Tuesday, 5 September 2017

What more is Catalan cinema ?¹

What more is Catalan cinema ?¹ :


More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

4 September (revised 4 October)

What more is Catalan cinema ?¹ :



It's the inevitable filmic follow-up to What is Catalan cinema ?... !


Three years ago, leading up to the third season of Camera Catalonia at Cambridge Film Festival [then in its 34th season], the question was posed What is Catalan cinema ? - in answering which, some of the defining features seemed to be :



Yet, as well as all these things (which, along with the Catalan films from 2012 to that date, are considered in more detail in What is Catalan cinema ?), succeeding seasons of Camera Catalonia have shown that the autonomous region in Spain called Catalunya – which, as with Scotland, some would see have a greater, independent status [highly relevant at the time of revising this piece...] – gives us cinema that :

* Remembers its history, right back to when Spain took control of Catalunya, in Claudio Zulian's (claudiozulian1's) thoughtful Born (2014) (@Bornfilm), reconstructing a few connected lives at the time of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), with Vicky Luengo a most desirable mistress to Josep Julien and the sister of Marc Martínez (Julien’s wealthy debtor, until Julien proves to back the wrong side in the war…)


* In the Catalan people, presents ones as reserved as the British, who - in two films that star the radiant Nora Navas (Tots volem el millor per a ella (We All Want What’s Best for Her) (2013) and L’adopció (Awaiting) (2015)) – manage to avoid talking to each other, but try to make happen what they assume should happen. In doing so, do they seem to lose sight of who is getting hurt, and for what real reason... ?



* Looks to literature such as Shakespeare, either in the feel - in Barcelona Summer Night (Barcelona, nit d'estiu) (2013) - of A Midsummer Night's Dream...


Or, in Hammudi al-Rahmoun Font's shocking telling of a classic tragedy, in Otel.lo (Othello) (2012) : 'OTHELLO is a cinematographic essay about power, desire, jealousy and deceit ; a thought on the boundaries between fiction and real life' (from IMDb)


Hammudi (with The Agent) at Cambridge Film Festival 2014

* Films as diverse as Ficció (Fiction) (2006), Fill de Caín (Son of Cain) (2013), and Menú degustació (Tasting Menu) (2013) are, in their quite different ways, further evidence² of flexibility in, and of creative thinking about, employing conventional elements of story-telling - and of both the expectations to which their nature gives rise and what writers and / or directors do to subvert them



* Or they do not subvert them - but surprisingly please, in Traces of Sandalwood (Rastres de sàndal) (2014) [this link is to TAKE ONE’s (@ TakeOneCinema's) review], with its Bollywood-infused tale of the (in)credulity of a loved and lost young girl, who is adopted into a Catalan family, and cannot believe that an Indian film-star knew her as a child - because she is her sister !


Aina Clotet, as Paula (Sita) - meeting her sister Mina (Nandita Das), and, later, reflecting on herself, and her identity


* Those living at the extremes of experience, in both Tots els camins de Déu (All The Ways of God) (2014) and El camí més llarg per tornar a casa (The Long Way Home) (2014)


Upper : Marc Garcia Coté in Tots els camins de Déu (2014)
Lower : Borja Espinosa in El camí més llarg per tornar a casa (2014)


* Adapts stage-plays very cinematically, whether Sílvia Munt [interviewed here], making a film of Josep María Sagarra's classic work El Cafè de la Marina (2014), or Ventura Pons of a contemporary writer in El virus de la por (The Virus of Fear) (2015)


Marina Salas in El cafè de la Marina (2014)


(Upper) Rubén de Eguia and (Lower) Albert Ausellé and Diana Gómez in El virus de la por (2015)

* Finally, documentaries by Catalan directors - although now listed in the Festival's main sequence (alphabetically with the others and the feature films) - tend to explore identity and connections to Catalan history, whether telling of the band-leader Xavier Cugat's career in film and music, during which he introduced Latin orchestration and rhythms to dance-music and Hollywood films and t.v. (although, which was probably little known, Cugat had been born in Catalunya, but had been an emigrée to Cuba with his family when young), in Diego Mas Trelles' Sexo, maracas y Chihuahuas (Sex, Maracas & Chihuahuas) (2016)


