Glamour over grit at the AACTA Awards Ceremony

7 February 2012

I’ve recently become one of the regular film and television columnist for the Kill Your Darlings blog Killings. For my first piece I wrote about last week’s 2011 Samsung Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) award ceremony and Channel 9 broadcast:

The AACTA awards are an attempt to rise above the negativity and celebrate our local achievements. However, by focusing so much on mainstream appeal, celebrity and glamour, the ceremony and the broadcast may have lost its original audience – the people who are actually passionate about Australian film and television.

The full column is available at Killings

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Posted by Thomas Caldwell

Film review – Shame (2011)

6 February 2012
Shame: Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender) and Sissy Sullivan (Carey Mulligan)

Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender) and Sissy Sullivan (Carey Mulligan)

In The Lost Weekend (1945) Billy Wilder portrayed alcoholism as a serious affliction rather than a delightful and humorous eccentricity. In The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) Otto Preminger debunked the cliché of the drug-fiend to reveal that narcotic addiction afflicts even ‘respectable’ members of society. In Shame video artist and Hunger director Steve McQueen does something similar with the condition loosely described as sex addiction. The protagonist Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender) is not a comical sex maniac, but an outwardly stable and content man whose life is inwardly dictated by the need to continually orgasm, whether by masturbation, paying for prostitutes, looking at pornography or having sex with willing strangers.

Shame opens with a flashforward/flashback sequence where the events of several hours are edited together out of sequence to convey Brandon’s ritualistic lifestyle. Not unlike Henry Mancini’s score for the opening of Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958), Harry Escott’s music for the opening of Shame distinctively features a repetitive percussion to suggest a bomb about to go off; a continuous countdown to Brandon’s next release. As he methodically walks naked around his sparse apartment, often his head is out of shot but his penis displayed, frequently close to the centre of the frame, indicating how much it has defined his life. The production design emphasises industrial design, to suggest Brandon’s mechanical and compulsive sexuality. Shots in the film contain a strong depth-of-field and appear to be shot with a long focal length to visually flatten out the scene and render it lifeless.

Sex for Brandon is functionary. Like with substance addiction, the joy of the ‘hit’ has long gone and all that’s left is the necessity to feed the addiction. Very little emotion can be seen on his face, other than an intense look of concentration. On the subway when he makes eye contact with a woman and communicates his intentions with a steady gaze, there is something absent from his eyes. She conveys a range of emotions to indicate she is flattered, aroused, nervous, apprehensive and even a bit scared, while he just maintains his look of hopeful expectation. She’s not an object of desire for him or even some kind of sexual prey; she’s simply an opportunity to feed his addiction.

The illusion of control plays a big part in Brandon’s condition. He has created an isolated life that allows him to feed his addiction, although a moment early in the film where he nervously reacts to his work computer being taken away suggests that he is not as on top of his impulses as he likes to believe he is. He also underestimates how a sex life based on artificial representations of sex through pornography, prostitution and anonymous encounters in alleyways, has hijacked his ability to form intimate relationships. In a key scene he is unable to perform with a potential romantic partner and then has no problem re-enacting with a prostitute a sexual encounter he saw a couple of days before. Both scenes take place in an open white room, dominated by a large, black widescreen television representing how sexual imagery and sexual representations have overridden real sexual connections.

Brandon’s sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) intrudes into the insular world he has created for himself, first through a series of answering machine messages that play while he is trying to masturbate, and then by showing up at his apartment and moving in with him. As a contrast to his ordered and almost ritualised life, Sissy is chaotic, disruptive and breaks down boundaries between Brandon’s private and professional life. She is also the only person Brandon relates to and is burdened with her own compulsive need to be loved. They are two sides of the same coin: Brandon is emotionally detached while Sissy is overly emotional, and yet both are bonded by an unexplained shared experience that has prevented them from being able to forge real relationships. In a mesmerising sequence consisting of close-ups on both their faces, Brandon watches Sissy sing at a bar. The deep love that they have for each other and the sorrow they feel for being so disconnected is expressed on their faces, revealing they are damaged people who are more than their compulsions.

Sexual politics are never the primary focus of Shame, even though issues of sexuality and representation underpin the entire film. While Brandon’s sexual appetite has been defined by the patriarchal commodification of sex, which reduces women to titillating body parts rather than whole beings, the film is careful not to suggest that Brandon is exploiting anybody or harbours aggression towards any of the women he has sex with. He is the product of a sexualised society rather than a victim or perpetrator of it. Women for Brandon are frequently the means to an end, but that doesn’t mean he hates them. Shame even includes a homosexual scene to indicate Brandon’s quest for sex is based on the need for the release rather than fulfilling any actual desires, sexual or otherwise. The double edged-sword is that this scene seems to also exist to use homosexuality to suggest Brandon’s downward spiral, which is disappointing considering how smart and sensitive the rest of the film is.

Shame is nevertheless an impressive addition to the small group of films that attempt to explore the nature of addiction. It’s a more conventional film than Hunger, but it still showcases McQueen’s remarkably ability to generate tension through long takes and to use the production design to communicate complex and difficult issues without overstatement, judgement or sensationalism. Despite the themes of detachment Shame is somehow also a beautiful film with just enough warm light glowing around the screen’s edges to keep the audience entranced.

Thomas Caldwell, 2012

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The Movie Man: Martin Scorsese

4 February 2012

Martin Scorsese

There are few filmmakers who rival Martin Scorsese’s contribution to cinema. The 69-year-old New Yorker is part of the passionate and highly film-literate moviemakers (including Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg) that started their careers in the 1970s during the New Hollywood era. These directors created the modern blockbuster and came to define American cinema.

