I am also not a big fan of director Robert Zemeckis’s work. Here at The Pulse, they will joke that I am much more likely to be sighted weeping over an independent film from Poland with subtitles than Forrest Gump.

Yet I fully plan to see Disney’s A Christmas Carol, and luckily for me, it looks as though it will be playing all the way through the holiday season.

There have been at least 30 film versions of A Christmas Carol, dating all the way back to a black-and-white version in 1901. Dickens has been credited with “re-inventing Christmas” and there is certainly something eternal about the tale of a miserable miser who is given another chance to live a better life.

Several of the reviews of this film version call it “gothic,” as in “combining both horror and sentiment.” That appeals to me, for Dickens was a very gothic writer. Clear-sighted about the horrific poverty, the child laborers, the disease, the filthy tenements that were glossed over by wealthy Victorians as they lived their lives of ease, Dickens has no peer in English for writing passionately about these injustices. Speaking about the poor living in workhouses, one of the philanthropists who approaches Scrooge says, “Many of them can’t go there, and many would rather die.” “If they would rather die,” retorts Scrooge, “then let them do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Not so very far from the declared views of some modern radio talk-show hosts and politicians, is it? When 14 percent of the American population says they have trouble putting food on the table, at least some of the time, how far have we really come?

But as insightful as he was about this side of his times, Dickens was also incurably sentimental, another classic trait of Victorian literature. Today, many of his heroines seem insipid and even poor old Tiny Tim and his much parodied “God bless us, every one,” gives modern readers cavities with his syrupy story.

Yet A Christmas Carol endures, and beyond enduring, is beloved. Why? Because it is a story of redemption and hope. Scrooge’s heart is definitely at least two sizes too small, and his life as a ruthless businessman has without doubt harmed many people. (Bernie Madoff, anyone?)

Unlike Bernie, however, Scrooge is given the opportunity to review his life with the possibility of change, and we, as the invisible clingers to the Ghosts’ skirts, see what has caused the young Ebenezer to become the wizened Scrooge. As we do so, we think about our own lives. When have we been miserly with our love, our compassion, our open-heartedness? Is it too late for us to change?

Charles Dickens’s idea is that it is never too late. And that, for me, will always be his timeless holiday message. I read a version of this story every year and try to take its message to heart (and avoid shrinkage).

So, off I’ll trot to see what Jim Carrey makes of Ebenezer. It doesn’t hurt that Zemeckis also cast Gary Oldham, Bob Hoskins and Colin Firth; good on you, Bob.
And even if Carrey is no Alastair Sim, George C. Scott or Michael Caine (in A Muppet Christmas Carol), I strongly suspect I will hugely enjoy it anyway.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldham, Bob Hoskins, Colin Firth
Rated PG
Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes

Life is unraveling for physics professor and generally good man Larry Gopnik.  His wife Judith is having an affair with an aloof family friend and wants a divorce. His brother Arthur is emotionally and physically incapable of living alone and spends his nights in Larry’s living room.

The Gopnik children, Danny and Sarah, are pilfering cash from their father’s wallet to buy pot and save up for a nose job. There’s an anonymous person writing nasty letters to the university to tarnish Larry’s good reputation and destroy his chances at tenure.

Distraught and terribly confused, Larry sets out on a quest to find some balance to the chaos.  A devout Jew, he’s advised by his friends to talk to the rabbi.  He consults three and they all have different non-answers.  Temptations arise, questions go unanswered, doors get slammed in his face, and Larry is confronted with many a harrowing choice, each one compounding the mystery of the Coen brothers’ latest existential riddle.

The Coens know how to harvest the hilarity out of life’s absurdity and A Serious Man is a movie for people who can laugh at exaggerated characters put in situations that easily reach a level of gleefully deranged poeticism.  Here we have messages written on the back of people’s teeth, a rabbi who quotes Jefferson Airplane, and a perpetually drained cyst all working to prove yet again that these filmmakers specialize in their own brand of niche comedy.

