Screen Log 1: Angels in America; A Ghost Story; Deadma Walking; Mudbound

"Mudbound."

I won't be in Manila for most of the year, which means theater reviewing shall take the back seat. Figured resurrecting my TV/movies log would be the best way to keep my non-literary writing brain from rusting.

Really, the first movie I saw this year was Paul Soriano's "Siargao," but I included it (as the last film) in my list for last year, so will no longer talk about it at length. 

Instead, it's the National Theatre's live broadcast of Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA that, um, heralded--pun intended--the new year onscreen for me (thank you, you-who-shall-not-be-named torrent site). And what a magnificent, mesmerizing experience this was. My introduction to this landmark theatrical piece was the HBO adaptation, which was a whole other creature, freed of the physical limitations of the stage yet also, to some extent, watered down emotionally. 

Meanwhile, Marianne Elliott's six-hour-plus staging for the London stage of both parts--"Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika"--raged with an untamable spirit, angry and dazed, wistful and desperate. I particularly liked the set, the multiple turntables and pieces that rose from the ground and entered sideways, and couldn't care less about that one reviewer's sentiment regarding the play not being "grand" enough. The depiction of the angel, I found slyly creative, and oh, that cast! Marvelous in every conceivable meaning of the word, from Andrew Garfield's glamazonian ex-drag queen to Nathan Lane's vitriolic Roy Cohn to Russell Tovey's heartbreaking, conflicted Joe Pitt (the best performance in this mightily performed play, in my opinion). 

If some genie were to barge into my life, I'd ask for a plane to New York and tickets to this show on Broadway in May.

I suppose I'm not the intended audience for David Lowery's A GHOST STORY, where Casey Affleck wears a white cloth over his head for almost the whole film. The concept I found daring (especially in this age of attention span-challenged viewers), but the entirety was more a triumph of craft and conceit than anything. There were bravura sequences (most especially the one that shows the passage of time way into the future in a matter of seconds), and the movie's focus on aftermaths rather than main events made for refreshing storytelling. But overall, I was uninvolved, even after the final, full-circle-ish revelation.

The MMFF entry DEADMA WALKING, directed by Julius Alfonso, has its Palanca-winning screenplay for bait. But I felt the transition from page to screen wasn't very successful; jokes fell flat, editing was awkward, and the narrative just fell apart by the end (which was ironic for something whose biggest asset is supposedly its writing). 

Now Dee Rees' MUDBOUND has been racking up end-of-the-year awards, though far less than it deserves if you asked my favorite Oscars prognosticator and blogger Sasha Stone (of Awards Daily). Earlier today, the cinematographer Rachel Morrison made history as the first woman to be nominated for the theatrical film award by the American Society of Cinematographers--a nomination I wholeheartedly concur with, as I felt it's the visual aspect that really elevated this movie, capturing the mud and rain and heat and heartaches of the rustic, post-war Deep South with animal precision. 

At times, the writing--Rees and Virgil Williams adapted the film from Hillary Jordan's novel--could get poetic, at once beautiful and alien. Carey Mulligan's character, for example: "When I think of the farm, I think of mud, encrusting knees and hair. Marching in boot-shaped patches across the floor. I dreamed in brown." How I'd love to be able to write such a passage in my own fiction. 

But the movie itself could get tedious, going certain places that could have been excised, lingering where movement would have worked better. I'd say the film really hit its stride once the boys came home from the war, and the racial tensions started piling up and seriously affecting both families; the jump from stasis (i.e. the astute observance of struggle in the rustics) to flow (i.e. romantic entanglements! illnesses! the Klan!) seemed only to highlight the disparity between the film's two inadequately reconciled halves. Also, the characters weren't very novel as far as writing went, but this cast was insanely talented and so in sync with each other. SAG Ensemble Award? Sure. But Best Picture? I'm not 100% convinced.