Whether making gangster films, period films or biopics, Scorsese explores aspects of masculinity, identity and violence. His protagonists are often loners in a chaotic world trying to make sense of the madness around them, grappling with issues of guilt, penance and spiritual enlightenment. Nostalgia plays a big part in Scorsese’s films, but so do regret and loss. Many of his films end ambiguously, with a sense of irony or with the main character on the decline. Frequently working with the same crew, including editor Thelma Schoonmaker on almost every film, and the same actors (such as Robert De Niro and, more recently, Leonardo DiCaprio), Scorsese is one of the few American auteurs, as his films can be regarded as a personal expression of his author-like direction.

Many of Scorsese’s early films reflected his childhood as the son of Catholic Italian immigrants living in New York. While attending film school in the 1960s he made a handful of short films before making his first feature, Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967). It starred his then-preferred leading actor, Harvey Keitel, as a typically Scorsesesque troubled man. The film contained some hallmarks of his later films with its focus on Italian-American communities, life-on-the-street feel, and a rock soundtrack. Following Boxcar Bertha (1972), which he made with legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman, Scorsese made Mean Streets (1973). This film announced his arrival as a filmmaker of note, and was the first time Scorsese worked with De Niro, capturing the stories, characters and atmosphere of Little Italy in New York City, where Scorsese grew up.

After his under-appreciated Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), a rare Scorsese film with a leading female protagonist (played by Ellen Burstyn), he made his masterpiece. Taxi Driver (1976) featured De Niro as an insomniac Vietnam veteran, Travis Bickle, who descends into violent madness. The film coined the phrase ‘are you talkin’ to me’, inspired the 1981 assassination attempt on US President Ronald Reagan and remains one of the greatest cinematic portrayals of paranoid psychosis. More importantly, Taxi Driver established Scorsese’s favourite techniques of using slow motion and fluid tracking shots to convey the subjective experience of his protagonists.

Reflecting his love of different cinematic movements from all over the world, a Scorsese film will often blend cinema-vérité techniques with the dreamlike imagery of avant-garde films. These elements were stunningly combined in Scorsese’s 1980 biopic, Raging Bull, with De Niro as the turbulent boxer Jake LaMotta. This black-and-white epic portrays masculinity at its most violent, reprehensible, pitiful and tragic. Taxi Driver might be the masterpiece, but Raging Bull is the definitive Scorsese film.

Between Taxi Driver and Raging Bull Scorsese made the homage to Hollywood musicals, New York, New York (1977) and a concert film of The Band, The Last Waltz (1978).

Throughout his career, Scorsese’s love of music is expressed on his soundtracks, which alternate between original scores by composers such as Bernard Herrmann, Philip Glass and Peter Gabriel, and eclectic pop and rock compilations. He also produced the 2003 documentary series, The Blues, and has made documentaries about Bob Dylan (No Direction Home; 2005), the Rolling Stones (Shine a Light; 2008) and most recently George Harrison (Living in the Material World; 2011). He even directed the ‘Bad’ music video for Michael Jackson in 1987.

Scorsese’s 1980s films were slightly left-of-field ventures. And, with the forgettable exception of The Color of Money (1986; a sequel to the Paul Newman classic of 1961, The Hustler), they are fascinating. The King of Comedy (1983) cast De Niro as a struggling comedian trying to get the attention of a famous talk-show host, played by Jerry Lewis. It’s Taxi Driver as a critique of showbiz. After Hours (1985) was a low-budget surreal comedy about a man in New York trying to get home one night. Of most interest was The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), a highly controversial film that depicted what Christ’s life may have been like if he didn’t die on the cross and lived as a mortal man. Despite accusations of blasphemy, the film remains an extraordinary examination of spirituality and faith.

In 1990, Scorsese made the gangster masterpiece Goodfellas. It’s classic Scorsese: violent, focused on the Italian-American mob, ending with a whimper rather than a bang, featuring De Niro among others, and full of iconic music and visual flourishes. Following his 1991 remake of the 1962 thriller Cape Fear, with De Niro playing the vengeful former convict Max Cady, Scorsese made Casino (1995), which functioned as a sort of unofficial but far more violent follow-up to Goodfellas. The final ‘conventional’ Scorsese film of the 1990s was Bringing out the Dead (1999), where he teamed up with writer (and also director) Paul Schrader for the forth and final time after previously collaborating on Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Last Temptation. Dead was an almost black comic retelling of Taxi Driver, this time featuring an exhausted paramedic played by Nicolas Cage.

After Goodfellas, the two standout 1990s films for Scorsese were the less obvious The Age of Innocence (1993) and Kundun (1997). An adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel, Innocence did not seem like a typical Scorsese film, but its New York setting and melancholic male protagonist, Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis), were Scorsese hallmarks. Likewise, a film about the 14th Dalai Lama initially seemed an odd choice, but Kundun displayed Scorsese’s command of using film style to convey the experience of a male protagonist in a world he struggles to comprehend. Just as Scorsese’s other religiously themed film, Last Temptation, attracted controversy, so did Kundun – this time from the Chinese Government, which wasn’t pleased about a film depicting the exiled Tibetan leader sympathetically.

The past decade has seen Scorsese repeatedly collaborate with actor Leonardo DiCaprio, starting with the disappointing period crime drama, Gangs of New York (2002). The director–actor partnership with DiCaprio picked up in 2004 with the impressive biopic, The Aviator, about the notoriously reclusive film producer and aviation pioneer, Howard Hughes. In 2010 the pair worked together on Shutter Island, one of Scorsese’s most misunderstood films (the complex, subjective film style used to signal the true nature of DiCaprio’s US Marshal character was mistaken for giving away the ‘twist’ ending, which was in fact not a twist at all).

Scorsese’s 2000s peak came in 2006 with The Departed, a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong crime drama, Infernal Affairs. Once more full of Scorsese’s trademark crime violence and psychopathic male characters, The Departed was a complex film about identity and loyalty. Some audiences were annoyed that Scorsese had remade a recent and much loved Hong Kong film, while others preferred Scorsese’s less melodramatic and more straightforward version. The Departed finally earned Scorsese an Academy Award for Best Director (he had previously been nominated five times).

