Mira Schendel at Tate Modern - Part I

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24 November

This is Part I of a review of a current exhibition at Tate Modern of the work of Mira Schendel (Part II is here, whereas Part III is here), which is due to finish on 19 January 2014

I believe the curatorship is heavy on reading philosophy and its concepts into art, @EMDeWachter @Tate @tanyabarson : http://t.co/BI88WSHiEz
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 11, 2014

When it is a matter of referring to works (tiresome though titles can be, with their weight of meaning), it has to be said that Schendel could have done herself a favour by not calling almost everything Sem título (‘Untitled’) : curatorial difficulties apart (in knowing what on earth piece one is requesting on loan from where), the viewer could at least be able to refer to a work, if she had adopted the approach, say, of Paul Klee (in addition to a title) of giving everything a sequence number and its year of production, uniquely identifying it.

When surveying a period of 35 years or more (the early paintings are from the 1950s, and a final series from 1987), a retrospective, even in the typical space of 14 rooms*, will tend to group pieces by date, style, technique, theme, and run chronologically. I take issue with this show in two regards, as to inclusion and extent :


(1) Starting with the huge Room 6, both issues arise in relation to some of the ‘works’ on rice paper (apparently, a medium that Schendel started using in 1964) : not wishing to say that there necessarily is not blurring between the realms of art, poetry and calligraphy** when an artist imports words onto the substrate.

However, there is a contrast to be drawn with the works in Room 5 (where the words sim (‘yes’), passe (‘pass’) and que beleza (‘how beautiful’, slang for ‘how cool’)) figure on the canvas in a similar way, say, to that Ceci n’est pas une pipe does on that of Magritte. For the words on rice paper in Room 6 are (a) all that the work comprises (on its own or in relation to other such sheets), (b) sometimes scrawled (although perhaps legible to a native and / or sympathetic reader), and (c) not obviously any more than a rough sketch, rather than some sort of displayable work.

Seeing much of this, in one of the four largest rooms in the exhibition, may be a preparation for Room 7, but the lesson that one learns there is that the nature of this mass of hanging written material is not – though some of it can be – to be read. The work (in no ways a preparation for the sheer beauty and effect of the installation in Room 12), which was in Brazil’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1968, does not require one to have seen, at such length, constituent elements to appreciate it – those in Room 6 are Graphic Objects (against (the Monotypes) in Room 6). I have no doubt that there are more than 2,000 Monotypes, because I cannot conceive it to be difficult to have generated them.


(2) On the calligraphic level, and still in Room 6, I am invited to consider the manipulation of the trio of German words Umwelt, Mitwelt and Eigenwelt, which I am told are terms used in Heidegger’s thought and in European philosophy, as some sort of work or statement, but I would say that, in relation to the Magritte work referred to earlier, I am not required to study Hume, for example, before I can approach it. However, whatever Schendel is about, even though – as far as I recall – the words are legible, is unlikely to mean anything to the average person trying to approach the work (even though the wall notes translate and explain the terms).

The opacity of the work – which inclines me to believe that it belongs on the page (not in the gallery), where those who want can refer to it – is akin to the barrier (perhaps deliberate) in scrawling texts (whether or not original) elsewhere in the Monotypes. Contrast this with the calligraphic simplicity of the word ZEIT (German for time, and written in capitals), displayed nearby, with the tail of the ‘T’ extended down the sheet. A calligrapher, in English (using the word TIME), could just as easily have extended that letter, or the three spokes of the ‘E’, but it would be craft, not art, and displayed alongside settings of lines from Blake or Keats.

Moving on to Room 9, and some of these abstruse notations or scribblings have become books. However, I have to ask whether the jottings of Einstein have any more – or any less – place in a gallery than, amongst other things, the Calculations : what branch or level of mathematics am I supposed to be familiar with to make any sense (if any is actually to be made) from these notations ? Do they have aesthetic or artistic appeal beyond any such understanding ?


These comments – maybe criticisms – are at a curatorial level. Even if a work forms a sizeable part of an artist’s work, does one have to give a proportionate amount of wall-space to make the point. For it has to be said that the installations in Room 12 (already mentioned) and Room 10 are world-class art, but, one somehow feels, some of the space devoted to other work is less worthwhile. If it is an intrinsic part of Schendel’s journey, one needs, I feel, to know more fully why it is – the basic question is whether it is truly integral to a survey of her work, or could have been given less time without impairment : I do not feel that that the notices in each room make the case for why this work merits our attention, and, with a less patient visitor, might lead to switching off from what, in my opinion, is of outstanding merit.


Continued, with other positives, in a separate posting…


Even if one ultimately thinks that Imogen Robinson is harsh about Schendel's works in her Review : Mira Schendel at the Tate Modern for Just A Platform, it is of interest to find comments where she echoes finding pretension in the curation and the claims made


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

The ferocity and frailty of war

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21 November

97 = S : 17 / A : 16 / C : 17 / M : 15 / P : 16 / F : 16

A rating and review of Land and Freedom (1995)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

9 = mid-point of scale (all scored out of 17, 17 x 6 = 102)



* Contains spoilers *

This film, set relatively early in the Spanish Civil War, not only has some gorgeous music by George Fenton, which only momentarily attracts one’s attention when it should not, but some very good acting and scripting. Director Ken Loach, working with cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, fills the screen with the immediacy of faces, and, at the times when David Carr (Ian Hurt) is part of the militia (POUM), immerses one in the vibrancy of that life and comradeship.

