The DVD release of Ken Loach’s 2013 documentary TheSpirit of ‘45 is particularly timely given the present government’s attempts to reform the National Health Service (NHS) and the furore surrounding Margaret Thatcher’s recent death. Loach remains a staunch socialist and his film is, in large part, a celebration of Labour’s achievements after its landslide victory in the 1945 general election. He compares the acute poverty that existed in the 1930s, the huge gap between rich and poor, with the community spirit that flourished after the war and was to prevail under Labour for the next few years.
Loach combines archive footage with contemporary interviews. Miners, nurses, doctors, railway men trade unionists and ordinary working class men and women describe the poverty that they were rescued from and the sense of hope they all felt with the nationalisation of Britain’s heavy industries and public utilities and the building of new public housing. The high point of Clement Atlee’s government was the birth of the NHS in 1948 – championed by minister of health, Aneurin Bevan.
The post-war Labour administration oversaw a period of dramatic change in Britain, from 1945 to 1951, and this is perhaps why Loach, after covering the period jumps abruptly to 1979, the year Thatcher came to power. During her eleven-year reign she was responsible for dismantling all that the Labour party held dear, returning everything to the private sector. However, by omitting these two decades, the strikes, three day week and rampant inflation of the 1970s inherited by Thatcher is not even touched upon.
Inevitably, given his politics, Loach’s perspective is going to be one-sided. He includes fascinating footage of Winston Churchill and Thatcher being booed (apparently cinema audiences also jeered when Thatcher first appeared on screen). Loach clearly blames Thatcher’s policies for Britain’s current disunity. Mass privatisation and the crushing of the trade unions led to public disillusionment and social unrest which, he implies, we are still reeling from today. Through clever editing, Loach links today’s protests – such as Occupy in St Paul’s – with earlier demonstrations against poverty and injustice.
The Spirit of ’45 is shot in monochrome until its final moments when we return to the footage celebrating the end of the war, which has been coloured by Gareth Spensley, underlining the explosive and exhilarating sense of optimism and hope. In documenting this period so carefully, Loach seems to be suggesting that the time is now ripe for British communities to pull together once more. By recapturing the spirit of 45, finding a national solidarity that challenges the austerity measures, Britain may yet return to the unity needed to achieve a fairer society.
Michael Haneke’s award-winning feature, Amour (2012), is at times almost unbearable to watch. We know, right from the start, that someone has died. The film begins with a door crashing open as fireman break into an apartment to find the corpse of an old woman. She is lying on a bed, carefully dressed in black, her features are serene and she is surrounded by flower petals.
We then track back in time to a few months earlier. Two elderly Parisians, Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignan) are retired music teachers who still enjoy a comfortable existence. But their lives are torn apart when Anne suffers a stroke and Georges has to care for her. After undergoing an operation she arrives home paralysed down her right side and makes Georges promise not to hospitalise her again. At first, Anne gets around in a wheelchair and the couple can still talk together, listen to music, read and, on occasion, even laugh. Then Anne deteriorates dramatically. She suffers another stroke, becomes bed-ridden and can no longer communicate properly. Gradually, she loses all consciousness of who she is and her surroundings. Georges is left with a terrible choice.
Haneke is unrelenting in what he chooses to film, whether it is Anne’s face and body contorted in pain, George’s quiet desperation as he tries to feed her or the nurse’s insensitive handling of her patient. Sound is also amplified – we hear every mouthful of food Anne swallows – and “it hurts” is a constant refrain. Their daughter, Eva (Isabelle Huppert), a successful musician who lives abroad, visits only rarely and when she does, finds it hard to cope. Conversely, her face is frequently obscured as she turns away to face a window or hides it in her hands. We realise that she is now irrelevant to them, her parents have no need for her, for it is their long past together that sustains them.
A profound meditation on old age and dying, Amour is rich in symbolism: A grand piano dominates the sitting room but is no longer played; an errant pigeon becomes trapped inside the apartment until it is caught and smothered by Georges; and a photo-album becomes the sole remnant of the couple’s love and life together.
