small things like this (d. tim mielants w.enda walsh)

Mielants’ film has heavyweight support. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are named as exec producers. Oscar winner Cillian Murphy takes the lead. The film deals with the issue of the abuse of girls in Catholic convents in Ireland over the course of decades. It occurs in that broad era known as the time before mobile phones. In a sense it feels as thought the casting of Murphy slightly unbalances the film, with his back story taking prominence over the that of the mistreated girls. We understand his actions and his morose disposition, but his story is not the film’s focal point. The film employs a downbeat tone to relate its narrative, endowing it with the seriousness it deserves, even if it sometimes feels as though it’s leading its audience by the nose. 

poor things (w&d lanthimos, w. tony mcnamara)

I realise this is a stretch, but it crossed my mind that Lanthimos’ film is perhaps stepsister to Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, which I saw on the Montevideo stage last year. Like Faustus, Bella Baxter goes on an educational tour of Europe (the Grand Tour). Like Faustus, hers is a voyage of discovery: the limits of human pleasure, and power. Faustus is almost the anti-Hamlet, the proto-magic cyborg, who can indulge his whims at will, just as Bella does. Like Faustus, Bella satisfies her desires in an almost mechanical fashion, bereft of any eroticism. For all the sex in Lanthimos’ film, it is doggedly anti-erotic, in a Barthesian or Bataille-esque sense: this is sex as ‘furious jumping’ rather than an exploration of temptation or transgression. Faustus is a child of the devil; Bella Baxter is a child of a Scottish Frankenstein - neither are their own person, even if Lanthimos twists the tale at the end to suggest that this is where she is headed. Bella’s encounter with the radical sex worker echoes Faustus’ visit to Heidelberg, which is echoed by Hamlet’s academic companionship. All of which makes Bella a kind of Faust de nos jours, only one who rather than being condemned to hell, is rewarded for her vaulting ambition, as she is rebirthed into a 21st C variation of the happy nuclear family, with her husband, her lover and her tamed monster in a garden of Eden. If Marlowe’s Faust represents the last cry of medieval man, whose blind faith in magic/ knowledge will soon give way to Hamlet’s alienation, does Lanthimos’ Bella Baxter represent the last gasp of optimism in the possibilities of five centuries of faith in science and its empiricism? 

essayism (brian dillon)

Dillon’s succinct and rather beautiful book weaves the personal with the enthusiast with the academic, as he discourses on the nature of the essay. His references range from Barthes to Derrida to La Rochefoucauld and Bacon, also taking in Didion and Hardwick and Cioran. The book consists of approximately twenty five essays, some themed around a particular writer, others more discursive, and others still plainly autobiographical. As much as an investigation into the possibilities, limitations and wonder of the essay form, this is also a book about how essays can save your life, which is no small beer. Much of Dillon’s reading echoes favourites of mine, or of any curious soul with intellectual leanings born in the late sixties, even if Dillon is Irish rather than British (we are not so very different). In part, as well, this is another examination from the Fitzcarraldo stable of those intellectual waters which exist at the margin of the Anglo-Saxon consciousness, and therefore attract the outsider, the one who seeks an intellectual framework above and beyond that handed down by the syllabus. (The patron saint of this line of thought, a figure who has now recurred in three Fitzcarraldo books I have read this year, is Sebald, who I have failed to engage with as furiously as Dillon, Cooper and Mallo.) Dillon balances the lure of the likes of Barthes, Derrida and Cioran with Sebald, Hardwick, Brookner and Didion, but it is still intriguing to see the way in which the former bunch of deconstructionists, essayists, aphorists and creative philosophers have become a kind of scapegoat for the intellectual echelons of Anglo-Saxon capitalism, the apogee of all that is wrong in a world where ethics and profit are supposed to be happy bedfellows. The outsiders, those who struggle to find a place in this world, are drawn to the sinuous prose of Barthes, or the arcane mysteries of Derrida. It is also interesting to note that, in celebrating the essay, Dillon celebrates a profoundly un-commercial form of writing (it has not always been so, because there was a time when the essay was the most profitable format out there), one which has none of the commercial clout of the novel or the screenplay. Dillon, like his stablemates Cooper and Penman, would appear to be a survivor of the war against the intellectual that is rigorously waged on British soil, and his book is a triumph of complex simplicity and the shining power of the marriage of word and idea. 

