Twenty-five year since its release, Hoop Dreams has lost neither its nuance nor its relevance. The basic structure of the film, its rise-and-fall-and-rise-again narrative retains a distinctive elegance. This is not just a film about two high-school basketball players hoping to make it to the NBA. This is a film about challenging race and class orthodoxies in the US. It’s a film about the place sport has in the imagination and dreams of millions of people around the globe. And it’s also a film about how human love and talent become exploited.
Director Steve James started filming William Gates and Arthur Agee more than 30 years ago. They were just smart teenagers who were good at basketball. Recruited by the fee-paying St. Joseph’s school, their families were informed that, so long as they played well, they wouldn’t have to pay. Eventually, Agee has to return to an underfunded inner-city school, and the two players undergo contrasting fortunes as the stars of their respective schools. Gates is the golden boy hailed by all, but gradually brought low by injuries. Agee is the underdog lifting an underperforming team above its weight.
The Wasp, puritan work ethics embodied by St. Joseph’s head coach, Gene Pingatore (who passed away just a few weeks ago), a serial winner and highly respected sports coach, is very questionable. It drains the love and passion out of the young players. He reduces the sport to a series of set plays in which there is only ever one right decision, and that is the one the coach wants you to make. Make the wrong one, and you’ll get a volley of verbal abuse. Such coaches want to be chess-masters, but there’s too much chaos in most team sports to guarantee that level of control. In my opinion, this method of coaching has spread to almost all professional sports.
Both Agee’s and Gates’ families look upon St. Joseph’s with hope, as a route out of inner city poverty. When Agee is dropped from St. Jo’s, he also has to contend with his father falling foul to drugs and the law, whilst his mother loses her income and goes on welfare. The sense of responsibility and pressure he must have felt at the time is enormous. Yet he tackles his problems effectively. He doesn’t emerge an outright victor, but he’s a fighter, and does his best to get through it.
Steve James seemed to instinctively understand this. The camera is patient. The time that the director spent building up a relationship with both families is crucial to the film’s success. This cosy relationship also extends to the viewers.
The basketball footage is riveting. Even though this is a 25-year-old film relaying results that are 30 years old, my palms were sweating as James’ narration takes us through the story of each individual game. The poetry of sport is pervasive. Chaos has a habit of creating unbelievable narratives, seeping into the collective folklore of mass history.
Let’s not forget, however, the dark forces behind these stories: the dirty money, the non-remunerated players, the international skulduggery, and so on. Hoop Dreams reveals that sports are a route out of poverty for many, but also a bumpy road filled with dangerous turns and lies. For coaches it remains a means to an end. Either you become a winner or you get out. For the institutions, there’s more money being funnelled into the game than ever before.
The two protagonists find a glimmer of hope in the end of the movie. Both Gates and Agee enter college, and they talk about their dreams. Five years earlier, they have said “NBA” without hesitation. Now, they’re not so sure. Basketball has given a scholarship into college, and with that the springboard to something a bit more stable, if not quite as opulent as the promised land of the NBA. The way they speak of it suggests that they feel a sense of relief, that a burden has been released. Perhaps NBA isn’t the only way forward!
Hoop Dreams showed at Cinema Rediscovered in Bristol, and it’s out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, October 25th. On Mubi in June, 2020.
The extraordinary power of Notorious does not come through its plot (although the story concerning Nazis hiding in Brazil was renowned for its topicality and thematic resonance) or Ben Hecht’s Academy-Award nominated dialogue (although every line either reveals something about the plot or character) but rather its two central performances from Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman; two lovers bound together by a mutual self-loathing.
The concept is simple. Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, the daughter of a disgraced Nazi traitor to the US government. To mask the pain of her father’s betrayal she drinks copiously, hosting parties where she fails to pretend that nothing is the matter. Government agent Devlin (Cary Grant) meets her at one of her parties, and recruits her to travel to Brazil, where she will use her father’s name to infiltrate a group of Nazi spies plotting a deadly uranium attack.
Released in 1946, the central concept was highly timely. WW2 had only just ended, people were afraid of Nazis on the loose in South America, and concerns about atomic warfare had been heightened after the deadly bombs America detonated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By roping Cary Grant and Ingmar Bergman in on the tale, Hitchcock scored a true box office hit and created one of his most gloriously romantic films, perhaps only bettered by the James Stewart-starring Vertigo (1958).
In true Hitchcock fashion, the film is a classic not because of its story but how it goes about telling it. With Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, Hitchcock found the perfect correlatives for his twin themes of love and fear, and how often they can be two sides of the same coin. Her Alicia Huberman is a totally broken woman, a compulsive alcoholic, drawn into the arms of Cary Grant’s infinite cool, while Grant’s Devlin is a failed attempt at a posturing blank slate; his eyes fearful of ever conveying anything other than pure detachment. Nonetheless, as part of his plan, she must be driven into the arms of Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), sending Devlin into a spiral of jealousy.Suddenly the previously composed government agent has to face up to his true feelings, lest he loses the first person he’s ever really cared for.
Hitchcock has always been known for the way he co-mingles sex, lust and love with the creeping fear of the unknown, yet Notorious is so seeped in its glorious, doomed romanticism that its images of love transcend the bounds of the conventional thriller into something incredibly gripping, vital and actually rather unconventional.