Newcomer Michael Stuhlbarg imbues Larry Gopnik with a jittery, painful unease that makes his strife even more relatable.  His character shares many similarities to William H. Macy’s character in Fargo, but whereas Jerry Lundegaard caved to criminal activity under the crushing weight of self-pity, Larry Gopnik chooses to fight it out and make the most of his ability to choose.  It’s a delicate balance and Stuhlbarg pulls it off beautifully.

In typical Coen fashion, the supporting characters nearly steal the show, particularly Fred Melamed, who plays Sy Ableman, the agonizingly serious and overbearing family friend who has stolen the heart of Larry’s wife.

The story is set in the 1960s and lensed impeccably in sharp focus by veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins.  Nothing is amiss in this film and each dramatic and comedic note is pitch-perfect.   The characters in the absurd world of A Serious Man fit the film’s structure like puzzle pieces.

Still, when we step back to view the whole puzzle, it’s hard to be sure what exactly it is.  If you took one piece away, the whole structure would fall, but like any truly great piece of art, multiple questions are necessary to interpret why everything fits.

For example: Why does Larry Gopnik suffer so much? Is it as a result of something he’s done?  Does he need to make better choices?  What does it mean to be a good man?   Could Larry ever achieve it?  Is it possible for anyone to be truly good?

What can we make of the film’s spare hopeful moments, including a startling intrusion of grace just before the final act?  Are these tiny shreds of common grace sufficient to make life worth living?  And how does that darned Jewish fable at the beginning of the film relate to the rest of the story?

Much has been said of how A Serious Man is a retelling of the Biblical story of Job, that pitiable saint put to the test by the devil to see if he would deny God.   Nearly drowned in raging waters of uncertainty, Job had the courage to say of God, “Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him.”  Whether you think this wise or foolish, the Coens appear to have a more secular course of action in mind.

The film begins with a proverb from Rashi: “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.”  Is this the blanket answer to all the questions of A Serious Man?  I think the auteurs behind it would say yes—and even though it seems like a terribly simplistic retort, we can applaud them for finding a strangely funny, very dark, and surprisingly human way to announce it.

A Serious Man
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed
Rated R
Running time: 105 minutes

Disney’s A Christmas Carol. In his apparent attempt to appear in every Christmas classic ever written, Jim Carrey returns to holiday fare in Robert Zemeckis’s Disney’s A Christmas Carol. Carrey plays not only Ebenezer Scrooge in the 3-D film made with the same process as The Polar Express, but Ghosts Past, Present and Future as well. Colin Firth and Gary Oldman also star. Will either be fabulous or a very expensive turkey. Opens November 6.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox. The combo of director Wes Anderson and the dark children’s tale of Roald Dahl is intriguing, to say the least. The “claymation”-style adds yet another dimension. The film tells the story of Mr. Fox and his “hen heckling, turkey taking and cider sipping, nocturnal, instinctive adventures.” This story has been made into a successful opera, so we’ll see what Anderson does with it. Opens November 25.

Avatar. A hotly awaited return from director Jim Cameron, Avatar is said to have been “ten years in the making.” Set in the future, the story follows a paraplegic war veteran who is brought to another planet that is inhabited by a humanoid race with their own language and culture. We love that Cameron has cast that veteran of interplanetary scariness, Sigourney Weaver.  Opens December 18.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. An even-more-hotly-awaited (and boy, have we awaited) return, this one from director Terry Gilliam. The fact that it is also the final appearance of Heath Ledger has fans panting, and it doesn’t hurt that it also stars Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and musician Tom Waits. Described as a “fantastical morality tale, set in the present day,” the film follows Dr. Parnassus and his Imaginarium, a traveling show where members of the audience get an opportunity to choose between light and joy or darkness and gloom. Opens December 25 in limited release only, so call your local theaters and request that we get it here.

The Arts and Education Council has one more film planned to screen on the tattered screens of the Bijou as part of the fall Independent Film Series and it is one of the most acclaimed of the season—Lorna’s Silence, a film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

The brothers Dardenne are some of the most notable filmmakers working today.  They come out of a rich tradition of European filmmaking and their films will no doubt be catalogued on lists alongside the best of Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Carl Th. Dreyer in the near future.

