Learning to Drive

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Isabel Coixet/Starring: Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Grace Gummer, Sarita Choudhury and Jake Weber

Spanish director Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me, Elegy) helms Learning to Drive; her adaptation of Katha Pollitt's essay of the same name. The film arrives in theaters with little advance notice. I found this strange, given the considerable talents of its two principal actors: Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson. With an accomplished director, cast and intelligent source material, one might think the film would be a sure thing. Think again. All conflict in Coixet's film is very light and unlikely to upset seniors attending a Saturday afternoon screening. Its attempts at profundity: the car as a metaphor for self-empowerment and Zen-like here-and-nowness are trite and reaching.

Patricia Clarkson is Wendy, a moderately known book critic who discovers her husband Ted (Jake Weber) has left her for another woman. In spite of his callous disregard for her feelings, Wendy's love for him still burns. Her daughter Tasha (Grace Gummer), who is supposed to be in college, is living happily on a farm in Vermont; an act of activism Wendy doesn't entirely approve of.

When Tasha invites her mother to the farm, Wendy decides to take driving lessons in hopes of being able to drive herself. The move is supposed to represent self-determination; a quality Wendy lacks.

Her instructor, an Indian cab-driver named Darwan (Ben Kingsley) meets her one night after a cab ride in which she and her husband have a relationship-ending shouting match. Not long after, Wendy contacts Darwan for driving lessons. Her initial instruction is a disaster, which discourages her from taking a second lesson but Darwan's professional pride makes him persistent.

We learn Darwan is a political refugee who has since became naturalized. His Sikh identity becomes an object of oppression in his native country. With no wife and child, he shares a house with Indian refugees in Queens, many of who are illegal.

As the driving lessons continue, Darwan and Wendy become friendly. The lessons also become life lessons, as Darwan's instruction is supposed to serve (at least for the audience) as ways to cope with the real world.

Forging ahead without her husband, Wendy begins to date but finds it less than satisfying. Meanwhile, a marriage is arranged for Darwan and his wife Jasleen (Sarita Choudhury), who makes her way from India to be with him. Darwan finds life with Jasleen rather difficult, for his work keeps him away from home while her fear of her new surroundings keeps her isolated. Making an attempt to learn English, Jasleen picks up a few words from a children's program, only to be told by Darwan the words are actually Spanish. Darwan finds his new wife's self-imposed isolation frustrating but his patient nature prompts him to encourage her rather than scold.

Though an attempt is made to make Darwan three-dimensional, somehow the character still comes off as a genial guru without flaws, in spite of Kingsley's best efforts. The character of Wendy seems also sadly underwritten. If this story is based on real life people and events, it also seems rather cliched and the characters appear as lazily-conceived people from a B-movie drama. Because of this, the story walks an uninspired straight line. The movie does tantalize with the passing possibility of true friendship between Darwan and Wendy but it sadly doesn't happen.

Most every problem in the film is ironed out in orderly fashion. Jasleen succeeds at meeting people and venturing out of the house, Wendy earns her license, buys a car, becomes empowered and sheds her husband's influence, while her daughter Tasha, an uninteresting peripheral character, leaves the farm to return home. Darwan finds a wife and the makings of happiness, in spite of his permanent exile from India. I normally avoid giving away such information regarding characters but their respective arcs aren't difficult to ascertain within the first five minutes of the film. I expected a lot more from a story based on an essay. Do these people really exist in real life? If so, they must be more fascinating than they appear here. This comes as a surprise, for Coixet's films are usually populated with more nuanced characters.

I really wanted this movie to work. I've always held Kingsley and Clarkson in the highest esteem but as talented as they are, actors can only do so much with material so broadly drawn. This should be a touching story; Indian refugee and Manhattan book critic become friends, but it doesn't stretch itself. I won't read the article the film is based on; it would be frustrating to learn the real story has power and unpredictability.

Learning to Drive isn't horrible but it isn't good either. It's difficult saying anything about the movie because I find myself barely inspired enough to comment. If it weren't for Kingsely, Clarkson and Coixet, I may have skipped this post. Take my advice, wait for the film to stream.

The Homesman

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Tommy Lee Jones/Starring: Hilary Swank, Tommy Lee Jones, John Lithgow, James Spader, Meryl Streep, Miranda Otto, Tim Blake Nelson, Grace Gummer, William Fichtner and Sonja Richter

One film that arrives without much fanfare is Tommy Lee Jones' The Homesman, which is too bad because a film so determined to depict the harsh and sometimes dangerous conditions awaiting those eking out a meager existence as farmers in post-Civil War America deserves closer examination. I came to Jones' film expecting costume-drama Oscar-bait but was impressed with the story's bleak, desolate, violent and powerful nature. This isn't Little House on the Prairie with girls in pigtails and farmers in suspenders and beards enjoying the fruits of their labor. Jones' film lets us know life for plains farmers was often dirty and muddy and death could be dispensed to them in many ugly and swift ways. If disease didn't claim one's life, being hanged or gunned down by one's fellow man were often effective, lethal surrogates.

Cast in this 19th century, Nebraskan milieu is Mary Bee Cuddy; a young woman tending her own farm and succeeding reasonably well. Cuddy is poignantly played by Hilary Swank, whose gaunt face and skeletal frame make her an ideal casting choice for a woman struggling to survive in an environment where deprivation is the norm. The film's opening shot is Mary guiding her mule-drawn plow through Nebraska soil. We see that she is an independent, determined, church-going woman who realizes survival and prosperity might be viable objectives if she had a man; preferably another farmer with whom to wed her fortune--as Mary might put it.

