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Wherever Two (1997)
You Get What You Need
This social comedy is filled with stellar moments of improvisation--not full-out improvisation, but the relaxed digressions and contemplative pauses that keep a conversation going, while broadening its reach. The actors radiate with reactive engagement, using the screenplay's signposts of story to draw insight and comic grievance from the core of their characters. Beyond that, their performances mine instances of deadpan humor, keeping faith with the issues at hand and ribbing the many egos in the mix.
True to its title, Wherever Two contains a series of pairings, often framed in 'two shots', where people--allies, adversaries, assorted pilgrims of purpose--assert root beliefs and suspicions, even as they interact toward the possibilities of consensus. Such interaction sparks off-the-cuff responses within the frame, yielding expressions of insight and epiphany. Eyes expand and engage, faces crinkle, and gazes linger to envelop the dialogue in unspoken feeling that resonates.
Driving a tale centered on an existing deal--a developer's pledge to provide affordable apartments in exchange for building variances on a luxury project--the linking of two empathetic, yet quarrelsome, protagonists in a related investigation gives the picture diverting scenes of discovery. Attorney Henry Collier (Christopher Morgan) and dancer-reporter Teresa Roman (Sandra Rivera) team up out of allied purpose and eventual need. Per the old adage--wherever two join in agreement, results follow--Collier and Roman go forth on a path both twisted and entertaining, requiring on-the-fly assessments and course corrections. Searching and seeking, he nimbly modulates his lawyerly manner to navigate the spectrum of personalities encountered. She brings a dancer's timing to the pushing of pace in prodding for action and enlivens the proceedings by occasionally dancing up a storm. The two actors succeed in creating a yin and yang dynamism: a wise but wary conveyor of counsel complements a choreographer of movement sure of her counts.
Other standout performers include Joe Carfagna (energized) as a reverend heading up a non-profit, Tony Iglesias (excellent) as a go-getting community leader and realty operator, Hank Poje (forceful) as a self-centered property owner, Pam Myette (caring) as a soup kitchen director, Yienan Song (spirited) as an aggrieved tenant, Manuel Garcia (deflective) as a dance promoter, Paul Myette (humorous) as a poetic voice of conscience, and Richard Virga (on the nose) as a fundraising guru. True-to-life commitment lifts the performances of Natsu Ifill as a grant administrator and Lucy Knopf as a social services advocate; Ifill's clipped comments speak volumes, and Knopf's eyes contain multitudes. Anthony Moscini and Rick Poli deliver a crisp and cryptic debate as a banker and debtor, respectively, with Moscini's eyebrows and Poli's tight lips facing off in a contrapuntal clash.
Music supervisor Myron 'Mike' Moss has given the picture a catchy soundtrack that elevates the story and attaches a bouncing rhythm to the fine work of the cast. Cinematographer Leo Holder has an eye for varied and evocative settings across the northern exposure of Manhattan and captures crowded interior scenes with elan.
The Fabelmans (2022)
The Man Who Shot Close Encounters
Thinking of the line in Sunset Boulevard that silent film actors "had faces" in place of dialogue, and marveling again at Spielberg's skill with eyes as instruments of revelation.
Sure, the actors are talented, trained, and tested. But a director sets the scene and creates a dynamic of discovery, and this director knows a thing or two thousand about summoning awe and amazement, insight and epiphany.
Mitzi (Michelle Williams) loses balance at a woodland crossing, eyes moving from fright to relief, then giddy warmth to loving affection, gazing upward at family friend Bennie (Seth Rogen), caught in his embrace. Later in the movie, while Burt (Paul Dano) solely views a snapshot in hand, his eyelids peel back from an initial glance, pinching at the corners, as he reacts to figures discerned in deep background. And when Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle) finds himself in some director's waiting room, bulbs behind irises turn on and white orbs spill light, as his inner lenses focus on a long line of one sheet wonders--not yet seen by the audience--shining bright.
Spielberg trusts that wordless moments resonate, letting setups play out, suspense build, and mystery envelop. He goes beyond himself in that scene with Sammy, concluding a reverie round of movie posters with a repeat reference to a film that shares The Fabelmans' triangle motif. He then breaks the spell, upon a hurried entry of the lipstick-smudged director in question, with a scratching cutoff of another picture's soundtrack recording--music from one of the most memorable opening shots in cinema, a portal moving from dark to light--signaling a trifecta of open doors: filmic, comic, and metaphoric.
The Fabelmans is filled with tripart imagery, evoking the film's interpersonal, conceptual, and formative themes: from triangular windowpanes to three bandits framed within the open legs of a sheriff in Sammy's Boy Scout western; from fulcrums under boards exploding sand in his war movie to the triad of camera, seagulls, and victims at the beach; from a tripod of sticks suspending a cauldron over a campfire to the seesaw rocking of Mitzi cradled from a bough. My favorite: Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) miming a perceived self-rending dichotomy of family and art, then thrusting a finger of fate--swish-panned past the center angle of assembled Fabelmans--at Sammy, who defies the dictum with a Superman stance, legs spread wide and arms triangulated via hands on hips and elbows out.
In Spielberg's hands films tell stories within a story. Consider the close encounters that punctuate this picture, interaction where the stakes are high: Sammy's dialogues with Mitzi, Burt, Uncle Boris, Bennie, his sister Reggie, his high school antagonist Logan. Note, as well, a low-angle shot of Sammy gazing at an office window, affirming a threshold moment. It's a figurative doffing of the hat to a certain professional--himself no stranger to letting eyes do the talking--who engaged a kid in a discussion of art and disclosed particulars of perception that were of a piece with the young man's own unrelenting attention to detail. See it as a salute to one picture maker from another, a fellow pilgrim on the way to the horizon that is the silver screen.