... And Everything Nice: Part Four

Say something nice, or nothing at all. This piece continues the review of 2014 releases begun here, and continued here and over here. Spoilers abound, large and small. I also clearly don’t apply too strict a notion of what “2014” is.

The Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance) – Generational sagas come few and far between, so it’s refreshing to see one ably pulled off within a manageable length. See this one to witness how to pass the protagonist baton not just once but twice within the same film. The first handoff in particular stands out, as the film’s two top-billed actors share a beat of eye contact moments before one exits the narrative for good. Also worth noting is the use of the forest location to gather in the sprawling timeframe. Seemingly incidental at first, the woods gather force as the years roll on, witness to a history the characters themselves are often unaware of.

Prisoners (Dennis Villeneuve) – If transcendent horror pushes beyond fear of a monster and finds the monster within the fearful, Hugh Jackman’s arc in particular fits the bill ably. Johannes Johannssen’s score – taking Arvo Part as its starting point – is a model of how to raise the stakes of a film to the highest possible concerns, rising beyond the bumps and stings of a thriller to strengthen the film’s emphasis on the spiritual. The union of his music with Roger Deakins’ golden light in the candlelit vigil makes that sequence and the chase that follows one of the strongest in 2014 cinema. The closing beat of the film similarly leaves an impression. What a beautiful sound idea that whistle in the dark proves to be, ending the film on the cusp of a moment that – as much as we want to see, we’re better left anticipating, fearful that it might not have come to fruition. 

Room 237 (Rodney Ascher) – It’s said that the paranoid are rewarded for their faith with evidence that the world is as bad as they believe. If nothing else this film proves (via extremes) how two-sided the film-audience dialogue is. No film’s meaning is independent of the viewer, or at least not The Shining in any case. Much could be said of the fine line between evidence furnishing and parody that this film’s editing straddles. It allows us to entertain the possibility that The Shining essayists are actually onto something, while leaving the door wide open for us to laugh at the ridiculousness of their theses. (Why not have a cake and eat it?)

A personal anecdote that proved the film’s point. Interrupted late film by a phone call, I found myself explaining Heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty principle’ over the phone in response to something my interlocutor brought up. I returned to the film only to have the film conclude with an explanation of the same idea as its concluding thought. Coincidence? Surely not. Doors in the house were double-bolted that night.

The Amazing Spiderman 2: The Rise of Electro (Marc Webb) – Many criticised this film as lacking a coherent narrative centre for its charming romance to orbit. I saw a charming romantic centre around which a few marginally-coherent villains orbited. To me this was a nice change from the villain-antagonist emphasis of the superhero form, and a sensible response to the perceived strengths of its predecessor (romance strong; villain arc weak), even if it was the unintentional outcome of a haphazard process. Not that the villains are a complete waste of time. The visualisation of Electro is truly beautiful, and his first clash with Spiderman in Times Square a reminder that there is very little that can’t be rendered in today's visuals. The film is also blessed with a rare traditional superhero score by Hans Zimmer’s team, including a Vangelis-style theme for Spiderman and a bold (if not quite revolutionary – don’t tell Hans) use of vocals for Jamie Foxx’s Electro. Between this and Interstellar, Zimmer’s had a striking presence in film this year.

The film also contains one of my favourite associative edits of late – Lucy’s animals notwithstanding. The climactic struggle is situated amongst an abstract cathedral of clocks, which collapse dramatically in slow motion around the action. As a beloved character falls to their death, the stop of their falling body is echoed with the collapse of a giant clock’s minute hand. Subtle it’s not. Visual storytelling it is.

Saving Mr Banks (John Lee Hancock) – Another film people were dying to hate, and to be fair, portraying PL Travers (Emma Thompson) as The-Grinch-who-wants-to-keep-you-from-the-Poppins-you-love isn’t likely to tilt the audience towards the author. But biopics always play fast and loose with the facts, and this isn’t so much about Travers as about the idea that artworks inspire responses that often bemuse the artist. Fight as you might, once it’s out there, it will be what people make of it.

Two beats stood out for me. When the Grinch arrives in California, like all characters heading for a comic reduction, she’s full of opinions about what she can’t stand about Americans, film producers and cloying, animated musicals. Her first encounter with her antagonist, the Little Lord of Magic (Hanks’ Walt Disney) thrusts her into everything she hates, and it’s hard to suppress a smile at her suffering. The second beat is stranger, and more sympathetic to Travers. As Disney’s Elves (the Sherman Brothers) present Travers with their satirical song ‘Fidelity Fiduciary Bank’, she recalls her shame at one of her father’s (Colin Farrell) drunken outbursts. The intercutting of the song’s inception with Farrell’s public shaming is eye-catching, tying the film’s two narratives together with striking energy.

Part Five follows here.

... And Everything Nice: Part Three

Say something nice, or nothing at all. 

This piece continues the review of 2014 releases begun here and continued here. The films covered here include some of the finer films of the year, and this may be a reach, but all of them place strong emphasis on unveiling narrative 'ghosts' (those backstory elements that surface as central to the story).

Notes: Spoilers abound, large and small. (Accordingly, some references border on cryptic.) I clearly don’t apply too strict a notion of what “2014” is. Even to other Antipodeans, several of the below will look like 2013 and 2012 releases. Finally, the positivity constraint need not apply to any who comment on this article.

Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-Ho) – Truly if there’s an ‘uncanny valley’ in 2014 cinema, it has to be this fusion of graphic novel aesthetics, Marxist politics, environmental dystopia and setpiece-driven suicide mission. I understand the disconnect more sensible minds experienced when they encountered this, but after a week juggling fever and wine tastings (in Adelaide of all places), the sweet notes outweighed the jarring chords. Cockroach protein bars; sniffable narcotic fuel crystals; the ‘cutting of the fish’ as prelude to slaughter; the circumnavigation salute; the danse macabre violin waltz as eggs are circulated to one and all and bullets re-enter the narrative; the impossible glance and firefight between the cars of a train arcing around a corner; Marco Beltrami’s carrying of the Jerry Goldsmith flame. A memorable ensemble too: great to see Song Kang-Ho (the beating heart of Bong’s The Host) used so well.

All of these are decorative, and perhaps secondary to the broader dramatic arc we go on with Chris Evans’ protagonist. The film takes advantage of the assumptions we place on heroes like this, and this blond-haired blue-eyed revolutionary has a monologue at the three quarter mark that bloods the stereotype memorably. Revolution is not uncomplicated in this world (even if the same can’t be said for what it’s attacking). Another highlight is the ‘sound of the engine’ beat – I don’t know if the moment quite worked (the metaphor is not so much mixed as naked), but I have to admire a film that puts that idea at its climax. Such a film is more than a dumb action movie.

Le Passe (Asghar Farhadi) – There’s an older post on this blog (lamentably incomplete) on how effectively Farhadi’s script utilises the framework and beats of the detective genre. (Quite likely without any intention of doing so, in much the same way his A Separation ups-the-ante on the courtroom battle stories.) This was pitch perfect filmmaking on every level. If we went into every thing it did right, we’d be here all day. Some things to watch for: deep focus compositions that allow the cast to breathe; realism without shakey-cam; an opening that beautifully flags the issues ahead without the symbols showing too clearly; a discrete colour arc; the metaphorical setting (a house mid-paintjob); great performances at all ages. The most graceful touch of all: a style shift to formalism worthy of Bresson as we finally meet the ghost whose unhappy wake we’ve witnessed.