Mary invites a fellow farmer Bob Giffen (Evan Jones, in a brief but memorable role), to supper with the intention of asking for his hand in marriage. When Mary tries to entertain Bob with her singing, which she accompanies with a mock keyboard made of cloth, Bob nods off. After he awakens, Mary proposes marriage, which Bob responds to with alarm; citing her "plain as a tin pan" appearance as a reasonable pretext for refusal. Mary's marriage proposal is inspired more as a pragmatic solution than an act of passion.

While in the local church-house one day, the minuscule congregation discusses a problem confronting the community. Three farmer's wives, who have gone mad, are to be taken east to Iowa, where the Reverend's friend will receive the women before they are sent further eastward. While the men in the congregation balk at the idea, Mary's Christian compassion and duty, as well as her prowess with a gun, make her the best, if not the most desirable, candidate. She agrees to take on the mission; a formidable and time-consuming journey, not to mention dangerous.

In the film's early scenes, we meet the three women: Arabella Sours (Grace Gummer; Meryl Streep's daughter), whose madness comes on the heels of the deaths of her three children--all lost to diphtheria; Theoline Belknap (Miranda Otto), first seen in a trance-like state as an infant she holds to her breast is tossed horrifically into an outhouse hole; and Gro Svendsen (Sonja Richter), whose loss of her Swedish mother and her husband's callous disregard for her emotional well-being have robbed her of her sanity.
Tommy Lee Jones, who co-scripted the film, doesn't spare the audience the horrors and hardness people faced on the frontier. We get a very real (and often disturbing) sense of the prevalence of infant mortality and disease and how the grueling efforts to make a life as a farmer could take a punishing toll on one's sanity.

After Mary finds a carriage to transport the women, she happens upon a man named George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones) who sits on a horse with a noose around his neck. We saw him earlier occupying the farm of Bob Giffen, who he claims abandoned the place to travel east to find a wife. The other farmers drive George from the property and execute their own brand of frontier justice by leaving him to hang. Mary frees him and after hearing George's story, offers him a job accompanying her on her trip. George refuses then accepts after Mary promises him $300. George is a ragged-looking drifter who has seen his share of death and brutality. His love for whiskey doesn't endear him to Mary nor does his rough-hewn manner.

George is forced to hide inside the carriage when he explains to Mary that some of the husbands of the women they are to transport are the same men who left him to hang. Gro's husband recognizes George and when he accosts him, he is given a violent rap on the nose while Mary levels her rifle at him as they pull away.

It seems there has been a movement in cinema the last twenty years or so to make dialogue in westerns and in frontier period pieces sound more authentic. Films like Unforgiven, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and the Cohen brother's True Grit all feature a blend of literate and colloquial speech that seems to be true to the period. The verbal exchanges between George and Mary reflect this nicely as her eloquence plays against his profanity-laced comments.

As Mary and George set out, with the women inside the carriage, he draws from his rough and tumble experiences to guide their course. Mary's suggestion on where to cross a river is met by George's ominous warning about who they might encounter if they follow her lead. George tells Mary that anyone they meet might want to rape the women and any Indians they may run into will most certainly rape the women before killing them.

George is soon proven correct. When George and Mary wake one morning to find Arabella has wandered off, he finds her seated behind a dirty, ragged man (a scary Tim Blake Nelson) on a horse who has no intention of returning her. He is also quite frank about what he intends to do with her. After George's friendly negotiations lead nowhere, the two men engage in a knife fight that ends badly for the abductor when Arabella shoots him.

En route to their destination, Mary learns George is a deserter from an army unit who visited its own kind of brutality on the enemy during the Civil War. Though George's interest in Mary's mission is strictly mercenary, he carries a kind of subtle decency and sense of duty that belies his behavior.

Not long after, another harrowing experience greets George and Mary when a group of Shawnee Indians silently shadow the carriage. Before George sets out to offer the menacing natives one of Mary's prized horses, he offers her some grim advice about what to do in the event he's killed.

Jones long shots of the seemingly endless, desolate, flat, barren prairie, with its bitterly cold winds, adds visual emphasis to the lawlessness of the plains and the unforgiving loneliness that envelops all who partake of its empty vastness.

More grisly and violent episodes accompany the group en route to their Iowan destination. One particularly shocking development occurs after a night where Mary proposes marriage to George and even goes as far as forcing her naked body upon him while the three women watch bewilderingly. What happened the morning after, I didn't expect, which is a testament to the story's wrenching, anything-can-happen unpredictability.

What happens after is no less bleak. Jones's story is never sentimental nor does it attempt to spin its history for the audience's peace-of-mind. The ending is a victory and a defeat. George finds his monetary reward has been rendered worthless currency by the failure of the bank it represents which also means a bad end for the people Mary and George left behind in the small, farming community. And to exacerbate his situation, he realizes his time as a drifter may not be at an end, for he finds himself unwelcome everywhere, which gives the title its ironic twist.

Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones are exceptional. Jones also coaxes some fine performances from the supporting cast, including James Spader and John Lithgow, as well as Gummer, Otto and Richter, who have little dialogue yet convey sorrow, hurt and mental anguish with their eyes and disheveled appearances.

So many memorable scenes in a film add up to a solid, honest and moving experience. While watching Jones' film, I couldn't help but think about author Karen Russell's brilliant story Proving Up (formerly titled The Hox River Window), which tells a horrifying tale of sod-busters (as plains farmers were called then) trying to legitimize their land-claims only to encounter death and despair.

I found The Homesman to be quite absorbing. Jones' attention to detail, his honest depiction of the plight of women on the plains and the insanity that lay in wait for them made for something alive and dark and gritty as all hell. It could be called revisionist but it doesn't need an academic designation; it's too visceral and earthy for that.

I hope it finds life on DVD or streaming; the film is too engaging to miss--or dismiss.