BigLens 6.3 by Big Lens

BIGLENS THE KENT FILM MAGAZINE | VOLUME 6, ISSUE 3 | SUMMER 2010

OPINION IS EVERYTHING

PLUS CINEMA ETTIQUETTE OVERRATED? WHEN TRAILERS ARE BETTER THAN THE FILM AND MUCH MUCH MORE

ESPECIALLY IF IT’S NOT WHAT YOU SHOULD BE THINKING

Celebrating Ingenuity, Inventiveness and Independence

For all the latest visit: www.kentfilm.net

EDITORIAL

COVER: THE GODFATHER | PARAMOUNT PICTURES

THE SUN ALWAYS SHINES ON TV THIS IS A BIT RISKY as an opening gambit for a film magazine, but here it goes: television is better than film. Deep breath. Exhale. Okay, perhaps I was making a dramatic overstatement for the sake of provocation, but there is actually something in it. Think back to the 90s (if your memory can stretch that far) and look at what TV had to offer. Friends. That’s about it. To be clear, actually, I’m talking about ‘serious’ television – comedy has always been relatively well represented on the small screen, be it Frasier, Seinfeld et al. But in terms of more weighty produce, television was always regarded as cinema’s younger and unfavoured little brother, the one with a short attention span and the silly haircut. However, over the last decade, the quality of television drama has rocketed. Though it saddens me to say so, it’s mainly American shows that are the pick of the bunch, and, equally saddening, it’s probably mainly to do with budget. Consider, though, the veritable smorgasbord of impressive programmes that have appeared over the last few years: Six Feet Under, The Wire, The Sopranos, Dexter, The West Wing, Generation Kill, Mad Men, True Blood... I could go on and on. Can we say, though, that the quality of films has markedly increased? It’s a lot more difficult to judge, and though Avatar has certainly heralded a progression of technology, the improvements in filmic craft and storytelling are perhaps slightly less distinguishable. But I think it’s a good thing. The little brother has finally hit puberty and is beginning to challenge its previously unrivalled sibling. So come on, big brother: it’s time to up your game. Tom Brown

SMALLPRINT Editor in Chief: Tom Brown Proof Editor: Linzi O’Brien Designer: Hannah Charles

If you have a passion for film and would like to contribute to BIGLENS, please email tb211@kent.ac.uk or visit www.kentfilm. net. BIGLENS is produced with the support of Kent Film, a society of the University of Kent Students Union. | All information is provided in good faith. | Articles are not necessarily the opinions of the editors of BIGLENS, of the Kent Film Society or of Kent Union. | Everything that is already copyrighted, is theirs. | Everything not, is the intellectual property of the individual writer, so no thieving.

WALL-E | PIXAR

Check out the Kent Film society hub at www.kentfilm.net for society news, BIGLENS movie reviews and all that good stuff.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING HONEST TOM BROWN

IN BRUGES | BLUEPRINT PICTURES

PICTURE THE SCENE: you’ve gone to the cinema with one of your good friends. You’ve sat through twenty minutes of trailers, twenty minutes of trailers about trailers, and then eventually almost 120 minutes of the feature. You really enjoyed the film – thought the acting was pretty good, didn’t see any of the twists coming – it wasn’t perfect but you thought it was great. Maybe it had Mark Wahlberg in it. Maybe it didn’t, it doesn’t matter. So you’ve just walked out the cinema and you turn to your friend and timidly ask: “So what did you think of it?” Needless to say, they hated it. “I didn’t like it. The plot was generic, the acting was average at best. Mark Wahlberg was terrible.” Oh. “How about you?” Now you have two options: either you can stick to your guns, go with your guts and declare proudly that you loved it; or you can subtly shift your opinion so it aligns more with your friend, averting any potential risk of confrontation or you looking like a fool for liking something that was clearly rubbish. “Err, yeah, I didn’t think it was that bad, but it wasn’t great...” Ah, the cowardly middle ground, home to many but comfort for few. If you enjoyed the film so much, why couldn’t you say so? The answer is, quite simply, standing. Not in terms of being upright on two legs, but in terms of reputation, of status. Even if I really loved a film such as Twilight (which, by the way, I DO NOT) I would be reticent to let everyone know of these misguided beliefs. It simply wouldn’t be cool. Similarly, if anyone asks you about something like In Bruges, the only possible response is to declare how much you loved it with all its purgatorial allusions (for the record, I did rather enjoy In Bruges, not least because I’ve been and it’s lovely). Certain films (even sometimes particular genres of film) have a certain cultural standing that the majority of people tend to adhere to. Sometimes films can begin with a 4