Farhadi already showed in A Separation that he doesn’t need bad guys to generate dramatic conflict, and that instinct shows in his crafting of the characters. The film consistently turns left when other films would turn right. (Take the unease we naturally feel when Ahmad – Ali Mosaffa – is left in the care of children not his own, and how it’s subverted by what a natural Ahmad is with the kids.)  Perhaps the ablest hattrick is the passing of the ball between protagonists over the course of the film. Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) is the right perspective to bring us into this world, and when others take over the torch to lead us to the self-revelation, most viewers will never notice that it’s happened.

Gone Girl (David Fincher) – Whoever said ‘a couple is a conspiracy in search of a crime’ might have been thinking about a story like this. Many films blend genres together effectively. Few pass the ball entirely from one form to another, and seeing it done well is reason enough to see this. Here the genre baton is passed from the most poe-faced of forms, thriller/crime, to the least sincere, social satire, both well suited to the feeling of emotional detachment Fincher’s films often convey. Many staples of satire appear in memorable forms – the preacher whose teachings leave us outraged (Anna Ratajkowski); the innocent who exits the stage screaming at the insanity of the system on our behalf (Carrie Coon); the sardonic trickster who knows better than to expect sane results (Terry Perry).

Perhaps the characterisation most native to satire is that of Amy (Rosamund Pike). We can lament that the film tilts sympathetically towards Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) – Amy’s psychotic status nullifying most of her criticisms of him – or we can relish the film’s awe of this impressive antagonist. When she wanders up that garden path, drenched in blood, and her husband insists on a naked shower with her for his own safety, I could only smile, and it took a while before I stopped. You have more to fear than the safety of your bunnies with this partner in crime.

I’m not sure the film tears marriage apart. Rather it seems to be saying that even under absurd circumstances, it's necessary for survival. That theme is written all over that ending, but perhaps the strongest hint is in that mid-film encounter Amy has with trailer park America. It takes two to take on the world, and when she gets that math wrong, even this superwoman is vulnerable.

The Homesman (Tommy Lee Jones) – SPOILERS (worse than usual) - I don’t know that I really appreciated what Alfred Hitchcock pulled off in Psycho, ripping out the protagonist without killing the film, until I saw this adaptation of Glendon Swarthout’s novel. True, this is a double journey (between Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones), so the loss of a key character is mitigated somewhat, but it’s the more important character that we lose, and I had no hint that it was coming. The way the film carries on despite that loss perhaps is not so surprising – from early on some truly disturbing images are laid out in so casual a manner that we see these moments for what they are, rather than the melodramatic value they’d normally bring to a story. The time jumps are handled similarly, the kinks are somehow abrupt, yet not – perhaps influenced by Jones’ collaboration with Guillermo Arriaga (Three Burials).

There are deep ironies in this material. That the same behaviours exhibited by women and men will be seen as madness in the former and strength in the latter. That figures of strength might fall to depression more readily than more obviously fragile cases. And as far as prize-worthy final images go, this film has a beauty. A drunken man tries to lose himself in revels and gunplay as he drifts across a river into darkness. It caps off a strangely ambiguous final scene that seems to be saying that the redemptions so many films offer us are not possible here. (What makes it an  ambiguous scene is that we don't have a character revelation to experience this through. Normally films use empathy with a character's learning as a way to tell us what they're trying to say. Our point of view is separate to anyone else's in the scene. Truly perhaps this is what is meant by 'letting the audience discover something for themselves', although the risk is that discovery is less assured.)

Marco Beltrami does lovely work in a folk-hymnal idiom, connecting to the time and mourning the disappointment of its ideals.

The Rover (David Michod) – I suspect one’s enjoyment of this film depends on foreknowledge of the destination. If you know where it’s going, as I did, the title becomes an apt pun, and more importantly, the protagonist’s desire line becomes a lot less opaque. Brooding silences take on a clear subtext, someone’s motivation becomes clear, and seemingly unrelated environmental details – the way dogs bark in the background as Guy Peace’s anger comes to the fore, or a brief glimpse of a dog shelter – point towards the film’s unstated ‘ghost’. Without that knowledge, you’d assume more was going on than is, the coda would be a letdown, and the film would have to stand on its decorative merits. (Which are considerable, starting with that seamless shift from metal-popping opening underscore to the sound atmosphere of the opening scene.) Fortunately that experience wasn’t mine, and I appreciated Michod’s slow but limited unveiling of this dystopian society.

Part 4 follows here.

... And Everything Nice: Part Two

Say something nice, or nothing at all. This piece continues the review of 2014 releases begun here. The films covered here include Mockingjay, Cannes favourite Force Majeure, and the duelling Oscar bait biopics, The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything.

Notes: Spoilers abound, large and small. (Accordingly, some references border on cryptic.) I clearly don’t apply too strict a notion of what “2014” is. Even to other Antipodeans, several of the below will look like 2013 and 2012 releases. Finally, the positivity constraint need not apply to any who comment on this article.

The Best Offer (Giuseppe Tornatore) – It’s a strange alternative universe of wealth, classical elegance, and ubiquitous art that Tornatore and his collaborators build as the setting for this modern noir thriller. Another of 2014’s great acousmetres lies at the heart of the film’s mystery, and unlike the other two (Her, The Lunchbox), the unveiling of the source of the voice of Claire Ibbetson (Sylvia Hoeks) is critical to the story. From a voice on the phone, to one on the other side of a door, to a visual presence whose lips finally speak, few character introductions were as carefully attenuated in recent film as this one.

Many relate how moved they were by Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso. (A film I saw for the first time within a week of seeing this one.) For me this tale of a proud man's humbling was far more moving. Largely this comes down to the role as written and the work of Geoffrey Rush, but the performance has sway in part because of the strength of the audio-visual work around it. A brief example. There’s a scene early on where Virgil (Geoffrey Rush) luxuriates in a hidden vault with his life's work – portraits of women by many artists, in many styles, gathered illegitimately by virtue of his position as a valuer. As Tornatore’s camera takes in the wall of beauties, Ennio Morricone’s score offers us not so much a piece of music as a space where female soli of different styles float through, carrying parts of a long line melody. Virgil’s blindspot in relation to women, and his need for genuine contact in this regard, have been unmistakeably communicated by the scene’s end, without a word uttered. (The subsequent cut to the many young men who staff his office serves to underline the point.)

