ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Despite a circling sense of critical apathy centred about this film, it’s still clear that director Tim Burton has lost nothing of his visual flair. There are a number of moments in this film that stun in their technical beauty. I thought the Chesire Cat was particularly well done and that Wonderland itself (or Underland as it comes to be known in this movie) was realised in an interesting and visually arresting manner. Unfortunately for Alice all CGI worlds now have the misfortune of being judged in the shadow of James Cameron’s Avatar. If your fantasy movie world doesn’t have giant blue men and plants that glow to the touch then you’re doing something wrong.

Of course, this is absolute nonsense – I’d love to see what Tim Burton could come up with if he were granted a project with an Avataresque budget. There’s no doubting Burton’s standing as one of the foremost creative talents still cashing his cheques in Hollywood. Moreover, Lewis Caroll’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of the great uniquely imaginative works. Caroll effortlessly conjures up a fantastically childish yet dangerous world in which the extraordinary shakes hands with the banal. Nothing sums this up better, I would suggest, than the image of a smoking caterpillar. You can’t help but feel that Tim Burton should be in his element here. One curiously inventive spirit drawing off the work of another creative soul in order to create what should be some deliciously entertaining popcorn fodder – what could go wrong?

Being a smart cookie and not wishing to obstruct his own creative freedom, Burton opted against a straight adaption of one of Caroll’s works. Indeed, in an effort to further eradicate any prior expectations upon entering the film, we are told that this is not Wonderland – upon her first visit Alice (played this time round by Mia Wasikowska) misheard the name, which is, in fact, Underland. It must have been decided somewhere down the line that the film’s title Alice in Wonderland would pull in more customers than Alice in Underland or the simple but effective Alice. Since the producers clearly didn’t have the courage in their conviction I too shall refer to Underland as Wonderland to avoid confusion.

Alice, now 19 years old, is presented as a woman out of time. At least the script strains to make this apparent – we know that she is somewhat anachronistic because she refuses to wear stockings and gains no satisfaction from conversing with the local dignitaries. The problem, it seems, is rooted in her rather wild imagination. Disillusioned with her real life – where she is proposed to by the goofy Hamish Ascot (Leo Bill) she neglects her responsibilities to chase a white rabbit in a waistcoat down a rabbit hole and back into Wonderland. Alice whose memory cannot recollect her past adventures in Wonderland believes she is in a dream world, full of surreal images and talking animals. It soon becomes clear that Alice is to play an important role in shaping the future of Wonderland – it is she that is prophesised to slay the Jabberwocky and put an end to the tumultuous civil war between the nefarious Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the commendable White Queen.

Despite confessing that I was subject to a number of bewitching images and sequences, the overall mood and tone of this film often feels way off kilter. To put it simply, Wonderland is just too glum – In Burtonian terms it can be too Sleepy Hollow when it should be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wonderland should awaken in us a sense of childish glee, instead the world it evokes is an ominous and morose place – almost as if the gothic trappings of Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake bled through onto an otherwise pleasant aesthetic. I understand that all good fantasy worlds have their shades of grey, but for my liking, there are one or two too many withered trees in Wonderland. The proceedings aren’t helped by 3D glasses which suck out about a third of the colour from the screen making the colour palette appear even more lifeless than it already is.

Whilst impressed by the Chesire Cat, Maynard the dog and a couple of other CGI critters, I was not left with an overall sense of satisfaction. Tweedledee and Tweedledum (to whom Matt Lucas lends both his voice and his face) have their character model absurdly inflated to the extent that they lose their reality (even in the sense of a fantastic reality – a sense of realism is equally important in a fantasy world, to prevent the whole piece feeling like something of a damp squib). This is equally the case with Absolem the caterpillar, the white rabbit and the various other animals that occupy the story. The failure of the CGI in this respect has the effect of drawing the audience out of the story and disrupting what should be a smooth viewing experience. The story itself is a barebones affair which fails to offer the visuals any heft or weight. We’ve seen the whole ‘hero comes between two warring factions’ plotline a number of times before and Alice in Wonderland adds nothing new to the proceedings.

Mia Wasikowska makes for a good Alice, approaching every challenge with a kind of steely innocence. It’s a performance that’s all the more impressive given that much of her performance would have been spent framed by a blue screen as she talks to a designated mark somewhere on the floor. Johnny Depp a Burton regular has some fun putting his spin on the Mad Hatter. Yet it’s Helena Bonham Carter who steals the show, seemingly treating her performance as a homage to Miranda Richardson in Blackadder Season 2. It is she alone that seems to tap into just the right level of creepiness, oddness and humour.

WORLD'S GREATEST DAD

Don’t be misled by the title. Don’t be misled by the posters. They merely show that Hollywood suits simply have no clue how to market a film which deals with issues as complex as those found within World’s Greatest Dad. It’s something of a relief that director Bobcat Goldthwait (what a great name) is in better control of his material than the men behind the advertising campaign. This movie could have been such a mess if handled incorrectly; instead it comes across as nothing less than a glorious success. Just don’t go in expecting a light-hearted romp in the same vein as William’s schlocky family comedies Patch Adams or What Dreams May Come. The title actually invoked in me expectations similar to those brought about by Will Smith’s The Pursuit of Happyness, but this is way off mark too. In that film a series of challenges were laid out before Will Smith who was able to come through and ensure that he could provide for his kid. In short, he proved himself to be a great dad. Robin William’s, in response to the challenges in World’s Greatest Dad, proves himself to be an exploitative grief-hound who manipulates his son’s death to serve his own ends.

Whereas The Pursuit of Happyness attempted to be life-affirming through the overcoming of hardships, World’s Greatest Dad is life-affirming in an equally unsubtle way: through contrasting life with death. It is about the way death shapes those who are still living – how it can give direction to some and take it from others. This is a comedy about the cult of suicide and as such it’s slightly staggering how many laughs it’s good for. This can only be down to Bobcat Goldthwait’s controlled direction – he is in control of the tone throughout. The proceedings never feel overwrought or as if they are trying to manipulate a reaction from the audience. All Goldthwait expects from us is that we laugh and have a good time. Of course the film’s subject matter makes it easy to find a message in the film, but it in no way demands that we do so.

Lance Clayton (Williams) is a single father and failed author who provides for his unruly teenage-son Kyle (Daryl Sabara, who has come a long way since the Spy Kids movies). The boy is a true brat – I doubt there’s a son in a movie as undeniably puerile, immoral and reprehensible this side of 1976’s The Omen. He bullies and manipulates everybody that he can – this includes his dad and his only friend Andrew (Evan Martin). He has a dirty mouth – “Andrew, you have to understand that fucking pussy's virgin shit, alright”. He is without any discernable interests (he hates both movies and music) beyond playing videogames and onanism. It’s his bad habits and his penchant for autoerotic asphyxiation that proves his undoing. One evening his father returns home from a date with a flakey fellow school-teacher, to see Kyle’s body perched lifelessly in front of his computer. To protect Kyle’s dignity he types up a suicide note which is soon leaked across the school where he works.

Death, it is well known, has a funny way of romanticising a person. All the kids who wouldn’t have anything to do with Kyle up until that point (and who could blame them) upon reading his suicide note realise what a delicate soul the boy truly was. Kyle’s PR is never stronger than it is after his death and an outpouring of love spreads throughout the school. Sensing an opportunity, Lance writes and publishes diaries he claims to be written by his son. He manipulates the grief of those around him for sex, money and fame. Despite committing loathable acts we never come to loath Lance himself – in some respects these people deserve to be manipulated – they didn’t know or like Kyle up until this point, they have merely been enticed by the cult of suicide. They worship not the Kyle that existed in reality, but the phantom idealized Kyle that resides only in their minds.

The controlled tone of the movie is moved along by a bravura comedic performance from William’s. It’s his best film for quite some time, perhaps since 2002’s Insomnia. You only wish that William’s would push himself harder and seek out more films as edgy and dark as this instead of the blunted, watered-down family fare we’re most used to seeing him in. With movies like this, Insomnia and One Hour Photo, he’s certainly proved himself capable of tackling meaty roles. World’s Greatest Dad is not perfect by any means. The ending feels unearned and forced. Lance’s moral u-turn towards the end of the film happens too quickly - almost ex nihilo. The music was also somewhat off-putting at times. Beyond the excess of Bruce Hornsby, the soundtrack also has central roles for ‘Don’t Be Afraid You’re Already Dead’ by Akron/Family and ‘I Hope I Become a Ghost’ by The Deadly Syndrome. Despite the song titles, neither really fit in with the tone or tempo of the film. These considerations do not stop me from heartily recommending World’s Greatest Dad, one of 2010’s best comedies.

