Nanny McPhee

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I saw Emma Thompson transformed from ugly to beautiful. That’s the story. The end.

Seriously, that is more or less a summation. Seven beastly children are transformed into seven darling lovable children. One father, Colin Firth (who couldn’t be ugly), is transformed from an ugly beautiful person to a beautiful beautiful person. Everyone in this story is transformed by each other, and the entire world is transformed by Nanny McPhee. The only one who is immune to all of this transforming is Aunt Adelaide (Angela Lansbury).

One of the great themes in this fairy tale is Love. Nanny McPhee is a romantic story of love that cannot be. Yet it is able to be. It is about love that should be, but isn’t, but then is again.

Colin Firth plays Mr. Brown, the widower dad of seven obnoxiously rude and devious children. He loves them but not properly. He is preoccupied with the recent death of his wife and the 30-day deadline he’s been given by his benefactor, Aunt Adelaide, before which he must re-marry or lose his allowance. Should he fail to meet this deadline, he would lose not only the large manor house he and his children live in, but his family likely would be split up. He has no prospects and in desperation settles for less than nothing, a widow whom he met through his work as an undertaker. Her Negativeness is: Mrs. Quickly, Celia Imrie.

Unbeknownst to him, Mr. Brown is secretly loved by his scullery maid Evangeline (Kelly MacDonald). She is learning to read by reading fairy tales about stepmothers—the kind who are always foul and hateful toward their newly-acquired kids. Despite these dire precedents she wants to be the stepmother to these kids.

The children are the way they are because they’ve been neglected. Father no longer reads to them. They have no one to spoil them properly when they are sick, so they feign sickness to get the sweets they want all the time. The rest of their waking hours are consumed with plotting the next near-death experience for some unwary nanny, farm animal or adult. They are troublesome and mean. They are especially mean to all the wrong people.

Enter Nanny McPhee. Nanny McPhee is the 18th straight governess that the Brown children have had. She is the one that they need. She is magic. Not exactly a witch, or at least not a wicked one, but a god-like being who knows all and can change things to her image. Affairs of the heart are off-limits. (Synonymous with free will.) Her mantra is “When you need me and don’t want me, I will be here. When you want me, but don’t need me, I must go.� It’s a clever way of giving you the theme of the movie and the ending all at the same time.

Nanny McPhee is the personification of what badly-behaved children should look like. She represents the ugliness of life that occurs when we are narcissistically consumed, when we allow our grief to overtake us, or when we ignore others around us. As the story progresses, Nanny’s ugliness fades and her true beauty is revealed. The changes to Nanny are prompted by the changes in the children and the others in the household.

Nanny comes with the intention of teaching five lessons. “I have five lessons to teach; what the children learn is entirely up to them.� The five lessons are simply, and allegorically: 1) to go to bed when they’re told; 2) to get up when they’re told; 3) to get dressed when they’re told; 4) to listen; and 5) to do what they’re told. These lessons have different layers of meaning and can be tumbled around to mean a different lesson for everyone. But you’ll get the idea how the lessons can be applied.

The use of color is striking. The house and surrounding park is idyllic—the strong colors used are such a striking contrast that the entire film appears almost cartoonish. This is no doubt intentional as we are dealing with magic and fantasy. It’s a good story. The acting is great. The pace of the movie is slow but interesting. The children are bright and learn their lessons well. The adults and children alike become better people. Their lives are cleansed of those who are nasty. Nanny McPhee allows the formerly destructive and belligerent but still ingeniously impish kids to use their energies to be mean to all the right people.

I like children’s stories. So often they use magical and whimsical methods of eliminating unfortunate events. Imaginative solutions to overwhelming problems are the stuff of enduring children’s stories. Visually Nanny McPhee is a joy. The entire story is filmed in such a way that you know everything will turn out all right. Not much tension, but lots of enjoyable scenes.

Ms. Thompson has written a beautiful, colorful, childishly innocent yet inspiring film.

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Last Holiday

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It’s always interesting to imagine what you would do if you only had three weeks to live. Sometimes I do this and my imagination goes in a variety of different directions, most of which are dependent on my mood. I’ve gone from picturing myself jumping into life with both feet to ruminating on my misfortune to taking masochistic pleasure in whether anyone would miss me or not. In the movie Last Holiday, Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifa) is told she has approximately three weeks to live. The whole film is a lot of fun, but at the same time it created in me a desire to improve my life and the lives of those around me.

