More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
29 August
Sadly, I do not have the skills of a Brian Hanrahan, but, going through the Festival's Main Features (that link takes one to where the PDF brochure can be downloaded), I made it twenty documentaries*, and there may be others (there and elsewhere) - in former times, which was not necessarily better save from a bean-counting perspective, they were listed in a separate section from the feature films per se, but now they mingle.
I think that I spotted a score of the DOC logos. I was looking, because, in one of our chats the other day, Festival Director Tony Jones said that emphasis is needed on how many one can see - over the 11 days, however exactly they may be spread, that is around two per day, after all, so one can see his point. (I always like to make space for three or four in the course of my Festival viewing, but, as with the whole Festival juggling cum three-dimensional crossword, compromise is inevitable.)
Tony is a nice, level-headed guy, and always makes time to talk to me. A few weeks back now, he and I chatted as we negotiated Parker's Piece in Cambridge**, and I learnt for the first time that Hawking was coming to the Festival, and about negotiations for getting Hawking people over from the States for it.
This most recent time, it was the documentaries, and also exactly what hard work for Festival stalwarts from the Arts Picturehouse and from his family (and from his son's circle) it had been to put on twinned screenings on Grantchester Meadows***. As I said to Tony, not wishing to diminish that effort and to remind him of his great enthusiasm for outdoor screenings, he wouldn't do it, if he didn't enjoy it.
The previous time, a little word that - whatever it may be, and I do not think that I am being indiscreet - Surprise Film 1**** is a World Premiere. Famously, no one knows (though @JimGRoss always guesses) what the film is / films are except Tony, and the projectionist only gets it / them just in time to do the necessary...
And I remember, last of all, coming out of Cell 211 (2009), and Tony wondering, even though he was pleased that I thought that it was a powerful screening, how it would stand for getting distributed. (If you follow that link, you will see (on IMDb) that the film, after all, did pretty well for itself.)
End-notes
* Sadly, I am an idiot, and failed to appreciate the music-documentary nature of the 33 1/3 strand, which makes the sum around thirty !
** For those who do not know it, click on this link, book yourselves some films, and get over to Cambridge to see this square of land, criss-crossed by paths, bicycles and foreign language students, and home to cricket- and football-pitches and the like on your own scenic walk from the station...
*** A real place, known to many by virtue of Fink Ployed.
**** Last year, there were two (for the first time ?), and the first of this year's is on Saturday 28 September.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Thursday, 29 August 2013
Monday, 26 August 2013
Just sheltering ?
This is a review of The Sheltering Sky (1990)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
27 August
This is a review of The Sheltering Sky (1990) in a 70mm print
* Contains spoilers *
Magnificent 70mm The Sheltering Sky (1990) at @CamPicturehouse : brilliant conception, luminous photography, attuned music, JM & DW superb.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 26, 2013
Not least through the experience of being seen in 70mm, with JM being Malkovich, DW Winger, and co-written and directed by Bertolucci.
Another in the Festival Central audience (and from the team at TAKE ONE) gave us:
Plenty to ponder about The Sheltering Sky: gloriously beautiful (and a great 70mm print), occasionally impenetrable, fascinating yet remote.
— Gavin Midgley (@GavinMidgley) August 26, 2013
I am unsure where the impenetrability crept in (if that is what impenetrability does, rather than suddenly shutting the door - or window), but, because I did not experience it, I would be de facto.
I also did not find myself at a remove, that anything was remote : unlike the fascination of, say, the very different Only God Forgives (2013), which comes from the other side of something much more substantial than a bamboo curtain.
Moving on, though in a sense not, there is a strong feeling of Pirandello at a crucial moment, where much more unravels that has gone before - I am thinking, needless to say, of Six Characters, as his best-known work (drama or otherwise) in the UK. Suddenly, the sporadic narrator, who seemed located when first we heard his voice, has a significance that we failed to grasp.
Does everything dissolve back to the point where we have nothing ? No, I still do not think so, hours later, though it might be worth at the original novel by Paul Bowles - I cannot see myself doing more than flicking through to have a feel for the narrative effect. I am left more with a feeling of benevolence, not that what I have engaged with has been insubstantial, the stuff of dreams.
That said, I do believe that there is a point, when Kit (Winger) leaves Port(er) (Malkovich) - and we have been greeted with a shot from then at the start of the film, after some sort of establishing of era and class has been effected by stock footage - and goes off with her little case, where the status of what we then see divides / departs from 'reality'. After all, it does not seem very likely that she would simply abandon him, and what she does is hardly the best way to cope with her position.
The scene in the market, where the flies are back*, the people, into whom or whose culture she has scarcely integrated, throng around her - this becomes the stuff of nightmare from which she wishes, unlike Joyce's Stephen, to escape into her own history.
Probably as long as we will ever know, we have had emperors dreaming that they were butterflies who might be dreaming the emperors, the King in Alice who is dreaming her, and Borges conjuring up a man who does conjuring himself only to find that he is another's creation. At the level of the narrative, Bertolucci's film gives us Port seeming to flee himself (or, at any rate, Tunner**) to take Kit to 'the pass', the view from which explains the title : he describes how it seems to protect, as if like a mantle, whereas she wants to know from what, and what is beyond.
On their initial arrival in the port town, Kit storms off at Port persisting in telling his dream to Tunner. This is where the occasional narration, and the appearance of the narrator, begin. However, beforehand, Port gestures at a white car arriving outside, and says to Tunner that Kit cannot have the white car just be a white car, but it has to mean something - which, in the film that follows, it does.
That impulse as describes by Port to Tunner is there again in Kit's unsettled response to being told about the sky (a half-empty one, not a half-full one), and the anxiety, the jealousy, the guilt surface as they are making love at that spot, and then deny them of a climax, whereas we most want that they should give themselves to each other and shakes off negative impulses. It becomes another such impulse in its own right.
And, finally, Port's sickness, which draws Kit to him : is it, in any sense, real or is it symbolic ? Does it represent the decay of their relationship (Port has been off for the night***, and she has woken from the train journey to find Tunner), which only, when Kit is properly afraid of losing Port, brings her back to him, and is there not quite a strong feel of, for example, Truffaut in Jules et Jim (1962) ?
If seeking to join a camel-train does not also operate on the level of some sort of psychological coping-mechanism, some projection of the self out of the situation into the fantasy of becoming an Arabic man's wife (or mistress), I am misreading this film and what I see it suggesting about these characters.
I do not think so, for, as with that scene on the edge of the cliff, the scenery - shot with real flair and a sense of grandeur by Vittorio Storaro) - feels there not merely for the purpose of telling a story, but is the story, or in inseparable from the story, or the story from it. The grotesqueries of travelling companions (includingly the lovingly obnoxious Timothy Spall), the purgatorial conditions, all of these things operate multiply, and make that quick flick through Bowles' original seem more likely...
End-notes
* Were we, at some level, reminded of the Biblical plague of flies (and / or of such tones in Days of Heaven (1978)) ? Do the weevils in the flour with which the soup has been made likewise say something to us ? (Port and Kit play oblivious to them just to banish Tunner, with his incessant spraying !)
** Played by Campbell Scott, he is George Tunner, irritating, ingratiating, even seductive (but kept at arm's length by his surname ?). He could be all men / suitors / rivals - or none, and just a cipher.
*** Self-destructively, he is not content just to get away with his wallet, but has to show that he has done so.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Does one have to be a vegetarian to be a Morrissey fan... ?
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
27 August
A particular song in Morrissey 25 : Live, about Meat and complete with black-and-white images of creatures and carcasses*, might make you think so. For me, it was the least subtle moment of the night in almost all respects, whether lyrics, message, or even pointing a finger by naming KFC - or in the swoon that Morrissey affected afterwards on his knees.
It must have been affected, because there was a spot perfectly focused to illuminate his back, and spots mean lighting-rigs, and they mean rehearsing the lighting-changes, so he would have hit the mark placed on the stage as much the benefit of those who would see the filmed gig as those at the venue.
That quibble apart, there was much that was spontaneous and warm about this performance, recorded live at Hollywood High School (on 2 March 2013) - obviously not, again, when Morrissey ripped open a shirt that he must have intended to sacrifice (unlike the first two, which he had worn to go offstage and change, and which looked much nicer**) at crucial words about those whose physical appearance one despises, but that was momentary, and gave the fans a moment of nearly baying frenzy when he chucked it into the crowd at the front***.
I watched with a friend, who could keep me abreast of where, before and after The Smiths, each number came from in Morrissey's recording history. (A couple from the second solo album both sounded heavily redolent of the earlier sound.) We probably also had three or so songs from before he went solo, and I was informed that one later song reflected what happened in litigation between band and former lead singer.
All of which is more than enough to give away the fact that I do not buy Morrissey's albums or go to his gigs, but that was no reason not to watch the cinematic release. (Those who read further afield on this blog will find that I talk about art, but one does not have to like an artist as such to talk about his or her work and try to understand it.)
As to being dramatic, it was clearly not - because of the size of the venue and the difference between the artists - going to compare with something like the video of Peter Gabriel's 'Secret World' tour, and it was really (apart from that mentioned) only the third in the running order that made a striking use of visual material. However, it all did the job of giving one some sense of what it might have been like to be there, and one got wonderfully close to the singing Morrissey.
He gave a strong performance, buttoned and unbuttoned his shirts as the mood took him, and was well supported by his band (one of whom, apparently, has been with him since he split off from The Smiths). How he would lash the stage so much, as he did earlier on, with a cordless microphone I do not know - maybe he stopped, maybe I became less conscious, because the first two songs definitely felt like openers, and then everything had more presence (not least with the way that the third item had been assembled for film).