Loach also puts a distance on it, by the medium of (what turns out to be) David’s granddaughter Kim reading the letters that he sent back from the front, with a deliberate alienation that he is somehow able to send back photographs of those alongside whom he is fighting – despite never seeing a camera, one might come up with an explanation where he gets films developed on leave, but it seems wiser to infer that Loach intends it symbolically.

The effect of those photos being looked through puts the events that are being so vividly shown, and with such a colour palette, back into history as ‘old photos’, along with the folded press clippings : unless we can stop and think, clearly the latter had not been sent with the former, but have ended up together as a subjective account along with (in the newspaper) a supposedly objective one.

Hurt is never better than when his voice is heard reading his letters aloud as Kim looks at them, and the images from abroad. On screen, probably deliberately, he seems a shadow of what we hear, which makes him perfect to be afloat in a world of politics and coalitions that are convenient only for a time – there may be a film that does not leave one confused about the rights and wrongs of the situation, of which Eyes on the Sky and The Forest are but two, and in need of a reliable history*, but Loach captures the incomprehension of people who find themselves on opposite sides.

The scene around the table in the town in Aragon that has been liberated is telling : Loach has the local people at the centre of the scene, but, at the margins, three pondering shots of members of the militia in civvies and casting glances, or speaking quietly, to each other. Before they are invited into the discussion, this makes it look like a mistake that they have been given nothing to add, but, afterwards, they make quite clear that they have views, the differences in which feed into the succeeding action.

Add to this guilt, the horrors of war and of retribution, a love story (Blanca, full of conviction, well played by Rosana Pastor), and needless death, and there is a powerful film, which maintains its pace, and does not deliver short on how divided those united against the fascists were. Loach, although he is known for left-wing inclinations, pulls no punches on that account.



End-notes

* Before the screening at Cambridge Film Festival, curator of the Catalan series, Ramon Lamarca, helped alleviate some difficulty regarding the anti-fascists and the International Brigade, whereas the husband whose family is at the centre of things is, although a conservative, not for that a fascist. The town shown being captured, which may be Mirambel or Morella (whose people are thanked in the credits), appeared to be the local town in the Catalan film.


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

What Hitchock says about Dial M for Murder...

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21 November

Some who scour these pages (I find that Brillo® is best) will already know that I favour a Faber & Faber series of collections, film by film, of interviews with directors.

In this case, it is Hitchcock on Hitchcock, into which I have delved for some revelations of what he put on record about Dial M for Murder (1954) :


First, in ‘Elegance Above Sex' (a very short piece of prose, which was originally published in Hollywood Reporter*), Hitchcock observes, regarding this film and Grace Kelly's part in it :

It is important to distinguish between the big, bosomy blonde and the ladylike blonde with the touch of elegance, whose sex must be discovered. Remember Grace Kelly in High Noon ? She was rather mousy. But in Dial M for Murder she blossomed out for me splendidly, because the touch of elegance had always been there.

(p. 96)

The only other mention of the film in this volume is in a very long-suffering** interview entitled ‘On Style’ : An interview with Cinema***, from which two extracts now follow

H : When you take a stage play, I said ? What do you call opening it up ? The taxi stops at the front door of the apartment house. The characters get out, cross the sidewalk, go into the lobby, get into an elevator, go upstairs, walk along the corridor, open the door, and they go into a room. And there they are, on the stage again. So, you might just as well dispense with all that, and be honest and say it’s a photographed stage play and all we can do is to take the audience out of the orchestra and put them on the stage with players.

I : You didn’t do this completely though. In Dial M ?

H : Yes, and I’ll tell you why. Because I’ve seen so many stage plays go wrong through opening up, loosening it, when the very essence is the fact that the writer conceived it within a small compass.

I : But you would still treat it cinematically ?

H : Within its area. If I can. As much as I can.

(p. 293)

 

What is of interest here is that the interviewer makes no mention of what is discussed in the review on this blog, i.e. how 3D makes the experience different, on the screen, from that on the stage, with looming bottles in the foreground, and, most of all, that fatal hand, reaching out to the audience, as if for mercy.


Moving on :

H : Well, let me say this as a maker of films. Maybe it’s a conceit on my part. I think content belongs to the original story of the writer, whoever wrote the book, that you are adapting. That’s his department.

I : That’s an interesting statement. You don’t feel then that the director, as such, is responsible for content, as you would select any different …

H : Well look, I make a film – Dial M for Murder – and what have I really had to do with that ? Nothing. It was a stage play, written for the stage, written by an author. All I had to do there was go in and photograph it.

(p. 297)

The interview is all about the element of 'style' mentioned in the title (as against 'content'), and Hitchcock contrasts the situation of this film with that of North by Northwest (1959), where his co-writer and he created the scenario, and he most interestingly goes to talk about the expectations that he sets up and then upsets in the famous crop-spraying scene.

Just for this interview alone, the volume is a very useful insight, through Hitchcock's own descriptions of what he was about with Psycho (1960), and how much more that it is that we think that we see, rather than the material that the cutting (pun intended !) actually used.



End-notes

* Vol. 172, no. 39 (November 20, 1962, 32nd Anniversary Issue).

** The unnamed interviewer, 'I' in the interview, claims (in response to Hitchock's enquiry as to what Cinema is) to be asking questions on behalf of the ?? intelligent cinema-goer ?? [actual wording needs to be checked]. However, he or she does not know what cross-cutting, art direction, or even 'a cut' are, and Hitchock - seemingly patiently - has to explain. (Why do I have the impression that Hitchock had a reputation for being 'difficult' - or was that at another time, or on set ?)

