In a year packed with good films, this is surely one of the best. The Observer called it "amazing", and I would too except for the fact that I call lots of things amazing and it would soften its impact. So I shall say it was remarkable, I rarely use that word.
If this film marks a direct in which cinema is going, then I am entirely enthusiastic about the future. Ari Folman recognises the limits of documentary and the drawbacks of fiction and moulds a film which is both, and neither. The layers here are fantastic. Folman, a veteran of the Israel-Lebanon war of the early 80s meets a fellow veteran in a bar who is having a recurring dream about the dogs he shot during the war. Folman realises he himself has no memories of the war, he has blocked it out. The film is his search for his memories.
Sorry, I was supposed to be talking about layers. I'll spell them out. Ari Folman is the director and the protagonist. We see him as a character, as if this were a noir fiction. He doesn't quite say "it all started 20 years ago..." but the implication is there.
Talking to friends and fellow veterans it looks like a fiction, sometimes it sounds like a fiction but we have tell-tell signs of a documentary, those signposts to tell us what register the film is in - each person's name and status comes up on screen, there are talking heads, etc etc. Some of these are real conversations, real interviews, animated. Some are imagined/remembered, voiced by actors, such as Folman's trip to Holland to see his friend Carmi, a millionaire falafel seller. They share joints and talk about the war. These are scenes you'd expect in a fiction. In the credits we discover Carmi's words are voiced by an actor. Folman has a recurring image of rising from the sea and walking through Beirut. This is a dream, or a mirage, and has no place in documentary. Nor do the flashbacks. If a documentary has fictional elements they are "reconstructions"; the technique, style and even film-stock change to tell us what the caption tells us, that this is a reconstruction. None of this appears in Waltz With Bashir.
The effect is a nightmare vision of a brutal war, filled with rich, vivid vignettes - the Israeli soldier who swam home down the coast after being ambushed, a soldier dancing in a street sprayed with sniper-fire, holding an AK47 as if it were a partner (this is where the title comes from). It's personal, as one's experience of war can only be; there is no use in listing statistics, figures: it's distancing.
If you do happen to be distanced by the film, perhaps by the animation, into not quite feeling its full hit, the ending will jolt you upright, remind you what it was all about.
Monday 8 December 2008
Saturday 29 November 2008
Lemming
Very strange, but entirely gripping, and as I said somewhat enigmatically (even to me!) after it finished, "subtle in an obvious way". Very much a companion piece to Haneke's Hidden, so much so that we should really watch them as double-bills.
Quantum of Solace
God, my masters really is taking its toll on my film-watching!
This was alright, not as good as Casino Royale.
This was alright, not as good as Casino Royale.
Friday 17 October 2008
Saturday 4 October 2008
Letter From An Unknown Woman
Part of the reason Brokeback Mountain worked so well was its encapsulation of a perfect - yet limited; doomed - period of time. The first act, the first summer on Brokeback is so exciting, so intoxicating for Jack and Ennis that they are forever doomed to try to recapture it. We as an audience feel it as viscerally as the characters themselves.
Letter From An Unknown Woman, I think, would like to tug on our heart-strings in the same manner. It certainly has the story for it. In Vienna in 1900 a teenager, Lisa, falls in love - from a distance - with her new neighbour, a dashing concert pianist called Stefan Brandt. She swoons to the sounds of his piano coming through the walls, holds doors open for him, watches as he brings home, early in the morning, a succession of beautiful society women. But then her mother decides to marry and moves the family to Linz. But Lisa runs away, back to Vienna, finds a job and every evening stands at the street corner, looking up at Stefan's window. One evening he notices her and a whirlwind romance ensues. There is something about her that fascinates him, something mysterious. But soon he discovers he has to go to Milan for two weeks, and in those two weeks - here the film jumps rather and becomes a bit muddled - Lisa realises she is pregnant. In her voiceover - the titular letter, delivered to Stefan the night before he faces a duel - she says she never told him because she wanted to be the "one woman who never asked you for anything". So their lives part, she raises her son, marries a respectable army fellow, but while he apparently forgets her, she never does he.
A decade later, at the opera, he spots her and something - he doesn't know what - stirs in him. She notices him and runs out; they bump into each other in the foyer. "There's something about you," he says, "I can't put my finger on it." The next day, she goes to his house, taking white roses, intended to remind him of their first evening together, when he bought her a single white rose. But he doesn't remember her, and as he goes to his cupboard for champagne, she runs out. We fade back into the present, Stefan finishes the letter, full of remorse for those years of missed opportunities. He looks up at his mute butler. "You remembered her," he says. The butler nods:
As you can see, it's there on a plate. And as I wrote that, I had a few second thoughts, that maybe it just took time to effect me. But. It should've been the most tragic love story. And in some ways it is. But with these sorts of stories everything needs to be pitch perfect, you need to come to the end with that sense of loss etched on you so much you take it away from the cinema with you; that it sticks to you for days. This film didn't do that. And I'm SUCH a sucker for tragic love stories. I am buying Stefan Zweig's original novella as I write this as I want the feeling the film should've given me! I don't know whether it was the acting, direction, the adaptation. Something in it didn't quite click - it is so, so, so close, but not quite. I suppose that's quite apt.
Letter From An Unknown Woman, I think, would like to tug on our heart-strings in the same manner. It certainly has the story for it. In Vienna in 1900 a teenager, Lisa, falls in love - from a distance - with her new neighbour, a dashing concert pianist called Stefan Brandt. She swoons to the sounds of his piano coming through the walls, holds doors open for him, watches as he brings home, early in the morning, a succession of beautiful society women. But then her mother decides to marry and moves the family to Linz. But Lisa runs away, back to Vienna, finds a job and every evening stands at the street corner, looking up at Stefan's window. One evening he notices her and a whirlwind romance ensues. There is something about her that fascinates him, something mysterious. But soon he discovers he has to go to Milan for two weeks, and in those two weeks - here the film jumps rather and becomes a bit muddled - Lisa realises she is pregnant. In her voiceover - the titular letter, delivered to Stefan the night before he faces a duel - she says she never told him because she wanted to be the "one woman who never asked you for anything". So their lives part, she raises her son, marries a respectable army fellow, but while he apparently forgets her, she never does he.
A decade later, at the opera, he spots her and something - he doesn't know what - stirs in him. She notices him and runs out; they bump into each other in the foyer. "There's something about you," he says, "I can't put my finger on it." The next day, she goes to his house, taking white roses, intended to remind him of their first evening together, when he bought her a single white rose. But he doesn't remember her, and as he goes to his cupboard for champagne, she runs out. We fade back into the present, Stefan finishes the letter, full of remorse for those years of missed opportunities. He looks up at his mute butler. "You remembered her," he says. The butler nods:
As you can see, it's there on a plate. And as I wrote that, I had a few second thoughts, that maybe it just took time to effect me. But. It should've been the most tragic love story. And in some ways it is. But with these sorts of stories everything needs to be pitch perfect, you need to come to the end with that sense of loss etched on you so much you take it away from the cinema with you; that it sticks to you for days. This film didn't do that. And I'm SUCH a sucker for tragic love stories. I am buying Stefan Zweig's original novella as I write this as I want the feeling the film should've given me! I don't know whether it was the acting, direction, the adaptation. Something in it didn't quite click - it is so, so, so close, but not quite. I suppose that's quite apt.
Saturday 27 September 2008
Brideshead Revisited
A preview of the new version shown at the GFT.
I absolutely LOVE the book, and so this was rather a disappointment. It seemed too convoluted, insofar as it jammed the story into too short a timespan. This book can't be done justice in 2 hours. Whilst the casting was OK (Matthew Goode was good, Emma Thompson not so - in fact in the post-screening Q&A the film's producer Douglas Rae let slip that he had much preferred Kristin Scott-Thomas to play the part, and I have to agree it would've been much better with her), it appeared a compromised film. It wasn't truly cinematic, and seemed stuck between cinema's more grandiose visuals and those solid, stately mises-en-scene you find in 'good, quality' BBC costume adaptations. It was no surprise to see BBC Films in the credits.
If possible, the film was far less subtle than the book but came across as far more vague and unsure of itself. The film-makers had made some strange choices too. Gone was the book's wonderful ambiguous relationship between the Charles and Sebastian, replaced with a fairly obvious unrequited love angle. Douglas Rae said afterwards that they had made the decision very early on to really go with the Sebastian Is Gay idea. I remember the book as having this wonderful vagueness, so wonderfully captured by Evelyn Waugh's perfect prose. He is so economical with his language that he gives you room to breathe, to take in the story almost by osmosis, to really understand it. This film trundled you on from "event" to "event" without pausing for reflection.
By wonderful coincidence, I switched on the telly today and on ITV3 was the original TV series, which I'd never seen before. One hour of it was enough to know - like everyone else - that this is the superior adaptation.
I absolutely LOVE the book, and so this was rather a disappointment. It seemed too convoluted, insofar as it jammed the story into too short a timespan. This book can't be done justice in 2 hours. Whilst the casting was OK (Matthew Goode was good, Emma Thompson not so - in fact in the post-screening Q&A the film's producer Douglas Rae let slip that he had much preferred Kristin Scott-Thomas to play the part, and I have to agree it would've been much better with her), it appeared a compromised film. It wasn't truly cinematic, and seemed stuck between cinema's more grandiose visuals and those solid, stately mises-en-scene you find in 'good, quality' BBC costume adaptations. It was no surprise to see BBC Films in the credits.
If possible, the film was far less subtle than the book but came across as far more vague and unsure of itself. The film-makers had made some strange choices too. Gone was the book's wonderful ambiguous relationship between the Charles and Sebastian, replaced with a fairly obvious unrequited love angle. Douglas Rae said afterwards that they had made the decision very early on to really go with the Sebastian Is Gay idea. I remember the book as having this wonderful vagueness, so wonderfully captured by Evelyn Waugh's perfect prose. He is so economical with his language that he gives you room to breathe, to take in the story almost by osmosis, to really understand it. This film trundled you on from "event" to "event" without pausing for reflection.
By wonderful coincidence, I switched on the telly today and on ITV3 was the original TV series, which I'd never seen before. One hour of it was enough to know - like everyone else - that this is the superior adaptation.
The Fly
This was the original 1958 version, complete with a fainting lady and Vincent Price. We watched at Al's on his projector, and I'd lost out in a vote between this and Man Bites Dog, which I'd had a sudden urge to watch again. Nevertheless, this film had its moments, most of them unintentionally funny.
It created a strange, nearly claustrophobic atmosphere by shooting the majority of the film in the same house, the atmosphere made stranger by the house's outward appearance of calm, family life: the big garden with hammock, the neat kitchen, the young son running round shouting to his mommy to come and look at something. All of this whilst underneath the genius professor in his den/laboratory fiddles away at a machine that will transport people. It reminded me of that bit in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when Mike TV is transported into the TV.
This clip is probably the most memorable. It reminded me of Tod Browning's Devil Doll.
This atmosphere aside, I came away with a strange empty feeling. Yes it was fun, yes we laughed at outmoded 50s notions and Vincent Price's ridiculous acting, but beyond that these films have a limited appeal. They're almost museum pieces. I'm aware of their interest in terms of a subconscious working through of the notorious "Red Threat" but some are just plain trash. And there's a limit to trash.
It created a strange, nearly claustrophobic atmosphere by shooting the majority of the film in the same house, the atmosphere made stranger by the house's outward appearance of calm, family life: the big garden with hammock, the neat kitchen, the young son running round shouting to his mommy to come and look at something. All of this whilst underneath the genius professor in his den/laboratory fiddles away at a machine that will transport people. It reminded me of that bit in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when Mike TV is transported into the TV.
This clip is probably the most memorable. It reminded me of Tod Browning's Devil Doll.
This atmosphere aside, I came away with a strange empty feeling. Yes it was fun, yes we laughed at outmoded 50s notions and Vincent Price's ridiculous acting, but beyond that these films have a limited appeal. They're almost museum pieces. I'm aware of their interest in terms of a subconscious working through of the notorious "Red Threat" but some are just plain trash. And there's a limit to trash.
Saturday 13 September 2008
Saturday 30 August 2008
Friday 15 August 2008
Man On Wire
Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful! I cannot do it justice! Film of the year!
Proper review to come.
Proper review to come.
The Sweet Smell of Success
"Conjugate a verb for me Sidney. For instance to promise. You promised you would do something for me."
Wonderful dialogue, sets, setting - New York shown in all its dramatic, glamourous, seedy glory.
Wonderful dialogue, sets, setting - New York shown in all its dramatic, glamourous, seedy glory.
Friday 8 August 2008
The X-Files: I Want To Believe
I read a review of this that called it "the summer's dourest blockbuster". And that wasn't a compliment. But it would be from me. Let me get this straight, I don't think it was a good film, in fact it was pretty unremarkable in every way, only of interest to X-Files fans (of which I am one) and of little to even them. They seemed to be going through the motions.
