ADAM MEMBREY

No Monkeying Around Here: WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES

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When I first saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in theaters, I was so taken by the quietness of it. The first twenty minutes allowed us to see a new ape civilization in its true home, deep in the woods, communicating solely through their own sign language. Whenever an action scene seemed to be coming, the film always resisted the temptation and kept its focus on the main characters: the apes themselves.

After the success of Dawn, the sequel’s title was soon announced: War for the Planet of the Apes. Seeing the title and ‘war’ in it, I expected it to be the big action epic the series seemed to hint at. I worried they would trade the stillness of Dawn for the heavy metal of action set pieces so common in big-budget films today. But I forgot that an oft-said maxim of war is that it is long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.

I should never have worried for War is long stretches of beauty punctuated by moments of terror.

Whenever sequels are made, they often feel like noisier versions of what came before. As if the team behind them simply dialed everything up to eleven. Here, though, it feels like director Matt Reeves and his own team sat down, took the opposite approach and said, “How many beautiful, soul-stirring moments can we fit into this thing?”

Because there are many. And they are all goddamn beautiful.

Lodged deep in my brain are the moments of seeing the interactions between the young girl Nova (Amiah Miller) and Maurice, the unflappable orangutan. Of seeing Nova place a small flower on the head of a fallen gorilla. Of the seamless eye communication between apes in the midst of inhumane treatment at the hands of human beings. Of Caesar watching in horror at what has happened to his kind. Of Caesar realizing how he is not so different from The Colonel, the one man he has come to kill.

I could go on and on. This movie found all of its soul and laid it bare. And it somehow wrapped a pretty cool prison break mission and some seriously explosive explosions around it without it ever feeling jarring. It also doesn’t forget to inject the story with small doses of terror, giving our ape characters very real threats that are as terrifying as they are thematically driven.

The control director Reeves and his screenwriting team have over this story is no more apparent than in two key additions: in Bad Ape (Steve Zahn) and in the simian virus that has mutated. The series has done such a great job of showing us the various types of apes – both in demeanor and in personal history – and Bad Ape, a chimp who has escaped from the zoo, further deepens those themes. He is comic relief that leavens the heavy dramatic load, but he is also another bright color in this story’s crayon box. When Caesar and his crew first arrive at The Colonel’s stronghold, they witness some humans who are struggling to speak. It turns out the simian virus that had originally wiped out humans at large has mutated into something that takes away the one thing that makes them more human than the chimps: their speech. It’s such an expected, small story development that beautifully illustrates how well the Apes team understands their own tale.

By the final moments of War for the Planet of the Apes, a flurry of goosebumps ran from my arms all the way up my spine. Days later, I’m still getting them as I write this. It is absolutely astounding to me the storytelling journey this new Apes trilogy has taken us the last six years. I hope and strongly believe that Caesar, a character bolstered by the never-less-than-incredible work of Andy Serkis, will go down as one of the greatest technical and artistic accomplishments in modern film history.

Serkis has played this character all the way from his first days as a baby chimp to his last days a leader for the new planet of the apes. In each of Caesar’s moments throughout these three movies, his eyes are impossible to miss. They draw you in. They make you feel the weight of every decision. They make you feel the conflict within his soul, as violence slowly begins to rob him of his dream. It is a travesty that Serkis will probably never get the credit he deserves for his work. Many rightfully freaked out and applauded Serkis’ work with Lord of the Rings’ Gollum. But this? This is next level. This is going to be hard to top.

This Apes trilogy is the rare bird that has not only told a whole complete story – both within and across each of the three films – but has improved each time out. I thought Dawn for the Planet of the Apes would be the high mark. I only had to wait until the next film for it to be topped. War for the Planet of the Apes somehow feels more epic and more personal all at once. I never thought I would want to see these incredibly-well-rendered apes traverse across the snow, but good God, is it a beautiful fit. The Pacific Northwest vistas are breathtaking and yet powerfully communicate the forces the apes will always be up against.

But it all comes down to the ending, a landing that War not only sticks, but does so without even a hint of stumbling. Three movies worth of story lead up to this moment. The goosebumps are undeniable. Everyone involved with this Apes trilogy has accomplished the impossible: they have used CGI monkeys (along with brave, incredible actors) to tell an incredibly human story about freedom, loss, grief, and redemption. They have proven you can build a soul within the machine, and you can lay it bare in a fashion both entertaining and heartbreaking.

