This is a filmed version of one of Spalding Gray’s famous stage monologues, which tend to involve him sitting behind a desk with his notes in an otherwise unadorned black box space. Of course director Steven Soderbergh has done his best to make this format more visual, with his full bag of tricks, but the origins and format of the show are still fairly clear. This, then, is a film that’s primarily about words, which makes sense because its subject matter is the loss of vision. It incorporates little spliced-in interviews with random people on the subject of eye health, and as a fair warning to those who aren’t expecting it, those stories can get pretty gruesome (the release also includes footage from Gray’s actual eye surgery, and let’s just say I won’t be watching that). This film, however, is certainly likeable, for it rests largely on Gray’s ability to tell a story, which by this point he is a master of doing, and as Gray is likeable so is the film.
NB The Criterion Collection lists the date as 1997, although the film premiered at 1996’s Toronto International Film Festival so that’s the year I give here.
CREDITS Director Steven Soderbergh; Writers Spalding Gray and Renée Shafransky; Cinematographer Elliot Davis; Starring Spalding Gray; Length 79 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), Melbourne, Saturday 18 February 2023.
After a first volume some years earlier, Criterion has added this second one, covering much the same range of years as the first, from some of his earliest works to his very last. I’m not sure if it necessarily adds more depth to the casual viewer’s understand of Brakhage as an artist, but it’s fascinating to see more of these little snatched windows into his life and artistry.
A lot of those early films seem more overtly autobiographical than the more abstract later works. The earliest included here, The Wonder Ring (1955), is a film glimpsed through the windows of a passing train, life reflected on the surface of that image, evoking a world that’s disappearing (this train line soon to be demolished) in a world so far from now and yet so tangibly there. The Dead (1960) takes in Paris, superimposing images of cemeteries (a sort of spectral double vision), a river boat ride and other assorted flashes of the old world, though it didn’t really cohere for me. In Two: Creeley/McClure (1965), the first of two portraits passes in a typical way for early Brakhage, with languorous superimpositions and negative images inserted, but this short piece is all about the second portrait, an all too brief ecstatic experience, literal flashes of a man. Rounding out the first programme of films, 23rd Psalm Branch (1967) is almost an hour long, a frenzied rush of images—of corpses (initially), of bombing, of Nazis, but also tender images of families and home, of being at the beach. But that shock of war and the horrors of conflict (this film was made during and largely as a response to Vietnam) means that even the positive images are pulled down into the darkness of Brakhage’s vision. It feels almost agitprop but of course remains an avant-garde text, a scream of a silent experimental film.
The second programme of films opens with one of his more renowned works, Scenes from Under Childhood, Section One (1967). It seems to me there’s a penetrating darkness to the vision of childhood here, the images snatched from black leader, flashes of red, a strange sense of dislocation and eeriness. Maybe that’s the soundtrack (apparently Brakhage preferred it without, but there’s an optional one and I do prefer it to silence—what even is “silent” as a film concept, really, for those of us who live in the world, where there are constantly noises in the background?). Anyway, this is a potent poetic opening to what is a three-part film (the other two are not included here), as strong as anything in this period of his work. The Machine of Eden (1970) follows it as a bit of a landscape piece with glorious glowering skies, albeit in an impressionistic collage. However, I like the way that Stan Brakhage really mined his domestic life in this period of his filmmaking, reflected in Star Garden(1974). He must have been quite an intense dad to grow up with but he was always there filming his kids, his home, the special reflection of light through blinds, through paper, the edge of a dress, a spectral presence always because isn’t all film ultimately about light? Rounding out the group, Desert (1976) is a short film that I gather is more about the idea of a desert, expertly evoked with the light and filters, except for those brief moments when it just seems grey and suburban.
