ROLL RED ROLL: Nancy Schwartzman's expansive documentary about rape culture at that Steubenville, Ohio, high school

The rape, back in 2012, of a teenage girl by a couple of guys from the Steubenville, Ohio, football team did not go unnoticed by our national press. I recall reading about it in The New York Times in the months afterward and being surprised (but not really) at the nastiness of both the thing itself, and of some of the reactions of the students and adults who were involved, even as bystanders, to this ugly event.

Even if you remember a lot about this, too, TrustMovies suspects you will still be surprised and quite interested in the information garnered by filmmaker Nancy Schwartzman and how she has delivered it for further exploration in her new documentary, ROLL RED ROLL. The movie is quietly involving and finally as depressing as it is devastating.

Ms Schwartzman, pictured at left, has a low-key but penetrating style; this is nothing like so many of the obvious, repetitive and cliche-ridden weekly television programs that deal with "true crime."

Instead, the filmmaker has unearthed enough behind-the-scenes information and subsidiary characters, one of which -- a female crime blogger named Alexandria Goddard (shown below) -- seems as close to the heroine of the documentary as you'll find. Ms Goddard, when she first heard of this incident, did her own digging, and her blog posts made much of the town of Steubenville angry as hell. For very good -- if very guilty -- reason: As in so much of American, today, just as at the time of this event, boys, machismo, and football trample just about everything in their path. Especially girls and even a remote sense of justice.

One of the most interesting things about the documentary is the manner in which it demonstrates both the horror and the help produced by social media. What we see of these footballers' texts speaks volumes about male entitlement and the place of the female in American society. And the collusion between everyone from parents and students to school administrators and teachers to protect the guilty and tarnish the victim is appalling, disgusting. What is uncovered here goes both farther back and farther ahead than this single rape incident.

Schwartzman also reconstructs the night of the crime, the where and the when, along with the police investigation, then puts it all together so that we easily follow things. By the time Anonymous becomes involved, further goosing justice into a "woke" state, you'll be holding your breath yet again. Schwartzman and her crew have done a major service in helping to upend the ongoing rape culture so prevalent in our own and much of western (hell, eastern, too) society, personified perhaps most clearly and wretchedly by the current President of the United States.

A Together Films release running a lean 80 minutes, Roll Red Roll opens in its theatrical premiere this Friday, March 21, at Film Forum, New York City. Other playdates? I don't find any currently listed on either the distributor's or the film's web site. But if you are not currently in the NYC area, the documentary will air later this spring as part of the popular PBS series, POV. Check your local PBS station for more details.

Arrow's Blu-ray debut of Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT proves a multi-faceted delight

TrustMovies had not seen THE APARTMENT -- the multi-Oscar-winning and now classic Billy Wilder movie -- since 1960, the year of its initial release. He was 19 at the time and far too untutored in life to begin to appreciate the film's unusual mix of compassion and cynicism that marks it, even today (hell, especially today), as something rather special. To say that this movie "holds up" is putting it far too mildly. In our current times of me2 and the off-the-charts political correctness that makes an intelligent person want to stop the world and get off, the film is like a slap in the face that wakes you and sets you back on course.

That said, its cynicism -- about male prerogative and the role of women in the workplace back in mid 20th Century America -- still startles.

Mr. Wilder (shown at left), who directed and co-wrote the film with his long-time collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond, pulls no punches in his depiction of the ways in which the male corporate executive treats the female as chattel/accessory -- and worse, how totally accepted all this is by both sexes.

It's the latter, however, that will probably raise viewers' pulses and redden their faces. Come on now, was it ever really like this? Yes, dears, it was.
And kind of still is. For the most wealthy and powerful.

That Wilder was able to make to make both a comedy and a love story from material that ought to creep us out was just part of his skill set. His and Diamond's attention to detail and just the right amount of repetition (to remind us but not club us senseless) plus their ability to set up situations, surprises, jokes and emotions in a manner in which they eventually coalesce and pay huge dividends down the road is, I think, unequalled in American movie history.

