The Woman in the Fifth

The Woman in the Fifth

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski

France, 2011

Cornerhouse, 25 February 2012

Despite several fine performances, this is a disappointing film.

It shares the same failing as Black Swan, in that implausible or weird events are explained as occurring within the mind of an unstable and quite probably insane central character.  The upshot is that you come to doubt pretty much everything that you’re seeing; and it matters not a jot.  Reality gives emotional weight to experience, and when it’s called into question, emotional investment takes flight too.

There’s good acting from Ethan Hawke as Tom, a disturbed writer, and from Kristin Scott Thomas, who’s a stunning, seductive and sinister beauty.  But the film as a whole is a falderal; you fairly soon don’t accept anything in it as real.  And it would be unable to sustain a second viewing.

Rampart

Rampart

Directed by Oren Moverman

USA, 2011

Cornerhouse, 25 February 2012

With an original screenplay by James Ellroy, this film is definitely worth a watch.

As a portrait of a man facing moral meltdown, it is riveting, Woody Harrelson delivering a take-no-prisoners performance as Dave Brown, a rogue LA cop.  He is a killer, a womaniser, a thief, a man of violence.  But his love for his daughters cannot be doubted.

If you’re familiar with Ellroy’s work, it will likely occur to you that Dave Brown is an updated version of Lloyd Hopkins, the cop in the L.A. Noir trilogy of novels, while his surname harks back to the writer’s first novel (Brown’s Requiem).  What is different here is the emphasis on Brown’s psyche and on a distinctive kind of (self-) destructive masculinity, rather than on the progress of a particular police investigation.

A good film – see it for Harrelson’s performance above all.

The Daughter-in-Law by D.H. Lawrence

The Daughter-in-Law

By D.H. Lawrence

Library Theatre Company

The Lowry, 24 February 2012

Natalie Grady (Minnie Gascoigne) and Diane Fletcher (Mrs Gascoigne) in D.H. Lawrence’s The Daughter-in-Law. Photo by Gerry Murray

Let me see if I can do justice to what was a fantastic theatrical experience.

It begins with a seemingly inconsequential yet telling scene: a bit of banter between mother and son.  Then there’s the stock situation of a young woman having a child out of wedlock, a just-married man apparently the culprit.  Will it turn out to be a farce, is this where we’re heading?

Well, the farce and comedy rumbles on throughout, but it is never exactly central.  And instead attention now switches to the man’s marriage and his relationship with a yelping, dissatisfied wife.  There’s that twin portrait you often find in Lawrence: man as an inarticulate, pitiable beast; woman as his keeper and tormentor.

And again the gender war, in the form of guerrilla skirmishes for the most part, rumbles on and while closer to the play’s heart it’s not really key either.  Here is what’s central: the complaint of the woman who marries a man to the woman who formed him; a wife’s grievance towards her husband’s mother.

You’re aware that some kind of strike is taking place and that the army has been called in, but all this happens off-stage.  It’s not what the play is about.  It’s about the world of women; and it is an extraordinary play for a man to have written.  All the women are capable, fierce and for the most part self-assured.  As to the men, they are a kind of material passed from generation to generation that these women must somehow work with: make do and mend. 

The final scene is, well, sublime and it offers a solution to that old Arthurian riddle: ‘What is it that a woman desires most in all the world?’  Everything that precedes this final scene is thereby justified; such is its power.

Downsides are few.  The dialect may be bothersome to some, an obstacle to understanding.  Yet despite the theme being pretty much universal, that’s the way Lawrence chose to write it.  Call it arrogance or artistic ambition, if you will.  A small warning: the ‘N word’ makes an appearance, but it’s not used pejoratively (the play was written in 1913).

The Daughter-in-Law is an important play and, in Lawrence’s canon, it’s an essential companion piece to Sons and Lovers.  And this is another one of those stupendously good, must-see productions that the Library Theatre seem to specialise in.

The Daughter-in-Law is at The Lowry until 10 March, and further details can be found either here or here.

An Instinct for Kindness

An Instinct for Kindness

Written and performed by Chris Larner

The Lowry, 23 February 2012

Chris Larner’s play is at once a wild gift and a dear hug.

It’s like life itself: untamed but dangerous, tender yet costly.

