Man with a mermaid on his arm

This is a review of Leviathan (2012)

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16 December

This is a review of Leviathan (2012)

Thanks to going into Screen 3 (which was the right screen for this evening), I missed Leviathan (2012) at Cambridge Film Festival 2013, but what a treat to catch up with it, once I realized how to watch it ! - the film is like Samsara (2011), in that it is 'about' process, not about particulars.

Afterwards, a woman was complaining to the man with her that there had been no interaction (on camera) with the crew, but he said that he liked that. I agree with him, because that was not its purpose, and it was concerning itself more abstractly with motion, rhythms (which animate the mermaid of this posting's title), action... (Another male separately described the film as 'sensory', although, as I shall go on to say, I think that the sound part is more of a construction.)

The confusion at the beginning - what are we seeing, what is the off-screen voice saying, what is the man with the yellow chain trying to do ? - tends to make one feel that it is necessary to concentrate hard to work out what is happening with these men on a vessel at sea, catching fish (and other seafood). Actually, the opposite is the best approach, to treat this as a symphony of images against a sound-scape (whose artificiality becomes more and more evident*), because the more that one tries to interpret, the less that one sees. It seems better to let the documentary, and what it is showing at any one time, to come to the viewer, which certainly works with Samsara.

With this approach, the water, the sky, the interface between them, and the patterns, and the effects of the surface seen from below, all speak for themselves - when the one man with a hook holds up a ray for the other man to put one into its wings and cut them, watching this for what it is misses the fact that it is a repetition, a rhythmic restatement over time.

If we jump ahead to what the men in a line are doing, we miss them moving back and forth as (which is what they are actually doing, but we cannot yet properly see) they open scallop-shells, we will see the man's arm, and not the mermaid moving with and through him as he works : later, the scallops will be shown us, en masse, being stirred around to get coated and (we may infer) added back to the shell for display / packaging, and, in the meantime, we can just go with the currents of the task, part of what happens at sea on a craft such as this.

Likewise the bird that wants to get beyond the wooden barrier that presumably separates it from where the fish are (it apparently does not think to flap its way over and grab a fish in passing), where, if we watch what it does, there are cycles of effort, until it gives up - or the fish-head lying on the deck near an aperture, which, with the addition of other fish-parts that come into shot, gets knocked into the water, and we wait with this view until it happens again with another fish-head.

Some may not find that profound, and may expect something to tell them what they are seeing, but it chimes in with the Biblical theme, with The Book of Ecclesiastes saying that there is nothing new under the sun (and all, of course, are under the sun, with a time for living, and a time for dying).

The film puts the crew, the fish and other sea-life, the birds on a level - sustained, sometimes very close, observations of a man at the wheel, another operating hoists (with the effect visible by reflection in the screen in front of him), of the men sorting the fish according to whether they can keep them at all, or they need to be in this category to be deheaded and gutted, all of this fits them into the world where the gulls and other birds follow the vessel for what is thrown back as scrap (and the men do what they do not because they love processing fish, but so that the owners will pay them).

With what I call a sound-scape (I did not notice a credit for a sound recordist, so, when the two guys are cutting off the rays' wings, that is presumably foley, though that is not overtly credited either), we seem to dive in and out of the sea, and we hear sounds that are less like the expected sounds of a ship under motive power : none of it is actually music as such, but it is, when not directly mimetic of what we expect to see (we hardly hear the clear sound of sea-gulls, but we see dozens, even - somehow - from above), evocative, and almost has a life of its own :

We are told (by the IMDb entry) that Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel are the directors, producers, writers, cinematographers, editors, and, with Ernst Karel, in the sound department. Karel is credited with editing and mixing sound (captured by the cinematographers ?), but also with sound composition.


As for the old-script typeface** used for a prefatory display of three verses from The Book of Job, which talk about Leviathan, this - if it matters - must be a matter for the viewer as to what it means, but it does not seem unreasonable for the green-hulled vessel that we see cutting with its prow through the ocean is the Leviathan here.

(No, no ship of that name was credited at the end, although the film was dedicated to the crew of a list of other ships, lost off the New Bedford coast, and, whimsically, thanks were given for the assistance of Puffinus gravus (and many another Latin name) alongside the likes of Steve the Greek.)



End-notes

* I chatted briefly afterwards with a fellow reviewer of films, and floated (pun intended !) the possibility that, when one of the crew is shown seemingly watching t.v. (and nothing much moves but his eyes), the voice-over of a t.v. documentary (complete with adverts) about an unhappy crew, working at sea, may not actually have been the programme that the man was fighting sleep to watch. He is going to check.

