Hard Times

“The Revenant”

What, precisely, is a revenant? The word calls to mind both the half-rhyme “remnant,” and the notion of revenge. As it happens, it’s an extraordinarily apt title for the new film by Alejandro G. Iñárritu (the director of last year’s Best Picture winner, Birdman), which shows us Leonardo DiCaprio playing an experienced hunter and tracker whose frame, for much of the film, carries around only the tattered remains of a formerly strong body, bent on retribution. The literal meaning of “revenant” is a person returned from the dead, either as a ghost or an animated corpse, making it triply suitable for the story of the film.

DiCaprio’s trapper, named Hugh Glass, has been hired by a company of hunters to guide them through the unsettled wilderness of what later became Montana and North and South Dakota, in the winter of 1823. He is accompanied by his son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), and haunted by the spectre of his dead wife, a Pawnee Native American, who was killed by a white officer. The company is made up of a few dozens of men – including the leader, Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), the shifty-eyed and hard-muzzled John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), and Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), little more than a boy – but their numbers are cut brutally short when the native Arikara ambush their camp. The survivors, whose final tally is a mere ten, hurry away down the river on their shabby log boat.

High Times

“The Big Short”

In the financial crisis of 2007 – 08, when the United States housing and credit bubbles burst and securities’ values tumbled downwards, the key culprits, it is generally agreed, were those who were trusted to keep American and world finances secure: Wall Street investors, traders, bankers, regulators, ratings agencies, related governmental departments, et cetera. Meanwhile, those who suffered most severely as a result were the people who had done the trusting, who had borrowed money to buy homes and establish security for their families, and were ultimately roughed up by the ruthlessly greedy and fraudulent system. One of the virtues of The Big Short, Adam McKay’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’s account of the build-up to the crisis, is that it both implicates the whole host of parties judged to be responsible, and shows concern and sympathy for those who bore the difficult consequences, and what those consequences largely entailed.

The Big Short is being called a comedy by most viewers and critics, but formally it doesn’t quite qualify. The genre is satire, the form is probably much closer to a tragicomedy, and the predominant stylistic elements are those of a mockumentary, in which a fictional story is told using documentary techniques, such as interviews and ostensible in-the-moment camera tricks, capturing what seem like real events – think along the lines of the television shows The Office and Modern Family. The two chief differences between those shows and this film, however, is that they are entirely comedic, whereas The Big Short depicts a global catastrophe and all its harrowing implications; and the stories of the two shows really are fictions, while The Big Short keeps reassuring us of its non-fiction credentials, to varying degrees of persuasion and annoyance.

Winter of ’52

“Carol” and “Brooklyn”

It’s the end of the year 1952. New Yorkers are reeling from a summer of singin’ in the rain, during the heights of McCarthy-era paranoia, and have just learnt that their years of post-war monotony will continue under the man, calm and white-haired, who had launched the successful and epic campaign to bring that war to a just end. In two of the boroughs, Manhattan and Brooklyn respectively, two love affairs are burgeoning and blooming, one illicit and tensely passionate, the other conventionally sacred and cheerful; both are touchingly heartfelt, both have their moments of poignancy and of delight, and both are designs of fiction, comprising the plots of two year-end releases at the movies.

The first, steaming along with an ardour that all but melts its icy setting in Manhattan, is the story of Todd Haynes’s Carol, adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt which tells of a romance between two women, taken from experiences in Highsmith’s own life. In the film, they are Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett), a well-heeled housewife with a wry smile and eyes of exquisite though cold enthralment, and Therése Belivet (Rooney Mara), the reticent and alert clerk who draws and holds Carol’s attention at the toy counter of a large department store. Carol leaves her gloves behind as she leaves – whether or nor by accident is the R2 question – and Therése, finding her information in the store’s accounts, drops by to return them. In ostensible thanks, Carol takes Therése to lunch, and the astute reader will need no further prompting to know where all this is headed.

The Year in Movies – 2015

“Trainwreck,” The Back Row’s film of 2015

The year 2015 may be remembered in future decades as a hinge between previous years’ suppressed but rising unease throughout society, and the movements of turmoil and upheaval in local spheres as well as on a global scale. The importance of the UN Summit in Paris for our global environment has been stressed, and the crises that broke out in the latter part of the year reminded us of how far our world is from where we’d like it to be. There are reportedly more refugees now than there have ever been since the end of World War II, and the threat of attacks from ISIL, or Daesh, has stoked terror and reckless urgency in any number of the world’s democracies. In America, a handful of presidential candidates (largely but not solely Donald Trump) have succeeded in stirring up the most sickening strains of racism and fascism in numerous enduringly racist pockets of the West; and in South Africa, we face our own turmoil in a clear low point in satisfaction with and confidence in a disappointing government controlled by what was once an ardent liberation organisation – a discontent whose definitive moment of 2015 can probably be identified as the student protests in October and November, shutting down universities and government systems nationwide in an outpouring of frustration with the ruling political factions and a fervent desire for change.

