the big goodbye (sam wasson)

Wasson’s book narrates the story of Chinatown, the film. How it came to be conceived, developed, made, distributed. It focuses on four key figures: Bob Towne, screenwriter, Robert Evans, producer, Polanski, director and Nicholson. In a sense the book is a tragedy, a paean to a world that might have been but never was, due to the obvious flaws of these four key players, but also because of the changing face of Hollywood and, by implication, the drift within the USA towards a more stupid vision of what it aspired to be as a nation/ culture. More commerce, less art. The balance between these two poles of a film’s production has always been a delicate one, film being an industry as well as an artform. Wasson describes how Chinatown’s success as a model of a certain kind of Hollywood filmmaking was the result of Evans’ indulgence and patronage, a production model which, even as the film was being released, was already in the process of being disassembled. For those interested in this complex equation, Wasson’s book is a masterly guide. The book doesn’t shy away from the Polanski issue, laying bare his crimes. However, it does look to contextualise this within the framework of the director’s life, noting the tragedies which befell him from birth, his mother killed in a concentration camp and the later murder of Sharon Tate and his unborn child. All the characters, save perhaps Nicholson, emerge ultimately as monsters of one kind or another, the product and victims of a kind of high Roman empire Hollywood epoch, where excess and wealth were celebrated, but whose fruits were a succession of films engaging with the artform in a manner that has never been equalled. Nicholson is described as a Falstaffian character within this network, at once vain, generous and brilliant. 

ukamau (w&d jorge sanjinés, w. óscar soria)

Sanjinés is not a well known name in Anglo- Saxon circles. Yet he has been one of the most consistently interesting filmmakers from this side of the world for decades, exerting a strong social conscious in his films. Ukamau, which translated from the Aymara, means something along the lines of ‘That’s how it is’, is one of his earliest films. Andrés Mayta leaves behind his wife, Sabina, when he goes to market. Whilst he is away, Ramos rapes and murders her. Andrés wants revenge, but knows the police won’t be interested and the indigenous social code forbids acts of violent retribution. The film, whilst showing the world of the Aymara on the Isla de Sol in lake Titicaca, slowly plays out to the moment when Andrés Mayta finally takes revenge, far from his own territory. The subtext of the tale is clearly about the abuse of the indigenous peoples by the colonial arrivalists. Whilst there is nothing too subtle about this, the depiction of Andrés Mayta’s moral dilemma is artfully described, and the insight into the world of the Aymara is beautifully shown. It was reminiscent of Rossellini or Paulo Rocha, as well as, (observed by Sñr Amato), Mark Jenkins’ Bait.