Or - in another realm of translocation - telling of how much better treated and regarded Americans of Afro-Caribbean descent were during their time in Spain (fighting the fascist forces of General Franco) than in the States - especially after going there. So #CamFF 2015 guest Jordi Torrent (with his co-writer / director Alfonso Domingo) showed in Héroes invisibles : Afroamericanos en la guerra de España (Invisible Heroes) (2015) [for which #UCFF interprets the sub-title as ‘The part played by Afro-Americans in The Spanish Civil War’], to the extent even that records that proved their participation hardly (were meant to) be available / survive





Ramon Lamarca (left), with Festival guest Jesús Monllaó (before the poster for Monllaó's
Fill de Caín (2013)) - by and courtesy of David Riley


Catalan cinema - to judge by the films that Camera Catalonia programmer Ramon Lamarca (pictured above) brings to Cambridge (and also the ICA (@ICALondon)) - is high-quality work that values its audiences enough to respect them :

Join us for the sixth year of a Catalan strand at Cambridge Film Festival, Camera Catalonia, to see why he and #UCFF give it due regard


End-notes :

¹ A deliberate nod to the inelegance of following up Analyze This (1999) with Analyze That (2002) (fairly criminally unwatchable, unless being very kind - for their other, better work - to Crystal and De Niro ?)... [Cristina Roures, pictured, is the Festival's Operations and Hospitality Manager (and, of course, is Catalan).]

² Camera Catalonia in 2012 (its first appearance at #CamFF) had included V.O.S. (2009), which is also – along with Ficció (2006) - the work of director Cesc Gay.




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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A response to Logan Lucky (2017)

This is a response to Logan Lucky (2017)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

4 September


This is a response to Logan Lucky (2017)



Channing Tatum and Adam Driver, although funny (as are, despite themselves, the characters played by Jack Quaid (Fish Bang) and Brian Gleeson (Sam Bang)), are not, whatever they may hope, the best thing about the film :

One of the best things about the film is that it can use its pace to tell a tale that makes scant little sense, and then, because that is so¹, has the chutzpah to put two fingers up to us at the end ! (As if that mattered, except that - after a slow start of great excruciation (extrusion ?) - one has been buffeted by Team Logan for more than a quite lively eighty or ninety minutes².)




A man (Joe Bang) chalks an equation, which we can't quite see or follow, for why some sweets and a couple of other domestic ingredients is what his team should trust him with - not only the accent, but Craig also has the presence to carry this scene off...

 Though, with the real wall of where they are trying to penetrate replaced by a transparent one, can we understand what they are trying to achieve - or how and why do we believe in it... ?



Wherever we are, and whatever Craig (right) is saying to Driver and Tatum (left) - how can a vessel such as the one that he is holding (even using a differential in aerodynamic pressure) negotiate curved piping such as is shown behind them ?


That is meant not so much as a spoiler, but rather as an invitation to be alive to the fictive power and nature of film in Logan Lucky... (If you're being done over, why not at least know it, or even how it's done ?)






End-notes :

¹ As pictured below, and Tweeted about here... :




² Cell 211 (Celda 211) (2009) [the link is to IMDb (@IMDb)], which screened at Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest) [in 2010 ?] does this to great effect, and not to blind (and deafen / deaden - the score is usually intense, and floods one's sense-data) to a creaky plot. (However, there is just one flaw that one can spot that the film-makers did not address.]


Alberto Ammann and Luis Tosar in Celda 211 (2009)


By contrast, American Hustle (2013) uses razzle-dazzle attrition, so that one is napping by the time that '"the clever bit"' happens (not-on-my-watch stuff).




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Sunday, 3 September 2017

Some Tweets after a preview screening (plus Q&A) of The Limehouse Golem (2016)

Some Tweets after a preview screening (plus Q&A) of The Limehouse Golem (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

30 August
Some Tweets after a preview screening (plus Q&A) of The Limehouse Golem (2016) at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, on Wednesday 30 August 2017 at 6.20 p.m.






