We are two flowers in the same pot

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19 November

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

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

N = narration / script

M = material / use of material

C1 = cinematography

C2 = cohesiveness

E = effects / music

F = feel


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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

A butler - with that gait ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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19 November

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

A rating and review of The Butler (2013)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

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



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

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

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

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


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No debate about the quality

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19 November


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


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

Violins
Stephanie Gonley
Laura Samuel


Violas
Lawrence Power
Philip Dukes


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



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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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



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

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

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

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


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


End-notes

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


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

Weighed in the scales

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

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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16 November


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

A rating and review for The Human Scale (2012)

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

N = narration / script

M = material / use of material

C1 = cinematography

C2 = cohesiveness

E = effects / music

F = feel


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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Spanner in the works ?

A rating and review of Factory Girl (2006)

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


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

A rating and review of Factory Girl (2006)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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


End-notes

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

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

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


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

TMI – or TLC ?

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14 November

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Traces of the Brontës in South Africa

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12 November

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

A rating and review of The Forgotten Kingdom (2013)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Beginning with ‘Beautiful’

This is a review of Air Doll (2009)

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12 November

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

In a grave situation

This is a rating and review of Gravity (2013)

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10 November


78 = S : 9 / A : 12 / C : 16 / M : 14 / P : 13 / F : 14

This is a rating and review of Gravity (2013)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

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


With Gravity (2013), 'irrelevant' questions easily abound :

* How does fire propagate in a space station ?

* If fire were whooshing down a tunnel, would it delay momentarily to allow someone to get through a hatch ?

* Are not the International Space Station (ISS) and its hatches actually square in profile (as this footage, hosted by astronaut Suni Williams, shows), with rounded edges, not circular hatches (except for in the oldest part, the Russian module) ?

* Would debris said to be from a missile-strike on a satellite whose explosion had set off the destruction of other satellites behave predictably in orbiting the earth, all in one direction and at the same velocity?

* If communications’ satellites had been damaged, would communications between individuals, or between space stations, operate ?

* Could the ISS initially escape without damage and with an uncompromised air-lock, despite such debris ?

* When hit by debris, would it explode, as vessels commonly do in the cinema, as if it were kindling, or made of tinder ?

* How would an atmosphere and a survivable temperature be maintained in a capsule from which someone went out on a pressurized line, protruding from its hatch left ajar ?

* If it were not maintained, how quickly would systems be able to create a breathable atmosphere and acceptable temperature?

* Would bodies in space and colliding at relatively low speeds cause a thump of a collision ? The footage, taken within the ISS, suggests not. Here, also, is NASA footage, showing the use of a jetpack in a space walk.

* Do space suits, as NASA footage seems to suggest, really need two crew members to help lock together and seal upper and lower parts, i.e. not something that one could simply do on one’s own ?

* Does breath condense on the visor of such a space suit, given that they have to withstand and compensate for the temperatures of outer space (in the footage linked to above, our guide calls the suit a spacecraft, since it contains 300kg of equipment for regulating its heating and the breathable air)?

* Do not helmets (as this footage demonstrates) have a silvered visor to act as sun-glasses, which the film - keen to keep showing us the actors' faces (since, most of the time, nothing else was visible)* - does not show being used ?

Finally, here are some comments from astronauts, interviewed by First Post, about what mattered to them in what the film showed...

An astronaut's view on Gravity http://t.co/QDbyd4Htnf pic.twitter.com/adRd2w008H
— Guardian Film (@guardianfilm) December 2, 2013

None of these really matter, but they are niggly : they draw attention to the fact that a reality is being shown, as always in film, but that it may not be drawing on facts about space and survival in space, but be invention.

They also serve to detract from the fact that, apart from voices and a colleague whom she never see properly (until it is too late, and then by the proxy of a family photo), there are actually only two actors in this film – we are not even shown the famous control-room at Houston. Sandra Bullock (Ryan Stone), with some on-screen support from George Clooney (Matt Kowalski), has to carry it all, and, although I do not generally find her engaging as a performer, she must have done it, because I only realized this fact after the event.

Call it spirituality, call it faith, but there is a trail of images and ideas. In the Russian craft, above the controls, there is an icon (St Christopher, a fellow viewer thought), and, perhaps less realistically, a Buddha in the Chinese one (they are actually Korean, but lucky cats have been adopted fairly widely in Chinese culture). Thinking that she will not survive at one moment, Stone realizes that there will be no one to say prayers over her body and that she has never been taught how to pray, and, later, addresses requests to Matt for her daughter, amongst other things, that are effectively prayers.

Typically, for such a film, there are sacrifices in the interests of the wider good, there is ingenuity and lateral thinking, and we have evidence for the strength of the human spirit. Whether such traditional elements sustain here, any more than in The Day After Tomorrow (2004) or Captain Phillips (2013), depends on one’s point of view.

