Vérité Sept-Oct edition

ISSUE #7

V é r i t é SEPT-OCT 2013 EDITION

FILM CRITICISM & CINEMATIC DISCUSSION

P R I N C E AVALANCHE David Gordon Green returns to his roots

also...

London Film Festival / Claire Denis / Bayou Maharajah / La Notte / reviews / and more...

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Editor’s Letter

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elcome to the latest issue.

Regular readers of the magazine will know our blog is now up and running (www.veritefilmmag.com) but if you haven’t yet sampled the delights on offer we would urge you to check it out – there are reviews, features and exclusive interviews, all fresh content in keeping with the Vérité ethos, updated regularly.

We’ve been branching out in other ways too recently, hosting Q&As at the Hackney Picturehouse in London as part of their Borderline films retrospective. As Vérité’s reputation grows we are looking to do more events like these.

Keep an eye on the blog for future developments.

Our lead feature this month focuses on the unpredictable young American director David Gordon Green. Green made an immediate impact with his breakthrough feature George Washington (2000), which drew comparisons to Terence Malick. But, just when the critics had him pigeonholed, he then took off in a

completely different direction with a series of slacker comedies. Now he’s back with two new films, including Prince Avalanche which blends elements from the seemingly opposing strands of his previous work to great effect. Stuart Barr’s interview with Green on page eight is revealing and surprising.

Another brilliant and and unpredictable talent – Claire Denis – is also interviewed this issue and she talks to us about her remarkable life, work and new film. And this month’s discovery is the fascinating Eric Khoo, much of whose work remains unknown in the UK. Our world cinema expert Evrim Ersoy sets about correcting this on page 50.

Finally October is London Film Festival month and Vérité will be there to cover as much as possible. On page 16 we look forward to what promises to be a truly special festival and the Vérité blog will be updated throughout the two weeks (9-12 October) – bringing you reviews and interviews which, I guess, brings us right back to where we started. Enjoy the issue.

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Thanks for reading, Jordan McGrath & David Hall

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“Cinema is an old whore, like circus and variety, who knows how to give many kinds of pleasure.”

Federico Fellini

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Contents Features

Columns

Reviews

King of the Road - p8

Magic, Realism, & the stories from Singapore - p50

Drinking Buddies - p62

Stuart Barr sits down with acclaimed director David Gordon Green to talk about his career and his new film, Prince Avalanche.

Evrim Ersoy continues his expert analysis into filmmakers we should be watching. This month’s Subject: Eric Khoo.

Filth - p63 Hannah Arendt - p64 The Last Passenger - p65

London Calling - p16 Jordan McGrath and David Hall look forward some of their most anticipated titles at the 57th BFI London Film Festival.

Masters of Cinema - p54

David Hall takes the Masters of Cinema reins this month as he switches his gaze to Antonioni’s follow up to L’Avventura, La Notte.

For Those in Peril - p66 Mister John - p67 Pieta - p68 Prince Avalanche - p69

Art of Darkness - p22

In Defence... - p58

Daniel Auty takes a look at Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s breakthrough year, coinciding with two of his films hitting DVD.

It’s James Rocarols’ turn to tell us about an underappreciated gem, as he waxes lyrical about Roger Mitchell’sEnduring Love.

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Rush - p70

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KING OF THE ROAD Prince Avalanche sees David Gordon Green return to more wistful and melancholic territory after a series of slacker comedies. Stuart Barr welcomes the change in tone and talks to the director

words and interview by Stuart Barr

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ver the course of a career that began in 2000 with George Washington, writer-director David Gordon Green has delighted, confounded and confused critics and fans alike. His debut was greeted with acclaim and subsequent features All the Real Girls (2003), Undertow (2004) and Snow Angels (2007) saw him compared repeatedly to that most revered of US directors, Terence Malick.

Then Green seemingly chose to soak his reputation in kerosene, and use it to ignite the barbecue at an epic backwoods kegger party – making three crude studio comedies in quick succession. Pineapple Express (2008), Your Highness (2011) and The Sitter (2011) were financially successful to varying degrees but also caused much gnashing of teeth and wails of despair from critics bemoaning the passing of a once-promising talent. Concurrent to his big screen comedies, Green branched out into television – directing and acting as executive producer on HBO’s bawdy comedy drama

series Eastbound & Down (2009-2013).

Vérité met the director on a glorious summer morning at London’s Somerset House, where his latest film, Prince Avalanche, was about to close the Film4 Summer Screen season. During our conversation the energetic 38-year-old (sporting a great hairstyle that looked like it had been created in a wind tunnel) was happy to address the question of his seemingly erratic career.

“I want to be the Toby Jones of film directors,” Green says, explaining his desire to be seen as a ‘character director’. “There is always a new way of seeing a character through a character actor.

Directors don’t really have that as a trend, and the reason is it’s bad for marketing. It’s bad for the publicity of a movie, and it’s bad for your own self-publicity in trying to create a brand for yourself.”

Green talks with the enthusiasm of a genuine film fan (it is surprising how many directors often seem uninterested in movies). This character actor analogy is one he has made before in other

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interviews, previously using Richard Jenkins as an example. Mentioning Toby Jones is a nice tip of the hat to dear old Blighty from a Southern gent.

Prince Avalanche came together following a visit to Bastrop State Park in central Texas. The Park had suffered a devastating forest fire and Green was immediately struck by the environment’s potential as a location, and aware that any production would have to move fast to take advantage.

“It was a very cinematic backdrop, explains Green, and when I first explored it I thought: I have to make a movie here.”

Shortly thereafter, while mulling over potential projects, he was introduced to the Icelandic film Either Way (Á annan veg) and instantly saw potential for a remake.

After discovering the location in late 2011 Green was shooting by May of 2012. When I express incredulity that he could write and direct a film as composed in such a short period of time, he shrugs, “If I’d never seen the Icelandic movie, I may have had a brilliant original idea and written something else, or maybe not, maybe I’d have made a documentary about the fire itself or something

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could have come to me.

“I immediately latched on to this idea and got very excited about it. Within six phone calls the rights were put together, the financing was in place, and the actors were on board. So that happened within four days. With the development of any project, you test the waters and think: well here’s an idea, would a studio buy that concept and help me develop a screenplay? Or would an actor buy into this role and help me develop a character? But for this everything was laid out really quickly.”

Both the original and remake place two men in an isolated environment where their personal differences form the basis of the drama. In Prince Avalanche, highway workers Lance and Alvin are repainting road markings following the forest fire. The men are quite different.

Alvin (played by Paul Rudd) the elder and foreman, is uptight and fancies himself as an outdoorsman. Lance (Emile Hirsch) – hired begrudgingly as favour to his sister whom Alvin is dating – is a classic man-child of the sort Jack Black made his name playing. The two appear to share no common ground whatsoever.

In an example of press idiocy, Prince Avalanche gained

a reputation for having being shot in secret, something the director seems to find amusingly typical. “We live in a world where everyone is all about the buzz, creating awareness before your film exists, releasing set photos and tweeting about it from the production. That’s the world we live in. So for some reason it was radical for me just to go quietly and grab my friends and go make a movie.”

The truth is simpler, as he explains. “It was an opportunity for me to take advantage of this moment in the transition of the devastation to the rebirth of this natural backdrop.”

This is certainly something that Green and regular director of photography Tim Orr seized upon as Prince Avalanche is a beautiful-looking film. However mundane Alvin and Lance’s bickering becomes, it is always set against a natural backdrop that embodies both the terrible desolation of destruction and the hope of rebirth.

“To me it’s the beauty”, the director says of his location, “I mean obviously there is devastation and tragedy that encompasses this event, but that’s not what this movie is about.

“This movie is about people who are affected, not by

the violent frustration of losing everything, but how you put all your pieces back together. And the foreground story, [which] isn’t even related to the fire in a sense, is only enhanced by the setting and the location.”

In synopsis, Prince Avalanche feels like it should be a comedy, but a palpable air of melancholy hangs over the film. In a great sequence Lance heads into town for a weekend of debauchery leaving Alvin alone. A straight comedy might choose to follow Lance’s story at this point, but Green never leaves the forest location. Instead we are shown Alvin’s day off. Wandering through the trees he comes across the burnt shell of a home and its former resident (played by non-professional actress Joyce Payne). She is sifting through the ash in a shocked daze, searching for her pilot’s licence, an item that has a deep but unstated personal significance.

This scene was almost entirely improvised. Payne was discovered during a location scout and had lost her actual home in the fire. “She wasn’t in the script, but we met her and… wove her into the project [and she] became a very interesting side character to what our principle cast was going through.”

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“In synopsis, Prince Avalanche feels like it should be a comedy, but a palpable air of melancholy hangs over the film.”

The director tells me that originally Alvin was to discover a burnt house and go through a solo pantomime of the domestic life his character is unconsciously fleeing.

“In the script the scene was very funny, and very vulgar… when we met [Payne] and went to do the funny scene, we had no interest in being funny.”

The new scene dramatically altered the tone and direction of the film. “It was an important part of the process when we recognised this wasn’t a comedic film... that scene was one of a number of scenes that were comedically scripted and then took on another melancholy tone.”

This isn’t to say there is not humour in the film. Some critics have rushed to call Prince Avalanche 50% Pineapple Express and 50% George Washington. This isn’t really accurate, and fails to nail the distinct mood of the piece.

Green is also very much against seeing his films in terms of ‘one for me’ and ‘one for them’.

“I don’t see a difference between studio movies and independent films; in fact I think I have more independence on studio movies. I did want to make something that was my kind of funny. That was very personal for me, something with little grace notes of humour rather than broader punch lines and more aggressive physical comedy.

I wanted this to be subtle and dramatic, the kind of thing that makes me laugh even though there are no jokes.”

Green offers as an example a scene that is not even in the film. When Lance returns from his supposed weekend of partying he reveals to Alvin that it was a washout and describes a bizarre scene in his parent’s kitchen. “I think about this a lot, I think about Lance standing up all night in his kitchen, sleeping. You don’t see the joke, you don’t linger on it as a punch line, it’s not even told humorously, it’s told like he’s pissed, because it’s all about him not getting laid. But for me, it’s one of those jokes

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that [afterwards] became very funny.”

Perhaps the closest thing to a joke in the film is a scene in which Alvin tries to bum a cigar of an elderly trucker only to be told not to smoke it because it will make him look stupid. When I mention this scene to Green he explained it had a personal resonance, “Sam Shepherd told me that once when I was smoking a cigarette with him.

He told me I shouldn’t smoke. He said exactly that.”

On first viewing I was taken with the idea of Prince Avalanche having common ground with a frontier western. This comparison was evoked both by the isolation of the environment but also Alvin writing letters to his girlfriend. This reading seemed to amuse Green. “I had thought about making a western version of it. Like a period piece, so that’s kind of funny, I hadn’t interpreted it that way. It was a part of my exploration prior to making the movie.”

The film contains a number of elements that invite interpretation from the viewer. The most obvious of these is Payne’s character. Some reviews have argued in favour of seeing her as a phantom, primarily because the trucker Alvin and Lance encounter never acknowledges her presence. This seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but Green is more than happy to embrace others opinions, even as he avoids settling on a ‘true’ reading. “As an audience member I appreciate movies where you are allowed to bring your own imagination and questions into the picture and have your own interpretation of things.”

Prince Avalanche is set in 1988, making it a period piece but still one very distanced from the actual frontier.

Alvin and Lance are never in danger of facing starvation or death as a 19th century frontiersman would have been.

They can jump in a truck and drive to town whenever they want. However the 1980s is still a ‘period’ setting several decades removed. I wondered if this was chosen just to avoid having a scene where Lance pulls out his phone and can’t get reception. The director laughs at the suggestion. “The Icelandic film took place in the eighties, and I just assumed I would update it.

“When I started writing it I loved the letter writing process... no-one would do that now, you would e-mail someone or text them. You’re not going to put a letter in an envelope, stamp it, and send it in with something that is of personal value. Everyone wants the immediate emotional knowledge and information. I thought it would be nice to be able to... revolve around the reveal of his relationship with that hand-written letter.”

The real subject of the film is of course the relationship between Alvin and Lance, two individuals in a state of arrested emotional development. The plot may seem slight, but these two men go through a tremendous

“I don’t see a difference between studio movies and independent films; in fact I think I have more independence on studio movies.” process first of psychological collapse and then emotional rebirth. Something that is obviously reinforced by the natural imagery of destruction and rebirth that surrounds them.

“I like pinpointing two different stages of adulthood that are very infantile and very juvenile,” explained Green.

“So it’s these two characters at very different positions in their lives looking at their relationships with themselves and with women and not being able to comprehend it any more than they could when they were six years old.”

The director and his two lead actors took care to give both Alvin and Lance their own unique and distinctive looks. The gulf between Alvin’s idealized self-image as a well-equipped outdoorsman and his reality as an urbanite is neatly expressed in visual terms. “[In] early e-mails and conversations with Paul [we] came up with the idea of [Alvin] wearing eighties Roger Ebert glasses and modelling him after a Christian summer camp counsellor.”

For the man-boy Lance it was even simpler, “I had this idea that he was obsessed with Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China.”

Ambiguity and subtlety are not something one normally finds in R rated studio comedies and I asked Green if it is harder to make a film like Prince Avalanche in a climate where film financiers seem to be risk averse? “Not difficult to make them... it’s difficult to market a movie that’s challenging to an audience... I believe audiences have an appetite to be challenged, but I think they have to be presented with that in a sophisticated way. And I think a lot of blind, blanket marketing happens, particularly in the States at trying to leapfrog off of a prior success. There are movies coming out in the next few weeks that are going to try and be the next Twilight movie, the next Harry Potter movie, or the next Despicable Me, the new franchises that they are trying to have emulate the last big hit. Typically the big hits are the surprises. Big hits no one saw coming.”

