i’m alright jack (w&d. john boulting, w. alan hackney, frank harvey)

This film screened as part of a Sellers season in Cinemateca. It’s the only one I caught. The context is given perhaps because it seems such a curious film to watch on the big screen in Montevideo. The audience laughed along with Sellers. There was one particularly loquacious fellow who reacted effusively all the way through. Watching it now is a bittersweet experience. It should be remembered that this seemingly gentle satire came out at the same time as the Angry Young Men were doing their thing, and Kitchen Sink drama was on the rise. The cosy caricatures of I’m Alright Jack were already being eroded. Curious, too, that these stereotypes include the Trade Union leader, holding industry to ransom with strikes and pickets. This was a story which would continue for decades. In my youth, the Trade Union leaders were household names (Len Murray, Scargill, Hugh Scanlon) and seemed to wield a power which has faded, just as perhaps British industry has faded. The irony that Boulting presents in his movie is that despite their class differences, all the characters fall under the umbrella of a cosy British familiarity. The capacity to bond over a cup of tea or a drink is always there. (Irene Handl really steals the show here.) There is an idea of a unified Britain that will bind us all together, no matter what. And, given the film was made little more than a decade after the end of the second  world war, that’s perhaps not so surprising. Whether the same could be said of Britain today seems doubtful. As an Englishman I would not want to share common ground with the more bigoted sectors of society who the new right seeks to recruit and promote. But it might be that the Boulting view of Britain was always rosy-hued. A truer version would be revealed in the filmmaking of Loach and Clarke, the writing of Osbourne, Wesker, Pinter and Shelagh Delaney. Although it might be said that within the work of Loach, there lurks a lingering hankering for the Britain depicted in I’m Alright Jack, one of confident workers forever quarrelling with cunning bosses, with some kind of compromise inevitably reached by the end.

volveréis (w&d jonás trueba, w. itsaso arana y vito sanz)

Trueba’s film La virgen de agosto was a sleeper hit in the Hispanic universe. Its tone was laconic, neo-romantic and far more hippy than anything by Madrid’s most famous filmmaker. It was also a love letter to Madrid, his native city, as is Volveréis (You’ll Be Back). The lead characters are Madrileño bohos, a filmmaker and an actor who have decided to end their fifteen year personal relationship, without rancour. They might work together in the future or they might not. Or indeed, they might be working together now, as Alex crops up in the film Ale has directed and is now editing. Or is that actually the film we are now watching? The meta-element of Volveréis is not shied away from. At the same time this is a film about love, about splitting up, about subsisting as artists in the capital. The only other filmmaker I know who lived in Madrid had to move out because rents were unaffordable, which is something the couple realise as they go looking for two new places to live. (One each.) The Maguffin is a party which they plan to hold to celebrate their separation, taking their inspiration from Ale’s father (played by Trueba’s actual father),  who gives his daughter Kierkegaard to read. As the film progress the storyline becomes less and less linear. It’s not clear if scenes are happening in the future after they have split up, or after they have decided not to split up, or in the present as they continue to debate the idea of splitting up. Or indeed whether the scenes are occurring within the matrix of Ale’s film itself, which might or might not be the film we are watching. The edit becomes more jagged and the film teeters somewhere between genius and tedium. The lead actors, Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanz are given screenwriting credits, and it’s hard to tell how far the film’s confusion is a result of precision or chaos in the process of its creation. It would be intriguing to see a script and find out how much of the second half of the film was finalised in the edit. There’s something both gratingly bourgeois about all this and yet radically, formally exciting. 

one battle after another (w&d pt anderson)

Thomas Pynchon. Vineland. Let’s start there. Let’s start with what was happening in the late sixties, the seventies, the eighties. Watergate. Kent State. Iran Contra. Etcetera. Pynchon is a dividing line. A lot of literary types are not that keen. His writing skirts around the shibboleths of standard lit crit. You can’t really teach someone to write like Pynchon. There’s not much  point analysing character or narrative development in his novels. They’re skittish, maverick, and exude a kind of brilliance which is hard to pin down, which might not move you to tears but will have you going - did I really just read that? It’s been a long time since I read Vineland and, guess what, I’ve been thinking about it a lot as we enter this phase of high-USA-fascism. It was all there, in Vineland, I recall, albeit rendered playfully, tucked away in a corner of California, private battles between the state and those who seek to live at the edge of that state. (Many of whom might be rednecks, or would-be Unabombers, but also including those who seek a kinder version of society than late capitalism permits.) Clearly I wasn’t the only one. PTA is a fan, he’s adapted Pynchon before, you can see something of Pynchon in the grandiose, meandering narratives of Boogie Nights and Magnolia.

