MACBETH 1971

“If you take material and filter it through me like a sieve, it’s gonna vaguely have my shape. I can’t hide that ‘signature’ any more than I can create it. It’s something that occurs. It’s DNA.”        
Robert Altman on the topic of directors subconsciously leaving their personal imprint on a film.

When Roman Polanski’s controversial film adaptation of Macbeth, William Shakespeare’s famously “unlucky” play (theater superstition has it that the play is cursed), flopped unceremoniously at the boxoffice, the director salved his wounded ego by complaining to any and all that the film’s poor reception was due to the public failing to believe his blood-soaked, graphically violent approach to Shakespeare's tale of a nobleman brought low by ambition and waning conscience, was in any way influenced by the Manson killings. Polanski felt his film was never given a fair chance because misguided critics and Freud-obsessed American audiences insisted on reading allusions to the brutal August, 1969 slaying of his wife (actress Sharon Tate) and unborn child into all those explicitly rendered, Shakespeare-mandated, stabbings, dismemberments, ambushes, beheadings, and infants from their mother's wombs untimely ripp'd.
Yeah...how silly of us.

"It makes 'The Wild Bunch" look like 'Brigadoon'"
Or so one critic thought upon the film's release. Most of the bloodshed that traditionally occurs offstage in Macbeth is placed front and center in Polanski's adaptation. 

Polanski was right of course. Audiences at the time most definitely reacted to Macbeth as a film made by a director exercising questionable taste in drawing upon an unspeakable personal tragedy for artistic inspiration. But how could they not? His first film in almost three years, Macbeth was Polanski's follow-up to Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and his first film since the cultural shockwave of the Tate/LaBianca Murders. I think it would be fair to say that at this point in his career, Polanski could have adapted The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore and audiences would still have scoured every frame looking for traces of what affect such a profound loss and personal trauma might have had on his work.

Roman Polanski is perhaps my favorite director of all time, but for him to have assumed it would be otherwise is not only naive, but smacks more than a little of a disingenuousness on his part. As one of the breed of filmmakers who greatly benefited from the “film director as star” cult that sprang out of the '70s "auteur movement," Polanski became the darling of both mainstream and avant-garde film by promoting his films as the creative end-result of his singular artistic vision. Whose fault is it then when audiences seek to detect traces of the director's DNA on the celluloid?

Jon Finch as Macbeth

Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth

Martin Shaw as Banquo

Terence Bayler as Macduff

John Stride as Ross

Both Polanski and co-collaborator Kenneth Tynan (the noted theater critic and literary manager of the National Theater Company) are terrifically faithful to Shakespeare's original text of The Tragedy of Macbeth, but make no mistake, this IS Polanski’s Macbeth. Good or bad, whether he likes it or not, Roman Polanski's cinematic fingerprints (not to mention copious amounts of blood) are all over this adaptation. Instead of denying it, perhaps it's time for Polanski to embrace it; for it is the infusion of one man's real-life fixations into the fictional story of another that wrests this Macbeth from its theatrical confines and brings it to vibrant, intensely compelling life. 

All the trademark Polanski templates and obsessions are in attendance: the bleak, empty vistas under ominous skies recall Cul-De-Sac; Repulsion's hallucinatory dream sequences are echoed in Macbeth's haunted nightmares; there's the coven of nude, elderly witches that hearken to Rosemary's Baby; and the coiled, masculinity-baiting tensions that exist between Lord and Lady Macbeth are not dissimilar to Knife in the Water's aggrieved married couple.

The Three Witches

Chaos, Darkness, & Conflict

So many familiar themes and motifs that later came to punctuate the entire Roman Polanski film oeuvre are present in fevered abundance—blunt, unsentimentalized violence; pessimism; a distrust of human nature; guilt; impotence in the face of destiny; black humor—one might be forgiven for forgetting that Macbeth was indeed written by William Shakespeare in the 17th Century and not Mr. Polanski in the 20th.

Nicholas Selby as King Duncan

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I’m not much on Shakespeare. The language is beautiful, I’ll grant you that, but the image I have of Shakespeare on film is one of lugubrious dramas with British actors in love with the sound of their own voices staring off into the distance delivering speeches. In tights, yet.

