Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom

Directed by Wes Anderson

USA, 2011

Cornerhouse, 28 May 2012

As deadpan Americana goes, this is delightful stuff, closer in spirit to Eric Kraft than (say) Ben Marcus.

We have a teenage love story, the boy a scout and an orphan, the girl erratic and impulsive, the two together a perfect if palpitating heart.  Not only is it gorgeous in design – its world an artificial, dazzlingly colourful pastoral – and engaging and humorous with it, the film is touching too.  Golden days should lead you to wayward ways, a path that leaves you lost in a forest.

The casting seems in some respects idiosyncratic – Willis as a mild-mannered cop, Norton and Keitel as scoutmasters – but it proves in practice to be devastatingly effective.

Let’s be grateful that this world now exists – it is no longer necessary to invent it.  One of those films you long to live in, or at least go on holiday in for a long while.

The Spaghetti Western Orchestra

The Spaghetti Western Orchestra

The Lowry, 24 May 2012

These fellows play the music of Ennio Morricone, and mighty fine they are at it too.

They dress as characters from Westerns as well – there’s a desperado, a bounty hunter, an undertaker or casino owner (easy to get these two mixed up), a bank teller… no cowgirls, mind, nor showgirls wearing garters, neither.  Another time, maybe.

Their musical instruments include a theremin, always a treat to see one on stage and in operation.  And the music was enhanced by various visual effects, notably a toy train trundling along – a sweet reminder that robbing a train was virtually de rigueur in Leone’s Westerns.  Morricone’s music works terrifically well here and it got me thinking about other composers who’ve written for films – Bernard Herrmann, John Barry, John Williams, Lalo Schifrin – and how well their music would fare in a show like this.  If given the same kind of classy, inventive treatment, their music would make a great show, for sure.

La Grande Illusion

La Grande Illusion

Directed by Jean Renoir

France, 1937

Cornerhouse, 27 May 2012

There are moments in this film that will stay with you forever – and not just a few, mind, but a score or so, easy.

Think of the woman showing off a wall of photographs, all uniformed men (including her husband) who’ve fallen in battle, then turning to her young daughter, eating alone at the kitchen table.  Of the silence that descends on a group of prisoners of war when a young soldier walks out dressed in women’s attire.  Or the German guard who gives the French prisoner a harmonica to play with, to cheer him up.  That’s three, among many.

Though often billed as an anti-war film, Renoir’s masterpiece is not quite as simple as all that.  What it does is look at people during wartime, there’s almost no polemic element to it at all.  Some people wish war were over, of course, but for others war is an engaging sport or even a welcome salvation: Erich von Stroheim’s German officer, for one, thrives during wartime.  To settle on any one view is to simplify what is a richly complex, deeply humanistic work of art.  This is the kind of film Montaigne might have made.

La Grande Illusion is showing again on Wednesday as part of the Matinee Classics season, further details here.

The Dickens Dictionary

The Dickens Dictionary

Free Men

Free Men

Les Hommes libres

Directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi

France, 2011

Cornerhouse, 26 May 2012

This film focuses on the Moslem resistance to the Nazi occupation of France, the reluctant hero being Younges, a young Algerian.

He starts off as a wheeler-dealer operating in the black market in Paris, but soon he’s saving Jewish children from deportation to the camps, killing German soldiers, dissembling to the French police, executing collaborators, that kind of thing.

Interestingly, the French (Vichy) authorities are the enemy too and there’s the definite suggestion that, for Younges and his comrades, the battles will continue after the war, segueing into the struggle for Algerian independence.

It is an intelligent thriller, there’s a splendid lead performance from Tahar Rahim and Michael Lonsdale is always a watchable actor.  He’s one of those actors who’s almost a guarantor of a good film, Michael Lonsdale, and so it proves here.

Toxic Bankers!

Toxic Bankers!

By Andrew Taylor and Desmond O’Connor

The Lowry, 24 May 2012

This intelligent, well-acted drama takes a long, hard look at some of those chemically challenged city folk.

It’s probably best described as a satirical musical and if you think of Sondheim doing Whoops! you’ll get the gist, right enough.  The songs have a smart and sassy quality, and I was only mildly surprised to learn that they were written by Desmond O’Connor, a name that benighted burlesque-goers and absinthe-quaffers (I’ve developed an abiding affection for Gold Wasser, myself) will likely know.  He’s a familiar face on the cabaret circuit, what with his panda-spec eyes and all that.

