Director Spotlight: Mark Forster
By Joshua Pasch
February 2, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
From earliest to most recent, Forster’s last three flicks are Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner, and Quantum of Solace.
Stranger Than Fiction
Like with most other screw-ball comedians, the public can be fairly divisive about Will Ferrell. And whether it was intended to be or not, Stranger Than Fiction is Ferrell’s appeal to all of his haters. It is his requisite subdued dramedy. The question is: would this be more Eternal Sunshine than Majestic? More Dead Poets Society than Patch Adams? More Punch Drunk Love than Spanglish?
Some people hate when their beloved funnymen take these dramatic detours. Here, Ferrell plays an IRS auditor who starts hearing a voice narrating his life. Emma Thompson, the narrator/author of his life has a crisis of conscience and must decide whether or not to kill off her lead character (Ferrell) once she realizes he is, in fact, more than a figment of her imagination.
Are you still with me? If you are, then you’re probably like me, and found Stranger Than Fiction to be both quirky and simultaneously pretty heartfelt. It is a perfectly quaint film that feels small, but has somehow stayed with me for quite some time since first seeing it. For my money, it’s Forster’s strongest work to date. He navigates a pretty murky narrative path and manages to construct a world that is oddly fictional but features many of the emotions of non-fiction life. Harold Crick the IRS auditor doesn’t sound like a protagonist to care about, but Foster daintily takes us through his daily routines, introduces us to his romantic interest, and we root for Crick to survive his pre-ordained ill-fate. Yes, Harold Crick is an oddball hero, but alas, that’s what unique movies are for. As the film quite literally addresses in a bit of existential analysis of itself, it knows not if it is a comedy or a tragedy, and that indecision actually gives it a very charming tone. It's not a home run, but then, I’m not sure it was meant to be. If you watch the movie through to the bittersweet ending, you’ll know exactly what I mean. Forster deserves bonus points for taming Ferrell’s most divisive quality – his loudness – but still affording Crick one or two nonsensical shouting moments.
Kite Runner
I read Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, as a senior in high school. It was at that point in my high school career that I became articulate enough, and perhaps bookish enough, to lob some serious criticism at the author and at my International Relations teacher for passing it off as part of curriculum. There was too much shmaltz, too much “Hollywood” to really tell the war-torn story of Kabul, Afghani-refugees, Russian invasion, and the rise of the Taliban. I liken it to Hollywood’s retelling of Pearl Harbor as a love story – I thought Hosseini glossed over the important points.
Five or six years have passed since then, and I’ll admit I know far less about the world today. I am less politically active, aware, or concerned, and I’m not proud to announce it. When I queued up Kite Runner on Netflix instant watch, I was ready to dislike it. And I’ll start by saying that the film isn’t great. It suffers from an excess in content/scope for a two hour film; also Forster’s set pieces never achieve a feeling of authenticity. Maybe part of that was budgetary, but it still removed me from the experience somewhat. The other criticism that remains is that the story unravels like a soap opera – the kind with a third act reveal that involves illegitimate children and hidden romances. I can’t directly spoil it here but suffice it to say that it would sound ridiculous if I did.
Where I once thought the soap operatic story and the shmaltz did the book under, I do think the movie survives in spite of those things. The movie does highlight a culture to which many Americans (and I know I’m generalizing here) have developed a dislike or at the very least an indifference. The Kite Runner has themes of generational respect, friendship, and simple moral good vs. evil that may be simplified, may be Hollywood-ified, but at least they’re being told in the context of a setting and from the perspective of people who are rarely, if ever, highlighted on film. There is a dearth of movies that feature Arab characters. When was the last movie you can recall where the Arab wasn’t a villain (Taken, for example) or the cab driver (any NYC-set rom-com). The Kite Runner has its share of broad villainy – in it, the Taliban are a fairly one-note group of hard-nosed, bearded, AK-47 toting pedophiles. That said, there are also topics about multi-generational barriers, political complexities, and race relations on display here. That’s a lot for any film to tackle – and Marc Forster (who is not Afghani as far as I know) – acquits himself pretty well through it all.
Quantum of Solace
To understand my take on Quantum of Solace, you first have to understand my take on Casino Royale.
