A Most Excellent Review

When TV partisans declare that their medium has overtaken film in terms of quality this is exactly the kind of film they're imagining as a synecdoche: the subtle, adult genre film with a strong thematic through-line. If they were to pick out a TV series to favourably compare to A Most Wanted Man they could hardly do better than The Wire. After all, both concern themselves with institutions so thoroughly perverted that they end up perpetuating the very pathologies they're supposed to be treating.

Unlike The Wire, A Most Wanted Man only has two hours to do its job so it narrows its focus to one institution and one pathology: it's about how powerful intelligence agencies focus on punitive measures without stopping to consider the long term impacts of their methods. Like The Wire it primarily relies on dialogue and performance to convey its message. Perhaps its most strong, thematically focussed scene is the one in which the head of an American intelligence agency struggles to understand the benefit of cultivating assets to which her German counterpart can only ruefully quote her own words, "To make the world a safer place."

It also narrows its scope, focusing solely on the methods through which the spy agencies undermine their mission and leaving the consequences to the fertile imaginations of its audience. (Jamal may turn terrorist, activist or simply live quietly but one thing is for sure: he'll never trust the state again.) Whether that approach is more or less effective than The Wire's relentless and agonising accounting is a question I'll leave to the partisans who think that TV versus film is a debate that's worth more than a lazy hook for a review.

A Most Wanted Man does however expand beyond its thematic boundaries. For example it documents some sketched-in personal relationships (every possibility of which would be exhaustively explored on a tv show, to the benefit of some and the detriment of others) and, more interestingly, demonstrates an interest in the way in which people are turned into assets.

The most in-depth example of this is Annabel Richter's recruitment. It's accomplished through nothing more than a textbook good cop/bad cop routine. To the audience it feels completely scripted and artificial. We can almost guess the words that each actor is going to recite before they even leave their mouths. It's a feeling that, if anything, is enhanced by the way the scene frequently cuts to surveillance footage. This pattern repeats some time later when Richter turns Issa Karpov except, if anything, it feels even more artificial because it takes place in an apartment that looks exactly like a theatre set.

I don't think this is accidental. These interactions are made to feel creepily artificial (we're shown lights and cameras that the subjects of the scene don't see) because they are. Whatever genuine concern the characters feel for one another its consumed and directed by the institutional pressures bearing down on them.

***
For making it through all of that nonsense I'm going to leave you with GLEN'S SUPER AWESOME DOUBLE BILL SUGGESTION #1: Omar was also released in 2014 in Australian cinemas and its take on the pathology of intelligence agencies is similar and equally topical.

Ida

I saw two trailers before watching Ida. One presented it as a film about uncovering dark secrets of the holocaust and the other suggested it was about a nun being tempted by carnal pleasures (you've got to feel for whoever fell for the latter). It follows then, that as far as I'm concerned it's about neither.

Many critics have seen this film as a radical change of pace for Pawlikowski and while the formal elements may be new - black and white cinematography, 4:3 aspect ratio, compositions emphasising negative space and an editing strategy that gets right to the meat of scenes - the narrative elements strongly recall My Summer of Love. Most saliently there's a coming of age story in which a young woman tries on a new identity under the tutorledge of a somewhat dubious mentor. What makes Ida more interesting than that earlier film is that Anna/Ida attempts to reconcile multiple contradictory identities - that of a devoted nun, of a Jew, and of a woman of the world. Furthermore those identities come with accumulated historical and personal baggage - they're as much suffocating as they are freeing.

It's interesting too, albeit frustrating, to see that Pawlikowski's interest in religion is much the same as it is in My Summer of Love. Pawlikowski's not concerned with the content of Anna's beliefs or why she might believe or continue to believe. Instead he still sees religion as an ascetic lifestyle in direct opposition to sensuality (maybe he's one of the few people who could really benefit from watching Babette's Feast) and as a tool with which to deny aspects of oneself. Once again though, worldly life has its own share of traps and disappointments.

...And I can't believe I just spent most of that "review" talking about Ida's narrative, of all things. What a waste of space.

(PS: I should give Ida an extra half star for the score. The last time I really listened to jazz Trichotomy was called Misinterprotato. I'm off to remedy that now.)

