films include documentaries, fantasy and mystery films

Reviews by Leonard Heldreth

The films this month include two documentaries, a fantasy by a major director and a serial-killer mystery.

Good Night Oppy

In 2003-2004 two spacecraft named Opportunity and Spirit were launched toward Mars over a threeweek interval; known as MER-A or MER-1 (Mars Exploration Rover), the two landed on opposite sides of the red planet. Their goal was to collect and broadcast data for over 92 Earth days, the scientists guesstimating that’s how long the rovers would survive in the harsh climate and dust storms of Mars. Instead, Opportunity (known as Oppy) lasted 14 years and 138 Earth days. Spirit, also expected to last 90 days, kept sending data until it got stuck in 2009 and ceased sending data in 2010, a period of time exceeding 20 times its expected life span. Opportunity lasted 57 times its expected life span, succumbing finally to massive dust storms that clouded its solar cells. The mission is considered one of NASA’s most successful ones. Oppy explored Victoria Crater and Endeavor crater, examined meteor sites and remains, and traveled across Mars for 28 miles.

Over the 15 years of the project, the control crew at NASA developed an attachment to the rovers, and several tears were shed when it became necessary finally to pull the plug on the inert machines, especially Oppy. Anthropomorphizing — the process of investing non-human things with human traits — could be argued to be the real subject of this movie; it’s certainly a major part of drama as the Earth-based crew tries to solve one problem after another, including the robot equivalents of arthritis and dementia.

The last signal sent to the rovers was a recording of Billie Holiday singing, “I’ll be seeing you.” Anyone who enjoys information about Mars and its exploration, as well as the bonds that form between humans and the machines they work with, will want to take a look at this documentary.

Wildcat

Wildcat is a documentary about how two young people try to raise an immature Peruvian ocelot to sufficient age (18 months) so it can be released from a wild animal shelter and returned to the wild to survive. In the process, the two have to contend with their own personal problems as well as caring for the young wildcat, and it’s a question of who needs the most care.

Harry Turner is an Englishman in his early 20s who was deployed to Afghanistan when he was 18 years old. He survived his tour of duty but emerged with burn marks on his arms and severe PTSD. Hiding from himself and his family, he flees to a wild animal shelter in Peru, which is run by American Samantha Zwicker. She is there to do research as part of her PhD from Oregon, but she is also dealing with trauma of her own, having grown up with a violent, alcoholic father. The question is whether these two mentally wounded young people can heal themselves while caring for Keanu, the young ocelot. After the earlier death of Kahn, an immature ocelot shot by a poacher, Harry goes to pieces, weeping, and threatening suicide, so the question is not a rhetorical one. Can he absorb any more losses? The movie follows the couple as their relationship develops and as Harry teaches Keanu the skills a young wildcat must know — what dangers to avoid, how to catch rodents and other cat survival skills.

Harry’s family comes to Peru to visit him, and they have a good interaction for the first time since his tour of service, but after the family leaves, Harry slides back into PTSD, and Samantha has to call the suicide hot line. Releasing Keanu back to the jungle is traumatic for Harry, but he survives and leaves the compound for another position. People who saw him at the film’s premier, which Harry attended, thought he was psychologically better, and a trail camera caught a photo of Keanu apparently in good health, but unlike many nature documentaries, the future of the three main characters remains ambiguous. Nonetheless, the film is very much worth seeing, even though everyone is struggling to survive, and sometimes it’s hard to tell who is healing whom.

Three Thousand Years of Longing

Anyone interested in story-telling has encountered the genie-in-thebottle trope; sometimes it’s Aladdin and a lamp, or Scherazade telling a story interrupted each night to extend her life another day, or a similar variation with a powerful figure who will grant three wishes to the “lucky” participant if he or she will free the genie (or djinn) from the bottle, lamp, or other confinement — it’s an old tradition with as many variations as there are stories to tell. In this case the lucky participant who gets to rub the bottle, in this case a small perfume container that needs to be polished up, is Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton), a British professor of narratology, and therefore someone savvy to the tricks and subterfuges of genies who tell stories. The genie, played by Idris Elba with Spock-like ears, is world-weary, suspicious, funny, absurd, and willing to negotiate (he’s been trapped in too many containers over the centuries). He offers Alithea three wishes, but she wants more information before using them, so he tells her stories from his past adventures, starting with the Queen of Sheba and a self-playing lyre that accompanies her stories and the song of Solomon.

The following tales range over various subjects, some better than others, including one in which a very heavy man has a weakness for obese women. To tell more would be to tell too much. Let’s simply say that like all good stories, the narrative comes to a rounded ending. Although the stories are uneven, the sets and costumes are splendid. Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton are superb in their roles, and the interaction between the very black genie and the very white English scholar raises all sorts of questions about orientalism, colonialism, and other background issues that will not be gone into here. Just a reminder that George Miller, the director, now in his eighties, has demonstrated his directorial ability in such features as Babe: Pig in the City, Happy Feet, and all four Mad Max films with a Mad Max prequel currently in production.

Solace

It takes a lot of originality to create a new variation on the serial-killer motif, and reviewers were divided over whether director Afonso Poyart achieved it or not. Originally conceived as a sequel to Fincher’s classic 1995 thriller Se7en, to be entitled Ei8ht, the connection was dropped by Poyart when Fincher objected. Instead, the stand-alone version uses two men with psychic abilities to track down a killer who chooses his victims because they already have terminal diseases, turning the murders into mercy killings and raising significant moral questions.

FBI special agent Joe Merriwether (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is in search of serial killer Charles Ambrose (Colin Farrell), although he’s not sure at this point what connects the victims. He enlists the help of a psychic doctor, John Clancy (Anthony Hopkins), who has helped him with tough cases in the past. This time Clancy declines until he meets Merriwether’s colleague, Katherine Cowles (Abbie Cornish) and receives a psychic shock when he touches her. Clancy jokes about how he was expecting them, the first of several jokes about how Clancy knows what’s going on because he’s psychic and anticipates some of what is happening. Unfortunately for the FBI, the killer has stronger psychic powers and anticipates their every move. The catand-mouse game results in more murders, and Clancy meets the killer, who confesses that he is killing only people who will soon die, which includes most of the main characters. Ambrose, the killer, has only a short time to live and wants Clancy to take over as his agent to eliminate people who are suffering, but Clancy declines. The two battle on a subway train and come to terms with their situation, and Clancy reveals one last secret (a fairly predictable one) to bring the film to a close.

Whether the acting of Hopkins and Colin Firth will make up for the worn and somewhat predictable plot depends on the viewer; the real question is whether the viewer can be psychic enough to unravel the plot twists before the detectives.

MM

Leonard Heldreth became interested in films in high school and worked as a movie projectionist in undergraduate and graduate school. His short “Cinema Comment” aired for some years on WNMU-FM. In 1987, he started writing reviews for Marquette Monthly. He taught English and film studies at NMU for over 30 years.