** Reminiscent of the Gothic script of the inter-titles of Nosferatu (1922) ?


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

Öd und leer das Meer

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31 October

* Contains spoilers *

89 = S : 15 / A : 16 / C : 16 / M : 10 / P : 14 / F : 16

A rating and review of Nosferatu (1922)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

Mid-point of scale (all scores out of 17) = 9






In acknowledgement of the fine live accompaniment of Neil Brand (@NeilKBrand)

At the end of to-night’s screening, I quickly read through the music credits, some by Hans Erdmann, that had been used to try to recreate his lost score for Nosferatu (1922) : at the end, one of the (excessively ?) summery themes that had been present at the start recurs as Hutter arrives back and kisses Ellen. Not a mood that lasts, although it appeared that Hutter had raced Count Orlok’s ship to Wisborg to protect her from him, which he then (save merely being there) does not do, even when she points out Orlok’s face at the window and says that he is there night after night – or seems powerless to do.

Continuing with the music, for the moment, one piece, a frivolous one (popularly given an accompaniment in the tapping of typewriter keys ?), is used when the letter from Hutter reaches home, seemed quite out of place for anyone with a familiarity with the reception of popular classical music to use. It was then that I realized with certainty that various compositions had been compiled, for the sub-Brahmsian summery and romantic music might have been written for this film, set in 1838.

Some instruments, maybe inevitably, came to the fore in the scoring, such as the xylophone, bass-drum, double-bass, and even a bass clarinet, as did a ground-bass, a creepy series of rising intervals, and chiming effects. All in all, though the film has to have an accompaniment, I felt that Neil Brand’s live playing at Cambridge Film Festival felt as though it did far more with far less :

We are several times shown, in an intertitle, the warning not to let the shadow of Nosferatu be cast upon one, and this score, at times, felt as though it were not just casting a shadow on the film, but overpowering it. The beauty of what Brand improvised – to continue this theme of choking – is that it allowed the film space to breathe, did not overlay the visual element with too much heavy meaning.

There is much meaning to be had here, with beautiful images of The Empusa at sea, and of the waves meeting the sea at Wisborg, where (amidst the iron memorials) Ellen likes to be, looking out at the water : for sheer beauty of the cinematography, these shots deserve to be relished.

Paper communications between Knock and Orlov in alchemical, magical symbols – such as one might get by putting a page of plain text in the font of that name – are but part of what is going on, since Knock telepathically knows when The Master is on the sea, getting nearer, or is dead.

Ellen, too, receives communication at a distance. When she sits up in bed at the time when fearful Hutter (who even tries to hide under the duvet) is about to be attacked in bed, she cries out – the doctor comes, and says that it is disturbances of the blood, blood on which Orlok feeds, of course, and is about so to do on her husband’s. Later, when both men are heading for Wisborg (there must be something missing that explains how Hutter knows that he is imprisoned), there is a sense, when Ellen calls out that ‘He is coming’ and she will go to him, she may no longer mean Hutter…

At the beginning, we see Hutter’s carefree expressions, but his delight in surprising Ellen and swirling her around before presenting her with the bouquet that he has picked is balanced by her asking why he killed the pretty flowers, suggesting a disposition to the melancholic, as may her appearance, her hair.

Hutter may not later choose the best language, by saying that he is going to the land of thieves and spectres, to make her feel assured of his safety (one feels that he is playing, although perhaps knowing that he plays with what he does not understand : his dashing the book to the ground after the night at the inn suggests denial), but he seems apt to rush off and leave her just like that. However, not just, one feels, that no woman in those times would be left alone, she is put in the care of the Harding couple, where she turns out to be a sleepwalker, who could have come to grief, if Harding had not caught her when she falls.


So, Ellen’s case maybe is not be taken superficially, and maybe the connection that Orlov, admiring her neck in Hutter’s cameo, makes with Ellen is some sort of unholy triangle of lust, where blood is not just sustenance (and he has tasted Hutter’s) : he wrote to Knock in the first place, because he desired a desolate property there – and where more desolate than these deserted warehouses, into which he can import his pest-laden coffins ?

He desired the property, he desired Hutter at his castle (just so that he could first feed on him, then lock him up away from Ellen ? Hutter’s papers, signifiying his agreement to the transaction, are never going to be returned, if Hutter does not leave), and he desired to be near Ellen and infect Wisborg. If Orlok has Hutter and Ellen behave according to his plans, then those plans have taken insufficient account of the fact that, in ein ganz sundlos Weyb, he desires what can destroy him.

