J. Edgar
Nothing like a little lunch hour blogging to get you back on track. I'm currently two movies behind on my reviews here. Best get to work. This will probably be a short one... after all, a dude's gotta eat.
Anyway, here we have J. Edgar, Clint Eastwood's latest directorial effort, a biopic of the life and times of one J. Edgar Hoover. To put it simply, the movie was pretty darn boring. Laborious even... I mean to sit through. Staying awake does take effort. I suppose there was some interesting angles to drive the movie forward, but the problem was that all interest was overwhelmed by a slow plodding plot and a yawn-inducing color palette. (The whole movie seemed to have a gray aura hanging over it.) I think it's about time I admitted to myself that standard biopics are just not for me. I can't think of a single one that I haven't found boring or overindulgent. Far too often, it comes off as though the filmmakers are following one of two routes: deification or iconoclasm. I think the iconoclasts have had their way with Hoover sufficiently enough to that he seems to be regarded as at least flawed- terribly flawed- if not batshit crazy. Eastwood (and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black) aren't treading new ground there. Instead, here, they seem to deify the self-deification of Hoover. An interesting route to take, but still- in execution- ultimately boring.
Ok, so maybe I'm not being particularly fair. Black and Eastwood do take pains to show that Hoover was a very complex cat. You couldn't pigeonhole him entirely as a dude with mommy issues or a closeted gay man who seemed to hate the fact that he was gay or a paranoid champion of some extreme sense of law and order. No, Hoover was more than that...or.. rather all of that mixed into one along with healthy doses of a guy just struggling to find himself and matter in the world. The most interesting thing about the movie is how the tale of Hoover unfolds. Hoover's story unfurls through flashbacks as he dictates his memoirs to a series of FBI-agent authors (the idea being that the paranoid Hoover just couldn't settle on one) during the 1960s. So you have Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) telling the story of his own rise to prominence in the FBI. And how Hoover recalls it is how its seen on screen. ... Oh, there are also pieces of the past that don't make it into the memoirs that the audience is allowed to see- particularly moments involving his more tender times with his trusted aide and would-be lover Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer)- these are seen as Hoover's recollections of the past. Unmentioned to his cascade of authors but not unconsidered by the man himself. So, we see it all: the paranoia, the Communist and gangster hunter, the cross-dressing, the homosexual leanings, the powerful, scheming dictator of the bureau and the insecure momma's boy. They're all there on the screen to behold. And all I could do was yawn.
On the surface, this should have all been interesting to me. I love the idea of trying to get into the heads of complex characters. I can only point to the slow, plodding way everything unfolds, the drab way everything looks, and perhaps the punchless conclusion that seems to want say both that everything you've heard about him is more or less true, but the reasons why- though if you noodle through it you can probably imagine them- are not as simple. Even the question of whose story did we see in the flashbacks, Hoover's authentic story or the one born of his self-aggrandizing imagination is more or less neatly answered. This seems to be a trend in Eastwood's movies: replace subtle teasing with outright clarification... I think playing up the whose story was it anyway angle... without answering it so clearly...would have been a more engaging route to take... or better yet, why not tell Hoover's story through the eyes of multiple people- perhaps including his own- who had to interact with him... who learned to love or loathe him... people who knew him on the surface and people who knew him intimately... then allow all those views to circulate in the viewers' mind and allow them to come to the conclusion on exactly who Hoover was... that might have been the way to go... because it seems as though Hoover was different things to different people, but Eastwood seems more preoccupied with who Hoover was to himself and also why.
A couple of other points here. The performances were generally good. You do, after all, have good actors and actresses working for a respected (if- COUGH- rapidlyloosingthouch-COUGH) director. You'd expect them to bring their A-games for Clint. And they do. DiCaprio makes a somewhat compelling Hoover. He works tirelessly at making him look and sound right, which at times actually makes his performance come off as more of a Hoover impersonation than Leo-as-Hoover. I don't think this is entirely his fault- I think this is where Eastwood is pushing him. He does bring great intensity to the role, but he's just never allowed to disappear into it. Armie Hammer makes for a charming and easy-going Tolson. Naomi Watts completes the Holy Hoover Trinity by giving a game but uncomplicated portrayal of Hoover's trusted assistant Helen Gandy. The real problems with the performances? Particularly Hammer's and Watts'? They're overpowered by some pretty horrific age-ifying makeup. I read all the criticisms of the pretty awful makeup effort on the film. A lot of it seemed to be directed at DiCaprio as Hoover. I was actually pleasantly surprised by how he looked as he aged. It actually blended pretty well. I didn't notice anything other than that it was DiCaprio under all that makeup. I actually think Brad Pitt as older (younger) Ben Button looked far more ridiculous than Leo Hoover. Hammer's older Tolson and Watts' older Gandy on the other hand looked like the work of a hack job. Particularly Hammer. The older Tolson is actually kept off screen for much of the movie but when he makes his appearance you begin to wonder if they used 1960s era makeup to complete his 1960s era look. It just doesn't look right. I've seen better makeup used in kids' Halloween costumes. (What really gives the look away are the eyes. Hammer's look way too young and fresh under the makeup. Or... maybe its the fact that the makeup around his eyes seems to be melting off that makes his eyes pop more... whatever the reason, Hammer's older Tolson looks like a zombie who harvested the fresh young eyes of a teenager. So unnatural). Hammer's young eyes burning through the old-age makeup are about the only thing that popped out of the drab atmosphere. They shouldn't have been a distraction... but with little else to attract my attention...well... that's what I had.
Grade: C-
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