melancholia (w&d von trier)

If cinema, as occasionally noted, is a synthesis of multiple elements (screenwriting, acting, photography, music, art direction, editing etc), then the art of the director is to employ each of these elements to the nth degree. It might seem counterintuitive that Von Trier, who comes from a lo-fi school, which sought a return to a pared-back methodology, should end up excelling in every aspect of this directorial remit, but in Melancholia, we witness a seemingly effortless mastery of the medium.

Screenwriting - when discussing the quality of screenwriting, what is involved? Firstly the idea that the screenplay will introduce and discuss ideas that provoke thought, a condition so often neglected by the mainstream. Second that the narrative should take the viewer with it, should be involving. Thirdly, that the dialogue should be credible, even at its more recondite. So when Dunst’s character says that the earth is evil, in another film this line might feel trite or contrived. Whereas, in Melancholia, it feels not only credible, coming from the mouth of this character, but also resonant of the more complex ideas the film is raising. Cinema is not philosophy. It struggles to explore concepts with subtlety or depth. Von Trier appears to be investigating a Schopenhauer- ian or Manichean argument about the overblown importance of humanity, its relative insignificance within the immensity of the universe. Dunst character explores these ideas convincingly, brilliantly, in a way that allows us to understand the questions the film is posing. Should the world end, would it really be such a tragedy? What would be lost? It’s an existential, anti-renaissance line, which feels all too pertinent in this 21st christian century.

Acting - Acting is by definition, fakery. Someone pretends to be someone else. The question then becomes, how well do they do this? Do they still feel human? Or does the fakery feel contrived? Perhaps the greatest testament to the director’s skill is the performance of Kiefer Sutherland, an actor who sometimes seemed to relish the fakery, the exaggeration of acting for the camera. Here, as the hassled husband of Gainsbourg and Dunst’s brother-in-law his exasperation is completely convincing.

Photography - I was lucky enough to watch the film on a big screen. There can be few more imposing visions than the great planet Melancholia soaring over the horizon, at the same time beauty, monster and avenger. There is something of the formal composition of certain scenes that is reminiscent of Resnais’ Last year in Marienbad. Then, in the opening half of the film, Von Trier’s DOP, Manuel Alberto Claro, captures the nuances and energy of a wedding with all the brillo of the days of Dogma, a homage, in its way, to Festen.

Music - Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde is used repeatedly throughout the film. Given the epic scale the film is looking to operate on, the choice feels just as apposite (and perhaps includes a nod and a wink) to Copolla’s uses of Wagner in Apocalypse Now.

Art Direction - someone (Simone Grau Roney) was doing something very clever indeed with the representation of the planet Melancholia, a second moon/ sun. The use of a simple piece of twisted wire as a messenger of salvation or doom is also extraordinary.

Editing - Editing is one of the least valued elements of the process of making cinema. You rarely get editors on the red carpet. Yet Molly Malene Stensgaard offers a masterclass. In the first half of the film, with its large cast, she ensures that the rhythm never drops as we flit from scene to scene, cutting at the perfect moment. In the second, which has only four characters, she ensures there is a rising sense of tension, propelling the film towards its glorious climax. 

the big nowhere (james elroy)

It’s so long ago since I read Elroy’s Underworld trilogy, which offered both a re-imagination and an examination of post-war US politics. One longs for either Elroy himself or another Elroy to analyse the Trumpian world with the same forensic discipline. Most history, as Marias observes, occurs in the shadows, and Elroy is a writer who is not afraid to walk in those shadows and take the reader with him. Perhaps because the trilogy felt so urgent, so necessary, I have resisted his crime novels. The Big Nowhere is the second of his LA Quartet, and whilst it doesn’t do so directly, it still flirts with politics, pulling up the skirts of the US establishment. Elroy writes with an urgency as he documents the way a crime investigation is railroaded by vested interests within the LAPD. There is no space for idealism or even honesty in this venal world. It’s a gripping, coruscating read, which gives a down-to-earth lowdown on what really makes the US tick. He is a writer blessed with a singular, scatty brilliance.

 

far from heaven (w&d todd haynes)

Todd Haynes achieves something complex in his Sirk homage. He bestows pathos on characters who at first seem laughable, even absurd. The film was released in 2002 and perhaps the lens through which an audience might watch the film has changed over the course of the last 25 years. Moore’s Cathy struggles to cope with her husband Frank’s gay infidelity,  The tone is melodramatic. Moore’s impeccably coiffed hair seems as much of a character as either of her children. Quaid’s Frank breaks down and weeps and then pinballs around like an archetypal repressed North American bourgeois. Everything is so on point that it feels like a pastiche, as indeed it is. It’s impossible not to laugh at these characters and their cliched fifties behaviour. Surely this is a world that we have left behind? Dennis Haysbert’s Raymond is the down-to-earth antidote to all this. A man whose solid decency transcends the boundaries of race and class. No wonder Cathy falls for him. All the same, this world and its characters feel like a caricature. Then something remarkable happens, in large part through the performances of Moore and Haysbert. The characters seem to slip the pastiche net. Their emotional distress touches us. The film becomes a film about love. its power and its limitations. These emotions are, of course, timeless.

