More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 October
A portrait of a man with traits of sociopathic disorder (and / or narcissism), which, because it is a slice of his life, might be a surprise to us – and to those on whom he preys - if they and we have never seen him before. That is the fiction, at any rate, but it does make you wonder whether A Brief Moment of Joy (Ein kleiner Augenblick des Glücks) (2013) may not be trying to educate us that people with such impulses exist : the close, however, shows that he is not wholly exploitative, when he had a free hand to do whatever he wanted…
That brief moment referred to the title may be right at the end, when he is no longer driven, and can just be, perhaps. The film presents Andreas, but is not a study of him – he is not real, because we cannot project his life beyond the confines of hiding keys in the leaves so that there is the shared experience of ‘finding’ them.
An experiment, maybe more than that, a mother who wants her son, in all seriousness, to praise her from a script of her devising (where she is the best mum in the world), a chance encounter in the forest, and then a repetition of the experiment, maybe more than that…
These words in no way tell one what Gasp (2012) is like, because it runs to 15 minutes and explores that time in a wholly unhurried way, as one might turn over pebbles on the beach, pick one up, let it drop. The contrast is with Brief Moment, which busies itself until, as I have commented, right at the end.
I regret to say that I felt that Remains Quiet (Die Ruhe Bleibt), with a similar running-time, tried too hard with a minuscule conceit, which was that of a crew making a film where the member of the crew delegated to block off one of the roads into the shoot will never get anywhere near (as we know that he and we will not).
What we can infer at the end is so banal and clumsily executed that it is surprising that anyone would trouble to make a film with such poverty in its concluding moments, whereas what went before, however observed, was just lacking in interest, and could not summon any up under any grander agenda of The Truth About How A Film Is Made.
Of this collection, the best came last, winning the audience award (A Golden Punt) for best short film. Inventive, engaging, spirited are just a few of the words that still come to mind : there is no point describing this film, the worst thing about which is the title (Rhino Full Throttle (Nashorn im Gallop) (2013)), and which just needs to be seen.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Monday 14 October 2013
Dolby sea : A Festival review of Thomas Dolby's film and performance The Invisible Lighthouse (2013)
This is a Festival review of Thomas Dolby's film and performance The Invisible Lighthouse (2013)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 October
Even if I knew the career highs or fortunes of Thomas Dolby, it would be of more relevance to knowing what he played before his film and after the Q&A (through the fog of forgetting, I am fairly sure that he set the mood for his film with a couple of thoughtful instrumental numbers), which I cannot now say, than to reviewing the film component.
In fact, I remembered him more from the videos of a younger he that he showed at the end than from any prior associations with his name, but it was clear that he was confident with the event that he was putting on, and happily hosted his own Q&A, usefully prefacing the answers that he gave with a technical run-down of how filming had been carried out.
Lighthouses have not only been a theme for British commemorative stamps, but the recent campaign to save the one at Beachey Head has made them newsworthy, when – after all those Blue Peter visits, and clambers up spiral staircases to look at a lot of mirrors and a very bright bulb – we knew that they had mainly been converted to be automated beacons. I do not know in what way the Beachey Head lighthouse has been ‘saved, but Dolby’s, on an island off Orford Ness that he excitingly secretes himself on, was simply turned off.
We sense his passion at trying to find out what will happen. Since, although it is soon clear that he is very familiar with technology, but not with the grey bureaucracy of Trinity House, which will not give him an answer, frustrations arise.
Not only that, but the land-owner (once the Ministry of Defence) apparently, so he told us afterwards, went back on its arrangement to let him occupy some sort of shelter on the night of the switch-off by suddenly announcing a fee that would have made his entire film’s budget much higher and giving priority to BBC’s Look East (or similar) : Dolby seemed to have become just the nuisance to them that we maybe always thought that they did not conceal suggesting.
A theme that ran through the presentation was memory. The family has connections with the Suffolk coast that go back decades, and Dolby tells us how he remembers the beam of the lighthouse as part of his childhood, just as things such as foghorns can be, because it would shine on his bedroom wall – or that is how he recalls it. I say that, because Dolby draws attention to the discrepancy between having a memory, from home, of seeing the roof ablaze of the building at The Maltings at Snape first used as the concert hall by Benjamin Britten (it was rebuilt, and in record time), whereas his mother says that the family was away in Oxfordshire at the time of the fire.
Then, in Rendlesham Forest on a recce, he wonders how the beam that he can see there could possibly have been said to give rise to stories of an unidentifed craft, because it is so weak, and so clearly from a lighthouse. However, although aware that the beam was brighter then, he evinces extreme scepticism at the stories that are still being told, and the stories tottering on stories, which he finds constructed from previous sources. Applying a principle of doubt, when his own memory of Snape burning is discredited, seems not an unnatural approach to take, but this element did seem like a diversion.
The filming is of very good quality overall, but of varying narrative force, and Dolby talked about the quad-copter and how he was able to use it for his project, including having a fellow user hide in the dunes and film him when he did not think that he could do too many things at once on his expedition. Most strikingly, he showed us (from its perspective) flying it in the Concert Hall, just before introducing the element about memory.
Any notion that the film is a fixed piece of work is belied by what Dolby was quite clear to explain when he spoke, because he adjusts it when on the road in this tour, and can quite easily move things around, so, for example, he might have the question of how reliable his boyhood recollections are set in some other relation.
The moments that the film really built up to were those of sincere and honest quest. Dolby’s problems with the closure have been mentioned : having to film from the mainland and without knowing when it was to be (only that it would be when the daylight sensor switched off the beam), he captures the poignant final flashes from this island undergoing erosion :
All, too, that was involved in the clandestine attempts to get close to the lighthouse, despite unexploded bombs, and take photographs, all very carefully planned with the tide and his visibility, have the same personal energy and interest.
As part of an evening, with musical numbers proceeding, and Dolby’s highly proficient live programming of looping and sequencing software, which he used to synch the videos to the tracks that he was laying down, it had enough to cohere as a whole. What he might plan for the developing the film outside such venues, and without a stated ambition to become a filmmaker in any broader sense, is unclear.
However, it had been a successful project of documenting this history, after Dolby found that he did not like the look of footage that a freelance made of him. Quickly and realizing how relatively cheaply useful equipment can be bought, he has produced this creditable realization, and it ties in with how, at the time of perhaps greater career recognition, he had, as I learnt this evening, been innovative with various technologies.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 October
This is a Festival review of Thomas Dolby's film and performance The Invisible Lighthouse (2013)
Even if I knew the career highs or fortunes of Thomas Dolby, it would be of more relevance to knowing what he played before his film and after the Q&A (through the fog of forgetting, I am fairly sure that he set the mood for his film with a couple of thoughtful instrumental numbers), which I cannot now say, than to reviewing the film component.
In fact, I remembered him more from the videos of a younger he that he showed at the end than from any prior associations with his name, but it was clear that he was confident with the event that he was putting on, and happily hosted his own Q&A, usefully prefacing the answers that he gave with a technical run-down of how filming had been carried out.
Lighthouses have not only been a theme for British commemorative stamps, but the recent campaign to save the one at Beachey Head has made them newsworthy, when – after all those Blue Peter visits, and clambers up spiral staircases to look at a lot of mirrors and a very bright bulb – we knew that they had mainly been converted to be automated beacons. I do not know in what way the Beachey Head lighthouse has been ‘saved, but Dolby’s, on an island off Orford Ness that he excitingly secretes himself on, was simply turned off.
We sense his passion at trying to find out what will happen. Since, although it is soon clear that he is very familiar with technology, but not with the grey bureaucracy of Trinity House, which will not give him an answer, frustrations arise.
Not only that, but the land-owner (once the Ministry of Defence) apparently, so he told us afterwards, went back on its arrangement to let him occupy some sort of shelter on the night of the switch-off by suddenly announcing a fee that would have made his entire film’s budget much higher and giving priority to BBC’s Look East (or similar) : Dolby seemed to have become just the nuisance to them that we maybe always thought that they did not conceal suggesting.