This blog has not turned into my political column – my chief concern here is still the movies and their aesthetic considerations – but it’s important, I feel, to provide some historical context when reflecting on the year as it’s represented in its movies. The cinema, across all its disparate subject matters and radically diverse styles and treatments, is about life itself, and something of the world and the time often finds its way into the very best of art, whether by design or not. Here I give my selection of the best films of this year – noting that there’s a great deal I didn’t see – and hopefully, if you’ve seen them as well, you’ll recognise the intimations of life contained in them.

Of course, another way life finds itself reflected in the good movies of the year – usually far more obvious to viewers – is when directors include details and experiences of their own personal lives in their films. My selection of the best movies of 2015 are all made by directors who bravely and deftly created personal images in their work, often unconsciously finding expression of the deeper and more tender parts of their inner selves. What makes cinema into an awe-inspiring art form, and what makes a film great, is the discovery of inner lives, psychic murmurings, and emotional and intellectual stirrings in physical detail, visualised and captured with both perception and skill. The great movies are the ones that reveal the essence of a creator’s distinctive personality, the ones where style is not an art-conscious gimmick or ideological tactic, but the exterior protraction of an artistic identity.

Round VII

“Creed”

I confess I had never seen a Rocky movie before, nor been convulsing with the desire to before this month, and, for all those who find themselves in similar situations, the antidote to your vast lack of enthusiasm is Ryan Coogler’s Creed. Sylvester Stallone returns as the Italian Philadelphian boxer, now retired, but the fight here belongs to Adonis Johnson, aka Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), the illegitimate son of Rocky Balboa’s longtime rival, Apollo Creed. Coogler also co-wrote the script with Aaron Covington, and this is evidently a very personal project. I've written before that remakes, sequels, and otherwise formulaic stories are not aesthetically marked by that status, and do not signify a lower tier of cinematic quality, as some film pundits seem to continually suggest, and Creed is an exemplary illustration of my assertion.

The action kicks off in Los Angeles in a juvenile detention centre where the young orphan Adonis, an inmate, is in a fight with some other boys (all inmates are black). A woman comes to see the duly confined boy and offers to take him in. She is Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad), Apollo’s widow, who has come to terms with his infidelity and intends to take care of his son. Adonis lives by his mother’s name, Johnson, and we find him again as an adult, fast-tracked on a shimmering career path in banking, and boxing on a Mexican circuit on weekends. Mary Anne tries to discourage him, reminding him of the immense harm it caused his father (among many other horrible instances, Apollo Creed was killed in the ring), but still supports him in his decision to leave his job and California and pursue boxing in Philadelphia.

The Fans Strike Back

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

If, like me, you were under the impression that what George Lucas has by now compelled dozens of obliging actors into calling “the Force” was something of a Spinozian God, what a pantheist might call “Nature” or “the Universe,” you will no doubt be somewhat puzzled by the title of the new Star Wars film. Why would an impersonal deity ever have been asleep? However, if you’ve come to consider the Force of the title as a metaphor for the saga itself, or the thrust that drives the movie-making monolith, the title makes total sense, and couldn’t be further from an untruth. The series has lain dormant for at least 10 years, since the release of Episode III, The Revenge of the Sith, though many of the fans (who, as you know, comprise virtually all Anglophone populations around the globe) may contend that the last sparks of the immanent divinity were seen as far back as in 1983, when The Return of the Jedi rounded off the first trilogy in the franchise.

Star Wars is – and, since its initial arrival in 1977, always has been – a cartoon on a vast scale, in a live action format, infused with the odd coupling of a mystical underpinning and a post-60s humanist and revolutionary atmosphere. What George Lucas has furnished us with has never been anything like great cinema, or even rather good cinema, but a thin escapist fantasy that mass popularity and fanboy frenzy have sustained over three and a half decades. Admittedly it’s altogether successful in this regard, even for someone as resistant as I to the whole rigmarole – I never quite forgot I was watching a vast Wagnerian puppet show, though my surroundings and my home planet faded quickly enough from my consciousness, which was just as well considering all the noisy philistines the franchise seems to attract into the theatre.

