Henry James comes to Poland ? (Part I)

This is a Festival review of Ida (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

22 November

This is a Festival review of Ida (2013)
(because it should have been seen on Day 3 of Cambridge Film Festival)

Some narratives [some really just do not care that one is awake enough to ask] need to be able to answer the question Why this – why now ? It is convenient enough that, before making a commitment (and so that there is a film), Anna is given knowledge that she has not had before : that, for all the time that she has been in the convent, she has had a living relative, whom she is now being sent to meet.

Understandably, as a good convent girl, she accepts what has happened, and does not seem angry or bitter, but, when she meets Wanda Gruz and learns that her real name is Ida*, she does still ask Wanda why she did not have her to live with her. Ida gets a good enough, and candid answer : maybe the candour actually goes over her head (or she has learnt much despite her upbringing), but she gives the impression of somehow being unshockable.

People will praise Agata Trzebuchowska (Ida) for her performance, imagining that age is a factor to allow for and that the interpretation can be attributed to her, but Agata Kulesza (Wanda) is the one to be impressed by, for her emotional energy and depth, and her integrity.

In any case, there is a sort of reason behind her deciding to get interested in her niece, when we see Wanda sitting on a tribunal panel, but, because she is never asked this quite obvious question, the film and she only obliquely answer it – if what she determines to do now with Ida matters, why is she only doing it now ?


In the opening part, before Ida meets Wanda, film-making gives us an example of how using monochrome can neatly lend visual severity to scenes in a convent. However, unlike the painful, extended treatment of this kind of setting, in colour in Beyond the Hills** (Dupa dealuri) (2012), here it feels gratuitous to use colour-deprivation – almost as if it is employing the potential of the aesthetics of asceticism to mislead.

Yet, although this is not an equivalent religious regime to that shown in Romania (and so that is not the point being made), giving an appearance of being austere chooses to suggest to us what might be – along with, later, showing prostate, cruciform candidates for taking orders, which might be straight out of Luis Buñuel at his most anti-clerical.

The convent is no doubt run strictly, with a seeming rule of silence at meals (and it is a nod that advises Anna to see Mother Superior), and the story-telling here is crisp, neat, orderly. However, what director Pawel Pawlikowski is really about here, in a film set in 1962 (according to IMDb), is setting up a dichotomy, which for Henry James’ characters was between The New World and The Old World (e.g. in novels such as The Ambassadors, or The Golden Bowl) – hence this review’s title.

In James, the dichotomy becomes embodied by, and so takes place within, the visitors from the States, who bring their preconceptions and imagination, but hamper them by not using their perceptions. Ida, summoned on the verge of taking orders, is told to go to stay with her aunt ‘for as long as is necessary’ (which is sufficiently vague to allow it to further the plot).

It may not the only dichotomy in the film, but it is summed up in this exchange – in the car – between Ida and her aunt [the last utterance is paraphrased] :

Wanda : Have you had impure thoughts ?

Ida: Yes.

Wanda : Carnal ?

Ida : No.

Wanda : That’s a shame. (Slight pause.) How do you know what you are giving up ?


To look further at the film requires a further posting and being spoilery…

Suffice for now to say that the working out of dichotomies here is fairly predictable. Which one would not expect of the director of The Woman in the Fifth (La femme du Vème) (2011), and is also lacking the subtleties of the various Jamesian texts that have been so successfully adapted cinematically.


End-notes

* Pronounced, whatever one may think, in the film Eh-dah.

** Or even in Philomena (2013).


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

What is Catalan cinema ?

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 June (updated 20 August)

What is Catalan cinema ?

[Now, in 2017, with its own sequel : What more is Catalan cinema ?]

Update : click here to go to outlines of three Catalan films
at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 and links to reviews

In advance of the 34th Cambridge Film Festival (#CamFF via @camfilmfest), and also of a screening at London’s ICA (@ICA) on 27 June of El bosc (The Forest) (2012) (a film that had its UK premiere when shown at last year’s Festival¹ – as did three other Catalan films), here is a little look at where films like this come from – geographically, temperamentally, and emotionally…

Catalan cinema : Does it fit descriptions such as Sassy / Sexy / Surreal / Sensuous / Subversively ritual, and bathed by the Mediterranean ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 12, 2014

Some may know that Barcelona, the second largest city in Spain, is the capital city of Catalonia – though it’s really, in Catalan, Catalunya – but forget Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) for giving you any more than an architectural montage to emulate that of Manhattan (1979) (or be a precursor to Woody Allen’s love-smitten depiction of Paris at Midnight from 2011…)²


But it probably may help little more to think of the inevitable Gaudí, let alone Juan Gris’ connections or – with the Catalan form of Gris’ adopted name and a birth-right to Barcelona – Joan Miró. Maurice Ravel (French, but with a Basque-Spanish heritage of a birthplace in territory somewhat distant from Catalunya, but likewise where France adjoins Spain), may give us some feel of Spanishness at times, but perhaps the quirky figure who provides a way in to this cinematic tradition is Salvador Dalí.