WILD TARGET

A very British failure. You would expect director Jonathan Lynn to be able to engineer more laughs than he does here. He’s the man behind the marvellous My Cousin Vinny and was a co-writer for Yes, Minister. Yet there’s not a laugh in the whole film – what went wrong? Lynn even managed to rope in some fantastic British talent, young and old – Rupert Grint, Emily Blunt, Martin Freeman and Bill Nighy. The presence of such respectable actors in this thing only serves to increase the sense of disappointment. What attracted them to such a dull uninventive script - how did this thing receive funding - what quality control was there and the most important of these rhetorical questions: why does this film exist?

It can’t be because the people behind it believed themselves to be in possession of an engaging or original story. We’ve seen it a number of times before: an aging hitman on his last job falls in love with the mark. Not only have we seen it before, but we’ve seen it done much better – just consider this year’s The American. Ironically, that film works because of its slow burning, patient, dare I say British sensibility. Wild Target on the other hand plays mostly for laughs without actually providing any.

Victor Maynard (Bill Nighy) is part emotionally stunted mommy’s boy and part ruthless hitman on the verge of retirement. His last target is Rose (Emily Blunt) a manipulative con-girl who has a habit of weaselling her way out of dangerous situations. This triggers a drawn-out sequence where Victor trails the unknowing Rose through the streets of London whilst presented with a variety of obstructions and distractions which prevent him from doing his job. At one stage he believes he has her cornered in a changing room. He pulls out a silenced-pistol and fires three quick shots into the cubicle. We hear a yelp of pain through the curtain and the camera pans out to show Rose walking away, having left the cubicle from the other side. Accidental murder: hilarious.

The chase only serves to somehow endear young Rose to Victor, who finds himself unable to finish the hit. He vows instead to protect Rose from the hitmen that will be sent after her when news of his failure spreads. The film strains to introduce Tony (Rupert Grint) to the proceedings, who is set-up as a kind of apprentice figure to Victor. Unfortunately he cuts a completely extraneous figure – he has no character arc whatsoever, learns nothing over the course of the film and fails to develop in any way. For evidence of his complete superfluity see the overly-smug last scene where you can’t help but wonder – what is he still doing here? This isn’t so much an attack on Rupert Grint, who I like, but more so on the script which introduces characters without granting them a personality or any natural conclusion (see also Rupert Everett’s character).

The relationships between the three central characters are also problematic. You never believe in the burgeoning romance between Bill Nighy (60) and Emily Blunt (27). At all stages the characters just appear to be going through the motions. The script demands that Victor falls for Rose so he does. If Lynn didn’t believe the ‘why’ was important here, he was mistaken – in the case of May-November relationships such as this you cannot simply account for things on the basis of an inexplicable physical attraction. On what level is Rose attracted to Victor? Is it an intellectual or spiritual attraction? Despite having sat through this film, without invoking the Electra complex, I can honestly say that I have no idea. This is to say nothing of the awkward father-son relationship between Victor and Tony. The nadir of this affiliation is reached in the unspeakable ‘bathroom scene’ where Victor, confused by his feelings for Rose, confesses to the naked Tony that he’s worried he is growing attracted to him.

On a more positive note, Martin Freeman who is so adept at playing the everyman (Tim in The Office, Watson in Sherlock) is given the opportunity to do something a little different and manages to shine almost as much as his unnaturally white teeth in his role as a toothy thug-for-hire. Rupert Everett also has fun in a rather limited role. It’s a shame then, that the main players Nighy, Blunt and Grint are so wasted in this film. It has the feel of a John Cleese or Rowan Atkinson vehicle – perhaps in the vein of Clockwise or Johnny English and yet it isn’t as good as either of those two (average) films. The whole thing just feels dated and it is held back by an unimaginative cliché-ridden script. If the British film industry is to be pulled out of its slump its produce must be much better than this. Yet, there is still hope for the future – see The Disappearance of Alice Creed a dark, twisty gem of a film and evidence that there are people at work in the British film industry who are capable of making great films.

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

Revolving around a central question: ‘What constitutes art?’ Exit Through the Gift Shop leads its audience through corridors of deception, drawing us in with its guerrilla imagery whilst simultaneously keeping us at hands length through the seed of doubt that it plants in our minds. Unquestionably the premiere and most popular street artist, Banksy has made a name for himself by creating witty and subversive works of art. He’s a notoriously tricky customer, which placed him somewhat on the back-foot when it came to releasing this, his first feature film. After all, those with a knowledge of Banksy will be watching thinking ‘Can I take what this man has to say seriously?’ or ‘Am I being duped here?’ He has effectively raised our collective guards before we even enter the cinema. The only way to combat this or to at least make the question irrelevant is to make an entertaining film and the film is entertaining because it focuses on the question of what separates a creative spirit from a true artist.

Street art itself has been the subject of many ‘yes, but is it art’ type articles, so it’s fitting that Banksy should explore similar issues. Yet he pushes the issue somewhat further, elucidating the way that mass-manufactured ‘art’ – art created without passion – can beguile and exploit the naiveté of casual art fans. At one stage Banksy declares himself uncertain of the moral of his film. Yet to me a message seeps through this film loud and clear: a thing is of value only when it is created with genuine love – when it manages to impart a piece of the creator’s soul. Without this, a piece of work cannot constitute a work of art.

The film opens with a killer montage of various street artists at work (I’ve still got Richard Hawley’s ‘Tonight the Streets Are Ours’ swimming somewhere through my head) before we are introduced to Thierry Guetta a Frenchmen residing in Los Angeles and Exit Through the Gift Shop’s focus. Guetta is portrayed as an obsessive - first he is obsessed with his camera and the two of them are never seen apart. Through it he documents every aspect of his life, including interactions with his cousin, the street-artist Space Invader. Blundering his way into the world of street art he obtains the role of documentarian of the street artist through perseverance rather than any skill with the camera. He eventually gets into contact with the elusive Banksy who allows Guetta to film him at work – but only from the behind. Banksy suggests that Exit Through the Gift Shop was originally set to be the product of Guetta’s efforts behind the camera as he photographed these street artists at work, but he found Guetta such a fascinating character that the focus of the film switched onto him instead. Indeed. Thankfully we get to see the apparent product of Guetta’s directorial labours – Life Remote Control, a film-within-a-film and a hilariously over-the top piece of film-making. If this is truly Guetta’s doing then it comes off as a failed attempt to appear ‘edgy’ and eye-catching, but, if the footage is edited together by Banksy then it must be regarded as a fun take on the way directors try to maintain the attention of their disinterested ADD-infected audiences.

Not content with merely following these artists around, Guetta seeks to become a street artist in his own right. Adopting the moniker ‘Mr Brainwash’, he takes to copying the works of the street artists he claims to admire. This transformation culminates with Mr Brainwash engineering his debut art show ‘Life is Beautiful’. The show exhibits his work (createdly mostly by a team of worker-elves), which varies from a ‘range’ of Elvis’s brandishing toy guns, various celebrities adorned with a Marilyn-wigs and the Campbell’s soup-can transformed into a spray-can. Beyond the fact that Guetta doesn’t seem to be doing any of the work himself, it’s quite clear that there’s nothing as daring or interesting as Banksy’s best works (of which we see plenty throughout this film and yet never feel like he is the perpetrator of some gimmick, which cannot be said for Guetta) or as influential as Shepard Fairy’s blue-red-Hope campaign poster for Obama. This doesn’t prevent pieces of art being snapped up by keen street-art enthusiasts and Guetta’s show being extended for a number of months. Hell, Madonna even let him design the cover art for her latest Greatest Hits album.

Exit Through the Gift Shop’s authenticity is much debated. I cannot help but feel that an artist with Banksy’s nature would be discontent with a simple documentary even one with as interesting a subject matter as this. The desire to impart one’s own unique artistic flair onto the project would be too strong. It could also be argued that Thierry Guetta’s Mr Brainwash is too clumsy, to oafish and too much of a sheep to have pulled anything like this off himself. We are never presented with any footage of Guetta creating his Banksy rip-offs. Instead we see him walk into a lamppost, fall off a ladder and have to be wheeled to the car on a desk chair. He comes across as something of an oaf. Real or not, the film works as a send up of art culture and the bastardization of the works of Andy Warhol and pop art in general through those looking to make a quick buck. As Banksy says “Warhol repeated iconic images until they became meaningless, but there was still something iconic about them. Thierry really makes them meaningless.” That’s the failing of so many wannabe artists, be they authors, directors or painters – they realise that something is great, but aren’t sure why. As a result their copies can only ever be pale imitations.

