Truth can be more interesting than fiction. Few tales echo such concept better than the true story of Billy Hayes—who escaped from a Turkish prison after being sentenced to life for smuggling hash—and the not-so-accurate film “based” on these events, Midnight Express. I hate Midnight Express—it’s incredibly cliché, noticeably racist and factually inaccurate. All three flaws could have been completely avoided had writer Oliver Stone and director Alan Parker followed Hayes’ true story account with its far more fascinating events, unbelievably intense escape, and fairly accurate representation of the Turkish people (along with no incredibly offensive speeches).
Midnight Return details the true events that occurred to Hayes, in addition to details of his youth and later life. The documentary also showcases the film's effect on the world, both positively and negatively. It’s an intriguing documentary that paints a fleshed out picture of the real Billy Hayes and the events/people involved in his story. My one gripe is I wish Midnight Return dived more into the changes made between the Midnight Express book and film, as they forgo discussing several fascinating events that occurred while Hayes was in prison.
The Shack:
The Shack is a weird film, but its weirdness is what makes the film fairly enjoyable. It’s certainly not your run-of-the-mill Christian faith film, and while the plot is predictable, its execution is definitely not. The Shack’s bizarre manner of religious teaching is refreshingly offbeat and amusingly, in addition to intentionally, places its viewers in the same perplexed state as its protagonist. The plot’s thought out reasoning behind Octavia Spencer (and, later on, Graham Greene) playing God is an aspect I both genuinely appreciate and enjoy. The Shack is far from a masterpiece, and I’m still uncertain if it qualifies as a good film, but its unconventional methods of teaching Christian faith does make it, at the very least, mildly entertaining and occasionally charming.
Song to Song:
…I don’t know what’s been going on with Terrence Malick, but he needs to stop with the existential experimental films. The Tree of Life is Malick’s magnum opus—a masterpiece of filmmaking, storytelling, and exploration into childhood, parenting, growing up, spirituality, the existence of life, etc. I believe Malick’s well aware The Tree of Life is his greatest work, because every film he’s directed since—To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, and now Song to Song—has copied its essential formula in a vain attempt at recreating and/or recapturing The Tree of Life’s beauty. Each one has fallen short: exchanging ambition, innovation and impact for monotony, triteness and steadily increasing pretentiousness.
Song to Song is certainly the worse of Malick’s post-Tree of Life films. Nothing feels new or innovative in the film as Malick runs his once remarkable style into the ground. While every Malick film possesses his unique style, his earlier films are easily discernable when comparing plot and characters (I can easily tell Days in Heaven apart from The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life), yet I’m uncertain if I could tell Song to Song scenes apart from Knight of Cups scenes if one were to splice the films together. Even after making his magnum opus 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick was wise and ambitious enough to move on and craft remarkably different films (which range from duds to masterpieces on their own right). Malick certainly has the ambition, but his wisdom has been recently running dry. The worst part about Malick’s latest films, however, is they’ve become lifeless experiences—being all about style over substance, and I’ve seen said style done far better, with effective substance, in Malick’s previous works.