I Feel Love: AMERICAN HUSTLE

Finally, a chance for The Academy to placate those who continue to bemoan the 23-year-long injustice of Goodfellas not winning Best Picture.  David O Russell gets all up in classic Scorsese and may have found the chocolate to his peanut butter in the process, finally making a near-perfect Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of a movie out of his “let’s toss everything together and see if it’s tasty” approach.  I’ve seen less delighted folks on Twitter dub this “Mediocre-Fellas” which may be amusing, but is totally unfair.

I like Scorsese as much as the next cinephile, but in a LOT of ways, I find Gangster Mode Marty to often be the least interesting Marty.  The Departed was in no way the Best Picture of that year, much less the best thing Scorsese has done in the last decade.  (That would be The Aviator, folks.)  Worst of all, even the worst attempt at the next “great” crime movie tends to have no trouble getting made and is over-praised by sheer virtue of its genre because it’s butch and is thus automatically awesome since "wouldn’t it just be SO COOL, dudes? To be Mickey or Nucky?"  Do we really NEED another “Magic City” or “Mob City” or American Gangster or Gangster Squad on our screens this year?  Much less this glut continuing for the next ten years?

Yes, as it turns out. What we needed is David O Russell.  His faster, funnier, looser touch cuts a swath through the solemn self-seriousness that plagues so many of these also-rans as they try desperately to convince us that they’re not making a shallow crime movie, they’re making a Scorsese-level smart one.  I don’t think Russell is trying to convince us of anything, much less the beaten-like-a-dead-horse trope that “crime doesn’t pay.”  Crime, as it seems here, seems to pay AWESOMELY.

It looks awesome, sounds awesome, and dresses awesomely while also being utterly ridiculous-slash-patently absurd, even when shit gets dangerous and real.  Like the con men and women of the film, David O Russell has confidence. Supreme confidence that crafting a sublimely entertaining movie IS art, in and of itself.  You know, like the ultimate master craftsman of artful entertainments Steven Soderbergh does.  Surfaces can be substantial and don't let anyone tell you any different.

This is one of the least Oscar Bait-y Oscar Bait movies in recent memory, in the best possible way. It glibly tosses aside the “oh, I’ll just make a boring prestige biopic that dully and dutifully recounts events because as long as I have great actors, I’ll win statues” formula (I’m side-eyeing you SO HARD still, The Queen) with its cheek-tonguing opening punchline that “some of this actually happened."

Like the hair, American Hustle is big, bold and brassy.  It’s funny in parts, it’s sad in parts, it drags in parts, but it never stops being eminently watchable and utterly original.  It’s got a song in its heart, a boogie in its shoes (and nights) and a throbbing rock-hard erection in its bell-bottoms.  That’s right, it’s not only straight-up hilarious, it’s also straight-up horny as hell.  You thought carnality and sexiness disappeared from American movies - movies made by and for grown-ups with grown-up desires - by the time the 70s ended.  You thought now such things could now only be the province of premium cable dramas.  You thought wrong.  David O Russell has come along to restore your faith and should be awarded handsomely for it.

Have pretensions of prestige all you want, but watching attractive people wear great outfits and say clever things as they try to talk each other into fucking * IS* one of the great sublime pleasures of movie-going.  And it’s art.  If you think otherwise, might I remind you of the first movie to pull off the total Oscar sweep a la Silence of the Lambs or One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest?  Yeah, that happened one night.  One Oscar night long ago, a funny-sexy-flirty flash of the gams was deemed as worthy of recognition as the BIG DRAMATIC ACTING of playing gay, crippled or fat.

Most importantly, for someone who gave up on one of those premium cable dramas early on as “Boardwalk Empire” made me feel like the new slogan should be “you’re not just an HBO subscriber, you’re also Paz de la Huerta’s gynecologist,” this movie does accomplishes a rare and refreshing thing by being a mob movie/con caper that’s ALL. ABOUT. THE. WOMEN.

David O Russell gives them the best outfits, the best lines, and the biggest moments.