AMADEUS

Sometimes the ambitious nature of a project is enough to put one off it. After all ambition can lead to a film’s being overwrought and over-thought. Amadeus cannot help but appear somewhat over-ambitious. It’s a biopic of one of the greatest musicians to have ever lived, it’s a story about the nature of envy – of how mediocrity is born and in turn destroyed in the shadow of brilliance and it moves forward with a kind of agitated energy changing its mood whenever it pleases. At one moment it’s a simple period piece, next it’s a romantic comedy, then it’s a meditation on mediocrity before it finally bleeds into a kind of murder mystery. This kind of enterprise, although admirable can often derail a film – I’m thinking of the overlong and overblown sweeping historical epics such as Kingdom of Heaven or Troy which aim high but fall flat. These considerations combined with Amadeus’ bum-aching three hour running time (if you’re watching the director’s cut – which you must) prevented me from popping this film in the DVD player.

But I’m damn glad I did get around to it. After about 15 minutes my worries and presuppositions were dashed and I knew that director Milos Foreman was in complete control of the material. He expertly handles the changes in tone and pace, crafting film both visually stunning and emotionally affecting. Amadeus is not about Mozart – at least not in any direct sense. It is a film about greatness and its antithesis - a story of inferiority and jealousy. Antonio Salieri, born 1750, was an Italian composer and a devoted subject of the Hasburg Monarchy who exercised a great deal of influence in the development of 18th century opera. He also suffered the grave misfortune of living in the same time and place as a certain Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

When we first observe Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) he is a broken suicidal old man, living in Vienna circa 1823, who is racked with guilt believing that he is responsible for the death of Mozart (Tom Hulce) some thirty years ago. He is soon moved into an asylum where he offers up his full confession to a somewhat out-of-his-depths Priest. Amadeus is this confession. From a young age Salieri’s love for music and desire to progress were hampered by the imprudence of his business-minded father. He barters with God: a life devoted to his one true love – music, in return for his celibacy. The untimely death of his father sees Salieri climb through the ranks of Vienna’s cultural elite earning a position as court composer for Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones). Despite his ascension he finds himself unable to hit upon any sense of satisfaction as his progress is seemingly mocked at every step by the precocious ability of a young man whose talent both haunts and obsesses Salieri. As a young boy, Mozart plays concerts for dignified nobles whilst blindfolded. As a young-man Mozart is observed in the court of the Archbishop by Salieri to be impertinent and tardy but also supremely talented. A spark of envy is born within Salieri.

Whilst Salieri is presented to us as a competent enough composer it is clear he recognises both the limits of his own abilities and the unrestrained strength of Mozart’s ability. His trouble results not from his own mediocrity but from his ability to discern genius – to understand what it is about Mozart’s music that makes it great, without ever being able to achieve this greatness for himself. That’s what makes this film universally relatable. We are not always able to relate to greatness since the majority of us will never experience it for ourselves, but everybody strives for it. If what Mark Twain has to say is true – that human live is made worth living through the respect and favour of our neighbours, (in a wide sense) then it must be equally true that we seek to obtain this respect through our own unique brilliance or individuality. The urge to stand-out from the crowd whilst also maintaining the rights to be a part of this crowd is present within us all. In this respect Salieri is an everyman character, a man of ample talents, but also – fatally – a man whose skill set is sadly lacking in comparison to the bloke down the street who seems to have it all.

When his attempts to prevent Mozart’s rise to prominence in Vienna fails, Salieri attempts to take from Mozart everything he holds dear. He does this by using the only quality over which he is a better master than the seemingly naive Mozart – his cunning. He attempts to corrupt Mozart’s wife Constanze (the beautiful Elizabeth Berridge) almost succeeding but falling at the last hurdle, hoisted by his last remaining virtue: his obedience to God. More successful is his attempt to take Mozart’s patrons by painting a picture of him as a disorderly drunk with an eye for young ladies. Soon enough with his family’s expenses on the rise and his commissions decreasing Mozart begins to cut an increasingly desperate and disturbed figure. This opens the door for Salieri to unleash upon Mozart his master plan. Wearing an ominous mask and cloak combination to hide his identity he offers Mozart a considerable sum of money on the condition that he complete a requiem mass. Exhausted and weak, yet desperate for cash, Mozart accepts the stranger’s terms.

In fact, Salieri’s plan is to do away with Mozart on the completion of the requiem (what would become the Requiem Mass in D Minor) and claim the composition as his own. This is his opportunity to claim the respect and admiration that he feels due to him. Through working on The Magic Flute and the Requiem at the same time, Mozart’s exhaustion worsens until he is left bed-ridden. This leads to the film’s best scene (albeit one which requires us to suspend our prior beliefs) where Salieri tricks the frail Mozart into working on his Requiem. Mozart conjures instrumental arrangements and orchestral movements off the top of his head whilst the ‘spiritually ravenous’ Salieri struggles to get all the details onto paper. The combination of Mozart’s enormous – almost supernatural talent and his naivety is almost too much to bear. Despite all of Salieri’s malicious deeds Mozart reaffirms their friendship: “I thought you did not care for my work - or me. Forgive me. Forgive me!” and asks Salieri to stick by his bedside throughout the night. Eventually Mozart’s heart gives out, perhaps through exhaustion or an acute rheumatic fever.

Many years later Salieri accepts the blame for his death. Whilst we as an audience can accept that he is worthy of the blame for pointing Mozart towards his own grave, it is difficult to view Salieri as a repugnant or morally-vacant man. After all, he claims, “I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint” and it is we, the great mediocre masses that he speaks for. In many ways his actions are just the ones we commit every day when we place our own progression over and above that of others, but pushed to an extreme. This is a film about Salieri and yet the film’s title takes Mozart’s middle name. The reason behind this is important: Amadeus is latin for ‘God’s beloved’. Whilst God’s love permeates throughout Mozart by way of his seemingly beyond-human talents, Salieri is a man forsaken by God – a man who through no fault of his own and despite an abundance of passion cannot make his voice heard.

Tom Hulce’s portrayal of Mozart is an interesting one. His Mozart is lewd and bawdy – he drinks too much and has little respect for the monarchy or the state. He wears expensive clothes, dyed wigs and attends decadent parties. He is, in short, a rockstar. Then there’s that laugh. I can see why some might deem his performance as ‘too big’ but it worked for me. In a film where little time is given to Mozart’s biographical details, it is the character of Mozart himself which must stand out and remain memorable at the films end and to this extent Hulce is successful. But this is P. F. Abraham’s show from beginning to end. His every emotion is so clearly etched upon Salieri’s evocative face – be it admiration, guilt or self-loathing, Abraham cannot help but make us feel sorry for this creep. Despite playing the bitter straight-man to Hulce’s Mozart, Abraham crafts a character who is just as memorable and a number of times more affecting.

POLTERGEIST

I cannot say with absolute certainty who made this film. Was it Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame whose hard-hearted, low-budget and high-thrills style of directing was tempered by Spielberg’s maudlin sentimentality? Or was Poltergeist helmed primarily by Spielberg who was influenced by the controlled restraint of Hooper? There still remains a great deal of ambiguity from cast and crew members about who was really pulling the reins on this project. Spielberg had this to say about Hooper soon after the film’s release:

“Through the screenplay you accepted a vision of this very intense movie from the start, and as the director, you delivered the goods. You performed responsibly and professionally throughout.”

So why then does this movie feel remarkably Spielbergian in style? It follows a number of established Spielberg themes, such as family, loss, innocence and the supernatural. It does not have the brisk documentarian feel of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Salem’s Lot and is similar in style to the polished E.T or the first half of Close Encounters of a Third Kind. Spielberg’s contract with Universal contained a clause dictating that he was not to direct another movie whilst prepping E.T for release in the summer of 1982. By positioning Hooper as the de facto director of Poltergeist, Spielberg had a means to evade this clause and put out two pieces of work that summer. In defence of Hooper it might be noted that his next film Lifeforce, despite not being particularly good was distinctly Spielbergian in style which goes to show he was capable of pulling something like Poltergeist off, especially with help from the man himself. The fact that this debate is still raging almost thirty years after the film’s release is just one of the interesting things about this film and its creative process.

I look at it this way: film-making is by its nature a collaborative process. It’s thus clear that both Spielberg and Hooper had some input. The truth of the matter though, is that the idea for Poltergeist found its genesis in Spielberg’s mind and the film itself bears the distinguished style and mainstream sensibility that was typical of his films. Combining this inclination with the testimony of cast and crew, one cannot shake the feeling that this is indeed Spielberg’s baby.

The film itself is great fun. It follows the trials and tribulations of the Freeling family whose quiet suburban life is interrupted by the introduction of a group of mischievous ghosts into their home. At first their activities seem relatively benevolent – they communicate with 5-year-old Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) through the TV, they leave the kitchen chairs in cheerleader formation and generate a supernatural slip-slide across the kitchen floor. Soon enough, however their behaviour worsens and they hold Carol Anne captive in a portal in her bedroom closet. The dismayed Freeling’s consisting of Mum, Dad and Carol Anne’s two older siblings must now compete with these super-natural forces and battle for the return of their loved one.

