Rebecca -Alfred Hitchcock

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Alfred Hitchcock, Film review, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, Laurence Olivier, Movie, Noir Movie, Rebecca, Thriller and Suspense Movie

A Paler Shade of Noir

I watched Hitchcock’s 1940 film, which I had seen before, close on the heels of re-reading du Maurier’s wonderful 1938 novel, and whilst the film is in many ways a brilliant adaptation particularly served by excellent performances, a tautly written screenplay which sensibly uses du Maurier’s dialogue, where this is given in the book itself, stunning cinematography and of course is excellently suited to the master of suspense’s vision, I do have some reservations at choices which substantially weaken the film, in comparison to du Maurier’s edgier, unsoftened version.

Some of the choices made by Hitchcock (or possibly by Selznick, who produced the film), seem pragmatic and perhaps understandable, but there are two major changes – the rather soapy, surviving adversity as the music swells to soupy lushness, ending, for Mr and Mrs and, even more importantly, the changed revelation of how ‘the crime’ actually happened, absolutely undercuts the far more powerful, morally tainted and uncomfortable questions du Maurier leaves for her readers, and, of course, for her unnamed heroine. I can’t say more, in case someone reading this hasn’t read the book or seen the film. Did David O. Selznick demand this choice, or did Hitch himself pull his punches?  Some stars would not have wanted to be left with moral taints, but I don’t think Olivier was one of those.

The book itself creates the ambiguous ‘after the end scene’ ending, by having the second Mrs de Winter describe the Winter’s post Manderley life, at the start of the novel. We do not get this in the film, either in the beginning or at the end, which creates more upbeat than du Maurier gave us.

I suppose another contrast to the book is what happens to Mrs Danvers. Hitchcock goes for high opera, and a visual which in some ways underlines the similarity that the book has with Jane Eyre, though, again, du Maurier presents something less resolved, less black and white. Readers of course have time to think about what they are reading, and can put a book down. Viewers, at least back in 1940 could not pause and reflect; the dynamic of the movie, once started, must be clearer to follow and more direct in its journey

There were some more understandable changes, which are inevitable when adapting a book which is most careful and subtle at applying the build-up of tension quite slowly, particularly at the start, whereas the film must concentrate everything into 2 hours and 10 minutes.

I was impressed by how very quickly and deftly plot was advanced, and how much the wonderful cinematography immediately created the layered build-up du Maurier’s prose had been crafted to do. We lose of course the interior feelings, imaginings, the running-in-the-head commentary of the book’s narrator, but the way, for example, the pile-up effect of napkin after napkin, leaf of stationery after leaf of stationery, stamped with the assured R de W logo has on the second wife, is expertly rendered by shot choices and Joan Fontaine’s feelings and thoughts as they express in her body language and face.

Fontaine, Olivier, Anderson

The initial slow build of connection and suspense from Maxim and the gauche young woman’s meeting in the book is given a much more dramatic and quickly signalled ‘something is dreadfully wrong’ subtext in a film scene which is not in the book.

The DVD comes with a few extras, some interviews with Hitch and some of his film critic admirers, which were interesting, but there are quite a lot of rather hard to read text notes, biographies of the two central actors, etc.

Something I found most fascinating is that Olivier was insistent that his then lover, Vivien Leigh (they were not yet divorced from their respective first spouses) should be cast as the second Mrs de Winter. It was Selznick who, rightly, nixed this, saying Vivien Leigh did not have the right qualities to the part. Too right – if anything Vivien Leigh (and, particularly as her marriage with Olivier began to unwind) displayed behaviour and powerfully charged emotional states which put her on the Rebecca end of the spectrum – plus, of course, that fabulous erotic beauty and clear sexiness.

Vivien Leigh who became the second Mrs Olivier, rather than the second Mrs de Winter

By all accounts, Olivier was perfectly beastly to Fontaine, and rather undermined her. Hitch, we are told, as he so often did, manipulated the insecurities the young and at that stage, fairly inexperienced Fontaine must have felt, to create ‘in real’ the not good enough, can’t match up, extreme fragility and low self-esteem of the character. Fontaine was of course an American, so there was plenty of potential on-set feeling against a Yankee playing a quintessential Brit, particularly in such an iconic role, as du Maurier’s book had been a runaway best-seller from the off.

No doubt a similar ‘in reverse’ happened when the Brit, Leigh, won the coveted role in Gone With The Wind, which her American counterparts had failed to carry off, though I don’t think either George Cukor, who initially was on board as director, or Victor Fleming, who did direct, had reputations for mis-treating their actresses in order to get specific performances, in the way Hitch did, particularly with the women who were not yet established stars

My other ‘I can’t quite love this film, though I do admire it a lot’ criticism is of Franz Waxman’s score, which, to my taste is a little too ‘this is a love story’ – which is certainly where the Hollywood choice moral, rather than du Maurier’s darker, more bitter and difficult book, and the soupy almost happy ever after ending, at least for Mr and Mrs – are leading. I would have preferred a little more salt, a little more sourness, a little more bitterness in that music.

A stunning example of George Barnes’ craft (photo from Pinterest)

Most curiously, though the film was nominated for a whole cluster of awards, it won just two: Best Cinematography for George Barnes, and Best Picture – despite the best picture award (which thus went to Selznick) it did not win the Best Director for Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock by Jack Mitchell

Olivier, Fontaine and Judith Anderson, as a magnificent, intensely still and unhistrionic villain were all nominated, along with Robert Sherwood and Joan Harrison for best adapted screenplay, Waxman for the score, and also nominations for editing, art direction and special effects.

