Gary Oldman and John Hurt answer some questions

This is some sort of account of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) and its Festival Q&A

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15 September

As did the director and the writer of the screenplay, after the screening [of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) on Festival opening night]


* Contains spoilers *

It was heartening to hear someone else say that following the plot didn't matter to enjoying the film, and, although I did not really see any of the t.v. series, to agree that recreating the atmosphere of the early 70s was a good thing to witness. (Oh, I did my best to follow the plot, but, in all honesty, I was put off early on by remembering 'Spies' from Fry and Laurie, with, respectively, their own Control and Tony: 'Control, I hear Firefly's been taken', etc.)

That apart, and other irrelevant thoughts that came into my head (about agents and double-agents in relation to much-inferior products such as Salt), I congratulated myself on realizing what had really happened to one character (if only by twigging that it had to be the case with someone of Mark Strong's billing), and seeing the significance of how regimes in all sorts of workplace can change for the worse.

Looking for secret folders and smuggling them out reminded me of Kate Winslet implausibly getting away with it in Enigma, but, for the life of me, I couldn't understand why John Hurt's flat would not have been stripped of the vast assembly of material there (unless it was, despite being transported elsewhere for Gary Oldman's Smiley to look through, just some unrelated hobby of his): it is the first thought on Colin Firth's mind to get to another character's property first and take things from it, when he is reported killed.

What counts, though, as came out in response to the question that I put to Gary Oldman (and others) at the end, is what the characters are experiencing at their deepest level, which, for Smiley, was felt as his wife's infidelity: I had asked what scene (or series of scenes) was central not to the story, but to his experience of the emotional core of the film, and this seemed to be how it would feel, in the circumstances, to need to hear another's account of becoming involved with a woman, what she meant to him, and what he would do to seek to protect her.

Not bad for an opening night!

Tell the Truth (1)

More views of - or at (or before) - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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15 September

I wasn't expecting Wakefield Express, because I'd forgotten that it was on the bill (it was a while since I'd booked), and wasn't in the right mood for it.

But, although I wasn't in the right mood for anything, I still enjoyed the man with an interest in budgies who'd arranged for Mussolini's white horse to pull the carriage for some special occasion. In 1952, he was looking to a royal event, whereas the man who grew and smoked his own tobacco had in mind cheaper cigarettes.

It was good also to see linotype machines - not acknowledged as a trademark - in operation, and the means of producing a weekly local paper (or five) then. But maybe it didn't all fit together, with a lot of time spent on following a reporter on his posed rounds with the police, vicar and town hall staff, and then much material in between, which, however informative, interrupted the flow with details of the local area and the owners of the papers, before we came to looking at putting the paper together.

FOUIART4202Y7

More views of - or at - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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15 September

If I'd been able to make a posting yesterday, it would have been about the very large free-standing display that greets one at the foot of the stairs to the bar at Festival central.

It's for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and has been there for a few days, making sure that one knows that this film is around - it includes huge images of Gary Oldman and his fellow cast in character, but against (and within) a pattern of (letters and) numbers, reminiscent of The Matrix, and, I'd almost swear, the original poster for Enigma. 'CULPHUNTERS' leapt out at me, as I mounted the stairs, and there are other utterances of similar significance, no doubt...

Another poem

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14 September

Mainly since I can, here is another poem, this time written (for a competition) as a review in verse of a film, In a Better World:

* Contains spoilers *

Christian's Journey

A boy who played with pipe-bombs

Nearly kills his friend -

Christian's the bomber,

Saved by his friend's dad:

Elijah's not in pieces

(Though he thought him dead)

And, on the towering silo,

He need not seek his end.

Returning from his coldness

At his mother's death

(He'd made himself heroic -

His father's sternest judge),

The future is reopened,

The truth can be revealed,

And Christian learns of feelings

That his hate concealed.

21 August 2011

Copyright © Belston Night Works 2011

Meditating about Lars

This is a review of Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

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13 September

* Contains spoilers *

This is a review of Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

I am still musing about this film, not just because I delayed until to-night to watch the special features, and not even because of most of what was in them. So what causes me to continue to muse?