Twenty five years later, even those elements of the film that seem wilfully contrived suddenly feel far more plausible. Conservatism is back. Prejudice is back. The closet is back. It seems like we’re slipping back into the absurd, divided world of the fifties. 

la femme d’ à côté (d. françois truffaut, w suzanne schiffman, jean aurel)

Truffaut’s melodrama feels slightly misconceived. Depardieu and Ardant are former lovers. She just happens to move in right across the street from him. Both are slightly nuts but keep it under control with their respective sane partners. However, when they inevitably reconnect, it’s a tinder box. Both veer towards a shared madness, an amour fou. The charisma of the two leads almost pulls it off, but as the film veers more and more towards melodrama, it flirts with the ridiculous. At one point Ardant’s husband says that he’s not a jealous man, “I’m not a Spanish husband”, (something the subtitles struggled to translate), but Depardieu and Ardant both have a Lorca-esque streak to them (she actually comes from the south, her children’s book editor is informed). One wonders what someone like Almodovar might have made of this tale. The tension between a Gallic cool and a Mediterranean excess doesn’t quite come off, as it did in a film like L’Apartment, for example, or even Pierrot Le Fou. It’s an interesting study in how a remarkable director can slightly misfire, no matter how enticing the ingredients, actors and premise. 

the voice of hind rajab (w&d kaouther ben hania)

If we accept that this thing we call life has always been a delicate balance between civilisation and barbarism. That at any moment the barbarians might rear their ugly heads and ignore the established rules of civilisation, then we also tend to believe, from the standpoint of the post-war liberal order, (which gave birth to the state of Israel), that this won’t happen here, or be perpetrated by those we consider our allies. Included in that idea of civilisation is that children should not become the victims of warfare. Wilfully killing children is the kind of thing the barbarians do. Be they the Nazis or the Mongols or any of the other peoples who codes of warfare pay no heed to our idea of civilisation. When the mass murder of civilians occurs, this is what we have come to term a genocide. There are many Israeli politicians who openly advocate for the eradication of the Gazan population. Their rhetoric has fuelled the acts of barbarism which we have witnessed, whether we want to or not, over the course of the past three years.

Hind Rajab was another of the victims of this barbarism. And the weapons which our ‘civilised’ societies have provided. This film pays homage to her suffering. It does so intelligently by not attempting to take us into a fictional Gaza which can never be recreated, rather recreating the events during the hours Hind Rajab was being killed from the point of view of the Red Cross workers in the West Bank, who are trying and failing to save her. Just as we, those who are opposed to the killing of children, try and fail. The Red Cross workers are impotent. They betray one of the core credos of modern filmmaking which is that the protagonists have to be active. They cannot be anything but passive bystanders as they witness the crime occur in real time. We are also passive bystanders, unable to roll back time, make the world see sense, save a child who is begging for her life. It is a terrible thing to witness but the action of witnessing which the filmmakers demand of the audience, the passive, impotent audience, is in some ways a homage to Hind Rajab’s short life and cruel death.

No-one can be a saviour or a superhero in the face of institutionalised barbarism. 

chikamatsu monogatari/ the crucified lovers (w&d kenji mizoguchi, w. monzaemon chikamatsu, matsutarō kawaguchi)

Mizoguchi conjures a subtle tale of tragic love which is also a vivid portrayal of a society where privacy is as wafer thin as the sliding paper walls of the houses the characters inhabit. It’s a world of secret passions and strict societal codes. There is endemic to the tale a severe critique of a wealth-driven culture (and by implication capitalism?). The only real villain is the business owner, Ishun, who wants to cheat on his wife and reacts with no mercy when his loyal and dedicated employee, Mohei, uses his signature to seek a loan of five silver marks for Ishun’s wife, Osan. This precipitates a series of increasingly unfortunate chapters which result in Mohei and Osan fleeing the city together. Osan is increasingly drawn to Mohei, who resists her, until the moment when he reveals his love for her. The story becomes a version of Romeo and Juliet, as the lovers commitment to each other presages their execution by crucifixion for adultery. The story unfolds with a parallel sense of jeopardy and redemptive love. All the characters seem trapped by a social code that fails to recognise the human nature of love. Even Ishun falls prey to this, and is ruined.

