Romance, Coen-Style.

Intolerable Cruelty

Directed by Joel Coen

School of Rock

Directed by Richard Linklater

Intolerable Cruelty’s title describes most Hollywood entertainment. But wait–it’s a Hollywood rarity: a comedy that appeals to adult sensibility. Romantic combat combusts between Miles Massey (George Clooney) a vain divorce attorney, and Marilyn Rexroth (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a professional golddigger. They gradually dismantle the cynicism and greed of their haut-Hollywood, California environs. It would sound pompous to say that this movie has Shakespearean insight, but Miles and Marilyn deserve each other as much as Kate and Petruccio do in The Taming of the Shrew. Likewise, Intolerable Cruelty’s brittle satire demonstrates how people’s emotions become expendable in a culture that competes over material property. "Money," Marilyn avows, "means independence."

But companionship among hyper-savvy equals offers rich and complex pleasures. Start with Clooney and Zeta-Jones’ pairing. They’re displayed like unwrapped chocolates–both luscious and surrounded by tinsel that glitters. Cinematographer Roger Deakins frames the brown-eyed couple in beiges, yellows and reds. A viewer yields to them even while aghast. Quite a balancing act, considering both stars parody their public image. The Coen brothers (who share script credit with Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone) make sure there’s also provocation in the film’s deceptive luxe. Despite the characters’ travestying of love and commerce, Intolerable Cruelty is never guileful (like, say, Down with Love). Whether spoofing Network when Miles approaches the senior partner in his law firm, or mocking a poolside chat between Marilyn and another professional divorcee as they listen to Piaf’s "Je Ne Regrette Rien," each moment daringly teases, Would you want this!

Although Intolerable Cruelty is a minor delight in the Coens’ ongoing winning streak, it shows a solid romantic conception. "Darling, you’re exposed," is the line Miles and Marilyn exchange while discarding pre-nuptial agreements. It’s said with both loving regard and genuine dread–recognition of what a relationship means beyond the papers and the sheets. Miles’ keynote address ("Love Is Good") to a lawyer’s convention shows a changed heart. He describes "Cynicism, the cloak that advertises our indifference and hides all human feeling." It’s startling, because although Miles is a shyster, he’s right. More right than Gordo Gekko’s "Greed Is Good" speech from Wall Street that the culture took to heart. That’s the Coens’ target, pointing out moviegoers’ cynicism and coaxing them out of it. Cedric the Entertainer plays a rollicking role as an investigator who videotapes infidelities (and watches them with his friends as sport). "I’m gonna nail yo’ ass!" is his motto. That’s also what the Coens do. Intolerable Cruelty reaches its devious highpoint with a violent joke so true to human nature–and yet, analytical of movie reflexes–that it is greater than the whole of Kill Bill.

Rock, Out

Rock is dead. But School of Rock would have you believe otherwise. The week that School of Rock topped the weekend box-office, Billboard/SoundScan’s top-ten-singles list belonged to: Ashanti, Beyonce, Fabolous, 50 Cent, Ludacris, Black Eyed Peas, P. Diddy, Nelly. Clearly, School of Rock doesn’t teach audiences what they need to know: that today’s predominant youth culture no longer moves to a "rock" beat. Those School of Rock ads, in the same font as the Rolling Stone logo, proves that the filmmakers are selling an idea of rock ’n’ roll that ignores the majority of popular music and disregards today’s authentic pop sensibility. If that’s not enough to stop any true music lover’s enjoyment, there’s the issue of what this formulaic hit really means.

Thinking Americans should fail to see the "humor" in School of Rock. This flimsy attempt at a modern fable places a small-time rock guitarist and buff, Dewey (played by comedian Jack Black), in the classroom of a private school. Though ill-equipped to teach the basics, he bullies the kids with rock ’n’ roll trivia. Not even an education of sorts, it’s what Lauryn Hill too aptly called a "miseducation." Putting together a prepubescent band, Dewey turns school into an American Idol contest that is the basis of both School of Rock’s offense and its indefensible acclaim.

