He Who Gets Slapped (1924): A fool is always laughing

"Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

The melodramatic story of a scientist who after being robbed of his discoveries and his wife by a bourgeois swindler becomes a circus clown, He Who Gets Slapped, directed in Hollywood for MGM by Swede Victor Sjöström starred Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, and John Gilbert, and was based on a  Russian play Tot, kto poluchayet poshchechini by playwright Leonid Andreyev.

A wonderfully expressionistic work which uses the circus ring cum spinning globe as a deeply pessimistic metaphor for life, love, and death.  A deeply profound performance by Lon Chaney in the lead role as He, the clown whose act is built on his being slapped for laughs as he repeatedly falls and gets up for more. Before a tragic finale he wreaks a terrible revenge on his tormentors. The final scene sees his limp body at the front of a spinning earth ringed by clowns unceremoniously swung into the void...

The Goddess ("Shen nu" China 1934)

"We are but a moment's sunlight fading in the grass"
- The Youngbloods


A silent masterpiece from Wu Yonggang starring Ruan Lingyu.

A mother's anguish a revolutionary act.  The existential  heroine made flesh. A profound and mesmerising critique of greed and bourgeois hypocrisy, set against the tender counterpoint of the bond between mother and child.  The streets of Shanghai a glittering purgatory. The fallen woman walks the dark streets of oppression and shame. Trapped and struggling, loving and kind, a whore and an angel, she soars with wings of  joy for a brief instant above the sordid infamy of vanity, exploitation, and deprivation.

Isle of Flowers: God Doesn’t Exist (Ilha das Flores Brazil 1989)

“The industrialized capitalist world has become an outside world of impenetrable material connexions and relationships” - Ernst Fischer, The Necessity of Art (1959)

Isle of Flowers is a 15 minute documentary film by Brazilian film-maker Jorge Furtado. This short is a fast-talking polemic on money capitalism and the failure of the human imagination. The critique is a sardonic ‘educational’ treatise on the food chain, consumerism, injustice, and how free markets operate. A spoiled tomato discarded by a middle-class housewife is tracked from a tomato farm to the slop fed to pigs on the Ilha das Flores, where the garbage not good enough for pigs is given to the landless poor in strictly controlled 5-minute intervals. There is no dialog only a voice-over narration. On this trip we segue onto related topics as the story progress, in a canny prefiguring of the world-wide-web, where clicking on one hyperlink leads to another. The pace is frenetic with many scenes made up of dynamic collages of printed media and vivid unsettling scenes offering a banal yet forceful commentary on the theme. The narration is deliberately redundant and almost indifferent, and this technique enforces the visual irony. There is an element of the surreal as we are confronted with graphic imagery in the segues as juxtapositions to the common-place narrative which follows the food chain as metaphor. A metaphor of social hierarchies and oppressive imperatives. The soundtrack includes snatches of music as an effective counterpoint, and is most powerful over the closing scenes when a plaintive electric rock guitar riff ratchets up the emotional intensity. Furtado is not so much portraying deliberately malevolent actions but the insularity of the bourgeoisie, who are protected not only from the stink and disease of their rotting waste, but from the realities of existence at the edge of an unequal society where pigs as a commodity rank higher than the poor who must scavenge after the fat porkers. Eisenstein move over.

Jammin’ The Blues (1944)

Director: Gjon Mili Cinematography: Robert Burks. Cast: Lester Young – on tenor sax, George ‘Red’ Callende on bass, Harry Edison – on trumpet, Marlowe Morris – on piano, Sidney Catlett – on drums, Barney Kessel – on guitar, Joe Jones – on drums, John Simmons – on bass, Illinois Jacquet, Marie Bryant – singer, and Archie Savage.

In 1944 Life magazine captured in a Warner Bros Hollywood studio the making of a jazz music short by an obscure 40 year-old still photographer born in Albania, Gjon Mili. Gjon Mili (front left) on the set of Jammin' the Blues This was to be Mili’s only directing credit and the 10 minute film of a group of black jazz musicians jamming was nominated for an Oscar in 1945, and in 1955 was entered into the National Film Registry of America. The movie has been perfectly preserved and to me is the smoothest music short ever made. Totally avant-garde. The music and the singing is superb, and the direction amazingly modern. Cinematography was by the later Hitchcock stalwart Robert Burks on his very first DP assignment. There is a noir ambience to the film and each scene has a formal elegance that is enthralling. Gili has total command of his form, and the mise-enscene and the continuity are impeccable. A must-see.       

Jean Vigo: Joy is now

Jean Vigo (1905-34) was the son of a French anarchist and consumptive. He made only four films in his short life. His first and third films À propos de Nice (About Nice 1930) and Zéro de conduite (Zero for Conduct 1933) are exhilarating forays into an artist’s discovery of cinema as personal expression. These two films are anarchic joyous experiments in which we enter the world of a magic lantern. A mosaic surprise of the potential of cinema to not only observe the concrete in new ways but to express our humanity, to wonder, to rebel, and to laugh.

 

À propos de Nice

À propos de Nice is a silent 23 minute candid documentary study of the people of Nice at play. The bored stuffy bourgeoisie sunning at the beach are contrasted with the less privileged enjoying simple pleasures in the littered streets of the workers' suburbs. The joy of Carnivale and the angst of its aftermath are giant exotic paper-mache masks donned and then discarded, flowers lovingly thrown and then seen rotting on the empty road. Young women dance with abandon and uninhibited sensuality. Tall industrial chimneys billow smoke into the sky an uncanny premonition of the industrial stacks of Ozu's Tokyo Story. A chic young woman reclining on a cafe chair is cheekily undressed until she is naked, and a man sun-bathing turns black. Capricious satire and sweet melancholy. Working men laughing and kids playing on the streets. The camera swoops up and around at luxury hotels and cuts to the narrow alleys of teeming tenements. A true kaleidoscope... like life itself too short.

 

Zéro de conduite

Zéro de conduite a 43 minute fiction talkie of boys at an elementary boarding school rebelling at the mindless discipline, is not only anarchic, but inspired comic lunacy from a fountainhead of deep love for childhood, and the joy of life lived with spontaneity and without pretense. A new teacher points the way: he is indulgent and playful. He is awed by everything. In the playground he suddenly starts impersonating Chaplin's tramp, then grabs a ball from the boys and runs. On an excursion into the town he leads the boys a merry chase after a young woman he fancies, and while she runs you see she is having as much fun as we are in the audience. The rebels take to the roof on a civic occasion and pelt the literally stuffed shirts from the Board of Governors on the dais below with rubbish. The stern midget principal with a beard nearly as long as he is short scurries away for shelter. Surrealism as fun shot at all angles and in frenetic montage, with a liberating asynchronous score of unbridled vitality. Mad pillow fights, irreverent language, and kids sick of eating beans throwing them at each other... Zero for conduct!

Noir City Blues: the cinematic city

The dark night of forsaken city streets, vistas of blissful angst and unholy pilgrimage. I have been there and known their inhabitants: deadly dames, drunken losers, dangerous hoods, crooked cops, dreamers of broken dreams, and flawed heroes.

LA, Frisco, Chicago, and New York. I know these cinematic cities though I have never been. A resident knows his locale, but the city in its ectoplasmic center is not reached corporeally, only in the phantasmagoria of a thousand and one shards of shattered night. Luminescent environs of a cosmic b-movie. Wet asphalt, fog-laden piers, deserted streets, rusting hulks at anchor, the neon glimmer of purgatory dives, cigarettes and booze, dark tenements, the skid of car tires, and the wailing sirens of the dead. Staccato rhythms and aching horns, crowded pavements and desperate loneliness.

One more fix, the last heist. Treachery, misplaced loyalty, and courageous infamy. The denizens of a nether world trafficking in sordid magic and lurid hopes.

A kiss before dying, the desperate lurch before oblivion, and the erotic click-clack of stilettos on pavement. Dank stairwells and silent corridors. Closed doors and hidden secrets. You break in and fall into a bottomless pool of black. Cut to a bare light-bulb burning on a current wired from hell. Lying on a steel-framed bed you stare through the bars of perdition at yourself a wraith in a cracked mirror on the ceiling.

LA Confidential: Rollo Tomassi has checked out

Visually stunning thriller: great direction, production design, score, camera-work, and editing. Strong performances all-round. But it has no soul and lacks any semblance of a noir sensibility. Screenplay is hopelessly contrived, and the ending is not only pat but too cute by half. Mickey Spillane on steroids.