What’s most effective about Poltergeist is that it manages to be both creepy and shocking in a manner that never comes off as being mean-spirited or sullen. That it manages to preserve a degree of family-friendliness throughout – despite talk of Indian burial grounds and killer clown dolls is also impressive. It takes its suburban setting and runs with it: we see beds twirl, television sets flicker on and off and cutlery and croquery whizz through the air. This really is worlds away from the wild south of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

As with any Spielberg film you get a sense of togetherness and family which grants Poltergeist its emotional heft and ensures you root for the Freeling family. Craig T. Nelson does a grand job portraying papa Freeling’s self-destructive meltdown driven by his failure to protect his family. The real star here though is JoBeth Williams who plays mama Freeling. She is clearly devastated by the loss of her daughter yet remains strong and stable in order to keep her family together amidst the on-going pandemonium. In a particularly physical scene William’s is tossed back and forth through her bedroom by the poltergeists wearing nothing but her underwear and an orange pyjama top. Whilst it’s never made entirely clear what the poltergeists are after in this scene, it’s moments like this one and a particularly Hooper-esque scene where papa Freeling stands in front of the bathroom mirror and his distorted mind shows his face melt off its skull, that prevent the film being entirely family friendly. I certainly don’t recommend showing this film to anybody under the age of 12.

Poltergeist feels very much of its generation: the organic special effects, the warm, inviting suburban setting, the simple yet effective dialogue. These all turn out to be good things and add to the film’s natural charm. I just wish that Spielberg, who proved himself adept at providing spooks in both this film and Jaws, would turn his hand to a project like this again. He has a talent for horror that does not come at the expense of the film’s warmth and that is a priceless asset.

SOPHIE'S CHOICE

Distasteful, cynical Holocausploitation or a thoughtful and effective character piece? Sophie’s Choice is a film which tends to split its viewership right down the centre. For some it is a ponderous drama which invokes the Holocaust as a means of adding emotional stakes which it quite simply hasn’t earned. For others it is a performance piece which works because Streep is at her most devastating best. For me, I am somewhat disappointingly in the middle. I really wanted to feel strongly about the film one way or another, but the story failed to grab me. There is of course that central performance by Streep but beyond that this is a dry, dull affair which hints at an engaging philosophical discussion, but fails to follow through on it.

To clarify, I don’t believe that filmmakers should be barred from ‘invoking’ the Holocaust or any other piece of humanity’s violent history. To do so would be the worst of slippery slopes – if we cannot mention certain acts in film, why should we be able to mention them in books or in other media outlets? Humanity’s history is both brutal and congenial. It is good and evil, and this duality simply must be reflected in the films we watch, the books we read and the pieces of art we see. The problem in creating a work of art that deals with something like the Holocaust, whether it is a film or not, is to avoid utilising these abhorrent historical acts in any exploitative manner. That is, their inclusion in the story must not be gratuitous – it must be at the very heart of the film, it must serve a point and it must capture the full horror of the event. Should it fail to do these things, the surplus of critical opinion will be against it, media outlets will turn on it and audiences will revile it. Film-makers know the stakes involved in making a Holocaust film and know the penalty involved for not bringing their A-game. We act as the regulating force.

This brings me to Sophie’s Choice. I’ve read a couple of very damning articles which position this film as crass and exploitative. But it’s not enough to just give it that label, even if you rally hard against it and manage to loquaciously convey the reasons that it failed to work for you. Get down to the nitty-gritty: why was this exploitative whilst something like Schindler’s List wasn’t? Perhaps your complaint is that Alan J. Pakula’s film reduces the colossal tragedy of the Holocaust by eclipsing it with a melodramatic post-war love story? If this is the case then I believe you are looking at the film in the wrong manner; it is not a Holocaust film – it is a film about the aftermath of a great tragedy that operates on a personal level, without failing at the same time to acknowledge the great pain and suffering that plagued everybody involved. It is a film about an individual who learns to live on after undergoing intolerable torment and insurmountable guilt. So, unlike those who find this film in some ways exploitative, I find its overall pursuit admirable.

Anybody who has heard of Sophie’s Choice but is yet to see it will likely think one of two things: “Oh, that’s the film where Meryl Streep gives a great performance” or “isn’t that the film where Sophie has to decide which of her kids to give up to the Nazi’s”? Whilst both are true, the second statement fails to capture the overall essence of the film. The ‘choice’ scene is shown in a flashback and is over and done in about a minute and a half. Screen time is given instead to post-war Brooklyn where aspiring novelist Stingo (Peter MacNicol) moves into a room in a boarding house just below that which belongs to Sophie Zawistowski (Meryl Streep) and her lover Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline). The three of them become fast-friends and it’s not long until Nathan’s jealous tendencies and bi-polar personality bubble to the surface. As the story progresses we see flashbacks from Sophie’s life, learning about her relationship with her dad and how she came to be in, and to survive Auschwitz.

Sophie’s Choice works best when it dwells on the philosophical conundrums that lie under its surface. How does one relate to a father whose world view is at odds with one’s own? What would you be willing to do to ensure your children’s survival? How does one survive sending one’s own child to its death? Then of course there is the decision central to this film – how does one choose between which child should have to die when you love them equally? My feeling of disappointment regarding this film is primarily because although Sophie’s Choice flags up these questions it doesn’t bother to pursue them in any meaningful manner. There’s an interesting (albeit uncomfortable) discussion to be had concerning the nature of moral dilemma faced by Sophie, as there is with many aspects of the film, which skirts around the important issues to dwell on the burgeoning love between Sophie and Stingo.

Stingo himself is presented as a dull, characterless sheep who is so prostrated by his admiration for Nathan that he fails to do the right thing for Sophie over and over again. We are told a number of times about his literary ability but this is never believable despite the overly flowery and verbose narration he has to offer. MacNicol is of course completely overshadowed by Streep’s powerhouse performance. It is she who brings together these scenes, be they driven by romance, misery or joy. Had I not known of Streep before this film I would have likely believed her to be Polish, such is the air of believability that she casts on the role. Her suffering is heart-breaking and her triumphs are rewarding.

I have a number of objections about this film. For a start it is far too long and the pacing is way off. Furthermore, the colour-palette cinematographer Néstor Almendros’ utilises for 1947’s Brooklyn is much too reliant on pastel colours. Its worst quality is that it focuses on a dull love story which does not have the pathos to make us truly believe that after all her suffering Sophie has finally found a means to genuine happiness such as she once shared with her mother and father when she was young. Despite this, Sophie’s Choice is worth recommending because of Streep – it is her film all the way through and ought to be watched as a documentation of a master of her craft at the peak of her powers.

INCEPTION

It’s nice to see a big-budget ideas piece such as Inception do so well at the box office – even more heartening considering it’s neither a remake nor a sequel. Hopefully the success of films like Inception will create the impetus required for producers and Hollywood execs to stand behind projects which despite being both intelligent and fun don’t already have a ready-made audience. Whilst something like Pirates of the Caribbean 4 has a built-in audience, Inception has to rely on critical opinion, word of mouth press, repeat viewings and, of course that all engulfing advertising campaign for its impressive box-office figures. Whether you like Inception or not, (and if you don’t, you’re probably finding the realm of cinematic discussion quite lonely right now) you ought to be glad that it has been such an unqualified success, given the effect it will have on the industry as it moves forward. That’s not to say we should expect an influx of smart, well-made popcorn movies – there simply aren’t that many filmmakers at work in Hollywood on a level with Nolan – but it opens the door for more interesting projects to receive budgeting.

Development originally began on Inception in 2001, where it was pitched to Warner Bros as a heist movie set in the realm of dreams. The project was shelved for nine years as Nolan wanted to experience what it was like working on films with a larger scale (having only worked on dinky think-pieces like the all-too-slight Following and the marvellous Memento up until this point). We can view Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight as practise pieces for this then: Nolan’s best made film yet.

The plot remains similar to the one pitched to Warner Brothers some nine years ago. Instead this time the heist involves not the stealing of ideas, but the planting of them inside somebody else’s head. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an extractor, who with the help of his team (which includes a rather svelte looking Joseph Gordon-Levitt) enters into a dream state with ‘the mark’ in order to extract – or in simpler terms, to steal – an idea out of their head. Extraction is becoming more and more difficult for Cobb whose dream-space is constantly being invaded by his subconscious representation of his dead wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard). We learn that authorities believed that he killed his wife and that Cobb had to flee the country leaving both his kids behind. We do not know the truth behind these accusations, but we see that Cobb’s subconscious is racked with guilt concerning his treatment of his wife.

Desperate for any way back to America to see his kids once more, Cobb accepts a job from Saito (Ken Watanabe) a business man intent on putting a stop to the stranglehold that the Fischer family are placing upon the energy industry and ending their hopes at establishing a monopoly. To do this Cobb and his team must pull of a seemingly impossible act of inception – that is, they must plant an idea in the head of the heir to the Fischer family business, Robert Fischer (played to slimy perfection by Cillian Murphy) and this idea must lead to him breaking up the family business. All this is made clear within the first 30 minutes of this 148 minute film and I am loath to give away anymore plot details. I believe the less one knows about the intricacies of Inception, the more one will be pleasantly surprised upon seeing it.

