Journey to Italy

Journey to Italy

Directed by Roberto Rossellini

Italy, 1954

Cornerhouse, 15 June 2013

Here a couple (played by Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders) go to Italy to sort out the affairs of a recently deceased relative.

This seemingly innocuous chore puts their marriage in jeopardy for it transpires that, away from their same-old, same-old social world, they have very little to say to each other.

Rossellini’s film gives us both a travelogue of Italy – taking in Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii and various sculptures and icons – and the emotional topography of a fractured marriage, the two aspects of the film steadily coming to refract upon one another.  It’s a to-and-fro, a dialectic, and unless you take both trips you won’t really get the film at all, each of Bergman and Sanders’ responses will seem arbitrary and contrived.  The film will only reward those who, momentarily at least, surrender to it completely.

A worthwhile watch.

Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing

Directed by Joss Whedon

USA, 2012

Cornerhouse, 16 June 2013

A highly enjoyable Shakespeare adaptation and a formidable feat of film-making.

It is remarkable how much ‘world’, how much emotional hinterland, Joss Whedon and his cast are able to bring out of such a constrained space.  Of course in this he is aided no end by the swagger of Shakepeare’s language, the dialogue bristling with (in Harold Bloom’s phrase) ‘Falstaffian wit and intelligence’, the rapier-like banter between Benedick and Beatrice.  The original fencing lovers, that’s who they are: forget Tracy and Hepburn.

Beatrice is by far the most vital character, it’s pretty much her play, but Benedick does have his moments.  His argument against bachelorhood (‘the world must be peopled’) still raises a smile.  I’d disagree with Bloom about the tediousness of the Hero subplot, however.  To my mind, it’s central, and I’d characterise this as a play about the uses of deception and falsehood.  The prince deceives Beatrice and Benedick about each other to awaken love, while his bastard brother deceives Claudio about Hero out of malice.  Anyway, by the end, you’ll be more than satisfied.

Americans can do Shakespeare, and do it well.  Kenneth Branagh should take note, in fact he might well learn a thing or two.

Thérèse Desqueyroux

Thérèse Desqueyroux

Directed by Claude Miller

France, 2012

Cornerhouse, 9 June 2013

Francois Mauriac’s novel has already been adapted for the screen once before and it makes for a captivating film here, with the extraordinary actress Audrey Tautou excelling in the title role.

Under social pressure yet also as respite from her own inner turmoil, Thérèse marries Bernard Desqueyroux, a prominent landowner.  She hopes thereby to attain contentment, security, peace; but it is a vain hope.  A banal if not a barren marriage is the result.  She isn’t happy: answered prayers and all that.

Women in her part of the world are expected to lead simple lives; Thérèse wants something more and almost by accident, as a consequence of a casual gesture – though even that’s putting it too strongly: through at first a whim of omission – her life is destroyed.

Although a crime lies at its centre, what the film presents is really an anatomy of a marriage, if not a whole social order.  The story of two very different people who almost but never quite loved each other, of a miracle that never quite happened.  (Mauriac wrote that ‘to love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others’.)

All in all, a very fine film.

Behind the Candelabra

Behind the Candelabra

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

USA, 2013

Cornerhouse, 8 June 2013

Liberace’s sparkling career, his unbridled success, was based crucially on keeping up appearances, manning the facade.

He embraced the glitz and glamour of show business and used cosmetic surgery to keep time’s poisonous arrow at bay, all the while maintaining the pretence of heterosexuality – incredible as this may seem in hindsight.

Although the portrait of the great pianist addresses the truth and tragedy of his life head on, this is a moving, entertaining, very funny film.  As a coda, there is The Picture of Dorian Gray: Scott, Liberace’s lover, being his youthful beautiful self and AIDS the treacherous worm within.

About Michael Douglas’s performance: well, it is impressive indeed, one of the best things he has ever done.  He here exudes a sweet yet sinister charm.  In the role of Liberace he has struck artistic gold.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Directed by Mira Nair

UK, 2013

Cornerhouse, 1 June 2013

After 9/11 everything supposedly changed, including the lives of Pakistani economic analysts working on Wall Street.

Changez’s life (a brilliant performance by Riz Ahmed, he’s a movie star already) is quite conflicted before then, mind: his father, a poet, despises his son’s chosen profession as a Draconian downsizer and he asks Erica (Kate Hudson), a girl he has his eye on, to pretend he’s her dead boyfriend just so she’ll sleep with him.  He is already heading for a sorrowful crash/radical change when 9/11 happens.  His experience of the distrust towards difference so typical of Bush’s America is merely the tipping point.

As a film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a triumph and this is due mainly to the pace of Mira Nair’s direction and Riz Ahmed’s compelling performance.  Changez tells his story in a bar in Lahore over the course of a day (there are extended flashbacks) so the drama is very tightly structured.

Yet on reflection, one cannot help feeling that the story has been contrived to make certain points: the kidnap victim (an American) isn’t entirely innocent, whereas Changez is  Whilst Erica, his American girlfriend,  needn’t have been such a monstrous mindfuck.

Still, it’s a telling footnote to the War on Terror.

