The Break-Up & The King

I think The King actually came out a couple of weeks ago on DVD. I've been falling behind lately. Trying to get some writing done of my own and occasional random rentals (tonight I watched a Polish film called Siberian Lady Macbeth) have really cut into my blogging time.

Both of these movies were surprisingly good. I didn't expect to like The Break-Up because I generally find mainstream Hollywood romantic comedies nauseating in the extreme. And I really didn't expect to like The King because it's a direct-to-DVD thriller and that's generally a death sentence. (There was some hope...It doesn't star Tara Reid...But only a faint glimmer.)

The Break-Up

I usually dislike Vince Vaughn in the straight-man role. When he's unconstrained, allowed to roam around free inside an outrageous character, the guy can be brilliant. Movies like Old School, Made and Wedding Crashers aren't exactly world-class films, but they are smart enough to sit back and quietly let Vaughn do all the comedic heavy lifting. But when he's forced to take care of exposition, or worse yet when he's the emotional center of a story, Vaughn seems to get bored. His performance in Dodgeball couldn't be less lively or compelling. Rip Torn and Stephen Root get the laughs, so Vaughn just checks out and goes through the motions.

The Break-Up indicates that he may be getting better at sharing the spotlight. An atypical romantic comedy that actually takes its central relationship seriously, the film allows Vaughn to examine and invert his usual persona in some interesting ways. The movie's not particularly funny, and most of its actual observations about men and women feel ripped from the pages of Seventeen, but it's still far more sophisticated and watchable than dreck like Failure to Launch.



Ten years after his iconic turn in Swingers made him a movie star, Vaughn essentially updates his old role. Chicago tour guide Gary Grobowski has Trent's same hyperactive, aggressive charm and the same goofy, childish attitude, only in an older (and, yes, fatter) body. (They're even both video game fans!) It's easy for Gary to pick up Brooke (Jennifer Aniston) at a ballgame and talk her into going out with him. What's difficult is hanging on to a woman when you're a slovenly, narcissistic man-child.

Gary and Brooke host a dinner party, where Brooke's possibly gay brother (John Michael Higgins) forces everyone to join him in a chorus of Yes' "Owner of a Lonely Heart," and get into a heated argument. The scene sets the tone for the film's comic style right up-front; it's awkward and confrontational, deriving the sort of half-squirms/half-laughs you get from "Curb Your Enthusiasm" or "The Office." (Only not as funny as those shows.)

Brooke's upset because Gary forgot to buy enough lemons to make a nice centerpiece. Gary's upset because he feels like Brooke's always annoyed with him. Their feuding at first drives out their guests and eventually brings about the end of the affair.

Unfortunately, that's about as deep into the relationship as the film bothers to probe. Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender's script doesn't waste a lot of time getting to the titular argument, so we really never see these two together as a functioning romantic unit. We see them meet at the ballpark, we see some still photos of them enjoying the good times, and then we're right into the dissolution of their union. All we're left with are some extremely simplistic, universal truisms about male-female relationships. You know, dudes are archetypally associated with the mythology of one planet, chicks are archetypally associated with the mythology of a different, but nearby, planet. That sort of horseshit.

Though their whole argument boils down to a few simple compromises that could be easily discussed, there's only a movie if things get more complicated. Garelick and Lavender fill the margins of the story with supporting characters played by talented veteran performers, so it's not up to the straight-forward main storyline to carry the entire film. It's a strategy that works pretty well, the idea being that all of Gary's and Brooke's friends give them ridiculously wrong-headed advice for the film's first half and then correct themselves once the stakes are raised.

Vaughn's old co-star Jon Favreau gets almost all of the film's best lines as Gary's best friend and bartender Johnny O. The two are clearly improvising some of their scenes, including a really funny dialogue in which Johnny suggests they murder one of Brooke's new suitors. Vincent D'Onofrio and Cole Hauser likewise are exceptionally well-cast as his brothers and business partners. These scenes provide an interesting, alternative take on the same kind of material as Swingers, only with Vaughn now in the opposite role. (One scene, in which Hauser urges his brother to be more like "an outdoor cat" directly recalls Vaughn's "big bear" monologue from that earlier film.)

Seriously, half of Reed's success with this movie was in the casting. In addition to teaming all these great actors with Vaughn, he's given Aniston a few scenes with a hilarious Judy Davis. As a preening, Gloria Swanson-esque art diva who owns the gallery where Brooke works, she's too good for the rest of this movie. Woody Allen should write her a movie based around this character. (Lamentably, a few of these scenes also feature a horrible, embarrassing turn from Justin Long as a gay receptionist. There is no need for this stupid, half-baked character in the movie.)

