Tag: cinema

Napoleon

by admin, posted in film reviews

There is much to admire in Ridley Scott’s latest historical epic, Napoleon. It has a stellar cast, namely Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby in the principal roles of Napoleon and his erstwhile paramour Josephine, a lavishly designed production that spares neither man or beast in its evocation of Napoleon’s great set piece battles, and a screenplay that, while bloated in parts, still gallops along at an engaging and watchable pace.

However, Scott’s film, for all its merits and obvious ambition, still manages to be much less than the sum of its parts. For me, the main problem is Phoenix, an actor with an undoubtedly heroic profile but also a highly mannered and idiosyncratic acting style which seems profoundly unsuited for the role.  Scott and the screenplay allow Phoenix to retain a distinctive east coast American accent and speech pattern, which is highly incongruous, to say the least, in a portrayal of the pre-eminent European statesman of the early 19th century. Now, I realise that Napoleon is primarily intended for an English speaking (i.e. North American) audience, and it is obviously unrealistic to expect this audience to assimilate the fact that Napoleon might speak with a distinctly un-American accent.  Nonetheless, for me Phoenix spent much of the film acting and sounding like he had wandered in from the set of a Martin Scorcese film, and this massively undermined the credibility of his performance in the film’s central role.

As Josephine, Vanessa Kirby seems a much more fully rounded character in her own right and more than deserving of her own biopic; the film seems very uncertain of what to do with her. She, too, is an enigma; apart from the heady aphrodisiac of power, it is not at all obvious as to exactly what she sees in Napoleon. Certainly, the forced, mechanical nature of their intimate encounters would not seem to inspire endless devotion on her part. Kirby battles heroically to make an impression in what could have been a thankless and marginal role, but even her efforts can’t overcome the deficiencies of the script. Her performance might be the film’s most redeeming feature, but that is simply asking too much of it.

It must be conceded that the character of Napoleon was always bound to be enigmatic, and Scott’s film is no exception in this regard. Napoleon was, after all, the self-appointed champion of enlightened and revolutionary ideals, scourge of both the illiberal ancien regime and the murderous excesses of the Terror, who nevertheless took the first opportunity to declare and crown himself emperor and attempt to establish his own dynasty built on a personal brand of demagoguery.  Scott’s film, and David Scarpa’s script, does not shy away from the complexities and contradictions of Napoleon’s story, but one feels the need to reserve judgment; any film in our current age is invariably conveyed to its audience via more than one platform.  There is a conventional cinematic version, the limitations of which present a severe challenge to the many complexities of the Napoleon story.  However, the alternative streamed version has the scope and latitude to be more elaborate and episodic, and Scott himself has already foreshadowed an expanded director’s version, so one might hope that the many underdeveloped elements that detract from the cinematic version might yet find a more complete and satisfying expression.

The combination of Scarpa’s pastiche of a script and Phoenix’s seemingly disinterested, detached performance makes it difficult to discern the film’s true attitude toward Napoleon.  On the one hand, Scott’s film eschews the sentimental, and the inclusion of the tally of deaths incurred by each of Napoleon’s campaigns serves to confirm this view, emphasising Napoleon’s callous disregard for human life and his well-deserved reputation as one of history’s greatest butchers.  But Napoleon only truly comes to life during the brilliantly conceived and staged battlefield scenes such as Toulon and Austerlitz. This is clearly where Scott feels most at home, and the great eye for spectacle that Scott has honed and refined over the many years of his long career serves him best in these sequences. Much of the rest of the film, and Scarpa’s hollow script, feels like little more than a perfunctory interlude awkwardly filling the space between these stunning combat sequences.

Elvis

by admin, posted in film reviews

On the surface, Elvis (2022), a new biopic of Elvis Presley, rock music’s original and most theatrical global superstar, and Baz Luhrmann, one of filmdom’s most exuberant and ostentatious filmmakers, would seem to be an ideal union of director and subject. Luhrmann, as director, also wrote the screenplay in league with Craig Pearce, Sam Bromell and Jeremy Doner.  And there is much to admire in Luhrmann’s sprawling epic, particularly in the elaborate set-piece stage performance sequences at both ends of Presley’s career, which are convincingly and thrillingly recreated courtesy of a stellar, breakout performance by Austin Butler as Presley. Indeed, it is in these sequences that Luhrmann’s film really takes flight and transcends the standard biopic fare. Butler conveys all of the young Presley’s visceral and, let it be said, uninhibited sexual on-stage energy that so transfixed, entranced and horrified several generations of Americans. Butler is equally compelling in his portrayal of the late career “Las Vegas” Elvis characterised by a series of sweat-soaked, bloated yet undeniably charismatic performances. Presley’s enduring relationship with his audience is in many respects the most crucial centrepiece of the film.

Less compelling are the off-stage sequences which are meant to convey the drama of Presley’s complex relations with his family, his long-suffering wife Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge) and most significantly, his manager and self-styled “snowman”, Colonel Tom Parker. These sequences seem to lack a sense of purpose and energy, and the screenplay in these areas seems cursory at best and painfully flabby at worst; this is not a unique observation on Luhrmann’s career. As director he seems profoundly ill at ease with the human dimension of his characters, preferring to hurry through the more intimate scenes and take refuge in his vast familiar bag of pyrotechnic tricks. One doubts that there has ever been a more distinctive filmmaker in the history of cinema, in both a positive and negative sense.