María Valverde, Sam Reid, Douglas Booth, Olivia Cooke, and Eddie Marsan







Douglas Booth and Mila Kunis in Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Douglas Booth is tremendous in the film – but he was tremendous (and very unpleasant) in Jupiter Ascending (2015), so it is hardly surprising, whereas Bill Nighy, although dependable, is rather unexciting, not least considering that screenwriter Jane Goldman, by promoting a minor part in the original novel Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem (by Victorian specialist Peter Ackroyd), created the role – as a Golem – from raw materials : what he does in the film, the book does not need from him at all...








 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tuesday, 29 August 2017

Poem in a Tweet : Pewter suitcase

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

29 August

 After reading George Monbiot on climate breakdown*... :




End-notes :

 * Also, here :







 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Souvenir (2016) ['Memory'] itself remembers - far better than The Artist (2011) - a bygone style and feel of film (stalled / unfinished review)

This is an appreciation of Souvenir (2016), as seen at Saffron Screen

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

28 August



This is a (stalled / unfinished) appreciation of Souvenir (2016), as seen at Saffron Screen on Monday 28 August at 8.00 p.m.

Of course, the release-date of a film – in this case, 2016 – is just as much a different matter from when, in the UK (say), it has distribution and one gets to see it as from when Isabelle Huppert would have signed up to the film, the dates of the shoot [IMDb (@IMDb) does not give any, but such as The Hollywood Reporter might], and the period of editing and other post-production work before one gets anywhere near ‘a theatrical release'.

All that aside, though, Huppert shows – in this film and in Elle (2016), released in the same year – such a different side to her acting that the contrast is palpable and endearing : the humour, the awkwardness, the pulls of desire are assuredly there in Elle, but the overall affect of Paul Verhoeven’s film is quite another, on account alone of Michèle’s (Huppert's) parents and her feelings towards them both !


Nonetheless, Elle - and Huppert's effective performances in Michael Haneke's films, from The Piano Teacher (2001) and Time of the Wolf (Le temps du loup) (2013) to Amour* (2012) - was a good enough reason to want to watch Souvenir...

[...]





[Something would have appeared here...]


Film-references :

 * Bright Days Ahead (Les beaux jours) (2013)

 * Edward Scissorhands (1990) - fable / Thurber

 * Indecent Proposal (1993)

 * Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

 * Romantics Anonymous (Les émotifs anonymes) (2010)

 * The Artist (2011)






End-notes :

* Somewhat coolly playing Eva, the daughter of Emmanuelle Riva (Anne) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (Georges).




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday, 26 August 2017

Real, moving and effective power in these massed voices¹

This reviews Stephen Layton conducting the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

25 August

This is a review of a concert given, under the guest conductorship of Stephen Layton, by the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain (NYCGB) in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge,
on Friday 25 August 2017 at 7.30 p.m.




First half :

 1. Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) ~ ‘Exultate Deo’ (1941)

 2. Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) ~ ‘O sacrum convivium’ (1937)

 3. Frank Martin (1890-1974) ~ Messe pour double chœur à cappella (1922-1926) :
Kyrie - Gloria - Credo - Sanctus / Benedictus - Agnus Dei


Judge just by the title (1) ‘Exultate Deo’, and then by the text (as heard, e.g. ‘Exultate timpanum’), that this short piece by Poulenc (from 1941) is a setting of praise (taken from the Psalms). With its bright, dawn-like opening (this material recurs), this was where one first took in the clear, full and assured sound of nearly ninety voices – soon into passages of subtle light and shade, as well as Poulenc’s uncompromising use of dissonance :

Straightaway, in this initial choice of repertoire, and in Stephen Layton’s (@StephenDLayton's) home acoustic at Trinity, Cambridge, we were able to appreciate the clear diction and unmuddied sound² of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain (NYCGB), and the exciting effect, in this familiar space, of ‘falling away’ into silence at the close.


In (2) ‘O sacrum convivium’ (1937), a second piece – and a more difficult one (?) – sung from memory, appropriately reflective tone and affect were brought out in a very mature and measured response to this text, a setting that wonders at the sacrament of communion (the Eucharist).

