chico: artista brasileiro (w&d miguel faria jr., w. diana vasconcellos)

One of the pleasures of having a local cinema is that you get to see films on the big screen you otherwise might not. I’m not a particular fan of Chico Barque, but it was a Monday night after football, there was nothing to eat in the house, so we moseyed out to Cinemateca in the middle of a rainstorm, enjoying the privilege of being able to take in a film without having to make any real effort. If I lived in London I wouldn’t have made it. It’s not the most extravagant of privileges, but let’s name it for what it is. The idea of privilege feels relevant to Chico Barque, a golden boy blessed with charm and looks who hit the big time at the age of 22, coming from a well-connected upper-middle class background. There’s not much regarding this in the film, but you can feel it behind the singer’s eyes, a sense of ‘how did I get to live such a charmed life?’ Of course, there’s no such thing as a charmed life, and his time in exile and participation in the struggle against the dictatorship becomes a key element in his story. The documentary functions on three levels. Firstly there’s an extended interview with the subject which is played out over the film’s near two hours. Then there are recurring versions of his songs, sung somewhat ironically in the Teatro Poiera, by celebrated Brazilian singers. All of this is broken up with archive footage. Then, towards the end, a sub-plot appears, perhaps, which is the remarkable story of Barque’s lost German brother. The camera crew follows him to Berlin for a fascinating if slightly tacked-on postscript where he discovers footage of the lost, now-dead brother. It feels as though there’s a whole other film here which the filmmakers have glimpsed, aware that it wasn’t going to fit into their film’s structure, but one with such an added poetic dimension that they felt the need to shoe-horn it in anyhow.

All of which is not to say that Chico: Artista Brasileiro isn’t a thoroughly competent and effective piece of documentary making. Above all for the way it recounts, perhaps even more than Barque’s musical genius, the history of a vast country and culture which exists, to a certain extent, at the margins. Barque himself relates a couple of self-effacing anecdotes about how little known he is in much of the world, in contrast to his iconic status in his homeland. The film offers an insight into the transformation of the country over the course of fifty years, from the post-war period to the fall of the dictatorship, revealing how much Barque’s art was formed and influenced by politics, in spite of the fact that by the end the singer says he’s seeking to retreat from engaging in any kind of political discourse. The film was initially released in 2015: it would be fascinating to know whether that position has changed now that politics have so rudely come back to haunt Brazil.

middle england (jonathan coe)

Coe’s novel unashamedly addresses the issue of Brexit. A married couple split up over the vote; the central character falls out with his father; families are divided. The toxic racist element that felt liberated by the vote is also represented, as a Lithuanian family feel forced to leave the country. The narrative is multi-character: at the centre is Benjamin, a listless part-time novelist whose initial attitude is strictly apolitical, but finds himself summoning up a toast of “Fuck Brexit” by the end. Around him are spun the stories of his family and his old school friends, one of whom is a political journalist with an inside take on the Cameron government. The sharpest conflict comes in the story of Sophie, Benjamin’s niece, whose marriage to Ian falters on the rocks of the referendum vote. All of this is told in an eminently readable, breezy prose. The fact that the novel is situated so adroitly within the context of recent British history makes it addictive. Do we even remember the Clegg-Cameron coalition anymore? It feels like it belongs to another century, although it’s less than a decade ago. The novel is peppered with references to the stuff of yesterday’s papers, from the Olympics opening ceremony to the murder of Jo Cox. For a British reader it’s like re-living history all over again. 

