loveless (w&d andrey zvyagintsev, w oleg negin)

Loveless, watched in the company of Mr W on Valentine’s night, is another rigorous, absorbing film from Zvyagintsev. It offers a portrayal of Russian society that has a muted ferocity. The film’s narrative revolves around the disappearance and subsequent search for Alyosha, the 12 year old son of Boris and Zhenya, a couple on the brink of divorce, both of them now setting out on new relationships which they hope will offer them greater scope for happiness. As the narrative unfolds, we learn that Zhenya only married Boris because she became pregnant, and the reason she kept the child was that she wanted a way out from living with her tyrannical mother. The couple have fallen out of love and the one who suffers collateral damage is their son. His pain is shown in a shocking reveal as he hides whilst his parents engage in yet another cruel argument.

This may be social realism, but Zvyagintsev’s palette is epic, rather than parochial. Firstly, the narrative is permitted to wander. Where the child’s disappearance might have been the immediate focal point of a British version of this story, Zvyagintsev enters into two lengthy sequences showing both parents with their new lovers. The understated camerawork, which uses a slow, creeping zoom to emphasise the sense of us spying on these people as they go about their business, (and perhaps suggests the ghost of their son), registers both characters with a devastating honesty. They are given time and space to say what they think, to the point of damning themselves. Minimal gestures give them away. Rarely has the process of capturing a selfie been made to seem quite so pernicious or revealing of the innate narcissism of modern society.  

Then, as the film shifts to the mechanisms of Alyosha’s disappearance, there’s no attempt made to sugar the pill. There are redemptive figures in this bleak story, namely the volunteer helpers who assist the parents in their search. It’s not hard to think that a British version of the story might have focussed on their POV, as the only sympathetic voices. Zvyagintsev refrains from this option. Instead, he focuses on the parents’ gradual disintegration, which is also a gradual journey towards humanity. A limited humanity, which offers little consolation, but something, all the same. 

The narrative might be harsh and relentless, but given the subject matter, why shouldn’t it be? The aesthetic approach consolidates its epic quality. This is a movie about Russian society, but it’s also a movie about the way in which humanity, with its placebo gadgets, runs the risk of drifting towards a state of engrained lovelessness as it pursues a nominal dream of material comfort. There’s a sleight-of-hand to the way in which the film effectively makes the audience accomplices in failing to realise the seriousness of Alyosha’s fate. As the twists and turns of the parents’ narratives are forefronted, it’s only much later on that the full impact of the child’s disappearance hits us, in exactly the same way as it catches up with his parents. There’s a terrible, almost religious  subtlety to the film’s construction: we are all complicit in the fate of our world’s lost children. 

phantom thread (w&d paul thomas anderson)

I thought about The Servant quite a lot whilst watching Anderson’s latest this afternoon. Which tells you several things. One is that the film has its longeurs, which offer plenty of time for reflection, which may or may not be a good thing. Another is that the issue of the British class system is still alive and kicking and generating box office. It will be forever thus. 

Phantom Thread, which I confess I had confused for a long time with the latest instalment of the Star Wars franchise, is a curate’s egg of a movie. I kept on thinking that there must have been something I was missing. Who was Alma? How come this young woman with a German accent had landed on the South Coast of Britain in the fifties? At one point in the film there’s a reference to a Dominican man selling visas to Jews in the war and the camera cuts to Alma’s face, and I thought, a-ha, there’s a meatier storyline which is about to unravel, but I was wrong, there isn’t. There’s plenty of unravelling and meaty mushrooms, but not much in the way of a storyline. It feels at times like this must be a slightly clumsy adaptation of a novel, with the above unfulfilled strands and random moments like the Swiss honeymoon which serve no real purpose. (It isn’t, as far as I know). At other points it seemed likely that this could be a highly personal project for Anderson, which is perhaps dedicated to his wife, a slightly self-indulgent way of explaining the insufferable nature of artistic genius, something PTA does indeed possess, but which it might have been cheaper and more useful to explore in therapy. Finally, earlier in the film, I thought it might be making a timely commentary on the way in which women are used (in movies and in life) as decorative adornments, and that Alma’s story would challenge that seemingly irresistible trend. But Phantom Thread didn’t really do that either; the marriage of Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps is a hardly a great leap forward for the feminist cause, especially when she has to poison her husband in order to obtain parity within their marriage.

All of which suggests a film containing a fragrant bouquet of ideas, but not that much staying power, either in the development of these ideas or the trama of the plot. In the end, the film seems to trip over itself in a bid to get to the end, hammering home the point about the sub-S&M relationship through the recycling of its slightly clunky poison mushroom trope. At the same time, there are some great moments and some great scenes. Day-Lewis is an actor with tremendous cerebral vigour, which he’s never afraid to employ. At times it feels as though his Reynolds Woodcock is an Irons/ Nighy pastiche, the distracted posh Brit per excellence, but then he puts his foot on the gas and produces moments of spectacular, excruciating insight, where the monstrous nature of the man he plays is stripped bare. No-one wrinkles an eyebrow quite like Day-Lewis.