An Electric Feeling: Zoe Lister-Jones’ BAND AID

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When I first read the synopsis for Zoe Lister-Jones’ hilarious and achingly real directorial debut, Band Aid – “a struggling married couple turns their fights into songs and start a band” – I wondered how this musical journey would present itself. I expected something slightly awkward, a therapist tossing it out there it as a random, whimsical suggestion that somehow stuck. But I got something different, and far more honest.

Ben (Adam Pally) and Ann (Lister-Jones) have gone from an argument at home to couples therapy to a birthday party full of kids. They sneak off together only to have another argument. So they come back to the party. They pick up the nearby toy instruments. They start jamming while the toddlers crawl around them. Their made-up song is melodic and pretty, even if it’s about their fighting. It’s a silly moment, a release they so desperately need that leads to a realization they later stumble into: they had fun, and they should start a band and sing about more of these fights.

That something so random could come across so organically is a testament to Lister-Jones’ talents behind and in front of the camera, and to how incredible her and Adam Pally are at creating these very vibrant, relatable characters. They are given space throughout the film, to pause, to reflect, to despair, to do all the human things we can all relate to. They never once feel like anything less than totally real people.

Too often in relationship comedies we only get one side of the equation; we either get a couple that appears so great together that their problems feel rather lame and contrived, or they’re so miserable that we never understand why they’re together in the first place. A balance should be struck so that we, as an audience, have not just an interest in what happens to them, but so there’s also room for us to empathize with whatever decision they make. At that point, the only ending we can ask for is an honest one.

Along the way, Lister-Jones gives us several situations in which Anna and Ben are so close to making something beautiful, but they can’t quite get there. Something always goes awry. At one point the two of them go the beach and get high on mushrooms, thinking it will help their creative process. What results is Ben thinking of the most incredible song ever, which he desperately needs to get on paper before it disappears forever, only for Ann to provide him a sandwich to write his notes on. It’s agonizing to watch because they both look so happy (even if it’s drug-assisted), and yet they’re never quite able to carry that happiness over into a real life situation.

In between all of this, this movie is incredibly, bracingly funny. It never hurts to have Fred Armisen in your movie playing a weirdo, awkward character like he does so expertly, but Lister-Jones makes the comedy hit even harder with some sharp character-based laughs. I’ve always been a believer that a sharp tension between comedy and tragedy, between laughs and pathos, makes the flavors pop even more. Lister-Jones takes that dynamic and runs it throughout the entire film, making it as honest and enjoyable a movie as I’ve seen in a long time.

This is the first time I’ve posted about a movie in nearly 8 months. I’ve certainly seen many movies in that time. Some, like Mike Birbiglia’s Don’t Think Twice (an excellent double-feature with Band Aid), are still stuck in my brain, while many others have slowly slid out. It’s all become something of a blur. It all becomes visual noise in search of a signal. It’s like listening to a steadily-strummed, slightly drowsy acoustic guitar, and Band Aid is that moment when it’s suddenly plugged into an amp. It feels electric. It feels different. It feels alive.

At times I felt like characters were talking to me and pointing out my own flaws directly. Arguments sometimes sounded all too real. But it all felt honest, like Lister-Jones and her team were adamant about going past the interchangeable relationship details and diving deep into the why of how people like Anna and Ben could become so stuck. That it can do all this heavy lifting without breaking a sweat and being as funny as it is makes it something truly impressive. And the tunes. Man, the tunes are sweet.

When Ann and Ben create their songs together, you can feel the electricity, and it’s not just from their instruments. There’s something chemical and hard to replicate. They’re getting high off of each other and, as an audience, it’s hard not to get high off their improvised musical collaboration. It’s an electric feeling, the way it all combines into a greater whole, in which pain and frustration has a beautiful, cathartic release.

But then the moment’s over and it is so hard for them to replicate that feeling in the everyday life they live. They are constantly chasing moments, many of which only work when they happen organically. The few times Anna and Ben try to create a moment and force it into happening – like when they try to go ahead with their debut performance without a drummer to back them up, or when they do mushrooms to help their creative process – it comes completely undone and feels all the more crushing.

Towards the end of Band Aid, Ann and Ben have an absolutely brutal fight in which they both say things we’re not sure they’ll ever be able to move past. There is serious doubt of this relationship continuing, and it’s made all the more relatable by how carefully Lister-Jones paints their relationship and all its different shades. No punches are pulled. No emotional stones left unturned.

When we last see Ann and Ben, they’re motivated to move past about just singing about their arguments and want to think about writing a love song. But they’re both just so baffled at the idea of something so hard to wrap their arms around. They’re interrupted by the steady drip of a new leak in the house. At that point, the suggestion is clear: they’ll always have something to fix; but they’ve made a choice to do it together. It’s love. And for now, it’s all they need.

