jude the obscure (thomas hardy)

three possible readings:

1, Perhaps the preferred reading. Hardy skewers a system which is weighted against the less fortunate, which promotes mediocrity in place of honesty and talent, which is a damning mirror of a society which hasn’t evolved in over a century. Jude’s calvary, from aspirant man of letters to stonemason martyr remains a pertinent lesson for Britain, where privilege continues to trump endeavour. Most glaringly in the faux glory of Oxbridge, that sham system which has perpetuated class divisions over the course of centuries. 

2, This is a novel which destroys the self-esteem of its supposedly heroic protagonists, Jude and Sue. The writer curses them with a fallibility neither deserve in order to make his polemical point, in the process reducing their struggle to a mean, petty romance, doomed to disaster. The writer’s personal marital hang-ups get in the way of his own characters, whose endless procrastination diminishes them. 

3, This is not a novel about the class system, or even about education. It’s a novel about the pernicious influence of societal norms, driven by reactionary forces, in this case represented by the institution of marriage and the church. It’s Hardy’s counterblast to the conservatism of Shakespeare, to the false happy-ever-after occidental romantic myths, which continue to be perpetuated by the gender stereotypes inherited by females and males alike. As such Jude the Obscure is genuinely radical text, not so much because of its critique of Oxbridge and the education systems, but because of an altogether more radical critique of marriage and monogamy. A critique which was a precursor of the sexual revolution of the sixties/ seventies and the identity revolution of the 2010’s.

Of course there’s no reason why these readings are mutually exclusive. Suffice to say that Hardy’s last novel is a slippery, complex beast, which frustrates straightforward interpretation. With moments when it feels as though even the writer isn’t exactly sure where his novel is headed, what he’s going to do with the troubling characters he has created. Mulling it over it’s curious to think how close Hardy’s world was to Laurie Lee’s. Which suggests that for a brief time in the twentieth century, social mobility became more feasible in the United Kingdom, although one fears that at some stage the tide has turned and we are receding back towards the obscurity of the Britain whose pathways Jude forlornly patrolled. 

days (rizi) (w&d tsai ming-liang)

 This is the type of film which depending on your point of view:

Offers a transcendent view of humanity

Gives art cinema a bad name

Only exists as a result of the existence of a festival circuit.

Of all those, the third is perhaps the hardest to argue with. The opening shot, which might be five minutes long, of a man staring out of a window as a storm rages outside, unseen, sets the tone. The film is composed of single shots, most lasting at least 90 seconds, if not much more. A man prepares food. A man has some kind of acupuncture treatment. A man has a massage. For the first half of the film I speculated that this was all leading towards some kind of revelatory finale. The man is a boxer or a hitman or an astronaut. In fact, the denouement is the ten minute (?) massage scene. The man then pays his masseuse, and then finds himself missing him. Apart from the slightly salacious aspects of the massage, which is far from erotic, there is no pay-off, no denouement. The film marches on with its rigid, inflexible portrait of humanity, tightly managed within the single shot, with no need for dialogue or artistry. It’s painting by numbers, rudimentary, tedious, perhaps revelatory. Only the act of memory will determine the film’s true impact. 

lillian (w&d andreas horvath)

Andreas Horvath’s unorthodox road movie, wherein the protagonist is only seen in a car on one occasion, feels like an instant classic. A classic because it taps into that most elemental American narrative, the travelling hobo. We are on the road with Lillian, as she embarks on her Quixotic quest to cross the US from New York to Alaska. Lillian never talks. There’s no back story. We don’t know why this Russian woman takes this decision, what has driven her to these extremes. It’s the journey laid bare. In the process we are introduced to what might be called the real America. A land of thrift stores and local radio stations. Of laundrettes and security cameras. Also, tellingly, a land of little kindness. Only two people in the film makes an effort to help this wandering stray. A sheriff lends her his coat, a woman gives her some drinks. In part it could be said that this is due to Lilian’s refusal to interact, for reasons we never learn, but it also shows up a land with at least 70 million people who seem diametrically opposed to the notion of the good samaritan. Obviously there’s a scripted element to this: the filmmaker chooses what he wishes to show, but the loneliness of the long distance walker is never interrupted as she marches towards death. The film is replete with cinematic references. There’s the bus from Into The Wild, Grizzly Man’s black bear, Antonioni’s death valley and, perhaps, Lilian’s end echoes that of the wanderer in Kalatozov’s Unsent Letter, alone on an ice floe. Lilian has much in common with Kalatozov’s film. The growing tension that is generated through the mere act of survival. We root for Lillian, played with a blank-face brilliance by Patrycja Planik, and the worse things get the more we root for her. Her journey feels absurd, doomed, but that doesn’t matter. As long as she keeps going, there’s hope. The starkness of her journey is one that the film’s producer Ulrich Seidl, would be proud of, and his influence can be felt. However, this film belongs to Planik and Horvath (who not only directed but also photorgaphed, edited and composed the music). Once again, the cinematic act of defying the odds, striking out to create something that seems absurd, makes for an astonishing film, putting similar Hollywood fare (Into the Wild, The Revenant, etc) in the shade. 

