For the week of March 6th, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is bringing the biopic Jackie to Blu-ray. You know the drill here: biopics either David Copperfield it, to paraphrase Interview with the Vampire ("I was born; I grew up") or they Lincoln themselves to a narrow slice of their subject's history. Jackie takes the second approach, focusing on Jacqueline Kennedy (Natalie Portman) in the wake of her husband's 1963 assassination. By all accounts, Noah Oppenheim's original script presented her grief through a fairly conventional narrative, subdividing tragedy into three acts, providing speaking parts for many accomplished thespians (including Billy Crudup, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, John Carroll Lynch, and John Hurt, in what would be his final film role). But the finished film is a little different, and I credit director Pablo Larraín for what Jackie became. Larraín actually replaced the great Darren Aronofsky, but I can't imagine The Wrestler director pulling off something as formally and conceptually audacious as this. Larraín is making an impressionistic biopic, one that's more interested in how Jackie is feeling than what is happening to her, and so he fragments time, plays with perspective, and winnows away so much conventional exposition until we're just left with sensations, with the experience of Jackie experiencing such a great, public loss and then struggling to process it. As such, don't expect spoonfed uplift - Larraín doesn't care if you don't know who's who or when things are happening, and I certainly enjoyed his more avant-garde take, although I do question the film's emotional staying power. It's an art object, this thing - even the Natalie Portman performance in the lead denies us a "normal" emotional association, given that Larraín often uses her as a vessel to project ourselves onto - and one that's fun to discuss analytically even as it maintains a chilly distance.
Also worthy of discussion: Warner Archive's new release of the Blake Edwards comedy S.O.B. Edwards was such an experienced farceur (we have him to thank for The Pink Panther series) that I think it's easy to underrate how morally and narratively playful he could be, but S.O.B. doesn't let us make that mistake. For this ribald Hollywood satire, Robert Mulligan stars as a has-been Hollywood producer who tries to revitalize his career in the least dignified manner possible - he wants to convince his movie-star wife (Julie Andrews) to star in a soft-core porno. Already, Edwards is layering in so many different facets/allusions to the then-Hollywood system: the importance of image, the meteoric rise of the pornography industry, the artistic compromises made in the name of celebrity, particularly those involving Mulligan's director Culley (William Holden, who died shortly after production). We even get a film within a film once production starts to roll on Mulligan's X-rated opus. However, those elements are less provocative than the thinly veiled autobiography at S.O.B.'s core. To wit: Mulligan plays a filmmaker not a million miles removed from Edwards himself, and Julie Andrews gets even less of a veil to hide behind, given that a) she was married to Edwards at the time, b) her movie character is not dissimilar from her own public perception, and c) her character's reticence to be naked on-screen mirrors Andrews' conflicts over her family-friendly image. We're through the looking glass here, and these different elements lend S.O.B. such intrigue from a film historian's perspective, even if the film itself is a little imperfect (at 121 minutes long, S.O.B. is easily a half-hour too long). But the auteur theory is in effect, and that's saying something.
Michael Reuben noted that "For ninety minutes, Edwards juggles the overlapping schemes, subplots and pratfalls with effortless mastery, but then S.O.B. takes a sharp turn in its final half hour. Without giving away key plot points, one can say that the film switches away from Felix, whose manic energy has been the driving force propelling the action, and downshifts to let his three best friends - Preston's quack doctor, Holden's cynical director and Webber's craven PR flack - commiserate about the unfairness of life. They're a fine trio, but they can't hope to match the demented energy that propels the film when Robert Mulligan's Felix is at its center. Indeed, once Felix is relegated to the background, Edwards seems to lose interest in his jeremiad against the hypocrisies of Hollywood. Instead of maintaining his focus on avarice and mendacity, he devotes inordinate screen time to obvious jokes about bodily functions and a Burmese mystic who recalls the Beatles' guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The latter is played by Larry Storch in heavy makeup and an even heavier accent, and he seems to have stepped in from an entirely different movie. Before it skids to a halt, though, S.O.B. achieves a madcap intensity that recalls screwball classics like Bringing Up Baby."
Finally, Shout Select is offering Dennis Hopper's crime drama Colors a Blu-ray release. I imagine that had I seen Colors during its 1988 theatrical release, I would have found it a gripping piece of social agit-prop. To Hopper's credit, he wanted to comment on the daily realities of LAPD officers with more verisimilitude than, like, Adam 12 allowed, and his depiction of gang violence and institutionalized racism is impressively bleak. However, Hopper didn't count on one thing: this gritty approach becoming the rule, not the exception. Scratch one Colors and you'll find ten Southlands or a Shields, so the novelty of what Hopper was doing doesn't seem as fresh now. Furthermore, those films and television programs that sprung up in Colors' wake are, by and large, so much more compelling than Colors. Hopper is a competent director but not a great one, and he's far too reliant on cheap shock effects (that wouldn't have been out of place in a pure genre thriller like Assault on Precinct 13) that start to wear on the viewer after a while. In addition, he packages some valid insights inside the most rote genre template possible: yep, Colors is a buddy picture of sorts, with Sean Penn playing the young hothead partner to Robert Duvall's far more experienced cop. Both actors are good (outside of Penn in Gangster Squad, are they ever not?), but they're also punching well below their weight-class, especially once Hopper introduces a go-nowhere romance subplot with María Conchita Alonso. Look, I'm glad Colors exists - it paved the way for a lot of vital cop dramas - I just never want to watch it again.