Magician & Surgeon: The Mystery of Picasso

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Mystery of Picasso (Le mystère Picasso, 1956) is, at least in part, a failure but it is an interesting one. Presented here in a lovingly restored form by the ever-admirable Arrow Academy, it is essential viewing for anyone with an interest in 20th Century art, never mind the singular force of nature it seeks to document.

Clouzot’s stall is set out early in the film, a voice intones:

One would die to know what was on Rimbaud’s mind when he wrote ’The Drunken Boat’, or on Mozart’s when he composed his symphony ‘Jupiter’. We’d love to know what secret process guiding the creator through his perilous adventures.

Clouzot doesn’t even get close. Or maybe it’s a red herring? The ‘French Hitchcock’ (a needless Anglophone-centric reduction if ever there was one) has some success in approaching Picasso’s work as an opportunity to build suspense, as was his stock-and-trade. Much of the film consists of specially-prepare canvases reverse-shot, filling the screen while Picasso ‘paints’ using marker pens and special inks on the other side. The ink bleeds through, giving us an unusual sort of animation. This was the first film of Clouzot’s to feature colour, an approach that certainly underlines the jouissance present on/in each canvas. The suspense emerges from the line of questioning most viewers cannot help but ask: where will that line go? What will this form become? What will the background be? When will the next nude or bull or matador or Pierrot turn up?

Shot in nice over three months in 1953, many of the pictures created in the course of the film are recognizable variations of works form the previous few years, typical of Picasso’s ‘late style’ (the body of work created between 1953 and his death in 1973). Of course, there was no one style per se over these twenty years, but it is not too harsh to state that his hitherto constant thrust toward innovation had ebbed by this time. As Cy Twombly once asked in defense of his friend Robert Rauschenberg, “ Do you have any idea how difficult it is to hold the tension over several decades?”

Perhaps the frustrations of this approach could be said to be with Picasso rather than Clouzot. While there is no doubt an appeal to the resultant works Picasso creates, the imposed suspense is rarely satisfied. That said, the suspense is imposed; and maybe that misses the point anyway – in a thriller, the suspense (not the resolution) is the point. Interestingly, this dovetails neatly with Picasso’s own attitude to his art:

For me each painting is a study. I say to myself, I am going one day to finish it, make a finished thing out of it. But as soon as I start to finish it, it becomes another painting and I think again I am going to redo it. Well, it is always something else in the end. If I retouch it, I make a new painting.

The trouble is that often this suspense feels not just imposed but really quite forced, and one cannot help but feel that Clouzot could do with letting the works ‘breathe’ more. The worst element in all this (and in fact the worst thing about the whole film) is Georges Auric’s overwrought, grating score – rather than leading one to be tense through a sense of suspense, one ends up tense through aural aggravation.

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Image courtesy of Arrow Films.

To see a Picasso emerge before you is a privilege, no doubt, but the most interesting parts of the film may be where we see the Picasso interacting with Clouzot If it weren’t apparent enough already from the canvases he has created before, Picasso’s enormous sense of playfulness then comes out in contrast to the mostly austere Clouzot  - though they do share the odd chuckle. It’s fascinating to see Clouzot excel in his usual stark monochrome yet with a more Brechtian, and less straightforwardly documentary approach. One of these all-too-short sequences leads to more suspenseful drama, Clouzot telling Picasso how long he has left to paint before the film runs out. Interestingly, these segments are score-less and manage to be more suspenseful than those where we directly watch and await the emergence of a ‘complete’ canvas.

If one feels a slight dissatisfaction at the end of the film, it is perhaps the blame of those expectations set up by the opening narration, that somehow we will have a greater insight into Picasso’s work, practice, thoughts, ethos; ultimately, we do not. In some ways this underlines a point made in Walter Benjamin’s essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’:

Magician and surgeon behave like painter and cameraman. The painter, while working, observes a natural distance from the subject; the cameraman, on the other hand, penetrates deep into the subject’s tissue. The images they both come up with are enormously different.

This disconnect may be the source of the sense that something has not quite come off with The Mystery of Picasso. But this is an experiment, and watching both artists working really is a privilege in itself. At the end of The Mystery of Picasso, Picasso and his work remain just that, a mystery – would you really want it any other way?

The Mystery of Picasso is out now on Arrow Academy on blu ray and DVD formats; each features Paul Haesaerts’ 1949 documentary ‘A Visit to Picasso’, ‘La Garoupe’, a 1937 ‘home movie’ by Man Ray, and a short ‘before and after’ feature on the restoration of the film.

Andrew R. Hill

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directed by Georges Clouzot

Bibliography

Bazin, André. Bazin at Work: Major Essays & Reviews from the Forties & Fifties. Edited by Alain Piette and Bert Cardullo, Routledge, 1997.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Translated by James Amery. Underwood, Penguin Books, 2008.

Berger, John. The Success and Failure of Picasso. Penguin Books, 1966.

Lewison, Jeremy. “In the Antechamber of Death: Picasso's Later Paintings.” Late Style and Its Discontents Essays in Art, Literature, and Music, edited by Gordon McMullan and Sam Smiles, Oxford University Press, 2016.

Lloyd, Christopher. Henri-Georges Clouzot. Manchester University Press, 2007.

