I’m trying to remember when in the last twenty years I must have met Wim Wenders and why he would have been interested enough in my life to listen to me describe it. Up to some details - I have never cleaned up-market Tokyo toilets for a living, and I don’t have any relatives who have chauffeur-driven cars - the life his central character Hirayama leads is very close to the one I lead for a decade or more. The moments when Hirayama (aka, me, played by Koji Yakusho, who is far more distinguished than I) stops reading and turns the light off get the feeling wonderfully. Wenders understands it as the ultimate expression of the autonomy of the single: we decide when our day is done, we end it quietly, and sleep. No-one can suddenly start talking, arrive home late, fidget, throw a mood, or otherwise mess with our final waking moments.
We older single men have our routines, we take small pleasures in some of the moments of our days, we may read, listen to music and watch movies, go to the gym (Hirayama goes to a public bath) and have regular places to eat and drink, and from the outside it looks like a life, and on the inside it can feel like a pleasant routine, but it is paper-thin, and we have no links with the people in it other than our habitual economic relations. I do recall Wenders giving me an ambiguous look when I described it like that, and here we are those years later, and it’s clear he got the point perfectly.
The film is not a portrayal of the joys of the well-organised single life. The repeated morning- and after-work routine sequences create the sense that Hirayama is in some kind of emotional stasis. (See also All That Jazz.)
The film ends with Hirayama being asked, by her former husband, who has cancer, to look after the lady who runs his favourite bar. When asked, he demurs, and the husband, says that he is counting on him. The last we see of Hirayama, he has a tearfully smiling face, intensely staring through the windscreen of his van at the future. He has found, as far as Wenders is concerned, the chance of a connection with another person, and that is a source of both happiness and sorrow.
I do remember Wenders suggesting that maybe I might find a relationship even in those my later years. He seemed to think it would be a Good Thing. Hard to explain the draw of bachelorhood to a man on his fifth marriage, so I didn’t.
“Perfect Day” is the most-misunderstood song. The day isn’t perfect because of what the singer does, or who he does it with, but because he is able to forget what a lousy person he is, or perhaps, what a rotten opinion he has of himself. (I think it’s a drug song, but then I would. Others think it’s a song about being with another person.)
This is where it gets interesting. Perhaps all Hirayama’s “perfect days” are a way of forgetting something that he did, or how he was, at some time in the past. In which case, we have a movie about a man hiding from his past in work, culture and routine.
Which would mean Wenders really did understand my life back then.
Leaving only the question of when and where we met.
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Tuesday 5 March 2024
Tuesday 23 August 2022
You're An Artist If You Say You Are
There's a scene in a wonderful movie called Dinner Rush...
(Not this scene, but it gives you an idea how good a film this is)
...where a pompous celebrity art critic says to Summer Phoenix's aspiring painter / waitress...
You're an artist if you say you are. You're a successful artist if....
...and then he's interrupted by his entourage.
I've often wondered how to finish that line.
It's subtle, because there's "being an artist" and being a writer, painter, sculptor, interior designer, architect, and all those other activities that fall under "the arts".
You're a writer if you sit down and write pretty much every day. You're a successful writer if you finish some of the stories or projects you start, (because you will waste time on bad ideas)
But then there's "being a writer" as a profession, as participation in a social / cultural scene.
You're an author if you've been published and paid for it. Once. That's what the Society of Authors says. You're a successful author if you keep being published. (Because almost nobody makes a living from writing.)
There are successful authors who are by no means artists. There are artists who write stories, who write little and don't spend much time schmoozing.
So what makes someone a successful artist?
It's not about being a successful practitioner, and it's not about being recognised by the in-crowd of agents, critics, editors, gallerists, academics, journalists, and other bureaucratic nabobs.
What I notice about people I call `artists' is that a) they can work and express themselves in multiple media; b) they are quick to experiment with new technology that may help them produce something; c) they have their own voice / tone / style. You can identify their work more or less immediately.
You're a famous artist if "everyone" knows your name.
You're a rich artist if you have lots of money.
You're a successful artist if you develop your own voice and use that voice to produce work in whatever media you can use.
And most probably you will be poor or working a day job. Those are the stats.
...where a pompous celebrity art critic says to Summer Phoenix's aspiring painter / waitress...
You're an artist if you say you are. You're a successful artist if....
...and then he's interrupted by his entourage.
I've often wondered how to finish that line.
It's subtle, because there's "being an artist" and being a writer, painter, sculptor, interior designer, architect, and all those other activities that fall under "the arts".
You're a writer if you sit down and write pretty much every day. You're a successful writer if you finish some of the stories or projects you start, (because you will waste time on bad ideas)
But then there's "being a writer" as a profession, as participation in a social / cultural scene.
You're an author if you've been published and paid for it. Once. That's what the Society of Authors says. You're a successful author if you keep being published. (Because almost nobody makes a living from writing.)
There are successful authors who are by no means artists. There are artists who write stories, who write little and don't spend much time schmoozing.
So what makes someone a successful artist?
It's not about being a successful practitioner, and it's not about being recognised by the in-crowd of agents, critics, editors, gallerists, academics, journalists, and other bureaucratic nabobs.
What I notice about people I call `artists' is that a) they can work and express themselves in multiple media; b) they are quick to experiment with new technology that may help them produce something; c) they have their own voice / tone / style. You can identify their work more or less immediately.
You're a famous artist if "everyone" knows your name.
You're a rich artist if you have lots of money.
You're a successful artist if you develop your own voice and use that voice to produce work in whatever media you can use.
And most probably you will be poor or working a day job. Those are the stats.
Monday 17 October 2016
Mod
Recently I read Richard Weight’s best-selling book on the Mod Movement. I assume it was best-selling, since it was out on the tables at Waterstone’s Piccadilly. It’s one of those social history books that makes sense while you are reading it, but doesn’t quite hang together in the memory. Weight includes as 'Mod' a number of groups I don’t think belong there. Skinheads: nothing sharp, ironic or racially-tolerant about them. And Northern Soul Baggies are as non-Mod as anything that could be imagined. A lot of the cultural content he ascribes to the movement comes from a group of people who called themselves “Modernists” and went for jazz, continental cooking and design. I have a feeling those guys weren't grooving to Stax and popping uppers in Ham Yard Friday night. I have no idea what Neville Brody and Post-Modernism are doing in there either, even if Brody was a young Mod back in the day. Len Deighton’s creation Harry Palmer just about belongs, although I see Palmer as closer to the Nouvelle Vague and Godard’s louche anti-heroes.
However, this isn't the point. Weight's book is a good guide to some of the fringe groups of post 1960’s British Cultural History.
It leaves you with the sense there was and is a sensibility called Mod, and that it had to do with dressing sharp, liking black music, being racially-tolerant, with Vespa-riding as an option, rejecting mainstream ideas of career and jobs, and with a sprinkle of irony thrown in. But not much more. Misogyny. But then Weight has to say that, because he’s a Visiting Professor at Boston University, so he has to throw some ideological chum to the feminists.
The phrase everyone quotes to define Mod is from Peter Meadon: “clean living under difficult circumstances”. You may feel that since this was said by someone in the middle of drug use and nervous breakdowns, this is possibly a little rich, but let’s go with the words of the prophet and not his actions.
At the very least “clean living” means self-respect, or at least its outward show. Hence the sharp dressing, which is always good for outward show.
Here are some things that weren’t options in the 1960’s: junk food, super-sizing, sugar and soya in everything, snacking; couch-potato living, playing computer games for hours, sitting in office chairs for hours on end; staying up late watching television; central heating keeping your house at near-summer temperatures; wearing sports clothes on the high street; two hundred channels and nothing’s on; around one hundred and fifty genres of dance music; terraced houses in working-class areas that cost ten times median earnings; sending jobs to foreign countries; easy divorce; hours of soap operas on television; effective birth control for women; social media. More people did manual work, and all work was more manual. The entire country was closed on Wednesday afternoon and all day Sunday. Except for cinemas.
What would “clean living” mean now? It would mean resisting all those ways to turn into a slob. It would mean keeping fit, eating well, staying in shape, and not being distracted by social media or slouching in front of the TV. Add being informed about the new in whatever interests them. It would mean focussing on having a good time, getting done what needs to be done and not being drawn into random drama and outrage. Sound familiar? Exactly. Mod was a Man’s Movement. Girls were welcome, but they weren’t the point of all the sharp dressing, Vespa-decorating and dancing to Wilson Pickett.
That’s the insight Weight’s academic political correctness blinds him to. Throughout history, I suspect, there have always been men who simply have not seen the point of family life and producing offspring - though they probably produced offspring, since birth control was pretty haphazard. These men chose to live better than the family man. Whatever “better” meant back then. Mods were the post WW2 working-class take on that. That's why the skinheads and their offspring really don't belong in Mod. When the Mods faded away, leaving only Paul Weller and Paul Smith behind, there was nothing for over three decades until the internet-based self-improvement movement evolved from PUA. That's the real story.
Self-improvers are not Mods. Sharp dressing, and a particular style of it, is the core part of Mod identity. I never dressed that sharp, but I did prefer Stax and Tamla Motown when I was at school. My lot were too late for Mod. Or for Hippies. But I am, however late in life, a self-improver.
The book has a comment from a Mod girl about the Mod-Rocker fights. She recognised some of the Mods in the photographs. They were not the Faces she knew. The rioters were the boys in the lower streams and secondary moderns. The Mods she hung out with were much smarter and were going to pass their exams and have careers. (You could have a better career with five good O-levels then than you can with a junk degree now.) Weight half-absorbs the lesson of this. Mod was an elite, as self-improvement is now. Elite means elite, not hundreds of teenagers in parkas having a riot. Since he's not allowed to like elites, Weight has to conflate the rioters and the Faces, and that's what spoils the coherence of his story. In the end, the art-and-design Modernists just cannot be tied in with the Vespa-riding, pill-popping Mods. Every time he did it, I kept wanting it to work, but it doesn't. Paul Weller and Pete Townsend weren't Mods, for all the parkas, rounders and sharp suits. They were from the start, professional, dedicated and hugely talented musicians, who found in Mod a framework for their ideas. There's a difference between being the thing and being inspired by the thing. The caustic song "Substuitute" is at once man anthem and a critique. It depends how the listener reacts.
On the other hand it does give him something to write about the thirty year wasteland between the death of Mod and the growth of self-improvement.
If you really want to know what Mod was and how it felt, read the first two chapters of Tony Parsons' Limelight Blues. In fact, read the novel: it's Parsons’ best, and one of the best novels of the last quarter of the twentieth-century. Yes. Really. Here’s his protagonist David Lazar in full Mod righteousness:
However, this isn't the point. Weight's book is a good guide to some of the fringe groups of post 1960’s British Cultural History.
It leaves you with the sense there was and is a sensibility called Mod, and that it had to do with dressing sharp, liking black music, being racially-tolerant, with Vespa-riding as an option, rejecting mainstream ideas of career and jobs, and with a sprinkle of irony thrown in. But not much more. Misogyny. But then Weight has to say that, because he’s a Visiting Professor at Boston University, so he has to throw some ideological chum to the feminists.
The phrase everyone quotes to define Mod is from Peter Meadon: “clean living under difficult circumstances”. You may feel that since this was said by someone in the middle of drug use and nervous breakdowns, this is possibly a little rich, but let’s go with the words of the prophet and not his actions.
At the very least “clean living” means self-respect, or at least its outward show. Hence the sharp dressing, which is always good for outward show.
Here are some things that weren’t options in the 1960’s: junk food, super-sizing, sugar and soya in everything, snacking; couch-potato living, playing computer games for hours, sitting in office chairs for hours on end; staying up late watching television; central heating keeping your house at near-summer temperatures; wearing sports clothes on the high street; two hundred channels and nothing’s on; around one hundred and fifty genres of dance music; terraced houses in working-class areas that cost ten times median earnings; sending jobs to foreign countries; easy divorce; hours of soap operas on television; effective birth control for women; social media. More people did manual work, and all work was more manual. The entire country was closed on Wednesday afternoon and all day Sunday. Except for cinemas.
What would “clean living” mean now? It would mean resisting all those ways to turn into a slob. It would mean keeping fit, eating well, staying in shape, and not being distracted by social media or slouching in front of the TV. Add being informed about the new in whatever interests them. It would mean focussing on having a good time, getting done what needs to be done and not being drawn into random drama and outrage. Sound familiar? Exactly. Mod was a Man’s Movement. Girls were welcome, but they weren’t the point of all the sharp dressing, Vespa-decorating and dancing to Wilson Pickett.
That’s the insight Weight’s academic political correctness blinds him to. Throughout history, I suspect, there have always been men who simply have not seen the point of family life and producing offspring - though they probably produced offspring, since birth control was pretty haphazard. These men chose to live better than the family man. Whatever “better” meant back then. Mods were the post WW2 working-class take on that. That's why the skinheads and their offspring really don't belong in Mod. When the Mods faded away, leaving only Paul Weller and Paul Smith behind, there was nothing for over three decades until the internet-based self-improvement movement evolved from PUA. That's the real story.
Self-improvers are not Mods. Sharp dressing, and a particular style of it, is the core part of Mod identity. I never dressed that sharp, but I did prefer Stax and Tamla Motown when I was at school. My lot were too late for Mod. Or for Hippies. But I am, however late in life, a self-improver.
The book has a comment from a Mod girl about the Mod-Rocker fights. She recognised some of the Mods in the photographs. They were not the Faces she knew. The rioters were the boys in the lower streams and secondary moderns. The Mods she hung out with were much smarter and were going to pass their exams and have careers. (You could have a better career with five good O-levels then than you can with a junk degree now.) Weight half-absorbs the lesson of this. Mod was an elite, as self-improvement is now. Elite means elite, not hundreds of teenagers in parkas having a riot. Since he's not allowed to like elites, Weight has to conflate the rioters and the Faces, and that's what spoils the coherence of his story. In the end, the art-and-design Modernists just cannot be tied in with the Vespa-riding, pill-popping Mods. Every time he did it, I kept wanting it to work, but it doesn't. Paul Weller and Pete Townsend weren't Mods, for all the parkas, rounders and sharp suits. They were from the start, professional, dedicated and hugely talented musicians, who found in Mod a framework for their ideas. There's a difference between being the thing and being inspired by the thing. The caustic song "Substuitute" is at once man anthem and a critique. It depends how the listener reacts.
On the other hand it does give him something to write about the thirty year wasteland between the death of Mod and the growth of self-improvement.
If you really want to know what Mod was and how it felt, read the first two chapters of Tony Parsons' Limelight Blues. In fact, read the novel: it's Parsons’ best, and one of the best novels of the last quarter of the twentieth-century. Yes. Really. Here’s his protagonist David Lazar in full Mod righteousness:
They thought they were so special, the creeps on the team [at the advertising agency where Lazar works], but they reminded him of commuters. The suits of the men in the Tube made him smile. What was the point in wearing a suit if you looked like a sack of potatoes in it? They stared at him…and they hated him, because he wore a suit beautifully and for pleasure, and they wore a suit as a convict wears a fetter.
Monday 11 July 2016
That Black Female Iron Man Rumour
It seems that Marvel Comics is going to make Iron Man a black female in the next series, and she’s modelled on and will be played by Rianna in the movie. Because of course movie. This is getting people’s knickers in a twist. Here’s why you should expect nothing less.
Disclaimer: I do read comics. Transmetropolitan. Fables. Ex Machina. Fuse. Smoke and Ashes. Sex Criminals. Channel Zero. The Filth. Global Frequency. And in earlier days adult days: Love and Rockets. Watchmen. Elektra. In childhood, we’re talking The Eagle, the Beano, MAD magazine. Plus everyone watched Batman on TV. Most of the stuff I read now is published by Vertigo (which is a DC Comics imprint). Good comics are out there. The only superhero movies I have in my DVDs are... Constantine. Yup. That’s it.
I was never one for the superhero comics. I preferred those WW2 / Korean War comics that Roy Liechtenstein riffed on later in the iconic WHAAM!
I wouldn’t read a Marvel or DC comic for all the shelf space they take up in the basement of Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue. I’m waaaay hipper than that. I get my comics at GOSH in Soho.
Marvel and DC have been on a Diversity jag. Iron Man being one of many. Various other characters formerly white, male and heterosexual are being made black, gay, female or combinations thereof. Marvel is owned by Disney and DC is owned by Time Warner. Nobody knows how those guys think. Or even if. Disney makes its money from trips to Disneyland / World and its cable TV networks . Comics aren’t even on the graphic. Movies, of which Marvel Studios is just one amongst Pixar, Lucasfilm and Touchstone and Walt Disney, make half as much as the theme parks. Disney want you watching its cable and going to its theme parks. And not to put a Gauntanamo blow-up doll there...
Time-Warner makes $28bn revenue. I don’t think the majority of that comes from comic book sales. Or even movies. It comes from cable subscriptions.
I did have my own theory about why Disney and Time-Warner would be prepared to throw their comic franchises to the SJW’s for some PR to protect their cable TV franchises. But then I decided it was nonsense. But it was one theory. There are others. First, that Disney and Time-Warner employ morons or do stuff because somebody senior enough thought it was a good idea. Second, that they researched this properly and it came out well, so they know what they’re doing. Third, that the research was slanted for it to come out well. Fourth, that they are part of a plot to demonise white masculinity. Fifth, that they know something about the market that the comic fans don’t.
