Ibsen's The Wild Duck gets a modern-day update via Simon Stone's THE DAUGHTER

The Wild Duck is among Henrik Ibsen's trickier plays. I've never seen a fully realized, thoroughly believable production of it, either on stage or at the movies. As I recall, the German/Austrian film from 1976, starring Bruno Ganz and Jean Seberg (her final screen performance) comes as close as any. Now we have a modern-day version of the story, adapted and directed by Australian theater director Simon Stone (shown below), which is credited as "inspired by" the Ibsen play and said to be based upon Stone's earlier theater adaptation, which I have not seen.

I have seen THE DAUGHTER -- Stone's filmed version of his adaptation -- and it is a terrible disappointment. It takes everything that is most melodramatic about The Wild Duck and runs with it. To disaster. (Ibsen always included plenty of melodramatic elements in his work, but his smart, thorough, explorative dialog was able to rise above sheer melodrama.)

Further, the filmmaker has seen fit to telescope the play pretty drastically, which highlights the melodrama even further. And he has loaded some of his characters with additional baggage, particularly that titular "daughter" (who is older here and has a problemed boyfriend in tow), perhaps to make what happens seem more understandable/palatable. This, too, simply stacks the melodramatic deck more heavily.

The tale told is of two families joined by seeming friendship and employment but who share a much heavier-duty bond. Which, of course, will be revealed in due course. Rich guy (Geoffrey Rush, above) heads one crew, poor guy (Sam Neill) the other.

When rich guy's estranged son (Paul Schneider, above) pays a visit, ostensibly to celebrate his dad's upcoming wedding, that son gloms on to a family secret (and gloms far too easily, even for melodrama), after which a bubble of trouble blooms and bursts.

Now, Rush, Neill and Schneider are fine actors. So, too, are the women in the film -- Odessa Young (below) as that daughter, Miranda Otto (above) as her mom, and Anna Torv as Rush's about-to-be bride -- but all they have to work with here is a screenplay full of "feelings," since Stone has seen fit to remove, change or streamline Ibsen's most telling dialog into fast-food fodder.

The film's best performance comes from Ewen Leslie, shown below, left, as Otto's husband and that daughter's would-be father. Mr. Leslie gets the most to do, say and (of course) feel, and he is quite good -- until the finale, at which point this sodden melodrama eats him alive, too.

The-big-family-secret genre is such a tricky thing to carry off that it is probably best left to soap opera and the like, in which we expect the worst but also expect it to be a lot of fun. All that occurs (and is made so very much of) in The Daughter begins to register as far too close to camp. This sort of thing shouldn't happen to Ibsen, nor even to, well, a duck.

From Australia and running a thankfully short 96 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, January 27, in New York City at the Cinema Village and the following Friday, February 3, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal.

The year's (the decade's?) most embarrassing, unnecessary film: Baz Luhrmann's crap GATSBY

I know people who actually enjoyed this movie, which we finally caught up with last evening. And even though Moulin Rouge was a ridiculous mess and Australia a ridiculous bore, I still held out some hope. No longer. THE GREAT GATSBY sure looks pretty, in a constantly overdone manner (that's the point, right?) -- but Baz Luhrmann (shown below) has managed to take everything melodramatic and silly in Fitzgerald's famous novel and place it front-and-center. And the guy still hasn't learned that you either show or tell, but for fuck's sake, not both--at the same time!

After the first half-hour, I was sure I would be departing midway. Yet I stayed through the end credits, mostly hypnotized by the badness on display yet wondering just how much worse things could get. Very, it turns out. From the crap contemporary music Luhrman (or his eye-on-the-youth-market producers) have chosen, to the accents from half the cast that run from the American south to British and Australian (sometimes within the same character!) to the silly show-and-tell moments to the piss-poor acting from people who are always better than this -- the movie is like a crude shock dressed up in its Sunday best with no place to go. And whenever (often, actually) the director is at a loss for where to place that camera, his fairy godmother appears to have whispered in his ear: "Shoot from above, honey!"

TrustMovies must admit to being one of those crotchety old fogeys who didn't much like the book the first time he read it (nor the second; there will be no third). Fitzgerald's stripping away of so much of the frou-frou found in other novels of its time may have been a good thing in theory, but it left, in my estimation, a distinct lack of character to just about all the characters. Gatsby is supposed to be mysterious, but F. Scott does pile it on. And Luhrman takes that pile and turns it into a slag heap.

Leonardo DiCaprio (above, doing that long-distance-gazing trick) was either a much better actor as a very young man or his later choice of projects and directors has failed him badly. Here, he resonates almost nothing of any consequence. (Still, he's a better actor than Robert Redford is and was, so this Gatsby is at least several shades less boring.) Carey Mulligan (above, emoting) has proven herself an accomplished actress time and again, but compare her work here with that in Never Let Me Go (or just about anything else she's done) -- and be amazed. Every acting choice is the most obvious one. This must be the fault of Luhrmann.

Supporting performances are on the same level. Tobey Maguire (above, center left) ought to have been a fine choice for Nick Carraway, but set this role against what he does in, say, The Details, and you see an actor ensconced in utterly mediocre dialog, under the hand of a director who can do no more than produce the occasional, colorful flash.

In fact, the movie often seems to be drowning in CGI effects -- above (nice juxtaposition of glamour and dirt) and below (look: it's Disney's magic kingdom!), some of which are indeed beautiful, but all of which simply add to the artificiality on display. Where's the heart here? The humanity? Luhrmann managed to leave some of this in his adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, before he had completely given over to special effects and flash-n-splash. His best movie remains his first: Strictly Ballroom. From there, he's come down a notch or ten with each new endeavor -- and Gatsby's the nadir. Might there be a silver lining? Of course: From here, the guy can only climb back up.

The Great Gatsby -- from Warner Bros. and running an unconscionable 2 hours and 23 minutes -- has been out on DVD and VOD for a month now; Netflix was just allowed to send members its copies this week: Talk about "restraint of trade." (And yes, I am breaking my rule of only covering what's on Netflix streaming because this movie, seen in all its fake glory on Blu-ray, made me so damned angry.)

All photos are from the film itself, 

with the exception of Mr. Luhrmann's, 

which is by Frederick M. Brown, 

courtesy of Getty Images.