The Thorn in the Heart

The Thorn in the Heart
(L’Epine dans le coeur)
Directed by Michel Gondry
France, 2009
Cornerhouse, 29 December 2010

Still from The Thorn in the Heart

A portrait of the director’s Aunt Suzette, looking also at the people who surround her, chiefly her son Jean-Yves.

Suzette had worked as a teacher, many of her pupils being the children of Algerian immigrants.  The film visits some of the schools where she had taught and we hear from her former colleagues and from some of her pupils, now grown up.  She clearly touched many of these children’s lives but her relationship with Jean-Yves, a former pupil as well as a son, remains a difficult one.

There are a few special cinematic moments – the children playing while wearing ‘invisible suits’ is one – but on the whole this is a straightforward documentary, a personal memoir that is gentle and affectionate rather than excoriating and probing.  It is clearly about someone whom Michel Gondry loves and respects greatly, which makes it perhaps a bit disabling and circumspect on occasion.

Radiantly sunlit most times and sometimes moving, meandering a little bit but always engaging, this is nonetheless a beautiful and elegiac film.

RNCM Big Band with Pete Long

RNCM Big Band with Pete Long
Royal Northern College of Music, 15 December 2010

Whoever would have conceived that the delicate clarinet could have given rise to such terrific music?

In this show Pete Long considered the role of the clarinet in jazz, from its early adoption, right through the swing era, and on up to modern times.  There were a slue of fine performances of grand works by the likes of Fats Waller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Thad Jones.  And above all, Duke Ellington: for one of Long’s attractive qualities is that he cannot disguise his enthusiasms and passions.  Ellington is the pinnacle for Long, as he was too for Boris Vian.  Truly, there was an abundance and an indulgence of musical riches; it was like being locked overnight in a sweet shop.

As host and compere, Long was top-notch: convivial and humorous, generous towards the band (and towards the wonderful Amy Roberts in particular, a young clarinet player to watch out for in the near future), enthusiastic and erudite.  He played a mean clarinet, an’ all.  Even though ‘mean clarinet’ as an epithet probably qualifies as an oxymoron.  Discuss…

This was an evening of vivacious, energising music and most of us learnt something too.  All in all, it was splendid entertainment; what more could you ask for?  Well, free chocolate would be nice.

The Way Back by Peter Weir

The Way Back
Directed by Peter Weir
USA, 2010
Cornerhouse, 29 December 2010

Still from The Way Back

Peter Weir’s film tells the story of an escape from a Soviet work camp and a trek out of Siberia, across the Himalayas, and into India and eventual freedom.

Along the way, the pilgrims – as they identify themselves in response to a Mongolian chief’s questionings –encounter cold, starvation, a sandstorm, wolves and snakes, illnesses… privations diverse and miscellaneous.  And a young woman is added to their number.  It is an epic journey and, truth to tell, an epic film.

The landscapes are rendered with real panache; the film perfectly captures the colour and light of a starkly wooded forest, a snowy mountain range, a roasting desert.  Set against such immensities of nature, the human travellers seem small indeed and they must stick together and stay strong to survive.  Some must learn that a weakness (such as, let us say, kindness) can be a strength.  And, as is usually the case in these kinds of films, not all of them make it to journey’s end.

The Way Back is a terrific film with a definite Howard Hawks flavour to it.  There’s the notion, familiar from Hawks’ work, of a small band of brothers (and here a sister too) bonding and battling against the world (here communism and the wilderness).  Weir is a master and this is a wonderfully composed work of cinema.

To Drive the Cold Winter Away by The Dufay Collective

To Drive the Cold Winter Away: Christmas Revels in Renaissance England
The Dufay Collective
Royal Northern College of Music, 14 December 2010

This concert was devoted to Christmas music of the 16th and 17th centuries.

For the first part of the concert, the focus was squarely on music of the court: carols, dances and songs, with quite a few of them being of French or Italian origin, as was the fashion of the day.  One of the songs performed here was the very pretty ‘Green Groweth the Holly’, written by Henry VIII himself.  Vivien Ellis sang a moving version of it, accompanied by period instruments – as were all of the musical works.  And even William Cornyshe, the King’s pageant master and sometime plumber, got a bit of a look in.

After a brief but impatiently observed interval (on my part, at any rate), the second part got underway and this featured what one might call the music of the common man.  In other words, music that might be heard in the tavern or on the street: the popular ditties and ballads of the day.

William Lyons, The Dufay Collective’s director, introduced well nigh every piece of music, ably setting it within the context of the age.  He also played the bagpipes and the dulcian, amongst other musical instruments.  As well, the harp played a prominent role in proceedings.

