After Darkness Light

Performance in the age of Covid-19

One of the best filmed performances of recent years, Taylor Swift, live from the 2020 Academy of Country Music Awards, shows us everything that's wrong with the way TV producers and directors have traditionally recorded live music. Forced by restrictions around the Covid-19 pandemic to rethink the usual conventions, the producers of this year's event have embraced minimalism as necessity, recording performers on stage for an audience of no one, holding the gaze of the performer in shots that last for more than a fraction of a second, and in the process creating something that allows musicianship, songcraft and personality to rise to the surface. The result pushes musical performance towards something approaching great theatre; studied, dramatic and visual.

Since I don't pay much attention to Award Shows and competitions around art, I can't say how consistently the approach and aesthetic was carried over the course of the entire evening. This clip caught my attention primarily because I'm quite fond of Swift and found her recent album, "Folklore" (2020), a brilliant collection of songs and stories. In watching the performance here, you can appreciate Swift as both songwriter and storyteller. It's not just her words and voice that take us on a journey into the lives of these characters, which she sketches across the song in question – "Betty", a narrative that continues across two further songs from the "Folklore" album – but her body language, vocal intonations and facial expressions as well. It's a complete performance.

Taylor Swift, live from the 55th Academy of Country Music Awards [2020]:

Appearing relaxed and clearly enjoying the opportunity to perform and to bring her song to an audience, even a "virtual" one, Swift is charismatic and charming. As she sings, she's able to capture both the voice of her teen-boy protagonist, as he moons and whines over a girl who (rightly) doesn't want to know, as well as projecting her own withering contempt and amusement for this poor narrator, his chauvinism and entitlement picked apart with a subtle glance or a cold shrug of the shoulders. It's always been apparent that Swift had talent, but with "Folklore" she really shows potential to be one of the great troubadours, a singer/songwriter able to move effortlessly between both narrative and confessional-based songs.

However, what's most remarkable about this is the way it's filmed. As a music fan, the main thing that has always bothered me about live coverage of musicians and performers is the frequent cut away shots to members of the audience. While an establishing shot of the audience to begin and end a performance is good for creating context, TV directors will often cut to a crowd shot simply to enforce a sense of excitement or atmosphere; in the process, denying us the sight of the musicians on stage. Similarly, how often have we seen performances where a director cuts to a wide shot of the band performing during a great solo, excellent bass run, or a rhythmic drum fill, instead of going in close? It's like the people charged with filming live performances have no idea how music works or is created. We don't need to be reminded of the audience every three seconds. For those not fortunate enough to be attending live, the drama is on the stage, not looking up at it.

The approach adopted by the producers of this year's Academy of Country Music Awards is reminiscent of director Jonathan Demme's approach to his landmark concert film with the Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense (1984). There, Demme made the decision to keep audience shots to a minimum, holding the camera on the performers and cutting between shots only when necessary to emphasize a musician, a new song, or a change in staging. This way, the director was able to preserve the integrity of the on-stage performance, which the audience is there to see.

Stop Making Sense [Jonathan Demme, 1984]:

While not as clever as Demme's staging of the Talking Heads concert, the way the performance of Swift has been recorded is nonetheless similar in its attitude and approach: keeping the camera fixed upon the artist and her unseen harmonica player; backlighting the whole thing to give the performance a distinct and entirely visual "look"; highlighting the performer – her words and music – against the blackness of the backdrop, and in doing so, creating a visual implication of the light emerging from the darkness: post tenebras lux. Along with the sight of the empty auditorium that begins the clip and the resounding silence that closes it (no audience means no applause), this aesthetic aspect, born from necessity, provides a powerful reminder of where we are as a culture as we approach the final act of the year 2020.

This is the first example I've seen of one of these new, post-Covid showbiz events, where audiences and excess have been banished in the name of social distancing. I know there have been other Award shows, premieres and festivals conducted in a similar way, however, not having a lot of time for such things, I can't say whether or not these recent examples have resulted in anything as fresh and exciting as this. Nonetheless, it's interesting to see how these institutions have been forced to adapt to the challenges of maintaining a thin veneer of normalcy, while at the same time protecting people against a global pandemic, and how this has resulted, at least in this example, in a new and better visual language for recording. As the first films and TV shows produced under conditions of Covid begin to appear over the next six to twelve months, it will be interesting to see what effect, if any, such restrictions and limitations will have on the kind of images and scenarios we see.