However, what I thought was commendable about it was exactly that dourness. Set in Virginia in the winter, the palette of this film is one of greys, blues, and blacks. There is no sun, no grass, no trees. Everything is caught under a layer of thick snow or harsh rock. Snowstorms batter the investigators, never letting up. The moral and emotional landscape is not much better either. Mulder has gone to seed and Scully works at a strange Catholic hospital, where she seems at loggerheads with the more traditional members of the staff. (Oh, and Mulder and Scully live together, sleep together, are people "that come home at night", as Scully remarks. It's all rather strange.) Everything is understated and half-lived. There is bleakness over everything and it is not shied away from. I thought that was worth mentioning.
However, what I thought was commendable about it was exactly that dourness. Set in Virginia in the winter, the palette of this film is one of greys, blues, and blacks. There is no sun, no grass, no trees. Everything is caught under a layer of thick snow or harsh rock. Snowstorms batter the investigators, never letting up. The moral and emotional landscape is not much better either. Mulder has gone to seed and Scully works at a strange Catholic hospital, where she seems at loggerheads with the more traditional members of the staff. (Oh, and Mulder and Scully live together, sleep together, are people "that come home at night", as Scully remarks. It's all rather strange.) Everything is understated and half-lived. There is bleakness over everything and it is not shied away from. I thought that was worth mentioning.
Saturday 26 July 2008
The Dark Knight
The hype seems justified. This film delivered in every area it needed to, the most important for me being Heath Ledger's performance. I so wanted it to be great, and it was. He was truly terrifying, and not only in that cartoonish, cackling villain way but in his portrayal of a man who is essentially a void. The most nerve-tingling parts were his multiple re-tellings of his "how I got these scars" story, changing it each time, each one as terrifying as the other, each time the void opening up a little more. This man is hollow - no name, fingerprints, even his clothes arecustom-made. There were echoes of Silence of the Lambs in the scenes after his "capture" - not only the physical space (the cage in the middle of the room surrounded by cops) but his haunting menace, the audience knowing that the cops' confidence was woefully misplaced.
The film's "battle between good and evil" conceit (which normally turns me off like no other trope in cinema) was a perfect prism through which to view this film. It's not a battle between good and evil so much as a portrayal of the power of those ideals. Whilst the Joker is in some sense intended as a personification of pure evil, Ledger's performance - and Christopher Nolan's direction - manage to tug the edges of this simplistic idea. And of course we are all aware of Batman's much-trumpeted ambiguity. He is complexity writ large, and Christian Bale is perhaps the best actor who has so far taken on the cape to portray this. His Batman is one unable to deal with the pressures of being a hero, unsure if he even is one, resigned to the attempt but always looking for a "real" hero. The film was mired in the complexity of human morality, a muddied world full of conflicted loyalties and the lure of big money and power.
The film's "battle between good and evil" conceit (which normally turns me off like no other trope in cinema) was a perfect prism through which to view this film. It's not a battle between good and evil so much as a portrayal of the power of those ideals. Whilst the Joker is in some sense intended as a personification of pure evil, Ledger's performance - and Christopher Nolan's direction - manage to tug the edges of this simplistic idea. And of course we are all aware of Batman's much-trumpeted ambiguity. He is complexity writ large, and Christian Bale is perhaps the best actor who has so far taken on the cape to portray this. His Batman is one unable to deal with the pressures of being a hero, unsure if he even is one, resigned to the attempt but always looking for a "real" hero. The film was mired in the complexity of human morality, a muddied world full of conflicted loyalties and the lure of big money and power.
Friday 25 July 2008
Summer + film - does it work?
It's not only lack of consistent internet that has led to the downturn in entries on this blog. I really haven't seen many films recently. (Although I think I've seen something I've forgotten). Summer isn't really a time for films for me - the cinemas are dominated by big blockbusters and arthouse cinema dries up a bit. Having said that, I'm going to see The Dark Knight tonight - an 11pm screening - and I'm looking very, very forward to it!
Monday 14 July 2008
Friday 27 June 2008
California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit) (Endless)
I'm really excited about the current generation of young European film-makers. This film is one of a string of films that have given birth to this excitement, although it's incredibly sad that the director of this wonderful Romanian film Cristian Nemescu was killed, aged only 27, in a car accident soon after making this film. In fact, before the opening credits, we are told that this is the film as it was when he died, suggesting that there was perhaps more work to be done. I suspect that for the international market he may have been pressured to shorten it from the 2 and a half hours it currently is. There may be a minute silver lining to the grey cloud there - if he'd lived, perhaps Nemescu would've cut his film and perhaps it would've been harmed. That's lots of perhaps's. IMDB logs the "Nesfarsit" or "Endless" of the title's bracket as meaning "Unfinished", suggesting that "Endless" is perhaps a sloppy translation.
Why this film excited me - both of itself and as part of a greater film-making network - was its treatment of story. It reminded me very much of The Edge of Heaven, Fatih Akin's remarkable film from earlier this year. In California Dreamin', Nemescu manages like Akin to consider greater implications of politics and history at one step removed by focussing on characters rather than grand ideas or narratives. It's a small story, concerning American troops on their way to Kosovo stuck in a Romanian village after a station master with a grudge stops their train, but it is shot through with the legacy of World War 2, of American intervention in foreign wars, of modern Europe.
I get the feeling - and it is a feeling, a vague, unresearched feeling - that this current generation of European film-makers, those in their 20s and 30s, are able to look at Europe now and in the past in a way that previous generations cannot. We are far away from the terrors of the 20th century to look at them more clearly (though not far away enough for the recriminations to have stopped) whilst at the same time being integral to the unification of Europe in the 21st century. This generation can uniquely learn from the past and direct the future.
Why this film excited me - both of itself and as part of a greater film-making network - was its treatment of story. It reminded me very much of The Edge of Heaven, Fatih Akin's remarkable film from earlier this year. In California Dreamin', Nemescu manages like Akin to consider greater implications of politics and history at one step removed by focussing on characters rather than grand ideas or narratives. It's a small story, concerning American troops on their way to Kosovo stuck in a Romanian village after a station master with a grudge stops their train, but it is shot through with the legacy of World War 2, of American intervention in foreign wars, of modern Europe.
I get the feeling - and it is a feeling, a vague, unresearched feeling - that this current generation of European film-makers, those in their 20s and 30s, are able to look at Europe now and in the past in a way that previous generations cannot. We are far away from the terrors of the 20th century to look at them more clearly (though not far away enough for the recriminations to have stopped) whilst at the same time being integral to the unification of Europe in the 21st century. This generation can uniquely learn from the past and direct the future.
Monday 23 June 2008
The Red Balloon/White Mane, The Haunting
A few more films seen while I still have no net.
The Red Balloon/White Mane
dir. Albert Lamorisse
1956 & 1953
The Red Balloon was a fantastic short about a boy and his red balloon wandering through Paris. A clear inspiration to those Sony Bravia adverts.
White Mane was a rather overlong piece about a wild horse and his sailor-boy friend in France's 'Wild West', the Camargue.
The Haunting
dir. Robert Wise
1963
Wonderful, classic haunted house story with minimum special effects and maximum imagination.
The Red Balloon/White Mane
dir. Albert Lamorisse
1956 & 1953
The Red Balloon was a fantastic short about a boy and his red balloon wandering through Paris. A clear inspiration to those Sony Bravia adverts.
White Mane was a rather overlong piece about a wild horse and his sailor-boy friend in France's 'Wild West', the Camargue.
The Haunting
dir. Robert Wise
1963
Wonderful, classic haunted house story with minimum special effects and maximum imagination.
Friday 13 June 2008
Dans Paris, Heartbeat Detector, and a rewatch: The Edge of Heaven
I haven't had the net in my current flat so a lack of entries. Also, possibly only coincidentally, a lack of new films. Only 2:
Dans Paris
dir. Christophe Honore
2006
Rather strange, a mixture of a portrait of a depressive and a New Wave film. Didn't really work for me, I was left confused by it. I watched the extras afterwards to try and get a handle on it: there's an interview with a director in which he says after making dark films he wanted to direct a lighter one, which I suppose he did. He talks of the influence of JD Salinger, who writes about similar themes but is always funny. I've read a lot of Salinger and this film is nothing like him!
Honore apparently wrote it for Romain Duris and Louis Garrel specifically, which makes you ponder the idea of lightness, as he cast Duris - a very powerful actor - as the depressed character. Duris is very good, as ever, and his story pulls down the "lightness". Garrel is great too as Duris' carefree younger brother. He says in an interview that Duris is the Brando - an actor "on the floor, with the world on his shoulders" and he, Garrel is the Jean-Pierre Leaud, "coming from the clouds". A nice way of putting it.
Heartbeat Detector
dir. Nicolas Klotz
2007
Quite why this film has received rave reviews is beyond me. It's adapted from a novel and basically can't deal with the ideas that are evident in the novel. The director is neither clever enough nor skilled enough to manage big ideas about language and the Holocaust and so creates a complete mess of a film: no cinematic verve, no idea of pacing, no idea how to tell a story, no idea how to manage ideas, nothing. The only good thing in it is Mathieu Amalric and the presence on the soundtrack of Schubert.
Dans Paris
dir. Christophe Honore
2006
Rather strange, a mixture of a portrait of a depressive and a New Wave film. Didn't really work for me, I was left confused by it. I watched the extras afterwards to try and get a handle on it: there's an interview with a director in which he says after making dark films he wanted to direct a lighter one, which I suppose he did. He talks of the influence of JD Salinger, who writes about similar themes but is always funny. I've read a lot of Salinger and this film is nothing like him!
Honore apparently wrote it for Romain Duris and Louis Garrel specifically, which makes you ponder the idea of lightness, as he cast Duris - a very powerful actor - as the depressed character. Duris is very good, as ever, and his story pulls down the "lightness". Garrel is great too as Duris' carefree younger brother. He says in an interview that Duris is the Brando - an actor "on the floor, with the world on his shoulders" and he, Garrel is the Jean-Pierre Leaud, "coming from the clouds". A nice way of putting it.
Heartbeat Detector
dir. Nicolas Klotz
2007
Quite why this film has received rave reviews is beyond me. It's adapted from a novel and basically can't deal with the ideas that are evident in the novel. The director is neither clever enough nor skilled enough to manage big ideas about language and the Holocaust and so creates a complete mess of a film: no cinematic verve, no idea of pacing, no idea how to tell a story, no idea how to manage ideas, nothing. The only good thing in it is Mathieu Amalric and the presence on the soundtrack of Schubert.
Wednesday 28 May 2008
Saturday 24 May 2008
Smiles of a Summer Night
My second Bergman film. It was wonderful! Really hilarious, wonderfully performed, and a great underlying theme of young loves and endless summers.
Tuesday 20 May 2008
Tuesday 13 May 2008
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Rediscovering Woody at the moment. I may have seen this before, but can't remember.
Thinking of it now, it's almost a predecessor to Match Point (which I seem to be utterly alone in the human race in actually liking), full of tragedic moral and religious dilemmas, a murderer getting away with, yep, murder. Actually, I guess it's part of a strand that runs through the whole of Woody's work. The Greek chorus in Mighty Aphrodite, the religious angst of Mickey in Hannah and Her Sisters, marriage break-ups and infidelity in pretty much every one of his films, the stories about 'castrating Zionists' in Manhattan. I never tire of it, his perfectly fine-tuned balance between that deep interrogation of the meaning of life and the hilarious consequences of our pathetic attempts to understand it all. No-one captures it quiet as well, I don't think. As Woody's Mickey says in Hannah and Her Sisters, "All these great minds who've written all these books, and none of them have any more answers than I do. I've read Socrates, he used to knock off little Greek boys, what's he got to tell me?"
Thinking of it now, it's almost a predecessor to Match Point (which I seem to be utterly alone in the human race in actually liking), full of tragedic moral and religious dilemmas, a murderer getting away with, yep, murder. Actually, I guess it's part of a strand that runs through the whole of Woody's work. The Greek chorus in Mighty Aphrodite, the religious angst of Mickey in Hannah and Her Sisters, marriage break-ups and infidelity in pretty much every one of his films, the stories about 'castrating Zionists' in Manhattan. I never tire of it, his perfectly fine-tuned balance between that deep interrogation of the meaning of life and the hilarious consequences of our pathetic attempts to understand it all. No-one captures it quiet as well, I don't think. As Woody's Mickey says in Hannah and Her Sisters, "All these great minds who've written all these books, and none of them have any more answers than I do. I've read Socrates, he used to knock off little Greek boys, what's he got to tell me?"
Monday 12 May 2008
Tuesday 6 May 2008
Rewatch: Festen
Or as the American DVD I have of it is called The Celebration.
The first Dogme 95 film, it's still just as devastating as it was when I saw it nearly ten years ago. For a film set in such palatial surroundings, it is so immediate and visceral.
The first Dogme 95 film, it's still just as devastating as it was when I saw it nearly ten years ago. For a film set in such palatial surroundings, it is so immediate and visceral.
Dekalog: The Ten Commandments Part 4
Almost a short play, mainly a two header between a young actress and a man in his 40s/50s who she's grown up thinking was her father.
Saturday 3 May 2008
Friday 2 May 2008
Rewatch: The Double Life of Veronique
I saw this a while ago, and didn't click with it. I didn't like it nearly as much as the rest of Kieslowski's work that I'd seen. I thought I'd watch it again as my love and admiration for Kieslowski's work has only grown. I think I could say I love this now.