Many of Luhrmann’s trademark flourishes are present here, and one has ample reason to suspect they are used primarily to take shortcuts through the more problematic and contradictory aspects of the Presley biography. There is an abundance of “smash” cuts, quirky dissolves (Parker’s intravenous drip bag becomes the Las Vegas skyline, to cite just one memorable example.) Luhrmann does a reasonable job of dealing with most controversial aspect of the Presley legacy, that being the charge thar he merely “appropriated” black rhythm and blues music without ever giving its black progenitors and performers their due credit. Luhrmann is at pains to portray the young Elvis willingly soaking up the sundry and diverse musical influences that surrounded him in his youth in the American south. There are the energised foot-stomping gospel beats to be heard in travelling religious roadshows, side-by-side with the much looser, sultry rhythm and blues that leaked out into the street, specifically the iconic Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, a city that would eventually become synonymous with Elvis and his legacy. The reality that the debt Elvis owed to black music and culture has gone largely unacknowledged is, the film seems to allege, the fault not to Presley himself but his omnipresent and overbearing manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

There is a significant omission here, unfortunately, being the admiration for, and the profound influence of, country and western music on Elvis’ career. Country music is really given short shrift by Luhrmann, personified by Hank Snow (David Wenham) who initially topped Parker’s bill ahead of Elvis. Snow’s subsequent sole purpose seems to be to serve as the voice of old-school conservatism and to be a mere speed bump on the path of Presley’s relentless ascent to the top of the bill.

However, the film’s main problem is the character of Colonel Parker, and the casting of Tom Hanks in the role, buried as he is under several prosthetic layers. This casting choice must have been a dilemma for Luhrmann as well; on the one hand, Hanks is the marquee name who doubtless made the whole production possible, and Hanks is to be commended for his preparedness to shed his familiar nice-guy persona to portray Parker, who emerges as the clear and obvious villain of the piece.

But Hanks’ fame and instantaneous recognition factor, even under layers of prosthetic makeup, present a significant problem and leave the whole film with a distinctly incohesive and unbalanced feel. Luhrmann’s fast-paced scatter-gun and pastiche style of filmmaking doesn’t leave much room for Parker to come across as much more than a cartoon villain, despite Hanks’ best efforts.  It must be said that the Hanks problem bedevils much of modern cinema; like Meryl Streep or Russell Crowe and many others, Hanks is just too famous as himself to convincingly portray any real-life character, and his dominating presence leaves the film feeling very lopsided and ultimately unsatisfying.

Perhaps this failure is to some degree unavoidable; Parker is an enigmatic character, even in real life. His origins to say the least are shrouded in mystery, despite claiming to have been born in Virginia it was revealed in later years that he was actually born in the Netherlands and emigrated illegally to the United States, and there is no evidence that he ever served in the military in any capacity. The decision to have him serve as the film’s erstwhile narrator gives the biopic a unique and innovative framing device, but does mean that the entire film pivots around his characterisation, which never really comes off. As narrator, Parker’s self-proclaimed mission is to absolve himself of the blame for Elvis’ premature death, but the film strongly subverts this objective.

Luhrmann’s film clearly endorses the tabloid version of the Elvis/Parker story: Parker was the opportunist carnival barker who saw Elvis as a ‘cash cow’ and wrangled him onto stage to and past the point of exhaustion, in the process turning a blind eye to his hedonistic self-indulgence and excessive drug dependence. As such, Parker was at least complicit in Elvis’ physical decline and death. Compounding this view is a key scene in the film that has Parker hovering over a prone, clearly dangerously ill Elvis in a corridor and loudly proclaiming that “nothing is more important than that boy takes the stage tonight”.

There is even an overt suggestion in the film that Parker’s famous reluctance to let Elvis tour internationally was related to the fact that Parker, as a non-citizen, had no passport and the attempt to acquire one would obviously cause the elaborate façade that he had created around his identity to crumble into dust. The lasting impression is of the “Colonel” as the obligatory, black-hatted scoundrel in the story. Hanks toils heroically but the screenplay allows him little scope to add more dimensions to this portrait.

It’s not the first time that Luhrmann has sought to bend his subject matter into a shape that seems to suit a comfortable and preferred view.  One need only consider his love of musical incongruity; his proclivity for injecting contemporary popular music into the ‘la belle epoque’ Moulin Rouge, of having Lana del Rey provide the soundtrack for Jay Gatsby’s lavish parties in The Great Gatsby. In Elvis, Luhrmann makes only fleeting reference to Presley’s film career, and whilst Elvis himself was eventually dismissive of it, it was nonetheless a crucial element of Parker’s strategy to make Elvis the biggest star in the world, and it was via these films, dire though most of them were, that people of my generation encountered Elvis, especially given the fact that he never toured internationally. Also, in Luhrmann’s hands, Elvis becomes something of a liberal hero, ignoring Parker’s objections and injecting a political slant into his famous 1968 comeback TV special which happened to coincide with the assassination of Robert F Kennedy. Perhaps Elvis really was on the side of the angels in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, but this portrayal conveniently ignores the gun-toting martial arts student’s enthusiastic endorsement for President Richard Nixon. This fact alone would seem to undermine the view of Elvis sympathising with the rising liberal zeitgeist of the sixties and straining under the leash of the arch conservative Parker.

In the end, as with so many of Luhrmann’s cinematic offerings, one is left with a profound ambivalence. You have to admire the skill and conviction apparent in the often compelling recreation of Elvis’ stage performances, but the lack of nuance and dimension in the other aspects of the screenplay means that the characters of both the ‘real’ Elvis  and Parker remain frustratingly out of reach.

