The aesthetics of almost

“A film can’t be true but it can be sincere,” states film Austro-German director Michael Haneke in an interview for his Code Inconnu (Code Unknown) (The French Collection: Vol 1 & 2 DVD). And in his essay Violence + Media, partly quoted in this last year’s Times BFI London Film Festival programme, (for his own English language re-make of his Funny Games) he furthers this point: “This endless one-upmanship [between film and TV reality] led to a permanent quest for maximum intensity that has resulted in growing confusion between reality and fiction.” Last week, two American films Charlie Wilson’s War and Dan in Real Life met a somewhat unfavourable Brit crit reception for not being, in a nutshell, ‘true to life’. And anyone who reads this column with any regularity will know I’m not a particular fan of ‘social realism’ but rather heightened realism. It’s quite like the term ‘naturalism’ used in theatre, a term that has nothing to do with realism in the common sense at all. As I noted last blog, the new Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile) wouldn’t have had the same subliminal impact had it not been for the ‘heightened realism’ of the cinematography that to all intent and purposes looked ‘naturalistic’. And this week abounds with further examples.

But first let me give an example of daily observation, or the lack of it. There’s a well-frequently dance studio near Bond Street (won't name,wasn't life threatening)where I used to do class many-a-time (in those days, not so long ago, with taped-over holes in the floors big enough to catch your foot on). But that got sorted. Finally. (A bit like ‘mind the gap’ on the underground.) Are you surprised? Anyway, I went in to take class the other day; paid a mandatory daily membership on top of the class fee only to find the male changing room had become the ladies. “First floor” a worker bee buzzed in passing. Wander, wander, wander like a lonely cloud all the way to the top floor finally alighting back at reception. “There’s been a flood in the toilets,” says a female worker bee adding slightly more enlightening instructions to the alternative. No signs anywhere, I might add, and the alternative a toilet with space for one with no shower. Back down the stairs wasting my limbering time. “Any chance of my daily membership being refunded?” I asked reasonably and forlornly (as I didn’t have full use of the facilities and would ‘whiff’ all through my subsequent meeting and all the way home). The response was not unlike the underground ‘we’re sorry your experience with us was a misery but have a nice day’ (my loose translation of female worker bee speak). “I don’t really think that ‘pat’ response is very satisfactory”, I moaned in a quiet husky voice. “I won’t have my staff spoken to in that way,” buzzed female bee No.2. Here we go, I thought. It happens so many times in London, complain about something – even in mild mannered tones (and they were, believe me)- and you’re basically told to put up with it or ‘f**k off’. I did get my membership money back but what a palaver. As the story’s losing altitude, even for me, suffice to say that most people simply don’t see reality and its consequences even on a small everyday scale.

In an interview on the now art-house classic Three Colours Blue (Vol.1: Juliette Binoche), Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski recalls trying “to find a sugarcube that soaks up [coffee] in 5 seconds” as his way of evoking the emotional world of Juliette Binoche’s character in one of the scenes. And to think she turned down Spielberg’s Jurassic Park to do Three Colours Blue. She joked with Spielberg that she’d prefer to play a dinosaur. On the Code Inconnu disc (not as easy as the others in the two sets to digest), Binoche praises Haneke’s direction for “leaving the actor face to face with silence” a skill she believes is the result of Haneke’s work in the theatre - it's “not reality but a model of reality”. Haneke is a perfectionist and “the champion of absolute pessimism” says his producer on Hidden (Caché) Haneke’s most accessible and successful film so far. Dominik Moll is equally fastidious in directing his Lemming basing his characters’ psychological states around the much touted myth that the little lemming rodents from Scandinavia commit suicide when in fact what really happens is that they end up in deep water they will never be able to cross. These recent ‘back catalogue’ DVD sets from Artificial Eye are most definitely excellent bargain value with four of the six discs including substantial extras, and a chance to watch European directing at its finest.