Wednesday 30 April 2008
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Errol Flynn as a possible template for James Bond, full of quips, a devil may care attitude and attractive to the ladies. "The classic swashbuckler" it said on the box. Lots of ribald laughter, lots of mutton legs being torn apart and thrown over shoulders, and Basil Rathbone plotting away.
Tuesday 29 April 2008
Rewatch: opening of Magnolia
Our most recent script discussions included this fantastic opening of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia.
One of our characters sees the world through rationalisation, making things make sense, quantifying experience into formulas. Our note of caution was this: we don't want it to be like the opening of Magnolia. The reason was this: it's simply too good to mess with.
One of our characters sees the world through rationalisation, making things make sense, quantifying experience into formulas. Our note of caution was this: we don't want it to be like the opening of Magnolia. The reason was this: it's simply too good to mess with.
Saturday 26 April 2008
Rewatch: excerpts from Coffee and Cigarettes
This is probably the best way to watch this film actually, cause you can just pick the best ones:
I can't find all of this:
I can't find all of this:
Friday 25 April 2008
Two guiding stars...
The film I've been working on with Tobias for over a year now has been rather hard work. Most of that work has been mental, a processing of ideas and various attempts at gathering them into a coherent whole. I suppose that is the work of all writers. This has been more difficult though.
The reason it's been so difficult is not really to do with the story. It is about style, and as such should perhaps not be given the notoriety I am giving it here, but nonetheless it has been my biggest - and most consistent - problem. It is this: my attempt to reconcile my admiration for two (apparently) mutually exclusive styles. A documentary-like realism and naturalism and a visually-arresting magical "other"-world. I like each as much as the other, and find it difficult to focus on just one when writing. The result is writing a scene in whichever style I feel I'm "in" that particular day, then doing away with it the next.
However, I think I've managed to achieve some form of synthesis, thanks to two guiding stars, who both, in their entirely separate ways, manage to reconcile these elements: Krzysztof Kieslowski and Michel Gondry. Both manage to ground their stories in a believable, emotionally honest reality whilst acknowledging the magic of everyday life, Kieslowski in his almost spiritual mise-en-scene and pacing, Gondry in his rabid visual imagination.
Of course this voyage of discovery wouldn't be complete without a new problem at the end of it: how not to write a Gondlowski-Kiesry rip-off!
The reason it's been so difficult is not really to do with the story. It is about style, and as such should perhaps not be given the notoriety I am giving it here, but nonetheless it has been my biggest - and most consistent - problem. It is this: my attempt to reconcile my admiration for two (apparently) mutually exclusive styles. A documentary-like realism and naturalism and a visually-arresting magical "other"-world. I like each as much as the other, and find it difficult to focus on just one when writing. The result is writing a scene in whichever style I feel I'm "in" that particular day, then doing away with it the next.
However, I think I've managed to achieve some form of synthesis, thanks to two guiding stars, who both, in their entirely separate ways, manage to reconcile these elements: Krzysztof Kieslowski and Michel Gondry. Both manage to ground their stories in a believable, emotionally honest reality whilst acknowledging the magic of everyday life, Kieslowski in his almost spiritual mise-en-scene and pacing, Gondry in his rabid visual imagination.
Of course this voyage of discovery wouldn't be complete without a new problem at the end of it: how not to write a Gondlowski-Kiesry rip-off!
Thursday 24 April 2008
Wild Strawberries
I'm somewhat shamed to say that this was my first Bergman film. In my defence, my degree saw fit to ignore him completely, so I wasn't given a good start.
I get the impression Wild Strawberries is held pretty high in the Bergman pantheon, and I reckon with good reason. Reading Bergman's notes on the making of the film, it seems the dynamic between him and the great Swedish director (and idol of Bergman) Victor Sjostrom, who plays Professor Isak Borg was "tetchy", one of those mythic relationships between arguing individuals that somehow conspires to produce a great work of art. Herzog's entire work with Kinski seems to be based on this relationship.
Sjostrom gives a remarkably toned portrait of an aged professor, voluntarily withdrawn from "social intercourse". As he travels from Stockholm to Lund to receive an honorary doctorate, episodes from his life arrest him as a handless ticking clock looms over his consciousness, signalling the death that surely must come soon. Borg is not merely regretful, or merely sad, but some combination of regret, sorrow, misty-eyed happiness and a gratefulness to whoever gave him life. This last point is important - even as a confirmed man of science, he refuses to be drawn into a debate between two of the "youngsters" he gives a ride to on science vs religion. Whilst they go into the woods to fight over the existence of the Almighty, Borg recites a verse, thanking whatever or whoever gave him, and the world, life.
In his notes, Bergman discusses events in his own life during the making of the film - his estrangement from his parents - and speculates that this film, which ends with a son finding his mother and father in a clearing, is an arm open in reconciliation to his parents. This tone pervades the film. It is that most mature of viewpoints, one that perhaps can only be achieved in old age, of slow consideration, of weighing up; accepting regret and remembering happiness.
(Having said that, Bergman made this film when he was 37).
I get the impression Wild Strawberries is held pretty high in the Bergman pantheon, and I reckon with good reason. Reading Bergman's notes on the making of the film, it seems the dynamic between him and the great Swedish director (and idol of Bergman) Victor Sjostrom, who plays Professor Isak Borg was "tetchy", one of those mythic relationships between arguing individuals that somehow conspires to produce a great work of art. Herzog's entire work with Kinski seems to be based on this relationship.
Sjostrom gives a remarkably toned portrait of an aged professor, voluntarily withdrawn from "social intercourse". As he travels from Stockholm to Lund to receive an honorary doctorate, episodes from his life arrest him as a handless ticking clock looms over his consciousness, signalling the death that surely must come soon. Borg is not merely regretful, or merely sad, but some combination of regret, sorrow, misty-eyed happiness and a gratefulness to whoever gave him life. This last point is important - even as a confirmed man of science, he refuses to be drawn into a debate between two of the "youngsters" he gives a ride to on science vs religion. Whilst they go into the woods to fight over the existence of the Almighty, Borg recites a verse, thanking whatever or whoever gave him, and the world, life.
In his notes, Bergman discusses events in his own life during the making of the film - his estrangement from his parents - and speculates that this film, which ends with a son finding his mother and father in a clearing, is an arm open in reconciliation to his parents. This tone pervades the film. It is that most mature of viewpoints, one that perhaps can only be achieved in old age, of slow consideration, of weighing up; accepting regret and remembering happiness.
(Having said that, Bergman made this film when he was 37).
You, The Living
Does the concept of a hilarious near-apocalyptic world sound ridiculous to you? Well go to see Swedish director Roy Andersson's You, The Living and you will see that world. Shot in shades of beige and grey and following a loosely connected group of people through their daily struggle (and for these people life really is a struggle) in a series of Pythonesque vingettes this is a superb film.
Forgoing the usual devices of character, plot and camerawork to exact a story Andersson gives us life in all its inglorious monotony. A punk who keeps telling her boyfriend to "piss off" because "no one understands me", a teenage girl hopelessly in love with the lead singer of the "Black Devils", a worn-down psychiatrist. These are the people through whom we see life. Everything is nice or 'not very nice', everything just so, sometimes someone has a bad day - the rug salesman who has called his wife a hag after she called him an "old fart". "I think hag is worse," says a customer.
Full of dry-as-a-desert humour - the military band man worrying about his investments as his wife tries to orgasm on top of him, the old man dragging his dog along the pavement - this film will really make you weep with laughter and the silliness and banality that life throws our way.
Forgoing the usual devices of character, plot and camerawork to exact a story Andersson gives us life in all its inglorious monotony. A punk who keeps telling her boyfriend to "piss off" because "no one understands me", a teenage girl hopelessly in love with the lead singer of the "Black Devils", a worn-down psychiatrist. These are the people through whom we see life. Everything is nice or 'not very nice', everything just so, sometimes someone has a bad day - the rug salesman who has called his wife a hag after she called him an "old fart". "I think hag is worse," says a customer.
Full of dry-as-a-desert humour - the military band man worrying about his investments as his wife tries to orgasm on top of him, the old man dragging his dog along the pavement - this film will really make you weep with laughter and the silliness and banality that life throws our way.
Wednesday 23 April 2008
Sunday 20 April 2008
Writing as ironwork...
The word "playwright" comes from the word "wrought", as in wrought iron, to "work into shape by artistry or effort". I can't think of a more apt etymology! When you write something, you are starting out with something rough-edged and clunky and attempting to fashion something coherent and beautiful out of it. And it's no more glamorous than whacking a bit of iron with a big hammer. In fact it's less glamorous, as you have to create even the lump of iron! Ironworkers have it made!
You have the initial excitement of inspiration, the lightbulb moment, then the awful, exhausting, anguish-inducing transfer onto a blank page, then the happy-go-lucky editing process. At uni a teacher said that the biggest artist on a film is the editor. I've kept that in mind ever since.
I think of it like a sandwich, a sort of reverse-sandwich really, with the flavoursome bits either side. I love coming up with the initial ideas and thinking them through, I HATE the middle bit, and love the 2nd, 3rd, 4th drafts. I could be a professional drafter for that matter, I'd be quite happy drafting away, creating multiple versions of things.
You have the initial excitement of inspiration, the lightbulb moment, then the awful, exhausting, anguish-inducing transfer onto a blank page, then the happy-go-lucky editing process. At uni a teacher said that the biggest artist on a film is the editor. I've kept that in mind ever since.
I think of it like a sandwich, a sort of reverse-sandwich really, with the flavoursome bits either side. I love coming up with the initial ideas and thinking them through, I HATE the middle bit, and love the 2nd, 3rd, 4th drafts. I could be a professional drafter for that matter, I'd be quite happy drafting away, creating multiple versions of things.
Saturday 19 April 2008
Dekalog: The Ten Commandments Part 2
This didn't quite catch me as much as the first part, most probably due to the somewhat unlikeable character and the slightly-too-slow pace for someone half-exhausted such as myself.
But putting that aside for a moment and trying to think more objectively, I find myself admiring the marriage of pace and subject matter.
This film concerns a woman whose husband is dying in hospital and who carries a baby that is not his. Her dilemma is this, in her own words: if her husband lives, then she cannot keep the baby. She has always wanted children, and this is her only chance to do so. Up until this moment, she thought she couldn't have them.
The film revolves around the series of encounters she has with the doctor caring for her husband. The unlikeable character mentioned earlier is not her but the doctor, a stern, unloving man numbed to humanity by the apparent death of his wife and children, the story of which he re-tells to his cleaner in moments interspersed with the "real" action. He eschews most other human contact and interacts verbally with grunts or the bare minimum of words. He has survived the tragedy of his family it seems through a mixture of the certainties of medicine and the tweeting of his pet budgie.
This life only now being half-lived, the slow counting of days, is mirrored in the husband lying in a hospital ward. He is half-comatose, half-dead already, his link with the outside world a monotonous dripping of rusted water from the ceiling. This is perhaps ever-so-slightly heavy handed from Kieslowski, as with the final shot of a wasp struggling - but making it - out of a cup of juice. Like the husband, it clings to life, barely managing to pull itself out of death. But perhaps that's the film student in me. It certainly works, there's no question about that; in fact the image of the wasp crawling up the spoon out of this red liquid is potentially iconic, and a wonderful metaphor for the seemingly miraculous recovery of the husband.
What this episode does is confirm my feelings about Kieslowski's genius. Part 1 was not an aberration, and my memories of the episode known as "A Short Film About Love" serve to further that impression. He has the ability to say a great deal in so few images, so few words. In cinema, that is a rare - and necessary - quality.
But putting that aside for a moment and trying to think more objectively, I find myself admiring the marriage of pace and subject matter.
This film concerns a woman whose husband is dying in hospital and who carries a baby that is not his. Her dilemma is this, in her own words: if her husband lives, then she cannot keep the baby. She has always wanted children, and this is her only chance to do so. Up until this moment, she thought she couldn't have them.
The film revolves around the series of encounters she has with the doctor caring for her husband. The unlikeable character mentioned earlier is not her but the doctor, a stern, unloving man numbed to humanity by the apparent death of his wife and children, the story of which he re-tells to his cleaner in moments interspersed with the "real" action. He eschews most other human contact and interacts verbally with grunts or the bare minimum of words. He has survived the tragedy of his family it seems through a mixture of the certainties of medicine and the tweeting of his pet budgie.
This life only now being half-lived, the slow counting of days, is mirrored in the husband lying in a hospital ward. He is half-comatose, half-dead already, his link with the outside world a monotonous dripping of rusted water from the ceiling. This is perhaps ever-so-slightly heavy handed from Kieslowski, as with the final shot of a wasp struggling - but making it - out of a cup of juice. Like the husband, it clings to life, barely managing to pull itself out of death. But perhaps that's the film student in me. It certainly works, there's no question about that; in fact the image of the wasp crawling up the spoon out of this red liquid is potentially iconic, and a wonderful metaphor for the seemingly miraculous recovery of the husband.