Movie Notes #1

The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) is a b-noir from a director who made only three movies in the early 50s, Earl McEvoy. The movie was lensed by Joe Biroc and stars the under-rated Evelyn Keyes, who passed away last year, and appeared to advantage in Joseph Losey’s The Prowler (1951) and Robert Rossen’s Johnny O’Clock (1947). Keyes plays an accomplice to a hood, who after a job in Cuba, returns to NYC with smallpox, in a dramatisation of the New York smallpox scare of 1946. Keyes is brilliant as ‘the killer’ and dominates the film, which in the light of the current swine flu scare, is a well-crafted docu-drama which deftly weaves the drama of the woman’s noir story and how a city of over 8 million people has to mobilise to deal with such a threat, with vignettes on how the illness is transmitted, and a continuing story arc of the fate of the killer’s first ‘victim’, a young working-class girl.

An interesting segue is how these old Hollywood b-pictures weaved wonderful vignettes and comic moments into the story. Two such scenes stand out in this movie. A milkman is infected and there is a scene in the sick man’s bedroom when the inoculation team visits. The poor guy’s persona is eloquently evoked by his wife’s harping but deeply loving commentary on her husband – before she realises the gravity of his illness. The other scene cuts to a Brooklyn street with kids playing on the road in front of a bar. The kids scramble as a police car pulls up. They gather on the footpath to check it out. As a burly detective steps out of the car, one kid pipes up and asks for the low-down “Hey Bub…”. The cop replies “Beat it kid.” The bar is closed so the cops after getting the form from the kids, drive off, and the kids jump back on the road shooting air tommy guns after the car. They don’t make movies like that any more.

Otto Preminger's Laura (1944) is an elegant noir melodrama. Gene Tierney is an exquisite iridescent angel and Dana Andrews a stolid cop who nails the killer after falling for a dead dame. Clifton Webb as the homme-fatale is his annoying best.

The original The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974) is great entertainment, with a surreal mix of humor and violence, and a noirish denouement. Check out Walter Matthau’s loud check shirt and yellow tie.

Le quai des brumes (Port of Shadows – France 1938)

The fog of angst seeps from the faces of two doomed lovers in the dank gloom of Le Havre. Jean is on the run and Nelly is trapped in a psychic prison as real as the physical constraints on her existence. Happiness is something that may exist but neither knows it. They meet by chance one night in a broken-down bar on the waterfront amongst the detritus of an ephemeral humanity. Panama’s is a haven for the down-and-out named for its publican’s hat, an old shaman with a rusted soul as deep as the canal he visited in his youth. Father confessor of a convent for lost souls. He keeps his counsel, ask no questions, and strums his guitar. And everywhere the fog and the harbor with rusting hulks at anchor ever-waiting transport for deliverance. The two lovers stroll as tentative friends with a hope as forlorn as it is sublime, when a bright clarity intrudes, a hood with a malice as sharp as his clothes and his shave, and as evil as his cowardice. A night of bliss follows. Jean and Nelly find love at a sea-side carnival and that elusive union we all seek - in a rented room. They keep missing pernicious Fate a drunken vagabond. The glory of a new dawn is soon shattered. They each leave alone. Fate occupies the sheets of last night’s passion, and they are lost. “Kiss me. We don’t have much time.”

For Neda

For Neda “Policemen are not authorized to use weapons against people,” said Tehran Police Chief Azizollah Rajabzadeh, according to Press TV. “They are trained to only use antiriot tools to keep the people out of harm’s way.” She was young elegant cheeky loving and loved our sister A simple honest life faith-filled dutiful modestly aspiring She knew freedom liberty dwelled in her lustrous soul she acted not with violence nor rancour a witness against tyranny An instant the bullet’s trajectory unflinching she falls the blood the horror “I’m burning, I’m burning!” Iranian Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, was killed Saturday evening when hit by a bullet during a protest in Tehran. Thanks to Lloyd Fonville of mardecortesbaja.com for bringing Neda’s story to my attention. Quotes from Los Angeles Times. In Farsi, Neda means voice or call.

Sunshine Cleaning (2008)

A boy talks to God on a CB radio in a beat-up cleaning van. A sassy young woman with no job and fewer prospects is transported to ecstasy trestling under an urban train bridge. Her older sister struggles in low-paid jobs to survive and bring up her son. A loser father who never gives up and with a heart of gold. A gentle one-armed man sells cleaning agents and makes model planes. Contract cleaning the grisly detritus of messy deaths as a path to a life with purpose. Sunshine Cleaning is a simple film that transcends a modest premise if you look deeply enough and with empathy. A story of the mostly painful struggle of those living on the margins in the suburbs takes you gently, and without violence or sermonising, on a journey where you discover the emptiness of things, the value of family, and the pain and wistful joy of grief. To have the perspective that sees something worthwhile in this thoroughly decent film perhaps one needs to have actually faced failure, been on the outside, been a father, or faced the angst that can push someone to blow their head-off. Ask an adult child who has had the heart-broking job of emptying their dead parent’s home of the stuff that is left behind, of the pain of deciding what to keep and what to throw away, of a place full of memories stripped of the signposts that anchored them, of the shock realisation that the artifacts of a life are at bottom junk to be removed for the next occupant. In this movie we have an original screenplay and direction by relative newcomers, and from that perspective they have done well. The cast is engaging and modest, they assume their roles without affectation or histrionics. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are the two sisters. Alan Arkin, who has a mortgage on such roles, is the father, and Jason Spevack is charming as his grandson. Clifton Collins Jr. is impressive as the local cleaning aids supplier. Christine Jeffs’ unassuming point and shoot direction leaves the story by Megan Holley to unfold through the characters. Not a great film but it remains in the memory as a bitter-sweet reminder of the transience of things, that a good life is not defined by the accumulation of possessions but by how honestly and bravely we tread the path fate has dealt us.

Summary Judgement: Gran Torino (2008)

A cliched story is saved by engaging performances from the the two young Asian-American co-stars. Eastwood's feel-good neighborly redemption and contrived sacrifice obscure the reactionary scenario that holds-up gun-justice and violence as solutions to urban alienation and conflict. A truly disturbing confection that has nothing to say on the causes of urban decline and the economic forces that shape lives in the suburbs and on the streets.

Book Review: "Have You Seen...?"

I waited with as much anticipation as a depressive 56yo can muster for my Amazon order of film critic David Thomson's book, "Have You Seen...?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films (2008). The reviews and blurbs are glowing: "a prodigious, seductive, and addictive achievement" said Richard Schickel and a "brilliant commentary" wrote Molly Haskell. Greil Marcus and Andrew Sarris offer similar praise. On receiving the book, I was sadly disappointed. Thomson allocates a page for each movie giving him 600-800 words to play with. There are no images. The films are presented alphabetically and cover a wide range, with a strong bias for Hollywood product. The dustcover describes the contents as "including masterpieces, oddities, guilty pleasures, and classics (with just a few disasters)". The marketing hype tells me the book is "a sweeping collection [presenting] films that Thomson offers in response to the question... 'What should I see?' ". Sadly, the reviews are too self-consciously quirky and overly striving for knowing irony to be of any real assistance in their stated aim. I suppose you can put it down to dry English wit for it own sake. The short essays are full of arcane references for those cineastes who live for such trivia, and there is nothing wrong with that! But when you only have a page at your disposal, such indulgence costs. And the cost is high. After reading a review, if you have not seen the film, there is at bottom very little to inform your decision of whether to pursue it. If you have seen the movie, more often than not, you are left perplexed by the flippant tone and neglect of important elements. For an old geezer, Thomson, who is in his sixties, strives to be hip by mixing obscenities with irony. Words such as, f*ck, f*ckability, and pr*ck, are often used where more elegant language would serve his purpose better. As his bias is obvious I suppose it is to a degree acceptable. Though to my mind, this makes his survey rather limiting. For example, he writes-off the Marx Bros as mere vaudeville, refers to film noir as a "style looking for content", and barely tolerates Billy Wilder. Better to spend your money on The Time Out Film Guide and 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (though I do resent having to pick up a book that has to always remind me of my mortality).