*** Originally published in Cinema 1, no. 5 (August – September 1963) 4–8, 34–35.


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

The soul of solar power : components of a new life

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21 November

This film was screened in a special session on Saturday 16 November 2013 at Aldeburgh Documentary Festival


* Contains spoilers *

This is a review of Rafea (2012)

Rafea is not quite the star of this film, because there is also the other solar engineer, her relative, Umm Badr (not mentioned in the IMDb summary) – both sent as ambassadors from Jordan to Barefoot College in India to bring back the technology and knowhow to introduce producing electricity from solar resources.

If it had been a straightforward ride, it would just, as series producer* Nick Fraser said after the film that he did not want it to be, have been about transistors and the work of the college, but, although selected to go, Rafea faces opposition from her family, principally her mother and her husband (he has two wives, and she is the second), who do not easily give their blessing for her to be in India for six months.

Rafea has to leave her four children to the trust of their grandmother (who was a bit abrupt, but some in the audience did not laugh in a kind way) and in the hope that their father will, for once, spend some time with them. We see all this from very close, because another trust has been established in the period of two years (all in all) that it took to make this film, that between the families and the film-makers, Mona Eldaief and Jehane Noujaim.

When Fraser talked afterwards in conversation with Mary Ann Sieghart, he explained how the two had worked with Rafea’s family, because she and the audience were quite curious to know how Rafea had been found, and whether her story had been shot in parallel with that of other women (it had not) :

Shooting with a very small team helped, he thought, for people to forget that the camera was there, although the opposite view was expressed by a director in the audience, that bringing a deliberately large team into someone’s living-room and rearranging the furniture could also work to focus on him or her being open and direct.

There was no doubt that, when Rafea’s husband has pestered her when she is away and claimed that her daughter is sick, he feels absolutely free to express his views when she flies back. Before she went, the danger was that he would do as he said, divorce her and take away the children, throwing her onto the dilemma whether she wanted to continue the same life, or take the opportunity, and risk her husband doing as threatened.

The Minister of the Environment (?) has sought for all this to happen as a pilot project, and his interaction with Rafea’s family is interesting at all levels – not only that he has confidence in the women (in a male-oriented world) and that they will return and spread their knowledge in their homeland (rather than being drawn to the city), but also in the level of excessive civility in the dialogue between Rafea’s husband and him when she visits his office to talk about the problems.

The place in which the Jordanian two study gives them scope for mixing with women from other nations and cultures, both building up a good relationship in the classroom, and socializing. Abu Badr, who has accompanied his wife on the trip, shows himself to have a love of dancing, and Rafea and his wife enjoy themselves, and, elsewhere, Umm Badr shows herself to be a wit of an eccentric kind.

They do not know what things will be like when they return, and some of what they have learnt is neatly reserved to show us when they do, but they throw themselves into the work of study. Umm Badr, not to be thrown in the shadow because illiterate, even determines that she is able to write and starts making marks in a notebook, much to Rafea’s amusement.

The film is heartfelt at a genuine level, and was immensely well received at Aldeburgh, both in itself, and – as the discussion widened out – as an example of what Fraser has been doing with Storyville. He is a man who just does not believe in some things about what films do, and is sceptical what films like this can achieve in changing attitudes at some levels, e.g. (as I understood his point) to have some power to educate by example, but he was clear to state his views and that he was not seeking an argument by it.



End-notes

* The series is ‘Why Poverty ?’ (a title that Fraser did not like), as part of BBC’s Storyville, for which he is editor.


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

We are two flowers in the same pot

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19 November

A rating and review for Cutie and The Boxer (2013)

96 = N : 15 / M : 16 / C1 : 17 / C2 : 16 / E : 16 / F : 16

N = narration / script

M = material / use of material

C1 = cinematography

C2 = cohesiveness

E = effects / music

F = feel


9 = mid-point of scale (all scores out of 17, 17 x 6 = 102)



The best documentary-makers know that audiences can be trusted to wait for whatever information / explanation comes (or for things to be left uncertain), and that they do not need all things spelt out : the art must be to stand back from one’s film, see it with another’s eyes, and imagine what would be understood by saying this, mentioning this here…

Early on, it just comes out of what Ushio and Noriko Shinohara are doing domestically that it is his birthday and he is 80, with individual cakes and candles. They are clearly Japanese, largely not talking in English except for emphasis, a good word, wit (but the subtitling is simply maintained as a constant), but we may not be aware (or may have read) that they are in New York.

That never needs to be conveyed as a statement (nor whether they have ever tried or wanted to live elsewhere in the States), although some excerpts from a documentary talk about Noriko arriving from Japan with support from her parents, and the early part of Ushio’s career. From where we see them, we come to conclude that it is their home, and many a feature film would benefit from allowing provisional beliefs to be made by their viewers.

Cases of artists – in the widest sense – married to other artists give us Mahler not letting Alma compose, Schumann cramping Clara’s career, and, in a friend’s life, a husband (they are now divorced) who thought himself a genius (as Ushio does), and that certain things did not merit him spending his time on them.

Here, we see the lives together of Noriko and Ushio, and their traumatized son Alex, with whom she became pregnant six months after arriving in New York from Tokyo – it seemed that, unlike the cat whom we see compliantly being washed, he just visited (or, if not, he must have been hiding, or dead drunk, earlier on). When she met Ushio, she was 19, he 41.

Now, the nature of female ageing typically being what it is, the age difference initially seems less apparent – also because he boxes paint onto canvas, with pads attached to gloves, and so seems very fit and energetic. Nothing is made of it as an explanation, but there is a beautifully tranquil, intense and bubble-laden scene where we see him swimming, and elsewhere we see his physique.

