Ne change rien

Pedro Costa (2005)


- -

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Film Zero

I thought it might be interesting to attempt a list of ten films from each year of the decade that I loved, for one reason or another. It's not a "best of" list, or anything as inscrutable as such a title might suggest, but a broad overview of my favourite films released between the beginning of 2000 and the end of 2009. At the moment it's incomplete, but I'll be adding to it as I catch up with more films released during the last couple of years, and may even offer some kind of clarification as to why these films, more than any others, have remained so essential. Some of these choices may seem unconventional; however, take my word for it, these films matter, if only to me. As a note - the numerical positions are fairly arbitrary, but do at least illustrate some vague sense of preferential order. In any case, the number one choice of each year was carefully debated.

2000

1. Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, 2000)
2. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)
3. Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000)
4. Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)
5. Dead or Alive 2: Birds (Takashi Miike, 2000)
6. Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan, 2000)
7. The House of Mirth (Terence Davies, 2000)
8. Chicken Run (Nick Park/Peter Lord, 2000)
9. Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000)
10. Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Anderson, 2000)

2001

1. Éloge de l'amour (Jean-Luc Godard, 2001)
2. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
3. Sex and Lucía (Julio Medem, 2001)
4. Visitor Q (Takashi Miike, 2001)
5. Artificial Intelligence: A.I. (Steven Spielberg, 2001)
6. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
7. Pistol Opera (Seijun Suzuki, 2001)
8. Monsters, Inc. (Pete Doctor/David Silverman/Lee Unrich, 2001)
9. Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
10. All About Lily Chou-Chou (Shunji Iwai, 2001)

2002

1. A Snake of June (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2002)
2. The Good Thief (Neil Jordan, 2002)
3. Spider (David Cronenberg, 2002)
4. The Man Without a Past (Aki Kaurismäki, 2002)
5. Ju-on: The Grudge (Takashi Shimizu, 2002)
6. Dolls (Takeshi Kitano, 2002)
7. Solaris (Steven Soderbergh, 2002)
8. 8 Women (François Ozon, 2002)
9. Lilja-4-Ever (Lukas Moodysson, 2002)
10. Punch-Drunk-Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)

2003

1. Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003)
2. The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin, 2003)
3. The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, 2003)
4. Saraband (Ingmar Bergman, 2003)
5. It's All About Love (Thomas Vinterberg, 2003)
6. Code 46 (Michael Winterbottom, 2003)
7. Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003)
8. Swimming Pool (François Ozon, 2003)
9. The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003)
10. OldBoy (Park Chan-wook, 2003)

2004

1. Notre musique (Jean-Luc Godard, 2004)
2. 2046 (Wong Kar-Wai, 2004)
3. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
4. Vital (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2004)
5. Ocean's Twelve (Steven Soderbergh, 2004)
6. The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass, 2004)
7. Vera Drake (Mike Leigh, 2004)
8. Dead Man's Shoes (Shane Meadows, 2004)

2005

1. Les amants réguliers (Philippe Garrel, 2005)
2. Angel-A (Luc Besson, 2005)
3. Tideland (Terry Gilliam, 2005)
4. Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005)
5. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Nick Park/Steve Box, 2005)
6. Reincarnation (Takashi Shimizu, 2005)
7. Princess Raccoon (Seijun Suzuki, 2005)
8. Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski, 2005)
9. Match Point (Woody Allen, 2005)
10. The Wild Blue Yonder (Werner Herzog, 2005)

2006

1. 4.6 Billion Year Love (Takashi Miike, 2006)
2. Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006)
3. Still Life (Jia Zhang-Ke, 2006)
4. Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
5. Brand Upon the Brain! (Guy Maddin, 2006)
6. Apocalypto (Mel Gibson, 2006)
7. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)
8. Lake of Fire (Tony Kaye, 2006)
9. Hors de prix (Pierre Salvadori, 2006)
10. Requiem (Hans-Christian Schmid, 2006)

2007

1. Don't Touch the Axe (Jacques Rivette, 2007)
2. I'm Not There. (Todd Haynes, 2007)
3. Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)
4. Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007)
5. Ratatouille (Brad Bird/Jan Pinkava, 2007)
6. Hannah Takes the Stairs (Joe Swanberg, 2007)
7. The Antenna (Esteban Sapir, 2007)
8. Away from Her (Sarah Polley, 2007)
9. Mister Lonely (Harmony Korine, 2007)
10. [REC] (Jaume Balagueró/Paco Plaza, 2007)

2008

1. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
2. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, 2008)
3. WALL•E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)
4. Tunnel Rats (Uwe Boll, 2008)
5. The Beaches of Agnès (Agnès Varda, 2008)
6. Helen (Joe Lawlor/Christine Molloy, 2008)
7. Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)
8. Of Time and the City (Terence Davies, 2008)

2009

...?

