Electrick Children

Electrick Children

Directed by Rebecca Thomas

USA, 2012

Cornerhouse, 13 July 2012

When Rachel (Julia Garner) is instructed to marry a boy she has never met, she runs away from her close-knit Christian community.

Our innocent heroine is then besieged by the garish neon glare of modern city life.  Her closeted upbringing creates a certain culture-clash yet gives her a naive charm.  This works sometimes to her advantage.  Apprentice knights yearn to protect her.

There is a potent atmosphere of peril and uncertainty at the start, but somehow the film loses its way and eventually runs out of steam.  It becomes messy and meandering, concerning itself too much with the fate of characters other than Rachel – and that’s a mistake.  The bold powerful image becomes smudged and blurry, rather less powerful.

But it is still a good film and well worth a watch.  Julia Garner’s performance is wonderful: Rachel is weird and strange, and kind of like one of Ben Marcus’ sentences.

Silent Souls

Silent Souls

Directed by Aleksei Fedorchenko

Russia, 2010

Cornerhouse, 6 July 2012

A woman’s body is a river; the problem is you can’t drown in it.

Just one of the notions to be found in this strange, spiritual film: it has an ambience of heightened life, of fragile beauty, as when people are close to death.

They’d both loved this woman, one of the men being her husband, and now her body lies in the back of their car as they drive towards her funeral pyre.  They’ll construct it themselves by the bank of a river.

Merjan beliefs, in particular as they relate to death, are explained in the film – and there’s an ethnological aspect to it, undoubtedly.  However, while these people do apparently exist they probably don’t have the shamanic beliefs ascribed to them; it is something of a put-on job.

Nonetheless, this is an absorbing film.  I found the mix of the Merjan’s supposed ancient and poetic beliefs and the banal Soviet-era environment (run-down factories, concrete slabs everywhere, pylons all along the road) to be a potent brew.

The Hunter

The Hunter

Directed by Daniel Nettheim

Australia, 2011

Cornerhouse, 6 July 2012

Willem Dafoe adds class and intensity to this clean killer of a thriller.

His character, name of Martin, is a guy who’s sent to investigate the sighting of a Tasmanian tiger in the Australian wilderness.  The mission is to get its DNA, to clone it, to find out how it immobilises its prey.  For some reason, his employer – he is contracted to one of those shadowy, unscrupulous, biotechnological outfits with a penchant for cryptozoology, you find them everywhere on the high street nowadays – doesn’t entirely trust him and as Martin tracks the tiger, other sinister forces track him…

Be assured of a rocky ride – thriller elements predominate and are handled very well indeed.  Oh, and there’s also a bit of a subtext about how badly we treat nature and the environment.  But ‘The Bear’ it is not.

RNCM Big Band with Bob Mintzer

RNCM Big Band with Bob Mintzer

RNCM Theatre, 7 July 2012

Exhilarating and invigorating, there you have two words that aptly describe this fine concert, a kind of unofficial curtain raiser for the Manchester Jazz Festival.

The band began with Harold Arlen’s ‘My Shining Hour’ then played a slue of Bob Mintzer’s own compositions, with the great man in attendance himself, conducting and joining in on saxophone.  It was terrific withal, with Laurence McNaughton on piano particularly delighting the ear.  Fred Lawton’s guitar work on the James Brown-inspired ‘Home Basie’ also stood out for me.

This band don’t just make music, they create and spread happiness.  Pass it on.

Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present

Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present

Directed by Matthew Aker

USA, 2012

Cornerhouse, 8 July 2012

Matthew Aker’s documentary casts an efficient eye over the career of the performance artist as she plans and appears in a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

There’s a new work as well, which could be called a silent confessional: someone sits across from Abramović, the two people looking at each other.  Their momentary meeting can be intense, surprisingly so.  An oblong table sits between the two at the start, then it is later removed, despite considerable security concerns.  Another metaphor suggested by this work: it’s as though Abramović takes a reading of the face and soul of the person before her.  Of course, it cuts both ways.

You come away from seeing this tightly-edited documentary with a renewed respect for Marina Abramović and the journey that her art – for it is art, probably, though it’s difficult to say why exactly – has compelled her to take.  It doesn’t feel like a path that’s been entirely chosen.

Die Klage der Kaiserin

Die Klage der Kaiserin

(The Plaint of the Empress)

By Pina Bausch

L’Arche Editeur, August 2011

ISBN: 9782851817563

This is Pina Bausch’s only genuine film – as distinct from, say, a film recording of a dance that had previously been performed on stage – and it can best be described as a strange and surreal mess.

Dance figures prominently, as you would expect, and there is music throughout; but the action takes place off-stage: in woods and buses, on hills and rooftops…  There are jump cuts, close-ups and other cinematic devices.  A close-up of a woman’s face, wrinkles undisguised, as her younger lover’s fingers walk along it becomes, in Bausch’s hands, a dance in itself.

Some people have suggested that the film is about our connection with the earth and, yes, there is something to that.  Yet it’s also about the female body: how it is controlled and tamed and presented.  It is about both of these (related?) orientations at once.  Take the woodland scene where the tree trunks are numbered, prior to being timbered; and then compare it with the one where the bride severely cinches the belt on her wedding dress, counting on her fingers how many seconds she can keep it that tight without fainting.