Georgia is a shy, God-fearing woman with a lowly job as a cutlery salesperson at a huge department store in New Orleans (Kragen’s). As the result of a work accident, she has to visit the company infirmary to have the bump on her head examined. It just so happens that the cheapskate company she works for has an unnecessary medical tool: a “used� CAT scan machine. Why a company as cheap as Kragen’s would bother even owning a scanner made no sense to me, even a used one. But we had to have a way to diagnose a grave disease quickly. (I didn’t notice any medical consultants in the credits).

As Georgia comes to grips with her misfortune, the life she didn’t live begins to blossom in her. (And this is where the movie gets good and stays there.) She takes her scrapbook entitled “POSSIBILITIES� and decides to make some of her dreams come true. She cashes her savings and bonds and plans a vacation of a lifetime in what to her is a dreamland: Karlovy Vary in Prague, Czech Republic. Her reservations are at the opulent and very expensive Grand Hotel Pupp (proudly pronounced “poop�), where beautiful people hang out and the “ceiling can make you cry.� Due to her ostentatious and daring behavior, Georgia attracts the attention of a small group of these “beautiful� people—people with deep pockets and shallow characters—that feel they must get to know this previously unknown “Kudjillionaire.� As luck would have it, these rich folks are also from New Orleans and are listed in the downward spiraling subphylum: Congressman, Senator, Boss, and Boss’s girlfriend (as in “not-wife-we-are-here-on-business-bimbo�). Oops. Not the people our still-God-fearing heroine wants to chill with.

I need to take a break here and introduce these flawlessly played characters. At the top of the subphylum we have our Congressman Stewart (Michael Nouri); then Senator Dillings (Giancarlo Esposito); Boss, a.k.a. Mr. Kragen (Timothy Hutton); and finally girlfriend, Ms. Burns (Alicia Witt). The cast itself embodies the term “chemistry.�

Other top-flight performances include Sean Matthews (LL Cool J: I’ve made a personal vow to go to any movie he is in from now on; he is terrific!) as well as the equally super, lovable and affable Gerard DePardieu (Chef Didier, Georgia’s kindred spirit). One of my favorite exchanges in the movie is between the Chef and Georgia:

Chef Didier: You and I know the meaning of life.
Georgia: What’s that?
Chef: Butter.

Food plays a huge role in this film. The Food Network was responsible for many of the sets. Both Mssrs. Depardieu and Director Wayne Wang are food aficionados, and this film is lavish with culinary pleasures, enhancing Georgia’s secret desire to be a chef in her own restaurant someday.

This film uses many pleasures we take for granted and moves them to the forefront of consciousness: food, music, art, architecture, nature—virtually all the things that we take for granted until we are in the position in which Georgia finds herself. Hopefully though, we start “smelling the flowers� now, not when it is too late.

Wang uses this backdrop of life’s joys to make a profound point. He shoots the film in front of these wallpaper themes to drive his message home. I walked away having heard a distinct message: “Slow your life down. Notice and engage other people. Enjoy the simple things of life before they are gone!� I’ve never seen a movie with such an important message conveyed with such joy and meaning. The movie is fun, but I walked away thinking about my own life choices.

Wang also made another film I enjoyed, Because of Winn-Dixie, where he explored important themes from the perspective of a 10-year-old girl. He has a way of mixing whimsy with gravity that evokes some prolonged soul searching I don’t get from many movies. In Last Holiday, Wang has given us a chance to really examine our hearts, our lives and our purpose in life in a non-threatening and life-affirming fashion.

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Me, You and Everyone We Know

This independent film by Miranda July is quirky and offbeat.

So is Miranda July. Her blog is a hoot, highlighting her funny way of looking at the world. She possesses a very unique sense of humor, so it won’t come as a surprise that this is a very unique movie.

MY and EWK is a story about relationships: weird relationships, quirky relationships, dangerous relationships and frustrating relationships are explored in graphic detail. Be aware that there are some troubling scenes in this film. It portrays, without apology, children in compromising situations. However, I think it is valuable in that it illustrates the emptiness that people often feel, the extremes people will go to in order to gratify their longings, and the often empty and unfulfilling results of many of these attempts. Desperation, longing, loneliness and clumsy courtship figure prominently…

But there is also hope in this film. The movie follows several concentric threads in which people are looking for companionship, each one demonstrating a unique approach to the pursuit. One primary plotline follows two adolescent girls (Natasha Slayton and Najarra Townsend) as they try their hands at flirting with a grown man. Unfortunately, their experimentation leads to a situation where a man who should know better (Brad William Henke) attempts to seduce the two girls. While the girls interpret his seduction as a kind of gross game, both the girls and Andrew fall for their own BS (so to speak) and have to face the music of their folly.