Me and You

Me and You

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Italy, 2012

Cornerhouse, 31 May 2013

It is a sometime raucous yet a gentle, genuinely sweet film.

He’s the son of divorced parents, this lad called Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori) who may (or may not) have some form of Asperger’s, and when his school goes on a skiing trip he decides to set up camp in the basement of his apartment building instead.  Better to sit out the week alone.

Yet in short order he’s joined by his half sister Olivia (Tea Falco), a soulful junkie, and together the two live in a world of their own making.  They make do, they’re OK, they come through fine.  When the week is over they embrace and part before entering the real world again.  Just like lovers on a weekend kissing goodbye on a Monday morning.  It may be a cold world sometimes but it’s the only one there is.

That’s the film in brief: beautiful and tender and true.

Something in the Air

Something in the Air

Directed by Olivier Assayas

France, 2012

Cornerhouse, 25 May 2013

The story of one young man growing up in the ‘70s, struggling with the political system, grappling with his artistic inclinations, finding his place in the world.

Then again, it is also a film about cinema itself – as pretty much all French films are – and in particular it poses the question: Truffaut or Godard?  Someone who has seen Silken Skin will know the correct answer, the quotation from Pascal at the start is a dead giveaway.

They find, this young man and his contemporaries, that left-wing organizations, so-called collectives, are as prescriptive and oppressive as the supposedly fascist society they purport to oppose.  I don’t think even the director would claim this as an especially piercing or original insight, yet nonetheless it is an accomplished film and benefits from some excellent performances, particularly from Clement Metayer and Lola Creton.

Madame de…

Madame de…

Directed by Max Ophuls

France, 1953

Cornerhouse, 26 May 2013

Madame de… is an intriguing film, a costume drama centring around a grand love affair that features lots of waltzing and ends with a duel, but you’d be hard pressed to call it a classic.

I enjoyed it more for the loose ends and inexplicable occurrences (what became of Lola in Constantinople?  Why was Madame de… in debt at the start?  How could the general, her husband, be at once worldly yet also so petulant and petty?) than for the main, overly melodramatic love story.  A women’s film, a weepie, a star vehicle for the likes of Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer and Vittorio De Sica: that’s most likely how the film was seen at the time.  Darrieux’s personage seems not only fickle but unwell, constantly on the verge of hysteria.  Though maybe she’s just a woman in love.

With several artistic touches certainly, yet as well a fair number of problematic lacunae, Madame de… is definitely worth a watch.  But Max Ophuls has made much better films.

Madame de… is showing again on Wednesday as part of the Matinee Classics season, further details are here.

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu

Directed by Andrei Ujica

Romania, 2010

Cornerhouse, 19 May 2013

Moving from the funeral of Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceausescu’s assumption to high office in 1965 right up to his interrogation by police officers in 1989, this documentary presents, without explanation or narrative, pictures from the man’s life.

As we see, he supported Czechoslovakia and resented and resisted Russian interference in Rumania, while cultivating relationships with Maoist China, Nixon’s America and de Gaulle.  In some respects, he served his country well, or at least was sincere in wishing to do so, by keeping it on an independent path – this film suggests that possibility, at any roads.  Ceausescu is seen mostly in public, performing for an audience, and it is difficult to get any authentic sense of the man.

The film uses only state-approved footage, though the odd dissenting voice does creep in, and the black and white images of a Cold War country – grey apartment buildings, clean and shiny car factories, sparsely shelved shops, the muddy fields of collective farms – are bleakly, oddly beautiful.  You wouldn’t want to live there, mind.  You’d go insane.

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu is showing as part of the Anguish and Enthusiasm Film Programme.  Details of further films can be found here.

Beware of Mr Baker

Beware of Mr. Baker

Directed by Jay Bulger

USA, 2012

Cornerhouse, 18 May 2013

The film presents a well-rounded portrait of Ginger Baker, brilliant jazz drummer and troubled soul.

Although occasionally obnoxious to his interviewer here (Jay Bulger, a conventionally pretty, well-fed American and the fellow whose film it is), Baker comes across as an aged eagle, someone who got what he wanted out of life, and who paid for it.  The downside is that the people around him, not least his family, generally paid a high price too.  In serving his talent (he ‘had time’, as he puts it, a natural sense of tempo and rhythm, that’s what made him a great musician), he hurt and abandoned others and damaged himself.

Among a handful of musicians who can be put in the same class as Eric Clapton – the two men played together in Cream, perhaps Baker’s finest moment – Baker has done more than enough to earn our respect.  Not that he cares whether he gets it.  Even so, Clapton himself, whilst emphasising Baker’s exceptional qualities as a drummer (vastly, quantumly superior to John Bonham or Keith Moon, in his view) speaks of him as someone from whom it is best to keep a measured distance.

As well as learning about Baker’s life and achievements, you come away with an understanding of how those who made an impact in the ‘60s, swinging London and all that, were often traumatised by World War Two.  Baker lost his father early and as a child lived through the Blitz.

I could have done without a sermon from the likes of John Lydon, otherwise all else good in Bulger’s film.