In order to pull off this act of inception, Cobb puts together a team consisting of Ellen Page (who coasts through this film in a disappointingly one-note performance) the architect who constructs the various dreamscapes, Tom Hardy (who is as wonderful as ever) the forger, who is capable of taking the form of others inside the dream-space and Dileep Rao, chemist-savant and van-driver extraordinaire. In combination with DiCaprio, Gordon-Levitt and Murphy you have a pretty damn impressive cast and that’s even without mentioning small roles from Michael Caine and Pete Postlethwaite. Leo proves worth his fee, bringing as he does the intensity that one associates with him post-Titanic. As we delve deeper into Cobb’s psyche and discover the psychological damage that dwells within him, we need to see at the same time this struggle reflected in Leo’s mannerisms and he brings it to this performance.

I’ve got to hand it to Hans Zimmer too, who has brought to the movie an absolutely masterful score. I thought Shutter Island’s score was over the top, but this takes it to a whole other level. Foghorns blast and strings weave in and out as a two-note motif repeats over and over and an enormous brass section completes the audio-assault. They’ve even roped in rock-god for hire Johnny Marr to play certain parts with a 12-string guitar. Wow. The song ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ plays an important role in the film and has been slowed down and tweaked until it plays as a hulking great, bass-heavy audible behemoth on the score and it works perfectly.

But above and beyond the movie’s music and its stars, Inception works because it’s meticulously structured and it revolves around a series of interesting ideas. None of this would have worked had Nolan failed to establish any stakes. Saito’s aim to derail Fischer’s rival business is not the driving force of the film. Much more impetus is given to Cobb’s quest back home to his children. One of the problems of basing much of the action in the world of dreams is that dying in a dream does not constitute dying in reality, thus lowering the stakes significantly. Thankfully Nolan has a way around this, which prevents Inception from being a simple farce and gives the at times technically brilliant action sequences a sense of danger that they otherwise would not have. It appears as though over the years Nolan has thought of everything, leaving no room for plot-holes or anything of the sort. What we have is a tight, thoroughly plotted intriguing story that is capable of being enjoyed on many levels. If you wish to put your analytical hat on you can attempt to establish what is “real” in the film and what is simply Cobb’s dream (there’s some fun to be had in establishing when Cobb is wearing his wedding ring in relation to when his totem spins continuously or not). Or, like any good blockbuster, you can simply sit back and enjoy the action.

THE LAST EXORCISM

Ever since The Blair Witch Project the mockumentary has been the go to format for injecting realism into a movie. This can often have the subsequent effect of increasing the tension and the spooks that it has to offer and has proven to be rather effective. Thus, we have been given the Spanish horror master-class .REC, the tepid American remake Quarantine and the overrated Paranormal Activity, all in the space of the last few years. Into this saturated market comes The Last Exorcism, one further attempt to milk the mockumentary cow for all its thrills. I have to question, however, whether the mockumentary format has run its course. The Blair Witch Project worked so well because it was so fresh and new. Yes, we had seen the mockumentary format before, but this was the first time it was utilised to scare us. It brought us closer to the characters; it made their fear real and in turn transferred their fear onto us.

One of the problems with the format is as follows: to further the film the camera must sometimes be in a position a documentary crew just would not be able to reach or which would be too emotionally manipulative to want to film. We are drawn out of the experience when we have to ask, “what the hell is the camera doing there?” or “how is the cameraman still holding the camera steady despite being scared out of his wits?” Why for instance is there still a documentary crew in Dundler-Mifflin after six series of action in the American version of The Office – surely they have outstayed their welcome? Another problem is that the mockumentary often draws attention to its purported realism in a way that documentaries simply do not. Perhaps this is done by having the actors intentionally fumble their lines, or act clumsily. Usually however, the documentary feel is established through a “shakey-cam”, where the camera jitters and shudders constantly creating in the viewer the distinct feeling of being lost at sea in the middle of a terrific storm. I’ve never seen as bad camerawork on a documentary as the “camerawork” on The Last Exorcism, which gives Bourne a run for its money on the shakey-cam stakes.

This camera follows Reverend Cotton Marcus, (Patrick Fabian – who looked to me a rather distracting cross between Thomas Jane and Robert Duvall) a down-to-earth priest who has lost his faith. After years of going through the motions and ‘performing’ exorcisms for people in need in order to give them a degree of psychological closure, the Reverend has called in a camera-crew so that they can witness his last exorcism and see it for the sham it is. They head to the farmhouse of Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) where amongst other mysterious goings-on the livestock has been slaughtered and his daughter Nell (Ashley Bell) has been exhibiting signs of possession.

The film works so long as it has us question whether Nell is really possessed, or if these acts of slaughter are the work of a psychologically damaged, scared little girl. The ambiguity works well but soon Nell starts to exhibit more and more signs of demonic control – knowing Latin, snapping her fingers off like twigs, climbing up the wall like a spider (which seems to be a staple for any movie revolving around exorcism) and the movie begins to fall apart. There’s the inevitable scene where Reverend Marcus, overwhelmed by the suffering and pain of this girl turns back to God to ask for help, reaffirming his faith. I recalled that disingenuous moment in M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs where Mel Gibson’s ex-Priest regains his faith after having survived an alien attack.

As previously hinted, there are problems with the film’s mockumentary format, not the least of which is the layering of a score over what is supposed to be ‘found-footage’. The build-ups to suspenseful moments are supported by a few ghostly yet gratuitous musical notes that serve only to pull the viewer out of the film. The performances are all good, particularly those offered by the leads Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell, but I feel as though they belong to a different movie. Some lines feel scripted and forced and lack the improvisational feel of something like .REC - perhaps the actors would have benefitted from rehearsing less, giving the film a more verité feel. There are also a couple of issues with the editing of the film, which can often give the impression that at least two cameras where present for some scenes, yet the storyline presents us with only one cameraman. To pull off a mockumentary you have to get everything spot on, otherwise we as audience members are pulled out of the experience and begin to ask deeper and more searching questions of where the film went wrong.

These criticisms are perhaps beside the point since the final fifteen minutes of this film are enough to remove any warm-feelings one may have had towards the film up until that point. It goes off the rails in a big way abandoning any notions of psychologically evaluating Nell, unnecessarily invokes Rosemary’s Baby and incongruously forces rather obvious CGI into what is supposed to be a documentary. One is left wishing that they had brought the film to a close a little earlier, preserving the sense of ambiguity which made the story an interesting one to follow, rather than ending things on a distinctly supernatural note. Perhaps it’s time to put the mockumentary format to bed and shift focus once more to creating a story which is consistent, believable and compelling. The Last Exorcism fails on all these accounts.

SALT

The role of Edwin Salt, super spy, was originally given to Tom Cruise, before he decided that the part was too similar to his role in the Mission Impossible series. Instead, Cruise opted to make Knight and Day, an awful lowest common denominator action flick infested with lame CGI and smug dialogue. Knight and Day is different from Mission Impossible in one important way – it was completely void of any intelligent spark. But I digress; I’m only seeking to make the point: Salt is smarter than most popcorn fair. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have moments of stupidity, importantly, however, it seems to be having fun even when the plot becomes seriously convoluted and forced.

So, Edwin became an Evelyn and Cruise became Jolie. Through a series of action flicks, comprising the Tomb Raider movies, Mr and Mrs Smith and Wanted, Jolie has positioned herself as a bankable action star. Unfortunately, none of the above movies are much good, despite her credible performances. She throws herself into these roles with giddy aplomb and as a result is capable of crafting a believable heroine at odds with her more vulnerable roles in A Mighty Heart or Changeling. Promotional material for Salt also suggests that Angelina does a great deal of her own stunts, but I wonder about the extent to which this is true. Jolie is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars and as a result she’s too valuable to risk.

This film begins really strong. CIA agent Evelyn Salt is imprisoned in North Korea where she is brutally tortured as her captors seek to discover her true identity. But, this girl is damn good at maintaining a lie. Her future husband, an arachnologist with access to North Korea (yes, really and with a job like that you know it’s going to be relevant at some point later in the film) discovers Salt’s location and forces the CIA into action. Two years later, Salt has been freed, is happily married and content in her job as a CIA agent. This is until a routine interrogation with a Russian defector, Orlov, who reveals details regarding ‘Day X’. Orlov tells Salt about a group of Russians born agents, trained from birth to spring into action on Day X and bring about the destruction of the United States. These agents would have extensive plastic surgery to appear American, would be trained to speak and act American and would earn high profile jobs in the US government, so when the time came they would be in a position to cause a great deal of damage. The kicker is this: Orlov claims, in front of everybody watching, that Salt is one of the Day X agents.