Now I would never underestimate the capacity for big companies to act utterly dumb. Like Columbia Pictures with Ghostbusters. It is after all a division of Sony, and what the hey does Sony know about Western Culture? Kick-ass females are a thing in Japanese culture. Time-Warner bought AOL. I am however trying hard to think of a bad move Disney made in movies.
Let’s give these guys the benefit of the doubt. Let’s suppose they think they know something about the market that comic fans and I don’t. Suppose their research asked women a question like this: If a big adventure or science fiction film had a female leading character, I would be more inclined to see it. That’s how research companies phrase these things. How would a girl not say YES to that, unless she said: Uh like there’s just no like way you would get me to like ever see a movie like that. So now they have research saying that if they put a female lead in, they will get far more female viewers than they will lose white males. I’m betting that’s what has happened. Whether that research holds out at the box office? Well, if this article in Forbes is accurate it seems the girls do see films that have “strong female leads” - and lots of CGI and maybe male eye-candy helps as well (the Divergent series isn’t exactly short on pretty boys). It also looks like girls read comics: there are blogs and everything.
What the guys liked about comics and superheroes was that it was somewhere they could go that the girls weren’t. Somewhere they could go that was untainted by female silly, whimsy, crazy and bitchy. Somewhere that understood them. And now the girls are moving in and spoiling it all.
In which case, it’s time to leave. That’s what men do when too many women move in: we leave. Man flight. Find something else. Spend money on it. The market will grow. But don’t let it get too successful or the big corporations will move in and then the girls will arrive again.
So no, superhero comic lovers, you are not on the front lines of cultural warfare. You’re on the receiving end of properly conducted business. They know you will eventually leave them, but you know what? They are going to replace every one of you with a girl. Sounds like a good deal to me. Your whinging is what they want: Look, the creepy people don’t like it, so it’s safe for you girls to go to the cinema when it’s showing. Heck, soon girls will be seen in comic shops, and then it will be Game Over.
Capitalism turns everything to its advantage.
Disclaimer: I do read comics. Transmetropolitan. Fables. Ex Machina. Fuse. Smoke and Ashes. Sex Criminals. Channel Zero. The Filth. Global Frequency. And in earlier days adult days: Love and Rockets. Watchmen. Elektra. In childhood, we’re talking The Eagle, the Beano, MAD magazine. Plus everyone watched Batman on TV. Most of the stuff I read now is published by Vertigo (which is a DC Comics imprint). Good comics are out there. The only superhero movies I have in my DVDs are... Constantine. Yup. That’s it.
I was never one for the superhero comics. I preferred those WW2 / Korean War comics that Roy Liechtenstein riffed on later in the iconic WHAAM!
I wouldn’t read a Marvel or DC comic for all the shelf space they take up in the basement of Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue. I’m waaaay hipper than that. I get my comics at GOSH in Soho.
Marvel and DC have been on a Diversity jag. Iron Man being one of many. Various other characters formerly white, male and heterosexual are being made black, gay, female or combinations thereof. Marvel is owned by Disney and DC is owned by Time Warner. Nobody knows how those guys think. Or even if. Disney makes its money from trips to Disneyland / World and its cable TV networks . Comics aren’t even on the graphic. Movies, of which Marvel Studios is just one amongst Pixar, Lucasfilm and Touchstone and Walt Disney, make half as much as the theme parks. Disney want you watching its cable and going to its theme parks. And not to put a Gauntanamo blow-up doll there...
Time-Warner makes $28bn revenue. I don’t think the majority of that comes from comic book sales. Or even movies. It comes from cable subscriptions.
I did have my own theory about why Disney and Time-Warner would be prepared to throw their comic franchises to the SJW’s for some PR to protect their cable TV franchises. But then I decided it was nonsense. But it was one theory. There are others. First, that Disney and Time-Warner employ morons or do stuff because somebody senior enough thought it was a good idea. Second, that they researched this properly and it came out well, so they know what they’re doing. Third, that the research was slanted for it to come out well. Fourth, that they are part of a plot to demonise white masculinity. Fifth, that they know something about the market that the comic fans don’t.
Now I would never underestimate the capacity for big companies to act utterly dumb. Like Columbia Pictures with Ghostbusters. It is after all a division of Sony, and what the hey does Sony know about Western Culture? Kick-ass females are a thing in Japanese culture. Time-Warner bought AOL. I am however trying hard to think of a bad move Disney made in movies.
Let’s give these guys the benefit of the doubt. Let’s suppose they think they know something about the market that comic fans and I don’t. Suppose their research asked women a question like this: If a big adventure or science fiction film had a female leading character, I would be more inclined to see it. That’s how research companies phrase these things. How would a girl not say YES to that, unless she said: Uh like there’s just no like way you would get me to like ever see a movie like that. So now they have research saying that if they put a female lead in, they will get far more female viewers than they will lose white males. I’m betting that’s what has happened. Whether that research holds out at the box office? Well, if this article in Forbes is accurate it seems the girls do see films that have “strong female leads” - and lots of CGI and maybe male eye-candy helps as well (the Divergent series isn’t exactly short on pretty boys). It also looks like girls read comics: there are blogs and everything.
What the guys liked about comics and superheroes was that it was somewhere they could go that the girls weren’t. Somewhere they could go that was untainted by female silly, whimsy, crazy and bitchy. Somewhere that understood them. And now the girls are moving in and spoiling it all.
In which case, it’s time to leave. That’s what men do when too many women move in: we leave. Man flight. Find something else. Spend money on it. The market will grow. But don’t let it get too successful or the big corporations will move in and then the girls will arrive again.
So no, superhero comic lovers, you are not on the front lines of cultural warfare. You’re on the receiving end of properly conducted business. They know you will eventually leave them, but you know what? They are going to replace every one of you with a girl. Sounds like a good deal to me. Your whinging is what they want: Look, the creepy people don’t like it, so it’s safe for you girls to go to the cinema when it’s showing. Heck, soon girls will be seen in comic shops, and then it will be Game Over.
Capitalism turns everything to its advantage.
Thursday 4 February 2016
£15 for a Korean Martial Arts Film at the Curzon Bloomsbury? My Inner Pricing Manager is Offended
I went to see The Assassin at the Curzon Bloomsbury (or “The Renoir” if you’re old-school) the other Saturday. The 11:00 AM showing. In the Minema screening room.
It cost £15.
It’s a good film. There were quite a few people there - for a Korean martial arts film showing at the Renoir. And get they must have spent a LOT of money on the Takero Shimazaki-designed overhaul of the cinema, of which this is a sample.
But £15?
When the DVD, which will come out in six months at the most, will cost about £8 in the Covent Garden branch of Fopp?
I paid £20 to see the Star Wars movie at the Odeon Leicester Square, and I was happy to do that because some films need to be seen on a BIG screen. The Curzon Bloomsbury does not have a big screen, though it does have more comfortable seats. I think the Minema screening room is not a lot bigger than my back room, and I live in a small terraced house.
My inner pricing manager is offended. I’m not sure what I think would be a good price. The Prince Charles charges £11. That feels about right, as they have refurbished the Prince Charles as well. I think I paid about £12 to see The Big Short at the Cineworld Haymarket the Saturday before that. I know the Curzon want me to sign up as a member, when I will get two free tickets and “reduced” rates. Except those “reduced” rates are the standard rates, and the walk-in price I paid was a premium rate. The annual membership (for me) is £45, less £30 for the free tickets, which is £15, and I think the discount isn’t as much as £3. I would need to see six films a year before I broke even on that one, which is just about possible.
It ain’t cheap to go to the movies no more. And I’m not sure the movies they’re showing are worth that kind of money. Maybe having Rohmer, Robbe-Grillet and Godard on DVD does spoil one.
Maybe I need to go to the ICA more. After all, they show more or less the same films as the Curzon chain. But this week it’s only showing The Assassin at 16:00, and that’s when I leave the office over in the City. So maybe not the ICA then. While I’m still working.
It cost £15.
It’s a good film. There were quite a few people there - for a Korean martial arts film showing at the Renoir. And get they must have spent a LOT of money on the Takero Shimazaki-designed overhaul of the cinema, of which this is a sample.
But £15?
When the DVD, which will come out in six months at the most, will cost about £8 in the Covent Garden branch of Fopp?
I paid £20 to see the Star Wars movie at the Odeon Leicester Square, and I was happy to do that because some films need to be seen on a BIG screen. The Curzon Bloomsbury does not have a big screen, though it does have more comfortable seats. I think the Minema screening room is not a lot bigger than my back room, and I live in a small terraced house.
My inner pricing manager is offended. I’m not sure what I think would be a good price. The Prince Charles charges £11. That feels about right, as they have refurbished the Prince Charles as well. I think I paid about £12 to see The Big Short at the Cineworld Haymarket the Saturday before that. I know the Curzon want me to sign up as a member, when I will get two free tickets and “reduced” rates. Except those “reduced” rates are the standard rates, and the walk-in price I paid was a premium rate. The annual membership (for me) is £45, less £30 for the free tickets, which is £15, and I think the discount isn’t as much as £3. I would need to see six films a year before I broke even on that one, which is just about possible.
It ain’t cheap to go to the movies no more. And I’m not sure the movies they’re showing are worth that kind of money. Maybe having Rohmer, Robbe-Grillet and Godard on DVD does spoil one.
Maybe I need to go to the ICA more. After all, they show more or less the same films as the Curzon chain. But this week it’s only showing The Assassin at 16:00, and that’s when I leave the office over in the City. So maybe not the ICA then. While I’m still working.
Monday 10 August 2015
Movies I Have Seen An Unhealthy Number of Times
(Inspired by Hadley Freeman’s book on 80’s movies, some of which she’s seen way too many times, and most of which were written and directed by John Hughes. None of mine were.)
The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1974) Loosely based on the Raymond Chandler novel of the same name, Elliott Gould shambles his way through early 1970’s Los Angeles. The photography, by Vilmos Sigmund, is gorgeous, and the script, by Leigh Brackett, has a memorable line or exchange in every scene. I saw this twice in the week it came out at the Odeon in Exeter, and haven’t stoppped watching it since. The critics didn’t like Altman’s Marlowe when the film came out, but as time has passed, this movie has become a legend. It’s flip, cool and has a great payoff at the end.
Dog Town and Z-Boys (Stacey Peralta, 2001) I once contemplated a post called “Everything I Know About Excellence I Learned From This Movie”. I didn’t write the post, but I probably used the thought as an excuse to watch it again. Tony Hawk, or whoever the New Guy is now, can do tricks that the original Z-Boys would never have thought possible, but the point is, these guys were the first to work out how to do an arial spin out of a swimming pool. There were no half-pipes in your local council playground like there are now. And they were better then than almost all the kids at the park or even on the South Bank are now. Above all the story is about how to get good at something, and the importance of looking good while doing it.
The General’s Daughter (Simon West, 1999) From the opening shot you can feel the heat, the humidity and the weirdness. John Travolta is a maverick undercover army policeman who happens to be there when the General’s daughter is found dead. Showing a total lack of judgement, the Army puts him in charge of the investigation. He gets teamed up with Madeline Stowe as a fiesty female detective, with whom he had an previous affair. “Brussels. We’ll always have Brussels,” Travolta reminds her. James Woods as a gay PsyOps colonel, a bondage dungeon, a painting cat and a bunch of great lines, plus an outstanding performance from Travlota. “My father was a drunk, a womaniser and a gambler: I worshipped the man” he tells Woods with all sincerity. Great lines, glowing photography, fantastic sets, and justice triumphing at the very end.
Grand Prix (John Frankenhiemer, 1966) In fifty years, nobody has made a better film, or produced better live-action footage, of motor racing. And that includes all the on-board cameras in Formula One for television. The 1960’s were the last decade of gentleman’s motor racing: the season was about ten races long, with most in Europe, one in America and one in South Africa. The film’s version of the Italian Grand Prix was eerily prescient of the actual 1967 race, when Jim Clark lost a lap and made it all back up to take the lead, and John Surtees in theYamura Honda really did win by overtaking out the last corner before the finish line. Everything else is pretty much fiction. Frankenhiemer followed the actual F1 circus from race to race, and many real racing drivers make cameo appearances. I watch it when I’m feeling down, and it never fails to lift me up.
Basquiat (Julian Schnabel, 1996) I came out of seeing this movie when it was released and felt more alive than I had for several years. It was the mid-Ninteties and I was in early recovery, but I saw a lot of other movies then that didn’t have that effect. The film alludes to Basqiuat’s drug-taking, but doesn’t get the sheer scale of his debauchery and chaotic behaviour. You have to read the books for that. Schnabel was making a film about Basquiat’s art and the art scene in New York at the turn of the Eighties, so I’m with him on leaving out Basquiat's excess. My favourite passage starts with Anina Nosei visiting Basquiat’s flat and looking at his drawings, and moves on to him producing his first great works in the basement of her gallery. Apparantly, Basquiat’s estate wouldn’t let them use originals, so Schnabel and his assistants re-created his paintings for the movie. Compare this with the documentary, Downtown 88, and it looks glossier, but has the same feel. Schnabel did a good job.
The Great Contemporary Art Bubble (Ben Nicholson, 2009) I liked Dan Flavin’s stuff before I did my O-levels. I have the catalogue from the Kinetics exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (I think half London went to that one). For some reason I lost track of art in my thirties and then made a concerted effort to catch up again in my Forties. I have been on the Contemporary Art Society coach tours. What changed in the time I was away was the importance of the art market, especially for contemporary art. The major buyers are hedge funds, investment houses and other rich people, plus own-account art traders, and for them, it’s a business. They could lose a few million on their holdings of, say, Gerhard Richter, but then they could lose just as much on their holdings of General Motors or HSBC. And Ben Nicholson does a top job of taking us round the players in the market circa 2008, most of whom are still major players and artists now. There’s lots of art on display, lots of interviews and the odd bit of self-indulgence. Just the sort of thing I like.
Last Seen Wearing (Inspector Morse S2) (Edward Bennet, 1988) In which by some miracle, a bunch of English actors and film crew channel the exact cynicism of Raymond Chandler to perfection. The cast is ridiculous, from Suzanne Bertish at her most controlled, to a young Liz Hurley, and John Thaw playing Morse at his most depressed, cynical and despairing. “Well, they put me on these things when they smell a corpse. One file... anyone. Two files... Ainly or McKay. I'm the three file man... No, she's dead.” Set in the well-off upper-middle classes and oozing with Morse’s dislike of them, in the end, it’s about a man pulling himself out of his own despondency and solving the case. It’s about privilege and dishonesty and a side rip to London where we can see a flash West End estate agent showing tenants round Chelsea Harbour. (Cutting edge stuff at the time.) “We ought to be able to arrest him for his taste, but we can’t,” comments Morse.
Civilisation: The Skin of Our Teeth (Kenneth Clarke, 1969) He wouldn’t be allowed to get away with this episode now. Clarke was the last of the great Hegelian art critics, for whom “culture” meant Greece, Rome, the Catholic Church, and above all the Renaissance. In this episode he looks at the coastal and island Christian communities of the post-Roman days, and it’s the light and images of those islands and beaches that triggers a whole bunch of childhood memories of English coastal holidays for me. Was Clark right? Did Western civilisation survive because of these isolated monasteries? No. Mostly it survived because the Arabs in Constantinople preserved and developed the literary legacy of Greece and Rome for hundreds of years while the European world seemed to be suffering a minor Ice Age that sapped the life out of it. Love or hate Clarke’s thesis, the imagery of this episode conveys the beauty and spirituality of those remote locations.
Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell,1994) Every scene has a great line. It looks fabulous and everyone is pretty. The prettiest people have the most problematical love lives. Yep, it must be a Richard Curtis movie. It’s basically a contemporary costume drama starring Hugh Grant looking gorgeously foppish and English, which is why the rest of the world loved it, with a sharp portrayal of the love life of an attractive young man about town, which is why I loved it. The critical scene is “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”, in which we see Grant’s previous girlfriends, who are the most shallow, shrill, awful bunch of women ever collected round one table. Without that scene you’re going to spend the whole movie wondering why Grant hasn’t been snapped up by some well-bred Eight. With it, you know what he’s avoiding. And if you haven’t had a morning scene like the ones with Andie McDowell in the country pub or the Ritz - but maybe not in such glam locations or with Andie McDowell - then, my friend you do not know the bitter-sweet tastes of love. The most gorgeous shot in the whole film is looking downstream on the Thames just before we cut to Grant and McDowell in her hotel room. (“I think I can resist you: you’re not that cute”. Yea right.)
I could add a whole bunch more that fall under ‘slightly less obsessive’: The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979), An American In Paris (Vincente Minelli, 1951), The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963), Heat (Michael Mann, 1995), A Few Good Men, (Rob Reiner,1992), Thirteen Days (Roger Donaldson, 2000), Any Given Sunday (Oliver Stone, 1999), quite a few more I can’t remember right now, and of course the entire post 1980’s contemporary films of Eric Rohmer.
