Tape … brilliance of Richard Linklater
This is third of my favorite Richard Linklater movies, two others being Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. I just loved this movie for the amazing content and his handling of characters. As usual, he has very few characters but heavily loaded with conversations. This movie came sometime between Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, and he cast his favourite hero and fellow texan Ethan Hawke.
The movie takes place in real time, but unlike the use of steadicam in Before Sun…, there is heavy usage of a handycam. The movie has a very amateurish approach with the handycam moving from one face to another, trying to capture immediate reactions to the lines spoken. But the content of the movie is very mature and the story idea is delicate/sensitive.
The entire action takes place in a motel room in Michigan. Vincent is in Lansing to attend the Lansing Film Festival. He is not a movie buff, he comes to Lansing to give moral support to his old buddy John Salter whose movie has made it to the fest. But he has an ulterior motive of coming all the way to Lansing. He brings back fresh memories of an incident from the past which revolves around John and Vince’s ex-gf Amy, while all 3 were in high school.
This incident is the crux of the movie, and takes place on the farewell day of the high school. The movie is about different perceptions of the same incident by different characters. A high voltage psyscho-drama is unleashed in the small room where the two friends chat about good old school days. While Amy becomes the focal point of the chat, they build up the tension and paint the character of the 3 individuals.
Vince, out of nowhere, blurts out that Amy had confessed to him something sinister. Vince outrageously suggests that John had forced Amy to have sex with him in high school, which is tantamount to rape. And John goes on the defensive that it was consensual sex. Now, while both the men are on a verbal duel, only one person can say if the allegation made by Vince is true or not; and that person is Amy herself. While John tries to defend his actions of the forced love-making, Vince takes him by surprise when he pulls out a tape-recorder and shows that he has recorded every word spoken by John and that he has invited Amy too; she would be joining them any moment.
Amy makes a late entry, after almost two-thirds of the movie is over. But this is a fantastic ploy, because she brings in a new perspective to the incident. She is the woman in question, and the way she handles herself is fantastic. The tension is palpable as she too does not know the real purpose of this get-together. John and Amy take the movie forward with some brilliantly written dialogues and a tight screenplay. Although Vince has nothing to gain from this, he tries his best to add fuel to fire. He comes up with lots of wise-crack statements which are partly relieving and partly wild remarks. The awkwardness in the room, the way Amy and John interact has been handled with lot of sensitivity.
When all 3 characters are deep into conversation, the manner in which the camera pans from one character to the other is fantastic, capturing Amy’s calmness, John’s initial composure and then losing his cool and Vince’s wickedness of having created the entire ruckus and the way he is enjoying the scene at the cost of his friends and ex-gf’s plight. The movie keeps you totally gripped and you just can’t bat your eyelids.
While I was still wondering how this movie would end, this clever movie got the fine ending it deserved; it started with vile and guile and ended the same way. The story by Stephen Belber is very well written and was actually a stage-play which was then translated on-screen by Richard Linklater with his innovative direction. And apart from the handycam, which assumed the part of the fourth character, the casting was perfect.
Ethan Hawke as Vince was conniving and I feel he is quite an under-rated actor. His performances in Before Sun… , Training Day, Gattaca and Great Expectations is awesome. He is an unassuming guy who just sweeps you off with his performance. Robert Sean Leonard as John Salter was very convincing in the way he played the guy with a dilemma of rape versus consensual sex and the guilt of having been a party to such an act. He was terrific in the movie, last I had liked him was in Dead Poets Society. And finally, Uma Thurman as Amy was marvellous. The way she conducted herself and being part of just one-third of the movie, she handled her sequences with deftness. After this movie, her next best movies were the Kill Bill series. Another noteworthy point about the performances is that, nowhere in the movie did Ethan and Uma show the warmness and the affinity of the married couple they were. They went about the job very professionally, stuck to the character and brought out the rough edges and rawness that the character demanded.
And of course, Richard Linklater, the guy who directed this movie is just brilliant. He makes movies with minimal characters and minimal fuss. He is so focussed that he does not give you a moment to turn your head around. He keeps you glued with those enchanting conversations and real-time cinema experience. This movie is a must watch as it reminds us the importance of story-telling and the art of writing conversations. All we need is a good story/script/screenplay, good actors and of course a brilliant director to make a good movie.
