Sometimes you just have to lay your cards on the table. I don't rate David Hare. I regret the fact that, seemingly forever, he has been allowed to use the National's main stages as his personal salon. His work seems mediocre and parochial, whilst aspiring to be subtle and politically sophisticated. The dialogue tends to stutter off the page, and the characters are like something created by a committee. And, besides his technical weaknesses as a playwright, something which the scale of his intent allows him to gloss over, it is hard to stomach the way in which he seems to have taken it upon himself to pretend to be a kind of moral compass of society, a society which, the more he claims to represent it, the further he seems to be from it.
Years ago, however, I confess, I saw the film of his play, Wetherby (I think it was), whilst in York. And the film registered. There was a dinner party scene where a stranger, as I remember it, started talking about reclaiming words, and then listed some of them. Words like faith or politics or all that. There was something vaguely Nietzschean about all this, and at the time, as a good 20 year old, I enjoyed my Nietzsche.
All of this springs to mind after seeing Campbell's play. Which also explores middle class mores, in a rural setting, round a dinner table, as did Wetherby. The play details the conflict between a radical art historian and her two sons, who still believe themselves to be suffering from the neglect she showed them as children. The play uses the unities of time, place and action fairly rigourously and to good effect. Campbell's dialogue is witty and he isn't scared to throw surprises into the characterisation, with a blond American christian, a flamboyant elderly gay and a soap star blended into the family mix. It takes a bold dramatic turn in the third scene, where the ensemble approach is thrown away with the scene consisting of a dialogue between the mother and her second, troubled son, who arrives and leaves in the middle of the night. The last act becomes somewhat stagey, as characters enter and exit in order to facilitate a succession of closing moments, not of all which feel strictly necessary, and the conversion of the American christian from ditzy laughing stock to moral touchstone seems a little off kilter. However, these are caveats and all in all, the piece marks out its intention to explore the consequences of our political attitudes or non-attitudes effectively, using the generational divide to explore the differences between a current apoliticised culture and the fabled, more radical sixties.
In other words, Campbell is a writer prepared to take a standpoint on the state of our moral-political consciousness, and with enough skill to convince an audience that his standpoint is worth paying attention to. Which is where the comparison with Hare becomes apposite. Given my stated opinions about Hare, and my enjoyment of Apologia, I'm obviously inclined to say that I hope this doesn't prove to be the Wetherby within Campbell's career. There are points of comparison between the two writers (and god knows we need a new Hare to replace the old one as soon as we can find one), but there does seem, for now, to be one very clear difference. Hare suffers from a chronic tendency to take himself too seriously (a not uncommon occurrence with British writers who achieve success in the world of letters). This leads to a sense of humour bypass, which means the humour he tries to inject is stilted and contrived. In Apologia, in contrast, Campbell clearly relishes his ability to use humour as an effective tool to engage the audience. Whilst the third scene showcases his capacity for gripping drama, the rest of the play is suffused with wit in its dialogue and characterisation. Humour, as a good dramatist knows, works against pretension, and Campbell's use of humour holds out the promise that he won't turn into the next Hare. And that an equally jaundiced critic, 20 years down the line, won't be using him as an example to scare a writer from the next generation who emerges with the rare vision and talent to write engaging politicised theatre.
Monday, 6 July 2009
Saturday, 4 July 2009
montano [enrique vila-matas]
My father used to work for a firm called Monsanto. I am tempted to begin an account of my experiences with regard to Montano thus, and indeed I find myself succumbing to temptation. My father was called Jean Paul Sartre and he was also my uncle. He was their in-house writer and his journal only came into my hands after his death. In which I discovered that he, Sartre, wasn't my father after all, he was just pretending to be my father. Or I was pretending to be his son. The distinction isn't clear. Or rather it doesn't always make sense, as I discovered when we were both in Buenos Aires for a while, without realising it, and I saw him crossing the road and called out to him and then chased after him and when I caught up with him he had become Cortazar, and he denied all knowledge of me, and told me that just because I thought he was part of my narrative it didn't mean that he necessarily was.
Or something like that. And repeat. I confess, speaking as neither my father nor as Cortazar nor as either of the Thomas', Pynchon or Bernard, that I found it hard, taxing, at times, to get my head around the book written by Enrique Vila-Matas which is known as Montano. In contrast to the concision of Bartleby, this is a novel that gyrates around itself in ever increasing circles, and they have a way of making the reader dizzy. In trying to write about the truth; or write the truth; or see which truths the truth will allow him to tell, Vila-Matos leads himself and his readership on a merry dance, waltzing along with Walser, and Musil and Kafka and Dickinson, and plenty more besides. In the end, rather than trying to make sense of the ever charming narrator's narrative, you just have to go with it, and trust that as he (I wanted to write 'or she?' but realise that if there's one thing we know for sure about this deceptive/ deceitful narrator it's that he is a he) sorts out his marriage and his literature sickness and his romantic tendencies, we, his readership, will pick up nuggets along the way which will be worth the treasuring.
And of course, Vila-Matos being the bibliophile he is, we do. As to what it all means, without wanting to sound malevolently Anglo-Saxon, search me guv, but there's fruit on the trees to be plucked, nurtured by the writer's fair hand. Two quotations from Montaigne towards the book's conclusion struck me as amongst the finest things you can read, and in a sense Vila-Matas is the writer as guide, shepherding his flock through the pastures of literature, saying don't worry about the terrain underfoot, just look at the views; and don't be scared of strangers. Even if they do turn out to be your father. Because in the Vila-Matos world of literature, everyone's your parent or your child. And he's probably got a point.
Or something like that. And repeat. I confess, speaking as neither my father nor as Cortazar nor as either of the Thomas', Pynchon or Bernard, that I found it hard, taxing, at times, to get my head around the book written by Enrique Vila-Matas which is known as Montano. In contrast to the concision of Bartleby, this is a novel that gyrates around itself in ever increasing circles, and they have a way of making the reader dizzy. In trying to write about the truth; or write the truth; or see which truths the truth will allow him to tell, Vila-Matos leads himself and his readership on a merry dance, waltzing along with Walser, and Musil and Kafka and Dickinson, and plenty more besides. In the end, rather than trying to make sense of the ever charming narrator's narrative, you just have to go with it, and trust that as he (I wanted to write 'or she?' but realise that if there's one thing we know for sure about this deceptive/ deceitful narrator it's that he is a he) sorts out his marriage and his literature sickness and his romantic tendencies, we, his readership, will pick up nuggets along the way which will be worth the treasuring.
