‘Barry’ snapshot of young Obama – Much of film’s reality feels genuine

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Not since young Abe have the early formations of an American president inspired as much moviemaking as Barack Obama’s early life.

Vikram Ghandi’s “Barry”, a snapshot of Obama as a college student, is the second of the year, following Richard Tanne’s “Southside With You”, a presidential rom-com about Obama’s first date with Michelle. These films may be just the start of the wave of Obama nostalgia to soon wash over the country (or at least approximately half of it). But the pleasant surprise is that both are fairly good, thoughtful films. The odds of this happening, while Obama is still in office, even Nate Silver might struggle to compute.

“Barry” is set in 1981 New York and “Southside With You” takes place in 1989 Chicago, but they have much in common. Both are framed as Obama prequels but use him as a prism through which to investigate race in America. They each delight in the novelty of a more human-sized version of the POTUS-to-be: smoking cigarettes, cursing and grooving to ’80s tunes. And both give a sense of a unique mind beginning taking shape. In “Southside” we see him reading Toni Morrison and watching Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”; in “Barry” it’s “Invisible Man” and “Black Orpheus”.

In “Barry”, his destiny is further away. He’s a little more Prince Hal. In early scenes, Obama (an excellent Devon Terrell) argues politics and Plato with young Reaganites at Columbia, but his interest in civic life hasn’t yet manifested. Politics, he tells his girlfriend Charlotte (Anya Taylor-Joy), are useless. “Come on, the president’s an actor,” he says. Later, while strolling arm-in-arm with his mom (Ashley Judd), he talks about fleeing society and becoming a monk. “Hope” is a long way off.

“Your politics are cute,” says Charlotte, a wealthy white girl from Connecticut.

To a certain extent, “Barry” shares the same superficial infatuation with a bachelor Obama. The film, written by Adam Mansbach, has bits pulled from Obama’s memoir “Dreams From My Father”, but large parts of it are invented, as are some characters.

What “Barry” most captures is an Obama struggling to find his identity and his place in the world, highly attuned to his surroundings. He walks the streets of Harlem, playing pickup basketball and perusing the books of sidewalk vendors. Where is from? The answer is complicated whenever he answers it. Hawaii. Indonesia. His father’s from Kenya. He’s harassed both by the security guards at Columbia and his more thuggish neighbors. “I fit in nowhere,” he says.

Pulling him in one direction is Charlotte, who Taylor-Joy (the breakout star of “The Witch”) plays with great tenderness. Her feelings for Barry are genuine, but her understanding of race is precocious. As the two draw closer, Barry is increasingly uncomfortable in the relationship and — as we know — he’ll ultimately reject the future she holds for another.

Invented

With much of the detail of Obama’s life from this period needing to be invented, “Barry” sometimes resorts to more clichéd scenes. In one, he’s mistaken for a bathroom attendant at the Yale Club. But much of the film’s reality — not its sometimes forced 1981 period detail but its representation of racial undercurrents — feels genuine. That’s partly due to the fine cast, led by Terrell but also including Jason Mitchell (“Straight Outta Compton”) as a friend met on the basketball court.

Given that we have two Obama dramas before the president has even left the White House, we’re probably in for dozens more. They will likely tackle larger moments in his political life, and will surely trade low-key naturalism for bigger biopic moments. “Barry” and “Southside With You”, more about the man than any myth, have done admirably in setting the stage. But their underlying optimism for the future that lay ahead, though, might already be dated.

“Barry”, a Netflix release, is not rated by the Motion Picture Association of America. Running time: 104 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

Commanding China’s most expensive production, with probably the biggest input from Hollywood talent ever, blockbuster Chinese director Zhang Yimou capably gives period fantasy-action “The Great Wall” the look and feel of a Hollywood blockbuster, but his signature visual dazzle, his gift for depicting delicate relationships and throbbing passions are trampled by dead-serious epic aspirations.

Those who ranted against the project as another case of Hollywood “whitewashing” in which Matt Damon saves China from dragons may have to bite their tongue, for his character, a mercenary soldier who stumbles into an elite corps fighting mythical beasts, spends the course of the film being humbled, out-smarted, and re-educated in Chinese virtues of bravery, selflessness, discipline, and invention. In between the cultural cheerleading, or its imitators.