An area where independent US films seem to be disadvantaged over studio fare is in dealings with the MPAA, the American ratings board. Prince Avalanche has bizarrely been handed an R rating, putting it on a par with the likes of Dredd, Pain & Gain, and the remake of The Evil Dead. Green finds this as bizarre as I do.

“There’s no swearing in it, there’s no violence, there’s no

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“We live in a world where everyone is all about the buzz, creating awareness before your film exists, releasing set photos and tweeting about it from the production.

That’s the world we live in. So for some reason it was radical for me just to go quietly and grab my friends and go make a movie.” drug use. There’s this [raises his middle finger] and then there’s this [makes the universally crude gesture of the sin of Onan].

“It’s insane”, says Green sounding more amused than outraged. “I was very driven to make this a very suitable for all audiences movie. I was very conscious of it, and I still failed. It actually benefitted the creative process because by taking out vulgarity… Emile wanted to improvise lines, there’s a line where he’s talking about making out with a girl in a toilet and he says he would have gone ‘full lamb chop’… I can picture the committee of the ratings board going ‘I don’t know what that is that kids are doing these days’.”

2013 has been marked by a number of very high-profile, diverse directors embracing television. Jane Campion, Stephen Soderbergh, David Fincher, David Slade, and Eli Roth have all been involved in creating work for the medium. In Soderbergh’s case he was unable to raise financing from Hollywood for Behind the Candelabra, the film finally being made as an HBO television movie. The pay-per-view and subscription services already have their audience’s money before a new show or made-for-TV movie premieres so, unless the production cost is extremely high, they are able to put faith in the creative to build an

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audience. The stigma of working for television has fallen away as the cable networks appear more open to challenging ideas.

Green dipped his toe in this world some years ago. “[On] Eastbound & Down, we get away with an entire world of humour, content, character development, exposition and exploitation because it doesn’t demand an opening weekend box office... It doesn’t demand you watch it [with] six hundred people. You are allowed to squirm in your seat in the privacy of your own home.

“I think people are uncomfortable socially being challenged... [a show] may say some horrifically vulgar or offensive things. Sometimes people want to absorb that privately rather than publicly. Or if it’s something very negative, but we are dealing with it in a funny light, people don’t want to be the one laughing in a crowded room because it makes them uncomfortable. So people have a greater appreciation for challenging content on television as opposed to in the movie theatre.”

While welcoming this freedom, Green is reticent to give up the lure of the big screen experience. “I love to be challenged. When I saw [Todd Solondz’] Welcome to the Dollhouse in the theatre I couldn’t help laughing at things no one else was laughing at.”

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London

Festival

BFI’s 57th

Film

LONDON CALLING

The 57th London Film Festival boasts an outstandingly strong line-up. Jordan McGrath and David Hall pick out their most anticipated films of the fortnight

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words by Jordan McGrath

hen you think about it, October isn’t a great time for a festival – a whole five months after the sun and champagne drenched promenades of Cannes and the hangover period of both Venice and Toronto. Therefore, right from the off, you know the BFI London Film Festival is never going to be the bearer of high-profile World Premieres or exclusive first glances that will shake up the cinema landscape. What it does guarantee though – especially this year – as the festival rolls out the red-carpets for the 57th time, is that good things come to those who wait.

LFF consistently trades on anticipation from proceeding festivals and cooks up a feast of the best and boldest releases the year has to offer and 2013 is no different.

We all know the previously announced Opening and Closing Galas – the Tom Hanks bookends of based-on-

true-events thriller Captain Phillips, directed by Bourne and United 93’s Paul Greengrass, and Walt Disney/Mary Poppins feature Saving Mr Banks – and in between, the diversity and depth of 2013’s line-up is enough to make any cineaste’s knees go weak. Festival director Clare Stewart has compiled some of the most unique talents working in cinema today, and a healthy mixture of mainstream and art-house titles.

Giant balls of burning hydrogen aren’t the only stars in the sky as Alfonso Cuaron’s George Clooney/Sandra Bullock vehicle Gravity can be viewed at the festival.

After leaving audiences giddy after its Venice premiere in August, this outer space thriller is sure to satisfy those with more commercial Hollywood tastes. With what’s rumoured to be a groundbreaking use of 3D, Cuaron’s latest promises to be an experience that you will not want to miss.

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Inside Llewyn Davis

Even Inside Llewyn Davis, the new film from everyone’s favourite sibling auteurs, the Coens, feels like it’s going to appeal to a wider audience than usual. An ode to the 60s folk scene that birthed Bob Dylan, we focus on a character Clare Stewart describes as ‘shambolic and self-absorbed’ in the festival’s programme, starring the underappreciated but enigmatic Oscar Isaac in the title role. Carey Mulligan (in what appears to be a hilariously dry Coen-esque turn) and a very clean-cut Justin Timberlake, whose on-screen talent continues to impress since his shift from music, provide support. Adored at Cannes where it picked up the Grand Prix, expect more love from the British masses, as well as awards, to come Inside Llewyn Davis’s way when the season kicks off.

New films from Jim Jarmusch and Jason Reitman fill a couple more Gala places, the latter heading into new and daring territory with Labor Day, adapted from Joyce Maynard’s novel. With his first three features – Juno, Up in the Air and Young Adult – firmly cushioned in his cosy ‘dramedy’ sub-genre, Reitman unexpectedly presents the story of an escaped convict and an agoraphobic single-mother, in whose house he decides to hide. With Josh

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Brolin appearing alongside Kate Winslet, sparks are sure to fly. Jarmusch on the other hand, gives us Only Lovers Left Alive. Again, this one had its premiere at Cannes and, with the undeniably eccentric casting of Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as ageless vampires whose love has spanned centuries, should deliver enough intrigue to tempt even the most hardened Jarmusch sceptic.

Next on our must-see list is Palme D’or winner Blue is the Warmest Colour. Controversy, a near three-hour runtime, and the makings of a doomed love story – well, that sounds like the definition of essential cinema. Adbellatif Kechiche’s award-winner comes with a pedigree that needs no introduction, surely a delectable delight. But before heading onto some more essential choices at this year’s festival, Richard Ayoade’s follow-up to the critically-loved Submarine could very well be the surprise hit.

Adapted from Dostoyevsky’s novella of the same name about a man driven mad after a doppelgänger begins to steal his identity, The Double sees Jesse Eisenberg in a dual role alongside Mia Wasikowska. A step in the opposite direction from Ayoade’s debut, all footage released from the film so far suggests he has captured the tone

The Double Only Lovers Left Alive

and feel of the source material perfectly. The one-time IT Crowd star is already carving out an eclectic career for himself behind the camera.

With just two features under his belt, artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen is already demanding attention. His two previous efforts, 2008’s Hunger and 2011’s Shame, have made him a rare commodity in cinema – a genuine visionary who doesn’t play within the boundaries. 12 Years a Slave, the story of free black man Solomon Northup, who was abducted and then sold into slavery, is already being called McQueen’s most accessible film to date. However that doesn’t mean his vision has been compromised. The cast is as diverse as it is astounding; with the reaction from Toronto being that certain gold statues should already be engraved to save time. I expect disgust and shocks within the frames of 12 Years a Slave and knowing McQueen’s earlier work, I’m sure he will not pull a single punch.

One thing is clear, it’s an embarassment of riches for any cinephile gracing the Capital this October.

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“With just two features under his belt, artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen is already demanding attention. His two previous efforts, 2008’s Hunger and 2011’s Shame, have made him a rare commodity in cinema – a genuine visionary who doesn’t play within the boundaries” VERITE SEPT-OCT 2013

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Under

the radar

The London Film Festival gives viewers an opportunity to see some works that may normally slip by unnoticed. David Hall highlights eight films to watch out for over the fortnight

words by David Hall

COMPUTER CHESS Andrew Bujalski is the mumblecore man who seemed to have got away, in the shadow of the Swanbergs, the Gerwigs and the Dunhams. Swanberg’s latest Drinking Buddies is actually playing LFF too (and IS reviewed on page 62) but Bujalski’s new film – set in the 80s and focusing on a group of chess nerds building a super intelligent computer that can take on an beat human opponents – is an absolute delight, one of the true must-sees of the fest. This is tremendous lo-key, lo-fi fun – brilliantly shot, genuinely smart and sweetly subversive.

LEAVE TO REMAIN Focusing on the hot-button topic of immigration, this film started life as a documentary about an art project for children stuck in the asylum system to help them focus on filmmaking. Bruce Goodison’s subsequent narrative film is peopled by first-time actors and looks like a timely and intelligent addition to a debate that continues to rage on, defining party political promises and fuelled by tabloid hysteria and misinformation. The trailer at the LFF launch looked fascinating.

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NIGHT MOVES

RAGS & TATTERS

We are delighted to hear that Soda pictures in the UK have picked up the latest from Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, Meeks Cutoff ) for distribution. She is a director whose work divides opinion, but we at Verite are (mostly) big fans. This has Jesse Eisenberg and Dakota Fanning as activists who commit an illegal act of subversion that turns out to have devastating consequences for the rest of their lives. An existentialist Running on Empty? We can’t wait to find out.

Ahmad Abdalla’s previous film Microphone (2010) deftly mixed relationship and family drama with a critique on contemporary Egypt set amongst the underground Alexandrian music and art scene in Egypt. An exciting young talent unafraid to explore anti-establishment themes, Abdalla brings his new film, set in pre revolutionary Egypt about a prisoner on the run, to the festival.

Strong word of mouth on this one from our rarely wrong correspondent in Cairo Joe Fahim has me buzzed to check this out.

A TOUCH OF SIN Frustratingly I just missed this at Cannes and have had to endure various critic friends talking up its brilliance ever since. It sounded like a shoo-in for LFF though and luckily it’s playing here now. A series of interlinked tales, featuring characters embroiled in corruption, violence and murder and spanning the length and breadth of China, this promises to be an intense portrait of a contemporary world tainted by cycles of violence, at a time when the economic downturn is hitting sectors of society very hard indeed.

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS I am rather agnostic towards Amer, the giallo valentine that brought Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani to the attention of genre fans and connoisseurs of Italian violence and art. However, I am keen to see if this follow up, which features a typically elaborate, absurdist but appropriate title, can inject a bit more oomph into their aesthetic – which is certainly loving but felt arch and stilted first time around A vivid, sensory experience is promised and again the duo have raided the Morricone vaults for the score, but early reports suggest this is an altogether wilder and more intense ride than Amer, which is good to hear.

WE ARE THE BEST!

WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL

Lukas Moodysson returns with what sounds like a mix of School of Rock and the 1981 Lou Adler curio Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains! The setting is 1980s Stockholm and for a teenage duo, punk never died. But these crazy music fans want to start a band. Only problem, they have no instruments and can’t play a note anyway. Enter Hedwig a quiet girl who can play her own guitar. Only she’s into classical.... A return to a the more playful side of this idiosyncratic director, I really cannot wait to see this one. Again the trailer at the LFF launch looked awesome.

Sion Sono is a fascinating, wayward and unpredictable talent who has made some of the most fascinating pictures of recent times (Love Exposure? Wow). Here he takes on the yakuza in what sounds like a piece of movie meta madness. Expect intense violence, splatter, comedy and craziness whenever this maverick gets behind the camera in what sounds like a change of pace after the intensity of recent fare like Guilty of Pleasure. A recent Fantastic Fest screening in Austin suggested those lovers of offbeat genre cinema had been sated – which bodes well for the LFF screening.

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Art of

Darkness As two little-seen early films from Japanese maverick Kiyoshi Kurosawa are released on DVD for the first time, Dan Auty takes a look at the cult director’s breakthrough year

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words by Dan Auty

or all directors who develop a singular style – be it stylistic, thematic or narrative – there is a moment when their work comes into focus. This can be in a single film, out of the blue – occasionally even a debut. Sometimes it is the culmination of many years developing whatever traits now define them as filmmakers. And sometimes it is simply making the right films at the right time, that moment when, for whatever reason, audiences and critics finally became attuned to a director’s sensibilities.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is best known for Pulse, which stands alongside Hideo Nakata’s Ring and Takashi Miike’s Audition as the highpoints of the Japanese horror wave of the late 90s/early 2000s. But as brilliant and scary as Pulse was, Kurosawa’s true breakthrough came three years earlier in 1997, when the then 42-yearold directed no fewer than three pictures, each playing

an important part in honing his skills and defining his emerging identity. While the psycho-thriller Cure has been available in the West for some time, the arrival of his back-to-back made-for-video features Eyes of the Spider and Serpent’s Path on DVD for the first time this month allow fans the chance to appreciate the scope and achievement of Kurosawa’s breakthrough year.

In terms of acclaim, influence and technical proficiency, Cure is clearly the most important of the three. Kurosawa’s previous theatrical releases had been a mix of lively but undistinguished sex romps, horror flicks and video game adaptations. On the face of it, Cure seemed to straddle the gap between the wave of moody post-Seven serial killer thrillers that emerged in the mid-90s and the supernatural horrors of Nakata’s Ring films and their many imitators. And yet Cure not only stands apart from any superficially similar pictures – it was also quite unlike

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anything else Kurosawa had made up to this point. It takes a familiar set-up – a troubled cop investigates a series of brutal murders – and turns it on its head.

There is no mystery as to who has performed each of these killings – random victims all found with an X carved deep into their throat. The problem is that despite the identical MO, every time the killer is a different, unconnected person, found beside their victim with a memory of murder but little idea about why they did it.

Equally, Kurosawa doesn’t withhold an explanation for this mystery for very long either. He reveals that these crimes were committed at the bidding of an amnesiac drifter called Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara), a man in possession of incredible hypnotic powers. In fact, Mamiya is apprehended by lead cop Takabe (Kôji Yakusho, in the first of several performances for Kurosawa) around the halfway mark, and he remains in custody until almost the very end.