Where is the humor in the plot of a teacher encouraging kids to screw off? Everyone knows that the American education system has failed the younger generation for several decades now. It’s hard to believe that reviewers ignore this fact; they celebrate the sham mythology that School of Rock propagates. Even party people can see that this supposedly feel-good family movie carries insidious notions about pop–integrity, creativity and energy are isolated as the virtues of only one genre. Dewey browbeats his fledglings’ personal taste with idolatry about Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Motörhead–he instills the rockist ideology that, in standard pop publications, has turned popular music into a sinecure for cultural racism. School of Rock perverts the radicalism imputed to rock in the 60s, pretending All-American exuberance and liberation when it is actually only selling hegemony.

Director Richard Linklater and screenwriter Mike White besmirch their indie bonafides with this lame and irresponsible twaddle. (I’m not being a curmudgeon; Linklater is extending the snobbery of Waking Life, and White is continuing the misanthropy of The Good Girl.) They demonstrate no concern or awareness about how children learn to think. Dewy’s manic-slacker routine makes him a role model of freeloading as a way of life. (Masquerading as a substitute teacher after being kicked out of his band, he still can’t support himself or help his roommate pay the rent.) Linklater and White derive this lesson from their own slack filmmaking; they dishonestly suggest that the pursuit of entertainment should be a life goal. This sense of privilege may work for them but it’s a misleading idea that deludes most young folks. (It also leaves out those young seekers trying to discover their individuality as portrayed in the superior and truly radical Camp.)

Rarely has a movie both bundled up and plainly exposed the scheming machinations of the entertainment industry. School of Rock is distributed by Paramount, which is owned by Viacom (as is MTV). It’s not a comedy, but an institution intended to graduate self-satisfied consumers of trash. How deceitful of Linklater and White to have Dewey curse MTV, then go on to promote the same rock mind-state as MTV’s. Dewey’s double-talk (he maniacally tells the kids, "Rock is not about acting crazy") implies that the habits of carousing youth culture hold some subtler moral point.

This familiar folly, contradicted by Dewey’s own impotent rebellion, also ruins the current Prey for Rock and Roll, where Gina Gershon portrays Jackie, an aging mascara’d rocker in leather pants, also trying to hold on to her youth. Like Dewey, she’s desperately avoiding the choices and compromises of adulthood. Jackie has played dives for 10 years in the same all-female band, following the dubious religion of rock to such a ridiculous point. When one of her bandmates is raped, she captures the guy, inks RAPIST on his forehead–surely an ultimate punk tattoo–and leaves him free on the streets. She must think: Who needs the law when you got rock ’n’ roll attitude?

It’s reviewers’ uncritical attitude that corroborates the persiflage in School of Rock. Longing to honor their Rolling Stone subscriptions, critics have given the movie high marks ("‘A’ is for Awesome," "The most unlikely great movie of the year"). Maybe we’re all enrolled the school of capitalist deception with little encouragement to drop out and think for ourselves. Who can deny a connection between the apathy most people show toward our collapsing education system and the willingness to high-five Linklater and White’s spoof on education? School of Rock presents apathy and conformity with a grin.

At one time, true pop rebellion was exhibited when the British post-punk band Scritti Politti released their 12-inch EP 4 A Sides with cover art that included an itemized breakdown of the cost of production. They did it to demystify the pop music process and encourage others to make art. Praise for School of Rock’s shallow myths proves how gullible and naive the media has become toward the entertainment industry. The hiphop exploitation used to gull black kids into avarice, hedonism and non-productivity is frequently documented, but here it’s the same pernicious formula used on white kids. Jack Black’s Dewey personifies its alchemical wizard. Black recalls Zero Mostel’s bizarre impishness, adding rock-era sarcasm. He’s burly, twinkle-toed and shifty-eyed. On stage with his grade-school charges, he’s dressed in a short-pants schoolboy uniform like Angus from AC/DC, a convincingly demented figure happy with his own arrested development. That’s the state of being School of Rock encourages.