Some of Morrissey's songs I might well look out and read, because, unlike the fans mouthing or singing alone, I do not know much of what he does, and it helped when I could lip-read from him : one, rightly enough and unobjectionably, told us that we all have a date with an undertaker that we cannot break. In addition, I was given a strong sense that any notion of ego about Morrissey is really a front, a view with which my friend agreed, and that the songs fairly often are sung by a persona, which it would be the grossest of simplifications to identify directly with him :
I initially formed that view by seeing how he gave a little bow to all the people whom we saw him giving handshakes to at the beginning, which seemed out of genuine respect. Expectation had been
built up by fans saying how they felt, seeing the empty auditorium, and the titles, and then we had him on stage, bedding down the act, and seeming to have no fear of reaching out to the audience, or of validating those who made it onto the stage by extending a hand to them : of course, we were all touched by his reception of the nine-year-old boy to whom he had spoken earlier being beside him.
Old cynic that I sometimes am, Morrissey's generosity of spirit warmed me - of course, it could have been a stunt for the boy to get to the stage and for Morrissey to hold him up by one arm for a while, but I had warmed to him by then, and I quite rejected the account of this show that has it that 'that the fella can sing but does he really have to wrap himself in a cloak of his own misery ?'.
No cloak, no misery that I could see - I did not recognize the Morrissey of (from memory) these words, and maybe they should not be divorced from what follows :
As the twelve-ton truck
Kills the both of us
For me, reflecting on one's mortality, on wanting to be authentic in one's own terms, and on what, rather than separating us, we have in common seems perfectly fine territory for a song-writer.
End-notes
* Then again, this made for a very filmic treatment of the footage from the stage, by overlaying it with images (or parts of them) from the screened projection, and so offset the relative banality of the rest (i.e. of equating killing and eating with murder).
** Belatedly, because I lost the link, I am reciprocating the kind link by @Notorious_QRG to this posting, in which words from this paragraph about the shirts were quoted - apologies !
I am still unsure whether Morrissey is rightly thought of as having an indissoluble ego, or whether the expressions that he had on stage are capable of having been misconstrued. Certainly, when he gave the audience the microphone and asked if they wanted to say something (and, even, to do so 'if they were hard enough'), there must have been a fair chance that they were fans and were going to be complimentary, but, just possibly, they could have chanted a lyric about tetanus injections for astrologers...
*** This latter gesture, too, I had been prepared for by the trailer.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
27 August
A particular song in Morrissey 25 : Live, about Meat and complete with black-and-white images of creatures and carcasses*, might make you think so. For me, it was the least subtle moment of the night in almost all respects, whether lyrics, message, or even pointing a finger by naming KFC - or in the swoon that Morrissey affected afterwards on his knees.
It must have been affected, because there was a spot perfectly focused to illuminate his back, and spots mean lighting-rigs, and they mean rehearsing the lighting-changes, so he would have hit the mark placed on the stage as much the benefit of those who would see the filmed gig as those at the venue.
That quibble apart, there was much that was spontaneous and warm about this performance, recorded live at Hollywood High School (on 2 March 2013) - obviously not, again, when Morrissey ripped open a shirt that he must have intended to sacrifice (unlike the first two, which he had worn to go offstage and change, and which looked much nicer**) at crucial words about those whose physical appearance one despises, but that was momentary, and gave the fans a moment of nearly baying frenzy when he chucked it into the crowd at the front***.
I watched with a friend, who could keep me abreast of where, before and after The Smiths, each number came from in Morrissey's recording history. (A couple from the second solo album both sounded heavily redolent of the earlier sound.) We probably also had three or so songs from before he went solo, and I was informed that one later song reflected what happened in litigation between band and former lead singer.
All of which is more than enough to give away the fact that I do not buy Morrissey's albums or go to his gigs, but that was no reason not to watch the cinematic release. (Those who read further afield on this blog will find that I talk about art, but one does not have to like an artist as such to talk about his or her work and try to understand it.)
As to being dramatic, it was clearly not - because of the size of the venue and the difference between the artists - going to compare with something like the video of Peter Gabriel's 'Secret World' tour, and it was really (apart from that mentioned) only the third in the running order that made a striking use of visual material. However, it all did the job of giving one some sense of what it might have been like to be there, and one got wonderfully close to the singing Morrissey.
He gave a strong performance, buttoned and unbuttoned his shirts as the mood took him, and was well supported by his band (one of whom, apparently, has been with him since he split off from The Smiths). How he would lash the stage so much, as he did earlier on, with a cordless microphone I do not know - maybe he stopped, maybe I became less conscious, because the first two songs definitely felt like openers, and then everything had more presence (not least with the way that the third item had been assembled for film).
Some of Morrissey's songs I might well look out and read, because, unlike the fans mouthing or singing alone, I do not know much of what he does, and it helped when I could lip-read from him : one, rightly enough and unobjectionably, told us that we all have a date with an undertaker that we cannot break. In addition, I was given a strong sense that any notion of ego about Morrissey is really a front, a view with which my friend agreed, and that the songs fairly often are sung by a persona, which it would be the grossest of simplifications to identify directly with him :
I initially formed that view by seeing how he gave a little bow to all the people whom we saw him giving handshakes to at the beginning, which seemed out of genuine respect. Expectation had been
built up by fans saying how they felt, seeing the empty auditorium, and the titles, and then we had him on stage, bedding down the act, and seeming to have no fear of reaching out to the audience, or of validating those who made it onto the stage by extending a hand to them : of course, we were all touched by his reception of the nine-year-old boy to whom he had spoken earlier being beside him.
Old cynic that I sometimes am, Morrissey's generosity of spirit warmed me - of course, it could have been a stunt for the boy to get to the stage and for Morrissey to hold him up by one arm for a while, but I had warmed to him by then, and I quite rejected the account of this show that has it that 'that the fella can sing but does he really have to wrap himself in a cloak of his own misery ?'.
No cloak, no misery that I could see - I did not recognize the Morrissey of (from memory) these words, and maybe they should not be divorced from what follows :
As the twelve-ton truck
Kills the both of us
For me, reflecting on one's mortality, on wanting to be authentic in one's own terms, and on what, rather than separating us, we have in common seems perfectly fine territory for a song-writer.
End-notes
* Then again, this made for a very filmic treatment of the footage from the stage, by overlaying it with images (or parts of them) from the screened projection, and so offset the relative banality of the rest (i.e. of equating killing and eating with murder).
** Belatedly, because I lost the link, I am reciprocating the kind link by @Notorious_QRG to this posting, in which words from this paragraph about the shirts were quoted - apologies !
I am still unsure whether Morrissey is rightly thought of as having an indissoluble ego, or whether the expressions that he had on stage are capable of having been misconstrued. Certainly, when he gave the audience the microphone and asked if they wanted to say something (and, even, to do so 'if they were hard enough'), there must have been a fair chance that they were fans and were going to be complimentary, but, just possibly, they could have chanted a lyric about tetanus injections for astrologers...
*** This latter gesture, too, I had been prepared for by the trailer.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Sunday, 25 August 2013
Cambridge Film Festival : Friday Films at The Red Lion, Whittlesford
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26 August
<i>If you haven't seen Woody Allen's classic take on a rom-com, we cannot recommend this highly enough ! Consistently voted a top comedy, it has inspired TV & film ever since.
Friday 6 September - doors open at 6.00 - films at dusk</i>
Except that :
1. The word 'rhombus' does not rhyme with the word 'comedy', so the term is a nonsense.
2. Anyway, a real romantic comedy, such as Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), keeps you waiting until the end to find out.
3. Maybe, for all Allen's and Keaton's quips, it is not even a comedy.
4. In any case, although he is never properly given credit for it, Marshall Brickman co-wrote the film with Allen.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
26 August
<i>If you haven't seen Woody Allen's classic take on a rom-com, we cannot recommend this highly enough ! Consistently voted a top comedy, it has inspired TV & film ever since.
Friday 6 September - doors open at 6.00 - films at dusk</i>
Except that :
1. The word 'rhombus' does not rhyme with the word 'comedy', so the term is a nonsense.
2. Anyway, a real romantic comedy, such as Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), keeps you waiting until the end to find out.
3. Maybe, for all Allen's and Keaton's quips, it is not even a comedy.
4. In any case, although he is never properly given credit for it, Marshall Brickman co-wrote the film with Allen.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Guff instead of substance
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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25 August
Try as I might, when I read chapters in some books about film (usually, where I have seen the film, and wish to see what the writer has to say, be it the opinions of Barry Norman, or some collection about the 100 this or that), I am reminded by the literary-critical movements of the late 1970s, and wonder why I am reading this stuff.
Just at the moment, it is Fifty Key American Films*, and a hair’s breadth separates me from not continuing reading what Jean Welsh has to say about Thelma and Louise (1991), in this collection edited by local academic John White and Sabine Haenni, because I have just reached :
This makes the female representations oxymoronic in ways which may reflect more truly the ambivalent position of women in society (p. 216)
Uh ? Fewer than two printed sides earlier, the author used one of these adjectives in a way that suggests no understanding of how it should be used :
She [Callie Khouri] is also ambivalent about the film’s status as a feminist text : ‘the issues surrounding the film are feminist. But the film itself is not’ (p. 214)
It is not that Welsh fails to spot that screenwriter Khouri distinguishes between the film (which Welsh is writing about) and these issues (which she mentioned earlier), but how she couches introducing the comparison makes one think that she is trying to be clever by deploying the word ‘ambivalent’, whereas Khouri is quite openly stating that the film is not feminist, and has no hesitation – in what is quoted – about saying that it should not have that status.
What I believe that Welsh means that is that Khouri is ambivalent about the film being perceived as making a feminist statement, because, although she states that the film itself is not one, the issues that surrounded it are. Whether or not I am right, this is not Welsh says, and, instead, she makes me feel that she is so busy trying to write in an academic way that she neglects to realize that she obscures her own meaning by so doing.
Back to the first example, and Welsh seems to be showing off again that she is using the word ‘oxymoron’. However, she is using it as an adjective and qualifying the word ‘representations’ by it, quite apart from the fact that an oxymoron is typified by the example bitter-sweet, a yoking together of opposites that are almost always polar ones.
