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Contents February 2018
32

FEATURES
20
COVER FEATURE
The needle and the damage done
Paul Thomas Anderson’s first movie
outside the US is a gothic romance set in
50s London. Here he talks about the rigid
world of haute couture, the English class
system and working with Daniel Day-
Lewis on the actor’s last film. By James Bell

32
Small wonder
Alexander Payne’s ingenious Downsizing
imagines a world where people can opt to
be shrunk to help tackle overpopulation.
He explains the film’s slow gestation
and why he’s so gloomy about the
future of the planet. By Philip Horne

36
Bergman: keeping the faith
As a major London retrospective launches
to mark Ingmar Bergman’s centenary,
is our new age of uncertainty a fitting
moment for audiences to reconnect
with the fearsome visions of spiritual
longing and loss found in the director’s
Faith Trilogy? By Catherine Wheatley
PLUS from the S&S archive, Peter Cowie
visits the set of Fanny and Alexander

26 42
The awful truth
Steven Spielberg’s The Post, which
Park life explores the Pentagon Papers exposé of
In Aardman’s Early Man, cavemen in a remote forest challenge US government duplicity in Vietnam,
tries hard to stir the democratic impulse
invaders to a football match to win their freedom. It’s Nick in the era of Trump – but the track record
Park’s first directing job in almost a decade. By Nick Bradshaw of crusading true-story sagas leaving a
mark in the national consciousness has
never been great. By Michael Atkinson
REGULARS
5 Editorial Category error Wide Angle
14 Point of View: Thomas McMullan is
Rushes living in the season of the glitch
6 2018 Preview: Nick James picks 16 Primal Screen: Pamela Hutchinson
highlights of the year to come reports on a new approach to
8 Interview: Philip Concannon talks to lost films: making them again
Pat Collins, director of Song of Granite 19 Festival: Tony Rayns at Tokyo FILMeX
9 The Numbers: Charles Gant
tots up 2017’s box office 95 Letters
10 Interview: Philip Horne meets Richard
Linklater, whose Last Flag Flying is Endings
a sort of sequel to The Last Detail 96 Adam Scovell basks in the rare
13 Dispatches: Mark Cousins imagines a optimism that closes Ingmar 20
sublime 24-hour movie made of clips Bergman’s Wild Strawberries
February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 1
 EDITORIAL
Editor
Nick James
Editorial Nick James
Deputy editor
Kieron Corless
Features editor
James Bell
Web editor
Nick Bradshaw
Production editor
Isabel Stevens

CATEGORY ERROR
Chief sub-editor
Jamie McLeish
Sub-editors
Robert Hanks
Jane Lamacraft
Researcher
Mar Diestro-Dópido
Credits supervisor
Patrick Fahy “You don’t get to make a ‘media exception’ just
Credits associates because it’s Lynch.” This comment on Twitter (from
Kevin Lyons
Pieter Sonke @jmittell) was typical of many huffy responses to
James Piers Taylor
Design and art direction
our Best Films of 2017 poll last month. David Lynch
chrisbrawndesign.com and Mark Frost’s 18-hour television series Twin Peaks:
Origination
Rhapsody
The Return coming second in a film poll sparked
Printer a turf war over which side of the thinning divide
Wyndeham Group
between fiction film and television drama such a
BUSINESS series should fall. We can’t pretend we anticipated
Publisher
Rob Winter
the spat, but it helped focus attention on what
Publishing coordinator the results meant. Lynch himself has called Twin
Natalie Griffith
Advertising consultant
Peaks: The Return a film, though it was financed and
Ronnie Hackston broadcast as a series; and the fact that the writer gets
T: 020 7957 8916
M: 07799 605 212 equal credit is another indicator of its separateness
E: ronnie.hackston@bfi.org.uk from film industry procedures. So telephiles
Newsstand distribution saw our listing as theft of their subject matter, or
Seymour
T: 020 7429 4000 invasion of their domestic turf, while cinephiles Telephiles saw our listing of ‘Twin
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Bookshop distribution
objected snobbishly to its inclusion in a ‘film’ list. Peaks’ in our best films poll as theft of
We say that both attitudes are mistaken. People have
Central Books
T: 020 8525 8800 been talking about the convergence of the various their subject matter, while cinephiles
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moving-image media for years, but lately reality has objected to its inclusion in a ‘film’ list
Sight & Sound is a member of the
Independent Press Standards
moved closer to the proposition. Televisions used
Organisation (which regulates the UK’s to be small devices offering inferior moving image deeply people feel connected to the specialness of
magazine and newspaper industry).
We abide by the Editors’ Code of reproduction and the programmes made for them their turf. Film criticism and television criticism
Practice and are committed to
upholding the highest standards of tended to concentrate on keeping things simple and have entirely separate traditions, and one thing this
journalism. If you think that we have
not met those standards and want to the talking heads front and centre. But the widespread debate has shown is how far behind – at least from
make a complaint please contact
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to resolve your complaint, or if you TV dramas are now shot to a standard very similar changing nature of how we watch films and TV.
would like more information about IPSO
or the Editors’ Code, contact IPSO on to most films, using the same cameras. Furthermore, Writing about television has traditionally been
0300 123 2220 or visit www.ipso.co.uk
Sight & Sound (ISSN 0037-4806)
the more auteurist film directors often now prefer done in round-up columns. Writers of these were and
is published monthly by British Film to work in television, where there’s arguably more are expected to be witty up front and analytical under
Institute, 21 Stephen Street, London
W1T 1LN and distributed in the USA artistic freedom and the rewards are more certain. the radar. In the UK, the master of that approach is or
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Periodicals Postage Paid at South best writing about the best work being done in New Yorker is queen of the form. Both are brilliant –
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Copyright © BFI, 2017

not, in fact, a deliberate act of reclamation, merely as, say, the theatrical release of foreign-language
The views and opinions expressed
in the pages of this magazine or on an oversight, but it clearly touched a raw nerve. cinema. The consequence is that films and television
its website are those of the author(s)
and are not necessarily those of the
Here’s a flavour of the kinds of things said: “It is not series will be seen increasingly to be in the same
BFI or its employees. The contents
of this magazine may not be used
[a] movie, it is clearly shaped as a TV show. It has cold leaky boat, whether their fans like it or not.
or reproduced without the written openings, it has intro credits in each episode, it even P.S. The issue you’re reading is my 250th as editor. Last
permission of the Publisher.
The BFI is a charity, (registration
ends each episode with a concert,” complained @ April’s issue marked my 20 years in the role. I am proud
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21 Stephen St, London, W1T 1LN
works’. It’s too broad. It’s like making a best novel list to enjoyment. I want to thank all variants of the S&S team
include anything with words in it,” said @swansonian. over the years, every contributor, and most of all you,
What’s interesting about these comments is how the readers, for sticking with us. Happy New Year!

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 5

 NEWS AND VIEWS

Rushes
2018 PREVIEW

SPOILT FOR CHOICE

The gang’s all here: Aml Ameen stars in Idris Elba’s directorial debut Yardie

Comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral- Il buco/The Hole). Sticking with Italian directors, Fantastic Woman and his understated adaptation
the next film by Luca Guadagnino, deservedly of Naomi Alderman’s memoir of sex in an
comical, historical-pastoral… Nick fêted for his recent Call Me by Your Name, will Orthodox Jewish context, Disobedience. Wes
James outlines a dizzying variety be his remake of Dario Argento’s horror classic Anderson’s Isle of Dogs will open the Berlinale
Suspiria, about a young student arriving to train at in February; Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack
of visual treats in the year ahead a ballet school which houses a disturbing secret. Built comes later in the year. And hard on the
It stars Chloë Grace Moretz and Tilda Swinton. heels of his Last Flag Flying (see page 10), Richard
In the making Linklater has an adaptation of Maria Semple’s
A new meaning to the phrase ‘dressed to kill’ On the arthouse schedule comic novel Where’d You Go, Bernadette.
seems to have inspired Peter Strickland’s Some things we mentioned last year are still
upcoming ghost story In Fabric, which stars to be released, so they’re worth reflagging: Home forces
Marianne Jean-Baptiste and involves the passing Lucrecia Martel’s magnificent Zama is on for A more bizarre pairing of Brit talents than director
around of a fatal dress. Meanwhile Abel Ferrara the spring, as is Claire Denis’s Juliette Binoche- Carol Morley and author Martin Amis is hard to
has secured funding for Siberia, “a subjective led anatomisation of romance Let the Sunshine imagine, but that’s what’s promised by Out of Blue,
and objective journey into the subconscious” In (Denis’s intriguing-looking sci-fi High Life Morley’s adaptation of Amis’s novel Night Train,
which will star Isabelle Huppert, Nicolas Cage should emerge at a festival later this year). Lynne which stars the wonderful Patricia Clarkson.
and Willem Dafoe (who by then will have also Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here should arrive For political bite, we’re expecting much that’s
played Vincent van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s At in March, as should Ruben Ostlund’s Palme d’Or rousing from Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, his drama
Eternity’s Gate). Joanna Hogg has been shooting winner The Square, but there’s still no sign of Ilya about the 19th-century massacre of Mancunian
The Souvenir, about a 1980s age-gap romance, Khrzhanovsky’s notorious experimental project protestors by sabre-wielding cavalry. The long-
under the aegis of executive producer Martin Dau. Of the newer upcoming works, pride of awaited adaptation of Victor Headley’s seminal
Scorsese. Getting us equally excited is the place goes to Steve McQueen’s film reshaping of novel Yardie finds Idris Elba at the helm and will
possibility of a new film from Michelangelo Widows, the 1980s TV series about female bank be in Sundance, as will Wash Westmoreland’s
Frammartino, director of the near-perfect essay robbers. A double helping of Sebastián Lelio literary biopic Colette. And Andrew Haigh’s
film Le quattro volte (2010) – the new one is called brings us both his transgender grief drama A evocative Pacific Northwest tale of a young

6 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

Explosive: The Deminer Un-Orthodox: Disobedience Thorpe-provoking: A Very English Scandal

boy and the ageing racehorse he loves, Lean On Stephen Frears, written by Russell T. Davies and Tower, which stars Tahar Rahim and Alec Baldwin,
Pete, will be released probably in late spring. starring Hugh Grant as Liberal leader Jeremy but next in line is probably Waco, about the
Thorpe, who was accused of conspiring to Branch Davidian sect’s 1993 stand-off with the
Hollywood hustlers murder his (male) lover, and ITV’s new seven- FBI, which resulted in more than 70 deaths.
Quentin Tarantino’s untitled next film, set in part adaptation of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Mike
the 1960s and 70s and called for convenience #9, Bartlett follows up Doctor Foster with Trauma, At the docs
has landed with Sony in the wake of the Harvey concerning a father’s revenge on a surgeon Many of the year’s top documentaries will be
Weinstein revelations. This will precede the much- for a botched operation on his son. For a more making their first impressions on the world
talked-about Star Trek movie QT is also down experimental approach to TV, the best bet is at January’s Sundance Film Festival. But titles
to direct. The superhero movies that promise Steven Soderbergh’s Mosaic, a multi-strand murder already scheduled for release that we can
the most are Ryan Coogler’s take on Marvel’s mystery starring Sharon Stone that’s being shown recommend include Hogir Hirori’s gripping
Black Panther and Ruben Fleischer’s evocation over five consecutive nights in the US. In a nifty portrait of a DIY Iraqi army mine-clearer The
of Venom, which stars Tom Hardy and Michelle twist, viewers watching via an iPhone app will be Deminer, and Talal Derki’s revelation of Syrian
Williams. Most awaited of the blockbusters is able to choose the order in which they experience life under Isis, Of Fathers and Sons. Veteran
Ava DuVernay’s interpretation of Madeleine the story by selecting different narrative threads. Agnès Varda is on form with Faces Places, a
L’Engle’s much-loved SF novel A Wrinkle in Time. Just as The Twilight Zone is being brought back portrait of rural France co-directed with the
Damien ‘La La Land’ Chazelle and his star Ryan to viewers in a new series, so the long-running 60s artist JR. More speculatively, we may see the
Gosling have tasked themselves with making the US space opera Lost in Space is being rebooted for unveiling of Asif Kapadia’s tantalising latest
Neil Armstrong biopic First Man. There’s much a 10-episode run. Another surprise comeback is a young-prodigy archive doc Maradona; Michael
curiosity to see what Shane Black does with the new series of Roseanne, last seen in the late 1990s, Moore’s anti-Trump screed Fahrenheit 11/9;
revived Predator, while the Mission: Impossible with the original cast. Taboo, Ozark and Harlots all Kevin Macdonald’s untitled Whitney Houston
sequels will reach the potentially confusing title get their second seasons underway, and TV series Documentary; Todd Haynes’s untitled Lou
MI:6. But for all these possibly thrilling spectacles, developments of the films Heathers and Snowpiercer Reed/Velvet Underground Project; Ken Burns’s
Guillermo del Toro’s dazzling The Shape of Water, are on the way. The true crime yen sparked by Muhammad Ali; and Tim Travers Hawkins’s
coming soon, has set the bar extremely high. Making a Murderer not only sees that programme Laura Poitras-produced Chelsea Manning doc
renewed for season two, but the advent of some XY Chelsea. But the most exciting prospect is
On the box rivals, including Law & Order: True Crime – The Viktor Kossakovsky’s Aquarela, a globe-trotting
The British series most likely to make an impact Menendez Murders. The main drama-doc attraction nonfiction paean to water in the style of his
this year are A Very English Scandal, directed by looks to be Osama bin Laden saga The Looming last solo feature, 2011’s ¡Vivan las Antípodas!.

The reign down in Africa: Chadwick Bose (centre) as King T’Challa of Wakanda in Marvel’s Black Panther

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 7

 RUSHES INTERVIEW

SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE

Places in the heart: while many Irish filmmakers steer away from the subject of Irish identity, Pat Collins puts it at the very centre of his work

life. The film unfolds in three distinct acts, first presume to know what’s going on inside his
Song of Granite, Pat Collins’s presenting Heaney as a child in Connemara in head so I just couldn’t go down that route.”
moving portrait of the life of an the 1930s before skipping ahead to his travels Instead, Collins says he took the opportunity
Irish folksinger, offers a subtle through the UK and US in the 1960s, and then to use Heaney as a kind of Trojan horse,
catching up with him as an elderly man in allowing him to dig into a wider set of ideas
portrait of a lost culture America, reflecting on his past and his legacy. and themes that had long fascinated him.
We get a sense of the overall shape of Heaney’s Song of Granite is in some ways reminiscent
By Philip Concannon life by the end of the film, but how much have of Peter Watkins’s Edvard Munch (1976)
There are many words you could use to describe we really learned about him? Beyond the bare and Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four
Song of Granite – just don’t call it a biopic. “The biographical details, Heaney has long been Chapters (1985), two films that take a bold and
thing with biopics is that I just don’t like them an elusive, enigmatic figure, and while some imaginative approach to presenting an artist’s
as a genre,” Pat Collins told me when the term filmmakers might have been tempted to try to life and work, but also explore the society and
came up in our conversation. “I can’t think of fill in the blanks, Collins felt it was important culture that shaped them; a culture that, in
many that I really liked. I think Roger Ebert to stay true to this aspect of his character. Heaney’s case, has been lost in many ways.
said something to the effect that biopics make “There have been two books written about “He might be one of the last people to make
every life the same and no matter whether it’s a him, a documentary and now a feature film, but that leap from, say, a peasant society, which
singer, an actor, a president or whatever, every I can’t say that anybody really knows anything had this rich oral tradition,” Collins says. “The
life comes out the same in a biopic. I suppose I about him,” Collins says. “We know certain place where he came from, Carna, somebody
wanted to avoid that, and I wouldn’t have started facts – he moved to New York, he worked as said there were more unrecorded stories and
it if I’d felt I had to use standard biopic setups.” a doorman in Manhattan, he taught at the songs there than in any other part of Europe.
So if Song of Granite isn’t a biopic, what is it? University of Washington – but we don’t know I think there was a neighbour of Joe Heaney’s,
Collins’s film is a portrait of Joe Heaney, the man how he felt about any of that. There are some or an uncle, who had 220 songs, and this is
widely regarded as the greatest practitioner of small revelations in his letters to people, but without writing them down; I suppose they had
sean-nòs, a form of traditional unaccompanied I don’t know if he spoke to anybody about a lot less junk in their heads than we have. So I
Irish singing. He was said to be able to remember his wife and family, for example, because it think the place he came from was unique and
a repertoire of more than 500 songs, and he was actually a shock to a lot of people that he special, and that lasted longer in Ireland and
became a star in the American folk music revival was even married or had kids. I don’t think I’d in Connemara than it would have in the north
of the 1960s, first at the Newport Folk Festival and of England or wherever. The whole industrial
then in various cities across the country, where Heaney has long been an elusive, revolution in England and Scotland would have
he performed to sold-out crowds and was fêted finished off that tradition to a certain extent.”
by avant-garde composers such as John Cage. enigmatic figure, and Collins felt The fact that the environment surrounding
Filmed in atmospheric black and white by
Richard Kendrick, Song of Granite gives us a
it was important to stay true to Heaney is given just as much emphasis as
Heaney himself should be no surprise to anyone
snapshot of various stages in this unpredictable this aspect of his character familiar with Collins’s work. As a documentarian

8 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

 THE NUMBERS
REVIEW OF THE YEAR

he has frequently examined the relationship By Charles Gant

between communities, landscape and history While the US suffered a torrid year at the
2017 ENGLISH-LANGUAGE ARTHOUSE/
in rural Ireland – most notably in his 2002 film box office, with a series of franchise pictures CROSSOVER FILMS AT UK BOX OFFICE
Tory Island – and his first fiction feature Silence underperforming in the marketplace, in UK
(2011) followed a sound recordist (Collins’s cinemas it was very much business as usual. Film Gross
frequent collaborator Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhride) In fact, for the year to the end of November,
as he travelled through the west of Ireland in UK box office was 4 per cent up on the
Dunkirk £56,650,292*
search of places free from man-made sound. equivalent period from 2016, with a torrent of La La Land £30,419,348
“A lot of filmmakers back off from landscape, cash from The Last Jedi yet to be factored in.
because they think it’s over-romanticised or Encouragingly, the good news was not Blade Runner 2049 £19,041,252*
they think it doesn’t really relate to life, but confined to the Hollywood mainstream. At
for me landscape is a central part of life,” he Curzon, for example – which programmes T2 Trainspotting £16,955,161
says. “Every time I go outside my front door a mix of foreign language, British and US
I see the landscape, so why would I not try indie, and the occasional quality blockbuster
Baby Driver £12,940,939
to include it in the films that I make?” – box office is up an organic 10 per cent Lion £11,831,603
This engagement with the land is one of on 2016, excluding the contribution of
the key attributes that distinguishes Collins’s new venues at Aldgate, next door to Get Out £10,339,962
work from his contemporaries. Over the the City of London, and in Oxford.
course of the past decade a number of talented Curzon benefited from a profusion of Victoria & Abdul £9,949,123*
filmmakers have emerged in Irish cinema, but commercially potent titles that fitted its
while their films may take place in Ireland, programming profile. Those included the
Hidden Figures £6,308,314
they often contain genre elements or an in-built chain’s top performer La La Land – the Hacksaw Ridge £5,687,724
crossover appeal, whereas Irishness itself seems eighth-biggest box-office hit of the year at
to be the central theme of Collins’ work. UK cinemas overall, with £30.4 million – and The Death of Stalin £4,993,186*
“I do think a lot of Irish filmmakers steer away summer smash Dunkirk, which surprised
from themes of being Irish or what might be Irish analysts by overtaking The Dark Knight Rises Moonlight £4,312,681
identity, because they feel there’s a bigger world (2012) to become Christopher Nolan’s biggest
Viceroy’s House £4,112,257
out there and because they want to make a film ever UK hit, with £56.7 million. In addition to La
that’s more marketable in the States,” he says. “I La Land, awards season threw up a number of Their Finest £4,052,726
suppose I start from a point where I don’t think other strong performers, notably Lion, Hidden
about that at all, it doesn’t matter to me. There’s a Figures, Hacksaw Ridge and Moonlight. Titles Manchester by the Sea £3,623,386
Patrick Kavanagh line about it taking a lifetime to including Get Out, Baby Driver and The Death
know one field, and just in the little areas I know I of Stalin successfully straddled plexes and Logan Lucky £3,391,161
could keep working in them for the next 20 years indie venues, while Blade Runner 2049, only
Goodbye Christopher £2,880,282*
and I don’t think I’d exhaust it. Now maybe the the 21st biggest hit at UK cinemas overall in
audience would be exhausted and the funders 2017, ranked seventh for the year at Curzon. Robin
would be exhausted, but all I’ve got is my view of The year’s top foreign-language title
Detroit £2,604,511
the world, and what is the point in me making proved – rather surprisingly – to be Park
a film that somebody else would make? But I Chan-wook’s Korean lesbian period thriller My Cousin Rachel £2,564,487
think Song of Granite is as much about humanity The Handmaiden. Usually we would have to
as it is about Irish identity. It’s using what I know qualify such a claim with the words ‘excluding mother! £2,344,069
and making it about singing universally.” Bollywood titles’. There’s no need to do so Grosses to December 17; *still on release
In perhaps his riskiest filmmaking decision, for 2017, since the top Indian film, Raees, fell
Collins tested the boundaries of that universality below The Handmaiden’s box office, which
by choosing not to subtitle any of the film’s totalled a hefty £1.35 million. It was the
Gaelic songs. Instead of following the lyrics, Song highest figure for a non-Bollywood foreign- FOREIGN-LANGUAGE ARTHOUSE
of Granite asks us to listen to each performance, language film since Untouchable in 2012. FILMS AT THE UK BOX OFFICE IN 2017
to feel it, to follow the emotional arc of the Overall in foreign language, 2017 delivered
song and to hear the specific tones introduced an untypical polarity of winners and losers, Film Gross
by the singer, and the results can be incredibly with The Handmaiden, rape revenge drama Elle
rewarding. Collins has been on tour with this film and the near-three-hour German comedy Toni The Handmaiden £1,353,246
at a number of international festivals and he has Erdmann surging ahead of the pack, and no
encountered viewers who have been moved to other title even managing to hit £300,000 – Elle £863,440
tears by the songs without understanding a word. although Happy End should get there. In 2016, Toni Erdmann £592,520
“The film is about singing and it tries to six films reached the £300,000 threshold. One
capture singing in a live context and in a kind notable 2017 trend was the underperformance Happy End £293,167*
of meditative way, and if people were reading of middlebrow French fare, which in past years
the subtitles they wouldn’t be getting lost in has proved reliably popular. Top performer in The Other Side £273,342
the aliveness of it,” he explains. “People are this field was The Midwife, starring Catherine of Hope
really responding to that. It’s not a mainstream Deneuve, which Curzon Artificial Eye released
film by any means, but I think people are more in July: it limped home to £107,000. In contrast, The Salesman £268,192
receptive to it than I could have expected in lots the year’s top performing titles all
of ways. I suppose it’s the way they hold the notes differentiated themselves with strong hooks,
Frantz £249,578
and inhabit the song, there’s such a musicality cultural talking points and transgressive Raw £204,878
in each voice and such emotion. Everybody content. Ben Luxford, head of the BFI Audience
who listens to Joe Heaney talks about the raw Fund, comments: “The familiarity and cosiness Kedi £197,170
emotion in his voice, and again, I think that’s the of those titles that littered the landscape a few
kind of thing that transcends any borders.” years ago, they’ve run out of relevance in the My Life as a Courgette £186,639
Song of Granite is released in UK cinemas marketplace now. Cinema audiences like to
i on 15 December and is reviewed on page 73 feel like they’re discovering something.”
Excludes Bollywood and Polish films
Grosses to December 19; *still on release