A theme that ran through the presentation was memory. The family has connections with the Suffolk coast that go back decades, and Dolby tells us how he remembers the beam of the lighthouse as part of his childhood, just as things such as foghorns can be, because it would shine on his bedroom wall – or that is how he recalls it. I say that, because Dolby draws attention to the discrepancy between having a memory, from home, of seeing the roof ablaze of the building at The Maltings at Snape first used as the concert hall by Benjamin Britten (it was rebuilt, and in record time), whereas his mother says that the family was away in Oxfordshire at the time of the fire.
Then, in Rendlesham Forest on a recce, he wonders how the beam that he can see there could possibly have been said to give rise to stories of an unidentifed craft, because it is so weak, and so clearly from a lighthouse. However, although aware that the beam was brighter then, he evinces extreme scepticism at the stories that are still being told, and the stories tottering on stories, which he finds constructed from previous sources. Applying a principle of doubt, when his own memory of Snape burning is discredited, seems not an unnatural approach to take, but this element did seem like a diversion.
The filming is of very good quality overall, but of varying narrative force, and Dolby talked about the quad-copter and how he was able to use it for his project, including having a fellow user hide in the dunes and film him when he did not think that he could do too many things at once on his expedition. Most strikingly, he showed us (from its perspective) flying it in the Concert Hall, just before introducing the element about memory.
Any notion that the film is a fixed piece of work is belied by what Dolby was quite clear to explain when he spoke, because he adjusts it when on the road in this tour, and can quite easily move things around, so, for example, he might have the question of how reliable his boyhood recollections are set in some other relation.
The moments that the film really built up to were those of sincere and honest quest. Dolby’s problems with the closure have been mentioned : having to film from the mainland and without knowing when it was to be (only that it would be when the daylight sensor switched off the beam), he captures the poignant final flashes from this island undergoing erosion :
All, too, that was involved in the clandestine attempts to get close to the lighthouse, despite unexploded bombs, and take photographs, all very carefully planned with the tide and his visibility, have the same personal energy and interest.
As part of an evening, with musical numbers proceeding, and Dolby’s highly proficient live programming of looping and sequencing software, which he used to synch the videos to the tracks that he was laying down, it had enough to cohere as a whole. What he might plan for the developing the film outside such venues, and without a stated ambition to become a filmmaker in any broader sense, is unclear.
However, it had been a successful project of documenting this history, after Dolby found that he did not like the look of footage that a freelance made of him. Quickly and realizing how relatively cheaply useful equipment can be bought, he has produced this creditable realization, and it ties in with how, at the time of perhaps greater career recognition, he had, as I learnt this evening, been innovative with various technologies.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Sunday 13 October 2013
It wasn’t just Russ, with his exobrain…
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
13 October
Google and the World-Brain (2013) gave me a first notion – I believe – of what H. G. Wells looked and sounded like, a man so set upon technological development that he seemed almost blind to morals, with what he conceived as The World-Brain, and relatively dismissive of human worth when all that we needed was a big machine to determine what we should do
There the comparisons with Google Books have to end. However, as I find myself having mentioned in connection with reviewing The Taste of Money (2013), nothing in this documentary made clear how Google Books persuaded some libraries to allow it to scan works still in copyright, whether the libraries received a fee, or why anyone was so blind – into many millions of such scans – that anyone’s rights (the copyright-holder’s) were being infringed. And so, when the copyright-holders found out, and brought class-actions in the States (and in other jurisdictions), the whole question had first come before a US judge.
When I asked Ben Lewis, the film’s director, in the Q&A, did Google Books do as it did, did he think, to present the world with a fait accompli, he did not appear to disagree. Are things as they should be, in pursuit of some well-meaning higher ideal, if people’s statutory rights are compromised, because this case has highlighted the issue – and since people now, other than Google Books (some of whose scans were actually or virtually worthless on account of the quality), are scanning works in the aim of information-sharing on a global scale, but more linked to the libraries (rather than, say, selling print-on-demand copies made from scans) ?
All that I say about the idea of reading everything into a machine is largely this : read Jorge Luis Borges The Library of Babel, a story about a seemingly infinite library in which Borges foresaw the problems of the Internet, i.e. that it may be there, but, amongst everything else, how does one find it ?
And, also from that story, does the sum of all printed writing actually achieve beyond (although worthwhile in themselves) accessibility, and the prevention of a devastation such as occurred with The Library of Alexandria ? If Plato writes x is true, and then Aristotle writes y is true, where the two statements are inconsistent, what possible software can construe what each writer – in the original Greek text, which we do not have, only later copies – meant and what it – and we – should ‘think’ ? How construe, then, a writer whose work survives in fragments, such as Heraclitus ?
As vain a dream as The Singularity, which the film touched momentarily on, and for which there has been the sort of special pleading usually reserved to criticizing (or making) the claims of religion. (Some may judge that my personal view is closest to that of Internet analyst Evgeny Morozov, who also appeared in the film, and, when edited appropriately (which was lacking on one or two occasions), was able to make some very relevant points.)
This, though, is not just a documentary about books, words, but those in the field who work with printed materials and who have been affected by what happened :
* Calm director of the library at Harvard (Robert Darnton) and the former director of The Bodleian Library (Reginald Carr) – neither, as I recall, said they allowed copyright books to be scanned
* A slightly more excited US lawyer (Mary Sue Coleman, who is the President of Michigan University), who informed us about the progress of the case
* An impassioned Frenchman (Jean-Noël Jeanneney, who, at the time of the events that he relates, when Google Books made an overture, was director of La Bibliothèque Nationale Française, and started the counteroffensive)
* A knowledgeable and uncompromising German scholar (Roland Reuss, Professor of German Literature at the University of Heidelberg), insistent that what Google Books had done was wrong
Plus the people at Google itself (not Google Books, except for a very short clip of Luis Collado, Head of Google Books in Spain and Portugal), such as Sergey Brin and David Drummond, who talked about worthy aims in a somewhat too enthusiastic way to be aware of real-world limitations (see above)…
A film that informed me, and made me reflect. Most of all, I wondered at Google Books, breaking faith with all those people who believed in copyright law, and a judge who might, in his final ruling, determine that those whose rights were ignored are fixed with a bargain that is likely to affect not just them, but the whole world of copyright.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
13 October
Google and the World-Brain (2013) gave me a first notion – I believe – of what H. G. Wells looked and sounded like, a man so set upon technological development that he seemed almost blind to morals, with what he conceived as The World-Brain, and relatively dismissive of human worth when all that we needed was a big machine to determine what we should do
There the comparisons with Google Books have to end. However, as I find myself having mentioned in connection with reviewing The Taste of Money (2013), nothing in this documentary made clear how Google Books persuaded some libraries to allow it to scan works still in copyright, whether the libraries received a fee, or why anyone was so blind – into many millions of such scans – that anyone’s rights (the copyright-holder’s) were being infringed. And so, when the copyright-holders found out, and brought class-actions in the States (and in other jurisdictions), the whole question had first come before a US judge.
When I asked Ben Lewis, the film’s director, in the Q&A, did Google Books do as it did, did he think, to present the world with a fait accompli, he did not appear to disagree. Are things as they should be, in pursuit of some well-meaning higher ideal, if people’s statutory rights are compromised, because this case has highlighted the issue – and since people now, other than Google Books (some of whose scans were actually or virtually worthless on account of the quality), are scanning works in the aim of information-sharing on a global scale, but more linked to the libraries (rather than, say, selling print-on-demand copies made from scans) ?
All that I say about the idea of reading everything into a machine is largely this : read Jorge Luis Borges The Library of Babel, a story about a seemingly infinite library in which Borges foresaw the problems of the Internet, i.e. that it may be there, but, amongst everything else, how does one find it ?
And, also from that story, does the sum of all printed writing actually achieve beyond (although worthwhile in themselves) accessibility, and the prevention of a devastation such as occurred with The Library of Alexandria ? If Plato writes x is true, and then Aristotle writes y is true, where the two statements are inconsistent, what possible software can construe what each writer – in the original Greek text, which we do not have, only later copies – meant and what it – and we – should ‘think’ ? How construe, then, a writer whose work survives in fragments, such as Heraclitus ?
