Culture Representation: Taking place in 1938, 1939, 1987, and 1988, in the United Kingdom, Poland, and the country then known Czechoslovakia, the dramatic film “One Life” (based on the non-fiction book of the same name) features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: In 1938 and 1939, British stockbroker Nicholas “Nicky” Winton leads a crusading group of people who rescue 669 Jewish children from an impending Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, and he gets recognition for these heroic deeds about 50 years later.
Culture Audience: “One Life” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Anthony Hopkins and true stories about rescuing people from the horrors of the Nazi-led Holocaust.
Johnny Flynn in “One Life” (Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street)
If you can tolerate filmmaking that’s a bit stodgy and old-fashioned, “One Life” is worth a watch for its meaningful true story. Anthony Hopkins is memorable in a film that is often undercut by its messy timeline jumping. The movie needed a more cohesive narrative, but the story is still easy to understand and requires patience to get to the movie’s best parts toward the end of the film.
Directed by James Hawes, “One Life” was written by Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake. The movie is based on the 2014 non-fiction book “If It’s Not Impossible…: The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton,” which has been retitled “One Life: The True Story of Sir Nicholas Winton,” written by Nicholas “Nicky” Winton’s daughter Barbara Winton, who died in 2022, at the age of 69. “One Life” had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie was filmed in the Czech Republic and in the United Kingdom.
“One Life” jumps around in the timeline from 1938 and 1939 to 1987 and 1988. In 1938, Nicky Winton (played by Johnny Flynn) is a 29-year-old stockbroker living in London, when he hears from his friend Martin Blake (played by Ziggy Heath), who has been helping refugees in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The refugees want to escape, as Nazi Germany prepares to invade Czechoslovakia. Just as Nicky was going to join Martin in Prague, Martin has called to tell Nicky that Martin is going back home to London. Nicky plans to go to Prague as planned.
Nicky has a strong-willed and opinionated mother named Babette “Babi” Winton (played by Helena Bonham Carter), a widow who is originally from Germany. The family of Nicky’s father was also originally from Germany. Nicky’s parents have relatives who are Jewish. Nicky identifies as an agnostic and a socialist. Babi doesn’t think it’s a good idea for Nicky to go to Prague, because she fears that his life will be in danger. Nicky can be just as stubborn as his mother, so he goes to Prague, despite her objections.
While in Prague, Nicky meets two British people who will change his life: Trevor Chadwick (played by Alex Sharp) and Doreen Warriner (played by Romola Garai), who both work for the British Committee for Refugees in Czechoslovakia. Doreen tells Trevor that she first came to Prague 10 years earlier for a university study trip. She returned to Prague because of her love of Prague’s people. Nicky, Travor and Doreen decide to what they can to help as many children (with permission from their parents) relocate to the United Kingdom and be placed in foster homes until it’s safe for them to come back to Prague.
When they tally up the numbers, there are more than 1,000 children who could potentially be rescued. Although the vast majority of the children are Jewish, Nicky says he wants to rescue children of any or no religion. In a race against time, Nicky and his allies have to not only find enough funding for these relocations, but they also have to find enough families in the United Kingdom who will be willing to be foster families. Nicky says these foster families can be of any religion.
Many of the potential foster parents have specific requirements, such as only wanting a child of a certain gender and only being able to take care of one child. An unfortunate reality was that many siblings were separated, in order to be placed in foster homes that could take a limited number of children. And an even harsher reality was that many of the children’s parents and other loved ones would be murdered in the Holocaust.
Nicky eventually returns to London to raise money and awareness (with the help of his mother) for these child refugees. He faces an uphill battle, since many British people at the time did not want to get involved in Eastern European politics. Nicky also gets some skepticism about his intentions from Jewish leaders in Czechoslovakia and in the United Kingdom, until Nicky makes it known that he has Jewish heritage. The rescue mission, which is called Kindertransport, ends up saving 669 children.
