Who are your favorite characters in American history?

Upon seeing the cover of this week’s TIME, I felt a burst of emotion, not because I'm a Lincoln enthusiast, though there is much to admire about the much-admired 16th President of the United States. It was more out of a passion for the performances of Daniel Day-Lewis, the actor shown on the cover, and my eager anticipation for Spielberg’s upcoming Lincoln.

Once again, Day-Lewis has invested himself in his role in true Day-Lewis immersion style. Apparently, he has reproduced Lincoln’s odd voice like no other performer. It sure sounded that way as I sat through the preview this weekend before a showing of Cloud Atlas; though I closed my eyes to avoid spoiler images, I couldn't help hearing Lincoln's voice, which sounded nothing like Daniel Day-Lewis. Much more than that the film is about Lincoln, I look forward to the film for Day-Lewis’s performance and for the Civil War period depictions, as well as for a sense of wonder and a swelling hope-in-cinema I always feel in anticipation for a Spielberg-directed film (although that butterflies-in-my-stomach hope is often disappointed).

As for Lincoln, one of the most famous figures in the American history I have taught 8th graders for the past twenty-seven years, I have always felt kind of indifferent toward the man. Yeah, he was folksy, funny, bookish, determined, assassinated, and he put an end to the pernicious institution of slavery (which inevitably would have been ended by some president), but he was surrounded by monumental events that always seem to dwarf the man. I never feel Lincoln. Perhaps Spielberg and Day-Lewis will make me feel differently.

That said, I got to thinking about my favorite characters in American history. I have selected five of my favorites and matched each with a performer who has played him or her well, a performer who could play this personage for the first time, or a performer who could play the part better than previous performers in an updated depiction.

I welcome you to join me. Who are your favorite characters in American history? Pick one, three, or five, however many you want. Explain a little why they are favorites. Go a step further and imagine these figures in a bio-pic. Who would you like to see play these characters in films? Or, if you are satisfied with a past portrayal, who played the role well?

My Favorite Characters in American History

1. George Armstrong Custer

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t idolize the man. (If anything, I idolize his Native American enemies.) I see him for what he was – a reckless glory-seeker. But I have to admit I have a read a lot about the guy, and my fascination for him, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, drew me to make two trips to the National Monument in Montana during two consecutive summers. He certainly had a dramatic life: all those daring cavalry charges during the Civil War and, of course, his demise in one of the most dramatic moments in American history. I am fascinated by his audacity and blind courage and the enigma that surrounds him. Why the hell did he divide his meager, exhausted troop into four contingents in his advance upon a vast Indian village that contained two thousand fighting men? And then why the hell did he leave half of his contingent on a ridge while he went ahead with a hundred to look for a way to attack the village? My fascination for this enigmatic American man, as well as a childhood during which I played Custer in countless re-enactments of Custer’s Last Stand in my backyard, makes him my favorite character.

As for the many performers who have portrayed him in films, none of them have captured the real Custer. I’d like to see Ryan Gosling take a stab at it.

2. Clara Barton

She might well be the famous American I admire the most. She’s a man’s woman, helping the wounded under fire at Antietam, identifying the dead at Andersonville, organizing relief measures for the survivors of the Johnstown Flood. Wow! Why hasn’t anyone made a movie about this woman?

As for an actress to play her, Claire Danes has something in her face that bears a resemblance. I’m open to suggestions, but I’m sure Danes could do a good job. Somehow, Clara Barton is the type of role Hilary Swank usually lands, but I just don’t see her in the part.

3. Lucy Parsons

When political affairs in D.C. are at their most absurd, I turn anarchist. Long live anarchy! And my favorite anarchist is Lucy Parsons, wife of Albert Parsons, one of the four anarchists wrongfully tried, convicted, and hanged for their beliefs as a result of the 1886 Haymarket Square Bombing. When Lucy went to the prison to see her husband on the morning of the executions, she was cruelly told to wait in a room. Three hours later, the police came for her and told her the hangings were over. Lucy took up her husband’s crusade as an anarchist labor activist, campaigning for labor reform and women’s rights. She died in a fire in 1942; some sources suggest foul play, so perhaps she had been killed for her beliefs as well. Again, somebody make a movie about this woman! I have a poster of her up in my classroom.

