DECEMBER 1, 1999: A couple of weeks back, “Entertainment Weekly” published a cover story headlined “1999: The Year That Changed Movies”. Inside, writer explained, in great detail, how future film historians will look back on 1999 with the kind of reverence we regard 1939 with today—as being a year filled with great movies that changed the way we look, saw, and felt film. When I saw the issue, a grin covered my face, and stayed on through the entire lengthy piece. The writer is right—it is an exciting year to see movies, to watch filmmakers who are in love with the craft, doing great work. The titles clicked off to support this thesis are indisputable: “American Beauty”, “Go”, “Run Lola Run”, “The Sixth Sense”, “The Matrix”, “The Blair Witch Project”, “Being John Malcovich”, “Fight Club” (Too bad they left off “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” and “The Insider” and slammed “Bringing Out The Dead” and “Eyes Wide Shut”. But I digress…). Also mentioned were two films that I was lucky enough to take in over one weekend a while back, and I’ve spent enough time digesting them to boldly say that I have honestly never seen a movie quite like either of them. One is Kevin Smith’s brilliant religious satire, “Dogma”. The other is Steven Soderberg’s moody, loopy crime and revenge thriller, “The Limey”.
The premise of Smith’s comedy is delicious: two fallen angels (wonderfully played by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) find a loophole that will allow them to return to the kingdom of Heaven, but their return would suggest a fallible God and thus end existence. So Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), the last living descendent of Christ (who happens to work in an abortion clinic), teams up with a pair of prophets (Smith and Jason Mewes, reprising their popular Jay and Silent Bob characters) and the long-forgotten 13th apostle, Rufus (Chris Rock) to stop them. Along the way, of course, are countless opportunities for Smith’s trademark pop-culture influenced dialogue, at once thoughtful, articulate, and cheerfully vulgar. Most of the riffs are about the ins-and-outs of the Catholic dogma, examining the fine points of mortal sin in a style reminscent of George Carlin (on hand here in a hilarious and all-too-brief appearance as Cardinal Glick, who is attempting to “lighten up” the image of the Catholic Church with a new campaign called “Catholicism WOW!”) Salma Hayek and Alan Rickman pop up occasionally as angels, and the great Janeane Garafalo appears too quickly early on as one of Fiorention’s co-workers.
Never mind the firestorm created by extreme conservative wings of the Catholic church; Smith’s film is devout and thoughtful, and that’s all the ink I’ll devote to that. More worrisome are the continuing slings and arrows in Smith’s direction about his lack of visual style. The most extreme is a horrid article by some hack at “Entertainment Weekly Onine”, which is actually called something along the lines of “Why Kevin Smith Should Never Direct Again”. Um….what? I’ll grant that the visual style of “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy” is crude—a necessity of the low budget. But “Dogma” is not a bad looking film. The camera moves, the camera tracks, his setups and compositions are fine. So he’s no Scorsese—so what? Does anyone slam Woody Allen for his lack of visual flair? No—and here’s why: his films are rooted in character and dialogue, and the camera captures that. What the fuck else do you need? Which would you rather have: Smith’s smart movie, adequately shot, or the empty dialogue and laughable development of a great-looking movie like “The Mummy”? Okay. Shut up.
The film excels in every other area; its potent mix of religious theory, scatalogical humor, and adventure fantasy is truly original and unusual. If Smith falters, it is near the home stretch, when entirely too much time is spent in a bar confrontation with dark angel Azazel—well-played by Smith regular Jason Lee, but the scene could be about half as long. All is recovered by the end, however, when Smith arrives at a conclusion that is genuinely and effortlessly exciting, intriguing, funny, and moving. And Alanis Morisette’s performance as God is a little masterpiece of physicality and timing. So is much of the movie. “Dogma” is Kevin Smith’s finest film, and one of the year’s best.
I was even more exited by “The Limey”, the new film from Steven Soderberg, who directed one of the best films of 1989 (“sex, lies, and videotape”), experimented in some little-seen films through the early and mid-90’s, and burst back with a vengence to create the best film of 1998, “Out of Sight”. That was a big-budget studio movie with stars, as is his next film, “Erin Brockovich”, which will star Julia Roberts. Thus, we have in “The Limey” a low-budget, experimental in-between flick with mostly character actors (Terrence Stamp, Peter Fonda, the wonderful Luis Guizman), released by indie Artisan.
What made “Out of Sight” so exhilarating (besides the performances and excellent script by Scott Frank from Elmore Leonard’s best book) was the joy of watching a terrific director have a great time making a film. Soderberg came to play, using freeze-frames, non-linear story structure, non-traditional editing, and other touches to disguise a hip, clever indie film within a slick studio comic thriller. He goes even wilder in “The Limey”, working these touches into a new style—especially in the editing. I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a movie cut the way this one is. Editor Sarah Flack doesn’t just fly from scene to scene in a sophisticated, stream of consciousness style—she will zip around within a single scene, jump cutting like the bastard child of Godard and Woody Allen, dropping in voice-over, cutting to moments thirty years in the past (taken from one of Stamp’s sixties films), and most vividly, flashing an image from later in the film—sometimes a scene or two, sometimes from the perfect final scenes—that move and fascinate, but whose meaning only becomes clear when those later scenes arrive. What’s more impressive than any of these flourishes is that, in spite of all, the narrative drive is always clear, and even if we don’t know exactly what’s going on, we’re riveted.
The story is honestly no great shakes. Stamp’s Wilson is a career criminal who travels to California to avenge the death of his daughter, whose death was in some way brought about by her relationship with a sleazy record producer (Fonda). The Cockney crook is guided through the Hollywood hills by a friend of his daughter, beautifully underplayed by one of my favorite character actors Luis Guzman (so funny and dead-on in “Boogie Nights”). However, the simplicity of the plot perfectly compliments the dazzlingly complex execution.
Oh, and by the way, Bob Curtright from our wonderful “Wichita Eagle” gave both of these films two and half stars—putting them, in his opinion, on a level with “Double Jeopardy” and “The World Is Not Enough”. Good call, Bob! Aren’t critics supposed to be a little smarter than the schmucks that make bad movies hits? (Sorry, just had my own little axe to grind there). At any rate, “Dogma” has turned out to be a surprise hit for Lions Gate, and while “The Limey”’s numbers haven’t exactly equaled Artisan’s “Blair Witch”, it has received a flurry of excellent reviews. And either of them would easily be the best film of a lesser year than 1999. As is, they’ll be on the list.