These moments threaten to carry the film, but they don’t quite. To return to The Servant: the Pinter/ Losey film explored the class/ power dynamic far more surgically, aided not just by the performances of Fox and Bogarde, but also by the concision of Pinter’s script. The neat topsy-turvy nature of their relationship was always kept in check by the writing, maintaining the tension and the feeling that something was as stake, something Phantom Thread allows to slip in the last half hour. Perhaps Anderson is trying to do too much, or perhaps he was never entirely sure what he was trying to do. Or perhaps, as mooted, there’s actually a subtext to the story which has very little to do with the viewer, and everything to do with the artist’s struggle. The artist in this case being Paul Thomas Anderson, rather than Reynolds Jeremiah Woodcock.

three men in a boat [jerome k jerome]

A title to conjure with. A title that has conquered the world. Simple titles are so often the best. Eponymous or definitive. War and Peace. Crime and Punishment. Pride and Prejudice. One wonders if the book would have garnered quite the fame it has, if it weren’t for the perfection of the title. It’s a slight anecdotal tale. The fascinating aspect of the book is the window it casts on Victorian city life; the sense of stress that was already present, the need to escape. The book’s success tied to a contemporary fantasy of getting away and escaping for a bit, embracing a quieter rhythm, something which modernity had already consumed. There’s a certain ingeniousness to the way in which the narration meanders like a river on a plain, seemingly in no hurry to get to its destination; and one can understand how the narrator’s jovial tone has beguiled generations, whilst at the same time realising why this was Jerome K Jerome’s only real success, albeit a success that has bestowed a minimal immortality. 

three billboards outside ebbing, missouri (w&d martin mcdonagh)

Martin McDonagh has always been a card. From the very start he’s loved to provoke and understood that nothing grabs an audience’s attention like a bit of well-placed, arguably gratuitous violence. Three Billboards feels like a move away from that territory towards something rather more Coen brothers, with Frances McDormand helming a diverse, ensemble cast. Although Mildred, McDormand’s character, is after revenge, this is as much a film about small-town USA as it is about retribution for the rape and murder of her daughter. That particular strand remains somewhat unconvincing, in spite of McDormand giving it all she’s got. The emotional realities of Mildred’s situation remain secondary to the delight the film takes in spiking Trumpian America. Sam Rockwell’s out and out racist cop, made to feel more than at home in the local police station, is the film’s boldest play. McDonagh isn’t afraid to come out with the fairly indisputable fact that it’s not uncommon to come across a racist policeman in the USA. The fact that Rockwell’s story is ultimately redemptive may have caused some controversy, but it’s refreshing to see a film have the honesty to confront a racism that Hollywood never normally recognises. Having said which, in spite of its critical plaudits, Seven Billboards feels like a bit of a pudding. It’s hard to see how you can construct a narrative around the issue of a violent rape and then play the movie for laughs. McDonagh might say that this kind of irreverence is an approach that has always served him well. However, In Bruges had a conceptual freedom which seemed to be more effective for the writer’s intellectual playfulness; whilst the (O)Irish plays functioned within a kind of mythical world of the author’s imagining, no matter how much that might have pissed off the Irish who had really lived and suffered the Troubles. Three Billboards threatens to deal with complex moral problems in a humorous fashion, but in the end it’s mostly humour and not much morality. Which makes for an entertaining if ultimately shallow ride. 

a philosophy of walking [frédéric gros]

There are plenty of books around about walking, tramping, the fundamentals of the act of treading the planet’s curvature, mapping it, returning to a human scale. Solnit and Macfarlane are two who come to mind instantly, but there are also those from previous generations including Lee and Stephen Graham. Often this interest is associated with a desire to counteract the way in which high modernity has abandoned what might be called the human scale. Planes, trains and automobiles have ruptured a connection to the land which the human species has had for thousands of years. The need to reclaim that bond is pressing and it comes as no surprise that writers who care about our relationship not just to nature, but also to our ancestors, seek to re-vindicate an art that in many parts of the modern world has come to be considered a near-redundant irritation.

Gros belongs firmly to this canon. His lovely book rambles through an articulation of the styles and benefits of walking. He cites several writers as cases in point, including Nietzsche, Nerval, Wordsworth etc, revealing the way in which they used the act of walking to further their thinking and their writing. He uses these examples in conjunction with an analysis of the different benefits that accrue as a result of walking, looking at how it stimulates us to think differently. The section on the differing approaches within Greek philosophy to walking offers a particularly lucid insight.

