Wednesday, 15 March 2017

A concert with The Endellion String Quartet : Beautiful Brahms, and somewhat baffling Haydn

This is a review of The Endellion String Quartet, playing Haydn, Mendelssohn, Brahms

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

 15 March

This is a review of a concert given by The Endellion String Quartet at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Wednesday 15 March at 7.30 p.m.


It has to be said that, when none of the string quartets on the programme (except perhaps the Mendelssohn ?) could be thought of as the core works of repertoire (though that makes it an inevitability that, for no good reason, a composition such as the Brahms A Minor is too little heard), The Endellion String Quartet clearly has a dedicated ‘fan-base’ [www.endellionquartet.com] : there must easily have been more than 300 in the audience in West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge (@WestRoadCH), so who says that there are no big audiences for chamber music… ?



 Programme :

 1. Josef Haydn (1732–1809) ~ String Quartet in E Major, Op. 54, No. 3

 2. Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) ~ String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80

 3. Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) ~ String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 51, No. 2



The Endellion String Quartet : Andrew Watkinson (1st violin), Ralph de Souza (viola), Garfield Jackson (2nd violin), David Waterman (cello)



Haydn ~ String Quartet in E Major, Op. 54, No. 3 (1789)

 1. Allegro

2. Largo cantabile

3. Menuetto : Allegretto

4. Finale : Presto



The Haydn of the string quartets seems influenced, here, by his symphonic writing. The Allegro opens with a pair of balanced bars, and then fast writing for first violin (Andrew Watkinson). Eventually, we are into territory that is serious, and, no longer with an appearance of graciousness, which is characterized by an ascent that, through being staggered by backwards steps, is not a scale : on the way up, or descending, it is impliedly modulating as it goes. The movement is in sonata form, so we hear anew, in the light of what has just preceded, material with which we are already familiar.

 In the following movement, marked Largo cantabile (but which seemed to have some of the qualities of a Scherzo), Haydn gives another orchestral theme, a hymn-like one, in which we may hear a marching motif. Next, before the opening material recurred, darker tones from the second violin (Garfield Jackson), which were expansively worked on by his fellow violinist, Andrew Watkinson, and with a virtuoso feel to the string-writing.

 The opening theme seems to be subjected to some brief variations, before the darker tones return, and then more of the virtuoso style of the first violin, but which seems to become increasingly out of tempo with the measure that the rest of the quartet is beating - almost as if 'Papa' Haydn is depicting a state of inebriation ? This curious quality to the quartet continued with the Menuetto : Allegretto, which had a strange opening figure, and then set the first violin, with quirkily spiky gestures, against the other players.

 In turn, the gestures became even more quirkily accented. Rather than have, per se a Minuet followed by a Trio section, Haydn gives us, after a rather odd Menuetto, an Allegretto that seems curiously dislocated, and almost as if his composition is assembled around dance-like rhythms. The Finale : Presto opens with the three instruments other than the first violin, and then, when it enters (in a lively and open way), we perceive it as distinct, again, from the trio of other instruments.

 Even so, this movement seemed most like what one expects from Haydn, when writing for the forces of string quartet, and he uses, as his driving force, the sort of chirping that one gets from repeated notes and trills. He takes us into the minor, and is then modulating, as the work draws to a conclusion – with the strong impression, still, of the first violin as a maverick loner.



When, next, Andrew Watkinson spoke from the stage (from and for The Endellion String Quartet ~ @EndellionQt), and then we heard him play in the Mendelssohn, it became quickly apparent that the character of the first violin part is not his, but Haydn’s.

 He had been addressing us to draw our attention to the next concert, on Wednesday 26 April 2017, and to commend both the work by Anton Arensky to be performed (the String Quartet for Violin, Viola and Two Cellos in A Minor, Op. 35), and the fact that, needing a second cellist (and only one violinist), Laura van der Heijden (@LauraVDHCello) was to be a guest perfomer. The following Tweets refer…








Mendelssohn ~ String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80 (1847)

 1. Allegro vivace assai

 2. Allegro assai

 3. Adagio

 4. Finale : Allegro molto



The second string quartet in the first half, for knowing which a debt is owed to The Coull Quartet (when they¹ played at Cambridge Music Festival in around 2004), began with a nicely-judged combination of sensitivity, passion and tension, so much so that sitting back and listening to the music, rather than – concentrate the mind and one’s hearing though it does – doing so with much eye to review-notes, seemed recommended. In the concluding bars, which were suitably vigorous, Mendelssohn completes the overall impression made by the Allegro vivace assai.

 The second movement (marked Allegro assai) has been anticipated in the first, and was boldly played, but not excessively so, and so one could enjoy the lugubrious bass-line, with Mendelssohn’s murky colourings. As the opening material recurred, it was with a quality of insistence to it, but only to give way to a reappearance of the quieter mood, and, after some tail-notes and pizzicato playing, ending pianissimo.

The Adagio has a quietly reflective, and restrained mood. To it, we heard contributions made by low cello-notes (David Waterman), as if in a sadly thoughtful vein. The cello takes its place hesitantly in the general section, but as if then using patterns of notes to stir itself. The movement became enlivened and impassioned, but these feelings subsided, and it came to a very quiet close.

