Screen Grabs: Weighty Matters

Last week, everyone was talking about sex after the Eliot Spitzer scandal broke, an event which could have a deleterious impact on New York's filmmaking industry. And one week later, sex was still on people's minds as Spitzer's successor, David Patterson, disclosed his own extracurricular activities. In movie news, the revelation that Evan Rachel Wood, still not old enough to drink, would become Woody Allen's latest nubile muse (though Larry David will be serving as Allen's neurotic Jewish proxy) brought with it a similar whiff of sexual impropriety. If nothing else, the casting serves as a reminder of how charged the subject of gender remains in film, just as in presidential politics. In film criticism, too—just ask Natalie Portman, who, just a few weeks after complaining about the virgin/whore dichotomy of movie roles for women, got called out for not having enough cleavage in a syndicated review of The Other Boleyn Girl. This in turn prompted a flurry of soul-searching about why so many film critics, like so many film directors, are men.

But sex was just one of several weighty matters being tackled in what turned out to be a very heavy week. With Edward Norton shopping a documentary about Barack Obama's historic campaign, Obama himself was confronting the issue of race in America head on in an attempt to respond to his pastor's inflammatory racial remarks. One would be curious to know what Obama might think of Robert Downey Jr.'s choice to perform in blackface in Ben Stiller's upcoming Hollywood satire, Tropic Thunder (out in August), something that's played up in the new trailer. ''If it's done right, it could be the type of role you called Peter Sellers to do 35 years ago,'' Downey recently remarked. ''If you don't do it right, we're going to hell.'' Downey's physical alteration is intended as a joke on the lengths method actors will go to. Perhaps it signals the emergence of a new proclivity, also evidenced by the upcoming second Harold and Kumar movie, for intentionally using racism for comic effect. For a more serious portrayal of racism in America, watch out for an upcoming film version of Lush Life, Richard Price's highly praised new novel; Oscar-winning producer Scott Rudin just picked it up, and Price, fresh off his work on The Wire, is adapting it himself.

And another weighty matter that bore down on the film community last week was the inevitability of death. Fortunately, a rifle-waving incident on the roof of Kate Hudson's New York apartment led to no injuries or fatalities, and turned out only to be a very bad idea on the part of a couple of NYU film students. But the week did see the passing of a number of beloved icons. Ivan Dixon, who was best known for his role on Hogan's Heroes but was also a remarkably successful director of several television series, passed away at 76. The acclaimed British stage actor Paul Scofield, known to film audiences for his Academy Award-winning role in A Man for All Seasons as well as turns in Quiz Show and The Crucible, also died, at 86. And Arthur C. Clarke, the towering giant of science-fiction who gave us the Three Laws and 2001, departed this universe at the age of 90, leaving behind a remarkable legacy as a futurist and a spiritual philosopher.

But the death that weighed most heavily on many people was that of British director Anthony Minghella, just 54, of a sudden hemorrhage. Minghella's passing led numerous critics to revisit their favorite Minghella films, from Truly, Madly, Deeply to The Talented Mr. Ripley, while others toured his remarkable career via YouTube clips. All over the world, friends and colleagues expressed their grief, but Minghella's departure may have been felt most sharply in Britain, where, partly through his role as chairman of the British Film Institute, he had become a leading champion of his native country's national cinema; "With his passing, cultural life in this country has descended one or two IQ points," one of his countrymen lamented. His latest film, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, the first film ever shot in the republic of Botswana, screened in its London premiere on the day of Minghella's death, with the blessing of his family. "It was a bittersweet occasion," Jill Scott, the film's star, told the British press, before going on to wonder at Minghella's ability to portray Africa, despite a lack of previous experience there. "He went there and he understood, he really understood," she said. Indeed, Minghella's remarkable powers of understanding are what we'll miss most about him.