As vain a dream as The Singularity, which the film touched momentarily on, and for which there has been the sort of special pleading usually reserved to criticizing (or making) the claims of religion. (Some may judge that my personal view is closest to that of Internet analyst Evgeny Morozov, who also appeared in the film, and, when edited appropriately (which was lacking on one or two occasions), was able to make some very relevant points.)
This, though, is not just a documentary about books, words, but those in the field who work with printed materials and who have been affected by what happened :
* Calm director of the library at Harvard (Robert Darnton) and the former director of The Bodleian Library (Reginald Carr) – neither, as I recall, said they allowed copyright books to be scanned
* A slightly more excited US lawyer (Mary Sue Coleman, who is the President of Michigan University), who informed us about the progress of the case
* An impassioned Frenchman (Jean-Noël Jeanneney, who, at the time of the events that he relates, when Google Books made an overture, was director of La Bibliothèque Nationale Française, and started the counteroffensive)
* A knowledgeable and uncompromising German scholar (Roland Reuss, Professor of German Literature at the University of Heidelberg), insistent that what Google Books had done was wrong
Plus the people at Google itself (not Google Books, except for a very short clip of Luis Collado, Head of Google Books in Spain and Portugal), such as Sergey Brin and David Drummond, who talked about worthy aims in a somewhat too enthusiastic way to be aware of real-world limitations (see above)…
A film that informed me, and made me reflect. Most of all, I wondered at Google Books, breaking faith with all those people who believed in copyright law, and a judge who might, in his final ruling, determine that those whose rights were ignored are fixed with a bargain that is likely to affect not just them, but the whole world of copyright.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Witchcraft wages war on sanity
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
13 October
At least, of the two shorts screened before Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968 version), the second made it no longer possible to desire to watch / hear any more, even with the (admittedly minimal) enticement of more of William Burroughs, now as narrator. I am sure that the rarity of being able to see this projected* might have tempted some to proceed beyond around ten minutes…
When I exited from the screening, and was waiting for my companion, another dazed person who had come out asked me how much more there was, and could not conceive of around a further hour. Tellingly, he also commented that he would understand if they used The Cut-Ups (1967) at Guantánamo Bay, as he would tell everything that he knew :
Towers Open Fire (1963) had intercut footage to defy one to tell oneself any more than a basic story, which is what the Festival programme called a ‘vibrant mix of exotic symbols and playful violence’, the latter phrase being an attempted oxymoron, but I have no recollection in relation to what.
That purgative effect is in no small part due to the paralytic diuretic that was to follow, with its soundtrack that was so unbelievable in being irritated that it made a mere twelve minutes seem like an eternity, with repetition without respite of words such as yes hello ? (or was it hello yes ?), which only stopped to give way to such others as Is the effect still subsisting ? or How does that feel ?.
I have no idea whether the film ‘punches straight for the optic nerve’, because the auditory overload left little desire to look at the screen : my impression, before the intense audio left me internally screaming in the hope that it would cease, was that it was qualitatively more of the same, not flashing, multi-layered film frames and sequences, but a provocatively pointless jumble.
I have seen and heard William Burroughs now. I have no further need of him in the near future, I fear…
End-notes
* I have no doubt that it is on YouTube somewhere.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
13 October
At least, of the two shorts screened before Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968 version), the second made it no longer possible to desire to watch / hear any more, even with the (admittedly minimal) enticement of more of William Burroughs, now as narrator. I am sure that the rarity of being able to see this projected* might have tempted some to proceed beyond around ten minutes…
When I exited from the screening, and was waiting for my companion, another dazed person who had come out asked me how much more there was, and could not conceive of around a further hour. Tellingly, he also commented that he would understand if they used The Cut-Ups (1967) at Guantánamo Bay, as he would tell everything that he knew :
Towers Open Fire (1963) had intercut footage to defy one to tell oneself any more than a basic story, which is what the Festival programme called a ‘vibrant mix of exotic symbols and playful violence’, the latter phrase being an attempted oxymoron, but I have no recollection in relation to what.
That purgative effect is in no small part due to the paralytic diuretic that was to follow, with its soundtrack that was so unbelievable in being irritated that it made a mere twelve minutes seem like an eternity, with repetition without respite of words such as yes hello ? (or was it hello yes ?), which only stopped to give way to such others as Is the effect still subsisting ? or How does that feel ?.
I have no idea whether the film ‘punches straight for the optic nerve’, because the auditory overload left little desire to look at the screen : my impression, before the intense audio left me internally screaming in the hope that it would cease, was that it was qualitatively more of the same, not flashing, multi-layered film frames and sequences, but a provocatively pointless jumble.
I have seen and heard William Burroughs now. I have no further need of him in the near future, I fear…
End-notes
* I have no doubt that it is on YouTube somewhere.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Three short reviews
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
13 October
My Beautiful Country (2012) is a German production whose German name translates as The Bridge on the Ibar, and the English title refers to a Serbian national song that a group of Albanians who have been captured are asked to sing. We see one of them, Ramiz, given the chance to escape, but he ends up on the Serbian side of the river, and Danica, who has been widowed, takes pity on him when she finds that he has broken in.
Both Mišel Matičević and Zrinka Cvitešić are very strong and natural in these roles, and we see Ramiz develop in relation to one of her sons (Danilo), who has not spoken since his father died, whereas his elder brother Vlado has disaffection for life, and ends up behaving dishonestly. Petty jealousy upsets things and sets in train a course of events that provides a fulcrum for the story in the shape of the bridge. It is a powerful film that makes one sees how destructive what divides us can be, but ultimately offers hope.
With Hawking (2013), we had a documentary about the 71-year-old Cambridge professor that received what must have been a premiere, but was not billed as one. After a t.v. film in 2004, it sets out to be Hawking’s own account of his life, based on his script or early writings about his diagnosis with Motorneurone Disease.
The film used actors to represent some scenes, as well as contemporary footage and stills. All in all, just as the expanding universe (the famous Big Bang) was represented schematically by shapes and whirls, so, too, are key moments, with shots of parts of faces, or faces or bodies out of focus.
Once Hawking’s marriage to Jane had been described as breaking down in the face of a private life very different from a public one, much of the nineties and beyond was passed over quickly. So much so that one might be forgiven for thinking that the last thing that Hawking did was write A Brief History of Time in the late 1980s, not that he has made more discoveries about black holes recently.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy presided over question session with Hawking and various people such as film-maker Stephen Finnigan, but Hawking did not seem to be put at the centre of that experience, with Guru-Murthy’s back to him much of the time. Some strategically left before the end, rather than watch what – no reflection on the Festival – was quite embarrassingly weak.
Finally, Woody Allen was in thoughtful mood with Blue Jasmine (2013), with Cate Blanchett striking as a character a little reminiscent both of Tennesee Williams’ Blanche Dubobis (from A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)) and of the mother in Allen’s own drama Interiors, from the late 1970s : though we did not always relate to some of Jasmine’s posturing, and maybe Sally Hawkins as Ginger was a little more uncomplicated (with Hawkins bringing a genuine enthusiasm to the role), Blanchett had a poise and a grace that made her the natural victim of Alec Baldwin’s duplicitous arrangements.
For his part, he was a man one could easily credit as pushing the boundaries of how to use apparent wealth to create businesses on top of businesses – and the film ably walked the tightrope between Jasmine’s memories of a hurtful past and how we see her try to extricate herself from acknowledging it. Ultimately, when she is confronted with it, we understand what she did when she felt herself humiliated, and Allen kept that moment for us : nothing is quite as it seems, and we gather what repercussions Jasmine’s instinct had for all.
There are laughs along the way, notably in the manner of Bobby Cannavale (as Chili), but no one should expect anything near as light as Midnight in Paris (2011) (or, though, as dark as Cassandra’s Dream (2007)).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
13 October
My Beautiful Country (2012) is a German production whose German name translates as The Bridge on the Ibar, and the English title refers to a Serbian national song that a group of Albanians who have been captured are asked to sing. We see one of them, Ramiz, given the chance to escape, but he ends up on the Serbian side of the river, and Danica, who has been widowed, takes pity on him when she finds that he has broken in.