The film shows us two recent shows of Ushio’s, the first solo (we never hear whether anything sells, though the opening of the documentary has Noriko estimating that they need $1,000 and the money for the rent to keep afloat), the second jointly with Noriko, which is near the end. In between, there is questioning about (from Ushio) whether he should have an assistant, and (from Noriko) any assumption that she is his assistant, and that she helps him other than because she wants to. Then, in Noriko’s painted-in drawings, we see the emergence of the characters Bullie and Cutie.

To begin with, they tell Cutie Noriko’s own story, soon pregnant and having an alcoholic to contend with, and financial support stopping from her parents when they learn of the drug- and alcohol-informed parties. She works out, in the drawings, her feelings, one of which is that of having been delayed being able to be creative again in her own right for so long, because of the cares and concerns of motherhood. However, in the mural for the joint show, she turns them into less identifiable polar characters with more general desires and impulses.

None of this sums up this neatly put-together film (which, one has to trust, does explain the poster) : the integration of the earlier documentary, the closeness to the subjects, the doubt about whether Ushio’s work is strong or just gimmick (which seems displaced for a while by a visitor from The Guggenheim, and the possibility of buying one of his boxing-paintings, but he then only tells Noriko when she asks that they had decided to buy a work from another artist this year).

What cannot be denied is that, despite the frictions, it is Noriko who knows better than Ushio where a suitable painting is to show to the Guggenheim visitor, and who can also intervene to say that a work that seems of interest had actually been given by Ushio to someone else with a promise not to sell it. Seeing her reasserting herself (for she complains, largely unheard, not only that she is a chef to Ushio, but that he then crudely gobbles something down on which she has laboured) may be a by-product of this film, but, at any rate, it is good to see her valuing her artistic creation – and having others value it.


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

A butler - with that gait ?

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19 November

64 = S : 13 / A : 11 / C : 10 / M : 11 / P : 7 / F : 12

A rating and review of The Butler (2013)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

9 = mid-point of scale (all scored out of 17, 17 x 6 = 102)



Maybe this is the butler that breaks the mould (or would break some sort of mould frequently enough with the unsteadiness of that gait), but the breed is always portrayed as light and efficient on its feet, not as if it cannot walk straight - serving things and not placing one's feet precisely really do not go together. The film takes the bother to age fairly unremarkable lead actor Forest Whitaker (as Cecil Gaines) and the undisappointing Oprah Whinfrey (as his wife Gloria), and to find a convincing look-a-like for Jackie Kennedy in Minka Kelly (but not one for John F.), but not to get right whether, from the waist down, he holds himself like a butler : if it was essential to have him, the things to have done was not have full-length shots of how clumsily he looked walking.

The major criticism of the film, apart from the too obvious effect of composed and pre-recorded music, is the pacing - it was a hot and stuffy Screen 3, which did not help, but the film could simply have done what it did with Jimmy Carter, the President of the US whom Whitaker facially and vocally most resembled, and skip over his term in office (and, IMDb makes clear, that of Gerald Ford) without anyone impersonating him (except Whitaker). Of the Presidents, the initial - but overcome - hesitation was that Alan Rickman looked too little like Reagan (and John Cusack as Nixon), but he and Jane Fonda as Nancy were the scene-stealers that one would have expected.

So, eight years passed over seemingly just to telescope apartheid with the US race issues that are the centre of the film, along with the typical theme of father eventually coming to realize that the rebellious son was right to stand up to opposition for what he believed. And, as usual, that individual falling-out is set against the bigger picture, too lazily invoked by having people see (or hear) the clips that are needed to tell the national story, rather than telling it in the dramatic writing - the danger is that, in a slow-paced story where only poor diction or sound-recording / re-recording (maybe deliberate in the case of the story about clapping the hands) requires one to be much more than passive (i.e. not having to make the effort of working out what is happening), one does not switch over to a mode (the usual one of a documentary) where one has to absorb material.

Right from the start, and not because of Whinfrey, the spark that was set up by this film was Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985), which truly does a whole lot better than this 'inspiration' from a true story (Wil Haygood's article 'A Butler Well Served by This Election'), and where one maybe does not feel that the struggle for equal rights, in which Gaines' son Louis plays his part (and, in turn, David Oyelowo plays him excellently), was so likely to be won. All down the line, the stories where sons break with sons whom they believe wrongheaded (or even immoral) chime in and give this film a resonance, because they did it better, that it does not have, just as borrowing Brahms or Schumann adds an otherwise undetectable gravitas, and the voiceover / framing device of Cecil waiting to be received takes away from any effect with its over-gravelly impression of age - from whatever time-perspective Cecil is talking, we do not need it, for it adds nothing.


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No debate about the quality

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19 November


This review is of a concert given by The Nash Ensemble, on Sunday 17 November, as part of Cambridge Music Festival


The Nash Ensemble (or this string subset of it) was never going to disappoint, but, despite live and recorded broadcasts on Radio 3 (@BBCRadio3), the delight of hearing and seeing it play had not been estimated. The group who played* comprised :

Violins
Stephanie Gonley
Laura Samuel


Violas
Lawrence Power
Philip Dukes


Cellos
Alice Neary (see her talk about her 300-year-old instrument and its character)
Pierre Doumenge



They began with Richard Strauss, the sextet that opens his one-act opera Capriccio. As such a title might suggest, the work had a sunny opening, and then the texture opened out, leading to hearing the upper register of the cello (with lower detail on the paired instrument), which is always a joy when composers let it sing properly. A tremulous passage followed, in which waves passed from the cellos to the violas, before we arrived at what felt like the emotional heart of the piece.

