Here's the pre-obituary I wrote for Amazon's blog Armchair Commentary in 2009. I'm happy to say that Jewison outlived this piece by 15 years.
Along with genre-hoppers like Howard Hawks and Steven Soderbergh, director and producer Norman Jewison epitomized cinematic versatility. Like many of his peers, he apprenticed in live television in the 1950s and '60s before turning to film; first in London, then in his native Toronto, and later in New York, where he oversaw The Judy Garland Show.
In a 2009 interview with The Los Angeles Times, he credited the success of 1965's The Cincinatti Kid with Steve McQueen for allowing him to move away from light comedies, like Send Me No Flowers with Doris Day, to the big-screen dramas that were his true calling (Jewison inherited the formerafter producer Martin Ransohoff gave Sam Peckinpah the sack).
Jewison went on to direct best picture winner In the Heat of the Night with Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, The Thomas Crown Affair with McQueen and Faye Dunaway, Rollerball with James Caan (which inspired an inferior 2002 remake), Jesus Christ Superstar, A Soldier's Story (with Denzel Washington, who would return for The Hurricane), and Moonstruck, which won Oscars for Cher, Olympia Dukakis, and writer John Patrick Shanley.
Unapologetically liberal, Jewison once said, "The movies that address civil rights and social justice are the ones that are dearest to me." Consequently, he had his detractors, like Andrew Sarris, who criticized his "strained seriousness," and David Thomson, who dismissed his work's "hollow prettiness," though Ephraim Katz praised his "superior craftsmanship," notwithstanding a career "that zigzagged between mediocrity and excellence" (and even Thomson found Moonstruck "charming"). The Hurricane (1999), a stirring account of wrongly-imprisoned boxer Rubin Carter, also took hits for some minor alterations to the historical record.
Despite his time in Southern California, Jewison never lost touch with his Northern roots, and founded the Canadian Centre for Advanced Film Studies in 1986. In 1999, he accepted the Irving G. Thalberg Award (nominated three times for best director, his movies won 12 Academy Awards). He also wrote a well received memoir, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me.
In addition to his many directorial and production efforts, Jewison deserves credit for mentoring Hal Ashby, who edited The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, In the Heat of the Night, and The Thomas Crown Affair, winning an Oscar for the latter before making 1970's The Landlord, a film Jewison had intended to direct until Fiddler on the Roof came calling.
Norman Jewison was married to Margaret Ann Dixon for 51 years until her death in 2004 and to Lynne St. David for 14 years until his death on January 20. He leaves behind three children; Michael, an associate producer and location manager, Kevin, a camera operator, and Jennifer, an actress.
Oh night, conceal my pain, caused by being nothing and being alive.
--epigram that opens the film
Ce que j'ai fait, ce soir-là
Ce qu'elle a dit, ce soir-là
Réalisant mon espoir
Je me lance vers la gloire... OK
--Talking Heads, "Psycho Killer"
As a boy, Émile, the central character of former Cahiers du cinéma critic Paul Vecchiali's fascinating and disturbing film, was a cute, blond kid. Perfectly normal-looking. But then, late one night during a trek to buy a copy of the funny pages, he witnesses an act of misogynistic violence. It could have destroyed him, but it doesn't—it makes him, and he will grow up to be much like the strange man he encountered on the picturesque streets of Paris.
Years later, a "killer of lonely women" stalks the city. The Jack the Ripper-like figure has killed five women by strangling them with a white child's scarf, exactly like the faceless man in the prologue. On TV, newspaper reporter Simon Dangret (Julien Guiomar) describes the victims, according to those who knew them, as "sad and lonely" and "desperate and suicidal." He asks the killer to reach out to him, and provides his contact information.
Anna (Eva Simonet), who watched the broadcast, just after being dumped by her boyfriend, approaches the reporter--who is actually a police inspector--and offers to act as bait. "I have nothing to lose," she says. He brushes her off.
Unbeknownst to Anna, 36-year-old Émile (Jacques Perrin, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Donkey Skin) witnessed the entire exchange, and proceeds to follow her. He doesn't do anything except observe, faithful German shepherd at his side. It's broad daylight after all--but she's now on his radar.
By day, Émile works at a produce stand in sequences that appear more documentary-like than the rest of this pastel-hued film. It seems likely that Perrin worked at an actual stand, interacting with actual customers.
Émile's true vocation, however, is killing, and since he feels no shame, no remorse, he calls the reporter to let him know he feels fine. "I'm happy," he states. He kills because it feels like the right thing to do, but just as Anna doesn't know he's watching her, Émile doesn't know someone is watching him, and it isn't the reporter, but Le Chacal (Paul Barge), a petty thief.
Since the film begins after he has already killed five women, Vecchiali depicts his encounters with victims six through eight, each a distinctly remarkable sequence. Émile kills one woman (Jacqueline Danno) after she has performed in a nightclub, singing a sad chanson about sailors while accompanied by dancers in navy-and-white striped tunics; a beautiful, once famous-now-forgotten actress (Hélène Surgère, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom), who has made herself up as if she were expecting a gentleman caller, even though she isn't; and a stylishly-dressed ballet dancer practicing in an empty studio late at night. They don't deserve to die, of course, regardless as to their possible heartbreak, but Émile doesn't see it that way.
Much like Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, a possible influence, Vecchiali alternates between what we see of Émile and what he sees of the world (and whenever he drives anywhere, the action briefly shifts into hyper-drive).