Both Mišel Matičević and Zrinka Cvitešić are very strong and natural in these roles, and we see Ramiz develop in relation to one of her sons (Danilo), who has not spoken since his father died, whereas his elder brother Vlado has disaffection for life, and ends up behaving dishonestly. Petty jealousy upsets things and sets in train a course of events that provides a fulcrum for the story in the shape of the bridge. It is a powerful film that makes one sees how destructive what divides us can be, but ultimately offers hope.
With Hawking (2013), we had a documentary about the 71-year-old Cambridge professor that received what must have been a premiere, but was not billed as one. After a t.v. film in 2004, it sets out to be Hawking’s own account of his life, based on his script or early writings about his diagnosis with Motorneurone Disease.
The film used actors to represent some scenes, as well as contemporary footage and stills. All in all, just as the expanding universe (the famous Big Bang) was represented schematically by shapes and whirls, so, too, are key moments, with shots of parts of faces, or faces or bodies out of focus.
Once Hawking’s marriage to Jane had been described as breaking down in the face of a private life very different from a public one, much of the nineties and beyond was passed over quickly. So much so that one might be forgiven for thinking that the last thing that Hawking did was write A Brief History of Time in the late 1980s, not that he has made more discoveries about black holes recently.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy presided over question session with Hawking and various people such as film-maker Stephen Finnigan, but Hawking did not seem to be put at the centre of that experience, with Guru-Murthy’s back to him much of the time. Some strategically left before the end, rather than watch what – no reflection on the Festival – was quite embarrassingly weak.
Finally, Woody Allen was in thoughtful mood with Blue Jasmine (2013), with Cate Blanchett striking as a character a little reminiscent both of Tennesee Williams’ Blanche Dubobis (from A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)) and of the mother in Allen’s own drama Interiors, from the late 1970s : though we did not always relate to some of Jasmine’s posturing, and maybe Sally Hawkins as Ginger was a little more uncomplicated (with Hawkins bringing a genuine enthusiasm to the role), Blanchett had a poise and a grace that made her the natural victim of Alec Baldwin’s duplicitous arrangements.
For his part, he was a man one could easily credit as pushing the boundaries of how to use apparent wealth to create businesses on top of businesses – and the film ably walked the tightrope between Jasmine’s memories of a hurtful past and how we see her try to extricate herself from acknowledging it. Ultimately, when she is confronted with it, we understand what she did when she felt herself humiliated, and Allen kept that moment for us : nothing is quite as it seems, and we gather what repercussions Jasmine’s instinct had for all.
There are laughs along the way, notably in the manner of Bobby Cannavale (as Chili), but no one should expect anything near as light as Midnight in Paris (2011) (or, though, as dark as Cassandra’s Dream (2007)).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Saturday 12 October 2013
Fruits of the forest
This is a Festival review of El bosc (The Forest) (2012)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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13 October
This is a Festival review of El bosc (The Forest) (2012)
A film festival is one of those rare places where you can talk to the person who has programmed films that interest you*, and, in this case, as last year, it was Ramon Lamarca for his Catalan films, of which I saw three (and managed one of those twice, the beautifully filmed and constructed The Redemption of the Fish (2012)), and it, with another, Eyes on the Sky (2008), were in my Festival top five at Cambridge :
The Forest (El Bosc)) (2012) has kept me thinking since, not since I did not have a chance to try a review until now, when memories have faded, and reviews tend to be shorter... In this time, there are antipathies between church-goers and the non-chuch-goers who largely make up the Republican forces, and between those who support the Republic and, those assumed to be Fascists, because they question it (they are conservatives). There is one notable exception, in the form of the man, who turns out to have falsified orders to protect a lone woman and her baby at this dangerous time by keeping a unit based at her property.
Another man, Coixo (Pere Ponce), is in love with her, and has been since childhood, but seeks to win her love by such means as seeking to starve her, although he has, probably for similar reasons, protected her from the worst excesses of the Republican forces. He and her husband Ramon (Àlex Brendemühl) and Dora (Maria Molins), who said that he would stand firm (and then fled), are the main characters in this drama.
It really wants to imply that nothing is as it seems - we do not know why the anti-Fascist forces are delayed so long until later - and Ramon has experience of another time that leads him to see many things differently. Effectively, although we do no not know what it was exactly like for him, he tells us that there are other worlds where conflicts are going on, and he learns humanity from this : that he has, as Dora urges, solidarity with the beings who looked after him.
Whether the strange fruit or alien creatures that we see distort our vision, I do not know (I hope not), but they serve to make another world more real (as I elicited in the Q&A**), and they also question our notion that everything is so clear on either side of a conflict.
End-notes
* I was interested that one character, Coixo, resembled Trotsky (and Dustin Hoffman) : it turned out that one influence that the training from the USSR had had on the Republican forces was to make leaders resemble Trotsky, by giving him as an example.
** In The Q&A, I referenced Diane Keaton and Woody Allen gorging themselves on enormous fruit (in Sleeper (1973)), and asked whether the director had had great fun designing the fruit. He did not answer as such, but said that it had been on a low budget, and that he knew what he had he had been doing when ordering it.
Read here, a review (with spoilers) from a colleague at TAKE ONE, Robbie Griffiths
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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 :
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...
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)
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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)
Friday 11 October 2013
My sweet banana banana land
This is a Festival review of My Sweet Pepper Land (2013)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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12 October
This is a Festival review of My Sweet Pepper Land (2013)
@THEAGENTAPSLEY @camfilmfest the instrument is called Hang...;)
— Si Belle (@si83belle) October 13, 2013
The instrument* carried and played by Golshifteh Farahani (Govend) in My Sweet Pepper Land (2013) is not Kurdish, but was invented in the West (in the States ?) around twenty years ago**. Anyone who is under any other impression has been allowed to think so by the filmmakers, and by an Iranian actress so westernized that it appears that she appeared nude for Madame Figaro.
@THEAGENTAPSLEY u r welcome its from swiss...
— Si Belle (@si83belle) October 13, 2013
Which is not necessarily to say that the film is bogus, but it did not catch my attention, and felt like a spoof of some sort of a western : a man, Baran (Korkmaz Arslan) posted to a border area where he is intent, from his unfinished police station (with flaps of plastic that intervene on the action, and then conveniently tuck themselves out of the way), on asserting the rule of law despite the activities of bandits and of a group of armed Kurdish women intent on preventing them.
Probably hilarity aplenty, but no serious message to be conveyed, other than that the bandits are hypocritical gangsters feigning a religious basis for their wrongdoing, including persecuting Govend, largely because of her support from Baran. Change of profession, but not so far from the owner of the saloon (leader of the dancing troupe, at any rate) in league with the sheriff...
End-notes
* My meagre researches, searching for 'percussion instrument', and then with 'turtle', found not quite what I wanted - just, in filming this clip, someone else who does not know what this instrument is called...
** Readers may now find more, thanks to @si83belle, at Wikipedia (or elsewhere).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Wednesday 9 October 2013
The cage door was shut ?
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9 October (seen at Cineworld, Cambridge)
I suppose it is honesty, but what documentary about a writer, predicated on one of the last interviews in his life, is left ending with this exchange :
What do you think of the universe ?
What a ridiculous question !
The question came hard on the heels of ones that established that life after death or reincarnation are what Paul Bowles, the subject of The Cage Door is Always Open (2012), called ‘intellectual toys’. This phrase was not picked up on, whereas some might see such beliefs as superstitions and not intellectual at all – again, Bowles is allowed to say something and not be challenged on it, just as, if Daniel Young meant anything by his universe question, he might at least have defended it.
So far so good. Each of the three sections is prefaced by a shot of a page from Bowles’ most famous novel, The Sheltering Sky, in each case a division of the book with a quotation. The quotation and / or the name of each section might mean something to Young in organizing his material, but I was left not understanding his taxonomy, nor why he includes animations that are not unlike Gilliam’s style and encompassing (it seemed) elements of Bowles’ life, but rushes them past the eye so that the experience is largely subliminal.
