Opposites attract in strange ways in Hitchcock classic STRANGERS ON A TRAIN
CABARET CINEMA: STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, September 28, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org
The Rubin Museum’s Cabaret Cinema series “Happiness Is . . .” continues with one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most multilayered, complex tales, the 1951 psychological double-murder thriller Strangers on a Train. Shortly after introducing himself to amateur tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) on a train, mama’s boy Bruno Anthony (an appropriately creepy Robert Walker) concocts a supposedly foolproof plan in which Bruno will kill Guy’s unfaithful wife, Miriam (Laura Elliott), so Guy can marry his socialite girlfriend, Anne Morton (Ruth Roman), one of the daughters of a U.S. senator (Leo G. Carroll). In return, Guy will kill Bruno’s father (Jonathan Hale). Bruno believes he has devised the perfect crisscross murder, with neither man having a clear motive and nothing for the cops to find to link them together. While Bruno is serious, Guy thinks he’s just a loon (Walker had in fact been recently released from a psychiatric clinic after suffering a nervous breakdown and died at the age of thirty-two before the film even opened), but after the psychopathic Bruno actually does kill Miriam — photographed in an unforgettable way by cinematographer Robert Burks, shown in a pair of broken eyeglasses — he starts shadowing Guy, insisting he keep his part of the bargain and kill Mr. Anthony, something Guy never intended on doing. Soon the cops are involved, along with a broken alibi, a key, and a critical cigarette lighter, leading to a spectacular conclusion on a merry-go-round. Loosely based on Patricia Highsmith’s debut novel and featuring an early screenplay written by Raymond Chandler (whose name was kept in the credits for marquee value despite Hitchcock’s famous — and literal — trashing of his contribution), Strangers on a Train is a powerful, tense mystery built around the idea of the double; from the opening scene of two pairs of shoes — immediately equating, and differentiating between, the two protagonists, as if they were two parts of the same person — to Hitchcock’s appearance carrying a double bass, to Anne’s younger sister, Babs (Patricia Hitchcock, Alfred’s daughter), wearing the same glasses as Miriam, to Bruno’s declaration, upon ordering two double scotches and relating them to tennis, “The only kind of doubles I play,” the film is filled with mirroring or directly opposing elements. As with Hitchcock’s Rope, which also starred Granger, Strangers on a Train also has a clear homosexual subtext; in real life Walker was straight while Granger was bisexual. Shot in a dark black-and-white that adds to the chilling effects, Strangers on a Train is one of Hitchcock’s best, a fully realized, frightening film that ends in a big way. The Rubin Museum screening on September 29 will be introduced by chef and musician Molly Neuman. “All in all,” Granger wrote in his 2007 autobiography, Include Me Out: My Life from Goldwyn to Broadway, “working on Strangers on a Train was my happiest filmmaking experience,” giving it extra reason to be included in this series that looks at different kinds of happiness in the movies.
Fernando Meirelles knows how to make movies. His previous film, the remarkable City of God (2002), was deservedly nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and he earned a nod for Best Director as well, sending him off to Hollywood for his first English-language effort. The result is this exciting tale of a low-level British diplomat who becomes obsessed with investigating his radical wife’s murder. As he uncovers more and more information, he learns surprising things about his wife — and the British government. Based on John Le Carré’s novel, The Constant Gardener opens with the murder of Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz); her husband, Justin (Ralph Fiennes), is a diplomat stationed in Kenya who prefers not to ruffle any feathers. As he is told what might have happened to her, he continues watering his plants, tending to his garden. Tessa’s death is ruled a crime of passion, allegedly committed by a peace worker, Dr. Arnold Bluhm (Hubert Koundé), but Justin believes there’s more to it. He soon finds himself in the middle of a complex conspiracy that puts him in the cross hairs of some very powerful — and dangerous — people. Meirelles alternates between the past and the present, using flashbacks to reveal Justin and Tessa’s complicated, often mysterious relationship. By focusing on the characters instead of the conspiracy, Meirelles has crafted an exciting spy thriller with a heart. Nominated for four Oscars, The Constant Gardener is screening at BAM on September 27, kicking off the BAMcinématek series “John le Carré,” comprising suspense films based on the espionage novels of onetime MI5/MI6 officer David Cornwell and also including Tomas Alfreson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Frank Pierson’s The Looking Glass War, Sidney Lumet’s The Deadly Affair, John Boorman’s The Tailor of Panama, Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and George Roy Hill’s The Little Drummer Girl.
Queer filmmaker Kim Kyung-mook, a film festival favorite, follows up his controversial 2005 feature debut, the three-part Faceless Things, which centers on an explicit gay sexual tryst, and his 2008 work, A Cheonggyecheon Dog, about sex changes and a talking dog, with another unconventional narrative. In Stateless Things, Kim examines the difficult life of social minorities in modern-day Korea. In the first section, filmed primarily with a handheld camera, North Korean defector Joon (Lee Paul) works at a gas station with Soonhee (Kim Sae-byuk), an ethnic Korean who has just gotten out of China. The two shy, quiet people work for a manager (Kim Jeong-seok) who sexually abuses Soonhee and mistreats Joon until they can take no more, fighting back and heading out on the run. In the second section, Yeom Hyun-joon plays Hyun, a beautiful young man being kept by successful businessman Sunghoon (Lim Hyung-kook), his jealous, closeted sugar daddy. The two make love in a stunning apartment with spectacular views of Seoul, but they are trapped in their own little world, filled with fear and obsession. Save for one quick scene in a bathroom stall — an extremely graphic scene, reminiscent of Carlos Reygadas’s Battle in Heaven, that will ensure the film is unrated — it is hard to connect the two parts until after the title credit is emblazoned on the screen and the shorter third section attempts to bring everything together in poetic, abstract, and surreal ways. Like its predecessors, Stateless Things is aimed at more adventurous moviegoers who don’t need films tied up in a little bow at the end but instead enjoy being challenged by what they are shown. And there is a lot of challenge in Stateless Things, not all of which works. Stateless Things is screening on September 28 at 8:00 as part of MoMA’s third annual “Yeonghwa: Korean Film Today” series, a collaboration with the 
Inspired by the true story of the Olympic dreams of a college teammate, actress and former rower Sarah Megan Thomas wrote, produced, and stars in Backwards, perhaps the biggest movie about crew since Rob Lowe picked up the oars to impress Amanda Pays in the 1984 cult-classic-wannabe Oxford Blues. Unfortunately, however, Backwards comes off as a well-meaning but overly earnest vanity project that is more like a basic-cable, family-friendly movie-of-the-week than a feature film for theaters. Thomas plays Abi Brooks, a champion rower who might have just one last shot to make the Olympic team as her thirtieth birthday approaches. But after being selected as an alternate, a wining Abi quits, eventually getting a job coaching the girls’ rowing team back at her old school, where her boss is her high school sweetheart, Geoff (James Van Der Beek). Searching for meaning in her life, Abi gets deeply involved in training Hannah (Alexandra Metz) and Susan (Meredith Apfelbaum) for an upcoming important tournament, until circumstances change and she is forced to make a crucial decision about her future, and that of her girls. Directed by Ben Hickernell (Lebanon, PA.), Backwards was admittedly made on a too-low budget, and it shows. The rowing scenes don’t ring true, the potential romance between Geoff and Abi is predictable, and Abi’s relationship with her mother (Margaret Colin) is riddled with clichés. That said, the film does have a good heart that makes you want to like it, but it never quite reaches that next level, with scene after scene mired in the obvious.