Waiting for the Barbarians (2020) Review

 rating: *****

the story: An allegorical tale about an imperial outpost and the magistrate trying to keep it moral.

review: Mark Rylance found himself a late-career critical favorite, but until Waiting for the Barbarians I hadn’t really found something to enjoy him in. In it he embodies a gentle morality that’s as magnetic as the forces he finds himself up against, namely villainous roles for Johnny Depp and Robert Pattinson.

Depp is particularly interesting, as he tends to be. Lately a pariah in Hollywood, it probably made it all the easier to accept roles like this one, at once the visually flourished look he tends to go for but also the same edge he brought to Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (which I imagine, as he was selecting projects, these two were chosen in quick succession of each other for that very reason, even though their contexts and thus impact are vastly different). And as interesting as he is, he knows he isn’t meant to be the star of this thing, and seems content to take that backseat.

He’s assisted, in both senses, by Pattinson, who shows up late into the movie as a kind of stand-in. Pattinson could not possibly do a better job of picking interesting projects. To see him show up for something like this is a further affirmation that he knows exactly what he’s doing with his career at this point.

But again, it’s Rylance at the core, Rylance for whom the audience is meant to, and easily so, care about, as he stands up to the unforgiving forces Depp and Pattinson represent, apparently losing everything in the process.

And in the process, Waiting becomes a sort of less heavy-handed Lawrence of Arabia, less a story about some interloping hero and more about a man just trying to do the right thing, and all the more effective when he seems to have failed miserably. That’s where Rylance is so easy to depend on, how effortlessly he embodies the role of martyr without being needlessly flashy about it, what makes the whole movie work so well, steeped heavily in an era that seems to have rejected a figure like Rylance, as presented here, could possibly hope to solve anyone’s problems, let alone his own.

I’d like to imagine in an earlier era Waiting for the Barbarians would have been hailed as an instant classic, gotten all the buzz and even the Oscars to prove it. I don’t mind championing it in lieu of such acclaim. Not at all.

Lone Ranger (2013)

rating: ****

the story: John Reid becomes the eponymous hero.

what it's all about: Basically this is a movie that flopped at the box office for an incredibly superficial reason, and that was the immense backlash at Johnny Depp playing Tonto.  For the kind of movie Lone Ranger is, the casting makes absolutely perfect sense.  Depp is literally the only actor who could've pulled it off.  It's quintessential Depp.  But he's also not exactly Native American, so there was immense backlash.

If the casting had been accepted, Depp's Tonto would've added to his collection of signature characters.  That was the whole point.  His Jack Sparrow revived Depp's career, and was the first time since Edward Scissorhands where Johnny Depp Being a Character Instead of a Generic Pretty Boy really worked, and that was the whole point.  So casting directors started trying Characters all over the place for him to play.  Robert Rodriguez scored a coup early on in securing Depp for Once Upon a Time in Mexico soon after the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie proved such a phenomenon, and, well, Depp's role and performance in it changed the tone of the Mariachi movies Rodriguez had been making, in such a way that still defines a Rodriguez movie to this day, but didn't really itch the scratch created by Jack Sparrow.  Then Depp appeared in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as an Eccentric Johnny Depp Character.  But it again felt forced.  And so on and so forth.  Really, Depp's career always thanked him most when he was appearing as Jack Sparrow, but eventually...he had to do something else.  He had to become something else. 

So he became Tonto.  This Tonto dominates Lone Ranger.  He's the framing narrator, the unreliable narrator who's, again, perfectly cast for the story Lone Ranger is trying to tell.  Ironically, this Tonto exists at all because in the years since Tonto's creation he's become less accepted as the Native American Sidekick, and now every time "kemosabe" is uttered, someone has to explain what it means.  It can't just be a term of endearment.  It's got to a commentary.  And so when Tonto in Long Ranger explains what it means this time, it's part of a running joke that's at the heart of this version of the story.  It's very much in the vein of Jack Sparrow, the character everyone used to try and explain, why he walked the way he did.  Ah, and the answer's always been, because Johnny Depp created a really, really interesting performance.