Glasgow Film Festival 2016: Miguel Gomes’ ‘Arabian Nights’ Trilogy

Adapting One Thousand and One Nights for the cinema is no small undertaking, especially when to do so automatically places you in the estimable company of the likes of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Georges Méliès. While the framework of Scheherazade’s need to tell her fantastical tales in order to save her life (and those of others) is still present, it is just that – little else of the source text remains, at least in terms of plot. Over these three films, a disparate and heady miasma of strange trials, talking animals, recondite hobbies, suicide, priapism and economic hardship unfold, primarily in Portugal of 2013 and 2014.

The trilogy begins with a prologue of sorts that establishes quite avowedly that this is not to be a literal adaptation of the famous book(s). Via documentary footage and interviews, we learn that a shipyard in a town in contemporary Portugal is to be closed; the town is also beset by a swarm of Asian Hornets threatening the indigenous bee population and, as such, the local honey production. The film’s director, Miguel Gomes, narrates (temporarily) and appears on screen, utterly despondent. He is trying to link the two problems afflicting the town, but isn’t sure what he means by it; then things take an unexpected and comic turn. It is the first of many, many formally playful moments over the trilogy’s intimidating six hours and twenty-one minutes duration. We do see Scheherazade (and she does turn up as other characters through her stories) in her Baghdad ‘in the Antiquity of Time’, especially in the third part, an undisguised modern-day Marseilles (Scheherazade uses a speed boat and at one point she and her father converse on a Ferris wheel). This is no sword-and-sandal epic and puts the (almost) here-and-now, post-economic crisis Portugal through a frequently entrancing magical realist filter.

Crista Alfaiate and Américo Silva ride a Ferris wheel in Arabian Nights Volume 3: The Enchanted One. Image courtesy of the Glasgow Film Festival.

Those only familiar with Gomes’ 2012 feature Tabu may be initially surprised by the tone and form of Volume 1: The Restless One but gradually a more meditative feeling takes over – the first film flits between several stories and settings; the second slows into more detailed, longer tales; and the third slows further still, to such an extreme that the trilogy ends with a grinding inertia (which stands in stark contrast to the first film in particular). The testudineous pace of Volume 3: The Enchanted One does bear facile resemblance to Tabu’s meditative oneirism, but lacks its compelling emotional weight. Unfortunately, the over-extended primary story of Volume 3 slips readily into self-indulgence and stretches initially interesting subject matter to a frustratingly ponderous length (there was an unusually high amount of groaning and sighing around the audience); arguably the saviour of this part and thus the trilogy is the particularly effective climactic use of The Langley School Music Project’s take on ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’, but the problems with this volume do threat to bend the viewer’s impression of the whole trilogy significantly out of shape.

Its running length and its experimental form makes Arabian Nights no small undertaking for a viewer either, but for all its manifest flaws, it is a worthwhile one; charming, beautiful, bawdy, hilarious, tragic and furious, it makes for a long, strange trip and one all curious or serious filmgoers should consider taking.

Andrew R. Hill

EIFF 2014 - A letter to Mania Akbari and Mark Cousins, after their new film, 'Life May Be'

Dear Mania, Dear Mark,

 Please pardon the familiarity. I am writing this letter as I have just seen your new film, Life May Be, in which you film letters to each other. Of course I write this (similar to Mark in the letter-within-a-letter of the first section) without any expectation of a response, nor the expectation of being able to match your respective poetic, explosive, eloquences. As the closing credits roll, I am taken to write this letter and I wonder what I’d say. Here goes nothin’, as they say in The Movies.

 Firstly, I must apologies to Mania as this is the first of your films that I’ve seen, while this is the fourth of yours, Mark – I will endeavour to rectify this imbalance as soon as I can. I like how personal Life May Be is, how it starts with a long take from Mark, reflecting what he tells us is a trademark of yours, Mania, yet journeys around the world in his narration – you then reflect and expand Mark’s letter with numerous photographs, in relatively short bursts both confounding and agreeing with Mark’s commentary on your trademark style (a photograph is a permanent take, no?). I like how the film unfolds, ideas ricocheting of each other in unexpected ways, platonic love letters to each other, each other’s films, to cinema, to the audience and to the audience members’ own lives.

The ‘naked’ thread might be the most important running through your film. I wonder why I, like so many people like clothes so much, why I dislike my own skin, why I prefer to cover it. Convention, yes, although I’ve never cared much for it, but what beyond that? Control, yes, more likely. In my own way, I am as much a prisoner to clothes as those bound to wear the veil (although I could and would never dare suggest that I am oppressed in the same way). It’s interesting that you feel that your mind is freer when naked, Mark; I have a tendency to believe that I need to be fully dressed to work, to think, even though my mind seems to get carried away in the shower every morning, thus leading to inevitable lateness, and an internal scrabble to find the ideas again later. I guess what I’m getting at is that the less I think about my skin, my face, my hair, the less embarrassed I am by it, then the freer my mind becomes. Maybe that explains a particular patriarchal rationale for making women think about the way they look to such a toxic level (whether veiled or to be expected to “attain beauty at any cost”), as you illuminatingly mull upon in your first letter, Mania; this afflicts women everywhere, whether that be in the Scottish Highlands, or Tehran, or Dubai or Stockholm, or London or Kaunas or Edinburgh.

