Did you read of the pregnant woman having to walk the rail tracks escaping her trapped train only to be confronted by police officers to whom she had to justify her actions (along with other passengers)? And more allegations of The News of the World phone hacking. "Deplorable" said Mr. Murdoch, News International's proprietor. Too little too late? If other organisations are anything to go by, there may be a trickle down effect but often very little trickles up! (There is, of course, a lot of benefit of the doubt itself in that statement.) But when in the bigger picture will it all stop and when will it all get better?
BBC Radio 4 Profile of investigative reporter Nick Davies
This year's Cannes fest winner The Tree of Life was finally distributed by Fox Searchlight (a News Corporation stablemate). It's director Terrence Malick has been dubbed a maverick and one of the few directors in the world whose films are awaited with hushed awe among the critical fraternity. Having mentioned 'the law' in paragraph 1, most films this week indeed orbit that subject. Malick's film opens with a supertitle from the Book of Job "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?" - his female protagonist wife (Jessica Chastain) extolling the virtues of 'grace': "the only way to be happy is to love...do good to them...wonder, hope". Moreover, Malick seems to be embrassing the philosophy of Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace): the qualities of grace being such that they are immune to the laws of gravity. And while many will feel that Malick's use of space and cosmos imagery (a little akin to Kubrick's in 2001: A Space Odyssey - effects maestro Douglas Trumbull in fact worked on both films) is unnecessary and pretentious, the director's vision is indeed just that and one that he follows with utter surety. It brings to mind the clip in the YouTube Life in a Day in which a husband is reciting Walt Whitman poetry to his wife who juggles two babies yet only berates him for laziness and inconsequence.
And it's certainly arguable whether Malick ever succeeds in promulgating his vision of humanity to a 'broader church'. But in Malick's defence his story of a church going 50s Texas family (the stern father-Brad Pitt), juxtaposed to the eldest son (Sean Penn) now matured into the modern day metropolis as an architect, is all to do with gravity and where 'grace' might lie. The film jump cuts, lists, swerves, hovers while never quite touching anything long enough to fall. It's a film full of tender and cruel moments like our own memories that we simultaneously cherish and trash in frustration upon reflection. It's a film at one and the same time deeply religious and yet deeply critical of religion's hypocrisy. Much as what lead Simone Weil into her unique Christian philosophy. Above all it's a film about the duality of love and survival; of how we must simultaneously trust each quality whilst never succumbing to the gravitational pull of the other.
Yuya Ishii's Sawako Decides (trailer)is one of the few wonderful Japanese films that has managed to secure distribution outside its homeland (Dear Doctor from last year's London Film Festival remains unbefriended). Like many Japanese films it's all to do with family and how one copes with the contradictions of independence and attachment. Sawako (Hikari Mitsushima) ran off from her family's freshwater clam farm in the countryside, a boy towing her to Tokyo. She returns rather reluctantly 5 years hence with another - his daughter not hers in tow (her 5th boy and 5 jobs later) to see her dying father. The tree of this film is a very disgruntled one cursing the roots it placed in government promises of prosperity and confidence. 'Thoughtful, funny, uplifting' would be the poster tag for this film. But thankfully it's far more than just that trinity of salesmanship.
"I can't understand people who say that childhood is the happiest time of one's life." says the orphaned 8 year-old Ana (Ana Torrent), as an adult (Geraldine Chaplin). Carlos Saura's Raise Ravens (Cría Cuervos) (1976) has another adult desperately trying to make sense of what was. For Ana, remembering or re-assembling her childhood past (the last days of Franco's Spanish regime) is somewhat sado-masochistic. By filling the void of memory or rather lack of understanding Ana kids herself that she has made her life whole again. A sugar rush that forever dwindles into despair.