He tells the tale of his wife’s life, how she came to choose suicide and why he decided to assist her.  The arguments are given a good going over (no need to revisit them here, for an outline see my review of Michael Cholbi’s excellent book) but it’s not simply a polemical work.  Above all, the play engages the heart.  For here, you realise, was a woman who took a long look at her life and made the rational decision to end it.  You see it as like stepping into a pool of darkness.

If it is true as Blake wrote that ‘it is a sublime act to place another before’ then here Chris Larner has written a sublime play.  Indeed, it is a dear gift and a wild hug both.

And as an aside: I loved this play because part of it reminded me of Mark Cox’s poem ‘Things My Grandfather Must Have Said’, which is most likely the best poem about a funeral ever.  It can be read here.

An Instinct for Kindness is currently out there, tour dates are here.

A Romance with Cocaine

A Romance with Cocaine

By M. Ageyev 

Translated by Hugh Aplin

Hesperus Press, 2009

ISBN: 9781843914327 

A good novel should open up at least one wound in memory.

This enigmatic effort, first fully published in Paris in 1936, does the job perfectly.

It is enigmatic in several respects.  For one thing, the identity of the author – it had long been known that M. Ageyev was a pseudonym – was only established in 1997.  Mark Levi (1898-1973) wrote it and, his evident accomplishments as a writer notwithstanding, he apparently wrote little else.  Then again, cocaine makes its entrance only two thirds of the way in; it is a prominent aspect of the novel, but by no means central to it.

 A Romance with Cocaine is a novel that’s all about the pitiful life of a certain Vadim Maslennikov, sixteen years old when we meet him, perhaps a decade older when we take our leave.  He is ashamed of his mother and will go out of his way to disown her.  When hooked on cocaine, he’ll steal from her to feed his habit.

What is remarkable about the novel overall is Vadim’s honesty with regard to his unpleasant, vacuous character and behaviour.  His self-awareness and analysis of his weaknesses is evident.  But he is unable to make that change.  Somehow he’s willing to just limp along, playing the poor relation to his richer, more powerful ex-school friends.

As a portrait of adolescence there’s a grit of authenticity such as you find also in The Devil in the Flesh and The Bold Saboteurs.  Here’s one nugget I like, which I’d adjudge worthy of Radiguet:

That morning I involuntarily and for the first time came up against that amazing and invincible certainty that I could not possibly be liked by, or attractive to the person that I loved the way that I actually am.  (75)

Man, Vadim makes some wrong choices here, neglecting what’s most important.  We’ve all done that, mind: those wounds in memory start to open up again…

The publisher’s description of the book can be read here.

House of Tolerance

House of Tolerance

Directed by Bertrand Bonello

France, 2011

Cornerhouse, 18 February 2012

Although at times quite disturbing, this film nonetheless is a worthwhile work of cinema.

There’s nothing vicarious or titillating about it, the abiding note being one of weariness.  A weariness of the body and the soul, the business of pleasure apparently really taking it out of you.

The film focuses on a brothel in fin de siècle Paris: we are shown the Madam and her girls, the wealthy men who make up the clientele.  While on the surface all is happiness and hedonism and unbridled enjoyment, in reality the women are bonded slaves, their bodies hired out to the men who pay for their services.

Yes, the violence erupts in one horrific scene.  But in a sense it’s always present, taking different forms.  There is a network of conscription and complicity, and what you might call the Coppelia scene – a client likes a girl to act the role of a clockwork doll – is perhaps paradigmatic.

Decadence has never seemed so dull and deadening, so less like fun.

An accomplished, very impressive film.

Tatsumi

Tatsumi

Directed by Eric Khoo

Singapore, 2011

Cornerhouse, 18 February 2012

Yoshihiro Tatsumi invented Gekiga, a kind of comic geared towards adults.

He was, on my understanding, a Japanese Robert Crumb or Harvey Pekar and this film is both a tribute to Tatsumi and an account of how Eric Khoo,  the writer and director, got into comics.  The two are, as it happens, closely related: Tatsumi was Khoo’s constant inspiration and his artistic hero.

There are several stories by Tatsumi incorporated into the film – his work is generally realistic, though dark and downbeat.

Naturally the whole of it is in the form of animation: comics, drawn figures.  It suffices.  As ever, Scott McCloud was right: you can express anything using comics and animation.

