Saturday, December 31, 2022

VIVRE SA VIE @ 60

Nana leaves her loveless marriage to try and make it movies. In debt, she gets evicted and then, in light of a nasty petty criminal moment, loses her job. She happens upon a situation while strolling a boulevard that gets her into sex work. Not ideal but it will kill the debt. A chance meeting with a friend who's doing the same gets her into the organised side of it. Despite her best efforts at eking happiness or at least meaning from her days, she succumbs to the industry and is reduced to chattel status. Fin.

Hmm. That is nothing like the experience of seeing this film. Take the breakup scene at the beginning. Nana and her husband talk at a cafe. In one exchange when he asks her if the new guy earns more than he does she responds with, "why should you care?" repeating it several times in different tones. He asks if there's something wrong and she explains she was looking for the right reading of the line. 

Now, in any other French New Wave film from the time this could be a moment of whimsy, a cute assault on the fourth wall, but here Nana is asserting her daydream of being in a movie (while being in a movie). The cuteness is not the point. The point is that she is placing herself for us personally such that we'll recall it later in the film.

The scene is shot entirely from the rear view of both actors as they sit at the bar. You can see their faces if you really look in the mirror behind the bar but we are being denied a moment of conventional melodrama. Jean Luc Godard is possibly the least sentimental film maker in the history of cinema and his choice of showing an emotional moment between a married couple without their faces forces us to think of the way they are speaking to each other. The title sequence has already given us a series of profile shots of the insanely beautiful Anna Karina (and they could be mug shots or portraits, even head shots for auditions) and when we come to the breakup chat it's all admin.

Unsentimental doesn't mean unemotional, though. In a telling move, Nana is transported beyond her cinema date at sight of Rennae Jeanne Falconetti's magnetic performance in the Dreyer Film of Joan of Arc. Nana's tears are real (as were Anna's). Again, this is Godard stepping aside from the winking use of reference films he and the other Nouvelle Vague-ers would gleefully pepper their films with. Here it is solemn and foreboding.

When Nana is moves into the organised side of sex work it is not as a fallen woman but one driven there by circumstances. There is nothing of a saucy Jacques Brel nightmare to it. Over a montage of endless marches of tricks and workers through hotel corridors, Raoul, her pimp, explains the details of government regulation on the industry as well as his own stipulations in precise language and in a flat tone as though inducting a new employee in factory life and the workings of machines. At one end a hypocritical government and at the other a greedy and possessive criminal underworld, Nana, like all the other women in her position, is a product, a good and service. Godard's aim is not at the tragedy of a woman undone but an alienated worker in a capitalist market. Just there I've been more strident than the film about that but this film is subtler than I.

This is Godard's third feature film, after the canonical Breathless and the glorious love letter to his wife A Woman is a Woman (no, not even that is sentimental, it's actually a hilarious social comedy). For Vivre sa Vie, Godard used a study of the sex work industry by a French magistrate (the direct source for Raoul's induction dialogue with Nana) as well as the nasty horror vignette The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allen Poe (read out almost in full in a later scene). 

Godard's politics, already on the left, were to lean further and further with each passing year of the '60s until, by Tout va Bien, ten years later, his hard line Marxist Leninism was streamlined into something more (but only a little more) culturally palatable for a mass audience. Vivre sa Vie is the point at which the auteur began to differ from the others in the New Wave and it became a direct driver on his approach to cinema. Four years later in Two or Three Things I Know About Her when he revisited the theme of sex work, characterisation was used only as a means of adding a layer to what was effectively an essay on consumerism.

Nana's conversation with the middle aged "reader" in the cafe where they discuss spoken language and pure thoughts (far more entertaining than that sounds) is a lot like Brecht's notion that actors should quote. Brecht's barrier-breaking ways come calling in all of Godard. When Nana pauses to gaze out at us, there is only a moment where we feel the pull of her beauty before the awkwardness sets in. This is the kind of movie that you have to think about while you're in front of it, not just after over a coffee.

Happily, not only is this film unabashedly gorgeous with Raoul Coutard's sumptuously deep monochrome cinematography, Michel Legrande's powerful baroque score, Godard's persistent denial of service when he turns the sound off (arresting every time it happens) but the warmth of the performances. Anna Karina yet again shows credibly how Nana keeps her spirits afloat with turns that, in another life, she could have used in Vaudeville. Her dance to the rock instrumental in the pool hall will be only just eclipsed later with the Madison in Bande a Part. The quick self height measurement is as endearing as it is practical. If she pouted in A Woman and never does here it is not to the cost of the humanity  both bright and distressed that she invests in Nana.

I saved this one for last this year in observance of Godard's passing this year. It's a good choice for his commemoration. If the later more severe and difficult movies turn you off and the early ones strike you as too cute try this for the anger in it that was expressed as warmth, the sense that all artists prostituted themselves for career (and he didn't leave himself out of that) and the sheer boldness of a film maker who, still new to it, was breaking even his own boundaries to say what he needed to say.

Friday, December 30, 2022

2022 WRAP


2022 and the cinemas were back open. The futilely expected springback from 2020 seemed to finally happen as the listings filled up with movies that I actually wanted to see. The audiences tiptoed back in, still masked and careful to keep to themselves. Once my choctop was devoured the cover went back on. This decreased behind me in the middle and back rows. By MIFF, being masked was the exception. I caught a cold which ignited an asthma-like bronchitis which made me cough like an anti-aircraft weapon and I had to reassign a lot of tickets and still miss two screenings. Happily the streaming program continued into this year and I spent a lot of the week after watching at home in voluntary isolation. It wasn't COVID but it did come back along with the bronchitis a week back into work life. Ah well, a few more weeks away from cinemas where I'd be lynched for coughing like that.

Finally got to sit in front of two long bucket-list items: seeing the "lost" classic of Australian cinema 2000 Weeks (ok, but nothing declared lost will ever live up to its hype) and Friday the 13th III in 3D at the Nova which was outstanding. Having the cinema as an option remained a novelty for a good half of the year and added a joyous tickle to the outing. The gasps at spectacular moments of Moonage Daydream, groans of dread at Barbarian, and rattling laughter at Bodies Bodies Bodies offered the familiar pleasure of seeing a movie in the dark with a crowd.

Top spot is tied between Moonage Daydream and Everything Everywhere All at Once

High

Barbarian: smart, cheeky and genuinely scary. Does what it says.

Moonage Daydream: the only way to document the career of one of rock music's most protean and important figures is this beautiful assault.

Saloum: genre-hopping folk horror makes a ton out of meagre means.

The Lost City of Melbourne: Not just because it is about my chosen city but does so with depth, strong storytelling approach and mother of invention aesthetic felt like home as Guy Maddin might have imagined it.

Lola: How to embrace a big idea in a humble budget, keep the story compelling, respect your cast and go for broke. A wonderful surprise of indy cinema.

Prey: Want to do honour to a loved but mangled franchise? Make a prequel that takes it seriously. This is how.

Soft and Quiet: Single shot found footage lets rip from the word go and shows us why we shouldn't be Nazis. For real. Will be thought too contrived by some but it worked a treat for me.

Pig: Nicholas Cage will now and then give his fans proof that he is not just a wild eyed screaming weirdo. This study in pain retention reminded me in the best way of the kind of indy cinema of the '70s and '80s that I still miss without a moment's self-conscious tribute.

Everything Everywhere All at Once: Some heavily clever ideas spin out of their creator's control fast, others are kept too much under restraints. This one both kept spinning wildly and kept giving. A finally beautiful trip of regret and acceptance.

Something in the Dirt: What do a ideas cinema team do in lockdown? They have more ideas and work out how to do them. In an interview I saw with Benson and Moorehead they answered the question of how they would follow their most recent project and one of them said, "we'll do the one we can do." Boy, they'd have to slip up for me to baulk seeing anything new by them.

Blaze: A brutal and beautiful fable of trauma and letting go. Needs more audience. Maybe on one of the streamers.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: A case of a second franchise movie exceeding the original. This is in every way the superior of the two and if there are more to follow I'll be there.

The Drover's Wife: A surprisingly restrained reimagining of a classic Australian tale the keeps faith with its original but also adds the missing element of race.

Petite Maman: Completely disarming time travel tale driven by hard emotions and cooling execution.

We're All Going to the World's Fair: When shoestring screen life  movies keep it short, sweet and simple to create unease and sorrow it's time to watch and keep watching.

Middle 

Bodies Bodies Bodies: Fun and surprising thriller with a coolly undercutting conclusion.

Bones and All: In which Luca Guadagnino partially redeems himself from the sloppy pointlessness of his Suspiria remake.

Wounded Fawn: I kept wanting it to erupt. Good but lacking.

The Worst Person in the World: Engaging fable of life speeding away as its most ardent dreamers take their time with the fantasy. Wanted it a little sharper, though.