They have crafted a vigorously naturalistic film aesthetic that has garnered their films many prizes at the Cannes Film Festival including the Palme d’Or in 1999 and 2002 for their films Rosetta and L’Enfant (The Child).

The bulk of their work focuses on young people teetering on the edge of society in lower-class Belgium.  Their latest film is the story of a young Albanian woman named Lorna who plans on opening a snack bar in Belgium with her boyfriend Sokol.  Before Lorna can open her doors, she unwittingly becomes an accomplice in the infernal plans of a mobster named Fabio—plans that attempt to strip her of her identity and her humanity.

It would be unwise to summarize the plot any further because Dardenne films hinge on moments of surprise.  By this, I don’t mean jump scenes or revelatory plot twists—the very concept is far too American—but intensely personal emotional revelations that change our perceptions of the internal lives of the characters.  The apparent story of a Dardenne film is simple and very important, but the internal struggles of the characters are what make their films so unique.

In addition to the handheld camera, another reason a Dardenne film feels so natural is their method of working with actors.  When filming begins, the brothers don’t feel pressure to direct their actors exactly the way they have rehearsed things.

“We pretend that we are starting over from zero so that we can rediscover things that we did before,” said Luc Dardenne in an interview with Cinéaste Magazine.  “The instructions we give the actors are above all physical. We start working without the cameraman—just the actors and my brother and me. We walk them through the blocking [and they] say but do not act their lines. We do not tell them what the tone of their lines should be.”  The directors then bring the camera in and shoot the scene in one long take, allowing them to subsequently modify details.

Their signature method of approaching moral, spiritual, and psychological dilemmas is breathlessly subtle and provoking, even if one does not agree with their conclusions.  Each film in their constantly expanding oeuvre is morally undergirded (yet never preachy) and deftly gives testimony to the human need for absolution and repentance.

“[Lorna’s Silence is] about a young woman who has every reason to be desperate and who continues to believe that everything is possible,” concludes Luc Dardenne in the film’s press kit.  “How can a woman who doesn’t believe in God believe everything is possible? Where does this crazy hope come from?”
These are the questions of Lorna’s Silence, the Dardenne Brothers’ story of a young woman caught between love and a world of crime and deception.

Max runs across the street and peeks in his house to get his teenage sister’s attention. Spurned, he goes back to his fort, but when his sister’s friends arrive, Max initiates a surprise snowball fight from behind the fence.

The fight, born from an innocent hunger for fun, escalates suddenly and ends with an older boy crushing Max’s snow fort with an impassioned, vindictive leap.  The defeated Max emerges from the snow fort with tears rolling down his face as his sister hops in the car with her friends and drives away without even a wave or caring gesture.  In turn, Max runs into the house and tears her room apart; crushing even the paper heart he once made her for Valentine’s Day.

Here we are introduced to the other side of Max.  Like any small child, he is easily hurt.  He cauterizes this hurt through destruction and anger, and after an evening altercation with his mother (the beautiful and reliable Catherine Keener), bolts from inside the house onto the street, where he loses his way and gets lost in the woods.  Soon enough, he has escaped to the imaginary land of the wild things.

The wild things are beautiful puppet/CG creations elegantly envisioned by the Jim Henson Company and voiced by James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Catherine O’Hara, and Chris Cooper.  Lumbering through their native land—a wondrous place in walking distance from an ocean, a desert, and a verdant forest—they sound like humans, have the momentary reasoning power of adults, and use the logic of the smallest children. Their world looks much different than reality, but the motions of the heart and the consequences of actions remain the same, and for Max, this is the most profound surprise.

The film hinges on Max and Spike Jonze and his team have snagged the perfect child for the role: Max Records.  How a small child could keep a character like this so stunningly consistent throughout a two-hour film that takes place is so many settings and sustains so many imaginative flourishes is amazing.

Still, because it tries so hard to faithfully envision childhood imagination, Where the Wild Things Are is often visually and aurally confusing.  The wild things act like children and while Jonze’s camera inhabits their land, it does, too.  We’re taken from one immaculately designed set piece to another, faced with the immaturity and confusion of one wild thing after another and soon enough we’re disoriented.  Is this the point?  Perhaps, but cinematically less is more for a land like this.

