the lost camels of tartary (w. john hare)

In common with most, I suspect, I was unaware that in the depths of the Gobi desert there range the last remaining wild camels in the world, threatened by gold prospectors, hunters, and the fact the region is China's preferred nuclear testing site. Neither did I know much about the Gobi itself, one of the world's true wildernesses, a place from where explorers as often as not never come back, their bodies and souls absorbed in the vastness of shifting sands and hysterical temperature changes.

Fortunately John Hare did return, though as the book describes he cut it fine upon occasion. The book documents his four visits into the region, in search of the wild Bactarian camel. Hare doesn't seem like the type of figure likely to be intimidated by the threat of the Gobi. Neither is he the model of the rugged adventurer. Pushing old age, in his tweed jacket, he's a quintessential British eccentric, engaged on the kind of foolhardy, quixotic missions for which his survival skills, his gregariousness and his diplomatic tact make him well suited.

I haven't read many of the most popular travel writers, the Theroux's, Bryson's and so on. So I don't have much to compare Hare with as a travel writer. However, the way in which he gets under the skin of this desolate part of the world, drinking with the locals, peppering his text with anecdotes from the Wild East, and bringing the most foreign of worlds to life suggests to me that he deserves a wider readership than he probably has. In addition, he's someone who actually puts something back into the places he visits, helping to establish a reserve for the camels, eating several dog legs and drinking all kinds of concoctions to help make it happen.

At a time when reading has felt like a secondary exercise, Hare's book, opening doors to the lost cities of the Silk Road, and the realities of late twentieth century Mongolia and China, has kept my reading juices flowing. Perhaps most tellingly of all, his book has made me jealous, taking the reader as it does to the kind of lost worlds which all too often seem, in our globalised modernity, to be under just as great a threat as the Bactarian camel.

see how they fall (w&d audiard, w. le henry)

Audiard seems like something of a johnny-come-lately, with the success of The Beat that my Heart Skipped putting him on the map, a success cemented by his yet-to-be-released-in-the-UK, A Prophet. Of course there's rarely such a thing in cinema, no-one hands you a million squid and says, get on with it, unless you're already in the know. True to form, Audiard has been around the block a few times. However, his earlier films, whilst possessing a remarkable cinematic lucidity, (and ludicity, if such a word exists), were never overly feted, and it's difficult to connect the johnny-come-lately with the struggling auteur. So much so that when I was told in a Jaipur hotel room that Audiard was also the director of A Self-Made Hero, I couldn't quite believe it, just as Mr W couldn't quite believe after seeing See How They Fall that this was by the same director as The Beat That... There may be something heartening in this; the knowledge that early invisibility can lead to universal acclaim later in life, the fairy tale that talent will out.

In keeping with this theme, I'd forgotten that I'd seen See How They Fall, back in some kind of day, presumably when it first came out. As a result the NFT offered me that most curious of cinematic experiences, which could be called 'seeing a ghost', when everything you're seeing really has been seen before, but the original viewing is so dim and distant that its memory only exists as odd traces or intuitions, which lurk on the screen, interfering with the present. Hence, the calibrated pairing of Kassovitz and Trintignant; the lugubrious charm of Jean Yanne; and the delirious noir-ish genius of the screenplay didn't have the freshness they might have done. See How They Fall is in some ways a muddy film, full of loose ends, some of which get pulled, drawing the viewer in, an ambitious film which seems chaotic but is in fact as taut as a narrative drum. It's a film made to be seen more than once, and such is its lack of obviousness, that I found myself both trying to work out what was likely to happen next, and simultaneously trying to work out what I remembered as happening next. Only for the film to come up with something I neither expected nor remembered.