The answer may partly be in the title (as I don't think that 'the Real Girl' refers to Bianca), and where it locates this film. Undeniably, whatever the cast and crew say about her in the so-called featurette, it would not have worked if Ryan Gosling, too, hadn't been good - and he is very good.

In order not to meet the film head on, although I do not really believe that it has any hidden depths, I find myself thinking about the therapy sessions in Good Will Hunting: when I saw the film, nothing could detract from or diminish the fact that Matt Damon's character was there with that of Robin Williams on account of the improbability that - despite the obvious problems posed by the notation alone - he had just been able, in a casual way, not only to pick up advanced mathematical learning from blackboards, but also to become a highly competent practitioner. (The impudent memory that lingers is of the joke that is told about the old couple, when all is said and done.)

Or I reflect on A Beautiful Mind, and what that film wants to suggest about the nature of experiencing schizophrenia, and how it seeks to set academic life, honour and achievements against discordant behaviour. (One could go on to mention Shine, though some disputed that it dealt with mental illness as such.)

I continue musing, knowing that the film gets the viewer to credit certain things, but at the same time - largely - presenting such a utopian picture of acceptance and understanding of another's needs that, if there were any truth in it and it is not to make us feel better about what could be, we would not face so many struggles that seem bound up with life, but, rather, people would bend when they saw how we were hurting.

In a world where people sometimes label one another as 'needy', a word that laughably seems to suggest that the labeller has no needs, I rather doubt it...


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Spoonbill revisited

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13 September

A few days back, on an inspiration, I pasted in a poem from The Spoonbill Generator (to which I was one of the collaborators), and I thought that I'd just quote from my latest comment on that posting:


With perhaps one exception, I either knew all the contributors to that particular poem personally (one of them was the person who set up The Spoonbill Generator, which I urge you to look at - I believe that I have given a link to the web-site in my posting), or I knew of them through one of those people.

If you look at the whole of TSG, there are many poems that - one way or another - did not work, but this was a good mix of writers, many of whom had (as I had) long experience of The Generator and / or had written in a collaborative vein before.

It also just happened that the poem succeeded in giving rise to a common enthusiasm. Other poems are in TSG's Hall of Fame, and are marked out in the main listing of finished poems by five stars.

All poems were mediated through the webs-site, with each person participating - such were the rules - only able to add one line at a time, so one could think of a couplet, but never add it (except by telepathy!).

Sadly, The Generator has not been functional for some while...


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News from the Festival

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12 September

The Festival web-site now carries the following programme change for the opening night:

TOMBOY * Plus Director! * Now Thu 15 7.45pm (not 7.30)
“One of the great films made by adults for adults… about children” – Little White Lies Film Magazine. TOMBOY treats the issue of sexual identity at an early age with vivacity, grace and intelligence. French director Celine Sciamma (WATER LILIES) will be joining us!
Good news, I guess, for those who didn't get - or didn't want - a ticket for the Opening Film!

A posting that has lacked a title (until now)

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11 September

I was chatting to a man of the cloth earlier about films and the Festival, and he mentioned one (well, a pair of them) that had been given what I understand not to have been the smoothest ride by the Rotten Tomatoes web-site (well, maybe nothing new about that - the UK critics, for example, all wrote in a way that disappointed me about Sarah's Key), but which he thought worth a view: The Gods Must Be Crazy I + II.

As the Internet Movie Database, IMDB (www.imdb.com), also gives a voice for those who do not review films for a living, I have just casually looked up this title, and it seems that I might as well take him up on the offer of borrowing the DVDs some time...

To-night, though, is too soon, as I plan to delve into the backlog of home-viewing and catch up with Lars and the Real Girl in time for the release of Melancholia.


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Revisiting the horrific mask

Some comments on Eyes Without a Face (Les yeux sans visage) (1960)

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11 September

Some comments on Eyes Without a Face (Les yeux sans visage) (1960)

* Contains spoilers *

As there are no real developments on the Festival web-site, an afterthought on Eyes Without a Face (1960) : maybe the tenuous appearance of something to shock and disturb belies a deeper intention to amuse and divert.