This blog-posting began with five ‘S’ key-words, and Dalí truly, as the phrase has it, ticks the boxes for all of them – and, with the infamous collaboration with Luis Buñuel in Un Chien Andalou (1928) (not forgetting L'âge d'or (1930)), is rooted in cinema. Dalí may have moved away from what Buñuel became a celebrated master of, but his showmanship and theatricality resembles aspects of film familiar, say, from the great Italian directors, and it is hard to believe that he has not been an inspiration in his home region.


Overview of Cambridge Film Festival's 'Catalan strand' in 2012 and 2013

Looking personally to the 2014 Festival (#CamFF), there is full confidence in Ramon Lamarca that he will have found and curated some powerful and challenging films, no doubt examining the nature of reality, or of the little-appreciated conflict that is The Spanish Civil War (Guerra Civil Española). As well as ending the life of poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, and providing the substance of Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, it not only tore Spain apart (with the help of General Franco’s allies in Germany and Italy), but has laid down a seam that underlies the history of Spain in our postmodern era, and which film-makers in Catalunya have been especially open to explore :

Directors such as Ken Loach, working with screenwriter Jim Allen in Land and Freedom (1995), have brought a British perspective on seeking to fight pro-fascist Nationalist forces, but Jesús Garay’s Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008) delves less into the politics and the pointlessness of brother against brother, but rather, and very movingly, into the ‘visceralness’ of what it means to tick down to something that changes individual lives for ever : although Garay is from Santander, not Catalunya, again this is in the very North of Spain.

Set in the civil war like his film, but from the point of view of a landowner with pro-fascist leanings (or, probably more accurately, inherited anti-communist feelings ?), The Forest (El bosc) (2012), through its embodiment of place and with its vivid special effects, evokes another world, another dimension, from the perspective of which professed love and care can be examined, and in and through which a transformational and redemptive influence can operate. Similarly, in a way in the post-war period, and with packed Festival screenings, Black Bread (Pa negre) (2010) hits us right at its close with a boy’s realization of what his true position in life has been.

On another level, and in Venice, we again have finding the truth in The Redemption of The Fish (La redempció dels peixos) (2013), as Marc (Miquel Quer) tracks down his past, and is seduced and misled by the shapes, shadows and reflections of La Serenissima : so many of these films revolve historical and familial disputes and allegiances in a rich and productive way. In V.O.S. (2009), we have that theme translated into the playful and malleable notion of relation and relationships, in and out of making a film that crosses the barrier between ‘life’ and ‘film’ in a way as inventive and thought-provoking as Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). And, but one might need to read further with the links below to reviews on this blog, The Night Elvis Died (La Nit Que Va Morir L’Elvis) (2010) teases apart the layers of reality (not least with its quiet homage to Paris, Texas (1984))…


Here (out of the eleven films shown in 2012 and 2013 - UK denotes UK premiere) are links to this blog’s reviews of most of the films (with @THEAGENTAPSLEY's tag-lines, and additional key-words) :

2012 – Black Bread (Pa Negre) (2010)

A naturalistic, but haunted, story of a child’s perspective on betrayal, sex and anger

Civil war – Childhood – Respect – Reprisal – Poverty – Loyalty


2013 (UK) – Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008)

Movingly mixing documentary, acting, and faux-documentary to dig into past pain

Bombs – Barcelona – Dante – Time – Heights – History


2012 – The Body in the Woods (Un Cos Al Bosc) (1996)

An unfolding with turns, twists and unprincipled practices

Sexual orientation – Investigation – Murder – Disguise – Corruption – Desire


2013 (UK) – The Forest (El bosc) (2012)

An account of a civil war through how the hated better-off classes fared

Magical realism – Twisted love – Collectivization – Other worlds – Symbolism – Unreal feast


2012 – The Night Elvis Died (La Nit Que Va Morir L’Elvis) (2010)

Finding the truth, when it is well hidden, by intuition and insight

Mental-health stigma – Friendship – Corruption – Blood – Unreality – Amnesia


2013 (UK) – The Redemption of the Fish (La redempció dels peixos) (2013)

Connectedness and disconnection, reality and illusion, in Venice

Contact – Closeness – Deceit – Truth – Reflection – Ripple


2012 – V.O.S. (2009)

A film within a film – or is one as real as the other ?