Cure goes through the motions as a police procedural thriller, with Kurosawa using a familiar cop/killer set-up to explore the narrative and stylistic expressions that continue to occupy him today. He is fascinated by the nature of identity, whether of the ordinary people

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transformed into vicious killers, the deadly enchanter with no recollection of who he is, or the fragile cop whose life is as full as his quarry’s is empty, struggling to balance a demanding job with caring for his mentally ill wife. Cure revels in its ambiguity, suggesting but never remotely clarifying whether Mamiya’s powers are of a supernatural nature, while the final scenes are filled with the type of audience-baiting enigma that would make Michael Haneke proud.

As a visual (and aural) stylist, Kurosawa made a massive leap forward in Cure, when compared to his earlier work. This is a scary, gripping film, and the director fills even the most innocuous scenes with a palpable sense of dread. The camera remains detached from the unfolding mystery, and many of the key sequences are filmed in lengthy medium shots that offer viewers none of the familiar comforts of cross-cutting or close-ups. The scenes in which Mamiya sets about mesmerising his victims are deeply unnerving (and genuinely quite hypnotic), while the sound design throughout is a subtle but persistent mix of industrial groans, echoes and unspecified environmental noise. Kurosawa would perfect many of these stylistic tricks in Pulse – an equally enigmatic film but

“The scenes in which Mamiya sets about mesmerising his victims are deeply unnerving (and genuinely quite hypnotic), while the sound design throughout is a subtle but persistent mix of industrial groans, echoes and unspecified environmental noise.”

one tied more closely to the horror genre – and in later movies such as 2006’s Retribution. But the subject matter of Cure – mental instability, the fear of losing control was one that lent itself perfectly to such an approach.

Cure was actually Kurosawa’s first theatrical film for six years – for much of the 90s he worked in Japan’s popular V-Cinema market. While at that time in the West the term straight-to-video largely implied that films weren’t good enough to receive theatrical distribution, in Japan the format had a much better reputation and often allowed established directors to work with lower budgets but more creative freedom (Takashi Miike and Ju-On creator Takashi Shimizu being notable examples). After wrapping Cure and while waiting for it to be released, Kurosawa returned to V-Cinema for two final films. But just as his theatrical breakthrough trod new ground as a police thriller, Eyes of the Spider and Serpent’s Path see the director delight in the experimental possibilities offered by shooting quickly and cheaply.

These pictures were filmed back-to-back in a couple of weeks each, and fascinatingly share many of the same themes, actors and plot-points. The starting point for both is the same – a father seeks retribution for the

abduction and murder of his young daughter several years earlier. But Kurosawa – plus script collaborators Hiroshi Takahashi and Yoichi Noshiyama - spins them in very different directions. Eyes of the Spider begins with mild-mannered businessman Niijima (Miike regular Shô Aikawa) having already captured the man he believes is responsible for this terrible deed. Within ten minutes his prey is dead and Niijima returns to his mundane job and sad, lonely home life with his still-grieving wife. But his violent actions have changed him, and when an old school friend turned low level Yakuza enforcer calls with a job offer, Niijima accepts and enters a life of full-time crime.

In Serpent’s Path, Aikawa plays a man with the same name. But this Niijima is helping another take his revenge – Miyashita, played by prolific character actor Teruyuki Kagawa. While this part of the story was just the catalyst for further events in Eyes of the Spider, in Serpent’s Path it is the central plot, as Niijima and Miyashita spend much of the running time in an abandoned warehouse with a succession of chained-up suspects, trying to figure out who really killed the child. Neither of these films has Cure’s gripping focus or visual power; the

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locations are limited, the cast small, the photography and lighting merely functional. But there is a confidence to the storytelling and pacing, and Kurosawa has admitted that their production was very much a watershed moment for him, particularly in terms of directing action.

As in Cure, Kurosawa enjoys playing with notions of identity – every one of his main characters possesses opposing sides. In Eyes of the Spider, Minima’s wife only sees the tired, dedicated businessman arriving home from work, not the cold, calculating hitman he becomes when heading out to do his job. Similarly, the aging crime overlord who tries to take Niijima under his wing seems as much interested in collecting ancient stones as he is in running a criminal empire.

The Niijima of Serpent’s Path is even more fascinating.

A teacher by day, it never becomes entirely clear why he is helping a man he barely knows track down his daughter’s killer, but it doesn’t take long to see that he, rather than the bumbling, ineffectual Miyashita, is in control of the situation. The turning point comes when Niijima begins colluding with the two gangsters they have chained up, hungry and covered in piss, to pin the blame on a third member of the gang. “I don’t give a damn who killed the girl,” he tells them. “I just don’t want things to get further out of hand.” Is this all a game for him? Does he know who the true culprit is? This being a Kurosawa film, there are no easy answers.

What actually sets these two movies apart from Cure and much of the director’s later work is a keen sense of humour. Despite the subject matter, they essentially play

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out as very dark comedies - the sequence in Serpent’s Path in which Niijima and Miyashita kidnap a Yakuza boss on a golf course is hilariously absurd, while in Eyes of the Spider the tension is frequently undercut by some nicely surreal moments - a gang leader insisting his men learn how to roller skate, or the wonderfully directed sequence in which Niijima attempts in vain to evade a car full of heavies trying to convince him to take on a new job.

Kurosawa directed Eyes of the Spider and Serpent’s Path shortly before Cure’s release, which hit Japanese cinemas in December 1997. Had Cure made little impact, he may have continued to work in V-Cinema. But it proved a success both at home and overseas, where the festival circuit embraced this bold, original vision and ensured Kurosawa’s future as a director on the international stage. His subsequent career has been impressive and unpredictable, from the dark scares of Pulse and Loft, through drama (Bright Future, the Cannes winner Tokyo Sonata), sci-fi (this year’s Real) and oddball comedy (Doppelganger), not to mention his acclaimed TV drama Penance. But much of what defines him as a director today can be found back in those three films of 1997, before he had any reputation to live up to and when he was able to experiment without the expectations of an audience. In Cure, the deadly Mamiya begins each hypnosis with a single question: “Who are you?” If Kurosawa himself didn’t know the answer when he began making that masterpiece, he surely did by the time the rest of the world saw it.

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On TheOutside, LookingInside Since her debut with 1988’s Chocolat, celebrated filmmaker Claire Denis has crafted a diverse and memorable oeuvre including such titles as Nenette and Boni, Beau Travail and 35 Shots of Rum. Recently, whilst attending the Midnight Sun festival, she sat down to chat with Peter von Bagh

words by Neil McGlone interview by Peter von Bagh

C

laire Denis was scheduled to appear at the Midnight Sun Festival in Iceland only a few weeks after the Cannes premiere of her latest work, Les salauds/Bastards. The film’s selection in the festival’s Un Certain Regard category caused something of a commotion in cinephile circles, with many perceiving it to be a disrespectful slight for such a leading auteur to be included in a strand usually reserved for debutant or marginal filmmakers. In any case the furore did Denis no harm at all, inspiring as it did a clamour of supporters to weigh in on her behalf, including Nick James’ memorable description of her as “one of the best five film-makers alive”. Denis arrived later than expected in Lapland (a not unusual occurrence, given the festival’s remote location), but eventually managed to unwind away from the hullabaloo and obligations surrounding her new release, to reflect on the origins of a remarkable career.

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Chocolat

Claire Denis interview: Vérité: What was the first film you saw?

Claire Denis: I think it was War and Peace (1956) with Audrey Hepburn. As a child I grew up in Africa and I saw films only every two years when I came to visit my grandparents in the suburbs of Paris. I was maybe six or seven. My grandfather took me to see the film. He raised my mother on his own, he was a widower and of Brazilian origin.

Can you speak about your childhood?

My parents met at college after the war and my father was keen to leave France. He had a diploma of administration and could speak several languages so they left for the French Colony part of Africa and were travelling from place to place while he was working for the French government, mostly as an interpreter. There were no roads and he was supposed to draw maps for them, so most of the time we were travelling in an open-air truck or he was riding a horse. Every two years I was coming back to France to visit the rest of the family. After the independence in 1960, my father decided to stay and work for the African government. I was sent to France with my sister, and we were both struck down with a serious illness and

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hospitalised. We then stayed in France and it was a hard time in my life, it felt completely different to me but I never felt I was African. I never thought I was the wild adventurer little girl climbing from tree to tree. I think I was really raised as a French child like my brother and sister, we were raised with a great appetite for order and I think that was really for the best.

Do you agree that Hollywood films have a very different perception of Africa?

Yes, I knew when I was very little that to be a white skinned child was a sort of privilege. There was a difference that still exists, that to be black or white is not the same. People stare at me even today when I go back. When I was shooting White Material (2009) with Isabelle Huppert, I knew a lot of things about Cameroon, but I didn’t feel at home. As a white person I knew there would be a slight and important difference. I was a human being with white skin and it makes a difference. I was in the car yesterday and I heard that two weeks ago there was this law in France that the word “race” was no more in use, because it’s proved genetically we are all the same, we have the same genes. It’s little and yet, it’s huge.

White Material

Can you speak about the school you went to in Africa?

First there was no school at all; I was the oldest in the family so my mother taught me to read and write when I was very young. It was an easy life; we had lessons for just one or two hours a day. The first time I went to school was in a place famous for its film festival called Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. I was really terrified because it was the first time I had to be part of a group with rules and it was not easy. I was the only white person and it was very frightening. Although I was not really afraid but I suddenly realised what it was to be lonely, from the looks that I got.

What books did you read as a child? I’m also interested to hear what African stories you heard or read as a child as I assume it was not an entirely French education?

The African tales held no great place in colonial times, there was a sort of tendency to believe that culture was occidental and that the African tales were like a secret past. It took me years to start reading books by great African writers. I would say that maybe I was more influenced by books then; my mother was reading a lot of roman noir but I was not allowed to read her books. It took me a long time to go back to African culture as a source for [my work]; maybe I was marked with guilt to have been brought up in a colonial place. It took me a while to take it for granted that I was allowed to not feel guilty anymore.

“I’m a professional of nothing. A lot of new filmmakers now working with digital, they learn everything within two weeks, I mean there is nothing to learn to be a professional, it makes you the best you can be. It gives you the tools to create an image that can get you somewhere. I have never made a perfect image. I am sure of that.”

Was there a turning point that made you realise you wanted to be involved with film?

At school I saw a lot of older movies like Dreyer and Eisenstein but Bergman films were not allowed until I was 16 so I had to wait. I remember the first I was allowed to see was The Silence (1963). My father thought it was an education to take me to see an American film because he thought it was improving my English. For him, cinema was more an American thing. My mother, she had a different feeling, she would come home in the afternoon and tell me “I’ve seen Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and it has changed my life”. Hearing that, it was my main aim to see that film and to understand how a film could change my mother’s life. My mother is not an intellectual woman, she is a daydreamer, a pessimistic woman too and therefore she understood movies much better than my father.

I had a godfather who took me to see, at maybe [age] twelve, Pather Panchali (1955), the Satyajit Ray film. He thought it was important for me to see a film like that and it was really a shock, a shock for a girl who had lived in Africa. I realised that the world was so vast, that what happens in Calcutta does not happen in Ouagadougou or Djibouti. As a student I discovered a lot of Japanese movies and again I was struck by the immensity and vastness of the world, and yet the connection of the filmmaking is so obvious, so immediate. For me that’s why, until my last day on earth, I will think that Ozu was like a teacher, not only a cinema teacher, but a teacher of how to be a human being.

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Beau Travail

What career did you think you would end up doing?

I honestly thought I’d end up doing nothing. I felt I was going to be the disaster of my family, not because I was a rebel, but I would spend my days in my room listening to music. I went to University but I was slowly realising that the only thing I was interested in was cinema but there was no way to convince my family I’d make a living from it. So I got married and I became a free person. I did little jobs here and there, it was hard at that time to get a job in film but then I heard about a film school.

I passed the exam and started but I was not an artist and I never thought that I ever wanted to be an artist, or that this was my vocation. I wanted to get closer and closer to film as I believed it was the best possible world for me, nothing else mattered. Yet today I don’t feel like a professional, not at all. I have been lucky, but to think I’m a professional? I’m a professional of nothing. A lot of new filmmakers now working with digital, they learn everything within two weeks, I mean there is nothing to learn to be a professional, it makes you the best you can be. It gives you the tools to create an image that can get you somewhere. I have never made a perfect image. I am sure of that.

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Were there any happy incidents that brought you to cinema?

After I got my diploma there were only two options available to me; either to enter television, which I didn’t want, or to try working in cinema but for a young woman, apart from continuity girl or editing, there was nothing very much available and I didn’t want that. I met two very different people, one was the director of the cinema school who was a very old fashioned communist and he thought it was his duty to find me jobs.

His name was Louis Daquin. He was like a godfather to me. I also met my DP there, Agnès Godard. We were both like his protégés in a way. He wanted us to succeed in making what we wanted. I took a training course at Peter Brooks’ school but I had absolutely no desire to be an actress, but to spend those months with Peter Brooks changed me completely. I felt like a human being. I suddenly realised that I was not so unfit, that there was something there in my body that I could trust. Since then I think that Peter Brooks was leading me in the right direction to become a director and not an actress.

When I was in cinema school there was a young DP that was working with Jacques Rivette and he told me to visit him

“As a student I discovered a lot of Japanese movies and again I was struck by the immensity and vastness of the world, and yet the connection of the filmmaking is so obvious, so immediate. For me that’s why, until my last day on earth, I will think that Ozu was like a teacher, not only a cinema teacher, but a teacher of how to be a human being.” one day and little by little through him I met a few people who were interested in working with me, and with a little crew and with a little budget we made some films. I owe a lot to those moments with Jacques Rivette and other directors who in a way never really believed me when I said I was just happy to be their assistant. They said no, you must do your own film. They were wrong at the time as I really enjoyed those moments with them. After a few years, somebody told Wim Wenders about me. We met in Portugal, he thought I was the kind of assistant that he needed; someone that would not be too bothered dealing with paperwork, someone that could change the schedule in the night, someone that would not have a problem with changes in the script at short notice. I mean I had trained with Jacques Rivette and I thought this was great to still have a freedom inside a small budget. I enjoyed that very much; I learned a lot from Wim. Through Wim I met Jim Jarmusch and worked on Down by Law (1986).

