I assumed that Oliver Stone would engage in much speculation about George W. Bush in W. his portrait of the President. I was indeed looking forward to them as no one else really goes where Stone goes when he decides to chance his arm with a portrait of the well-known. Since the middle of 1999 when it became clear that Bush would be the Republican candidate, throughout the rest of that year as Al Gore crashed and burned, then as Republican judicial appointees contrived to award him the verdict notwithstanding the popular vote nor the obvious intent of the citizens of Florida, I’ve cordially despised the 43rd President of the United States and nothing he did in his Presidency eviced an iota of sympathy for him. This even manifested itself in my participating in marches for the first time in decades when he took the US and its acolyte John Howard’s Australia off to a foolhardy and vainglorious war. I settled in to Stone’s speculations and representations very comfortably.
Do we otherwise know that Colin Powell snaped back at Dick Cheney along the lines “Don’t talk to me like that Mr Five Deferments”. If it never happened then we have to be grateful to Stone for creating the legend. There are similarly brilliant moments scattered throughout. When Richard Dreyfuss’s marvellously reedy rendition of Dick Cheney launches into a tirade of choked up vengeance, a presentation that reeks of homage to Dr Strangelove, in which he proposes how America will use the Iraq war to solve its long term energy supply problems, you get a mesmerising glimpse of pure evil. It may be satirical but you believe every second of it, especially the contempt and the malice that lurk therein. When George W. goes to bed and dreams of his father provoking him into an Oval Office fist fight you get an an Oliver Stone piledriver image of the weak bastard who spent his life pissed off that his father doesn’t like or admire him.
(It’s mildly amusing that Stone adopts an almost hagiographical stance about Bush Sr, a nondescript President that no one recalls with any warmth and one who was belted by Bill Clinton in the only real contest he ever fought. )
There are other incidental pleasures as well and no doubt more than a few conform with other long held prejudices. Thandie Newton plays Condoleeza Rice as the befuddled intellectually inadequate loyalist she undoubtedly is. Toby Jones, last seen playing the odious Swifty Lazar in Frost/Nixon plays Karl Rove as the smartest kid on the block, the only one of the male entourage to actually like Bush the man and the one who can see the political potential for someone with an extraordinary y and probably unique mix of laziness, street smarts, smooth talk, ambition, hatred, envy, fear of failure and a knowledge that any inadequacy can be overcome by hard work when it matters. Stone evinces sympathy when he focuses on Bush’s legendary fitness campaign, his three miles a day, probably the only thing that stood between him and complete disintegration in the face of disaster all round. Without it he may well have lapsed back to drinking or worse just as Nixon did in his dark days.
Josh Brolin’s performance seems note perfect. If you want to see Bush portrayed as the man out of his depth, here’s the opportunity. Maybe the Academy was too frightened to even contemplate nominating Brolin for his work. When you consider that the contest for best actor came down to a couple of actors working on our nostalgia quotient in different ways you can see why. Maybe, in the way of these things he’ll get something for something less worthy at some other, safer time.
So, what’s the best film of the moment with all these Oscar nominees and Berlin launches floating round the multiplexes. I surprise even myself by saying that its Oliver Stone’s W.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Screened Out
I have been musing away reading the the obituaries for Harold Pinter which have concentrated almost exclusively on his contribution to the theatre. A single para, even a mere few words, were generally all that his substantial contribution to the cinema apparently warranted.
There were however a number of fine film adaptations of his work that ultimately via TV and now DVD would have probably have been seen by many more people than ever attended a production of his work. But there they lie, almost completely ignored, filmed adaptations, mostly of the early plays to add to a long string of script credits including most especially a fruitful series of collaborations with Joseph Losey that, in the 60s and 70s substantially enhanced the reputations of both the writer and the director.