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 9

 RUSHES INTERVIEW

IT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN TO A VET

Coming home: Laurence Fishburne, Bryan Cranston and Steve Carell as Vietnam vets in Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying

Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying of the more faithful adaptations, even though
we changed things, because it adheres to the
PH: You usually do a certain amount of
rewriting at the rehearsal stage.
follows three former comrades-in- structure of the book, whereas The Last Detail RL: They always accuse me of improvising,
arms on an American odyssey, in a film kind of stopped [before the end of the but that’s the phase where I improvise. Not
novel]. Even though we create a whole different on set, but in rehearsal, and not like acting
loose follow-up to The Last Detail backstory – Vietnam, which is not in The Last exercise improv. It’s just talking, finding new
Detail – and we do so many things differently. thoughts, and a lot of humour comes out of
By Philip Horne PH: How did you first get involved? that process. Reworking the material, and
Spoiler alert: this interview reveals a plot twist RL: The book was kind of floating around. Darryl trying to involve the actors, just trying to get
Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying isn’t exactly a felt that he had a lot to say and that those three the right pitch, the right words, the timing.
sequel to Hal Ashby’s bleak 1973 comedy drama guys were speaking to him, even beyond the grave PH: So the actors are like co-writers?
The Last Detail, starring Jack Nicholson. It’s a free in Billy’s case. So that book, Last Flag Flying, was a RL: Yeah, we’re sitting around, pens in hand,
adaptation of Darryl Ponicsan’s 2005 novel of the bit of a purge – a lot of humour, passion and anger. I talking. “Let’s hear it again, let’s read through
same title, which is a sequel partly to that film responded to that. There was a lot of anger, and that it.” It feels more writerly than actorly. But
and partly to his own 1970 novel, which was was exactly how I was feeling. Darryl liked what it’s not real till you start hearing it, because
adapted for the screen by Robert Towne. Like the I was doing. He was a good partner all the way. words on a page are pretty abstract. It’s
original film – which followed a pair of career PH: Was the fact that Jack Nicholson so funny, films are completely judged as
Navy men, Billy ‘Badass’ Buddusky (played by passed on the project liberating? scripts, but to me that’s just nothing.
Nicholson) and Richard Mulhall (Otis Young), RL: Put it like this, I’m glad the way it all worked PH: So working with the actors is
showing young sailor Larry Meadows (Randy out. I worked on the adaptation and had all the primary experience?
Quaid) a last good time before they deliver him to these ideas and we just couldn’t get it off the RL: Yeah, I’m always trying to figure out what
a naval prison to serve an eight-year stretch – the ground. The open wound of that war [in Iraq] the film wants to be. The vibe will be defined
new film follows a trio of military men on an around ten years ago – no one wanted to deal by how my cast gets along, interacts, what
episodic American journey. In Linklater’s film, the with it. But I told Darryl, “This isn’t going away: their strengths and weaknesses are. Certain
three are Vietnam veterans – with the Buddusky we’re gonna make this film some day.” things won’t be achieved based on what’s there,
character becoming Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston), PH: Is this movie unique, in that the sequel novel but that will be more than replaced by what
Mulhall becoming Richard Mueller (Laurence only exists because the original movie changed is there that couldn’t have been anticipated.
Fishburne) and Quaid’s character becoming Larry the ending and allowed Billy to survive? It is a bit I’ve got my antennae up the whole time,
‘Doc’ Shepherd (Steve Carell) – who are reunited of a fudge, at the beginning of the second novel. going, like, “Oh! That’s an interesting thing
after many years and travel to the funeral of RL: Yeah, like, “I thought you were you do. What if we do that?” It’s wonderful
Larry’s soldier son, who has been killed in Iraq. dead!” – “No, I got a plate in my head!” It’s fun and the most alive thing. A lot of directors
I met Linklater when he visited the UK for great not to have to deal with that. would say they like editing the most, but
the BFI London Film Festival in October. PH: So the novel Last Flag Flying is like I like rehearsing and shooting the most,
Philip Horne: I’m interested in how you a sequel to the original movie rather because to me that’s where it’s happening.
went about adapting the novel. than the original novel – or… PH: That bond of friendship from Vietnam
Richard Linklater: Darryl [Ponicsan] says it’s one RL: Somewhere in between. in the movie is a thing you could only

10 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

have because it’s not a sequel. In The Last
Detail they’re only together travelling
from Virginia to New Hampshire for that
short period. They’ve never met before
and they never meet again afterwards.
RL: And they’re just thrown together. It was
the freedom we were granted by adapting,
to actually add something that would bond
those people – you’re bonded for life. The
thing is so much about friendship, about
these guys who were generous with each
other. They just see each other’s humanity
and find humour in the oddest places.
PH: It’s interesting the way you feed us
bits about what happened in Vietnam.
RL: It was important in this to give them actual
Vietnam experience. What went on there is still
not big – it’s not like the My Lai massacre – it’s
pretty typical. They’d lost some friends and they
were fucked up on drugs, and in the big scheme
of things you would say, “It’s not that big a
thing” – but to the individual psyche it’s huge. Life of Bryan: Richard Linklater on set with Cranston
PH: And what we learn about the incident
that haunts them is fragmentary. PH: It’s a great moment when they you. Are you who you are in relation to
RL: We give bits and pieces, and I wanted arrive at the Arlington Cemetery and who you were as a younger person?
to dole it out, because guys who’ve been realise Doc has just been confused. PH: Which makes me ask how Jesse and Celine
through that don’t usually talk about it much. RL: They’re in the wrong state! Yeah, my [from the director’s Before… trilogy] are doing,
They talk in half-thoughts and sentences, editor was like, “Can’t we just cut that?” because with the nine-year gaps between
so it was a challenge to communicate, to and I said, “No, that’s kind of great, just that each previous film, that time is coming up.
let the viewer put together that something you’ve gone the wrong way.” Those subtle RL: I don’t know! We’re about the five-year mark.
happened but not say 100 per cent what. looks that Sal and Mueller gave each other, This is usually around the time we have an idea.
PH: You’ve said a lot of your films are like, “Doc is not okay. He’s not all here. But it hasn’t happened yet. We’ve got four more
explorations of ideas you want to come to terms What have we gotten ourselves into?” years. We were joking it takes us about five years
with, and that it’s the story that gets you first. PH: But then they’re quite gentle with him… to recover from those. They’re pretty rigorous.
RL: Yeah, it’s like, “Why are you grabbed by this RL: Well, he’s a gentle soul himself. Steve gives But yeah, if at age fiftyish Jesse and Celine have
story? Is it these three guys, or this war backdrop: this really beautiful interior performance. something to say, we’ll do it. I don’t want to do
the mixed feelings?” The film ultimately is a His dad had fought in World War II and it just to do it, unless there’s something we feel
picture of the love-hate relationship a lot of never talked about it. He had a certain compelled to share. Again, I’m not going to force it.
people end up with. You get this particularly stoicism, and Steve was really playing that. PH: Although Last Flag Flying is set in 2003,
with service members. Anyone who’s trapped PH: Your next film is another novel adaptation, it could be about the people who voted for
in this big bureaucracy often ends up at odds Where’d You Go, Bernadette, about a Trump – they feel betrayed by the government
with it. But you can love it at the same time, teenager trying to track down her missing and their politics are up for grabs.
like Sal’s character: truly, he felt like those were mother. Have you shot that already? RL: It’s an interesting dynamic that’s played out
the best years. He’s one of those guys who liked RL: Yeah, I’m editing. We only wrapped two and in the American Right. In the last election, in the
the regimen of it all; Mueller, not so much. a half weeks ago, so I’m still recovering. The debates, they would ask, “How many of you think
PH: Cranston and Fishburne give wonderful Russian vessel we were in got caught in an Arctic that the last Iraq War was a mistake?” and they all
performances, yet there are quite a few hurricane! Suffice to say we got it – barely. It was raised their hands. So that’s when I knew times
big unexpected close-ups on Steve Carell. pretty rigorous. The film has an epic structure; had changed. I was like, “Okay, Last Flag is ready.”
You’ve said this is really Doc’s story. He’s a we cover a lot of ground. I’m excited about it. PH: America today seems incredibly divided.
quiet character, but essentially he’s sort of Cate Blanchett is Bernadette, and Kristen Wiig RL: I can’t tell you who my characters voted for.
the audience for a lot of what’s going on. plays Audrey the neighbour. It’s a wonderful I’m pretty sure Mueller didn’t vote for Trump,
RL: Yeah. He’s the one getting pulled through. cast. Billy Crudup is the husband. Laurence but I can’t tell you that Sal didn’t vote for Trump.
It’s this nightmare narrative that he has to live Fishburne plays the architect friend… a lot of Sal might have voted for Trump. So this film is
through. Time is probably moving at a different great people. It’s set in Seattle, and we shot a little showing guys that are pretty far apart in their
rate for him. Just the last two days of his life there. We only shot second unit in Antarctica, belief systems, obviously you have a pretty sworn
have felt like an eternity. Finding out about his because right now it’s winter there, or was when atheist, and a man of the cloth. But it kind of
son’s death, and then deciding what to do, he we were shooting, so we went up to the North shows how – because they’re old friends – they
feels like he’s just walking in this nightmare. Pole. That’s where we got caught, because they can joke about things, and find humour in their
But these guys pull him back into some reality. have icebergs. Everything but penguins – you humanity. They don’t hate each other. There’s a
Before even deciding to do the movie, Steve gotta put those in. So it was a good experience. certain love and camaraderie. That really stems
asked me, “Why do you think Doc goes and And it’s sort of like Last Flag – it’s got that from a long time ago, so they’re bonded there,
looks these guys up? They have that history, middle-age thing. It’s a woman’s movie but which is kind of beautiful. But there’s a kind
but why?” And I was like, “You know, I’m not it echoes a certain way – how time changes of understanding, or healing. And though the
really sure.” [Laughs] There’s a kind of actor film depicts very different people – in Mueller
who would run away when the director Though the film depicts very and Sal’s case, there’s different race, beliefs and
doesn’t have the answer, but Steve liked that. choices – they get along. So maybe the film has a
He said, “Yeah, Doc just doesn’t know why he’s different people – in race, beliefs uniting feel. They can all unite in their frustration
doing anything.” He’s following an impulse
he can’t consciously intellectualise, so it’s
and choices – they get along. with the Man, when the Man is wrong.
Last Flag Flying is released in UK cinemas
a pure emotional, instinctual journey. So maybe it has a uniting feel i on 26 January and is reviewed on page 66

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 11

 presents December 2017

A selection of our limited edition Blu-rays from 2017:

Some of our forthcoming limited edition Blu-rays for 2018:

Buy direct from powerhousefilms.co.uk

 RUSHES DISPATCHES

THE 24-HOUR SUBLIME

For a change, let’s imagine that
this column isn’t a column at
all, but a great series of moving,
exciting and funny film clips
By Mark Cousins
When critics recently
voted Twin Peaks:
The Return, which
was shown on TV,
as the second-best
film of 2017 in Sight
& Sound, there were complaints on social
media. It was medium-inappropriate.
Well, how’s this for medium-inappropriate?
I’d like to put a film in this magazine column.
I’ve done film on the radio, but so have many.
Let’s push it further. Let’s imagine that these
900 words aren’t 900 words, but a film.
Why? I recently rewatched Caroline Leaf’s
short animation The Owl Who Married a Goose:
An Eskimo Legend. As I did so, the following
thought appeared in my head: “If I ever made
‘The 24-Hour Sublime’, this film would be in
it.” I’ve never heard the phrase ‘The 24-Hour
Sublime’ before, but there it was in my head,
fully formed and insistent. It’s shocking when
you have a thought without precedent. But let’s
work out what The 24-Hour Sublime might be,
and ‘make’ it. Essay films and video essays are
everywhere these days – what would this one
be? Twenty-four hours of great film clips?
Let’s start: David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ video;
Norman McLaren’s The Flicker Film (black-and-
white frames intercut fast – almost never shown
because it could induce a seizure); Scottish
director Margaret Tait’s A Portrait of Ga (1952),
a short home movie about her mother; that story in this list? My boss at Sight & Sound agreed shot in Chantal Akerman’s D’est (1993); Sammy
YouTube video of a full-sized lion running and to my idea for this column, but said, “Don’t just Davis Jr singing Public Enemy’s ‘Fight the Power’
hugging its owner, who saved it as a cub; Gene make it a list.” Was she right to say that? I’ve (he didn’t, but could CGI make it work?); Oum
Kelly in the film Summer Stock (1950) doing noticed that I can spend hours on YouTube, Kalthoum singing ‘Enta Omri (You Are My Life)’;
his dance routine on stage with two bits of zig-zagging from film clips to music videos the café scene at the end of Moonlight (2016).
paper; Claudia Cardinale arriving on the train and archive footage, without getting remotely At this stage you might be thinking – this is
in Once upon a Time in the West (1968), as the bored, yet a 90-minute fiction film with an actual fun, but inconsequential, or un-sequential. I’m
music soars; Bill Clinton’s eulogy at Sinn Féin plot intending to keep me interested, can have enjoying it, but the non-list bits – ie, paragraphs
politician Martin McGuinness’s funeral. me nodding off. When the BBC does one of its like this – are engaging me more. Maybe we’re
How’s it going so far? Lots of good choices, I good music video compilations – which might just killing time here. Maybe you’ve started
think, but are you frustrated yet that you can’t cut from Nina Simone to Neneh Cherry – I’m reading my politics, nationality, aesthetics or
see the extracts? Before the internet and when hooked. Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010) sexuality in the list? That’s fine. The list is a raw
I didn’t live near an arts cinema, I read about was ridiculously watchable, and had zero plot. thing. I’ve chosen things that move or excite
films without being able to see them. I loved So are story and argument all they’re cracked me or make me laugh, but am not saying why.
doing so. I loved the deferral, the pleasure of up to be? And if not, can we plunge in again? They need to speak for themselves, like a film
seeing through and past the words, into the The title song in Cabaret (1972); the seaborne speaks for itself. I walked around Glasgow today,
images they were describing. Can you admit ending of Imamura Shohei’s Profound Desires in stormy weather, battered by rain. My walk
to some pleasure in being able to picture of the Gods (1968); Vertigo Sea (2015) by John had no content, no meaning, no consequence,
these moments, even if you haven’t seen all Akomfrah; The Slave’s Lament by Graham yet it made me feel incredibly alive, alive in the
of them before? If so, can we proceed? Fagen, Sally Beamish, Ghetto Priest and Robert way that art aims for but doesn’t always achieve.
Mary Robinson’s speech when she became Burns; all of the tracking shots in Agnès Varda’s Again, there was no story in the walk. There
the first female president of Ireland in 1990; Vagabond (1985); NASA’s ‘Earthrise’ footage; the was just me and my fears and excitements.
the mirror scene in the Marx Brothers’ Duck moment of the explosion in Peter Watkins’s And, so, in violation of the norm that an
Soup (1933); the sex scenes in Jonathan Glazer’s The War Game (1965); the long train tracking article should conclude with a conclusion,
Under the Skin (2013); all the songs Marlene here’s my non-conclusion: the ‘Remember My
Dietrich sings in films; Godley and Creme’s Can you admit to some pleasure Forgotten Man’ number in Gold Diggers of 1933
ILLUSTRATION BY NATE KITCH

‘Cry’ video; the buddy song ‘Yeh Dosti Hum (1933); the funeral of suffragette Emily Wilding
Nahi Todenge’ from Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay in being able to picture these Davison; the Young Fathers’ ‘Shame’ video;
(1975); Missy Elliot’s ‘The Rain’ video; the
ending of Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen (1987).
moments, even if you haven’t Picasso drawing a chicken; Marilyn Monroe and
Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators doing
Are you bored yet, by the lack of thread or seen all of them before? ‘Running Wild’ in Some Like It Hot (1959).

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 13

 EXPLORING THE BIGGER PICTURE
Wide Angle
POINT OF VIEW

ALL SHOOK UP
When we see the world through and the underlying horror of the digital glitch are a meditation and celebration of the glitch
contemporary phenomena. In the 21st century as a political and creative tool. “Much more
screens, the digital glitch becomes we know one when we see it: when the screens common was the actual burning of celluloid,
a powerful symbol of all that’s we carry in our pockets splutter the wrong back in the days of nitrate, so I think this event
textures; or the screens in our office throw up of staged collapse might have been received
wrong with reality – if it is reality mangled lines; or the games consoles in our living with actual surprise, and maybe shock.
rooms create strange walls and stranger voices. “On the other hand, when walking through
By Thomas McMullan That’s not to say glitches were born with a city today you really don’t have to look more
There is a scene in Blade Runner 2049 in which computers. Since the 19th century there have than three metres ahead to see some kind of
our hero, Ryan Gosling’s K, and yesterday’s been slurred crackles on telephone lines. Since digital interface,” she adds. “We, audience and
hero, Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard, meet in a the 1950s there have been woozy pictures on makers, have developed language skills in terms
subterranean night club. The light is dim. The videotapes. In the dark spaces of cinemas, celluloid of digital media, and are aware now of collapse
tension is concrete, spectacularly ruptured has long been breaking down. Indeed, there are also being a metaphor for something else.”
as an enormous hologram of Elvis Presley directors who have made this happen on purpose. As Menkman suggests, a visual language of
begins to sing. And then he stops. And then The great experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, glitching screens is of a different order when
he starts again. And then he stops again. for example, would physically scratch film stock, garbled text and images don’t represent Gremlins
The scene judders forward at the pace of as in Reflections on Black (1955), when the blind in the projector room, but a collapse of your
a glitch. The holographic performers are protagonist’s eyes are lacerated with white cuts. social profile, your smart home, your work
on the blink. What could easily become a The 1990 film Gremlins 2: The New Batch – to documents, your dating profile, your bank
high-stakes punch-out framed by facsimiles take a very different example – has a remarkable account. When something glitches on your
becomes a contortion of false starts. Instead of sequence in which the film itself slows down computer or phone it is unsettling – perhaps
an anachronistic soundtrack, we are treated to and burns out, destroyed by pesky Gremlins who exciting, even liberating – because it reminds us
a quivering rendition of ‘Su/s/picio/us m/in/ have taken over the projector and are only made for a brief second that so much of our lives are
ds’. The warm swells of the music crack into to behave after a scolding from Hulk Hogan. held online, and that the seemingly permanent
silence, only to start up again without warning. Gremlins are themselves an embodiment systems which hold it all together can, much like
It’s an unsettling moment, undermining the safe of pre-digital glitches, bugs in the machinery. Blade Runner 2049’s holographic Elvis, fall apart.
stronghold of a familiar song, splitting it apart. You can imagine that, for a cinema audience in
This scene is not one that could have appeared the 1990s, seeing their evening entertainment The glitch, as a sickness or as
in Ridley Scott’s original film. Technical crash would have been a disorientating hiccup,
possibilities aside, it is not one that Blade Runner at least until the celebrity wrestler turns up. a superpower, pulls back the
(1982) would have imagined because this
rhythm – that of the digital glitch – was not yet
“The collapse of celluloid was maybe used by a
handful of popular artists,” says Rosa Menkman,
curtain of our infrastructure
an everyday experience. The anxiety, the anarchy artist and author of the Glitch Studies Manifesto, and hints at fires within

Viva Las Vegas: Ryan Gosling’s K encounters a holographic Elvis in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049

14 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

Sickness and superpowers
Video games are arguably the most common
sites for the glitch-in-the-wild. If you had an early
Game Boy you’ll likely remember loading a dusty
cartridge to be faced with a garbled Nintendo
screen. US artist Cory Arcangel’s Super Mario
Movie (2005) takes this idea and runs with it.
Programmed on to an actual Super Mario Bros
Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge,
the 15-minute film sees the plumber lost in
a corrupted landscape. Textures that usually
come together to form levels of blocks and fluffy
clouds are distorted into seasick abstractions. “As
a video game grows old its content and internal
logic deteriorate,” a wall of text explains at the
beginning of the film. “For a character caught in
this breakdown problems affect every area of life.”
The breakdown of Mario’s scenery has a
lot in common with Bill Morrison’s hypnotic,
nightmarish Decasia (2002), made up of
decomposing segments of film in which
cowboys and comedians and the like dance Inner visions: Nae Yuuki as the eyeless Naido in Twin Peaks (2017)
around growing splotches in the fabric of
their existence. There’s a reminder, too, of the unexpected accident is always that it might be like it belongs in a nuclear reactor emits hums
fourth-wall disintegration in Chuck Jones’s catastrophic. This may be the uncanny threshold and clicks. All the while, the camera is convulsing,
1951 Looney Tunes short Duck Amuck, in where the horror [of the] glitch operates.” interfered with by some unseen malevolence.
which the apparatus of Daffy Duck’s world and Lynch’s scene is haunted by the mysterious
body is stripped and teased by an omniscient Ghosts in the machines rhythm of unknown interference, expressed
animator. Like Daffy’s self-referential plight, Towards the beginning of David Lynch’s 2017 through the glitchy grammar of contemporary
the corruption of Mario’s code comes across TV series Twin Peaks: The Return, there is a scene technology. It feels modern, but it also harks
as a sickness. Something is wrong with the in which FBI agent Dale Cooper finds an eyeless back to pre-digital ideas of distortion caused by
characters: out of whack with their world, spilling woman in a room above a purple sea. The non-human forces. “Somewhere deep in the
across the circumference of their stage. Like the sequence spasms like a streaming malfunction. If archaeology of these forms is the belief that ghosts
estranged family of Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 play the original series’ backwards-talking phantasms and extra-terrestrials haunt the electromagnetic
Six Characters in Search of an Author they have were a nightmare tailored for spools of videotape spectrum,” Cubitt explains. “The stutters and
glitched out of their own fictions; liberated, yes, in a VCR, this scene has the unnerving anti- crackles of late-night recordings became for
but dangerous by virtue of being unmoored. rhythm of a digital corruption. Something begins researchers the traces of posthumous apparitions,
In 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph – set across the to bang on the door. A strange panel that looks the voices of the dead, or messages from distant
multiple universes of arcade machines – the stars – a thesis still powering SETI [search for
character Vanellope von Schweetz is ostracised extraterrestrial intelligence] projects today.”
as a glitch, exiled from the cutesy Mario Kart- In 1986 the Russian filmmaker Vladimir
esque society as if she were a leper. Her sickness Shevchenko was given permission to fly over
manifests itself as a fluttering pixellation of her the site of the Chernobyl disaster. The film reel
body, broken down and teleported from place he brought back was pockmarked and carried
to place. In the film’s climax, she learns to use large amounts of static. He thought at first that
this ability to her advantage, win a race and save the stock was defective, but then realised the
the lumbering Ralph. The glitch, and its power glitches were created by the radiation. “It was
to disturb, are flipped into a superpower. The not a representation of catastrophe but an actual
2017 teen thriller iBoy treads similar territory toxic event in which a lethal dose of radiation was
with the story of a London teenager who ingrained within the molecules of each and every
suffers brain damage and is subsequently able silver halide particle,” wrote Susan Schuppli in
to visualise digital signals. He becomes a glitch her essay ‘The Most Dangerous Film in the World’.
in the real world, liberated from its invisible Shevchenko’s film was literally corrupted.
tethers, given control of the reins, capable of The unseen interference in this case was deadly
making phones and computers explode. radiation. Its glitch was contagious. When you
This power fantasy clearly expresses our watch the scene in Twin Peaks, it’s hard not to feel
anxieties about how much control we actually a similar sensation – as if the sickness of which
wield over the vast, obscure networks that carry the medium’s stutter is a symptom is spreading
our online lives. The glitch, both as a sickness into your screen. The haunting of static has given
and as a superpower, pulls back the curtain of our way to a possession of the networks. Perhaps
global infrastructure and hints at fires within. the glitch is unsettling because it makes us, the
“Glitches at their natural best are ways the viewer, feel infected. When a holographic version
system betrays itself, betrays its pretensions of Elvis stops and starts to sing, or when an FBI
to perfection, and its attempt to exclude agent flits back and forth in a room, the fear is
not only the natural noise of the world but that their collapse will spread into our eyes, into
the noise of its own operation,” says Sean our brains, into our networks. Whether that
Cubitt, professor of film and television at corruption is an affliction or a liberation, it is an
Goldsmiths College. “The risk is always this: interruption that jolts us out of the everyday, out
glitches can produce unexpected beauty of our stability, out of our bodily and social order,
through accidental means; but the risk of the Gremlins take over the projector in Gremlins 2 into something altogether less sure of itself.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 15