And of course, Vila-Matos being the bibliophile he is, we do. As to what it all means, without wanting to sound malevolently Anglo-Saxon, search me guv, but there's fruit on the trees to be plucked, nurtured by the writer's fair hand. Two quotations from Montaigne towards the book's conclusion struck me as amongst the finest things you can read, and in a sense Vila-Matas is the writer as guide, shepherding his flock through the pastures of literature, saying don't worry about the terrain underfoot, just look at the views; and don't be scared of strangers. Even if they do turn out to be your father. Because in the Vila-Matos world of literature, everyone's your parent or your child. And he's probably got a point.
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
tree of smoke [denis johnson]
Tree of Smoke is an epic Vietnam novel which was published in 2007. Straightaway, in that one sentence, there's a great big Why forming. Or several. Why another Vietnam novel? And why now?
The novel appears to be impeccably researched and assiduously structured. It covers the years 1963-70, with a coda set in 1983. Each year has its own chapter. The book doesn't reach Vietnam until 1965, having started in the Philippines, the States, and other parts of South East Asia. There is a cast of about half a dozen characters, most of whom are connected in some way to the mythical 'Colonel', who is the uncle of the man who might be the main protagonist, Skip Sands. The Colonel has a Kurtzian approach to the war, believing that the constrictions imposed by bureaucracy and the rules of engagement will lead to defeat. He sets up his own mini-kingdom near the front line, which is attacked during the Tet Offensive. Eventually the Colonel's enemies within the CIA get the better of him. However, dynamic though his story sounds, it's but a part of the tale, and much of the attention focuses on Skip, who spends most of the war hidden away in an old French villa, reading and translating the books which the doctor who used to live there left behind. One of the passages he translates is by Artaud, the reference acting like a small hinge opening a door onto Johnson's underlying poetic ambitions.
Because for all the keenly noted detail, and the sense of place which is conjured up, the book often feels as though its only tangentially concerned with the Vietnam war. It's actually something of a character study, as half a dozen personalities including a North Vietnamese spy, an aid worker, and an infantryman, explore their minds against the backdrop of war's chaos. These characters are constantly reaching for philosophical truths to guide them through the chaos, truths which might offer some reason for soldiering on within a grubby world, truths that might help them maintain a faith in idealism, or God, or their country. Nowhere is this clearer than in the 80s coda when Storm, one of the more marginal characters up to now, ends his search for the colonel by participating in what looks like becoming a savage kind of sacrificial ritual. There's a constant search going on for meaning, a search that might be military, or might be studious, or might be self-sacrificing, or might just be venal.
Vietnam itself acts as the epic backdrop for these human struggles. The book feels like it's been unashamedly written in the shadow of all the Vietnam literature and movies that have gone before it, from Despatches to Apocalypse Now. However, there are also occasional hints of the other US wars being waged right now, as when a reference to capturing 'hearts and minds' leaps out of the text. The tree of smoke itself refers to a variety of things, including the cloud formed by an atomic bomb. Johnson might be intimating with these references and allusions that the US has and always will be a bellicose nation, something that those who come in contact with it need to understand; a state of being which has philosophical implications, shaping the way in which we think and act.
Or maybe this is a vague and unhelpful reading. However, Johnson's text, with its arcane poetics, appears to be inviting or provoking analysis: the very title itself, with its biblical connotations, seems to beseech interpretation. It's a book which self-consciously lays out the many levels it can be read on: part wartime saga; part lost book of the old testament; part poetic exegesis of the state of the writer's nation.
The novel appears to be impeccably researched and assiduously structured. It covers the years 1963-70, with a coda set in 1983. Each year has its own chapter. The book doesn't reach Vietnam until 1965, having started in the Philippines, the States, and other parts of South East Asia. There is a cast of about half a dozen characters, most of whom are connected in some way to the mythical 'Colonel', who is the uncle of the man who might be the main protagonist, Skip Sands. The Colonel has a Kurtzian approach to the war, believing that the constrictions imposed by bureaucracy and the rules of engagement will lead to defeat. He sets up his own mini-kingdom near the front line, which is attacked during the Tet Offensive. Eventually the Colonel's enemies within the CIA get the better of him. However, dynamic though his story sounds, it's but a part of the tale, and much of the attention focuses on Skip, who spends most of the war hidden away in an old French villa, reading and translating the books which the doctor who used to live there left behind. One of the passages he translates is by Artaud, the reference acting like a small hinge opening a door onto Johnson's underlying poetic ambitions.
Because for all the keenly noted detail, and the sense of place which is conjured up, the book often feels as though its only tangentially concerned with the Vietnam war. It's actually something of a character study, as half a dozen personalities including a North Vietnamese spy, an aid worker, and an infantryman, explore their minds against the backdrop of war's chaos. These characters are constantly reaching for philosophical truths to guide them through the chaos, truths which might offer some reason for soldiering on within a grubby world, truths that might help them maintain a faith in idealism, or God, or their country. Nowhere is this clearer than in the 80s coda when Storm, one of the more marginal characters up to now, ends his search for the colonel by participating in what looks like becoming a savage kind of sacrificial ritual. There's a constant search going on for meaning, a search that might be military, or might be studious, or might be self-sacrificing, or might just be venal.
Vietnam itself acts as the epic backdrop for these human struggles. The book feels like it's been unashamedly written in the shadow of all the Vietnam literature and movies that have gone before it, from Despatches to Apocalypse Now. However, there are also occasional hints of the other US wars being waged right now, as when a reference to capturing 'hearts and minds' leaps out of the text. The tree of smoke itself refers to a variety of things, including the cloud formed by an atomic bomb. Johnson might be intimating with these references and allusions that the US has and always will be a bellicose nation, something that those who come in contact with it need to understand; a state of being which has philosophical implications, shaping the way in which we think and act.
Or maybe this is a vague and unhelpful reading. However, Johnson's text, with its arcane poetics, appears to be inviting or provoking analysis: the very title itself, with its biblical connotations, seems to beseech interpretation. It's a book which self-consciously lays out the many levels it can be read on: part wartime saga; part lost book of the old testament; part poetic exegesis of the state of the writer's nation.
