London's burning and other regional cities followed suit. The impression, at least, our newspapers gave the world. Yet London's West End is perfectly normal, no more, no less than ever before-the same twittering bullshit, petit alliances, pretense of normality, total lack of privacy and absence of anything less than banal. This week's film releases seem as if history was already writ. You could feel tensions in the city's tentacles at least 5 years ago. But to have spoken its name would be to own up to a terrible truth of democracy. Once again, the Metropolitan police have shot dead a suspect. Not a regular occurrence but you only need one match with which to start a fire. The Brazilians were more level-headed after the Met Police shot dead one of their own (Mr. Menezes). But few ever wish to confront such a naked flame.
Angry Police We made decisions while politicians were on holiday
The Interrupters is released this week.
Did Amy Winehouse die from a broken heart and did anyone ever really keep an eye on that porcelain breath? Or were the seismic jolts from the police, from the press, from the nay-sayers just too much to bear in the end. Her fans were her solace. I joked to someone a few weeks before, that with her money she could've/should've moved to Malibu for a bit and bought that classic recording studio going for a song instead of splurging on her Camden pile. Like that other singer who'd recovered in Nashville. Probably that just wouldn't have been Amy. She now rests is peace and the world's non-conformists and dreamers will have an inextinguishable flame.
Nick Godwyn wrote a wonderfully honest tribute in the Saturday Review of The Times (July 30)
One Rio de Janeiro police officer Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura) confronts the naked flame in Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (a sequel set 13 years after the 2007 original). The territory of this film may seem all too familiar - corrupt politicians in league with corrupt cops - fictional with "similarities to real events" (Brazilian audiences of 10 million in its first 9 weeks of release). But writer/director José Padilha gives faces and lives to these people, and though its an action film certainly on par with Hollywood, you leave the cinema wondering (if you hadn't already) just what your own government's "loathsome interests" hasn't been telling its people. Interestingly the film isn't attacking policing as such; rather the abuse of power. Moreover, Nascimento tries to impress upon his own teenage son how important it is to be ready to fight in order to be able to enjoy peace.
More abuse of power in Lee (Once Were Warriors) Tamahori's The Devil's Double - the story of Uday Hussein (one of Saddam's sons) and his body double Latif (Brit actor Dominic Cooper believably impressive as both). The director freely admits he was aiming at making a gangster pic with all the garishness of Scarface and "the obscene bad taste of wealth". The Tamahori choice to verge on savage satire works well though some may wish for more socio-political depth of field.
A wonderful surprise on Eureka DVD is Imamura Shôhei 's wide-screen B/W (beautifully restored print) Pigs and Battleships (Buta to gunkan, 1961) centering on a small Japanese fishing port transformed by the presence of a US naval base. Small-time yakuza (lead female Haruko [Yoshimura Jitsuko] contemptuously
calls them chinpira, meaning ‘punks’ or ‘would-be yakuza’) control the tiny town including pig breading. Haruko's boyfriend is the endearingly awkward Kinta - the yakuza's scapegoat. This gangster comedy (with an exciting painfully bitter-sweet finale) is certainly the equal in all respects of Hollywood product at the time (even a little reminiscent of Minnnelli's Some Came Running, 1958) ending. Imamura' "didn’t find the atmosphere of Shochiku [film studio] at all inspiring (least of all his stint as Ozu’s lowest assistant director) and needed little encouragement to jump ship to [the more commercial] Nikkatsu" notes Tony Raynes in the DVD booklet. Imamura's first feature Stolen Desire (Nusumareta yokujô, 1958) ,also on the DVD, exhibits the director's same comedic touch on a group of struggling travelling actors.
Another thoroughly enjoyable 'evening in' from Eureka (no sycophancy needed only justly deserved) is Jean Epstein's silent 1923 Cœur fidèle (Faithful Heart): "You might say it’s the least bad of my films," the director is quoted, "And, in fact, by dint of this desired, studied, concentrated banality, I made a rather strange film which possesses nothing of the melodrama beyond its surface appearance." If you knew nothing of Epstein or his film theories you'd watch this film and go WOW! that's not at all like a boring silent movie;) such is Epstein's modern movie-making skills. Epstein himself again (quoted from Eureka's DVD booklet):
"If you must say about a film that it has beautiful sets, I think it would be better not to speak about it at all; the film is bad. The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari [Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1920] is the best example of the misuse of sets in cinema. Caligari represents a serious cinematographic malady: the hypertrophy of a subordinate feature accorded to what is an “accident” at the expense of the essential...shoddy expressionism ready-made for thirty francs.”
Henri Langlois' following text first appeared in Cahiers du cinéma, no. 24, June 1953:
"For everyone else, Cœur fidèle was a point of departure; for Epstein, it was only a point of arrival. He was through with the discoveries of our first avant-garde; he was eager to test himself on a simpler story, on a slower type of movement." Rapid editing technique had been almost perfected by Abel Gance in his La Roue (The Wheel, 1923) who at the Palais du Festival in Cannes 1953 paid tribute to Epstein the "extraordinary and unrecognised thinker and philosopher...and, like a true sorceror, he went so far as to penetrate the mysteries of the fringes of interference between images of the automaton strangling the inventor."