For the third programme of films, there is a movement towards the abstract, starting with The Process(1972), as images of people both become colour fields and are intercut with flashing blocks of colour suggesting (as I gather it) one’s closed eyelids and the idea of recalling something. There’s death in Burial Path(1978)in the shape of a bird, placed carefully in a cardboard box, and then there’s the recollection of death, the camera moving on to other things before looping back around to the bird. The duplicity in Duplicity III (1980) is presumably the spectacle of theatre as put on by his children and their classmates, but there’s almost an epic quality here. That sense is aided by showing these scenes alongside animals, a sort of contrast between lies and unadorned truth that evokes something essential. Four animals are intercut with one another in The Domain of the Moment(1977), though I don’t think that snake is making friends with the mouse. There’s a mystery and a beauty to his editing here. Of course, maybe you just need to be in the right mood to appreciate any abstract experimental film but Murder Psalm (1980) was very much it when I watched it: a collage of images, textures and grains of film and video, the shock of life and of death, the play of children and of armies, juxtaposing these eternal themes under an evocative title that suggests a continuity of behaviour from the humiliated child onwards and outwards through history. Rounding out the programme, one does wonder how Criterion decided which of the 20 films in Arabic Numeral Seriesto present. Ostensibly 12 (1982) is an abstract series of lights piercing the darkness, shimmering and hazy as if reflected through many layers and then gone. It has its own hypnotic pulse and I wonder again at the deeper meaning.
The fourth programme of shorts presents the four-part Visions in Meditation (1989-90), wherein Brakhage goes on a road trip in a way only Brakhage can, with shakily shot images that nevertheless suggest something deeper and stranger than any travelogue. He evokes mystery of course, with these unexplained images, but perhaps like the title suggests it’s better to just give in to the rhythms. The second film is even stranger and more mysterious than the first , though that may be as much to do with its focus on the ancient Puebloan culture we see at Mesa Verde, these ancient buildings built into the rocks. The way Brakhage shoots makes everything seem even more stranger, immanent, loaded with unknowable threat. This is poetic filmmaking, though at a certain point with I find it difficult to express why I like them. The third involves more images from a road trip, and what I like is the lights and the quality of light and the intersection between the images and also—for a change, since most of his films are silent—a score. It’s all very evocative of something but it feels right to me. There are some lovely images to the fourth and last in the series, which takes us to New Mexico. Glowering skies and threat hovers, but the light plays on the camera and it has a suitably epic feel.
The penultimate programme of films starts with Unconscious London Strata (1982). I don’t see much of London in it; I guess I don’t see much of anything. It feels like a film by someone losing their sight, as though it trades in images of the world, they are so blurry and out of focus that it registers as abstract patterns of colour and light crossing the screen. That’ll be the “Unconscious” in the title, and there’s obviously a dreamlike hazy quality to this, though it had more of a soporific effect on me at the time. There are some lovely sequences of abstract colours creating elaborate patterns in Boulder Blues and Pearls and…(1992), along with images of the world, presumably from around where Brakhage lived. But there’s that constant sense of surprise in the film which I appreciated. The Mammals of Victoria (1994) is half an hour of gentle waves lapping at the Canadian shore, indistinct figures, horizons, some video distortion and painted images. It’s hard to take in properly, but it certainly does have a holiday sort of feel to it, a gentle tranquillity, that perhaps lulled me a little too much (into a bit of sleep). However, some of my favourite of Brakhage’s pieces are the short ones with hand-painted patterns, not least From: First Hymn to the Night – Novalis (1994). These ones are dense and colourful, but they are broken up with the (hard-to-read) words of the poet Novalis.
I do like the hand-painted works that Stan Brakhage did and there are plenty featured in this sixth and final programme of short films within the collection. Watching I Take These Truths (1995), I’m imagining the bright blocky colours of a 90s sitcom credits sequence but there’s something far more majestic about these splashes of colours as they threaten to dissolve into the darkness of the black background. There’s a playfulness that even its almost sitcom-length running time cannot dampen. The realm we see depicted in The Cat of the Worm’s Green Realm (1997) does involve a cat memorably for a few seconds, and I welcome it, though the worm presumably may not. It’s a film of leaves—bright and shining with dappled sun coming through, autumnal, barely perceived in a mulchy green haze—and undergrowth, a worm’s perspective perhaps. As for Yggdrasill: Whose Roots Are Stars in the Human Mind (1997), which is named for the World Tree in Norse mythology, I guess I expected it to be more tree-based, but aside from some hand-painted bits that give a sense of leaves, this is dominated by water imagery, pulsing strangely like constellations.
