Gandhi goes bad in heist film by next (?) Welles (JuiceJW's Future of Hollywood Write-Off)

Orson Welles once said that the sets, props and costumes that belonged to RKO were the greatest set of toys anyone could ask for. If British director Jonathan Glazer ever gets his hands on the toys Hollywood has, it will be his audience that has the fun.

Several moments in Sexy Beast, Glazer's feature film debut, crackle with the exuberance and daring techniques that Welles brought to such memorable pieces of film as the famous extended tracking shot in Touch of Evil. Glazer hasn't yet shown himself capable of making so complex a movie as The Magnificent Ambersons, but he has shown that he might craft a Citizen Kane.

Glazer isn't Moses, or even Charlton Heston, but he accomplishes at least two miracles in Sexy Beast. He doesn't let Ben Kingsley's tidal wave of a performance wash away everything in the movie. (Water plays a big part in two vital scenes.) And he doesn't let the story, adapted by Louis Mellis and David Scinto from their play, drift in the oceanic expanse of the big screen. Glazer draws so deeply from the pool of film resources that he pulls off the moviemaking equivalent of parting the Red Sea.

It is early on when Glazer first suggests he's the guy to lead us to film's promised land. His story is about a thug who summons one of his former partners in crime from retirement to pull off a daring heist in a supposedly impenetrable bank vault. Before he shows us the brutal thug Kingsley plays, Glazer makes us feel the dread of four formerly happy people for whom Kingsley's imminent arrival is a threat.

When the news that Kingsley is headed their way reaches them, Glazer lingers in moments of dire unease as the four characters sit in anxious, complicated silence. It is as though Death has entered the room and they fear any sound or movement will capture its attention.

Then Glazer's camera pulls away slowly, the way people step back while trying to cope with the shock of the first few moments after catastrophe. Then he makes the camera jerk about a bit from one character to another, as one might look around frantically for aid in handling bad news. Glazer makes his audience feel his characters' fear. Only later can reason reassert itself, allowing one to appreciate the techniques by which Glazer accomplished this emotional transference.

That's just one of many moments in which Glazer draws one so deeply into his movie that you forget briefly that you're watching a movie. In another, he puts us close to the action in an orgy with people who have done everything and continue to do so even though they long ago stopped deriving any pleasure from it. It's a brief scene, but Glazer makes us feel as though it is we who suffer from erotic ennui. With more money and more time in Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick did much less.

There are bits that suggest Glazer thinks he's being clever. He follows a romantic moment with a glimpse of the two lovers hovering against a starlit sky that looks like an especially clumsy image from Hallmark. And there is little clarity to an important, apparently erotic relationship between two of the men involved in the heist. But such instances are quick and few. Glazer always regains his vision and sets the movie back on track.

That track leads to an ending in which it is clear that something unpleasant is going to happen. Glazer evokes suspense as sharp as some of Hitchcock's best.

Glazer was smart to cast Kingsley as the hoodlum who sets the plot in motion. A man as slight as Kingsley should not inspire the fear that his character does, but Kingsley's volcanic performance makes that fear believable. It must be like the fear that scrawny Adolf Hitler instilled in the burly, armed soldiers he commanded. But Kingsley suggests some of his character's inner conflicts as well. His performance, as powerful as any by Robert DeNiro, might earn him an Academy Award nomination. If it does, it would be deserved.

Glazer was even smarter to select a cast that matches Kingsley. Cavan Kindall is amiable as a former partner in crime of Kingsley's character, and he makes his intimidation by Kingsley painful to watch. Amanda Redman has what could have been a flat part as a former porn star who is happily married to one of Kingsley's crime partners, but she makes her character a person of some depth by investing her performance with nuance and assurance. And Ian McShane makes an especially unnerving villain of the crime lord who engineers the heist.

But the revelation in the cast is Ray Winstone, whose portrayal of the retired hoodlum reflects a stunning range of emotion from explosive rage to almost whimpering fear. When Kingsley poses a threat, Winstone etches that threat in his features. Winstone makes a quick shift and we see a man resorting to bluster to cover his fear. And when his character's wife is threatened, Winstone exudes both anger and determination to protect her.

Sometimes the shifts from one emotional extreme to another are lightning quick, but Winstone registers every bit of them. Winstone displays a virtuoso talent, and one never senses he is acting. If that Oscar were to go to Winstone, it would be because he earned it.

Welles gets most of the credit, but he didn't make Citizen Kane by himself. Herman J. Mankiewicz helped the director craft the screenplay for what many consider the greatest movie ever made.

Sexy Beast doesn't have any symbols as meaningful as Rosebud or as subtle as the dining room table that grows longer as Charles Foster Kane and his wife grow apart from each other. But it has flashes of audacious moviemaking that reflect Glazer's confident command of the medium's vocabulary, a command reminiscent of Welles'. If Glazer finds his Mankiewicz to help him channel his talents and enthusiasm, or if he finds the discipline within himself, Sexy Beast promises to be the start of a career that will enthrall audiences for generations into Hollywood's bright future.

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This review is a very late entry in JuiceJW’s Future of Hollywood Write-Off. The Web page for the write-off is at:

http://futurewo.benho.org

Other participants include:

alex_isit
Benho
dequebec
DrJ008
Grouch
JonTurner
JuiceJW
Kenshin-Guy
kuuleimomi
matt_harney
MrsNormanMaine
Pffrdfdus7
Shadow8
Sloucho
stargull
The_Wood