The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, February 7, 2017 — 5

‘Becoming Warren’ does 
not do the Sage justice

HBO documentary scratches the surface of Warren 
Buffet’s fascinating rise to the top of his industry, beyond

Whenever Warren Buffett’s 

name is mentioned, there’s 
a certain mystique attached. 
It’s not simply because he’s 
wealthy — his net worth is 
estimated to be around 60 
billion dollars — but because 
of his idiosyncrasies. Buffett 
has come to be defined by 
his 
eccentric 
personality, 

but, 
unfortunately, 
HBO’s 

new documentary about the 
financial magnate, “Becoming 
Warren 
Buffet,” 
fails 
to 

offer more than a cursory 
perspective 
into 
the 
most 

intriguing 
aspects 
of 
the 

investor’s life.

Directed by documentary 

vets Peter Kunhardt (“Nixon 
by Nixon: In His Own Words”) 
and Brian Oakes (“Jim: The 
James 
Foley 
Story”), 
the 

biopic sees Buffet chronicling 
his rise in his own words. 
The 
documentary 
includes 

interviews 
with 
many 
of 

Buffett’s 
colleagues, 
family members 
and 
friends. 

This is easily 
the 
strongest 

aspect 
of 

“Becoming 
Warren 
Buffett,” 
with 
Buffett’s 

longtime 
co-worker 
Charlie Munger 
offering 
particularly 
insightful 

anecdotes 
about 
the 

billionaire. 
Outside 
these 

interviews, the documentary 
features extensive footage of 
Buffett’s daily life, depicting 
his morning routine of a 
three-dollar 
McDonald’s 

breakfast sandwich and five-
minute drive to the offices of 
the financial conglomerate he 
took over in 1970, Berkshire 

Hathaway.

Due to Buffet’s intimate 

connection 
with 
Berkshire 

Hathaway, “Becoming Warren 
Buffett” devotes much of its 
time to the firm’s history. The 
documentary 
outlines 
the 

winding road the company 
has taken since its founding in 
1839 to its present ownership 
stakes in Coca-Cola, Kraft 
and American Express, which 
have netted the 
company billions 
of 
dollars 

annually. While 
these scenes of 
the 
company’s 

history 
don’t 

make 
for 
the 

most 
exciting 

television, 
the 

documentary 
does 
well 
at 

explaining Buffet’s decisions 
in a clear, succinct way that 
makes the firm’s range of 
dealings 
understandable 
to 

less financially savvy viewers.

It’s unfortunate, however, 

that the documentary is so 
keen on focusing on Berkshire 

Hathaway. 
Learning about 
the 
financial 

behemoth 
is 

interesting, 
but 
for 
a 

Warren Buffett 
documentary 
to 
succeed 
it 

must focus on 
the 
real 
star 

of 
the 
show: 

Buffett, in all 
his 
eccentric 

glory. Although 

“Becoming Warren Buffett” 
does portray a few of Buffett’s 
quirks, like his fondness for 
Coca-Cola, it spends far too 
little time on them, instead 
focusing on the trite, battle-
tested, “rags-to-riches” story 
arc. That’s not to suggest that 
Buffett’s rise isn’t fascinating, 
but it represents a massive 
missed opportunity for the 
documentary 
to 
dive 
into 

what makes the proclaimed 
“Sage of Omaha” tick. Even 
more disappointing is that 
when the documentary does 
provide 
these 
glimpses 
of 

Buffet’s character — like when 
he chooses to buy a 22 cent 
cheaper meal simply because 
the stock market is down that 
day — the biopic is enthralling, 
and Buffett’s character begins 
to shine through the screen.

At 
times, 

“Becoming 
Warren Buffett” 
feels rushed and 
it’s 
apparent 

the 
filmmakers 

struggled to fit all 
of Buffett’s story 
into a 90-minute 
documentary. 

The result is a product without 
strong 
focus; 
one 
that 
is 

content to show Buffett’s life 
without going beyond surface 
level analysis. For example, 
the documentary emphasizes 
Buffett’s hatred of Wall Street 
and his moral opposition to 
predatory banks, yet does not 
seek his thoughts on the 2008 
financial crisis, which saw 
millions of Americans lose 
their homes due to cutthroat 
banks taking advantage of 
them. Confining Buffett to 
this sort of vacuum prevents 
viewers 
from 
gaining 
a 

clearer perspective into his 
character, and this, too, feels 
like a missed opportunity for 
the documentary to separate 
itself from other stories about 
Buffett’s life.

Overall, 
while 
“Becoming 

Warren 
Buffett” 
offers 
an 

intriguing 
view 
into 
the 

billionaire’s life, it feels like a 
half-baked documentary. The 
biopic fails to delve farther. It 
likely could have benefited from 
a move to a full two-hour piece. 
In its current format, however, 
the documentary fails to take 
advantage of its unique subject 
— the Sage of Omaha deserved 
more than this.

