CAPONE GIVEN ONE LAST TREATMENT
Posted May 16th, 2020 at 9:40 pmNo Comments Yet
IN REVIEW
HARDY CHARACTER SKETCHES GREATEST GANGSTER OF ALL TIME
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
Tom Hardy wears a death mask in an intimate portrait of the last year of the life of a notorious Prohibition Era gangster.
Capone (2020) unravels the life of Chicago Gangster Al Capone through a series of dark funeral veils as death approaches inevitably, but ever so so slowly.
Director Josh Trank uses Capone’s deteriorating mental health as a narrative device, leading the audience down a figurative hall of mirrors through Capone’s destabilizing subconscious.
Linda Cardellini is cast well as the adoring wife, Mae Capone, as are Matt Dillon as Johnny, and Kyle MacLachlan as Capone’s Doctor Karlock.
In his performance, Hardy, just as Capone was, is the center of the universe no matter how shrouded in truth and lies that universe might be.
Trank creates clever self-referential opening scenes that set the tone and vision for the rest of the narrative. Hardy is involved in a children’s game of Hide-and-Seek involving scary monsters stuffed away in the closet only for Capone to face down his own childhood reflection on the lawn of his Florida mansion.
Hardy then begins to bring the audience into the portrait by layering on intimate details of the gangster’s character. Hardy is about to tell the story of a character who has held the world’s attention through the retelling of stories and cinematic reproductions for generations on.
Hardy literally wears a thin facial prosthetic with the scars and facial imperfections gathered up by Capone from a life of crime.
Capone’s habit of smoking thick cigars is used as part of the mask, with Hardy making acting points by puffing smoke and spitting the bits of tobacco from his lips throughout the film.
Hardy also develops the voice of an aging, sickly cigar smoking bully, mumbling and cursing on and off in Italian, with English subtitles.
Just as Matt Dillon’s character states: “This is what happens to people who spend too much time in Florida – they turn into hillbillies.”
Trank has Hardy’s character continually struggling with ghosts and demons as the violence of the past comes back to haunt him regardless of how enigmatic the gangster may remain to the public and his extended family.
The narrative is compelled forward by Hardy’s acting as well as several well directed, artful scenes.
“THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS TO PEOPLE WHO SPEND TOO MUCH TIME IN FLORIDA – THEY TURN INTO HILLBILLIES”
Trank also uses a movie score in the far background to lightly drive several scenes.
Cardellini shows Mae Capone as an angel, since Capone is such a monster that only an angel could love.
Trank cleverly transitions an intertextual scene with a self-referential scene as Hardy becomes deeply immersed in his character defending Judy Garland’s portrayal of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.
The film narrative then begins the reversal as Capone’s mental health deteriorates further down the death spiral.
Trank shows a lot of promise as a filmmaker with this biopic film.
Hardy though carries the film through a script that lacks a bit of suspense. Capone is such a well known character that this last year of his life is perhaps the only mystery to the world.
Trank avoids time fraud by keeping the audience in that last year without flash backs to Capone’s time in prison or life as a gangster on the streets of Chicago.
The biopic material merges into a psychodrama narrative – with a nod to filmmaker David Lynch by casting one of Lynch’s favorite actors, Kyle MacLachlan, as the sterile, clinical doctor making house calls at Capone’s Florida mansion.
The film does spend a bit too much time in the Hollywood imaginarium for a biopic film, while other compelling cinematic devices are toned down to bring Hardy’s performance to the forefront of the narrative. This precarious balancing of devices leaves a kind of ambiguity and sterility to the story.
Overall, Capone is interesting and compelling, but falls a bit short with intermittent sprinklings of sardonic humor and moments of chaotic horror.
MASKED VILLAIN OUT DOES US ALL REAL AND IMAGINED
Originally Published on November 3, 2017
Tom Hardy has been quietly gathering up acting credits in some of the most successful films of the last decade.
