Charlie Says
They appear so childlike: Leslie Van Houten (Hannah Murray), Patricia Krenwinkel (Sosie Bacon) and Susan Atkins (Marianne Rendón) singing together on California’s Death Row. Devoted members of the “family,” they embraced Charles Manson as the guiding light they never had. They would do anything he told them and when answering any question, they offer the same preface: “Charlie says…”
Directed by Mary Harron (American Psycho), Charlie Says (2018) is a fact-based dramatization focused on three of “Charlie’s girls” who took part in the murder of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca shortly after the more notorious killing of Sharon Tate. Matt Smith’s performance as Manson is magnetically evil and gets the essence of his countercultural charisma. Many hippies spouted similar lines about “killing the ego,” a dangerous practice when substituting someone else’s ego for your own. Damn, if everything doesn’t look a lot like Quentin Tarantino’s take on the Spahn Ranch.
Ash Is Purest White
Qiao (Zhao Tao) becomes a girlfriend to a mob boss in the jianghu (Chinese underworld) and will do anything, even prison time, for her man. The latest film by writer-director Jia Zhangke (Mountains May Depart) gradually gains compelling momentum—in large part through Zhao’s pregnant silences, meaningful eyes and restrained pain. Jia excels at directing actors, drawing low-key performances and finding pockets of silence and conspiracy in a noisy, crowded and highly organized society of contemporary China.
Butley
The celebrated playwright Harold Pinter added a rare item to his curriculum vitae by directing a work for the screen by a contemporary. Simon Gray’s Butley (1974) is a cinematically stage-bound but savagely sharp-tongued satire of academia. The title character is a cynical, careless English professor at a second-rate college. He teaches books he’s never read, barely puts up with students and engages in bitchy backbiting with colleagues. Alan Bates (King of Hearts) stars as Butley.