However, whilst the novel is addictive, one can’t help wondering if this is a useful lens through which to look at the issue which has rent the country in two. There’s something relentlessly convivial about Coe’s prose, one could even call it smug. As the novel flowed forwards towards a feel good finale, it made me question whether the words I was reading weren’t part of the problem the novel appears to be trying to identify and address. At the end of the book, the reader is off the hook. If he or she had ever questioned what was going on in the country over the past decade, those questions could be conveniently shelved by the most anodyne of endings, where Benjamin gets to wallow in the middle class bliss of opening a B&B in an ancient French farmhouse, which he can afford because he’s cashed in on the London property market boom. There’s not a hint of self-awareness on the part of the writer about the irony of his protagonist being able to drift through life and emerge in some kind of liberal Eden merely as a result of the historical accident of his birthplace and his willingness to play a system that has rewarded shrewd property investors. Even the warring party, Sophie and Ian, are offered an upbeat conclusion. There’s no price paid by any of the characters for the chaos which has been unleashed on the country. This is no Swiftian assault; it’s more like the Archers does Brexit. Entertaining in its way, but never as thought-provoking as it sets out to be. 

leto (w&d kirill serebrennikov, w. lily idov, michael idov, ivan kapitonov, natalya naumenko)

Leto means Summer in Russian. I picked this detail up from the subtitles. In the first twenty minutes of the film, there’s an exquisitely filmed beach sequence, when the youthful musician Victor is introduced to Maik, the world-weary Soviet rock star. The sequence is filmed with a diffuse, black and white grain which feels both nostalgic and like it could be happening tomorrow. The work of the DOP, Vladislav Opelyants, throughout the film is electric, achieving that rare quality, when you’re happy to watch the screen for the images alone. During the beach sequence, Maik sings a song  called Leto; a lazy, going-nowhere verse which drips with an insouciant cool. As though these people knew, back then in Leningrad, that you could listen to Lou Reed singing Walk on the Wild Side, but nothing could match the outlandish dream of being a rock and roll rebel in the USSR. 

There’s something very beautiful about the idea of Soviet rebellion (which reminded me of Limonov who I read thirty years ago). The film is set in the Leningrad punk and post-punk scene. Samizdat copies of Reed, Bowie, T-Rex, the Velvets, even Echo and the Bunnymen, are the currency of independent thought. Rock music is rigidly controlled by the authorities, who have to give their approval to lyrics and control the gigs. In this context, subversion is survival, smuggling the counter-culture in though sly lyrics and a deadpan gaze which hides the beating pulse. The songs are steeped in a Baudelaireian celebration of rock and roll, the home of the lazy, the degenerate, the drunkard. In the latter days of the Soviet empire, they get away with it, and Victor will go on to front Kino, one of the most successful Russian bands ever.

Indeed, if you’re Russian, this movie will have other resonances, reminiscent of Corbijn’s Control. Both Victor and Maik were stars who died young. Leto is loosely based around Maiik’s wife, Natasha’s attraction to Victor, making for a Jules et Jim narrative.  Serebrennikov’s film has a punky vitality which extends to several reworkings of classic favourites. Some of these interventions, adorned with graphic design touches, are more effective than others. A rumbustious fantasy sequence set to the Heads’ Psychokiller comes brilliantly out of the blue, taking the viewer by surprise. But more than these western songs, it’s the subtitled Russian tunes that quicken the pulse. The poetic roots of rock and roll reverberate. Pushkin was a rock star. So was John Clare. César Vallejo. All the young dudes carry the news. 

the nun [diderot]

Diderot’s scabrous little tale tells the story of Sister Suzanne, a young woman despatched to the convent by her family, against her wishes. She’s a weird mix of naif and modern. Diderot was clearly taking the piss, to a certain extent, as Suzanne recounts with an other-worldly innocence the advances of the mother superior who develops a fierce crush on her. Her innocence is also abused in her previous nunnery, with the other nuns going full shlock horror psycho on her, sprinkling broken glass on the floor where she walks barefoot and mixing ashes into her food. There’s something very Piano Teacher about all this, with Suzanne remaining a voice of sanity, insistent on her desire to terminate her vows and lead a life beyond the convent walls. Reading Diderot, it feels as though the psychological make-up of modernity, a modernity in deep conflict with itself over ideas of duty, adherence to social structures, sexuality, power, was already in place two hundred and fifty years ago. Not that much has altered or evolved, in spite of Freud, in spite of the liberal revolution of the twentieth century (which is itself experiencing blowback in the twenty first). Suzanne’s desperate struggle against the corrupt mechanisms of power is as valid today as it ever was. Currently reading Annie Ernaux, I discover that Rivette’s screen adaptation of the novel, made in 1966, was itself banned, something that triggered similar societal divisions between the liberal and authoritarian sectors of French society. It’s as though a matrix was constructed with the arrival of the Enlightenment and we’ve been imprisoned, like the nun, in this matrix forever more. (With acknowledgement to the intellectual parent of this idea). To read The Nun is to read your own story: to what extent are you trapped within a capitalist bubble that you can never escape? The use of the word ‘capitalist’ is not pejorative: it might be that you/we are better off and safer within this bubble, than we might be outside it. Which doesn’t stop us gazing at the convent walls and longing for the chance to escape from a world which has never quite succeeded in convincing us that God exists, or that there are not other, more fertile worlds on the other side. 