There are exceptions of course. I'm fond of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet – (1996), Titus (Andronicus) - (1999), and this, Polanski’s Macbeth—which is my favorite screen adaptation of a Shakespeare work. Macbeth, with its exceedingly high body count and concern with such relatable, base emotions as guilt, envy, and revenge, is a particularly impressive translation to film, not only because Polanski is a perfect ideological match for a tale about the poisonous imprint of ambition (Lord Macbeth and Rosemary’s Baby’s Guy Woodhouse would have a lot to say to one another), but as one of cinema’s great visual storytellers, Polanski’s command of the language of cinema enlivens the story by creating images as poetic and dramatically evocative as the words that accompany them.

As though summoned by Macbeth's own brooding temperament, dark clouds
 gather in the skies above Inverness castle as King Duncan approaches to meet his fate

Polanski takes the naturalistic approach to Shakespeare’s play, an approach that forges a psychological intimacy to the story, making the characters life-size and rendering their faults not ones born of evil natures, but of human weaknesses. The tragedy of Macbeth is that the darkness within him is only unearthed after his fortunes have taken an upturn and his future success ordained. Lord and Lady Macbeth are only truly unhappy with their lot after it has been prophesized that it is to be improved. It’s like the “entitlement” sickness that grips Americans today. People seem to have lost the knack of being happy with what they've got because everywhere you look they're being told that they should want more, that they deserve better…and worse…as citizens in the “land of plenty”, are entitled to it. Ambition for ambition's sake is the madness that grips Macbeth.

Lord and Lady Macbeth: Thwarted by vaulting ambition

Polanski, who knows all too well the corruptive allure of ambition and its close kinship to guilt, makes Macbeth’s conflict of conscience one disturbingly personal and frighteningly real.

PERFORMANCES

In spite of Polanski's well-documented technique of micromanaging the hell out of his actors (which, given the level of performances he gets out of his actors, may well speak to the efficiency of the technique overall), naturalism dominates. His actors appear liberated and unfettered, their performances effortlessly lifting Shakespeare's characters from the printed page.
Macbeth’s boxoffice prospects were greatly diminished by the lack of star names attached to it (beyond Polanski’s, of course), but in Jon Finch (the late actor who starred in Hitchcock’s Frenzy) Polanski has an actor capable of tapping into the man behind the monster. Finch, whose dark, anxious eyes reveal more about the demons plaguing his character’s mind than any monologue can adequately capture, makes for a persuasively vulnerable, down-to-earth Macbeth. A performance refreshingly devoid of theatrical posturing and the arch striking of surface attitudes, Finch’s Macbeth is a man driven to malicious madness by weaknesses within him that he allows himself to be convinced are strengths.

Jon Finch's Macbeth is no speechifying protagonist. He's a man suffering
the disintegration of his soul in pursuit of ambition he scarcely knew he harbored.

Gender, sexual politics, and women as possessors of the only true power, have been recurring themes in a great many of Polanski's films (Cul-De-Sac, The Ghost Writer, Bitter Moon, Knife in the Water, Carnage, and his forthcoming Venus in Fur). Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth is tailor-made for Polanski's usual upending of gender roles in the service of dramatizing the subtle gynophobia that lies behind the uneasy alliance known as sexual relations in his films. 

In Francesca Annis, Polanski happily departs from the usual depiction of Lady Macbeth as natural femininity perverted by the "masculine" pursuit of power, and presents her as something of an intellectual barbarian equal to the physical barbarism displayed by the men. She is no better nor worse than those around her who plot and scheme, but hampered by the medieval limitations placed upon her gender, she operates within the only sphere allowed her: covert puppetmaster to her husband's implicit will.
Few critics in 1971 were able to get past her nude-sleepwalking scene, but Francesca Annis gives a very fine, understated performance as Lady Macbeth, both her fevered desire for the crown and eventual decline into madness are quite affecting.

"What, will these hands ne'er be clean?"

From his childhood eluding the Nazis in his native Poland, to the loss of his family to the Manson madness, one attribute of Polanski's real-life acquaintance with the naked face of horror has been his inability to see the need to paint evil as anything more than human, and anything less than something that resides within each of us.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Perhaps because I've never been partial to medieval costume dramas full of derring-do, pageantry, and heroic swordplay; I’m crazy about the squalid, gloomy look of Macbeth. Polanski gives us one of Shakespeare’s most unrelentingly bleak and depressing plays and serves it up with extra dollops of rain, murk, and medieval filth. There’s nothing romantic or even remotely cheery about it, and the effect is to ground Shakespeare’s larger-than-life themes of wrongs corrected and order restored into a cynically circular tale where suffering is as ceaseless and bleak as the horizon.