Binoche never got to play a dinosaur, or even voice-over a lemming in Ice Age but she brings her enormous quiet presence to Peter Hedges’s comedy drama Dan in Real Life playing the new light in columnist Dan’s (Steve Carell) recently widowed 3-daughter life. But on arriving at his family get-together in Rhode Island he discovers she’s the girlfriend of his brother (Dane Cook). This is a charming, beautifully scripted film that perhaps wears its ‘theatre reality’ too much on its sleeve for some and lacking the filmic detail spoken of in the last paragraph. Hedges is ex-theatre, so is highly respected casting director Bernard Telsey as is the rest of the cast, though with equally substantial film experience. Carell and Binoche didn’t really come from theatre and that makes for very good screen chemistry, as they’re sort of outsiders forcing themselves to fit in. There’s a wonderful scene when Binoche and Dan’s brother set him up on a double date with a podgy girl from his school days. Except she blossomed into a gorgeous long-legged, hip-swinging plastic surgeon brunette (Emily Blunt). Discovering the latter info and the instant light in Dan’s eyes as they all sit in the bar, Binoche’s radiant face suddenly looks as if the blood has been vacuum sucked from her entire being. It’s a moment so common in cinema but I’ve never seen it done with such skill as Binoche displays here. Nice debut soundtrack too (is that a ‘soundtrack Betty Blue in-joke’ at the seaside?) by Norwegian pop star Sondre Lerche. Definitely not a film as ‘pat’ as the critics make out. But it ain’t Ingmar Bergman.

An offbeat New Zealand comedy is Eagle vs Shark (Optimum DVD with substantial extras) (US Buena Vista DVD). “Human beings are essentially the losers [the geeks] of the animal world and somehow we become winners but we’re still losers,” muses first feature director Taika Waititi (his short film Two Cars, One Night was Oscar nominated). “It’s a not very romantic black comedy,” says Jemaine Clement (Jarrod) a bit of a candle-making video game dork who is seeking revenge on his high school nemesis, “He’s gonna reap what he sowed and it sure ain’t wheat.” The shy unpopular Lily (Loren Horsley) gets sacked from her job behind the till at ‘Meaty Boy Burger’ but gatecrashes Jarrod’s video game showdown costume party - she shark, he eagle hence the title. Lily is based on a character Horsley created for the stage. “There’s people in the world who don’t even have sleeping bags,” says Lily who’s like a beautiful little flower nestling beside the forest log. Horsley, looking nothing like her character, even took Lily on a day-out while workshopping the script in Salt Lake City as part of Sundance’s nurturing lab. Lily was totally ignored and sneered at says Horsley. Waititi’s cites Mike Leigh and Wes Andersen as influences and this film really holds its own in the crowded world of quirky indie film. Nice stop-motion animation too. Great weekend DVD date.

YouTube Eagle vs Shark trailer

Jemaine Clement is also part of the duo Flight of the Conchords (HBO/BBC Four) trying to make it in New York. Jemaine and Bret (Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, play fictional versions of themselves) with band manager Murray (Rhys Darby), a Deputy Cultural Attaché at the New Zealand consulate. This is some of the funniest TV comedy we’ve seen in recent years and songs like Albi the Racist Dragon have the clever insight of Chris Rock’s patter except slowed down in a parallel universe.
YouTube behind the scenes vid

If you like your comedy cleverly American unsubtle Superbad is out on DVD.

Judd Apatow has also co-written Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story out this week - a spoof on the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. Sounds like a song I remember from an off-Broadway spoof with country lilt, “I told my daddy I hadda be a cowboy, ride off in sunsets and chase those rainbow drea-ee-ee-eams”. Sounds better when I sing it :)