Audiard has retained a kind of intensity to his film-making. There's something feverish screaming beneath the surface, hints of violence, suggestions of love, everything draped in a white cloth waiting to be removed, like a body in a murder scene. In his first film it's there in the Trintignant's stick which helps him walk but is also a repeated weapon; in the creeping madness of Yanne, revealed through his impassioned assaults on an electronic keyboard; in the shape of the voiceovers, one by Yanne, the other by an unnamed woman - who is she? All of these are tricks which snare the audience, which keep you hooked even when you haven't got a clue what's going on or where it's heading. They're the mark of a film-maker who knew what they were doing, (even to the point of making it appear as though they didn't), part of which involves forging a distinctive style which can be picked and unpicked over the years in the films which are to follow.

the lady and the beard (d. ozu; w. kitamura; ozu (gagman))

Cinema, more than any other art, is a hunter of the verisimilitude of life. Ozu's images may be grainy, but here is a Japanese martial arts competition, taking place in 1931, there or thereabouts, with an appreciative, masculine audience. However, the swordsman isn't any kind of obvious Zen master. He fools around, stopping to tie a shoelace, taking the piss, entertaining the crowd, before delivering the telling blow that wins the fight.

Aha, you say as you settle into your seat, so this is what it was like. However, verisimilitude is a curious beast. You don't capture the heart of things by just showing images. You have to find a way under the skin. And the film, in it's rambling way, does just that, taking the swordsman, removing his costume, his weapon, his dignity and finally, the ultimate sacrifice, his beard. The dashing hero is revealed as an oddball misfit, struggling to find a way through the complexities of a Japan where swords and platform shoes are being replaced by smart cars and even smarter suits.

Accompanied by a pianist, The Lady and Her Beard meanders through the story of Okajima's various potential love affairs, and a film which started as a macho action flick turns into a somewhat winsome comedy of manners. However, it also strips bare the local class system, and feels like a convincing portrayal of a hero trapped in a world which has no need of heroes anymore. Which helps to substantiate this visit to a lost world which is Japan at the turn of a decade, almost a century ago.

the limits of control (jarmusch)

Jarmusch, where do you place him? Where does he place himself? In this instance in Spain, and that doesn't seem too wrong, if you view Spain as a kind of non-place, fundamental to European culture yet at the same time stuck out on a limb, protruding, secretly influenced more than it cares to realise by Africa and Islam, both a finger pointing towards the new world, and the tip of an Islamic crescent which stretches from Kashmir through Mecca to the gates of Madrid. A place in the centre of itself and yet on the edge of almost everything else, one way or another. Which, perhaps overwhelmed by its potential for influence, retreats into seemingly static traditions whose foreign roots are scarcely remembered.

All of which seems more than appropriate for the lesser spotted Jarmusch, as he corrals a multi-national cast of primetime art-movie luminaries, steering them through a movie of high European art-house pacing, whilst referencing Hitchcock and an older Hollywood school, the whole thing coming to an understated climax when the black man of unclear provenance, wearing his fancy suits, (Isaach De Bankole), assassinates a Rumsfeld impersonating Bill Murray. De Bankole is poker faced throughout, and the narrative makes no attempt to enter his mind. The title and the fact that he has to spend a good portion of the film fighting off the nubile advances of a naked Paz De La Huerta, imply that the script might be an exploration of his ability to maintain control over his anime, but this may also be a red herring in a film so full of them it's almost constantly swimming out of view.

In truth, like many Jarmusch films, Limits of Control is a slow-paced shaggy dog story, which could be accused of being an exercise in style, but does just enough to suggest that it's more than that, although you might need to belong to another form of consciousness, which could be Zen, or could be simply Spanish, in order to work out what precisely this 'more than' might be. Despite the fact that both people sitting either side of me dozed at various points, I found myself enjoying the sheer inanity and probable vacuity of the elongated tale; as though guided round a maze for three hours with your eyes shut. You're either going to hate it or go with it. Neither Hollywood nor European, the Limits of Control is resolutely Jarmuschian, a land all of its own. The fact that it ended in Atocha station, the place where all the best stories begin, only added to its unlikely charm.

mishima (w&d paul schrader, w. leonard schrader)

It had been twenty five years since I saw this film at the York floating cinema. At the time the reasons for going had more to do with the curiosity of my fellow filmgoer than any particular personal fascination for the Japanese novelist, as was the case this time round. As though Mishima has a lurking role to play in the life story. If this is the case, then Schrader's film suggests its a slightly disconcerting presence.