It’s best known for its Hay Code-skirting kiss scene, in which Grant and Bergman trade endless three second smooches for the better part of three minutes (a duration completely novel at the time), yet these moments keep on recurring, making it a true film of smushed-together faces, filmed in glorious close-up. Here Hitchcock innovates the use of the zoom. While the best example is the long pan from the stop of the stairs down to Alicia in the ballroom holding the key for the basement, Hitchcock also uses fast zooms during romantic sequences as well, suddenly getting us up close and personal with our subjects in the midst of passion. Every close-up becomes a tightening of the vice, another way of rushing to the heart of the matter, carrying us, the viewer, along with him.
While these love scenes — filmed in cars, hotel balconies and gorgeous ballrooms — are part of the plot per se, Hitchcock, with help from cinematographer Ted Tetzlaff, frames them in such a tender way that all “thriller” elements seem completely subsumed by nakedly erotic passion. It is this very woozy passion that is the heart of Notorious —a film obsessed with trust, brokenness, addiction and poison — and what makes it a particularly adult and unconventional thriller, even now.
It’s success rests upon Ingrid Bergman’s beautiful face, playing a woman endlessly oscillating between self-hatred, doubt and fear; both of the enemy and the far more terrifying prospect of opening her heart to another man like she did to her traitorous father. Is there any actress in history of cinema that could pierce quite so fiercely into the heart as her? Whether its as Rick Blaine’s ex-lover in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942), the wife in a failed marriage in Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini, 1954) or the terrifying matriarch in Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman, 1978), no actress before or since has ever been so effective at conveying vast emotions through the power of close-ups alone. Watching her act I find my critical faculties melting away in favour of pure adoration of such an evocative range of facial expressions. It’s hard to imagine any other actress playing that same role.
The plot of Notorious might be concerned with violence and death, yet these moments almost entirely take place off-screen. Whether it’s the agitated guest who is euphemistically “driven home” or the iconic final scene where Sebastian walks back to the mansion and an almost certain death, everything is suggested rather than depicted. The MacGuffin may concern hidden uranium, yet no bombs go off, voices are rarely raised, and there are no wild chase scenes. Rather the most violent scenes are the love sequences, both players losing themselves in the midst of incredibly raw and evocative passion.
Hitchcock understands better than any other mainstream director that love and sex can be far more terrifying than gunshots and creatures in the dark. It is rare to see a romantic thriller where both characters are ostensibly so weak-willed, yet one where their love for each other eventually sees them through to a happy ending (eighties and nineties noir updates almost always end up with betrayal or death). Instead Notorious stands out for its belief that love can just about keep persisting, even when you hate yourself, drink obsessively, and are surrounded by Nazis. While Psycho (1960), Vertigo (1958) and The Birds (1963) are often considered to be bigger reinventions and artistic leaps in terms of Hitchcock’s technique, Notorious deserves credit for its uncommonly powerful, optimistic yet mature romantic vision; completely undimmed by the passage of time.
Notorious is back in cinemas across the UK more than 70 years after its original release on Friday, August 9th.
The last major film festival of the summer season before Oscar hype ramps up in the autumn, Locarno’s reputation is builtupon its eclectic and unconventional programme. Its standout cinema is the Piazza Grande — with over 8,000 available seats, it’s the largest outdoor screen in the world (pictured below) — which crucially means that queueing is a lot less stressful than during Venice or Cannes. This year’s Festival, curated for the first time by Lili Hinstin since Carlo Chatrian moved to the Berlinale, might be low on the big names, but nonetheless offers an exciting, experimentaland challenging line-up. From the Moving Ahead section, focusing on cinema’s most obscure edges to the retrospective Shades of Black — celebrating black cinema in all its forms — this year’s Festival champions that which is daring, different and auteur-driven. The event takes place from August 7th to the 17th.
Here are the 10 films we are most excited for!
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1. 7500 (Patrick Vollrath):
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a great knack for taking traditional genre fare and turning it into something that seems vital. He stars in 7500 as a young pilot tasked with negotiating with plane hijackers. Given that this premise is one of the most overcrowded of micro-genres, it will be interesting to see if 7500 — referring to the code pilots use in the event of a hijacking — can rise above its predecessors into something truly worthwhile. The claustrophobic clips released so far suggest a rather minimalist and claustrophobic approach, requiring Gordon-Levitt to really step up and carry the film all by himself.
Easily the most anticipated film at the festival, Tarantino’s ninth film sees the postmodern auteur return to the LA locale of his first three films. Received to rapturous applause at Cannes, this Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt-starring lament for a passing age of Hollywood, set against the backdrop of the Manson Murders, has been touted by some as a return to form following the middling The Hateful Eight (2015). Known for provoking endless discussion, it will be fascinating to see how he tackles the horrendous Manson murders and makes it entertaining and meaningful.
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3. Days of The Bagnold Summer (Simon Bird):
Yes, its Will from The Inbetweeners (2008-2010) with his debut film playing in competition at a major international film festival! Days of the Bagnold Summer, adapted from the graphic novel by Joff Winterhart, looks like a classic coming-of-age tale, telling the story of a young heavy-metal loving teen who is forced to spend his holiday’s with his annoying mother. Featuring an airy Belle and Sebastian soundtrack, and performances from Tamsin Greig, Rob Brydon and Earl Cave, it seems to be another thoughtful addition to the British oddball teen canon.
