Tuesday, 9 February 2016

You’re just a sore loser

This is a review of Rams (Hrútar) (2015)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

 9 February

This is a review of Rams (Hrútar) (2015)


 Of course, though there are sheep in the film, those are not the rams – but no one, even without having seen the film-poster, need feel complacent for that realization…


Film references :

* Addicted to Sheep (2015) [interview with director Magali Pettier]
* Burden of Dreams (1982)
* Fitzcarraldo (1982)
* Iona (2015)
* It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
* Kosmos (2010)
* Life in a Fish-Bowl (2014)
* Nebraska (2013)
* Rear Window (1954)
* The Field (1990)


 However, there are some puzzles in the film – asking ourselves, as we try to be intelligent observers, Why is he doing that ? [meaning, usually, Gummi¹], and intractably getting no answer in at least one case – and they require our patience. There must also be half-a-dozen times when, through things such as reflections, our attention is drawn to the fact that Gummi is looking at the world through a window : in one shot, we almost have more streaks of light featuring across the image than the image itself, and at a moment when we are really watching Gummi watching (or the character playing him, pretending not to expect what he sees), and not just first being shown him at the window, then what we know that he is seeing.

They are still there, but writer / director Grímur Hákonarson does not overdo it with beautiful views of Iceland, and there are two sorts of shots that he has cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen distinctively employ : external long-shots with a static camera-position, allowing us to take in what we see, and which may include an element of movement to which we can give our attention (not least if we are asking ourselves the question Why are we being shown this ?), and internal medium shots, again static, that let us take in Gummi, sitting, or with someone else, where there is a landscape painting above him, but what the window is framing is at least as worth looking at (a point of connection with the previous paragraph).


 Those who invite us to see this film on the basis that it is 'deadpan comedy', executed extremely well, seem to see that as sufficient reason in itself, but no film is under an obligation ‘to be about’ what it appears to be about – and this one does not even seem to be about the sheep (even if there is enthusiasm akin to that of Tom and Kay Hutchinson in Addicted to Sheep (2015), and the passion and love for, and for breeding, the prize-winning favourites). When Gummi delivers Kiddi to the hospital, we might stop to consider where the humour comes from (even if it may elicit an amazed snort, rather than a belly-laugh - though there were pockets, in the screening, of those fervent to derive much amusement from their viewing) :

In constructing the scene, Hákonarson first of all effects a misdirection (which derives from the manner of the delivery, and in relation to an earlier scene²), and it has already been noted how, as a quiet way of subverting our perception, he has us react to what we expect, e.g. early on, when Gummi does not receive first prize, and what he is then about outside (a moment whose implication drives the whole story on, but which looks like sabotage).

By the time of this part of the film, Hákonarson has already set up a polarity, where our time is very clearly with Gummi (as well as our sympathies), not Kiddi, and what works here is the incongruity between action and the duty that informs it³. (A little, as it turns out, with Tom and Jerry, we may be worried about Kiddi, taken to and left in the surprised care of those who have half a mind that their attention should be on the unknown driver, but Kiddi soon turns out to bounce back (as those characters do), in a way that belies our fears.)


We need to spot, but only to set aside, the patent theme of obsession, for this is not the desire-at-all-costs of Richard Harris (as ‘Bull’ McCabe) in The Field (1990) (or of Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982), though, at times in Burden of Dreams (1982), we might ask whose mad obsession the film is about), despite arising from the issue of ‘the last of the Bolstadur stock’.

Artfully, then (and with the wise investment in using no fewer than four translators to care for its foreign-language viewers), the film is a lot more to do with an obsession that actually speaks and treats of notions of identity and personhood (as in Nebraska (2013)), which is exposed, on one level, when the government official / lawyer tells Gummi You’re the one who’s responsible. If we mentally stay with its arc (and never quite credit, per se, this conceit of deadpan comedy, any more than we can / should with Lars and The Real Girl (2007)), Rams has laid foundations⁴ so that, led by Atli Örvarsson’s score, we build in the last ten or so minutes to what is actually the heart of the film, with excellent sound-design, visual-effects and situation.

 Right at this moment, where we may misdirect ourselves as to what is taking place, we might just puzzle a bit about what happens after the black-out at the end (and leave, saying so loudly, and what a good film it was)... Or we might consider what, in us, has made us doubt what we see, both in this film, and in the world outside : what challenge, in other words, the film might mean for our lives, when we construct realities of the world, and of - and for - people who are in it, both those whom we write off, and those whom we credit.


Still from Lars and The Real Girl (2007)

And, for those who also stay for the credits, there is a chance to reflect on how the theme for piano sounds now, when reprised, and to note that Örvarsson played it, as well as the organ and accordion, with the session musicians.


End-notes

¹ It is only a diminutive nick-name (as is Kiddi), but, if we did not note the full name in the film, IMDb (@IMDb) does not know, and cannot tell us after the event…

² As well as by the look of some of the shots (characterized above), one is reminded of the powerful close of Kreuzweg (Stations of the Cross) (2014), but also of the brothers, driving around in Kosmos (2010).

 ³ Contains spoilers * Not unrelatedly, it is as if Gummi is feeling required to kill the fatted calf, but his heart is elsewhere – and by no means rejoicing – when he does it (a little as with George Bailey, and his life ?), and from this way in which Hákonarson has Gummi (hardly for the first time that we know of) care for Kiddi, but without according him any more dignity than a bag of potatoes. A treatment grotesquely exploited, at length, by John Cleese and Connie Booth with ‘The Kipper and The Corpse’ in Fawlty Towers.




⁴ In a way that Iona (2015), set on the island of that name, just fails to, wishing to seem genuinely portentous (as if it had the emotional pull of Greek tragedy ?), but only being bogus and hollow. (In a similar way (though less unsuccessfully), Icelandic film Life in a Fish-Bowl (2014) wants to nestle big themes, such as those of the Icelandic banks, amongst domesticity, as if it were another Chinatown (1974)...)