I found it a fascinating and rewarding experience to revisit book and film so closely together

Rebecca, Movie – Hitchcock Amazon UK
Rebecca, Movie – Hitchcock Amazon USA

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That Sugar Film

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Damon Gameau, Documentary Film, Film review, Food Industry, Health and wellbeing, Sugar, That Sugar Film

Sweet and deadly

Now this is a film which is right up my street, as I am enormously interested in the politics of the food industry and how it deliberately dupes us and deceives us – and even more interested in matters related to health and wellbeing.

Damon Gameau, an Australian actor and film-maker did not really tell me anything I didn’t already know (because I read a lot of books about the subject) but, my did he tell it entertainingly!

It is because this film is not just talking heads stuff by the prophets of doom that I rate it so highly. Neither does it fall into the other side trap of being all pizazz and flashy dumbed down soundbites without any reference and substance.

Instead, there is a very assured tightrope walked between giving lots of facts, having various experts talk through the science of how the body metabolises sugar, in its different forms, all accompanied by `turns’ by various luminaries, including Stephen Fry, giving us some of the scientific information in a more engaging and witty way.

There is even, I kid you not, a star turn rock star number with Gameau as a kind of Presley/Alvin Stardust/Rocky Horror combo sugar devil in an outrageous pink jumpsuit leering seductively at a group of babes dunking themselves in chocolate mousse! This by the way is Gameau at the end of his 60 day 40 teaspoons of the stuff ‘normal Australian sugar consumption’.

Behind all the fun `sweeteners’ though, is a shocking story (one we DO know, though, it seems, ignore) Gameau engages in a particularly shocking experiment to show the devastating effects of sugar.

Gameau’s diet had been completely sugar free for three years, and he had not drunk alcohol for about ten years. He ate a particularly healthy, wholefood diet. At the start of the film he is clearly someone glowing with vitality and energy, and when tested by nutritionists and medics, was pronounced extremely healthy, with no markers for fatty liver, heart problems, or raised blood lipid levels and the like.

The `experiment’ was that for 60 days he would keep to the same calorific intake, – normally most of his calories came from healthy fats, protein and complex carbohydrates – but would consume the amount of sugar and hidden sugar (processed foods) eaten and drunk by the average Australian – 40 teaspoons a day. But he would not do this by consuming junk food, instead, it would be by the consumption of food wrongly supposed to be `healthy’ – for example, fruit juice, smoothies, `high energy’ muesli bars and the like.

Part of the lie we have been fed is that ‘calorie control’ is where it’s at – but calories from different food sources do not metabolise the same way – the calories in sugar behave differently in the body than the calories in fat and protein

By 18 days in, this vibrant trim man was looking more than a little pasty and jaded, puffy around the eyes, which had lost their sparkle. His skin and hair looked dull, he was visibly developing a paunch. He was also suffering mood swings. Part of the brief for the experiment was that he would keep up his normal good exercise patterns. The `normal sugar consumption of the average Australian’ diet was eating into his energy, creating those sugar rush manic surges followed quickly by listless slumps and the inevitable (cocaine like) cravings for more of that white death stuff. He was finding it hard to exercise, as he lacked the energy.

Even more alarmingly his liver was showing signs of damage after 18 days – liver cells dying, releasing their contents, becoming cirrhotic, the signs of fatty liver disease. Fortunately, at the end of the 60 days, and the resumption of his old, healthy diet, all the bad effects had gone after a couple of months, though Gameau did say that the first week of cutting out the addictive sugar (it affects brain chemistry and hits the `reward’ centre of the brain and its neurochemistry exactly like cocaine) was pretty tough, and he certainly had `cold turkey’ symptoms

If Gameau and the visible evidence of the shocking changes sugar produced on him are not enough to make spoon on its way to sugar dish pause, there is the heartbreaking 26 tooth extraction on a Kentucky boy, just shy of his 18th birthday, caused primarily by a variant of Pepsi called Mountain Dew, which he had imbibed since he was 3.

Also explored tellingly in this film are the obvious parallels between big tobacco and the sugar industry. Just as the tobacco companies leaned muscle and spurious science funding scientists to do research to deliver skewed results to disprove links between smoking and disease, so the sugar industry does exactly the same.

This is a wonderful, hard hitting film, delivering its punches of fact wrapped nicely in a ….lethal candy coating. `Sweet,’ being so much linked to pleasure and reward, is hard wired in our brains BECAUSE in nature readily available fructose , is RARE, so we are programmed to want it, and respond to it, as a useful source of energy which can be stored as a long term energy resource, as fat. The problem for us of course being that now, fructose is readily available and what was an evolutionary advantage is now the sweet kiss of death.

I have one disappointment – little mention is made about artificial sweeteners, which carry as many, and in some cases, MORE problems associated with their use. Sweeteners, and the perfidious ubiquitousness of THEIR presence, as food manufacturers respond to and create new possibilities for our desire for that sweet taste, are every bit as dangerous. Many, for reasons of weight control, have got as far as checking the labels and avoiding sugar in their processed food and drink, but are surrendering to the hugely profitable diet industry and ‘going diet food’. There have been plenty of studies about the artificials, but, again, these are not hugely funded because the funders are those big, powerful, vested interest concerns who of course are not going to be giving money to researchers to prove that their products are dangerous! A little mention is made of sweeteners in the Extras section of the DVD, but the lack of much information is likely to just see the sugarholics switch to sacchaholic behaviour, in the belief they might be sparing themselves from the dangers of fructose consumption. Not so

Bravo to Gameau, making such a brilliant documentary

He also authored a companion book, That Sugar Book, where a lot of the research studies are cited
That Sugar Book Amazon UK
That Sugar Book Amazon USA

I received the DVD as a review copy, from the Amazon Vine programme, UK. It will be released for sale on 27th July in the UK. A visit to Amazon USA site shows it is unavailable to view/buy. It probably just means that video rights have not yet been negotiated, but I smelt a conspiracy around the evil empire of sugar. Well, they suppressed studies showing the perfidious nature of the stuff, so surely, an indie film is small fry to them.