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4. Space Dogs (Elisa Kremser, Levin Peter):
Laika was the first living creature to ever be sent into space by the Soviet Union, dying in the name of scientific progress. Legends say that the dog returned to earth and lives among the streets of Moscow as a ghost. Experimental documentary Space Dogs looks to be an unconventional look at animal-human relations, and how progress can easily come at a cost to the earth’s most friendly animals. Interestingly enough, this film comes with a content warning while the inevitably violent Once Upon A Time In Hollywood doesn’t. Dog lovers beware!
Asif Kapadia has established himself as one of the best profilers in the documentary business with character portraits of legends such as Amy Whinehouse (Amy, 2015) and Brazilian F1 Driver Artyon Senna (Senna, 2010). For his latest work, he turns to arguably the greatest footballer of all time, Diego Maradona, utilising an extraordinary 500 hours of unused footage to go deep on his mythical stature. With critics saying that deep knowledge of football is not required to enjoy the movie, it seems that Kapadia has found a way to use Maradona’s tale to enquire into deeper truths regarding the human condition.
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6. Wilcox (dir. Denis Côté):
The preeminent Quebecois auteur Denis Côté’s previous film, Ghost Town Anthology (2019)may have already been released this year after positive buzz at Berlinale, but he’s already back at it again with the experimental film Wilcox. Running only 63 minutes long and featuring no dialogue, it seems Côté is taking his minimalist instincts to a new level; telling the quiet story of a hermit living beyond the normal bounds of society, surviving on his wits alone in the vast countryside.
Wilcox is also pictured at the top of this article.
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7. Echo (Rúnar Rúnarsson):
The most exciting contemporary director to come out of Iceland, Rúnar Rúnarsson tells sensitive, family-focused tales set against the beautiful backdrop of the rugged and barren countryside. Often filmed in grainy 16mm, his body of work does a lot with little dialogue yet strong and evocative gestures. His latest is set during Christmas time, and features only 56 scenes; foregoing a traditional narrative to create an entire portrait of Icelandic society. Judging from his boldly shot trailer, this could perhaps be his best film yet.
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8. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot):
Already released to highly positive reception in the USA, The Last Black Man in San Francisco makes its debut on European shores. At tale of gentrification that leaves the African-American community of San Francisco behind, it has been touted as a highly lyrical and dreamlike depiction of a city that has changed beyond measure. It stars Jimmie Falls playing a version of himself, attempting to reclaim his childhood home built by his grandfather. Picked up by A24, currently the hottest independent film studio in the USA, it’ll be interesting to see how it plays over the pond.
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9. A Voluntary Year (Ulrich Köhler):
The Berlin school — comprised of directors such as Christian Petzold and Angela Schanelec — have been making serious waves on the arthouse scene recently, from Berlinale to beyond. Ulrich Köhler may not specifically be from Berlin, but his work — bold, uncompromising and completely its own — fits the ticket exactly. His last film, In My Room (2018) took a wistful look at the end of the world, while the upcoming A Voluntary Year tells the story of a girl taking a gap year volunteering abroad, possibility separating her from her father. It’ll be fascinating to see what Köhler does with the topic here.
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10. To The Ends of the Earth (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa):
An Uzbekistan-Japan co-production, To The End of The Earth is a clash of civilisations story; depicting a young Japanese woman’s travels to the central Asian country to film the latest episode of her travel show. Here she has the bizarre aim of capturing a legendary fish; once again showing Kurosawa’s love of blending genres together, mixing together comedy, thriller and romance for good effect. The closing film of the festival, it’ll be the second Kurosawa film to premiere at Locarno after Real (2013).
DMovies critic Redmond Bacon will be at the festival. Follow DMovies for our exclusive coverage of the event!
British filmmaker Peter Strickland’s fourth feature film In Fabric stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hayley Squires, Leo Bill, and Gwendoline Christie. Set mostly around an antiquated Thames Valley department store, the film follows the journey of a killer red dress from its first wearer to its last. Lavishly stylised, In Fabric sees Strickland flexing his inimitable style and challenging orthodoxy once again with satire and horror, this time exploring themes concerning consumerism and the rituals, superstitions and fetishes that surround clothes and retail culture.
Just as the film gets released on Curzon Home Cinema, Lara C. Cory had a word with the director in order to find out where his inspiration came from, the mythologies behind the movie aesthetics, his relation with music, working with Stereolab and much more!
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Lara C. Cory – Please tell us about the department store that inspired the setting of this film? What elements particularly captured your imagination?
Peter Strickland – A department store in Reading called Jackson’s was the main inspiration for the film. Everything from its pneumatic money chutes to the mannequins was pivotal to the script I was writing. The film is essentially a childhood’s perspective of department stores, evoking the perceived mystery of these places when one is too young to know where a dumb waiter goes.
LCC – The film had an unusual story arc of two stories, one long, one short. Was this intentional or simply a result of budgetary limitations? How did you choose whose stories or which strands to follow?