And though it may be far from obvious, this is not a children’s film.  It is dark, it is often harrowing (in a PG kind of way), and it is free from the sentimentality and romanticism that plagues lesser films about children.

Allow me some introspection, if you will.  Exiting Where the Wild Things Are, I felt as if I had missed something, for I found myself thinking, “If only someone would please calm that kid down!”  I soon realized why.

I am not Max.  I wasn’t the energetic kid who built forts out of chairs and blankets, who ran around in an animal costume and wished he could run without stopping for ever and ever.  I was the kid from that children’s classic The Red Balloon, quietly content to myself, glad to follow the metaphorical red balloon around the streets for hours on end.

I don’t think my caustic reaction to Max is entirely unfounded, but to eschew him would be to close my eyes to what a profoundly wounded character he is.  Though there are moments when Jonze urges us to empathize with Max’s misbehavior to an unhealthy extent, his vision of Sendak’s story culminates in a subtle redemptive flourish that is huge in its power and profound in its implications.

All the imagination in the world may help a boy function in private, but it is the love and care of people in the real world that shape a young man.  This is the heart of Where the Wild Things Are and a lesson that will hopefully take root in the hearts of people who welcome this classic story into their lives now and in the years to come.

Where the Wild Things Are
Directed by Spike Jones
Starring Max Records and the voices of James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Catherine O’Hara, Chris Cooper
Rated PG
Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

Starring Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus, and Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee, Zombieland details the life of two survivors with very different philosophies struggling to survive in a post-zombie apocalypse America. Along their way they are carjacked by the ravishingly emo Wichita (Emma Stone) and adorably vicious Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). You’ll notice the motif in their names, as Tallahassee doesn’t want anyone getting too attached, so they go by the names of the cities they used to call home.

Columbus has survived the apocalypse by adhering to a strict set of numbered rules. The most important is “Rule #1: Cardio” because as the director points out in the first few moments of the film, “The fatties were the first to go.” Columbus is a hypochondriac, omniphobic weenie, who spent his days before the apocalypse shut up in his apartment playing World of Warcraft. His fear of everything helped him establish other such important rules as “Rule #2: Beware of Bathrooms” and “Rule #4: Doubletap.”

Each time these rules are implemented, the director chose an ingenious way of layering the words over the film much in the way Volkswagen did with their CC commercials. The words become part of the setting, and occasionally get broken or blood-spattered—particularly as it pertains to Rule #4.

Inversely, Tallahassee has a philosophy that is considerably more basic. He is a man who enjoys killing zombies, is in search of the last of the Twinkies, and idolizes the acting prowess of Bill Murray. Preferring to be armed to the teeth, and chock-full of excellent one-liners, Tallahassee loves his work. A poster of the look on his face upon receiving his prized Twinkie should adorn college dorm rooms across the nation. Additionally, your day will be brightened when Tallahassee finds an abandoned Hummer H2 filled with automatic weapons, and triumphantly exclaims, “God bless rednecks!”

Oddly enough, Tallahassee also has the only visceral storyline of the foursome. His rationale for bloodthirsty vengeance against the undead abruptly shifts from superficial to completely justified. It might be hard to believe, but Zombieland could be the best example of Harrelson’s true acting abilities.

The sisters, Wichita and Little Rock, are on their way to Pacific Playland. This amusement park is hyped to sound like Disneyland, but in actuality resembles Lake Winnepesaukah. The purpose of this quest is to give Little Rock back a moment of her childhood, and the sisters are quite determined in their purpose. In the days before the apocalypse, the sisters worked as a con team, and their unique set of skills works to their advantage in Zombie America.

The unnamed star of the movie is a high-speed camera. While other directors work hard to obscure what you’re seeing by shaking their cameras to pieces, Fleischer went the other direction and slowed the action down. Don’t be confused: We’re not talking about the CG-slow-mo of 300 or The Matrix; instead we just have perfectly choreographed scenes complete with slow-motion fire, flying beverages and zombies.

The absolute most beautiful image you will see in a movie this year will be Abigail Breslin running through chaos wearing a Native American headdress and carrying a spear.