NOTE WELL: While the single spoiler that follows is well marked, if you’d like to retain the surprise of watching the film for the first time, read no further until you’ve seen the film.

Spectral Success

“Spectre”

Laying it on thick has always been a popular approach at the movies. Filmmakers found it to be a possible means of expressing mounting pressure on the psychic front and studios learned that, if teased in a trailer, it can draw great numbers of moviegoers, eager for a couple of hours of diversion and sensual bombardment. Sometimes the trick works stunningly, as in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, in which Eva Green, smeared with red lipstick and wrapped in a tight red dress, struts about Collinsport, repeatedly appealing with ever-lowering necklines to the carnal interests of Johnny Depp. As the story and its small-town setting sank lower and lower into Gothic folly, Green’s lip-smacking torrent of histrionics surpassed the boundaries set by both Burton and Depp on every front. Sometimes it doesn’t work quite as well, as can be seen in a large number of films every year, which flop despite – or, more likely, because of – large and overbearing elements, sown together by swarms of producers for what is hoped to be maximum impact. As with everything at the movies, the success of the mode of overdoing it relies on the intuition of the filmmakers.

In Spectre, that intuition fails – most irreparably. Sam Mendes and the production team, following up on Mendes’s 2012 mega-hit Skyfall, wished to replicate that release’s success, and devised Spectre to be bigger and louder where Skyfall was big and loud, to stretch further where Skyfall had reached into James Bond’s family history, and to offer even more of the faux-seriousness, faux-darkness-and-ominousness, faux-character-detail that Skyfall had set up. I suspect what these filmmakers neglected to observe was that to further feed on audience hype and consumerist frenzy with a sequel, one should either make that sequel obligatory viewing by refusing to tie up loose ends in previous entries (as was done, rather necessarily, with the Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings sagas), or leave audiences waiting an extravagantly long time for it (as was done, twice now, with the Star Wars franchise).

Opening the Box

“Dis Ek, Anna”

Izel Bezuidenhout (as Anna), Nicola Hanekom, and Morne Visser in Sara Blecher's "Dis Ek, Anna"

Dis Ek, Anna opened throughout South Africa on Friday 23 October 2015, with one of the most anticipated releases ever for a South African film, mostly due to the popularity of the two books from which it’s adapted – Anchien Troskie’s Dis Ek, Anna (“It’s Me, Anna”) and Die Staat Teen Anna Bruwer (“The State vs Anna Bruwer”). The essential subject of the film is known to most people, whether or not they’ve read the book: Anna, as a 12-year-old girl, is repeatedly raped by her paedophile stepfather. The event that triggers the telling of her story is nearly as well known: Anna, as a 30-year-old woman, arrives at her stepfather’s house one evening, and when he answers the door she shoots and kills him. These are the two crucial facts of the film. Based on the anticipation among South African audiences for its release, stoked by the film’s screenings at the Durban International Film Festival in July and the Silwerskermfees in August (where it won Best Feature Film, Best Director, and Best Actor for Morné Visser) and the film’s overwhelmingly positive receptions there, most people have decided that it’s precisely what they’d like to go see.

Dis Ek, Anna is directed by Sara Blecher, who also directed Ayanda, which opened three weeks ago, and Otelo Burning, released in 2011. With Dis Ek, Anna she takes a clear stance of condemning child rape, but shows no perspective or even interest in the characters of her story. In any of the scenes where the stepfather, Danie (played by Morné Visser), molests or rapes Anna (Izel Bezuidenhout), Blecher’s camera tactfully moves into a position where nothing distasteful is shown, while still efficiently conveying all the necessary information. An obvious reason for this is that it would be illegal to show much more of Bezuidenhout – who is still a child – but Blecher has personal reasons as well. We can’t stand to see an adult man raping a young girl, and Blecher can hardly stomach the thought. She leads up to each instance of molestation bearing the notion that if we actually saw it, we would be repulsed, and probably even psychologically damaged in some way. Her images successfully convey, mostly pre-emptively, the horror she feels when she contemplates Danie’s actions. The outcry that broke out when Dis Ek, Anna was given the age restriction of 18 (SVLN) by the Film and Publication Board – for apparently containing images that may be considered pornographic – was just; there is no visible nudity in the film, and nothing in here is erotic or rousing. It’s the furthest from pornography any sex could be.

Stage Craft

“Venus in Fur”

This is one of my first reviews, written before I had a blog, when I first saw this movie. You’ll notice disparities between my current writing and the writing found in this early work. I hope the difference reflects well, if not on me, at least on your judiciousness.