The graceful, romanticized fencing duels of the typical Shakespearean film are replaced by clumsily brutal bouts that highlight the awkwardness of the armor and the sense that what we are witnessing are not heroic battles, but lowly brawls and acts of aggression.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Although I dearly wanted to, I wasn't allowed to see Macbeth when it was opened. Not because my parents thought it was too violent for my tender age (I was 14), but because of all the pre-release publicity surrounding Lady Macbeth’s nude sleepwalking scene (so tame by today’s standards, the film could be shown in high school English classes) and the guilt-by-association tarnish of Macbeth being the premiere entry from Playboy’s newly-formed film division. (It’s reported that Polanski’s somber film got off to a bad start at press screenings when the title card, “A Playboy Production” was greeted with snorts of derisive laughter.)

The Macbeths find their nights plagued by sleeplessness

In any event, I’m grateful for having been spared seeing this film at a time when the horrors of the Manson case would have still been too fresh in my mind. As Manson's trial had only ended that same year, seeing the film just would have been too painful and depressing an experience. Now, with neither its nudity nor violence the incendiary focus they once were, it's possible to see Macbeth as one of the screen's more successful Shakespeare adaptations. A fact that remains even though time has yet to fully eradicate the cloud of sadness hovering over the violent events it recalls.
Polanski's Macbeth was released the same year as Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and Ken Russell's The Devils. As you can imagine, the entertainment world was up in arms over what it perceived at the time to be the "new permissiveness" in films gone completely out of control. 

Both in interviews and in his memoirs, Polanski has spoken of how happy he was during the making of Rosemary's Baby; a fact easily attested to by Polanski delivering an ingeniously dark thriller that is nonetheless buoyed by a delicate black humor and obvious love of moviemaking. By comparison, Macbeth, as riveting a dramatization as it is, has an unshakable air of sadness about it (the real reason I think the film fared to score well with audiences), and feels at times like an act of hostility directed towards the audience. It's as if—in choosing to make the violence so graphic, gruesome, and in-your-face—Polanski is enacting revenge on those who blamed him and his films for attracting the violence of the Manson crimes.

Critics like Roger Ebert took issue with Macbeth's wanton barbarism and the unfortunate resemblance of many of the knights to Charles Manson and his minions

Armed with the rejoinder that all of the violence depicted in Macbeth is Shakespeare’s, not his own, Polanski, subconsciously or not, decides to rub our faces in it. Outdoing any film he’s done before or since in terms of the depiction of savagery (even going so far as to provide a startling view of jeering crowds from the point of view of the already beheaded Macbeth), Polanski, perhaps feeling he would be damned by the public no matter what he did, opts for showing us a vision of a world the press had claimed he'd inhabited all along. A world of unremitting bleakness and hopelessness.

"When you tell a story of a guy who’s beheaded, you have to show how they cut off the head. If you don’t, it’s like telling a dirty joke and leaving out the punch line."

                                                                                                 Roman Polanski 

The suggestion that artists cannot help but leave behind a patina of some aspect of themselves on their work is a concept to which I strongly adhere. And in the case of an artist as gifted as Roman Polanski, such a belief only stands to further enrich the viewing experience. For me, his Macbeth, a film of haunting images both beautiful and horrific, stands as a towering achievement in terms of one artist adapting the work of another (in this instance, a story ofttimes told) and fashioning it into something uniquely, exclusively...and to Polanski's regret...revealingly, his own.

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2013

GOSFORD PARK 2001

Adapting Robert Altman’s trademark, multi-character, freeform narrative style to the formalized structure of a classic Agatha Christie murder mystery is such an inspired concept, I’m rather surprised it took until nearly the end of Altman’s 50-plus years in film for someone to think of it. But after tackling musicals (Popeye), westerns (McCabe & Mrs. Miller), farce (Beyond Therapy), romantic comedy (A Perfect Couple), film noir (The Long Goodbye), the psychological thriller (Images), and satire (The Player); a good, old-fashioned whodunit was just about the only genre left for one of the more resilient and versatile filmmakers to come out of the New Hollywood.