THE LEFTOVERS + THIS WORD NOW: The Guiding Mysteries

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The morning after watching and absorbing The Leftovers finale, I felt a certain kind of emotional hangover. I woke up to a different life, one irretrievably changed by the show. The world outside my apartment pulsed with emboldened color and mystery. The sun shined brighter. The grass gleamed greener.

I needed something to guide me back from a place of transformation to a place of reality. My brain craved not only a better, more efficient way to gasp and gulp at life, but to put it in expressive, actionable steps.

Water wouldn’t quench my thirst. I needed something more.

Owen and Jodi Egerton’s This Word Now sat on my shelf for weeks. I even renewed it with the library twice. I meant to read it at some point, and that morning, of all mornings, felt like just the right time.

Talk about serendipity.

While the Egertons have done a fantastic job of putting truly actionable and creative steps for a writer together (seriously: buy the book; every section traps your excuses and sends them to space), the best thing it does is change the way you think.

Prior to watching The Leftovers, I had a beef with one of its creators, Damon Lindelof. In several interviews over the years, he mentioned how he liked to give every character a secret. And while it sounded like a great writing tip, in execution, it often faltered. How could we care about characters when we didn’t know what they wanted? How could we have conflict? It seemed like a non-starter. It also led to him having a hand in blockbuster movies that had no lasting impact, big, giant light shows that slid off your brain as you exited the theater.

What Lindelof seems to have learned with The Leftovers is that you can have secrets and mysteries as long as the characters are compelling. It certainly helps to have great actors and directors tell your story. But we can go a long way from home if we’re at least somewhat interested in the people we’re riding along with.

But the biggest thing The Leftovers taught me is the same thing This Word Now reminded me, over and over: that there is truth and beauty in questions, mysteries, and the abstract. The Egertons use a David Lynch (who else?) quote to anchor their point:

Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch a little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.

– David Lynch

I would happily bet a six-pack of cold beer on a Texas summer afternoon that the quotes the Egerton’s use throughout the book are posted somewhere in their own home. They hit the truth of writing and storytelling so hard on the head you could build an entire house with those few nails.

Here is what I mean:

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.

– Gilda Radner

I couldn’t think of a better quote to drag me from my Leftovers emotional hangover into something I can work with. Delicious ambiguity.

There are several times throughout the show that the audience wonders if something is real or supernatural or there is some explanation they have yet to consider. But Lindelof, Tom Perrotta, and company did the best thing they could have: they refrained from giving their interpretation. Whatever way you think of it, they suggested, is just as real as the way anyone else thinks of it.

They definitely went deep and hooked some big fish. They took wild risks that paid off beautifully. They threw assassins, resurrections, and the Australian Outback at us, and all of it felt real because it all rang emotionally true.

The most meaningful passage, to me, of This Word Now comes from Owen, and it literally stopped me cold. I must have stared at the wall for a solid five minutes. Owen describes a white-and-brown dog his grandparents had, which he would play with when he visited them in England in the summers. One day he came home only to be informed that Norman had passed away. Distraught, Owen went upstairs, pulled out some paper and a pencil, and wrote about it:

“Then I was done,” he wrote, “the story complete – a simple, sentimental piece. There was nothing breathtakingly brilliant about the writing. But I felt better. I breathed easier. The writing had helped, but not in the way I had expected. I was no longer sick, but I had not answered a single one of my questions. Instead the story had given my questions and confusion a place to be.” (p. 98)

 The characters of The Leftovers are all struggling in the aftermath of the Sudden Departure. There is no explanation for what happened, and it leads to a lot of questions and confusion. But what this show – and the story it told – did, is give the characters and the audience a place to let their questions and confusion be. Without judgment. Without demand for answers. Just a place for it to exist.

Some critics, like The New Yorker’s Matthew Zoller-Seitz, had an intensely personal reaction to the show. You don’t get responses like this from your average Netflix or network TV show. And it’s only because Lindelof, Perrotta, and company so relentlessly and consistently went deep-sea fishing that they were able to bring up all of the emotions and the questions that followed.

“I had written stories before,” Owen continued, “but Norman’s story was a turning point. It was born from questions.

 There are countless ways into a story or essay, but I’m drawn to the cracks made by questions. Questions that would be cheapened by answers. I am convinced that a life is defined more by the questions we return to than the answers we can temporarily embrace. Those answers change, but we circle the questions again and again.” 

