Re: Friendship Scaricare Film
Laverne Levenstein
There's good reason to be slightly skeptical of films that centralize cancer. Too often cancer is used as a plot-point or a short-cut to emotional engagement. In television series, cancer is used to boost ratings. Cancer patients are portrayed as inspirational, enlightened: they are here to teach us how to live. The worst and most bafflingly common "cancer trope" is the one where a young woman dies of cancer, and her boyfriend becomes a better man in the process. These types of films don't want to deal with the reality of cancer. In a way, the movies are designed to deny reality. One of the most refreshing things about Gabriela Cowperthwaite's "Our Friend," based on Matthew Teague's devastating 2015 essay about his wife's death and the friend who helped the couple through it, is the film's strict interest only in reality. "Our Friend" doesn't make cancer "mean" anything beyond what it already is, and it doesn't turn cancer into a symbol of something else. In his essay, Teague wrote, "We don't tell each other the truth about dying, as a people. Not real dying. Real dying, regular and mundane dying, is so hard and so ugly that it becomes the worst thing of all: It's grotesque. It's undignified. No one ever told me the truth about it, not once."
Why would Dane give up his own life like this? As the film makes clear, Dane is at loose ends. He works in a sporting goods store. He says he wants to "start to think about" doing stand-up comedy, not exactly an ambitious choice of words. All of his friends are husbands and fathers now. Dane wants that, too. But after a visit to Matt and Nicole's house post-cancer-diagnosis, he notices instantly that everyone is overwhelmed. He thinks he could be of use, pick up the slack, do errands, be there for whatever is needed.
Brad Ingelsby's screenplay sticks fairly closely to Teague's original essay. When the screenplay deviates, the film loses focus. The tangents feel like tangents, off-shoots of the main narrative. In some cases, these tangents muddy the waters. Teague's essay jumps around a little bit in chronology, backtracking to explain how he and Nicole met Dane. But Ingelsby goes full-bore into fractured chronology, leaping back 13 years, leaping forward 8 years, back 4 years, and etc. It's a challenge keeping the timeline straight.
If you don't believe in Matt, Nicole, and Dane's friendship, then the film would not work. You believe it. Affleck's Matt can be a difficult man, prone to gloomy brooding. When he suffers, he suffers mostly in silence, interrupted by explosive impatience or sudden fainting spells. (Yes. He faints. Often.) Nicole is a warm and giving person, and people are drawn to her. She is forgiving, but not a pushover. What is unique here is Dane is friends with both Matt and Nicole. (Teague writes about this dynamic in his essay.) Segel is perfect for this sort of material, with his scruffy kindness, his humorous impulses (his scenes with the children are particularly wonderful), his openness. One can only imagine how awful it would be if Dane were portrayed as some saintly self-sacrificing angel. Segel plays to Dane's sense of disappointment, his loneliness for a mate, for children of his own. It's all there. He's a complicated man, and yet his impulses for friendship are simple and clear. Together, the three actors create a believable sense of shared history.
"Our Friend" is insightful on a lot of things nobody wants to talk about, like caregiver fatigue. To "take a break" consumes the caregiver with guilt. Dane suggests to Matt they go on a short hike. Matt puts up resistance, but Dane wins, and they have a good day out. There's a quick montage showing neighbors and friends dropping food off on the porch steps. Such a small thing, but so helpful. The film is also truthful about the less positive aspects. Right after Nicole gets diagnosed, friends swarm by the house in support. As Nicole gets sicker and sicker, the friends stop coming by. Only Dane remains.
Teague's essay is factual about the horrible things cancer did to his wife's body. "Our Friend" avoids some of the more gruesome elements, but it is honest about the breakdown of Nicole's personality, her psychosis, as well as her lashing out at Matt in frightening rages. (This is new territory for the gifted Johnson, and she is more than up to it.) Cowperthwaite directed "Blackfish," a documentary about orcas in captivity. She seems to look at situations without blinking. She doesn't sugar-coat. She doesn't sentimentalize. She brought this to bear in 2017's "Megan Leavey," a film I reviewed for this site. One could, I suppose, "write off" "Megan Leavey" based on the plot description, but Cowperthwaite's keen eye for details and empathetic sensibility made it a very powerful film. The same holds true for "Our Friend."