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday, 8 February 2016

Don’t you dare waste it !

This reconsiders Pride (2014) after a screening plus panel discussion

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

8 January

This reconsiders Pride (2014) in the light of a screening, plus panel discussion, at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, on Monday 8 February at 6.30 p.m.



NB As this is not just in the nature of a review, it assumes knowledge of the film, i.e. *containers spoilers *

One of the touching aspects of the closing captions, watching Pride (2014) again, is that Sian James (Jessica Gunning) did take that advice from Jonathan Blake (Dominic West) [given in the title of this posting], getting a degree, and becoming an MP in 2005 : the film leaves one in a little doubt whether a preceding scene with Jonathan / Sian had been shot (but had to be lost to get down to 119 minutes), because the film’s style is generally not really just to tell you what it includes, but also to show it¹.

 [Since Bromley / Joe (George MacKay) is fictional, we have to imagine what happens to him when he abruptly leaves home, and whether, as the film shows Gethin Roberts (Andrew Scott) being¹, he is reconciled to his family, although, at Onllwyn, Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) gives him advice that we see him follow.)


In the post-film discussion, the real-life Gethin Roberts suggests that the film is, which it is, about solidarity (in oppression), and that there are not [not his exact words] goodies and baddies. However, quite opposite to that latter view, and with the benefit of watching a film unfold and know (roughly) where it is going², there are actually clear elements of pantomime :

* Most obviously, the combination of a malign character egging on her stupid sons as her agents (Lisa Palfrey, as Maureen Barry)

 * The same woman, tricking those whom she opposes by catching them unawares (moving the time of the meeting)

 * Before that point, generating the bad press that causes the meeting to be called : although screenwriters adhering to a conventional model of a film’s development will have a difficulty arise, and the action develop from overcoming it (and, of course, seeming not to be able to) [and that is not what one happens here], one could almost imagine Maureen Barry talking to camera, saying what she is planning, and inciting the audience to hiss and boo her

* Almost where else, but in musicals, does someone win over affections or hearts by dancing² (as Jonathan does, at the Onllwyn Miners’ Welfare Hall ? – a spectacular moment from Dominic West, even if it was but, as Gethin Roberts told Screen 3 at The Arts (in describing the left-wing credentials of the real location), one of those plot-obstacles just alluded to above)

 * Probably for no very good reason, and not that Paddy Considine (as Dai) is not on top form in the film (as are so many others – please see below), not least when he makes a superbly scripted speech of thanks about Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, his character seems like Buttons, almost too good for this world

* Much as one should disregard any notion that it really means much, when reading about a film, to have something described as happening in the third act… (save that some films can, all too easily, be more programmatic than theatre, and fall into patterns already mentioned, with the initial situation, difficulties in the way, and a resolution), shots of The River Severn and one of its crossings (one forgets which, but one bridge did not exist then) do serve to punctuate, both giving us a breather (with some stunning aerial and scenic views), and mentally effecting the repeated transition from a city with an openly gay and lesbian bookshop (although not always well received) and how Pride chose to portray The Dulais Valley (Gethin gave us some facts about inclusivity³ in Onllwyn, and its not being as remote) to tell its story


One could go on, and risk just becoming more tenuous, but there is something about the way in which the characters are drawn (those of Dai and Maureen have already been caricatured a little) that lets them make an impact. From the start, Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer), to whom Joe / Bromley (George MacKay) looks up, is a committed campaigner for rights, seeing the connections / the similarity with others³, not the superficiality that separates.

One on one level of memory, one might recall this film for (the role of) MacKay’s character (and as an innocent, gay, coming-of-age story, grafted onto the historical narrative), with him gingerly going up from Kent to London to see what the Gay Pride march is all about. In fact, Bromley / Joe sticks in our mind because, structurally, he is really our way into (the life of) this film, and the way in which it unfolds is quietly pinned onto his being present :

He is there right from the first, stumbling out of the Underground station and into the parade, instantly to be met by Mike (Joseph Gilgun) – and at the end (with a brief hiatus of house-arrest by his mother (Monica Dolan), despite, after her husband has shouted at him, her work of seeming relative sympathy), as the marchers are assembling, stunning people such as Mark Ashton by how he now expresses himself. It is through Joe, in between, that we see the founding steps of LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners⁴), as someone intrigued, but shyly confused and on the margins, who sees how people’s support drops off, and stays in, a little by default. For its purposes of concentrating on this group of people⁵, what the film does not show - until, at the end and by implication at least, it has to - is that there grew to be LGSM groups in eleven cities.

Indeed, as one of the panel of speakers told us, Cambridge had been one of those cities, with volunteers, and those who donated money and food, etc., providing support to mining areas in Nottinghamshire (and, also, South Wales ?) : a memory-project, where those who remembered that time had been invited to submit their contributions to a record of its history. (It is now written up, as Cambridge and the miners' strike, on the Internet here [www.cambridgeminersstrike.com].) Gethin Roberts, and the local representative (@AmnestyCambridg) from Amnesty (@AmnestyUK), talked about showing the film elsewhere in the world to those involved in strikes or political struggle.



It has been cheekily suggested (above) that Paddy Considine’s Dai might be seen as a bit of a pantomime goodie, but the role, as Stephen Beresford’s screenplay has given it to him and Considine has played it, is to the latter’s credit, as a portrayal of someone not afraid to stand up for what he believes, and to face a difficult situation with courage. In his way, for self-belief and leadership qualities, Dai is a structural counterpart in the film to the part of Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer), with Dai’s speech at the gay club mirroring the reception that the party from LGSM seems set to receive at Onllywn, even when Ashton has announced them…

 On another level completely, away from the impact of set-pieces, there is a very affectionate moment (and also one of nicely underplayed humour) with just Bill Nighy (Cliff) and Imelda Staunton (Hefina), making sandwiches together in the kitchen at Onllywn : it might be that we are more engaged with the dialogue, and how Matthew Warchus has directed it, when Cliff tells her that he is gay.

