last year at marienbad (d. alain resnais, w. alain robbe-grillet)

This remains an astonishing, formally brilliant film. In spite of the archness of the narrative and setting, there’s an undercurrent of brutal humanity. Delphine Seyrig’s enigmatic posturing conceals the fact that this is a film about choices. The choices made in relationships which are pivotal, determining our fate: a relationship might be a stay in a luxury hotel or it might become a stay in prison. Like the film’s recurring motif, the game of Nic, which is always won by Seyrig’s husband, our capacity to determine our own fate is denied by the logic of a game we fail to understand. Someone else is always winning. In this sense there also appears to be a strong echo in Robbe-Grillet’s radical script of Beckett’s quiet nihilism. The characters are trapped in a Godotian conundrum, one whose logic the viewer can intuit without ever really understanding. This lends the film an interpretative ambiguity. Is the hotel heaven or the hell of a concentration camp or the decline and fall of Western Civilisation? Watching the film for the first time in twenty five years, (when Mr C and I watched it on video in his Kilburn flat, a viewing which clearly influenced the Boat People), it resembles nothing so much as Jaramuschian zombie film, a far more complex and darker narrative than that director’s faded aristo opus, Only Lovers Left Alive. Marienbad has the prophetic power of a greek tragedy, no more so than in the director/ screenwriter’s use of the statue of a man and a woman poised on the brink of danger. In a more classical screeenwriting scenario, it might have been suggested that the interpretations of the statue not be articulated (who’s holding who back, what it really means, etc). However, here the novelist’s articulation works, precisely because it is not done to elucidate or clarify, but to further confuse. Words are part of the puzzle, a puzzle the viewer is constantly failing to solve, and the watching process is far more engaging for our failure to understand than it would be if we had a clear idea of what the film was trying to say. 

shame (skammen) (w&d bergman)

Shame is one of the bleakest most brilliant films I have seen in a long while. Bergman’s narrative takes a couple, Jan and Eva, violinists who have retreated to live a quiet life in the countryside (an island). In today’s language, Jan and Eva might be said to have dropped out. The world around them seems to be in turmoil. There are military manoeuvres and low-flying jet fighters. But they do their best to wilfully ignore the world, content in their bubble, receiving news from neighbours. Their only real interaction with the real world is their radio, which doesn’t work, although they sometimes take the ferry to go to the nearest small town where they sell their fruit. Their marriage is very Bergmanesque: volatile, loving, the fortnight Ullmann a perfect foil for the more neurasthenic Von Sydow. Then reality catches up with them. Undefined opposing forces occupy the island. One army makes Ullmann record a propaganda statement on their behalf. Island folk are murdered. Planes bomb the land at will.  The couple try to flee but they are arrested and rounded up and threatened with being sent to a concentration camp for having collaborated with the enemy. It emerges that Ullmann’s Eva has slept with the local mayor to secure their freedom. They are allowed back home to their island, but when the mayor visits, Jan discovers what’s happened. The mayor is then captured by the other side, who have Jan shoot him. His personality has changed. He’s not the meek violinist anymore. (His violin has been destroyed along the way). He’s a desperate man who will do anything to survive. In a final, breathtaking sequence, the couple flee the island on a boat, which would appear to be a boat to nowhere.

There’s so much going on in this film, that it seems from a resumé, excessive. But the cumulative effect is overwhelming. More so in this era of chaos and fear. Bergman’s use of sound is quite brilliant, from the noise of the bombing to the silence of the boat at the end. The film keeps punching, becoming more and more harrowing. It’s clearly set in a metaphorical world (to the best of my knowledge there was no civil war in Sweden in the sixties), but not only are the effects brilliantly realised (apparently using models), but also the film is all the more powerful for occupying this unclear, open-ended space. It’s a mystery who’s fighting who and why, but what is clear is the destructive effect of the war on the psyche of those caught up in it. Both Ullmann and Von Sydow give grandstanding performances which are rooted in their completely believable marriage. Perhaps the film might be read in more peaceful times as a metaphor for a marriage, but it also feels like a sentient warning of the dangers of an apolitical lifestyle, the impossibility of truly dropping out, no matter how tempting. 

the dead (sebastian kracht, tr. daniel bowles)