Nuts in May

In an earlier post regarding the DVD release of the Mike Leigh at the BBC box-set, I described this particular film, Nuts in May (first broadcast January 13th, 1976), as "loose and rambling"; a two word pairing that not only underlines the direction that these characters take throughout the course of their literal journey through the English countryside as defined by the plot, but in the practical, presentational way in which Leigh allows his story to unfold and eventually develop. In what has now become fairly characteristic of the director's individual approach to cinema, Nuts in May is an intelligent if somewhat fairly broad character-study enlivened by moments of keenly observed social-satire; where the elements of conflict, drama and humour central to our engagement with the film are created by the endearingly awkward interactions between each member of the cast, and the often uncomfortable, or sometimes absurd situations, to which they're confined.

Although it is a much lighter film in disposition than the majority of Leigh's work, either before or since, the general thematic development of Nuts in May is nonetheless an essential example of Leigh's particular ability to create moments of conflicting drama from even the most honest and basic of situations. These situations could (and indeed do) include anything from the pitching of a tent or the excavation of a centuries old fossil, to the more reflective, interpersonal moments, of which the vast majority seem drawn from the small-scale spectacle of everyday life. In taking these two characters and introducing them as a married couple, eventually revealing the minute details of their lifestyle and pursuits through the wry dialog and the interaction of the characters, Leigh is able to create something that works on several levels; not simply as a character study, or as a wider satire on a particular subculture or general ideology, but as something that establishes a number of themes germane to the broader parameters of Leigh's cinema: chiefly, the ideas of conflict and co-existence.

Despite being set within the midst of the beautiful rolling-green countryside of Dorset, on the south-west coast of England, Nuts in May has enough similarities to later films like Grown Ups (1980) or Meantime (1984), in which the domestic disputes and disagreements of different characters attempting to get along with one another is used to explore deeper, more complex themes pertaining to the basics of human psychology. In fact, Leigh himself has stated that his intention with Nuts in May was to produce an urban drama in a rural setting, so that the contrasts between characters from numerous walks of life attempting to co-inhabit a particular shared space - like the cramped living rooms and kitchens that one might find in the suburbs, or on a council estate - could be used as a springboard for the purposes of discussing more universal themes or ideas not necessarily related to plot.



As something of a departure for Leigh, not just in terms of its setting or in the basic concept of characters on the road (so to speak), Nuts in May could be seen as an attempt at filtering its drama (in both structure and approach) through two very different and distinct filmmaking forms. Most obviously, the situation comedy, or in fact, more specifically, the English situation comedy, as typified by the likes of The Good Life (1975) or The Last of the Summer Wine (1973) - in which eccentric if well-meaning characters are established and then placed into a recognisably, every-day situation - and the road movie: as our two characters become almost like guides to this strange shambolic trek around the English coast, bringing us along, as if passengers on a journey, and allowing us to share in the ups and downs of their experiences. As ever, Leigh captures this action in a way that is mostly unobtrusive, observing these characters, either in a very reserved, almost documentarian approach, or shooting hand-held from the back of the couple's car (which continues that notion of the audience as part of the drama; the brought-along hitchhiker, caught up in the narrative and along for the ride).

It is in the relationship between the two central characters that the basis for the various emotional responses to both the comedy and the drama are formed; with the obvious contrasts of background and attitude - as one character's quirks or preoccupations are played off against another wildly different character - being used in order to trigger personal associations in an attempt to make the situations more real and our response to these characters, as they move from laughable to sympathetic, all the more authentic. Unlike many of Leigh's others films for television, the characters from Nuts in May were pre-existing, with the film created around two characters that Leigh had originally developed for an earlier theatre production, in which the domestic-life of the central couple was documented in a kind of two-act, interior-set comedy of manners - more in keeping perhaps with the director's follow-up film, the highly successful and now fairly iconic television play, Abigail's Party (1977). In adapting these characters for the cinema, Leigh opens the drama up; taking his characters on the road, removing them from their protective domestic setting in which their traits and eccentricities were freely accepted, and turning them loose on the world, so that these same characteristics can be observed by both the audience and the supporting cast to better contrast the deeper psychological implications of their actions.