“One Life” shows these rescue efforts in a perfunctory manner, often in montages. These scenes are intercut with elderly Nicky (played by Hopkins) in 1987 and 1988, when he is living in suburban Maidenhead, England. Senior citizen Nicky is finding some of his Kindertransport mementos and records while he is cleaning up his cluttered study. The reason for the cleanup is that Nicky’s wife Grete Winton (played by Lena Olin) has been complaining that Nicky’s mementos and records have been taking up too much space in their home, and they need room for an upcoming visit from their pregnant daughter.
Nicky was an amateur photographer who took a lot of photos of the children he rescued, as well as their Czech neighborhoods. He kept these photos, as well as meticulous records of the refugees, without knowing what happened to them. His wife Grete tells Nicky about these memories that haunt him, “You have to let go, for your own sake,” but Nicky can’t really let go. Going through these photos and records of these refugees bring these memories back to him.
Jonathan Pryce has a small role as the elderly Martin Blake, who meets Nicky for lunch and comments to him about Nicky’s Kindertransport rescue efforts in the late 1930s: “It’s incredible what you achieved.” (It’s an on-screen reunion of Prye and Hopkins, who both starred in 2019’s “The Two Popes.”) Nicky humbly says that Trevor and Doreen took more of the risks in the rescue efforts, because they stayed in Prague. “One Life” doesn’t really extend that acknowledgement, because the rest of the movie is all about Nicky getting recognition for this rescue mission.
It all starts when Nicky gets a call from a library in England saying that they’re interested in the archives that he wants to donate. At his wife’s urging, Nicky decided that these records were better off in an official institution instead of in their home. When he meets with Holocaust researcher Elisabeth “Betty” Maxwell (played by Marthe Keller), she is amazed at Nicky’s collection and says that it’s too big and important for a library and should belong in a museum.
And what do you know: Betty just happens to be married to Robert Maxwell, the Czech-born British media mogul who owned the Mirror Group Newspapers at the time and who got the publicity machine going to tell Nicky’s story. The movie doesn’t mention the later scandals associated with Robert Maxwell (who died at age 68 from a boating accident in 1991), including his history of fraud and the fact that his socialite daughter Ghislaine Maxwell became a convicted sex offender due to her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The publicity over Nicky’s Kindertransport archival collection results in him getting invited on the BBC talk show “That’s Life!,” which leads to the most tearjerking parts of the movie.
“One Life” is certainly an inspirational story. However, the movie could have been a little bit more gracious in showing that happened to Trevor and Doreen, instead of reducing them to brief updates in the movie’s epilogue. Hopkins and Bonham Carter give very good performances, but there’s nothing award-worthy about this movie, which has a formulaic style and at times a manner that is too plodding. The movie is called “One Life,” but the real lives from this story are at the heart of the movie and what viewers will be thinking about the most.
Bleecker Street released “One Life” in select U.S. cinemas on March 15, 2024. The movie was released in Italy and in Australia in December 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Chicago in 1956, the dramatic film “The Outfit” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.
Culture Clash: A mild-mannered British man, who owns a men’s clothing shop in Chicago, has local gangsters as his clients, and he becomes embroiled in the gang’s problems.
Culture Audience: “The Outfit” will appeal primarily to people who like watching above-average mystery thrillers that have some unpredictable plot twists.
Johnny Flynn and Mark Rylance in “The Outfit” (Photo by Rob Youngson/Focus Features)
The suspenseful thriller “The Outfit” keeps viewers guessing about who are the heroes and who are the villains. It’s a well-crafted movie with a very talented cast that brings impressive energy to this unique story. If people ever say that good old-fashioned mystery films aren’t being made anymore, then point them in the direction of “The Outfit.” It pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock-influenced films of the mid-20th century while avoiding being a misguided, “stuck in a time warp” mess.
“The Outfit,” which takes place in 1956, is the feature-film directorial debut of Graham Moore. He won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, for 2014’s “The Imitation Game,” another well-made movie about an intelligent British man who gets caught up in a web of lies and treacherous conspiracies. Moore co-wrote the “The Outfit” screenplay with Jonathan McClain.
Unlike the sprawling settings of “The Imitation Game,” the setting of “The Outfit” is contained entirely in one place: the small clothing shop of Leonard Burling (played by Mark Rylance), a British immigrant who has been living in Chicago for the past several years. It would be easy for viewers to assume that “The Outfit” was adapted from a stage play, but this movie has an original screenplay.
