Note – Spoiler alert
I’ve seen three films in the last little while with children in lead roles. I Wish, Moonrise Kingdom and Monsieur Lazhar have seemingly little in common apart from this fact – but in each case, the presence of the children invests the film with charm and a fable-like quality that made me put away adult ways (scepticism, hard-heartedness, cynicism).
The Girl’s Own Annual overlay of Moonrise Kingdom was especially appealing. It was beautiful to look at, like a faded Polaroid, or the pages of a picture story book from the 1960s (it was set in 1965). Situated on an island off the coast of New England, two 12 year olds run away from home. This is not a gritty urban runaway story, despite the fact that the boy, Sam, is an orphan living in a foster home, and the girl, Suzy, is unhappy at school and feels misunderstood at home. Each starts out on the adventure with a lot of equipment (she takes a cat in a basket, a portable record player and several hardback books, he carries a pipe and enough camping equipment for a scout troop. The film is highly stylized – reminiscent in look and feel to the new app The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Less more.
Critic Roger Ebert describes it thus: “Anderson always fills his films with colors, never garish but usually definite and active. In "Moonrise Kingdom," the palette tends toward the green of new grass, and the Scout's khaki brown. Also the right amount of red. It is a comfortable canvas to look at, so pretty that it helps establish the feeling of magical realism” and Peter Bradshaw from the Guardian says: “Where David Lynch finds a dark horror beneath the wholesome exterior, Anderson sees something else — something exotic but practical and self-possessed, a world that ticks along like an antique toy, much treasured by a precocious child. The homes and buildings often look like giant dolls' houses.”
The adult world depicted in all three films is fraught – by relationship issues, war, suicide, loneliness, displacement. And so each film-maker is able to generate a contrast between the adult world and the children’s world – of perspective, of capacity to respond to the world, of tone. Monsieur Lazhar is the bleakest, dealing as it does with suicide, war and refugees. In this film, the children cannot escape these issues and the film is potentially quite dark. We watch it knowing that it can’t (and shouldn’t) end well. What makes it bearable is the relationships created in the classroom between the children and their teacher and his determination to acknowledge and work with the pain they’ve experienced as a group. In this he shows great respect for what children are capable of both feeling and working through.
Koreada, who directed I Wish, showed this kind of respect in Nobody Knows, his 2004 film that focussed on a family of children abandoned by their parents trying to survive in the Tokyo suburbs without adult support. He is a director who is very skilled at working with children. In I Wish, the lead characters are played by two real-life brothers who play brothers separated when their parent’s marriage breaks up. Living in different cities, they miss each other and what the family was and the plot to get the parents back together (the “I wish” of the title). The film is about the wishes and fantasies of children, as all three films are to some extent. There is a sweetness in the story, a humanism and charm in the kids that made me put aside things that I would normally criticise. I liked being in the optimism of the kids’ zone – they thought they could do things, change things. All three films give children a degree of agency, inventiveness and care for each other that is often missing in films about children.
It’s maybe no accident that I’ve connected I Wish and Moonrise Kingdom. Roger Ebert says, of Wes Anderson “In Anderson's films, there is a sort of resignation to the underlying melancholy of the world; he is the only American director I can think of whose work reflects the Japanese concept mono no aware, which describes a wistfulness about the transience of things. Even Sam and Suzy, sharing the experience of a lifetime, seem aware that this will be their last summer for such an adventure. Next year they will be too old for such irresponsibility.”
I could write more, as others have, about the symbolism inherent in Moonrise Kingdom (the coming of the flood, America in a time of innocence (early 60s – innocent – really?) etc etc) but these things weren’t strong factors in the charm of this film for me. Bradshaw says it better than I can: “Anderson's movies are vulnerable to the charge of being supercilious oddities, but there is elegance and formal brilliance in Moonrise Kingdom as well as a lot of gentle, winning comedy. His homemade aesthetic is placed at the service of a counter-digital, almost hand-drawn cinema, and he has an extraordinary ability to conjure a complete, distinctive universe, entire of itself. To some, Moonrise Kingdom may be nothing more than a soufflé of strangeness, but it rises superbly.”
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
Great Expectations
“It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window as a pocket handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of spider's webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy; and the marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village — a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there — was invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the Hulks.”
This passage is near the beginning of Great Expectations. Isn’t it fabulous! I don’t normally think of Dickens as a landscape artist but this novel is full of vivid descriptions of both the outer and the inner world. Here’s another one much later in the novel:
“We got ashore among some slippery stones while we ate and drank what we had with us, and looked about. It was like my own marsh country, flat and monotonous, and with a dim horizon; while the winding river turned and turned, and the great floating buoys upon it turned and turned, and everything else seemed stranded and still. For, now, the last of the fleet of ships was round the last low point we had headed; and the last green barge, straw-laden, with a brown sail, had followed; and some ballast-lighters, shaped like a child's first rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud; and a little squat shoal-lighthouse on open piles, stood crippled in the mud on stilts and crutches; and slimy stakes stuck out of the mud, and slimy stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks and tidemarks stuck out of the mud, and an old landing-stage and an old roofless building slipped into the mud, and all about us was stagnation and mud.” It’s J.M.W Turner in print isn’t it. Turner died about ten years prior to the publication of Great Expectations – but you can see that both men had been in the same terrain.