This implicates us, but not necessarily as voyeurs. Except for the dreamlike opening sequence, the Corsican filmmaker--who produced Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles--doesn't linger over any of the killings, and nor is there any sex or nudity. None of this makes Émile sympathetic, though Vecchiali depicts Le Chacal as a colder character, since he could have tried to prevent the killings he witnessed or shared his findings with the police, but doesn't. Further, pawing through the still-warm victims' effects has no discernible effect on his psyche.
As the film continues, Vecchiali spends less time with Émile and more with his followers as Anna continues to pester Simon, while he continues to brush her off. Until he doesn't. They're all obsessed in different ways, and the four--including Émile--will come increasingly close to colliding with each other.
Though Émile insists to Simon that he's happy, and that he's "doing these poor women a favor," the way he reaches out to the reporter suggests otherwise, since he now has someone to talk to, and he seems to relish that, even as it jeopardizes his ability to kill indefinitely. In other words, he's lonely, too--but he's more sociopathic than suicidal. The situation grows even more complicated when the enchanted Chacal reaches out to the attractive Anna.
By this point, Simon knows enough to act, but doesn't, and Émile knows enough to stop, but doesn't. All of the actors are very good, and each brings a different color or flavor to the film. Throughout, Émile remains the most enigmatic, even as we catch glimpses of his memories and fantasies.
Though he sleeps next to a portrait of a white-haired woman who appears to be his mother, we never learn anything about their relationship (tellingly, the portrait is situated next to a copy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince). Other than his trusty canine sidekick, he's completely alone, and it appears that he always has been. Perrin doesn't play him as a sad sack or an incel, but as an introvert who has a set way of looking at the world, and lacks the ability to grow or to change out of his immature worldview.
For most of its running time, The Strangler didn't strike me as misogynist--or feminist--but a series of incidents towards the end shifted my thinking, one of which involves a group of street walkers who spend as much time strolling the boulevards of Paris as Émile (they look after each other in a way that felt Varda-esque).
Émile also gets careless, as single-minded serial killers are wont to do, but no matter how you think the film is going to end, you're likely to be surprised, since not one of the four players is exactly who or what they appear to be; the bad characters have good sides and the good characters have bad sides, and all of those sides will eventually--and eventfully--converge.
It's hard to say if The Strangler, which also saw release in 1970, was as much of a comment on women's lib as Rudolf Thome's Red Sun, in which women act as killers of men. Vecchiali's film is more of a character piece--and not a full-fledged giallo as some have claimed--and the central character is more obviously villainous, yet somehow not a complete monster. At Screen Anarchy, Olga Artemyeva compared the film to Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End, with its dangerously naïve protagonist, and she's not wrong.
Émile proves capable of empathy, sorrow, and even love. In a way, that's the scariest idea of all: that such a seemingly decent person--the cute guy at the fruit stand with the dog and the shy smile--could also be the worst.
The 2K restoration of The Strangler, which made its US theatrical debut in 2023, is out now on Blu-ray through Altered Innocence. Roland Vincent's fabulous score has never been available on any format, which is a shame as it hews towards light and charming during the day and dark and jazzy at night--with generous helpings of organ, accordion, and reverb. Images: Mubi (Jacques Perrin), Film at Lincoln Center (Émile as a boy, Eva Simonet, and Julien Guiomar), Film Inquiry (Jacqueline Danno), and IMDb (poster).
Red Sun, a film primarily concerned with women, opens with a man. It will close with that same man--after his life has been irrevocably changed by the four women at its center.
With his shaggy hair and foppish cravat, Thomas (Marquard Bohm, Deadlock, Kings of the Road) looks like a cross between Mick Jagger and frequent Fassbinder player Gottfried John (The Marriage of Maria Braun, Berlin Alexanderplatz); handsome from some angles, less so from others.
In the opening sequence, Thomas hitchhikes from Hamburg to Munich to reconnect with Peggy (model Uschi Obermaier), a bartender with whom he once had a dalliance. This isn't about love; he may be attracted to Peggy, who looks like Twilight-era Kristen Stewart with her classic features and curtain of thick, dark hair, but it's mostly about finding a woman who will support him, since he has no desire to work, explaining rather hilariously, if accidentally poetically, "Work contradicts the rhythms of my life; it causes the body to waste away." Presumably, he's been doing this for awhile, bouncing from woman to woman, moving on after each one kicks him out.
It's the kind of thing a young person, like Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley, can do for awhile if they're pretty, charming, and/or persuasive enough.
Thomas has no other goals or aspirations, but the clock is ticking, and it's unlikely he can do this indefinitely, not least because he isn't especially charming. Amusing, perhaps, and the actor invests him with "a certain rotten charm," as Thomas puts it, but the guy doesn't otherwise have much going for him. It doesn't make him a villain, though. Plus, he knows Peggy is a soft touch. As her friends put it, "She mothers the layabout types."
After switching out his cravat with a tie, Thomas drops by Take Five, the high-end nightclub where Peggy tends bar. She seems neither thrilled nor disappointed to see him; but rather takes it in stride. Though she offers some light teasing, it doesn't dissuade him from embedding himself in her life. After a visit to the lake in her VW Bug, a sequence Thome will repeat at the end, they return to the flat Peggy shares with three other women.