In this sense, the title of the film, as ever with Leigh's screen titles, has certain hidden implications, here relating back to the traditional children's rhyme: which establishes a certain generational background and the notion of a pairing between the male and female protagonists (and also, you could argue, the male and female characters that will later appear on the fringes of the narrative). However, the title can also work as a fairly obvious though no less amusing pun; the idea that the nuts in season are actually the two central characters; nuts, as in "oddballs", on holiday in the month of May (with May relating to the May Day celebrations, or the May Bank Holiday, when families often plan weekends away). The film opens with the screen title rendered in a cheerful font - brightly coloured in an almost picture-postcard parody to better make light of that once most curious of English pursuits: the countryside camping holiday - superimposed over a shot of the ferry as it arrives in Dorset with the two main characters in tow. On the soundtrack our jovial protagonists Keith (Roger Sloman) and Candice-Marie (Alison Steadman) sing their own self-composed folk song about an escape to the country, in which the improbably twee-lyrics and the yearning sense of innocence as expressed in the song's particular worldview, seems to underline the broader aspects of their relationship and the general dynamics of the trip itself.

I want to get away she said
I want to get away
I'll take you on a trip he said
We'll have a holiday
We'll be with Mother Nature
And laugh and sing and play
I want to get away she said
I want to get away

I wonder where we'll go, she said
I wonder where we'll go
I'll look around the world, he said
I'll search both high and low
The prettiest is Dorset, it has so many charms
We'll walk across the hills and dales
And look at all the farms

The contrast between these two forms, with the characters singing their song with a dual guitar and banjo accompaniment over a travelogue of images shot from the back of the couple's car, creates that perfect evocation of the escape to the country - the get-away, as it were - where couples would leave behind the toil and the strife of the suburbs or the big city and get back to nature. That Keith, in his self-composed lyric to the song, expresses an urge to walk across the hills and dales "looking at all the farms" is in complete contrast to Candice-Marie, who corrects his lyric, claiming that "linking each other's arms" is the more emotionally expressive dénouement to the pastoral evocation that they're creating. Keith's natural reaction is to dismiss the suggestion - "that doesn't scan!" - seems to illustrate right from the very beginning the sense of order and efficiency that Keith strives for; setting their holiday to a strict day-to-day timetable and preplanning every facet of the trip, right down to the most effective footwear for clambering on rocks or walking the footpath to the beach.

As the relationship develops, and the correlation between the two characters becomes more clearly defined, we can question the subtleties of this introduction, or what it says about our protagonists. When Candice-Marie sings "I want to get away", are we to see this simply as a yearning for the open road, fresh air and countryside, or is it instead a subtle hint to her dissatisfaction with the strict, know-it-all Keith? We can take it either way. Likewise, in the later scene, when the couple perform their song about London Zoo, which has the same melody, chord structure and rhythm as the song from earlier in the film, the phrasing of the lines "I want to see the zoo, she said, I want to see the zoo" / "I want to take you there, he said, I want to go with you" could hint at the fact that despite his bluster and need to get his own way, it is actually Candice-Marie who wears the trousers in the relationship, and without her, Keith would effectively be nothing. If we choose this interpretation, then the relationship between Candice-Marie and their campsite neighbour Ray (Anthony O'Donnell) takes on a different quality, as she seems to be generally interested in the young man, even coercing her husband into taking a picture of the two of them together. It also, to some extent, explains the sexless relationship that the married couple share, with the particular association between them seeming at times to be more like that of the teacher and his student. He is full of his own stuff and nonsense, older than his years. She works in a toy shop and sleeps with a purple kitten-shaped hot water bottle named Prudence.



The brilliance of Nuts in May is that it allows these characters to develop and evolve naturally, without relying on the usual melodramatic superfluities, intrusion of plot twists or creative editing to make the process more direct. The narrative builds gradually, introducing the two central characters, placing them in a situation, allowing them the time to interact with the situation, to use it as a means of developing their own characters in more detail, before another character is introduced into the situation to cause a conflict that drives the narrative further towards its natural resolution. With the arrival of Ray, and later the brash and jubilant couple Honky and Finger (played by Sheila Kelley and Stephen Bill), Leigh creates a natural chain of events that will push the characters to the very edges of their patience, once again illustrating that idea of co-existence, or the neighbourhood power struggle that he would return to in Grown Ups, or Home Sweet Home (1982).