How did you get your first chance to make your own film?

knew that I was not blind. I knew exactly what it was like to be an African director. I became friends at that time, thanks to Anatole and Pascal Dauman, with Djibril Diop Mambéty who did his first film Touki Bouki (1973). For me this film was something complete from him, he had nothing to express from being a student of cinema school, he wanted to speak about the young people of Senegal and the dream that this young couple had of trying to escape by stealing enough money to go to France. That film was for me the beginning of something new and important.

Can you speak about the collaborative process with your cinematographer?

I think it’s like a pact, it’s important to share the same desire to do something at the same moment. I don’t need to speak with Agnès because when I can see she’s preparing some lights somewhere, she only needs to look at me and she can see whether I like it. We reflect on each other. I recently worked without her because her mother was dying, and worked with Yves Cape. The first week with him, he was terrified because I was looking at everything he was doing, checking every detail but I think to be a companion, to be a partner of the person who is doing the image is not a luxury, it’s not fun, it’s a necessity. For me, there is a way that I am telling the story with my script and they are doing the image, the image has to go inside, to search what is under the script, otherwise it’s boring for me making the film. It’s boring in the sense that I will freak out and will feel that the film is going away from me.

I wanted my first film to be politically involved and thought maybe it’s going to be a disaster but it should at least be a necessary film. I wasn’t going to make a film just for myself, so I met a journalist who was working with women who were in jail for abandoning their babies. So I started working on that and I got permission to go inside a jail. This took me like two years and then I changed my mind. I owe a lot to my childhood, so I thought let’s go to Cameroon and make a film The sound and music in your films perhaps comes from about the colonial times, before independence when you can just start to smell independence in the air. This is how I started your childhood in Africa, it’s so beautiful and very orChocolat (1988) with that feeling. ganic with the image.

Do you relate to African Cinema?

I met Sembene, he was already a master and had been to the best school, I also met Souleymane Cisse. I never dare consider myself more than a tourist opposite them. I remember when Sembene took off his casket and shook my shoulder; it was like a big brother thing. It was nice but I knew that he

My first two films I made with a very famous South African musician called Dollarbrand, and then I met Tindersticks.

When I met Stuart Staples and his band we had something in common with each other. It’s like a partner, I know through him a lot about the film. He comes to the editing room and he makes me see things that nobody else could make me understand.

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Vérité’s Top 5 Lost in New York

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5.

The Out-of-Towners (1970) It’s hard to dream in a city that never sleeps so there’s always the chance of falling into a waking nightmare. Within the space of twenty-four hours an otherwise simple journey can quickly evolve into an epic and terrifying quest for survival, which is the essence of all good Lost in New York tales.

Neil Simon’s The Out-of-Towners sets the blueprint for this odd sub-genre that perceives one of America’s greatest cities as an omnipresent force, a hostile, bewildering metropolis of serendipitous peril and incidents of random abnormality, where it’s never quite clear if the protagonists are being destroyed out of sheer spite or shaped for the better.

Simon’s screenplay feeds into every uptight suburbanite’s fears, assumptions, and snooty reservations about the big smoke, and takes an almost sadistic delight in tormenting Jack Lemmon’s highly-strung executive to immense comic effect.

Desperate to reach his career-defining job interview and treat his wife to a meticulously planned evening of regimented fun, his agendas are constantly stomped on by adversity. By the time he reaches his planned destination he’s worn down and dishevelled, but thick skinned and totally confident; an archetypal New Yorker.

Robert Makin

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4.

Brother from another Planet (1984) John Sayles’ early 80s allegorical, socio-political, sci-fi urban parable on space, race and class is what you might refer to in scholastic film theory terms as being funky fresh. On the run from inter galactic slave traders, a mute alien crash-lands in inner Harlem. Despite having three toes, removable eyeballs, the power to heal, and the ability to experience past incidents by touching surfaces and objects, he’s still the least strange character in the neighbourhood.

Sayles takes a bizarre concept and films it with an endearing naturalism. The most memorable scenes being the hilarious verbal interactions between the patrons of a local bar that the extra-terrestrial protagonist initially takes refuge in. Their memorable banter is so believable and quick witted, you begin to hope he never leaves.

A million miles from home, isolated and on the run in a seemingly uncaring, brutal and desolate landscape, the alien doesn’t save mankind – despite having strange mystical powers – or become a comic book super hero. He just tries to get by the best he can in the hope of finding somewhere to fit in, eventually becoming just another face on the subway. Robert Makin

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3.

Quick Change (1990) The first adaptation of Jay Cronley’s comic novel Quick Change was French/Canadian production Hold Up (1985), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Kim Cattrell desperately trying to escape Montreal after taking part in a bank heist. Bill Murray’s early nineties crime comedy – co-directed with screenwriter Howard Franklin – brings the action back to the location of the original novel.

Quick Change succeeds as a pretty decent heist movie whilst updating and warping the framework of The Out-of-Towners, depicting the Big Apple as a concrete labyrinth of episodic weirdness. It’s during these random confrontations and incidents that the film works best, my favourite moment involving two men jousting on push bikes. It’s definitely up there with Murray’s best movies and unfortunately seems to have been lost down the back of the cinematic sofa when it comes to reappraising the decade’s finer films. Robert Makin

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2.

The Warriors (1979) The Warriors may not be the most authentic depiction of inner city gangs and the dark hidden corners of crime-fuelled seventies New York, but it certainly beats the shit out of West Side Story (1961). Walter Hill does everything in his power to give the film its own distinct, stylish and otherworldly mood with a unique visual grittiness achieved from shooting entirely on location.

Sol Yurick’s 1965 source novel was inspired in equal measures by his experiences as an investigator for New York City’s Department of Welfare and Ananbasis by Xenophon of Athens – a historical account of Greek mercenaries retreating from the Persian War and their adventurous attempts to reach home.

Hill took all these elements and turned The Warriors into a seminal comic book adventure and one of the earliest examples of a genuine cult classic rooted in the home video revolution. Whenever The Warriors make it back home to Coney Island, legendary status is bestowed upon them - by the first generation of film fans to be educated by VHS, and who now have their own mythology. Robert Makin

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1.

After Hours (1985) Is there a doubt in anyone’s mind this is Martin Scorsese’s weirdest film? Channelling Henry Miller, Franz Kafka, Neil Simon, Paul Auster and Alfred Hitchcock, the inescapable neighbourhood of After Hours is a threatening urban wonderland of surreal distress, where every inhabitant seems to be on the verge of explosive psychosis.

There’s an incredibly dark streak of bizarre humour running through Scorsese’s most underappreciated movie, along with a superbly crafted atmosphere of unease, paranoia, and creeping malevolence.

Kicking off with a signalling quote from Tropic of Cancer and ending with Griffin Dunne being indivertibly abducted by Cheech & Chong, it takes the all-too-familiar scenario of missing the last train home to comedic extremes.

An eccentric ode to big city chance encounters of the nocturnal kind, Griffin Dunne’s office minion stumbles from one demented situation to the next, so preoccupied with returning to the safety of his dull existence he remains oblivious to the fact he’s actually experiencing precisely the kind of strange and sordid adventure his favourite author Henry Miller would have revelled in. It’s the quintessential Lost In New York tale. Robert Makin

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T H FESTIVAL G E H N D A words by Evrim Ersoy

eld every year in the heart of Lisbon, just off the beautiful and lively Avenue de Liberdade at the historic Cinema Sao Jorge, MotelX represents a marriage of the best of festivals – a lively and full programme complimented by a laid-back and friendly atmosphere.

In its seventh edition, the festival continued to bring the best of the world together with a line-up of films that included Open Grave by Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego, Kiss of the Damned

by Xan Cassavates, Painless by Juan Carlos Medina, Belenggu

by Upi Avianto and much, much more – including two sections dedicated to the works of masters Tobe Hooper and Hideo Nakata; both of whom attended the festival to present masterclasses and introduce retrospectives.

Blessed with beautiful weather, the festival drew in huge crowds – with many of the screenings selling out and the queue for returns snaking out the door.

Taking advantage of the Cinema Sao Jorge’s beautiful balcony, filmmakers and guests mingled with festival-goers with many taking full advantage of the cinema bar’s happy hour and the local Super Bock beer.

There was also a beautiful array of shorts both local and international including young Turkish talent Can Evrenol’s new shocker Baskin as well as Ryan Haysom’s gorgeous neo-giallo Yellow.

Here’s a couple of highlights from the festival:

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ABDUCTEE director Yadai Yamaguchi Essentially a one-location, low-budget thriller, Yadai Yamaguchi’s effective tale concerns Atsushi Chiba who one day wakes up in a container being transported to a mysterious location. A claustrophobic tale, the film displays the director’s ability to handle a story with one character – effectively keeping a tight-sense of tension all the way through.

Although Chiba is alone, we hear from a number of other kidnapped people who help or sometimes hinder into Chiba unravelling the central mystery.

By keeping the container on the move, Yadai Yamaguchi keeps a sense of urgency running through the film – the final destination is clearly not going to be a good place for these abductees and Chiba’s time running out is palpably reflected on the screen.

A terrific thriller, Abductee sees the director strike out in a new and quieter direction after the excesses of his earlier efforts and is well worth seeking out.

OPEN GRAVE director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego A man wakes up in a pit filled with corpses. With no memory whatsoever, he stumbles around until a mysterious stranger throws a rope into the pit and he climbs out. Disorientated, making his way through a nearby forest, he comes upon a house filled with others who seem to be suffering the same condition. The group start to investigate to try to figure out what happened to them and, more importantly, why they are there.

Sharing similarities with recent Spanish genre-entry Last Days, Open Grave is an admirable effort from the director of King Of The Hill and ‘Apollo 18’ which goes wrong very quickly. Dire dialogue and repetitive scenes destroy any chance of emotional connection with the two-dimensional characters while the key reveals are so clumsily handled that the film never recovers its pace.

The cinematography is beautiful and once again the sound design is some of the best used for a long time – however all this fades next to a story which gambles its entirety on set-pieces which end up more alienating than emotional.

Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego is clearly a talented director – however this script is in dire need of work and his efforts cannot end up saving what is clearly a doomed film from the start.

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Music

makes you lose

R N O T O L C The tragic genius of James Booker is explored in the remarkable documentary Bayou Maharajah

words and interview by Robert Makin

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uscian James Booker once claimed that Ringo Starr pulled his eye out during a fight, hence the star motif on his eye-patch. Dr John famously described Booker as “the best black, one-eyed junkie piano player genius New Orleans has ever produced.” James Booker was not your average musician and Bayou Maharajah, which explores his entertaining but troubled life, is not your average documentary. I spoke to director and New Orleans resident Lily Keber on what motivated her to create one of this year’s most original docs.

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Lily Keber interview: Vérité: You first heard about James Booker whilst work- At that time, around 2009 I guess when I first started looking ing behind a bar in New Orleans, is that right? into his life, if you did a Google search just nothing came up.

Lily Keber: I was working at Vaughan’s Lounge, and he was always being played on the jukebox. It was totally bizarre music, I had no idea what I was hearing, and then people would tell these outrageous stories. Booker is so well known and beloved in New Orleans everyone of a certain age has a story about seeing him. He’s also a guy you don’t forget easily; his legacy is still very present here.

Because I was exposed to Booker through these stories, through people recounting their memories, that’s how I wanted to structure the film. I didn’t want it to be a bunch of experts sitting around telling you facts, because Booker’s history is not necessarily one of solid facts, it’s one of local mythology so I intentionally wanted to give the sense of sewing together a rich tapestry of tales.

Of all the musical legends that are born out of New Orleans why James Booker?

That’s the story that grabbed me. Looking back on it now his history seemed so mysterious compared to other musicians.

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He was obviously a huge influence on New Orleans music yet at the same time seemed so overlooked. He was so legendary amongst the people I knew but just absent from everywhere else. There was no way to easily know more. It was like I had to make this journey of discovery, and at the time I started this project it seemed like Booker and the huge impact he had on music was in danger of being forgotten.

How long did it take to make the film?

It took over three years. The first interview was in January 2010 and then we showed it at SXSW March 2013. The first step was just talking to people. I identified a few individuals who I thought would be ideal first candidates. I did six interviews over the course of three days and then I edited those together into a trailer for the film. Not a single person in New Orleans ever asked me where I went to film school, or if I’d done this before, or if I knew what I was doing. The fact that I worked in Vaughn’s as a bartender was really much more of an intrinsic factor in persuading people to be part of the film than whether I had any previous experience directing a

“The first stories you hear always involve Booker throwing up on stage, Booker shooting up, Booker sitting at the piano with a joint between every black key, that kind of stuff.” documentary. The first stories you hear always involve Booker throwing up on stage, Booker shooting up, Booker sitting at the piano with a joint between every black key, that kind of stuff. I think a lot of people were kind of concerned whether I was going to focus mainly on that side of his personality or if I was going to make a film about music. The trailer demonstrated that what I was trying to do was show that he was this over-looked musical genius and not just a scandalous junkie, which really helped get people on board.

What was the greatest obstacle?

The archive footage was a beast. I always thought the idea of finding footage of Booker would be the hardest part but in the end finding footage of New Orleans in the seventies was the hardest thing. It just doesn’t exist.

process. Of course my main objective was to bring Booker to a new audience and a younger generation.

Another objective was to make an honest portrayal of New Orleans. Everyone that worked on the film is local and really wanted to make a film that was actually from New Orleans.

We wanted to avoid all the clichés and make something that goes a little deeper in capturing the character of the city and its soul, and make the kind of New Orleans film that I’ve always wanted to see.

New Orleans is the supporting character of the film. You can’t tell the story of James Booker without telling a story about New Orleans. I don’t think he could have come from any other place.