the banshees of inisherin (w&d martin mcdonagh)

There was a time, twenty years ago, as McDonagh was consolidating his reputation as a playwright on the London stage, that an Irish friend of mine came round to supper and lacerated him as a plastic paddy, who was exploiting his roots. His argument was that McDonagh and his brother, raised in Camberwell, were essentially Londoners cashing in on their heritage by writing London-friendly versions of rural Ireland. Everyone knows that it’s never been a hindrance to be Irish if you want to get ahead in London, and most of our greatest English language playwrights have been Irish, through and through. McDonagh may not be Irish through and through but still succeeded in creating apparently authentic tales from the backwaters, often tales which played on masculine venality and stupidity. The plays were imbued with a dark humour and no little violence and were immensely successful.

Since when the playwright has been reinvented as a film director and whilst the rhythms of Irish speech still permeate his work, even when set in the USA, he has left the country in peace for a while, only to return with the Banshees, a folk tale from an island off the west coast of Ireland, imbued with dark humour and calculated violence. It’s a warped folk tale about a dull man who happens to be nice set against a charismatic man who turns out not to be very nice. There’s plenty of affection and mordant wit in a fable about friendship, masculinity and living on small islands. With some bravura acting and delirious greenery, this feels like the most McDonagh script ever written and it really doesn’t matter wether the inspiration came from Donegal or Camberwell, it’s still deliriously effective.

+++

Brief ps after a night in a Forest Hill pub, having touched on Camberwell & Brixton on the night of SK’s death and discussing this film with regard to the director’s relationship with his brother, among others. Noting that the tension within the film between the characters played by Farrell and Gleason so neatly reflects the fraternal tensions and silences within the director’s own environment and how the film is a fine example of the capacity of art to act as a safety valve for the travails of the artist.

under the net [iris murdoch]

Murdoch’s first novel recounts a few days in the life of Jake, a sometime translator and drifter, who lives on the margins of an early fifties London intellectual world. Kicked out of his digs in the first chapter, he spends most of the novel looking for his next place to stay, something that doesn’t appear to generate all that much anxiety. The novel has a lot on common with Wain’s Hurry on Down, published the year before. Like Wain, Murdoch centres her novel on a protagonist who resists any societal pressure to settle down and get a proper job. (The only fixed job Jake takes on is as a hospital orderly, following the in footsteps of Wain’s Lumley.) Instead, he embarks on a picaresque journey which involves rabid left wingers, actresses and his nemesis, Hugo, a man who can’t help making money but dreams of becoming a watchmaker. Jake has had a book published which is a disguised transcription of the philosophical conversations he used to have with Hugo. Likewise, one can perhaps sense the author’s own instincts to use the literary form as a way of grappling with philosophy, although it never feels all that clear which philosophical issues the book is seeking to address. It seems invidious to comment on the literary merits or not of the first novel of such a respected author, all the more so as I don’t know her later work. However, more than anything, Under the Net feels like a companion piece to the fifties aspiration to discover a path towards the unconventional, which had to be out there somewhere, if only you knew where to look. (As it turns out, Liverpool, the soon-to-be former colonies and the Deep South of the USA, to name a few.)

pond [claire-louise bennett]