Men: What it says and with merit. Wanted it to be more than what it said.

Hellbender: Gloriously taped together supernatural horror by cinema's actual Adams Family. A little creaky but I will now watch anything they put their names to.

Skinamarink: Largely successful experiment in horror gets a little too carried away with its technique that it starts alienating when it stops scaring. I'll watch the space, though, so to speak.

Flux Gourmet: Not the first Peter Strickland piece I found hard to love but I was glad to have seen it at a cinema.

Old: M. Night Shyamalan at his best with strong commitment to concept but also at his worst with an overcooked twist. Always want his films to be better.

Enys Men: The master of Bait (no, not a joke, just reads like one) returns with a '70s style UK weird magic story that works a treat. Let down a little (and only a little) by backstory that we were doing fine without.

Glorious: Nice try at a conversation with a deity with a lot of elements familiar enough to keep it fun. Felt less than 100%, though.

The Wonder: Tale of the meaning of a local miracle and how the community nurtures it even to the expense of its central figure. Strong work that yet felt short of the mark, despite some industry best performances.

Scream: The okayest movie of the year.

Smile: Better than a high functioning jump scare movie but not as good as an original curse tale that clarifies its boundaries and keeps to them. Works well but doesn't quite push its way out of mere adequacy. Points for strong electronic score.

Dark Glasses: Better Argento than we have a right to expect these days.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Another one where you have to qualify the date when you talk about the original. This wasn't so bad but it was unasked for.

Dashcam: More single sequence screen life horror fun from the team that brought us the lockdown classic Host. I share my issue with most of the audience in that it takes so long to care about the obnoxious protagonist that it almost falls apart halfway. It does regain ground but then we need to, also.

Deadstream: See above for empathy and obnoxiousness. It's hard to love the central figure but the horror situation takes over and wins us (not without a big fight).

You Won't Be Alone: Highly accomplished folk horror of body-jumping entity provides both well learned lessons and originality. Kept wanting it to take advantage of the horror flavours on show, though.

Sissy: Highly enjoyable horror satire didn't quite resolve which of those approaches it preferred. Not bad at all but not quite strong enough.

V/H/S/99: One of the better of these horror anthologies with a lot of fun before a trip to hell. Wish I liked more of it.

Crimes of the Future: Cronenberg covers himself in an era when his son is doing similar but better. Always good to see DC get back on to the genre wagon he invented. Maybe it's time to either move away or go harder.

Decision to Leave: Too elegant and stylish for its own good as this Park Chan-wook noir falls into repetition and tedium.

The Black Phone: Intriguing setup just ends up hugging its own coastline. How can alarming topics like child abduction and molestation in a survival story be routine? Watch this movie.

X: Kept confusing it with the Texas Chainsaw remake but a lot of merit by itself. Didn't get to see Pearl in time to put it here but it has a reputation that eclipses this (not too shabby for a secondary project thought up and shot while on location)

LOW

Nope: Everything is extraordinary in principle but, after the initial premise, it seems to just play out, something I couldn't say of Get Out or US.

Belfast: Cute Ulsterians in a neighbourhood increasingly plagued by factional violence while the wee kiddies grow up fast. Too much contrivance for too little heart.

Nightmare Alley: A disappointingly overstated rehash of a great undersung '40s original. I had to return to the Tyrone Power version to remind myself that it did, indeed, feel more grown up than this new one.

Hellraiser: A few good aspects like the new casting of Pinhead and the overall design. But if you are going to persist with grave robbing an old franchise like this without trying to figure out what made the first one work and why the ones that followed didn't you should just go back and watch them and take some notes. Oh, and it really ought to try being scary.

My Best Friend's Exorcism: If you are going to adapt a contemporary classic of YA fiction that contains a laugh out loud moment on every single page try to include some more humour and if said book strays from cliche while poking fun at it try and do that, too. Don't just make a thing with the same title but without the jokes.

Don't Worry Darling: Some films soften with me over time and I can start to see how they work at least for others. This one plays its hand too early and treads water for too long before getting to the point, betraying everything about the first act that was genuinely good.

The Humans: To do a troubled family get together you need a lot more than contrived conflict and a spooky setting. And never, whatever it is, call a piece of fiction The Humans. 

Petrol: A vacuous local scenester guru is pursued by someone who is far more interesting. The kind of overstuffed piffle that gives movies made in Melbourne a bad name. 

The Lonely Souls Variety Hour: Wes Anderson keeps copying Hal Ashby without ever getting it. This copies Wes Anderson.

Broadcast Signal Intrusion: A compelling tale of media violation and the dark web ruined by a cast with no presence.


And so, farewell to the most varied year at the cinema since sometime before the plague. It was wonderful to return to the cinema experience as a normal thing rather than a stolen one. MIFF was much improved with some good selections and the continuation of the streaming program (I suspect that was there as a failsafe like the previous two years). Getting back into the venues that only open for the festival was the smoothest dream. I maxed out the Forum screenings on my sharepass. Seeing less end of year short term titles in the marginal mainstream places like the Nova or Kino but times have altered that. Roll on, 2023.

DARK WATER @ 20 (SPOILERS)

The best ghost stories let the ghosts weave their way in, meshing with the day to day world until they cannot be extracted without dire action. Yoshimi sits in the law firm waiting room, recalling how her mother neglected to fetch her from kindergarten. She is going through a difficult divorce and wants custody of her daughter. Her husband has already ratted on her long completed psychiatric treatment and she finds each one of these meetings gives her some new obstacle. Her husband doesn't even seem to want to take care of young Ikuko he just likes how the fight punishes her mother.

Still with Ikuko in tow, Yoshimi finds a flat in a run down apartment block in a far flung corner of Tokyo. Already the signs are bad - a strange incident in the lift and the weird ancient receptionist throb with ill vibes - but she can afford it and once it's done up it should be ok. Meanwhile, Ikuko starts school and Yoshimi goes out looking for work. School is good and the interview, while messy, goes fine. 

Landing on feet. Then there's a weird circular stain on the ceiling of her room that is dripping. A toy bag that Ikuko found on the roof keeps coming back, even when Yoshimi bins it outside. The stain grows, now more like a giant slug. When she goes to the flat upstairs there's no one home. From the lift back down she sees the door open and a girl in a yellow raincoat appears. The lift window is dirty but the girl doesn't appear to have a face. In fact she looks just like the photo of the missing girl fading on the lamp post near the school.

Hideo Nakata's film of Koji Suzuki's story was his third collaboration after the first two Ringu films and he demonstrated something that film makers seldom do after early successes in genre movies, he got subtler. There is one jump scare in the entire film. It is brief and contains the sound only of a child. There is a twist to the story but it is a soft one, gradually turning until the knot appears and then it's not "aaaah" but more of an "oh".

The ruling emotion of this film is not terror (though there is plenty to dread) but sadness, a persistent and grave sense of tragedy that we will see when it is ready to appear. Hitomi Kuroki as the harried Yoshimi tries to contain the blows that life is dealing her but she breaks into screeching emotion increasingly. My take on this is not that she is given to melodrama as a performer but understands that her character finds the outpouring steadying. As a neglected child she witnesses herself compelled by her circumstances to neglect Ikuko who waits after hours at the school, withdrawing into herself. The pressure of this and its crushing irony alone would give anyone the screeches. We do see her calmer and certainly happier, it's just that the universe is denying her control over her life. One detail that always gets to me is how Yoshimi, even in moments of crisis, remembers to take her shoes off when she enters the flat and puts them back on when she leaves it. One normalising ritual so ingrained it is impossible to avoid.

Rio Kanno as Ikuko gives us a brave child who wishes life were not so unfair. She maintains as stoney a face as she can. This allows us to project bewilderment on to her as she faces the ghost of Mitsuko across the playground as the rain torrents down. There is no need for projection when Mitsuko finds her trying to hide (in a game). The ghost girl's feet approach slowly as water pours down her shins and leaves a stream behind. Ikuko's stare is one of frozen fear. The incident leaves her unconscious and half drowned. Another slap in the face for her mother. Earlier scenes of the pair playing or negotiating as mother and child are moving and our memory of them by this scene wrenches hard.

I announced spoilers in the title of this article and the harder ones start here. The climax of this film is one which has placed it at the top of my favourite ghost story movies. The coda keeps it there. Finding that Mitsuko didn't go missing so much as fall in the water tank that keeps popping hairs into glasses downstairs. Investigating the tank, the girl's red bag (the one that keeps appearing to Yoshimi) falls in and, reaching for it, so does Mitsuko. When Yoshimi climbs the tank to find her the ghosts knocking increases until it creates little fist sized dents in the corrugated iron.