“SOMETIMES, IT CAN BE EXHILARATING TO FLY IN THE FACE OF COMMON ACCEPTANCE”

poor reputation and then gradually increase over time – The Shawshank Redemption, for example. Sometimes films reach a point where their status gets so high that they are inevitably knocked down, such as the new trend for disliking Tarantino films. The same thing happens with music and fashion; everything moves in cycles. The Gold Rush, Chaplin’s first starring feature-length film, was, at the time of its release, a piece of cinematic and cultural gold (excuse the unavoidable pun). Chaplin was the fashion, and everyone wanted a piece of it. Critics fawned over the film as it experienced its zenith in terms of popularity and standing. However, over the course of many years and excessive critical analysis, it became the popular thing for academics to belittle the little man and his film, meaning its loss in status. More recently, the film has almost come full circle and regained its standing as a piece of cinematic art, and rightly so, but it goes to illustrate how fickle all this business can be. The problem is, it’s a lot easier (and often more fun) to be cynical and derisive about a film than it is to sing its merits. I don’t know about the less neurotic of you, but whenever I tell someone I love a particular film and they say they don’t like it, I feel as if that means they dislike a little part of me, and I tend to take it too personally. Hence the mumbled “it wasn’t great...” on the fence reply; it’s a means of self-protection. Sometimes, though, it can be exhilarating to fly in the face of common acceptance. I remember fondly (probably in much the same way as someone recalls their child’s first words) one seminar last year that revolved around The Godfather. I’d kept my mouth as shut as it goes for the majority of the hour and a half, until at the end our teacher asked: “Does anyone have anything else to say about the film?” Well, I did. With no little delight, I uttered a long “Yeah...” ensuring I had everyone’s full attention. This was my moment. “Is it just me, or does anyone else think The Godfather’s a little overrated?” I sat back in my chair and soaked up the beautiful stunned silence. “I can’t believe you just said that,” said my good friend sat next to me. But I had said it, and it felt good. Therein lies the lesson. The next time you hate a film you know you should love, shout it as loud as you can. Scream that Citizen Kane was a boring, overdrawn, pretentious piece of wank, and declare sincerely that Happy Feet is PROBABLY THE BEST FILM EVER! We all know it isn’t, but it doesn’t matter. Just have an opinion, and stick to it.

THE GOLD RUSH | CHARLES CHAPLIN PRODUCTIONS

TWIFIGHT

“SWEET? REALLY? I HOPE EDWARD TURNS FERAL.”

TWILIGHT | SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE by Edward Wood (for an easy recap watch Tim Burton’s Ed Wood) is generally considered the ‘Worst Film Ever Made’, a dubious title it has held for some time. Now there is a new contender for the infamous label: The Twlight Saga. Now some may consider this a little harsh: after all Plan 9 From Outer Space had atrocious acting, diabolical direction, shocking special effects, and horrific writing. But wait! So does Twilight. The performances in Twilight are on par with Joey’s ‘Smell the Fart Acting’ in Friends, but even funnier because it’s deadly serious. What makes this worse is that the actors have actually been pretty good in other films. Kirsten Stewart has a sizable filmography, including the likes of Into the Wild, and Robert Patterson gave one of the better performances from a young actor as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Maybe the director is to blame; after all, it’s their job to guide the performances. Twilight number one was helmed by Catherine Hardwike; a thoroughly disappointing film from a director who has proven before to be more than capable. Twilight two, New Moon, was marginally better (perhaps because the insufferably pathetic Edward Cullen was out of the picture for most the film) and to be fair the director, Chris Weitz, possibly made a marginal improvement from his last directional effort, The Golden Compass. One thing New Moon suffered from was just being far too rushed. Apparently the studio wanted to churn out any old piece of crap knowing that the mindless masses would go and see it. Which is probably why the special effects are inexcusably bad. Although the filmmakers may have advanced past Ed Wood’s flying saucers with visible strings, cheerfully bobbing up and down, in this day and age there is no excuse for such shitty special effects as are displayed in New Moon. The werewolves had the potential to be pretty cool; there’s nothing like a good man to beast transformation. However, the CGI was on par with Dr. Who. The problem is, when Dr. Who flaunts shabby CGI it can get away with it. This is because Dr Who doesn’t have a fraction of the budget a Hollywood giant like New Moon has, and, crucially, Dr. Who is on a TV screen; a screen very different from that in a cinema. When Dr. Who’s CGI is better than Twilight’s, there is something very wrong. Perhaps the writing is to blame? Seeing as much of the dialogue is reminiscent of the source material, this is probably a big factor. In fact, pretty much everything is taken from the source books, which were terrible in the first place. I feel I have given the Twilight Saga a fair chance. I have seen both films, and read all four books. The epic terribleness of the whole thing wouldn’t bother me so much if it weren’t for this ridiculous amount of ‘fangirlness’ surrounding the whole fi-