Those who have experienced the loss of a loved one will connect with the filmon many levels. Others will be moved by Haneke’s sensitive treatment of a difficult subject and the provocative and topical questions he raises. There’s a brilliant and terrible conceit at the heart of Amour; a violent act that is imbued with love.
Greek auteur Giorgos Lanthimos’ latest venture,Alps, is out on DVD this week and proves as unsettling, bizarre and memorable as his acclaimed 2009 feature film Dogtooth.
A group of people hire themselves out to the newly bereaved. They are led by Aris Servetalis’s paramedic who names the business after the mountain range because, he claims, it does not reveal exactly what they do and yet is symbolic. The Alps, he tells his three colleagues – a young gymnast, her male coach and a nurse – are so imposing that each of them could stand in for another mountain and yet they are irreplaceable. He names himself after the highest one, Mont Blanc. His rationale is as bizarre as his business plan. Mont Blanc’s office is in a gym where he interviews perspective clients and introduces them to the members of the group who will enter their homes and take on the roles of the recently departed. Their intervention is meant to help the grief-stricken deal with loss until such time that they feel able to move on.
What makes Lanthimos’s work so refreshing is his quirky, highly original storylines and audacious cinematography. Aggeliki Papoulia’s hardworking nurse becomes so obsessed with her role playing that it begins to take over her life. The line between fiction and reality becomes increasingly blurred and she starts crossing boundaries with her clients. Gradually, we realise, she is herself struggling with loss and grief.
All the principle characters are, to some degree, damaged, but it is the women who suffer the most. The nurse and the gymnast are effectively controlled by the two men in the group. Mont Blanc proves cold and brutal when crossed, while the coach constantly undermines his young protégée’s confidence and denies her the opportunity to make her own choices.
There is both humour and sadness in the way the characters rehearse their roles, delivering their lines in dead pan voices like bad actors or automatons, and their desire to fulfil their clients’ demands, however bizarre. But their ‘professional’ empathy is empty and potentially damaging. The paramedic thinks nothing of grilling a young girl (a promising tennis player, bleeding profusely in his ambulance) for the name of her favourite actor after telling her that she probably won’t make it. Later, when she does die, his two female colleagues vie for the opportunity to stand in for her.
Of course the whole premise is absurd. Members of Alps can never replace the real thing and everything they are involved in becomes devoid of meaning. This is driven home in the explicit sex scenes that are mechanical and unerotic. The headless shots and characters breaking in and out of frame give a vivid sense of fragmented lives.
It’s intentionally disconcerting, but part of Lanthimos’ skill as a filmmaker is that he constantly pushes boundaries both cinematically and in terms of narrative. He persuades us that the surreal could be real. The bereaved want to believe in the scenarios they create and we sympathise with their desperation.
Alps is released on DVD 11 March 2013
Review originally published by huffingtonpost.co.uk
A key voice in television drama for the past three decades, Stephen Poliakoff makes gloriously flamboyant films with sprawling plots and all star casts; Dancing on the Edge, a five-part period drama set in the 1930s, is no exception. London is between two world wars and still feeling the aftermath of the Great Depression. A new musical phenomenon, led by black musicians, is about to shake things up.
The Louis Lester Band plays jazz in subterranean bars in London’s seedier quarters until they are discovered by music journalist Stanley (Matthew Goode). He introduces Louis (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the band’s charismatic front man, to his well-connected friends and persuades the swanky Imperial Hotel to let them play a regular gig. The band engages two female singers and, after the endorsement of the Prince of Wales and his brother George, their careers take off.
Poliakoff’s trademarks are all here: Dancing on the Edge islavishly shot and deliciously melodramatic, has a preoccupation with class and royalty, a sensational soundtrack and a stellar cast that includes both American and British actors. It’s a vivid portrait of the early jazz era in Britain with a political edge.
