Zéro de conduite
Zero marks for conduct is what you get in school if you behave particularly shittly, but this film is fantastic. Even though it was made in 1933 and it's less than three quarters of an hour long, and even though it's about a bunch of naughty schoolkids reenacting scenes from Baggy Trousers, it's got an impossible poetic grace about it. It's by Jean Vigo, who made the equally wonderful L'Atalante, and who died a year after making this film, aged 29. It inspired the Truffaut of The 400 Blows, and If... is almost a remake of it. There's nothing else like it, and missing out on the films of Jean Vigo is like missing out on one of the smaller and more unique pleasures of being alive.
I thought it was pretty
good.
Labels: Back of the ead with a plastic cup
Distant Voices, Still Lives
The
aesthetic experiment comes to fruition. This film doesn't start off too bad, very intense camera-work, a shot of a hall in a terraced house held for ages, before slowly zooming or dollying inwards to the sound of disembodied voices. And that's the high point. This shot and the idea behind it are repeated many times throughout the film, which is emblematic of its failings. There is no deepening of the drama, no understanding, no modulation of the emotional tone. Pete Postlethwaite smacks his missus; it is shocking. He does it again; it's tiresome, in the same way as a conversation with someone who really wants to talk about bus routes. He lies in a hospital bed. You wish he would die, in a slightly bored fashion, so as to be able to get out of the cinema earlier.
It's a funny word to use of an overly serious film about domestic violence, but I found it sentimental, in its unwillingness to engage with the characters as real people. And fortunately I had seen this film before, so I was able to do something I hadn't managed to do 20 years before, and walk out.
The sky had cleared and it was a beautiful evening by the river;
this lot were busking by the moebius prism outside the NFT, and there was more enjoyment in five seconds of their music than in an hour of Terence Davies' best. A
shit film that couldn't spoil a nice day.
Exciting Aesthetic Experiment
Dear reader, for your edification, I am about to embark upon a thrilling experiment in cinematic aesthetics. Well, thrilling for you, fraught with danger for me. Because I am going to go and see Terence Davies' Distant Voices, Still Lives again. This has just been reissued in a clever new digital print, and all the critics are literally ganting for it.
Just as they ganted when it first came out, in 1988. Back then, when I was half as old as I am now, my dad was still under the illusion that he should try and mask his contempt for cinema. So he took me and my sister to see it, and we all hated it. There is a five-minute shot of some carpet in Pete Postlethwaite's hall that particularly sticks in my mind, for all the wrong reasons.
But I saw Barton Fink at about the same age, and I was well wrong about that. So have I similarly misjudged Distant Voices, Still Lives? Is it a work of cinematic genius? And did I have any real insight as a teenager? All will be revealed. I am very tempted to open a market for this on Betfair.
Labels: Cut the blue wire
United 93
Quite simply, essential viewing. It's remarkably restrained and completely gut-wrenching at the same time, as it turns from a dull morning into a nightmare in the office for the air traffic control to Das Boot on a plane at the end. When I was watching that Family Friend movie I got the impression that no-one cared if the film was any good and they all just wanted to get to the end of the shooting script. But the film-makers here worked with the surviving family members and you can tell they had a palpable obligation to do a good job. It's a remarkable document and an outstanding film. And the only DVD I've ever watched where the bonus materials make you blub.
The Lives of Others
This is the Stasi-tastic winner of the Best Foreign Picture Oscar, and it's pretty
good. It features a storming performance from Ulrich Muehe, the German Kevin Spacey, as well as loads of crap cars and brown telephones. It's a little obvious, and lacking the intensity of The Conversation, for instance, but expecting too much originality from an Oscar winner is like wanting deodorant on a tramp.
It made me want to go
here, anyway.
Charulata
The Time Out film guide described this flick as Jamesian, which I have to assume is a very literate way of calling it boring. Giving it the
shit rating might be a bit harsh, but the soundtrack had so many crackles on it that it sounded like a Geiger counter factory. I really couldn't concentrate, plus I have just got a new computer with a big telly on it so I had to go and play for ages on Google Earth instead.
Labels: Henry, James, Snooze, Tablet
Memories of Murder
This is a 2004 cops vs serial killer drama from the same Mr Bong as made The Host. It is
good and well shot, but it suffers from a lack of ambition - you never find out too much about any of the characters or the world they live in. On the other hand it may have been the bastard-strength Polish beer I was drinking.
There is a lot to admire though - the coppers clearly learnt their kung fu skills at the Cantona academy (shame they don't get to practice on Palace fans as well) and the subtitles appear to have been compiled by Withnail. Any film which includes the line "is wanking a crime" has to be worth a look.
Labels: respect the dojo
Sunshine
Here is my monthly apology for not having blogged very much. I saw that Friend of the Family film by Paolo Sorrentino which was shit-tacular and about as much fun as watching a pigeon eat stale vomit. Sorrentino made The Consequences of Love, which was fantastic, so you can't help but think that half-way through shooting Friend of the Family he must have realised what a dog's arse of a film he was making and lost all heart.
That put me off films for a while until I went to the flash new Apollo cinema in Regent Street to see Sunshine. The big concept of the Apollo is that you pat £12.50 to get in but it is all very Premium Economy in there which means you get reclining seats and fake ice in the bogs. The film was good as well, apart from the ridiculous slasher subplot - only a buffoon would think that a movie about people flying an enormous nuclear bomb into the heart of the sun needed a bit more excitement. It is on a par with trying to liven up your journey into work on the Central line from Loughton with a bit of nude carriage-surfing in the Leytonstone area.
Plus when the crusty space gimp appears they all start talking about God and it threatens to go a bit Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Thankfully that doesn't go on for very long and there is the appropriately trippy ending nicked out of 2001. Go and watch this film at the iMax and take loads of drugs beforehand, lovely.
Labels: dirty pigeons
Zero marks for conduct is what you get in school if you behave particularly shittly, but this film is fantastic. Even though it was made in 1933 and it's less than three quarters of an hour long, and even though it's about a bunch of naughty schoolkids reenacting scenes from Baggy Trousers, it's got an impossible poetic grace about it. It's by Jean Vigo, who made the equally wonderful L'Atalante, and who died a year after making this film, aged 29. It inspired the Truffaut of The 400 Blows, and If... is almost a remake of it. There's nothing else like it, and missing out on the films of Jean Vigo is like missing out on one of the smaller and more unique pleasures of being alive.
