Reign Over Me ( Mike Binder. 2007)

I think this just might be the first film to address 9/11 pertinently. Incidentally, that infamous date designating both time and place in our collective consciousness, is not even mentioned until half way through the film. Binder's decision to sift through the bitter remnants of grief outside of the predictable format of the disaster film, is nothing less than audacious. Of course, this is a fictional story and films like 'United 98' and 'The World Trade Centre' have traded on the kudos of realism (the former by adopting documentary techniques, the latter by purporting to include moments of 'actuality'...in the words of Alicia Silverstone in 'Clueless' - 'WHATEVER!') for their emotional (read manipulative / exploitative or downright stupid) effect. Adam Sandler is truly a revelation in this film; his demeanour, reflected through the shallow focus of the camera, is that of a somnambulist who is only half aware of his surroundings. The pain that he cannot channel is manifest in the lugubrious camera movement and the significance of the heavy rock soundtrack that accompanies him where ever he goes so as to smother his grief. The film's triumph is in its lack of condescension. Too often films dealing with mental illness are content to suggest that all bad things must be exorcised and once this is achieved, everything can return to normal. 'Reign Over Me' eviscerates such platitudes of their trite content; in fact, it is only once Sandler's character has confessed, has admitted he once had a family, that his desperate and somewhat vitriolic rage at the world becomes apparent. However, it is Sandler's performance as someone who is clearly ill but intent on 'finding his own way' which ultimately rids this film of any accusation of being emotionally spurious or manipulatively sentimental. Sandler is so delicately poised between a childlike simplicity and unbearable frustration that his performance throws into poor relief those of actors such as Russell Crowe (whose portrait of a mentally ill mathematician left me wondering if he had a particularly virulent case of the nits). There is no tidy answer to the question of how one can even speak of such sadness and Binder acknowledges this with his inchoate conclusion. This films is serious and it is affecting but I'd also like to add that it has veritable moments of humour courtesy of Sandler's character whose special manner of articulation lacks any kind of politically correct filter.

Lights In The Dusk. Aki Kaurismaki. 2006

This is the second film I've seen of Kaurismaki's, the first being, 'Leningrad Cowboys Go To America'. I came upon him because of my unadulterated love of all things Jim Jarmusch who cites him as a major influence (once you've seen the two, the connection is palpable...Jarmusch even plays a dodgy car salesman in 'Leningrad'). This had all the absurdity of 'Leningrad' without any of the sweetness. The central protagonist, Koistinen is a hopeless loner and, if we're being mean, a total loser; he becomes embroiled with a group of Finnish gangsters through his infatuation with their moll, Mirja. The humour is so dry, it's like trying to eat a piece of burnt toast whilst having a severe case of laryngitis. You want to sympathise with Koistinen because he's actually done nothing wrong but he's as apathetic to everything as his environment is to him (Kaurismaki is very picky about which bits of Helsinki he shows his audience...it's not an advert for tourism); in fact, his whole demeanour suggests that trying to work his way out of the spiral of disaster he's involved in is simply too much effort. So, I've made this sound like a depressing hour and a half in the cinema. It's not. Kaurismaki sets up this cinematic world as a piece of absurdist theatre from the get-go. There's barely any camera movement and his signature narrative elipses and inclusion of dead time are all here to remind you that you're just watching a film and this is just a bit of fun. So, why not throw the central character in jail for something he hasn't done and while you're at it, kick him when he's down on his luck? After all, it's just a laugh!

I had read various reviews of this film suggesting that it isn't bleak because the central character never loses his sense of hope (some people can't take it, can they!). Frankly, I think this is rubbish. I don't think Koistinen has any hope to start with and that's precisely what makes him so great and the film so funny. He's never surprised or outraged by anything that happens to him because he doesn't view the world en rose; he is wholly accepting of the repetition, the boredom and banality of everyday life... which leads me to wonder whether Kaurismaki had seen Jarmusch's 'Broken Flowers' before he made this?

Far From The Madding Crowd. John Schlesinger. 1967

This is a really long film (2 hours 40 mins) but I actually enjoyed it immensely and I'm not even a person who is partial to Hardy's special brand of melodrama. I had heard that the acting was not so fantastic and there's certainly nothing I would describe as a tour de force here but I think the gloomy restraint rather suits it. Furthermore, seeing Julie Christie at the height of her 'it' girl fame (replete with purple, Biba-esque eyeshadow) only reinforced how this Bathsheba could capture not only the hearts but also minds (read sanity) of all the men who surround her. So, she may have only been being Julie Christie, but she does it ever so well here. Terence Stamp is truly truly slimy in this (to my mind, he looks like a tacky car salesman)...the montage scene where he demonstrates his prowess with a sword is hilarious (I think Bathsheba is supposed to be so frightened that she's turned on...personally, if some gappy toothed man was waving a sword in my face, I'd tell him he'd missed his chance and that would be the end of it). The most appealing thing about this film is the photography by the commensurate Nicholas Roeg (whose 'Don't Look Now' Julie would appear in later); I don't know where it was shot but it looks like the South Downs to me. Really gorgeous colours abound throughout: pastel springtime shades mixed with the earthy hues of autumn all conveyed through languid panning shots. I think this would be a perfect film for a Sunday afternoon when it's raining outside...there's even a happy ending (who would have thought that of Hardy!)