The textures of the hand-painted frames are different in “…” Reel Five (1998), with a white ground and largely monochrome splashes and swathes of black (with little flashes of other colours). It’s all accompanied by a James Tenney score that leaps about as nimbly as Brakhage’s images. The first three films of the ongoing Persian Series (1999) are also presented here. I’m not exactly clear what the link is with Persian art, but I had some Iranian music on the record player so that made it feel to me a bit more specific. This is a heady wash of colours, as per the other films in this series and Brakhage’s later work. #2 gets my vote for Brakhage’s trippiest film, with the same use of vivid colours as in #1, but here the camera seems to speed through them like a spaceship speeding up through a galaxy of colours, before circling around. #3 is of a piece with #2, but is more frenetic, a bold pulse of constant colours in a visual thrum of intensity. Finally, there’s something very poignant about how Chinese Series (2003) was made, his final work, scratched with his fingernails into the film stock as he died, that commitment to the physicality of film (albeit watched now on Blu-ray). It’s stark, with the black ground dominating the visuals of largely monochromatic scratches that play out until a sudden stop.
As usual for this blog, I don’t put ratings on films that are under 30 minutes in length, but my favourites were Star Garden, Persian #2 and Chinese Series. To save repetition, all films below have the credit of Director/Cinematography Stan Brakhage.
The Wonder Ring (1955) — Length 6 minutes. Seen at home (Blu-ray), Wellington, Friday 18 March 2022.
The Dead (1960) — Length 11 minutes. Seen at home (Blu-ray), Wellington, Friday 18 March 2022.
I can’t fully pretend to be able to tell apart the characters in this film by Pedro Costa, which kicks off his so-called Fontainhas trilogy (being the films set in the downmarket area of Lisbon where migrants from former colonies have tended to cluster together). Nor am I entirely sure of their relationships to one another. However, Costa’s filmmaking is absolutely clear in finding perfect images to capture the essence of this neighbourhood and of the squalor in which the characters live. Not quite dim and unlit as his later films, there’s still a palpable sense of chiaroscuro to the contrasts in these interiors, as characters with equally murky intentions move through them (a young mother, a feckless father, some others who are trying to do good to little avail). Every shot here has a careful and palpable beauty to it, even as the characters themselves seem unable to express themselves and keep trying to find a way out of a certain sense of hopelessness. It feels like a move towards his modern style of filmmaking.
CREDITS Director/Writer Pedro Costa; Cinematographer Emmanuel Machuel; Starring Vanda Duarte, Nuno Vaz; Length 98 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), Wellington, Sunday 20 February 2022.
I remember loving this as a 20-year-old back in 1998 when it was on its first release. After all, I’ve always responded positively to elegantly filmed adaptations of contemporary literature, with all those underlying themes of suburban ennui and disaffection, couched in a stylised and ironic register, and in truth I still like it a lot. However, I find it more difficult to watch it without groaning at the immediacy of the “ice storm” metaphor, given these peoples’ lives in 1973 Connecticut, the suburbs of New York, the playground of the middle-classes as they struggle to adjust to… well, to the same things to which people in books and movies (and life) have always failed to adjust: them losing the spontaneity in their relationships; their tedious friends they’re stuck with; their kids growing up and becoming more sexual; the mindless tedium of the working life; you know, the usual. And with Kevin Kline in there you wonder if this isn’t just an updated The Big Chill (I haven’t seen it yet, mind, but the titles do seem superficially similar). Anyway, in short I think what happened to Elijah Wood’s character was a bit overdetermined, and things just seem so oppressively miserable for everyone (even though materially they’re all pretty well-off), but even so the look of the film is gorgeous, and the acting is all excellent, not least of all Joan Allen, who is I think the emotional core of the film, increasingly so as I get older.
CREDITS Director Ang Lee 李安; Writer James Schamus (based on the novel by Rick Moody); Cinematographer Frederick Elmes; Starring Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Tobey Maguire; Length 113 minutes. Seen at the Penthouse, Wellington, Saturday 11 April 1998 (and again on Blu-ray at home, Wellington, Saturday 15 May 2021).