That Sugar Film DVD Amazon UK

Banished – TV Drama

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Banished, BBC, Jeffrey Walker, Jimmy McGovern, Joanna Vanderham, Joseph Millson, Julian Rhind Tutt, MyAnna Buring, Russell Tovey, Ryan Corr, TV Drama

Banished – A stunning drama – The first and (sadly), the only series.

I was completely hooked on this excellent 7 part series when it was transmitted earlier this year, and have been urging anyone who missed it to buy the DVD.

It was a stunning drama – the fact that Jimmy McGovern was the writer, almost guaranteed that we would have gritty realism, punches (many) to the heart and gut, and a lot of complex and nuanced issues to leave the viewer puzzling over – not to mention difficult challenges for the characters, who would be complex people.

The script then would be a wonderful starting point for a potentially brilliant drama, and ‘all’ that would then be needed would be equal brilliance from director, (Jeffrey Walker) technical crew, and most of all, some wonderful actors. Tick, Tick, TICK!

The background and setting is Australia, 1788, and the arrival of the first convict ship with transported criminals to be banished (some for life) into this new world. So, the convicts are one group, struggling in a harsh place, to survive. Then there are the military, here for a limited term of duty (but this is still in years) to keep those convicts under control. And then there is the governor, not a military man, a Crown appointed ruler. So, clearly some different agendas going on, and a wealth of potential conflicts. And also of course some other disparate people, with different agendas again – mainly, the representative of Divine Law – the Church, which in this case is in the guise of a Reverend (and his wife) who are deeply committed to saving souls.

And, almost greater than all of these individuals and their conflicts is the harsh, unknown, inaccessible continent itself. Reaching Australia was dangerous and hazardous, the colony will need to support itself – growing food, farming the livestock they brought with them, hunting what they can, and the difficulty of the journey means that it is impossible to know when more convict ships (with more supplies) will arrive, the present military will be relieved, or, indeed whether the mother country will remember its servants and its outcasts at all. And, even more unknown – what of any indigenous peoples, and will they be friend or foe, ‘savages’ who can be duped and exploited, or, perhaps, peoples to be respected and negotiated with.

Now the bad news, the very very very bad news is, that the BBC recently announced that there would not be a second series, so some of the threads which were clearly waiting to be developed will not happen – and the relationship with the indigenous peoples was clearly a strand for the second series, as, in the first series, almost the whole focus is ‘inside the colony’ with only one episode indicating that there might be some other human life outside the cleared area of the first settlement.

Please note, the fan made trailer below uses the dreadful trailer music employed by the Beeb on the show – it is not indicative of any in show soundtrack. I recently read an interesting article by James Gill on the Radio Times website about the dire inappropriate use of trailer music which seems snatched at random from a ragbag entitled ‘any old stuff for trailers’. I guess this is Auntie thinking this is the way to get down with the kidz and attract a younger generation. Seems a bit reductive/insulting/patronising to me. But then I’m not a kidz.

This is an absolutely operatic, epic, classical tragedy type piece, – the very antithesis of a familiar, little, domestic drama. Consider, for example, the fact that there are male and female convicts, but soldiers do not come with their wives or with their children. So, how are ‘men’s needs’ to be met – why, the female convicts of course. They are there as bounty, the soldiers’ creatures for the choosing. And it is a hanging offence (for male convicts) and a flogging (for females) for the convicts to have sexual relationships with each other.

Then there is the issue of how the female convicts  should be assigned. For fairness, lots are chosen, women will be the property of several men, and of course, higher ranking officers get dibs. Disobeying orders given by a superior officer is also a punishable offence. There are potential challenges between the military and the governor, with a more hard-line military leader, and a governor who is more idealistic, and with more ‘humane’ ideas (though still autocratic)

Even more pressing, with effectively 1 armed soldier to 10 convicts, in a situation where there is extreme shortage of food, where sex is a hanging offence, and heat and drought are extreme, the whole situation is a tinderbox of conflict. And this is not a confined prison where cons can be locked in a cell and all kept apart from each other. Compliance is needed for any kind of physical structures to be built. It is only the hostility of the land itself which prevents mass escapes. Or indeed any escape

“Stinging tree” by Cgoodwin – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Don’t even think about all the things which slither, scuttle, swim, crawl, hover or lumber ponderously, Oz even has lethal trees!