"In The Senses Epstein explains that because stories do not exist in life, they have no place in cinema. The cinema is true; a story is false. [He] believed that narrative served only to strangle the drama and emotion in cinema, the proper place for narrative was the theatre and the novel, and it was within these forms that such devices should be dominant." Epstein believed in a film theory of photogénie. "I would describe as photogenic any aspect of things, beings or souls whose moral character is enhanced by filmic reproduction. And any aspect not enhanced by filmic reproduction is not photogenic, plays no part in the art of cinema...[ the camera grants] a semblance of life to the objects it defines.”"
As I first noted, you'd don't need to read the DVD booklet first to immediately appreciate all those qualities in Cœur fidèle. They just leap out at you from the screen e.g depth of field, the very unstagy acting, even the damp, depressing walls (wonderfully visible in the restored print) seem more like the work of a contemporary film art director not one from 1923. Quite simply, I was blown away by this DVD. And it's such a sad comment on our existence that Epstein's talents went so unrecognised during his lifetime.
A more familiar name is Alain Resnais whose Last Year at Marienbad (UK DVD), recently re-released, divided critics into either the still fascinated or still totally bored i.e. ponderous. In fact most of his oeuvre is of much the same divide. There was the failed, fascinating comic book musical I Want to Go Home (1989), the singular Stavisky with a rare Stephen Sondheim score, or his Providence (1977) with an amazing cast that included John Gielgud. And so many, many more films.
Just out on DVD are two early classics Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard) (1955), and Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). The latter, his 1st feature (with a Marguerite Duras script) is considered part of the ground-breaking 'modernist vein' in cinema and it would be intriguing to know what Epstein would have thought of this (he died in 1953) given the film's refusal to follow traditional narrative in its quest for "inconsolable memory". Night and Fog also divides opinion: a half hour film about the holocaust! It's distancing effect is almost Brechtian - the film gives you crucial facts but they barely scratch the surface, it elicits a gut-wrenching emotional response yet never allows such an indulgence. This is no Shoah (1985) nor was ever meant to be. Yet there are three lines of narration that leap out grabbing the viewer (and indeed is that one and the same as the listener?): “Is it in vain that we try to remember?”. "We pretend it only happened once." "At least they tried." (in reference to the Nazi's recycling of their victims' bodies and belongings) Resnais seems not so much to be making a documentary about the past but a film about the present and the future. How can one remember something that you've never experienced? Or indeed relate in any meaningful way except for platitudinous grief. Is the film not asking how can we possibly respect history (or even the future) if there's little chance of really understanding it from the remains of what we are proffered?
Hiroshima Mon Amour (Criterion DVD)
Night and Fog (Criterion DVD)
Chris Marker was an assistant on Night and Fog and has gone on to be one of the most discussed figures in avant-garde cinema and photography. “The Sorbonne [University] should be razed and Chris Marker put in its place,” wrote fellow French writer Henri Michaux. Optimum DVD releases his three important films: the 28min narration of still photos La jetée (1962), Level Five (1996) and Sans Soleil(1983): "I've been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me...small fragments of war enshrined in everyday life...the fragility of those moments suspended in time...memories whose only function of being to leave behind nothing but memories." His faux narrator travels to the locations of Hitchcok's Vertigo: "From this fake tower—the only thing that Hitchcock had added—he imagined Scotty as time's fool of love, finding it impossible to live with memory without falsifying it." So much has been written about Marker that it seems almost superfluous to the films themselves. If Godard is Brecht then for all its Marxist leanings, Marker is the melancholic romancer of Mouladji's song Un jour tu verras (One day you will see) that plays out the final credits of Level Five. Marker is all to do with projected futures that are predicated on a projected past, predicated on a projected present, projected on a forgotten future.
Sander Lee even wrote an essay for Senses of Cinema, Platonic Themes in Chris Marker’s La Jetée - "Like Plato’s philosopher, the protagonist in La Jetée cares more for his internal vision of the truth than for the objects and shadows coveted by most other people." In Sans Soleil the ill-fated Guinea-Bissau Carnation Revolution of 1974 is constantly referred to like an old refrain that holds hope for the future but with a bitter memory of past's reality: "And beneath each of these faces a memory. And in place of what we were told had been forged into a collective memory, a thousand memories of men who parade their personal laceration in the great wound of history." If you visit Chris Marker, you visit a world that is tragic, spontaneous, exhilarating, the nadir of human existence. But also by its very nature pragmatically romantic - or should that be the other way round right side up?