Everything seems pretty normal so far, especially for 1970--whether in Germany or any other western country during the height of the sexual revolution--with one significant exception. At Take Five that night, Thomas passes middle-aged businessman Howard (Don Wahl) on his way down the steps to the club. Unbeknownst to him, the other women (Diana Körner, Sylvia Kekulé, and Gaby Go) lured Howard to the flat before he and Peggy arrived. Now he's bound, gagged, and hidden behind a closed door. Before the night is over, one of the four women will shoot him in the head.
The next day, they ask Thomas to help them move a large, covered basket--white like most of Peggy's outfits--from the flat to the street and into the Bug. It's obviously heavy, and he may be a layabout by trade, but he doesn't hesitate to lend a hand. It's a funny scene, because the audience knows exactly what's inside the basket, but the incurious Thomas doesn't, and nor does he care. So, he makes himself useful in the moment, but after Peggy decides she's had her fill--"You're lazy!"--she asks him to leave. He doesn't, and nor do they fight about it, but it's clear that he has signed his death warrant, because if he stays, he too could end up in a large, covered basket.
Oddly, Thomas sticks around, even after he starts to put two and two together. In fact, he joins forces with a local man whose brother went missing, vowing to remain until he catches the women in the act, at which point he'll alert the authorities and claim the reward. Sensing that the timid Isolde is the quartet's weak link, he attempts to gain her confidence. "We kill men," she states flatly, adding, "We thought it was right--they deserved it." Once again, as dark clouds continue to gather, Peggy asks Thomas to leave, even offering him money to go away, but he just won't take the hint.
Over the course of the film, four other men will die at the quartet's hands, which isn't a lot, but it's certainly enough, and Thome plays none of this for horror or suspense. Instead, he takes a matter-of-fact approach, largely free of violence or gore. If Thomas, a standard-issue layabout, isn't a villain per se, nor are the women. They're murderers, to be sure, and the director, by way of screenwriter Max Zihlmann, doesn't make light of that fact, but they aren't mean, nasty, or sadistic. If anything, they're just honoring a pact they made to kill any man with whom they find themselves involved after five days in order to sever any attachment that might develop, since that can only lead to dependency. They also believe they're doing society a favor by dispatching men who cheat, make sexist remarks, and the like.
Thome doesn't side with the men or the women. In interviews, he has stressed that Red Sun isn't intended as a feminist film, and I take his point, though he has cited Valerie Solanis's infamous 1967 S.C.U.M. Manifesto as an influence. Marleen Gorris's A Question of Silence, in which three women who had never met before spontaneously kill a male shopkeeper, is a feminist film, because years of patriarchal belittling and bullying leads the women to snap at the same time, but there is no snapping in Red Sun. This isn't Thelma and Louise either, and none of these women will be taking desperate measures to avoid persecution. It's just not that kind of film.
Canadian programmer and historian Kier-La Janisse wrote about Red Sun in her essential guide to films about women on the verge, House of Psychotic Women, a 2012 title that FAB Press reissued in 2022. Then, in 2023, Radiance Films released a beautifully-designed Blu-ray with abundant extras, including a 52-page booklet (Margaret Deriaz's 50-minute visual essay about the New German Cinema is particularly enlightening). These are only two examples, but I believe the film has remained relevant, though not exactly widely known, because it isn't a clear-cut polemic or a standard-issue exploitation item, but something slipperier and more ambiguous.
Nor is Red Sun the kind of cult item that made no impact upon release, only to become better known over time. Due to the participation of Obermaier and Bohm, it received a fair amount of attention in Germany, but it wasn't a hit like Detektive--and the model-actress never made another film.
In his commentary on the Blu-ray, which comes from an interview with Obermaier's then-boyfriend Rainer Langhans, Thome explains that his funders wouldn't back the film unless he secured the services of the two performers, a feat made easier by the fact that both appeared in his 1969 directorial debut, Detektive. This time, however, Obermaier played hard to get, asking for more money each time he asked her. Though not exactly a great actress--she's good enough--her status as a countercultural icon gave her clout, and she used it. In the end, Thome met her asking price.
Wim Wenders, for one, was a fan, and reviewed Red Sun enthusiastically in 1970—the same year his own directorial debut, Summer in the City, first made the rounds. At the time, Wenders was more arts journalist than filmmaker, so I'm not sure how much sway his words had, but he described the film as "intentionally superficial" and compared it, favorably, to a comic strip, possibly because of the way Thome uses vibrant shades of red, blue, and gold; in that sense, it also recalls Godard's 1966 Made in U.S.A.
If Red Sun isn't heavy-handed in its politics, Thome's initial interest in Obermaier may have been intensified by her association--largely through radical writer and filmmaker Langhans--with the West Berlin-based Kommune 1, which would, in turn, inspire the formation of the infamous Red Army Faction/Baader-Meinhof Group.
The way the director concentrates his attentions on Bohm also confirms that Red Sun isn't a feminist film--not intentionally, at any rate--no matter how poorly Thomas comes across, though Thome may have also found it easier to work with the experienced actor. The less-experienced women are fine, but there's the sense that he hired them primarily for their looks, which is hardly a crime. It was the braless era, so even though nudity is kept to a minimum--Obermaier has a brief topless scene--the women's hip outfits don't leave much to the imagination, but nor are they overly revealing.
A more cynical viewer might dismiss the whole thing as a not-exactly-flattering satire about women's lib, not simply because the women kill men, but because the men just aren't that bad. They have their flaws, but they don't deserve to die. As author and podcaster Samm Deighan notes in her excellent essay for the Radiance release ("Guerilla Girls: Radical Politics in Rudolf Thome's Red Sun"), "While it was likely Thome's intention to present a parody of issues like feminism, commune life, and radical politics, Red Sun transcends these aims to become something stranger and more surreal."
