'The Alamo' (Film Review)

The Alamo, a 2004 film starring Billy Bob Thornton, Dennis Quaid, Jason Patric, and Patrick Wilson, and directed by John Lee Hancock, billed itself as the first historically accurate retelling of the famous 1836 siege and battle of the Alamo. As a Texas Revolution history buff, I take contention with this claim. The film offers a capable depiction of its subject matter, and while it gets many details correct, it also indulges in questionable revisionist narratives.

Released by Disney's Touchstone Pictures, The Alamo had a troubled production history. Original director Ron Howard left the film after Disney refused to front the budget he wanted, and also required Howard to keep the rating PG-13. With Howard's exit also came the departures of actors Russell Crowe and Ethan Hawke from the project. Despite these setbacks, the film went into production under Director John Lee Hancock.

Produced in the midst of the Iraq War, the film's screenplay is openly critical of Anglo ambitions in 1830s Texas. To what degree the screenwriters were trying to make a parallel with contemporaneous events is unknown. But the film is anxious to provide a revisionist take on the Texas Revolution. The Anglo settlers in Texas are generally depicted as greedy land grabbers, frothing to fulfill the credo of Manifest Destiny. Early on in the film, Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid) attempts to lure then Congressman David Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton) to Texas with the promise of free land. The encounter never occurred in real life, but the filmmakers use it to cast the ambitions of American pioneers in a certain light. At one point in the film, a Tejano revolutionary remarks, "these lowlifes want the entire world!". While I personally feel the Iraq War was a travesty and a waste of life and resources, it is in no way comparable to the Texas Revolution.

The historical reality was a bit more nuanced. But like many revisionist narratives, The Alamo is eager to reduce its central conflict to greed and prejudice vs. multicultural harmony and goodwill. Historically, the Anglo settlers that came to Texas were motivated by a wide variety of factors, unique to each group and family. Mexico was eager to settle its vast territory of Coahuila y Tejas, and so established an open immigration policy. The promise of land, a new beginning, and freedom to live as one pleased was attractive to many. Settlement in Texas was contingent upon a conversion to Catholicism as well as an oath of loyalty sworn under the Mexican Constitution of 1824. General and president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna would later shred the document, sparking the revolution.

The Alamo more or less depicts the Texian freedom fighters as a band of deplorable scoundrels. Aside from the characters of David Crockett, William Travis, and James Bowie, we barely get to know any of them before they are butchered in the pre-dawn attack of March 6.

Travis, Crockett, and Bowie

The aforementioned "big three" or "the trinity of the Alamo" are depicted as seriously flawed men doing their best despite the circumstances. Thornton's Crockett is a world weary celebrity, trapped by his "King of the Wild Frontier" image, which he feels is a sham. Travis (Patrick Wilson) is a foppish young Calvary officer, eager to find his grit and prove himself. Bowie (Jason Patric) is a broken down wreck, mourning the loss of his young wife and undergoing an existential crisis.

While Thornton, Wilson, and Patric perform their roles well, their characters as written do not really reflect historical truth. But these depictions are central to the relativistic themes the screenwriters and director were trying to convey, namely that there are no heroes or villains in a story like this--only flawed humans who kill each other out of fear and greed. While perhaps a noble attempt at humanizing these famous historical figures, it is more an over-correction to past Anglo-centric idealizations of these men. Both are extremes and not indicative of historical reality.

Unfortunately, Hancock's historical advisers were not the best. The film did not utilize the latest in Alamo scholarship, but rather promulgated revisionist perspectives of the seventies and eighties. Chief among these is the notion that David Crockett did not die in the final chaotic battle, but surrendered and was executed under the direct order of Santa Anna. The primary historical source for this narrative comes from the post-war diary of a Mexican officer, imprisoned and quite bitter towards the now disgraced Mexican president. Knowing of Crockett's celebrity, the account was no doubt a politically motivated attempt on the part of its author to smear the reputation of Santa Anna. In all probability, Crockett was part of the large group of Alamo defenders who broke free from the compound that morning and were cut down by the Mexican Calvary. This pivotal event is not depicted in the film.

