Vérité June 2014

ISSUE #15

V é r i t é JUNE 2014 EDITION

FILM CRITICISM & CINEMATIC DISCUSSION

B OY H O O D

Is Linklater’s Latest a Future American Classic?

also...

Alain Robbe-Grillet / Cannes / Hip Hop Cinema Nashville / reviews / and more...

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Editor’s Letter

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e’ve all done it. The credits roll and, upon exiting the theatre, we reach into our pocket, pull out our phone and (before even checking calls or emails) head to twitter to share our thoughts on the film we’ve just had the pleasure (or pain) to sit through.

Providing however many followers we have with our immediate opinions. As the saying goes, ‘first impressions are everything, so is being limited to 140 characters really giving your audience your true first impression?

Cannes closed its doors a couple of weeks ago and part of the fun of being an online spectator is the flurry of tweets after each screening. I’m heading up to the Edinburgh in a couple of weeks for the International Film Festival and it will be the same again, with instinctive reactions flooding our feeds once more and mine will be included. But what makes a good twitter review? What can you express in that limited space (which also has to include the film’s title and obligatory hashtag #edfilmfest)? Firstly, as any writer will know, adjectives are your best friend.

They give easy-to-understand expressive context to your experience. Secondly, a twitter review should be

a summary; going into any detail is too difficult. An example of this is The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw’s reaction to Godard’s latest - ‘Jean-Luc Godard’s Farewell To Language is chaotic, eccentric, exasperating and mad. Review up later #Cannes2014 #Cannes’. It’s concise, punchy, and gives a succinct overview of his experience. Who knew the complexity of the Godard viewing experience could be eloquently distilled within a tweet?

Of course, this should be read with a sense of humour, but it’s something that needs highlighting. The dilution of film criticism is a serious issue exacerbated by the Internet’s obsession with a ‘first is best’ state of mind. With the breadth of the online film community, and so many writers/websites trying to find their audience, competitive ‘content’ is shifting from the potency of long-form film writing to shorter form, summary style criticism that lacks analytical punch and lasting observations.

Perhaps Twitter works most effectively as a tease for a full piece of film criticism or to highlight an element you wish to discuss further? There are a great many cinematic minds on the Internet and intriguing, though-provoking discussions to be had with them.

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Thanks for reading, Jordan McGrath & David Hall

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“I think maybe making films is something innate you can’t really teach to begin with.”

Richard Linklater

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Contents Features

Columns

Reviews

Youth & Young Manhood - p8

Memory, Identity & Genre - p52

Common People - p64

Joseph Fahim on Richard Linklater’s new 12-year-in-the-making cinematic achievement, the bold and beautiful Boyhood.

Evrim Ersoy continues his expert analysis into filmmakers we should be watching. This month’s subject: Christoffer Boe.

Fruitvale Station - p65 Camille Claudel 1915 - p66 Cold in July - p67

The New, New Wave - p14

Jordan McGrath takes a journey through the unique, strange and mysterious career of Alain Robbe-Grillet.

Masters of Cinema - p56

Luke Richardson tackles Robert Altman’s classic Nashville, one of the highlights of the MoC’s June release schedule.

Leave to Remain - p68 T.S. Spivet - p69 Belle - p70

Electric Kingdom - p20

In Defence... - p60

Robert Makin reminisces about the 80s popularity, trend and legacy of Hip Hop cinema.

Ben Nicholson defends the speed-ramping spectacle that is Zach Snyder’s Spartan epic 300.

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Boyhood - p71 Miss Violence - p72

Join the Conversation

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YOUTH AND YOUNG MANHOOD Richard Linklater’s Boyhood leaves Joseph Fahim dazed and enthused

words by Joseph Fahim

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t began one snowy evening in Park City last January. At the Eccles Theater, Sundance Film Fest’s largest auditorium, Richard Linklater’s 12 years in the making Boyhood premiered to a packed room. With a length of 163 minutes and a cast of predominantly non-professional performers, catching Linklater’s mysterious project at a far-flung theater at 10pm did not seem like the wisest proposition. Little was made available about what was a late entry in the fest. A coming-of-age family drama shot over 12 summers and starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, Boyhood initially seemed like an object of curiosity built on a gimmick difficult to translate into a serious work of art.

Festivals, I’ve grown to believe, are not the most fitting place to watch films. Sleep deprivation, image bombardment and the lack of sufficient space needed to fully digest every picture are among the various factors standing in the way of proper assessment and appreciation of the works on display. But then along comes that rare film that emerges out of nowhere to

surmount your cynicism in a way no other can; touching something so profound in you in a manner that transforms you from a stern analyst into the wide-eyed kid you once were.

Perhaps that’s not most eloquent introduction you’d expect for one of the most discussed films of the year, but that’s exactly what happened to me and the vast majority of the 1200+ audience that caught the first public screening of Boyhood. These were our lives nakedly played out on screen; our hopes, triumphs, fears, disappointments and regrets. Not since Edward Yang’s Yi Yi has a film managed to encapsulate the wide spectrum of the human condition in such a subtle, reflective and stirring manner. Whatever Linklater does in the future, this may well be remembered as his masterpiece.

Linklater is not the first filmmaker to document a number of characters over several years. Michael Apted tracked a group of British kids from childhood to middle age over the course of 40 years in the Up documentary series. François Truffaut continued to revisit

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“When young, we mourn for one woman... as we grow old, for women in general. The tragedy of life is that man is never free yet strives for what he can never be. The thing most feared in secret always happens. My life, my loves, where are they now? But the more the pain grows, the more this instinct for life somehow asserts itself. The necessary beauty in life is in giving yourself to it completely. Only later will it clarify itself and become coherent.”

Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991)

his alter ego, Antoine Doinel, in five films over 20 years.

Michael Winterbottom chronicled the relationship of an imprisoned husband with his wife and four children through a five-year period in Everyday (2012).

Less known is Nikita Mikhalkov’s underseen tour de force Anna: Ot shesti do vosemnadtsati (1994) in which the Burnt by the Sun Russian director presented his daughter with a set of ritualistic questions about her loves, hates and aspirations every year from 1980-1991 And of course, there was Linklater himself who captivated an entire generation with the romantic odysseys of Jesse and Celine in the Before trilogy from 1995-2013.

No other filmmaker nonetheless has had the audacity, and patience, to record a long-form fictional story over such a lengthy span of time. Simply put, Boyhood is unlike anything seen before on film; bodies change; faces mature, new trends emerge while others die: every facet of the film cumulates into an startlingly haptic experience where aging becomes a hard-bitten reality rather than a mere illusion.

The year is 2002. Republican America is ruled by George W. Bush. Coldplay’s Yellow is the new indie anthem and Britney Spears is the biggest teen star on the planet. The Harry Potter mania is in full swing and the

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global economy is booming.

Seven-year-old Mason (newcomer Ellar Coltrane) is caught up in a non-courteous separation between his strong-headed working-class mother Olivia (Arquette) and his freewheeling, reckless wannabe musician father Mason Sr. (Hawke). His slightly older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter) is the sole levelheaded member of the family; and like all older sisters, she’s more of the protective guardian rather than close friend. Forced to constantly move from city to another, Mason finds himself alone, propelled to prematurely face a world he’s yet to comprehend.

Olivia and Mason Sr. have little to nothing in common. Olivia is serious, determined and remarkably ambitious. In less than a decade, she transforms herself from a humble worker and student to an esteemed psychology professor. Mason Sr., on the other hand, is forever chasing rainbows. He juggles jobs, also moving from one city to another, and waits for the big break that never comes.

He’s a man-child, endlessly stuck in a state of arrested development, until he concedes defeat, gives up and accepts the ordinary life he’s bound to live.

Linklater refuses to impart any judgments on Mason’s parents. Mason Sr. could be thoughtless occasionally, and

he may not be as involved as he should be in his children’s upbringing. But he remains a supportive, caring father; his unwavering love for his children is palpable throughout the years. Olivia is arguably more responsible than him, but she’s no less imprudent. Time and time again, she gives herself in to the first man who shows her the slightest interest, ending up with her middle-aged professor who turns into an abusive alcoholic husband (Marco Perella) and a younger police officer (Brad Hawkins) who also turns to alcohol for failing to escape the shadow of his successful wife.

Boyhood, among other things, is a story of flawed individuals struggling to rise above their shortcomings and failing. Olivia and Mason Sr. take different life routes, assume different roles and battle on different fronts, but ultimately reach the same end: an unconquerable incompleteness that constitutes the most obvious truth in the human experience.

Linklater emerged in the late ‘80s at the peak of the new American indie cinema. Tarantino, Rodriguez, Soderbergh and Spike Lee would embrace Hollywood, toying with the system to produce atypical works steeped in genre filmmaking. The Houston-born, Austin-based Linklater was a peculiar anomaly: an intelligent, unos-

tentatious filmmaker who never felt at ease working in mainstream cinema. His reluctance to leave Austin may have played a large role in maintaining the singularity of his vision, but it has also reduced his chances in taking on bigger, more luxurious projects. His few studio films — The Newton Boys, School of Rock, The Bad News Bears — are breaks in a career spent at the outskirts of the establishment.

From his breakout hit, Slacker (1991), Linklater has shown a strong preference for evocative mood, expressively literate dialogue and strong characterization over plot. His visual style is naturalistic and unfussy, always in service of his characters rather than the other way round. The effortlessness of his direction often masks the meticulousness of his craft — the great lengths he goes through in capturing and reproducing those authentically precious human interactions.

Nearly all his films are coming of age stories; teens channeling the seemingly endless possibilities life promises them and adults coming in terms with the limitedness of these possibilities. The outcasts of Slacker, high-schoolers of Dazed and Confused, the twenty-something idlers of SubUrbia, junkies of A Scanner Darkly, the aspiring theater performers of Me and Orson

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Welles, the fading rockers of School of Rock; Linklater’s characters are misfits searching for something worthwhile. They’re too smart to take obvious paths, too stubborn to settle for normality, yet in refusing to conform to their economic and social reality, they often end up with nothing.

In Boyhood, and to lesser extent Before Midnight, Linklater’s beloved misfits try a radically different course that may have not been in the cards for them in the past: family. And in this, they finally find a passageway to adulthood, if not fulfillment.

Boyhood is thus the story of Mason Sr. and Olivia as much as it is of their son’s, and that is precisely what makes Linklater’s 17th feature his richest, most mature film to date.

The focus of Linklater’s stories is lives in transitions; the axis of every film of his is centered on an end and a beginning. Boyhood, the most expansive of his films, adopts this concept in a literary fashion, employing Mason to portray the beginning of young life and his parents for explore an end of a journey.

For the most part, Linklater eschews big dramatic events in favor for unassuming moments resembling fleeting memories. The big breakups, the first kiss, the

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moving in, all happen off-screen. What we get instead are transfixing spells of mesmeric tenderness; the little squabbles between little Mason and Samantha, the queasy advices Mason Sr. pass on his son, the little family gatherings, the aimless conversations.

Through these little moments, we gradually watch Mason blossoming from an inquisitive little kid bewildered and aggravated by a life at odds with him into a confident young artist seeking the road less taken.

Linklater shrewdly, and economically, interweaves the socio-political changes of the past 12 years inside the narrative without straying from the story. Popular songs, from the aforementioned Coldplay to Weezer, Wilco, Arcade Fire and Daft Punk, are used as signposts to underline designated timeframes and signify the passage of time. The historical 2008 presidential elections, the release of the last Harry Potter book, the dominance of social media and the materialization of religion as the essential panacea for the failures of the middle class are swiftly referenced as Mason’s identity develops. These historical and cultural cues do not come off as sentimental, nostalgia-inducing trickery but represent a concise, insightful record of our collective memory.

And then there’s Texas itself; an unmistakably unique

milieu that transpires into an imposing character. The infinite highways, the gorgeous-looking lakes, the bowling alleys, the soulless suburban houses, the cozy delis, the arresting mountains are all parts of a place that feels boundless and restrictive at the same time. In this sense, Boyhood is a very Texan movie; a document of a vast and hospitable place of contained prospects. Perhaps that’s why it’s no surprise to see Mason gravitate towards art — a getaway to a boundless world carrying the dream of fulfillment that has forever eluded his parents.

Boyhood is a story of hope lost and hope regained; a story about loss, the passage of time, and the quixotic search for meaning. The elderly among us will see in Mason Sr. and Olivia their failings, regrets and missed opportunities. The young will see in Mason their unbridled dreams, great future romances and small victories.

And this brings me to the quote from Slacker — a thorough distillation of Linklater’s philosophy that has been refined and crystallized in Boyhood. Like all of us, every Linklater character is on a quest for happiness; a few succeed in finding it, some never do and the majority settle for something in between — something resembling happiness. In Linklater’s world, joy is inseparable from pain; the pain of every journey’s end is juxtaposed

with the excitement of a new beginning. What does it all mean? Is there more to this life? Is there something left to be? Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. Olivia and Mason Sr. will go on; their quest and ours for this happiness will not end.

Whether we find it or not, what ultimately remains of this long, arduous journey are those sweeping memories: the affectionate bickering, the liberating drives, the endless hearty conversations, the great outdoor adventures, the warm embraces, the joyful tears, the passionate kisses…the love of our parents…the indelible sights, sounds and smells. Mason may end up as one of Linklater’s idlers; he may stumble in his father’s missteps or be inflicted with his mother’s emotional instability; he may turn into the greatest contemporary artist or become an average art designer; he may find his Celine or he may forever be embroiled in hollow, transient affairs. It doesn’t really matter; what it matters this very moment is the here and now, the lingering final images of this journey: that magnificent mountain, that dazzling-looking girl, that inviting horizon, and that intoxicating air of unshakable hope that will carry him, and us, all way through in a new journey, in a new place, for a new quest.

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THE NEW, NEW WAVE

Jordan McGrath delights in the sweet, perverse playfulness of Alain Robbe-Grillet words by Jordan McGrath

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o take a swift glance at Alain Robbe-Grillet’s salient oeuvre, it’s peculiar to think the French auteur had arguably provided his most prominent and important gift to cinema before even directing a frame of his first feature, 1963’s The Immortals (L’Immortelle) – as he was famously the scribe of fellow French master Alain Resnais’ labyrinthine classic Last Year in Marienbad. The script for Last Year in Marienbad is an esoteric masterclass that, even with its abstract structure, retains an emotional character-driven core. Resnais’ imagery is an intoxicating potion but its Robbe-Grillet’s memorable words that form its soul and make the film the unforgettable masterpiece it is.