A moment from "Venus in Fur," hopefully hinting at the titillation on offer here

Like most great films, and indeed many good films, Venus in Fur, Roman Polanski’s latest endeavour, can inspire, and has inspired, a good deal of discussion on what it’s about: sex and power; art and life; the artifice of the theatre and how that helps the art form help us deal with our questions; the simultaneous logic and absurdity of desire, etc.

But why choose? And why not consider that it could also be about the film’s auteur, or at least that some understanding can be gained from looking at Mr Polanski’s life and career? A Holocaust survivor, an exile and a fugitive, a victim of great loss and suffering, a sex offender, Mr Polanski does not often play at autobiography in his films, but does seem to tackle, or at least engage with, some of his personal demons in his films. The film is based on the play by David Ives, which in turn in based on the 1870 Austrian novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masochs, from whose name and work we’ve derived the world “masochism”. That novel was based largely on the life and relationships of its author, and Mr Polanski has certainly left his mark on this adaptation. The female part, Vanda Jourdain, is played by his wife Emmanuelle Seigner, and her foil, Thomas Novachek, is played by Mathieu Amalric as an impersonation of his director, unless his diminished stature, nervous energy and neat haircut are all a coincidence.

Fairy Tales

“Maleficent”

This is, I believe, the first review I ever wrote, long before I considered starting a blog. You’ll notice disparities between my current writing and the writing found in this early work. I hope the difference reflects well, if not on me, at least on your judiciousness.

The regal Angelina Jolie, grabbing attention and holding it with a firmer grasp than the all-share holds over a coke addict

In Maleficent, Disney’s new live-action release, the 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty gets the “Wicked treatment”, in which the well known tale is told from the perspective of its villain, providing a back story to explain her malice and inviting us to sympathise with someone we’ve been taught to distrust and despise. Unlike Wicked, however, Maleficent does not act as a parallel to its source, but is a re-telling, shifting the “good” and “bad” sides and giving an entirely different conclusion to the story.

If any of the early Disney classics were to be chosen for adaptation into a contemporary 3D CGI-laden blockbuster, Sleeping Beauty might just be the best choice. Often hailed as one of Walt’s best, it features magnificent stylised designs by the painter Eyving Earle, also the film’s art designer, giving it a truly unique look, a lush score by George Bruns, based on Tchaikovsky’s music for the ballet, moments of grandeur and one of the most menacing villains in the canon. It was also the first to be photographed and released in the 70mm-widescreen format and the last fairytale adaptation by the studio until The Little Mermaid, 30 years later, long after Walt Disney’s death. The visuals of this film, stunningly rendered by the photography crew and effects artists, don’t look like a photo-real copy of Earle’s gorgeous paintings, but rather like another rendition of the same universe. The forest has the same charming quaintness and calmness in its isolation from the castle, which has the same medieval austerity, though this time with a harsher atmosphere about it because of the people who inhabit it. The director, Robert Stromberg, was production designer on Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, and this film takes place in another rich dreamscape, though it’s a little less superbly bizarre than Avatar or Alice, because it professes to exist on our planet.

Looks Like Rain

“Noah”

This is one of my first reviews, written before I had a blog, when I first saw this movie. You’ll notice disparities between my current writing and the writing found in this early work. I hope the difference reflects well.

An example of a distinctive image in Aronofsky's idiosyncratic Biblical epic "Noah"

Nearly sixty years after the release of DeMille’s vast epic The Ten Commandments, and ten years after the significant success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, Darren Aronofsky and Paramount have taken the sizeable risk of producing a biblical epic, the story taken directly from scripture, and releasing it as a major commercial feature.

Naturally, it took time to get the project backed and produced, with Aronofsky beginning work on the script in 2000, and continuing with it, along with his collaborator Ari Handel, intermittently between other ventures until they released it as a graphic novel in French in 2011, under the title Noé: Pour la cruauté des homnes (Noah: For the Cruelty of Men). After this was published, a deal was struck with Paramount for a budget of $130 million, still no mean sum in Hollywood terms.

I can report that Aronofsky’s persistence – and Paramount’s capital – have paid off… somewhat. The film, not without flaws, is mostly a success, in some ways a marvel, and often an entertaining work, not to mention one of the craziest big films in years. It’s not a subtle work, but Aronofsky has not aimed for restraint and understatement here. He’s made a film telling an ancient, archetypal story, loaded with celestial beings, centuries-old patriarchs, supernaturally-endowed plants and trees, sacred animals, divine retribution and, bizarrely, environmentalist fury. The parts of Noah that don’t work really and truly don’t. But the parts that do sweep you away entirely.