The final battle of the siege on March 6, 1836.

The filmmakers went to lengths to recreate the Alamo compound and the town of San Antonio as it was in 1836. They didn't quite succeed. The town and mission are too small and claustrophobic, and do not accurately reflect the lush environment of the San Antonio River basin. Also, designer Michael Corenblith made some bizarre decisions, such as altering the position of the Alamo church, which throws off the overall symmetry of the mission as it looked in 1836. John Wayne's efforts for his 1960 epic are much more evocative on screen. Corenblith utilized perishable materials to construct his set, while Wayne's designer used actual stone, and it shows.

Historicity aside, the film succeeds in its atmosphere and tone. Hancock does a commendable job at conveying the desperate nature of the thirteen day siege, particularly the harrowing experience of the Mexican army's continual cannon bombardment. The final nighttime battle is both quick and intense, as it was in reality. Though it is in this area that the film could have benefited from Ron Howard's desired R rating. The film's meditations on death and suffering are also poignant, with the scenes of a deathly ill James Bowie standing out.

Carter Burwell's score is both haunting and understated. He employs woodwinds and acoustic sounds to great effect. Of note are David Crockett's performances on violin.

The Alamo is well-worth the time. But the definitive film on this historical subject has yet to be made.        

'Winchester' Misfires (Film Review)

If I kept higher expectations for new releases these days, then I surely would have been disappointed by Winchester, the recent horror flick starring Dame Helen Mirren and Jason Clarke. As it is though, I was only marginally let down.

I've always had a fascination with the historical figure of Sarah Winchester and her mysterious mansion of walled-off rooms and stairways to nowhere. I recall viewing a documentary on the subject as an adolescent that sparked my imagination and probably kept me awake for a few nights.

Sarah Winchester was a wealthy widow who inherited the Winchester Arms Company from her late husband, William Winchester. Sarah came to eschew the famous rifle bearing her last name, known as it was for its deadly accuracy and claiming innumerable lives on the western frontier. After the death of her husband and baby daughter, Sarah came to feel that her family was cursed. She retreated to her mansion home near San Francisco, California and began what would become a lifelong building project and obsession.

The legend goes that Sarah believed herself to be haunted by all the spirits whose mortal lives had been ended by a Winchester rifle. Through nightly seances, these vengeful ghosts demanded Sarah make accommodation for them. Using automatic writing, the spirits would channel architectural designs through Sarah and onto paper. Sarah would then hand off these designs to her permanent labor force, who would then execute them in reality. That the "designs" were often bizarre and nonsensical made no difference to Sarah, and the crew did as they were told. All of the above has been denied by scholars at one time or the other. But it sure makes for a tantalizing story.

  The exterior of the mansion as it appears in the film. The effects work is

 shockingly bad here. This looks like a background from the old 1998 PC game, Myst. 

Set in 1906, the film Winchester is told from the perspective of fictional character Dr. Eric Price (Clarke), who is hired by the board of the Winchester Arms Company to evaluate Mrs. Winchester's mental health. Price is brought to stay at the mysterious mansion and ghostly chaos ensues.

We discover early on that Clarke is a skeptic and man of science, with an addiction to laudanum on the side. He attributes his initial spirit sightings in the mansion to the influence of said drug, that is until Sarah (Mirren) has her hollow-eyed butler confiscate the goods from Price's room. 

The first twenty minutes or so of the film are intriguing, and I hoped were providing the foundation for a meaningful plot and measured horror. However, the content of the remaining run-time had me convinced that the writing team had a substance addiction themselves. I have no idea how the screenplay for this film made it past the green-light stage.

