Indie Spotlight: A Joe Swanberg Double Feature

There’s never enough coverage of the independent film world. Unless it’s a publication or website devoted solely to indie productions, the attention of movie news and reviews focuses on the big name films and actors, the big budget blockbusters that everyone is already talking about. Even we here at The Chronicle are guilty of this, emphasizing wide release films rather than smaller, often more introspective independent works. Now, we attempt to rectify that.

This week, we bring attention to two films by Joe Swanberg, a legend in the world of independent film. Having worked in the indie world for nearly a decade, Swanberg regularly puts out multiple films every year, all of which he writes, directs, and edits himself. This nearly superhuman output is augmented by the fact that he pays for so many projects by acting in other people’s low-budget productions, meaning that the total number of films he’s involved in during a given year usually adds up to more than half a dozen.

His films often clock in between 70 to 80 minutes, with an outlier or two on either side, focusing more on characters than story. Subsequently, most of his films, made up mainly of improvised dialogue, don’t have much of a story at all, instead following characters through their daily lives rather than a storyline. While this may alienate many viewers, others will be fascinated by Swanberg’s style of characterization over plot development, of truly exploring a character rather than moving a story forward.

Swanberg made ripples into the mainstream last year with the release of his underrated comedy film Drinking Buddies, a movie that starred well-known actors (Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, and Ron Livingston) and got a much wider release than any of his previous works. For his two latest productions, however, Swanberg returned to his shoestring budget indie roots. The results, the erotic thriller 24 Exposures and the drama All the Light in the Sky, are a mixed bag, with one never living up to its premise, while the other ascends due its strong lead performance.

 

24 Exposures

Billy (Adam Wingard) is a fetish photographer, taking pictures of women made up to look like murder victims. His girlfriend, Alex (Caroline White), sets up his gigs and hires the models, many of whom the couple engage in threesomes with. But their normal, if unusual, existence is interrupted when one of their former models is murdered.

Enter Detective Michael Bamfeaux (Simon Barrett), the classic cop on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Having recently been dumped by his long-time girlfriend, Michael struggles to balance his personal and professional lives. As Michael investigates the murder and Billy takes too much of a liking to one of his models, the body count starts to rise, putting all three main characters into situations that none will leave unscathed.

24 Exposures is an ambitious film with a fascinating premise, but it just doesn’t add up to a satisfying movie. A film about the killing of a model who was photographed as a corpse days earlier suggests a psychological crime thriller that constantly blurs the line between fiction and reality. While Swanberg does make the audience question what is real, regularly showing an image of a bloody woman on the floor without revealing if it’s one of Billy’s photos or a CSI’s, he rarely goes back to give the answer. By the end of the movie, it’s easy to question just how many murder victims there actually were.

Similarly, the film only reveals in the final minutes that the first murder was unrelated to the rest, which were committed by an on-screen character. Furthermore, that first murder is never solved, a fact the surviving characters realize and laugh about just before the credits. When you’re watching a murder mystery film and the murderer is never identified, something has clearly gone wrong.

But the film’s biggest problem is its acting. While the main female roles are well cast and acted, the two male leads are the opposite. Wingard and Barrett, the director and writer of last summer’s great horror film You’re Next, respectively, are not professional actors and usually relegate themselves to cameo roles if they ever appear on-screen. Here, we see why.

As a fetish photographer who regularly charms women into bed, Billy needs to be both quirky and charismatic, but Wingard just comes off as a creeper. There’s nothing alluring or compelling about his performance, so the audience fails to make a connection or sympathize with him.

Barrett, meanwhile, does an adequate job as the dangerously depressed detective, but does nothing new with the character. The disinterested glances and mopey stares get old quickly, but Barrett has nothing else to work with. While this may be a problem in script or direction, one would think that the actor might be able to bring something to the table. But not here apparently.

Ultimately, 24 Exposures squanders its great premise with a lack of focus on the plot and poor lead performances. It serves as a cautionary tale of what can happen when the emphasis is placed on characters over story and those characters are not well acted.

 

All the Light in the Sky

Marie (Jane Adams) is a 45 year old actress living in Malibu who finds that roles are much harder to get than they were in her younger years. Regardless, she finds peace in her simple existence, paddleboarding every day before either chasing or researching the roles she does get. But when her niece Faye (Sophia Takal), an aspiring actress herself, comes to visit, Marie slowly realizes that her existence is actually much sadder and lonelier than she thought, inspiring her to do more with her life.

While 24 Exposures fails because of its lead performances, All the Light in the Sky thrives because of it. Adams, who co-wrote the screenplay with Swanberg, is actually going through the struggles Marie faces in the film, giving her performance a strong sense of authenticity. She delivers beautiful monologues about her nearly 25 year career, one that never panned out like she’d hoped. There’s a sad nostalgia in each glance she takes in conversations with her niece that truly sells the performance, proving to the audience that this is a person who has actually had these experiences. The film rests entirely on Adams’ shoulders and she rises to the occasion.

Takal, meanwhile, accepts her smaller role and does good work with it. While it might be expected that her younger actress character would get roles immediately, making Marie even more depressed, the film never actually shows Faye working. The few scenes she has without Marie show her hanging out with her new acting friends and Skyping with her boyfriend back on the east coast. These scenes help show that Faye might not actually know what she wants with her life, a parallel with Marie wondering if she made the right decision at the beginning of her career. If the film has one big problem, it’s that Takal does not get enough screentime.