The identity of Salt is the driving force of the film – who is she and is she a force for good or evil? Fearing for her husband’s life she evades the CIA and goes rogue. Her buddy in the CIA, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) seeks to catch Salt so that they can establish the truth together and clear her name (but if you’ve seen a Liev Schreiber performance before, it’s quite clear what’s going to happen and where his real motivations lie). Then there’s Agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor, also in a role he’s done many times before) who chases Salt relentlessly, believing that she represents a genuine threat to the United States. It’s disappointing that no time is given to developing Peabody’s character, who is so flat and uninteresting that he might as well not exist. This disappointment is magnified because we know Ejiofor is an extremely talented actor who can give a dignity to these kinds of roles if given a chance (as he did as ‘The Operative’ in Josh Whedon’s Serenity).

So there are a couple of missed opportunities. Jolie, on the other hand makes the most of her role. There’s a great sequence early on in the film as she escapes the CIA by jumping from moving to truck to moving truck. Moment's like this get the blood pumping and aid the progression of the film. The action manages to remain compulsive even as the plot falls apart towards the end of the film. By keeping Salt’s identity secret from the audience until near the end of the film, it is impossible to keep track of her motivations and her actions become more and more nonsensical. It’s also fun to note that despite living in America all their lives and having been trained from birth to speak and act American, all the Day X agents, speak in perfect Russian accents when they come out of hiding. Yes, the film is smarter than most popcorn fair, but it can also be pretty stupid too. Its primary plot mechanism is designed to keep the audience guessing at all times. It works too, but by sticking with it for so long a number of gaping plot holes form. By the end of the film we have reached levels of absurdity approaching those present during Knight and Day. We do however, have the preceding 75 minutes which are entertaining, satisfying and driven by a convincing lead performance.

RASHOMON

The very nature of perception is a crux in humanity’s search for truth. We can grant - as philosophers often do - that there is already a problem with perception in the respect that it is the sole source of all our beliefs regarding an external world and we have no means of testing whether or not it reliable, because we have no yardstick by which to judge it. Kurosawa’s Rashomon clearly outlines another issue which prevents us from grasping objective truth: this film is an investigation of the manner in which perception is distorted and disturbed by our own impulses, be it the impulse to honour, the avoidance of shame or the tendency to self-aggrandization. Our human desires and impulses chip away at the truth creating its own new subjective truth. Rashomon  explores the consequences of a reality that runs counter to our self-image. The truth is an ideal which, when touched by the muddy-waters of human interrelations loses its perfection.

Taking shelter from the rain, a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) a priest (Minoru Chiaki) and a commoner (Kichijiro Ueda) meet at a dilapidated city gate. The priest is in a state of disbelief – both he and the woodcutter have just witnessed a trial concerning the murder of a samurai and the rape of the samurai’s wife. They have seen three different people confess to the murder and fail to understand how this could be possible. The story of the murder is told through flashbacks from four different points of view. The first is told from the perspective of the notorious bandit Tajōmaru (Kurosawa regular, Toshurō Mifune), who describes a great battle between he and the samurai in which he is the victor. Second to the stand is the Samurai’s wife (the spectacularly over the top, yet somehow magnetic Machiko Kyō) who, drowning in shame and unable to receive the forgiveness she desires from her husband, kills him and attempts to kill herself. Then we hear the samurai’s story from the lips of a medium, who claims he killed himself as a result of the dishonour brought upon him by his wife. Finally, we hear from the woodcutter himself, who was also present at the time and offers an account which seems to have the strongest claim to being an objective truth.

There’s plenty of fun to be had piecing the elements of the story together and judging not only what is true from these accounts, but also why the storyteller chooses to lie when they do. The film is also a technical marvel. It’s in Rashomon that Kurosawa reveals himself to be particularly adept at manipulating light to create an uneasy tension or to suggest impending violence. The film’s primary setting, the woodland glen acts as a obstacle between the characters and the sunlight which plays an important role in this film. The branches and leaves of the trees cast glum shadows onto the characters – particularly the bandit - suggesting a kind of darkness present within them. It was common belief that one should never shoot directly into the sun, for fear that it would highly distort the exposure of the shot and damage the camera itself. Kurosawa, like every great auteur recognised that the rules of photography were not laws, and could be adapted or adopted to meet his purposes. As a result, the film is littered with shots where the camera is pointed directly at the sun. In one particularly symbolic shot, the samurai’s wife looks to the sky as she braces herself to be violated by Tajōmaru and sees the sun take cover behind a patch of clouds.

Then there is the distinction between the intense, pounding sun which characterises the flashbacks and the pouring rain which abounds as the as the priest and woodcutter tell the commoner their stories. The dichotomy in weather serves not only as a tool to distinguish between timelines, but also as a barometer of mood. It’s easy to identify the torrential rain with the confusion and uncertainty that underlines every scene with the Priest, Woodcutter and Commoner under the city gate. This uncertainty is branded not only unto these characters, but no doubt in viewers themselves, who simply do not know what is true and what is false. In Plato’s allegory of the cave the sun is the great source of illumination – our means for obtaining of knowledge. In the language of The Forms, the sun represents both The Good and the The Truth. So of course, as these storytellers all seek to appear to be relating some objective truth to those listening, the sun beats down upon them. When it comes to the investigation of these stories, the light of illumination has gone.

Rashomon is the most widely shown Japanese film of all time. It’s certainly Kurosawa’s best known film, even if it’s not his finest. One of the key reasons behind this is its accessibility: the film runs for only an hour and a half and thus does not require the commitment that other Kurosawa masterpieces such as Ikiru and Seven Samurai call for. More importantly, the film almost demands talk and debate between those who have seen it. You can discuss the motivations behind why each character painted their story in the way they did. What parts were true and why did they choose to lie when they did? Can we trust everything the woodcutter has to say?

The film is also rife with symbolism. As the priest and the woodcutter regale the commoner with the story, the three of them slowly dismantle and damage the gate in which they are taking shelter. As they tell their stories our gateway to the truth is slowly and systematically being destroyed. The gates also holds an obvious link to civilization: it is that through which we enter into it, or leave through it, back into the wilderness. If we wish to take a different message from this story it’s that these savage acts not only lead us to lose our civility but could lead to the destruction of society and a paradise lost. The contrast is there, of course, with the woodcutter, the character who acts as the sole source of hope in the film and whose job is one that directly aids the building of civilization.

I can understand objections to the film that suggest the ending feels ‘tacked on’ or incongruous with what we’ve seen for the previous hour and a half. We have been offered this image of humanity as a pathetic, scheming, lying group of savages and it is almost as if, at the last moment Kurosawa tears this image down and says, “Yes, the world is a bad place, but don’t worry there is still hope”. Rashomon, unlike Ikiru, released just two years later suffers from an ending which is tonally different from what we have seen in the rest of the film. Yet this film still remains one of Kurosawa’s great works. Beyond his daring efforts behind the camera, there is the story, which manages to remain compelling, even after being retold for the fourth time. It is also paced to perfection: watching closely you can see how Kurosawa allots the same amount of time for each individual element of the film. Thus, each flashback lasts about 15 minutes; but also on a smaller scale, the length of screen time given to the bandit’s hysterics and the wife’s hysterics is equal. Kurosawa effortlessly conjures a world full of deceit and barbarism. We are led to a conclusion; our one attempt to form an objective truth: Rashomon is a classic.

THE LONG GOODBYE

Phillip Marlowe, the protagonist of Raymond Chandler’s popular series of detective novels is very much a man of his time. The established image of Marlowe is that of a quick-witted, hard-drinking, chain smoking tough young man – perhaps with a chiselled jaw line and sharp features. He’s nobody’s fool and is always a couple of steps ahead of his rivals. Most importantly he abides by a strict moral code which does not permit violence unless absolutely necessary and ensures that the guilty are brought to justice. The values of the ‘50s are personified within this man. Altman, helming the adaption of Chandler’s penultimate Marlowe novel, The Long Goodbye, asks us instead to imagine Marlowe as a Rip Van Winkle figure. Having fallen asleep in the ‘50s, Marlowe entered a period of ‘big sleep’, eventually awaking in the ‘70s. This film asks the question: is there a role for people like Phillip Marlowe in this new society?

Upon waking from his 20-year slumber, Marlowe (Elliot Gould) struggles to please his cat by finding its favourite brand of food, greets the free-spirited girls next door, and grants – without question - his buddy Terry Lennox’s (Jim Bouton) request to give him a lift to the Mexico-California border. Still wiping the sleep from his eyes the next morning, he is accosted by policemen who claim that Lennox brutally murdered his wife and was seen fleeing to the border with Marlowe. Soon, however, news of Lennox’s suicide reaches the police and they are forced to close the case and release Marlowe without charge. In a state of shock and disbelief Marlowe sets out to seek the truth behind the accusations. He soon learns, however, that he is somewhat out of his element.