PS – I did have more stories, but that all fell by the wayside. It ended up feeling strange with three victims, but in two stories. I could’ve incorporated more victims for the dress had I made each story shorter, but the problem with that is the characters feel more dispensable. I wanted the audience to relate to the characters and not want them to die, and by spending time with each character the audience hopefully connect more.
LCC – Talk us through some of the themes and mythologies that fed into the story and aesthetic of the film?
PS – The ultimate thing for me was to explore the darker side of our connection with clothing – unspoken fetishes, superstition, body dysmorphia, things that clothing often emphasises. I love the idea of an inert piece of fabric provoking such strong reactions in people. How a dead person’s clothing has its own haunted power. How another piece of clothing can disgust someone or turn them on. Clothing is this strange conduit between one human and another. Without the human imprint on it, clothing is not so interesting for me as a subject.
Of course, the allure of clothing and its aspirational or cosmetic ability to hide or reveal who you are is of relevance in the film, but ultimately, I was fascinated by the visceral nature of a human’s presence found in clothing and even in second-hand clothing. You can often smell the previous owner’s body odour in the armpits of jackets and shirts. If you dwell on it long enough, it’s a very bizarre form of proxy intimacy. All this is not exactly a mythology, but that was my preoccupation for the film.
LCC – The time-zones in the film felt rather fluid and difficult to pin down and I was told you gave the various crew members different time periods to work within. What can you tell me about this and the significance it has in the larger narrative?
PS – The film is set in January 1993 and only has one flashback to a man’s childhood in the 1970s in which an erotic twitch is ignited by a sales rep’s hosiery. What I loved about Jackson’s in Reading was the feeling of stepping into a different period and I wanted to maintain that anachronism with In Fabric. I didn’t give anyone different time periods. I gave numbers to the actors according to the reality of the environment they were appearing in. A one was close to social realism, while a nine was close to completely surreal.
LCC – There are some very disturbing scenes in this film, some explicit and some more subtle. How do you know how far you can push the boundaries when it comes to graphic bodily function? Do you ever worry about being gratuitous or are you waving the flag for uncensored self-expression?
PS – I don’t know about uncensored. I’d fully respect any individual’s choice to walk out of In Fabric or not see it, but that’s not for censors to decide. It’s an incredibly complex thing and censorship can only be on a case-by-case basis. It’s really hard to write about unless one writes an essay. I sound as if I’m contradicting myself and a lot of films I admire are extremely troubling or toxic, but there are things that I personally would find too distressing to see and in a world without a censorship body. You open up a Pandora’s box of transgressions way beyond what we’re already accustomed to. But when do things shift from an infinite variety of personal limits to something clearly defined as unacceptable?
In Fabric might push its eroticism into uncomfortable areas, but on a purely technical and legal level, all the ‘sex’ scenes in the film are consensual, which is why I feel this particular film shouldn’t be cut even though the cuts were minimal. I disagree with the US censor on In Fabric, but I’d still rather have a world in which I disagree with a censor than having no censorship at all. I find the normalisation of extreme violence in film far more troublesome than Fatma’s character from In Fabric tasting a bit of menstrual blood, but still – the vast majority of films with extreme violence shouldn’t be censored either.
LCC –In Fabric feels like a series of obfuscated mysteries more than a haunting tale with a traditional story arc, did you set out to tell such a diffuse and abstract tale? Does sharing only portions of the ‘bigger picture’ make for more intriguing cinema?
PS – To me, the film is not abstract, as long as one accepts that the dress is the protagonist and everyone else plays second fiddle to it. The characters are disposable, but that doesn’t mean I can’t invest all my love in them. The three victims of the dress might have their flaws, but I couldn’t write those characters if I didn’t believe in them or didn’t see something of myself or people close to me in them. That doesn’t really answer your question. Only sharing portions of the ‘bigger picture’ does make for a more intriguing cinematic experience, but I think In Fabric does share pretty generous portions, in which case it’s probably not an intriguing cinematic experience.
LCC – I really love the music in this film. I understand you engaged Tim Gane (of Stereolab) to work on the score before the film was made. Can you tell us some of the triggers or ideas that you gave him for the soundtrack and was there much adjusting to be done or did you find yourself bending to the will of the music as you wrote and shot the film?
PS – Tim initially made a series of long pieces for me to immerse myself in. There was no story at that point, but I knew I wanted to work with him. Some of the demos were remastered for the film and I didn’t want much to change there, but other pieces of music were created by Tim and the band after they saw the rushes. Sometimes the music would inform the images, such as with the ‘fire alarm’, which is a slight mutation of a demo Tim did for me several years back. Otherwise, it was a back and forth with Tim adjusting music for a scene and adjusting the edit for the music.
In terms of references, I tried to avoid them as much as possible. Of course, there were a few [musical] references, such as Merry Clayton, Mick Jagger and Bernard Parmegiani, but even then, we tried to allow ourselves to deviate as much as possible. A lot of our conversations were about mood and instruments. Tim suggested the celeste and that worked out really well.
