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22 September
Films with the word 'money' in the title have a ring to them, as in The Color of Money (1986) - or The Taste of Money (2012), one that I would call 'stylish' if that word were not closeted in a relationship with that of 'thriller'.
This film ends - as it began - with the recirculation of money, and what takes place in-between the appearance of two brittle pieces of furniture in an otherwise solid environment, the door to a strong-room and a large receptacle, never goes far from it (in one form or another). I may be quite mistaken that they seemed so obviously stagey, but I do not think so, and I am more tentative about the notion that they are meant to mark off the intervening feature as a conscious framing-device.
However, because the household, family and staff, at the centre of this film is shown with such style, and they live, dress, drink and relax with such fine things, I shall credit it with that notion, because I quite early found myself reminded of the passionate plays of Jean Racine in a way that I did not think that I could walk with when translated to this world - it felt a bit too much like Only God Forgives (2013) again, whereas The Taste of Money turned out to redeem the merit of using universal themes (and reprises a scene where a man who cannot box challenges another to a bare-knuckle fight, but this time with so much grace and beauty in the mise-en-scène).
Not nearly in such a self-conscious, parodic, almost moronic, way as in Winding Refn's latest, this piece of real cinema echoes the chamber plays of Strindberg, the vast, bloody tragedies of Aesychlus' Oresteia, and we follow the fate of the excellently played Joo Young-Jak (Kang-woo Kim) as a thread through the story - chance has a part to play in the unfolding of events, but nothing that is taken for granted, with every detail accounted for in how what someone knew but did not reveal comes to be known as his or her failure to speak.
An initial impression made it seem as though the film were requiring too much to be believed to be happening for the first time, but, as indicated, director Sang-soo Im was taking no indulgence from his audience for granted. Without anything being forced, everything had its place.
The monetary deals at the centre of what unfolds even mirror the real-life activities of a US corporation (Google and the World Brain (2013)), with the Google Books project cavalierly (though not without the assistance of those who should have opposed, or at least questioned what it was doing before giving it) seeming to break copyright and then seek to have its actions made good in accord with the principle that it was pursuing - we hear it said in this film's script that the outline of the deal will be made, and it is for the lawyers to sort out the niceties to make it happen.
Sometimes affectionately, sometimes mockingly, called Mr Joo, we see his journey from filling cases with cash to buy the freedom of the son of his boss, and contenting himself to smell the fresh notes rather than (as licensed) to pocket some for himself, to differing relations to power and money. This is a thoughtful and powerful film, whose strong visuals live on in the mind.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Saturday, 21 September 2013
Redemptive washing
This is a Festival review of La redempció dels peixos (The Redemption of the Fish) (2013)
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21 September
This is a Festival review of La redempció dels peixos (The Redemption of the Fish) (2013)
The Redemption of the Fish (La redempció dels peixos) (2013)* had its UK premiere at the Festival to-night. As we learnt afterwards, it was filmed on almost no budget and was really only achievable because director Jordi Torrent (who was with us for a Q&A, along with lead actor Miquel Quer) has friends in Venice, where all the filming took place : avoiding the popular locations, and unbelievably having a three-week shoot in August, it did what was needed, but with a change of wind-direction and temperature that adorned the very final scene.
The film is stunning, not just because Venice is a glorious city, but because Torrent gave it the space to breathe and be itself, without the picture-postcard mentality that others might have brought to making a film there. It does not matter whether one's view is that Venice was the actor at the heart of this film, it fed the action, and the action subsisted so naturally there. I say that, because Venice is one of my loves, but the heart of the film is how it shows contemporary relationships and communication in this centuries-old place.
Quer (Marc) has gone to Venice from Barcelona for reasons that only became apparent with time, and, as he tries to follow a man when he closes a bookshop and leaves, he loses him in the confusion that is this city (and which twice, on a first visit there, caused me to stray into the Naval Dockyards and meet men with guns). (Here, there are hints of Don't Look Now (1973).) They had last seen each other when Marc was nearly two, because Paco, the other man, is his father.
An inner core of others who are connected with Paco peoples Marc's time there, and he comes into association with them, thinking (or maybe wanting to think) that there is a meaningful link between each of them and him. One tells him to look at how The Grand Canal divides the city into two fish, one of which is trying to eat the other - he is reminded that he used to say the opposite, or that he said that the fish represent other things, but he says that the Fish of Science is gobbling up the Fish of Ethics. Beautiful shots of the water, with buildings coming in and out of flux, had prefaced all of this, and, as Venice is La Serenissima and married to the sea, it had been a delight to realize that this unattainable, unmasterable place was our setting.
Saying little more about what happens or why, the film is a cinematic joy for its acting and for how it has been made (all, we were told, with available light, and a light crew of five or six) - Paco seems not to trust Marc or his motives, and maybe we do not like the feeling that Marc is on a mission at the behest of his grandmother and reporting back to her and to his girlfriend, but we grow out of relying on one, and into what brings Marc to find his father.
This represents the present high-point this year, and I hope to make it to the repeat screening at 10.45 a.m. on Sunday 29th September (the closing day of the Festival).
End-notes
* As an English title, it feels cumbersome, because is the fish what is redeemed, or is it what carries out the redemption ? Maybe that ambiguity is fecund, but I wonder whether something else might do better :
The Fish Swallows Whole, or
Venice the Redeemer
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Bits and pieces
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21 September (Revisited, 5 August 2015)
In the introduction, we were told that this feature, Pieces of Me (Des Morceaux de Moi) (2012) said a lot in ninety minutes, but I found myself ending up quite bored with it – not that I did not have sympathy with one sibling being treated worse than another, but I found the central character Erell (Adèle Exarchopoulos), even given her age (one guesses fourteen ?), irritating with her incessant videoing, and could not credit that more than one of her friends would not have told her to stop doing it long before. (Maybe it was meant to be set a few years back, but no youngster would use one of those monsters with a flip-down screen now.)
The video footage itself I found inconsistent, because some of it obviously was of a quality that matched the hardly new camera that Erell was using, and others seemed to have been shot with a decent lens and then, as if to pretend that she had taken it, degraded afterwards. If she really had not been filming her friends for long, it was remarkable how much she was allowed to put them on the spot, challenging the notion of what one would do if he did not, as he expected, die young, or another (who did actually tell her where to get off) as to why he would not kill a man, if asked to do so, given that he was willing to kill a chicken on request.
I had not been very impressed by the opening shot to self-camera, where she had envisaged her request being carried out to be cremated and then her ashes mixed well into a large bottle of vodka and drunk. A toxic drink that, perhaps, her family choked on with regularity, as she seemed to have nothing but accusations for them, and to be the tomboy – when not behind the camera – for her friends. As such a portrayal, it was classic, but the piece itself did not have many filmic credentials, apart from a few choice shots of flora and fauna.
I say nothing about a daughter’s feelings towards a mother with MS. Only that the former is supposed to be partly confused why the latter needs care (and, more importantly, whether she is not shamming), whereas regular trips to the hospital are not – with what one understands to be a typical course for the condition – cohesive with such early stages : the admission that we see seems to necessitate walking with a stick, when all that had been complained of before was fatigue. There was nothing, say, to suggest problems with motor control or balance. These things are queried from knowing what one has witnessed in others, but being open to hearing that The MS Society compliments this depiction. (Compare it with that of Martina Gedeck in Atomised (2006), who also has a degenerative condition ?)
The film is competent, but, other than much recrimination about why Sarah has been favoured over Erell, and left without any contact (such that her father had to be called to see whether he could identify a body as hers), and the associated rebelliousness of youth, it has relatively little to say : this is one of the rare occasions where watching a film on a t.v. screen would not have depreciated it at all.
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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)
21 September (Revisited, 5 August 2015)
In the introduction, we were told that this feature, Pieces of Me (Des Morceaux de Moi) (2012) said a lot in ninety minutes, but I found myself ending up quite bored with it – not that I did not have sympathy with one sibling being treated worse than another, but I found the central character Erell (Adèle Exarchopoulos), even given her age (one guesses fourteen ?), irritating with her incessant videoing, and could not credit that more than one of her friends would not have told her to stop doing it long before. (Maybe it was meant to be set a few years back, but no youngster would use one of those monsters with a flip-down screen now.)