Racism is rife. At first, the musicians can only use the tradesman’s entrance and are not allowed into the hotel’s bar or restaurant areas unless they are playing. After cutting their first record, the band’s popularity grows. They are given rooms on the top floor and become on first name terms with the hotel’s grumpy proprietor (Mel Smith). However, fame and fortune don’t stop them from being sneered at by their fellow passengers when travelling first class by train. Members of the German Embassy are the most ferocious racists, preferring to leave the room rather than have to listen to the band play.
After the tragic murder of the band’s main singer, Jessie (Anglea Coulby), Louis finds himself implicated and his attempts to flee London act as a framing device for the series. Despite celebrity status and the support of royals, class and race prejudices come to the fore even amongst those he once considered his friends. Suddenly Louis doesn’t know who to trust anymore. The behaviour of some of his biggest fans, the reclusive Lady Cremone (Jacqueline Bisset), Donaldson (Anthony Head) the suave man of leisure, and Masterson (John Goodman) the American Tycoon, becomes increasingly suspect.
There are, as always with Poliakoff, elements that will incite criticism – the meandering narrative, some stereotypical characters and occasionally clunky dialogue – but Dancing on the Edge evokes the decadent milieu so effectively, it’s easy to forgive these flaws. There are also plenty of contemporary resonances – a financial crisis (which barely registers with the already affluent), sadistic immigration officials, a preoccupation with celebrity culture, a power-hungry newspaper magnate and, most importantly, a passion for music.
Newly returned from studying abroad, Ananda (Ananda Everingham) is filming on location in Thailand. He plays an amnesiac, trying to rebuild his memory and identity after having survived the 2004 tsunami. The setting is the ruin of an old hotel destroyed in the disaster. Ananda’s good at his role but occasionally struggles with the correct Thai pronunciation, betraying his privileged background and an international education.
His American girlfriend Zoe (Cerise Leang) comes to visit and stays nearby in a five star beach resort. It’s low season, there are no guests at the hotel, and Ananda is too busy shooting and learning his lines to pay her much attention. Alone, Zoe soon becomes listless. Bored in paradise and tired of hanging out on the film set, she befriends the hotel staff and even attends the maid’s birthday party. When it comes time for Zoe to leave, the cracks in her relationship with Ananda have become crevasses.
After Zoe’s departure, Ananda becomes involved with May (Sajee Apiwong) who is working on the production side of his film. Like Zoe, she is beautiful and intelligent. The action shifts to the city. May lives with Ananda in the luxury apartment block owned by his wealthy mother. One side, we discover, has been decimated by the tsunami and is only slowly being rebuilt. Another part of the ruined building has been sold off to developers.
‘Hi-So’ is short for High Society. Ananda is certainly of that ilk; young, rich and aimless. Ananda and May laugh and play together but something fundamental is missing from their relationship – the nearest the couple come to properly connecting is when they adopt a stray dog. Like Zoe, May is unable to adapt to the culturally diverse worlds that Ananda drifts between and finds it hard to bond with his brash American friends.
Umpornpol Yugala’s cinematography is impressive. Although Hi-So is lushly shot, and the Thai landscape (much of it devastated by the 2004 disaster) is as much a part of the film as the characters, Aditya Assarat’s script may prove too ponderous for British audiences. He offers a vivid portrait of contemporary life in Thailand but female viewers, in particular, may be disappointed that Zoe and May are such disempowered characters. They are easily discarded by Ananda who seems incapable of settling down or offering his girlfriends more than a warm bed.
Consequently, it is hard to sympathise with Ananda’s sense of alienation – a central theme of the film. He is not entirely at ease either in Thailand or amongst his American buddies. However, his feelings of cultural displacement are too superficial. Assarat never gets fully under his protagonist’s skin and consequently Ananda feels sketchily drawn; like the film he is beautiful to watch but ultimately an empty vessel.