Right, I’ve done weeks themed around various online streaming platforms, but I haven’t yet mentioned YouTube, which may just be the best repository for films online. It certainly has some of the more interesting and obscure titles. It’s always worth searching YouTube when you’ve exhausted every other possibility, especially when you’re looking for a particularly niche title, because someone may have uploaded it. I also can’t verify that at any given moment any of the films I mention having watched there will be available, but who knows. This particular pick comes from inspiration provided by Australian film writer and academic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas in a Twitter thread of Australian movies directed by women which were available on various platforms, including YouTube, so a few more may appear on my blog this week.
A deeply bittersweet Australian romcom of the late-1990s, about a man who marries a woman but realises as he’s doing so that he still has deep and real feelings for an ex that he can never repair due to his own stupidity. That all comes out in the final act, though, as the early part of the film is him meeting his future wife, and then a series of flashbacks to the earlier relationship. At first these seem like they’re just a reminder of another similar time of happiness in his life, but by the end comes the realisation (for him as for the audience) that this was in fact the only time he was happy. The problem—and this is perhaps a problem exacerbated by time—is that it’s difficult to really feel for his predicament because the woman he ends up marrying, the Lizzie of the film’s title, is played by Cate Blanchett. That said, playing the role of a beautiful, perfect yet imperious and demanding woman is in fact very suited to Blanchett; the true love is played by late-90s Aussie romcom mainstay Frances O’Connor (well, she was in Love and Other Catastrophes anyway), and that makes some sense even if the fact that both of them fell for this guy (called Guy, which makes me think of the similarly bittersweet Umbrellas of Cherbourg) is rather less explicable. Still, it’s rather likeable in my opinion.
CREDITS Director Cherie Nowlan; Writer Alexandra Long; Cinematographer Kathryn Milliss; Starring Richard Roxburgh, Cate Blanchett, Frances O’Connor; Length 91 minutes. Seen at home (YouTube), London, Friday 10 April 2020.
I’m doing a week focusing on ‘very long’ (3hr+) films, but most of these have been made by men, perhaps overeager to flex their cinematic clout or show off their stamina (amongst other things). However, there have been plenty of directors working in television who have pulled off longer-form work in the guise of mini-series and multi-part episodic drama (so not technically a film, I suppose, but it’s my blog my rules). One such figure, working in the documentary form, is Molly Dineen, who like a British Frederick Wiseman, has been profiling institutions and work throughout her career. Her longest films are The Ark (1993) and In the Company of Men (1995), which respectively look at London’s zoo and the British Army (as deployed in Northern Ireland), but she also has a number of shorter works to her name. Her most recent film, Being Blacker (2018) is one I haven’t yet caught up with, but everything else I talk about below. All of these have been released by the BFI on the three-part DVD set The Molly Dineen Collection, which is well worth tracking down.
Molly Dineen’s first three documentaries were made for BBC2, in a slot called “Forty Minutes” and so they all run to this length. However, her rather remarkable first film, Home from the Hill (1987), also exists in an hour-long ‘director’s cut’ (the BFI collection has both versions). The film itself cleaves to that classic documentary practice of focusing on a single fascinating central character, in this case the figure of Hilary Hook, an elderly gentleman who has served in various colonial armies since before World War II and has retired to a rather relaxing life in Kenya, before being evicted and sent home to Blighty, where he must readjust. He seems remarkably chipper about ‘coming home’ to a place he’s not been in 50 years, but a lot of the amusement (and certainly the notice it attracted when broadcast back in the late-80s) is in his inability to deal with simple everyday things which once he’d have had a man to do for him, such as a can opener (admittedly, a peculiarly confusing electric one, so I’m not sure any of us would really understand) or a broadcast of Top of the Pops, et al. He shows his poky little home to guests, remarking that “you couldn’t bloody swing a cockroach in here” as he takes them into a guest bedroom, and his string of expletives at the can opener segues into a forlorn desire to just go down the pub. It’s amusing for sure, but also illustrates a certain mindset, that of a man with genteel civility who nevertheless is hopelessly unable to cope with how we live (and it brings to mind certain current parliamentarians).