State of Play (2009)

Buried under the mire of cliché, there is an important story in State of Play, but its telling in a feature film will need a more intelligent screenplay and tauter direction. An overweight long-haired junk-food-eating newspaper reporter, ably assisted by a young and attractive female blogger, stumbles across a story of corporate dirty-dealing which exposes government corruption and segues into sordid melodrama. Not to leave any stone of topicality unturned, we also have corporate demands for profits from the newspaper business, new versus old media, marital infidelity, abuse of process, and a deranged a gunman. The reporter is played by a stolid Russell Crowe, who does little with an empty role. Helen Mirren as the blustery editor shouts and swears a lot, and nothing much else. Only Ben Affleck as a young Senator resonates, while Michael Berresse is strangely effective as a rogue psychopath. It all plays out as a second-rate John Grisham novel, with a twist within a twist ending, which looks like it was tacked-on to appease a studio suit. The whole affair lacks tension or dramatic momentum largely due to the lacklustre direction and pedestrian cinematography. The soundtrack tries to instill a modicum of drama, but is weirdly out of sync: it telegraphs rather than informs the action. If you want the real story told with conviction and intelligence read Naomi Klein’s thoroughly researched expose The Shock Doctrine.

Reading the Movies

The Dancing Cinema film blog has asked film bloggers to list the film books that have enriched their passion. This is my list after excluding my latest disappointing purchase - "Have You Seen...?" by David Thomson, which I review here.

Landmark Films William Wolf A selection of films that Wolf saw as representing their time: from Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) to Wertmuller's Seven Beauties (1975)

Film Noir Andrew Spicer Essential introduction to film noir.

Film As Film: Understanding and Judging Movies V. F. Perkins A critique of film theory and criticism.

A Panorama of American Film Noir, 1941-1953 Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton THE seminal survey of film noir.

More Than Night: Film Noir In its Contexts James Naremore A deeply insightful review of the the meaning of noir.

American Movie Critics ed. by Phillip Lopate A compendium of American film criticism from the silent era to the present.

The Art of the Film Ernest Lindgren How movies are made and the aesthetics of film-making.

The Contemporary Cinema: 1945-1963 Penelope Houston A survey of post-war cinema.

The Story of Film Mark Cousins A complete reference endorsed by Bernardo Bertolucci.

The Philosophy of Film Noir ed. by Mark T. Conrad Anthology of the philosophy of noir from Plato and Nietzsche to Sartre.

The Film Handbook (1989) Geoff Andrew A reference of major world directors with an introduction by Martin Scorsese.

1001 Movies (2005) ed. by Steven Jay Schneider Film reviews of top 1001 films by selected major international critics

His Girl Friday (1940): Dated and Oppressive

Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday is a dated stagy unfunny comedy that glibly milks cheap humor from cruel ridicule. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in their roles never go beyond caricature. The elements of moral turpitude and tragedy in the script are everywhere sacrificed to the tawdry ambition and low humor that propels the story. Particularly repugnant is the latent misogyny and contempt for people who don't have an angle. The rejected suitor, the guy on death row, and the decent ordinary Molly are all expendable once their "production for use" value is used up. Even corrupt officialdom is let off the hook in the twisted ending where a girl jumps out a window, is then promptly forgotten, and a heinous attempt to obstruct due process is traded for the freedom of the two amoral protagonists.

Le Mépris (1963)

Cinematically Joean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (Contempt) is beguiling: the elegant camera of Raoul Coutard; the stunning use of primary colors, reds, blues, and yellows; and the mise-en-scene in each of the major locations, a studio lot, an apartment; and the windy paths and a geometric home on the glorious isle of Capri – each partner’s isolation symbolically played out on the terrazzo roof-top. Fritz Lang is charming, Jack Palance strangely effective as the ugly American, Michel Piccoli suitably clueless, and Brigitte Bardot the epitome of the young woman of an age where sexual passion is at its peak.

But Godard’s conceit is overblown. The husband is no Odysseus, and the loss of his Penelope, would have happened if not then later. It is ironic that the film is set it in Italy. No Italian male would have let his girl get in that sports-car. Paul loses Camille in that instant. Bardot is teasing him by coquettishly slinking around the ‘red’ sport-car, and she thinks there is no way Paul will let her go with Palance. You can see the sense of betrayal in her face, which goes from a smile to incredulity.

The film fails for me in a number of ways. Palance is an imagined American from an America akin to that invented by Kafka in his novel. Lang sprouts poetry and philosophy that is profoundly irrelevant, and the viewer can only share Camille’s contempt for Paul, so there is no tension. The whole thing is drawn out too long and the use of Eisenstein-like cuts to mythic sculptures is vacuous, as is the grandiose Delerue musical motif, which waxes and wanes in a belabored attempt to add the drama that is missing on the screen. And all those cuts to Bardot naked on variously-colored flokati rugs with her pert behind on view are just too Playboyish.

Though Godard does reach some clarity in the final scenes at the gas station and the brilliant cutting from Camille’s letter to Paul writ-large to the tragedy that ensues.

What Just Happened (2008)

A strange low-key satire, which is supposed to be accurate, but boils down to nothing much at all. Some may appreciate the stoned Keith-Richard-clone director, who gets his phyrric revenge and says "bollocks" a lot.

Summary Judgements #5: Failed Revolutions

The Peach Girl (Tao hua qi xue ji 1931) Starring the luminous Chinese screen legend, Lingyu Ruan, The Peach Girl, is an histrionic and predictable silent melodrama. What saves it from obscurity is the iridescent beauty of Lingyu Ruan, and the assured direction of veteran Shanghai director Wancang Bu. A young peasant girl and the son of a wealthy widow are star-crossed lovers, and the girl and her family are tragically ruined when she falls pregnant and the boy's mother refuses to allow him to marry the girl. Though the plight of the girl and her family is sympathetically handled, the resolution is reactionary, with a romantic reconciliation between the families. The greater tragedy for the Chinese peasantry is that still after 80 years, a revolution, and the madness of the Great Leap Forward, the baton of class arrogance and corruption has not been destroyed, but only passed from the bourgeoisie to corrupt Party cardres and a greedy economic elite.

Christ in Concrete (aka Give Us This Day 1949) Based on the novel by Italo-American Pietro Di Donato, this powerful leftist denunciation of contemporary capitalism from director Edward Dmytryk, had to be filmed in the UK, and was buried two days after its US release by a reactionary backlash. Telling the story of Italian immigrant building workers and their families in Brooklyn during the Depression, the film is the closest an Anglo-American movie ever got to the aesthetic and socialist outlook of Italian neo-realism. Teeming tenements and residential streets are shot with a provocatively gritty realism and film noir atmospherics. The cast is superb with particularly powerful performances from the two leads, Sam Wanamaker and Lea Padovani, who embody the immigrant experience, which is so imbued with vitality and compassion that the film soars above any other similar work of the period. Enriched by a poetic script, the innovative cinematography of C.M. Pennington-Richards, and a brilliantly evocative score from Benjamin Frankel, the movie is a revelation. The opening scene in a deprived urban locale that follows a drunken man from the street and up the stairs of a dirty tenement building is a tour-de-force. An inspired mise-en-scene and a moving camera that follows the action from below Ozu-style, framed by the drama of the musical motifs, had me enthralled. Film as art, Christ in Concrete is simply a masterpiece.

Reflections on Ozu's Tokyo Story

For Fumiko, Noriko, and Kyoko A loving daughter's gaze Another day lost in time forever gone and ever-present The departing train leaves a dissolving black cloud Both gone The mother and the sister she never had On forged rails of steel that offer no return the other daughter gifted by fate holds the mother's watch In anguished reminiscence the time-piece ticks away in eternity as she smiles the smile of loss and regret Why did she leave us? Three women in boundless love blossomed in cruel obscurity and exquisite meaninglessness The mother is gone forever and the daughters lost to each other in Time's imperative The towers of industry billow their smoke to the boundless indifferent sky while the agony and the ecstasy of aloneness and sweet regret fade into the abyss of the past The ships ply the harbour their engines rhythmically echoing the aching heartbeat of a lonely old man

Summary Judgements #4

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) The ultimate road movie of good intentions and sincere charm.

Mulholland Drive (2002) An ugly wet-dream.

The Man Who Wasn’t There (2002) Cold empty expressionism with no soul .

Good Night and Good Luck (2005) Looks great and the Morrow re-enactments are fine, but the rest is confusing.

Sideways (2004) Light on the palate with a fizz, but pretentious.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) A loopy forgettable romantic comedy with a dash of angst.