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Image courtesy of EIFF

Then I think about ‘the Naked Rambler’, Stephen Gough, as you mention in your next letter, Mark, and how he has been mocked and pilloried, deemed a pervert and exhibitionist. The reaction is in some ways even more understandable when one realises, as I do just now, that people are afraid of him. And why? Not because of please-won’t-you-think-of-the-children-Daily-Mail-style hysteria, or not because he is naked and refuses to clothe the body that does not meet their conventional standards of ‘beauty’, but because they are afraid of how unafraid he is to bare all, to unveil; this body that they believe he should be - like they are - ashamed of. Stephen Gough is imprisoned because of his body, and because of his ideology; people everywhere feel their bodies to be prisons because of ideology. And if you are imprisoned just by the very nature of your being, then it makes it all the easier to control you. You both appear naked on screen in Life May Be, and your letters make it seem very natural indeed. More powerfully, perhaps, are how naked you are in your words Thinking of ekstasis, as referred to in this film by way of Mark’s What is this film called Love?, you make it very obvious that we need to get outside ourselves a lot more, clothed or not.

As I walk out of the press screening and down Fountainbridge, again it occurs to me to write this letter, and as I look at others who have attended, I wonder what would happen if everyone who saw Life May Be wrote - or went one step further and filmed - a letter in response; not just the delegates, but everyone who saw it? A lot of your time would be consumed of course, if you felt compelled to read/watch them all, but what would they say? A simple ‘thanks’? A review? A rant? Would they find their own personal experiences and feelings jolting through, as I have found?

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Image courtesy of EIFF 

Creating and engaging with art is to make connections - between subjects, objects, concepts, landscapes, feelings, structures, arguments, ideologies, colours, shapes, people - that one might not expect, or, at least, one may have not seen or understood fully before, and (as an appreciator of or art, or as an artist) make you see the connected things in a different way form thereon. Mania, Mark, you have done so with your film – in Life May Be you connect with each other across time and space, throw ideas and experiences into the air and see where they land, and in doing so you invite the audience to do the same.

You highlight something that we risk forgetting all too readily, as apathy quickly becomes the opiate of the people – the personal is universal, yes, but the personal is most definitely political.

Yours in ekstasis,

Andrew R. Hill

‘Life May Be’ received its world premiere on Saturday as part of this year’s Edinburgh international Film Festival. There is a further screening at Cineworld on 23 June.

Edinburgh International Film Festival '14: Five Reviews

Koo! Kin-dza-dza (dir. Georgiy Daneliya & Tatiana Ilyna)

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Image courtesy of EIFF

Present day Moscow. World famous cellist and cultural snob Vladimir Chizov and wannabe hipster DJ Tolik are accidentally catapulted onto a strange and desolate planet known as Puke. How will they make it back to Earth? This is the premise of Koo! Kin-dza-dza, an animated remake of the homonymous 1986 Soviet sci-fi satire. 

It's refreshing too see an animation that doesn't have to rely on CGI or 3D, especially when it skillfully infuses a picaresque story line with the absurdist touches of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. In the dune world of Pluke, inhabitants fall into two main categories - Patsaks and Chatlanians (the latter being the dominant people), a humble match (known as a ketse) is the most valuable item, and common sense doesn't seem to apply as strict hierarchies extend to the colour of pants one wears. The two main characters must fight their way through unreliable journey companions, perennial bribes and cacophony-loving  grandmothers. The comic darkness of this dystopian universe is  occasionally provided with light relief: it's hard not too smile when Vladimir plays his cello for an unusually appreciative and rather timid Plukian creature, or when Vladimir and Tolik seem to finally make an emotional connection.

For all its analogue ambition, Koo! Kin-dza-dza is far from perfect -  clocking in at 96 minutes, it feels overlong, leaving us with the impression that the script could have been much tighter in parts. 

Seeing this film presented again in the 21st century, when the USSR has become a distant memory makes for thought-provoking viewing, as its powerful depiction of laughable hierarchical structures, corruption and racism still resonates in contemporary Europe.

Koo! Kin-dza-dza , 27 June, 18:15 at Odeon 2

[Erika Sella]

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Anatomy of a Paperclip (dir. Akira Ikeda)

Director Ikeda Akira has stated that his starting point  for Anatomy of a Paperclip was his wish to create the modern equivalent of a Japanese folk tale.

The quiet, submissive Kogure is certainly the kind of character that can be found time and time again in both literature and film (his body language and tubby, inexpressive appearance reminded me Italian popular cinema staple Fantozzi); the linear simplicity and even pacing of the storyline (matched by the minimalist, deliberately two-dimensional and immaculately balanced, often symmetrical shots) are also somewhat reminiscent of a parable. 

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Image courtesy of EIFF

The flat cinematography also complements the deadpan humour that springs from a world that has become devoid of pleasure - this is Japan, but not as we know it. Kugore lives in a small, bare room, works in a factory (which actually looks like a converted garage) where he is repeatedly abused by his horrific boss, survives on horrible food and is regularly taunted by a couple of thugs who have a penchant for stealing his clothes. This routine is gradually eroded by the vision of a butterfly (a presence usually loaded with meaning in Japanese culture) and the consequent appearance of a woman who speaks gibberish (a 'language' that was invented by the filmmaker) and decides to move into Kogure's bedsit without an explanation.

At the press screening, a fellow viewer felt that Anatomy of a Paperclip was 'essentially a Japanese remake of Eraserhead'; while the bleak, quietly hysterical  atmosphere that pervades the film may certainly recall some aspects of David Lynch's output, I felt this statement detracts from the film's complexity. This is a mysterious and often profound film; a poignant (yet very funny) comment about human nature and the meaning of interpersonal connections. 