la vida invisible de eurídice gusmao (w&d. karim aïnouz, w. inés bortagaray, murilo hauser)

Aïnouz’s film is a melodramatic love letter to a lost Rio de Janeiro. The recreation of 1950s Rio, in this tale of sisterly love, is spellbinding. A place of wild, ragged gardens, of steepling views, of steamy clubs and stifling families. But, significantly perhaps, no guns, no gangs. A poverty which transcends race, but also unites above and beyond race. I have too little knowledge of the city to know whether Aïnouz’s vision is idealised or not, but it is always beguiling and fascinating to see a Latin American film aspire to the sweeping grandeur of early Coppola. The story itself is hung in a somewhat contrived narrative device. Two sisters are separated, pine for each other, both believing the other to be in Europe, when in fact both are stuck in Rio, facing their personal challenges. It’s all slightly clunky, with the separate narratives evolving side by side. There’s one lovely moment of dramatic tension, when their respective offspring meet unknowingly, but as the device is spun out over two hours is starts to lose traction. However, in a sense it feels as though the narrative is just a hook upon which the director can hang his primary theme, which is the role of the female in society. One sister, Euridice, battles to be able to continue playing the piano, at which she is extremely talented, in spite of being a mother. The other, Gilda, fashions a life for herself despite being driven out of the family home, working in a factory, eschewing the role of prostitute which at one point beckoned. The film is full of physicality. Convincing sex scenes, filmed from a female perspective, a gruelling childbirth scene, and more. In these visceral moments, the film becomes more than the story, painting a vivid portrait of womanhood in an evolving Rio. 

love me tender (w&d klaudia reynicke)

Reynicke’s film is essentially a tender portrayal of mental illness. Seconda is a dance obsessed young woman who suffers from agaraphobia. When her mother dies and her father does a runner, she’s left alone in the house. What can save her? Although there’s something faintly predictable about the initial set-up, with its echoes of Repulsion, the film takes wing when Seconda, played with a gamine intensity by Barbara Giordano, finally escapes the house. She collects a lover, kidnaps another would-be lover, and goes on an extended flight of fancy in the woods. The film is whimsical, floating between dirty naturalism and heightened fantasy sequences. Whilst there are echoes of Lanthimos’ Dogtooth, it is also reminiscent of another recent Swiss movie, Alloys, (d Tobias Nölle), which in a similar manner dealt with the threads linking society, alienation/ atomisation and mental health. It makes one wonder what they’re putting in the Swiss water. This seeming land of plenty is actually peopled by lost souls struggling to come up with a means of coping with the complexity of the big wide world; the lure of escaping into a fantasy world proving far more enticing. 

mumbo jumbo (ishmael reed)

Well now… this is perhaps the ur-text of 2020. Pandemic/ BLM/ Conspiracy theories. Mumbo Jumbo’s got it all. The Jes Grew pandemic is sweeping the States, making everyone dance to its crazy rhythms. The Knight’s Templar are desperate to repress it. They set out to discover the secret blockchain code which will reveal its Egyptian mysteries. A race war plays out on the streets of New York. In the midst of which Reed gives an erudite and definitive guide to the history of Osiris and Isis and Moses and the origins of just about everything. Mumbo Jumbo is as the title suggests a rip-roaring nonsensical blast of glorious imagination, strident enough to blow down the walls of Jericho. Ishmael Reed’s novel is Pynchonesque in its scope and refusal to take itself too seriously. Its brash, prophetic prose suggests that not much has changed in a hundred years of the USA. Perhaps because it refuses to pander to a conventional downbeat minority narrative, or perhaps because it’s just so out there, Mumbo Jumbo would not appear to be part of the canon, either of US literature or US Afro-American literature. But as 2020 has blessed us with all the ingredients which seemed so outlandish in Reed’s imagination, perhaps people might start to recognise Mumbo Jumbo for what it is: one of then most astute portrayals of the USA ever written. Egyptian founding myths and all. 

the audition (w&d ina weisse, w daphne charizani)

The Audition is one of the most effective examples of a tight script and an even tighter edit that you could ever hope to see. We’re in deep in Piano Teacher territory, the highly strung violin teacher, Ana, played meticulously by Nina Hoss, seeking to channel her frustrations via the tutoring of a talented but fragile student. Unlike Haneke’s film, The Audition never veers towards sexual abuse, although there are two moments of physical intensity in their relationship which hint at the passion both have in common, a passion which finds its outlet in music. There’s a taut subtlety to the narrative which is constantly in play, something which is never flashy, a pot that simmers, threatening to boil over, finally reaching a heightened dramatic finale. The script weaves its multiple elements together effortlessly. One might say that the script is far from seamless - there are abundant seams. Ana has relationships of differing intensity with four different males (the student, her son, her husband and a cellist lover). She is also managing the demons of her own stress related abandonment of concert playing, a woman whose talent buckles in the fact of her temperament. The elements are many and varied, but the edit keeps the film moving at all times, with a suitably musical precision, scenes cut just at the point when their kinetic energy is sufficient to drive the next scene forwards. Hence even a scene as seemingly banal as Ana walking to work is inveighed with menace and meaning. The craftswomanship at work in the film, on every level, makes for an absorbing tale which never crosses the line into melodrama, no matter how close to the line it walks. 