The video footage itself I found inconsistent, because some of it obviously was of a quality that matched the hardly new camera that Erell was using, and others seemed to have been shot with a decent lens and then, as if to pretend that she had taken it, degraded afterwards. If she really had not been filming her friends for long, it was remarkable how much she was allowed to put them on the spot, challenging the notion of what one would do if he did not, as he expected, die young, or another (who did actually tell her where to get off) as to why he would not kill a man, if asked to do so, given that he was willing to kill a chicken on request.
I had not been very impressed by the opening shot to self-camera, where she had envisaged her request being carried out to be cremated and then her ashes mixed well into a large bottle of vodka and drunk. A toxic drink that, perhaps, her family choked on with regularity, as she seemed to have nothing but accusations for them, and to be the tomboy – when not behind the camera – for her friends. As such a portrayal, it was classic, but the piece itself did not have many filmic credentials, apart from a few choice shots of flora and fauna.
I say nothing about a daughter’s feelings towards a mother with MS. Only that the former is supposed to be partly confused why the latter needs care (and, more importantly, whether she is not shamming), whereas regular trips to the hospital are not – with what one understands to be a typical course for the condition – cohesive with such early stages : the admission that we see seems to necessitate walking with a stick, when all that had been complained of before was fatigue. There was nothing, say, to suggest problems with motor control or balance. These things are queried from knowing what one has witnessed in others, but being open to hearing that The MS Society compliments this depiction. (Compare it with that of Martina Gedeck in Atomised (2006), who also has a degenerative condition ?)
The film is competent, but, other than much recrimination about why Sarah has been favoured over Erell, and left without any contact (such that her father had to be called to see whether he could identify a body as hers), and the associated rebelliousness of youth, it has relatively little to say : this is one of the rare occasions where watching a film on a t.v. screen would not have depreciated it at all.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
That's a classy address !
This is a review of Sunset Blvd. (1950)
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15 September 2013
This is a review of Sunset Blvd. (1950)
What the connotations were, in 1950, of an address in Sunset Boulevard, I do not know, but I am sure that Billy Wilder knew what his audience would think, and what specifically it signified to have one in the early ten thousands...
Both as Norma Desmond and in real life (Gloria Swanson was then the age of the former actress whom she plays), the end of what is often called The Silent Era partly caused a wane in her popularity in the 1930s. Here, though, Swanson – and Wilder with her – is capitalizing on her name, and I suspect that the photographs with which she decorates her still lavish home are from that home.
With Wilder’s amusing script, we have all the elements for us to be more knowing than William Holden, as Joe Gillis, and for the spooky Max, played delightfully by Erich von Stroheim, to put the wind up him – whether or not one believes that the corpse of Gillis is literally telling the story, or that we somehow hear what he has to say from his perspective, including narrating Desmond’s descent under the direction of Max, is neither here no there.
The strength of what we see unfold is how it is rooted in the fabric and how it brings the characters to life – as Gillis is beckoned into the palazzo, having symbolically lodged, without asking, his pride-and-joy white motor in one of its garages, his mind is already thinking of Dickens’ Miss Havisham. By contrast, the house comes alive, out of a slumber as if he is a Prince Charming to her Sleeping Beauty, and yet the lavishness of what is bestowed on him is not unlike what Pip thinks that he seeks after.
Here, the benefactress needs no guessing at, only how she could have preserved her wealth, and Gillis is no more grateful or moderate with what he is bought by her than Pip is with the attempts to make him a gentleman – in neither case does it prove what is really desired.
Whether we believe that the room over the garage becoming inoccupable is just convenient, or the house having its way with Gillis, it comes back to life with him there, and provides the means for what happens to unfold, even including Miss Desmond’s own vehicle, which Max seemingly effortlessly gets back on the road – the pool would not be there without Gillis, and Miss Desmond would not have a life outside the house without him.
In this house without locks, the doors come to resemble pairs of eyes (as Beckettt was later to play with in Film (1965), and even to ask Buster Keaton to play another serious role), and yet there are secrets, from turning, from Miss Desmond, by turning off the lights of the car when Gillis goes out in it.
What Pip turns out to want is Estella, and Gillis wants is Betty Schaefer and to work with her on a script. In Gillis’ case, he is not big enough to accept her gracious willingness to forget all that he has told her (although maybe he believes that she would not be able to do so, and that she is better off without him), but still thinks that he can give the relatively ageing star ‘the go-by’, after all that he has thrown in her face as fantasy.
The cameras and the lights show who is mistaken in thinking that she is still a star, as Gillis is forced to admit…
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Saturday, 14 September 2013
High-class cinema comes to Childerley
This is a Festival review of Edward Scissorhands (1990)
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14 September (14 April and 22 July 2015, Tweets added)
This is a Festival review of Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Agents on location, watching the cinema from afar...
The Long Barn at Childerley Hall, which (apart from yesterday, when I went on the wrong day) I had last seen when the pairing of Northumbrian piper and fiddler Kathryn Tickell and the trio The Side rocked the place, to-night had the treat of bespoke cinema, courtesy of Tony Jones, the director of Cambridge Film festival, and his dedicated team.
Just in case it rains, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS @camfilmfest Plan B at Childerley Hall is in this gorgeous grain barn :)X pic.twitter.com/nJTL8KjHnb
— Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturehouse) September 10, 2013
This was not just any projector and a screen plus sound-system in a wonderfully atmospheric space with beams, decorative chairs, an extensive bar, and even very tasteful fairy-lights - the image was sharp, beautiful, warm and magic, so that the resolution of the long-shots almost took one by surprise, and one could hear every detail of the soundtrack. I should have expected nothing less from people with these credentials, but I loved them for it.
First up, unexpected I will warrant by many, was something to preface the billed film, Edward Scissorhands (1990) - another Tim Burton number in Frankenweenie (1984). Yes, the original, not the one released in 2012.
So a proper, old-fashioned programme, but with links :
* Winona Ryder is Edward's Kim*, and is the voice of Elsa Van Hesling in the 2012 Frankenw.
* Both works deal with, address or feature the situation of the outsider who can only be loved, if at all, by people being more than skin deep
* Who else to bring such an outsider from, or back from, another realm than Ben (Barret Oliver), a member of the Frankenstein family, and a Vincent Price at around 79, just a few years before the end of his life, and looking nothing like it ?
Tim Burton showing off a Halloween costume made by his mother, 1967. pic.twitter.com/0tSRicKbaQ
— History In Pictures (@HistoryInPics) July 22, 2015
* Nosy neighbours, to whom young Frankenstein feels obliged to account for his behaviour, and for whom Edward's arrival in an unnecessary bright yellow automobile is an instant source of fascination, intrigue, and fear
* One in pure monochrome, the other with two almost distinct colour-worlds, one being the washed-out one of Price as The Inventor on his eminence and Johnny Depp as the named work of creation**, the other a Dogville sort of a place, but with the distinction of largely pastel colours pushed to make Tobermory look drab, with hues so garish as almost to be fluorescent
A good night's viewing, with a nice role for a much younger-looking Alan Arkin, but perhaps one for Dianne Wiest that did not leave her much room to move - what was given to, and made of, by Depp, Ryder, Shelley Duvall, and Daniel Stern.
End-notes
* Nearly put Kim in Edward, but that did not feel right...
** Edward (even though we are shown how) is left in an explicably parlous state - more important to impart etiquette and poetry than the opposable thumb ? - unless one remembers the origins in Der Struwwelpeter, and what such thinking gave rise to in Haneke's The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band) (2009)
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Friday, 13 September 2013
About time for another Curtis film ?