Acting – Film-making – Real time – Couples – Attraction – Meta-textuality


2012 – Warsaw Bridge (1990)

The whirl / ennui of yet another publishing event, and what it leads to

Connections – Publishing – Society – Glamour – Politics – Water


End-notes

¹ It had two screenings, at the second of which the film’s director, Óscar Aibar, was in attendance and answered questions.


² For one thing, Penélope Cruz (easily the best part of the film, and whose deserving an Academy Award (for María Elena) was undeniable) and her now husband Javier Bardem (by no means the worst), although Spanish, are not from what (since 1978) has been an Autonomous Community or ’nationality’ within Spain.

For another, according to the trivia of Wikipedia’s web-page for VCB, Allen had funding for a film to be shot in Spain, and so adapted a script that he had written years before, which was set in San Francisco : judge for oneself what Catalan (or even properly Spanish) feel one has from the film – and, more importantly, whether the character of Juan Antonio (Bardem) resembles a convenient stereotype of Mediterranean mores (to drive the plot in a rather Jamesian, ingénues-abroad way)…



If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

Paul : The distinction of being not just a bore, but a boor

This is a review of Midnight in Paris (2011)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

This is a review of Midnight in Paris (2011)

People have, apparently, likened this film to Manhattan (1979), which they mean in a back-handed way, as saying that Allen has returned to form, but this view is wrong on two counts: Allen may have made occasional recent films (e.g. Match Point (2005)) that do not work (or only work clunkily), but he has never lost his form; and Midnight has almost nothing, opening montage excepted, in common with Manhattan (or, for that matter, Annie Hall (1977), the other chosen point of comparison – why choose two films made more than thirty years ago ?).

Taking each point in turn, there is nothing to be apologetic about in either Whatever Works (2009), perfectly suiting Larry David, or You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010), although probably less successful for reasons of plot – Midnight is not a welcome recovery, but simply surpasses them both.

The wide situational and character sweep of Midnight is also nothing like that of Annie or Manhattan, which are arguably more like chamber music than this piece, which, if not a symphony, has clear claims on being a concerto.

In addition, it is not as if Paris has not been the backdrop before, unless people have already forgotten Everyone Says I Love You (1996), and it is common knowledge that Allen is truly American in feeling the French capital’s charm and attraction – just as he does London’s very different pull.


Midnight is not perfect, either, but there are some very good elements to it, some of which look back in the canon: for example, the lead character, Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), has definite similarities, not just in mannerisms and pacing, with Kenneth Branagh as fellow writer Lee Simon in Celebrity (1998). Such figures, if not Allen-substitutes per se in the films in which he does not (choose to) cast himself, function in the same pivotal sort of way, and often have the pick of the lines. Taking that further, Lee, as does Gil, finds himself in an exciting new world that he does not know, but it is one of elitism and opportunity – Gil has opportunity, perhaps, but of a different kind..

The film feels very close to Allen’s short stories, and he very casually has Gil enter the world of the 1920s by being offered a lift, when he is lost, by a group of revellers in a vintage Peugeot: nothing overt in this transition, except for the bubbles in the champagne that they insist that Gil join them in drinking, and he is taken he and we know not where.

Thankfully, we can get away from regarding the scenario as magical realism (whatever it may be, though it little matters). For Gil not only gives us the benefit (probably partly because he is tired after an evening of wine-tasting, in which he favoured quantity over quality) of letting us be several steps ahead, but also because, just because of the dramatic irony, we can watch his reactions of disbelief more closely. (As the film goes on, they may, however, do Allen fewer favours : how few even know that Eliot’s initials stand for Thomas Stearns, let alone would blurt out the names ?)

Yes, it is just a given that this travel to the earlier decade happens, and that, although Gil can repeat the experience, he cannot explain it to anyone in his own time. (As is usual, e.g. Lucy first visiting Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.) Yet it is never just a shared magical assumption about the nature of the world, unless one includes the viewer.

The feel of the era is good, which, when this is not an art-historical recreation, is what matters, but Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) could still have had a chance to shine more with a less functional role (which may have fallen prey to editing): after all, Stein herself was no mere editor or midwife to other’s creations, and was just as much a character as Hemingway and Dalí, in particular, are shown to be. (As to whether she would have called them ‘crazy Surrealists’, one is less sure.)