HBO

Billionaire Warren Buffet

CONNOR GRADY

For the Daily

“The Space Between Us” is a 

paradox: A film with an original 
premise but no other original 
thoughts. In the beginning, it 
is intriguing in just how many 
uncharted paths it can take its 
characters. It just so happens 
that it goes down the same path 
that almost every other young 
adult romance flick travels. It 
has everything — no trope goes 
unused; no stereotype need fear 
being turned away. “The Space 
Between Us” has room for all. 
Anybody who has been to the 
movies in the last decade has 
seen this teen-angst-character-
drama-romance before. This 
time around, it’s just been thinly 

reskinned as a sci-fi movie.

Asa 
Butterfield 
(“Miss 

Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar 
Children”) stars as Gardner, a 
fish-out-of-water boy, born on 
a human colony on Mars, who 
is destined to charm everyone 
he 
meets 
with 
his 
other-

worldliness. Gardner wants to 
go to Earth to find his father, 
but he can’t go to Earth because 
— and this is completely serious 
— his heart is just too darn big. 
Still, it’s nothing a little bit of 
poorly explained surgery can’t 
cure, or rather, postpone until 
it’s convenient to the plot, and 
it’s not long before Gardner is 
off to Earth.

Once there, he meets up 

with Tulsa (Britt Robertson, “A 
Dog’s Purpose”), a collection 
of half-baked character molds 

crammed into a single teenage 
girl who he met online and who 
follows him on his journey with 
no questions asked. Together, 
they strike off on a road trip 
backed by an unending parade 
of sappy soft rock songs, and 
within 
twenty-four 
hours, 

they’ve fallen in love, because 
no one understands them like 
they understand each other.

Gardner 
and 
Tulsa’s 

relationship is defined by two 
things: his performance and 
her dialogue, and neither does 
the pair any favors. To his 
credit, 
Butterfield 
embodies 

the physicality of Gardner, who 
isn’t used to Earth’s gravity, 
but emotionally he just doesn’t 
work. Any scene that requires 
him to emote falls flat. Tulsa, 
on the other hand, is plagued 

with phrases like “Everyone’s 
fronting” and “See you in the 
funny papers,” both of which 
haven’t 
been 
used 
by 
any 

teenager since the 1980’s, but 
have 
apparently 

come back into 
prominence 
by 
whatever 

crudely 
defined 

future 
period 

in 
which 
“The 

Space 
Between 

Us” takes place. 
Eventually, after 
a few of the most 
excruciatingly 
hard-to-watch 
romance 
scenes 

since George Lucas gifted the 
world “Attack of the Clones,” 
Gardner and Tulsa give into 
their feelings and engage in 
ludicrously 
out-of-place 
off-

screen sex. It would almost 
be glorious if it weren’t so 
awkward.

Besides the fact that almost 

every line of dialogue and 
character 
interaction 
feels 

copy-and-pasted 
from 
other, 

better movies, the biggest issue 
with “The Space Between Us” 

is 
that 
it 
lacks 

confidence. It is 
unsure 
of 
itself 

at 
every 
turn. 

It 
can’t 
decide 

whether 
or 
not 

Gardner is socially 
maladjusted; 
halfway 
through 

the first act, it just 
springs it on the 
audience. 
Then, 

it 
can’t 
decide 

how 
socially 

maladjusted Gardner is. He 
starts out normal, then has a 
working knowledge of Earth, 
but by the halfway point he 
doesn’t even know what a 
horse is. It can’t decide on the 
relationship between Nathaniel 
Shepherd 
(Gary 
Oldman, 

“Criminal”), the founder of the 

Mars mission, and Gardner, a 
bond which should define the 
film from the outset, but which 
takes so many twists and turns 
that it’s hard to get a handle on.

Coming into the third act, 

“The Space Between Us” is 
already on thin ice, but it’s the 
climax and the accompanying 
twist 
which 
take 
it 
from 

boring and generic to gleefully, 
magnificently 
stupid. 
Not 

only do the final ten minutes 
undo, or otherwise ignore, all 
of the work done on several 
characters, but nothing that 
happens 
makes 
any 
sense. 

There was no foreshadowing 
to what happens, and the film 
must then spend so much time 
wrapping up the consequences 
of that one bad decision that it 
forgets to give resolutions to 
half of the plotlines it already 
started. It ends as paradoxical 
as it began, now a film that 
feels overlong yet lacking any 
satisfying ending.

JEREMIAH VANDERHELM

Daily Arts Writer
D

“The Space 
Between Us”

Rave, Quality 16

STX Cinemas

“Becoming 

Warren Buffet”

HBO

Streaming Online

Much 
of 
the 
stigma 

surrounding young adult novels 
is undeserved. People point 
to the tired tropes of the most 
laughable YA novels as being 
representative of the whole 
genre — love triangles, mean 
boys in leather jackets with 
secret crushes, bland female 
protagonists named Elektra or 
Aurora or whatever, nouns being 
unnecessarily capitalized in the 
place of actual worldbuilding, 
etc. 
And 
yes, 
these 
tropes 

are pervasive and annoying, 
but they’re window dressing. 
They’re never at the heart of 
what 
makes 
teenagers 
love 

young adult books.