I’d like to see Halle Berry take on Lucy; Berry needs a substantial role.

4. David Crockett

Yeah, I know. What did he do? Died at the Alamo. But his is such an iconic American persona. As the backwoodsman who served a number of periods in the U.S. Congress, he is a fine example of the egalitarian ideal. He was funny, too. When he lost his final campaign, he said, “You may go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” Darn! See what you get for cussin’, Davy! In addition, Disney’s The Adventures of Davy Crockett and John Wayne’s The Alamo impressed themselves upon my childhood imagination so deeply that I can’t leave Davy off the list.

I thought Billy Bob Thornton’s portrayal of Crockett in the 2004 The Alamo was spot on and very memorable, but I’d love to see a film that covers Crockett’s whole life, and I’d like to hand the job to Sam Rockwell, who fit right into that backwoodsy atmosphere in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

5. Theodore Roosevelt

Teddy is my favorite American president. (He and Lincoln are the only Republican presidents I admire.) He was a Republican with a social conscience and quite the character. With a little more effort, I might think of a recent actor who could portray him memorably, but I am totally satisfied with the memorable performance of Brian Keith as Teddy in the 1975 film The Wind and the Lion. Keith masters the toothy grin and sometimes plays Roosevelt as caricature, but in a number of touching, quiet moments, Keith captures the man. Out on the shooting range, he confesses to his daughter, “I’m blind in that eye . . . but don’t tell Edith. Maybe it’ll go away.” In another scene, after all the foreign tension is resolved, Teddy just wants to commune with the bear he shot while playing cowboy in Yellowstone. “And now, I’d just like to be alone with my bear.” Bully!

Looper - A Glossary of Terms

Writers of science-fiction novels just love inventing terminology for the trappings of their sci-fi worlds. Some novels pile on the terminology so thick that, thankfully, a glossary of terms is provided. (I find sci-fi novels like that very irritating; more artful are the novels that introduce invented terms sparingly in such a way that the story teaches you the terms as you go along and a glossary is not needed.)

The problem with some sci-fi movies is that they include so many gimmicky terms that you can’t keep them straight. This is not the problem with Rian Johnson’s sci-fi thriller, Looper. Mercifully, Johnson has not piled on the terminology to the point of obfuscation, and the terminology invented is clearly defined by the main character's voiceover. Though the film might lose you in respects to its time-travel conundrums, it doesn’t lose you in a sea of labels.

Still, I would like to supply a glossary just for fun. Mild spoilers ahead.

Glossary of Terms:

looper, noun: a hit man from the year 2042 who is hired by a mobster from 2072 (when time travel has been invented) to assassinate enemies sent back to 2042, bound, hooded, and strapped with a payment of silver bars, to be shot and disposed of without incriminating the future mobster. Clever! In Looper, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, a looper who is good at his job, as you see in a repetitious montage of hits so repetitious as to be entirely tedious.

Joe kneels next to cane field holding a shotgun. Joe looks at his watch. Victim suddenly appears on a tarp waiting to receive him. Joe shoots victim. Victim flies back off tarp. Done. (So why doesn’t he place the tarp behind the spot where the victim is predestined to land?) This sequence is repeated multiple times. (Also, for security reasons, you'd think the loopers would choose a different location for each hit. Change it up a little!)

Gordon-Levitt, who is supposed to look like a younger Bruce Willis by means of prosthetics and CGI, looks like someone who had a very bad experience with a surgical makeover to the point of looking frightening throughout the film. Nevertheless, through the fearsome mask, Gordon-Levitt is able to express Joe’s developing compassion as he learns the meaning of love and family and starts to salve over inner wounds. This aspect of Joe’s moral progress gives the film heart.

Quell and Dodd: Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master opens with the close-up of a World War II soldier peering from under his helmet, an image reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line in which soldiers peer from under their helmets at the horrors of war. At one time, Freddie Quell, played by Joaquin Phoenix, may have been one of those men, but we never find out. Instead, the film cuts to discordant music and a beach where traumatized soldiers seem to be recuperating in a frenetic orgy of wrestling, sculpting lewd sand sculptures, humping lewd sand sculptures, drinking, and masturbating. We never find out what has traumatized Freddie Quell. Perhaps, Randle McMurphy style, he’s feigning his condition in order to be close to sources of alcohol and to get out of work, or perhaps Freddie Quell has always been a solitary, alcoholic, sex-addicted outcast.