To Drive the Cold Winter Away was an unusual Christmas treat, immensely enjoyable and entertaining.

The Redstone Diary 2011: The Artist’s World

The Redstone Diary 2011: The Artist’s World
Edited by Julian Rothenstein and Mel Gooding
Redstone Press, 2010
ISBN 978 1870003 59 9

The theme of Redstone’s 23rd diary is ‘the artist’s world’, which is to say that it is concerned with epiphany and the quotidian, ‘the magic roundabout’, as the children’s TV programme has it.

There is also a concern with art and how it is made.

An introduction in Spanish, German, French and English is followed by a month by month year planner, each month accompanied by drawings taken from Pierre Bonnard’s day book.  This is then followed by the diary proper, with each slue of seven days being set against a text or image.

Most texts are excerpts from letters, notebooks and journal entries: Kurt Schwitters sat on a park bench in wartime London, barely subsisting on a few scraps of bread and cheese; Keith Vaughan’s moving encounter with a Moroccan shepherd.  But there is also the full text of Paul Klee’s epitaph: unsentimental, earnest and aspiring.

As for the images, we get a lot of photos of artists in their studios: an aged Pierre-August Renoir, his eyes vital and haunted; Lucio Fontana among the debris and exposed facades of a bombed-out building that once housed his work; Matisse at his easel, painting an African beauty.  Some of the images are in fact works of art, provided that their subject is art of course, and of these Robert Storm Peterson’s Beanoesque skit on how art (Cubism, etc.) distorts form stood out.  A Hokusai work was pretty good too, mind.

On its opening page, the diary has a folded pocket and there is plenty of graph paper (a nice touch) for notes or drawing and design.  Spiral-bound and measuring 245mm x 167mm, this is a terrific diary with which to meet the coming year.

Further details of The Redstone Diary 2011: The Artist’s World can be found here.

Lemmy

Lemmy
Directed by Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski
USA, 2010
Cornerhouse, 28 December 2010

Still from Lemmy

A fairly solid documentary portrait of Motorhead’s famous frontman.

The film is informative and appreciative (and at times overly eulogistic) although not terribly revealing, in truth.

There is an account of Lemmy’s early life and of his time as a roadie for Hendrix.  His tenure in Hawkwind, an episode that ended acrimoniously on the Canadian border, is also covered.  Yet even this unfortunate experience didn’t deter our hero: as Hawkwind dissipated, Motorhead rapidly revved up; and the rest is history.  Nowadays, the band are still on the road, still going strong.

Although we are given plenty of footage of Lemmy on stage and a haphazard tour of the great rock’n’roller’s rather cluttered flat, including a peek at his precious collection of Nazi memorabilia, he still remains a bit of a mystery.  In a way he is a classic Englishman, reserved and eccentric, despite the years spent in LA.

Curiously no one, among the many celebrity contributors, makes mention of the fact that Lemmy’s leather cowboy/biker get-up is, well, just a teensy-weensy bit gay.  Funny, that.  It is as though Tom of Finland never happened.

Lemmy is a fun documentary that fans will enjoy, but don’t expect too many surprises.  Also, there are rather too many eulogistic blurb-style soundbites to make it a really serious film.

Zack by Harold Brighouse

Zack
By Harold Brighouse
Royal Exchange Theatre, 13 December 2010

Justin Moorhouse as Zack. Photo - Jonathan Keenan

When Mrs. Munning’s niece Virginia (Kelly Price) comes to stay with her for a short while, she notices one or two things that Mrs. Munning (Polly Hemingway), for all her Northern wisdom, has overlooked.

For one thing, that Zack (Justin Moorhouse), far from being a hopeless ne’er-do-well, has a talent for getting on with people and making them happy; lubricating the wheels of social intercourse, it is known as in the parlance.  He is nice and it is nice to be nice, as I’m sure you’ll agree.

This is, in fact, a very agreeable, personable and altogether mellifluous production of Harold Brighouse’s fine social comedy.  The whole cast were terrific but I would single out in particular Polly Hemingway, for she delivered Mrs. Munning’s dour jibes towards Zack (‘Your ways would make a cat laugh’ and ‘You’re too soft to live’ are two) with great style.  She made me laugh quite a lot, any roads.

There’s the odd universal truth to be found here (reflect for a moment, if you will, on: ‘You can’t make weak tea strong by adding water’) but, to all intents and purposes, this is an entertaining comedy with a big heart and a large dollop of dry Northern wit.  It is splendid withal and no mistake.

Zack is at the Royal Exchange until 22 January 2011.  Details here.