And speaking of cowboys, is Charlie Wilson’s War as bad as the Brit crits paint it? Based on the real story (George Crile's book) of ‘80s larger-than-life Texan congressman Wilson who masterminded the covert war against the Russians in Afghanistan, critics are wanting it to be something it’s clearly not. It’s whiskey tippling, womanising Wilson’s story not a Tom Hanks ‘feelgood save the world’ movie. The script is by West Wing’s Aaron Sorkin with his characteristic fast-paced dialogue and direction by exemplary Mike Nichols. Nichols did a production of Beckett’s existential comedy Waiting for Godot many years ago at Lincoln Center New York with the likes of Robin Williams and Steve Martin and though I didn’t see it, it sounds like Charlie Wilson’s War (CWW) suffers that production’s same ‘swings and roundabouts’. There’s loads of detail but maybe not the detail some would prefer. There’s almost the element of slap-stick in CWW with Wilson’s ‘fluffy bunny girl’ staff and Julia Roberts’ rightwing Texan billionairess Joanne Herring who helps fundraise for Wilson’s war. Characters like Herring really exist, believe me, and Roberts’ portrayal isn’t a characature. But the movie is stolen by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s world-weary CIA op Gust Avrakotos; “You ain’t James Bond,” quips Wilson, “Well you ain’t Thomas Jefferson, let’s call it even,” riposts Gust. “These things were glorious...and then we fucked up the endgame” roll the final credits. Don’t go looking for too much Graham Greene in this Buster Keaton pic.

The Times interview with the real Charles Nesbitt Wilson

It’s pretty much Philip Seymour Hoffman month in London (he’s one of the few actors we could happily celebrate all year). He’s also in Sidney Lumet’s (now 84 years old) Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead a flashback heist movie in which on the slide 6-figure exec Andy (Hoffman) has overreached himself persuading his also sliding brother (Ethan Hawke) to rob his parents sleepy suburban jewellery store – a victimless crime. Or so he hoped until bro takes a gun-happy mate with him who kills Andy’s mom (a cameo for stage stalwart doyenne Rosemary Harris whom only became ‘known’ to a cinema audience through the Spiderman films). The ever superb (almost octogenarian himself) Albert Finney is the dad who won’t let go of the bone. It’s a first feature for writer Kelly Masterson and it’s more cleverly subtle than it may first seem. Hawke bravely plays it ‘on edge’ most of the time and brings it off. And the end has a panging twist on the nature of crime.

The Savages is another movie about family and Tamara Jenkins first feature as writer/director in 10 years since The Slums of Beverley Hills. Hoffman again plays a brother, Jon Savage to his sister the struggling playwright Wendy (Laura Linney) whose difficult father (Philip Bosco) has dementia. Jenkins was reading Bruno Bettleheim’s The Uses of Enchantment about fairy tales and based the siblings on Hansel and Gretel “really a story about children confronting mortality for the first time – they are rejected by their parents, thrown into the woods and forced to find their own way, to grow up and become individuals, in a sense,” says Jenkins, “The story is definitely not [Bergman’s grim death flic] The Seventh Seal.” Definitely try The Savages for a poignantly humorous look at families growing old. Co-producer is Ang Lee’s mentor Ted Hope.

The Coen brothers latest No Country for Old Men is no relation but based on the Pulitzer Prize winning maverick Cormac McCarthy’s 2003 thriller novel with the old-age story of a man Moss (Josh Brolin) who finds a bag of money ($2.4 million in cash) with the remorseless Chigurh (Javier Bardem) in pursuit. You can never not like a Coens movie, some may be more personally preferable to others but there’s always some unseen clock ticking away in their woodwork. The film is released hot on the heels of its Golden Globe awards in the US for Bardem’s Best Supporting Actor and Best Screenplay for the Coens. Don’t wait for the DVD; see this in the cinema because Roger Deakins’ cinematography is breathtakingly the ‘No Country’ character.

An amazing 11 film box DVD set of the Coens oeuvre is released Feb 18 through Spirit Entertainment. No website – I guess that’s how they keep costs down and manage to offer this set for only £69.99. Even at RRP price it’s bloody amazing. No review copies available, but 7 discs even have substantial extras, and Fargo has an audio commentary by its No Country for Old Men cinematographer Roger Deakins, and The Man Who Wasn’t There a commentary with the Coens and Billy Bob Thornton! Wow!

