Everyone who loves cinema has been waiting expectantly for Christopher Nolan's Inception - likewise Warner Brothers for an intelligent summer blockbuster (opening US/UK today). Well: as you'd expect, it certainly ain't boring even at 2.5 hours. But what at the end of the day what is Nolan's point? We never really know so we leave the cinema dissatisfied. And not in a joyful perplexed David Lynch way. In fact Inception seems to owe more to David Cronenberg’s stunning 1969 student film Stereo. And the film quotes the never ending Penrose stairs created by Lionel Penrose and his son Roger. By casting the petite 'girl next door' Ellen Page as the 'architect' (Ariadne, of course) of upside-down urban dreamscapes and inside out neural mazes- Escher optical illusions drunk on Piranesi ruins - there seems to be a referencing of Ayn Rand's male architect in her 1943 novel The Fountainhead (for which Rand wrote the Warner Brothers screenplay.)
"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision." - a Fountainhead quote on a Walt Disney Center plaque.
One could even argue that Leonardo Di Caprio's corporate spy mercenary Dom Cobb is akin to John Galt of Rand's Atlas Shrugged (1957) and that he's a sort of Batman/Clark Kent character diving into the minds of the rich to save the world. In accessing their dream states e.g. the corporate inheritance of Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy), is Nolan commenting ironically on Rand's idea that we are doomed by those who attempt to live through others, placing others above self? That the individual "must exist for his own sake neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself." (1962) On the contrary, Nolan seems to be siding more with Kantian philosophy (Rand's bête noire) that reason is unable to fully comprehend reality. But instead of us the audience rather smugly and happily experiencing this rollercoaster from the sidelines, we feel like the guy trying desperately to keep balance atop his giant medicine ball. Fun for a while but not hours on end. And perhaps the problem with Nolan's film is that he's trying to subvert Warners' action/heist genre while never really changing its conventions. He never acknowledges Edgar Allan Poe's verse "all that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream" but nods to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey - the rotating corridors/hotel room, the large opulent room empty except for the old man's death bed (another Warners film rather than e.g. Vincent Ward's What Dreams May Come ). Cobb himself tells Ariadne that you can't just use what you've seen but must imagine new realities in order to create the dream. Yet there is barely (if at all) a hint of surrealism in the film's imagery so Ariadne's potential to be a Leonora Carrington is stymied.
V & A's 1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces
The Serpentine's latest temporary summer pavilion's been designed by Jean Nouvel. More photos HERE.
Incisively curated (Emma Dexter and Oscar Humphries) show of post-WW2 art and furniture The Tightrope Walker at Timothy Taylor Gallery, including the oft overlooked wife of Hans Hartung, Anna-Eva Bergman and designer Charlotte Perriand.
Toy Story 3 seems to succeed far better in all this. Cobb's dad (Michael Caine) early on in Inception says wryly something to the effect that by giving a child the cuddly bear from childhood they thought it would make for happiness - visually reinforced in the film's final minute. Or as Lady Macbeth spake: "what's done cannot be undone". Inception has the happy ending of the heist movie: Cobb returns home. 'Bruce Willis' has dealt with all his demons in the process of defeating the bad guys. But The Thomas Crown Affair remake does this better. We never know the demons of either Pierce Brosnan's corporate guru turned art thief or Renee Russo's insurance investigator seduced by the intellect of her chase. The not knowing is all the more intriguing for us. The past may be a foreign country but they're still not doing things any differently there. "How do porcupines mate?" Crown asks his psychiatrist. "Very carefully" is her reply. Home is where the heart is - at least what's left of it without losing your mind.
Mind control is the name of the toys' game in Toy Story 3 when Andy's on the eve of college and his toys are packed off to the kids daycare home Sunnyside. Woody (Tom Hanks again), of course, is the only skeptical seer of the pack. Initially, Sunnyside's strawberry scented teddy bear Lotso (Lots-O'-Huggin Bear) lumbering on a walking stick appears a lovin' uncle. By night under the watchful CCTV controls of a wide-eyed cymbal clashin' monkey the home is a Stalinist state with Lotso's patrolling henchmen biding time by gambling. A nice irony that Lotso is voiced by Ned Beatty who was Academy Award nominated opposite Peter Finch in Paddy Chayefsky's 1977 Network - a vicious satire on network news control. As a kiddy’s film it's quite scary - but then probably no more so than the modern day playground, while at the same time being very funny indeed both for them and the adults. The Shrek sequel's not bad either but if there was a choice...
Toy Story 3 also references the heist movie genre in the playful manner of an Aardman animation never loosing momentum right to the very end. Having Buzz Lightyear temporarily switch to Spanish language mode (with requisite Flamenco dance moves) is a nice co-incidence with Spain's World Cup success this week (and a clever net to catch Latino audiences).