Like her debut, My African Farm (1988) also focuses on a single person who somewhat exemplifies the (slightly more benign aspects of) British colonialism. However, unlike the protagonist of the earlier film, Sylvia Richardson is someone who remains living in Kenya, who has a fierce attachment to the UK but who has barely lived in it for more than a few years since she was a child, and clearly has no intention of ever doing so. Her life, which she spends with another woman (apparently married, though we never see any men aside from the servants), is one of relative ease, and the film is quick to establish her grouchy condescension to the native population (who wait on her in her home). While there’s a slight softening of this persona when we see her handing out Christmas presents to those living and working on the farm, even there it’s mixed in with a nasty attitude. Amusing (and apparently self-aware) as she can sometimes be, it’s clear that the legacy of British imperialism is never very far from the surface.
The Heart of the Angel (1989), Dineen’s third film, finds her back in the UK but it’s one that seems like another world entirely from the London I’ve lived in for the last 15 years. Angel station on London Underground’s Northern Line was largely rebuilt in the early-90s, when it moved from a single-island station (like Clapham Common still is) into having two separate platforms and a completely remodelled entrance and ticket hall opening onto Islington High Street (rather than the old one on City Road). Indeed at one point during this film we see the staff looking over the plans, remarking that there’ll hardly be any place for them in this upmarket new station, and much of the rest of this film shows us how it used to be: it’s clear that the case for refurbishment was strong. After all, one of the constant refrains is the archaic lifts breaking down, to much irate feedback from customers, who then must tramp up and down the windy staircase. Less related to Angel station specifically, we also see the night-time teams of workers who do the track maintenance, like the burly sweaty men walking the length of the line to find faults, or the women binning the fluff and other flammable debris from along the tracks. However, what makes it feel such a world apart is the attitudes of some of the service staff, like the guy at the ticket window contemptuous towards tourists asking for directions (including what he presumably finds to be an amusing pronunciation of the “Picklydickly line”; it’s not)—though when questioned by Dineen he then responds that he is largely happy with his lot in life—or the chirpy lift operator posing questions to everyone that gets on the lift (“so do we think the Earth is round or flat? Anyone?”). There’s an interesting set of outtakes on the DVD featuring an interview with a smartly-dressed young Irish woman in her station office, who basically explains the nature of micro-aggressions and how these dissatisfactions build over the course of the day into full-blown anger, and I can see that some of the staff attitudes are just ways of coping. But I swear if some guy in a lift kept up the kind of patter as he does in this film, I’d be so much quicker to punch someone during my commute. Perhaps the Underground has lost some of this character, but it doesn’t (usually) feel nearly as choked, dilapidated and Victorian as it does here, a mere 30 years ago.
Dineen’s longest film is The Ark (1993), a large-scale observational documentary about an institution, originally a four-part piece for BBC TV about London Zoo, as it negotiates a funding crisis in the early-90s. Indeed, the Zoo almost closed in 1992, so this is a fascinating insight into the institution at this fraught time, as staff are laid off, animals sold off to other zoos, and expenditures drastically reduced in an effort to stave off financial ruin. The four parts are themed around various topics, the downsizing of keepers and the animals in the first two parts (although those who remain thread throughout the entire film), the arrival of a ‘celebrity’ animal (Ming Ming the panda) as a means to drive public interest and thereby revenues, and the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring between reformers within the zoo and its management that leads to the axing of the role of the director general of the zoo. As ever, Dineen’s focus is on the people, with whom she cultivates strong relationships, and who become our conduit to understanding what’s going on. The keepers come across as likeable and driven, some gregarious, others amusingly sardonic and world-weary, whose care is primarily the animals (one is reduced to tears when one of his elephants leaves), but the management are clearly also operating in rather straitened circumstances. It could be a bleak film about desperate people in sad times, but it retains a fierce compassion for peoples’ (and animals’) lives, and suggests these may be the basis for the necessary change.
There’s a certain way in which Dineen’s interest in institutions in such films as The Ark is reminiscent of Frederick Wiseman, and yet her approach is completely different: she inserts herself into what she’s filming, eliciting commentary and sometimes confessions from those around her, and trying not to efface her (and her sound recordist Sarah’s) existence. It’s important in her follow-up film In the Company of Men (1995) because she’s working with the British Army and thus there are limitations to what she’s given access to document, and the way the (male) troops and their commanding officer relate to her camera.
