Formerly Known As Cinema

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THE DELINQUENTS

Wikipedia describes Rodrigo Moreno’s marvelous new movie “The Delinquents” as a Heist film, which is kind of like describing “The Wizard of Oz” as a Tornado film.

Yes, a sum of money gets stolen from a bank in a breathlessly clever sequence that manages to be both tense and strangely calming at the same time, but the cash, with its promise of a new life for the film’s two main characters, is nearly forgotten an hour into the plot.

Like one of Hitchcock’s ‘McGuffins’ (something that sets the story in motion without having intrinsic value), the heist proves to be merely a jumping off point, ultimately leading us into a much richer conversation about something that rarely gets talked about in the culture: free time and what it means.

In the film, two men, more acquaintances then friends, work at a bank in downtown Buenos Aires. Through a mixture of careful planning and happenstance, a large sum of money comes into their possession.

Morán (Daniel Elías), the mastermind of the scheme, is willing to make temporary sacrifices for a chance at real freedom, while Román (Esteban Bigliardi), his initially reluctant accomplice, begins to realize, to his slowly awakening delight, that he’s been given an opportunity to alter the direction of his life.

Though both actors are remarkable, as is every performer in the film, it’s Bigliardi’s Román, with his dorky handsomeness and lithe, goofy physicality, that seduces us from the start.

First seen wearing a hilariously confining neck brace (a brilliant metaphor for the strictures of his nine-to-five existence), Román begins to shed his tightly-wound working drone persona, layer by layer, making his ultimate sea-change a divinely resonant transformation.

The film is broken into two parts. The first, set within the busy streets and towering cement structures of downtown Buenos Aires, is all angles and doorways, gates and locks. A mostly still camera frames the tightly controlled action, making the limitations and constraints of the working class characters palpably confining.

For the second part, director Moreno takes us to a verdant countryside of mountains, meadows, forests and streams. It’s here that Román meets Norma (the incandescent Margarita Molfino), a free-spirited local woman picnicking by a river, with whom he shares an instant attraction.

At one point she grabs Román by the hand and starts to run, and to our delight, the camera takes flight too, bringing the audience on a giddy, thrilling ride up a tree-lined path.

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And it’s more than just the physical environment that changes in the second part of the film. The story itself breaks loose from its tightly plotted construction and morphs into a joyously rambling exploration of what it means to be free.

Moreno has fun playing with abstraction as well. It’s not for nothing that he named the five main characters Morán, Román, Ramón, Norma and Morna, all anagrams of each other. In a sly, marvelous way, this group of friends, with their varying character traits of love, work, art, passion and sacrifice, can be taken to represent the inner workings of a single mind.

Near the end of the film, Moreno uses the gorgeously evocative poem “The Great Salt Flats” by Ricardo Zelarayán to represent the passage of time, with Daniel Elías’s Morán reading aloud to a captive audience.

The beauty of the language, the warm resonance of Eliás’ voice and Moreno’s masterfully gliding camera, bring this fairytale-like film to an unexpectedly moving close.

After three hours in a theater seat, my body may have been ready for the journey to be over, but my heart and mind didn’t want to leave the company of these richly drawn characters who’d become as real as it’s possible to be within the imaginary world of the movies.

IN THEATERS

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Scorsese has made some great films throughout his truly remarkable career, though for my money he peaked with 1993’s “The Age of Innocence” and has since only sporadically achieved the brilliance of his early work, most notably with 2013’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Nonetheless, he’s more than earned his place on the pantheon of cinematic geniuses, even if his longevity has somewhat outpaced the quality of his once fervent imagination.

His latest film is an adaptation of David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” a heretofore little known story of a group of white American businessmen who, in an effort to acquire the ‘headrights’ for oil deposits that had been discovered on land owned by the Osage Nation, systematically murdered hundreds of wealthy members of the tribe.

It is a horrific story that deserves to be told. And from all indications, Scorsese came into the project with the best of intentions.

He met with 200 members of the Osage Nation, after which he significantly reworked the script he’d spent years writing. And he hired Osage consultants, Osage actors and behind-the-scenes Osage artisans to ensure that a level of accuracy was maintained on the production.