 WIDE ANGLE PRIMAL SCREEN

PARADISE REMADE
When a film is lost forever, the only as the first crowdsourced movie. The original film
came out of a competition – the writer submitted
way to see it may be to make it all his idea anonymously and didn’t include any
over again – and who knows what contact details. “It’s obviously a shame,” Kylmälä
says, “but at the same time a blessing, because it
we might learn in the process? gave us freedom to take the material in whatever
direction we wanted.” Reminiscences by the
By Pamela Hutchinson crew suggest the original film ran to 20 minutes,
Remakes may be a sensitive subject, but in the but the threadbare plot led Kuosmanen and
silent era they were sometimes a necessity. When Kylmälä to believe it was closer to half that.
a film became popular, multiple copies were The completed remake is a hoot, a comic
printed, and the negative could wear out: the only caper about a pair of middle-aged scruffs making
solution was to shoot the film again. Famously, a killing selling moonshine to the locals in the
Cecil Hepworth’s company remade its 1905 British The Blind Girl, part of Guy Maddin’s Seances snow-covered Finnish countryside, then suffering
hit Rescued by Rover twice over to satisfy demand. from the effects of their own product when they
Then again, there were always unscrupulous that was key to their country’s cinematic history. try to multiply their profits at the card table. The
producers who might ‘borrow’ a successful idea The Moonshiners (Salaviinanpolttajat, 1907) was film was shot in black and white on 16mm film
from another territory for their own local market. the first fiction film ever made in Finland, but no using a Bolex camera – which gives it the texture
Several decades after the coming of sound, copies exist. Kylmälä approached Kuosmanen of an older work without any digital distressing. It
remaking silent films sounds like a good idea (“He has a wonderful understanding of film has been screened several times at festivals, with
once more – not just any silents, but the massive history and a movingly humane touch”) to live musical accompaniment and foley effects.
majority of films from the era that are now remake the film for its 110th anniversary, and The Canadian director Guy Maddin has long
considered lost. If we have no reasonable chance the 100th anniversary of Finnish independence. nursed an interest in lost film: “I’ve always
of seeing the originals again, but we do have cast All the filmmakers had to go on, says Kylmälä, considered a lost film as a narrative with no
lists, cue sheets, publicity materials, reviews, was a synopsis, “a rough plot description known final resting place,” he has said, “doomed
even screenplays or stills, these films seem ripe published in a newspaper at the time of the to wander the landscape of film history, sad,
for a remake. As with extant films, the remake film’s premiere”. The description was vague, but miserable and unable to project itself to the
shouldn’t replace the originals, but add to their that gave Kuosmanen and his team scope to use people who might love it.” To address this loss,
legacy. Every remake differs from the original, their imagination and invent a short comedy Maddin staged his Seances project in Paris and
even Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot rerun of Psycho from the barest details: two hooch hawkers Montreal, beginning in 2012. Every day, in a
(1998). What’s exciting about this process is who encounter a card sharp and a policeman. public place, he gathered a group of actors on a
that it is creative – the filmmakers inevitably There was no auteur influence to guide the small set to shoot swift remakes of lost or never
have very little to copy, so must approach the style of the film either, which Kylmälä describes completed movies. I went to the Pompidou
material in some ways as if it is brand new. Centre in Paris to see a cast that included Udo Kier,
Perhaps, also, the process of recreating a lost work A lost film is a narrative the writer Kim Morgan and Geraldine Chaplin
could tell us something about the original. enacting the scenarios of 1921’s The Blue Mountain
Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen (The Happiest with no known final resting Mystery, an Australian silent (I was lucky enough
Day in the Life of Olli Mäki) and producer Otto
Kylmälä had both made their own original silent
place, doomed to wander the to witness a brutal murder), and Erich von
Stroheim’s 1933 talkie script Poto-Poto. The shoots
shorts before they decided to tackle a lost film landscape of film history were streamed live online, and although the
finished, edited films are not available as complete
movies, much of the resulting footage was edited
into Maddin’s 2015 feature The Forbidden Room.
Perhaps acknowledging that every decision made
on set or in the editing room took the completed
remake away from the source or the original
directors’ intentions, Maddin has now presented
the Seances films in an interactive form, in
museum installations or online (seances.nfb.ca).
Seemingly randomised and remixed, the films
are true one-offs, presentations of the Seances
material in fleeting form, never to be repeated.
A project that began with remaking resists the
idea of replacing previous texts, and in fact
creates new “lost films” – a warning card before
each short advises: “This film will disappear.”
Projects such as these add to rather than
supersede the originals. Kylmälä says that so few
ILLUSTRATION BY MICK BROWNFIELD WWW.MICKBROWNFIELD.COM

early Finnish films survive that if the original

Moonshiners was ever discovered it would be “a
massive victory for Finnish film and our cultural
history … [but] while we wait, at least now Finland
has one version of its first film.” We could extend
the logic: since we may never find the original of
Tod Browning’s London After Midnight (1927) or
Murnau’s Four Devils (1928) or Hitchcock’s The
Mountain Eagle (1926), why not remake them?
Remakes could become an opportunity to engage
creatively with film history and raise its ghosts –
Finns ain’t what they used to be: the 2017 remake of the lost 1907 Finnish film The Moonshiners not an exercise in leveraging brand recognition.

16 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

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POWERS OF OBSERVATION

Panoptic nerve: Dragonfly Eyes edits a narrative out of thousands of hours of surveillance-camera footage

The main prize at Tokyo FILMeX there was a symbiotic relationship between which makes the ‘drama’ engrossing and
the soundtrack (performed by professional oddly credible. And an insidious, haunting
was shared by two Indonesian actors) and the images: Xu looked for images electronic score by the Japanese composer
directors – but their work was to illustrate the script but also allowed found Hanno Yoshihiro helps to tease out unexpected
images to shape revisions to the storyline. emotional nuances in the material; beyond the
overshadowed by another film A young woman named Qingting (‘Dragonfly’) elements of social satire, there are moments
grows disillusioned by the commercialism of of keenly felt pathos, rage and even horror.
By Tony Rayns the Buddhist temple where she is training to be There is one objective voice in the film,
Most critics and festival jurors haven’t yet noticed, a nun; she decides to drop out and explore the belonging to a mechanical entity which calls
but Xu Bing’s Dragonfly Eyes (Qingting zhi Yan) was secular world outside. Her first job is at a highly itself Dragonfly: it speaks (in English) on the
the most exciting and innovative film of 2017. mechanised dairy farm, where a technician soundtrack in what Xu calls a mixture of Tang
It was certainly the towering highlight of the named Ke Fan falls for her and liberates one dynasty poetry and modern computer-speak,
Tokyo FILMeX festival in November, although the cow in an attempt to please her. Both of them and classifies the elements in surveillance
jury chose to reward two richly imagined films are fired. Qingting moves to a big city and finds images by boxing and analysing them. Pitched
by young Indonesian women directors instead. a job in a dry-cleaning shop; Ke Fan follows and somewhere between sci-fi soap opera and
Xu Bing, some readers will know, is a star of the keeps intervening in her life, especially after she’s conceptual fable, this remarkable film has
contemporary Chinese art scene – a major one- victimised by a nouveau riche customer. Ke Fan’s no obvious precedent in world cinema.
man retrospective of his work plays in the city of aggressive behaviour lands him in jail. When No space left to give the two Indonesian
Wuhan until the end of spring – and Dragonfly he comes out he can find no trace of Qingting prize-winners their due, so here are thumbnail
Eyes is his first film. A project that took four years – until he stumbles on evidence that she may sketches. Kamila Andini’s highly original The
to finesse, it may turn out to be his only film, have had plastic surgery and become an online Seen and Unseen centres on a young girl trying to
although he said in Tokyo that he’s enjoyed his micro-celebrity under a new name. After suffering come to terms with her twin brother’s impending
exposure to the world of cinema in the Locarno several setbacks, Ke Fan decides to ‘restore’ the death in hospital. Nearly half the film comprises
and Busan festivals and would like to make missing Qingting by becoming her himself… ten-year-old Tantri’s fantasies (some of them
another one. Full disclosure: Xu asked me to do The story unfolds in a chaotic universe: natural could be fantasticated memories) of playing
his English subtitles, but my enthusiasm for the disasters and mechanical hazards lurk on every with her brother Tantra, inspired by wayang
film goes way beyond this marginal involvement. road and highway and outside every shop. Human shadow-puppets and Balinese animist dances.
The project started from an intuition that the identity becomes as malleable and indistinct The title cuts two ways: the ‘unseen’ could be
vast and ever-increasing amount of surveillance- as the motives of apparent suicides caught on Tantri’s dreams, but it could equally refer to the
camera footage out there might yield something surveillance cameras. Of course, dozens of young complex feelings which the film intimates but
more intriguing than the old ‘Who watches women and men appear on screen as Qingting cannot show. Either way, the film is a feat of non-
the watchmen?’ conundrum. It took off when and Ke Fan, but the film offsets the flow of narrative storytelling. Mouly Surya’s Marlina the
numerous websites in China began live- everyday routines and incidents with a Buddhist Murderer in Four Acts (Marlina si Pembunuh dalam
streaming from surveillance cameras and other sense that ‘reality’ is illusory and impermanent, Empat Babak) is the polar opposite, a powerful
websites began anthologising striking footage narrative set on Sumba Island, balanced between
caught by such cameras; this happened in sync The film offsets the flow pop-genre (especially Italian western) rhetoric
with the proliferation of hosted ‘Make me a star’ and modern Asian ‘slow cinema’ style. The
websites. Xu and his team captured literally
of everyday routines and newly widowed Marlina takes violent revenge
thousands of hours of online footage and came incidents with a Buddhist on a gang of men who try to rape her, latterly
up with a fictional storyline which carefully helped by a very pregnant friend. In more than
chosen images could be used to tell. Apparently sense that ‘reality’ is illusory one sense, a victory for Indonesian women.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 19

 TAILOR TINKERS
Vicky Krieps as Alma
and Daniel Day-Lewis as
Reynolds Woodcock in
Paul Thomas Anderson’s
Phantom Thread

20 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

 Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Phantom Thread’, his
first movie outside the US, is a gothic romance
set in 1950s London. Here he talks about the
rigid world of haute couture, the English class
system and working with Daniel Day-Lewis
on what the actor says will be his last film
By James Bell
The ‘phantom thread’ in the title of Paul Thomas Ander-
son’s eighth feature, it’s said, refers to a term that seam-
stresses working in the East End of Victorian London
used to describe the sensation they felt after emerging
from long, repetitive hours in the workshop. After re-
turning home exhausted, the women would find their
hands moving involuntarily, their fingers clasped as
though sewing invisible, ‘phantom’ threads.
It’s a title that offers hints of the gothic undercurrents
that drive Anderson’s film, the first the California-native
has made outside the US. Phantom Thread is a claustro-
phobic chamber drama about the high-wire balance
between giving and taking, conceding and resisting in
relationships, and one as singularly unconventional
as any he has made since 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love sig-
nalled his move away from the dazzlingly orchestrated
Scorsese/Altman-isms of Boogie Nights (1997) and Magno-
lia (1999) to the more distinctive signature felt in There
Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012) and Inherent Vice
(2014). The film introduces the forbidding, immaculate-
ly presented figure of Reynolds Woodcock, a punishingly
obsessive, unwaveringly perfectionist couturier in fash-
ionable mid-1950s London, played by Daniel Day-Lewis
in what the actor has said will be his final performance.
Woodcock lives and works in an elegant Georgian town-
house in Mayfair, the ‘House of Woodcock’, as it’s known,
where royalty and ladies of high society come to be fitted
for bespoke dresses each new season, and where a team
of backroom seamstresses toil under the watchful eye of
Reynolds’s implacably loyal sister Cyril – his very own
Mrs Danvers (Rebecca was a key influence) – played with
relishably purse-lipped disdain by Lesley Manville.
Everything is ‘just so’ in this world, precisely ordered to
facilitate the unencumbered creativity of the great man
at its centre. “It’s right because it’s right,” as Reynolds says.
Romances with women only last while they’re useful
for the work – once the muse is used up, Cyril steps in
to usher the ladies out the door (“What do you want to
do about Johanna?” Cyril asks Reynolds over breakfast
early in the film. “She’s lovely, but the time has
come”). The bodies of Bluebeard’s former wives

THE NEEDLE
AND THE
DAMAGE DONE February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 21
PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON PHANTOM THREAD

I would keep were locked away in the forbidden room in the old There was also the desire to work again with Day-
fable, but Reynolds’s women simply vanish from Lewis, after their Oscar-winning collaboration on There
seeing pictures the house once they are no longer needed, living on only Will Be Blood, and to bring the actor back to England. As
of these couture as phantoms in the exquisite dresses they once inspired Anderson describes the process of writing and conceiv-
and wore. ing the film, he unfailingly refers to “we” or “us”, and it’s
houses, and it was That is until, as with Bluebeard’s eighth wife, Reynolds clear that the collaboration was unusually close, even to
always a man meets a woman who can’t be cast aside so easily, and who the point of co-authorship. Was this a new way of work-
may prove to be a match for him – an orphaned Eastern ing for him? “I had worked a bit in that way with Phil
with dozens of European immigrant named Alma (Vicky Krieps) whom [Seymour Hoffman] on The Master,” Anderson says. “But
women behind he meets when she’s working as a waitress in a seaside yes, this was really from the ground up. I had less than
hotel, seduces (over breakfast) with the promise of glam- I had ever had before when coming to Daniel, which I
him, in lab coats, our and high society, and who is soon living in the May- found to be a really good way of working, actually. We
doing his work. fair house and spending weekends in his country manor had the seed of the story and the character, but it had to
(a family inheritance with more than a passing resem- grow. I’m never very strict on outlines going in. There’s
That lent itself to blance to a modest Manderley). Like the heroines of so a central premise, on which we can hang things as we
a gothic story many gothic romances, from Jane Eyre and Wuthering discover them.”
Heights to those of the films made in the genre’s heyday in That hanging of details accelerated as Anderson
1940s Hollywood, such as Gaslight (1944), Experiment Per- became increasingly interested in fashion, and mid-cen-
ilous (1944) Dragonwyck (1946) and Secret Beyond the Door tury haute couture in particular – in part prompted when
(1947) – not to mention any number of other Hitchcock composer and Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood,
heroines imperilled by potentially murderous spouses – who has scored each of Anderson’s features since There
Alma finds Reynolds’s initial seductive interest gives way Will Be Blood, including Phantom Thread, complimented
to a chilling distance. However, Alma refuses simply to him on a suit: “He said something sarcastic to the effect of
bend to Reynolds’s will as so many of her predecessors ‘Look at you, Beau Brummell’,” Anderson says. “I had to
have. As she tells him on their first evening together, with look the name up, then wanted to know more.
a portent that he can’t know at the time: “If you want to “I discovered [Spanish designer] Cristóbal Balenciaga,
have a staring contest with me, you’ll lose.” When later and just became fascinated by his life and his work,”
Reynolds is seized suddenly by a mysterious, violent sick- he continues. “As I looked at other designers, I would
ness, it’s he who becomes the vulnerable one. keep seeing pictures of these couture houses, and it was
“The idea of doing something in the genre of the gothic always a man with dozens of women behind him, in lab
romance had interested me for a long time,” says a very coats, doing his work. That lent itself to a gothic story, I
jet-lagged Anderson when I meet him a few days before felt. There was also something so cinematic about stair-
Christmas, coincidentally in the same Covent Garden cases and doors and workspaces leading into other work-
hotel room in which he, Day-Lewis and Krieps had their spaces, with women in those gowns and dresses. It all fit.”
only brief meeting together before shooting began. “I had That period of research led Anderson and Day-Lewis,
an idea to do a story of a man and a woman based upon as well as costume designer Mark Bridges, to English
a character who, unless he is ill, is unable to show how designers of the period – men like Norman Hartnell
much he needs someone.” Anderson has spoken of how (designer of Elizabeth II’s 1947 wedding gown, as well
one moment of inspiration came when he was laid up as her 1953 Coronation dress), Hardy Amies (who also
sick in bed, his wife tending to him with loving patience, designed dresses for Elizabeth) and Charles James, all ex-
but the theme is of course one that reaches back into the acting and brilliant men who were drawn upon during
tradition of the gothic romance – in Jane Eyre, it’s only the creation of the character of Reynolds Woodcock.
when Rochester is blinded and maimed that he and Jane Paris and London were twin centres of European dress-
finally marry. Love is brutal in these stories. making in the 50s, but the latter appealed for the way it

COUTURE SHOCK
Krieps and Day-Lewis (left);
Lesley Manville as Reynolds’s
sister Cyril (right); V&A
volunteers Joan Brown and
Sue Clark as seamstresses
Nana and Biddy with Daniel
Day-Lewis (far right)

22 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

cleaved to a formal tradition, tied in to the rituals and oc- Powell and marrying a Dominican businessman; Reynolds has to
casions of upper-class society, as opposed to the fashion- hold his nose and attend the wedding]. You can go on
able ‘New Look’ developed over the channel by the likes Pressburger to YouTube and watch Pathé reports of the Chelsea Arts
of Christian Dior (at one point, Reynolds spits invective films were a Club balls between 1947 to ’57. They were so much more
in disgust on hearing a client use the word ‘chic’ – “Fuck- violent and scandalous than we portray them in the film.
ing ‘chic’. Whoever invented that should be spanked in great reminder It’s following those paths. So, the dressing of the Belgian
public. I don’t even know what that little word means!”). of the need to put princess [in the film] was inspired by a real story of Balen-
The bringing together of the obsessive world of couture ciaga dressing a Belgian princess – but it’s a story from
with the stifling rules governing manners and behaviour theatrics in – the the 60s that we’ve transplanted to the 50s. Historians will
in fashionable English society of the period, where poli- rituals of walking wag their fingers, but all those inspirations get pooled.”
tesse might barely mask barbed hostility, revealed itself Nonetheless, he did look to contemporary fiction and
as prime gothic terrain. “That, and being from America. into the house, of cinema for tone. I ask him if he looked at Jacques Becker’s
There’s always that old Anglo-fascination,” says Ander- walking up the 1945 film Falbalas, a story about, yes, an obsessive, wom-
son. “I’d always loved the idea of post-war London, prob- anising designer in Paris whose ways are disrupted by an
ably from all those movies I love: David Lean’s Brief En- stairs to meet affair – the scenes of seamstresses at work feel very remi-
counter [1945] and The Passionate Friends [1949], Michael the great man niscent of Phantom Thread. Anderson says, “Yes. It’s not
Powell’s I Know Where I’m Going! [1945]. These are food one of Becker’s best at all. I thought it would be a gold-
and drink to me. The Passionate Friends always seems to mine to steal from but it turned out just OK. The gowns
suffer in comparison to Brief Encounter, but I love it.” are by Marcel Rochas if I’m not mistaken, who was a
Less celebrated it may be, but The Passionate Friends famous designer at the time and quite a ladies’ man. But
feels a particularly key reference, dealing as it does with we were well on our way with the idea and of course,
explosive secrets and emotional duplicity between three started searching for anything that might inform or pres-
figures (in Lean’s film it’s Ann Todd, Trevor Howard as ent us with a problem of the ‘it’s been done before’ kind.”
her former love, and Claude Rains as her mistrustful An especially key influence on conveying the claustro-
husband). More obviously still, it also has a scene set at phobic atmosphere of London’s grand houses of the time,
a raucous New Year’s Eve party at the infamous Chelsea and the somewhat scathing, darkly comic tone the film
Arts Club Ball, as well as showing its characters holiday- takes towards them, were the sharply observed short
ing in Switzerland – both also found in Phantom Thread. stories by the writer and heiress to the Guinness fortune
“A straight lift!” laughs Anderson. “No. Whether it’s Lady Caroline Blackwood, a celebrated muse and fixture
a wholesale steal from The Passionate Friends or not, I in bohemian London circles in the 50s, when she was
don’t know. Most of those kind of details came through married to artist Lucian Freud. Blackwood’s third hus-
the historical research. Switzerland was where soci- band, the poet Robert Lowell, memorably described her
ety figures used to vacation at that time – Balenciaga, as “a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded
for example – so it fits that they would go there in The lovers” – an image that feels perfectly of a piece with
Passionate Friends. Phantom Thread.
“We were pulling from everywhere,” he continues. And in British cinema of the period, as well as Lean,
“Here we really counted on old Pathé footage. I found he inevitably looked to The Archers: “Powell and Press-
amazing material shot at the Chelsea Arts Club Ball, burger films were a great reminder to me of the need to
footage of fashion shows from the 50s, news footage of put theatrics in,” he says. “For instance, the theatrics that
[American heiress] Barbara Hutton’s marriage to [Puerto come with a fashion house like that – the grand entranc-
Rican diplomat and renowned playboy] Porfirio Rubi- es, the rituals of walking into such a house, of walking up
rosa, which we have paralleled in our film [with a story the stairs to meet the great man… trying to film that with
involving the House of Woodcock’s wealthy American a bravura theatricality. Ramping it all up, certainly
investor Barbara Rose, played by Harriet Sansom Harris, with the music, because that must have been the