This is a critique of About Time (2013)
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13 September (revised, in case too hard on Curtis, 16 September [revisions in bold-face])
* NB Pretty spoilery *
This is a critique of About Time (2013)
It is inevitable that a film that features time travel will remind of other such films that do, such as Back to the Future (1985), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), or Dimensions (2011) (a truly independent production, set in Cambridge), and also invoke the likes of Lola Rennt (1998) (in English, Run Lola Run) and Sliding Doors (1998).
Those films have an internal logic, and they tend to try to keep to it. With About Time (2013), Richard Curtis is either cavalier with that logic, or just careless. A writer and director who introduces the sight-gag of a discovered off-stage band, which is not only worthy of Woody Allen, but definitely taken from one of his films (probably Bananas (1971)), shows that he does not hesitate to use something that does not chime with character or mood to get a laugh.
One can therefore use either theory to explain why the logic that Curtis chose to employ is handily overlooked (or ignored). Admittedly, some of the audience will not notice, but, with a very artificial piece of stage-machinery, one is running the risk of not undermining the others’ enjoyment, if it creaks so noisily.
Our protagonist Tim (Domnhall Gleeson) has a maybe older sister (he is 21, but her age seemed unclear) called Kit Kat (Lydia Wilson) whose life has become unnecessarily burdened, so he reckons on taking her back to when she picked up that burden. Apart from the fact that nothing has suggested that the male-only gift of doing so (by clenching one’s hands in the dark and thinking of that moment) allows passengers on one’s coat-tails, there is no obvious reason why Tim needs to take an older Kit Kat to that point : at his leisure, he could have gone back on his own, and contrived to distract her from the undesired encounter.
As it is, the first re-take is disastrous, and then the whole thing proves to have been so, because Tim’s baby has changed sex, the reason for which, relating to the chance nature of the moment of conception, Tim’s father then explains (though not, as becomes telling later, how he knows). ‘Remedying’ the change to the past that has already made is not explained, but the model of time travel that has been shown before (as when Tim regrets not giving a girl a New Year's kiss, or humorously wishes to rescue the opening night of Harry’s play) seems to have been that, when one revisited the past, what stemmed from it no longer exists, almost as if the new version of events has been recorded over it.
If that were not so, Tim would be able to pick and choose between different versions of events, and not have to shoo the extravagance of a band away when things have gone well. He would also not have to re-live the intervening time, which we see him do to seductive effect. Then again, when he goes back to just before midnight on New Year's Day, he simply returns from that moment and goes back to see his father...
So maybe Kit Kat and he would not both have had to re-live the time that had passed from New Year’s Eve, if one way of approaching this 'gift', then, may be to change a variable, and see what happens, another to do the same, but travel forward to the same point in the future in the expectation that nothing has changed.
That said, Tim tries changing several weeks' worth of dynamic between Kit Kat's friend Charlotte and him - the humour of the situation, i.e. that he still does not win her love, is allowed (and used) to gloss over the fact that going to Charlotte's room partway through her stay at his parents' house is hardly going to leave everything else unchanged.
For just seeing Tim not being natural because he knows things about Mary (Rachel McAdams), e.g. that she is a fan of Kate Moss (or even her name), that she knows that she has not told him proves how difficult that would be just for an hour or two. The time travel becomes a sort of alibi where, because one knows too much from what happened the time before, it tends to sound dodgy, like an excuse.
Yet the bigger sin against Curtis’ own logic is when Tim decides that he will have a different person do something important for him, and tries several friends in the role : for him to have done so, he would, again, have had to go right back to when he first asked the original person, and that, too, would impossibly unravel too much else, quite probably that exact baby’s conception (again).
That said, Curtis does not, after all, seem to mean us to take the time travel that literally, because the end of the film shifts into a more ‘preachy’ mode of using it reflectively, to go back over and cherish each moment / count one’s blessings, and seems to want to turn what went before more into a fable, if not downright disown it.
Indeed, Tim’s closing voice-over makes one think that a documentary about awareness has been tacked on, invoking the wisdom of some celebrated homily. (The quiet lyric of a Nick Cave song in the soundtrack even begins ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’.) It feels as though Curtis is using the medium of this film to try to pass on a weighty Socratic message about living a good life – and dying well – even if he may be out of his league…
With Richard Curtis, the similarities to his other films do not hide : Hugh Grant running across Notting Hill in that self-titled film is echoed here by Tim, there is a wedding and a funeral (of sorts), and we have the awkwardness of the main character, as if no Curtis leading man can be anything other than acutely and Britishly self-conscious. (The difference being that running a bookshop maybe requires less tact, discretion, charm than being a successful barrister.)
Without the self-consciousness, there would be little need for the family secret that Tim’s father (Bill Nighy) passes on to him - with it, blurting out to Mary’s parents about their sex-life would be so commonplace that Tim would ever and exhaustingly be clenching his fists to undo things. Again, to the extent that the film works through humour, the comedic effect is put before stable characters.
Thus, if one of his friends is to be believed, Tim is sexually experienced, but he behaves like a virgin, and, in the summer following his twenty-first, has a crush on Kit Kat’s friend Charlotte (Margot Robbie), calling her ‘my first love’. The friend may just be being embarrassing, but, when Tim is counting his blessings and how he has been served that day, the price of his sandwich order rises from around £4.40 (when he is in a rush) to some £6.20 (stopping to appreciate the woman’s smile), and there have been other reasons already to doubt this scripting.
However, unless you credit that counsel at the Criminal Bar are just like actors and can throw themselves into their brief (we also see Tim with modest quantities of paperwork, and never working into the night to master his brief), Tim has hardly the best foundation for good court advocacy, to the extent that it requires some thinking on one’s feet. (Quite apart from the fact that, at Tim’s age, he would at best be newly called to The Bar, if not in pupillage.)
Talking, for a moment, of Tim’s parents, one must feel sorry for the role that Lindsay Duncan is given of a tea-making, picnicking mother who is somewhat gauchely forthright, for, although Tim clearly takes much of his character from her, a highly urbane Nighy is given a much more fleshed-out part, and steals – or comes close to stealing – the important scenes between Gleeson and him.
The cast is good, and gives of its best, with McAdams, Gleeson, Robbie and Joshua McGuire (as Rory) standing out, but ‘the depth’ of the writing does let them down : Nighy is the only one who feels rounded, whereas Gleeson’s utterances too often make one just cringe, and enough others are stock (Curtis) characters.
Tim’s mother has been mentioned, but there is also the uncle (nicely played, though, by Richard Cordery), the playwright Harry (likewise Tom Hollander), the clumsy friend Jay (with no stereotypical suggestion, one can be sure, of inbreeding)… Tim goes back in time just to be with his father, who is reading Dickens, and Nighy reads a passage to Gleeson.
Maybe an attempt at Dickens with time travel is a bit, overall, what About Time feels like – no disrespect to the novelist !
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Thursday, 12 September 2013
Coffee Choice
'Coffee Choice' : A 75-word story
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12 September
'Coffee Choice' : A 75-word story
For Edana Minghella
Wiltshire lay behind him. As the wheels purred lightly, it receded reluctantly, and he yawned.
Tired already, so soon in ? Well, keep on - an espresso in 14 miles.
Yet what Coffee Choice served had scant cuore, no crema - a true, sugary graveyard ! Jo and Manvers Street had spoiled him...
He drove quickly. On the roundabout, he took his exit, accelerated on the slip-road, cruised.
As Swindon loomed, he knew leaving could be put off forever.
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Saturday, 7 September 2013
Immense beauty ?
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7 September
I believe that a viewer who approaches The Great Beauty (2013) as narration, not meditation, is missing its best qualities
Or
Un bel homme au charme irrésistible malgré les premiers signes de la vieillesse
Film-titles are problematic.
The title of The Way Way Back (2013) is meant to be provocative, so 'the problem' is systemically desirable from the point of view of the film-makers, their supporters, distributors, etc.
On my understanding, the original Italian title of La Grande Bellezza just means something like immense beauty*, or maybe, more loosely, very beautiful - and the film exquisitely, almost hyper-realistically, is beautifully composed, shot, edited.
