Inglourious Basterds

If the initial trailer and the subsequent promotional materials seemed to suggest a kind of ultra-violent, men on a mission style Nazisploitation picture - in which a group of revenge-seeking Jewish-American soldiers form a band of scalp-hunting executioners literally carving a path of vengeance through the forests of occupied France - then the eventual experience of Inglourious Basterds (2009), as a complete film, will no doubt be a surprising one. Far more rewarding than The Dirty Dozen (1967) meets Hostel (2005) approach that the studios seemed to be encouraging with their publicity images of bloodied knives, baseball bats and rifle butts, the actual thrill of Inglourious Basterds is never exclusive to the presupposed notions of carnage and retribution that such intentionally provocative images might normally suggest. Instead, it can be found in the film's particular emphasis on language. Not necessarily the languages that are spoken by the various characters - or how such languages are used (or not used) to further a possible plan of action - but the more important languages of fiction and film.

This, as an idea, is something that Tarantino has been refining for the majority of his career. From the seemingly meaningless but ultimately character-building pop culture-heavy chitchat of films like Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), to the more self-aware, self-referential patter of the subsequent Kill Bill, Volumes 1&2 (2003-2004) - where the general form of the thing could potentially be seen as a filmed commentary or dissertation on the genre(s) being explored - the ability of dialogue to suggest multiple ways of looking at the film through the creation of stories within stories was always one of the director's greatest strengths. As an extension of this, Inglourious Basterds is perhaps the first film by Tarantino where the power of language is really looked at within a greater dramatic context. Only during The Second World War - the last real war in which the protagonists were, predominantly, Caucasian, and therefore more able to adopt a particular language in order to feign cover behind enemy lines - could the use of language be considered as deadly as the Walther PP or the Bowie knife. The notion of words as weaponry is therefore an important device in Tarantino's film; not only establishing the dramatic motivation of the later plot development (as in - the deliberately hackneyed plot to blow up Hitler?) but also the psychological aspects as well.

The words themselves may seem fairly innocuous, as various characters, largely unknown to one another, sit down to discuss work, or movies, or the benefits of cream with strudel, but through these quirks of conversation Tarantino is able to achieve the creation of a world, based in fact but defined by fiction, where one single, half-mumbled gesture from a previously anonymous dairy-farmer - a devoted husband and father no less - can result in the massacre of a sheltering Jewish family. These ideas, relating to language and the power of words, are made definite in the film's much talked about opening sequence; which, on a more obvious level, establishes the dramatic elements of loyalty, role-play, justice and retribution, and yet beyond this initial interpretation, seems to suggest the by now familiar Tarantino approach of postmodern appropriation: where the references to film, fiction and the general pop culture create a recognisable grammar for the film itself. Although the dialogue in Tarantino's work is often leisurely, idiosyncratic and arguably self-indulgent, revelling as it does in the awkward speech patterns, prose and anecdotal asides that his characters slip in and out of during a single conversation, it is nonetheless essential in developing these characters: not simply as people that we can relate to or care about, but as signifiers; where the subject matter discussed - or the particular way in which said discussions pan out - suggests hidden layers of interpretation and characterisation.



With an opening chapter title boldly announcing the location, "Once Upon a Time... in Nazi-Occupied France" - immediately followed by a suitably heroic widescreen composition depicting the abovementioned farmer chopping wood in a long-shot that frames his small house as if it were a studio recreation of some forgotten frontiers homestead (a literal 'little house on the prairie') - it becomes immediately obvious what Tarantino is attempting to achieve through the visual style alone. The iconography throughout is crucial, with at least three shorthand references to the work of Sergio Leone and a general nod to the work of John Ford creating a sense that this is a mythical story, again with ties to history, but somehow greater than the reality; a cinematic history, in the grand tradition of Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West, 1968). However, the shorthand references to Ford and Leone aren't simply examples of Tarantino showing off his movie geek obsessiveness. On the contrary, both serve a definite purpose. These elements of obvious homage create a world for the viewer that is immediately recognisable; establishing the relationships between characters - or the ideas of loyalty and betrayal - and a certain logic (movie-logic?) that forewarns the viewer that there's something slightly more self-aware going on behind the violence, conflict and assassination attempts; something that plays on the more recognisable codes and conventions of the war movie, in the greater, historical sense.

