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Bruce Greenwood

Doctor Sleep: Facing Our [Literal] Demons

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[Caution: The following review contains spoilers for Doctor Sleep.]

A continuation of Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror movie, The Shining, Doctor Sleep takes place after the events that occurred at the Overlook Hotel and follows the now grown-up Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor). Doing his best to live with the horror that transpired as a child, Danny is tired and beaten by life. Doing his best to forget his past, Danny drinks his problems away in an attempt to repress his ‘shining’. To Danny, his ability is nothing short of a curse, until he meets Abra, a young girl in trouble who also has the shining and is much more powerful than him. Abra needs help fighting a sinister group called “The True Knot”, a group of shining users that want to murder and leech off of others who possess the shining in order to stop their aging. Dan decides to work together with Abra to save and stop this group from continuing their centuries long murder spree. 

For most of his life, Danny lives as a drifter, travelling city to city to get by. Constantly on the run from his personal issues including the traumatic events at the Overlook hotel, Danny has become a drunken selfish drifter that lives his life by drinking his problems away, sleeping with random woman and stealing from them. When he moves to a small town on the East coast, he finally finds a community, a job, a place to stay, and seems to have overcome his alcohol addiction. However, he still has not yet dealt with the pain of his own past. For example, in one particular scene, the film takes us travels into a mental representation of the Overlook hotel in Danny’s mind. Here, in a metaphor for Danny’s locking away and repression of his personal demons, we see dozens of boxes locked up with the ghosts of the hotel. Having repressed his powers for his whole life, when he meets up with Abra as she is looking for help to defeat the True Knot group, Danny tells her to hide and to stop using her powers altogether. 

Eventually, Danny must visit the Overlook Hotel and face the source of his trauma and even confront the ghost of his father, Jack. In doing so, Danny finally has the opportunity to challenge his father, venting his years of anguish as a result of his father’s actions. Given that his alcohol addiction remains a big internal conflict for Danny, his confrontation with his father helps him realize that his addiction was a result of him trying to relate to Jack, the father he used to look up to. When Jack offers Danny a drink, calling it ‘medicine to get on with life’, Danny is forced to choose between his sobriety and submitting to his own demons. 

Ironically, this scene is just one that parallels Jack’s story arc in the original movie. Like his son, Jack was also someone struggling with addiction, a tortured soul trying to survive. (In fact, at one point, Danny even becomes possessed by the same spirit of the hotel that possessed his father, attacking Abra with an axe and chasing her throughout the hotel.) However, unlike Jack, Danny is able to overcome the ghost, allowing him to finally move on from his father. Later, Danny even comes to realize that he was wrong about the shining and that it is a gift that should be used openly and embraced.

Doctor Sleep is a great sequel to The Shining. Picking up in modern times and giving science to the shining ability, Sleep becomes more of a thriller/superhero movie than the horror of the original. In fact, the film is a great redemption story to the broken Danny, who has become a grizzled old man who is broken and struggling with addiction. He’s also a great contrast with his partner Abra, an optimistic preppy young girl that looks forward to the journey they’re set on. Doctor Sleep also hits the nostalgia factor by referencing the iconic lines, locations and ghosts from the original movie. Overall, I recommend Doctor Sleep, the long-awaited sequel is an exciting thriller that does justice to the original movie.

Doctor Sleep scares its way into theatres on Friday, November 8th, 2019.

4.09 Digging for Truth in THE POST

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In his latest film, THE POST, Steven Spielberg and his all-star cast aren’t satisfied with merely retelling a chapter in American history. They’re on a search for truth and justice in our culture today. This week, Steve welcomes back Kevin McLenithan (Seeing and Believing) to dig into THE POST while also offering their Top 3 Movie Moments of 2017.

Want to continue to conversation at home?  Click the link below to download ‘Fishing for More’ — some small group questions for you to bring to those in your area.

A special thanks to Kevin for joining us!

4.09 The Post

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https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/connect-city/

The Post – The Calling of Truth

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Directed by Steven Spielberg, The Post tells the story of Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep), the first female publisher of a major American newspaper, the Washington Post. Set in the later years of the Vietnam War, Katherine and her editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) suddenly find themselves in the possession of papers exposing the American government’s cover-ups. As her shareholders are growing anxious and question her ability to lead, she and Bradlee must decide whether they will put their careers—and lives—at risk by publishing the truth that they have uncovered in an effort to hold their elected leaders accountable for their actions.