The best theme song the show uses – for Season 2 and, fittingly the season and series finale in Season 3 – is Ingrid DeMet’s “Let the Mystery Be”. It summed up the point of view of the characters, the creators, and the audience. What could have become maddening became freeing. What became freeing gave way to a sense of purpose and place in a way we never expected.

Everybody’s wonderin’ what and 
where they they all came from 
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go
When the whole thing’s done
But no one knows for certain
And so it’s all the same to me
I think I’ll just let the mystery be 

Another humdinger of a quote the Egertons include, of which slides right into The Leftovers so beautifully they cannot be separated:

Fiction’s purpose is not to explain the mystery, but to expand it.

– Tim O’Brien

So much of the show is an exploration of the stories we tell each other to give meaning to the things we cannot explain. But the most important thing, in as close to a mission statement as I imagine the show would venture, is the presence we provide each other. When Nora asks Kevin, after all they’ve been through if she believes him, he says, “Of course I do. You’re here.”

She smiles and says, “I’m here.”

Writing can be a lonely, isolating practice, but the tools we write with and the questions we have give us company. They surround us and goad us on, right until the end. They become so much a part of us that it feels criminal not to let the story out to the world. It has to come out. It has to have a place to be so the story can be passed on and envelop itself just as The Leftovers did me.

The title of the Egertons book comes from the beginning, when they inform us that we don’t need anything fancy to tell a story. We just need one word to start. And that’s it.

So when I finished This Word Now,  I felt emboldened to pursue the writing questions stuck in my head and to give them a place to be. In trying to revel in another five minutes of air-conditioning, I almost sidetracked myself before I even started. And then I remembered another quote Jodi and Owen used:

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.

– E.B. White

Here are the words to paper. Here is to This Word Now, a guide and mind-transformer I can’t recommend enough, and to The Leftovers, a show that merely a week later I already deeply miss.

Here’s to searching for and cycling back to the questions, and as Owen and Jodi remind us, we don’t need anything fancy. We don’t need a table or time or talent. We just need this word, and this one word to start.

Go.

AN ELUSIVE VICTORY: Lebron James, Damon Lindelof, and the Perilous Road to Greatness

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It’s June 21, 2012, and LeBron James is standing amongst his teammates on the bench, the final three minutes of Game 5 of the NBA Finals ticking down. His Miami Heat have throttled a young, upstart Oklahoma City Thunder team, blowing them out in their decisive fourth win. Just as the Thunder’s championship chances deflate, a balloon hopelessly shrinking, something else grows in size and wattage: Lebron James’ smile.

A smile we haven’t seen in years, at least nowhere near a basketball court.

He jumps up and down, chanting and laughing and soaking in the moment. It is, to the crowd and the TV audience, utterly contagious. The legacy of the King, born out of the gyms of Akron, Ohio, and a weight around his neck his entire career, has finally lifted. He has defeated, at least temporarily, the narrative that has dogged him his whole career. He is free.

As someone who remembers reading that first Sports Illustrated cover in February 2002, the one calling James “The Chosen One”, even as a high school junior, I felt as though I’d followed him every step of the way. I remembered the pressure to be Cleveland’s EVERYTHING his first years there. The constant calls of “not good enough”. It didn’t matter that he drug a hopelessly overmatched Cavalier team to the 2007 Finals, and it wasn’t enough that his Miami Heat super-team had lost in the 2011 Finals the year before. The narrative became so suffocating – he had no clutch gene, that he would disappear in key moments, that he didn’t want to be a leader – that James no longer appeared to enjoy basketball. It didn’t matter the stats or how well he took care of his superhuman body; he would always be compared to Michael Jordan, an unfair and pointless comparison. It would never be enough.

In the face of all of that, I watched random Heat games on TV not as a fan of the team, but as a witness. Those who knew basketball did their best to warn us all: that James had reached new gears, ascending to the new heights of his basketball powers. I knew something special was happening. I had to see it for myself so I could tell my grandchildren one day. Still, it was never enough. The failures of the past, though not entirely his fault, would not be forgiven by anything but an NBA Championship hoisted above his head. That’s the myth the sportswriters wrote.

But when the finals seconds ticked off the clock  of that Game 5 and James finally won that championship? Pure, unbridled joy.  “You know,” James said after the game, “my dream has become a reality now, and it’s the best feeling I ever had.”

I felt the same way with Damon Lindelof as his incredible The Leftovers eased its way toward the series finale. I could tell – from the word of mouth of many television critics I greatly respected – that this show was approaching or operating on a level of greatness we don’t often see. It was something to behold. And behold it I did, soaking up 27 episodes in a less than a week, a flurry I would happily absorb again.