So the association does not feel casual. One of the talents of an artist is to be on the pulse of where society/ humanity is headed. (“The unacknowledged legislators”.) I am not sure when PTA would have started adapting Vineland, but one imagines it was in the days of the Migra, rather than ICE. Before the full Pynchonesque civil war truly blew up last year. He, like Pynchon, must have sensed what was out there. The sociopathic values given flesh in Sean Penn’s brilliant performance as Lockjaw, the desperation of DiCaprio’s Bob, a desperation that so many who might have coasted through the Obama and the Biden years must be feeling now. (Including PTA himself?). Whilst paying homage to the radicals of yesteryear, the Weathermen and the Panthers, the film locates the punctum of the present conflict in the war on immigration, and specifically Latinos. The Latinos who have occupied California and the southern USA since before the Anglos, (albeit they were colonisers too), against whom the forces of WASP USA are now turning their guns. Benicio del Toro makes amends for his part in Sicario with a beautiful turn as a laconic radical, protecting his people from the state’s grasp. This is where the war is being waged within the USA’s borders, even if other wars are being waged on behalf of this would-be turbo capitalism in other territories in other, more horrific ways.

There’s a moment in the film where Bob is watching The Battle of Algiers. In theory it’s a very knowing, on-the-nose reference, except for the fact that the vast majority of Anderson’s public will never have heard of the film, just as they will never have heard of Pynchon. Hollywood and PTA could not produce a film like The Battle of Algiers. There’s a need for humour, glamour, car chases. PTA supplies this need. It’s a relentlessly enjoyable watch and in this way it gets past the unacknowledged financial censors. It could, were one a radical radical, be accused of extracting humour and profit from the culture war it depicts. But PTA’s sympathies are never in doubt. He knows which side he wants his bread buttered. And he recognises, in a finale which in many ways is the least Pynchonesque moment in the whole film, that there are battles to come, just as the battles being waged are a product of those that were fought (and lost?) before, in the time that Pynchon wrote Vineland. We are on the verge of times that we had hoped we could avoid, but history tells us will always return. My generation, the same as PTA’s and DiCaprio’s and Penn’s, will not be on the front line. It will be a younger generation which will have to choose which side they are on, and who will have to fight to defend their beliefs. 

the battle of algiers (w&d. gillo pontecorvo, w. franco solinas)

Doubt there is very much I could say that hasn’t been said before about this remarkable film, which seems to offer a template for political filmmaking, with percussive edit, sound and music, interweaving dramatic scenes within a historical context, that has never been adopted. Rather, political filmmaking tends to be relegated to talky TV shows where the screenwriter’s dialogue skills are put to the test, and the cinematic aesthetics remain secondary. The power of TBoA comes from the mesmeric use of sound and camera, as the viewer is taken into the radical heart of the casbah. The colonial forces, echoing events today in Palestine, seek to control the local population, but no matter how much they think they’re winning, they’re not. Wanton bombings, carefully controlled gates into and out of the ghetto: this all feels far too familiar. The need for colonial forces to regulate societies they occupy will always be confronted by an enemy for whom the collective patria has more value than an individual fate. 

midnight run (d. martin brest, w. george gallo)

Cinemateca has devoted much of its programming to US cinema this year. Here is another minor Hollywood classic. A film which is entirely constructed around character sees De Niro give one of his finest performances as a disenchanted bounty hunter, and Grodin almost upstage him as the crooked accountant De Niro has to take from NY to LA in order to collect his reward. Grodin’s performance is a thing of quiet beauty. Whereas in most buddy movies, there’s a testosterone rivalry, Grodin exudes a world-weary anti-masculinity. He is, we are told, a good guy, who stole from the mob to give to charity. This marks him out as a maverick, but his performance goes further than this, as though his character is almost actively working against the genre he’s found himself in. He thinks before he speaks. He’s quiet spoken, insistent, even whiny. He has a confidence which has nothing to do with his physical strength. He could be a character out of a Wenders’ movie. The contrast with De Niro’s typical wisecracking boludo is beautiful, and as a result the movie is far more than the sum of its action and comedic parts. There’s a sensitivity which helps it to transcend the genre, to speak about the problems of masculinity and what friendship really means.