Although the issue of class, so often crucial to much of Leigh's wok, and particularly of these early television films, such as Hard Labour (1973) or Abigail's Party, is mostly absent from the development of Nuts in May, it does find a certain parallel with the way Keith and Candice-Marie are seen by the locals, who can smell their suburban back-to-nature bullshit from a mile off. It's particularly palpable in the scenes between our central couple and the pig farmer, who seems to get an enormous amount of pleasure from informing Keith that the filed in which they wish to spend the night doesn't have a toilet, and the policeman, who, in one of the most cruel scenes in the film, stops the couple and penalises Keith for having obscured the rear-window of his car with camping equipment. There is also some hint to the nastier side of Keith, who, in angrily confronting Honky and Finger, screams to them to "get back to [their] tenements", which cuts through the audience with all the ferocity of a particularly violent racial slur. However, such moments simply add depth to the characters, never turning them into caricatures, as is the usual criticism of Leigh's work, but simply offering the different shades and aspects of a personality that makes up the greater whole.

As is often the case with Leigh's work, the richness of these characterisations and the work that he and his actors put into the creation of these fully-functioning individuals - with full back stories and carefully drawn relationships - seems to push the viewer into becoming an armchair psychiatrist, trying to "understand" these characters, their actions and their motivations. However, to read too directly into these sketches could easily take away from the immediacy of the drama, or the sheer entertainment value that comes from witnessing these perfectly nuanced performances, where those involved act and react to the situations, or to the other characters, and make it seem entirely without effort. Although plagued by eccentricities and at times downright exasperating traits, we never find these characters repellent or repulsive. We enjoy the company of Keith and Candice-Marie, even though they're irritating, or occasionally self-righteous. Even with Keith, all well-meaning arrogance and authoritative tone, attempting to force his lifestyle on the various other characters encountered during the course of his journey, and condescending in his approach to his own wife, who in turn is skittish and naive, peeking out from beneath an oversized bobble-hat and national-health glasses, and speaking in a slow, monotonous drone, each sentence posed as a question, we nonetheless feel something for these characters, and can offer empathy and understanding when the film ends on a note of quiet desperation.

In a recent interview with the broadcaster Mark Lawson for the BBC (to coincide with the release of this particular box-set), Leigh claimed that his preferred ending for the film would have had Keith and Candice-Marie camped out atop the enormous phallic erection of The Cerne Abbas giant - which would, in his mind, have been the perfect ironic critique of the couple's central relationship - but the lack of funding made it impossible. As it stands, the current ending is just fine. There's no shot of the ferry to end the film, or to wrap up this disastrous journey, so we're left with the suggestion that this closing scene, tranquil enough, but also fairly tragic in its own way, will just continue, with Candice-Marie happily strumming out a song about the need for conservation, as Keith pops behind the pigpen with a roll of toilet paper, giving some vague reference to what would have been Leigh's original title, "Eaten By A Pig".



Nuts in May is available as part of the 'Mike Leigh at the BBC' DVD collection.

Some notes on "Cast Offs"

As everything else on the television these days continues to look distinctly average - the same faces, the same formats, the same high-gloss sheen or considerations to satisfying the all important youth market, etc - a programme like Cast Offs (2009) stands out as a particularly remarkable one-off experience; a television series that dares to be extraordinary! What could have initially seemed like a bad or potentially exploitative idea on paper, quickly reveals itself over the course of the first two episodes to be a programme of real creative worth; where the talented cast of disabled actors were not simply being used for their disability, or for their particular appearance, but instead were being given a legitimate platform to create these characters - to create these performances - and to actually engage an audience in a real drama that wasn't there simply to offer anything as patronising as an equal opportunities style "issues" piece, but presenting the audience with a view of disability that doesn't pander to sympathy, managing instead to present the issues at hand without having them overshadow the all important drama, or the performances of the cast.

