'Twas the Season: An Alan Rickman Twofer (at His Most Caddish for Christmas)

I took a break! It really wasn't (completely) unintentional, but I enjoyed just watching stuff and not hitting the keyboard to pour forth reflections, thoughts, analyses, and other brain droppings. The downside is that I missed writing, so I'm going to try to wrap up the year with a "what did you do on your holiday break" series.

First off, I celebrated the big consumerist, Christianist day with two of my unabashed favorites. Die Hard, of course, but also, Richard Curtis's Love Actually. And yes, this is the first time it occurred to me that Alan Rickman is a cad in both of them.

He is, arguably, a bigger cad in Die Hard, of course. However, let's note that he treats Emma Thompson (well, her character) pretty shabbily in Love Actually and that should solidify villainous bonafides as much as holding people hostages, murder, and grand theft.

I doubt seriously that there is anything to say about either of these films that hasn't been said already. Thus, much of what follows is predicated on the reader having seen both films (or at least, has a familiarity with what they're about) and will be mostly a collection of observations as opposed to any serious deep dive or look at either movie.

Off the bat, it was a genuine pleasure to see both in the theater on the big screen! Jan de Bont's cinematography on Die Hard is a textbook case of using lighting, color scheme, and composition to work with the story. It's not as slick as Black Rain (different director and attitude toward material) and perhaps not as "compressed" as The Hunt for Red October, but it might be his most accomplished work. To be sure, he's not lacking in accomplishment; his work on The Jewel of the Nile, All the Right Moves, and oh, Speed, is all on precision lensing in the service of the story, but there's something more here. Everything just seems to amplify as well as assist. 

What catches the eye is how the imagery flows along from each scene to the next and how gradually increasingly dark the palette becomes as events escalate. The denouement - from Willis's knockdown-drag out with Alexander Godunov's Karl all the way to, of course, Hans Gruber's demise is kinetic but crystal clear in a way we rarely see in action films today with muddier colors, janky CGI, and in general, too much camera motion. Part of the point of fight scenes is to extend and/or reveal more about the characters. All too often, we're left with barely discernible figures and monochromatic color choices that tend to run into slurry. 

Also, I'd argue that the only movie that matches the bad guy falling from way high up where it really sells is Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. It might be worthwhile someday (not today) to see where Ledger's Joker and Rickman's Hans would fall in a list of great movie villains of the last fifty or so years. Ah, yes, nothing makes an action film more interesting than a good villain. Action is flaccid in the absence of compelling stakes, moral as well as physical conflict, and a bad guy who you really believe is 99% Bastard DNA (TM).

Here we have bad guys who are for the most part, actually scripted well enough to read as individuals. This doesn't meant that they're not going to be cannon fodder for Willis's John McClane, but you sense something of an interiority of bad choices that led them to their demise. Of course, it's Rickman's Gruber that all eyes are on. Witty, oily, articulate, and as reptilian as they come, his is a wonderfully mercenary heart for grand larceny parading as a terrorist who's going to play law enforcement like a fiddle, from the local cops in L.A. to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

Of course, Rickman walks away with almost every scene. He'd already had an illustrious stage career in England, but this was his first foray into big screen acting and he executes with panache and mastery. I've heard he was a generous scene partner, but I suspect both he and Willis were still finding their footing in what would turn into a tentpole movie. I don't think anyone at the time (I certainly wasn't) was thinking a series of really good to mediocre to pretty bad films would grow out of this. 

Die Hard is one of those rare action movies where the central characters are more than sufficiently fleshed out (it's there on the page with a tight script by Jeb Stuart and Stephen E. de Souza based on Robert Thorp's novel), the performers breathe something like real emotional life into them, and - and this is key - our hero actually gets hurt. EDIT: well, not quite "on the page". Apparently, the script was still being written during filming and more than a few scenes were improvised. This just makes me love the movie more.

This last sounds like a ridiculous detail to point to, but Willis plays McClane as vulnerable emotionally and physically as we're likely to see in a film of this nature. He's a New York cop come to Los Angeles to try to figure out his marriage and make things right and he just happens to wind up in the middle of a hostage crisis that is very much different from what it appears to be. 