I am seated in the upper terrace of the food court in Paddington Station. On the table is a coffee of some description, a piece of carrot cake, a phone, this laptop and a book. The book is called Pond. It’s published by Fitzcarraldo, and their books are highly distinctive, with the same blue cover, so if anyone were to pass by who knew anything about them, they might say to me - Which one is that? But I don’t think that’s going to happen. Neither is the author of the book going to appear and say, Oh look, you’re reading my book. Because these things don’t happen. Not in London anyway. They might do in Montevideo. I’m musing about this somewhat idly because I met the author a few months ago, in Montevideo, and told her that when I went back to London, I’d read Pond. I could have bought it as a kindle book beforehand I suppose but I had a feeling that I wouldn’t want to read it digitally. Some books you can read on a screen, and some you can’t. Or, if you do, they lose something. For something reason. Anyway, I’m reading it now. And I can’t remember all that much. It was a sunny day in a leafy garden, Spring time. I was with the man from the British Council, who I don’t really know, and who, it emerged, had an interest in punk, which made him seem far more human than most men from the British Council, who belong to a strange organisation which merely exists in order to remind people that once upon a time, Great Britain, (to give it one of its names) was a concept that had cultural weight, a weight that is now so diminished or crinolined that you’d struggle to feel it if it cuddled up and nestled in your arms. I’ve finished my coffee. That last remark might not be fair to the British Council. It might be full of a vibrant modernity I’ve never been observant enough to discern. Anyway, that was a few months ago and the three of us had a convivial conversation about how novels do or don’t work and I threw in the name of Bernhard as a reference for where I thought the author might be coming from, but I was winging it really, just chucking stuff out there, as you do. Now that I’m actually reading the book it makes me think about other writers. Like Proust or Joyce, or my friend who wrote to me for two months about nothing at all, really, just the fluff of life, and it was the most captivating thing in the world. And I thought that writing, real writing, is the capturing of the parallel life that we constantly live. The life we lead in our minds alongside the life we lead with our bodies. Not the life we lead with the things we say or do. All the rest. The warp and the woof. Which is the hardest thing of all to capture because it’s always just there and then it’s gone. And if you try and capture it and you don’t do it ever so well it’s just verbiage. Cabbage. Some kind of hideous puree which is supposedly nutritious for babies but tastes like recycled codswallop. But if you do it right, it’s like a magic trick. Someone just came over and removed the empty coffee cup and the wrapping of the now-consumed carrot cake. They took them away whilst I was writing and although I looked up at them they didn’t even glance at me. Let alone the blue book on the table. It’s so hard to connect in the modern world that it’s a miracle whenever anyone succeeds. On which note I should probably go to Heathrow and catch my flight back to South America. 

the taming of the shrew (d. caroline byrne)

a trip to the globe

There’s inevitably something of the heritage experience about visiting the Globe, just as there is when you visit Sutton Hoo or Stonehenge. It’s on the tourist circuit. Lots of people probably go not because they want to see the play, but because they want to experience the theatre. And a wonderful thing it is to experience too. Within its Wooden O, you get a sense of the role the theatre played in Elizabethan society. A space to be seen and a space to see. A space which is both profoundly democratic and hierarchical at the same time. A space possessing an energy within a small town that must have been incalculable. (No matter how similar the Globe is to its forefather, the society and the city have changed beyond compare.) It’s an exciting experience to step into the Globe, cherish its intimacy, cherish the power that the theatre possesses. A power which the black box has done so much to nullify. 

The day we went, we were lucky enough to experience not just Caroline Byrne’s version of Taming of the Shrew, but also a brief piece by Jess Thom, a performer with Tourette’s, and a Q&A with the audience. Thom’s piece was short, sharp and incisive, describing a visit to another London theatre to see a Mark Thomas show about segregation in Palestine, where she had ended up being asked to move to the sound booth because of her disability. The inclusiveness of the Globe as a theatre was made all the more evident by Thom’s brief performance. It’s a space which allows for all manner of performance. all kinds of performers and as diverse an audience as you could wish for. A space which works for a circus or a one-woman show (a soliloquy or a masque). The power of the space was underlined by the Q&A with Thom and members of the Shrew cast. One member of the audience threw out a contentious remark about Byrne’s version of the Shrew being overloaded with theatrical devices, at the expense of Shakespeare’s verse. For a second you could sense the bear pit beneath the stage. It didn’t quite all kick off, but the cast’s response suggested the potential for tension that a space so intimate is capable of generating.