This opening sequence, which introduces us to the literally larger than life character of SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) - a "Jew hunter" who considers himself to be a serious detective, and applies a method-actor's logic to sniffing out his prey - seems designed to capture that sense of anticipation so evident in Leone's work: with the two most memorable scenes in the aforementioned Once Upon a Time in the West (the arrival of "Harmonica" by train, and the subsequent massacre of the McBain family by Frank and his gang) setting something of an obvious template. It also plays into the Leonian idea of the confrontation; where the build up to a moment of violence is often so prolonged and so focused on the personal, idiosyncratic rituals that make such sequences resonate on a deeper level of emotional investment, that the violence, when it does occur, seems all the more unexpected and cruel. The form of the film, in this respect, isn't merely an attempt to juxtapose the style of the Spaghetti Western with the political conventions of the Hollywood war drama - which, in itself, was already characteristic of the Italian Zapata Westerns of the 1970s: films such as Damiano Damiani's A Bullet for the General (El Chucho, quién sabe?, 1967), Sergio Corbucci's Compañeros (Vamos a matar, compañeros, 1970) and Leone's own Giù la testa (released as Duck, You Sucker! and A Fistful of Dynamtie respectively, 1971), which was a critique of the Zapata subgenre, as well as a perfect example of it. Instead, these juxtapositions and associations create something approaching stenography for the viewer; a kind of cinematic slang very much in keeping with the standard Tarantino dialogue - which plays on a kind of stylised conversational approach steeped in self-reference - making the passage of information between the director and his audience much more direct.



We can see an obvious example of this in the use of the film's title and its particular function in describing (or branding) the supporting characters (the aforementioned Nazi-scalp-hunters) through an accented misspelling: presenting the title as the characters themselves might pronounce it, therefore giving the notion of language within the film a recognisable voice. The title itself is by now obvious to most viewers as a direct reference to the Enzo G. Castellari film The Inglorious Bastards (Quel maledetto treno blindato, or literally That Damned Armoured Train, 1978). Through this, Tarantino establishes, briefly, a sense of the men on a mission, action adventure movie that Castellari's film attempts to replicate, while also self-consciously endearing itself to the Euro War, or "Macaroni Combat" subgenre; a sort of European (usually Italian, but not exclusively) pastiche of the Hollywood War Movies popular at the time. So, what we have in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is, on some level, a parody of a parody; which is perfect in its own way of illustrating the director's quite interesting idea of using the conventions of a film like The Eagles Over London (La battaglia d'Inghilterra, 1969) or Salt in the Wound (Il dito nella piaga, 1970) (and their own references to movies like The Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare), to create his own commentary on the outlandishness of war and the ridiculousness of a conflict between two human beings, both from the same ethnic background, class and generation, conditioned into hating one another for the benefit of an abstract cause.

Of course, in Tarantino's work, the notion of conflict isn't simply restricted to the depiction of "war" in the real-life sense, but of the idea of a cinematic conflict: as in the conflict of various juxtaposing styles, ideas and philosophies. Although most critics and viewers are quick to point out the more obvious lifts from the work of Ford and Leone, the driving force behind Tarantino's intellectual experiments seems closer to his early idol, Jean-Luc Godard. There are some superficial though no less relevant Godardian touches littered throughout the film, with the particular references to real-life figures in a fictional framework, exaggerated for the purposes of satire. So we have the character of Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) presented as a would-be Hollywood film producer, full a would-be Hollywood film producer's bluster and bullshit, which, rather than simply creating a mockery out of the real-life Goebbels, manages to humanise him in a way that is a benefit to the film's actual creative intent. There is also the naming of certain characters in a way that is significant, culturally, to Tarantino's primary influences: names such as Hugo Stiglitz (the Mexican cult-actor) or Omar Ulmer (a play on the film director Edgar G. Ulmer), or the use of the alias Antonio Margheriti (the director of Cannibal Apocalypse, 1980), which would, in spirit at least, suggest the influence of a film like Alphaville (1965) or Made in U.S.A. (1966).



