“We Own The Night” (2007)
It took Gray a while to regroup after the disappointment of the reception of “The Yards,” and when he finally did return to our screens, it was with a film that, if anything, represented the director further digging in his stylistic and thematic heels. “We Own The Night” was Gray’s attempt, in his own words “to make a policier that was much more focused on the emotional,” having had his attention caught by a newspaper picture of an NYPD officer’s funeral and been moved by the scene of naked grief. And reading the film on that level is an interesting way into what can, in terms of plot, seem like just another cop flick. In fact, the way the plot’s mechanics work, along the familiar genre lines of the procedural, kind of betrays that Gray’s attention is elsewhere, on creating a sense of mood and place and on mining the specificity of the situation for grand, sweeping statements about the inescapability of one’s background and the nobility of choosing the hard lack of glamour of a decent life over the more obvious attractions of the morally lax, not-quite-legal variety. In this endeavor, he is helped immeasurably by a terrifically sympathetic and nuanced central performance from Joaquin Phoenix, who captures his character’s ambivalence perfectly and seems to have visibly matured as an actor in terms of charisma and confidence since “The Yards.” And again, the onscreen talent Gray assembled around him was stellar, especially Robert Duvall as the stiff patriarch, so unbending in his adherence to a code of ethics that you can see how the only options that exist are to capitulate to his way of thinking entirely, as does Mark Wahlberg’s Joseph, or to wholly repudiate and rebel against it, as does Phoenix’s Bobby. But while, like “The Yards” before it, “We Own The Night” played in Competition at Cannes, it was greeted with jeers at the festival presumably by a press crowd unable or unwilling to see past the film’s generic casing, and yet ironically it performed much more strongly at home (for a Gray film, “modest commercial hit” is a blockbuster), presumably due to a public audience who were brought in by exactly those genre elements. For ourselves, we find a great deal to admire here — the gripping performances, the moody style, the insanely stress-inducing undercover sequences, and an intense car chase scene for the ages — but nonetheless have often felt like the end result slightly more compromised than Gray’s other films, and somehow less personal than his two prior dramas. Absorbing as the drama is, it was the film that made us hope Gray would cast his net a little wider than the New York family crime drama he’d made his stock-in-trade, and indeed his very next outing would see him do just that. [B+]
“Two Lovers” (2008)
Under an overcast sky in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with a somber score appropriately arresting our attention through hollow bellows, a man attempts suicide. He fails and mumbles an awkward “thanks” to the kind stranger that saved his life. So begins Gray’s most romantic film to date, “Two Lovers” — and what a perfectly melancholic opening it is, punctuating Gray’s subtle signature within seconds. The suicidal man in question, Joaquin Phoenix (who else?), is Leonard Kraditor, a 30-something who’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and lives with his two endearing parents (Isabella Rossellini and Moni Moshonov, both really tug your heart-strings here). Moving back home after a tragic separation from his fiancé, Leonard helps with the family dry-cleaning business and within two days meets two women who complete the film’s triangular story: Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the meek daughter of important family friends who are in the middle of negotiating a dry-cleaning merger; and Michelle (a spirited Gwyneth Paltrow), the girl next door who is the complete opposite of the archetypal girl next door. Magnetically attracted to Michelle, but having to settle for Sandra after the latter friend-zones him, Leonard’s quest for happiness is blindly commandeered by his heart, and if “Two Lovers” reminds us of anything, it’s how much this utterly insoluble emotion deprives us of common sense, blinding us to see something that’s right in front of our eyes. Thanks to another brilliant turn by Phoenix, Leonard’s social ineptness is instantly lovable, and Gray’s screenplay fills the most ordinary of conversations with a profound sense of urgency. It’s not long before we get hooked and desperately root for Leonard to make the right choice, to stop, to listen, to not answer that text message. Rarely has “I love you” sounded so pathetic (in the truest sense of the word). Complemented by Gray’s meticulous control (a dinner scene featuring Elias Koteas conveys an ocean of feeling with a single slo-mo brush of the cheek) and Joaquín Baca-Asay’s delicate cinematography, “Two Lovers” reveals the old soul of its director. The quasi-melodramatic and classical tendencies (the film is inspired by Dostoyevsky’s short story “White Nights”) might make the narrative predictable, but no less powerful. As ever, it’s always the journey, rarely the destination, that really matters in a James Gray film. [A-]
“The Immigrant” (2013)
When he was asked about the chosen subject and setting for “The Immigrant,” James Gray said that he felt a deep connection to it and what it must have felt like back in the 1920s, because his own parents were immigrants. If we didn’t know any better, we’d think the filmmaker who gave that kind of answer just made a conventional film about the struggles of immigration as felt by a single family unit, basically something we’ve seen a dozen times before. But it’s never that black-and-white in a James Gray film. He is a director who evokes a nostalgic era through much more subtle and polished means, without resorting to worn-out tropes. Taking a step away from his heavily male-centered films, “The Immigrant” (originally titled “Nightingale”) centers around Ewa (Marion Cotillard), a Polish woman who has landed in New York with her ailing sister Magda (Angela Sarafyan) and is trying to turn a new leaf in her life. Immediately separated from her sister, Ewa comes under the care of burlesque runner/pimp Bruno (reliable Gray anchor Joaquin Phoenix), whose keen fascination (read: creepy obsession) with Ewa starts to dismantle in front of him when magician Orlando (Jeremy Renner) gets involved. Coming out of Cannes with mixed reviews, condemned by naysayers for being a pretty-looking melodrama, “The Immigrant” is another James Gray film we’re very much enamored with. Darius Khondji’s cinematography and Chris Spelman’s score do wonders to transport you into the 1920s, like having vintage Polaroids turned into moving images right before your eyes. Strengthened by the performances — especially Cotillard, who officially acts better in English with a Polish accent than in English; and Phoenix, who manages to contort his characters’ emotions in such ways that make you kick yourself for ever thinking they were creepy — the picture is a time machine into an ever-alluring era. Sure, there’s a bit of reliance on melodrama, but it’s done in such a moving way, and supported by a kind of love not often explored (the kind of love shared between two sisters), that we’re completely swept away. Credit goes to Gray for taking a unique approach to evoke a popular time period, while keeping within his thematic sandbox of love, family, and honor. The conclusion of “The Immigrant,” putting split screens to shame, speaks volumes to Gray’s immense talents as a filmmaker in a single shot, and makes us anticipate his next project that much more. [A-]