The audience member’s observation helps to pinpoint the difficulties of staging Shakespeare in the Globe. The new artistic director has been chosen because she’s a believer in making Shakespeare accessible. The more classically minded audience might feel this is a populist approach which fails to reveal the true glory of the text. Byrne’s direction of the Shrew is a rumbunctious, entertaining affair. The cast in the Q&A mentioned that they spent the first week of rehearsals exploring the physicality of the play. There are set piece moments, including the wedding, where the choreography supersedes the letter. From this audience member’s POV, this is all to the good. A play which has a reputation for being almost impossible to stage due to its un-PC approach to marriage somehow succeeds in this production in suggesting a neo-feminist subtext. This is in part down to a steely performance from Aoife Duffin, but also down the imaginative and successful feminisation of the casting. Although the Easter Rising 1916 setting in many ways passed me by, it clearly worked as device to lend unity to the Irish cast’s vision of a play which they regard as subversive rather than reactionary. I’m the last person to argue for populism over intellectual content, but not only does it feel to me as though the ethos of the space demands an inclusive vision, I’d also far rather see Shakespeare performed in a fashion that provokes through a willingness to use the imagination rather than a belief in the sacrosanct nature of the bard’s language. 

portrait of the artist as a young man [joyce]

A long long time ago, as a young man, I first read this curious, radical novel. I have no idea what I made of it then. There remains a shadow memory of a study, which looked onto a courtyard, built in the finest 80s red-brick tradition. Perhaps a mud-green bean-bag. Perhaps not. Another time, another world, Joyce’s text all but forgotten. For some reason a trigger activated in the last fortnight and I decided to return to the text of youth. The first thing that struck me, through the first two chapters, was how readable it was; how funny; how game. Still fresh, the ear for dialogue functioning like a butterfly net. It’s an arresting opening, it grabs you by the wrist and drags you into its world. The tone changes in the third chapter. God intervenes. Another note swims to the surface on the back of other Joycean preoccupations. The novel began to slip away from me. “The world for all its solid substance and complexity no longer existed for his soul save as a theorem of divine power and love and universality”. And indeed, this is the case with the book, which chooses to forego the clod, the earth the solid, resorting instead to the speculative and the ethereal. Here, Joyce and I struggled to stay in touch. Then he returned in the closing chapter, with its rambling searching conversations carved out of walks and wonderings with friends and foes. Politics, literature, art and most dangerously, love, return to fly their flags and it feels as though reader and writer have managed to overcome a theological crisis; ready to take on the world once more. Which is not unlike the sensation of being a young man, or woman, when the moment arrives where the question of why our existence might be worth celebrating becomes one that has none of the simplicity of childhood; when the wrestling must be done in earnest before the course is plotted and there is no turning back. “April 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life, I go to encounter the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”

in bruges (w&d martin mcdonagh)

Two hitmen who don't seem like hitmen, trapped together in a hotel room. The implicit allusion to The Dumb Waiter is made explicit by their surnames or pseudonyms: Cranham and Blakey, surnames of the actors who played Pinter's hapless assassins in a TV version of his play.

The Dumb Waiter isn't the only reference point for the literate McDonagh. The other is, of course, Godot. Bruges, the hitmen's hideaway, is in fact a purgatory, a waiting room between life and death. Ray and Ken stare at a painting by Bosch, openly discussing the likelihood of heaven, hell or the other place. In keeping with Pinter's play, these apparent hitmen don't seem come across as violent killers. Ray is raddled with doubt following the accidental killing of a boy, and Ken is coming to the end of his inglorious career.

They may not be regular hitmen, but they are, to the bone, Irishmen. McDonagh made a successful career out of presenting the lugubrious downhome wit of the Irish on the London stage (joining the vast list of Irish dramatists who have been adopted by the British). The film takes his mordant dialogue out of its Irish setting, locating it in the peculiar gothic beauty of Bruges (yet another reference is to Don't Look Now, also a fatalistic drama set in a city of canals). Liberated from its normal context, the humour is an extravagant success, not least in the scenes where the Irishmen come into contact with the various Russians, Canadians and Americans (not to mention the occasional Belgian) who people the city. McDonagh is a writer of wit and panache, and on top of this, he also directs his lead actors with a superb level of understatement, never forcing the joke, letting it tell itself. This is an art honed in the pubs, kitchens, street corners of his homeland. In a sense McDonagh is just a student of an oral tradition, but when he pulls it off, as he does so emphatically in the first hour of the movie, something fresh, funny and alive occurs. Within the straightjacketed world of genre and budgets, it's rare for a writer to be given enough rope to potentially hang himself, something McDonagh seems to have no fear of doing, to wonderful effect.