Anatomy of a Paperclip, 28 June, 13:15 at Cameo 3

[Erika Sella]

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Displaced Perssons (dir. Asa Blanck and Johan Palmgren) 

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Image courtesy of EIFF

Pelle Persson is one of the most intriguing characters I have ever had the privilege to encounter on the big screen; perhaps inspired by a childhood adventure book (having recently watched Mark Cousin's A Story of Children and Film, I was reminded of Palle Alone in the World, and not simply because of the similarity of the main character's name), he sets off to adventure as soon as he is old enough to drive, living and working in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He eventually settles in Lahore, Pakistan, where he marries Shamin, and has two daughters. As his children reach adulthood, he finds that his liberal parenting idea clash with the local customs (the girls find they can't leave the house by themselves), and decides to return to his native Sweden. But can you ever go home again? 

This is a documentary that tackles complex issues such as identity, the meaning of national cultures and of family ties. It's hard not to like the Perssons as they face their Swedish adventure with defiance and a great deal of humour, but also with fear and maybe some regret; the camera only needs to sit back and watch them, letting the occasional title card guide us through the passing of time. We see the deadpan Shamin braving the freezing winter and unenthusiastically learning Swedish, Pelle having to prove to the local bureaucrats that he still exists in order to receive his pension, their daughter Zahra struggling with life-changing decisions. There is no place for stereotype here - both Sweden and Pakistan are represented in ways that we not normally accustomed to. We are faced with a family that don't conform to the narratives we are fed by the popular press: Pelle, Sharmin, Zahra and Mia all prove that identity is something complex, fluid and not necessarily defined by a country of birth, and that love and family really can overcome the biggest difficulties. As soppy as that might sound, there was not a dry eye at the screening - Displaced Perssons delivers the kind emotional punch that is becoming increasingly rare. Do not miss.

Displaced Perssons, 27 June, 18:10 at Cameo 3

[Erika Sella]

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Snowpiercer (dir. Joon-ho Bong)

It’s quite startling that an actor better known as Captain America (AKA Chris Evans…no, not that one) to many should be the protagonist of a film that critiques Capitalism quite so overtly (if in an occasionally naïve, often daft way). The premise is a bit silly but clearly analogous: in a post-apocalyptic world, a train rattles around the world carrying three groups of people, the last humans left on Earth – an elite that lives at the luxurious front, a servile group that do their bidding, and lumpenproletariat that dwell in slum-like carriages at the rear. Evans’ Curtis leads a revolt, blood is shed and a fable of the perils of Capital emerges through action setpieces and a great deal of humour. It does feel a little lacking in nuance in its politics and is silly in that comic-book-film way at times, but is enjoyable all the same. John Hurt expertly plays the wise old man, Tilda Swinton is a hilariously grotesque Lancastrian spokesperson, Kang-ho Song amuses as the drug-addled security expert and Jamie Bell is an entertaining sidekick (if a little heavy on the Oirish Eejit schtick) to Evans’ hirsute and oh-so-tortured American hero. 

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Image courtesy of EIFF

Snowpiercer may struggle to escape the inherent limitations of its form but is entertaining with both heart and head in the right place. One can’t help but feel that Harvey Weinstein has probably bludgeoned Joon-ho Bong’s film into something more straightforward for Anglophone audiences than it may have been in the form shown to audiences in South Korea and elsewhere, but entertains and manages to be not entirely brainless with it, which is more than can be said yer average comic book (sorry, graphic novel) adaptation.

Snowpiercer, 28 June, 20:15 at Cineworld 3

[Andrew R. Hill]

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The Cheviot, The Stag, and the Black Black Oil (dir. John McGrath)

Buried treasure screened on Saturday afternoon as a part of Dick Fiddy of the BFI’s lovingly programmed Border Warfare: John McGrath’s Work in TV, Theatre, & Film thread at the EIFF 2014. John McGrath’s The Cheviot, The Stag, and the Black Black Oil shouldn’t work; a Brechtian play filmed live (audience and all) with inserted dramatised exterior scenes (with different actors from those in the play), contemporary interviews with real people, Gaelic folk songs, Scottish country dancing and old-fashioned one-liner comedy collide in an hour and a half that is by turns tragic, didactic, polemical and hilarious.

The play takes three instances of the Scottish Highlands being carved up by outside forces, from the Clearances through to the Victorian stag hunting playground to North Sea oil. An unashamed attack on Capitalism, The Cheviot… is a breath-taking work of deceptive complexity – detailed, rich, informative, entertaining and moving. That it was screened on BBC One is astonishing now, especially on a weekend where the BBC News has proven itself to be little more than the propaganda wing of the Tory government, failing to report 50,000 people marching from its own headquarters to protest anti-austerity measures. That the film has yet to be released on DVD is, sadly, not much of a surprise – and, no, a screening on BBC Alba in 2012 isn’t enough (and Auntie’s tack has shifted all too far in the wrong direction in the interim). Luckily, YouTube saves the day – it  really is essential viewing. 

The EIFF should be commended for unshowily yet unashamedly political programming, in an era where artists (by which I include filmmakers, musicians and writers) seem content to shy away from politics altogether, for fear of alienating audiences – audiences that are often very receptive. John McGrath certainly was no such artist and the opportunity to discover (or, indeed, rediscover) his work is an unmissable opportunity.