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 23

PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON PHANTOM THREAD

impression they all wanted to give – that display

of power. ‘I’ll let you walk up the stairs to me, and
I’ll greet you from above.’ And that hasn’t changed today.”
The Red Shoes (1948) was a particular touchstone, its
tale of an obsessively committed man at the head of a
creative enterprise – and the exploration of the personal
and emotional toll of that commitment – an obvious
parallel. Day-Lewis also borrows unmistakably from the
look and poise of Anton Walbrook’s ballet director Boris
Lermontov for Reynolds, and just as Lermontov calls the
ambitious young composer Julian Craster to a meeting
over breakfast, Phantom Thread is punctuated by several
excruciatingly funny breakfast-table scenes, with Reyn-
olds showing mounting irritation as his invaluable think-
ing time is disrupted by the simply unbearable clink of a
teaspoon against a cup, or the intolerable sound of a knife
buttering toast. As Cyril tells Alma: “If breakfast isn’t right
it’s very hard for him to recover for the rest of the day.”
Was Anderson lampooning the scenes of the great man
at breakfast familiar from earlier films? (In Rebecca too,
Olivier’s Maxim de Winter is at breakfast when he sud-
denly proposes to Joan Fontaine’s “little fool”, instructing
her that he has “two lumps of sugar in my coffee – now
don’t forget!”) “Actually I come to it from a very personal
place,” Anderson laughs. “Daniel has teased me about my
obsession with breakfast. When we were getting together
to make There Will Be Blood he would always point out
that I was ordering five times the normal amount.”
If this is really to be Day-Lewis’s final role, it’s anoth-
er entirely distinctive performance on which to bow
out. Not as obviously bravura as, say, his turns as Bill Daniel and I That sense of his own uniqueness and disdain for the
the Butcher in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2000), or entitlement of the idle upper classes is something that ul-
his oilman Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, his always imagined timately he shares with Alma. We’re given little direct in-
Reynolds Woodcock is still every bit as memorable as that Reynolds formation about Alma’s background (of the fact that she
his character’s name demands. Despite his reputation shares her name with Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville, An-
among royalty and London’s elite, he’s a brusque, fabu- would be a derson says, “I promise you, it was a complete accident.
lously rude figure (“Didn’t I tell you to fuck off?” he says person who ran I probably would have avoided it if I had thought of it”),
at one point to the young doctor who examined him other than that she is an orphan (material showing her
during his sudden sickness, and with whom Alma has in his own lane with her brother was cut from the final edit of the film);
a tentative flirtation; on another that he “doesn’t give a – he wouldn’t but we’re given clues, such as her reaction to a scene in
tinker’s fucking curse” whether or not a client is satisfied which a Daily Mail reporter asks Woodcock benefactor
with her dress). Reynolds doesn’t really fit at all in high socialise with Barbara Rose at the press conference to mark her wed-
society, which he views with a scathing disregard – all anyone else who ding to playboy Rubio Gurrerro, about rumours of him
those entitled, useless people lacking in the grand talent selling visas to Jews during the war. The camera holds
and purpose only he possesses. He’s an odd, self-centred did what he did on her expression as she reacts, and the line echoes in
man with a fixation on his dead mother (he keeps a lock her ears – are we to read that she’s a Jewish war orphan?
of her hair sewn into the lining of his jackets, just above “Yes. I would say so,” Anderson says. “We tried to point it
his breast “to keep her close to me always... I try to never in that direction. We actually wanted several things to
be without her”), and trusts no one but Cyril. “Daniel and be captured in her expression in that scene: her disgust
I always imagined that Reynolds would be a person who that Reynolds’s beautiful dress is being worn at such an
ran in his own lane – he wouldn’t socialise with anyone occasion; visas and Jews – this is triggering a lot in her.
else who did what he did,” says Anderson. “He would And also, if this is what love is meant to look like [a cyni-
have had a belief that he was the only real designer in cal, financial arrangement], she doesn’t want a piece of it.
England. I always found myself wondering what Reyn- It’s the classic thing, you get to a point in editing where
olds would have made of someone like Norman Hartnell. you decide that you’ve retained material that points to a
He probably would have been slightly dismissive – he backstory, and if the audience are swift they will catch it,
would have said that Hartnell used too many gemstones but if they don’t, it’s not important for their enjoyment.”
or something. We talked about the fact that Reynolds’s Gradually, Alma emerges as someone as complex and
mother would have been an immigrant, an outsider her- difficult as Reynolds, her initial exasperation that he
self – like Alma. With a character like Reynolds there’s so resists her attempts at a more conventional intimacy
often a preoccupation with his mother, and Reynolds’s giving way to a sense of almost conspiratorial under-
mother would have made sure that her child’s feet never standing of his difficult nature – something abetted by
touched the ground; he was the golden child, whose gift Cyril, who comes to see Alma as an ally. In her first major
for sewing was cultivated, at the expense of Cyril.” English-language role, Luxembourg-born actor Vicky

24 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

Krieps is a revelation, and more than holds her own Daniel came to It can be frustrating shooting a period piece on location,
alongside Day-Lewis. I ask Anderson if he was concerned you sometimes have to resort to digital effects to take
that working with Day-Lewis could be intimidating, and me two weeks into things out or put things in. But I try to avoid it.”
if he used that to impact on the film: “I’ve no doubt that the shoot to say Similarly, all the main dresses seen in the film were
Daniel is aware of it. But he is very good about putting designed and made bespoke by costume designer Mark
people at ease, even if there is supposed to be an uneasy he was nervous Bridges, rather than bought in from museum collections.
relationship in the film. I would hesitate to say that I at just how good “That was an idea early on, but they’re museum pieces,
used it to help any performances. He even came to me they can’t go out. Plus they’re 70 years old now, and we
two weeks into the shoot to say he was nervous at just Vicky Krieps was, needed them to be brand new. Also, it just would have
how good Vicky was, and that he was on the back foot.” and that he was been wrong to make a film about a dressmaker and not
The fact that Reynolds and Alma are both outsiders is build the dresses. That said, there are many dresses in the
a detail Anderson uses to probe the snobberies and ugly on the back foot background that are vintage, and to make all of them
prejudices of the English upper class. “I was fascinated by would have been way beyond the scope of what we could
the rules of the British class system,” Anderson says. “But afford. So you focus on the ones that are really front and
I relied on Daniel to guide me in that area.” Most of the centre.”
film is set in the claustrophobic confines of the House of That sense of authenticity is stitched into the film in
Woodcock, or away at the weekend house in the country, other, more surprising ways too. Bridges accompanied
or occasionally at dinner in the same restaurant – a world Anderson and Day-Lewis on research trips to London’s
within the wider world of London society of the period. Victoria and Albert Museum, where they happened to
But there is a telling sequence of Alma and Reynolds out meet two long-time volunteers, Joan Brown and Sue
at a party hosted by Lady Baltimore (played by Julia Davis Clark, who were so helpful they ended up not only being
– “She’s a national treasure. I love Nighty Night, Camping, creative advisers on set, but also appearing in the film as
Jam and all that Chris Morris stuff, and especially Human seamstresses Biddy and Nana. “Joan had even worked for
Remains”), whose snobbery towards Alma is vicious – a Hardy Amies for many, many years from the 1950s, so
comment on the well-documented anti-Semitism of working with them was one of the great, great pleasures
much of the English aristocracy of the time? “Yes,” says of making this,” says Anderson.
Anderson. “Julia Davis said of Lady Baltimore that she In formal terms, what’s striking about Phantom Thread
was the type of person who might say, ‘I don’t mean to is not the ostentatious stylistic audacity that character-
be racist, but…’ As her character says of Alma: ‘Is she up ised Boogie Nights and Magnolia, and led to wild claims
there stealing things, or attacking people, or howling at of Anderson as a new Kubrick (though many will note
the moon?’” the way the filming of Reynolds and Alma’s high-speed
The film was all shot on location – a seaside town near night-time drive through country lanes recalls a simi-
Whitby in Yorkshire standing in for the seaside village lar scene in A Clockwork Orange); nor even the daring
where Reynolds meets Alma, a large Elizabethan cottage ROLE MODELS choices of later films like There Will Be Blood, whose first
in the Cotswolds for his weekend retreat, and an elegant (Clockwise from below left) 20 minutes took place entirely without dialogue. Instead
Georgian terrace on Fitzroy Square in central London Joan Fontaine and Judith there’s a restrained classicism to the look and editing of
Anderson in Rebecca (1940);
for the House of Woodcock. The decision brought chal- Jacques Becker’s Falbalas the film (which Anderson shot himself – no cinematog-
lenges, but Anderson wouldn’t have had it any other way. (1945); Anton Walbrook rapher is credited) that is appropriate to the theme.
“The idea of going to a set seemed like I could have just in The Red Shoes (1948); There’s also a trust in the power of transitions between
Ann Todd, Claude Rains
stayed in Burbank, which would have been wrong. I look and Trevor Howard in The scenes to affect the uneasy disquiet that is the heart of the
at London as a tourist, it all seems so cinematic to me. Passionate Friends (1949) story – elisions that express what is not necessarily seen
or verbalised. Subtle dissolves to a new scene manage to
indicate a change in the emotional temperature in the
house; a cut to a new morning bringing with it the reali-
sation that the balance of power in the relationship has
shifted almost imperceptibly overnight in Alma’s favour.
Anderson credits editor Dylan Tichenor with much of
the crafting of that effect, and also Jonny Greenwood’s
score, which winds around pieces by Nelson Riddle,
Oscar Peterson, Debussy, Schubert, Brahms and others
and wonderfully suggests the ebbing and flowing of oth-
erwise disguised emotions.
Did Anderson have notes for Greenwood on the
music? “I actually showed Jonny The Passionate Friends,”
he says. “Interestingly, Richard Addinsell, the composer
of that score, was the lover of Victor Stiebel, a popular
couture designer in London, so again there were those
unexpected connections. Jonny would say that he would
write music he imagined Reynolds would listen to. ‘Ro-
mance’ was my only direction to him.” Swooning ro-
mance? Or romance of the dangerous, masochistic kind?
“Well… in the end, what’s the difference?”
Phantom Thread is released in UK cinemas
i on 2 February and is reviewed on page 69

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 25

 SPEAR OF DESTINY
In Nick Park’s Early Man
Eddie Redmayne voices the
simpleton hero Dug, while
his not-so-wild boar sidekick
Hognob is grunted by the
director himself

26 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

PARK
LIFE
A group of cavemen cut off in a remote forest
are forced to challenge their Bronze Age
invaders to a football match to win back their
freedom, in Aardman’s ‘Early Man’, Nick
Park’s first directing job in almost a decade
By Nick Bradshaw
aw

In a converted factory north of Bristol, a woolly mammoth

is risen from the clay, fearsome and dressed for combat.
Nearby are its handlers – soldiers of the Bronze Age, a
bustling and expansive society of inventors, traders and
officials who, like the Romans and others, are bonded in
both military imperialism and the rituals of competitive
sport. And around another corner, on a two-floor set bor-
dered by green-screen walls, is their secular temple – a sta-
dium of football, apparently designed with a mix of Meso-
potamian, Egyptian and Saxon influences (plus a wink to
Shakespeare’s Globe in London), and detailed with native
motifs of square-horned helmets and footballing coins.
This is Aardman, the studio built by Morph, Wallace
and Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep – though the building
itself was acquired in 1997 on DreamWorks boss Jeffrey
Katzenberg’s advice, to shoot Chicken Run, the team’s
first feature. It’s late September 2017, and the studio is a
year into the filming of Early Man, its first non-franchise
feature since co-founder Peter Lord’s The Pirates! In an Ad-
venture with Scientists! in 2012, and its first fully original
feature concept since Chicken Run, released in 2000. It’s
also Nick Park’s own first directing job since 2008’s Wal-
lace and Gromit short A Matter of Loaf and Death, and his
first time making a feature as the sole director, having
co-directed Chicken Run with Lord, and The Curse of the
Were-Rabbit (2005) with Steve Box.
The sophisticates of the Bronze Age are the an-
tagonists of Early Man, which focuses on a small

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 27

AARDMAN EARLY MAN

band of simpletons who time forgot – cavemen

and women who know only the tyrannical nature
of the volcanic ‘Badlands’ beyond their forest idyll and
hold out, Asterix-like, against the outside world. Merlin
Crossingham, one of the film’s two animation directors,
talks us through the cast list: the tribe leader is Bobnar,
“avuncular and warm” and voiced by Timothy Spall
– “He’s quite old, he’s nearly 32”. His hunter-gatherer
charges, generally two sticks short of a fire, include
Selina Griffiths’s rough-and-tumble northerner Magma,
Johnny Vegas’s Asbo, Richard Ayoade’s Treebor (“a tiny
man stuck in a big man’s body”), Simon Greenall’s in-
comprehensible Geordie Eemak and Mark Williams’s
simplest-of-all Barry, whose best friend, Mr Rock, is a
rock. But there’s also Eddie Redmayne’s hero Dug, “an op-
timist”, and his not-so-wild boar sidekick Hognob (grunt-
ed by Park himself), who leads the adventure when the
Bronze Age comes crashing into their world, led by the
greedy and rapacious Lord Nooth (a French-accented
Tom Hiddleston). To win back his tribe’s freedom, Dug
challenges the Bronze Age to a football contest on their
home turf: his Stone Age football novices pitted against
the might of Real Bronzio FC. Dug has one ally: Maisie
Williams’s plucky Goona, a football wannabe stymied
by the sexism of the Bronze Age’s sporting strictures.
Behind the scenes, Early Man continues Aardman’s
new production/distribution partnership with Euro-
pean conglomerate StudioCanal, following truncated
Hollywood collaborations with first DreamWorks and
then Sony. (A sequel to 2015’s Shaun the Sheep Movie is
also slated for 2019 and, what with the success of its Pad- The whole film of mouth shapes required. There are robotic arms for
dington films and the riches of the Studio Ghibli back cata- programmable camera moves, and a hydraulic skeleton
logue, StudioCanal has emphatically established itself as was a challenge: inside the mammoth, and motorised spinning orange-
a family-cinema powerhouse.) Stop-motion remains un- it’s not terraced painted jam jars which spin around lights for an added
avoidably time- and money-intensive: Aardman averages sense of movement. But my favourite prop is the studio’s
four or five seconds of production per animator per week. houses and cosy very physical production timetable, a series of wall-sized
I’ve been brought to Bristol with a handful of fellow ob- living rooms grid boards criss-crossed with string, indicating which of
servers from the press – and iTunes! – to catch a glimpse the 37 sets and scenes each animator is assigned to for
of the studio ratcheted to its highest gear. Shooting began any more, it’s every day of the shoot. It’s a system Aardman developed
in September 2016 but ramped up in May 2017, with 33 a prehistoric for Chicken Run, and has seen no reason to change since.
animators working across 37 sets and nearly 45 produc- Finally, we’re ushered into a back office, and Park him-
tion units through till the end of October, for a late Janu- universe; it’s self is brought in for a 20-minute interview.
ary release deadline. (Because the actual shoot is the cul- definitely a nod to Nick Bradshaw: What was the germ of the idea? The clash
mination of huge numbers of preparatory sketches and of civilisations?
tests, the studio aims to do much of its editing in-camera, one of my heroes, Nick Park: No, not really; it was cavemen, really. Cavemen
hence the tight editing timeline – though there are still Ray Harryhausen and clubs and weapons. It came from the attraction of the
backgrounds and effects to add, and seams and scaffolds medium and the earthiness of it all – clay figures, primitive
to remove, in computer-generated post-production. Park people expressing themselves; that seemed to suit the
says he saw ‘2011’ on some script notes the other day tactile nature of the medium. Then I was playing around
– but the company was press-releasing a ‘Nick Park un- with the fact that they had clubs: what if they had a go at
titled movie’ as long ago as 2007.) sport – at rounders or baseball or something? Somehow
There are 273 puppets in total, made by 22 modelmak- it arrived at football: what if they had to put down their
ers over 30 months, typically with fivee or six itera- weapons and use thetheir feet? And it expanded from there:
tions of each model for simultaneous use on mul- how would a bunch of lunkhead cavemen deal
ontinuity
tiple stages, or to be sent back to the continuity with having
havi to play a game, a more disciplined
department for cleaning and maintenance. nce. There exercise, instead of fighting?
are fully 18 different Dugs, each with h his own NB: Wha
What was the hardest sequence to realise?
till rising).
box of 23 different mouth shapes (and still NP: Th
The whole film was a challenge: it’s
We’re shown the models’ armatures, and the cy- not ter
terraced houses and cosy living rooms
teriors; the
lindrical moulds for their plasticine exteriors; m
any more, it’s a prehistoric universe. The
ng’ effect of
treatment of their fur to limit the ‘boiling’ look of the opening in the Badlands,
wild fuzz movement between shots; how ow the ed- th highly volcanic and volatile
this
iting department breaks down dialogue ue w
world with prehistoric creatures, is
into syllables to calculate the sequencee e
exciting; it’s definitely a nod to one

28 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

of my heroes, Ray Harryhausen [the legendary late stop- GOING FULL BOAR A HEAD FOR FIGURES
motion effects animator behind the 1966 Raquel Welch A fortnight later, Park is out on day release at Soho’s latest A pair of Aardman animators
working on the sets for
dinosaur/cavemen fantasy One Million Years B.C.] – we swanky media hotel to screen a handful of scene assem- the opening prehistoric
have a dinosaur called Ray and another called Harry. blies and join Hiddleston and Maisie Williams on stage sequence in Early Man
NB: How did you cast the voices? for a press call. The scenes are fun – the tribe’s foibles as (opposite); Nick Park (above)
making adjustments to the
NP: The voice casting is always a big [judgement call], they try to catch a rabbit; Dug’s introduction to Bronze evil Lord Nooth, voiced by
both for me and for Aardman. I have to believe it coming Age urbanity; some excellent Parkian techno-farce as Tom Hiddleston, and one
from the characters, so that you can literally model the Lord Nooth is delivered a voice recording from Miriam of his courtiers; and Barry
and his best friend Mr Rock
characters around the voices and make the models own Margolyes’s Queen Oofeefa via Rob Brydon’s mimetic (opposite, bottom)
their voices. I do a lot of scouting in my head – YouTube’s Message Bird; and a set piece seven weeks in the shoot-
quite handy for looking around, watching all sorts of ing, intercutting Dug’s nocturnal raid on the stadium’s
clips. We do it as we’re starting to shoot the characters, football stockroom with a bathtime harp recital and then
putting the sound of Tom Hiddleston or Eddie Redmayne massage that a wrong-time-wrong-place Hognob has to
from another film next to the character and seeing how give the unwitting Lord Nooth (“Not so ham-fisted!”, etc).
it plays. So it’s a question of finding them as a similar On stage, compliments are exchanged, the actors both
character. I saw Eddie Redmayne in something called nod to childhoods under the influence of Park’s work
Black Death [2010], in which he’s a sort of dishevelled (does any British actor nowadays turn down a call to
teenager, a novice monk, and liked the way he was quite work with him?), and there’s further description of the
vulnerable and not clear – in a good way. iterative process of finessing animation voices across 18
Tom Hiddleston I’d met a couple of times, and knew months’ worth of recording sessions. Park professes his
his work. But I saw him on Graham Norton mimicking admiration for actors who, sans sets or costumes, can
voices – and I was after someone who could do a funny colour a vocal performance using just their imagina-
French voice, really, so I went to him, and he was up for it. tion. Williams, who grew up in Bristol and made model
NB: Why are the Bronze Age characters French? animations with her friends, says she found a young
NP: Well, only Lord Nooth is, actually… The backstory Norwegian YouTube host to base Goona on; she talks of
was about this group of cavemen who in their past had the learning experience of not having to get a vocal per-
invented football and then lost it – they’d kicked it over formance ‘right’ so much as experiment and play, to give
the channel, and the Europeans had developed it better the animators options – “Until you put it with the action,
than they had. So a British parallel started to emerge… you don’t know which take will slot in perfectly.” And
but it’s not really about England or Britain or the UK; it’s she hails Park’s willingness – in unusual contrast to live-
more a universal story. All the Bronze Age characters have action directing protocol – to give a line reading. “I found
different European accents; some even have English ac- that really useful,” she says.
cents. Nooth just happens to be French. We tried it differ- Hiddleston remembers how Aardman first sent
ent ways, and it was the one that happens to be funniest. him a script and little sketch of Nooth as “this

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 29

AARDMAN EARLY MAN

Full Monty [1997], Brassed Off [1996]: the group that gets
together to do something extraordinary… Most underdog
sports movies are about that – the group that goes on the
road to learn a great lesson about who they are. Here the
stakes are higher, though. And of course Die Hard [1988]
fed into the bit when they grab the toilet roll as they jump
out of the window. They didn’t really have hosepipes in
the Bronze Age. Not that they had toilet paper either…
NB: Hognob seems to echo Gromit in his capacity for great
double-takes. The smarter animal familiar seems to be a
mainstay of your comedy?
NP: It happened more inevitably than consciously… I
didn’t set out to do Gromit in a pig costume. He started
as much more of a pet than Gromit is – kind of a lively
puppy, really, who’s supportive and loves his master
and their home, and is ever-enthusiastic. And I suppose
situations arose where we needed a reaction, or he’s the
smarter one. It’s never been rationalised, but there is
I realised while overweight, frustrated middle-manager… with definitely that Gromity thing. Maybe I just can’t avoid it.
small hands.” He mimics the grinning thumbs-up NB: It looks to me like there’ll be less irony around Dug than
making this that he’d get from Park across the recording glass when he there is with Wallace. He’s not so lost in his own nuttiness.
in features you nailed a take. “Nick would say, ‘Do it a bit more pomp- NP: Dug’s slightly more aware. But he does compare with
ous.’ So I’d do it more pompous and he’d say, ‘…And a all those old Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd characters
have to be truthful bit more irritated.’ And so I’d do it irritated and he’d say, I seem to gravitate to – the fool triumphant. Somehow
and dramatic; ‘That was really good on the irritation but sort of lost they always land on their feet. We’ve struggled for ages
the pompous.’ And I’d do it pompous and irritated and with the question of ‘What is Dug’s journey?’ And with
it can’t just be he’d say, ‘…And a bit more French.’ And then it would be the fool triumphant, he doesn’t really change, or need to;
spoofy. There had irritated, pompous, French, and you’d get this [grinning it’s the world that changes around him. With Gromit,
thumbs-up].” Park – who we’d already seen, during the the only thematic character development was in Were-
to be a genuine studio tour, in video sketches dancing around on set in Rabbit, where he learns that he shouldn’t try to change
emotion to it; at proto-costume – also embodied Hognob for the purpos- Wallace, who’s always going to be this way.
es of authenticating the sounds of the massage scene. Dug is more of a can-do caveman, as we call him.
the same time not “It was oddly more physical than I expected it to be,” He’s an exuberant, over-enthusiastic guy who’s always
relent on the gags muses Hiddleston. reaching higher, and if he has a flaw it’s that he’s over-
“I think I volunteered, actually,” says Park. hasty and doesn’t listen to conventional wisdom, which
“I’d seen the sketch of Nooth sitting in the bath, spread gets him in trouble but he wins out in the end. It’s Bobnar,
out… and just thought it would be funny to have all those the chief, who really learns the lesson – because he has
awkward noises. Because he thinks he’s with [his servant] a low view of his tribe. They’re all low-ambition except
BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY Stefano, but he’s with a pig,” Hiddleston explains. Dug, who doesn’t see the conventional restrictions that
Dug (above) on the – literal “It was a funny feeling, massaging Tom Hiddleston’s Bobnar does. His eagerness or ambition is what sets him
– zebra crossing during his
first visit to the big city; and shoulders, and thinking how many people would pay to apart – that’s what it’s about, really.
aspiring footballer Goona, do this,” chuckles Park. NB: Part of the joy of your films is their gags about particular
voiced by Maisie Williams Later, as I wait for another interview slot with the direc- aspects of British culture. Is there any thought in the studio,
(below), held back by Stone
Age sexism tor, I see Hiddleston take his leave from Park, job all done. during production, about how those travel abroad? Did
“I’ll look you up when I need another massage,” he quips. DreamWorks used to raise them as issues?
Nick Bradshaw: You were just telling us about seeing a gap NP: They did – more often with the verbal jokes. The
in the market for ‘underdog prehistoric sports movies’. What written ones are just there; if you notice them then that’s
other films did you look at? good. But there were issues with the verbal gags: wheth-
Nick Park: There are definitely nods to [this] and influ- er you can tell what they’re saying; what that means… I
ences of [that], but in a funny way I feel like this is more guess it was the Carry On influence in Were-Rabbit: one
its own thing. Coming from the short-film tradition, it’s of the villagers saying, “That beast has been at my wife’s
easy to reference other films because you don’t feel like brassicas in the night,” which we had to take out of the
you are one yourself, so you’re always spoofing a bit. I re- American version, because they didn’t know what bras-
alised while making this that [in features] you have to be sicas were but it sounded rude.
truthful and dramatic; it can’t just be spoofy. Also there StudioCanal and Lionsgate don’t seem to worry about
tends to be a lack of emotion if you’re just spoofing. So that kind of thing. They get concerned tonally, if we go
there had to be a genuine truth and emotion to it; at the too dark, but generally haven’t commented an awful lot.
same time not relent on the gags. They’ve given notes, quite strong ones, but they’ve been
I don’t always know I’m doing it, but I do find I’m helpful more than anything, getting us there so it works
constantly referring to those films I’ve loved over the emotionally. What I’ve learnt over the years is to befriend
years. I looked at all the underdog sports movies – The criticism: it can help. You get so close that you can’t really
Mighty Ducks [1992], The Bad News Bears [1976], Miracle see where it’s not quite landing in certain places.
[2004], with Kurt Russell against the Russians at the 1980 Early Man is released in UK cinemas on
Olympics. And not just sports underdog movies, but The i 26 January and will be reviewed in our next issue

30 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

A THRILLING READ
Explore how onscreen thrillers have
always captured the unease of the
times, while holding us on the edge
of our seat, gripped in suspense.