 Mendelssohn builds his Finale from tonally ambiguous material, as well as prominent gestures, and The Endellion Quartet created a texture that swelled from placid to turbulent. Though they are very differently written and characterized from those in Haydn’s piece, it also has passages for the first violin against the trio of other instruments. One really did feel this as Allegro molto, pushing onwards, expressively and, in doing so, rhythmically – a final movement that is so full of drama that it is a conclusion without fully seeming like a resolution for all that we have been feeling.
It was a true pleasure to hear this work again live, and in such a strongly felt performance.




The auditorium of West Road Concert Hall



Brahms ~ String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 51, No. 2 (1873)


 1. Allegro non troppo

 2. Andante moderato

 3. Quasi Minuetto, moderato

 4. Finale : Allegro non assai



Prominent in the opening of the first movement (marked Allegro non troppo) was a long held note from David Waterman (on cello) before we moved into the ‘sunny’ and airy material, with pizzicato cello, that makes this composition shine - especially with The Endellion String Quartet sounding so well together, with a very good ensemble.

 Seamlessly, Brahms takes us back into the (sometimes) tempestuous initial theme, with its bold statements, and fluidity in the writing, which is as compelling as in the better-known Piano Quintet in F Minor, Opus 34 (although his string quartets generally receive less attention than they deserve). With the recurrence of the more cheery theme, his emphasis is on the viola (Ralph de Souza), before - as if at the end of a complete work - the movement closes very definitely.

 In the Andante moderato, the cello was again to fore, and the players and their sounds in perfect balance. The measured development had a suspensive, shy start, and then, led by a strong line from the cello, a passage marked (at least) forte, but which Brahms lets dissipate (as he might in the symphonies).

 Ruminatively, and sotto voce, the writing seems – or, rather, makes us – unsure about which key it is in at any time, and as if it dare not decide. Then, a measured, lingering cello-line, appearing to be tempting the other instruments ‘to talk’, and which so brings about a small crescendo. Via rhythmic patterning from the cello, and then a passage of high notes on its upper string, we are brought to a soft close, with viola pizzicato.

The slow movement, an Adagio, begins – as did one in the Haydn – with twinned sets of assertions, here feeling to be delicately placed into the aether, before we move into a fast, and lighter, section that resembles a fugato. A cascade of notes develops, flowing between the instruments, but with Brahms moving us so cleverly between sections that it seems quite natural and casual. Cello-notes and a few sympathetic strokes bring the movement to an end.

 At the start of the Finale (an Allegro non assai), the first violin, before passing the material to the viola, is answered by the cello, which, before we have a reprise of where we began, leads to some fugal writing. Another cello-line, again high up, was introduced to join sounds made by gentle strokes from the other players, just before Brahms evokes the opening of the work, and then, with some vigorous pizzicato, brings it to a spirited end.
A hugely enjoyable evening with these insightful players, and who are playing works, written within ninety years of each other², that are much in need of an airing !


 End-notes :

¹ Do quartets like to be 'they' or 'it' ? (It rather matters more to try to please than whether it is ‘The company is’ or ‘The company are’, except by striving to be consistent.)

² Even with different ideas of adulthood, and reaching maturity, two of these composers could never have met as adults (Mendelssohn was born in the year of Haydn's death), and Mendelssohn and Brahms barely so, but the music passes between them...




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday, 13 March 2017

All the best compliments are dubious – that is part of their charm

This is a review of A Quiet Passion (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

12 March

This is a review of A Quiet Passion (2016)



So, indeed, A Quiet Passion (2016) has done – though it was good, at the time of viewing (and before much fatigue set on), to provide the Twitter accounts for the film and for its executive producers [@aquietpassion, @Gibson_MacLeod] some things that the account-holders were kind enough to Retweet !




As with John Keats, about whose love affair with Fanny Brawne Bright Star (2009) was wonderfully made by Jane Campion¹, Emily Dickinson’s poetry was very little recognized in her life-time (1830–1886²) : Keats, alive for less than half that span (1795-1821), did manage to publish, but was met with savaging reviews, whereas – to judge by Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion (2016) – Dickinson looked, with limited success, to a newspaper (The Springfield Republican), in terms both of which poems / how many were accepted for publication, and how little her style of punctuation was respected.



 Penguin Books published a source-book for the film, in Bright Star : Love Letter and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne (London, 2009) – one could wish for the sound-track album to have a bonus disc of Cynthia Nixon’s readings of Emily Dickinson's verse… !

Rivalling her aunt for ambitions to be recognized a poet, and to know in what good poetry consists, so arises Emily’s equivocal compliment to her aunt Elizabeth (Annette Badland), her response to being questioned about which heads this review : something about Dickinson’s conscience – although she has also been mercilessly and laughingly critical to her sister and ally Vinnie (Lavinia) – will not allow her to do more (or less) than wish her aunt’s poems the reception that they deserve. (As we watch, we, of course, know that it is Dickinson’s reputation that has lived on and grown – even if it does so partly on the basis of anecdotally being aware of her individual approach to punctuation and syntax, which Cynthia Nixon’s excellent reading of her texts dispels.)