Cliché is not the same as bad. 

If this were true, then I guess we 
all would really hate “Star Wars.” 
After all, it’s home to all those 
dumb tropes like love triangles, 
mean boys in leather jackets and 
the 
egregiously 

capitalized 
Empire 
and 

Republic. 
Many 
of 
the 

surface-level YA 
criticisms 
have 

much more to do 
with derision of 
teenage girls and 
the things made 
for/written 
by 

women than they 
do concerns over 
actual 
literary 

quality, but I digress.

What I’m trying to get at 

here is that a book that features 
corsets 
and 
enchantments 

and not one, but two mean 
boys in leather jackets with 
hidden hearts of gold, is not 
inherently dumb or bad. Silly? 
Yes. Ridiculous wish-fulfillment 
fantasy? Absolutely. Fun as hell? 
But of course.

Stephanie Garber’s “Caraval” 

is 400 pages of pure pulp joy. 

The 
protagonist, 
Scarlett 

(spoiler: she wears many red 
dresses, 
because 
of 
course 

she does) is the daughter of a 
powerful, ruthless and violent 
man who terrorizes her and her 
sister Tella (short for Donatella, 
because of course it is). Scarlett 
is engaged to be married to a man 
she has never met, 
but 
she 
secretly 

dreams of seeing 
Caraval, an annual 
performance 
where the audience 
participates in a 
Hunger 
Games 

minus the murder 
(well, kind of) style 
of 
competition. 

Caraval 
is 
a 

weeklong experience in which 
participants stay on a magical 
island where they solve a series 
of riddles, competing to see 
who can get to the end of the 
puzzle first. With the help of the 
mysterious sexpot sailor Julian 
(Leather Jacket Boy #1), Scarlett 

and 
Tella 
are 

whisked 
away 

to 
the 
show, 

where Tella is 
immediately 
kidnapped 
by 

the 
magical 

mastermind 
Legend, 
who 

is 
also 
the 

organizer 
of 

the 
event. 
In 

this 
year’s 

competition, 
whoever 
finds 

Tella first is the winner of the 
Caraval. It’s up to Scarlett, with 
the help of Julian, to find Tella 
and return home in time for her 
wedding.

“Caraval” is so easy to poke 

fun of. In this novel, there is no 
such thing as too many adjectives 
or too many synonyms for the 
color red (“cerise”? Really?). 
There is — no joke — a character 
named Dante (Leather Jacket 
Boy #2, duh) who has completely 

unironic tattoos of black roses 
and falcons on the backs of his 
hands and neck. There are many, 
many extended sequences of 
Scarlett and Leather Jacket Boys 
being forced into increasingly 
hilarious situations where they 
have to stand really really close 
together and make breathtaking 

eye 
contact. 

At 
one 
point, 

Scarlett says the 
word “scoundrel” 
with 
complete 

sincerity, 
and 

LJB#1 is honestly 
offended.

And 
yet, 

Stephanie Garber 
is no dummy. She 
knows 
exactly 

what kind of book she’s writing 
and never shies away from the 
ridiculousness. Garber works 
entirely within familiar YA 
story structures, but she clearly 
understands exactly how to 
maximize traditional narratives 
to be their very best. Every 
character 
is 
well-developed, 

interesting 
and 
complicated 

(except for Dante, but I mean, the 
dude’s name is Dante. It would 
be a little redundant if he had a 
personality). The relationships, 
though 
predictable, 
develop 

organically 
and 
believably. 

And the plot twists may be 
numerous, but they make sense 
and work within the larger 
story. Structurally, this book is 
precisely written and airtight 
in its construction, building in 
momentum by the page. 

“Caraval” has its flaws, and 

it may be silly, but it works. A 
functional, entertaining and 
effective story is no easy thing 
to write, especially within 
traditional 
YA 
frameworks, 

from which people often expect 
the worst. It’s melodramatic 
and 
deeply 
entertaining. 

Ridiculous 
and 
glorious. 

All hail “Caraval.” Here to 
remind us just how weird and 
wonderful YA can be.

Garber embraces the cliché of the genre in her latest novel

All hail ‘Caraval,’ and all 
hail the young adult novel

BOOK REVIEW

SOPHIA KAUFMAN
Daily Book Review Editor

“Caraval”

Stephanie Garber

Flatiron Books

‘Space’ is YA nonsense

STX CINEMAS

sgsbs

Sci-fi drama is all tropes and litte substance and originality

TV REVIEW

FILM REVIEW

It’s unfortunate 

that the 

documentary is so 
keen on focusing 

on Berkshire

Silly? Yes. 
Ridiculous 

wish-fulfillment 

fantasy? 

Absolutely. 