The importance of what Scorsese has done for cinema cannot be understated. Not only has he made numerous American classics, he has also long campaigned for the need to preserve older films. He has made documentaries about American and Italian cinema, and is endlessly championing films from all over the world. He co-created the Film Foundation in 1990, and the World Cinema Foundation in 2007 (both organisations are dedicated to the preservation and restoration of films).

The man loves cinema, which is what is so beautifully expressed in his latest 3D family film, Hugo (2011). Not only does Hugo celebrate the wonders of films from a previous era, it introduces a whole new generation to the joys of cinema. Unlike his many protagonists, Scorsese is not about to fade into obscurity. Indeed, he is making films that are as remarkable, inspirational and unpredictable as anything else he has done during his extraordinary career.

The Big Issue, issue 398Originally appeared in The Big Issue, No. 398, 2012

Thomas Caldwell, 2012

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Film review – The Artist (2011)

30 January 2012
The Artist: George Valentin (Jean Dujardin)

George Valentin (Jean Dujardin)

One of the most significant developments in the history of cinema was the introduction of sound. Once the technology was ready and the public developed a taste for the talkies, cinema was transformed to an extent that had a much greater effect than the widespread use of colour or the advent of digital technologies. Sound changed the ways films were made, introduced new approaches to film style and, as depicted in films such as Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950) and Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952), supposedly ended the careers of many of the original movie stars. Although, as argued by Bryony Dixon in the January 2012 edition of Sight and Sound, the myth of sound bringing about the demise of silent film actors has been greatly embellished and most of the claims about the widespread destruction of careers are simply inaccurate. Nevertheless, this mythology is once again brought to life in Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist where a Rudolph Valentino/Douglas Fairbanks-style actor named George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) finds himself fading from the limelight once silent cinema goes out of vogue.

The most striking thing about The Artist is how it lovingly and playfully pays homage to pre-sound cinema by being a silent film. The film opens in a cinema in 1927 where an audience is watching a film titled A Russian Affair featuring George in the role of the hero being tortured. On the cinema screen his dialogue flashes up as intertitles: ‘I won’t talk, I won’t say a word!’ Just before we see the real George waiting behind the cinema screen getting ready to greet the audience, the camera pans past a warning sign that reads, ‘Please be silent behind the screen’. Hazanavicius continues playing with the audience during these opening moments, as while A Russian Affair the film within the film is silent, it is still not clear that The Artist is as well. None of the characters are talking and the orchestral music accompanying the film could be coming from the actual orchestra seen on screen. It is not until A Russian Affair ends and the audience in the cinema burst into unheard applause that Hazanavicius makes it clear that we are watching a 21st century silent film.

The Artist doesn’t quite contain the same magical reverence for early cinema as Hugo does, but it similarly pays an affectionate tribute for the cinema of the past while remaining modern. Not only is it about a silent film star and made without sound, The Artist is shot in the old 4:3 ratio and is in black-and-white. However, the editing and cinematography are otherwise contemporary, instead of mimicking 1920s cinema. The Artist contains far more camera movement and edits than most films from the era, not to mention a much sharper depth-of-field and many more close-ups than were usually seen in such films, if seen at all. The acting style is also different for while the actors in The Artists are suitably expressive, especially with their faces, they don’t use the same theatrical arm gestures that were commonplace before sound made such performances seem over-the-top. All this would be a bad thing if The Artist were purporting to be a faithful reconstruction of what a classic silent film may have looked like, but it is not. (Rolf de Heer’s 2007 film Dr. Plonk is a better example of a contemporary film more directly adopting the aesthetics of early cinema). The scenes within The Artist of the fictitious films made during the era, such as A Russian Affair, do contain all the familiar stylistic characteristics, demonstrating that Hazanavicius is more than aware of the conventions, but has chosen not to follow them throughout The Artist.

Hazanavicius’s decision to embrace some aspects of pre-sound cinema and not others suggests that The Artist is both a fond look back at the unique beauty of earlier cinema while embracing the exciting potential of new technology. Sound does feature in The Artist first in a sequence that represents it as threatening for George (yet a wonderful scene for those of us watching) and then in a scene that represents sound’s future. This is similar to the way Scorsese made Hugo as a tribute to early cinema while using the latest advancements in 3D technology. The narrative of The Artist also suggests the dual nostalgia/progressive theme, for not only is the film about George’s downward spiral, but it is also about the rise to success of Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) who benefits from the transition to sound. In a key moment early in the film Peppy meets George on a staircase as she is going up and he is going down, to provide a pleasingly simple metaphor for how their stories are going to develop.

What is ultimately so pleasing about The Artist is how much the film expresses an all-encompassing love of cinema in all its guises. Central to George’s story and Peppy’s story is that they help each other at pivotal points when the other needs it most, suggesting a harmony between different styles and eras. There is also an assortment of what may or may not be references to other classic films littered through The Artist. Peppy’s routine with George’s coat looks like something straight out of a Charlie Chaplin film while Malcolm McDowell’s cameo as The Butler looks distinctively like WC Fields (and incidentally, both Chaplin and Fields successfully made the transition into sound). A major revelation George has late in the film contains faint echoes of the revelation Cary Grant’s character experiences in An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey, 1957), a cross-section view of the studio offices seems like a deliberate nod to the famous boarding house scene in The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis, 1961) and a piece of Bernard Herrmann’s music from Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) is used in an emotional sequence late in the film. The frequent shots where the actors are reflected in mirrors could also possibly be a tip of the hat to Hugo director Martin Scorsese, who is similarly fond of mirror shots.