Initially, we spoke a lot about the score being very drum-machine heavy, which felt quite cold and hard in a good way. Tim sent a lot of rhythms, but in the end, we didn’t use so many, as I eventually felt that cold and hard was not the way. I wanted something more romantic, but not to always use that music where you would expect it. The sex ritual with the mannequin has the film’s most romantic music (which was initially composed for the love scene with Sheila and Zach), but I really loved the counterpoint of that dark sexuality with lush, romantic music and the Sheila/Zach lovemaking with more ominous music. I wanted Tim to take the lead as much as possible. Of course, I had my thoughts and suggestions, but I can never tell a musician what notes to play and even if I could, there’d be no point in asking someone to do a score. When you ask someone to do a score, it’s important to remember why you asked them and not try and mould them into a Hans Zimmer or Ennio Morricone prototype.
Picture at the top of this article by Marek Szold. The other images are stills from In Fabric.
I must confess my ignorance regarding the storied feud between the titular Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), but the pair bring a welcome humour to their dynamic – tongues are firmly in cheek amongst all the macho-posturing and smouldering intensity.
The only problem is that this banter is lame and contrived – it raises little more than a smirk. Consider the following line: “Listening to your voice is like dragging my balls across shattered glass”! You could find better trash talk in the worst Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle or WWE pay-per-view. Johnson’s natural charisma does break through on several occasions, though. Indeed, his humour and hulking physicality (he’s never been bigger) give him an action hero’s screen presence. He just needs to find that defining role – something edgy, something dirty.
However, the same cannot be said of Jason Statham, whose tough guy shtick never quite lands. He has developed this strained, unnatural mid-Atlantic cockney accent that mangles almost every line he’s given. Again, though, he may find new facets as a performer should he land the right role in the right film. Even less interesting is Vanessa Kirby, who seems to have wandered off the set of Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018) and onto the Universal lot for Hobbs & Shaw, only this time her character is even flatter (but much less annoying). There’s also Idris Elba, who coasts along as the hackneyed, megalomaniac stock character Brixton Lore.
Ultimately, neither Johnson nor Statham fill the action hero void. They’ve seen success in both franchises and star vehicles, yet they don’t have a single iconic performance between them. They don’t have the insouciance of Clint Eastwood, the absurdity of Arnold Schwarzenegger, or the gruff, everyman appeal of Bruce Willis. However, this may speak to the state of the action film rather than their personal capabilities. After all, both the action film and the summer blockbuster has – with some exceptions – been diluted to family-friendly fare; 12A fodder with swear word quotas, weightless action and all manner of high-tech nonsense. We can’t expect another Harry Callahan, T-800 (Terminator) or John McClane in this infantilised milieu.
Contemporary action’s most egregious trend is, of course, the cut-heavy, shaky-cam aesthetic popularised by the Bourne and Taken films. 2014’s John Wick – which was co-directed by Hobbs & Shaw helmer David Leitch, alongside Chad Stahelski – signalled a mainstream pushback against this hideous style of filmmaking, yet Leitch could have done a lot more in Hobbs & Shaw to promulgate John Wick’s emphasis on fluid camera work and genuine physicality. The combat is definitely high-impact, but too much of this impact is derived from quick cuts rather than Johnson and Statham’s physicality – which they doubtlessly possess.
The action sequences are at their best when Hobbs & Shaw are running, jumping and driving – not fighting. An early moment when Hobbs abseils down the Leadenhall Building, for example, is so ridiculously elaborate that you can’t help but enjoy the ride. Then there’s the climactic chase involving four or five massively powerful deuce coupes and a military helicopter, which also sucks you into its boyish fantasyland. Everything in-between though – the combat, the characters, the narrative – is decidedly middling.
Fast and Furious: Hobbs & Shaw is in cinemas Thursday, August 1st. On VoD in April.
Although F.Murray Abraham who won the Oscar, it was Tom Hulce’s arc which led Milos Forman’s astonishing Amadeus (1984) through the cascading chordal changes which haunted Mozart as he wrote his librettos. Staggeringly situated in solemn sincerity, Forman explored the prowess classical opera held and holds on its listeners. Marc Collin, on the other hand, explores the power of electronic music of the 1970s, an esoteric genre as captivating as Mozart’s, imposing an impressive piece, much of it triumphantly directed.
Jodorwsky’s Ana plays the captivated fan, eagerly awaking during the film’s opening to a cigarette and Giorgo Moroder. Sinewy, sensual, sanguine, sagacious, Ana pirouettes periodically from the bathed bed to the multi composed keyboard from where she writes in one of the film’s more outstanding set pieces. This niche genre of avant pop music calls Ana in all its undiluted qualities, while others perceive its improvised mechanics as an affront. Captivated by the raw rigidity, Ana wastes hours reconnecting her thoughts to that of the music, as deadlines and past-times pass her by.
Despondent, her manager informs her that he’s called ten times to no reply, oblivious to the obvious charm this style of music holds. The apartment scenes are gorgeously decorated, spacious halls lit by exterior reflections cascading the outer world from the inner, rugs ravished under the barefooted composer. Working through the sound systems of a device she wishes to buy, Ana finds as much pleasure from the dropped needle as Trainspotting’s (Danny Boyle, 1996) Renton takes from the sharpened device.
It’s a finely accomplished piece of filmcraft, bathetic beats bearing becomingly between the various edits. One telling scene shows Ana writing with another female artist, writing their perspective truths in an industry both phallocentric and underplayed. Between them, the two women embody the steamiest sections seventies youth culture shows in all of its most glorious of detail.