Though the reliance on the more obvious movie caricature of films like Death Proof (2007) and Kill Bill seems to be more subtle here, certain examples of it can still be found. Not necessarily in the previously discussed opening sequence, but in the smaller, seemingly throwaway moments, which seem handpicked in order to establish an underlining message that "violence begets violence". Such examples could include the shot of Aldo "The Apache" (Brad Pitt) and The Bear Jew (Eli Roth) staring down, into the camera (showing us the POV of one of their recent victims) in a manner that recalls the near-iconic shot of a masked Malcolm McDowell taunting the prone Patrick Magee in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange (1971); or perhaps through the later references to Brian De Palma's Scarface (1983), Elem Klimov's Come and See (Idi i smotri, 1985) and Lamberto Bava's Demons (Dèmoni, 1985), which all occur during the penultimate sequence set during the premier of the fictional propaganda film Nation's Pride, where the kaleidoscope of references seem deliberately chosen in order to illustrate the various potential presentations of violence on film (the lurid, to the surreal, to the pure exploitation).

Such suggestions can also be found in the general feeling of the war-time Parisian setting, the meeting between the displaced Jewish farm girl turned cinema owner Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) and the German war hero Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), and the espionage film subplot of the Basterds and their double-agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) attempting to formulate a plan. Each of these segments open out like the plot of a self-contained film; almost as if each instalment could carry its own independent narrative - be it a film about a noble family man struggling with his conscience and a loyalty to his children as he takes in a neighbouring family of sheltering Jews, or even a burgeoning war-time romance between two people from either side of the conflict (as just two single examples). Instead, Tarantino uses these short scenes to construct a much larger-tapestry of events; employing the literary use of chapter-points familiar from Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, and therefore encouraging this idea of each element of the narrative becoming its own miniature drama, both self-contained mini-movie and an integral part of the actual film as a whole.



There are other examples too, like the introduction of Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), looking like a stunt double Sean Connery just walked off the set of Richard Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far (1977) and straight into a typically serious, stiff-upper-lipped, War-Time propaganda piece from the early 1940s (surprisingly no less distracting for featuring a ridiculous Mike Myers characterisation and an appearance from a stogie-puffing Winston Churchill), or the extraordinary "Putting Out Fire" sequence, in which the transformation of Shosanna from innocent country girl to 40s femme-fatale is presented as an 80s pop cinema cliché: with the use of David Bowie's title song from the Paul Schrader remake of The Cat People (1982) offering an anachronistic commentary of the central themes of the film. In this sequence in particular, the cultural reference points, and the way in which each element of the iconography can be interpreted by the viewer, is simply jaw-dropping. Through montage, Tarantino shows the metamorphosis of Shosanna as if she were an actress preparing for a role: choosing a costume, applying makeup, etc. He also further suggests that the exaggeration of the violence and the retribution still to come is in many ways filtered back through the general, recognisable symbols of the cinema itself.

In striping two lines of red lipstick across either side of her face Shosanna establishes an explicit connection with the Apache theme of the Basterds, while also further illustrating the film's continual quotation of the western genre (in this instance, the classic westerns of John Ford, or the spirit of Debbie from The Searchers). By the end of the sequence she is reborn, cinematically, as the archetypical Fassbinder heroine. As she adjusts a netted veil, framed by the infamous black, white and red of a distant Swastika, she could just as easily be Maria Braun or Veronika Voss; the great symbols of post-war Germany in Fassbinder's later work. What these moments do, besides maintaining the plot and illustrating Tarantino's individual approach to the genre (or the pastiche of it), is to set up a far greater thread of interpretation that runs throughout the film: specifically the depiction of a world, both contemporary and historical, that is entirely reflected through the magic of the silver screen.



