Cynical Cinema

Alliance Films is releasing the movie adaptation of one of Canada’s most enduring and popular novels, The Stone Angel, today, September 16th. This is one of my favourite books, but it’s not the type of classic book that lends itself to a classic screenplay. And while there are certainly some good things going on in this movie, it doesn’t really work overall. Now, I’ve read Margaret Laurence’s book. So I didn’t expect gunfights and car chases and hilarious jokes. I expected a long, slow meditation on the life of Hagar Shipley full of flashbacks as she reflected on her life as an old woman. And that’s exactly what I got. With an emphasis on the “long” and the “slow”.

Ellen Burstyn is wonderful as the old, stubborn, bitter Hagar. She does a great job of conveying Hagar’s double standards in life, especially when it comes to her children. Do as I say, not as I did, and so forth. Her resistance toward the actions of her children is more of a self-loathing regret than it is good parental advice, and this comes through loud and clear in Burstyn’s performance. Also terrific are Dylan Baker as her adult son Marvin, Kevin Zegers as her adult son John, and Ellen Page as John’s girlfriend. But they all appear so briefly. Or at least it feels that way in a movie that feels far too long. It’s like listening to certain types of jazz, in that you can tell there is brilliance there, but it isn’t immediately apparent where, and even if you knew you might still be bored.

In the book, one of the most interesting and powerful scenes was a scene when Hagar, as an old woman, runs off on her son who is trying to put her in a home, and makes her way to the seaside cabin she remembers from her youth. While there, she gets drunk and has a great talk with a young man, while her past blurs with her present are we’re not even sure if she is in the right house. But for me, the most compelling part of that scene was the journey itself. The way she, as an old woman, snuck out of the house and managed to struggle her way down to this cabin. But that gets left out of the movie in favour of more flashbacks.

In the end, this movie is more skillfully made than it is interesting. There is great acting but it fails to become compelling. I can’t really think of anything (other than the getting to the cabin scene) that could have been either added or omitted for greater effect. I can’t think of how this movie could have been better done, or how it could have been better acted. And yet, I realize that is because I love the book. And I am familiar with the book to such an extent that I watch the movie from that perspective. And it becomes rather clear to me that it was made from that perspective as well. Not that The Stone Angel is too faithful to the book, but that it makes the assumption that simply running through the same scenes as the book does, with great actors to make those scenes come alive, is enough to create the same impact. And it isn’t.

All Hat is a movie that seems to be strangely unsure of itself. When I picked it up, I was fairly excited. Everyone on the cover was wearing cowboy hats and carrying guns. Shotguns and pistols and so forth. However, the movie is not a western. Not really, anyway. And it doesn’t involve that many guns. In fact, there are guns in only one scene, and they are both pistols, and the shotgun on the cover of the DVD box never makes an appearance. The whole movie, I was looking for that shotgun. When is it going to show up? Does someone get their head blown off? Or will they just be scared away by the cocking sound the shotgun makes? It never materialized. I was so desperate to see a shotgun by the time it was over that I watched all the special features. Was it left on the cutting-room floor? Did the editors deprive me of the chance to see someone blasted in the chest? It turns out no. The shotgun existed only to be photographed for the DVD cover, and nothing else.

Also, throughout the film, I was wondering where the title came from. All Hat? What does that mean? Why would you name a movie All Hat? How is that going to get people to watch, for starters, and what focus group came up with that gem? Well, it turns out that this Canadian movie was based on a book by Canadian author Brad Smith (a celebrated fiction writer, he also wrote One-Eyed Jacks, which is not to be confused with the very under-rated western directed by and starring Marlon Brando). And his book was named All Hat. And it comes from a bizarre line in the book and the film: “you’re all hat and no cattle, son”. What does that mean? Why do they think that’s a bad-ass line? Why did Keith Carradine deliver it like he was John Wayne? Why am I still watching this? Oh right, the shotgun.

There are other reasons to watch All Hat, besides the non-existent shotgun. First of all, Lisa Ray is very hot. (Her most famous role was in Deepa Mehta’s terrific Canadian-Indian film, Water.) And secondly, it is pretty short. So you won’t waste a large portion of your day. The movie begins with Ray (Luke Kirby) being released from prison and picked up by Pete (Carradine). Then there is some horse racing. We don’t know what Ray’s done to be put into prison, and it becomes pretty clear that we’re going to be told, slowly, in pieces, over the course of the film. Like it’s some kind of big revelation. But when we find out what that revelation actually is, it is…very disappointing. Also disappointing are the characters. Rachel Leigh Cook plays a jockey who is sassy and bitter and kind of a jerk. But we’re supposed to LIKE her for that! She’s a free-spirit! The bad guy, Sonny, is an absolute cartoon. He may as well spend much of the movie stroking a cat and enter each scene to the strains of Thus Spake Zarathustra.

And the big sting at the end, to nab the bad guy? Painfully unsatisfying, unless you’re really into those simplistic after-school-special movie endings. Imagine for a moment that the big gag at the end of The Sting was that Doyle Lonnegan gets a pie in the face. That’s about the level of clever we’re dealing with here. But I think it has more to do with shoddy direction than with an actual lack of cleverness to the premise. Lots of other strange stuff happens in All Hat. Every single character, almost at all times, is drinking. Beer, whiskey, from a flask, from the bar. Always. Like the Trailer Park Boys, only…serious. They all (men, and women, at convenient times) hang out at the local strip club. Small-town strip club, eh? Why would that be in the movie? Especially since there is NO nudity. Why have everyone hang out at a strip club all the time, unnecessarily, unless it’s a cheap excuse for cheap nudity? Maybe in this case it’s a cheap excuse for that expensive hooker bit.

Graham Greene shows up, just to let us know for sure that this movie is Canadian. And then - out of nowhere - there is a gross-out comedy scene, clumsily handled, as though it were out of Epic Movie or the crappier version of the Farrely Brothers. A guy gets sprayed, head to toe - with horse semen! What? Where did that come from? What movie IS this? What’s going on? Well, the answer is, not much of anything. A guy gets out of jail, his enemy is evil, Lisa Ray is gorgeous, there are horses that race, a sting is set up for the bad guy, the payoff is weak, you’re all hat and no cattle, the end. All Hat comes out May 27th, tomorrow, from Alliance Films. It’s worth skipping. You see, it’s all hat and no cattle. I think.