Coppola Lost in
Compared to other directors of his generation, Sofia Coppola is not a particularly prolific figure (counting from 1999, we found only three previous films: The Virgin Suicides -1999 -, Lost in Translation -2003 -, Maria Antonieta -2006), but each of his films, without being either an example of risk and challenge is unique in generating different positions around that carry much of the criticism to take opposite positions.
The soundtrack of your life
probably the reasons for bitterness among different positions in the work of Coppola come biased by the weight of a particular constellation of cultural references that usually fit (at times too much) like a glove with a specific target viewers indies. It will not be the first nor the last to use a resource as old as cinema itself, but in his movies, everything seems to be gone or lost in the swirl of certain songs, given in literature or film. In some cases (this is the place of his most fervent critics), you would think in a certain effect, sometimes even emotional blackmail some of the principal. In the Coppola's film music is rarely heard to listen to their characters, but that crosses the mind and heart of the director at the time to think and compose scenes. The clearest example of this occurs with Maria Antonieta , where the court of Versailles at times seems to morph into a nightclub in Manchester, to music by bands like Gang of Four, Bow Wow Wow, Adam and the Ants., Or New Order . You want to stay cool, not to be dominated by such a low trick, but ends bitterly resigned to the fact that the soundtrack is too exciting, too perfect to resist. Though not the only one who digs music scenes like the peculiarity of Coppola comes from the hand of the composition of the scene and the raising of a paradoxical effect in opera under registration. It would appear that she took a taxi and saw herself, thinking how nice it would be that at that very moment, not in the taxi, but in the whole town was ringing some My Bloody Valentine . Many events in the lives of some of us are crossed by the aesthetic desire, just that most of the time are there in our heads, unlike the director Yorker who has the means to translate that into movies. After all, what you are buying a spectator when you buy a ticket from Sofia Coppola, is nothing more nor less than their fantasies, as if to borrow at least half an hour.
Cage
In this sense, one of the peculiarities of Somewhere is the fact that the first film where the director gets off the horse, since most music or references that cross the site are most committed to the film's diegetic universe. Except for this unusual and beautiful song by The Strokes that could easily have marked the end of the movie and the entry of claims, most popular topics are and stripped of certain halo of melomanÃa (eg skating scene scored by Gwen Stefani in other circumstances would have been filmed in a completely different). The film itself has opted for a much harsher tone and unaffected than all their previous works, portraying a character who never ceases to be a younger and fachera version of Bill Murray in Lost in Translation but with more blind spots, so to speak, with its edges filed down under (well, well, Bill Murray is one). Johnny
Marco (Stephen Dorff) is a Hollywood actor who passes his days in a luxury hotel and whose life seems to be summarized a series of press conferences and sexual encounters random with a huge bunch of females. Reviewed well, it seems the idealized life of a rockstar, but the reality is be the opposite. The alternative option is usually to show the hell of drugs and sex that lead the character to some physical and spiritual decadence, yet you choose not to choose any of the two roads. More than anything, which surrounds the life of Johnny Marco (the reference to Don Juan de Marco seems too obvious) is a nimbus cummulus of absurdity that seems to surround almost everything. In this sense, the film follows the common of all the films of director who is a portrait of characters enclosed in their own cages luxury in The Virgin Suicides, sisters locked up by their parents, encapsulated in that magical world of Carole King and Todd Rundgren, in Lost in Translation Murray and Johansson wandering in that city completely alien, in Marie Antoinette, first court caged for life, then besieged by the same people demanding his head.
Referring to this notion of a cage in Somewhere, the hotel becomes a maze, with those representing them supermodels minotaurs guarding it. Following the Greek metaphors for this maze the only thread that seems to save reel there is his daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning, sister of the famous child star of Little Miss Sunshine ), who has a sweet and natural relationship. The film goes along that path of cyclic, only altered by one point in Johnny's wife decides to "take some time to herself," leaving Cleo in her care.
Slide
In this escape from Cleo with Johnny Coppola receives certain fragility in the glare of cool and luxurious, something that often prove to be a weakness, but in Ultimately, it is also part of what we like it. One can perceive in his films something that bothers a little, an effect similar to what is perceived in this fascination a little slug Chabrol's latest in its portrayal of the wealthy classes. The latter reached its most paroxysmal in Maria Antonieta where fantasy moments Coppola Versailles seemed to turn a house of Barbie, with somewhat awkward ideological implications.
Beyond that (which last, is the author's signature, take it or leave it), in that tone more stripped surrounding Somewhere, the movie gains in sincerity what it loses in emotion, with certain times or minor details and very accomplished, as the small platform that rises to Johnny to be the same height of a co-star (as a rest or residue of that celebrity status that is never put on the whole), or the scene where they are doing a mold of his face and see it with all his head smeared with something similar to clay, a person locked in her own face, and can only breathe through two holes, unable to open his eyes or say anything. The flow of metaphors becomes a bit redundant at the end, that detail the car stopped in the middle of the road (a fairly cliché, by the way), somewhat in contrast with the beginning of the film, where driving in circles seem to talk about the state's vital role. Perhaps the director faltered a bit when trying to redeem the character at the end I was a little short on footage for the rebuilding of their lives. It would also have to think how many more films can be made about the existential emptiness of celebrity without falling of repetitions. Taking accounts Somewhere not become the best of Coppola (beyond being awarded the Golden Lion), but it makes a new line in his films are to be seen where they end by contact.
Posted in Daily on April 8, 2011
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