selkirk (w&d walter tournier)

Selkirk is a curio: an animated account of the life of the man who was the model for Robinson Crusoe. Made in Uruguay. The opening sequences, set in a Scottish port, are so full of charm that it has you rooting for it straight away. Selkirk produces the maps that will guide a ship round the treacherous Cape Horn and on to the gold of the East Asian islands. Once on board ship he succeeds in getting the entire crew in hock to him. So when they get a chance to leave him behind on a desert island, they don't take much persuading.

Clearly made for kids, it appears to have all the ingredients to become a kind of cult hit. Apart from the fact that it all becomes rather predictable. Not because we already know the story, but because Selkirk never acquires any real depth as a character. It may be sticking resolutely to the original story, but the end effect is to make the viewer feel that Defoe probably knew what he was doing when he embroidered the reality.

You have to admire the stop motion animation and the geniality of the project. However, in spite of the fact that the kids munching popcorn all around me seemed to remain engaged, it's hard not to think that there's something missing, some sense of depth to the narrative which would lend Selkirk's achievement of survival a more heroic slant.

gran torino [d. eastwood]

Clint. They love him here as much as anywhere. The 10.45 showing at Cine Punta Carretas is sold out, as was the screening before. When we leave the cinema, Ana asks me if I like Clint. And I genuinely can’t answer. I don’t know what I think. Clint is like the Grand Canyon, I say. He’s there. You can’t like or dislike him anymore than you can like or dislike the Grand Canyon. Ana says she’s never been to the Grand Canyon, and I acknowledge that neither have I. She doesn’t seem to think my theory makes much sense, but it’s the only one I have.

What you can say about Clint is that he knows how to make a film. He knows what you need, what you don’t need. You need a sympathetic if flawed hero with a journey to go on. You need others to learn from that journey. You need bad guys who will be overcome. You need lashings of Vietnamese food, men talking like men, and a shoot-out at the end. OK the last three aren’t essential. Gran Torino is both an affectionate paean to the fading frontier values of the United States, and a jaundiced side swipe at the way those values have become corroded by its consumer culture. In a way it’s a film that’s all about neighbourliness, and society, with the Huong Vietnamese community that has moved into Clint’s barrio possessing these virtues which his own white community has neglected. I could go on a tangent about child rearing in the affluent West in comparison to other, poorer parts of the world, but it’s not strictly speaking relevant.

At the heart of the film, as ever, is Clint, a figure who has become symbolic of something of which no-one’s entirely sure what. A kind of individualistic, libertarian icon, gun-toting, unafraid to use violence if he feels the need is there. And yet even this apparently self-evident image is undercut by the film’s closing sequence, where Walt rejects the way of the gun, and the audience isn’t given what they expect. Which could be construed as something of a betrayal by those who have bought into the image Clint has been steadfastly cultivating over decades (with the help of Leone).

Maybe Clint himself doesn’t know what to make of Clint, as he ages, a journey shared by his character Walt. When Walt talks about killing lots of men in the war, it could be Clint talking about the trail of bodies in his cinematic career. The way of the gun is seductive and efficacious, as well as being crowd pleasing, but is there a hint of regret for a career chiselled from the eyes of a figure who’s unafraid to kill?

the wrestler (d. aronofsky, w. robert d siegel)

The Wrestler is a skilful piece of film making. This deduction is possible because when you look at the narrative, at what’s going on in the film, it’s all fairly silly. (Said without wanting to sound too English). The Ram basically commits hari-kiri, using his sizeable heart by-pass wound and a fat old man who goes under the stage name of The Ayatollah to carry out the deed. This because he went out and got ‘fucked-up’ when he should have been making amends with his estranged daughter, who as a result becomes even more estranged. The lap dancer who doesn’t fancy him suddenly does and quits it all to convince him not to commit hari-kari, but because he's such a complete and total fuck-up he goes ahead and does it anyway.

Maybe this is supposed to be a warped commentary on the American dream. It makes for a lot of potential schmaltz and vaguely preposterous narrative turns, but, in spite of all this, the film kind of works.

There’s doesn’t seem to be too much doubt where the credit for this lies. Firstly Aronofsky, who shows he can pull off the multi-faceted Soderburgh trick. The grainy, restless hand-held photography successfully conveys the bleakness of some of the colder, duller parts of the US. It also adds a pseudo-documentary feel to the investigation of the wrestling sub-culture the film is set in. The participants don’t feel like Hollywood actors faking it – they feel like the real, unadorned thing. In addition to this, no one does screen violence better than Aronofsky. It’s often wince-making, and again, even when it’s clearly fake, (as in the meat-slicer scene), he pulls it off. There’s a kind of meta-text at work here: the fakeness of the wrestling violence is reflected in the fakeness of movie violence, and as a result the audience really doesn’t know what hurts and what just look like it hurts. Consequently, when it doesn’t just look like it hurts, but looks like it really looks like it hurts, the violence is hyper-effective, and we feel Rourke/ Ram’s pain all the more.

Rourke is the second reason the film works. It’s a performance which succeeds as much for its under-statement as its over-statement, and this is what separates it from other renowned macho performances. The moments of reflection which suggest that all the pain he’s endured (or faked) has taught him something, that something in part being the uselessness of a macho approach. The performance is a sly commentary on North American values; emphasising both the abrasive charm of a macho posture, but also its suicidal boneheadedness. In this regard The Wrestler might well be the full stop at the end of eight years of neo-con government.