The film certainly feels a lot more unique and cinematic than most standard music profiles.

What were your main objectives in regards to what you hoped to capture?

I think a lot of that derives from Booker himself because he’s such a complicated character, there’s so much that you need to know in order to get to the point where you can listen to the In many ways Booker is so emblematic of New Orleans on so music. There’s so much information that needs to be imparted many levels that it helped me see this city in a whole different that isn’t straightforward because he still remains a mystery. way and raised some very intrinsic questions about the creative So in order to figure out how to tell the story of an enigma we

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“Reggie Scanlan said Booker taught him the nonsense of genre. Music is just music and these labels that we put on it are largely there so that it can be sold. It doesn’t reflect on the music itself. As long as we think about music in those terms we’re really limiting its impact and limiting ourselves.”

had to do a lot of somersaults.

So we decided to structure the film in the spirit of one of his live sets. He could sit down and medley from song to song according to what I refer to as Booker Logic. So that’s really more how we tried to make the film, to structure according to theme rather than chronology or fact.

We just wanted to make the best film we could and to eschew a lot of the stereotypes associated with our city. We wanted to tell a good story and one that was up to his standards. He really does inspire you to reach higher levels.

The reason I let a lot of the concert sequences play out is because that is the time when Booker is being his most truthful and that is the only time Booker is really in control of his element. That’s why we’re here talking about him today, not because of all the crazy stuff he did but because of his mastery of music. I want the audience to be present with that moment and to understand what he is saying.

it’s so complicated speaks wonders of what he achieved as a musician.

As far as New Orleans is concerned he represents the complexity of the city. At once the vibrant, creative and in the moment intenseness of the city, while at the same time he represents the part that’s unable to escape itself. The side of the city that loves life so much that it can’t preserve it. It’s beautiful and it’s sad at the same time. But that is New Orleans.

There’s an incredibly haunting black & white time lapsed sequence towards the end of the film. Can you elaborate on its significance?

Well most of that was shot at Vaughan’s. Most of what’s seen in the film is pretty much archival but that was shot this spring on 16mm. Everything that you need to know about James Booker is in that piece of music you hear, he’s playing Rachmaninoff ’s Prelude in C and then it medleys into Taste Of What do you think he represents in regards to music Honey by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, a total sixties and to New Orleans? pop song.

The music is very haunting and very strange and it’s the Reggie Scanlan said Booker taught him the nonsense of genre. closest I could get to being inside James Booker’s head. At that Music is just music and these labels that we put on it are large- point in the film we wanted to represent one night in James ly there so that it can be sold. It doesn’t reflect on the music Booker’s life, one night at the bars in New Orleans, an initself. As long as we think about music in those terms we’re stance in which you see how he’s making those connections. really limiting its impact and limiting ourselves. One thing For me his version of that music is the deepest scariest music that Booker really excelled at was making a mockery of the I’ve ever heard. And then to go into Taste of Honey, it’s like convention of genre, and what was expected of an instrument breaking through the cloud into light and I’ve never heard too. But I think in typical Booker form it also limited him. music that makes me feel that way before. To see what a deep He doesn’t quite fit anywhere and that’s the beautiful part impression he had on other people was always fascinating for of him and that’s also one of the things that held him back. me and it’s something that will stay with me forever.

The fact that no one today can actually play his music because

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Check out the teaser issue of CultTV Times... covering everything from NCIS to anime!

Broadcast the news – the first full issue of Cult TV Times will be available to buy soon at Culttvtimes.com Follow us on : (@CultTVTimes) for the latest news and issue updates For subscription enquiries contact: subscriptions@culttvtimes.com VERITE SEPT-OCT 2013

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Magic, Realism, and the stories from

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Cinema’s Rubik’s Cube Eric Khoo Evrim Ersoy, our guide to the unexplored delights of world cinema, welcomes you to the cinema of Eric Khoo

words by Evrim Ersoy

W

hile Eric Khoo is one of the few directors to bring Singaporean cinema to the forefront of the international circuit – he was the first to be invited to Cannes, Berlin and Venice – it’s safe to say he remains relatively unknown within the UK. His most recent film – Tatsumi – received mostly favourable reviews but a limited release; a shame considering its masterful blending of the autobiographical and the fantastic. His previous effort – My Magic – didn’t receive a release at all in the UK. Khoo’s talent lies in his ability to blend stories of the everyday with a touch of magic. From the shy noodle seller of Me Pok Man to the story of Fatty in Be with Me – whose obsession with food hides a loneliness all too familiar – Khoo chooses subject matters filled with the

rich spectrum of human emotion; from love to loneliness, old age to disability.

Khoo’s first feature length film Mee Pok Man was released in 1996. The film, written by Yu Lei Foong, tells the story of Mee Pok Man (played by Joe Ng of the Padres) a shy, retiring noodle seller infatuated with a prostitute named Bunny (Michelle Goh in her debut). Bunny treats the Mee Pok Man with disdain – however it all changes when she is injured in a hit-and-run accident.

Khoo focuses on characters that, in less-killed hands, would come across as creepy, unpleasant or even disturbing. The actions of the Mee Pok Man are not taken lightly but it’s hard to not feel the sympathy and humility Khoo introduces to the story. He handles the difficult storyline deftly, letting a rare sort of humanity shine through.

Mee Pok Man was a huge deal for a Singapore film

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industry which had been in stagnation for a while. Here was a film with local dialects, swearing and nudity and characters plucked from the streets of Singapore. Characterisations were delicate, attentive with a local flavour – which made them seem like they’d just stepped off the streets and into the frame.

The next film – 12 Storeys – sees Khoo take over the writing duties as well as directing. This multi-character sprawling drama focuses on the residents of Singapore’s Housing Department apartment blocks. The film starts with the suicide of a man connected to three families across three distinct storylines. There’s a mother having a difficult and verbally abusive relationship with her adopted daughter, the hawker whose Chinese bride is cheating on him and, finally, the story of Meng and his sister Trixie, whose relationship hides many dark undercurrents.

The joy of 12 Storeys lies in the way Khoo intercuts between the three storylines, weaving together an unusual and very real array of characters. The film is a reflection of everyday life in Singapore with characters chatting about news, current affairs and the gossip of what’s happening behind the closed doors of friends and neighbours.

There’s also Khoo’s unobtrusive camerawork to consider – his approach is to let the talented local actors fill the

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scenes without resulting to any fancy cutaways or camerawork. He’s more than happy to let storylines go unresolved. Khoo is not a typical filmmaker, tying everything up in a neat package; he’s trying to bring the Singaporean society onto the big screen as effortlessly as possible.

There’s a seven-year gap between 12 Storeys and Khoo’s next effort Be With Me – however watching one after the other it’s impossible not to spot the similarities.

Be With Me again deals with a multitude of characters – however, in an unusual fashion, one of the leads is not an actress but teacher Therea Poh Lin Chan, whose autobiographical tale of how she went from a deaf and blind mute to a teacher of disabled children is woven into the story of the fictional characters within the film.

Be With Me deals mainly with loneliness, solitude and love. Whether it’s the old shopkeeper who is finding it hard to continue with life after his wife dies or Fatty the lonely security guard who is infatuated with a high-flying executive named Ann (Lynn Poh), Khoo explores the loneliness that engulfs the human heart.

His exploration of food reflecting its important place within Singapore society is also charming – whether it’s the rituals of the old shopkeeper’s dinners or Fatty’s gluttonous self-punishments, Khoo understands the

“Playful, intelligent, gentle and emotional, Eric Khoo is a director whose work resembles that of a complicated puzzle. Although it is not possible at first to see how all the pieces fit, it’s a testament to his ability that the overall picture that emerges is as satisfying and brilliant as any of his worldwide counterparts can hope to produce.”

importance of food within the Singapore culture and brings it to the fore.

Khoo’s films are delicate, fragile creations – his storytelling so subdued that by the time themes emerge, the audience is astounded by the delicate touch. The characters in Be With Me all cross each other’s paths in unexpected ways and, without spoiling the film, the death of some means a chance to be happy for others.

This is even more apparent in Khoo’s next film – My Magic – which deals with Francis, a drunk and single dad who, fearing he has lost the confidence of his young son, tries to bring home some money and perhaps even find some hope by re-enacting a one-man circus act at nightclubs across the city.

Khoo’s exploration of a Tamil man living in Singapore carving out a meagre living is tinged with sadness and beauty. Francis is never presented as anything other than a useless drunk – however when he tries to earn a living through his one skill, it’s hard not to feel for him. The scenes of Francis swallowing swords or broken glass are difficult to watch, acting as a commentary on the state of life for immigrants within Singapore’s multi-cultural existence.

Although My Magic was Singapore’s entry for the Best Foreign Oscar at the Oscars in 2008, it gained little exposure for the director outside of a small circle of cinephiles.

The film failed to get distribution in the UK, relegating this most melancholy and touching tale to the confines of dusty film archives.

Tatsumi, Khoo’s next effort, was perhaps the film that gave him the most amount of exposure. A worldwide distribution deal meant audiences were able to see it

across the globe and the tie-in with comic shops and manga lovers meant awareness was higher than usual.

In Tatsumi, Khoo mixes Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s life story with his manga stories creating a dual-world where both realities exist. The visual style of the film apes the drawings of Tatsumi and his tales are brought to life as carefully as possible.

The mammoth task of condensing Tatsumi’s 800-page autobiographical manga A Drifting Life is handled expertly. Khoo covers major events in the artist’s life without getting bogged down in too much detail – one can almost sense the film serving as a great introduction for an audience who have never encountered Tatsumi and his challenging manga before. Tatsumi was also the official entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar for Singapore in 2012, highlighting the directors’ popularity and standing with his home audience.

Khoo has also been acting as a producer for local filmmakers –focusing especially on genre films and trying to renew Singapore’s horror scene. Titles such as 23:59 and Ghost Child represent the first of a new wave of Singapore horror which Khoo wants to keep pushing.

Playful, intelligent, gentle and emotional, Eric Khoo is a director whose work resembles that of a complicated puzzle. Although it is not possible at first to see how all the pieces fit, it’s a testament to his ability that the overall picture that emerges is as satisfying and brilliant as any of his worldwide counterparts can hope to produce. A real talent whose work still continues to astound, Khoo deserves to be discovered by audiences all around the world.

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Masters of Cinema

La Notte As La Notte is released by Masters of Cinema, David Hall offers a personal take on why its director still divides and finally catches up with a film that’s eluded him – until now words by David Hall

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utside of cineaste circles, certain International directors are still known – usually by a single, signature work. You can easily find non-film buffs familiar with Godard’s Breathless, Fellini’s La Dolce Vita or Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (even if it is because of their iconographic posters or images). However Michelangelo Antonioni – despite an enormous international reputation, many awards and having worked in English language film – has never enjoyed the same crossover appeal. A relatively commercial film like Blowup (1966) never cemented itself in the wider cultural consciousness in the way that even a difficult, cryptic work like Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal has. It’s understandable – although his films are filled with startling images and beautiful faces, Antonioni is, in many ways, a pleasure denier. His films are languid studies in alienation, torpor and ossification. Even amongst cineastes, Antonioni has been a greatly divisive figure (booed, then revered

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at Cannes for L’Aventurra) gaining as many heavyweight sceptics (Welles) as admirers. And the fans of his work tend to be directors viewed as cold, remote aesthetes; Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Haneke. Perhaps the quintessential art house director; his work cannot be causally appreciated and, for everyone who feels he is a master, there are those who view his work as cold, removed, even dated.

In hindsight his career is marked by three distinct periods. His early work very much the essence of an artist at flowering point, one who was adopting and then refining a long-take approach that would bleed into his canonical quartet (all starring then-lover Monica Vitti and produced at an incredible rate); L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L’Eclisse (1962) and Red Desert (1964). And although he worked very late into his life (and even after suffering a stroke) the last significant block of work is his MGM period, comprising three key post-modern European art films in the English language; Blowup (1966) Zabriskie Point

(1970) and The Passenger (1975).

US distribution and access to international stars never provided any kind of breakthrough for Antonioni commercially. But then this rigorous marxist, intellectual and atheist (“When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them.”) was never going to be embraced in the US, even during a period ripe for experimentation. Sexual pleasure and monetary gain – two elements that, in romanticised forms, propel most mainstream western cinema – provide a fleeting respite for Antonioni’s characters. They are a brief escape from the boredom. Antonioni’s use of long takes and deep focus photography as indicators of character expression, and his use of symbolic signifiers that are clinical, sometimes artificial and resolutely humourless, further baffle and bore non-aficionados.

Sparseness, detachment, minimalism and suffocating ennui – these are not exactly selling points for the casual viewer. Attention is demanded, absorption expected. Antonioni’s films take investment; an investment that is the very antithesis of cinema as entertainment or escape. Ironically most of his characters want to escape – either their situation or themselves. They want to be anywhere but where they are. I once said this exact thing to a girlfriend I took to see L’Avventura. “I understand entirely” she said as the credits rolled, I would rather be anywhere but where I am right now too.”

L’Avventura was my first Antonioni. I was 17 and in the middle of a film studies ‘A’ level. We had moved from neorealism to the more expressive 60s Italian cinema. I was devouring foreign-language film and liked almost everything I was fed, being too young and green to respond with anything other than slavish worship of accepted classics. I was also an insufferable, pompous little shit with ridiculous hair in a stupid coat, loving anything that was obscure and rating it all higher than ‘mainstream’ cinema. I instantly loved Antonioni. Plus I fancied Monica Vitti. Soon after I saw Blowup, Zabriskie Point and what would become my favourite of his films, The Passenger. Later, at University, I caught Identification of a Woman and loved it, despite its flaws. I may have even pretended to like Beyond the Clouds. But I never managed to catch up with La Notte until now.

“Whenever I try to communicate, love disappears.”

