"Paris, Je T'Aime," "To Have and Have Not," "A Mighty Heart"

Since I last posted about Waitress and Away From Her, I've seen three more intriguing movies at Bryn Mawr Film Institute, my favorite local place to see films. Though it's regrettable that I don't visit Philadelphia more often (or New York for that matter), Bryn Mawr is a reminder that culture does exist outside of large cities.

First is Paris Je T'Aime, a series of 18 French-language short films, each set in a different arrondissement (subdivided section) of Paris. It's hard to imagine 18 short films working together as a cohesive unit, and this movie isn't really able to disprove that kind of logic. There's no really coherent theme tying the shorts together, besides for the concepts of love and Paris that seem entirely too general.

 

No matter, many of the shorts are effective, witty, or at least visually appealing. Especially charming is the final piece (click to watch the entire section on YouTube), directed by Alexander Payne (Sideways), that tells of a middle-aged American woman's lonely trip to Paris and the bond she forms with the city, one she describes as a love affair in and of itself. The featured actress in that portion is Margo Martindale, an actress who seems to be in an abundance of compelling movies, always in lackluster roles. In this short, you've got to love her bumbag. Many of the pieces are memorable, and it's definitely a film - or, rather, a collection of 18 - that's worth checking out, as much for their artistry as for the quirky, if inconsistent, content.

The second installment of the Hollywood Summer Nights series at BMFI was To Have and Have Not starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Though I was familiar with Bogart's work in Casablanca, I hadn't ever seen Lauren Bacall before, so this film was especially revelatory for that reason. She's got a smoky, brusque quality that's absolutely stunning - the rare case of someone having true star quality. The movie, directed by Howard Hawks, featured a typical formulaic ganster/chase plot, and it was the performances that really stood out. I'm looking forward to seeing Key Largo, also starring Bogart, this coming week.

Last but certainly not least was A Mighty Heart. Having read the Vogue profile of Angelina Jolie last fall, I got a sense that she was not your typical movie star. She prefers to keep to herself, has an overwhelming sense of self and self-responsibility, and, in a way that's in keeping with the outstanding values of this film, a mighty heart that's willing to take in various children from around the world.

I'm not too familiar with Jolie's work overall, but I was suspecting from previews of A Mighty Heart that it would be a good film. I wasn't, however, expecting a movie with quite the impact that this one had. The movie follows the hunt for Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), a Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Afghanistan after leaving one night for a particularly smarmy interview. His wife, Mariane Pearl (Angelina Jolie), and a team of officials, gather in a house rented by Pearl's colleague, stake out their territory in what becomes a non-stop, full-force search for any information they can find. It's a riveting movie that follows the twists and turns of the incoming clues as they come and latches onto particularly affecting bits of dialogue between those searching for Pearl and between Daniel and his wife in flashback.

It's one of those movies, like United 93 before it, where you know the harrowing ending but are ultimately unable to turn away from the proceedings. What really made this film stand out was its absolute unwillingness to sensationalize the events portrayed. Jolie's performance is a fine example of a woman inhabiting a role that's absolutely the heart and center of the movie but who is so humbled by the the part she's playing that one never gets the sense that she's manipulating the audience. It's a tour de force for Jolie. 

Though I was very much captivated by the film as a whole, I wished I could have known more about the two characters (Danny Pearl and Mariane Pearl) at its center. I wasn't quite sure why Pearl's heart was so particularly "mighty." In fact, Mariane herself seems to emphasize, particularly through the humility she shows in television interview segments, that Pearl (and herself, and all others for that matters) are part of a global community and that, in many ways, no one man is particularly mightier than any other. Despite that small gripe however, nonetheless, it's a must-see movie.