Although Messiaen’s spiritual and theological message is abiding in his canon, it appears that this work is unusual in being liturgical. Particularly striking were the gradations of dynamics across the ensemble, and the employment of softness and hush, which may be known from works as diversely religious as Quatuor pour la fin de temps [Quartet for the End of Time (1941)] or, for solo organ, La Nativité du Seigneur (1935), his beautiful meditation(s) on the birth of Christ.



The Kyrie of this well-known (but simple and unfussy ?) (3) mass-setting by Martin (1922-1926) begins with a multi-entry section [the first entreaty of Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy)], which, through the rendering of its flowing melismatic lines, established warmth and the celebratory sense of participating together in the mass. The central Christe eleison rose at least to fortissimo [ff], but still with a good balance.


Characteristically rounded and pure vowel-sounds flooded the sound-world of the Gloria and, as Frank Martin again gives us a multi-entry setting of the text, we clearly heard, in a trio of statements prefaced by Domine Deus, Agnus Dei… [‘Lord God, Lamb of God’], the sincere and solemn heart of this section of the Messe :

 Martin has some of the singers imitate a drone, thereby giving the quality of a suspensive underpinning to each affirmation (and, not for the only time this evening, the powerful sense of sounds that, because one could not immediately locate them, evoked aetherial disembodiment). At Quoniam tu solus sanctus (‘For you alone are the most high’), we bridged into a form of chanting, and with the vivid impression of composer, conductor and choir together heightening our perception of what is very active within the words of the standard text of the Latin mass.


Except when one such as that of Stravinsky (1944-1948) whisks through it, the Credo – which almost certainly contains more words than in the other four sections combined – inevitably forms a significant portion of a setting : this one makes generous and vibrant use of a double choir, and, again, of wordlessly hummed notes and of crescendi to the full sound of the ensemble.


Amongst various others, some features in particular were highly moving : the tenderness, in the singing and the writing, of the passage that sets Et incarnatus est ('And [He] became man') ; then, the dramatic present of Crucifixus etiam ('For us [He] was likewise crucified'), but with neither Layton nor Martin rushing anything in the specificity that is in the text that starts with sub Pontio Pilato… (‘in the reign of Pontius Pilate’) ; and in the simple joy of Et resurrexit ('And [he] was resurrected'), which re-deploys the theme of running notes from the Kyrie.



 There is a real, moving and effective power in these massed voices, they and we alike enjoying Martin’s flowing melodic lines, but held back in Et unam, sanctam, catholicam… ('And a single, holy, catholic [church]') – before a declaration of faith in Et exspecto…, ('I await [resurrection and eternal life]') and the closing ‘blaze’ of Amen.


Maybe these are not the right words for it, but there was ‘luxuriant’ writing and singing in the repeated word ‘Sanctus’, which then gently ‘retired’, so giving a strong contrast with the dynamics of Pleni sunt coeli (‘The heavens are full…’). Afterwards, we were into the peals / waves of the first Hosanna - before the Benedictus commenced with almost sub voce 'utterances', developing and ‘rolling’ into repeating the acclamation Hosanna !


 With its tri-partite form, the Agnus Dei had an otherworldly, ‘uncanny’ feel to it at the start [for the words are addressed directly to Christ], with voices supporting, and yet moving against, each other – and then an evocation as of a calm beat of a clock (or heart ?), in which one senses Martin’s conviction most, and also, just as significantly, these performers’ dedication to conveying the text.

 After all that has gone before, both in this section and in Martin’s mass for double choir as a whole, the concluding chords - which set the supplication Dona nobis pacem (‘[Lamb of God,] give us Peace’) - are open. As Peace is open to us... ?
Certainly, the audience seemed very open to giving applause from its hearts for this accomplished and engaged performance under Stephen Layton, a celebrated interpreter of such sacred works – one had also had the privilege of seeing close to his encouragement of and approbation for the members of NYCGB, and of feeling pride as they took an orderly step down to walk along the aisle, and out, at the end of this impressive first half.