I first read this novel in 1963 when I was fourteen. It’s fair to say that I did not like it. At all. So it was with unexpected pleasure that I came to read it again many years later. I think the reason I found it going when I was 14 was because of the main character, the first person narrator, Pip. In an era that predates Freud and Jung, Pip really seems, for much of the novel, to embody our shadow side (and given the physical shadows and mists on the marshes, this seems appropriate). All our shame and guilt is writ large in his behaviour and feelings about himself. Written by an older man as a reflection of his younger self, it is unsparing and merciless. I think I found Pip’s false ideas, his desire for social mobility, his churlish treatment of Joe Gargery, and his hopeless unrequited love for Estella almost unbearable. It’s very hard for the main character to bear this kind of burden; he behaves very badly for at least half the novel. G K Chesterton, who wrote a lot about Dickens, described this novel as “A novel without a hero … it is a novel which aims chiefly at showing that the hero is unheroic.” He also said: “It is a study in human weakness and the slow human surrender.”
A lot of it is about shame. Here’s Pip reflecting on this: “It is a most miserable thing to be ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude on the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but, that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.”
It’s also about unrequited love. Here’s a lovely, evocative piece: “I said to Biddy that we would walk a little further and we did so, and the summer afternoon toned down into the summer evening, and it was very beautiful. I began to consider whether I was not more naturally and wholesomely situated, after all, in these circumstances, than playing beggar my neighbor by candlelight in the room with the stopped clocks, and being despised by Estella. I thought it would be very good for me if I could get her out of my head, with all the rest of those remembrances and fancies, and could go to work determined to relish what I had to do, and stick to it and make the best if it.
I asked myself the question whether I did not surely know that if Estella were beside me at that moment instead of Biddy, she would make me miserable? I was obliged to admit that I did know it for a certainty, and I said to myself "Pip, what a fool you are!" As Pip says at one stage - "so throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of people that we most despise." I think my teenage self knew this to be true but wanted to run a mile from its grim view of human behaviour.
As with all Dickens, there is a thousand small phrases that add colour and vigour to the writing. “I sat silent, recalling what a drudge she had been until Mr Wopsle's great aunt successfully overcame that bad habit of living.” You have to love this. Dickens described this novel as atragi-comedy and it’s easy to let the dark side dominate but there are many great comic touches: the unctuous and ingratiating Pumblechook, Mr Wemmick with his postbox of a mouth and his castle and drawbridge and the Aged P, and the slipperiness of Trabb’s boy.
Chesterton again: “Great Expectations, which was written in the afternoon of Dickens's life and fame, has a quality of serene irony and even sadness, which puts it quite alone among his other works. At no time could Dickens possibly be called cynical, he had too much vitality; but relatively to the other books this book is cynical; but it has the soft and gentle cynicism of old age, not the hard cynicism of youth.”
The most recent edition of the novel that I’ve seen has an image of convict leg-irons on the cover. In some ways I think that is the most apt metaphor for the whole novel. Most of the characters are imprisoned by something or someone. All the women are literally almost house-bound (Ms Havisham through madness, Mrs Joe after her accident, Estella growing up in a lonely house captive to a delusional woman), Pip sees his life as circumscribed by his social class and education, until his fate changes, Jaggers is a lonely workaholic who sees emotions as having the potential to derail him.
The great joy in the novel is as Pip finds his moral centre and begins to appreciate the qualities that we see in Herbert Pocket, in Joe, in Magwich and in Wemmick. It’s ultimately a story of redemption; that it is possible to live differently; to live a good and kind life. I think it’s a great book.
This passage is near the beginning of Great Expectations. Isn’t it fabulous! I don’t normally think of Dickens as a landscape artist but this novel is full of vivid descriptions of both the outer and the inner world. Here’s another one much later in the novel:
“We got ashore among some slippery stones while we ate and drank what we had with us, and looked about. It was like my own marsh country, flat and monotonous, and with a dim horizon; while the winding river turned and turned, and the great floating buoys upon it turned and turned, and everything else seemed stranded and still. For, now, the last of the fleet of ships was round the last low point we had headed; and the last green barge, straw-laden, with a brown sail, had followed; and some ballast-lighters, shaped like a child's first rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud; and a little squat shoal-lighthouse on open piles, stood crippled in the mud on stilts and crutches; and slimy stakes stuck out of the mud, and slimy stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks and tidemarks stuck out of the mud, and an old landing-stage and an old roofless building slipped into the mud, and all about us was stagnation and mud.” It’s J.M.W Turner in print isn’t it. Turner died about ten years prior to the publication of Great Expectations – but you can see that both men had been in the same terrain.
I first read this novel in 1963 when I was fourteen. It’s fair to say that I did not like it. At all. So it was with unexpected pleasure that I came to read it again many years later. I think the reason I found it going when I was 14 was because of the main character, the first person narrator, Pip. In an era that predates Freud and Jung, Pip really seems, for much of the novel, to embody our shadow side (and given the physical shadows and mists on the marshes, this seems appropriate). All our shame and guilt is writ large in his behaviour and feelings about himself. Written by an older man as a reflection of his younger self, it is unsparing and merciless. I think I found Pip’s false ideas, his desire for social mobility, his churlish treatment of Joe Gargery, and his hopeless unrequited love for Estella almost unbearable. It’s very hard for the main character to bear this kind of burden; he behaves very badly for at least half the novel. G K Chesterton, who wrote a lot about Dickens, described this novel as “A novel without a hero … it is a novel which aims chiefly at showing that the hero is unheroic.” He also said: “It is a study in human weakness and the slow human surrender.”