In what Terence Davies presents of her character and demeanour, Emily Dickinson resembles Cordelia [from Shakespeare's King Lear], in that she cannot say what is convenient, even if it is what the other wants (or needs) to hear, and this quality is amongst those that lead to her sister Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle) and she making friends with Vryling Buffam³ (Catherine Bailey), a newcomer to Amherst, even if we see how it causes tensions with their brother Austin, and father : the balance, though, is in favour of the trio’s good-natured and spirited behaviour, and so we hear nonsensical banter about Vryling's intentions and activities that would not be out of place in Monty Python. (Early on, she quips to the sisters, Don’t enjoy your prayer too much – it might become habit forming.) Or we witness the keen glee of Emily and Vinnie at the ineptitude of the dance-partner who has invited her onto the floor, and their waiting to hear her report (as shown in the image in the Tweet below - to the right of their sister-in-law Susan (Jodhi May) - played by Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Ehle, respectively).



Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne in Bright Star (2009) [though the blossoms and blooms, which are beautifully necessary to the film, can be more readily seen in the trailer]


Even so, ‘the independence’ – as she puts it – that Emily Dickinson requires for her soul is what, in particular, leads her into various confrontations, including with her father, because, as we see at the start of the film (as considered below), she defies all tactics that would bully or coerce her into Christian belief : not, however, because she rejects it, but because she tries to be scrupulously honest with herself about her difficulties. (Helping her see herself in a more kind light, and also helping her see others (such as their brother Austin) differently, Davies shows us Emily’s sister playing a dual role towards her.)

The following exchange could have been taken from – and would not have been out of place in – Children (1976), say, or Of Time and the City (2008), because Terence Davies’ concerns and fascinations in life have been abiding :


Do you wish to come to God and be saved ?

I have no sense of my sins – and how can I ?


The words come from the opening moments of A Quiet Passion, when Emma Bell plays Dickinson (at Mount Holyoke ?), asserting herself - always an attraction to Davies, as a champion of independent minds (as it was with Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn) in Sunset Song (2015).) In interview with Anne-Katrin Titze (‘Terence Davies on innocence, sin, half smiles and A Quiet Passion’), Davies questions the doctrine of original sin (arguing for the lack of any basis for it in The New Testament) in relation to Emily’s attitude.


Emma Bell (Emily, when younger)

Terence Davies has a strong feeling for the frailties and failings of the human heart, and – not in an anachronistic way – shows us moments pregnant with emotion. So, in the theatre, when Dickinson has been brought home by her family, and they are spending time with her aunt Elizabeth, he carefully has the motion of the camera swivel up to where they are sitting, but not detract from the moments when Emily dares speak to challenge her father’s disapproval of a woman being a vocalist, before it moves away again.


This exchange serves as a foretaste of the verbal play that we are to hear between Aunt Elizabeth and Emily’s sister, brother and her – where, coupled with the pretence, at least, of respect, there is also palpable mischief, as well as elegance and charm, in Emily’s and their words and vocabulary : as she smoothly declares Clarity is one thing, obviousness quite another ! We are ready to credit that Cynthia Nixon is Emily, we are glad to hear her read her work, in beautifully apt verse-reading.


Although very differently from the life of Chris Guthrie (in Sunset Song), where Davies is not only adapting a novel (rather than telling a person’s life from history), but also one that is set nearly thirty years after Dickinson’s death, and entering the period of The Great War, he again shows us how that of Emily Dickinson, and her sister Vinnie, is spent with that of their parents (played by Keith Carradine and Joanna Bacon) – even their brother Austin (Duncan Duff), with whose marital behaviour Dickinson allows herself to find fault (partly on account of her friendship with his wife, Susan (Jodhi May)), resides adjacently. In particular, we see a great tenderness towards, and in Vinnie’s and her care for, their mother (who has some unspecified poor health).



Towards the end of her life, Dickinson is seen to have convulsions : Davies does not seek to soften our experience, any more than he does with the grossness of Chris Guthrie’s distress at the hands of her father (Peter Mullan – John Guthrie) or husband (Kevin Guthrie – Ewan Tavendale) in Sunset Song, and – although in reality he may not delay immensely much longer than we would prefer – he does so sufficiently to show that he will not merely feature what happens to her – to tell us illustratively, as he could do in words – and then, as we desire, move on.



At the end of Emily's life also, as at the end of that of their mother, Austin and Vinnie are with her. We see her funeral², knowing that the time for her writing to find its proper evaluation is still to come...






 End-notes :

 ¹ With Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw, respectively :


² Emily Dickinson is buried in Wildwood Cemetery, Amherst, MA.

 ³ Who confesses something to the effect that she sounds like an anagram !


Vryling (Catherine Bailey) and Emily (Cynthia Nixon)

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday, 10 March 2017

Michèle : Shame isn’t a strong enough emotion to make us stop doing anything at all

This is a review of Elle (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

10 March

This is a review of Elle (2016)


Prelude :

 The beauty of cinema can also be a film’s bane, in that, just as one creates the film for one’s self as one watches (which, frankly, one just does not with a play – or a symphony, or painting), and then in one’s mind afterwards : one may need a re-examination of what happened at Point A (and / or what it may have meant), because, seen from Point B (and Point C), what one thought then does not fit, or poses questions…

 With a review such as this one, begun on the day of release and worked on amongst other things, time, and over-recreating the film, seem to have taken one too far off course (just now - hence this note) : the film as a whole, and the much more varied aspects of Isabelle Huppert’s role of Michèle, now seem like the coast-line, seen through a telescope, because matters of navigation have taken on an unhelpful life of their own, with one's not consulting the charts, but puzzling over, and cogitating, items noted and brought into the cabin at the time.