160 pages of lavishly illustrated essays

from leading film writers
Brought to you by Sight & Sound

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SMALL
WONDER

32 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

 SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
In Alexander Payne’s
Downsizing, Kristen Wiig
plays Audrey and Matt
Damon plays her husband
Paul Safranek (opposite,
centre), a Candide-like hero
who is the traditional ‘little
man’ literalised

Alexander Payne’s ingenious ‘Downsizing’ a drudging member of the ancillary class. As Safranek’s
neighbour, the small, charming but semi-despicable Eu-
imagines a world where people can opt to be rotrash mogul Dusan (Christoph Waltz), says of Tran,
shrunk to help tackle overpopulation and “She almost died so now she can clean my house. Ameri-
climate change. Here he explains the film’s ca! Big land of opportunity.” Paul is gradually sucked into
political ambitions, its slow gestation and why Tran’s orbit – which changes him, and changes the film,
in a thrilling way.
he’s so gloomy about the future of the planet When I met Payne at a hotel on the day of the film’s
By Philip Horne screening at the BFI London Film Festival, he was, as ever,
urbane and alert.
Admirers of Alexander Payne’s films have had a long, Philip Horne: So what was the genesis of Downsizing?
anxious wait since Nebraska (2013), his bleak, beautiful, Alexander Payne: It took some time to grow. The urge
drily funny picture of the post-industrial Midwest and came when Jim Taylor and I had had some modicum
sad, haunted lives. Four years on, Payne, who still lives in of success with Sideways, in 04 and bleeding into 05.
his native Omaha, has made a grand and astonishingly Around that time Bush the Second was re-elected – we
daring movie – a satirical fable, or blackly comic science have Trump now, but even 13 years ago we thought
fiction epic, or unexpected love story. It’s all these things things were bad – and I had within me the urge to make
and more. a political film. But you can’t make a literal one, it has to
There’s a serious, even tragic, side to the film, but its have some kind of metaphor.
main premise is treated with such visual and verbal I was on a plane, and thought, “What about that idea
inventiveness that we get jolts of pleasure at the imagi- of Jim and his brother’s?” [The brothers had discussed the
native scope of its makers’ conceptions. Scientists con- shrinking idea for years.] We would treat it very earnestly,
cerned with ‘human scale and sustainability’ develop an as a solution to the problem of overpopulation and cli-
absurd technology for reducing the size of the human mate change. And then the narrative dominoes started to
population, making them five inches high. It looks like a fall in my mind: “Oh well, it could touch on this and this.”
giant microwave, and even pings when the transforma- And it started a chain reaction of ‘What ifs?’. I proposed
tion is complete. This low-tech-seeming process – invent- that to Jim and we just started writing.
ed by idealistic Norwegians to produce a “self-sustainable It took us a long time to come up with a dramatic
community of the small” – is then commercialised and premise: a central character who guides us through a bit
normalised in familiar ways by global/American capital- of an episodic structure – through a world in which this
ism, sold to punters as a time-share-style heaven called is happening. And if the story, in touching on, let’s say,
‘Leisureland’, which is “like winning the lottery every political aspects, doesn’t have extremely sharp teeth, at
day”. This is because a modest nest egg of $152,000 least we’re acknowledging a lot of things.
when transferred (unshrunk) to its newly tiny owner’s PH: Why did it take so long?
account in a ‘small city’ translates as the equivalent of AP: In essence we were writing an eight-hour miniseries.
$22,500,000: it’s an American dream. In this brave new But we still wanted to make it as a movie. So how do we
world, Omaha occupational therapist Paul Safranek corral that screenplay? And life was intervening… and we
(Matt Damon), our Candide-like hero, is the traditional were having trouble finding financing, and then I made
‘little man’ literalised. a TV pilot [Hung, 2009] and two features [The Descendants,
Payne and his co-writer Jim Taylor insinuate a sharp- 2011; and Nebraska]… And then finally after Nebraska it
edged political satire here: the full-size economic system, came together – and fell apart – and then came together,
with luxurious bourgeois lives supported by legions of and then I was able to make it.
immigrant workers, turns out to be replicated on the In hindsight you can see benefits. We waited so damn
small scale (so mainly Hispanic slums lurk beyond what long, but now, with Trump in power, there are certain
seems the very Trumpian wall of Leisureland). Down- images in the film that have more potency than they
sizing technology is abused by oppressive regimes, so might… None of the elements of the film is new, but a
a Vietnamese dissident, Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), is couple of them, particularly the idea of Mexicans living
shrunk against her will and barely survives her escape behind a wall, have a certain resonance that they
to America as a stowaway in a TV box. She ends up as might not have had previously.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 33

ALEXANDER PAYNE DOWNSIZING

between ‘Norwenglish’ and Norwegian and English was,

sadly, asking a tincture too much. But it’s a device that
we can still use if we ever do anything else with the idea
in the future.
PH: Were there any models you had in mind – an obvious
connection for me was Gulliver’s Travels?
AP: Not really – no previous film about small people at
any rate. I’ve never seen Honey, I Shrunk the Kids [1989].
But when you make a film, different influences drift by
from time to time. The episodic nature of the screenplay
– not to compare this film to those great films – relates to
the way that in Fellini films you see a central character
going through a series of often very unrelated episodes,
and then coming out at the end with a close-up on that
character’s face. Maybe there’s been some shift. So I
thought about that. With an idea of ultimately striv-
ing for some kind of tough compassion toward others,
I always very much liked Kurosawa’s Red Beard [1965].
Those are great films, this is whatever it is. Still we see
the great films and we think, “Oh, that’s a nice notion.”
And the other benefit I see to having shot now is Climate change? PH: There’s a building in the film called ‘Transitions’, which
having found this remarkable actress Hong Chau, reminded me of your interest in transitions between scenes.
who, to my mind, steals the movie. In a way the whole What is there AP: Considerations of transitions are what separates the
movie, up until her arrival, is like a prologue. to be optimistic wheat from the chaff among filmmakers. It means the
PH: It’s an extraordinary performance. How did you find structure is there, and you’ve thought about it. So, in this
her? about? I see film, it’s like, “We want the film to have this element, and
AP: I knew she had to be Vietnamese. I had thrown out a nothing. Things this element, and this element,” and I trust in the fact
casting net to Vietnam, to Paris, to Canada, and it turned that it’s all being filtered through me and that it will have
out she was right in Los Angeles. She was born at a refu- look grim. And some sense of unity, even if it has disparate elements. You
gee camp of Vietnamese people in Thailand and then now with this don’t always succeed, but you hope.
they emigrated to Louisiana. I had only seen her in Paul Incidentally, [editor] Kevin Tent and I do one thing
Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice [2014], but she knocked asshole in the that many contemporary filmmakers do not, and I do
me out in the test. She understood the rhythm, the poi- White House… not understand why: dissolves. We love dissolves, and
gnancy and the comedy. long dissolves.
PH: Dusan also shifts interestingly through the film – from PH: The movement of the film might look as if it’s following
loathsome and despicable to quite sympathetic – in a way a classic Hollywood character arc, like Close Encounters of
that helps hold the film together. the Third Kind [1977] or The Terminator [1984], so that Paul,
AP: It’s Han Solo. Luke Skywalker with Han Solo and needing to choose whether to go underground forever with
Princess Leia, all over again. the colony of Norwegian little people, has a speech near
PH: Was anything lost in the editing? the end where he lists all the things that have happened to
AP: The one element I made the decision to lose, which I him and says, “I’m obviously meant to go down this hole.”
very much liked, is that the entire story is being told by a But then the film rejects that, and offers a different sense
tiny storyteller 5,000 years in the future. All of this world of purpose.
as we know it did end, and those Norwegians down the AP: Yes, and what’s wrong with the screenplay is that
hole did end up being thee only ones who survive, and some element of that aspiration to something larger than
epopulate the planet, and an
eventually emerge and repopulate himself should ideally
ide have been articulated
old storyteller, clutching a gnarled staff, tells children, An in fact it was, when we
in act one. And
“You know, aeons ago, the world was ruled by giants.” had the voivoiceover character telling
“Ohhhh!” “But they chopped ped down all the forests, us about Paul Safranek – in fact
and fished all the seas, andd their breaths and fires his name had become Safrapool:
made the land unbearably y hot…” “Ohhh!” “Well, “Safrapool
“Safrapoo wished” – you know,
one of the giants…” It was a voiceover film, with when he’s iin the middle of the night
a lovely narrative structurere throughout, and I with his calculator,
cal trying to pay his
nning long, and there
miss it. But the film was running “Saf
taxes – “Safrapool wanted nothing
were commercial concerns ns – because it was an more than to please his wife, but found
expensive picture. frustration and he wished for a life
only frustration,
inguist named Bren-
We had a wonderful linguist greater than he had.” Something that’s
agnificent job of
dan Gunn, who did a magnificent ri about the screenplay
not quite right
alf-Norwegian,
inventing a language – half-Norwegian, tha urge, which has maybe
is that that
half-English – as might be spoken ta or latent throughout, is
been tacit
5,000 years from now. So o it was a articul
articulated a bit too late.
subtitled voiceover picturere and, PH: Bu
But, in the movie’s defence,
just maybe, for a commercialrcial Paul tthroughout is alive to the
audience distinguishing ng relatio
relation between one’s own pain

34 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

8
and other people’s. “Lots of people are in pain, Mom,” he PH: Even so, at the end of the film the emphasis falls on the THE PLEASURES OF PAYNE
says when she moans about her fibromyalgia. In Sideways, present and how you have to get on with life. Matt Damon as Paul
Safranek and Christoph
the sad-sack hero Miles has spent years caring for his sick AP: Well, yes, and we have to care for each other. Sorry to Waltz as Eurotrash mogul
father; in Nebraska David [Will Forte] is looking out for his be so corny-sounding. But I certainly believe what Dr As- Dusan (above); and Damon
father [Bruce Dern]; here Paul too gives up a medical career bjørnsen [the Norwegian scientist in the film] says – it’s with Hong Chau (opposite,
bottom), who, according to
to be a good son. In all those cases your heroes are doing now an actuarial certainty, we don’t know if it’s going to director Alexander Payne
this altruistic thing but they feel depressed and… be in ten years, or 200 years, but it’s coming. (opposite, top), steals
AP: …plagued by it [laughs]. PH: Do you see yourself as an ironist? the movie as Vietnamese
dissident Ngoc Lan Tran
PH: They’re doing good but feeling bad, and in a sense that AP: There are different forms of irony. There’s an irony
impulse is what comes out at the end, isn’t it? He’s helping which is deathly afraid of anything emotional. But then
people. Isn’t that last shot, which is quite low-key, of Paul there’s Buñuelian irony, you know, or Mario Monicelli
watching the old Hispanic man just eating his meal, and not irony, or Wilder irony or Kubrick, which is where you
looking fantastically grateful or happy, a sort of downsizing see they’re using irony to say we’re not living in the
of his expectations? best of all possible worlds, and can’t we care for each
AP: Or, he is at long last falling back into himself. Like other? They may not admit to it, but you know… Like
so many of us, he has gone around the world to come Chekhov: his early sketches were verbal caricatures of
home again. The other idea that no one has asked me others, but over time it deepened. He never lost that
about, which is an interesting one, is Tran’s line as they’re sense of irony, the sense of humanity widened, and his
heading back to Leisureland. She says, “When you know net grew wider.
death is coming soon you look at things more closely.” PH: You once mentioned your wish to make a film about the
And that very much relates to an idea in the film about many Hispanic workers in Nebraska.
global warming and climate change, which is that only AP: I still think about it. This film scratched that itch
when you accept that you will die are you then armed a little bit. I still want to do something with a more
with the tools – perhaps – to defeat them. genuinely documentary feel rather than have everyone
PH: The film seems very gloomy about climate change. play those people. I’d like to make a film in Nebraska
AP: Gloomy? What is there to be optimistic about? I see largely in Spanish, using non-actors. That would be quite
nothing. The only good thing going on right now is that interesting.
it’s a little warmer. But, yeah, things look grim. And now Downsizing is released in UK cinemas
with this asshole in the White House… i on 19 January and is reviewed on page 58

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 35

BERGMAN
KEEPING THE FAITH
As a major London retrospective launches to mark Ingmar Bergman’s centenary, is our new age of uncertainty a fitting
moment for audiences to reconnect with the fearsome visions of spiritual longing and loss found in the director’s Faith Trilogy?
By Catherine Wheatley

There’s a terrific skit by French and Saunders, made some best ten of the year, as he has! You can get tickets for ‘My THE MAGICIAN
time around the mid-1990s. Shot in black and white, it Fair Lady’ more easily than for the summer-long season ‘When I show a film, I am
guilty of deceit,’ wrote
opens with the sea full of dead bodies and Death waiting of Bergman’s films now running at the National Film Ingmar Bergman (opposite,
on the rocks. There’s a crack in the wallpaper; a “bloody Theatre.” It’s hard to imagine that the forthcoming BFI in 1964). ‘I use an apparatus
great huge” spider dressed as Christ. Jennifer clutches her season marking Bergman’s centenary will be outselling with which I can sway
my audience in a highly
head in an apparent crisis of faith; Dawn has fleshly inter- Hamilton. Still, it’s possible that contemporary audiences emotional manner – make
course with the Evil One. “Another one of those Bergman might find a poignancy in Bergman’s idiosyncratic brand them laugh, scream, smile,
sort of days,” Jennifer sighs. “Never mind. We can pretend of existentialism, and in particular its concern with what believe in fairy stories,
become indignant, feel
to understand it and read a book about it later.” to believe in after the death of God. shocked, charmed, moved’
French and Saunders’s images are torn straight from Matters of faith and doubt have long pervaded film.
the pages of Bergman’s screenplays for films such as The From Epstein and Dreyer, Bazin and Bresson through Tar-
Seventh Seal (1957), The Virgin Spring (1960) and Through kovsky and Kieslowski to von Trier and Scorsese: a line
a Glass Darkly (1961), films that have, of late, fallen out of of canonical directors has used cinema to investigate the
fashion. Indeed today they might be considered so wil- meaning of life – and culture – in a godless world. None,
EDOUARD BOUBAT/GAMMA-RAPHO/GETTY IMAGES

fully opaque and mired in symbolism as to be past the though, did so quite as zealously Bergman, a filmmaker
point of parody. Bergman’s oeuvre epitomises a type of who described himself as a “conjurer”: a sophisticated,
art cinema that marries philosophical conceits with ex- technologically savvy magician whose raw material
plicit treatments of sexuality, a type that was very much is nothing other than our “incredible need to believe”.
of its time. In 1958 the journalist Leslie Mallory could “When I show a film, I am guilty of deceit,” he wrote in
write: “No director, British or foreign, has ever been ‘Why I make movies’, the essay he issued as an introduc-
honoured in this country as Bergman has. No director tion to the published screenplay of The Seventh
in history has had three of his pictures included in the Seal. “I use an apparatus which is constructed to

36 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 37
INGMAR BERGMAN THE FAITH TRILOGY

take advantage of a certain weakness, an appara- For Bergman, art his films to be, he replied: “I want to be one of the artists in
tus with which I can sway my audience in a highly the cathedral on the great plain…. Regardless of whether
emotional manner – make them laugh, scream with had to be part of I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would
fright, smile, believe in fairy stories, become indignant, something else – play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.”
feel shocked, charmed, deeply moved.” Although he described himself as an agnostic, religion
More than any other filmmaker, it is Bergman who im- something deeper, – or at least its loss – was a longstanding concern of Berg-
planted the idea of director as God. In Jane Magnusson grander, more man’s. It became the main focus for his films in the late
and Hynek Pallas’s 2013 documentary Trespassing Berg- 1950s and early 1960s. While works such as The Seventh
man, for example, in which a steady stream of great direc- ancient: ‘It is my Seal and The Magician (aka The Face, 1958) are critical of
tors makes pilgrimage to Bergman’s home on the island opinion that art institutional religion, they nevertheless float the pos-
of Farö, Alejandro González Iñárritu exclaims upon en- sibility of spiritual connection. ‘Grace’ isn’t a word that
tering the hallowed rooms: “If cinema was a religion, this lost its creative fits easily into Bergman’s vocabulary, but something
would be Mecca, the Vatican… the centre of it all.” drive the moment like it can be found in the moments of human commu-
Bergman’s work is intensely personal, intimate. Yet the nion dotted throughout these films. Such glad moments
director’s distinct sense of humility stands at ironic odds it was separated begin to fade in the first pair of films that make up Berg-
with his reputation as the quintessential auteur. For Berg- from worship’ man’s Faith Trilogy, though: Through a Glass Darkly and
man, art had to be part of something else – something Winter Light (1962); by the time of the concluding part,
deeper, grander, more ancient; a larger human project. The Silence (1963), they have disappeared altogether, re-
The artist, meanwhile, must transcend himself, leave his placed by a dystopic vision of humanity abandoned by
ego at the cinema door. He wrote: “It is my opinion that God. Gradually, it becomes clear these are films not about
art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was sepa- faith, but about the crisis of faith that haunts modern life.
rated from worship. In former days the artist remained Bergman described the trajectory of the three films
unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived as moving from “certainty achieved” to “certainty un-
and died without being more or less important than other masked” to “God’s silence – the negative impression”.
artisans; ‘eternal values’, ‘immortality’ and ‘masterpiece’ But any certainty offered by Through a Glass Darkly – the
were terms not applicable to his case. The ability to create tale of a young schizophrenic woman, Karin, haunted
was a gift.” Asked what he wanted the general purpose of by visions while on holiday with her family on a remote
island – is ultimately undermined. The vision of God
that Karin – a woman who seduces her own brother –
sees creeping out of the cracks in the wallpaper takes the
shape of a spider; moments later a helicopter arrives to
cart her off to an asylum. In the wake of this nightmare,
her feckless father David’s efforts to reassure his long-
neglected 17-year-old son Minus that “God is love” ring
horribly hollow. And Minus’s damp-eyed declaration,
following this discussion, that finally, “Papa talked to me”
is a cliché that closes the film on a false note.
Bergman claimed that doubts about the ending of
Through a Glass Darkly caused him to write Winter Light
as a ‘sequel’ of sorts, rejecting David’s self-protecting God
of love. The film turns around the dwindling faith and
shrinking congregation of a pastor, Tomas Ericsson – a
character who is a mix of both Bergman and his father,
Erik, a Lutheran minister and later chaplain to the King of
Sweden; Ericsson is both ‘Eric’ and ‘Eric’s son’ – who reach-
es crisis point after a communicant, Jonas, reveals that his
despair of the world and fear of China’s atom bomb has
led him to consider suicide. Far from offering reassuring
platitudes, Tomas confesses that his participation in the
Spanish Civil War and the death of his wife have turned
his loving God “into a spider God”. Jonas duly kills himself,
and Tomas wonders if there is no God at all. As his lover
Märta – an atheist, the sanest person in the three films and
Tomas’s only real hope at redemptive love – puts it, “God
doesn’t speak. God hasn’t ever spoken, because he doesn’t
exist. It’s all unreservedly, horribly simple.”
The question of God’s silence permeates Winter Light’s
close-ups of the characters’ tortured faces, its long, stark
shots of the woodland where Jonas’s body is found and
its taut, clipped conversations. At the film’s end, one
character suggests to Tomas that far worse than Christ’s
physical suffering was the pain he must have endured on
realising that his disciples, during the course of his minis-
try, had “simply not grasped what he meant. Not a word.

