RNCM Concert Hall, 17 May 2013

We are up to the seventh symphony so far, and it just keeps getting better.

Not only the astounding music and the pleasure of the performance but the proximity of the orchestra, that’s what makes this series of concerts so special.  You’re sat close to, there is a wonderful immediacy to it all.

Rather fine, too, were the pieces that preceded Beethoven: Britten’s Sinfonia da requiem and Avner Dorman’s Percussion Concerto.  The latter work, an unusual form, was graced by Delia Stevens’ busy, brilliant performance on percussion.  She was a blur of artistry and athleticism yet there was no boy to hand her a towel between movements, as by rights there really should have been.  The RNCM has not yet embraced such practices.

Details of day 8 of the Ludwig van Festival can be seen here.

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.

vague star

twin weight

grand wave

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.

black adam

green sin

plain sign

Directed by Jeff Nichols

USA, 2012

Cornerhouse, 12 May 2013

This is a terrific film, an intelligent, rite-of-passage drama with a magnificently choreographed gunfight at the close.

There are echoes of Stand by Me and the opening scene of Great Expectations but its best described (scrabbling for a comparison) as a down-home, Americana version of The Go-Between, if you can imagine such a beast.

Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), two teenage boys, come upon Mud, a mysterious stranger (Matthew McConaughey).  He is a man of the river the like of whom they’ve never seen before, and Ellis in particular is smitten.  They decide to help Mud by bringing him food and equipment and taking messages to his girl (Reese Witherspoon), and in time the two boys find themselves embroiled in his troubles.

It is a film about boys and men, fathers and sons, and as such it is wholly satisfying, but what s especially fine – well, there are two things, the second being the luminous presence of Sam Shepard, legend – is that there is nary a hint of misogyny to be found.  You never give up on women or on love as a possibility, that’s the bottom line.

green ore

phantom ice

stolen leaf

Directed by Tobias Lindholm

Denmark, 2012

Cornerhouse, 10 May 2013

Apart and alone, the crew of a cargo ship await their fate as Somali pirates and company chiefs back at head office negotiate for their release.

However you turn it over in your mind, this film dazzles: it is intelligent, absorbing, quietly brilliant.  At certain moments you feel it stall ever so slightly but then there’s a revelation, a slip of the mask perhaps, a horror or trauma, a subtle terror to put you on edge again.

He comes out of it damaged, does Mikkel the ship’s cook, his exposure to the aleatory imp of evil yielding a cruel cost.  The chief negotiator Peter pays a high price as well, driving home all by his lonesome at the close.

It’s a film I’ll see again soon.

By Henrik Ibsen

Royal Exchange Theatre, 7 May 2013

Cush Jumbo as Nora Helmer in A DOLL’S HOUSE by Henrik Ibsen. Photo – Jonathan Keenan.

It has not been so long, a little more than two years, since the Library Theatre put on a production of Ibsen’s great play.

What strikes one now is its contrivance: the way it takes place over Christmas, the many elements of intrigue that would not be out of place in a Feydeau farce.  Such as, for example, a secret loan, a forged signature and a fatal letter that must be intercepted and retrieved.

Yet the crucial achievement of the play remains, and that’s the verve with which it reengineers marriage.  Transforming it from a Christian institution where the woman vows to honour and obey into a mature alliance of equals founded on honesty and mutual respect.  And this still seems extraordinary as well as effecting, the way these people – Nora and Torvald too, the latter with some reluctance, granted – grow up before ones eyes.

A beautifully crafted, perfectly paced play and there are some splendid performances in this production, not least from Cush Jumbo as Nora.

A Doll’s House is at the Royal Exchange Theatre until 1 June, further details can be found here.

Directed by Sergei Loznitsa

Germany, 2012

Cornerhouse, 5 May 2013

We are in Belarus during the German occupation of World War Two.

The story centres on Sushenya (Vladimir Svirski), who’s a kind of a Jesus/Judas Incognito figure.  Most men actively commit to one side or another, but Sushenya strives to keep out of it.  But he finds that in wartime it is virtually impossible not to do evil.

During the whole sorry catalogue of petty and vindictive violence, Sushenya strives only to protect others and to behave well, but it is simply not on the cards.  However he tries, he fails.

The film is beautiful but bleak; an aura of fallen hopes surrounds everything.   Redemption is nowhere to be found.