In interview, Bernardo Bertolucci calls The Sheltering Sky a poem in prose, each page filled with the venom of Bowles, which he wanted to distil into the film, but he was keen to stress that it is ‘not a psychological film, not a pyschological novel’ : They go into the desert and disappear for ever, these were his words.
Other figures such as Truman Capote, though there is no one like him for his bitchiness (or the huge cat that roamed his lap), gave the information about Bowles’ life, marriage, sexuality, writing and drug-taking, but, as said, arranged under the headings of his most famous book (including a quotation from Kafka), in a way that seemed largely arbitrary.
The documentary seemed to have been a long time in the making since Bowles’ death in 1999, when we were told that the impetus to make it had been reading The Sheltering Sky, contacting Bowles, and being offered the interview with which this review began. What is clear is that the writers of The Beat Generation flocked to him, for some of the same reasons that made him like North Africa, but he had been there first, and they learnt from him. Whether the film conveys much sense of Bowles’ literary legacy is open to discussion.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 October (seen at Cineworld, Cambridge)
I suppose it is honesty, but what documentary about a writer, predicated on one of the last interviews in his life, is left ending with this exchange :
What do you think of the universe ?
What a ridiculous question !
The question came hard on the heels of ones that established that life after death or reincarnation are what Paul Bowles, the subject of The Cage Door is Always Open (2012), called ‘intellectual toys’. This phrase was not picked up on, whereas some might see such beliefs as superstitions and not intellectual at all – again, Bowles is allowed to say something and not be challenged on it, just as, if Daniel Young meant anything by his universe question, he might at least have defended it.
So far so good. Each of the three sections is prefaced by a shot of a page from Bowles’ most famous novel, The Sheltering Sky, in each case a division of the book with a quotation. The quotation and / or the name of each section might mean something to Young in organizing his material, but I was left not understanding his taxonomy, nor why he includes animations that are not unlike Gilliam’s style and encompassing (it seemed) elements of Bowles’ life, but rushes them past the eye so that the experience is largely subliminal.
In interview, Bernardo Bertolucci calls The Sheltering Sky a poem in prose, each page filled with the venom of Bowles, which he wanted to distil into the film, but he was keen to stress that it is ‘not a psychological film, not a pyschological novel’ : They go into the desert and disappear for ever, these were his words.
Other figures such as Truman Capote, though there is no one like him for his bitchiness (or the huge cat that roamed his lap), gave the information about Bowles’ life, marriage, sexuality, writing and drug-taking, but, as said, arranged under the headings of his most famous book (including a quotation from Kafka), in a way that seemed largely arbitrary.
The documentary seemed to have been a long time in the making since Bowles’ death in 1999, when we were told that the impetus to make it had been reading The Sheltering Sky, contacting Bowles, and being offered the interview with which this review began. What is clear is that the writers of The Beat Generation flocked to him, for some of the same reasons that made him like North Africa, but he had been there first, and they learnt from him. Whether the film conveys much sense of Bowles’ literary legacy is open to discussion.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
My favourite poem is ‘Twat’
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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9 October
Evidently John Cooper Clarke… Live, relayed from Tyneside (though Cooper Clarke is from Salford), was hosted by Johnny Green, who had been manager of The Clash. It comprised a short video of Cooper Clarke reciting to guitar accompaniment from Franky (Frank Sidebottom, alias the late Chris Sievey), a quick word between Cooper Clarke and Green, the main feature of the film Evidently John Cooper Clarke, and a Q&A.
The collaboration that proved to be made with groups such as The Clash was by no means inevitable, except for CC’s self-belief and making it work on stage, even though, as Green said twice, he was very good at dodging bottles. By sheer perseverance, Cooper Clarke got audiences to listen to him as an authentic voice of the late 1970s, and we heard from, amongst others, Kate Nash, Bill Bailey, Steve Coogan and Arthur Smith what he and poems such as ‘Kung Fu International’ and ‘Evidently Chickentown’ meant to them at the time.
The film used intercutting of different versions to show the variation in Cooper Clarke’s performance from slower to incredibly fast, and how he was on and off stage in seconds in a way that his admirers and supporters found very cool, as well, of course, as what he did in between. The fictionally located ‘Beasley Street’ also proved of lasting appeal, a name chosen by Cooper Clarke to give him rhymes.
In terms of his own taste, Cooper Clarke named The Ramones as the final word on music of the time, and we saw him in The Black Lion at Salford as he reminisced about his career.
One of his teachers, Mr Monroe, was an inspiration not just to him, but his whole class, by reading poems that appealed to teddy boys. In turn, ‘I am Yours’, one of Cooper Clarke’s poems, was anthologized, and reading it at school inspired Alex Turner, who both wrote a song in his vein, and has now recorded a setting of the poem.
As Cooper Clarke was proud to say, Ben Drew (also known as Plan B) has also included him in his film Bad Illusions, performing a poem that he wrote after reading Drew’s script. These are both part of Cooper Clarke’s come-back, although what remained unclear is how much time from the 1980s onwards had been unproductive for him, largely because of drugs and their inheritance, and there is no good reason why one would have wanted to be more explicit.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
9 October
Evidently John Cooper Clarke… Live, relayed from Tyneside (though Cooper Clarke is from Salford), was hosted by Johnny Green, who had been manager of The Clash. It comprised a short video of Cooper Clarke reciting to guitar accompaniment from Franky (Frank Sidebottom, alias the late Chris Sievey), a quick word between Cooper Clarke and Green, the main feature of the film Evidently John Cooper Clarke, and a Q&A.
The collaboration that proved to be made with groups such as The Clash was by no means inevitable, except for CC’s self-belief and making it work on stage, even though, as Green said twice, he was very good at dodging bottles. By sheer perseverance, Cooper Clarke got audiences to listen to him as an authentic voice of the late 1970s, and we heard from, amongst others, Kate Nash, Bill Bailey, Steve Coogan and Arthur Smith what he and poems such as ‘Kung Fu International’ and ‘Evidently Chickentown’ meant to them at the time.
The film used intercutting of different versions to show the variation in Cooper Clarke’s performance from slower to incredibly fast, and how he was on and off stage in seconds in a way that his admirers and supporters found very cool, as well, of course, as what he did in between. The fictionally located ‘Beasley Street’ also proved of lasting appeal, a name chosen by Cooper Clarke to give him rhymes.
In terms of his own taste, Cooper Clarke named The Ramones as the final word on music of the time, and we saw him in The Black Lion at Salford as he reminisced about his career.
One of his teachers, Mr Monroe, was an inspiration not just to him, but his whole class, by reading poems that appealed to teddy boys. In turn, ‘I am Yours’, one of Cooper Clarke’s poems, was anthologized, and reading it at school inspired Alex Turner, who both wrote a song in his vein, and has now recorded a setting of the poem.
As Cooper Clarke was proud to say, Ben Drew (also known as Plan B) has also included him in his film Bad Illusions, performing a poem that he wrote after reading Drew’s script. These are both part of Cooper Clarke’s come-back, although what remained unclear is how much time from the 1980s onwards had been unproductive for him, largely because of drugs and their inheritance, and there is no good reason why one would have wanted to be more explicit.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Monday 7 October 2013
What a puzzling thing to assert !
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8 October
If one has researched something (and somehow one's research was misguided), whether or not on one's own behalf, that is unfortunate.
However, the Kegelstatt Trio is no rarity (although Catherine Bott's interlocutor, from The London Conchord Ensemble, calmly treated it, in his response, as if it were), but it seems as though Miss Bott had never heard it again, after being on a judging panel that awarded a prize to performers of the piece, until now (Live in Concert from Champs Hill, Sussex, from 7.30 on Sunday evening).
I surely cannot have been alone in wondering why she was suggesting it recondite, when the very 'composed in a skittle-alley' claim (on which point she observed that the programme-writer miserably stated that there is no documentary evidence to support this account) draws one's attention to it at every time that Radio 3 bills it.
As it is, asking a question based on the premise that an unusual work had been unearthed, just made the interview appear an exercise in folly for the radio station as much as the questioner : as soon ask why Piano Concerto No. 22 is so infrequently played to lose credibility !