If so, we might not see not only that these are hard times, so they are filling-less sandwiches, but also realize that, when she tells him how to cut them, he had been doing them that way at first, before his utterance. The comedy in her pretending to recall when she realized, and telling him that it was around the end of the 1960s, shows that she has cared about, and for, him that he thought that he had to keep a secret all that time, and that they know each other well enough that she can make making him know that she knew a little joke. Both actors play this short scene beautifully and tellingly.


As a whole, the screening was full of good spirits – even if, without being trite, Pride finds the positivity in the situation (with an engaging and appealing lightness of tone and approach), but does not play out what the NUM’s losing the strike was to mean (leaving that to films such as Still The Enemy Within (2014) [review still to come…]). Nearly the biggest laughter must have been when Hefina (Imelda Staunton) claims that she is driving the LGSM minibus to take them to Swansea [?] for a big ‘lezz-off'.


End-notes

 ¹ Gethin’s being attacked, which is what brings Sian and Jonathan to be in the same place, for obvious reasons is not (the film is rated 15), and, until the same place in the film, we are kept in suspense how he was received when he calls on his mother.

 ² Though one knew that there was that stupendous dance-scene, it occurred where, but not when, one recalled it…

³ One is reminded, as brought out by hearing from Gethin Roberts about the long-term links of the miners in South Wales with those in Spain, and their involvement with The Spanish Civil War and the efforts of Paul Robeson, Snr, for equality, of a documentary at Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) : Héroes Invisibles (Invisible Heroes) (2015), which is subtitled Afroamericanos en la Guerra de España (and one might interpret that as ‘The part played by Afro-Americans in The Spanish Civil War’).

⁴ Since Gay Pride, in the UK, had its roots in protests in the States, there is a certain irony that the American-Scottish Ian MacGregor, the nemesis chosen by Nicolas Ridley / Margaret Thatcher for the National Union of Mineworkers, was another US 'import', but one that LSGM opposed… (Rather puzzlingly, MacGregor’s Wikipedia® entry claims : Margaret Thatcher herself felt that he had handled the public relations aspect of the miners' dispute poorly, failing to empathise with the British public's widespread sympathy for the miners and their communities, and the pair were on cool terms after his departure from the NCB.)

⁵ Another consequence of eliminating our having an awareness of what LGSM was doing elsewhere is that the issue that is made to cause difficulty for the miners’ group to receive LGMS’s money artificially has to be made a local one about, literally, bad press and its ill-effects.

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday, 6 February 2016

Catrin Finch at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge

This reviews European Union Chamber Orchestra with Catrin Finch / Fiona Slominska

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

6 February

This review is from a concert given by The European Union Chamber Orchestra and with soloists Catrin Finch and Fiona Slominska, at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge, on Friday 5 February at 7.30 p.m.




After the talk that Catrin Finch gave, which was in the basement of Heffer’s bookshop in Cambridge (with Ambrose Miller (Managing Director of The European Union Chamber Orchestra (EUCO / @EUCO1)), the first piece on the programme at The Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) was Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 (in G Major, BWV 1048).

For understandable reasons (because none of the other pieces required harpsichord¹), EUCO had omitted it from the ensemble. However, although the contribution that it makes to the continuo is perhaps subtle at times, it is still important in this third Brandenburg, otherwise Bach would have scored the work for just ten strings (we had nine, in the event, with just two cellos).

From the point of view of just being able to omit that instrument, only Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 might really have succeeded (and here, with very different scoring, would just have created a surfeit of recorder-players !). As it was, particularly at the tempo at which the first movement was taken, hearing the harpsichord amongst the strings, as Bach intended, would have enriched the texture, and opened up the scope for more-nuanced intonation.



 Concerto for Flute and Harp in C Major, K. 299 ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

 1. Allegro
2. Andantino
3. Allegro


Note on the cadenzas :
As would have been usual, we do not have any written-out cadenzas provided by Mozart (even if it was asserted that they did not survive). The usual choice is those by German pianist and composer Carl Reinecke, but André Previn (as well as various soloists) have written ones of their own.



The introductory bars of the Allegro, with two horns and two oboes, had poise and grandeur. Flute and harp were co-introduced, and were sharing thematic material², and with the flute seeming to give answers or replies to the harp – on occasion, the latter’s part seemed to be that of beautifying the role of the flute. However, at many others, it also had significant chords and closures, and Catrin Finch was obviously into the work from the start, feeling the way in relation to and working with her fellow soloist Fiona Slominska’s playing, and, as the movement proceeded, there were was greater interplay between the instrumentalists. In the cadenza, before a close per tutti, the flute gave the impression of wanting to say something, but of failing, in the end, to do so.


Andantino is an unusual marking, in that it can ambiguously mean a little slower or a little faster than Andante. With its opening, for strings, it similarly seemed more than a distant relative to Mozartian theme familiar from elsewhere. The version of the theme that we heard on the flute was passed to the harp, which now had more scope to be eloquently expressive, and there was a synergy with Slominska, as we saw Finch carefully listening to what the flute was doing, and which then caused the synergy to work even more closely :

If we were to want to ascribe moods or characters to the soloists’ parts, that of the flute weightily feels something emotional, and has a sympathetic response from the harp. The cadenza began in a standard way, but again with the sense of the flute searching, and, in that search, of becoming even more of a duo with the harp. In the refinement at the end of the movement, the motif from the cadenza continues to be shared between them, but in the company of the strings.


