Walter Black (Mel Gibson) is the recovering alcoholic, depressive, toy company CEO of the Jodie Foster directed The Beaver . The title refers to the Cockney accented animal 'ventriloquist' hand puppet through which Black relates to both his estranged wife (Foster) and kids and the outside world. Kyle Killen's script had been dancing the Hollywood rounds garnering 1st place on the 2008 Black List survey of best un-produced screenplays. Thankfully producer Steve Golin (Anonymous Content) decided to shoulder the risk. There are resonances of the Robin Williams' vehicle World's Greatest Dad whose anti-hero stops living the lie (for which he's been amply rewarded) and tells the penultimate truth about his dead son. And in many ways that film's script is far more astute than Killen's The Beaver.
Both celluloid dads appear on a network TV show - ostensibly inspiring the world to better love and understanding. Robin Williams' dad is practically pissing himself with constipated laughter though it's perceived by the audience and host as tears. Gibson's 'Beaver' dad is totally sincere in his breakfast TV spot as he self-performs open-heart surgery on his condition: "it's crazy pretending to be happy". Mel Gibson is one of those rare breed; both a fine actor and a movie star. (I was lucky enough to see him, as Biff, every night on stage pre-stardom, break his father's heart Willy Loman (Warren Mitchell) in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman). Gibson 'acts' too much in The Beaver. He doesn't inhabit that alternative world of quiet, noble, witless desperation that only a comedian like Robin Williams has visited. Once one has become a construct of the befuddled world and seen it (as if through the eyes of the Ridley Scott's Blade Runner android) there is no turning back. Some go on flailing revenge for something that they could never have been. Others only watch, refraining comment. Which lily pads of dreams will survive the surface tension of the pond? The Beaver is a wistful film about life wrestling on the river bank. But the Kyle Killen/Jodie Foster/Mel Gison Walter Black could have been a contender. He could have been Willy Loman.
When it was announced last year that Ridley and Tony Scott (together with Youtube) were seeking worldwide clip submissions for the feature length Life in a Day one thought this is either gonna be really naff or quite wonderful. 80,000 videos of July 24, 2010 daily life on the planet were submitted and director Kevin Macdonald alongside editor Joe Walker whittled it all down and added a music score by Harry Gregson-Williams. It's all a thoroughly engaging 90 minutes with a great end credit sequence. And not getting the penultimate clip that someone hastily taped a few minutes to the midnight deadline would have completely changed the impact of the entire film. Without 'spoiler alert' a girl mused whether all our daily lives are actually that interesting? And there are many moments in the film where, in retrospect, you feel more like a 'save the planet' campaign video had been thrust upon one rather than a reality check. There's little anger, violence, obscenity etc etc in the finished film to upset our sensibilities - surely not so in 80,000 videos! Life in a Day is an unashamedly life-affirming movie waving rather than wearing a sting in its tell-tale heart.
Many will find greater sustenance in Jean-Luc Godard's latest opus Film Socialisme (not released till July 8) shot on low-res video. The subtitles for the multi-lingual exchanges are simply a trinity of words and Godard terms the film "A symphony in three movements": THINGS SUCH AS, OUR EUROPE, OUR HUMANITIES. "Ideas separate us, dreams bring us together."
Matt Porterfield’s Putty Hill (at the ICA) is a psuedo-doco about family bereavement using non-professional actors (apart from singer Sky Ferreira) - the director stating “an interest in the world first and storytelling second”. Too often, though, one feels Porterfield's interest, rather than the world's existence. And in this regard, it's a far cry from the work of say Kevin Jerome Everson.
Whether the sexual boredom of marriage in Jonathan Newman's rather lame London set Swinging with the Finkels bears any resemblance to the bedroom antics of our fair city I wouldn't know - I think most of such-like prefer going out for a 'dog' don't they? American movie talent (in both senses of the word) Jerry Stiller (Seinfeld)/Mandy Moore share the screen with Brit TV talent (both senses) Martin Freeman/Angus Deayton. This blend results in rather obviously odorous joss sticks that get up your nose rather than more refined, sinuously fragranced incense getting the mood up. In that sense I guess it is quite representative of a London demographic;)
More stimulating is a new book launched yesterday at the Courtauld Institute Girls! Girls! Girls! in contemporary art (edited by Catherine Grant and Lori Waxman, Intellect Books) on the representation of girlhood in contemporary art photography. In short, why for so many years has the more explicit work (e.g 'panty photos') of girls/women by women been deemed exploitative? I'm reminded that Scotland Yard police a few years ago shut off the Tate Modern room of Richard Prince's 'teen Brooke Shields' photo whereas it had been publicly exhibited at major American galleries without any drama. Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge in the Courtauld gallery should ruffle fewer feathers;) Even fewer than Hugh Heffner's new Playboy Club in Mayfair? Straights fighting over the fig-leafs of gays? No wonder the dodo became extinct? I guess those birds just fluffed their lines too many times in the evolutionary cycle.
Not that you'd get to pick up much on the broadwalk of the South Bank except some driftwood and maybe used condoms along the beach at low tide. But, hey, they've really pulled out all the stops in pre-Olympic year to make this part of town sociable if not exactly exciting. The Eden Project has real grass and plants on what was a desolate concrete terrace now replete with bar; hidden away under the Royal Festival Hall is an exhibition of its conception and history; round the back of the 'bike sheds' you can snog your way through organic produce (and buy some decent incense). Or sit on the fake grass of the Royal National Theatre (they grew live stuff a few years ago courtesy of those grass sculptors whose names I always forget) and watch performances every day. A nice walk it is too past Oxo Wharf (where the inaugural Moving Image London fest takes temporary root during Frieze Art Fair Week later this year) and onto the Tate Modern.
Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape (on till Sept) is the artist's first major show in London since 1964. The Tate is plugging a political dimension to a life's work that has almost become its own ubiquitous wallpaper. But like all good retrospectives it's the trajectory from his earliest to late work that most fascinates in Miró. There's some early crap (sorry, adequate) Fauvist paintings but all those little childish spidery spirals are present even in the earliest 'landscape' paintings. Evolution is at work. An early sky at the top of a canvas bellows cylindrically. As the years progress, the spirals become tentacles, become tiny contemplative shoals in seas of massive colour.
There's certainly a repetitiveness to Miró's inspiration but always a movement towards something (so apt is the show's title). If you 'do' the last room first you think, here's a guy who's just run out of ideas and he's hurling buckets of paint at the canvas decades after Jackson Pollock. But go backwards, forwards, and back again and it's not like that at all. 'What happens to my little creatures if I throw paint at them?' the artist seems top ask. His Spanish contemporary Antoni Tàpies' accolade is so apposite (quoted in the Financial Times review): in his "infinite flux of nature...he showed us that we are all equal because we are all made from the stars themselves. He made the wretched see that they carried all the riches within themselves." But as we all know, especially in the wake of Spain's recent Socialist election slamming, equality doesn't necessarily lead to prosperity. Nor happiness.
No comments:
Post a Comment