What this episode does is confirm my feelings about Kieslowski's genius. Part 1 was not an aberration, and my memories of the episode known as "A Short Film About Love" serve to further that impression. He has the ability to say a great deal in so few images, so few words. In cinema, that is a rare - and necessary - quality.
Friday 18 April 2008
Dekalog: The Ten Commandments Part 1
I'm discovering these anew. It's been so long since I last watched them that I can't remember which ones I've seen and which ones not. I'd forgotten what a master Kieslowski is. He had the mark of a genius. The first Dekalog is devastating, it tells you more about human existence in an hour than Ben Affleck's entire career. Absolutely mind-blowing.
I had to look up the Ten Commandments and even then it's rather more confusing than you'd assume, as different religious traditions assign different numbers to different commandments, but the general gist of the first is "I am the Lord your God and you shall have no other Gods before me". Kieslowski moulds this into the tussle between science and religion, between the reasoned measurements of the computers Pavel and his father are fascinated by and the unpredictability of the weather, the randomness of probability. I fear to say more unless I give it away, but it's completely riveting cinema.
I've been dipping in and out of Robert McKee's infamous Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting recently and one particular passage sticks in my mind. He says that part of a successful screenplay is managing to unearth a "universally human experience, then [wrapping it into] a unique, culture-specific expression". If ever this idea was born out in film, then this is it. The snow-covered, wind-battered Communist tower blocks of 80s Poland could only be of that time and place, the dominance of white and grey, the restrained pallet, but those archetypal themes of faith and belief, of youthful wonder and questioning, could be set down anywhere in the world.
I had to look up the Ten Commandments and even then it's rather more confusing than you'd assume, as different religious traditions assign different numbers to different commandments, but the general gist of the first is "I am the Lord your God and you shall have no other Gods before me". Kieslowski moulds this into the tussle between science and religion, between the reasoned measurements of the computers Pavel and his father are fascinated by and the unpredictability of the weather, the randomness of probability. I fear to say more unless I give it away, but it's completely riveting cinema.
I've been dipping in and out of Robert McKee's infamous Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting recently and one particular passage sticks in my mind. He says that part of a successful screenplay is managing to unearth a "universally human experience, then [wrapping it into] a unique, culture-specific expression". If ever this idea was born out in film, then this is it. The snow-covered, wind-battered Communist tower blocks of 80s Poland could only be of that time and place, the dominance of white and grey, the restrained pallet, but those archetypal themes of faith and belief, of youthful wonder and questioning, could be set down anywhere in the world.
Wednesday 16 April 2008
My Brother Is An Only Child
Wonderful Italian film from the writers of The Best Of Youth, about two brothers growing up in the 60s, the eldest a handsome, charming Communist, the younger nicknamed Accio (Bully), wily and a Fascist. Perfect acting, superb writing and great camera work, everything works together for the good of the film.
Like The Edge of Heaven last week, My Brother Is An Only Child seems almost effortless. The bond between the family is quickly established through countless smackings, brotherly rough and tumble and shouting matches through the apartment the five of them share. The pertinent information about them simply appears in your brain without need for a eureka moment of understanding. It's all in the swirling camera-work and the way the dialogue is performed, with everyone talking over each other, not finishing sentences, resorting to insults.
Luchetti achieves the right balance between the fanaticism of the two brothers' ideals and their fraternal bond. Whilst in the context of two rival protests coming together in a brawl they can fight each other, in the more personal context of Fascist friends of Accio burning Communist Manrico's car, then blood comes before ideals. It's an ongoing tussle, complicated firstly by Accio's lack of true Fascism - after rebelling against his family he renounces it after Fascists storm a concert by a Communist orchestra who've "de-fascisted" a Beethoven symphony by writing pro-Mao accompanying lyrics, and secondly by Accio falling - slowly, and without anything ever really coming of it - in love with Manrico's on-off girlfriend and mother of his child Francesca.
It's a testament to the acting that this works, given how hard it is to pull off. They're both believably fanatic but when they break through their beliefs or discard them all together it makes sense and is completely free of sentimentality.
Like The Edge of Heaven last week, My Brother Is An Only Child seems almost effortless. The bond between the family is quickly established through countless smackings, brotherly rough and tumble and shouting matches through the apartment the five of them share. The pertinent information about them simply appears in your brain without need for a eureka moment of understanding. It's all in the swirling camera-work and the way the dialogue is performed, with everyone talking over each other, not finishing sentences, resorting to insults.
Luchetti achieves the right balance between the fanaticism of the two brothers' ideals and their fraternal bond. Whilst in the context of two rival protests coming together in a brawl they can fight each other, in the more personal context of Fascist friends of Accio burning Communist Manrico's car, then blood comes before ideals. It's an ongoing tussle, complicated firstly by Accio's lack of true Fascism - after rebelling against his family he renounces it after Fascists storm a concert by a Communist orchestra who've "de-fascisted" a Beethoven symphony by writing pro-Mao accompanying lyrics, and secondly by Accio falling - slowly, and without anything ever really coming of it - in love with Manrico's on-off girlfriend and mother of his child Francesca.
It's a testament to the acting that this works, given how hard it is to pull off. They're both believably fanatic but when they break through their beliefs or discard them all together it makes sense and is completely free of sentimentality.
Tuesday 15 April 2008
Out Of The Past
From Jacques Tourneur, made in 1947 and starring Robert Mitchum, also known as Build My Gallows High.
Monday 14 April 2008
Rewatch: Lost In Translation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, Dazed & Confused
It occured to me that perhaps I should note down films I re-watch. These are recent ones.
Head On & Slacker
These are only lumped together because I watched them around the same time, but interestingly they share an importance: they are both interesting from the point of view of tracing a director's development.
Head-On I went out and bought the day after I saw The Edge of Heaven. The themes of displacement and the uneasy relationship between Germany and Turkey, and the conflicted identities of those born in one but raised in another are present in Head-On as much as they are in The Edge of Heaven, but there's a certain fear perhaps of going too far with them. Maybe not, maybe I'm looking for differences when actually there aren't any. Having said that, I enjoyed The Edge of Heaven more, perhaps for apparently superficial reasons like there being a character who was a lecturer in it or perhaps for deeper, more-difficult-to-enunciate reasons. I think I felt that The Edge of Heaven was more assured, less afraid to tackle big themes. Someone in the Guardian called it daring, whereas Head-On was more tentative.
Slacker I didn't like very much. It looked far too much like an exercise, an experiment, than an actual film. Nevertheless, I'd never considered it in the view of Before Sunrise and Sunset, films I love and which share a similar walking-and-talking aesthetic. But whereas those films are full of the warmth of well-drawn characters, Slacker is empty, almost vacuous. Perhaps it was intended - as a reflection of the characters? - but it doesn't hold up: once you've seen one switch of characters, you've seen them all. You never get to know any of the human beings in the film and in fact the greatest character is the city itself, despite the fact you're never actually told what city it is. Writing that I'm reminded of Gus Van Sant's Elephant, but whereas that film managed to create an entire world simply by wandering its physical parameters, Slacker seems naive, not thought through, as if Richard Linklater had this concept and padded it out.
Head-On I went out and bought the day after I saw The Edge of Heaven. The themes of displacement and the uneasy relationship between Germany and Turkey, and the conflicted identities of those born in one but raised in another are present in Head-On as much as they are in The Edge of Heaven, but there's a certain fear perhaps of going too far with them. Maybe not, maybe I'm looking for differences when actually there aren't any. Having said that, I enjoyed The Edge of Heaven more, perhaps for apparently superficial reasons like there being a character who was a lecturer in it or perhaps for deeper, more-difficult-to-enunciate reasons. I think I felt that The Edge of Heaven was more assured, less afraid to tackle big themes. Someone in the Guardian called it daring, whereas Head-On was more tentative.
Slacker I didn't like very much. It looked far too much like an exercise, an experiment, than an actual film. Nevertheless, I'd never considered it in the view of Before Sunrise and Sunset, films I love and which share a similar walking-and-talking aesthetic. But whereas those films are full of the warmth of well-drawn characters, Slacker is empty, almost vacuous. Perhaps it was intended - as a reflection of the characters? - but it doesn't hold up: once you've seen one switch of characters, you've seen them all. You never get to know any of the human beings in the film and in fact the greatest character is the city itself, despite the fact you're never actually told what city it is. Writing that I'm reminded of Gus Van Sant's Elephant, but whereas that film managed to create an entire world simply by wandering its physical parameters, Slacker seems naive, not thought through, as if Richard Linklater had this concept and padded it out.
Friday 11 April 2008
The Edge Of Heaven
Aka: Auf der anderen Seite (On The Other Side, its original German title)
Made by Fatih Akin (Head-On, Crossing The Bridge) this is a remarkable film, haunting, memorably and superbly made. I knew of Akin as a film-maker who tackles the complex relationship between Turkey (where his family originates) and Germany (where he grew up), but wasn't aware of seeing his films before this one. As it happens, I've seen Crossing the Bridge, a documentary following Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten as he explores Istanbul's musical melting pot. I got into traditional and contemporary Turkish music off the back of that film and those exotic, comforting sounds accompany this film.
I don't want to give a synopsis, but you can find one here and here.
This film really blew me away. You know those trailers with the trailer-voice-man saying things like "one man's journey to another world" and all that sorta stuff, the stuff they've buthered the Persepolis trailer with in the UK? Well this film is the reason such trailers exist. It tracks the emotional journey of a group of people, connected deeply but not really knowing it, and it also tracks the history of two countries, the history of history really.
Oh just read those two links. They're much better at wording it than me. And see this film. It's out in June on DVD - rent it!
Here's a couple of trailers:
Made by Fatih Akin (Head-On, Crossing The Bridge) this is a remarkable film, haunting, memorably and superbly made. I knew of Akin as a film-maker who tackles the complex relationship between Turkey (where his family originates) and Germany (where he grew up), but wasn't aware of seeing his films before this one. As it happens, I've seen Crossing the Bridge, a documentary following Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten as he explores Istanbul's musical melting pot. I got into traditional and contemporary Turkish music off the back of that film and those exotic, comforting sounds accompany this film.
I don't want to give a synopsis, but you can find one here and here.
This film really blew me away. You know those trailers with the trailer-voice-man saying things like "one man's journey to another world" and all that sorta stuff, the stuff they've buthered the Persepolis trailer with in the UK? Well this film is the reason such trailers exist. It tracks the emotional journey of a group of people, connected deeply but not really knowing it, and it also tracks the history of two countries, the history of history really.
Oh just read those two links. They're much better at wording it than me. And see this film. It's out in June on DVD - rent it!
Here's a couple of trailers:
Thursday 10 April 2008
Rules for Writing
On my walk down to the bank today two rules for writing popped into my head. Once they had, I thought about coming up with a framework that makes me write more than I do at the moment. My own personal set of rules, that whilst not useful to everyone, might make me more productive. As it happens, the last few days have been very productive, so perhaps I have been subconsciously adhering to these rules before I realised I'd thought of them.
1. Don't second guess yourself, go with your instincts.
2. Get it on the page; edit on paper not in your head.
I'm going to be editing and changing this but I think those two rules (or guidelines, if you prefer) are between them a lot of percent responsible for my lack of finished product.
1. Don't second guess yourself, go with your instincts.
2. Get it on the page; edit on paper not in your head.
I'm going to be editing and changing this but I think those two rules (or guidelines, if you prefer) are between them a lot of percent responsible for my lack of finished product.
Friday 4 April 2008
The Wire
I read an article a while ago that wondered whether the more challenging and complex screen-based work was in fact not appearing on cinema screens but on its smaller cousin, the humble ol' TV. On the strength of my just-completed viewing of Season 3 of HBO's The Wire, I would be tempted to wonder the same thing.
That The Wire is superb in every conceivable way is I think uncontestable. I'm fairly unanimous in my review of this, based entirely on 20% of its content. (I still haven't seen Seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5).
Here's Charlie Brooker's view on it. "I reviewed The Wire on my low budget, miserabilist BBC4 show Screen Wipe, calling it "the best TV show of the past decade" in the process. I was wrong. I hadn't seen the fourth season then, which subsequently convinced me it's the best TV show since the invention of radio" he says.
Here's another bit of praise: "If Charles Dickens were alive today, he would watch The Wire," ran one plaudit, from the New York Times. "Unless, that is, he was already writing for it." That gets at the immense view of the interconnectedness of society The Wire has, but I would also add that Shakespeare would be sitting next to Dickens at the story meetings, creating not only lines to sit alongside his more famous "hits", but making sure that HBO's series had the majestic, all-too-human sweep of his plays.
Take a look at this confrontation between Omar and Brother Mouzone:
Or this war speech from Slim Charles:
Or McNulty getting "schooled" by Freamon:
There are countless examples like these. This show just blows everything out of the water.
And, right now, I feel a bit like the first coupla paragraphs of this, ya feel me bro?
UPDATE: There's an interesting article in the May issue of Sight & Sound (bizarrely in the shops but not on their website as yet). It's a little over-harsh on some of the acting, but it does place The Wire in the right context, and doesn't give too much away.
That The Wire is superb in every conceivable way is I think uncontestable. I'm fairly unanimous in my review of this, based entirely on 20% of its content. (I still haven't seen Seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5).