In several interviews supporting Inglourious Basterds at the time of its initial release, Tarantino suggested that what his film was really about, beyond the more recognisable genre practicalities of war-time espionage and personal retribution, was the true, all conquering power of the cinema itself. It is here, in Tarantino's film, that we see the invention of a cinema that acts as a creative force somehow strong enough to bring down the Third Reich; not simply in the metaphorical sense, but in the realisation that film is a deadly weapon; an actual combustible celluloid, as well as a creative medium with the ability to offer a group-forum for the communication of ideas. In this sense, the ideology goes back to Godard's 60s belief that the cinema could be used to change the world, and although Tarantino seems less interested in changing the world in a contemporary sense, with any attempt to read the film as a critique of the current situations in Iraq or Afghanistan (or anywhere else for that matter) seeming somewhat limited, it is no less remarkable as a central idea.

In the final chapters of the film, Operation Kino and Revenge of the Giant Face respectively, the idea of a cinema that is about cinema (the creation and the viewing of it) is confirmed, not just through the self-reflexive chapter-titles, but through Tarantino's direction of the film's major scene. In the attack on the cinema, Tarantino creates an astounding sequence that works on at least several layers; offering the obvious thrill of the climax, in which various strands of the narrative converge in a kind of closure, but also intensifying his theme of the cinema as a force to be reckoned with. The juxtaposition between images of celluloid being loaded into film canisters (or projectors) with bullets being loaded into magazine-clips had already been made during the scene of Shosanna's Bowie-scored transformation. However, in the cinema massacre sequence, the cross-cutting between the endless machine gun fire of the on-screen soldiers and the shots of celluloid running through the projector seem designed to make such connections all the more explicit. There is also the pertinent image of Fredrick Zoller, larger than life on the frame-within a frame cinema screen, pointing his blazing machine gun out at the audience, and then the fantastic mirroring of this, life vs. art, as the real-world audience (the one that we saw the movie with) cheer the eventual slaughter of this Nazi audience, who themselves were previously cheering the massacre of the opposing forces in the film within a film. Could this particular presentation be seen as Tarantino quite radically flipping the film's creative purpose, turning it back against the audience - against an audience that had always embraced the violence of his earlier work, but failed to question his own creative intentions? - Possibly. In Tarantino's film, the violence is as unforgiving as that of his characters, resulting in a powerful anti-war commentary where the recognisable distinction between the heroes and the villains is completely removed.

[Ammunition]

[Spent shells]

[An attack on the audience?]

As the narrative develops, it is almost as if the initial plot - the two strands of revenge, from the Basterds to Shosanna - becomes less important; or at least, less important in the sense of paying off in the final act. Although the theme of revenge is carried right the way through the film, you could argue that this is really more of a study of vengeance, as an ideology, rather than simply a film about the character's pursuit of it. Like Richard Lester's cult classic How I Won the War (1967), the stylisations of Inglourious Basterds seem deliberately tailored to reduce the spectacle of war to a kind of comic book fodder; showing up the absurdity and irrationality of it, on a philosophical level, and lampooning it mercilously. So the end product is less an anti-war film than an "anti anti-war film" (Lester's classification); a riposte to the overly serious presentation of something like Saving Private Ryan (1999), where Spielberg attempted to produce a film that would place the audience right alongside his characters, so that we could experience, as close to first hand, the real horrors of combat, but instead made the whole thing rather exciting, and thrilling.