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
accident (d. losey, w. pinter)
I mooted the idea of seeing Accident to a few people, but got no takers. There was a sizeable audience at NFT3 last night, but all the same, it would appear that the film doesn't resonate with my contemporaries, although one gets the feeling that Joanna Hogg may well have been influenced by it along with her Antonioni. Another modern director who sprang to mind, as they say, during the carefully composed opening shot, is Hanecke, another artist who favours extended takes and the action taking place off-screen.
Pinter Losey, Losey Pinter. As I left it crossed my mind that Pinter never directed his own scripts, but perhaps its because in Losey he found someone who could do it better than him. Losey's US perspective presumably helped him to enjoy the nuances of Pinter's vision. A great film script needs silence just as much as words, and Losey knew this, framing Pinter's extravagantly brilliant dialogue with long, slow lazy takes where nothing is said and very little seems to be happening.
[A small personal aside: when The Boat People was written, the lawn scene in Accident was in the back of the writer's mind, even though it had been so long since I'd seen it, at York I suspect.] The film uses the space of the lawn to emphasise the participants togetherness and separation. It's an acutely English vista - continentals would be sitting round a table, as in the end happened in Boat People - but one that Losey's swooping camera understands, also understanding the technicalities of how to use sound to make the scene work. I've got a feeling that most of the film uses ADR, and is none the worse for it, indeed, in the London sequence, it's used with a Godardian flourish.
This Is England, the piece might have been called, because for all its lack of council estates, skinheads or modernity; and in spite of rather than because of the cutesy shots of Oxford, Accident conjures up the nature of how the English communicate (or rather don't), how they love (or rather don't), and how they speak (and sometimes don't). It doesn't matter where you come from, these methods of living are going to rub off on you if you're 'English'. Codes and cruelty. A man reads the letter of his wife to his friend about that man's infidelity whilst the friend cooks an omelette and the man's new girlfriend observes. The man than starts to eat the omelette, in spite of an avowed lack of hunger, something that's too much for the Austrian, no matter how cool she is. The steely brilliance of this and other scenes compensate for their apparent theatricality, whilst also reminding the cinemagoer that cinema is drama first and spectacle second. However, the film is in some ways a kind of perfect storm of Englishness: sprinklers in the rain; cricket; punting; japes, booze. And sex, although more in the longing than the act. A spectacle of Englishness.
Pinter himself appears in a comic cameo, although its hard not to feel as though he's enjoying himself a little too much as the actor, freed of responsibilities. And then there's his wife, Vivien Merchant, the woman he cheated on and later divorced, as she went quietly nuts, playing the most intransigently sane character of the lot. Playing a betrayed wife in a film written by her husband who might have been betraying her at the time, or if he wasn't she surely knew would one day. (And perhaps also suspected he would write a play about it called nothing less than Betrayal). Seeming to savour being given hard no-nonsense lines to say about affairs and the men and women who play those silly games. All of which feels so English its almost French.
For my money, and of course in the end this all comes down to personal taste, the ability to create a work of drama where, ostensibly, next to nothing happens, but in which so much is happening that you can't look away for a second for fear that a word or a gesture missed will mean the viewer loses the key to the whole damned plot, is not a bad trick to be able to pull off. Because what is all this malarkey but the games we play, and the pleasure we get from playing them? The film that can reveal this, played out like 90 minutes of chess or bar billiards, or cheese rolling...or cricket... and keep you hooked and leave you much the wiser... must be some kind of fluke. Nothing less than an accident.
Pinter Losey, Losey Pinter. As I left it crossed my mind that Pinter never directed his own scripts, but perhaps its because in Losey he found someone who could do it better than him. Losey's US perspective presumably helped him to enjoy the nuances of Pinter's vision. A great film script needs silence just as much as words, and Losey knew this, framing Pinter's extravagantly brilliant dialogue with long, slow lazy takes where nothing is said and very little seems to be happening.
[A small personal aside: when The Boat People was written, the lawn scene in Accident was in the back of the writer's mind, even though it had been so long since I'd seen it, at York I suspect.] The film uses the space of the lawn to emphasise the participants togetherness and separation. It's an acutely English vista - continentals would be sitting round a table, as in the end happened in Boat People - but one that Losey's swooping camera understands, also understanding the technicalities of how to use sound to make the scene work. I've got a feeling that most of the film uses ADR, and is none the worse for it, indeed, in the London sequence, it's used with a Godardian flourish.
This Is England, the piece might have been called, because for all its lack of council estates, skinheads or modernity; and in spite of rather than because of the cutesy shots of Oxford, Accident conjures up the nature of how the English communicate (or rather don't), how they love (or rather don't), and how they speak (and sometimes don't). It doesn't matter where you come from, these methods of living are going to rub off on you if you're 'English'. Codes and cruelty. A man reads the letter of his wife to his friend about that man's infidelity whilst the friend cooks an omelette and the man's new girlfriend observes. The man than starts to eat the omelette, in spite of an avowed lack of hunger, something that's too much for the Austrian, no matter how cool she is. The steely brilliance of this and other scenes compensate for their apparent theatricality, whilst also reminding the cinemagoer that cinema is drama first and spectacle second. However, the film is in some ways a kind of perfect storm of Englishness: sprinklers in the rain; cricket; punting; japes, booze. And sex, although more in the longing than the act. A spectacle of Englishness.
Pinter himself appears in a comic cameo, although its hard not to feel as though he's enjoying himself a little too much as the actor, freed of responsibilities. And then there's his wife, Vivien Merchant, the woman he cheated on and later divorced, as she went quietly nuts, playing the most intransigently sane character of the lot. Playing a betrayed wife in a film written by her husband who might have been betraying her at the time, or if he wasn't she surely knew would one day. (And perhaps also suspected he would write a play about it called nothing less than Betrayal). Seeming to savour being given hard no-nonsense lines to say about affairs and the men and women who play those silly games. All of which feels so English its almost French.