Talking about the film in English under the name 'The Great Beauty' makes one think that someone of the kind of Claudia Cardinale is its unattainable star - if there is such an unattainable star, it is, as one will surely appreciate in and through the filming, Rome.
Yes, The Eternal City - and, yes, Una Grande Attrice, starring above all others in cinema from Roman Holiday (1953) to To Rome With Love (2012)**, with La Dolce Vita (1960) and others in between. But, most of all, Fellini’s Roma (1972) for an insight into Sorrentino’s vision for what this film could (or should) be / mean.
Who knows whether it is a riposte in any way to Allen’s opera-singing, showering undertaker, or his Cruz-realized cheery prostitute, but the worlds are worlds apart : they are, in fact, more the mainly well-heeled world of another Fellini, 8½ (1963), and Federico’s Guido Anselmi is a puzzler in the vein of Paolo’s Jep Gambardella. Whether he puzzles us is not the real issue, but how what he / life / Rome is puzzles him is his real – and our proper – concern.
Jep is not easily impressed, but we both see him cry, and reduce another to the need to escape the company in which he has just, so perfectly, so mercilessly, delivered humiliation. (For a moment, we think that she will outface him / them and stay. What does Jep expect, in this cruel attack on pretension and pompous self-inflation ?)
What he cries at, along with the daydreams, reveries, fantasies that he shares with Guido is at the heart of this film. Akin to Marcello Mastroianni’s mastery, Jep is brought to us to a tee by Toni Servillo as this man who is just as capable of demolishing as building up, a restless individual of talent, but little direction. He is not a Citizen Kane, but his roots do lie deep in what he cannot forget, and maybe few others know about - unlike Kane, Jep is alive, and he makes a confession to himself about how he lives – has chosen to live – at the conclusion of the film.
Comparisons with Warsaw Bridge (1990), screened in the Festival’s lovely Catalan strand in 2012, are also not inappropriate, would that overload had not stripped many memories of watching it – the nuances, the humour, the shallowness of society were all, I nevertheless know, all reminiscent. But Fellini informs so much more, and the man whom Jep has forced his novelette-authoring soul to embrace being is, although quite alien to him, all that he is left with when he cannot be other than he is (nothing to do with his age ?) :
He can hurt, but he can also heal. Perhaps we here see Jep attracted to what he is not able to be, and vice versa, because in some Jungian archetypical way they are complementary personalities, two sides of one coin…
The film is not an easy ride, but it is a phlegmatic one, not one that relies on linearity, literality, logic – just a shame that, as my Italian source confirms, the sub-titles are a poor reflection of the dialogue, on which, and not on whose rendering, I shall attempt to turn my attention next time around.
End-notes
* After writing that, I secured agreement from a convenient and friendly person with Italian credentials. (I have few.)
** I make no apologies for rating that film on a par with Midnight in Paris (2011), because the former is not that weak, nor the latter that strong, despite what is claimed about both.
*** Amazingly turned into Nine (2009) with the participation of the late Anthony Minghella.
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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)
7 September
I believe that a viewer who approaches The Great Beauty (2013) as narration, not meditation, is missing its best qualities
Humbert Humbert
Or
Un bel homme au charme irrésistible malgré les premiers signes de la vieillesse
Film-titles are problematic.
The title of The Way Way Back (2013) is meant to be provocative, so 'the problem' is systemically desirable from the point of view of the film-makers, their supporters, distributors, etc.
On my understanding, the original Italian title of La Grande Bellezza just means something like immense beauty*, or maybe, more loosely, very beautiful - and the film exquisitely, almost hyper-realistically, is beautifully composed, shot, edited.
Talking about the film in English under the name 'The Great Beauty' makes one think that someone of the kind of Claudia Cardinale is its unattainable star - if there is such an unattainable star, it is, as one will surely appreciate in and through the filming, Rome.
Yes, The Eternal City - and, yes, Una Grande Attrice, starring above all others in cinema from Roman Holiday (1953) to To Rome With Love (2012)**, with La Dolce Vita (1960) and others in between. But, most of all, Fellini’s Roma (1972) for an insight into Sorrentino’s vision for what this film could (or should) be / mean.
Who knows whether it is a riposte in any way to Allen’s opera-singing, showering undertaker, or his Cruz-realized cheery prostitute, but the worlds are worlds apart : they are, in fact, more the mainly well-heeled world of another Fellini, 8½ (1963), and Federico’s Guido Anselmi is a puzzler in the vein of Paolo’s Jep Gambardella. Whether he puzzles us is not the real issue, but how what he / life / Rome is puzzles him is his real – and our proper – concern.
Jep is not easily impressed, but we both see him cry, and reduce another to the need to escape the company in which he has just, so perfectly, so mercilessly, delivered humiliation. (For a moment, we think that she will outface him / them and stay. What does Jep expect, in this cruel attack on pretension and pompous self-inflation ?)
What he cries at, along with the daydreams, reveries, fantasies that he shares with Guido is at the heart of this film. Akin to Marcello Mastroianni’s mastery, Jep is brought to us to a tee by Toni Servillo as this man who is just as capable of demolishing as building up, a restless individual of talent, but little direction. He is not a Citizen Kane, but his roots do lie deep in what he cannot forget, and maybe few others know about - unlike Kane, Jep is alive, and he makes a confession to himself about how he lives – has chosen to live – at the conclusion of the film.
Comparisons with Warsaw Bridge (1990), screened in the Festival’s lovely Catalan strand in 2012, are also not inappropriate, would that overload had not stripped many memories of watching it – the nuances, the humour, the shallowness of society were all, I nevertheless know, all reminiscent. But Fellini informs so much more, and the man whom Jep has forced his novelette-authoring soul to embrace being is, although quite alien to him, all that he is left with when he cannot be other than he is (nothing to do with his age ?) :
He can hurt, but he can also heal. Perhaps we here see Jep attracted to what he is not able to be, and vice versa, because in some Jungian archetypical way they are complementary personalities, two sides of one coin…
The film is not an easy ride, but it is a phlegmatic one, not one that relies on linearity, literality, logic – just a shame that, as my Italian source confirms, the sub-titles are a poor reflection of the dialogue, on which, and not on whose rendering, I shall attempt to turn my attention next time around.
End-notes
* After writing that, I secured agreement from a convenient and friendly person with Italian credentials. (I have few.)
** I make no apologies for rating that film on a par with Midnight in Paris (2011), because the former is not that weak, nor the latter that strong, despite what is claimed about both.
*** Amazingly turned into Nine (2009) with the participation of the late Anthony Minghella.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
We're literally not going to make it !
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
7 September
If - as you were - you were crossing the road, why use four syllables when there was no need to say literally at all ?
Some ironic, post-modern, sub- or post-ironic tic ? Or just clueless employment of the latest degraded word..
End-notes
* It was four, not elided to three.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
7 September
If - as you were - you were crossing the road, why use four syllables when there was no need to say literally at all ?
Some ironic, post-modern, sub- or post-ironic tic ? Or just clueless employment of the latest degraded word..
End-notes
* It was four, not elided to three.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Thursday, 5 September 2013
Empty vessels
This is a review of The Way Way Back (2013)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
5 September
This is a review of The Way Way Back (2013)
* Contains moderate spoilering, and a bit of swearing *
I defy anyone to dislike Sam Rockwell as Owen in The Way Way Back (2013)*. (I probably should not do too much defying, or I might end up like the film's odious Trent (Steve Carell), telling people who they are or what they think.)
As I Tweeted :
Anyone who ever had a pivotally inspirational figure in his / her life can relate to #TheWayWayBack: I found Sam Rockwell totally enjoyable.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 4, 2013
The odious Trent, possibly unconsciously, seems set on crushing Duncan, nicely brought about by Liam James - he is the sort of man that he is probably a bit like Reggie Perrin's CJ, in that he did not get where he is to-day without making bogus and manipulatively one-sided 'deals' with people.
