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Thursday, May 31, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS

Considering the well publicized 
production 
issues 
that 
plagued 
“Solo” — which saw its original 
directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller 
(“The LEGO Movie”) fired due to 
creative differences midway through 
production and replaced with Ron 
Howard (“Rush”) shortly after — 
having the finished product be at the 
least watchable is a victory. And by 
some miracle, it’s actually good.
“Solo” is a fun, one-off story that 
doesn’t pretend to be anything else. 

It’s a heist movie in space with a 
loveable cast of characters and more 
than enough terrific set pieces to 
go around. The shoddy pacing and 
subpar first act make it the weakest 
of the new wave of “Star Wars” 
movies but those looking for another 
adventure in a galaxy far, far away 
will nonetheless find themselves 
more than satisfied.
Beneath 
its 
heist 
trappings, 
“Solo” plays as part origin story and 
part fictional biopic for everyone’s 
favorite smuggler-turned-war-hero, 
Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich, “Hail, 
Caesar!”). After escaping the dystopia 

of his homeworld of Corellia, Han 
runs into a band of crooks, led by 
Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson, 
“Three Billboards outside Ebbing, 
Missouri”), who allow the young 
Solo to tag along.
When a theft goes wrong, forcing 
them to embark on a dangerous 
mission 
together, 
we 
see 
the 
beginnings of Han’s partnership 
with 
his 
Wookiee 
co-pilot, 
Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo, “Star 
Wars: The Last Jedi”), the suave, 
but two-faced, businessman Lando 
Calrissian (Donald Glover, TV’s 
“Atlanta”) 
and 
the 
Millennium 
Falcon, the fastest hunk of junk in 
the galaxy.
The role LucasFilm hopes the 
anthologies will play is clear with 
two saga films and two of these 
“Star Wars Stories” under their belt. 
While the episodic films like “The 
Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi” 
will continue to carry “Star Wars” 
forward and ensure its longevity, the 
“Star Wars Stories” exist to recall 
the original trilogy and allow us to 
continue to play in that sandbox.
For better or for worse, “Solo” does 
just that. The interactions between 
Han and Lando are a joy to watch as 
both Ehrenreich and Glover inhabit 
their characters perfectly without 
resorting simply to impressions. 
Han’s cockiness and snark, Lando’s 

status as the smoothest of criminals 
— it’s all there. Even better, there’s 
the start of what can only be 
described as a bromance between 
man and Wookiee since “Solo” does 
more for Chewie as a character and 
his friendship with Han than any 
other “Star Wars” movie.
The weaker fanservice is less 
prevalent and apparent than in, say, 
the prequel trilogy, but the first act 
still packs in a groan-
worthy moment of 
revelation that ranks 
among 
the 
worst 
in 
the 
franchise. 
It may not be “a 
scientific explanation 
of the Force” bad, 
but I’d argue it is 
“prepubescent 
Anakin 
Skywalker 
built C-3PO” bad. In fact, the entire 
Corellia set first sequence has clunky 
moments of nostalgia that do no 
favors for the rest of the movie. As 
opposed to the sci-fi crime movie 
that follows, these scenes play more 
like “Oliver Twist” in space and 
if the first 10-to-15 minutes of the 
movie were cut, “Solo” would likely 
be better for it.
From there on out, director Ron 
Howard ably plays to the strengths 
of his cast and his characters alike. A 
heist early on is an homage to Han’s 

origins as a western archetype. 
Another sequence set on Kessel — a 
name that should be familiar to die-
hard “Star Wars” fans as the place 
where Han made his name as one 
of the greatest pilots in the galaxy — 
should certainly be in contention for 
the best set piece of 2018. 
Like its title character, “Solo” 
is a little rough around the edges 
and 
prone 
to 
the 
occasional 
overindulgence, 
but 
like 
Han 
himself, 
it’s also charming, 
charismatic and liable 
to win over even the 
most cynical among 
its audience. Overall, 
it’s a sustained thrill 
ride that starts fun 
and only gets more 
and more bombastic 
and fantastic the longer it goes.
I’ll admit that I was apprehensive 
as the lights went down and the 
LucasFilm logo lit up this time 
around — both because of the firing 
of previous directors Lord and Miller 
and the collapse of the “Star Wars” 
fanbase post-“Last Jedi” into toxic 
anarchy — but credit is undoubtedly 
due to Howard for righting the ship 
and delivering a movie that, for the 
most part, reminded me why I fell in 
love with this franchise in the first 
place.