A lot of it is about shame. Here’s Pip reflecting on this: “It is a most miserable thing to be ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude on the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but, that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.”
It’s also about unrequited love. Here’s a lovely, evocative piece: “I said to Biddy that we would walk a little further and we did so, and the summer afternoon toned down into the summer evening, and it was very beautiful. I began to consider whether I was not more naturally and wholesomely situated, after all, in these circumstances, than playing beggar my neighbor by candlelight in the room with the stopped clocks, and being despised by Estella. I thought it would be very good for me if I could get her out of my head, with all the rest of those remembrances and fancies, and could go to work determined to relish what I had to do, and stick to it and make the best if it.
I asked myself the question whether I did not surely know that if Estella were beside me at that moment instead of Biddy, she would make me miserable? I was obliged to admit that I did know it for a certainty, and I said to myself "Pip, what a fool you are!" As Pip says at one stage - "so throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of people that we most despise." I think my teenage self knew this to be true but wanted to run a mile from its grim view of human behaviour.
As with all Dickens, there is a thousand small phrases that add colour and vigour to the writing. “I sat silent, recalling what a drudge she had been until Mr Wopsle's great aunt successfully overcame that bad habit of living.” You have to love this. Dickens described this novel as atragi-comedy and it’s easy to let the dark side dominate but there are many great comic touches: the unctuous and ingratiating Pumblechook, Mr Wemmick with his postbox of a mouth and his castle and drawbridge and the Aged P, and the slipperiness of Trabb’s boy.
Chesterton again: “Great Expectations, which was written in the afternoon of Dickens's life and fame, has a quality of serene irony and even sadness, which puts it quite alone among his other works. At no time could Dickens possibly be called cynical, he had too much vitality; but relatively to the other books this book is cynical; but it has the soft and gentle cynicism of old age, not the hard cynicism of youth.”
The most recent edition of the novel that I’ve seen has an image of convict leg-irons on the cover. In some ways I think that is the most apt metaphor for the whole novel. Most of the characters are imprisoned by something or someone. All the women are literally almost house-bound (Ms Havisham through madness, Mrs Joe after her accident, Estella growing up in a lonely house captive to a delusional woman), Pip sees his life as circumscribed by his social class and education, until his fate changes, Jaggers is a lonely workaholic who sees emotions as having the potential to derail him.
The great joy in the novel is as Pip finds his moral centre and begins to appreciate the qualities that we see in Herbert Pocket, in Joe, in Magwich and in Wemmick. It’s ultimately a story of redemption; that it is possible to live differently; to live a good and kind life. I think it’s a great book.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
One hundred and fifty minutes in the dark
I haven’t seen much Turkish film but the one I saw last week reminded me of an incident that happened to us when I was in Cappadocia with my friend Barb. We were dropped off an overnight bus into a darkened town at about 4.30 in the morning. We were expecting to be picked up and taken to our B&B but no one turned up. This is from my journal:
While this is on the surface a police procedural, it is really just about life – about the awful and the beautiful. There’s not much on the beautiful side but one scene, using candlelight and the face of a young woman contrasting with the aging faces of the men to whom she minsters, is beautiful and restorative.
The film invites intimacy through its very close portrayal of these ordinary men over the course of a night and a morning - their movemnets, their conversations, their interactions. The last part of the film provides a moral dilemma that made me think about the film long after – but I suspect that it is the cinematography and ‘feel’ of the film that will linger longest.
Critic Roger Ebert wrote:
Last week I saw two films of 150 minutes duration. The other one was titled Margaret. (The diector of this film was new to me, as was Nuri Bilge Ceylan who made the Turkish film.) Made by Kenneth Lonergan, it has taken seven years to release as a result of internal issues around the edit. This is obvious in the film which has many more small sidetracks in plot that it needs. I think the director must have been unable to let these go; they impede the actual emotional arc of the film and made me irritated. I was irritated very early though because an essential part of the main character’s experience seemed to be withheld from the audience and the narrative – for the purposes of creating tension. I felt manipulated. Various aspects of the plot were less credible given this withholding. I can’t wrote easily about this without giving away the plot. I don’t want to do this. The film is based on a great idea. Three people are involved in a traffic accident; two pedestrians and a driver. The significant impact of this momentary event has long-reaching consequences, especially on the teenage girl, Lisa, who is played extremely well by Anna Paquin.