Here's Charlie Brooker's view on it. "I reviewed The Wire on my low budget, miserabilist BBC4 show Screen Wipe, calling it "the best TV show of the past decade" in the process. I was wrong. I hadn't seen the fourth season then, which subsequently convinced me it's the best TV show since the invention of radio" he says.
Here's another bit of praise: "If Charles Dickens were alive today, he would watch The Wire," ran one plaudit, from the New York Times. "Unless, that is, he was already writing for it." That gets at the immense view of the interconnectedness of society The Wire has, but I would also add that Shakespeare would be sitting next to Dickens at the story meetings, creating not only lines to sit alongside his more famous "hits", but making sure that HBO's series had the majestic, all-too-human sweep of his plays.
Take a look at this confrontation between Omar and Brother Mouzone:
Or this war speech from Slim Charles:
Or McNulty getting "schooled" by Freamon:
There are countless examples like these. This show just blows everything out of the water.
And, right now, I feel a bit like the first coupla paragraphs of this, ya feel me bro?
UPDATE: There's an interesting article in the May issue of Sight & Sound (bizarrely in the shops but not on their website as yet). It's a little over-harsh on some of the acting, but it does place The Wire in the right context, and doesn't give too much away.
Thursday 27 March 2008
Ong-Bak
Almost forgot this! Having a bit of a series of less intellectually stimulating films, it seems. This is great though. Or, rather, the fights were great, everything else was a bit rubbish.
Check it out at 4:09! There might be a fairly nasty arm and leg break in it though, later on. I wimped out and didn't watch it again.
Check it out at 4:09! There might be a fairly nasty arm and leg break in it though, later on. I wimped out and didn't watch it again.
Team America: World Police
Which I watched a month or so ago, and was rather disappointed by. Nowhere near as funny as I was hoping/expecting. Although the America, Fuck Yeah! song was quite good.
The Wedding Party
Brian dePalma's first film, not-quite-starring "Robert Denero". Interesting... (Good for film students)
Saturday 22 March 2008
Nacho Libre
This was done by the guys that did Napoleon Dynamite, which I still haven't seen!
I am, I am, an unashamed fan of Jack Black. Not much else to say really.
I am, I am, an unashamed fan of Jack Black. Not much else to say really.
Syndromes and a Century
This was a wonderful film. The film-maker's name is Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Get practising your prononciation, he'll be on everyone's lips sooner or later.
Using the divisive stylistics of the cinema of inconsequentiality (see my Silent Light review from January) but injects it with a dose of humour and deftness sadly lacking in others. Instead of being as Peter Bradshaw puts it (in his albeit favourable review of Silent Light) "weirdly passionless", this film is full of passion, full of the joy of life. It also possesses one of the best endings I've seen for a long, long time: so surprising, so incongruous and just plain funky you leave the cinema with a grin on your face. If you'd been reserving judgement up to that point, it's hard not to go with it.
It is ostensibly a film about the film-maker's doctor parents and how they met. But there's no grand love story, no embraces set to soaring strings, it's the little things that we see here, those apparent inconsequential conversations that you remember as pivotal. There's a great scene between an orchid enthusiast and the female doctor. They are obviously fond of each other and despite their easy friendliness there's a little tension around them. Leaning on a balcony the orchid fan describes a predicament: he loves someone but doesn't know how to tell them. He quickly tells the doctor it's not her, "someone else", and she asks a few light-hearted questions, her pose relaxed, open. Whilst he talks, the orchid man absent-mindedly peels an orange. Evidently the subject matter is somewhat tough, as the doctor laughs as the orange splits and spills all over the place. "Is the orange crushed?" she asks, in between bursts of laughter.
No-one seems to know what it's really about, but who cares, really? There are nods to Buddhist themes of reincarnation in the repetition of scenes in different cities with different people, as well as in the lingering (and sometimes near-Lynchian) shots of statues in hospital grounds. There's perhaps a discreet comment on the impersonality of modern life in the teenage boy playing tennis in hospital corridors, and perhaps a hint of unrequited love in the short but troubled scenes between lovers. Nevertheless, I totally agree with Peter Bradshaw (again), who found it "a transcendentally happy experience: inducing a joyous and calm kind of euphoria". Go see it, if you can.
Using the divisive stylistics of the cinema of inconsequentiality (see my Silent Light review from January) but injects it with a dose of humour and deftness sadly lacking in others. Instead of being as Peter Bradshaw puts it (in his albeit favourable review of Silent Light) "weirdly passionless", this film is full of passion, full of the joy of life. It also possesses one of the best endings I've seen for a long, long time: so surprising, so incongruous and just plain funky you leave the cinema with a grin on your face. If you'd been reserving judgement up to that point, it's hard not to go with it.
It is ostensibly a film about the film-maker's doctor parents and how they met. But there's no grand love story, no embraces set to soaring strings, it's the little things that we see here, those apparent inconsequential conversations that you remember as pivotal. There's a great scene between an orchid enthusiast and the female doctor. They are obviously fond of each other and despite their easy friendliness there's a little tension around them. Leaning on a balcony the orchid fan describes a predicament: he loves someone but doesn't know how to tell them. He quickly tells the doctor it's not her, "someone else", and she asks a few light-hearted questions, her pose relaxed, open. Whilst he talks, the orchid man absent-mindedly peels an orange. Evidently the subject matter is somewhat tough, as the doctor laughs as the orange splits and spills all over the place. "Is the orange crushed?" she asks, in between bursts of laughter.
No-one seems to know what it's really about, but who cares, really? There are nods to Buddhist themes of reincarnation in the repetition of scenes in different cities with different people, as well as in the lingering (and sometimes near-Lynchian) shots of statues in hospital grounds. There's perhaps a discreet comment on the impersonality of modern life in the teenage boy playing tennis in hospital corridors, and perhaps a hint of unrequited love in the short but troubled scenes between lovers. Nevertheless, I totally agree with Peter Bradshaw (again), who found it "a transcendentally happy experience: inducing a joyous and calm kind of euphoria". Go see it, if you can.
Rome, Open City
Directed by Roberto Rossellini (and curiously written in part by Fellini), Rome, Open City was filmed in the bombed out Rome of 1945. As part of the Neo-Realist section of my degree I'd always kept this nugget of information in my head, but not much more. After watching it, that is still my introductory remark: "Yeah, I watched Rome, Open City the other night, it was filmed in the bombed out Rome of 1945." This is partly due to the awful quality of the DVD release that we watched: no apparent attempt at updating and restoring the footage and the subtitler was obviously of the narcopleptic variety, choosing to give us only a third of the speech spoken in the entire film. At one point five minutes of conversation went by without a flicker of a white word at the bottom of the screen.
As such - and, admittedly because I was tired and fell asleep in parts - I don't really have much to say about it!
As such - and, admittedly because I was tired and fell asleep in parts - I don't really have much to say about it!
Wednesday 5 March 2008
Persepolis & Before The Devil Knows You're Dead
Persepolis is a film from the book of the same name by Marjane Satrapi, and tells the story of her childhood, growing up at first in the confusing and often frightening Tehran of the revolution, then in Vienna, after being sent there, and follows her through her return to Iran and her giving up of her country for good and heading back to Europe, this time to Paris.
The animation is superb, the style of the book more than ably transferred to the screen. In fact, the liveliness of the drawings perhaps work better on the big screen, especially when the alternative is victim to bad printing, rendering everything far greyer than the deep blacks and whites of the film, as I saw in a copy of the book I picked up in Borders the other day.
Beyond the humour and vivacity of little Marjane and the wonderful animation, this film presents an Iran in 1979 and beyond in a simple way that seemed to be aimed as an introduction to the recent history of Iran. This effect is heightened, I suppose, by the current political climate.
We saw this film in the Parkway Speakeasy Theater in Oakland, California, a cinema with sofas instead of seats, beer instead of (or rather in addition to) coke and waiter service to your sofa with your pizza!
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead
Sidney Lumet is one of those cinematic directorial heavyweights that makes you (and actors looking for parts quite possibly) sit up and take notice. This film, coming from the man who directed 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon, has been talked about as a masterpiece to sit alongside those films. I'd have to watch it again to say anything about that. Watch it again and watch it on a screen bigger than the minute screen on the plane back from San Francisco.
Having said that, you were certainly aware that you were in the presence of a master. The convoluted story structure does not buckle from its own complexity as so often happens, and each scene is played note perfect, by the script and the direction (there is nothing so much as a superfluous sigh, flick of the hair, raise of the eyebrows) and by the central performances of Ethan Hawke and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. That they look nothing alike and nothing in the world would make you mistake them for the brothers they are supposed to be is of little consequence. Other reviewers have noted how this incongruous physical relationship between the two is simply forgotten in the portrayals of a family falling apart.
And it is brutal - there doesn't seem to be much redemption for anyone, which is refreshing. The subject matter dealt with (sons responsible for the death of their mother during a robbery-gone-wrong) does not offer easy redemption. Or difficult redemption. One would assume the natural fallout to this series of events being exactly what is shown in this film - the disintigration of a family, the revealing of long-hidden secrets and the mental breakout and anguish of more than one family member.
The animation is superb, the style of the book more than ably transferred to the screen. In fact, the liveliness of the drawings perhaps work better on the big screen, especially when the alternative is victim to bad printing, rendering everything far greyer than the deep blacks and whites of the film, as I saw in a copy of the book I picked up in Borders the other day.
Beyond the humour and vivacity of little Marjane and the wonderful animation, this film presents an Iran in 1979 and beyond in a simple way that seemed to be aimed as an introduction to the recent history of Iran. This effect is heightened, I suppose, by the current political climate.
We saw this film in the Parkway Speakeasy Theater in Oakland, California, a cinema with sofas instead of seats, beer instead of (or rather in addition to) coke and waiter service to your sofa with your pizza!
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead
Sidney Lumet is one of those cinematic directorial heavyweights that makes you (and actors looking for parts quite possibly) sit up and take notice. This film, coming from the man who directed 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon, has been talked about as a masterpiece to sit alongside those films. I'd have to watch it again to say anything about that. Watch it again and watch it on a screen bigger than the minute screen on the plane back from San Francisco.
Having said that, you were certainly aware that you were in the presence of a master. The convoluted story structure does not buckle from its own complexity as so often happens, and each scene is played note perfect, by the script and the direction (there is nothing so much as a superfluous sigh, flick of the hair, raise of the eyebrows) and by the central performances of Ethan Hawke and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. That they look nothing alike and nothing in the world would make you mistake them for the brothers they are supposed to be is of little consequence. Other reviewers have noted how this incongruous physical relationship between the two is simply forgotten in the portrayals of a family falling apart.
And it is brutal - there doesn't seem to be much redemption for anyone, which is refreshing. The subject matter dealt with (sons responsible for the death of their mother during a robbery-gone-wrong) does not offer easy redemption. Or difficult redemption. One would assume the natural fallout to this series of events being exactly what is shown in this film - the disintigration of a family, the revealing of long-hidden secrets and the mental breakout and anguish of more than one family member.
Saturday 1 March 2008
There Will Be Blood
Everything the critics have written and said about this film is true. They may even have been a little harsh in giving it only 10 out of 10. This film is immense.
Daniel Day-Lewis is mesmerising as Daniel Plainview; maniacal, menacing and just plain mean, but also every now and again flashing a glimpse of a heart. He loves his son, that's for sure, the dismissing of him towards the end of the film with the revelation that they're not biologically related rings hollow, the flailing of a desperate man.
Equally compelling is Paul Dano as Eli Sunday, a preacher convinced of his healing powers. His utter creepiness and apparent certainty of belief crash against Plainview's pure greed in episodes of physical and emotional violence. A fantastic scene sees Plainview pinning Sunday to the ground and filling his mouth with oil after the preacher's attempt to extract money from the oil man. "You're a healer are you?" screams Daniel, "then when are you going to come and heal my son" (who has been deafened by an oil well explosion.
The third star of the film has to be Jonny Greenwood's score. It and Day-Lewis's performance seem cut from the same cloth, or I suppose drilled from the same well. The screaching violas, the clicky heart-like percussion, all rolling to enormous crescendos heighten the film's subject matter from the personal to the universal. This is not just a character study of greed or belief, it is the battle between capitalism and religion, the story of the gold of the 20th century. I've read about the operatic-ness of the film, and yes that's an apt description, but this is opera that is relevant and believable, not some snicker-worthy grand dame. Between them, Day-Lewis, Dano and Greenwood, all guided by the considerable wisdom and dare I say it - genius - of Paul Thomas Anderson have crafted something that, in the words of Peter Bradshaw, "all directors, and all moviegoers, will want to measure themselves. Paul Thomas Anderson is doing something new with cinema, and you can hardly ask for more than that."
See it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it......
Daniel Day-Lewis is mesmerising as Daniel Plainview; maniacal, menacing and just plain mean, but also every now and again flashing a glimpse of a heart. He loves his son, that's for sure, the dismissing of him towards the end of the film with the revelation that they're not biologically related rings hollow, the flailing of a desperate man.