As mentioned, The Philosophy or Walking is more of a ramble than a hike. It’s one of those books you can dip in and out of. The terrain feels familiar, but it’s full of occasional unexpected sights. Take it out for a stroll. It will be good company. The road will not tire you. It will leave you refreshed. 

park (w&d sofia exarchou)

The park in Park refers to the Olympic complex in Athens, created for the Olympic Games in 2004, which is now, as presented in Exarchou’s muscular film, a wasteland, taken over by kids. The kids are something like a cross between Lord of the Flies and Bicycle Thieves. On the one hand they have an endearing can-do energy, on the other they are malicious and combative. These kids have their own games, with their own winners and losers, games they play on the Olympic field of dreams. It’s a telling parable for the way in which glory fades. In this case, Greek glory, but, the film suggests in two vivid sequences, Europe’s too. 

Park ends up following the lives of two of the kids, Dimitris and Anna. Dimitris has a job in a stonemason’s yard, a job his mother has got for him by sleeping with the boss of the yard. But the boss soon lays him off. Dimitris starts to drift. He and Anna have a fling. Anna is as lost as her lover. In the first sequence which clearly squares the fate of the kids with that of a dehumanised European modernity, the two gatecrash a drunken party of British tourists, who are indulging in some full-on orgiastic hedonism. The two Greeks join in and no-one seems to care what the interlopers do. Personality, friendship, human contact: there’s no need for any of this. The tourists’ behaviour apes that of the kids. Anna is nothing more than a body, but that’s enough for free booze and partying. Later, after the couple split up, Dimitris repeats the gate-crashing trick, this time with a group of middle-aged Nordic businessmen and women. All of these people come to Greece in order to indulge, to reduce themselves to the state of animals. Jens, a businessman who drunkenly befriends Dimitris, howls like a wolf. The metaphor, located in the midst of the film’s dreamy narrative, is more potent than it perhaps sounds on paper. Exarchou’s camera lingers as Dimitris is caught, Hamlet-like, between conscience and action, whilst he decides whether or not to take advantage of the sozzled businessman. 

Meanwhile, the kids continue their games at the park. They are a lost generation, who have nothing better to do. Anna appears to drift towards prostitution. Dimitris becomes increasingly unhinged. Park, with its hand-held intimacy, gets right into to the heart of the problem. In a way, the film feels like a counterpoint to Ade’s Toni Erdmann. Europe on the brink of retreating into barbarism. The Olympic games, that great symbol of youthful ambition, revealed to be nothing more than a symbol, stripped of any value. so that all that’s left are empty stands, grassed-over arenas, dead swimming pools. The hollowness of the show revealed for all to see. 

companions [christina hesselholdt]

Companions is a chunky novel, composed of monologues spoken by five different characters: Alma, Camilla, Alwilda, Kristian and Edward, all of them Danish. The novel opens with Alma and Kristian, a couple, on holiday in the UK, retracing Wordsworth’s steps and recounting the visit from their differing perspectives. It also provides, for a British audience, the fascinating  experience of viewing one’s homeland through a European lens. The writer uses her scalpel to slice up their soon-to-be-doomed relationship. The literary references continue with visits to the homes of the Brontës and Virginia Woolf. The novel operates on all kinds of levels, and it’s a luminous, absorbing opening.

The format of the novel, this succession of monologues, suggests an extension of this fractal pattern. Something along the lines of a roman á clef, divided by five. This suggestion is deceptive. In fact, Camilla emerges as the dominant voice, with Alma as the secondary one. The other three characters have cameo roles, nothing more. Camilla’s relationship with her mother gradually establishes itself as the book’s dominant theme. The engaging, worldly Camilla and the more phlegmatic Alma (who is a novelist) begin to feel like twin manifestations of the author’s id. The two women dovetail memories, share journeys together. The novel rambles. It has no set destination. The event which draws the book to its conclusion seems slightly Hollywood. In the end Companions has the feel of a memoir as much as a novel, even though we have no way of knowing whether Camilla and Alma’s anecdotes are drawn from the author’s life or are entirely fictitious. 

The writing retains a savvy, erudite tone. These are strong Danish women, whose romanticism is kept in check. They visit Sylvia Plath’s home, but neither are the type to put their head in an oven, in spite of a history of attempted suicide in Camilla’s family. At times it almost feels as though both women pine for that Brontëan moment, which history and culture has neglected to give them. Instead, Camilla and Alma substitute a restless, Proustian roving through their history, a sublimation of the lived passion which eludes them, or in which the writer has less interest. It’s perhaps revealing that when Alma does start a relationship with one of the other narrators, Edward, this happens almost entirely off-screen, so to speak. This is a novel which skirts passion; one which is more preoccupied with the binds of friendship or family. To what extent this might be a Danish trait is hard to know; although there are echoes of Vinterberg’s The Commune. 