Of course, we have the benefit of reading what she has just written, but using a word such as ‘oxymoronic’ in this way should be summative, it should be a drawing together of what has already been said, not one that makes the reader scratch his or her head and wonder what the writer is talking about, and why this is an oxymoron at all.
Again, about the choice of words, and using them appropriately, whereas these texts of film studies seem to rejoice in obfuscation, in using the word ‘oneiric’ to prove that they know it, not just that all that they mean are that whatever the word qualifies is of or relating to dreams. Cannot these people grow up ? Did they read so much Roland Barthes, and are so keen to maintain the position of their writing as an academic subject, that they have to use unreal academic prose ?
And what is ‘ambivalent’ about ‘the position of women in society’ (even if we limit the society to that in which the film is set) ? Whose ambivalence even are we talking about, because a position cannot really be any more ambivalent than the thoughts of the person who is either in that position, or views something (or someone) in two quite different ways ? (No more so than a representation can be oxymoronic.)
There may be ambivalence about the position of women in society, but can it mean anything (much) for the position itself to be ambivalent ?
All of which makes me feel that I have tired of all this – if the writer cannot straightforwardly express matters, why should I trouble myself to figure out what she did mean (or might have meant)… ?
Without finishing, I continued reading, but the more that I read, the more that it has become clear that White & Haenni should never have accepted this contribution, because it ain't about Thelma and Louise :
It is intended for quite another volume, Fifty Key American Filmscripts Subverted by the Director and / or Studio and / or XYZ, but, even so, it would have to be more honest** that no screenwriter gets what he or she wants into a film - and even people like Woody Allen tell you that of what he initially had in mind, regardless of so-called auteur theory (if it is auteur, why is it not théorie ?), what makes it to be released is often a messy compromise.
And, as if all this rampant multi-valued appreciation were not enough, how about this (from the closing paragraph) ? :
However, to anyone who has seen the film this potentially depressing reading [see below] doesn't ring true to the experience of watching the film. The ambivalence of the ending with its tension between the essentially depressing representation of female powerlessness and its fairytale happy ending where the women 'just keep going' (emphasized by the use of the freeze-frame and the reprise of shots from earlier in the film) are in keeping with the rest of the film. (p. 217)
Again, the script is what counts, not the film - it is abundantly clear that the film as it was written has been betrayed by how it was directed, and yet we conclude with this sentence, where what seemed negative has suddenly become positive :
A great part of this film's power is to achieve the seemingly incompatible aim of both presenting a stark reality and providing an enjoyable escape from it.
I am right, that is praise, isn't it, but it seems like a non-sequitur ?
Was it, maybe, all that the editors really read, after glancing over the intro, or am I in some world of ambivalence where lessening the impact of the women driving over and into The Grand Canyon is somehow a virtue - when has giving something a 'fairytale happy ending' been something for which to thank a director for just because it avoids the force of an 'essentially depressing representation of female powerlessness' ?
So 'enjoyable escape' - the audience leaves, not thinking that the women have driven off the edge to their death, but remembering how they stuck up for themselves, and they go into a neverland, a bit like in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) ?
End-notes
* I avoid such a use of the word ‘key’, let alone saying ‘These things are key’, which, if it means anything, is expressed just as well by ‘These are the key things’.
** Ideally, called Five Thousand and Fifty American Filmscripts, etc., etc.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
25 August
Try as I might, when I read chapters in some books about film (usually, where I have seen the film, and wish to see what the writer has to say, be it the opinions of Barry Norman, or some collection about the 100 this or that), I am reminded by the literary-critical movements of the late 1970s, and wonder why I am reading this stuff.
Just at the moment, it is Fifty Key American Films*, and a hair’s breadth separates me from not continuing reading what Jean Welsh has to say about Thelma and Louise (1991), in this collection edited by local academic John White and Sabine Haenni, because I have just reached :
This makes the female representations oxymoronic in ways which may reflect more truly the ambivalent position of women in society (p. 216)
Uh ? Fewer than two printed sides earlier, the author used one of these adjectives in a way that suggests no understanding of how it should be used :
She [Callie Khouri] is also ambivalent about the film’s status as a feminist text : ‘the issues surrounding the film are feminist. But the film itself is not’ (p. 214)
It is not that Welsh fails to spot that screenwriter Khouri distinguishes between the film (which Welsh is writing about) and these issues (which she mentioned earlier), but how she couches introducing the comparison makes one think that she is trying to be clever by deploying the word ‘ambivalent’, whereas Khouri is quite openly stating that the film is not feminist, and has no hesitation – in what is quoted – about saying that it should not have that status.
What I believe that Welsh means that is that Khouri is ambivalent about the film being perceived as making a feminist statement, because, although she states that the film itself is not one, the issues that surrounded it are. Whether or not I am right, this is not Welsh says, and, instead, she makes me feel that she is so busy trying to write in an academic way that she neglects to realize that she obscures her own meaning by so doing.
Back to the first example, and Welsh seems to be showing off again that she is using the word ‘oxymoron’. However, she is using it as an adjective and qualifying the word ‘representations’ by it, quite apart from the fact that an oxymoron is typified by the example bitter-sweet, a yoking together of opposites that are almost always polar ones.
Of course, we have the benefit of reading what she has just written, but using a word such as ‘oxymoronic’ in this way should be summative, it should be a drawing together of what has already been said, not one that makes the reader scratch his or her head and wonder what the writer is talking about, and why this is an oxymoron at all.
Again, about the choice of words, and using them appropriately, whereas these texts of film studies seem to rejoice in obfuscation, in using the word ‘oneiric’ to prove that they know it, not just that all that they mean are that whatever the word qualifies is of or relating to dreams. Cannot these people grow up ? Did they read so much Roland Barthes, and are so keen to maintain the position of their writing as an academic subject, that they have to use unreal academic prose ?
And what is ‘ambivalent’ about ‘the position of women in society’ (even if we limit the society to that in which the film is set) ? Whose ambivalence even are we talking about, because a position cannot really be any more ambivalent than the thoughts of the person who is either in that position, or views something (or someone) in two quite different ways ? (No more so than a representation can be oxymoronic.)
There may be ambivalence about the position of women in society, but can it mean anything (much) for the position itself to be ambivalent ?
All of which makes me feel that I have tired of all this – if the writer cannot straightforwardly express matters, why should I trouble myself to figure out what she did mean (or might have meant)… ?
Without finishing, I continued reading, but the more that I read, the more that it has become clear that White & Haenni should never have accepted this contribution, because it ain't about Thelma and Louise :
It is intended for quite another volume, Fifty Key American Filmscripts Subverted by the Director and / or Studio and / or XYZ, but, even so, it would have to be more honest** that no screenwriter gets what he or she wants into a film - and even people like Woody Allen tell you that of what he initially had in mind, regardless of so-called auteur theory (if it is auteur, why is it not théorie ?), what makes it to be released is often a messy compromise.
And, as if all this rampant multi-valued appreciation were not enough, how about this (from the closing paragraph) ? :
However, to anyone who has seen the film this potentially depressing reading [see below] doesn't ring true to the experience of watching the film. The ambivalence of the ending with its tension between the essentially depressing representation of female powerlessness and its fairytale happy ending where the women 'just keep going' (emphasized by the use of the freeze-frame and the reprise of shots from earlier in the film) are in keeping with the rest of the film. (p. 217)
Again, the script is what counts, not the film - it is abundantly clear that the film as it was written has been betrayed by how it was directed, and yet we conclude with this sentence, where what seemed negative has suddenly become positive :
A great part of this film's power is to achieve the seemingly incompatible aim of both presenting a stark reality and providing an enjoyable escape from it.
I am right, that is praise, isn't it, but it seems like a non-sequitur ?
Was it, maybe, all that the editors really read, after glancing over the intro, or am I in some world of ambivalence where lessening the impact of the women driving over and into The Grand Canyon is somehow a virtue - when has giving something a 'fairytale happy ending' been something for which to thank a director for just because it avoids the force of an 'essentially depressing representation of female powerlessness' ?
So 'enjoyable escape' - the audience leaves, not thinking that the women have driven off the edge to their death, but remembering how they stuck up for themselves, and they go into a neverland, a bit like in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) ?
End-notes
* I avoid such a use of the word ‘key’, let alone saying ‘These things are key’, which, if it means anything, is expressed just as well by ‘These are the key things’.
** Ideally, called Five Thousand and Fifty American Filmscripts, etc., etc.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Saturday, 24 August 2013
Cinema at Childerley Hall
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
25 August
Kathryn Tickell's gig with The Side was held at Childerley Hall*.
Next month, on 14 September, is a screening in the run-up to the Film Festival of Edward Scissorhands (1990), a 12 certificate. The film will not be shown until dusk, but there is a chance to acquaint oneself with the gardens, which I always lose myself in (in more senses than one !), from 6.00.
Picturehouse members (with proof thereof) count as concessions, as do students and whatever those of a certain age care to call themselves, at £10, otherwise the adult admission is £12.
PS And this is what happened...
End-notes
Those who, for some technological purpose, need to be told should make note of 3 Mill Yard, Dry Drayton CB23 8BA...
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
25 August
Kathryn Tickell's gig with The Side was held at Childerley Hall*.
Next month, on 14 September, is a screening in the run-up to the Film Festival of Edward Scissorhands (1990), a 12 certificate. The film will not be shown until dusk, but there is a chance to acquaint oneself with the gardens, which I always lose myself in (in more senses than one !), from 6.00.
Picturehouse members (with proof thereof) count as concessions, as do students and whatever those of a certain age care to call themselves, at £10, otherwise the adult admission is £12.
PS And this is what happened...
End-notes
Those who, for some technological purpose, need to be told should make note of 3 Mill Yard, Dry Drayton CB23 8BA...