Adventures crazy and images weird are everywhere to be seen, most centreing on culling/slaughter or birth/regeneration.  A woman squeezes milk from her own breasts and then slurps it up.  Her sister runs in high heels, lost and crying for her mother, as Billie Holliday sings ‘Strange Fruit’.  One of my favourite scenes sees a shepherdess tending her flock in evening dress and heels, whilst swigging from a bottle and holding a black lamb in her arms.  Later we see her comatose on the ground, her flock milling and spilling around her.  It reminds you of one of Brueghel’s proverb paintings.

In short, it is a poetic film: many images will stay with you, teasing and delighting the mind, but there isn’t a narrative as such, so don’t go looking for one.  Also, when dance does occur – the tango in midsection where we see just see legs and red shoes or the joyous turn that ends the film, a calypso song on the jukebox – it is terrific.

Open the accompanying booklet and you’ll see some black and white film stills, an impressionistic synopsis of the film, plus various photos taken of Pina Bausch as she worked on it.  Furthermore, there is an interview with her which took place in 1990, shortly after the film was released.  She talks mainly about her approach to cinema.

All in all, it’s an attractive and worthwhile package.

The publisher’s description of the DVD and booklet can be read here.

Your Sister’s Sister

Your Sister’s Sister

Directed by Lynn Shelton

USA, 2011

Cornerhouse, 2 July 2012

Making a genre film – here, a chick flick – that retains a core truth and vitality is a difficult trick to pull off.  Genre conventions are usually at odds with simple plausibility, never mind raw reality.

This film just about succeeds, but it is a close-run thing.

The best moment is when Iris (Emily Blunt) confesses her love; she is so fraught with emotion it’s as though she has just said she’s dying of cancer.  Her voice tells you that love is losing what you cannot ever truly possess: devastation is guaranteed.  It’s a journey you wouldn’t ever freely take but maybe it’s the best life has to offer.  The moment doesn’t last long, just a few seconds, and only a handful of words are spoken, but it is all there in the girl’s voice.  ‘Brilliant’ doesn’t really do justice to Blunt as an actress, but again it’ll have to do.

The film itself is OK; the teary-eyed emoting is generally kept in check.  Mark Duplass as lovable love object Jack can be quite irritating, though.  And the guy looks even more like a teddy bear than male leads in chick flicks usually do.

The Witches

The Witches

Directed by Nicolas Roeg

UK, 1990

Cornerhouse, 1 July 2012

With The Witches we have a stylish adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s story, just as you’d expect from a classy director like Nicolas Roeg.

It is genuinely scary in places, especially when Anjelica Huston takes off her ‘human face mask’ and addresses the gathered faithful.  Huston plays the grand witch sexy as well as scary, a smart move and one which tells you all you need to know about the subtext of the story: a boy’s inchoate pubescence, his apprehension – bordering on fear – of women outside the family home.

This terrific film will delight children of all ages.  And all interested adult parties should compare Dahl’s story with his romp My Uncle Oswald; they are two sides of the same coin.

The Witches is showing again on Wednesday as part of the Matinee Classics season, further details here.

Killer Joe

Killer Joe

Directed by William Friedkin

USA, 2011

Cornerhouse, 30 June 2012

It’s a gross, crazy, OTT crime drama – and there’s a lot to admire in it.

Let’s get to the acting, first: Matthew McConaughey in the lead is dazzlingly supreme, while the rest are merely excellent.  About the story and screenplay: well, Tracy Letts wrote it, adapting her own play, and you can characterise it as being as blackly comic as Joe Orton and as amoral and downright noir as Jim Thompson.

Nor does William Friedkin let you down.  Those nihilistic moments – the chase and the beating of the poor sap who starts it all, the abrupt blow to the cheatin’ woman’s face, the gross-out scene with the chicken leg, all that red – are vulgar cinematic gold.  Friedkin is in his element, transforming a tale of human weakness, petty scheming and congenital stupidity into a parable of hope.

And here is an equation to end: Entertaining Mr. Sloane + Nothing More than Murder = Killer Joe.

Verve 2012

Verve 2012

Northern School of Contemporary Dance

The Lowry, 29 June 2012

This stupendous show shimmers with lambent motions and energetic delights.

The centrepiece was Akram Khan’s ‘Vertical Road’, mesmerising to take in in real time and not a little mystical; it even included at one point some dervish whirling.  It seemed to be about the emergence of an individual from a group; that was my interpretation as I watched it anyway.  Xenophobic disdain or absolute adoration being the fate that awaits the one who’s different from the rest.

Jordan Massarella’s ‘For Dear Life’ was athletic as well as aesthetic, physically demanding yet intricate close-to, as delicate as clockwork; Claire Rodemark and Tom Tindall handled this aspect of the dance very well indeed.  At the end you were moved by it.

A male duet, ‘Dark in the Afternoon’ by James Cousins was strenuously performed and had a definite erotic charge.  If you could bring the figures in one of Paul Cadmus’ paintings to life they would move like this.

And Lea Anderson’s ‘Dynamo’ also had a defined erotic edge, along with a certain painterly quality.  There was a phalanx of beautiful young women, all dressed in vintage (‘50s) attire a la Aguilera.  Some were doll-like and puppet-like, while others took it upon themselves to manipulate them.  They (the doll-like dancers) were twirled about, discarded when boredom struck.  As with a lot of Anderson’s work, it was inventive and intriguing but at times disturbing.

All in all, Verve 2012 offered a varied and interesting programme and the dancers – all recent graduates – were superb, easily professional calibre +.

The final tour date of Verve 2012 is 4 July, when it returns to the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds.  Details can be found here.