This post will probably be less about The Hurt Locker than it will be about Iraq, and will probably be less about Iraq than it will be about me.
The day after I was born, Israeli jets bombed the (French built) Osirak Nuclear plant in Iraq. I was nine when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, and I can still remember hearing the news on TV AM when military action began the following February. The other class in my year would write letters to British Forces in the Gulf, and got a signed photo of a Tornado in return. Yes, I'm still bitter that our teacher never let my class do that. When that war ended, the nice old woman who lived across the road had her bungalow decked out in Union Jacks to welcome her son home. In time, I devoured the memoirs of that conflict; Bravo Two Zero, The One That Got Away (filmed by Paul Greengrass) and Tornado Down. Of course, the conflict didn't end there; British and American forces continued to patrol the skies over the south and north of Iraq, occasionally bombing sites in the country. People who dismissed Blair as Bush's poodle should note that Blair was bombing Iraq as part Operation Desert Fox while Bush was still a failing and flailing Governor of Texas. The continued presence of American troops on Saudi soil was, of course, a major feature of Osama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa against the US.
The 2003 Iraq War politicised my generation like no other event. I moved to London last year, and now my MP is the one figure in British political life that did not only oppose the war, but became a cheerleader for the other side. Seven years after the invasion, we're still there, both physically and psychologically (the Chilcot inquiry rumbles on). After their elections, Iraq is on the front pages of the papers today. So for most of my life my country, and the US, has existed in a state of war with either the government of Iraq or some element of the people of Iraq.
And how many good films have been made about this? A few. Off the top of my head, I can think of Three Kings, Jarhead and now The Hurt Locker. Greengrass's Green Zone is out this week, so I will reserve judgement until I've seen that, but that's not a great showing, is it? Three films in near enough twenty years. Too often films that deal with the subject - I'm thinking of In The Valley of Elah - like The Hurt Locker, scripted byMark Boal, and Stop Loss too - do so not only from an American perspective, but one in which the action takes place at home. To paraphrase from a book I read about Vietnam War films years ago, the tragedy of a film like Redacted is not that people were killed, but that Americans debased themselves by killing them. That said, Nick Broomfield's Battle For Haditha was a decent stab at depicting an actual event, but otherwise unremarkable. A film like Avatar beats us about the head with allusions to the conflict - mentions of "shock and awe" "daisy cutters" and "martyrs" are thrown at us in quick succession just before the final battle, just to ram the point home. Other than that, it's slim pickings if you want a decent modern war film.
Television has served the Iraq War better than film - Generation Kill being a notable example, and the BBC have made a good fist of it with Ten Days To War, a series of shorts about the run up to the invasion, and the three parter Occupation, which dealt with the aftermath of the war.
The Hurt Locker worked because it didn't wear its politics on its sleeve - it just told a thrillingly tense story of a bomb disposal team in Iraq. Kathryn Bigelow said that "wars dirty little secret" is that some men enjoy it. No Michael Moore style hectoring, no self pity because Americans killed or were killed, just a rollickingly good movie. Given that we're only just seeing films that deal with the 1982 Lebanon War now, it may be some time before we see more Iraq War films, but when we do, let's hope they are more like The Hurt Locker than most that came before it.
Monday, 8 March 2010
Friday, 5 March 2010
On My Ignorance, and Subsequent Enlightenment, of Actors and Acting in Film
Although actors are incredibly important to film, for some reason I’ve spent a lot of my life (approximately all up until January 2010) regarding actors second to the text they occupy. As a youth (I had little else to bother myself with), I always believed that the work of the director was undervalued in public discourse, feeling that its focus predominantly lay on what was before the camera – the actors, or in some cases, special effects – whilst neglecting those that operated behind/BEYOND it.
This was, however, before I had any academic schooling in film, where, pleasantly enough for my tortured soul, the situation was reversed. 2nd year Auteur Theory classes would have one believe that all is director; the actors scarcely putty to be moulded in His/Her god-like hands.
Beginning to admire Hitchcock and Bresson, directors who both explicitly state their actors are nothing more that ‘models’, only strengthened my precondition.
There is, of course, star theory and strands of that sort – but it never seems to assess acting as a technical form, as one would attribute to a camera movement, or a particularly provocative graphical edit. They instead, in my ignorantly limited reading, preoccupy themselves with notions of the actor as auteur (in that one can tell immediately this is a ‘James Cagney film’) or in the marketing of a subject’s specific star persona. What is needed is the mechanical deconstruction of performance – to treat the actor as one would obsess over a pan in the wrong direction (see: Le Crime de Monsieur Lange) or an effective use of light.
There is more emotional weight in one moment of falsetto speech than the rest of the The Royal Tenenbaums. Even Anderson’s cartoon world cannot rob it of its rawness. As Gene Hackman sits on the street’s curb, outside an imploded wedding, with his son, Ben Stiller, a little flicker in the latter’s voice sends all the deadpan that precedes it crashing down into a rubble of melancholy and rebirth. “It’s been a tough year, dad” – his voice breaks, in the way a 13 year old boy’s would, at the start. This second, if that, Ben Stiller ceases to be an actor. He is Chad, the oppressed griever of his wife’s premature death. It is a note, as in one on a piano, that is hit so crisply, yet with such tenderness, that it beats Luke Wilson’s stylicide (I tried to merge the words ‘stylised’ and ‘suicide’ into one) as the film’s most humanly invested instance.
