The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoise

I just saw the acclaimed movie, The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoise and was about as entertained as when I watch kids swim. The comedy, about a sextet that never get to finish a meal, is over thirty years old (1972). I think Luis Buñuel's brand of humor, over the top then, is common place now: the couple who can't get enough of each other and slip out the window while their dinner guests are waiting, the rifle shot at a mechanical dog, a priest shooting the murderer of his parents after forgiving him, the parody of soldiers telling their sad stories of ghosts and murders and of course the body of a restaurant owner laid out in the back room--the guests are assured they will still get a good meal. None of the characters really seemed to care when their dinner plans went awry, even when they were interrupted by uprisings and arrests. They were never fed, I suppose, because they were essentially soul-less. The main characters are all corrupt. We have drug dealers, friends cheating on friends, a murderous priest and a Neo-Nazi, and a dippy sister, the unkindest cut of all. Thinking it over, The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoise is a well done, understated look at the banal middle class after all.

Atonement -- A Review

Atonement, nominated for a slew of awards, falls short of the far superior, 1965, Dr. Zhivago. There are two independent segments in Atonement, the love story and the war story. The love story is the more compelling. A jealous twelve year old, Briony Tallis (Romola Garai), wrongly accuses her older sister’s lover, Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), of a molestation. If the unreliable Briony is to be believed, the older sister, Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley), turns to nursing, while Robby goes to prison. Four years later, Robby enlists in the army to escape prison. This movie, which moves both forwards and backwards time, both surprises and exasperates viewers, ultimately being inconsistent in its attempts to do both.

Further, the war movie fails to resolve the problem of this intriguing threesome. Atonement makes an obvious nod to the Dr. Zhivago, when its leading victim, Robbie Turner, stumbles into a forest glade of executed school girls, all seemingly shot in the head. We do not know how or why the girls were shot. Turner has no hand in the business, except to shed a tear. Director Joe Wright seems to be simply pointing out the brutality and pointlessness of war. Robbie steps into the main problem with this overrated film, aimlessness. In Dr. Zhivago, the hero and namesake of the film is forcibly drafted into the Red Army. When his company mows down a group of boys in school uniforms, mistaking them for White soldiers, Zhivago is horrified and tries to help one of them. Unlike the girls slaughtered in Atonement, viewers know why the boys were killed and get the futility and ugliness of war. At the same time, the lead character is advanced. Atonement’s war dwarfs the story of the threesome.

To his credit director, Joe Wright, paints a magnificent, surreal portrait of the beach at Dunkirk. A ferris wheel looms in the background, packs of dogs scramble off the foreground from bursts of explosions, a platoon of war ragged soldiers sing songs, while a ghost-like ship teeters on the sand. The love triangle is replaced by a threesome of soldiers, and even one of these gets lost.

Then, we are zipped decades into the future and the aged Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) give us the real scoop and too neatly summarizes the story. An irritating feature of the film is that the three actresses playing the three ages of Briony all maintain the thirteen year old’s hairstyle. The identifying mole should be enough. It is unclear, whether or not Briony atones for her actions. A successful author of twenty-one books and dying of cancer, Briony concedes the unhappy reality of Cecelia and Robby’s story, but then she indicates that she has constructed a fictionalized, happy ending for the two characters, gag, who hold hands and stroll down a beach on screen. Everything comes into question, including her romantic portrayal of her younger self nursing a dying French soldier. The viewer is left with more questions than answers. Atonement is a movie worth seeing, but not Oscar worthy of best picture.