habitat [miguel rey]

Rey’s collection of inter-linked short stories gets under the skin of young Cuban society. It consists of six brief tales, all of them narrated by a disillusioned young man, probably the same one, Liam. Liam works as a tennis coach, giving classes to tourists and the wealthy Havana elite. He inhabits a more sheltered, Westernised Havana, one which feels a long way from any kind of politicised revolution. The book is peppered with acerbic references to contemporary culture, from Hugh Grant to Chris Brown and Rihanna. In one of the stories the narrator has a friend called Maiquel Jordan Zamora, and the author makes the wry observation that people ask: is that his real name? There’s no mention of Che or Fidel. This is a Cuba that is culturally close to the US and Central America. The closest the writing gets to talking about politics is a brief discussion of The Cherry Orchard, and how its title in the Spanish translation is wrong. The narrator then makes a few playful remarks about subtext and his ignorance regarding this, but this is a writer who seems well aware of the significance of the subtext of all his references; the way they both expand and contract the Cuban perspective.

Rather than politics, the stories relate random sexual encounters; tawdry Havana nights; minor porn addiction and tennis coaching. This is low-key living, told in a deadpan style. It has something in common with other seemingly disengaged texts such as Pedro Mairal’s La Uruguaya or even Pauls’ The Past. Tales from a post-political generation. Where the search for meaning isn’t found in big ideas, but in the kinks in the mainframe that can only be registered by experiences lived on an intimate, personal level. 

our man in havana [greene]

This was the third Greene novel I read in 2017. I read Our Man in Havana in Havana itself, hidden away in a windowless room on the edge of Havana Vieja, a block away from the Malecon. The Havana Greene describes is pre-revolutionary, although there were rebels in the hills and there’s an unspoken pressure on civil society, which is represented by the figure of the Mephistophelean police chief Captain Segura, who apparently has a cigarette case made out of human skin. Segura is, nevertheless, one of the less malicious antagonists the protagonist, Jim Wormwold faces. He’s a sly, intelligent man, whose evil traits are rooted in an understanding that within Cuban society, there’s no room for sentiment. And it feels as though Greene traces an echo of this in the way that British society functions. Wormwold is singled out as a suitable candidate to represent the British Secret Services in Havana, no matter the personal consequences for him or his family. His task is to stay alive and do his best not to cause too many needless deaths. 

There’s a lightness to the tone of Our Man… which makes it a breezy, amusing read. Greene sends up the British security services, with Wormwold an admirable anti-Bond, a little man who runs a vacuum cleaner shop, whose main preoccupation is keeping his teenage daughter happy. The novel is at once a portrayal of Cuban life, seen through the eyes of an ex-pat, and a critique of Britain’s post-imperial ambitions as it seeks to punch above its weight. Wormwold’s fleecing of the civil service he has been seconded to is admirable. It’s fascinating to see the way in which brand Bond has become a kind of flagship for Britain over the course of the past fifty years; a cruel, unthinking kind of Britishness which has its flair but is ultimately pretentious nonsense. Whereas Greene’s protagonist is a homespun anti-hero in the tradition of Jerome K Jerome or Sterne. 

As for the portrayal of Havana: the streets Wormwood treads and the bars he visits are still there, still recognisable in their Caribbean chaos, although he might well be saddened by the degree to which the city has fallen into decline, following nigh on 60 years of the US blockade. The wealth that once encouraged foreigners to set up shop and sell vacuum cleaners has long gone.

Potential site of Jim Wormwold's Shop/ Home in Calle Lamparilla, Havana

ice [anna kavan]

Ice is a book that takes you by surprise. It starts with a vivid description of a man driving through a blizzard, in the hope of reaching a mysterious pale woman he claims to be in love with. It’s a Douglas Sirk opening, heightened and melodramatic. From then on the novel evolves into something altogether more hallucinogenic. The man’s quest for the woman turns into an odyssey, set against the backdrop of a planet threatened by an existential ice age. There is also an implication of nuclear war, between undisclosed powers. The quest becomes more and more outlandish, each chapter leading the narrator no nearer to his goal, as he becomes more and more lost in the novel’s cruel logic.

The more you read, the more you start to wonder what Ice is really all about? It’s a symbolic, metaphoric text rather than a naturalistic one. The world the author is depicting would appear to be a representation of an inner landscape, an inner quest. I know nothing about Ana Kavan, but there’s a tantalising clue in the biographical note. Her tennis coach got her hooked on heroin (to help her improve her serve?). Reading Ice as an opiate nightmare would seem to make sense. Then again, maybe the world is an opiate nightmare? Kavan’s book packs enough of a punch to make us believe it might be so. In these days of climactic crisis and nuclear tyrants, it’s a vision which feels closer than ever.