In reflection (as opposed to ‘on reflection’), my gushing for drama may be a coping tactic for an upcoming assignment, a quasi-Stockholm syndrome if you will. For the first time ever I will be dealing with actors as a director, and I’m relishing the idea. And just as when one learns a new word, for that word to then crop up everywhere one looks, I have began to come away from films thinking as much about performance as I have about narrative and technique. Previously, I don’t recall it ever entering my mindset, bar those exceptional performances that one can do nothing but talk about.
However, it is a welcome change, and one I feel a tad idiotic and embarrassed for dismissing so readily before. There is a notable example I would briefly like to mention.
The Lovely Bones, a frustrating film (and one I can imagine even more so for readers of the book), does not excel in acting. That is, at least, I think. I’m still a newcomer to this ‘appreciate the acting’ lark, but on an innocent’s experience nothing really impressed me. But for that matter, little of the film did. Yet on sitting through the credits (another new habit I have picked up to the annoyance of some companions) Stanley Tucci’s name scrolled upwards. “Who was Stanley Tucci in that?” I asked impressed. “The killer” came the reply.
I had lost interest in the film when it premiered about 5 years before its general release. Much of my anticipation had been rooted into other ventures (mainly, the live Monday night war between WWE and TNA starting IMMINENTLY), and had left me very lacklustre about even seeing it. When I did get round to seeing it, I had forgotten the film’s premise and actors. Whilst watching I would pick them up here and there. One can hardly miss Mark Whalberg (who I have always been a huge fan of despite my animosity towards thespians, and he is responsible for my favourite moment in the film – an entire character summed up in his neurotic, but charming questioning of whether developing one roll of film a month, as promised, for his daughter was fair or not), and eventually one realises that that is Rachel Weisz; the grandmother is Susan Sarandon; that is girl from Atonement; I neither care about the actors or the characters for the majority of the supporting cast. Apart from…holy shit is that Chris from Sopranos – it totally is. A friend from work still calls him Spider from Goodfellas. And he has completed the Sopranos. I don’t agree with that, but it’s interesting how one can place an emphasis on an actor as always belonging to a certain role. Well, that, I suppose, is star theory…
I digress…
…I always thought, throughout the film, that the killer was played rather fun. In the way that hideous characters can be fun because they are so interesting, not because I find child rape (a theme that is pretty much absent from the film, it rather focusing on the much more acceptable and public-friendly child murder) fun. He was the atypical loner. He trimmed his roses. He has a retro moustache and Denis Taylor glasses. He made model dollhouses and presented himself as an obsessive, or rather, a perfectionist (a trait he shared with Mark Whalberg, whose hobby was boats in glass bottles, but I never quite worked out this parallel). A complex character, yet so steeped in obvious psychological motives that psychoanalysing him became redundant (besides, who does that anymore, it’s soooo 1970s). One was released from these shackles to enjoy his performance, a rather campy villainous type. Indeed, much of my enjoyment came from not knowing who he was, as an actor, and suppose I must have fully bought into his portrayal – preferring instead to focus on the character rather than thinking “Wow, [insert actor’s name here] is having a lot of fun with this character”.
This is why I was so pleasantly surprised that this was in fact Stanley Tucci. A name and face I’m very much acquainted with – making the prospect of me not realising who it was even more absurd. To me, at least.
From this absurdity I obtained a large sense of bemusement and glee. A grin carved on my face like a loon, I walked through the Bexleyheath Cineworld foyer constantly updating my facial expression. From furrowed eyebrows of disbelief to looking up at the ceiling (there was no sky inside) to find an answer. All this time my companion was providing insights into how the film had differed from the book. Usually, as I did not want to see the film in the first place and submitted only because my preferred choice was The Crazies, I would have been gloating “I told you so”. Although I know that if I had developed an attachment to the book and had gone along to see an unfaithful adaptation of it, I would be in the same state of resentment and annoyance. However, the criticism that “it wasn’t nearly as good as the book” has become such a generic thing to say (despite being completely valid and nearly always right), to those with no emotional involvement with the source text it merely becomes white noise. Yet none of this crossed my mind. I just walked and muttered in disbelief, that that was Stanley Tucci, and I had no idea throughout the entire 120 minutes that it was anyone other than a real character. My disbelief had not only been suspended, but hoisted up into the rafters with reinforced adamantium.
It’s simply such a fresh experience. And imagine that was the case for all film. No billing to gloom over the poster and every actor so lost in character that it is impossible to place them in your head - the task becoming pointless and for one to accept them for what they are, people. Not fictional characters, but also not real actors. People.
This was, however, before I had any academic schooling in film, where, pleasantly enough for my tortured soul, the situation was reversed. 2nd year Auteur Theory classes would have one believe that all is director; the actors scarcely putty to be moulded in His/Her god-like hands.
Beginning to admire Hitchcock and Bresson, directors who both explicitly state their actors are nothing more that ‘models’, only strengthened my precondition.