After all, the dogs and how they are acquired (let alone what they are for) are passed off in a matter-of-fact way, but they do not bear the weight of examination, nor does why what is being shown done by one person at the opening needs two later on, save that we could not be misdirected that we are seeing a potential victim, rather than a perpetrator. Means of identification, too, may have been different fifty years ago, but, in the particular circumstances, it does not seem likely that a body's being established to be someone's relative could be as easy as it appears - and the thinking behind doing it does not seem to have been put it, because there is the inconvenient matter of a fiancé.

If this were viewed again, with all these elements (and, maybe, even the gruesome surgery) seen not as attempts to be plausible, but rather to tickle and titillate, how far would we then be from seeing this - as another casual critic has described it - as the greatest horror film ever, and instead as a jocular symphony played on the elements of the genre?


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

A tribute to times past : 'Big Custard', a multi-author work

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10 September

Nothing to do with the Festival, but anyway : 'Big Custard'

(A very unrepresentative sample from The Spoonbill Generator's 'Hall of Fame')

Big Custard

Warm in nutritious mulch, we germinate, [E Greejius]
And of ourselves we feed; some lesser fry [Roland]
Lie dormant still, by spring's alarm untouched, [P]
From summer’s bounty barred. Why, when the years [E Greejius]
Give notice of denial, may we not [Roland]
Like locksmiths turn our newest tumblers loose [P]
Upon the lawn, and, from a brimming jug [Roland]
Drown somnolence in alcoholic cheer [P]
And deep contentment? No; for when we strive [Roland]
To summon up the moon's most hoary face [P]
In stiff remembrance, clouded with remorse [Roland]
The merest hint of which would spell the end [The Agent Apsley]
Of time's imposture, all our withered shadows [P]
Die a-borning, pent beyond the veil. [Roland]

How best conjure, by faith, such fruitful yield [E Greejius]
When all around the land lies burnt and sere [TG]
with stagnant salt-pans, dearth's memorial. [E Greejius]
We strive, but striving know that we shall fail [TG]
In such endeavours as, when disavowed, [Roland]
Will tempt the feet of those who walk the waves [P]
In saviour's guise. Yet awe, in sighs of sleep [Roland]
Will cause our eyes to widen, noses flare [TG]
Like stallions in the dawn. Hope glimmers still [KT]
Though in another's eyes; and in defeat [Roland]
Our troubled curses make the sun turn pale [P]
Though not so pale, perhaps, as heretofore [Roland]
For, strengthened now by victims' blood, it turns [P]
In orbit caustic, shadowing a tryst [Roland]
A spiteful meeting at the coven's wrath [P]
Which heralds tragedy for this sad realm [TG]

Yet even so, the lily spares no scent [Roland]
Nor stints her sensual promise of cool joys. [E Greejius]
Not she, immune to treason nor to time [Roland]
And yet, still slave to him who comes to all [TG]
Forcing rash demands upon the soil [Grayman]
He warms, with finger gold and burnished thumb. [Roland]
When, through the decaying years, our barren [E Greejius]
Limbs upbraid the heavens' dial, and when [Roland]
Our weary hearts beat slower but beat sounder, [E Greejius]
Our shining, worn escapements lose their edge [Roland]
Keeping no glowing archive for our solace. [E Greejius]

This it remains, and the remainder thus [(trad)]
Itself engenders its own residues [E Greejius]
In sallow time's bewildered almanack [Roland]
Harbouring long-lapsed trysts to no good end; [E Greejius]
And when the key is turned, when all is known [Roland]
Of fecund or of sterile, quick or dead, [E Greejius]
When swings the final door, the fatal hinge [Roland]
Whhose groans betray the ravages of rust [TG]
Too long untended, and too far behind [Roland]
The reckonings of Tophet ... Ay! What then? [E Greejius]