Catrin Finch

Away from this feeling of intimacy (not uncommon with Mozart’s slow, inner movements) was the effect of the almost boisterous and rather ‘straight’ opening to the Allegro, complete, at points, with horns and oboes. For a while, harp was to the fore, before passing over to flute, when Catrin Finch could be seen, with her head cocked, listening to Slominska’s intonation and interpretation, in and out of passages with orchestra : the more that one tries to write about musical performance, the more that one finds oneself watching the communication involved in how soloists and other fellow musicians seek to hear and align themselves with what is being played. Briefly, harp and the two oboes were the most prominent players, and with matter that, when handed to the flute and supported by the harp, formulates the concerto’s path ahead.

In that, Finch had definite and clear statements to make (at one moment, with forceful repetitions), and one was in no doubt about her energy or her enjoyment of her role in the work : she imbued it with the spirit of making utterances, but all the while heeding the flute as a commentator who could influence the direction of her own playing. Come the cadenza - with Slominska holding the note that leads into it, as the ensemble expectantly withdraws - the instruments were as equals, and, when Finch broke off with the melody, it oscillated between them before they played together. In lively and positive mood, the Concerto completed with cadences and two full final chords, and to much appreciation for harpist Catrin Finch, and flautist Fiona Slominska.


* * * * *



Danse sacrée et danse profane³, L. 103 ~ Claude Debussy (1862-1918)


Beforehand, after the intervening interval, Catrin Finch needed to check being in tune, with scales and swirls. To the first dance’s relatively sombre opening (the Danses sacrée), she brought lightness of touch from the harp, and a definite feeling that she was in command : in that sound, one could almost sense what it had been, hearing Marisa Robles play, that had captivated a girl of five with the wish to be able to conjure such sounds into existence. When the strings played pizzicati, her tone was authoritative, and the restatement of the theme was made with restraint.

The tone and theme of Danse profane, begun by the harp and then in relaxed synchrony with the strings, are arguably more familiar. As it developed, Finch brought to it playing that was first luminous, but, soon after, deliberately resembled brittleness. When Debussy started anew with his material, she gave us an evocation of a rêverie, and then a mood that seemed decisive, which, when it led to one of action, was marked by tautness. A glissando, and a few quiet touches, brought the piece to a finish.


Catrin Finch ~ www.catrinfinch.com

Catrin Finch was again greeted with much enthusiasm for her thoughtful playing, and some flowers from the wings.


After the Debussy, we heard Haydn’s Symphony No. 55 in E Flat Major (Hob. I:55), with the finale of his better-known and recently performed Symphony No. 49 (in F Minor, La passione (Hob. I:49)), as an encore.

 It brought out the orchestra’s enthusiasm, although they had done their best to be inspired with playing the preceding symphony : read around it only a little, though, and no one seems to consider it other than highly conservative in approach, etc. Failing a better choice from Haydn's many other symphonies, we might (despite issues of balance) have been better ending with the Debussy… ?


End-notes

¹ That said, a soloist may commonly play an instrument (such as a piano) that will not appear in the rest of the concert, quite apart from some members of the orchestra.

² Did the principal theme seem to resemble one from Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in G Major, K. 313 ?

³ The piece itself, consisting of two movements (respectively, the sacred and profane), is relatively straightforward (or so familiar as to seem so ?). However, sometimes the separate titles get confused, as Danses sacrée et profane, which means not only that it appears that more than one dance is being referred to as both sacred and profane at the same time, but also, for anyone who knows about adjectival agreement in French, some scratching of the head as to why this is not in the plural throughout, i.e. Danses sacrées et profanes.

(For those who prefer, there appears to be this alternative title : Deux danses pour Harpe (ou Harpe chromatique ou piano) avec accompagnement d'orchestre d'instruments à cordes.)

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday, 5 February 2016

At Lunch 2 : Arrangements, augmentations, and other versions [Edited Ligeti version]

This is a review of Britten Sinfonia in At Lunch 2 on 19 January 2016

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

20 January
This is a review of At Lunch 2, given by Britten Sinfonia at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Tuesday 19 January 2016 at 1.00 p.m.


NB This is the edited version, now that the review is complete (whereas the full version can be found here

Britten Sinfonia’s (@BrittenSinfonia’s) programme for At Lunch 2, heard at West Road Concert Hall (@WestRoadCH), mixed the eighteenth century (with three arias from cantatas by Bach, and two re-workings of ones by Alessandro Scarlatti¹) with the twentieth (Ligeti and Pärt) and a new commission (Anna Clyne) – one theme being arrangements and other versions, and with the concert’s own running-order altered and augmented (the original place in the order, if different, in shown in parenthesis) :


1 (4) Aria Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not [with its preceding Sinfonia] ~ Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)

 2 Due arie notturne dal campo ~ Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725*) arranged by Salvatore Sciarrino (1947–)

 3 Fratres (version for string quartet) ~ Arvo Pärt (1935–)

 4 (1) Aria Gott versorget alles Leben ~ Bach

 5 Continuum ~ György Ligeti (1923–2006)

 6 (7) Aria Tief gebückt und voller Reue ~ Bach

 7 (6) This Lunar Beauty ~ Anna Clyne (1980–)



* * * * *


Dating from Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis (BWV 21), a Cantata written by Bach in Weimar (in 1714), the aria that we heard, (1) Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not, was a good opening choice : its accompanying Sinfonia introduced Marios Argiros to us on obbligato oboe, and, as we listened to the aria, the plangent tone of that instrument, beloved of Bach’s later sacred works², was weaving in and out of the texture (as, also, Jacqueline Shave on first violin).

When soprano Julia Doyle made her entry, leaning into the monosyllables of this short text (e.g., in the first two lines, Not, Furcht, and Tod (respectively ‘need’ (or, in that sense, ‘want’), ‘fear’, and ‘death’)), it was with an uncluttered vocal-style. Around all this, giving a stately, steady feel, was Maggie Cole’s harpsichord continuo (and also from Caroline Dearnley on cello, adding weight to the ensemble). As Jo Kirkbride’s programme-notes comment, regarding the last Bach aria in the hour-long sequence, the accompanying instruments ‘suggest a level of torment beneath the calm surface’, so here there were suspensions and mini-cadenzas that punctuated the vocal line.

