Secrets and lies – behind glass

This is a review of The Past (2013)

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9 April

This is a review of The Past (2013)

The beautifully crafted script of The Past (Le passé) (2013), from its director Asghar Farhadi, reminds of so many strands of literature of the best kind, and all in a very good way (which is because the themes have rung down the ages on account of the issues that our lives together throw up).

Amongst them are : Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (and probably Ghosts), Chekhov in Uncle Vanya (or aspects of The Cherry Orchard, Death and the Maiden (1994) (adapted from Ariel Dorfman’s play), much of Michael Haneke’s cinematic work (not least Hidden (Caché) (2005), or Amour (2012)), to name some principal ones. (And it is only in the title that it bears any relation to Miranda July’s The Future (2011) (even if that film tried something of this kind*) !)

Casting, delivery, posture, gesture, editing – there is nothing to fault here, and the latter, with the other ingredients, means that there is never a moment slack at the wrong time, but, equally, we will be lingeringly with two men who have nothing to say to each other, and keenly, if awkwardly, wonder which will break by uttering something first, or abandoning the stage.

Marie-Anne (or Marie) is a far worthier role for Bérénice Bejo than that of Peppy Miller in The Artist (2011), and one where she can play a part that does not seem a caricature of itself. The Past also has Ali Mosaffa (Ahmad) and Tahar Rahim (Samir) along the other two sides of what is its often triangular heart, which is true all the time, because the centre of what we see is a form whose shape and structure change with time.

The presentation may be linear, but only in the way that, say, one of those Ibsen plays is. Thus, from the first moment when Marie spots Ahmad the other side of a glass partition that separates Arrivals from Baggage Reclamation and tries to attach his attention (before tellingly speaking to him through the transparent obstacle), we find that the past is an all-too-visible barrier in the reactions that are evoked.

In reacting to those three in this film who are sixteen or younger, it could be that acceptable discipline is viewed differently in France, but the way in which Marie and (to a lesser extent) Samir behave towards them in some scenes will shock. When, straight afterwards, Samir takes the time to listen to his son Fouad (Elyes Aguis) and hear what he says, he comes to a better understanding in a very moving moment together, and Fouad and he have then dynamically changed their positions in relation to each other (and, therefore, regarding the others).

Léa (Jeanne Jestin), who seems younger, has less of a role, but, when she challenges Fouad about the account of things that he gave to Marie earlier, the truth of their positions resonates. Likewise, Marie’s fury towards Lucie (Pauline Burlet, whose plausibility as Marie’s elder (16-year-old) daughter is undoubted) abates, as Ahmad knew that it would, but, as in a game of chess – where a player moving a piece can ‘reveal’ an attacking capability of another piece on his or her side, one answered question leads to another – much as steps in a dance (though, in literal terms, this is a piece of cinema that is refreshingly sparing in its score).

In The Past, there are references to depression, but they are no mere tokenistic ones, showing another experience in life that can drastically separate those having it from the world and from loved ones – which is not helped if family, friends, employers, and so on do not understand its capacity for suppression of feeling, even to the extent that nothing reaches through it or at all matters. For Farhadi’s dialogue shows that he knows what he is talking about, and includes scenes both when Marie reminds Ahmad of how it had been for him, and then when he, having remembered that time, talks to Lucie about what depression is like.

Depression is in this screenplay as an integral reflection of our lives, and so Ahmad’s restaurateur friend Shahryar (Babak Karimi), recognizing the pressures on Ahmad, points out to him that he does not belong in this place (he flew in from Tehran days before), here where the other barriers that, in a complex way, the film revolves are doubt, delusion and dilemmas.

Very subtly, without overplaying differences between West and East, Farhadi has Ahmad show that he can come alongside the others, relate to them, and help them to articulate and approach the fears that torment and threaten to overwhelm them. They kick and scream, and he may not always be right (mainly when talking about himself), but there is an empowering that they receive without necessarily appreciating that it came from outside them. However, as the ironic face of one of the impulses that can bring on (or heighten) depression, he is the sort of help to them that one senses that he could never be to himself when still in France.

Here, when Marie and he got soaked walking to the car, he does the right thing and offers to dry the hair at the back for her. However, he is distracted, and maybe he only offered because he thought that he should, and so ends up holding the drier in one place and burns her head – throughout, there are instances of people doing or saying something on the basis that it is expected (with Fouad a largely welcome change). Farhadi permits, amidst a narrative that takes us by surprise, these gentle moments of dramatic irony, when we momentarily see the course of things and smile, or snort with amusement.