Another aspect of her documentary work that comes to the fore is the way she always seems to find interesting central characters, and this three-part TV documentary is largely based around the presence of Major Crispin Black, who like most officers (and like Hilary Hook in her first film) has an excellent private and Oxbridge education, and speaks and acts in that kind of very patrician English way (though he’s leading a regiment of the Welsh Guards, so his loyalties can sometimes be rather more aligned with that identity). However, he is also very self-aware and provides at times amusing reflection on certain aspects of the modern Army, as well as narrating for the viewer what’s going on in a day-to-day operational way, elucidating matters of discipline and procedure. As it happens, this was filmed during a tour of service in Northern Ireland just prior to the peace agreement, and though it largely avoids engaging with the complexities of that particular deployment, the very fact of their existence there certainly does lead to questions about their role—and indeed a great deal of the time Molly films them, they are guarding a police station, which occasions some withering commentary by Major Black. There are insights in all three of the parts about the procedures (as well as some of the limitations) of the Army, and though it’s hardly propagandistic, as mentioned it does avoid any overtly political engagement. One nevertheless feels you couldn’t make the same film today, as depicting the administration and perpetuation of state authority—and the systems of control and inculcation into it which go along with the Army life—inevitably raises uncomfortable questions. Still, thanks to Major Black in particular, this is very easy to watch, and rather fascinating in its way.
All of Molly Dineen’s films in the 2000s took her into the British Parliament and this trend towards more directly engaging with the political process started with a short film commissioned by the (nominally left-wing) Labour Party in 1997, only somewhat jokily called “Tony Blair: The Movie”, which is probably best to watch alongside her longer reflective piece about its making (an extra on the BFI collection). The Party Election Broadcast broadcast itself is ten minutes of fairly laidback conversation in the backs of cars and in Blair’s home that touch on his feelings about change and leadership, his family background, some of his childhood dreams, intercut with a few more focused political speeches. It does its job, which is to present Blair as a human being that people can relate to, but Dineen has rather more complex feelings about taking on the job in the first place, and whether doing her kind of work with a politician could ever really be successful. Anyway, I didn’t live in the UK during much of Blair’s leadership, so I don’t really recall anymore why people now have such antipathy towards him, but I suppose it’s (at least partly) for just these reasons that Dineen prevaricates about: that he’s presenting an untruth in the way he projects himself.
Her two subsequent more directly political films are The Lord’s Tale (2002) and The Lie of the Land (2007) (pictured above). I didn’t start watching the former, about the 1999 reform of the hereditary peers in the House of Lords, expecting to find any sympathy for this group of old men, whose titles had passed down in some cases for hundreds of years and whose attendance of the second chamber of the UK government was, for many, more of an amateur pursuit to be taken up in their old age. However, Dineen finds the humanity in this group of dinosaurs shambling off into the sunset, less angry than just frightfully disappointed by the whole affair, dash it all, as they see their House left to the professional politicians who care rather less about what they’re debating. Dineen’s argument is to contrast the passage of the Lords reform with sharp criticisms of the government’s own attacks on social welfare, many of which come from across the political divide, both Labour and Conservative peers. That said, in the end these are a bunch of interesting characters who are quite aware their time has come, so the tone is elegiac after a fashion. The hereditary peerage we see is a rather nice thing for a few men, that isn’t without its benefits, but is being rather abruptly retired. As for The Lie of the Land, there’s a slightly disjointed sense as it skips from an initial interest in the protests for and against the practice of fox hunting, to following some of these hunts, to moving to a story about farmers trying to make ends meet in a changing modern environment and under a government that doesn’t really make much effort to understand the rural sector or the work they do. There are plenty of good points being made, even as we see some of the slaughter and hurt caused (in some cases needlessly, or for tenuous bureaucratic reasons) to the animals. Still, it amounts rather to a move away, perhaps a conscious distancing, from Dineen’s earlier work on behalf of the new Labour government, and an awareness of the complicated balance of power (not just party political, but in terms of the politics of food) that lies between cities and the countryside.