In the intervening years I have read some of the writer's novels, but cannot claim they have stayed with me. Schrader's immaculate film pays due homage to the writer's work, including in three beautifully composed sequences a condensed version of three of his novels. These are performed as filmed plays, on stage sets which may or may not have influenced Von Trier, permitting a stylised, colour-soaked imagination to run wild. The imagination of Mishima, of course, but also the director. The three novels are the cornerstones of three of the film's four chapters, which also develop the narrative of Mishima's last, vainglorious day, the result of which becomes the subject matter for the final, forth chapter. Schrader also succeeds in threading the writer's life story through the film, the flashback sequences captured in black and white. It's a masterly piece of story telling from a master of the screenplay, underpinned by Phillip Glass's remarkable score, the forerunner of many a Glass-like score, (some of them composed by Glass himself), but one which may never have been surpassed in its ability to reveal the agitated energy which lurked beneath the surface of the ostensibly super-cool novelist.

The bio-pic has to be one of the hardest of all the genres to weld into an innovative, engaging cinematic narrative. Schrader might just have written the finest pair of biopics in movie history. Mishima's skill is that it gets under the surface of its subject. It does so by approaching him from various tangents, as well as integrating his work as a facet of his life. The result is a near cubist depiction of a man whose flair and lunacy constantly flirted with each other, culminating in an action which attempted to combine them both, and perhaps succeeded. Perhaps this is the message that the recurring presence of the film is trying to convey to me: keep your flair and your lunacy at a distance. When you try to put the two together, it's going to end in tears. Or seppuku.

going native (w stephen wright)

It's New Year's Eve. Thoughts turn to friends, family, the diaspora both national, international and temporal. None of which has much to do with Going Native. Save perhaps for the fact it's deeply rooted in the States and was read in India by an Englishman. In this instance.

As a book it befuddled me. This may have been because I was befuddled by the sub-continent. But I'd like to think it's because I assumed it was a novel, reached the second chapter, found no connection with the first, and it then took me about two more to realise that it was in fact a collection of short stories. The fact that you can move from one chapter into another and not realise that is not a novel has something to do with an abrupt switch in styles, as Wright moves from a fairly regulation sub-Updike register into something altogether more hallucinogenic. His versatility would appear to be both a strength and a weakness, as Going Native darts between various tonal frequencies, never allowing the reader to settle, constantly searching for patterns. Perhaps it might be said that he appears on occasion to be trying a little too hard. From Updike to Burroughs via Pynchon and who knows what else proves skill, but doesn't make for an unbefuddling read. Or maybe it was just the sub-continent.

Happy New Year, both to readers and non-readers, those who are real, those who might be ghosts, and those who are ghosts.

the red shoes (powell & pressburger)

Powell and Pressburger. The alliterative combination itself seems to conjure up some kind of lost golden age of British cinema. When their curious, quixotic talents were allowed to flower, producing unconventional gems, against the odds, quintessentially British, both for their charm, and their peculiarity.

It's the end of a decade, and there all sorts of lists drifting around quoting the finest films of the last ten years. As ever, this prompts reflection on what makes for a great film, what are the magic ingredients that enable a filmmaker to achieve something with the medium which lends a distinction to their work which others can only hope to emulate. Of course there are a hundred and one analyses available. However, The Red Shoes, it all its curious glory, brought to mind the idea that for a film to rise above its peers, to shine, it requires a boldness of vision, a kind of majesty, which is quite likely to be at odds with given diktats of genre and form, but which the filmmaker(s)' chutzpah somehow pulls off. These are films which aren't afraid of boredom or loose narrative threads, which are prepared to test their audience's patience, but which reward them in the end.

The Red Shoes is a film about ballet. So perhaps it's not surprising that about two thirds of the way in, the film abandons its narrative to enter into a twenty minute sequence (at a guess) which is pure ballet, a ballet conceived and executed for the screen. Only, of course, it is surprising. Because what rule book allows a narrative to cut itself off for this length of time, suspending character development and narrative action? Yet, without the ballet sequence, the Red Shoes would not have pulled of its strange, fairy tale alchemy. Whilst there are characters, and a narrative to speak of, in fact the filmmakers are consciously creating an exploration of what it means to create art, the tension between life and art, the irresistibility of the will to create. It's Nietzche wrapped up in technicolour. However, it's also dazzling entertainment, a son y lumiere show underpinned with philosophical intrigue.