Leonard’s specialty is high-priced, custom-made men’s suits. He also does clothing repairs. He’s very meticulous and takes pride in his work. He’s also quick to tell people that he’s a cutter, not a tailor. As time goes on in the movie, viewers see that the movie’s title of “The Outfit” has a double meaning: the type of clothing that Leonard can make and the gang syndicate that causes the dangerous predicament that Leonard becomes involved with in this movie.
Leonard is a reclusive, middle-aged bachelor with no children. He lives alone in a back area of the shop. Leonard has one employee: a woman in her 20s named Mable (played by Zoey Deutch), who is the shop’s administrative assistant/receptionist. She has a perky personality and is very reliable. However, Mable is honest in telling Leonard that she doesn’t love his line of work and only has this job to make enough money to pay her bills. Her dream is to travel around the world, including go to Paris, a city that has a special place in her heart.
Leonard tells people that he moved from the United Kingdom to Chicago because the popularity of denim clothing made his bespoke line of work fairly obsolete in his native country, where he used to have a shop on London’s Savile Row. Leonard’s reason for immigrating to America doesn’t sound very plausible, because denim clothing is popular in the United States too. Leonard is very private and doesn’t divulge much about his personal life, although he mentions that he served in the British military during World War I.
Among the people who are Leonard’s loyal clients are some local Irish gangsters. Leonard stays out of the gang’s dirty dealings and doesn’t pass judgment. The wealthy Irish mob boss in the area is named Roy Boyle (played by Simon Russell Beale), who doesn’t appear until about halfway through the movie. Roy is grooming his only son Richie Boyle (played by Dylan O’Brien), who’s in his 20s or early 30s, to eventually take over the gang’s business.
However, Richie has a rival for this position of power: a cunning manipulator named Francis (played by Johnny Flynn), who’s about five to eight years older than Richie. Francis was orphaned at an early age and taken in by Roy as somewhat of a foster son. Francis is as cold and calculating as Richie is hot-headed and impulsive. Richie feels a lot of jealousy and resentment toward Francis, whom Richie suspects is his father Roy’s top choice to be Roy’s successor as the mob leader. Richie gripes to Leonard about Francis: “He not even Irish!”
Something happens during this story that forces Leonard to be caught in increasingly elaborate deceptions and traps involving a coveted surveillance tape and a missing person. Complicating matters, Francis and Mable are romantically involved with each other. All of the cast members give exemplary performances, but Rylance is the obvious standout because his Leonard character is the most complex. Nikki Amuka-Bird shares top billing in “The Outfit” as an enigmatic woman named Violet, but viewers should know that Violet gets very limited screen time (about five minutes) toward the end of the film. After a somewhat slow-paced start, “The Outfit” goes on a thrilling ride that keeps viewers on edge throughout this entire memorable mystery.
Focus Features released “The Outfit” in select U.S. cinemas on March 18, 2022. UPDATE: Peacock will premiere “The Outfit” on May 2, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in 1971, in England and various parts of the United States, the drama “Stardust” features an all-white cast of characters in a fictional interpretation of David Bowie and his early career.
Culture Clash: Bowie goes on a promotional tour of America and is frustrated by getting a mostly confused reaction or lack of interest from the music industry and music consumers.
Culture Audience: “Stardust” tries to appeal to Bowie fans, but the movie is a sloppily made bore that’s an insult to Bowie’s legacy.
Johnny Flynn and Marc Maron in “Stardust” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)
British rock star David Bowie was a fascinating, vibrant and legendary artist. But you’d never know it by how the dreadfully dull and shoddy film “Stardust” tries to tarnish his legacy by portraying Bowie in 1971 as a petulant hack who cared more about looking like a moody artist than actually creating any art. You don’t have to be a Bowie fan to know that his creativity was perhaps his most-admired trait as an artist. “Stardust” looks like the filmmakers cared more about replicating Bowie’s crooked teeth than making a reasonably good movie.