Despite its 1970s setting, The Post feels like Spielberg’s most urgent film in years. With an energetic script, each actor within the film attacks their roles with a ferocity and passion that bleeds off the screen. While one could argue that the film looks on paper as simple Oscar bait (Spielberg! Hanks! Streep! Together at last!), the truth is that, regardless of the size of their role, every performer within the film appears actively invested in the project. As a result, the film sparkles, eliciting shades of classics like The Conversation or All the President’s Men yet seems entirely relevant to the current political landscape. Given the film’s message of freedom for the press and the courage of women, The Post is not exactly subtle with its intentions, arguably the film’s greatest flaw. (“Nothing less than the integrity of the presidency is at stake!” someone exclaims.) However, the intensity of the film coupled with truly remarkable performances across the board prevent it from being simply another ‘message movie’.

In light of this, one of the most interesting aspects of the film is its passion for truth. While it seems obvious that a film about revealing the flaws of the government would have an overarching theme of truth, The Post seems genuinely interested in offering the concept of truth as a universal construct as opposed to basing it on one’s subjectivity. Whereas many modern narratives, whether it’s The Last Jedi to Lady Bird, bases truth on one’s perspective or feeling, this film depicts truth as an objective, higher standard to which we’re all held accountable.

In The Post, truth is a calling.

Interestingly though, the film also manages to resist painting characters by the simple brushstrokes of ‘hero’ and ‘villain’. Whereas Spielberg could have presented characters like McNamara (Bruce Greenwood) or Arther Parsons (Bradley Whitford) as purely evil, he also shows

their desire to do good, albeit by their own standards. As a result, these characters aren’t considered bad because they actively oppose truth. Rather, their actions are bad because they seem naive—or worse, disinterested—in heeding what is objectively wrong. Issues ranging from accountability of government to women’s rights are highlighted by the outdated attitudes and morals of a culture that fears change and these are characters refuse to admit to themselves that they’ve become lost. These are not mustache-twirling criminals but flawed human beings whose misguided actions have real consequences. As such, there is a cost to truth as well. McNamara may argue that ‘it’s easy for the papers to paint us as liars…’ but, by these standards, that is who they are. While these sorts of realizations are painful at times—especially when you consider how we idolize people in authority (or historically)—they also create space for new beginnings when truth is objective.

The Post reminds us that there is still a place for recognizing an objective, external standard of right and wrong that is also imbued with hope. At a time in our culture where administrations trending movements such as #MeToo reveal the damage that has remained in the shadows and caused by people in power, this film is a reminder that there is hope that lies in the truth.

 

The Post is in theatres now.

 

Hail to The Post: 1on1 with Bruce Greenwood

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Set in the later years of the Vietnam War, Katherine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, and her editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) suddenly find themselves in the possession of papers exposing the American government’s cover-ups. As her shareholders are growing anxious and question her ability to lead, she and Bradlee must decide whether they will put their careers—and lives—at risk by publishing the truth that they have uncovered in an effort to hold their elected leaders accountable for their actions.

Directed by Steven Spielberg and featuring an all-star cast, The Post brings a key moment of American history to life that showcases the damage that can be done to our culture through the misdeeds of the administration. Playing former Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara, in the film, veteran actor Bruce Greenwood felt it was quite an honour for Spielberg to consider him for the role.

“It was just one of those miraculous things about planets aligning,” he begins, “and, for some reason, Steven thought I was the man to invite. He called me and said ‘Would you like to do it?’ and when I picked up the phone from the floor (laughs), I said okay!… We’d had a few brief conversations but I wasn’t that sure he even knew who I was. It was doubly surprising that he reached out to me for this. Then the research began and the conversations began. You get to the set and you look at the call sheet and the call sheet is a list of people that you could only dream to work alongside.

Greenwood’s enthusiasm for The Post is palpable, but he is far from alone. The film has an energy and heat emanating from the cast that is visual from beginning to end. Greenwood claims that the earnestness of the film stems from the current political climate.