Events accelerate until Yoshimi has to decide between Ikuko's life and her own as the rotting skinned monstrosity is strangling her. Her face falls, She calls to Ikuko to stay back and tells Mistuko not to worry, that she is her mother and everything is well again. Now we understand that the ghost was not out to harm Ikuko but claim her mother. One moment of grotesque horror in enough to make the heartrending sadness of it weigh tons.

This film has a coda scene that will haunt you. A teenage Ikuko is with her high school friends and notices that they are near her old neighbourhood. She takes a stroll along the river and goes back for old times' sake and is surprised to find her mother, still young, is in the flat. It's a happy reunion. They catch up on details until with a groaning liquid music cue we see the blur of Mitsuko standing in the background, waiting for this indulgence to be over. With some deft edits we see Ikuko is alone in the room. She rises and returns to her friends, spooked but maintains in a voiceover that she always felt her mother was watching over her. Watching over her? At the behest of an eternally needy, grasping and gripping monster child. 

When I first saw that coda (MIFF 2022 when the film was released globally) I heard that voiceover and the sentimental scoring of the strings and wrote it off as saccharine. It was an early case of my hunting and finding a copy of the DVD (from a Hong Kong based online shop). I showed it to friends and this time the full resonance of the ending and coda hit me in the gut, pushing the title to the top of the pile of the lifelong best. I never tire of it and when I again look at the muddy yellow green field of the title screen and hear the slow gongs of the electronic score I feel at home and ready to get tense all over again. The mouldy pallet drips down and I am once more lost.

Wednesday, December 28, 2022

THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS @ 90

Shipwreck survivor Edward Parker is picked up from a life boat in the south Pacific. He rises from his delirium the worse for wear but all the better for learning his rescue ship is headed for his destination where he will join his bride to be. Taking a recuperative stroll on deck he notes the cargo of exotic animals and the doglike servant that tends them. When the captain beats the servant in a drunken rage, Parker socks the captain on the jaw. Later, when the animals get dropped off, so does Parker. Welcome, to the island and nightmare domain of Dr Moreau, accelerator of genetics, maker of monsters. There's still a wedding to get to.

One of the first things a modern viewer might make of this old film is that it has a modernity beyond its vintage. If they were aware of James Whale's horror films like Frankenstein or The Old Dark House they might not be so surprised. Like those, this pre-code movie revels in its salacity and the darker recesses of the power-hungry. The notion of Darwinism had leaked from the academy and into the gutter where popular culture made of it an excuse for anything from eugenics to the hysterical notion of science playing god. But, as the strong voiced hosts of The Faculty of Horror podcast recently said of Halloween: "The film is radically left, its killer is conservative." The more we know of Dr Moreau the creepier we find him, the text of the film itself leaves no doubt of his ethical perdition.

As such, he couldn't have been better cast then with the rising Charles Laughton whose eye rolling superiority or irrepressible whinnies of mockery give us no comfort from any scientific wisdom by which he has built this monster of civilisation, his own creature. Moreau's mad scientist theatre is a vivisection room known to the subdued population of hybrid creatures as the house of pain. We see his careless handling of one subject on the table whose groans and screams have punctuated the dialogue and it's as though he were examining needlepoint. If the crowd scenes of the mutants were meant to disturb viewers, the plans of cruelty and pointless agony that the white-suited Moreau inflicts upon them render them victims, however frightening they might be in mob form. Laughton presents an affable sadism, one he knew from his own profession and how it fit without remark in the latter days of empire.

Wells's book and this film were made without knowledge of Hitler but they had seen the mass manipulation of Mussolini, the growing press of industrialisation and issues such as vivisection itself that Wells despised. Moreau is not sadistic for the sake of science, he is scientific for the sake of his own glory, mangling the lives of anything he can find so he'll have something to drag back to the first world, throw at its feet and ... show them!

We have already seen the unfairly treated dog boy, cannot mistake the carnal force of the simian Ouran for anything but animal need (it's Moreau's licence that makes it unnerving) and when we meet her, hear her guileless speech and see Lota's feline beauty that we understand the real monstrosity of Moreau's envelope-shoving. Is there a human selflessness in her final actions? That fits the brief of the vintage Hollywood noble savage but the Wellsian root gives us a better notion in that it might be the remnant animal response to danger that got the better of the apparent lustful humanity. We've already seen her anticipate another session in the house of pain with some writhing that, for all its balletic sweep, does ring physical.

This film rises high above any expectations we might have of cheap exploitation or assembly line genre. The still effective make up artistry should tell you as much. Bela Lugosi's energetic roaring performance backs that up. The solemnity of the final shot seals it and the spectre of the civilised monster rising like smoke over the shrinking island give us far more than an angry crowd with torches and pitchforks could. Hindsight helps here: the island of Dr Moreau could be the camp of Dr Mengele. Other points of comparison are in the news as I type. Movies can teach with the power in their audiences. This is another.


Viewing notes: I watched the 2011 Criterion restoration Blu-Ray which is a marvel of research and skill. This film has a history of lacerating edits and incongruous film elements. The folk at the big C label put it all together and it looks solid and seductive.

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

WITHNAIL AND I @ 35

Two "resting" actors, Withnail and the unnamed Marwood, are slipping down the drain at the end of the '60s in London. Marwood, working class and worried, panics about how he can't handle his flatmate's caprices and just needs to start his acting career. He resolves to confront the aristocratic monster but is once again charmed by him and the pair of them fall into the familiar delusional drain of mutually supportive balderdash. They don't have careers because they haven't got out of the swinging sixties blur, fronted up to auditions, nibbled on some humble pie and made a start.

But who wants to hear that? They are all out of wine and must do something to keep the fuse burning.

Withnail responds to Marwood's pleas to make a temporary exit through the toff's uncle Monty's country house for a bucolic regroup before a massive assault on the profession with rejuvenated vigour. All that happens but it is the expected disaster as the two city boys can make nothing but unintentional comedy of their efforts to go from day to day. When Monty turns up to claim his prize from a lie slipped quietly to him by Withnail, everything has to change. And so it does, more drastically than either intended.

Bruce Robinson's autobiographical swipe at the self delusion of bohemia and its self-annihilating force deceives more than once. We are presented with a pair of alcoholics whose naivete is meant to seduce us and then we are meant to be disgusted by the heavily othered Monty when his predation of Marwood disgusts us. But there's something wrong with this reading. It doesn't work.

All of the elements are there on screen for the contemporary viewer to find distasteful. I won't dispute a moment of that. But to feel attacked by these things is to ignore the disarming writing and committed performances of a small group of players who, having introduced a boomerish alienation to the proceedings, proceed to thwack at the worst of prejudice with an industrial axe. 

I'll admit that I was feeling uncomfortable while watching but I'll also admit that it took no reverse telescope to right the apparent blunders of an old screenplay which was already treading an anachronistic tightrope. The comedy and disgust at the centre of Monty's aggressive approach to Marwood is the result of Withnail's myopic scheming. Monty is more played than playing (there's even a card game on screen to reinforce that) and we might well be surprised to find ourselves feeling sorry for his being duped. But the weird thing is that we forgive the narcissistic pile of self assertion and entitlement that is Withnail if for no better reason than he never quite means ill because he never quite means.

For all the goofy drunkenness gags in the opening scenes we do see Withnail's vulnerability, his screaming desperation and his delusion. We walk beside him as he staggers from one outrageously absurd claim to the unsteady next because we love him. And, sod it, he's funny. And when he sucks all that down to a placid face to express his disappointment and congratulations that Marwood has won a good break, we know he's better than all of the other hacking bastards who have crawled over each others' backs to get a bit part in an offseason Shakespeare. Blowhard, yes, but one who can paraphrase Wilde's claim that he has applied his talent to his hustle but his genius to cadging a drink. And when we see him wail Hamlet's lines about the quintessence of dust to the hyenas in the park and then just turn and walk back home in the rain, we know he'll find something to do and say. It's not a comfortable realisation but it's solid and it keeps the story working even as the credits roll.

I saw this at the Kino in late 1987, as a dunk bohemian Fitzroyal along with a few others of the same ilk. We headed straight for the bar afterwards, armed with its quips and the infectious comedy of its scenes. We celebrated Marwood's success but were far more interested in following Withnail back to his digs. None of us had had to make Marwood's choice and met it the same way as his dissolute friend. None of us expected we would have to. The genius of this film, if there is one, is that it is aware that each one of its viewers knows this. And genius is how it still plays. 


IVAN'S CHILDHOOD @ 60

Ivan, twelve, is having the kind of fun a country boy who lives by a lake can have, running around the shore line, calling out to his mum. All of a sudden he's flying, soaring above the water. Then he is falling and all the sunlight has vanished into darkness and he has woken again into the world of all his days, Russia in the days of the Nazi invasion. He navigates his way through the edges of the lake to a Soviet outpost and demands of the young lieutenant there that he speak to a particular officer in a nearby camp. Ivan is a scout, a wiry young boy who can get behind lines undetected and report accurately on what he finds. He gets through to the officer and sends a coded message to him.