What if anything on earth links all of these films? The leading character is usually an attractive single man, who is an outsider with something to prove to himself if not to others. The main obstacle to achieving his goal is his own temperament - there’s a sequence in Grand Prix with James Garner and Toshiro Mifune about exactly that - and once he learns to overcome his own weakness, he gets the girl (Four Weddings), wins the Championship (Grand Prix), solves the case (Last Seen Wearing, The Long Goodbye), wins the trial (A Few Good Men). That’s one theme.
The other is about deciding to commit oneself. In The General’s Daughter, Travolta has to decide to be a policeman first and an Army man and maverick second; Basquiat has to decided to come out hiding when opportunity - in the form of Annina Nosei - comes visiting, and then throwing yourself headlong into the work; Dogtown (and The Great Escape and The Warriors) is about the unexpected rewards of excellence achieved for its own sake, and the value of having a bunch of Bros dedicated to the same thing.
An American In Paris is almost the opposite of all this: it’s a film is about a bunch of modestly talented middle-aged dreamers who will never really make anything of themselves (except the French stage star, who has, if that’s your idea of artistic success). It’s about and for all the middle-aged men who haven’t quite succumbed to the living death of normal life but can’t really break out into the life they want. It says that if you do that, you’ll have to wait for Leslie Caron to change her mind at the last moment and come rushing back to you. Which is why those are called “fairy-tale endings”.
The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1974) Loosely based on the Raymond Chandler novel of the same name, Elliott Gould shambles his way through early 1970’s Los Angeles. The photography, by Vilmos Sigmund, is gorgeous, and the script, by Leigh Brackett, has a memorable line or exchange in every scene. I saw this twice in the week it came out at the Odeon in Exeter, and haven’t stoppped watching it since. The critics didn’t like Altman’s Marlowe when the film came out, but as time has passed, this movie has become a legend. It’s flip, cool and has a great payoff at the end.
Dog Town and Z-Boys (Stacey Peralta, 2001) I once contemplated a post called “Everything I Know About Excellence I Learned From This Movie”. I didn’t write the post, but I probably used the thought as an excuse to watch it again. Tony Hawk, or whoever the New Guy is now, can do tricks that the original Z-Boys would never have thought possible, but the point is, these guys were the first to work out how to do an arial spin out of a swimming pool. There were no half-pipes in your local council playground like there are now. And they were better then than almost all the kids at the park or even on the South Bank are now. Above all the story is about how to get good at something, and the importance of looking good while doing it.
The General’s Daughter (Simon West, 1999) From the opening shot you can feel the heat, the humidity and the weirdness. John Travolta is a maverick undercover army policeman who happens to be there when the General’s daughter is found dead. Showing a total lack of judgement, the Army puts him in charge of the investigation. He gets teamed up with Madeline Stowe as a fiesty female detective, with whom he had an previous affair. “Brussels. We’ll always have Brussels,” Travolta reminds her. James Woods as a gay PsyOps colonel, a bondage dungeon, a painting cat and a bunch of great lines, plus an outstanding performance from Travlota. “My father was a drunk, a womaniser and a gambler: I worshipped the man” he tells Woods with all sincerity. Great lines, glowing photography, fantastic sets, and justice triumphing at the very end.
Grand Prix (John Frankenhiemer, 1966) In fifty years, nobody has made a better film, or produced better live-action footage, of motor racing. And that includes all the on-board cameras in Formula One for television. The 1960’s were the last decade of gentleman’s motor racing: the season was about ten races long, with most in Europe, one in America and one in South Africa. The film’s version of the Italian Grand Prix was eerily prescient of the actual 1967 race, when Jim Clark lost a lap and made it all back up to take the lead, and John Surtees in the
Basquiat (Julian Schnabel, 1996) I came out of seeing this movie when it was released and felt more alive than I had for several years. It was the mid-Ninteties and I was in early recovery, but I saw a lot of other movies then that didn’t have that effect. The film alludes to Basqiuat’s drug-taking, but doesn’t get the sheer scale of his debauchery and chaotic behaviour. You have to read the books for that. Schnabel was making a film about Basquiat’s art and the art scene in New York at the turn of the Eighties, so I’m with him on leaving out Basquiat's excess. My favourite passage starts with Anina Nosei visiting Basquiat’s flat and looking at his drawings, and moves on to him producing his first great works in the basement of her gallery. Apparantly, Basquiat’s estate wouldn’t let them use originals, so Schnabel and his assistants re-created his paintings for the movie. Compare this with the documentary, Downtown 88, and it looks glossier, but has the same feel. Schnabel did a good job.
The Great Contemporary Art Bubble (Ben Nicholson, 2009) I liked Dan Flavin’s stuff before I did my O-levels. I have the catalogue from the Kinetics exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (I think half London went to that one). For some reason I lost track of art in my thirties and then made a concerted effort to catch up again in my Forties. I have been on the Contemporary Art Society coach tours. What changed in the time I was away was the importance of the art market, especially for contemporary art. The major buyers are hedge funds, investment houses and other rich people, plus own-account art traders, and for them, it’s a business. They could lose a few million on their holdings of, say, Gerhard Richter, but then they could lose just as much on their holdings of General Motors or HSBC. And Ben Nicholson does a top job of taking us round the players in the market circa 2008, most of whom are still major players and artists now. There’s lots of art on display, lots of interviews and the odd bit of self-indulgence. Just the sort of thing I like.
Last Seen Wearing (Inspector Morse S2) (Edward Bennet, 1988) In which by some miracle, a bunch of English actors and film crew channel the exact cynicism of Raymond Chandler to perfection. The cast is ridiculous, from Suzanne Bertish at her most controlled, to a young Liz Hurley, and John Thaw playing Morse at his most depressed, cynical and despairing. “Well, they put me on these things when they smell a corpse. One file... anyone. Two files... Ainly or McKay. I'm the three file man... No, she's dead.” Set in the well-off upper-middle classes and oozing with Morse’s dislike of them, in the end, it’s about a man pulling himself out of his own despondency and solving the case. It’s about privilege and dishonesty and a side rip to London where we can see a flash West End estate agent showing tenants round Chelsea Harbour. (Cutting edge stuff at the time.) “We ought to be able to arrest him for his taste, but we can’t,” comments Morse.
Civilisation: The Skin of Our Teeth (Kenneth Clarke, 1969) He wouldn’t be allowed to get away with this episode now. Clarke was the last of the great Hegelian art critics, for whom “culture” meant Greece, Rome, the Catholic Church, and above all the Renaissance. In this episode he looks at the coastal and island Christian communities of the post-Roman days, and it’s the light and images of those islands and beaches that triggers a whole bunch of childhood memories of English coastal holidays for me. Was Clark right? Did Western civilisation survive because of these isolated monasteries? No. Mostly it survived because the Arabs in Constantinople preserved and developed the literary legacy of Greece and Rome for hundreds of years while the European world seemed to be suffering a minor Ice Age that sapped the life out of it. Love or hate Clarke’s thesis, the imagery of this episode conveys the beauty and spirituality of those remote locations.
Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell,1994) Every scene has a great line. It looks fabulous and everyone is pretty. The prettiest people have the most problematical love lives. Yep, it must be a Richard Curtis movie. It’s basically a contemporary costume drama starring Hugh Grant looking gorgeously foppish and English, which is why the rest of the world loved it, with a sharp portrayal of the love life of an attractive young man about town, which is why I loved it. The critical scene is “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”, in which we see Grant’s previous girlfriends, who are the most shallow, shrill, awful bunch of women ever collected round one table. Without that scene you’re going to spend the whole movie wondering why Grant hasn’t been snapped up by some well-bred Eight. With it, you know what he’s avoiding. And if you haven’t had a morning scene like the ones with Andie McDowell in the country pub or the Ritz - but maybe not in such glam locations or with Andie McDowell - then, my friend you do not know the bitter-sweet tastes of love. The most gorgeous shot in the whole film is looking downstream on the Thames just before we cut to Grant and McDowell in her hotel room. (“I think I can resist you: you’re not that cute”. Yea right.)
I could add a whole bunch more that fall under ‘slightly less obsessive’: The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979), An American In Paris (Vincente Minelli, 1951), The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963), Heat (Michael Mann, 1995), A Few Good Men, (Rob Reiner,1992), Thirteen Days (Roger Donaldson, 2000), Any Given Sunday (Oliver Stone, 1999), quite a few more I can’t remember right now, and of course the entire post 1980’s contemporary films of Eric Rohmer.
What if anything on earth links all of these films? The leading character is usually an attractive single man, who is an outsider with something to prove to himself if not to others. The main obstacle to achieving his goal is his own temperament - there’s a sequence in Grand Prix with James Garner and Toshiro Mifune about exactly that - and once he learns to overcome his own weakness, he gets the girl (Four Weddings), wins the Championship (Grand Prix), solves the case (Last Seen Wearing, The Long Goodbye), wins the trial (A Few Good Men). That’s one theme.
The other is about deciding to commit oneself. In The General’s Daughter, Travolta has to decide to be a policeman first and an Army man and maverick second; Basquiat has to decided to come out hiding when opportunity - in the form of Annina Nosei - comes visiting, and then throwing yourself headlong into the work; Dogtown (and The Great Escape and The Warriors) is about the unexpected rewards of excellence achieved for its own sake, and the value of having a bunch of Bros dedicated to the same thing.
An American In Paris is almost the opposite of all this: it’s a film is about a bunch of modestly talented middle-aged dreamers who will never really make anything of themselves (except the French stage star, who has, if that’s your idea of artistic success). It’s about and for all the middle-aged men who haven’t quite succumbed to the living death of normal life but can’t really break out into the life they want. It says that if you do that, you’ll have to wait for Leslie Caron to change her mind at the last moment and come rushing back to you. Which is why those are called “fairy-tale endings”.
Thursday 30 April 2015
Why I'm Not Seeing As Many Films As I Used To
Even five years ago I used to see at least one movie a week and often two. Hollywood blockbusters; American indie movies and Dogwoof documentaries; French and Japanese art movies. However, now I think about it, I prefer my films to be set in a city, to be about independent and emotionally-uninvolved people, and to have that indefinable aura of cool. Hence Quo Vadis Baby, Hinterland, Electricity, Polisse and for thatr matter, the Denzel vehicle The Enforcer ((check)). Family dramas, especially if set in poor countries, horrors, invincible psychos, Northern Ireland, creep movies (Harry, He's Here To Help) and anything "gritty" involving the English underclass... thanks, I'll take a pass. I usually see the Oscar Worthies as well.
Anyway, now I barely see one a month. Weeks can go by and nothing takes my fancy. As I write, the last film I saw was John Wick. Before that was Appropriate Behaviour. The last one I thought was wonderful was Hinterland. But then I’m a sucker for imaginative and creative cinematography.
Some of this is simply that I’ve seen several thousand films, and a lot of movies are re-makes I don’t need, or want, to see. Some is that there are a lot of Marvel movies, and I have a limited appetite for superheros and large-scale CGI. I have, as I write, also burned through about thirteen episodes of Elementary S2. This is because it is a well-written series with good stories, photography, acting and Lucy Liu. For some time now, some of the best acting, stories, scripts, photography and set design has been on television, in the top-end series, some of which have per-episode budgets that would fund the entire British film industry for a year. I don’t need to go to the cinema to see good visual story-telling.
What’s happened to all those French and Japanese movies? Why do the Curzon’s, Everyman’s and the ICA all show the same films? Are they all owned by the same company? The ICA can't be, by definition, but they can all be staffed by the same generation of cool kids. It is a truth little recognised that when your life is less than ideal, you don't like movies about people whose lives are better than yours, unless it's fantasy or costume drama. Given the low standard of living of the current generation of cool kids, none of whom can afford an un-shared roof over theiir heads, they are going to be choosing, and even making, films about very poor people living in very hard circumstances. Hence the popularity of films set in favelas, Russian wastelands and countries with a lot of very poor soil, like Iran. For further proof, see the comments about the films playing at the Curzon Soho recently.
To make my points, let’s take a look at what was playing at the Curzon cinemas the week I first drafted this.
A LITTLE CHAOS (12A): Versailles gardens were the dream of Louis XIV (Alan Rickman), but were realised by landscape architect André Le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts). Charged by the king to design the most opulent gardens in history, the ordered Le Nôtre takes a chance on Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslett), a talented but chaotic gardener. Though their temperaments initially clash, arguments soon give way to something else in this lovely, sumptuously realised period drama, the second film directed by Alan Rickman. Verdict: NO. JUST NO. I don’t like costume dramas, and this lacks any historical veracity in the story. It sounds horribly self-indulgent. And I’m supposed to care about how Kate Winslet creates chaos doing gardens? Really?
HOME FROM HOME: CHRONICLE OF A VISION (15): Edgar Reitz (director of the Heimat Trilogy) continues his visionary journey through German history with a domestic drama and love story set against the backdrop of a forgotten tragedy. In the mid-19th century, hundreds of thousands of Europeans emigrated to faraway South America. It was a desperate bid to escape the famine, poverty and despotism that ruled at home. Verdict: PASS. Domestic drama and love story. Also Germany.
CHILD 44 (15): Tom Rob Smith's novel was inspired by the real-life case of serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, but moved the action back a couple of decades to the dark days of Stalin's Russia. Daniel Espinosa's faithful adaptation stars Tom Hardy as a disgraced army officer who takes it upon himself to hunt down the killer after a friend's child is one of his victims. The result is a top-notch thriller, capturing the spirit of Stalin's regime and featuring an impressive international cast. Verdict: MAYBE. I would have seen this as a matter of course ten years ago. Kinda not in the mood mostly for something this dark now.
FORCE MAJEURE (15): A model Swedish family - handsome businessman Tomas, his wife Ebba and their two beautiful children - are on a skiing holiday in the French Alps. The sun is shining and the slopes are spectacular, but during lunch at a mountainside restaurant an avalanche suddenly bears down on the happy diners. With people fleeing in all directions and his wife and children in a state of panic, Tomas makes a decision that will shake his marriage to its core and leave him struggling to reclaim his role as family patriarch. Verdict: NO. Family drama, I bet based on subtle mis-understandings. I can hear the words “How could you?” already. Sometimes I wonder if any of the people who write these stories have ever been involved in a serious incident. People in real life do not behave in a “dramatic” manner. But I could be wrong.
THE SALVATION (15): The European western, once a staple of 1960s and 1970s cinema, has been missing from the screen for some time, so it's great to welcome this thrilling, atmospheric film from one of the great original Dogme 95 directors, Kristian Levring (The King is Alive). Mads Mikkelsen is on spectacular form as a farmer who kills his family's murderer and finds himself battling a tyrannical gang, its psychotic leader and his enforcer, played by a gleeful malevolence by Eric Cantona. Verdict: MAYBE: Again, it’s a tad dark for me right now. I’ve seen enough psychotic revenge stories.
DARK HORSE: THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF DREAM ALLIANCE (PG): An inspirational true story of a group of friends from a working men's club who decide to take on the elite 'sport of kings' and breed themselves a racehorse. Verdict: NO. JUST NO. “Inspirational”. “Working Men’s Club”.
COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK (15): The lead singer of Nirvana and reluctant posterboy of a generation gets his first ever fully authorised documentary feature, blending Kurt Cobain’s personal archive of art, written word, music and never-before-seen home movies, with animation and revelatory interviews from his family and closest confidantes. Following Kurt from his earliest years in Aberdeen, WA, through the height of his fame, it creates an intense and powerful cinematic insight into an artist who craved the spotlight even as he rejected the trappings of fame. Verdict: MAYBE. A couple of years ago I would have watched this. I thought Gus van Sant’s movie Last Days was haunting.
GLASSLAND (15): In a desperate bid to save his mother from addiction, and unite his broken family, a young taxi on the fringes of the criminal underworld is forced to take a job which will see him pushed further into its underbelly. But will John be prepared to act when the time comes - knowing that whatever he decides to do his and his family's lives will be changed forever? Verdict: NO. JUST NO. English underclass drama with a futile story. Anyone who tries to save someone from addiction is onto a losing fight. So either this film is unrealistic or has some silly denoument.
GENTE DE BIEN (12A): Eric lives with his handyman father in a poor district of Bogota. A client takes pity on them and invites the two to spend time in her county villa over the Christman holidays. Tensions rise during their stay and Eric witnesses the disparity between rich and poor for the first time. Bryan Santamaria (Eric) is outstanding as our guide through both worlds in Franco Lolli's sensitive drama. Verdict: NO: It’s a film about the economic and class differences in Bogota and the story has an implausible premise (“a cleint takes pity on them” indeed!). Fake drama and political posturing.
WOMAN IN GOLD (12A): The latest film by Simon Curtis (My Week with Marilyn) features an impressive all-star cast led by Helen Mirren. It tells the story of Maria Altmann (Mirren), a Holocaust survivor who fought the Austrian government to retrieve Gustav Klimt's painting of her aunt, 'Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I', which was confiscated from her family by the Nazis. It was a battle that took her, along with her lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), all the way to the US supreme court. PASS: I’m supposed to care about a rich woman getting back one of the most valuable paintings in the world? This relates to my life how? Exactly?
WHILE WE'RE YOUNG (15): Noah Baumbach's follow up to Frances Ha is an exploration of aging, ambition and success stars Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a middle-aged couple whose career and marriage are overturned when a disarming young couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) enters their lives. Verdict: MAYBE. But only because Amanda Seyfried. And because Frances Ha was a neat little film.
