24fps: LIFE AND DEBT (IN JAMAICA)

Life and Debt (2001) could be one of those ‘worthy’ films you don’t really want to watch for entertainment. And in some sense and for a lot of people no doubt this will be the case. It’s not exactly a barrel of laughs. For me though it’s a bit more real, a bit more important. It’s not something I can look away from – and i do look away rather a lot already! The mean streets of Jamaica will always be close to my heart – for better or worse – and I have an interest in the financial well-being of the island and its inhabitants. If they are well off, I’m well off. If they are poor, I’m poor too. There is a goodly segement of this film that deals with the ‘Free Trade Zones’ and unless you know someone who actually worked for ‘Uncle Sam’ under those conditions then you might have a rather more blasé view of the damage rampant capitalism can cause. I do know someone, so I can’t forgive and forget so easily.

All that said this is not as preachy as it might be. I’s a documentary. It’s anti-globalisation naturally, but it does serve to give you a true picture of some of the terrible things happening under your noses day by day, or worse while you are on holiday, a scenario which serves as bookends to the meat in the middle.

It is not just the US that suffers, but Europe and the IMF so I wouldn’t be scared off by any natural aversion to US-bashing. It is what it is. If global politics is your bag and you’re not going to balk at seeing the US as primarily ‘the bad man’ then check it out. For me, I couldn’t live without it, but that’s because it’s up close and personal. Your milage, as they say, may vary. Here’s a link to the Life and Debt home page if you want to know more.

24fps: FIVE EASY PIECES

Five Easy Pieces (1970). Where do I start with this one? Shall I say MY SECOND MOST FAVORITE FILM OF ALL TIME? Nah, you’d get bored hearing me say stupid things like that all the time. What can I say? Well, it’s American Independent cinema like they don’t make anymore. There’s a hundred and one critical essays about it floating around the web. I ain’t going to be able to say anything as smart as what has already been said so … I won’t bother.

All I can say is that this speaks to me personally. As do all my favourite things. I don’t like these films cuz they be smart, po-lit-i-cal or any some such. I likes ‘em because they hit a nerve. “When will he stop going on about his dad?” Sorry guys, but that scene cuts me up every time. I can’t help it! OK so we”ll put that to one side. What really gets to me is Bobby’s predicament. That is why I love this film. It describes a familiar feeling that I just can’t shake myself. It offers no real solutions either. In its quiet, studied way it addresses a problem that I’ve not seen described in any other film. There are no wasted moments here – “That’s a wig you wear, isn’t it?”

Bobby wants to be honest. Indeed he is honest, but the world just doesn’t present itself in way that he can accept it. Honesty he finds is a brutal stick, to use as a weapon or a defence. Bobby wants too much. He gladly takes on the role of rough blue collar rig worker and its easy camaraderie, but is horrified by the ultimate fate of his ‘poor’ friends and the lengths they are driven to in order to survive. Elton and Stoney always make me think of Barney and Betty Rubble for some reason. Bobby loves ‘his girl’ Rayette, but has to force down the contempt he also has for her lack of er, well, intellectual depth. She’s funny, loving and loyal, but in the end that is just not enough. And yet when later in the movie someone else decides she lacks ‘class’ he doesn’t think twice about defending her. But is that what he does? Nah, the intellectuals make him just as sick too.

Bobby appears dumbfounded by the duality of people. He wants them to be smart enough to have a view, but when they do have a view he finds them intractable. We are never quite sure whether Bobby has any real talent or not. The five easy pieces are too easy for him, yet he is on the run from something. Inability, fear of failure, I dunno. For me the film just sums up precisely the feeling I have that things just won’t fall into place – ever. That there is something within gnawing away within waiting for the moment to explode, or the person to explode at. That life isn’t going to break down into a series of five easy pieces that you can live with.

And yeah “I want you to hold it between your knees!”

Though that diner scene is the one well-remembered scene in the movie it’s not the crucial one – that comes later when Bobby turns on his real peers. That later scene is less well-remembered , and perhaps for obvious reasons. It doesn’t lend itself to repetition or ‘our’ shared experience. I would say more but that’s it. “I don’t even want to talk about it.” It’s about a man on unsafe ground. The ending perfect. I mean who really knows what’s going to happen next?

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” I get that a lot.

24fps: BLACK NARCISSUS

Black Narcissus (1947) is, wait for it, MY FAVOURITE FILM OF ALL TIME! “How is this possible?” you say. Let me explain.