These are (some of) the reasons why it works. Whilst the acting is engaging, and the quirky humour engaging, and the louche charm of this itinerant ballet world is engaging, ultimately it's the film's near absurdly grandiose ambitions which lift it out of melodrama onto another plane altogether. Ambitions which demand a cinematic verve; it's hard to think of any other film of any other era which has captured the process of dance so compellingly, something which its lofty ambitions absolutely require. Powell and Pressburger do indeed reach for the stars, and in the act of reaching, take their audience with them, offering a perspective which the everyday or the banal or the rulebook cannot permit.

unmade beds (w&d alexis dos santos)

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, on another website entirely, before the doe-eyed days had been born, I found myself writing a somewhat critical piece about Winterbottom's Wonderland, a film I didn't enjoy, in spite of the fact his more recent work proves him to be one of our more creative and intriguing filmmakers. One of the few in fact. Anyhow, at this point in dim distant history, this ancient website was in fact the communal property of a group called The Focus Group, which is another story altogether. It so happened that one of the members of that group was independently in discussions with Revolver, Winterbottom's production company, and when he saw the somewhat critical review, (which probably took about six months, as it was not a website which was consulted with any great regularity), he wasn't best pleased.

For understandable reasons. At the end of the day, the UK film industry is a small business, more of a cottage industry than an international finance industry. The players are known to one another, and the same names will regularly feature in production credits. These are the gatekeepers, who control production capital, green lights, and most of all, our cinematic sensibilities. If you want to get anywhere in cinema in this country, at some point you're going to have to convince them of your worth. And presumably not offend them by criticising their recent output.

Which brings us to Dos Santos' movie, Unmade Beds. The premise of a movie directed by a young Argentine, set in London, for reasons which regular readers of this blog will understand, was highly inviting, not least because I'm currently on the hunt for films appropriate for 'non-native speakers' to use a well-honed TEFL phrase. The film had received a bit of buzz on the grapevine, and I happily handed over my money to the Curzon chain for the second day in a row. The first fifteen minutes seemed promising. Potentially beguiling figures speaking in a subtitled polyglot mooched through a highly recognisable Hoxton context, threatening to have minor crises, drink too much, suffer a little, and laugh. In theory this could be New Wave Latin American cinema meeting Nouvelle Vague meeting New British Waving not Drowning.

Then, before it had even emerged from the first act, a terrible dawning began to shroud the cinema. The film seemed to decelerate. The apparent premise of the title, (the various beds in which the film's hero finds himself waking up), was abruptly jettisoned. Much of the film became dedicated to a narcissistic, post-Linklater love story. The plot atrophied. Hours passed. Beguiling moments were lost in the fog. The pie had been left in the oven for twelve years. This was a film which would never cook, and seemingly, never end.

It did, of course. All things end. Even websites. It ended in a sudden flurry of post-dated plot, the final half hour suddenly knitting everything into place, like the neatest of Richard Curtis scripts. 'I took that photo' the French girl says as she stands outside the club where her flatmates hang out every night, flatmates she seems to have no knowledge of, and perhaps has never met. The photo lures her into a club she was going to anyway, where she meets the man she'd thought she's lost who's singing a song which might have been written... for her! It's too beautiful to be true, and indeed, truthfulness has been abandoned in favour of animal heads and the odd breathy orgy, approximately three hours ago.

The credits rolled. There were the names. There were the script editors. Two of them. It's impossible not to imagine the interminable script meetings Unmade Beds must have been through. Because if there's one thing the British film (cottage) industry prides itself on, it's script development. I have a sneaky feeling that sometime long long ago, when the director first presented his premise, and original script, it might have been the quirky, counter-culture vehicle it seemed to be aspiring towards. However, after a million regurgitations, Unmade Beds has been shorn of its inventiveness and charm.

It might be shooting myself in the foot to make these (subjective) observations. Biting the hand which could theoretically feed were the writer to crampon his way up the food chain. However, the experience of Unmade Beds was just too disheartening. Anyone who's watched a film by Sorin or Trapero, Rebella & Stoll, Linklater or Payne or etc knows it's possible to make a winsome and effective slacker movie. However, if you try and script edit in nuts and bolts, the whole house of cards is likely to collapse. All over again.

the white ribbon (d. haneke)

My mind is a little blunted by the return of insomnia, and perhaps also the crunching, megalithic nature of Haneke's latest offering.