38 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

They abandoned him… And he was left alone.” Worse ers continue to make films shot through with a kind of FAITH NO MORE
still is the thought – Christ’s thought on the cross – that amorphous spirituality, what Pinkerton calls “new mystic Max von Sydow and Harriet
Andersson in Through a
God had forsaken him. “Everything he’d been preaching cinema”; while John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary (2013) Glass Darkly (1961, opposite,
was a lie. The moments before he died, Christ was seized and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida (2014) seem to be direct hom- top); Gunnar Björnstrand
with a great doubt. Surely that must have been his most ages to Bergman. Churches may be empty but religion has as Pastor Ericsson and
Ingrid Thulin as Märta in
monstrous suffering of all.” found other, subtler outlets. Forms of philanthropy, trans- Winter Light (1962, opposite,
In The Silence Bergman took this monstrosity to its logi- humanism, yoga, clean-eating (“my body is a temple”) and bottom); and Thulin, Gunnel
cal extreme, not only avoiding all mention of God but even environmentalism could be considered spiritual ex- Lindblom and Jörgen
Lindström in The Silence
reducing the role of language almost to an irrelevance. Its periences. After the hedonistic, capitalist self-interest of (1963, above)
action takes place in an unidentified city where the citi- the late 20th century, a vocabulary of care, responsibility
zens speak an unidentified and untranslated language. and love has seeped back into our language. So too has a
Here, two sisters – one of whom, Ester, is in the throes of sense of abandonment. Witness the disoriented millen-
a painful illness – hole up in a sinister hotel, inhabited nials of TBS’s TV series Search Party: a brilliant satire about
by weird carnivalesque performers. Anna’s ten-year-old the lengths that a group of young New Yorkers will go to
son Johan wanders aimlessly through hotel corridors; his imbue their otherwise banal lives with significance.
mother has a disaffected sexual encounter. Ester seems It’s possible that such existentialist crises are the privi-
to recover, then relapses into agonising convulsions. An lege of mostly white moneyed classes, as the makers of
army tank makes its ominous way through empty streets. Search Party suggest. But a quick look at Sight & Sound’s
The atmosphere is sickly, static. The clock ticks; nothing best films of 2017 shows a series of works unconnected
moves forward. Not even art offers solace: the film ends by nation, race or subject matter, yet all displaying a deep-
abruptly, unresolved. The film is haunted by the meta- seated anxiety about our loss of connection with one an-
physical fallout of the end of Western values. The crisis other, our inability to make sense of the past or present,
of language is the mirror of the larger one faced by the our abandonment by – and of – any purpose higher than
modern world. If the other films float the possibility of ni- ourselves. With the age of irony withering, could Berg-
hilism, The Silence is nothing short of a gaze into the abyss. man’s kind of earnestness have a renewed resonance? It’s
How far removed are such questions of love, of despair, just possible. Bergman believed that even though God
from today’s culture? The god discussed within Bergman’s may not exist, our worship of him has cast a long shadow
films is, after all, a Christian one, and as Nick Pinkerton on the history of humankind. Films such as Get Out, Zama,
put it in an article in this magazine (‘Mystical magery Western, Loveless – as well as the exercise in symbolism that
tour’, S&S, April 2017), Christianity is still something of a is Twin Peaks: The Return – stand in that shadow, making
dirty word among liberal elites. Hence perhaps the critical clear, just as the trilogy does, that an absent god shapes our
opprobrium surrounding Scorsese’s Silence last year, and history quite as effectively as a present one would do.
the outright contempt for the crowd-pleasing schmaltz of The Faith Trilogy is screening at BFI Southbank,
films such as Miracles from Heaven (2016). Still, religiosity i London, as part of ‘Ingmar Bergman: A Definitive
survives, albeit in disguised forms. Filmmakers such as Film Season’, which runs until March. A selection of
Terrence Malick, Eugène Green and the Dardenne broth- the director’s key films plays at cinemas nationwide

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 39

INGMAR BERGMAN FANNY AND ALEXANDER

‘IT CAN NEVER wail, thrash and groan, while a monk with
a drum beats out a menacing rhythm. After
of about 2 hours 45 minutes. Grade and
Starger insisted on a maximum length

BE MORE FUN’ three takes, the air thick with smoke from
the censers, Bergman laughs with the others
of 2 hours 15 minutes for the theatrical
release; Bergman demurred. “The marriage,”
as one frenzied flagellant goes on screaming he says, “was dead and cold, and we had
In this account of a visit to the set after her colleagues have stopped. “It’s a no backer for Fanny and Alexander.”
of Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Fanny and quote from The Seventh Seal,” he says with a Enter Jörn Donner. Having read the script
Alexander’ in 1982, from the ‘Sight grin. Then, rather more seriously: “I first saw with mounting enthusiasm Donner, with
these flagellants as a child; my grandmother characteristic audacity, invited Bergman
& Sound’ archive, our critic found the
had a marvellous edition of the works of Sir to make the film in Stockholm, using the
director in an ebullient mood Walter Scott, and there they were, and all that studios of the Swedish Film Institute (of
By Peter Cowie imagery made a huge impression on me.” which he was then managing director).
Beside him stands Daniel Bell, a jocular Donner, having extended this invitation
Comforting, on one’s first visit to a Bergman expatriate Scot who will be responsible for without consulting his board, was faced with
film set, to encounter Death in the corridor. the music in Fanny and Alexander. He listens the task of raising some 30 million crowns
Not the late lamented Bengt Ekerot from The to the strange incantations and casts about (approximately £2,850,000) in the year before
Seventh Seal (1957), but a lanky extra adjusting for inspiration. “I’ve got to strike a contrast shooting was to begin, in September 1981. For
his grisly mask and fondling his scythe prior with the terrible poverty and humiliation a Swedish production, the logistics appeared
to entering Stages 1 and 2 of the studios in that religion has brought to these flagellants,” insuperable: 1,200 extras, 140 characters, at
the basement of the Swedish Film Institute. he says. “The score will have to summon least 60 speaking roles, a 25-week schedule...
Nearby, a dishevelled man-at-arms tucks up the ideological vision of Christianity, But Donner went to work with a will.
his chin into his breastplate and dozes on angels and all that.” Meanwhile, Bergman is German television, in the shape of ZDF
a bench. An imperious woman strolls past, addressing the crowd: “Beat harder!” he urges in Mainz, was prevailed upon to invest
her breasts slashed with scarlet make-up. the flagellants. “Flick with your wrists. No heavily in the project, thanks in part to the
Two harlequins are playing a desultory game limp movements. Sometimes it’s obvious that intervention of Horst Wendlandt, a long-time
of gin rummy. A bell shrills, and everyone you’re faking.” Then, as the assistant director admirer of Bergman who had shared with
springs into life. Scores of extras, barefoot Peter Schildt shepherds them back, Bergman Dino De Laurentiis the production credit
and clothed in ragged fustian, troop into the strolls off on his own, whistling quietly. on The Serpent’s Egg (1977). Then Gaumont,
well-lit sound stage. Harriet Andersson, long It is an economic miracle that Fanny the most powerful conglomerate in French
a denizen of Bergman’s world, waits patiently and Alexander has reached this stage at all. cinema, and with a president, Daniel Toscan
as more paint is applied to the stigmata in After the success of Autumn Sonata (1978), du Plantier, who had long been known as a
her palms. Dressed in a long black robe, Bergman’s unlikely patron Lord Grade devotee of Pantheon directors, as well as an
with hair drawn up in a bun and turn-of-the- was eager to establish a long-term artistic astute businessman, stepped in with more
century spectacles, she looks formidable, relationship with the Swedish director. Two production guarantees. Bergman’s own
straight out of a dream by Strindberg. hammer blows descended on this marriage company in Munich, Personafilm, joined the
Bergman is home. After five years of self- of convenience. First, From the Life of the investment roster, and Donner drew upon an
imposed exile in Munich, he has directed Marionettes (1980) opened to mixed reviews impressive network of international contacts
what he claims will be his last Swedish film, and total public apathy. Second, Bergman’s to sell Fanny and Alexander in advance to
Fanny and Alexander. Bergman has mellowed screenplay for Fanny and Alexander ran certain key territories – the BBC, for example,
over the years. The strain of the upheaval to several hundred pages. Grade and his have purchased rights to the TV series.
that followed the trumped-up tax scandal of associate Martin Starger were aghast, and Donner feels it unlikely that ever again
1976 shows in his face and figure. Suddenly, scarcely mollified by Bergman’s cheerful can such an expensive Swedish production
he looks his 63 years. The hair, once sleek and suggestion that he make a five-hour film be mounted. In spite of his mustering of
black, is grey and wispy; the shoulders stooped. for television and a separate cinema version outside capital, Donner became the target
Yet there is something grand about the way
he orchestrates these dream sequences. The
pale, curvilinear walls of the set assume the
contours of a metaphorical desert, across
which the wind and sand whirl in the face
of the peasants and dancers who caper their
way towards the camera, Death bringing tip
the rear. “Come on, come on!” cries Bergman.
He seems enveloped by the host of extras, but
remains atop the camera dolly, hair tossed
by the blast from a wind machine. Then, the
take completed, there is a quick consultation
with Sven Nykvist, Bergman’s veteran
cinematographer (28 films in partnership).
As the extras shuffle back to the baseline, the
hush descends once more, cathedral-like.
Minutes later, it is the turn of the
flagellants, dancers trained to contort their
bodies and lash at one another without
actually making contact. They keen and The puppetmaster: Fanny and Alexander’s lead, played by 12-year-old Bertil Guve

40 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

of ferocious attacks in the Swedish press for
his alleged damage to the Film Institute’s
economy. He maintains that the Swedes
are getting good value for their share of the
budget – a five- or six-part TV series, plus
a major cinema release. Not to mention
employment for scores of technicians during
more than half a year, and the sense of the
Institute’s studios being tested to the limit.
Bergman himself was sceptical about the
technical resources of the Film Institute.
Working at the Bavaria Studios outside
Munich, he had been reminded of the
halcyon days of Svensk Filmindustri, when
so many gifted designers and wardrobe
experts had been on the staff out at Solna.
“I was convinced it was not possible to film
Fanny and Alexander in Sweden,” he admits,
“and I have been delightfully surprised.”
Four sound stages were brought into play,
two at the Film Institute and two at Europa
Film in Bromma. Even then, the production Bergman on the set of Fanny and Alexander with his titular protagonists Pernilla Allwin and Bertil Guve
designers, led by Anna Asp, had to perform
miracles of improvisation and compression. Bergman was taken to task Hugo and Josephine, 1967). Grede had taken
Marik Vos-Lundh supervised a team of 17 Bergman gently to task for producing grim
costumiers and seamstresses. There were 260 by a friend for producing grim and depressing pictures when in private he
leading costumes to be made, each of which pictures so he decided to show the patently relished life and found parts of it
had to be tested and approved by Bergman, so amusing. Bergman decided to show the
working with his still photographer, Arne world he too liked entertainment world that he too liked entertainment. The
Carlsson. “Then we needed 400 for the dichotomy between his genial personality
big funeral sequence,” says Vos-Lundh, confirms that she helped him build his first and his anguished work appears to stem
“and 350 more for the theatre scenes.” toy theatre. Bergman prefers to site himself from childhood. While Guve kicks a ball
The reconciliation with Sweden was elsewhere in the film: “There’s a lot of me around the set during takes, Bergman sits on
unexpectedly warm. Early location in the bishop, rather than in Alexander. an upturned drum and remembers: “There
excursions for Fanny and Alexander had the He’s haunted by his own devils.” And to was a very twisted atmosphere in my home.
air of a public fête, with Bergman being ogled reinforce the family atmosphere, the film’s Sometimes it was happy, very amusing, we
and applauded like royalty as he supervised vast credit list is speckled with Bergmans liked to play games, play theatre, play music.
scenes in the streets of Uppsala. “He is so – Anna, Ingmar’s daughter, as the ingenue When my father was in a good mood, he
much more at ease here at home than he Hanna Schwartz; Mats, his son, as Aron; was a wonderful man. But when he had his
was making From the Life of the Marionettes Kabi Laretei, a former wife, as Aunt Anna; depressions, then the mood was certainly very
in Munich,” says his wife Ingrid. “Directing Daniel, their son, as grip; and his present wife, heavy. As children we could never understand
in German was extremely taxing.” Ingrid, helping with production matters. the abruptness of these changes. Fanny and
Bergman was brought up in Uppsala, living Contractual difficulties have led to the Alexander is not about my childhood, but
at the home of his maternal grandmother. absence from Fanny and Alexander of several parts of my childhood are lodged within it.”
This university town is the setting for Fanny archetypal Bergman names: Max von Sydow, Towards the end of last year, the Swedish
and Alexander, which depicts Swedish high who might well have played the Bishop, newspaper Aftonbladet pounced on a remark
society at the close of the last century and and Liv Ullmann, who might have appeared Bergman had made about retiring from the
in the first years of the 20th. The Ekdahl in the coveted role of Emilie Ekdahl, now cinema. When one asks him directly about
family rules the roost, owning the town’s taken by Sweden’s most lauded actress the rumours, however, Bergman attests to
much valued theatre, and coming into of the moment, Ewa Froling. But Erland their accuracy: “I will do some 50-minute TV
gradual conflict with the fire and brimstone Josephson is back, as the antique dealer, plays, and perhaps another opera like The
Bishop, Edvard Vergerus. One of the movie’s Isak Jacobi. So too are Gunnar Björnstrand, Magic Flute, but I prefer to leave filmmaking
high points will be the bishop’s death by as the doyen among actors at the theatre, to younger people. In earlier days, when I
immolation, expiring in flames after his bed and Jarl Kulle, as Gustav Adolf Ekdahl. made those pronouncements about each film
has been set alight (“We damned near burned Fanny and Alexander, part comedy, part being my last, I said so with quite a different
down the entire studio!” recalls Bergman). tragedy, part farce and part horror show, will emphasis. I was a financial catastrophe, and
Alexander, played by Bertil Guve, is 12, be much less claustrophobic and intense than I never knew when I would be forced to
and his young sister Fanny is ten, and clearly Bergman’s recent films. “It’s not so much a quit the industry. But now I need too much
there is an autobiographical tinge to the chronicle,” he says, “as a Gobelin tapestry, energy,” and he gestures vaguely at the huge
scenes of their discovering the delights of from which you can pick the images and the studio and the milling figures amid the
a magic lantern and the mysteries of their incidents and the characters that fascinate glaring klieg lights. “Besides,” he adds, “it
grandmother’s home. Bergman’s sister you.” The film was conceived as Bergman can never be more fun than it is now.”
Margareta – an author in her own right – is was pondering on a conversation he had This essay originally appeared in
in fact four years younger than him, and had with his friend Kjell Grede (director of i Sight & Sound, Summer 1982

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 41

 Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Post’, which explores the Pentagon Papers exposé
of US government duplicity in Vietnam, tries hard to stir the democratic
impulse in the era of Trump – but the track record of crusading true-story
sagas leaving a mark in the national consciousness has never been great
By Michael Atkinson

THE
AWFUL
TRUTH
On at least a few epidermic levels, Steven Spielberg’s new
film The Post makes a rousing bid for relevance, for its own
editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) drives his staff
through the gruntwork of secretly organising and read-
PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED
Steven Spielberg’s The
Post weighs the legal and
historical particularities and for its righteous subgenre: ing through the thousands of pages, while Post publisher financial repercussions
the defiant journalism docudrama. Here we have, 45 – and family friend of McNamara – Katharine Graham faced during the Pentagon
years after the fact, a scrupulous and power-engineered (Meryl Streep) weighs legal and financial repercussions Papers saga by Washington
Post editor-in chief Ben
retelling of the tale of the Pentagon Papers – a secret against the ethical imperative of journalism’s role in de- Bradlee (Tom Hanks, above)
study of US involvement in Vietnam commissioned mocracy. As we know, the courageous risk paid off – the and publisher Katharine
by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967 and Papers, or news of them, were splashed across every news Graham (Meryl Streep,
above and opposite), against
leaked four years later by federal whistleblower Daniel outlet in the country, and were written into history. their ethical obligations as
Ellsberg – which presented history with the stone-cold Or were they? The war would last another four years, members of the press
evidence of government duplicity, illegal espionage and in an already rising climate of rage and protest, and Nixon
propaganda engineering behind the waging of the war. would fall as a result of an entirely different newspaper-
What could be more pungent, more magnifying, in this reported scandal. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis,
our bloodshot year of caveman power grabs, alternative while still only a trust-busting lawyer, famously claimed
facts and renewed media relevance? that sunlight is “the best of disinfectants”, but we could
It was the first major top-secret government leak, hardly be blamed for wishing, alongside Spielberg, that
requiring thick currents of courage at every step, from the publication of the Papers mattered much more in
smuggling the documents out of the Pentagon to pub- the real world than it actually did. The ultimate salience
lishing them and putting them on every American of Spielberg’s film, much as the Papers themselves, may
breakfast table. Spielberg, humankind’s most passion- depend upon whatever impact it might or might not
ate marketeer of chest-swelling heroic nerve, somehow have, on audiences, and what public spirit arises from
resisted focusing entirely on the skulking risks taken that impact. Or, it’s just a newspaper film, which is to say,
by rogue fed worker Ellsberg, and instead homes in on one of movies’ most beloved if unsung genres, a school
the dilemma posed to the Washington Post in publishing of ethical narrative tropes literally constructed
them, in violation of a federal court order. Hard-bitten around democratic ideals.

42 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 43
STEVEN SPIELBERG THE POST

Is ‘The Post’ just as naive as we all were those many decades ago, thinking that publishing something in the
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE It’s a genre about work, the hard existential human discourse, stories told densely with tongues and
(Above, from left) Power of work of truth in a civil society. Dramas concocted lungs. Today, an exchange of dialogue, even in The Post,
the Press (1943), Citizen
Kane (1941), Jake Gyllenhaal around Edward R. Murrow, Hannah Arendt, Bob Wood- that surpasses one lone minute and features more than
in Nightcrawler (2014) and ward and Carl Bernstein, and the Boston Globe’s Spotlight four swapped lines is an aberration – a taxing irritant
WIlliam Hurt in Broadcast staff, whatever else they may be, have a genuine baked-in amid the swooshing tides of digital noise and body-fluid
News (1987)
heroism, contingent upon labouring with facts and lan- pratfall and silent brooding. Back in the day, dialogue
guage, for the sake of a public’s almighty right to know. In would stretch our for four, eight, even 12 minutes at a
movies, of course, the ‘truth’ is a slippery quantity, and a stretch, the movie’s actors yammering away like pet-
journalist saga telling a factual story confronts a Lady from shop macaws and fleshing out their characters by way of
Shanghai–style shootout between truth and politics, and what is said, what isn’t said, how fast they talk, how com-
truth and movieness. The Post, being a Spielberg movie, fortable they feel speaking in their particular situation,
is pure fantasy in its form and tone, even as its facts are how they react at length with the other characters, all of
straight. It’s a forgivable nostalgic swoon, expressing our it arising from the texture of the scene organically, with-
near universal longing now for journalism’s 20th-century out ‘emphasis’ and visual cues. (Long, mute close-ups
heyday, as newspapers today face the financial cliff, and were unheard of – unless you were Garbo or Dietrich.)
the entire world suddenly seems as badly in need of hard- Audiences of all ages brought an attention and acumen
core reporting and printed defiance as it ever has. to moviewatching that verged on the capacities that we
The tradition of newspaper movies has always tem- all bring – or should bring – to bear on conversations
pered the ideals of journalism with the savvy urban bit- with real, live people.
terness of the reporter – an original trickster figure for There was the electric sense in 30s films of talking itself
the modern era. This dynamic appeared first during the being an outrageous novelty, to be indulged in like whis-
Depression, and with the advent of talkies. Reporters had key by teenagers, and the newspaper picture in general
driven stories before, but in the sound era they drove required throats like Tracy’s because it is uniquely con-
them with their mouths, adopting a kind of comic, slang- tingent on language and information, even as far along
clotted tough-guy delivery originated on the stage but as Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men (1976), which is
borrowed equally from the city streets, which teemed really no more than a series of Q&As, however riveting.
with the first generation of Americans born of millions Westerns and films noirs were also rooted in a newborn
of European immigrants. Whatever kind of public dis- Americana, but the newspaper movie, with its boundless
course we had before, now we had throngs of Irish, Ital- cynicism and keep-it-moving pace and narrative need to
ian and Eastern European urchins and workers, relent- know what happened, captures an ambivalent sense of
lessly reinventing the American vernacular and defining the national character – its restless confrontationalism,
the dog-eat-dog modern metropolis as a distinct chunk of its queasy balance between crowd identity and hungry
space-time, where wealth and success awaited the quick solipsism. This is one of the thematic faces of Citizen Kane
and merciless, and speed was the name of the game. (1941), in many ways the ne plus ultra newspaper film,
What better milieu in which to make talkies? Watch- and yet one in which journalism is a means, not an end,
ing an actor such as Lee Tracy execute a patch of scripted to building a fortune and destroying your soul.
dialogue is like watching a spider spin a web in fast- Obviously, the heroism of journalism has had its
motion. How did audiences keep up? They did, that’s all, countercharge, from the self-serving skullduggery of
and therein lurks the real wonderment to be had before Walter Burns in every version of The Front Page from 1931
the spectacle of Hollywood product like The Front Page onward, to the slipshod reportage at the core of Sydney
(1931), Blessed Event (1932) or Power of the Press (1943) – Pollack’s Absence of Malice (1981). Between them, noir ex-
these were mass-produced narrative entertainments plored the moral vacuum that could easily evolve from
composed almost entirely of dialogue, cataracts of modern journalism’s faith in story at any cost, notably

44 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

newspaper would change the abuses of state power all by itself, instead of needing us to act on the information?
Billy Wilder’s acidic Ace in the Hole (1951), Fritz Lang’s The Post virtually bites its lip in tearful pride about HEROES AND VILLAINS
dark-hearted While the City Sleeps (1956), and Alexan- what it thinks it achieves, but the track record of crusad- (Above, from left) Kirk
Douglas and Richard
der Mackendrick’s septic Sweet Smell of Success (1957). ing true-story sagas leaving a thumbprint in the nation- Benedict in Ace in the Hole
What’s interesting is how the reporter, without being al consciousness is not great. The only fallout, after all, (1951), Dustin Hoffman and
criminal, has often functioned in noir as an active agent from the ‘Woodstein’ coverage of Watergate, much less Robert Redford in All the
President’s Men (1976) and
of darkness, not merely another lost pawn criss-crossing Pakula’s film version of it a few years later, was an abrupt Sally Field in Absence of
the genre’s endlessly expressive alleys and hallways change in presidents, an oddball Democrat elected the Malice (1981)
and night streets, alongside the luckless war vets, petty next term, and, in 1980, a full return to regularly sched-
crooks and devious femmes. The newspaperman’s cyni- uled skullduggery and Republican power abuse. Also,
cal ambition swaps out the genre’s more generalised we got to enjoy the lingering figure of Nixon as a low
sense of capitalistic doom, and the pessimism becomes limbo bar no elected official should bow down to beat, a
personal, a fact of private corruption spiralling outward. standard that has been thoroughly obliterated in recent
Again, the journalistic enterprise runs on uniquely high- months and for the foreseeable future. All the President’s
octane ethical stakes, with the heart of the American Men, like The Post, has the jaw-dropping indignity of his-
project weighed as meat set for roasting. If the press is the torical revelation, dramatised at full throttle and widely
conscience of the country, then in noir its fate was already seen. But the awareness it offered did not help deter the
sealed by the mid-50s. Reagan-Bush administrations that followed, and the ac-
Of course, idealism fought its fight, too; in Richard companying covert wars, campaign monstrosities, inter-
Brooks’s Deadline – U.S.A. (1952), for example, the cru- national scandals, top-secret crimes, and our own sleep-
sading journo paradigm of The Post was alive and thriv- walking acceptance of whatever lies the government fed
ing in a noir-shadowed world. The coming of TV news to the media.
only deepened our wells of cynicism, as quite sud- Assume if you will that Spielberg had intended to
denly any acceptable scale between what’s appropriate stir up a traumatised public under Trump, and foment
versus what’s sensational is summarily destroyed by a revitalised outrage over the malevolent shredding
the medium itself – the appalled point of both Haskell of governmental principles and structures, in a litany
Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969) and Paddy Chayefsky and we numbly shrug off as daily news noise. Maybe – or is
Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976), not to mention Brooks’s Spielberg looking to shame us, with how little we bother
second-to-last film, the underrated fake-news tale Wrong to change things, and how little the Pentagon Papers
Is Right (1982). Something about TV – about the simple changed American minds, despite all that fierce newspa-
narcotic effect of its illuminated and illuminating status per excavation and First Amendment idealising? Is Spiel-
as a semi-human presence in our homes, endlessly gen- berg’s emphatic visual palette and swelling music and
erating news and images even when it’s not turned on inspirational cant ironically intended? Or is the film just
– inspires our deepest qualms, even as we never question as naive as we all were those many decades ago, think-
our own addiction to it. Even James L. Brooks’s Broadcast ing that publishing something in the newspaper would
News (1987), about as gentle a massaging as mass media change the abuses of state power all by itself, instead of
has ever received, ends up interrogating its own glib ma- needing us to understand and then to act on the informa-
nipulation of on-air journalism, while Michael Mann’s tion as a citizenry? Look around us: the troglodytes have
The Insider (1999); Dan Gilroy’s Medium Cool for the selfie found the complacently vulnerable gaps in our rampart,
generation, Nightcrawler (2014); and James Vanderbilt’s and the seizure has begun. Real journalism in the time of
Truth (2015) are all as ruthless in their probing of moral Trump has never been more necessary, but if it ever had
failure as The Post, among its ilk, is dogged in its pursuit a chance of changing history, would we be here now?
of moral triumph. What other genre so teeters back and The Post is released in UK cinemas on
forth on a fulcrum of genuine ethical equivocation? i 19 January, and is reviewed on page 70

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 45

I AM NOT
A W I TC H
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY RUNGANO NYONI