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Friday, 23 August 2013
Gibberish comes to a home of academic excellence and parades as talking about 'competition'
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
24 August
The following quotations are taken from the Provisional Findings Report of the Competition Commission, dated 20 August and called Cineworld / City Screen Merger Inquiry : Completed acquisition by Cineworld Group plc of City Screen Limited
In Cambridge, Picturehouse operates a three-screen cinema. There is a nine-screen Cineworld cinema and an eight-screen Vue cinema within less than 5 minutes’ drive-time. (para. 6.77)
Yes, that's all very well - you can be outside the Arts Picturehouse in a car and, from there, drive to Vue's premises, except that you cannot park immediately outside either of them. Being able to do that journey in less than five minutes ? Well, you would have to be very lucky with two major traffic-light-controlled junctions and two pelican crossings, and then you would be outside a cinema, momentarily, on a road where you cannot even stop.
Talking, then, of '20- and 30-minute drive-time isochrones' is then sheer nonsense - I might be able to drive to some prime location in London very quickly, but, if I cannot actually benefit from being there in and with a car, I would obviously not choose to drive there. One might do better, say, to compare being able to shop at Tesco in Royston (and park there) and then, within that timescale, getting to Morrison's in the town and being able to park - notional drive-times that have no element of practicability to them are meaningless. (I say that because when The Co-operative wanted to buy Somerfield stores, they either did not, or could not, buy what became the Morrison's.)
The report is not even consistent internally about what it means by 'travel', and so the following paragraph reads :
The parties’ survey showed that 81 per cent of Picturehouse Cambridge customers had travelled 30 minutes or less to the cinema from their home. This is consistent with our own survey, which also gave a result of 81 per cent. (para. 6.78)
This does not mean what it says, because the report is fixed on the idea of driving, as the subsequent text makes clear, but driving alone, not driving plus walking, or driving plus a parking-fee plus a smaller amount of walking. These factors might make, say, someone living in Stapleford more likely to cycle than even to get behind the wheel of a car - door-to-door transport at only the cost of effort, and with no extra time or cost, but still the journey-time.
This next paragraph beggars belief - you ask the people who would stand to benefit (by buying up one of the readymade sites) how they view Cambridge, and expect them to tell you the truth about their business plans, not playing down anything :
In addition, Curzon told us that although the demographics of Cambridge were attractive, there was too much competition under the control of Cineworld and it preferred to look at areas where there were more opportunities. Odeon considered Cambridge an attractive area, but the centre of Cambridge already had three cinemas, and it was not clear that there was enough demand to support another cinema. In addition, the city centre was tight and opportunities to enter consequently limited. Odeon [snip]. It was unlikely that Odeon would be able to open a cinema in the area in the next two to three years. If an opportunity arose, likely timescales for development were the next five to ten years. We therefore considered that timely entry in the Cambridge area was unlikely. We considered that competitive constraints on the parties would be weakened following the transaction and, on balance, that other factors at play in the Cambridge area would not defeat the lessening of competition. (para. 6.84)
So they play down how they can compete to encourage you to tell Cineworld to sell one of the cinemas, and then they just buy it. No matter whether the people who frequent these cinemas would want the films that Curzon or Odeon would show - they just get the chance to take over, because that's 'competition', even if it is a disservice to the present clientele.
Still, as long as someone watches some films or other, it doesn't matter much...
Or is that approach / logic more like that phrase of cutting off your nose to spite your face ?
And this little phrase was reported, and then ignored :
The parties also told us that demand in Cambridge could support another multiplex. (para. 6.83)
Are they trying to be clever, by saying that other chains might be drawn in, or not. It just hangs in the air - if they are right, then all the more reason for someone to gobble up whatever Cineworld is compelled to sell, because they can get rid of this home of the film festival and unprofitable arthouse rubbish, and put on solid blockbusters from noon to night !
And then there was something about surveying people and what they would do in the event of some percentage price-rise : if I wanted to watch, not the latest Batman caper, but, say, Samsara (2011), or Kosmos (2010), would I find either at Cambridge Vue or Cineworld ?
Rubbish in, rubbish out, in terms of asking a meaningful question ?
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
24 August
The following quotations are taken from the Provisional Findings Report of the Competition Commission, dated 20 August and called Cineworld / City Screen Merger Inquiry : Completed acquisition by Cineworld Group plc of City Screen Limited
In Cambridge, Picturehouse operates a three-screen cinema. There is a nine-screen Cineworld cinema and an eight-screen Vue cinema within less than 5 minutes’ drive-time. (para. 6.77)
Yes, that's all very well - you can be outside the Arts Picturehouse in a car and, from there, drive to Vue's premises, except that you cannot park immediately outside either of them. Being able to do that journey in less than five minutes ? Well, you would have to be very lucky with two major traffic-light-controlled junctions and two pelican crossings, and then you would be outside a cinema, momentarily, on a road where you cannot even stop.
Talking, then, of '20- and 30-minute drive-time isochrones' is then sheer nonsense - I might be able to drive to some prime location in London very quickly, but, if I cannot actually benefit from being there in and with a car, I would obviously not choose to drive there. One might do better, say, to compare being able to shop at Tesco in Royston (and park there) and then, within that timescale, getting to Morrison's in the town and being able to park - notional drive-times that have no element of practicability to them are meaningless. (I say that because when The Co-operative wanted to buy Somerfield stores, they either did not, or could not, buy what became the Morrison's.)
The report is not even consistent internally about what it means by 'travel', and so the following paragraph reads :
The parties’ survey showed that 81 per cent of Picturehouse Cambridge customers had travelled 30 minutes or less to the cinema from their home. This is consistent with our own survey, which also gave a result of 81 per cent. (para. 6.78)
This does not mean what it says, because the report is fixed on the idea of driving, as the subsequent text makes clear, but driving alone, not driving plus walking, or driving plus a parking-fee plus a smaller amount of walking. These factors might make, say, someone living in Stapleford more likely to cycle than even to get behind the wheel of a car - door-to-door transport at only the cost of effort, and with no extra time or cost, but still the journey-time.
This next paragraph beggars belief - you ask the people who would stand to benefit (by buying up one of the readymade sites) how they view Cambridge, and expect them to tell you the truth about their business plans, not playing down anything :
In addition, Curzon told us that although the demographics of Cambridge were attractive, there was too much competition under the control of Cineworld and it preferred to look at areas where there were more opportunities. Odeon considered Cambridge an attractive area, but the centre of Cambridge already had three cinemas, and it was not clear that there was enough demand to support another cinema. In addition, the city centre was tight and opportunities to enter consequently limited. Odeon [snip]. It was unlikely that Odeon would be able to open a cinema in the area in the next two to three years. If an opportunity arose, likely timescales for development were the next five to ten years. We therefore considered that timely entry in the Cambridge area was unlikely. We considered that competitive constraints on the parties would be weakened following the transaction and, on balance, that other factors at play in the Cambridge area would not defeat the lessening of competition. (para. 6.84)
So they play down how they can compete to encourage you to tell Cineworld to sell one of the cinemas, and then they just buy it. No matter whether the people who frequent these cinemas would want the films that Curzon or Odeon would show - they just get the chance to take over, because that's 'competition', even if it is a disservice to the present clientele.
Still, as long as someone watches some films or other, it doesn't matter much...
Or is that approach / logic more like that phrase of cutting off your nose to spite your face ?
And this little phrase was reported, and then ignored :
The parties also told us that demand in Cambridge could support another multiplex. (para. 6.83)
Are they trying to be clever, by saying that other chains might be drawn in, or not. It just hangs in the air - if they are right, then all the more reason for someone to gobble up whatever Cineworld is compelled to sell, because they can get rid of this home of the film festival and unprofitable arthouse rubbish, and put on solid blockbusters from noon to night !
And then there was something about surveying people and what they would do in the event of some percentage price-rise : if I wanted to watch, not the latest Batman caper, but, say, Samsara (2011), or Kosmos (2010), would I find either at Cambridge Vue or Cineworld ?
Rubbish in, rubbish out, in terms of asking a meaningful question ?
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
I knew Don Pasquale as a Cambridge restaurant
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
12 August
* Contains spoilers *
I went to that restaurant for the first time with a friend long since lost - the Varsity Handbook of the time said, deliberately cruelly, that it was about as Italian as Watney's (itself rather an anachronism).
By utter contrast, Donizetti's Don P., relayed live from Glyndebourne (a place that my rather more well-heeled friend would know - I know that he knows), was not anything like a tepid ale, but magnificent, piece and production.
With what little I know of opera buffa, principally from a Haydn caper (with another man led into a delusion, that time that he had been transported to the moon), I was expecting something...
Here, the craziness was introduced step by step into the action proper, though signalled by the doctor (Dr Malatesta*) climbing in and out of secret passages during the overture - he could, equally, have been a behavioural scientist, and the others rats in his Skinner box, because he knew their world better than they did, and, more or less, pulled all the strings. (A rocking-horse soon after carried by the Don onto the part of the set that represented his (adult) nephew's bedroom hints at absurdity - no one knows the true meaning of Dada (as in Dadaism), but it is the French term for such a creature.)
I say, more or less, because de Niese (as Norina) is his essential collaborator, and she really throws herself into it, more assiduous than even Malatesta 'to teach Pasquale a lesson' ! Echoes, in that objective, of The Madness of King George (1994), Twelfth Night, or even the framing-device of The Taming of the Shrew. Notions of moral worth and not having a swollen head, which give us the term shrink (from head-shrink). (The oysters referred to above (and all that they imply) appear when Pasquale flips a hinged painting over, hiding a contemplative skull as memento mori, showing where his libido is now seeking to lead him.)
Malatesta is as focused on ends not means as Norina is, hence her not being averse to taking a bubble-bath whilst he is around, or to his getting into it... Surely not in the libretto, but pointing up what's in it for him in all this !
Likewise, Pasquale's retainer cum nurse, who is both clearly jealous when Norina in disguise comes on the scene (or curious when Malatesta shuts her out), and part of the notion that what is 'wrong with' him is his miserly and stiff-necked attitude. As Pasquale, Alessandro Corbelli showed his experience, and brought out the comedy both of his folly before 'marrying', and when his 'wife' has revealed himself in her true colours : de Niese wonderfully went to town, and Corbelli was her perfect foil.