And yet the film lacks the panache posited on personal conversation. At times it comes across a little robotic in delivery, just like the machines portrayed. On the other hand, the soundtrack is reliably stellar!
The Shock of the Future is in cinemas on Friday, September 13th.
The titular photograph of Miloni (Sanya Malhotra) is the thread connecting the episodic narrative. It is taken by Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) a freelance photographer, eking out a living by taking pictures of tourists at the attraction of the Gateway. Against all the odds and despite the difference in age, background and education, they develop a strong connection.
Said photograph, which is never seen clearly, appears to transform Miloni into an image of beauty. Otherwise, she appears a self-effacing young woman devoted to her studies. Her willingness to go along with her family’s wishes is illustrated by her mother choosing the colour of the dress which suits her best. By volunteering the photograph taken by Rafi, she is compliant in responding to her parents plan to arrange an introduction to a suitable match for her. Despite her own interest in becoming an actress, she studies accountancy at college.
In contrast to the comfortable home where Miloni lives with her parents and sisters, Rafi shares one room in a multi-occupied building with a convivial group of friends and fellow photographers. They and others of Rafi’s acquaintance make much of the fact that his grandmother, living in his home village at a considerable distance (three days journey by train) wants to see him married. He has provided a dowry for each of his sisters and sends money regularly to his grandmother leaving himself with no means of setting up home himself.
Left with extra copies of the photograph of Miloni, it occurs to Rafi to send a sample to his grandmother as proof that he has a girlfriend, not anticipating that this will result in his grandmother coming to see for herself. This sets off a chain of reactions which form the main body of the film. Miloni goes along with the deception and even creates a back story for herself as an orphan. The character of the grandmother (played by Farrukh Jaffar) motivated by the need to see her grandson married, is a an unusual portrayal of a woman in old age, well able to adapt to life in the big city.
Various encounters with taxi drivers, visits to the cinema, a meeting with prospective husband (whose aim in life is to get away from his parents) expand our understanding of the characters of the couple. Miloni with the awareness of Rafi waiting in the background manages effectively to get away from her unpleasantly assertive college lecturer. She benefits from advice from the more worldly-wise maid within her parents household.
Despite the differences in background, Rafi and Miloni each have stories which demonstrate their strong attachment to their grandparents. Little is said but they manage to meet up quite successfully and spend time together. The specially composed music supports the screen images, often creating a melancholy but intimate atmosphere. Who knows how their friendship will progress but each appears to have a deepening understanding of their importance to each other.
Photograph is in cinemas across the UK on Friday, August 2nd.
They were in a relationship for eight years. They spent about six months a year together in the Greek Island of Hydra. Then four months. Then two months. Then two weeks. After the eight-year period and the relationship name to an end, they would still see each other for a couple of days a year, Leonard Cohen joked. The two lovers remained connected through music and memories. After all, there ain’t no cure for love. Until one day Marianne became fatally ill. This time, she had to say farewell. She died in July 2016. Leonard Cohen wrote a love letter: “Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine”. He passed away just three months later.
The latest work by English documentarist Nick Broomfield – more recognised for controversial and inflammatory pieces such as Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992) and Sarah Palin: You Betcha! (2011) – is tender, intimate and respectful of his subjects. Broomfield himself was a friend of Marianne Ihlen, as well as an occasional lover. She is described as “extremely kind and generous” throughout the movie. Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love is a love letter to the titular characters.
The film starts in the 1960s in the idyllic Greek island. Cohen was a writer struggling to make ends meet. His latest book was panned by critics, who described it as “verbal masturbation”. He wasn’t a singer yet. He was neither rich nor famous. He met Marianne and her toddler Axle and became some sort of father figure to him. Marianne – who was extremely shy and never thought of herself as beautiful – became his muse. He then composed the famous song So Long Marianne, which catapulted him to fame. She first thought that the song wasn’t for her because her name is pronounced “Mariana”. Ironically, it was the fame brought by the song that caused Leonard Cohen to drift from the sun-kissed Norwegian beauty.
Everybody knows that the 1960s were a time of sexual freedom and LSD, and Leonard Cohen was extremely famous and attractive. He became a magnet for females. He also became very promiscuous. He described his life as a “blue film”, and as with any blue film “without romanticism”. He also started a relationship with Suzanne (the one from the eponymous song) in Montreal. He argued that his constant travel and departures, and inability to settle were not a symptom of selfishness, but instead a mere question of survival. Eventually, Marianne decided to split up and move back to Oslo, where she married a seemingly loving and devoted husband.
It’s not easy to make a film about Leonard and Marianne in equal measures. Marianne’s life was far less eventful than Leonard Cohen’s. That’s why Broomfield focuses primarily on the Canadian artist. We learn about his Russian mother, his recurring depression problems, his stint at the Bald Zen Center at Los Angeles, and so on. There’s a lot trivia most die-hard fans such as myself are likely familiar with, including the Janis Joplin blow job at the Chelsea Hotel and his creepy experience working with gun-toting Phil Spector. Strangely and disappointingly, Leonard Cohen’s songs are mostly absent from the movie (a live extract So Long, Marianne and Bird on a Wire, the two songs inspired by Cohen’s Scandinavian muse, are only briefly heard).