The film stars two of the most talented and popular actors of the day -- Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine (above, right and left, respectively) along with an impressive third wheel, Fred MacMurray (below left), playing against his usual happy-family-man type (though some moviegoers will recall his work in Wilder's Double Indemnity).

The tale tells of a corporate schlub (Lemmon) who is good enough at his accounting work but is "getting ahead" by allowing his married corporate bosses to use his apartment as a sex pad for their assignations with their mistresses. Maclaine plays one of the elevator operators in the corporate building who seems to have managed to keep herself aloof from these predatory males.

Much of the comedy arises from the bone-deep hypocrisy and denial of the males, as well as from the enormously adept stars, who make almost everything we see and hear both comic and sad. Even the film's "happy ending," while delicious enough, comes slightly curdled if you allow yourself to consider the character of its protagonists.

He is all too willing to bow to power for a little recognition, while she's ready to use suicide as a way out of a failed romance. Sure, maybe they've changed a bit along the way, and we do get the clinch and the kiss at the finale. But tomorrow? Better not think about that. Yet Wilder has built all of this right in.

The filmmaker is both compassionate enough to see these folk as fallible humans and cynical enough to know how little real long-term change is likely to happen.

Filmed in widescreen black-and-white, the movie's a pleasure to view and hear in this new 4K restoration from the original camera negative, with original uncompressed PCM mono audio. As usual with Arrow Video, the Special Features are many and wonderful. Especially good is The Key to The Apartment, a new appreciation of the movie by film historian Philip Kemp.

From Arrow Academy (released here in the USA by MVD Entertainment Group) and running exactly two hours, the new Blu-ray disc is available now -- for purchase and (I would hope somewhere) for rental.

Blu-ray/DVDebut: WAKEFIELD -- Robin Swicord's take on the E. L. Doctorow story

The idea of WAKEFIELD -- both the movie (directed and adapted by Robin Swicord, shown below, from the short story by E.L.Doctorow) and the Doctorow story itself -- is such a strong and original one that I think it would be difficult for any intelligent middle-class reader or viewer not to be drawn in by it. A relatively successful corporate drone on his way home from work one evening encounters first a problem with his commuter train's inability to proceed (in the short story, it is the accidental uncoupling of the train car in which he is seated) and finally arrives in his town only to discover that an electrical blackout has occurred.

Once he reaches his house, instead of proceeding inside to greet his wife and daughters, without anyone noticing, he goes up and into the attic room located atop the garage across from the house. Why? Both film and short story make it clear that Howard Wakefield is an intelligent but unhappy man and not a very good or kind one, either (at least in the more conventional meaning of those words). His marriage is certainly in trouble, so perhaps he needs some time alone to figure it all out. Whatever: Howard decides to take that time, which stretches from mere hours into days, weeks and months alone in his little attic storeroom by day, while scavenging for food and other needs by night.

After viewing this film, which TrustMovies found interesting enough, certainly, but not as compelling as he had hoped it might be, he decided to read the short story (which you can find here). Doctorow's Wakefield takes less than half as long to read as does Ms Swicord's version (at 106 minutes) does to view. And while the character of Howard narrates both, because the movie's POV allows us to see what Howard sees, rather than simply hearing his words, our experience is now much broader and encompassing.

Some viewers might find this more interesting, if expected, but Swicord's version does two things that detract from the original: It takes you, to some rather large extent, out of the mind of Mr. Wakefield, while allowing you to form our own judgment of what he (and now you) see; and it absolutely softens Wakefield's character so that you can imagine that this man's time alone has perhaps helped him to change for the better. The story itself offers none of the latter. For instance, in Doctorow's original our guy refers to the Down Syndrome children next door as "retards." But, oh, my, not in the movie. The whole tone of Wakefield's narration in Doctorow's version is drier and more "entitled."

