12 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY3, 2020
SAMUEL GOLDWYN FILMS / EVERETT
Jim Jarmusch revealed an original and influential cinematic world view in
his second feature, “Stranger Than Paradise,” from 1984 (screening on
Jan. 31 in MOMA’s series “American Indies, 1980-1989”). It’s a whimsically
dour tale of a young Hungarian woman named Eva (Eszter Balint) who
comes to New York and connects with a pair of grubby gamblers—her
cousin Willie ( John Lurie) and his pal Eddie (Richard Edson)—en route
to visit her elderly aunt (Cecillia Stark) in Cleveland. The comedic chaos
of their lives gives rise to a threadbare road movie; their workaday wor-
ries mesh with innocent, angelic fantasy. Jarmusch lets time run free in
stylized and static long takes that blend his characters’ Beckettian inertia
with the quasi-documentary fascination of the idiosyncratic performers
just being there. He links the kitsch of down-market culture—shabby
motels and thrift-shop clothing, TV dinners and TV shows—to vintage
musical treasures (embodied in Eva’s cassette of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins)
in a unified vision of populist American aesthetics.—Richard BrodyINREVIVAL
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For more reviews, visit
newyorker.com/goings-on-about-townpredator, luring young women with offers of
employment. What’s more, Jane’s colleagues
know what’s going on and enable his mis-
deeds—and crimes. This drama, written and
directed by Kitty Green, is a diagnostic view
of a reign of terror. The manipulative boss
berates Jane over trivialities and then flatters
her; his employees—mostly men, slick or
nerdy—condescendingly keep her in line.
The agonizing tale combines personal and
structural misogyny, gaslighting, emotional
assault, and the corruption of workplace
relations; Green’s direction and dramatic
sensibility are blunt, but the film’s labora-
tory-like microcosm of scenarios pointedly
similar to recent widely publicized events in
the movie business is shocking and effective.
With Matthew Macfadyen as a human-re-
sources executive from Hell.—Richard Brody
(In limited release.)
Beanpole
The agonies of history return with a calcu-
lated vengeance in Kantemir Balagov’s first
feature. It’s set in Leningrad, just after the
end of the Second World War, and its title
character is a tall young woman named Iya
(Viktoria Miroshnichenko), a nurse at a mil-
itary hospital who’s enduring the aftereffects
of a concussion suffered in combat. She’s
taking care of a baby for her friend Masha
(Vasilisa Perelygina), who’s recovering from
wounds that prevent her from conceiving
again. When the toddler dies in Iya’s care,
Masha demands that Iya bear a child for
her. Balagov packs the plot with crises—
unbearable injury, mental trauma, hopeless
romance, political privilege, blackmail—and
films amorphous theatrical tableaux that
spotlight showy performances and photoge-
nic moments. But the characters don’t seem
to exist outside the stilted drama of their in-
dividual scenes; the ambiguities of Balagov’s
detached approach yield a sentimental tale of
pride and reverence. Meanwhile, he doesn’t
miss a chance to undress his actresses—prin-
cipals and extras alike—for the camera. In
Russian.—R.B. (In limited release.)Judy
Renée Zellweger’s passionate and vulnera-
ble incarnation of Judy Garland energizes
this empathetic, nuanced, yet patchy drama
centered on the singer’s London concertseries in 1968, the year before her death.
Struggling with her career because of a pre-
scription-drug addiction that dates back to
her childhood stardom, Garland desperately
seeks custody of her children, Lorna and Joey
Luft, but is penniless and homeless. She
only accepts the London gig to earn enough
money to support them. Although she flings
herself devotedly into the concerts, her initial
triumphs crumble in the face of fresh trou-
bles, including an unhappy new marriage
and failed business plans. Flashbacks to her
teen-age years at M-G-M reveal the abusive
studio regime that brought her worldwide
fame at the expense of her private life. Tom
Edge’s script, based on a play by Peter Quil-
ter, lapses into clichés, but the dialogue is
often sharp, and Zellweger offers it up with
flair and fury. She also sings, and, though
her voice hardly resembles Garland’s, she
commands the stage majestically. Directed
by Rupert Goold.—R.B. (Streaming.)Melinda
Hugh A. Robertson’s first feature, from 1972,
offers a sly and seething blend of genres and
tones in the guise of a straightforward blax-
ploitation drama. Frankie J. Parker (Calvin
Lockhart), a suave, hip d.j. and Los An-
geles man-about-town, meets the elegant
Melinda (Vonetta McGee) in a night club;
their rapturous affair ends two days later—
when he comes home from work and finds
her murdered in his apartment. Wrongly
arrested, Frankie is quickly released from
police custody but is soon targeted by a
gangland associate, and discovers that the
killing was an ordered hit—and that he’s a
pawn in a far-reaching conspiracy involving
the media, drug dealers, and union politics.
With intrepid planning, martial artistry, and
unhinged violence—and thanks to the auda-
cious complicity of his longtime lover, Terry
(Rosalind Cash)—Frankie fights back. This
Hitchcockian setup gives rise to rapturous
romance, crude comedy, and frenzied action;
Robertson sets the hectic melodrama in swift
motion with a brash sense of style.—R.B.
(MOMA, Jan. 29, and streaming.)The Traitor
If you want family values, Marco Bellocchio
is your man, though they may not be what you
expect. His coruscating début, “Fists in the
Pocket” (1965), showed a household ripped
apart by mental illness and matricide. In his
latest film, more than half a century on, it’s
the ties of clan loyalty, among criminal patri-
archs and their loved ones, that are strained
and torn. For an epic plot, Bellocchio turns to
recent history: the tale of Tommaso Buscetta
(Pierfrancesco Favino), a Mafia boss who
dares to testify against his fellow-crooks.
The settings range from Sicily to Brazil and
America (where Buscetta lives for a while
under the witness-protection program) and,
likewise, the tone sways between the murder-
ous and the surreally comic—the highlight
being the notorious Maxi Trial, starting in
1986, in which rows of caged mafiosi fling
curses across the courtroom. In Italian and re-
lated dialects.—Anthony Lane (In wide release.)