Needless to say, Bowie’s family/estate had nothing to do with this embarrassing mess of a film. Bowie, who died of cancer in 2016, never wanted to write a memoir or have a movie made about his life. But “Stardust” writer/director Gabriel Range clearly didn’t respect that wish and wanted a cash grab of a movie while trying to boost his career as a filmmaker. The result is an insulting film that blatantly uses the famous name of a very talented artist and warps the artist’s story by making the artist look very untalented.
To make matters worse, Range gave this statement in the “Stardust” production notes: “I’ve been fascinated by Bowie ever since I was a kid. I bought every record, read every interview, every biography.” Really? Based on the way that “Stardust” turned out, it looks like Range forgot everything he heard and read about Bowie and replaced it with this delusional story: Bowie is a wannabe rock star who has a creative breakthrough only when he rips off an idea in a therapy session while visiting his schizophrenic brother in a psychiatric institution.
Until “Stardust” gets to this ludicrously bad plot development near the end of the film, it’s a sluggish and often-idiotic slog that makes the movie’s sex, drugs and rock’n’roll clichés look like pathetic posturing by woefully miscast actors. The casting in this movie is simply atrocious, with actors in their 30s and 40s portraying people who were supposed to be in their 20s at the time this story takes place in 1971. Bowie, his band mates, his wife Angie, and Bowie’s good friend Marc Bolan (the lead singer of T. Rex) are among the characters who are cast with age-inappropriate actors who seem to be doing parodies of the real people.
The only actor who actually comes close to looking and sounding like an authentic showbiz person from this time period is Marc Maron. He portrays a smarmy American publicist named Ron Oberman, who works for Mercury Records (Bowie’s record label at the time) and volunteers to chaperone Bowie during Bowie’s disastrous 1971 tour of America. This tour takes up about 80% of the movie.
Ron was a real person, but he never did this type of road trip with Bowie in real life. Because Ron wasn’t famous, most people in the general public won’t know how accurately the movie portrays his personality. However, Maron at least realistically depicts how publicists in the music business often act when they’re desperate to get media coverage for an artist whose most recent album is considered a flop.
Although there’s a disclaimer in the beginning of “Stardust” that says, “What follows is (mostly) fictional,” it’s a moronic statement. That’s because the filmmakers didn’t change real-life people’s names, album titles, song titles and other major identifiers about Bowie’s life in this story. A more accurate statement would have been: “What follows is (mostly) a ripoff of Bowie’s life and legacy.”
British actor Johnny Flynn portrays David Bowie (whose birth surname was Jones) in “Stardust.” Flynn has the misfortune of being stuck in the aforementioned crooked teeth (the movie’s most accurate replication from Bowie’s life) and in cheap-looking wigs. Flynn tries and mostly fails at capturing the charismatic and mysterious essence of Bowie. (For the purposes of this review, the Bowie character in the movie will be identified as David, while the real-life Bowie will be referred to as Bowie.)
In real life, Bowie had an elegant, otherworldly aura about him, while Flynn depicts Bowie as a pouty and confused dandy who looks like he’s a rejected extra who wandered off of the set of filmmaker Todd Haynes’ 1998 Bowie-inspired drama “Velvet Goldmine,” which was also set in the 1970s. There are moments when Flynn attempts to portray Bowie as a misunderstood, tortured soul. But the acting is too affected and too mired in insufferably inane dialogue.
Flynn does his own singing in “Stardust,” which obviously couldn’t get the rights to any of Bowie’s original studio recordings or any songs written by Bowie. Instead, viewers get snippets of third-rate performances of Flynn as David on stage, singing cover versions of other artists’ songs, such as Billy Boy Arnold’s “I Wish You Would” and Jacques Brel’s “Amsterdam” and “My Death.” There’s also a performance of “Good Ol’ Jane,” an original song written by Flynn that sounds like a wannabe Velvet Underground tune.
And this is very much a solo tour. Bowie’s band members, including guitarist Mick Ronson (played by Aaron Poole), are not on this trip. And therefore, the band members are barely in the movie.