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Point of note: This is a book that has sat on various shelves unread for over thirty years, having been purchased in May 1987. Presumably whilst still in university, being ushered on to the next stage of my supposed path, one whose smooth flow I have sought to disrupt. This book will have accompanied me through the Wars of the Roses, marriage and divorce, the London Dayz, before finally finding a moment to be read on a continent I knew nothing about when the book was purchased. The immortality of books as a repository for everything the world could ever contain. Had this book been bought in a digital format, what are the chances I would finally have caught up with it 30 years later?

tomorrow in the battle think on me [marias, tr. margaret jull costa]

Back in the day, working for some Stakhovian corner of the BBC, we were constantly being told about the importance of creating “sympathetic” characters. No-one would want to engage with a central character they couldn’t warm to. The mealy-mouth tediousness of this dictum seems to me more or less fully responsible for the shit-storm which has since overwhelmed Britain. No-one ever wants to engage with anything or anyone they don’t like, as though the complexities of story and discourse are of secondary importance. All that matters is that we feel good about ourselves: that the mirror held up to our society shows us that we are nice, likeable, and therefore worthy of our own attention. I realise that there have been dramatic and literary exceptions, nevertheless, the pervading need to ‘complacer’ the audience has had a deadening effect on our culture. It’s as though Britain hasn’t had a civil war or been invaded in so long that people have forgotten that good people can do bad things, and bad people good. The complexities of moral representation have been eroded. We  have turned into the land of Harry Potter. All of which springs to mind because Marias, whose affection for Britain would appear to be considerable, has such a radically different attitude towards character. At times it’s as though he’s seeking to challenge the audience to engage in spite of his characters, rather than because of them. The narrator of Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me is a brilliant but flakey man, whose first thoughts on meeting the sister of a woman who died in his arms only weeks ago, is to seduce her. The husband of the woman who died in the narrator’s arms turns out to be an even less likeable specimen of humanity, recounting at the book’s denouement a terrible tale of mortal betrayal, a tale which occurs in a London which crucially still had open-decked double deckers. Like The Infatuations, Tomorrow in the Battle Think On Me is another curious tale of unfortunate death and the mixed reactions people have towards death. As though the writer is determined to puncture any kind of sentimentalism regarding that most inevitable of processes. Philosophical asides are smuggled into the great rolling tide of Marias’ prose. The story takes a Cortazarian twist when the narrator sleeps with a prostitute, in a bid to find out whether she’s his ex-wife or not. Everything teeters on the brink of the unbelievable, the unpalatable and yet, somewhere in these morbid, amoral observations, there lurks a deranged wisdom. The oft-dismissed whispers of those who don’t paint pretty, palatable pictures, those who insist on reminding us that the world isn’t a box of chocolates; it is full of random cruelty and stupidity. Those who die young aren’t necessarily good; those who mourn them aren’t necessarily noble. Humans are fickle creatures, easily lead. 

the conversation (w&d coppola)