For those of you still unconvinced, let me assure you that while there’s some blood and gore, and plenty of zombies, this isn’t your typical “zombie movie”. Unless your typical zombie movie is Shaun of the Dead, then yeah, it’s a little like that.

Zombieland
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
Starring Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
Rated R
Running time: 80 minutes

Paper Heart is the story of Charlyne Yi who, like many disappointed females inhabiting romantic comedies this past year, doesn’t believe in love.  We encountered another version of her a few months ago in 500 Days of Summer, a film that also had its premiere and won awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

But whereas Summer Finn in 500 Days remained content for a while without love in her life, Charlyne Yi feels as if she must go on a cross-country quest to understand the funny phenomenon.

And with that, she grabs a filmmaker friend named Nick and they head off on a massive documentary project in which they talk to ministers, divorce lawyers, happily (and unhappily) married couples, chemists, a group of kids on a playground, and more.

So determined is she to find an exact definition of love, Charlyne fails to notice that she is actually falling in love with one of her interviewees: Michael Cera (Arrested Development, Juno), a charming young man who has taken an interest in her.

Paper Heart moves back and forth between reality and fantasy many times—you’ll see the literal reason for the film’s title when you watch the film.  Treading in the footsteps of When Harry Met Sally, that classic of all romantic comedies, the film mingles its original material with, in the words of Charlyne Yi, “real doc footage of real interview with real subjects.”

“Everybody had such incredible stories,” said one of the crew members.  “We would go into someone’s home, take over their living room for a day and ask them these unbelievably personal questions…and they’d really get into it.”

Many of the narrative elements of Paper Heart are improvised within a story outline penned by Charlyne Yi herself, and this is where it gets confusing.  Because the film is a pseudo-documentary, many of the actors play themselves inside the framework of Charlyne’s documentary—meaning the cast and crew are all evident in the movie.

“We knew that some people would be a little bit confused,” said the film’s director Nick Jasenovec, “but we also found that part of it sort of exciting and interesting—maybe [the audience will never] know what’s real and what isn’t.”

“Sometimes we didn’t tell the cameraman what we were going to do so that he’d actually be capturing it for the first time and even be caught off guard,” said Yi. “It wasn’t about how pretty the camera shots were, but about making it feel natural.”

“The documentary stuff is all real,” said Jake Johnson, who plays the film’s “director”, “and as Charlyne is going around the country interviewing people on love, we create a story where she potentially finds love and see how making a movie about love affects her relationship.”

In addition to playing themselves, much of the cast and crew knew each other and had close friendships before the film started.  “It’s hard to fake any sort of chemistry,” said Jasenovec.  “We were all friends and we had to ask each other to really take a chance on an idea that could’ve turned out to be a disaster.”

Whether it’s a disaster or masterpiece, Paper Heart has won the affections of film festivals and viewers all across the country.  It comes down to the Bijou this weekend and might provide an answer to all your questions about love.

Maybe.

Paper Heart
Directed by Nicholas Jasenovec
Starring Charlyne Yi, Michael Cera, Jake M. Johnson
Rated PG-13
Running time: 88 minutes

Adam Raki is a handsome young man with a twinge of mystery about him.  Slogging through a menial day job in front of a computer screen, his real passion is astronomy, a subject that fills his mind so much it overflows into simple conversation.  He’s led a sheltered life in a New York apartment with his father, but when his father dies and a new neighbor moves in next door, Adam begins an emergence from his solitude.

The new neighbor is Beth Buchwald—a beautiful young woman, a lifetime New Yorker, and an elementary teacher who dreams of writing the perfect children’s book.  Fascinated by Adam and his quirks, she takes it upon herself to pull Adam into the outside world and help him live life through interacting people instead of by ignoring them.

The new seems so easy until Adam tells Beth that he suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism-like disorder, the cause of his social interaction problems but also the reason for his genius.  Beth is still attracted to Adam and the consequences of her love lead to the fearful question of whether being in love with a disabled person is worth facing the trials that inevitably come.

Shot on location in New York City, Adam takes its love of the city more seriously than the characters of its story.  The relationship of the characters to their city is the most comfortable aspect of the film, but the way they relate to each other (and the way the camera relays their relationships) is strained and fraught with unease.