The book from the inn, which Hutter finds with him at the castle, he tells Ellen not to read, but she does, of course, read it, and finds her fate. Struggling with it – and, importantly, not acknowledging that she has accepted it by symbolically throwing open the window facing Orlok – she disturbs Hutter, who has not even been able to offer the protection of staying awake to watch (which may signify that Orlok subdued him by taking his blood).

Significantly, he is sent not for an ordinary medical man, but for Bulwer, the Paracelsian professor (who has earlier been demonstrating the wonders of the Venus fly-trap and the like), and Hutter does not hesitate to follow the instructions. It is that he, of all people, will understand the nature of the struggle in which Ellen has been, not that she expects to survive it ? Of the triangle, Hutter is the survivor, and we have no sense of whether he can resume any life, as we are shown the destroyed castle of Orlok.

This is where I ended with my thinking in the other review – that there is, somehow, a sympathy for the vampyr, who poetically seeks out what is most likely to destroy him, in Ellen as the sinless sacrifice (the translation mistranslates ‘Weyb’ as ‘virgin’). His stiff, occasionally slightly hesitant demeanour, the doors, hatches and coffin-lids that open and close at his command, and the true horror as his form becomes upright in the hold of the ship, and he emerges from its hatch : he has so much power, and yet risks so much to feast on the bewitching Ellen.

A truly poetical meditation on the self-destructive impulse, which disguises itself from its possessor in the form of an obsessively thought- and carried-out plan.


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

Sympathy for the Vampyr

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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13 October (updated 21 October)

The British Film Institute (@BFI) trailer for the release of the restored Nosferatu in its original version for the first time - due out on Hallowe'en - quotes Time Out as calling it one of the most poetical of all horror films, an evaluation with which I concur :

Lovely shimmering, chiming piano accompaniment from @NeilKBrand to a restored Nosferatu - fangs, claws, and rats with yearning (Sehnsucht).
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 28, 2013

It's a magical atmosphere in Screen 2 for @NeilKBrand 's @camfilmfest live piano accompaniment to NOSFERATU :)X pic.twitter.com/6ij8CztIXa
— Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturehouse) September 28, 2013

Nosferatu (1922), one will gather, was performed with live accompaniment by Neil Brand, and it was a very fine one :

In all of this, Brand brought out the passing of time with key moments when a clock strikes, for much in this film happens at a pace - Hutter's journey across to where Count Orlok lives - and much, when there is no immediate movement, has a sort of febrile negative inertia, a sort of immanence that the shining arpeggios or alternated chords bring out.

For example, when Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) energetically, boyishly even, dashes the book that tells him all the mysteries of the vampires to the floor, we suspect that he is trying to convince himself in youthful disrespect that all this is nonsense - and the music played out that half-hearted self-deceit. We, as observers of the film, are in a different relation to its subject, set, I guess, in something like the seventeenth century, when distances maybe seemed further and we did not have the same instantaneous media by means of which to learn things about the world, e.g. do a Google search about Orlok and his castle...

Pianist, composer, writer @NeilKBrand did not entertain us with Nosferatu, he helped us see it live, make it live : http://t.co/fCz3Dcj2iq
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 13, 2013

We would expect no less from Brand that his playing is humane - he does not imbue a live performance with qualities that are not there, but he so knows and loves this pre-spoken form of cinema that he can draw out the story, the visible emotions, the hidden feelings, and we trust him with seeing this film because he invests of himself and his talent. I am not sure whether, technically, they are themes or leitmotifs, but they recur, they remind us of earlier moments, and they help us be inward with the characters.


The film revolves around Nosferatu himself, who is involved in some land deal that will bring us back where we started and to his fate. In these times, some of the visual effects and the nuances of the film, for those not used to films of the time, will seem ludicrous, so there was a fair amount of laughing in Screen 2, but I hope that there was also an appreciation that there is a sort of obsessive love-story at play here, not just of a vampire for blood : the film's subtitle is eine Symphonie des Grauens, and a symphony requires more than one theme.

As a reviewer at IMDb has judged that Max Schreck (the name means something like 'fright'), who plays Count Orlok / Nosferatu, is Nosferatu, and he is both sinister, but at the same time desires beauty, in Ellen Hutter (played by Greta Schröder) : her character name means someone who keeps watch, and ultimately, by doing so, she defeats the infestation that responds to the control of Orlok.

As I say, there is an unfulfilled sense of longing, and this was in Neil Brand's masterly playing, showing that even the ugly Orlok can have desires in 'an Expressionist film' : if we can be in touch with the art of this time, whether the ambiguous states of mind in Edvard Munch's paintings, woodcuts and other prints, or the artworks and diaries of August Strindberg (not often enough thought of nowadays as a painter), we will see the action as something to engage with more seriously, and not limited by its technical constraints.


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