Roof shall abase to floor, and floor to ground [Roland]
Before the pristine actuary-magus; [E Greejius]
His propehcy but piles of ruins [The Agnet Apsley]
Despite the ivy, ineffectual buttress; [E Greejius]
Tower shall slope to turf, pile fall to pond [Roland]
Leaf cling to leaf, concealing all the paths [TG]
Earth harbours; milk shall curdle in the byre [Roland]
Wine in the butt degrade to vinegar. [E Greejius]
In desolate lament , each lovelorn bleat [Roland]
Falls fallow on the thin unheeded air. [E Greejius]

And I, whom all betrayers have abjured [Roland]
In strict adherence to their solemn curse, [The Agent Apsley]
And thee, forever wandering, possessed [Roland]
By burden's knowledge of the ghost of time [P]
Dissembled quite; how shall we, sister, fare [Roland]
Together at the edge of temperance [P]
And on the very brink of sanity? [Roland]
I tremble quite, envisaging our doom [TG]
Swept, nameless, down the brackish torrent - yet, [E Greejius]
Some stain, by us impasted on the silence [Roland]
As 'twere th'embodiment of rime, [The Agent Apsley]
Shall print us immemorial as stones [Roland]

And when, at last, Time's palsied sands have run [TG]
Their paltry course, and 'neath the final dust [Roland]
The tigers of indifference repose, [E Greejius]
The muscled threat is but disguised [Grayman]
Anew, and rises yet again, an atom's breadth [Roland]
Away from penitence, the like of which [The Agent Apsley]
Was never dreamt by cranium of yore [Roland]
Even in ghostly ecstasy. Indeed, [E Greejius]
But for the haste of man, the tears would flow [The Agent Apsley]
In all-consuming torrent, washing out [Roland]
Life's thinnest crust onto the shore [P]

Festival publications (1) - a comment (or two)

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10 September

Restraining the impulse to bring an eye trained in consistency too closely to bear, I shall just observe concerning TAKE ONE that:

* The Camera That Changed The World + Dont [sic] Look Back are on on as follows (not as stated, p.5): Monday 19 September at 3.30 p.m.

* The interview with Dimensions' director Sloane U'Ren is compelling (p. 1)

* There are other screenings than those listed of Tomboy (p. 4 - also on Friday 16 September at 12.45 p.m.) and Red State (p. 5 - also on Tuesday 20 September at 11.00 p.m.)

* Hugh Paterson's account of the 'forest screening' of Robin Hood was fun, and I look forward to making the film's acquaintance again in the Great Hall at Trinity

* Silent Running is being screened at 10.30 p.m. on Saturday 24 September (not in the morning)

* It would be good to apply 'a house style' to the presentation, outside of reviews and interviews, of dates and times


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Festival publications (1) - updated update

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9 September

There is now a link to the actual pages of TAKE ONE, so I need say no more than Happy reading!:
http://issuu.com/camfilmtrust/docs/takeone-08.09.11?mode=embed

Festival publications (1) - update

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9 September

Well, a link hasn't appeared that takes you to a PDF file (or the like) of TAKE ONE, but there's now a list of three entries

http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/review/take-one/

which reference some of the ones that I picked out before, and which should (if the links were functioning) take you on to read more:


Interview
Sloane U’ren, Director of Dimensions: A Line, a Loop, a Tangle of Threads

There’s no room for regret in a world without time travel. If you can’t quantum leap, you must make your own luck – and if you can’t afford to follow your dreams, sooner sell your home than your soul. Read more


Special Feature
Meet the Dutch Master: JOS STELLING

He may not be a household name here in the UK, but Dutch director Jos Stelling has endearingly developed his directorial style since childhood in such a way that his films exude their own personality. Read more


Review
Hold the Front Page!