Goodfellas by Martin Scorsese

Goodfellas
Directed by Martin Scorsese
USA, 1990
Cornerhouse, 22 December 2010

Still from Goodfellas

Although in the tradition of the gangster film, Goodfellas still feels fresh, new and different.

There is the staginess of it.  Consider:

• The use of popular music to convey mood and atmosphere (which Scorsese used also in Mean Streets); the songs also serve to skewer a story which, for the most part, is told straight and chronologically.  And which therefore might be a bit boring otherwise.
• That long serpentine scene, all one continuous trawl of the camera, where Hill (Ray Liotta) and his bride-to-be Karen (Lorraine Bracco) enter a nightclub through the back door and wind up in the best table in the house.  An exhilarating feat of cinema.
• The depiction of death and killing: all those hits carried out, all those bodies found in garbage trucks and meat wagons.
• The way Hill walks towards the camera in the courtroom at the end and talks directly to it.

As a portrait of the life of crime, its understandings and rules, Goodfellas is without peer.  As in a Greek tragedy, it is the gangsters’ own paranoia, impulsiveness and excess that is their undoing in the end.  Cumulatively, their doings create an atmosphere of anxiety and fear in which no one can function.  From an unreal dream, life becomes an anxious nightmare, just outside of normal society.

There are plenty of other things to notice and praise, for example:

• Tommy (Joe Pesci) and his ‘Am I a funny guy?’ routine.  Even though it has been more or less parodied to death.
• The fraught scene where Karen decides not to look through some Dior dresses.  As she drives off, the camera lifts up to reveal a ‘One Way’ sign pointing toward the alleyway where the dresses were supposedly stored.  She made the right call.
• The very title of the film, its overt, in-your-face irony.

Goodfellas is a classic gangster film, deserving of a hundred viewings, for you will always find things in it you didn’t notice before.

Queer: 25th Anniversary Edition

Queer: 25th Anniversary Edition
By William S. Burroughs
Penguin Modern Classics, December 2010
ISBN: 9780141189918

Although written in the early 1950s – Burroughs sent two manuscripts comprising virtually the complete text of the novel to Allen Ginsberg in May 1952 and June 1953 – Queer remained unpublished until 1985.

Its subject matter (homosexuality) was an initial stumbling block to publication, but in later years the author himself was dead set against putting out what he regarded as a beginner’s effort only.  Burroughs had, by this time, a reputation as a visionary writer to maintain.  Eventually, however, a sizable sum of money persuaded him to go to press and the novel duly made a belated appearance.

Queer is set in Mexico City where Lee, a middle-aged gay man, hits on various young men for sex.  In due course, Lee hooks up with a twenty-something personage called Allerton, befriends and beds him, and establishes a reciprocally satisfying arrangement, sex-wise.  Together, they journey to South America in search of Yage, a wonder-drug with weird and wondrous properties, but there is no panacea for what ails Lee.  As a soul, he remains lost, wounded and driven.

If you make the equation Lee= Burroughs (allowing for the caveat that it is never absolutely true or entirely wise to equate an author with their protagonist) then you’ll find that Burroughs’ soul is here more exposed, vulnerable and unprotected than in his later, more accomplished writings.  (And perhaps this was another motive for not publishing the novel sooner?)  Lee’s sorrow is raw and rejection exposes all his perilous feelings of emptiness and fear.  He casts a dark shadow.

Queer is not a great novel by any means, but it is an important one for anyone with an interest in Burroughs’ work as a whole, written as it was between Junky and Naked Lunch.  The skits and routines that Lee has recourse to here would in fact emerge with a vengeance in Naked Lunch, where they assumed an even more scathing, scabrous form.  (And these skits make me wonder whether Burroughs ever heard Lenny Bruce perform, since there’s a definite kinship between the two: both were uncompromising outsiders.)

Oliver Harris provides a scholarly introduction to this 25th Anniversary Edition of the book (25 years on from publication in 1985, that is; it’s 57 years or so since it was written), placing the novel in literary and historical context and discussing the circumstances surrounding its composition.  In particular, the comparison of Queer with The Lost Weekend is well made, I feel.

We also get Burroughs’ own introduction to the 1985 edition of the novel, where he reflects on his experiences in Mexico City and elsewhere:

Yes, you found a Johnson, but you waded through Shitsville to find him.  You always do.  Just when you think the earth is exclusively populated by Shits, you meet a Johnson.  (125)

It is good to see an allusion to Jack Black’s world and his great autobiography You Can’t Win.