Pride & Prejudice & Blogging Incompetence

My first thought upon seeing the opening shot of Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice was that I might be about to watch a precursor to Andrea Arnold's muddy, sweary take on Wuthering Heights. Of course Wright's elegant, concise adaptation is nothing of the sort. Sure, a pig is briefly brought inside a house but Wright's shots of nature are more likely to be sweeping and stirring than grimy and grim. Furthermore much of the dialogue is taken directly from the source material and the actors are all professionals.

Despite this it's a pretty far cry from Masterpiece Theatre* so I thought I'd do something a little different on this blog and make some trite, grammatically challenged observations about its mise en scene. As to how this differs from my standared M.O. well, this time I'll be doing it with pictures! No more dancing about architecture!

To start let's return to that opening shot I mentioned. It looks exactly like this:

And in the space of about a minute it turns into this:

It's nice, although starting your story with "a new day dawns" is not exactly a strong statement of purpose. It's just as well then that Wright is using this shot to visually foreshadow the movie's climax.

In the following scene, during which the central couple reunite after having dealt with all their hang-ups, Wright returns to the same landscape at the same time of day for the first time since the film began and I like to imagine that as soon as viewers see the following:

 They're anticipating this shot here:

Wright doesn't just use repeated motifs to create a little extra resonance. Sometimes he deploys them in order to get across a plot point. For example the most urgent motivation for Catherine de Bourg to marry her daughter off her daughter to Mr Darcy.

Here is the establishing shot of her grand house as Lizzie Bennet and the newly married Collins approach:

Despite the house's overwhelming size it's clear, even from this tiny screenshot, that multiple windows are broken which suggests that, despite all of Mr Collins' effusive praise, the de Bourgs are something of a dynasty in decline and are no longer able to afford the upkeep that their stately home demands. I'd like to imagine that the placement of the tree on the left, which doesn't frame the house so much as obscure it, and the decision to shoot in the afternoon so that said tree's shadow looms over the house were deliberate but I'll admit they may well be serendipitous.

What is not serendipitous is the contrasting majesty of Mr Darcy's mansion:

Unlike the shot which introduces the de Bourgs' house the camera is not static, instead it pans left past obscuring greenery until it rests in the position you see above, thereby encouraging the viewer to anticipate the reveal of the mansion's majesty. The shot's composition is also much stronger than the one that introduces the de Bourgs' house as the artificial lake in the foreground serves to guide the viewer's eye towards the house.

Shots of the houses' interiors only reinforce this impression. The scenes at the de Bourgs' are shot in the late afternoon and the night. This is as bright as the house interior gets:

This house's gloominess is only reinforced by its colour scheme which, as you can see above, consists of a lot of browns and reds.

Meanwhile Darcy's mansion is only seen in the morning and comes across as lighter and airier. It helps that the interiors are largely white/cream (or something, colours are not my strong point) and that the rooms are larger:

It's never directly stated in the film that Catherine is bitterly upset about Darcy's interest in Lizzie because of  money troubles; ostensibly she's far more concerned about their differing class status. The presentation of these two houses however suggests that she has more pressing motivations.

Speaking of Mr Darcy my favourite repeated motif in this film is the one I like to call "The Hand of Sublimated Passion". It's difficult to make a romance when your leading man's defining characteristic is his guardedness. Hence Joe Wright's use of "The Hand".

Here it is in its first appearance:

It's just been engaged in the uncommonly gentlemanly gesture of assisting Lizzie to board a carriage. Lizzie, who has been sparring with the hand's owner for some time now, is understandably surprised so the shot that precedes this one shows her looking quizzically after him. Obviously it would be a betrayal of Darcy's character for him to return her gaze so Wright shows us a close-up of his hand flexing instead which makes his feelings clear to the audience but no one else.

Darcy's Hand of Sublimated Passion sadly makes only one more appearance. This time it's after a meeting at which he and Lizzie are clearly smitten with each other but not yet ready to bust out the L word (no Scott, the other L word). The most romantic thing Darcy actually says to Lizzie here is something along the lines of, "Would you like a lift?" so the hand has to do the heavy lifting:

While Darcy's hand is regretfully denied a proper denouement (I was hoping it would find it's way into Lizzie's) the film's end is strong and a key part of it is this shot here in which Jane Bennet prepares to accept Mr Bingley's proposal (by the way that guy is such a dolt in this adaptation):

The scene is initially about Jane so she gets to be front and centre in bridal white while most of her sisters are relegated to dull colours and the background. Lizzie too, is favoured by the composition as she is placed off to one side and framed by the windows. This is because she gets a little moment with Mr Darcy.