In the beginning of “Stardust” (which mainly takes place in 1971, but jumps back and forth in time with David’s flashbacks), David arrives at an airport in Washington, D.C., and immediately stands out as a “freak” because he’s very androgynous-looking. As customs officials go through David’s luggage and see that he has feminine-looking clothes in his suitcase, one of the officials holds up a dress and looks at it with a mixture of curiosity and disgust.
David says pretentiously, “It’s a man’s dress. It’s by Michael Fish. He invented the kipper tie.” The customs official could care less. Later on, David is asked during an interview in the customs area if he is gay (David is advised to answer no, so he says no) or has any mental illnesses. This question about mental illness triggers a series of flashbacks to David spending time with his older half-brother Terry Burns (played by Derek Moran), who was diagnosed as schizophrenic and spent time in a psychiatric institution, as did the real Terry Burns.
Through these various flashbacks, viewers see that Terry, who’s about 10 years older than David, was David’s greatest inspiration when he was growing up. Terry was the first person to introduce David to music. And the movie pushes a narrative that David’s “The Man Who Sold the World” album (released in the U.S. in November 1970 and in the U.K. in April 1971) was largely inspired by David’s fears that he might inherit his family’s history of mental illness, since David’s maternal aunts and maternal grandmother were also schizophrenic. The album track “All the Madmen” was supposed to be about Terry and David’s relationship, according to this movie.
“The Man Who Sold the World” album wasn’t the big hit that David had with his 1969 self-titled second album, which yielded his breakthrough single “Space Oddity.” In the movie, David is seen having several tense meetings about his career, because he’s in danger of being considered a one-hit wonder, and there’s talk that Mercury Records might drop him.
In England, David’s manager Tony Defries (played by Julian Richings) and David’s wife Angie (played by Jena Malone) lecture David on what they think is best for his career. (In real life, Bowie’s manager at the time was Tony DeVries.) Tony tells David that “The Man Who Sold the World” album is considered “too dark and weird for the Yanks.” Tony mentions to David that publicist Ron Oberman is supposedly the only person at Mercury Records who cares about David.
Angie is an American, but she puts on airs with a fake accent where she tries to sound British. During the tour, she’s pregnant at the Bowies’ home in England, although the movie never shows her giving birth in May 1971 to David and Angie’s son, who was then known as Zowie Bowie, but he now goes by the name Duncan Jones. In the movie, not once does David show any concern for his unborn child. David doesn’t even mention his child. It’s simply horrendous how the movie makes him look like a cold, uncaring father, when in reality (by all accounts) he was a more nurturing parent to Duncan/Zowie than Angie was.
In real life, David and Angie Bowie were very open about being bisexual swingers, which is depicted in the movie as Angie reacting this way when a young woman attempts to seduce David at a party, with Angie nearby. Angie says haughtily to this would-be mistress: “If you want him, you have to go through me.” Angie then gives the woman a passionate kiss on the mouth and tells her that she can join her and David in the bedroom later. T. Rex singer Bolan (played by James Cade) makes a cameo at this party by giving a badly written speech about the joys of taking LSD, as if he’s trying to be the next Timothy Leary.
Angie is depicted as someone who loved to tell people that she and David had an unconventional marriage. But in this movie, she falls into a very conventional “wife of a musician” stereotype of being a nagging shrew who complains that David doesn’t pay more attention to her when he’s away on tour. She also fancies herself as a wheeler dealer who can take control of certain aspects of David’s career, even though the movie doesn’t show her actually doing anything business-minded, except trying to get Ron fired because David’s career in America isn’t going as well as she hopes it will.
During the road trip with Ron in America, David gets a rude awakening when he thinks he’s going to be treated like a star. Instead, he’s mostly treated like an oddball nobody. Rather than staying at a five-star hotel as he expected when he first arrives in America, David stays at the house of Ron’s parents until David and Ron begin their road trip, with Ron doing the driving. Ron is middle-aged and divorced with no kids. It’s implied that Ron still lives with his parents.
Ron thinks David is a genius and tells him that repeatedly. This fast-talking publicist is convinced that he can persuade people into believing the same way about David. However, based on the things that people in the music industry say to Ron and how he’s treated, Ron doesn’t get much respect because his career has gone nowhere and he’s considered kind of a joke.