There are some wonderful central stories to follow. First are two sets of star crossed lovers. One is a more mature couple – the charismatic Julian Rhind Tutt as Tommy Barrett, who has fallen in love, on that voyage, with Elizabeth Quinn (MyAnna Buring) Quinn is a strong, forthright and equally charismatic woman. The two also have a fierce friendship with fellow convict, James Freeman, the magnificent Russell Tovey. Freeman’s story is the central one. He also loves Quinn – and has an equally strong bond of friendship with Barrett. So clearly, a painful struggle for him between sexual love and the strength of loyalty given between friends. The rules of the colony of course prohibit Quinn and Barrett being together, and Quinn is useable by the soldiers, and cannot choose refusal

Buring, Rhind Tutt, Tovey

The second star-crosseds are a young and beautiful pair, innocent and in some ways not yet tested by complexity. Pretty Katherine McVitie (Joanna Vanderham) has been falsely accused of theft by her jealous employer, because the master of the house tried to force himself upon her. She, and an idealistic young soldier, Private MacDonald (Ryan Corr) have fallen in love, and both are anxious that she should only be his bedfellow, and that she shall not have to share her favours. Unfortunately, MacDonald’s highest ranking superior, the Machiavellian, Iago like figure, Major Ross (Joseph Millson) – another stunning performance, the person you love to hate, also develops a growing obsession with McVitie

Hiss the villain – Millson

But there are many many more conflicts than these – every single character is nuanced, and at times divided against themselves, torn by different beliefs, different loyalties. It almost feels invidious to name any of the actors, as every one commits wonderfully to the piece, and many of the performances are brave, raw, and shocking.

However, it is James Freeman, more than any other character, who is tested, torn, challenged by some unbearable choices; he is forced to be both villain and hero, sometimes in the same instant. And I have to say that a number of times, in the series I was on the edge of my seat, literally shouting ‘No, NO, NO!’ as something absolutely inevitable was clearly going to happen, and Freeman would be both the perpetrator and the victim, and torn apart by conflict. And Russell Tovey rises to meet the challenges of playing this character beautifully. He is raw, subtle, ferocious, a brave maelstrom of emotion. At times watching him was almost uncomfortable because of the nakedness of the ugly struggles the character goes through – struggles with himself. It’s a performance without confines, almost going right up to the wire of being overdone, but I never felt that TOVEY was self-indulging. Where there was a sense of ‘overdoing the emo’ it was FREEMAN. It must be said that there was an excellence in performance by all,  and each actor was contributing to cranking up the standard of everyone else.

I SHALL be buying the DVD, for sure, but I am still kind of needing the astonishing power of the initial transmission of this to settle, before I am ready to watch it again.

The series was fairly rapturously received by viewers, but did not do well from the professional reviewers. However, there has been quite a strong campaign launched on social media to demand the BBC rethinks its decision not to go for a second series. Whether public affection can override a generally ridiculing response from the heavyweight papers, remains to be seen.

Jimmy McGovern

The heavyweight TV reviewers pretty well all  found the piece overdone and kind of uber-soapy. My word, though is ‘operatic’ , even ‘elemental’ not to mention, naked and dangerous – that’s because I really did ‘get’ the rawness of the world that those early convict ships and their entire community, were establishing.

It gets my very high fives.

And here is an interesting piece on the Beeb and its cutbacks, as well as more info about ‘Banished’ from a blogger who is external to WordPress, so I can’t appear her in the Posts That Caught My Beady Eye widget

Banished Amazon UK

Alas, Statesiders, this does not seem to have made it to your side of the pond.

Our Friends In The North (DVD of BBC Production)

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Alun Armstrong, BBC, Christopher Eccleston, Daniel Craig, David Bradley, Gina McKee, Malcolm McDowell, Mark Strong, Our Friends In The North, Peter Flannery, Peter Vaughan, Tony Haygarth, TV Drama

When Memory Turns Out To Be Vindicated…………..

Back in 1996 I was completely glued to BBC’s 9 part drama series, Our Friends In The North, produced by Charles Pattinson, directed by Stuart Urban, Pedr James and Simon Cellan Jones, and scorchingly written by Peter Flannery, based on his original idea and stage version for the RSC in 1982. At that time, I knew it was one of, or possibly THE best TV drama series I’d ever seen.

OFITN, which had had a hugely checkered, difficult, stop-go history at ever reaching transmission at all, for over 12 years, was an examination of British Politics, corruption in local government, central government, the Met, an indictment of class and the North-South divide, far-left politics, old-style Labour, new-style spin, and the rise of Thatcherism. It covered a period from 1964 and the Wilson government, – the `white hot heat of technology’ when Britain was cool and a country of potential, to 1995, when the opportunities offered in the 60s for a more egalitatarian society had all gone, and the politics of a different class had resulted in `there’s no such thing as society’

It was a drama tackling serious issues, but what made it magnificent drama, rather than merely `talking heads analysis’ was that it was based around the lives of 4 working class or lower middle Geordies, a group of friends in their late teens in 1964. Over 30 odd years the friends, two of them on the verge of University or already in academia, one indulged one dreaming of musical stardom, and one blighted by a violent, deprived, alcoholic upbringing, meet, connect, divurge, meet again and follow different ideologies and trajectories.

Eccleston, Craig and a bad hair day in 1970

That this still astonishing, still stunning, still thought-provoking and gut punching drama was released onto DVD, is probably down to the fortunate result of 2 of the 4 leads becoming pop-culture stars – Christopher Ecclestone, as well as being known for serious, intense, quality work, – Shallow Grave, Cracker, Jude amongst others – and also the 9th Doctor Who, played the politically focused Nicky Hutchinson in OFITN. But it probably did the fortunes of the release onto DVD no harm at all, that the most emotionally hard-punching, heart-breaking role was given to an unknown, only a couple of years or so out of drama school, called Daniel Craig….For anyone with a complete indifference to Hollywood blockbusters, who has, moreover, been stranded on a desert island without any access to the broadcast media, for the last 10 years, Craig became James Bond in 2005. Geordie Peacock, his character in OFITN is a far cry from the muscle man, secret agent and swoon factor of Bond

Nor have the careers of the two other `Friends’ sunk without trace – Mark Strong, playing wannabe a pop star Tosker – credits include Prime Suspect, Fever Pitch, Emma – his is a solid, working career rather than the stardom which happened to Craig. And Gina McKee (the only genuine North-Easterner of the four) whose Mary goes through the most steady progression into self-awareness and growth of the four, again has a solid rather than starry career (though award winning) and works as much in theatre as media – The Forsyte Saga, The Street, Waking The Dead.

