Directed (surprisingly well) by Ben Affleck
A Sort-of-Review by Ken Molnar
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SPOILER ALERT: Code Yellow.
While I do not give away any specific details of the movie, I do allude to plot-curves here. So if you are like me and plummet into a fit of ape-like rage if you accidentally hear anything about a movie before you see it, I suggest you strap in and swiftly hit your emergency "back" button.
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And now, on with the show:
OK, I really wish that this movie totally and unflinchingly sucked, because I would have just love love loved to have been able to title this piece Yawn Baby Yawn, but - sadly for me - we're gonna have to score 1 for Ben and 0 for me, because I really have to just admit it: this movie was very good.
Now, despite my humble beginnings, I am well aware I am no Ben or Casey Affleck. I could only dream of having their kind of street-cred: almost growing up a Southie (but in a cute, straight-A student kind of way) yet still being able to play one convincingly on-screen. Although, one does have to wonder what the true bad-ass Southies actually think of the Casey and the Ben - if such things even cross their radar, what with their Dayplanners full of appointments to throw down and all. Regardless, I am pretty darn sure any self-respecting Southie would rather go out in a spray of bullets than be seen walking into any kind of Affleck-crafted dramatical experience.
But wait... where was I? Oh, right - I really really liked Gone Baby Gone!
I remember hearing a lot of seagull-fluttering about this one at the Oscars, mostly because of Amy Adams - do I even have her name right? (Oh, no, I see: it's Amy Ryan. Thank you, Internet.) So it was amazing for me to learn that the film was actually directed and co-written by Ben Affleck, a fact that basically got zero press. (And, of course, it also starred his baby brother, Casey.) But I have to give that crafty Ben credit, not putting himself out there all front and center, all I-made-a-movie like. It's a much smarter way to play it: slowly build credibility, like an ant building his anthill one speck of dirt at a time.
Speaking of credibility, there was one perfect and absolutely-essential note of acknowledgment near the start of the film - which Ben was very clever to include and which really just bought the film wads of credibility with the viewer. It was when the requisite weathered cop points out the rather obvious fact that Casey (who is supposed to be a private eye) actually looks impossibly young for his profession, and how can someone so young be a private eye, yada yada yada... Let me just personally interject here that this question had to be addressed, otherwise the movie would have just dead-stalled and plummeted into the nearest ravine...
This being Ben's directorial debut, I'm guessing there probably just wasn't enough money in their budget to hire Stan Winston - or Industrial Light & Magic - to make Casey Affleck actually look like his stated age of 31. (He actually looks like an oddly pissed-off, track-suited 12-year-old.) So they thriftily clipped their coupons and just addressed it in dialogue. But by wisely calling out the tiny underaged elephant in the room, and by applying just the right mixture of machismo and salty backtalk, we the viewers all get to breathe a sigh of relief and move forward, safe in the knowledge that our filmmakers (with whom we have just entrusted the next two hours of our life) are still operating within the borders of reality.
Now, hopefully without saying too much, this movie stands out in two very unique and significant ways:
(1) This movie has some of the most convincing casting I have seen in a long time.
Now, by no means did I come from South Boston, but I can tell you that the area I grew up in was only a crumbling farm or two better. Granted, we did not spend our days ducking brickbats or drive-by's, but still there was that same fun despair that grows in towns without any opportunity. Nestled in a river valley chain of post-industrial towns, all of the ornate but fading buildings offering only a shadowy hint of its glorious past... in contrast to the people, who suggested the area's quite vivid, hangovery present. It was the type of place that if you didn't leave when you are young, then you didn't leave at all... except to go see Cats in New York.
Still, I should be more flask-half-full about it. If I had stayed, I would have had all kinds of work opportunities: there's the Stop & Shop, the pawn shop, the Long John Silver's. You get the picture. But, the most important thing is that many people there have The Look, that certain hollow something in the eyes of people who know their lives have basically ended before they began. It's a mixture of resignation and resentment, and just plain boredom. It's very scary to be around, because - just like the flu epidemic of 1918 - it is ever so slightly catching. Now, you can go ahead and call me an elitist, or a snob or whatever, but I was always so terrified of never getting out, of being the 50-year old calling out for a price-check on poly-blend kitten socks at the local Job Lot.
But anyway, it really brought all of these feelings home to watch this movie. To see all of these people who just looked so harrowingly authentic, with their overuse of blue eyeshadow and their underuse of vocabulary. Which all comes back to the movie's perfect perfect casting. I don't know where you find such authentic-looking actors, but they're not from Hollywood, that's for damn sure. They have to be locals. Maybe Ben just payed them in unscratched lottery tickets, to just stand around and be themselves. But whatever he did, he made a movie that - for me, for this reason alone - was closer to a horror than to a drama. And that Amy Ryan was just simply amazing: there's no way the movie would have worked without her. If for no other reason, see it for her. Fantastic casting.
(2) Again, I'm gonna talk about plot-curves here, so scram if you don't want to hear...
Usually, most movies hook you with an interesting question up front, and then spend the rest of the movie careering towards some sort of jangly, hair-raising conclusion. But the thing that makes this movie so significantly unique is that you think you are witnessing a standard missing-child, investigative drama, but really you're kind of not. Over time, you actually come to find that this is just the very colorful shell of the Easter egg. You think that the movie is all about the shell, but instead it really builds to this other very surprising philosophical question. And it's all the more surprising because the sand grains of this question have been right there, falling right in front of your face the whole time, accumulating, but you don't realize what it all adds up to until the final few scenes. But it is so arresting that you launch up straight, as if you are slamming into an invisible airbag.
I don't want to say any more than that, but the movie, which is quite good on its own, really turns out to be just the vehicle for this one haunting question. A question that they just start to answer the tiniest bit before not-so-gently asking you to get up and leave, so they can sweep up the sticky, popcorned carpet and get home to their Sony Playstations and their iPods.
You know, I read recently in Details that Ben Affleck was having all of these horrible migraines during the shoot. So much so that he had to go to the hospital. So there I was, up too late once again on a worknight, reading this article, when - for the first time - I suddenly felt a real point of kinship with Ben. Over migraines, of all things, which I also get. There is something universal about the experience of putting so much pressure on yourself that you get sick: of wanting to control every detail of life, of wanting everything to turn out exactly as planned, of wanting to be able to deliver for fucking everybody. I understand, I really do. Although I also think there is something in all of that stress that makes for a good end-product. Lazy, relaxed people generally do not make interesting things. Well, except for maybe the hula-hoop, but - c'mon - it's a plastic tube that a girl swings around her waist.
So anyway my point is that I think the pressure got to Ben, but in a good way. Not to be mean, but I don't think a hundred years from now there will be any towering, graven images of Ben, erected in memory of his acting. (I still think Bounce and Chasing Amy represent his best.) But in this, his first film, a twisty little tale about loss, I think he may have finally found something. I know I did.
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