Why is it that films about mental illness make us so uncomfortable?  Some would say it’s because mental illness is a terribly disconcerting subject that few of us are prepared to deal with.  Granted, but in Adam’s case the problem is much different.  The way in which Adam deals with Asperger’s is the most troubling thing about the whole affair.

Adam is introduced as a character with a painful past—his father/caretaker has just passed away leaving him alone—but other than this context, we’re left to believe that Adam is nothing more than a quirky dude with a planetarium in his living room, who somehow knows where to find a family of raccoons at Central Park in the dead of night.  Though we know of his affliction, his pain seems to come strictly from his circumstance, not his condition.

So when Adam has the obligatory (yet sudden) emotional outburst triggered by this condition, a turning point in the script that slices an emotional gap between him and Beth, we feel more embarrassed for the filmmakers than for Adam.  By making Adam a stereotype rather than a living, breathing character, they distance us from the pain they would like us to feel for him and put us in danger of laughing instead of crying.

The pretty face of Hugh Dancy (Confessions of a Shopaholic, King Arthur) doesn’t help the situation either.  Dancy never sheds his charming, socially adept persona to become something other than himself.  He tries and rarely succeeds, making the spare moments where Adam is silent and alone the most powerful ones of all.

Still, it isn’t all mush. The beautiful Rose Byrne (seen at her best on FX’s Damages) holds her own as Adam’s innocent and sympathetic lover.  The supporting characters are all refreshingly complex, each with stories of their own that the script weaves together effortlessly with Adam’s.  There’s also a beautiful little ending that wraps all the film’s disparate elements into a neat little package, a flourish that made this critic smile and redeems some of the more saccharine parts of the script with a fleeting dose of narrative realism.

But Adam leaves no lasting mark.  The humorous diversions are nothing fresh and the dry wit never fuses with the urgent drama to present a sobering thought about the reality of living with Asperger’s Syndrome.  It may be a nice-sounding recipe, but it’s cooked all wrong.

Adam
Directed by Max Mayer
Starring Hugh Dancy, Rose Byrne. Peter Gallagher
Rated PG-13
Running time: 99 minutes

No, that honor would have to go to the Brits with their ever-reliable Monty Python, the scathing writings of Charles Dickens, the very concept of the Punch and Judy show, and now, Armando Iannucci’s new film In The Loop (produced by the BBC) which has been called “the funniest big-screen satire in recent memory” by A.O. Scott of The New York Times.

In The Loop makes its way to Chattanooga this week via the Arts and Education Council’s Independent Film Series, and takes every opportunity to poke fun at political leaders during the Iraq war crisis with biting one-liners and verbal gags penned by two BBC comedy vets.

In the world of In The Loop, the president of the United States and the prime minister of the UK are itching to start a war.  To their dismay, not everyone thinks that such a war would be in the best interest of both countries.  Two of these men are American General George Miller (James Gandolfini, The Sopranos) and British Secretary of State for International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander, Pirates of the Caribbean).

Miller is quite stalwart in his position, but a verbal blunder on primetime TV leads the world to think that Secretary Foster is as anxious to take up arms as is his prime minister.

This sends the prime minister’s communications director (Peter Capaldi) into a frenzy as he sends his team over to the United States to delegate—a place where apparently (according to In The Loop) the cost of a war can be added up on something as simple as a kid’s toy calculator in the hands of a verbally abusive, dry-witted general.

In skimming critical reactions to In The Loop, you’ll surely come across many comments about the film’s use of strong language, including the stinging line from The Hollywood Reporter, “The obscenities are awe-inspiring.”  Critics haven’t been talking like this since Joel and Ethan Coen unleashed The Big Lebowski in 1998, but is this reaction any big surprise?

One can expect it as the natural result of acerbic British wit crashing against the bone-dry humor that is the hallmark of American satirical tradition.  They are destined to be opinionated, loud-mouthed bedfellows, and with such talented players as Steve Coogan (Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, Tropic Thunder), Peter Capaldi, and James Gandolfini, the comedic timing is promised to be perfect.