When Chabrol, Truffaut and Godard we’re carving out the beginnings of the nouvelle vague in the late 1950s, changing the landscape of French cinema along the way, Robbe-Grillet was busy doing the same for French

literature. One of the main players in the nouveau roman (New Novel) movement, he was somewhat of a poster boy for bucking the system in his attempts to discover new, refreshing ways to tell stories. He challenged readers with narratives presented as disjointed construct, seeming uninterested in pandering to an ‘easy’ audience experience as he defied general ‘classic’ narrative logic. His style was exciting and enticing, dressing postmodern and surrealist ideals as entertainment. And with a somewhat rebellious persona, like his New Wave counterparts, he was gleeful in his endeavour to instil change. It’s obvious to say that when he would finally chance his talent with cinema, those strong ideals never dwindled.

A beautiful woman’s face, unblinking and still, slowly gains sharpness from its blurred beginnings. This is the introduction into Robbe-Grillet’s work as a filmmaker. The face is that of Françoise Brion who portrays the mysterious L in the beguiling The Immortals. Her life

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The Immortals

becomes entwined with that of Jacques Doniol-Valcroze’s N, after he arrives in a small coastal town in Istanbul on the way to his new home in a neighbouring town. But when she surprisingly disappears one day with the locals curiously seeming to forget her existence overnight, he begins to investigate and discover her role in town’s crime underbelly.

The ambiguity of its characters’ identity, alongside the unmistakeable dream-logic and ‘memory editing’ from Bob Wade (who would go and work with the director until the Robbe-Grillet’s 1995 release The Blue Villa), echoes Marienbad, but anyone who has sat through both films can assess they are two very separate experiences.

Resnais’ inventiveness in the control of his camera is way more accomplished; the visual flourishes that punctuate the aesthetic language of Marienbad are nowhere to be seen in The Immortals. In a way, The Immortals could be seen as a complete opposite execution of a similar narrative style in its un-cinematic qualities which, arguably, could have all been a part of Robbe-Grillet’s bold stylistic approach.

The Immortals is a dark, foreboding exercise with genuine genre objectives. The mystery within a mystery that we find N caught up in feels like hard-boiled noir, with

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Trans-Europ-Express

flourishes of Hitchcock and Jean-Pierre Melville. However, with Robbe-Grillet honouring his surrealist roots its obscure structure, like the unfolding of a memory, feels like something completely different. It may be difficult to digest for audiences on a first watch - and possibly many viewings after – but its commitment is worthy of applaud. It’s fascinating to sit through and try to work out Robbe-Grillet’s process, the fragmented representation of plot as if structured like memory recollection. As anyone knows memories rarely exist as fully formed entities, they’re pieced together and structured to fit the means of the story being told and sometimes miss key details. They are recited as truth but are in fact only a presumptuous, faux-reality of one person’s experience.

It may not be the best looking of his films but The Immortals will definitely keep you on your toes with its shadowy narrative. I’d be surprised if David Lynch didn’t find influence from the disjointed, atmospheric, non-formula driven storytelling on show. Films such as Mulholland Dr and Inland Empire, whose stories seem to exist on different plains of reality, are obvious examples of Robbe-Grillet’s influences.

Those differing levels of reality are once again evident in his follow-up, 1967’s Trans-Europ-Express. It’s a

Eden and After

“It’s fascinating to sit through and try to work out Robbe-Grillet’s process, the fragmented representation of plot as if structured like memory recollection.” whimsical deconstruction - and to a level provocation of conventional storytelling (especially that seen in the French New Wave) with the director taking one of the most potent movements in cinema history and presenting it as farce. It is easily his most accessible and ‘enjoyable’ work.

We follow a film director, his producer and assistant on-board the Trans-Europe-Express train as they outline the essential plotting of a new thriller involving cocaine smuggling. A man enters their carriage, places a suitcase in the luggage compartment above, and then swiftly changes his mind and exits, luggage in hand. The man is Jean-Louis Trintignant and he becomes the lead character of these filmmakers’ new film; living out each story beat they concoct. It’s cognitive blurring of alternative reality and coincidence, multi-layered and with much mischievous charisma and wit. Mocking the simplicity of conventional storytelling in cinema but never the attacking the influence cinema has over its audience. Much more focussed on the process of ‘creation’ than the quality of the finished product.

On the one hand you have a tight-knit thriller, rather sinister in its sexually-charged lead, Trintignant’s Elias, who seems fond of his lovers simulating rape. It unfolds,

in a seemingly linearly before cutting back to the central characters as they discuss the actions of their own character, plot-holes and what should happen next. Robbe-Grillet constantly creates a disconnect between the material on screen and his audience (a theme that repeats over and over in his work). He doesn’t allow his audiences to be seduced by his films by consistently reassuring them that they are watching fiction. It’s as if he believes a film’s manipulation of the audience is a cheap trick, that the audience should always be aware of their surroundings and analytical in their consumption of art. Keeping us at arm’s length, Robbe-Grillet seems unique in that his films seem to not adhere to the ideals of cinema as escapism. We lose ourselves in the artistry of Godard and Renoir, Truffaut and Varda, but Robbe-Grillet wants us to watch his films with our heads and not our hearts. He made it a goal for his audience to always realise they’re watching is films a lens and Trans-Europ-Express was remarkably ahead of its time. Meta before the term was even conceived, helping pave the way for filmmakers such as Charlie Kaufman.

Robbe-Grillet carried on his daring streak with his third outing; The Man Who Lies (L’homme qui ment) released a year after Trans-Europ-Express in 1968. Once

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Eden and After

again working with Jean-Louis Trintignant, this time as a character named Boris Varissa, who visits the home town of his comrade Jean Robin (also played in part by Trintignant) in World War II. Before anyone has the chance to ask he begins telling townsfolk of his gallantry fighting for France’s freedom and the demise of the universally loved Robin. Boris becomes obsessed by the three women closest to his claimed best friend - his wife, his sister and his maid - and goes out of his way to seduce them all by telling them tales of the war, each more elaborate the next, which consistently self-serve his courage and tarnish Robin’s war hero legacy within the town.

The reality Boris creates from himself is understandably fabricated and manipulated but seeing as there is no-one in the village that can rebuke his claims it quickly leads him down a darker path in an obvious attempt to cover up a darker truth. Trintignant’s looseness allows Boris to constantly feel on the edge as if he’s always being judged. Robbe-Grillet tells you the man is untrustworthy from the title of the film alone and that he will do anything to get what he wants. Boris draws his past like a painter seeing another level of detail in their subject, the intricacies of the moral maze he creates another exercise the writer/director challenges his audience with.

Robbe-Grillet’s next, 1970’s Eden and After (L’Eden et après) was his first foray into colour. It’s a sardonic, sadis-

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tic and highly sexualised piece of Pop Art, using colour in an intense way that somehow allows him even more license to explore his abstract ideas in heightened detail.

The plot for Eden and After revolves around a group of youths that frequent the experimental Eden café, where role-play, trust games and other strange activities are all part of the normal daily routine. But when a strange man visits the café, speaking of his time in Africa, he gets one of group, Catherine Jourdan’s Voilette, to sample an unknown drug. A nightmarish plot regarding a stolen picture follows, taking her and her friends (now plotting against her) to Tunisia, where she is captured and tortured.

As experimental art-house cinema goes this is Robbe-Grillet’s most ambitious film, once again playing with ideas of what can be perceived as reality. The shifting ambiguity of its characters confuses and confounds. Like many, I support the theory that the latter half of the film is all taking place within Violette’s head, induced by the ‘fear’ drug she sampled. The director’s use of repetition in Violette’s pre-drug consciousness and the plot that unfolds after the drug is taken seems too coincidental to take for granted. Robbe-Grillet doesn’t seem to be creating a cinematic jigsaw, like Christopher Nolan’s Memento, but presenting a fractured and scared state of mind.

Talking in an interview about his appreciation of

Michelangelo Antonioni, Robbe-Grillet compares him to Hitchcock. ‘At the end of a Hitchcock film you understand everything, with Antonioni it’s exactly the opposite’. Images never hide anything but the meaning of the images is constantly problematic and becomes more problematic as the film unfolds’ For Robbe-Grillet it is this quality in Antonioni’s work that allows the film to ‘remain open’ after the audience leaves the confines of the cinema – films that are open, progressive and always forcing the audience to think, dissect and discuss.

Even N. Took the Dice (N. a pris les dés...), a made for TV version of Eden and After which was released a year later in 1971, makes for an interesting watch. Yes, it’s diluted and doesn’t hold the same vigorous effect of Eden and After but, instead of creating a limp facsimile, Robbe-Grillet turns it into a commentary on the restrictions of TV and the fear of experimental properties and debates. Exactly the kind of ‘open stories’ the director spoke about when speaking of Antonioni’s oeuvre.

It becomes a protest of having to conform to formulaic necessities, not only criticising the TV companies who decide on programming but also the audiences’ viewing habits and their fear of watching something different. Of course, making this point (and having to deal with obvious restrictions of TV) removes much of the ambiguity and heavy sexual overtones that were so essential in Eden

and After. The tame rendition of the story is nowhere near as interesting a film, but the views and discussions N. Took the Dice raises make it worthwhile.

Successive Slidings of Pleasure (Glissements progressifs du plaisir) finds the young and beautiful Anicée Alvina, named The Prisoner, arrested and labelled a witch after her roommate is found tied to a bed with a pair of scissors piercing her heart. The curious nuns that run the convent in which she’s imprisoned, as well as lawyers and judges who visit her, all seem to fall under Alvina’s spell.

It’s one of the strangest murder mysteries I’ve ever seen and could be seen as an expression against sexual oppression, with Alvica’s character – frequently nude – allowing the stiff individuals who visit her to access their most explicit yearnings.

Successive Slidings of Pleasure, like all his films, could only have been made by Alain Robbe-Grillet. His voice is truly unique – not only within the movement that nurtured his talent, but in world cinema. However, for some reason, his films are not regarded as highly as his counterparts of the French New Wave. Unlike say Chabrol or Truffaut, Robbe-Grillet enjoyed deconstructing ‘cinema’ and presenting it in differing forms; unafraid to produce film that might alienate the larger audience. He fought against conventional sensibilities and deserves his place in cinema history.

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Electric Kingdom Hip Hop on Film, from Wild Style to Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton words by Robert Makin

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hile I was growing up in the 80s there was a kid in our neighbourhood who rarely wore shoes, owned far too many dogs, and had a rather liberal attitude towards personal hygiene, theft and casual violence. He was also the only person I knew who had access to an actual video shop membership card, circumstances which led to me being able to watch Hip Hop classic Beat Street (1984).

Halfway through the film his older brother (a strange Goth type with bad hair and pointy shoes who ended up being a prison warden) asked us why we were watching this American crap when we should be watching “proper” films like Letter to Brezhnev (1985) or My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). Of course the fact that it wasn’t anything like those films was one of the very reasons I wanted to see it. I found far more solace and life-affirming inspiration from seeing a bunch of people in tracksuits from the South Bronx spinning on their heads than anything else spawned from a decade otherwise defined

by Thatcher, Reagan, Aids, and crack.

It was also a million miles away from the dull and ignorant suburb I lived in where the majority of young males aspired to be Crockett from Miami Vice. I was one lone B-Boy in search of a crew, much to the disdain of all adults and anyone who happened to be into The Smiths or Wham.

Hip Hop was loud, often profane, and parents hated it. But it was also the last great movement in popular culture. It had roots and a deep history that saved it from being just another image-led fad, something that mainstream cinema has often struggled to capture.

Wild Style (1983) remains the ultimate Hip Hop movie, and what it lacks in plot and structure it makes up for in accuracy, authenticity and sincerity, mainly because it was made for all the right reasons. The objective for Hip Hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy and director Charlie Ahearn was to capture a scene they seriously believed in and create a showcase for the artists responsible, rather than a fictionalised cash-in. It certainly laid down the

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foundations of Hip Hop as an evolving culture and helped bring it to a global audience. It’s still a worthwhile watch and is to Hip Hop what Cassevetes’ Shadows (1959) was to the Beat/Jazz scene of 50s New York.

As much as I loved Beat Street and Breakin’ (1984) as a kid (they’re both enjoyable and they definitely deserve their place in the history of Hip Hop) in hindsight they both lack the gritty weirdness of Wild Style and have shoe-horned plots that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Hollywood musical (or even a Cliff Richard movie) which serve as inconsequential padding in between the performances of B-Boy battles and old school rap.

Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984), Krush Groove (1985) and Rappin’ (1985) soon followed, and by the time the Fat Boys had become Disorderlies (1987) and Run DMC had got Tougher Than Leather (1988) the film industry had become a viable career step for any successful rap act. But it’s within the field of documentary that the real energy and creative prerogatives of Hip Hop are rightfully preserved.

For an understanding on the kind of environment that

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Hip Hop grew out of and why it became such an important movement, both 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s (1979) and Flyin’ Cut Sleeves (1993) are essential viewing. The former, directed by Gary Weis and inspired by an Esquire article written by Jon Bradshaw, consists of a series of interviews with members of The Savage Nomads and The Savage Skulls.

Two of the most notorious gangs of the South Bronx are equally perceived by Bronx residents as guardians of the neighbourhood, bringing order and control to the chaos of urban desolation, and as vicious criminals. It’s an incredible insight into a world that the Godfather Hip Hop Afrika Bambaataa was a big part of as a prominent member of the Black Spades gang before turning to creativity as a platform for social change.

Covering similar ground Flyin’ Cut Sleeves takes archive footage of the same gangs, filmed during the seventies by Bronx teacher Rita Fecher, and revisits some of the members as adults in 1989. Flyin’ has more of a narrative agenda than 80 Blocks, with a focus on how police intervention became more intense when certain

gangs became more politicised and decided to fight the authorities for better living conditions rather than fighting in turf wars against each other.

Its co-director, photographer Henry Chalfant, will forever be associated with the progression of Hip Hop having produced the seminal documentary Style Wars (1983) that delves into the nocturnal, subterranean lifestyles of Bronx graffiti writers. It’s a certified classic and an important historical document where subway art is its own reward and an integral creative outlet to a generation of young, inner city New Yorkers desperate to express themselves and leave their mark on society.

Something the local police force, railway authorities and New York mayor Edward Koch had trouble understanding, deeming it a serious violation of public property. Chalfant continues to chronicle the cultural legacy of the South Bronx and in 2006 directed From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale, which makes connections between New York’s early innovations in Latin music and certain elements of Hip Hop. The German produced Breakin’ ‘n’ Enterin’ (1983) was

a direct influence on the movie Breakin’ and even features three of its cast members, dancers Shabba Doo and Boogaloo Shrimp, and an up and coming rapper named Ice T, profiling the impact of Hip Hop on the West Coast. There’s already a divide in style in comparison to their New York counterparts, and it all feels a bit more showbiz. The clothes are a bit more flamboyant, there’s beaches and sunlight, and most of the footage takes place in dance studios as appose run down basketball courts surrounded by broken glass and rubble.