One final notable film by Dineen, perhaps her most well-known (and certainly most widely-seen) work, for obvious reasons, is Geri (1999). I have to admit, having not lived in the UK during the 90s, that I may never fully understand that era, and this documentary (along with the others mentioned above, made during the Labour government) really brings that home to me. Of course, even in New Zealand we had the Spice Girls, and what’s fascinating here is just the access that Dineen has to her star, free from the control of industry handlers and PR people. There’s an unguardedness to Halliwell that’s rather refreshing, not that I think it necessarily allows Dineen to fully grasp her thorny and probably impossible subject: the entire nature and business of “celebrity” in the modern world. Still, it may be as close as any documentary is likely to get, in showing this (perhaps necessarily) self-involved star and some aspects of her daily life, and already some of the things that look massively tiresome to a viewer (the hordes of paparazzi) she barely gives a second thought to. Even being thrown into the deep end by the UN with a short-notice press conference as a goodwill ambassador doesn’t dampen her enthusiasm. It must be said that she comes across very empathetically on the whole—and not because this is a hagiography, as Dineen is clear to establish early on, in a rather direct and confrontational conversation with Geri—and even her occasional bouts of self-criticism and childish pique when Molly is talking to Geri’s mother never derail this portrait of someone who for all her narcissistic flaws, seems genuine and impassioned about what she does.
CREDITS
Home from the Hill (1987) [certificate 15] — Director Molly Dineen; Cinematographers Dineen and Sarah Jeans; Length 60 minutes (originally 40 minutes when first shown on TV). Seen at home (DVD), London, Monday 22 April 2019.
My African Farm (1988) [medium-length, certificate PG] — Director Molly Dineen; Cinematographers Dineen and Sarah Jeans; Length 40 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), London, Monday 22 April 2019.
The Heart of the Angel (1989) [medium-length] — Director Molly Dineen; Cinematographers Dineen and Sarah Jeans; Length 40 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), London, Tuesday 23 April 2019.
The Ark (1993) [certificate 12] — Director/Cinematographer Molly Dineen; Length 240 minutes (in four 60 minute episodes). Seen at home (DVD), London, Thursday 9 May 2019.
In the Company of Men (1995) — Director Molly Dineen; Cinematographers Dineen and Sarah Jeans; Length 180 minutes (in three 60 minute episodes). Seen at home (DVD), London, Thursday 25 April 2019.
Party Election Broadcast for the Labour Party (aka Tony Blair: The Movie, 1997) [short] — Director/Cinematographer Molly Dineen; Length 10 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), London, Thursday 25 April 2019.
Geri (1999) [certificate 12] — Director/Cinematographer Molly Dineen; Length 90 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), London, Sunday 19 May 2019.
The Lord’s Tale (2002) [certificate PG] — Director/Cinematographer Molly Dineen; Length 86 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), London, Monday 27 May 2019.
The Lie of the Land (2007) [certificate 12] — Director/Cinematographer Molly Dineen; Length 90 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), London, Saturday 25 May 2019.
I’ve dedicated this as a year of catching up with classic movies, and 20 years on from Selena‘s release, I’d heard this film had become something of a classic—at least, amongst those whose experiences it reflects. After all, like I’m sure plenty of British people, I don’t know anything about Tejano music or cumbia, or indeed about the singer at the heart of this story. Incredible as it may be, it’s true that this film wasn’t made to reflect or reconfirm anything I experience or know about the world—but that’s a quality I like in films and I like it here. Sure you could say it’s about all those ‘universal themes’ (growing up under a demanding father, finding your voice in the world, love against the odds or at least against aforementioned father, all that kind of thing), but it’s grounded in a specifically Texan (or ‘Tex-Mex’) reality, of sparkly 90s fashion, and of music I have already confessed to knowing nothing about (so won’t say anything about). I do like that the director enters the story via mainstream ‘white’ music with the backstory of Selena’s father Abraham cross-cut with her 1995 set at the Houston Astrodome, which incidentally illuminates the outsider experience of America—a fascinating topic now as ever. I like too Jennifer Lopez’s performance, but I’ve always been a fan of heracting. It’s a full-throated biopic that tips occasionally into melodrama and has the hint of hagiography but on the whole is radiant with life and colour (where it could easily have been about death and tragedy).
CREDITS Director/Writer Gregory Nava; Cinematographer Edward Lachman; Starring Jennifer Lopez, Edward James Olmos, Jon Seda; Length 127 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), London, Saturday 28 January 2017.