The Year in Film 2019 - Part Five

Delirium (aka Photos of Gioia) [Lamberto Bava, 1987]:

Watched: Jun 17, 2019

The film is tasteless, without question. An apparently shallow slasher movie full of the usual scenes of women in peril, knife-wielding assailants and over-the-top twists. However, it contains so many elements that I enjoy in movies that I couldn't help being held captive by the experience of it. The giallo sub-genre is one that I have a great affinity for. Even when the films are flawed or middling, I can usually find something in the subtext or execution that elevates the whole experience. In Delirium, the setting, the world of publishing and glamour photography, gives the film a context to explore ideas relating to voyeurism, objectification, desire, obsession and representation. Self-reflexive themes that have characterized the best giallo movies since Dario Argento's landmark debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), and its debts to both Rear Window (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock and Blow-Up (1966) by Michelangelo Antonioni. Delirium isn't as great as those earlier works, but it does at least attempt to provide a meta-commentary on the world of the film. Its emphasis on surfaces and appearance, its world of privilege and affluence and its luxury villas hidden behind the gated suburbs of Rome, make sense on a narrative and presentational level, but they also underpin what the genre is about; chiefly, style and excess. While not as cohesive or coherent as Bava's earlier film, the superior but controversial A Blade in the Dark (1983), nor as shamelessly pulpy as his no-less self-reflexive Demons (1985) and its sequel Demons 2 (1986), Delirium satisfied my expectations. The atmosphere throughout was redolent, the plot random but engaging, and the set-pieces genuinely thrilling.

The Blackout [Abel Ferrara, 1997]:

Watched: Jun 25, 2019

Like many of the films of Abel Ferrara, The Blackout is intentionally messy. Ferrara isn't a filmmaker looking for perfection. He doesn't want the edges to be neat, but frayed and disheveled, allowing the whole thing to unravel and leave the audience feeling confused and disoriented. His protagonists are frequently intoxicated, high on booze and pills, smoking cigarettes and marijuana, speeding on whizz, and the experience of the film becomes as dizzying for the audience as it is for the characters on screen. Scenes lurch and stumble into one another as if assembled at random, or as if significant events have been removed and reshuffled. Characters come and go in a haze, rambling, incoherent, revealing everything and nothing, becoming guides to a neon-lit underworld of drugs and illicit sex, or becoming victims, willing or otherwise. To the casual observer the experience can become alienating, as the audience is thrown into scenes without context, unable to relate to its characters, decadent, violent and unlikable as they often appear. However, there's a method to Ferrara's madness, as The Blackout is a film that's felt as much as it is viewed. Like the director's later film, the vaguely futurist and entirely prescient William Gibson cyberpunk adaptation New Rose Hotel (1999), The Blackout is a hermetic, claustrophobic film about a character effectively imprisoned by their own memories and attempting to piece together the wreckage of their own existence through an investigation into these memories. Ferrara again ties the psychology of the character into a dissertation on images; with Dennis Hopper's mad videographer becoming a kind of Mephisto figure, the devil's agent who calls in the debt owed by the central character's burnt-out Faust. That the protagonist is an actor is significant as the film becomes about the nature of cinema – acting and reacting, faking things that can't be felt – and where the nightclub central to the narrative becomes both a subconscious space and stand-in for hell; the Inferno, after Dante, as a video installation.

A Master Builder [Jonathan Demme, 2013]:

Watched: Jun 29, 2019

Having mastered the live concert film with the legendary Stop Making Sense (1985) and the spoken-word monologue with Swimming to Cambodia (1987), director Jonathan Demme turns his attention to another theatrical standard, the "filmed play." This is how many writers have categorized Demme's A Master Builder, though in truth the term is contentious and incorrect. While the film, a somewhat modernized adaptation, or interpretation, of Henrik Ibsen's 1892 play "The Master Builder", maintains the claustrophobic setting, the heightened or exaggerated performance style, and the feeling of unreality created by the engagement of intentional artificiality that defines the theatre-going experience, the film is not a recording of a live event, but a motion picture that has been shaped and directed for cinematic engagement. The composition of shots, the choice of lens, the use of close-ups and subtle effects work, the changes in lighting and the associations created by the cutting between scenes and images, are done with purpose and intent. That the film is defined by sequences of characters sitting or pacing around sparsely furnished rooms speaking in long, poetic but expositional dialogues doesn't make the film "uncinematic."  The notion that the first rule of cinema is "show don't tell" is horse shit, as in the cinema even the telling is shown. What is cinematic and brilliant about A Master Builder is the power of performance; actors expressing, reacting; telling a story with their voices and facial expressions writ large across the screen. Then merge with the power of the written word as translated into spoken dialog; invested with emotion and room enough for the things left unsaid. These virtues become the film's "special effects." The spectacle of human drama as presented here is more thrilling and innately cinematic than any gritty street drama or act of CGI exhibitionism currently seen at festivals or award shows.