Yet, partly, even that would-be poetic description avoids the truth that, when generally trying to make reviews that are no more ‘spoilery’ than a trailer (whatever use a trailer is to someone who wants to watch a film), and by discussing and trying to give a flavour of the film (rather than reciting – an interpretation of – what happens in it), one just cannot be too specific about some things : here, exactly how Michèle’s life fits into that of the others whom we see, and ending up, in what has been said, omitting to be more rounded.





Well, you know I've got me an imaginary friend
And it's his daydreams they buy in the end
He won't let me break, he won't let me bend
He puts it all together and I just press send
And he's a shadow behind me in the light
And he takes me walking in the park at night

 He makes me do something wrong,
Do something right
And disappears before the morning


Quoted, with kind permission of Ezio Lunedei (@eziolunedei)
'The further we stretch' ~ Ezio [Black Boots on Latin Feet (1995)]







During pre-festival drinks one Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest), and talking about Lars von Trier (and where he has been since Breaking the Waves (1996)), it was remarked – to someone likely to be in the know – that von Trier appears to have been working his way through DSM-IV. (Or DSM-V, as he remarked, since he was in the know, and the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual controversially stood about to be adopted [an article for Mad in America writes 'How Reliable is the DSM-5 ?'].)



Here, we are in a different territory, more as where - in adapting Michel Houllebecq’s novel - Atomised (2006) gives us a generalized sense of the formative parental relationships. Likewise, with the young protagonists of Jeune et Jolie (2013), or, also directed by François Ozon, In the House (Dans la maison) (2012), with Isabelle (Marine Vacth) and Claude Garcia (Ernst Umhauer), respectively, both doing what they can, because they can : when Isabelle is asked for a reason, by her mother, for setting herself up as a sex worker, she provides a sufficient reason for this purpose, but to make money does not account for why she did this. (In this respect, the closest parallel with Michael Haneke's films - please see below - is in the chilling mood of The White Ribbon (2009).)


Three images from The White Ribbon (Das weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte), and its shoot


On the level of the film's ambit, and how it communicates to us the different places where it resides, Elle has something in common with Eastern Boys (2013). However, although the latter - though to very little effect (other than adding variety to the changing dominant scene ?) - evokes a merging of the power-play of the everyday world with that of gaming and gamers, Elle (2016) actually does it. Regarding the 'shop of horrors' shown in the still below (which clearly equates to an armoury, or other repository, for one's character to select weaponry in a game - and which may even have equipped her attacker, with the hood, and some sort of special codpiece ?), one is almost in two minds whether, when someone is feeling threatened to the extent of buying equipment, that disturbing state of mind is being matched by another one, in having such a clear sense of contemplating what to buy, and to achieve what end :

As to Michèle’s purchases, and how we see them used (and notably not used again), there must be some ambiguity whether – however they might have been employed – she was thinking, as in a game, in part offensively. If so, we might wonder whether thinking in terms of attack, rather than defence, helps her generate the perception of danger on which she acts : she does act in a highly precipitate way on slender grounds (and with no consequences (for her)). (If it is, indeed, a genuine apprehension of threat, given that Michèle seems unengaged and disingenuous when explaining her pre-emptive actions - just as when, earlier in the film, she more than mischievously blamed a substantially wrecked bumper on quelqu'un ?)



Michèle (Isabelle Huppert - who brought us the insane and transgressive intensity of Haneke's The Piano Teacher (La pianiste) (2001)) is interchangeably gaming in her living whilst also living in her gaming, and so candidly says to Richard Leblanc (from whom she is, if not divorced, then separated), about his young girlfriend, You've broken the rules. (Richard suggests that he was not aware that there were any, but thereby plays her game : he may not recently have read, or at all, Eric Berne's book Games People Play, on transactional analysis...)


Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Magimel in The Piano Teacher (2001)


Oscar Isaac, as the title-character of Inside Llewyn Davies (2013), the pair of Paul and Peter (played, respectively, by Arno Frisch and Frank Giering) in Funny Games¹ (1997) [the German-language original], and Michèle in Elle all have in common that they prioritize their (emotional or other) need over that of others : it is partly in the degree of the middle example that it differs, with its scenario of torture and pain. (Which Michael Haneke says that he is willing us not to keep watching. Having, one way or another, disposed of three members of a family, it turns out to be only so that Peter and Paul can cyclically move on to exploit an earlier introduction to another family as an entrée for their previous opening gambit.) With Llewyn Davies, even if he were not portrayed as a performing artist, persisting until he becomes successful (as we always knew that he did), there is a narcissistic quality to him that may make us find him unlikeable.