Beat This: A Hip Hop History (1984) was one of the first attempts to explain the cultural significance of Hip Hop, trace its roots and puts things into perspective as it leaked into the mainstream. Having taped it off BBC 2 when it was initially broadcast I watched religiously. I’m sorry to say that Live Aid bored me shitless, watching Beat This: A Hip Hop History was for me the most pivotal moment of seeing music on TV during the eighties.

With rhyming narration from Gary Byrd, opening scenes of an intergalactic Afrika Bambaataa and The Soul Sonic Force arriving from outer space, and Kool Herc

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driving around his neighbourhood in a convertible with biggest speakers you’ve ever seen taking up his back seat, very few films came this close to capturing the spirit of Hip Hop, where it came from and where it seemed to be going.

It’s a mighty piece of work and director Dick Fontaine followed it up with Bombin’ in 1988, following graffiti artist Brim on a UK tour and featuring a very young Goldie, and 3-D of Massive Attack. There’s also a very odd moment with Michael Winner persuading a reluctant Brim to spray paint the Death Wish 3 film set.

Dutch production Big Fun in the Big Town (1986) also has some great archive footage of Doug E. Fresh, Biz Markie, Roxanne Shante, and LL Cool J being interviewed by curious host Bram van Splunteren who spends a lot of time walking around New York in a Crack Is Wack t-shirt.

There are also some interesting comments from Suliaman El Hadi, member of The Last Poets, who believed that Rap was nothing but nursery rhymes and didn’t deal enough with serious social issues, which is something that would definitely change by the end of the eighties.

There are very few areas of music these days that still contain a certain sense of adventure, mystery, mythology, and lore. Turntablism could be the last. Doug Pray’s Scratch (2001) perfectly encapsulates the audio subterfuge of the Hip Hop DJ with insight and humour, paying respects to their abstract manipulation of sound, the poetic serendipity of crate digging, their important role in the development of modern music, and how a kid from the Bronx who called himself Grand Wizzard Theodore inspired a whole generation by moving a record backwards and forwards whilst being shouted at by his mum. The only criticism I have is that it seems to lack any mention of D-Styles, one of the most innovative turntablists on the planet.

The most frequently sampled and beloved tracks in Hip Hop is of course Apache by The Incredible Bong Band and Sample This (2013) affectionately traces the strange and mysterious circumstances surrounding its inception and its immense effect on popular culture. It’s an excellent, visceral trail through the hidden corners of 20th century music and a loving ode to that unsung hero

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of the recording industry, the session musician.

Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton: This is Stones Throw Records (2013) is already being hailed as one of the greatest films on Hip Hop. Detailing the creation of one of the most influential independent labels in contemporary music it’s also the personal journey of its founder Chris Manak, known to most as Peanut Butter Wolf, whose ideology consists of simply nurturing the kind of the music he likes to hear, an attitude which continues to this very day. After the tragic murder of his original music collaborator and high school friend Charizma, and determined to avoid the constraints of stagnant major labels, Manak set up Stones Throw Records. Releasing albums by such ground-breaking artists as J Dilla, Madlib and MF Doom whose unconventional approach towards performance and production changed all preconceptions of what Hip Hop should be in era that had seen it become decidedly formulaic.

But the passing of J Dilla in 2006 from a rare blood disease would leave an indelible mark on the label and all involved. Manak’s remediable reaction was to take a hairpin swerve and steer Stones Throw even further left of centre by signing experimental artists such as Gary Wilson, James Pants, and the excellent Vex Ruffin.

It was a move that left a lot of fans scratching their heads, but when you delve into the origins of Hip Hop it all makes perfect sense; especially considering old school artists such as The Jonzun Crew, Cybotron, and Egyptian Lover. And if you really need reminding at how deeply weird and experimental Hip Hop used to be check out Ramellzee or Dub (The Knights Fly To Mars And Venus, With Their Dog, Woodpecker, And Cat!) by The Knights of the Turntables. And let’s not forget that Planet Rock was intended as a fusion between Funk sensibilities and experimental German electronica.

What makes Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton such a unique documentary is that instilled within its story are many of the vital elements that made Hip Hop so appealing in the first place. The absurdist humour, the importance of fun as part of the creative process, a positive and productive reaction to devastating circumstances, a fervent dedication to artistic progression, an undying passion for all things music, and the unbiased bond of creative minds.

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CAN NES 2014 26

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The Good, The Bad, at the...

WEIRD Joseph Fahim talks us through the highs and lows of his Cannes Experience

words by Joseph Fahim

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cclaimed director Jane Campion’s jury was expected to make bold choices and cause plenty of upsets, and that’s exactly what happened at the closing ceremony of the 67th Cannes film festival. Nuri Bilge Ceylan won his first Palm D’Or for his much-discussed Winter Sleep, a three-and-a-quarter hour domestic drama that won near-unanimous acclaim when it premiered at the first half of the fest. Many believed that Ceylan’s victory was overdue, having already won the Grand Prix twice for Distant in 2002 and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia in 2011, in addition to the best director prize for Three Monkeys in 2006.

The film certainly deserves the rapturous acclaim it received; it’s a multi-layered Chekhovian drama hugely inspired by the chamber pieces of Ingmar Bergman, but I couldn’t connect to it as many of my peers did. EastEnders star Haluk Bilginer is a former stage actor and a columnist running a large property chain at the snowy Cappadocia area in central Anatolia. The tranquil façade shielding his largely uneventful life slowly disintegrates to expose his dysfunctional relationships with wife, sister and tenants.

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Winter Sleep

Two Days, One Night

There’s undeniable ambition and dexterity to Ceylan’s challenging method, but the film lacks the edginess of both his past works and the best of Bergman’s films.

Its length and slow tempo requires plenty of patience and emotional investment on part of the audience, but the end result is not entirely satisfactory. There are thought-provoking ideas about ethics, religion and class disjunction, all emanating from the power play between Bilginer’s character and his wife and sister that is weaved with sharp psychological precision by Ceylan, but I couldn’t help wondering if these concepts would’ve been better served in more expressive visual symbolism rather than lengthy dialogue scenes that almost always outstay their welcome.

Ceylan’s win stole the thunder from what was otherwise the most rewarding film in competition. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne Two Days, One Night is a towering socialist statement that cements the pair as the greatest living humanist filmmakers. In her finest screen performance to date, Marion Cotillard plays a blue-collar worker given 48 hours to convince her co-workers to give up their bonuses in order to keep her job. The Dardennes do not break new ground; all their visual and thematic hallmarks are in here — the documentary-like aesthetics, the Belgian working class milieu, the moral tests their characters must undergo and the ensuing grace they manage to attain. But each of these elements is realized with such perfection that’s there’s nary a false note in a film that courageously wears its heart and politics on its

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sleeves. Two Days, One Night is a work of disarming compassion and gentleness; the rare unsentimental picture that believes in the possibility of human goodness in the midst of a self-serving, dog eat dog world.

Another movie that should have figured more heavily in the closing ceremony is Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan, the Russian luminary’s most overtly political piece to date which earned the best screenplay award.

Zvyagintsev’s fourth feature is an allegory inspired by the Book of Job about a car mechanic battling a corrupt political institute, represented by the city’s Mayor, who attempts to rob his land with the aid of the decaying religious elite. Leviathan is Zvyagintsev’s most accessible film to date; gone are the elusive narratives of The Return and The Banishment, replaced with a straightforward story that packs a punch. Zvyagintsev’s violent attack against Russia’s ruling class is punctuated by contemplative landscape shots that lend the story a universal quality largely missing from his previous films. In an edition abundant with political statements, Leviathan stands out with a powerful message about a lawless nation where justice has no place.

Completely shut out from the award ceremony was Damián Szifron’s uproarious Argentinean black comedy Wild Tales, easily the most entertaining picture I saw in Cannes this year. Produced by Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar, Szifron’s portmanteau film is divided into six stories set in a present-day Argentinean reality, drawn with broad brushstrokes. Wide arrays of subjects are

Mommy

Maps to the Stars

touched upon: bureaucracy, institutional corruption, male chauvinism, debilitating individualism and the epidemic violence — all integrated in brilliantly constructed, ingeniously-told anecdotes that keep the comedy engine rolling. Some segments are stronger than others, but the comedy never loses steam as Szifron maintains a swift pace modelled after the silent slapstick comedies. In a competition populated by the familiar works by the great masters of cinema, Szifron’s breakthrough hit was the most refreshing entry in the lineup.

A late contender for the Palme d’Or was Xavier Dolan’s Mommy, the 25-year-old Canadian’s best received movie. A chronicle of a mother’s painful struggle in dealing with her autistic teenage son, Mommy is Dolan’s least self-indulgent, least pretentious and most coherent film to date; a deeply involving, emotionally searing tale of an impossible love between the mother, the son and the sympathetic neighbour. Dolan proves again to be an expert in marrying sound and image, calibrating his scenes via pop songs by the likes of Dido, Oasis and Celine Dion that add a startlingly poignant tint to the proceeding. The film does drag in different intervals and Dolan can be excessively showy. Nevertheless, Mommy shows a hugely talented young filmmaker honing his craft and finding his voice.

Mommy shared the Jury Prize with what the most talked-about film this year. Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language was everything critics expected it to be: elusive, intellectually challenging, frustrating and largely

incomprehensible. What no one expected is how fun Godard’s latest essay film would turn out to be. Goodbye to Language is Godard at his most mischievous, most playful, and most confrontational; a visual affront on 3D for those who hate 3D. There’s the signature Godardian loose plot: an alienated man and a woman searching for meaning but, as always, it’s nothing more than a valve used to unlock the floodgates of ideas about modern life, evolving modes of oppression and the death of cinema.

There are nods to Darwin, Solzhenitsyn and Godard’s own movies, all incorporated in a series of stunning collages enlivened by a sense of resignation. Goodbye to Language is a wild beast, by turn poetic, ferocious and amusing; an unclassifiable cinema by a filmmaker who remains head and shoulders above everyone else.

David Cronenberg’s ventured in the world of Hollywood to largely timid results in Maps to the Stars, his first film shot in the U.S. A hallucinatory account about the pitfall of celebrity life taken from the point of view of a dysfunctional family haunted by a mysterious part, Maps to the Stars is a shapeless drama exposing nothing new about a tired subject that has been done to death in recent years. As a drama about a family poisoned by money and fame- the film also doesn’t hold up, offering a disjointed narrative without a single sympathetic character. Cronenberg’s message is blunt and smug, encircled in a story that ultimately feels insubstantial. The cast is terrific though, featuring deliciously deviant turns by John Cusack, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Pattison and best

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Foxcatcher

actress winner Julianne Moore.

More decisive than Godard’s magnum opus was Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria, his first English-language production. Assayas reteams with his Summer Hours star Juliette Binoche for story about a middle-aged actress joining a stage revival of the play that made her name twenty years ago. Co-starring Kristen Stewart, in another career-best performance, and a mature Chloë Grace Moretz, Sils Maria is everything Maps to the Stars is not: subtle, thoughtful and striking in looks. The story is somehow familiar: a gifted aging actress trying to fit in an industry that solely champions the young. But the evocative mood, breath-taking landscapes and the excellent rapport between Binoche and Stewart (the young assistant) set the film apart from the average Hollywood drama. Assayas is one of the rare filmmakers who know how to completely suck the viewers in his richly-textured worlds even when little action is happening; his sensory, plush universes remain as captivating as ever.

Having dominated the fest the past few years, American movies didn’t fare so well this year in Cannes. Tommy Lee Jones returned to the Croisette with his second directorial effort, The Homesman, a bizarre neo-western about a spinster and a claim jumper escorting three insane young wives from Nebraska to a preacher’s lodge in Iowa. Hillary Swank gives a nuanced performance as the strong-headed rancher looking for acceptance in a world

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where single women are cast to the margins, but the film loses both focus and energy when she disappears near the end. There are hints of Fellini’s La Strada, and Lee Jones’ visual mastery is entrancing throughout, but there’s a whiff of regression in its gender politics that casts the claim jumper as the sole protector of vulnerable women.

The standout pick of the American pack was undoubtedly Bennett Miller’s wrestling drama Foxcatcher starring Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo and an unrecognizable Steve Carell. Based on a true story, Miller charts the stormy relationship between American multimillionaire John du Pont (Carell) and Mark Schultz (Tatum), the star of the wrestling team he founded in the ‘90s. With a David Fincher-like attention to the details of the period, Miller produces a fascinating character study about two men striving for an unattainable love; a compelling psychological drama about suppressed machismo, emotional deprivation and obsession. Miller skilfully employs the thoroughly-choreographed wrestling scenes to expose the fragility and anger of his characters, using their body movements to communicate their fears and self-doubt.

Foxcatcher is American mainstream filmmaking at its best; assured, moving and profoundly unsettling.

Contrary to recent editions, the Un Certain Regard section did not offer real noteworthy works this year.

Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis’ Camera d’Or winner Party Girl failed to fulfil its intriguing premise, producing an attractive-looking

Lost River

but hollow story about a has-been nightclub performer settling down with a man she doesn’t love.

Mathieu Amalric’s third directorial effort, The Blue Room, an adaptation of Georges Simenon’s 1955 pulp novel about a lethal affair between a married couple is distinguished by an elliptical narrative with commendable performances by Stéphanie Cléau and Amalric, but let down by thin characterizations that fail to explain the actions and motivations of the lovers.

The little said about Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut Lost River the better; a mishmash of contrasting genres, tones and themes that descend into self-parody. In an edition with no shortage of major misfires (Atom Egoyan’s ridiculous thriller The Captive; Michel Hazanavicius’s schmaltzy, pointless war melodrama The Search, Keren Yedaya’s nefarious incest drama That Lovely Girl), Lost River emerged as the most reviled bomb this year.