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8 October
If, @CatherineJBott, you have only heard the so-called Kegelstatt trio K. 498 once before, you mistake in thinking it obscure on @BBCRadio3.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 6, 2013
If one has researched something (and somehow one's research was misguided), whether or not on one's own behalf, that is unfortunate.
However, the Kegelstatt Trio is no rarity (although Catherine Bott's interlocutor, from The London Conchord Ensemble, calmly treated it, in his response, as if it were), but it seems as though Miss Bott had never heard it again, after being on a judging panel that awarded a prize to performers of the piece, until now (Live in Concert from Champs Hill, Sussex, from 7.30 on Sunday evening).
I surely cannot have been alone in wondering why she was suggesting it recondite, when the very 'composed in a skittle-alley' claim (on which point she observed that the programme-writer miserably stated that there is no documentary evidence to support this account) draws one's attention to it at every time that Radio 3 bills it.
As it is, asking a question based on the premise that an unusual work had been unearthed, just made the interview appear an exercise in folly for the radio station as much as the questioner : as soon ask why Piano Concerto No. 22 is so infrequently played to lose credibility !
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Eyes full of tears
This is a Festival review of Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008)
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7 October
This is a Festival review of Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008)
Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008) is not an overtly flashy film, but – deservedly – it does make big claims on our attention, and on our hearts. As can be seen, it is being shown not because it was made in the last year, but it is a UK premiere, part of the Catalan strand, again curated by Ramon Lamarca after a successful first appearance at the Festival last year, which made many friends.
I have written elsewhere about another Catalan film at the Festival (also a UK premiere), The Redemption of the Fish, which I watched twice, and I would – if possible – gladly have done the same with this film, but it is quality that the films have in common, not their subject-matter.
This one concerns the Spanish Civil War and the power of memory – what is best forgotten about when Italian air forces bombed Barcelona, and what should never be forgotten. One review that I have read (maybe this one) challenges how the film is put together, and its story and pace, but, for me, these are what most attracted me to it, for it uses acted scenes, documentary, and faux-documentary, e.g. to introduce the men who were in the anti-aircraft batteries that ringed the city on a number of eminences.
We see men and women, down in the shelters and tunnels that also served to wait out air-raids, interviewed by the same woman who challenges a visiting professor, apparently a Dante scholar and visiting for a conference, and pesters to get to speak to him – what some mistake for the monotonous course of this film is actually provoking us to ask ourselves (if we have not just read up all about it beforehand*) what is real, what is not, and what remembered, what feigned forgetfulness.
In this, we are as much in a confused state as the main characters (Maria (Gabriela Flores) and Mario (Paolo Ferrari), played with great conviction), who think that they know what is right, and not preconception, until life throws them up in each other’s way. After all that we have seen and heard, the closing scenes, and the beautiful reading that the professor gives from the opening of the Inferno, are painfully touching, speaking for all who have been lost.
For the second time this Festival, I was moved to tears just by that simplicity.
End-notes
* My approach to a film is that it should, for good or ill, stand for itself : if I need to have read the book or play on which it is based, it has failed in its own terms, and, if it cannot speak for itself, it is just images.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Sunday 6 October 2013
Taking over the asylum ?
This is a Festival review of Sieniawka (2013)
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6 October
This is a Festival review of Sieniawka (2013)
What can I say about Sieniawka (2013) that is not inherent in watching it, in sticking with it ? Put another way, anything that I say will be reductive or interpretative (or both)
I believe that I cannot review this film (this was its UK premiere) in any traditional way, even with a ‘spoiler’ warning, but that I just have to say what I know, consistent with not saying too much :
1. Just as Fulbourn Hospital is named after a village near Cambridge, so Sieniawka is a psychiatric unit named after its neighbouring town, and we see another place nearby, damaged by flooding, at the end of the film.
2. Director Marcin Malaszczak and I talked extensively during gaps in my schedule, when not simply socializing at the end of the day (and once some reviews had been written). Those who do not just read film reviews on this blog will know about an experience of working in mental-health advocacy.
3. Marcin’s film (I cannot call him by his surname) falls into three sections, of which the longest is filmed in Sieniawka and its grounds. I have already mentioned the last section, and Marcin seems to think that we need not see it as chronologically the final one, although how it is set up suggests that it may be.
4. In the Q&A, I referred to Mr Endon in Murphy and to other writings of Samuel Beckettt. In particular, in Watt there is a journey to Mr Knott’s house, a two-part stay there, and a departure, but the narrative is framed by Watt and Sam meeting and doing their best to converse in different ‘pavilions’ of some sort of establishment. Apparently, the likeness had been seen before, but had not informed the making of the film.
5. Some of the questioners wanted to declare what the figures seen in the first part of the film, or their actions, meant.
6. However, it had a clear provisionality to it, which, at best (and knowing that one was doing so), one could interpret. From the end (or earlier), then, one might make an inference about whose body is delivered where at the opening, but never be sure.
7. It does not follow from the agreement of the staff for filming to take place, or from gaining the trust of the residents, that filming them does not exploit them.
8. I am not saying that it does, but comments from some of the others were that witnessing the repetitive behaviour disturbed them, or that they did not see the need to continue watching the footage.
9. When Marcin and I talked about such institutions (the food being set out, and a watery soup ladled into bowls, did not look very inviting), he agreed that his film would be seen differently by someone as familiar with them as I, and that I probably ‘knew too much’.
10. The impression that I know that he intended to give was of a sort of microcosm, where the smoking room – and people’s efforts to ask others, who receive tobacco beyond a ration, to give them some – is a hub of activity.
11. I cannot endorse such a view when, here as at Fulbourn in recent history, there have been people there for 20 or 30 years : they are alive, but they do not have their own space or life, and how some of the staff were heard talking about restraining a ‘bastard’ who got violent was shockingly self centred.
12. We see some residents playing volleyball or handball, but with no ball. Maybe they are more clever than Marcin imagines, and are ironically putting on a show for the camera. At any rate, when someone serves, he has – as I asked at the Q&A – added in the noise of the ball being hit.
13. Apparently, the mosaic at the end of the film gives hope, whereas one viewer had found hope lacking (see paragraph 11, above).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Whiter than White Star
This is a Festival review of White Star (1983)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
6 October
This is a Festival review of White Star (1983)
You could not call it a Roland Klick* retrospective as such (Cambridge Film Festival did not), because (so I gather) many of his films had not been released in the UK. Not wishing to do a Jos Stelling, I decided on White Star (1983), and then, depending on how it went, maybe Supermarkt (1974).
However, I had, of course, not reckoned on making a mistake (going into Screen 3, rather than Screen 2), so missing the beginning of Leviathan (2013), and ending up with dubbed Klickery in Deadlock (1970), a film not on my list.
A desert, a guy who finds a dressed-up other guy, then takes more interest in his case and its contents, but hesitates – rock held high – to ensure that he does not survive, as if leaving him for dead were better. Second thoughts, going back, but the suited guy is gone, and holds him up. They drive off, arrive somewhere, only for the man with the upper hand to be easily overpowered. A mysterious woman. And so on, but all dubbed.
Did it seem bizarre, as the Festival write-up tells me that some had thought it ? No, not least because the word is overused, but really because it seemed arbitrarily wafer thin (to the point where I sneaked out, having stayed too long – until just after the title, because I had bizarrely thought it to be a preceding short that I had overlooked) who was in control. Hence ‘Deadlock’ ? Maybe, but the dubbing was killing me (even if subtitles were not then the norm) for its way of sucking the life (any of the film’s and mine)…
So Star, with its stark title, no longer seemed such a good choice, but there would be a Q&A with Klick. It, too, was supposed to be strange, but it seemed amazingly one dimensional in the way that Deadlock had threatened to be :
The opening scene is, I think, of Dennis Hopper (as producer Kenneth Barlow) trying to persuade Terrance Robay (as star Moody) to appear on stage in a club full of restless punks – either that, or of him, with his stooge Frank (David Hess), setting up for the latter to smash windows (which will later look as if there has been a riot), and arranging the foment of said punks. Oh, and, in arguing with the club’s owner, Barlow reveals that Moody is his sister’s boy. Nothing else do we need to know, and nothing else of significance emerges save from this starting-point.