[Andrew R. Hill]

Review: 'The Double'

Richard Ayoade’s 2010 film Submarine was a warm, charming, stylish and frequently hilarious story of adolescent awkwardness that this particular writer has been recommending, sharing and gifting since falling head over heels for it on release. It’s not an uncommon response to it, one understands. So, as one would gather expectations of his second feature, The Double, were understandably high – and justifiably so, it transpires. 

The Double is an altogether darker affair than its predecessor and it’s no wonder - the source novella was written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, an author that (while no stranger to humour) isn’t renowned for his carefree jottings on the lightness of being. ‘Kafka-esque’ would have doubtlessly been splashed all over the reviews were it not published over forty years before the Czech existentialist’s birth. That should not suggest an absence of humour of course – quite the opposite. The film is intense, oppressive and intermittently grim, but it is also very funny.

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. Photo credit: Dean Rodgers

The set-up itself is a wry smile of a premise. The protagonist (Simon James) is a nobody - a hopelessly meek, wan, anonymous, unmemorable office worker with a perennially unrealised crush on a co-worker; one day, an employee from another office transfers to his and is an instant hit – not only is his name James Simon, but he is everything Simon James is not (brash, confident, well liked, manipulative, lazy, dishonest); he’s also Simon James’ exact double, and nobody notices except them. Needless to say, the chain of events that follows brings Simon James to the brink of his sanity. Jesse Eisenberg plays both Simon and James masterfully, to the extent that one even forgets that the two characters interacting are, well, the same person. Furthermore, Eisenberg makes Simon James very much the subject of our identification, our empathy – in lesser hands, we wouldn’t care, or not as much anyway.

The setting for the film is familiar yet enigmatic. The location is unknown (the prevailing language is English; American, Australian, English, Irish and Welsh accents are all presented without remark), it could be the future or the past; it’s certainly a dystopian urban permanocturnal hinterland of lunatic bureaucracy and emotional retardation. The lack of a specific setting links it to Submarine (‘80s-ish with modern details) but (alongside many other films and filmmakers that employ this trick so well – most particularly Wes Anderson) also to Terry Gilliam’s classic Brazil; in particular, they both present a world in which progress stopped in some ways during the ‘50s yet continued in others. It could be distracting but it moreover serves to aid a fuller sense of the absurdist reality that could accommodate this strange and entrancing tale.

For all that the palette may have shifted somewhat (‘realism’ versus ‘fantasy’, bluish tones with primary splashes versus washed out greens and greys), Ayoade has already established a filmmaking language of his own. This is not to say it lacks obvious links to other films or works, far from it, but he does already exhibit a distinctive voice, a rare achievement. The Double stands up to analysis by itself, for all its narrative has a certain cultural shorthand (Chuck Palahnuik certainly must have read this particular Dostoevsky) and, as such, an underlying familiarity. It inhabits a world of its own - partly ours, partly someone else’s – and as with the most effectively realised dystopian worlds, one is both overtly repelled yet covertly seduced. This duality applies to The Double (how bad can a place in which Shin Joong Hyun is the pop star du jour be?), but one is unlikely to be left in two minds by The Double itself.

Ayoade has got a hard job following himself (again).

Andrew R. Hill

Review: 'Under the Skin'

Defining Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin as an alien invasion film wouldn't even begin to describe one of the most interesting cinematic excursions of the year - just as his previous films Sexy Beast (2000) and Birth (2004) challenged the limitations of their specific genres (crime thriller and paranormal drama respectively), his latest work intelligently defies a viewer's expectations.

Image courtesy of Film 4

Under the Skin is based on a novel by Michel Faber; whilst Glazer remains faithful to the book's central idea (an alien arrives on earth looking for human prey), he reduces the narrative to a very basic, almost skeletal concept, abandoning most dialogue, and offering very little explanation for what happens on screen. Suitably, the film opens with a mysterious sequence that echoes Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey:  a series of close-ups of  a variety of abstract, circular shapes (perhaps signifying the rebirth of the alien, her mutation into human form) accompanied an eerie musical piece. The mood swiftly changes as we are transported to contemporary Glasgow, where our unnamed protagonist drives around in a white transit van, occasionally stopping young men to ask for directions or to offer them a lift. The alien is played by Scarlett Johansson, barely recognisable in a black wig and cheap fur coat. The effect of combining an A-list Hollywood star that is largely associated with glamorous hyper-sexuality with a context that seems so at odds with her persona is nothing short of exhilarating.  If the director was trying to tell us something about feeling alienated by a certain environment (the film arguably follows the protagonist's perspective), he is certainly successful in his aim. Glasgow is filmed in a a naturalistic manner that borders on cinema-vérité (part of the film was shot with hidden cameras) - real situations, real people, real shop fronts, real streets, real accents. This milieu is contrasted with Johansson's well-spoken, physically attractive persona - she is not only an alien (in both a tangible and metaphorical sense) roaming the streets of a busy city much like Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle did in Taxi Driver (1975), but also a fiercely alluring star from a world so far removed from the West of Scotland. 

