Archive for August, 2009

The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

August 28, 2009 at 8:13 am · Filed under Good

Much better film than the title would suggest.

Apparently the title refers to a kids nursery rhyme: “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater /Had a wife and couldn’t keep her/ Put her in a pumpkin shell/And there he kept her, very well“.

Which in a way doesn’t make sense; it’s not Peter (Finch) who can’t keep his wife (Anne Bancroft); it’s his wife that can’t keep him.

(I still think it’s a crap title)

About 15 minutes in there were these oddly punctuated pauses in conversations. This sounds like Harold Pinter i thought. It was.

Anne Bancroft is great as the depressed wife of philandering Peter Finch. Actually lets call him more than “philandering”; he’s a lying cheating bastard!

Bancroft seems to have it all: big house, loads of sweet kids (6) and a handsome screenwriter husband (No 3) “We’ll have the same life” she says to him swoonily. Well, actually she won’t as it turns out. She might be married, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be together. He’ll be absorbed in his writing, in his film world. He’ll  go off her sexually and be fancying other woman. Not only fancy them but fuck them. And she won’t really know who he is. She’ll love him to death but she won’t like him very much at all.

Anne Bancroft conveys her inner wretchedness, beautifully, brokenly. Says alot with out having to say anything, just says it with those big luminous dark pools of eyes of hers.

The pithy Pinteresque screenplay adds to the terse dislocation of the characters, their estrangement from one another. They keep mis-communicating because language, words, are hopelessly inadequate at bridging the alienating aloneness human beings seem to have to suffer together.

It’s to Anne Bancrofts credit that i  was empathizing with her Mommies, Daddies, and Nannies world of privileged class snooty exclusivity. But i could. I did. She was all too Human

Dir: Jack Clayton, England

7/10

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Molloch (1999)

August 26, 2009 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Tedious ·Tagged

The reason to watch this was not the subject material (Hitler et al);  but the Russian director Surokov. I’ve seen one very good film of his already (“Mother & Son”, which I’ll review sometime soon) So this might have been worth a look.

It wasn’t. Although the opening 10 minutes promised something visually poetic and unusual: obliquely angled shots of Eva Braun in the noddy doing calisthenics inside a stony grey mountain castle. Ten minutes with no talk but lots of moody eerie atmosphere.

The first line of dialogue is: “A drops form. Conformity of drops-form” Not a good portent. Is this going to be wankily abstractly obtuse?

Eventually Hitler arrives with his SS sturm-troopers, Martin Boorman, Joeseph Goebbels and Co; he’s acting and looking like a fat Charlie Chaplin. He gets into typical spasmodic rants and rages. But mostly he comes across as somebody dimly deranged – an unappealing.

As all the rest of the cast of characters are. Smelly oik (Boorman), pathetically sycophantic (Goebbels) fawningly sybaritic (the female spouses) Eva (Braun) has a bit of spunk in her – even has the audacity to kick Hitler up the arse (this the prelude to chasing around the bedroom before sex)

At 23 minutes in i’m hitting fast forward. Not engaging me. The Russian actors are dubbed into German but their mouths look out of sync. It’s all airily estranging.

Dir: Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia

4/10

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Glue (2006)

August 23, 2009 at 9:47 am · Filed under It's ok

Just the kind of film you’d expect Channel 4 to hide away at 2 in the morning: low-key low-budget Argentinian indie film.

Is “a teenage story in the middle of nowhere” (of Patagonia) gonna translate to elsewhere? Yes more or less. I can see 16 year olds in Manchester or Copenhagen identifying with Lucas , Nacho, Andrea.

Adolescents the world over go through the same growing-up pangs and pains; feeling confused, lost, awkward, angsty.

Lucas is a typical teen: hanging out with mates, experimenting with drugs , booze, sex. Trying to smoke. Having wanks. Biking aimlessly about. Starting up a band. Desperate to get fucked.

You can feel the heat scorching the grasses, burning the heat out of the dry dusty streets.