asco. ‘The next Harry Potter’: wait, WHAT?! The Potter films are far from perfect, but at least Potter’s source material was intelligent and didn’t read like a fourteen year old wrote it. The main problem that makes Twilight so much worse than Plan 9 From Outer Space is that it had a huge Hollywood budget. Plan 9 is quirkily cheesy, even enjoyable in its supreme terribleness: a cult classic. Twilight is mainstream crap that spoon-feeds its audience absolute tripe. Consider in New Moon an actually quite beautiful and effective shot (if I have to give Twilight anything, the cinematography is often quite striking) of Bella stropping in a chair by a window. The camera moves around her and every time we see out of the window it is a different season: summer with bright blue skies, autumn with leaves on the ground, winter with snow. Beautiful, and perfectly conveys to any idiot that this is supposed to show time passing. Apparently not. It seems that Twilight’s audience is considered to be so unbelievably simple that the months have to be written on the screen to tell them that time is passing; raping what would otherwise have been something pretty good. In fact, every time Twilight starts to do anything impressive, it is quickly smashed to the ground. The werewolves in New Moon would have been pretty damn cool if the effects hadn’t have been so crap. The story might be genuinely sweet and touching if the acting and the dialogue wasn’t so cringe-worthy. And OK, so Twilight is supposed to be aimed at pre-teen girls… in which case I despair at what teenagers these days have been reduced to. Just because it’s aimed at a certain age group doesn’t mean quality has to suffer. [Exactly: see Pixar – Ed.] Oh God, the country is going to be overtaken by squealing girls who think vampires ought to sparkle. Forget vampires and werewolves, that’s the stuff of nightmares right there. Stephanie Myers might claim to be a Mormon or whatever, but she must have sold her soul to Satan to get this bollocks as popular as it is. What is even worse than the tweens squealing over it, is when older people, who ought to know better, join in the squealing. So what if it’s ‘so cheesy it’s funny’, or ‘awhh so sweet!’ there are plenty of films that are ‘so bad it’s good’, but Twilight is not one of them, and can never join the ranks because it has way too much money. Only low budget films can claim the title of ‘so bad it’s good’, because they have an excuse. Twilight does not. And sweet? Really? I hope Edward turns feral and tears out that whinny bitch’s throat like vampires are supposed to do (unfortunately, it would take a massive detour from the books to make this happen, but here’s hoping). What did I aim to achieve by writing this article? Those who actually like it aren’t going to change their minds; it’s not going to put any sort of scratch in Twilight’s incessant popularity. I could beg for it all to stop right now and launch a rally to burn the books and smash the DVDs, but that won’t happen either. I just really needed to vent, to let all the anger out. In fact, I do actually feel a little better.

HANNAH CHARLES

TRAILER TRASH BEN PARRY

that sit and laugh in films because they understand that they’re supposed to. Like people who cry with laughter when watching Shrek 2 because they recognise one of Donkey’s quotes FROM THE TRAILER. Although I suppose studios pretty much have a lose-lose situation; the only alternative is to put no funny jokes in the trailer, but then everybody would be like ‘dude I didn’t lmao once, no way am I gonna pay to see The Godfather.’ Not really, that’s not a comedy. Of course there are more ways to market a flick than simply slapping all the film’s highlights together in a twominute blitzkrieg. The marketing campaign for JJ Abrams’ Cloverfield was a heavily mysterious affair. It featured a teaser involving the head of the Statue of Liberty crashing down in the street during some New York shindig. Most people assumed Godzilla, as this is what many people secretly want from trailers anyway, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. Though Cloverfield did turn out to be about a skyscraper-sized monster that fumbled around wrecking cities, and JJ Abrams himself said the purpose of the film was to give America its own Godzilla. So I suppose people that assumed the film was advertising Godzilla were actually the closest. Regardless, the film was a love-it-or-hate-it kinda thing, you either got off on its wacky shaky cam and monster with lungs on its face or hated the dumbo characters and wacky shaky cam. Indeed, any traditional trailer would have showcased the wacky shaky cam and either turned on or turned off any potential audience members in an instant, so intrigue