That officer, while grateful for the intel, decides that Ivan has done enough for the war effort and should be shipped back to school to be with all the other children. Ivan, who's done a mass of growing up under these circumstances, just wants another mission. His family have been killed by the Germans. On one of the walls of the bunker where he is quartered is a message from doomed prisoners of the Nazis which ends in the words: avenge us. Ivan really did already have a sense of vocation before that but now it's a compulsion. 

As far as plotted timelines go that's pretty much it. The rest is Tarkovsky who, in his debut feature, is announcing his entrance into world cinema. It's a Soviet-era war film from before the thaw and all it had to be was a wrenching tale of heroism. The Russian experience of World War II which they still refer to as the Great Patriotic War, is about the as personal as any invasion gets. The Germans moved through it like butter for the first year until it was turned around but their conduct was almost entirely criminal and done under the idea that they were conquering a subhuman race. If that doesn't create the angriest army in history I don't know what will.

There's no ambiguity about that in this film but there is also no propagandist hysteria. We already have a good idea of what the land has gone through and, if anything, already feel impatient at seeing so much day to day organisation among the good guys that we as viewers want them to get on with it. But this is every frame a Tarkovsky tale and what we see is the grim poetry of the longer game. We feel as impatient as Ivan but the soldiers know that wars are won with movement of supplies as well as troops and there will always be waiting. The constant flare lights that fall from the evening sky remind us that anyone on the surface of the lake is a target but they also give us pause to the dangerous beauty of warfare. An eerie scene in a birch forest between Captain Kholin and Masha the nurse where their flirting in full uniform among the tall, thin silvery birch trunks does not allow a moment's escape from the violence that surrounds them even when it makes no sound of its own. The scene is left unconsummated and, if returned to later, is left below the priorities of military order. That's about as heroic as Tarkovsky allows us.

Well, until the end where, at the liberation of Berlin at the end of the war, we learn the fate of Ivan whom we last saw disappearing into the night on another mission years before. The Soviet soldiers are going through the records of prisoners that the Germans have executed among the rubble, the nooses on beams and even a home fashioned guillotine. One face stares out from the many files among the rubble.

We end again in one of  Ivan's fantasy scenes or dream sequences. It's like the previous one where he and his sister are riding on the back of a truck laden with apples and the background is unnervingly in the negative. This time is more like the opening. Ivan and his friends are playing at the beach. He runs along with one of them (who might be his sister) right to the water and onwards. The image, for its beauty and the innocence that not even the worst he knew could erase, is possibly the last thing that went through his mind: it will freeze your heart and shatter it to tiny pieces.

This film is second only to the also Soviet Come and See by Elem Klimov from 1987 which is one of the most devastating and uplifting films about war I've ever seen. Ivan's Childhood, for all its comparative subtlety, recalls at least the beauty and the joy of why fighting Nazis was important, not just the cruelty that borders on the surreal and refuses to be forgotten but the sliver splashing of children enjoying play.


Monday, December 26, 2022

1972 @ 50: TOUT VA BIEN (EVERYTHING'S GREAT!)

Jacques and Susan, a Franco American couple, go to a meatworks for a journalistic investigation and are immediately involved in a workers' occupation, thrown into an office as captive with the boss. The fourth wall is broken by addresses from the boss who sees the action as a minor inconvenience, a union rep who calls it counterproductive, and the workers themselves who set themselves apart from both parties who consider them invisible outside work hours. In the first of two major Godardian setpieces, we watch as the camera tracks sideways back and forth along a cross-sectioned factory building as we see the time of the occupation passing and the seemingly ineffectual action of the workers.

After the occupation, the boss is fired (with the assumption that someone identical will replace him) the workers are no better off (possibly worse that they've fallen foul of the union) and Jacques and Susan, stunned, walk away with mixed feelings that lead them to confront what their lives have become.

In case anyone in the audience of the film when fresh missed it, the spectre of May '68, the near two months of demonstrations, strikes and occupations that gave rise to solid hope that the toughening rightist rule in Europe might be on the verge of collapse. But the big guys won again and things went back to the way they were only with a lot more readiness from above to keep the pressure downward. For French people of the left, academics and artists, the event remains one of both anger and hope.

Godard and Gorin's four years later look at where France had gone in the interim is both rich with the kind of subversive cinema that Godard had led in fierce independence away from the warmer and fuzzier New Wave as his film practice grew increasingly radical, artistically and politically. While Godard in the wake of May '68 had dived deep into the Marxist Leninist ethos that opposed the auteurism that had made him famous and the films he directed grew more obscure and difficult (including gems like One Plus One and British Sounds) Gorin had been nurturing his own film experiments in the USA, coming back to France to co-steer this epic of incredulity.

The prologue is a discussion between a male and female voice about the making of a film, how to set up a production, what it should be about, the kind of characters to use, over images of social groups, locations and cheques for elements like cinematography and score and so on. This is par for the course for the '60s Nouvelle Vague which often began its films with self-reflexive commentary. The casting of the central couple who seem to have made a journey of many pre and post May '68, is intentionally similar to that of Breathless with established stars Yves Montand and Jane Fonda as Jacques and Susan. 

Everybody here has come a long way. The couple each have their story of youthful activism followed by the needs of careers followed by comfort. Jacques still thinks of making documentaries (he accompanies Susan to the meatworks for this purpose) but these days is really only making tv commercials. Susan, having worked her way from lighter fare now has become a foreign political correspondent for an American service but feels increasingly stagnant in the role. In the accounts given by the meat workers we see them as workers on the lines and at the machines working as described. The experience of the occupation at the factory doesn't so much radicalise them as remind them of what they left in the wake of the massive action four years before, right down to questions they have about their marriage.

Agreeing to separate, he helms another ad while she goes to write a piece from a supermarket. In the second extraordinary setpiece of the film the camera again sideways tracks back and forth, this time from behind the checkouts at the shop. Customers load the conveyor belts with masses of products as a man with a table of red covered paperbacks preaches revolution with the French Communist Party. At first he could be mistaken for a radical actor but then he just seems like another hawker like someone with a tray of samples. While on one of the slow tracks we see a group of student-types running in along an aisle and begin undercutting the current of retail, first subverting the Communist bookseller and then persuading the shoppers that everything they load into their trolleys will be free. It looks situationist like the ones in May '68 but it also looks organised. It's not on the factory floor and it's far from the campuses, it looks and feels like action in real life. The gendarmes turn up with their shields and clubs because they do that but now it's after the knowledge that this can happen.

To avoid a charge of political naivete, we then return to Jacques and Susan who meet up again at a cafe, a turn with reversed roles each, who we are told agree to try and work things out without false ideals but real cooperation. In the end we are given the gaudy Godardian title: THIS IN AN ACCOUNT FOR THOSE WHO DIDN'T MAKE ONE.

How does it look in 2022? Well, apart from needing to go Google May '68, fresher viewers might well recognise the same need for a return to values that uphold the collective good. You don't need the flags or the uniforms but you do need to bring your voice and mix it in. Yes, I'm an auld lefty of decades' standing. This film is difficult to find and more difficult to get through if you are used to the faster fare in cinemas and streamers but, if you do come upon it, try it. Some of the characters preach but the film doesn't, all it says is think about it.


Viewing notes: I saw this on my old Criterion DVD and it's in a great need of an upgrade. I was surprised at the subpar video quality for something from that label but there it was. Checking on Criterion's site I find that not only has there not even been a Blu-Ray but that the DVD has been deleted from the catalogue. This doesn't mean that the film is no longer available but that Criterion no longer has a licence to release it. Just checked , there's a UK Blu-Ray.

Saturday, December 24, 2022

THE OLD DARK HOUSE @ 90

It's a dark and stormy night*. A car is making its way through the torrents. It stops and the man and woman in the front seat argue about where they are and complain about how horrible it is to be wet, cold and lost in the middle of the universe. In the back seat, sleeping off several too many is Mr Penderel, a veteran of the Great War who matches his formless life with wit rather than action. The couple, Phillip and Margaret Waverton don't take kindly to Penderel's teasing jibes and, for the moment, nor do we. We just want them to find their way and find happiness. However, we will soon depend on Penderel's way with quips.

Narrowly avoiding a mudslide, the party drive on and stop at the first place they find, a large dark mansion with yet some light in the window. They knock at the door. It is answered by a hulking bearded butler with a scarred face who groans incomprehensibly ("not even Welsh ought to sound like that." says Penderel). 