A brief cello solo then introduced writing where the other four instruments supported violin and cello in a duo, and this seemed a way of writing for this combination with which Strauss seemed most at ease, rather than, as the other composers did more, treating each voice as an equal. Here, virtuoso scoring for violin had an almost improvisatory quality to it, and Strauss had the lead player pass it to the second violin in order to effect a re-entry.

In a full ensemble as the piece concluded, it sounded as though these final chords depicted a sunset, before traditional means signified the actual close. The piece demonstrated the considerable balance of the ensemble, and the sonority that Strauss evoked was given its full effect.


Next, Dvořák’s four-movement Sextet in A Major, Op. 48, which opened as an Allegro–Moderato, with a theme whose instant engagement was brought out, and which increased in rhythmic intensity, as Doumenge plucked notes. The difference with Strauss lay in a balanced group of instruments, although one could still marvel at features such as Neary’s lovely tone, and the fact that, when the opening theme returned, it presented itself more deeply, and had a thoughtful character. A more agitated section was marked by the viola playing pizzicato, and then gave way to gestural notes from the cello, a softening of the tone, and ending on a loud concord.

The Dumka that followed (marked Poco allegretto) began with pizzicato notes from the cello, and was in three-four time (with a pair of quavers on the second beat) : as a dance, it felt a little strange to Western ears, and then the irregularly swaying beats intensified and swirled. In due course, the movement gave way to a more strophic passage, but whose metricality was suitably unaccented. Momentarily, it threatened to end softly, but gave way to a theme with a hesitantly oriental feel, before concluding in a few quiet strokes of the bow.

In a slightly squeaky Furiant, marked Presto, some cello pizzicati were executed with an unflashy ease before vigorous writing that paired the violin and cello, where we already had the greatest of confidence in Gonley and Neary. After a caesura, and a figure introduced by the violin, Power had a short passage where the viola gave a solo, which he played with great sensitivity. A tune in common measure, with a pair of quavers on the final beat, brought it to an end.

The Finale, in variation form, was marked Allegretto grazioso, quasi andantino, and the violas led in the opening, which became an effortlessly flowing violin melody that was to be the theme of the variations. Initially, they were underpinned by writing for the cellos, until the theme was passed to Neary, to the light accompaniment of sustained notes from the other players. As Dvořák proceeded, he altered the shape and the metre of his theme, and, in a variation that exuded serenity, the violas and the second cello played pizzicato. Later, he had contrasting blocks of measures, and the piece ended in rhythmic intensity and with an immensely impressive momentum.


By now, the audience was well pleased with the music that The Nash Ensemble had made, and reluctantly let them take a break. The pity was that there were so relatively few present to hear, as is all too often the case with concerts of chamber music (compared with orchestral or choral affairs).

With more there for a true experience of music in the round, the debating chamber of The Union Society in Cambridge would have felt no less intimate in this horseshoe of leather-upholstered bench-seats. Perhaps people think that chamber music is difficult, but, when you can focus on the playing of the individuals and appreciate their contribution to the whole, it takes some beating.



After the interval, a shorter second half with Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence (String Sextet in D Minor, Op. 70), also in four movements (slow movement second). The initial Allegro con spirito brought us straight into the flow, led by the first violin. This was playing of great energy, great expressiveness, as Tchaikovsky set up the recognized due of violin and cello. In a move that he was to repeat, he passed the melody briefly between violin and viola before on to the cello, and then the movement built and intensified, as the violin came to the fore, but with gorgeous detailing from Neary. The chamber felt as though it were full of sound from just these six instrumentalists, and then that movement of shifting emphasis reccurred. With motive force in the second cello, the movement ended.

Grave chords began the Adagio cantabile e con moto, giving way to the violin bowing over four pizzicato voices and a complementary entry from the cello, to which the second cello responded in the bass, with a rich, full sound from Doumenge. With a viola solo against the two cellos and the other three players pizzicato, the movement reached a very sonorous point, which gave way to a ghostly feeling, with a lower tone on the cello, a melody then completed by the violin, with flourishes on the cello, a deep bass line from the second cello, and the other strings pizzicato. Next, Tchaikovksy gave the viola a rich piece of writing, deep in the midst of its honeyed range, which, when it recurred, brought the Adagio to an end.

The Allegro moderato featured some very exciting cello-playing, before Tchaikovksy gave the violin some work reminiscent of the Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, and where there was a feeling of rawness and freshness. Subsequent passages had a meditative quality, where it was clear how closely the players were communicating and listening to each other, and the end came with some very authoritative and assured string-work from Neary.

The opening of the Allegro vivace gave us a familiar theme, which moved on in a quasi-fugal way. As the movement developed, the players demonstrated again their mastery of a range of emotions and textures, and that they had dynamics under close control. Towards the end, they dropped down, but only to build up from there in volume, and, in a coda with bell-like notes, they brought the work to a conclusion with every last ounce of expression.


They were brought back three times, and, although there was no encore (we had ended on a good note), we were incalculably the richer for the evening.


End-notes

* Either four of the instrumentalists were guests, or the Nash web-site is not very up to date, because only Samuel and Power are listed there.


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

Weighed in the scales

This is a rating and review for The Human Scale (2012)

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16 November


This film was screened in a special session on Saturday 16 November 2013 at Aldeburgh Documentary Festival

A rating and review for The Human Scale (2012)

93 = N : 15 / M : 15 / C1 : 15 / C2 : 17 / E : 16 / F : 15

N = narration / script

M = material / use of material

C1 = cinematography

C2 = cohesiveness

E = effects / music

F = feel


9 = mid-point of scale (all scores out of 17, 17 x 6 = 102)



According to Aldeburgh Documentary Festival’s leaflet, the writer and director of The Human Scale (2012) is Anders Dalgaard, whereas IMDb's entry calls him Andreas. (I assume that he provided the voiceover in what the leaflet tells me was the English language version.)