‘Solo’ brings ‘Star 
Wars’ back home

FILM REVIEW

RCA

FILM COLUMN

STEPHEN SATARINO
Daily Arts Writer

JEREMIAH VANDERHELM
Daily Arts Writer

“Solo”
Walt Disney 
Studios Motion 
Pictures
Ann Arbor 20 + 
Imax, Goodrich 
Quality 16

If there was any place to start a 
dive into the French New Wave, any 
key figure to visit first, it would have 
to be the spearhead of the cinematic 
movement 
— 
the 
ever-prolific 
Francois Truffaut. Truffaut’s name 
is difficult to avoid wherever the 
history of cinema is brought up. 
Even for me, someone without any 
proper film theory education, his 
name is the first to pop up in any 
internet search, the first mentioned 
in any academic reading, the first 
slid into any conversation — and 
after watching “The 400 Blows” this 
week, I can’t say I’m surprised.
The autobiographical “The 400 
Blows” 
follows 
young 
Antoine 
Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), an 
emotionally 
abandoned 
Parisian 
boy with a propensity for mischief 
that stems from troubled childhood 
years. Doinel never seems like a 

particularly bad kid; he thieves and 
he lies and he skips class to go to 
the cinema, but the child never acts 
malicious or vindictive in any way.
All 
things 
considered, 
the 
treatment that he receives from his 
parents and from his teacher feels 
unwarranted, as though there’s 
something else we cannot see. The 
film gives its answer in the form of 
a great scene just before the end 
where Doinel explains the trials of 
his early life to a child psychiatrist 
at a delinquent detention center. He 
speaks candidly about his mother’s 
contempt for him, and of her wish 
for an abortion.
As the veil is lifted on Doinel’s 
past, the poor boy’s reality on screen 
begins to make unfortunate sense. 
The “Blows” in the title is apparently 
a poor translation for a french idiom; 
a more accurate translation of the 
meaning of the title would be “The 
400 Practical Jokes.”
The film’s honesty is its greatest 

strength. Much praise can be 
given to Truffaut’s writing and his 
directing, but Léaud stole the show. 
He is resigned, and far too mature 
for his age, as he relays to the doctor 
the truths of his life. Throughout 
the film he is happy, interested and 
engaged in his life, emotions which 
seem more important once its 
known what is going on under the 
surface.
In terms of the script, Truffaut is 
careful with his honesty. He doesn’t 
toss the pain of his protagonist out 
in front of the audience up front, he 
waits and lets Léaud build up his 
own reputation before throwing it on 
its head. The partnership between 
the real Antoine Doinel and the one 
that appears on screen is masterful, 
and I think it has a lot to do with how 
close Truffaut was personally to the 
subject matter at hand.
Throughout his career, Truffaut 
was 
outspoken 
on 
his 
belief 
that there should be a personal 
connection between the filmmaker 
and their film, much in the way an 
author’s specific and individual 
voice shapes their novel. This 
idea became the foundation for 
Truffuat’s well documented “auteur 
theory,” which first appeared in his 

1954 essay “Une Certaine Tendance 
du Cinéma Français,” and built upon 
the concepts introduced by Astruc a 
decade before.
The bulk of the essay is criticism 
against 
the 
status-quo 
French 
cinema of the time. Many of the 
films receiving critical acclaim in 
the middle of the century were 
adaptations of great works of 
literature for the screen. While 
Truffaut doesn’t argue against the 
craftsmanship, he calls for a shift 
in the types of stories told: Away 
from recycled goods to narratives 
written for the screen, declaring 
an adaptation only of value when 
written by “a man of the cinema.”
One other thing that interested 
me in “Certaine Tendance” was 
Truffaut’s description of a specific 
story archetype that he didn’t want 
to see anymore. As he writes, “It 
is not exaggerating to say that the 
hundred-odd french films made each 
year tell the same story: It’s always a 
question of a victim… the knavery 
of his kin and the hatred among 
the members of his family lead the 
‘hero’ to his doom… the principal 
character, 
normally 
constituted 
when the curtain rises on him, finds 
himself crippled at the end of the 

play.” Truffaut stands firmly against 
helpless protagonists or protagonists 
who don’t have enough moral 
substance to resist temptation that 
would pull them away from their 
principles. I guess Truffaut wouldn’t 
like “Boogie Nights.”
Truffaut’s legacy stretches much 
further than “Certaine Tendance” 
and “The 400 Blows.” He became 
obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock 
and greater America as a whole in 
the 1960s and his films likewise 
took a bit more of a commercial 
turn. “The 400 Blows” lives up to its 
legacy seventy years later, it’s subject 
matter and the great performance by 
Léaud up front making it accessible 
to anyone.
The film benefits from its focus 
on childhood. More than any 
other narrative type, I find coming 
of age stories and stories with 
young protagonists in general are 
oftentimes easier to sympathize 
with. They lose less over time as the 
sorts of difficulties the characters 
face seem to be relatively universal. 
“The 400 Blows” takes this familiar 
narrative and elevates it. And after 
my two watches for this column, 
it has quickly become my favorite 
foreign film I’ve seen to date.

Riding the New 
Wave: Truffaut