JAUJA (15): Viggo Mortensen continues to balance his career between high-profile films and more intimate dramas, of which Jauja is an excellent example. In this metaphysical road movie set against the intoxicating landscape of Patagonia, Mortensen plays a desparate man searching for his young daughter, who eloped with her lover in the lack of night. With a jaw-drapping final act, it channels Herzog and Jarmusch's Dead Man whilst offering up breathtaking visuals. Verdict: PASS. But ten years ago, I would have seen this as a matter of course.
WILD TALES (15): Inequality, injustice and the demands of the world we live in cause stress and depression for many people. Most face them on bended knee - but some of them explode. This is a film about those people. Comprising six stories of apocalyptic revenge, Wild Tales is a blackly comic series of vignettes on what it means to lose control. By turns shocking, hilarious, violent and preposterous this exhilarating thrill-ride produced by Pedro Almodóvar is one that you're never going to forget. Verdict: It’s always a cause for concern when they promote a film on the basis of the producer’s name. I saw the trailer, and it looked interesting.
DIOR AND I (12A): Frédéric Tcheng's documentary is behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Raf Simons' first haute couture collection as the new artistic director of Christian Dior fashion house. Melding the everyday, pressure- filled components of fashion with mysterious echoes from the iconic brand's past, the film is also a colourful homage to the seamstresses who serve Simons' vision. Verdict: PASS. Seen enough fashion-world documentaries now, thanks.
CINDERELLA (U): In the age of revisionism and reboots, it's heartening that Kenneth Branagh has recognised the innate beauty of the story of Cinderella, one of the best-known fairtales. Verdict: NO. JUST NO.
HOME (U): When Earth is taken over by the overly-confident Boov, an alien race in search of a new place to call home, all humans are promptly relocated, while all Boov get busy reorganising the planet. But when one resourceful girl, Tip, (Rihanna) manages to avoid capture, she finds herself the accidental accomplice of a banished Boov named Oh (Jim Parsons). The two fugitives realise there's a lot more at stake than intergalactic relations as they embark on the road trip of a lifetime. Verdict: NO. JUST NO.
You may love some of these. I’m not saying the films aren’t worth you watching. I’m explaining why I’m not hugely motivated to see them. I don’t read a lot of contemporary novels either. I don’t think this is about “contemporary”. I think this is about the stories today’s film-makers are telling.
So let me tell you about the Year I Didn't Buy A Shirt. It was a long time ago. I looked in the menswear windows and nothing caught my eye. I began to think there was something wrong with me. That I needed to change what I thought was worth wearing. However, the money did not leave my wallet. About half-way through the next year, I bought some more stuff for my wardrobe. My tastes hadn't changed, and still haven't. But they were selling stuff I wanted to buy. It happens. This lot of cool kids will get jobs somewhere else in the Arty sector, or even maybe just proper jobs, and the next lot will come in and choose something else.
Anyway, now I barely see one a month. Weeks can go by and nothing takes my fancy. As I write, the last film I saw was John Wick. Before that was Appropriate Behaviour. The last one I thought was wonderful was Hinterland. But then I’m a sucker for imaginative and creative cinematography.
Some of this is simply that I’ve seen several thousand films, and a lot of movies are re-makes I don’t need, or want, to see. Some is that there are a lot of Marvel movies, and I have a limited appetite for superheros and large-scale CGI. I have, as I write, also burned through about thirteen episodes of Elementary S2. This is because it is a well-written series with good stories, photography, acting and Lucy Liu. For some time now, some of the best acting, stories, scripts, photography and set design has been on television, in the top-end series, some of which have per-episode budgets that would fund the entire British film industry for a year. I don’t need to go to the cinema to see good visual story-telling.
What’s happened to all those French and Japanese movies? Why do the Curzon’s, Everyman’s and the ICA all show the same films? Are they all owned by the same company? The ICA can't be, by definition, but they can all be staffed by the same generation of cool kids. It is a truth little recognised that when your life is less than ideal, you don't like movies about people whose lives are better than yours, unless it's fantasy or costume drama. Given the low standard of living of the current generation of cool kids, none of whom can afford an un-shared roof over theiir heads, they are going to be choosing, and even making, films about very poor people living in very hard circumstances. Hence the popularity of films set in favelas, Russian wastelands and countries with a lot of very poor soil, like Iran. For further proof, see the comments about the films playing at the Curzon Soho recently.
To make my points, let’s take a look at what was playing at the Curzon cinemas the week I first drafted this.
A LITTLE CHAOS (12A): Versailles gardens were the dream of Louis XIV (Alan Rickman), but were realised by landscape architect André Le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts). Charged by the king to design the most opulent gardens in history, the ordered Le Nôtre takes a chance on Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslett), a talented but chaotic gardener. Though their temperaments initially clash, arguments soon give way to something else in this lovely, sumptuously realised period drama, the second film directed by Alan Rickman. Verdict: NO. JUST NO. I don’t like costume dramas, and this lacks any historical veracity in the story. It sounds horribly self-indulgent. And I’m supposed to care about how Kate Winslet creates chaos doing gardens? Really?
HOME FROM HOME: CHRONICLE OF A VISION (15): Edgar Reitz (director of the Heimat Trilogy) continues his visionary journey through German history with a domestic drama and love story set against the backdrop of a forgotten tragedy. In the mid-19th century, hundreds of thousands of Europeans emigrated to faraway South America. It was a desperate bid to escape the famine, poverty and despotism that ruled at home. Verdict: PASS. Domestic drama and love story. Also Germany.
CHILD 44 (15): Tom Rob Smith's novel was inspired by the real-life case of serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, but moved the action back a couple of decades to the dark days of Stalin's Russia. Daniel Espinosa's faithful adaptation stars Tom Hardy as a disgraced army officer who takes it upon himself to hunt down the killer after a friend's child is one of his victims. The result is a top-notch thriller, capturing the spirit of Stalin's regime and featuring an impressive international cast. Verdict: MAYBE. I would have seen this as a matter of course ten years ago. Kinda not in the mood mostly for something this dark now.
FORCE MAJEURE (15): A model Swedish family - handsome businessman Tomas, his wife Ebba and their two beautiful children - are on a skiing holiday in the French Alps. The sun is shining and the slopes are spectacular, but during lunch at a mountainside restaurant an avalanche suddenly bears down on the happy diners. With people fleeing in all directions and his wife and children in a state of panic, Tomas makes a decision that will shake his marriage to its core and leave him struggling to reclaim his role as family patriarch. Verdict: NO. Family drama, I bet based on subtle mis-understandings. I can hear the words “How could you?” already. Sometimes I wonder if any of the people who write these stories have ever been involved in a serious incident. People in real life do not behave in a “dramatic” manner. But I could be wrong.
THE SALVATION (15): The European western, once a staple of 1960s and 1970s cinema, has been missing from the screen for some time, so it's great to welcome this thrilling, atmospheric film from one of the great original Dogme 95 directors, Kristian Levring (The King is Alive). Mads Mikkelsen is on spectacular form as a farmer who kills his family's murderer and finds himself battling a tyrannical gang, its psychotic leader and his enforcer, played by a gleeful malevolence by Eric Cantona. Verdict: MAYBE: Again, it’s a tad dark for me right now. I’ve seen enough psychotic revenge stories.
DARK HORSE: THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF DREAM ALLIANCE (PG): An inspirational true story of a group of friends from a working men's club who decide to take on the elite 'sport of kings' and breed themselves a racehorse. Verdict: NO. JUST NO. “Inspirational”. “Working Men’s Club”.
COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK (15): The lead singer of Nirvana and reluctant posterboy of a generation gets his first ever fully authorised documentary feature, blending Kurt Cobain’s personal archive of art, written word, music and never-before-seen home movies, with animation and revelatory interviews from his family and closest confidantes. Following Kurt from his earliest years in Aberdeen, WA, through the height of his fame, it creates an intense and powerful cinematic insight into an artist who craved the spotlight even as he rejected the trappings of fame. Verdict: MAYBE. A couple of years ago I would have watched this. I thought Gus van Sant’s movie Last Days was haunting.
GLASSLAND (15): In a desperate bid to save his mother from addiction, and unite his broken family, a young taxi on the fringes of the criminal underworld is forced to take a job which will see him pushed further into its underbelly. But will John be prepared to act when the time comes - knowing that whatever he decides to do his and his family's lives will be changed forever? Verdict: NO. JUST NO. English underclass drama with a futile story. Anyone who tries to save someone from addiction is onto a losing fight. So either this film is unrealistic or has some silly denoument.
GENTE DE BIEN (12A): Eric lives with his handyman father in a poor district of Bogota. A client takes pity on them and invites the two to spend time in her county villa over the Christman holidays. Tensions rise during their stay and Eric witnesses the disparity between rich and poor for the first time. Bryan Santamaria (Eric) is outstanding as our guide through both worlds in Franco Lolli's sensitive drama. Verdict: NO: It’s a film about the economic and class differences in Bogota and the story has an implausible premise (“a cleint takes pity on them” indeed!). Fake drama and political posturing.
WOMAN IN GOLD (12A): The latest film by Simon Curtis (My Week with Marilyn) features an impressive all-star cast led by Helen Mirren. It tells the story of Maria Altmann (Mirren), a Holocaust survivor who fought the Austrian government to retrieve Gustav Klimt's painting of her aunt, 'Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I', which was confiscated from her family by the Nazis. It was a battle that took her, along with her lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), all the way to the US supreme court. PASS: I’m supposed to care about a rich woman getting back one of the most valuable paintings in the world? This relates to my life how? Exactly?
WHILE WE'RE YOUNG (15): Noah Baumbach's follow up to Frances Ha is an exploration of aging, ambition and success stars Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a middle-aged couple whose career and marriage are overturned when a disarming young couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) enters their lives. Verdict: MAYBE. But only because Amanda Seyfried. And because Frances Ha was a neat little film.
JAUJA (15): Viggo Mortensen continues to balance his career between high-profile films and more intimate dramas, of which Jauja is an excellent example. In this metaphysical road movie set against the intoxicating landscape of Patagonia, Mortensen plays a desparate man searching for his young daughter, who eloped with her lover in the lack of night. With a jaw-drapping final act, it channels Herzog and Jarmusch's Dead Man whilst offering up breathtaking visuals. Verdict: PASS. But ten years ago, I would have seen this as a matter of course.
WILD TALES (15): Inequality, injustice and the demands of the world we live in cause stress and depression for many people. Most face them on bended knee - but some of them explode. This is a film about those people. Comprising six stories of apocalyptic revenge, Wild Tales is a blackly comic series of vignettes on what it means to lose control. By turns shocking, hilarious, violent and preposterous this exhilarating thrill-ride produced by Pedro Almodóvar is one that you're never going to forget. Verdict: It’s always a cause for concern when they promote a film on the basis of the producer’s name. I saw the trailer, and it looked interesting.
DIOR AND I (12A): Frédéric Tcheng's documentary is behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Raf Simons' first haute couture collection as the new artistic director of Christian Dior fashion house. Melding the everyday, pressure- filled components of fashion with mysterious echoes from the iconic brand's past, the film is also a colourful homage to the seamstresses who serve Simons' vision. Verdict: PASS. Seen enough fashion-world documentaries now, thanks.
CINDERELLA (U): In the age of revisionism and reboots, it's heartening that Kenneth Branagh has recognised the innate beauty of the story of Cinderella, one of the best-known fairtales. Verdict: NO. JUST NO.
HOME (U): When Earth is taken over by the overly-confident Boov, an alien race in search of a new place to call home, all humans are promptly relocated, while all Boov get busy reorganising the planet. But when one resourceful girl, Tip, (Rihanna) manages to avoid capture, she finds herself the accidental accomplice of a banished Boov named Oh (Jim Parsons). The two fugitives realise there's a lot more at stake than intergalactic relations as they embark on the road trip of a lifetime. Verdict: NO. JUST NO.
You may love some of these. I’m not saying the films aren’t worth you watching. I’m explaining why I’m not hugely motivated to see them. I don’t read a lot of contemporary novels either. I don’t think this is about “contemporary”. I think this is about the stories today’s film-makers are telling.
So let me tell you about the Year I Didn't Buy A Shirt. It was a long time ago. I looked in the menswear windows and nothing caught my eye. I began to think there was something wrong with me. That I needed to change what I thought was worth wearing. However, the money did not leave my wallet. About half-way through the next year, I bought some more stuff for my wardrobe. My tastes hadn't changed, and still haven't. But they were selling stuff I wanted to buy. It happens. This lot of cool kids will get jobs somewhere else in the Arty sector, or even maybe just proper jobs, and the next lot will come in and choose something else.
Monday 30 June 2014
Frank: The Movie
I have no idea how anyone writes songs. I can extemporise instrumental music on the guitar, piano and recorder; I can write plays, have written poems and stories; I have a glimpse at what creative mathematics and philosophy are about; I take reasonable photographs and can put together a meal from whatever’s in the kitchen. But I have NO IDEA how Curt Cobain wrote Smells Like Teen Spirit.
None. Can’t fathom it. (I can pick up a guitar and "just play" something. Improvisation / extemporisation I can do: song-writing? Composing to order? Not a hope.)
The pianist in Frank could be me - except he can do social media better than I can’t at all, and gets to make hay with a girl who looks just like Maggie Gyllenhall. It has the funniest joke I’ve heard all year
“I play keyboards”
“Can you play C, F and G?”
“Yes”
“You’re in”
I rolled in the aisle.
Frank is sold as a comedy, and who knows it may even have been written and performed as one. But inside it is a portrayal of the creative process and people. The key scene, the one that tells you that Frank and his weird band are actually the real thing, is right at the end. (Spoiler alert). Robbed of his papier-mâché head, revealed as the grown-up version of the troubled child that he was, he walks into the dingy bar his band have a gig at - playing to four people who can’t hear them. Frank looks around and picks features of the room and starts to recite them, which turns into a kind of chorus, which the band pick up on and within three choruses are in full flight, at once backing and soloing over Frank’s song. And it’s good, for its genre. Jam and Lewis it ain’t, but if you’re into that stuff, you’ll know it’s good. (it’s not great, but it’s good.) It’s better than I could do.
And in the meantime, our narrator, who fell in with them by accident, promoted them through You Tube and Twitter, and fails to write a single worthwhile bar of music throughout the movie, leaves, having understood that he’s not a creative musician, but at best a guy who knows when to play C, F and G.
The process that the movie shows us is hermetic (the band don’t want to be a success, and two of them only speak French), obsessive (they take nearly a year to prepare an album that never gets released), and quirky (scenes of recording natural noises and other things). That’s one way of creating ideas and music, but it’s not the only one. At the other extreme is what the great jazz musicians did: play all the time, listen to other people when you’re not playing, and keep experimenting with changes. What happens if we do this, or that? What happens when I get three of the greatest improvising musicians in history in a church and give them some chords to work off? (Hint: Kind of Blue. We just didn’t know that Coltrane, Adderley and Evans were that good then.)
Frank suggests that creative people are odd if not actually weird, and that’s a common enough idea, but it’s an excuse. For the audience. Creativity takes knowledge, skill and application, the willingness to experiment and be wrong, and, of course, a lot of familiarity with what others are doing. It’s hard work and requires a certain amount of single-mindedness, or a lot of opportunities to experiment (as in “I thought I’d try putting prunes in the stew this time”). That’s not likely for people whose time fritters away on conference calls, meetings, making up slide decks, BS-ing in the pub, zoning out on the train and “dealing” with other peoples’ insecurities and neediness. But creative people spend more time futzing, going down blind alleys and pursuing impossible pet projects than anyone thinks.
One thing the movie is pretty darn clear about. It’s better to be the band playing doleful versions of cowboys songs in a nowhere bar than it is to be the people drinking at the bar. Or the piano player who brings the band-leader back to join them. And with that, I do not disagree.
None. Can’t fathom it. (I can pick up a guitar and "just play" something. Improvisation / extemporisation I can do: song-writing? Composing to order? Not a hope.)
The pianist in Frank could be me - except he can do social media better than I can’t at all, and gets to make hay with a girl who looks just like Maggie Gyllenhall. It has the funniest joke I’ve heard all year
“I play keyboards”
“Can you play C, F and G?”
“Yes”
“You’re in”
I rolled in the aisle.
Frank is sold as a comedy, and who knows it may even have been written and performed as one. But inside it is a portrayal of the creative process and people. The key scene, the one that tells you that Frank and his weird band are actually the real thing, is right at the end. (Spoiler alert). Robbed of his papier-mâché head, revealed as the grown-up version of the troubled child that he was, he walks into the dingy bar his band have a gig at - playing to four people who can’t hear them. Frank looks around and picks features of the room and starts to recite them, which turns into a kind of chorus, which the band pick up on and within three choruses are in full flight, at once backing and soloing over Frank’s song. And it’s good, for its genre. Jam and Lewis it ain’t, but if you’re into that stuff, you’ll know it’s good. (it’s not great, but it’s good.) It’s better than I could do.
And in the meantime, our narrator, who fell in with them by accident, promoted them through You Tube and Twitter, and fails to write a single worthwhile bar of music throughout the movie, leaves, having understood that he’s not a creative musician, but at best a guy who knows when to play C, F and G.