One film that raised eyebrows for drastically dissimilar reasons was Ned Benson’s much-publicized break-up drama, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby starring Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy. Benson’s directorial debut was originally conceived as a three-hour film documenting the break-up of a New York couple from their different point of views. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her debuted last year at the Toronto Film Festival as work in progress to raving reviews and an Oscar buzz for its two leads along with a scene-stealing Viola Davis. The Weinstein’s bought the film, cut

one hour off and combined both perspectives in a new version titled Them that premiered in Cannes. The result is not disastrous (if somewhat disappointing). The original version, which Benson insisted will be made available later this year, is a rich and tremendously absorbing story that ranks among the finest romantic dramas of recent years. On the other hand, the condensation of both perspectives (particularly McAvoy’s) in the new version eliminates the complexities and gradations of the original film, driving the story to a generic territory invisible in the first outing. Still, this remains heart-tugging stuff; a crushingly sad, reflective look at an unsalvageable relationship between two people struggling to let go of each other and their idle, static worlds. Hopefully, the Weinstein’s will listen to the voice of reason and release the original version before the end of the year.

Overall, this was a stellar Cannes, offering solid works on the expense of real surprises. The competition continues to be dominated by prestige pictures, allowing the Director’s Fortnight and Critics’ Week sidebars to take chances on more daring works, and there was surely no shortage of them this year: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s The Tribe, David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, Thomas Cailley’s Les Combattants, Frederick Wiseman’s National Gallery and Isao Takahata’s Tales of the Princess. All are radical works in their own way that could’ve revitalized the competition had they made the cut.

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Vérité’s Top 5 Screen Punks

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5.

Peter Stegman Class of 1984 (1982) ‘Do you feel lucky… punk?’ Until grunge stormed the mainstream and inadvertently spawned a strain of frat-house friendly, politically illiterate, up skirt picture taking, Jackass watching, pop punk goons: North American punk rock was music from the margins. Isolated in distinct regional scenes that variously attracted intellectuals, art school rejects, misfits, screw ups, and anyone interested in giving a middle finger to Ted Nugent.

‘Hollywood’ is a deeply conservative industry (ironically mostly run by liberals) that often demonizes marginal sub cultures. The most hilariously objectionable punk in the exploitation canon is Peter Stegman (Timothy Van Patton) in Mark L. Lester’s Class of 1984. A violent updating/rip-off of The Blackboard Jungle, this Canadian film sees a high school terrorized by a gang of delinquents. Leader Stegman is a bad boy cliché: middle class, spoilt by an indulgent mother and no father figure.

Despite being a right wing fantasy that wants to bend the kids over its knee and administer a spanking, Class of 1984 is actually pretty entertaining, gave Michael J. Fox an early role, and managed to get banned in the UK. Stuart Barr

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4.

Derek Vinyard American History X (1998) Californian punk runs the gamut from country-tinged troubadours X, to the frenetic chaos of The Germs, to B-movie horror punks 45 Grave, but during the eighties and nineties the neo-Nazi skin became a regrettably popular onscreen representation. Edward Norton’s scorching performance in Tony Kaye’s brutal issue drama American History X tackles racism and hate with a blunt and earnest directness that is rare. In an extraordinary act of physical transformation the slight Norton plays Vinyard as the ultimate neo-Nazi alpha male (only rivalled by Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper).

Vinyard is smart, charismatic, filled with terrible conviction and utterly terrifying. However after serving three years for voluntary manslaughter (a truly hideous scene), Vinyard leaves prison a changed man, shorn of his racist beliefs and determined to stop his brother (Edward Furlong) from following his self-destructive path.

If punk is about rejecting and questioning authority, then it is the older wiser Vinyard who wears long sleeved tops to hide his Nazi tattoos who represents its true spirit. Stuart Barr

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3.

Cebe Out of the Blue (1980) It is ironic that one of the best ‘punk’ movies of the eighties should be directed (and largely written) by Dennis Hopper one of the iconic figures of the sixties counter culture. In fact it makes perfect sense; Hopper was never really a comfortable fit for the wide-eyed naiveté of flower power, even whilst starring in his own Easy Rider Hopper was an anarchic presence next to Peter Fonda’s Zen master. Originally Hopper was hired solely to act in Out of the Blue, but took over directing duties early in the shoot and extensively rewrote the screenplay.

Hopper plays Don, a trucker with a chaotic and destructive lifestyle who is sent to prison after crashing his rig into a school bus. This leaves his Elvis obsessed daughter Cebe (a brilliant Linda Manz) deprived of a father figure and marooned in small town nowheresville with her drug addicted mother. Leather jacketed and hair slicked back with boot polish Cebe is a study in adolescent alienation, and Hopper’s remarkably cynical film is a pure blast of cold nihilism applied to the myth of freedom that underpins the American Dream. Stuart Barr

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2.

Richie Summer of Sam (1999) One of Spike Lee’s most finely rolled joints, the sprawling Summer of Sam is multi-layered portrait of a South Bronx Italian-American neighbourhood terrorised by the ‘Son of Sam’ murders over the summer of 1977.

Although the lead character is ostensibly John Leguizamo’s slick lothario Vinnie, the greatest impression is made Adrien Brody in one of his breakthrough roles (after the non-starter of The Thin Red Line where his lead part was reduced to a near walk-on in editing). Brody is brilliant as Richie, a neighbourhood kid who has returned from London affecting a British accent and dressed in classic Carnaby Street punk-rocker garb. Richie’s new look and radical ideas (in particular his rejection of Vinnie’s misogyny) ostracise him from his former childhood friends. The only person who gives him the time of day is Vinnie’s half-sister Ruby ( Jennifer Esposito, great) who forms a band with him, eventually playing CBGBs. Ruby’s rejection of the strict social order of the neighbourhood is clear when she finds out Vinny is working as a gay hustler but does not ridicule of reject him. Stuart Barr

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1.

Travis Bickle Taxi Driver (1986) Travis Bickle did a lot more than just introduce the Mohawk haircut to the punk rock style guide via fan Joe Strummer (The Clash repaid Scorsese by appearing as extras in King of Comedy), he is the ultimate marginal character of the New American Cinema. The character was birthed in the mind of destitute former film critic and screenwriter Paul Schrader when he was homeless, sleeping in his car, clinically depressed and realized he had not spoken a word to another human being in weeks.

Bickle is an example of what Thomas Wolfe called ‘God’s Lonely Man’ but taken to a nihilistic conclusion. This kind of character is a staple of American film, think of Ethan Edwards in Ford’s The Searchers (Bickle wears cowboy boots for a reason). He has fallen through the cracks in society’s basement, with a brain fried by post-traumatic stress induced insomnia, despised, misunderstood and marginalised by every strata of the social spectrum.

Bickle eventually finds a violent outlet for his alienation, if only someone had given him a guitar and three chords instead. Stuart Barr

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T H FESTIVAL G O E N D A

words by Evrim Ersoy reviews by David Hall

ne of the UK’s biggest showcases for Asian Cinema ‘Terracotta Film Festival’ continues to grow with impressing speed in its 6th brilliant year.

This year the festival had an even more eclectic section including a spotlight on Philippines, an exploration of current Asian cinema, an all-nighter dedicate to the best of current horror from Asian and even an exhibition of film posters from Taiwan from the 1950’s and 1960’s.

The festival opened with the UK premiere of Erik Matti’s downbeat and underplayed crime drama On The Job – the film also signalled the beginning of the festival’s spotlight on Philippines with a wide arrange of films including Raya Martin’s fantastic experimental feature How To Disappear Completely as well as Andrew Leavold’s new documentary on Filipino exploitation star Weng Weng titled The Search For Weng Weng.

The Current Asian Cinema section of the festival exhibited some of the best titles available including Kim Ki-Duk’s familial masterpiece MOEBIUS as well as Nakamura Yoshihiro’s exquisite Snow White Murder Case which may be one of the most visually playful films of the year.

During the Terror-Cotta all-nighter, audiences were able to witness Takashi Miike’s demented but brilliant Lesson Of The Evil as well as the deeply divisive Killers’ by Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto.

Terracotta also stood out this year with the inclusion of even more guests, Q&A’s and master-classes as well as a few late-night parties which proved to be a nice break from the hectic schedule.

Overall the sixth edition of this seminal Festival proved that Terracotta is shaping to be THE essential Asian Film Festival for London and future editions can only expand its already impressive reach.

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KILLERS directors Kimo Stamboel, Timo Tjahjanto

The fine line between repulsion of, and fascination with, torture – that’s the modus operandi of Killers, which explores the flowering psychological bond between Nomura Shuhei, a Japanese executive based in Tokyo and Bayu Aditya, an ambitious and respected Jakarta-based journalist.

Nomura is a Patrick Bateman figure; a successful businessman living a second life as a psychotic serial killer who captures his horrifying exploits on film and posts them to the internet to the global appreciation of online sickos. This is where they catch the eye of Bayu, who is fascinated by them. When Bayu is the victim of a robbery he exacts terrible revenge on the perpetrators and shares the information with Nomyura via the web. A strong bond forms between the two ‘killers’ with different motives, but connected nonetheless, and what starts out as a tentative online courtship spoon escalates into a crazed professional rivalry.

Exceptionally well plotted and tightly scripted, with plenty of dark comedy to take the edge off some truly horrendous violence, this is a stylish, troubling and layered film, which plays fast and loose with genre tropes and audience expectations familiar to those who have seen Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer and Funny Games and know their funhouse-mirror game-playing.

It’s not a thrill ride – the early pacing is glacially slow and draining in its violent and debased imagery. But then Killers is the work of writers/directors The Mo Brothers (Timothy Tjahjanto and Kimo Stomboel) who are part of Gareth Evan’s Raid collective. These guys know their cinematic violence. But whereas The Raid treats carnage as cartoonish, throwaway entertainment, here it used for very different reasons in what is an intriguing addition to the serial killer cannon.

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LESSON OF THE EVIL directors Takashi Miike

School is definitely out for veteran Japanese shockmeister Takeshi Miike, in this desperately cruel and uneven pantomime of homicidal high-school horror. This is no Battle Royale though – Miike’s film is far less politically subversive and way more scattershot, taking in extreme body horror and surrealistic fantasy sequences in its portrayal of one teacher’s very public meltdown.

Hasumi (Hideaki Itō) is a charismatic and popular teacher loved and respected by students, parents and faculty alike, who appears to be the very model of the profession. One person not buying his act is fellow teacher, Tsurii (Fukikoshi Mitsuru) and when he starts digging into Hasumi’s past he uncovers a man whose previous assignations have left a string of suicides in their wake and whose true nature and intentions are definitely extra-curricular.

Of late there’s been a sense that this former enfant terrible has turned his back on the splattery days of yore, but in Lesson of Evil Miike is back on aggressively disreputable form, adapting Yusuke Kishi’s 2010 novel Aku no Kyōten in what starts out as perverted psychological character study before finally exploding into an orgy of violence and excess.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to register shock amongst genre fans these days, but Miike is in deliberate button-pushing mode here and his fan base, who is accustomed to him flying in the face of decency and taste, may find this a bracing return to old (bad) ways. Everyone else may need to steer clear or check their moral compass at the door. Unfortunately, as often the case with the tirelessly prolific Miike there are plodding stretches of tedium and some incoherent plotting.

There’s a semblance of subtext here, about class and ‘class’ exploitation of both kinds, but come the eye-popping and grotesquely violent finale, it’s hard to locate.

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ON THE JOB directors Erik Matti

The current vogue for Asian cinema that addresses economic desperation as a trigger for violence – the high watermark thus far being Na Hong-jin’s modern Korean classic The Yellow Sea(2010) – continues with Erik Matti’s Filipino crime-drama; which paints an acute picture of men prepared to risk what little they have for a relatively meagre benefit.

The high-concept narrative has veteran professional hitman Tatang ( Joel Torre) and wired protégé Daniel (Gerald Anderson) as contract killers with a difference – employed by a shadowy, politically-led cabal that utilises prison inmates for assassination duties. But the backdrop of abundant poverty and corrosive, ingrained corruption ultimately plays second fiddle to a familiar chase narrative along with an escalating series of propulsive terse, aggressive action sequences. Inevitably a US remake is in the pipeline.

At the heart of this muscular thriller is a cat and mouse/mirror protagonist scenario that owes a clear debt to Johnny To’s crime dramas and most obviously Infernal Affairs (2004), with the duo pursued throughout by two detectives, seasoned cop Acosta ( Joey Marquez), and his own young protégé Francis (Piolo Pascual), eager to make a name for himself.

On the Job doesn’t rewrite the policier rulebook in any way, although there are a couple of ingenuous twists that are worked in very well, but it wins out through sheer visceral force. The location work is superb and Jay Hill’s hair trigger editing is fast but always coherent, complemented by crisp lensing from cinematographer Francis Ricardo Buhay III. This is high-class, engaging and atmospheric B-Movie fare.

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Cannes 2014 A View from the Market

words by Evrim Ersoy

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or two weeks during the month of May, Cannes; a small town on the Cote D’azur, becomes the mecca for anyone interested in film. In May over 200,000 film professionals including journalists, actors, directors, producers and everyone else you can imagine descend upon this tiny spot to buy, sell, pitch, watch, live, eat and breathe film.

If you’ve been to a film festival before, chances are you’ll have a rough idea of what to expect – there’s a certain rush present in every major festival that will be fairly familiar. However Cannes takes that expectation and multiplies it by a 1000 – turning it into one of the densest and most intense experiences imaginable on this planet.

One of the most common mistakes about the festival is the assumption that there is such a thing as the ‘Cannes Film Festival’ – in reality Cannes hosts 5 (or more) overlapping film festivals including the official festival, the Director’s Fortnight, The Critic’s Choice, A.C.I.D and the market – at least these are the most recognisable events occurring as there are many more dotted around the historical town.

This year, attending both the main festival and the

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market for the first time, I found myself running what felt like the world’s longest marathon: a week long race to attend meetings, see films, write reviews and generally not fall behind at this gargantuan event. Cannes is frightening – the pace is so overwhelming that at times this can feel like you’re drowning in a sea of film titles, screenings and numbers whilst the numerous queues can be dastardly long and boring as anything as you can imagine.

Yet at the same time if cinema is your religion, there’s nowhere else I’d recommend other than Cannes – a festival which grants you the opportunity (if you so wish) to discuss, debate, dissect and consume movies from 8am until 4.00am the next morning. It’s a merry-go-round which has no stop button – a mad and brilliant dash.

This year at the main festival, I had the pleasure of seeing five titles reflecting the variety of choice at Cannes.

The first film was David Michod’s post-apocalyptic road move The Rover which features a grizzled Guy Pearce setting off to find the man who stole his car accompanied by a brother of one of the man – played against type by Robert Pattinson.

Although Michod’s skill is evident in the suffocating mood of the film and his construction of a believable

world after the collapse of civilization is impressive, The Rover unfortunately lacks a story punchy enough to carry the brilliance of the world across. At times, the film feels like a travelogue into this dystopian nightmare and the lack of a central thrust affects the overall rhythm of the piece.