Thankfully, the excruciating embarrassment of the characters sizing each other up at the Riptide, the holiday home from Trent's previous relationship, diminishes as Owen and Water Whiz (apparently a real place) hove into view. A little bit like Steve Martin being energized, but largely his own man, Rockwell is the dad whom Duncan does not have / no longer has, as puerile Trent cannot resist grinding Duncan with.
The water-park becomes that sort of home-from-home that we know so well all the way to Alice and her adventures via Dorothy and Kansas / Oz and even into a recent Thai film that was in my top three from last year's Festival, Postcards from the Zoo (2012)** (let alone Midnight in Paris (2011)).
Yes, we root for Duncan, and laugh with him, even despite him, and Owen is no saint, but he is humane, comfortable with himself (most of the time), encouraging. No more than that needs be said - watch the film, relish a world beyond the cringeing hypocrisy of people pretending, and find the punctuation-mark !
End-notes
* With its silent punctuation.
** The zoo is a sort of Eden, but Water Wizz is more flawed, although caring and compassionate, taking in Duncan as he is.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Wednesday, 4 September 2013
Why can't people write 'commit / committed / commits suicide' ?
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
4 September
According to those who know that suicide was once a criminal offence, using the word 'commit' to describe the action of carrying out suicide suggests that it is a crime.
The Suicide Act 1961*, in section 1, enacted as this Tweet says :
Aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring is what section 2 is concerned with, or as this Tweet says :
In essence, what I am trying to use a Tweet to say is this :
If section 1 makes clear that committing suicide is not a crime any longer, because of the passing of the Act, how can anyone construe the use of the phrase 'commit suicide' in sections 1 and 2 as saying that it is a crime (or that it suggests that it is) ?
Was Parliament really incapable of saying what it meant in 1961 ? If no one since the last few years thought that the phrase commit suicide suggested a crime was involved, why do we suddenly need to infer a conscience about what 'commit' + 'suicide' means fifty odd years later ?
Training courses once had it that people had to say thought-shower or some such on the basis that brainstorm was a term offensive to those with epilepsy or similar conditions - this was taught, that those using the word 'brainstorm' were, albeit unwittingly, hurting others. Except that other trainers, who worked with such people liable to be offended, said that it was nonsense, a myth - a myth that gave some trainers power over those attending their courses by making them seem wise...
I no more see any basis for saying that commit suicide is insensitive and needs to be avoided than in the case of brainstorm - it is an attempt to reclaim a non-criminalizing feel for suicide when it is, after all, an act in the way that bankruptcy is an act. People believe in debtors' prisons and in owing money as punishable by the criminal courts, but there is nothing that can be pointed to that suggests it, other than people not knowing what criminal justice and civil justice are.
If people believe that suicide is a crime, some religions may teach that it is, but I cannot see how an Act of Parliament that abolished a crime can be wrong in referring to the act of suicide as something that one commits, just as one commits an act of folly, an act of bankruptcy, an act of kindness.
Does anyone really believe committing a selfless act is a crime, because of the word 'commit' ? I honestly do not think so.
End-notes
* Its full title is 'An Act to amend the law of England and Wales relating to suicide, and for purposes connected therewith', but section 3 lets us shorten it.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
4 September
According to those who know that suicide was once a criminal offence, using the word 'commit' to describe the action of carrying out suicide suggests that it is a crime.
The Suicide Act 1961*, in section 1, enacted as this Tweet says :
Suicide Act 1961 : The rule of law whereby it is a crime for a person to commit suicide is hereby abrogated (s. 1), but crimes in s. 2 ->
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 5, 2013
Aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring is what section 2 is concerned with, or as this Tweet says :
1961 Act : s. 2(1) refers to 'an attempt by another to commit suicide' - s. 1 says it's not a crime, so how is 'commit' saying otherwise ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 5, 2013
In essence, what I am trying to use a Tweet to say is this :
If section 1 makes clear that committing suicide is not a crime any longer, because of the passing of the Act, how can anyone construe the use of the phrase 'commit suicide' in sections 1 and 2 as saying that it is a crime (or that it suggests that it is) ?
Was Parliament really incapable of saying what it meant in 1961 ? If no one since the last few years thought that the phrase commit suicide suggested a crime was involved, why do we suddenly need to infer a conscience about what 'commit' + 'suicide' means fifty odd years later ?
Training courses once had it that people had to say thought-shower or some such on the basis that brainstorm was a term offensive to those with epilepsy or similar conditions - this was taught, that those using the word 'brainstorm' were, albeit unwittingly, hurting others. Except that other trainers, who worked with such people liable to be offended, said that it was nonsense, a myth - a myth that gave some trainers power over those attending their courses by making them seem wise...
I no more see any basis for saying that commit suicide is insensitive and needs to be avoided than in the case of brainstorm - it is an attempt to reclaim a non-criminalizing feel for suicide when it is, after all, an act in the way that bankruptcy is an act. People believe in debtors' prisons and in owing money as punishable by the criminal courts, but there is nothing that can be pointed to that suggests it, other than people not knowing what criminal justice and civil justice are.
If people believe that suicide is a crime, some religions may teach that it is, but I cannot see how an Act of Parliament that abolished a crime can be wrong in referring to the act of suicide as something that one commits, just as one commits an act of folly, an act of bankruptcy, an act of kindness.
Does anyone really believe committing a selfless act is a crime, because of the word 'commit' ? I honestly do not think so.
End-notes
* Its full title is 'An Act to amend the law of England and Wales relating to suicide, and for purposes connected therewith', but section 3 lets us shorten it.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Saturday, 31 August 2013
Any spaces
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
31 August
A debate arose about the use of the question-mark this lunchtime, except that it was only a debate in the modern sense : I received an explanation of how many screens, if one had been driving when sending Any spaces as a message, one would have had to go through to add the punctuation, whereas I had pointed out that the pithiness of some of the messages sent had bordered on abruptness.
As to a question-mark, clearly it had to be a question - although, had it started with a lower-case letter (some friends never use capitals), one might have wondered whether it was the tail-fragment - and clearly one also inferred the missing Are there.
Which brought us to what happens when a proposition is not, as almost in that case (it would actually have been Are there spaces ?), turned into a question by inversion, but by intonation :
You are coming as statement
You are coming ! as a form of imperative
You are coming ? as a question
Are you coming ? also as a question
Likewise :
You want that as statement
You want that ? as a form of derision in a question
You want that ? possibly, again, as a form of derision in a question, possibly not
You want that ? as a form of uncertainty, perhaps
Etc., etc. with several words stressed...
But :
Do you want that ? as a question
Do you want that ? as an intensified question
Do you want that ? as another intensified question
Do you want that ? as a third intensified question
Etc., etc. with several words stressed...
Questions, we take them for granted, but forming them can - rightly or wrongly - impart all sorts of meaning, without even considering adding another intensifying word such as 'really'...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
31 August
A debate arose about the use of the question-mark this lunchtime, except that it was only a debate in the modern sense : I received an explanation of how many screens, if one had been driving when sending Any spaces as a message, one would have had to go through to add the punctuation, whereas I had pointed out that the pithiness of some of the messages sent had bordered on abruptness.
As to a question-mark, clearly it had to be a question - although, had it started with a lower-case letter (some friends never use capitals), one might have wondered whether it was the tail-fragment - and clearly one also inferred the missing Are there.
Which brought us to what happens when a proposition is not, as almost in that case (it would actually have been Are there spaces ?), turned into a question by inversion, but by intonation :
You are coming as statement
You are coming ! as a form of imperative
You are coming ? as a question
Are you coming ? also as a question
Likewise :
You want that as statement
You want that ? as a form of derision in a question
You want that ? possibly, again, as a form of derision in a question, possibly not
You want that ? as a form of uncertainty, perhaps
Etc., etc. with several words stressed...
But :
Do you want that ? as a question
Do you want that ? as an intensified question
Do you want that ? as another intensified question
Do you want that ? as a third intensified question
Etc., etc. with several words stressed...
Questions, we take them for granted, but forming them can - rightly or wrongly - impart all sorts of meaning, without even considering adding another intensifying word such as 'really'...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Friday, 30 August 2013
What the heck is 'competition', Competition Commission ?