The Dead, portentous title aside, is like a delicious if slightly unsatisfying first course. It’s a slim novel, which takes a lot on. The narrative recounts the story of a Swiss film director, Emil Nägeli, who is commissioned by a Nazi director of culture in the early days of the Third Reich to make a German language film in Japan. This offers the novelist Pynchonesque scope, which he takes advantage of. The action flits from Japan to Switzerland to Berlin, back to Japan, to Hollywood and finally Zurich once more. It takes in figures including Chaplin, whose visit to Japan is skilfully interwoven into the narrative, Lotte Eisner, Fritz Lang, and others. The Berlin sequence, where Nägeli spends a whirlwind few days, is brilliantly realised. One half-expects Nägeli to run into a pre-GI Slothrop. However, the bittiness of the book ultimately works against it. The pages end up feeling like fragments from a larger novel which hasn’t been written. The narrative hop, skips and jumps until it runs out of steam. 

dressage (d. pooya badkoobeh, w. hamed rajabi)

Why do the Iranians have such an innate grasp of how to do cinema? It’s a question, which, knowing so little about their culture, I cannot answer, but it’s a curiosity that Iranian directors of various generations are able to construct films which feel well nigh perfect. Dressage is that latest of these, a tale of a girl, Golsa, living in a provincial town, who effectively goes rogue.  Interestingly, it’s not set in Tehran, but in a small town. We’re a long way from Farhadi. Golsa starts the film hanging out with a group of spoilt teenagers who get their kicks out of robbing shops. However, their escapade goes wrong when they realise they haven’t removed the video recording of the theft captured by the store’s CCTV, and they bully Golsa into going to fetch it. She then hides the video tape, refusing to return it. What she wants in exchange for the tape seems increasingly unclear. She finds herself in conflict with the friends, with her family, even with the stable where she helps out and develops a strong affection for one of the horses. The film allows the director, Pooya Badkoobeh, to show us various strands of Iranian life. The narrative touches on local corruption, class division, and in a telling sequence, the maltreatment of an Afghan immigrant. Through all this, Golsa, brilliantly portrayed by Negar Moghaddam, seems to be waging a lone battle against the inevitable injustice not just of society but the very condition of being alive. Her battle is always understated, carefully constructed, with low-key twists coming thick and fast, building the tension. Beside the fact it’s beautifully filmed, acted, and conceived, this is also a superb example of how to conjure a compelling script from the most minimal of ingredients. Dressage is Pooya Badkoobeh’s first feature, and one waits expectantly to see what he does next. 

un ange (w&d koen mortier)

Un Ange tells the story of a Belgian cyclist who travels to Senegal to hook up with his brother and party. There he meets Fae, a woman who isn’t officially a prostitute, but unofficially appears to be. This moot definition arises as a result of the carnet de salud  which official prostitutes are required to have. Thierry meets Fae in a  bar and appears to fall head over heels in love with her. They spend a crazy night together, where he proposes to her. This unlikely love affair is thrown off course when Thierry isn’t allowed to bring Fae into his hotel, as she doesn’t have the carnet de salud. He takes some drugs which freak him out, they go to another cheap hotel, he becomes paranoid and delusional and then he dies. 

The first hour or so of An Ange is brilliant. All the elements of film, sound, camera, lighting, edit are used to the max. Nicolas Karakatsanis’ camerawork is mesmerising. The set-up itself is fascinating, with Senegal providing the perfect setting for these artists to go to work. The film generates tension and empathy with both Fae and Thierry. However, as the brief resume of the narrative perhaps suggests, the trouble is that the narrative doesn’t hold up. The final half hour feels undercooked, as though this is a short which has been stretched out for all its worth. At the heart of this narrative problem, perhaps, is the issue of what them film is about. It opens with a voiceover from Fae talking about prostitution. The scenes in Senegal perfectly capture the uneasy first world/ third world sexual tourism issue. However, this issue feels as tough it’s ditched or ducked at the end, as the pivot of the film becomes Thierry’s drug addiction. A cutaway to his funeral in Belgium feels awkward. The fact that Thierry has become an addict as a result of his doping feels like a curveball the film doesn’t need and doesn’t entirely warrant (there’s even a reference to Armstrong in there). 