A quiet, thoughtful film about a middle-aged woman reflecting on motherhood, and how to weigh the feelings of her (almost grown) son with her own desires. It uses documentary footage of women talking about being mothers—the protagonist is a filmmaker—to introduce these themes, as she talks about her feelings in voiceover. Her son really is quite an annoying chap, but it leaves it until the very last moment to resolve her indecision.
CREDITS Director/Writer Rakhshan Bani-Etemad خشان بنیاعتماد; Cinematographer Hossein Jafarian حسین جعفریان; Starring Minoo Farshchi مینو فرشچی; Length 88 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), London, Thursday 12 January 2017.
I guess there are elements here that seem dated (spoken word clubs, some of the fashion, no one having cell phones) but they’re part of a rich texture that evokes an era and a place and a group of people—which is to say, Chicago in the late-1990s. Twenty years on and this film is excellent at giving a sense of this group of friends and acquaintances, and what it’s like to be around them. As the film progresses, so from out of the group emerge the two protagonists, Darius and Nina (played by Larenz Tate and Nia Long), who fall in love, sort of, then actually, then not so much. It creates a bewitching atmosphere, never needy and boisterous (like, say, the more overtly comedic The Best Man a couple years later), and never reliant on the ubiquitous 1990s tropes of black filmmaking (drugs, violence, ghettoes). As the star of both those films Nia Long should have been everywhere (maybe she was; her career is a blind spot for me and I need to remedy that), and this director should have defined romance in film for the following decade, but that didn’t happen and who knows why. This is great.
CREDITS Director/Writer Theodore Witcher; Cinematographer Ernest Holzman; Starring Larenz Tate, Nia Long; Length 108 minutes. Seen at home (DVD), London, Tuesday 10 January 2017.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Danish cinematic bad boy Lars von Trier, but this, his first feature film, is certainly made with a fair amount of energy and a bold (if dark) cinematic vision, taking its apparent cue from film noir thrillers, not to mention recycling some of Tarkovksy’s imagery. Stylistically, though, my overall feeling is that it’s more akin to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil of the following year, with all those fussy, busy details in all corners of the frame. The plot is in a sense fairly straightforward, as Detective Fisher (gruff-voiced Michael Elphick) is tracking down a serial killer using the methods of his mentor Osborne (Esmond Knight), in which he is aided by prostitute Kim (Meme Lai).
Yet this plot is nested within layers of memory and obfuscation, attaining something of a dream-like trance state, emphasised by the line delivery of the actors, who move around almost as if underwater. The chief cue to this altered consciousness is the visual style, which is almost monochrome in its (usually red-tinged) intensity, like something Guy Maddin might make, tipping its hat at one level to silent film, but creating its own world of grainy distanciation—the characters may not actually be underwater, but they are certainly submerged in this grimy dark monochrome world. I can’t say it ever really coheres for me (and Meme Lai’s role requires little more than that she hang around and take off her clothes occasionally, though it’s a small part in any case), but there’s plenty here of interest to those who like an arty thriller with pretensions.
CRITERION EXTRAS:
Aside from the trailer, the main extra of interest is the medium-length documentary Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars von Trier (1997), directed by Stig Björkman (with help from Fredrik von Krusenstjerna), filmed around the time of von Trier’s The Kingdom (1994) and Breaking the Waves (1996). It’s rather an amusing jaunt through (von) Trier’s life from his upbringing by lefty liberal parents to his early schoolboy filmmaking attempts, through film school and his early film work, along the way self-aggrandisingly awarding himself the aristocratic ‘von’. The film features behind the scenes footage of his directing the two films (which has its own fascination), as well as talking head interviews with his colleagues and actors (and it’s particularly nice to see Katrin Cartlidge, who sadly died far too young), giving an impression of him as a man with plenty of phobias and quirks such that it’s surprising he can get any films made at all. Von Trier pops up periodically to talk us through his life and foibles, and there’s a warmth to the film’s portrait of him, so he never comes off too badly, beyond what he says about himself.
CREDITS Director Lars von Trier; Writers von Trier and Niels Vørsel; Cinematographer Tom Elling; Starring Michael Elphick, Esmond Knight, Meme Lai, Jerold Wells; Length 103 minutes. Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 14 February 2016.
filmcentric 