Malatesta, creeping around the place at night like some over-sized Borrower, has been mentioned above, and this is where the stage's potential first became apparent - he would slip through one aperture, and, as the scenes moved right to left, appear somewhere else. All creating a pretty creepy, almost delusional feeling, of someone unseen on manoeuvres when one is unawares, and a very convincing (and two-faced) portrayal from Nikolay Borchev - according to one person leaving a comment on the Glyndebourne web-site, Malatesta is supposed to be 'the moral fulcrum of the tale', not a 'self interested puppet master', but, equally, de Niese was 'miscast'.
I cannot see myself ever researching this matter far enough to know what the plain text says about Malatesta, but, quite apart from anything else, Borchev sang well, and my recollection is clear enough that, unless passages have been deleted, interpolated or simply added, morality only seemed the doctor's part in the sense of Shakespearean 'problem' plays, such as All's Well That Ends Well or Measure for Measure.
Nephew Ernesto, played by Alek Schrader, did seem to have been miscast by contrast, because, for me, his voice needed to be blended with that of other singers, but otherwise seemed reedy and exposed when he had a solo line. As to Donizetti's music, de Niese seemed to have a fine sense for delivering recitative, and the harmonies created with four voices were quite enchanting.
End-notes
* The name appears literally to mean 'bad in the head', but we need not worry, because Donizetti is drawing on figures from the Commedia dell'Arte.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
12 August
* Contains spoilers *
I went to that restaurant for the first time with a friend long since lost - the Varsity Handbook of the time said, deliberately cruelly, that it was about as Italian as Watney's (itself rather an anachronism).
By utter contrast, Donizetti's Don P., relayed live from Glyndebourne (a place that my rather more well-heeled friend would know - I know that he knows), was not anything like a tepid ale, but magnificent, piece and production.
Excellent high-definition relay of Donizetti's Don Pasquale from @glyndebourne at @CamPicturehouse - beautiful writing for vocal quartet !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 6, 2013
With what little I know of opera buffa, principally from a Haydn caper (with another man led into a delusion, that time that he had been transported to the moon), I was expecting something...
Interesting stage-business in Donizetti at @glyndebourne via @picturehouses : skull turns to oysters, Harry-Potter-type pictures as doors...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 6, 2013
Here, the craziness was introduced step by step into the action proper, though signalled by the doctor (Dr Malatesta*) climbing in and out of secret passages during the overture - he could, equally, have been a behavioural scientist, and the others rats in his Skinner box, because he knew their world better than they did, and, more or less, pulled all the strings. (A rocking-horse soon after carried by the Don onto the part of the set that represented his (adult) nephew's bedroom hints at absurdity - no one knows the true meaning of Dada (as in Dadaism), but it is the French term for such a creature.)
Danielle de Niese is stealing the show at @glyndebourne in Donizetti via @picturehouses - beautiful voice, wonderful and confident manner !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 6, 2013
I say, more or less, because de Niese (as Norina) is his essential collaborator, and she really throws herself into it, more assiduous than even Malatesta 'to teach Pasquale a lesson' ! Echoes, in that objective, of The Madness of King George (1994), Twelfth Night, or even the framing-device of The Taming of the Shrew. Notions of moral worth and not having a swollen head, which give us the term shrink (from head-shrink). (The oysters referred to above (and all that they imply) appear when Pasquale flips a hinged painting over, hiding a contemplative skull as memento mori, showing where his libido is now seeking to lead him.)
Malatesta is as focused on ends not means as Norina is, hence her not being averse to taking a bubble-bath whilst he is around, or to his getting into it... Surely not in the libretto, but pointing up what's in it for him in all this !
Likewise, Pasquale's retainer cum nurse, who is both clearly jealous when Norina in disguise comes on the scene (or curious when Malatesta shuts her out), and part of the notion that what is 'wrong with' him is his miserly and stiff-necked attitude. As Pasquale, Alessandro Corbelli showed his experience, and brought out the comedy both of his folly before 'marrying', and when his 'wife' has revealed himself in her true colours : de Niese wonderfully went to town, and Corbelli was her perfect foil.
Nice use of a revolving-stage in Donizetti's Don Pasquale at @glyndebourne via @CamPicturehouse - quick-change moves between scenes, vibrant
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 6, 2013
Malatesta, creeping around the place at night like some over-sized Borrower, has been mentioned above, and this is where the stage's potential first became apparent - he would slip through one aperture, and, as the scenes moved right to left, appear somewhere else. All creating a pretty creepy, almost delusional feeling, of someone unseen on manoeuvres when one is unawares, and a very convincing (and two-faced) portrayal from Nikolay Borchev - according to one person leaving a comment on the Glyndebourne web-site, Malatesta is supposed to be 'the moral fulcrum of the tale', not a 'self interested puppet master', but, equally, de Niese was 'miscast'.
I cannot see myself ever researching this matter far enough to know what the plain text says about Malatesta, but, quite apart from anything else, Borchev sang well, and my recollection is clear enough that, unless passages have been deleted, interpolated or simply added, morality only seemed the doctor's part in the sense of Shakespearean 'problem' plays, such as All's Well That Ends Well or Measure for Measure.
Nephew Ernesto, played by Alek Schrader, did seem to have been miscast by contrast, because, for me, his voice needed to be blended with that of other singers, but otherwise seemed reedy and exposed when he had a solo line. As to Donizetti's music, de Niese seemed to have a fine sense for delivering recitative, and the harmonies created with four voices were quite enchanting.
End-notes
* The name appears literally to mean 'bad in the head', but we need not worry, because Donizetti is drawing on figures from the Commedia dell'Arte.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Thursday, 22 August 2013
Russian dolls : the Western understanding of Pussy Riot
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 August (updated 23 November - see asterisked paragraph)
I knew enough to make sure that I was accompanied by a native Russian when I saw Pussy Riot : A Punk Prayer (2013), if only because I wanted to hear whether the subtitles were both accurate and caught the essence.
However, it has to be said that the extensive perspectives shared afterwards by my sleeper-agent friend (we'll call her Agent Y) make me think that, without her there, I would have felt that I understood what was going on in this documentary, but have missed almost everything that, had I but known it, would have caused me to question the first-blush impression.
Starting with one thing, the three young women who were caught and put on trial after the events of 21 February 2012 (Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (Nadia), Maria Alyokhina (Masha), and Yekaterina Samutsevich (Katia)), one might have thought that there was a gross over-reaction in their ending up with two years each in a labour camp*. My point of comparison, probably, would have been the protest around a decade ago that sought to disrupt a live broadcast from Canterbury Cathedral - it must have been on the issue of gay clergy in the Church of England**.
What I, in trying to be worthy, may have been overlooking was the simple possibility that these women, however deeply held their beliefs, also just wanted to be somebody - after all, Maria's (?) mother did tell us that she had been very keen on The Spice Girls, in particular Victoria Beckham. Whatever girl power had really ever been about, it had never conflicted with self-advancement, it must be said.
Contrast their situation with that of people put away for sentences five times longer for being 'guilty' just by association with Mikhail Khodorkovskiy, and one could not help realizing that the plight of the rioting trio had to be looked at in the round. From what Agent Y said, which reminded me of things that I had heard before, there is more than a strong hint that Khodorkovskiy's continued and lengthening incarceration is Putin locking up a significant political rival.
Which leads on to another take on the trio : there seemed to be very free access to high-quality filming of all three girls' statements, both immediately prior to deliberation, conviction and sentencing, and for the appeal. They all spoke - as far as I could tell - with great assurance, and with clear articulation of the arguments and points that they wished to make, and nothing (except not being a Russian) got in the way of hearing every word of what they had to say.
* At Aldeburgh Documentary Festival last weekend, Nick Fraser, editor for the BBC for its Storyville series, commented on the footage of the trial : according to what he said in conversation with journalist Mary Ann Sieghart, after a screening of Rafea (2012), when it came to light, there was surprise that it existed, and no one quite knew how it had been obtained (and what the implications of using it might be). *
The attention of the world's media and press was on all this - we were shown part of an RT interview, and I recognized, for example, the initials on a microphone of Westdeutscher Rundfunk - but what, actually, was all this in relation to the other issues of Putin's Russia from which, maybe not wholly inconveniently, this served as a high-capacity sideshow ?
Couple this with some facts about the Cathedral that we were shown, outside and in (including in the infamous 30-second protest), and, however sincerely Pussy Riot's members on that day were seeking to further feminism and challenge sexism, one has to question what all this was about other than skin deep.
We were told that the Cathedral of Christ The Saviour was built in 1812, demolished (as we were dramatically shown) in the Soviet era, became the site of a swimming-pool, and rebuilt following Gorbachev - even if it could have been shown that there was a real heritage attaching to this place (despite simply not having existed for decades), Agent Y tells me that this so-called Cathedral is more in the political ceremonial arena, about as much a place of religious veneration as The Palace of Westminster.
Yes, one of the matters that the rioters listed as their issues (we did not really hear much from any of the other members of Pussy Riot, although it is clear that they are not, as perceived, the three who were on trial, plus those who managed to escape) was the lack of separation between Church and State, but this - for all its associations - seems to be as little a holy place per se as The Cenotaph. No one wants people to be disrespectful to The Cenotaph by association with the war dead, but to claim that it is a holy place is far fetched. Apparently, the Cathedral of Christ The Saviour is more of a civic memorial, less a spiritual one.
If, as is often said, The Church of England is, variously, the Conservative Party or The Establishment at prayer, a protest in The General Synod would have a religious element to it, but not seem blasphemous or desecrating a shrine in the way that was claimed by and for the Russian protectors of the Faith, who seemed quick enough to want to say (and without clearly distancing themselves from the perception)that Islam would have beheaded Pussy Riot for similar actions in a mosque (a double whammy of claiming another's intolerance, whilst being one slightly less hard line oneself).