And if one had the choose of taking their enlightened teenager (indeed some are still allowed to thrive;) to see either Disney's Prom or Greg Araki's Kaboom? Disney can do 'edge' within it's happy realm but it's usually confined to animated characters. Any chance of another Enchanted anytime soon? A shame Prom's cheerleader couldn't end up with the cute geek who turned out to be gay (but not quite) but who had a friend who everyone thought was, you know, but wasn't (almost). Innuendo is possible in a G rating. The closest we get in Prom is the poking of a pencil. Still, great acting all round.
Araki wanted his film to "exist on its own terms and vibrate at its own anomalous frequency". His tale of American college freshmen (and women) is intimate, quirky and cool until in the final quarter angsty paranoid gloom prevails and he discovers his estranged Dad has become Mr. Doomsday. But maybe the young Smith (Thomas Dekker) is also attempting to fill that void of memory. Some great lines abound in Araki's script, though: "Dude, it's a vagina, not a bowl of spaghetti." Oh sweet mystery of youth I've found you...
Actor David Schwimmer (on the board of directors for the Rape Foundation in Santa Monica, California) explores the issues of teenage 'grooming' and sexual encounter with older men in Trust (Lionsgate is UK distributor). The 14 year old Annie (a totally believable Liana Liberato) strikes up an internet/text relationship with the much older Charlie (Chris Henry Coffey) and you can guess the rest. If it weren't for Liberato's deeply nuanced, affecting performance Schwimmer's film would probably not have the impact it does. And you do begin wondering about this when the director neatly sews everything up in a moralising end credit coda. It's politically ney morally incorrect for us to feel any empathy for Charlie but that's how Annie feels. What's interesting about the film is that for the mostpart Annie doesn't feel like a victim of Charlie more one of society's mores. The adults, meanwhile, attempt to impress upon you (and her) that such empathy is misplaced.
It's a script needing several more re-writes if one wants a film that lives up to what one senses are Schwimmer's more chiaroscuro intentions. We get it: Annie's Dad (Clive Owen) works for an ad company that of course markets sexily to teenagers etc etc. He becomes somewhat of an incensed vigilante even committing GBH at a netball game on someone who vaguely resembles a pedophile in a photo he's seen. He's, of course, instantly forgiven. Not bloody likely in America. Out for dinner and drinks his ad buddy innocently banters chat-up with the quite normal flirtatious 19 year old waitress and then sprouts sexual innuendo to his mate. We get it. What we don't get is what we experience from Liberato's performance as Annie.
Her trust in Dad snaps as she learns that her older brother's been told of the incident as they discuss his new girlfriend while enjoying an extended family dinner: she socks her disgust at that hypocrisy to the assembled. Scenes like this show Annie's strength rather than vulnerability. So why does Mr. Schwimmer feel the need to tow a moral line rather than trusting his material and performers - the latter are all so tremendous. Annie is done a disservice by a film that allows her to remain a victim. Would the investigating police really prejudice their case by showing Annie photos of other girls, prefaced by the info that their rape cases match the DNA of Charlie? Perhaps so. But the film results more in promulgating a law to help and condemn adult morality rather than offer any consolation to girls like Annie. Why does age of consent differ in different countries? Are girls of those ages any more/less vulnerable? Any more/less able to judge for themselves. Of course not. It isn't what this film is about but THIS seems to be the film Schwimmer really wanted to make. His direction of Liberato is just too full of care and compassion of a young human being to say otherwise. While the world chokes on the hypocrisy of agism, the law is like democracy: it's far from perfect but it's all we have to combat the darkness of its alternative.
The stylised comic-book-esque Super is another case in point. Should Frank 'the Crimson Bolt' (Rainn Wilson) and Libby 'Boltie' (Ellen Page) really be allowed to clean-up crime on our screens? Seemingly no subtlety to be found here only a helluva lot of fun from writer/director James Gunn. But he found a way to entertain whilst acknowledging the widespread moral rectitude debate in America - Gunn was influenced by reading William James' 1902 book The Varieties of Religious Experience. Ellen Page, as always, bounces around and out of that screen like a dog never ceasing to search for its ball.