Everybody's Fine is out on DVD
Mega Piranha is that sort of film for when you have absolutely nothing else to do (or don't want to) - and that's not a scaly backed compliment. In fact its intentional 'B' movie acting style resembles Buzz Lightyear in all modes except Buzz dubbing is better. Its soundtrack is daytime TV serial deliriously endless and it's edit points always comedically spot on. A total waste of time in a totally fun way.
Birdemic: Schlock horrors that come low on the pecking order
The Concert is a feel good post-Communist comedy (Romanian/French director Radu Mihaileanu) that is beguiling if a little thin, though not in subject matter. Once leader of the Bolshoi Orchestra, Andrei's (Aleksei Guskov) Jewish ness demoted him to cleaner during Communist rule. Thirty years later the orchestra is to play the Châtelet in Paris and Andrei is determined to reunite his own orchestra in their place. Young violin virtuoso Anne-Marie (Mélanie Laurent who learnt violin for the role) harbours a longing to discover her childhood and family that's finally resolved.
Bluebeard (Barbe Bleu) (finally in the UK -IFC opened March in NYC) is Catherine Breillat's version of Charles Perrault's 1697 blood thirsty fairy tale of murdered wives hanging in the back room. "I like that Bluebeard isn't an ogre or a giant—he's a man. It struck me that girls read this tale at a very young age: I myself read it when I was five. It's a story that teaches these little girls to love the man who's going to kill them," said the director. Like all her films the camera in Bluebeard lingers long on character whereas Béla Bartók's well-known opera has only hints of a man rather than the monster. The only thing lacking in Bluebeard's regal life is someone whom he can trust unconditionally. The only thing, absolutely the only thing, he asks of his new young bride is not to use the tiny key he's given her. In Breillat's film one imagines it's the same request he made to his very first wife. Only then the room was probably empty.
Claire Denis is as strong as Breillat with her subjects and Isabelle Huppert's White Material white African coffee grower standing in the tide of revolution is relentlessly no exception.
Trust is also at the heart of the surprisingly engaging French kidnap film Rapt by actor turned writer/director Lucas Belveaux. At over 2 hours you'd think the film would sag yet it never does. Nor does it ever feel the urge to move on until characters have established themselves in a scene. There's nothing new here but the direction asks you to consider whether you've looked hard enough in Claude Chabrol fashion. It's almost blackly comedic when the released corporate tycoon returns to his family and his only real care is for his dog- oblivious to the forgiveness all around for his now public errant, salacious lifestyle.
Skeletons won its writer/director Nick Whitfield the Michael Powell Award for best new British feature at this year's Edinburgh Film Fest. Describing it as a Scottish Ghostbusters doesn't really do either film just favours. Skeletons is small, finely crafted (acting/cinematography) seemingly without big ambitions. In other words a very British film and the equal of most indie American comparisons. Whitfield's gentle comedy works just fine "a kind of surreal Laurel and Hardy" but perhaps what it needs is a touch of Catherine Breillat - Danish actress Paprika Steen being as always outstanding. Whitfield said himself that a favourite film of his "is Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven and the way that film is a benchmark for me. The camera doesn't ever want to be admired." Perhaps Whitfield will give Britain its next 'break-out' film. Or perhaps its quiet bigness may not be heard by all.
Derick Martini's US indie first feature Lymelife (written with his brother Steven) took over a year to be released here (April 2009 in the States) but its story of family meltdown or rather universal deficit of coagulation has its impetus in Charlie Bragg (Timothy Hutton) contracting the lethargic disease of the title's Lyme tick insect - an epidemic in suburban 70s Long Island. His wife Melissa (Cynthia Nixon) is supportive but finds sexual satisfaction elsewhere with Mickey Bartlett (Alec Baldwin showing nay-sayers that he really does do proper acting). While not quite on the level of Tamara Jenkins' The Savages, the Martini brothers are most impressively heading in that direction.
London River is Rachid (Days of Glory) Bouchareb's English language debut centred around the London bombings (tube and bus) 5 years ago with wonderful performances - as you'd expect from Brenda Bleythn alongside Sotigui Kouyate - both searching for their adult children gone missing that day. Co-incidence or not? Many will find this a deeply moving and cathartic film in large part to Bleythn's ability to be so ordinary and yet so magisterially humble. On perhaps the downside is the script's need to contexualise the parents' story with that of the day's events e.g. several scenes at the police station that add little to the power of the central performances. It isn't that they're not well played just that Bouchareb seems anxious to show the extra-ordinary of human nature in the simplicity of the ordinary. And his camera doesn't observe his supporting cast the way Mike Leigh can in that vein.
Catherine Breillat: "Isn't this the fundamental, selfish and cynical relationship of childhood with life: knowing that we are powerless, that we depend on adults for everything, and yet drawing our strength in the knowledge of our temporary immortality in relation to grown-ups. Knowing that we will live on after they disappear. I know that this is the way tales work. Life always gets the upper hand. For children, Nothing is really that frightening because Everything is frightening and they have faith in their lucky star."
Edgar Allan Poe: "Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence."
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