OUT NOW ON DVD AND BLU-RAY

TM

WHILE STOCKS LAST

74 Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi
Director Rian Johnson leavens political high seriousness and
fan-service tear-jerking with enough charm and humour
to prevent ‘The Last Jedi’ becoming the biggest downer ever
delivered at Christmas by the Walt Disney Company

48 Films of the Month 54 Films 80 Home Cinema 90 Books

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 47
FILMS OF THE MONTH

In the name of the father: Eric Caravaca as philosophy lecturer Gilles and Esther Garrel as his troubled daughter Jeanne

intimate relationships, signature motifs turned up at her father’s home following the
Lover for a Day such as walking, dancing or sleeping – and break-up of her own relationship, interrupts
France 2016 compresses them into a storytelling mode her cruel tirade against his girlfriend Ariane
Director: Philippe Garrel that is both cinematic and ‘novelistic’. (“You’re not so amazing – you’re less beautiful
Certificate 15 75m 58s
Garrel has arrived at a new level of respect than my mother”) with the apology that
for intricately constructed screenplays – this she is just talking trash. But is she, in fact,
Reviewed by Cristina Alvarez one, a four-hander, was fastidiously rehearsed spontaneously exploiting her own lovelorn
López and Adrian Martin with the cast over a one-year period. Garrel even grief as an excuse to vent her true feelings?
Twenty years ago it would have seemed vulgar allowed himself what he calls a ‘Hitchcockian’ In the last third of the film, Jeanne (brilliantly
– or simply unlikely – to imagine directors of element of ongoing intrigue: a voiceover played by Esther Garrel, who is the standout in
lofty, artistic intent such as Terrence Malick or narration (spoken by Laëtitia Spigarelli) that this ensemble) introduces Ariane to her friend
Philippe Garrel getting ‘on a roll’ and pumping fills in for us, at special moments, what each Stéphane, a casual seducer to whom Jeanne
out multiple films in (for them) rapid succession. character knows, doesn’t know or is not saying. has never succumbed. The plot that Jeanne
Yet what Malick has recently achieved in terms What is Lover for a Day about? In Garrel’s engineers here – if, indeed, she is consciously
of productivity, with the aid of big stars and films, this common-or-garden question of
generous budgets, Garrel has managed within interpretation frequently springs a trap for
a much more constrained production set-up. viewers and critics alike. Garrel began by
Garrel seized the opportunity enabled by pondering the Electra complex: flipping
producer Saïd Ben Saïd to make a loose trilogy the traditionally masculine Oedipus tale so
of films – Jealousy (2013), In the Shadow of Women that a daughter (Jeanne) symbolically kills
(2015) and now Lover for a Day – that are all in the mother-figure (Ariane) in order to solely
widescreen black and white, with only a few possess the father (Gilles). But, judging by the
central actors, clocking in at not much more than end result, that template really only offered
70 minutes each. As he told Cahiers du cinéma: “A Garrel a pretext. Lover for a Day traces a tight
quarter hour less is a quarter hour less to produce.” triangle of interrelationships in which virtually
Of course, there is more to it than simple every act is ambiguous. What people say is not
low-budget efficiency. The trilogy takes necessarily what they believe; and what they
up familiar features of Garrel’s cinema allow to happen is not necessarily what they
– the melancholic mood, the focus on intend or consciously desire. Jeanne, who has Louise Chevillotte as Ariane, with Garrel

48 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

 ‘Lover for a Day’ is a film of (Jeanne trying to delete a compromising
photo of Ariane from her phone) are retained
Freudian inspiration, and its in the final cut, and extraneous characters

FILMS OF THE MONTH

glimpsed only once deliver grave speeches
terrain is the unconscious – Garrel (a bar proprietor declares that, while wholly
even directed the performers to sympathetic to Algerians during the ‘nameless
war’ of 1954-62, he still loyally fought against
‘act as if you are in a dream’ them on the French side when conscripted).
Loyalty, or fidélité, is another recurring
been sleepwalking in and out of their own and fully ambiguous theme woven into the
dreams. According to Louise Chevillotte film. It is discussed as a philosophical issue
(impressive as Ariane, in her first screen role), between father and daughter: “One can
this approach informs even his direction of be faithful to memories, details,” observes
the performers: “Act as if you are in a dream.” Gilles, but he adds, “I don’t know what I’m
In this dreamlike framework, it is perhaps faithful to, or who.” A fellow teacher, his head
better to approach the trio of Jeanne, Ariane spinning from the many attractive young
and Gilles less as realistically discrete, flesh- students, asks Gilles about his marriage:
and-blood characters than as unstable – and “Fidelity, how did that go?” – to which Gilles
frequently interchangeable – packets of blandly replies, “Badly.” Like Godard, Garrel
emotions, moods and drives. The film traces is fascinated by the complicated, sometimes
an arc of reversibility. In the opening scenes, fatal interplay between political loyalties,
Garrel vividly contrasts Ariane’s orgasmic intellectual ideals and relationship codes.
jouissance with Jeanne’s hysterical, suicidal Issues of gender representation have rarely
depression. By the end, the positions of the two been so pointed in the director’s career as they
women will have swapped almost exactly. are in Lover for a Day. More than ever, Garrel
In fact, much of Lover for a Day is built on insists in interviews on his essentially feminist
rhyming schemes that permutate different viewpoint, and on the creative means he
arrangements of characters into the same type of employs to ensure gender equality on screen:
situation: side-by-side conversations framed in men write the male roles, women the female
close two-shot; people walking and talking in the roles. In practice, this obliterates neither Garrel’s
street; even certain sex positions recur. One can penchant for gender dualism – the characters
detect here the influence of Chantal Akerman, endlessly discuss the supposedly universal
particularly her triangular romance Night and differences in behaviour and outlook between
Day (1991), with its serenely serial ‘eternal men and women – nor the evident trace of
return’ of particular spoken phrases and physical male fantasy. How could a film in which the
gestures. Indeed, Garrel recalls the ‘lesson’ director’s own daughter plays the Electra figure,
imparted to him by his late friend: “Everything where both she and the rival are student age
must be rendered flat – on the same level.” In in relation to a teacher-father, be anything
this spirit, even the dream sequences in Lover but suffused with an aura of erotic reverie?
for a Day (there are two, according to Garrel) Although this is, for Garrel, a surprisingly
are depicted like any other part of the story. sexual film, Lover for a Day keeps a tight lid on
Gone are the days (particularly of the 1980s) such disquieting insinuations. All the films in
when Garrel made a Godardian show of violent Garrel’s ‘Freudian trilogy’ arrive at an enigmatic
disjuncture between the various levels of the but satisfying equilibrium for their faithful
narrative. Now everything is smoother, more viewers – a Mozartian sense of optimism,
fluid and coherent in terms of traditional second chances balancing out the catastrophic
scheming – is, once again, mysterious: Ariane’s movie craft. Yet odd events still intrude into mistakes that every character inevitably makes.
subsequent affair with Stéphane is both (as the fabric (such as an amusing moment when, If Lover for a Day, like Godard’s Le Mépris (1963),
the voiceover narration suggests) a way for in the street, Gilles is drenched by somebody is about the mysterious process by which a
Jeanne to enjoy him by proxy and her means watering plants above his head – a practice relationship unravels, it also shows – to borrow
to catalyse Gilles’s ultimate rejection of Ariane. he decries as “bourgeois”), fumbled actions one of Garrel’s own titles – the rebirth of love.
And yet, in one of the film’s best moments, once
this house of cards collapses, a tearful Jeanne Credits and Synopsis
tries to “plead Ariane’s cause” to her father.
Even more centrally, Gilles and Ariane’s
Produced by Original Music France Cinéma A co-production Stéphane In Black & White
relationship as a couple rests on a verbal pact Saïd Ben Saïd Jean-Louis Aubert co-production of Fresnoy, Studio Michel Charrel [2.35:1]
that is meant to ensure peace but only wreaks Michel Merkt Sound Recordists With the participation National des Arts bar owner Subtitles
Screenplay/ François Musy of Arte France and Contemporains Nicolas Bridet
havoc. Gilles, shaken by the evidence of Dialogue Guillaume Sciamma Centre National teacher Distributor
Ariane’s impulsive one-day trysts (“You’re a Don Arlette Langmann Gabriel Hafner du Cinéma et de Marie Sergeant MUBI
Juan,” he comments), asks her to agree to this Jean-Claude Carrière Key Costumer l’Image Animée Cast Yentel
Caroline Deruas Justine Pearce With the support of Eric Caravaca Raphaël Naasz French theatrical title
condition: they can both have affairs, as long as Philippe Garrel Procirep, Angoa Gilles young man smoking L’Amant d’un jour
they don’t declare them to each other. But the Director of ©SBS Films, Arte In association with Esther Garrel a cigarette
Photography France Cinéma Soficinéma 13 Jeanne Justine Bachelet
very utterance of this plan introduces doubt, Renato Berta Production With the support Louise Chevillotte friend in restaurant
distance and eventually disenchantment into Editor Companies of Soficinéma 11 Ariane Christian Bouillette
François Gedigier Saïd Ben Saïd and Développement, Paul Toucang drunkard
the relationship: Ariane goes in a split second Art Director Michel Merkt present Cinémage 10 Mateo Laëtitia Spigarelli
(the space of an edit) from contemplating a Manu de Chauvigny an SBS Films, Arte Développement Félix Kysyl narrator
lifetime with Gilles to forecasting its end; he
Paris, present day. Jeanne has left her boyfriend Mateo, Gilles, Ariane is courted by another student, with whom
flirts with another young woman but suddenly, and arrives in despair at her father Gilles’s home. Gilles, she subsequently has a one-day affair. Gilles and Ariane
as if completely destabilised, withdraws a philosophy teacher, is in a secret relationship with agree to maintain an ‘open’ relationship. At a kiosk,
from the seduction game he has initiated. former student Ariane. After a rocky start, the two Jeanne spies a nude photo of Ariane in a porno magazine;
Lover for a Day is, as Garrel has declared, a women gradually become friends. Still obsessed with she promises to keep it a secret from Gilles. Jeanne
film of Freudian inspiration, and its chosen Mateo, Jeanne fakes phone calls to the apartment, introduces Ariane to her friend Stéphane, leading to a
supposedly from him. Ariane saves Jeanne from a suicide sexual liaison that Gilles witnesses. Gilles and Ariane
terrain is the unconscious. This is in itself attempt, and agrees not to tell Gilles. The women go break up. Three months later, Jeanne announces to her
nothing new in his work: at least since the out dancing together. At a group dinner organised by father that she has reconciled with Mateo.
early 1980s, his characters have seemingly

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 49

 of the film’s originality and interest stems from its
The Nothing Factory internal probing of the stakes and limitations of
the very strategies it deploys to such great effect.
FILMS OF THE MONTH

Portugal 2017
Director: Pedro Pinho When grappling with social themes, there is a
strong and longstanding tendency for a particular
kind of cinema to aspire to heart-wrenching
Reviewed by Erika Balsom authenticity, to romanticise precarity as a form of
Cinema begins with the end of work. In 1895’s exotic otherness and package it for consumption
Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, the mostly by middle-class viewers. Faced with such images,
female employees of the Lumière brothers’ audiences feel good about themselves for feeling
factory in Lyon pour through the gates. This bad, reassured as they are of their progressiveness
image opens the cinema but forecloses the and empathy for just a few hours before returning
representation of industrial labour itself, to their comfortable homes. Such is one problem
establishing a preference for depictions of leisure with a certain vein of the realist enterprise. In
and white-collar work from which film history the late 1960s, Cahiers du cinéma’s contributors
has seldom deviated. There are, however, notable articulated another: the illusionist picturing
exceptions: figures such as Jean-Luc Godard of political subjects fails to acknowledge that
and Harun Farocki have sought to redress this representation is never a neutral act, but a process
absence with reflections on the factory as a site imbued with power relations. In order for a film
of sociality and struggle, skill and exploitation, to be truly effective, the argument went, it must
while last year saw the very welcome restoration be political not only in content but also in form.
of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Eight Hours Don’t As if to respond to and pre-empt both critiques,
Make a Day (1972), a captivating television The Nothing Factory introduces the character
miniseries exploring working-class life on and of the filmmaker Daniele, played by Italian
off the factory floor. To this eminent list one documentarian Daniele Incalcaterra. He is the
must add Pedro Pinho’s The Nothing Factory, an catalyst for the film’s reflexive self-questioning,
entrancing and inventive film about the fate of a diegetic proxy for Pinho himself, who pulls the
a suburban Lisbon elevator manufacturer in our film away from its realist ground and enables a
era of deindustrialisation and economic crisis. consistent interrogation of issues that have long
Shot on beautifully grainy 16mm and haunted leftist discourse: how to conceptualise
featuring a cast comprising overwhelmingly non- the fraught relationship between the intellectual
professional actors, some of whom are factory and the worker; how filmmakers of class privilege
workers in real life, The Nothing Factory traffics and avant-gardist inclinations might best
heavily in the conventions of social realism, approach the representation of the proletariat.
at times adopting a documentary feel perhaps When we first see him, Daniele is driving
informed by Pinho’s background as a nonfiction through terrains vagues left in the wake of
filmmaker. When the Fataleva company runs failed industry, providing the occasion for
into financial difficulties, the management sells a ponderous female voiceover: “A spectre is
off machinery in the middle of the night and haunting Europe. The spectre of its ending.”
attempts to cajole employees into taking lump- It is an echo of Marx and Engels, devoid of the
sum payouts. Some do, but the remaining workers conviction that a communist future is imminent.
band together to occupy the factory in an effort to Something is certainly ending – not only Europe,
protect their jobs. When they visit the head office but industry, stable employment, organised
and find it abandoned, presumably owing to the labour – and better futures are difficult to
company’s insolvency, they discuss the possibility imagine. Quotations follow from To Our Friends,
of continuing to work on a self-organised basis – a a 2014 book by the Invisible Committee, an
theme also central to Fassbinder’s miniseries. anonymous French anarchist collective who
The film’s narrative, partially adapted from a describe the current state of capitalism as one of A matter of lifts and death: The Nothing Factory
1997 play of the same name by Judith Herzberg, “lasting apocalypse”. Throughout The Nothing
consists of little more than this; it is skeletal, Factory, such snippets of theoretical discourse In To Our Friends, the Invisible Committee
especially given its running time of nearly periodically appear, puncturing the film’s proposes that a utopia of self-organisation
three hours, but this is not to be construed as a realism with moments of Brechtian rupture that should be achieved through revolution, but it
deficiency. The Nothing Factory is less a matter of recall the political modernism of the 1960s. is not so clear that The Nothing Factory shares
story than it is a naturalistic immersion into a On receiving their first order, the workers such convictions. To be sure, the film is a
milieu, with substantial screen time given over break into a choreographed musical number cacophony of contradictory voices, making it
to capturing the subtleties of group dynamics exalting the “3,000 tilting modules” they have difficult to assign to it any singular position;
and the lived environments within which been asked to produce. After the song-and- this is indeed one of its strengths. Nonetheless,
they occur. Extensive scenes of the workers dance has concluded, it is revealed that the any radical remaking of society seems out of the
arguing over the best path forward, developed spectacle has been orchestrated by Daniele for question. The factory workers do not constitute
out of improvisation exercises with the cast, the benefit of the film he is making, as was the a unified historical subject poised to overthrow
are punctuated by Straubian travelling shots of order that prompted it. Zé pushes back against
industrial landscapes and episodes from the home these manipulations: “We’re going to be what,
life of Zé, a worker who lives with his immigrant characters in your neorealist musical?” The
girlfriend and her son. The film renders its gesture is one that resonates as much as an
characters and environments in tremendous interpersonal and interclass conflict within
detail over a protracted duration, carefully the narrative as it does as a film-historical jab
attending to the complexities of interpersonal at modes of representation from which The
relationships, the strain of collective decision- Nothing Factory is keen to depart. The film
making and the affective weight of precarity. confronts head-on the problems inherent in the
The factory features as the central node in a intelligentsia’s romanticisation of the working
network of social relations that extends beyond class, yet its task is not one of self-flagellation.
its walls to encompass commuter trains, nail Despite its thorough reflexivity, it never loses
salons, dark bars and cramped apartments. sight of its primary concern with capturing a
Yet The Nothing Factory is by no means a reality; after all, the play of the signifier doesn’t
straightforwardly realist work. A great measure mean much when one needs food and housing. Non-professionals make up the bulk of the cast

50 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

 FILMS OF THE MONTH
capitalism, but an internally fractured group Credits and Synopsis
comprising diverging attitudes and priorities.
When Zé’s father raises the possibility of
revolutionary violence, digging up machine
Produced by original idea by João Gazua Cast Fernando Lopes Isabel do Carmo
João Matos Jorge Silva Melo Choreographer José Smith Vargas Sandra Calhau Roger Claustre
guns buried since the fall of the dictatorship Susana Nobre Based on the play Joana Pupo Zé Ricardo Gonçalves Sara Pinto
Producers De Nietsfabriek by Carla Galvão Dinis Gomes
four decades ago, the episode is presented João Gusmão Judith Herzberg Production Carla Helena Cavacas In Colour
farcically, as the useless fantasies of an old man. Joana Bravo Excerpts from the Companies Njamy Sebastião Veríssimo [1.85:1]
João Matos text À nos amis by Terratreme presents ‘Mowgli’ Carlos Garrido Subtitles
Self-organisation figures not as utopia, but as a Susana Nobre Comité Invisível a film by João Matos, Daniele Incalcaterra Santos
project of questionable viability. The tone is one Leonor Noivo Director of Leonor Noivo, Luisa Daniele Américo Silva Distributor
Luisa Homem Photography Homem, Pedro Pinho, J. Bichana Martins Vasconcelos ICA Films
of humiliation, stagnation and uncertainty. Tiago Hespanha Vasco Viana Tiago Hespanha Hermínio Amaro António Rocha
And yet factory production does resume, with Pedro Pinho Editors Produced by João Santos Lopes Pereira Portuguese
Screenplay Cláudia Oliveira Terratreme Filmes Paulo Vitorino Tristão Soares theatrical title
management nowhere in sight. The Lumières Pedro Pinho Edgar Feldman Financial support: Rui Ruivo Nuno Vieira A Fábrica de Nada
begin when work ends; Pinho ends when work Leonor Noivo Luisa Homem Instituto do Cinema e António Cajado João Barbosa
Luisa Homem Art Director do Audiovisual, RTP Santos David Pereira Bastos
begins anew, with workers clocking in to try Tiago Hespanha Luísa Homem Executive Producers Zé Pedro Paulo Ganhão
their hand at existing on their own terms. Fredric Script Collaborators Music Directors João Matos Arlindo Miguel Anselm Jappe
João Rosas Pedro Rodrigues Susana Nobre Boris Martins Nunes Matilde Gago
Jameson was right when he wrote that “it is Telmo Churro José Smith Vargas Euclides Furtado da Silva
easier to imagine the end of the world than to Based on an Sound Recordist Toni
imagine the end of capitalism”. The seemingly
Portugal, present day. In the middle of the night, Zé, a the workers, filming – and shaping – their discussions
ceaseless proliferation of disaster movies in worker at an elevator factory, receives a telephone call. about the best path forward. He arranges for the
our young neoliberal century is evidence of the Something is wrong at the factory. On arriving there, factory to receive an order from Argentina, without
seduction of the first option. The Nothing Factory Zé finds that machinery is being taken away owing to disclosing his role in this to the group. After some initial
is a rare film that opts for the more arduous path the company’s financial difficulties. The next day, the enthusiasm, expressed in a musical number staged by
precisely to acknowledge it as such. It confronts workers are offered payouts to quit, and some accept. the filmmaker, the workers debate whether to accept
this impasse, yet insists that we must continue The others decide to occupy the factory in an effort to the order and how they might organise themselves.
keep their jobs, but when they visit the head office, they As the film ends, the workers clock in and production
to search for better ways of working and living find it deserted. A filmmaker starts to spend time with resumes.
together within this lasting apocalypse.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 51

FILMS OF THE MONTH

A quiet passion: Judith Chemla as Jeanne in Stéphane Brizé’s delicate portrait of a 19th-century noblewoman trapped by patriarchy and her own passivity

so too has his treatment of women. While he convent school, and ends a quarter of a century
A Woman’s Life deploys his male actors – in particular three-time later in the same place. In between, Jeanne marries
France/Belgium 2016 collaborator Vincent Lindon – with sensitivity local nobleman Julien de Lamare, who, having no
Director: Stéphane Brizé and heft, his female characters have rarely been fortune of his own, moves into her parents’ home.
Certificate 12A 119m 13s developed beyond sketches. The eponymous She bears a child, Paul. The husband is miserly and
Mademoiselle Chambon, for example, was cheats on her with her two closest confidantes.
Reviewed by Catherine Wheatley given neither backstory nor motivation for The son is sent away to school and later spends
Stéphane Brizé is something of a stealth auteur. her aleatory lifestyle. In The Measure of a Man, his adult years frittering away the family fortune.
For nearly 20 years he has been making slim, the protagonist’s wife hardly had a name. These are the events that make up the film’s
muscular films whose tone has shifted from A Woman’s Life, set in the early 19th century narrative. In the face of them, Jeanne says little and
the gentle comedy of Le Bleu des villes (1999) and based on a novel by Guy de Maupassant, does less. She grieves for her faithless husband, for
and Not Here to Be Loved (2005), through the turns a weakness into a strength by making her feckless child, for the friends who betray her,
minor-key melodrama of Mademoiselle Chambon female passivity its central theme. The woman in for the parents who, with the best of intentions,
(2009) and A Few Hours of Spring (2012), to the question is Jeanne, beloved daughter of Baron and sell her down the river. The film minutely details
political critique of 2015’s Cannes Competition Baroness Le Perthuis des Vauds (an adorable Jean- the various ways in which women are persuaded
entry The Measure of a Man. Throughout, his Pierre Darroussin and Yolande Moreau). The life to acquiesce in their subjugation: motherhood,
style – intense, sensuous, low on dialogue and is little to speak of. The film opens with 18-year- marriage, friendship, filial duty, forgiveness.
heavy on detail – has remained consistent. But old Jeanne returning to the family chateau after Sometimes, Jeanne demurs: she does not want

52 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

her son to be apart from her; does not want to
wear the crimson dress her friend tells her will
suit her so well; does not want, it seems, to have