Similarly, Miranda’s depiction of the genesis of an internet romance between a 7-year-old kid and an unknown adult has profoundly spooky implications. When the two would-be “randomers� finally do meet, it is simultaneously hilarious, profound and pathetic.

Other relationships center around anonymous and experimental teen sex, internet chat rooms, retirement home romances and couples dealing with breakups. People of all ages make fools of themselves, compromising their own convictions to try to connect with someone else. We witness myriad approaches to the pursuit of intimacy, from anonymous meetings between chat room participants to bold invitations into an intended’s car while at a stop sign. Each relationship is starkly filmed, artfully framing desperation and loneliness in the portraits of believable people.

Understanding the nature of this film is a valuable lesson. I came away from the movie thanking Miranda July for her instruction. She aimed to portray the longing she carried around as a child, her apprehension for the future, her desire for someone to find her, her yearning for magic in her life. Every relationship in the film is weird, but desperately wants to be normal. Each character is hurting, but has no one to cry with and is incapable of expressing his or her true needs.

One scene that I found intriguing occurs near the end of the movie, when the two boys and their dad take his recently burned but mostly mended hand out for some air, and one of the boys sings a song he learned in school. It’s a precious, pivotal moment in the film.

Overall, this is a sensitive story, told well. Miranda July is an insightful person, but more importantly she has something valuable to say to all of us: when we do connect with one another, it’s a special moment. We may not all connect, but there is hope.

Glory Road

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This picture is a classic underdog-wins-it-all story. (And no, I'm not giving away the end, since this actually happened.) Yet despite knowing the outcome, Glory Road is a film well worth seeing—one that I will probably end up owning as it portrays the gritty self-assurance that can lead to winning more than basketball games.

Jerry Bruckheimer’s film tells the story of Don Haskins (played masterfully by Josh Lucas) and his under-funded West Texas University basketball team that wins the 1966 National NCAA Basketball title. In fact, the entire cast was as accomplished a team as the basketball team they were portraying. Yet what is troubling about this movie is that only 40 years ago, racist bigots nearly ruined the lives of these fine ball players and almost bankrupted the entire WTU basketball program. You see, this team was composed of several black players, and “that just isn’t done at West Texas University in 1965.� But what was behind the racism? Did those opposed to having black players on the team think they couldn’t play well enough? Or were they bugged that they were “allowed� to participate at all? If starting five black players were all that we were considering, Coach Haskins should be canonized just for proposing it. But these men won! Not because they were black, but because they had all of the ingredients that it takes to win. Character and talent mixed with desire, discipline and intelligence all add up to make champions—not just in sports, but in every aspect of life. The players’ lives after college hoops prove that point. Many of them went on to contribute to their communities in areas unrelated to basketball. That is the part of this movie that is so touching to me. Basketball gave them an opportunity to get an education, and they used that education to make a positive impact.

Like most movies based on true stories, a post-script in the credits lists what most of these men did after college. Generally, they did not go on to play professional basketball, (in fact I think only one did), or even follow basketball as passionate sportsmen. Several became teachers and coaches, which is probably more of a testimony to Coach Haskins than to how they may have changed the game of basketball itself. I only hope that the real racists depicted in this movie ultimately realized that these men (regardless of their skin color) had talent and character, which supercede their (admittedly spectacular and historically significant) winning season.

While the film raises this issue, it also makes several educationally relevant statements through the telling of the story. We learn that the team members didn’t have to always obey the coaches’ strict curfews. We watch as they have to actually get into shape. We see their natural abilities. We follow them as they learn that they have to play as a team. We observe the entire team supporting each other, regardless of color. We learn that conditioning and fundamentals win seasons and championships. And we are willing witnesses to the ways in which this team changed the game forever.

But which of these things have anything to do with race? What about the character and teamwork they had to develop? College basketball was changed because someone was brave enough to buck the system. Coach Haskins introduced five black kids with talent, intelligence, drive, discipline and character—and it so happens that they won a championship. They demonstrated that regardless of your upbringing and the potential others perceive in you, a team has the potential to become greater than the sum of its members.

Would it be fair to these guys to say that they won because they were black? Wouldn’t that be the same racism we are disgusted to witness in this film? We think they changed the color of the game. What they and Coach Haskins actually did was add someone that was missing in college basketball: they added five (actually more) fine college basketball players who were not only black, but were fine people.

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—2. Cast and Crew
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