Running Heads

With the holidays comes a flood of delectable or at least tempting movies. I’ve managed so far to catch three of these: Lincoln, Life of Pi, and Skyfall.

Lincoln is great drama, with uniformly superb acting.  The film also brings out how bad male haircuts were in those days. Lincoln tells some soldiers that his chronic bedhead drives his barbers to suicide. But topping them all off, so  to speak, is the atrocious wig sported by abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens (played by Tommy Lee Jones). Hair aside, what shines through is Lincoln’s determination to end slavery once and for all, and the fragile human and political connections that made that possible.

Pi, as in Life of, also sports a wild haircut, if only because he spends  most of the movie stranded at sea. The film is a gorgeous spectacle. Often times CGI- and  special-effects heavy films are consumed with the surface and lack  any depth. Happily, that’s not the case here. The theme of story and its purposes, and well as its relation to truth, is explored in some considerable depth.

Lastly, in Skyfall, the latest James Bond installment, Bond’s hair is always impeccable—no matter how many explosions surround him or how long the fistfight with a villain. This is a less high-tech Bond—fewer gadgets, and relatively simple gadgets at that. There also a less labyrinthine plot. And the movie delves into Bond’s Scottish family background. The whole effect is a more straightforward Bond movie, and in many ways a more enjoyable one than usual.  And that’s not just because of the haircuts.