For my money, and of course in the end this all comes down to personal taste, the ability to create a work of drama where, ostensibly, next to nothing happens, but in which so much is happening that you can't look away for a second for fear that a word or a gesture missed will mean the viewer loses the key to the whole damned plot, is not a bad trick to be able to pull off. Because what is all this malarkey but the games we play, and the pleasure we get from playing them? The film that can reveal this, played out like 90 minutes of chess or bar billiards, or cheese rolling...or cricket... and keep you hooked and leave you much the wiser... must be some kind of fluke. Nothing less than an accident.
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
collaboration (w ronald harwood, d philip franks)
The West End on a Monday night is quiet, but there's still a decent turn out for Harwood's play. The play deals with the relationship between Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig. The material contains many of the requisites of a solid drama: two strong characters facing personal conflicts, leading to inevitable conflict with one another. This is a solid, old fashioned kind of play, which some would call well-written and others might describe as fusty. It's a showcase for the two lead actors, (Michael Pennington and David Horovitch) who seem to enjoy the somewhat stilted nature of their relationship, and who work effectively enough opposite one another.
This is theatre as it used to be (perhaps?) - people talking to one another, a playwright unfurling his point of view, acting as much as educator as entertainer. It's hard not to long for a little more provocation: everything is sagely observed, humanely described, Strauss' dilemma is articulated but never really entered, and all along there's something strangely passionless about the process, even including the scene where Zweig and his wife prepare to commit suicide. The lines about the inevitable corruption of politicians drew knowing laughs, and the audience seemed engaged, in a highly British, disengaged, manner.
It seemed a bit worrying that I found myself longing for the Nazis to arrive, and indeed the scenes with Goebbel's assistant (played with some vim by Martin Huston) were the ones which seemed to generate the most edge, the greatest sense of drama. Harwood has made something of a late career out of shrewd dramas taking a sideways look at the Nazi heritage. Acute though many of his observations clearly are, in the end this felt like one of those fifties British war movies, starring Kenneth More. The drama depends on the quality of the villain, and no-one did villains like the Nazis. Meaning in the end that the piece has a somewhat facile, simplistic feel, in spite of its ostensible complexity, and one emerges in a not dissimilar frame of mind to how one might have come out of a history class about Genghis Khan at the age of 14. Intrigued as much as disturbed, and a long way from truly getting to grips with the reality of what it might have been like to have to put up with Genghis Khan in the flesh; or, in the case of Collaboration, have to live through the barbarism of the Nazi era.
This is theatre as it used to be (perhaps?) - people talking to one another, a playwright unfurling his point of view, acting as much as educator as entertainer. It's hard not to long for a little more provocation: everything is sagely observed, humanely described, Strauss' dilemma is articulated but never really entered, and all along there's something strangely passionless about the process, even including the scene where Zweig and his wife prepare to commit suicide. The lines about the inevitable corruption of politicians drew knowing laughs, and the audience seemed engaged, in a highly British, disengaged, manner.
It seemed a bit worrying that I found myself longing for the Nazis to arrive, and indeed the scenes with Goebbel's assistant (played with some vim by Martin Huston) were the ones which seemed to generate the most edge, the greatest sense of drama. Harwood has made something of a late career out of shrewd dramas taking a sideways look at the Nazi heritage. Acute though many of his observations clearly are, in the end this felt like one of those fifties British war movies, starring Kenneth More. The drama depends on the quality of the villain, and no-one did villains like the Nazis. Meaning in the end that the piece has a somewhat facile, simplistic feel, in spite of its ostensible complexity, and one emerges in a not dissimilar frame of mind to how one might have come out of a history class about Genghis Khan at the age of 14. Intrigued as much as disturbed, and a long way from truly getting to grips with the reality of what it might have been like to have to put up with Genghis Khan in the flesh; or, in the case of Collaboration, have to live through the barbarism of the Nazi era.
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
let the right one in (d. tomas alfredson; w.john lindqvist)
Swedish vampire flick. Electric cinema. Not obvious doe-eyed territory but word of mouth does its bit, and consequently I find myself sitting in the most comfortable cinema seat I've ever been in at 11 o'clock on a Monday morning, feet up on the leather foot-rest (sic) waiting for the Smiths to kick in.
Context. Leather foot-rests because that's what you get if you go to the Electric and don't sit in the first three rows. Where you still get the comfortable chair. There was only five people in the cinema, so although I got the discount seat, I craftily re-located. The only thing is you wouldn't want to watch anything too demanding, because these are siesta-seats, ideal for snoozing. If the question were to arise, 'Can a cinema seat be too comfortable?', you would have to cite the Electric. A far cry from the last time I went there, twenty five years ago, to watch a Bergman double bill. Before I knew anything at all. The Smiths, because one of the few things I'd gleaned about the film was that the title is apparently a line from a Smiths song, though I'm not sure which, and was hoping to be enlightened.
I wasn't. The film is set sometime towards the end of the Brezhnev years. Not something I would have guessed had his name not been mentioned in a news report. The chunky Swedish Ikea fashions have come round again, so the Brezhnev namecheck came as something of a surprise, and also seemed to show that you can do a period piece set in recent decades without wigs or silly costumes or laboured historical references. Perhaps if I was Swedish I'd have been more clued in to the cultural nuances, but on another level what the film succeeds in doing is taking you away from your previous assumptions about Sweden in the 80s or, more importantly, what a vampire flick should be like. Replacing these assumptions with a beautifully shot world all of its own.
Hoyte Van Hoytem is the cinematographer, and the film is something of a personal triumph for him (or her?), with the director making the most of his (or her) talents. Much of the film, this being a vampire movie, is set after the sun has set, and the lighting is beautifully composed, capturing the stillness of a snowbound Swedish night. The editing is also measured, the shots allowed to linger for just long enough to resonate, to make the viewer look rather than merely see. Added to this, the performances of the two child stars are beguiling, their relationship completely believable. The film makes a virtue of its lack of showiness: we know that Eli can fly, but we never see her doing so; we know Oskar wants to stab someone, but he never does. Whilst there is blood-letting, this too is done with restraint, with the director sensitive to the fact that the sight of a 12 year old girl's mouth swathed in blood is probably more disconcerting than a vampire sucking blood from an unfortunate Swede's neck.