The other western on my viewing schedule was Kristan Levering’s take on the classic western titled The Salvation starring Mads Nikelsen. The film told the story of two Danish brothers who have settled in the Wild West to make their fortune and who, through a series of unfortunate events, find themselves in a blood feud with a feared local gang leader.

Opening with an incredibly impressive sequence in which the camera travels through the dusty town as if setting the stage in a play, Levering wastes no time in setting the action – the arrival of Nikelsen’s wife triggers a brutal attack by two bandits during an increasingly uncomfortable stagecoach sequence and when Nikelsen kills the men in retaliation for the murder of his family, things start happening at breakneck speed.

Blessed with a terrific cast, Levering strips the classic western to its barebones whilst trying to impose his own very unique visual style – and he’s successful to some

degree .However the film suffers from over-stylization, alienating the viewer from the action on the screen whilst the general stilted tone of the film creates an awkward atmosphere somewhere between Dogville and a production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

The violence is suitable abrupt and the action sudden – but the flimsy nature of the plot cannot sustain the excessive running time of the film and the end result is a highly unsatisfactory experience.

One of the best films of the festival was the horror-drama ‘When Animals Dream’ which screened as part of the Semaine De Crituque at Cannes. Reminiscent of oeuvre of Val Lewton, this subtle, intense drama tells the story of a family living in a small village on the Western coast of Denmark. 16-year-old-Marie has just started working at the local fish factory whilst her father divides his time between looking after Marie’s catatonic and frail mother and his work.

As Marie starts to find herself afflicted with a mysterious ailment, she begins to notice changes in her body which clearly worry her father who monitors her closely.

Although the result of this ailment will not really come as a surprise to any seasoned genre veterans, it’s the depth of characters and the brilliantly written emotional

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When Animals Dream

content which sets When Animals Dream head and shoulders above its counterparts. Blessed with one of the most beautiful and moving scores of the year, this is subtle, gentle and potent genre filmmaking at its best.

The other surprise of the festival was Mage Tes Morts screened as part of the Director’s Fortnight. This brilliant French road movie takes over the course one night and is set amongst the trailer park gypsies of Northern France.

Jason Dorkel has one day before his baptism living in caravans in a gypsy campsite with his mother and his Christian cousins who encourage him to choose the correct path. However when his older brother Fred comes out of jail, having been put away for 15 years for running over a security guard with a food truck he was stealing, turning Jason’s life topsy-turvy over one fateful night.

Blessed with fast-paced local, naturalistic local dialogue and more testosterone than the screen can ever handle, Mange Tes Morts is a swaggering fast-ride into the male psyche, an exploration of family but most importantly a night’s soul searching for these posturing and violent men. Perhaps it’s nothing we haven’t seen before yet that does not stop director Jean-Charles Hue from crafting an incredible film which builds up to a climax of unexpected and yet powerful emotional impact.

The final film that I saw as part of the festival was Fabrice Du Welz’s Alleluia – a new take on the Honeymoon

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Killers case which has already inspired some very good movies.

Starring Lola Duenas as Gloria, a divorced, single mother who (pushed by her friend Madeleine) agrees to go on a date with Michel (a magnificent Laurent Lucas) and finds herself beguiled with this sleazy snake charmer of a man.

From thereon it’s anybody’s guess as the couple go on a deranged, brilliant journey into the depths of crazy, excessive love and as the body count rises and the madness threatens to engulf the two, the film keeps apace with kinetic camerawork and incredibly script.

Perhaps Fabrice Du Welz’s best film since Vinyan, Allelulia is one of the most shocking, engaging, powerful and unforgettable films of the year – the central performances are nothing short of miraculous and structure of the film is so intelligent and well-handled that it even risks losing some audience members in its final third.

Whilst the screenings at the main festival require a degree of patience and planning with long queues, tuxedos a must for evening slots and odd screening times, the market at Cannes is a totally different experience.

The Marche Du Film is set across the entire town of Cannes – whilst the main exhibitors are in the densely populated Palais, a lot of the large companies will occupy entire floors of the hotels on the Croisette, hanging their

Alleluia

banners to show the world where they are. Every square inch of the town is occupied by posters for films these companies are representing: a walk through the main market rooms at the Palais is an eye-opening experience with everything from killer crocs to the new film from John Woo vying for space.

At any given time there’ll be upwards of 20 screenings happening under the market umbrella taking in every genre imaginable – trying to navigate this Byzantine film minefield requires cunning, planning and a degree of madness. For anyone in love with film, Marche Du Film represents perhaps the biggest candy-shop any kid could ever want. This year I managed to see over 45 films during my week there and the experience was second to none.

Although there’s an unwritten contract which forbids anyone from reviewing any of the films they’ve seen at the market, there were one or two movies which I could not pass by without mentioning.

One of these was The Treatment – a brilliant and shocking serial killer procedural which brought back the brilliance of films like Manhunter into the modern age kicking and screaming. Blessed with a sharp script, characters with depth and some very shocking twists, this Dutch adaptation of an American novel really shows other genre films how to construct a nail-biting thriller.

The other title, which I saw at a market screening even though it was also part of the official selection of Critic’s Week, was The Tribe – an intense melodrama from Ukraine. Set in a special boarding school for the deafand-mute, The Tribe is a film without dialogue, voiceovers or subtitles. Although the on-screen characters converse freely in sign language, the film makes a conscious decision to leave the audience in the dark, giving them only access through the actions and physicality of the actors – a decision which pays of rich dividends.

Starring Gregory Fresenko as Sergey; who we see first is making his way across the city to arrive at a special boarding school for the deaf-and-mute. Here Sergey discovers a criminal organisation operated by the students and finds himself embroiled within its hierarchy. With unexpected violence and incredibly oppressive long takes, The Tribe creates an undeniable atmosphere of magic and horror which rewards the audience aplenty.

Of course, this is in no way enough to summarize Cannes. There are more films, more events, more shocks, more surprises and more parties than I could ever attempt to write but suffice it to say if there’s one place on Earth where anyone in love with cinema needs to visit; that’s this festival.

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Melancomedy Kelsey Eichhorn continues our partnership with the Swedish Film Institute highlighting some of their personal favourites from their collection. This month’s addition - Tillsammans

introduction by Swedish Film Institute

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n Lukas Moodysson’s second feature film, Together (Tillsammans, 2000), the director and screenwriter further explores one of the themes of his acclaimed feature debut, Show Me Love (Fucking Åmål, 1998), namely the deeply humane need to be seen, respected, welcomed and loved. Like in all of Moodysson’s films, the children’s perspective is always present in Together, although less so than in his previous work. Where Show Me Love was mainly a story about teenagers, Together has important characters in all ages – young boys Stefan and Tet, teenagers Eva and Fredrik, a large collective of thirty-somethings and forty-somethings and the old man Birger. All of them are struggling, in their own way, with loneliness and longing for meaning and togetherness. The commune in the

centre of the story represents the idea of this longing, but the ideal means different things to the different members of the commune, which leads to misunderstandings, pain and dissolution. Still, the film is not a tragedy, because even if the commune can’t last forever, the human needs are universal and timeless, which is also why the film is more than a nostalgia-tinted fantasy about Sweden in the 1970’s. The journey away from loneliness and pain and the quest for love and harmony is prevalent in all of Moodysson’s films, making his works semi-religious in a way. In Together the filmmaker lets his main characters reach their goal, perhaps more so than in any other of his films. Here, Lukas Moodysson chooses to look at the world kindly.

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words by Kelsey Eichhorn

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common misconception is that if a film is funny, it is a comedy; and comedies, we all know, are not to be taken seriously. Never one for genre distinctions in general, the classifications become increasingly offensive in application to films I love, and Tillsammans is an all-time favourite. Often billed as a comedic look at a 1970’s swinging Stockholm commune, the IMDb.com labels of “Comedy”, “Drama” and - wait for it - “Romance” seem unconvincingly trite in the face of such a complex and clever film. While comical at times, Tillsammans is neither silly nor light-hearted. While the film many seem farcical at first, and the stringently radical politics of many of the characters are pushed to the point of absurdity, beneath the surface level of plot, the film reveals a deeply poignant tale of humanity and relationships that defies classification.

Tillsammans makes an art form of turning established expectations on their heads. Everything from the style to the content of the film not only defies convention, but consistently keeps us guessing throughout the narrative. In 1970s Sweden, much like in the rest of the western world, being a hippie meant free love, Marxism, Lennonism, vegetarianism and, most importantly, a Volkswagen van. This is how Lukas Moodysson presents

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his characters: in a nutshell, a caricature of expectation.

Yet through the film’s loose-knit plot, which lacks many decisive events but rather focuses on the everyday interactions that constitute relationships, preconceptions are continuously challenged. Whether it is to question the expectation of an art film or our understanding of political communes, if there is any sort of overarching lesson to be learned from Tillsammens it could potentially be that very few things are ever as they initially seem. Who would have thought, for instance, that one could feel such compassion and sympathy for an abusive alcoholic husband/father? And yet as Rolf swigs back his hip flask at the restaurant with Eva and Stefan, the heartaches for his seemingly insurmountable struggle. His is just one of the numerous story lines that challenge our pre-conceived notions to eventually reveal a deeper truth about humanity.

Perhaps the most striking reversal of expectation is Moodysson’s treatment of children throughout the film.

On the surface it is obvious the dichotomy Moodysson is playing with here: the adults in the film often behave like children, while the children consistently present the maturity expected of adults. The theme is not a new one - many a comedic encounter has resulted from this basic plot. Yet Tillsammans takes this somewhat obvious

storyline/narrative technique and pushes it still further, beyond the farcical mode of that to which we are accustomed. There is honesty to the frivolous, childlike behaviour of the adults that suggests a moving vulnerability rather than the expected petulance or selfishness. There is an intense understanding in the emotions and interactions of the children that suggests all too clearly that one day they too, like their parents, will one day find themselves searching in vain for a lost innocence.

The tables are turned most tellingly in the scene where Goran brings Eva to school in the commune’s grungy Volkswagen van. In the awkward purgatory of adolescence, where societal perceptions region supreme, Eva’s mortification at her association with the commune is enough to tug at even the most cynical of audience’s heartstrings. Yet, unexpectedly, what compounds the sentiment further is Eva’s emotional awareness. At her tender age she feels not only the expected embarrassment at the hands of her peers, but an even more acute embarrassment at her own reaction - an intense guilt at her seemingly selfish reaction to her Uncle’s bumbling attempts at a kind gesture.

The adult members of the commune petulantly brandish sexuality and political opinions with frivolous abandon in a perverse and often hurtful game of playground

banter. The children, meanwhile, either watch and listen stoically, or play games weighted with meaning beyond their years. In one scene, Stefan and Tet play a make-believe game of “torture” and argue over who gets to be Pinochet. On the one-hand, an absurdly comedic exchange, on the other an unsettling revelation.

It is fitting that the film’s final, concluding scene sees the characters engaged in a game. While snowfalls on Christmas morning the weight of the world is put aside momentarily in favour of that most iconic of European pastimes: football. Yet the conclusion of the film is anything but conclusive. Once the final goal is scored and the ball placed back on the shelf, the fears and worries, the stresses and strains and crises of confidence will be waiting just inside the door of the house. The scene is joyous, and there is undoubtedly a sense of hope in the ability to escape, for a brief moment in time to the simple joy of a game with friends. Yet it is impossible to escape the implication that all of life is a game: serious and silly at the same time. And, like all of us, the characters of Tillsammans neither win nor lose; they simply continue to play on in awkward, messy, hopeful search of the one thing that gives life meaning: togetherness.

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Memory Identity & Genre

Great Dane Christoffer Boe In this month’s discovery strand, Evrim Ersoy highlights the enigmatic sensibilities of Christoffer Boe words by Evrim Ersoy

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ne of the leading figures of current European cinema, Christoffer Boe also remains one of the most mysterious and idiosyncratic figures to come out of Denmark.

Determined to be a filmmaker from an early age, Boe finished a trilogy of short films whilst still at National Film School of Denmark. During the production of these shorts, he collaborated with a production team which would become his regular working partners prompting him to place the label of Hr. Boe & Co on each one of his films.

His first film finished straight after graduation was Reconstruction a title which he specifically wrote for the two actors he worked with on his shorts as he found the experience to be so positive. An astute, assured debut, the film is a riff on memory and identity filtered through a science-fiction/otherworldly lens. In it we see Alex; a Danish photographer who starts pursuing Aimee after meeting her one night despite being a long-term

relationship with Simone.

However after Alex ends up spending a night with Aimee, he will find his entire life erased, his past totally wiped clean and his investigation into the reason behind this will throw up more questions than answers.

In Reconstruction Boe plays both the with expectations of the audience and the characters- by casting actress Maria Bonnevie in both the role of Simone AND Aimee, he creates a duality which reflect on most of the events throughout the film – Alex’s discovery that Aimee’s husband August, who also serves as the film’s narrator; brings forth a further curveball – could it be that August’s writing is somehow reconstructing Alex’s life?

Boe is more interested in questions than answers – the film is playful and in his choice of style Boe deliberately creates the sense of a reconstruction – the location of the characters pinned on overhead maps of Copenhagen – whilst teasing the audience with what might be behind the weird, ever-shifting world he chooses.

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The same themes extend into Boe’s second film Allegro as well. This time the central character is a famous pianist, Zetterstrom, who returns to Copenhagen after an unspecified length of time. A narrator reveals to us the reason behind his initial departure: the breaking up of his relationship with the beautiful Andrea – an event so traumatic that Zetterstrom has almost blocked all memories of that period of his life.

What separates an unsurprising drama is Boe’s ability to introduce a science-fiction angle reminiscent of Tarkovsky’s ‘Stalker’: the departure of Zetterstrom somehow triggers a mysterious force-filed which has enclosed a section of Copenhagen; now nicknamed ‘The Zone’ which no-one can enter and no-one can leave.

Upon his return, Zetterstrom is told that Andrea has been kidnapped and is being held captive within The Zone: however there’s a problem – Zetterstorm claims to not know who Andrea is and does not remember anything of his life before his departure from Copenhagen.

Allegro feels like the next natural step after Reconstruction for Boe – whilst retaining the playful meta-structure which made the first film so interesting, he builds upon the atmosphere to create a more ambiguous setting – the elliptical nature of time (again nodding to Stalker) creates impossible situations which delight and confuse in equal measure.

The figure of Zetterstrom, the anguished artist, may begin as a movie archetype – however the realization that his memories may be missing and that his life might not be what he think it is throws in a curveball which allows the audience to regard the character afresh. Is he just a walking stereotype or is his personality just a mere surface cover over what he lost?