Inside the trio are met by Fem, Mr Horace Fem, a nervous and fragile householder whose bitterness is almost spat out like stale tobacco. They are joined by his sister Rebecca, owner of the house, of ancient religion, deaf as a post and unwelcoming. The storm is crashing around them. Morgan the butler, is a drinker and a bad one. Something is going on upstairs. It's going to be a long night

J.B. Priestly's gallows-humoured drawing room horror tale could not have been better served by the circumstances of its production. James Whale brings his committed eye to the world he is building and never passes up an opportunity for a visual gag when it fits. You might see a clip and think it's a ricketty old movie but give it its first act and you will want to be in there with them. 

On that, the other great talent Whale possessed was his nurture of performance. Raymond Massey is content to be a called-upon action man but proves why he should be married to the urbane Gloria Stuart. Charles Laughton's golden hearted industrialist oaf has charm enough to make us believe that a grown up before her time chorus girl like Lillian Bond would be partying with him. Earnest Thesiger and Eva Moore as the ancient Fems are nervous and blustering by turns. Melvyn Douglas shows us a physical charm that matches his constant wit and renders it credible. Boris Karloff is relishing the opportunity to create another figure of terror without a word after Frankenstein.

Even when it turns blatantly unsubtle this film's tightrope walk between horror and comedy makes that work. When Rebecca is haranguing Margaret about sin with a tale of her own sister's violent death she is seen in a mirror distorted to monstrosity. A moment later when Margaret catches sight of herself in the same mirror she is suddenly as grotesque. When Morgan answers the trio at the door with an elongated groan, Melvyn Douglas takes a moment to turn to the others to say, "not even Welsh ought to sound like that."

The origins of this film were not a play as was so often the case (even the 1931 Dracula was based on a stage rendition) but a novel. Priestley's own wit and love of horror world building are brought into cinematic life so well we who have read the text might mis-remember a scene from the film being in the book (as I did, no spoilers). Raymond Massey's character of Phillip Waverton seems form fit for the life of a middle class early 20th century man but he also experiences a kind of alienation to the extent that he is surprised when pedals and levers do what they are meant to when he uses them in his car. Massey adds this layer of bewilderment to his performance. It augments his will to action as though it has armed him to expect the unexpected. Lillian Bond might easily have been cast as a bimbo but her energetic intelligence prevents this. She is the perfect foil for the quippy Melvyn Douglas and their scene towards the close of the second act is warmly adult, the point where their wit only adds sweetness to their self-surprising sincerity.

And that's the thing that keeps bringing me back to this durable favourite, it's not a horror comedy that's really just a comedy with campy monsters and winking fourth wall breaks, it's a human comedy that shows the creepy effects of lives lived through poor decisions and the at least hopeful results of ditching the judgement and working with what you find. The sense of this brings the novel forward by this film's insistence on depth. For all the fire and brimstone that take Rebecca to the brink of pantomime queendom we do learn what brought her there. Horace's dialogue that tries to manipulate Phillip to go upstairs without him feels like it happens in a different part of the house, not a new set, and one in which the character has walked quietly. 

I'll acknowledge the person who put me on to this movie that I could probably watch weekly as to me the memory is the same as someone recommending music that I've kept close ever since. My friend Warik Lawrance lived in an ex-industrial loft on Flinders Street when you could. It was big and airy so in winter he built a tent around a few couches which became the living room. He showed The Old Dark House to us on what I'm going to imagine was a dark and stormy night (regardless of what it actually was) and all of us who'd normally yap through movies shut up and watched as this gluey image with the sound of an old tv took us in the most fun ambush we could have had then and there. I will always have a copy of it to share.

Viewing notes: I watched my copy of the splendid Cohen Media Blu-Ray transfer with a deep greyscale image and clear audio. Magic. If a 4K comes out I'll get that, too.


*This phrase by Sir Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton is often cited as the worst opening sentence in literature but there's nothing wrong with it, being perfectly descriptive and atmospheric. The trouble with it is that it doesn't stop there but continues on for a country kilometre after. That first clause is fine: this is the worst opening sentence in literature: 

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

LOST HIGHWAY @ 25 (spoilers)

Fred Madison, a working musician, suspects his wife Renee is being unfaithful. His days' ick factor is swelling due to some creepy video tapes left for the couple with the morning papers. When they go to a party he is approached by a weird looking man who hooks him into a mind bending trick of appearing to be in two places at once (the other place is inside Fred's house). The last tape he sees ends in murder which lands him on death row. One night after a painful looking metamorphosis, he wakes as someone else who, having no current charges against him, is set free.

Pete Dayton, fresh from his strange and barely recalled transition, resumes his life as a cool mechanic with a rock star sex life and now constant surveillance attention from a pair of detectives. Pete's favourite customer comes in one day for a tune on his Merc which involves a wild ride that includes one of the funniest road rage rants you are ever likely to see. On another day that customer, local gangster Mr Eddy, comes in with his golden girl on display. She is an ultra textbook feminine version of Renee now called Alice. She and Pete lock eyes and it's on.

The rest is a kind of twisted neo-noir plot with guns, gangsters and infidelity. It is also about responsibility and guilt and retribution and the notion of a circle leading back to fate. The film was the first in what came to be known as the psychogenic fugue trilogy (Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire followed) by which a character's need to flee the scene of guilt or degradation was so powerful that they willed themselves into a new reality. Callbacks and crossovers between the Fred and Pete worlds abound and the sense of the overall arc being a circle grows with each viewing.

When I first saw this in 1997 it was already quite well established in my mind. I'd read a fair bit in things like Sight and Sound and online and a long piece in Premiere by David Foster Wallace. They didn't spoil the film or Barry Gifford's story but the fugue trope was well out of the bag before the lights went down in the Nova when I tore open the plastic of my choctop.

While I was wowed by the whole experience, it's an intense Lynchian entry, I left feeling emptied rather than filled, enervated. I understood the structure and appreciated the craft of the execution but ... I'll just repeat what a person on one of the newsgroups I frequented wrote: It's a cold film about a bad man. It's very hard to feel intimate with Lost Highway just as Blue Velvet or even the bizarre world of Eraserhead can offer warmth. It wasn't until much later that I began to return to it as though it was an unresolved problem. And watch after rewatch I only felt more familiar with it, not more comprehending of it.

I'd read many good, lucid ideas about it online in the great days of Usenet and discussions I had of the more searching kind were helpful in building a picture of what the characters were experiencing. There was a circularity I found pleasing as it allowed starting with either Pete or Fred as the bardo, reincarnation, fugue trigger rolled on, repeating endlessly. But it doesn't do that. The suggestion of the final moments is that the process is neither finishing nor moving levels but simply rebooting. Perhaps that was it all along: there was neither redemption nor clear punishment who was physically attempting to outrun both. Fred/Pete was forever in a loop. Any suggestion that he might break out of it is just projection by the viewer. 

Lynch and Gifford only show us a bad young man and a bad mature one making bad decisions. I don't buy that the Alice/Renee are figures of downfall or temptation: is Renee really to blame if the increasingly high strung Fred has become unlovable (assuming she's even having the affair)? Alice isn't holding a gun to Pete's head (though one was held to hers earlier). The chill of the line, "you'll never have me," comes not from Alice/Renee's coldness as much as from Fred/Pete's bewilderment at not transforming into local gods by their risk or paranoia. Fred's jealousy of Andy becomes Mr Eddy's of  Pete. Those switches are essential to understanding this piece as they prevent the expectation of an easy resolution. It's not just a film noir Freaky Friday, Fred's escape makes him the prey of a far more powerful version of himself in the Pete Dayton life. Andy's higher social clout contributes to Fred's sense of besiegement.

I have warmed a little to Bill Pullman's thankless performance over the years. It's a committed and courageous one for the still emerging actor that he was. While still young enough to present a trim professional in control of his life his increasingly unsexy presence that all but he know, keeps him at arm's length from all but the most worryingly identifying viewer. He is the bad guy in his own story. While his evident power has increased (from the absorption of Pete?) it has only made his bleak badness a little more lithe and leather clad. Balthazar Getty fares better from the get go as the cool young grease monkey ready for the best and fastest of the world. If he is as bad as Fred we might find ourselves using the filter of his youth to offer forgiveness. Getty is all winks, chewing gum and cool sexy phone voice, lithe and ready. Even under threat of a mob hit he falls into an action mode that hisses with animal magnetism.

A note here must be made about Robert Blake's Mystery Man. His white faced, eyebrowless severity, his tricks and that incising stare gave Lynch another unerasable bad guy. Blake himself got rid of the brows and put the greasepaint on. Did he recognise himself in the intense character the way Dennis Hopper said he had to play Frank in Blue Velvet because he was Frank? Robert Loggia's gangster is tough enough but he is earthly and at least understandable. Mystery Man with his unsettling insistence on having met Fred and how he speaks to Pete with such familiarity remind us that Fred has already said he prefers to remember things his own way, not necessarily the way they happened. Mystery Man is interdimensional, a cosmic standover boy, waiting around the corner of every escape. Unless you count the baby, the absence of a baddie from Eraserhead strikes me as why so many people consider it over-weird or even just boring: there's no engine to the events (no, the guy with the wrench isn't driving anything, he's just pulling a lever). When you have Blake's creation of this figure, a meta hit man, repeated viewings of Lost Highway make you bring yourself up that you shouldn't feel used to him but that's what happens and it only feels bad afterwards.