Losey’s career was merely muddling along before the collaboration started. He was making mostly low budget films in Britain where and when he could. He had just made perhaps his greatest film, The Criminal at the very low rent Merton Park Studios. The Damned (1962) had been made for Hammer Studios. Blind Date (1959) was a low budget detective story and Eva (1962) despite its big budget, was an international disaster. They were however, films which addressed some tough issues and attracted some positive reviews as well as high quality actors and writers into the director’s orbit. Notwithstanding that, none of those films were box office successes. Yet somehow or other the money for The Servant (1963) was conjured up by producer Norman Priggen. Losey, Pinter and Dirk Bogarde then combined to make an off beat, baroque, and highly erotic movie from Robin Maugham’s very short novella and together, with gusto, they peeled back the skin of the British class system to do some revelling in personal weakness and corruption. It was a breakthrough work for all three and their films both together and separately, were treated very differently following its success
The three collaborated again in 1967 with Accident, an adaptation of LP Hartley’s solid British novel and Pinter adapted Hartley again for Losey's The Go Between a Cannes prize-winner in 1970 and a huge success around the world. One amazingly ambitious project never came to pass, an adaptation of Proust’s Remembrance of Thing’s Past, though Pinter’s six hour script was apparently once performed or read at the National Theatre in London.
Beyond these highlights Pinter seemed ever ready to do adaptations of just about anything. He ranged from domestic dramas to a common or garden spy story and in each, the so-called Pinteresque dialogue which the obituaries have laboured over, was always somewhere present. Alec Guinness proved particularly adroit at delivering those short, clipped lines and pregnant pauses for the otherwise unremarkable The Quiller Memorandum (Adam Hall/Michael Anderson, 1966).
The range of this element of his work is noteworthy and most authors were well-served by Pinter’s transformations. His filmed scripts included The Pumpkin Eater (Penelope Mortimer/Jack Clayton, 1964), The Last Tycoon (F. Scott Fitzgerald/Elia Kazan (1976), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (John Fowles/Karel Reisz, 1981), Turtle Diary (Russell Hoban/John Irvin, 1985), Reunion (Fred Uhlman/Jerry Schatzberg, 1989), The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwod/Volker Schlondorff, 1990), The Comfort of Strangers (Ian McEwan/Paul Schrader, 1990) and the remake of Sleuth (Peter Shaffer/?, 2007)
Pinter also directed a film adaptation of Simon Gray’s Butley done as part of the American Film Theatre series of film versions of modern drama in 1974. Pinter’s own The Homecoming was also done as a part of this series by Tony Richardson. He also directed several TV films.
The film adaptations of Pinter’s plays were all high quality movies though none were very successful with filmgoers. They began with Clive Donner’s version of The Caretaker (1963) and this was quickly followed by William Friedkin’s version of The Birthday Party (1965).
Pinter also seemed to enjoy the social life of making movies and appeared in quite a few small roles including in both The Servant and Accident. He had a very funny part as Uncle Benny in John Boorman’s Le Carre adaptation The Tailor of Panama (2001) and small roles in movies as oddly diverse as Mansfield Park (Patricia Rozema, 1999), The Tamarind Seed (Blake Edwards, 1974) and The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (Kevin Billington,1970).
A couple of years ago a major season of Pinter’s work for the cinema was presented in New York. It was a rare tribute for a writer in the director or thematically-oriented world of film cultural programming. Pinter was a most deserving case for such attention. As a writer of original scripts, adaptations of his own and other work, most notably modern British writers, as a director and even as an actor his contribution was unique. His work in film was in many ways a seamless continuation of his original work for the theatre which is the basis of what will be an enduring reputation and it shouldn’t be near completely overlooked in any assessment of the man’s life and work.
There have been a huge number of TV adaptations done of his own plays in all parts of the world and as well there have been a seemingly limitless number of profiles, interviews, reviews, discussions and colloquia devoted to his work. He seemed to freely participate in all of these, perhaps mindful that the theatre is a public art and relies on the electronic media for endless amounts of publicity. But he was much more than a practitioner of the high art of the theatre and there are instant reminders of his work everywhere. He took on with great gusto the duties of the artist to discuss, expose, crusade, engage and enrage. If you want a quick reminder you can find it on the shelves where The Servant, Accident, The Go Between, The Comfort of Strangers and The Last Tycoon are freely there for all to see. Maybe soon someone will add The Pumpkin Eater and Jerry Schatzberg's very under-rated Reunion to that list to serve as further reminders that Pinter practiced a craft within the film industry as well as the art of the theatre.