Back at the film, we were left feeling that this was a holy of holies, rather than a perfect symbol of the Church being the reactionary servant of Putin's government - the status of this Cathedral is at the centre of our appreciation of what significance the members' action had. However, we were, at best, shown the Cathedral's congregation called to public prayer, with nothing, other than the police trying to move them on and a spat when tensions ran high, to say that they were not the unforgiving extremists whom they appeared. By which I mean that it was claimed that, because of how they appeared and what they did, the women must have been 'possessed' (a view shared by a host of a t.v. show of which we saw a clip), and there generally seemed - other than rather mechanistic waving of icons of The Virgin and Child - very little other than a human reaction to 'the offence' (real or perceived), and not a Divine one (or a mention of this saviour).
I forget who, but someone observed that no one would have derived any meaning, from the brief moments before the security guards stepped in, from the protest in the Cathedral - Pussy Riot proudly circulated footage of it, but, at face value, a few disarrayed seconds were never going to change the world, let alone put what was (apparently misleadingly) translated as It's God shit in context. Agent Y tells me that the actual phrase conveys a sense of going through the motions, of faking a faith : perhaps appropriate for people so offended, as six present were, that they had to complain to the prosecutor about how hurt they were.
We saw Pussy Riot's filming of three other demonstrations - at best, we were told that those taking part had received 'administrative fines', but no one could explain how their actions had not been known to Putin before. Then again, Agent Y says that, contrary to the assertion made by those close to the group that conceptual / performance art and staging a happening are not understood in Russia, such things are hardly new in Moscow, and, thus, that a man used to behave like a dog to the extent of excreting in the street.
In essence, one could sympathize with the Pussy Riot group in wanting to oppose sexism, and promote feminism, in the arena of Putin's politics. How effectual their protest had been before they chose a more high-profile target must be questioned, and what they expected from it, but so also must the film's complicity in presenting the Cathedral as more than a token religious place. If they have taken heat off Putin's other actions, allowing such free access to the court proceedings and to the women's relatives might have been a price well worth someone paying.
End-notes
* One, Katia (?), was released on appeal - unlikely though it seemed, an argument on a technicality was accepted to free her.
However, one must admit that things can be seen differently : Agent Y interpreted using an argument to get out of jail as saying that Katia did not really support her fellow members of Pussy Riot, whereas I observed that, even with the case of those who make or attempted to make mass-murder with explosive devices, the accused terrorists never say We are terrorists and proud of it - we did these things, but expect their guilt to be shown.
As to Katia's father, Agent Y perceived him as having been privileged with a good wage and a dacha before perestroika. That may have been so, but that was no reason to think that his proudly giving out photos of his imprisoned daughter was not genuine pride in her and what she was fighting for, rather than clutching at importance on her coat-tails.
** In fact, it was as far back as 12 April 1998 (Easter Sunday), when Peter Tatchell and six other members of OutRage! made a protest : as a man of good character, Tatchell received a small fine, was ordered to pay costs, and was told that a custodial sentence had not been in issue.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
22 August (updated 23 November - see asterisked paragraph)
I knew enough to make sure that I was accompanied by a native Russian when I saw Pussy Riot : A Punk Prayer (2013), if only because I wanted to hear whether the subtitles were both accurate and caught the essence.
However, it has to be said that the extensive perspectives shared afterwards by my sleeper-agent friend (we'll call her Agent Y) make me think that, without her there, I would have felt that I understood what was going on in this documentary, but have missed almost everything that, had I but known it, would have caused me to question the first-blush impression.
Starting with one thing, the three young women who were caught and put on trial after the events of 21 February 2012 (Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (Nadia), Maria Alyokhina (Masha), and Yekaterina Samutsevich (Katia)), one might have thought that there was a gross over-reaction in their ending up with two years each in a labour camp*. My point of comparison, probably, would have been the protest around a decade ago that sought to disrupt a live broadcast from Canterbury Cathedral - it must have been on the issue of gay clergy in the Church of England**.
What I, in trying to be worthy, may have been overlooking was the simple possibility that these women, however deeply held their beliefs, also just wanted to be somebody - after all, Maria's (?) mother did tell us that she had been very keen on The Spice Girls, in particular Victoria Beckham. Whatever girl power had really ever been about, it had never conflicted with self-advancement, it must be said.
Contrast their situation with that of people put away for sentences five times longer for being 'guilty' just by association with Mikhail Khodorkovskiy, and one could not help realizing that the plight of the rioting trio had to be looked at in the round. From what Agent Y said, which reminded me of things that I had heard before, there is more than a strong hint that Khodorkovskiy's continued and lengthening incarceration is Putin locking up a significant political rival.
Which leads on to another take on the trio : there seemed to be very free access to high-quality filming of all three girls' statements, both immediately prior to deliberation, conviction and sentencing, and for the appeal. They all spoke - as far as I could tell - with great assurance, and with clear articulation of the arguments and points that they wished to make, and nothing (except not being a Russian) got in the way of hearing every word of what they had to say.
* At Aldeburgh Documentary Festival last weekend, Nick Fraser, editor for the BBC for its Storyville series, commented on the footage of the trial : according to what he said in conversation with journalist Mary Ann Sieghart, after a screening of Rafea (2012), when it came to light, there was surprise that it existed, and no one quite knew how it had been obtained (and what the implications of using it might be). *
The attention of the world's media and press was on all this - we were shown part of an RT interview, and I recognized, for example, the initials on a microphone of Westdeutscher Rundfunk - but what, actually, was all this in relation to the other issues of Putin's Russia from which, maybe not wholly inconveniently, this served as a high-capacity sideshow ?
Couple this with some facts about the Cathedral that we were shown, outside and in (including in the infamous 30-second protest), and, however sincerely Pussy Riot's members on that day were seeking to further feminism and challenge sexism, one has to question what all this was about other than skin deep.
We were told that the Cathedral of Christ The Saviour was built in 1812, demolished (as we were dramatically shown) in the Soviet era, became the site of a swimming-pool, and rebuilt following Gorbachev - even if it could have been shown that there was a real heritage attaching to this place (despite simply not having existed for decades), Agent Y tells me that this so-called Cathedral is more in the political ceremonial arena, about as much a place of religious veneration as The Palace of Westminster.
Yes, one of the matters that the rioters listed as their issues (we did not really hear much from any of the other members of Pussy Riot, although it is clear that they are not, as perceived, the three who were on trial, plus those who managed to escape) was the lack of separation between Church and State, but this - for all its associations - seems to be as little a holy place per se as The Cenotaph. No one wants people to be disrespectful to The Cenotaph by association with the war dead, but to claim that it is a holy place is far fetched. Apparently, the Cathedral of Christ The Saviour is more of a civic memorial, less a spiritual one.
If, as is often said, The Church of England is, variously, the Conservative Party or The Establishment at prayer, a protest in The General Synod would have a religious element to it, but not seem blasphemous or desecrating a shrine in the way that was claimed by and for the Russian protectors of the Faith, who seemed quick enough to want to say (and without clearly distancing themselves from the perception)that Islam would have beheaded Pussy Riot for similar actions in a mosque (a double whammy of claiming another's intolerance, whilst being one slightly less hard line oneself).
Back at the film, we were left feeling that this was a holy of holies, rather than a perfect symbol of the Church being the reactionary servant of Putin's government - the status of this Cathedral is at the centre of our appreciation of what significance the members' action had. However, we were, at best, shown the Cathedral's congregation called to public prayer, with nothing, other than the police trying to move them on and a spat when tensions ran high, to say that they were not the unforgiving extremists whom they appeared. By which I mean that it was claimed that, because of how they appeared and what they did, the women must have been 'possessed' (a view shared by a host of a t.v. show of which we saw a clip), and there generally seemed - other than rather mechanistic waving of icons of The Virgin and Child - very little other than a human reaction to 'the offence' (real or perceived), and not a Divine one (or a mention of this saviour).
I forget who, but someone observed that no one would have derived any meaning, from the brief moments before the security guards stepped in, from the protest in the Cathedral - Pussy Riot proudly circulated footage of it, but, at face value, a few disarrayed seconds were never going to change the world, let alone put what was (apparently misleadingly) translated as It's God shit in context. Agent Y tells me that the actual phrase conveys a sense of going through the motions, of faking a faith : perhaps appropriate for people so offended, as six present were, that they had to complain to the prosecutor about how hurt they were.
We saw Pussy Riot's filming of three other demonstrations - at best, we were told that those taking part had received 'administrative fines', but no one could explain how their actions had not been known to Putin before. Then again, Agent Y says that, contrary to the assertion made by those close to the group that conceptual / performance art and staging a happening are not understood in Russia, such things are hardly new in Moscow, and, thus, that a man used to behave like a dog to the extent of excreting in the street.
In essence, one could sympathize with the Pussy Riot group in wanting to oppose sexism, and promote feminism, in the arena of Putin's politics. How effectual their protest had been before they chose a more high-profile target must be questioned, and what they expected from it, but so also must the film's complicity in presenting the Cathedral as more than a token religious place. If they have taken heat off Putin's other actions, allowing such free access to the court proceedings and to the women's relatives might have been a price well worth someone paying.
End-notes
* One, Katia (?), was released on appeal - unlikely though it seemed, an argument on a technicality was accepted to free her.
However, one must admit that things can be seen differently : Agent Y interpreted using an argument to get out of jail as saying that Katia did not really support her fellow members of Pussy Riot, whereas I observed that, even with the case of those who make or attempted to make mass-murder with explosive devices, the accused terrorists never say We are terrorists and proud of it - we did these things, but expect their guilt to be shown.
As to Katia's father, Agent Y perceived him as having been privileged with a good wage and a dacha before perestroika. That may have been so, but that was no reason to think that his proudly giving out photos of his imprisoned daughter was not genuine pride in her and what she was fighting for, rather than clutching at importance on her coat-tails.