And then there is Patricia Arquette. As Renee she is an L.A. socialite beset with creeping boredom. In ankle-length black satin and a fringed mane that would seat her comfortably beside the femmes fatale of noir. She appears ornamental in the high-design house she shares with Fred which adds to the sense of breathless stasis that her days have become. The only time we see her animated is at the pool party in the company of anyone but Fred. At home she is back in storage. The sex she has with Fred is so ungiving and loveless she might as well be the inflatable that her husband appears to demand she be. Arquette gives us only a little more than her character gives Fred. However, she suffers, and not just from boredom.

As Alice, Arquette is so light and silky that she seems designed by a retail catalogue editor. Of the two she is the hardest and most ruthlessly ambitious and is far readier to manipulate. But the story plays fair about this. Remember that gun to the head? There's no bedrock loyalty she has with Mr Eddy. As it happens, she's been planning for the opportunity to present itself. That it was Pete, escaping from Fred or Fred who just couldn't get the love that his schmucky cry of unfair begs for. Alice isn't a queen bitch or really that much of a femme fatale, she's an escapee. Arquette's performance keeps this tightly under the ice queen face until the line that should tell Fred and/or Pete why they need to give up, the pacing of the syllables and the front and centre place in the soundmix present it like a ceremonial mace: "You'll never have me." All the fatal longing in the song on the audio (This Mortal Coil's version of Song to the Siren) becomes solid. And this is however many reiterations of Fred/Pete/whoever later and he still doesn't get it. As the cop cars are racing behind him on the dessert highway he begins to explode yet again into yet another manifestation, just the next station along the eternal futility of one who will not know.

I know, this is going on and on, but I'll finish with something more personal. When we change our minds about cultural artefacts it's because time has added something to ourselves in the interim. The movie is the same one I was initially cold on. A few years back now, a flatmate of mine was going through what he feared was a breakup. He told me about the other guy who was hovering around in the shadows and how his avowed love was drifting. He was slowly imploding as he sipped beer at the pub we'd gone to. He said through hard restrained pain: "what about loyalty?" 

I didn't say what I wanted there and then as he was so close to collapse it might have ruined him but I noted it and brought it up later. It was a life lesson that had taken me too long to learn and if he'd caught me with his crisis only a few years earlier I might have just echoed everything he was snarling about in solidarity. But all I could think about (that I wasn't saying) was to ask him what he was doing to make himself attractive, to keep himself at something like the value he was giving to the relationship at the start. He was using the benefits of the thing like consumables and blaming the shop staff for running out of stock. He eventually was ready to hear that (well, not as callously put) and went off to do a lot of thinking about the many things he had been avoiding. I haven't seen or spoken with him at all for years but I gather he's closer to being ok than he was which is the best I can say.

My point is that while I can wrap that anecdote up in a bow I know, as I type this, that I can still dispense advice more easily than follow it at times. These days that amounts to little but given the kind of stakes that promise the rewards that this figure is chasing I have far less of a problem finding the empathy on screen here. That it isn't always for Fred or Pete and now more likely be for Renee or Alice is telling as well. When Mr Eddy grins despite a fatal wounding, looks at himself in the video, dying, he still manages to reach Fred: "You and me, mister, we can really out-ugly them sumbitches!"

Lost Highway is a poem of denial which I've finally got.


Viewing notes: I'd put this one off for most of the year as I was waiting for Criterion's extraordinary 4K presentation which is the deepest looking and most immersive sounding I've experienced since first seeing it at the Kino twenty-five years ago. 

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

1982@40: BLADE RUNNER (spoilers)

"Lemme tell you about my mother." Kowalski murmurs that before he blasts Agent Holden into the next room. That's at the end of a tense interrogation meant to test Kowalski's humanity. He knows he's flunking and the mother question shoves him in a corner. Across town retired Blade Runner Deckard gets hauled away from his dumplings and noodles for a re-hiring chat with his old boss at headquarters. A small group of lethal replicants have illegally re-entered the atmosphere and need dispatching. Deckard finds himself at the source point of androids, meeting the great Mr Tyrell himself and does the Voigt Komp routine with Tyrell's niece. She's a clanker. As these threads approach each other, winding and weaving, Deckard won't just be hunting down bad robots, he'll be wondering about his own nature, if that's what it's called.

Ridley Scott's classic neo-noir sci-fi set the pallet and the design for the genre to come for over a decade, building a splashy neon city whose vintage grandeur is loosening brick by brick from the endless rain of climate change and whose people seem to swarm like insects. He could have died with that achievement but then he'd already made Lucas' dirty space grittier with workaday talk and penalty rates in Alien. Blade Runner is a marvel of world building.

Well, the screen life is set at a near future far short of the setting (2019), where an imagined interface of mumbled commands gets results that a few mouse clicks or wheels still get faster. It's not that bad a job, though, considering how they scaled the devices down and integrated them into the domestic decor when the computers that aided the production still filled rooms. Also, if you think of how advanced the computers in the original Star Trek look by comparison with the ones from the '60s you're seeing a wilful leap from the old tape spool, valves and incandescent lights. They even got the floppy disc kind of right. In 1982, Ridley Scott was reeling all that back into the kind of machines we'd have to use, unglamourous, daily, functional. It's a similar feat of the imagination it just looks a little more like the office than we feel comfortable with. 

It's the city at large that impresses, here. It spreads beyond the screen, as weathered as an old cliff face, with the teeming futility that any alpha replicant would wince at as soon as see. There are no attack ships on fire here, just cops and little people. But their purpose is not to move into a flat, they want to leap out of the four year constraint given them by factory workers as dull as anyone around them. Even the designer at the centre suffers from a formless ennui. Even here, at the centre of their genesis where a kindly and prematurely aged loner wastes his genius on physically making his own friends. There is a lot more depth to the meeting that Pris stages between herself and J.F. Sebastian; her own programming recognises vulnerabilities within him to manipulate his pain. She even seems to know that his recognition of this will not create resistance. Darryl Hannah glows as the standard pleasure model grown well more self aware and nuanced than her designers allowed for. We know she's a replicant but her ingenue facade is so charming we prefer to believe it.

Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty feels more like the cinema that was presenting Conan the Barbarian until the sadism that his own self-development has made comes out. He's as much a pragmatic torturer as Wagnerian hero which only makes him scarier. His lengthy showdown with Deckard takes the deluxe sci-fi tale here into the epic, to a point where Deckard cannot help but be haunted forever by it. Hauer famously suggested the last line of his dying monologue. It resonates with all of us. The closing line from the detective takes further down: "Too bad she won't live but then again who does?"

This is where my experiences bifurcate. In 1982, Blade Runner was a cuter film with a hard boiled narration and a nice ending with a glider and big open scenery. Since then the film has undergone a number of different cuts, all purporting to be definitive. For this article I watched the currently available Final Cut version on 4K. The practice of directors returning to their canonical works and bloating them out with cutting room goodness that would have better life as home video extras has been one of the trials of the technology and the market. In the main they end up like the longer cuts of Amadeus (purpose defeating), Apocalypse Now (boring) The Exorcist (failed grab at later currency). In the case of Blade Runner I prefer this one. Nothing drags, nothing cloys, it's just a deathless epic.

I've gone all this way with almost no mention of Harrison Ford at the centre of the narrative. Is there much to say? He is poised between finding such depth as he was able in the Star Wars cycle and then reducing himself to an action figure as Indy Jones and he was soon to take pride of place in the cinematic trophy room as a steroidal dad for us all. Here, at least, he was given a shot at a character penned by a visionary whose cinema had to be conjured by a reader. It is to Ford's, Scott's and the movie's once and future pride that Phillip K. Dick saw Ford as Deckard and recognised him:

"He has been more Deckard than I had imagined. It has been incredible. Deckard exists!"


Friday, December 16, 2022

THE MUMMY @ 90

Archaeologists open a case found in the tomb of a mummy which brings the executed undead to life. A half Egyptian half British society gal turns out to be the dead spit of the object of the Mummy's affections all those years ago. Will she fall for his thrall?

That's the basic plot of 1932's The Mummy which should be enough to make a tight and snappy horror flick. The opening scenes of the resurrection of Imhotep and the subsequent traumatising of the young archaeologist are pure mastery, worthy of anything in the early Universal horror canon. But from that point everything stodges down to the kind of drawing room horror that Todd Browning only just kept compelling in Dracula. 