They have keyhole surgery incisiveness, do these songs, at their best.  If they also draw as many spurts of blood as a ragged rusty blade might, should we be surprised?

I enjoyed this show immensely, was vastly entertained all the way through.

Toxic Bankers! is at The Lowry again tonight, details here.  Future tour dates will most likely be posted here.

The Violence of Financial Capitalism

The Violence of Financial Capitalism

By Christian Marazzi

Opera North’s Carousel

Carousel

Music by Richard Rodgers

Book & Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Opera North

The Lowry, 23 May 2012

Context is absolutely key to understanding the impact of Carousel when it opened on Broadway in 1945.

The Second World War had come to an end, but many of the men that America had sent overseas had failed to return.  There then came Carousel, a musical that’s in part about how a man returns from the grave to aid his ailing daughter.  His return being accompanied by the stirring song ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, recognised immediately as a classic.  Be in no doubt, it was powerful stuff – and it still is, as this admirable production makes plain.

Eric Greene’s central performance as Billy Bigelow is brilliant; the set and lighting design is inventive and effective, especially in the transition from heaven to earth in scene 3; and the use of Agnes de Mille’s choreography was a masterstroke.  To pick out other things to admire would be easy an’ all.

Indeed, I have only two qualms.  The first is the really rather romantic attitude to domestic abuse: ‘When a man hits you, can it feel like a kiss?’ a daughter asks her mother.  She doesn’t answer: ‘No, not really.’  The second is with that classic, hymn-like song (the two were fond of these kind of songs, recall ‘Climb Every Mountain’) and in particular with the line ‘walk on / with hope in your heart’ – for once you depend on hope, you’re already lost to God.  A true Christian has a faith that fear cannot ever touch.  Hope is for heathens, if they want it.

Anyway, it is some sweet ride, this Carousel.  It’s at The Lowry until 26 May then tours the UK thereafter.  Further details are here and here.

Beloved

Beloved

Les Bien-Aimes

Directed by Christophe Honore

France, 2011

Cornerhouse, 22 May 2012

One of those French films about love – all about how it’s a blessing and a curse, how though it is difficult to live with love it is impossible to live without it.

Eros, c’est la vie.

And as with recent films featuring Catherine Deneuve, there’s a fair few allusions to her life and career.  She is – or has become, or has donned the persona of – The French Woman.  Her daughter, Chiara Mastroianni, plays her daughter in this one – and read into that what you will.  Also, like Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, this film is a musical too – at any rate, there’s singing.

The problem with the film is that it lacks any genuine sense of peril – it’s too light and, frankly, altogether too indulgent for that.  This wouldn’t matter terribly if the film were simply a fluffy comedy.  But since it addresses topics such as love and death, passion and the perversity of human nature, it’s unable to strike the right register.  You’d be forgiven for coming away thinking that love was a pastime for self-absorbed people with time on their hands.  Say, for housewives who don’t work and think love might make an engaging hobby.  And come to think of it, that’s another Catherine Deneuve film right there.

RNCM Symphony Orchestra with Gergely Madaras and Syuzanna Kaszo

RNCM Symphony Orchestra

RNCM Concert Hall, 18 May 2012

A concert can be a celestial show, though rarely as here a case of twin stars shining.

Our first star was Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 2 In G minor, a work which the composer dedicated to a best friend who’d taken his own life.  If violence lay hidden within the complexity and difficulty of the piano part, Syuzanna Kaszo’s quicksilver fingers soon quelled it, no worries.  To say she played a blinder is simply to be accurate, sometimes literally so.  Her fingers would often move so fast the naked eye faltered.

The next star, an amazing sighting this, was the complete score of Stravinsky’s The Firebird, played by a full symphony orchestra.  It turned out to be an exciting, bold and dramatic work, at times as tumultuous as a raging tide, but the conductor Gergely Madaras ably steered it to shore.

Stravinsky’s first work for the Ballets Russes, The Firebird pretty much made his reputation.  For anyone wishing to learn more about how the ballet came into being, I’d recommend reading chapter 2 of Charles M. Joseph’s recent ( 2011) Stravinsky’s Ballets.