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.

 

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.

dekalog, five (w&d krysztof kieslowski, w. krzysztof piesiewicz)

Of course I watched this thinking I had seen it before. I hadn’t. I’d seen a Short Film About Killing. This is the shorter version, the sketch, if you like. But this shouldn’t in any way detract. The shorter version is astonishing. Perhaps more so than the longer. Kieslowski employs a sparse dialogue. Images are distorted. A vignette blurs the edges of the frame. For a while we have no idea who is the protagonist. The stressed out lawyer or the unpleasant taxi driver or the youth. Then we realise it’s the youth. The killer, who will be killed. The narrative is already chopped in three, and then, as the pieces come together, the whole thing coalesces into a terrible, mortal whole. The ultimate effect, compressed into 55 minutes, is devastating, Needless death begets needless death. You can see why the director chose this tale to expand. But you can also see why it wasn’t entirely necessary. 

dekalog, four (w&d krysztof kieslowski, w. krzysztof piesiewicz)

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the fourth chapter of Kieslowski’s Dekalog is the lack of astonishing things. There are no big dramatic moments. There’s one long dramatic scene, which culminates in a decision (or two decisions), but no-one fights, no-one fucks, no-one even screams. All those things which are taken for granted as being necessary to make captivating drama are missing. In spite of this, the short film has you sitting on the edge of your seat. There a tension which is almost nebulous, but instilled in every frame. The shadow of incest, which might have become the focus, is dispelled. This is a simple tale about the meaning of love, rendered with minimal effort. 

a short film about love (w&d kieslowski, w. krzysztof piesiewicz)

 Kieslowski became the celebrated European auteur towards the end of his short life. He died at the age of 54. His final Three Colours Trilogy is what he is most celebrated for now, but he had already had a prolific career before he “burst onto the scene”, as they say. A Short Film About Love is an extended version of one of his Dekalog series, where he made ten films set on a Warsaw housing estate. These ten films were originally an hour long, and two of them, ‘Love’ and ‘Killing’, were then given feature length versions. Wikipedia notes that all twelve were made in the same year, but when there was a plan to do the same for ‘Jealousy’, “exhaustion eventually prevented him from making what would have been his thirteenth film in less than a year."

There is something disarmingly simple about Kieślowski’s storytelling. He does not appear to make films about great themes, although there are themes that run through his films. Instead he creates fables about people, locating the universal in the individual. These days, in an atomised capitalist world, it is very hard to get a film financed unless it has a marketable theme and ‘target audience’. The target audience for A Short Film about Love, which clearly riffs to an extent off Rear Window, can only be described as frustrated post-adolescent lovers and confused adults, which is quite a broad audience base. The film tells the tale of a young man, Tomek, who spies on a woman who lives in the opposite block, and, believing himself to be in love, engineers a way of letting her know. The woman, Magda, understandably finds it hard to take Tomek seriously, but then finds herself surprised to discover how his infatuation affects and changes her.

Watching the film, one is struck by the way in which Kieślowski’s better known masterpieces were a product of the freedom he had enjoyed to learn his trade, that trade being to both be a filmmaker and also a poet of the human consciousness. His focus is on the way our weaknesses can become our strengths, and vice versa. How courage so often manifests itself, for the common person, in the most unlikely, even cowardly fashion. How heroism and anti-heroism in the real world are rarely what they might claim to be in the movies. Cinema needs more Kieślowskis, more poets of the every day, artists capable of transforming the banal into the transcendent. 

nb It is worth noting the remarkable quality of Kieślowski’s actors, who lend their humanity to these complex characters. It’s gratifying to note that both Olaf Lubaszenko (Tomek) and Grazyna Szapolowska (Magda) are still working, according to IMDB. The beautiful secondary performance of Stefania Iwinska as the godmother should also be celebrated. 

the event [saer]

The Event opens in gripping fashion. After a virtuoso description of a wild flock of horses, careering across the Pampas, the narrative shifts to mid 19th century Europe, recounting the adventures of Bianco, a Maltese anti-matter wizard. Bianco can not only bend spoons, he can also read minds and see beneath the surface of the stuff the world knows as matter. Bianco, the novel assures us, is no charlatan. So powerful is he that the mysterious but reactionary positivists gang up on him in Paris, arranging an event where they ridicule him, eventually forcing him to flee Europe for the quieter waters of Argentina.

All of which is narrated at a lick, with the text proving to be both metaphysical speculation and gripping yarn. However, the pace changes as Bianco settles in Argentina, as he abandons his experiments, flirts with becoming an entrepeneur, and grows suspicious of his young, pregnant wife.

The narrative becomes increasingly enigmatic, or hermetic, as it traces Bianco's journey, a journey that appears to be leading him towards a loss of his gifts as well as a loss of faith in the world. There's something a little frustrating about the way Saer lets his story drift away, ending on an abrupt note, the author taking care to construct a narrative which is wilfully anti-dramatic. Perhaps Saer, like his leading character, suspected that his novel possessed hints of greatness, but shied away from fully grappling with the consequences of what this greatness might really mean, or even what form it might have taken.

lust [w. elfriede jelinek]

Lust is not a straightforward read. In theory it tells a small story, which takes place, so far as I could make out, over the course of a couple of days. Gerti is married to the swinish factory owner, Hermann. She meets a student, Michael, and they have sex. Later she tries to run away to be with Michael, but he's not interested, Hermann comes and gets her and brings her home, and she murders their child. 

That's what happens, but Lust isn't really about what happens but the way in which these actions are described. Jelinek's prose is composed of dense, poetic, pornographic  paragraphs. She's a writer who can't resist a pun, which suggests that her translators have their work cut out. Trying to get to grips with her text is like wrestling with a bibliophilic python. It's hard work, and matched by the writer's bleak analysis of modern life. 

Lust is a book about lust, and large chunks of it are dedicated to painstaking descriptions of sex. Gerti is fucked every which way by a husband who has remarkable stamina and who sees his wife as his chattel, to do with as he pleases. It seems somewhat surprising that this hasn't put Gerti off sex, but when she meets Michael, the attraction seems to be primarily physical. You won't read a dirtier book than Lust, but that doesn't mean there's anything particularly erotic about it. Sex is another commodity in a world which has been reduced to pure commodification.

For what it's worth, my favourite chapter was the one which described the skiers, in all their florescent gaudiness. It reminded me of a Peter Doig picture I saw earlier this year, a white mountainside populated by small figures in bubble gum colours. Jelinek's critique of modern living merits the application of words like 'coruscating'. Her unremitting bleakness and baroque prose isn't going to appeal to a mass audience, although it has secured her the Nobel prize.