The end of the movie is beyond powerful. Marianne reads Cohen’s final poem to her on her hospital deathbed, being reminded of the frailty of their bodies and their imminent end. She finds peace in his final words. Their relationship finally came full circle. Hey, that’s the way to say goodbye!
Marianne and Leonard: Word of Love is in cinemas Friday, July 26th.
A day in the life tale of a racially divided block in Brooklyn, the one-of-a-kind talent’s fourth film rightly catapulted his rise to fame and ushered in a new era for black film in America.
This is Spike Lee at his best: direct, unflinching and didactic. He implores the US to find its better self, and to rise above the hatred and to sort out its differences. In the light of his recent, far more politically pointed yet structurally looser works such as Chi-Raq (2016) and BlacKKKlansman (2018), Do The Right Thing stands out for the way it feels both contained and generous, its plot slowly simmering to boiling point while allowing a whole world to teem and bustle within its frames.
In one of the best bits of self-casting in cinematic history, Spike Lee plays the protagonist Mookie, working in a pizzeria in a predominantly black neighbourhood, hereby acting as a bridge between the Italian and African-American community. He also embodies the tensions of a black man in a neighbourhood where all the economic power seems to be contained in the hands of others — both Italian and Korean, with nothing left for the African Americans.
Danny Aiello excels as Mookie’s boss Salvatore, whose pride in his role as the block’s pizza provider borders on the patronising. While not as blatantly racist as his son Pino (John Turturro), he seems wilfully blind to his own prejudice. While often seeing himself as the voice of reason, he quickly rises to anger when his authority is challenged, displaying the privilege of the white man in relative power. Mookie resents his role as the poorly paid delivery man, constantly telling the mother of his child (Rosa Perez) that one day he’ll quit and finally make something of himself.
This central conflict is played out against the wider backdrop of community life, panoramically staged. It often feels like it is channelling the fleeting, joyful and observant poetry of Langston Hughes, the great African American writer who dazzlingly teased out the contradictory realities of black life in America. Whether its the middle-aged men on the block, who shoot the breeze all day while sweating in 100 degree Fahrenheit heat, or the old drunk, acting like the conscience of an entire nation, or the jazz-like rhymes of Samuel L. Jackson as a radio host, Do The Right Thing could have worked as a mere observational piece like Smoke (Wayne Wang and Paul Auster, 1995). What Lee does that’s so clever is weave these different, contrasting lives into the narrative itself, until clashing ideologies finally force the dam to break.
The film functions like a Russian doll of racial conflicts. Episodic scenes such as the Italian-American driver getting his car sprayed by a loose fire hydrant, the white brownstone owner told to leave the predominantly black neighbourhood and Mookie’s own conflicts with his Hispanic mother-in-law, are mini-stories within the main story, showing how on hot days, any small conflict can potentially spill into violence. The spark in this case may be Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) demanding a black person adorn the walls of Sal’s pizzeria — which features only famous Italian-Americans such as Al Pacino and John Travolta despite catering to a mostly black clientele — but on another day it could’ve been something else entirely.
Perspective is everything. Its constant change is brilliantly reflected by Ernest Dickerson’s cinematography, excellently using skewed angles to portray differing viewpoints in the neighbourhood. This is complemented by the fine deep shots and wide angles, allowing side characters to constantly flit in and out of the background, giving the impression of a corner constantly bustling with life. Then in one brutally effective sequence, characters talk directly to the camera, shouting every racist epithet under the sun, showing how prejudice is something of a performance in itself; a tale as old as time, perhaps impossible to unlearn.
When s**t hits the fan and the police finally arrive and brutally strangle Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) to death in a scene that horrifically predates Eric Garner’s murder by about 25 years, it becomes clear that the issues facing this neighbourhood cannot be solved within the neighbourhood alone. These are structural problems built upon a fundamentally racist society. Do The Right Thing is so brilliant precisely because its representation is so knotty and its conflicts seemingly unsolvable. It’s not a fairy tale like To Kill A Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1963) where racism can be evaporated through taking your jacket off and giving a good speech.
With everyone so set in their ways, finding a way through can seem almost impossible. But it is not the role of a filmmaker to provide solutions, but to start the kind of conversations that can lead to solutions further down the road. Spike Lee possibly does this better than anyone. With the jury still out on whether Mookie did the right thing by throwing the garbage bin through the pizzeria window, its the kind of conversation-starting cinema that’s needed now more than ever.
Despite its essentially timeless nature, the only thing that seems dated is the portrayal of the Korean shop-owners, put in to provide extra colour but lacking a own perspective of their own. While Lee is usually so good at transcending basic stereotypes (consider the heft given to the complex racial past of the Italian-Americans) the Asian characters have no part to play apart from owning a shop while withstanding prejudice from both black and white patrons. It just goes to show that even Spike Lee has a lot of learning to do. We all do.
The 30th anniversary edition of Do The Right Thing is in cinemas on Friday, August 2nd.
A film exec produced by Martin Scorsese with a top-drawer cast (including Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon and Nicholas Hoult) is almost guaranteed to become an instant hit. But then Harvey Weinstein – who owns the film distribution company – was brought down by a series of sexual misconduct allegations, the ensuing scandal tarnishing and delaying the film release. This would have been a real pity if The Current War was a great film. Unfortunately this is a squeaky clean historical drama with hardly any colour and vigour.