The basic form of Cast Offs is presented as a faux-reality TV docusoap. Six disabled characters are left on a remote island for 90 days to see if differently-able people can achieve self sufficiency. The cast is made up of Dan (Peter Mitchell), a 26 year old paraplegic, Tom (Tim Gebbels), a blind, 39 year old actor, Gabriella (Sophie Woolley), who is deaf and heavily pregnant, April (Victoria Wright), who suffers from Cherubism, Will (Mat Fraser), a thalidomide affected forty-something, and Carrie (Kiruna Stamell), a twenty-something of restricted growth. Intercut with the scenes of survival and character building, we get "behind the scenes" interview sequences and general background information in order to develop a greater insight into the daily lives of these individuals, including the usual problems and dilemmas that affect everyone, regardless of disability. Each episode focuses on a different character, intercutting these behind the scene back-stories in a way that enriches the scenes based around the group attempting to adapt to life on the island. Although the mock-reality TV show format could have been used to greater effect, at times seeming like a prop to support the more interesting background scenes that are used to introduce the characters, the back and forth structure nonetheless helps to draw the audience into the story, if only occasionally having any kind of greater cause or effect.

Watching a show like Cast Offs makes an audience aware of the (potentially?) thousands of talented, disabled actors, performers, artists and musicians that are seemingly marginalised by a society and a media that crave absolute perfection (even if such perfection is entirely devoid of talent or personality, as is often the case). Cast Offs proves that if filmmakers want to portray disability on screen intelligently and honestly, then they need to make the best of these talented, disabled actors. It's not acceptable anymore to have the likes of Sean Penn or Daniel Day-Lewis faking it for the awards ("spacking up is the new blacking up", as one character puts it), but to actually engage people with real experiences, or actually make a move to cast these actors simply because they're right for the part, without letting any kind of disability get in the way of the decision.

Although the ensemble cast were all terrific, I have to clear a short space in this post to praise the efforts of Tim Gebbels and Sophie Woolley, who were the featured "stars" (for lack of a better word) of my two favourite episodes, and gave two of the most incredible performances of recent years. The eerily beautiful scene of Tom wandering the desolate beach, giving an absolutely spellbinding performance of King Lear, oblivious to the observation of the camera crew, was for me one of the most exciting things that I've seen on television all year. Likewise, the image of Gabriella, sat amongst the grass with a stethoscope against her belly, attempting to make out the faint sounds of life (combined with her amazing reaction to later seeing her baby for the first time), seems to be the introduction to a real star in the making. Although some episodes were clearly more engaging that others, Cast Offs was nonetheless an amazing experience, benefiting greatly from the remarkable use of location, the fantastic direction and the beautiful cinematography, which looked even more startling when viewed in HD.







Cast Offs will be released on Region 2 DVD on the 14th of December by Channel 4.

I Will Have To Pull My Heart Away

Quite possibly the second most impressive music video of 2009, made all the more remarkable in this particular instance given the fact that the performer, Jack Peñate, was a recording artiste pretty far off my musical radar before the beginning of the year, and that's putting it politely. In fact, I genuinely despised his first album and the whole NME approved mock-cockney conversational vocals over a Housemartins-lite backing track shtick that he had goin' on circa 2007. Perhaps I was just being bitter because my own career as a singer songwriter had ended so catastrophically (although, to be honest, I never really did put the work in); but even so the lightweight faux-indie-pop styling of his earlier work and image certainly didn't prepare me for this shift into a vaguely late 80's but also quite contemporary The Cure meets a James Ford production type effort that this particular track is steeped in. And while the song shimmers with chiming guitar riffs and confident, multi-tracked vocals, the video itself more than matches the adventure with this hazy evocation of burnt-out desert desolation that perfectly captures the juxtaposition of the joyous abandon and intense melancholy explicit in the verse/chorus interchange.

Once again I can't really put into words what is so remarkable about this clip. I guess like the Florence and the Machine video that I wrote about in August, this particular video seems like it's been sent out as a transmission from another world; a world where artists aren't obliged to sell their music, or themselves in order to make a mark, and where the finished product doesn't scream "buy me, buy me, buy me" in an endorsement of its own cultural insignificance. There's no regard for fashion here - but at the same time it looks incredibly fashionable, precisely because it looks like nothing else (or at least nothing else that's being produced right now). In fact, it looks like it could have come from 1968 or 1988, or 1991 for that matter: superficially bringing to mind the Stéphane Sednaoui-directed video for the U2 single Mysterious Ways. The fact that it just happens to comes from this year, a year dominated by theatrically minded young women with synthesisers and a penchant for suggestive stage attire, lazily provocative pop acts, award show invasions and a host of gone-but-then-forgotten flavour of the month R&B groups trying to spice up the usual urban posturing with a touch of Grime, makes it all the more exciting.