Gerry [Gus Van Sant, 2002]:

Watched: Jul 03, 2019

Every so often, director Gus Van Sant makes a movie that convinces me he's the best American filmmaker of his generation. Gerry is one such film. Dispensing with the conventions of plot, backstory and characterisation, Gerry is a work that finds drama in a changing landscape; the physiognomy of the rocks, the desert sands and the vast oceans of sky, each interceding on behalf of actors that are made small and insignificant by the world around them. In conventional terms, its plot can be surmised in a single sentence: having driven to a remote part of the desert, two friends set-off to explore a wilderness trail by foot, get lost, and attempting to find their way back to civilization, go off the rails. But the experience of the film goes much deeper than this brief summation would suggest. Taking influence from Chantal Akerman's "slow-cinema" masterwork Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) and the then-recent films of Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, such as Sátántangó (1994), Gerry is a masterpiece of mood and meditation. While actors and co-writers Matt Damon and Casey Affleck do well with their minimal performances, their blank state and restrained emotions suggesting the quiet resolve of two people facing but refusing to accept the hopelessness of their situation, it's nonetheless a film where the prolonged movement of actors wandering aimless towards oblivion, becomes more thrilling than an action set-piece. The trance-like nature of the actors on-screen is in synch with the endlessly drifting camera, the spare soundtrack with its repetitive rhythm of footsteps on dry sand, of deep breaths and the whistling wind. It creates the impression of something almost ambient; a figurative black mirror that the audience experiences but is then free to project onto it their own thoughts, feelings and motivations.

The Belly of an Architect [Peter Greenaway, 1987]:

Watched: Aug 04, 2019

The general perception of the work of Peter Greenaway is of something rigorous and academic; something that's devoid of the warmth and emotion that audiences anticipate when they sit down to watch a film. For many audiences and critics, the cinema, as a medium, has become synonymous with escapism and "storytelling." For Greenaway, who once said the avant-garde visual installations of filmmaker Bill Viola were "worth ten Martin Scorsese's", and who ranks the mysterious Last Year at Marienbad (1961) as his favourite film, the cinema is something else. Structured around lists and numerical strategies, with visual guides and puns woven into the ornate mise-en-scène, the films reduce characters to intellectual or political representations, and position them around a kind of heavily manipulative and deconstructive theatre of cruelty that makes the viewing audience complicit in events. While this can be challenging and even alienating for viewers, I've always felt Greenaway's best films do contain an element of human engagement and identification. They may be ironic in presentation and allergic to notions of melodrama, but they still engage with recognizable themes of guilt, grief, pride and failure. This is certainly true of the film in question, which strikes me as Greenaway's most human film, as well as his most moving. Anchoring his usual decorative stylisation to a genuine character study, the film is less engaged in his usual Brechtian distancing and ironic detachment. Instead, it becomes a study in contrasts between cultures, the past and the present, but more significantly the contrast between the permanence of art and architecture against the fragility and finality of the human body.

A Year in Film Pt. 2

A Viewing List for Twenty Eighteen

Married to the Mob [Jonathan Demme, 1988]:

Watched: Apr 16, 2018

Once again, it's the personality of director Jonathan Demme that enlivens and enriches the experience of the film. From his eclecticism - that bold mishmash of colours, fashions, music and settings, so vibrant and diverse - to the unwavering humanism already evident in previous films, such as Citizens Band (1977), Melvin and Howard (1980) and the preceding Something Wild (1986), the attitudes and relaxed stylisations favoured by the filmmaker succeed in charming the audience at every conceivable turn. Even when his characters are shady, or when the social milieu is suggestive of a particular threat of violence and criminality (as it is here), there's always a resolve and determination to these people, which is infectious. As such, the film becomes a celebration, with Demme allowing his actors the space to define and develop their characters through an expression of their own individual personalities; their quirks and idiosyncrasies on full display. The ensemble cast is incredible throughout, with standout turns from Michelle Pfeiffer as the film's strong-minded protagonist Angela, Dean Stockwell as the slimy mob boss Tony 'The Tiger' Russo, and Matthew Modine as Mike; a boyish FBI agent-cum-love interest.

