safari (d ulrich seidl)

Seidl’s deadpan, disturbing documentary is a fearsome piece of stripped-down filmmaking. As the title suggests, the film follows various  Austrian characters on safari at a game reserve in Namibia. The reserve is run by a German couple whose visitors include a family of four, father, mother, son and daughter. It’s obvious that these people are extremely wealthy. Safaris aren’t something many can afford, as one of the hunters observes, stating they bring far more money into the country than ordinary tourists.  

The film is set up to intersperse moments of action, as the hunters track down game in the bush, with snippets from staged interviews, where they talk about their attitudes to hunting, killing and death. Those characters seem harmless enough on first viewing; their attitudes appear to be formed by a need to prove their alpha status, for example when the son questions his sister as to why she’d draw the line at killing a lion or a giraffe. They come across as banal figures, playing out some kind of power fantasy as they tramp through the bush, searching out targets. Another older couple are even broadly comic, with the wife spending her time sun-bathing whilst her husband drinks beer in a hide, waiting for game that never arrives.

But in the last third of the film the killing takes on a different dimension. The mother has already shot an impala and posed by it, but now the son shoots a zebra. The beast’s beauty appears to be unconquerable even in death, but then the filmmaker shows the zebra being skinned by the African workers, who also increasingly figure in the film’s narrative. Then the father shoots a giraffe. It feels like an act of terrible, senseless vandalism. When they get to the beast, it is still dying. The camera observes its death throes in a chilling sequence, made all the more so by the family’s pride in their actions. It’s not a boastful pride; it’s a kind of self-serving bourgeois pride in a job well done. Seidl then films the giraffe being loaded onto a truck, driven away and skinned, with the family looking on. The images of the entrails are worse than anything you’d encounter in a horror movie.  The film has captured the obscene reality of killing: a beast that was alive and wondrous a few hours ago is reduced to a carcass. 

The exact message of the movie is never stated, but the viewer comes away with a deep feeling of unease; that this kind of sport should still exist; at the senseless violence of man; and an implicit critique of a class of people who choose to indulge themselves using killing as a kind of bonding experience. The film is framed with two shots, pre and post credits, of horn players performing in a European forest, suggesting that this is a movie which is more concerned with questioning European values than anything else. The reserve is owned by slightly racist Germans, (with suits of armour in their colonial home) who have created a kind of savage idyll. Safari is a very simple piece of filmmaking, but the director succeeds in creating a deeply unsettling narrative from his material. 

the encounter (w&d simon mcburney, d kirsty housley)

This is one of those, on the one hand, and then again, on the other hand, shows.

On the one hand:

McBurney weaves a sterling theatrical tale, adapted from Loren McIntyre’s account of his journey to the Amazon, where he experienced a profound and intoxicating encounter with a native tribe. An encounter wherein he flirted with death and was forced to face up to the meaning of his values, as he became engaged with the tribe’s anti-materialistic theology/ philosophy. The story is told via the use of headphones and dazzling technological manipulation of the theatrical space. Light, sound and little else are used to turn the vast Barbican stage into a convincing jungle, alien, terrifying and wondrous. McBurney pulls off a redoubtable one-man performance, taking the reins as the narrator himself, then slipping into the character of McIntyre, and alternating between the two with confidence and aplomb. 

On the other hand:

This is a piece of theatre which appears to be about the problems of materialism. At one point, the tribe which McIntyre is visiting destroy all their possessions. McBurney, as himself, then goes on a Lear-esque rant, wherein he proposes that we destroy all our possessions too. Or at least contemplate the possibility. Clearly it’s not going to happen, and much less as a result of a show which chooses to tell its story through the use of technology. Western theatre returns to its essential paradox of telling people who can afford to pay 50 quid for a seat a message which, no matter how worthy, is completely redundant. There’s something vaguely unsatisfying about the process, an itch being scratched which maybe only makes the rash worse. 

However, this might be to quibble in the face of history. Because at the end of the day, what McBurney pulls off is something which has a life and dynamism which you don’t always encounter in the theatre, and no matter the ins and outs of the context or the message, as a theatrical experience it feels radical and remarkable. Special mention should be made to the technical team, Gareth Fry and Pete Malkin who explore the potential of sound in the theatre with flair, as well as the design of Michael Levine and the lighting of Paul Anderson. 

war and cinema: the logistics of perception [paul virilio]

Virilio’s text has a straightforward premise: that the developments in cinema and the developments in weaponry (or war) have been a complementary process. Which is also to say developments in methods of perception. These developments are evidenced in cinema’s ability to view the world from different perspectives, which is related to the demise of the horizontal battle, with war now being followed from the perspective of the sky, or space. Elements such as the introduction of colour, widescreen, sound are all charted in cinema’s technological arms race. There are fascinating details about the Nazis' quest to make colour films, spurred on by American advances. Many of the regular tools of modern warfare: radar, ballistic missiles, surveillance methods etc are linked to developments in the audio-visual field, such as the rise of television. Virilio carefully depicts the way in which the atomic bomb itself acts as a kind of camera, leaving a negative: “It left its imprint on stone walls, changing their apparent colour…the same was the case with clothing and bodies, where kimono patterns were tattooed on victim’s flesh.”

