{"id":4979,"date":"2022-01-30T11:06:39","date_gmt":"2022-01-30T11:06:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=4979"},"modified":"2023-01-22T22:09:30","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T22:09:30","slug":"film-review-the-tender-bar-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=4979","title":{"rendered":"FiLM REViEW: The Tender Bar, 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Pecs n\u2019 duds n\u2019 rock n\u2019 roll\u2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Wow! What a great film. Set in the early \u201870s, and chronicling the childhood of a fatherless boy*, who finds solace and inspiration under the wing of his bar owner uncle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love the early \u201870s aesthetics of this film, and just the whole visual vibe of small town America of that era, at least as portrayed here. The particularly American style of individual suburban wooden homes, all slightly different, really appeals. The era is also cherry-picked somewhat for great music, funky duds, nice wheels, and those really quite beautiful American homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gramps takes up the paternal slack.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And this is no stupid action adventure sci-fi superhero bollocks either, just plain ol\u2019 humdrum \u2018real life\u2019. Based on a memoir of the same name, it\u2019s not so humdrum, truth be told, as JR gets into Yale – his mother\u2019s dream – and his family and friends, despite a mostly absent father, are quite a colourful bunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot of heart and humanity in this film. And many moments I loved, such as when uncle Charley opens his cupboard to reveal a sizeable stash of books. This is his auto-didact\u2019s library, and he exhorts the young JR to read them all! That, to me, is kind of heart\/brain porn, if you know what I mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The aspiring writer gets some supportive critique.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Right now I can\u2019t be doing with any more of a synopsis, or unravelling it all. I just really dig it. The acting is great; very engaging. The production is fantastic, Clooney does his job really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniel Ranieri and Tye Sheridan as JR the child and JR the young man are terrific, as is Ben Affleck, as the kindly self-educated uncle Charley. Indeed, the whole cast acquit themselves admirably. A real heartwarming feel good movie. Thanks, GC!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fly duds at the Bowladrome.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

*Absent rather than nonexistent!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part the second, or a few further thoughts. <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ok, so I said I wouldn\u2019t try and unravel this. But I guess Ah cain\u2019t he\u2019p maself\u2019! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, one or two further thoughts\u2026 The first is that this is, despite several female characters, the strongest of whom – both as a person and in terms of the film\u2019s focus – is JR\u2019s mom, a film about a boy becoming a man. Or put another way, boyhood and manhood\/masculinity\/maleness, or whatever one might call it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also mostly about how a boy relates to his elders – there\u2019s a great if very brief scene that underscores that, early in the film (when JR passes a room full of dancing kids, only to watch uncle Charley at rest, before wandering off alone) – only really becoming more focussed on his peers once he gets to Yale. And even then they are now \u2018young men\u2019, and mostly looking forward, not backwards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as it\u2019s main focus is on the male condition, there is more than just a nod to the ladies\u2019 experiences. But whilst it\u2019s all quite sensitively handled, there is, like Charley\u2019s homespun code of manhood, imparted to JR at the bar, a rather old-fashioned vision of male\/female relations at the core of the story. And, like the fags and booze, in today\u2019s times this can look almost as \u2018quaint\u2019 as the seventies visual aesthetics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for ageing men like Clooney, and me, all of this can be somewhat more deeply bittersweet that the surface appearances might convey. And this aspect of the film is amplified by JR\u2019s affairs with Sidney. Unlike the unrequited loves of my youth, whose potent effects on my development have, for better or worse, shaped my entire life, JR\u2019s advances are<\/em> requited, albeit not quite to his satisfaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This thread of the plot prevents the whole thing from becoming too cloyingly \u2018feel good\u2019, as JR has to contend with not only an absent father, but thwarted young love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One final observation on the more critical \u2018unweaving the rainbow\u2019 side would be this: when the ornery Grandpa Maguire (played terrifically by Christopher \u2019Doc\u2019 Lloyd) scrubs up and takes JR to the \u2018father\u2019s breakfast\u2019 at school, there\u2019s a scene where he charms JR\u2019s teacher by revealing his own well developed (if otherwise rarely deployed) critical intellect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s my own experience and observation that such a scenario – whilst within the realms of possibility – reeks of a certain self-indulgent fantasy. In all probability the person on the receiving end of such \u2018insights\u2019 (whether these are right or wrong or chime with my own perceptions\/beliefs, etc) has to work hard to conceal – poorly, usually – their disinterest. Such poils of wisdom more normally elicit responses ranging from boredom to hostility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gramps has worn out his welcome on such things back at his home. But JR\u2019s teacher is, it appears, smitten. He has<\/em> scrubbed up well, and he can be quite<\/em> charming. But the old fart back home side of his portrayal looks, to me, and rather sadly, the more realistic face of such a character. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, in the end I couldn\u2019t resist a bit of analysis. And I didn\u2019t even really touch on the whole bit about Yale and JR\u2019s buddies there, or the barflies at Dicken\u2019s, or the NY Times journo\u2019 bits. There\u2019s plenty of narrative meat, albeit somehow both rich and lean, to this \u2018flick\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, in these days of sci-fi and superheroes, and crime capers and rom-com chick-flicks, this is a rare and welcome kind of film, that speaks very directly to me. I mean, the music, for example; almost (but not quite!) every track used throughout the film is stuff I love. And ending with Steely Dan\u2019s \u2018Do It Again\u2019? Ah, sheer bliss\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow! What a great film. Set in the early \u201870s, and chronicling the childhood of a fatherless boy*, who finds solace and inspiration under the wing of his bar owner uncle. I love the early \u201870s aesthetics of this film, and just the whole visual vibe of small town America of that era, at least … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “FiLM REViEW: The Tender Bar, 2021”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-1ij","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4979"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4979"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8139,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4979\/revisions\/8139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}