Facebook is booming with videos: educational videos teaching you to garden or code, those addicting and useless 5-minute craft videos, the very visibly faked videos of people catching their partners cheating on them, aliens caught on film. If there is a craving for content, that content is likely on Facebook in video form.
An adventure, a journey, a success forgotten in memory. In 1976, a group of young people from Pamplona made history by successfully reaching the summit of Shakhaur (7,116 m) in Afghanistan. It was "the first Basque seven-thousander", but the joy soon turned to sadness. During the descent, an accident occurred: One of them died and another was seriously injured. Thanks to the help of a Polish expedition, they managed to save the life of their companion and meanwhile forge a friendship that has lasted until today.
A fanatic by nature, entrepreneur and lover of the mountains, I dedicate my free time to climbing and skiing in the Pyrenees and Alps. Self-taught in audiovisual techniques, I have published several documenatry films with awards at international mountain festivals.
After a few mountain short films, Mendiak 1976 is my First feature film, which surprisingly won the Best Mountaineering Film & Audience Award in Internatinal Bilbao BBK Mendi Film Fest in Dicember of 2021.
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Filmed and set during World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate (Bogart) who must choose between his love for a woman (Bergman) and helping her husband (Henreid), a Czechoslovak resistance leader, escape from the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Germans. The screenplay is based on Everybody Comes to Rick's, an unproduced stage play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. The supporting cast features Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Dooley Wilson.
Warner Bros. story editor Irene Diamond convinced producer Hal B. Wallis to purchase the film rights to the play in January 1942. Brothers Julius and Philip G. Epstein were initially assigned to write the script. However, despite studio resistance, they left to work on Frank Capra's Why We Fight series early in 1942. Howard Koch was assigned to the screenplay until the Epsteins returned a month later. Principal photography began on May 25, 1942, ending on August 3; the film was shot entirely at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, with the exception of one sequence at Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles.
Although Casablanca was an A-list film with established stars and first-rate writers, no one involved with its production expected it to stand out among the many pictures produced by Hollywood yearly.[7] Casablanca was rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier.[8] It had its world premiere on November 26, 1942, in New York City and was released nationally in the United States on January 23, 1943. The film was a solid if unspectacular success in its initial run.
Exceeding expectations, Casablanca went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, while Curtiz was selected as Best Director and the Epsteins and Koch were honored for Best Adapted Screenplay. Its reputation has gradually grown, to the point that its lead characters,[9] memorable lines,[10] and pervasive theme song[11] have all become iconic, and it consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest films in history. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress selected the film as one of the first for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
When the police arrest Laszlo on a trumped-up charge, Rick persuades Renault to release him by promising to set him up for a much more serious crime: possession of the letters. To allay Renault's suspicions, Rick explains that he and Ilsa will use the letters to leave for America. When Renault tries to arrest Laszlo as arranged, however, Rick forces him at gunpoint to assist in their escape. At the last moment, Rick makes Ilsa board the plane to Lisbon with Laszlo, telling her that she would regret it if she stayed, "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life." Strasser, tipped off by Renault, drives up alone. When Strasser attempts to stop the plane, Rick shoots him dead. Policemen arrive. Renault pauses, then orders them to "round up the usual suspects." He suggests to Rick that they join the Free French in Brazzaville. As they walk away into the fog, Rick says, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
The play's cast consisted of 16 speaking parts and several extras; the film script enlarged it to 22 speaking parts and hundreds of extras.[12] The cast is notably international: only three of the credited actors were born in the United States (Bogart, Dooley Wilson, and Joy Page). The top-billed actors are:[13]
Much of the emotional impact of the film, for the audience in 1942, has been attributed to the large proportion of European exiles and refugees who were extras or played minor roles (in addition to leading actors Paul Henreid, Conrad Veidt and Peter Lorre), such as Louis V. Arco, Trude Berliner, Ilka Grünig, Ludwig Stössel, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, and Wolfgang Zilzer. A witness to the filming of the "duel of the anthems" sequence said he saw many of the actors crying and "realized that they were all real refugees".[23] Harmetz argues that they "brought to a dozen small roles in Casablanca an understanding and a desperation that could never have come from Central Casting".[24] Even though many were Jewish or refugees from the Nazis (or both), they were frequently cast as Nazis in various war films, because of their accents.
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