This is one of the many enigmas that make Anderson's inspired creation, Freddie Quell, a compelling character, especially when allied with Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, another enigma. Lancaster, Dodd, suggested by L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Dianetics, is a domineering, sometimes brilliant, sometimes childish, volatile, often weird singer of songs, creator of the Cause, a self-help cult that promotes a hypnosis-like therapy called “processing” for connecting with and healing past traumas. As Hoffman portrays Dodd’s passion, it would seem that Dodd really believes in all the hocus pocus he has conjured up and continues to change. But, as Dodd's taciturn son (Jesse Plemons) finally says to Quell in the one of the best moments in the film, “He’s making it up as he goes along.”

The greatest pleasure of this film is watching Anderson’s film craft. He makes something memorable out of the shot of a desperate man running across a field. He brings a 1950s department store to nostalgic life. Compelling too are the performances of Phoenix and Hoffman. While Hoffman sometimes slips into histrionics that reveal Hoffman through the artifice, Phoenix totally transforms himself into Quell. He morphs body, face, and speech. Speaking out of the side of his tightly clamped mouth, his speech is sometimes hard to follow, but the affectation effectively evokes the turmoil inside this troubled soul. Walking as though it is painful, suffering through Dodd’s processing sessions, ripping apart a jail cell, Phoenix always makes you see Quell.

Much like a Dickensian character bordering on caricature, a troll-like Mr. Quilp or a writhing Uriah Heep, Phoenix’s Quell constitutes the film’s compelling core. In the beginning, as a troubled loner; as a photographer in a department store until he beats up a customer; as a cabbage field harvester until one of his caustic alcoholic concoctions poisons a fellow worker, Quell is fascinating to follow, and I found myself preferring the film’s picaresque first chapter to the Dodd chapters that follow. When he hooks up with Dodd, he is again the enigma. Does he become a true convert to the Cause, willing to play the goon, a zealous “brownshirt” roughing up hecklers for the charlatan Dodd? Or is he just an opportunist going along for the ride, enjoying the action until it’s time to move on? With all the tension that seems to be building between Dodd and Quell, or between Dodd and his followers, or between Dodd and his loopy wife, superbly played by Amy Adams, lurking mysteriously in the background, it seems that a dramatic denouement is promised. Alas, it never comes.

Yes, I suppose the film takes Quell to a subtle denouement. In one of the best scenes, he has gone back to Lynn, Massachusetts, to look up the “girl next door,” perhaps the one true love of his life. In this quiet scene in which the girl’s mother tells him she has been married for five years, Quell comes to grips with his flaws and fatalistically embraces his aimless destiny. Quell is back to where he started, alienated and solitary, drinking heavily, trying out Dodd’s processing therapy on a whore. Perhaps Quell has not changed at all. He’s back on the beach. This ending is, perhaps, appropriate, but the viewer is left with a film that employs skillful filmmaking to depict two compelling characters who are never taken toward a compellingly dramatic conclusion.

Random Thoughts on The Words

I enjoyed The Words for the intricacy of the plot. The Words is a story wrapped around a second story that flashes back to a third story which includes a fourth story.

The third storyline is set in a very picturesque post-World War II Paris. Ben Barnes plays a young American who comes back to Paris after the war, falls in love, and tries to become a writer. The idyllic street scenes set the tone for this story of a young man who would like to be the next Hemingway. The romantic setting suggests the magic inherent in the act of writing. The novel that the young man eventually writes is shown in glimpses as he writes it, and as another writer later reads it and word-processes it. This presents the novel with a sense of wonder that makes it believable that it becomes a much-loved bestseller.

Dennis Quaid is quite commanding as Clay Hammond, the author of a book called The Words, which is about an unsuccessful, aspiring writer named Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) who finds the lost manuscript of the young writer in Paris (Ben Barnes as the young man/Jeremy Irons as the old man) and calls it his own.