Having almost exactly the same runtime as 24 Exposures, this film has even less of a plot than its predecessor. But because of this, it’s not tied down to a premise and is able to float freely between Marie’s daily activities as easily as she does on her paddleboard. If there must be a criticism of the film, it’s that Swanberg barely gives his thin plot even the minimal attention it needs, instead focusing mainly on Marie’s life. This is a good film, but there’s just not enough there to push it forward into becoming a great one.

Overall though, this is both a great examination of a mid-life crisis and an intimate, thought-provoking character study.

 

Hopefully you now have an introduction to the films of Joe Swanberg. 24 Exposures and All the Light in the Sky are just the two latest works in a filmography that includes nearly two dozen short and feature-length films, so there’s plenty out there to explore. As we speak, he’s probably putting the finishing touches on his newest film and planning his next two. We look forward to seeing them and the presumably dozens more he’ll make in the years to come.

Originally published in the Saint Rose Chronicle.

The Monuments Men: Lighthearted War Film Leads to Mixed Results

Which is worse, an overall bad film or a good film that should have been great? A bad film seems to be the initial obvious answer, as the viewer takes nothing away from the movie, unless it’s so bad that it’s laughable. But I’d go with the latter answer, a good film that squanders all of its top quality resources and simply produces a mediocre product. Such a film leaves the viewer with an unfulfilling feeling as the credits roll, leaving them frustrated that what they saw was not nearly as good as the film they were promised.

Sadly, The Monuments Men is such a film. While it is certainly entertaining, switching between relaxed comedy and serious drama, and highlights an important story of World War II not known by many people, the film never lives up to its potential. With Academy Award winners both in front of and behind the camera and a huge Hollywood budget supporting it, the film should be a triumph, an emotionally affecting film that stays with the viewer long after they’ve left the theater. Instead, the film is merely good.

The film follows the historical Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program of the Allied Powers during World War II, whose mission it was to recover works of art stolen by the Nazis before they could be destroyed. Led by Frank Stokes (George Clooney), the team consists of painter James Granger (Matt Damon), architect Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), sculptor Walter Garfield (John Goodman), designer Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin), composer Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban), and Frank’s old friend Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville).

After getting together and going through basic training, the team splits up and heads to locations all across Europe to look for paintings, sculptures, murals, and more, including meeting French resistance member Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett), who may know where thousands of pieces of art are being stashed. Initially meeting nothing but opposition from soldiers who are disgusted by their pretend-soldier status, their mission becomes even more important, and dangerous, when Hitler gives an order that if Germany falls, all the artwork the Third Reich has hidden across Europe is to be destroyed.

In addition to starring in the film, Clooney serves as director, co-writer, and co-producer, truly putting his all into the project. Clooney’s earlier filmography suggested that The Monuments Men would be a well-made film that audiences would enjoy. In addition, his previous films Good Night and Good Luck and The Ides of March attracted awards buzz at the time of their release. Couple that with Clooney and producing/writing partner Grant Heslov riding a tidal wave of momentum for producing last year’s Best Picture winner Argo, and most critics and movie-goers assumed The Monuments Men would be an early contender for next year’s awards season.

Overall, Clooney has done a good job with the material, creating an entertaining film that makes the viewer both laugh and cry. No expense has been spared to make the film historically accurate, with the costumes, props, and sets all looking the part of 1940s Europe. While the film initially struggles to find its identity, jumping too erratically between comedy and drama from the start, it establishes a serious tone with bits of comedy sprinkled throughout at about the halfway mark and continues this to the end credits. The audience forms an attachment to the characters and sympathizes with them as they face every obstacle thrown in their way. When a member of the team dies in the field, viewers are as devastated as the characters in the film.

But on a technical level, the film is a misfire. Despite featuring an all-star cast, the characters are criminally underdeveloped. The team members’ talents are only shown in a recruitment montage at the beginning, then totally forgotten about. Once they hit basic training, the Monuments Men become a group of men who all have a connection to the art world; their areas of expertise do not matter. Had the two hour film been 20 minutes longer, as well as going through a few more script revisions, this problem could have easily been solved.

This lack of character development is astonishing, considering the film takes place over the last two years of the war. Realizing that there was so much material to dive into makes the final result even more unsatisfactory. The film jumps forward months at a time, but these transitions are only recognized by lines printed at the bottom of the screen. Had they not been there, the audience would have assumed the events of the film took place over just a few weeks. When the war ends and the Monuments Men head home, only one or two of them seem to have really undergone any spiritual transformation or have been changed by their experiences at all.

The root of the problem with the film seems to be that Clooney doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do with it. He clearly wants to make a great war film about an important story, and he has absolutely found one here. But he struggles with how to tell that story, trying to cram too much material from a 450+ page book into a 120 minute film. Having already cut down the number of real-life Monuments Men from over 400 to just seven, the film seems more like a series of individual missions rather than one cohesive story. In hindsight, it would have been a much smarter move to adapt the book into a six hour TV miniseries, which would have allowed for not only more characters, but much more characterization, as well as clearly showing the passage of time and the changes, both physically and emotionally, in the men and women saving Europe’s very culture from destruction.

Ultimately, The Monuments Men will be remembered as a good film, a solid war film that people will enjoy re-watching again and again. But today, it’s just a bit disappointing.

Originally published in the Saint Rose Chronicle.