As a result of which I have only one observation of any note about The White Ribbon. First, however, the observations of little note. Which include the fact that, in spite of hints of narrative, the film in fact appears to be another impressively gruelling example of Haneke's slightly obsessive reluctance to favour an audience with anything in the way of what they expect or (so he might argue) have been lead to subliminally desire. As in Funny Games (and perhaps Hidden), the evil kids walk away unpunished, most of them implicitly destined to become successful members of the National Socialist party. As well as its reluctance to bestow any kind of Grecian notions of justice, the film is also a whodunnit whose detective, the engagingly buffoonish teacher, spends a year putting clues together and then fails to act on them. The unnamed school teacher is no Poirot, and in spite of an implicit decency, it seems unlikely that, having survived the first world war, he will put up much resistance to the rise of Hitler. Brecht wrote, unlucky the land in need of heroes, but Haneke appears to offer a bleak counterpoint: cursed is the land lacking in heroes. Firstly it will suffer the persecution of the evil children, then it will run the risk of fascism; finally it will fall prey to the moral vacuum of modern consumerism.

Having noted all of Haneke's usual barbed contrariness and general cassandrism, my one point of real note relates to his aesthetics. With The White Ribbon the director has followed up on his success d'estime with Hidden (and ridden the strange hurdle of his misjudged US remake of Funny Games), with a film that, in spite of its inherent audience antagonism, has been hailed as a masterpiece, and lauded with the Palme D'Or. Part of the film's success is probably attributable to its inordinately beautiful cinematography, composed on a stark black and white print. Haneke has always been a secret stylist, and here he gives this vice free rein. Given this, no matter how stringent he is in his adherence to his narrative principles, there's something about The White Ribbon's production values that gives it the feel of a weighty classic, redolent of a great European literary tradition, something enhanced by the unusually wordy narration. Perhaps this is part of another game within a game, but it's not hard to see how the lofty aesthetics allow critics to drool; and have helped The White Ribbon to have generated a contrarily eulogistic response, which somehow doesn't seem in keeping with Haneke's aspirations. As ever, with cinema, the production values themselves contribute and in some way seem to impose their own set of values, irrespective of the filmmakers' own intentions.

home (d. yann arthus-bertrand)

The Tibetan Environmental Society’s showing of the documentary Home takes place at 5.30 pm in an unheated hall 2000 metres above sea level. The majority of the audience are gringos of one description or another. The film is projected onto a large screen, with an introduction given by the society’s Tibetan head.

You might think that this location, not so far from the roof of the world, would be the ideal place to take in the film’s abstract narrative about the fate of the world and the environmental mess homo sapiens has made of it. The movie is made up of edited sequences, filmed from the air. Volcanoes. Elephants on the charge. Fisherman on an African beach. Vast lorries in a hyper-mine. However, in practice, the venue in no way alters the unfortunate juxtaposition the film presents between the terror of its message and the beauty of its images.

When you’re actually within the exploited, impoverished world which the rich 20% is abusing to both fund its lifestyle and abuse the planet, the lush power of cinematic technology can feel faintly offensive. Your mind can’t help but speculate on the costs of hiring helicopters, exec producers salaries, and expense accounts. And even if everyone involved was working for 500 rupees a day, there’s still something jarring about the way in which its expensively graded images are employed, as though the film’s beauty is somehow necessary for its message to be put across to the Western world.

A somewhat preachy American voice, which I later learn belongs to Glen Close, narrates the film’s loose narrative from Genesis to imminent Apocalypse. Perhaps I’d have felt more comfortable if the accent was Malaysian, (say), or had gone for subtitles. However, ultimately, no matter what it was saying, I wanted it to get off its helicopter plinth, go to ground, and actually speak to people.

Travelling opens your eyes to the harshness from which the Western world is so often inured. Pigs rooting through burnt rubbish on the streets, affirming the conjoined crimes of poverty and environmental degradation. Whilst we know its out there, we don’t want to face up to it. Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s beautiful but banal movie seems symptomatic of this attitude.

Outside in the cold air of McLeod Ganj, itself something of an island within India’s teeming sea, the real fight continues on the millions of frontlines which the West is only aware of through news reports and sanitised, graded images on its TV screens.