Once again, Bradley Cooper plays a wayward, aspiring writer, as he does in Limitless. In both films, his character is faced with a choice. In Limitless he writes a successful book by taking a drug that enhances his mental processes. In The Words, he takes a lost manuscript, calls it his own, and becomes a bestselling, award-winning writer. Cooper does quite well depicting Rory's anguish when faced with his moral dilemma.

I love movies that depict the act of writing. We see someone writing with a pen, with a typewriter, with a word-processor. A gripping, passionate scene captures the torment and hard work of writing. (It also deals realistically with rejection and the difficulties of getting published.) I remember those manual typewriter days! Love the shot of the young writer struggling with a typewriter ribbon. I remember banging away at a ribbon until I could no longer ink the paper. The film also depicts the torture of writer's block, and I like how it portrays the enigma of creativity. The same young man who can't seem to join words together effectively suddenly finds inspiration and pours out a heart-felt story. That's how it can work sometimes.


I love the film's simple paradigm: young man, old man, lost manuscript, aspiring writer, moral dilemma, choice, repercussions. But there is a lot going on in this simple pattern. The Words is about passion, the imagination, moral choices, justice, and living with an immoral choice. At the same time, the cinematography employs a minimalism that nicely frames the conflcts: writer with laptop; writer with typewriter; Rory faced with his choice; Rory and old man in Central Park; Clay Hammond with book entitled The Words.

Primarily, The Words is about words and the challenging, painful, elusive art of writing. We see words on a laptop screen. We see them scribbled on scratch paper and on a file folder. We seem them in English and French. We see them printed in a hardback book. We see the young man's clear, Hemingwayesque diction typed on age-yellowed manuscript paper, the pages placed in a folder, the folder kept in an old leather briefcase. You can feel the writing going on.

“You are my Sunrise / My only Sunrise"

This is fucking great! vs. NOT EVERY GREAT MOVIE HAS TO BE AWESOME.

In a recent post at the Cooler: Sight and Soundless: How Cinephiles are Failing Cinema, Jason Bellamy states simply, A great movie is one that as you're watching it, and after, makes you think, "This is fucking great!" He goes on to exhort, We need to ditch this notion of over-praising movies we "respect," which is almost always code for "I didn't like it as much as I think I'm supposed to, but I'm not about to look like an idiot by saying so," and let our heart and our gut guide us. His statements here come in response to the Sight and Sound critics’ poll that supplanted Citizen Kane as #1 and included Sunrise, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and Rules of the Game in the top 10.

In a rebuttal post in The Front Row, David Brody of The New Yorker contends that NOT EVERY GREAT MOVIE HAS TO BE AWESOME. He goes on to say, One of the dangers for a critic in putting the pleasures at hand on the top of the heap is that of taking familiarity for primacy, of mistaking habit for merit and comfort for virtue—to take the conventions of our own times and milieux for the center of the universe.

I, however, have always believed that a great movie elicits the response, as you watch it and after you watch it, "This is fucking great." And I don't believe Bellamy is contending that the pleasures at hand necessarily provoke this response. I might consider movies like the Nic Cage disaster film Knowing and the sci-fi film Tron Legacy "fucking great," but they are not "fucking great" with a difference. They compel me to watch them repeatedly for certain satisfying elements, but they don't compel me significantly in regards to the ideas and emotions they evoke.

Sunrise

Murnau's 1927 silent classic has been used as an example of a film that critics might choose for a top 10 list because they feel they must in order not to appear ignorant. Oddly, I was compelled by this film BEFORE I saw it when I read about it in a book about the silent era. I loved the title, and I was fascinated by its simple paradigm, its fable-like story that the book summarized with a series of stills. I immediately went to amazon.com to buy a copy, but I discovered that it was not available in a new DVD. Much later, when it was re-released on DVD, I bought it and watched it twice. Again, love the title! Love the simple story and some of its stunning images. But I can't say I am greatly compelled by its overall effect. I can hum its praises but I can't sing them.

"You compel me."

