Cultural Mining

Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Fall Film Festival Season continues in Toronto with Rendezvous with Madness, from Oct 22-Nov 1, featuring Tasha Hubbard’s lovely Meadowlarks (interview here); and Planet in Focus with films on international environmental topics, opening with Nuisance Bear on Oct 20th.

This week, I’m looking at three new movies, all of which premiered at TIFF this year. There’s a drama based on a novel by a famous English author, a mystery about a famous American novelist, and a documentary about the richest man in the world.

Sense and Sensibility

Dir: Georgia Oakley (review: Blue Jean)

It’s the late 18th century at the Dashwood family manor in England. Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is an intelligent young woman who lives with her parents and two younger sisters: the passionate and hot-tempered Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles), and the youngest one, the playful and inquisitive Margaret. They happily pursue their interests in culture, reading, and the arts, while pondering the idea of someday getting married, with any number of possible suitors. But everything changes when their father dies. Their relatives — headed by their scheming sister-in-law Fanny (Stacy Martin) move in with eyes on taking over the Dashwood estate. Luckily, another in-law, the genteel and courtly Edward (George MacKay) movies in as well, and shows a clear interest in wooing Elinor (the feelings are mutual.) But he won’t commit.

Somehow Fanny  manages to seize both the stately home and the Dashwood sister’s promised fortune. They’re left with a small stipend, and are forced to move into a rural cottage owned by a jolly country-woman named Mrs Jennings (Fiona Shaw) who is looking for company. Meanwhile, a Colonel (Herbert Nordrum) back from foreign wars, expresses his interest in getting to know Marianne. But he rarely speaks and is stiff as a board, which isn’t her style. Instead she falls for Willoughby (Frank Dillane), a local playboy who rescues her from an accident on the beach. But is he dependable? Will Edward ever propose to Elinor? And can the family survive giving up their regency manners for life in the sticks?

Sense and Sensibility is yet another filmed version of the Jane Austin novel. It’s full of the expected twists and turns of the plot, but relies more on passion, betrayal and heartbreak, than on witty repartee. The men are walk-ons, while the women are the main point. I just wish it were cleverer.

This is a serviceable adaptation, with beautiful hairstyles  and clothing seen against lovely scenery. The characters are fun and interesting. There are many familiar faces, even in the smaller roles, like Caitríona Balfe (Outlander) and Tom Brooke (Slow Horses). And some of the dramatic scenes are quite moving.

There are almost as many Jane Austin movies as there are James Bonds. Do we need another one? I say, why not? As long as they keep making 007s, these middling English dramas keep a cosmic balance in this world.

A Talent for Murder

Dir: Anton Corbijn (Reviews: A Most Wanted Man,  The American)

Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich) is a rising young executive at a major publisher in New York. He’s talking to a stranger on a train. Clementine (Olivia Cooke) is an avid reader visiting Switzerland. Edward is there on business, paying a visit to a reclusive writer. Her name is Patricia Highsmith (Helen Mirren), the author of bestselling novels, stories and screenplays. Her most popular series follows a charming but sociopathic thief named Tom Ripley, and though she’s officially retired, her publisher, represented by Edward, thinks they can get one more Ripley book out of her. 

Highsmith is an abrasive person to deal with. She’s widely known as both a misanthrope and a bigot. Edward isn’t the first executive his publisher sent but the previous one ended up in a straightjacket.  But Edward comes prepared with a number of gifts, including a loaded pistol, as requested.

She grudgingly lets him stay overnight — an experience she made sure would be extremely unpleasant. And she gives him a series of tasks to complete, some involving his new friend Clementine before she’ll listen to his proposal. But as he spins his tale, it becomes unclear whether she’s talking with Edward… or with Ripley, himself. 

A Talent for Murder is a clever and highly entertaining movie, that manages to combine both fictional and real characters into a single story. It flirts with class, identity, and deception. Lots of exotic European settings filled with trains, boats and mansions.  Based on a stage play, it alternates between chapters of the Ripley story and the “real” story, both acted by Ehrenreich and Cooke. Though nothing deep, it’s intriguing, well-acted and just a lot of fun. 

Musk

Dir: Alex Gibney (Reviews: Client 9: the Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer; Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief)

Elon Musk was born into a rich family in South Africa, who parlayed his family wealth — and extensive government funding — till he became the richest man in the world. Musk is known for his advances in electric and self-driving cars, aerospace technology, and telecommunications. He also played a crucial role in DOGE, the massive purge of the civil service under the current US government. How did he change, over just a few decades, from frustrated tech bro, to an Obama-darling widely-adored, environmentalist entrepreneur, to an internationally-reviled financier of the extreme right? This new four-hour documentary traces his history, in a series of discrete, journalistic  chapters. And to tie it together is narration from Gibney the filmmaker and from Elon Musk, himself. Though he refused to participate in the doc, a realistic, AI avatar (that looks and speaks like a better version of Musk), is there to provide a series of his actual quotes.

The doc looks at both his business and his personal life. It includes new interviews with Musk’s family, his first wife, and the mothers of some of his many children (he is apparently trying to spread this genes around the world a al Kublai Khan.) The documentary is four hours long (including a timed 10 min intermission) but never boring. It talks at length about flaws in his “autopilot” app supposedly at the heart of his self-driving cars, but mainly controlled by living people behind the scenes. Lt also handles the multiple deaths it caused that his company is trying too cover-up. He also became a huge influence in Trump’s second term, decimating the civil service, ostensibly to eliminate a deficit — though it has reached astronomical numbers under Trump — but more importantly to give him potential access to all the personal data the government holds, and to eliminate dozens of costly lawsuits the US government was holding against his corporations. 

Now Elon Musk is a major player in extreme-right-wing politics, giving countless millions to US Republican candidates and actively supporting right wing political parties worldwide. (Most recently, he has been supporting Canadian separatists.) 

Musk is a very good, though quite long, documentary about this very rich man. (Elon calls it a hit piece and has tried to get it banned, which is reason enough to watch it.)

My one criticism is I wish it had focussed more on Starlink, part of SpaceX, the world’s biggest extensive satellite network that basically puts the entire globe, including its potential misuse (against Ukraine, for example) under his control. 

A Talent for Murder starts next week, while Sense and Sensibility and Musk both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. 

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website  culturalmining.com