None of this would work if Willis wasn't as good as he was. This is not the bald headed Superman John McClane and the innumerable clones of Willis the Impervious in so many Direct to Video releases; this is the guy who showed crazy range as David Addison in Moonlighting, Malcolm Crowe in The Sixth Sense, Butch in Pulp Fiction, and for Pete's sake, Captain Sharp in Moonrise Kingdom. At this point in his career, though, Willis was still having to prove himself capable of carrying a film and he proved it thoroughly. 

Of course, there's an embarrassment of riches in the supporting characters in almost every scene. Bonnie Bedelia's turn as McClane's wife Holly Gennaro (she drops the "McClane" upon accepting her position as a VP - I think - for Nakatomi Enterprises) fully shows us a woman whose career has taken off and has eclipsed her husband's and perhaps taken her to a new place where it might be time for a new start. Then we've got De'voreaux White as Argyle the limo driver who picks McClane up at LAX but reads as exactly the kind of guy working two jobs and just trying to get ahead. Also on hand, the aforementioned Gudonov who twice played such wonderful tough guys (see also Witness, but while a tough guy, not a bad guy) and sadly, died too young. I wonder how many moviegoers are aware that he was also one of the great dancers of our - well, my - time. That's a whole other story.

There's also great moments with William Atherton adding yet another supercilious asshole to his gallery (the punch in the sock in the jaw Bedelia delivers to him at the film's end is priceless); Paul Gleason - everyone's favorite principal from The Breakfast Club - brings his miscalibrated sense of authority to his police chief; but there's one support player that I don't know gets enough credit. Reginald VelJohnson as the beat cop who gets wrapped up in the drama surrounding the siege of Nakatomi Plaza. VelJohnson's empathy just feels so genuine; he pegs McClane who's been communicating with him on an emergency channel via CB as a cop and Al's back story as a cop who got benched after shooting a kid is told so integrally and so well, you feel for him when he takes out Karl (one of those guys who just won't die). The rapport between McClane and Al just feels true.

McTiernan was hot off of directing Predator and would go on to lens The Thomas Crown Affair, The Hunt for Red October, and the only really good sequel, Die Hard with a Vengeance. Even that one was showing signs of stretching a good thing just way too far, but it's anchored with strong performances from Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, and Jeremy Irons. Here, though, he delivers one of the classics of action movies and provides a masterclass if not a template, that more directors should follow.

When I found out Die Hard was being released, the room spun when I read that it had been 35 years since it first came out. I shouldn't have been as discombobulated with the rerelease of Love Actually, but I was. Twenty years is not as long as thirty-five as any decent mathematician will tell you, but for some reason, it seems too long for this film. By the time it had come out, everyone in it had established careers. What speaks much to the film's credit is that everyone still seems so....fresh. 

To be clear, I do like this film a lot, but it is fluff and it's just ever so overstuffed fluff, though on the balance, I don't really mind. Everyone is charming and actually (dare I say that?), kind of "off" or somewhere on the eccentricity spectrum. It doesn't hurt, too, that the cast is full of some of the finest actors to grace the screen - British all, except for Billy Bob Thornton as the President of the United States (seemingly channeling a more serpentine version of Bill Clinton) and Laura Linney as a graphic designer. To be sure, maybe some weren't quite household names yet, but even in their limited screen time, Martin Freeman and Keira Knightley showed us that they were on their way up (to be sure, Freeman had done The Office and Knightley was known for Bend it Like Beckham and struck gold with the first Pirates of the Caribbean, but we're a ways away from Atonement and Sherlock). 

At the center, though (as much as the film has a center), there's Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman's marriage which he basically fouls up (and it is, frankly, the weakest part of the film); there's Hugh Grant as the newly elected Prime Minister who falls for his assistant Natalie - Martine McCutcheon bringing it beautifully); there's Liam Neeson as the widower who's bonding with his son over, well, love; his son is nuts for a girl his age and his dad is playing wingman - and doing a good job of it...); there's also Colin Firth's Jamie a writer whose wife is having an affair with his brother, who decides to winter in the south of France and strikes up a - I guess relationship is the word - with his housekeeper from Portugal. She speaks no French or English and he speaks no Portuguese, but well, you know, la lengue d'amour and all that tosh. Oh! Bill Nighy as the gone to seed rocker Billy Mack whose new Christmas single is climbing the charts thanks to his very public denigration of the song (and himself) and his promise to perform it naked if it hits number one. Have I forgotten anyone? Well, yeah. Laura Linney plays a woman in Rickman's office who everyone knows has eyes for Rodrigo Santoro's Karl (another Karl? hey, wait a minute; is Love Actually really a Die Hard sequel???)

