Metcalf's DVD screening room: March 1, 2008

Mark Metcalf, co-owner of the Mequon restaurant Libby Montana, is an actor known for his work in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld."

This week, Metcalfe weighs in on "The Graduate," "The Dead Girl" and "American Gangster."

THE GRADUATE (1967)
The main reason I didn't like "The Graduate" when it came out in 1967 is because I found the ending to be just too depressing.

There the two of them are in the back of the bus. He has just driven from Berkeley to Los Angeles to Berkeley to Santa Barbara. She has just been married, apparently against her will. He has broken into the church. She has fled with him.

They go from this moment of supreme rebellion and the accompanying ecstasy, to the moment immediately following -- when they have little or nothing to say to each other. They sit there, alternately smiling, laughing and looking blankly, with the hint of recognition that they have accomplished nothing. She looks at him, but his self-involvement continues so he doesn't even realize it.

I find it tremendously sad.

I worked with Mike Nichols once and he described himself as being epitomized by the word bathetic. Bathetic is a form of the Greek word bathos, meaning trite, overly sentimental to the point of humorousness.

I think when I saw it originally, I didn't distance myself from it enough. I was very much in Ben's shoes, I identified with him and when I saw the abyss of afterwards in his look after gaining all that he thought he ever wanted, I felt the emptiness of my own future.

The other thing I didn't like is the Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack. I now like a lot of Simon & Garfunkel, but "Scarborough Fair" is one of my least favorites. I remember watching the movie and thinking, "Where the hell is Scarborough Fair?" Is that the name of some town he was driving through? I was pretty literal in 1967. My son thinks I still am.

Now, when I watch this film I am amazed at how good it is and how it sets up so many archetypes that are still being used by people in films today. I am impressed that Nichols is such a master with the camera. Bruce Surtees was there to help, but even if Surtees came up with all the images, Nichols had to be smart enough to say yes, and knowing Nichols just the little bit that I do, I think he probably imagined most of the shots himself. Great, great landscapes using the just OK bodies of Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman.

Again and again, he spreads the frame to its very edges with two people, or puts one so far in the foreground, or a piece of someone as in the classic shot of Mrs. Robinson's leg with Hoffman way off there in the background. He lets people walk out of the frame and then re-enter it. Woody Allen did this almost to distraction 12 years later in "Manhattan."

And then there is the wonderful moment when Hoffman is trying to tell Elaine that the older woman he had an affair with is her mother when her mother shows up behind her. As Elaine turns away from Hoffman, the camera quickly racks focus to Mrs. Robinson. Elaine turns back and the camera only slowly re-focuses on her after she has had time to come to the realization of the truth and has been shocked utterly and Mrs. Robinson has left the frame. Then, we cut to the Diane Arbus shot of Mrs. Robinson huddled way at the end of the hall, wet from the rain, perhaps broken finally.

Anne Bancroft gives a really great performance. She brings a full humanity to a character that could have been just a lonely, frustrated, attractive woman about to be old.

Hoffman is very good, too. But, he is mostly good because he is so not right for the part. He has a very distinct ethnicity and he is playing blond haired, blue-eyed goyim from Pasadena. He is out of place, but the character feels out of place wherever he goes. Katherine Ross is just beautiful, and just slightly independent enough to be attractive in a more than just pretty kind of way. But her character just goes wherever she is pointed. She has been thinking of marrying the true Aryan prince with the pipe, but she also is thinking of marrying Benjamin. She is confused, obviously, but it doesn't seem to be a difficult state for her to be in. It is a great film, deserving of its place at No. 9 in the AFI funny movies list.

THE DEAD GIRL (2006)
This is a wonderful movie with a great cast: Marsha Gay Harden, Mary Beth Hurt, Giovanni Ribisi, Toni Collette, a long way from "Little Miss Sunshine," Josh Brolin, who will probably be doing everything that Nick Nolte used to do for a while now, and Brittany Murphy, Kerry Washington -- a lot of really good actors, doing wonderful naturalistic work.

Karen Moncrieff wrote and directed the story of a dead girl's body is found in a field in Southern California, near Los Angeles. The story of the girl is told in six segments, each from the point of view of one of six people who had something to do with her life and her death. Some were involved as directly as her mother; some tangentially, as with Rose Byrne, who performs the post mortem on the "Dead Girl."

Oh yes, Rose Byrne, who is so good in "Friday Night Lights," also is in it, and great in it, and very different from what you see in "Friday Night Lights." It's not a film where you'll go away humming the tunes or retelling the jokes. For the people in this film, life is basically suffering and then you die. It is grim, but very moving, beautifully observed, and deeply compassionate.

I think this woman Karen Moncrieff is a writer/director to watch. She has another film called "The Blue Car" that I also saw. It is good, but not as fully realized as "The Dead Girl." Both deal with difficult subjects, but where "The Blue Car" strains credibility a little, "The Dead Girl" feels perfectly authentic, yet is always deliberate, and artistic.

AMERICAN GANGSTER (2007)
This movie is like the cartoon version of "The Godfather" influenced by a steroid enhanced version of "Serpico." It is straining so hard to be an American classic that it completely misses the point of classic literature. Great films, great books, great songs are struggling only to be themselves, to tell, clearly and articulately, the story of their own existence.

"The Godfather" redefined a classic American genre. It paid its respects to the original "Scarface" (released in 1932) and to "White Heat," but it went beyond those great films to become something of it's own. "American Gangster" just imitates great and good films like the "Serpico," "The French Connection," "The Godfather," even "King of New York," the great, underrated Chris Walken / Abel Ferrara collaboration.

Denzel Washington pursing his lips and never smiling except at his mother and casually blowing people's brains out does not make him a mobster and a drug kingpin any more than Leonardo DeCaprio putting on a suit and growing a mustache makes him Howard Hughes.

Even Russell Crowe, who I think is doing good work for him in this, seems like he is just putting on the clothes and wearing the mannerisms. It is the director's fault. This guy moves the camera around and cuts quickly, but there is no heart, there is no deep and real need to communicate this story of growing up bad and successful in America.