However it is also this ambitious, multi-layered narra-

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tive which ultimately derails the film. Boe’s narrative fails to sustain itself and what begins as intriguing and mysterious becomes merely confusing. Still the film stands as an interesting exercise - both visually and in terms of a cinematic construction, it’s one that demands investigating.

With his next film, Boe tightens the screws on his format and films – neatly channelling all of his playful exploration and complicated layers into a nightmare worthy of any self-respecting filmmaker. Offscreen is a short, sharp trip into the heart of darkness and mesmerising as well as grotesque.

Actor Nicolas Bro plays Nicolas Bro – an actor intent on making a film about himself. Armed with a camera lent by Christoffer Boe, Bro records everything and anything he can. As his film progresses and his life starts to dissolve, Bro begins to disintegrate – all his madness captured on camera to be watched by the audience.

When the film opens, the audience is informed that Bro has disappeared and Boe is tasked with editing together the footage he has left behind. Leaving behind the dazzling visual style of his previous two films, Boe creates an ugly tale of madness – both mesmerising in its simplicity and shocking in its outrageous approach. Bro’s performance hold the film like a magnetic centre - in almost every shot, his fall from grace is equal measure grim, gallows humour and out-and-out shock and horror.

If anything, the idea of identity is stronger in ‘Offscreen’ than even the previous two of Boe’s efforts – Bro the actor and Bro the character merge into one with Boe weaving the meta storyline out of real life and somehow managing to create a second reality – more frightening, more stark and certainly more seductive.

The partnership between Boe and Bro continues onto

Boe’s next film – another magnificent tale of madness titled Beast. Nicolas Bro plays Bruno, a man madly in love with his wife Maxine. However all is not within their relationship and Maxine has started to move away from Bruno – however Bruno’s obsession with Maxine is all-consuming and more powerful than either of them could have imagined so as he begins to stalk Maxine and her love and play psychological games with them, he begins a transformation of a different kind.

Just like Offscreen, Beast is a film with an urgent tempo , propelled by the central performance by Bro – he’s a force of nature, screaming, rallying, chiding, observing – a performance that is only matched by Isabelle Adjani in Zulawski’s ‘Possession’ – in fact the two films carry a similar them about obsession and the end of relationships.

As chaos perpetrates his life and love, it does so into the structure of the film as well – the beating of drum getting stronger by the scene. A unique psychological experiment, Beast stands as one of Boe’s finest hours.

It’s quite surprising then to see Everything Will Be Fine coming from Boe – a film released almost simultaneously with Beast. It’s a film more traditional in its structure and more modest in its experimentation – however underneath the surface Boe remains equally questioning and unhinged.

On surface this is a conspiracy story – director Jacob Falk is behind to finish a new script for which the deadline is approaching. Involved in a hit and run accident on the edges of Copenhagen, he abandons the wounded man and choose to report the accident anonymously.

However upon opening the man’s bag, Falk finds himself face to face with photographic evidence of torture

by Danish soldiers. As he tries to uncover the mystery of the photos and who might be behind them, he will

discover a story more complicated and frightening than he could have ever written.

A thriller in the traditional sense, Everything Will Be Fine benefits from Boe’s visual flourishes – he embellishes the action in a way that mainstream thriller would dare not do – the narrative feels personal with Falk reminiscent of Boe in certain ways whilst his handling of Copenhagen as an architectural maze only helps to heighten the incredible tension. Everything Will Be Fine works well both as a thriller tribute to the conspiracy thrillers of the 70’s and delicate character study.

Boe’s latest film Sex, Drugs and Taxation once again surprises with its central conceit: the true story of Mogena Glistrup and Simon Spies – one an eccentric millionaire, the other a capitalist lawyer and tax protester.

Teaming up with Boe is Nicolas Bro again in the role of the lawyer whilst Pilou Asbaek excels in the role of the quirky, rich man.

The odd nature of this real life story suits Boe well and he uses it to reflect upon a time in Danish history and identity with his usual flare. Although the film feels too short to be comfortably host all of Boe’s ideas, it is still a jet-black and sharp comedy and it’s almost impossible not to admire the solid, engaging central figures.

Boe’s work remains both enigmatic and intriguing to anyone encountering it for the first time – he is a director constantly at war with himself to re-invent our perception of character, of story and of cinema. He’s a man who like Von Trier and other contemporaries seems determined to drag cinema into unexplored territory, no matter what the cost – and although sometimes the results may confuse or falter, one thing is for sure: nothing he ever does will ever be ordinary. Boe remains a t rue pioneer.

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Masters of Cinema

Nashville Luke Richardson discusses one of the many Robert Altman masterpieces with the interlocking lives of 1975’s Nashville

words by Luke Richardson

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hate country music. I’ve never understood it, I guess.

The twanging pedal steel guitars, the ho-hum humbleness and cornball lyrics, not to mention the dubious gender politics, all wrapped up in an XXXXL portion of American jingoism. So yes, the delusional paeans of country music have never sung to me. And yet, a Robert Altman movie – featuring a near wall-to-wall hour of the stuff – is one of my absolute favourite viewing experiences from the decade.

Not only making me an apostate to my own musical tastes, Nashville is a universally adored landmark of American cinema, and often earmarked as the filmmaker’s epochal work. It’s where all the Altmanesque fancies come together at their gargantuan best, from the irreverent reveries of M*A*S*H and Brewster McCloud, to the quirks of buffoonish characters in California Split, and the subversive

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genre whimsy of The Long Goodbye. The resulting film is both dizzying and formative: a freewheeling, beer swilling, 159-minute musical drama shebang, which lightly criticises the star spangled libertarian subculture, yet doesn’t shift into overtly cynical or pompous judgement. For a film about country and western music, Nashville is oddly punkish, and herein lays its charm. The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael famously fawned over the then yet to be released movie, beatifically labelling it as an ‘Altman party’. Luckily enough, we’re all invited.

Altman kicks off his jamboree in typically meandering fashion, encapsulating the mood, tone and timbre of America’s Music City at the expense of formulaic narrative propulsion. The lack of dowdy exposition is an oddly pleasing one, gently enabling us to meet all two-dozen of the significant central characters and sink into the city they populate.

Taking place over five hot summer days in the lead up to the Tennessee presidential primary, Nashville begins with the homecoming of the city’s rose, a ditzy country music queen called Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakeley), returning after a long recovery in a burn centre. Awaiting her at the airport is her very own Beatlemania, with crazed fans, bustling paparazzi and her smarmy, Rhinestone Cowboy singing partner in the wings, Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson).

Trickling through the airport masses are some of the regular Altman players and Nashville’s leads - although the way in which they are nonchalantly introduced through serpentine tracking shots and quick-cuts would make their presence here seem almost incidental. Amongst them include a very young Jeff Goldblum as a silent, trike motorcycle riding prestidigitator; Shelley Duvall’s “anything goes” Californian groupie; Scott Glenn as an unhinged war vet in town to give a message to the returning megastar; Gwen Welles’ guileless (and tone deaf ) waitress looking for her big break into the music biz; Geraldine Chaplin’s pompous Auntie Beeb reporter, Opal; and Keith Carradine’s Tom, a sleazy rock heart throb always on the prowl for his next sex fix, while longing for the one who got away - a mumsy white gospel singer played with devastating poignancy by the Academy Award nominated Lily Tomlin – in her first ever movie role, no less.

These are all meaty enough characters to charge a standalone movie, but this is an Altman production, and the forefather of American cinematic maximalism intermingles these two-dozen lost souls to create one engaging ensemble in a network narrative that could only be described as a thrilling diegetic overload. The origins of which came from the fresh-faced screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury, whom Altman sent out to Nashville to discover the soul and sound of the place. She returned with a diary brimming with unforgettable characters and wry observations, which were quickly adapted to form the movie screenplay.

Released just before the country’s bicentennial during an economic slump – and mere months after Nixon’s resignation and the end of the Vietnam War – Nashville arrived at a point of transition in the US. It was the first time in its young history where the country was under serious civil duress, with protests coming from every social faction, class and creed. Political apathy was seeping in, while subservient state patriotism was being squeezed, resulting in many asking questions of what really defines the behemoth that the United States had become; and what makes an American person truly “American”?

Without drowning the film in pathos, Altman subtly alludes to this semantic shift in nationhood with Nashville. Its warts-and-all exposé of the Tennessee capital and its often-cartoonish inhab-

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itants was emblematic of an indictment of the country en masse. It’s a sentiment typified by the prelude from Haven Hamilton (written, in character, by Henry Gibson himself ). He’s in the studio to lay down a cut of a rousing new anthem celebrating his great nation’s birthday, featuring the refrain: “We must be doing something right/ To last two hundred years”. Beyond Gibson’s portrayal of the cantankerous old king of country being humorous, the faux self-effacing demeanour of the lyrics mask a hubris that is unnerving and provocative; something is great about the States, but what?

Further political discord comes in the form of the 24th central character, Hal Philip Walker, the head honcho and presidential candidate for the Replacement Party.

While never featuring in frame, his rallying political campaign is omnipresent throughout the movie, with a touring minivan spouting his pre-recorded policies on a loudspeaker. A contrarian political figure, Walker is a stand-in for the everyman in this hyperbolic Americanala-la-land, with a campaign comprised of populist rhet-

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oric (“Lower public taxation!”, “Tax the church!”, “Oust the lawyers up in Congress!”); and nonsensical flights of fancy, like changing the national anthem to something people actually like, remember and can sing (maybe a Haven Hamilton original?).

Not only are his values in line with those of a wouldbe politician, the advantageous Walker sniffs the nation’s desire for a change that will hopefully bring America back to its defining Constitutional values. With the aid of duplicitous political whip (Michael Murphy), Walker decides to win his way into hearts and minds of the electorate by hosting a star-studded political convention with live music, hot dogs, balloons and even more political orations. So familiar were all these political platitudes in 1975 that Nashville became something of a zeitgeist epoch, and a directorially brazen portrayal on the national disillusionment.

Beyond its winning political portent, Nashville is a feat of enveloping cinematic sound engineering, and just as good a reason for the film to be restored on glorious

Blu Ray as the visual foreground. Manning brand new multi-track recording equipment, sound designer Jim Webb was able to encapsulate all the noises of a scene live and unobtrusively, much like cinematographer Paul Lohmann’s extreme long shots, and then splice, edit and rework them in post-production - an Altman technique known as “un-mixing”. The result is a cacophony of country, both as a music and a landmass; a polyrhythmic collage which eavesdrops into moments of actuality and conversation, only to skittishly move away from them and onto the next POI. It’s a vigorous hallmark of Altman’s work – and perhaps his most divisive – but in Nashville the outcome is absolutely electric and befitting to the audacity of the subject matter.

And who could forget the thrumming elephant in the room? Much like the city, music is at the heart of Nashville. Written and performed by the cast, the songs often speak to the characters own latent insecurities. Perhaps the best of the live-recorded soundtrack is Keith Carradine’s Oscar winning hit, “I’m Easy”, in which his char-

acter Tom bluntly announces his licentious sexual endeavours to a packed audience crowd - featuring several of his recent, still besotted flings - while directly trying to reach out to Lily Tomlin’s Linnea, sitting in the shadows at the back of the bar and lusting over the man who is at risk of tearing her picture postcard American family apart.

A film of colossal importance and prestige, what makes Nashville such a thrilling viewing nearly forty years after its original release is that it often feels like Altman could drop the ball at any moment. He never does, of course, as the film keeps moving at such a great velocity that one could never be bored. It’s long, but not excessive; it’s clever, but not ostentatious. It’s an intricate tapestry with a pleasing surface sheen. It’s a tough competitor for Altman’s best movie, and that alone is enough.

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Nashville is available on June 16th courtesy of Eureka Entertainment. www.eurekavideo.co.uk

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In Defence...

The Gory Excess of Zach Snyder’s 300

words by Ben Nicholson

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here is an unfortunate tendency in the world of film marketing to refer to director Zack Snyder as a visionary. Whilst he has admittedly brought various projects to the big screen in stylish fashion, it is entirely understandable that the majority of commentary addresses such lofty characterisations with disdain. Snyder’s career has been built upon the shoulders of giants, remaking or adapting works by the likes of George A. Romero, Alan Moore and Frank Miller with precious little invention. It is the latter that provided the source for the director’s first foray into the world of comic book adaptation, the pumped-up tale of Spartan defiance - 300; the film that launched Snyder to another level of success.

Despite largely middling reviews, and dismissive chuckles even from those that liked it, it stands head, shoulders

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and fetching plumed helmets above his other work as a bronze-clad spectacle worthy of megalomaniacal Godkings and fearless doomed warriors.

The story is one as old as history itself. Making its bow in Herodotus’ The Histories, it told of a small contingent of Greek soldiers - formed around three hundred battle-hardened Spartan hoplites - that stood against the might of the Persian Empire. The place was Thermopylae, and the Greek cohort was broken amidst the tidal wave of Xerxes’ army, but knowledge of their honour and sacrifice has survived courtesy of an almost legendary status.

For all of the criticisms that can be levelled at 300 - and it can be conceded that some are fairly legitimate - it is this propagation of that mythic status, and the artistic license taken therewith, that elevates Snyder’s swords and sandals bloodbath.

“The visual style, all burnished gold and deep red, works to perfection - see the lamentable sequel for how not to colour an ancient epic - and provides the appropriate slo-mo stage for a bloody bonanza.”

I was a student reading Classics when Wolfgang Peterson’s Troy sailed into cinemas on a thousand ships in June, 2004. The Iliad was apparently its basis, but in reality much of the wonder of the Greatest Story Ever Told (according to me) had been stripped away in an attempt to transpose legend into a historical setting.

The fabled Trojan War was scythed from a decade to a long weekend, and the Gods - major players in Homer’s epic poem - were mentioned but never seen. This is an approach that will be very recognisable to modern audiences, and indeed Zack Snyder has since been a culprit of the same when he took the hopeful and altogether mythic Superman and grounded him in earthy hues and mopey realism. What makes 300 sing is that it goes utterly against type and embraces the unreal, absurd, and ridiculous, despite the fact that the story being portrayed up on screen is actually a historical one.

Naturally, Snyder has cleaved fairly closely to Frank Miller’s comic book, so it is the author rather than the

director that should be commended for this, but either way it works in 300’s favour. Herodotus was a trailblazer when he decided to compile the first history book in the fifth century BC and indeed the title of his masterwork, which translated actually means “inquiry”, coined the term itself. What is fantastic is that 300 arguably embraces the spirit of Herodotus. The historian compiled stories and accounts regarding Greece’s past and reported what was told to him even though some stories were fanciful and others were downright bizarre. A blending of fact and fiction is how the story of Thermopylae and the 300 Spartans was born, so it is perfect that the muddied veracity of the source is reflected in the Miller/Snyder film providing an equally unreliable narration.