There is, of course, star theory and strands of that sort – but it never seems to assess acting as a technical form, as one would attribute to a camera movement, or a particularly provocative graphical edit. They instead, in my ignorantly limited reading, preoccupy themselves with notions of the actor as auteur (in that one can tell immediately this is a ‘James Cagney film’) or in the marketing of a subject’s specific star persona. What is needed is the mechanical deconstruction of performance – to treat the actor as one would obsess over a pan in the wrong direction (see: Le Crime de Monsieur Lange) or an effective use of light.
There is more emotional weight in one moment of falsetto speech than the rest of the The Royal Tenenbaums. Even Anderson’s cartoon world cannot rob it of its rawness. As Gene Hackman sits on the street’s curb, outside an imploded wedding, with his son, Ben Stiller, a little flicker in the latter’s voice sends all the deadpan that precedes it crashing down into a rubble of melancholy and rebirth. “It’s been a tough year, dad” – his voice breaks, in the way a 13 year old boy’s would, at the start. This second, if that, Ben Stiller ceases to be an actor. He is Chad, the oppressed griever of his wife’s premature death. It is a note, as in one on a piano, that is hit so crisply, yet with such tenderness, that it beats Luke Wilson’s stylicide (I tried to merge the words ‘stylised’ and ‘suicide’ into one) as the film’s most humanly invested instance.
In reflection (as opposed to ‘on reflection’), my gushing for drama may be a coping tactic for an upcoming assignment, a quasi-Stockholm syndrome if you will. For the first time ever I will be dealing with actors as a director, and I’m relishing the idea. And just as when one learns a new word, for that word to then crop up everywhere one looks, I have began to come away from films thinking as much about performance as I have about narrative and technique. Previously, I don’t recall it ever entering my mindset, bar those exceptional performances that one can do nothing but talk about.
However, it is a welcome change, and one I feel a tad idiotic and embarrassed for dismissing so readily before. There is a notable example I would briefly like to mention.
The Lovely Bones, a frustrating film (and one I can imagine even more so for readers of the book), does not excel in acting. That is, at least, I think. I’m still a newcomer to this ‘appreciate the acting’ lark, but on an innocent’s experience nothing really impressed me. But for that matter, little of the film did. Yet on sitting through the credits (another new habit I have picked up to the annoyance of some companions) Stanley Tucci’s name scrolled upwards. “Who was Stanley Tucci in that?” I asked impressed. “The killer” came the reply.
I had lost interest in the film when it premiered about 5 years before its general release. Much of my anticipation had been rooted into other ventures (mainly, the live Monday night war between WWE and TNA starting IMMINENTLY), and had left me very lacklustre about even seeing it. When I did get round to seeing it, I had forgotten the film’s premise and actors. Whilst watching I would pick them up here and there. One can hardly miss Mark Whalberg (who I have always been a huge fan of despite my animosity towards thespians, and he is responsible for my favourite moment in the film – an entire character summed up in his neurotic, but charming questioning of whether developing one roll of film a month, as promised, for his daughter was fair or not), and eventually one realises that that is Rachel Weisz; the grandmother is Susan Sarandon; that is girl from Atonement; I neither care about the actors or the characters for the majority of the supporting cast. Apart from…holy shit is that Chris from Sopranos – it totally is. A friend from work still calls him Spider from Goodfellas. And he has completed the Sopranos. I don’t agree with that, but it’s interesting how one can place an emphasis on an actor as always belonging to a certain role. Well, that, I suppose, is star theory…
I digress…
…I always thought, throughout the film, that the killer was played rather fun. In the way that hideous characters can be fun because they are so interesting, not because I find child rape (a theme that is pretty much absent from the film, it rather focusing on the much more acceptable and public-friendly child murder) fun. He was the atypical loner. He trimmed his roses. He has a retro moustache and Denis Taylor glasses. He made model dollhouses and presented himself as an obsessive, or rather, a perfectionist (a trait he shared with Mark Whalberg, whose hobby was boats in glass bottles, but I never quite worked out this parallel). A complex character, yet so steeped in obvious psychological motives that psychoanalysing him became redundant (besides, who does that anymore, it’s soooo 1970s). One was released from these shackles to enjoy his performance, a rather campy villainous type. Indeed, much of my enjoyment came from not knowing who he was, as an actor, and suppose I must have fully bought into his portrayal – preferring instead to focus on the character rather than thinking “Wow, [insert actor’s name here] is having a lot of fun with this character”.
This is why I was so pleasantly surprised that this was in fact Stanley Tucci. A name and face I’m very much acquainted with – making the prospect of me not realising who it was even more absurd. To me, at least.
From this absurdity I obtained a large sense of bemusement and glee. A grin carved on my face like a loon, I walked through the Bexleyheath Cineworld foyer constantly updating my facial expression. From furrowed eyebrows of disbelief to looking up at the ceiling (there was no sky inside) to find an answer. All this time my companion was providing insights into how the film had differed from the book. Usually, as I did not want to see the film in the first place and submitted only because my preferred choice was The Crazies, I would have been gloating “I told you so”. Although I know that if I had developed an attachment to the book and had gone along to see an unfaithful adaptation of it, I would be in the same state of resentment and annoyance. However, the criticism that “it wasn’t nearly as good as the book” has become such a generic thing to say (despite being completely valid and nearly always right), to those with no emotional involvement with the source text it merely becomes white noise. Yet none of this crossed my mind. I just walked and muttered in disbelief, that that was Stanley Tucci, and I had no idea throughout the entire 120 minutes that it was anyone other than a real character. My disbelief had not only been suspended, but hoisted up into the rafters with reinforced adamantium.