A Guardian reviewer writes:
“Then a car sort of jerks its way into the square. An old beaten up sort of vehicle. The call to prayer booms out over the square - but nothing in the town moves. A man emerges from the car. He is waving a half empty Efes bottle (local beer) and inviting us into his car. A big ugly mongrel of a dog emerges from the back seat and runs around. Barb and I do a quick 'What do you reckon - how drunk is he?' and negotiate a fee with him. We have to get to a town called Urgup - about 8 kms down the road. He is likely to be a tout from one of the local pensiones but he is equally likely just to be a drunk out looking for a light. A moth. We struggle to fit all our stuff in the car and he - let's call him Mehmet - there are only 6 million Mehmets in Turkey - struggles to coax the dog (Which looks like it had some bull terrier and other people-friendly breeds) into the back seat with me. We set off.I felt like I was in this territory in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Part of the reason for this is that the film (almost) opens with a focus on landscape – rolling treeless hills, the gathering dusk, a road and some headlights. It is mesmerising. Slowly, slowly three vehicles emerge into view. They are old vehicles – like Mehmet’s - and stuffed full of Turkish men. Their size within the claustrophobic confines of the car is comedic – it reminds us that this is not a wealthy country, These men are on an unpleasant mission; they are in search of a corpse, a murder victim who has been disposed of by two men who are part of this strange band of people. The rest of the cast are those in authority: policemen, a prosecutor, a doctor, a soldier. A collegiality is established; the men talk of domestic things during this more morbid task. The texture of buffalo mozzarella, the need for a prescription for a chronically ill son. They exude authenticity.
The road to Urgup is through one of the most surreal landscapes I have ever been in. The whole area is formed out of some sort of volcanic leftovers - so that there are thousands of giant cone shaped outbreaks of rock. People build homes in them - that's what the area is famous for. It looks like something from a science fiction film. The effect is enlivened by our particular mode of travel - the small truckload of empty stubbies rolling around on the floor of the car, the dogs breath on my leg, Mehmet's drunken attempts to engage in conversation with Barbara - I’m sure he mentioned Steve Irwin at one stage. He would speed up and slow down in some deep-seated drunken rhythm that bore no relation to the road conditions at all. His back door wouldn't close properly so I was more in fear of falling out. Dawn was beginning to appear.
In Urgup it became obvious that he had no idea where our hotel was (not a surprise in the long run as it wasn't actually in this town). Fortuitously, his car stalled outside the police station (It wouldn't start in first gear) so we were able to enlist the aid of the local cops. We paid Mehmet for bringing us to the wrong location - he kept muttering 'I a good man' and threw ourselves on the mercy of the cops who took us inside, located our hotel - in another town close to the original one and called a taxi for us. They were very entertained by our journey - the crime wave in Urdup has been on the wane and they were pleased to have something to do.”
While this is on the surface a police procedural, it is really just about life – about the awful and the beautiful. There’s not much on the beautiful side but one scene, using candlelight and the face of a young woman contrasting with the aging faces of the men to whom she minsters, is beautiful and restorative.
The film invites intimacy through its very close portrayal of these ordinary men over the course of a night and a morning - their movemnets, their conversations, their interactions. The last part of the film provides a moral dilemma that made me think about the film long after – but I suspect that it is the cinematography and ‘feel’ of the film that will linger longest.
Critic Roger Ebert wrote:
(It is)150 minutes long, and its story unfolds slowly and obliquely. I tell you now so you won't complain later. It needs to be long, and it needs to be indirect, because the film is about how sad truths can be revealed during the slow process of doing a job. The Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan doesn't slap us with big dramatic moments, but allows us to live along with his characters as things occur to them.Some lovely phrases there – I hope they teach them in film school: “film is about how sad truths can be revealed during the slow process of doing a job” and the director “doesn't slap us with big dramatic moments, but allows us to live along with his characters…”
Last week I saw two films of 150 minutes duration. The other one was titled Margaret. (The diector of this film was new to me, as was Nuri Bilge Ceylan who made the Turkish film.) Made by Kenneth Lonergan, it has taken seven years to release as a result of internal issues around the edit. This is obvious in the film which has many more small sidetracks in plot that it needs. I think the director must have been unable to let these go; they impede the actual emotional arc of the film and made me irritated. I was irritated very early though because an essential part of the main character’s experience seemed to be withheld from the audience and the narrative – for the purposes of creating tension. I felt manipulated. Various aspects of the plot were less credible given this withholding. I can’t wrote easily about this without giving away the plot. I don’t want to do this. The film is based on a great idea. Three people are involved in a traffic accident; two pedestrians and a driver. The significant impact of this momentary event has long-reaching consequences, especially on the teenage girl, Lisa, who is played extremely well by Anna Paquin.
A Guardian reviewer writes:
Lisa is overwhelmed with ambiguous emotion at having contributed to a disaster and then participated in a coverup, and, compulsively driven to do something, draws everyone into a whirlpool of painful and destructive confrontations. But is that emotion guilt or righteousness? Or a sociopathic convulsion, a need to create a huge redemptive drama with herself at the centre, to lash out against her mother and the entire adult world; or to enact vengeance against a man who, without trying, has placed her in a position of weakness – at the very point at which she considers she should be attaining her adult, queen-bee status? Paquin creates that rarest of things: a profoundly unsympathetic character who is mysteriously, mesmerically, operatically compelling to watch.Another reviewer also comments:
As the heroine of his story of life in conflicting times, Lonergan casts a character in the grips of emotions she can feel but not process. Paquin plays a young woman filled with passion she can’t quite articulate and frustration she can only translate into anger. Alternately endearing and enraging, Paquin’s work might be remembered as one of the great depictions of what it feels like to be a teen if the film around her had worked out better. But, despite a wrenching opening that saddles Paquin’s character with more guilt than most anyone could bear, much less a less-than-steady-on-her-feet teen, the film lets some great performances and compelling moments drift in a sea of shapelessness.Holden Caulfield is the person who comes to mind in watching this performance. And an early version of my own righteous self in full and ugly flight. ‘Margaret’ (the title of which derives from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem called Spring and Fall) got lots of very good reviews as well as some mixed ones. For me, the girl’s performance was authentic and the relationship with her mother real and honest. However, the director saddled the girl with a histrionic mess. I felt manipulated and bored despite the excellent acting of the two lead actresses. Some of the quietness and the pared-back narrative of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia would have served this film well. Both of these films turn on the value of knowing the truth – but one rendition is melodramatic; one full of existential ambiguity. Nothing is black and white - or is it?