** In fact, it was as far back as 12 April 1998 (Easter Sunday), when Peter Tatchell and six other members of OutRage! made a protest : as a man of good character, Tatchell received a small fine, was ordered to pay costs, and was told that a custodial sentence had not been in issue.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Wednesday, 21 August 2013
Navigating a labyrinth
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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21 August
Looking for Hortense* (2012) is engaged with its characters, rather than driven by a plot, and Kristin Scott Thomas, for all that she is a striking woman as Iva, is not a primary player in this film (perhaps even less so than in In the House (201?) – towards the end, she is not on the screen, and we hear her activities narrated. It is not for me to know whether Damien has always been suspicious of her, and Iva always held back from her desires by duty, but, if we felt that we wanted to know, there is enough to guess by.
What emerges more slowly, shown unfolding in Damien’s attempts to speak to his father (Sébastien Hauer, an important judge) to ask him to bend the ear of an authority, is what intervenes, in him, between action and execution, what impedes**. The connection of the matter with Judge Hauer, which is indirect at his end, is tenuous at the other, and when the couple known to Iva and him have sex in their bathroom, she, unlike he, is able to pass it off as being in love (as well, probably, as a natural way of celebrating what they believe that he has achieved).
Jean-Pierre Bacri plays Damien beautifully well, and, whether in the apartment, about the streets of Paris, or giving his lecture course in two post-modern confections of architecture, always feels in place. Set him, however, in relation to his father and to the man whom he finally and momentarily gets to meet (expertly played by, respectively, Claude Rich and Philippe Duclos), and it is clear that the latter two are of a kind, and from a different mould from the sort of man who he is : when the former calmly says that he is self centred and apologizes for any way in which he may have hurt Damien, it costs him nothing any more than it does for him to be candid and amaze his son, over a hasty lunch, by his attitudes to sex***.
When, eventually, Damien challenges Sébastien, as a passenger on the vehicle of life, to get off and make way for others to get on, all that shocks the judge is the fact that a weapon has got through security, and he then straightforwardly rejects, as if it were the most natural suggestion in the world to be invited to consider, anyone else saying how and when he might choose to end his life. For those with a bent for Kafka’s writing, this sense of obstacles, of getting to the impossible appointment and then being distracted not to make use of the time, will be familiar : more on that here.
Only in relation to Iva does Damien seem to stand his ground, in a like manner to that of his father with him, by rejecting her manipulative analysis that what has happened between them is what he wants, or that what she wanted changes having to address what is. The teenager Noé (Marin Orcand Tourrès) creeps to the door and listens. There is nothing to say, but I have a sense that maybe he was not Iva’s child, but came from a previous relationship. (If IMDb can be trusted thus far, he has Damien’s surname.)
A dazed Sébastien seems energized by what happened, although clearly upset by it, and we go with him as he appears to find more of who he really is and what matters to him. Not for nothing, surely, has Zorica sought to put the French at their ease (and not attract attention) by calling herself Aurore, dawn, and Isabelle Carré has captured the essence of this vital, if naive, younger woman****.
Yes, she shares characteristics with that idealized type of woman who is suddenly there, but she has an ease of manner, a breadth of emotional intelligence, and her heart appears to be in the right place. Perpetually keeping us guessing, the film leaves us with a vision of leaves on a tree, transformed as if into a painting made with a Chinese brush, perhaps an image of evanescence such as Damien first strove to find in the sky as a boy…
End-notes
* The original French title, Cherchez Hortense, takes the form of an instruction (or command) (Find Hortense !), not a present participle. If, as I do, one goes into films blind, one was early wondering whether Iva’s actor Antoine was going to be the last person who saw her (and she was Hortense).
** IMDb tries to summarize in one sentence : A wife pressures her husband to solicit work papers from his civil servant father, but they are a couple, not married, and judges probably are civil servants in France, but one doubts that IMDb realizes.
*** Unconsciously or not, Damien later seems to set out to test his own attitudes (and risk missing a nine o’clock appointment into the bargain) by drunkenly placing himself near one of his father’s favourites.
**** Dare I say it (and risk detracting from my own thesis), but Carré has been put in a potentially perilously equivalent position to that in Romantics Anonymous (2010), a chocolate morsel so lacking in substance that my interest soon collapsed.
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge) If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
21 August
Looking for Hortense* (2012) is engaged with its characters, rather than driven by a plot, and Kristin Scott Thomas, for all that she is a striking woman as Iva, is not a primary player in this film (perhaps even less so than in In the House (201?) – towards the end, she is not on the screen, and we hear her activities narrated. It is not for me to know whether Damien has always been suspicious of her, and Iva always held back from her desires by duty, but, if we felt that we wanted to know, there is enough to guess by.
What emerges more slowly, shown unfolding in Damien’s attempts to speak to his father (Sébastien Hauer, an important judge) to ask him to bend the ear of an authority, is what intervenes, in him, between action and execution, what impedes**. The connection of the matter with Judge Hauer, which is indirect at his end, is tenuous at the other, and when the couple known to Iva and him have sex in their bathroom, she, unlike he, is able to pass it off as being in love (as well, probably, as a natural way of celebrating what they believe that he has achieved).
Jean-Pierre Bacri plays Damien beautifully well, and, whether in the apartment, about the streets of Paris, or giving his lecture course in two post-modern confections of architecture, always feels in place. Set him, however, in relation to his father and to the man whom he finally and momentarily gets to meet (expertly played by, respectively, Claude Rich and Philippe Duclos), and it is clear that the latter two are of a kind, and from a different mould from the sort of man who he is : when the former calmly says that he is self centred and apologizes for any way in which he may have hurt Damien, it costs him nothing any more than it does for him to be candid and amaze his son, over a hasty lunch, by his attitudes to sex***.
When, eventually, Damien challenges Sébastien, as a passenger on the vehicle of life, to get off and make way for others to get on, all that shocks the judge is the fact that a weapon has got through security, and he then straightforwardly rejects, as if it were the most natural suggestion in the world to be invited to consider, anyone else saying how and when he might choose to end his life. For those with a bent for Kafka’s writing, this sense of obstacles, of getting to the impossible appointment and then being distracted not to make use of the time, will be familiar : more on that here.
Only in relation to Iva does Damien seem to stand his ground, in a like manner to that of his father with him, by rejecting her manipulative analysis that what has happened between them is what he wants, or that what she wanted changes having to address what is. The teenager Noé (Marin Orcand Tourrès) creeps to the door and listens. There is nothing to say, but I have a sense that maybe he was not Iva’s child, but came from a previous relationship. (If IMDb can be trusted thus far, he has Damien’s surname.)
A dazed Sébastien seems energized by what happened, although clearly upset by it, and we go with him as he appears to find more of who he really is and what matters to him. Not for nothing, surely, has Zorica sought to put the French at their ease (and not attract attention) by calling herself Aurore, dawn, and Isabelle Carré has captured the essence of this vital, if naive, younger woman****.
Yes, she shares characteristics with that idealized type of woman who is suddenly there, but she has an ease of manner, a breadth of emotional intelligence, and her heart appears to be in the right place. Perpetually keeping us guessing, the film leaves us with a vision of leaves on a tree, transformed as if into a painting made with a Chinese brush, perhaps an image of evanescence such as Damien first strove to find in the sky as a boy…
End-notes
* The original French title, Cherchez Hortense, takes the form of an instruction (or command) (Find Hortense !), not a present participle. If, as I do, one goes into films blind, one was early wondering whether Iva’s actor Antoine was going to be the last person who saw her (and she was Hortense).
** IMDb tries to summarize in one sentence : A wife pressures her husband to solicit work papers from his civil servant father, but they are a couple, not married, and judges probably are civil servants in France, but one doubts that IMDb realizes.
*** Unconsciously or not, Damien later seems to set out to test his own attitudes (and risk missing a nine o’clock appointment into the bargain) by drunkenly placing himself near one of his father’s favourites.
**** Dare I say it (and risk detracting from my own thesis), but Carré has been put in a potentially perilously equivalent position to that in Romantics Anonymous (2010), a chocolate morsel so lacking in substance that my interest soon collapsed.
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge) If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Tuesday, 20 August 2013
In a pear-tree ? : A review of Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013)
This is a review of Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
20 August
This is a review of Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013)
Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013) is a tremendously enjoyable film. If one knew the subject-matter or some of the scenes, one might not be able to imagine that laughs would come (and so consistently), but it comfortably runs to 90 mins without outliving its welcome. (I doubt - never having subjected myself to it - that one could say the same for Steve Coogan in The Parole Officer (2001)...)
That is not meant to knock long-standing Partridge collaborators Armando Iannucci and Coogan down, but rather to say that they (and the others who co-wrote) know what they are doing with the character, and how far to bend him - in the other film, Coogan is credited as authoring it just with Henry Normal (a producer on Alpha Papa), and it must have been a shock that enough people did not seem to trouble themselves to see it (even though, on a low budget, it grossed respectably enough.)
If one looks at the Wikipedia® page for Partridge, it is written in a curious amalgam of fact and pseudo-biography, almost as it was not known where to place this would-be child of Norfolk (though Coogan neither attempts to sound as though he is one, nor does much other than mask his Mancunian heritage), and it reveals that we have had more than twenty years of Partridgeisms on radio, and not far short since he first appeared on t.v. Again, in the nicest way, it had seemed like longer, and I had hoped against hope that Partridge had not been made into a feature for the sake of doing it.
Those whose judgements I trusted assured me that it would be a safe ride, and now I see that Coogan had had a half-feature-length t.v. outing with Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life (2012). Alpha Papa loses nothing from seeing the trailer (a feat of avoidance that is almost impossible to achieve), keeps the gags, by and large, safe with Coogan, and he delightfully (in character) loses his dignity (in various different ways) whilst trying to play each situation for his advantage.
I am not sure that one likes Partridge any more than one ever does, because he is always on the make, but he does get our resect - momentarily - in some of the scenes that he has to face. However, he really does not irritate in this nicely structured scenario.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Friday, 16 August 2013
Tussling with Tibet
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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16 August
Many years ago, a friend strongly urged me to read a book about the 14th Dalai Lama and how China had overrun Tibet. It was a small book, I liked my friend, so I did. I felt anger, and hurt for the Tibetan people and what had become of their culture
Nothing I have learnt, then or since*, prepared me for the level of content portrayed in When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun (2010**) : the politics of whether the Tibetan Government in Exile should still be seeking independence, or, as the Dalai Lama announced in Strasbourg in 1989, autonomy, alone are complex.