He lets them be funny and crazy and sad, fierce and vulnerable and fearless and scared, totally open and totally inscrutable.  He lets them be human and complex.  He lets them be everything, usually all at once.  (“Everything.  All At Once.” is totally the motto on the Russell family crest.)

His camera might as well be the hands of a moon-eyed, punch-drunk, horny teen who just landed a chance with the Prom Queen, because he can’t keep seem to keep it off them for more than a minute. But he not only passes the Bechdel Test, he can’t seem to pass up a single opportunity to interrupt the ostensible plot to give Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence another line to knock out of the park or scene to steal. He treats them lavishingly and lovingly, basking in their incredible beauty AND their formidable talents.  He never stops tossing them the keys so they can take over driving the plot.

There is no doubt that he’s just as intensely and insanely in lust and love with them as the dudes he’s written to be crazy about them are.  Amy Adams’s con persona consists of not changing her appearance whatsoever and adopting an ever-shifting English accent.  That’s all she needs to do to convince people she holds the title of Lady Edith.

The homage to the greatest romcom con woman of all time couldn’t be clearer and Russell creates a movie worthy to be called a delightfully duplicitous,  Dionsyian-driven, disco-dancing daughter of The Lady Eve - by way of classic Scorsese meeting a Soderbergh caper.

All while being undeniably a David O Russell movie.  Impressively, he pulls off the feat of not only working in an entirely new genre than his last two pictures, but manages to reunite all the main actors from those films - half of which he directed to Oscar wins - while avoiding the reunion trap of relying on the same tricks that won previous praise.  Instead, he is constantly remixing and refreshing his troupe in ceaselessly-shifting narrative and emotional combinations from scene to scene.  He can toss in new performers like Louis CK to great effect while driving his old reliables to different heights, exposing previously untapped qualities and new depths of talent.  I mean, who among us would have believed in Amy Adams's sex appeal enough to let her play the part of an absolute sex bomb goddess?

Is it perfect?  No.  Is it shaggy?  Yes.  Shaggy and messy and too much is this man's wheelhouse.

Jennifer Lawrence's long-suffering Rosslyn can’t seem to help herself from saying whatever she’s thinking or doing whatever she wants, like starting kitchen fires by putting metal in the microwave - or as it's dubbed here, “ the science oven.”   David O Russell works the same way – but his “everything AND the kitchen sink AND metal in the science oven” approach has never been more enjoyable or more expertly accomplished.  He’s gone from indie auteur to enfant terrible to persona non grata to Oscar comeback kid in the span of two decades.  Now he finally has the clout and freedom to make pretty much whatever kind of movie he wants and, my god, we should let him do it.

Because a slightly imperfect but totally refreshing take on a moribund genre is a dozen times more satisfying than a boring but perfectly plotted prestige picture.  Give me a romcom/dramedy about mental illness-slash-sports-movie-slash-ballroom-dancing-let’s-put-on-a-show movie rather than a solemn self-serious take on the struggles of bipolar disorder.  Give me a con caper with a screwball comedy love quadrangle interrupting a mob movie period piece. Give him an Oscar, give him these actors, give him all the money he needs, and give him a leash long enough to let him explore and explode whatever genre he wants to do next.

Given how the dancing sequences were among the best scenes of SLP and the bravura sing-along Jennifer Lawrence does here of “Live and Let Die,” I’m personally hoping he’ll tackle a musical.  How amazing could it potentially be?  This amazing: in American Hustle, he manages to take the song *most* overused by cinema to signify how wild-and-crazy the 60s/70s were - "White Rabbit" - and manages to do it in a way that's so fresh, funny and fantastic that I actually gasped.

Will his next movie be pitch-perfect?  Probably not.  Will it be shaggy?  Undoubtedly so.

Will it be as well made, acted the hell out of and superbly entertaining as American Hustle is?  Who knows?  If we've learned nothing else, we've learned that David O Russell will never stop surprising us.  But no awarding body should wait to reward his talent two-decades down the line with an unwarranted better-to-recognize-you-later-than-never Departed-style win when he's earned it now.