Monday, May 14, 2012
Emotional glaciation
OK, am going to write about a film with a SPOILER ALERT. It’s The Seventh Continent which was made in 1989 by Michael Haneke who also made Hidden and The White Ribbon. The film hasn’t dated at all. It’s theme of alienation and disconnection is, if anything, more resonant today. (READ NO FURTHER IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE FILM WITHOUT KNOWING THE PLOT.)
*****
In an interview on the DVD, Haneke said that the film is based on an article he read about a family who committed suicide in a very deliberate and considered way. One of the things they did prior to dying was to tear up their money and flush it down the toilet. The article said the police discovered that the money was flushed because they found little bits of currency stuck in the plumbing. He said that he knew that that audiences would be upset with that scene, and also said that in today's society the idea of destroying money is more taboo than parents killing their child and themselves.
The film opens inside a mechanical carwash. One reviewer described the first 15 minutes very well: “But Haneke’s stroke of brilliance in The Seventh Continent is his visual “angle” on the Schobers. A good quarter-of-an-hour passes before he reveals their faces to us. Instead, we are given a series of tight close-ups on the objects of the Schobers’ everyday routine: alarm clock, door handle, the breakfast table, interior of the car, the supermarket till; and fragmented views of their bodies: a hand, an arm, the nape of a neck, the back of a head, a shoulder. It’s a strikingly effective way of enunciating the film’s theme, of emphasising the loneliness, isolation, sense of disjunction, and alienation of each family member.”
It’s intriguing trying to make sense of the images as they provide glimpses into a very routine mundane family life. Occasionally small events provide an unsettling disconnect. It was like watching Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Both of these films linger on the domestic and the mundane. (I still can’t make my bed without being reminded of Jeanne Dielmann.) For me, the decision that the family made came as a surprise but not a great one. They seem worn down by the drudgery of ordinary life and there is no joy. Joy is an important thing for me. About fifteen years ago, I was in a university program about organisational change. I had to identify seven moments of joy in my life. I had trouble with this task. Not enough moments. I could get to seven but it seemed like a bit of a struggle. I decided then that I needed more joy in my life more often and I think I am in a much better space. Throughout The Seventh Continent, a poster appears and reappears like a fantasy. It is a beach scene (apparently of an Australian beach – the Seventh Continent of the title). It’s weirdly unsettling – it’s not until you look at it closely that you realise that it’s geographically impossible. It is actually a fantasy; it will not deliver what this family is looking for.
Not everyone will like this film – it is troubling – but I agree with this reviewer:
*****
In an interview on the DVD, Haneke said that the film is based on an article he read about a family who committed suicide in a very deliberate and considered way. One of the things they did prior to dying was to tear up their money and flush it down the toilet. The article said the police discovered that the money was flushed because they found little bits of currency stuck in the plumbing. He said that he knew that that audiences would be upset with that scene, and also said that in today's society the idea of destroying money is more taboo than parents killing their child and themselves.
The film opens inside a mechanical carwash. One reviewer described the first 15 minutes very well: “But Haneke’s stroke of brilliance in The Seventh Continent is his visual “angle” on the Schobers. A good quarter-of-an-hour passes before he reveals their faces to us. Instead, we are given a series of tight close-ups on the objects of the Schobers’ everyday routine: alarm clock, door handle, the breakfast table, interior of the car, the supermarket till; and fragmented views of their bodies: a hand, an arm, the nape of a neck, the back of a head, a shoulder. It’s a strikingly effective way of enunciating the film’s theme, of emphasising the loneliness, isolation, sense of disjunction, and alienation of each family member.”
It’s intriguing trying to make sense of the images as they provide glimpses into a very routine mundane family life. Occasionally small events provide an unsettling disconnect. It was like watching Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Both of these films linger on the domestic and the mundane. (I still can’t make my bed without being reminded of Jeanne Dielmann.) For me, the decision that the family made came as a surprise but not a great one. They seem worn down by the drudgery of ordinary life and there is no joy. Joy is an important thing for me. About fifteen years ago, I was in a university program about organisational change. I had to identify seven moments of joy in my life. I had trouble with this task. Not enough moments. I could get to seven but it seemed like a bit of a struggle. I decided then that I needed more joy in my life more often and I think I am in a much better space. Throughout The Seventh Continent, a poster appears and reappears like a fantasy. It is a beach scene (apparently of an Australian beach – the Seventh Continent of the title). It’s weirdly unsettling – it’s not until you look at it closely that you realise that it’s geographically impossible. It is actually a fantasy; it will not deliver what this family is looking for.
Not everyone will like this film – it is troubling – but I agree with this reviewer:
"Arguably, no greater cinematic interpreter of alienation exists in the world today than Austrian director Michael Haneke. Haneke shows us characters whose response to the world around them has deadened, people who have forgotten how to feel, how to love, how to care. The Seventh Continent, the first film of the trilogy that, with Benny's Video (1992) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), depicts what Haneke has called "my country's emotional glaciation."