In interviews Hazanavicius has listed several of his influences and not surprisingly many of them – including Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, John Ford and Ernst Lubitsch – successfully worked during the silent and sound era. The Artist ultimately undermines the myth of the demise of the silent stars in the way it represents the advantages that sound would deliver. The end result could be easy to dismiss as a novelty, but to do so would not give credit to how skilfully Hazanavicius has weaved together a variety of cinematic styles from different eras to make a silent film that is easily accessible to a contemporary audience. Not too many other feel-good films possess the craftsmanship and passion for cinema that is found within The Artist.

Thomas Caldwell, 2012

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Film review – Weekend (2011)

23 January 2012
Weekend: Glen (Chris New) and Russell (Tom Cullen)

Glen (Chris New) and Russell (Tom Cullen)

A first glance an English film about a relationship between two young gay men, one of whom lives in a council estate apartment, invites comparisons to films such as My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985) and Beautiful Thing (Hettie Macdonald, 1996). The sexuality of the two men in Weekend and their developing relationship is the foremost focus of the film, while the lower socio-economic setting is recognisably that of an English kitchen-sink drama. And yet while not to diminish the significance of earlier films exploring gay identity, Weekend is something of a revelation in its sophisticated yet heartfelt depiction of the brief affair shared by swimming pool attendant Russell (Tom Cullen) and artist Glen (Chris New). For a start, Weekend is neither a coming out story nor a coming-of-age film. The characters – and presumably a lot of the target audience – are beyond such narratives. Instead the film looks at the shifting needs, desires and attitudes experienced by Russell and Glen during their affair.

Visually writer/director Andrew Haigh creates a strong tension between the different ways Russell and Glen present themselves in public compared to how they express themselves privately. Weekend alternates between mostly static long and medium shots of the characters in public spaces, such as nightclubs, bars and motorways, with intimate handheld close-ups of just their faces, to capture moments of private conversation and intimate body language. This is further enhanced by the sound design where the noises that the audience hears in the long and medium shots are those heard by Russell. This technique indicates how Russell experiences a private life (suggested by the sound design) that is different to his public life (suggested by the long and medium shots). Glen, on the other hand, is more open about expressing his sexuality so doesn’t separate his private and public life in the way he interacts with the world. Such themes are further developed as the pair debate what it means to live as a gay man, to what extent do some people still have difficultly understanding gay sexuality and to what extent is that their problem. One of the many joys of Weekend is seeing such complex issues being discussed so frankly and honestly by characters who are most qualified to discuss them.

An extension of the perception theme is in the film’s commentary on the way straight audiences respond to homosexuality. Many previous films depicting gay sexuality, especially the ones that aren’t exclusively pitched at gay audiences, have historically shielded away from actually showing gay sex. Films such as Philadelphia (Jonathan Demme, 1993), Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005) and Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008) are commendable for their part in introducing gay narratives to wider audiences, but they were still extremely coy about showing the physical side of male same-sex relations in a way that films about straight couples are not. In Weekend this issue is scrutinised when Russell questions Glen about his art project, which involves making recordings of previous lovers describing how they met and then eventually had sex. Russell – who keeps a private typed diary as a contrast to Glen’s public recordings – argues that gay men don’t like talking about sex publicly and straight people don’t want to hear it; hence, the absence of expressions of gay sexuality in popular culture.

The debate about Russell’s art project can clearly be applied to Weekend itself, and the film does possess a fascinating self-reflexivity in the way it questions how it will be received. This self-awareness also reveals just how considered Haigh has been in the way he directs the film’s sex scenes. At one point Glen half jokingly mentions that the only audience for art expressing gay sexuality are gay men who want to see cocks. Haigh therefore avoids showing cocks and overtly pans the camera just above the waistline to draw attention to his deliberate decision to defy expectations. By visually removing such an obvious symbol of male sexuality, but by still suggesting it so as not to deny its significance, the sex scenes contain a rawness, frankness and explicitness without ever being graphic or indulgent. The result is several scenes where sexual acts express the physical desire and emotional connection of the characters in a way that is rarely seen in cinema of any kind.

It would be a shame if focusing on the stylistic techniques and themes of Weekend suggested that it is a didactic message film, because it is ultimately a very moving love story. The intensity that comes from the film is a result of its willingness to intelligently engage in issues of sexuality, identity and representation, not despite it. The film’s biggest triumph is one of its final shots that begins as a public wide shot and then slowly zooms into a tightly framed private close-up. It signals an important final moment of character development and delivers a powerful emotional surge for the audience. During the zoom, off-screen characters yell taunts at the pair and Russell’s glare at them is almost directed straight at the audience to confront us with our own potentially unevolved or childish uncomfortableness with gay sexuality. Nevertheless, the pair have their private moment in the public space, although in a brilliant masterstroke Haigh drowns out a piece of key dialogue with on-screen noise. It’s a similar technique to the one used by Sofia Coppola in Lost in Translation (2003), but in Weekend it has more resonance due to the play on private/public space throughout the film that results in a moment so private that not even the audience get to fully share it.

Weekend is one of the most impressive films ever made about love. Haigh’s confidence and intelligence as a filmmaker, has resulted in a sincere and emotionally engaging film. At first glance Weekend seems to have much in common with My Beautiful Laundrette and Beautiful Thing, but the film it really does evoke is a far older English romance/drama about social conventions. That film is David Lean’s 1945 masterpiece Brief Encounter and Weekend is arguably its modern day reincarnation.