Thoughts on Letter From An Unknown Woman

The passionate heroines of Balzac, Flaubert, Stendahl, and Tolstoy are evoked by Joan Fontaine's luminous portrayal of Lisa in Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948), one of the great films of the 40s, and perhaps Max Ophüls' best Hollywood picture. A teenage schoolgirl in Vienna during La Belle Epoch idealises Stefan, a young concert pianist who lives in her apartment block and is barely aware of her existence. As a young woman they meet and spend a day and a night together. A decade passes, she is now married to an older man, an aristocrat, who has accepted her child from the liaison with the pianist. A chance encounter re-ignites her sublimated passion and tragedy ensues. The story's conceit is that the pianist never recalls that day of passion. I can't accept this. He is no shallow cad, but a man of deep melancholy, whose dissipation is an almost inevitable response to his angst and not a fault of character. A sad wrinkle in an otherwise exquisite film.

Summary Judgements #3

 Born To Be Bad (1950) "It's just a sex attraction." A classy melodrama from Nicholas Ray. In a savoury twist Robert Ryan and Zachary Scott play the saps to Joan Fontaine's charming gold-digger, who gets away clean in a new sports sedan with a pile of furs on the back seat. Me, I have a crush on the luminous Joan Leslie as the good girl. Fluid cinematography from Nicholas Musuraca, sumptuous art direction by Albert S. D'Agostino, and Friedrich Hollaender's elegant score add value.

Lost in Translation (2003) Is Tokyo really that boring?

A Very Long Engagement (2004) A very long movie...

A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004) A southern tale of a life's ambitions lost at the bottom of a glass of stale vodka and orange juice. Travolta's best role. Even Scarlett Johansson charms. Great soundtrack. The title track by singer/songwriter Grayson Capps is superb.

The House of Flying Daggers (2004) Stunningly beautiful visuals with a haunting soundtrack, otherwise forgettable.

Juno (2007) A quirky engaging look at teen pregnancy.

Sicko (2007) Michael Moore's brilliant critique of the failing US health system.

Lars and the Real Girl: His True Companion

Baby I've been searching like everybody else Can't say nothing different about myself Sometimes I'm an angel And sometimes I'm cruel And when it comes to love I'm just another fool Yes, I'll climb a mountain I'm gonna swim the sea There ain't no act of God girl Could keep you safe from me My arms are reaching out Out across this canyon I'm asking you to be my true companion True companion True companion - from the song True Companion by Marc Cohn ( 1991)

Lars and the Real World is an achingly sad, funny, and beautiful testament to the lonely. As Saul Bellow wrote in his eponymously-titled novel, more die of heartbreak. Lars is cut-off, estranged from life, unable to cross that canyon that cuts him off from true experience. He is ill yes, but many of us are removed from him only by just a single trauma. Those of us who are uncomfortable in their skin, always painfully aware of their separateness, desperately envious of those who seem so at ease, so confident of themselves, and so certain of their place in the scheme of things. Lars is healed not only by a sympathetic doctor, but by those who love him and his community. He was never really alone - he just never before had the capacity to reach out for love and connectedness. Many sadly will never be given the same chance, those who through chance, circumstance, or wilful denial of the opportunity, will struggle painfully alone without hope along boulevards of broken dreams. I walk a lonely road The only one that I have ever known Don't know where it goes But it's home to me and I walk alone I walk this empty street On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams Where the city sleeps and I'm the only one and I walk alone I walk alone I walk alone I walk alone I walk alone My shadow's the only one that walks beside me My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me 'Til then I walk alone - From the song Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day (2004)

The B Connection: Lewton, Renoir and Truffaut

In a book I am currently reading, The Early Film Criticism of François Truffaut by Wheeler Dixon (Indiana University 1993), there is an interesting section that deals with the obvious influence on Truffaut of Hollywood b-movies, particularly film noir. According to Dixon, Truffaut and even his mentor, Jean Renoir, preferred b-features over a-productions. In a 1954 interview, Renoir was quite emphatic:

"I'll say a few words about Val Lewton, because he was an extremely interesting person; unfortunately he died, it's already been a few years. He was one of the first, maybe the first, who had the idea to make films that weren't expensive, with 'B' picture budgets, but with certain ambitions, with quality screenplays, telling more refined stories than usual. Don't go thinking that I despise "B" pictures; in general I like them better than big, pretentious psychological films they're much more fun. When I happen to go to the movies in America, I go see "B'' pictures. First of all, they are an expression of the great technical quality of Hollywood. Because, to make a good western in a week, the way they do at Monogram, starting Monday and finishing Saturday, believe me, that requires extraordinary technical ability; and detective stories are done with the same speed. I also think that "B" pictures are often better than important films because they are made so fast that the filmmaker obviously has total freedom; they don't have time to watch over him."

So all you b-movie fans you are in hallowed company! [Cross-posted at FilmsNoir.Net]

2046

2046 A hotel room I write dreams A train to nowhere The rambling commuter tracks An empty highway of voluptuous dreams Exotic visions An elusive stringed symphonia of a future present already gone Four women, three sirens The hotel neon illumines our sordid fantasies We embrace then kiss Sweet poison Red lampshade, red lips Red rooms, red curtains Red shadows Unfaithful erotic pose Defiant gaze The aching solitude of knowing In your arms I am no longer there A chimera of future timelessness Platform shoes Heels that glow Strut and trample the hallowed tar from my shattered soul Wanton abandon a mirror for Innocence lost My words shattered Shards of fallen glass In pools of liquid gaze Your naked thighs thrust in ecstasy A trap of lost hope and stolen bliss

GATTACA : "There is no gene for the human spirit "

As night-fall does not come at once, neither does oppression... It is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become victims of the darkness. -Justice William O. Douglas (opening title from an early draft of the screenplay) One of the most intelligent and provocative sci-fi films ever made, Gattaca is a frosty, dystopian, and unpreachy vision of the ethical challenges that lay ahead. -UrbanCinefile.com

Gattaca is set in a future dystopia where your genetic inheritance determines your place in society from birth. If your genes are deficient you are an 'in-valid' and excluded from pursuing a meaningful life. Gattaca is the story of a young man who defies this oppressive system of exclusion. The movie is the first feature of New Zealand writer and director, Andrew Niccol, and as stunning a debut as I can recall. The realisation of Niccol's cinematic vision is admirably aided by the ravishing cinematography of Slawomir Idziak and exquisite art direction of Sarah Knowles. Color is rendered from a muted palate that gives the film a dream-like quality. The young leads, Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Jude Law are perfectly cast, with strong supporting performances from Alan Arkin and Loren Dean. Michael Nyman’s elegiac music score is hauntingly ethereal 

 'Gattaca' is an acronym of the first letters of the component organic compounds that make up DNA: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. Thematically Gattaca is structured as a double-helix - the molecular structure of DNA - with a major groove and a minor groove. The major overarching theme is the disturbing vision of a world where eugenics defines your life chances and life choices: your job, who you marry, your intrinsic worth as a human. This ambitious scenario is deftly woven into a dramatic and deeply human story of romantic love, family, sibling rivalry, murderous ambition, bravery, sacrifice and tragedy. The geometry of the double-helix is a potent motif with a spiral staircase a dramatic visual focus throughout.

Many critics have agreed with the Time Out reviewer, who described Gattaca as "chilly, elegant, and a little bloodless". This may be a fair description of the society that frames the story, but for me the human story projected on the screen has a deeply oneiric quality, and the director's expressive mis-en-scene engenders deep psychic imagery that make Gattaca a truly 'cinematic' experience. Gattaca is akin to the vivid primal dream you recall at that instant of awakening with the deep recognition of a preternatural truth that makes you ache for a return to that truth. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, the night is all around, soft and quiet, the white moonlight is cold and clear, like the truth we dream of but don’t find. Gattaca is an imagined universe that Janus-like is darkly visionary yet achingly beautiful.  