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Intimate and gruelling
Most films about people undergoing a slow death have an inevitable sentimentality about them. It’s a feeling I resist and then fall for – like eating too much chocolate. Not so Stopped on Track, a new German film. It’s about a man, Frank, who is diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. It's gruelling and true. It combines all the wretchedness, tedium and sadness that accompanies a slow death. And I think the audience feels these three qualities in equal measure, with a couple of light moments thrown in. Very powerful. Great acting. I did not feel emotionally manipulated, just very sad. And a bit bored at times – which felt appropriate.
I felt there was some irony at the expense of the health profession. Their capacity to do anything in the face of his dying and the terrible burden this placed on his family seemed limited in the extreme, and their words felt kind but hollow. I doubt that this was the intention of the director, Andreas Dresen, who also made Cloud Nine – a film I really liked at MIFF a couple of years ago. In this film, he used a mix of professional actors and these real-life health professionals, and much of the dialogue was improvised as the filming took place.
The Eye for Film critic said: “It's seamlessly delivered; it just doesn't seem to have much to say.” I felt that this was missing the point – it is about a journey – the most universal of journeys and one that we often resist seeing up close and slow. The Telegraph critic got it:
I felt there was some irony at the expense of the health profession. Their capacity to do anything in the face of his dying and the terrible burden this placed on his family seemed limited in the extreme, and their words felt kind but hollow. I doubt that this was the intention of the director, Andreas Dresen, who also made Cloud Nine – a film I really liked at MIFF a couple of years ago. In this film, he used a mix of professional actors and these real-life health professionals, and much of the dialogue was improvised as the filming took place.
The Eye for Film critic said: “It's seamlessly delivered; it just doesn't seem to have much to say.” I felt that this was missing the point – it is about a journey – the most universal of journeys and one that we often resist seeing up close and slow. The Telegraph critic got it:
”For this is a film about adaptation and coping. It’s a record of a journey as difficult as any polar expedition; counselors offer Simone and her husband’s family sketchy maps of the new, fraught world in which they now find themselves, but essentially they have to draw on their deepest reserves of love, pity and resourcefulness."The film begins in a hospital waiting room. Frank ans his wife Simone are called into the doctor's surgery where he shows them slides of Frank's brain and tells them what has been found. The scene is quiet and sparse. They are shocked. Simone cries silently and Frank looks like he has been run over by a bus ('stopped in track, in fact). There is a lengthy silence, eventually filled by the doctor with information about potential life span. It is very well handled - no music, no embellishment - just sparse and empty. One other aspect that I liked was that over the course of the film, Frank used a mobile phone to records short bursts about himself and to capture his family reacting to him. This mini film within a film not only gave us insights into how he was feeling but mimicked, for me, the fragments of memory that you retain of someone who has died. This is an intimate and authentic film.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Crime fiction: creating order out of chaos - or disrupting order
I wouldn’t usually use the word “hegemonic” in conversation but I feel the need to up the ante on my crime fiction spree (which has come to a temporary end). I have been mulling over the genre after finishing The Phantom and wandering around the Internet looking at theories.
Now to go back to Schmid’s original questions, I think the appeal of Nesbo’s novels is that there is limited closure; the criminal is usually brought to some kind of justice but the underlying issues in the novels; police corruption, drug usage in the community, homelessness, continue largely unabated. The individual efforts of Hole and his diminishing band of friends make a small dent but the status quo continues. There is an ongoing critique of society (not dissimilar to the work of Stieg Larsson) but little changes; power is entrenched. We are given a picture of a society which on the surface looks orderly and managed but one where crime flourishes in bubbles underneath. As readers, I think the appeal is in the failure of the individual to do more than bring another individual to some kind of rough justice. We recognize this failure as being authentic but commend the doggedness of the individual (in this case Hole) for persisting. It is his defining quality. As he says at one stage “I am a policeman.” (In this case the sentence is ironic; he is no longer works in this role and has returned reluctantly to Oslo.) The hero’s journey is flawed and likely to end with a degree of ambiguity. Some loose ends.
At the Adelaide Writers Festival, Nesbo said that his writing relates strongly to the American tradition of crime writing – which came in part from the history of pioneers, the Western and the archetype of the outsider. Often the protagonists have been cast out of an organisation or marginalised within it but they refuse to bow down, they are heroic to us for that reason, despite the their anarchic tendencies. Harry is emblematic of this tradition; he is still a believer in the system but ambivalent about the way in which it was operating. Nesbo said that he is working within the tradition of James Ellroy: something is rotten in the state of Norway, despite the truth of its stereotype (“as a happy socialist democracy”). He went on to say one more interesting thing. He said that money, as a motivation for crime, was almost unbelievable in Norway. Before the advent of the oil industry, Norway was very poor – so crime novels focused on money as a motivator. Contemporary novels focus more heavily on the quirks of human nature. He gave Ibsen’s interest in secrets in families and concealed emotions as an example of what he is interested in exploring, using crime as a vehicle.
