For three weeks in a row, the weather caused the cancellation of my LifeQuest Arkansas class.
That was a drag because I enjoy the class, which is really just an opportunity for me and 70 or 80 friends to sit around and talk about the movies for an hour or so. Usually we spend the winter session talking a lot about Oscar-nominated films, and if things had gone as planned we would have wrapped up the week after the Academy Awards ceremony.
But now, the Oscars seem to have happened a long time ago. While there are still a few films that haven't arrived in local theaters (Russian Best Foreign Language nominee Leviathan will likely be here next week, while Mauritania's Timbuktu may show up later this year), I'm not sure there's any juice left in the award season lemon. And most of the movies that show up in theaters this time of the year -- in the post-award season/pre-summer spectacle doldrums -- are unpromising, especially to the sort of educated, mature and mainly retired folks who show up for my class.
That's one of the problems with the movies in general. Increasingly they are made in a distressingly obvious fashion. In many ways, character and language have been devalued as movies have adopted a simplified, almost semaphoric code in which action trumps sense. Movies have become ever blunter instruments, as they are designed to appeal not simply to the great mass of Americans but to eligible ticket buyers in China, Pakistan and the whole world over. We have been trained to accept that people will routinely do certain things in movies that, in real life, would seem insane.
But there is still an audience for movies in which people talk and wrestle with problems that arise from things as modest as human complication. It was with that in mind that we went to see The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel this past weekend; it is exactly the sort of movie that plays well with my LifeQuest fellows (I have a difficult time thinking of them as "students"), though they are probably more likely than most to receive it critically. They understand, and (probably) forgive, the more pandering aspects of a movie particularly crafted to appeal to their demographic.
If you're not familiar with the precursor to this film, John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), you should probably know it's about an entrepreneurial young Indian named Sonny (Dev Patel) who opens a seedy-chic (and apparently very cheap) residential hotel designed to attract British retirees. The movie, which played as sort of a Very Special Love Boat episode for senior citizens, was a surprise hit for a couple of reasons.
In the first place, in The Best Exotic Marigold movies, the older folks are treated like kids are in movies aimed at children. By this I mean they are the only characters granted a full complement of human emotion; they are smarter and more clever than the younger "adults in charge." They are destined to be underestimated, and to prevail. They are the heroes and the antagonists, the ones who matter.
And, maybe even more importantly, adults -- especially older adults -- are a perpetually underserved segment of the moviegoing market.
There's nothing wrong with making products designed for this demographic. We ought not be surprised when those products turn out to be, like most movies, mildly corny and sort of obvious. My impression of The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is that it's probably about as good as its 2011 predecessor and that both are better crafted than the average Hollywood rom-com (which is perhaps a distressingly low bar).
That said, it's a sweet and often funny movie populated by likable actors who know their business. Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy are adorable, and it's good to see them all working in a project where aging is treated as just something that happens to fortunate people. It's good to see a movie where people who've reached retirement age are still treated as vital and viable, and not simply devices through which sympathy or laughs can be bought.
While the humorless might frown at the echoes of imperialism inherent in the idea of pensioned Brits cavorting in the subcontinent, the film is gentle and respectful, and the only Indian character who really comes off as a fool is the hotel's obsequious and scheming owner, and he's ultimately redeemed in the end.
No one would argue that Second Best Exotic is a great movie, and I doubt it will linger long in anyone's mind. But it's not hard to see why it exists or why people like it.
...
It's not too late to attend the Film Society of Little Rock's inaugural Fantastic Cinema festival that kicked off Wednesday. It's being held at the Studio Theatre, 320 W. Seventh St., and doors open at 5 p.m. today and noon Saturday. Tickets are $7 at the door for individual screenings or $15 for a day pass.
Festival programmer Tony Taylor says the "primary goal of FSLR and the Fantastic Cinema Film Festival is to bring a diverse selection of high quality films to Little Rock that would not otherwise screen here. ... There is no venue screening foreign genre films. We want to change that."
Tonight's films include the Filipino drama Children's Show; the British sci-fi film Hungerford; Der Samurai, a fantasy/horror film from Germany; and at 10:30 p.m., a screening of Friday the 13th: Part 4.
Saturday's lineup includes 54 Days, a psychological thriller from Australia; the Italian sci-fi animated feature Fantasticherie di un Passeggiatore Solitario (which won Best World Feature at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival last month); Mexico Barbaro, an anthology of eight Mexican horror shorts; and Cub, a first feature from Belgian director Jonas Govaerts, who claims most U.S. film festivals found the film too shocking to program.
For more information, see the Film Society's website at fantasticcinema.com.
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MovieStyle on 03/13/2015