As an aside, Brest’s career is an anomaly. He only directed seven features, including this one and the hits Beverly Hills Cop, Meet Joe Black and Scent of a Woman. Those films were made over the course of over twenty years, meaning he was far from prolific. His career appears to have died with Gigli, a Lopez-Affleck flop. Watching Midnight Run it seems surprising he only made three more movies, but perhaps this also speaks to the qualities of Gallo’s ingenious script.

the devil of the provinces (juan cárdenas, tr. lizzie davis)

There is a certain style of Latin American novel which Cárdenas’ book maps onto. An elliptical narrative with a semi-alienated protagonist. A sense of quest, to discover something which the reader realises by the midpoint of the book will never be found. A distancing device, perhaps, hinting at a post-political vacio. In this case the protagonist, a biologist, returns to a small Colombian town after fifteen years abroad. He hooks up with old friends and an ex and his former dealer. He has a job in a girls’ school which is mysterious and possibly nefarious.  His brother was a gay politician who was murdered. The novel also incorporates observations on biology, palm weevils and avocados. There’s no shortage of thought-provoking material, but as noted everything is processed through the deadpan attitude of the biologist, for whom nothing seems to matter an enormous amount. 

set my heart on fire (w. izumi suzuki, tr helen o’horan)

The protagonist of the novel goes by the same name as the author. Izumi is a model who hangs out with rock stars and makes no bones about the fact she likes getting laid. Then, half way through the book, she meets the darkly controlling Jun, a jazz guitarist. Jun is a manipulative controlling personality. Izumi is a drifter, a wil-o-the-wisp, who gets caught in his slipstream. He is abusive and ends up going insane. The first half of the novel feels as though it takes place in a limited timeframe: the second half unfolds rapidly over the course of a decade. Izumi’s descent, tied to Jun’s lunacy, is vertiginous.

It’s not hard to see why Izumi Suzuki’s writing struck a chord in the Japanese psyche. She writes with a candour that pierces the codified society. Sex, violence, drugs: nothing is held back. It’s particularly surprising to see Izumi’s wilful licentiousness and the detail the author provides, without ever seeming salacious. This is how this young woman, representative of a certain zeitgeist, lives. Japan’s social codes have perhaps always concealed a more sexualised undercurrent, the world of geishas and arrangements. Suzuki smashes through any kind of hypocrisy, offering a convincing vision of an alternative slacker society. 

los divinos (laura restrepo, tr. carolina de robertis)

It’s 17 years since I read Delirium by Restrepo, although it feels like yesterday. Our relationship to the books we read is atemporal. They function on a different plane. It’s nearly forty years since I first read Foucault, but my relationship with him hasn’t aged in the slightest. Almost everyone I knew from that era has gone, save family. But he sticks around, with his bald head and his laconic questions. Restrepo’s Delirium has always stuck in my mind as a window into Colombian culture. It’s a country I have never visited, but it forms part of the Latino universe and I have come across many Colombians in Montevideo. Post civil war, post the era of the edge-lords, Colombia might have appeared to settle down. Los Divinos offers a sclerotic take on the social divides which exist in the country, and indeed across the Latino world, where those who belong to or associate with the wealthy elite act as though they only have a passing relationship with the law. Los Divinos - the divine ones - are five over-privileged friends who are due a dose of hubris. Narrated by one of them, with not so much as a single sympathetic character, the novel has a harsh, acerbic flavour. We don’t want any of these characters to emerge unscathed and perhaps for this reason it’s a less engaging read than Delirium.

 

the trial (d. orson welles)

Welles’ version is both expressionist and baroque. Expressionist in the way it uses its Zagreb locations, its off-beam photography, its heightened acting by a stellar cast. This is in keeping with a perceived conception of how Kafka’s world might have looked (not so far removed from Soderbergh’s version of The Castle). Welles does it in style and there are many moments where the set eclipses the action. In the days before CGI, the scenes of mass typists have a demented glory, and the gargoyles and brickwork of the high nineteenth century architecture speak of the Hapsburg world Kafka was born into. Baroque, because of the mannered use of text and ponderous nature of the edit. There are no short cuts on show here, no matter how much Welles’ script has edited down the novel. Scenes play out with a papal solemnity. Welles himself, as the advocate, feels like he might be a cardinal. Women are demented and lascivious. Men are doomed to a warped, frustrated middle age. Antony Perkins strides around through all this like a lost high jumper being asked to take part in a marathon. His demise at the end, as Welles tinkers with the novel, comes as a kindly release. The spirit of Welles hangs over the film just as much as the spirit of Kafka, a monomaniacal presence which challenges the viewer to stick with his vision as the dialogue unfurls at its stately pace and the illogical narrative keeps going round in circles. 