There were however a number of fine film adaptations of his work that ultimately via TV and now DVD would have probably have been seen by many more people than ever attended a production of his work. But there they lie, almost completely ignored, filmed adaptations, mostly of the early plays to add to a long string of script credits including most especially a fruitful series of collaborations with Joseph Losey that, in the 60s and 70s substantially enhanced the reputations of both the writer and the director.
Losey’s career was merely muddling along before the collaboration started. He was making mostly low budget films in Britain where and when he could. He had just made perhaps his greatest film, The Criminal at the very low rent Merton Park Studios. The Damned (1962) had been made for Hammer Studios. Blind Date (1959) was a low budget detective story and Eva (1962) despite its big budget, was an international disaster. They were however, films which addressed some tough issues and attracted some positive reviews as well as high quality actors and writers into the director’s orbit. Notwithstanding that, none of those films were box office successes. Yet somehow or other the money for The Servant (1963) was conjured up by producer Norman Priggen. Losey, Pinter and Dirk Bogarde then combined to make an off beat, baroque, and highly erotic movie from Robin Maugham’s very short novella and together, with gusto, they peeled back the skin of the British class system to do some revelling in personal weakness and corruption. It was a breakthrough work for all three and their films both together and separately, were treated very differently following its success
The three collaborated again in 1967 with Accident, an adaptation of LP Hartley’s solid British novel and Pinter adapted Hartley again for Losey's The Go Between a Cannes prize-winner in 1970 and a huge success around the world. One amazingly ambitious project never came to pass, an adaptation of Proust’s Remembrance of Thing’s Past, though Pinter’s six hour script was apparently once performed or read at the National Theatre in London.
Beyond these highlights Pinter seemed ever ready to do adaptations of just about anything. He ranged from domestic dramas to a common or garden spy story and in each, the so-called Pinteresque dialogue which the obituaries have laboured over, was always somewhere present. Alec Guinness proved particularly adroit at delivering those short, clipped lines and pregnant pauses for the otherwise unremarkable The Quiller Memorandum (Adam Hall/Michael Anderson, 1966).
The range of this element of his work is noteworthy and most authors were well-served by Pinter’s transformations. His filmed scripts included The Pumpkin Eater (Penelope Mortimer/Jack Clayton, 1964), The Last Tycoon (F. Scott Fitzgerald/Elia Kazan (1976), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (John Fowles/Karel Reisz, 1981), Turtle Diary (Russell Hoban/John Irvin, 1985), Reunion (Fred Uhlman/Jerry Schatzberg, 1989), The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwod/Volker Schlondorff, 1990), The Comfort of Strangers (Ian McEwan/Paul Schrader, 1990) and the remake of Sleuth (Peter Shaffer/?, 2007)
Pinter also directed a film adaptation of Simon Gray’s Butley done as part of the American Film Theatre series of film versions of modern drama in 1974. Pinter’s own The Homecoming was also done as a part of this series by Tony Richardson. He also directed several TV films.
The film adaptations of Pinter’s plays were all high quality movies though none were very successful with filmgoers. They began with Clive Donner’s version of The Caretaker (1963) and this was quickly followed by William Friedkin’s version of The Birthday Party (1965).
Pinter also seemed to enjoy the social life of making movies and appeared in quite a few small roles including in both The Servant and Accident. He had a very funny part as Uncle Benny in John Boorman’s Le Carre adaptation The Tailor of Panama (2001) and small roles in movies as oddly diverse as Mansfield Park (Patricia Rozema, 1999), The Tamarind Seed (Blake Edwards, 1974) and The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (Kevin Billington,1970).