In any case, with Michèle in Elle, she is much more nuanced and changeable than Llewyn Davies, who is set (more or less) on his destiny. We see Michèle both as the victim of an attack, but also as one who (as we all can and do) chooses her own victims. For example, just in relation to her ex alone (played with patience by Charles Berling), we see Michèle at least four times exploit circumstances to punish him, whereas, at the same time, she has no anger or retribution for (but a continuing relationship with) three men who have quite deliberately exploited or humiliated her - it may, equally, be a response by them to something in her (and so some sort of match, not exactly made in heaven, but which draws them to each other³), but it seems to unlock something in her psyche to which she can respond. It fascinates and stimulates her, which we are shown, when she takes the opportunity to observe one of these men from a distance, and give free rein to sexual excitement and climax.


[Returning briefly to when Michèle determines to buy the black axe (as shown above), it is only in remembrance, fantasy or dream (or some combination of all) that she imagines, and in a game-like way, the damage that such a weapon could cause. Significantly, picturing this seems to gives her power – as we see on her face, when she emerges from it – but, for some reason, she then does not ready her weapons . Perhaps, on various levels, she no longer wishes to do something so damaging, when it has been so graphically seen. Is it also, perhaps, as if the rules of combat say so (or those, at any rate, of playing an on-line game), where sometimes items are only available to be used once… ? Since Michèle has disarmed herself / is unarmed⁴, her reaction has to be ad hoc - with what happens to be within reach (Verhoeven is obviously causing us to recollect Dial M for Murder (1954)).]

It seems not unlikely that the element of religious observance at this moment heightens, or gives rise to, Michèle’s arousal, and that her being drawn to these men is also because of something in the behaviour or character of her father. However, this film is not Nymphomaniac Vol. I (2013) (or Vol. II (2013)) – although it is in other ways – or Marnie (1964), or Spellbound (1945), and we hardly know any more about Michèle’s father, and her relationship with him, than she herself narrates. Given that she tells what seems a frank and open account to one of the men, but is in seductive mode still (having covertly made her intentions very clear to him), she may want to judge his reaction / arousal, and we then have only bares bones to judge by, from elsewhere in the film, of the truth of the story of her father and her (he is now 76, and her last contact with him was at around the age of 10).



It is with Michèle as she is, rather than how she has come to be, that Paul Verhoeven concerns himself and us - even if she takes herself as a given, with fierce and fiercely held attitudes, and holding others in disrespect (for example, we twice hear her how she just rebuffs criticism for entering without knocking, by asking why she should, when she has the key). Even so, one can say too much about nerdyism in programming or related fields, but Michèle and Anna (Anne Consigny) must have been brought to be friends by something more than occupying the same maternity ward⁵, especially in order that they achieve success in the world of designing and making games of extreme violence and eroticism (which feel quite large and loud, bursting into the safety of the auditorium).



Film composer Anne Dudley, who wrote the score for Elle, appeared in conversation about her career with Matthew Sweet (@DrMatthewSweet), on Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema (on Saturday 11 March 2017)


And then [in the aftermath of the scene of violence] our character, Isabelle, behaves in quite a, an unexpected fashion, and continues to behave in a quite (Laughs) unexpected fashion throughout the film. And, um, when I was discussing this film with Paul [Verhoeven], he said, ‘Well, the music has to give her a heart, because… she… could be seen as quite a cold character’.

 As you say, she’s the CEO of this company that makes incredibly violent… video-games. She seems inured to violence. […] She deals with [her past] in her own way, but she’s potentially quite icy, so the music, especially with the harp, sort of, doing this round-and-round rhythm all the time, gives her a sort of heartbeat, a sort of centre.


Dudley’s score brings that sense of such a centre (and of why it is needed) so well, when we are watching, and yet explains how, afterwards, we might be bewildered by what Michèle has calculatedly (or recklessly) done – and, often enough, with an element of the self-destructive in it. (So it is that, when she has an accident in the car, we are disbelieving at her next choice of person to call, when calls to Anna and Richard both go straight to voicemail.) Or, early on in the film, when she is about to have dinner out with a group of friends (a sparkling wine is just being ordered, so a call has to be made to delay pouring it), she declares to the party, in quite simple terms, that she has been attacked, as if she can do so, quietly and factually, and then they move on to other things : Michèle simply does not see that, in the circumstances, a level of question and comment (which she just does not want) is bound to ensue, and does not accept responsibility when it does, but coolly insists on silencing the line of enquiry (leaving us in no doubt that she likes to try to have things on her terms).



At Michèle's dinner-party on Christmas Eve : Vimala Pons and Charles Berling (as Hélène and Richard)

It is also clear that (as we all can do) Michèle disapplies some rules, in respect of others (to the extent of seriously being told You’re so selfish, it’s frightening), but expecting that they should hold for her : at her dinner-table, we have – of all things – Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 playing [Brief Encounter (1945)], but – as well as flirting, and more – waiting for the right moment to press on the weak point (irrespective of what the consequences may be), and then denying any responsibility again. (It may not be a meaningful distinction (and not one of which she is likely to be conscious) whether Michèle does what she does because she 'needs to', or because – pre-emptively, and selectively – she can : at a crucial time, when she asks, of another who acts as she³, Pourquoi ?, all that she is told is C’était nécessaire.)