The Matrix Resurrections

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The principal challenge facing The Matrix: Resurrections its director Lana Wachowski and her fellow screenwriters, David Mitchell and Aleksander Hemon, is to justify its own existence. Alert readers will know that both main protagonists, Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Ann Moss) were dead, at least in theory at the end of Revolutions (2003), the second of the two underwhelming sequels spawned by the original Matrix in 1999. As well, the story arc, such as it was, that began in the first film seemed complete.  Unfortunately, the fourth most recent instalment in the franchise largely fails to rise to this challenge. This is a real shame, because Resurrections has within it the makings of a truly interesting film, potential that sadly goes unrealised.

As the film begins, we find that Neo, in the guise of his original “character” in the first film Thomas Anderson, is a burnt-out middle-aged interactive game designer whose singular claim to fame is the creation of the original Matrix trilogy, which in this version of events is a trio of immersive ‘virtual reality’ -style computer games.  A reluctant and seemingly chronically depressed Anderson finds himself under pressure from his business partner (Jonathan Groff) and their parent company Warner Brothers (not coincidentally, the studio from which the “real world” Matrix franchise originated) to produce a follow-up to his original trilogy. Herein we get an insight into Anderson’s tormented mindset; he is haunted by recurrent lucid dreams which are actually key episodes from the earlier films. So immediate and vivid are these dreams that Anderson can scarcely distinguish them from reality, as he discloses to the audience and to his therapist, (Neil Patrick Harris) who will assume a much more pivotal, if predictable, role as the film’s plot unfolds.

It is easy to forget, especially now at a distance of more than twenty years, just how impactful and genuinely ground-breaking the first Matrix film was in 1999. I can personally vouch for this fact; at the time of its release, I worked in a software development company, and for many of the twenty-something IT professionals among my colleagues the first Matrix film was a well-nigh religious experience. Its use of advanced CGI such as the super slow-motion (commonly known as “bullet time” and referenced as such in Resurrections in one of the screenplay’s several ‘mega’ moments) was truly revolutionary and quickly became a new standard in contemporary cinema. Which soon became a problem, because what was new and innovative in 1999 quickly became a hackneyed cliché in the four years that elapsed between the original film and its two sequels, Reloaded and Revolutions, in 2003. In the interim it seemed that every Hollywood ‘blockbuster’, even the dire Charlie’s Angels reboots of the early 2000s, were relying heavily on ‘bullet time’ and similar CGI in which marquee cast members featured in elaborately choreographed fight sequences; so commonplace was the use and abuse of this form of CGI that by the time Reloaded was released in 2003, it looked like little more than a pale imitation of itself.  The provocative ideas that propelled the first film had been exhausted by the first of the sequels. A hallmark of the first film was that the celebrated CGI sequences are actually few and far between, which served to maximise their impact. In both the sequels, the filmmakers seemed to have adopted the time-honoured Hollywood mantra that ‘nothing succeeds like excess’; the CGI was at saturation level in virtually every frame and often seemed to exist for its own sake, serving little if any narrative purpose. Regrettably, the Matrix franchise has earned an unwanted reputation as one where the sequel(s) are so undistinguished and lacklustre that they diminish the reputation of the original that inspired them.

The new film, Resurrections, leans heavily on the same CGI trickery that the original film made famous, but it has become so familiar that where it once had freshness and originality, its sole appeal has more to do with nostalgia. Early on, Resurrections seems to be heading down a more daring and compelling path by suggesting that the events of the trilogy existed purely within Neo/Thomas Anderson’s fevered imagination and are in fact part of a deep-seated psychosis. The screenplay actually goes to some lengths in preparing the ground for this scenario.  Neo/Thomas Anderson offers this self-diagnosis to his therapist, who concurs and suggests that Anderson has integrated various elements from his real life into his alternate Matrix reality in a fictionalised form.  Thus, his mistrusted and manipulative business partner is transformed into the malign Agent Smith, the friendly yet unattainable woman who he encounters in a coffee shop becomes Trinity, his paramour and soulmate, and the therapist’s black cat, whom Anderson despises, finds its way into the Matrix as the cat in the iconic ‘deja-vu’ episode.  Even the mute impotence that Anderson feels when trying to voice his opinions to his business partner is given expression in the notorious CGI torture interrogation scene in the Matrix during Neo/Anderson’s first encounter with Agent Smith. This interpretation would seem to tie in with the famous quote from Morpheus in his first meeting with Neo/Anderson in the original film:

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real?

This theme is even explicit in the name chosen for Morpheus’ character: the god of sleep. Frankly, Resurrections would have been a far more interesting and watchable film if the screenplay had chosen to explore this theme, of the indistinct overlap between Neo’s dream and reality, in a more definitive way.  As it is, most of the film is given over to a predictable CGI heavy re-run of the first Matrix film, with seemingly the only narrative objective being the restoration of the supposedly epochal, Matrix-overwhelming romance between Neo and Trinity. 

This might have been more compelling had the screenplay in any of the four films had allowed for even the slightest spark of chemistry between them, their ‘grand romance’ (despite being seemingly ‘divinely’ ordained by the Oracle) always had a distinctly perfunctory feel.  Even more problematic is the re-casting of the iconic roles of Morpheus and Agent Smith.  Yahya Abdul Mateen II as the new version of Morpheus is colourful and dynamic in an underdeveloped role, but Lawrence Fishburne had a cool elegant gravitas that was crucial to the first film’s success. And Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith conveyed a singular, refined malevolence that made him into one of the great screen villains. Jonathan Groff toils valiantly as the ‘new’ Agent Smith, but his role in the narrative seems unclear at best.  In the 2003 sequels he was the ‘unplugged’ wildcard with his own agenda who ultimately inspired the uneasy alliance and truce between humans and the machine world. Now he is – what, exactly? A contractual obligation, perhaps? The occasional appearance of both Weaving and Fishburne in ‘flashbacks’ from the first three films only underlines how sorely their presence is missed in the new iteration.