It’s a small, sweeping book, originally published in 1984, something which gives pause, and makes the reader wish there was an updated edition to take the grandiose themes the book addresses forwards. Hollywood cinema, post Star Wars, has become ever more military in its technological creation and its thematics. The links between Hollywood and the military (industrial complex) would appear to be more and more firmly entrenched, whilst US military might continues to dominate on a ‘global stage’. Soft power and hard power create a united front. There’s the remarkable paradox that people all over the world who would rage against US military intervention will happily absorb the soft power cultural warfare of Netflix and its ilk, never thinking twice about how they are made subjects of a global power structure whilst they consume the pretty pictures. 

War and Cinema would have a field day with this issue, along with the issue of 21st century surveillance and the way in which the machines we thought would liberate us are in fact being used to control and monitor our every move. 

a quiet place (w&d john krasinski; w scott beck, bryan woods)

For reasons more to do with the professional than pleasure, I found myself watching John Krasinski’s acclaimed horror. And then wondering why or on what terms or in what parallel universe this film is worthy of being acclaimed. A Quiet Place could be a model exercise in how to take a great idea and proceed to disembowel it. The premise is that the killer aliens have finally arrived, only they function acoustically. If they hear noise, they’ll attack. Humanity has failed to be smart enough to find a solution and society has collapsed. People live in a state of Carthusian silence. Make too much noise and you’re a gonner. It’s a smart premise which functions on both a narrative and technical level, one that demands an audience pay attention  and listen. The significance of silence is amplified. Unfortunately, the film which can’t even respect the beauty of its premise. There’s a clunky score which infiltrates whenever it looks as though there’s a risk the film might flag. Which it does repeatedly. Added to which, there’s a use of jump scares akin to an over-enthusiastic barman going mad on the jaegermeister shots. ANDDD here comes another one! Down the hatch. The incongruities in the narrative are legion. There are almost more than there are rampaging monsters. The dialogue, for a film with next to none, is so reductive it deserves to be put down. And yet, dear reader, this film has been a critical and commercial success. The latter one can perhaps accept; in a list of the top 20 grossing films of all time, there are two from the F&F franchise and none that this writer would have have paid to watch. Which means there’s no accounting for taste. But how straight-laced critics can allow themselves to be seduced by this nonsense defeats me. One imagines they have been beguiled the beauty of the idea; like a child being given a shiny toy they are so distracted that their faculties are incapacitated. Much like the young boy whose merciful death at the start of the film spares him from having to negotiate the following 80 minutes of increasingly vapid sound and fury signifying nothing but the jangling sound of dollars landing in the box office coffers. 

the square (w&d ruben östlund)

When you’re developing a film in this part of the world (I don’t know what it’s like in Sweden), you are repeatedly requested to clarify the film’s themes. One can imagine what someone like Hitchcock might have made of this. As a writer, I tend to be inherently resistant to this way of thinking which can lead to a tendency to over-explain, even to patronise the audience. You shouldn’t need to state your themes. They should emerge. At least that’s my line. The Square is a classic example of a film that seems far too concerned with making sure there’s absolutely no doubt about its themes. Which is a real shame, because this ends up spoiling what would otherwise have been a terrific film. 

Christian is a gallery curator whose latest project, an installation by Lola Arias, is all about creating a space which is both a haven and a place which forces individuals to face up to to, or square up to, their social responsibilities. This film ends up being Christian’s ‘square’. The place where he will confront his responsibilities, something he’s not very keen on having to do, either as a father, a lover or a human being. The first hour of the film has several sequences which display the director’s razor-sharp satirical brilliance. The world of the gallery is beautifully constructed. Christian’s understated arrogance meticulously captured by actor, Claes Bang, and script. But gradually the film starts to lose its shape. Increasingly it becomes a string of sequences rather than a cohesive narrative. The ape-man dinner, the press conference, the girls’ acrobatic team, the star cameos, the kitchen sink. It dawns on you that the director is struggling to leave anything out. Whilst simultaneously putting as much in as he feasibly can to make sure that we, as an audience, get what it’s all about. The themes. It starts to feel like being hit over the head with a paper hammer. It doesn’t hurt, it even tickles, but in the end it can’t help but become irritating. 

