HITCHCOCK (Sacha Gervasi, 2013)

-

One thing better about watching a great movie, is watching a movie about the creation of that great movie, and in Sacha Gervasi's HITCHCOCK which sees the tumultuous birth of PSYCHO, we are along for the bittersweet, often sarcastic but always fascinating journey of Hitch and his wife Alma Reville as they pushed to have PSYCHO made and released while trying not to fall apart as husband and wife.

Anthony Hopkins (in a performance clearly robbed of an Oscar) is magnetic as Hitchcock, who is so deep in his performance he becomes Hitch himself. Every mannerism, stride, and even the voice is imitated, or rather portrayed with precise quality. Equally of caliber here is Helen Mirren who plays Alma Reville, with balls of steel and guts and wits to match that of her onscreen husband who is usually stealing the spotlight. 

What HITCHCOCK ultimately achieves is a throwback to the age of Hollywood when Hitch's films existed, and every love for the material, and for the period is honestly felt in the production design, music, and the hairstyles and costumes of the actors. Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh and James D'Arcy as Anthony Perkins are instantly believable even just at first glance, while Michael Wincott who is no stranger to portraying deranged characters onscreen is menacing as Ed Gein, the real-life killer who inspired PSYCHO. 

Indeed the journey from script to screen is one hell of a thrill ride, from Hitch and Alma debating casting choices and scene treatment, to their almost marital breakdown, to a visit to the censors (which Hitch refers to as worse than a visit to the dentist), and to the nerve-wracking premiere of PSYCHO, which we all know involved Hitch requiring all theater owners not to admit latecomers, due to the early plot twist in his movie.

Through HITCHCOCK, we are given more light on the eccentricity of one of the world's greatest auteurs, and director Sacha Gervasi presents the film with every bit of love for the movies and the way it's evolved over time. The film addresses Hitch's relevance in the history of cinema, and reminds us the power of movies to infect us with ideas and emotions, as well as the hardworking people who made them possible. 

RATING: 5/5

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ANINO SA LIKOD NG BUWAN (Jun Lana, 2015)

-
Image
* English title "Shadow behind the Moon" The best term to describe Jun Lana's latest film would be a cinematic charade- a game of identities, of motives, of suppressed passions, and of uncertainty. Or the film equivalent of a Russian doll, if you will. "Anino sa Likod ng Buwan" only has three characters- husband and wife Nando (Anthony Falcon) and Emma (LJ Reyes) and military man Joel (Luis Alandy). What started as a seemingly routine banter among friends gradually and intensely escalated into an examination of society, where the definition of immorality is blurred during a time of insurgency.  And in fact, the film does discuss the subject of immorality from various paradigms. When does adultery become acceptable, and to whom? Is sexual liberation more heinous than murder? Why is immorality always a double standard? The film plays out the ideas in endless games. Or are they really games at all? Lana could have stopped there, but he didn...
Read more

TUHOG (Jeffrey Jeturian)

-
Image
Film within a film-structured movies are always interesting watch. Not only do they provide a much-needed deconstruction of form and content of cinema itself, but also that much-needed emotional punch a cinephile would surely love.  Like in BAD EDUCATION (Almodovar, 2004), we witness the characters tell the back story via montage, as if we are part of the cast of characters watching an actual movie. The form was successful in evoking pain and regret, and also of empathy. In TUHOG, Jeffrey Jeturian and screenwriter Bing Lao tackles sensational media in the Philippines, especially in cinema. The film opens as a film producer hears a pitch for a possible movie- a story of a grandfather who rapes his own granddaughter.  The director of the film soon after visits the victim of the crime, Floring (Ina Raymundo). Coercing both she and her mother, Perla (Irma Adlawan) to sell them the movie rights to their story, we witness as exploitation cinema unfolds. To think of it, capitaliz...
Read more

BIGKIS (Neal Tan, 2014)

-
Image
As an advocacy film, BIGKIS (INTERTWINED) gets its message across. The state of maternal healthcare in the Philippines is downright depressing, with mothers seated on the floor of public hospitals due to shortage of beds, medical equipment and hospital staff. The baby better be gaping through the birth canal before the mother receives serious medical attention.  Such social issue has been featured countless times in local documentaries and even in a feature film (2011's BAHAY BATA), but BIGKIS pushes the envelope further by bridging a connection between mother and child by means of breastfeeding, and in doing so, promoting breastfeeding in the process.  As a drama, the film tends to squeeze too much tragedy from the downtrodden lives of its characters that a lot of the dialogue feels staged for us to feel sorry for their countless miseries. Mariel (LJ Reyes), a teenage mother deals with an unwanted pregnancy and worse, the abandonment of her baby's father (Pancho ...
Read more