300 | WANRER BROS

HAVE YOU EVER walked out of the cinema with someone and had them say ‘Mate, the trailer was better than the film’? Well I probably have. This might seem like a pretty outrageous thing to say, as trailers have no character development or MOVING performances, but it actually makes sense. Anything is easy to sustain for around two minutes (innuendo!), especially the attention of somebody who is all hyped for films having just paid money to go to the cinema (unless they’re watching trailers on youtube, but then they’re on youtube watching trailers so they’re an idiot if they’re not hyped up for trailers). Pretty much the only thing you don’t get from a trailer that you do from a film is the ending - unless you’re some kind of weirdo that likes dialogue and development and the other characteristics of classic cinema. Even so, some trailers pretty much give away the ending anyhow, like The Sixth Sense one where Bruce Willis walks around wearing a white sheet with eye-holes cut in; I was like ‘mate, he’s a ghost’. Not really, but definitely some trailers totally wreck films, especially comedy films. Many comedy trailers showcase the best gags, to such an extent that it’s almost pointless to see a comedy film once you’ve seen the trailer. Sometimes you get those people

BACK TO THE FUTURE | UNIVERSAL PICTURES

was necessary to fool people into subjecting themselves to eighty minutes of motion sickness (not me, I thought Cloverfield was stellar). Though the Cloverfield teaser was well mysterious, the footage that shocked people’s pants off was still just a clip of the actual film. Another film, this time from the mid-eighties, that proved intensely popular was able to exhibit a number of said film’s greatest characteristics without showing any of the film in its teaser trailer. The clip showed a scruffy lad sauntering towards a DeLorean, hopping inside and flipping a bunch of switches. The window rolls down and a gal asks, ‘Where you goin’?’ He replies, ‘About thirty years,’ then fun eighties music kicks in and everyone’s like ‘HOT DAMN I WILL PAY TO SEE THAT!!’ Such advertising ventures are pretty rare these days though and studios tend to go for the other approach and it is this approach that most often leads to the conclusion that the trailer was ‘like, well better than the film, mate’. 300 is a really fun film. It’s got loads of slow motion and crazy action, as well as stupidly masculine chaps and really stylish visuals. But there’s something else that contains all of this stuff and none of the boring set-up with the politicians being like ‘mate, the Persians are coming’ - this something is the trailer for the film. Like I say, I have no problem with 300 but I have to say that the trailer is such a powerhouse of action and hype and drama and whatever that the film simply can’t compare. It even has all the best quotes like ‘THIS IS WHERE WE FIGHT, THIS IS WHERE THEY DIE’. It would be a logical deduction to conclude that it simply wouldn’t be worth paying to see a film that has that quote in its trailer because there’s no way there could be anything cooler elsewhere in the film. Thankfully most people do not think this way, they see a cool trailer and they expect a cool film. Sometimes they get it and sometimes they don’t, but this is the gamble people take when they go to the cinema. It’s like the lottery but more expensive and the reward is just a good film rather than loads of money.

“ANYTHING IS EASY TO SUSTAIN FOR AROUND TWO MINUTES”

CLOVERFEILD | PARAMOUNT PICTURES

QUIET, PLEASE SUSHAN MANSLEY THE CINEMA. A film-enthusiasts temple. The gloriously huge screen magnifying every broken crevice on Owen Wilson’s nose, surround-sound vibrating through your feet as you nestle into your plush throne for two hours. Perfection. But every time I go to the cinema nowadays, I’m reminded of one fatal flaw: the people. The fact is, you can’t choose who you share this potentially wonderful experience with. If I could, I sure as hell wouldn’t pick the troglodytes who infiltrate nine tenths of the movies I pay to see. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Then you’re probably one of them. My main complaint is the noise, but this doesn’t necessarily stem from the size of an audience. On the contrary, the crowd experience usually adds to the enjoyment of a cinema trip; comedy scenes are funnier when everyone laughs together, scary scenes are funnier when the guy behind you screams like a girl and everyone laughs together. We love the brief moments of unity; it’s good to feel part of the crowd. So it’s not the numbers that bother me; no, it’s the individual who breaks away from the crowd to draw attention to themselves. These simpletons tend to fall into one of two groups: the Talkers and the Snackers, equally prevalent and equally annoying; God help you if you are seated near a crossbreed of the