The word of mouth was right. Let The Right One In is an effective, tender film, made with a great deal of skill. Watching the film, and in spite of the slightly tortuous plotting in the final third, you always feel as though you're in the hands of film makers who know what they're up to, who don't try and overwhelm you with their genius, preferring to let their genius creep up on you and suck your blood when you're least expecting it. I'm not sure if Bergman would have been proud of it, but if every film I ever see at the Electric is Swedish and lives up to the tradition which has been set I'll be back there, in the cheap seats again.
Context. Leather foot-rests because that's what you get if you go to the Electric and don't sit in the first three rows. Where you still get the comfortable chair. There was only five people in the cinema, so although I got the discount seat, I craftily re-located. The only thing is you wouldn't want to watch anything too demanding, because these are siesta-seats, ideal for snoozing. If the question were to arise, 'Can a cinema seat be too comfortable?', you would have to cite the Electric. A far cry from the last time I went there, twenty five years ago, to watch a Bergman double bill. Before I knew anything at all. The Smiths, because one of the few things I'd gleaned about the film was that the title is apparently a line from a Smiths song, though I'm not sure which, and was hoping to be enlightened.
I wasn't. The film is set sometime towards the end of the Brezhnev years. Not something I would have guessed had his name not been mentioned in a news report. The chunky Swedish Ikea fashions have come round again, so the Brezhnev namecheck came as something of a surprise, and also seemed to show that you can do a period piece set in recent decades without wigs or silly costumes or laboured historical references. Perhaps if I was Swedish I'd have been more clued in to the cultural nuances, but on another level what the film succeeds in doing is taking you away from your previous assumptions about Sweden in the 80s or, more importantly, what a vampire flick should be like. Replacing these assumptions with a beautifully shot world all of its own.
Hoyte Van Hoytem is the cinematographer, and the film is something of a personal triumph for him (or her?), with the director making the most of his (or her) talents. Much of the film, this being a vampire movie, is set after the sun has set, and the lighting is beautifully composed, capturing the stillness of a snowbound Swedish night. The editing is also measured, the shots allowed to linger for just long enough to resonate, to make the viewer look rather than merely see. Added to this, the performances of the two child stars are beguiling, their relationship completely believable. The film makes a virtue of its lack of showiness: we know that Eli can fly, but we never see her doing so; we know Oskar wants to stab someone, but he never does. Whilst there is blood-letting, this too is done with restraint, with the director sensitive to the fact that the sight of a 12 year old girl's mouth swathed in blood is probably more disconcerting than a vampire sucking blood from an unfortunate Swede's neck.
The word of mouth was right. Let The Right One In is an effective, tender film, made with a great deal of skill. Watching the film, and in spite of the slightly tortuous plotting in the final third, you always feel as though you're in the hands of film makers who know what they're up to, who don't try and overwhelm you with their genius, preferring to let their genius creep up on you and suck your blood when you're least expecting it. I'm not sure if Bergman would have been proud of it, but if every film I ever see at the Electric is Swedish and lives up to the tradition which has been set I'll be back there, in the cheap seats again.
Thursday, 28 May 2009
the damned united (d. tom hooper; w. peter morgan)
There's a moment when what one takes to be Nigel Clough, a fine midfielder in his day, is sitting in the back of his father's car and reading something like Shoot magazine. It's 1974 and he must be about the same age as me, an 8 year old absorbed in the farcical detail of football. Eight year old's tend to know quite a lot, more than they're given credit for, and one wonders what young Nigel made of his dad's leading Leeds to their worst start in many a season, including a home defeat to QPR, sadly not featuring footage of Stan Bowles, the one man Brian has told his bunch of Leeds terriers to stop. Bowles, so my memory tells me, had a dissolute flair, something he had in common with Clough, the subject of the movie. It's the kind of flair which seems less and less common in the British game (which was always distrustful of flair) - names like Currie, Hudson, Marsh, Osgood etc used to light up our culture, a direct link to perhaps the last true flair player of them all, Gascoigne, as though brilliance, the capacity to make the jaw drop in wonder, is no longer the preserve of the British psyche.
Sadly, Hooper's movie echoes this trend. The idea is interesting enough, but this feels in the end like a workmanlike, mid-table kind of movie, run by a cautious board more worried about the perils of dropping down the leagues (doing a Leeds or a Derby or Forest) than tilting for glory. There's one scene in the film, when Clough rails at the Derby chairman, which explicitly refers to this kind of insipid cultural approach, with Clough pointing out that without his genius Derby would still be scraping around in the then second division. That the script should put its finger on the creative conundrum which links both cinema and football; the need to balance ambition with caution on the financial playing field; only for the film to then retreat from Clough's challenge, seems perhaps indicative of the culture we inhabit. Smart enough to know the rules, but never brave enough to break them.
Elsewhere, Morgan's script is functional but rarely flies. Odd notes of exposition sneak in (as Clough explains his rivalry with Revie to Taylor for the benefit not of Taylor, who surely knows this, but the audience), and a noticeable trope continues to dominate the narrative, of two powerful men headed for inevitable confrontation (The Deal; Frost/ Nixon; Last King of Scotland). However, in this instance, the Clough/ Revie rivalry feels contrived (which is not to say that it is); a somewhat clunky narrative tool to explain Clough's maverick ambition. As even the most casual follower of English football knows, Clough was in another league to Revie. Even if he needed the impetus of the rivalry, it is only a mechanism of his ambition, not the root (much as Ferguson loves to stimulate rivalries with any other manager who threatens him, from Wenger to Keegan). The scene which really seemed to reveal the serrated tension which made Clough tick was the one where he cannot bear to watch the match and hides away in the bowels of the stadium instead, agonising as the minutes pass. Here was a glimpse of the nervous tension which Clough channelled into his management; however the film's psychological portrait of Clough remained too skin deep, too thinly veined, to live up to the intensity this moment revealed.
Which takes us to Sheen's performance. Sheen's a clever actor, and a talented one. But the more of these turns that he does, the more one starts to wonder if he's really a soulful one. Perhaps he is, but at the moment it feels as though the mimicry, the details and the finickity ambition to embody the subject he's playing are in danger of getting in the way of his engagement with that subject. His Clough feels like looking at a near flawless reproduction of the real thing: it's very impressive, but it's never quite the real thing, and if anything the flawlessness draws attention to that gap that exists between the impression and the reality. Rather than involving the audience in the story it acts as a kind of Brechtian alienation technique, and I'm not convinced that's the object of the exercise, or if it is I'm not convinced the director realised this.