So here I am, still talking about Tonto.  Tonto is inescapable in this movie.  Imagine what the character would be, in this context, if someone like Adam Beach had played him.  And no offense to Adam Beach, but I know Adam Beach, and he's no Johnny Depp.  That's part of the problem.  Native Americans aren't allowed to be Johnny Depp in general, even now, decades into redefining their role in stories like this.  We're still stuck in a one dimensional look at them, it just so happens that now it's supposed to be positive.  But they're static, and we like it like that, and so when we say we're complaining about Johnny Depp playing Tonto we're really criticizing our inability to think of Tonto in any other way than Stoic Native American, because the actors we have?  Totally incapable of playing this Tonto. Except, maybe, Graham Greene.  That guy's awesome.  But he's also older than Tonto ought to be.

Anyway, so Tonto's at the heart of understanding this movie.  He's even at the heart of understanding why Johnny Depp's casting is so perfect, despite everything.  Tonto is meant to be "a band apart," as explained, eventually, in his origin story, late in the movie, when it's explained why he became the screwy dude we see throughout the movie, why he becomes such a perfect Johnny Depp Character.  He's been traumatized, and all his quirks have developed from his attempts to cope with what happened to him, what he did, when he was a boy.  He's not weird for the sake of being weird.  There's a honest-to-god, genuine answer for it. 

And that's the rest of the movie, from the framing narration, which tries to explain what happened to Lone Ranger's legacy, both in the fictional and real worlds, and the pathos at the heart of the madness.  That's the story in a nutshell, pathos at the heart of madness.

It's about a corrupt businessman (Tom Wilkinson, doing brilliantly restrained work in extreme contrast to William Fichtner's showy Butch Cavendish, whose look seems to have been the one real concession to Depp and director Gore Verbinski's Pirates past) who tricks the public into believing his lies, even though the one character who most interacts with him (Ruth Wilson, who does wounded beauty so incredibly well) thinks he's scum mostly worth shunning as much as possible, even though it's continually impossible.  To watch Wilkinson at play is to know this movie has a beating heart, and knows exactly what it's doing at all times.  To watch him perform under a heavy beard that makes him unrecognizable is to know that this is a production that takes seriously immersing itself in its own reality.  We don't need to see Fichtner's bloody fingers as he works a loose nail free, but that's detail that rewards the viewer, that authenticates a movie that spends much of its time with, well, Tonto.

Then there's the Lone Ranger himself, Armie Hammer.  Armie's, surprisingly, had it rough since his breakthrough role(s) in The Social Network.  He's an actor who oozes charisma, but it's so hard to quantify, because like Depp he refuses to be just another pretty face.  So it's not surprising to see the two in a movie together.  Where Depp's instinct has always been to bury his looks under a gauzy character, Armie simply rejects expectations.  He looks like the classic leading man, but he's not afraid to make a fool of himself. 

Tonto is constantly complaining that the wrong brother survived.  The other brother is James Badge Dale, another actor who inexplicably finds it difficult to be appreciated.  He embodies the hero as the hero is supposed to be, in Lone Ranger, and makes an early exit.  Dale's biggest problem is that he commits so thoroughly to his roles that he doesn't mind taking the backseat.  His squinty eyes say he's a clever guy, but the rest of his performance says he'll hide the best of his work behind everyone else's.  It's not that he can't command a scene (my first and favorite experience with him to date is a glorified cameo in Flight, where his character is literally named Gaunt Young Man in the credits, where he absolutely dominates a scene with Denzel Washington), but that he never has a role big enough to fit his talent. 

So the brother is so heroically competent that Armie's Lone Ranger is stuffed ideals that are always comically backfiring on him, so that he can never live up to him.  That's this movie's version of the character, a thorough deconstruction calculated for cynical audiences who maybe don't trust Westerns as a source of popular modern entertainment, but somehow ending up rejected...because of that?  Because it didn't take itself seriously enough?

Again, only if you're looking only at the surface, and this is a movie with a lot of moving pieces, that's endlessly rewarding, that throws supporting stars at you without warning (Helena Bonham Carter!  Barry Pepper!  Stephen Root!), seemingly at random and with no regard to their narrative impact.  But it's all calculated.  Brilliantly.  The way Wilkinson's character thinks he's got all the angles figured out.  The way even Tonto believes he's got everything figured out. Certainly the way the Lone Ranger thinks he does.  Before he puts on the mask.

This is a story about why good men must wear masks, why the heroes aren't happy being paraded before the public, why even when the narrator is unreliable he's telling the honest-to-god unvarnished truth (even about that stupid bird on his head).  It contradicts basically every common conclusion about this sort of storytelling.  It's more clever than any of Depp and Verbinski's Pirates movies (even if they could be quite rousing and affecting).  It knows it's retelling a classic Hollywood story, one of the stories that made Hollywood, the Western at its zenith, as myth. 