Ghost Stories [Andy Nyman & Jeremy Dyson, 2017]:

Watched: Apr 19, 2018

Pitched in its promotional materials as a kind of horror anthology - a film in the same tradition as Dead of Night (1945), Spirits of the Dead (1968) or Tales from the Crypt (1972) - the eventual presentation of Ghost Stories soon expands into something far more character-driven and cohesive. Framed around the attempts made by a paranormal investigator to debunk three supernatural cases that led to his former mentor's disappearance, the individual vignettes presented by the investigation soon begin to suggest a different type of story; one that eventually propels the film towards its revelatory third-act twist. While the general nature of the three cases and the over-reliance on conventional jump-scares does initially seem to promise only modest thrills, it's the film's later sequences - and their clever dismantling of the fourth-wall between the supernatural and the psychological - that opens the film up to a more emotional interpretation, as well as moments of genuine surrealism. Co-written and co-directed by lead actor Andy Nyman and the former "League of Gentlemen" collaborator Jeremey Dyson, Ghost Stories is a film that riffs on the well-worn clichés of the horror genre; playing with the language and iconography that we've come to expect from other supernatural works - from The Shining (1980) to The Sixth Sense (1999), etc.  - but distinguishing itself through a kind of post-modernist deconstruction. It's a film rich in atmosphere, visually inventive and one that creates a palpable sense of fear throughout. However, the most disturbing aspect of Ghost Stories is the sense of loneliness that comes to define the character's journey as the film draws to a close.

Force of Evil [Abraham Polonsky, 1948]:

Watched: Apr 27, 2018

The film noir as art film; elusive, inscrutable and rich with allegorical interpretation. The two brothers representing Cain and Abel; a descent into subterranean worlds as a kind of figurative "Dantean" inferno; Faustian pacts and capitalism as a literal black death. The love story seems like an afterthought, but it's the performances, heightened and emotional, like the great American theatre, and the dialog, which has a kind of poetry to it, that are entirely gripping. Most movie dialog is merely perfunctory. It attempts to evoke naturalism; finding in its construction the awkward pauses, lack of cadence and layman's vocabulary that define the ordinary, or the everyday. Force of Evil however presents something far more interesting in its use of dialog. There's an "ornate" quality to the language here; a certain grandeur, though a grandeur that belies an undercurrent of violence and betrayal. In this sense, one could argue that the film is something of a precursor to the work of the American playwright David Mamet. Like Mamet's best writing, the dialog of Polonsky's screenplay has a rhythmical, almost musical quality to it. It has repetitions and reiterations that continually shift the emphasis from word to word; changing the subtleties and meanings of sentences in a profound way; finding subtext and insinuation; expressing everything and nothing simultaneously. The direction and cinematography are also incredible, utilising the full creative arsenal of post-German expressionist cinema to create a world full of atmosphere and emotion.

Secret Beyond the Door [Fritz Lang, 1948]:

Watched: May 1, 2018

Unfurling with an inscrutable dream-logic rife with visual symbolism, Lang's enigmatic, proto-Lynchian mystery, ties the Gothic intrigues of classic novels like "Jane Eyre" and "Rebecca" - with their similar presentations of lost girls, damaged men and figurative allusions to rooms that are off limits - to something comparatively more modern in its psychology and approach. From the very start of his career, Lang's cinema seemed preoccupied with matters of the subconscious. Think of the vengeful inventor Rotwang in Metropolis (1927), driven insane by grief, or the titular master criminal at the dark heart of The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1933), casting his insidious influence over the city, like a veritable plague. Using the bare necessities of his routine genre assignments to explore more interesting ideas perhaps closer in presentation to the form of the psychodrama, Lang's greatest works frequently dealt with this conflict between the inner and outer self. This is most apparent in the film in question. While considered a poor effort by many critics, Secret Beyond the Door is nonetheless a film where Lang takes his Freudian/psychoanalytical interests to the absolute limit. The entire film has an internal quality to it, where the use of voice-over monologues establish the notion of a character looking back on their own experiences. Not merely 'from the past', in the conventional sense, but as if suspended; hovering above the narrative, trancelike; as if recalling events through a form of hypnotic suggestion. It's a film full of mirrors and mirror imagery, suggesting ideas of replication, doppelgängers, self-reflection and the fragmentation of the self. It's also one of Lang's most visually inventive and expressive films.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time [Mamoru Hosoda, 2006]:

Watched: May 16, 2018

As with Blade Runner 2049 (2017), this is another film that I didn't manage to make any notes on after my initial viewing. As such, I'll try to extract from memory the things that most impressed me, though again, I feel it's a film I'll need to return to in the not-too-distant future. Nonetheless, the animation here is stunning. Unlike American animation, which is often loud and hectoring - an endless blur of action, colour and movement that always seems to be in a great rush to get to the next big set-piece - Hosoda's film is quiet and reflective. While there's a definite high concept at work here - a presentation of time travel and repetitions of chance and coincidence that seems to owe a debt of influence to the film Groundhog Day (1993) - The Girl Who Leapt Through Time doesn't allow its science-fiction elements to boil over into action or spectacle. Instead, it remains focused on the relationship between its characters; the moral concerns and personal considerations, which are engaging throughout. It's a film that seems content to focus on the small, seemingly inconsequential daily routines and activities that define the lives of these characters. The emotions are overwhelming.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 [David Yates, 2011]:

Watched: May 20, 2018

Harry began the story as an innocent. During the course of his childhood a war breaks out. As a result, the youth must radicalise; preparing themselves for battle and the uncertainties ahead. As the series drew to a close I was struck by how much this parallels the experiences of its own audience. Those that came of age with the franchise: roughly speaking, millennials, or "Generation Potter"; these children of Marvel and J.K. Rowling. Like Harry, these kids would've experienced the relatively more colourful adventures of The Philosopher's Stone (2001) in a state of complete innocence. As the fall of the Twin Towers brought terrorism and tyranny on a global scale, the subsequent instalments - beginning perhaps with The Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) - saw the battles at Hogwarts coincide with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan; the books' subtext of 'in-world' prejudice (the slurs against the "mud-bloods") or the characters displaced by war, connecting with the grim realities of the migrant crisis, racial intolerance and an overwhelming climate of fear. This probably sounds intensely pretentious, but I couldn't help seeing a connection. As the film's final moments found its characters framed against a landscape of death and destruction - ruined buildings and the soil still black from war - I felt the films had somehow become a mirror to the experiences of a generation, and the wider cultural events that surrounded their formative years. Not in the sense of the themes being inspired by these events- which would be impossible, given that the books predate both the films and the political climate - but adapted in response to them; giving this culmination to the seemingly disposable film series an incredible weight and depth.

Lunacy [Jan Švankmajer, 2005]:

Watched: Jun 16, 2018

Combining a number of possible inspirations - from two texts by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Premature Burial", and more significantly, "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether", to the writings of the Marquis de Sade - Švankmajer's fifth feature-length film, Lunacy, is perhaps best surmised by the well-known idiom: "the lunatics have taken over the asylum." Set mostly within the walls of a decaying psychiatric hospital, the early scenes of Švankmajer's film are a bizarre and sometimes alienating experience. As an audience we witness these early scenes through the eyes of our protagonist, Jean; a young man that has been suffering from night-terrors following the death of his mother. We share his bewilderment and sense of disbelief as he's initially taken in by a man who claims to be the embodiment of the aforementioned de Sade, and who allows the patients at his hospital to run riot as a part of some bizarre form of behavioural therapy. However, as the film progresses and more revelations become clear, we begin to recognise where the influence of "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" is eventually leading us. Without giving too much away, the satirical crux of Lunacy is a depiction of society under both the left and right-wing systems of government; a political commentary that feels somewhat relevant to the world of 2018, in which the perception of society is now torn between the two extremes of the modern left, with its social-constructs, micro-aggressions, identity politics and safe spaces, and the modern right, with its rhetoric of intolerance, ignorance and hate. For Švankmajer's, both systems are inherently flawed. Too much order leads to oppression, censorship and abuse; no order at all leads to chaos. As such, the argument of the film seems to be this: that to find true freedom one must accept a compromised middle-ground between the two extremes of anarchy and totalitarianism. It's a bold and provocative supposition, but one that is intelligently conveyed.

The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque [Éric Rohmer, 1993]:

Watched: Jun 19, 2018

Conversational to the point of didacticism, Rohmer's extended rumination on the political divides of a small village and its questions of commerce and redevelopment in the face of a changing cultural identity is exhausting, but also quietly adventurous. While much of the film is presented in the characteristic manner that one associates with Rohmer's work - familiar as it may be from earlier or even subsequent films, such as The Aviator's Wife (1981), Pauline at the Beach (1983) and A Tale of Springtime (1990) - there are nonetheless several bold deviations from the typical "Rohmerian" aesthetic. These deviations include 1. moments of actual documentary - comparable to some extent to similar sequences found in the filmmaker's earlier and no less brilliant Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987) - 2. a sub-plot that feels more befitting of a Hollywood romantic comedy, and 3. a later sequence that can only be described as a kind of folk-musical. The last of these deviations was the most surprising, not least because it broke from Rohmer's typically relaxed sense of naturalism; aligning the work instead to the stylised historical opera of something like Moses und Aaron (1973) by Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet. Arriving at the end of what is otherwise a kind of dry cinematic discourse on the themes aforementioned, this coda felt entirely remarkable; connecting the film, in some small way, to the legacy of one of Rohmer's most bold and unconventional earlier efforts, the masterful Perceval le Gallois (1978).