The process that the movie shows us is hermetic (the band don’t want to be a success, and two of them only speak French), obsessive (they take nearly a year to prepare an album that never gets released), and quirky (scenes of recording natural noises and other things). That’s one way of creating ideas and music, but it’s not the only one. At the other extreme is what the great jazz musicians did: play all the time, listen to other people when you’re not playing, and keep experimenting with changes. What happens if we do this, or that? What happens when I get three of the greatest improvising musicians in history in a church and give them some chords to work off? (Hint: Kind of Blue. We just didn’t know that Coltrane, Adderley and Evans were that good then.)
Frank suggests that creative people are odd if not actually weird, and that’s a common enough idea, but it’s an excuse. For the audience. Creativity takes knowledge, skill and application, the willingness to experiment and be wrong, and, of course, a lot of familiarity with what others are doing. It’s hard work and requires a certain amount of single-mindedness, or a lot of opportunities to experiment (as in “I thought I’d try putting prunes in the stew this time”). That’s not likely for people whose time fritters away on conference calls, meetings, making up slide decks, BS-ing in the pub, zoning out on the train and “dealing” with other peoples’ insecurities and neediness. But creative people spend more time futzing, going down blind alleys and pursuing impossible pet projects than anyone thinks.
One thing the movie is pretty darn clear about. It’s better to be the band playing doleful versions of cowboys songs in a nowhere bar than it is to be the people drinking at the bar. Or the piano player who brings the band-leader back to join them. And with that, I do not disagree.
Monday 17 March 2014
Five Tear-Fests
Over at Jeff Goldblum’s Laugh, they have a list of five movies guaranteed to set loose that self-pity that’s straining at the leash and bring self-indulgent tears to your eyes. Didn’t agree with one of them. But I know what they mean.
At number one is this song from Rent. Wrecks me every time.
Then there’s a film I cannot watch again. Ever. You want the bit between 1:00 and 4:00, where Alan Rickman comes back from the dead to comfort a grieving Juliet Stevenson. You really need the set-up first, in parts 1 and 2 of this to get into the state of mind.
I have no idea where Stevenson got those tears from, unless within herself, from the memory of some irreplaceable loss of the kind that one can only learn to stop awakening, because it is never going to go away.
There’s the end of Blue is the Warmest Colour.
How many times have I left a social occasion where I felt totally unconnected with everyone, especially since there was a someone I wanted to be connected to? How empty and hollow it feels to be talking to the people there? The moment of decision to leave, the slight hesitation as I pass through the door, and then the turn into the empty side street, the cigarette, the firm pace taking me away. As she approached the turn, I was thinking “Don’t walk down that street, don’t do it” and when she did, I teared up in the darkness of the Renoir. I had to rush back into the West End and eat ice cream and cake and coffee. The rest of my day was a mess.
There’s the end of Mahler’s Second. You do need to sit through the whole thing, which meanders and wanders and seems directionless for a long time, until the last ten minutes, when it starts to build, and in the final two minutes, he reaches into your chest and crushes your heart. (Don’t skip to then end, or it won’t work)
I first heard this at a Prom, up in the Gallery, and when the organ and the bells come in, I just thought “Good God above, how is music like this even possible?”. Not quite as articulate as that at the time, because the hairs were standing on the back of my neck and there was a bloody great lump in my throat.
Which brings me to the last one
Yep. Mastersingers. I saw this at the ENO and teared up in two places. First when that overture (the single best piece of music ever composed for orchestra) ends, the curtain rises and the choir starts. And then, of course, at the end, when the Boy gets the Girl, having overcome all the small-town silliness in-between. I swear people all around me were wiping their eyes.
At number one is this song from Rent. Wrecks me every time.
Then there’s a film I cannot watch again. Ever. You want the bit between 1:00 and 4:00, where Alan Rickman comes back from the dead to comfort a grieving Juliet Stevenson. You really need the set-up first, in parts 1 and 2 of this to get into the state of mind.
I have no idea where Stevenson got those tears from, unless within herself, from the memory of some irreplaceable loss of the kind that one can only learn to stop awakening, because it is never going to go away.
There’s the end of Blue is the Warmest Colour.
How many times have I left a social occasion where I felt totally unconnected with everyone, especially since there was a someone I wanted to be connected to? How empty and hollow it feels to be talking to the people there? The moment of decision to leave, the slight hesitation as I pass through the door, and then the turn into the empty side street, the cigarette, the firm pace taking me away. As she approached the turn, I was thinking “Don’t walk down that street, don’t do it” and when she did, I teared up in the darkness of the Renoir. I had to rush back into the West End and eat ice cream and cake and coffee. The rest of my day was a mess.
There’s the end of Mahler’s Second. You do need to sit through the whole thing, which meanders and wanders and seems directionless for a long time, until the last ten minutes, when it starts to build, and in the final two minutes, he reaches into your chest and crushes your heart. (Don’t skip to then end, or it won’t work)
I first heard this at a Prom, up in the Gallery, and when the organ and the bells come in, I just thought “Good God above, how is music like this even possible?”. Not quite as articulate as that at the time, because the hairs were standing on the back of my neck and there was a bloody great lump in my throat.
Which brings me to the last one
Yep. Mastersingers. I saw this at the ENO and teared up in two places. First when that overture (the single best piece of music ever composed for orchestra) ends, the curtain rises and the choir starts. And then, of course, at the end, when the Boy gets the Girl, having overcome all the small-town silliness in-between. I swear people all around me were wiping their eyes.
Friday 22 June 2012
Movie Step Nines
I was watching the Stephen Bochco / Chris Gerolmo series Over There again recently. In one episode, Brigid Brannagh's character explains that since getting into AA she has to tell everyone all the bad stuff she's done, and drops a detail-free hint about various infidelities on her infantry-soldier partner in Iraq. Over a sat phone link.
In case you were wondering, that's not how it's done. What she's referring to is a Step Nine, though how anyone in early sobriety understands that Step Nine is relevant to them is beyond me. I didn't. But this is the movies.
Step Nine says "Made direct amends to such people, wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others." There are two key ideas: one is making amends, the other is about not making it any worse
Amends first. Step Nine is not about getting forgiveness from everyone you've ever inconvenienced, nor is it about apologising. It's about the recovering alcoholic stepping up, admitting their wrong-doing and offering to make amends for it. Apologies are not amends. Step Nine amends mean repaying debts you welched on, replacing things you broke or stole, admitting guilt where you had fobbed it off on someone else. Stuff like that. For parents and partners, it might be behaving as they should have been behaving from the start, a lifelong amend.
The amend is for the wronged party, the admission is for the recovering alcoholic. But there's a restriction. They are not allowed to be self-indulgent, wallow in self-pity and mess things up even more than they already have. This is the "except where to do so will hurt others" clause. And it's this clause that Brigid Brannagh's character breaks. What the frack does she think she's doing, confessing her sins to a man thousands of miles away fighting a pointless war? And what kind of advice was her sponsor giving her? Generally Step Nine is for the second year, when the alcoholic has grown used to being sober, recognised a bunch of their baggage in their Fourth and Fifth Step, and is better prepared to behave and judge situations as a normal person would.
What her character was doing was, of course, a plot device. Given that the next thing the guy does is get busy with the Nicky Aycox's eighteen-year-old blonde hot girl driver "Mrs B", soon after her return from an AWOL, he's not the most balanced of people. But that's where the writers wanted to take the story. My guess is that Bochco is on the program and wants it to play a role in all his shows - because it is.
Steps Eight and Nine are where this recovering alcoholic learned to get his self-respect back. It's where I learned to be independent of other people's judgements of me. I can stand up, admit my fault, apologise and offer amends, and the other person can tell me to go to hell. That's their prerogative and I have to live with it. I don't have to beg them to forgive me and nor should I, because some people could play an endless game of blackmail with that. Which is not how I want nor should live my life. I confessed and offered to make it right, and that's all I can do: if you don't want any part of it, I can't make you and nor should I try. My self-respect does not depend on your approval.
A real Step Nine would look calmer and more serious. Much more awkward. Six people would make a ninety-minute movie, running through most of the emotions the wronged people would be feeling, from cheerful indifference to a deep and irrational bitterness, to a happy ending where we discover that the wronged party knew they were just as much in the wrong as our ex-drunk. In the course of the movie, our man gets a job, helps work on a house, and does other stuff, and those turn out to be amends as far as someone else is concerned.
In case you were wondering, that's not how it's done. What she's referring to is a Step Nine, though how anyone in early sobriety understands that Step Nine is relevant to them is beyond me. I didn't. But this is the movies.
Step Nine says "Made direct amends to such people, wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others." There are two key ideas: one is making amends, the other is about not making it any worse
Amends first. Step Nine is not about getting forgiveness from everyone you've ever inconvenienced, nor is it about apologising. It's about the recovering alcoholic stepping up, admitting their wrong-doing and offering to make amends for it. Apologies are not amends. Step Nine amends mean repaying debts you welched on, replacing things you broke or stole, admitting guilt where you had fobbed it off on someone else. Stuff like that. For parents and partners, it might be behaving as they should have been behaving from the start, a lifelong amend.
The amend is for the wronged party, the admission is for the recovering alcoholic. But there's a restriction. They are not allowed to be self-indulgent, wallow in self-pity and mess things up even more than they already have. This is the "except where to do so will hurt others" clause. And it's this clause that Brigid Brannagh's character breaks. What the frack does she think she's doing, confessing her sins to a man thousands of miles away fighting a pointless war? And what kind of advice was her sponsor giving her? Generally Step Nine is for the second year, when the alcoholic has grown used to being sober, recognised a bunch of their baggage in their Fourth and Fifth Step, and is better prepared to behave and judge situations as a normal person would.
What her character was doing was, of course, a plot device. Given that the next thing the guy does is get busy with the Nicky Aycox's eighteen-year-old blonde hot girl driver "Mrs B", soon after her return from an AWOL, he's not the most balanced of people. But that's where the writers wanted to take the story. My guess is that Bochco is on the program and wants it to play a role in all his shows - because it is.
Steps Eight and Nine are where this recovering alcoholic learned to get his self-respect back. It's where I learned to be independent of other people's judgements of me. I can stand up, admit my fault, apologise and offer amends, and the other person can tell me to go to hell. That's their prerogative and I have to live with it. I don't have to beg them to forgive me and nor should I, because some people could play an endless game of blackmail with that. Which is not how I want nor should live my life. I confessed and offered to make it right, and that's all I can do: if you don't want any part of it, I can't make you and nor should I try. My self-respect does not depend on your approval.
A real Step Nine would look calmer and more serious. Much more awkward. Six people would make a ninety-minute movie, running through most of the emotions the wronged people would be feeling, from cheerful indifference to a deep and irrational bitterness, to a happy ending where we discover that the wronged party knew they were just as much in the wrong as our ex-drunk. In the course of the movie, our man gets a job, helps work on a house, and does other stuff, and those turn out to be amends as far as someone else is concerned.
Friday 10 December 2010
"Growing Up" As A Movie Subject - Or Not. Part 2.
So how do you make a movie about "growing up"? Trick question: you can't because there's no such process. You could make a movie about people stopping drugs or binge-drinking or hopping to yet one more job or finally getting their own place... damn, they did, it was called St Elmo's Fire. What can you make a movie about?
Becoming an adult, which is quite a process. What adulthood is not about is "putting aside childish things": by now you should know not to fall into that trap. We make ourselves people by advancing our projects, our plans for our lives, the contributions we want to make to other people, institutions and the arts and sciences. Sounds a little pompous, as well it should. Adults have plans that challenge them. What counts as a challenge depends on the place and time: just getting by with some dignity is pretty damn heroic in Kyrgyzstan, but it's really not enough in Frankfurt for a middle-class engineering graduate.
Adults don't dream their life away and they don't throw it away either. A talented lady surgeon loses her adult status if she gives it all up to have children. She can do what few others can, and that's her obligation to the rest of us. She has to hire a nanny and get back to work. The capable have duties that the plain folk don't have. A tax-collector can throw it all in and paint in Polynesia, but only if they're a better painter than tax-collector.
Adults accept their responsibilities, but do not confuse those with other people's needy demands. Adults don't rescue, but if they have the ability to help and someone asks for that help, then they do. Adults know the difference between rescuing and helping.
Adults have lost most of their illusions, but so they can deal with the real world with clear sight. Illusions are pleasant and it is better to have had them and lost them than never to have been illuded at all. There's something a little dull about people who never had any illusions.
Adults understand that right action is contextual, specific, and depends on your aims, not abstract moral law. This is not something that young people and moral philosophers who want timeless moral principles understand. Adults also understand that in many cases there are no right actions, and there aren't even any less wrong ones.
Adults do apologise for their occasional crass, rude or thoughtless actions. No-one is perfect. They don't apologise for themselves. It doesn't mean they are perfect: an adult is always changing because that's the world they live in. It does mean that they do not allow anyone to make them feel ashamed of themselves. There's always someone out there who can push our buttons, but adults fight it. Or leave.
Especially an adult does not apologise for taking a share of the Good Stuff (however you conceive of the Good Stuff). They go after what they want without worrying if there's enough for everyone else in the queue. Adults accept that they can't take it all and they can't stomp on the competition to get to the trough, but they don't feel guilty when they take what they need.
Finally, an adult doesn't take major shit from anyone. The indignities of everyday life have to be suffered by us all, but major shit gets fought against. This is the final defining moment in the evolution of a black-belt adult, and a knowledge of the arts of self-defense is usually needed.
According to this, a great many people of mature age are not adults. It's not their fault: it never was a common spiritual condition. A consumerist, post-modern capitalist, bureaucratic society and economy doesn't need adults, it needs good little consumers and flexible employees who don't defend their interests, whose projects can be realised by buying things and experiences and buy following "processes", who believe the hype (or at least don't try to see beyond it), who can be guilt-tripped into conformity and leaving the Good Stuff for their Lords and Masters, and who are prepared to take a whole load of shit because you can't take the law into your own hands and you can't fight City Hall. Every one of us, after all, spends the first twenty-one or so years of our lives at the mercy of hormones and examinations, and of teachers and parents whose overwhelming need is to keep us within the limits that they are comfortable with. We spend twenty-one years being rewarded for doing as we are told and punished for being independent or unruly. You need more than just determination to shrug that lot off: you need to know there is an alternative and that it is acceptable.
Now there's a subject for a movie: showing a bunch of adult guys dealing with the overgrown children around them.
Becoming an adult, which is quite a process. What adulthood is not about is "putting aside childish things": by now you should know not to fall into that trap. We make ourselves people by advancing our projects, our plans for our lives, the contributions we want to make to other people, institutions and the arts and sciences. Sounds a little pompous, as well it should. Adults have plans that challenge them. What counts as a challenge depends on the place and time: just getting by with some dignity is pretty damn heroic in Kyrgyzstan, but it's really not enough in Frankfurt for a middle-class engineering graduate.
Adults don't dream their life away and they don't throw it away either. A talented lady surgeon loses her adult status if she gives it all up to have children. She can do what few others can, and that's her obligation to the rest of us. She has to hire a nanny and get back to work. The capable have duties that the plain folk don't have. A tax-collector can throw it all in and paint in Polynesia, but only if they're a better painter than tax-collector.
Adults accept their responsibilities, but do not confuse those with other people's needy demands. Adults don't rescue, but if they have the ability to help and someone asks for that help, then they do. Adults know the difference between rescuing and helping.
Adults have lost most of their illusions, but so they can deal with the real world with clear sight. Illusions are pleasant and it is better to have had them and lost them than never to have been illuded at all. There's something a little dull about people who never had any illusions.
Adults understand that right action is contextual, specific, and depends on your aims, not abstract moral law. This is not something that young people and moral philosophers who want timeless moral principles understand. Adults also understand that in many cases there are no right actions, and there aren't even any less wrong ones.
Adults do apologise for their occasional crass, rude or thoughtless actions. No-one is perfect. They don't apologise for themselves. It doesn't mean they are perfect: an adult is always changing because that's the world they live in. It does mean that they do not allow anyone to make them feel ashamed of themselves. There's always someone out there who can push our buttons, but adults fight it. Or leave.
Especially an adult does not apologise for taking a share of the Good Stuff (however you conceive of the Good Stuff). They go after what they want without worrying if there's enough for everyone else in the queue. Adults accept that they can't take it all and they can't stomp on the competition to get to the trough, but they don't feel guilty when they take what they need.
Finally, an adult doesn't take major shit from anyone. The indignities of everyday life have to be suffered by us all, but major shit gets fought against. This is the final defining moment in the evolution of a black-belt adult, and a knowledge of the arts of self-defense is usually needed.
According to this, a great many people of mature age are not adults. It's not their fault: it never was a common spiritual condition. A consumerist, post-modern capitalist, bureaucratic society and economy doesn't need adults, it needs good little consumers and flexible employees who don't defend their interests, whose projects can be realised by buying things and experiences and buy following "processes", who believe the hype (or at least don't try to see beyond it), who can be guilt-tripped into conformity and leaving the Good Stuff for their Lords and Masters, and who are prepared to take a whole load of shit because you can't take the law into your own hands and you can't fight City Hall. Every one of us, after all, spends the first twenty-one or so years of our lives at the mercy of hormones and examinations, and of teachers and parents whose overwhelming need is to keep us within the limits that they are comfortable with. We spend twenty-one years being rewarded for doing as we are told and punished for being independent or unruly. You need more than just determination to shrug that lot off: you need to know there is an alternative and that it is acceptable.