It was written, directed and produced by ‘the Archers’, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Oh, you want more? I don’t know, that should be enough for anyone! But why then not The Red Shoes or The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp? Well, those two do feature in my top 100, Blimp quite highly, but in Black Narcissus I find everything I want. Those things include the nostalgia inherent in picking an ‘old’ movie rather than a modern one. It’s only as films age that they acquire perfect taste. I’m not going to say anything about wine – don’t worry.

I suppose the thing that stands out most obviously is the subject matter. Name me one other film where ‘nuns go mad in the Himylayas’. So its striking in its obtuseness to begin with. The story seems wafer thin in that not a great deal seems to happen and when it does it doesn’t seem to amount to very much, except for the fact that it does! Watching this as a child I fell in love with this on the basis that it was just had a fantastic thriller ‘ending’ – a life and death struggle between two nuns at that! Now of course the many layers of sexuality and repressed desire strike me most agreeably.

Add to that photography by Jack Cardiff against which many a master painter of old fades into insignificance. Rarely a film of that age where almost every single frame could live quite easily as a print on the living room wall. The matte paintings that lead you to fully accept that Wales is somewhere in Asia are still astonishing. Maybe not entirely believable, but still astonishing.

Still not convinced. I refer you to the scene where Kathleen Bryon applies her lipstick, in ultra close-up, not for the first time in her life one thinks. For me that is probably the high point of the medium itself! Within that scene notice the bravura editing and movement, truly painting with light. For more chills again with Kathleen Byron her reappearance at the door as Deborah Kerr tugs at the bell rope. There isn’t anything in the Exorcist to approach that for the sudden realisation of a purely evil intent.

OK, it’s not all sex and horror! There are some amazing scenes in flashback of Deborah Kerr’s life before her character Sister Ruth joins the order. Dazzling colour to shame the pre-raphaelites! And David Farrar as the love interest? Well, speaking as a straight man, and that’s pretty straight as the English go, I almost fell in love with him myself. Having him ride around on the smallest of ponies does nothing to diminish his mystique and the final shot of him in the rain looking after the one thing he cannot have and brushing his hair back in the most manly of manly ways is simply magnificent. And I don’t give a hoot how that sounds!

Is that enough? I’ve not mentioned countless favourite scenes. Or even Flora Robson. Or Sabu. “3pm to 4pm, physics with the physical Sister!” Or Jean Simmons! Or my favourite line of dialogue in any movie ever – “I DON’T LOVE ANYONE!”

As a final note I’d just like to say that if you haven’t seen a decent print of this film then you’ve not seen it at all. I caught a version on cable that was barely watchable. I think this is out or soon to be out on Blu-ray soon. Get that. Or the Critereon DVD version I’ve got with all the really great extras on it.

There is an absolute wealth of information out there on this film if you look hard enough and I’ve discovered a few new tidbits myself today!

Did I say this is MY FAVOURITE FILM OF ALL TIME?

24fps: ANNIE HALL

Annie Hall. What a wonderfully simple unpretentious title. It’s hard to imagine a film getting a title like that now. It’s easy when the film is a biopic – I mean you know what to expect or rather who – but just who the heck is Annie Hall?

If this were a simple love story it wouldn’t stand so many repeated viewings, but here it is at the top of my personal list and a safe bet to pull off the shelf and view any time. It’s made easy by the episodic nature and relatively fast pace. Each scene has a different hook, a fresh gimmick, a new joke, sometimes sophisticated, sometimes banal, romantic, sexy, always funny and just full, rich. Rich in language and style without ever being flashy or just about the surface. A moment of perfect clarity for Woody. It’s original too. When Christopher Walken does his thing. When the subtitles reveal the thoughts of the characters. When Woody gets to prove his point in the cinema queue and then talks directly to camera he harks back to Laurel and Hardy but also sets the stage for the next thirty years or so of film-making. Of course he has long since lost the plot, but this will always be the film that stole the Oscar from Star Wars and rightly so. La-De-Da! La. Dee. Dah!