“I think that Amy Pascal became aware of Hannah’s script, and it was a passion project. When she took it to Steven, it really began in earnest,” he recalls. “I think he had a project that he was in the midst of getting in motion and he felt strongly, from what I understand, that now was the time and not a moment too soon to make a movie about this. That urgency coupled with the political passion of everyone involved… but I don’t know if it’s just a political passion but a desire to do right by this country to remind everyone that democracy is a fragile, fragile bubble. It doesn’t take much to puncture it.”

However, Greenwood also contests that is importance of the film goes beyond simply the personal passions of the cast. Rather, the significance of these conversations relates to the heart of the current battle for truth itself.

“It’s the attempted smothering of the press and the maligning, the mocking, the calling into question the veracity of things being
reported on by the current administration [that makes this film so vital],” Greenwood explains. “If an administration chooses to malign, mock, diminish and otherwise impugn truthful reporting for long enough, eventually people may throw their hands up and say, ‘I can’t believe anything at all’. Then, the control of the press has been won over in that way. We the people are entitled to the truth but we don’t get it for free. We have to work for it.”

Given the current battle over the nature of truth, Greenwood is unsure what steps need to be taken in order to repair the damage that has been done in our culture when it comes to civil discourse.

“That’s a long question that requires a lot of dialogue to tease out the answer. A lot of news is incredibly partisan and the echo chambers that we all inhabit, to some degree, are dangerous places. I wish I had the answer to how we create civil discourse that allows penetrating reporting to keep us informed.”

One of the greatest strengths of The Post is the overall quality of the script. Although much of the film focuses on conversations as opposed to action, it’s astonishing how gripping the story becomes. Having found himself involved in a number of amazing projects over the years, Greenwood–who also stars in FOX’s upcoming medical drama, The Resident–feels that it’s that quality of writing that helps him know that he’s found a great script.

“The first clue is that you want to turn the page,” he clarifies. “That was what was so remarkable about this is that, even though I
knew the story at large and what was going to happen at the end, I was fascinated at how [writers] Liz Hannah and Josh managed to pull together all these arguably dry details into something in which every character had a passionate point of view and was pursuing that point of view with everything they had. This could’ve been told half a dozen different ways and not been nearly as compelling but they have a gift for endowing characters with an emotional point of view while their giving you information that you might otherwise is just plain information.”

“I think the perfect example in this movie is when Sarah Paulson, who plays Ben Bradlee’s wife, tells him what bravery is and puts in in the context of all the things that Kay Graham was up against to be taken seriously and in order to be heard. That can be just information but it was anything but information. It was a passionate pan from a woman who ultimately left her husband, describing the station of women at that moment in our history.”

Of course, his role as McNamara is far from Greenwood’s first opportunity to bring a historical character to life onscreen. Having played such real-life characters as John F. Kennedy and Jack Dunphy, Greenwood recognizes the amount of collaborative work that goes into preparation for these roles.

“[I do] a lot of reading, watch a lot of film and I continued to read throughout the shoot,” he recalls. “Of course, when you get onto the set, everyone is infused with information from their own research. Then, you start cross-referencing quotes and people and points of view with the other people that have been working on the movie and have done equivalent amounts of research that have been focused on other things. So, the dialogue at work was constantly about ‘Oh, did you know this? Did you know that?’ There was a tremendous about of cross-referencing information between all the people working on the movie. Everybody, right from the top of the call sheet to the last on the list, was made to feel like we were doing something that had to be done and had to be done right now.”

Though re-creating a historical figure onscreen can be intimidating, he also claims that there is room for an actor to bring their own perspectives to the role as well.

Says Greenwood, “I don’t think you can help but bring your own perspectives into the performance and the idea of being able to recreate somebody in a whole way will drive you mad. I can only hope to find a couple of shapes and colours in the kaleidoscope of who they were and hope that that reflects something of who they were and what they represented. I will say that, while I was talking to Carl Bernstein last night that, unsolicited, he said that watching Meryl Streep was like being in a room with Kay Graham. Some actors can do that utterly. Other actors like myself can only attempt. She’s otherworldly.”

Although McNamara would be considered one of the ‘villains’ of The Post, Greenwood believes that, despite his wrongdoing, that he still is a good man overall.

“I think he made some profound mistakes and was profoundly misguided,” he feels. “His mea culpa at the end of his life doesn’t absolve him of his responsibility of what happened in the 60s in Vietnam. But, to impugn him as a man for his profound missteps, [is] not for me to say.”

 

The Post is in theatres now.