i never see alexander payne get appreciation around here, so i thought i'd make a thread celebrating his three best pictures: election, about schmidt, and sideways. payne is sort of a lynch-lite -- he clearly loves the study of broken personalities, but payne usually leaves the gore, the twisted narrative, and hot hot lesbianism out, preferring the tragedy of suburbia as a backdrop. as an overall director, he has a great skill in making the utterly depressing somehow interesting and uplifting, and manages to coax some spark of fundamental humanity from what should be utterly unlikable characters. he's absolutely superb at choosing leads and directing actors, which makes up for some mundane cinematography, and he picks scripts that play to his strengths. on the other hand, he's supposedly a pretty self-indulgent prick on the set, but that's a claim leveled against a lot of directors.
sideways is probably my favorite, despite it being the critically "popular" choice. paul giamatti and thomas haden church are fucking brilliant in it, and paul giamatti's anagnorisis with his ex-wife at the end of the film is one of the best performances by an actor i've seen. paul giamatti is so criminally fucking underrated in general, and if you so-called film buffs haven't seen american splendor i hope you die in a fucking fire. sure, the grape-to-wine metaphor is little heavy-handed -- although i'm sure phoenix dark would miss it -- but the moments of dark comedy perfectly punctuate the ambling misery that is miles' existence. i've never seen a scene so humanly pathetic as the 40-something miles kissing his mom's ass just so he can steal money from her chest-of-drawers at the start of the film.
about schmidt is also a great, great character piece, with probably my favorite (and possibly the most revealing) nicholson performance. nicholson plays an aging dude who has lived an utterly unexamined life until finally, at 70, he "wakes up" and wonders why everyone is estranged from him. again with the powerful ending, as jack can only connect with an african child he has never seen or met but has only fictionalized in his head based on letters from the charity to which he sends money. moments of understated dark comedy pervade his little road trip to his daughter's wedding, and his attempts to connect with his grossly neglected wife meet with disaster. i think this has some of his best actual cinematography -- the shots of americana feel more raw and natural than sideways' travel brochure shots of san ynez valley, although in retrospect you might argue that those shots are intentional. in fact, now that i think about it, there was a fade from a brochure to the actual location in one scene. eh.
election is probably the best indictment of public high school life i've seen, minus some of welcome to the dollhouse. again, payne managed to get a really good performance out of the rather overrated reese witherspoon and the heavily typecast matthew broderick, who plays the anti-bueller -- a scuzzy teacher who can't let his personal agendas go. witherspoon probably has payne to thank for hollywood taking her seriously.
anyway, i never see payne get props on the "best director" lists around this shithole, and i thought i'd pimp him a bit. he's mainstream and accessible, although he makes films for irritable older folks rather than lightsaber junkies. PROPS.