The lack of clarity surrounding the role of Agent Smith is one of the many underdeveloped elements that leads one to conclude that the creation of a fresh instalment in the Matrix franchise owed, in common with so many big-screen sequels, more to economic imperatives than the needs of cinematic storytelling. This is a genuine shame because there does exist within the Matrix universe, teased by Resurrections but never quite delivered, the promise of a far more interesting and engaging story that goes sadly unfulfilled.

Dementia on Film: Supernova & The Father

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It is an extremely  rare event to see a major cinematic offering that deals with the decidedly less than crowd-pleasing subject matter of dementia. It is perhaps a consequence of the pandemic, that has upset the cinema world’s schedule, as it has so much else, that two such films come to the screen almost simultaneously. Supernova and The Father both have central characters who are afflicted with dementia, and the devastating impact of this ailment on their world and that of the people around them.

In Harry McQueen’s Supernova, Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci play Sam and Tusker, a middle-aged couple touring the verdant and oh-so scenic northern districts of England in their battered campervan. The film is essentially a two-hander, and at first glance appears to be a road movie, traversing much of the same territory (literally) as The Trip with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. In this respect, the cinematography by Nick Pope is superb and a real feature of the film. However.it soon becomes clear that McQueen’s film, and Sam and Tusker’s journey, has a quite different and much more serious intent. Tusker has been diagnosed with a degenerative version of early on-set dementia, and hence the trip is actually a “farewell” sojourn to re-connect with family and friends before Tucker’s deterioration, is too severe.  And what were his prodigious mental powers are apparently in precipitous decline. (He is a celebrated novelist, whilst Sam is a concert pianist of repute.) I say “apparently” because we learn of the dire nature of Tucker’s condition largely from his own commentary and that of Sam and other characters. There are a few episodes that are suggestive of Tucker’s decline, such as one where he wanders off while the pair are parked at a roadside convenience store, and one particularly telling scene where he is unable to read aloud a prepared speech for Sam’s birthday, and has to hand off the task to Sam himself. But for the most part Tusker seems perfectly lucid, never more so than when he offers avuncular advice to Sam’s young niece Charlotte (Nina Marlin). Ironically, this scene coincides with Sam’s pivotal discovery of Tusker’s clandestine plan to take matters into his own hands and spare Sam the burden of witnessing his inevitable decline.

Tucci and Firth are old friends off-camera (apparently each of them read for both parts). Their easy rapport and interaction, and the sheer quality of their nuanced performances, is the film’s chief saving grace and the main reason for seeing the film. Their performances are the crucial glue binding the film because McQueen’s script seems slightly underdeveloped and often teeters on the cusp of maudlin. It is perhaps not helped that the film’s cast, especially Tucci, has a well-developed screen persona, not least as an in-demand talk show guest where he is a witty and erudite presence.  McQueen’s script has flashes of this type of humour, such as the early scene where the two principals light-heartedly bicker over driving directions, and a later scene where, on an overnight stay in Sam’s family home, the two are forced to share the bed that Sam slept in as an adolescent. But these scenes are all too rare; a few more would have leavened the film’s emotional impact and provided even sharper relief for the reality of Tusker’s plight, and the extreme solution that he has planned.

But there is one other noteworthy aspect of the film. Sam and Tusker are obviously a long-term same sex couple, but whereas another film would have emphasised the political implications of this, it goes largely unremarked in McQueen’s screenplay, which has larger concerns to deal with.  Ultimately, Tucker’s journey is the one that we must all take, in one way or another. Which might just be the most profound political statement of all. Nonetheless, the lasting impression left by Supernova is of an end result that is considerably less than the sum of its parts, as impressive as some of those parts are.

The Father, though it ostensibly deals with similar subject matter as Supernova, is an altogether different beast.  Conventional wisdom says that Anthony Hopkins won his first Best Actor Oscar thirty years ago as Hannibal Lector in Jonathan Demme’s iconic horror/thriller drama, The Silence of the Lambs. As Lector, Hopkins embodied the calculating psychopath like few other characters in cinema history, and the character’s embedding in popular culture bears eloquent testimony to this.  But Hopkins’ actual performance as Lector was showy and left large teeth marks in the scenery (though perhaps appropriate given the proclivities of the character).  Lector was a tour de force by Hopkins but was never remotely believable.

Whereas in his eponymous role in The Father by writer/director Florian Keller, Hopkins is only too believable, as a retired engineer struggling with the ravages of dementia. Unlike Supernova, Keller puts the audience in the shoes of the main character, so that we experience the world of the film through the fractured, distorted lens of his disordered consciousness. Anthony (Hopkins) is (or perhaps was) a fiercely independent, voluble, and somewhat cantankerous father, struggling to piece together the random fragments of his memory into a coherent whole. We as an audience view an increasingly confusing and hostile world through Anthony’s eyes, and hence relate to his paranoia, impatience and growing sense of isolation and impotence, which manifests itself in the details. Hence, we witness Anthony’s seeming obsession with the location of his watch, and his paranoid belief that others have stolen it; after all, the watch represents Anthony’s desperate attempt to assert some measure of control and connection to a reality that seems ever more ephemeral and tenuous, seemingly always slipping from his grasp.