Some journalists will do anything for a story. Whilst the plot of ACE IN THE HOLE is lent an unexpected topicality by press events in the US, that is not the only reason it makes for such an excellent and prescient movie experience 60 years after its original release. Read more

If critic Top Ten lists are to be believed, CITIZEN KANE is the greatest achievement of the film medium so far, the very pinnacle of cinematic perfection. Read more

Time enough for travel

More views of - or at (or before) - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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9 September

After Ant Neely kindly alerted me to one of them, I have made time to view some of the dimensions of Dimensions on youtube: so far (and I may stop here - see below), I've seen the trailer, an interview with Ant, and also with Olivia Llewellyn - not, I gather, that one should wish one's life away (or maybe ask to be back where things were different), but it's all making me wish that 21 September were closer, as this whole project looks really inventive and enthused by a small group of people working hard to making it happen.

There are going to be so many good things at the Festival in-between, so that, although finding time for blogging seems pressed now, it will seem com-pressed then, I'm sure that I'll make it. Do I, though, have to brush up on Everett, the 'many universes' theory, and quantum mechanics whilst I still have the chance, or can I rely on my sketchy memory of such things...? (I'm guessing not!)

Festival publications (1)

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9 September

As well as the very well-presented Festival brochure (thanks to Tony Jones and his team), full of interesting information about what is showing, when, where, and what it will cost*, and available at the Picturehouse (or to download as a PDF file on the home-page) or at:
http://issuu.com/camfilmtrust/docs/cff31_brochure?mode=embed


there is also TAKE ONE, an eight-page A5 booklet, the first issue of which I found had come out to-day (and also available at the Picturehouse - or should I refer to it as Festival Central?).

I think that it is going replace the Festival Daily from previous years, and will appear less frequently (but I undertand that the on-line reviews are still going to be added every day).

As I have not yet found the text of the booklet on the Festival web-site**, I shall attempt to give a flavour of it later in lieu of a link, but can say for now that, amongst other things, it mentions:

* Dimensions (the whole inside front cover)

* Ace In The Hole (a half-page with Citizen Kane)

* Information about Jos Stelling (with a large photo) and the screening / Q&A

* Robin Hood (a full page - already shown under Films in the Forest, and now to be screened in Trinity College)

* The Camera That Changed The World (two-thirds of a page)


More of TAKE ONE (issue one) in due course - and, if there is one, a link... (now below**)



*Again, I recommend the Festival passes. For staff and customers alike, it was all a bit confusing at first, but it can now be stated: passes are on sale for £25, £50 or £75 (the last one is Blue, so I guess that the other two, in order, are Red and White, but just as easy to specify the value, I think), and you then receives that amount of credit.

Credit can only be used on festival screenings, so it is important to estimate accurately (not too much, not too little) how much will be spent overall. The chosen credit is stored on a card to spend by buying tickets, which (in addition to the discount from Picturehouse membership) gives, respectively, 20%, 25% and 30% off the ticket-price.

With the Blue card (and probably the £50 card, because some information appears contradictory), the holder also gets free tea and coffee at the bar, which - although not free beer - cannot be bad!


**Well, it's supposed to be there, and it has its own web-page, but it isn't just now:

http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/review/festival-daily-online/

More melodramatic than horrific?

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8 September

Reactions to last night's special screening of Eyes Without A Face (1960) (screened because it is said to have informed Almodovar's latest, The Skin I Live In, whereas others whose comments I read had not had that unique benefit of seeing it on the type of screen on which it belongs - a real plus for Festival and other screenings):


I'm guessing that if you don't actually laugh at a film that isn't meant to be laughed at, but nonetheless snort from time to time and perhaps shake your head in disbelief (or inwardly sigh, or cringe) at what is being shown that it may not have worked (for you).

Well, it didn't for me, I'm afraid. From the start, Maurice Jarre may have been asked to conjure up a certain flavour with a tune that kept being used in connection with the latest victim, but, just as with what was depicted, it all seemed too whimsical. (That is with the exception of one sequence of scenes that - perhaps for no reason (see below, where I re-publish comments that I made on another web-site last night) - would have some in the audience averting or closing eyes of their own.)