As much British cinema seems to do now, The Damned United indulges in a nostalgic vision of Britain before the dawn of Sky Sports or the Premier League, when stadiums were run down and men were men. The local colour has its moments, and there is a sense of a lost England, one where Derby County could win the league. However, within this context, the way it affected the characterisation seemed unconvincing, nowhere more so than in the depiction of the fag-smoking Leeds team, who seemed like a bunch of Dickensian raggamuffins, with their surly attitudes and curly locks. The notion seemed to be that back in those more innocent days, you could become the best team in the country through sheer thuggishness, and footballing ability was a secondary requisite. Leeds under Revie were just the biggest thugs on the block. Even if there is a germ of truth in this, the whole thing is drawn out and caricatured to absurd levels. And it also conveniently ignores the fact, as noted above, that back in the day, there were players of remarkable flair, individuals, who flowered in the then first division. The pathos of what has been lost might have been all the stronger had the script found a way to connect with the fate of Clough's teams in the 21st Century. And talking of pathos, if that's the right word, there seemed to be some going with the end note stating that Clough (and Taylor) were the first and only British managers to retain the European cup, on a day when Ferguson was poised but failed to emulate them. It does seem in some way indicative of the film's weaknesses that the moments that were really powerful and evocative were the documentary shots at the end of the strange duo on the bench, or being interviewed, moments when the full extent of Clough's almost disconcerting, messianic genius finally shone through.
Sadly, Hooper's movie echoes this trend. The idea is interesting enough, but this feels in the end like a workmanlike, mid-table kind of movie, run by a cautious board more worried about the perils of dropping down the leagues (doing a Leeds or a Derby or Forest) than tilting for glory. There's one scene in the film, when Clough rails at the Derby chairman, which explicitly refers to this kind of insipid cultural approach, with Clough pointing out that without his genius Derby would still be scraping around in the then second division. That the script should put its finger on the creative conundrum which links both cinema and football; the need to balance ambition with caution on the financial playing field; only for the film to then retreat from Clough's challenge, seems perhaps indicative of the culture we inhabit. Smart enough to know the rules, but never brave enough to break them.
Elsewhere, Morgan's script is functional but rarely flies. Odd notes of exposition sneak in (as Clough explains his rivalry with Revie to Taylor for the benefit not of Taylor, who surely knows this, but the audience), and a noticeable trope continues to dominate the narrative, of two powerful men headed for inevitable confrontation (The Deal; Frost/ Nixon; Last King of Scotland). However, in this instance, the Clough/ Revie rivalry feels contrived (which is not to say that it is); a somewhat clunky narrative tool to explain Clough's maverick ambition. As even the most casual follower of English football knows, Clough was in another league to Revie. Even if he needed the impetus of the rivalry, it is only a mechanism of his ambition, not the root (much as Ferguson loves to stimulate rivalries with any other manager who threatens him, from Wenger to Keegan). The scene which really seemed to reveal the serrated tension which made Clough tick was the one where he cannot bear to watch the match and hides away in the bowels of the stadium instead, agonising as the minutes pass. Here was a glimpse of the nervous tension which Clough channelled into his management; however the film's psychological portrait of Clough remained too skin deep, too thinly veined, to live up to the intensity this moment revealed.
Which takes us to Sheen's performance. Sheen's a clever actor, and a talented one. But the more of these turns that he does, the more one starts to wonder if he's really a soulful one. Perhaps he is, but at the moment it feels as though the mimicry, the details and the finickity ambition to embody the subject he's playing are in danger of getting in the way of his engagement with that subject. His Clough feels like looking at a near flawless reproduction of the real thing: it's very impressive, but it's never quite the real thing, and if anything the flawlessness draws attention to that gap that exists between the impression and the reality. Rather than involving the audience in the story it acts as a kind of Brechtian alienation technique, and I'm not convinced that's the object of the exercise, or if it is I'm not convinced the director realised this.
As much British cinema seems to do now, The Damned United indulges in a nostalgic vision of Britain before the dawn of Sky Sports or the Premier League, when stadiums were run down and men were men. The local colour has its moments, and there is a sense of a lost England, one where Derby County could win the league. However, within this context, the way it affected the characterisation seemed unconvincing, nowhere more so than in the depiction of the fag-smoking Leeds team, who seemed like a bunch of Dickensian raggamuffins, with their surly attitudes and curly locks. The notion seemed to be that back in those more innocent days, you could become the best team in the country through sheer thuggishness, and footballing ability was a secondary requisite. Leeds under Revie were just the biggest thugs on the block. Even if there is a germ of truth in this, the whole thing is drawn out and caricatured to absurd levels. And it also conveniently ignores the fact, as noted above, that back in the day, there were players of remarkable flair, individuals, who flowered in the then first division. The pathos of what has been lost might have been all the stronger had the script found a way to connect with the fate of Clough's teams in the 21st Century. And talking of pathos, if that's the right word, there seemed to be some going with the end note stating that Clough (and Taylor) were the first and only British managers to retain the European cup, on a day when Ferguson was poised but failed to emulate them. It does seem in some way indicative of the film's weaknesses that the moments that were really powerful and evocative were the documentary shots at the end of the strange duo on the bench, or being interviewed, moments when the full extent of Clough's almost disconcerting, messianic genius finally shone through.
Saturday, 23 May 2009
synecdoche, new york (w&d charlie kaufman)
Curzon Soho. Friday afternoon. London. The leaps between place and place seem so straightforward. No one bats an eyelash at the notion of being on one side of the world one week and another the next. Technology, it is revealed, has shrunk the globe, as though borders and oceans are on the point of extinction.
OK, so that's all a bit rhetorical and actually its not as though I can pop across to where I've been for a quick chivito and Patricia any time soon, nor as though I could have leapfrogged back to a London cinema to catch any of the films I might have missed these past three Montevidean months. However, all the same, one hopes the reader will indulge the conceit. Which sets the writer up for a point of encounter with this most peculiar of films, out on a spatial limb all of its own, a limb which appears at first to be the twin towns of the title, but reveals itself to be in fact a locus in the author's brain, a place so far removed from the everyday that only Kaufman can hope to know it, him and perhaps Malkovich.