Postscript: Illumina, a genetics firm in the UK, will be starting an affordable genetic mapping service within two years. Clients will pay at least US$10,000 for a complete mapping of every gene in their DNA. Illumina says that by 2020 the service should be so affordable that all newborns will have their genomes sequenced at birth. Source: The Times on Line 9Feb09

Summary Judgements #2

Open City (1945) A landmark film, the meaning of which goes beyond the immediate drama of the story and its historical genesis, where the struggle of daily existence and life's tragedies are related unadorned and with supreme empathy and authenticity, of its time and beyond time, grounded in real lives played out in real homes and real streets. Open City opened up the horizon not only of a freedom so harshly won, but of a new cinema beyond the 'illusion of reality'. Vittoria de Sica in his introduction to the published script for Miracle in Milan, wrote the neo-realists "offered a transformed reality from which they drew forth the inner, human, and therefore universal meaning: it is reality transposed to the realm of poetry". When Francesco speaks to Pina on the eve of their wedding, he speaks of aspirations that are timeless: "We're fighting for something that has to be, that can't help coming. Maybe the way is hard, it may take a long time, but we'll get there, and we'll see a better world. And our kids will see it. Marcello and - him, the baby that coming". [From my review of The Grapes of Wrath]

Bicycle Thieves (1948) Visual poetry; a truth beyond artifice; a transfiguration of the everyday to the realm of the sublime; the love, the sorrow, and the pity of real lives lived in earnest and without ego, artifice, affectation or ambition. Art for the people of the people and for all time.

Casino Royale (2006) Banal and boring. The new Bond is a fascist. Innocent bodies drop like flies as Bond establishes his hero persona with his macho daring-do and his elongated gun-cum-phallus. The body count is only necessary ‘collateral damage’ in the greater ‘just cause’.

The Air I Breathe (2007) A very unusual Hollywood movie that goes beyond genre and episodically explores dark and mystical motifs: memory, love, violence, criminality, ambition, alienation, urban ennui, existential angst, causality, serendipity, and even the butterfly effect cum six degrees of separation.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007) An ugly urban fable, that by it’s end leaves you stunned as to why this film should have been made at all. A family of psychotics in a killing frenzy like the sharks in Orson Well’s 'The Lady From Shanghai': "Then the beasts took to eating each other. In their frenzy… they ate at themselves. You could feel the lust of murder like a wind stinging your eyes. And you could smell the death reeking up out of the sea".

The Darjeeling Limited (2007) Not perfect but a quirky engaging celebration of true freedom in all it’s darkness and richness. The film is weakest when it tries to analyze the reasons for the journey, and in the banal interlude at the nunnery. We don’t need a reason for living… or for dying.

Gone Baby Gone (2007) A strange violent story of nostalgia and social mis-critique. Working-class Boston is portrayed in a pseudo-realist opening sequence of urban ennui and alienation as some 'lost' place, where an urban flatfoot and his girl-friend get to play judge, jury, and executioner, with a climax where the gumshoe executes an un-armed and deranged psychopath in a squalid tenement. Fascist violence as urban justice - rollover Tarantino.

There Will be Blood (2008) A rambling confusing epic with no soul.

Guilty Pleasures

After a 20 year hiatus, in 2005 my then 15yo daughter drew me back to television. She wanted me to watch her favorites shows with her. I did, at first reluctantly, and then went on to enjoy these shows immensely. High production values, a continuing story arc, quirky characters, cool contemporary music, and the thriller elements had me hooked. Also recommend for fathers struggling to connect with their teenage daughters :). I will be writing up each show later, and each review will be hyper-linked the show's title below.

• Roswell (1999-2002)
• The 4400 (2004-2007)
• Veronica Mars (2004-2007)
• Prison Break (2005-2008?)

Summary Judgements #1

Frost/Nixon (2008) Revisionist souffle.

The Class (Entre les murs - France 2008) "A little less conversation, a little more action please".

Up The Yangytze (Canada 2007) Heartrendingly sad. The real China.

The Fountain (2006) Profound and mesmerising journey into the unbearable deepness of being.

Trouble in Paradise (1932) Joyous irreverent elegant fun with a delicious erotic playfulness.

The Apartment (1960) Very dated and very tedious. Watch Mad Men instead.

Dracula (1931) The first 20 minutes is magic. Flounders after the count leaves his castle.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Camp noir horror - a visual feast.

My Brother is an Only Son (Mio fratello è figlio unico - Italy 2007) A saga of two brothers - one a fascist the other a marxist - in 60s Italy. Powerful and affecting.

Lumet's 12 Angry Men (1957)

Peter Heath Baker wrote of 12 Angry Men in an article for Criterion: "The 95-minute running time of the film is also the duration of the jurors’ decision-making. The camera, like the jurors, cannot leave the room until a verdict has been reached. Faithful to Aristotle’s prescription for classical theatre, 12 Angry Men observes the unities of time, place, and action, which is rare in a film. Sidney Lumet, in his debut as a film director, used the techniques of the theatre to evoke the claustrophobic tension of the jury room. Before shooting, he rehearsed his cast for two weeks, running through the script like a play. With the aid of On the Waterfront cinematographer Boris Kaufman, Lumet plotted the camera’s movements to highlight what developed during the intensive period of rehearsal."

I have served on a criminal jury. I was in my mid-20s and the accused was a guy charged with robbing a bank. 12 Angry Men echoes my experiences in that jury room. In my case the evidence was largely circumstantial and the jury included women, but the terrible fear in most minds was the same: what if we condemn an innocent man? We deliberated and found the guy guilty, though with no great sense of justice. Sidney Lumet's first feature is a powerful movie, where Boris Kaufman's camera is not so much an observer as a participant in the cloistered confines of a jury room on a steamy summer day where the only fan doesn't work. After the opening scene where a weary and visibly bored judge instructs the jurors to consider their verdict in a murder case, we cut to the jury room and in an elegant long take the camera moves at eye level around the room, first observing a man staring out a window, then moving to other men in conversation, and moving on again and again to introduce each protagonist in turn. When the jurors are seated on the first vote around the table one man is holding out for not guilty - the man we earlier saw staring out the window who is played by Henry Fonda. The drama turns on this man's insistence on justice being done, and holding the jury down to a fair assessment of the evidence. A great ensemble cast holds the tension and expertly develops the melodrama of conflict and personality. The camera is often in close-up deftly taking a player's point of view in confrontations.

As the tension mounts and the personal dramas of the jurors take on as much significance as their deliberations, the camera moves progressively down to a lower angle to reveal the room's ceiling, adding to the volcanic emotional tension as the last hold-outs on a guilty verdict come under attack.

While the strength of the direction and the cinematography are integral, it is the tight script by Reginald Rose and the telling dialog that underpins the drama. Each protagonist is profoundly human - each with his own emotional baggage and differing characteristics.

When the jurors finally leave the jury room, the camera lingers and muses over the empty chairs and table. There is a palpable sense of melancholy for something memorable, important, that is now gone forever. The final scene shows the jurors descending the steps of the court-house, each returning to their separate lives. The oldest of the jurors, a canny old man played beautifully by Joseph Sweeney, makes a touching attempt to talk to the Fonda character, to hold on to something that he doesn't want to lose, but the short exchange goes nowhere, and he shuffles away down the steps a little bewildered, and suddenly very old and very tired.

Thoughts on Les Enfant du Paradis

Such a rich tapestry of a film requires volumes to adequately explore its glorious and myriad threads. I wish to talk here broadly about allegory in the film in its historical context. While I claim no special privilege or skill in tackling the subject, these are my thoughts for what they are worth. 

The name Garance rhymes with France and means a red flower: a delicate symbol of freedom and of a simple and beautiful elegance. Garance personifies liberty. Liberty as depicted by Delacroix, where again the colour red dominates: red for a nationalistic passion and vitality for revolutionary liberty. The metaphor is strong and simple. Garance is loved by four men: the romantic mime, the gallant actor, the amoral criminal, and the banal aristocrat. In a simple yet profoundly symbolic gesture, Garance gives her red flower, her love and liberty, to the mime, the man of and from the people. She says love is simple. But it must be grasped impulsively and tightly held lest it is lost. The actor who loves all women does take her as she wishes to be taken, but he cannot hold her. His passion is ultimately selfish as he wants to possess her and not be one with her: he is too political, in love with his own oratory. The criminal cannot be loved by Garance and he destroys the aristocrat who can buy her companionship but not her love.

Liberty is for the people up in the stalls, les enfants du paradis, but requires sacrifice – sometimes a terrible wounding sacrifice. Will Baptiste impose that sacrifice on his family? Will liberty be won for the people?

