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After two weeks of never quite getting round to it, I finally got around to seeing Persepolis last night and I’m glad I made the effort. Ok, it wasn’t much of an effort, a fifteen minute walk to the cinema, but you know what I mean. I’m quite aware of the fact that haven’t seen enough new films this year – I blame The Wire, which has occupied most of my free time for the past two months – but this brilliant little animated film has renewed my interest in getting out there and trying new things again.
Based on Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel of the same name, Persepolis is essentially the coming of age story of a young girl in Iran, before, during and after the 1979 Islamic revolution. The film is told from the point of view of Marjane, who was around ten years old at the time of the revolution, and so reflects on the situation from a child’s perspective, and the child of a reasonably affluent communist family in Tehran at that. Marjane’s uncle Anouche, a recently freed communist activist, is effectively Marjane’s most influential history teacher, too, so those looking for the other sides of the political argument will not find them covered equally here. As I said, it’s a coming of age story with a side order of politics, not a political essay. And it’s all the better for it.
After the revolution, with Iran embroiled in a devastating war against Iraq – you know, the one we supplied the weapons for – Marjane is sent abroad to Austria to attend school by her parents. The film follows her experiences there, as she gradually loses touch with her homeland and struggles with her identity, trying, with limited success, to integrate herself into Austrian society. This segment of the film offers a pleasantly distracting comedic element (the Viennese anarcho-punk scene, a string of useless boyfriends) but there are also poignant scenes as the European experience turns sour for the teenage Marjane. Crushed by a series of unfortunate events, she heads back to the now very different Islamic Republic of Iran to attend college and, eventually, to undergo a political re-awakening that will see her return to Europe once and for all.
While sarcasm, humour, and politics are never far away, it is the strength of its supporting characters and the depth of their relationships that makes Persepolis great. Key to the film’s success is Marjane’s bond with her grandmother, a charismatic, wise and above all loving lady whose words of wisdom (”the first marriage is only practice for the second one”) are matched only by her beauty tips – I certainly wasn’t aware of the cosmetic powers of a bowl of cold water. (Watch the film, you’ll see what I mean).
While others might disagree, I also felt that the film’s handling of the revolution – i.e. its one-sided, childlike portrayal – worked surprisingly well. Refreshingly free of preaching, Persepolis has encouraged me to go and learn more about pre-revolution life in Iran under the Shah and the revolution itself. It’s prompted me to think, rather than telling me what to think, and that distinction is important.
Still, even if you have no interest in Iran or politics whatsoever, Persepolis a great film and, as much as I enjoyed Ratatouille, I think this would have been a worthy winner of last year’s Best Animated Feature Film Oscar. Then again, I suppose it’s a minor miracle that a French film about an Iranian girl even got nominated in a major category.
From Rear Window to Rushmore, Citizen Kane to Amélie, obsession is a perennial favourite in modern cinema.
Michel Spinosa’s Anna M. tackles the theme through the eyes of an unhinged female stalker and the result is a chilling psychological drama. Think of it as a better, artier take on Fatal Attraction.
Isabelle Carré stars as Anna, a slightly odd, detached young woman who works at the National Library in Paris and lives with her equally troubled mother. After deliberately walking into the path of a speeding motor vehicle, Anna finds herself in hospital where she develops what at first seems like an innocent crush on the surgeon responsible for fixing her shattered femur, Dr Zanevsky (Gilbert Melki). Of course, Spinosa’s film is about obsession and over the course of the next 90 minutes we see Anna take the art of stalking to a whole new level. It’s an uncomfortable journey, as those containing casual sex, masturbation, late night phone calls, vandalism and reckless endangerment of children tend to be, and by the end I was so unsettled by Carré’s character that I found it genuinely difficult to praise her outstanding performance.
Anna M. is not without its share of flaws – a few stretched plot devices (the slightly cavalier attitude of the locksmith had me scratching my head with frustration) detracted from the tension somewhat and the dream sequence ending seemed like a bit of a cop out – but ultimately I found it to be a rewarding piece of cinema. Spinosa is no Michael Haneke (whose Caché, incidentally, is probably the last great stalker film) but he’s certainly a name to watch. (7)
As predicted, it seems that I’ve fallen a little bit behind in my quest to comment on every new film I see. My excuse? Well, it’s a combination of the usual culprits – laziness and poor time management. And I should probably include spending too much time watching films while I’m at it. I haven’t got the time to compose inspirational critiques on all of these movies but I’m going to have a stab at condensing my feelings into a couple of lines for each. If nothing else this will give me a record of what I’ve seen in the past month.