Ginger & Rosa received a mixed reception on its theatrical release last year. The DVD is out this week and I must admit to being pleasantly surprised. The film covers similar moral territory to Lone Scherfig’s An Education (a teenage rites of passage/older man preying on young girl) and I found it as fascinating, less glossy and rather more poignant. At the heart of Sally Potter’s sensitive portrait of teenagers growing up in London, during the onset of the Cold War, are two stunning performances from Elle Fanning as Ginger and Alice Englert as Rosa
The two girls are inseparable. Their mothers gave birth to them in the same hospital, on the day the Americans bombed Hiroshima, and they’ve been friends ever since. Now it is 1962, a transitional time, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis – London is not yet swinging and the sexual revolution is only just beginning. There is talk of nuclear war and Ginger is convinced that this might spell the end for them all.
Rosa comes from a broken home so likes to hang out in Ginger’s bohemian household. Ginger’s mother Natalie (Christina Hendricks) is a former artist, her father Roland (Alessandro Nivola) a pacifist, imprisoned during the war, and a writer. He’s also somewhat pretentious – asking Ginger not to call him ‘Dad’, because he thinks it sounds bourgeois – but she adores him.
When Ginger’s parents’ marriage falls apart the girls find themselves increasingly left to their own devices. On the cusp of adulthood, they play truant, smoke cigarettes and tentatively explore their attraction to boys. They try to look similar, share clothes and obsessions – there are two lovely moments when they iron each other’s hair (literally) and sit together in the bath to shrink their jeans. But as Rosa becomes more sexually precocious, Ginger turns towards politics and writing – she wants to be a poet. When Rosa becomes entwined with Ginger’s raffish father, now separated from Nat, Ginger seeks solace in poetry and is increasingly involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Ginger feels the sense of betrayal acutely and it is her attempts to come to terms with their duplicity that propels the second half of the film. Roland’s lack of remorse for his actions is all the more shocking given Rosa’s age and the fact he’s watched them grow up and blossom together.
The decision to use American actors may well have been to ensure box office appeal on both sides of the Atlantic but it pays off. Hendricks and Nivola make suitably glamorous, if troubled, parents and Fanning’s emotional range on camera is stunning. There are memorable cameos from Timothy Spall and Annette Bening as Nat’s concerned friends who offer Ginger advice about growing up. There’s a wonderful moment when Spall’s character, Mark, asks her sadly “Can’t you be a girl for a moment or two longer? You’ll be a woman soon enough.” Later, Ginger demonstrates her conflicted state when she moves in with Roland and takes her two teddies with her.
Potter also scripts and together with cinematographer Robbie Ryan creates a vivid sense of Britain, emerging from post-war austerity and facing another world crisis. I love the attention to period detail – the accents, clothes, hair, the poetry Ginger reads (TS Eliot), Roland’s love of jazz and his boho, somewhat dingy, London flat. This is a moving coming of age tale where you feel both the mother and daughter’s pain.
A stellar British cast, including Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith and Tom Wilkinson, ensure that The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel hasthe feelgood factor without the cloying sentimentality of some romantic comedies. Based on Deborah Moggach’s novel, These Foolish Things, six OAPs arrive in Jaipur, India, in a bid to avoid stagnating in Britain. They are joined by Muriel (Smith) who has reluctantly travelled abroad for a hip operation.
They are all headed for the eponymous “retirement” hotel run by the exuberant Sonny (Dev Patel). Sonny is attempting to resurrect his dead father’s business and restore the building to its former glory. He’s also working on winning the love of his sweetheart Sunaina (Tena Desae). But he desperately needs funds and his mother’s approval. Despite the dilapidated state of the rooms, the elderly Brits decide to stay and find themselves profoundly changed by their various experiences.
Evelyn (Dench) is mourning the death of a husband who left her a pile of debts and broken promises. Graham (Wilkinson) is a former High Court judge returning to India to find a lost love. Norman (Ronald Pickup) and Madge (Celia Imrie) are in search of erotic adventure and Douglas (Nighy) and Jean (Penelope Wilton) are an argumentative couple unable to contemplate the prospect of moving into a retirement home together.