From the off, you’re in for a tall tale as Dilios (David Wenham) recounts the childhood of a Spartan boy and a deadly (but almost fairytale-like) confrontation with a pitch black wolf. That boy become the Spartan king with the thickest of Scottish accents, Leonidas (Gerard

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Butler), who decides to pick a fight with the hordes of Xerxes that come barrelling into Greece with conquest on their minds. The realities of the militaristic Sparta are perfectly embellished by the chiselled muscles on show. Glistening pectorals and loincloths meant that vast swathes of time had to be spent by the actors beefing up for their roles. Like the physiques, this is history turned up to eleven and splattered with Kensington gore; it’s an absolute riot.

It is easy to empathise with those put off by the grotesquery that litters 300, recognizable borne of Frank Miller’s mind. This can be especially problematic when considering the roles that the deformed characters are generally given. It’s a legitimate grievance but also an issue that feeds back into storytelling themes and the tradition of history being the word of the victors. The fact that the treacherous Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan) is reimagined (or is that regarded?) as a pandering hunchback seems to fit perfectly with the story, the Spartan uber-masculinity, and a heritage of malformed villains.

These reinventions also include a perverse twist on the

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‘oracle’ that combines mysticism and lasciviousness with comprehensible politics and greed.

Whilst modern scholars have concluded that the infamous battle probably took place between approximately 20,000 Greeks and 150,000 Persians (which are still pretty bad odds), good old Herodotus had figures closer to 5,000 vs 2.5 million and it is these that Snyder & Co have plumped for. This way they can keep their focus on the few, and it makes for some thoroughly enjoyable combat sequences. The visual style, all burnished gold and deep red, works to perfection - see the lamentable sequel for how not to colour an ancient epic - and provides the appropriate slo-mo stage for a bloody bonanza.

Ultimately, the thing is that most people who don’t like 300 have valid criticisms. The problem is that many of those are the things that make it something rather unique in modern film. This is not a comic book pared down for the screen, but one whose excesses and freedom are its superpowers. It is not a myth treated as history, but history elevated to myth, and it rarely gets enough credit for that.

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Common People

cert (12a)

directors Stewart Alexander, Kerry Skinner writers Stewart Alexander starring Sam Kelly, Diana Payan, Iarla McGowan

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Review by Kelsey Eichhorn

release date 10th June

Like any art form, film enjoys periods of not only cultural, but also chronological trends in style and structure. The dark, sultry presence of Film Noir cast a shadow over the industry in the 1940’s, The 1970’s became a decade of change as road movies tore across every screen from Hollywood to London, and in the pre-millennial decade the world became swept up in the sweet saccharine style of the Romantic Comedy. Fast forward and there’s no doubt the quirky indie film has seen a recent surge in popularity. But popularity has its pitfalls, and with increased audience awareness and experience, the bar continues to be set higher and higher. It is this environment that proves the fatal downfall of Stewart Alexander and Kerry Skinner’s Common People.

In one of the film’s early scenes, a homeless man (Michael Ballard) wakes up on the park bench where he has spent the night. As he rummages through his bag the camera takes in his shabby appearance, noting the collared shirt under what was probably once a rather high-quality jumper.

Emerging from his camping rucksack with a can of beans and a spoon he proceeds to eat breakfast as the camera adopts a long-shot position of observation. Then, the homeless man begins to sing. “Common people, common ground. Common hearts, common sounds.” A jogger passes and the man stops, self conscious. “These are common people, this is common ground”, he begins again. The scene is beautiful and simple, and the not-so-subtle irony is clear – the film is in fact set on a Common.

Yet the secondary commentary is where the power of the lyrics lies and the promise of a moving tale of the common hearts and common sounds of common everyday people strike a hopeful tone to open the film.

The real disappointment of this film is the glimpse of promise that is never realised. An attempt to provide a string of connection through the search for a lost Parakeet named Princess Parroty falls short when the bird is only seen or reference a scant four times throughout the film, including once in the opening and again in the closing scenes. Acting performances, for the most part, fall on the wrong side of the line between eccentric yet inspired and just plain poor. The exceptions are the previous mentioned restrained and beautiful portrayal of a homeless man from Michael Ballard and the dynamic duo of husband and wife characters Derrik and Pamela, brought to life by Sam Kelly and Diana Payan.

The narrative concept is fundamentally intriguing who doesn’t love a whimsical, slice-of-life film? Yet the execution is disappointingly lacking. Moments of beautifully effortless cinematography descend into haphazard and uninspired shot-reverse-shot sequences while the connections between characters, which individually are often intriguing, are tenuous and clichéd, making for a confusingly disjointed narrative. As a result, the lighthearted hopefulness intended in the concluding scenes feels not only unrealistic but somewhat offensive in its naiveté, ultimately undermining the entire premise of the film.

Fruitvale Station release date 6th June

Review by Ben Nicholson

The pitfalls of projecting real-life tragedy as big screen narrative are evident in the varied reactions to Ryan Coogler’s arresting feature debut, Fruitvale Station. Its focus is on the real-life shooting of 22-year-old African-American Oscar Grant who was killed by a police officer in the titular Oakland BART station in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 2009. More specifically, the focus is on a fictionalised account of Oscar’s final day which has provoked the ire of some, taking liberties to venerate the protagonist and failing to tackle the wider issues head on.

Converse opinion is available, however. There are, admittedly, some heavy-handed beats littered through the narrative but rather than attempts to idolise him, these endeavour to remind the audience regardless of the colour of his skin, Oscar was just an ordinary person. They are the pursuit of a flawed and caring man, who has made bad choices but who regrets them, who is a rounded realistic character even to the point where they may tip into sentimentality. The men who killed Oscar saw a stereotype, they panicked at conventions undoubtedly proliferated by movies; Coogler is trying to present more than that. To that end he is fortunate to have the exceptional performance of Michael B. Jordan in his corner, anchoring the film even when it threatens to slip away.

Various facets of Oscar’s life are perhaps too neatly condensed into an eventful 24 hours leading up to the tragic episode on the station platform. Indeed that is where the film begins with handheld phone footage spying from the open train doors as the situation escalates in front of appalled passengers. The action then shifts back to the beginning of Oscar’s busy New Year’s Eve which comes replete with a resolution to give up his drug dealing career, a plan to get his workaday job back, the comforting of a dog as it lies dying after a hit-and-run. Some of these moments are evidently on-the-nose but through the sheer force of Jordan’s brilliant turn, many are simultaneously awash with far subtler nuances. Though a long way from the significance held by the trope in the classical tradition, Coogler and Jordan do imbue Oscar with his own fatal flaws - a livewire temper proving the most calamitous.

Whilst the star at its centre shines brightest, he could easily have been eclipsed by Octavia Spencer and Melonie Diaz (as mother and lover respectively) in supporting roles. As the devastating events unfold, these two must carry the weight of the film on their shoulders and they bear it with more than a little poise, especially when they could so easily have floundered. It is in that final act that Coogler delivers the real gut-punch, handling proceedings with an impressively assured touch. For those who rolled their eyes at earlier indiscretions, it may be undermined, but most will struggle to keep their emotions in check once the gun has gone off.

cert (15)

director Ryan Coogler writer Ryan Coogler starring Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer

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Review by Jordan McGrath

Camille Claudel 1915 release date 20th June

cert (PG)

director Bruno Dumont writer Bruno Dumont starring Juliette Binoche, Jean-Luc Vincent, Emmanuel Kauffman

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In Bruno Dumont’s Camille Claudel 1915, we live alongside our title character for a three day period in the mental asylum she was admitted to two years prior. Where the once protégé and lover of Auguste Rodin awaits a visit from her sternly religious, well regarded poet and diplomat brother, Paul. From the revealing opening scene, where the asylum carers strip and thrust her into a bath to clean her, as well as Juliette Binoche’s affectingly defined, nuanced performance, it’s obvious to all that see doesn’t belong.

Its minimalistic narrative pierces with a raw sense of authenticity, robbed of her freedom and privacy her existence is a monotonous, mundane dreary one void of any real feeling of joy or happiness. Binoche’s silent, absent exterior a thin-layered shell hiding her extreme inner turmoil. She paints Camille as a deeply complex, troubled and somewhat conflicted woman, prone to act out on her emotions but nothing unable of anything that would to qualify her for admission into the place she currently finds herself. Her functioning mind (full of questions and unfounded hope) is the complete opposite to her peers - carved out in unembellished reality by Dumont’s choice to film in an actual asylum placing the current inhabitants of that facility as supporting characters, which may seem to some rather exploitative but the effect is undeniable. The complete innocence of the other women plays perfectly alongside Binoche’s still, stone-like stare.

The asylum itself is a prison without bars. The pleasant, picturesque surroundings and grounds a façade of the chaos within. As a viewer it’s difficult to bare at points, the claustrophobia of the bland walls and rooms is suffocating to say the least and the empathy it creates for Camille is palpable, her imprisonment mixed with her faded genius (she is unable to paint of sculpt anymore) leaves her a wandering vacuum. Even at a short 94 minutes it’s a tough watch, not so much by its slow pace but the fact that this humdrum day-to-day is infuriating for a mind that craves more. Then you think, as an audience we’ve only witnessed a short three day period and the fact that this repetitive, unstimulating existence was Camille’s life for 30 years until her death in 1943 is unimaginably horrific in retrospect.

It’s a beautiful piece of work that showcases an actress on the top of her game, the film hangs on Binoche’s performance and she doesn’t falter for a second, able to say as much with a her gaze as she does with her two lengthy memorable monologues during the film, the final one being to her brother to aid her being discharged is a heart-breaking plea, made all the more painful as it falls on deaf ears. Very much a Dumont film, Camille Claudel 1915 is short of narrative, heavy on emotion and subtext, as always the French filmmaker is divisive in his execution but the quality under the skin of his latest is a provocative glimpse into a life unwarrantly wasted.

Review by David Hall

Jim Mickle’s fourth film (after the distinctive post-apocalyptic western Stakeland and the well-received US remake of Mexican vampire movie We Are What We Are) is a throwback to the seedy pleasures of 70s and 80s pulp noir and hard-boiled thrillers.

Richard Dane (Michael C. Hall) is the archetypal everyman with a steady job, loving wife and son whose peaceful existence is shattered when an intruder breaks into the family home. Startled by the masked figure, Richard ends up nervously shooting the assailant at point-blank range. The local cops seem remarkably (over) eager to close the case, assuring Richard the robber was ‘one of the bad guys’ and his action was understandable self-defence. Despite this Richard remains understandably troubled by his actions as do the locals in the sleepiest of towns. To make matters worse, the dead man’s father is a grizzled lifer about to make parole (Sam Shepard) and eager to make his acquaintance.

The setting affords Mickle the chance to indulge retro obsessions (the film’s title font and synthheavy score thieve explicitly from John Carpenter) and free up his co-writer Nick Damici from the thorny narrative issues that modern-day technology brings - where GPS, DNA and social media can bog down a thriller of this type. Mackie and Damici adapted the script from a late-‘80s crime novel by Joe R. Lansdale. Lansdale’s style combines brutal violence with coal-black comedy and it’s astonishing that more films haven’t been made from his books.

After a taught opening forty minutes that apes, practically beat for beat, Cape Fear – Cold in July takes a highly unexpected, and not always entirely convincing, detour. The pacing sags a little during the middle stretch, where Mickle and Damici try to tie together the various loose strands they have woven together – corrupt local cops, the southern and equally threatening ‘Dixie Mafia’, Sam Shepard’s semi-redemptive journey – before unleashing a torrent of expertly choreographed carnage in the finale.

The film is blessed with a trio of A-grade performances though. Hall steps away from Dexter duties to deliver a compelling riff on the ‘good guy caught up in bad shit’ persona. Shepard, head bowed and body buckled, barely recognisable from his the Right Stuff days of yore, has developed a mesmeric and grizzled quality in his old age. You can’t take your eyes off him. And Don Johnson, as Jim Bob, an outlandish Stetson- wearing private eye who drives a cherry- red Cadillac, is on super-charismatic form underplaying with a cheery swagger.

As well as his evident love of Carpenter, Mickle clearly has a soft spot for early Paul Schrader scripts too, given that the latter half of Cold in July comes on strong like a retro 70s cocktail that blends together a dash of Hardcore with a big hit of Rolling Thunder. While he’s not quite at the level of his idols (yet) there’s enough distinctive flourish to suggest Mickle will eventually step out of their shadows and join the pantheon of lean, mean B-movie practitioners he’s so enamoured with.

Cold in July release date 27th June

cert (15)

director Jim Mickle writers Nick Damici, Jim Mickle starring Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard, Don Johnson

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Leave to Remain cert (15)

director Bruce Goodison writers Charlotte Colbert, Bruce Goodison starring Jake Davies, Alex Harvey, Toby Jones

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Review by Kelsey Eichhorn

release date 20th June

Debut feature Leave to Remain introduces director Bruce Goodison as a talent whose star is certainly on the rise. With a strong resume of television and documentary work, Goodison’s first foray into narrative features developed out of a three-year-long project that sought to give young asylum seekers experience and training in the dramatic arts. Both the content and style of the film reply heavily on Goodson’s documentary experience; not only does the story draws on the real life experiences of countless teenagers who have first-hand experience of the asylum process in the UK, but many of the actors have themselves suffered varied traumas linked to the UK immigrations service.

While a number of scenes undoubtedly portray the authorities in a less-than-favourable light, the film does a good job of avoiding the slippery slope into anger and accusation, focusing instead on the fundamentally human aspect of this bigger-picture story: the lives of the asylum seekers. Performances from the three lead characters are packed with subtle power and prove far more impassioned than the often melodramatic performances such emotionally-charged subjects often produce. Confident, charismatic Omar (Noof Ousellam) opens the film with a grisly account of the torture he experienced back home in Afghanistan, setting the tone for a poignant and challenging story that unfolds to include recent arrival Abdul (Zarrien Masieh), who shares a painful past with Omar back in Afghanistan, and Abdul’s unlikely friendship with Guinean asylum seeker Zizidi (Yasmin Mwanza). Against a backdrop of the other young asylum seekers in their group, Omar’s naturalised wisdom and charm provide a stark contrast to Adbul and Zizidi, and as the film unfolds the interactions between the characters reveal personalities and pasts the power of which is impossible to evade.

