abide with me...

                                           w..h..e..r..e..

Writing these posts is a little like watching the films/DVD/art herein mentioned. Who will watch these, where will they wash up? Is it all worth it anyway seeing hundreds of films a year when one instead could be writing a screenplay , a novel, reading the complete works of a,b,c or d, travelling the world, or just helping other people. Maybe simply living life.  I’ve said before that I hate end of year ‘best of’ lists. But this year such a task became a purely selfish assessment of whether or not I’d wasted my year in seeing just too many images on those screens and not enough time on life itself. Though unlike many of my colleagues there was almost as much art tossing around in the visceral cauldron. And also unlike many of my colleagues I regularly go out with a camera and fascinate myself with capturing images. A past-time that again is very open to question these days with such a plethora of digital imagery. Yet with that plethora you’d assume the images had become more informative, more savvy. That somehow you’d plug the USB stick into your brain and the world would be seen with new eyes. But alas, no. People seem to see less clearly and ever more needy of mucking in with the aggregated image or news story. When I started taking celebrity/line-up ‘step and repeat’ photos that weren’t the norm, PRs often eyed me with strangeness. Why would you want to do that? Just as nobody is really interested anymore in a review that doesn’t appear in the week of a cultural product’s release. And it all became somewhat worrying. 

Hurricane Sandy hit. Then 2 months later the Sandy Hook massacre. A colleague offered (well, was asked) his opinion of this Flight review (NYFF world premiere) and he warned of conflating the artifice of film with real-life. A few weeks ago this article popped on my radar in Senses of Cinema. And one BBC radio reporter noted that the hundreds of journalists and their vans that had descended upon the little hamlet of Sandy Hook were probably more likely statistically to cause a fatality than any lone gunman.  A forensic psychologist on CNN vehemently reminded us that statistically you were also more likely to be struck by lightning than be mowen down by an errant gunman. A BBC radio Front Row report (Fri Dec 28) on British actors working in America was illuminating in making one aware of just how scared and therefore reluctant  were Americans  of a presentation of self that would be anything less than heroic, humane, good-natured and giving.  Well those in the States who support gun-ownership do so for the very reason that they believe many of their fellow citizens may not possess those noble qualities and may forcibly infringe their civil liberties of health, wealth and happiness. And they have a very strong point. What’s also interesting is that when credible interviewees from the somewhat Right mention in passing of the 2^nd Amendment protecting their rights to stand up to government if necessary, no interviewees (not even Piers Morgan on CNN) took up that point. And, again, it’s a view shared by many, many Americans. They consider that right democratic, and one that is enshrined in the constitution. 

It’s ironic that one of the year’s best films (and that’s a Planet Lucre year whose calendar probably owes more to the Mayans;) is Tarantino’s Django Unchained (UK released Jan 18)- a film that from beginning to end is redolent with gun violence. But as in the Westerns, Tarantino does very well with just a normal shooter rather than an assault weapon. OK it would be historically inaccurate to do so but you get the point. (Remember all the Reservoir Dogs ear dismemberment hoo-ha, when everything was suggested and you saw nothing?) Tarantino took an ear out of Hitchcock’s freezer of fear. Well-worth seeing the stellar cast lead by Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren in Hitchcock(UK released Feb 8) Hitch knew his audience and finally after all these years American TV networks have caught onto this (tired of having all the ratings stolen away by cable’s serial killer successes).

Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher does well without a semi-automatic: initially brute Reacher force, then of necessity a hand gun, then out of circumstance an assault rifle to kill the oodles of bad guys. But the Über bad guy Zek (the film director Werner Herzog) is dispatched with just one bullet. As in the final moment of This Must Be the Place. (One couldn’t help thinking that Herzog’s deadpan delivery would be so great for all the litany of possible side-effects warnings after TV drug ads.) Now where am I going with this argument- as if it wasn’t already obvious.

Quentin Tarantino: my inspiration for Django Unchained

It’s interesting that Jack Reacher’s author, the pseudonymous Lee Child, noted in an interview that it’s often the most meticulously research reality (i.e the counterfeiting of money in one novel) that readers deemed ‘unreal’. Reacher is a hero because he is an outsider. Is John Wayne in The Searchers a vigilante or a freedom fighter? If Reacher becomes a film franchise it’ll be interesting to see if Tom Cruise is able/will shift-shape his image from an out and out hero to the champion outsider. That’s where TV has moved to: no longer good guys defeating the bad guys but investigating what makes the bad guys tick). Willy Nelson (a supporter of gun control) in a recent CNN interview with Piers Morgan stated that he supported gun control but believed in hitting back if he were hit. A sentiment that arguably made Let the Right One In such a success. You start poking sticks down my borrow what do you expect will emerge? 