There are exceptions to this including the famous shot of Boris Karloff staring out in his weird, ancient glory and the admittedly gripping finale. However, we are meant to maintain interest in the dusty dialogue of the professorial oldies as they try to nut out what is happening. Karloff's Ardeth Bey might have some compelling scenes of menace but is given almost no support for this until the crucial moments at the climax. Mostly, this film wastes its talent while apparently trying to fulfil the substance of the ... 

I was about to write stage play but recalled that this was an original screenplay meant for the cinema. It just plays like theatre in a way that live performance compels but screen presentation allows to sag. This is despite some impressive set design, good casting (including the pleasingly unusual beauty of Zita Johann and the dependable Karloff as the baddie). Enduring the grind of the pace of the talk heavy scenes we long for the romance between Helen and Frank to get infectious but there's too much haze from the speed blocks to allow it. The film runs for under eighty minutes but feels like two hours.

Director Karl Freund was no slouch. He'd lensed Dracula with Todd Browing and his cinematographer rap sheet is as long as your arm. The Mummy was his second directorial performance and his first with sound. His career as a director continued for decades and included episodes of the tv classic comedy I love Lucy. But those things happened long after this which continues to feel like a film maker who does not grasp what he has been given. In general I dislike comparisions and what ifs but I kept wondering how much more stable mate James Whale might have made of this material. His drawing room horror comedy The Old Dark House shares a vintage with this and is a film I could watch weekly.

When younger folk ask me for recommendations for cinema of earlier eras I prefer to customise my advice to their concerns over throwing them a rigid top ten. People interested in older action thrillers are going to be bored lifeless by Citizen Kane. Everyone who sees it is dazzled by The Cabinet of Dr Caligari but many would find the silent classic tough going when they want dialogue. I would recommend The Mummy as a secondary venture in cases where Frankenstein or Dracula have worked for them. But even that would come with the caution that there was neither Browning's silent movie experience and carny spirit nor Whale's mix of deep visuals and what never failed on stage, but instead a walk through of a creative problem that ended with what worked and what didn't; the film that had to be made to show how it could have been improved. 

Sunday, December 11, 2022

1972 @ 50: CABARET (some spoilers)

After a series of white on black deco titles we open on what looks like a reflection in a beaten metal surface. An audience hubbub and a slowly rising roll on the snare drum as the black and white image takes on colour. We move across the surface to a distorted face in heavy makeup. Pulling back we see it's the MC of the Kit Kat Club with an infectious grin. He welcomes the audience in several tongues as a strident jazz age piano vamp starts under his voice. "Leave your troubles behind," his piercing voice offers. "Here, everything is beautiful. Even the orchestra is beautiful." Behind him a band of women in silhouette breaks into a brisk ragtime. And there we are in Berlin at the crumbling end of the Weimar Republic, sitting at the cabaret for some risque fun, surrounded by figures straight out of Otto Dix or Georg Grosz. So, drink your sekt and watch the show, the bad stuff outside can wait. This story is how that bad stuff got through the door and came to stay.

As singing star Sally Bowles takes the stage among the heavily choreographed dollfaced dancers we also see young Brian Roberts slight from the train and breeze through the streets in search of cheap accommodation so he can take his Cambridge studies further still. These two meet at her rooming house when they stumble through some misdirected niceties and he learns the drill of the house and goes on a tour. His room is poky and grey but it's across the hall from hers and her sparkling life force. He takes it.

She shows him how Berlin works in the streets and at the club and we get a lot of wicked wit from the stage in the form of expert moves, arch lyrics and acts that tell the times with the distilled accuracy of burlesque. Brian takes on students who bring their own subplot and both he and Sally are swept up by omni-hungry aristocrat Maximillian whose house and estate in the country is only outsized by his appetites. He's fun, they're fun, and everything empties like a bottle of Heinkel Trocken. Their last encounter reminds us that Maximillian has figured that once the increasingly visible Nazis on the streets will erase the communists only to be erased by the remaining decent folk like him. They stop at a country pub where a Hitler Youth boy sings the only song in the musical that takes place away from the Kit Kat Club. Tomorrow Belongs to Me starts out all nature and Julie Andrews until its symbols of ancient rights and reclaiming history stir up the crowd as they join in. It's the polar opposite of the Marsellaise scene in Casablanca. Young women, middle aged men, children, all take voice to a deafening chorus of impassioned shared hatred. If you aren't freezing in your seat you need help. The scene holds extraordinary power and it's strengthened by the returning shot of the ancient man who keeps his seat beside his beer who can only gaze into the light before him with a weariness that outweighs him.

From there it's a downhill roll as Sally and Brian declare a doomed marriage plan, English language students Fritz and Natalia commit to a union immeasurably more doomed, and the next version of the opening pan over the reflection in the metal, following the defiant last gasp of the title song, and we see that every other audience member's arm is ringed with a swastika armband. The exhilaration of the message of life as a cabaret is roughly contradicted by a symbol that tells us that it won't be sassy or funny or even much resembling humanity for many, many years.

I saw this as a late night movie on a commercial channel on the black and white tv of my student house in 1980 in Brisbane. Queensland was a corrupted state at the time and anyone who didn't buy into the monoculture was an easy (often visibly so) target for the attention of the worst of the populace and its politicised police force. This film's theme of snarky fun going on at the expense of the regime and how the stronger force from the top was not going to give in or forget opposition without drastic action, hit right home. In more ways than one Brisbane substituted for Berlin with very little effort. Tomorrow Belongs to Me was a kind of joke state anthem among opponents, a sour joke but sometimes that's all you can get. Seeing it again brought those years back for me and I was again struck by the tightness of the narrative and central concept of stage/offstage life and how the Nazi anthem breaks that scheme the way the Nazis themselves did for real.

The pallet has the rich tones of the cinema of the day and feels more European than American and will, almost by itself, remind the adventurous viewer of the look and feel of other continental callbacks to the past that was starting to free itself from grief and anger to be examined at the cinema. The Damned, Salon Kitty and so on live in the same colour realm.

Broadway maestro Bob Fosse's choreography is machine prefect but warmly sassy and perfected through cinematic angle choices and tight editing. He's a little less even when it comes to performances but then he doesn't always have the material. Marissa Berenson's third act confessional dialogue with Fritz Wepper feel stagey despite, in one case, taking place on the running board of a moving car. Berenson, a career model, was cast for her beauty and if her Cherman accent is more comedy sketch Sveeedish than Wepper's real one it is surrounded by such commitment to be politely overlooked.

Michael York was also being cast for looks first as at this point in his career he struggles to emote. In his case, though, this does come in handy as he is meant to be tight laced, mumblingly coy about his sexuality and barely capable of handling the slightest deviation from his expectations of normality. When Sally challenges him to a cathartic scream under the train tracks his attempt falls kilometres short of her larynx-tearing explosion. Is it a poor performance if most of it probably comes from the actor's own guardedness? Is that any less of a thing than overstated method acting? York ends up being one of the features of the film and a welcome presence for us as we'd rather have him than us deal with Sally.

Sally is a handful from the word go and if you were iffy about Liza Minelli's four on the floor assault of it then this is not the movie for you. Springing from the legacy of a famous and infamous mother into her own showbiz persona, Liza Minelli took every role up to this and beyond to slam a flag on every project. But she's not just playing big. Between her and Fosse she knows to ride the hyperbolic actory onslaught so that while it can be irritating that feels intentional and it is never quite pushed to fulsome. York's self conscious Englishness comes in handy here but Minelli is clearly working nuance. When Sally is discovered in dark disappointment after her father stood her up on a dinner reunion we understand the pain that the high flamboyance masks and when that returns on high with Maximillian in the picture we know that it will have to be called on at the end of the thrill. This is Minelli's film to lose and she never lets go of the lead.

Deserving of his own paragraph is Joel Grey who took his celebrated and award winning role as MC to the screen and immortalised himself by his turn. Entirely caked in greasepaint and highlighter, having no dialogue beyond his hectoring addresses to the audience, he speaks in song and dance and is bawdy, charming, conspiratorial, pathetic, and sometimes even frightening, and always magnetic. His presence survives one of the film's triumphs in the number If You Could See Her Through My Eyes. He sings as a dancer in a gorilla costume lopes in his arms. At first it's an ugly girl joke aimed straight into the audience's imagined bigotry but it pushes it right to the ends with the final line whose chill is delivered without accompaniment: "If you could see her through my eyes she wouldn't look Jewish at all." If there had been ambiguity about the club's attitude to the steadily infiltrating Fascism it is abandoned here. The performance goes from an uncomfortable joke to a slap in the face and it is Joel Grey's expert delivery that carries us through it. It might be Liza's show but it would collapse without him.

Cabaret continues to delight. Made with warmth that doesn't neglect precision and a world building that makes us want to walk its streets and get a table at that club, every night of the year. And that despite what we know (more than the characters) about what the loony right wingers in their boy scout uniforms were going to do to the world. So, do we still need reminding that the Nazis were bad guys? Look around.