Do we know why Moody trusts Barlow to be his producer, or why he goes along with this ‘White Star’ branding (with all its connotations of white supremacy, apart from those of space and of a burst of creation : it certainly is not Moody’s choice, though it is the best that the pair have to offer, even when Moody seeks to collaborate with a female vocalist (Sandra ?? Mascha ??)) ? Quite simply, other than probably having no other hope, no – since the conceit of the film is that Moody lives in Berlin**, the club would have been notorious, and he would never have agreed to try to play his synthesizer there.
The same objection is not dependent on being a denizen of Berlin. Since nothing in the film suggests that Moody is trusting (or, at any rate, trusts Barlow – except disastrously to take unspecified tablets in the back of a dangerously driven car when also ordered to change into his white suit), it hardly seems likely that he would not have objected to the choice of opening gig long before being there.
The only way in which this film works is if it is just a vehicle for a Hoppermonster, and we watch him barge through life like a giant game of PAC-MAN. Klick may not have hired him with that intention, and what he said about Hopper in the Q&A suggested that both that the man whom he had met before he arrived in Berlin, and what other people had said about working with him, had not prepared him for the reality :
Klick told the Festival audience (apparently, a story that he has told before), a coke story about Hopper, that, when he arrived in Berlin, the first thing that he wanted was cocaine, and Klick had to arrange something such that a man arrived with a briefcase every week with Hopper’s fix. The story went on : that Hopper was too high to act for the first part of the day, and too tired later on, but Klick had a clear two hours to get what he wanted from him (and, moreover, Hopper is scarcely off the screen).
Maybe, then, with the roles reversed, the film is a paradigm for making the film itself, with Hopper as the maverick star whom the director struggles to control, versus Hopper as the hell-bent producer, using all means and any to promote ‘White Star’ and ‘The Future’. A model of capitalism gone crazy in search of selling goods, but one that has really very little to say about why Moody goes along with it all and, say, sells the fittings of his studio (and shafts his black colleague) for Barlow to sell them for a song.
Glengarry Glenn Ross (1992), O Lucky Man ! (1973), The Color of Money (1986) – maybe (I don’t know) some of these films could have learnt something from Klick, and it is a helluva show from Hopper, but the ‘terrifying, unhinged performance’ (Festival write-up) is not enough, and Lindsay Anderson is careful to throw Malcolm McDowell into relief.
End-notes
* What sort of name is that ? I knew the phrase Das klickt nicht and the like, but still – perhaps he could develop and print a film for me…
** As we learn later, even if it may be a poor translation, since he is staying in a hotel.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
When we still had icebergs…
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
5 October
This film was shown in conjunction with a live relay from The Ritzy Picturehouse in Brixton, in which the host introduced Sophie Fiennes (who grew up watching films there), its director, and later interviewed its presenter, Slavoj Žižek
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012) is a very good film, but, for a documentary, a longer one at 136 minutes : a little in the way of some non-narrative features, one kept wrongly thinking that it was making a move towards resolution, but that is an element that will be less present on a re-watching, which it well deserves.
Not least when sitting in Row C in Screen 2 (where one does not have the distance on it), it is not easy to keep with Žižek, because, although he may sometimes be tongue in cheek, he is always quite intense. In addition, the snorting, touching the nose with one hand, then the other (which are not feigned – if they were, he did them in the Q&A), can be off-putting. I say this merely to prepare a prospective viewer, as there is much, much more that is positive, and which draws one in.
One attraction, as one might gather from the trailer, is a wealth of film material that Žižek references here and – sometimes in more depth than in other cases – whose significance he analyses. It ranges from pre-war footage of Chaplin (plus Nazi commentary that criticizes him as typical of what is despicable in Jews) to Freeing Berlin from around 1944, which tells the story, from Stalin’s perspective, of what led to that event (and even portrays Hitler and him).
Žižek has many other examples, which encompass David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945), Lindsay Anderson’s If… (1968), and Seconds (1966), as well as Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Full Metal Jacket (1987), and The Dark Knight (2008).
Where Žižek is amongst his most expansive is in pulling apart James Cameron’s Titanic (1997), saying how ludicrous Kate Winslet partying with the lower decks to be with Leonardo DiCaprio is as a representation of class solidarity, and how hateful the denizens of the upper decks are made out to be by contrast. Most of all, though, how out-of-sorts Winslet is doing little more than feeding on DiCaprio to regenerate her flagging energies, even if at the cost of letting herself be abused.
Not that Žižek says so, but an arrangement of mutual benefit. However, he does ask, as one would know from the trailer, what part the iceberg plays in the development of the love-story, and he suggests that a worse disaster was averted by the couple’s not disembarking together and splitting up after two to three weeks of sex. He also comments how Winslet saying words to the effect that she will never let go of DiCaprio are literally at odds with thereupon releasing her grip on him so that he sinks into the water.
Throughout the film, through largely effective dummy-ups, and to much amusement, we see Žižek in a lifeboat beneath the stars to introduce this section about Titanic. He is then, variously, in the head in Jacket, relaxing by some of the furniture from Orange’s Korova Bar, or even on Travis Bickle’s bed – as good a way as any to draw attention to the artificiality both of the medium (in the original film, and in this one), and of what it passes of as distinct, real things.
Of course, this method also draws attention to the words that we hear Žižek saying, not least when, back to Titanic, he ends the film with an assertion and a power salute, and to how cinema can teeter on having us believe something and showing us that it is contrivance. Which is partly what he appears to be saying about the love-story in that film, that the real-life iceberg dramatically serves to make enduring the love that he predicts would have quickly petered out without it – no one wants the iceberg for that, but predicating a film on a doomed voyage would only be done to exploit it.
Žižek, as he did at length in the Q&A, states his views vigorously, but seems to disregard the reaction of the audience of Titanic when it was released, which must have known, at some level, that (a) the love was likely to be doomed, (b) it was being shown a fictionalized / idealized encounter between the classes, and, as a composite of these, that (c) the order of things is maintained.
No matter, as there is so much to follow in Žižek’s analysis*, that one loses the impression of being on top of it, for it is also part of his thesis that we chose our dreams and that we are complicit with engaging with ‘ideology’. Punchily, by showing us a scene from Guys and Dolls (1955), where one of the gang impersonates Officer Krapky (?) and the others make excuses that are grounded in their upbringing, and contrasting it with footage from the riots in the UK in 2011 and what was said by some then about why it had happened, he shows the connection between ‘ideology’, life and art. With scenes from the suppression of ‘The Prague Spring’ in 1968, he draws the lesson from Titanic that killing off the uprising allowed it to live on as a dream, not what he posits might have happened.
Necessarily, because Fiennes has had Žižek talk to camera* and then edited it together for her film, the creative act is hers, but the polemic may have, in the structure and order that she chose for it and the takes that she selected, have had its dynamics altered : I failed to hear this in the Q&A, but presumably (nominally) Žižek endorses the film, if only on the basis of having produced copy that is grist to someone else’s mill.
End-notes
* Incidentally, he told us in the Q&A that Fiennes read all of his books, worked for months beforehand, and, as she told us in the introduction, on nine months of solitary editing. He stated that his part was to shoot for two hours per day for two or three weeks in two locations, and was graphically explicit about how irritated he got when he was improvising, asked, because of technical issues, to do a second take, and then Fiennes asked him for a third take, saying that what he had said the first time had been better. Altogether, a strange collaboration.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
5 October
This film was shown in conjunction with a live relay from The Ritzy Picturehouse in Brixton, in which the host introduced Sophie Fiennes (who grew up watching films there), its director, and later interviewed its presenter, Slavoj Žižek
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012) is a very good film, but, for a documentary, a longer one at 136 minutes : a little in the way of some non-narrative features, one kept wrongly thinking that it was making a move towards resolution, but that is an element that will be less present on a re-watching, which it well deserves.