And while the ending of both story and movie is almost exactly the same, the movie offers, yes, quite a bit more possibility of hope. Perhaps this is simply the difference between Ms Swicord's reading of the original and my own. Certainly the performance of Bryan Cranston in the title role (shown, above, in his middle class mode and, below, in the gone-to-seed version) is exemplary, as this actor most often is.

Jennifer Garner (below and two photos up) also proves credible as the wife, but because what we see of her and all the others here comes from Howard's viewpoint, the movie remains pretty much a one-man show. To her credit, Swicord stays remarkably close to the original regarding the various incidents that pile up along the way. But Doctorow kept us closed into the mind of his man; Swicord lets us wander too much. Still, I'd have to recommend Wakefield, the movie, simply because the idea here is so fascinating, while the execution, if flawed, is at least good enough to carry us along. If you have the time, however, I'd highly recommend reading that original, too.

Released theatrically via IFC Films, the combo DVD and Blu-ray pack arrives on home video from Shout Factory this coming Tuesday, August 1 -- for purchase and/or rental.

More than you know: Stéphane Brizé's de Maupassant adaptation, A WOMAN'S LIFE

The title of Guy de Maupassant's first novel is Une Vie, which is also the original French title of the new film adapted from that novel by Stéphane Brizé and Florence Vignon and directed by Brizé. The title of the American release has been changed to A WOMAN'S LIFE, which does immediate disservice to both the film and its source novel by assuring viewers that this is "woman's picture." This will certainly guarantee less males in the audience and more females. The simpler "A Life" is so much more apt and generous, and though de Maupassant was more than aware of a woman's predicament during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, his choice of the non-gender title itself calls attention to the difference in experience had that titular life belonged to a man rather than to a woman.

M. Brizé's adaptation -- the filmmaker, shown at right, has earlier given us such excellent movies as Mademoiselle Chabon, The Measure of a Man, and A Few Hours of Spring (click and scroll down) -- is a masterful one, if very slowly paced. Action lovers be warned. But if you give yourself over to this leisurely, extra-ordinarily quiet movie, you may come away changed by having indeed experienced...
a life.

That life belongs to a young woman named Jeanne (played by Judith Chemla, shown above and below), whom we meet on the cusp of adulthood and then follow for two generations, as her life moves along, growing slowly and surely ever more out of her control.

But then, how could it not, since she has been groomed by her loving and sensible parents -- played respectively by French and Belgian icons Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Yolande Moreau (shown below, at right and left, with Ms Moreau seen again at bottom left) -- to learn little but how to garden, read and serve her husband.

We witness her marriage to and life with a pretty-boy rotter named Julien (Swann Arlaud, below, right), who, yes, manages to impregnate the maid and then offer up the usual apology of the time. (Not so very unlike those we're increasingly used to hearing these days.)

Her son appears to take after his father (if this sounds like an anti-male screed, it is more like a reflection of the male entitlement of that day), and Jeanne's lack of understanding of finances (and much else), coupled to her complete dedication to, first, Julien and then to her son, slowly begin to destroy her well-being.

Religion is given a good going-over, with one local priest pushing for forgiveness above all (hey, look at Jesus!), while his successor insists on the kind of truth-telling that proves utterly destructive to not only life itself but to the very sanctity of the confessional.

How all this turns out -- the final line, as often happens with de Maupassant, is a lulu -- is deeply sad but also oddly bracing, with one character reappearing unexpectedly to help our heroine as her mind and her money dissolves. The film's quiet, deliberate pacing and attention to detail exert their own charm and abiding reality. Stick with Une Vie, and Jeanne may very well brand herself on your memory -- by virtue of her very limitations -- as one of the movies' more memorable characters.

From Kino Lorber and running a lengthy two hours, the movie opens this Friday, May 5, in New York City at both the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and the Quad Cinema, and on the following Friday, May 12, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal and here in Miami at the Tower Theater.