This is a stunningly strong film and, agonize as one might that, under it all, it would fall apart and betray its promise, it disappoints in no respect. In short :

The Past is brilliant ! By which @THEAGENTAPSLEY means not yesteryear, but a masterpiece film just seen (once so far) at @CamPicturehouse !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 9, 2014

End-notes

* Another film that tried and, in other ways, spectacularly misjudged was the histrionic Dust on our Hearts (Staub auf unseren Herzen) (2012), complete with its own scene with paint...

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

You’ve fucked thousands of men !

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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2 March

This is a review of Nymphomaniac Vol. II (2013), and follows on from a review of Vol. I

A guess at Nymphomaniac Vol. II from @THEAGENTAPSLEY : does younger Joe's lack of affect suggest a Freudian father / daughter issue ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 1, 2014

In the catalogue of sexual possibilities*, Vol. II leaves an obvious one unexplored till late, and, even if it did not end as it does (its blackout over imagined action mirrors the opening), it would be hard to conceive (pun intended !) that a night of confession would lead to a radical resolve on Joe’s part, despite the alleged merits of a problem shared.

There are certainly plays that have us believe in the redemptive possibilities of talking till dawn or the like (and, equally, there is Chekhov and works such as Uncle Vanya), and enough of the dialogue even smacks of the stage (both now, between Joe and Seligman, and between Joe and others in her recollection) : whatever therapy goes on here, with what Joe calls Seligman’s digressions (and, as the review of Vol. I identifies in him, her accusing him of not listening), seems like Long Day’s Journey into Night.

The credits confirm that the films were shot in continental Europe, Nordrhein-Westfalen (in Germany) and in Belgium (Ghent ?), despite the ostentatious show of modern-day fivers, and the one-pound notes that ceased circulation in the early 1980s and their predecessors, whereas all that establishes the possibility of Britain is Stacy Martin’s RP way of being matter of fact as younger Joe, and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s very obviously British – if less class-ridden – tones.

Perhaps Lars von Trier seriously intends by these means to pass off other countries as the UK, but the whimsicality of the currency is matched by having Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård) see a conflagration that he does not know about or which Joe has yet to put in context : it is on the screen, and it is as if he reads it from Joe’s mind, just as he does when he decodes her secular transfiguration with The Whore of Babylon and the promiscuous wife of a Roman Emperor. Finding meanings, interpreting things, he seems to live in his head, whereas Joe, if not in her heart, then in her body and its sensations.

In fact, she seems to go to the opposite extreme from being bookish and knowing what everything is, and in her Martin incarnation especially sounds often not so much ironic, as maybe she is meant to be in a ‘cute’ sort of way, as vacuous. Yet in this film we are meant to believe that she is earning at a level where she can make a payment of £1,000 per month beyond the cost of living – or maybe that just sounded a good sum to von Trier, and he does not realize what her salary would have to be…

The film likes to run the gamut of filmic techniques, perhaps just in case we are getting stale, so stock footage of nature is used, which is just before the scene of levitation when Joe has her revelation, and another chapter is edgily hand-held, whereas the two-person scenes with Seligman and Joe have them occupy the space from all angles. Something that Joe says about the number of permutations of the leads of an eight-cylinder engine suggests that trying everything every way seems to be a drive that she shares with von Trier.

It certainly leads to films whose combined running time is a minute more than four hours, but it felt much longer than a night’s worth of narration** :

If @THEAGENTAPSLEY is not much mistaken, Vols I and II of @NymphomaniacUK need only have run to 3h 15mins, maybe just 3h...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 2, 2014

However long it ran, how was this film going to end, when all the talking was done ? With what might seem a cheap comment about what men really think about promiscuous women, not worthy of a typical man, let alone one of apparent education – and which then justified, after the fact, suspicions that all Seligman’s acceptance of Joe’s past actions had been insincere and for other reasons (and he, not Joe, is the predator with his lair and trap) ? What did that leave other than a shattered framing-device for a story of a woman who would say Fill my holes, but maybe had not much else to say, maybe was not always / ever telling the truth… ?

Cynically, if Seligman did not comprehend the nature of consensual sex and take what she said seriously, he had seemed as good a person as any to do so – or was the catharsis of just telling it all sufficient for this therapy to be of lasting value, despite the outcome ? Though the truth is that von Trier wanted to show us this, and chose the device of Joe telling it to Seligman (not her telling us) for its clear advantages, even at the risk of losing part of the audience (no doubt the less worthy part) for this second film.


Post-script

Lars von Trier thanks Andrei Tarkovsky in the credits : is this an acknowledgement, as seems to be the case, that the Bach work for organ that he uses was employed to such effect in Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice (1986) ?


End-notes

* Seen or mentioned are anal sex, masturbation, sadomasochism, lesbian sex, oral sex, double penetration, inter-racial sex, rape, dice sex, masturbating in public, and even intercourse.