It’s simply such a fresh experience. And imagine that was the case for all film. No billing to gloom over the poster and every actor so lost in character that it is impossible to place them in your head - the task becoming pointless and for one to accept them for what they are, people. Not fictional characters, but also not real actors. People.
Monday, 22 February 2010
The problem with BAFTA
Really, this should be titled "the problem for BAFTA", or "Right winners, wrong idea."
I'm really not sure what to make of last night's BAFTA Awards. On one had, I find it very hard to knock a ceremony that gives the Best Actress to Carey Mulligan for An Education, Best Actor to Colin Firth for A Single Man, and where The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture and Best Director. If that happens at the Oscars I'd be delighted.
My problem with the awards, and the problem the people responsible face every year, is the B of BAFTA. The ceremony tries to do two things; showcase, promote and celebrate British film, and be seen internationally as a serious event and good predictor of who will win at the Oscars. Sometimes, you can't do both.
In Britain, we benefit and suffer from sharing a language with the US; American cultural product finds it easier to get a foothold over here than it probably does in, say, France. Sometimes this is good - we get to watch great American TV and films without them being dubbed or subtitled, and sometimes this is bad - as soon as they get any attention, our best acting talent sods off to Hollywood where they do not face a language barrier (and who can blame them).
A similar French film awards ceremony would have a nice cut off point; any film not in the French language could be excluded from everything except the best international film. We don't have that luxury, and none of the big names that the sponsors demand would turn up if it was solely British film only (what constitutes a British film is deserving of a post in itself). The organisers, then, after moving the date the awards are given out a few years ago, try to pitch it as an Oscar indicator. Fair enough, but if you're going to do that, why have Outstanding British Film and Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer as awards? You cannot claim to be an award of international importance and then hand out a couple of parochial awards as a token nod to your Britishness.
If they want to be taken seriously, BAFTA either need to drop the "B", relocate their ceremony to LA and forget about being British, or they need to go the other way and give only allow films that are British - that is, deal with a British issue, are set in Britain, shot in Britain and have a cast and crew that is largely British - to be nominated. Of course, neither of those things are going to happen, so I'm going to be annoyed by them for the forseeable future.
I'm really not sure what to make of last night's BAFTA Awards. On one had, I find it very hard to knock a ceremony that gives the Best Actress to Carey Mulligan for An Education, Best Actor to Colin Firth for A Single Man, and where The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture and Best Director. If that happens at the Oscars I'd be delighted.
My problem with the awards, and the problem the people responsible face every year, is the B of BAFTA. The ceremony tries to do two things; showcase, promote and celebrate British film, and be seen internationally as a serious event and good predictor of who will win at the Oscars. Sometimes, you can't do both.
In Britain, we benefit and suffer from sharing a language with the US; American cultural product finds it easier to get a foothold over here than it probably does in, say, France. Sometimes this is good - we get to watch great American TV and films without them being dubbed or subtitled, and sometimes this is bad - as soon as they get any attention, our best acting talent sods off to Hollywood where they do not face a language barrier (and who can blame them).
A similar French film awards ceremony would have a nice cut off point; any film not in the French language could be excluded from everything except the best international film. We don't have that luxury, and none of the big names that the sponsors demand would turn up if it was solely British film only (what constitutes a British film is deserving of a post in itself). The organisers, then, after moving the date the awards are given out a few years ago, try to pitch it as an Oscar indicator. Fair enough, but if you're going to do that, why have Outstanding British Film and Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer as awards? You cannot claim to be an award of international importance and then hand out a couple of parochial awards as a token nod to your Britishness.
If they want to be taken seriously, BAFTA either need to drop the "B", relocate their ceremony to LA and forget about being British, or they need to go the other way and give only allow films that are British - that is, deal with a British issue, are set in Britain, shot in Britain and have a cast and crew that is largely British - to be nominated. Of course, neither of those things are going to happen, so I'm going to be annoyed by them for the forseeable future.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Vicarious Viewings
There is, for myself at least, a certain thrill when I recognise a location used in a film as somewhere I have visited, or visit somewhere that has been used as a location for a film. Both the visit, and subsequent viewings of the film are enhanced by the experience. Playing the giant piano in FAO Schwarz, like Tom Hanks in Big, was a highlight of a trip to New York (when I got back from that trip, I also compared the photos I'd taken on the Staten Island Ferry to the opening shot from Working Girl). A trip to Prague was enlivened by me committing an arrestable offence (twice!) in the place where, in the first Mission:Impossible film, Tom Cruise and Kristin Scott Thomas are exiting what is supposed to the US Embassy (it's actually a restaurant). Sticking with central Europe, a trip on the ferris wheel from The Third Man is a must on any visit to Vienna (it also makes it into Before Sunrise and a Bond film). Closer to home, a walk through Waterloo Station can't help but make me think of London to Brighton or The Bourne Ultimatum.