The Whispering Star [Sion Sono, 2015]:

Watched: Jun 19, 2018

If we were to attempt to simplify the experience of the film, then The Whispering Star is essentially The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) remade by Andrei Tarkovsky. Again, it's a simplification. However, like The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Whispering Star involves a non-human character who travels to our planet to fulfil a specific task - in this instance, delivering packages to the scattered pockets of civilisation - and invariably becomes a kind of witness to the folly of mankind. Aesthetically, it's more modern - if not post-modern - than any of Tarkovsky's films, particularly in its transformative final scenes, but nonetheless, the film shares an affinity for Tarkovsky's contemplative tracking shots, monochromatic  imagery, ruined locations that suggest the collapse of civilisation, and an interest in the elements; the rain, wind, sand and fog. Apparently filmed in and around the district of Ōkuma - the site of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster - the authenticity of the film's desolate locations and its depiction of humanity clinging to the last semblances of contemporary existence while poverty and desperation take hold, is quite extraordinary. Like Jia Zhangke's brilliant Still Life (2006), a film where the writer and director set a fictional relationship against a real backdrop of the village of Fengjie - at the time being destroyed by the building of the Three Gorges Dam - the placement of the science-fiction story into this particular setting suggests a clever blurring of the line between fiction and documentary. It also gives an added weight to the central character's observations on human experience, perseverance and survival.

Amour Fou [Jessica Hausner, 2014]:

Watched: Jun 21, 2018

Hausner's control of the formalist elements of the film are impeccable. In terms of the aesthetics - the art direction, costume design, cinematography, etc. - Amour Fou is a complete work. However, there is much more to the film than just stylisation. In telling the story of the relationship between the writer Heinrich von Kleist and his lover Henriette Vogel - a courtship that resulted in the pair committing to a murder-suicide pact in the winter of 1811 - Hausner views the events through a modern lens; inviting an element of irony (even cynicism) into this retelling of history in order to challenge the audience's perceptions of Kleist, German Romanticism and the myth of the male genius. In keeping with this ideological approach, the film's depiction of Kleist is not that of the romantic dreamer, the sensitive soul or even the vulnerable adult beset by crippling neuroses, but a cold, aloof, ineffectual figure; a man-child who doesn't so much die as an attempt to express some fatalistic sense of devotion, but instead, selfishly kills Vogel and then himself out of a state of manic depression. In presenting the story in such a way, Hausner creates an intentional indictment of Kleist and a sardonic dismissal of romanticism in general.

A Year in Film Pt. 1

A Viewing List for Twenty Eighteen

I didn't get around to compiling one of these lists for 2017, which is unfortunate, as I saw some great films over the course of that particular year. Some of the obvious highlights included Split (2017) by M. Night Shyamalan, Dragons Forever (1988) by Sammo Hung, Cosmos (2015) by Andrzej Zulawski, The Babadook (2014) by Jennifer Kent, Dogtooth (2009) by Yorgos Lanthimos, Hangmen Also Die! (1943) by Fritz Lang, La Cérémonie (1995) by Claude Chabrol, Big Fish (2003) by Tim Burton, mother! (2017) by Darren Aronofsky, It Follows (2014) by David Robert Mitchell, and perhaps the best of the bunch, Over the Garden Wall (2014) by Patrick McHale. This year I thought I'd renew the tradition, so I've compiled, in chronological order, a four-part list of the forty best films I saw over the course of 2018.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [David Yates, 2009]:

Watched: Jan 06, 2018

For me, this is the most cinematic of all the Harry Potter films and the first to feel relevant beyond its own specific franchise demographic. Whereas previous instalments had the feel of illustrated text - bland and visually generic fantasy affairs concerned mostly with telling a story in the most basic terms - The Half-Blood Prince actually succeeds in translating its themes into images. In this sense, it's not simply an illustration of the story, but something that engages visually with the subtext, ideas and emotions being expressed; not through spoken exposition, but through the iconography (uses of mirror symbolism, imprisonment; a birdcage within a birdcage, etc) as well through the formalist aspects of lighting, colour and composition. The tone is still uneven and often talkative, but there does seem to be a much greater emphasis on the emotional journey of the characters; the sense of loyalty and betrayal. There is also a compelling and ever deepening emotional intensity that works brilliantly, not just from an audience perspective, but more significantly, in bringing together many of the thematic and narrative plot-points that had developed through the previous instalments.