Equally compelling is Paul Dano as Eli Sunday, a preacher convinced of his healing powers. His utter creepiness and apparent certainty of belief crash against Plainview's pure greed in episodes of physical and emotional violence. A fantastic scene sees Plainview pinning Sunday to the ground and filling his mouth with oil after the preacher's attempt to extract money from the oil man. "You're a healer are you?" screams Daniel, "then when are you going to come and heal my son" (who has been deafened by an oil well explosion.
The third star of the film has to be Jonny Greenwood's score. It and Day-Lewis's performance seem cut from the same cloth, or I suppose drilled from the same well. The screaching violas, the clicky heart-like percussion, all rolling to enormous crescendos heighten the film's subject matter from the personal to the universal. This is not just a character study of greed or belief, it is the battle between capitalism and religion, the story of the gold of the 20th century. I've read about the operatic-ness of the film, and yes that's an apt description, but this is opera that is relevant and believable, not some snicker-worthy grand dame. Between them, Day-Lewis, Dano and Greenwood, all guided by the considerable wisdom and dare I say it - genius - of Paul Thomas Anderson have crafted something that, in the words of Peter Bradshaw, "all directors, and all moviegoers, will want to measure themselves. Paul Thomas Anderson is doing something new with cinema, and you can hardly ask for more than that."
See it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it......
Monday 25 February 2008
In The Valley of Elah
I'd forgotten I'd watched this on the plane over here, which I suppose is not a good start for a film review. As it is, the film isn't entirely forgettable and it raises interesting questions, as much about modern technology as about the war in Iraq.
Whilst Tommy Lee Jones is good in this - so good the Oscar committee decided to nominate him - I think he's better in No Country For Old Men. There isn't much to this film for him to get sunk into. His character - Hank - is rather undemonstrative, a quietly honorable, quietly religious man who wants to honour his son's memory by discovering the truth behind his death. That it turns out to have nothing to do with the war in Iraq and far more with the type of people that go into the army somewhat tarnishes the success of the film. Perhaps the director Paul Haggis was trying to draw a line of connection between the violent stabbing of Hank's son with the desensitising nature of combat in Iraq, but it either wasn't shown forcefully enough or it wasn't there in the first place.
There have been a lot of films about the Iraq conflict over the last year or so, and whenever a new one comes out people (including, obviously, myself) feel the need to mention this fact. Perhaps that is because these films don't work on their own, don't stand alone but work as part of a tapestry of responses to the war. I suppose they are films whose authorial opinions are still being formed: I find my thoughts about the war changing weekly if not daily and I imagine Paul Haggis and his fellow directors and actors find the same. It's not an easily quantifiable war, especially as it's still ongoing and doesn't look like nearing a resolution. I imagine that when it's all over - if it ever is - we'll look back at this collection of films and find things in all of them. It's just a shame we have to wait until their true merit can be deduced.
Whilst Tommy Lee Jones is good in this - so good the Oscar committee decided to nominate him - I think he's better in No Country For Old Men. There isn't much to this film for him to get sunk into. His character - Hank - is rather undemonstrative, a quietly honorable, quietly religious man who wants to honour his son's memory by discovering the truth behind his death. That it turns out to have nothing to do with the war in Iraq and far more with the type of people that go into the army somewhat tarnishes the success of the film. Perhaps the director Paul Haggis was trying to draw a line of connection between the violent stabbing of Hank's son with the desensitising nature of combat in Iraq, but it either wasn't shown forcefully enough or it wasn't there in the first place.
There have been a lot of films about the Iraq conflict over the last year or so, and whenever a new one comes out people (including, obviously, myself) feel the need to mention this fact. Perhaps that is because these films don't work on their own, don't stand alone but work as part of a tapestry of responses to the war. I suppose they are films whose authorial opinions are still being formed: I find my thoughts about the war changing weekly if not daily and I imagine Paul Haggis and his fellow directors and actors find the same. It's not an easily quantifiable war, especially as it's still ongoing and doesn't look like nearing a resolution. I imagine that when it's all over - if it ever is - we'll look back at this collection of films and find things in all of them. It's just a shame we have to wait until their true merit can be deduced.
Sunday 24 February 2008
I'm Not There
Saw Todd Haynes' I'm Not There at the wonderfully rickety Red Vic Movie House on San Francisco's Haight St. Somehow an apt location for this film.
I think I agree with general views on it, that it doesn't quite work but very nearly, and it's as close as you're gonna get to the "real" Bob Dylan.
I didn't like Richard Gere's segment, but I liked Cate Blanchett (obviously!, she was fantastic). My favourite sections were the Heath Ledger/Charlotte Gainsbourg ones. Their parts were the only ones that drew you into a story and took it beyond gauging how well each actor could "be" Bob, more than just a sort of caricature. Their's was a real story I suppose, with a proper connection with the viewer. It was a more universal story of fame and family life as opposed to the specific details of a specific person's life.
As a big Dylan fan, it was fun to match up the actors to the "periods" of Dylan's life, and to connect people with the actors, like Michelle Williams with Edie Sedgwick or Charlotte Gainsbourg with Sara Dylan. There was no bit of the film I thought really inaccurate, but some of it sat easier than the rest.
I think I agree with general views on it, that it doesn't quite work but very nearly, and it's as close as you're gonna get to the "real" Bob Dylan.
I didn't like Richard Gere's segment, but I liked Cate Blanchett (obviously!, she was fantastic). My favourite sections were the Heath Ledger/Charlotte Gainsbourg ones. Their parts were the only ones that drew you into a story and took it beyond gauging how well each actor could "be" Bob, more than just a sort of caricature. Their's was a real story I suppose, with a proper connection with the viewer. It was a more universal story of fame and family life as opposed to the specific details of a specific person's life.
As a big Dylan fan, it was fun to match up the actors to the "periods" of Dylan's life, and to connect people with the actors, like Michelle Williams with Edie Sedgwick or Charlotte Gainsbourg with Sara Dylan. There was no bit of the film I thought really inaccurate, but some of it sat easier than the rest.
Tuesday 19 February 2008
Juno
Possibly the best film I've seen so far this year. So perfect in every way. Ellen Page gives an absolutely fantastic performance and the lines are so sharp, so hilarious and so common that the whole film is a joy from start to finish. It is so, so, so funny!
And for everyone that's like "yeah, dunno if I want to see that" based on the stupid, sickly-sweet studio trailer, GO AND SEE IT!!! Ignore the trailer, it's the wisest, funniest film you'll see this year.
And for everyone that's like "yeah, dunno if I want to see that" based on the stupid, sickly-sweet studio trailer, GO AND SEE IT!!! Ignore the trailer, it's the wisest, funniest film you'll see this year.
Margot At The Wedding
This was the one film at the festival I really, really wanted to see, and it didn't disappoint.
Here are some notes I made at work the other day. I'm slipping behind in my reviews cause I'm seeing so many films!
- abrupt start/end - I liked how the film seemed just an excerpt from some lives, nothing showy about it
- the path of emotional destruction wreaked by Nicole Kidman's Margot - this is a fantastic performance by the way, Kidman is really, really good
- one of Baumbach's tropes - kids just discovering sexuality
- sisterhood's underlying and underhanded rivalries
- darkly funny script
- autumnal colours throughout - muted lighting
- reminiscent of Woody Allen's Husbands And Wives
Here are some notes I made at work the other day. I'm slipping behind in my reviews cause I'm seeing so many films!
- abrupt start/end - I liked how the film seemed just an excerpt from some lives, nothing showy about it
- the path of emotional destruction wreaked by Nicole Kidman's Margot - this is a fantastic performance by the way, Kidman is really, really good
- one of Baumbach's tropes - kids just discovering sexuality
- sisterhood's underlying and underhanded rivalries
- darkly funny script
- autumnal colours throughout - muted lighting
- reminiscent of Woody Allen's Husbands And Wives
Glasgow Film Festival
I'm basically listing these as these were films I saw ushering and they kinda don't count:
Michou D'Auber
Bridge Over The Wadi
Michou D'Auber
Bridge Over The Wadi
Thursday 14 February 2008
Brokeback Mountain
I've only just seen this film. I never got round to seeing it when it came out and whilst it was always on my list to see, there was always something I wanted to see more. Plus everyone else had seen it so no-one wanted to watch it with me. But my unexpectedly emotional reaction to Heath Ledger's death made me want to watch it, to see the performance that he'll be remembered for.
And it is as wonderful as all the eulogies said. It's so understated, tortured, so full of sorrow and guilt. From his voice to his body language to his eyes, all the pain in Ennis Del Mar's life is there.
It's actually quite hard to write about because it's such a consuming film, it catches you and draws you in and you can't escape. You know those films that when you come out of the cinema make you feel like the "real" world is stranger and less real than the "fake" one you saw on screen? This is one of those films. It's so, so perfect a film, and so, so sad, made doubly so now. But somehow wonderful too, like the saddest things are I suppose.
And it is as wonderful as all the eulogies said. It's so understated, tortured, so full of sorrow and guilt. From his voice to his body language to his eyes, all the pain in Ennis Del Mar's life is there.
It's actually quite hard to write about because it's such a consuming film, it catches you and draws you in and you can't escape. You know those films that when you come out of the cinema make you feel like the "real" world is stranger and less real than the "fake" one you saw on screen? This is one of those films. It's so, so perfect a film, and so, so sad, made doubly so now. But somehow wonderful too, like the saddest things are I suppose.
Saturday 9 February 2008
Mean Girls
Just watched this. Loved it. Great one-liners and a good biting cynicism. Weird to see pre-tabloid cover girl Lindsay Lohan as an ingenue.
Friday 8 February 2008
In a healthy state
An interesting article in the Guardian today. It looks at the Quigley annual list of bankable stars and finds that for once, it is populated not just by star names but by great actors making great and challenging films:
"If every generation gets the film stars it deserves, the latest list of the most bankable performers in Hollywood reflects favourably on early-21st-century cinemagoers. There's a highly eccentric character actor at the number one spot (Johnny Depp), various independently minded and/or political personalities (George Clooney, Matt Damon) in the mix, as well as two stars (Will Smith, Denzel Washington) who have disproved the received wisdom about African-American celebrities failing to connect with international audiences. We have at least earned the right to scoff at the Eighties, when such cinematic luminaries as Paul Hogan, Tom Selleck, Prince and Bo Derek made the grade." (The article continues here.)
Quite an apt article on the day when three 5-star films are released (Juno, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, There Will Be Blood). Not that these films have bankable stars in, but when was the last time we got so many good films at one time? Remember we've already had No Country For Old Men and Before The Devil Knows You're Dead this year and all these films with Philip Seymour Hoffman in. We're lucky, lucky, lucky!
"If every generation gets the film stars it deserves, the latest list of the most bankable performers in Hollywood reflects favourably on early-21st-century cinemagoers. There's a highly eccentric character actor at the number one spot (Johnny Depp), various independently minded and/or political personalities (George Clooney, Matt Damon) in the mix, as well as two stars (Will Smith, Denzel Washington) who have disproved the received wisdom about African-American celebrities failing to connect with international audiences. We have at least earned the right to scoff at the Eighties, when such cinematic luminaries as Paul Hogan, Tom Selleck, Prince and Bo Derek made the grade." (The article continues here.)
Quite an apt article on the day when three 5-star films are released (Juno, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, There Will Be Blood). Not that these films have bankable stars in, but when was the last time we got so many good films at one time? Remember we've already had No Country For Old Men and Before The Devil Knows You're Dead this year and all these films with Philip Seymour Hoffman in. We're lucky, lucky, lucky!
Vengeance Is Mine & Geoffrey Jones
Tonight on Al's all new projector, we watched Shohei Imamura's 1979 film Vengeance Is Mine, which is a sort of 70s-Scorsese-type-police-procedural-serial-killer-psychological-father-son-
family drama, which is out on the Masters of Cinema DVD series, and a couple of films from the BFI's release Geoffrey Jones: The Rhythm of Film.
Here are a couple of teasers for Vengeance Is Mine. Sorry there's no subtitles!:
Here's my favourite Geoffrey Jones film, no prizes for guessing why!:
family drama, which is out on the Masters of Cinema DVD series, and a couple of films from the BFI's release Geoffrey Jones: The Rhythm of Film.
Here are a couple of teasers for Vengeance Is Mine. Sorry there's no subtitles!:
Here's my favourite Geoffrey Jones film, no prizes for guessing why!:
Tuesday 5 February 2008
Control
Finally saw Anton Corbijn's Control today. Absolutely fantastic! Just going to the pub but will write later.
Sunday 3 February 2008
The Manchurian Candidate
I've just finished watching John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. I think I will need to watch it again to really comprehend it. Right now, it feels hugely important, massively prophetic and incredibly mysterious.
For those of you that don't know the story, it is that of Raymond Shaw (played by a manic/catatonic Laurence Harvey), a US soldier who is given the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in Korea, for rescuing his troop and leading them to safety through enemy lines. But something's not right. Frank Sinatra's Major Ben Marco keeps having these recurring dreams where he has been captured along with his unit (including Shaw) by the Russians and Chinese, who are experimenting on them with hypnosis. They want to create the perfect assassin...