I disagree with Brody. I have always felt that a GREAT movie HAS TO BE AWESOME! Like Bellamy, I have always let my heart and gut be my guide when it comes to naming great movies. If I had been called upon to contribute to the Sight and Sound Greatest Films list, this would be my guide, and I’m afraid I wouldn’t choose Sunrise for the top 10. In way of providing a euphemism for Bellamy's declaration, "This is fucking great," I feel that a great movie is one that as you're watching it, and after, makes you think, "You compel me." You want to talk about it. You want to write about it. (Bellamy exhorts critics to write about those less-known films they consider great.) You want to sing its praises. "You are my __________, my only __________." Fill in the blanks yourself.

The Odd Life of Timothy Green

The Odd Life of Timothy Green features sensitive performances by Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton as Cindy and Jim Green, a married couple suffering the loss of childlessness. Rosemarie DeWitt is excellent as Cindy’s sister, a mother of children she drives to be perfect while David Morse gives a solid performance as the father who was not always there for Jim. As Timothy Green, young CJ Adams is nicely understated, allowing his whimsically cute face to establish a wonderful presence. As mutual outcasts, Timothy and a dark-haired hippie girl named Joni, played sincerely by Odeya Rush, establish a kindred-spirit alliance as memorably touching as the relationship between Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward) in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. While Geoff Zanelli’s thoughtful musical score suits the film’s fanciful tone, the talented cinematography of John Toll captures the dazzle of autumn woods and the simple beauty of small-town America. In addition, the direction of John Hedges (writer for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape) makes up for any slips into silliness by keeping the pacing tight and carrying the story along to some delightful surprises. All of these strengths support an often powerful story about life and death; parenting, both good and bad; dealing with loss; coping with a child’s handicap; suffering ostracism and alienation; tolerating differences; persevering in the face of hopelessness; and gaining fulfillment in unexpected ways.

Sounds great! So let’s stop there. Oh, yeah, the story. I’ve told you what The Odd Life of Timothy Green is about, but I haven’t told you what it’s about. Okay, well, here goes. It’s about this couple, Jim and Cindy, and they are told they can’t have kids, so Cindy is at home crying, and Jim says they should hold one last hope, so they drink wine and write down their wishes for what their child would be like if they had one, each wish on a separate chit of paper, and they put the pieces of paper in a box, and they bury the box in Cindy’s vegetable garden, and I guess they have sex, but it only shows the bedroom light going out, but, hey, this is a Disney movie, and it rains even though there’s been a drought, and that night they find a ten-year-old boy named Timothy running around their house naked and muddy, and, uh, yeah, right, you guessed it, there’s a big muddy hole in Cindy’s garden as though something has grown right out of the box they buried, so that’s mind-blowing, yeah, but it beats dealing with adoption agencies (which is pointedly satirized by the film’s wraparound scenario in which Jim and Cindy are telling their bizarre tale to a dour adoption agent played by the ever-dour Shohreh Aghdashioo), and Timothy’s a cute, an enchanting little boy, except the one thing is, uh, here goes, he has leaves growing out of his ankles, but, hell, what are leaves growing out of ankles when you’ve finally got a kid and you didn’t have to go through an adoption agency or hire a surrogate mother who doesn’t want to give up the kid at the last minute and takes it to court, so they keep Timothy, and send him to school, a big mistake, because we know what kids are going to do to a boy like Timothy, and later the things Jim and Cindy wrote on the chits of paper all come true in one way or another, and Timothy is regarded as odd by some, but many are touched by him, and, finally, autumn comes and the leaves change color and fall, and Timothy’s leaves change color and fall . . .

Phew! Got that done. And now you expect me to tell you how silly this movie is. Well, I’m not gong to. Want me to tell you that it takes its premise to ridiculous extremes? Can’t do that either because it doesn’t. One of the best films of the year, The Odd Life of Timothy Green assumes the tone of a fable and delivers its many morals with charm and grace. Despite some of its simplistic, Disney Channel scenarios, it covers many serious topics very effectively. We’ve all suffered loss. There’s that something we’ll never get. This movie portrays that feeling sharply. Ever felt like an outcast? Ever yearned for a soul mate to share your alienation? This film captures the pain of that yearning. Ever been the parent of a child who is “different”? The Odd Life of Timothy Green zeroes in on that feeling sharply. This is not just a cute fairytale about a boy who brings joy and provides lessons and leaves people with the strength to go on. Behind Timothy’s cute face is an awareness of the hard things in life. Timothy knows what it means when the leaves fall.