Lives of famous people
Biopics and cinematic interpretations of “true stories” are usually problematic. When it comes to chronicling legendary figures and events, cooperation with the subject or their estates is often crucial, which means a certain amount of sugar-coating is a given. F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton, engaging as it was, glossed over Dr Dre’s rich history of wife battering. Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper was accused of all manner of truth bending with regards to its sniper’s conscience. Then there’s the unforgiveable tendency to give into bland storytelling: Walk the Line, Ray, The Imitation Game and dozens of others that follow the rise-fall-rise-become legendary template of the central figure.
So it comes as no surprise that Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ Battle of the Sexes is a cookie cutter recreation of tennis lore with a bigger focus on 1970s-era clothing than on the monumental gender pitched tennis match between superstar player Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and the washed-up Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) — and more importantly, King’s crusade for equal pay for women tennis player championships and the establishment of the Women's Tennis Association. The match, viewed by 90 million people worldwide, was lopsided; despite King’s fears there was no way Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsman (?) of the Year” was going to lose to a 55-year-old, emasculated hustler. This was a moment for society, and though writer Simon Beaufoy does a respectable job of building tension, it never feels as white knuckled as it really was.
Carell is pitch perfect, playing Riggs as an almost knowing pawn in his own final hustle; his last moment on broadcast television. His failing schemes and aimless life take up half the film though, leaving the real story — the still relevant part about institutional sexism, the continuing fight for equal pay, homophobia — as little more than a B-plot. Stone is fine as King, and while she navigates the quagmire that is King’s blossoming sexuality as it impacts her personally and professionally, she never quite nails the real woman’s understated determination and grace. Like Stone, the film is fine, but it’s not nearly as fiery as it should be, considering women started earning the same amount for wins as men at Wimbledon only in 2007, and Hollywood has demonstrated so vividly of late that men like Riggs are still allowed to roam free.
Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman’s gorgeous and creative rendering of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh’s final days in Loving Vincent is a surprise package. Animated over seven years with 65,000 hand-painted oils in van Gogh’s style, the film uses a Citizen Kane construction that follows Armand Roulin (the voice and likeness of Douglas Booth) and his attempt to deliver van Gogh’s (Robert Gulaczyk) last letter to his brother, Theo. Discovering Theo has died, Armand pokes around the town, Auvers, that was van Gogh’s last home, asking questions of the locals about what happened. Among them are the innkeeper, Adeline Ravoux (Eleanor Tomlinson), his doctor, Gachet (Jerome Flynn, Game of Thrones) and his daughter Marguerite (Saoirse Ronan).
The mystery of van Gogh’s death drives the narrative, but it’s the artwork itself that really supports it. Van Gogh, his short, turbulent life and his art have been the subject of many films ( Lust for Life, Vincent and Theo), but few have explored his story through the man’s own words, so to speak. Loving Vincent is singular, but it’s best compared to Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio, in that it mimics the subject’s art for the moving image. Many of van Gogh’s best known works are featured somehow in the story, from a sidewalk cafe to portraits of the people Armand speaks to, and re-contextualizing them makes van Gogh’s work just a little more intimate. The rotoscoping (the closest animation process to this) lends the film texture while the drama (the mystery and Armand’s passion seem a bit forced) fails it — and will no doubt renew your interest in the 20th century’s most enigmatic artist.