I shan't spoil the story because it unfolds so unremittingly, so quietly suspensefully, and because it's such a good film. It was released in 1962, a year before Kennedy was shot, and it seems to map out the road of American politics for the next 40 odd years. It certainly has similarities with today's climate, with its talk of civil liberties and patriotism.
It really is hard to write about it without giving away the story or the plot. It's an incredibly unsettling film, unfolding almost entirely through dialogue, and is all the more gripping for it. You follow all the moral arguments, the mental anguish and it puts you right in their heads and you can't get out. Thinking now, there is always more to what seems to be happening, far more under the radar, subconscious I suppose. Which is apt, considering the story.
For those of you that don't know the story, it is that of Raymond Shaw (played by a manic/catatonic Laurence Harvey), a US soldier who is given the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in Korea, for rescuing his troop and leading them to safety through enemy lines. But something's not right. Frank Sinatra's Major Ben Marco keeps having these recurring dreams where he has been captured along with his unit (including Shaw) by the Russians and Chinese, who are experimenting on them with hypnosis. They want to create the perfect assassin...
I shan't spoil the story because it unfolds so unremittingly, so quietly suspensefully, and because it's such a good film. It was released in 1962, a year before Kennedy was shot, and it seems to map out the road of American politics for the next 40 odd years. It certainly has similarities with today's climate, with its talk of civil liberties and patriotism.
It really is hard to write about it without giving away the story or the plot. It's an incredibly unsettling film, unfolding almost entirely through dialogue, and is all the more gripping for it. You follow all the moral arguments, the mental anguish and it puts you right in their heads and you can't get out. Thinking now, there is always more to what seems to be happening, far more under the radar, subconscious I suppose. Which is apt, considering the story.
Murder My Sweet
At the current temporary home of the Cinematheque in Brussels we saw Edward Dmytryk's Murder My Sweet, which was incidentally renamed from the original (Raymond Chandler) book title of Farewell My Lovely for fear it sounded too much like a musical!
It's a perfect noir, as you'd expect given its sources. Dick Powell's version of the iconic Philip Marlowe apparently (ie: according to IMDB) met with Chandler's approval, and it is the wonderful delivery of the one-liners that made the greatest impact on me.
Like these:
Lindsay Marriott: I'm afraid I don't like your manner.
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, I've had complaints about it, but it keeps getting worse.
Helen Grayle: I hadn't supposed there were enough murders these days to make detecting very attractive to a young man.
Philip Marlowe: I stir up trouble on the side.
Helen Grayle: I find men *very* attractive.
Philip Marlowe: I imagine they meet you halfway.
Philip Marlowe: What were you saying?
Dr. Sonderborg: I made no remark.
Philip Marlowe: Remarks want you to make them. They got their tongues hanging out waiting to be said.
PERFECT!
It's a perfect noir, as you'd expect given its sources. Dick Powell's version of the iconic Philip Marlowe apparently (ie: according to IMDB) met with Chandler's approval, and it is the wonderful delivery of the one-liners that made the greatest impact on me.
Like these:
Lindsay Marriott: I'm afraid I don't like your manner.
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, I've had complaints about it, but it keeps getting worse.
Helen Grayle: I hadn't supposed there were enough murders these days to make detecting very attractive to a young man.
Philip Marlowe: I stir up trouble on the side.
Helen Grayle: I find men *very* attractive.
Philip Marlowe: I imagine they meet you halfway.
Philip Marlowe: What were you saying?
Dr. Sonderborg: I made no remark.
Philip Marlowe: Remarks want you to make them. They got their tongues hanging out waiting to be said.
PERFECT!
Tuesday 29 January 2008
Inspirations...
I saw Paris Je T'aime at the Glasgow Film Theatre as part of a packed house. It was a premiere I think, I can't remember if there was any particular occasion.
The film itself was hit and miss of course, as pretty much all portmanteau films are. My favourite was the last one, by Alexander Payne.
It's just so perfect for the form, for the five minutes. Any longer and it would've been tiring, and the mystery, sadness and beauty dashed.
But strangely enough, this wasn't the one that stayed with me the longest. That one was the segment directed by Tom Tykwer starring Natalie Portman and Gaspard Ulliel.
The reason I still remember it and am writing about it now is its technique in establishing a relationship. The video above has Spanish subtitles and is in French (I couldn't find it with English subtitles) but I think you can still understand what I mean. The way he remembers their relationship as a slow build up of experience ( "I went with you to the conservatoire, we kissed, we danced, we listened to music, I went with you to the conservatoire, we kissed, we listened to music, we danced...") is to me amazing. This aggregation of similar experiences, how you fall into routines, how you build a life together, it really effected me emotionally in a way other films can't. It's so hard to create a believable couple on screen, a real relationship between two people that the audience swears is real. Somehow this deft little device works when so many other things don't.
It's always in my mind when I'm writing my film.
The film itself was hit and miss of course, as pretty much all portmanteau films are. My favourite was the last one, by Alexander Payne.
It's just so perfect for the form, for the five minutes. Any longer and it would've been tiring, and the mystery, sadness and beauty dashed.
But strangely enough, this wasn't the one that stayed with me the longest. That one was the segment directed by Tom Tykwer starring Natalie Portman and Gaspard Ulliel.
The reason I still remember it and am writing about it now is its technique in establishing a relationship. The video above has Spanish subtitles and is in French (I couldn't find it with English subtitles) but I think you can still understand what I mean. The way he remembers their relationship as a slow build up of experience ( "I went with you to the conservatoire, we kissed, we danced, we listened to music, I went with you to the conservatoire, we kissed, we listened to music, we danced...") is to me amazing. This aggregation of similar experiences, how you fall into routines, how you build a life together, it really effected me emotionally in a way other films can't. It's so hard to create a believable couple on screen, a real relationship between two people that the audience swears is real. Somehow this deft little device works when so many other things don't.
It's always in my mind when I'm writing my film.
Monday 28 January 2008
Tuesday 22 January 2008
A New Theory
A theory has been rattling around my head for a few weeks now. It's not entirely thought through, in fact it's more of a passing thought, but more one that doesn't pass.
I got quite obsessed with The Darjeeling Limited when it came out, and by extension Wes Anderson's entire oeuvre. I re-watched Rushmore (still as perfect as the first time I saw it) and The Royal Tenenbaums (a lot darker than I remember) and even The Life Aquatic (a bit better than I remember, but not much). This Anderson frenzy began around the time the Glasgow Film Theatre started its run of It's A Wonderful Life in December, and with so many people overheard in the foyer talking about its "feelgood" qualities, I began to to foment this theory, perhaps to let out my irritation.
Because I get very irritated when people talk of It's A Wonderful Life as a "feelgood" movie. It is not. It is far more complex than that. Frank Capra is far more complex than that. It's A Wonderful Life starts with a suicidal man. It takes us back to his youth where his carefree self dreams of moving away from his small town to do things, to literally build bridges. He dreams of being a great architect. But then his father dies, and the business his father worked at is under threat from a nasty man. So the young man puts his dreams aside (just for a while) in order to save the business. Once he has saved the business he decides to go back to those dreams, to pick them up where they left off. But the town has other ideas. The other men at the business need him, and he meets a girl. He stays in the town, becomes a local man of good repute, the all-American hero, an all-round good guy. But what happened to those dreams? Where are those bridges he was going to build? I don't see any. He hasn't built a single one.
Oh yes, of course he doesn't commit suicide, he realises what a wonderful family he has, but this family is a small-town family, the same small-town he always wanted to leave. He hasn't built bridges, he hasn't travelled the world. The only good feeling in the film is of the "well I suppose as far as compromising one's dreams go, this isn't so bad" kind. This guy may be happy, but it's not the type of happiness he wanted. It's what everyone else wanted.
Now take Anderson. Oh he's too light, too much style, not enough substance, not enough emotive power. Let's make a list of thematic concerns in:
Rushmore:
- lonely young boy
- death of mother
- stifled dreams
- unrequited love
- patheticness of innocence
The Royal Tenenbaums:
- familial strife
- a father tells his family he is dying. He is not
- incest (sort of)
- attempted suicide
- unrequited love
- mental illness and paranoia
- the death of a beloved wife, mother to 2 young children
- estrangement of fathers (multiple ones)
- racism
- the failures of love
- divorce
- drug addiction (multiple)
- restlessness
- failure
- lack of parental approval
The Life Aquatic:
- world-weariness
- divorce
- best friend dying
- estranged fathers and sons
- jealousy/rivalry
- failure
- lack of answers
The Darjeeling Limited:
- absence (through death) of father
- estranged brothers
- mental illness (possibly)
- estranged mother
- failures of love
- attempted suicide (hinted at)
- actual death - the unfairness of life
You may be beginning to see my point. Anderson is our Capra. Both are as misunderstood as the other. Both are seen as light, happy, fluffy. They are anything but. They realise that the lighter side of life has an undercurrent of melancholy to it, that laughter can sometimes be sad. Aren't Capra's boy-men (Mr Deeds, Mr Smith) made to look foolish, out of touch, made fun of? Their innocence is sad and melancholic, people take advantage of their lack of understanding of the modern world, the big city. These film-makers don't make "feelgood" movies, they make films that reflect life as it is. What a ridiculous term "feelgood" is anyway.
I got quite obsessed with The Darjeeling Limited when it came out, and by extension Wes Anderson's entire oeuvre. I re-watched Rushmore (still as perfect as the first time I saw it) and The Royal Tenenbaums (a lot darker than I remember) and even The Life Aquatic (a bit better than I remember, but not much). This Anderson frenzy began around the time the Glasgow Film Theatre started its run of It's A Wonderful Life in December, and with so many people overheard in the foyer talking about its "feelgood" qualities, I began to to foment this theory, perhaps to let out my irritation.
Because I get very irritated when people talk of It's A Wonderful Life as a "feelgood" movie. It is not. It is far more complex than that. Frank Capra is far more complex than that. It's A Wonderful Life starts with a suicidal man. It takes us back to his youth where his carefree self dreams of moving away from his small town to do things, to literally build bridges. He dreams of being a great architect. But then his father dies, and the business his father worked at is under threat from a nasty man. So the young man puts his dreams aside (just for a while) in order to save the business. Once he has saved the business he decides to go back to those dreams, to pick them up where they left off. But the town has other ideas. The other men at the business need him, and he meets a girl. He stays in the town, becomes a local man of good repute, the all-American hero, an all-round good guy. But what happened to those dreams? Where are those bridges he was going to build? I don't see any. He hasn't built a single one.
Oh yes, of course he doesn't commit suicide, he realises what a wonderful family he has, but this family is a small-town family, the same small-town he always wanted to leave. He hasn't built bridges, he hasn't travelled the world. The only good feeling in the film is of the "well I suppose as far as compromising one's dreams go, this isn't so bad" kind. This guy may be happy, but it's not the type of happiness he wanted. It's what everyone else wanted.
Now take Anderson. Oh he's too light, too much style, not enough substance, not enough emotive power. Let's make a list of thematic concerns in:
Rushmore:
- lonely young boy
- death of mother
- stifled dreams
- unrequited love
- patheticness of innocence
The Royal Tenenbaums:
- familial strife
- a father tells his family he is dying. He is not
- incest (sort of)
- attempted suicide
- unrequited love
- mental illness and paranoia
- the death of a beloved wife, mother to 2 young children
- estrangement of fathers (multiple ones)
- racism
- the failures of love
- divorce
- drug addiction (multiple)
- restlessness
- failure
- lack of parental approval
The Life Aquatic:
- world-weariness
- divorce
- best friend dying
- estranged fathers and sons
- jealousy/rivalry
- failure
- lack of answers
The Darjeeling Limited:
- absence (through death) of father
- estranged brothers
- mental illness (possibly)
- estranged mother
- failures of love
- attempted suicide (hinted at)
- actual death - the unfairness of life
You may be beginning to see my point. Anderson is our Capra. Both are as misunderstood as the other. Both are seen as light, happy, fluffy. They are anything but. They realise that the lighter side of life has an undercurrent of melancholy to it, that laughter can sometimes be sad. Aren't Capra's boy-men (Mr Deeds, Mr Smith) made to look foolish, out of touch, made fun of? Their innocence is sad and melancholic, people take advantage of their lack of understanding of the modern world, the big city. These film-makers don't make "feelgood" movies, they make films that reflect life as it is. What a ridiculous term "feelgood" is anyway.
Sunday 20 January 2008
The River/No Country For Old Men
Films I've watched the last few days that I need to find the time to write about:
The River
dir. Jean Renoir
1951
Of it's time perhaps, but with surprisingly modern attitudes toward India. Traces of Renoir's famous humanism.
No Country For Old Men
dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen
2007
Absolutely wonderful! Great atmospheric Texas landscapes and a sense of a sort of wearisome doom falling over everything. A seen-it-all, resigned-to-fate morality, with Javier Bardem as a genuinely terrifying killer.
The River
dir. Jean Renoir
1951
Of it's time perhaps, but with surprisingly modern attitudes toward India. Traces of Renoir's famous humanism.
No Country For Old Men
dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen
2007
Absolutely wonderful! Great atmospheric Texas landscapes and a sense of a sort of wearisome doom falling over everything. A seen-it-all, resigned-to-fate morality, with Javier Bardem as a genuinely terrifying killer.