** Apparently, the present films originate in response to an edit down to just 90 minutes.


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

Ain't misbehavin'

This is a review of August, Osage County (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

12 February

This is a review of August, Osage County (2013)

Just hearing the dialogue of the trailer, it had been clear that this film was a mess, and not a very appealing one. Still, though one chose not to face it in the case of Polanski’s Carnage (2011), some tasks cannot be ducked.

Quite apart from the fact that this film is not very cinematic in nature, sometimes it is just inadequately or even poorly shot – opening shots of landscape to set the scene do not, of course, have to be vibrantly beautiful, but these were mediocre, whereas a different unit, later in the film, produced some very nice work in and around the lake, and another ambiently showed when Little Charlie (Benedict Cumberbatch) is met by from the coach by his father, Charlie Aiken (Chris Cooper).

Inside the house, another sequence of Barbara (Julia Roberts) lying, rising, going out through the screen-door, and birds flying was all nicely filmed. Compare that with the distracting variable focus around the infamous lunch table, and no doubt some of the time the back of the chair was sharp so that Violet (Meryl Streep) was in soft focus, but other times her wrinkles were crisp, and there seemed no rhyme or reason as to what the camera was most on from one shot to the next. In this respect, this must take some beating as an entirely arbitrary approach that acts against concentrating on the swordplay.

It may not be from a very pretty play, but, although it does not need to please the eye, why does August : Osage County offend it so much ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 12, 2014

Some of the lighting and composition of shots was not much better. No, not every shot need be composed so that it gives one an aesthetic thrill, but the sequence after the three sisters come out of the conservatory, and Violet tells her tale about the boots, is clunkiness itself, worse than many a holiday snap – if you have a visual medium, you cannot just offend the eye to feed the ear with dialogue and a faltering speech, as you might on the stage.

Tracy Letts is credited with the screenplay from her own stage-work, but, in the translation, she has in no way freed it just because there are cars (overtaking cars, even), a gathering at the Baptist church, and a few other moments outdoors. Some might say that the paucity of life outside the restless confines of the house throws one back on its claustrophobic quality and intensifies it, but, equally, it could have the effect of stressing the stage-bound nature of the writing, conception and direction.

Streep and Roberts are both nominated for awards, which seems to send the message that people who shout, say ‘fuck’ a lot, and declare that they are in charge are the best at acting. As to whether the repetitive lines given to Roberts, urging Streep ‘to eat the fish, bitch’, represent the heights of dramatic inspiration or its nadir may divide opinion, but it all seems to be about to set off the fuse off another lunch scene when, starting with Ivy (Julianne Nicholson), three plates of fish are dashed to the ground :

Which is the essential message, If you smash your food on the floor, I’m damned if I’m not going to do the same, more loudly and messily, if possible. Against all this rebellion, the best speech from Aiken was when he tells his wife, Violet’s sister, that they will not make it to their thirty-ninth anniversary unless she changes. Which begs, of course, the question how he ever made it to the thirty-eighth, and Violet’s husband Beverly (Sam Shepard) survived as long, because, at the rate at which emotional and relational ammunition is being fired off in the compass of the film, even the grass that is supposed to get Aiken through would have worn thin.

The plot tries to be like an Ibsen play, with secrets from the distant past back to haunt, let alone like Chekhov (Violet being in the position of Firs in The Cherry Orchard ?), and all this ‘truth-telling’ that Violet indulges in makes the stressful wedding reception in Melancholia (2011) seem like a walk in the park, except that one ultimately does not much care, because the film frankly does not, whether she is like it because of abusing psychiatric medication, because of any actual psychiatric condition and / or whether the abuse has made it worse, and / or because it is just in her nature.

Yet what all that says is that it has all happened in the past, because we are told both that Beverly has disappeared before and Violet has been in rehabilitation, so nothing is different now, but we are expected to believe that severe home-truths, which could not be unsaid, are being told for the first time. Apart from a fleeting suggestion that Violet might be a Lear-like figure to Barbara’s suddenly tyrannical Regan / Goneril, which might have been interesting, some more actually powerful moments than the fireworks around the table are :

* When Ivy tells Barbara and Karen (Juliette Lewis) that they have both left her to it, but she is going to New York (Three Sisters meets Uncle Vanya ?)

* Earlier, Karen’s monologue, overpowering Barbara in the car, and into the house

* Charlie meeting Little Charlie (as mentioned above)

* Ivy joining Little Charlie to watch t.v.


In this world, Lewis for turning herself into Karen, and Nicholson for a very nuanced performance, go unnoticed in the shade of the nominations, but not on this blog…


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