Robert Altman has been one of my favorite directors since first discovering him in the early 1970s. But following the rather (for me) dismal back-to-back entries of Cookie’s Fortune (1999) and Dr. T and the Women (2000), I really thought Altman had gone the way of that other '70s favorite, Peter Bogdanovich; i.e., dried-up creatively, his best work behind him. I was wrong. Like Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman proved himself to be one of those directors capable of delivering surprisingly fresh and innovative work well into their seventies. Indeed, at the ripe old age of 75, Altman’s Gosford Park revealed the director in his finest form since 3 Women (1977), delivering not only one of his most solid and fully realized films, but his biggest boxoffice hit since M.A.S.H. (1970).

Maggie Smith as Lady Constance Trentham

Clive Owen as Robert Parks

Kristen Scott Thomas as Lady Sylvia McCordle

Jeremy Northam as Ivor Novello

With Gosford Park, the collaborative efforts of Robert Altman, producer Bob Balaban, and screenwriter Julian Fellowes combined to create a marvelously layered re-creation of a traditional English-style crime mystery with a decidedly Altman-esque twist. The twist being that the mystery—a murder taking place during a weekend shooting party at an English country estate in 1932— is not seen from the point of view of the aristocratic set of relatives and guests, but rather, from the perspective of the servant class, below stairs. It’s a simple yet ingenious device allowing for the filmmakers to cleverly intermingle the crosscutting stories of some 35 characters while making shrewd observations on everything from the class system, changing times, sexual mores, social conventions, personal relationships, and cultural differences.

Helen Mirren as Mrs. Wilson

Alan Bates as Jennings

Emily Watson as Elsie

Kelly Macdonald as Mary Maceachran

In detailing a strained weekend in the country in which virtually all in attendance have something to hide or something they’re after, Altman’s legendary virtuosity behind the camera serves the misleadingly conventional setup exceptionally well. In fact, not since Nashville has Altman’s celebrated “bag of tricks” (overlapping dialogue, peripheral activity, cross-cutting storylines, ensemble cast of characters harboring secrets) seemed so organic to the material. Ostensibly hemmed in by the rigid constraints of the religiously adhered-to rules of the British social class structure, Altman actually comes off as more liberated than ever. There’s something in Julian Fellowes’ (Downton Abbey) surprisingly witty, culturally-perceptive script that presses most of Robert Altman’s best qualities to the forefront (I can’t think of a single director capable of getting us to keep track of, let alone care about, so many characters), while suppressing a great many of his weaknesses (the English locale spares us Altman’s fondness for the easy laugh of hayseed southern accents).

Michael Gambon as William McCordle

Eileen Atkins as Mrs. Croft

Bob Balaban as Morris Weissman

I saw Gosford Park when it opened in 2001, and, clocking in at a little over two hours, it's a film I was nevertheless sorry to see come to an end (a problem happily remedied by the DVD which contains loads of deleted scenes!). In a world where I find myself feeling grateful if the film I'm watching at least chooses to rely on smart clichés instead of stupid ones; Gosford Park is an endangered species: a film that feels like it's shedding the rote and predictable with the introduction of each new character. Somehow, while still adhering to the genre conventions of an Agatha Christie crime drama (or, as is referenced in the film itself, a Charlie Chan thriller) Gosford Park manages to confound expectations. The comedy is sharp, the drama is well-played and frequently moving, the characters are dimensional, the mystery element engrossing, and its subthemes on class distinctions are poignant and eye-opening.
Of course, the biggest surprise of all is that after all these years, Altman is in the best form of his career.

A particular favorite of mine is Camilla Rutherford as Isabel McCordle.  She and Mabel Nesbitt are characters with story arcs I'd describe as classically Altman-esque.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Perhaps the right word here is “grateful.” What I’m grateful for about Gosford Park is the depth of its intricacy. It's an entertaining film that breezes along, providing both character-based humor and genuinely affecting dramatic moments, yet Gosford Park has a great deal more on its mind than just providing a solid mystery and a houseful of suspects. It's a very smart, observant look at the kinds of surface behaviors and rituals that people engage in order to mask who and what they really are. And all this is layered atop a social satire and comedy of manners contrasting self-imposed hierarchies of status against those that are socially imposed. It's a film just brilliant in its complexity, chiefly because all of these layers play out subtly beneath an outrageously entertaining mystery that is fun to watch in and of itself.
From every conceivable angle, Gosford Park is a marvel of logistics. So many stories to tell, so many characters, so much information to impart...and yet, the film feels light and effortless. That Altman is able to deliver to us so many interesting characters in so brief a time is a skill he has demonstrated several times before; his being able to do so while simultaneously enlightening us as to the myriad duties and rituals that go into the running of an English manor house is something else again.