Revolutionary Road

"From win and lose and still somehow It's life's illusions I recall I really don't know life at all" - Joni 

Mitchell

Revolutionary Road, contrary to my expectations, impressed me. The acting is fine, the artistic direction excellent, the direction accomplished, and while the screenplay moves too slowly, it is substantive and lets the story unfold unhindered by weighty symbolism or rhetoric.

In our own lives, how well do we really know or understand ourselves let alone others? Ambiguity and ambivalence enrich this picture. The situation and the angst portrayed are very real and not confined to the 50s. What is of interest is the dynamic of reconciliation with life that we must all make. Each takes his or her own torturous route, and there is no winning or losing, only a path.

Slumdog Millionaire

The ‘quiz show that stopped the nation’ trope is imposed and corny, the resolution clichéd, the genuine pathos of the older brother Samil’s sacrifice lost, the drama undermined by the love conquers all ending, and the dance number as a final coda misplaced and even repugnant. But the movie is still a dazzling cinematic experience: the cinematography, the editing, and the sound production as integral as the inspired direction. The acting of the young people and the kids is as solid as you could wish. In a scene that deals with the mother's death, the visual terror and the cacophony is loud and intense, and the adrenalin that fuels the kids' flight is palpable, with the fast editing, the angled and off-center shots, all amplifying the brutality of what is happening on the screen; the abrupt stop as the kids' escape is blocked by a car with an annoyed and indifferent better-off passenger cocooned behind the closed windows; then the boys are off again until the final soaring aerial shots that move from the particular to the general - this is not a single story but one of many. A Hollywood movie is not going to save India, but it can bring an immediacy to the plight of people living marginal lives in dire poverty, and perhaps widen awareness and understanding. The blinded kids don't escape their fate. Jamal and Latika escape only because Samal has a gun and uses it. A background story on the writing of the screenplay by writer Simon Beaufoy is of interest.

A disturbing post-script: According to a recent newspaper report, the kids who played the young boy and girl who grew up to be the young lovers are still destitute and living in a Mumbai slum.

The Wrestler

Mickey Rourke's strong performance makes the picture, but otherwise I was disappointed. I deeply admire The Fountain, but here Darren Aronofsky has made just another Hollywood picture. The rich and resonant motifs and symbolism are used in the service of a rather banal and clichéd story, which does not cover new ground and shows little maturity. The scenario of the loser bad father who loves the Madonna whore, and has an estranged histrionic daughter is too hackneyed to sustain the crucifixion motif: pearls before swine. The hand-held camera perpetually trying to keep up with Randy may give the film an Indie cinema verite feel, but the cliché overload makes it redundant. The Magdalenesque ending is predictable and cloying. But what really strikes me is the unrelieved ugliness of the appalling wrestling scenes and its contrived yet explicit violence. With respect, I feel not a few commentators on this movie let wrestling and those who promote it and enjoy it, undeservedly off the hook. If there is any deeper symbolism, and here I give Aronofsky the benefit of the doubt, it is that in a market economy, even the human body is simply a commodity, 'meat' ripe for exploitation and abuse - be it wrestler's steroid-enhanced body or the explicit cavorting of a stripper. Randy's alienation needs to be exploded not glorified.

The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath is a testament to the people whose story is told, and is a profound and revolutionary social and economic critique, the meaning of which goes far beyond the Oklahoma dust-bowl and the orchards of California. It is both mythic and real, and its humanity universal. It is the greatest American film ever. John Ford's realisation captures the spirit of Steinbeck's novel completely. His adaptation is respectful, and his ending utterly faithful to the book's intent. Steinbeck's suckling metaphor is one of hope, where from the deepest tragedy rises a like a phoenix the basic decency of simple people giving all that they have left to a stranger. Tom's leaving is inevitable. He is radicalised and his path is strictly defined. What happened to the Joads happened to thousands of families: the banks' perfidy, the exploitation by farmers, and the hostility to organized labour, are historical facts, and these essential elements are the backbone of the film. The killing of Casy is one of the most politically powerful scenes in US movie history, and the case for government intervention is as strongly stated as it can be in the camp sequence. Gregg Toland's photography prefigures the neo-realists. The integrity of Nunnally Johnson's script and Ford's unerring sense of pathos, have left us not only a film of deep humanity but an important social artefact. The makers of The Grapes of Wrath, to paraphrase De Sica on the neo-realists, offer us "a transformed reality from which they drew forth the inner, human, and therefore universal meaning: it is reality transposed to the realm of poetry". Roberto Rossellini's landmark neo-realist Open City, is also a film the meaning of which goes beyond the immediate drama of the story and its historical genesis. It is film where the struggle of daily existence and life's tragedies are related unadorned and with supreme empathy and authenticity. Open City is a film of its time and beyond time, grounded in real lives played out in real homes and real streets. The film opened up the horizon not only of a freedom so harshly won, but of a new cinema beyond the 'illusion of reality'. When Francesco speaks to Pina on the eve of their wedding, he speaks of aspirations that are timeless: "We're fighting for something that has to be, that can't help coming. Maybe the way is hard, it may take a long time, but we'll get there, and we'll see a better world. And our kids will see it. Marcello and - him, the baby that coming". Tom Joad's last word's to his mother echo the same sentiments: "I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too."

The Dark Knight

There may be bits and pieces that are ok, but this film for me is at best mediocre. More a confusing noisy comic writ large on a wide screen, that is sorely in need of balloons to capture the dialog, which is otherwise unintelligible. Heath Ledger does something with his role, but to no greater purpose. Bale is predictably banal, and the rest of the cast borderline only. The plot is entirely derivative and the supposed count-down climax a veritable yawn. The mayhem in the closing action sequence is so closely framed and poorly edited that you don't know what the hell is going on. There is something wrong when so many otherwise intelligent people can invest this tripe as some deep and meaningful metaphor for our troubled times.

The Incredible Hulk: Incredible Chase

The Incredible Hulk (2008) another comic adaptation loses power as it progresses and overall is just another popular blockbuster. But the first exciting chase through the narrow alleys of the favelas of Rio and in a soft-drink bottling plant is brilliant. Bright primary colors rendered richly by the dying evening sun and by street-light, narrow lanes, varied camera angles, turbo-charged editing, and a brilliant staccato score, are melded into a visually stunning and viscerally exciting cinematic experience. 

Beyond Doubt

“I will do what needs to be done, though I’m damned to Hell! You should understand that, or you will mistake me.“

When I was 10 in the early 60s I was preparing for the Catholic sacrament of Confirmation. I never attended a Catholic school, so I was prepared on evenings and weekends by lay women at the local Catholic elementary school. These women were kind and gentle souls who treated their charges with compassion - we were ‘outside’ the fold you see, 2nd-class Catholics. During my lessons I crossed paths with some of the nuns from the school, and they were always sour and severe in their fearsome dark habits. In his wisdom, the parish priest decreed that to qualify for the sacrament, the other kids and I had to take a leave of absence from our public school and spend a week in a Catholic school class. On my first day I was ‘welcomed’ by the nun principal and treated so harshly and with such contempt that at the first opportunity, I made a b-line for the school gate and wandered the streets until the afternoon, when I returned home to face the music. Thankfully, my parents let me return to my public school the next day. In John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, set in 1964, a nun principal in her sixties, Sister Aloysius, played exquisitely by Meryl Streep, is a harsh and a strict disciplinarian at a Catholic elementary school in the Bronx. She is roundly feared by students and held in awe by the other nuns. The parish priest, Father Brendan (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is younger, wants a more a liberal welcoming parish, and his sermons are impressive and unusually hold his Mass-goer’s attention. A young idealistic nun, Sister James (Amy Adams) becomes suspicious of the nature of the priest’s relationship with an alter-boy, the school’s only black student, and informs Sister Aloysius. The boy’s mother (Viola Davis) when told by Sister Aloysius of the suspicion shockingly expresses higher priorities for her child. After an 18 year hiatus, Shanley directing his second feature, based on his play and screenplay, has fashioned a powerful and ambivalent story. He may not win any kudos for directorial flair, but his direction while subdued is assured. He leaves the protagonists to develop the story. While making effective use of close-ups and low-angle shots to accentuate the melodrama, only his use of off-horizontal takes is a mis-step. He deftly takes the scene with the boy’s mother and Sister Aloysius out of the principal’s office to neutral territory on sombre autumnal streets. Shanley’s use of rain, wind, and snow to underline the drama is elegant, and his script is powerful and to the point, and not at all stagy. The audience is free to enter a realistically rendered cinematic place. Meryl Streep dominates in a bravura performance, the supporting cast is superb, with nuanced portrayals all-round. Though constrained by a full nun’s habit, Streep captures the disciplined yet rebellious and compassionate woman in all her contradictions and yes, softness. (I now wonder whether there was any softness in the nun’s of my childhood.) Sister Aloysius is, as she herself says, the ‘protector’ of the children in her care, and her every action is taken for this end - she is hard, that’s her ‘job’. You admire her for her resilience and commitment. She battles with intelligence and wit against hypocrisy, moral relativism, hierarchy, patriarchy, and ultimately, doubt. If we adopted the rules of judicial evidence, of being persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt, how many believers would maintain a religious faith? In matters of individual faith, it is the individual who decides, but in situations where terrible harm may be occurring, and we have only circumstantial evidence, is the burden of proof absolutely necessary? Is an instinctual knowledge of a truth to hold sway over vehement denial and no corroboration? These are vexed questions, and this timely and serious film confronts them head-on. Not to be missed.