What heralded the doom of this picture was, as you might guess, the first of many jump scares. The build to it was superb, utilizing a set up with Price and a shaving mirror. Each time Price turns to retrieve something from his bag, he moves the mirror in its frame to reveal an empty armchair in the corner of the room. This repeats two or three times, building the tension. If the writers had possessed any degree of subtlety or finesse, they would have left it at that--just a build up with no pay off. It would have been a clever way to hook the audience and keep them on the edge waiting for the first real spirit appearance. As it is though, we are assaulted with a jump scare in the form of a rotted ghost face appearing behind the mirror.

As I suspected, the moment would epitomize the entirety of the film: a wasted opportunity. What follows is a tiresome and oddly comical series of "thrills" and "scares", culminating in the giggle-inducing image of a vengeful Confederate ghost throttling a battered Mrs. Winchester against a shattered gun case. This film is not the first time in recent memory that I've wondered if the filmmakers are trolling the audience. I'm formulating a conspiracy theory that this is actually an avant-garde style of movie making--a cynically cheeky ode to our times if you will.

The always superb Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester.

Mirren and Price do a capable job in their respective roles, though Mirren seems to grow rather glassy eyed as the picture progresses. The far too few scenes of the two together in Price's evaluatory  sessions show potential, and one wishes these moments had been fleshed out and shaded. The themes of coping with grief, the fear of death, and skepticism vs. superstition are powerful and really could have been explored at length here. Is Sarah merely a grief-stricken widow, encased in a world of delusions, or does she truly communicate with the dead? And by extension, is Price, himself a widower, retreating from grief and guilt in the skepticism he promulgates? These questions should have been the heart and soul of the film. Perhaps such was the original intent of the writers. But somehow, somewhere, something went terribly askew, not unlike the Winchester mansion itself.

   

'My Friend Dahmer' (Film Review)

Yes, I'll admit it, I'm into True Crime. For those who don't know, True Crime is a non-fiction literary and film genre that explores actual crimes and actual murderers, from Jack the Ripper to Ted "ladykiller" Bundy. Quite understandably, True Crime is a guilty hobby for many, often hidden from family members and coworkers. We know all too well those odd/worried looks cast our way when we start prattling on about the true identity of Saucy Jacky or the minutia of the Tate/Labianca crime scenes. I suppose we shouldn't complain though. After all, doesn't one have to be a bit of a creep to be interested in this stuff? I would beg to differ, but that is a debate for another time. 

Now that I have that bothersome (though necessary) caveat out of the way, I can proceed with reviewing My Friend Dahmer, a 2017 independent film that explores the teenage years of serial killer and cannibal Jeffery Dahmer, ending just prior to his first murder at the ripe old age of 18.    

My Friend Dahmer is based on a 2012 graphic novel by artist Derf Backderf, who attended high-school with Dahmer in the late 1970s. During their school days, Derf, along with a group of friends, established the "Dahmer Fan Club," inspired by the fake seizures Jeff used to pull in class and in public. Dahmer was their weird mascot, the boy who got a laugh but never connected with anyone. To see Derf's blog about his memories of Dahmer and his experiences on the set of the film, follow this link. 

Writer/Director Marc Meyers treats his source material with respect, presenting an accurate film adaptation that is both haunting and poignant. At the heart of his film is the troubling question: What makes a killer? In Jeffery Dahmer's case, the answers are not easy to pinpoint. We'd like to think of serial killers as fully-formed maniacs, born out of some hellish vacuum. It's not comfortable to imagine these people as they were as children. It humanizes them too much.   

What sets My Friend Dahmer apart from other biographical films about serial killers, is the uncomfortable relatability of its protagonist. In many ways, Dahmer had a typical suburban upbringing of the time. Sure, his mother and father argued a lot, and his mother suffered from various mood issues, but there seems to be little there that would induce a young man to murder and dismember other young men. 

Director Meyers doesn't keep Jeff at a distance from the audience. While most films with similar subject matter present their killers with a psychotic gleam in the eye and creepy demeanor, My Friend Dahmer provides us with no such distancing techniques. We the audience have nothing to hide behind--no comforting barrier from which to crouch and whisper, "oh, thank God I'm not a creep like that!". 