[After today’s (Thurs) aborted school shooting in California, a mention should be made of this year’s Bully – the clue is in the title - and distributor Harvey Weinstein fought hard to change the film’s ratingso that the kids the age of those in the film could see it in cinemas. If the modern day American equivalent of ‘hitting back’ is the ability to shoot everyone in sight either meditated or not then something obviously has to be done. But again, what do you say to a bullied kid whose complaints have been largely ignored for years? Gun control is a far bigger issue than just controlling the sale of guns whatever calibre. To at least live some sort of life the lawyer of kids who do kill will plead some sort of mental health issue. But most of such kids were likely to be perfectly normal until bullying drove them berserk.  Many people, myself included, feel very strongly about this issue. Killing is not the solution but how does a parent let alone the child deal with the apathy and political correctness of councillors, school governors etc? Bullying can totally change a child’s personality, sometimes irrevocably. No pills or potions will attack the source of that problem.]

 

America is a very, very strange place. I imagine that’s what Werner Herzog loves and in equal measure loathes about it. His performance in Jack Reacher is chillingly real. Yet most folk going to see that film at the multi-plex won’t have a clue who is he! Yet think of who could’ve been more quietly chilling in that villainous role and you think not even Herzog’s own maverick actor Klaus Kinski would have bettered him. Is it that Herzog the man and the filmmaker isn’t afraid to confront reality, evil, the outsider? When does the outsider become a psychopath? The problem is surely that almost every film actor villain deep down is seeking for some redemption for his character. The point, surely, is that those characters are past the point of sympathy. We may empathise but not forgive. Yet this remains a very fine line because normal humans and the law want justice to be seen as done. The reason hundreds of news crews gather at an atrocity is that people want to see the reality. Of course the reality has been and gone in a few seconds and is way past. As was the culprit- dead or alive.

Jack Reacher review

Skyfall (that just passed the $1 billion box office hurdle ) is an interesting case in point. MoMA in New York recently had a Bond retrospective (they’ve collected the films over years).

Daniel Craig’s Bond wasn’t the first 007 to meet a villain for whom the audience not only empathised but with embarrassed reluctance also somewhat sympathised. The terrorist as freedom fighter. Dangerous ground. But then so that should be in a Bond movie. Otherwise we simply stop believing the story and let go its hand. Pierce Brosnan in The World is Not Enough had female villainess  Elektra (Sophie Marceau). Moreover, M (Judi Dench) was also seduced and taken in by Elektra’s vulnerable wiles. 

A further step ney a leap is taken in Skyfall. Here Bond became sacrificed to his job taking M’s bullet and only narrowly escaping death. Thereafter he lies low in debauchery contemplating a world that he tried and almost believed was enough. Only to spring back into action like some pre-programmed op when London MI6 HQ is bombed. He could have become like Alec Trevelyan in Goldeneye- a ‘OO’ agent fucked over by the system and deciding that it was time for him to do the fucking over. We meet another Alec in Skyfall, Silva (Javier bardem ) who many years ago was M’s best agent in the Far East. And the whole scenario becomes deeply Freudian/Oedipal in that he tries and almost succeeds killing his father (the State) and fully succeeds in marrying his mother (M) in a consummated death.  To say it is one of the best Bond scripts ever is a very difficult claim to juggle. But it’s a claim that surely deserves the making. And it’s a very hard franchise act to follow. For no longer are Bond villains purely evil and dismissible as never ‘of our kind dear’. The new Bond villain is very much of ‘our kind’, almost kith and kin. We are suddenly embroiled in a torturous reality. No longer an artifice. Bond is brought back to his childhood home Skyfall. The audience questions what is a lived life. What would happen if you discovered that the nice Iraqi man next door - one legged, his innocent family massacred by stray American bombs - was a terrorist? After the Blair/Bush Iraq war few British Foreign Office officials see the world ever the same again. The death of Ambassador Chris Stephens in Benghazi seems more like a movie than Argo! That of course was that film’s  true ironic story of ironies using a fake movie to free real hostages. And CIA agents squirm shaking their heads with ‘I didn’t sign up for this’? But then Skyfall is just a movie. But then, great movies are never just movies. They ought to be capable of life-changing experiences. Otherwise ‘what is the bloody point of it all’ (as M might say)?