Dragon succinctly shows, by choice of speaker and judicious interviewing and editing, how the stances operate not merely to create division between those advocating each aim, but differences of approach in how best to achieve them. Some say that one should claim independence in the hope of being granted autonomy, others that, in accord with the constitution of the People's Republic of China, there is a right to autonomy. Others still say that independence had always been fought for, but had not achieved anything, or that those who claim autonomy have not a single lawyer amongst them to argue for it.
Before Dragon, it had been tempting to believe that everyone (except the Chinese government) accepts that the forces of occupation had not, apart from in some bogus sort of way, been invited in to liberate the Tibetans from serfdom. However, we even hear some Han Chinese in dispute with protesters in San Francisco, who are campaigning for a free Tibet, and hoping to embarrass the Chinese government on the world stage at the time of the Olympic Torch, prior to Beijing 2008.
The Han Chinese want to challenge Tibetans as to whether they have ever been to China or Tibet (the Dalai Lama had left in 1959, and others had left whilst they still could), and so whether they have a right to a voice (an argument used both for and against, as far as I could tell). None of this stopped Bishop Desmond Tutu from making a personal appeal for how the Dalai Lama deserves respect as a great human-being, or Richard Gere from endorsing the justness of the cause, but the Chinese wanted to say that the Tibetans do not pay tax, and that, unlike the Tibetans, they can only have one child.
Looking beyond the issues, there are gorgeous views, some in stunning time-lapse, of Tibet (the mountain and the monasteries), shots of its people, and scenes on the street in Tibet and in China, and of protests in Delhi, again at the time of the Olympic flame. (We likewise see Beijing and its Olympic buildings and new shopping centres / malls, and there is a contrast with the 2008 Tibetan Olympics (presumably held in northern India).)
Again, there is disagreement about how the protests had been mounted, and whether it would have been possible (and, if so, why it did not happen) to register an incident, by extinguishing the torch, to bring international attention and pressure to bear on Tibet.
Inevitably, with a subject where genocide is alleged, there are shots of corpses and wounds and footage of people being hurt or telling how they had been tortured. As this is a complete view of the Chinese occupation, we are in doubt how difficult it is for people to envisage change, not least those who are settled in India and, between marches and commemorating dates such as 10 March, have to get on with their lives. Some spoke of being accepted in India.
Amongst other things, dance, music, chant, Buddhist tradition and garb, and lovingly composed shots, for example water streaming off the edge of a roof, make for a richness of feel to this thought-provoking documentary. It does not tell you what to think, but makes clear how many people are thinking in different ways about Tibet under Chinese rule.
End-notes
* In more recent times, I have also seen folks such as Michael Palin visiting Lhasa, and meeting the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala, India (and also heard Palin narrating his own book of Himalaya).
** Though the credits say 2011...
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
16 August
Many years ago, a friend strongly urged me to read a book about the 14th Dalai Lama and how China had overrun Tibet. It was a small book, I liked my friend, so I did. I felt anger, and hurt for the Tibetan people and what had become of their culture
Nothing I have learnt, then or since*, prepared me for the level of content portrayed in When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun (2010**) : the politics of whether the Tibetan Government in Exile should still be seeking independence, or, as the Dalai Lama announced in Strasbourg in 1989, autonomy, alone are complex.
Dragon succinctly shows, by choice of speaker and judicious interviewing and editing, how the stances operate not merely to create division between those advocating each aim, but differences of approach in how best to achieve them. Some say that one should claim independence in the hope of being granted autonomy, others that, in accord with the constitution of the People's Republic of China, there is a right to autonomy. Others still say that independence had always been fought for, but had not achieved anything, or that those who claim autonomy have not a single lawyer amongst them to argue for it.
Before Dragon, it had been tempting to believe that everyone (except the Chinese government) accepts that the forces of occupation had not, apart from in some bogus sort of way, been invited in to liberate the Tibetans from serfdom. However, we even hear some Han Chinese in dispute with protesters in San Francisco, who are campaigning for a free Tibet, and hoping to embarrass the Chinese government on the world stage at the time of the Olympic Torch, prior to Beijing 2008.
The Han Chinese want to challenge Tibetans as to whether they have ever been to China or Tibet (the Dalai Lama had left in 1959, and others had left whilst they still could), and so whether they have a right to a voice (an argument used both for and against, as far as I could tell). None of this stopped Bishop Desmond Tutu from making a personal appeal for how the Dalai Lama deserves respect as a great human-being, or Richard Gere from endorsing the justness of the cause, but the Chinese wanted to say that the Tibetans do not pay tax, and that, unlike the Tibetans, they can only have one child.
Looking beyond the issues, there are gorgeous views, some in stunning time-lapse, of Tibet (the mountain and the monasteries), shots of its people, and scenes on the street in Tibet and in China, and of protests in Delhi, again at the time of the Olympic flame. (We likewise see Beijing and its Olympic buildings and new shopping centres / malls, and there is a contrast with the 2008 Tibetan Olympics (presumably held in northern India).)
Again, there is disagreement about how the protests had been mounted, and whether it would have been possible (and, if so, why it did not happen) to register an incident, by extinguishing the torch, to bring international attention and pressure to bear on Tibet.
Inevitably, with a subject where genocide is alleged, there are shots of corpses and wounds and footage of people being hurt or telling how they had been tortured. As this is a complete view of the Chinese occupation, we are in doubt how difficult it is for people to envisage change, not least those who are settled in India and, between marches and commemorating dates such as 10 March, have to get on with their lives. Some spoke of being accepted in India.
Amongst other things, dance, music, chant, Buddhist tradition and garb, and lovingly composed shots, for example water streaming off the edge of a roof, make for a richness of feel to this thought-provoking documentary. It does not tell you what to think, but makes clear how many people are thinking in different ways about Tibet under Chinese rule.
End-notes
* In more recent times, I have also seen folks such as Michael Palin visiting Lhasa, and meeting the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala, India (and also heard Palin narrating his own book of Himalaya).
** Though the credits say 2011...
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Wednesday, 14 August 2013
Faber & Faber's [Film Director x] on x series
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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15 August
After a special screening of Time Bandits (1981) the other night, I have sought out Gilliam on Gilliam (edited by Ian Christie).
I did so, because these books are an excellent sourcebook of what, in interview with a suitable person from the world of film (in some way), directors have to say about their works, almost invariably grouping comments by film (or period) - I cannot commend them more warmly, and would certainly not be where I am without Woody Allen on Woody Allen (edited by Stig Björkman).
In the chapter that deals with Bandits, I have learnt, for example, how :
* Connery helped Gilliam with filming in Morocco, when there was more to do with shooting the fight than two days allowed, and the older man simplified his task for him
* Sir Ralph put Gilliam through various tests, both before accepting being God, and then in God-like mode, but was still a trouper
* The scene where the mirror / boundary that separates the Bandits from the fortress had not been originally written (and, if it were conceivable, more screen business, this time with Edwardian spiderwomen, had bridged from escaping the giant to getting to the fortress), but had arisen from David Rappaport's aloofness from the rest of his team
* The ending would have been different, if Connery had first not used up his fourteen days in the UK (and so it could not be shot as planned), and, because Gilliam then nabbed Connery when he came to the UK to see his accountant
* Palin had written the role of Robin Hood for himself, but had accepted that Cleese would be fine when billing / financial reasons had required
* The scene in Holy Grail where the animals are thrown over the castle walls was done (as this information impinges on effects in this film), and also the cage scene in Bandits
* Gilliam says that he had never read C. S. Lewis (or known of his use of wardrobes*)
As I hope that I may have demonstrated, a way of learning about films from the inside, and a book in which I shall next be reading about Brazil (1987)...
NB The British Film Institute (@BFI) now has an interview with Gilliam on its web-site...
End-notes
* I think that Christe errs, in his end-notes, in considering The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe first of the books(though the ordering and publication history scarcely make matters clear).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
15 August
After a special screening of Time Bandits (1981) the other night, I have sought out Gilliam on Gilliam (edited by Ian Christie).
I did so, because these books are an excellent sourcebook of what, in interview with a suitable person from the world of film (in some way), directors have to say about their works, almost invariably grouping comments by film (or period) - I cannot commend them more warmly, and would certainly not be where I am without Woody Allen on Woody Allen (edited by Stig Björkman).
In the chapter that deals with Bandits, I have learnt, for example, how :
* Connery helped Gilliam with filming in Morocco, when there was more to do with shooting the fight than two days allowed, and the older man simplified his task for him
* Sir Ralph put Gilliam through various tests, both before accepting being God, and then in God-like mode, but was still a trouper
* The scene where the mirror / boundary that separates the Bandits from the fortress had not been originally written (and, if it were conceivable, more screen business, this time with Edwardian spiderwomen, had bridged from escaping the giant to getting to the fortress), but had arisen from David Rappaport's aloofness from the rest of his team
* The ending would have been different, if Connery had first not used up his fourteen days in the UK (and so it could not be shot as planned), and, because Gilliam then nabbed Connery when he came to the UK to see his accountant
* Palin had written the role of Robin Hood for himself, but had accepted that Cleese would be fine when billing / financial reasons had required
* The scene in Holy Grail where the animals are thrown over the castle walls was done (as this information impinges on effects in this film), and also the cage scene in Bandits
* Gilliam says that he had never read C. S. Lewis (or known of his use of wardrobes*)
As I hope that I may have demonstrated, a way of learning about films from the inside, and a book in which I shall next be reading about Brazil (1987)...
NB The British Film Institute (@BFI) now has an interview with Gilliam on its web-site...
End-notes
* I think that Christe errs, in his end-notes, in considering The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe first of the books(though the ordering and publication history scarcely make matters clear).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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