Atonement (Dir: Joe Wright)
In a nutshell, this adaptation of Ian McEwan’s book is a tragic love story set against the backdrop of WWII. I imagine quite a lot of critics and viewers would add a clichéd “but it’s so much more” to that description. I’d rather not. While the Dunkirk scenes are brilliantly filmed, the second half of Atonement is far too long for its own good and after twitching in my seat for half an hour thinking “when will it end?” I felt somewhat cheated by the ultimately predictable climax. (A fairly lukewarm 6)
Joy Division (Dir: Grant Gee)
Written by journalist Jon Savage and directed by that guy who did the Radiohead film, Joy Division is an exhilarating and entertaining look back at late 70s / early 80s Manchester and the defining local band of the era. The talking heads involved are generally worth listening to (Hooky in particular offers some interesting insights) and the live footage, though of varying quality, is fantastic. As a fan (rather than a fanatic) I certainly hadn’t seen most of this and I was pleasantly surprised by how visceral and raw Joy Division were in the live arena. In the pre-film Q&A session Hooky described Joy Division as an answer to the questions posed in Control. I think that sums it up pretty well. I’d recommend this to anyone interested in Manchester or even British music in general. (9)
Elizabeth (Dir: Shekhar Kapur)
Not the best. Some have criticised this film for its historical inaccuracies – fair enough, I remember covering the Elizabethan period about fourteen years ago in a first form history class and it certainly didn’t quite go like this – but that’s a minor point. Of far greater concern to me is that fact that nothing really happens. Except some wooden acting from Clive Owen and a somewhat warped portrayal of the Spanish Armada, which I admit is shot pretty well but bears no real resemblance to fact. Yes, Cate Blanchett is pretty good but isn’t she always? If you want to feel bored, patronised and particularly if you fancy a good laugh at Clive Owen then go and see Elizabeth. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. (3)
Death at a Funeral (Dir: Frank Oz)
Who could imagined that the man best known as Yoda would create one of the comedies of the year? My expectations for this Brit-com were fairly low, I must admit, but the lively script and its frequent flirtations with bad taste really won me over. There are multiple coffin jokes for God’s sake and unlike many most contemporary comedies, Death… doesn’t veer too far into sickly sweet territory at the end. The stiff and lifeless Run, Fatboy, Run, for example, looks somewhat ghostly pale in comparison. (8)
For all his editing tricks and gimmicky tactics, Michael Moore certainly knows how to make an entertaining documentary. Sicko takes a long hard look (through Moore’s tinted glasses) at the American health service, focussing particularly on the care that those with health insurance receive. The examples he uses to illustrate his points are typically shocking and certainly effective. In the first hour Moore delivers tears, corruption, CEOs on seven figure salaries and, of course, a deluge of George W. Bush gaffes – it’s very much a case of so far, so good.
The second half of the film sees the globe-trotting Moore examining health care abroad, primarily as a tool to support his own clear beliefs that USA should pursue a system of free universal health care. The idea is very much “look how much fairer the health service is in that country”, and as Moore visits France, Cuba, Canada and Britain it’s hard not to feel the facts are being twisted somewhat. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m as proud of the NHS as the next man, but the scenes that take place in a London hospital give the impression of a flawless, perfectly oiled machine. Anyone who’s worked in the system will understand that this isn’t quite the case. It might not be convenient for Moore’s polemic, but inequality in healthcare is very much alive and kicking here in Britain (as I’m sure it is to varying degrees in the other countries he chose to visit).
Rather than trot out the same argument over and over, I’d have liked to see Moore’s film delve deeper into different health specific problems – Sicko focuses on profit hungry HMOs but what about the pharmaceutical industry? Surely its deviant practices were worth 20 minutes of screen time? Wouldn’t this have been more relevant than parking a boat outside Guantanamo Bay and demanding free healthcare over a megaphone? But that’s Michael Moore for you: he prefers the grand gesture to the hard fact, the manipulated sob story to the honest account. This is why, ultimately, even if you agree with his arguments, it’s often difficult to agree with his methods of presenting them. (7, for entertainment)
One day a young pregnant girl presents in extremis to a London hospital. After she dies during the delivery, Anna (Naomi Watts), a naive, half-Russian local midwife, is left holding an orphaned baby and the mother’s diary and so begins her quest to find out more. Inadvertently, she bites off far more than she can chew, stumbling blindly into the HQ of one of London’s most notorious Russian crime syndicates. Here she encounters Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen, trading Elvish for Russian with much success), a sinister looking driver/undertaker/ambitious criminal and the plot thickens, with many of the usual Cronenberg twists and turns.