Howl's Moving Castle [Hayao Miyazaki, 2004]:

Watched: Jan 27, 2018

The transient nature of the castle and the backdrop of an encroaching war suggest a subtext of how war itself displaces people. In rejecting the kind of easy spectacle that animation can so ably depict, Howl's Moving Castle instead adopts a relaxed, almost contemplative tone; creating a suggestion of war, not as an excuse for action and adventure, but as something that forces us, as a species, to lose connection to the people and places that define us. It's a rich idea and one that plays beautifully to the film's sensitive depiction of old age (suggested here by the experiences of the heroine, Sophie; old before her time). So few films, especially ones aimed at children, give space to the struggles of those at the end of life, but here the character's attempts to find peace are genuinely heartfelt. The journey of the film, as such, has less to do with the fantastic odyssey these characters take than the emotional journey of Sophie, as she attempts to get back to a state of being (and a sense of self) that existed before the war (and its curse) intruded upon her existence, changing it forever. This adaptation of a novel by the English author Diana Wynne Jones may at first seem an unconventional choice for Miyazaki, but it's nonetheless a film that connects many of the great narrative threads that have run throughout the filmmaker's career.

The Coward [Satyajit Ray, 1965]:

Watched: Jan 28, 2018

Feeling somewhat more European in its influences than Ray's more celebrated works, such as Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and The Goddess (1960), to name just three - films in which the influence of neo-realism was applied to a culturally specific and historically authentic milieu, unburdened by western perspectives - this intimate, almost theatrical memory-play, shows the filmmaker's further development and mastery of diverse narrative forms. Perhaps owing as much to the influence of the Southern Gothic of writers like William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams as it does to the stifling chamber-films of Ingmar Bergman, the shifts from naturalism towards a kind of heightened stylisation, create an almost dreamlike quality; a sense of ambiguity in terms of the story's place between reality and fiction. While apparently underrated and even discredited by many film critics and devotees of Ray's cinema, The Coward - with its stark modernist compositions and sensitive performances from the three main leads - presented, for this particular viewer, a wandering "dark night of the soul" examination into the themes of lost love, fragile masculinity and the fear of commitment, where ghosts of the past and fears of the present freely intersect.

Blade Runner 2049 [Denis Villeneuve, 2017]:

Watched: Feb 19, 2018

This is the only film on the list that I didn't write something about after my initial viewing. I'll need to see it again before attempting to write anything more substantial, but it's sufficient to say, I found the film utterly compelling, beautiful in both design and conception, and thematically profound. While it largely contradicts the most fascinating question that runs throughout the Ridley Scott-directed original - e.g. is Deckard a replicant? - Villeneuve's sequel nonetheless compliments the earlier instalment's existential themes regarding identity and what it is to be human. Such conceptions feel more relevant now, in our current climate of smart phone technology and further developments in the field of robotics than they perhaps appeared when explored three decades ago, and as such there's a greater sensitivity, if not empathy afforded to its android characters, which suggests this societal blurring of the real and artificial. While Villeneuve's work does draw heavily on the template of the original film, the aesthetics of Blade Runner 2049 are very much its own. While one can point to the influence of a film, such as Steven Spielberg's masterwork A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), or the philosophies of Mamoru Oshii's similar sci-fi noir Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), there's also something of Tarkovsky and Solaris (1972) in its sombre mood, slow pace and elemental concerns.

Steamboy [Katsuhiro Ōtomo, 2004]:

Watched: Feb 28, 2018

Anyone going into this expecting a film along the same lines as director Katsuhiro Ōtomo's great masterwork, Akira (1988), will be sorely disappointed. While Seamboy once again showcases Ōtomo's tremendous visual sense, his ability to create vast worlds that feel utterly immersive and entirely authentic, as well as his obvious flair for creating scenes of large-scale action and destruction, the film is a lot more grounded and conversational than that aforementioned cyberpunk classic, with little of the violence or grotesquery that propelled that particular film to its lasting cult status. Instead, Ōtomo uses a fantasy of late 1800s Britain to draw a line from the industrial revolution to the tragedy of how such miracles of modern engineering would pave the way for the great wars and devastation that would come to dominate the 20th century. In doing so, he turns this beautifully crafted steampunk adventure story into an oblique anti-war commentary; wherein the protagonist - the boy-inventor, James - has to protect his grandfather's innovations from the corrupt and capitalist warlords trying to use them for their own insidious ends.