The alien's aggressive and unsympathetic attitude changes in the latter part of the film when she suddenly abandons Glasgow for the majestic but stark Scottish countryside. Here, surrounded by a thick mist that becomes a signifier for her sense of isolation, she morphs into a vulnerable, confused figure that becomes the victim instead of the aggressor. Interestingly, she also starts coming to terms with her human body (an emblematic sequence involves Johansson curiously observing her naked body at the mirror): is her new frailty inseparable from the human form she finally feels aligned to? Or is the violence she is subjected to a comment on her 'woman as a sex object' status? Jonathan Glazer has stated that he did not intend to tackle gender issues with Under the Skin, but there are discernible feminist undertones in the way his protagonist's body becomes a central subject (maybe even the central subject) of the film.

Under the Skin is never impenetrable, but its esoteric nature, its 'openness' and its clever mix of different cinematic elements mean that multiple interpretations become possible. Scarlett Johansson's alien takes on a journey that  partly resembles a poignant coming of age tale, even though her desire to fit in never materialises. Jonathan Glazer leaves his mark all over this strange fable: his vision is capable of polarising audiences, but it also capable to provide a distinctive film experience that knows how to reward a viewer that can approach it with an open attitude.

Erika Sella

Subscribe to FilmTrailerZone: http://ow.ly/adpvg Like us on Facebook: http://ow.ly/rduc2 Follow us on Twitter: http://ow.ly/ay0gU Under the Skin - Official Trailer (2014) Release Date: April 4, 2014 Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller Director: Jonathan Glazer Writer: Jonathan Glazer, Walter Campbell Starring: Scarlett Johansson Studio: A24 Plot: Johansson plays an alien on earth, disguised as the perfect aesthetic form of a mesmerizing woman.

Review: 'The Robber'

The Robber is Filmhouse's third foray into film distribution. After the brilliant, but tragically under-exposed The Stoker and Vivan las Antipodas! , their latest offering comes in the shape of a recent Austrian thriller dealing with a daring criminal who also happens to be a bit of a national sports hero. 

Image courtesy of Filmhouse

Director Benjamin Heisenberg was inspired by real-life bank robber Johann Kastenberger  (also known as 'Pump-gun Ronnie' after his penchant for wearing a Ronald Reagan mask), but this film is nothing like your average cine-biopic. 

We first meet Johann (Andreas Lust) as he is about to leave prison: we see him training, running on the treadmill he has been allowed to have in his cell. His counsellor encourages his sporting aspirations, but at the same time he warns his that running won't pay his bills.  We don't wonder about what the protagonist will do once he is again a free man for very long - in quick succession he successfully robs a bank and unexpectedly triumphs at the annual Vienna marathon. The viewer is not offered any explanation on why Johann would so blatantly risk his newly-found freedom: his motives are never made clear, there are no easy explanations for any of his decisions. Is he so dependant on the adrenaline that only running can supply him with? Maybe. In a way, our robber is portrayed as something of an 'existentialist' anti-hero. As he says to his love interest Erika (Franziska Weisz) as she attempts to change his ways, 'What I do has nothing to do with what you call life'. Conjoining running with a certain kind of rebelliousness is certainly nothing new: in a way, Johann is reminiscent of Colin Smith, the disaffected protagonist of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Ultimately, though, there is nothing obvious about this man, as Heisenberg always keeps the viewer's at arms' length, making his character almost inscrutable. Even the relationship between Johann and Erika is never injected with the kind of romantic fervour (read: emotional manipulation) we are so accustomed to, their intimate, but ultimately awkward encounters making the viewer feel like a distant observer. The film could certainly be seen as 'cold' and calculated, almost an attempt to scientifically dissect its lead - a distinctive directorial choice that will inevitably alienate some casual audiences.

This is not to say that The Robber  lacks immediate cinematic pleasures. Andreas Lust offers an outstanding lead performance in a role that is extremely demanding from both a physical and emotional perspective. The film is almost flawlessly paced (only the third act loses a bit of steam), with the action sequences shot with accomplished skill; robberies and ensuing chase sequences have a raw, almost visceral energy that knowingly sustain tension and keep the viewer enthralled until the film's predictably bitter end.

The Robber  will be at the Filmhouse from Friday 21st March. Tickets are available here. 

Review: 'The Great Beauty'

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After his patchy US excursion, This Must Be The Place, Neapolitan director Paolo Sorrentino returns with The Great Beauty  (La Grande Bellezza), a portrait of the Roman haute bourgeoisie, a particularly irksome strand of the idle rich often satirised by Italian cinema and television.

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Image courtesy of Medusa Film

Jep Gambardella (Sorrentino's regular Toni Servillo) is a journalist and one-time writer who is both bemused and somewhat terrified by turn his life has taken in the Italian capital. Early on in the film, we witness an opulent party given for his 65th birthday; he is surrounded by well-preserved and not-so well-preserved Botoxed society types, strippers, pseudo-intellectuals and wannabe 'artists'. Jep glides through life, seemingly untouched by his surroundings, observing reality with a sharp eye that becomes increasingly blearier after he begins realising that he is not getting any younger. His interior struggles are slowly revealed in the strange dichotomy that characterises the film; part lavish widescreen essay on what beauty really means, part criticism of contemporary Italian society. Sorrentino juggles these grand ideas with dexterity for the most part: we laugh as Jep verbally takes self-satisfied artists down a notch or two, and we are left almost breathless by accomplished cinematography as the camera caresses a variety of Roman locations and monuments. It's almost as the director had it in mind to create a perfect art house film for non-Italian audiences, that works both as a satire of the post-bunga bunga Italy and as a sophisticated 'postcard' of the 'Eternal City'. In a way, it is rather satisfying seeing the decline of this writer's home country brought to the big screen – not many directors have attempted this in recent years. As it is rather well-noted, one of the most repulsive aspects of Italian popular culture is the questionable treatment of women on television, film and the press. Sadly, Sorrentino fails to address this issue as all his females characters are borderline idiotic 'objects of desire' (Ramona, the stripper who brings Jep back in touch with reality is hardly a bright spark), vacuous egotists (Stefania is a radical writer who is only successful because she slept with the leader of a political party), or reassuring and desexualised mother figures. Riddles of The Sphinx it ain't.