 Second half :

 4. Vytautas Miškinis (1954-) ~ 'Angelis suis Deus' (2006)

 5. Eriks Ešenvalds (1977-) ~ 'Salutation' [world premiere]

 6. Ugis Praulinš (1957-) ~ Missa Rigensis (2003)

 7. Paweł Łukaszewski (1968-) ~ ‘Nunc Dimittis’ (2007)


Again from memory, two short pieces (maybe shorter again than the Poulenc and the Messiaen ?) began the second half, by which time one finds that, both as one settles into a programme, and into taking further pleasure from it (even as it advances into territory that is less familiar, but no less engaging), one tends - for good or ill - to have to keep prompting oneself to record impressions in one's review-notes, and so makes fewer… [Apologies for anything not noted at the time, and so unlikely to be here now.]

In any case, from a trio of twentieth-century composers in the French tradition (none still alive, though their music continues) to ones all still living and from Eastern Europe (Latvia [Ešenvalds], Lithuania (x2), and Poland [Łukaszewski]) – and, this time, not with works now seventy-five or more years old (yet sounding so fresh), but everything from the twenty-first century.

 We even had a new commission from Eriks Ešenvalds, as well as a second of the composers (Ugis Praulinš) with us, in the chapel itself. Before it, though it had in common that it evoked the sound-world and affect of John Rutter (also said afterwards to have been present), (4) Vytautas Miškinis’ ‘Angelis suis Deus’ (2006) had a swaying motion to it, which was rooted in the bass and treble lines. [As for the text, that will need to be researched (for an end-note), but had apparently been set to celebrate Stephen Layton’s birthday, when he was forty…]

 (5) ‘Salutation’, with a text in English, felt like a pæan, and we had been told that Ešenvalds, in common with large numbers around the world (via live-streaming), was intending to watch the world premiere of this work : the words Senses reach out, and touch thy word at my feet were noted, but this, too, needs research. The overall impression of the ensemble was of brightness, but, within it, Ešenvalds had placed little harmonic hesitations, or what seemed like remembrances of Morten Lauridsen, and then brought the piece to a close with a beautiful bass-note : repeated listening will be necessary, but the audience responded very well to his setting, as it had to that of Miškinis.



As with the Mass setting by Frank Martin, that by (6) Ugis Praulinš, Missa Rigensis (2003), had a strong opening, and the effect of echoic falling-away. To judge by the singing and how the choir looked, it must be thrilling to perform this composition, and this was an excellent space in which the sounds could die away.


 In the Kyrie, one could pick out some lovely soprano voices, nicely blended. A bass took a solo in Christe eleison³, and Praulinš also gave us little lingering individual sounds, and an a capella voice to close.

The rhythms and style of the Gloria were exciting, but it was also a moving setting, and employed chant-style sections. One almost had the feeling here, as when soloists step down from the choir, of individual testimonies being given³, and with a vivid sense of expectation in the Domine Deus.


 The clever impression (as of rain-drops) that is formed by the overlay of voices in the Credo also feels in line with worship, and the harmonic riches that Praulinš bestows (as Martin did) on this part of Missa Rigensis put one in mind of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms (other composers' works aplenty were discernibly quoted). Particular focii for attention were, again, the words Qui propter nos homines ('Who, for mankind and for our salvation, came down from Heaven'), and a remarkable setting of the Crucifixus, after which Stephen Layton brought us an impassioned believer's personal confession of faith³.

 The Sanctus was full of life, especially the 'Hosannas', and was simply set until the repeat of Dona nobis pacem ('[Lamb of God], may you give us Peace'), when the Agnus Dei then had unexpected twists and turns. An accomplished bass recitation³, to a wordless hum, led to a simple close.


Ugis Praulinš, who was in the front row, keenly applauded the NYCGB and Stephen Layton, and was clearly affected by the performance. (It was also a pleasure to have him kindly receive some brief words of thanks afterwards.)




The programme closed with - as fitting both the purpose of the work and the reason for programming it - a ruminative setting by (7) Paweł Łukaszewski of the 'Nunc Dimittis' (2007), and with the uncomplicated beauty in which it ends : again, there was an element of voices 'coming off' and so our hearing a remaining voice exposed.


 This was an extremely enjoyable concert, and one that gives great comfort at the depth and breadth of new choral singing, and also very real delight in individual performers within a tight and disciplined ensemble.

No doubt some very proud parents and other relatives would have shed a tear of pride as the NYCGB processed out !