This is Valentina (Monica Vitti), the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, purring to middle-aged writer Giovanni Pontano (Mastroianni) as they flirt with one another at a dinner party. Giovanni has just been offered a job by Valentina’s father and is contemplating an exit from his failing marriage. Meanwhile, Lidia ( Jeanne Moreau), his socialite wife, is wandering the streets of Milan in an emotional fug, contemplating an exit from Giovanni. Welcome to twenty-four hours in the life of a beautiful, gilded, spiritually empty couple as their sterile marriage crumbles and atrophies. Ain’t any party like an Antonioni party!

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The film plays out in a series of emotionally distant vignettes. Giovanni is in Milan to attend his own book launch accompanied by his beautiful wide Lidia. The couple first pay a visit to a friend of Giovanni’s, Tomasso Garani, who is dying of cancer. Lidia leaves, shaken by Tomasso’s appearance. While at the hospital Giovanni, increasingly distant from his wife, is approached by a sexually aggressive patient who comes on to him. When they leave to attend Giovanni’s launch party Lidia walks out on him, disappearing into the streets of Milan. Giovanni attends the party and flirts with Valentina, the daughter of an industrialist.

Later that evening the estranged couple are briefly reunited in a club, before some devastating news compels then to finally accept the limitations of their doomed union.

Giovani is an archetypal Antonioni figure; a husk of a man, blocked artistically and spiritually, emotionally disconnected and increasingly distant from his wife. Vida is similarly adrift but at least recognizes her own alienation and disaffection. Both are trapped by their own indecision and torpor. Has there ever been a filmmaker more attuned to

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the vacuity and blankness between individuals and prepared to explore this in ways that are testing, even unpalatable to the viewer? Antonioni’s craft is undeniable but I have to admit that, even to an initiate and a fan, La Notte felt like a lengthy two hours at times. Maybe I’ve been away from Antonioni too long?

That said Antonioni’s films are often punctuated with telling visual moments, subtle and intricate signifiers of mood change and development. The most extreme moment of this in La Notte (and perhaps a litmus test for first-time viewers) is Moreau’s listless walk through Milan, which she takes after walking out on Giovanni’s book launch party.

A walk is never just a walk in Antonioni film and we are treated to what now feels like some incredibly dated symbolism – look, poor people eating sandwiches! But the scene is also filled with undeniable melancholy and tension. It’s also a wonderful evocation of character; a wordless journey through a protagonists’ psyche, the topography and physical geography indicative of Moreau’s emotional flux, indecision (pedestrians blocking her way, hemming her in) and

“Where Fellini utilised Mastroianni’s effortless charm to fuel his glittering and ironic ‘celebration’ of the sweet life, Antonioni has him essay a different form of opulent ennui in a film that might alternatively be called ‘the sour life’. ” emotional confinement – the space between people, literally.

Antonioni eschews theatrics and, in all his films, actors exhibit a far greater control than in almost any of their other works (check how America’s most expressive actor of the 70s, Jack Nicholson, reigns in it completely in Antonioni’s The Passenger). At the time of La Notte, Mastroianni had just come off of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. It’s not that he’s miscast here, but something’s off and, on first viewing I’m not sure he connects entirely with Antonioni’s aesthetic. Moreau had done a couple of big films with Claude Chabrol and made La Notte just before Jules et Jim. In a way, perhaps her breezy mania in the Truffaut film can be seen as a reaction to the stifling constraints extorted on her

by La Notte. If you are familiar with either actor’s work their austere performances here will come as a real surprise.

Monica Vitti livens things up as the alluring society girl and her exchanges with Mastroianni have a febrile sexual dynamism, crackling with promise and opportunity – two things long extinguished from Giovanni’s life.

If you’re at all familiar with Antonioni’s oeuvre and

haven’t yet seen La Notte, it is absolutely essential viewing.

If you haven’t seen any Antonioni, I wouldn’t say it was an ideal starting point as there are definite longeurs and the final third is a serious drag. Try L’Avventura first – you’ll know soon enough where you stand.

In the end, perhaps it’s more instructive to view La Notte back-to-back as a double bill with a film made a year earlier by one of Antonioni’s famous countryman with the same lead actor. Where Fellini utilised Mastroianni’s effortless charm to fuel his glittering and ironic ‘celebration’ of the sweet life, Antonioni has him essay a different form of opulent ennui in a film that might alternatively be called ‘the sour life’. A contrasting double bill from an unparalleled decade in Italian cinema – but I’d start with the Antonioni.

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La Notte is available now courtesy of Eureka Entertainment. www.eurekavideo.co.uk

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In Defence...

Delusions of Love in Enduring Love

words by James Rocarols

R

evisionist defence columns usually take the form of resurrecting the reputations of classic films maudit; identifying specks of intrigue in extravagant Hollywood follies, or taking the auteurist line of rehabilitating minor works from otherwise respected filmmakers.

There should still be a place for defending the more lowly and unfashionable films which can’t rely upon such badges of honour, of which Enduring Love is certainly one. Roger Michell’s 2004 drama isn’t even conspicuous enough to have ever been passionately savaged by critics, for the film barely caused a ripple when it came out. Some contemporary reviews were largely positive but the balance of opinion weighed against the film. In the intervening years it’s been all but forgotten; just another average British film, dutifully adapted from an acclaimed novel of worthy British literary lineage. Audiences

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at the time just didn’t understand the unevenness of the film, which starts with a bang and slowly peters out like the deflating balloon that’s central to its plot. As a thriller about a stalking sociopath it’s unsatisfying, yet as a mere drama it is way too philosophical to be engaging, with its endless, stagey dialogue about the meaning of love. Worse still, it could be seen as one of those horribly sanctimonious middle-class nightmares that populated the post-millennial cultural landscape, in which the bourgeois dinner parties of Hampstead intellectuals are suddenly aflame with the fallout from dramatic parables of guilt and entitlement. Breaking and Entering (2006), Notes on a Scandal (2007). They all seemed to feature Bill Nighy gamely plugging away in genial, altruistic supporting roles, whose sole purpose was to counterbalance the moral degeneracy of their central protagonists.

Moreover, in identifying Enduring Love as underappreci-

“McEwan draws a parallel between Jed’s inflexibly irrational love and other types of blind, accepting love which can characterise healthy relationships. ” ated I aim to make no claim for greatness on director Roger Michell’s part. For many followers of British cinema, Michell would seem to epitomise the very worst kind of UK director an unexciting, middling talent in the mould of a Tom Hooper or Joe Wright, who brings a distinct lack of edge, excitement or stamp of personality to any of his projects. I won’t be aiming to overturn such sentiments, but I will make attempt to explain why Enduring Love is a very interesting film.

Can a great film appear as the result of mediocre talents?

That’s an argument for another day. But if I did have to identify a personality responsible for the films successes (as perceived by me), it would be screenwriter Joe Penhall. Like the film, Penhall himself is largely forgotten now, superseded by the likes of Lucy Prebble, Jez Butterworth and the Morgans Abi and Peter as in-demand theatrical talent scooped up by the film industry, but he was once a highly promising British playwright. His works were very interesting, concerned with how the ambiguities of language can lead to moral compromises.

Of course Ian McEwan is an extremely talented author and the book upon which the film is based is a fascinating work in its own right which must take due credit for much of the film’s thematic intrigue. But I will argue that it’s Penhall’s input that creates the film’s more pleasing and thematically resonant narrative arc – if one takes the time to look for it.

For those who haven’t seen the film or read the book I’ll recap the plot as concisely as possible. A middle-class man with rationalist and scientific tendencies ( Joe) is having an idyllic rural picnic with his partner (Claire) when they witness a drama unfolding in front of them; a hot-air balloon has gone

out of control with only a small child inside it. As Joe makes his way towards the balloon three other men emerge from the surroundings and together they try to bring it down. Unable to control it, they all eventually give up except for one man who waits too long before letting go, fatally crashing to the ground.

Back in London, Joe is increasingly disturbed by the event, but even more troubled when one of the men, Jed, contacts him and begins to follow him around, acting strangely and insinuating something passed between them that constitutes the beginnings of a clandestine love affair. The stalking becomes ever more dangerous and Joe’s obsession with working out the origins of Jed’s delusion begins to affect his relationships. His comfortable life begins to unravel. Eventually Joe definitively confronts Jed and is finally free to move forward and repair his dysfunctional relationship with Claire.

Much of the above synopsis applies to both book and film, but Penhall contributes subtle differences to the film version that make a big impact. The book is extremely clever, dense and full of ideas, but McEwan’s main concern throughout is the theme of love, as the double meaning of the title suggests (enduring can mean either lasting or surviving). McEwan draws a parallel between Jed’s inflexibly irrational love and other types of blind, accepting love which can characterise healthy relationships. In both book and film Joe posits himself as a Darwinist and a believer in genetic determinism, and his theories about the ‘illusion’ of love are paralleled with Jed’s delusion of love.

Penhall builds on these ideas, but restructures the narrative so the story has even more metaphorical weight. The balloon

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incident isn’t just a dramatic incident which allows “a means of exploring [the] characters”, as McEwan has admitted in interviews, but is transformed by Penhall into a symbolic device that underscores his subtextual theme – that of an allegorical battle between the forces of faith and reason.

One of Penhall’s key changes is to make Joe and Claire unmarried in the film. Penhall adds the idea that Joe planned to propose to Claire just before the ballooning incident, but is unable to after the subsequent dramatics and its effect on his life. Why would he add this? Because for Penhall the moment before the balloon incident represents the moment this scientific, rational character was about to give in to the forces of faith – faith in the emotional terrain of love rather than the logic of reason. As he was on the precipice of this leap of faith he was interrupted by the ultimate symbol of incarnated conflict between fate and science – the out-of-control balloon.

The scientific creation that’s at the mercy of the winds of nature. There’s a key moment during the balloon scene where the drama momentarily stops and the characters all turn and look towards a coming gust of wind. Dramatically it’s a bit silly, but for Penhall it symbolises natural forces gaining the upper hand.

After the event, Joe can no longer propose. Instead he’s sucked back into his world of rationality, unable to comprehend these forces of fate. Then comes Jed, who isn’t just a literalisation of pure love, as McEwan intended, but also an incarnation of faith and disavowal of reason. Penhall empha-

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sises Jed’s religiosity much more than McEwan. Throughout the story Joe struggles with the conundrum of who let go of the balloon first (ostensibly so he can blame someone for the would-be-rescuer’s death). This idea is given much more prominence in the film because Penhall wants to emphasise the idea of ‘letting go’ of one’s rationality and over-analysis. Joe’s disgust at Jed’s personification of unfettered faith and his innate fear of letting go drives the story, until the end of the film when he comes to terms with the consequences of ‘clinging on’ when he meets the dead man’s family.

All of this is reiterated in an even more telling concluding scene that’s also completely Penhall’s invention. Joe and Claire sit down in the field where the incident occurred, the now estranged couple nervously attempting reconciliation. The scene mirrors the beginning of the film, and Joe goes down on bended knee while opening a bottle of champagne. Though he’s not going to propose again at this very moment, the echoes of the opening scene and the resulting resolution of the narrative are apparent. “I made it all so complicated, when it was all so…” says Joe. “You don’t need to say anything”, Claire replies. Ultra-rationalist Joe ran into trouble because he made everything so complicated, when all he had to do was let go and learn to love without over-analysing it. Words aren’t important. Instead as the camera pans back and presents several overlapping images of the English countryside, the idea of the primacy of unknowable nature over science is established.

Can the film really be a hippy parable in this vein? And if so would arch-rationalist McEwan have approved? Well, just listen to Jeremy Sams’ score for more evidence of Penhall and Michell’s intentions. His lush orchestral score seems totally incongruous for such a dramatic film, evoking as it does the pastoral symphonies of Vaughan Williams and Delius in its overtures to the English landscape. I love the unsuitability and sheer strangeness of Sams’ cues and if anyone’s looking for a score to rank alongside the heightened orchestral eccentricity of Alexandre Desplat, I would recommend they check it out.

Having outlined my reading of the film, the question remains: have I succeeded in convincing anyone that it’s a good film? After all, it may be that even if the grand themes I ascribe to the film aren’t obvious to most viewers, perhaps they’re not particularly interesting to anyone. For one, I’m a big fan of allegorical fiction of this type and the idea of this titanic metaphorical struggle occurring within what seems like a safe bourgeois drama is one that resonates with me. I believe that once you read the film in this way it no longer seems an uneven or incomplete work; it’s not a wannabe thriller with existential musings tacked on, everything in the film is a significant aspect of Joe’s karmic struggle.

I also believe Michell’s direction is distinguished. Many critics admired the construction of the balloon sequence when the film came out, and it remains an impressively mounted set piece. Another great scene is the wordless romantic dinner that

dissolves into accusatory glances and mistrust, conveying the breakdown of their relationship with admirable efficiency and cinematographic flair. Generally the film is slightly ahead of its time in utilising the shallow-depth-of-field look (to emphasise Joe’s detachment from the world, bound up in his inner struggle) that’s now commonplace, but of course achieved here without recourse to digital cameras and lenses.

It could be argued that many of the much maligned British journeymen like Michell are better directors than they first appear, because Tom Hooper is another who’s managed to try out some interesting visual ideas in all his films. It’s just that they lack the same sense of experimentation in other aspects, when for example choosing material or complying meekly with narrative convention. Judging from Enduring Love, which I believe to be a fascinating synthesis of the ideas of McEwan, the grand themes of Penhall, and the nods to generic thriller convention from Michell, I believe there’s a possibility of some truth in this. If Michell could ever break from the confines of his endless collaboration with Hanif Kureishi we might get a clearer idea. Penhall, for his part, has changed direction somewhat since he became a father, his work losing a dash of its intellectual rigour in the process. But I still have faith in him.

If anyone still has some convincing to do it could be me.

Many may find my championing of this film still far too illogical to contemplate. But sometimes reason can be the enemy.