A couple of years ago a major season of Pinter’s work for the cinema was presented in New York. It was a rare tribute for a writer in the director or thematically-oriented world of film cultural programming. Pinter was a most deserving case for such attention. As a writer of original scripts, adaptations of his own and other work, most notably modern British writers, as a director and even as an actor his contribution was unique. His work in film was in many ways a seamless continuation of his original work for the theatre which is the basis of what will be an enduring reputation and it shouldn’t be near completely overlooked in any assessment of the man’s life and work.
There have been a huge number of TV adaptations done of his own plays in all parts of the world and as well there have been a seemingly limitless number of profiles, interviews, reviews, discussions and colloquia devoted to his work. He seemed to freely participate in all of these, perhaps mindful that the theatre is a public art and relies on the electronic media for endless amounts of publicity. But he was much more than a practitioner of the high art of the theatre and there are instant reminders of his work everywhere. He took on with great gusto the duties of the artist to discuss, expose, crusade, engage and enrage. If you want a quick reminder you can find it on the shelves where The Servant, Accident, The Go Between, The Comfort of Strangers and The Last Tycoon are freely there for all to see. Maybe soon someone will add The Pumpkin Eater and Jerry Schatzberg's very under-rated Reunion to that list to serve as further reminders that Pinter practiced a craft within the film industry as well as the art of the theatre.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
An update on the history of magic
James Galea bounds out onto the stage of the Sydney Theatre after the screen behind him has run what amounts to an ad for his brilliance. We shall see. One of the endorsements was from one of the tastemakers on The Footy Show. He soon has the audience involved via a trick where everyone has to clasp their hands together and then get their thumbs pointing back upright the way he demonstrates. Nobody knows how. Then he’s prowling along the front row asking for thoughts as to what a magic show might contain. He asks a guy in the middle of the front row to hold a post parcel box on his knees. Finally we get ‘rabbits’ and he launches a rant that there wont be any in his act. His show is called "I Hate Rabbits" and a rabbit with a red line through it is part of the back projection. He’s still prowling, asking people would they like to double their money and he hits on an audience member who says he has a $50 bill in his pocket.
It’s moi!
I’m up on stage and James gets me to write my name with a big felt pen and put a secret sign on the note. Suddenly he folds it and folds it and folds it and then it’s gone. He produces something and unfolds it. A $5 bill. He takes my watch off me and drops it into a bag which has two slits. Suddenly he flaps the bag and the watch is gone and I’m asked to take my seat. No point in arguing.
James is a card prestidigitator without peer. He dazzles us with tricks involving a card which keeps returning from impossible places, especially his back pocket. The tricks are so delicate that most of the audience have to watch them on the big screen behind him. He plays a pea and thimble game with amazing dexterity. If you counter-intuit you can win on your guesses but the sleight of hand is remarkable. He brings up another audience member and guesses a word she has chosen from three books he offered her and he brings up another to do an elaborate trick with an upside down bottle inside a tube. This audience dummy takes so long to follow instructions the impact is lost.
Then it’s back to me. I’m again on stage as he stands in front of stand containing a towel and an orange. I suspect nothing and he slices open the orange to produce my signed $50 bill, dripping with juice. He wipes it down with the towel and throws the towel away. I was going to borrow it to mop sweat from my brow but he beat me to the punch. No one wants scene stealers. I then have to retrieve the box from the lap of the punter in the first row. He cuts the sticky tape off the box and produces another box. I’m invited to remove the bow and the wrapping paper. Inside the box is a brown wooden box and inside that box is a can of Heinz tomato puree. He opens the can with a can opener and out pops my watch. Or so I and the audience believe. Its high fives all round between us and he whispers “thanks mate, you were good”. Much better than the time on the boat on the river in Shanghai, I think.
He makes a woman’s wedding ring disappear and turn up on his own key chain buried deep in his pocket. Finally, there’s time for another incredibly elaborate card trick which involves him memorising the entire order of the pack and then some, the pack then being cut several times by strangers.
Then it’s over. The exhilaration of the hour long show is extraordinary. James high fives his assistant as he exits the stage. He’s happy and so were we.
It’s moi!