Thomas Caldwell, 2012

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Film review – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

16 January 2012
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: George Smiley (Gary Oldman)

George Smiley (Gary Oldman)

Everything the audience needs to know about the tone of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is established in the opening scenes. It’s 1973 and the Cold War in England is not being played out in high-tech James Bond-style labs, but in dank and dusty rooms where the head of British Intelligence is a dishevelled and elderly man known as Control (John Hurt) sending agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) to Hungary on a secret mission. In Budapest, where the sounds of children playing are juxtaposed with the sight of two fighter jets tearing across the sky during a beautiful slow establishing shot camera pull, the mission goes wrong. An innocent bystander is shot dead, which is treated as an unfortunate detail in a world of international subterfuge. Thus begins this highly accomplished spy thriller/drama. Swedish director Tomas Alfredson delivers the same diffused visual style and melancholic atmosphere in this new adaptation of John le Carré’s 1974 novel that he so successfully employed on Let the Right One In (2008).

Alfredson’s command of film style and his respect for the intelligence of the audience is evident during the opening title sequence, which brings the story up to speed and establishes character relationships simply through the body language and facial expressions of all the key players. The graphic matched editing and the almost noirish jazz score further enhance the sequence, which presents the professionally complex yet personally lonely world of the aging agents. Everything about this film is economical – dialogue, acting style and visual style – so that from the very opening shot the audience are themselves playing the part of spies, attempting to piece together information and looking for clues.

Throughout the film the overcast, grainy and colour-drained visuals emphasise the cold emptiness experienced by the intelligence operatives. Characters are frequently filmed boxed in by their surroundings; framed by small windows and other rigid geometric shapes. Their world is one of restrictions, deceitfulness and moral ambiguity. The cinematography is like surveillance; shots begin from a distance and then hone in on the ‘target’. There is a mist that seems to hang over the entire film, suggesting the mesh of secrets and betrayals that conceal everything seen on screen. Gone are the days of the ‘gentleman’s war’ when working for the British government or army was something to be proud of and open about. Instead there is the new world where nothing is genuine anymore and the slow-burning exhaustion and resignation to ethical compromise of working in intelligence, tears friendships and relationships apart.

As the ironically named George Smiley, Gary Oldman rivals Ryan Gosling in Drive for deadpan and minimalist acting. They both play machine-like characters who are seemingly programmed to unquestioningly perform a specific function. Throughout Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Oldman delivers a slow, still and precise performance – exemplified in one early scene when he calmly releases a bee from a moving car – to indicate Smiley’s methodical institutionalisation into the role of the spy. Like Gosling’s Driver character, things break down when Smiley breaks his programming and acts on human impulses. While this breakdown propels the main narrative in Drive, in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy it is part of the back-story that happens before Smiley is ‘shelved’ and then brought back out of forcible retirement.

The significance of Smiley’s relationship with his wife comes late in the film, but midway we discover the personal attachment that he forged with a failed attempt to turn the mysterious and unseen Soviet spy Karla. In one of the most stunning shots of the film, Oldman as Smiley almost addresses the audience directly in a close-up as he tells the Karla story. It’s a rare scene of emotional exposure where the audience gets up close to this withdrawn and secretive man who betrays through expression and delivery how he got too personally invested in a situation. This is also the scene where Smiley reveals his doubts about the justness of what he does, explaining that Karla realised that neither side had much to offer, hinting that he perhaps suspects the same.

Smiley is not the only character to come undone by moments of personal attachment as other characters in the film’s multi-layered narrative are also shown to either compromise themselves professionally due to personal feelings or to have to make painful sacrifices. And this is the core of what makes Tinker Tailor Solider Spy such a compelling and remarkable film. Within its tale of double agents and international intrigue are a series of micro narratives about love lost and denied. It’s no great insight to comment that by taping photos of Smiley and his colleagues onto chess pieces, Control reduces them to players in an elaborate game where sacrificing individuals is a necessity to achieving the ultimate goal. Perhaps the deepest sense of sadness that comes from the film is that all the people involved are aware of this and yet mostly continue to play their part, regardless of consequences and uncertain as to why.

Thomas Caldwell, 2012

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Film review – Hugo (2011)

9 January 2012
Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) and Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz)

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) and Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz)

Martin Scorsese’s passion for cinema has long been evident. His filmography is filled with titles that not only reference cinema of the past, especially Italian and classical Hollywood cinema, but push the development of contemporary cinema. Scorsese’s ability to look lovingly to the past and excitedly toward the future is further exemplified by his work in restoring and preserving older films while continuing to challenge himself artistically. Hugo is a perfect encapsulation of Scorsese the artist, film historian and pioneer – a technologically advanced 3D spectacle celebrating the craft and imagination of early cinema.

The visual splendour throughout Hugo is mostly derived from its 1930s Parisian train station setting. The light and colour of the production design are heightened to create an expressive fairy tale world, which nevertheless remains grounded in a recognisable reality without ever slipping into overt whimsy or Magic Realism. The true visual flourishes occur when the audience are taken behind-the-scenes of the station, into the hidden passages and rooms occupied by the orphaned boy Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield). In these labyrinthine catacombs, Hugo is surrounded by the mechanics of the station clocks he maintains and the automaton he is trying to repair. Echoes of Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis can be felt throughout these scenes while the various mini dramas that play out down on the platforms as witnessed by Hugo evoke Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window.

It is no accident that Scorsese evokes Metropolis and Rear Window since both films are triumphs of how cinematic space can be explored. Like Metropolis Hugo is a spectacle film filled with special effects and like Rear Window the subplots that are literally in the background of the film blend into the principle story. All three films use the technology of the day to explore the boundaries between private and public spaces, and what happens when those spaces are collapsed. In the case of Hugo the technology of the day is the glorious 3D, which creates the best depth-of-field in a narrative film since Avatar (James Cameron, 2009). Illuminated specks of dust floating in the air feel like they are in front of your eyes and in one notable scene Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays Inspector Gustav, is given a dramatic close-up where it looks like his head will float out of the screen like a giant blimp.