We can anticipate that their interactions with one another, and India’s chaotic charm, will affect them all but, despite the predictability of the plot, it’s a joyous journey that unfolds with genuine wit and warmth and with plenty of surprises along the way.
This kind of bittersweet comedy is what the British do best and it’s heartening to see a film that focuses on the rites of passage of the elderly. Director John Madden gives each of the characters’ stories equal weight. The central message is that it is never too late to realise your dreams but the challenges that the characters face are not simplistic and there are no easy choices. Although the transformation of Murial from an irascible bigot to unlikely saviour of the hotel may seem overly neat, there is truth in her shift of ideals – she is motivated by a selfish desire to be needed rather than pure altruism. The blossoming love between two of the characters and Graham’s reconnection with his past are also subtly drawn.
Part of the success of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is down toits impressive cast. Nighy and Smith provide much of the laugh out loud humour while Dench and Wilkinson bring gravitas to their roles. It’s also beautifully shot with Ben Davis’s camera capturing all the colour, squalor and mayhem of Jaipur.
Romanian director, Radu Muntean’s intensely observed domestic drama¸ Tuesday, After Christmas (2010), is about the end of a marriage and the start of an affair. Paul (Mimi Branescu), a well-off, middle-class Romanian living in Bucharest has to make a choice between the two women he loves. Happily married to Adriana (Mirela Oprisor), Paul has also fallen for a younger woman, Raluca, (Maria Popistasu), who is his daughter’s orthodontist.
Tuesday, After Christmas begins with Raluca and Paul, post-lovemaking – a scene that is uncomfortable to watch and feels almost voyeuristic in its intimacy. She is young and pretty, he is past his best and beginning to show signs of middle-age spread, but with a gentle, rugged charm. We then catch glimpses of his comfortable existence with Adriana and nine-year-old daughter Mara as they prepare for Christmas – an ordinary but happy marriage, conveyed through short scenes of them in the bathroom together, out shopping, eating an evening meal or on the phone to one another.
Played out over a few days during the holiday period, Muntean’sspare narrative is deliberately understated. One of the most excruciating moments in the film comes when Adriana unexpectedly decides to accompany Paul to Mara’s dental appointment. Completely oblivious that Raluca is her husband’s lover, Adriana converses easily with her as they examine X-rays together and discuss the extent of Mara’s overbite, while Paul stands apart, careful not to catch Raluca’s eye. This seemingly banal scene is full of emotional intensity and perfectly illustrates Muntean’s talent for dramatic realism.
When Paul finally tells Adriana that he is in love with another woman, the moment is completely unexpected. In laying bare his characters’ inner lives, Muntean cleverly manipulates the filmgoer into feeling their anguish. Oprisor effortlessly conveys Adriana’s quiet devastation at her husband’s betrayal through minimal words and gestures. Branescu is also superb as a man struggling to make the right decision, never entirely sure of his true motives.
Tuesday, After Christmas catches you unawares. It is beautifully executed and acted. A slow burn of a film that really packs a punch.
Love, loss and the transformative power of music are the central themes of Café de Flore, Jean-Marc Vallée’s latest film venture, starring Vanessa Paradis and Kevin Parent.
Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y., The Young Victoria) interweaves two stories, encompasses two continents and tracks back and forth between the past and present. Jacqueline (Vanessa Paradis), living in one of Paris’s shabbier suburbs in the late 1960s, is bringing up Laurent (Marin Gerrier), a boy with Downs syndrome. In modern day Montreal, Antoine (Kevin Parent), an internationally celebrated DJ, is dealing with the fallout of his divorce from childhood sweetheart Carole (Hélène Florent). For the film’s first half there is no evident connection between the two narratives except that seven-year-old Laurent and Antoine share a love of music.