Writing about the genre of crime fiction, Regis Behe quotes William Edwards, an associate professor of sociology at the University of San Francisco. Edwards uses crime novels in his classes. Behe also quotes Sarah Weinman, a crime fiction writer who says: So perhaps the crime fiction that we are happiest with is that which gives us enough of a resolution to feel safe within a general context of authentic and credible disorder. The state has been preserved – but to what extent is it worth preserving? I think this is where the Hole character has got to in his thinking – which might explain the very interesting treatment he receives in this novel.
So perhaps the crime fiction that we are happiest with is that which gives us enough of a resolution to feel safe within a general context of authentic and credible disorder. The state has been preserved – but to what extent is it worth preserving? I think this is where the Hole character has got to in his thinking – which might explain the very interesting treatment he receives in this novel.
David Schmid, writing about the ways in which space (usually city space) is used in crime fiction, has developed some interesting questions: His essay is worth reading. We come to know some cities intimately through crime fiction. Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh. Shane Maloney’s inner-city Melbourne. Peter Temple’s depiction of the same space. Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles. James Ellroy’s LA. Sarah Paretsky’s Chicago. The fictional town of Santa Teresa, (aka Santa Barbara) California created by Sue Grafton. And Jo Nesbo’s Oslo. In The Phantom, I felt that I needed to Google images of that city and of a new development in that city on the waterfront called Tjuvholmen which gets a brief mention in the novel (what propelled me to Google the latter is that he described it as resembling a nipple on the waterfront).
“is the genre characterized primarily by closure, the neat tying up of loose ends, or by open-endedness and ambiguity? Is crime fiction best described as being characterized by individualized approaches to both the causes and solutions to crime, or does it imagine and put into play more collective, structural analyses of these issues? Finally, does crime fiction have the potential to produce radical, counter-hegemonic critiques of the ways in which power is mobilized in capitalist, racist, and patriarchal social formations, or is it instead an essentially conservative, bourgeois genre that supports the status quo?”
Most of the detective fiction I read is set in urban inner city landscapes – I think this is true of most contemporary detective fiction (the honourable exception is Temple’s wonderful book about country life The Broken Shore). The Harry Hole character has so thoroughly possessed Oslo that I find it impossible to imagine without him. I’m sure that if I visited, I would be searching for the Plata where drugs are sold (not for the drugs), the Salvation Army hostel, Hotel Leon and looking for the large ski ramp which features prominently in The Snowman. The very new opera house that merges into the harbour would be another place to visit. He’s no foodie, Nesbo, so cafes and restaurants would not be part of my walking tour. And I’d want to get behind the immediate city up into the area that overlooks the harbour, where wealthy people live. Speaking at the Adelaide Writers Festival, Nesbo said he wanted to create a “Gotham City version of Oslo – a little bit darker, a little bit larger”. He said that Oslo used to be a kind of “innocent village” but drugs, which are the central theme of The Phantom, have always been bad. It is a changed city in the last fifteen years with the advent of human trafficking and increasingly obvious drug problems.
Now to go back to Schmid’s original questions, I think the appeal of Nesbo’s novels is that there is limited closure; the criminal is usually brought to some kind of justice but the underlying issues in the novels; police corruption, drug usage in the community, homelessness, continue largely unabated. The individual efforts of Hole and his diminishing band of friends make a small dent but the status quo continues. There is an ongoing critique of society (not dissimilar to the work of Stieg Larsson) but little changes; power is entrenched. We are given a picture of a society which on the surface looks orderly and managed but one where crime flourishes in bubbles underneath. As readers, I think the appeal is in the failure of the individual to do more than bring another individual to some kind of rough justice. We recognize this failure as being authentic but commend the doggedness of the individual (in this case Hole) for persisting. It is his defining quality. As he says at one stage “I am a policeman.” (In this case the sentence is ironic; he is no longer works in this role and has returned reluctantly to Oslo.) The hero’s journey is flawed and likely to end with a degree of ambiguity. Some loose ends.
At the Adelaide Writers Festival, Nesbo said that his writing relates strongly to the American tradition of crime writing – which came in part from the history of pioneers, the Western and the archetype of the outsider. Often the protagonists have been cast out of an organisation or marginalised within it but they refuse to bow down, they are heroic to us for that reason, despite the their anarchic tendencies. Harry is emblematic of this tradition; he is still a believer in the system but ambivalent about the way in which it was operating. Nesbo said that he is working within the tradition of James Ellroy: something is rotten in the state of Norway, despite the truth of its stereotype (“as a happy socialist democracy”). He went on to say one more interesting thing. He said that money, as a motivation for crime, was almost unbelievable in Norway. Before the advent of the oil industry, Norway was very poor – so crime novels focused on money as a motivator. Contemporary novels focus more heavily on the quirks of human nature. He gave Ibsen’s interest in secrets in families and concealed emotions as an example of what he is interested in exploring, using crime as a vehicle.
Writing about the genre of crime fiction, Regis Behe quotes William Edwards, an associate professor of sociology at the University of San Francisco. Edwards uses crime novels in his classes. Behe also quotes Sarah Weinman, a crime fiction writer who says: So perhaps the crime fiction that we are happiest with is that which gives us enough of a resolution to feel safe within a general context of authentic and credible disorder. The state has been preserved – but to what extent is it worth preserving? I think this is where the Hole character has got to in his thinking – which might explain the very interesting treatment he receives in this novel.