In between episodes and reading the recaps on AV Club, Vox, and UPROXX, memories hit me of watching those third season LOST episodes (to my memory, the best season the show had to offer) one week at a time with my college friends. We would huddle in the dorm lobby, watch with gasps, laughs, and groans, and spend the entire following week discussing what everything meant and what we thought would happen. But the mystery slow began to unravel, and we all grew weary of it. We lost faith. By the time the 6th and final season rolled around, I found myself on the outside looking in. I felt like the answers would never come. Only more questions. But I buckled in, caught up with the mysteries, and watched that finale.

I had never been more enraged at a work of art in my life.

Many people felt the same. We felt cheated. But LOST had also guided itself into a narrative corner it could not transcend, just like LeBron found himself on a Cavaliers team in 2007 that he could not possible maximize any further, leading him to take his talents down to South Beach.

From there, it felt like something of a creative stumble, a walk of penance through the desert. Lindelof took the brunt of the blame (along with co-showrunner Carlton Cuse). Still smarting from the LOST finale response, Lindelof went on to write several movies, all of which suffered the same problems as LOST: maintaining a game of mystery until the very end, at the expense of characters acting stupid and being impossible to relate to, only for the secrets to be a collective wet fart.

So my only hope with this Leftovers finale was that Lindelof would get some that same moment James had in 2012, when the clock would be ticking down, and he would feel like the veil, the dark harness, had been lifted. Just like James had become a much better, decisive, and efficient basketball player playing alongside the Big 3 and with a class organization like the Heat, Lindelof appeared to be emboldened by his collaboration with novelist Tom Perrotta and his fantastic writer’s room. His decisions had purpose. When he withheld information, he knew exactly why they were doing it. I saw confidence and wisdom in his representation of the show that I never saw with LOST.

I have no way of knowing how Lindelof feels about his show now, but I know many, many critics and viewers (myself included) loved it. It tied the show up as only it could. Even better – it pushed itself into the pantheon of all-time great finales with Nora Durst’s finale monologue, leaving the audience to guess if she told the truth or not. And while I am highly mindful that an entire writer’s room worked together to create this special, final episode of television, Lindelof’s name, fair or not, will always be associated with it.

LeBron will likely never get the credit he deserves, and neither will Damon. There will always be someone hungering to take them down, another false narrative propped up for clicks and retweets. It will never be enough.

But for now? It’s time to celebrate. Greatness, long so elusive, has been achieved.

A Blast to Behold: JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2

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One night in Spokane, an old college professor of mine set up a screening at the Magic Lantern. For the longest time, the Magic Lantern was the only real place in Spokane to see the independent films I often sought out. On this particular night, my professor was hosting a screening of Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men. I don’t remember the particular reason for it being shown (other than being a stone-cold classic), but what I have always remembered – even 6 years later – are the gunshot sound effects. When Clive Owen is desperately trying to guide Key and her baby Diego through a greyed-out war zone, the constant, terrifying buzz of war is punctuated by some of the loudest gun shots I have ever heard or felt in a theater. Each one sounded like it hurt. Like it meant something. Like there was no way it could be fired without lives immediately being attached to it.

I had never heard gunshots like that in a theater until John Wick: Chapter 2.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

There’s a lot of things that John Wick: Chapter 2 does well – it stages clear, dynamic action in ever-escalating, always unique ways, it injects small doses of clever, dark humor, and it has far more fun (and success) with subtitles than it does actual translation – but the best special effect the movie uses is the most analog: the percussive, never-quite-numbing sound of gunshots. They sound fresh. They sound alive. They sound like the true enemy of silence.

This film sees John Wick send 128 men to the grave. That’s a lot of bullets. All of them feel so emphatic as to beg you to find deeper meaning in the sound. There’s barely a soundtrack beneath the gun shots; there doesn’t need to be. It provides it’s own score, an accumulation of sin and occasional good, dirty fun.

The most impressive thing this movie does is that it willingly divorces itself from what sets it apart. The first John Wick introduced a delightful concept in the Continental Hotel – a place where assassins could gather under the one rule they cannot do business on the premises. Chapter 2 takes the concept a few steps further by introducing a Continental chain that at least extends to Europe, as well as its own money system. It even peppers in bits of mythology – always mentioned, but never a victim of exposition – that only ratchet up the giddy fun the movie always threatens to break out into.

And then it throws it all away. It gives us a John Wick who, aside from his adorable new dog, truly has nothing. It announces its ending and its possible future with story intent as loud as the gun shots that echo throughout it. Who knows where the story will lead? But the shots tell us all we need to know: these guys aren’t screwing around; they’re playing for keeps.