Supporting the 4 relative unknowns were a wealth of amazing, established actors, including Tony Haygarth, Malcolm McDowell, Alun Armstrong, Peter Vaughan, David Bradley

Unfortunately the YouTube upload in sections has rather poor sound quality

A gripping, riveting storyline, based on real scandals around bribery and corruption – T. Dan Smith, John Poulson, the attempt to clean up Soho and the Countryman enquiry into corruption in the Met, there is a lot of sex, a lot of violence, an explosion of wigs and funny fashion to be recollected – and a wonderful, evocative soundtrack of 30 years of music as commentary to events on screen.

Friends in 1995

If I were to be a little picky, yes, the `Geordie’ accents of the 3 male friends are at times (particularly in the earlier episodes) a little ouchy, and there are a few technical hitches in sound quality in some scenes which mean that I was rapidly turning up and turning down the volume as the occasional scene descended into something approaching a whisper whilst the following scene boomed out blaringly till the level was taken back down, but, hey, these are minor. And then there are the wigs…but these are as much a pleasure as a pain

It’s a cracking, cracking drama, ye kna, man…………….

However, poor Statesiders, be aware this does not seem to be available in a DVD version outside Region 2 (Europe) so unless your player is all regions or you know someone with an all region player, these delights are not for you………….though you can at least see some of the done in sections uploads on YouTube

Our Friends In The North Amazon UK
Our Friends In The North Amazon USA – Region 2, Europe

Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky – TV adaptation

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BBC Drama, Bryan Dick, Film review, Kevin Elyot, Patrick Hamilton, Sally Hawkins, Simon Curtis, TV Drama, TV Film, Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky, Zoe Tapper

Patrick Hamilton’s stunning trilogy beautifully rendered

I completely missed this at the time of transmission, possibly because at the time I was unaware of the trilogy of which it was based. And in many ways I am very glad of that, as I do prefer to have read the book on which a film or TV dramatisation has been made, as going to the book afterwards seems to get in the way of my own experience of the original.

Of course the danger of this approach might be the purist reader is forever nitpicking about how badly the book has been served and doesn’t do it justice.

Happily, this is not the case here, and in the main there has been not only a faithfulness to the book, but something added by performance and by the wonderful visual element showing the minutiae of a vanished time

Patrick Hamilton’s book, Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky was originally 3 interlocking books, published over a period of some 5 years, centring around a Fitzrovia pub, The Midnight Bell, in the late 1920s, and telling, from 3 different viewpoints, stories of hopeless love, broken dreams and the aspirations and hardships of ‘little people’, the ordinary lives of those without the benefits of money and education, but with the desire for something better, somewhere……

Bob is the barman at The Midnight Bell self-educating himself, wanting to be a writer. Pretty Jenny, from a very poor background, is initially proud to get a live-in job as a housekeeper and cook to 3 elderly people of means. Warm-hearted, homely Ella is the barmaid at The Midnight Bell. Bob loves ruinous Jenny, who loves no-one, though Bob in turn is beloved by Ella. It’s a kind of much more sparkling, much more witty, much more emotionally, less didactic Huis Clos.

Simon Curtis is a director of fine pedigree from stage, where his credits include the original production of Jim Cartwright’s Road, TV – credits include BBC’s Cranford and film – My Week With Marilyn.

Kevin Elyot was a fine writer (My Night With Reg) – and wisely here uses much of Hamilton’s sparkling, precise dialogue, lifted from the trilogy, and does not seek to impose his own voice. He prunes, shapes and guides, trusting in the source material.

All performances are assured, Bryan Dick as sweet, charming Bob, far too susceptible to the twin delights of a pretty ankle and the alcohol he serves, Zoe Tapper as ravishingly pretty, dramatically damaged Jenny, and, especially Phil Davis, always worth watching, here, more dapper, less outwardly seedy than his usual casting, but still definitely a bit creepy, as Ernest Eccles, erstwhile admirer of the stand-out, heart-breakingly must-stay-upbeat Ella, beautifully played by Sally Hawkins

The last section of the piece, Ella’s story, The Plains of Cement, as in the book itself, is the one which best manages the balance between humour, pathos and a kind of anxious terror. Davis’ horribly lonely Eccles is both repulsive and inviting of pity, and the scenes between him and Hawkins’ overwhelmed, not quite sure what is going on Ella are both funny and creepy, and I found myself with anxiously thumping heart resonating with Ella’s troubled confusion, bewildered by it all.

The structure of the 3 stories is beautifully woven together. If I have one minor criticism, it is that the end of the piece half suggests a sense of missed opportunity for Bob, which is not suggested for him, in Hamilton’s book – it may well be the reader’s, and indeed, the viewer’s perception, but it is not something which is made part of Bob’s perception.

The DVD has been uploaded in entirety (in small sections) to You Tube, I thought it was worth getting to play as a seamless whole in good definition, but at least the You Tube gives a sneak preview and allows you to make your choice!