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
31 August
If you've never heard of the MMC*, you might wonder what the Competition Commission does ?
Do they police the occasions when you came up for a brilliant new name for Frosties, but didn't win, or that holiday in Honolulu that they keep ringing me about ?
Well, this probably won't help : Imagine a town, Townchester, with a big branch of Tesco a few streets away from one side of the river, and an equally big branch of Asda in the same position on the other side. Imagine Asda decided that they thought that people were more interested in carpet, and devoted half of their floor-space to that instead of their normal range of goods.
So what has happened to competition in Townchester ? Asda, for whatever business or other reason, has effectively given Tesco a massive advantage, and could make its so very low prices creep up, because it knows that customers can less easily find all that they need at Asda.
But does the Competition Commission have anything to say about this ? I understand not, and it would take Asda to decide to sell up to Tesco altogether before, as I gather, The Office of Fair Trading might refer the matter to the Commission.
Does this make any sense ? In both cases, a market position lessens competition, but, unless I am quite wrong, the Commission won't oblige Asda to compete fully with Tesco, any more than it will, if Asda does as I say with 70% of its floor area, encourage Lidl or who knows what other supermarket retailer in to keep Tesco in check.
And does it nap ? A very big Sainsbury's has now opened in Bicester, but I am reliably informed (by a friend who lives there) that the competitive playing-field before then saw no fewer than seven, yes seven, Tesco branches in this one town.
Anyway, apply this 'thinking' to the business of cinemas, of projecting films for public exhibition, and Festival Central is threatened because Cineworld, which had a cinema already, now owns both : the Commission, from the lofty height of its great wisdom, records that there are membership schemes and a diversity between the type of films shown at each.
It records that state of affairs, but decides, I am told (by @MovieEvangelist), to take no account of it, irrespective of the fact that one largely could not see almost all of the films shown at Festival Central at Cineworld. It focuses (again, @MovieEvangelist informs me) on odd assumptions about what people would do if prices rose 5%, but has no wit to think that, if the cost of seeing films did increase that much, one would not, as it surmises, go to another cinema where one could not see the films that one chooses to view, but just not watch quite so many films - if the price of beer goes up, do I just consume as much, if my income has not kept pace, or have slightly fewer pints ?
It's obvious, but seemingly not to the Competition Commission. And membership : one pays a fee for membership at Festival Central, but then gets three free tickets, 10% of food and drink, and up to £2.00 off the price of almost all other tickets, all applicable across Picturehouse cinemas. One can just discount that, when Cambridge Vue, I gather, does not have such a scheme ? Cineworld has an unlimited subscription (@MovieEvangelist says), allowing the holder to see any number of films for a monthly payment - can that, too, just be ignored, if one wants to talk about ticket-prices ?
Whose interests, then, is the Commission protecting ? The one-off visitor to Cambridge who wants to see a film ? If the visitor likes world or independent cinema, and is a member at The Belmont, in Aberdeen, he or she can use those free tickets, or get something up to £2.00 off, plus the 10% discount, so why compare the straight price of, say, a matinee ticket at the Vue with that ?
Regarding supermarkets without their loyalty cards, discount vouchers, and three-for-two offers - would looking at the ordinary prices, without being able to cash in points on meals, holidays, probably cinema tickets, make sense ?
In the Commission's world, there is the possibility of the lessening of its arcane notion of competition, and it seems not to care that the consequence of believing that action probably must be taken, i.e. requiring Cineworld to sell one of the Cambridge cinemas, runs the risk of three cinemas showing pretty much the same films**.
If that is the desired outcome, then it is the desert that we have of multi-channel t.v., with no variety within the large number of channels, save that each one is a different channel, in terms of the quality and worth of content. Making big players bid to screen prestigious sporting fixtures just meant that the winners passed on the cost of their winning bid to the public - pay £Z to subscribe, or you don't see these events.
The public had these events more easily and less inexpensively available before. They have just had them sold back at the high price of subscribing, say, to Mr Murdoch's services.
Only beneficiaries ? : Mr Murdoch, the shareholders of his companies, the staff who encrypt and broadcast the events, allow the subscriber, both physically and by checking that he or she continues to pay, to watch, and the manufacturers of the technology that the subscriber needs, and their staff and shareholders.
What price a film festival ? Oh, a fanciful notion of competition has to be explored to protect the public from seeing the latest Woody Allen, world premieres, twenty documentaries (when Cambridge is not even primarily a documentary film festival)...
Thanks, and make me have to spend at least £13 on a Travelcard to London and then to have to pay the high admission fees of London Film Festival's screenings !
End-notes
* The Monopolies and Mergers Commission, replaced by the CC on 1 April 1999 (from memory).
** Of course, that is pure competition, rather than having this arthouse muck screened ! (Almost in the same way that Nineteen Eighty-Four has three massive powers vying for it.)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
31 August
If you've never heard of the MMC*, you might wonder what the Competition Commission does ?
Do they police the occasions when you came up for a brilliant new name for Frosties, but didn't win, or that holiday in Honolulu that they keep ringing me about ?
Well, this probably won't help : Imagine a town, Townchester, with a big branch of Tesco a few streets away from one side of the river, and an equally big branch of Asda in the same position on the other side. Imagine Asda decided that they thought that people were more interested in carpet, and devoted half of their floor-space to that instead of their normal range of goods.
So what has happened to competition in Townchester ? Asda, for whatever business or other reason, has effectively given Tesco a massive advantage, and could make its so very low prices creep up, because it knows that customers can less easily find all that they need at Asda.
But does the Competition Commission have anything to say about this ? I understand not, and it would take Asda to decide to sell up to Tesco altogether before, as I gather, The Office of Fair Trading might refer the matter to the Commission.
Does this make any sense ? In both cases, a market position lessens competition, but, unless I am quite wrong, the Commission won't oblige Asda to compete fully with Tesco, any more than it will, if Asda does as I say with 70% of its floor area, encourage Lidl or who knows what other supermarket retailer in to keep Tesco in check.
And does it nap ? A very big Sainsbury's has now opened in Bicester, but I am reliably informed (by a friend who lives there) that the competitive playing-field before then saw no fewer than seven, yes seven, Tesco branches in this one town.
Anyway, apply this 'thinking' to the business of cinemas, of projecting films for public exhibition, and Festival Central is threatened because Cineworld, which had a cinema already, now owns both : the Commission, from the lofty height of its great wisdom, records that there are membership schemes and a diversity between the type of films shown at each.
It records that state of affairs, but decides, I am told (by @MovieEvangelist), to take no account of it, irrespective of the fact that one largely could not see almost all of the films shown at Festival Central at Cineworld. It focuses (again, @MovieEvangelist informs me) on odd assumptions about what people would do if prices rose 5%, but has no wit to think that, if the cost of seeing films did increase that much, one would not, as it surmises, go to another cinema where one could not see the films that one chooses to view, but just not watch quite so many films - if the price of beer goes up, do I just consume as much, if my income has not kept pace, or have slightly fewer pints ?
It's obvious, but seemingly not to the Competition Commission. And membership : one pays a fee for membership at Festival Central, but then gets three free tickets, 10% of food and drink, and up to £2.00 off the price of almost all other tickets, all applicable across Picturehouse cinemas. One can just discount that, when Cambridge Vue, I gather, does not have such a scheme ? Cineworld has an unlimited subscription (@MovieEvangelist says), allowing the holder to see any number of films for a monthly payment - can that, too, just be ignored, if one wants to talk about ticket-prices ?
Whose interests, then, is the Commission protecting ? The one-off visitor to Cambridge who wants to see a film ? If the visitor likes world or independent cinema, and is a member at The Belmont, in Aberdeen, he or she can use those free tickets, or get something up to £2.00 off, plus the 10% discount, so why compare the straight price of, say, a matinee ticket at the Vue with that ?
Regarding supermarkets without their loyalty cards, discount vouchers, and three-for-two offers - would looking at the ordinary prices, without being able to cash in points on meals, holidays, probably cinema tickets, make sense ?