Now there's a subject for a movie: showing a bunch of adult guys dealing with the overgrown children around them.
Wednesday 8 December 2010
"Growing Up" As A Movie Subject - Or Not. Part One
There's a very badly-written film about how a group of men in their late twenties "grow up". Apparantly the original was a big hit in the Netherlands, but the British version sunk without trace to the bargain bins at Fopp. Sadly I borrowed it from Blockbusters just before I stopped borrowing anything there at all. The writer clearly didn't like the male characters and to judge from his script has had a life full of demanding and judging women. Or maybe that's how he sees them. Right from the opening scene the guys have no chance against Billie Piper's character, who is... well, I'm not sure Ms Piper or the writer understood that most of the audience would assume by the end that she was a closet lesbian: why else would she be going out with such a nebbesh?
What the writer missed is that when someone asks you when you're going to "grow up", they are not asking you about the course of your personal development. They aren't even asking you a question. They are just trying to shame you. "You did something that I didn't like / didn't want you to do / embarrassed me / doesn't fit into my plans / generally pissed me off." That's all it means. They have no idea what they might mean by "growing up" - except "not behaving like a child / idiot / spoiled brat / teenager / whatever", which is sort of circular.
The law says you're an adult when you reach your eighteenth birthday, because that's the age it's decided you can't claim you're a dumb kid with no sense that your actions have consequences for which you are responsible. That's the core of the idea: that you become responsible for the course of your life and the foreseeable consequences of your actions.
By contrast, being a grown-up used to be about taking a role in a community, having a status, a standing, an identity. From which it follows: no community, no grown-ups. There are no grown-ups in the suburbs,because the suburbs aren't a community. Post-modern capitalism attempts to substitute "economy" for "community", so that you're grown-up when you have a job, a pension plan, a mortgage and other debts and possessions. Of course it would: what better than to link a moral virtue with consumption? You can't be a grown-up at the office, because you aren't you there, you're the function. Replaceable by with the same "skill-set", disposable when the management decide to play musical chairs.
Due to the lack of effective birth control, parenthood usually happened around the same time as you took your place in your community. Parenthood was a co-incidence, not a component. One thing a grown-up isn't, and that's the couple with the trophy wailing baby, the trophy pram blocking the aisles, the trophy SUV blocking traffic as they try to turn right, the two-salary mortgage, the wedding plans and an air of entitlement as strong as the smell of a brewery at fresh hops time. Consumer toys make them consumers, not grown-ups or parents.
So if we can't be grown-up the old-fashioned way, is there a new-fashioned way that makes sense? It's tempting to suppose it's about behaviour: dignity, restraint, appropriate playfulness, and other such. The catch that a child can behave like that - even if it's slightly scary when they do. Personally, I don't think you're a grown-up until you've been made redundant at short notice and learned that you can't just "get a job", but that's really about learning a little humility. I suspect surgeons don't "grow-up" until they've had their first death on the table, but that's about professionalism, not moral fiber. "Grown-up" is as opposed to "child": the kids sleep in the back of the car after a long day out, the grown-ups drive them home and tuck them up in bed. Grown-ups can be depended on by children and won't deepen the insecurities of women; they are reliable, trustworthy, don't say they can do what they can't and do do what they say they can. Amongst men, grown-ups deliver and amongst women and children, grown-up men protect.
That's the idea, anyway. The truth is that "grown-ups" only exist in the eyes of children. Just as every generation deplores those younger for having no manners and being functionally illiterate, so every generation wonders who amongst its own can replace the grown-ups it knew when it was young. No-one can, because those very grown-ups were wondering the same thing. If you're over thirty, have stopped binge-drinking and don't do drugs, hold down a job, don't live with your parents, don't expect other people to fix you, exercise some financial caution and generally keep your promises, you're a grown-up. If you're still calling everyone "dahling" or living off debt and dodgy jobs, you have a way to go. You can ignore your parents when they ask when you're going to grow up - they are just resentful you haven't produced a grandchild for them - and you can ignore your girlfriend as well - she has to learn that other people can't ease that chronic insecurity she feels.
In the next post, I'll talk about what you can make a movie about, if you can't make one about "growing up"
What the writer missed is that when someone asks you when you're going to "grow up", they are not asking you about the course of your personal development. They aren't even asking you a question. They are just trying to shame you. "You did something that I didn't like / didn't want you to do / embarrassed me / doesn't fit into my plans / generally pissed me off." That's all it means. They have no idea what they might mean by "growing up" - except "not behaving like a child / idiot / spoiled brat / teenager / whatever", which is sort of circular.
The law says you're an adult when you reach your eighteenth birthday, because that's the age it's decided you can't claim you're a dumb kid with no sense that your actions have consequences for which you are responsible. That's the core of the idea: that you become responsible for the course of your life and the foreseeable consequences of your actions.
By contrast, being a grown-up used to be about taking a role in a community, having a status, a standing, an identity. From which it follows: no community, no grown-ups. There are no grown-ups in the suburbs,because the suburbs aren't a community. Post-modern capitalism attempts to substitute "economy" for "community", so that you're grown-up when you have a job, a pension plan, a mortgage and other debts and possessions. Of course it would: what better than to link a moral virtue with consumption? You can't be a grown-up at the office, because you aren't you there, you're the function. Replaceable by with the same "skill-set", disposable when the management decide to play musical chairs.
Due to the lack of effective birth control, parenthood usually happened around the same time as you took your place in your community. Parenthood was a co-incidence, not a component. One thing a grown-up isn't, and that's the couple with the trophy wailing baby, the trophy pram blocking the aisles, the trophy SUV blocking traffic as they try to turn right, the two-salary mortgage, the wedding plans and an air of entitlement as strong as the smell of a brewery at fresh hops time. Consumer toys make them consumers, not grown-ups or parents.
So if we can't be grown-up the old-fashioned way, is there a new-fashioned way that makes sense? It's tempting to suppose it's about behaviour: dignity, restraint, appropriate playfulness, and other such. The catch that a child can behave like that - even if it's slightly scary when they do. Personally, I don't think you're a grown-up until you've been made redundant at short notice and learned that you can't just "get a job", but that's really about learning a little humility. I suspect surgeons don't "grow-up" until they've had their first death on the table, but that's about professionalism, not moral fiber. "Grown-up" is as opposed to "child": the kids sleep in the back of the car after a long day out, the grown-ups drive them home and tuck them up in bed. Grown-ups can be depended on by children and won't deepen the insecurities of women; they are reliable, trustworthy, don't say they can do what they can't and do do what they say they can. Amongst men, grown-ups deliver and amongst women and children, grown-up men protect.
That's the idea, anyway. The truth is that "grown-ups" only exist in the eyes of children. Just as every generation deplores those younger for having no manners and being functionally illiterate, so every generation wonders who amongst its own can replace the grown-ups it knew when it was young. No-one can, because those very grown-ups were wondering the same thing. If you're over thirty, have stopped binge-drinking and don't do drugs, hold down a job, don't live with your parents, don't expect other people to fix you, exercise some financial caution and generally keep your promises, you're a grown-up. If you're still calling everyone "dahling" or living off debt and dodgy jobs, you have a way to go. You can ignore your parents when they ask when you're going to grow up - they are just resentful you haven't produced a grandchild for them - and you can ignore your girlfriend as well - she has to learn that other people can't ease that chronic insecurity she feels.
In the next post, I'll talk about what you can make a movie about, if you can't make one about "growing up"
Friday 26 November 2010
Reflections on Holly Golightly
Just what is it about Breakfast at Tiffany's and Holly Golightly? There's La Hepburn's look and performance, of course. There's a nicely-judged masala of silly comedy (Micky Rooney), adult stuff (George Peppard and Patricia Neal), romance, heartbreak (Holly's previous husband) and some neat legerdemain with Holly's weekly visits to the crime boss. There's the bits where Holly makes fools of the men she suckers in nightclubs and her ease with cafe society - very appealing to teenage girls of all ages - and the collapse of her dreams of marrying into wealth, which is also very reassuring to suburban teenage girls everywhere, as it confirms that they aren't missing a trick because there are no tricks to miss. Most of all there is the portrayal of life as dizzy and basically innocent fun. With handsome men. Which, oddly, is very appealing to teenage girls everywhere. It's so easy to get a bit of Holly for yourself. Say "Darling" and change your mind a lot, and avoid anything that feels remotely serious.
Holly Golightly was a role model for many thousands of women of my generation. It was a long time before I saw Breakfast at Tiffany's. When I did, I saw fifteen minutes of Holly Golightly and said "Margie". Margie behaved as if she was going to marry up to some Kensington Male, and for a long time we thought that was a real ambition. So did she, which might explain her breakdown in early middle age when it had clearly reached a point where it wasn't going to happen. First, she didn't quite have the looks to compete with the Guildford Girls; second, I'm not sure she had the tolerance for functional sex needed for the task; third, no-one raised in that household with those parents in that marriage could possibly get the idea that marriage was desirable. She thought of men as something to be manipulated and tolerated, and that's not how men think of themselves. I suspect she understood somewhere in her psyche where secrets are recognised but never spoken that her life was not going anywhere special and being Holly throughout her twenties gave her a way to pretend it was. After all, Holly herself falls romantically for a writer who has so far been supported by a wealthy sponsor. (A relationship as far as I know used twice in mainstream movies: the other one is in An American In Paris.) But whereas Holly had actually left a perfectly fine - if backwoods - marriage, Margie had never seen one. Holly had a role model for the future of her relationship with George Peppard: Margie didn't.
That generation of women could use Holly as a role-model because they didn't understand the details. Today's girls do understand the details: for one thing, there is no way they can get a flat anywhere in Manhattan (no-one can). For another, they know that her early mornings and general breeziness are sustained by taking drugs - maybe the amphetamines were better back then, but I'm betting the real Hollies all blew a little pot to come down after a night running the suckers round the nightclubs. Above all, today's girls have jobs and have had since they left education. The job might be as a Good Mother or it might be as an HR Drone, but it's a job, and likely more secure than any partner's. I'm guessing the suburban girl looks at Breakfast at Tiffany's and sees it as an historical curio: Audrey's glamour is still there, but it's the glamour of a museum piece, like a Fortuny dress in the V&A. Your contemporary suburban girl knows that modern glamour takes luck, hard work and a single-minded ambition: Victoria Beckham taught her that.
None of which stops the opening of Breakfast at Tiffany's being one of the Top Five Movie Openings Of All Time. Or one of the best constructed stories in the movies. It may be time to retire it from "iconic" to "historical curio" though.
Holly Golightly was a role model for many thousands of women of my generation. It was a long time before I saw Breakfast at Tiffany's. When I did, I saw fifteen minutes of Holly Golightly and said "Margie". Margie behaved as if she was going to marry up to some Kensington Male, and for a long time we thought that was a real ambition. So did she, which might explain her breakdown in early middle age when it had clearly reached a point where it wasn't going to happen. First, she didn't quite have the looks to compete with the Guildford Girls; second, I'm not sure she had the tolerance for functional sex needed for the task; third, no-one raised in that household with those parents in that marriage could possibly get the idea that marriage was desirable. She thought of men as something to be manipulated and tolerated, and that's not how men think of themselves. I suspect she understood somewhere in her psyche where secrets are recognised but never spoken that her life was not going anywhere special and being Holly throughout her twenties gave her a way to pretend it was. After all, Holly herself falls romantically for a writer who has so far been supported by a wealthy sponsor. (A relationship as far as I know used twice in mainstream movies: the other one is in An American In Paris.) But whereas Holly had actually left a perfectly fine - if backwoods - marriage, Margie had never seen one. Holly had a role model for the future of her relationship with George Peppard: Margie didn't.
That generation of women could use Holly as a role-model because they didn't understand the details. Today's girls do understand the details: for one thing, there is no way they can get a flat anywhere in Manhattan (no-one can). For another, they know that her early mornings and general breeziness are sustained by taking drugs - maybe the amphetamines were better back then, but I'm betting the real Hollies all blew a little pot to come down after a night running the suckers round the nightclubs. Above all, today's girls have jobs and have had since they left education. The job might be as a Good Mother or it might be as an HR Drone, but it's a job, and likely more secure than any partner's. I'm guessing the suburban girl looks at Breakfast at Tiffany's and sees it as an historical curio: Audrey's glamour is still there, but it's the glamour of a museum piece, like a Fortuny dress in the V&A. Your contemporary suburban girl knows that modern glamour takes luck, hard work and a single-minded ambition: Victoria Beckham taught her that.
None of which stops the opening of Breakfast at Tiffany's being one of the Top Five Movie Openings Of All Time. Or one of the best constructed stories in the movies. It may be time to retire it from "iconic" to "historical curio" though.
Monday 27 September 2010
Why We Have Poor Cinema
There's an article in this weekend's FT by Peter Aspden about the British films in the London Film Festival. He doesn't think much of them: "Kiera Knightly floating ethereally on a hot day in a boarding school; Colin Firth palying a stammering King, under the watchful eye of Helena Bonham Carter; some unattractive Mike Leigh characters indulging in bitter-sweet conversation; some unattractive Ken Loach characters swearing profusely and threatening to beat the life out of each other...British films...have nothing to do with the concerns of ordinary people." So far, so much am I in agreement. However, it turns out that it's my fault. "...this is less the fault of British film-makers than Britain itself....of the chino-wearing, frappuccino-drinking Britain of today... Do current economic and social trends make for great cinema? We are a culture besotted by reality shows, celebrities, sport, property prices..."
In other words, British cinema is poor because the English are shallow and crass. It's interesting that when he has to name some great films, he has to go back to the 1940's and 50's. Brief Encounter at that - a film which is so clearly a metaphor for the problems of the love that dare not speak its name that I'm always amazed anyone thinks it's about straight people. More recently, what about Local Hero, Heavenly Pursuits, Gregory's Girl, Unrelated, Movern Caller, Genova, Love Actually, Croupier, Close My Eyes, Truly Madly Deeply, Land Girls, The Ploughman's Lunch, Rag Tale, Strong Language, ...... ? All of these are wonderful films mostly with fairly believable, if rather well-paid, middle-class characters and all more recent that 1945.
The problem with the crass-culture-makes-for-crass-movies thesis is that much the same could be said about the French, but no-one is as rude about French cinema. Ah. There's the thing. L'Exception Culturelle. The subsidy and encouragement by the French Government for movies.
Someone green-lights these costume dramas and underclass horrors (Eden Lake anyone?), someone fund them and people (desperate for work) agree to appear in them. Someone writes them, and other people produce and direct them. Costume dramas are the one genre England can export - Four Weddings and a Funeral is a contemporary costume drama. Movies are a business and costumes are a good bet. Underclass horrors I have no idea about, but then I don't see the attraction of football either. British films are poor because people knowingly sign up to make poor films, not because I have a take-away cappuccino from Caffe Nero of a working morning.
Writing about the contemporary world is far more demanding than it used to be, because our world is far more complicated and a lot less economically attractive. Maybe people don't want to see films about contemporary concerns because they live with the threat of unemployment, a constipated job market, increasing taxes, declining real incomes, ever-shabbier public spaces and ever-less satisfying personal relationships (because everyone's working in spirit-sapping jobs) and are surrounded by fantasy-land stories of individual strike-it-lucky successes (hello National Lottery) and vacuous self-help (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People anyone?).
Robert McKee points out that a writer must have an understanding of the politics and economics of the world of their story. How a writer is supposed to have that when politicians, economists, bankers and academics so clearly have no grasp of it at all, well, I'm not so sure. That doesn't excuse Kidulthood - nothing could - and nor am I suggesting that the British Government should subsidise movies. But it isn't my fault that poor movies get made - I don't go to see them (except Eden Lake on DVD, which I bitterly regret ever passing in front of my eyes).
In other words, British cinema is poor because the English are shallow and crass. It's interesting that when he has to name some great films, he has to go back to the 1940's and 50's. Brief Encounter at that - a film which is so clearly a metaphor for the problems of the love that dare not speak its name that I'm always amazed anyone thinks it's about straight people. More recently, what about Local Hero, Heavenly Pursuits, Gregory's Girl, Unrelated, Movern Caller, Genova, Love Actually, Croupier, Close My Eyes, Truly Madly Deeply, Land Girls, The Ploughman's Lunch, Rag Tale, Strong Language, ...... ? All of these are wonderful films mostly with fairly believable, if rather well-paid, middle-class characters and all more recent that 1945.
The problem with the crass-culture-makes-for-crass-movies thesis is that much the same could be said about the French, but no-one is as rude about French cinema. Ah. There's the thing. L'Exception Culturelle. The subsidy and encouragement by the French Government for movies.
Someone green-lights these costume dramas and underclass horrors (Eden Lake anyone?), someone fund them and people (desperate for work) agree to appear in them. Someone writes them, and other people produce and direct them. Costume dramas are the one genre England can export - Four Weddings and a Funeral is a contemporary costume drama. Movies are a business and costumes are a good bet. Underclass horrors I have no idea about, but then I don't see the attraction of football either. British films are poor because people knowingly sign up to make poor films, not because I have a take-away cappuccino from Caffe Nero of a working morning.