A Hijacking (Tobias Lindholm) – Much as I appreciate Captain Phillips, this film succeeds by being everything Phillips was not. If the Greengrass film is about the timeframe of crisis that mobilises all players, this is about the slower war of attrition that is likely involved when the United States doesn’t take an active interest. There is no Pax Americana to force a climax. Corporate executives, consultants and a translator (employed by pirates) trade gesture and counter-gesture without direct communication. There is no pulse-racing ship-seizing setpiece. The inciting incident of piracy happens offscreen. The effortless crosscutting that instantly communicates scene geography and stakes in Greengrass's film is gone. Instead, we’re often stuck on one side of a phone call, deprived of a clear sense of the circumstances of what is happening in the other story branch. Violence is rare, and comes without tense foreplay or catharsis. But the realist feel Lindholm cultivates is much stricter than Greengrass’s more classical approach, so when the violence does come, its implications are more keenly felt.

Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund) – While few would describe the film as a comedy, the chuckles of embarrassment that circulated my cinema spoke to the way people identified with Tomas’s reduced stature as cowardly father. The rift that forms between Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and his wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and children over a failure of valour lowers the man to a moment of emotional honesty so embarrassing one can only laugh. The satire is broader than the role of the father – few figures escape unscathed, and it's not exactly gentle ribbing at that.

The film is immaculate in its direction. Ostlund crafts some truly uncomfortable frames for his characters to squirm in. He applies a clear visual strategy that speaks to the story - from their first grinning moments in posed family portraits, the family is pushed apart to separate focal planes and separate frames. (Only Tomas’ meltdown brings them together again.) Much like the daily cycle suffered by Roy Scheider in All that Jazz, the repeated instrusions of avalanche guns and snatches of Vivaldi each new day brings add a dash of malicious humour. And I love the landing where Tomas and Ebba argue in their pyjamas, in plain sight of hotel cleaners – effective use of place. What possibly elevates the film as a dissection of marriage over Gone Girl is the added pressure brought by the presence of children, the absence of pulpy signifiers, and most important of all, Ebba is a human being, rather than a psychopath.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her (Ned Benson) – The idea, of splitting a drama between two films, is certainly interesting. (Not having seen them both, I can’t say whether the whole makes more sense than this half.) One thing you can say for this film is its invested in its characters and milieu (university town America), to the point where the characters find the time to talk about the minutiae of life. Jessica Chastain is the heart of this one as the title suggests, McEvoy a more tangential presence. The supporting players are nothing if not distinguished (Isabelle Huppert, William Hurt, Viola Davis, among others).

12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen) – It will seem a small thing, but the transitional rhythms of this film lingered in my memory. One in particular: the sermon of a slave owner (Benedict Cumberpatch) interwoven visually and aurally with the abuses of his farm manager (Paul Dano) and the percussion of seed sowing. It’s a passage that’s indicative of the film. The vision is not without its adornments. For all the praise of realism (and the long, unfolding wide shots certainly bring that neutral observer feel during some key abuses), I couldn’t help but feel the extent to which McQueen and his team nudged the material towards dark fairy tale, or even horror story. You could be taken in the night, have your identity stolen and toil ceaselessly as a slave without hope of escape. That cacophonously percussive steamboat is a passageway to another world. (The frequency with which reviews emphasized its metaphorical import is telling.) The long shot on Solomon’s face as he leaves the plantation is a nice stylistic answer to that earlier scene. 

(What’s also interesting is how forward the filmmakers were about the structural shift in the editing process from linear-chronological to a loose flashback/storyteller structure.)

The Infinite Man (Hugh Sullivan) – Not the first film this year to fuse science fiction and love (Her, I Origins and The One I Love also come to mind). The opening montage is full of potential, hinting at threads and motifs both perplexing and inviting. The location – an abandoned hotel in a desert, near an ocean – is appropriately cast for a romantic-comedic Last Year at Marienbad. The premise (a man, through science, tries to recreate the perfect weekend), and the first narrative reset (of many), are thought-provoking.

The Imitation Game (Morten Tyldum) – Like many biopics, this one utilises a detective structure (and even a detective) to find its way into the life of Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberpatch). He’s an enigma, but fear not, the film will decode him in time. The condensed arena in which that decoding is achieved is worth noting – we don’t even meet the parents that are normally a staple of this genre.

Two recurring features of this screenplay (as filmed) I appreciated. Despite the stakes, and the sense of tragedy they want to build by the end, scene after scene are advanced through comic beats. Turing, written and played as Asperghers, is a machine comic, always under-emoting or fixating to humourous effect.

The second feature is the layering of the film’s theme of coded communication through all the story branches and relationships. A code like Enigma could fall to Turing, but he forever struggles with the social codes those are around him are fluent in. The theme extends to include both the power and powerlessness that come with understanding a code.

A few more decorative observations. The time period switches aren’t signposted, yet always apprent. At times I wish they’d allowed some other aspects of the material (such as the all important birth of the computer, or one particular oft-repeated line of dialogue) to speak for themselves. (But I forget myself – that wasn’t entirely nice.) And Alexandre Desplat is incisive as ever, his delicately orchestrated reserved arpeggios and ostinati seemingly made for terrain like this.

Theory of Everything (James Marsh) – A tribute to filmmaking’s ongoing commitment to the Noah’s Ark principle (two of everything, even biopics of pivotal British intellectuals), this is a more sentimentally uplifting experience than Imitation Game. If that film was a detective story, this is a love story, following the gravitational pull two bodies (Steven and Jane Hawking, played by Edie Redmayne and Felicity Jones respectively) continue to have on each other many years after first flirting with each other’s orbits.

The theme of the awkward, essential marriage is never far away in this film, whether it be the marriage of Steven (ever the teaser, ever flexible in his assumptions) and Jane (sensitive and constant), of science and faith, or quantum mechanics and relativity (those peas and potatoes). The filmmakers should be commended for slipping in more than a few references to Hawking’s area of expertise. Was the intercutting of the camping trip with the opera melodramatic hokum, or an ingenious demonstration of the ‘spin’ proposition of quantum mechanics on a level more easily understood? I also appreciated the closing nod to Hawking’s oft-employed thought experiment of reversing time, applied here to the narrative universe. (Appropriate to Hawking’s theory, the endpoint is not the inciting incident, but the point of no return, since his Big Bang was preceded by a Big Crunch.)

More decorative thoughts. Redmayne’s gormless smile is hard to resist, as is Jones’ patience and vulnerability. Johan Johannson’s score finds ways to fall in empathetically behind the characters – in particular during the croquet game, and the melodrama of their third child’s christening. The imagery of Steven and Jane struggling with domestic life has a more real air than Imitation Game’s mise-en-scene (and I’m not just talking about the faux home video material that bridges narrative movements), although perhaps that’s quibbling over shades of classicism. (The film softens the experience of Lou Gehrig’s disease if only by cutting out the boring bits.)

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 (Francis Lawrence) – It was brave of the filmmakers to retain the highly subjective point of view of the book. (It must have been tempting to violate it.) This series also shines over all other comers in its genre in the strength of its casting, with Julianne Moore a worthy addition here. Many have concentrated on the fact that the source material shouldn’t have been cut in half, and the film doesn’t entirely prove them wrong, but the filmmakers have done a nice job of creating a new climax through intercutting of the commando assault with the dialogue between Snow (Donald Sutherland) and Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence). After so singular a narrative point of view, the parallel cutting here instantly introduces tension. Lawrence has a good sense of shaping an image system to a film – note the realignment towards symmetrical framing in the final shots as gesture of completion. (The same tactic closed the equally unresolved Catching Fire.)