Here’s some more info about Gekiga.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

The Sisters Brothers

By Patrick deWitt

Granta Books, 2011

ISBN: 9781847083180

What is there to say about Patrick deWitt’s rather fine novel?

Well, first that it’s a kind of Western noir, the main storyline involving two brothers, a pair of  hired killers, making their way to California with the intention of killing a prospector by name of Hermann Kermit Warm.  The story is told from the point of view of Eli, who is somewhat ambivalent about his chosen profession; the other brother, Charlie, is a cool (or for this read ‘disengaged’; in any event he’s a fellow with the empathy button turned firmly off) sociopath.  They have an undoubted bond, a workable understanding; but there are also, it would be fair to say, a few fractures in the fraternal relationship.

There is quite a sizable picarersque element to the novel, especially in its first part.  This details the people the brothers meet and the difficulties they encounter as they journey ever westward, into the unknown.  We are shown your typical Western characters within a new light and with a dark humour: a big rancher who owns a whole town, a boy who’s a survivor from a wagon train massacre, a dentist studying the subject by correspondence, myriad gunfighters, prospectors and bears.  (And speaking of bears, sort of, dig the allusion early on – on page 6 – to Faulkner’s ‘Barn Burning’.)

DeWitt’s prose is an immense pleasure, well-nigh pitch perfect.  He sounds a false note on one or at most three occasions: on page 43 certainly (‘focus’ is a too modern usage), maybe on pages 183 and 194 also (did terrific carry the sense of ‘great’ in 1851?  Or was it simply a synonym for ‘terrifying’?  I confess I’m unsure).  His novel is beautifully written, on a par with what to my mind are the two other great Western novels by contemporary American writers: Quinn’s Book by William Kennedy and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.  Certain sections are entitled ‘Intermission’, so it’s structured like an old-style cinema or picture-palace experience; and indeed you could view The Sisters Brothers as being a literary equivalent of Meek’s Cutoff.  It’s moving and it means something.

Within deWitt’s book there’s also a side-text about the destruction of the balance of nature and the consequences of a rabid search for gold, whether it be black gold or the original deal, as here.  In the end, it’s all fool’s.  And on a cheerier note: Yes, brushing your teeth can be an ineffable delight, truly.  This novel says it, and and it needed saying.

The Sisters Brothers is a terrific read.  The publisher’s description of the book can be read here.

The Confetti Maker

The Confetti Maker

By Frank Wurzinger

The Lowry, 11 February 2012

He creates fake snow-flakes, or are they granules of sunlight?

At the centre of this comedic work is a ‘little man’, a downtrodden character like the ones Norman Wisdom or Jerry Lewis used to specialise in playing, who assiduously cuts up paper to make confetti in some ‘70s-style factory.  There are lashings of physical comedy, some dancing and juggling (‘the instant engendering form and form making the instant visible’ as a philosophical poet once put it) and a waxing of verbal wit, including a Shakespeare soliloquy.

This leaves out mention of the puppetry – and a sorry tale of love lost it is that’s told.  But it is a lot to take in, my pretties, it’s quite a ride.

The show will appeal to children as well as grown-ups with child-like hearts.  And those hearts will surely swell.

The Confetti Maker can currently be seen on tour, details here.  And there’s a trailer of the show here.

Travelling Light @ National Theatre Live

Travelling Light

By Nicholas Wright

Directed by Nicholas Hytner

National Theatre Live

Cornerhouse, 9 February 2012

What you have here is something of a paradox.

For Travelling Light is a play about the beginnings of cinema that as part of National Theatre Live is being screened in cinemas world-wide.

The conceit of the play is that Hollywood, or rather the spirit of that iconic place, has somehow been transposed  to a Jewish village in Eastern Europe.  So we have the preview to gauge audience reaction, the casting couch, the star system, the conventions of storytelling – and there are also (rudimentary) films within the play.

In spirit it is quite close to Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso and, naturally enough, the story is told through flashback: a Hollywood director, a kind of Irving Thalberg figure, telling the story of how he first started out.

It’s a gorgeous watch, the performances possessing a real propulsive force.  And Antony Sher’s character Jacob, the owner of a timber mill and the chief financier of the films, is virtually a force of nature.

There is a dedicated National Theatre Live site with trailers and productions pics of Travelling Light.  Check it out here.

And details of future National Theatre Live events at Cornerhouse can be found here.