Musings on In The Mood for Love

Memories night rain on cobble stones

we sheltered under eaves of lost time and aching solitude

slowed motion our paths crossed

we dare not touch rehearsing heartbreak and leave-taking

stairs a hallway with no turning condemned to relive a love ever unconsumated

always alone a red billowing curtain belies our passion

an empty hotel room 2046

there is no future no past

only an aching emptiness slippers forgotten kept as relics and stolen back by a visage not a visitor

red lipstick on a cigarette left in suspense on the edge of a lost horizon

I go back

all is gone

the story has moved on

new players in the same rooms

I don't knock on the closed door

tears and whispered secrets among ancient stones lost forever

Mr Deeds Meets Slumdog: Who wants to be a millionaire?

I often wonder how it feels to be at home in your country of birth. As a child of immigrant parents, and though an Australian by birth, I have never been confident that I ever will. There is a discontinuity, and bridging it is as unlikely as me flying to the moon. It is a strange feeling that I am in a place but not of it - a stranger in the only home I know. Perhaps it is me and not my situation, but the feeling of estrangement is always there under the surface, dormant, but ever-ready to puncture that rare sensation that I may have found that elusive threshold to a life unhindered by a feeling of not belonging. I imagine this is how Slumdog Jamal feels. A Muslim in a hostile Hindu nation, first as an orphan eking out an existence on a refuse heap, living little better than a dog, later as a hustler on the edge of society, and then as a lowly chah-wallah in a Mumbai office tower. He has no home and belongs nowhere. This is how Longfellow Deeds feels in New York City. A fish out of water. A decent man surrounded by conceit and deceit. At least he has a home in Bedford Falls to go back to, where he truly belongs - a place in the world that is inviolably his - a very part of his being. I grew up in a tenement behind my parent's fruit store. There was love and we struggled together, but my life was different from the other children I knew. My brother and I between school and homework toiled with ours parent in the store seven days a week. We had no vacations and no lawn, or a shiny car. And we were seen as different: dagoes who didn't amount too much. My dreams of what life could be were shaped by Hollywood. Andy Hardy and Frank Capra were the stuff my dreams were made of. Mickey Rooney, James Stewart, and Gary Cooper populated my imagination. They belonged and they knew who they were - their lives were magic. Jamal wades through a cess-pit to get a glance of his Bollywood idol. Shit: the stuff that slum-dreams are made of. The conceited quiz show host tries to set Jamal up for failure, and when that stratagem fails, he accuses Jamal of cheating and delivers him to police brutality. Longfellow Deeds suffers humiliation at the hands of his literary idol, he is manipulated by a cynical young reporter, and finally his shyster lawyer, who is after his dough, tries to have him declared insane when Longfellow decides to give his inherited millions to the needy. They each overcome by their essential decency and natural intelligence. Jamal says he didn't want the quiz show prize, he wanted to find his girl- and he does - just like Longfellow Deeds. Bollywood meets Hollywood. Jamal's millions may buy him a measure of comfort and respect, but Longfellow Deeds doesn't need the money - he has something more precious and inviolate - a place in the sun.

The Wonder of Childhood

I had to wait until I was an adult to feel alone, as I was blessed with a brother only three years my junior. To be so alone as a young child that you enter a fantasy world so compelling that you begin to see it as part of the real world can be as terrifying as it is magical. Two films, over 60 years apart, explore this phenomenon in interesting ways: Val Lewton's The Curse of the Cat People (1944) and Pan's Labyrinth (2006) from Guillermo del Toro. Both movies are about a young girl cut off from other children and feeling estranged from her parents. The fantasy has the element of the fabulous and directly influences the child's feelings and actions in reality. Each film in its own elegant fashion demonstrates that no matter how phantasmagorical and fearful a child's fantasy, it cannot challenge the horror of the world inhabited by adults. In The Curse of the Cat People, the fantasy is therapeutic and brings the child's family together, while in Pan's Labyrinth, the resolution is horrifically tragic. These pictures have an important and very rare quality - they pay homage to the wonders of childhood and it's precious innocence. Children are in the world not of it, and they have much to teach us if we would take notice and share their wonderment.

John Ford's The Fugitive (1947)

Directed by John Ford; written by Dudley Nichols, based on the novel, The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene; cinematographer, Gabriel Figueroa; edited by Jack Murray; music by Richard Hageman; art designer, Alfred Ybarra; produced by John Ford and Merian C. Cooper; released by RKO Radio Pictures. Starring Henry Fonda and Dolores Del Rio. Black and white. Running time: 104 minutes.

John Ford's The Fugitive is not widely known or referenced in film writing, but it is reported to have been Ford's favorite film, of which he said: "It had a lot of damn good photography - with those black and white shadows. We had a good cameraman, Gabriel Figueroa, and we'd wait for the light - instead of the way it is nowadays, where regardless of the light, you shoot." While dismissed by critics as too arty and not faithful to the source novel, a story of a 'whisky priest' in a revolutionary latin country, for me The Fugitive is a magnificent film. It may have flaws, but it is such a sincere statement of faith that any shortcomings are like the minor blemishes in a sparkling diamond. Filming entirely on location in Mexico, Ford and Mexican cinematographer, Gabriel Figueroa, fashioned a scene-scape of monochrome chiaroscuro that is a ravishing homage to the Renaissance. The movie was the first production of Argosy Productions, the film company Ford setup in 1946. He found a willing distributor in RKO, who thankfully released the picture without interference. The movie sadly failed at the box office, and to recover the financial losses Ford retreated from this bold experiment and returned to his traditional fare in subsequent productions. The picture also led to a rift between Ford and his long-time collaborator, screenwriter Dudley Nichols. According to Nichols, "I don't know what happened in Mexico, I didn't go down with him... To me, he seemed to throw away the script. Fonda said the same. There were some brilliant things in the film, but I disliked it intensely - and, confidentially, I don't think Ford ever forgave me for that." At the time of its release Bosley Crowther was among the few who were able to appreciate this gem in his eloquent review for the New York Times: "Out of the flood of pictures which opened on Broadway yesterday emerges in monolithic beauty John Ford's The Fugitive. For here, in this strange and haunting picture... is imaged a terrifying struggle between strength and weakness in a man's soul, a thundering modern parable on the indestructibility of faith, a tense and significant conflict between freedom and brute authority... Mr. Ford has made The Fugitive a symphony of light and shade, of deafening din and silence, of sweeping movement and repose. And by this magnificent ordering of a strange, dizzying atmosphere, he has brewed a storm of implications of man's perils and fears in a world gone mad. The script, prepared by Dudley Nichols from a novel by Graham Greene, is a workmanlike blueprint for action, failing only to define the deeper indecision of the hero as it was apparently conceived by Mr. Greene. And the performances are all of them excellent, from the anguished straining of Henry Fonda as the priest to Ward Bond's stony arrogances as an American gangster 'on the lam'. Dolores Del Río is a warm glow of devotion as an Indian Magdalene and Pedro Armendáriz burns with scorching passion as a chief of military police. The musical score by Richard Hageman is a tintinnabulation of eloquent sounds. Let us thank Mr. Ford for giving us, at this late date, one of the best films of the year." - 26 December 1947 Beyond its visual beauty, this story of a weak man, a priest who when he finally confronts his cowardice, says "I began to have pride", has a simple resonance and trajectory, but the characterisations have a subtle complexity, and none of the protagonists is strictly biblical. As the last priest in the country, he is pursued with revolutionary zeal by a fanatical young Lieutenant, who has also fathered the Magdalene's illegitimate baby. The Magdalene, 'Maria Dolores', hides the priest and, with unsolicited help from the Barabas, who ambushes the military, aids him in his eventually futile escape across a mountain. The priest finds redemption only after he is betrayed by a perversely comical Judas and shot by revolutionary firing squad. His otherwise zealous pursuer lacks the courage to witness his execution.