Image courtesy of Medusa Film

The Great Beauty  has attracted comparison with a couple of Federico Fellini's masterworks, specifically  La Dolce Vita  and 8 ½:  Whilst these might seem like obvious reference points,  the episodic structure of the film, the male protagonist at a crossroad, and the surreal little touches all inevitably make us think of those milestones. It might be worth remembering that Fellini wasn't one for easy resolutions – unfortunately this is where Sorrentino lets us down. Towards the end of the film, we are introduced to a character, a 104-year-old nun who can apparently speak to animals and perform various miracles - she reminds Jep that 'roots are very important'. We are subsequently led to believe, albeit in a vague and semi-mystical way, that our protagonist can find solace in a return to the past/his home town. After 2-odd hours of philosophical (and admittedly, rather entertaining) meanderings, this almost feels like a betrayal - a rushed ending that leaves us very unsatisfied. Sorrentino has attempted something rather courageous with this film - a love letter to a city, a study on disappointment and death, a witty mockery of a crumbling world - but he doesn't have the discipline to hold it all together to the end. If you are unfamiliar with his work, perhaps you should start with the far superior Il Divo.

Erika Sella

EIFF 2013: A Story of Children and Film

Following the making of his fifteen and a half hour epic documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey - a project that took six years to shoot – Mark Cousins made the poetic film essay What is this film called Love? in just three days, a film that was a meditation on the nature of happiness (among other things). What is this film called Love? functioned as a kind of creative palate-cleanser for Cousins and, unlike the herculean effort of The Story of Film, was spontaneous, unplanned. A Story of Children and Film (that indefinite article is important) feels, in more ways than one, to be a meeting of the two films, a historiography of cinema through a personal prism, prompted by a chance incidence of home recording.

Image courtesy of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.  

The film was inspired by an unplanned recording of Cousins’ niece and nephew playing in his Edinburgh flat one morning and takes its structural queues from the themes he found in this ad hoc footage (and then some). These themes encompass shyness, social class, the strop, enacted parenting, conflict, dreams and adventure (among others). In his distinctive and captivating (captivated, even) Ulster brogue, Cousins leads us through fifty-one films from Denmark in the ‘40s (Palle Alone In The World), Iran in the ‘70s (Two Solutions For One Problem), Japan in the ‘90s (Children In The Wind) and the USA of the current decade (Moonrise Kingdom); his selection encompasses directors as diverse as Bill Douglas, Charlie Chaplin, Ingmar Bergman and Luis Buñuel to explore his chosen themes.

At one point the unnatural (actually somewhat creepy) performance of Shirley Temple in Irving Cummings’ Curly Top is contrasted with Margaret O’Brien’s bum note laden duet with Judy Garland in Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me In St Louis, Cousins remarks that "We are spellbound by [O’Brien]” – we are, but we’re spellbound by this film too, entirely apposite given its subject; we marvel with childlike wonder at both children in cinema and at cinema itself. This only serves to illustrate and underline the thrust of the film, “Could it be that kids are movies? That the movies are kids?” That would be an eye-rolling moment had these questions come at the end of a film that did not so subtly nudge us towards this conclusion all the way through, and it’s a very convincing argument, beguilingly executed. Cinema in its purest experience is open to the world and open to everyone, everything; it is egalitarian, simple, profound, honest, fantastical - these qualities only get disrupted when adults (or, perhaps, ‘adults’) get in the way.

Andrew R. Hill

EIFF 2013: Leviathan

A documentary that is prefaced with a quote from The Book of Job rarely creates anticipation for a light-hearted romp. Leviathan begins with such a quote in white text on black, an extract from chapter 41 regarding the titular beast. We fade to black; deep metallic groaning as water laps in surround sound, light leaks in, red and then an image forms: waves, the deck of the boat, a fisherman’s gloved hands – our hands in fact, as the camera’s eye is the fisherman’s. We’re hauling in a catch, an enormous net, the trawler leaning toward the sea. We could go in those waves at any moment and then, apparently, we do. Have we gone overboard? No – this camera moves about as it pleases, possessing fishermen, swimming in the wake of debris, climbing nets, writhing among gawp-mouthed fish, defying gravity. The camera is our narrator. From that slow fade in, we plunge into a semi-psychedelic miasma of images and sounds, edited into a practically seamless hallucination. This is no ordinary documentary.

Image courtesy of Cinema Guild.