If anything, the women are like praying mantises in that they fuck their victims before killing them (but do not eat their heads!)--a less cynical viewer might conclude that that's a pretty sweet way to meet one's maker.
About the music: Uschi Obermaier was an associate of krautrock pioneers Amon Düül II--a pretty cool credential--while the soundtrack combines rock and classical music (in her illuminating Psychotic Women review, Kier-La Janisse describes Obermaier as a groupie, which may be true, but I have some issues with that word).
Notably, most of the songs don't appear in the credits, possibly so that the low-budget production could avoid paying royalties. The acts/composers/ tracks include Jean Sibelius, the Small Faces, the Nice (Keith Emerson's pre-Emerson, Lake and Palmer outfit), and Remo Giazotto's "Adagio in G Minor," which Norman Jewison would later use in Rollerball and Gerry and Sylvia Anderson in Space: 1999, according to the fine folks at B&S at the Movies.
Radiance's restored, 2K version of Red Sun is out in the United States for the first time ever in a limited edition of 2,000. Though sold out at their UK site, it's available in the US through MVD. Images: IMDb (Uschi Obermaier), DVD Beaver (Obermaier and Marquand Bohm), McBastard's Mausoleum (Obermaier, Gaby Go, and Don Wahl), eBay (first edition of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto), Close-Up Film Centre (Anna Karina in Made in U.S.A.), and Retentional Finitude (Obermaier, Go, and Diana Körner).
As an admirer of Alan Warner's 1995 novel Morvern Callar, which centers on a coolheaded Scottish drifter, I was pleased to see that he's preparing a 33 1/3 entry on Can's 1971 opus Tago Mago. That's an album—a double album, no less—that could benefit from literary exploration (though Ege Bamyasi remains my favorite Can record).
Can plays a part in Morvern's story just as they do on the soundtrack to Lynne Ramsay's 2002 adaptation. Her first feature, 1999's Ratcatcher,
knocked me out to the extent that I immediately grabbed a copy of
Warner's debut novel when I found out that she would be adapting it.
After catching the film, in which Samantha Morton
plays the title character, I picked up the soundtrack. Naturally, it
includes Can, but also two solo selections from singer and bassist Holger Czukay (Ramsay has since adapted a second novel, Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin).
Here's a mini-cut of Can references from Morvern Callar (exactly as written):
Though alone I climbed to the circular folly
above the port. I put Can: Delay 1968 in my ears while I used the
goldish lighter on Silk Cuts and bolted the wine... I held my arms out
for a while to let the mud just dry on the skin then I climbed on up
swinging the trowel to I'm So Green till I came to the big gathering of
tons boulders with soil and mosses capping the tops... Near their feet I
cooried down in front the CD and put on Unlimited Edition by The Can...
From her late boyfriend, Morvern inherits a mixtape, the unpublished novel he dedicated to her, and copies of Magazine's Secondhand Daylight, Last Exit's Iron Path, Bill Nelson's Red Noise, PM Dawn's Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience, the Golden Palominos' This Is How It Feels, Material's Hallucination Engine, and Lee "Scratch" Perry's De Devil Dead.
According to the publisher's announcement
regarding Warner's upcoming Can book, "Publication date is unconfirmed at this
point but look for further announcements on this blog." It's been years
since I've read a 33 1/3 title, due more to a lack of time than
interest, but I predict that his contribution will be among the finest
in this enduring album-exploration series.
Fun fact: Alan Warner dedicated Morvern Callar to Czukay and saxophone great Peter Brötzmann. Dec 29, 2023 update: I read Warner's book in 2017 during a summer trip through Eastern Europe. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, i.e. he took a memoir approach, so there's more Warner/Scotland and less Can/Germany than I anticipated. Still worth a read, though. Images from the IMDb (the movie poster) and Amazon (the book cover).
"Now, we all know Kerry's my favorite, then Kev, then David, then Mike. But the rankings can always change."--Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany) to his sons
Part One: The Story of a Face
It's hard to talk about writer-directorSean Durkin's fact-based melodrama The Iron Claw without talking about Zac Efron, and not just because he plays the central character, former wrestling champion Kevin Adkisson, aka Kevin Von Erich, but because it isn't the kind of role he could've played, say, 10 years ago when he appeared in the hit frat-vs-dad comedy Neighbors.
Zac just doesn't look like that fresh-faced guy anymore, and not because he's 36 rather than 26--in The Iron Claw, he plays Kevin from his late-teens through his late-thirties--but because he looks like a different person.
When Zac first came to fame by way of The Disney Channel's 2006 millennial sensation High School Musical, he was about as pretty as a young man could get. It made him an instant teen idol. Zac capitalized on his success by appearing in two sequels, in addition to the 2007 version of the Broadway musical adaptation of John Waters' 1988 film Hairspray.
He could've kept going as a song and dance man, but decided to try other things instead; some worked, some didn't, but he was honing his chops.
In retrospect, it's too bad the coming-of-age dramas he made with Richard Linklater (Me and Orson Welles), Ramin Bahrani (At Any Price), and Lee Daniels (The Paperboy) didn't make more of an impact, or he might have continued in that vein, but instead, he gravitated toward mainstream comedies and romantic dramas. It's only in more recent years that he's appeared in slightly edgier material, like Harmony Korine's The Beach Bum.