I’m up on stage and James gets me to write my name with a big felt pen and put a secret sign on the note. Suddenly he folds it and folds it and folds it and then it’s gone. He produces something and unfolds it. A $5 bill. He takes my watch off me and drops it into a bag which has two slits. Suddenly he flaps the bag and the watch is gone and I’m asked to take my seat. No point in arguing.
James is a card prestidigitator without peer. He dazzles us with tricks involving a card which keeps returning from impossible places, especially his back pocket. The tricks are so delicate that most of the audience have to watch them on the big screen behind him. He plays a pea and thimble game with amazing dexterity. If you counter-intuit you can win on your guesses but the sleight of hand is remarkable. He brings up another audience member and guesses a word she has chosen from three books he offered her and he brings up another to do an elaborate trick with an upside down bottle inside a tube. This audience dummy takes so long to follow instructions the impact is lost.
Then it’s back to me. I’m again on stage as he stands in front of stand containing a towel and an orange. I suspect nothing and he slices open the orange to produce my signed $50 bill, dripping with juice. He wipes it down with the towel and throws the towel away. I was going to borrow it to mop sweat from my brow but he beat me to the punch. No one wants scene stealers. I then have to retrieve the box from the lap of the punter in the first row. He cuts the sticky tape off the box and produces another box. I’m invited to remove the bow and the wrapping paper. Inside the box is a brown wooden box and inside that box is a can of Heinz tomato puree. He opens the can with a can opener and out pops my watch. Or so I and the audience believe. Its high fives all round between us and he whispers “thanks mate, you were good”. Much better than the time on the boat on the river in Shanghai, I think.
He makes a woman’s wedding ring disappear and turn up on his own key chain buried deep in his pocket. Finally, there’s time for another incredibly elaborate card trick which involves him memorising the entire order of the pack and then some, the pack then being cut several times by strangers.
Then it’s over. The exhilaration of the hour long show is extraordinary. James high fives his assistant as he exits the stage. He’s happy and so were we.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Australia Fair
First I have some questions about well, an amazing movie. Clunky start, finish like some old time John Ford picture. Only Baz does close-ups as big as those or does someone else? Did Mandy Walker also photograph Tracey Moffat's Bedevil? Some of the shots look the same, particularly the studio interiors. David Wenham doing his whining act would be good if he hadn't done it before most notably in that movie where he appears as a witness at a Royal Commission. No chemistry between Hugh and Nick. Nick starting to look old but trying to hide it. Was all the stuff about Aborigines being warned that the film refers to dead people and the roller title at beginning and end about the stolen generations in the version the Oz critics saw? Are Aborigines now requiring that a fictional film referring to dead non-existent Aborigines requires a warning? Must ask Bordwell what his shot clock comes up with for average length of shot. 2.7 million feet of film and according to an ad in Inside film never less than six cameras running. Really?
"That was good" said an old lady nearby. "Not them again" said another old dear when we held the script about the The Stolen Generations for a moment. Interesting demographic emerging. Is it people closer to forty than twenty who will go to it. If so it defies all box office activity these days. Was there a scene with a pedophile priest shot or contemplated.
He's never dull but Snowy River made me more tearful, and was probably about as manipulative.
"That was good" said an old lady nearby. "Not them again" said another old dear when we held the script about the The Stolen Generations for a moment. Interesting demographic emerging. Is it people closer to forty than twenty who will go to it. If so it defies all box office activity these days. Was there a scene with a pedophile priest shot or contemplated.
He's never dull but Snowy River made me more tearful, and was probably about as manipulative.