End-notes

 ¹ A review-comment, as noted on the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain (@nycgb) in Frank Martin's Messe pour double chœur à cappella (1922-1926).

² The confidence of these young performers – and the worthwhile promise that they show for the future – was, too, inspiring in their appearance, in how they held and comported themselves : assuredly, one power that there is in justified self-belief.

³ As if, perhaps, the representative characters of The Apostles had been given, to show that we, through them, were in the midst of this act in remembrance of The Last Supper. (Some - if so, they could not have been many - might have found this work theatrical, but it served the liturgy and felt apt in doing so.)

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday, 23 August 2017

Song to Song : Much better made than Knight of Cups, but still well-made tedium

This is a reaction, by accretion, to Terrence Malick's latest, Song to Song (2017)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

23 August
This is a reaction, by accretion, to Terrence Malick's latest, Song to Song (2017)











His being an auteur, Terrence Malick can, of course, interpret that to mean doing what he wants - desiring, as his characters* grandiosely emptily do, 'to be free', and / or 'to set others free' (sc. delude themselves, and / or screw others over, in the name of Freedom).

 If Malick chooses, he can have us infer (and maybe agree) that he is painting with light, and that we are redundantly seeking a narrative (which he does not actually have, and so cannot deny us) - until he then gives us one, of sorts, but only once he has had his way with our mind, with his fractured slices**.

[...]



Film-references :

* Hideous Kinky (1998)

* Jules et Jim (1962)

 * La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty [but #UCFF prefers 'Immense Beauty' as a title]) (2013)

* On the Road (2012)

* The Last Station (2009)

* The Master (2012)

* The Neon Demon (2016)




Interlude ~ Irreverent parody No. 1 :
The travel of Song to Song is from deliberately momentary snatches of the past - which have been blanked out by the actors, in confused guilt and shame at having been paid to arse around implausibly on camera - to healing (and, of course, the pay-cheque).

 However, this only comes through expressionless (and barely cleansing ?) confessional utterances, spoken to God knows whom (an on-line diary, via voice-recognition ? or a very professionally indulgent therapist ?). Thus, if just as implausibly, they become reconnected with good, honest, Tolstoyan toil on - dare one say so ? - the soil that they had spurned.
In essence, the road's shown to be tough, but (for actors, at least) healing for careworn hedonism can be won by lost wild-child rockers-in-their-heads stars of screen !



Other references :

 * Friends and Crocodiles

 * The Diamond as Big as The Ritz ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

 * The Lost Ones [Le dépeupler] ~ Samuel Beckettt


End-notes :

* If we may rightly call them that... Gosling, though perhaps never heard called that, is credited as 'BV' = boundlessly vacant, as Gosling usually does / is, or boulevard verdure ?

** Naturally, Woody Allen and Charlotte Rampling (as Dorrie) did this with far greater impact in Stardust Memories (1980).


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday, 14 August 2017

Cool for cats ?

This is an appraisal [uncorrected proof] of Kedi (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

This is an appraisal [uncorrected proof] of Kedi (2016), as seen at Saffron Screen on Monday 14 August 2017 at 8.00 p.m.


Kedi (2016) is no more about cats¹ than Visitors (2013) is about alien life per se² on Earth : likewise, Wes Anderson does not intend us to understand The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) to be telling part of the history of The Republic of Zubrowka...

 What probably cannot be told, even at the time of filming [the calendar included in one shot seems to show that at least part of the shoot was in 2014], could even less so now : in the Turkey of President Erdoğan, would making this film even be allowed...?


Plus-points :

 * The nauticality, the maritime nature, of Istanbul both strongly and very beautifully comes out at times, and makes one think of - and long for - Venezia !