Many of the tale’s commendable features come from the underlying novel, but they’ve made it to the screen well. The rebellion of District 13 is more complicated than the usual jingoistic freedom movements that pop up in these tales (e.g. everything from Total Recall to Braveheart). This is closer to Borges’ ‘Theme of the Traitor and the Hero’.  That the seemingly superficial terrain of celebrity culture continues to be the proving ground for success, now that Katniss is not only far from the Games, but removed from the authority of Panem, is supremely ironic. Few films foreground the ironies of acting and performance credibility as much as this series, best summed up in a scene where a number of deconstruct Katniss’s performance in studio-based propaganda videos. It’s nice to see ‘The Hanging Tree’ musical number made it. It’s one of the film’s highlights.

How I Live Now (Kevin McDonald) – The title is the last line of the film’s voiceover. It marks the end of what proves to be a momentous character journey. There are shades of Peter Watkins’ scenario in The War Game here, war positioned in the wings of a young American’s coming of age narrative. (Cate Shortland’s film Lore comes to mind also.) As played by Saoirse Ronan, Daisy’s indignant, insistent, self-loathing and fearful, qualities that have all convincingly been softened by tale’s end.

I appreciated the symmetry between the first act and the closing movement. We start with a young woman, with all the confusions the beauty and health industries can impact, coaxed out of prickly reticence by the eldest of her cousins. We end with position reversal, she now the coaxer, trying to draw a shellshocked young man back to life. It’s a moving transition, and while Daisy is a world away from Hunger Games’ Katniss in personality, it will be interesting to see how many register the similarity of destination when that film series comes to a rest in 2015.

There’s a nice arc in use of the voices in the soundtrack: from the cacophonic voices of admonition at the opening that keep her from participating in the pastoral life of her more expansive cousins, to the mature, reflective internal voiceover with which she closes the film. The midsection – in particular that strange dinner scene – is genuinely surreal, and speaks to the believable universe the film constructs.

Part 3 of ‘Everything Nice’ follows here.

... And Everything Nice

It’s often said: if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all. This constraint would halt many a film pen, and probably my own, perhaps because the analytical temperament tends to be more incisive about acute flaws than general strengths. My enthusiasm is rarely unguarded, and my derision rarely allows room for a saving grace. If a film is good, it would have been better if only for ‘x’; if a film is bad, there was nothing good about it. (And occasionally, if a film is great, we’ll not hear a bad word said about it.)

But film is a form of many levers, many moments. It shouldn’t be too hard to find something nice to say about even the least of them. Perhaps the constraint – ‘speak well, or not at all’ – will free us up to emphasize the elements that do work. It could be as simple as a shot, a music cue, an edit, a line of dialogue, a dramatic situation or a theme. It would be an unworthy film indeed that taught us nothing at all about the form, or contained no single positive demonstration of why film continues to capture our imaginations.

We’ll start with a handful of the titles I saw in 2014. (Yes, there are more of these to come.) Notes: Spoilers abound, large and small. (Accordingly, some references border on cryptic.) I clearly don’t apply too strict a notion of what “2014” is. Even to fellow Antipodeans, several of the below will look like 2013 and 2012 releases. Finally, the positivity constraint need not apply to comments on this article. Say anything – it need not be nice, merely on topic.

Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu) – A social horror story, a tragedy of people and systems, and a convincing portrait of character change, as the nervous Voichita takes on Alina’s fearlessness. That change in character aspect is evident in much of the film’s form, not least the journey from the fretful handheld overshoulder shot that opens the film to the controlled slow zoom that closes it. The film’s realism is key to the accumulating sense of foreboding, and it’s very different to the kind of realism we’ve. And it’s an elegant realism – showcasing restricted point of view, open frames, long takes and precise deep focus staging that belies its unchoreographed feel.

The Lunchbox (Ritesh Batra) – A true city film: loneliness is the only constant, intimacy is only possible with strangers, and what little solace can be had is transient. As strong as it all is, the pleasure is in the detail. The gentle humour of manners (‘the food was too salty today’). The mental image of a man standing in his grave. The food. And 2014’s nicest use of the acousmetre character in Ila’s unseen ‘aunty’ (apologies to Spike Jonze). In the spirit of In the Mood for Love and Brief Encounter, sharing their affinity for social texture.

The Immigrant (James Gray) – It’s nice to see Todd Haynes isn’t the only modern American filmmaker interested in bringing back the melodrama. As monstrous antagonists go, Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix) is a fascinating, broken human. The final frame, of diverging character paths, is worthy of a mise-en-scene class.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (Bryan Singer) – A great reworking of the graphic novel into blockbuster form, using Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) as the fish out of water. More than any of its series so far, this film tapdanced in showing off the mutant powers of its characters. One of these moments was a lovely theatre moment, as a crisis allows the powers of Quicksilver (Evan Peters) to come to the fore. The appreciative noises that ripple around a cinema when an audience knows what is about to happen (yet still manage to be surprised) are great to hear. The demonstration is so effective, the film had to shuffle the character offscreen shortly after, lest his gifts circumvent all other remaining crises. Most of the other set pieces are less soloistic, each written to take optimal advantage of the impressive ensemble cast. (The opening battle, the Pentagon heist and the Paris Peace conference all come to mind.) The 'lowest point' moment, when Young Charles (James McEvoy) finds consolation in his future self (Patrick Stewart), is surprisingly moving, as is the outcome of Wolverine's quest.

Begin Again (John Carney) – A nice twist on showing the same scene twice from different points of view, managing to illustrate the difference between how most of us hear a musician, and how a music producer might. The first performance of ‘Lost Stars’, travelling through a video camera to the past, is moving. The same song, when it emerges in a new incarnation for the finale, becomes the marker of story change. Some would begrudge Carney shifting away from the realism of Once, but there’s something to be said for trying something he hadn't done before. (Arguably this film's romantic streak was anticipated in Once's nighttime walking song number.)

Non-Stop (Jaume Collet-Serra) – The premise – ‘a plane passenger will die every 20 minutes or else’ – is set up with the kind of skill that these films can’t live without. When, at the twenty-minute mark, the first passenger does die, after a close quarter fight in a toilet cubicle, it’s a surprisingly lean-forward moment.  

Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel + Ethan Coen) – A film wrapped around a ghost, represented by the song ‘Fare thee Well’. The shift in character of that song from first to final appearance tells you most of what you need to know, but which the Coens are expecting you to find for yourself. As with A Serious Man, interesting things are happening with structure here. (Another nice twist on showing the same scene twice from different points of view.) The time loop adds a sense closure to an episodic narrative, a sense of inevitability to Llewyn’s final state, and generate empathy with one of recent cinema’s pricklier protagonists. Kudos for the ‘Kuleshov cat’ subway scene.

Godzilla (Gareth Evans) – The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead of monster films? While the monsters settle ancient accounts, mankind cowers confusedly in the wings. The angle is a nice idea, done well. Some of the details are striking too – the association between the ribbing of Godzilla’s spine and the shape of the film’s mushroom clouds; the allegro of the opening credits; the strangely serene climactic moment. (The latter two enormously aided by Alexandre Desplat.)