And yeah, it features a classic Johnny Depp performance.  Don't believe what you've heard.  Watch it for yourself.  You'll feel its magic for yourself.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

rating: ****

the story: New Scamander travels to New York with a briefcase full of magical creatures, and things kind of spiral out of control from there.

what it's all about: In a lot of ways, judging the Harry Potter movies (all eight of them) was always going to be a tough proposition.  There's a diehard subculture that believes movie adaptations by definition are inferior to their book counterparts.  Actually, let me reword that: the prevailing opinion is that the book is always better than the movie.  It's a persistent prejudice, one that never really takes into account the unique benefits of both mediums.  To anyone who goes along with this line of reasoning, try to watch a movie based on a play.  If it's not a musical, and particularly if it was done years ago, you'll find "staginess" in the movie that would otherwise not be there.  That's the result of being excessively faithful to one version of a story at the expense of a different and wholly unique experience.  What works on the stage works that way because of the particular confines of the stage, which do not exist in movies. 

My point being, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them may in fact be the first real chance we get at how well the world of Harry Potter works in movies.  It's only too appropriate that the movie is set in America, which is where the majority of moviegoers around the world expect blockbuster movies to be set.  That's just one of the things it kind of automatically have going for it.  But there's also the threat of franchise fatigue.  Fans don't like to admit such a thing exists.  But you only have to look at the muted reception of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy to see it in action.  If these movies had been released right after his highly acclaimed and enthusiastically received Lord of the Rings trilogy, fans would have reacted to them very differently.  Franchise fatigue is a thing that happens mostly when fans have...moved on to something else.  It's no surprise that the Star Wars prequels were relative failures when Star Wars-scale blockbusters suddenly happened all the time (including Jackson's Lord of the Rings, and yes, the Harry Potter series).  But fans will attribute it to declining quality.

And actually, no matter how much lenience fans gave J.K. Rowling when she started to vastly increase the page-count of her books (the strain most showed in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the second giant-size entry, and also the first one in the series directed by David Yates in the film adaptations, which will be important later in this review), this blind love has declined in recent years, as she's begun a career writing books specifically for adults, none of which (there have been four, including three detective stories, which will also be important later in this review).  This is relevant, because of course Rowling wrote the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts, the first full-length story she's written in this series since 2007's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the book).

So there's no telling how enthusiastic fans, or critics, will be with this movie.  But they should be pretty ecstatic, because it's a brilliant success, like the stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which debuted this past summer, an unexpected continuation as well as restatement of everything that worked so well about Harry Potter the first time.

The story revolves on a vaguely familiar character, the author of a textbook Rowling released in the real world, for charity, but more importantly, the lone Brit in the story, who's an instant connection to Hogwarts lore even though he's technically off entirely on his own.  In a lot of ways, though, Rowling takes great pains to paint a portrait of the intrepid Newt Scamander very much in the mold of the beloved Rubeus Hagrid, the beloved groundskeeper portrayed by Robbie Coltrane in the movies, an outsider befriended by Dumbledore with a great love for magical creatures.  But make no mistake: Newt is no Hagrid.  In a lot of ways, he's what Harry Potter would have become if he hadn't found such stolid friends in Hermione and Ron, a sensitive soul with a fierce devotion to what he believes in, and an unwillingness to open up easily to others, fearing they just won't understand.

But the movie quickly pushes Newt in the direction of two helpful people, one being an American witch and the other a No-Maj, which is the American term for muggles.  (Some critics have suggested that "No-Maj" is a clumsy term, but anyone who grew up with the Magi of the Bible, or heard a similar term in the Mummy movies featuring Brendan Fraser shouldn't have any problem accepting it.)  Both of these characters add a wealth of inspiration to the movie, and help represent the uniquely American aspects of the movie.  In their own ways, they represent Newt's Hermione (someone who knows what's the what) and Ron (a charming bumbler) without consciously evoking them.  If I hadn't just pointed it out, I doubt you'd make the connections (not to insult you or anything).