The originality and impact of the film lies in the way Keller subverts the standard audience expectation: that at some point the swirl of mystery and confusion surrounding identity, time and location, will be resolved into something approximating coherence.  Of course, no such resolution is available to Anthony, nor will it ever be.  No one with Anthony’s affliction ever comes out the other side.  And so, as an audience, we are left to wonder if Anthony’s daughter, played with an appropriate mix of stoicism and weary resigned frustration by Olivia Colman, is actually divorced or still married to the gruff and abusive husband portrayed by Rufus Sewell? And is she living in Paris or not? And was there ever really a painting by his daughter over the fireplace in his apartment? And is the character of Bill, as portrayed by Mark Gatiss, really his former son-in-law, or a senior staff member at the nursing home where Anthony finds himself at the film’s end?

Or, as seems increasingly, likely, has Anthony been in the nursing home all along, and the film’s previous events have just been broken shards of memory randomly colliding in his disordered mind?

The Father has its origins as a stage play, and its one defect is to have an excessively stagebound feel at times.  But this is a minor quibble with a film that is never more resonant than now, in our anxious age with its rapidly ageing population. Hopkins may have played the most infamous psychopath in cinema history, but as The Father, he has created his most genuinely terrifying character.

Nomadland

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Nomadland

Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century from 2018 is a non-fiction work of first-person journalism which shines a forensic spotlight on a hitherto neglected underclass: workers, normally of retirement age or beyond who, as have taken to America’s highways in RVs or modified vans in search of seasonal work in soul-destroying fast food outlets or cavernous Amazon warehouses. The subtitle of Bruder’s work makes it clear that she sees them as casualties of the “Great Recession”, pitiable economic fringe-dwellers who, rather than spending their declining years in leisure, are forced to lead a makeshift, itinerant lifestyle scrounging a meagre subsistence income. At first glance, this would seem to be unlikely source material for a mainstream motion picture, but Chinese American film-maker Chloe Zhao’s screenplay for Nomadland (2010), whilst ostensibly a work of fiction, draws heavily on Bruder’s journalism, is rather more nuanced. Whilst taking care to avoid an overly romantic Jack Kerouac-like depiction of the footloose, “on the road” lifestyle, Zhao does convey a sympathetic portrait of the diverse characters that comprise the community of nomads and their mutually supportive network. Many of these characters, such as Linda May and Charlotte (“Swankie”), featured in Bruder’s original piece, and as non-professional actors play lightly fictionalised versions of themselves in Zhao’s film.  Indeed, it is the presence of so many so-called “non-actors” in the cast, allied with Zhao’s naturalistic dialogue and film-making style that give the film such a feeling of documentary-style immediacy and authenticity.

The film’s central performance is an improbable star turn by Frances McDormand as Fern, a recently widowed 60-something who stows the remnants of her former life in a storage locker in the grandiosely named town of Empire in Nevada and hits the road in a battered van which she christens Vanguard.  (The use of the name ‘Empire’ might seem like a heavy-handed metaphor in a film in which the theme of economic decline and entropy is explicit, except that Empire is a real place, a small town virtually wiped off the map by the closure of the gypsum plant that sustained it). Fern is initially taciturn, only becoming more ebullient as she forms friendships with some of her fellow travellers like the aforementioned Linda and Swankie, but she has a hard outer shell and only rarely, if ever, does she drop her guard. We do get the occasional hint that Fern has a much richer inner life than her circumstances might suggest, such as the occasion when she launches into a word-perfect recitation of a Shakespearean sonnet to help out a young fellow traveller in need of romantic inspiration. Gradually we piece together enough of her back story that we realise that her straitened financial plight is only a partial motivation for her; that a rootless, transient, ‘wanderlust’ lifestyle has always suited her temperament. Significantly, when presented with the opportunity to “settle down”, put down roots and lead a more conventional, stable existence, she rejects it in favour of the habits and customs acquired in her nomadic life. As Fern says, early in the film, she is “houseless, not homeless.”

David Strathairn (Dave), one of the few other professional actors in the cast, also portrays a fellow nomad who repeatedly crosses Fern’s path. In a more conventional, mainstream screenplay, his tentative romantic overtures toward Fern would have come to fruition and offer her character a clear if contrived path to redemption. But in Zhao’s carefully constructed universe, Fern needs no such redemption, and Dave is also navigating his own fraught personal path to redemption via a reconciliation with his estranged son.  Instead, it becomes clear that Fern’s never-ending journey is her way of dealing with grief and loss, not only bereavement, but the loss of the life and the community that she shared with her late husband. McDormand conveys Fern’s complex depths, complete with her complicated hinterland, in a finely observed and executed performance. As one of the film’s producers, she doesn’t shy away from Zhao’s need to portray all dimensions of the nomad life, including the least glamourous; surely McDormand is surely the only multiple Oscar winner to be filmed defecating into a bucket.  But McDormand is also allowed to depict Fern’s capacity for wonder. There are memorable scenes (brought vividly to life by cinematographer Joshua James Richards) where Fern is shown exploring the giant redwoods of the Pacific northwest, and, with no evident self-consciousness, swimming naked in an isolated natural spring.    In one especially poignant scene late in the film, Fern is seen returning to the now deserted Empire and wistfully exploring her former home and workplace, now derelict and desolate. It is this encounter that leads to Fern’s singular moment of catharsis. Despite her stoic resolve, Fern cannot outrun the dark cloud of desperation, isolation and fatalism that seems to hang over her and the entire film.

