11/02/2013 - 17/02/2013
Apologies. I didn't watch any films during this
week. I injured my back playing
tennis. Nothing serious, but I've had to
rest and as such was unable to get downstairs to access the television. Instead, I spent the time reading and
occasionally writing. My 'book of choice'
was movie related. Adventures of a
Suburban Boy by John Boorman. Even if
you don't appreciate Boorman's work as a filmmaker, his autobiography is
wonderfully written, wry, candid and ever self-deprecating. The book offers a great insight into the
trials and tribulations of Hollywood filmmaking, the compromises and the
disappointments, but is also a great rumination on life; from the exploration
of his turbulent childhood during The Blitz, to his years as a documentarian,
to his love of nature and the endless Arthurian quests that become a kind of
metaphor for the director's personal approach to cinema. Throughout Adventures of a Suburban Boy,
Boorman writes beautifully on the subject of film, the meaning of it, the
alchemic nature of cinema and its images, and their ability to transcend
time. His writing demonstrates more
passion and reverence for the medium than any contemporary critic.
The book
would have seriously enhanced my respect for Boorman had I not already considered
him one of the finest English filmmakers.
My only wish is for films like Catch Us If You Can (1965), Leo the Last
(1970), Excalibur (1981), The Emerald Forest (1985) and The Tiger's Tail (2006)
to eventually achieve the same kind of recognition as Point Blank (1967), Hell
in the Pacific (1968), Deliverance (1972), Hope and Glory (1987) and The
General (1998). It would also be nice if
audiences could finally embrace the eccentric genius of Zardoz (1974) and The
Heretic (1977). Boorman is forever seen
as a director of lean, "muscular" action movies, and the films that
don't conform to this image are often deemed to be failures, but if anything
he's a great poetic realist and a practitioner of pure artifice and
phantasmagoria. His films are like
fables, full of magic and metaphor, alive with the spirit of nature.
Last year,
one of my big plans was to complete a full blog-retrospective on Boorman's
feature filmmaking career, but it didn't happen. Partly because I couldn't find a proper
widescreen copy of Hell in the Pacific and partly because I'm still missing
several of his later films. At some
point, I might try to fashion a loose commentary on Boorman's work using quotes
from the man himself. His own
elucidations on these films - always humble, always tinged with a sense of
personal failure or perilous ambition - will surely be more interesting than
any of the markedly more tedious observations that I myself may have mustered
in celebration or defence.
