Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:57 am 
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BRADLEY COOPER, JENNIFER LAWRENCE IN SERENA

Cooper and Lawrence in muddled Carolina depression drama

Bradley Cooper and Jessica Lawrence are two of today's hottest Hollywood stars and have good chemistry together. So why the over two-year delay in releasing the third movie in which they're paired? Danish director Susanne Bier's Serena was apparently shot between Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. Trouble in development, apparently, but weaknesses in the material itself as well clearly explain the hiatus. Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian says, it's "arguably Jennifer Lawrence’s most ambitious and grownup performance so far." But he has suggested it doesn't fit with her "brand" now. That's not all that's wrong.

Serena is based on a dark, violent Southern Gothic novel by Ron Rash about Pemberton, a rapacious Appalachian lumber baron, and his equally ruthless Lady Macbeth of a wife. In the film this bracingly brutal novel has been softened and given a tidier ending and winds up over-edited down into an odd mixture -- extreme, yet curiously muted. Morten Soborg's widescreen cinematography is beautiful. The cast is good. But as Geoffrey MacNab of The Independent put it, the storyline is "caught in some muddy, purgatorial wilderness between romantic drama and backwoods social realism." Despite its Gothic extremism, reviews show the original novel by Appalachian cultural expert and professor Rash, both a NY Times bestseller and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, was a great success with most critics.* The failure of the material on film suggests both that the adaptors were too timid and that the editors rearranged things too much when it was seen things weren't working.

One's initially dazzled, impressed by Cooper's mixture of panache and mousiness and Lawrence's mad grandeur. Their first meeting with her on a white horse, golden Thirties locks bouncing, is memorable (though her crimped hair, like his southern drawl, comes and goes). Lawrence's trademark confidence commands attention to Serena's bold actions in subsequent scenes. There is good work by secondary actors too, with Toby Jones particularly authoritative as McDowell, the local sheriff. Pemberton (Cooper) is out to chop down all the worlds' trees. He operates in the freedom of depression-era America in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina (replaced by the Czech Republic in the shooting). Men are dying like flies, but there are many to replace them. McDowell is opposed, allied with a government movement to set up large national parks in the region and protect the land and the trees. Pemberton has financial problems with the bank, which he's using land he owns in Brazil to combat. The books in his safe reveal multiple malpractices.

The Lady Macbeth atmosphere sets in when Serena (clearly not living up to her name), who has begun bossing the lumbermen around and trained an eagle to kills snakes, loses a pregnancy and turns out to be barren and her wrath focuses on Rachel (Ana Ularu), who has had a child by her husband. As the situation deteriorates, Serena goes mad. But the action seems frozen in amber: it's hard to care about it. The movie doesn't live up to its early promise.

Serena, 109 mins., debuted at London October 2014, two years after its completion; theatrical release in many countries later in that year. US VOD release February 2015 (?), US theatrical release set for 27 March 2015. (In multiple Landmark Theaters in the Bay Area.) Current Metacritic rating (5 March) based on 9 reviews, 37%.
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*Not all critics. One says "the carnage of Serena's characters is nothing less than a mass murder."

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