The visual associations might be entirely personal, but for me the look of this video and the exotic evocation of ruined temples, figures in the landscape, ecstasy and shadow dancing recall elements of loosely avant-garde filmmakers like Werner Herzog, Kenneth Anger and Philippe Garrel. Though such particular associations are no doubt accidental, put there by my own overactive imagination (because that's just the way my mind registers these images), it nonetheless enlivens this clip with a sense of something greater. A window into something, and not just something designed to sell records or catch the eye of the passing vidiot, but something that works at creating a suggestion of the song's intent. It is after all a fairly twee lyric about the breakup of a relationship and could have quite easily been reduced to the kind of nonsense of Second Minute or Hour, where the video doesn't really offer anything beyond, you know, promoting the song (and the elements of the song that are most saleable). Instead, Peñate and the director have decided to produce a video that interprets the themes behind the song; the emptiness of failure, the loneliness of the post-breakup mindset, the barren wasteland of life beyond that sense of purpose; the exploration of the ancient ruins of existence as viewed through a glass orb that obscures the memory even further, like the lyrics to a pop song.

"It's not like my feet are stuck to the floor –" he sings, and indeed, this is a video full of movement, full of awkward dancing around objects; a half-hearted celebration, to "dance the pain away" as someone once wrote. It's quaint. Peñate may indeed still be a prick, but there's desperation to the movement, to this event, which seems to be perfectly in line with the general tone of the music. In the images there are traces of Fata Morgana, of the climactic dream sequence in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, of the "Falconer" scene in Le Lit de la vierge, or of the general aimless exploration of The Inner Scar. Perhaps these similarities don't register to anyone else; perhaps you disagree with me, or think I'm talking nonsense, but the reminder of these objects, for me, is as special as the objects themselves. To me, this is a brave piece of music promotion; it's simple to the point of "let's go to Jordan with a Super 8 camera and film some stuff"-simple; it's not immediately exciting; it's not glamorous; it celebrates the old, the ancient - but these things make it worthy of merit. More importantly though, it's the sense that these images don't immediately spring to mind when you hear the song, but when you see the two put together it works perfectly, and afterwards you can't imagine one existing without the other.



Pull My Heart Away was released as a single by XL Recordings, August 24th, 2009.

Forthcoming projects from Uwe Boll

Storm (aka Final Storm)

Darfur

Max Schmeling

...because I'm excited, even if you're not.

From the Notebook – Episode 3

From the Notebook – Episode 3

Hostel (2005)

These are my incomplete notes for the Eli Roth movie Hostel (2005). Originally, the plan was to look at both Hostel films in a single post, attempting to work out why Hostel Pt. 1 was so much more successful than its follow-up film, Hostel Pt. 2 (2007). However, in going back and watching the original film again, I found that my initial more positive reaction to it had completely changed, and what was originally seen as a mildly diverting if never entirely successful thriller, was now something of a cumbersome bore that had absolutely nothing of relevance to say whatsoever. Before the end of the film I'd completely lost interest in writing about it and gave up making my notes shortly after the scene where Paxton (Jay Hernandez) has the conversation with the enthusiastic American businessman (Rick Hoffman). Given this complete change in opinion over the course of the last three years, I'm now wondering if it might be worth returning to Hostel Pt. 2 - a film that I'd completely dismissed as a total failure when I saw it at the cinema on its initial release - to see if my opinion of it has changed for the better (I've seen it referred to as a pro-feminist deconstruction of the first film's casual misogyny, but I'm not entirely convinced).

Once again, I'm not quite sure if these notes will be of any interest to the anonymous readers (or reader?) stumbling across this post from a random search-engine enquiry, but let me know either way. These vague musings were originally compiled last month, so the opinions are still fairly fresh... and again, it is worth repeating that I was genuinely disappointed that the film didn't live up to my earlier, more positive recollection of it.

Host el/Hostile

- An opening image establishing the setting: a traditional if not entirely original underground lair. A montage of close up images follow, exaggerating the location; water dripping from pipes, splashes of soap suds pitter-pattering off the hard concrete floor, a barely-visible figure in overalls going about his business in the back of the frame, unaffected and blasé as he scrubs the blood and gore from a collection of homemade implements of torture and death, finally hosing down the pools of thick, deep claret from the hard, stained tiles.

- Already director Eli Roth is fetishising the act of violence as a post-coital rite; presenting this torture business where the aftermath of violence is treated as perfectly normal, business as usual type stuff. No shock or attempt to unnerve the audience beyond the obvious; a particular approach that unfortunately carries through to the rest of the film.