Writing about the contemporary world is far more demanding than it used to be, because our world is far more complicated and a lot less economically attractive. Maybe people don't want to see films about contemporary concerns because they live with the threat of unemployment, a constipated job market, increasing taxes, declining real incomes, ever-shabbier public spaces and ever-less satisfying personal relationships (because everyone's working in spirit-sapping jobs) and are surrounded by fantasy-land stories of individual strike-it-lucky successes (hello National Lottery) and vacuous self-help (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People anyone?).
Robert McKee points out that a writer must have an understanding of the politics and economics of the world of their story. How a writer is supposed to have that when politicians, economists, bankers and academics so clearly have no grasp of it at all, well, I'm not so sure. That doesn't excuse Kidulthood - nothing could - and nor am I suggesting that the British Government should subsidise movies. But it isn't my fault that poor movies get made - I don't go to see them (except Eden Lake on DVD, which I bitterly regret ever passing in front of my eyes).
Friday 27 August 2010
Cool Movies
I have a DVD shelf (rather early 2000's, I know) with what I loosely catagorise as “Cool” Movies. Quo Vadis Baby, Ghost Dog, Heat, The Killer Elite, Basquiat, Dinner Rush, The Warriors, Constantine, Love and Human Remains, The Long Goodbye. What is it that makes a movie “cool”? For me?
The protagonist has to live alone but isn't lonely. They have friendships and maybe a relationship that's about sex, but no love and no commitments. And yet they have the possibility and hope, however disappointed by life, of love.
They need to have striking, watchable, intriguing looks – which Angela Baraldi and Forest Whitaker (Ghost Dog) have big time. This is Angela Baraldi in the trailer for Quo Vadis Baby.
They live in an edgy district and the place is either a tip (Elliot Gould's flat in The Long Goodbye) or spartan (de Niro's place in Heat). In practice they couldn't possibly afford it on whatever it is they're earning doing whatever it is they're doing. Whatever they are doing, it isn't a regular nine-to-five job: the protagonist of many cool movies is a private investigator. They can handle themselves, but aren't action heroes; they are smart, but not Sherlock Holmes; they are cynical, but for good reason.
The world doesn't quite make sense because our protagonist doesn't have the usual motives: wealth, fame, beautiful lovers, career, knowledge, power or reputation. Nor are they easing some inner demon - Lispeth Salander is not cool. There's an idea of finding a truth, or of living a truth (Ghost Dog, The Killer Elite), of being true to yourself or your vocation (both the protagonists in Heat). It doesn't matter what motivates the Bad Guys, because their actions mean they can't enjoy their success for long, so why would they do it? And there are no normal people with normal motives, except as ghosts in comparison to the vivid Cool People.
They need to have striking, watchable, intriguing looks – which Angela Baraldi and Forest Whitaker (Ghost Dog) have big time. This is Angela Baraldi in the trailer for Quo Vadis Baby.
They live in an edgy district and the place is either a tip (Elliot Gould's flat in The Long Goodbye) or spartan (de Niro's place in Heat). In practice they couldn't possibly afford it on whatever it is they're earning doing whatever it is they're doing. Whatever they are doing, it isn't a regular nine-to-five job: the protagonist of many cool movies is a private investigator. They can handle themselves, but aren't action heroes; they are smart, but not Sherlock Holmes; they are cynical, but for good reason.
The story can't quite make sense, because a cool movie isn't about the story, it's about the atmosphere, it's a way to show us the world of the story. Other than the protagonist, the people are at once individuals and stereotypes. The world doesn't quite make sense either, which is why only the Cool can engage with it and survive. You don't see many normal people in cool movies, except as contrast or to have something bad happen to them a few minutes later. When the protagonist has to visit the straight world, from a supermarket to their families, it is somehow unreal, slightly dishonest, and relies on illusion and dissumlation. In the cool world, people lie for a purpose: in the straight world they do it to stay sane.
The world doesn't quite make sense because our protagonist doesn't have the usual motives: wealth, fame, beautiful lovers, career, knowledge, power or reputation. Nor are they easing some inner demon - Lispeth Salander is not cool. There's an idea of finding a truth, or of living a truth (Ghost Dog, The Killer Elite), of being true to yourself or your vocation (both the protagonists in Heat). It doesn't matter what motivates the Bad Guys, because their actions mean they can't enjoy their success for long, so why would they do it? And there are no normal people with normal motives, except as ghosts in comparison to the vivid Cool People.
What I'm describing, of course, is a Raymond Chandler or a Dashiell Hammett novel, the spiritual forefathers of Jim Jarmusch and Robert Altman.
Friday 25 June 2010
Why Can't The BBC Do The Wire?
There was an interesting article about British TV drama in the FT a couple of weeks ago. The starting point was The Wire and why the BBC hasn't done anything like it. The article ended with an attempt to suggest that British TV drama was different-but-equal. Tosh.
What lifted The Wire clean above even The Shield, The West Wing and BtVS, was season four, that heartbreaking series about criminality and evil amongst school-children. These were children murdering and hiding the bodies in derelict houses, pouring lye over the corpses to help with the decomposition. Being children, they poured the lye over the clothes. They didn't quite get it. The series didn't flinch, didn't miss a detail and it didn't moralise once - it told the story. I can't remember a single moment of hope in all twenty-two episodes.
It took David Simon thirteen years of non-stop writing and producing to get there, with one hundred and fifty four episodes of Homicide: Life On The Street between 1993 and 1999, six episodes of The Corner in 2002 and sixty-six episodes of The Wire, before that awesome series four. No other writer in television history has had Simon's opportunities, and he has admitted as much in an interview. It's not that British TV can't do The Wire - no-one else could or did either.
What British TV should be able to do but can't, and Hollywood can and does, is The Shield and follow it with Sons of Anarchy, or BtVS and follow it with Angel. (And don't dare offer Dr Who and Torchwood) Why not? Well, are we looking for reasons or excuses? Lack of money is an excuse - if the British wanted to produce high-quality drama, they would find the money. God knows they find enough for football and celebrity presenters. The "theatrical tradition" is an excuse as well - the Americans only got this good at TV in the early 1990's. Both have had the same time since the invention of television to learn the art. The fact that British culture is run (if it is) by kidults to busy attending inclusiveness and marketing courses is an excuse as well. There are sensible people you can hire if you are prepared to pay. It's not a lack of talent either: the music scene is bursting with it and Hollywood moves and TV are packed with English actors who couldn't get jobs in the UK.
British TV produces not-quite-good-enough (or "flawed" if you're being polite) drama because the British simply are not serious about the job of writing, directing and producing drama. That's not unique to drama: the Special Forces and music aside, the British aren't really that serious about anything. They rely on the fact that the competition are just as... lackadaisical isn't the word, nor is shoddy... easily satisfied is probably it. On the creative side, the British are easily satisfied and on the managerial side they are just plain cheap. Which is why most British writers never do more than two drafts - they aren't being paid enough.
I suspect that most British writers and producers don't even read the books. Hollywood has three standard texts on screenwriting: McKee's Story, Syd Fields' Screenplay and Vogler's Writer's Journey. Everyone has read these, and even if they don't agree with what the authors say, the industry shares a common technical language. Do you know what a "beat" is? Entire British scripts can go by without a single one - and as for story arcs, in British scripts, fuggedaboutit. (One reason I love Local Hero, Dinner Rush and Groove is that they are packed with satisfying character arcs.)
It's more than just a lack of technique. It's as if there's something missing in the soul of many English writers: it feels like they don't really like or understand people. The Big Names who write for theatre admit they are all about the Ideas and the Politics as if that's a good thing. The British can make nasty, mean movies (Eden Lake, Kidulthood) but they can't make something as charming as Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist or Before Sunset. No. You just think they have. But they haven't. And costume dramas are cute, not charming.
The real question isn't why British television couldn't do The West Wing or The Wire. It's why the BBC can't even do Flashpoint or Blood Ties. If I was unlucky enough to be in charge of drama at the BBC, I swear I would cancel the lot and show a test card where Eastenders was supposed to be, until either I or someone else worked out how to tell engaging stories with characters the audience will identify with on the limited budgets at my disposal. And if I couldn't, I'd give the money back to the license-payers.
What lifted The Wire clean above even The Shield, The West Wing and BtVS, was season four, that heartbreaking series about criminality and evil amongst school-children. These were children murdering and hiding the bodies in derelict houses, pouring lye over the corpses to help with the decomposition. Being children, they poured the lye over the clothes. They didn't quite get it. The series didn't flinch, didn't miss a detail and it didn't moralise once - it told the story. I can't remember a single moment of hope in all twenty-two episodes.
It took David Simon thirteen years of non-stop writing and producing to get there, with one hundred and fifty four episodes of Homicide: Life On The Street between 1993 and 1999, six episodes of The Corner in 2002 and sixty-six episodes of The Wire, before that awesome series four. No other writer in television history has had Simon's opportunities, and he has admitted as much in an interview. It's not that British TV can't do The Wire - no-one else could or did either.
What British TV should be able to do but can't, and Hollywood can and does, is The Shield and follow it with Sons of Anarchy, or BtVS and follow it with Angel. (And don't dare offer Dr Who and Torchwood) Why not? Well, are we looking for reasons or excuses? Lack of money is an excuse - if the British wanted to produce high-quality drama, they would find the money. God knows they find enough for football and celebrity presenters. The "theatrical tradition" is an excuse as well - the Americans only got this good at TV in the early 1990's. Both have had the same time since the invention of television to learn the art. The fact that British culture is run (if it is) by kidults to busy attending inclusiveness and marketing courses is an excuse as well. There are sensible people you can hire if you are prepared to pay. It's not a lack of talent either: the music scene is bursting with it and Hollywood moves and TV are packed with English actors who couldn't get jobs in the UK.
British TV produces not-quite-good-enough (or "flawed" if you're being polite) drama because the British simply are not serious about the job of writing, directing and producing drama. That's not unique to drama: the Special Forces and music aside, the British aren't really that serious about anything. They rely on the fact that the competition are just as... lackadaisical isn't the word, nor is shoddy... easily satisfied is probably it. On the creative side, the British are easily satisfied and on the managerial side they are just plain cheap. Which is why most British writers never do more than two drafts - they aren't being paid enough.
I suspect that most British writers and producers don't even read the books. Hollywood has three standard texts on screenwriting: McKee's Story, Syd Fields' Screenplay and Vogler's Writer's Journey. Everyone has read these, and even if they don't agree with what the authors say, the industry shares a common technical language. Do you know what a "beat" is? Entire British scripts can go by without a single one - and as for story arcs, in British scripts, fuggedaboutit. (One reason I love Local Hero, Dinner Rush and Groove is that they are packed with satisfying character arcs.)
It's more than just a lack of technique. It's as if there's something missing in the soul of many English writers: it feels like they don't really like or understand people. The Big Names who write for theatre admit they are all about the Ideas and the Politics as if that's a good thing. The British can make nasty, mean movies (Eden Lake, Kidulthood) but they can't make something as charming as Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist or Before Sunset. No. You just think they have. But they haven't. And costume dramas are cute, not charming.
The real question isn't why British television couldn't do The West Wing or The Wire. It's why the BBC can't even do Flashpoint or Blood Ties. If I was unlucky enough to be in charge of drama at the BBC, I swear I would cancel the lot and show a test card where Eastenders was supposed to be, until either I or someone else worked out how to tell engaging stories with characters the audience will identify with on the limited budgets at my disposal. And if I couldn't, I'd give the money back to the license-payers.
Wednesday 20 January 2010
Movies about Music - Part 2
You can point out that Sex and Drugs and Rock 'N Roll isn't a movie about music, it's a movie about a pop star - after all, why else would we be watching it? But why would we watch a film about a pop star? Because they made love to more and better-looking women than we did, or that they took more and better drugs, or that they had rows in big houses with swimming pools? Because we didn't already know they were screw-ups? Uh-huh. Their lives are interesting because they wrote Reasons To Be Cheerful, or Like A Rolling Stone or Love Will Tear Us Apart or even, for that matter, Always On Time.
I understand how philosophers can philosophise, mathematicians can produce creative mathematics, how J S Bach wrote his music and John Coltrane improvised. I know what it's like to have stories appear in my head from a sudden burst of sunshine. I get how painters can paint, though I can't do it, and I get how photographers can see a photograph. I can "pick up my guitar and play" in a kind of baroque-y improvisational style.
But I have no idea, not the slightest glimpse of an insight, into how someone can sit down and write Please Please Me, or Summertime, or Big Yellow Taxi, or Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, let alone how Jam and Lewis wrote those songs for the SOS Band. I have never, ever had a tune and a lyric drift through my head. Not once. I don't even understand how it's possible. And neither, I'm guessing, do you. I bet there are respected composers who have never had a possible chart-topper pass through their heads. Don't you want to know how Stepping Out happened?
Songwriters often don't do anything else, as if it is such a different use of the mind and personality that it won't let them be programmers or advertising creatives or tax inspectors before or afterwards. With a handful of exceptions they don't write songs for long either: they are more like athletes than, say, physicists. Like Auden said about poets, they burn bright and not for long, unlike novelists or conventional composers.
In a similar vein, The Damned United wasn't only nothing like the real life of Brian Clough, it was also a bad film about football - at the end of it you had no idea why or how he could take two medium-level sides to the very top of the game. The best film about football I've seen was Zidane, eighty minutes during which the camera just follows Zidane and you barely see the rest of the match. It was utterly riveting and informative.
The best movie about music (that isn't a straightforward bio) is Godard's Sympathy For The Devil, which is about equal amounts of the Rolling Stones trying out the song in the studio and classic Godardian agit-prop. What's surprising the first time you see this movie is that the song started its life as a blues jam going nowhere: it's only half-way through that we return to the studio to find the congas going and Nicky Hopkins going full-bore on the piano, in the arrangement that made it a classic. The moment that happens is not on film, but there's the sense of work, of trial-and-error, that even the greatest rock 'n roll band sometimes goes for a stretch with no clue of what a song needs.
I understand how philosophers can philosophise, mathematicians can produce creative mathematics, how J S Bach wrote his music and John Coltrane improvised. I know what it's like to have stories appear in my head from a sudden burst of sunshine. I get how painters can paint, though I can't do it, and I get how photographers can see a photograph. I can "pick up my guitar and play" in a kind of baroque-y improvisational style.
But I have no idea, not the slightest glimpse of an insight, into how someone can sit down and write Please Please Me, or Summertime, or Big Yellow Taxi, or Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, let alone how Jam and Lewis wrote those songs for the SOS Band. I have never, ever had a tune and a lyric drift through my head. Not once. I don't even understand how it's possible. And neither, I'm guessing, do you. I bet there are respected composers who have never had a possible chart-topper pass through their heads. Don't you want to know how Stepping Out happened?
Songwriters often don't do anything else, as if it is such a different use of the mind and personality that it won't let them be programmers or advertising creatives or tax inspectors before or afterwards. With a handful of exceptions they don't write songs for long either: they are more like athletes than, say, physicists. Like Auden said about poets, they burn bright and not for long, unlike novelists or conventional composers.
In a similar vein, The Damned United wasn't only nothing like the real life of Brian Clough, it was also a bad film about football - at the end of it you had no idea why or how he could take two medium-level sides to the very top of the game. The best film about football I've seen was Zidane, eighty minutes during which the camera just follows Zidane and you barely see the rest of the match. It was utterly riveting and informative.
The best movie about music (that isn't a straightforward bio) is Godard's Sympathy For The Devil, which is about equal amounts of the Rolling Stones trying out the song in the studio and classic Godardian agit-prop. What's surprising the first time you see this movie is that the song started its life as a blues jam going nowhere: it's only half-way through that we return to the studio to find the congas going and Nicky Hopkins going full-bore on the piano, in the arrangement that made it a classic. The moment that happens is not on film, but there's the sense of work, of trial-and-error, that even the greatest rock 'n roll band sometimes goes for a stretch with no clue of what a song needs.
Monday 18 January 2010
Movies About Music - Part 1
I saw Sex And Drugs And Rock 'N Roll yesterday: it's supposed to be about Ian Dury. You can look up the details of his life here. You'd better do, because you won't learn anything about it from the film. It opens with him rehearsing while Olivia Williams is giving birth upstairs - that's to let you know he's a self-obsessed screw-up and it pretty much carries on from there in the same vein. You will not find out that he studied at the Royal College of Art under Peter Blake (there's a scene where his bullied son asks if they are "posh", Dury says "we're Arts and Crafts". Not from the RCA he isn't - he's posh.) He was an art teacher married with a young daughter who decides to get into rock 'n roll. Way too late in life. There's no attempt to explain that, it's just a given, and the man remains therefore a total mystery or a bag of bad behaviour.
The Blockheads are appallingly treated by the film - depicted as a bunch of no-hopers when they were in fact one of the tightest British bands that ever performed (right up there with the Average White Band) and they performed music that was closer to jazz-funk than rock 'n roll. Check this out.