If Death Proof was essentially about transcending the casual misogyny of the horror film genre, then Inglourious Basterds could be seen as an attempt to strip away the supposed nobility of war; illustrating the conflict from numerous narrative and character perspectives - from the Americans, to the French, to the British and the Germans - and ultimately exposing the futility of it. That rather tragic notion that these people, who can (and do) hold conversations, show charm and charisma, sit side by side undetected, are conditioned into blowing each other away with bombs and machine gun fire. While many critics consider Tarantino to be nothing more than a shallow purveyor of hardcore violence - or worse, a sardonic hipster who glamorises cruelty and makes the thrill of bloodshed akin to a celebration - the actual brutality of Tarantino's work is never superficial. The violence of Inglourious Basterds is conspicuous, but never explicit. Perhaps because the film exists so far beyond the parameters of cinematic realism - rewriting history for its own satirical ends - so that these characters are ultimately robed of a recognisable humanity; reduced to symbols of status, religion, ethnicity or nationality; much like actual human beings during an extended period of war.



Inglourious Basterds is currently available on Region 2 DVD from Universal Pictures.

The Kids Play Russian

It begins with a question. Why does the West want to invade Russia? The response: because it is the home of fiction, and the West has run out of stories to tell. In The Kids Play Russian (Les enfants jouent à la Russie, 1993), several voices of discussion are channelled through the director Jean-Luc Godard's typically formalist stylisations in order to create an examination into this particular dilemma, establishing what the screen-titles announce as an "experiment in literary investigation", where the filmmaker constructs various fictional scenarios around the iconography of classic Russian literature, in an attempt to define the birth of fiction, and in the process, the birth of cinema. To achieve this, Godard creates a film that is part detective thriller, part video essay; where the staggeringly apocalyptic declaration, that the future is "at stake", establishes a sense of foreboding more befitting a Hollywood disaster movie than the kind of films Godard is best known for. However, The Kids Play Russian is in many ways as much a disaster-movie as anything produced by Irwin Allen; a film where not only is the future at stake, but where Europe has been condemned to death.

"One has to speak of Europe", Godard says, "and of Dostoyevsky", and through his typically inscrutable combination of images and text, establishes a particular tone of remorseful longing for a vanishing world - "Insulted and Humiliated" as it were - in which the basic form of the film is confabulated by Godard's editing into becoming a fictionalised dramatisation of a metaphorical "event" presented as an actuality. Like much of Godard's work of this mid-to-late period, most clearly defined in his on-going video serial Histoire(s) du cinema (History of Cinema/Stories of Cinema, 1988-1998), The Kids Play Russian is not necessarily a film about, but a film on; presenting its various ideas and ruminations - which are sometimes obvious, other times obscure - through a combination of stock-footage, direct quotation and Godard's own dramatic recreations, which for much of the film consist largely of actors sitting around tables reading entire passages from books.

The style is perfect for presenting the various lines of thought and discussion that pass back and forth - between the soundtrack and the pictures on screen - and the often disorientating montage of images, in which each cut seems to work on a vague level of visual symbolism, or association. One of the most obvious of such motifs is the stock footage inserts of seagulls (or other such birds) whenever the narrator discusses the concept of freedom. Like the obvious romantic associations of the shots of two trains passing in the night, or the two ships at dawn used in both Masculin féminin (1966) and Prénom Carmen (First Name: Carmen, 1983) respectively, this image of the gull (or gulls) in flight would suggest a sense of freedom that is almost tangible; contrary of course to any brief black and white footage of the young woman bound by chains in an obvious visual representation of general oppression, or the great struggle. It also illustrates Godard's sense of humour, with each cut in many ways becoming a kind of visual pun, like the combination of shots in Histoire(s) du cinema, in which Godard illustrates the triumph of the Hollywood blockbuster over the independent spirit of the art-film by cutting to a pornographic insert of penetrative anal-sex.