This is a shame, as so much of Un Ange is so well done. For a long time it feels as though we’re in the hands of a director of great skill. The edit, which includes flashbacks and one great dream sequence, is terrific. The film drives forwards in a flare of colour and dynamic camerawork and committed acting. Then, in the final straight, it runs out of gas. 

fleuve noir (w&d erick zonca; w, lou de fanget signolet)

Have started reading Richard Brody’s biography of Godard. Wherein he notes early on the post-war agreement, at the time seen as an assault on French cinema, that “each French movie house show four weeks of French films per quarter”. This was seen then as a way of opening the door for the US to take over the cinemas in “nine out of every thirteen weeks”. However, in the long term, as Hollywood and free market capitalism and soft cultural power developed their takeover, this accord would protect the French film industry, guaranteeing the presence of French films in every cinema. In large part it might be down to this that the French cinema industry remains so robust, churning out movies with homegrown stars and a guaranteed local audience. This might also explain why so much French cinema, (which for reasons that demand another line of investigation ends up being screened in Montevideo), is highly generic.  Zonca’s Fleuve Noir is a prime example. The narrative is in so many ways a routine cop story. Dishevelled and destroyed flic, Vincent Cassel, one part Bad Lieutenant, another part Morse, struggles with his demons as he seeks to discover who is responsible for the disappearance, presumed death, of teenage Danny, a kid the same age as Cassel’s own wayward son. The slightly pedestrian narrative is bolstered by the presence of Romain Duris as would-be novelist who gets so excited by Danny’s disappearance, (he is a neighbour who at one point tutored Danny),  that he starts to meddle in the case, arousing Cassel’s distaste and suspicion. The narrative always feels a bit clunky; the strand with Cassel’s son never really goes anywhere, the ending feels slightly overdone. It feels likely that if this got anywhere near to being made in the UK it would be as a TV drama, perhaps split into three episodes, and given the relative mundanity of the material, perhaps it might have functioned more effectively in that format. However, there is one thing that would have been lost, which is probably the thing that makes the film worth making in the first place. Which is the opportunity for some grandstanding acting from Cassel and Duris. Cassel rocks a truly manky beard, he goes full-on ugly, even developing a weirdly loping walk. It’s an old-school performance, which could have come out of a fifties black and white policier. Duris seems to be enjoying himself immensely as the marginally deranged would-be novelist who quotes Kafka and Camus. He too has a particular walk, a jaunty straight-backed mechanism which perfectly suits the character. Fleuve Noir reminds us of how we go to the cinema to watch actors perform, how the material is so often a mere canvas upon which they paint their art, with its nuances and exaggerations. It’s not a great movie, but it has a despotic charm, the pleasure of watching artists at work. 

the ascent (voskhozhdenie) (w&d larisa shepitko, w. yuri klepikov)

There are so many films from the USSR or Russia set in the second world war that it’s not hard to think there’s nothing new to see. The Ascent, a film I had never heard of, proved this thesis wrong. It has to be one of the most remarkable, harrowing films I have ever seen. The director, Larisa Shepitko conjures an astonishing bleak, visceral film which drives itself forward over the course of two hours to a gut-wrenching conclusion. The first hour of the film sees two partisans, Sotnikov and Rybak struggle through a snowbound landscape in search of food to take back to their group. This is almost all filmed with hand-held camera, which tumbles through the snow with the two partisans, sinks up to its waist in the snow, genuinely makes us feel as though we are also there, fleeing for our lives. Cinema as immersive experience. Just as it seems they’ve succeeded in their mission, Sotnikov and Rybak run into a German patrol and Sotnikov is wounded. Rybak saves his life, but seeking to hide in a farmhouse, they are captured. This is a plot twist that it complete contrast to anything Hollywood might have come up with. What we assume to be a film about how the plucky heroes’ escape, turns into something completely the opposite. A tale of torture, betrayal, collateral damage, death. In short, a stunningly convincing and unsettling portrayal of the realities of having an enemy force invade your homeland and the price that is paid in both physical and spiritual terms. The Ascent is another example of the remarkable talent of Soviet cinema. The Soviets didn’t just lose the Cold War, they also lost the culture war, but in their cinema we can discern a sensibility in complete contrast to that of their enemies, a capacity to create cinema that is immersive, compelling, terrifying and beautiful. Perhaps Soviet cinema whispers to us that there was another course for humanity to take, another way to put the technology into practice. Or perhaps this is just a wilfully romantic notion on my part.

madame bovary (flaubert)