"Heroes are symbols of how a nation wishes others to see it. The hero represents triumph and affirms the goodness in the nation… But crime novels seem to more easily tap into the current angst. In a post-9/11 world, the crime novel reminds us of our vulnerabilities in an uncertain world… In the post-9/11 world, Edwards says, the crime novel simultaneously reminds us of our shortcomings while positioning "heroes" as defenders, "the nation's counterbalance force."Behe also quotes Sarah Weinman, a crime fiction writer who says:
“the genre's appeal stems from the primal urge to "create order out of chaos, to find a resolution in the face of violent situations. This doesn't mean that crime novels have to follow conventional patterns -- and many of the best in recent years certainly do not -- but whatever conflicts are presented are, for the most part, resolved”.
So perhaps the crime fiction that we are happiest with is that which gives us enough of a resolution to feel safe within a general context of authentic and credible disorder. The state has been preserved – but to what extent is it worth preserving? I think this is where the Hole character has got to in his thinking – which might explain the very interesting treatment he receives in this novel.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
The common archetypes of human existence
In 1979, I was completing a Diploma in Education. The Method Lecturer for English bounced into the room about a month into the year and wrote “common archetypes of human existence” on the board. He asked us to suggest what these were. My memory is that we all kind of looked around the room hopelessly but I may be projecting my own ignorance onto everyone. He went on to talk about Jung and of the place of archetypes in literature.
Now I think of this kind of ignorance as startling – so much of my world view is informed through a psychoanalytic lens and way of operating. I was thinking this as I was watching A Dangerous Method – how different the perspective on life might be without the work of Freud and Jung. A small part of this film alerts us to the revolutionary nature of their work. As reviewer Julie Rigg says “The idea that sexuality was at the core of many psychiatric disorders was like a bombshell in this conventional society: intellectually exciting but also risky.”
So the director Cronenberg explores the birth of psychoanalysis through the intellectual and personal relationships of Jung and his patient, and lover Sabina Spielrein and through the relationship between Freud and Jung – which began with great promise and curdled in less than a decade. Like this relationship, the film begins with much promise but doesn’t quite work. I think this is for two reasons. Firstly, the film tries to cover too much territory. Is it about the personal or about the ideas behind psychotherapy? If about the personal – what is the focus: fidelity, sex, adultery, Freud’s father/son relationship with Jung, competition, anti-Semitism, free love, betrayal – what? It touches on all these things. If it’s about the basic concepts of psychoanalysis, is it about the role of sex, the theory of the unconscious, the place of mythology, the collective unconscious or how to progress these understandings into broader society? We get a smattering of all these things but not enough of any to be satisfied.
Secondly, I found it hard to see inside the façade of Jung to get a sense of what he was really like. Perhaps this is historically accurate; maybe he was a closed book. The only time we see him in an unguarded moment is when he is so excited at meeting Freud that he forgets all social graces. It makes hard to really understand the gist of his relationship with Spielrein which forms a key part of the film and to make any kind of judgement about the changing relationship with Freud. For example, does he spank Spielrein as her doctor or her lover? (And why do I use the word “spank” instead of “hit” or “smack”?)
I’m not sure if this opaqueness of character stems from the way that he is played by Fassbinder, an excellent actor usually, or by some uncertainty on Cronenberg’s part about Jung’s actual character and motivations, or by a very historically real repressed public persona.
I found the final scenes poignant and moving. They showed what the film could have been about.
Now I think of this kind of ignorance as startling – so much of my world view is informed through a psychoanalytic lens and way of operating. I was thinking this as I was watching A Dangerous Method – how different the perspective on life might be without the work of Freud and Jung. A small part of this film alerts us to the revolutionary nature of their work. As reviewer Julie Rigg says “The idea that sexuality was at the core of many psychiatric disorders was like a bombshell in this conventional society: intellectually exciting but also risky.”
So the director Cronenberg explores the birth of psychoanalysis through the intellectual and personal relationships of Jung and his patient, and lover Sabina Spielrein and through the relationship between Freud and Jung – which began with great promise and curdled in less than a decade. Like this relationship, the film begins with much promise but doesn’t quite work. I think this is for two reasons. Firstly, the film tries to cover too much territory. Is it about the personal or about the ideas behind psychotherapy? If about the personal – what is the focus: fidelity, sex, adultery, Freud’s father/son relationship with Jung, competition, anti-Semitism, free love, betrayal – what? It touches on all these things. If it’s about the basic concepts of psychoanalysis, is it about the role of sex, the theory of the unconscious, the place of mythology, the collective unconscious or how to progress these understandings into broader society? We get a smattering of all these things but not enough of any to be satisfied.
Secondly, I found it hard to see inside the façade of Jung to get a sense of what he was really like. Perhaps this is historically accurate; maybe he was a closed book. The only time we see him in an unguarded moment is when he is so excited at meeting Freud that he forgets all social graces. It makes hard to really understand the gist of his relationship with Spielrein which forms a key part of the film and to make any kind of judgement about the changing relationship with Freud. For example, does he spank Spielrein as her doctor or her lover? (And why do I use the word “spank” instead of “hit” or “smack”?)
I’m not sure if this opaqueness of character stems from the way that he is played by Fassbinder, an excellent actor usually, or by some uncertainty on Cronenberg’s part about Jung’s actual character and motivations, or by a very historically real repressed public persona.
I found the final scenes poignant and moving. They showed what the film could have been about.
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