TT 272: Severance ("Defiant Jazz"), Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, and Sonatine
TV and Movies in review
A few months ago Sarah and I watched the first season of Severance. The show is mysterious and compelling, with marvelous visuals and performances. Regrettably, the season ends on a cliffhanger, an unfortunate choice which is all-too-common in the binge-watching era.
The plot has extended to almost unmanageable size already! Taking the world-building further down wormholes of deceit and complexity for a second season promises to be a grueling affair. As with Dark and Killing Eve — two other shows we just loved before seeing the twists snowball into an unsatisfying cliffhanger finish — we doubt we will continue the journey. There is more to telling a story than just making sure the audience stays around to watch the next episode.
Kudos to the production team for the episode “Defiant Jazz,” where an old Joe McPhee track in the “Bitches Brew” idiom is the soundtrack for a corporate reward. If a character in the office completes a certain task, a turntable is wheeled onto the office floor and they are treated to a short “Music Dance Experience.”
This “Music Dance Experience” is one of the best dance sequences in a show I’ve ever seen. Truly a magical moment.
Severance was created by Dan Erickson; the episode “Defiant Jazz” was written by Helen Leigh and directed by Ben Stiller. The lead dancer is the unforgettable Tramell Tillman, accompanied (after a fashion) by Britt Lower, Adam Scott, and John Turturro.
Vince Keenan suggested I watch Guy Ritchie’s recent Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. While I put it on just to shut my mind off, the film turned out to be a unique aesthetic experience.
There are far too many movies that follow this general “elite covert operative” idea — James Bond, Mission: Impossible, Jason Bourne, etc. The Grey Man from last year was pretty bad, although that one I did finish, unlike Ghosted from last month, which I turned off after 30 minutes.
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre has had poor reviews. Fair enough, for the movie goes through the motions in a relentless and obvious fashion. Still, I think there is something happening here that many viewers missed.
About five minutes in, it becomes clear that Ritchie and company are satirizing the genre. That’s not a new idea, of course, and it is certainly not a surprise to hear a lot of witty banter as a counterweight to the scheming and the killing. (Indeed, hundreds of similarly-themed movies do the same kind of goofy, and at least a dozen of them also feature the lead of Operation Fortune, Jason Statham. )
But there’s something truly remarkable and sophisticated about Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, for the satire is not that obvious. The movie works pretty well as a straight-faced modern techno thriller. It looks so good, the action sequences deliver, the details are on point. After all, it’s a Guy Ritchie film, he knows this language as well as anyone.
All that gorgeous detail is truly the ruse, for I’m convinced that after finishing the final cut of every scene, the director and the editors were rolling on the floor, helpless with laughter. My proof? Any scene with Aubrey Plaza, Hugh Grant or Josh Hartnett. Separately or together, they are obviously comic relief, and yet these three great actors are underplaying the jokes, which keeps the movie on a certain mysterious and unique trajectory.
My hero Charles Willeford might be worth considering in this context. A book like Miami Blues is both a police procedural and the satirical antithesis of a police procedural. It’s easy to miss the sophistication of Miami Blues, but once you hear the music, it becomes addictive.
I’m not exactly placing Guy Ritchie in my pantheon alongside Willeford, but I’ll say this much: At first I only rented Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, but now I’ve gone ahead and bought it.
Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine came out thirty years ago in 1993. Upon re-watching yesterday it held up.
Sonatine was the movie that made Kitano an international reputation, and many still consider it Kitano’s greatest yakuza film, if not one of the greatest existential movies of any land or era. Kitano himself stars in an epic performance, heading a cast of marvelous faces including Susumu Terajima, Tetsu Watanabe, and Masanobu Katsumura. Generally we observe those marvelous faces staring off into space for minutes on end until the next burst of insane violence, although I had plumb forgotten how much screen time is taken up with goofing off on the beach.
A mesmerizing experience and a must-watch for anyone serious about the gangster movie genre.
1) I ran a still image from that video in September of last year, without noting the name of the show, or the dancer, and I certainly did not know the needle drop so thank you for reminding me there to …do the math. Seems like it borrows from “sorry to bother you” by Boots Riley.
2) see also Hanif abdurraqib, various, but especially about Soul Train and War “Ballero”;
3) local interest: Rabiah Kabir, flautist for Stanford’s Cien Mil Mangos, trying to engage the crowd May 5, 2023, at Stanford’s Tresiidder Union coffee house known as CoHo.
4) self-indulgent, lying to myself and strangers: I will use that line to close the last show I ever do. “The music experience is officially cancelled “
Eric Cohen, son of Paul J. Cohen, nixed the idea of watching it at the dinner party because it might upset Christina Karls Cohen, his mother. I waited and watched during the witching hours.
Did not understand the title until this morning, read the wiki.
Thinking of calling my new band — I’m a producer— Sonachine, which is the Hepburn version of Sonatine, plus one of the bandmembers is from “chi”. As I am.