Ageless
Tucked away at the Chauvel is Youth Without Youth, the first film by Frances Ford Coppola for over a decade. It brings him full circle. His first official film the no-budget horror flick Dementia 13 was also barely in the public gaze, or at least the critical gaze. Yet I found it quite remarkable, the only film all year with enough plot and mystery and intrigue and ideas to make me want to see it again as soon as possible. The great man is so far out of the loop these days that he’s getting his money from smallish French and Italian producers and distributors, shooting in cheap foreign locations and minimising costs by film on HD. It might have been sad indeed, as such circumstances have been for many as they attempted to keep going in the face of general indifference. But Coppola’s rigorous methods and intelligence are on full show. Coppola has adapted a story, or is it a novel, by a Rumanian writer Mircea Eliade. The book was given to him by an old friend, a linguistics professor at the University of Chicago. I think the story posits the idea of a man who at the moment of his death is hurled back in time to relive the events of his life. This gives him an opportunity to be somewhat reflexive, and reflective, about things and he conducts his life again through a conversation with an all-knowing double. Coppola films it with a classical camera style. There are according to the director, only two occasions when the camera moves. The energy is generated in the editing and staging and not by an application of the current fad for unruly hand-held camerawork. Youth Without Youth wasn’t something I expected and it turned out to be the most involving experience I’ve sat through in a long time.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Phenomenal
Not having seen Australia I am at a disadvantage to thousands of others who have been herded into previews and advance screenings. I am aware however of two interesting emerging phenomena. The film seems to have been summed up in five critical words; “good but not great” and “long”. The most interesting response was in, of all places, R. Murdoch’s very own Sunday Telegraph. I read the piece by a young woman columnist sitting in a café at Berry. I expected to find it online but its not there so I cant tell you her name and my recall wont necessarily be perfect. This is what I took to be the gravamen of the piece from less than perfect memory. 1. Baz wanted to make a film about aboriginal dispossession. 2. This is a no-no. It would be regarded as dark and depressing (note those words) so to do. 3. That story has already been told anyway and no one went to see it. It was called Rabbit Proof Fence. 4. Baz thus made a love story involving whitefellas from different classes and embedded within his story set in the outback the 'real' story. 5. The ‘real’ central character is the young Aboriginal who goes through all the horrors that whitefellas have inflicted on blackfellas over a couple of hundred years. 6. Baz’s minders did not want journalists to ask Baz questions about this element of the subject for fear it might turn the punters off. There was a lot more including digs at the campus post-modernists and how they say you can tell stories. That I thought was interesting and I’ll take it with me into the movie.
The second interesting phenomenon is more to be expected. The opportunity has been taken to hop into the rest of the recent, i.e, the last decade or so, Australian film production and, in passing, attack David Stratton for being too generous towards Oyster Farmer in particular and other unspecified films in general. That Oyster Famer review seems to have assumed the status of the single defining event that caused Australian audiences to turn off going to Australian films. The latest right wing mavens to take up this challenge, after Michael Duffy and that ratbag Andrew Bolt (as my late dad always referred to him), were Greg Sheridan in his secondary guise as editorialist on The Australian and the ludicrous Miranda Devine. I say only one thing. The fact that they all obsessively return to this minor matter, scatering their vitriol and insults along the way is amazing to behold. Sheridan insults the intelligence further by gratuitously slagging off Ivan Sen’s wonderful and prize-winning Beneath Clouds as well. I was always convinced that John Howard's press office ke[t an eye on Stratton's opinions. A ;little too pinko for their taste and when the opportunity presented itself Sheridan stuck the boot in. It seems that the demise of the Howard office with its endlessly updated clipping service for selected warriors is sorely missed.
The warriors seem to have collectively decided that apart from Australia (with its themes of aboriginal dispossession, the nation’s unpreparedness for military attack and its setting in a harsh, uncompromising landscape notwithstanding), the rest of our recent cinema is ‘dark and depressing’ as noted above. Occasionally someone remembers Happy Feet and Kenny in this context even though the latter got depressingly dull towards its end. Maybe this isn't the same as depressing. Nobody, except maybe Philip Adams, apparently thinks Mad Max is either dark or depressing. Maybe it’s when the film has both characteristics that it causes a problem.