“Lordy, I hope there are tapes”, is the phrase famously uttered by James Comey when it was suggested that his conversations with Trump might have been recorded. The importance of tapes in American political life can be traced back to Watergate and the conversations recorded by Nixon himself which helped to bring about his downfall. The Conversation was made around the time that Watergate was blowing the lid off American political life, in an administration beset by rumours of corruption and foul play. It sounds familiar. The film also feels frighteningly prescient in the way in which it articulates the idea of a surveillance state. There’s no such thing as privacy anymore. Anything we do or say can and will be monitored. This Kafkaesque notion of a surveillance state leads to a breakdown in trust. Human relationships are polluted by paranoia. By the end of The Conversation, a beleaguered Gene Hackman is a prisoner in his own home, trapped by a justified fear. The only sound left to articulate are the mournful notes of jazz he plays on his tenor sax. 

One supposes that great art doesn’t have to be prophetic, but on the other hand one supposes it does have to be rooted in truths about the human condition that go beyond the context of the art work’s setting. In this sense, Coppola’s The Conversation qualifies in the “great art” category. Technically it’s just about perfect. The script is tight as a drum. The edit is flawless and the sound edit, by Walter Murch, is a thing of genius. Hackman’s acting, the lugubrious fallguy who can never be too careful (but never be careful enough) is a masterly performance, all grunts and hidden sadness behind the eyes. (Of all the great actors who emerged in the seventies, Hackman might be the most underrated). The opening shot is a truly dizzying long sentinel take, lasting up to five minutes. The audience doesn’t realise it, but the whole of the film’s contents are contained within this single take, like a seed about to germinate. It succeeds in putting the audience on the edge of their seat, and from the word go we know that we can’t afford to take our eyes off the film for a moment, every detail is important. There is a mystery to be solved, even if, like the protagonist, we don’t even know what the mystery is. If that isn’t a metaphor for the human condition, I don’t know what is. 

midsommar (w&d ari aster)

There are several levels upon which to read Midsommar. Firstly as a horror film. Here, we encounter the problem that it lacks tension and it’s not particularly scary. The film employs a trope that has been used more effectively by Claudia Llosa (Madeinusa) or Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust) among others, that of the callow Westerners trapped in a tribal society. Four USA grad students (and two aimless Brits) are parachuted into a remote Swedish festival. The fact that ‘the tribe’ is Swedish (blond, white), gives it a twist; it could be said to subvert the stereotypical image of ‘the other’. The art department has a ball, and it all looks pretty, but the studied plot points, as the ‘westerners’ are despatched, feel contrived and only serve to dilute the tension that is supposed to be building around the fate of plucky heroine Florence Pugh, (who does a decent job). Not for the first time, it feels as though a big-budget Hollywood film is suffering from an excess of everything. It’s hard enough to sustain tension over ninety minutes, let alone 147 and the film gradually warps under the weight of its own gravity. The longer it goes on the more the holes in the plot seem to gape and the nods to Von Trier (and even Tarkovsky at the very end?) feel forced, lacking either the discipline peak Von Trier brought to his outrageousness or, of course, the vaulting ambition of Tarkovsky. 

So as a film, whilst Midsommar ticks a lot of pretty picture boxes, and a few gruesome ones, it’s disappointing. However, to return to the connection to Pocock’s Surrender. Pocock visits on a sub-anthropological level various communities in the Midwest. The thing that links these communities is they all have a fierce stance regarding their relationship to nature. As the title Midsommar suggests, the Swedish tribe that Pugh & co visit are steeped in an ersatz relationship to nature. They worship the tree of the ancestors, where the ashes of sacrificed elders are scattered. The festival is also a fertility rite (which chimes with Pocock’s visit to an Ecosex festival). Petals are scattered and trees are venerated. Magic mushrooms are consumed in large quantities in a kind of group shamanic ritual. Yet, in the hands of a Hollywood director, there is still no way to present this world other than as dystopian. In this sense, for reasons that the film seems to be in no way aware of, Midsommar might well be the scariest film of the year. Confronted by the image of a society which seeks to co-exist with nature, the technological military machine which is a Hollywood film production sees itself as having no option but to treat this society as a violent, terrorist threat.