All of these moments have one thing in common: I have visited them after the film has been shot, as if I am paying homage to the film. There are other films where I have recognised a location as somewhere I know; here, I have been there before the film was shot.
Last night, I experienced something new: seeing a film on a big screen that included footage shot when I was actually present. This was a new thrill, but not one that was entirely unexpected.
The film was No Distance Left to Run, a documentary telling the story Blur against the backdrop of their gloriously triumphant 2009 reunion tour. At the gigs last summer there were signs at the entrance telling people that filming would be taking place and by entering we were giving our consent for any footage featuring ourselves to be used in some way. I presumed that some video would find its way into some sort of bonus section of a live DVD of one of the gigs. To have been at event that was not only, by some distance, the best gig I've ever seen, but also when some footage for a film that had a (admittedly small) cinema release was, for someone like myself, pretty special.
It will be hard, but I will try to get some critical distance on the film. A mix of archive footage and gorgeous HD, it is funny, sad, dark (Damon Albarn mentions that heroin "muddied" the lives of certain people around the time of the Blur album, a reference, one presumes, to the problems of his then girlfriend, Justine Frischmann) but with a happy ending. One complaint I heard as I left the cinema was that it didn't really deal with the final two gigs of the reunion that took place in Hyde Park. Though moments from them are shown, there is a good narrative reason for this: the crowd singing the "Oh My Baby" line from Tender back at the band at their Glastonbury performance is hard to top as a moment of triumph.
As the tour did, the film rights the record that Blur were the definitive band of the Brit Pop era. Or to put it a little less elegantly, as I did at the Wolverhampton Civic Hall on June 24th last year, "Who the fuck are Oasis?". The 2003 documentary Live Forever, in which Albarn appeared, seemed to have its feet firmly in the Oasis camp (even going so far as to interview a laughable Oasis tribute band). No Distance Left To Run reminds us of the band Blur were. Nobody else had the songs in the numbers they did, nobody else had the intelligence to move away from Brit Pop at exactly the right time (what are Ocean Colour Scene doing now? Are Oasis still going as some sort of Liam Gallagher and friends band?) and find other influences. The reunion didn't feel like it was for the money, it felt more like catharsis for the band.
This has turned away from a review of the film or a meditation on having some vicarious thrill from being where a film was shot into an appreciation of Blur, so I perhaps better wrap it up. The DVD of the film is out on February 15th, and well worth a look for fans of Blur, historians of the 90s, and people wondering why it's a bad idea to invite Will Self to your comeback gigs. It also shows just how well David Walliams captured Graham Coxon in his impersonation in the Blur episode of Rock Profile. Decent music documentaries are rare, and this is one.
All of these moments have one thing in common: I have visited them after the film has been shot, as if I am paying homage to the film. There are other films where I have recognised a location as somewhere I know; here, I have been there before the film was shot.
Last night, I experienced something new: seeing a film on a big screen that included footage shot when I was actually present. This was a new thrill, but not one that was entirely unexpected.
The film was No Distance Left to Run, a documentary telling the story Blur against the backdrop of their gloriously triumphant 2009 reunion tour. At the gigs last summer there were signs at the entrance telling people that filming would be taking place and by entering we were giving our consent for any footage featuring ourselves to be used in some way. I presumed that some video would find its way into some sort of bonus section of a live DVD of one of the gigs. To have been at event that was not only, by some distance, the best gig I've ever seen, but also when some footage for a film that had a (admittedly small) cinema release was, for someone like myself, pretty special.
It will be hard, but I will try to get some critical distance on the film. A mix of archive footage and gorgeous HD, it is funny, sad, dark (Damon Albarn mentions that heroin "muddied" the lives of certain people around the time of the Blur album, a reference, one presumes, to the problems of his then girlfriend, Justine Frischmann) but with a happy ending. One complaint I heard as I left the cinema was that it didn't really deal with the final two gigs of the reunion that took place in Hyde Park. Though moments from them are shown, there is a good narrative reason for this: the crowd singing the "Oh My Baby" line from Tender back at the band at their Glastonbury performance is hard to top as a moment of triumph.
As the tour did, the film rights the record that Blur were the definitive band of the Brit Pop era. Or to put it a little less elegantly, as I did at the Wolverhampton Civic Hall on June 24th last year, "Who the fuck are Oasis?". The 2003 documentary Live Forever, in which Albarn appeared, seemed to have its feet firmly in the Oasis camp (even going so far as to interview a laughable Oasis tribute band). No Distance Left To Run reminds us of the band Blur were. Nobody else had the songs in the numbers they did, nobody else had the intelligence to move away from Brit Pop at exactly the right time (what are Ocean Colour Scene doing now? Are Oasis still going as some sort of Liam Gallagher and friends band?) and find other influences. The reunion didn't feel like it was for the money, it felt more like catharsis for the band.
This has turned away from a review of the film or a meditation on having some vicarious thrill from being where a film was shot into an appreciation of Blur, so I perhaps better wrap it up. The DVD of the film is out on February 15th, and well worth a look for fans of Blur, historians of the 90s, and people wondering why it's a bad idea to invite Will Self to your comeback gigs. It also shows just how well David Walliams captured Graham Coxon in his impersonation in the Blur episode of Rock Profile. Decent music documentaries are rare, and this is one.