The central conflict of the film, a Money Pit-inspired bit of business in which Gary and Brooke fued over their shared condo, never really goes anywhere. For a while, it seems like the movie's actually planning to extend that "I Love Lucy" episode where they draw a line through the living room out into a 90 minute feature, which would be considerably ill-advised. Instead, it actually focuses more on the relationship - whether Brooke will ever just ask Gary to change, and whether he'll be willing to follow through with it.

That's a rare and appreciated change from how Hollywood typically approaches these kinds of stories, but it would have been nice if the scenario were more meaty and dramatic. Gary and Brooke's problems are just so generic and uninteresting. Yes, he should listen to her more. Yes, she shouldn't nag him right away when he gets home from work. It's not these kinds of self-help generalizations that make a relationship compelling and realistic. It's the details that make these stories work, and Gary and Brooke's story has no details. They really don't even talk about the time they've spent together, as if all their emotions and memories about the past several months (or years?) evaporated when they decided they were no longer in love.

Vaughn and Aniston do have pretty good on-screen chemistry, though (regardless of how it worked out off-screen), and I liked that Reed didn't try to force the saccharine happy ending. Still, the movie's only okay. It's nice to see a mainstream date movie more mature than Hitch, but that's not exactly setting the bar high.

The King

I'm not 100% sure I understand why this movie is called "The King." It does deal in Biblical themes, and it's narrative constitutes something of a classical tragedy, but I can't figure out which character is actually meant to be said monarch. (Towards the end of the film, one guy puts on a fast food restaurant's paper crown, but the reference has got to run deeper than just that visual.)

Anyway, it doesn't really matter. This is a terrific fiction debut for British director James Marsh, a harrowing thriller reminiscent of the Gothic Americana of David Gordon Green. Behind what opens as a relatively simple story about a troubled young man searching for a place to belong, The King morphs into a truly troubling examination of faith, personal responsibility and trust.



Elvis (Gael Garcia Bernal) leaves the Navy bound for Corpus Christi, Texas, to confront the father (William Hurt) he's never known. His father, David Sendow, turns out to be a Pastor with a wife (Laura Harring) and two children. He clearly favors his son Paul (Paul Dano), an aspiring Christian rocker who's getting ready to leave for Bible College.

Predictably, David wants nothing to do with Elvis. He's ashamed of fathering a child out of wedlock and frightened that his family will find out about his past sins from the time before he found Jesus. Elvis seems at first to take the news well. He moves into a local motel and gets a job delivering pizzas. But then he starts showing up at David's house, chatting up his daughter Malerie (Pell James) and eventually asking her out on a date. Is this part of some master plan to get back at the father who doesn't want him? Or is he merely acting on instinct, trying to get close to the only people in the world with whom he has an actual connection?

Though Marsh, working from a script he co-wrote with Milo Addica, builds to an suspenseful climax, The King focuses on the dramatic collision of these characters rather than ratcheting up the tension throughout. He adroitly keeps Elvis' motives and plans unspoken, providing the audience with information about his situation but not about his mindset. Generally, a director would withhold the revelation that two main characters are having an incestuous relationship until the final act.

Marsh, however, alerts us from the beginning that Elvis is related to David and also sexually attracted to David's daughter. He wants us to know that from the beginning, to disturb us even as we watch the sweetly romantic scenes of Elvis and Malerie's courtship, and to wonder what's going on in Elvis' head. The boy is clearly disturbed - obsessed with his rifle, aggressive, lonely - but he's not depicted as a hopeless case. Really, save for his occasional fits of rage and his diabolical, devious behavior towards the Sendows, he's a pleasant, friendly, easy-going guy. Once people get past his timid exterior, they tend to enjoy his company.

As Elvis' actions become more violent and erratic, the film gets tighter, uglier and more focused. Marsh takes his time during the initial hour, taking in the sparse, unpopulated areas around Corpus Christi, using the flat emptiness of the scenery to highlight Elvis' isolation. The grassy meadows and sunny swimming holes of the first half are replaced with an arid wasteland, where the evidence of Elvis' misdeeds begin to pile up. Marsh's collaborator from the culty avant-garde documentary Wisconsin Death Trip, Eigil Bryld, suffuses his cinematography with verdant green for a while before everything gets suddenly cold and muted. These guys clearly spent a lot of time considering the visual palatte of the film and it clearly shows.

Though it's occasionally unpleasant, what with all the violence and incest and eventual trauma, The King is pretty much one of the best movies I've seen all year. Hurt's great as Sendow, whose crisis of faith following Elvis' intrusion on his life may be the first time he has questioned himself since entering the Lord's Service. And Bernal gives another mysterious, subtle performance, balancing Elvis' earnest optimism and his extreme creepiness. It's too bad this is only coming out on DVD and didn't hit theaters. It probably would have looked good on a big screen