With a reported $150 million budget, the film rolls out in China mid-December with little competition in cinemas, boosted by a massive marketing campaign, which should draw full houses in the first week at least — though “The Great Wall” has a lot to recoup and will be hard-pressed to beat Stephen Chow’s charmingly lo-tech romantic fantasy “The Mermaid”, which still holds the record as China’s top-grossing film with nearly $489 million. While its marriage of Hollywood production values with Asian elements may skew the film toward a more culturally open-minded audience, the generic storytelling and lack of iconic characters will make it a tough sell stateside when Universal releases it on Feb 17.

The film opens like a spaghetti western in the Gobi Desert, as mercenary soldiers William Garin (Damon) and Pero Tovar (Chilean-born actor Pedro Pascal from “Game of Thrones”) flee the attack of Khitans, and Damon’s character procures the claw of an unknown creature by fluke. They arrive at a fortress on one segment of the Great Wall and are captured by the Nameless Order, an elite army led by General Shao (Zhang Hanyu) to fight Tao Tie, ravenous beasts that rise locust-like from the nearby Jade Mountain every 60 years to devour humans and everything else in their wake.

The mechanical screenplay keeps the battles coming with accelerating size and peril. Shot with sweeping agility by Stuart Dryburgh (“Alice Through the Looking Glass”) and Zhang regular Zhao Xiaoding, using the Arri Alexa 65 and other state-of-the-art cameras, images of leaping movement appear with extraordinary sharpness in the 3D IMAX format. As the entire horde lays siege to two pagodas, the finale evinces the raw threat of a zombie apocalypse while the resplendent colored glass windows inside the pagodas form a romantic and distinctly Chinese backdrop. (Agencies)

Yet, with rapid-fire editing by Mary Jo Markey (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”) and Craig Wood (the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise), viewers are also overwhelmed by the inability to take in everything before the film abruptly lulls again to make room for more exposition and drama. This is especially true in an otherwise gripping setpiece in which Garin helps the soldiers capture a live Tao Tie, as the intricate human offensives are clouded by fog and dust.

Though the film plays with the idea that China’s Great Wall may have been erected to keep out invaders more intimidating than mere mortals, the idea isn’t necessarily original, having already inspired the 2009 Japanese manga “Attack on Titan”, which depicts a community that has built concentric walls to ward off man-eating giants. The Nameless Order, with its five corps named after and touting the combat styles of the crane, bear, eagle, deer, and tiger, resembles the three-tiered military in “Titan”. (In particular, the Crane Corps, made up of all-female aerialists, swing around in a tethering system that invites close parallels with the “Vertical Maneuvering Equipment” in “Titan”.)

That wouldn’t be such a problem if Zhang or his scribes had devoted even a smidgen of time to giving the respective commanders identities or backstories. Instead, though they are played by recognized actors (Eddie Peng, Kenny Lin Gengxin) with proven ability and charisma, these characters are just glorified cameos, stomping around in heavy armor looking angry or worried or both. Since most of the Chinese characters are portrayed as flawless paragons, they end up looking like cardboard cut-outs with no emotional dimension. This makes former K-pop idol Lu Han, with his characteristic boyish coyness, stand out as a cowardly foot soldier whose valor grows through his friendship with Garin.

The only character who hogs the spotlight is Lin Mae (Jing Tian), commander of the Crane Corps, as she’s the one who impresses Garin with the Chinese people’s altruism in fighting not for money, but for the salvation of humankind. Perhaps the sheer amount of English dialogue constrains her performance, but Jing is completely wooden in her exchanges with Damon, even though Lin and Garin are supposed to develop a grudging respect and warmth for each other. Their dynamic feels especially awkward in static close-ups (and hers are numerous), when she’s most expressionless.

It’s heartening that a film with European protagonists doesn’t cave to the controversial “white savior” syndrome seen in movies such as “Forbidden Kingdom”. But Damon’s role as a money-grubbing, lying, and smelly foreign mercenary is dubiously similar to the boozy, uncouth, opportunist mortician Christian Bale played in Zhang’s “The Flowers of War”, and he too is schooled in Chinese values of self-sacrifice by a coterie of “professional” women. Given very little complexity to round out his character, Damon forges a presence in the scenes of physical exertion, but don’t expect any award nominations.

As for his selfish and unlikable sidekick, Pascal’s lines fall flat as comic relief and sound worse in translation, while a gaunt-looking Willem Dafoe is wasted as a minor villain.

Zhang’s bold use of color schemes and lustrous lighting, notably in “Curse of the Golden Flower” or “Hero” are subdued by “Memoirs of a Geisha” production designer John Myhre’s stately contributions, which avoid chinoiserie in favor of subtle Chinese period details that most viewers will overlook in the flurry of action. And despite much being made of the Tao Ties, which were conceived from ancient Chinese mythology and invested with a philosophical dimension as the symbol and scourge of greed, their form and movement are not so distinct from Orcs.