The Devil's Rock mixes Nazi occult with the vampiric devil in a New Zealand three-hander (basically) set in the Channel Islands. It sounds dire but is surprisingly well done with few tricky camera moves or effects relying almost solely on the actors' ability to convince. You even get used to the Nazi sporting a Kiwi accent. What's not to like...
"Ignorance is never dead, it's even making progress" director Bertrand Tavernier said of his latest film The Princess of Montpensier (based on Madame de La Fayette's novel). This director's greatest skill has always been to get into the heart of his characters whether they be the police, a jazz musician, a school teacher or in this case the Princess Marie (Melanie Thierry) in 1562 France trying to assert her independence of heart and mind in a world dominated by male political power struggle. It's a film whose invisible orbit is of "realities we cannot see" and make sense of. Marie is uneducated and yet uncalculating. Ultimately, did she get the life she desired or has she fallen victim of it the film seems to ask? Some may prefer the period contemporaneous immediacy of Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard. Tavernier goes for precise detail such as the scrutinising of Marie's hymen blood on wedding night showing us that the moral and political absurdities of our modern world aren't very far at all from those of 1562.
Lots of Tavernier titles with commentaries from him e.g. L.626, L'Horloger de Saint Paul (The Watchmaker of St. Paul)
Bridesmaids needs no introduction after its enormous success all sides of the globe. So is it as good as...? Well, yes, pretty much, given that it's the sort of film outre comedienne Sarah Silverman outgrew in her mind years ago and one she could take her mum to without causing much offence (assuming her mum is a universal one;) And all the gags are funny because real life is the basis for their wicked wit. Even Brit's own Chris O'Dowd (from TV sitcom The IT Crowd) fits in perfectly - gentle nature, accent and all - as of all things a cop who falls for Annie (Kristen Wiig) after pulling over her car. And it's produced by Judd Apatow of Knocked Up fame etc.
Only one line rings slightly awkwardly when at the very end Annie jokes to the sky marshall she caused havoc with on a flight (all's now well and he's even invited to the party), "I put a gun in your carry-on". Now if Silverman delivered that line it would be funny. Here in Bridesmaids it seems to need an addition like 'joking' as ballast. And if there's a criticism of the film it would be that we should laugh through our tears for Annie rather than just with her. Not the fault of Wiig who always suggests that in her performance (and she's far less trouble, well not quite, and irritation than the sister in Mike Leigh's Another Year.) And what is nice about the film is that it never makes fun of one character or lifestyle ( e.g. Helen's perfectly manicured rich life and actions) over another. A touch of Hannah and Her Sisters wouldn't go astray, though.
Treasures of Heaven: Saints, relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe sounds dull. But in fact it would be even more interesting than it already is if the British Museum's show told us who, exactly, were these Catholic saints whose intriguing reliquaries to this day have devotees in their thousands. A 3 minute video reminding us of contemporary icons (as diverse as eg Princess Diana, Elvis Presley, Lenin) isn't a crowd pleasing afterthought in the last alcove either. Rather, its germane to the whole idea of the exhibition. Fragments of the dead that allow some of us to continue the struggle for our gift of life.
BBC Radio 3's Discovering Music explores the contemporaneity of Ockeghem's C15 Requiem Mass.
This week's The Choir is also worth a listen.
And of course the annual BBC Proms springs into action next Saturday.
BBC4's Troubadours: The Rise of the Singer Songwriter (also out on Universal DVD) is Morgan Neville's doco on the famed Los Angeles club of the title. "By 1970 the heart of 60s rock was going down...losing it's energy and needed time to take its breath...and this was when this singer/songwriter movement was at its most powerful" according to Robert Hilburn of the LA Times. Much of the doco centres on Carole King and James Taylor who returned to celebrate the club's 50th anniversary in 2007 and the 2010 reunion tour.
King: there was "a hunger for the intimacy, the personal thing that we did".