24fps: SOLYARIS

Solyaris (1972) has long been one of my favourite Science fiction films. Naturally when i was younger part of that was a snobbish backlash against Star Wars and the like for having seemingly killed SF stone dead. Now I’m older, much older, I find my fondness for it runs much deeper. I realise that for some ‘hypnotic’ can translate as deadly dull but the pacing here reminds me here more of a good slow build Japanese horror film or, if it weren’t so dark a sinister, an epic romance. It’s slow, measured, sometimes disturbing, but ultimately emotionally rewarding. I don’t suppose you have to be middle-aged and a little world-weary to identify with Kris (Donatas Banionis), but it must help. When the action comes, and there’s not a great deal of it apart from the resulting aftermath, it really delivers some powerful, memorable scenes, especially as Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk) rips through a steel door with her bare hands or drinks liquid nitrogen to try and escape the horrible dawning realisation of what she is.

The big open question is the end. What does it mean? Open to interpretation I guess, and to be honest I’ve read quite a few interpretations. All of them equally good. Or equally insufficient. This is often compared with 2001: A Space Odyssey, but seriously you really can’t imagine blubbing at the end of Dave Bowman’s journey – Kubrick never was much of a one for people. For a reason I can’t quite identify (oh you know me so well) I always choke-up when Kris is reunited with his father – if he is, of course. The symbolism of that running water, so right in your face, also escapes me. I’m not sure I want or even need to know. The emotional reaction is so strong I wouldn’t want to spoil it with anything as crude as understanding!

24fps: CHINATOWN

Yadda yadda. We all know about the best script ever. Jack Nicolson at the height of his powers. A great director fulfilling his promise. Lighting. Photography. Complexity. An unfinished trilogy. But for me great films are not about technique, they are about an emotional connection between the individual members of the audience and the content. Cinema being primarily a folk art that requires multiple successful contributions for anything to work it’s difficult to suggest any one thing that gets everybody excited.

Chinatown (1972) has lots of things going for it, but the personal thing that grips me is … and tell me if I’m becoming obvious … the character of Noah Cross. The little screen time John Huston gets is used not only with apparent ease but also to judicious effect. Not unlike Henry Fonda’s turnabout performance in Once Upon A Time In The West I have no problem believing Noah is the God of Evil. The biblical name helps, as does it’s association with water, the recurring theme and motif of the film.

It’s all about Noah for me. I could paraphrase some of the dialogue, but I won’t!

24fps: THE WAGES OF FEAR

The Wages of Fear or for the French among you Le Salaire de la Peur (1953) is still a rich veiwing experience even more than 50 years after it’s intial release. Of course it’s French for starters which means it’s likely you’ll get some cracking photography, a noir-ish theme and at least one good looking and impossibly cool hero. Cue Yves Montand: hair, cigarette, slightly gay neckerchief (we’ll forgive that), but most importantly the clean white vest (of which more next week). This film as well as the man is the epitome of cold dark chic, and here one of those stars, the like of which hardly exists anymore on the slivery screen, the kind of star that when you see them enlarged to 40ft wide even the coldest brain can’t help fantasising what it might be like to be … that … cool!

On a basic level it is just a fantastic action adventure movie. Four desperate men, two trucks loaded with nitro-gyclerine, one vast South American jungle -shit, do I have to spell it out? Among several unforgettable scenes is the simplest. A finger of tobacco blown off the open cigarette paper – you might have been on the edge of your seat for a couple of hours already but you didn’t see it coming like that!!! You have to wonder at the influence on Speed (1994) of the scene in which the drivers have to stick to a speed limit over rough road in order for the lethal cargo not to detonate due to the vibration.

My own favourite scene is the one depicted above. It’s not just the horror and pain of the victim who has already given himself up to cowardice, but the sheer bloody ruthlessness of our hero, from then on without a doubt our anti-hero. Probably the only bum note is the final scene which betrays it’s age, but rewind it back to the start and remember how long it takes for this film to get to the meat of the story – how much background detail you get. How easy it would have been to quickly sketch in the main character and leave the other dupes as cardboard cut-outs. You couldn’t even think about developing those characters in this way or giving them that much screen time in modern cinema, which is a little bit of a shame.

You may also want to revel in the anti-American feeling that resulted in a pared down version for that audience (now restored) but now dear reader I shall leave you to die, because I am a cool French anti hero, with perfect hair, a cigarette, a clean white vest and a slightly gay neckerchief (but we’ll forgive that today).

PS. I’ve not seen the remake Sorcerer (1977) but it looks good despite bombing on it’s release (everyone was still watching Luke, Han and the Princess)!