The serious stuff is perhaps more problematic. In a sense, In Bruges feels like an exercise in tension between plot and character. I would have quite happily watched Gleeson and Farrell wandering around Bruges having their misadventures, without any of the neat plotting that brings Fiennes's Harry to the city and their collective downfall. Whether Gleeson really needs to fly like a fallen angel through the Belgian night, or Farrell demands to be hunted by a psychotic is perhaps questionable, and the closing pursuit seemed like the one moment when the film retreated into banal genre, the soundtrack suddenly intruding and the denouement feeling a little bit too neat.

In Bruges never acquires the menace with which Pinter imbued The Dumb Waiter, (or Don't Look Now) and when it pushes itself towards achieving it, it comes up short. But that doesn't mean to say that McDonagh hasn't conjured something magical out of the fairy tale city, making a remarkably successful transition from stage to screen in a way that few of his contemporaries have managed. The likes of Macpherson, Penhall, Nielson, even Mendes must have watched the film through clenched teeth. Once again an idea of overwhelming simplicity works a treat. In Bruges is an indefatigably entertaining film which also gets away with a meditation on the existence of purgatory. The fact that the director nicks from the likes of Pinter, Beckett and Roeg only leads one to think: more power to his elbow. The pity of it is that more people will not be stealing from them, the old masters, on a more regular basis.

garage (d. Leonard Abrahamson)

The more you know about a film, the harder it becomes to review it. The main reason this site started with theatre reviews and has had few since is that most of the plays the critic sees are created by or feature people he knows. As soon as a hint of friendship creeps into the equation, it gets a whole lot harder to criticise without encumbrance. Not just because you don't want to offend; but also because the work of art is likely to be clouded by the penumbra of personality, the lens through which you perceive it.

With regard to Garage... A couple of years ago I found myself drinking Guiness in a pub in Old Compton Street with the screenwriter of Garage. Great company he was and all. Told me about this next film he was writing, set in a village somewhere, a guy in a garage, and I forget the rest. Sometime around then I caught the DVD of Adam and Paul, first thing of a hungover Brixton morning. I enjoyed its candour, it rough edges, its laconic tone, all of which are attributes that could be discerned in the screenwriter himself.

Garage shares all these things. It does something smart, which is to place the least heroic of figures as its protagonist. Pat Shortt's Josie is the kind of anti-face and anti-figure cinema was also made for. Loping along with his lop-sided grin and dodgy hip, trapped in an endless childishness, more at home with the kids than the adults. Without his performance the film seems unimaginable.

The film doesn't rush things. It's based around the eponymous garage where cars are still rare beasts. The script gives a nod to the new Ireland, suggesting that the garage itself will soon be knocked down for real estate, but otherwise it belongs to a sleepy world which has yet to be colonised by winners of the Irish boom, French novelists, or English escapees. The narrative hinges on one moment, and even this and its consequences are underplayed.

Whether the film is too slow, or whether it sacrifices its dramatic power to an aesthetic insinuation (much as Josie is brought down), I couldn't say. There is a pathos to Josie's final scene, but it felt like a cold-hearted pathos. We never get quite under the skin of this bovine man, friend to the clodhopping horse. We always look at him with the eyes of the fifteen year old.

Perhaps if I hadn't drunk Guiness with the man in a Soho pub I'd be saying Garage was a minor masterpiece of understated drama. Or perhaps I'd be saying it pulls its punches and doesn't have the potency it might have had. Which ever it might be, Garage is definitely an antidote to much brittle British film-making, and allows itself to boast a central performance that possesses something out of the ordinary. Never has a man looked more different not wearing his Australia cap to wearing it.