In a similar vein to Stephen Frear’s Dirty Pretty Things, Cronenberg’s film offers a dark and uncompromising glimpse into London’s seedy underworld. It might not make for comfortable viewing, but this is certainly one of the year’s stronger thrillers. (8)
Well here’s one I didn’t think I’d be writing about. I’m normally immune to Pixar’s small, furry digital creations – and I skipped their last two major offerings The Incredibles and Cars altogether – but in Ratatouille I’m afraid they have struck upon an unlikely source of gold. The story focuses on Remy, a gastronomy-obsessed rat who longs to escape his mundane existence as, well, a normal rat. After becoming separated from his family – a favoured device of the animated film – Remy finds himself in the restaurant of his idol and before you know it he’s got his grubby little paws in the soup.
Striking up an improbable partnership with kitchen assistant Linguini, Remy realises his dream of being a top chef but soon realises that this not come without its dilemmas. Linguini, too, has his own story arc, and the additional supporting characters have more depth than in the majority of modern animations. The strongest – and funniest – of these has to be the miserly food critic, Anton Ego, voiced superbly by a rejuvenated Peter O’Toole. I could pick more, too, and this is a testament to Ratatouille’s superiority over, say, Finding Nemo – I challenge anyone over the age of sixteen to remember anyone other than Nemo from that movie.
The story is certainly predictable – cut away the culinary theme and Ratatouille essentially follows the same coming of age story arc as countless other animated (and non-animated) tales – but its writers clearly understand this and, smartly, they’ve included enough lines of sharp dialogue and plenty of adult-level references to distract the more mature viewer from thinking about this too much. And it obviously works; I laughed lots and walked out of the screening without so much as a grumble or a complaint. And I dislike rats nearly as much as I dislike Disney. (8)
It’s been nearly two weeks since I saw Control and since walking out of that sombre, Sunday afternoon screening I’ve read Deborah Curtis’ book Touching From A Distance (a source for much of the film’s narrative), a handful of reviews, and listened to Unknown Pleasures a number of times. So I guess it left an impression.
I hadn’t read much about Anton Corbijn’s picture prior to seeing it; I guess knowing the story I didn’t feel I needed to. For some reason I expected a sensational retelling of the Joy Division story, something to add further fuel to the myth. Control
achieves the complete opposite, though, completing demystifying its subject, portraying Curtis as a talented young man, struggling to come terms with adult responsibilities, newly-diagnosed epilepsy and fame.
For understandable reasons, while Deborah Curtis interviewed most of the key players for her book, she did not interview Ian’s Belgian mistress Annik Honoré. This leaves a tangible gap in the storyline. By contacting Honoré, and taking into account her version of events, Control manages to plug some of this gap. This must have been an incredibly difficult task, requiring both sensitivity and single-mindedness. There’s no pressure to pick sides as viewer, and this is one of Control’s key successes.
Aside from condensing some of the facts and, it has to be said, portraying the medical profession as a particularly uninterested and unsympathetic bunch, Control is a great film, brilliantly acted and beautifully shot in black and white. Arguably the finest music film of the decade. (9)
If you’ve seen a Wes Anderson film (or any other film that kind of wants to be a Wes Anderson film) then Rocket Science is unlikely to surprise you. First of all, the content is way too familiar. It’s got the obligatory dysfunctional family (see every Anderson film, Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, even Little Miss Sunshine), a cast of quirky supporting characters, and it’s set in a high school. Add in an unlikely hero (the stuttering geek, Hal Hefner, played superbly by Reece Thompson) and a wacky soundtrack and this could be Rushmore. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly as much fun.
The fact that Jeffrey Blitz won a directing award at Sundance for this formulaic piece makes me wonder if the panellists up there are issued with marking schemes upon arrival. It’s not that it’s terrible – there are a few sharp lines of dialogue and admittedly some laughs to be had – but ultimately Rocket Science just isn’t as good as it thinks it is. Save your money and go and see Anderson’s new one instead. (5)
Tarantino’s contribution to Grindhouse has finally arrived in the UK, albeit it without its companion piece, Robert Rodriguez’ Planet Terror. I had the pleasure of seeing it in a half empty cinema last night and after nearly two hours of fast cars, girls and gore, I’m kind of glad the distributors decided to break up the Grindhouse package. Not because I don’t like fast cars, girls and gore but because I don’t have the attention span to sit through four hours plus of plot-lite, reference-heavy cinema.
I’d love to see Tarantino challenge himself, to move out of his post-Pulp Fiction comfort zone and stop recreating his film collection but as far as nostalgia trips go Death Proof is undeniably great fun. The car chase segments in the final third are particularly electrifying, and while the typically verbose dialogue has a tendency to grate on occasion, the film is ultimately an enjoyable ride. I’m tempted to award a bonus mark for Kurt Russell’s performance as Stuntman Mike, too. After twenty six years we finally have proof that Snake Plissken wasn’t a fluke. (8)