Gosford Park is a great film for repeat viewings. It's staggering the amount of subtle details one misses when first just trying to figure out "whodunit." The interwoven lives of all the characters become much clearer.

For me, it's such a delight to see a film that asks something of you. That requires your attention, mental involvement, and active participation in following along and picking up on all the pieces provided. It’s great not to have everything spelled out for you, or to have a camera continually directing your gaze towards where you should be looking and why. Gosford Park assumes an alertness from its audience and rewards you with a story that pays off as terribly sharp mystery, crisp comedy, taut character drama, and biting social commentary.

Stephen Fry as Inspector Thompson

PERFORMANCES
The nearly all-British cast assembled for Gosford Park is an eye-popper (Knights! Dames! The inexplicable presence of Ryan Phillippe!), a fact made all the more impressive by having some of the most distinguished actors democratically blended and divided between the upstairs and downstairs characters. Dame Maggie Smith steals scenes and looks quite at home as the snobbish dowager Countess (a role that is essentially a dry-run for the one she would assume 9 years later in Downton Abbey); but it's great fun seeing Sir Alan Bates as the butler of the household, silently occupying scenes like an overqualified extra; or Dame Helen Mirren, makeup-less and relegated to below stairs quarters. And as Gosford Park is a murder mystery, such egalitarian casting works much to the film's benefit, as it is impossible to play the "billing" game here - attempting to guess the victims and guilty parties based on star rank.

Geraldine Sommerville as Louisa Stockbridge (younger sister of Lady Sylvia)
Altman films have a reputation for being well-cast, and Gosford Park is no exception. As was the case with A Wedding, Altman makes it easier for us to tell who's-who by casting actors who look as if they could plausibly be related

The performances in Gosford Park are so uniformly excellent that it's both pointless and futile to try to single out a particular actor. I confess to finding Ryan Phillippe to be the weakest link, although even in this instance his blank screen persona works well within the film's context. Nor am I too fond of Stephen Fry's Inspector Thom...(above stairs, no one lets him complete his introduction), which feels like another of Altman's risky forays into needlessly broad farce (think Opal in Nashville). Certainly, individual characters and their storylines stand out more than others, but if you're like me, you'll wind up having a different "favorite" each time you view the film.

Claudie Blakley as Mabel Nesbitt, serenaded by Ivor Novello

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

There's no escaping the feeling when watching Gosford Park, that one is watching the most elegant, life-sized game of CLUE ever! The insular, bygone world depicted is meticulously recreated in the seamless blending of locations and sets, outrageously gorgeous clothing, and an attention to period detail in makeup and hairstyles that fittingly recall the very sort of films from Britain's past that Gosford Park pays homage to.

Derk Jacobi as Probert, Sir William's valet

All this lavish period-detail fetishism would be off-putting were it not used in service of dramatizing the huge difference in the lives of the "haves" and "have-nots" of Gosford Park. And this is precisely why Robert Altman has always remained one of my all-time favorites; for while the average director would be content to have us ooh and ahh over the jewels, gowns, and luxury of the life depicted, Altman matches every loving close-up and perfectly framed shot of upstairs opulence with a similar shot in the tight and privacy-free servant's quarters. He never preaches or tells us what we should feel about it all, but unlike, say, the inappropriately worshipful depiction of wealth in 1974s The Great Gatsby, Gosford Park captures it all, but with a conscience.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Gosford Park ranks among my top five favorite Robert Altman films. I’m also an avid Downton Abbey fan...a fact that really intrigues me. Not only about myself but about America. American audiences aren’t known for taking British culture to its bosom, but Julian Fellowes’ tales of servants and the social classes seem to have struck a chord with us.