It is with the initial words, in reference to which the aria borrows its title, that Bach is most concerned, and to which he will have us return : after a moment of attack on Schmerz (‘pain’), the final word in the four-line text, Doyle had to go very high, in re-visiting the opening line, and we ended, as we began, with oboe, and a very definite close.


In Alessandro Scarlatti’s (2) Due arie notturne dal campo (as arranged by Salvatore Sciarrino), possibly pre-dating the Bach work*, Doyle brought out warmer, stronger tone-colours, better suited to Italian than to German.



 The setting was built around accents and a falling scale (other works in the programme were to do the latter), and each half-line of Dove sta / la mia pace was repeated for emphasis. We could see, as well as hear, string-effects being passed from viola (Clare Finnimore) to cello (Caroline Dearnley), and, at the last line of the text, we doubled back for a da capo finish.

The second, shorter, aria fitted a lighter tone, and Doyle’s ornamentation was bright and easy, as exemplified by the portamento on the significant word curo in the first line : Non ti curo, o libertà. On cello, Caroline Dearnley’s playing was vibrant, and (on viola) Clare Finnimore could be heard bringing out the resonance.


Lamentably, the review of The Sinfonia at Saffron Hall (@SaffronHall) [with Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho (1960), played with a simultaneous screening] is still not finished (and is unmanageably overlong already). However, it says what was as true of hearing Arvo Pärt’s version of (3) Fratres (1977) for string quartet (from 1985) : watching performers as they play can bring out what one might otherwise overlook [but please see 5, below], or take for granted, by not being conscious of what they are doing - here, the initial two clusters of pizzicato gestures on the cello, which act as a sort of punctuation before each of nine variations, but by no means invariantly (please see below).



Here, those opening gestures led in a disembodied, echoing tone (also described above), and seeing Dearnley’s spread hand for playing harmonics helped one hear the sounds that she was producing. In the programme-notes, which are the link to (2) the Scarlatti / Sciarrino, it is observed that Pärt ‘employs just a simple scale’ [in Italian, the word just means ladder], and he also had Miranda Dale (second violin) much occupied with a continuous note, to act as a drone - virtually the polar opposite of the plucked, and so almost necessarily brief, notes on the cello ?

Not that Pärt intends to hypnotize us, or the string-players, but it proves harder than one might imagine to keep track of the variations, at important points in each of which (by no means to stay out from under the piece’s influence) the performers ensured that they were together by nods. By around the fifth section, which now sounded uncannily like Russian Orthodox chant, the feeling had become far less aetherial, and spoke rather of richness, with the succeeding pizzicato notes on cello being notably different in tone (all of which, somehow, is presumably indicated by notation ?).

 The next section added even greater resonance, and it and what followed much more resembled a conventional string-sound, before a variation that was again contemplative – with a slight diminuendo, and a more quiet cello pizzicato. Now, right at the end of the work, the section that followed was softer, and with Pärt achieving a very striking spiritual effect on us, through a little rallentando, which then combined with a diminuendo. In the final pizzicato, one could see Caroline Dearnley’s other hand, holding the string (to shorten the duration of the note, one assumed).


For the second Bach aria (originally to have been the first number in the hour-long concert), (4) Gott versorget alles Leben [from the Cantata Es wartet alles auf dich (BWV 187)], the date of composition (1726) is twelve years later (and in the period of works by Bach already referred to²), but what links it is the beautiful writing for obbligato oboe, which leads into that for voice.

 To this setting of a longer passage of verse, accompanied this time just by harpsichord, oboe and cello³, Julia Doyle gave, in her delivery, both clear vocal-tone, and a quality of ‘reaching out’ from - and with - the given text, which made the change in mood at the mid-point, as well as feeling natural, touch us with the sentiment Worries, be gone !, as from the words of another person.


(5) Continuum (1968), a piece for solo dual-manual harpichord by György Ligeti, was next, and some of us had sampled it beforehand via the link Tweeted by Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) :


Much more detail than given here can be found in the full version

As Richard Steinitz tells in his book György Ligeti : Music of the Imagination⁴, Ligeti’s work, one of thirty-eight commissioned by Antoinette Vischer, has become the most famous (others had been written by, for example, Cage, Berio and Henze). Continuum was based on Goffried Michael Koenig's discoveries in the electronic studio in Cologne (where he became Ligeti’s mentor), specifically having found a rate at (and above) which a succession of pitches coalesces as chords, and the pitches are then not distinguishable as a line of melody : Steinitz says that, when a human performer plays the piece, each hand (one on each manual) depresses 16-17 keys per second⁵.

It was soon apparent – when principal harpsichordist Maggie Cole started playing – that concentrating on watching the performance was counter-productive, and that it was better to have one’s attention, not on the instant moment, but rather on absorbing the overall patterns and impressions. After the event, what Steinitz had written was confirmatory, in describing how rhythm operates on three levels, the first of which he characterizes as the incessant ‘clatter’ of the foreground pulses), beyond which the second is the rate at which patterns repeat in the piece, and the third that at which the choice of pitch changes.

Listening with a relaxation of active awareness led to making this comment later : Perhaps the piece exists, in this way, in the cycles between and within the cycles : not quite as with a work by Steve Reich, with whose approach one hears different things and in a different way, but as with other works by Ligeti. Whatever others were hearing, and how they chose to listen and what to watch, one necessarily did not know, but the conclusion of the piece brought Maggie Cole a tremendously appreciative round of applause, which saw her return for a further bow.


After the intensity of the Ligeti, and with the reversal that had been announced of the order of the final two vocal pieces, we next heard the third Bach aria, before the new commission by Anna Clyne (at the mid-point of a world-premiere tour).