This is a film about architect Jan Gehl’s view of cities, how they can be reinvigorated, and what those practising around the world under the Gehl brand bring to projects. Some might disagree (as members of the panel afterwards did - please see below) with what those participating are included saying about, for example, what went wrong with modernist approaches to architecture or the nature of the interventions made, but the documentary is a coherent account, with an excellent soundtrack by Kristian Eidnes Andersen, which struck just the right balance of being perceptible, but not too evident.

The film slows and speeds motion, tracks, and puts the camera in place to give us before-and-after views, but all in a harmonious way that does not interfere with clear presentation of the subject. In China, perhaps some stock footage of a very different picture-quality could have been avoided, before we get on to seeing how cities have developed, but this is a minor criticism.

The film begins with the various speakers just on camera, almost all of them saying nothing, and then they are introduced in their turn, after Gehl has said some words about what matters to him in his practice, as each has something to say. Structured around five utterances, which some of the corresponding sections lead up to and close with, the film takes us all over the globe, giving examples.

It was in Siena that Gehl and his wife began studying the way that people use spaces in cities, because he perceived Italy as being a good place for people to live in, and we are shown the central square in the city, and how the notion of commonality, which they had measures for, works there. In Copenhagen, interventions in the harbour area, which had just become a big car-park, and pedestrianizing the main thoroughfare and the city square, restored people spending time in these places.

In New York, despite the outspoken views of a New York cabbie that no one wanted to cycle, a network of cycle lanes has been installed, Broadway was closed to motor traffic, and Time Square turned into a public space where people could sit and relax : the pedestrians, who made up at least 90% of the traffic there, were no longer being ignored in favour of a small number of motorists.

Likewise, in a project in Melbourne, which the mayor (?) had noticed was dying over the decades, street-life was introduced at ground-floor level by making use of the alleyways between buildings that had just been viewed as functional ancillary space : we heard figures of how two restaurants in such locations had become hundreds. In China, the traditional low-rise dwellings, where shops were a short distance away and people could look out for each other, were contrasted with the tower-blocks of Chongqing.

In one part of the city, one of Gehl’s people had designed improvements to a pedestrian route to make it more pleasing and accessible to all. Although they were made, on a return visit six months later they were found to have been undone… An imponderable is what will happen to the earthquake-damaged centre of Christchurch, when national government took responsibility away from the city council (but at least accepted that buildings would be limited to seven storeys, which people had said that they wanted when a survey was carried out, where another Gehl consultant had been at work), and some remained unconvinced that all buildings in the sealed-off area affected, including the cathedral, needed to be pulled down, although it might be in commercial interests to do so.

The note of pessimism in the film’s final section (and which had been sounded earlier on) was not, however, shared by the members of the succeeding panel discussion. Marc Vlessing hosted it, and although it was largely unrelated to the film, Ricky Burdett, of those on the panel (the others were Roger Graef and Sir Michael Hopkins), made most attempt to comment on it, and was also the most lucid: he thought that the future of the city is more rosy and that environmental concerns can be overcome, and that the human gestures with which the documentary ended were on a different level from the nature of the problems that faces cities (although he clarified, when asked by one questioner, that he had not meant to belittle those things).

All staunchly defended garden cities, saying that no one had intended to create a horrible place in which to live, but, having seen squalor in the Gorbals in Poor Kids, I remain unsure that those who implemented such schemes (which are shown being torn down) do not have something to answer for : the health and sanitation issues that caused parts of Paris to be rebuilt with high-rise buildings may have raised shockingly low mortality rates, but mould, damp and being cut off from things do not, in turn, make for good physical or mental health.

Weakest member of the panel was definitely Sir Michael, who did not seem prepared to answer questions, either from Vlessing or the audience, and started many answers in several different ways before determining what he wanted to say. Asked to handle the question whether architects are artists or providing a service, he eventually said little more than it worked on numerous levels. A question about designing public space he also fudged, and it was for someone else to give examples of buildings that seem to have a space before them, but it does not function and is not inviting.

As to questions (or ideas), some of the ones from Vlessing (who is chief executive and founding director of a private developer of affordable housing) found little favour with his colleagues. Even to me, it seemed fanciful that architects are too tired out by the planning process to fight for public space, and some of his other thoughts about planning were dismissed.

Interesting though it was to hear the panel questioned, one had to be grateful to Burdett for seeking to bring in the film, since, otherwise, it felt as though one thesis was being advanced that the panel was choosing not to engage with – a film about matters maybe new to the audience, and not digesting it (let alone its filmic qualities) before moving on.


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

Spanner in the works ?

A rating and review of Factory Girl (2006)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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16 November (film watched on DVD) revised 17 November (to reflect film's slim connection with the facts - please see below)


66 = S : 6 / A : 14 / C : 9 / M : 15 / P : 12 / F : 10

A rating and review of Factory Girl (2006)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

9 = mid-point of scale (all scores out of 17 / 17 x 6 = 102)



This film gives the impression that it does not know what it is meant to be. It uses a framing device that jars, and, at one point, undercuts the impact of what had just been shown on screen – a regretted point of rupture with the person only called Musician, but who sounded very much like he was a person well known to Joan Baez*.

Unless it was feeling awkward or embarrassed, when Andy Warhol has introduced an Edie Sedgwick look-alike into The Factory, to go back to the Musician and admit that he had been right about Warhol, the film does not tell you, but it did not require complete degradation for Sedgwick to overcome any pride that she may have and ask for money. At best, one is left feeling, as the film does not use its own device to give any motivation, that there may have been some self-destructive streak in operation, for which there is probably sufficient evidence.