Not least when sitting in Row C in Screen 2 (where one does not have the distance on it), it is not easy to keep with Žižek, because, although he may sometimes be tongue in cheek, he is always quite intense. In addition, the snorting, touching the nose with one hand, then the other (which are not feigned – if they were, he did them in the Q&A), can be off-putting. I say this merely to prepare a prospective viewer, as there is much, much more that is positive, and which draws one in.
One attraction, as one might gather from the trailer, is a wealth of film material that Žižek references here and – sometimes in more depth than in other cases – whose significance he analyses. It ranges from pre-war footage of Chaplin (plus Nazi commentary that criticizes him as typical of what is despicable in Jews) to Freeing Berlin from around 1944, which tells the story, from Stalin’s perspective, of what led to that event (and even portrays Hitler and him).
Žižek has many other examples, which encompass David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945), Lindsay Anderson’s If… (1968), and Seconds (1966), as well as Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Full Metal Jacket (1987), and The Dark Knight (2008).
Where Žižek is amongst his most expansive is in pulling apart James Cameron’s Titanic (1997), saying how ludicrous Kate Winslet partying with the lower decks to be with Leonardo DiCaprio is as a representation of class solidarity, and how hateful the denizens of the upper decks are made out to be by contrast. Most of all, though, how out-of-sorts Winslet is doing little more than feeding on DiCaprio to regenerate her flagging energies, even if at the cost of letting herself be abused.
Not that Žižek says so, but an arrangement of mutual benefit. However, he does ask, as one would know from the trailer, what part the iceberg plays in the development of the love-story, and he suggests that a worse disaster was averted by the couple’s not disembarking together and splitting up after two to three weeks of sex. He also comments how Winslet saying words to the effect that she will never let go of DiCaprio are literally at odds with thereupon releasing her grip on him so that he sinks into the water.
Throughout the film, through largely effective dummy-ups, and to much amusement, we see Žižek in a lifeboat beneath the stars to introduce this section about Titanic. He is then, variously, in the head in Jacket, relaxing by some of the furniture from Orange’s Korova Bar, or even on Travis Bickle’s bed – as good a way as any to draw attention to the artificiality both of the medium (in the original film, and in this one), and of what it passes of as distinct, real things.
Of course, this method also draws attention to the words that we hear Žižek saying, not least when, back to Titanic, he ends the film with an assertion and a power salute, and to how cinema can teeter on having us believe something and showing us that it is contrivance. Which is partly what he appears to be saying about the love-story in that film, that the real-life iceberg dramatically serves to make enduring the love that he predicts would have quickly petered out without it – no one wants the iceberg for that, but predicating a film on a doomed voyage would only be done to exploit it.
Žižek, as he did at length in the Q&A, states his views vigorously, but seems to disregard the reaction of the audience of Titanic when it was released, which must have known, at some level, that (a) the love was likely to be doomed, (b) it was being shown a fictionalized / idealized encounter between the classes, and, as a composite of these, that (c) the order of things is maintained.
No matter, as there is so much to follow in Žižek’s analysis*, that one loses the impression of being on top of it, for it is also part of his thesis that we chose our dreams and that we are complicit with engaging with ‘ideology’. Punchily, by showing us a scene from Guys and Dolls (1955), where one of the gang impersonates Officer Krapky (?) and the others make excuses that are grounded in their upbringing, and contrasting it with footage from the riots in the UK in 2011 and what was said by some then about why it had happened, he shows the connection between ‘ideology’, life and art. With scenes from the suppression of ‘The Prague Spring’ in 1968, he draws the lesson from Titanic that killing off the uprising allowed it to live on as a dream, not what he posits might have happened.
Necessarily, because Fiennes has had Žižek talk to camera* and then edited it together for her film, the creative act is hers, but the polemic may have, in the structure and order that she chose for it and the takes that she selected, have had its dynamics altered : I failed to hear this in the Q&A, but presumably (nominally) Žižek endorses the film, if only on the basis of having produced copy that is grist to someone else’s mill.
End-notes
* Incidentally, he told us in the Q&A that Fiennes read all of his books, worked for months beforehand, and, as she told us in the introduction, on nine months of solitary editing. He stated that his part was to shoot for two hours per day for two or three weeks in two locations, and was graphically explicit about how irritated he got when he was improvising, asked, because of technical issues, to do a second take, and then Fiennes asked him for a third take, saying that what he had said the first time had been better. Altogether, a strange collaboration.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Saturday 5 October 2013
Julian Orchard ? : A Festival response to The Orchard (2013)
This is a Festival response to The Orchard (2013) in Microcinema with James Mackay
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
6 October (updated 7 October)
This is a Festival response to The Orchard (2013) in Microcinema -
with James Mackay, at Cambridge Film Festival
Putting forward the work of prized pupils as if representative of a class or school, or taking the best figures to make claims for the achievements of the Tories in power (if not just inventing them instead, to make so-called welfare reform seem effective, even it is starving people into jobs), this is what is almost always nowadays called cherry-picking. (Cranes with a cradle and mounted on small vehicles are even called cherry-pickers, for no obvious reason.)
In The Orchard (2013), title and film alike, there is an attempt to distract attention from where the power in the latter comes from, by leaving out the word 'cherry'. Yes, we are meant to believe that the title derives from a real orchard in which a group of six amateur players (three men, three women) will perform an improvised version of Chekhov's play - even that is pretty vague, as if the instructions or invitation on which they are acting have been put through Waiting for Godot first.
However, it is hard to work out whether they are, in their factions, more heartily sick of each other than we become of the lot of them. Afterwards, we were told that all of the actors is performing a script, just a script where there is a good deal of bickering, largely disputation as to who will play which part and whether it has previously (in the film) been agreed - we were told in the Q&A that each, before and during shooting over just one weekend, was supported individually in playing a wholly unimprovised part by the directors, Clive Myer and Lynda Myer-Bennett.
That is as it may be, but none of it makes their carrying on engaging or with a plausible outcome, not even having them dine in costume. They have the excuse that they, the characters, are not professionals, but they want to treat what they have been asked to do as something to work towards, yet at the same time starting, on their opening evening, from such an open viewpoint, where female parts might be played by men and how to double is the least of their worries, that no one can reasonably believe that they will achieve anything, dressing as their characters or no.
The contrast is then with when they actually start looking at the text (which, previously, they have made almost a virtue of not having to hand), and we get cherries in the form of various translations of Chekhov. If, as we were told afterwards, The Cherry Orchard has outperformed any other play that we can think of, in numbers of times put on, it is small wonder that the touchstones of Chekhov's play will enliven the film, but they do not make believable that this factional troupe has somehow transformed itself and become inspired by, or just familiar, with their parts.
True, in the cacophony of their discussion and disputation when they have arrived (whose sound quality, maybe deliberately, was not very good, but such as to hurt one's mind with babble), we have every impression that they know the play and its characters. Yet, as noted, they refuse to go anywhere near the printed copies until the Chekhov is alive on their lips and in their acting. Maybe I blinked, but I do not know how that was meant to be credible.
In the overly long first part of the Q&A, before it was thrown open to the audience, we were told that Chekhov considered the play a tragedy. When I got to ask I question, I pointed out that it had been stressed to my class when we first studied it that he had called it a comedy (the Oxford University Press edition, we had been told, drew attention to this fact)*, but, rather than being comic, was it not toxic, because the same inertia that had stopped the family acting seemed to have infected the cast.
I was told that the directors interpret the play as being about 'change' - the change comes in because Lopahkin, who has had no one listen to him, buys the orchard to chop down for holiday homes. If that is 'change', it seems quite a regressive one to modern ears, even if, as in Uncle Vanya, there is much rhetoric about what the future will bring and be like...
* Postlude
I do not have OUP text, but I looked out my Penguin Classics text (Harmondsworth, 1959), translated and introduced by Elisaveta Fen, and she says that he wrote to Olga Knipper (an actress from the Art Theatre, whom he married) The next play I write for the Art Theatre will definitely be funny, very funny - at least in intention. Fen goes on to write (p. 28) :
The play was altered and re-copied several times, but there was one point on which Chekhov remained consistent - it was 'not a drama but a comedy : in places almost a farce'.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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