Though Zac has worked steadily since 2002, when he was only 15, he was involved in an accident in 2013 that would change the course of his life. After a bad fall that, by his own account, left his chin literally hanging from his face, he had his jaw wired shut. The experience didn't alter his appearance at first. Through regular rehab, he could keep the damaged muscles in his face in alignment, but when he took an extended break in 2021, his jawline widened, permanently altering the shape of his face, and leading to speculation that he had had plastic surgery. He swears he hasn't, and I believe him, but he looks different. He's still a handsome man, but the prettiness is gone.
While watching The Iron Claw, it occurred to me that he's entered the post-1956 Montgomery Clift stage of his career. After the horrific accident in which Monty's famous face took the brunt of the impact, he had surgery that subtly, but significantly altered his appearance. Though plastic surgery wasn't as advanced in the 1950s, he appears to have had the very best.
It's often said that the accident robbed Monty of his looks, but this is cruel overstatement.
Even the Clash got in on the act with "The Right Profile" when Joe Strummer sang, "And everybody say, 'He sure looks funny--that's Montgomery Clift, honey'." Monty still looked good, but his matinee idol days came to a crashing halt, and though the films and roles grew smaller, he continued to do finework. Eventually though, after years with a debilitating case of chronic colitis combined with the suffocations of the celluloid closet, the damage from self-medicating with alcohol and barbiturates took its toll.
Zac, on the other hand, may also look subtly, but significantly different, but he isn't going anywhere--not least because he's been sober since 2013, possibly as a result of the fall. It's just that there aren't likely to be as many pretty-boy roles in his future, which brings us to The Iron Claw in which he takes on his darkest, most devastating role to date.
If 2017's superfluous Baywatch introduced a super-fit, male model version of the svelte figure he had been before--much like Ryan Gosling's beach-ready body in Barbie--Zac is all muscle here, just as young Kevin Von Erich was all muscle (in 2020, Zac claimed he never wanted to work out like that again--"It's just stupid and it's not real"--and yet here we are). As far as I can tell, it's 100% Zac; no makeup effects, no prosthetics. It's a startling transformation. In combination with his changed face and shaggy hair, he's virtually unrecognizable, other than by those unmistakable blue eyes.
Part Two: The Family That Prays Together
In the prologue, a trim and effectively intimidating Holt McCallany (Mindhunter) plays Jack, patriarch of the Dallas-based Von Erich clan. He's a variant of the absolute beast Robert Duvall played in The Great Santini or maybe even Robert De Niro's "Shut your pie hole!" stepfather in A Boy's Life. Better known by his heel name, Fritz, he and his wife, Doris (Maura Tierney), have two boys, Kevin and David. From their father, they learn his signature move, The Iron Claw, which is every bit as injurious as it sounds.
The next time they appear, the family has expanded by two more sons, Mike and Kerry (Durkin omitted Chris, the youngest Von Erich). Fritz now works behind the scenes of World Class Championship Wrestling as owner and promoter, while Kevin and David (Scrapper's Harris Dickinson) have taken his place in the ring.
Except for the fact that their world revolves around wrestling, they're a typical Texas family in the 1970s: they own a ranch, their house is filled with guns, and their stay-at-home mom is a devout Christian. It isn't clear if the Von Erich menfolk share Doris's fervor, though it seems unlikely. When something goes wrong--like the accidental death of firstborn son Jack Jr. in 1959--she claims it was God's will, and when the boys seek her advice, she tells them to sort things out for themselves. It's the most downbeat performance I've seen the one-time Newsradio player give, and it will grow more downbeat over the course of the film.
A bright spot arrives in the form of Pam (Lily James, last seen playing Pamela Anderson in Pam & Tommy), who forthrightly and flirtatiously approaches Kevin after a match. The expectation: she's a groupie looking for a roll in the hay. Not exactly. Pam does everything in her power to get the sweet, if rather clueless grappler to ask her out. One date later, and they become inseparable. Durkin suggests that the Von Erich boys have been so indoctrinated by Fritz's macho bluster that they don't know how to have a normal conversation with a woman, especially one as outspoken as Pam. She's everything Doris isn't. (Even in the prologue, Doris comes across as a scold, chastising Fritz for buying a fancy car when their funds are tight.)
Durkin introduces the third brother, Mike (Angelfish's Stanley Simons), early on. To his father's chagrin, the rangy kid would prefer to make music than to wrestle, but he supports his brothers, and the feeling is mutual. At least 30 minutes pass before Durkin introduces the fourth brother, explaining that Kerry (The Bear's Jeremy Allen White, shorter than the rest, but just as buff), aka the future Texas Tornado, has been away at his father's alma mater, Southern Methodist University, where his expertise at discus-throwing lands him a berth on the Olympic team, but when the US boycotts the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Fritz talks him into joining Kevin and David in the ring where they become a formidable tag team, wrestling three opponents at the same time, bringing even more fame--if not always fortune--their way.
So far, so good, but then, after Durkin has fully defined the contours of the family's life and work, everything starts to go wrong, and no one has the power--or uses what power they have--to try to stem the tide. The idea of a Von Erich Curse takes hold, but not one of these tragedies was preordained.
In brief: David develops enteritis before a major Japanese match. Though Kevin urges him to see a specialist, David tells him he plans to wait until afterward. The boys have been taught to suck it up, and so David does what he has been told. We won't see him again.