Lucy (Luc Besson) – Scarlet Johannson has played the goddess more than once lately (Her, Under the Skin). Of the lot, Lucy has the most visibly-apparent outward arc. But even the commitment she brings to the film pales next to the film’s real pleasure: 2014’s greatest associative edits. There’s not a lot of common ground between Nicholas Roeg and Luc Besson, but intercutting predatory cheetahs with Lucy’s foyer scene might have done it. I only wish the film had kept it up.

Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson) – If you find Andersonland amenable rather than irritating, you’re never short on gestures to relish. Gustave and Zero, both the characters and the characterisations (Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori and F Murray Abraham). Boy with Apple. The concerto for footsteps that ends in four severed fingers. The Society of the Crossed Keys – for which Desplat must be partly credited. Lessons in comic framing in three aspect ratios, reminding us that frame shape is more of a choice than most filmmakers make it. Lessons in instantly communicating storyframe through style choices. The conclusion’s deft closure of three of the film’s storytelling frames in half a minute is a feat of punctuation. The film’s dramatic side is just as strong. Gustave’s rage and subsequent shame after the prison break. More impressive: the elegiac endnote the filmmakers find their way to after so much tomfoolery. In this picture-book alternative Mitteleuropa, the heavy-hearted history of Europe is barely seen, but not unfelt.

Parts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of this series follow here, here, here, here and here respectively.

Unlikely Detectives: Le Passe (spoilers), Part 1

I suspect Le Passe is a film that would play well whether you knew its secrets in advance or not. But don't take the risk that it might not be. Farhadi's screenplay handles its chain of reveals beautifully, and shouldn't be spoiled. If you haven't seen it, don't read this.

To require the services of a detective, there must be a crime, or at least a mystery that points to the likelihood of one. Something has usually happened, the story starting in media res, and only a detective can discern the truth of it. Many films are haunted by backstory, but few are as enslaved by the past as detective stories. And so it is appropriate that one of the most elegantly-written detective stories in some time is Asghar Farhadi's Le Passe.

Early on in the film, two key characters back out of a parking spot and run into something. In this story, the characters can hardly make a move without running into the past. They ignore it at their peril. Towards the end of the story, when one character declares 'I don't want to go back to the past' after all that has come to light, it's hard to see how such an attitude is possible.

Farhadi's A Separation won deserved acclaim for its layered presentation of a civil dispute. Others talk about making films where there are no villains, but in that film Farhadi showed what that really meant, allowing the audience to empathise with all sides of a conflict to such an extent that the desire for a resolution went away. If there are winners, then there are losers, and when you see where everyone is coming from, there's little appetite to see anyone lose.

If A Separation was a courtroom drama without a courtroom, Le Passe is a detective story without a badge or a chalk outline. This piece will step through some of the key aspects of detective stories in terms how they appear in this film: the detective, the investigation, the crime, the criminal, and the ghost. The film fuses the procedural form with a family drama to the benefit of both forms, so its variations on these genre motifs are worth contemplating.

The Detective

Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa), the Iranian husband of Parisian Marie (Berenice Bejo), is the detective. At film opening, he has returned to Paris at her prompting to formalise their separation. The wordless opening shows the two communicating - muted to audience ears - through an airport's soundproof glass as Ahmad struggles to locate his baggage. The image of a man and a woman struggling to communicate would set a nice tone on its own for this film. But like many sequences where we're deprived the easy idea-train of textual speech, when we're kept at a distance like this, a curious thing often happens. We lean in, we look closer. It's a good way to train the audience's attention for a story where the small details matter.*

So if Ahmad is a detective, what is he investigating? The details of his arrival - the lack of a hotel booking, the absence of a clear reason for the divorce at this time - stoke his curiosity. The house he finds himself staying in has more children than the one he left, and those children are struggling to get over something. It's not long before he's asking questions. There's even a client: Marie. She asks him to find out what's bothering Lucie (Pauline Burlet), the eldest daughter of her disastrous first marriage.

Farhadi's chosen well in Ahmad as the surrogate for the audience's inquisitiveness. Of all the characters involved in this house, he has the most to learn about the cause of its present mood. He's also good in his role - he gets answers easily, yet believably, from all involved. His ability to interact with children not his own separates him from the remainder of the adult cast. Lucie, so closed off to her mother, opens up easily to him.

Ahmad is also no saint. His darker days seem to be behind him, but his own confessional baggage weighs on him. And his reason for being in the same space as his ex-wife's new family is a source of tension in and of itself, particularly once her new partner makes an appearance.

Investigation

Unfolding via investigation is a clever plotting choice. Potentially dry family exposition about the missing years is turned into a chain of reveals of escalating significance. There is another man in the house, Samir (Tahar Rahim), a younger man of foreign origin. His paint half covers the walls, and it is his son Fouad (Elyes Aguis) that Ahmad is bunking with.

As for Lucie, Ahmad learns that she can't stand to be with either her mother, or her mother's lover. Is it fatigue with her mother's succession of husbands? Is it the discomfort of a teenager on the edge of sexuality being around a younger man? Is it seeing her mother need a younger man? All seem credible, but her true concern is darker than any of these. It takes a reveal from Marie to draw it out of her. Marie is pregnant with Samir's child, so marriage to him is inevitable.

This loosens Lucie's tongue. She holds her mother's new relationship to blame for the attempted suicide of Samir's wife Celine, an act that left the woman in a coma. Marie rejects this interpretation, insisting Celine's depression got the better of her. Lucie disappears. The tense equilibrium between the three adults - Ahmad, Marie and Samir - breaks out into verbal battles of Marie and Samir on Ahmad.

The Crime

By now the ghost behind the household's disquiet has become clear: Celine's attempted suicide. Suicide is a crime whose suspect may seem obvious at first. The crime here is in what caused it. Did she attempt suicide out of pre-existing depression, or was her depression fuelled by knowledge of Samir's infidelity? Marie and Samir arrange for Lucie and Ahmad to meet Samir's shop assistant Naima (Sabrina Ouazani), who establishes that the circumstances of Celine's suicide attempt - which occurred in front of her - point more to depression stemming from her work than knowledge of infidelity.

Then comes the bombshell. Lucie confesses to Ahmad that she knows the relationship caused the suicide attempt, because she sent Celine the love emails of Marie and Samir the day prior to the attempt. She blames herself for the attempted suicide. (This is not the last time a character will outwardly deal with their guilt by blaming others in this story.) Lucie's confession becomes the new crime, as her gesture throws the guilt for Celine's act back on Marie and Samir. Marie explodes at her daughter with an aggression we haven't seen until now and throws her out of the house. The girl is soon re-admitted, but the confession changes the landscape of oppositions. Marie and Samir have worked as a block so far. The new information shifts the primary opposition in the film away from being Marie vs Ahmad to a new axis.