Brit director Duncan Jones follows his successful Moon with Source Code (just out on DVD) an absorbing and intriguing thriller predicated on the ideas of quantum physics - and it's much more fun not knowing too much about the film before watching it. Suffice to say the Jake Gyllenhaal's wounded Afghan war Black Hawk chopper pilot is manipulated by scientists to enter parallel time frames hoping that Chicago will be saved from annihilation. Even more absorbing because it's exactly where real life science is heading in understanding the curvature of time following in the footsteps of Einstein. And a film that'll stay rattling about in your head. Some good DVD extras too - 20min of a prof explaining all the film's science, cast interviews and an audio commentary from Mr. Jake, Duncan Jones and the screenwriter. The latter extra is interesting principally for showing just how a healthy collaborative process can lead to a film much more than the sum of a team's parts. Ego is blown out the window here (well, almost from Mr. Jake but then he's a lead actor so sorta excused;)
"There are some things in life that you just can't change [or words to that effect]"muses Freida Pinto in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Director Rupert Wyatt certainly proved that his debut The Escapist (also with Brian Cox) wasn't just a flash in the pan - everything in his latest is exciting yet restrained, informative yet never dull. (Weta Digital's [Avatar, Lord of the Rings] special effects are awesome, but it's a shame Patrick Doyle's music score isn't as fearsomely inventive as Jerry Goldsmith's original) The film's premise is one that initially makes one cringe. Not a remake of the original Planet of the Apes but almost a pre-quel/sequel. A drugs corp Gen-Sys is testing a virus on chimps that has proved restores brain tissue i.e. Alzheimer's cure=big bucks=corporate kudos. However, their chimp goes berserk and gets shot. No wonder, there's a hidden baby at stake. Back to Will Rodman's (James Franco) suburbia, and in a cardboard box arrives the baby chimp Caesar (later enacted by Andy Serkis). What transpires owes a lot to the true story of the baby chimp Nim - which James Marsh has doco assembled and is also released this week as Project Nim .
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is film studio entertainment but it's also quite a lot more than that reminding the general public of questions and implications surrounding the animal testing of drugs let alone the moral debate. And it reminds one of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park who didn't take long to work out that the electric fence was no longer operational. What is man actually controlling? Is he really in charge of his own destiny? Does man even know what he wants to be when he's grown up? If you've read the book or heard the story of Project Nim this doco will still captivate every human demographic, simply because Nim is so 'human'. And again, it begs debate on human freedom and incarceration, of how we want all people to be equal but could/will never be by their very nature. Much like his Man on Wire Marsh sculpts his documentary with music and artistically shot interviewees so the whole thing resembles 'a performance'. It is none the less for that and arguably none the better. But the reality of Nim is just so human it will break your heart (that's if you still have one).
And just in case you're not convinced of how powerful chimps can be: Chimp attack woman reveals her new face
Also arriving in a cardboard box (this time into a Manhattan pad) is one of the teeny blue creatures (originally a Belgian comic book) of The Smurfs. Akin to Enchanted, they're chased by an evil wizard out of their happy mythical village and stumble into a vortex that dumps everyone into Central Park. Now: though the special effects may not be quite as inventive as one might wish for, Rob Engle's 3D effects (Phil Méheux as cinematographer) is thankfully perfect (just as well as Sony are the frontrunners in promoting the stuff!) i.e. 3D doesn't have to be dark and the gradation of light and shade here is as good as standard 35mm cameras. While the mix of animation (the Smurfs) and live action isn't cringe-worthy either. What's more: an adaptation that could be so, so naff is actually bristling with wit and charm. It'd be hard for tiny tots and adults not to exit the cinema grinning from ear to ear. As for your teenagers, well, just hope that when you get back they're not burning down the family home or frying your computer hard-drive. You never know they might actually find the digital antiquity of Chris Marker's Level Five rather fascinating if you leave it playing. As for the politics...
Or they may just poke cathartic fun at you if the teenagers are taken along to Salt of Life (Gianni e le Donne). Gianni (played by the director himself Gianni Di Gregorio) lives in middle-class Rome retirement with his rarely seen wife, caretaker, and loving teenage daughter (stringy boyfriend in toe) with wrinkly charming tippling mum playing bridge (or is it poker) with her friends in leafy seclusion, not that she ever stops beckoning poor Gianni for favours. Teenagers might enjoy Gianni's antics of chasing after a mistress - and it's always endearing never seedy (not that we know of anyway!). He's still able to do a yoga 'downward dog' - though may have a bit more trouble lifting his leg. He even inadvertently experiences an LSD trip walking the dog (canine one). Is this the life that 'rounds our little sleep' asks the film? Is there ever any more than this? The film doesn't judge, doesn't probe, doesn't prod. Lucky are the ones who can fall gently asleep without the pain of existence weighing them down even before the first earthy sod hits the casket.
HAL dreamt of a chimp hiding his sock beneath a lily-pad before he fell asleep forever and a day...Cocoloco..coco.co.c________
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