In much the same way that the shots I discussed at the beginning call back to one another this shot is reminiscent of the one in which the sisters first learn of Mr Bingley's arrival:

Here Lizzie was most favoured because her amused reactions contrasted with her siblings unabashed excitement. And now I have no idea how to end this... so let's hastily cut to the credits:

*Disclaimer: I have not seen any Masterpiece Theatre.

Another Year, Another BIFF

1. The Past dir: Asghar Farhadi
At the very first BIFF I attended I saw four films. The last of those films was Farhadi’s About Elly and I’m convinced that when the workers tore down the Regent Cinema a year or so later they found a chair with my hand prints imprinted in it. Aside from being nerve-wracking About Elly was the first film I ever saw that hinged on an entirely different set of cultural norms to those I was familiar with. All of which is a rather long winded way of saying that I have no intention of missing a Farhadi film.

2. Outrage Beyond dir: Takeshi Kitano
The only previous Takeshi film I’ve seen is Hana-bi. Having said that, I love that film’s curious mixture of brutal violence and goofy sentiment. I also love its idiosyncratic editing and marvelously suspenseful bank heist scene. In short it’s long past time that I saw another – even if it is the rather tepidly received Outrage Beyond.

3. The Missing Picture dir: Rithy Panh
This film’s reception plus its premise of brutal history mixed with dollhouse reconstructions makes it a must see.

4.  Fallen City dir: Zhao Qi – and 5. ‘Til Madness Do Us Part dir: Wang Bing
Ever since I went to Rotterdam in 2012 and saw films like Bachelor Mountain, Shattered, Born in Beijing and Apuda DV, ethnographically minded documentaries from China have been one of my favorite film types – a feeling reinforced by seeing Petition and Three Sisters recently. Documentaries seem so much more revealing when they focus on their subjects’ behavior or when the interviewer actually leaves space for the interviewed to really express themselves. And the rapid change, dramatic rural/urban divide and history in China create so much rich subject matter to be mined. So of course I’m seeing the two Chinese documentaries at BIFF – especially the one by Wang Bing, the acknowledged master of the form.

SFF Capsules #1

I'm having a great time at the Sydney Film Festival so I'm unearthing my blog to write about some of the movies. We'll see how long this newfound desire to write again lasts.

Vic + Flo Saw a Bear 

“I know. Horrible people like me don’t really exist.”

Vic + Flo Saw a Bear is a deliciously strange film. At its centre is a lived in relationship portrayed by two actors turning in nuanced, understated performances. At its edges is an off-kilter world both charming (golf carts as a major means of transportation) and chilling (psychopaths with bear traps). The two shouldn’t work together but somehow they do. 

Perhaps it’s the women in the aforementioned relationship that make the film work. Vic is grounded enough, albeit anxious and needy, but it's Flo’s personality which feels like a synecdoche for the rest the film. She’s alternately serious, playful and passive aggressive, sometimes she's even all three at the same time. It says a lot about Romane Bohringer’s skills that she can incorporate all these traits into one cohesive character. 

Alternately it might be Dennis Côté’s camera which impassively studies his actors’ worn faces before viewing them in motion and pans right with the same unhurried precision whether it’s approaching a boy playing with a toy helicopter or two women in tremendous agony. I don’t want to suggest that the camera feels totally removed from events but it almost always seems to be studying the action from a position of bemused detachment.  Similarly the film’s mise en scène often seems to undercut scenes' dominant mood. In particular many ominous moments are ever so slightly undermined by a playful note. For example a normally opaquely menacing henchman idly playing his guitar or an agonising sequence being interrupted by a hilariously incompetent trumpet player. 

Whatever the case it’s a fine film, by turns exquisitely moving, wryly hilarious and disconcertingly surreal. Sometimes it’s even all three at the same time.