Hugo coming out from his hidden world to befriend Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), a stallholder’s granddaughter, is an important collapsing of private and public spaces in the narrative. While working together to first recover Hugo’s confiscated notebook and then to repair the automaton, the pair discover a piece of at-the-time forgotten film history. While most cinephiles will recognise early in the film what this piece of film history is, seeing it slowly revealed and explained for the benefit of the non-cinephile viewers is extremely rewarding, especially as it is based on a true story. The person at the centre of this story has been long overdue for a biopic, but having their life told in a fictional film with them as a secondary character is something they would have no doubt found delightful. They certainly would have adored the wonder, magic and cinematic craftsmanship behind Hugo.

The two images that resonate most throughout Hugo are the clocks and the automaton. The constant shots of clocks and the sound of the ticking on the soundtrack evoke the period of change and progress between the two World Wars, but also the rush away from the past, which runs the risk of forgetting people, events and artefacts that deserve better recognition. The uncanny figure of the lifelike yet artificial body of the automaton is both a symbol of humanity that has been damaged, fragmented and made expendable by war, but also the hope that technology can be a liberating and hopeful force to create a better world. Both are also reminders that we are living in a time where we receive a constant barrage of information, manufactured images and other sensory stimuli to an extent that even cultural theorist and philosopher Walter Benjamin probably could not have imagined when he was examining modernity and cinema in essays such as his 1936 ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (which would have been a nice alternative title for Hugo). It’s likely that Hugo’s Rear Window-style multi-perceptive narrative, the use of 3D and production design to represent city spaces as ever changing experiences, and the Parisian train station and arcade setting would have thrilled Benjamin.

In Hugo Scorsese not only tells an important story about early cinema, but delivers a film that is a passionate and convincing reminder of the essential role art and imagination should play in our lives. Hugo also pays tribute to the joys of reading, which is fitting considering it is an adaptation of Brian Selznick’s 2007 novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Typical of Scorsese it is a nostalgic film, but also a contemporary one. It contains historical commentary on the devaluing of art in times of economic hardship and the damage that war does to the collective souls of a nation – both timeless themes, but particularly applicable to the current era. The best part is that while film buffs will adore it, it hasn’t been made exclusively for them. The main audience that Hugo is intended for is the new generation of filmgoers who may not yet know of a time when cinema wasn’t frequently in 3D and created with computer generated imagery, let alone a time when cinema was silent and in black and white. Being in a theatre filled with young audience members who were engaged with the film and laughing in delight at the early cinema clips, is the final element to what makes Hugo so special. This family film is perhaps Scorsese’s most significant gift back to the art form that he loves so much.

Thomas Caldwell, 2012

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Top Ten Films of 2011

28 December 2011

As 2011 comes to an end, I’ve once more looked back at my personal highlights of the cinematic year. For the first time I did a count of how many films I saw during the year to discover that while I watched over 300 films, only half of those were new films released in Australian cinemas in 2011. I also saw several films more than once, which is unusual for me, but extremely rewarding. The result was a very satisfying year that wasn’t guided by what did or didn’t hit the multiplexes. Nevertheless, in order to create a top ten list that makes any sort of sense, won’t need revising and is the most relevant to the majority of my readers (who are Melbourne based and don’t go to advance media screenings), I’ve once again restricted myself to only including films that were given a theatrical release in Melbourne during 2011, even if only on one screen for a limited season.

Top ten films with a theatrical release in Melbourne, Australia in 2011

1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

The Tree of Life

“A cinematic poem of extraordinary scope and ambition.”

Rarely has picking a favourite film of the year been as straightforward for me as it was this year. I returned to the cinema to see Malick’s The Tree of Life a second time within a week of first seeing it to once more have it engage my mind, stir up my emotions and touch my soul. An all too rare cinematic work of art that dares to be so much more than what most people can even imagine cinema to be.

2. We Need to Talk about Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, 2011)

We Need to Talk about Kevin

“This is sensory and visceral cinema at its most compelling and expertly crafted.”

One of the most confronting films I’ve experienced this year was Lynne Ramsay’s intensely subjective and impressionist film, which like The Tree of Life was also a complex representation of memory.

3. Certified Copy (Copie conforme, Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)

Certified Copy

“Its beauty, nuanced performances and grace give it the emotional and dramatic weight that make it rise far above being simply an intellectual exercise.”

My most unexpected highlight of the year was this cerebral and charming film where every single element in it contributed in some way to exploring its central question of how do we measure authenticity in art and life.

4. Pina (Wim Wenders, 2011)

Pina

“The whole range of human emotion is expressed and experienced during this film, making it a sublime visual accomplishment.”

This tribute/documentary/dance film uses 3D to almost revolutionise cinematic space to convey the power of Pina Bausch’s choreography. As somebody who had previously been sceptical about contemporary dance, Pina made me see the light.

5. Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek, 2010)

Never Let Me Go

“A beautiful and satisfyingly melancholic story of mortality, destiny, love and loss.”

This strange and sad film overwhelmed me. The melancholic film style stunningly expresses the novel’s themes of fate and inevitability, without explicitly stating them.

6. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)

Drive

“A gorgeous fusion of pulp genre cinema with an almost abstract approach to characterisation.”

I admittedly had reservations about Drive the first time that I saw it, but it lingered in my mind enough for me to revisit it. The second viewing removed all doubt and I succumbed to this gloriously stylistic and minimalist neo-noir.

7. Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols, 2011)

Take Shelter

“One of the most captivating and overwhelming portrayals of mental illness in a domestic setting since John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence.”

A film that stayed with me long after seeing it, Take Shelter is a tense yet compassionate study of how mental illness can manifest and how it affects not just the sufferer, but also the people around them.

8. Another Year (Mike Leigh, 2010)

Another Year

“A tribute to kindness, family and friendship without sentiment, easy answers or judgement.”

This has possibly become my favourite Mike Leigh film. The central couple are two of the most wonderfully likeable characters to ever appear on screen.