Speaking for myself, I suspect there is something about the distancing effect and “otherness” of British society class struggles that allows me to be entertained by them in ways unthinkable were these tales told about contemporary wealthy American households with maids, nannies and the like. Here in the U.S. we still have yet to come to terms with our own race-based class systems.
Our films and audiences have no trouble humanizing the downtrodden and their plight if they are white; but so much guilt is attached to our ugly slavery/Jim Crow history that Hollywood tends to mostly greenlight movies in which black characters in servitude exist to reassure white audiences or provide them with white "hero" characters who rescue the oppressed from the very racist social structures they created.
No, as far as America is concerned it can take a Downton Abbey to its bosom because it is infinitely easier for this country to culturally process stories that feature white characters both above and below stairs. A lot of uncomfortable subtext is avoided. In my own experience, I can attest to there definitely being a distancing issue here that makes Downton and Gosford suitably escapist.

Gosford Park boasts a beautiful musical score
There's an absolutely charming sequence where we're shown the servants hiding in the shadows to listen to the music coming from the drawing room. Ironically, the aristocracy is bored by it, while the lower classes, prohibited from being seen listening to it, are transported by it. 

Were there to ever be a film about slavery in America (or even the recent past of the Jim Crow era or the 1960s) in which slaves or victims of systemic racism are depicted not as they usually are (as a social issue), but as fleshed-out, fully-realized characters with the same level of dimensional humanity as the servants of Gosford Park or Downton Abbey – varied, unique individuals granted their resentments and temperaments, people with their own hopes, personalities, and emotional agonies derived from their life circumstances – I'm pretty sure my heart would never stop breaking.

Copyright © Ken Anderson     2009 - 2013

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION 2006

Although I like to think of myself as having a good sense of humor, I’m afraid I’m not what you might call an “easy laugher.” (My partner would beg to differ. Given my fondness for Peter Sellers, Benny Hill, and particularly Don Adams; I think he ranks my funnybone somewhere in the “easily-amused, lowbrow laugh-whore” zone.)

But be that as it may, I just don’t happen to find many motion picture comedies to be particularly funny. This is especially true of contemporary comedies, a great many of which seem little more than 5-minute skits painfully dragged out to feature-film length. My face turns to stone at just the mention of the names Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Tim Allen, Rob Schneider, or Vince Vaughn; each of whose films (of which I’ve mercifully experienced but a smattering) feels like an eternity spent in the frathouse kegger from hell.

Looking over my DVD collection, I note that a preponderance of what I consider to be my favorite comedies are actually of the unintentional variety: Showgirls, Mommie Dearest, The Oscar, The Poseidon Adventure. But also represented are the '70s comedies of Mel Brooks; Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? and Paper Moon; the counterculture black comedies of John Waters and Paul Morrissey/Andy Warhol; and, although I haven’t found Woody Allen to be particularly funny since Manhattan Murder Mystery and Bullets over Broadway, I can’t deny that I own virtually all of his early, Diane Keaton-era films.

Jane Lynch and Fred Willard do a terrifyingly spot-on send-up of those vapidly cheerful, vacant-eyed hosts we've all seen on Hollywood news magazine programs like Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood.

These days, I find television to be the most satisfying and consistent source of comedy. Or, more accurately, the whole TV/Internet/DVD connection. From the brilliant The Larry Sanders Show to Arrested Development, Lisa Kudrow’s Web Therapy and The Comeback, Parks & Recreation, Ricky Gervais’ The Office and Extras, and Louis C.K.’s Louie…the comedy stuff being made for television nowadays (owing, perhaps, to the briefer format) is head and shoulders above what’s being done in film.

The sole exceptions to the above-stated criticism leveled at motion pictures are the (all-too infrequent) ensemble comedies of Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy & Co. This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and my personal favorite, For Your Consideration, rank, in my estimation, among the best American comedies ever made. 

Catherine O'Hara as Marilyn Hack:  32-year veteran actress

Harry Shearer as Victor Allan Miller: 40-years in the business, still works for scale

Eugene Levy as Morley Orfkin: Worst Agent in the World

Parker Posey as Callie Webb: "I don't act for trophies."