Such stylistic devices complement Godard's recurrent interest in quotes, puns, anagrams and word games, as well as the general aesthetic appropriation of various cultural or literary iconography into the framework of the film. The most notable icons in this instance are culled from the pages of The Idiot (first published, 1869), The Seagull (written, 1895) and Anna Karenina (first published, 1877); the three symbols of Russia that dominate Godard's dramatisations, alongside the usual references to the work of filmmakers like Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, in an attempt to establish context. Through this however, Godard is able to collapse three separate layers, between the past and the present (meaning, in this case, the early 1990's), in which fictional, historical characters are placed into recognisable, contemporary situations. This approach once again evokes the continual idea of bringing the past into the present; like the symbol of Napoleon in La chinoise (1967), or the spirit of historical recreation as a contemporary "critique", as seen in Le vent d'est (The Wind from the East, 1970).



The basic plot outline of The Kids Play Russian has been listed by several sources as follows: A famous French filmmaker is hired by a major Hollywood producer to make a documentary on the state of Russia in the wake of the Cold War. The filmmaker however, subverts the project by stubbornly remaining in France and casting himself as the title character in Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. As an attention grabber, the above description does give some suggestion as to the fictional background of the film; indicating parallels to Godard's earlier, little-seen work, A Letter to Freddy Bauche regarding a short film about the city of Lausanne (Lettre à Freddy Buache à propos d'un court métrage sur la ville de Lausanne, 1982), in which Godard was indeed approached to make a conventional documentary, but instead made a video response to the initial offer. However, the idea of seeking some kind of coherent narrative from Godard's continual aural and visual experiments in montage and association would no doubt be an exercise in futility. Again, this is a film on, not a film about.

If we were to reduce the film to the most basic sense of narrative, in order to - I suppose - better define the intentions (or assumed intentions) of its creator, then one could possibly consider this a film about the making of films. In this sense, it is a continuation of a theme that has run throughout Godard's career; not simply from the more obvious presentations of Le mépris (Contempt, 1963) or Passion (1982) - two films in which the actuality of film production is an essential concern to the lives of his central characters - but to films like Prénom Carmen, Détective (1985) and Soigne ta droite, ou une place sur la terre (Keep Your Right Up: or A Place on Earth, 1987). In these films, the characters are making movies of their own. From Uncle Jeannot in Prénom Carmen, creating a narrative from his hospital room typewriter that will eventually develop into the narrative being depicted on screen; to the trio of crime solving sleuths in Détective, piecing together their hours of video-camera surveillance footage in order to solve a murder that could be past or could be present. However, beyond these particular examples, the closest companion-piece within Godard's career is Soigne ta droite, in which he not only originated the same character of The Idiot/Prince from Dostoyevsky's great novel, but where he was once again placed in the position of delivering a film.

Godard's own appearances in The Kids Play Russian - initially huddled-over a pan of hot water, surrounded by miniature Russian dolls and with a red towel over his head, and later in his pyjamas and a woolly hat - continue the general presentation of the Godard "character" as it has developed through his own work; or at least through his own work since the early 1980's. From the aforementioned Uncle Jeannot (possibly insane, shuffling around the hospital in his dressing gown and wanting nothing more than to place a finger between the buttocks of a young woman), to his appearance in King Lear (1987) as the strange Professor Pluggy (extension-cord dreadlocks included), it's near-impossible to think of any other highly respected international filmmaker so willing to lampoon their own eccentricities (or exaggerated eccentricities) in order to add a separate layer of interpretation to the work itself; creating a recognisable persona, as immediately synonymous with his own work as Monsieur Hulot is to the work of Jacques Tati, or the various shades of the "Woody Allen" persona as it became more fully-formed and multi-faceted through films such as Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979) and Stardust Memories (1980).



When Godard isn't physically on screen (as in, within the frame) then he's nonetheless present through the words of the narrator, or the words that feature as screen-captions or inter-titles. He can also be heard, as himself, dictating a quotation to his actors, demanding that the lines be repeated, again and again, faster and more direct. This brief moment is a fascinating insight into Godard as director, suggesting that many of the performances in his work are dictated to an almost obsessive level; contra to the notion of Godard as a proponent of improvisation and freewheeling spontaneity, and more in line with the quote from his ex-wife Anna Karina, when she claimed that much of Godard's work was carefully designed to the smallest detail. However, it could simply be a comment on the nature of language; the natural rhythms that make up our languages, or the way in which we use and phrase our words in order to emphasise their apparent meaning. After all, "the historical world is described through language", as one character explains during the first part of the film.