 (6) Tief gebückt und voller Reue [from the Cantata Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut (BWV 199)], again, as with the first aria in the revised order (Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not), from 1714, seemed reminiscent of the sound-world of The Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046–1051), especially - as explained in the next paragraph - No. 3 (in G Major) : as is well known, the six instrumental works are so called, because, in 1721 (although they are thought to have been composed earlier), they were presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt.


The opening bar of BWV 1048 (as we might call it), which the Sinfonia will be bringing to Saffron Hall in a concert on 15 May, contains just two semi-quavers (as one can see above). They, with the first note of the next bar (a quaver), form a rhythmic and tonal three-note motif (and then, further down the treble stave, it immediately repeats, for the first of numerous times – taking it next up the stave once more, and then down). Although the aria also has, as an obvious feature to the cello part, such a semi-tone ‘dip and back’, it does not have the Concerto’s insistence, albeit a gentle one – as of links in a chain, and making for a higher level of patterning [not wholly dissimilar, dare one say, to the effect of the various levels, as Steinitz calls them (please see above), of rhythmicity that one could discern within Continuum ?].


To how this five-line text had been set, and the honest metaphysics of its words, the Sinfonia instrumentalists assisted Julia Doyle in bringing poise of vocal expression, so that (in the third line) Ich bekenne meine Schuld then balanced against both of the lines that followed (in fact, all of them against each other) : Aber habe doch Geduld / Habe doch Geduld mit mir !. Here, catching Bach’s intention, there was a feint of simply finishing there, with a soft ending, till our hearing a ritornello signalled beginning da capo, and then closing, so that we were plunged back into the words after which it is titled, Tief gebückt und voller Reue.

 These three arias, and the company that they kept, worked very well together - as did our soprano and her fellow musicians !


Concluding the hour of music with (7) Anna Clyne’s This Lunar Beauty (2015), setting W. H. Auden’s poem of that name [the text is here], must have been the right thing to do with the programme, and Anna Clyne is not a stranger to having works appearing in Sinfonia concerts. (She can be heard here, in a pre-concert talk with The University of Cambridge’s Kate Kennedy (@DrKKenney), from the final At Lunch 2 concert, at The Wigmore Hall (@wigmore_hall), on the following day.)

The composition felt to have a Scottish ring to it at times, e.g. with the use of a drone on the viola, but also more generally, in its landscape (which perhaps fits with what Clyne says, in that talk, about having studied music at university in Scotland), and it seemed Nymanesque in a vague way (not inconsistently with using a high soprano voice towards the end). We started with oboe, which had been a linking element in these pieces, then Marios Argiros was joined by Clare Finnimore (viola), and next the two violinists, until all were playing.

One can think of works from the Classical period that did likewise, but, in the last hundred years, it has often enough been a feature in neoclassical and modernist works, too : one purpose that it served was to draw attention to the various instruments (for, whilst we cannot be unaware of Bach’s use of obbligato oboe, the role of the cello or harpsichord is much less prominent, and more subtly part of the voice’s accompaniment). Again (hardly for the first time), Clyne makes the soprano seem more part of the ensemble’s range of voices, which we hear from at various times, such as harpsichord figurations with cello and violin.

Except for the Ligeti [for quite other reasons, already very sufficiently given above], This Lunar Beauty was unlike everything else on the programme, and, on a first hearing, a feat to try to take in - not least because of its unfamiliar text, which (despite its simple appearance) is both densely poetical as well as outright difficult to construe in places, even with later quiet reflection (for example, the second half of the second stanza : the text is here). Amidst a lively part for oboe, which at times was up and down scales / parts of them (which is where Michael Nyman somehow first seemed present ?), or elements of pounding from the harpsichord, and definite in their company, the unhurried, tranquil voice (as of The Moon ?) of Julia Doyle, complete with impressively leaping into the higher register before, with some bending of notes, the work came to close.




End-notes

¹ The dates for Scarlatti (2 May 1660 to 22 October 1725) are wrongly given in the programme as 1685–1757 : the latter are those of Aleesandro Scarlatti's son Domenico (now much more famous ?).

² E.g., towards the end of Part I, in the aria for tenor with Chorus Ich will bein meinem Jesu wachen, in the St Matthew Passion (original version 1727) (BWV 244). (Or the Quia respexit from the Magnificat in D Major (from 1733, after the version (from 1723) in E Flat Major) (BWV 243).)

 ³ In the continuo, one could hear how Bach gave the oboe part shorter note-values than for harpsichord and cello.

⁴ Faber & Faber, London (2003), pp. 164-166.

⁵ The video of which the Sinfonia Tweeted a link (please see above) shows the progress of a piano-roll alongside a recording that runs to around 3:47 (said to be played by Antoinette Vischer herself - please see above). At the end of his chapter, Steinitz talks about an adaptation for barrel-organ, which, in recorded performance [in the Ligeti edition] takes just 3:22 (op. cit., p. 166).

This is faster than Maggie Cole could have played Continuum, and so the duration for the piece when heard with the video is intermediate between her playing and the version for barrel-organ. Describing that version, Steinitz says that the headlong tempo has two effects, both of creating a splendid ‘coalescing’, whilst the shifting patterns of second-level rhythm are actually clearer : might even the recording from a piano-roll, if heard first, have tended to put Cole at a disadvantage by giving these effects, but to a lesser extent ?




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday, 30 January 2016

I have to believe everything in order to make things up ~ Mick Boyle¹

This is a review of Youth (2015)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

30 January (link substituted, 19 May)

This is a review of Youth (La giovinezza) (2015)

The film is dedicated to director Francesco Rosi (who died on 10 January 2015)


The list of key-words below had probably been noted before, in white capitals, the title Youth appeared [above a division of the screen, as if in a colour-field painting, comprising the colour of a low partition-wall, its rail, and the wall behind it], and then the sky, above an Alpine view (which, one estimates, was 10-15 minutes in – it was not quick, because, by the time that it arrived, one had forgotten not having seen the film’s name [the BBFC (@BBFC) certificate does not count]) :

* Light = use of, and our awareness of, light [Luca Bigazzi is Sorrentino's cinematographer again²]
* Fluidity, of the image, and how it changed with the camera’s movement
* Composition, i.e. of shots, and the Viewpoint from which they were taken
* Transition between shots
* Tactility, in that (as did its predecessor²) it has and conveys a keen sense of our physicality / our corporeality

All of these impressed one with the film’s quality, and the care of its making : as one expected², and hoped would be so.