- Crash cut to the introduction of our three main protagonists, with the blaring, generic rock music to establish the idea that these guys are looking for fun (in the blandly hedonistic westerners' abroad sense of the word). The jocular excess that reminds us of EuroTrip (2004) or An American Werewolf in Paris (1997); all frat boy posturing - "Amsterdam motherfucker!" - introducing both the location and the character's attitude to such.

- The kind of film where characters and their relationships are developed through dull conversations that are intended to set the wheels of the story in motion. The lazy satirising of supposed American jingoism, pot-smoking aspirations and banging pussy; a one-dimensional presentation that seems intended to make the characters as vulgar, dull and unsympathetic as humanly possible, just so that Roth can hang his concept on a nearly throw-away line of dialog – "these days everybody wants to kill Americans".

- Do we buy the back-story of these individuals? Can we actually believe that a dullard like Paxton is "studying for the bar", or that Josh is an aspiring writer? These details are thrown out and quickly forgotten about, never really having any kind of knock on effect or relevance to the story, either on an immediate level, or in terms of its subtext.

- No real tension is created, even after Oli goes missing, precisely because the characters are never developed beyond the level of pleasantries and Euro/American stereotyping. All we know about this character is that he has a daughter (who he can't be all that committed to raising) and an uncircumcised penis... and yet we're supposed to be on the edge of our collective seat as his two friends search the streets of a cartoon Eastern Europe in an attempt to track him down?

- The whole film plods along without ever really engaging the audience; occasionally exploiting the natural atmosphere of the locations, which are admittedly great, but Roth does nothing with them besides pointing his camera at them. Even a potentially interesting "torture museum", which could have been used to create a commentary on the actual narrative (and how an audience is attracted to violence and suffering, while not really wishing it on their friends and immediate family), is relegated to a clever if forgettable piece of production design. Like the vast majority of the ideas in the film, such moments seem to have absolutely no intellectual purpose, and instead seem to be there for no other reason than Roth's belief that such ideas are "cool".

- It is clear that Roth, like the even less talented Rob Zombie, only comes alive when he's directing scenes of violence and brutality. The scenes of exposition show some of the laziest composition of shots outside of the realms of the Made for TV thriller; cluttered, bland, stick the camera on a steadicam rig and hold it in place cinematography, and with no real regard whatsoever for the use of colour and texture. However, when he's directing the torture room scenes, he's in his element. Locked off, clearly well planned composition, atmospheric lighting, a real sense of colour (or selective colour: rust brown and red with the occasional burst of fluorescent green) and a decent use of depth of field to enforce the importance of certain objects within the frame.

- Roth, like several French-speaking directors who have found fame in the post-Hostel horror film milieu, clearly relishes having these obnoxious but completely innocent characters beg and plead as his camera lingers on every spit-dribbling close up or teary-eyed lament. The invention of the term "torture-porn", which is contentious and debatable, but when reinforced by the continual shots of moaning victims, or psychopaths attempting to reclaim masculinity through the wielding of phallic implements of death (as their prey kick and fight against tight, metal on leather straps), seems entirely appropriate.

- However, even here, where the film should have us on the edge of our seats, the overbearing music takes us out of the experience, and not in a good way. We know these characters are doomed and that their very convincing cries for forgiveness will not be rewarded with a chance of escape; so what's the point in making an emotional investment in this nonsense? This is precisely why the so-called torture-porn genre doesn't work; there's no tension. It's brutality for brutality's sake, because there's no element of the life and death struggle to keep us motivated - no depth beneath the surface of big-budget exploitation, no hope for redemption, for the victims or the victors, etc.

- It's only at the 50 minute-mark that the film becomes vaguely interesting, when Roth begins to play with the form of detective fiction; not quite a giallo, but interesting enough in the investigatory sense that we actually become attracted to the previously dull character of Paxton, and concerned about his well being.

- Putting Takashi Miike in your film won't make it as good as Audition (Ōdishon, 1999), just as having Quentin Tarantino listed as your executive producer won't make your scenes of terror anywhere near as memorable or genuinely terrifying as the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs (1991), or even the Rose McGowan/Car Crash sequence in the much maligned Death Proof (2007).