First announced in August 2011 as a English-speaking tentpole project to kickstart Legendary East, the new Chinese arm of Legendary Pictures (now acquired by China’s Wanda Media), “The Great Wall” builds on such east-west collaborations as “Dragon Blade” and the Justin Lin-produced “Hollywood Adventures”. Early on, the project was to be helmed by “The Last Samurai” director Edward Zwick, who planned to co-write the script with Marshall Herskovitz, working from a concept from Legendary CEO Thomas Tull and “World War Z” author Max Brooks. Henry Cavill, Benjamin Walker, and Zhang Ziyi were at one time attached to star, though the final form was written by Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, and Tony Gilroy, featuring more Mandarin dialogue and a bigger proportion of Chinese cast.

Grief is an emotional trial without shape or structure. Certain self-help books may speak tidily of its stages, but the mourning process can be as long as a piece of string, and no less prone to knotting and looping. That irregularity is something that “Tonio” understands well: Based on acclaimed Dutch novelist Adri van der Heijden’s account of surviving the death of his 21-year-old son, Paula van der Oest’s film thoughtfully reflects the shattered psyche of its characters in its restless, non-linear timeline and oblique, artfully sawn-off scene construction. Where it falters, however, is in its rather misty sense of who these people were before their lives were disassembled by one late-night traffic accident. Easy as it is to tearfully empathize with their plight in a universal sense, the human specifics of the tragedy are less vivid.

Still, “Tonio’s” frequently arresting style and unabashed tear-jerking skills should secure it at least as much international festival exposure as van der Oest’s Oscar-nominated 2001 feature “Zus & Zo” — whether or not the film, selected as The Netherlands’ foreign-language Oscar entry this year, gains similar awards traction. Domestically, where van der Heijden’s book was a strong seller, the film has grossed over $1.1 million since its October release, a robust figure for such a downbeat work. In territories where van der Heijden and his book are less known quantities, “Tonio” represents a tougher sell to distributors.

“I am writing this for you, not for the repose of your soul. It has to become unsettled.” Thus does van der Heijden (played by Pierre Bokma) address his deceased son in an introductory voiceover lifted directly from the book. Hugo Heinen’s adaptation doesn’t shy away from this overtly literary tone, though the poetic intimacy of a grief memoir is harder to forge on screen. Narratively and stylistically, “Tonio” is dreamily splintered from the outset: As scenes break and blend into each other, alternating between exposition and pure atmospherics, the film’s own soul is aptly loath to settle.

The skeleton of the tragedy soon becomes clear enough: Tonio (Chris Peters), the gentle, creative only child of Adri and his wife Mirjam (Rifka Lodeizen), was fatally hit by a motorist on his late-night cycle home, leaving his stricken parents to ponder the unfinished pieces of his life. What takes longer to emerge are the interpersonal dynamics of this interrupted family. Even given the film’s leading perspective, Adri frequently comes across as an inscrutable figure, perhaps to his nearest and dearest ones as well as to the audience — despite Bokma’s sturdy emoting. Mirjam remains an underdeveloped figure throughout; as pointedly as the film denotes the distance that a lost child can leave between parents, it’s hard not to wonder how the loss looks and feels from her side.

Less a sustained narrative than a wandering memory piece, then, the film flips casually back and forth through the family album — showing us Tonio as an ebullient toddler in one scene and as an exasperated college student in the next, arguably reflecting his parents’ own blurred awareness of his development. Editor Sander Vos deftly keeps the film in agitated chronological flux, sometimes using locations to bind disparate events — most obviously, but effectively, pairing the hospital wards where Tonio enters and exits the world. Cinematographer Guido van Gennep, meanwhile, playfully manipulates light and color to match the nature of the remembrance: Certain flashbacks are quite literally rose-tinted, while gloaming greys and blues predominate in the present.

The closest thing to a driving narrative arc in this otherwise impressionistic portrait concerns the rather unsensational mystery over a potential woman in Tonio’s life. Notwithstanding a faintly morbid fantasy interlude in which father conducts son through a romantic maneuver, it’s a development that might further put viewers in mind of Nanni Moretti’s similarly themed but more prosaically fashioned Palme d’Or winner “The Son’s Room”. As Adri conducts his own tenuous, desperate investigation, in the absence of anything else to do, “Tonio” registers most insightfully and movingly as a study of the many compartments of our loved ones’ lives that we never see while they’re living. (Agencies)

By Jake Coyle

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