Points of cinematic comparison are, sadly, not hard to find, even at this time of the year, i.e. despite what worth it might be reasonable to assume that nominations for awards recognize, whereas films Based on a true story seem sufficient unto themselves (as with Tim Burton's Big Eyes (2014), at this time last year), without speech, for example, seemingly needing to sound as if anyone might have uttered it :




* This paragraph contains Spoilers (if intending to watch Trumbo) *
The choice of film is not irrelevant (even if the relevance was in someone else’s mind, in devising the trailers to show) in that Youth (La giovinezza) (2015) has Harvey Keitel as a writer / director (Mick Boyle), whereas Trumbo (2015) purports to save us the trouble of finding out why Dalton Trumbo was not credited, say, with the screenplay for Roman Holiday (1953) (and it was only forty years later that the Academy Award for ‘Best Writing, Motion Picture Story’ was credited to him). (Whereas, in 2 hrs 4 mins, one could watch Roman Holiday instead, and, on IMDb (@IMDb), there is what seems a very full biography of Trumbo (it is staggeringly longer than usual), just for the reading.)



Youth most clearly does reference both 8½ (1963) and, more fleetingly, both The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), and even Metropolis (1927). However, director Paolo Sorrentino is not being derivative of Federico Fellini, Wes Anderson, Fritz Lang ; rather, he is showing us his reverence for these films and, albeit with playfulness, asking us to share his appreciation. (Likewise, Stardust Memories (1980) - which Sorrentino clearly values - is a massive tribute to European cinema, hardly least also to 8½ [Fellini is an acknowledged inspiration to Woody Allen and his work], but it sees those films / that film through another director’s eyes (but as if through the eyes of his character, Sandy Bates). (It is sad [dare one say, simplistic on their part ?] that contemporary critics and audiences, feeling insulted, insultingly mistook Sandy Bates, and his opinions, for Allen and his.))

When it comes to The Lobster (2015), a film that achieves far less, but with far more effort, the link between Lanthimos’ film and Sorrentino’s is, as well as in the type of location (and in a first film scripted in English), in the person of Rachel Weisz : here, Fred Ballinger’s (Michael Caine’s) daughter Lena ; there as a form of emotional outlaw, without a name (but, significantly, narrating the story, one has to feel - please see the next paragraph). (If the films were, more than superficially, so irremediably different, one might have asked in whose film Weisz seemed ‘a spy in the camp’ (for, according to Wikipedia® (citing dates in Cineuropa and ScreenDaily, respectively), principal photography for The Lobster ‘began on 24 March 2014, and concluded on 9 May 2014’, and that for Youth started in Flims, Switzerland, in May [also according to Wikipedia®].)


The true point of connection is in Rachel Weisz’s very distinctive voice and the rhythms of her way of speaking. Here, she makes a striking speech as to whose status, immediately afterwards, we are (or should be) uncertain : for, literally from the first visuals to the last (and not just when it is patent), this feeling of uncertainty is built into the fabric of the film - as with Allen in Stardust Memories (or, equally, with Deconstructing Harry (1997)), or Fellini, whom Allen had used as his model. It is suggested that, in The Lobster (as has been argued at the conclusion of the review on these pages), we ought to have been watching throughout with a view to what this use of the device of a voice-over actually signifies (and not just take it for granted). (Are we meant, say, to take that element simply as read in American Beauty (1999), or even Sunset Blvd. (1950)?)


Grand Hotel Waldhaus Flims

But the connection with where Sorrentino filmed proves to be a quite different one, in that Wikipedia® tells us that the primary location was the nineteenth-century five-star Grand Hotel Waldhaus Flims, but that filming also took place in Davos (in Switzlerland), particularly at The Hotel Schatzalp - where the novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) is set. That novel is is highly relevant to a setting in a spa (although its characters are more unwell, e.g. tuberculosis), but it is also a link with another novel by Thomas Mann, which one thereby sees confirmed as having been in Sorrentino’s mind, Dr Faustus (published in 1947, more than twenty years later). This later work is more allusive and, even though it is considerably shorter, its subject-matter makes it feel more dense : albeit an extreme one, Mann’s composer-character Adrian Leverkühn seems a perfect reference for a character-type such as Fred Ballinger’s (Michael Caine’s)³.



Having had a prominent piece at the opening of La grande bellezza, David Lang scored Youth, and, amongst his work (particularly ‘just’), we hear such musical touch-stones as, three or four times over, excerpts from Triste et lent (number 6 from Book I of Debussy’s Préludes [the occurrences are considered further in another posting), and the Berceuse from Stravinsky’s The Firebird, with their clear associations for those who know them. With other allusions, there is a set-piece, which is reminiscent of the ‘friendly’ and wholly ‘well-meant’ honesty of Arsinoé towards Célimène (and then vice versa) in Molière’s Le misanthrope (which has been described as a ‘a fencing-match’ (of sorts)), between Keitel and Jane Fonda⁴.


Of course, we know, on the surface, that there is a film within a film, and that, as with the scene with flamingos on the balcony (for example) in La grande bellezza, there is another dimension to reality. (In fact, there is more than one film, but Paul Dano, as Jimmy Tree (developing his film-character), amounts to a sub-plot (if a major one).) In the development of the main film (the relevance of whose title cannot be overlooked, but which is not stated within this review), with Harvey Keitel (Mick Boyle) and his collaborators, Boyle demonstrates, as an analogy for Time, how a telescope (depending on at which end one looks into it) can make objects look nearer or farther :

 Does that second film not seem to zoom in on the first (in which Caine and Keitel exist, and the second film is a project), right in the closing shot⁵... ? [That question is now considered, at length, in another posting.]