David’s management in England botched the immigration paperwork, so David doesn’t find out until he arrives in America that he doesn’t have a work visa to perform music during this visit. In other words, the “Stardust” filmmakers couldn’t get the rights to Bowie’s music so they had to think of a reason in the plot to explain why Bowie’s original songs aren’t in the movie. Despite David being told that he can’t perform any of his music on the tour, the movie still shows David performing anyway. Ron books David at a hotel convention for vacuum salespeople, and a humiliated David performs in a hotel bar to a very straight-laced crowd that largely ignores him.
Ron arranges interviews with David and influential people in the media, but David grows increasingly difficult and deliberately sabotages the interviews. An interview with a magazine journalist named Tom Classon (played by Ryan Blakeley) only happens after Ron pathetically begs Tom to interview David. Tom doesn’t like “The Man Who Sold the World” album, but only agrees to interview David to get Ron to stop pestering him about it. During the interview, David acts weird and standoffish and then does part of his pantomime act. And Tom literally laughs as he abruptly ends the interview.
At a nightclub bar after another underwhelming performance, Ron introduces David to Jeanie Richards (played by Annie Briggs), a music writer for a major publication called Skyline. But instead of having a conversation with her, as Ron is expecting, David decides to hang out with another woman he met that night whose pickup line was: “Do you want to do some coke with me?” David and this random woman then do cocaine and have sex in a back room while Jeanie waits at the bar for David to come back to talk to her. He never does.
And at a radio station in the Midwest, Ron tells David that the radio station has a wholesome reputation, so he asks David to keep the interview “clean.” But David alienates the DJ (played by David Huband) by giving bizarre and raunchy answers in the interview. The DJ suddenly ends the interview and changes David’s record to play something else.
After Ron and David leave the radio station, Ron predictably gets angry at David for ruining the interview. They argue and David shouts: “I feel like I’m in a carnival sideshow—without the carnival … I came here to be a star!”
David’s entitlement is completely obnoxious because he wants to be a star, but he doesn’t want to do any real work, and he’s disrespectful to people who are trying to help him in his career. Needless to say, the movie never shows David as a true songwriter. And aside from a scene where Ron and David gush to each other about artists who made a big impact on them (The Stooges for Ron, Vince Taylor for David), the relationship between Ron and David is mostly joyless to watch.
When Ron first met David, he promised David that he would eventually get David on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. And so, there’s a time-wasting subplot about how David and Ron try to get a meeting with a high-ranking Rolling Stone editor named John Mickelson (played by Richard Clarkin), who doesn’t wait around for them when David and Ron are very late (more than an hour) for a scheduled appointment at a hotel in New York City. Ron finds out that John will be in Los Angeles, so Ron and David make a cross-country trip to try to meet up with John again.
“Stardust” has some very dumb and pointless scenes that seem concocted just to name drop Andy Warhol and Lou Reed in the movie. While in New York City, David goes to a party, where he meets Warhol (who’s never seen in the film) and leaves the party in an angry huff because he feels like Warhol disrespected him and used David for footage in a tacky short film. What did David do in this short film? Pantomime, of course.
The “Stardust” reference to former Velvet Underground singer Reed is even sillier. While Ron and David are still in New York City, they go to a Velvet Underground show at a nightclub. The band is performing on stage, but the movie doesn’t even have any music resembling the Velvet Underground in this scene.
The scene then shows Ron and David walking on the street after the performance, with David talking excitedly about how much he admires Lou Reed and how much he enjoyed talking to Lou after the show. Ron tells David that Lou actually left the Velvet Underground a few months earlier, and the singer whom David was talking to was actually Lou’s replacement Doug Yule. David then says he doesn’t care because the guy he was talking to was interesting anyway.
During this entire movie, David keeps having flashbacks to good and bad memories of his older brother Terry. And as David does more cocaine, he becomes increasingly paranoid that he’s going to be stricken with a mental illness. In one of the flashbacks, David overhears his parents Mrs. and Mrs. Jones (played by Geoffrey McGivern and Olivia Carruthers) saying that they think Terry is a lost cause, but they’re relieved that David doesn’t seem to have the “family curse” of schizophrenia.