Fur. Steven Shainberg 2006

‘Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus’ (Steven Shainberg, 2006)


Director Steven Shainberg is no stranger to the weird and arcane, his last feature being 2002’s ‘Secretary’. In, ‘Fur’ he palpates similar territory taking Diane Arbus, the controversial American photographer who has been both pilloried and praised in equal measure, as his subject matter. Unlike other ‘bio-pics’, Shainberg does not purport to give his audience factual accuracy; by focusing on what may have been Arbus’ catalyst for her extraordinary career, he presents the film as a piece of interpretive conjecture from the outset. Dispelling the myth that Arbus was a mere voyeur who exploited the disenfranchised, Shainberg suggests that it was within the abject and marginal that Arbus found her true calling; her sympathy for the freakish and strange is shown to be the result of her peripheral status within middle-class society making her photography an act of kinship and not objectification. Unashamedly pro-Arbus, ‘Fur’ gives us a real insight into the formation of a seminal artist whilst the powerful and emotive performances by Downey, Kidman and Burrell ensure that the film is consistently imaginative rather than ridiculous.

Mutual Appreciation. Andrew Bujalski. 2005

‘Mutual Appreciation’ (Andrew Bujalski, 2005)


Having only just received UK distribution, this may be your first encounter with the work of Bujalski; if so, you have a treat coming to you. ‘Mutual Appreciation’ represents the director’s second foray into the world of filmmaking after his impressive and critically lauded debut, ‘Funny Ha Ha’. Bujalski returns to similar subject matter here: the liminal, disaffected youth of thinking America. All the big existential questions are posed here but, unlike Richard Linklater’s affected and self-conscious philosophising, Bujalski places the quiet, unassuming and sometimes downright inarticulate thinker at the centre of this funny, engaging and unpredictable ménage a trois. It is Bujalski’s penchant for dead time, the sentence that trails off, drunken ramblings, seemingly improvised dialogue and simmering emotion that marks him out as a filmmaker of considerable merit with an aesthetic that hangs somewhere between the French New Wave and the sublime work of John Cassavetes. If you are in any doubt over the state of American independent cinema, you must go and see this film!

The Night Porter. Liliana Cavani. 1973

I think this is a really strange film and it has left me with an equivocal feeling. I don't think I could easily say whether I liked it or not and that's probably a very good thing. Aesthetically, it's dark and lugubrious. It's closer to Visconti's 'Death In Venice' than Bertolucci's 'Last Tango In Paris' (with which it seems to have been frequently compared). I suspect that the comparison with Bertolucci has to do with the subject matter: a sado-masochistic relationship between a Nazi concentration camp guard (Dirk Bogarde) and a young Jewish girl (Charlotte Rampling) is revived after the event to deleterious result. Yet the fascination / disgust with sex seems to have more to do with a Freudian repetitive compulsion than shock value or mere titillation. Half way through the film, I decided that the key to the central relationship was the fact that Bogarde's character is embroiled in a group who refuse to admit any guilt at the same time as knowing they are guilty of perpetuating atrocity on a mass scale; in the context of guilt and denial, his relationship with Rampling's character becomes one of both punishment and a way of working himself out of guilt. In many ways, Rampling's character is the more controversial of the two as she returns to the man who has made her a victim in more ways than one. In the extras, Rampling confesses that it was her character that sat most uncomfortably with contemporary viewers because it was thought that nobody would ever do such a thing...

The film is affecting because it explores the grey area between good and evil which is continually denied.

Mon Dieu

Bonjour,
I am new to the world of blogging and thus a little shy of intrepidly posting the quotidian wears, tears and bores of my life for all to see. I am currently trying to print an academic article on Sofia Coppola's cinematic career to date. My main aim in doing so is to expose the substance below the style and, most importantly, to single-handedly salvage 'Marie Antoinette' from the opprobrius criticism it unduly received...all in a day's work! I've just gotten home from an exceedingly depressing talk given by academics to aspiring academics on the harsh realities of publishing. Given the fact that this talk was held by specialists in the field of Divinity, I can only hope that my article may be of more interest to the world than one written on the gospel accorrding to St. Matthew (unless it's the Pasolini film we are talking about, in which case, I will demur).
I'm probably going to turn this into a little bit of a running commentary on cinema: new film releases, old classics and any gems I may happen upon.
First up tonight is an evening in with 'The Night Porter' starring Charlotte Rampling.