Someone who continues to feed this into the debate is Brian Rosen, the now film industry feather duster, who continues to find a sympathetic ear with a couple of journalists, most notably Michael Bodey and Gary Maddox. Rosen apparently absolves himself from any responsibility for this state of affairs notwithstanding that he was the head of the Film Finance Corporation for half of the Howard years and decided where the money would be spent. That has given offence to some and you can read one response to it, and to The Australian’s editorial, by Rod Bishop, former and much admired head of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School here at Urban Cinefile. http://urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=15116&s=Forum
The second interesting phenomenon is more to be expected. The opportunity has been taken to hop into the rest of the recent, i.e, the last decade or so, Australian film production and, in passing, attack David Stratton for being too generous towards Oyster Farmer in particular and other unspecified films in general. That Oyster Famer review seems to have assumed the status of the single defining event that caused Australian audiences to turn off going to Australian films. The latest right wing mavens to take up this challenge, after Michael Duffy and that ratbag Andrew Bolt (as my late dad always referred to him), were Greg Sheridan in his secondary guise as editorialist on The Australian and the ludicrous Miranda Devine. I say only one thing. The fact that they all obsessively return to this minor matter, scatering their vitriol and insults along the way is amazing to behold. Sheridan insults the intelligence further by gratuitously slagging off Ivan Sen’s wonderful and prize-winning Beneath Clouds as well. I was always convinced that John Howard's press office ke[t an eye on Stratton's opinions. A ;little too pinko for their taste and when the opportunity presented itself Sheridan stuck the boot in. It seems that the demise of the Howard office with its endlessly updated clipping service for selected warriors is sorely missed.
The warriors seem to have collectively decided that apart from Australia (with its themes of aboriginal dispossession, the nation’s unpreparedness for military attack and its setting in a harsh, uncompromising landscape notwithstanding), the rest of our recent cinema is ‘dark and depressing’ as noted above. Occasionally someone remembers Happy Feet and Kenny in this context even though the latter got depressingly dull towards its end. Maybe this isn't the same as depressing. Nobody, except maybe Philip Adams, apparently thinks Mad Max is either dark or depressing. Maybe it’s when the film has both characteristics that it causes a problem.
Someone who continues to feed this into the debate is Brian Rosen, the now film industry feather duster, who continues to find a sympathetic ear with a couple of journalists, most notably Michael Bodey and Gary Maddox. Rosen apparently absolves himself from any responsibility for this state of affairs notwithstanding that he was the head of the Film Finance Corporation for half of the Howard years and decided where the money would be spent. That has given offence to some and you can read one response to it, and to The Australian’s editorial, by Rod Bishop, former and much admired head of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School here at Urban Cinefile. http://urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=15116&s=Forum
Monday, November 10, 2008
National Pride
We all have our prejudices. Some say that the reason that the Coen Bros Burn After Reading was a dud at the domestic box-office, after a strong opening week, is that it is viciously anti-American. It proposes a US intelligence establishment full of vain, selfish, pompous dunderheads, chronically incapable of understanding even the simplest fact or comprehending the most obvious event. They are contemptuous of husbands, wives, colleagues and rivals. (“Shall I inform the FBI?” “Oh God no. Don’t bring those idiots in on this!” …or something like that, says one.)* The working class stiffs, toiling away for a low hourly rate at a gym, who move the plot along when they stumble on what they think are state secrets, are also vain, stupid egocentric and selfish.
The actors called upon to deliver this raucousness are brilliant at portraying such vanity. In fact, making the movie must have been a hoot for all those Hollywood liberals involved. Even the usually abysmal John Malkovich is perfectly cast as an alcoholic analyst shafted in a bit of bureaucratic byplay. Never in fact has such fun been had from a Coen Bros movie, despite a lot of attempts. Even the editor of Sight & Sound, not renowned for a sense of humour, found the movie affecting enough to describe it as “a minor Coens comedy with major stars goofing off”. Very kind.
Notwithstanding, Americans apparently, and American critics especially, though they get the joke, don’t like it. Australians on the other hand are going to it in such numbers that it is defying all attempts to knock it off the box office leadership charts.
But Australians are not immune to this syndrome. The only time I went to Cannes, along with the world’s film critics, I had the misfortune to suffer through Werner Herzog’s Where the Green Ants Dream, a film which played fast, loose and inventively with Aboriginal mythology. Needless to say the white guys were the bad guys. The rest of the world judged it largely as another of Herzog’s badly directed japes at civilisation but the Australians went apoplectic at the thought that the world might believe Herzog’s inventions were, rather like Bruce Chatwin’s in his novel “The Songlines”, the product of documentary reportage.