There’s a masterful extended sequence at the beginning of the film – perhaps the film’s most famous scene, where Marlowe attempts to feed his cat. This scene subtly portrays Marlowe’s character flaws, which will be exploited to a greater extent later in the film. He attempts to fool his cat by giving it a different brand of cat food from that which it expects. Of course he fails (at which point the cat turns up its nose, lets out a meow and casually knocks the cat food onto the floor). Marlowe’s blind loyalty is also evident as he heads to the store in the middle of the night to pick out his cat’s favourite brand. This sparks a hilarious conversation with a store clerk – “What do I need a cat for, I've got a girl”. Of course, Marlowe’s loyalty goes unrewarded as his cat betrays him by leaving and never returning – an event which occurs in tandem with Lennox’s journey south to the border.

Rather than simply satiating the Chandler purists, The Long Goodbye appears to be the product of Altman having fun, gleefully letting loose and seeing just how many genre conventions he can toy with. His Phillip Marlowe is a man hopelessly out of sorts with the world around him. Upon being released from police custody, Marlowe is hired by the beautiful Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt) to track down her alcoholic husband Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden - who apes Hemingway magnificently). Marlowe, despite figuring that this disappearance is related somehow to Lennox’s apparent suicide fails to see the bigger picture. Chandler’s Marlowe would have seen through Mrs Wade – just the way Marlowe saw through Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep - but this femme fatale stays one step ahead of our protagonist at all times. Further signs that he is out of place are dotted throughout the film: his relationship to the troupe of hippy girls outside his apartment, his social awkwardness and his constant smoking in contrast to the remaining cast’s complete abstinence.

So yes, Altman paints Marlowe as an impotent, easy to fool man out of time. But he doesn’t simply exercise subtle hints regarding the nature of this change – sometimes he paints in much broader strokes. That the world has changed is made startlingly clear in one scene where Marlowe is captured by the gangster Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell), who claims Marlowe is in possession of a $5,000 bill stolen from him by Lennox. In an act of brutality Marty takes a coke bottle and smashes it across the face of his girlfriend, just to make the point “Her, I love. You, I don't even like.” At moments like this it’s not just Marlowe who is reminded that the world has changed and will never be the same again.

Elliot Gould is perfectly cast as Rip Van Marlowe. He is a strange amalgamation of unadulterated ‘50s cool combined with a kind of desperate strangeness. He does a good job of not playing Marlowe as bumbling or entirely inept – it’s clear that there was a time and a place for this kind of man; unfortunately it’s made equally clear that this time is no more. Gould does a good job of showing the evolution of this new Marlowe. At first he appears to be merely a passenger in this story, forced this way and that by other people’s plotting and planning. However, before the movies end he regains control on the reigns of his life and is able to accept that a new form of justice is needed for a new age.

Altman’s control of the story and Marlowe’s evolution (or, re-evolution, perhaps) reaches levels of genius. There are only two songs in the film – the mood setting The Long Goodbye composed by John Williams and Johnny Mercer, which plays on different formats and in different arrangements throughout the film. Having poked fun at Hollywood conventions for 112 minutes, Altman’s second song plays over the final shot (which clearly references The Third Man) and the final credits: the bitterly ironic ‘Hooray for Hollywood’. Little acts of daring such as these characterise Altman’s entire filmography. Unlike The Long Goodbye’s Phillip Marlowe, Altman is very much aware of the time he lives in and as a result created a film that is not only satirical and full of references to Hollywood’s past, but also a whole bunch of fun.

BREATHLESS

Since the advent of television media types have worried about how the portrayal of violence will affect those who view it. The worry is not so much that we will see Leatherface taking his chainsaw to the bodyparts of his victims and think, "oh hey, that looks like a good idea", but that we will become desensitized to violence, that it could encourage violent behaviour and that those who already exhibit violent tendencies will feel vindicated in doing so. Since these debates have begun we've seen video-games like Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt and films like Saw, Hostel or Battle Royale which often result in the evocation of this buzzphrase "the glorification of violence". Now I don't see how these films do glorify violence, but that is a discussion for another time. I bring up this debate because Michel the lead character in the zenith of the French new wave, Breathless, is a man who models his life upon the stylings of popular culture, envoking in particular Humphrey Bogart circa Angels With Dirty Faces (1938). Michel is a man capable of acts of violence and great sensitivity. The question is thus there to be asked: to what extent has he been manipulated by cinema and other forms of media into adopting this gangster persona and is this the reason behind his acts?

Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a youthful - somehow childlike, petty criminal who gets his kicks stealing cars and looking for girls to pick up. Pursued by the police, Michel ends up confined in a country lane and in a moment of fear shoots dead a policemen in order to make his get away. With the police on his tail he meets with struggling American journalist Patricia (Jean Seberg) the two of whom share a somewhat ambiguous, yet at times romantic relationship. Unaware of Michel's status as a wanted criminal, Patricia allows herself to be seduced into following Michel's dream: to head to Rome. Of course, it's clear from the beginning that this will not end well for the two lovers and the main suspense arises from the evolution of their relationship and Michel's growing sense of detatchment from a world he cannot get a handle on.

The film's french title is A Bout de Souffle, or 'At Breath's End' - which as well as being more poetic strikes me as better suited to this film. Being breathless is associated with being astonished, or surprised - having your breath stolen out from underneath you. Being at breath's end however, suggests a kind of weariness or a sense of the end impending. Breathless expresses a kind of indifferent fatalism which sees Michel beaten down by life, fail to connect with those around him and have his tragic fate brought upon him by the stupidity of another. The story - dreamt up by Truffaut and passed onto Godard - has its fair share of cliches, even for 1960. After all, it is, in simple terms, the story of a man on the run from the law who seeks to be reunited with the woman he loves so that he can make his getaway. It is scarcely any different from the kind of fluff that Hollywood had been producing for many years before. What makes it standout from the pack is a combination of Godard's love of cinema, culture - whether it be high or low and his groundbreaking experimental style of filming and editing.

The techiques of the French New Wave are well documented and this film represents the peak of the artistic ingenuity prevailent during that rich period in film history. Driven largely by financial considerations (which still affected the industry following World War 2) filmmakers began to rely less on having a well structured plot as the backbone to their film, focusing instead on creating a sense of documentary realism influenced in turn by Italian neo-realism. Of course Godard had a general idea of where the story was going, but he left a lot of wiggleroom regarding the matter of how it got there. Each morning, Godard would scribble down lines of dialogue for Belmondo and Seberg, who had a short amount of time to rehearse before shooting. They were also encouraged to improvise which, combined with Godard's unique style of editing gives all their conversations a natural flow. Consider Michel's adlibs as he is driving, at the beginning of the film, before he is pursued by the police, that he "won't be overtaken by a renault" or that a couple of lady hitchhikers are "dogs". These little moments give the film an unforced and organic feel which was characteristic of the new wave. It's little surprise then that Godard conceptualised the film as a kind of 'reportage' or documentary and shot the film, along with cinematographer Raoul Coutard solely on handheld cameras using natural light. This is most evident perhaps when Michel, fleeing from the police makes his way into the surrounding countryside only to be swallowed up into the darkness and fade away from the picture.

Some influential techniques found within this film were brought about not through design but by necessity. Originally clocking in at about 120 minutes, Godard decided that he would have to cut out about 30 minutes in order to make the film more digestable. Rather than remove entire scenes, Godard elected to cut out any moments from within these scenes that he found boring, creating the effect that the camera was jumping from place to place. This shots which may seem somewhat bizarre to the modern viewer were influential to filmmakers - particularly those making action films as a way of maintaining the tension by making it appear that the action is ongoing.

These techniques, as revolutionary as they were, do not solely account for the film's legacy. Belmondo is fantastic as Michel, whose sense of all-pervading cool is now iconic. Despite basing his personality on Bogey, in the years since he has become very much his own man. He can certainly be initiated, along with Elliot Gould's Phillip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, into a list of film's greatest smokers. What works about the character, however, is that underneath the macho bravura, there's clearly a scared little boy that doesn't know what to do next and wants to make a genuine connection with another human being but finds himself uncapable of doing so. It's unclear if Michel genuinely loves Patricia, but he seeks desperately to form a connection between himself and her, whether it be through sex or merely through intelligent conversation. Eventually however, his attempts to make this connection fail and he is left betrayed and alone. Importantly, instead of despairing, he gives up and seems to admit, this life isn't for him - he's your typical outsider, hopelessly detached from the world.

Like Breathless itself, Michel is at odds with the world around him. He's an anachronism who looks at the world and can only conjure up feelings of apathy. The desire to fit in leads Michel to adopt this toughguy persona, but it is because he is scared and alone that he commits the act of violence, not because he holds any belief that violence is acceptable. For Michel this meant a tragic early end to his life. Breathless however ushered in a new age of modern cinema and is one of the most influential films of all time. It is a passionate film about a man who is both passionate and disapassionate and one which I will surely never grow weary of.

MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR

George Miller’s Mad Max (1979) was a relentless, at times exhilarating revenge movie which utilised a simple plot to keep the action, like the engine of Max’s interceptor, ticking over. One of the problems I had with the film was that many of the plot stipulations required to turn Max into this brooding, murderous vigilante hell-bent on revenge felt unnecessary. We see his partner ‘The Goose’ viciously killed by a dangerous biker gang, yet this only serves to send Max, the supposed hero of the piece into self-enforced retirement. It is only when his wife and young son are run down and killed by this same gang that Max is forced into action. Channelling the spirit of Charles Bronson (I’m thinking of Death Wish  here, rather than Britain’s most violent criminal – though either seem to work) he hunts down and murders everybody involved in bringing about his family’s fate. The character of Goose merely amounts to another bullet point on the list of grievances the gang causes Max and as such seemed completely superfluous to me. Everything’s done with a technical brilliance that is particularly astonishing considering the film’s meagre budget, but this minor pacing and motivational problem prevented me from enjoying the film to the degree that I know many others have. Let’s just say I didn’t have any such problem with Mad Max 2.

“My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos. Ruined dreams. This wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior”. So recounts a mysterious figure who describes to us the events of the previous film (and there’s not a Goose to be seen) and how the world came to be the way it is. Civilization has collapsed, society is no more and the Earth is a nuclear wasteland. All that remains are dissolute violent gangs who search the land for Earth’s most precious resource: gasoline. Like the first instalment, the plot here is simple. Mel Gibson’s world-weary Max comes across an assembly of people protecting a fuel deposit from a gang of savages led by the no-good Lord Humungus (who must have earned this preposterous name solely on the basis of his biceps). Seeking a share of the gasoline for himself, Max offers these stragglers his services as a driver to help them move the fuel to the coast without being picked off by Humungus’ bandits.

Max’s motivations are clear in this film. He seeks the world’s most precious resource and is willing to put himself in harm’s way for it. He offers his services because he wants a reward. It’s only when Humungus’ bandits leave him for dead (and in an unforgivable act, kill his dog) that it becomes personal. There’s nothing I find questionable about Max’s motivations in this film, and I was thus able to sit back and enjoy the ride. Mel Gibson is great in a quiet yet brooding role. We know the tragic past that Max emerges from in this movie and in the long patches of silence that sometimes traverse this film we see how heavily these events weigh upon him. More importantly, however, he’s a capable and believable action hero. Max Rockatansky belongs right up there with larger than life heroes such as John McLane, Indiana Jones and John Rambo. Indeed, as a result of his performance in the Mad Max films Gibson was propelled to international stardom.

But the real star here is the action. The film’s bigger budget allowed Miller to build upon the already spectacular action from the first film and in this case bigger is better. Miller sure does know how to frame a car-chase, and there’s probably nobody better at providing these kind of break-neck thrills than he is. The film is mostly just a (very watchable) excuse for an extravagant 20-minute freeway chase as Humungus and his minions seek to stop Max getting away with the gasoline. Excessive maybe, but there’s never a reason to look down at your watch and wonder when this will all end – Miller is too busy piling on thrill after thrill for your mind to wander off. The effect is in some way self-galvanising and keeps our blood pumping as the film slows down to reveal a couple of nice touches and draw to a close.

This is a quintessentially Australian film and by that I mean I cannot imagine Mad Max having been filmed anywhere else. The stretches of open land that seem to go on forever suggest a desolate and lonely world torn apart by nuclear war. It was also, no doubt a great help to have such a large stretch of land for these car chases to take place. The cast of characters are also typically Australian, and whether they be good or bad, bring a degree of desperate strangeness to the proceedings. Bruce Spence (who, admittedly, hails from New Zealand) is particularly good fun in this respect as the Gyro Captain, with his long drawn-out emotive face and goofy World War 2 goggles. All these factors add up to create an action film which is as impressive as it is individual (and I think it is this aspect which accounts for its popularity and longevity). After the slight dip in form that was Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome and a 25 year wait, Miller still seems intent on bringing us Mad Max 4: Fury Road. This may worry some fans who would like the series’ reputation to remain unblemished, but The Road Warrior has reminded me that when this formula works, it works damn well. I reckon there’s gas in that inceptor engine yet. Bring it on.

THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE

Despite its being over 70 years-old, I’m struggling to name a film that contains within it such a considered, meticulous deconstruction of the human impulse to greed. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a film not frightened to expose the dark, lustful urges that lie deep within our souls. The film’s title may mislead one into thinking this will be a simple adventure story where our heroes traverse mountain ranges, fighting both the terrain and perhaps scattered groups of bandits in the hope of finding their fortune. However, there is more to this story than that. Yes there are entertaining fights with bandits and our heroes do strike it rich, but none of these events are present in the film simply to titillate or amuse. These events help to aid our psychological evaluations of these characters and grant us access to a bleak form of morality that may be more prevalent in modern day society, indeed within each one of us, than we care to admit. 

When we first meet Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) he’s a down-on-his-luck drifter floating through the streets of Tampico, Mexico, trying to make a buck any way he possibly can. Cheated out of the money owed to him for his work, he teams up with fellow vagrant Curtin (Tim Holt) and together they beat the money out of their crooked boss. Looking both to get out of town and find a new line of work, they meet Howard (John Huston’s father – Walter Huston) an effusive but seemingly knowledgeable old man who claims there is gold to be prospected up in the mountains should the three of them combine their assets. Following in Howard’s experienced footsteps, Dobbs and Curtin make it up the mountain with some difficulty and soon enough they strike it lucky and find the perfect spot to erect their gold mine. It is agreed in advance that any findings should be split fairly three-ways, but Dobbs the most paranoid of the group grows suspicious of the intentions of his fellow prospectors.

What follows is the credible and at times disturbing psychological deterioration of a man driven by greed. Despite warnings from Howard who presciently claims to know “what gold does to men's souls” and signs that Curtin and Howard are good and honest men, Dobbs remains unable to shake the paranoid notion that they are seeking to cheat him out of his share of the money. The events that occur in the first third of the film set us up perfectly for Dobb’s impending breakdown. His impoverished lifestyle prior to the excursion explains his lustful almost obsessive attitude towards the gold. After all, nobody knows the value of money more than somebody who has gone without for such a long time. It is also important to show Dobbs being beguiled out of his money on a previous occasion. This grants the paranoia prevalent in his mind throughout the course of the film a base and serves to show he is willing to use violence to ensure he gets what he desires.

Within this frenzied atmosphere of distrust and fear we see the way moral boundaries are tried and tested by the presence of something as vital and desirable as gold. At one stage our three prospectors are approached by a fourth man who seeks to become a partner and make a share of their profits. They are now faced with three choices: to release the man and allow him to head back into town where he can inform the community of the large quantity of gold to be prospected in the mountain, allow him to become a partner or murder him and discreetly remove the evidence. In any civil and decent society of people option one or two would be the only possible solution. But in this case there are large portions of gold at stake and it is clear that this factor weighs heavily on the minds of the three lead characters.

The conclusion they arrive at is inevitable - even jolly old Howard eventually concedes that they ought to kill this newcomer in order to protect their bounty. If I have one minor quibble with this film it’s that the characters are given an easy way out of this moral conundrum when outside forces bring about the death of this problematic newcomer. I’d have liked to see whether Curtin and Howard could find it within themselves to pull the trigger on this innocent man and sink to the level of moral depravity which Dobb’s finds himself later in the film. Yet, given that this decision results in a fantastically entertaining encounter with an intimidating gang of bandits and one of the most famous film lines of all time – “We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges” - I think we can let director John Huston off the hook.

The performances are unanimously great. Bogey, playing against type is masterful as the loathsome Dobbs. He perfectly encapsulates the paranoia that so often goes hand in hand with obsession. It’s a measured and precise performance that does not feel over the top, at least until his final scenes where his madness becomes uncontrollable. By this stage, however, I think we as an audience are both expecting this to happen and indeed accepting that this is the logical progression for his character. Whether or not this is Bogey’s best performance is still a matter of debate, but it’s certainly the most psychologically complex. The show, however, is well and truly stole by Walter Huston who commands every scene he is in. At first he appears only to express a kind of joviality and in a lesser film he would probably be relegated to the role of comic relief. Yet behind those friendly smiling eyes Huston’s Howard expresses a kind of world-weariness – a knowledge of the world that he bears not as a crux, but something he has accepted and refuses to allow to get him down. Both John and Walter Huston won academy awards for their work on their film and rightfully so. This is a thrilling morality play that encourages introspection and debate. No doubt its power and force will remain equally strong for the next 70 years.