However, it is more alarming, when someone is in a coma and Michèle is being shown a scan of an aneurysm, that she can in all conscience ask You’re medically certain this is for real ? - and one can see that the medical practitioner, hearing this response (as she must hear many an unusual response), knows better than to engage with such highly bizarre thinking. As if divorced from the presenting facts, and lacking in empathy, it is borne out by telling the unconscious person that she does not believe it, and calling the aneurysm an act of treachery – but this is not an inter-player chat, berating someone for having betrayed a strategic alliance in a game…


In the very closing shot of the film, when there might be reasons for Anna and Michèle not to be there (after the launch-party for the new game), it does seem - as more than suggested earlier - as if Anna's and her understanding of, and for, each other runs more deeply than between others : we had heard that, at the office, in the oddly delighted inquisitorial energy with which Anna tells her some news about Robert (Christian Berkel)).

Martin Scorsese made The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), truly ahead of the game, because there are people in the world who are / behave like Jordan Belfort - not because he wanted us to like him / his story. Watching Elle twice makes us more aware of what - as we all might (like to) do - Michèle not only subversively does, but how hurt and distrustful she feels.



Final remarks – how little Michèle is really present in Elle :

 If we closely consider our view of Isabelle Huppert, on screen, we will realize that, by one or other of these techniques, her character generally avoids being truly present to us : degrees of soft focus, as well as imparting pallor to her, or limiting the aperture of the camera or the use of light on her so that she is under-lit.

 Twice, when she is telling a story about herself and choosing to charm / be charming (to one of the nurses, and at her dinner-party), Michèle gives a veiled appearance of being candid, but she knows exactly what impression she chooses to give, whereas there are probably only three (or four) occasions when we can say that she is directly present in the way that the other characters are. (There are even extreme out-of-focus views of Michèle, looking across the car to Patrick, as he drives her back after the launch-party – a hint of Crash (1996) ?)



In Brody's opinion, Huppert’s performance is no more than standard — which, for an actor of her rare art, is high — but not distinctive. She is, as she usually is, precise, controlled, dryly witty, understated, fiercely committed, risqué.



A closing thought :

 Giving a childish excuse, youngsters might say that ‘Mr Nobody did it’ – or that quelqu'un had.

What if someone whose treatment caused her to became dehumanized – and was no longer allowed to be Michèle - because, whoever that was, that was not who this person was now ?

 Could that person inhabit the second half of the name Mich-èle, and become just Elle... ?



End-notes :

 ¹ In films from Haneke's oeuvre, we need not limit our thinking to Funny Games, though, because – without spelling them out – themes in The Seventh Continent (1989), Benny's Video (1992), or The White Ribbon (2009) are highly relevant here.

² If so, although seeing Llewyn Davies' narcissism play out (and bothering to contrive to get to Chicago, but with no idea how to present himself) is relatively uninteresting, because his is an almost one-dimensional portrayal, and The Coen Brothers import positivity to the affect through Carey Mulligan and to her in the musical numbers (although they are done less well than usually given credit for). On the level of the quality of the film and of its music, and the depth of the performances, might one think that Un cœur en hiver (1992) has much more to offer ?).

Daniel Auteuil (as Stéphane) in Un cœur en hiver (1992)

³ In the book that he wrote with John Cleese, Robyn Skynner describes The Family Systems Exercise in this way : Its purpose is to show what lies behind the way that couples pick each other out across a crowded room ! Families and How to Survive Them by John Cleese and Robin Skynner, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1984), p. 17.

⁴ Whatever that – and there are very good reasons for asking – says about Michèle's deeper motivations.

⁵ Of course, that does happen commonly enough, at a pivotal time in a mother’s life. Yet we only hear about the connection between Anna and her (seemingly ?) inconsequentially when, with apparent absolute candour, she tells a story that invokes the two women before King Solomon : is Michèle broken in the sort of way where she would want half a disputed child ?

Or where, in all the circumstances, someone might normally be expected to explode at an employee who still cheekily expects to be paid, she just says no.)




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday, 9 March 2017

On Radio 3 Late Junction, Annette Peacock makes claims for Candy Dulfer's playing

On Radio 3 Late Junction, Annette Peacock makes claims for Candy Dulfer's playing

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

8 March

On Radio 3 Late Junction from 11.00 p.m., during International Women's Day (8 March 2017), Annette Peacock makes claims for Candy Dulfer's playing (and, more surprisingly, about childcare¹ [last paragraph])

When, in one of the programme's signature seamless trio of tracks, Annette Peacock played 'Lily Was Here' [at 00:20 mins in, but maybe only for the next 30 days] on Radio 3 Late Junction (@BBCRadio3 #LateJunction) - on the same evening when Kerry Andrew gave us her mix-tape for International Women's Day (#InternationalWomensDay) - one straightaway recognized Dave Stewart with saxophonist Candy Dulfer...

Then, as Peacock spoke to presenter Fiona Talkington (@fionatalkington) and explained / justified her choices, she praised Dulfer, and made a few assertions [at around 23:00 mins in, available to listen to for the next 30 days] about the stature of Dulfer's playing. These were in the context of being asked to say what these three tracks were, which, as Talkington described it, Peacock had Not just chosen, but crafted together, and are transcribed here (and below¹) :

Well, of course, the first track was Diamanda Galás, and, uh, the second was ‘My mama never taught me how to cook’, by Annette Peacock. And, uh, Diamanda’s track, I think, was recorded in 1996, mine was… 19… 78. And the last one, Candy Dulfer, that was 1980, yeah.