two. Nobody is better at breaking the tension than the chubby Snacker two rows behind you. Apparently they sit, crisp packet in hand, waiting for their moment. Simba slowly approaches his trampled father’s body, guilty tears beginning to well in his eyes and… rustle rustle. The Chomper decides he can’t resist the call of his Monster Much any longer. Anyway, which ignoramus decided popcorn and crisps (the loudest foodstuffs known to man) be prime movie provisions? The man is either a moron or a particular kind of evil genius, on par with the inventor of “I know a song that will get on your nerves”. The only positive with a film Snacker is you can normally pick them out before the movie starts, either by the shiny wrappers glinting through their podgy fingers

“DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT? YOU’RE PROBABLY ONE OF THEM.”

or, more obviously, by the chocolate smeared across their gluttonous, dim-witted smiles. Now is the time to choose your seat accordingly. Unfortunately, not only are film talkers far more difficult to spot than their Snacker allies, but they have an unlimited supply of ammo. Their favourite weapon by far comes in the form of ridiculous questions: “Who is he? What is he going to do? Why are they talking in Spanish?” A good deal of self-restraint is needed to prevent yourself from physically striking the culprit. Unfortunately, their ammunition doesn’t end with pointless questions, on occasion you may find yourself seated near an Echo. The Echo is often female and particularly rampant in the horror genre; they enjoy narrating exactly what they see, accompanied by thoughtinspiring comments like, “Did you see that? Oh my God!” or, more simply, “Ewwww!” The time for an uprising is long overdue, new cinemas with new rules in which I have the final word. So, Snackers and people who can‘t shut up are already out. Next, no latecomers. People trampling your toes or waving their big fat heads in your field of vision once the movie has started will soon be a thing of the past. Not only shall there be automatic locking doors, synced with the film’s start, but I’ll add a fancy gizmo that spits in the faces of those who dare to show up late. Now we’re on a role, who else can we eliminate? Children - self explanatory. People who check their phones? They’re out. Inappropriate laughers? Why not. By now you may be thinking this leaves very few people actually allowed in my cinema of rules. You’d be right. At last, the rest of us can enjoy the cinema experience, without wondering how many of our personal belongings we’re willing to sacrifice in an attempt to hit that guy with the silly hat on.

DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE CHRIS FENNELL

CITIZEN KANE | MURCURY PRODUCTIONS

‘OVERRATED’ IS A PRETTY malleable term. And as I write in postOscar season, the word is banded about a lot, perhaps even more so than such stalwarts of critical conversation as ‘dated’, ‘chemistry’, ‘masterpiece’, ‘pretentious’ et al. Whether The Hurt Locker is just another anti-war movie in realist clothing, or Avatar is indeed the tropical ‘Dances With Smurfs’ is as irrelevant as the five extra ‘Best Picture’ nominees; the fallout gives birth to many a faux-cinephile, Tarantinoschooled patrons of the one-sentence mini-review. My problem with the ‘overrated’ thread that weaves itself into these lazy critiques is that they become, almost essentially, reviews on reception. This in turn, often leads to a skein of exaggeration to balance things out. I might add though, this is not a fault exclusive to you and me. Take the usually perceptive J.R. Jones and his article ‘What’s Wrong

inclusive canon, where Citizen Kane is taken as a given in exchange for ten-part serials, shorts and unfinished trilogies. Rosenbaum is by no means exempt from a bit of ‘overrated’ rhetoric (check out his ill-timed article on Ingmar Bergman, ‘Scenes from an Overrated Career’) but what a spectacular relief it is to read a ‘best of’ list that is not churned out verbatim every year. You may argue that films become canonised precisely because of their brilliance, and you would be right, but none of us need telling (regardless of our opinions) that The Godfather is peerless cinema not to be missed. We know that, that’s why we haven’t missed it. [Dare I say it, overrated – Ed.] Give us a lengthy retrospective or revisionist critique because this relentless eulogizing is just fuel to the ‘overrated’ fire. I am going to come to an abrupt end, a reductive turn for such a big subject, certainly far too big for a lowly wannabejourno in a Uni film magazine, albeit one as wonderful as BIGLENS. But I think what we look for, all in all, are recommendations, pointers towards something hitherto unknown to us. Whether this be sustenance for our collective movie hunger or garnish for our veiled anti-populism is another matter, but the cynic in me thinks that the pedestal can be bumped up to a height which is impossible to reach. It seems only in a world free of Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritics, perhaps only in a world devoid of film criticism altogether, that we could look at film, or indeed any art, in and of itself.