Highly recommended

Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky DVD Amazon UK
Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky Blu-Ray Amazon USA

Gett : The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

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Film review, Gett : The Trial Of Viviane Amsalem, Israeli Film, Menashe Noy, Ronit Elkabetz, Sasson Gabai, Simon Abkarian

Sombre Film With A Rather Old Fashioned Feel : but then, so are Rabbinical Divorce Laws

Viviane Amsalem, an Israeli woman, wants a divorce, as she and her husband are not compatible. She has lived apart from her husband for 3 years. Unfortunately for Viviane, this is Israel, and the `Get’ or divorce ruling, can only happen if the husband agrees to the divorce. And Viviane’s husband does not want to release her

Shot entirely in soulless official hearings rooms and waiting areas, this is a claustrophobic film, with a trio of powerful performances from, particularly from Ronit Elkabetz, as Viviane Amsalem, Simon Abkarian as her stone-faced brooding, implacable husband Elisha, and Menashe Noy as Carmel, Viviane’s fiery, impassioned lawyer. Sasson Gabai is equally excitable and prickly as Elisha’s advocate, brother, and upholder of traditional rabbinical values.

The divided couple, both deeply suffering, one wanting her freedom, the other savagely unable to let her go `she is my destiny’, despite the fact that both leak hard suffering through their association in every glance, givw wonderfully internalised performances, electric with seething, restrained bitterness. The advocates roar and gesticulate, with fiery expression.

The film misses its final star, for me, because a few of the `star turn’ witness performances are a little too much bravura character comedy `we need some laughs here’. And though we certainly do, at times that dialogue and some of those performances are a little too obviously `play this for laughs’ and verging on caricature. Performances for the stage rather than film. Oppressive though the film and its subject matter is, a lighter touch on the `breathing space’ moments would have better kept the integrity of what the film is about.

Though the dreadful rigidity and wrongness of the system is clear, what is well done is that the husband is not played as a pantomime villain by Abkarian – he performs the role without commenting on it. It is a truthful, restrained performance which means that Elisha makes sense to himself.

Elkabetz is a multi talented woman, as she co-directed and co-wrote, as well as starred in this.

Her powerful pressure-cooker performance eventually and agonisingly explodes as the film reaches a dreadful climax and the final images had me out of my chair with shock and disbelief. Skilfully done.

This film is Israel’s entry as `Best Foreign Language Film for the 2015 Oscars.

In filmic terms, it has no whistles and bells, no fast cutting, soundtrack et al, and has nailed its submission to issue and performances.

Costumes are almost unremittingly black and white (!) throughout, pre-and-post credits and titles against a heavy red background. Sudden appearances of colour in clothing are shocking, as if we have forgotten light, shade and nuance could exist at all.

I received this as a review DVD from the Amazon Vine programme UK. The film does not yet appear under the above name on Amazon USA. Maybe it will be retitled.

Gett: The Trial Of Viviane Amsalem Amazon UK

The Great Beauty

Tags

Film review, Italian Film, Paolo Sorrentino, Rome, The Great Beauty, Toni Servillo

Flowers of Beautiful Emptiness

Paolo Sorrentino’s much lauded, multi award winning film about La Dolce Vita, the hedonistic, excessive, stylish – but ultimately exhausted ennui of Roman high-life is itself a feast of beautiful, empty, melancholic ‘so what’ exhaustion.

The conundrum at the heart of this, is: how can you make a film about a group of sophisticated, pretentious, self-indulgent excessive artists or, more properly, for the majority, pseudo-artists, without your own art-work being subsumed into the gorgeous soft porn, sated, over-indulged luscious skin and vision-fest you are portraying.

I was not completely certain, despite the wit in the script, the gorgeousness of the vistas and especially the stunning, stylish women, which the camera lingers lovingly over, in their often naked voluptuousness, whether what I was watching was art, or merely another excuse to show beautiful women naked, and a parade of ageing powerful men clustered like vampires in a feeding frenzy round succulent female flesh.

The central character, through whose eyes we ingest Rome’s beauty, fiddling whilst – not necessarily Rome, but life itself, burns and is destroyed, is Jep Gambardella, a 65 year old journalist, of acerbic, mordant pen. Jep is lionised by his society, he is, as he always wanted to be, a mover and a shaker, and delights in being the sort of man who attends the best and wildest and excessive gatherings, but is not only the man who attends those parties – but the man whose dismissive words can make those parties FAIL. Once, many years ago he wrote a novel which was praised high, now he makes and unmakes reputations.

The unseen presence which stalks through the film is the grim reaper; death. Although it is hearing of the death of his first love which brings existential despair up close and personal for Jep, we see through his eyes, as he plunges into the swings and roundabouts of parties, sex, and spectacle that he (and all around) are doing this to stop awareness of the knowledge that we are all on that journey to the grave.

The film swings constantly between the overindulgence of spectacle, movement, noise and distraction, and silence, emptiness, spaciousness, some kind of surrendering acceptance, as exemplified by the presence of a 103 year old nun, soon to be canonised. However, the spectacle of the lizard-faced, decrepit nun crawling in suffering penance on hands and knees up a flight of stairs as part of her spiritual, saintly journey, is no particular solace either.