I mean, the thing about Candy is that, you know, she’s just the embodiment of effortless joyous expression. She is a consummate musician – she was born to do this, you know. And every phrase is lyrical and definitive, and she is one of the great players on the instrument, beyond the equal of, you know, many of her male counterparts, I think.

You know, those three tracks were all, sort of, done in one take, you know, Diamanda’s, mine and Candy’s – just spontaneously, basically, they were recorded as a one-take sort of jam, basically. So you get that sort of realism when that’s happening, you know – it’s a different sort of approach to recording.

[To consider the matters raised in the above Tweets, the transcript is continued below¹, with comments².]


Yet are Peacock's comments especially borne out by this track by Dulfer, which we will all know - but need not, for that reason, think remarkable (please see below) - or which we may not even like all that much ? :


At the time, it then seemed best to Twitterate the question... :







In a way, one cannot disagree with what Candy Dulfer herself comments, except that :

 (a) The track was, at the time, a hit / it was in the charts

 (b) Which means that, love even what one does, might one still not wish to hear it, over and over, for weeks - or months ?

 (c) The danger with 'Lily Was Here' is that it had grounds to be immensely popular, and there is almost nothing not to like - even so, does the fact remain that something that is lacking reasons not to be liked is a subtly different matter from there being positive reasons to like it... ?




Could one contend, though, that Baker Street – cited on account of its own sax solo, by Raphael Ravenscroft – makes a bigger impact and statement ?



Unlike the Dave Stewart track, and Dulfer’s sax-playing, does Gerry Rafferty’s song, and the place of the solo within it, make a more persuasive case that we should actually approve of it, not disapprove of it ?




End-notes :

 ¹ Fiona T. : I’m so glad, Annette, that you chose ‘My mama never taught me how to cook’, because, uh, there are some absolutely great lines in there, which you deliver with, with such immaculate timing² – I think we’re all sitting there, going, I’m not big in the kitchen, I’m not big on cleaning, and we’re all, sort of, shouting, Yes, I completely agree with you ! Um, would it be OK to take that as a feminist anthem for us, even to-day ?

Annette P. : It is ! I’ve always thought of it as a feminist - I’m so delighted to hear you say that, ’cause that’s what I’ve always thought of it as. You know, My destiny’s not to serve. I’m a woman – my destiny is to create. (Laughs) We are the embodiment of the creative process aren’t we ?

Fiona T. : […] I guess, along with all of that, we ultimately, somehow or other, we do have to clean the kitchen and pick the children up from school, and, and, and balance things. And it’s all those things that make us so good at juggling… ?

Annette P. : That’s true, but I think men are better at those… things, like, you know. I mean, women are brilliant : if you can keep a kid alive to the age of five, you're a genius – so many things can go wrong. And women have a huge investment in, you know, the offspring surviving – much greater than men. But, once a child gets to be the age, you know, where they are self sufficient, in a way, then men can take over at that point. You know, it's a job, a kind of job that men are very suited for, you know : it's, like, disciplined and, you know, they're good at those kinds of things – more than women, I think.


² There are, indeed, some hilarious lines in the song [which can be heard here, on YouTube (@YouTube)], delivered equally hilariously (and not always sung as such, but – amongst other things – wailed, or squealed, or shrieked), which have words stressed, or distended for suggestive emphasis, and defy being taken literally (or seriously), for example :

 My mama never taught me how to cook
That’s why I am so skinny !


The succeeding part of the song, before the singer’s persona has left home and become involved with other men (as at the end of the second section next quoted, or in a line such as I wanna suck your honey), is again rendered with drawled emphasis :

 My mama never taught me how to cook
But my brother, now, my brother, he taught me how to eat
Daddy never taught me to suck seed
That’s why I’m so crazy, crazy, crazy

 And :

 Never had no one to believe in me,
Even though, you know, my brother gave me a head start
Even though, you know, my brother gave me a, a head start
And I’ve had men say ‘Hey, baby, your love is the greatest show on earth !’


However, the text now clearly speaks of incestuous oral sex, neither of which the song’s persona seems to regret, but rather cherish – which, when Talkington refers to ‘some absolutely great lines in there, which you deliver with, with such immaculate timing’, might be what we would more naturally think of than the lines that she quotes, which are relatively indistinct, and where wrily making ‘succeed’ sound like ‘suck seed’, or equally smuttily prolonging the word ‘head’, do not enter into it.

 Peacock is invited to endorse a view of ‘Mama never taught me how to cook’ as a feminist anthem¹, and does so. Both in the last paragraph quoted above¹ from the broadcast, and at this point, someone seems to be being disingenuous on International Women’s Day…




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday, 8 March 2017

All the raw edges, but with respect and compassion : Cameraperson (2016)

This enthusiastic response is to Kirsten Johnson's Cameraperson (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

 8 March


This is a response – enthusiastic – to Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson (2016), shown for International Women’s Day by The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, on Wednesday 8 March 2017





Kirsten Johnson’s film luxuriates spiritedly in the constructed status and quality of cinema, whose nature as artefact, even in documentary, is usually heavily disguised – although, on the borders, there is little divide between documentaries and feature films, e.g. Man on Wire (2008), or the astonishing Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975) (screened in 2016 in the Chantal Akerman retrospective at Sheffield Documentary Festival (Doc / Fest, @sheffdocfest)).