Bullock is good enough, compared with her usual showing, but others could have been much better, and Kowalski’s oscillation between making wisecracks or giving monologues and being directive in a grimly jokey does not leave a lot of room in between for the character development that Stone has, not least, as I observed, largely alone.

All that aside, for me, the setting in space has been compromised by, primarily, not getting detail right or cheating the laws of physics to spice things up. I wonder what Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield really thought...



End-notes

* I am merely saying that, if there are any pretensions to show things as they are, a film that can only show people through their visors is not an obvious place to start.


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

All by the board ?

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9 November (updated 10 November)


* Contains mild spoilers *


79 = S : 15 / A : 14 / C : 12 / M : 11 / P : 13 / F : 14

A rating and review of Captain Phillips (2013)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

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


I know that I am not alone in saying that the closing minutes of Captain Phillips (2013) made all that went before worth watching.

Much of those two hours was, not very subtly, made to seem more thrilling by quick cutting and by the effects of heartbeat-like pulsations, other percussive sounds, and sustained high-frequency notes, which one may not register in Henry Jackman's score, but whose sudden absence lifts the preceding tension. The script also makes use of power-games, and games of people tryin g to work out which game is being played, such as wearing your opponent down through talk, addressing comments to someone who is not there to make it seem as those one has a powerful ally, and, equally, speaking when one knows that, unknown to others, someone else is listening.

The film has some basis in actual events. We have a captain, in Tom Hanks, who notionally establishes his American Irish credentials by saying one line in a lilting brogue (brogues always lilt), but not at any other point. Prior to finishing getting ready, he gratuitously brought up the itinerary on his PC, telling it to us, but as if he was just checking to be sure, which might fit his desire to have things shipshape.

On the journey to the airport to meet his vessel, Rich (Phillips) is admirably concerned about his children's future, when in conversation with his wife Andrea, but he sounds as though he is paraphrasing the lyric of 'Times they are a-changing' in a Forrest Gump (1994) sort of way. His arrival in port in Oman has him check the security on the way up to the bridge, which he announces that he wants rigorously put in place, but, when the time of testing comes, it puts up no resistance whatever.

This is where one wonders what has gone before - Phillips must know more than the e-mail warnings of Somali pirates that we see on his screen on board, and the hoses that are deployed must have been installed as part of a stratagem on the part of Maersk, but, if so, it all seems a little rusty, and rather too ineffectual.

We have Phillips' preparations for sea, and we have that of Muse's (Barkhad Abdi's) crew, under his warlord boss - we compare the Western approach of civility in giving orders with that of the Somalis, shouting at each other and jostling for position, but it is there in the relations on the Maersk Alabama, when Phillips takes on an objecting union member, and urges people to finish their break on time. Another point of contact is engines, on both vessels, being taken beyond their limits, all of which tends to suggest how similar things are in this parallel way.

Still, we do not quite know how much, on Muse's and Phillips' side, is instinctual thinking on their feet, and how much training. Maybe a vain boast from Muse that a $6m Greek vessel had been caught, maybe it was, but all benefit went to his boss - the huge surprise is the successful boarding. From there, everything is bound to go in cat-and-mouse fashion to sustain the film's need for twists and turns, even if Phillips seems the person least likely to convince in lying (both as he does it, and with the lies to hand), and when Muse allows a powerful position to slide for reasons that are fairly tenuous : either he knows how to conduct a situation like this, or he does not, whereas he seems swayed by Phillips, almost as if the white man saying that he does not know what happened to the crew is worth listening to.

For me, when Phillips is left to his own devices, the situation does not build a claustrophobic tension whose resolution one longs for, but one that drags, and where the visuals did not impress a sense of confinement on me. (However, we do have the very necessary element that all this happens at the time of the full moon.)

Hanks after that, though, is an excellent end to the film, focusing just on him, his essential responses and feelings, before we pull out from a wide view and close. Abdi and his fellow captors, especially Najee (Faysal Ahmed) and Elmi (Mahat M. Ali), are very strong, and suitably threatening.


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

Found in her memories

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7 November

90 = S : 14 / A : 16 / C : 12 / M : 17 / P : 16 / F : 15

A rating and review of Philomena (2013)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

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

Those who read my blog with any regularity - poor fools ! - may have found that I am 'not good around' Judi Dench, though I did enjoy (even if I should not have done) Billy Connolly and her in Mrs Brown (1997), and, for this reason, will not have discovered much reviewed that features her : something to do with not being able to forgive her spending her effort on series after series (nine, was it ?) of As Time Goes By...

In Philomena, where she is the title-character, all my doubts were overcome - just the close-ups alone, where one could feel the yearning in her eyes, and believe that she was transfixed by the images that were her past, were worth the whole film. (I must last have seen her in Skyfall (2012), as M, but there she has a different vulnerability to her, feeling under personal threat, and then facing a murderous Javier Bardem - at those moments when Philomena was vulnerable, for she could also be very resourceful and admirable in holding her position, she did not seem nearly so frail, but very touching.)