24fps: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP

The War Office pressed the Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) for a little slice of propaganda and what they got was The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)! I expect they were hoping for a flag waver but if you want anything straight don’t ask a couple of artists. It is on the face of it and to today’s modern audiences a bit of a flag waver probably because we find it easier to read, but it’s because of that unashamedly patriotic over tone that I like it so much (though it is not uncritical in the detail). The story in essence is simple: in order to win the war against the Nazi’s the British must give up their out-dated notions of fair-play and honour. As the German Officer Theo says “this is not a gentleman’s war. This time you’re fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain – Nazism. And if you lose, there won’t be a return match next year… perhaps not even for a hundred years.“ Considering the resources of the time, the special effect, which consists entirely of aging Roger Livesey into old age, is remarkable. Perhaps the Archers over-complicate the film with a flashback and a device that sees Deborah Kerr play three parts – confusing perhaps, if you’ve not seen the film twenty times like I have!

Of course some viewers might confuse the complex mixed messages at work here. It WAS 1943. There is only so much that Powell and Pressburger can get away with which means a good deal of sifting and many pleasant viewings. The original script was much harsher, but then it would be wouldn’t it?

DVD: THE MAHABHARATA

The Mahabharata (1989) is a play more than a film although less wordy and more visual than perhaps a play ought to be. As I mentioned last time this is a cool Western interpretation of an Eastern idea. The Mahabharata is one of two classic Indian epic poems, the other being the Ramayana. I was going to review this as any other film sat on my DVD shelf, but I give up. How can you objectively review something you actually believe. Well, I suppose you can, but it would take a better person than me to do it. I know my limitations. So, as I’ve said, I’ll probably think of a format to continue my investigation of this subject, but in the meantime some rambling …

In the scene above, Abhimanyu, the beloved son of the main hero Arjun, is about to be slaughtered by forces far more powerful and experienced than he. It is sometimes related that the Mahabharata is somehow a battle between good and evil, but if you accept that your appreciation of the story is likely to be limited. The story, indeed the tradition (he says, avoiding the dirty word), rejects that duality. The Mahabharata is the story of the apocalypse described in familial terms. The destruction of the family of mankind is the end of the world. Here on the battlefield of Kurukshetra are ranged two massive armies each led by a set of cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas. On each side the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ are equally mixed due to many a stupid oath or promise made in haste. Good men fight on the side of evil and evil fights alongside the good.  That situation alone should be enough for anyone to realise that this war isn’t going to end well for anyone. The death of Abhimanyu signals the catastrophic failing of the moral code of conduct that had existed in regard to the normal rules of war up to that point. The people who kill Abhimanyu are his family, cousins, an uncle, his childhood friends and teachers, good men completely lost to their senses. This seems to be making a point about war in general – a slippery slope up which it is impossible to return. The majority of the Mahabharata is actually about the avoidance of the inevitable. The Pandavas represent appeasement, the Kauravas unreasonable provocation.

In some sense that single scene above describes many events within the narrative. Bad decisions are made by otherwise intelligent people. The wicked test the virtuous beyond breaking point. Like many a parable it provokes the question what would we might do in similar albeit smaller  situations. There are very many questions, but unlike more biblical texts the Mahabharata seems short on answers. That, I feel, being somewhat the point! Yudhistira will not tell a lie and Bhima will not cheat, but when push comes to shove what are they prepared to sacrifice on those hasty promises? What are promises, except a challenge to God to break them down.

A challenge to me is the hyper-text nature of this great story of mankind. For every sentence I write leads in at least two different directions. You will appreciate from that fact alone that the story is Eastern in nature. It is not linear and defies any attempt to make it so. This might make my notes appear mere rambling, but I’ve always thought that you should most definitely not start at the beginning when approaching the Mahabharata. Dive into the middle and work your way out.

More rambling to come.

24fps: THE HAIRDRESSER’S HUSBAND

The Hairdresser’s Husband (1990), or should I say Le Mari de la Coiffeuse, has a soundtrack like no other. One that not only matches the visuals but informs them. They are inseparable. The whole thing adds up to not much more than a decent perfume. Unlike the characters within I wouldn’t suggest drinking too much – it’s a bit intense! A blend of light comedy, romantic fantasy and ultimately tragedy, it is intoxicating, sensuous, exotic, undemanding, but all the same breathtaking as well. A man dreams as a boy of growing up and marrying a hairdresser. His dream comes true, but like everything in life there is a price. You can’t get much simpler than that.

Heady stuff. Pure film. And it’ll make a dancer out of the most left footed amongst you.