And yet the resulting film stumbles significantly, failing to live up to its promise as art or history, or more importantly, as a legacy to the Osage People.

It’s hard to criticize a film that clearly has so much goodwill on its mind. But there’s no denying the egregious errors that have led to this three and a half hour misfire, and it starts with the casting of the leads.

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Yes, it’s impossible in today’s Hollywood to make a 200 million dollar historical epic without movie stars. But by casting Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro as the bad guys, their roles (which given the parameters of the actual story should’ve been supporting parts), had to, by necessity, be turned into leads.

And this is a problem, at least given the way Scorsese tells the tale. Because it’s clear, right from the beginning, that “Killers of the Flower Moon,” like “Casino” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” is just another attempt by Scorsese to retell the ‘boys behaving badly’ crime story of “Goodfellas.”

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Sure it’s fun to see mafia types goofing around and rubbing each other out, but it’s horrifying to watch a couple of serial killers goofing around while organizing and performing the execution of dozens of Osage people, primarily women.

And while Lily Gladstone is very good as Mollie, a member of a wealthy Osage family whose headrights William Hale (DeNiro) has his sites set on, the movie doesn’t let us anywhere near her thoughts, so we never understand the world as seen through the eyes of the Osage.

Instead, we focus on Hale’s nephew Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio) as he hunts his prey, luring Mollie into a marriage by pretending (badly) to fall in love with her just so he can poison her. Good times!

Without the fundamental access to the all important POV of the “victims,” the Osage people are relegated to the role of wide eyed naifs. And with Hale and Burkhart and every single white person onscreen leering and snarling like villains in a melodrama, the Osage end up looking like ignorant rubes.

The script is another problem, making its unsubtle points again and again, with some scenes repeated so often it starts to feel like we’re in a feedback loop. (I lost track of how many times DiCaprio stuck Gladstone with a needle in the thigh while she groaned feebly and collapsed on the bed).

The biggest disappointment however is how little “Killers of the Flower Moon” feels like a Scorsese movie. There is almost none of the director’s usual muscular filmmaking on display: those artistic flourishes of mild abstraction, the meticulous yet invisible control of every element, the effortless ability to pull us inside an individual moment until we felt its beating pulse, and the clear sense that we were in the hands of an undeniable genius.

Here, he doesn’t seem to be paying attention. The crowd scenes, for instance, are so badly directed they sometimes resemble the shapeless wanderings of teenagers in a high school play.

And some of the performances have been allowed to remain static and shapeless when they clearly required nuance, build and variation.

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Gladstone, whose eyes have the warm emotionality of Deborah Kerr, has been seemingly given no help whatsoever with her very difficult role. Her long, drawn-out illness with its endless scenes of moaning and sweating has become one dull, flatlining slog. Is she getting worse? Is she getting better? Is she suspicious? Is she afraid? There’s no way to tell since Gladstone’s face remains an utter blank.

The old Scorsese would’ve seen that and fixed it.

There is, however, one gorgeous scene of a ranch burning that brings back the excitement of his best work, where he allows his imagination to show us something not quite real.

And in the film’s high energy coda, even though it’s borrowed from Wes Anderson, Scorsese does provide a jolt of sheer fun that only emphasizes the missed opportunities of the previous 200 minutes.

Sadly, when I think about the film, all that really comes to mind is the incredible performance given by the owl that appears in the doorway of Gladstone’s room at one point and hops across the floor towards her bed. It’s stunning, haunting and unforgettable.

But when an owl does the best acting in a Scorsese film, something’s not right.

IN THEATERS

An LA-based playwright, JUSTIN TANNER has more than twenty produced plays to his credit, including Voice Lessons, Day Drinkers, Space Therapy, Wife Swappers, and Coyote Woman. His Pot Mom received the PEN-West Award for Best Play.

He has written for the TV shows Gilmore Girls, My So-Called Life and the short-lived Love Monkey. He wrote, directed and edited 88 episodes of the web series Ave 43, available on YouTube.

Tanner is the current Playwright in Residence for the Rogue Machine Theatre in Hollywood, where his most recent play Little Theatre, of December of 2022, was met with rave reviews. Charles McNulty of the LA Times writes, "Engrossing... a comedy à clef... “Little Theatre” is invaluable.'"