Christopher Guest as Jay Berman: Alleged Film Director

Ascribable perhaps to its departure from the usual “mockumentary” format they’re known for, For Your Consideration is regarded by some devotees of the Guest/Levy films to be one of their weaker efforts. For me, it's the total opposite. While I wouldn't go so far as to insist any of these films is better than the other (each manages to be uproarious in its own unique way), I can say that due to its satirical targets being topics near and dear to my heart (movies, Hollywood, The Academy Awards, fame culture), For Your Consideration is the film I relate to the most. I get all the inside jokes, I understand the characters, I recognize the absurd world depicted. For Your Consideration achieves the impossible in creating a flawless and riotously funny satire of an industry that increasingly teeters on the brink  of becoming a satire of itself.

John Michael Higgins as Corey Taft (alias Jo-Jo): Movie Publicist

For Your Consideration tells the story of what happens when three otherwise rational actors in an inconsequential little independent film allow themselves to get swept up in the frenzy surrounding the self-propigating hype of the Academy Awards. Following Christopher Guest’s usual mode of commenting on the large by focusing on the small; Hollywood and the film industry is savagely lampooned when we're allowed behind the scenes in the making of Home for Purim— a by-all-appearances dreadful family drama (think Lifetime or Hallmark Channel caliber) in the southern gothic tradition of Eugene O’Neill. Minus the talent. 

The amusingly overwrought Home for Purim chronicles the domestic travails surrounding a family reunion in the Pisher household in 1940s Georgia (pisher being Yiddish slang for just what it sounds like…pisser). From its team of hack writers, dedicated cast of never-quite-made-its, and barely-up-to-the-task production crew, Home for Purim is journeyman filmmaking in every department. But because it's an independent feature, cast and crew indulge themselves in the delusion that what they are making is art.
Once The Academy starts knocking, principles and pretensions are put to the test. In depicting the many (hilarious) ways in which Hollywood types are willing to quickly sell out when fame and fortune comes calling makes For Your Consideration a laugh-a-minute look at a world where high-flown pretensions of “art”commingle uneasily with standard-operational workday mediocrity.

Bob Balaban (I love that guy) as Phillip Koontz (not Kuntz) and Michael McKean as Lane Iverson.
The conjointly-disregarded writers of  Home for Purim

As was the case with the delusional regional theater thespians of Waiting for Guffman, For Your Consideration mines its (occasionally poignant) comedy from the big-time dreams and ambitions of the talent-challenged. But since it takes place in Hollywood, the absurdity ante is considerably upped, because, as we all know, being absolutely terrible at one’s job has never been an obstacle to success in the movie business. Hope springs eternal in an industry where individuals of no discernible talent (Kristen Stewart, Vin Diesel) can rake in the millions, or truly abominable, full-on crap directors like Michael Bay and Dennis Dugan (IMDB him, if you dare) never cease to be employed.

Wake Up, L.A.!
For Your Consideration's television spoofs are so off-the-chart deranged, they don't look like spoofs at all.

For Your Consideration shows what happens when career actors for whom working in the movies has always meant earning a living and not being on the A-List, are given a last-gasp shot at a ride on the red carpet of fame.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Hollywood satires are as old as the industry itself (the 1937 Leslie Howard comedy Stand-In is a good example). But too often they’re either kid-gloved jabs at the easy targets of greed, egomania, and artifice (i.e., Jerry Lewis’ The Patsy, Walter Matthau’s Movers and Shakers, Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie, Singin’ in the Rain); or embittered, not-very-funny, revenge-fueled vendettas by tarnished Golden Boys no longer at the top of the heap (Blake Edwards’ S.O.B., Joe Eszterhas’ Burn, Hollywood, Burn). The flaw of the former is the toothlessness of the satire; the flaw of the latter: the convenient way the filmmakers tend to posit their onscreen surrogates as the principled victims of a morally corrupt industry (an industry you sense they'd sell their mother for to get a chance to again be a major player in).

Jennifer Coolidge as producer Whitney Taylor Brown & Jordan Black as production assistant Lincoln.
Not a functioning brain cell between them. 

In the end, the biggest lie of these satires is their being rooted in the questionable notion that somehow the movie industry is this monolith of empty values and avarice operating independently of the individuals it employs. If the movie industry is creepy, it's because of the Brett Ratners and Charlie Sheens it attracts, not its profit-based corporate structure.

