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Review Archive
FILMS
CQ (2001)In my mind this film falls into the same category as Donnie Darko and Memento, in that it's one of the best films you've probably never heard about. It's not easily pigeon-holed into a specific genre and is difficult to define what its audience would be. Of course, for people like me and you, it's easy to know what the audience is: People who like Good Movies is its audience.
Yes, sometimes it's just that simple Mr. Drooling Marketing Savant.
In a nutshell, CQ is about nostalgia....
...nostalgia for the free-wheeling fun of '60s. (Or at least a verisimilitude of that decade.)
...nostalgia for old campy sci-fi flicks whose plots and cinematics tend to defy all logic, and thus they have charm and garner the It's So Bad It's Good chuck on the chin. (The movie within the movie shows snow on the moon? I think it's great that a character outside of the film-within-film mentions this as ludicrous.)
...nostalgia for the old-school medium of actual film. CQ has a longing to remind us how very hands-on the process of working with film can be. None of this New-Millennium-mamby-pamby-George-Lucas-digital-orgy-of-easy-edits for the main character of CQ. Nosirree. Roman Coppola reminds us that we call films "films" because they used to actually use film, a medium which needs to be handled; that there's an importance to holding the stuff in your hand, stacking and rattling the cans. Films are more than just electrons being manipulated within a computer.
...nostalgia for the innocence of youth. Paul, played admirably well by Jeremy Davies (Cpl. Upham of Saving Private Ryan fame), skates the edge between Gee Whiz Beaver Cleaver naivete, and Quiet Genius. He's awkward and unsure but driven by his absolute love for the medium. He has the hope that only young people have.
...nostalgia for a time when men with dreams were important. Upon first glance, Depardieu's Andrezej seems to be nothing more than a filler for the role of Difficult Director. We've seen this guy a million times in various movies about the filmmaking process, and we've all heard enough stories about Stanley Kubrick to understand what Andrezej is all about. But then, near the end, there's a tender moment when Andrezej begs Paul to keep the spirit of the film. I found the Andrezej's passion inspiring. Here's an artist who doesn't care one wit about himself, all that matters is the Art and The Message.
There are tons and tons of tiny details within CQ that make the whole moviewatching experience a complete delight. Here's a small ferinstance: Angela Lindvall's running. As she sprints across the surface of the moon, there's a shot where she's running away from the camera and it's absolutely perfect—it's almost as if she isn't even running like a normal person, but rather like someone who trying to act like she's running! Does that make sense? It's almost like her character is such a campy actress, that even her running is hammed up. This is an incredibly small detail, but it's this sort of thing that makes Roman Coppola a fine director.
One more detail: There's a brief scene between Paul and his father (Dean Stockwell) at the airport. Allow me to make a bold statement with, "I have never before seen a relationship on film so quickly and concisely illustrated with such detail, accuracy, and brevity." Yup. There's a scene here where in just a few minutes I know exactly how these two people relate to one another, and where they're coming from. It's fantastic.
I highly recommend this film. There's no super-duper action or high-flying special effects, just granite-solid storytelling and quality, conscientious filmmaking. That, and well, let's be honest: Lindvall is superfly hot in her various secret-agent outfits. She's worth the price of admission.
When I say that I wish "Hollywood" would make better films with better stories, CQ is a prime example of what I'm talking about.
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