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Acknowledging Hypocrisy
Whilst having a rather intellectual bath reading A Very Short Introduction to Nietzsche (a simultaneously pretentious and not actually pretentious act - surely the really pretentious would scoff at the idea of a ‘very short introduction’, but oh, how I would love to be that scoffer), the book spoke of how fierce a scribbler Freddie was. Any idea or concept that entered his mind would be jotted down in an instant, so convinced he was of always being on the cusp of brilliance. Most of it was brilliance (apparently, I’m only reading a short introduction), but were ideas he became heavily critical of upon later reflection. This is why they remained simply jottings, excluded from his published work. These half-thoughts provided inspiration/proof for the extremists, fundamentalists and any other wide ranging fanatical group who took him as their cause’s forefather.
A rather tenuous link, then, that the notion of the unpublished, the unfiltered, entered my consciousness only earlier. The Internet has appealed to this side of one’s mindset - the process of a thought, and that that thought can often be the most ingenious thought that ever was thunk. Often proved wrong upon reflection, and always criticised heavily or politely nodded at (which is infinitely worse) by those one explains them to. It is a painful acknowledgement to make, that one’s ideas are so often waffle. In my experience, being shot down (which I have considerable experience of) provokes two reactions; a tenacious denial of the shooter’s credentials, a stuttering defence of the idea and bitching about the whole fiasco to anyone who will listen (or again, politely nod, which is rather helpful here), or a downward spiral pondering my own inadequacies. The blogger has no-one to be shot down by until their post is within the digital sphere. I’m sure many are severely embarrassed once posting, as I am, and maybe that comes from a sense of unrefinement, of putting something as personal as fleeting thoughts somewhere where anyone can see.
For blogs aren’t surely as researched as other forms of writing. And why would they have to be? Are they not just diary entries (see, I am doubting my own words already)? But that does mean there is an intrinsic haste to their form. Blogging, as I see it, is a mass of individuals all shouting and not listening. There will be dialogue to an extent, but not in a traditional, sustained, productive or progressive form.
Tenuously again, I will relate this to spectatorship and the steady whittling down of shared experience. If one takes the cinematic apparatus as the beginning of spectatorship, shared experience there is at its highest. Say there are ten films released every week, the possibility of others having seen what you have seen increases. Indeed, the very act of watching in a cinema is shared due to the people that surround you (although it may not feel like it at the time - the wonderful trick of film). To continue, television thus widens the choice of what to view, and decreases the amount of people one shares this experience with. This concludes with the Internet, the most whorish of distribution systems, with its inherent rape, et all. The spectator is often reduced to a crowd of one, as I am now, and the increased choice decreases the chance of someone else sharing your experience. The Internet breeds individuality and destroys the need for space. I am not going to be absolutist enough to cry that community is under threat, but surely this need to have an existence of defined individuality within a new space is a subject worth a ponder.
But everything I have just typed is equally (if not more so) applicable to it. These thoughts have only been bouncing through my head in only the last few days, even then they had not been linked together as above. None of it has been run by another. The diarrhoea of the unfiltered mind is present here in all its abhorrence. Likewise, the act of typing this blog commits me to the same self-projectors I lament. It is an odd thing to acknowledge one’s own hypocrisy and then continue as if simple awareness of it is enough.
Unfortunately, I have no answers. And even if you do, I won’t listen.
Saturday, 28 November 2009
The Overlooked Hotel: Face (1997)
The Overlooked Hotel is a new series from Elliptical Edits, where we take a second look at a film we feel deserves a wider audience than it got on its original release. And yes, the title is a nod to King and Kubrick.
In my first post on Elliptical Edits, I made a reference to Face, and thought it would be worth a post of its own. Released in the autumn of 1997 it seems, at first glance to be a fairly run of the mill generic heist gone wrong film, but a closer look reveals a little more.
Starring Robert Carlyle as Ray, a former socialist activist turned armed robber, the film takes place over two days showing the build up and aftermath of a raid on a security depot in west London.
The film was directed by Antonia Bird, and marked her return to British cinema after making Mad Love in the US (and though that film was not a success in critical or commercial terms, when she appeared on Inside the Actors Studio, Drew Barrymore said her character in that film was the closest she has ever come to playing herself in a film). I would argue Face failed at the box office because, released just a month after The Full Monty, audiences didn't want to see Robert Carlyle as a criminal at that point. If it had been released a year later, in the wake of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels it may have faired better, though it is very different in tone to that film. It could be described as a less stylised, British Reservoir Dogs; both films share a similar storyline and feature a fictional radio show on the soundtrack, though in Face it's Billy Bragg rather than K-Billy's Super Sounds of the 70s that gets the characters talking.
Opening with Ray and his colleague Dave (Ray Winstone) turning up on a London council estate, the sound of a police radio and the fact that Ray has a warrant card leads us to believe they are police officers. Turning over a drug dealer, he tells them he's "experienced the old bill, and they don't usually come on this strong", even on a bad day. The words are given an extra piquancy when you realise the character is played by Gerry Conlon. (The writer of the film, Ronan Bennett, also spent time in prison for a crime he didn't commit.)