And that seems a recurring theme with the various travelers that cross Fern’s path; they are all dealing with loss in one form or another, whether it be the loss of a livelihood, a loved one or the ultimate loss that awaits us all, occasioned by age, infirmity and mortality. Even Bob Wells, the self-styled guru and seer of this mobile nomad community, has a similar back story.  When we first encounter Bob, he is expounding his world view on the decline of the American economy and the desirability of the road-based, mobile life in a latter-day, improvised Sermon-on-the-Mount setting. His long white beard makes him reminiscent of an Old Testament prophet and adds to his air of avuncular authority and mystique, as he exhorts his followers in invest in “wheel estate”.  And yet Bob, too, is struggling with his own burden of loss, the suicide of his son. And it is this theme, more than economic privation or the contemplation of old age and mortality, that creates the film’s lasting impression. Nomadland elicits profound reflection on the human condition by inviting the viewer to reflect on human beings, seemingly tossed aside and left to fend for themselves by the impersonal society at large, still able to seek out and find crucial and meaningful human connection.

1917

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The English director and writer Sam Mendes sets his new World War I epic on the ravaged and scarred battlefields of the Western Front in early spring of the year that gives his film its name. Two young corporals, Blake (Dean Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George Mackay) are sent on a perilous mission to prevent another battalion from being sent obliviously into an ambush, as engineered by a strategic German withdrawal. Aerial reconnaissance has alerted the young corporals’ commanding officer, General Erinmore (Colin Firth) to the enemy ruse, and the fact that Blake’s own brother is a member of the doomed battalion adds a piquancy and urgency to the mission for him that is lacking for his seemingly more war-weary companion.

The two corporals are obviously friends and have an easy rapport and banter, although we never know their first names or much of their backstory.  This is perhaps a deliberate ploy by Mendes, as was the decision to have two lesser known actors play these two principal roles and carry the film’s entire narrative.  There is a marked contrast in stature between them and the cameos by English acting heavyweights such as Firth, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch that punctuate the film at regular intervals. The lasting impression is perhaps intended to be of two “Everymen” who are left to endure the various and plentiful horrors of trench warfare with only their own sense of duty, and reliance on each other, to sustain them.

Unfortunately, the lack of backstory, meaningful character development or much memorable dialogue means that the audience doesn’t feel much engagement with the two main protagonists.  Their fate, even though it is the film’s sole reason d’etre, tends to take a back seat to the central technical conceit – the illusion of being shot in a continuous single take. Mendes, of course, is no stranger to this type of cinematic trickery; the opening sequence in Spectre (2015) also employed the same single shot artifice, but there it provided what was the only talking point in an otherwise lack-lustre, unremarkable Bond instalment. In 1917, the continuous shot cinematography is sustained for the film’s entire length. It is certainly an impressive technical achievement and is designed to give the myriad horrors and confronting brutality of the battlefield an immediacy and immersive quality by putting the audience quite literally in the shoes and at the shoulder of the two soldiers.  But the film’s technical sophistication has the effect of undercutting any truly immersive quality.  The depiction of the grimy, blood-caked, corpse-strewn realism of trench warfare is meant to be overt and realistic, and it certainly is, but the showy nature of the film’s technical aspirations subverts any attempt at naturalism by so constantly drawing attention to itself.

There is still much to admire, particularly in the artfully managed set pieces where the single shot cinematography is shown to its best effect. Most notable among these is the sequence where the two soldiers have a seemingly random encounter with the (albeit temporary) survivor of an aerial dogfight, an encounter with dire and fateful consequences for one of the protagonists. The sheer audacity of the logistics and choreography involved in this this sequence is an extraordinary cinematic achievement in itself.  Other scenes seem at odds with the movie’s erstwhile grisly setting by depicting a transcendent, almost surreal beauty. One of these scenes is of a devastated, evacuated village bathed in an eerie, luminous beauty at night; the camerawork by veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins has been deservedly nominated for an Oscar. The production design, too, is impressive; the portrayal of the Danteesque hellscape of No Man’s Land that the two soldiers must traverse may be graphic and unsparing, but the exposure of similarly forensic depictions of total war in such films as Platoon (1986) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) may have inured contemporary audiences to such scenes. However, at other times, the film’s abiding technical conceit is so obvious and transparent that its impact is inevitably diminished.  And it is, of course, a conceit, however proficiently executed. There are numerous editing points, most expertly camouflaged, but one in particular so jarringly obvious that it provoked an audible groan in the session I attended.

Whilst there is much to admire in Mendes’ film, its most striking achievements would appear to be technical and technological, rather than more satisfying and dramatic, and the overall impression it leaves is of a film that is just a little too enamoured with its own technique. The main cinematic conceit of the single shot illusion is masterfully and successfully sustained, but seemingly at the expense of coherent storytelling, character development and convincing dialogue.  Whilst 1917 is, in most respects, a superior film to Mendes’ preceding venture, Spectre, it does share that film’s main shortcoming: a superabundance of style over substance.

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood

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Quentin Tarantino’s 9th and most recent film, One Upon a Time in Hollywood, has been received rapturously by many critics, with more than a few hailing it a ‘masterpiece’. This reaction is best understood when one considers that few subjects are guaranteed to absorb and transfix Hollywood more than…itself. Also, in our current Trumpian binary moment, where hyperbole has never been more rampant, it seems that the reaction to any cultural artifact oscillates between the contrary poles of scathing denunciation and lavish, effusive disproportionate praise with nothing much in between. Since his 1992 debut Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino has achieved an iconic status in modern cinema, and spawned a legion of imitators.  (To mention just one among many, the makers of last year’s Bad Times at the El Royale must certainly owe him royalties.) Surely no contemporary filmmaker has such a rich and highly developed film vocabulary, spanning a diverse spectrum of influences from Akira Kurosawa to David Lynch, Sergio Leone to Brian de Palma among many. Indeed, one is moved to suspect that his many obvious sources of inspiration serve to distract many highbrow critics from what has always seemed to me his primary influence: Chuck Jones of “Merrie Melodies” fame.