However, I still haven't reached my point, as I battle against time and its literary economies, which is that no matter how comfortable a modern audience might be with the notion of geographical fluidity, we haven't really begun to get to grips with temporal fluidity. Which is what Kaufman uses to really mess with his public's heads. Something he tricked around with in Eternal Sunshine... but which he goes to town with in Synechdoche. If you can't get lost in space anymore, you can get still get lost in time. So as PS Hoffman succeeds in ageing ten years in five minutes, and then another how many more in how many more minutes, as his daughter goes from beguiling child to a tattooed German pole dancer in less than half an hour, Kaufman succeeds in doing our heads in in a way that Dali or Lynch would be proud of.
As for the rest of it... Watching this of a Friday afternoon it really felt as though perhaps cinema (and consciousness) had moved on in the months of my Latin American exile, and now films are made differently and people think differently and we've entered some kind of post post modern age of enlightened complexity which won't reach Uruguay for another six months or so (they're generally a bit behind) and I'll be forever lost in the limbo. Admittedly its all been done by Pirandello, or Ionescu, or some other old-school modern maverick, but no-one ever gave them millions of dollars and a host of stars to play with, and a budget sufficient to make the worlds in their heads spring to realisable life. So, I thought, Synechdoche is the arrival of the future, the collapse of the fifth dimension, the breakthrough that will take us beyond death.
Then I walked out into the world with Mr Kemp and we were herded into playpens outside pubs and loud people in suits made jokes that weren't funny and I learnt that the film had been a commercial disaster and I realised I was wrong, that nothing had actually changed all that much, I hadn't died and gone to Synedoche heaven, all is as it was... This is merely another taster, of how we will think when we learn to stammer better, burn houses more theatrically, take more pride in our depression and generally revel more in messing with brains, both our own, our public's and in particular, Mr Kaufman's. To return the favour. As would only be polite.
Now then. Where's the beef? (Asado, churrasco, milanesa, chivito, molleca, chorizo, morcilla, rinones, or whatever else that's good on the menu) Como? No estoy en Kansas mas? Bueno, in that case I'll just have a full english. Good to be back.
OK, so that's all a bit rhetorical and actually its not as though I can pop across to where I've been for a quick chivito and Patricia any time soon, nor as though I could have leapfrogged back to a London cinema to catch any of the films I might have missed these past three Montevidean months. However, all the same, one hopes the reader will indulge the conceit. Which sets the writer up for a point of encounter with this most peculiar of films, out on a spatial limb all of its own, a limb which appears at first to be the twin towns of the title, but reveals itself to be in fact a locus in the author's brain, a place so far removed from the everyday that only Kaufman can hope to know it, him and perhaps Malkovich.
However, I still haven't reached my point, as I battle against time and its literary economies, which is that no matter how comfortable a modern audience might be with the notion of geographical fluidity, we haven't really begun to get to grips with temporal fluidity. Which is what Kaufman uses to really mess with his public's heads. Something he tricked around with in Eternal Sunshine... but which he goes to town with in Synechdoche. If you can't get lost in space anymore, you can get still get lost in time. So as PS Hoffman succeeds in ageing ten years in five minutes, and then another how many more in how many more minutes, as his daughter goes from beguiling child to a tattooed German pole dancer in less than half an hour, Kaufman succeeds in doing our heads in in a way that Dali or Lynch would be proud of.
As for the rest of it... Watching this of a Friday afternoon it really felt as though perhaps cinema (and consciousness) had moved on in the months of my Latin American exile, and now films are made differently and people think differently and we've entered some kind of post post modern age of enlightened complexity which won't reach Uruguay for another six months or so (they're generally a bit behind) and I'll be forever lost in the limbo. Admittedly its all been done by Pirandello, or Ionescu, or some other old-school modern maverick, but no-one ever gave them millions of dollars and a host of stars to play with, and a budget sufficient to make the worlds in their heads spring to realisable life. So, I thought, Synechdoche is the arrival of the future, the collapse of the fifth dimension, the breakthrough that will take us beyond death.
Then I walked out into the world with Mr Kemp and we were herded into playpens outside pubs and loud people in suits made jokes that weren't funny and I learnt that the film had been a commercial disaster and I realised I was wrong, that nothing had actually changed all that much, I hadn't died and gone to Synedoche heaven, all is as it was... This is merely another taster, of how we will think when we learn to stammer better, burn houses more theatrically, take more pride in our depression and generally revel more in messing with brains, both our own, our public's and in particular, Mr Kaufman's. To return the favour. As would only be polite.
Now then. Where's the beef? (Asado, churrasco, milanesa, chivito, molleca, chorizo, morcilla, rinones, or whatever else that's good on the menu) Como? No estoy en Kansas mas? Bueno, in that case I'll just have a full english. Good to be back.
Thursday, 23 April 2009
espía a una mujer que se mata (d daniel veronese)
The Argentinians have arrived in town. The Sala Muniz is sold out. The whole of my cast has come to see the show, and it seems as though collectively they know every single person in the audience.
Whilst the theatre seems to be bursting at the seams, a party due to break out at any moment, the stage itself, awaiting its actors, is a restricted, slightly ugly space, made out of plywood, a cheap set nestled within the theatre’s generous proportions. It’s diamond shaped, with a few old chairs and a table, on which sits an old revolver, with doors to either side and a small hatch in the back wall. An old man and a younger girl amble on. They start to talk, quietly, as though they weren’t in a theatre. Two faces spy on them through the hatch. The girl makes as if to threaten the old man with the gun, but he quietens her and takes it away, telling her they need to save it for the final scene.
Other characters appear. They are all drinking. One is called Vanya. I know this is an adaptation of Chekhov, but I can’t remember Uncle Vanya and anyway it doesn’t matter as the actors are talking about Ostrovsky and Genet and theatre, and there’s a hint of Pirandello, and the actors keep on drinking and all of a sudden they’re all roaring drunk, incapacitated, falling over each other, all of this taking place on their tiny handkerchief of a stage. And Sonya’s in love with the doctor who fancies Elena, who Vanya’s in love with only she’s not in love with either of them and she’s not even in love with her husband, Sonya’s father, Alexander, who was the old man at the start of the scene, but gradually all the connections start to make sense, like a whisky, natch, vodka dream, a night swimming, the characters gravitating round the space like fish in a bowl, a ceaseless fluid movement which seems more real than reality.