The Dahmer of the film is no frothing, twitchy eyed, stalker, but rather an unassuming highschooler. He is less of a social outcast than he is simply disassociated from the world around him. He spends his evenings hunting for roadkill that he can take home to his special shed and dissolve in jars of acid. He isn't necessarily shy about his bizarre hobby. When two peers express curiosity about Jeff's roadkill collecting, he takes them back to the shed and provides a demonstration. They express great disgust, proclaiming "You're such a freak Dahmer!" as they flee the little shack of horrors.   

"The boy who didn't belong." Jeff's face was censored from the highschool yearbook.

The real Dahmer took an interest early on in animals and bones. His father, Lionel Dahmer, a chemist, jumped at the opportunity to encourage his son's curiosity. He built him the shed out in the woods behind their home and instructed him on how to remove the skin from deceased animals in order to study the skeletal structures. In the film, when Jeff persists with the hobby instead of going out and finding friends, Lionel dismantles the shed and demands that his teenage son take more of an interest in social life.

Meyers' screenplay is brilliant in its reserve. Here we find no blood splatters or scenes of gory, gratuitous violence. Rather we see Jeff as his peer group saw him at the time--quiet and probably depressed. While the film takes place in the year before Jeff's first killing, it nonetheless could have depicted the graphic fantasies that he'd been having since age 14. As it is in the film, we see only one brief scene where Jeff imagines lying down on a bed with a corpse.

The film also has touches of humor; no simple task to pull off when dealing with such weighty themes. When the local stoner offers to sell Jeff the drug of his choice, he asks, "what do you do?" Jeff responds with, "I collect roadkill, I'm trying to quit." Moments like these offer a brief respite amidst the pervasive gloom of the story. 

By keeping his film understated, Meyer's heightens its tension. The film throbs with the unspoken and terrible truth of what Jeff is thinking and what he is destined to become. Actor Ross Lynch, a former Disney Channel star cast against type, plays Jeff with a deliberate subtlety that leaves a definite impression. He looks eerily like the real Jeff. Walking with an odd, hunched over gait, Lynch's Dahmer ambles down the halls of his school, and stalks the county roads, all with the same muted, dull expression. Only occasionally and briefly, does Lynch allow us to see the deep pain behind Jeff's eyes. The theme of disassociation is an important one to the film, and the element that most struck home with me. 

Actor Ross Lynch as Dahmer on the left. The real Jeff on the right.

Upon reaching puberty, the real Dahmer realized he was gay, but also began to be plagued with violent sexual fantasies involving necrophilia and dismemberment. The teenage Jeff began drinking heavily, presumably to dull these terrible thoughts. His friend Derf recalls Jeff stumbling down the corridors of the school and showing up to class heavily inebriated. The adults pretended not to notice and did nothing. Consequently, Jeff never received the help he needed. One hopes that today, a kid like Dahmer would be noticed and given treatment. But in the wake of yet another school shooting, it seems our society remains largely blind to the troubled among us.       

Visually, My Friend Dahmer is soaked in atmosphere. I noticed early on in the film that Dahmer's house, shed, and the roads he trudges down, seemed charged with a weight that belied typical film sets and locations. Sure enough, upon looking it up, I discovered that the film was shot on location in Bath, Ohio, where Dahmer spent his childhood and teenage years. The house featured in the film was Dahmer's real family home, in which he committed his first murder. The dissecting shed in the film is a replica built over the spot of the original. And the roads seen in the film are the very roads the real Jeff haunted as a teen. 

Doesn't get more authentic than that!

If you're at all interested in True Crime, make sure to check out My Friend Dahmer. It is a quiet but powerful film with something to say.  

*Jeffery Dahmer would go on to murder 17 young men before being apprehended in 1990. In 1994, Jeff was attacked and beaten to death by a fellow prison inmate.