End-notes

¹ When trying to recall the name of Harvey Keitel's character (a film-maker), one was not totally erroneously led to the name Frank Boyle...

² Having seen La grande bellezza (2013) three times [which it seems better to translate not as The Great Beauty, but as Immense Beauty] :



In Youth, we not only hear the line You understand everything with your hands, don’t you ? (spoken to a young masseuse [with whom we recurrently spend moments off duty]), but it also (as Albrecht Dürer or Godfrey Reggio may do in Visitors (2013), or some of the films that Youth references) reminds of the very tangible nature of our mortal form.

 ³ As does that of Daniel Auteuil’s Stéphane in Un Cœur en Hiver (1992).

⁴ * Contains spoilers ? * Finally appearing as Brenda Morel, after audaciously referred to for much screen-time – not unlike the very slow appearance of the film’s title, perhaps willing us to forget that Fonda is still absent ? (As Barry Norman once said about Henry Fonda, in The Hollywood Greats : Fonda made the heart grow absent.)

⁵ * Contains spoilers * After we have been put much in mind of the opening of Stardust Memories, with (again referencing 8½) what we initially see turning out to be in a screening-room - where the end of Sandy Bates’ film, much to his dismay, has been outrageously changed by the studio without his knowledge so that the characters all end up in Jazz Heaven...




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Sunday, 24 January 2016

The questioner hadn't seen Peter Greenaway's film (but Greenaway didn't listen to the questions anyway)

When Peter Greenaway came as a guest, with Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015)…

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

24 January

When Peter Greenaway was a guest, and his film Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015) was his platform…

For Rocketina - a kind and thoughtful editor, and supreme encourager - in fondest memory of Charlie


Some propositions :

 1. It is ‘possible’ that Peter Greenaway (‘PG’) spoke at some length, when introducing Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015) ('EiG')

2. Possibly, at such length that the screening that followed EiG had to be delayed by around thirty minutes

3. The questioner (so called for reasons that one may guess at) (‘AJD’) could be known to the present writer (@THEAGENTAPSLEY)

4. It is conceivable that AJD may not have watched any significant part of EiG, other than, say, the last ten minutes (less significant, one might imagine, without the rest of it ?)

5. During the ensuing Q&A (hosted by Bill Lawrence (‘BL’ / @Billlawrence)), it might have seemed that PG was, again, talking at those who (with the possible exception of AJD) had just seen EiG - apparently simultaneously inciting, and condescending to, those who had chosen to be there by saying (in the manner of these propositions) that they might have seen his film The Draughtsman's Contract (1982) ?

6. Some might assert that, whereas PG could have seemed, just before AJD's engagement in the Q&A, to bait his audience for not embracing a revolutionary form of cinema that employed more than the field of view occupied by the screen¹, and for not doing more than sitting immobile in front of it, EiG itself was, even by PG’s unusual standards of - and approaches to - story-telling and marshalling of cinematic material, a largely conventional film

7. When, at around this point, BL noticed AJD’s hand raised, he could have interpreted it as someone who was rising to the invitation that he had put out for people to respond to PG’s directly challenging words to those there - as to whether the time for watching films in this way had passed, and they should be embracing the type of new cinema that PG was strenuously urging on them

8. AJD may well have apologized to BL, clarifying that he had not been intending to offer such a response, but, if so, simply wished to ask who would come to such a cinema (to which, perhaps, no one else added anything - even if that might not have implied tacit assent ?)

9. If so, well knowing where he was (some guests, being much in demand and often tired from travel, do not immediately recall the present location), PG indicated that, for that reason, he had expected more of the people there - this, maybe, in several minutes further of urging for his thesis ?

10. At this time, it is likely that AJD took the opportunity to put his substantive question to PG, probably :

Q1 If, as one suspects, you are having a conversation with Mark Cousins², in this film, what is the nature or content of that conversation ?

11. When he started, PG seemed to be replying, for he immediately agreed, and without reservation, that he was having a conversation with Mark Cousins : yet, since he apparently turned this locution into a list of people (including Borges³) with whom he was ‘having a conversation’, and (in a long answer) never went near the question again, AJD would rapidly have had to draw the conclusion that PG either chose not to address what had been put to him, or did not even comprehend the reason for being asked it²

12. Despite perhaps not having seen very much of EiG, would AJD not have been intrigued by this mention of Borges³, a writer whom AJD much respected, and would he have been able to resist testing whether there was any substance behind PG's mentioning Borges' name ? :

Q2 Since you mentioned Borges, are you willing to tell us in what way his work informs your film, and so how it should be part of our understanding of it ?

13. One could possibly reinterpret proposition 11 (above) to guess what answer anyone present derived, to this new enquiry, from what PG went on lengthily to assert - and whether AJD, renouncing the struggle⁴, collapsed in despair…


End-notes

¹ PG repeatedly referred to a specific angle of view as that in front of the spectator : was it 110 degrees ? (If so, the residual angle, to make a complete rotation, is 250 degrees.)

² In 2012, Mark Cousins (@markcousinsfilm) had given a Q&A after his film What is This Film Called Love ? (2012), made by Cousins on the spur of the moment (and with the resources available) in homage to Sergei Eisenstein (and his time in Mexico), when unexpectedly in Mexico City for a few extra days.

³ Jorge Luis Borges (24 August 1899 to 14 June 1986) is an Argentinian author, poet, literary critic, editor, and translator. He writes in Spanish, and, from 1955 to 1973, served as Director of The National Library of The Argentine Republic (Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina).

⁴ A phrase that always brings Kafka much to mind : 'Beschreibung eines Kampfes' ('Description of a Struggle') was one of the few works published in his life-time (in Betrachtung (1912)).




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