In fact, still keeping that sequence apart, I was inescapably reminded of other features such as Thoroughly Modern Millie (not just because I delighted in Julie Andrews as a boy!) and all those adventures about Fu Manchu and his despicably beastly plots - OK, it's arguable that those films took from Eyes Without A Face and lightened the tone a little, and that I am reading that lightness back into the original, but I really don't think so. It really had the feel more of Arsenic and Old Lace, and of the others already mentioned, with the odd dose of chloroform knocking one person out for hours, and a sizeable thump over the head with a bottle having only a momentary effect.


But on to those other postings... (NB spoilers ahead!)

First, commenting on the graphic scenes, in response to someone who had liked 'the music, atmosphere, photography, the creepiness, the ending...', but not the detail of the police's undercover plot (which, true enough, had made no sense whatever), or the faked surgery:


'I thoroughly agree - just saw the film in a special cinema screening this evening.

'What I would go on to say is that, if you want to show something gruesome (and, yes, they defied expectations that the shot would cut away when what appears to be a scalpel appears to make an incision), it should look to the audience better than if you hadn't tried at all.

'Anyone who knows the fake knives with which actors regularly have their throats cut on stage wouldn't credit that this was remotely happening, whereas I (at least) still don't know how the infamous scene in Un Chien Andalou was done. After that moment, any notion that one is being presented with something shocking, rather than something that is meant to be shocking, has disappeared.'


Then on the character of Christiane (the daughter who has the eyes, but not the face to go with them), whom some had found 'enchanting', and 'beautiful in spirit', with her father being 'the real beast'. I expressed a contrary view (not, I hope, contrarily):


'I struggle to see how she is enchanting or any real moral contrast to her father (except facially, after she has been given another's face for at least the second time, and before that - skin-deep - beauty fades):

'We seem led, by her elaborately discovering where Edna is (it appears that she should not be there, and does not know anything about the operating-theatre, although she knows where the dogs are) and - not too intelligently or sensitively - flashing her deformed face at Edna just as she touches her and wakes her up, to the suggestion that she may not have know before how she has been operated on or what tissue has been used.

'That scene ends with Edna's scream (we don't know whether that is heard), and there is nothing to indicate what happens afterwards, but just that the surgery has still taken place (I believe that it is a scene of Edna in bed with bandages, leading to her escape and apparent jump (with, I think, another scream, though perhaps Christiane somehow doesn't hear it)).

'Whether, somehow, Christiane had not been complicit before, there can be no doubting now that she is fully aware that others are being maimed to benefit her. Even before that, she knows that some earlier victim's body (even if she does not know that she was a victim or the source of her facial graft) has been passed off as her own in burial.

'I do not find it convincing that she merely acquiesces in all this because of the strength of her father (her defiance in going off and finding Edna indicates otherwise), that she hides what she knows from herself because it is too awful to believe, or that her prying, as we are told, and finding her own death notice (or the order of service of her own funeral) really serves any useful purpose than confirming what the sharp-witted will already have surmised.

'Certainly, she moves as if she is some higher being, but she is no angel, and what she does by releasing the last victim (whatever will then happen to her), and letting the dogs and then doves out does not turn her into the carefree creature walking away from us with a bird on her finger that she appears.'


At any rate, my reactions to last night at 6.30 - really not sure, now, if I want to go through more of the same with Almodovar, not least as his Broken Embraces (2010) left me deeply unimpressed: again, I'm guessing that, if watching the film on DVD leaves you deriving more benefit from the deleted scenes (which, for my money, were far more inventive and funnier than the film itself - making one think that Pedro's own film must have been 'edited' in the way depicted in relation to the film within the film!), you were better off not going to the cinema to see it...

New dimensions on Dimensions

8 September


I've just found that one of the films mentioned in the last posting has its own web-site, which might prove interesting to explore:

http://dimensionsthemovie.com/2011/08/23/cambridge-film-festival-dates/

Popular items

8 September


There was no need to guess that - as the Festival web-site announces has happened - the opening film would sell out, but also:

* Black Butterflies has been lifted out of the German strand into the main listing of features

* Gerhard Richter: Painting has been moved out of the screen that it was in (Screen 3, the smallest) into Screen 2 (the middle-sized screen) for the screening that I booked

* Dimensions, for which there was little choice when I came to book (and had to, because the other screening gave rise to a clash), has also sold out


A useful feature to keep an eye on, and it would be even better if a section of that web-page gave an alert when tickets are selling fast for a particular film or one (if more than one) of its screenings...