Where the film falls short is in its attempt to string such a rich plethora of personal experiences into a single distinct narrative. Caught somewhere between a collection of short stories and conventional progressive plot, Leave to Remain borders at times on the clichéd and thus fails, rather frustratingly, to achieve its full potential. The most powerful scenes are those where the natural levity of youth shines through to mingle with the daily challenges the young protagonists face: a particularly poignant interaction where a light-hearted palm-reading amongst three young women reveals the traumas of lost innocence while a farcical rehearsal scene for a nativity pageant gives way to a life-altering experience. It’s in these flashes of simple humanity that the strength of Goodison’s film truly shines through.

And so despite its short comings Leave to Remain is a distinctly watchable, if often challenging film. Providing a window onto a far-too-often ignored world, the subtle difficulties with structure and style of the film fail to cloud Goodison’s obvious eye for narrative, and the result is a film well worth watching.

T.S. Spivet

release date 13th June

director Jean-Pierre Jeunet Review by Stuart Barr

For T.S. Spivet - growing up is not easy. His scientist mother Dr. Clair (Bonham-Carter) is obsessed to the point of distraction by her studies. His father is a taciturn outdoorsman who dotes on his brother Layton.

Sister Gracie is pop culture obsessed and thinks the whole family is weird. None of them seems to have noticed that T.S. is an actual genius.

Despite these issues life on the family’s Montana ranch appears remarkably idyllic, but there is a sense of something unresolved, a melancholy shadow at the edge of the frame. When T.S. wins a science award from the Smithsonian Institute he is afraid to tell his parents and runs away, riding freight trains through epic Americana (ravishingly realised by Swiss cinematographer Thomas Hardmeier). His intended destination is Washington DC where he intends to collect his science prize.

The adult actors are all playing essentially supporting roles but Bonham-Carter, Rennie and Wilson are all excellent and there is a convincing portrait of a family here, even as Jeunet throws all manner of 3D trickery at the audience (I may have blinked and missed a sink flying by). The film is constantly enlivened by the characters T.S meets on his adventure. Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon appears as a Woody Guthrie-a-like hobo and has a wonderful scene amusingly playing on a child’s tendency towards literalism. Judy Davis is at her most brittle and officious as the Smithsonian director who sees dollar signs in the child prodigy.

However the star is Kyle Catlett as T.S. This is a part which asks a lot from a child actor he has the innocence of a child but the intelligence of an adult.

What the character lacks is experience, and so he often misinterprets the world around him, especially adults. It is the sort of role that could play as irritating and precocious, but Catlett is utterly charming.

Like Son of Rambow, this is a film about a child but it’s not a children’s film per se. There is quite a lot of rather unfashionable irresponsible behaviour on display including a hair-raising sequence where the central character has to board a moving train with a suitcase almost larger than he is. There is also some regrettable use of the term ‘spaz’ which has a rather different meaning in the US than the UK. The rambling narrative (based on Reif Larson’s novel) is part Mark Twain and part John Irving. Whilst never dull it does appear to be travelling around the houses, and there is some unnecessary media satire in the final act. However when the satisfying conclusion comes round its clear the plot has been carefully constructed.

Jeunet has often strayed into excessive whimsy, but like Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel, T.S. Spivot deceives us by appearing to be a mere French Fancy, a sweet but insubstantial confection. Crack the colourful icing and cut through the sponge however, and you will find a surprisingly emotional centre.

cert (12a)

writers Guillaume Laurant, Jean-Pierre Jeunet starring Helena Bonham Carter, Robert Maillet, Judy Davis

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Review by Cleaver Patterson

Belle

release date 13th June

cert (12a)

director Amma Asante writer Misan Sagay starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Matthew Goode, Emily Watson

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Britain does period, factual drama better than anyone else and often derived from its rich, varied and frequently traumatic past. Belle highlights a particularly unpleasant era during which prejudices and injustices were faced not just by black people before the abolition of slavery, but also more generally by women in Georgian England. Directed by Amma Asante, written by Misan Sagay, and featuring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Emily Watson, and Tom Wilkinson, this film comes alive because those involved portray sympathy in their roles which could only come from deep empathy with its core themes.

A lesser known episode from the period of English history which led to the abolition of the slave trade, Belle recounts the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle (Mbatha-Raw), the illegitimate mixed race daughter of an eighteenth century British naval officer, who is taken into the care of her great-uncle Lord Mansfield (Wilkinson), The Lord Chief Justice of England, and his wife (Watson).

Afforded all the privileges of her lineage, Belle is nonetheless ostracised from society due to her colour. All this changes however with a court case over which Lord Mansfield presides, its outcome affecting not just the course of British law but also Belle’s future happiness.

Occasionally a film, like Belle, still appears that restores your faith in an industry, the driving force of which seems to increasingly derive from populist culture and subject matters. These are films which, like the story they tell, have a sense of relevance which lends them a voice that transcends time.

As with the recent 12 Years a Slave and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Belle is imbued with an empathy for its central character, clearly coming from the fact that those people involved in its production felt an affinity with the subject.

Only Asante’s second film as director - after 2004’s BAFTA winning A Way of Life - here she steers the story with an accomplished lightness of touch, which belies her relative directorial inexperience, as she captures the serious air of writer Misan Sagay’s retelling of the story at the film’s heart with its sensitive subjects of racial and sexual inequality.

Cast members like Watson and Wilkinson, along with Penelope Wilton and Miranda Richardson, are suitably aristocratic in roles similar to those around which they have built successful careers portraying. However it is Mbatha-Raw as Belle - in her wide eyed innocence of, and then frustration with, the cruelty and inequality of the society which she finds herself born into - who lends the story a believability which will move viewers to tears.

Besides its political messages, it’s the film’s evocative recreation of eighteenth century England which stays in the mind. Shot on location at authentic historical locations, and with an eye to exquisite period detail, this is yet another film which proves why Britain still produces some of the film industry’s most talented and accomplished artisans, as well as evocative and beautiful pieces of cinema.

Productions such as Belle are a continuing reminder of the darker facets of man’s past, and that film can still play a part in bringing it to light lest we should forget.

Review by David Hall

It’s quite possible that viewed in isolation, certain sequences in Richard Linklater’s epic 164 minute story of boy-to-man transition may look fairly mundane, even uninteresting. But it is the collective journey, not the destination that makes this unique film so quietly devastating and resonant.

Filmed in 40 days, over 12 years, with the same cast, Linklater’s already rapturously received opus may end up being his career peak. As familiar as the tropes of adolescent growing pains are by now to filmgoers, you really haven’t seen anything quite like this, on such a grand yet intimate scale.

The chronicling of characters over a prolonged period of screen time in itself is not especially ground breaking, as Joseph Fahim’s main feature on the film this month explains, but Linklater’s execution of the material definitely is. The sheer bravado and folly of attempting to document a fictional families’ life through more than a decade brings with it much risk – perhaps the biggest being whether or not a young and truly impressive child actor can continue maturing as a performer into young adulthood. Fortunately for Boyhood, young Ellar Coltrane as Mason remains a relatable and likeable presence throughout. It’s not a one man show however. Linklater continues to bring the very best out of Ethan Hawke (an actor he seems to have a telepathic understanding with) as Mason’s feckless but caring father (40-somethings with creative leanings will see a LOT of themselves uncomfortably in this character). And Patricia Arquette is outstanding as a mother whose own journey is even more overtly dramatic than Mason’s as she charts a successful career trajectory but bounces from failed relationship to another, while trying to hold the family together.

This is a film as much as a time capsule document or sprawling concept album; the kind of movie Cameron Crowe would love to make but one far less prone to ballooning every small moment to grandiose or overly sentimental proportions. Linklater’s familiar subtle, low-key style approach eschews emotional grandstanding and uses period music and pop cultural totems, as well as subtle shifts in technological discourse and politics, to produce a near seamless, long-form time-lapse effect over nearly three hours of screen time.

The smallest moments of intimate drama are perhaps the most profound: road-trip adventures, family get-togethers, tell-tale signs of budding romance, disappointments keenly felt as adult failings momentarily crush young hopes and aspirations. There’s a remarkable passage involving some particularly Texan rituals (religion, a boy’s first gun) captured with great humour and refreshing lack of cynicism and the film has a natural, unforced comedic undercurrent throughout.

It’s rare to be able to proclaim the arrival of a unique, landmark film, but by virtue of its intent and execution Boyhood is truly something special – perhaps the last word in American rites of passage film storytelling. Quite how this will be topped is anyone’s guess. Maybe only Linklater himself will be the one to do it, and decide to continue the journey for as long as he possibly can.

This is one for the ages in every respect.

Boyhood release date 11th July

cert (15)

director Richard Linklater writer Richard Linklater starring Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke

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Miss Violence cert (18)

director Alexandros Avranas writers Alexandros Avranas, Kostas Peroulis starring Kostas Antalopoulos, Constantinos Athanasiades, Chloe Bolota

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Review by Timothy E. Raw

release date 20th June

On the day of her birthday, eleven-year-old Angeliki jumps off the balcony falling to her death.

Her family insist the suicide was an accident but a Social Services investigation threatens to uncover a truth more horrifying than anyone could imagine.

At least it would be, if these sickening household secrets weren’t quite so par for the course in Alexandros Avranas’ Greek shocker that feels perversely predictable following the art-house abuses of family values by his compatriots in the films Dogtooth, Alps and Attenberg.

It is of course the instinct of critics and cinephiles to always be looking for such connections, but all on its own, Miss Violence invites some rather unwelcome comparisons, echoing Dogtooth as early as its opening image. Angeliki is first seen at her party, dressed in clothes identical to the siblings in that film, and similarly there are plenty of shots that cut off characters’ heads when they stand up out of the frame, though here that technique does serve a very precise purpose. DOP Olympia Mytilinaiou shoots the mostly interior, airless film in landscape compositions, examining how close quarters entrap people instead of the people in them, and the punched in close-ups with the heads lopped off effectively express the psychological pain of the bereaved. In one close-up, that sense of hopelessness is entirely communicated by a family member’s posture and position of repose – the image of his trousers riding high up over his gut while slumped in a chair, perceptively saying so much more about his defeated state of mind than a tightly held close-up on his face ever would. This compositional emphasis on bodies also becomes pointedly perverse as the narrative moves into the darker corners of domestic abuse.

Just as sonically judicious, the sound of a Spiderman videogame echoing through the house uncomfortably amplifies the terrible silence the family are sworn to, and there’s something haunting about the way the Leonard Cohen song playing at the moment of Angliki’s death abruptly cuts out, only to softly filter back in as the camera pans down fourteen floors of the building, then tilts ninety degrees to reveal the little girl splattered all over the pavement with her smile on her face.

As with Attenberg, the monetary metaphor is as explicit as the dark sexuality, Angeliki’s family the symbolic victims of a financially ruined society forced to submit to the rules of an exploitative government. One of the first discussions in the wake of Angeliki’s death is how this family on benefits stands to lose 170 Euros a week given the nature of her death. The fathers in these films are products of that system, iron-willed unbending despots, though the insidious quality of Themis Panou’s performance as the patriarch is how - like the film - he remains poised and poker-faced throughout. No doubt about it, Miss Violence will leave you winded, but now we’re getting wind of the twisted rules by which this new wave of Greek tragedies play, that too feels exploitative. A punch you can see coming a mile off.

In the The Tango Frame: Lesson (1997)

words by Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg

I

’ve been following you in the tango Pablo. But to make a film, you have to follow me. Are you ready?” In Sally Potter’s 1997 film The Tango Lesson, the character Sally (played

by Potter) says this to Pablo (Pablo Veron) in the church of St. Sulpice in Paris. In the above frame, they have recreated Eugene Delacroix’s famous painting of Jacob wrestling with the Angel (Pablo is the Angel, Sally is Jacob). Until this point, the film has been about Sally learning the tango, her professional and personal relationship with Pablo, and her attempts to write a new film under pressure from Hollywood.

After this image, the film shifts to Sally taking the lead in directing Pablo, to make him a star, but really, it is the film we are watching.

Much like Jacob, at this point in her career, Potter had moved into a kind of exile.

After the success of Orlando, Hollywood came calling, but Potter balked under the studio system, unable to create her vision

of her new film Rage, about the murder of fashion models in Paris (though of course Potter would later make this film). In The Tango Lesson, Sally is exiled from her house due to repairs, and finds solace and inspiration in learning the tango. The first half of the film sees her move between London, Paris and Buenos Aires, learning the dance and entering into an affair with Pablo. Pablo is all Latin machismo, wanting the gaze of Sally and the adoring audience; as a man, he is used to ‘leading’ in the dance; but as a director, Sally is also used to leading, and the conflict of two strong personalities leads to the passion of love and anger. This is what Sophie Mayer, in her definitive book on Potter’s work, calls the politics of touch: the touch of dance, which requires intimacy and trust between leader and follower; and the touch of the gaze, which also requires intimacy and trust between director and actor. This is the politics between these two exiles: Sally, as a female director struggling to write a

film without selling out to Hollywood, and Pablo, as a Jewish Argentinean in Paris, struggling with letting someone else lead him.

Both Sally and Pablo try to teach each other the strength of following in their respective fields, and the strength of being the object of the gaze. Each is the Angel struggling to command Jacob; each is Jacob, struggling against their inner demons and past sins, wrestling through the night against a force that they can neither lose to nor defeat.

In tango, two partners become one; in film, the director and actor become one: each pairing leads and follows to create a vision of beauty, passion, works to choreograph and display. Each follower works under the gaze of the leader, a gaze that both objectifies and loves. Pablo and Sally’s tableau recreates the importance that lies in engaging with the struggle between love and anger, exile and home.

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Jordan McGrath

David Hall

Founder / Editor-in-Chief / Designer

Managing Editor

jordanmcgrath@veritefilmmag.com

davidhall@veritefilmmag.com

thanks: Contributors Joseph Fahim Evrim Ersoy Robert Makin Stuart Barr Cleaver Patterson Kelsey Eichhorn Luke Richardson Timothy E. Raw Ben Nicholson Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg

Proofing David Hall, Dan Auty & Jessica Chamberlain

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Image credits: Universal Pictures - 1,8,11,12,13,71,75 / BFI - 14,15,16,17,18,19 / Cannes Film Festival - 28,29,30,31 / Swedish Film Institute - 48, 50, 51 / Eureka Entertainment - 56,57,58,59 / Legendary Pictures - 60, 61, 62 / Common People Productions - 64 / Attitude Film Distribution - 65 / Soda Pictures - 66 / Icon - 67 / Indefinite Films - 68 / eOne Entertainment - 69 / 20th Century Fox - 70 / Metrodome - 72

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