Tags: before sunrise, Before Sunset, dead poets society, ethan hawke, gattaca, great expectations, Kill Bill, Richard Linklater, robert sean leonard, tape, training day, uma thurman, World Cinema
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I’ve been wanting to get my hands on ‘Tape’ for a long time … I’ve watched most of the rest of what Linklater has made … Waking Life, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Slacker, A Scanner Darkly, School of Rock, and Dazed and Confused … and loved all of them …
Would especially recommend Waking Life (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243017/) … finest movie I’ve seen.
As for Uma Thurman, I recently rediscovered my love for her after watching ‘Beautiful Girls’ – (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115639/)
Crazyrals!
Thanks a lot! TAPE is my one of FAV! & I share same sentiment that Ethan Hawke is an underrated actor in Hollywood. Same thing I feel about Robert Sean Leonard. I liked him in movie & I thinks he is doing great job in NBC’s drama “HOUSE MD” (AXN on Indian Television)
Thanks again for bringing back that experience of TAPE to me! :D
@ JD
WAKING LIFE! Yeppp! Amazing!
Tape!!! I actually saw Tape first day first show in NYC. At that time I was in film school & my girlfriend (now wife) thought I should be exposed to the indie scene. I absolutely hated it. After the horrible horrible experience, we made a pact that we will not expose even our worst enemies to this linklater chap. I will say our mutual hatred for this Tape brought us together & today we are happily married, so I guess I should thank this linklater for making this horrible piece of shit. btw you say “The entire action takes place in a motel room”. There is no action. It is just 3 ppl talking & yelling & crying & talking some more in that stupid motel room filmed by a grainy handycam. It may have worked as a play but even calling it a movie is an insult to movies. Its like going to some desi samosa party & shooting the old letching uncle, confused abcd guy with che guevara tshirt, cleavage showing abcd girl & her black boyfriend, the hip desi mom putting birth control pills in her daughter’s samosa, the pseudo patriotic desi dad, the pregant bahu & her parents & harassed husband & his inlaws & tonu monu & all the tiny idiots in there & shooting this garbage for 2 full hours & calling it a movie. Very few ppl have the stomach to watch such things. Thankfully I don’t.
@NRI: i am glad tat ‘tape’ helped u come closer to ur gf whom u later married.
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i do appreciate u criticizing the movie, but ur rigmarole abt desi samosa party etc etc was not in good taste at all. plz refrain from making off-the-topic remarks. it does not make for healthy discussion
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action need not necessarily mean fight sequence or thrilling moments. action is a verb and can be used liberally to any thing tats ‘being done’. lifting a tumbler is an action, smoking a cig is an action, jumping on couch is an action etc etc
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finally coming to the merit/demerit of the movie, it may not have worked for u but tat does not stop it from being brilliant. it won a special mention in venice film festival. and the grainy handycam was the master-stroke, as i have already explained in my post. the 3 ppl in the frame were fantastic in the movie and they were having a tense conversation, u may have dis-liked the theme of the movie or may have not understood the gravity of the incident else there was no need for such extreme reaction to this wonderful piece of art.
Check out “Waking lfe”, it is his best by far.
@ravi,JD,32: i hope to do a final write-up on dazed&confused, slacker, waking life.
i liked school of rock, but it does not push me to write abt it :(
my sole purpose of writing these posts was to familiarize ppl with richard linklater and his work. they are so simple in look and feel, but so deep in thought and content.
Thanks crazyrals, I watched the movie after you recommeneded it. Being a fan of both Before Sunsrise and Before Sunset, I had been planning to watch all other Linklater movies but somehow had lost track. Thanks for reminding me.
Dazed and confused and Slacker are next in line.
Nice writeup too. But what do you think about Ethan’s character? His character remained a mystery till the end. Why did he start all this? Was he in love or was he hurt due to the cheating by his best friends or both?
@Susant: i m glad tat u liked the movie. as i wrote in the post tat etahn had nothing to gain out of it. but on hindsight, i think he was trying to get back into the good books of amy by showing john in badlight. remember, he says tat altho’ amy was his gf they never had sex. and here, john has had his fun[from vince's pov]. maybe, by bringing up this incident, he wants to gain a moral high-ground and boost his ego; and hide his pain and hurt.
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in any case, this cant be called cheating. unless 2 ppl are going around together and during tat phase one of them weakens, its not called cheating. vince was just trying to show that its morally reprehensible, what they indulged in…consensual or otherwise.
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if anyone else has a better understanding, plz contribute
thanks for the post,hope i manage to get my hands on Tape ASAP.