With a second son down, Fritz convinces Mike to trade music for the mat; from his business-minded perspective, the boys are virtually interchangeable, but it works for awhile. Until it doesn't.
One injury later, and Mike is no longer able to wrestle. More critically, he isn't able to do much of anything, and though he shows signs of improvement, it isn't enough. He doesn't want to live like this, and so he finds a way out. Though Kerry, not Kevin, will bring home the American Heavyweight Champion belt Fritz was never able to secure himself, yet another injury will take him out of the ring. Against all odds, he finds a way to return. All the while, though, he's in excruciating pain, and turns to painkillers to cope. Soon he, too, will take himself out of the picture, leaving Kevin the last Von Erich male--next to his indestructible father, of course.
After the film ended, it occurred to me that this is a deeply odd motion picture to release during the holidays. The entire thing serves as a cautionary tale about masculinity and its discontents. Though Durkin concludes with an idyllic sequence, and though the inter-titles indicate the better times to come, I left with the overwhelming feeling that the Von Erich Curse was due more to poor parenting than to fate. Notably, Durkin didn't call on the real-life Kevin, now a 66-year-old grandfather, until well into production, but he's been supportive of the film, so it would appear that he doesn't dispute the representation of his parents. If anything, he says he was moved by the depiction of the closeness he and his brothers shared.
Part Three: Suicide is Painless (Not Really)
There are plenty of adults who grow up with shitty parents, and manage to survive and thrive. There are others who have the most loving parents imaginable, but it isn't enough when life feels like it's no longer worth living. There's no one reason people commit suicide any more than there is no one kind of person who sees death as the only solution to their ills. In the case of the three Von Erich brothers who took their lives--including the unseen Chris--they made their own decisions, but the film strongly suggests that they didn't have the means to cope when adversity came their way. Dad taught them to suck it up, Mom taught them that everything is God's will, and they grew up in an environment where therapy was for the weak. If The Iron Claw isn't an overtly political film, it's certainly not pro-gun. The principle of Chekhov's gun is in full effect: two brothers would die by self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Though it's beyond the scope of the film to explore copycat suicides--a real-world phenomenon that rattled Japan in the 1980s--it's hard not to imagine that the first Von Erich suicide in some awful way made the second and third possible. It's almost as if The Iron Claw is an uber-macho precursor to Jeffrey Eugenides' hyper-feminine novel The Virgin Suicides--the inspiration behind Sofia Coppola's directorial debut--in which every one of the beautiful, blonde Lisbon sisters takes her own life. Except that this all really happened.
Part Five: The Last Man Standing
In the end, Kevin escapes--and ostensibly ends--the so-called curse. He would follow his father as a behind-the-scenes wrestling magnate, while his sons would follow in their father and grandfather's footsteps as pro wrestlers. The film posits Pam as the primary factor that helped him to weather adversity, though it also presents him as the most stable Von Erich right from the jump. True or no, he's like a surrogate father in the film, since he settles down first and doesn't judge his brothers the way his parents do when things go wrong.
Though the idea that the love of a good woman saving a man's life seems simplistic--and even conservative in ways that the rest of the film isn't--Kevin and Pam have now been married for 43 years, run a business together, and have managed to avoid the scandals that plagued his father's career, so it's hard to completely discount her influence.
Part Six: The Aftermath
Last week, Zac Efron was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and members of The Iron Claw cast came out to support him with Sean Durkin and Jeremy Allen White saying a few heartfelt words on his behalf.
Hollywood is powered by hot air, so I don't always know what to believe--as much as I like to think I'm pretty perceptive--but the person they described sounds a lot like film's Kevin Von Erich.
Zac, too, is a survivor, and reportedly a kind and decent person. He's also ridiculously privileged, but when a young, inexperienced kid finds themselves with boatloads of money: bad things can happen. Zac slipped and broke his face because he was running around in socks and collided with the granite fountain in his home. But he got sober with help from his friend and mentor Matthew Perry, who succumbed to drug addiction this October after years of trying to get clean (sadly, the ketamine overdose that claimed Perry's life was part of a therapy treatment gone wrong).
I watched Zac's Walk of Fame ceremony on YouTube because I wanted to see what he looks like now, long after filming has wrapped. His appearance in The Iron Claw is so unsettling--and frankly disturbing--that I worried he might still look like a Hulk-come-to-life. He doesn't. He's de-bulked, and he looks good. In fact, no one could stop talking about how good he looks.
I'm not sure whether he gives a great performance in the film, because Kevin is so recessive compared to his more extroverted brothers--David especially--but it's definitely a good one, and I feel certain that he's never brought more of himself to a role. So far, the film's biggest award has been for best ensemble, and despite Zac's shocking physical transformation, an Oscar nomination isn't guaranteed, but at least he's got a real shot.
At the press screening, my colleague, Silas Lindenstein, noted that The Iron Claw isn't really a wrestling movie, and he's right (he also complained that the film's Ric Flair doesn't begin to capture the actual flamboyant heel's charisma, and he's right there, too).
As Sean Durkin explains in the production notes, he grew up as a fan of the Von Erich brothers, so he brought that knowledge and enthusiasm to the project, and the wrestling scenes look sufficiently authentic--and viscerally painful in ways that recall Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler--but I believe it's the second half of the film, when things fall apart, that really drew him to the project.