A New Detective

With the investigation pointing back to the client, the detective is taken off the case. The divorce complete, and the ice between Lucie and Marie comprehensively shattered, Marie wants Ahmad out. Ahmad could dig deeper, stay on for the sake of the children. An old friend advises him to end his involvement now, while he still can. In many a detective story - The Conversation, Chinatown, Vertigo - such a warning is the prelude to calamity, as the detective ignores all warnings and insists on his ability to get to the heart of the matter. But Ahmad is a rational person, not a dramatic device, and Farhadi flips this idea on its head. At the two-thirds mark, having served as our surrogate for the story to date, Ahmad effectively exits the story.**

It is not the end of the detective story. The detective impulse remains, and migrates over to Samir. The late-film switch in detectives is risky: Zodiac comes to mind, Margin Call to a lesser extent, as well as aspects of the three protagonist LA Confidential. Farhadi's screenplay has layered in enough alternative perspectives throughout to make the switch from Ahmad to Samir relatively seamless.

Samir is an interesting choice to take on the detective mantle. For obvious reasons, he was the character least comfortable with Ahmad's presence.*** He doesn't take on the role out of admiration, or a conscious desire to complete Ahmad's work. Ahmad has brought new information to light. Samir's one of the implicated. He wants to establish that he has done nothing wrong.

He has a lead that Ahmad would not have. A discrepancy between Lucie's account and Celine's movements prior to the suicide puts his shop assistant Naima in the crosshairs. And it seems even the servant has a reveal in store for the master. Naima passed on Celine's email address to Lucie the day before the suicide attempt, knowing the implications. Samir fires her, but she does not go quietly. Naima puts her action in context: Celine hated her, believing Naima was having an affair with Samir. She sabotaged Naima's work, and was going to compromise Naima's immigration status. Naima wanted to establish that she was not the focus of Samir's affections, and didn't intend harm to Celine. Naima doesn't even believe Celine read the emails, reminding Samir that Celine attempted suicide  before her eyes, not Marie or him. Naima exits the drama, another scalp claimed by the investigation.

Like Lucie's reveal, Naima's reveal folds back on Samir and Marie's affair. Does it matter that Celine was wrong about which affair Samir was having, if it still led to her desperate act? This subtlety does not save Naima, who exits the drama, the first scapegoat for the suicide who actually can be sent away. (Lucie couldn't really be sent away, despite Marie's kneejerk reaction to her reveal, and Ahmad can be sent away but can't be blamed for more than bringing the situation to light.)

The second part of this article will look at the two other key aspects of the detective form that show up in Le Passe: the criminal, and the ghost, as well as rounding out on some of the general filmmaking choices.


* The motif of seeing a conversation without hearing it is repeated twice in the film. 
** Guy Ritchie's Snatch is a very different film, but I couldn't help but think of Dennis Farina's exit from that story. (Perhaps on the cutting room floor Ahmad re-enters Iranian customs with only one thing to declare: "Paris, je ne t'aime.")
*** The awkwardness between the two men is beautifully realised in a tense frame where the two sit on opposite sides of a table for a lengthy beat. They attempt to ignore eachother. Finally Samir leaves the frame, unable to stay in the same shot as his predecessor in Marie's affections.

Unlikely Detectives: Z (spoilers)

This article is the first of a series on recent cinematic incarnations of a powerful form: the detective story. Of all genres, detective stories most successfully align an audience's desire with the search for truth, and all of the complications of that search. For this reason, perhaps, they're a personal favourite of mine. Most of the films discussed will be recent releases. The subject of this article is the biggest exception to that rule. A recent viewing brought it to mind, so it seemed foolish to quibble on the film's release date.

Overview

There's so many aspects to Costa-Gavras' 1969 political thriller that shine, both large and small. The fusion of verite techniques with the political-thriller is a winning combination, to date one of the more inspired uses of realist style in genre filmmaking. The film also marks one of the strongest examples of protest cinema using a popular form as the pill to deliver a political argument. With the political left under attack from a strong, unlikeable, opponent at the outset, our sympathy shifts towards them in the way it so often does towards the hero of a thriller. On top of the thriller element, when Z (Yves Montand) becomes the victim of an injustice that appears to go unpunished, the film uses a clever twist on the detective story to engage our desire that the truth come out. (More on this below.)

Among the smaller details, two stood out to these ears. Firstly, Z's speech prior to his death marks a brief appearance by Chion's acousmetre. He's no Wizard of Oz, but it is precisely those moments when Z's voice travels beyond his immediate audience, echoing in the streets over the heads of battle-ready demonstrators, that the conflict of ideologies is most clearly felt. This is a man whose life will be sustained more through symbolism than physical presence as the film progresses - and even before the assassination attempt, that physical presence already has powerful cinematic properties. Secondly, during the energising montage towards the film's close where military figures of increasing seniority are called before The Judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant), Theodorakis' music steps forward in a commanding way we don't normally associate with realist style. As each military leader passes the media gauntlet, Theodorakis's bouzouki-led march gathers confidence, the snare drums surging. The powerful rat-a-tat of the snares lines up beautifully with the strokes of the typewriter documenting the damning testimonies. It's as metaphorical a use of synchresis as you'll find, and declares the colours of the filmmakers: a true Greek nationalism would see these men led to the wall rather than calling the shots.

Lawyer as Detective

Z provides a few twists on the detective form. Before the detective appears in the stern form of Jean-Louis Trintignant's Judge, the crime must occur, and it comes relatively late in the film. Here comes an added twist - even before the crime occurs, we know who is behind it. Many a detective story relies on a concealed opponent, but here we're given access to that information relatively early (arguably the opening scene), before the crime occurs. It's not a given the crime will occur, or how, so the first act is not lost time. It's firstly a tense depiction of political life as an opposition in an unsympathetic regime, the tension raised by our knowing that Z's opponents are the apparent keepers of the peace. Additionally the time allows the filmmakers to acquaint us the man who will be the target of the crime (and like Mr Wu, he will be talked about before he appears), impress his character upon an audience, depict something of his inner life, so that his loss is meaningful when it comes. We will never wonder in Z if all of what ensues is unnecessary: this man was worth the fuss.

So when the crime occurs and an investigation begins, we are in the privileged position of knowing more than the detective. We see through the convincing alibis that disguise guilty faces. The dramatic question is not the identity of the the opponent, but how our detective will uncover it given the forces of obfuscation marshalling against him. Those forces of obfuscation are plausible enough to satisfy most of the investigators. Added to this concern: we don't really know whether our detective wants to find the truth. Disguised by his glasses, his unemotional commitment to proper process seems more of the bureaucratic professionalism that we've already seen too much of in this film's civil service.* And even if he does want to uncover the truth, we've already seen that a genuine man can be killed if the powers-that-be will it.**

But an interesting pattern forms. For every potential channel of guilt that the Judge misses, he finds others. New clues satisfy our curiosity. While we know where the chain should lead, our point of view on the assassination disguised many of the processes that came to a head that night. The workings of the opponent are mysterious, hard to discern, and compelling to discover. In the process, the Judge deflects every gesture from above to minimise the implications his findings. We begin to see the advantages of this particular detective. One of the last pieces of character backstory to emerge is his family's connection to the political right. Well before then, we've observed a conscious strategy on his part to establish an apolitical line of evidence. His disregard for politically-motivated testimony greets witnesses left, right and centre.