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood certainly exhibits all of the cinematic trademarks that Tarantino has refined and deployed continually over the past quarter of a century, and for all its flaws it remains immensely watchable for much of its considerable length, at least until the screenplay falls apart horribly at the film’s denouement. In many ways the film serves as a companion piece to Tarantino’s earlier works Django Unchained and Inglorious Basterds. Like them, it imagines a universe somewhat adjacent to reality but only tangentially related to it.  The film’s title alerts the audience to its intentions; it is ultimately a (very) violent revenge fantasy deliberately set in a period that would become a cultural touchstone in the America of 1969, that being Hollywood in the months leading up to the notorious Manson ‘family’ murders of, most notably, the actress Sharon Tate, pregnant wife of the director Roman Polanski.

Tarantino’s film is also an evocation of the Hollywood, and by extension the America, of the late 1960s, and a lament for its passing. The hydra-headed assault of forces such as Vietnam and the counterculture (whose dark underbelly is personified by Manson and his murderous acolytes) meant that this was an era of profound and rapid change. Tarantino’s is a wistful and largely affectionate portrayal of the decline of an age of baby boomer optimism and unrestrained masculinity. This conflict is personified by the two fictional protagonists: Rick Dalton (Leonardo de Caprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who are turned into accidental heroes by the happenstance that places Dalton as a next-door neighbour to Polanski and Tate.  Dalton is an alcoholic, middle-aged actor, formerly a leading man in the kind of cowboy and war films that were the once the staple of Hollywood, now desperately trying to hang on to the threadbare remnants of his career by taking demeaning “villain of the week” guest roles in television series.  Booth is Dalton’s erstwhile stunt double and one-man entourage, and where Dalton comes across as a singular study in angst and self-loathing, Booth is much more of an insouciant, knockabout free spirit, although Tarantino hints at a darker hinterland for him by having other characters give voice to the rumour that he once killed his wife.  This is yet another characteristic of a Tarantino screenplay, conveying if not quite benign acceptance of, at least indifference towards, casual sexism and misogyny. Booth’s wife-killing past is little more than an aside and is never explored in any detail; seemingly its only purpose in the narrative is to help prepare us for Booth’s pivotal role in the final spasm of graphic, cartoonish violence. Even the character of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) is given precious little to do by Tarantino other than wander through the film in a kind of dreamy disengagement.  Tarantino’s alternative universe does spare her the grisly fate that reality had in store for her, but she is nonetheless less of a fully-fledged character than an avatar in a video game.

For me at least, the overall impression is of a film that has many interesting elements but nevertheless still manages to be less than the sum of its parts, a not uncommon reaction, at least on my part, to a Tarantino film.  Having watched more than a few of his films one is very aware of the filmmakers and cinema traditions that he admires and that have left their stamp on him; what seems far less certain is what unique, individual vision, if any, he brings to the craft.  Watching a film like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, one can’t fail to be to be impressed by the mastery of form in evidence and the skillful and painstaking evocation of time and place. But one is left to wonder: what, exactly, is the point?  By having his fictional characters intersect with, and inhabit the same universe as real-life characters such as Manson and Tate, what is Tarantino trying to achieve beyond providing a fanciful vehicle for his typical adolescent revenge fantasy? There is no other plot as such, other than the apparent inevitability of Dalton’s career decline and the consequent cooling of his relationship with Booth, but this serves as little more than prelude to the final, violent culmination. For by no means the first time in the Tarantino oeuvre, the graphic and grisly violence of the finale has a cartoonish quality, and the heavy-handed post-modern irony that is a Tarantino trademark means that the audience is uncertain of whether to recoil, laugh or perhaps do both.

One can’t help but speculate that a more satisfying, thoughtful film might have eschewed the absurdity of the ‘alternative history’ and concerned itself more with the reaction of Dalton, Booth and Hollywood in a larger sense to the real-life events of August 1969. But nuance, and an affinity for reflection, have never been in much evidence in Tarantino’s career hitherto.  We are told that Once Upon A Time in Hollywood may be Tarantino’s penultimate film, as he has stated more than once his intention to make 10 films and then retire. It seems that those of us waiting for this prodigiously gifted filmmaker to produce his definitive masterpiece, with a unique distinctive vision, may be destined for disappointment.  Despite the breathless hype, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood does not appear to me to be that film.

Rocketman

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In the opening scenes of Rocketman, Dexter Fletcher’s Elton John biopic, we get our first sight of Elton (a standout, thoroughly immersive performance from Taron Egerton) making a theatrical entrance into a group therapy session. He is coming direct, we are obviously intended to assume, from the stage still sporting his characteristically over-the-top performance garb as a mock ‘devil’ complete with detachable horns.  The early 90s therapy session serves as a framing device for the entire film, wherein Elton takes us through key episodes in his life, interacts with his younger self, and both literally and metaphorically strips away the layers of his ostentatious stage persona to eventually lay his complicated psyche bare.  To its credit, the film does not shy away from the darker, more problematic aspects of Elton’s story, namely the damage wrought by years of substance abuse, dysfunctional relationships and celebrity monomania. 