Those CFF events (so far...)

7 September

Thursday 15

4.45 Ace In The Hole

8.00 Opening film: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (sold out)

Friday 16

12.45 Tomboy

3.15 Rembrandt Fecit 1669 (Jos S.)

8.00 The Illusionist (Jos S.)

11.00 The Day The Earth Caught Fire - decide on the night

Saturday 17

12.45 Jess + Moss

3.00 Black Butterflies

8.15 Jos Stelling in Conversation (Q&A)

10.30 Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark

Sunday 18

3.15 No Trains No Planes (Jos S.)

5.45 White White World

8.15 Burnout

Monday 19

1.00 Bombay Beach

3.30 The Camera That Changed The World + another

5.45 A Useful Life

10.30 Sympathy For Mr Vengeance - decide on the night

Tuesday 20

8.15 Drive

11.00 Red State - decide on the night

Wednesday 21

3.15 As If I Am Not There

8.15 Dimensions (sold out)

11.00 Wild Side - decide on the night

Thursday 22

12.30 The Seventh Seal

11.00 Bullhead - decide on the night

Friday 23

3.30 Jo For Jonathan

6.00 The Nine Muses

8.15 Gerhard Richter: Painting

10.30 Red White & Blue - decide on the night

Staurday (?) 24

12.30 Kosmos

8.00 Tyrannosaur

10.45 Guilty Of Romance - decide on the night

Sunday 25

3.15 Sleeping Beauty

6.00 Surprise Movie (probably sold out)

8.30 Closing film: The Look

Days of Heaven

6 September

This 'new digital restoration' from the British Film Institute of a title from 1978 is what the Arts Picturehouse, the BFI and the festival are all about : the opportunity to see something that is only just being premiered or has otherwise not been easily obtainable.

The feature itself was, for me, a bit like a fairy tale - it appears, although not accurately in terms of any correlation between what the images show us and what the voiceover seems (or seeks) to tells us about the underlying situation, to be the narration of a 12-year-old girl, but, for my mind, not nearly as cleverly as in the case of the narrator of Haneke's The White Ribbon.

Richard Gere & Brooke Adams Days of Heaven (1978) pic.twitter.com/IynS09DaUD
— Mademoiselle Cinéma. (@BelleDeJour15) December 2, 2014

The person with whom I watched it - and the lobby card, issued with a still (not, as I recall, a scene from the film as screened), bears this view out - commented that there were people in rags posed against the stunning landscape in neat array, and even the rags were beautifully done. Maybe that is part of the fairly tale, the mystification and magification of the (to my mind) somewhat unlikely series of events that unfolds:

If it hadn't come first, one could have sworn that Days of Heaven was playing with the theme of Indecent Proposal - as it is, given that Demi Moore in the latter film bears what I would say is more than a passing resemblance to Brooke Adams (playing Abby), I wonder whether there was a tribute being paid, and, if so, how many spotted it at the time. Certainly, as to the result of these interactions (on the world and the characters), one thinks inevitably of Exodus (if that isn't the young girl's wishful thinking of vengeance, stirred up by some religious teaching to which she makes reference), or even Genesis and the garden of Eden, but, with what one source states is a quotation from Leviticus.

Maybe, maybe not, and with the Bonnie and Clyde tone of part of the close of the film, one isn't exactly encouraged to dwell on it, or, with that strand, how Abby seemingly ends up unscathed and able just to disappear from sight (unless, again, as a fairy-tale fictionalizing, where actions don't necessarily have consequences).

What did, though, for me give the greatest reward, other than the photography of wide skies, are the minute depictions of nature (locusts, otters (?), pheasants, and so on), which are interspersed with (what one would assume is) the main action, and which, with the adept editing, give it richness and texture, and, even, a hint of heaven.


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