In the Commission's world, there is the possibility of the lessening of its arcane notion of competition, and it seems not to care that the consequence of believing that action probably must be taken, i.e. requiring Cineworld to sell one of the Cambridge cinemas, runs the risk of three cinemas showing pretty much the same films**.
If that is the desired outcome, then it is the desert that we have of multi-channel t.v., with no variety within the large number of channels, save that each one is a different channel, in terms of the quality and worth of content. Making big players bid to screen prestigious sporting fixtures just meant that the winners passed on the cost of their winning bid to the public - pay £Z to subscribe, or you don't see these events.
The public had these events more easily and less inexpensively available before. They have just had them sold back at the high price of subscribing, say, to Mr Murdoch's services.
Only beneficiaries ? : Mr Murdoch, the shareholders of his companies, the staff who encrypt and broadcast the events, allow the subscriber, both physically and by checking that he or she continues to pay, to watch, and the manufacturers of the technology that the subscriber needs, and their staff and shareholders.
What price a film festival ? Oh, a fanciful notion of competition has to be explored to protect the public from seeing the latest Woody Allen, world premieres, twenty documentaries (when Cambridge is not even primarily a documentary film festival)...
Thanks, and make me have to spend at least £13 on a Travelcard to London and then to have to pay the high admission fees of London Film Festival's screenings !
End-notes
* The Monopolies and Mergers Commission, replaced by the CC on 1 April 1999 (from memory).
** Of course, that is pure competition, rather than having this arthouse muck screened ! (Almost in the same way that Nineteen Eighty-Four has three massive powers vying for it.)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Thursday, 29 August 2013
Damien and The Castle
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
30 August
* Contains spoilers *
When I watched Looking for Hortense (2012) again, I wanted to see the film more freely than when tied to the sub-titles first time around, to catch the French more (the translation is quite free - even the original title really means Find Hortense !), and do my variously named Does it work the second time ? test.
In reverse order, yes, everything dovetails beautifully with the Aurore / Zorica identity, I could hear more idiom, and the film's arc affected me wonderfully now that I could see how we got to Antoine and Eva in the car. But, amongst all of that, ironies, subtleties and confluences of Franz Kafka's Das Schloß*, The Castle, which visibly owes much to the time when he lived in Prague's Golden Lane, very near (almost part of ?) that city's castle complex.
The mapping works thus :
* Damien is the hen-pecked ambassador to his father (Sébastien) on behalf of Zorica, whom he does not know (he has already neglected his task once, partly because he does not wish to have to have contact with Sébastien)
* Zorica and her plight are known to him via the partner (Véra) of the brother (Marco) of his partner (Iva)
* At Time A, Damien's trip to see Sébastien proves to be a waste of time, because judicial matters have overrun, and then Sébastien looks at his diary and writes off the next fortnight as offering no replacement time
* He has just met Aurore (not knowing that she is Zorica, too), and Sébastien has to tap Damien firmly on the shoulder to distract him from watching her have an altercation in the square below : the irony is that Damien breaks off watching to talk about the case of the person whom he was watching
* When he leaves, something on his phone causes Damien to miss speaking to Aurore when she is sitting on a bench
* So, not through his own fault, Damien has not managed to articulate anything to his father when Véra and Marco turn up with oysters (Time B) to celebrate what they think that he has done
* It is, though, Damien's fault, both that they are under this impression (as he lied to Iva about having lunch with Sébastien), and that he does not disabuse them (so guilt attaches, and the stickiness of the task results, because he has been treated as having done what he failed to do, which has something of a paralysing rather than spurring effect)
* At Time B, however, Damien is stirred to exchange text-messages with Sébastien, trying (and failing) to find a time to have lunch that does not clash with his class tuition - none is forthcoming, but they fix Time C
* On account of this renewed activity, he is not free when they have Zorica on the phone, wishing to thank him (so Aurore and he miss again)
* In the unbridled sort of way highly reminiscent of K. having sex with Frieda on the floor of the inn and amidst the slops**, early on in the Kafka novel, Marco and Vera copulate noisily in the bathroom (their celebration ?)
* With the task in his sights in a K.-like determination, Damien finishes his lecture early for Time C, but cannot hail a taxi quickly, and then the cab-driver does not know anywhere by means of which he tries to specify his desired destination (a driver as useless in that role as K.'s 'assistants' are to him)
* He arrives late, to Sébastien's consternation, who will not allow him longer than scheduled
* However, what time they have is wasted, because Sébastien's sybaritic behaviour towards the androgynous waiter Satoshi causes Damien to enquire into his father's sexuality, and he then becomes flustered and cannot dismiss his curiosity
* This sort of distraction happens all the time in Kafka, e.g. Josef K. seducing Leni (in Der Prozeß, The Trial) when he is supposed to be having a consultation with the advocate, or K. (in Das Schloß) missing his appointment in The Herrenhof since, as I recall, he is more interested in finding out what Frieda is now doing
* As in both novels, the matter is an administrative matter with judicial / bureaucratic machinery in the way : here, both getting to see Sébastien, and the meeting being meaningful
* However, Damien would not be side-tracked by Sébastien, if the latter did not flirt with Satoshi and, ignoring what Damien had started saying, concern himself with the gastronomic excesses of his ice-cream dessert, but, once he sees his father's infatuation, he loses sight of the whole purpose of seeing Sébastien until he insists on going
* The task was given to Damien by Iva in the first place, but it has made him less available to her obviously self-inflated ego, which is partly the attraction of Antoine from the latest play that, with whatever skill, she is directing - a form of castration, to which Josef K. and K. are prone (e.g. Frieda decides that one of the assistants is a better bet than staying with K., after K. evict them from the schoolroom)
* The boy, Noé, refers to Iva, and without obvious correction, as 'the airhead' at one point, and Kristin Scott Thomas cleverly and gradually brings her self-obsession out - she cannot cope without purely physical things such as her cigarettes, coffee, her watch
* When Iva admits the affair, but tries to buy more time, Damien insists that she leave
* It is at this time that Aurore and Zorica collapse into one person, and Damien is confronted with having failed someone whom he likes under another name - at least, though, he is honest with her, not least since he has demanded Iva tell him the truth
* That might be where some takes on what Kafka is like would have the story end, and not resolve, but other strands come together, also in a Kafka-like way :
* Damien barges into a meeting at the court and insists that Sébastien listen - he agrees, but a pause covers whatever he says, and we hear Sébastien saying why it is not possible to help by speaking to the Hortense of the title, because Hortense will refuse, and Sébastien does not want that
* Reading between the lines, when we see Damien blag Hortense's number from his mother and first speak to and then meet Hortense (after some suitably poised being made to wait in a Japanese-style conservatory), the sybaritic manners of this man suggest that Damien's father and he probably are (or have been) lovers
* The reason for being unable to contact Hortense is, at the level of bodies and persons, the sort of force that makes K. associating with Barnabas and his family, when he thinks that it will help, damaging to his cause, or Josef K. always deciding that he knows better about his case than people whose time with him is secured to try to assist
* Much as one of Kafka's officials might do, Hortense claims to have an excellent memory and not to need Aurore's paperwork
* Whatever Damien may think or know, he is no longer impressed by getting to see Hortense, and cannot conceal what he feels from Aurore, who has come to wait his exit
From here, how things resolve is Damien getting himself arrested so that Aurore, who has no papers, can escape, but then falling very ill from the drenching rain - in his deepening fever, he reaches out to her with his words, his strong memory of what made him the academic that he became.
After the illness, he narrates greater separation from, and flightiness of, Iva, and one cannot help thinking that the luxury to be a director has been at the vampiric cost of living off Damien, his care for the house and for Noé, and the roof over their heads.
He thinks that Aurore has gone to India with the man who excessively to his embarrassment thanks Damien for saving his life, and tries to threaten Sébastien with the gun by whose removal he did it. Sébastien is not to be threatened, but does despair of love in the future after being rejected (by Hortense ? the final resolution of a quarrel ?)
