An Architecture of Loss: Liverpool

I went into Liverpool fearing an "unmediated slab of quotidian reality"* and hoping for an Uncle Boonmee-like revelatory experience. What I actually experienced was something that, while not reaching (or to be fair even grasping) for Boonmee's intense mysticism, imparted a not dissimilar sense of a regrettable past embedded in the present. Unlike Boonme the loss is etched in run down, occasionally skeletal, buildings and faces. Lisandro Alonso finds a great deal of pathos in simply placing his prodigal son in what were clearly once familiar surrounds and people, or in quietly evoking the wider world outside of the small, isolated village.

Despite this I didn't find it an entirely gratifying experience. Alonso's use of non professionals ensures some very restrained performances which occasionally become flat. It's probable that this hyper-naturalism is exactly what Alonso was hoping to achieve but for me, raised on traditional acting, the ability to read the tiniest flickers of emotion in the actor's faces was missing and I couldn't stop thinking about how the film might have played with someone like Samantha Moreton in the lead.

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*This wonderful phrase is stolen from Shane Danielsen who deployed it in his critique of Joe Swanberg. His piece is here.

BIFF Capsules: Choice Cuts from Days 2 and 3

Carlos: Ostensibly about the notorious Carlos the Jackal Assayas' latest film is more interested in the rise and fall of Cold War terrorism than its most famous poster child. This wasn't immediately clear to me, so I exited the first part feeling a little let down having expected a probing character study and instead having seen what seemed like a stripped-down personal history. However it's clear, particularly as the film moves into its second third, that Clarlos was chosen as a subject because of his connections to a large number of different organizations and countries and because he was active for close to two decades. This allows the film makers to show us how these groups went about their business, how their targets responded and how that changed over time.

The film turns up some rather startling and intriguing details for viewers (like myself) who are not well versed in this particular part of Cold War history. There's the struggle of German anti-Zionists to distinguish, both in action and deed, the difference between what they do and the unforgivable crimes of their country's recent past, there's  the steadily decreasing willingness of governments to strike deals with hostage takers and most strikingly for me, there's the desire for governments to use these small groups in much the same way as earlier nations might have used privateers. In hindsight I suppose this latter action is something that still goes on today but words to the effect of "East German Terrorist Liaison Office" were nonetheless surprising.