Private eye Harry Caul in Coppola’s The Conversation knows that he’s onto something. And he’s right. Just wrong in where the something lies. He is a consummate professional at pin-pointing the audio in a surveiled conversation. But he is hopeless at twigging that the girl seducing him wants only the tapes not his broken life story. He will always be unable to think laterally and realise that the world is wheels within wheels and that one family member may be loyal to the live long day while another can both love eternally but be as fickle as a nickel freeing itself from a coat pocket. The interesting thing about Tom Cruise movies is that although he projects a hero emerging unscathed one always feels that at heart he is an actor (not just a movie star celebrity) and that he wants the audience to feel that his character has been scathed. Therein lies the problem. 

In the novels Reacher is a sort of superhero albeit a human outsider. And one can project whatever frailties or not upon him as a reader. Some will see reality as fiction and others not. In a film one wants either a semblance of reality or unattainable reality. But not both. In that sense Cruise is perfect for Reacher. We know he’ll never die whatever happens. But for Lee Child’s character to exude humanity on screen (a necessity of the outsider rather than just plain psychopath into which Herzog’s character has evolved- never fearing death with no sympathy nor empathy of others as arguably with the villain Bain in The Dark Knight Rises), we need to believe that Cruise can be broken as Daniel Craig’s Bond was in Skyfall. Child’s novels may read more Mission Impossible but on screen they can really only exist as mission possible. And if Cruise continues surrounding himself with actors such as Herzog and Robert Duvall he may have a chance. Because a character like Reacher is the sum not only of his own parts but those of the good and evil tug-o-war- neither of which Reacher wants or desires, unlike James Bond. 

America now more than ever is the perfect example of French philosopher Deleuze’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia. There’s very little way out. Certainly not for those who gullibly (but understandably) believed that the system would look after them. But perhaps there is hope and all the talk of the ‘fiscal cliff’ is awakening us and maybe more people will consider whether it matters a damn whether one is seen at the best restaurants, with the latest fashions, in the best part of town. But the schism in the system remains. It’s not in the best interests of credit card companies for the small print in customer contracts to become larger. The system wants you to spend not save. The system wants you to aspire and be happy not frugal and content. And now AIG (insurance giant $182 billion bailed out by the American taxpayer) wants to sue the government for a bad interest deal! Shouldn’t the shareholders be suing AIG’s management if they want a case? Who said America isn’t unbelievable, ney unbearable?! The white fiscal cliffs of Capitol Hill? There’s even talk of using a treasury loophole whereby the President can decree a commemorative coin minted to whatever denomination- say, $1 trillion- deposit it back in the treasury and solve the debt crisis. Are we really back to the good old reality days of Bond movies where a ‘Dr. Evil’ poisons all the gold in Fort Knox to control the world? Do you think ordinary people could find a loophole to print commemorative money to pretend they weren’t in debt and buy more houses and things? Oh wait- the banks, brokers companies and their customers already sorta did that for a decade or more hence the entire global meltdown. (Arguably;)!

Polanski’s Chinatown is re-released this week as is Repulsion.

A doco on the Swiss arrest of Polanski Odd Man Out screened at last year’s NYFF. Whose crime is greater? Polanski’s or that justice systems can be used to broker more favourable terms for international banks not willing to divulge all the looting of their ‘Dr. Evils’? The ultimatum in greed of course was Wagner’s Ring Cycle- gold stolen from the Rhine maidens is ultimately returned after it causes nothing but destruction on its journey. The doco Wagner’s Dream (last year’s Tribeca Fest) lovingly detailed the trials and tribulations of the Met Opera’s new Robert Lepage production (the most expensive staging in its history). Filmmaker Susan Froemke did, however, neglect to tell us why the much discussed and lauded video imagery was indeed so important. Nonetheless, seeing this staging live was quite amazing. But then it’s a fairly indestructible 20 odd hours of opera. The ever enterprising FrankfurtOper also had a new production, that at a fraction of the Met’s cost, was damn impressive both musically and visually. Not the same experience as seeing this opera cycle live but both productions are issued on DVD for your comparison should you so accept the mission. A compromise might be the Met Opera's HD Live broadcast in cinemas throughout the world.

........................for PART 2 go here....