As with another film out now, Gloria (2013), the clue is in the title, i.e. that we are going to witness a portrait of that person, but this person (although she, too, has hurts and griefs) is very different from Gloria. Martin Sixsmith, played by Steve Coogan (who produced the film, and co-wrote it with Jeff Pope), thinks that Philomena is credulous (and says so to his editor), but, when he more or less tells her so (in what sort of desire to keep her sweet, one does not know), she very quickly tells him that God would think him a feckin' eejit. (No, it did not smack of Father Ted, but seemed a very genuine response to Martin's thoughtless atheistic baiting.)

When I consider that Coogan wrote this part for Dench, I am humbled. At The Lincoln Monument, after he has moved her around like a piece of meat to try to get a good pose, there is a very telling pair of lines :

Martin : I'm only going to tell the truth

Philomena : That's what I'm worried about


The lines encapsulate a polarity at the heart of the film. Philomena is a real person about whom Martin Sixsmith, the former BBC journalist and then adviser to the last government, wrote a book in 2009, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. The real Philomena (of whom a photo is shown in a closing montage) was presumably similarly torn about looking for the son whom she was forced to allow to be adopted, and the personal cost of her privacy in doing so.

Whatever the offscreen Sixsmith may be like (and Coogan does not use his ability for mimicry here), he must have allowed Coogan to portray as Martin a journalist who, when declining breakfast and asking for privacy in a supposedly polite way, has an abrasiveness to him that causes Philomena to rebuke him for rudeness. (His quick retreat into saying that he needs 'quiet time' felt like a sulk, the complementary side to beginning to correct her when she alludes to him 'going to Oxbridge' (because it is a contraction, not a place), and thereby ignoring the context in which said it, and what she was actually saying to him.)

What worries me a little about the film, from where I could judge the laughter to be coming from in Screen 2 (and of what quality), is that it veers close to the racist notion of being Irish equating with backwardness. Not specifically when an irritated Martin sums Philomena up as someone who has soaked up Reader's Digest and The Daily Mail (and one other publication), because he is not a million miles from being thoroughly conceited anyway (which, in characterizing a Sixsmith persona, Coogan must have enjoyed).

However, there are occasions when the timing of the editing does tend to make Philomena sound like a simpleton, for example when she does not get Martin's allusion to The Wizard of Oz, just after they have first met, and when she quotes the word 'titanium' in a single-word description of her new hip : it floats, as if she is foolishly saying things that she does not understand (whereas her job for thirty years suggests otherwise). Then, at the trademark salad-bar, it is clear that Martin does not know this sort of place to eat, and we are again left with space that makes it sound awkward that she is calling the croutons that she is adding to her salad 'bits of toast' (though croutons are really scarcely more than bits of toast).

As the film progressed, my perception is that a fair number in the audience were, in laughing, not being sympathetic - almost the old distinction of 'at' rather than 'with', although they might have been laughing, rather than bearing with Philomena. Perhaps they missed that Martin was not meant to be right in thinking her to soak up words and phrases to use without understanding, but that he - not unusually in the trajectory of such a film - was, as a graduate from Oxford, meant to learn things from her.

In the first scene at an airport (actually, identifiable as Stansted, from where they would not have been able to take that flight), Martin does not disguise that he has heard the plot of a cheap paperback on sufferance, quipping unkindly that he almost felt as though he had read it. When they are next at an airport, Martin has no answers for why they should not be, and we are left to congratulate ourselves when we hear Philomena articulate the reasons not to catch the flight that we thought of shortly before.

Fine as a plot device to make us think better of Philomena, and to watch Martin just go along with it when he had had no idea what to do, but there are perhaps too many other cases when we begin to wonder how sharp he really is, if he takes the step of going somewhere without having thought through what to do when he gets there. That is where the film seems weak, since we insufficiently have portrayed a Martin who is depressed, for whom some of what happens might no longer be grist to his mill.

This is also not a buddy film, but more of a Rain Man (1988) sort of film, in that Cruise's (Charlie's) position changes in relation to Hoffman's (Raymond's), and Martin ends up respecting Philomena, and making a gesture that shows respect for her views. The closing, rising shot is beautifully executed, and seems in no way forced in bringing an air of grandeur to the scene.

Alexandre Desplat's suitably unobtrusive score has achieved the same aim throughout, of being there, but not being so obvious that one feels it out of place (and, in this, he did as he did with Marius (2013) and Fanny (2013)). The device of using footage, so that Philomena almost seems to be prescient in seeing what happens to her son, is an effective one, and roots Philomena in the memories of what she had.

If we excuse the black-and-whiteness of the depiction of the nuns (though, for all that I know, Sixmsith's book may record Sister Hildegard's views as shown), the cast as a whole is strong, but especial mention must go to Sophie Kennedy Clark for bringing a vitality to Philomena as a younger woman, and for showing us the origin of the hurt, the moment of separation, that inhabits the reflective older Philomena's gaze.


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