This is where stories get confused, as do values, for, if Sedgwick is a spendthrift, not receiving any recompense from Warhol for appearing in his films, for example, becomes an issue where it would not if she had been a socialite more careful with her means**. It is not to say, of course, that Sedgwick was not as portrayed (I have never seen any footage of the real Sedgwick, so I cannot judge on any level), and was only getting half her rent paid her father, Fuzzy the man who had sought to abuse her in childhood, but she did choose to throw her lot in with Warhol the genius as his superstar, and never did properly attempt to tie him down to what money, if any, The Factory made from what she did.

No doubt the positions were unequal, since (on this showing) she admired him more as an artist, and he her more as a commodity, but nothing disguised the fact that she instead relied on a trust fund’s infinite resourcefulness, when she knew that The Factory gave her nothing. She could, tied only by loyalty to the not terribly loyal Warhol (as witnessed by what he says when she storms into where he and his cohorts are eating), have broken away before, when all that she has ever been given is fifty dollars.

The stories seem confused because the finger is pointed at Warhol, and he was not alive to say what he intended, whereas, cutting him out altogether, it is really the story of a woman from a wealthy family who, through meeting people in New York, starts using speed and worse (though the Wikipedia item cited suggests that she had used LSD before she ever met his circle). If Warhol could have paid Sedgwick, then he was mean not to, but it would perhaps have only slowed the inevitable : I know too little to be able to judge whether he relied on his recondite charm to make money from others and not reward them.

Despite the life that he led, maybe because of it, it is possible that factually Warhol did go to confession (did he keep it hidden from all but his diary, or is that charitable and it is invention ?), as we twice see : contrasted with Guy Pearce’s beautifully brought off vapidity and self-centred mannerisms, the moments in the confessional seem to betray some feeling, some regret, but maybe this fictive Warhol likes best that, other than saying a prayer and lighting a candle, there is no obligation on him to do anything to mend matters with Sedgwick. In fact, on this second occasion, he conveniently forgets what he did and said to incite the further formation of the rift, so, on this level, the confession is humbug.

We come back to what sort of film this is meant to be. If it portrays Segwick’s life, it does so by larding Warhol with immense quantities of blame***, and then one either stands back from what the film asserts, or takes it at face value, neither of which is really a satisfactory stance. The disclaimer quoted below does not help anyone adopting the former, not, at any rate, without a good deal of research.


End-notes

* The closing credits cryptically tell us ‘Whilst this motion picture is based upon historical events, certain characters’ names have been changed, some main characters have been composited or invented and a number of incidents fictionalized’, which effectively means that the film-makers could represent things as they liked regarding Sedgwick and Warhol, since both are dead, but not regarding the living.

** Sedgwick's Wikipedia entry reports 'Edie embarked on a constant round of partying and spent her trust fund at an astonishing rate; according to friend Tom Goodwin she went through eighty thousand dollars in just six months and bought huge amounts of clothing, jewelry and cosmetics.'

*** The Wikipedia page makes it quite clear who 'Musician' must be (as thought) and that, whatever involvement he had with Sedgwick, it was after she was no longer part of Warhol's circle, had already moved to the Chelsea Hotel before she met him, and that the screen-test shown for the Musician with Warhol must be invention. Nothing suggests that Warhol and Sedgwick drifted apart for the reasons shown, or that money was an issue between them.


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

TMI – or TLC ?

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14 November

In imitation of do (or did) they know what, maybe people still dismiss others with ‘Too much information’ (or write TMI), a retort to interrupt further revelation of the preceding speaker’s (or writer’s) sex-life, personal habits, or feelings, but I like to think that those days may be past.

If they are, it will just have been through boredom, through the phrase becoming passé, not because of those so confronted coming back – as they should have done ¬– with FBR, where ‘R’ stands for ‘Rude’. When the information really is ‘too much’, because someone is talking about his latest Bob Dylan CD when no one has any interest in it, the phrase seems strangely inapt.

Then, though, it would really be information, about the use of guitar on track 4, or Dylan’s lyrics or vocal style, whereas I never heard the blunt use of the words to silence someone boringly talking about a topic, only as a put-down in mock horror for what had been divulged.

What is really bad about it is that it cannot bother to be a full sentence, e.g. You are giving me too much information, as if one would say Corny old joke, rather than That’s a corny one !.

So it is the smugness that I object to, the outright declaration that it is TMI, not just, in some cases, that person’s interpretation. And, for me, the impact that it might have on someone who does not find this world easy to live in.

If people still said TLC, perhaps they could employ that instead as an approach…


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Traces of the Brontës in South Africa

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12 November

 93 = S : 15 / A : 16 / C : 16 / M : 16 / P : 15 / F : 15

A rating and review of The Forgotten Kingdom (2013)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

9 = mid-point of scale (all scores out of 17 / 17 x 6 = 102)

I did not know until after viewing The Forgotten Kingdom (2013) that this film, set in Johannesburg and Lesotho, was written and directed by Andrew Mudge. I now find that Mudge has made relatively little on film, and that, at the premiere, he described the film as a coming-of-age drama.

Be that as it may, I was not half reminded of all those other stories in Western films where a young boy shows an older stand-offish adult that he knows more than he is being given credit for, as well as of – for all that it has a contemporary setting – such classics as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and her sister Anne’s Agnes Grey. (There were even, from what I know of it, hints of Slumdog Millionnaire (2008).)