Queer is an interesting work, allowing a peek at Burroughs when he had not yet acquired his customary hard-boiled, outer protection.  And this is a worthwhile, added-value edition of the novel.

Further details of Queer: 25th Anniversary Edition can be found here.

Dear Dead Women by Edna W. Underwood

Dear Dead Women: The weird stories of Edna W. Underwood
By Edna W. Underwood
Introduction by S.T. Joshi
Tartarus Press, May 2010
ISBN 978-1-905784-21-9

This volume collects together nine weird stories from the pen of Edna W. Underwood (1873-1961), a writer best known in her own day as a historical novelist and a translator from many languages, Chinese, Persian and Russian among them.

Some eight stories appeared originally in the collection A Book of Dear Dead Women (1911), while the remaining one, ‘An Orchid of Asia’, made its debut in Asia magazine in 1920.

The first story, ‘The Painter of Dead Women’, is about a serial killer of upper-class beauties, which makes a welcome change from lower-class prostitutes, I guess.  Count Ponteleone kills them and then he preserves them (or he gets them in a coma first, I forget the M.O. exactly) and in that state he paints them.  He has a nice line in necrophile spiel, this aristocratic precursor to Ed Gein:

Besides, when I love, I love only dead women.  Life reaches its perfection only when death comes.  Life is never real until then.  (9)

There is a sensuous, decadent atmosphere to the story that I very much liked (and in fact it recalled the episode in Locus Solus where the dead come alive momentarily to enact the key event from their lives) but I found the ending to be rather perfunctory.  As with many of the other stories, Underwood seems mainly concerned with exploring a stance or attitude towards life (usually involving beauty, art, love, death and other similarly significant abstract nouns) and seeing what moods and scenes she can conjure out of it, how far she can take it.

To my mind, ‘Sister Seraphine’ is the best story, from the 1911 batch at any rate.  It is (on my reading) an ironic take on the myth of Narcissus: a nun is given a mirror to place in her room and she is slyly seduced from holy orders by her own beauty, by its capacity for pleasure.  In this lush passage, typical of Underwood’s prose, we are given a description of the young nun’s mouth and lips:

In its colour alone were hidden all the sins of the earth.  Such a colour might have been born from the conflagration of a world, or in the feverish brain of some sightless dreamer.  In its curves there was all the restless languor of a medieval mondaine, or a voluptuous Roman woman who had idled in the villas of Baiae.  Imagine, if you will, such a mouth beneath that ascetic brow!  (59)

Sister Seraphine breaks out of the convent and into a world that is to be conquered and enjoyed, or at least where the fruits and bounty of life are all up for grabs; quite a contrast to the Greek myth where the beautiful youth – after a prolonged period of self-immersion – winds up with his head up his arse, the world nowhere in sight.  What I like most about Underwood’s story is its sense of transgression, hedonism and freedom; as one character says: ‘Everyone has a right to happiness.’  Or as Frank O’Hara put it in that poem about his heart: ‘I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar.’  (Indeed, what is the point of art if it doesn’t lead to a heightened vitality?)

Another high point of the volume for me was the long short story, ‘An Orchid of Asia’, with the third quarter of it (about pages 209-220 here) being particularly powerful.  A convalescent, one Jacques d’Entrecolles, attempts to cultivate a new species of orchid as a kind of therapeutic hobby, on the recommendation of his doctor.  At length he succeeds  but (untoward consequences, answered prayers and all that…) the newly made flower comes to dominate his being as it assumes the role of drug, vampire, predator, monster, invasive alien…  One might almost say that the orchid becomes a kind of femme fatale, her addictive beauty and intoxicating perfume creating a craven dependence in d’Entrecolles, leading on to an enervating, erotic obsession.  There is a terrific psychological subtlety to this story and Underwood makes you aware, as well, of the uncanny nature of flowers, their wonderful yet terrible beauty.

Some time ago I read a book called Sensory Exotica by Howard C. Hughes, which was all about creatures whose sensory systems are quite unlike our own.  Though they are as real as we are, and live in the same world, their experience is beyond our ken, quite literally alien to us.  The same kind of wonder engendered by Hughes’ book is present also in certain passages of ‘An Orchid of Asia’.

As for the rest of the stories, each has something remarkable about them, and Underwood’s prose is always sophisticated and stylish.  I’d raise a qualm and a concern about ‘The King’, mainly on account of its anti-Semitic tenor (not untypical for the time, and even John Buchan flirted with anti-Jewish conspiracies in The 39 Steps).  All in all, though, Dear Dead Women is a welcome set of stories from an accomplished writer who has been curiously neglected.

Further details of Dear Dead Women can be found here.