Hardy started out in feature film acting with a small supporting part in Black Hawk Down (2001), a modern war drama about the United States Marines failed intervention in civil war ravaged Somalia.
Hardy’s biopic character was one of the US Marines thrown into a hornets nest of gun toting gangs in an attempt to apprehend one of the regions destabilizing influences.
Since that bit part in a seminal film on modern warfare by director Ridley Scott, Hardy has oscillated between supporting roles as the hero and supporting acting roles as the villain.
Just one year later, Hardy played the space villain opposite Patrick Stewart in the dark story-line of the blockbuster science fiction franchise film, Star Trek: Nemisis (2002.
Hardy also plays in supporting roles opposite leading actor Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception (2010) and The Revenant (2015).
Di Caprio won his first Oscar for the lead role of a revengeful father hunting down the killer of his son in Revenant. Hardy plays a ruthless trapper so desperate to survive in the harsh, unforgiving wilderness that he is willing to take the lives of other members of his trapping party so that, if necessary, he alone may continue on in his journey.
Director Christopher Nolan cast Hardy as the masked villain, Bane, opposite Christian Bale’s dark hero character, Batman in the Dark Knight Rises (2012).
Bain personifies modern day tyranny with a powerful controlling presence as well as overwhelming physical strength.
Then came an equally powerful hero role, opposite leading actor, Charlize Theron, as he performed Mad Max in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). Hardy cannot wait to take the mask off on screen next to Theron playing Imperator Furiosa, with a prosthetic arm and masking body costume.
Imperator Furiosa and Mad Max gradually shed their masks as they begin to trust each other and build a rapport with the audience.
The hero role began to look well on the talented actor when Nolan cast Hardy once more, this time as the masked fighter pilot in the World War II drama, Dunkirk (2017).
Hardy’s fighter pilot intersects the narrative several times as he is sent to the French beaches to protect the fleeing British army from the German Luftwaffe.
Hardy has worn a mask in his movies, somewhat symbolically depicting an actor, gradually but unequivocally gaining recognition for his art.
OTC50 #27
REASONS EXIST FOR THE COPYCATS ALL AROUND
Originally Published November 3, 2017
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
P
eople become united as much by fear as love, and by displaying as much fascination for the villain as admiration for the hero.
Psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung believed that the collective unconscious contained universal patterns of characters that make up the individual personality. The collective unconscious also frequently repeats the same combination of codes and thereby gives life to similar personalities.
These coded copies running lost somewhere else on the planet explains similar acts of hate and similar acts of kindness in completely different areas of the globe.
Suddenly people became magically united throughout the world with coded characteristics copied in different communities, across the oceans and deserts.
The mass media culture of the previous century, that culminated in the social media storm of this century, has created even more copycats with people literally copying other people and other acts witnessed on television and now through the social media.
People first want to be individuals before connecting with a larger community. And some people might be averse to meeting a near mirror reflection. Like the moon eclipsing the sun, you might want the other one to move on rather quickly after the meeting.
Most people have a doppelganger, a faint mirror somewhere with whom one might never have met and might never become acquainted.
This orphaned twin is often similar in physical appearance as well – and are heavily relied upon by the film and entertainment industry for double work on film sets.
Doppelgangers can have a personality that is mirror opposite while looking physically similar in appearance.
“ONE GOOD IDEA DISCOVERED IN THE MORNING DURING COFFEE MIGHT ALREADY HAVE BEEN TRADEMARKED IN ANOTHER PART OF THE WORLD SEVERAL YEARS AGO”
Generally, bad luck ensues when meeting a doppelganger that has an evil personality, opposite of your angelic karma.
Ideas also have their origin in codes common to many people. For that reason, one good idea discovered in the morning during coffee might already have been trademarked in another part of the world several years ago, although there is no monopoly in a good idea, only the patent that is the product of the idea.
People often know of a good idea when they learn of one, and wonder why they had not thought of that first when in truth they might have had those similar thoughts on an unconscious level.