The performances, (especially Toni Servillo as Gambardella) are all impeccable, the whole filmic quality of the piece is lush, wonderful, artful, but at the end I was left looking for something which I’m not certain I found – something to value, some quality of heart. In some ways, though the characters in this piece have a sophistication and finesse, and a stylish wit and brio, which makes them at least knowingly witty company, I was left with the same feeling of distaste for humankind which reading Bret Easton Ellis’s The Laws of Attraction gave me. And the point of that comparison, is that this is as partial and incomplete a view of humankind (very little that is kind, in this) as the other side unreal saccharine view of traditional Hollywood. This was a world peopled pretty well by only the stunningly beautiful or the Fellini-esque grotesque. It missed the extraordinary of ordinary itself.

As filmic spectacle, it is indeed splendid, but is it more than just a very finely lacquered mind-game to be dissected and debated. And is that enough?

The Great Beauty Amazon UK
The Great Beauty Amazon USA

Inside Llewyn Davis

Tags

Carey Mulligan, Coen Brothers, Garrett Hedlund, Inside Llewyn Davis, John Goodman, Oscar Isaac

Uncomfortable, hilarious, poignant and musical is the brew

This Coen Brothers film, about the burgeoning folk scene in the early 60s had me wincing, laughing, and absorbed for its 90 minutes. The film opens in Greenwich Village in 1961 at a precise time just BEFORE Dylan burst onto the scene.

Llewyn Davis (an excellent performance by Oscar Isaac) is an utterly self-obsessed, careless, narcissistic musician. He is however a man of talent, self-belief, and creativity. And also laziness, prickliness and melancholy.

So the nub of the film is the self-obsession and belief which the artist MUST have, if they are to be putting their creative vision out there – married with the fact that the person themselves may not be particularly likeable. We (the consuming public) half forgive the often careless and badly behaved artist if their WORK touches us.

The Coens present us with this – in many ways Davis is a rather unlikeable human being, careless of everyone else’s feelings, tender of his own. At yet, there is a curious vulnerability about him which is attractive enough to allow him to use people, because they see something in that vulnerability which they want to protect, not to mention a sense that what the artist creates may be much finer than the artist himself. So, as that fineness of creation is IN the artist, this means they must, surely, be a better person than they appear to be. Well, that I think is the theory that has artists forgiven for what would be unindulged behaviour in non-artists.

Maybe we do believe, unlike what Orwell says, that an artist IS a special kind of man!

Davis stumbles through, journeying from New York to Chicago and back, in pursuit of fame and fortune, insulting people wittingly and unwittingly, coercing his way into places to stay, meals to be fed – and making at one point a terribly wrong decision around a recording session which the audience knows will sting. Davis is careless and selfish, sure, but he is also gauche and possessed of a certain gullible innocence – he both exploits and IS exploited.

I’m sure I’m not alone is also rooting for the parallel ginger cat story, one of those wonderfully real Coenesque eccentricities, which left me, as a cat fancier, wondering and worrying about one development. (can’t say more, spoiler avoider)

Llewyn Davis’ has a Dylanesque musical style and voice, and indeed Oscar Isaac has some of that intense street-waif sexiness of the young Dylan, as in the album cover of the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and there is almost a sub-text of ‘could this be a version of Dylan’. There is a neat barbed moment around this in the film, which had me wincing and laughing in equal measure.

With a great musical trawl through, in terms of live performance and soundtrack music, this was a thoroughly enjoyable film

Other performances of note in the film are the sweet faced, sweet voiced, foul mouthed and angry character played by Carey Mulligan, John Goodman as a fairly obnoxious jazz musician and Garrett Hedlund as Johnny Five, a beat poet, in the road/Chicago section of the film.

The 40 odd minute ‘extras’ have a certain rough-cut charm, probably particularly to musicians.

I have one small criticism of the sound quality of the spoken material, which seemed unusually quiet and muttery from some of the performers, so I had to have the volume turned up beyond normal levels to properly hear much of the dialogue.

I received this DVD as a copy for review purposes from Amazon Vine UK

Inside Llewyn Davis Amazon UK
Inside Llewyn Davis Amazon USA

Forks Over Knives

Tags

Colin Campbell, Documentary Film, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Forks Over Knives, Nutrition, The China Study, Veganism

Far more than a polemic for veganism on ethical grounds alone

Based in part on the results of a ground-breaking observational and epidemiological study on nutrition and degenerative disease in China, in the late 90s. by 2 leading scientists, one American and one Chinese, this film pulls no punches and does not pussy-foot around the links between obesity, diabetes, many cancers, coronary heart disease, osteoporosis and other degenerative conditions, and the typical Western industrialised McDiet. That is, a diet high in artificial processed foods, heavily laced with saturated and hydrogenated fats, corn syrup and other sweeteners, salt, meat and dairy produce from factory farmed methods, heavy on the additional growth hormones, antibiotics and fed on pesticide rich vegetation as the least offensive option. Several recent food scandals showed factory farming has also resulted in herbivores being fed ground up animal remains in order to boost weight, with predictable results.

Colin Campbell

This is a documentary and educational film which takes that study, and others, hooking up Colin Campbell, one of the aforementioned scientists, and author of the mainstream book brought out from those findings, The China Study, with work done with seriously ill patients, treated by radical changes in diet, rather than pharmaceuticals, by clinician Dr Caldwell Esselstyn

Colin Campbell, co-author of The China Study (the book which rendered more suitable for lay readers, that study, which took several years) and clinician Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn go further than linking our additive rich, tampered with, factory farmed chunks of flesh rich diet as the prime cause of the rise in degenerative disease.