The Rocket

Its subject is worthy, its director is endowed with not inconsiderable chops and its child actors are as cute as any cherubs who’ve graced the screen. It’s no wonder then that I feel like a right curmudgeon for not being able to enjoy this fable of a cursed son trying to save his family and his sense of self.

The biggest stumbling block for me is its tone.  Ostensibly this is a pretty grim story of people coping with enormous loss; no wonder then that director/screenwriter Kim Mordaunt feels the need to lighten the mood somewhat. It’s an impulse I could get behind – I don’t disagree that even the grimmest of lives is leavened now and then. It’s just that the humour is so hacky, consisting as it does of an endless stream of selfconscious wackiness and limp bodily function jokes. Here’s a traumatised war veteran who is also a James Dean impersonator! Oh and did you know that rockets are kind of phallic? I mean they’re just like dicks! Dicks, geddit?! Also here’s a little boy pissing!

Another stumbling block is that of the plot itself which bears a horrifying similarity to any number of uplifting family drama/comedies I was made to watch as a youngster before I was able to choose my own viewing material. Granted it is a little more accomplished than those movies – the cut from a difficult birth to a giggling boy on a swing and the suddenness and brutality of a woman’s death are two of many minor formal coups that never appeared in the likes of Ed – but the storyline’s payoffs are every bit as familiar and tired, robbing them of any resonance their real world relevancy might’ve lent them.

Various Letterboxd Scribblings

My writing productivity has been low of late and, as usual, the quality hasn't been anything to write home about but I have written about two (two!) films on letterboxd. Neither of these scribblings are as holistic as I'd like and neither really talks about formal elements but, uh, here they are.

I Saw the Devil
Rote plot twists and suspense beats turn what should be an unnerving descent into moral hell into yet another tired revenge thriller. If Kim really wanted to put his hero through a meat grinder he could have made a noir film in which the protagonist is constantly, inexorably drawn towards his fate. Instead I Saw the Devil employs constant cat and mouse set pieces where the question is less about what will be left of the hero and more about who will survive. (To say nothing of the misplaced but apparently obligatory use of black humor to close out the second act.)

If I Saw the Devil is good at anything it's in providing a short hand glimpse into the logic of misogyny and goosing its male audience with shots that threaten to make them complicit in sexual violence. Kim's camera lingers unnervingly on things no audience should reasonably want to look at in quite a different way from, say, the unambiguously outraged gaze of Fincher's camera in his The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But again, this is the audience being made complicit in an unnerving way. If only Kim was able to do the same for his protagonist.

Seven Psychopaths

Plays like a Cabin in the Woods for mouthy, British gangster films. Which is to say that it's often clever and funny but rarely more incisive then the average blog post bemoaning Guy Ritchie's oeuvre or lamenting the state of modern horror. I mean, pointing out that women rarely get substantial roles in crime films isn't exactly the stuff of which incisive critiques are made, and it doesn't help that, much like The Cabin in the Woods, it wants to have its objectifying cake and eat it too.

Notes on Polisse

1. Maiwenn, the director, hasn't just cast herself in her own film - a common enough practise for actors who take up directing - she's written herself into the film through the surrogate role of an embedded photojournalist. Given that Polisse is not about film-making this is a curious choice.

A charitable reading would suggest that she's seeking to emphasise that her film is realistic. Her character’s role, and by extension her own, is not that of a director who tells a story. Rather she's a reporter who relays the situation on the ground. This is of a piece with both the opening title card, which informs the audience that all the cases in the film are based on actual police reports, and with the use of hand-held digital cameras, which have become de rigueur for anyone looking to convey a sense of verisimilitude. However the dialogue she gives her surrogate character suggests that she's also seeking to head-off criticism before it's even been levelled at her: The photojournalist tells others that she worries that people won't take her seriously if she presents herself as the young, attractive woman she is.

2. The closing shot is pretty risible. The film is more about toll of policing child abuse than it is about the victims or perpetrators of it. As such it's gilding the lily to end on a shot which hammers home the idea of these police officers giving their lives for others. It's even more disconcerting that the only on-screen death in the film is shot and edited in a highly aestheticised way (the final scene cross-cuts between a child happily jumping off a trampoline and an officer jumping out a window - all in slow motion) that is completely at odds with the previous commitment to gritty realism.