After David’s U.S. tour ends and he comes back to England feeling disillusioned about his stalled career, David visits a psychiatric institution where Terry has been living. David watches a group therapy session where the patients are doing “drama therapy,” which is explained as working out emotional problems by pretending to be someone else. It’s here that David has a silent “a-ha” moment and it’s where the movie basically tells the audience that this is why the real-life Bowie constantly reinvented himself with different personas.
The movie ends with David unveiling a new persona that will redefine his career: Ziggy Stardust, a red-haired alien from outer space. And he has renamed his band the Spiders From Mars. The band members, whose speaking lines are in “Stardust” for less than 10 minutes, are depicted in the movie as hating their new costumes that they’ve been given to wear on stage. And then, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars are born with their first performance.
Simply put: “Stardust” is a travesty on almost every level. Bowie was a first-rate artist. He and his legacy don’t deserve this mind-numbing trash.
IFC Films released “Stardust” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on November 25, 2020.
Culture Representation: This comedic adapation of Jane Austen’s 1815 novel “Emma” is set in the fictional countryside town of Highbury, England, and revolves around the white upper-class main characters and some representation of their working-class servants.
Culture Clash: The story’s title character is a young woman who likes to meddle in people’s love lives as a matchmaker, and her snobbish ways about social status sometimes cause problems.
Culture Audience: This movie will appeal mostly to fans of Jane Austen novels and period movies about British culture.
Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn in “Emma” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)
This delightful and gorgeously filmed adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1815 novel “Emma” stays mostly faithful to the original story but spices it up a bit to appeal to modern audiences. In her feature-film debut, director Autumn de Wilde takes the comedy of “Emma” and infuses it with more impish energy that’s lustier and more vibrant than previous film and TV adaptations.
The title character of the story is Emma Woodhouse (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), a woman of privilege in her early 20s, who lives with her widowed father in the fictional countryside town of Highbury, England. Emma is a somewhat spoiled bachelorette who thinks she has such high intelligence and excellent judgment that she takes it upon herself to play matchmaker to people she deems worthy of her romance advice.
The movie takes place over the course of a year in the early 1800s, beginning one summer and ending the following summer. Viewers know this because different seasons are introduced in bold letters, like a different chapter in a book.
One of the changes from the book that the movie makes is that it begins with Emma attending the wedding of her friend and former governess Miss Taylor (played by Gemma Whelan) to Mr. Weston (played by Rupert Graves). (The book begins after Emma has attended the wedding.) Because Emma had introduced the Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston to each other, Emma feels that she has what it takes to play matchmaker to the unmarried people in her social circle. It’s at the wedding that viewers are introduced to most of the story’s main characters.
Emma’s father, Mr. Woodhouse (played by Bill Nighy), is a loving dad but often exasperated by Emma’s antics. He’s a hypochondriac who tries to shield himself from imaginary drafts of cold that he’s sure will cause him to get sick.
George Knightley (played by Johnny Flynn) is the handsome and cynical brother-in-law of Emma’s older sister Isabella (played by Chloe Pirrie). He thinks Emma can be an annoying meddler, but he nevertheless seems fascinated by what she does.
Mr. Elton (played by Josh O’Connor) is a social-climbing local vicar who has his eye on courting Emma, mostly because of her wealth and privilege. He’s unaware that Emma doesn’t see him has husband material.
Miss Bates (played by Miranda Hart) is a friendly, middle-aged spinster who is slightly ashamed about being unmarried at her age. She lives with her mother, Mrs. Bates (played by Myra McFadyen), who is a friend of Mr. Woodhouse.
Missing from the wedding is Mr. Weston’s son, Frank Churchill (played by Callum Turner), who has a different last name because he was adopted by his aunt, who is frequently ill. Frank chose to stay home with his aunt instead of attending his father’s wedding.
Emma, who says multiple times in the story that she has no interest in getting married, nevertheless takes it upon herself to tell other people who would be suitable spouses for them. She starts with her gullible best friend Harriet (played by Mia Goth), a slightly younger woman of unknown parentage who idolizes Emma for being more glamorous and seemingly more worldly than Harriet is. Knightley can see that Harriet will be easily manipulated by Emma, and he expresses disapproval over Emma befriending Harriet.