They drink nesquik. Sniff bags of glue. Hands go on one another’s cocks. There’s getting rat-arsed at the pub and fumbly snogging in the mens toilet between Lucas, Nacho, Andrea.

It’s all genuinely acted. I liked the haphazard warm glow of the digi camerawork capturing feelings of moments.

But a bit too adolescent-centric to compel my genuine interest. I’ve seen more than enough films now about self-centred teenagers.

Dir: Alexis Dos Santos, Argentina

6.5/10

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Betty Blue (1986)

August 20, 2009 at 8:43 am · Filed under Tedious ·Tagged , ,

“I had known Betty for a week. We screwed every night. The forecast was for storms” is the first line, narrated over Betty and Zorg screwing in their beach bungalow with Mona Lisa above the bed. The scene has got a lush soft-core glow about it (apparently they were at it for real in this scene)

So more screwing, getting pissed, being crazily in love, painting bungalows together. Then she’s getting into a tantrum; starts throwing things out of the window; 10 minutes later another tantrum – and everything gets chucked out; then she’s burning the bungalow down and they’re fleeing the torched scene.

Bit of a wildcat she is. Or a bit cracked. But he loves her. Is crazy about her (craziness) So he’ll put up with anything.

Turns out he has to put up with the whole kit and caboodle. Those storms are gonna be coming. More tempers and tantrums; a tendency to lash out, or slash out violently she has. You know it’s gonna end tragically eventually. She’s gonna end up doing one. Which she does. Poking her own eye out with a knife. She’s got so nuts (apparently) the nurses have had to strap her tight into the bed. Zorg does the only kind thing his fatally flawed love will allow; he puts the poor tortured soul out of her misery by smothering her frozen mush with a pillow.

Then he’s back to the kitchen, to eat his pot of chilli, and scribble away on a pad with a strange white cat (Betty?) sat on the table. He’s gonna write that masterpiece. Maybe the whole tragically tempestuous love affair has been a figment of his imagination?….

This Directors Cut version is 3 hours long; it gets tedious after about an hour – but there’s still another 2 hours of their selfish love to be got through. I was soon becoming immune to Betty’s charms; her self-absorbed impetuous narcissism. Her descent into madness isn’t deeply interiorized, but a shallow show externalised by these superficial  hysterical hissy fits.

Betty Blue was a fav of an ex-girlfriend of mine, so i associate it with her – mostly – negative character traits; it’s wowed up adolescent bombast; it’s exaggerated, conceited, romanticism; it’s vivid, sumptuous – but vacuously ostentatious style; all hype but no substance. Fatuous. Empty.

Glossy trash souped up as a self-important, tragically doomed, – but passionately fab -”love affair”.

Dir: Jean-Jacques Beineix, France

5/10

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Remember me (2003)

August 16, 2009 at 5:01 pm · Filed under Tedious

I’ve watched about half of this film so far.

I don’t feel particularly sympathic towards the characters or their self-centered melodramas.

Possibly because they are all too fabulously glamorous. Too beautifully Italian. The mom, dad, daughter, various boyfriends and girlfriends, all look like they’ve been air-brushed from out of a glossy lifestyle magazine. Affluence, excessive self-importance, a wannabe want-it-all look-at-me egotism infects their gloriously Me-absorbed aspirations.

“We’re the simulacrum of the petite bourgeoisie,” says one character. Yes, it seems like individual angst is being mocked up for the camera, faked for film purposes. Stylishly synthetic suffering.

Let’s indulge ourselves in abit of actiing it all up. Or rather; indulge ourselves in simply being Italians.

It’s reminiscent of “American Beauty”, that cynical film about family dystopia with Kevin Spacey; it’s got an omnisicent voice-over narrator attempting to “place” or contextualize the characters as part of  a typically conventional sort of Italian family. I think thats what it’s doing.

I’ll watch the 2nd half tonight.

@

It got marginally better. But in a way my mind had been made up not to like it too much or get too sympathetico.