Madame Bovary. A name everyone knows. It stands for something, represents some kind of idea of womanhood, but what exactly? Reading Flaubert’s first and most famous novel, one is struck by the almost (but perhaps not quite) misogynist treatment of the protagonist. She is married off to someone she soon she realises she doesn’t love. She’s seduced by a miserable rake, who ditches her when she demands to be taken seriously. She treats her husband appallingly. She racks up huge debts, allowing herself to be manipulated by the local tradesman. She has another affair with a younger man which is clearly destined to end badly, and does. Her debts bring ruin to her family. She’s a half-hearted mother, at best. She commits suicide rather than face up to the consequences of her actions. She drives her husband to an early grave and her orphaned daughter to a miserable fate. She is venal, selfish, capricious, unfaithful, in all senses of the word. Yet her name is venerated and she is held in mystical esteem. How to explain this paradox? How to rationalise the author’s near misogyny with his creation of an iconic female heroine? In the end, this must come down to the potency of naturalism. Because, no matter what you think of Emma Bovary, she feels like a completely convincing, authentic character. And of course, her flaws, manifold as they are, are elemental in this authenticity. Great fictional characters are, as the books tell us, flawed characters, servants of their whims, their desires. Emma Bovary might the most perfect example of this thesis and what might be termed, clumsily, the paradox of idealisation. 

paths of glory (w&d stanley kubrick, w. calder willingham, jim thompson)

It’s always intriguing to watch the early work of a maestro. What one sees in this film is Kubrick striving and occasionally achieving transcendence over material whose profundity is undermined by some B-movie tropes. Hence we have the secondary character actors with their quirks; the melodramatic set-up of a trial; the chiselled jaw of the leading man. The opening scene feels stagey, as two generals bat back and forth some heavy-handed dialogue. Initially, one struggles to see what’s distinctive about the film, what’s going to set it apart. Then, all of a sudden, we hit a battle sequence. It’s relentless, noisy, unpleasant, and lasts a good five minutes. Men try and cross No-Man’s-Land and they are cut to ribbons. The noise is positively off-putting and more than this, the sequence is purposefully anti-romantic. The sequence is the godfather of other famous war scenes: Saving Private Ryan; Atonement; Dunkirk. It’s far more shocking and savage than anything in Mendes’ recent 1917. It’s the first time the film reveals Kubrick’s brilliance at constructing epic moments and more soon follow. The editing and the cinematography of the court room scene is both precise and done with a flourish. Daringly, rather than keep the camera close on Douglas as he delivers his crucial, grandstand speech, we follow him from behind a chair, the camera tracking him as he strides back and forth. Kubrick’s cinematic vision subsequently shines through in two further grand set-piece scenes: the closing bar scene where a young German woman brings French troops to tears with a song and, most impressively, in the austere execution scene, which  foregoes any dramatic histrionics to deliver a terrifying representation of harsh injustice. It’s in these elaborate scenes that the film reveals the nascent craftsmanship of Kubrick, a director seeking to elevate his art above and beyond any kind of commercial imperative, something that feels remarkable and unusual for a 1950s Hollywood financed movie. 

curious footnote:

The actor Timothy Carey was fired during production. He was reportedly extremely difficult to work with, even to the extent of faking his own kidnapping, holding up the whole production.

ivan’s chidhood (w&d tarkovsky, w vladimir bogomolov, mikhail papava, andrey konchalovskiy)

 The face of a goat. A tracking shot across a field. A ruined church. An icon. Trees in water. Birch trees. Albrecht Dürer.

There are a thousand and one images to be harvested from Tarkovsky’s first film. He was a painter. He was also a philosopher. He married the two disciplines and came up with cinema. An art form he did indeed invent, even if some say it had been around for nearly a century when he got going. 

The war. The sudden drastic switch to documentary footage. Dead children, Goebel’s cowardly offering. A death cult. The documentary footage jarring, all wrong compared to the aesthetic splendour of all that has preceded it, but all right too, for this is a film about a boy who died, who was captured and executed. A boy whose life was enshrined in childhood. 

Sound, like water, a relentless rebarbative rhythm, the rhythm of being alive. 

Image on the front line, language left behind in the rearguard. Words are for the moments when joy or tears are called for. Words are for joking or flirting. Not for when you reach the frontier between life and death. A frontier Ivan crosses, never coming back. Neither to his companions, nor to us, nor to language.