A local farmer named Mr. Martin (played by Connor Swindells) has asked Harriet to marry him, but Emma convinces Harriet to decline the proposal. Why? Even though Mr. Martin is kind and clearly adores Harriet, Emma thinks that Harriet deserves to marry someone who’s higher up on the social ladder. As far as Emma is concerned, Mr. Elton would be an ideal husband for Harriet, so Emma sets out to pair up Harriet and Mr. Elton, whom Emma describes as “such a good-humored man.” It’s too bad that Emma doesn’t see that his humor is really buffoonery.
Mr. Knightley occasionally stops by to visit the Woodhouses, and he warns Emma not to interfere in other people’s love lives. He thinks Mr. Elton would be a terrible match for Harriet. Mr. Knightley is right, of course, but Emma ignores his warnings. Emma begins to manipulate communications between Harriet and Mr. Elton, with the goal that they will end up together and happily married. At one point in the story, Emma and Mr. Knightley have a big argument and they stop talking to each other.
Meanwhile, a new ingenue comes on the scene named Jane Fairfax (played by Amber Anderson), who is the orphaned niece of Miss Bates. Jane (who is close to Emma’s age) is attractive, intelligent, talented. And everyone seems to be gushing about how wonderful she is, so Emma gets jealous. As Emma complains in a catty moment, “One is very sick of the name Jane Fairfax!”
Frank Churchill, a very eligible bachelor, begins spending more time in the area. And it isn’t long before Emma has thoughts about who would make a suitable wife for him.
However, things don’t go as planned in Emma’s matchmaking schemes. A series of events (and a love triangle or two) make Emma frustrated that things aren’t going her way. Unlike most heroines of romantic stories, Emma can be very difficult, since she can be bossy, selfish and occasionally rude. However, there are moments when she redeems herself, such as when she tries to make amends for her mistakes. If you know anything about romantic comedies and don’t know anything about how “Emma” ends, you can still figure out what will happen and if she’ll fall in love.
One of the changes made in this “Emma” screenplay (written by Eleanor Catton) that’s different from the book is that it puts more heat in the characters’ sexuality, with a makeout scene that’s definitely not described in the book. Another change is Emma shows more acknowledgement of people in the working-class, such as her servants and Mr. Martin, by interacting with them more than she does in the novel.
As Emma, actress Taylor-Joy brings a little bit more of a “hot mess” attitude to the role than Gwyneth Paltrow did when she starred in 1996’s “Emma.” Whereas Paltrow’s version of Emma was the epitome of prim and proper, Taylor-Joy’s version gives the impression that she would be ready to show her legs or knickers under the right circumstances. And as Mr. Knightley, Flynn’s pouty-lipped delivery gives him a smoldering quality that Jeremy Northam’s Mr. Knightley didn’t quite have in 1996’s “Emma.”
“Emma” director de Wilde comes from a music-video background (she’s helmed several videos for rock singer Beck), and perhaps this background explains why this version of “Emma” has a snappy rhythm to the pacing, which is sort of a tribute to 1940s screwball comedies. This pacing is subtle if this is the first version of “Emma” that someone might see, but it’s more noticeable when compared to other movie and TV versions of “Emma,” which tend to be more leisurely paced.
This version of “Emma” is also pitch-perfect when it comes to its costume design (by Alexandra Byrne), production design (by Kave Quinn), art direction (by Alice Sutton) and set decoration (by Stella Fox), because everything will feel like you’ve been transported to the luxrious English estates of the era. The costume design in particular is worthy of an Oscar nomination.
“Emma” certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea for people who don’t like watching period pieces about stuffy British people. However, fans of Austen’s “Emma” novel will find a lot to enjoy about this memorable movie adaptation.
Focus Features released “Emma” in select U.S. cinemas on February 21, 2020.
UPDATE: Because of the widespread coronavirus-related closures of movie theaters worldwide, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has moved up the VOD release of “Emma” to March 20, 2020.