Monday 14 January 2008
Une Femme est Une Femme
This was an absolute joy. I'm going to be pretty much on message with this one, no startling insights here. I'm going to place my critical weight firmly behind every other critic of this film in saying it is a delight, from start to finish.
Perhaps a simple list of the multitude of inventive, funny, sad.. scenes in this film will surfice:
- An argument enacted out entirely through books. Anna Karina and Jean-Claude Brialy getting out of bed, balancing their upright lamp over a shoulder and marching around the apartment searching for books, the titles of which spell insults.
- Jean-Paul Belmondo desperate to get home to watch Breathless
- Belmondo's gregarious grin to the camera after mentioning his "friend" Burt
Lancaster
- Anna Karina's song that ends with the lines "because I am too gorgeous"
- Brialy blowing a kiss to Karina and nearly knocking an old lady flying
- This interchange between Brialy and Karina:
Angela: Would you rather have fish or meat for dinner?
Émile Récamier: Fish.
Angela: What would you have preferred if you were having meat?
Émile Récamier: I dunno. Veal.
Angela: And if you were to have beef rather than veal, would you prefer a steak or a roast?
Émile Récamier: A steak.
Angela: And had you answered roast, would you prefer it rare or well-done?
Émile Récamier: Rare.
Angela: [jump-cut to Angela returning with the well-done roast] Well, honey, you're out of luck. My roast beef's a little overdone.
- The scene in the bar with Karina and the Aznavour song
- Brialy's scarf
- Brialy's hair
- Their apartment's decor - white walls, red lampshades
- Belmondo's argument with a hotel owner
Oh it goes on and on and on. Just watch it!
Perhaps a simple list of the multitude of inventive, funny, sad.. scenes in this film will surfice:
- An argument enacted out entirely through books. Anna Karina and Jean-Claude Brialy getting out of bed, balancing their upright lamp over a shoulder and marching around the apartment searching for books, the titles of which spell insults.
- Jean-Paul Belmondo desperate to get home to watch Breathless
- Belmondo's gregarious grin to the camera after mentioning his "friend" Burt
Lancaster
- Anna Karina's song that ends with the lines "because I am too gorgeous"
- Brialy blowing a kiss to Karina and nearly knocking an old lady flying
- This interchange between Brialy and Karina:
Angela: Would you rather have fish or meat for dinner?
Émile Récamier: Fish.
Angela: What would you have preferred if you were having meat?
Émile Récamier: I dunno. Veal.
Angela: And if you were to have beef rather than veal, would you prefer a steak or a roast?
Émile Récamier: A steak.
Angela: And had you answered roast, would you prefer it rare or well-done?
Émile Récamier: Rare.
Angela: [jump-cut to Angela returning with the well-done roast] Well, honey, you're out of luck. My roast beef's a little overdone.
- The scene in the bar with Karina and the Aznavour song
- Brialy's scarf
- Brialy's hair
- Their apartment's decor - white walls, red lampshades
- Belmondo's argument with a hotel owner
Oh it goes on and on and on. Just watch it!
I Don't Want To Sleep Alone
This film finally came to Glasgow, and to be honest, the trailer was better. Whilst I admired its bravery and vision it left me cold. I wouldn't see it again. I would look at stills from it - as Espos magazine did recently - for years, all those lovely pastel blues, greys and browns, but it's a hard watch basically.
It follows a nameless, and rather unlikable Chinese immigrant in Kuala Lumpur. He is beaten up and nursed back to health by a fellow immigrant, a Bangladeshi. The Chinese man has a brief affair with a local girl and risks the jealousy of the Bangladeshi man, who has grown attached to him.
This story is entirely emotionless, except for one scene where the Bangladeshi man (neither character has a name by the way!) is persuaded against slicing open the Chinese man's throat with the edge of a tin can. To go from gruesome to forgiveness using just the two actors' eyes is fantastic. And that's where my admiration comes in, ever so briefly. Two things I marvelled at with this film: the bravery of persuing this film using no dialogue. No-one says anything. The majority of the film is silent, and what human voices there are come from the radio that seems to be on in every scene. I admire Tsai Ming Lang's bravery but it doesn't come off. The alienation one feels towards these characters is most probably as a result from the lack of dialogue, and even the lack of names! Thinking about it now, perhaps that was part of the strategy, an analogy for the anonymity of immigrants in great capitalist metropoli, but I don't buy it.
What succeeds entirely is the placing of this anonymity in the context of these great city landscapes. As the group of young Bangladeshis transport a saggy, soiled mattress across the city, they are shown in the corner of the shot, scurrying along the edge of dual carriageways and motorways, the whirr of cars going by and the looming advertising hoardings and skyscrapers behind them. This image is one of vermin, rats scurrying through sewers and in bins. They are portrayed - and treated by the "successful" - as precisely that, forgotten nuisances.
It follows a nameless, and rather unlikable Chinese immigrant in Kuala Lumpur. He is beaten up and nursed back to health by a fellow immigrant, a Bangladeshi. The Chinese man has a brief affair with a local girl and risks the jealousy of the Bangladeshi man, who has grown attached to him.
This story is entirely emotionless, except for one scene where the Bangladeshi man (neither character has a name by the way!) is persuaded against slicing open the Chinese man's throat with the edge of a tin can. To go from gruesome to forgiveness using just the two actors' eyes is fantastic. And that's where my admiration comes in, ever so briefly. Two things I marvelled at with this film: the bravery of persuing this film using no dialogue. No-one says anything. The majority of the film is silent, and what human voices there are come from the radio that seems to be on in every scene. I admire Tsai Ming Lang's bravery but it doesn't come off. The alienation one feels towards these characters is most probably as a result from the lack of dialogue, and even the lack of names! Thinking about it now, perhaps that was part of the strategy, an analogy for the anonymity of immigrants in great capitalist metropoli, but I don't buy it.
What succeeds entirely is the placing of this anonymity in the context of these great city landscapes. As the group of young Bangladeshis transport a saggy, soiled mattress across the city, they are shown in the corner of the shot, scurrying along the edge of dual carriageways and motorways, the whirr of cars going by and the looming advertising hoardings and skyscrapers behind them. This image is one of vermin, rats scurrying through sewers and in bins. They are portrayed - and treated by the "successful" - as precisely that, forgotten nuisances.
Sunday 6 January 2008
Lust, Caution
Don't let the terrible title put you off. The film's quality is inverse to that of the title. Never a shot too long or too short, never a word out of place, acting right on the money scene after scene after scene, this is premium film-making. It is the type of film that makes going to the cinema such a spellbinding experience. It is the movie equivalent of chocolate, but really, really good chocolate. The Valrhona of cinema.
It is a story that grips you for every one of its 157 minutes, that ticks all the story boxes: what happens next, what happens next, what happens next?!
You know when a film tells rather than shows? This film shows, every moment of anguish, every moment of fear is etched on the screen. Some films would tell us the student radicals were inept and would proceed to show pratfuls and most probably the boys more interested in girls and the girls more interested in make-up. It would be like a lecture, the film's voice telling us something and then illustrating it. This film does not do that. The students are inept because we see them being inept. Ang Lee doesn't overdo it (they do kill someone after all, but it is rushed, hurried, unplanned), but we know that their muddled plans will never quite lead to the desired end.
When Wong Chia Chi lets fly at her spymaster, cursing him for this mission and describing in minute detail the hell of sleeping with the animalistic Mr Lee we know every word of her speech to be true because we have seen it for ourselves. Ang Lee doesn't let us miss anything.
There have been few times in my film-watching career where I've been aware that I'm watching an utterly masterful film. The first - and still most vivid - time was during The Godfather. I remember just sitting there and it hitting me: this is perfect film-making. So is Lust, Caution. Or nearly perfect: the title needs a bit of work.
It is a story that grips you for every one of its 157 minutes, that ticks all the story boxes: what happens next, what happens next, what happens next?!
You know when a film tells rather than shows? This film shows, every moment of anguish, every moment of fear is etched on the screen. Some films would tell us the student radicals were inept and would proceed to show pratfuls and most probably the boys more interested in girls and the girls more interested in make-up. It would be like a lecture, the film's voice telling us something and then illustrating it. This film does not do that. The students are inept because we see them being inept. Ang Lee doesn't overdo it (they do kill someone after all, but it is rushed, hurried, unplanned), but we know that their muddled plans will never quite lead to the desired end.
When Wong Chia Chi lets fly at her spymaster, cursing him for this mission and describing in minute detail the hell of sleeping with the animalistic Mr Lee we know every word of her speech to be true because we have seen it for ourselves. Ang Lee doesn't let us miss anything.
There have been few times in my film-watching career where I've been aware that I'm watching an utterly masterful film. The first - and still most vivid - time was during The Godfather. I remember just sitting there and it hitting me: this is perfect film-making. So is Lust, Caution. Or nearly perfect: the title needs a bit of work.
Thursday 3 January 2008
Silent Light
If ever certain film-makers felt aggrieved on being accused of favouring style over substance, then this is the type of film that gave birth to such accusations. I actually enjoyed Carlos Reygadas' Battle In Heaven, much to my surprise. I felt it managed to balance style and substance reasonably well, and the arch stylistic elements did not blur the story of a man having a mid-life crisis complicated by his religion. Something worked in that film. Nothing worked in this film.
It is hard to care about a film that subjugates everything to the movement of a camera, to the extent that it resembles idolatory. An example: a doctor walks into a room and sits down with a man whose wife has just died. The doctor looks at the man, who is staring straight ahead, into space. The camera slowly tracks forward, to just past a two shot. It stops. The doctor sighs. "Your wife died of a heart attack" he says. THIS WOULD NOT HAPPEN! A doctor would not wait, the man would ask what happened, even if he was in shock, or in a daze, he would be stirred by the doctor's arrival! What should be a heartbreaking scene becomes ridiculous. You find yourself counting down the silence.
Another example: A man and a woman are driving in a car. They are man and wife, and have had some problems. He has had an affair, and has tried to stop it. He has found that hard. "I've seen her again" he says. The camera stays on him. He drives, his face emotionless. Cut to the wife. She looks ahead, to the road, not at her husband. She looks out the window. She looks at him. She turns away. She looks at him. "How long ago?" she asks. Again RIDICULOUS.
By two thirds of the way through the film, I just couldn't be bothered anymore. Yes it was beautiful to look at but you can look at photo essays for that. And thinking about it, you could probably find more about the Mennonite community in which the film was set through a photo essay than this. There was absolutely no reason to set this film, this story in this place. A man has an affair and finds it hard to make moral choices. Affairs are looked down on in the community. It could be set anywhere.
You don't care about anything in this film. Every scene is an exercise in alienation. Alienation of the viewer that is. Bit by bit, steadily but surely, you are broken down to the state of not giving a damn. You hope for an olive branch from Reygadas, something to draw you in, something to make you feel something, but it never comes. There is some sort of barrier between you and the film. In the cinema, you are intensely aware of the people around you, of your existence in a darkened room watching something on a screen. Great films make you forget that.
At university we were always told that film-making is about decision-making. We were right to be told about it. It is full of decision-making. You can't escape it, you can't make a film without it. It comes down to this: you need to know what you are doing and why you are doing it. I don't believe Reygadas knew either.
It is hard to care about a film that subjugates everything to the movement of a camera, to the extent that it resembles idolatory. An example: a doctor walks into a room and sits down with a man whose wife has just died. The doctor looks at the man, who is staring straight ahead, into space. The camera slowly tracks forward, to just past a two shot. It stops. The doctor sighs. "Your wife died of a heart attack" he says. THIS WOULD NOT HAPPEN! A doctor would not wait, the man would ask what happened, even if he was in shock, or in a daze, he would be stirred by the doctor's arrival! What should be a heartbreaking scene becomes ridiculous. You find yourself counting down the silence.
Another example: A man and a woman are driving in a car. They are man and wife, and have had some problems. He has had an affair, and has tried to stop it. He has found that hard. "I've seen her again" he says. The camera stays on him. He drives, his face emotionless. Cut to the wife. She looks ahead, to the road, not at her husband. She looks out the window. She looks at him. She turns away. She looks at him. "How long ago?" she asks. Again RIDICULOUS.
By two thirds of the way through the film, I just couldn't be bothered anymore. Yes it was beautiful to look at but you can look at photo essays for that. And thinking about it, you could probably find more about the Mennonite community in which the film was set through a photo essay than this. There was absolutely no reason to set this film, this story in this place. A man has an affair and finds it hard to make moral choices. Affairs are looked down on in the community. It could be set anywhere.
You don't care about anything in this film. Every scene is an exercise in alienation. Alienation of the viewer that is. Bit by bit, steadily but surely, you are broken down to the state of not giving a damn. You hope for an olive branch from Reygadas, something to draw you in, something to make you feel something, but it never comes. There is some sort of barrier between you and the film. In the cinema, you are intensely aware of the people around you, of your existence in a darkened room watching something on a screen. Great films make you forget that.
At university we were always told that film-making is about decision-making. We were right to be told about it. It is full of decision-making. You can't escape it, you can't make a film without it. It comes down to this: you need to know what you are doing and why you are doing it. I don't believe Reygadas knew either.
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