Thirteen Lives

It’s award consideration season, so here’s my consideration.

Synopsis

A cave rescue mission.

Writing

On June 23, 2018, twelve boys and their coach were trapped in a flooded cave system in northern Thailand. Given the recency of the event, extensive coverage at the time, and the known outcome, the movie practically writes itself. The only challenge is writing something to convince the audience not to skip to the end of the story. William Nicholson achieves this by focusing his screenplay on the lead divers, the harrowing details of the cave’s makeup, and eventual rescue plan. Until seeing this movie, I had no idea what the divers did to rescue the boys and I still have trouble believing it worked. In short, the story grabbed my full attention.

Acting

Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell absolutely nail their performances as divers Richard Stanton and John Volanthen, respectively. Between the two, I give Mortensen the edge. His Stanton is bluntly honest, apologetic, and in despair about the situation, sometimes all at the same time. There is no better example of this than when Stanton and Volanthen return after initially finding the boys, and Stanton expresses his feelings at discovering the boys alive (they found the boys ten days after they initially went missing). Joel Edgerton as diver/anesthesiologist Richard Harris deserves an honorable mention, delivering a performance rivaling Farrell’s, but doesn’t appear in the film until deep into the second act.

Directing

Ron Howard washes off the stink of Hillbilly Elegy to create a compelling survival film in Thirteen Lives. Armed with Nicholson’s screenplay, Howard humanizes the divers and fleshes out a story that, to the vast majority of us, was only a few headlines. Howard handles the various aspects of the event with the respect everyone involved in the rescue deserves.

Technical

Throughout the film, Howard splices in cave schematics to make sure the audience never forgets how truly difficult an operation was the rescue. Plenty of attention is also paid to the various equipment used during the operation, as well as visuals of various parts of the cave. The cinematography elicits feelings of claustrophobia, sometimes to the point where the audience literally holds its breath. The music and sound underpin these sensations to create a tension that lasts throughout the film.

So?

Mortensen and Farrell could get acting nods, but like I said, I lean towards Viggo. Howard might crack a top twenty list for directing, but not a top five this year. I always respect the difficulty of adapting real events into movies, but the screenplay is in the same boat as Howard’s directing. If anything, cinematography has the strongest case for a nomination. 

Crimes of the Future

It’s award consideration season, so here’s my consideration.

Synopsis

Humans are evolving and David Cronenberg makes it gross.

Writing

There are interesting concepts, but they never fall into a cohesive narrative. In this future, most humans have evolved to no longer feel pain or become infected by disease and many are growing new organs with undetermined functions, only to have them removed to comply with new laws banning the organs. Simultaneously, a new form of performance art has developed featuring people performing surgery on each other, often featuring the new organs. The ideas of surgery replacing sex and humans evolving to digest toxic waste emerge from those concepts, but are never explored to any real extent. The film is constantly interrupting itself, meandering between the performance art, an office for registering new organs, an undercover operation to break up a ring of plastic-eaters, surgery eliciting sexual pleasure, internal physical beauty, and human evolution providing the solution to humans destroying the Earth. Confused yet?

Acting

Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux portray couple Saul and Caprice, a very popular art-tainment duo. Saul grows organs quickly and Caprice removes them. There is good chemistry between the two, though some might be offput by Saul’s constant hacking and coughing from his condition. Scott Speedman as a plastic-eater named Lang puts in a genuine attempt to bring depth, but his storyline is given too little attention for the performance to breathe. Conversely, Kristen Stewart is terrible as Timlin, another character with far too little development and one who mumbles every line as quickly as possible, though we can probably chalk this up to Cronenberg’s creative choices. The best performance comes from Lihi Kornowski, who has just two scenes playing Djuna, the mother of a plastic-eating child. Her horror at her son’s trait is palpable, eclipsed by her later certainty that killing him was justified. Nothing else in the film comes as close to hitting its mark the way Djuna does.

Directing

As both writer and director, Cronenberg focuses too much on the body horror rather than telling a good story. Cronenberg misses opportunities throughout the film to make it a compelling watch. Is it supposed to be a commentary on the destructiveness of human industry? The beauty of human physiology? The collective fear of change? Fetishes run amok? Government control? Pick a lane, man.

Technical

The score ratchets up the creepy vibe, enhancing the visuals, especially the surgical performances. The visual effects are a bit uneven, from really good makeup to bizarre set pieces that look like they are all made from intestines. The surgeries themselves aren’t particularly believable, but they look and sound squishy.

So?

Seydoux deserves to be on an early list of potential best actresses, but likely not a top five choice. I’d throw Kornowski a supporting nod, but her role was just not significant enough. Nothing else sticks out, as the film is weighed down by too many half-baked ideas. Cronenberg should have spent more time fleshing out the story rather than physically fleshing out the movie.