9. I Love You Phillip Morris (Glenn Ficarra and John Reque, 2009)

I Love You Phillip Morris

“Manages to walk a line between hilarity and tragedy throughout, with unexpected moments of sadness that are not undermined by the comedy surrounding them.”

After seeing this at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2010, I was so pleased for it to finally get a brief, albeit small, cinematic run this year. This romantic-comedy with its ultra-dark undertones is the funniest film I’ve seen in years.

10. 127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2010)

127 Hours

“While 127 Hours celebrates the achievement of an individual under extreme duress, it is also a critique of individualistic behaviour.”

Danny Boyle pulls out every trick in the book to convey the range of emotions and thoughts experienced by Aron Ralston. The resulting film is a thrilling survival story, cautionary tale and character study.

Honorary mentions

Selecting my top ten films was relatively easy this year, however, finding another ten films to list as honorary mentions was extremely difficult given that the standard of cinema that I saw this year was extremely high. Nevertheless, in alphabetical order, here goes:

Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard (Lynn-Maree Milburn and Richard Lowenstein, 2011)

Hanna (Joe Wright, 2011)

The Illusionist (L’illusionniste, Sylvain Chomet, 2010)

Incendies (Denis Villeneuve, 2010)

Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, 2010)

Mad Bastards (Brendan Fletcher, 2010)

Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)

Of Gods and Men (Des hommes et des dieux, Xavier Beauvois, 2010

This Is Not a Film (In film nist, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, 2011)

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Loong Boonmee raleuk chat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)

This Is Not a Film

This Is Not a Film

Top ten unreleased films

Many of my highlights from the year are from films that were either only screened at festivals (in my case mostly during MIFF), during special seasons or went straight to DVD. The follow films are the best films that I saw this year, which weren’t given a full theatrical release and to the best of my knowledge aren’t scheduled to receive a general release in 2012.

How to Die in Oregon (Peter Richardson, 2011)

Inni (Vincent Morisset, 2011)

The Kid with a Bike (Le gamin au vélo, Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, 2011)

Michael (Markus Schleinzer, 2011)

Polisse (Maïwenn Le Besco, 2011)

Restrepo (Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, 2010)

Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure (Matthew Bate, 2011)

Surviving Life (Přežít svůj život, Jan Švankmajer, 2010)

Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, 2011)

The Turin Horse (A torinói ló, Béla Tarr, 2011)

Inni

Inni

Top ten retrospective screenings and re-releases

While these lists are obviously personal, this next list is more so since it is dependant on what screenings I happened to make it to out of the many to choose from. To try and narrow the field down somewhat, I’ve restricted myself to films given full re-releases in their own season, films shown as part of a special event and films shown as part of curated seasons (for example those shown at the Melbourne Cinémathèque in what I think was one of their best years and I wish I attended more). Some of these are films that I was revisiting for the umpteenth time and some were new discoveries, listed alphabetically:

American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) at the Astor Theatre

Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941) – my highlight of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s Sophisticated Madness: Classics of American Screwball Comedy season

Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) at the Astor Theatre

Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954) – my highlight of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s You Can’t Go Home Again: The Ballard of Nicholas Ray season

King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933) – screened at the Astor Theatre’s 75th Anniversary

Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad, Alain Resnais, 1961) – my highlight of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s The Garden of Forking Paths: The Films of Alain Resnais season

Offside (Jafar Panahi, 2006) – Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne Film Festival charity/protest screening for the imprisonment of Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof

Once Upon a Time in China (Wong Fei Hung, Tsui Hark, 1991) – my highlight of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s Phantoms & Fireworks: The Incredible Adventures of Tsui Hark season

Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) at Cinema Nova and the Astor Theatre

Veronika Voss (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982) – my highlight of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s Totally, Tenderly, Tragically: The Films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder season

Last Year at Marienbad

Last Year at Marienbad

And there you have it, 40 films – 30 new and 10 old – that most fuelled my passion for cinema during 2011. I was pleased to have been able to write full reviews about nearly all the new films and the three major re-released films I listed, so please click through to those reviews for more details about why I embraced those films to the extent that I did. This year I also particularly enjoyed writing reviews of Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh, 2011), A Serbian Film (Srpski film, Srdjan Spasojevic, 2010) and The Lion King (Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, 1994), as well as penning my love letter to Dogs in Space (Richard Lowenstein, 1986).

Thank you to everybody who has read this blog over the year as well as subscribed to it and shared links from it. The readership and number of page views has grown considerably over the year (more than anticipated) so that’s been wonderful. Most pleasing has been the generally high level of discussion that has started to regularly appear in the comments so I’m very grateful for that and I hope in the future I’ll get better at responding to everybody.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks in mid January 2012 when Hugo gets released in Australia, so see you then!

Thomas

PS Debate and difference of opinion are as always very welcome under my reviews, but for this post I’d like to keep things celebratory and focus on the positive cinema experiences from the year just gone.

Also appears here on Senses of Cinema.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

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Film review – Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

13 December 2011
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol: Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)

Like the original film in the Mission: Impossible franchise, part four focuses more on the group dynamic of the Impossible Missions Force agents rather than solely on the Ethan Hunt character, played once more by Tom Cruise. Hunt is joined by fellow agents Jane Carte (Paula Patton) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), who previously appeared in the third film, and analyst William Brandt (Jeremy Renner). Forced to operate without any official support, the team have to stop the codes for a nuclear device falling into the wrong hands while on the run after being falsely accused of committing an act of terrorism.

This time the director is Brad Bird, continuing the franchise’s tradition of bringing in new directors to give each film a unique look and feel. Bird is making his live action directorial début after an extremely impressive background in animation, having worked on The Simpsons and then directing films such as The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Bird knows how to handle cinematic space, making full use of the film’s impressive IMAX sequences during scenes set in Budapest, Moscow and Mumbai. The middle section of the film takes place in Dubai, where the film truly excels, culminating in an exhilarating foot and then car chase through a sand storm. As perhaps a nod to Bird’s animation background, there is an early scenario that utilises a high tech version of the fake wall gag that Wile E Coyote often used to try to trick Road Runner.