UP IN THE AIR | PARAMOUNT PICTURES

With Up in the Air?’ in which he takes aim at the ‘ridiculous sobriquets’ that inspired the film’s self-perpetuating Oscar buzz. Jones lambastes the National Board of Review for naming Up in the Air the best movie of 2009 because for him, only in a year of mediocre movies would such a patronising George Clooney vehicle be considered Oscar material. This is what film criticism is about, yet whether right or not, the final paragraphs hiss with scathing cynicism at director Reitman’s skewed moral universe of frequent flyer miles and jet-set bachelors - turbulence I speculate would be absent if the film did not get off the ground. Because of its critical and commercial success, Up in the Air (with all the added pressure of its own Boeing 747 cabins) carries the weight of expectation to live up to the hype. To this filmgoer it seems bizarrely ironic that movies can become victims of their own ‘greatness’. Jones’ recently retired predecessor at the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum, famous for playing the festival ‘orphan’ and promoting the dissemination of foreign film culture Stateside, has long campaigned for a less

MING KOAL “ALL YOU NEED for a movie is a gun and a girl.” The words of Jean-Luc Godard, who applied this practice to twelve of his first fifteen feature films. You could say that he was quite committed to this theory. But what he’s actually been ‘notorious’ in is that he has no interest in sticking to any rules. He has been the maverick of all mavericks - he has been bashing the establishment and criticising the Hollywood mentality of crowd-pleasing for his whole life. He has a lifelong hatred towards television, particularly talk shows. Allegedly, he is not an internet user. He only edits his films on analog equipment and not on digital equipment even if it is available - pretty unbelievable behaviour for filmmakers from 1990s onwards. He is one of the only two living leaders of Nouvelle Vague in 1960s. Whilst his counterpart Alain Resnais is still active in filmmaking at the age of 87 and collecting awards over the past 2 decades (including 2 Bears from Berlin, 2 Lions from Venice, 2 from Cannes), Jean-Luc Godard, turning 80 in the coming December, has only received apathetic reception for his films in recent years. For many people he has become a weird old man. The peak of career is far gone. Fifty years ago, Godard’s first feature film, À bout de Souffle, was premiered in Paris in March, 1960. It was one and the only one collaboration between Godard and another giant, François Truffaut,

who had already enjoyed a universal acclaim for his first feature, Les Quatre Cents Coups in the summer of 59. Godard deliberately delivered a down-to-earth playful style for his debut: improvised dialogues, all real locations, hand-held camera, characters in plain clothes, and narratively disconnected and unrelated scenes that did not necessarily contribute to the development of the story. All of those had been rarely seen in tradition that usually stressed a strong and strict narrative of ‘what’s happening’, set-up locations, pseudo-realistic props and glamorous wardrobes. À bout de Souffle instantly appealed to young audience because of its freshness. Its lead actress, Jean Seberg, subsequently became a cinematic icon as she walked down Champs-Élysées to sell the New York Herald Tribune. Selling that paper on a street in Paris can be seen as a symbol of how American culture influenced younger generations of Parisians; American films had great deal of impact to young film bluffs spending most of their time hanging out in independent cinemas on the Left Bank of the river Seine. Godard was one of these cinephiles but tried hard to get away from the influence of the Hollywood studio system. This became his lifelong battle against the established cinema language and commercialised mind-set of filmmaking. In Le Mépris, he invited a real director, Fritz Lang, who launched a quite successful career in Hollywood at that time, to play a director who adapted himself in a desperate situation so that filmmaking became a pure profit-making business. He also invited Samuel Fuller, a then efficacious director, to be a cameo and deliver a line in Pierrot le fou: “Film is like a battleground... Love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word, emotion!” Godard’s films in the 60s were never short of a battleground, challenging the conventional cinema experience. They were also social criticisms and political manifestoes because he was emotionally embedded in Marxism and revolutionary ideas. Never had a director been so dedicated in portraying the decadence of the bourgeoisie and their smear towards intellectuals, the working class and student activities. In 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle, Paris is like a city of soulless men and women longing for material satisfaction of their comfortable lives. In Week End, Emily Brontë was set on fire by a man. His wife asked him, “Isn’t it cruel to burn a philosopher?” and he replied, “What do we care? She’s not real anyway.” In his film Le Petit Soldat, one of the characters states:

A BOUT DE SOUFFLE | LES PRODUCTIONS GEORGES DE BEAUREGARD

WAITING FOR GODARD

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.” He seems to suggest not relying on the ‘fictional’ product of reality, but rather finding truth in film because they have a potential of realer-than-reality. On the other hand, the cinema has also become an industry of squandering twenty-four dollars per second. Film industry actually does not encourage the portrayal of reality, but reinforces the nature of falseness of films. To make films marketable and wow the audience, filmmakers become more interested in stranger-than-fiction, larger-than-life and over-the-top. Who are the players of the industry? Media moguls, powerful producers, bankers, corporate lawyers... in short, the capitalists. This summer, Godard is about to present his latest film, simply named Socialism, fifty years since his debut. Will it be a defence of left-wing politics, or rather a self-reflexive criticism of what he deeply believed in the 60s? Nowadays, the legacy of social activism in the 60s still inspires lots of young people campaigning for different causes. Bob Dylan is still widely idolised. Sartre’s existentialist ideas are still widely read. But Godard’s films become more and more confined in film schools and cultural studies department catering for film scholars and students. Are they merely a depiction of the 60s’ spirit of New Wave cinema and social reality? Do they really detach from our life experience in the 21st century? One of Godard’s comments on education always stays in my mind. And I believe it is everlastingly true in any time. It is a line spoken by a philosophy student Véronique in La Chinoise: “Abolish the exams: because we learn nothing from them; because it is prohibited to copy; because they are a kind of racism in favour of those who work all day everyday on preparation; because they create neurosis, anxiety and sexual frustration.” Véronique goes on to assassinate a government official in order to achieve her ideal revolution (and then get away from exams). Oh yes, La Chinoise is about Véronique and her gun.

TRASH TALK VADIM A. MILEVSKIY

tentions to what is stated. As a matter of fact, the comment carries a lot more positive, rather than negative energy. To my mind, a good trash movie should not carry any kind of deep meaning or higher purpose: to me, a good trash movie is all about a single simple story; a story that has a single start and a definite finite end and nothing else. It should not stretch across those vast fields of knowledge and life questions that are discussed every single day by the philosophy students, leaving you re-thinking every decision you have done on that day whilst exiting the cinema or when the screen goes black. It should just be a story! In terms of the actual style and ‘screen’ definition, trash films are usually cheap and, seemingly, badly made. To be quite frank and honest with you, the majority of them are, but that does not necessarily mean it is a bad thing. Perhaps behind those unprofessional camera angles, dim lighting and poor special effects lies something that is quite unique and original in its content and idea. Something individual. Some-

PLANET TERROR | DIMENSION FILMS

SOME CALL THEM ‘trash’, some call them ‘B movies’... There are a great deal of other names one may use in reference to films of this breed, but when we are talking about them, we all know exactly what we mean. How can you not? With all the other exact, meaningful and clearly defined genres and kinds of movies, how can one not distinguish between them and trash? Before we go deeper into this discussion, let us, first of all, remind ourselves of the history of trash. Cinematography history states that as a classified genre, B movies, originated and became apparent to the viewers in the early 1900s, although, in my opinion, every single time line and epoch of cinema’s past has the right to say that films of this kind existed throughout history. If you think about it and transfer yourself mentally back in time, such purposeless and nonsensical motion pictures were always there! The main reason we don’t always notice those few decent trash films that are out there is because they are not meant to be as mainstream as what we see on the posters at the cinema entrance. Trash films tend to be cult pictures that will usually be appreciated by a true low-budget-scene fan. These films are what I like to call ‘The Lost Art’. A few days ago, I had been speaking about trash films to a close friend of mine and he said that these films are absolutely meaningless and pointless. And I agreed with him, but that was not my complete and genuine opinion: I think that, actually, that there is a lot more to trash movies. Despite the fact that I have just made such a (seemingly) negative comment about this film genre, I would, like to elaborate a little bit more on that and make sure that you, who is reading this article, properly understand what I meant. First of all, I have to say that when I was making the above comment, I had absolutely no negative meaning or in-

DEATH PROOF | DIMENSION

“A GOOD TRASH MOVIE SHOULD NOT CARRY ANY DEEP MEANING OR HIGHER PURPOSE: IT IS ALL ABOUT A SIMPLE STORY.”