Jackson Browne: "the authenticity of somebody telling their own story was what people were interested in". Doug Weston's Troubadour club was also the start of Elton John's career amongst many, many others. Steve Martin: "It wasn't so much, 'I want to be an artist', it was that 'I want to make it' ...here's how you make it, 'to be an artist'." Neville's doco wisely focusses on how the music of the club germinated rather than the personal trials and tribulations (drugs and otherwise) of his interviewees though James Taylor is as candid as one could get in a chat filmed with Carole King. And though the subject of this musical era has been covered by others (e.g. the BBC series Hotel California that follows tonight's airing of Troubadours), as with all Neville's docos, the director always finds the personal stories that make the relatively unknown history spring to new life rather than melancholy.
In celebration of the re-release of The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) there will be specially arranged bike tours of historic cinematic sites (July 29-31).
For scooter enthusiasts there's always Tom Hanks pootling round LA in Larry Crowne - an idealised life perhaps but so is the one politicians wish us to live. Tom Hanks should know he gets to have dinner with them all;) Still, on its own terms, the film's not all that bad, come on. And why you may ask is Optimum releasing a film with so little 'edge' (Universal in the States): it's produced with its French owner Studio Canal.
A Separation sounds fairly plodding but one shouldn't be deterred by the storyline. In fact it's the very intricacies of the film's plot that make it more akin to a subtle low key police thriller than the social realism that also it is obviously. Equally, the fact that the film is set in Iran and is Muslim in nature in no way limits the film's resonance to a capital city like Berlin, Paris or London. It deservedly scooped this year's awards in Berlin with its writer/director Asghar Farhadi paying tribute to his imprisoned colleague director Jafar Panahi. Farhadi's film seems to ask what does the law mean to us as normal human beings? We may transgress it but not necessarily ourselves and vice versa. When does a white lie become rather more black and so on? Sony Classics picked up the film for US distribution and its easy to see why.
Marcel van Eeden's new show at Sprüth Magers Lee asks us to consider our relationship to historical narrative. Initially you wonder why that in 2011 the artist is presenting what looks like narrative fictions exclusively in pencil. Surely this is 80s/90s work before the internet truly went berserk in deconstructing our world order. You read the press release and are still a little mystified. You go back to the walls yet they seem odd - the placement of the drawings, the colour of the walls. This isn't even just a constructed fictional set of narratives. If one were to move a drawing you feel that it would leave a trace on the wall. When the artist himself explained, the sense of the show was indeed as simple and complex as one wondered. Every historical narrative is of course a construct. Only a fraction of the truth (if that) is ever present in the representation of any narrative e.g. if the government didn't tell us that then what else didn't/aren't they telling us? In theory the internet should be making us conform to such narratives less and yet the opposite seems to be happening. Plus ça change...
Last fortnight's film Potiche rather appositely opened this year's Transylvannia International Film Festival. For another week at the Romanian Cultural Institute is the exhibition In the Light of Utopia showcasing experimental art of the late 1960s from a group of Timisoara-based artists. The catalogue's opening paragraph: "The artists' individual searches sometimes lead them to the most dissimulated, labyrinthine spaces of a line of thought, which shunts the surrounding reality aside. The searches take them to the secret locations, jealously kept away from the outsiders' looks, wear the most daring concepts arise, bearing the mark of idealism. This line of thought, fed by inner phantasms, gives rise to chimeras or utopias, eclectic sets of dreams or goals, replacing the surrounding world. Chacun sa Chimère, Baudelaire used to write, pointing to the diversity of these phantasms, which can take a variety of arbitrary shapes measured against individual standards."
Liliana Mercioiu Popa's Elliptical Construction was made in response to Romania's 2001 election - simple grey boxes containing word actions, "nothing coherent and constructive...it doesn't matter what one says only how one wins their audience." It's an art work certainly equal to any in major museums and one's not quite sure whether it's allowable to kick or move the boxes around. Great piece for kids too. When Sean Penn looks up at those skyscrapers in The Tree of Life it reminds us (and probably him) of what it was to grow tall thence taller. We thought the world was unknowable it was so big and when we return to such a place we wonder at how on earth the world could possibly have tricked us. And how indeed it continues to do so.
...this dark ceiling without a star
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