The politics of the film perhaps also give a clue to why the film didn't succeed. Wearing its leftist principles on its sleeve (though Bird, in the DVD commentary to the film says the “Vote Labour” billboard was only included because it happened to be at the location they were shooting), it may have seemed a tad dated in the autumn of 1997, with an as yet undiscredited Labour government in power, it looked like some characters were fighting battles that had already been won. A character's speech about there being no public servants and no public service at the end of the film may have seemed out of place when it first appeared, now it just seems like Peter Mandelson's claim that “We are all Thatcherite now” almost five years before he actually said it. Ray has to be the only armed robber in history to have posters for Ken Loach films on his walls.
Ray and Dave's gang are completed by reliable character actor Phil Davis as the unhinged Julian (don't call him Julie), Steven Waddington as the slow but loyal Stevie, and making his screen acting debut as Jason, the youngest of the team, a certain Damon Albarn (his best line? On dance music, he says “It's just noise, isn't it? Stops you thinking.”).
Though there is a moment – a brief montage – that borders on glamourising the crime the gang are committing, more often than not it makes armed robbery look a bit pathetic as a career, and the gang a bit amateur (Jason crunches the gears on the van as they drive to the security depot they are robbing, and it takes two attempts to break through the wall). In the pub after the raid, when the arguments have already started about how the money will be split up, Ray tells Jason the downside of his chosen career – he's spent five years in prison and could have earned double driving a van or a minicab.
When Dave turns up bloodied and having his share of the loot stolen, the gang implode into accusations and in-fighting, with the police hot on their tail. A shoot out in the street is based on the one in Michael Mann's Heat, with the action transposed from Los Angeles to suburban Haringey.
Knowing the game is up, Ray goes to his activist mother, Sue Johnston, for money and a car. After telling her “They won.” She dresses him down and asks “Who do you think you are, Robin Hood?” He replies with “Well, we don't always give to the poor, but we do rob the rich”, a version of which would appear, two years later, as the tag line to the Carlyle starring Plunkett & Macleane.
The end, following a shoot out in a Police Station, is downbeat but, ultimately, hopeful. One could speculate what would happen to the characters, and what sort of life they cold lead after the events of the film, but you imagine those that survive will somehow make a fresh start.
Bird reunited with Carlyle for the cannibal thriller Ravenous (for which Albarn, teaming up with Michael Nyman, produced the soundtrack). She and Bennett (who worked on the script for Public Enemies, uniting him with Michael Mann, the director of Heat that he paid homage to in Face) would reunite for television's The Hamburg Cell, telling the story of the 9/11 hijackers. Lena Headey, here appearing as Ray's youth worker girlfriend, would eventually find success in 300 and on television in The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Carlyle has also moved into TV, starring in the latest Stargate series. In fact with the exception of Winstone, most the cast and crew seem to have forged a career in television. Though it works as a feature film, one wonders if Face would not have been better served as a the sort of one off TV drama they sadly don't seem to make anymore. It was part financed by the BBC, and to have it remembered as a great television play would surely be a better fate than to be forgotten as a film. Still, check it out, you won't be disappointed.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
On the Narrative Failures of Twilight Using Wrestling Terminology
On the Narrative Failures of Twilight Using Wrestling Terminology
There is something inanely seedy and perverted about watching films on a laptop screen. I find the charges of its illegality dubious; I refer to the picture quality it evokes. Just as one sees surveillance footage with a condemning eye (unless one were a security guard, why would one be watching such footage unless to condemn?), anything I see on a laptop screen - with an occasional pixelated face/frozen visual/poor sound - must activate a register in the subconscious instinctively recognising it as pornography (unfortunately through habit). However, TWILIGHT turned out to create a similar effect: I was left at the laptop screen feeling slightly cheated and depressed and angry that everything I'd just witnessed was far more multicultural and prettier than I am.
Self-conscious anxiety aside, disappointment towards the product solely derived from poor narrative structure and a failure to represent characters properly. Feedback from other sources, and noting the film’s targeted demographic (emo girls), I had preconceptions for the film being awful. Experience dictates this should make the film enjoyable. It worked, to an extent, but there seemed something terribly askew with the whole fiasco. To explore the reasons behind this I will be utilising wrestling terminology (please note the following are subjective opinions disguised as absolutes):
The major narrative flaw with the storyline is that the heels [1] are hardly represented or built up throughout the film. As the main event is a bout between the leader of the heel faction (James, bad vampire) and the leading baby face [2] (Edward), one would assume the build [3] would be far greater. Instead the feud [4] between the two is only allowed time to develop in the final half hour, generating hardly any heat [5] for James. More frustrating is the constantly teased heel turn [6] of Edward’s ‘sister’, Rosaline, and the sudden, informal face turn of Laurent when he warns the family of James’ vicious streak. Laurent’s is an intriguing turn and would benefit greatly from more screen time, hopefully bringing with it exposition on the (completely underdeveloped) character of James, whilst offering more of a back story on inter-vampire feuds . Rosaline, however, proves an obstacle to Edward and Bella at every opportunity. These are not even subtle disagreements (ones which would lend to a more complex, developed complete heel turn over the ‘saga’ of films), but huge, blaring ones which usually dictate a full heel turn at the end of a film. Instead, this storyline is completely abandoned and we are offered nothing more of her after refusing to put on a coat (to hide Bella’s smell from the tracking James). Although her complete heel turn is inevitable (unless she turns fully face through a love of Edward – the only other plausible storyline I can see for her), it should have been carried out far more discreetly in this instalment.