Philip Adams, then Chair of the AFC, was so enraged as to write a “Dear Werner you are a complete idiot” open letter published gleefully in the Cannes daily press. If there had been an organisation called Handwringers Anonymous we would all have been forced to join, such was the collective dismay.
The poor sods who try and control the cinema in China also have to suffer such indignity frequently as well. Each year a bunch of tyros with digital cameras go into the streets, back alleys and byways of far flung outposts of the celestial empire, usually without troubling even the local authorities for permission, and make movies like Xiao Wu, Blind Shaft, Blind Mountain and Little Moth to name just some. At Vancouver this year there was Sweet Food City among others. All of them are portraits of how the underclasses, the left behinds, the forgotten and the misbegotten go about their daily lives in tough times. Blatant misrepresentations no doubt abound, but as the Coens and Herzog know, these only serve to make the movies smarter, more pointed, more accessible and, frankly, more interesting to the wider world. Those whose sensitivities are affected, like genteel critics, po-faced officials, censors and rabid nationalists wont be given more than scant regard. So be it always.
*That may be why a film like Traitor, is so boring and, after its main twist is revealed, predictable, in its attempts to be fair to all sides. In so doing it employs a principled and highly ‘moral’ FBI agent as a key protagonist. Who can believe that? Americans I guess.
The actors called upon to deliver this raucousness are brilliant at portraying such vanity. In fact, making the movie must have been a hoot for all those Hollywood liberals involved. Even the usually abysmal John Malkovich is perfectly cast as an alcoholic analyst shafted in a bit of bureaucratic byplay. Never in fact has such fun been had from a Coen Bros movie, despite a lot of attempts. Even the editor of Sight & Sound, not renowned for a sense of humour, found the movie affecting enough to describe it as “a minor Coens comedy with major stars goofing off”. Very kind.
Notwithstanding, Americans apparently, and American critics especially, though they get the joke, don’t like it. Australians on the other hand are going to it in such numbers that it is defying all attempts to knock it off the box office leadership charts.
But Australians are not immune to this syndrome. The only time I went to Cannes, along with the world’s film critics, I had the misfortune to suffer through Werner Herzog’s Where the Green Ants Dream, a film which played fast, loose and inventively with Aboriginal mythology. Needless to say the white guys were the bad guys. The rest of the world judged it largely as another of Herzog’s badly directed japes at civilisation but the Australians went apoplectic at the thought that the world might believe Herzog’s inventions were, rather like Bruce Chatwin’s in his novel “The Songlines”, the product of documentary reportage.
Philip Adams, then Chair of the AFC, was so enraged as to write a “Dear Werner you are a complete idiot” open letter published gleefully in the Cannes daily press. If there had been an organisation called Handwringers Anonymous we would all have been forced to join, such was the collective dismay.
The poor sods who try and control the cinema in China also have to suffer such indignity frequently as well. Each year a bunch of tyros with digital cameras go into the streets, back alleys and byways of far flung outposts of the celestial empire, usually without troubling even the local authorities for permission, and make movies like Xiao Wu, Blind Shaft, Blind Mountain and Little Moth to name just some. At Vancouver this year there was Sweet Food City among others. All of them are portraits of how the underclasses, the left behinds, the forgotten and the misbegotten go about their daily lives in tough times. Blatant misrepresentations no doubt abound, but as the Coens and Herzog know, these only serve to make the movies smarter, more pointed, more accessible and, frankly, more interesting to the wider world. Those whose sensitivities are affected, like genteel critics, po-faced officials, censors and rabid nationalists wont be given more than scant regard. So be it always.
*That may be why a film like Traitor, is so boring and, after its main twist is revealed, predictable, in its attempts to be fair to all sides. In so doing it employs a principled and highly ‘moral’ FBI agent as a key protagonist. Who can believe that? Americans I guess.
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