Sometimes you just have to … let go.

v

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Drinking Buddies

release date 1st November

cert (15)

writer Joe Swanberg starring Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, Ron Livingston

62

SEPT-OCT 2013 VERITE

Review by David Hall

director Joe Swanberg

Mumblecore maestro Joe Swanberg’s most commercial film to date finds him on familiar turf with a relationship comedy about two sets of couples at a crossroads. It seems like predictable Sundance-y territory on the surface but, as you would expect from this director, soon develops into something more unconventional. Drinking Buddies is a refined brew with a pleasingly bittersweet aftertaste; the work of a filmmaker who has been finding his voice through lo-fi doodles and experimental works for some time and is now delivering on that early promise.

The situation is one we’ve seen many times before; two couples, happy on the outside but evidently mismatched in ways they can’t or are unwilling to see. Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke ( Jake Johnson) work at a Chicago craft beer brewery. Their work days are full of banter, mock bickering and mild flirtation. Yet both are in relationships with other people; Luke with schoolteacher Anna (Anna Kendrick) and Kate with high-flyer Chris (Ron Livingston). Neither couple is ostensibly unhappy in the relationship (although Kate’s is the most evidently fragile) but a camping weekend involving the quartet brings suppressed emotions to the fore.

In the wrong hands Drinking Buddies would be a formulaic rom-com heavily rigged to a certain inevitable outcome – no doubt demonising certain characters at the expense of others to create a clear narrative about who to root for and who to discard. With dexterous writing, canny improvisation and a charismatic cast all working at the top of their game Swanberg offers up something more refreshing; a twist on a familiar recipe.

Of the game cast, Wilde is a revelation, turning her potential fantasy girl into a flawed, funny and rounded character and her chemistry with Johnson (from TVs New Girl) is palpable. But the four characters all have their flaws and whenever it looks like the film is heading down a familiar path Swanberg pulls the rig from underneath his characters – revealing their insecurities, flaws and foibles in ways that are gently funny, recognisable and believable.

Those familiar with Swanberg’s previous pictures will be surprised by the sheen applied here. Drinking Buddies is a leap away from the lo-fi world of Hannah Takes the Stairs and Nights and Weekends but the switch to a more polished style works well. Widescreen lensing from Ben Richardson (Beasts of the Southern Wild) opens up the drama nicely; it’s the best-looking film this director has made. But although there’s a precision to Drinking Buddies that Swanberg’s more obviously improvised and ramshackle earlier work lacked, the transition hasn’t diminished his keen eye and ear for human quirks and behaviour. Drinking Buddies takes a fair few unexpected twists and ends on a tantalisingly open note but there’s a formal control that elevates the material and shapes it into a more satisfying and rounded comedy. Frankly, that’s no bad thing.

Filth

release date 23rd September

Review by David Watson

We do love our dodgy cops. They fascinate us, compel us. Perhaps we envy their taboo knowledge; perhaps it’s their freedom to act. Whether it’s the mildly fascistic rogues like ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan or ‘Popeye’ Doyle who bend and break the rules in search of justice, or the tortured, morally dubious antiheroes of The Shield, Training Day and everything James Ellroy’s ever written – who line their pockets and break every law they’ve sworn to uphold – we love a dirty cop.

We’re not so keen on them in real life; no one likes having their cash and coke trousered on a night out by some apron fetishist with a funny handshake or enjoys being tuned up in the back of a paddy wagon by some part-time football referees. But safely shackled by the silver screen, we like our coppers tough and corrupt, our ideal law enforcer falling somewhere between Judge Dredd, the Bad Lieutenant and Chief Clancy Wiggum.

Step forward Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson ( James McAvoy), a bigoted, corrupt, bi-polar, alcoholic, drug-addicted, porn-obsessed, Frank Sidebottom impersonating sociopath with a taste for kinky sex and ‘the Games’ – his term for the Machiavellian war of attrition he wages against the world, particularly the co-workers who threaten his chances of promotion. Drafted in to help solve a brutal murder in the run-up to Christmas, Robertson finds himself succumbing to his own personal demons. His drink and drug abuse spirals out of control and he loses his grip on reality, his tenuous sanity unravelling as he undermines and manipulates everyone around him.

Adapted from his 1998 cult novel, author Irvine Welsh has called Filth “an ultra-dark, head-fucking film” and he’s not wrong. A surreal, adrenaline-fuelled, scabrously funny wallow in the depraved mind of the dirtiest of dirty cops, the film’s cheerfully anarchic degeneracy is refreshing.

Scottish director Jon S. Baird (who previously shot hooligan porn Cass) pulls off the near-impossible by tackling Welsh’s most unfilmable book, smoothing off some of its rougher edges while staying true to the novel’s core essence.

Confidently laying to rest some Ben Affleck-sized casting reservations, McAvoy is a revelation as Robertson, breathing demonic life into the misogynist misanthrope, a litany of sins hiding behind his puffy gone-to-seed choirboy features and red-rimmed eyes, humanising Robertson without ever making his actions palatable.

He’s ably supported by a terrific cast that includes Jamie Bell as acolyte and rival Lennox, John Sessions as his befuddled boss, Jim Broadbent as his bizarrely South African shrink-cum-inner voice, Eddie Marsan as pathetic BFF and bullied victim Bladesy, babydoll-voiced Shirley Henderson as Bladesy’s wife whom Bruce sexually harasses, well, simply because he can and the porcelain steel of Imogen Poots as Bruce’s feminist nemesis, the PC (politically correct as opposed to police constable) embodiment of his darkest fears.

Bleak, bitter and utterly compelling, Baird and McAvoy have fashioned a hilarious, wildly transgressive rollercoaster ride of a movie so filthy you might want to shower afterwards.

cert (15)

director Jon S. Baird writer Jon S. Baird starring James McAvoy, Imogen Poots, Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan

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Review by Jordan McGrath

Hannah Arendt release date 27th September

cert (12a)

director Margarethe von Trotta writers Pam Katz, Margarethe von Trotta starring Barbara Sukowa, Axel Milberg, Janet McTeer, Julia Jentsch

64

SEPT-OCT 2013 VERITE

‘The banality of evil’ – four words that linger in your mind, as loaded as a gun in the hands of a madman. Coined by German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) within the pages of The New Yorker following the trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, they highlight the bureaucracy of evil deeds. The idea that the true horrors carried out by the Nazis during World War II were done by, as Arendt bluntly explains, nobodies, individuals who were – in the simplest definition – just following orders, unable to think for themselves. Can you differentiate the monstrous actions from the monster? And, with that in mind, who exactly is the monster – the one giving the orders or the ones performing them? These are questions that create cavernous grey holes of moral ambiguity, a heavyweight playground of debate for anyone daring to take the plunge.

Veteran German filmmaker Margarette von Trotta is the one to do just that. Reteaming with long-time on-screen collaborator, the enigmatic Barbara Sukowa, to retell the tumultuous and controversial period in Arendt’s life and the consequential aftermath following the publication of her series of articles for The New Yorker. Arendt was heavily criticised for these and demonised – not only by the public but also by her friends and peers.

A free thinker, Arendt as a subject is a bottomless pool, inarguably brilliant but deeply flawed.

Therefore, the fact that von Trotta’s depiction of the icon is, for want of a more fitting word, ‘safe’, is surprising. The story of a boundary-pusher told in a fashion that remains comfortably within the boundaries. However, as you contemplate and scrutinize the complexity of the arguments and opinions raised after the film has ended the true fascination of Arendt becomes more evident and resonant.

Much more interested in painting a humanistic picture of Arendt rather than wrestling with the societal impact of her work and focusing the importance of her friends and the effect these articles have had on her personal life, the film goes out of its way to create sympathy. Von Trotta stands beside Arendt bravely but isn’t naïve enough to not criticise the arrogance of her stance. It may lack the ferocity of her earlier work, (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum springs to mind) but her matured and experienced approach, composed and analytical, fits the film much better given the subject.

A near 10-minute monologue Sukowa delivers to a lecture hall explaining and defending her opinions outlined in the New Yorker is an astounding, near-perfect blend of writing and performance. It’s a set-piece of rhetoric that lays Arendt bare, a punch-in-the-gut that – as the dust settles and the credits begin to roll – leaves you reeling. Hauntingly memorable, Hannah Arendt succeeds simply in the discussions it raises which, even with its obvious flaws, means it exists way beyond its runtime. Not von Trotta’s best but there’s a quality here that is undeniable.

Review by David Hall

Films and trains; it’s a relationship as old as the medium itself. The Lumière brothers were responsible for freaking out early cinemagoers with their film L’Arrivée d’un Train à la Ciotat (1895) and, from Edwin S. Porter’s landmark 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery through to Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and the recent Unstoppable, trains have provided the setting for highstakes, hermetically sealed drama for decades.

Omid Nooshin’s ambitious debut is a pleasingly old-fashioned suspensor with an eye on character development that takes its cues from both Hitchcock and Andrei Konchalovsky’s masterful Runaway Train (1986) and, while it isn’t in the same league as those classics, this bumpy ride has its moments of drama and small-scale suspense.

Nooshin’s film doesn’t have marquee names, much in the way of pyrotechnics or immediately recognisable landmarks. Instead he has Dougray Scott and an ex-Eastenders actress on a night train from London to East Sussex. But what Nooshin and his co-writer Andrew Love do, admirably and mostly successfully, is build suspense and tension around character rather than spectacle, playing on the ‘what-if ’ factor of likeable everyday heroes in extraordinary circumstances.

Scott is Lewis, an overworked doctor and single dad travelling out of London with his young son Max ( Joshua Kanyama) on the last train home. A chance encounter with an attractive fellow passenger Sarah (Kara Tointon) looks set to make his journey more pleasurable and, as they flirt and banter, we are introduced to their fellow passengers – including Brit stalwarts David Schofield and Lindsay Duncan and a livewire young man who is less threatening than he initially appears (Iddo Goldberg). This disparate band are soon forced to work together when Lewis discovers the train’s brakes have been sabotaged and the vessel is hurtling through stations, seemingly driverless.

For the first part of the film Ooshin and Love build character and drama patiently, maintaining a level of unease and expectation as the train makes its way through the night. Scott is very likeable in the lead and Tointon acquits herself well in her first major film role. They’re a believable, likeable couple. The supporting cast are drawn more broadly, which derails proceedings slightly as the drama unfolds, although Kanyama who plays Max’s young son is surprisingly good and non-irritating for a child actor. Genre fans may also feel he bears an uncanny resemblance to Danny from The Shining.

There’s something pleasingly old-fashioned about Last Passenger; a naturalism that means you’re invested in the drama right from the off.

The problem is that the threat, or at least the handling of it, lacks a certain level of intensity that makes for really exciting drama, and the film never truly quite catches fire the way you hope it will. That said debutant Ooshin shows enough promise to suggest he’s a director to watch for in the future. I await his next cinematic journey with interest.

Last Passenger release date 18th October

cert (15)

director Omid Nooshin writers Omid Nooshin, Andy Love, Kas Graham starring Dougray Scott, Kara Tointon, Iddo Goldberg

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For Those in Peril cert (18)

director Paul Wright writer Paul Wright starring George MacKay, Michael Smiley, Kate Dickie

66

SEPT-OCT 2013 VERITE

Review by Jordan McGrath

release date 4th October

‘The sea can be a harsh mistress, to some who come to call, as they make time there forever, deep in the watery grave’ read David Harris’ 1945 poem, A Harsh Mistress. He spoke of the temptation of the sea, the seduction of its beauty before swiftly reminding you that – although beautiful – it is a savage, dangerous place. And it seems Scotsmen Paul Wright, with this his debut feature, took that poem’s words and ingrained them into each frame of the mightily impressive For Those in Peril.

The sea, an omnipresent God that can give livelihood as quickly as it can take it away, is feared once again, with Wright’s tale of an outcast unfolding like a biblical parable of inconsolable grief and loss. We find ourselves in the aftermath of a tragedy in a secluded Scottish fishing town after Aaron (George MacKay) is the only one to return from a mysterious and seemingly fatal boating accident which claimed the lives of all of his crew, including his elder brother. With no memory of the event itself, and with the townsfolk wanting answers, Aaron quickly finds himself on the edge of society. But adamant his brother is still alive, losing his grip on reality by the day, he obsesses over a local folk tale.

As troubled as it is troubling, Wright’s hypnotic gaze into mania sinks its hook early on, dragging you deeper and deeper under the surface with each passing minute. Introverted and intentionally misleading, with the lines of fantasy and reality blurred, it plays like Polanski’s Repulsion told through the lens of stark documentary-esque realism you’d expect from the work of early Lynn Ramsey. And to top off this practical lyrical soufflé, a Terrence Malick influenced narration, as Aaron whisperingly guides us through his state of mind.

Burdening a film of such weight on top of the shoulders of such a young actor may seem naïve but George MacKay’s elegiac demeanour shows astounding depth. Tenacious in its temperament, his performance (alongside Erik Enockson’s score and Benjamin Kracun’s photography) delivers an experience portentous and utterly chilling. Not to say you couldn’t easily pick apart the film’s intentions and its influences – the blend of myth and reality would beg a comparison to last year’s Beasts of the Southern Wild – but this is a film for the senses, urging you to get lost in the grey sea, to let the mistress Harris was talking about seduce you.

Wright’s disregard of creating a commercial product should be respected, and the palpable, deep-rooted atmosphere he creates is worthy of a director beyond his years. His script may be a tad lacking but he more than makes up for it with his visual bravura and a final scene that will, quite-frankly, leave your jaw firmly resting on the floor. A daring and raw debut, this young director has orchestrated something special. 2013 has given us both this and Shell so I guess one thing is sure, Scottish filmmaking has a bright, bright future.

release date 27th September

cert (15)

directors Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy Review by David Hall

Resembling an extremely low-key, elusive and less adolescent Only God Forgives, Joe Lawlor and Christine Malloys’ second film is another tale of Eastern promise; a (character) study in grief that continually, teasingly and elusively hints at something more disquieting. A superlative central performance from the perennially underrated Aiden Gillen as Jerry – a broken man, haunted by the recent breakdown of his own family and floating through an alien Singapore as he comes to terms with his estranged brothers’ death – elevates Mister John. This coolly lensed, fragmentary drama teases and frustrates in equal measure but maintains a truly unsettling tone throughout, taking some surprising detours into blackly comic and surrealistic territory.