It stars Cumberbatch as the the business and inventor Thomas Edison (often described as “America’s greatest inventor”) and his competitors American entrepreneur and engineer George Westinghouse (Shannon) and the Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla (Hoult). The film starts out as Edison is about the bring electrical power to Manhattan for the very first time, thereby astonishing the entire world. Meanwhile, Tesla invents modern alternating current (AC) electricity, while Westinghouse put all his resources into developing and marketing Tesla’s idea. They are in competition against the Edison’s direct current (DC) system.
The film title refers to the battle between AC and DC. Westinghouse and Tesla sought to split the energy market between the two organisations, but Edison was far less magnanimous. He was not interested in compromise, instead forging ahead on his own. Edison is ambitious, unscrupulous and mercurial. Westinghouse is dandy, cocky and entrepreneurial. Tesla is shy and lacking confidence. The bright Serbian inventor is eventually left penniless, while the two big titans fight for the money and prestige. Westinghouse receives the recognition that he longed for in 1911 by winning the Edison Medal “for meritorious achievement in connection with the development of the AC system”. The irony of the award name speaks for itself.
The topics of xenophobia and unfettered capitalism are touched throughout the film. Tesla believes that being an immigrant in the US prevents him from gaining the recognition that he deserves (perhaps little has changed since). He also believes that it’s “currency” and not “current” that moves the world, thereby highlighting the deceitful and ruthless nature of the business battle. These two topics are extremely interesting and yet secondary.
We also learn that electricity was soon applied to the death penalty. We watch the first electric chair executions, and the very gruesome deaths (particularly the bungled ones, where the person has to be electrocuted over and over again). At first, Edison regrets that his invention is being used for such morally questionable purposes. But eventually business interests prevail, and he becomes uninterested in the deadly use of electricity. He was never overwhelmed by guilt.
The Current War could have been an interesting and informative historical drama. The problem is that it relies too heavily on the mise-en-scene, visual gimmicks and the music, while the script is all over the place. There is a climax and a twist every five minutes from the very beginning of the movie. It becomes exhausting after 20 minutes. And tortuous after 108 minutes. A little bit like the bungled executions portrayed in the movie. Plus the nuts and bolts of the actual story are very difficult to put together. I never understood why Westinghouse and AC won the first round of the war, and how come Tesla was left to fend for himself. If you want to learn more about the history of electricity, watch a good documentary instead.
All in all, The Current War is a mediocre fantasy thriller trying really hard to tell a real story (and failing tremendously at doing so). Plus, it’s a film guaranteed to fail the Bechdel test. Women are pretty-looking, entirely flat characters devoid of any psychological depth. Maybe a little bit how Weinstein perceives females.
The Current War is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 26th. On Netflix on Monday, July 26th (2021). Also available on other VoD platforms.
Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Candidate is a political thriller, and as with many political thrillers, it is a little too long. But it does produce a juicy effigy, conspiratorial in division, to make for a strong night’s viewing, much of it genuinely thrilling and affecting at points. Manuel (Antonio de la Torre), a charismatic, louche politician finds himself the victim behind a leak involving a corruption scandal, which threatens to break his entire party and decimate a drowning man politically.
Conversations infused with cigarettes light the fiery backstage conversation. Manuel is threatened with thinly veiled references to his daughter’s Nati (Maria de Nati) well-being, causing moments of dubious self-reflection and introspection. Protracted smears seemingly chase the downtrodden man, ably and brilliantly articulated by the star of the seminal The Fury of a Patient Man. Antonio de la Torre, magnetic in sneer, smirk and sinewy appearance, divides charm, charisma with low lying latent violent demeanours.
Asking for a receptionist’s book, Manuel walks the thin line between commanding and threatening, shades of Joe Pesci’s past performances alarming the audiences. He’s a vigorous, virile lead and though the final third makes the unlikely leap action hero formula, Manuel is a prescient presence, presiding the pain, panache and poetry a man in his position and disposition must conquer. The silence looks good on de la Torre, yet the valiant speeches he gives exude the right level of character and charisma for the script’s valedictorian purposes.
Causes and causeways call on the Madrid pathways, leading to one of the film’s more explosive scenes. Manuel exits a taxi, towering under the towers which have serviced his wallet for decades. What follows is the film’s centre-piece, a tense talkative throwback to the Spanish films of the 1990s such as All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar, 1999) and Butterfly’s Tongue (Jose Luis Cuerda, 1999), punchy in spirit and word, clenched fists dropped for worded hits, the barbed threat more realised than the physical punch.
Ana Wagener’s angry insults match Manuel’s finger pointed barbs, both decrying each other for their hypocrisies. Two political masterminds, mixed in their ministerial duties and demonstrations, drench one another in aggressive angular answers. The construct of human maturity displaying the actions of infantile immaturity, this telling moment shows how petty the political performances can shape left to their personal devices.
And yet the run time simply drags the audience’s attention at points, at times taking from one of Antonio de la Torre’s most rewarding performances. It needs splicing from the unnecessary amount of exposition, for a punchier product. A near-perfect film.
The Candidate (aka The Realm) is in cinemas and digital HD on Friday, August 2nd.