Bad ideas are also copied, and like the good ideas, bad ideas cannot be kept a secret for very long, such as the impetus for war rooted in the same motivations regardless of nationality, thereby explaining the ruthless desire of either side to be victorious in battle.
People are often too predictable.
Social engineers depend on the ability to identify patterns in human behavior that can lend science to the architectural design of buildings, urban renewal projects and transportation planning.
Cities can be made more efficient by calculating how the population of that community will function with specific structures put in place.
People are so predictable that not only can a certain segment of the population be expected to become displaced as a result of economic renewal, but how those people deal with the negative change in their lives can be programmed into an app for download.
When a city does not function properly, the social engineers have not made significant enough structural adjustments to accommodate for the changes in the population. This dysfunction can become most noticeable when the population dramatically increases over a relatively short period of time. Ultimately, the city outgrows itself.
Social criticism goes down heavy in some communities not wanting change, because to just keep going is easier and more profitable.
Free speech only exists in cities under a traffic lockdown if one does not have to pay for the information.
If the free press does not start talking, though, the city is going to become a miserable sink hole.
I just want to be able to go to work in a city in which I grew up, without headbutting another free individual heading in the opposite direction directly towards me.
“COMIC BOOK CHARACTERS ARE OFTEN THE PUREST FORM OF THESE ARCHETYPES WITH A BASENESS AND SIMPLICITY MADE EVEN MORE PURE BY THE CHARACTERS WEARING MASKS.”
The unusual universal appeal of some arthouse movies and paintings is likely a result of people sharing the same unconscious codes regardless of social status and cultural upbringing.
“I can relate to that” translates into sharing the same unconscious codes to interpret community events and individual acts.
Similarly, many offensive acts can be universally condemned as abhorrent to the human condition because of shared archetypes among those people commenting about the act.
Innocence, isolation, heroism, caregiving, exploring, rebellion, loving, creating, wisdom, illusion and ruling have distinct codes for interpretation that become shared universally with civilizations around the world.
Comic book characters are often the purest form of these archetypes with a baseness and simplicity made even more pure by the characters wearing masks.
Masks accentuate the code by symbolizing the character, but also by hiding personal features that often do nothing other than send the audience miscues about the true intent of a person.
A beautiful person is not always a nice person.
People in real life wear masks to hide their true identities. A person wearing headphones in public wears a form of mask, and shuts out the audience from what is going on with the individual on any particular day.
A public transit passenger does not just wear the headphones because the trip from work to home at the end of the day is rather boring without listening to music, but because this form of mask also blots out the other people in the transit vehicle from making unwelcomed personal connections.
Masks can also do just the opposite as well, by freeing up personality traits for public sharing. Culturally specific masks are commonly used in most cultures to facilitate ritual disinhibitions.
But what I am really trying to get to is that repression puts masks on the entire population in a way that inhibits individualism and drives people into a larger indistinguishable collective in which the masses then become easier to manipulate and exploit.
Individuals all choosing different consumer products to assist in completing the same function would fracture the market place and make production unprofitable, merely in terms of too much supply for too little demand. Manufacturers would be without that certain cache of consumers required to make manufacturing worthwhile.
People are therefore given masks of sorts to be melded into that same consumer next in line at the check-out.
Politicians do inherit a heavy burden with political office to manage the city, but to also manage the people well. Knowing what is being asked of politicians by the citizenry is a good part of the struggle. Codes can help.
Codes are a system of rules that convert information into meaning. If the people in that system wear masks that hide irrelevant individual characteristics, then that message becomes even more clear with the hidden codes imbedded in both conduct and speech becoming accentuated.
If too much of this coded chatter occurs, then the city has become dysfunctional, and the politicians better get working on a solution.
Society fits the population into prescribed social roles, and when those social roles are no longer functional, chaos ensues, like that experiment developing at the rapid transit stations that no one knows about yet.