It would not enrich a commendation of this excellent piece of cinema to distend it with an exact catalogue of the ways in which it works or has been assembled – though it possibly says too little that Kirsten Johnson works with juxtaposition and accumulation.

 In a three-line inter-title at or near the start of the film¹, she tells us that the footage is taken from what she has shot for films during the last twenty-five years, but which was not used in the film in question. (Given that a documentary not untypically has more than a hundred hours of material – from which it is edited down to, at most, somewhere between two and three hours² - this is a large amount.) Johnson extrapolates from that fact to call the film that we are about to see, if not a testimony (one forgets her word), then at least describing it in such a way that we appreciate that it is far from being constituted as if it were any sort of demo-reel :

 Johnson, rather, has graciously chosen what to show us not necessarily because it is technically best, but so that we can see, and appreciate, what she does, sometimes including, as she lines up or composes her shot, dialogue with her producer or other person in the production team (presumably actually recorded in situ from her camera’s microphone, which is how she asks us to perceive it).


Johnson shows footage, from which this is taken, for Derrida (2002), where she is negotiating how to film the group of people to whom Derrida is talking as he crosses the road


There are three broad ways in which, as we go, we are aware of Johnson working on documentaries, which are when she is filming on her own behalf, and so being the voice asking questions or engaging with the person on screen (even if through an interpreter), when – which is clearly Michael Moore’s film – working with him, on Fahrenheit 9 / 11 (2004), and somewhere in between, where the conversations that she is having as she shoots suggest that the film is co-directed, co-produced, or made alongside a sympathetic colleague. (On IMDb, Johnson has more credits as a producer than as a director.)


Marine Abdul Henderson and Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9 / 11 (2004)
In the footage shown, Johnson is talking to Moore about the technicalitities of arranging him, in relation to Henderson as his on-screen interviewee, and with The Capitol as a backdrop


Early on in Cameraperson, an assemblage of pieces of footage was presented at a great hurry, and which was also noisy (in the way that that sort of scratchiness of sound can be), which is very untypical of the film, because otherwise this work of editing (with film editor Nels Bangerter) shows that Kirsten Johnson wants to keep the rootedness and immediacy that she had when shooting, be it just a one-off attempt to film illicitly outside a prison for reasons of international interest, or where we see her several times, relating to who she is with and where that is. Nonetheless, it was a moment that suggested both the many places and people that are in her experience from close proximity, and, of them, the noise that news media seek to make for viewers.


Michael Koresky (in the helpful review for Film Comment, cited below - @filmcomment)) conveniently describes what also served as a very telling moment, and which shows what a cinematographer does to get a clear shot – and, naturally, reaching out with her hand, from behind the camera, where we can see what she is doing :


 In Foca, the camera searches rural environs ; the voice comments on the patches of wildflowers ; a shepherd and his flock trail by. When she finds the right composition, a hand emerges from the left, reaches around to the front of the camera and pulls a few blades of grass from the ground, so they’ll sully the frame no longer.



The vivid, fresh water-melon that is cut up by a member of the militia (in Iraq ?), but the men are called away, joking – to one knows not what – before they can eat any of it : such an evocative image. Before, towards the end of the film, we hear someone speaking for dignity, and for it to be applied to injured and dead bodies in the media as ‘The golden rule’, we have already seen it enacted by Johnson in her practice.

 It is there in not gratuitously giving us gruesome insights into the evidence that had been presented to a court-room about how a man came to be dead, but in very deferentially shooting a woman’s knees and hands as she talks, hearing a young man talk plainly about what happened to his injured face, and hearing those who were raped in the occupation of Bosnia, and those who have been investigating these war-crimes.


In the feature film As if I am not There (2010)³, concerning the fate of younger women during The Bosnian War, director Juanita Wilson based it on dramatizing stories revealed during the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague



Now, from colleagues at TAKE ONE (@TakeOneCinema), a review of Cameraperson on the web-site [with a comment from #UCFF]


End-notes

 ¹ Apart from captions that locate us in, say, in Foča, Bosnia, or Kabul, Afghanistan, Johnson usually tells us relatively little about what we are seeing, or why we are seeing it, and has left what she has chosen to put on the screen to talk to other material, not just what immediately preceded or follows it. For example, we are in Brooklyn, New York, a couple of times early on, but the significant and longer clip is near the end of the film, and which sheds light on all that we have seen in between. (The principal exceptions to saying little by way of context are such as for footage of her twins, or of them with her father, or of her deceased mother (and her mother's artefacts and memorial place those things into time).)

 ² Even though many film-makers will edit ‘the rushes’ as they go, to keep on top of the scale and scope of the film.

³ The film had funding from a number of sources, including The Irish Film Board [and appears amongst Fifteen fine festival films].




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