Realizing that Aurore did not go away, he speaks to her, finds her, sees her. She did not go, because of what he said on the verge of collapse. Things have finally had their consequence and brought them, at least for now, together, a battle, a struggle through the labyrinth of missed meetings, mistakes, lies and confessions...
For Der Verschollene, the third of Kafka's novels, translated as The Man Who Disappeared, such a resolution does not seem impossible - Max Brod claims so, some other material suggests as much, and The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma*** seems of a positive kind
End-notes
* It, as with Kafka's other two novels, is incomplete, in that we have the hint of how it might end (courtesy of his literary executor and first editor, Max Brod), but episodes to get us there are wanting.
** Haneke's 1997 film of the novel brings out well that K. is seeking advantage in seducing Frieda, as well as satisfying lust.
*** Which inspired a huge installation by Martin Kippenberger.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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30 August
* Contains spoilers *
When I watched Looking for Hortense (2012) again, I wanted to see the film more freely than when tied to the sub-titles first time around, to catch the French more (the translation is quite free - even the original title really means Find Hortense !), and do my variously named Does it work the second time ? test.
In reverse order, yes, everything dovetails beautifully with the Aurore / Zorica identity, I could hear more idiom, and the film's arc affected me wonderfully now that I could see how we got to Antoine and Eva in the car. But, amongst all of that, ironies, subtleties and confluences of Franz Kafka's Das Schloß*, The Castle, which visibly owes much to the time when he lived in Prague's Golden Lane, very near (almost part of ?) that city's castle complex.
The mapping works thus :
* Damien is the hen-pecked ambassador to his father (Sébastien) on behalf of Zorica, whom he does not know (he has already neglected his task once, partly because he does not wish to have to have contact with Sébastien)
* Zorica and her plight are known to him via the partner (Véra) of the brother (Marco) of his partner (Iva)
* At Time A, Damien's trip to see Sébastien proves to be a waste of time, because judicial matters have overrun, and then Sébastien looks at his diary and writes off the next fortnight as offering no replacement time
* He has just met Aurore (not knowing that she is Zorica, too), and Sébastien has to tap Damien firmly on the shoulder to distract him from watching her have an altercation in the square below : the irony is that Damien breaks off watching to talk about the case of the person whom he was watching
* When he leaves, something on his phone causes Damien to miss speaking to Aurore when she is sitting on a bench
* So, not through his own fault, Damien has not managed to articulate anything to his father when Véra and Marco turn up with oysters (Time B) to celebrate what they think that he has done
* It is, though, Damien's fault, both that they are under this impression (as he lied to Iva about having lunch with Sébastien), and that he does not disabuse them (so guilt attaches, and the stickiness of the task results, because he has been treated as having done what he failed to do, which has something of a paralysing rather than spurring effect)
* At Time B, however, Damien is stirred to exchange text-messages with Sébastien, trying (and failing) to find a time to have lunch that does not clash with his class tuition - none is forthcoming, but they fix Time C
* On account of this renewed activity, he is not free when they have Zorica on the phone, wishing to thank him (so Aurore and he miss again)
* In the unbridled sort of way highly reminiscent of K. having sex with Frieda on the floor of the inn and amidst the slops**, early on in the Kafka novel, Marco and Vera copulate noisily in the bathroom (their celebration ?)
* With the task in his sights in a K.-like determination, Damien finishes his lecture early for Time C, but cannot hail a taxi quickly, and then the cab-driver does not know anywhere by means of which he tries to specify his desired destination (a driver as useless in that role as K.'s 'assistants' are to him)
* He arrives late, to Sébastien's consternation, who will not allow him longer than scheduled
* However, what time they have is wasted, because Sébastien's sybaritic behaviour towards the androgynous waiter Satoshi causes Damien to enquire into his father's sexuality, and he then becomes flustered and cannot dismiss his curiosity
* This sort of distraction happens all the time in Kafka, e.g. Josef K. seducing Leni (in Der Prozeß, The Trial) when he is supposed to be having a consultation with the advocate, or K. (in Das Schloß) missing his appointment in The Herrenhof since, as I recall, he is more interested in finding out what Frieda is now doing
* As in both novels, the matter is an administrative matter with judicial / bureaucratic machinery in the way : here, both getting to see Sébastien, and the meeting being meaningful
* However, Damien would not be side-tracked by Sébastien, if the latter did not flirt with Satoshi and, ignoring what Damien had started saying, concern himself with the gastronomic excesses of his ice-cream dessert, but, once he sees his father's infatuation, he loses sight of the whole purpose of seeing Sébastien until he insists on going
* The task was given to Damien by Iva in the first place, but it has made him less available to her obviously self-inflated ego, which is partly the attraction of Antoine from the latest play that, with whatever skill, she is directing - a form of castration, to which Josef K. and K. are prone (e.g. Frieda decides that one of the assistants is a better bet than staying with K., after K. evict them from the schoolroom)
* The boy, Noé, refers to Iva, and without obvious correction, as 'the airhead' at one point, and Kristin Scott Thomas cleverly and gradually brings her self-obsession out - she cannot cope without purely physical things such as her cigarettes, coffee, her watch
* When Iva admits the affair, but tries to buy more time, Damien insists that she leave
* It is at this time that Aurore and Zorica collapse into one person, and Damien is confronted with having failed someone whom he likes under another name - at least, though, he is honest with her, not least since he has demanded Iva tell him the truth
* That might be where some takes on what Kafka is like would have the story end, and not resolve, but other strands come together, also in a Kafka-like way :
* Damien barges into a meeting at the court and insists that Sébastien listen - he agrees, but a pause covers whatever he says, and we hear Sébastien saying why it is not possible to help by speaking to the Hortense of the title, because Hortense will refuse, and Sébastien does not want that
* Reading between the lines, when we see Damien blag Hortense's number from his mother and first speak to and then meet Hortense (after some suitably poised being made to wait in a Japanese-style conservatory), the sybaritic manners of this man suggest that Damien's father and he probably are (or have been) lovers
* The reason for being unable to contact Hortense is, at the level of bodies and persons, the sort of force that makes K. associating with Barnabas and his family, when he thinks that it will help, damaging to his cause, or Josef K. always deciding that he knows better about his case than people whose time with him is secured to try to assist
* Much as one of Kafka's officials might do, Hortense claims to have an excellent memory and not to need Aurore's paperwork
* Whatever Damien may think or know, he is no longer impressed by getting to see Hortense, and cannot conceal what he feels from Aurore, who has come to wait his exit
From here, how things resolve is Damien getting himself arrested so that Aurore, who has no papers, can escape, but then falling very ill from the drenching rain - in his deepening fever, he reaches out to her with his words, his strong memory of what made him the academic that he became.
After the illness, he narrates greater separation from, and flightiness of, Iva, and one cannot help thinking that the luxury to be a director has been at the vampiric cost of living off Damien, his care for the house and for Noé, and the roof over their heads.
He thinks that Aurore has gone to India with the man who excessively to his embarrassment thanks Damien for saving his life, and tries to threaten Sébastien with the gun by whose removal he did it. Sébastien is not to be threatened, but does despair of love in the future after being rejected (by Hortense ? the final resolution of a quarrel ?)
Realizing that Aurore did not go away, he speaks to her, finds her, sees her. She did not go, because of what he said on the verge of collapse. Things have finally had their consequence and brought them, at least for now, together, a battle, a struggle through the labyrinth of missed meetings, mistakes, lies and confessions...
For Der Verschollene, the third of Kafka's novels, translated as The Man Who Disappeared, such a resolution does not seem impossible - Max Brod claims so, some other material suggests as much, and The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma*** seems of a positive kind
End-notes
* It, as with Kafka's other two novels, is incomplete, in that we have the hint of how it might end (courtesy of his literary executor and first editor, Max Brod), but episodes to get us there are wanting.
** Haneke's 1997 film of the novel brings out well that K. is seeking advantage in seducing Frieda, as well as satisfying lust.
*** Which inspired a huge installation by Martin Kippenberger.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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