At the same time, this is a story of literal sliding doors, as the paper walls of the claustrophobic living quarters make for the inevitable revelation of secret passions and betrayals. Mizoguchi’s camera seems to glide through these spaces, a spy in the house of love. 

nuestra tierra (w&d lucrecia martel, w maría alché)

Martel deviates into doc. Nuestra Tierra is a rangy documentary which looks, as the title suggests, at the issue of the land, who owns it, who has rights. The location is Tucuman, the northern province of Argentina. Northern Argentina has a far larger native or indigenous population than other parts of the country. One of the notable aspects of Martel’s documentary is the way it makes explicit how little representation this element of society has within the general Argentine audio-visual world. The film revolves around a dispute over land rights in a valley which the indigenous Chuschagasta population claim they have always inhabited, which several white families now claim ownership of. This lead to a clash between the local indigenous population and three men of caucasian descent which ended with shots being fired and one indigenous man dying. The film is loosely weaved around the subsequent court case, brought by the relatives of the dead men. There was one pointed moment in the cinema when an academic opines that there are no official rastros (traces) of Chuschagasta in the valley. Rastros can also mean features, and Martel juxtaposes the academic’s words with the faces of the Chuschagasta who are present at the trial. The irony of the academic’s negationist argument was not lost on the Cinemateca audience.

The film seeks to both relate the dramatic events of the confrontation, of which there is grainy footage, and also to recount the stories of many of the inhabitants of the valley. It is an object lesson in a non-netflix method of storytelling. It resists sensationalism, preferring to dwell on the complex history of the region and its inhabitants, shifting from courtroom drama to archeological/ sociological study. There is no dominant central character. The viewer is encouraged to immerse themselves in this valley, to walk through its ravines, to gaze at the wild horses, to listen to the memories of the elders. In so doing, Martel creates an important document about discrimination and the inequities of Argentine society.  

mother father sister brother (w&d jarmusch)

Jarmusch is a master of style. Cinema is a visual medium (natch) - nevertheless those artists who embrace their aesthetic identity tend, perhaps surprisingly, to be pushed to the margins. The list of directors who are valued for style as much as content is short. Parajanov, Greenaway to name a couple. Jarmusch has long been a master of the acerbic, stripped back narrative, which allied to his aesthetic charms can produce masterpieces. Down By Law, Dead Man, Night on Earth and so on and so forth. He is also one of the few directors who can use the portmanteau format effectively (Coffee and Cigarettes, Night on Earth). Mother Father Sister Brother goes back to this format. Three extended shorts glued together to make a whole movie. There are recurring tropes - skateboarders, water, and (to an Englishman the slightly annoying) riff on the phrase ‘Bob’s Your Uncle’. The three pieces are also showcases for his cast, a mix of the famous and the less-well-known. The theme is family. In the first two pieces, the leitmotif is discomfort, and Jarmusch’s employment of the awkward silence is impeccable. The final piece, Sister Brother, is the only one which depicts a loving family relationship. The overall vibe is arch, even mannered, perhaps offset by the siblings’ evident affection. The film falls somewhere between Chekhovian versus Style-Over-Content, dependent on the viewer’s predilections and, presumably, personal family condition.

Nb - The second short, featuring a fearsome Charlotte Rampling, takes place in Dublin. It feels as though it was written to take place in London, and got switched for tax breaks? Jarmusch’s engagement with British culture, which features the aforementioned Bob’s Your Uncle riff, also has Rampling, an English doyenne waxing lyrical about PG Tips. One wonders of this is a deliberate choice, ie an act of irony, or a strange misrepresentation. In which case, did no one have the courage to tell the director that there is no way that Rampling’s elegant character would be serving PG Tips, given her refined gastronomic tastes? It’s one of those details which makes the second short feel slightly off-kilter, an essay that doesn’t quite square with its material.

aparajito (w&d satyajit ray)

The middle chapter in the Pather Panchali trilogy, Aparajito is a sensitive coming of age story, as Apu moves firstly from Benares to the countryside, following the death of his father, and then from the countryside to Calcutta, where he studies whilst his mother pines for him back in the country. The three chapters in themselves allow Ray to depict three different elements of Indian culture. The devotion and poverty of the Ganges town, the more lyrical ballad of the countryside, (albeit a peace interrupted by the sound of the train on the horizon), and lastly city life. Even if Apu’s Calcutta seems less frenetic that its modern day incarnation. These transitions help to paint a picture not just of a young man growing up, but also of an entire society, its possibilities, its limitations, its aspirations. 

the disappearing act (maria stepanova, tr sasha dugdale)

Stepanova’s novella can be read in the course of a single day. It recounts the cute tale of an exiled female novelist who nearly joins the circus. A dream of so many. At the edge of the novella lurks the spectre of Putin and Ukraine. But they are kept on the edges, as the mercurial narrator tiptoes through a chaotic twenty four hours, seeking to escape fame and fortune, dreaming of another life.