[1] Heels – wrestling terminology for the bad guy in a feud. For a ‘heel’ to fully work the spectator must feel the urge to boo him/her, thus creating ‘heat’. See: Chris Jericho during his Shawn Michaels feud
[2] Baby Face or Face – wrestling terminology for the good guy in a feud. For a ‘face’ to fully work the spectator must be overcome to stand on their feet and, in a sense of elation, cheer him/her, thus creating ‘heat. See: early 2000 The Rock
[3] Build – the effort and time given to developing a feud between two characters. This should eventually end in a match
[4] Feud – wrestling terminology for the tension between two battling characters. See: any build to a wrestling match, ever.
[5] Heat – wrestling terminology for an audience’s verbal reaction towards a character. For instance, if a baby face receives cheers they are said to have good ‘heat’. If a heel receives boos, they are also said to have good heat. The worst outcome for a wrestler is that they have no ‘heat’ – the arena would be silent– as this implies nobody buys or believes their character or feud. See: Mark Henry at any stage of his career
[6] Turn – wrestling terminology for when a character switches to an opposite role. For a baby face turn, see: Kurt Angle at Bound for Glory 2009. For a heel turn, see: Batista at Bragging Rights against Rey Mysterio, Jr.
There is something inanely seedy and perverted about watching films on a laptop screen. I find the charges of its illegality dubious; I refer to the picture quality it evokes. Just as one sees surveillance footage with a condemning eye (unless one were a security guard, why would one be watching such footage unless to condemn?), anything I see on a laptop screen - with an occasional pixelated face/frozen visual/poor sound - must activate a register in the subconscious instinctively recognising it as pornography (unfortunately through habit). However, TWILIGHT turned out to create a similar effect: I was left at the laptop screen feeling slightly cheated and depressed and angry that everything I'd just witnessed was far more multicultural and prettier than I am.
Self-conscious anxiety aside, disappointment towards the product solely derived from poor narrative structure and a failure to represent characters properly. Feedback from other sources, and noting the film’s targeted demographic (emo girls), I had preconceptions for the film being awful. Experience dictates this should make the film enjoyable. It worked, to an extent, but there seemed something terribly askew with the whole fiasco. To explore the reasons behind this I will be utilising wrestling terminology (please note the following are subjective opinions disguised as absolutes):
The major narrative flaw with the storyline is that the heels [1] are hardly represented or built up throughout the film. As the main event is a bout between the leader of the heel faction (James, bad vampire) and the leading baby face [2] (Edward), one would assume the build [3] would be far greater. Instead the feud [4] between the two is only allowed time to develop in the final half hour, generating hardly any heat [5] for James. More frustrating is the constantly teased heel turn [6] of Edward’s ‘sister’, Rosaline, and the sudden, informal face turn of Laurent when he warns the family of James’ vicious streak. Laurent’s is an intriguing turn and would benefit greatly from more screen time, hopefully bringing with it exposition on the (completely underdeveloped) character of James, whilst offering more of a back story on inter-vampire feuds . Rosaline, however, proves an obstacle to Edward and Bella at every opportunity. These are not even subtle disagreements (ones which would lend to a more complex, developed complete heel turn over the ‘saga’ of films), but huge, blaring ones which usually dictate a full heel turn at the end of a film. Instead, this storyline is completely abandoned and we are offered nothing more of her after refusing to put on a coat (to hide Bella’s smell from the tracking James). Although her complete heel turn is inevitable (unless she turns fully face through a love of Edward – the only other plausible storyline I can see for her), it should have been carried out far more discreetly in this instalment.
[1] Heels – wrestling terminology for the bad guy in a feud. For a ‘heel’ to fully work the spectator must feel the urge to boo him/her, thus creating ‘heat’. See: Chris Jericho during his Shawn Michaels feud
[2] Baby Face or Face – wrestling terminology for the good guy in a feud. For a ‘face’ to fully work the spectator must be overcome to stand on their feet and, in a sense of elation, cheer him/her, thus creating ‘heat. See: early 2000 The Rock
[3] Build – the effort and time given to developing a feud between two characters. This should eventually end in a match
[4] Feud – wrestling terminology for the tension between two battling characters. See: any build to a wrestling match, ever.
[5] Heat – wrestling terminology for an audience’s verbal reaction towards a character. For instance, if a baby face receives cheers they are said to have good ‘heat’. If a heel receives boos, they are also said to have good heat. The worst outcome for a wrestler is that they have no ‘heat’ – the arena would be silent– as this implies nobody buys or believes their character or feud. See: Mark Henry at any stage of his career
[6] Turn – wrestling terminology for when a character switches to an opposite role. For a baby face turn, see: Kurt Angle at Bound for Glory 2009. For a heel turn, see: Batista at Bragging Rights against Rey Mysterio, Jr.
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