The use of elaborate technology in the series somewhat functions in the way that superpowers or magic functions in fantasy films. Characters can achieve the unbelievable with the use of a super computer or some other extraordinary device, which in the real world seems absurd, but in the world of the film is part of the internal logic. Bird successfully inhabits the film with such technology with the right amount of tech speak to make the audience accept what is being seen without getting bogged down in the details. It also helps that most of the devices do have some grounding in the real world.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol: Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)

Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)

Most interesting about this latest Mission: Impossible film is the frequency in which technology fails at the critical moment. Far from being a lazy plot device, there is a strong theme of fallibility and unreliability of technology throughout the film allowing the action sequences to be inventive and surprising. This extends to the human characters who all have moments of hesitation and nervousness, and occasionally allow emotions to get in the way of their work. Even Hunt is less than enthusiastic when he realises he is going to have to scale the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. This results in a high level of improvisation by the characters throughout the film, making a much more engaging narrative than in the previous films.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is the best film in the franchise so far. The characters are likeable and developed, the scenarios are complex without feeling ridiculous and the action is engaging. This film will benefit from being seen in an IMAX cinema where some of the bigger set pieces will most effectively provoke gasps, especially during the Burj Khalifa scenes from anybody with even a mild degree of vertigo. The whole cast are excellent, especially Renner and also Pegg, who plays a character who has only recently begun fieldwork. Pegg effectively articulate the audiences’ wonder, excitement and delight over the film’s elaborate scenarios and gadgets. Cruise is still the star of the film, but much more part of an overall ensemble than previously, which may make him more palatable to non-fans. Regardless, he looks great running in a suit.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

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Film review – The Yellow Sea (2010)

8 December 2011

NOTE: This is a review of the 140-minute International Cut (aka Director’s Cut) version of the film.

The Yellow Sea: Gu-nam (Ha Jung-woo)

Gu-nam (Ha Jung-woo)

Gu-nam (Ha Jung-woo) is resilient. He may be hopelessly in debt, has been left by his wife, can’t take care of his daughter and has problems with gambling and controlling his temper, but he still persists. Fuelled by the mix of love and loathing that comes with sexual jealousy and a muted sense of regret and sadness over having to allow his mother to raise his daughter, Gu-nam needs a way out of his predicament. He therefore doesn’t need too much convincing when crime boss Myung-Ga (Yun-Seok Kim) offers him a large sum of money in return for killing a man. The mission involves getting smuggled out of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China to South Korea, which also happens to be where Gu-nam’s wife has gone.

The Yellow Sea is divided into four parts with each part given a title that reflects how Gu-nam is perceived by himself and the other characters. The first segment is simply ‘Taxi Driver’, named after Gu-nam’s job in Yanji City in Yanbian. He is so overwhelmingly in debt that his monotonous and subservient job is all that he is. This first segment has something of a social-realist feel. While the film maintains a gritty aesthetic, filmed with handheld camera and shot in the bleakest parts of the various Chinese and Korean cities and towns where the action takes place, the emphasis at the start of the film is the hopelessness of Gu-nam’s situation.

The Yellow Sea: Myung-Ga (Yun-Seok Kim)

Myung-Ga (Yun-Seok Kim)

Gu-nam has similarities to Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. Not only do they both share a profession, but they are both loners in a hostile environment who become increasingly violent. There is a brief shot in The Yellow Sea where Gu-nam is walking down a small street, looking pensive with his hands thrust into his army jacket, which bears a remarkable visual similarity to the shot of Robert De Niro as Bickle used on many of the Taxi Driver promotional posters. While Bickle’s act of murder is the climax of Taxi Driver, Gu-nam’s act occurs at the climax of the The Yellow Sea’s second chapter, titled ‘Killer’. This whole chapter functions as a tense thriller with Gu-nam attempting to find his wife while planning the assassination he has been sent to perform. He really is God’s lonely man in this section; a man whose future has become defined by how successfully he performs his hit.

The third chapter is a combination of action, fugitive and gangster film, titled ‘Joseonjok’, one of the names used to describe people like Gu-nam who are Chinese of Korean descent. While the urgent and bleak style of the film becomes increasingly used to facilitate extraordinarily choreographed action set pieces, the film also makes an interesting commentary on Joseonjok identity. On the run from both Chinese and Korean gangs, The Yellow Sea writer/director Na Hong-jin seems to be using Gu-nam’s story to suggest that Joseonjok people are outsiders who aren’t fully embraced by either culture.

The Yellow SeaThe final chapter expands the scope beyond Gu-nam’s story to focus on the rival Chinese and Korean gangs. This section is appropriately titled ‘The Yellow Sea’ after the large body of water between mainland China and the west coast of Korea. It is also the sea that Gu-nam is initially taken across, by smugglers who have little regard for the lives of their Joseonjok passengers. The action reaches a fever pitch in this final chapter as the Koreans and Chinese butcher each other. Na Hong-jin alternates between scenes shot in open spaces where adversities come from all sides making escape look impossible, and tightly filmed sequences in confined spaces that are rapidly edited to convey disorientation and panic.

While it does provide a commentary on the geopolitical relations between China and Korea, the shift away from Gu-nam during the final sections does lose some of the film’s intense focus. In particular, there is one too many scenes of Myung-Ga being indestructible and unstoppable as if he is some kind of Terminator. Nevertheless, The Yellow Sea is still an exhilarating film with action that is breathtakingly kinetic and visceral. The traumas inflicted on the human body by knives, axes and even a large bone (there are very few guns in the film) leave visible and pronounced marks that don’t heal between shots. For a film this slickly structured and ultimately over-the-top, it maintains a grim realism.

Thomas Caldwell, 2011

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