Where did these guys come from and how did they stay in such good musical shape? Chas Jankel, who is a songwriter good enough to have Quincy Jones cover one of his songs and get an international hit with it (Ai No Corrida), appears from nowhere, gets hired and disappears into a back room to churn out hit after hit to Dury's lyrics. Like they didn't already know who he was before they hired him. To see the movie, you'd think no-one ever rehearsed or discussed arrangements - and yet they must have done. A song as good as Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick does nto appear like Venus from the head of Jupiter.
The movie addresses none of this. Instead we get a decent forty minutes or so of Andy Serkis with a band performing Dury's songs - and doing a damn good job of it - and the usual tales of, well, sex and drugs and rock 'n roll. It's a good a way of passing Sunday afternoon at the movies, but it ain't about the life of a musician.
The Blockheads are appallingly treated by the film - depicted as a bunch of no-hopers when they were in fact one of the tightest British bands that ever performed (right up there with the Average White Band) and they performed music that was closer to jazz-funk than rock 'n roll. Check this out.
Where did these guys come from and how did they stay in such good musical shape? Chas Jankel, who is a songwriter good enough to have Quincy Jones cover one of his songs and get an international hit with it (Ai No Corrida), appears from nowhere, gets hired and disappears into a back room to churn out hit after hit to Dury's lyrics. Like they didn't already know who he was before they hired him. To see the movie, you'd think no-one ever rehearsed or discussed arrangements - and yet they must have done. A song as good as Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick does nto appear like Venus from the head of Jupiter.
The movie addresses none of this. Instead we get a decent forty minutes or so of Andy Serkis with a band performing Dury's songs - and doing a damn good job of it - and the usual tales of, well, sex and drugs and rock 'n roll. It's a good a way of passing Sunday afternoon at the movies, but it ain't about the life of a musician.
Wednesday 29 July 2009
The Movie List: Part 3
The Battle of Algiers – Gillo Pontecorvo
If the French army ever had a colonel as lucid and objective as Colonel Mathieu, sent in to quash the OAS after its first bombing campaign, then it was a lucky army. When he dismisses the border controls at the edge of the Kasbah with the remark “If anyone's papers are going to be in order, it will be a terrorist's” you know the guy is smarter than you average flic. The French army were not angels, but neither were the OAS – Pontecorvo makes you realise just how shattering bombing civilians is. Made with the assistance of the people in the Algiers Kasbah and many amateur actors, the film is tight, balanced, cool and manages to get you feeling for both sides. It's still the finest political film ever made.
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her – Jean-Luc Godard
This is the movie where a lump of sugar dissolving in a cup of coffee becomes the entire universe, each bubble a galaxy against the blackness of space. You have to see it to believe it. The opening has a 360-degree pan round a suburban housing estate: before it's half-way through you don't know if you're going right-to-left or vice-versa or where on earth you are. That's why Godard is a genius. “Her” is Paris, and Juliette Janson, a housewife who has to turn tricks in Paris to earn extra cash to pay the bills in her family's new and more expensive apartment in the suburbs. It's based on an article about such housewives – called “shooting stars”. The film is Godard at his poetic best.
My Girlfriend's Boyfriend – Eric Rohmer
This was the film that converted me to Rohmer: it bore a reasonable resemblance to my own love life at the time. The fact that it was set in an Eighties suburban development of Paris also helped, as did the wonderful performance of the central character by Emmanuelle Chaulet and the fact that the two male leads, Eric Viellard and François-Eric Gendron, had a lot of characteristics in common with me as well. The structure is neat, the story moves along, the moments are real and it feels real, as all Rohmer's movies do.
Grand Prix – John Frankenheimer
This remains the best film about motor racing ever made. It's set in the Golden Age of semi-pro Formula One, before the huge budgets, wind-tunnel testing and non-stop circus. There are real motor racing drivers in the background (look out for Graham Hill's moustache), while the climactic ending was to be done for real in the 1967 Monza Grand Prix when Honda won its only race with John Surtees at the wheel. The cars are Formula Three dressed up as Formula One, and the tracks are for real. The on-car filmed racing sequences are still more exciting than the live broadcasts. The scene you will remember for ever is Antonio Sabato picking up Francois Hardy and I'm not going to spoil it for you.
Last Seen Wearing (Inspector Morse) – BBC
How this Season Two, Episode Two tale got by the BBC censors I will never know: it drips the same insight and contempt for the influential upper-middle classes that comes off the pages of Raymond Chandler. A depressed and morose Morse crosses his own boss, an influential businessman whose daughter has gone missing, exasperates Lewis with his insistence that the girl is dead, gazes at a field of teenage girls in sports kit and interviews a young but buxom Elizabeth Hurley. It's the 1980's and there's an air of money, power and intrusive change – that mechanical digger outside Morse's house is a metaphor. It's the standout episode from a standout series.
The Long Goodbye – Robert Altman
Chandler purists were outraged by this adaption. Elliott Gould shambles through the story the hippest Marlowe there ever was. Today it's a classic and regarded as one of the best Chandler adaptations ever.
Catch Us If You Can – John Boorman
The best Swinging Sixties movie made: it's as sour and refreshing as a lemon, sharply written, the photography is luminous and it doesn't matter that the acting creaks a little.
Duck Soup – Marx Brothers
You haven't seen this? Get the boxed set of the early Marx Brothers from Amazon and do so now. It contains the funniest scene in the history of cinema.
If the French army ever had a colonel as lucid and objective as Colonel Mathieu, sent in to quash the OAS after its first bombing campaign, then it was a lucky army. When he dismisses the border controls at the edge of the Kasbah with the remark “If anyone's papers are going to be in order, it will be a terrorist's” you know the guy is smarter than you average flic. The French army were not angels, but neither were the OAS – Pontecorvo makes you realise just how shattering bombing civilians is. Made with the assistance of the people in the Algiers Kasbah and many amateur actors, the film is tight, balanced, cool and manages to get you feeling for both sides. It's still the finest political film ever made.
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her – Jean-Luc Godard
This is the movie where a lump of sugar dissolving in a cup of coffee becomes the entire universe, each bubble a galaxy against the blackness of space. You have to see it to believe it. The opening has a 360-degree pan round a suburban housing estate: before it's half-way through you don't know if you're going right-to-left or vice-versa or where on earth you are. That's why Godard is a genius. “Her” is Paris, and Juliette Janson, a housewife who has to turn tricks in Paris to earn extra cash to pay the bills in her family's new and more expensive apartment in the suburbs. It's based on an article about such housewives – called “shooting stars”. The film is Godard at his poetic best.
My Girlfriend's Boyfriend – Eric Rohmer
This was the film that converted me to Rohmer: it bore a reasonable resemblance to my own love life at the time. The fact that it was set in an Eighties suburban development of Paris also helped, as did the wonderful performance of the central character by Emmanuelle Chaulet and the fact that the two male leads, Eric Viellard and François-Eric Gendron, had a lot of characteristics in common with me as well. The structure is neat, the story moves along, the moments are real and it feels real, as all Rohmer's movies do.
Grand Prix – John Frankenheimer
This remains the best film about motor racing ever made. It's set in the Golden Age of semi-pro Formula One, before the huge budgets, wind-tunnel testing and non-stop circus. There are real motor racing drivers in the background (look out for Graham Hill's moustache), while the climactic ending was to be done for real in the 1967 Monza Grand Prix when Honda won its only race with John Surtees at the wheel. The cars are Formula Three dressed up as Formula One, and the tracks are for real. The on-car filmed racing sequences are still more exciting than the live broadcasts. The scene you will remember for ever is Antonio Sabato picking up Francois Hardy and I'm not going to spoil it for you.
Last Seen Wearing (Inspector Morse) – BBC
How this Season Two, Episode Two tale got by the BBC censors I will never know: it drips the same insight and contempt for the influential upper-middle classes that comes off the pages of Raymond Chandler. A depressed and morose Morse crosses his own boss, an influential businessman whose daughter has gone missing, exasperates Lewis with his insistence that the girl is dead, gazes at a field of teenage girls in sports kit and interviews a young but buxom Elizabeth Hurley. It's the 1980's and there's an air of money, power and intrusive change – that mechanical digger outside Morse's house is a metaphor. It's the standout episode from a standout series.
The Long Goodbye – Robert Altman
Chandler purists were outraged by this adaption. Elliott Gould shambles through the story the hippest Marlowe there ever was. Today it's a classic and regarded as one of the best Chandler adaptations ever.
Catch Us If You Can – John Boorman
The best Swinging Sixties movie made: it's as sour and refreshing as a lemon, sharply written, the photography is luminous and it doesn't matter that the acting creaks a little.
Duck Soup – Marx Brothers
You haven't seen this? Get the boxed set of the early Marx Brothers from Amazon and do so now. It contains the funniest scene in the history of cinema.
Friday 24 July 2009
Why Soaps Aren't Drama
There is a fascinating series to be written about a real hospital: how people lie around in casualty for hours because there is only one decision-making doctor and he's in an emergency surgery for the rest of his shift, how people with cancers are turned away as being pregnant or suffering from indigestion, how doctors don't dare call consultants at the weekend and one consultant would rather leave a patient suffering than deal with another consultant's case – Private Eye's On The Rounds or any of the medical blogs will give a writer and producer endless material. A few dozen hours spent with nurses and disenchanted NHS managers will give them the inside stories and the touches of realism you need.
That series is not Casualty, Holby City or any of the others currently on British television. None of those hospitals is recognisable as any I have ever been in. Where are the groups of nursing assistants gossiping at the admin desk but doing nothing? Why is a consultant wandering around the ward waiting for something to happen? Why are the staff talking in English voices? How did any patient get treatment within three hours? How on earth did they find a nurse who knew the patient's name? And where did they dig up the awful chavs who have family rows by the hospital bedside? If there's one thing that impresses me about hospitals, it's how quiet, considerate and well-mannered the visitors are – and my local hospital is the West Middlesex. What are doctors doing having affairs with nurses or each other? Have you seen real doctors and nurses? Would you have an affair with them? Anyway, that myth grew up in the time when a fair number of nurses came from the same strata of society as the doctors – rather as airline stewardesses came from a similar strata as their passengers in the Fifties and Sixties, when airline travel was for an elite, not you and me.
You have to like your characters to tell stories about them – even the bad guys, in fact, especially the bad guys. You can't like them unless you let them into your head. And who would want to let the endless parade of chavs, dysfunctionals, mediocrities, uglies and nobodies who make usual people in The Bill? It's as if there is a guideline that attractive, intelligent, well-balanced and communicative people must not be portrayed.
You also have to understand the world of your characters, and by the nature of the job of writing, what most writers understand is the world of the freelance and the edges of the State arts bureaucracy and the BBC. They have never worked in a public- or private-sector management role and don't know what happens there. They haven't worked on the railways, in a hospital, a local council, a bank, a retailer or anywhere else. They have no idea how modern corporations and institutions work. I'm not expecting every writer to be Neil Simon, but they ought to do better than the utterly unrealistic portrayal of journalism and politics that is State of Play. Any journalist who behaved as the Kelly MacDonald character did would never keep a job on a national newspaper.
The major employers of writers in the UK are the Big Soaps. Soap operas have strict conventions, the most important for our purposes is that the characters cannot develop, only suffer random setbacks that result from the clash of circumstance and their static character (in tragedy, the setback arises from the character, not a car crash). Hence no-one can learn, there is no development: slimy Nick Cotton is down but will return, as nasty as ever, in a few episodes' time. In a Soap, these defined and stable characters meet life's insults, challenges, whips and scorns and fight back, break down or run away and cry, as they might. But never change – even when they are written out. (Okay, the best cop show ever made – The Shield – has the structure of a soap opera, as does The West Wing. Sometimes it can work. )
Soap characters live in the most heavily-populated town in England: Denial. They cannot believe this could happen, nor that you could have done it to them. What were you thinking? You're in trouble now, this could ruin everything. I can't believe this has happened. It can't be true. Not only are English soaps are set in Denial, they are set in the lower-income end at that, Denial-by-the-Industrial Estate. This limits the characters even more, as they have no money or time for any moments of contemplative life, their every waking moment taken up with the daily round, dodging, diving, grafting and, oh yes, drinking tea and beer. This ensures the viewer never thinks to ask why the characters don't do something about their lives. The Soap inhabitants of Denial are nothing like the people who really live there but a parade of stock characters, who appear in every Soap, sometimes wearing a stethoscope, sometimes pulling a pint, sometimes teaching a class.
Because the Soap cannot countenance change, it is not drama. Drama is about change: characters develop through meeting or not the circumstances they find themselves in. The Soap therefore has to substitute conflict and confusion for drama (there's nothing wrong with either as plot devices - Romeo and Juliet has a plot based on the conflict between the Capulets and Montagues, but it's a love story). Writing conflict and confusion is a lot easier than writing drama: all you need are people shouting at each other because they thought that he was cheating on her with Sally Evans, when all he was doing was hiding her birthday present there. It's why Soaps are reassuringly unrealistic, as our daily lives are carefully organised to reduce the possibility of conflict and so little happens in them that there is very little room for confusion.
Soaps corrupt writers. A writer's job is drama, and there is no drama without change, development, a character's strengths holding them up through a crisis as their weaknesses threaten something fundamental about their existence. This can be done without guns, crossed messages, mis-communication and fist-fights: it can be done without conflict. Eric Rohmer's charming little ditties are drama on exactly this level.
That series is not Casualty, Holby City or any of the others currently on British television. None of those hospitals is recognisable as any I have ever been in. Where are the groups of nursing assistants gossiping at the admin desk but doing nothing? Why is a consultant wandering around the ward waiting for something to happen? Why are the staff talking in English voices? How did any patient get treatment within three hours? How on earth did they find a nurse who knew the patient's name? And where did they dig up the awful chavs who have family rows by the hospital bedside? If there's one thing that impresses me about hospitals, it's how quiet, considerate and well-mannered the visitors are – and my local hospital is the West Middlesex. What are doctors doing having affairs with nurses or each other? Have you seen real doctors and nurses? Would you have an affair with them? Anyway, that myth grew up in the time when a fair number of nurses came from the same strata of society as the doctors – rather as airline stewardesses came from a similar strata as their passengers in the Fifties and Sixties, when airline travel was for an elite, not you and me.
You have to like your characters to tell stories about them – even the bad guys, in fact, especially the bad guys. You can't like them unless you let them into your head. And who would want to let the endless parade of chavs, dysfunctionals, mediocrities, uglies and nobodies who make usual people in The Bill? It's as if there is a guideline that attractive, intelligent, well-balanced and communicative people must not be portrayed.
You also have to understand the world of your characters, and by the nature of the job of writing, what most writers understand is the world of the freelance and the edges of the State arts bureaucracy and the BBC. They have never worked in a public- or private-sector management role and don't know what happens there. They haven't worked on the railways, in a hospital, a local council, a bank, a retailer or anywhere else. They have no idea how modern corporations and institutions work. I'm not expecting every writer to be Neil Simon, but they ought to do better than the utterly unrealistic portrayal of journalism and politics that is State of Play. Any journalist who behaved as the Kelly MacDonald character did would never keep a job on a national newspaper.
The major employers of writers in the UK are the Big Soaps. Soap operas have strict conventions, the most important for our purposes is that the characters cannot develop, only suffer random setbacks that result from the clash of circumstance and their static character (in tragedy, the setback arises from the character, not a car crash). Hence no-one can learn, there is no development: slimy Nick Cotton is down but will return, as nasty as ever, in a few episodes' time. In a Soap, these defined and stable characters meet life's insults, challenges, whips and scorns and fight back, break down or run away and cry, as they might. But never change – even when they are written out. (Okay, the best cop show ever made – The Shield – has the structure of a soap opera, as does The West Wing. Sometimes it can work. )
Soap characters live in the most heavily-populated town in England: Denial. They cannot believe this could happen, nor that you could have done it to them. What were you thinking? You're in trouble now, this could ruin everything. I can't believe this has happened. It can't be true. Not only are English soaps are set in Denial, they are set in the lower-income end at that, Denial-by-the-Industrial Estate. This limits the characters even more, as they have no money or time for any moments of contemplative life, their every waking moment taken up with the daily round, dodging, diving, grafting and, oh yes, drinking tea and beer. This ensures the viewer never thinks to ask why the characters don't do something about their lives. The Soap inhabitants of Denial are nothing like the people who really live there but a parade of stock characters, who appear in every Soap, sometimes wearing a stethoscope, sometimes pulling a pint, sometimes teaching a class.
Because the Soap cannot countenance change, it is not drama. Drama is about change: characters develop through meeting or not the circumstances they find themselves in. The Soap therefore has to substitute conflict and confusion for drama (there's nothing wrong with either as plot devices - Romeo and Juliet has a plot based on the conflict between the Capulets and Montagues, but it's a love story). Writing conflict and confusion is a lot easier than writing drama: all you need are people shouting at each other because they thought that he was cheating on her with Sally Evans, when all he was doing was hiding her birthday present there. It's why Soaps are reassuringly unrealistic, as our daily lives are carefully organised to reduce the possibility of conflict and so little happens in them that there is very little room for confusion.
Soaps corrupt writers. A writer's job is drama, and there is no drama without change, development, a character's strengths holding them up through a crisis as their weaknesses threaten something fundamental about their existence. This can be done without guns, crossed messages, mis-communication and fist-fights: it can be done without conflict. Eric Rohmer's charming little ditties are drama on exactly this level.
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