PS - I am aware that the source material for the play and this film was a number of short stories written by Christopher Isherwood based on his own experiences but my concern was the film itself rather than the development of its text.

Viewing notes: I watched this on Warner Brothers stellar Blu-Ray with deep colour and an immersive 5.1 audio track. I would advise you to do the same if you can't find an anniversary cinema screening.

Tuesday, December 6, 2022

CASABLANCA @ 80

A montage lets us know that it's 1941 and the Nazis are getting crazy again but no one wants to play so they run in all directions except the bad one. Some of them find a place and settle but most end up somewhere like this place, remote, venal, politically uncertain, all those things that a refugee could really want. We open in a marketplace dominated by the newcomers who try to buy their passage to America and, guess what, it's a seller's world. Losing count of the deals and many faces of human aspiration, we are taken as rapidly through this undeclared Hunger Games of manners.

The opening of Casablanca is a wonder of choreography, so perfectly judged and finely crafted that even detail hound cinema students like me when I first saw it - who could confidently name the lens types Gregg Toland used for any given setup in Citizen Kane - let all that fall to the floor and just watched. 

There's plenty of expository dialogue but it's couched in the barb and the wink of the deal. All of life, such as it has become for these stateless people, is here in the noise of raw retail. We are not surprised when the earnest local warns the soft British tourists of the dangers of the locals as he picks their pockets. Then in a different location we witness the amiable reception of a visiting Nazi by the local police chief who makes it plain that local law and order is a process of pragmatism served up for the wit of the gendarmerie.

That night everyone goes to Rick's. The whimper-voiced Ugarte takes to Rick himself. Ugarte has things more valuable than money for Rick to caretake for a take while the deal matures. Goes bad. Around them a superficially more refined version of the stinky marketplace rolls on with ever more folly observed with wisecracks. We first think the worst and then the best of Rick by a deed following a lack of deed. Life in Casablanca suits him. It's everyone's problems not his.

And then she turns up. From a long delayed tale of a past that the war interrupted, she too has fled like everybody else and, of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she has walked into his. Ilsa, who is instantly recognised by Sam the piano man and who instantly recognises him and asks him to play that song about time going by. Time stops, just for a little, as the suave melody rises though the cigarette haze and into the ears of Rick who gets up to rage at Sam until he gets there and sees her. The world stops. It's really her. Married, actually. To the famous fugitive freedom fighter. Everything feels too strong and the night is still blushingly young.

Michael Curtiz' movie has come down the decades more beloved than Kane, more grown up than Wonderful Life, easier on the attention span than Potemkin. An oldie that the youngest love, enamoured of both cynics and romantics ... its really easy to do this. But it's also easy to see why this one draws its masses of platitudes and it has less to do with expert or virtuous film making. There are creaks here and corndogs there all over the shop that wouldn't pass the cut in noirs made for half the cost but the point is not in the lap dissolves or the often forced goodness of the messianic Lazlo who seems essential for the whole world's sake to clear it of nazis.

It is in the central love story between Rick and Ilsa and it is in the complications that make that story impossible or at the worst, defeatingly cruel. For the audiences of 1942 the high stakes would put the prospect of a show of humaneness at some distance behind the satisfaction of a tight struggle and punishing blow to the black hats. But we just don't feel that as we watch, we want the goodness more than anything and we want, having become acquainted with their vulnerability, all the refugees to rest in real homes. And when the barking nazi anthem gets drowned out by the rest of the world singing La Marsellaise we struggle to breathe for the intensity of it. And we see the kind of nobility that we never expect of our politics rise to triumph. And by all the circles of hell we wish we lived in such a world ourselves.

If only a Rick made of a Humphrey Bogart at his hard boiled peak could stand amongst us. If we had the example of the insanely photogenic Ingrid Bergman to show us that the toughest intellect can be no match for the heart's tug o' war. Well, we've all already met the Chief Louis Renault, whose way with a silky barb would stay with us after we shot him for his eelish self-service. But that's the thing, the most romantic terms fall off these characters as, for all the romance of their situations, they do act as they might if real, or at least how we wish we ourselves would act.

The quote section for this one over at the IMDB goes for screens, including almost all the dialogue. It's a talky film. But as witty as it gets (very) the wit itself is measured and appropriately assigned. Rick's deadpan wisecracks are rougher than Louis' Wildean bon mots. Isla's earnestness forbids jokes but her warmth comes through and in the midst of her gravity she manages the genuine eroticism of: "Kiss me as if it were for the last time."

It works because it takes no imagination to link the hill of beans problems Rick mentions and those of the wider world racked by a Hitler to the issues of any time since its release deep in the middle of the war years. It works because it makes us feel as good as we do when we understand that the grownups recognise the crap we're going through and manage to croak out something perfectly formed and healing. When I first saw it, in the days of old movies on prime time on the commercial channels and themed movie marathons that went from midnight to dawn, offering an education supplement I will never cease to be thankful for, in a Brisbane pressed down by a party political police force as much as it was by the humidity. And I thrilled and understood. The next morning brought the same Bjelke Brisbane in through the windows but I had a new song to whistle on the way to the busstop.


Friday, December 2, 2022

Review: BONES AND ALL

Young Maren is starting to fit into the new high school enough to get invited to a sleepover. She begs off, saying her father, saying that he has issues with that kind of stuff. Issues: when she goes to bed she sneaks a screwdriver into her room and her dad latches her in. She gets out, goes to the sleepover and commits an atrocity which she flees. Dad's seen this before, so when Maren bangs on the door with a bloody mouth Dad angrily shouts that they have three minutes. At the next town, Maren wakes alone with a cassette and a wad of bills, the world waits to use or be used by her. What she finds, without significant spoilage, is that there are more people like her who go by smell to tell each other apart from the normals. And this is how Maren finds love.

Luca Guadagnino has a lot to make up for with me after his pointless remake of Suspiria (twice as long and half as good as the original) but the originality of this one drew me to it. And I was neither disappointed nor smitten with it. Though, from the Suspiria debacle, I already knew that the director seemed to think that horror meant excessive gore and would happily set it up without the understanding that shock and horror are distinct and not mutually dependent. So, I went in with the trepidation that he would try so hard that he would achieve disgust without dread or fear, to play it too hard. When I bought my ticket at the Nova, the woman who sold it to me pointed to a card stand which bore a warning about the violence and we had a brief conversation about being wary of the gore. Like her, I had dithered over seeing it.

After I got home from the screening I checked to see if the Australian release was cut but apparently not. It has been released as an MA 15+ here where it's 18 or R in the UK and US. Same running time and, reading the content advisory notes at IMDB, I can safely say I saw everything described. And yet reviewers I trust (at least to their response to issues like gore) were really gunning it about the gore and disturbing moments.

There is gore and plenty of worrisome passages between characters but I've seen far more intensity in those areas in many other films. Maybe I'm just jaded but, if you were tempted by this one yet worried about the nasty stuff, it's really not all that. You'll see far worse in an old Fulci film.

The gore, however, is not the point or, more accurately, not the real focus here. That is taken by the development and growing depth of the central duo. Maren and Lee are served by writing that feels observant and restrained. I was reminded, in a positive way, of Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen in Badlands, a film that this strongly resembles for its light touch and patient craft in the examination of attraction. On that notion, the casting is a dream for this effect as Taylor Russell delivers a flawed and confused young woman gripping anything that might add meaning to her condition and a world that doesn't declare rules for anyone of her needs to live within it. Young adult of the times, Timothee Chalamet uses his effortless beauty to endear us to his rough southern boy who is surprised to draw tenderness from his attraction to Maren. These are a pair of violent cannibals but damn me if I don't love them as they go.

Zen master of cinematic restraint, Mark Rylance, excels in the role of the veteran "eater" who develops an unhealthy lust for Maren (even within this context). He displays the motions of charm but his dead-eyed hunger gives us the creeps at sight of him. It's possibly Rylance's most powerful movie role and puts him beside other whackos like Blue Velvet's Frank, Wild at Heart's Bobby Peru and Hannibal Lecter (my god would he make a good Hannibal!). When he shows up, we squirm and that's the way the nature of this film intended it. He is the one who enlightens Maren and us of the ways of the eaters in tones avuncular and terrifying.

In addition to the sourced British post punk and popcorn rock of the '80s we are treated to a subtly constructed acoustic and synthesised wash which glues it together and gives voice to the beauty of the landscapes (of which many and lush) and leaves us helpless for the violence when it approaches.

While there are some directors I think I'll never reconcile with (hi, Wes Anderson) I will admit defeat against the surprising charms of Luca Guadagnino for this outing. He really didn't go the Gaspar Noe route and beat us senseless with gore. He added to the classic Badlands without trying to hijack it for his own purposes (Suspiria). And he ended up making a substantial and enjoyable film.