We begin to wonder: perhaps this is the way a crime can be punished when a power structure shields the guilty? Z may have seemed like the man Greece needed, but perhaps it's really this man?*** A man with an impartial eye, uncompromised by passion. A detective who does more than uncover guilt, he does so in a way that the guilty can be punished on their own terms. He engages the prosecutor in all of us: it's not enough to know the guilty parties, a more practical chain of evidence must be assembled. Evidence mounts, achieving a momentum in the typewriter montage that is all the more exhilarating because of windy path the investigation has taken to build to it. The investigation feels unstoppable at this point.

So when the investigation is stopped, and most of the links in the chain of evidence - including the detective - are declared the likely victims of assassination in a postscript, the tragedy is all the more palpable. The writer's strategy in making us aware of the opponent from the outset becomes clear. Our desire has been that the truth behind Z's death be uncovered, and justice be served. Like watching twins separated at birth come close to reunion in a melodrama, the closer they get to each other, the more we want it. We've been worked up to the point where we really feel the drop. To have seen the investigation come so close, and still fail, is a bitter revelation. Two models of resistance have failed - one political (Z), one apolitical (the detective). Z is a rare detective story that transcends the usual hunt for a villain, touching the political epic and the epic tragedy in the process.


* Gary Oldman's Smiley in the recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy harkens back to this figure.
** The title character of Michael Clayton is another recent detective who searches for an opponent the audience is already aware of.
*** The Judge is the third model man in this film. Z is the first. A hospitalised Everyman character is the second.

Return to the Cutting Room: American (R)ustle (spoilers)

Overview

It feels like it should be wrapping up. A watch check reveals forty-five minutes remain. The laughter is getting quieter with each hair joke. Thirty minutes later, at the film's apparent climax, a nearby viewer - engaged at the outset - has fallen asleep. Something isn't right. Everything we need is here: performances, prestige, period details, star power, humour, rampant stupidity, twists and turns aplenty - how did it get boring?

It looks great, it's funny, it showcases a fleet of impressive performers, the true story underneath (the ABSCAM scheme) is compelling, and the themes it brings to light are - as they say - ever relevant. (In particular this: that bullish ambition bordering on criminality equally fuels law enforcement and  criminal trajectories.) The film does service to its fictionalised versions of the characters: conmen - whether enforcers, politicians, mobsters, lovers, husbands, wives or even actual conmen - have never been so vulnerable, nor so pathetic, as they are here. In aid of that, the film has the best hair narrative since Natalie Portman's arc in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. It's almost a epic poem of wardrobe contradictions. A mid-film phonecall intercutting close-ups of Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) with Richie Dimasso (Bradley Cooper) is the apogee of that arc.

The hair narrative doesn't quite resolve. In answer to the opening indignity Dimasso inflicts on Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), it feels as if the ending should have done more than ruin Dimasso's career, and gone the extra step to ruin his hair. (Possibly the mid-film visit to Dimasso's house deflated his image as far as it could go.)

There are more substantial rhythmic issues. A mid-film encounter with mob figure Victor Tellegio (Robert DeNiro) provides the greatest 'drawn breath' moment, when Tellegio makes an impromptu shift to Arabic language. The stakes never feel as high again as they do at that table, and Tellegio's proxy in the narrative from that point, Pete, is no substitute. Whatever the true pattern of events behind this film, and changes appear to have been considerable, the Tellegio encounter in its present form possibly should not have been as far from the end of the tale as it is. (If this was a script edit: condense the plot after the Tellegio encounter. Have Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) hurl her grenade about Irving and the IRS to Pete not in a subsequent rendezvous, but during her bar binge while the Tellegio encounter takes place. The fake sheik makes it past Tellegio, but Irving is picked up by Peter the very next morning.)

This raises a question: what is the tale? The Goodfellas-style storytelling frame makes it the story of a love made in heaven (Irving and Sydney's). They have chemistry, and share the ambition and aptitude to fleece the unwitting. Their love is rooted in a tension, as one of the lovers (Irving) is in a relationship (with Rosalyn). The love is challenged by the entrapment of the FBI (led by Dimassi), caught out doing the very thing they do well together. The dramatic question ultimately: what will it cost them to get out of this? Their relationship? Irving's relationship with his stepson? Since Irving will ultimately end up having to sacrifice neither of these, the screenplay sets up stakes around a third idea - the reputation of Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) so that Irving's success comes at a price. Leaving aside the issue of whether the real-life basis for Carmine Polito was as innocent as the film makes out, and whether it might not have been better to have Irving being hoodwinked in his own way by a politician (society's most legitimate confidence men), it's questionable whether the love was the right thing to dramatise here. It certainly adds pathos towards Prosser, Irving and Polito that seems at odds with the satirical tone the film hits at its strongest moments.

It could be the screenplay as Truby suggests, the consequence of a focus on character over plot, an incongruous genre fusion (love, memoir and black comedy), and an awkward use of storytellers (three of them), flashing back from the wrong beat. The focus on character over plot seems telling. It accounts for the amount of 'acting porn' in the film -- scenes that feature strong performances but essentially don't take the story forward. Films that pitch their tent around schemes of deception are among the most plot-heavy there are (Mamet's Heist or The Spanish Prisoner, Nolan's The Prestige). This film tilts its hand on a few key reveals - some macro, some micro - undercutting the surprise each has. It does this to dramatise the point of view of several characters in a given scene, giving the audience a bit of all sides of the equation. But omniscience makes for a clumsier dance between states of concealment and revelation than was necessary, and not enough of the developments in the film's last stretch are unanticipated when they come. There's the old suspense vs surprise debate (revisited recently by David Bordwell), to which there is no definitive answer. Sometimes it's better to foreshadow and engage the audience imagination. Other times it's better to blindside them. For me, and I suspect for others I saw the film with, the absence of surprise is part of the reason the film drags. (See particulars below in the list of suggested edits.)

I think the style of the film may be partly to blame as well. The film is often up close to its key players, close enough to see nuances on faces, pivoting around them in fluid movements, with a graininess of image -- a style that would be familiar to viewers of the director's previous films, The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook. It would be interesting to see a lot of the film's scenes filmed from a locked-off point of view, wide angle, deep focus, slightly above or below character eye level. The suitcase camera motif feels underused, and in part because there'd be something embarrassing about seeing all this with a more unflinching gaze. The people would be less relatable, the satire stronger. It's a different direction than the one O Russell has chosen, but I suspect such a style choice would have better enabled him to shift the balance in favour of character over plot.

Some of these problems are not as easily approached in the editing room as they would have been in the screenplay and production phases. Had this story been filmed, or written, a different way, some of the below thoughts wouldn't be relevant, as the film would be a different beast. Nonetheless, given the chance to take American Hustle back to the editing room, what would we try?