Durkin's 2011 directorial debut, Martha Marcy May Marlene, which stars a very good, pre-MCU Elizabeth Olsen in her breakout role, also revolves around a survivor; in that case, a former cult member learning to function as an autonomous individual. The link between the two is clear: having to perform masculinity at all times in all situations and never showing any physical or emotional vulnerability is like being in a cult. It's also a curse that can infect--and in some cases destroy--most everyone that it touches.
For a more upbeat wrestling film, I recommend 2018's Fighting With My Family with Florence Pugh and Jack Lowden. The Iron Claw opens on Dec 21 at the Uptown and wide on Dec 22. Images from TV Guide (Zac Efron in The Iron Claw), Teen Vogue/Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection (Zac in High School Musical), Men's Health (Zac in Baywatch), The Hollywood Reporter (Zac with Harris Dickinson, Stanley Simons, and Jeremy Allen White), WrestleTalk (the Von Erich menfolk), Common Sense Media (Zac and Lily James), ABC7 Chicago/KABC (Zac with star), and Yahoo /Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images (Kevin and Pam at Zac's ceremony).
RISSI PALMER: STILL HERE
(Dilsey Davis, USA, 44 minutes)
At the second and final festival screening of Still Here, Durham, NC director Dilsey Davis explained that PBS's American Masters,
which produced her directorial debut, stipulated a cut of less than one hour, and so
she complied, though it wasn't easy. To Dilsey's credit, her profile of the Nashville country
singer, the first Black woman to land a song on the country charts since 1987,
feels pretty comprehensive, though I still wish it was more fleshed-out (and she didn't say anything about the availability of a longer cut).
Aside from Dilsey's look at her subject's rise from a frustrated pop singer toa fully-actualized country artist, mother, and television host, the profile shows how emerging artists from marginalized communities can benefit when someone of Rissi's stature uses her platform for their benefit.
Charly Lowry, a Pembroke, NC-based artist from the Lumbee/Tuscarora tribes, was at the screening, and performed a couple of songs from her upcoming full-length debut (she's also a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate). Charly has a strong, resonant voice, and one of the songs was so catchy, I found myself humming it while walking out of the theater. Definitely an artist to keep an eye on as she makes more waves in 2024. Dilsey is now working on a documentary about Charly. I hope, for the sake of both women, that she'll be granted a longer run time.
RIDDLE OF FIRE
(Weston Razooli, USA, 113 minutes)
I've never seen a film exactly like Weston Razooli's Riddle of Fire, a hit at Cannes and Fantastic Fest, which takes place in Wyoming, but looks more like Romania. That's because Razooli appears to be well versed in the fantasy films or fantastique of the 1960s and '70s, like Barbarella or John Boorman's Zardoz, even if his film is devoid of crazy, sexy costumes.
Unlike Riddle of Fire, those very adult films never revolved around kids. Other than some choice profanity, it would make for a great family film. I would've loved it if I had been able to see such a thing when I was a little one, though it's more likely to target and attract the art house crowd.
There's plenty of action, most involving paint guns and off-the-wall humor. There's even a little magic. I couldn't always understand what Jodie (the unbelievably cute Skyler Peters), the youngest of the four adventurerers, was saying, but his rubbery gestures and appealingly squeaky voice made me laugh more often than not. Charlie Stover, Phoebe Ferro, and Lorelei Olivia Mote as his brave companions were equally effective.
Their quest: to find a speckled egg for the purposes of Jodie and Hazel's mom, who will only share the TV password they need to use the video game console they boosted if they bring her a blueberry pie made according to a very specific recipe while she's in bed with a cold.
That's the gist of the plot, but Razooli (who also plays a part) squeezes maximum inventiveness out of it. There are also witches, freak folk twins, a hazy color palette that lends everything a lysergic glow--he shot on 16mm as in the fantastical days of yore--and the kind of Celtic-style lettering for the credits and inter-titles that adds vintage flare to a film otherwise set in the present. I heard a rumor, from a knowledgeable source, that Razooli's debut may be coming to Seattle at some point, and I hope it's true.
SHE IS CONANN (Bertrand Mandico, Belgium/France/Luxembourg, 104 minutes)
I reviewed French fantastique filmmaker Bertrand Mandico's After Blue (Dirty Paradise) for Video Librarian last year (I haven't seen his directorial debut, The Wild Boys). Mandico has his own, idosyncratic thing going on, and it's easy to admire, but not as easy to like--at least not for me.
In their outlines, his narratives make a kind of sense, but dialogue is frequently inscrutable.
Unlike After Blue, She Is Conann--his queer, gender-bending take on Robert E. Howard's Conan--features an entire B&W sequence in English, and it's one of my favorites. Conann, a female-presenting character, is played by older actors in each sequence as she ages.
In the English-language section, the 35-year-old Conann is played by a bald, striking Black woman (Lupin's Sandra Parfait) with silvery, new wave-style face makeup and records strewn across her floor from the likes of Can (Tago Mago) and Klaus Nomi (his self-titled debut).
Not a lot happens in this sequence, but Mandico amps up the somnolent pace to welcome effect. Another, livelier highlight: the sequence in which Conann asks a gathering of cash-strapped artists to literally eat her body in its entirety. If they do so, she'll ensure they have the funding they need. They're thoroughly disgusted, but except for one woman, they all dig in.