los conductos (w&d camilo restrepo)

Another low budget movie, shot on 16mm, a Colombian film made with the support of the French group, L’Abominable. This tells in a roundabout fashion the story of a hitman, who wants to discard his gun and escape a life of violence. The story is presented in images, grainy, arresting. The choice of location becomes in itself key in a film that clearly has little budget for art design. An illegal factory, making rip-off Adidas and Kappa sportswear. A disused warehouse. A forest with a view over the city of Medellin. The city hovers at the edge of the film, seen in occasional glimpses, an escalator, a person on the phone in the background. Perhaps as a result of its shorter span, the images feel as though they have a greater economy. The film concludes with a poem and there is indeed something poetic about the recurring use of imagery, the handle of a gun, the mesmeric claustrophobia of an underpass, the ball of copper that is stolen from the city’s wiring. Los Conductos maintains its pace and intrigue to its somewhat stagey end. There’s a real sense of the underbelly of a Latin American city in its portrayal of Medellin, a place where survival can be found in the most remote, dirtiest corners of the city and in its search for this representation, the film transcends its limited budget. 

the metamorphosis of birds (w&d catarina vasconcelos)

Catarina Vasconcelos’ film has the feel of a prose poem. The narrative is sketchy. As the film unfolds we gradually realise that this is the story of a family, a homage by the filmmaker to her mother who died too young. But these elements emerge elliptically. The film is constructed from artfully staged frames. A woman tries to right a fallen tree. A man stares out of a porthole. A boat with a tree sets out onto open water. A woman submerges in a river. The film is an assemblage of these moments. It’s slow, immersive, without the current of narrative to drive it along. At the same time, the meditative approach contains beauty. A Mapplethorpe-esque montage of flowers opening. A sequence of African stamps. A language of images, assembled to reveal the story of a family. 

the lover (marguerite duras, tr. barbara bray)

Duras is a name whose resonance perhaps surpasses the knowledge of her work in the Anglo-Saxon world. I had an extremely vague memory of having read her most famous novel about thirty years ago, but if this was the case, few memories remained. The novel is a strange hybrid, reminiscent in many ways of the writing of Annie Ernaux. A feminine frankness married to a deliberate flouting of narrative norms. The story roams from point to point, at times a fictionalised account of a love affair in French Indochina between a rich Chinese man and a poor French teenager, at other times a family narrative, describing the trials of the narrator’s experiences in the colonies and her turbulent relationship with her mother and her brothers. In general told in the first person, the writer has no qualms suddenly switching to the third person if she wants to change the framing. The result is easily digestible, on the edge of salacious, and incontrovertibly auto-fiction. The writer as subject, the doyenne of her story. With scope to lie and elaborate, no doubt, as a cursory read-up around the novel reveals. Perhaps the most telling aspect of the novel from this reader’s point of view is the description of the torpid world of the colonialist. Never capable of integrating into the society they inhabit, seeking to construct some kind of false entity which represents a homeland but which can never become one. As such the colonial project always seemingly doomed to failure and, more than that, a form of existential despair, an eternal failure to connect. The mother’s depression, the older brother’s psychosis, the treatment of the Chinese lover and his own neuroses, all seem to reveal the hollow foolishness of this imperial reach, one which comes at a cost to all involved. 

the third reich (w. bolaño, tr natasha wimmer)

After an extended Bolaño hiatus, the blog returns to its most-read writer. In times of crisis turn to a sure bet. Unfortunately, Third Reich proves to be strictly minor Bolaño, a long shaggy dog story about a German war games champion who gets stuck in Catalonia when a holiday friend of his girlfriend mysteriously vanishes in a windsurfing accident. This brief synopsis instantly marks the novel out as being in prime Bolaño territory, even more so if it’s added there’s a scarred Latin American beachcomber who plays a prominent role in the narrative. However, the novel itself feels baggy, it’s wide Bolaño, rather than focussed Bolaño. It goes round the houses as it plays out its central device which is a board game reenactment of the second world war between the protagonist and the scarred beachcomber. The second world war took six years from start to finish, and if the novel isn’t quite that long, there are undoubtably moments when it feels as though it’s being played out in order to accommodate the twists and turns inherent in the device. The narrator also tends towards the cold intellectual Bolaño rather than the warm poetic one. One imagines the novel as an earlier work, and in this context it is of course fascinating to see how the writer evolved, how he chiselled his craft, to merge ideas with content with emotion. On the other hand, it might be that this was not an earlier work at all. In which case this kind of ad hoc observation should be labelled as trite and indicative of nothing.