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Udo Kier plays the world-traveling hero Jason in
Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier's little-seen
adaptation of Euripides' Medea.
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A Hollywood blockbuster like The Italian Job has nothing to do with Danish film auteur Lars von Trier and his stunning 1988 made-for-TV film, Medea, but I value both just the same. Director F. Gary Gray's The Italian Job, a fast-paced update of the 1969 British caper film, forfeits much of the original's rollicking comedy for straightforward action, elaborate stunts and an attractive, young cast. Gray's new Italian Job is slick, quick, sugary fun. The director wisely brings back the original film's Mini Coopers as the stars of the big-budget remake. By the time you reach the Italian Job's climactic chase, a rattling race through Los Angeles' subway, it's clear the Mini Coopers, not its good-looking cast, are the stars of the show. There are other car movies this summer -- the South Beach street racers in 2 Fast 2 Furious, the Cadillac sedans careening across a Los Angeles expressway in The Matrix Reloaded -- but nothing compares to the sheer exuberance of Italian Job's Mini Coopers.
Like all his movies, Medea, an update of the classic Greek drama about the embittered sorceress, Medea (Kirsten Olesen), and the revenge she plots against her lover, Jason (Udo Kier), for abandoning her, is ultimately about von Trier and his artful sense of filmmaking. He updates the Medea myth by transporting the story to Denmark's Nordic past and its North Sea marshes. Shot on video for Danish TV, Medea is more beautiful than most feature films. Von Trier strips the color from the watery Danish landscape for eerie effect. Much of the film takes place in shadowy, underground caverns. Candlelight provides a visual accent to many dramatic scenes. A pair of digitally-manipulated sequences gives Medea an added, experimental allure. The result is a stunning, engrossing, transcendent film.
People assume film critics solely enjoy esoteric, specialty movies like Medea, and that the annual barrage of summer blockbusters is a painful experience or a job-related annoyance at best. The truth is more of a happy medium. A critic's regular movie-watching diet of some 300-plus films per year creates a craving for anything different, distinct, if not outright experimental. A film like Medea is essential for anyone who believes cinema to be a modern art form. At the same time, everyone needs the occasional diversion, something fun, playful and perfectly disposable. You need to be entertained, and The Italian Job is up to the task.
My cliché response to people intent on branding film critics as eggheads whose tastes hover in the clouds is this: Everyone has two sides to their brain, and both ends need to be nourished. Paired together, film art like Medea and lowbrow entertainment like The Italian Job create movie-made synchronicity. One complements the other more than you realize.
Two clever heists bookend The Italian Job, and they more than compensate for some of the dead weight in between. The film begins with an underwater heist beneath the Venice canals that sets a fast-paced tempo for the rest of the film. Master thief John Bridger (Donald Sutherland), his team leader Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg) and their criminal crew, played by Edward Norton, Seth Green, Jason Statham and Mos Def, swipe millions in gold bullion from an Italian home. When they're hoodwinked by a double-cross, it's left to Charlie to plan how to get the gold back.
Wahlberg has a well scrubbed, all-American face, but little else at his disposal. He's stiff, more so than the famously wooden Keanu Reeves. Watching Wahlberg's uptight performance in The Italian Job convinces me that his heartfelt performance in Boogie Nights was either an anomaly or the only time a director matched his boyish personality with the right character. Donald Sutherland oozes presence and his cameo early in the film helps compensate for Wahlberg's charisma deficiency.
Edward Norton grinds his teeth through what turns out to be one of the more uninteresting performances of his career. Norton flashes plenty of threatening stares, gruff language and an appropriately cheesy goatee and mustache, but he lacks the creepy spark necessary to play an action villain.
Luckily, for the film's sake, a lively supporting cast surrounds the wooden Wahlberg and the uninspired Norton. Seth Green flashes slackerish charm and much-needed laughs as the crew's computer expert. Jason Statham's come-on energy matches perfectly with his thick British accent as the getaway driver. Mos Def offers steady lighthearted support as the team's demolition expert.