The film opens with a dead body face-down, floating in a lake of eerie stillness. The man is John, an ex-pat Brit and the owner of a popular Singapore bar. When Jerry (Gillen) gets the call about his brother’s demise he’s still reeling from his wife’s admission of a recent infidelity and in a state of almost trance-like melancholia, depression and concealed rage. Not the best mixture then, to take to an unfamiliar place full of secrets where your brother has just been murdered.

When Jerry arrives he is distant and refuses the offer made to him by his brother’s widow Kim (Zoe Tay) to stay with her and her daughter, emphasising that he is only in town to deal with John’s estate and take care of business. However, as he investigates John’s life further he finds it increasingly difficult to stay away from Kim. Reinvention and the possibility of a new life begin to appeal. But is Jerry in any shape psychologically to remain in a country he barely knows and leave behind his wife and child? As his grip on reality becomes ever more tenuous, Jerry’s involvement with Kim intensifies and sinister characters with connections to his dead brother enter into his life.

Obvious thriller material then, but, at every turn, Molloy and Lawlor eschew genre thrills in favour of a slow-burn meditative approach that allows for some quirky humour to leaven the intense air of melancholy. Less patient viewers may find the films’ glacial pace frustrating and it’s true that, for all the films’ qualities, come the downbeat ending there is a sense that something is still missing from the puzzle. It’s best to approach Mister John as a frazzled, semi hallucinatory character study of a man in personal and emotional crisis rather than as a straightforward genre piece – particularly as Gillen is so riveting in the lead.

Equally impressive work comes from Ole Bratt Birkeland – whose cinematography enhances the film’s assured sense of dread and discomfort – and Stephen McKeon who delivers an outstanding score, one of the year’s best; alternately lush and foreboding and strongly reminiscent of Howard Shore’s work for David Cronenberg.

Mister John writers Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy

starring Aiden Gillen, Andrew Bennett, Daragh Brady, David Byrne

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Review by Luke Richardson

Pieta

release date 6th September

cert (18)

director Ki-duk Kim writer Ki-duk Kim starring Min-soo Jo, Jung-Jin Lee, Ki-Hong Woo

68

SEPT-OCT 2013 VERITE

Sexual frustration, broken families and overcooked melodrama; it must be a new Kim Ki-Duk movie.

Notorious as ever, it comes to art-house cinemas after causing a stir at last year’s Venice Film Festival, where it infamously beat Paul Thomas Anderson’s far-superior existential drama The Master to win the coveted Golden Lion. How and why the esteemed jury was so taken with the South Korean provocateur remains a mystery, but one can speculate that it was a decision made out of fatigue and fear. Despite its profoundly frightening moments, Pieta is a gritty, daringly funny and wholly engrossing exercise in cinematic tolerance.

Li Jung-Jin stars as Kang-Do, the merciless, primeval henchman to a crooked Seoul loan shark.

Living in a threadbare apartment and on a diet of barely cooked meat and flesh, he scuttles across the city roughing people up and making sure they pay up their debts, or else suffer the brutal consequences.

His lonesome, pitiful existence is transformed by the arrival of Mi-Sun ( Jo Min-Soo), an indefatigable elderly woman claiming to be his estranged mother seeking repentance and the love of the inhumane monster she birthed and bastardised. A disbelieving misanthrope, Kang-Do puts her through a slew of horrific tests that will prove their bloodline; from eating dismembered body parts to unsolicited incest.

Boundaries are crossed, taboos are annihilated and a repugnant relationship ensues.

Despite the industrial slum setting and the subtext of tooth/limbless capitalism and escalating debt, Pieta conforms to the archetypal Greek tragedy.

With each revelation more traumatic and sickening than the last, Kim tells the story with brute emotional force and savagery without ever resorting to the ultra-violence made so common in South Korean cinema from the likes of Park Chan-Wook and his ‘Vengeance Trilogy’. While Jo Young-Jik’s curious handheld cinematography may (thankfully) shy away from the most distressing of graphic acts, pain lingers on the screen through Li and Jo’s fantastically devastating performances. Together, the pair share an inflammatory chemistry which keeps the volatile horror-show throttling forward and leaving us constantly dumbfounded with every new breach of their dangerous liaison.

Perhaps the film’s success in Europe isn’t all that surprising. Tackling the cruel storyline through emotional heft – without the archetypal glossy production values of the region – Pieta could be mistaken for a Lars von Trier or Gaspar Noé project. With a sublime first act, Kim struggles to keep a grasp of the knotty narrative he has spun. Fortunately, by the time the film’s stirring denouement - and, as an audience, we are absolutely exhausted with all the anguish - Kim is able to tie everything up with an allegorical portrait of dog-eat-dog, Seoul city living.

In that brilliant opening third, Mi-Sun turns to Kang-Do to denounce money as the ‘beginning and the end of all things: love; honour; violence; fury; hatred; jealousy; revenge; death.’ Unsavoury topics abound, Kim Ki-Duk combats them all with severe conviction and macabre humour in Pieta. If you can stomach such callousness, then this audacious drama is worth enduring.

Review by Stuart Barr

An (apparently) loose remake of 2011 Icelandic film Either Way, Prince Avalanche marks writer/ director David Gordon Green’s return to the introspective drama of his early career (such as George Washington) before his sideways step into bawdy ‘stoner’ comedies (Pineapple Express, Your Highness).

Set in 1988, the film follows two highway workers as they hammer in posts and repaint the markings on the asphalt in the wake of a forest fire. In charge is Alvin (Rudd, rendered initially unrecognisable simply by the addition of a moustache and a bad haircut), a bookish introvert eager to live off the land and enjoy the stillness of nature. He has taken on immature, libidinous child-man Lance (a luxuriantly puffy Hirsh in a part that might once have gone to Jack Black) – because he his dating Lance’s sister. Camping in the wilderness seems to suit the older man, who concerns himself with studying German and writing letters to his girlfriend. Lance is less enamoured and laments the lack of party action.

And that is more or less it, as far as the small amount of plot goes. The two men bicker, have some chance encounters with eccentrics, bicker some more, discuss their issues with women and bicker.

Prince Avalanche struck me as a kind of neo-frontier-western. Alvin is the older cavalryman, Lance the young buck with a lot to learn.

There is the emphasis on isolation and letters to loved ones (the 1988 setting handily dispenses with the annoyance of trying to work mobile communications into the story). At the same time, rather than scouting for a railroad or trying to chart a difficult pass through a treacherous mountain valley, the men are never really in danger and civilisation is never more than a few hours’ drive away. This edges Prince Avalanche towards satirical territory, but Gordon Green resists the temptation to draw explicit parallels between the ‘present’ of the late eighties and a mythologized past.

Ultimately the film is a character study and an examination of masculinity. The two characters seem poles apart but actually have similar issues to resolve (particularly in affairs of the heart). Rudd and Hirsch are both excellent, making two potentially very irritating characters both sympathetic and interesting.

As with all stories of this type it is all about the journey rather than the destination. Along the way Gordon Green mounts several sequences that are both lyrical and comic, and occasionally both. The pair are tempted by a trucker who passes by and dispenses unhelpful philosophy and moonshine. In one of the film’s most poetic passages Alvin comes across an old woman combing through the ashes of her burnt-out home.

Also of note is an excellent score by post-rock band Explosions in the Sky and Gordon Green’s regular composer David Wingo that greatly adds to the lyricism of the films’ impressionistic passages. Gentle, charming and amusing, Prince Avalanche is a bridge between the two extremes of its director’s artistic output to date.

Prince Avalanche release date 18th October

cert (15)

director David Gordon Green writer David Gordon Green starring Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsch, Lance LeGault

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Review by David Hall

Rush

release date 13th September

cert (15)

director Ron Howard writer Peter Morgan starring Daniel Brühl, Chris Hemsworth, Olivia Wilde, Joséphine de La Baume

70

SEPT-OCT 2013 VERITE

Surprisingly funny, unexpectedly moving and visually exciting, Rush is one of the genuine surprises of the year – focusing on a sport that has, until now, utterly eluded cinema in terms of providing exciting spectacle. As one would expect from the man who made Apollo 13, this is a resolutely oldschool crowd-pleaser but directed with unexpected vitality by the usually workmanlike Ron Howard and shot with dexterity and visual élan by the innovative DoP Anthony Dod Mantle.

A film about the competitive spirit, bravery, madness and the sacrifices – emotionally, physically and spiritually – that winners make, Rush focuses mainly on the infamous 1976 F1 season and the intense on-track rivalry between the sports’ two great iconic figures of the time; English devil-maycare ladies’ man James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and the mercurial Austrian Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl). Chalk and cheese characters with different philosophical mind-sets and approaches to the sport, they were nevertheless linked, as all great champions are, by an overwhelming desire to win.

It was this intensity that led to one of the most horrifying and controversial events in the history of the sport and provides a flashpoint moment in the film.

The central pairing of Hemsworth and Brühl accounts for a great deal of the pleasure in this film.

Brühl is a superb actor with excellent European pedigree and he’s outstanding as Lauda, capturing his blend of clinical determinedness and dark humour. The surprise is Hemsworth. Not only does he look the part, there’s a gracefulness and lightness of touch about his performance. He humanises Hunt’s publically cartoonish booze n’ birds’ player and reveals a man with a tangible air of melancholy under the playboy facade. The men’s differences are exaggerated for dramatic and comedic effect (apparently Hunt and Lauda were good friends in real-life) and there are some enjoyably broad turns – especially from Christian McKay as Hunt’s wealthy backer Alexander Hesketh. Olivia Wilde breathes life into Hunt’s sexy rock chick squeeze Suzy Miller and Alexandra Maria Lara impresses in the few moments she gets to shine as Lauda’s remarkably supportive wife Marlene.

Rush only very occasionally grinds to a pit stop.

Peter Morgan, the highly garlanded screenwriter who has never met a historical event he didn’t want to milk for hindsight-laden irony and on-the-nose voice-over treatment, overcooks the dialogue but it’s forgivable because so much of the film is so effortless and entertaining.

Where Rush truly excels is in capturing just how insanely dangerous this world was in the 70s. The cars seem extremely vulnerable, their drivers even more so and we get a cockpit eye-view from inside these potential coffins-in-waiting. Ron Howard, who freely admits he knew nothing about this story before taking the project on, has, if truth be told, always been more of a cinematic Lauda – a technical craftsman erring on the side of caution. In Rush, he seems to have picked up a little of Hunt’s freewheeling sensibility –driving with a new found freedom, out of his comfort zone. It suits him.

In the Paris, Frame: Texas (1984)

words by Dan Auty

M

ovie monologues, despite often being the scenes that define an actor or give them their most memorable moments – think Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, Robert Shaw in Jaws or Peter Finch in Network – are very hard to pull off convincingly. They simply aren’t natural; while a theatrical soliloquy works because of the already artificial environment of the stage, it takes a combination of brilliant writing and acting to make a film monologue become something other than silly, boring or heavy-handed.

For me, one of the greatest monologues in all of cinema occurs towards the end of Wim Wender’s 1984 classic Paris Texas. Written by Sam Shepherd and performed by Harry Dean Stanton, it remains a heart-breaking summation of a doomed relationship - its greatness is such that it was printed in its entirety on promotional T-shirts at the time and all eight minutes are included on the much loved soundtrack album.

“I knew these people...”

Just as iconic is Wenders’ visual realisation of this sequence. The encounter takes place in a strip club on the outskirts of Houston, where Stanton’s character Travis has tracked down his wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski), whom he has not seen for many years. She’s in a booth, unable to see him, not knowing it is her estranged husband on the other side. She expects to disrobe, but is instead asked: “Can I tell you something?” So Jane sits and listens, unsure at first why this stranger is reciting a rambling anecdote about a couple’s messed up relationship - until slow realisation sets in that it is their own tale she is listening to.

As the frame shows, Travis sits with his back to Jane as he talks. It makes perfect narrative sense that Travis wouldn’t want to look at his wife while he tells her their story, but more than that - Stanton isn’t looking at anything specific while he recalls this painful memory.

His eyes gaze up and out, as if looking back through a tunnel, picturing the events that led to their traumatic break-up and his subsequent disappearance.

Jane looks ahead too - to the viewer, she is looking out, but a cutaway suddenly reminds us that it is only her reflection she sees. As Travis’s story continues, and as she grasps whom he is talking about, her tear-filled eyes drop to the floor, as if unable to gaze upon the young woman that was a part of this sad story.

Only when the monologue ends does she look up and Travis turn back to the glass.

Ironically the filming of this scene was less than smooth. Stanton didn’t want to shoot such a long monologue at all – Shepherd eventually persuaded him – and it took all day for the actor to deliver it in one go. But the magnificent results speak for themselves.

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Jordan McGrath

David Hall

Founder / Editor-in-Chief / Designer

Managing Editor

jordanmcgrath@veritefilmmag.com

davidhall@veritefilmmag.com

thanks: Contributors Stuart Barr Dan Auty Neil McGlone Peter von Bagh Evrim Ersoy Robert Makin James Rocarols David Watson Luke Richardson

Proofing James Marsh

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Image credits: Metrodome - 1,8,10,11,13,14,69,73 / Warner Bros - 16,18 / Artificial Eye - 16,31,30,32,67 / eOne - 16 / StudioCanal - 16,17,20,68,70 / Lionsgate UK - 20,63 / Third Window Films - 22,24,25,26 / Eureka Entertainment 54,55,56 / Twentieth Century Fox - 58,59,60,61 / Sony Pictures - 62 / Soda Pictures - 19,64, 66 / Kaleidoscope Enteratinment - 65

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