- Roth doesn't seem sure of what kind of film he's trying to make. Some scenes seem pointed towards hardcore exploitation, with the usual element of violent exploitation as social commentary - reminding us of The Last House on the Left (1971) or I Spit on Your Grave (1978), etc - while at other times he seems to be making a throwaway slasher film, where eyeballs are gouged out and fingers scattered like confetti, bringing to mind enjoyable rubbish like Friday the 13th (1980) and The Burning (1981). These continual shifts in tone clutter the film and make it impossible to connect with; too much heavy brutality to really enjoy as popcorn entertainment, and too many macabre jokes and elements of slapstick to appreciate as a serious work of note.



Hostel is available on Region 2 DVD from Sony Home Entertainment.

From the Notebook – Episode 2

From the Notebook – Episode 2

A Moment of Happiness
(Un moment de bonheur, 2001)

- A pre-credit sequence, introducing an at-this-point unidentified young woman who we will later adopt as our central character, who runs frantically up and down a beach screaming the name Damien as the wave's crash violently against the sand. This brief scene, a collection of no more than several single shots cut roughly together to establish the position of this character, and to some extent exaggerate her disconnection from a world that we will soon be introduced to, will eventually be repeated in context towards the end of the film, at which point the emotional mindset of the woman, and her geographical position within this seemingly tropical location, will become clear.

- The two principal characters are Betty (Isild Le Besco), the young woman, nineteen-years old, who we meet in the opening scene, and Philippe (Malik Zidi), a young man, twenty-six, riding a bus on his way to a small coastal town to meet a woman. After our initial introduction to Betty - who we can't, in any real way identify with at this particular stage of the narrative - the creators choose to change their direction and follow Philippe on his journey to this provincial seaside town, where we're fooled, primarily at least, into identifying this mysterious misfit as a genuine lead protagonist.

- A Moment of Happiness is one of those films where the same drama plays out twice, from two different perspectives, with each process of repetition allowing us to appreciate greater depths and details previously obscured by the deliberately one-sided character interactions. We've seen this kind of devise used in countless other films both before and since, however in this film, it seems particularly well suited to the intentions of the director.

- The development of the plot owes some superficial influence to the work of Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski, in which the various preoccupations with chance encounters, fate and coincidence are the driving factors in pulling these different characters together. It might lack the nuances of Kieslowski's work, from the unwavering attention to detail as witnessed in his masterful television series The Decalogue (Dekalog, 1989), or the more magical-realist inspired flourishes that would develop through a masterpiece like The Double Life of Veronique (La Double vie de Véronique, 1991) or the simply monumental Three Colours trilogy (1993-1994), but still, nonetheless, there is a definite element of those kinds of abstractions, or the notions of each action having a greater significance on the larger whole, no matter how seemingly insignificant it may have originally seemed.

- At its most obvious, A Moment of Happiness is somewhat representative of a certain kind of cinema that flourished in Europe in the wake of the Dogme 95 movement and a certain push towards truthful, slice of life films enlivened by naturalistic performances, uncomplicated mise-en-scene and a sense of time and pace that seems to move closer to that of our everyday lives. Such films often focus on real-life dilemmas, albeit, with a level of dethatched irony that can only be expressed through the cinematic form at its most plainly manipulative.

- It is here where the ironies of the title become clear; a moment of happiness shared by two characters, one a hit-and-run driver, and the other, the mother of the boy he knocked down? There's a tragedy to this set-up that is tangible, and brilliantly conveyed by Isild Le Besco (probably my favourite actress of my own generation). As Betty, she conveys a sense of hopeless desperation, of a girl forced to grow up as a result of an adolescent mistake and her painfully dysfunctional parents, and who just wants to capture and savour that one brief moment where she can put aside any parental responsibility and just enjoy a "moment", without the reality of the situation intruding on her escape.

- It is possible to see Betty as a few-years-older variation on Le Besco's teenage-character Gwen from the earlier Girls Can't Swim (Les filles ne savent pas nager, 1999), which also had a seaside setting and a character that might one day find herself in Betty's particular situation if she continued down the road of youthful rebellion and casual promiscuity.

- The tension, and the drama within the narrative, is created by the fact that we know who these people are and expect, given the natural mechanics of such films, for the truth to eventually be revealed.

- Although in some respects A Moment of Happiness is an incredibly flawed film that never quite achieves the full potential of its individuals flashes of creativity, it still remains, in spite of such shortcomings, a completely interesting work; one that is enlivened by several sequences of brilliant drama and a great atmosphere, especially towards the end of the film, as the relationship begins to burgeon, and we know (although the characters don't), that something more shocking is there, just in the background, waiting to be revealed.



These notes were originally compiled in May, 2009.