Despite an unsparing depiction of these darker elements, Fletcher paints his canvas overwhelmingly in lighter hues.  In this endeavour he is helped by having access to exploit Elton’s extraordinary back catalogue, studded as it is with some of the most familiar tunes of the latter twentieth century. Key events in Elton’s life and career are played out against a soundtrack of his most instantly recognisable hits.  Among the standout sequences are an exuberant, Broadway-style rendition of “Saturday Night’s Alright for a Fight” performed as an adolescent Elton and his fellow performers make musical progress through a London pub and a neighbouring 50s era fun fair. Elton’s famous American debut at The Troubadour in Los Angeles is presented via an exhilarating, literally transcendent version of “Crocodile Rock” with no small amount of dramatic licence. But possibly the most convincing and most affecting mix of soundtrack and dramatic recreation is in the use of the poignant “Tiny Dancer”, performed by Elton and his erstwhile collaborator Bernie Taupin (an excellent Jamie Bell) at a louche LA party where a Elton wistfully witnesses a liaison between Taupin and the woman who would, supposedly, be immortalised in the song’s lyrics. Elton, meanwhile, is being seduced by his soon-to-be lover and manager John Reid, played with a beguiling mix of charm and unctuousness by Richard Madden.

Despite its willingness to venture into the darker detours of Elton’s improbable journey, Fletcher’s film ultimately comes across as a celebration. Doubtless, this is because unlike so many of his pop industry peers (as witnessed by the fate of  Freddie Mercury in Fletcher’s recent companion piece Bohemian Rhapsody) Elton’s story has a redemptive narrative arc, as he has apparently arrived in the safe harbour of a clean and sober lifestyle and a stable, loving relationship in his late middle age. In this light, the late elaborate staging of “I’m Still Standing” seems particularly apposite. This is obviously a welcome development for Elton himself, but at the same time provides much less compelling fare for a biopic, which helps to explain why the film’s narrative ends quite abruptly in the early nineties.  Nonetheless, Fletcher’s film is immensely accomplished, directed with considerable flair and imagination, and gives the viewer an engaging and very watchable nostalgic tour through one of the more remarkable careers in popular music.

Sometimes Always Never

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With his towering angular physicality, and mildly eccentric obsessiveness, Bill Nighy has come to embody a quintessential cinematic Englishness in a fashion that a previous generation might associate with Alastair Sim or Dirk Bogarde. Sometimes Always Never, Carl Hunter’s debut feature, finds Nighy in good form as Alan, a fastidious sixty-something tailor with a 70s era board game obsession, engaged in a long and fruitless quest to find his eldest son Michael, whom he hasn’t seen since the former deserted the family home apparently after a Scrabble inspired feud. In this quest he is joined with seeming reluctance by his other son Peter (Sam Riley), and as the film opens the pair are visiting a morgue in Brighton to identify an unidentified body which they are led to believe might be the long-lost Michael.

This seems, on the surface, like dark, gut-wrenching territory better suited to Mike Leigh, but Hunter directs the film, from a script by Frank Cottrell Boyce, with a light touch and a note of whimsy that is at odds with what could easily be a fraught family drama.  This whimsical approach extends to the cinematography and production design; even though the film’s setting is contemporary, the set design and props are unmistakably retro as if to evoke the 70s, as if to suggest that the characters, Alan especially, are frozen in a former time and unable to move on and confront an uncomfortable modern world.  Alan, after all, is a bespoke gentleman’s tailor by profession, an occupation that itself belongs to a passing age; the film’s enigmatic title comes from tailor’s parlance describing the convention of utilising the three buttons on the front of a man’s jacket.  Alan’s obsession with Scrabble also suggests a defiantly retrograde world view, with one of his few concessions to modernity being his proclivity to play Scrabble on-line on his grandson’s computer.  This character quirk furnishes one of the film’s key plot points, as Alan comes to believe that one of his anonymous on-line opponents is actually Michael reaching out to him. The resolution to this should not surprise the attentive viewer, but one suspects that it is not the intention.

The distinctive retro style that is intrinsic to Hunter’s visual style seems to extend to the casting of supporting roles.  Tim McInnerney and Jenny Agutter, both actors who seem to likewise embody a bygone age, play Arthur and Margaret, a reticent couple encountered by Allan and Peter in their Brighton hotel who are implausibly engaged on the exact same grim mission as they; Margaret reappears later in the film in an equally unlikely reprise.  And just as unlikely is the unexpected and largely superfluous cameo by Alexei Sayle, which seems tacked on and, while amusing, does nothing to advance the screenplay, which at times seems to meander aimlessly, and is just a trifle too besotted with its own determined quirkiness.

Nighy is an immensely watchable actor, and his presence gives the film much of its energy and impetus even if his quest seems diffident and less than earnest, but notwithstanding his sterling efforts, and despite a promising beginning, the screenplay seems run out of puff well before the end. And thus is the viewer is left to ponder what its ultimate purpose is other than a labored retelling of the Biblical parable of the prodigal son. There are a number of subplots which are frustratingly left as loose threads, such as Margaret’s and Alan’s confused extramarital dalliance, which seems very contrived and quite at odds with all that the audience has hitherto learnt about these characters. Much the same can be said of a tepid romantic subplot involving Allan’s grandson (Louis Healy) and a classmate [Ella Grace Gregoire), just another underdeveloped plot element that fails to cohere into a more satisfying whole.  The film’s denouement arrives in a scene that seems deliberately to evoke Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, but the viewer is left uncertain whether this homage is meant to be ironic, or a sincere pointer to a deeper existential truth that sits oddly with the film’s oh-so-English glibness.

Sometimes Always Never is at pains to create its own unique world which exists at a tangent to reality, but despite some fine performances and a spasmodically wry and witty script, at the end the viewer is left at the end with the impression of an underdone first course, and a dessert course that never actually arrives.