Films where the protagonist finds roots are inevitably going to have a certain similarity, of course, and there were disapproving mutterings from behind me, when Atang’s (Zenzo Ngqobe’s) reacquaintance with Dione (Nozipho Nkelemba) seemed to be going too easily, which were maybe satisfied (I shut such noises out, when I could) when matters became more complicated – which, in plot terms, was not unlikely, although I had no foresight as to the path to be taken.

Call it a road movie, if you like, but the travel really represents, as Mudge says, a voyage of self-exploration and recapturing the past, against which it appears that Atang, with his habit of abandoning journeys (we see him do so at least four times), has struggled most of his life.

Hating his father for having moved him away when his mother died, although he only learns why first from those whom he meets at his father’s burial (such as the priest), he comes to realize that he has burnt himself up with this hatred, so that, as he puts it, he no longer knew whether he was hating his father or himself. He has a scorn of things that, having lived in Johannesburg, he thinks himself above, but he learns first that Dineo had lived there, too, and then that terms such as ‘Weevil’ that his younger travelling companion, excellently brought out by Lebohang Ntsane, levels at him have their truth.

Also a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress through wonderful landscape, we come to see the life that Atang (by abandoning his name, and turning his back on where he lived), in the words of the title, has forgotten – traditions, ways of living, celebrations. Alongside that story, that of Dineo and her sick sister, and her struggle with her father to care for her and determine her own life.

At the end, nothing is promised or certain, but we feel that we can leave the journey to unfold as it will.


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

Beginning with ‘Beautiful’

This is a review of Air Doll (2009)

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12 November

This is a review of Air Doll (Kûki ningyô) (2009)

One might feel that Air Doll (Kûki ningyô) (2009) makes Lars and the Real Girl (2007) feel simplistic and uni-thematic, or that the latter makes the former seem overcomplicated and confused. There is an element of truth in both, perhaps.

Do they even have much in common, other than the life-sized sex-toy that is Nozomi and Bianca, and that both are fairy-tales ? In Lars’ case, Bianca is certainly a substitute, but he is not pretending, whereas Hideo (Itsuji Itao) is, and, for that reason, would never introduce Nozomi to his family in complete seriousness as his partner.

Lars (about which I have written here) operates on a psychological level (Bianca, in herself, is never anything other than Bianca, partly because Lars (Ryan Gosling) named her, and she arrives in the post), but Doll embodies Nozomi in Doona Bae’s body, and exploits the sexual aspect of so doing straightaway. It shows first her breasts as she awakens, then her naked back, before she tries on various outfits, settling on that of the French maid (albeit with knee-length white socks).

As Bae’s body has become that of Nozomi, she can do things for which Bianca relies on the agency of others (partly because Lars has pictured her to the world as disabled), such as dressing, eating, getting work : they have these things in common. As if somehow drawn to the world that most represents herself, Nozomi gets a job in a video shop, but there a huge element of unreality steps in :

With her having little more than a blank slate for a mind, which knows nothing about the world (though she soaks in information), and having never seen a film, would the (unnamed) manager – even though he fancies her – employ her ? Unless that is just the point, that the upskirt views justify her being there for the customers and for him, and she is being regarded just as a doll on the payroll.


With Bianca, the situation is turned around, with much input from the psychologist, from people laughing at or resenting Lars (because he is parading with a blow-up sex-doll as a girlfriend) to showing their care for him by entering into the fantasy, and looking after Bianca by involving her in evenings out. They come to approach her as if she were real, but the only person who believes that she is – and then has an epiphany – is Lars.

There is no depth or dimension to the film other than that, but it is moving, because of what everyone, led by Gosling, comes to do. It is a fairy-tale because the toughest person to get to sympathize is Gus (Paul Schneider), Lars’ brother, whereas we know that there would be much more antipathy in real life.

With Doll, it is Nozomi’s realization about who she is, what place she has in the world, that has an emotional effect, and that falls upon Bae as Nozomi in a way that it cannot upon Bianca, not just because she is almost always present to the camera (except when we see scenes of others’ lives). Where she is playing truant to Hideo, we would think that, as in any double-life, the film or she would be careful not to be caught out, but that seems to matter less, even to the extent of his unwittingly buying a DVD from her, which means that she will be there, not in his home, when he gets back.

It is not just at the level of whether she attempts not be caught out that the film seems frayed. Quite apart from whether Nozomi would make a worthwhile employee, the complete lack of impatience or bewilderment that Junichi (Arata Iura) has with her questions, or with helping her, is just a given, but he may be seeking something from her, too, or making her a substitute.

When she has a nasty accident in the shop, it brings their friendship closer, in a way that he proves to want to desire to repeat, over and over. Nozomi has feelings, but, despite having found that she has a heart, they seem at a distance, just as Junichi’s interest in her seems to be really more of a fascination. What fascinates him – is it the mechanism of her sexuality, rather than her as any sort of woman, just as the owner of the shop seems to have only a basic need for her ?

We see her enjoying things that she finds or is given, and she amasses a treasure that she carries with her, but she has been wounded by what she is told about having become a real woman : indeed, it has not even been noticed that she is real, so taken for granted is she is a possession and a toy to play with. Driven on by her experiences, and the knowledge of her mortality, she seeks further encounters with others who might explain to her who she is.

In this, she seems to stand for every woman, perhaps everyone, who wants to know about where to be in society, and the removable vagina that we twice see being washed stresses her functionality on that level. Back with Bianca, if she were a disabled person, she might not so readily receive the accommodation and acceptance that we see, and it is only through people’s deeper love and care for Lars that she has any place.

Maybe both films ask the same question, deep down : what is the role of a woman in relation to others when coming to their world from outside ?


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