Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Gone, Baby, Gone

The best part of Dennis Lehane's detective novels, of which, Gone, Baby, Gone is the most heart-wrenching, is that they deal directly with moral questions, and refuse to offer satisfying answers. Characters make tough choices, and live with the consequences, never knowing if they've done the right thing and content to just be able to sleep at night. The best part of Ben Affleck's directorial debut in the film adaptation of Gone Baby Gone is that he keeps that sense of ambiguity and moral confusion intact. The other thing that Affleck's adaptation has to recommend it is a deeply felt sense of place. One of the main characters in this story, and in Lehane's work in general, is the working class neighborhood of Dorchester. Affleck does a much better job of conveying the sights, sounds and people of that location than Clint Eastwood's critically acclaimed Lehane adaptation Mystic River. River, like most of Eastwood's movies, felt like it was filmed in a coffin, not a real place. Affleck trains his camera on the rugged faces of the Boston white working class, paying special attention to the kinds of manly rituals that define social relationships in that kind of environment. One thing that blunted my enjoyment of the film is the fact that the wrenching moral quandaries at the heart of it were already familiar to me from the book. Also, some people have complained that the plot machinations in the middle of the film are less-than-clear, and I don't feel that I can honestly evaluate them having read the book. My only real complaint about the movie is that Bubba Rogowski, a larger-than-life mad dog behemoth who looms large in all of Lehane's novels, who is practically a mythic figure in that world, is reduced in the film to a fat reject from the White Rapper Show.

Score: 8.4

7 comments:

matthew christman said...

May your dick explode, Adam, may your goddamn dick fucking explode.

matthew christman said...

May your cock gargle razor blades, Adam, may something horrifying please happen to your goddamn cock.

Anonymous said...

Adam hates freedom

Robert J. said...

cush, would you be willing to do a textual analysis of a scene in a movie for me to use as an example in my classes? i'm talking a full real break down of how cinematic technique, acting, direction, and/or dialog converge to convey an underlying meaning or mood.

that would be awesome, and pretty fun, too, i bet. a good exercise, and you could even post here for all to see!

Anonymous said...

I'm also hoping to "employ" you on a project, but I only pay in handjobs. Hope that's good enough.

So, I'm listing to NPR this morning, and a reviewer says the one thing that connects all this Fall's "serious" movies is a sense of manhood (or men) in crisis with the world. I know you said at one point you were looking to write an essay about the state of American film, and I guess I'm wondering:

A. Do you see that as a common thread? Basically, do you agree? Or how might you modify it?

B. Is that essay coming?

Anonymous said...

Hey and also:

Before the Devil Knows You Are Dead?

Seems like something you might want to check out?!

(After I deliver said handjob, of course)

matthew christman said...

Rob,

I'm down. Since it's your class, I think it would be good for you to suggest a few scenes that you had in mind. I'll rewatch that movie ASAP and post the essay here. If said scene is on the youtube, I'll embed a link (provided I figure out how to do that).

Jesse,

I'll need to watch more of these films before I formulate any notion of connective thematics, but just from the synopisis' of these films, that does seem to be a legitimate observation. That essay is coming, but probably not until Januarary or so. I'll need to see the new Coen, American Gangster, There Will Be Blood, and, yes, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and probably a few more that I'm currently forgetting before I'd feel comfortable writing about the year in film.