Whenever Godard or his characters talk about language, it almost always relates back to the language of film. In The Kids Play Russian, the translator's line about "the historical world" gives way to a brief conversation on the state of cinema in the dying days of the Twentieth Century. Unsurprisingly, the response is a negative one. However, the process of using language to define history (or fiction to offer a viewpoint on reality) also allows for a process of simplification; i.e. to make the argument more direct. Is it then such a surprise to consider that the early Russian cinema was the only cinema at that point in time not to employ the use of the shot/reverse-shot editing structure? Is this because, as Godard puts it, these films were not about the exchange of viewpoints, but rather (we assume) the investigation of a single idea?



In his short essay, Je vous salue, Sarajevo (I Salute Thee, Sarajevo, 1993), produced around the same period as the film in question, Godard achieved his commentary on the atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina with a single image. In The Kids Play Russian, he reduces his argument to two intangible words: one for reality, and one for fiction. This language, which is as much the language of film as the language we use every day, offers two ways of seeing. So the war in Vietnam, as seen by Stanley Kubrick, becomes a reality, because it is familiar through the general accepted conventions of Hollywood cinema. Conversely, the war in Vietnam, if it were to be seen by Vertov, would be fiction; too extraordinary to believe. Therefore, the history of Russia is defined by its fictions; its literature, cinema, etc. So in Godard's mind, one can trace the present-day significance of the country by drawing a line through these fictions, connecting the symbols and associations that define the progression from the past into the present. If such definitions can be trusted, then the train that arrives at La Ciotat (station) could easily become one of the many trains used to carry passengers to Auschwitz (currently, as of 1993, being reconstructed by Steven Spielberg), just as the woman from the steps at Odessa can be found in a porno film on one of the twenty television stations controlled by the Mafia.



What the film is really about then, is the link that cinema makes between the reality and the fiction. A connection that seems perfectly implied by the following lines of text, in which the narrator breathlessly intones: "The Russians saw cinema differently from us, when they saw a train coming into the station. They weren't seeing for the first time an image of a train, but rather – once again – Tolstoy's young woman, who would throw herself under it." And alas, there it is; the cultural heritage of a country, defined by its fiction, made all the more tangible/glorious by the associations of (a) film. As if to remind us, once again, of the great struggle, or the impressions of freedom defined by those gulls in flight, the film ends with a shot of Godard himself, lit by a spotlight, hopelessly turning a crank, as the screen captions state, mockingly "once more... once more... once more with feeling". Such scenes remind us of the most impressive aspect of Godard's career: mainly, his extraordinary imagination, and his ability to create compelling works of cinema from the most basic of materials.

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".

Ready for the Floor

A continuation of a theme that I accidentally stumbled upon a month ago with my post on the Florence and the Machine video for Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up); the realisation that Lights in the Dusk needed something a little more colourful and contemporary to elevate it above the kind dreary nonsense so often featured on the pages of this blog. It could also be seen as a clear attempt to smuggle in some music discussion through the backdoor... which is always fun, but not enough to dedicate an entire space to.

At any rate, I thought it would be interesting if every other month or so, I wrote about one of my favourite music videos from each year, reserving the discussion only for videos that seem to aspire to something greater than the usual promotional gestures or the basic gone-but-then-forgotten generators of consumer hype. Although it's generally true that most media spectators can find at least some worth in the work of directors like Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry or Chris Cunningham (to name a few), there are still a number of videos that go without celebration, simply because many choose to see them as nothing more than empty promotional-work with no artistic merit, which of course, seems a little unfair – especially when many of the greatest music videos feature more creativity and imagination than the average feature film.