With Adriana (Marion Cotillard), one is less sure whether it is that she gives Gil attention (which Inez (Rachel McAdams), though she is also sexy, seems less keen to do), as that she can claim Modigliani and Braque as lovers (in this film, at least), that draw him to her company : let alone the t.v. series, Goodnight, Sweetheart dealing with such a theme, it is at the centre of The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and Allen’s early story ‘The Kugelmass Episode’ (first collected in Side Effects).

As a parable of what one can and cannot have, Paris of the 1920s may be where Gil would have himself be, but he has not foreseen that it might not be everyone’s choice, and he finds himself making other choices for the future instead.

Where the film really does not work is with facts about the contemporary literary and artistic circles, and, if one were the ‘pseudo-intellectual’ whom Gil dubs the very irritating character of Paul (who is of a type whom Allen likes creating, and does so well*), one would have had them to hand in the screening :

Not that it matters, because it may be that all this is Gil’s imagination, and that he is capable of being confused about facts as even Paul (who apparently confounds the figures of Rodin’s wife and mistress, and then insists that the guide is wrong**): if so, then, as with a dream, or as with psychosis (the explanation offered by Inez for Gil’s behaviour and utterances), what he experiences is the product of his will and mind.

In a dream, it is just as much we who are in the dream, creating the people whom we meet, be they Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, or Papa Hemingway (obviously not then called that, but that is how Gil relates to the man whom he has met). One curiosity is that, except for the party to which Gil is first taken, everyone is dressed much more casually than photographs show was usual at that time. Another is that, when it comes to Buñuel, Allen has made him a rather sullen character, and with no suggestion, around the table, that Dalí and he are – or are to be – film-makers together (in Un Chien Andalou (1929). Largely as a private joke, because few might know the reference, Allen has Gil give Buñuel the essential details of the plot of The Exterminating Angel (1962) (which are also supposed to be dealt with in a scene within L’Age d’Or), but Buñuel rebuff him with very unreceptive questions about why that would or would not happen – as if he has not got a Surrealist bone in his body.

This does not seem to suggest that we believe that Gil is dreaming, even if what he experiences is a deep wish on his part, but rather that too much licence has been taken with showing this period, probably in an attempt not to confront an audience with the truth, that the free and easy Surrealists and other artists of the time were to be found in suit and tie.



End-notes


* E.g. Alan Alda as Lester in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). (Alda is also in Everyone Says.)


** However, it seems that Rodin did nothing as bourgeois as intending that either woman – let alone any of the others ! – could contemporaneously claim to be married to him: it was only after knowing Rose Beuret for 53 years that, in 1917, the year in which they both died (she just two weeks afterwards), they married.

By then, Camille Claudel, the other woman, had already been confined to a psychiatric unit for more than twenty years, following a breakdown when Rodin and she split up in 1898, and died there in 1943.


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

Pasta made from durum wheat

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

5 May

Perhaps we have become accustomed to this assertion

I don't doubt its truth, but - except through familiarity with the fact that pasta-packets usually make it - I have no notion what it means (and so wonder whether that might be true of most of us), any more than if it stated, with just as much specificity*, made from wheat grown in Co. Durham (or in Dumbartonshire).

Unrelatedly, a woman from The Czech Republic** gave my parents what my mother called 'a peck on the cheek' - not spotting that it could have been descrbed as a Czech on the peak, if they had been on an eminence.

And what about the word surreal (or even surrealist)? I do have to agree with what was mentioned in passing yesterday in that day's issue of The Guardian***:

'I feel the word "surreal" has been totally overused as a fancy word for weird'


For, having read a fellow writer's piece about surrealism in films, which was pegged almost entirely (for factual basis) on the well-known collaboration that was Hitchcock / Dalí (and with scant, if any, mention of the other collaboration, Buñuel / Dalí****, or of the former's significant career as a director), I despaired at what the author went on to identify as evidence of surrealism in more modern (but mainstream) cinematic works.

That said, there seems to be as little chance of stopping misuse of this word***** - so carefully employed to be in opposition to the boring or bourgeois - as of its beleaguered friends random, manic, psychotic, and (surely not for want of anything better to say) like.


End-notes

* A word that - I am led to believe that - T. S. Eliot, if he did not revel in it, used more than others did.

** My mother and father both resolutely, because instinctively, used the name Czechoslovakia in telling more about this woman.

*** g2, p. 8.

**** If Dalí is to be believed, that should be Dalí / Buñuel, but, it any case, they gave us, of course, A Dog and a Toilet (amongst other things).

***** Except, of course, by seeking to impose a totalitarian regime (one with a competent secret police!).


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here