Where For Your Consideration shines (and why I find it so hilarious) is that it presents Hollywood as an industry that is only as empty-headed and superficial as the people who seek to make their living in it. The humor comes out of the character flaws of individuals who willingly subject themselves to its rejections and petty humiliations; who delude and flatter themselves that they are absolutely NOT a part of the system; and who, pitiably, are so fueled by longing and vulnerable to temptation that they readily sell out every last principle and ideal they have when an opportunity for fame and fortune presents itself.

 For Your Consideration finds both the humor and humanity in people of unexceptional gifts harboring the dream of being extraordinary.

There's not a movie made that couldn't be made better with the casting of Parker Posey.
Rachael Harris as Debbie Gilchrist: "Dying is easy. Playing a lesbian is hard!"

PERFORMANCES

As is always the case with Christopher Guest’s ensemble comedies, the entire cast is absolutely brilliant, making it impossible to point out one favored bit without leaving out a dozen more. Suffice it to say there’s not a single character in the film I wouldn't have enjoyed seeing more of. Even after multiple viewings, I keep catching new bits of business and finding more layers in the marvelously comic characterizations. They are all just great.

Ensemble members Rachael Harris, Ed-Begley, Jim-Pidddock, and Deborah-Theaker 

Of course, special mention must be made of Catherine O’Hara, who just shines as Marilyn Hack. Her performance here is doubly notable because it inspired real life to imitate art (O'Hara garnered considerable Academy buzz for the film. A buzz that never materialized in an Oscar nod). 

There’s no way that I can watch her sympathetic portrayal of an actress who so humiliatingly loses her grip at the thought of being nominated for an Oscar without thinking of Sally Kirkland. For those unfamiliar with the name, Sally Kirkland is an actress who’d been appearing in films since the 60s without making much of an impact when, in 1987, a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Anna, thrust her into the limelight. And she ran with it.

Serious Actress                                      Movie  Star

Catherine O'Hara's transformation from dedicated professional to potential Oscar-nominee is nothing short of chilling in perfectly capturing that "perpetually startled"  look of the face-lift set. Amazingly, there are no special makeup effects involved. She's just using her facial muscles! 

Determined to reverse decades of obscurity, Kirkland (who in Anna beautifully portrayed an unglamorous, middle-aged stage actress) launched herself into an exhaustive campaign of self-promotion memorable for its shamelessness. Almost unrecognizably glammed-out, wearing perilously short skirts that enhanced her always-on-display, recently-enhanced breasts; the 46-year-old veteran actress carried on like a giggly starlet on a string of nighttime talk shows—most frequently The Arsenio Hall Show. A sad coda to her tale is while she continues to work in films, her Oscar nomination never did result in stardom. In addition, Kirkland suffered so many serious health issues as a result of her breast implants that she had to have them removed and later became an advocate for the banning of the surgical procedure.

Don Lake & Michael Hitchcock as the squabbling Siskel/Ebert-like TV film critics

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

A few of my favorite bits of dialogue.

Victor Allen Miller: "It’s just a bit silly about the Oscar stuff, don’t you think?"

Sandy Lane : Silly? It’s the Backbone of this industry!"

Victor Allen Miller: "An industry noted for not having a backbone."

Corey Taft: “In every actor there lives a tiger, a pig, an ass, and a nightingale. You never know which one’s going to show up.”

Simon Whitset (cameraman): "Do you know how tight my aperture is right now? Have you any idea?”

Jay Berman (director): “If you’re being a smart-ass, you know what I'm gonna do? I’m gonna put you across my knee.”

Variety Headlines
Pointing Guy Scores Big  / "Let's Shoot The Puppy" Gets Axed: Studio Pulls Plug

Lane Iverson: “You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater because then all you have is a wet, critically injured baby. And I don’t think that’s what you want to put your name on.”

Debbie Gilchrest: "I feel like it's ambiguous. I don't think it's clear that I'm gay. I mean, I got the look, but I think that we're pussyfooting around the subject."

Brian Chubb: "That made you sound gay..."

Sandra Oh & Richard Kind as the marketing directors for Home For Purim

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy make comedies about dreamers, and as such, their humor always has a touch of wistfulness to it. Being a huge film fan and a dreamer myself, perhaps that's why For Your Consideration is my favorite of their films. Or maybe it's just that I get a kick out of a movie that takes a bit of the air out of the kind of people who go around saying things like: "It's all about the work," "It's important to hone one's craft," or refer to their voices and bodies as "My instrument." 

Copyright © Ken Anderson