All these tales are marked with niceness until they aren't. As I've noted Rickman's Harry entertains having an affair with an admin and this doesn't really work; she flirts with him - who knows why? Rickman's Harry is George Smiley but not a spy. He's kind of doughy and not very interesting, really. On the other side of it, we're not given much of a reason why he'd pursue this (for one thing, Emma Thompson; need I say more, really?); his wife Karen is attentive and loving and supportive, and on and on and Curtis doesn't really write any dissatisfaction into Harry's character that might make sense. 

There are hiccups along the road for some: Grant's PM seems conflicted about his assistant and after catching her at the mercy of the U.S. president, he requests that she be relocated elsewhere in the building. Jamie, in the south of France and Aurelia converse in their respective languages (cute...dumb but cute) and of course, he flies back to propose to her after he arrives in London for Christmas festivities. Nighy's Billy Mack is like a Keith Richards without the talent and who's been coasting on the same song for forty years but has apparently done okay as a legacy act and while he has no one in his life, he recognizes his manager has been with him all these years and they celebrate that bond.

Freeman and Joanna Page as Judy, "just Judy", are body doubles for sex scenes who strike up one of the best meet cutes in film. And yes, Liam Neeson does meet a woman in the course of the movie, as well. 

All of it is so pleasant and it's easy to see why Love Actually has won its place in the hearts of so many.  Mostly Americans, it seems; Martin Freeman noted some time ago on the Graham Norton show that it's one of the main works he gets recognized for - (after Sherlock, I suppose, and The Hobbit - likely not The Office or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...just guessing) and that while it's well-received in the UK, it is a proper major holiday TV event in the US.

It is overstuffed and it's not all evenly baked. Some episodes are undercooked, some are just right. I can't think of any that are overdone. But it's interesting to see Curtis the writer supported by Curtis the director. In general, writing is his strong suit. I've only seen one other film he's directed and I honestly can't think of anything about it that stuck out. This was About Time, which I do remember liking but I'm vague on details.

Of all these types of films, I'd take The Holiday over Love Actually for a seasonal rom-com and I'd certainly go with Curtis's own Four Weddings and a Funeral or Notting Hill, for that matter. It also helps that Michael Coulter is helming the camera; his is a steady hand and an eye for giving characters room to breathe on screen. His set-ups and close shots tell you as much about the characters as the actors and the dialog; it's an unusual strength to have in camera work. In most cases, cinematography advances the plot and certainly serves the characters. In others, the camera work is a character itself (this is dodgy; if you're Scorsese, you know how to make it sing; if you're Olive Stone, you're just annoying as hell). But in rare moments, the shot creates a special space that may not be the result of angle or composition; almost every scene Coulter's shot (I'm thinking of the movie at hand, but also, Sense and Sensibility, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and even Spalding Gray's Monster in a Box) uses framing to create a space that accentuates the performances. Nothing so unsubtle as pointing to something an actor is doing; just something in the lighting and yes, angles and set-ups that does seem to let us in more on the process.

Thoughts on Alan Rickman: easily one of my favorite actors ever. There was a grace to just about everything he did. He could be menacing, kind, riddled with yearning or consumed by rage but it all felt genuine. Even in smaller roles, he raised whatever he was in. He died just a few days after David Bowie and I was pretty convinced that 2016 would go down as one of the nadir years of the century. Watching him still brings a great deal of joy, though; from Truly, Madly, Deeply to Dogma to the Potter flicks, Galaxy Quest and beyond, it's not difficult to imagine how much love he had for his craft and how much joy he took in it. Do you have a favorite Rickman role? Let me know in the comments.

In the meantime, I've got more stuff in the pipeline and I'm opening the valve.