Mandico's performers, like the ever-fearless Elina Löwensohn (Nadya, Amateur) are always game, but the acting is variable at best, which can make it hard to care about any of the characters. The lovely Ms. Löwensohn spends the entire film behind a thick, prosthetic dog mask as a sort of ageless trickster figure named Rainer who wears a black leather jacket with their name emblazoned in rhinestones on the back, much as in Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising. The name also surely serves as a reference to Mandico inspiration Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who created fully-formed, insular worlds out of whatever the fuck he could get his hands on.
At times, I drifted off, ever so briefly, during the film. It didn't really matter, and I felt zero guilt. As programmer Aaron Hillis advised in his introduction, if you aren't sure what's going on, just relax and let it wash over you.
Though I wish Mandico was a more scrutable storyteller, I can't imagine taking a pass at the chance to see one of this films on the big screen, because there's nothing quite like them in terms of practical effects, and we need more of that in our CGI-dominated cinematic landscape.
There are no more screenings of any of these films,but Altered Innocence will be releasing Conann theatrically in 2024. Images from Rissi Palmer's official website, Screen Anarchy (Riddle of Fire's pint-sized cast), Movie Insider (Andrea and Rachel Browne), Brooklyn Horror Fest (Nathalie Richard as Conann at 55), and The Movie Isle (Elina Löwensohn and pals).
SCALA!!! (Ali Catterall and Jane Giles, UK, 2023, 96 minutes)
It's unlikely I'll see a better documentary this year than Ali Catterall and Jane Giles's Scala!!! (love those three exclamation points), an artful, no-holds-barred look at the celebrated London movie palace that existed under various names and permutations for hundreds of years. Against all odds: it's still standing.
Giles, a former programmer was at the screening with former theater worker Vic Roberts--who now lives in Wilmington, NC--had previously compiled a large-format Scala Cinema Book for FAB Press, so she was well positioned to segue to a documentary about a subject she loves dearly.
Through present-day interviews, archival footage, and an abundance of fair-use film clips, Catterall and Giles recount the history of the place, including the first UK appearances from proto-punk legends Lou Reed and Iggy & the Stooges, while concentrating specifically on the years 1978-1993 (a plaque now commemorates the historic 1972 concerts).
During that time, Scala was as much of a haunt for aspiring filmmakers, like Isaac Julien and Mary Harron, as musicians, like Douglas Hart (Jesus and Mary Chain) and Barry Adamson (Magazine, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), who composed the finger-snapping, Elmer Bernstein-inspired score (at the screening, Jane noted that it will be coming out in some form, possibly on Mute Records). Editor and producer Andrew Starke also deserves credit for marshaling the material in such a clever, fast-moving manner.
Scala!! is currently making the festival rounds while Catterall and Giles work out the distribution situation. To judge by the reaction of the capacity crowd at Jengo's Playhouse, the documentary will be making a lot more enthusiastic fans in the future, and maybe it will even inspire more theater owners, like the fine folks at Seattle's Beacon Cinema, to throw caution to the wind when it comes to film (and other kinds of) programming.
KIM'S VIDEO (David Redmond and Ashley Sabin, USA, 2023, 85 minutes)
Unlike some of the other documentaries I've seen at Cucalorus, especially Georden West's beautifully burnished Playland, Kim's Video is not a pretty film, but as much as I love a handsomely-shot or creatively-constructed work of non-fiction, a case can be made for those films in which the storytelling--and the sheer fearlessness it takes to tell the story--reigns above all. That film is David Redmond and Ashley Sabin's Kim's Video.
I would imagine that these experienced documentarians (Intimidad, Girl Model) didn't have the budget for a cinematographer, because aside from co-directing, David--who has a very pleasant voice--narrated and shot the film.
I couldn't say what kind of camera he used, but the images have a consumer-grade look, like the camera work in The Blair Witch Project or Ti West's Trigger Man, after which Ti turned to professional DPs. For what its worth, the imagery isn't as wobbly as either of those films.
It's also possible that the filmmakers simply wanted to be as nimble as possible, since David had to travel from New York, where Youngman Kim once owned several popular video stores, to New Jersey and South Korea, where he maintains homes, and remote Salemi, Sicily, where the entire collection ended up after Kim's went out of business (Karina Longworth previously recounted the labyrinthian journey for LA Weekly in 2012).
So, the storytelling is the thing, and David is relentless in trying to establish the links between "Centro Kim," as the collection was known in Salemi, and the various mobsters and politicians who took it up as a cause, while also ensuring that nothing was ever digitized and that the thousands of films, in whatever form, were never properly shielded from the elements or made available to the public as promised.
There's a happy ending, and David helped to make it happen. When a filmmaker inserts themselves into a story, bad things can happen, but just as Jane Giles's passion fueled the Scala book and documentary, David Redmond's passion for Kim's Video inspired him to go above and beyond mere image-making. Maybe someday he and Ashley will again make a film that looks better than this one, but their storytelling is hard to beat.
There are no more screenings of SCALA!!! or Kim's Video. Images: Alan Delaney / Screen Daily (Scala), Mick Rock / Happy Mag (David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop), James and Karla Murray Photography (Kim's Video), and The New York Post (Youngman Kim in one of his stores).
Coverage of the Seattle International Film Festival and year-round art house programming in the Pacific Northwest.
Kathy Fennessy is former president of Seattle Film Critics Society, a Northwest Film Forum board member, and a Tomatometer-approved critic. She writes or has written for Amazon, Minneapolis's City Pages, Resonance, Rock and Roll Globe, Seattle Sound, and The Stranger.