this is not propaganda - adventures in the war against reality (peter pomerantsev)

Pomerantsev’s book is an investigation into the world which shaped the world we live in. Even though it was published less than a decade ago, it already feels as though history is running away from those pre-pandemic times when the reality of what was about to confront us was something that people were warning about, rather than living through. Pomerantsev investigates on a global basis the evolution of the post-truth world, fuelled by social media and its bot farms, by individuals like Nix for whom ethics are an offshoot of capitalism, entirely beholden to the idea of profit. In the process of which are facilitated sense-deranging attacks on reality, allowing the wanton killing of women and children, the elderly and the innocent, to be reframed as actions taken in self-defence, and promoted as such to the point that anyone who questions this logic is in danger of being excommunicated. This is the world Pomerantsev saw coming, and now it has arrived. The dangerous edges of democracy, a system beholden to the manipulation of the masses, are laid bare. The author of the book outlines his personal journey from Soviet Ukraine to the UK. His family fled from a repressive totalitarian regime towards the hope of something called ‘the west’. But the west is not an ethical construction. It is a market driven society. And now the fusion of vast wealth which the technocrats of the internet have succeeded in generating and seek to preserve, with the autocratic ambitions of wealthy men and women driven by nothing more than personal ambition, threatens to decimate the planet with an uncontrollable ferocity. Anything that stands in the way of this behemoth will be levelled. Pomerantsev sees the writing on the wall and traces the way that this is a global epidemic. But there’s a sense that his concerns have been overtaken by the actuality of the present. 

miller’s crossing (w&d the coen brothers)

Did we know, way back when, that we were witnessing the birth of a dynasty? In a world where so many filmmakers come and go, have their moment of glory and then are moved on, to TV or being a gun for hire, or obscurity, the Coen Brothers have stood out over the course of thirty years as a team that gets films made and occasionally strike gold. Miller’s Crossing, their third feature, is an assured piece of filmmaking. The Coen Brothers thrive on big casting, a heightened sense of reality and some tastefully excessive violence. It’s noticeable how Gabriel Byrne keeps bouncing back from repeated beatings, as though he was made of rubber. Then again, this feels like part of the Coen bros schtick - rubbery faces which contort, distort and then come back into some kind of regular shape, a rubbery plot that wobbles around but gets there in the end. It’s a kind of playmobile filmmaking; straining the boundaries of emotional plausibility whilst the actors charm pants off the viewers. So good to see Albert Finney in there doing his thing, one of that great generation of British/ Irish film actors that stalked the movie world and exuded charisma. (On which note and completely tangentially, RIP Terrence Stamp.)

the last seduction (d. john dahl, w. steve barancik)

Dahl’s film feels like it belongs to another era. The narrative dénouement is hinged on a deliberately provoked rape. Whilst Bridget, the femme fatale, is the agent of this rape and is using Mike’s action to her own advantage, one can’t see a film treating the dramatic action of rape in this manner now. Likewise, whilst we live in the era of the sassy female lead, it feels unlikely that a female protagonist’s strengths would be pinned on her sexuality and powers of seduction, as the title suggests. Which is not to say that seduction has ceased to exist, or that women, and men, are still likely to use their sexual attractiveness as a means to get ahead in the world. Just that this is no longer material around which a narrative might be structured. As Bridget, the femme fatale, Linda Fiorentino gives a barnstorming performance, loving the limelight and unafraid to hog it, delivering Barancik’s one-liners with a deep-fanged venom. Small town boy Mike (Peter Berg) doesn’t know what he’s got himself into. Bridget’s ingenuity is tied to the cynicism that goes with knowing how easily men can be manipulated by a stockinged leg. She knows how the world works, even when the world doesn’t want to be seen to work that way. She also knows that whether or not she triumphs in the end it can only be a pyrrhic victory: age will defeat her finally no matter what, and she needs to make the most of the time she has before that oldest enemy of all catches up with her.