Thoughts on In the Valley of Elah

When Pfc. Albert Nelson died in Iraq in 2006, the Army first told Feggins that he might have been killed by friendly fire, and then that it was enemy mortars. She says she never believed the Army's explanation. "I always felt like they were lying to me," she said. "I could never prove it." 

Jean Feggins, is the mother of Albert Nelson and retired from the Philadelphia Police Department, and the quote is from a Salon.com article of October 14 by Mark Benjamin, Friendly fire in Iraq - and a coverup. Salon.com has obtained evidence - including a graphic 52 min video and an eyewitness account - suggesting that in 2006 friendly fire from an American tank killed two US soldiers in Iraq, and that the US Army ignored the video and other evidence, ruling that the deaths resulted from enemy action. For those who have seen Paul Haggis' powerful film In the Valley of Elah (2007), this scenario has disturbing parallels. In the movie, aging Vietnam vet, retired military investigator, and reticent patriot, Hank Deerfield, played with understated grit by a craggy by Tommy Lee Jones, sets outs to find the killer of his son, whose charred remains are found in brush on the outskirts of Fort Rudd, New Mexico, a few days after the boy's return from a posting in Iraq. Hank's dogged search for his son's killer is frustrated at every turn by the military but aided by a female cop, played simply and unaffectedly by Charlize Theron, who refuses to drop the case after pressure from the army. The father not only discovers the killer but reaches a profoundly shattering realisation about his country and its institutions, and how the brutalisation of war can destroys live far from the battle-line. The tone of the film is quiet and respectful and rendered with a muted palate, and the breakdown in Hank's accepted beliefs about his country is handled deftly. During his stay at Fort Worth, Hank holes up in a motel. In the first days he is seen polishing his shoes, maintaining the crease in his trousers, and making his bed in strict army fashion. As his journey into a nether world of obfuscation, deceit, and moral indifference goes deeper, he longer polishes his shoes and his bed is left dishevelled each morning as he trudges out into a starkly dark world he could never have imagined existed. On the surface the picture is a police procedural, but on a deeper level it is an exploration of contingencies and responsibility. His son's murder and the brutal killing of a child by a US humvee on the streets of Baghdad seen in a video from the dead son's cell-phone, bring chaos to the life of a father, who no longer understands his son or his country. Everything including the American flag is upside-down.

Michael Clayton: When you run out of fixes...

This is not so much a review of the movie, rather an exploration of thoughts that have arisen from the film in the context of current events. I am not overly concerned here with the cinematic quality of the picture, but the extent to which film-making is informed by social circumstances, and how a popular film may reveal to us something about our world. Wall St has undergone over the past few months a seismic shift, and the after-shocks and tsunamis have spread beyond the shores of the US to financial markets everywhere. Economies have been thrown into recession, corporations have failed, and rdinary people everywhere have seen their retirement savings put into serious jeopardy. The crisis has its origins in the packaging of US home mortgages that should never have been written into toxic debt instruments that have been traded all over the globe. Share markets have gone into free-fall, and credit markets have seized as a result. Now after the horse has bolted there is a desperate scramble for a “fix”. But it is too late for fixes: those responsible for this debacle have face to the consequences, as will the rest of us - the suckers who bought retail. Michael Clayton’s job was fixing things – discreetly and behind the scenes – for the clients of a top New York law firm. He was “the janitor”, working out of sight and getting his hands dirty in the dark places where things that somebody wants buried get buried and stay buried. “The truth can be adjusted”: like the discardable history written and re-written as often as necessary by the automatons in the solitary cubicles in George Orwell's 1984, where persons, events, and even places, are erased from collective memory, and like the skins in the movie Dark City who labour every night underground with the conspiring bio-chemist to erase and re-construct individual memory, and actual physical reality, so that individual consciousness ceases to exist. Michael Clayton opens with “the janitor” called in the early morning from a card game in a noir dive to the home of a wealthy client, who wants to bury a hit-and-run. The client, whose sense of entitlement to a fix that will not inconvenience him is as nauseating as it is breathtaking, has to face the stark reality that not even Clayton can bury this one. Here we have the central motif of the film: no-one wants to take responsibility. The only guy who does, a litigator with the firm and Clayton’s friend, first goes off the wall for his trouble and is then rubbed out by his erstwhile client. The resolution is pure Hollywood, and the film is weaker for this, with all the loose-ends nicely tied, after Clayton is faced to confront his responsibility to his dead friend, and only after an attempt is made on his own life - even then he is motivated not by justice but by his outrage that some-one had the temerity to think he could out-smart him. The true origin of the current financial melt-down lies in the same unwillingness to take responsibility. From the real estate brokers who did not look beyond their brokerage check when pushing people into taking on debt that they could never repay, and the bankers who traded the complex financial instruments with no regard for the quality of the underlying assets, to the regulators and politicians who neglected to properly regulate financial markets.

Welcome To The Sticks: The bicycle as liberation

Welcome To The Sticks (Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis) was released in France in February, and is the most successful French movie ever, with over 20 million admissions and a box-office take exceeding $US200 million in France alone.

A simple premise is weaved into a touching and hilarious journey into the profound beauty of simple unaffected lives. The plot is clichéd and banal, but the sincere humanity of the director, Dany Boon, who also co-wrote the script and has a starring role, and the sheer exuberance of the cast, transform a formula for bathos into paean to family, friendship, and simple fun.

A post-office functionary, Phillipe, played beautifully by a gangling Kad Merad, living with his depressive wife, Julie, and young son in a town in the south of France, is exiled to the cold forbidding north of the country after faking disability to wrangle a transfer to the Riviera. He leaves his Julie, who refuses to join him, and his son behind, and treks North to do battle in the sticks with the "country bumpkins" in a small village. When he gets there, after a series of misadventures and struggling with the absurd local argot and un-appetising provincial cuisine, he settles into a life of simple pleasures and bountiful friendship, while all the time concocting for his wife on his weekend visits home stories of terrible deprivation. When Julie can take the estrangement and the thought of his suffering alone no longer, she packs her bags and joins him, thus establishing the premise for the hilarious climax and dénouement.

Dany Boon, plays a simple post-man unmarried and in his mid-30s, who lives with his domineering mother, and pines for a vivacious postal clerk who also works at the local village post office, where the transferred functionary is the manager. It is the dynamic of the relationship between these two men that propels the story and is the catalyst for the life-changing inter-play for both men.

It is these two men's experience together one sunny day cycling through the village delivering the mail that forms the film's central tableau: a sequence so funny yet so moving, your laughter only just manages to contain heart-felt tears of joy.

Transported into a simpler world where friendship is real and work a truly communal extension of life, we confront what we have lost: the capacity of simply living in the moment. To fully live and realise our true being, we must jettison all pretension and embrace life stripped to its essentials.

Z

I saw Costa-Gavras' Z for the second time in Greece in 1976 in the local cinema in the Cretan village of Sitia, where my late mother had relations, in the original French with Greek sub-titles, and as I speak French "comme une vache espagnole" and good Greek, I was ok. Z is based on the true story of the assassination of the socialist Greek politician Gregoris Lambrakis in the early 60's by a conspiracy between the army and right-wing elements. A military junta ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974, and collapsed after a student uprising in Athens was brutally crushed by the army and the Makarios coup in Cyprus failed. The climax in Z occurs when Jean-Louis Trintignant, as the Magistrate investigating the assassination, personally issues warrants for the indictment of a cohort of generals, who are each shown entering his office and then leaving totally flummoxed and each trying to leave by the wrong door, all to the stirring music of Greek patriot and composer Mikes Theodorakis, who had been imprisoned and tortured by the generals, and was in exile in France when Z was made. The reaction in the cinema to this scene was spontaneous on-your-feet cheering with a wave emotion so electric it sent shivers down my spine. This was truly cinema for the people!