A rip-roaring comedy slice of Brit wit is the perfect selection to play middle man between last week’s bracing doc The Horse Boy and next week’s charming rom-com Adam.  Even if you hate politics, In the Loop will surely give you something to laugh about.  But watch out: The thing about satire is that you may be unknowingly laughing at yourself.

In The Loop
Directed by Armando Iannucci
Starring James Gandolfini, Tom Hollander
Rated R
Running time: 106 minutes

Rupert and Kristin Isaacson had an idyllic romance.  According to Rupert, when he first saw Kristin he knew she would one day be his wife.  He took special measures to ensure this would happen when he asked her to marry him on their first meeting.  They married and settled in Texas, Rupert working in journalism and human rights, Kristin teaching psychology.

When their son Rowan was born 2002, everything had seemingly fallen into place for them as a family.  But it all fell shockingly apart when Rowan was diagnosed with autism in 2004.

Unlike some cases of autism, Rowan Isaacson’s case is debilitating.  At 5 years old, he was still not potty trained.  It was impossible for him to interact with his peers and his tantrums—caused not by physical circumstances but by events inside his brain—made him inconsolable, leaving his parents at a dead end when it came to helping him.

Anyone who has suffered from mental illness or walked alongside someone who is struggling will immediately identify with the Isaacsons.  To see any child suffer is unbearable, but to see Rowan suffer so uncontrollably and inconsolably while knowing that nothing can be done to stop the pain is nothing less than heartbreaking.

The only thing that the Isaacsons found that calmed their son’s raging mind were animals—particularly horses.  Confronted with a horse, Rowan’s tantrums would stop and his mind become calm.  Animals would run to him and be uncharacteristically gentle.  This puzzled Rupert and caused him to do some more research.

Having worked in Africa with human rights organizations, Rupert was aware of traditional healing ceremonies performed by tribal shamans.  He had seen people cured of a variety of illnesses, but eventually found that the only place that still practiced Shamanism was Mongolia, the country where, coincidentally, horseback riding originated.

Not knowing what to expect, the family flew to Mongolia and started their journey in the plains.  In the film, it comes as a shock when they are made to kneel on the grass next to a man beating a loud drum, and allow themselves to be whipped by a shaman while little Rowan screams in a tantrum in the background.  Kristin is even asked to wash herself with a special soap to rid her of a black spirit.  “You have to stand in the direction of your country,” the shaman advises, “and you have to wash your lower body where Rowan was coming out [during birth].”

Think what you will of these extremes. The Horse Boy is not a call to embrace shamanic tradition as the key to healing a child of severe autism.  In fact, even Rowan’s mother Kristin remains skeptical in the end as to whether the shamans were the key to Rowan’s healing.  Rather, the film is about fidelity and how commitment to the health of an ailing child is the most necessary component for renewal.

The family journeys through the mountains, where Rowan’s tantrums worsen as comforts are stripped away and the days achieve no pattern of normalcy.  He is incontinent, constantly screaming, but his parents never lose their patience.  Rooted in deep love for him, the spare hopeful moments are enough to keep them going.  Abandoning any adult agenda, they press on even through their own great discomfort.

The film features interviews with leading scholars and autism experts including Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen (cousin to Sacha Baron-Cohen of Borat fame) of Cambridge University and Dr. Temple Grandin, author of a book about using autism to better understand animal behavior.  Their expert opinions give the film an added sense of immediacy, but constantly seeing the Isaacsons go through hell to bring their son a sense of peace is never less than powerful.

At one point, Rupert and Rowan run through the plains of Mongolia through herds of goats before a brilliant sunset when the cameraman catches up with an exasperated Rupert.  “Quite an adventure,” the cameraman says to him.

Panting and sweating, Rupert looks into the camera and simply says, “I love my son.”  A huge smile breaks across his face as he runs to catch up.

Yes, the film makes us aware of autism, but it’s in a moment like this that we get to glimpse what love it truly about.  The power of a father’s fidelity is the lasting effect of The Horse Boy and the spark that ignites a flame of hope that burns all the way to Mongolia and back.

The Horse Boy
(part of the AEC Fall Independent Film Series)
Directed by Michel O. Scott
Not Rated
Running time: 93 minutes