A couple of nights ago, we finished Scarlet Street, one of three films on a film noir DVD collection that came in the mail. This Fritz Lang film stars Edward G. Robinson, who usually plays a snarling thug (perhaps the quintessential thug, see...), but here, he is Chris Cross, a sadsack bank cashier with big, puppy-dog eyes. He falls in love with Kitty, who is, unbeknownst to him, a prostitute. Johnny, her pimp boyfriend, is one of the most unlikable characters I've seen in some time. Kitty and Johnny manipulate Chris into giving them money, which he obtains by embezzling from his company and stealing from his horrible shrew of a wife. Things get worse and worse, culminating in a truly horrible scene with an icepick. Fun!
Last night, it was Everything is Illuminated, by Liev Schreiber. I haven't read the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, but that is probably the best way to see a movie adaptation of a book. I've only seen three movies that even come close to their literary roots: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, A Room with a View, and Hardcore Logo (which in fact, may surpass the slight book of poetry on which it is based). But even without the spectre of its literary origins looming over me, Everything is Illuminated still felt like the book would have been better. We found it entertaining (perhaps an unseemly adjective when applied to a movie about the Holocaust) and quirky at times, beautifully shot. But the movie was in love with its own sentiment, never a good thing. Joe pointed out a scene where a character takes off his jacket, a large yellow Star-of-David sewn on to it, and leaves it on the heap of bodies out of which he has just crawled. He does this slowly, ponderously, full of emotion. "That's just the wrong way to do it," Joe said. "He should have just torn that jacket off and gotten the hell out of there!" Yes, indeed.
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