As pretty safecracker Stella Bridger, daughter of master thief John Bridger, leggy Charlize Theron gets behind the wheel of one of the film's trademark Mini Coopers, and she is clearly enjoying herself. In another time, Theron, toned and thoroughly tanned, would have been a Hitchcock blonde, cajoling men into foolish misdeeds with an icy stare and an exposed thigh. In The Italian Job, a movie more focused on the guys, Theron is abandoned with the impotent Wahlberg, a leading man incapable of generating one sexy spark no matter how beautiful his leading lady. It's no wonder Theron's face lights up every time she gets behind the wheel of a Mini Cooper. The car beats Wahlberg in the personality department hands down.
Gray keeps the camera moving swiftly with plenty of aerial shots, which is a good thing, because the characters are kept at a comic book level. Croker's plan to retrieve the stolen gold is implausibly elaborate, which means it's perfect for The Italian Job. There are chases with subway trains, a Hollywood Boulevard explosion and a disappearing armored car, the hijacking of the Los Angeles traffic control system and a final confrontation between car and helicopter. Through it all, the film's trio of red, white and blue Mini Coopers dazzle.
Can you imagine watching a von Trier film and later discussing the cars? Medea is the work of a visionary, a confident update on Euripides' play and a screenplay by Danish filmmaker Carl-Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc).
Medea is as emotionally powerful as any film can be. Udo Kier plays Jason as a perplexed hero, someone unaware of the impact of his decision to desert Medea and his sons so he can marry King Creon's (Henning Jensen) daughter Glauce (Ludmilla Glinska).
Kirsten Olesen makes full use of her deep-set eyes, narrow features and solemn speech. She gives a quiet, intense performance as Medea, and her impact is more commanding because of it. In her clenched lips, you sense how Medea is dying from the hatred for Jason that she's keeping inside. At the film's end, when she finally lets loose her long red hair from beneath her skullcap, the moment feels revelatory. It's as if Medea has finally released some of the anger she's been harboring for so long.
Medea predates von Trier's Vow of Chastity, his rules for his school of low-budget, realist filmmaking, the Dogme 95 Movement, by eight years. But Medea hints at the naturalistic storytelling von Trier would emphasize in later films. Lighting is kept to a bare minimum. Costumes and sets are rough-hewn. Medea avoids the extreme artifice of von Trier's least successful film, Zentropa (1992). Medea is a movie's movie, a great story bought to life with vision, drama and accomplishment. Breaking the Waves (1996), a tale of a young wife trying to please her injured husband thrives on its heightened melodrama. Dancer in the Dark, about a Czech immigrant trying to earn enough money for an for an operation to save her son's failing eyesight, used 100 handheld digital video cameras to create song-and-dance numbers that pay homage to Golden Age Hollywood musicals.
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Scene stealers: The Italian Job's Mini Coopers are
more memorable than its cast.
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Medea is more straightforward, free of the mischief and publicity stunts that surround films like The Idiots, about a commune of Danish twentysomethings pretending to be mentally retarded. His latest film, Dogville, a Depression-era drama set on a mostly bare stage about a runaway woman (Nicole Kidman) seeking shelter in a Rocky Mountains town, earned plenty of controversy at this year's Cannes Film Festival due to its anti-American stance.
Medea is more straightforward, subtler by comparison. It's completely gimmick-free and, for that reason alone, ranks as one of von Trier's greatest films, alongside his surreal hospital epics, The Kingdom and The Kingdom II.
Gray is a Hollywood workhorse, a worker bee director who struggles to put an imprint on his steady output of movies. Von Trier is a courageous filmmaker, someone willing to risk hatred and ridicule to try something different. Von Trier would never make a Hollywood movie like The Italian Job, and that's fine. In fact, it's safe to say that The Italian Job could have been directed by just about anyone with similar results. Yet I'm convinced that both films, one high art, the other lowbrow fun, have something valuable to offer audiences. The Italian Job is a glossy entertainment, more fun the second time I watched it. Medea is an essential film from one of contemporary cinema's significant directors. Only Medea qualifies as timeless, but The Italian Job still warrants 90 minutes of our time.
The Italian Job CityBeat grade: B.
Lars von Trier's Medea CityBeat grade: A.
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