Gerald's Game [Mike Flanagan, 2017]:

Watched: Feb 28, 2018

My first experience with director Mike Flanagan was seeing his earlier films, Oculus (2012) and Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), during the latter half of 2017. Both films impressed me on a level far greater than what I'd expected. It was my interest in Flanagan's work that led me to subscribe to Netflix and to the film in question. Throughout its claustrophobic narrative, Gerald's Game succeeds in capturing the internal, almost stream-of-consciousness quality of its source material (the novel by Stephen King); inhabiting its protagonist's subconscious the way one might conventionally inhabit a room. Here, Jess's thoughts and fears become personified, taking physical form. While her body is bound her mind is free to wander off into the darkened reaches of her own psyche; into the past or somewhere else. While the ending of the film proved to be problematic for some, the coda seemed necessary to me, providing a point of catharsis. It underlines the central themes of abuse and survival, while also showing how the protagonist is finally able to accept that she wasn't to blame for her own experiences. The way the editing of the film conflates the two abusers of Jess into one supposedly imaginary bogeyman figure, reinforces the idea, quite disturbingly, that some monsters are real.

Before I Wake [Mike Flanagan, 2016]:

Watched: Mar 02, 2018

As much as I was enthralled by Gerald's Game (2017), I loved this one even more. Not only is the film genuinely terrifying, employing a slow-burning, long-held observational aesthetic influenced by "J-horror" filmmakers like Hideo Nakata and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (albeit, with the occasional Hollywood style jump-scare there to lower the tone), it builds to an emotional climax that is actually heartbreaking. Like the best films of M. Night Shyamalan, Flanagan uses the supernatural to explore themes of catharsis and grief. His monsters aren't embodiments of pure evil, but emotional manifestations, filled with pain and fear. If we were to follow the Shyamalan/Flanagan comparison to its logical conclusion, then Before I Wake is this filmmaker's Lady in the Water (2006). On the surface, it's Flanagan's lowest rated film to date, but like Shyamalan's similarly derided effort, I found it sensitive, imaginative and refreshingly earnest in its emotions. It's also beautifully cinematic.

Something Wild [Jonathan Demme, 1986]:

Watched: Apr 04, 2018

The spirit of the French New Wave collides with the energy of the American independent cinema in this seemingly simple but actually quite rich and intelligent road movie; a highlight of the very brief "yuppie in peril" subgenre that also gave us the brilliant After Hours (1985) by Martin Scorsese and the quite enjoyable Into the Night (also 1985) by John Landis. However, the elements that make Something Wild an actual masterpiece are almost distinct from the narrative itself. While the original screenplay by E. Max Frye is perfectly well developed, it's the depth of personality and sensitivity that is brought to the film by director Jonathan Demme that defines the overall experience. In particular, it's Demme's seemingly earnest love for alternative cultures, old Americana, reggae music, street art, indie rock and the natural eccentricities of people that elevates Something Wild beyond what could've been a fairly standard or straight-forward screwball romance into a genuine time capsule of specific attitudes, people and places.

The Mystery of Picasso [Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1956]:

Watched: Apr 07, 2018

A film that should've done for live-drawing what The Last Waltz (1978) did for the rock concert. Quite why so few filmmakers have followed in Clouzot's footsteps and produced a similar arts-based documentary might be what the mystery of the title refers to, though if nothing else, one could perhaps see this as something of an early precursor to a perennial favourite like The Joy of Painting (1983-1994), hosted by Bob Ross. Nonetheless, Clouzot's documentary is a fascinating and in some sense historically significant study in the practicalities of form; a work preoccupied not just with the creation of images, but with the notion of how images can be used to tell a story. In collaboration with cinematographer Claude Renoir, Clouzot devises an intricate system that allows the audience to see Picasso's paintings come to life almost in real-time; it's not animation, but actuality; although it sometimes has the same effect. In doing so, the filmmakers provide an extraordinary insight into the famed artist's methodology, his abilities and approach.

Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life [The Brothers Quay, 1995]:

Watched Apr 07, 2018

Having discovered and explored many of the animated works of the Quay's during the course of 2017, I was very keen to check out their first live action feature, the beguilingly titled Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life. As with their earlier works, such as Nocturne Artificialia: Those Who Desire Without End (1979), the acclaimed Street of Crocodiles (1985) and the underrated Rehearsals For Extinct Anatomies (1988), Institute Benjamenta is a slow, carefully composed and stylised work that carries a definite European influence. Its tone and stylisations owe something of a debt to Jean Cocteau - specifically his Beauty and the Beast (1946) - as well as Eastern-European folk tales; to say nothing of the legacy of its author, the German-speaking Swiss writer Robert Walser. Enigmatic and inscrutable to the point of rejecting almost all logical interpretations, the Quay's sub-textual deconstruction of Walser's 1909 novella, Jakob von Gunten, embraces a dreamlike, almost fairy-tale narrative, which envelops rather than compels. While themes of incest, repression and existentialism seem to circle, the film impresses more as a work of carefully designed and beautifully photographed craftsmanship, where individual sequences of intricately choreographed sound and movement stand out.