Chief : I’m a stray / Nutmeg : Aren’t we all (in the last analysis) ?

This is a review (work in progress) of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs (2018)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

25 March

This is a review (work in progress) of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs (2018), as seen in the non-dog-friendly preview screening* at The Arts Picture, Cambridge, on Sunday 25 March 2018 at 6.15 p.m. (in lovely Screen 1)

It is a pleasure to watch and want to write about such a film.

Rather than why The Square (2017) shows scant connection with the world of art (and might as well have been set in a bus station as a museum-style gallery ?), or wishing that Martin McDonagh's [ ] Billboards (2017) film [@3Billboards] had the credentials of his In Bruges (2008) - assuming that people realize that there are two McDonaghs, the other one being his brother Michael, who is the one who made The Guard (2011) and [ ] Calvary (2014)* ?

Sally Hawkins - even without words - is tremendous : should have won the Award from @TheAcademy ! https://t.co/0y7FuWsM6h

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 25, 2018

Meanwhile, both offending films will sell plenty of tickets, and no one will notice that Sally Hawkins deserved The Academy Award for 2017, not Frances McDormand...

Such a bewildering repertoire of rendering physicality and immateriality in Anderson's vision and his crew's artistry, from wisps and clouds of cotton-wool and fibre to puppetry, hand-drawing, etc. - and never 'about' what it's about !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 26, 2018

A theme of injury or mutilation has been part of Wes Anderson’s world(s) since at least The Darjeeling Limited (2007), and, at the start of Isle of Dogs (2018), is introduced by the narration of Jupiter, who lacks his left eye… Other recurrent situations are being orphaned (e.g. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)), absent fathers / father-figures, escaping (right from the opening of Bottle Rocket (1996) onwards through to The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)) and imagined places (especially islands, and exploring them).



[...]



End-notes :

* Much advertised, the dog-friendly screening had been at 11.00 a.m. on the same day.

**


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Don’t you think they’re the same thing, love and attention ?

This is a review of Lady Bird (2017), written and directed by Greta Gerwig

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

This is a review of Lady Bird (2017), written and directed by Greta Gerwig

As actor and as writer, Greta Gerwig has always seemed at her best when she embraces the fact that, polished veneers apart, life is full of awkwardnesses (although, at the same time, this actually seemed to be the least successful aspect of Mistress America (2015) – perhaps the extent to which others felt awkward was too great¹ ?).

Both tall and immature, awkward and graceful, blundering and candid, annoying and engaging, Greta has won all hearts in the title role of Frances Ha(liday) ~ Greta Gerwig's biography on IMDb

In no bad or derivative way, the script of Gerwig’s film feels as though it is harking back to that which she co-authored with Noah Baumbach for his Frances Ha (2012), though hardly because both title-characters (the latter played by Gerwig herself) have both adopted their names, since, in the case of Frances, it happens through pragmatism and at the very end of the film. What is more enlightening is that it is part of both of them that they have to find a way of being comfortable in the world, before they can relate to it. In the case of Lady Bird – insisting on being called that, because she can – we know how she plans to give herself what she seeks, and how, despite everyone else’s refusing to do so, she credits her abilities.

On that level, although the film does not make this a message, we do see someone who perseveres, based on her self-belief. It is on the level of her relations with her mother (Laurie Metcalf) that things are really interesting, however. As her father (Tracy Letts) puts it, in talking to Lady Bird, You both have such strong personalities, and we find, in the car at the outset, how that can be good and also less good. One is reminded that it is said of psychiatrist R. D. Laing that he gave much to his patients, but was distant from, or even hard on, his own children (which, though it can be rather loose with its facts, is how Mad to be Normal (2017) portrays him).

Saoirse Ronan excellently plays the part of Lady Bird, and her friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein) and she behave, and have been dressed to look, convincingly the right age (which Greta Gerwig, born a decade earlier, could not have done). Whether she is feeding into the script her own experience (she was, in fact, born in Sacramento, CA²), or solely her imagination, is less important than that she clearly does so with a level of plausible absurdity that makes what we see feel genuine, coupled with knowing when we will be interested, amused or touched by it. It matters to her that she tell this story, and that makes the film-making powerful and worthwhile.

Frances Ha is trying to find, personally and professionally, the way of being comfortable with herself that will let her just be in the world. It is almost as though, when she does ‘fly away’ to where she feels home (as the children’s rhyme has it), Christine drops the high-school cover of calling herself Lady Bird. She is a figure akin to Frances, but seen earlier in life, and whose ways of being we see being shaped by her background.

"A coming-of-age story like no other, Lady Bird is smart, emotional, funny and completely original" **** Empire - Watch #LadyBird here at Genesis TODAY - Book: https://t.co/PPpO07wfrc #WomenInFilm2018

— Genesis Cinema (@GenesisCinema) March 18, 2018

Though it helps to watch as a film, and expecting a good one ?

We really just see Lady Bird do what lady birds do - fly.

* It's even been heard described as a teen film, which it hardly is, and will just deny the very different expectations to which the term gives rise ? https://t.co/IagJ2Of2Er

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 18, 2018

End-notes :

¹ It seems like Bottle Rocket (1996), except that Wes Anderson’s film is a whole, so that its close makes it complete in itself and cohere – rather as does The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), when one might be wondering where it is going ?

² Where scenes in Frances Ha (2012) are also set (with Gerwig’s actual parents cast in the role), and, according to IMDb, Gerwig did attend an all-girls Catholic school, and describes herself having been ‘an intense child’…


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Watching early Wes Anderson I

A first-time response to Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket (1996)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

7 February

A first-time response to Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket (1996) - co-written with Owen C. Wilson (Dignan in the film)

Sal Paradise's (Sam Riley's) draw to Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) in On the Road (2012) makes no comparison : maybe not the extreme adventure of True Romance (1993) (in so many ways it's very other), but here's a real feel for travelling with a plan that doesn't amount to one. pic.twitter.com/ILYs5tBUa4

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 8, 2018

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)