In acid-droppers’ parlance, this is a bad trip. The fishermen live on a knife edge, everything is poised on the brink of destruction at all times, it’s dark and it’s wet and it’s choppy as hell. The camera eye, our eye, is unflinching: fish writhe and suffocate, and are beheaded and gutted with ruthless efficiency by the fishermen – in this initial sequence – mostly faceless, sou’westered automatons. The physicality of their job combined with the harshness of their environment makes it hard to believe they’re human sometimes. In one grimly hypnotic sequence, two fishermen remove the fins from stingrays, hooking them through the eye, hacking off the fins and then throwing the three dismembered pieces into buckets - hook, hack, chuck; hook, hack, chuck; hook, hack, chuck – a (presumably) routine process in their day’s work, a routine of metronomic brutality. Later, we see blood and slurry pouring from the side of the boat, back to the sea.

The unsettling horror sequence of the first hour is abruptly interrupted and the film turns round into a more human affair. The fishermen, below deck for the most part, are now human; they still conduct their business in a well-worn manner but we can see their bare faces: physically and emotionally exhausted, damp and hollow eyed. Fish are processed, cranes are operated, incomprehensible New England gutturals exchanged. A hefty, moustachioed man in a vest blankly watches television beneath deck, he doses off and we’re in another frame of consciousness again. A slow-motion, woozy drift, the camera floats in and around the ship, in and out the black water - is this the fisherman’s dream? Is it ours?

To call Leviathan a documentary is in many ways inadequate, a convenience of categorisation. But while it does so in an extraordinary, hypnotic, hypnagogic manner, it actually cuts to the heart of its subject matter by simply showing us, unencumbered by narration or a narrative. In among the viscera of the operations of the boat, we feel the brutality of nature and the brutality of industrialised human consumption. To call Leviathan a horror film is something of an exaggeration too but it might be just as accurate as calling it a documentary: like the best horror films, one is relieved when it’s all over - but the pull of the dark currents, the impulse to plumb those depths again, recurs too.

 Andrew R. Hill  

LEVIATHAN opens 3/1/13 in New York at the IFC Center. Visit www.leviathanfilm.org for more info.

In The House

‘The house of fiction has in short not one window but a million’ – Henry James, preface to The Portrait of a Lady, 1908

François Ozon’s In The House has been described by critics as a ‘psychological drama’, ‘a tantalising comedy’ and even as an ‘enjoyable romp’. It’s hard to deny that, so far, the French director’s output has been nothing short of diverse – he has comfortably jumped from the heart-wrenching chamber piece 5x2 (2004) to the camp farce that was Potiche (2010). However, this does not mean that Ozon is a mere ‘genre tourist’: like many great auteurs, he had recurrent preoccupations (in his case, the malaise of the bourgeois family), and an identifiable style. His new film, a compelling melange of black comedy and melodrama, is in many ways ‘classic’ Ozon; part satire, part coming of age story. In The House elegantly tip-toes amongst different genres, explicitly referencing both Woody Allen and Pier Paolo Pasolini in the process.

​Image courtesy of Momentum Pictures

Fabrice Luchini stars as Germain, a middle aged literature teacher disillusioned with the perceived lack of writing skills amongst his pupils.  Whilst marking homework, he is reinvigorated only by one essay, penned by the mischievous and quick-witted Claude, who has wangled his way into the middle class home of his school friend Rapha just to spy on what he caustically (but somewhat enviously) describes as  ‘the perfect family’.  Germain and his wife Jeanne (played by Kristin Scott Thomas) are both appalled by the boy’s morally questionable and often lurid investigation, although they don’t do anything to try and put a stop to it. Germain, who is a ‘failed writer’ himself, finds he has a new aim in his life and actively encourages Claude by offering post-school writing classes.

From this moment on, it becomes clear that the film’s real protagonist is the notion of storytelling; Ozon has fun dissecting the nature of creativity and the boundaries between reality and fiction.  Germain tells Claude that his prose needs to become less observational (at one point the student admits: ‘This is what I see’) – he essentially suggests he should impose a narrative on what he is experiencing. The teacher’s literary guidance becomes more and more important (almost suggesting a skewed Virgil-like figure), to the point when he is physically introduced in Claude’s fiction (a device used to great effect in Annie Hall). Perhaps Germain is also manipulating what the audience is seeing – are we experiencing the story through is eyes? Is the lurid tale one of his own making, a verbalisation of his own frustrations? It seems like a fair question since Claude is never on camera on his own telling the story; he is always prompted (if not directed) by his teacher.

​Image courtesy of Momentum Pictures

The situation quickly becomes potentially tragic, as the young pupil goes one to two steps too far in his attempt to cynically interfere with other people’s lives – at one point, he even reminds us of Terence Stamp’s nameless character in Theorem: he attempts to desecrate the family home and almost destroys it.  This potent premise is perceptibly softened by the drily humorous exchanges between Germain and Jeanne (the seemingly happy accomplices) and by the self-reflexive nature of the film, as references to literature (Celine and J.D. Salinger are quoted in key moments) and the act of writing are always omnipresent. It’s a technique that allows the viewer to develop a certain amount of detachment, in an almost Brechtian sense. It makes us leave the cinema wondering about the nature of both writer and reader, and of both filmmaker and viewer. Why are we compelled to watch something that we consider questionable?

The answer lies with the somewhat sentimental yet pivotal finale. Claude and Germain are gazing at an apartment block (modelled on the one in Hitchcock’s Rear Window), observing its inhabitants and wondering who they are and what they are doing. Ozon’s message is clear: for better or for worse, we all need to create stories to help us make sense of what surrounds us.