 * it is very good that at least two (human) participants are heard talking about their mental-health issues in relation to how being with and caring for cats helps them (one says what her therapist thinks, one attributes his progress, after a nervous breakdown in 2002, to looking to feeding the street cats)

* The stories about the cats – whether one or two, or in numbers that run into tens – emerge as a way of managing one’s notional world, through having an understanding of it that is rooted in telling oneself how it is, and the film’s director (Ceyda Torun) acknowledges these stories and, through editing and framing, partly gives an authority to them (saying which, takes from what are clearly different occasions³ are editorially conflated to the end of telling visually what those near to the cat(s) want (us) to believe about each one)

 * Though where the film comes into its own is at the point when talk about, or reflection on, the cats of the city shades into alluding to other things – to the question for whom cities and the life within them exist, what it is to be human, and what we lose to our peril…⁴ From this perspective, some, but not very many, of the tracks used alongside the composed score (please see below) are spot on for the part of the film for which they have been selected

* Despite some reservations (please see below), there are enough moments of pure cinema to please the fussy watcher of film – plus ones of unforced smiles and laughs about what it is about cats that has some people embrace philosophies or beliefs that assert that cats know God directly, and that we, when we (respond to God and) serve their needs, are but mediators of God’s will


Negatives (these are all less important than they seem, since, on Kedi the 'Ayes' have it) :

* If you did build your entire hopes for the film on seeing the cat from the poster, it is just in one shot

* Which could also be a positive, the fact that some of the film looks – for not necessarily being the best take, but perhaps an atmospheric one – unpolished

* With the first cat featured (who, about the body, is one of the more obviously unsymmetrical ones - ginger, but with predominantly white legs (one of which has a ginger 'flash')), one is 86% certain – and would have to re-watch, when the film is on DVD, to check – that some footage has been flipped, left to right, because, one imagines, having the image that way around looked right (ginger 'flash' apart) / fitted with that segment’s dynamic better⁵

* Kira Fontana’s original score for the film [one looks in vain to IMDb (@IMDb) for much detail about the film, except the soundtrack] is sometimes too intrusive on what one is seeing (for example, the ‘shimmer’ effect of what sounds like low-reverb vibraphone over marimba), with the result of detracting from what it tries to respond to (rather than amplifying it)

* Even when Fontana brings back the principal theme in its full form (presumably, ‘Nine Lives’), which feels as though it is meant to be the final reprise that pulls out all the stops (musically, and so emotionally), there is a connected question :

Does the film do itself a disservice by seeming to build to a closing image, but then reprising the featured cats, and ending (after an unattributed short commentary by voice-over⁶) on another shot and a fade-out – as if not confident that it has established the star cats in our mind ?


Maybe some closing words here (a quotation from Russell Hoban's novel Pilgermann might be good - or from his collection The Moment Under The Moment ?)... or maybe that is it... ?


End-notes :

 ¹ As one might guess, 'Kedi' is Turkish for 'cat'.

 ² In part, Godfrey Reggio is invoking a Biblical saying (1 Chronicles 29 : 15), and alluding to its wider relevance.

³ With, for example, the cat who taps on the window of the bar / restaurant when hungry, the open or shut front door, and where the cat is tapping, give this away.

⁴ With one commentator saying that, if people have lost their relation to cats, it is for them to rediscover it (not for cats to change who they are), for it is to our detriment. Kedi unavoidably reminds of the deeper matter of such films Citizen Jane : Battle for the City (2016), The Human Scale (2012), and A Dangerous Game (2014)…

⁵ If one watches too many films (or is otherwise attuned, as to an out-of-tune string orchestra), it may also grate when the chosen aesthetics of documentary have led the cinematographer (and director) to arbitrary choices about how to shoot. Such as evoking immediacy through a very shallow depth of field and / or when the focus keeps shifting during the shot (even if either may not just actually have some viewers irresistibly hunting around the image - trying to find something in focus, and not greatly fore- or backgrounded…).

⁶ It could have been added at any time, not least because it feels more contemporary to the Turkey of now than much of the film (except the clearances of the orchards, and the similar threat to the market area) ?




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday, 7 August 2017

Maudie - or Maudit ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

7 August
Some observations, partly by Tweet, about Maudie (2016)

You are determined to put a stain on this family name !
Aunt Ida


This film, however based in reality, could only work on the level of parable -
and it unnecessarily laboured even that
Jacob Apsley










Some film-references :

* Being There (1979)

* Big Eyes (2014)

 * Caravaggio (1986)

* Forrest Gump (1994)

* La belle et la bête (1946)

 * Mr. Turner (2014)

 * New York Stories (1989)








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