An Argentinian Chekhov, with all the unfulfilled dreams of the ever dreaming characters played out in some backwater where people speak as though they’re singing. The play reminded me a little of La Cienega, Lucretia Martel’s film, an old family holed up in its old house lost somewhere in the middle of a vast country. The Argentine dolefulness acting as a perfect foil to the Russian melancholy. A company so in tune with itself that it almost seems to deny the need for space, as though it could indeed perform the play in a nutshell, if the need arose.
Whilst the theatre seems to be bursting at the seams, a party due to break out at any moment, the stage itself, awaiting its actors, is a restricted, slightly ugly space, made out of plywood, a cheap set nestled within the theatre’s generous proportions. It’s diamond shaped, with a few old chairs and a table, on which sits an old revolver, with doors to either side and a small hatch in the back wall. An old man and a younger girl amble on. They start to talk, quietly, as though they weren’t in a theatre. Two faces spy on them through the hatch. The girl makes as if to threaten the old man with the gun, but he quietens her and takes it away, telling her they need to save it for the final scene.
Other characters appear. They are all drinking. One is called Vanya. I know this is an adaptation of Chekhov, but I can’t remember Uncle Vanya and anyway it doesn’t matter as the actors are talking about Ostrovsky and Genet and theatre, and there’s a hint of Pirandello, and the actors keep on drinking and all of a sudden they’re all roaring drunk, incapacitated, falling over each other, all of this taking place on their tiny handkerchief of a stage. And Sonya’s in love with the doctor who fancies Elena, who Vanya’s in love with only she’s not in love with either of them and she’s not even in love with her husband, Sonya’s father, Alexander, who was the old man at the start of the scene, but gradually all the connections start to make sense, like a whisky, natch, vodka dream, a night swimming, the characters gravitating round the space like fish in a bowl, a ceaseless fluid movement which seems more real than reality.
An Argentinian Chekhov, with all the unfulfilled dreams of the ever dreaming characters played out in some backwater where people speak as though they’re singing. The play reminded me a little of La Cienega, Lucretia Martel’s film, an old family holed up in its old house lost somewhere in the middle of a vast country. The Argentine dolefulness acting as a perfect foil to the Russian melancholy. A company so in tune with itself that it almost seems to deny the need for space, as though it could indeed perform the play in a nutshell, if the need arose.
Monday, 23 March 2009
camera lucida [w. roland barthes]
It doesn’t feel entirely correct to be writing ‘a review’ of Camera Lucida or anything written by Barthes. This brief book, the last that he wrote, is one I’ve read various times over the years. I don’t know what made me return to it, but it’s slim and taxing and encapsulates the way in which Barthes writes in what appears to be a complex, intellectual fashion, but in fact his words are imbued with passion about issues of emotion, humanity, love and how we live our lives in our brief span.
Ostensibly this is a book about photography, about what makes a photograph a photograph (as opposed to a film or a chair or an ice cream.) Barthes analyses a range of photos, pursuing his personal reactions, trying to see what they have in common. This leads to a succession of observations about the way in which photographs function, and what makes, from his point of view, one photograph more interesting than another.
However, this leads him to the most important photograph he knows, which is one of his late mother as a child. The value of this photo is that it, in some alchemical way, for him, captures something of the essence of his mother, in a way no other photograph did. Barthes explores his relationship with this unseen photograph, which leads him towards the relationship between photography and death, the way in which the photo would appear to renege death, it becomes one of the only human inventions which can stand in its way. Whatever has been photographed has been, and its existence cannot be denied. Thus, the book becomes an investigation into the connections between time, death, memory and truth.
Without trying to summarise his thoughts in any great detail, its perhaps safe to say that Camera Lucida is also a requiem for his mother, and, given the irony of the fact that this is the last book he wrote before he died, himself. That the essence of a person should live on, that mortality can adapt itself through the interference of light on paper, (or now, pixels) is some kind of strange modern achievement, of which photography itself is barely cognizant. However, Barthes observes, even this is a deception, for photographs themselves fade, the ink receding with time, and the truth that is written in the arrangement of ink on a page is transient too. In this sense, it could be that photographs are a kind of liminal purgatory, a whisper of breath, of the soul, which clings to the material, knowing this is a futile gesture, doomed to obsolescence.
It is entirely fitting that there is no photograph of Barthes himself in the book. However, as he must have been aware, his words contain more of his self, whatever that is, than any photo ever could. But that’s another story.
Ostensibly this is a book about photography, about what makes a photograph a photograph (as opposed to a film or a chair or an ice cream.) Barthes analyses a range of photos, pursuing his personal reactions, trying to see what they have in common. This leads to a succession of observations about the way in which photographs function, and what makes, from his point of view, one photograph more interesting than another.
However, this leads him to the most important photograph he knows, which is one of his late mother as a child. The value of this photo is that it, in some alchemical way, for him, captures something of the essence of his mother, in a way no other photograph did. Barthes explores his relationship with this unseen photograph, which leads him towards the relationship between photography and death, the way in which the photo would appear to renege death, it becomes one of the only human inventions which can stand in its way. Whatever has been photographed has been, and its existence cannot be denied. Thus, the book becomes an investigation into the connections between time, death, memory and truth.
Without trying to summarise his thoughts in any great detail, its perhaps safe to say that Camera Lucida is also a requiem for his mother, and, given the irony of the fact that this is the last book he wrote before he died, himself. That the essence of a person should live on, that mortality can adapt itself through the interference of light on paper, (or now, pixels) is some kind of strange modern achievement, of which photography itself is barely cognizant. However, Barthes observes, even this is a deception, for photographs themselves fade, the ink receding with time, and the truth that is written in the arrangement of ink on a page is transient too. In this sense, it could be that photographs are a kind of liminal purgatory, a whisper of breath, of the soul, which clings to the material, knowing this is a futile gesture, doomed to obsolescence.
It is entirely fitting that there is no photograph of Barthes himself in the book. However, as he must have been aware, his words contain more of his self, whatever that is, than any photo ever could. But that’s another story.
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