Casino Royale was a film that didn’t work for me the first time around. It was bloated and didn’t know how to end. It was a film of “buts.” Craig was an okay Bond, but…why so serious? Eva Green was great, but…not enough skin! The opening chase sequence was cool, but…who was the Bourne-like guy Bond was chasing through Africa? I had a laundry list of quibbles. Alas, maybe I had fallen victim to high expectations. With its through-the-roof tomato-score, I couldn’t wait to see Casino Royale, so I did what I never do (seriously I never do this), and I went alone (it’s so lonely!) to see the film. Boy, was that a mistake. Everyone said I was crazy not to love it. I must have been missing something. I must have been in a bad mood because I was eating a large bucket of too-salted popcorn without a date. I must have been hung up on Sean Connery. How could I not love it!?
Watching it again on Showtime, perhaps ten months later, I learned that I am a Grade-A idiot. Casino Royale has it all. Bond is suave and slick and his anger comes from real raw emotion when he is jilted by his true love. The settings: Miami, southern France, et al, are sumptuous, as is Eva Green, who teases us with her eyes and her sharp tongue instead of her body. I was excited to see what the franchise would do for a follow up, and to see how Forster would rise to the challenge of making a direct sequel to Royale (another first for a Bond flick, since they are usually part of the same anthology, but storylines do not carry over into the following film).
My reaction was at first quite positive – Quantum featured a very sexy Bond girl and mostly competent sequences on planes, boats, car, motorcycle, and foot. There was an excellent climactic set piece set on a highly flammable eco-hotel and at least one or two unexpected twists. But then I settled in for a second viewing not more than a few months later. Boy was I a Grade-A idiot – again. Quantum of Solace is thin. I mean paper-thin. There are plot holes into which you can crash a jumbo-sized aircraft carrier – which Bond does in fact, in one of the flick’s most egregious requests for the audience to suspend disbelief. Bond was never meant to be a very plausible series, but if you’re going to set up Quantum as a hyper-real, emotional follow-up to Royale, than you should at least try to craft a script that successfully introduces its action sequences. Maybe the script isn’t entirely Forster’s fault. But what about those action sequences? A second viewing exposes more than one or two of them as frauds. Quantum of Solace is either the victim of over editing with too much cutting to tell what is happening, or of poor filming where nothing coherent perhaps ever made it onto the camera to begin with.
Also, and perhaps most importantly, I have to point out that Bond is not a heartless cold-blooded killer. He is a lover (and perhaps a misogynist) as well. He kills when he must, as he does in Royale, but he is just too angry, too blunt, too Bourne, in Quantum. In Royale, the blending of suave and sophisticated with brute and emotional worked to sublime effect. In Quantum, Bond is enslaved to the latter qualities. Maybe that was unavoidable because of how the first film’s plot feeds in to the second. But lets hope that if MGM ever gets off the schneid that they let Bond relax his shoulders a little bit and have some fun. How else are we going to enjoy all of that globe trotting spy work if it’s always so damn solemn? Forster didn’t ruin the Bond franchise, and Quantum certainly isn’t the least competent entry of the 21 so far. Forster never puts Bond in a jet pack and his car never has a cloak of invisibility, so it wins points on those two fronts. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give Forster too much love – neither from Russia nor any other place – but I’ll give him a pass, since following up Casino Royale would have proved challenging for anyone.
Machine Gun Preacher
How…I mean, seriously, HOW, could you not want to see a movie called Machine Gun Preacher? I’d be incredulous if you said you weren’t at least curious. The movie could go in so many directions, and the one that it actually is, you may not be able to guess. It could be about a sociopath who preaches the world of G-d Jules Winfield-style before blowing people apart with a machine gun. It could be about an actual clergyman who uses a machine gun while giving sermons during mass to help instill fear in his congregation. The truth is – according to IMDb – Machine Gun Preacher is the story off Sam Childers, a reformed drug-dealing biker who finds G-d and becomes a crusader for Sudanese youth who have been forced into become soldiers. Blam! That’s not the blam blam of the machine gun you hear – that’s the sound of you hitting the floor in shock over the surprising subject of Machine Gun Preacher.
What’s that? Sounds too “preachy” for you? Maybe not when you learn that titular machine-gun-toting preacher will be played by perpetual smarmy badass Gerard Butler. Say what you will about the guy, but I wouldn’t want to mess with him (regardless of whether he were wielding a machine gun).
Forster might be the right guy for this type of movie – that is, action with a conscience. He’s made thoughtful and personal movies, and now he’s had a try at action and maybe those machine-gun-blasting moments will be a little crisper than in Quantum. I don’t anticipate anything whimsical a la Stranger Than Fiction or Finding Neverland, but then, there are few unifiers running through the veins of Forster’s work. And while Forster doesn’t have cart blanche given his most recent effort, I remain optimistic. He’s earned at least that much.