Their evidence heavy material convinces that whether heavy meat and dairy consumption is processed or of more natural, traditional provenance, it is the high protein concentration itself which is the problem. There are some sobering cross-over lab studies cited around high levels of protein switching on and low levels of protein switching off tumour development. Sure, these are lab rat studies, and we do always have to question the validity of studies applied to one animal being extrapolated over to another species, but, sobering and thought provoking.

This is of course not new material – there have been many, smaller studies, reaching the same conclusion. What is interesting about The China Study – and this film based largely around those findings, is that both Campbell and Esselstyn, nutritional scientist and clinician, respectively, are not vegans on ethical grounds, or banging a drum for their dietary beliefs through vested financial interests. Rather, both of them, originally from farming (cattle rearing) stock, CHANGED their views because of the evidence they found – Campbell from a life-time in nutritional research, initially espousing the we need more protein line, and Esselstyn working at the start with seriously ill heart attack patients who were so far down the line there was little that could be done for them except a dreadful cocktail of surgery or drugs which were not expected to extend life beyond months. Years later, survivors both from his initial cohort, and later patients, tell their own surprised and miraculous (to them) stories of the rapid and positive changes in health caused by moving to a plant based wholefood diet.

Dr Esselstyn

As this short, direct, fierce and sensible film wears on, other reasons for vegetarianism are woven in, beyond the compelling evidence for personal health. These include some references to the ethical arguments, the arguments around the waste of resources in terms of land as the clearing of rainforests to provide arable land so that the developed world can continue to eat itself to unwellness continues apace. They lay out information about starvation in some parts of the world happening precisely because resources are going to feed the animals that will feed the haves, rather than the land being used for plant material to feed the have-nots of mankind directly. There are also the economic arguments about the unsustainable costs of healthcare in the developed world, as more and more expensive pharmaceutical drugs are seen as the cure for, or control of, degenerative and debilitating conditions which have been caused by our poisonous diet.

Not to mention tie ups between the interests of big pharma, big agri, and politics.

The film makes the telling case that logic, ethics, evidence, environmental concerns all point to a simpler answer. In the words of that other politics of food prophet, Michael Pollan

Eat Food. Eat Less of It. Eat More Plants

This is not a film presented by sweet hangovers from the love and peace brown rice, flowers in the ringlets and lentils era – this is hard edged, well argued, with plenty of evidence from all sorts of surprising people, including a group of fire-fighters, medal winning runners and a rather well-muscled martial arts experts, that wholefood plants based diets are for seriously fit people. In fact, I thought this film was putting a stake through the vampire heart of the steak-and-pharma industries.

Forks Over Knives Amazon UK
Forks Over Knives Amazon USA

The Wall (Die Wand)

Tags

Die Wand, Film review, Julian Roman Polsler, Marlen Haushofer, Martina Gedeck, The Wall

As powerful and plangent as the book : deepening mirrors

I came to this 2013 filmed version on the back of reading Marlen Haushofer’s 1968 published book. Indeed, the republication of the book, and its reaching a new and wider audience, has come precisely because of this film. We appear to have a virtuous circle going on, for once, in the relationship between the single writer’s vision and the collaborative vision of the film.

Normally wary of film adaptations of books which have strongly resonated, I might have passed Die Wand by, except for the fact that thoughtful reviews re-iterated the powerful sense evoked by the book, speaking of the patience, depth and meditative quietude and despair in the film. I’m so glad I trusted the sensibilities of the reviewers, because with this film, is something which deepens my earlier reading of the book – and the book itself is deepened by the dynamics of vision, sound and embodiment of the narrator in Martina Gedeck’s deep performance The film, directed by Julian Roman Polsler runs for 108 minutes, and can be watched with German or English narration, and is also subtitled. I chose to have Gedeck’s voiceover, and English subtitles. A performance of this truth needs no other interpreter getting between actor and viewer, in my opinion.

The word which the film owns is ‘reverence’ – not a sterile reverence for Haushofer’s strange and disturbing book about the only woman left alive, in a lonely landscape, after some cataclysmic event has turned all life outside her Alpine valley to stone – but a reverence for the living world itself, for authenticity, and for, in Haushofer’s words, love as the rational choice. Not the gushy gushy of sentimentality, but a respect for the nature of matter, of the living and the dying of things, of the tangled, interconnecting web which human being alone have choices about – often taking the wrong paths of enmity and hatred.

Certainly this is not a film to satisfy if what is wanted is a ‘what happens next’ as, like the book, itself, a journal written by the narrator over four months as she looks back over her two years since ‘the end’, as she waits, implacably, for her own, time is looked forward to and back. There is no fast cutting, there is the slow pace of the breathing landscape, the camera and the actor observing the stillness. In this, it reminds me of the film Into Great Silence, an uspoken filmic observance of life in a Carthusian Monastery.

The transformation of the city dwelling narrator, as Gedeck inhabits her (it is a performance of inhabitation and revelation rather than of demonstration) in her designer cream frock, full faced and jittery, to the shorn haired figure, like one of the Fates, staring into the inevitability of whatever new or old may befall, is haunting.

The spacious empty soundtrack, except for Gedeck’s voiceover of occasional phrases from her journal, and the natural sounds, is perfectly deepened by the underlining, sparing use of a Bach partita, melancholy and haunting, perfectly balanced in its plenitude and its emptiness.

Forgive the purpling prose, this/these, (film and book, book and film) are fully what they are, to be experienced by their next reader/viewer, who will enter into their own relationship with both film and book

Die Wand (The Wall) Amazon UK
Die Wand (The Wall) Amazon USA