Antoine has embarked on a passionate relationship with Rose (Evelyn Brochu) and they plan to marry. He has to contend with his own feelings of guilt at leaving his lifelong partner and the disapproval of his family and two daughters. Carole, however, is secretly convinced that Antoine is her soulmate and will eventually come back to her.
On one level, Café de Flore is about confronting our fears and relinquishing our desires. Vallée reminds us that we cannot control our destinies. When Laurent becomes overly attached to a female classmate, Jacqueline’s attempts to sever the bond ends in tragedy. Jacqueline’s obsessive love for her damaged son is vividly contrasted with Carole’s heart-rending attempts to let go and move on. In her struggle to come to terms with the pain of loss, Carole starts to believe that she has a connection with Jacqueline in a past life.
Vallée’s editing style is fast and furious, a deluge of crosscuts suggesting parallel lives, frequent flashbacks, and a deliberate blurring between fantasy and reality. Distorted images reflect the characters’ inner turmoil and the film’s pulsating soundtrack adds an extra layer to the narrative.
The central performances are terrific. Florent perfectly captures Carole’s anguish which is, at times, almost unbearable to watch. Parent impresses as the charismatic, DJ, loved by two women but wrestling with his own demons. Paradis effortlessly conveys a mother’s protective love for her child that verges on the destructive.
Not everyone will engage with Café de Flore’s denouement, with its hints of the paranormal, and the final scenes tie up the loose ends too neatly but, despite these flaws, it’s hard not to admire Vallée’s flair and distinctive style of filmmaking.
Cindy Meehl’s poignant portrait of horse whisperer Buck Brannaman, the subject of Nicholas Evans’ best selling novel and Robert Redford’s movie, wowed audiences at the Sundance festival last year and proved a surprise box office hit in America.
At the film’s start, Buck comments “Often instead of helping people with horse problems, I’m helping horses with people problems.” It’s a philosophy that has held him in good stead on his travels across the United States and beyond and defines his particular style of natural-horsemanship. For nine months of every year Buck leaves his loving family to hold clinics for difficult horses and their owners.
Your horse is a mirror to your soul, he tells one group, before demonstrating how treating them with compassion can tame the wildest of beasts. Buck had to learn patience and respect the hard way. As children, Buck and his elder brother, Smokie, were celebrity rope-trick performers. But after their mother died, the brothers were relentlessly beaten and abused by their father, until they were taken into care by a foster family. They helped to rebuild Buck’s confidence in humans and nurtured his love of horses. His foster father taught him to shoe a horse, aged twelve, and he went on to train under celebrity horseman Ray Hunt. He then had to overcame his crippling shyness in order to set-up and run his own clinics.
Now middle-aged, Buck exudes calm confidence as Meehl follows him on the road. Interspersed with shots of him working his magic are interviews with friends and fellow horsemen and women. Redford is full of admiration and reveals that Buck was a major force in the production and subsequent success of The Horse Whisperer and even served as his horse-riding double.
Buck’s horse philosophy could just as easily be applied to humans. He can’t always perform miracles as demonstrated by a moving sequence involving a colt that was brain-damaged at birth. Sometimes, as Buck points out, the trauma is not caught early enough or runs too deep. But he is as gentle with the owners as he is with the horses, even when they are clearly to blame for their animals’ distress.
Once he has calmed a troubled horse, his aim is to make horse and rider work as one. His success is extraordinary. Buck provides a fascinating glimpse into the life of a remarkable man.
The DVD release of Ken Loach’s 2013 documentary The Spirit of ‘45 is particularly timely given the present government’s attempts to reform the National Health Service (NHS) and the furore surrounding Margaret Thatcher’s recent death. Loach remains a staunch socialist and his film is, in large part, a celebration of Labour’s achievements after its landslide victory in the 1945 general election. He compares the acute poverty that existed in the 1930s, the huge gap between rich and poor, with the community spirit that flourished after the war and was to prevail under Labour for the next few years.