Return to the Cutting Room (Note: Heavy Spoilers)

1. Introduce the film in the present tense.  Unimaginable as it might be to unpick the Goodfellas knot, the potential of the tale trumps the homage. Start the film in a real moment, one that gets to the heart of genuineness vs deception, rather than making the first Polito sting the framing device. The meeting between Rosenfeld and Prosser at the party is one possible entry point. (It would be nice to have Bale apply his hairpiece at the outset, but clothing continuity forbids it, and it will be a humorous reveal when the film gets to the Polito sting for those who haven't already spotted it.)
2. Potentially keep the voiceover, but try to do without it.  Quite what role voiceover would have in this version would be felt out on a case-by-case basis - if it worked, it's worth trying out the hairpiece line from Prosser. (But then consider the effect further down the film of the moment when Dimassi rips off Rosenfeld's hairpiece if her attitude to it hasn't been flagged.) If the voiceover was essential for exposition, and there was no way around it, then retain it. (My current resistance to it comes from it mostly filling in historical detail and a source of distance from the absurdities unfolding before camera rather than a source of levity.) 
3. Continue in the present tense.  From the meeting of Prosser and Rosenfeld, cut to the first scene of Rosenfeld with Rosalyn as a point of contrast, introducing both Rosalyn and the idea of the son. Then show Rosenfeld and Prosser meeting in his office, and the invention of Lady Edith Greensley. Follow with an intercutting of the affair between them and the hooking of victims with their London loan scheme. Then Dimasso enters the picture, catching out Rosenfeld and Prosser. Proceed from there. Eventually we'll get to the scene that currently opens the film.
4. Introduce Polito and Tellegio as entities in the film universe before they appear in the plot.  Since Polito will now not be established at the film's opening, the film will approach him as the subject of an investigation. To help him appear significant, and a natural target for the investigation to drift to when it does, hear him on the radio in Rosenfeld's car early on, or have him on the TV in the background of Rosenfeld's house. Make his public side part of the film texture before seeing the man in person. Tellegio is trickier, since he's not a public figure. It does feel as though he (or the mob) needs at least one reference in the film's first half, given the significance he take on in the second. The power of the "Mister Wu device" (Orson Welles) should not be overlooked.
5. Avoid having Prosser clearly spell out her intention to seduce Dimassi. The film tries to create drama for Prosser and Rosenfeld by having Prosser give an early indication of her intention to seduce Dimassi. I'd be interested to see what happens when the audience doesn't know that Prosser might be seducing Dimassi purely to entrap him. Rosenfeld will still get jealous, except his jealousy will raise fewer questions. Prosser will still seem torn, but we'll be wondering whether it's an act as opposed to knowing that it probably is. Dimassi will still get hooked, but now when he raises the question of her sincerity, we'll wonder along with him. Sacrifice a bit of omniscience for a bit of plot. It will all come out in the 'we got to get over on these guys' conversation anyway. A smart audience will see the reveal coming that Sydney is conning Dimassi, and they'll appreciate the fact that the film gave greater room for their imagination. 
6. Save the Polito sting for its chronological position within the plot.  One of my issues with the film is that the first major conning experienced after we've got up to speed with the story is the evening with Tellegio, from whence the stakes diminish. I think the experience curve might rise a bit more naturally to the Tellegio encounter if they've had another sting along the way. This is a nice double experiment that emerges from starting in 'the present'.
7. Delay Rosenfeld's guilt over Polito's involvement.  If Rosenfeld is to face a moral challenge about the scheme, then Polito is the natural focal point for those feelings given the material in the film. But as with a couple of other arcs, the idea sprouts too early. From memory, foundations are laid down around the time the dinner between the Polito and Rosenfeld couples. Better to let the guilt about Polito creep in over the film's second half, making it even more of a by-product of Rosenfeld's self-preservation. All those shots of Rosenfeld viewing Polito's apparent sincerity feed the idea. When the reckoning comes - Rosenfeld's last conversation with Polito - the audience will have had less than an hour of concrete anticipation. (Again, save ideas for the freshness they'll bring later.)
8. Don't announce Rosalyn as the weak point before she becomes it.  Immediately prior to Rosalyn's lunch with Pete (Tellegio's enforcer), Sydney and Irving effectively mark her as their Achilles heel. (The film then cuts to her, and while you'd think there'd be a laugh on that cut, there wasn't in my screening.) This primes us to expect a slip from Rosalyn in the following scene, and she fulfils the expectation. There's no real surprise to it or suspense about it. We're told something will happen. It happens. Cut out the remark from Sydney/Irving in the previous scene, and Rosalyn's slip will have the quality of surprise. (She'll also be a more active agent if her action isn't predicted by others.)
9. A bit more of a macro-change.  The suggested script edit above, of having Rosalyn give the game away due to her drunkenness during the Tellegio encounter, can't be achieved on the basis of current footage. But one could find the pairing of shots of Rosalyn and Pete in that bar that plant the seeds of Pete's suspicion. The next day, a car pulls up and Rosenfeld is forced into it. This loses some good material, but it is the part of the film where it feels the stakes should be accelerating, and that is one way to achieve it. (I'd have to see the film a second time to make another suggestion, but another thought is pretty much going straight to the Rosalyn-Pete lunch after the Tellegio encounter.)
10. Don't let the cat out of the bag that Sydney and Irving are going to outwit the mob and the FBI.  If there's a common thread to the suggestions here, it's that the film hints at its destinations too early. I personally knew that Dimassi was being played when he visited the offices of Tellegio's lawyer, because the film had told me that Sydney and Irving were going to try something, and their strategy in the scene was clear. I would have rather been in Dimassi's shoes for that scene, falling for the con. (Maybe a good deal of the audience is, but if so they'll miss nothing but accommodating the audience who got ahead of things.) How do we achieve that point of view shift? Look again at the conversation between Sydney and Irving from which Adams' best line comes: "We got to get over on these guys. That is what we have to do." That was the bit that told me they were about to pull something.
11. Delay the final Rosenfeld-Polito encounter until after the humiliation of Dimassi in front of Amado.  Here we're looking for the right way to leave the story. Rosenfeld has taken care of himself, now he will try to take care of his conscience and take the news of the reduced sentence to Polito. This saves the gravest consequence for the end, which could be tonally too heavy, but worth a try. If it was too heavy, give a bit of distance to those consequences through a potential pickup. Stay in the car with Prosser as Rosenfeld goes into Polito's house. (Maybe she can even hear Polito being interviewed on the radio about an unrelated matter.) She sees Irving angrily ejected some time later, with Polito's yelling overheard.  
12. Don't have Rosenfeld make Polito's reduced sentence a condition for returning the money.  This could undercut what we're trying to achieve with the above point, but it could add to the guilt Rosenfeld feels about Polito if he can't do anything to protect him. He is ultimately trying to save himself.
13. End in the present. Mirroring the adjusted start, this version of the film may need to end with the right beat between Prosser and Rosenfeld, rather than the happily-ever-after montage set to voiceover. (This doesn't rule out Rosalyn's final appearance with Pete, a scene that's necessary to say what's happening to the son.)

These are all experiments in shifting dramatic pressure, changing the way the audience experiences the story. Assuming successful execution, each would have ripple effects through the film. Some elements will work better, others will probably cease to work in their present form. However given the quality of the elements that work in American Hustle, I'd be surprised if a little restructuring didn't result in a film that could connect with all of its audiences: those that already seem to love it, and those who fell asleep by the climactic reel.