The daughter/sister gets to get on telly. The mother/wife gets to go on stage (and get clapped) The son/brother gets laid. The husband/father doesn’t get his book finished. Cus he – accidently – runs into a car while rushing off to be with his ex-lover. But he gets to be cared for. And walk again (with a slight limp) so nothing too horribly tragic happens. He’s secretly ringing ex-lover again at the end – so the great novelist will no doubt be eventually discovered.

I don’t seem to click much with Spanish or Italian  films. Too tantrumy and tempremental.

Dir: Gabrielle Muccino, Italy

5/10

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High Hopes (1988)

August 5, 2009 at 11:01 am · Filed under Good ·Tagged , ,

Yet another Mike Leigh film i’m watching off YouTube.

In the early days i’d come to his films expecting to be amused by how “awfully” comic his neurotic characters are.

But this film didn’t make me laugh much. Made me feel sad and slightly depressed.

It starts off promisingly. You’ve got Phil Davis as Cyril, a beardy biker scruff into rolling joints on his “Lenin for Beginners” book. He keeps cacti with names like “Bollock, Turd, Thatcher“. He sleeps on a mattress in the living room cus the cold bedroom is too expensive to heat. He’s living with long-term girlfriend; broody Shirl (Ruth Sheen) with the goofy teeth. They give off a laidback vibe of warm smiles and easy teases with one another – 2 gentle potheads together. For once in a Mike Leigh film we seem to have a relatively “normal” – as in not dysfunctional – relationship to enjoy.  Some ordinary tenderness going on – they’re even snuggled up on the settee kissing in front of Cyril’s old Ma!

But old Ma Bender is miserable, losing her marbles. And she’s living next door to a couple of snobby posh gits: Laetitia Boothe-Brain (Lesley Manville) and her Hooray Henry of a husband Rupert. Comes an excrutiating scene when old Ma loses her door key and has to be taken in by Laetitia – “Come along, chop! chop!” – to ring for help.

Valerie  -the daughter  – turns up to snoop around; wife of a used car dealer, she’s either screeching histrionically, or laughing hysterically. We’re back to typical Mike Leigh; the “I’m an OTT Grotesque Caricature” School of Acting. You want to slap her silly stupid head.

Lesley Manville as Laetitia is equally as Grotesque. Parodic. But not comic. Nasty. Full of cool but cruel Top-Dog class condescension. Probably quite deliberately so. Leigh asking her to give snotty-nosed Laetitia a  sneery vicious bite.

Both of these selfish uncaring  grotesques – manipulative Valerie and hateful Laetitia – threaten to overwhelm the film with too much heartlessness.

And throw in Valeries car dealer geezer husband, replete with fat cigar, fast car, gold bling – you name it, the misogynistic cunt has got just about every dodgy dealer wheeler cliche going

He can’t be bothered to fuck, let alone make love to Valerie anymore. “You start” she says “No, you bloody start” he says. “Oh, come on!” she says “You get on top” he says. “ Start what anyway?” he says “You’re Michael Douglas. I’m a virgin” she says. He turns over on his side….guffawing

Priggish wine-dealer Rupert is chasing Laetitia up stairs in her lingerie. On the top step she’s saying “Mr Sausage deserves a smack!” “On the bottie!” pants Rupert clambering up to get at her.

Misery-guts Ma Bender is vacantly staring out on everything in stupefied befuddled helpless bitterness…..

Spirits are starting to sink. I don’t know about “high hopes” – no-hope more like it….A hopelessly dystopian world.

The 2 potheads – Cyril and Shirl – can’t do anything. Or won’t do anything “I sit on me arse” says Cyril. He won’t even give Shirl the kid she so desperately wants “They’re out of date familes. They ain’t no use anymore. Two’s company”. Two gentle souls, laidback, harmless enough – but ineffectual.

All they’ve got is their bit of love to keep them warm, keep them going. And maybe they can give a little bit to Ma too. Be caring of/for her too. Well, for a bit.

They just about redeem the film of all it’s yuppified, Me-Centred, heartless, hopelessness.

Yes, i think calling the film “High Hopes” is an example of Mike Leighs famous “black humour”.

Dir: Mike Leigh, England

7/10

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