This particular clip, Ready for the Floor, by the British electro-pop band Hot Chip, strikes me as a particularly vibrant example of the perfect pop video; clever, concise, and above all else unique to the image of the band. In a few basic frames it succeeds in capturing the eye of the potential viewer with its unforgettable visual presentation; mixing pop-culture and pop-art in a way that makes it approachable, not only as an exciting piece of music-television, but also as something that wouldn't seem out of place in the pages of a glossy, ultra-hip, art and design magazine, such as Juxtapoz or PIG.

The notion that this particular combination of sound and image seems very modern, very fresh, and in some ways characteristic of a generation defined by its fascination with second-hand style or an obsession with childhood nostalgia.

Ready for the Floor directed by Nima Nourizadeh, 2008:

Ready for the Floor is exactly what I was describing in the earlier post when I referred to the "emphasis on the conceptual element; of lines, shapes, colours and contrasts." It is, in other words, a concept video - the kind that has become increasingly passé over the subsequent year, with several high-profile mainstream artistes successfully copying a similar look and feel from the video in question to the point where this particular appropriation, or look, has become predictable, or worse, entirely generic. For example, an electro-pop band in the year 2009 who want to appear on the vanguard of the avant-garde can easily throw in a few Commodore 64 effects or references to the kind of subject-matter that Kraftwerk were singing about on the album Computer World (1981) and still find themselves on the right side of the cutting edge.

However, we should remember that Hot Chip had been developing this kind of sound since 2004; even as the scene was still swooning for the lad-rock of bands like The Libertines and Arctic Monkeys. It feels specific to their image – to the image that their music creates, and to the particular personality of the band as a whole. That mixture of the nostalgic - exemplified by the current wave of 1980s style-references in fashion and design - mixed with the contemporary; the post-post modern notion that any idea has relevance, regardless of where it came.

The director of this clip, Nima Nourizadeh, took the song's throwaway reference to the Tim Burton-directed Batman (1989) - "you're my number one guy" (rather that than the more endlessly quotable "this town needs an enema") - and ran with it; creating a neon-coloured ode to Jack Nicholson's Joker by way of Ceaser Romero. The iconography is particularly relevant to anyone who grew up during that specific period, circa the late 1980s; from the two-face references predominantly evident in the dancing Vicky Vales' or the literal split-personality of lead-singer Alexis Taylor (who here looks like a cross-between the late-80s kids' show presenter Timmy Mallet and a Spike-era Elvis Costello), to the birthday gifts filled with poisonous gas, the Tetris-themed production design and the ghosts of Robert Palmer's oft-parodied video for his song Addicted to Love. It also reminds me a little of the classic videos that New Order made for the singles Blue Monday and True Faith; where the ideas of performance and conceptual design were blended together to create Haute Culture pantomime pieces; or something that might have been more at home in the Guggenheim than broadcast on MTV.

Although the video tells a story, placing the band at the mercy of an evil genius and forced to carry out a series of offbeat tasks in order to guarantee their escape (or so we assume), it doesn't really conform to any easily identifiable narrative like some of the more ambitious music videos often do. Instead, it presents these scenes as sketches that flow, one into the next, as if following the panels of a comic-strip (again, the retro Batman references of the pre-Chris Nolan variety). We can trace the line, left to right, like the vocals drifting from speaker to speaker, and pulled by that looped guitar riff that carries us through the song.

It also plays on the title, which, as written, could be something as innocent as ready for the dance floor - especially given the up-tempo nature of the music - but here, in the visual sense, seems evocative of something like the killing floor; in which the ready participants must sing karaoke into a microphone gun, or traverse a big-top style torture chamber that reminds us of a Game Boy classic.

Ready for the Floor directed by Nima Nourizadeh, 2008:

Tetris designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov, 1984:

Ready for the Floor directed by Nima Nourizadeh, 2008:

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 artist 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 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 '80s but also quite contemporary The Cure meets a James Ford production style 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.

Pull My Heart Away directed by Jack Peñate & Cherise Payne, 2009:

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 bull-shit, 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.