Force Majeure had an economy, reinforced by the single location, which helped lend the film a remarkable power. The Square, in spite of its title, feels as though it sprawls all over Stockholm. No-one’s going to deny that Östlund has serious talent, but The Square is never as neat as its premise suggests. In some ways it’s reminiscent of the film of Arias’ compatriot, one she actually appears in, Mariano Llinas’ Improbable Stories, a film which also suggests a wunderkind at work, but one which ends up giving the impression of a director over-reaching themselves, both in length and insistence (in Llinas’ case it’s an over-reliance on his aesthetic). Or even Lanthimos’ The Lobster: all of these films indicative of talented directors grappling to get to grips with bigger budgets and wider reach. 

the doorman [reinaldo arenas]

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A long, long time ago, New York felt like it had to be the centre of the universe.
On both a political and personal level. Even though I’d never been there.
It was culturally dominant. The films, Scorsese, Allen, natch, and a whole
lot more besides. The music, The Velvets, Dylan, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson
and what the kids now call post-punk. Blondie, Richard Hell, Johnny Thunders,
all that jazz. The art. Warhol, Basquiat, Schnabel. The club scene, which to
the ears of a curious youth sounded like the apogee of a new Roman Empire
(And from subsequent accounts it probably was.) The literature.
Interesting to note that this periodemerged before NY became ‘gentrified’ to the
extent that it supposedly has today. When there were still no-go areas. Also
interesting to note the role that a type like Kushner has occupied in this
cleansing of the city. Kushner, the mini-me Trump, the bruiser who will also
have played his part in the process of remodelling it as a sanitised, deracinated
environment which has little to do with its earlier incarnation.

The literature was spearheaded at that time, by Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the
Vanities. A vast book which we read with avid expectation. One of those
books which is no longer in fashion, but, in its moment, felt as though it
defined the shape of the world.

The first half of Arenas’ novel, which is a profoundly New York novel,
reminded me of Bonfire of the Vanities. Its premise is the travails of a
spiritual doorman in a high-end NY block of flats, and his interactions
with the residents, who seduce him, abuse him and ignore him. The
clash of cultures, which made the city seem so vital, is present in
spades. Juan, the doorman, is the beautiful immigrant ingenue, the
type who will go on to help construct the city. Although many of the
characters have a Cuban connection - Juan is a recently arrived Cuban
immigrant, others have been there longer or have more tenuous links to
the old country, Arenas succeeds in keeping this theme and his personal
issues regarding Castro’s regime in the background. In the foreground
is the satirical vision of the city.

At least for the first half of the book. The second half veers off into
the realm of metaphorical fable. Perhaps, it could be argued by the
PhD student that this fable, which involves a biblical exodus of the
rich owners’ pets, presages the way in which the city would be stripped
of its vibrant, animal life over decades to come. Although, as is the
way with metaphorical fables, it could be read in many other ways.
Needless to say, Arenas’ novel is something of a tale of two halves,
and the first Wolfeian half is the one that engaged this reader more
effectively than the second. The Doorman is one of those books which
is perhaps more interesting for the position it takes up within a cannon
than the text itself, but its a fine example of the author’s Swiftian aesthetic,
capable of mixing extreme satire with what might pass for a children’s book.

visages villages (w&d agnes varda; jr)

It’s impossible not to warm to Agnes Varda, the great survivor. Truffaut has gone, Godard is in hiding, Rohmer, Rivette, Chabrol all dead, but Varda keeps going. This film, according to IMDB her 52nd as a director, is co-directed with the geekily enthusiastic JR, an interventionist photographer. It sees them criss-crossing her native country, With Varda helping her co-director put up giant photo-murals of common people in the provinces. This showcases Varda’s democratic instincts: the objective of the exercise is to put ‘art’ in places it wouldn’t normally be expected to find a home (the side of a farm shed; the port of Le Havre; a factory). The reflections of ordinary people to the art is fascinating and the directors’ down-to-earth intervention makes a mockery of so much well-intentioned, pretentious attempts to diversity culture’s reach. It really isn’t that hard: get in a van, go to places, and do something which gets the locals involved. 

At the same time, the film is an examination of the relationship between Varda and JR. At one point he takes her to meet his only slightly-older grandmother, whose lack of faculties helps to remind us, in case we needed to be reminded, what a remarkable woman Varda is. There’s something slightly contrived about this strand of the film, not least when they go on an abortive relationship to visit Godard. Here the film skirts over the deeper issue it touches upon, namely Varda’s relationship with death, approaching more rapidly now in the rear view mirror.

Nevertheless Visages Villages  is a relentlessly charming film. Let’s hope it’s far from being her last. 

the doll’s alphabet [camilla grudova]

It felt appropriate to be reading Grudova’s strange stories in Mexico, the North American antipode to her native Canada. The skulls, the stitched-up painted faces, the anthropomorphism are all elements her stories and the country have in common. Grudova constructs her gothic universe across the course of the book’s thirteen stories, some brief, some more extended. The book is full of slightly vulnerable female narrators, whose relationships with the opposite sex are rarely straightforward. It’s perhaps a book to be dipped in and out of; sometimes there’s a feeling of repetitiveness as the same tropes reappear. If you like Saunders and Kafka and surrealism, The Doll’s Alphabet will probably delight.