Tom DiCillo’s 1995 Living in Oblivion (Second Sight DVD-Region 0) is so thought of as an indie classic that it was included in New York’s Golden Age of Cinema Festival in 2002 (funny interview extra included). It also won best screenplay at the Sundance Fest in 1995. DiCillo used his experiences on his first feature flop Johnny Suede to make this spoof about the filmmaking process, on-set in B/W on-screen in colour. DiCillo relates the fascinating history of the film, financed by friends who also got main parts (including Jim Jarmusch’s brother Tom), in his non-stop audio commentary. Steve Buscemi is the indie director (who was himself at the time trying to get his directing debut Trees Lounge off the ground) struggling to make his frustrating dream. But Living in Oblivion is far more than just a jolly spoof. The dark comic tone of the film is pretty faultless. DiCillo cites an unnamed Wim Wenders’ film (presumably The State of Things, further BFI screenings with a stunning new print Jan 18/20) in which a film crew is making an existential sci-fi outside of Lisbon, Portugal. “Every single thought that they had was thinking heavy metaphysical thought. [But] most of the time people are thinking much more realistically than that [on a movie set]...There’s no other reality than the ‘oblivion’ of the film you’re making...trying to get [at least] one millisecond of magic on film”. Another great weekend DVD.

Good Wenders interview on BBC Radio 3’s NightWaves (Mon Jan 14)

Wonderful child's-eye view of family reality in Libero (Along the Ridge -Anche Libero Va Bene). Review next week.

Paul Schrader's The Walker (HMV link with trailer) now out on DVD my blog review)

A surprising fascination is Nicolas Philibert’s doco Back to Normandy in which he returns to the French village where he worked with the mostly non-actors, assisting Rene Allio’s 1975 fiction film Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère, the true story of a young 19th century villager who slaughtered his family because of how they treated his father. The film is based on the 80 beautiful pages he wrote in prison later edited by French contemporary philosopher Michel Foucault. A truly wonderful meditation of the concept of reality.

Financial Times Philibert interview
Amiable, intrepid Louis Theroux goes inside San Quentin prison, Behind Bars (BBC 2 TV last Monday Jan 14th)

Brown: No guarantees for taxpayer in Northern Rock bank rescue plan

Ghosts of the Cite Soleil (Revolver budget DVD) is Ager Leth’s getting low-down and dirty doco with the government backed gun-toting Chimeres of President Aristide’s Haiti and in particular two brothers. Very visceral. And J.C. Chavez Diego Luna’s doco about the life of Mexico’s boxing legend (expensive, no extras).

Spain (Un) censored season continues at the BFI Southbank.

ICO Essentials: The Secret Masterpieces of Cinema has six themed programmes on a national tour. One of my only other inmates for the screening Philip French (The Observer) quipped something about canapes (I'm sure he won't mind that little indiscretion). But you could live on canapes like these for years and not go hungry.

And there’s always loads of good theatre in London but this week is a bumper crop made all the more galling given the unencouraging funding news from the Arts Council and the British Council (BBC Nightwaves Jan 14):

New Neil LaBute play at the Bush Theatre, interview on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row (Tues Jan 15)

New David Hare play The Vertical Hour, Broadway now at the Royal Court. BBC Radio 4’s Front row interview (Wed 16 Jan-only available for a week,alas)

And the restored stage on which Shakespeare plays were first performed the Rose Theatre in Kingston (a bit of a trek if no car) opens tonight with the theatre’s passionate supporter Sir Peter Hall directing Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Front Row interview (Thurs Jan 17)

And Radiohead gave a free gig this week playing their new album in full In Rainbows plus encore!.

And classical singer Mark Padmore blows the whistle on rehearsal scrooging in BBC Radio 3's Music Matters (podcast too). Conductor Valery Gergiev blows some steam too.