thing that neither you nor I could think of. Brazenly colourful and bloody scenes, unethical behaviour of characters, as well as blunt and self-descriptive titles, are amongst the strongest and most defining stereotypical edges of the trash movie world. Who can forget the strangest characters from Mum and Dad or The Pumpkin Carver? Or, for example, Mama Firefly’s sincere and genuinely violent statements in Rob Zombies’ House of 1000 Corpses and Devil’s Rejects, that firmly stand at the true definition of human madness and schizophrenia. Almost every single scene of Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof, which were just a taste of the whole Grindhouse Experience, kept the viewers nailed to the edges of their seats, with expressions of true fright on their faces. Strangely enough, though, and even I am not sure why, the majority of trash films are horror films, or at least are built upon this foundation. The only reasonable explanation for that I guess one might think of is trash film may get away with almost anything, due to the fact that it is not meant to be taken seriously. Yet there are exceptions. Last year’s Triangle was a very strange film: it was scary and creepy at the same time, but it wasn’t due to violence, gore or intense moments. It felt like that due to the characters’ behaviour and the way the story developed. You know those moments where you think: ‘If I was with those people, I would be freaking out...’ Lastly, I would like to say that, sometimes it is good to have some form of medium that would help you take your mind off everyday standards and take your logic and imagination across a completely different independent plane of reality, where fictitious villains win and continue to rock this world for no apparent reason, and, perhaps, where endings are not always happy and don’t seem to make sense. All these and many others are the experiences that are offered to us by the lunacy that we call trash art. And, please, do not try to make any sense of it, because, remember, this is just a story...

LEAPHIA DARKO

AMELIE | CLAUDIE OSSARD PICTURES

FROM PARIS, WITH LOVE OKAY, SO I’LL BE HONEST. I hadn’t really ventured very far into modern French cinema at all until recently. I managed to get as far as the Amélie trailer and then return to the warm inspiring glow of the French New Wave. And yes, it is healthy that as a film fan I worship it so, but I see now that there are many more things to discover. And shame on me for my short sightedness because over the last few years a plethora of heartfelt and beautifully rendered films have emerged from the country. There are many reasons why these films are successful but the most obvious one is this: they allow their stars to shine, whilst these performers in return politely decline the opportunity to. They selflessly and with huge amounts of creative energy put the execution of the part before themselves. This can be seen in masterpiece after masterpiece although I need only mention one to cement this point – La Vie En Rose. In films like this, there’s a really effective working relationship where honesty is the order of the day regardless of how fantastical the story is, from the practitioners on both sides of the camera. It is this that allows us to believe so completely in Amélie, the eponymous young dreamer of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 film, as well as in a middle aged ex-convict named Juliette in I’ve Loved You So Long. This is no fluke. Guilluame Cannet demonstrates with Tell No One the dexterity of his story telling abilities, that good storytelling in France at the moment is as budget proof as it ever was. The focus is a man’s search for what happened to his wife. It’s that simple and the filmmakers have not chosen to do Harlan Coben’s novel a disservice by trying to tell it any other way. More evidence of the flexibility in storytelling is widely available. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, an adaptation from JeanDominique Bauby’s autobiography, puts us squarely in the shoes of - or on a more literal level, the chair of - a quadriplegic magazine editor played by Mattieu Amalric. The easy and dare I say Hollywood route that could have been taken here, would have been to turn it into a tale of triumph over adversity and take a human being and transform him into a symbol. Well here a man who has recently lost the use of every muscle in 18

his body, save his one functioning eye, is allowed to be human. He is allowed to not only complain and regret and feel sorry for himself, but also to be sarcastic, to take joy in seemingly small things and to make jokes and laugh at other people’s. Perhaps the thing that makes contemporary French cinema so great is that it is comprised of a series of beautiful and yet precise portraits. Sure, there are only a couple of hours of screen time – unless you happen to be a gangster named Mesrine that is; then you can wave your gun in the air and order everybody to remain in their seats an extra hour and a half – but the concern here lies much more in rendering a complete likeness and staying true to the subject matter. The collective mastery of these craftsmen and women across such a wide array of genres leads me to believe that in France right now, they know how to make movies better than anywhere else in the world. I’m sure as new practitioners come and old ones go, this will change over time before swinging back again. That’s the way these creative periods always work, but I for one am content to enjoy this output while it lasts. It pains me to admit this, but I haven’t seen A Prophet yet, although I can’t wait to because at the moment, within the French industry, every square inch of a two hour picture is just as important as the whole. Call me old fashioned, but it shows.

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