And actually, Katherine Waterston's Tina Goldstein is more like Rowling's Robin from her Cormoran Strike mysteries, a woman who enjoys the thrill of the chase, even if it sometimes gets her into trouble.  Dan Fogler's Jacob Kowalski is so protoptypically American he's also fat, which is what most people around the world (and quite a few Americans) have assumed is the standard model for years, even though American movies rarely reflect that (Paul Blart, Mall Cop not withstanding).  His most interesting arc in the movie actually has nothing to do with Newt or Tina, but rather Tina's sister Queenie, played by Fine Frenzy, who would be a dead ringer for Idina Menzel.  Queenie is mesmerized by Jacob, the first No-Maj she's ever known.  The movie is actually about breaking through old modes of thought, and this is the easiest way it's demonstrated, and ends up finishing out the movie, too, so that you could very easily watch Fantastic Beasts as a completely standalone experience, whether or not subsequent sequels (there are four projected) picks up their story.

But these are all supporting players; Eddie Redmayne is, well, the main event.  He's developed a reputation lately of being a mercurial performer, able to slip into the unlikeliest roles, whether Stephen Hawking in 2014's Theory of Everything or a transgendered woman in 2015's The Danish Girl.  In Fantastic Beasts he brings almost lyrical physicality to the role of Newt Scamander, especially in a sequence where he coaxes a particularly troublesome creature back under control.  He brings effortless charm to Newt, which is the crux of the movie's appeal, and how it sells further exploits into the world of Harry Potter as something that doesn't actually need Harry.  In other words, he achieves the unthinkable.

There are other notable performances: Ezra Miller as the conflicted Credence (more on this later), Jon Voight as Henry Shaw Sr., Ron Perlman as Gnarlak, and Samantha Morton as Mary Lou, each of whom make indelible marks on fleshing out the American nature of the story.  (The whole concept of the Second-Salemers is brilliant, addressing something that was missing in Harry Potter previously, a tangible connection to the past.)  They have limited parts to play, so I won't spend too much time talking about them.

More notable is Colin Farrell as Percival Graves.  I would've watched this movie even if I wasn't already a fan of Harry Potter (and Rowling), because I've been a fan of Farrell's for nearly a decade now.  The Irish actor ironically plays an American in this one, as he has for the vast majority of his roles.  Critics have been silent about his appearance, if not dismissive, but he brings to Fantastic Beasts what he brings to all his movies: a distinct, brooding presence.  It's not just the eyebrows.  Farrell tends to inhabit all his characters will three dimensions.  This is not the first time he's spent the majority of his screen-time more or less silent (Dead Man Down, or even Miami Vice, or the most artistic example, The New World).  His role as Graves is the most direct reflection of the deeper ramifications running through Fantastic Beasts, and by the time the movie ends it's easy enough to understand why (I'm not going to spoil that, but I would give those who know reason enough to keep an open mind; this is hardly the first time we've been asked to ignore the personal life of someone making movies, and not even the hardest one to stomach, which I would say is the career of Roman Polanski).  Graves is almost Snape done all in one movie, but in the way fans expected rather than what Rowling eventually gave them.  His relationship with Credence is a dark reflection of Newt's with Jacob, and the film greatly benefits from the contrast.  I think Farrell is a powerful asset to the movie, and one of the few actors who could've pulled off such a tricky role.

Yates proves a deft hand as director once again.  By the time he started directing Harry Potter movies, the material had existed so long it almost didn't matter who was at the helm anymore, but this is an assumption he calmly busts with Fantastic Beasts.  Like the new look at Harry Potter in general, he proves that he really is as competent, and imaginative, as the movies might have only had fans think.  Matching him is Rowling, who proves she wasn't just doing this to further cash-in on her biggest success to date (now that there's been a lot of other stuff, too).  Some critics have said Fantastic Beasts reveals the debt she owes Roald Dahl, which is true, but there's also L. Frank Baum, too, anyone who's done truly imaginative work in the grand tradition Rowling continues, really.  There's even some Jumanji in there!

Where Yates proves that he was capable adapting even questionable material (his streamlined and incredibly effective improvement on Order of the Phoenix), Rowling demonstrates what she's learned since leaving behind the comforts of telling epic adventures one school year at a time.  If there are those who begin to suspect a lot of Harry Potter storytelling was somewhat convenient, fans can watch Fantastic Beasts and finally see for themselves that Rowling needs no such crutches.  This is a lot like the free-form nature of Deathly Hallows (both the book and movies) taken to its next logical extension.

In short (!), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is pretty fantastic.