FILMS OF THE MONTH

sex with her husband, judging by the small silent
tear and whispered “stop” that he ignores. No one
takes heed. The one time she does stand up for
herself – to a bullying priest – it ends in tragedy.
If Jeanne’s lot is to give and give and receive
little by way of return, even the film itself seems
to mine what energies she has to sculpt itself
from. When she is happy, the world is burnished
with sunlight, the fields surrounding the family
chateau red-gold and rosy. In her melancholy,
the sky becomes grey, overcast. At her lowest
ebb, when she discovers that Julien (a weaselly
Swann Arlaud) has been sleeping with her maid
Rosalie, the screen is plunged into darkness; we
can only just make out two blurry figures in
white nightclothes, one howling, one pleading.
This pathetic fallacy might seem a little
on-the-nose, but Brizé grounds the shifting
colours in economic circumstances as much
as emotional devastation: miserly Julien won’t
allow Jeanne to waste money on wood for fires
or candle wax for reading; later, Paul (played
as an adult by Finnegan Oldfield) has depleted
her financial reserves to such a point that she Couple in a hole: Swann Arlaud as Viscount Julien de Lamare, the husband of Chemla’s Jeanne
has nothing left to waste. In this much there’s a
timeliness to the narrative that makes it a kind The film details the ways in a classical melodramatic heroine, an antecedent
of companion piece to The Measure of a Man, in of Letter from an Unknown Woman’s Lisa: Stefan
which Lindon’s beleaguered everyman struggled which women are persuaded to Zweig, from whose novella that 1948 film was
with the economic hardship and multiple adapted, was a vocal admirer of Maupassant.
indignities that come with being unemployed. acquiesce in their subjugation: It is another film, though, another small life,
Indeed, the two films feel of a piece: despite
the period setting, the camerawork here is
motherhood, marriage, that Brizé’s picture most potently calls to mind,
that of George Bailey in Frank Capra’s classic
naturalistic, the performances modern. A friendship, filial duty, forgiveness It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). A Woman’s Life is
Woman’s Life is shot in Academy ratio by effectively that indelible shot of Jimmy Stewart’s
Antoine Héberlé; the squarer format literally meanwhile elides the film’s terrible central twist reaction to the news that he’ll be staying in
boxes Jeanne in. Hers is a small world. The into three stunning seconds-long shots. We don’t Bedford Falls, stretched out over two hours. Like
camerawork is composed almost exclusively see the ensuing devastation, but Brizé (writing George, Jeanne almost succumbs to despair.
of close-ups or medium shots, with only one or in collaboration with Florence Vignon) makes But not quite. Her hope is a thing with feathers,
two establishing shots. The tiniest gestures and clear the long-term ramifications. Jeanne, like perched always in her soul. And since this isn’t
sounds are amplified. A touch. A breath. The turn her fortunes, is not floored by a single blow but Hollywood but 19th-century France, Jeanne’s isn’t,
of a head. The scratch of pencil lead on paper. by a ceaseless erosion, a chipping away at her ultimately, a wonderful life. It’s just a life – one
Yet while Jeanne herself is in almost every shot, reserves. Her fate is inexorable. In this much she is that’s neither as good nor as bad as she thinks.
she is hardly visible (I don’t think she is ever shot
head-on). Judith Chemla has won plaudits for her Credits and Synopsis
performance, but it hardly seems a fitting word
to describe the act of self-erasure that takes place.
Produced by Supervising F comme Film, et de l’Audiovisuel Baron Simon-Jacques Lucette Beudin
How complicit is Jeanne in her own fate? Miléna Poylo Sound Editor CN5 Productions de la Féderation le Perthuis des Vauds Ludivine, servant
Certainly, she tries her Pollyanna-ish best to Gilles Sacuto Hervé Guyader With the participation Wallonie-Bruxelles Yolande Moreau
Screenplay Costume Designer of Canal+, France With the support Baroness Adélaïde le In Colour
be blind to any unpleasantness. She burns the Stéphane Brizé Madeline Fontaine Télévisions, Ciné+, of Tax Shelter du Perthuis des Vauds [1.33:1]
posthumous evidence of her mother’s affair, for Florence Vignon Centre National du Gouvernement Swann Arlaud Subtitles
Based on the novel ©TS Productions, Cinéma et de l’Image Fédéral Belge and Viscount Julien
example, preferring to maintain the illusion of [Une vie] by Guy France 3 Cinéma, Animée, Région Inver Invest de Lamare Distributor
her parents’ perfect marriage. We linger over de Maupassant Versus Production, Haute-Normandie, In co-production Nina Meurisse Arrow Films
Director of F comme Film, Procirep and Angoa with VOO and Be tv Rosalie
companionable scenes with her best friend Photography CN5 Productions in association Olivier Perrier French theatrical title
and parents, but quicksilver images of Julien Antoine Héberlé Production with Indéfilms 4, Father Picot Une vie
and his lover surface unbidden. Indeed, while Film Editor Companies Eurimages and Cast Clotilde Hesme
Anne Klotz TS Productions Programme MEDIA de Judith Chemla Gilberte de Fourville
the film takes a loosely chronological path, it Art Director presents a co- l’Union Européenne Jeanne le Perthuis Alain Beigel
skitters between good times and bad without Valérie Saradjian production with Produced with des Vauds Georges de Fourville
Original Music France 3 Cinéma, the assistance of Jean-Pierre Finnegan Oldfield
warning or reason, until it comes to resemble Olivier Baumont Versus Production, Centre du Cinéma Darroussin Paul aged 20
a battle between the version of the life Jeanne
wants to believe in and the one that she most Normandy, France, 1819. Jeanne lives an idyllic Julien is having an affair with her best friend, Madame
existence with her parents, Baron and Baroness Le de Fourville. Jeanne confides in her priest; he tells
fears. The laconic, clipped storytelling reminded Perthuis des Vauds, at their ancestral home. When she Madame de Fourville’s husband, who shoots his wife
me, oddly, of Brady Corbet’s The Childhood of is wooed by Vicomte Julien de Lamare, her parents and Julien before killing himself.
a Leader (2015), another film in which it is all encourage her to marry him for love. Julien has sold Years pass. Paul is miserable at school and, as a
too clear that a refusal to heed the portents of his assets to pay off his father’s gambling debts, so young man, runs up huge debts, then absconds with his
what is to come can only lead to disaster. after the pair marry they move into Jeanne’s family lover. Jeanne’s parents die. Rosalie returns to work for
residence, while the older couple move out. Jeanne her. Jeanne’s fortune is depleted by Paul’s increasing
Although the film turns around key moments
is smitten, though Julien is mean with money and demands for money. She is forced to sell off most of
and crises – marriage, birth, death, bankruptcy – unforgiving towards their unmarried maid Rosalie the family land and becomes depressed. When a letter
these events appear as almost throwaway details. when she reveals that she is pregnant. Jeanne is arrives from Paul, asking for money to care for his
Neither Jeanne’s wedding to Julien nor Paul’s birth distraught when she catches Julien in bed with Rosalie daughter, Rosalie suspects that he is lying and travels
is shown. The deaths of the baron and baroness and realises that the baby is his. She forgives him, to Paris to find him. She returns with Jeanne’s infant
are marked only by the actors’ abrupt absence and soon gives birth to a son of her own, Paul. But her granddaughter, and the news that Paul will join them
happiness is shattered again when she discovers that shortly.
from the screen. Anne Klotz’s excellent editing

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 53

 The Bachelors Brad’s Status
USA 2016 USA 2017
Director: Kurt Voelker Director: Mike White
Certificate 15 102m 7s

Reviewed by Nikki Baughan Reviewed by Leigh Singer

Spoiler alert: this review reveals a plot twist One way to examine Brad’s Status is through
The use of female characters as nothing more Ben’s status. The film’s lead, Ben Stiller, has long
REVIEWS

than a dramatic catalyst for the men around been the figurehead for Hollywood comedy’s
them is an unfortunate mainstay of cinema. Dead man-child obsession, his roles ranging from
women have a particular emotional potency in outré characters such as the clueless male
this regard; even more so if they happen to have model of Zoolander to the mild-mannered but
been wholesome wives and mothers. So it is in still permanently harried, largely passive-
the The Bachelors, which succumbs to this (and aggressive victims of misfortune in the Meet
almost every other) melodramatic cliché in its the Parents franchise. All of Stiller’s emotionally
exploration of the impact of grief on a father fragile stooges inevitably reach a point of
and son. Writer/director Kurt Voelker’s ability to humiliation that causes an explosion of
mine some brutal truths at key points in the story Truly madly Delpy: Julie Delpy, J.K. Simmons self-loathing angst, allowing Stiller’s manic-
does, however, prevent the film from dissolving comic stylings free reign. And for years, to
entirely into movie-of-the-week schmaltz. and feeling. Although he initially hides his paraphrase Derek Zoolander, it was generally
Voelker also owes a great deal to lead actor J.K. grief behind an ‘I’m fine’ facade, psychological a really, really ridiculously good look for him.
Simmons, who brings gravitas and authenticity cracks begin to widen and his grief descends Mid-period Stiller continues to probe the
to the role of Bill Palet, a fiftysomething man into a depression that no amount of therapy, downtrodden, dissatisfied essence of such
struggling to cope after the death of his wife medication and electroconvulsive treatment characters, but he’s also been trying out some
of 20-plus years. Finding it impossible to stay can touch. Empathetic cinematography from welcome muted variations on that theme.
in the family home, he takes himself and teen Antonio Riestra, usually associated with Recent collaborations with writer-director
son Wes (Josh Wiggins) to Los Angeles, where genre works such as Mama (2013), Last Knights Noah Baumbach, including 2014’s While We’re
he pulls in a favour from an old friend and (2015) and Eloise (2017), underscores Bill’s Young and this year’s The Meyerowitz Stories
takes a teaching job at a local private school. psychological battles, the warming brights (New and Selected), engage a darker tragicomic
Enrolling in the same school, Wes encounters of the golden Californian landscapes at odds persona, forcing the actor to do more – more
the standard hierarchical set-up of bullies, jocks with the darkness that’s consuming him. introspection, more self-awareness – with less.
and outsiders, eventually befriending a pair of It’s no surprise that Bill embarks on a tentative In Brad’s Status, Stiller is rarely off screen, often
geeks and taking up cross-country running. courtship with Carine, but instead of being a shot in close-up as he articulates out loud or
Thanks to well-meaning French teacher Carine too-easy balm, these halting attempts at intimacy through (overused) voiceover his inferiority
(Julie Delpy), he crosses paths with Lacy (Lady only split him further apart, causing a breakdown complex. That he’s now so adept at playing
Bird’s Odeya Rush), a beautiful student from that seriously threatens his relationship with a man more likely to implode than explode
the nearby girls’ academy to whom he must Wes. An explosive dinner-table confrontation under pressure shows an actor increasingly
offer French tuition. While Lacy is initially between father and son is the best sequence in the comfortable at internalising discomfort.
standoffish, it transpires that she has some film – a desperate, visceral conversation laying The performances, then – notably from
serious issues of her own, and the pair find in bare the insidious nature of depression not only Stiller and also from impressive young
each other a kindred – albeit damaged – spirit. on the sufferer but also on those around them. Austin Abrams as his endearingly diffident
When it’s concentrating on Wes’s experiences, Within the next few minutes, however, a hasty yet quietly switched-on son Troy – largely
The Bachelors plays like an unoriginal, surface- concluding montage sees Bill emerge from bed, make writer-director Mike White’s modest,
level teen drama, in which Wes gazes wistfully sort through his late wife’s belongings and have empathetic story work. White’s speciality,
at home videos of his mother on his phone, them taken away – all in the time it takes Wes whether scripting effervescent mainstream
admires the female students bussed in from the to win his first major cross-country event. Bill comedy (School of Rock), squirm-worthy
neighbouring convent school (on what one of makes it to the finish line, where the two share indies (Chuck & Buck, Beatriz at Dinner) or
his friends delightfully terms “the muff truck”), a hug, then embark on a trip for ice cream with his own underrated HBO Laura Dern-starrer
takes on the school bully who slut-shames Lacy and Carine. It’s a woefully pat ending to Enlightened, is the frustrated, borderline deluded
Lacy, and acts as de facto therapist when he Bill’s challenging journey and proof that, despite loners grappling with a world unwilling to
discovers that Lacy cuts herself. Of course. the kernels of truth studded throughout its acknowledge their talents or their terrors.
It’s with Bill’s storyline, however, that the narrative, The Bachelors is content to be nothing Yet in making his protagonist here a
film delivers moments of genuine insight more than a sweet, palatable confection. middle-aged, middle-class white male whose
life is falling short only when considered
Credits and Synopsis next to the success of his one-percenter
friends, White is well aware that – as Troy’s
Indian-American college friend chides Brad
Produced by Richard Sherman Capital presents Wes Palet Jae Head Michael McGlone
Matthew Baer Original Music a Windowseat Odeya Rush Gober Coach Keyes – he’s dealing with first-world problems.
Joseph McKelheer Joel P. West Entertainment/Matt Lacy Westman Kitana Turnbull The result, for all its compassionate probing
Bill Kiely Production Baer Films production Kevin Dunn Annabelle Westman In Colour
George Parra Sound Mixer Executive Producers Paul Abernac Charlie Depew [2.35:1] of Brad’s status, is a sweet, self-effacing film
Written by Matthew Sanchez Leo Kiely Julie Delpy Mason that almost apologises for its own existence:
Kurt Voelker Costume Designer Ryan Dorff Carine Roussel Spencer List Distributor
Director of Camille Benda Jennifer Kelly Harold Perrineau Taber Bulldog Film
a mission statement and mea culpa politely
Photography Dr Rollens Niko Guardado Distribution circling each other into stalemate.
Antonio Riestra ©Firebird Films, LLC Kimberley Crandall Rios
Edited by Production Cast Jeanie Palet Jean Louisa Kelly
This reticence extends to all the other
Anita Brandt Companies J.K. Simmons Tyrel Jackson Barbara Westman characters bar Troy, even though they’re
Burgoyne Peregrine Bill Palet Williams Tom Amandes largely envisioned as projections of Brad’s
Production Designer Entertainment Josh Wiggins Rafi Davis Westman
neuroses. His high-powered college friends –
The US, present day. After the death of his beloved wife, tentative relationship with Carine. While Wes begins
cameos from Luke Wilson, Jemaine Clement
fiftysomething teacher Bill Palet moves with his teen to move on from his grief, however, Bill descends into and White, hilariously imagining himself
son Wes to California, where he takes a job in a private depression. His relationship with Wes breaks down, as a flamboyant Hollywood hack director –
school. Enrolling in the same school, Wes crosses leading to an explosive confrontation. Following the remain marginalised. Even fantasy scenes of
paths with Lacy, a student from the neighbouring outburst, Wes competes in a school cross-country run, their idealised lives feel muted, as if White
girls’ academy, after French teacher Carine asks him while Bill finally clears out his wife’s belongings. Wes
were wary of accusations of aping another
to give her extra tuition. As Wes and Lacy bond over wins the race. Bill arrives at the finish line and the pair
their respective family traumas, Bill embarks on a hug, then head out for ice cream with Lacy and Carine. recent Stiller midlife-crisis vehicle, 2013’s
CGI-heavy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It’s

54 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

 Brigsby Bear
USA/Hong Kong 2017
Director: Dave McCary
Certificate 15 97m 2s

a shame, because arguably the film’s best Reviewed by Anton Bitel

scene is an actual confrontation between Brad Meet Brigsby: an ursine interdimensional
and a former friend, the excellent Michael adventurer whose endless cosmic clashes with

REVIEWS
Sheen’s breezily conceited media pundit. the villainous Sun Snatcher – and accompanying
More problematic, however, is the sidelining lessons in maths, hygiene and ethics – are
of Brad’s upbeat, loyal wife Melanie. The the subject of the TV show that James (Kyle
opening scene of Brad’s insomnia only Mooney) has been watching obsessively on
gradually reveals that she’s sleeping in the VHS for as long as he can remember. Now in
same bed. It’s a neat visualisation of his his mid-twenties but somewhat arrested in his
solipsism, but perhaps confirms all too development, James is the ultimate fanboy, his
easily, even inadvertently, Brad’s theory that bedroom festooned with Brigsby paraphernalia
Melanie’s contentment undermines his own and his every online conversation (on his ancient
ambition. And as the story doesn’t really end computer) devoted to speculations about the
up reintegrating her, it’s an impression the more arcane intricacies of the show’s plotting.
film never really shakes off. Amid White’s Cheesily derivative and hilariously didactic,
generous, honest approach, aided by Mark this 80s-style kids’ serial is a formative fantasy
Mothersbaugh’s twinkly score, it’s a rare twice over: first, it has shaped housebound James’s Bunker mentality: Kyle Mooney
moment of unquestioned narcissism: Brad’s education and character over the two and a half
status set to ‘single’ when he’s clearly in decades he has spent with parents Ted (Mark misguided fools rather than exploitative abusers.
a mutually beneficial relationship. Hamill) and April (Jane Adams), bunkered in Brigsby Bear is so much a part of James that his
the desert to protect him from the apocalyptic quest to find a place for himself in the world
Credits and Synopsis toxins outside; second, it is, much like James’s naturally involves him creating his own home-
life, a fiction, painstakingly – lovingly, even made Brigsby movie, with help from Aubrey’s
– crafted each week by Ted for James alone, as friends, from Greg Kinnear’s friendly police
Produced by Entertainment Adam Capriolo
Dede Gardner production Chris Kanew are the interlocutors on the Brigsby Bear forum detective (and actor manqué), and eventually
Jeremy Kleiner A film by Mike White Felicia Shulman with whom James chats daily. All this is designed from his own family. The DIY sci-fi epic that
David Bernad Executive Cherie Parkinson
Sidney Kimmel Producers to keep James engaged and distracted from – if results is a way for James to bring a seemingly
Written by Brad Pitt In Colour incurious about – the fact that Ted and April never-ending chapter in his life to a close and to
Mike White Carla Hacken [2.35:1]
Director of John Penotti
are not in fact his parents but his long-term forge new connections and a new universe for
Photography Mark Kamine Distributor abductors, and that everything in his hermetic himself – and it also reflects the kind of home
Xavier Grobet Sarah Esberg Vertigo Films
Editor Bruce Toll
little universe is a big lie. One FBI raid later, movies that Mooney, Costello and first-time
Heather Persons though, and our naive hero is reintroduced to his feature director Dave McCary (all Saturday Night
Production parents Greg (Matt Walsh) and Louise (Michaela Live veterans) have been making together since
Designer Cast
Richard Hoover Ben Stiller Watkins), his teen sister Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins) their teens. This view of filmmaking as both
Music Brad Sloan and the real world of contemporary America. communal experience and means to creative
Mark Mothersbaugh Austin Abrams
Soundman Troy Sloan If the set-up here is familiar from the captive self-expression evokes the Capra-esque spirit
Simon Poudrette Jenna Fischer horrors of The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), of Be Kind Rewind (2008), transforming James’s
Costume Designer Melanie Sloan
Alex Bovaird Luke Wilson
Bad Boy Bubby (1993), Dogtooth (2009), Miss peculiar adventures into something genuinely
Jason Hatfield Violence (2013) and Room (2015), the screenplay affectionate and sweetly humane. Oddball James
©Amazon Studios Michael Sheen
LLC and Kimmel Craig Fisher
by Mooney and Kevin Costello is so good-natured may stand out, but by emerging, bleary-eyed,
Distribution, LLC Jemaine Clement and generous towards all its characters that into an age where nerdishness and nostalgia rule,
Production Billy Wearslter even James’s captors are depicted as lovably he also fits right in – and is hard not to love.
Companies Shazi Raja
Amazon Studios Ananya
and Sidney Kimmel Luisa Lee Credits and Synopsis
Entertainment Maya
present a Mike White
Sidney Kimmel Nick Pascale
Entertainment Xavier Grobet Produced by 3311 Productions and Merideth US, present day. James lives in a desert bunker with
and Plan B Xavier Andy Samberg YL Pictures present in Jorge Lendeborg his father Ted and mother April, and obsessively
Jorma Taccone association with The Spencer
Akiva Schaffer Lonely Island and LM Ryan Simpkins watches episodes of children’s sci-fi adventure
Sacramento, present day. Brad Sloan is 47, running Billy Rosenberg Executive Producers Aubrey Pope ‘Brigsby Bear’, delivered weekly on VHS. FBI agents
a small non-profit organisation, living with wife Phil Lord Phil Hoelting Chance Crimin raid the house and arrest Ted and April, who are not
Melanie and teenage son Troy, and wrestling with Christopher Miller Lian Hua Logan in fact James’s parents, but the couple who abducted
feelings of disappointment and inadequacy. He Will Allegra P. Jennifer Dana
him as a baby. Ted made ‘Brigsby Bear’ to entertain,
Mark Roberts Ross Jacobson In Colour
constantly compares himself to his former college Al Di educate and brainwash James, recruiting local
friends, now all financially successful and publicly Screenplay Distributor waitress Whitney to play characters in the show.
admired, and projects idealised fantasies on to Kevin Costello Cast Sony Pictures Helped by Detective Vogel and psychiatrist Emily,
them. He accompanies Troy, a musical prodigy, to Kyle Mooney Kyle Mooney Releasing UK James moves in with his real parents, Greg and Louise,
visit prospective New England colleges. Troy misses Story James Pope
Kyle Mooney Jane Adams and teen sister Aubrey. He meets Aubrey’s friend
his interview date at Harvard University. One of Director of April Mitchum Spencer at a party, and the two agree to make a film
Brad’s old friends, Craig Fisher, is now a famous Photography Claire Danes that will complete Brigsby’s adventures. Soon they are
political pundit and part-time Harvard lecturer; Christian Sprenger Dr Emily Larson joined by Aubrey’s other friends Merideth and Logan,
desperate to help Troy, Brad calls Craig, who Editor Mark Hamill
Jacob Craycroft
and even Aubrey begins to warm to James – but when
Ted Mitchum
manages to arrange another interview for the boy. Production Designer Greg Kinnear an exploding prop attracts police attention, James’s
Brad and Troy have dinner with Troy’s friends, Brandon Tonner- Detective Vogel parents grow concerned that the Brigsby film is not
including fellow musician Ananya. Later, while Connolly Andy Samberg helping him adjust to his new life. James steals their
Troy sleeps, Brad meets Ananya at a local bar and Music Eric car and heads out to the bunker, meeting Whitney
confesses his jaded idealism and unhappiness; David Wingo Matt Walsh
Sound Mixer Greg Pope on the way back. He is arrested and sent to a mental
she tells him that he’s exaggerating his problems. Jonathon Earl Stein Michaela Watkins institution. Spencer shows Greg and Louise footage
Troy’s interview seems to go well. Brad meets Craig Costume Designer Louise Pope that convinces them of James’s pleasure in making
for dinner, and gets a more realistic picture of Sarah Mae Burton Kate Lyn Sheil the film. Helped by inmate Eric, James escapes the
his friends’ lives; frustrated at Craig’s arrogance, Whitney, ‘Arielle
©Kablamo: Tokyo Smiles’/’Nina Smiles’
institution; returning home, he finds his family and
however, he walks out. He joins Troy at a classical Drift, LLC Beck Bennett friends transforming the garage into a film set for
concert where Troy’s friends are performing, Production Deputy Bander him. James asks Ted (in prison) to record Brigsby’s
and seems to find some sense of peace. Companies Alexa Demie voice for the film. The premiere is a success.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 55

 Coco The Commuter
USA 2017 France/USA/United Kingdom 2018
Director: Lee Unkrich Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Certificate 15 104m 26s

Reviewed by Violet Lucca musician husband, and her skills – and hatred Reviewed by Matthew Taylor
Spoiler alert: this review reveals a plot twist of music – have been passed down through the A slick, riveting, agreeably ludicrous thriller
Requiring audiences to do more emotional generations. But Miguel secretly plays guitar played out in near real time on New York’s scenic
REVIEWS

work than they would for four live-action Oscar- and idolises Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Hudson Metro-North line, The Commuter is a
bait films combined, Pixar’s Coco is a beautiful Bratt), a Pedro Infante-like star who was once fourth pulpy collaboration for Catalan director
testament to the power (and pains) of family. Mexico’s most famous musician – and who, it Jaume Collet-Serra and star Liam Neeson,
It also deconstructs myths around fame and so happens, came from Miguel’s hometown. following the identity-theft shenanigans of
celebrates Mexican culture, from street food to an On the Day of the Dead, Miguel attempts to Unknown (2011), the aerial potboiler Non-Stop
array of musical genres on the soundtrack. Given play in a talent contest rather than honour his (2014) and the underworld odyssey Run All Night
that most Hollywood films and TV shows set in ancestors, and his grandmother responds by (2015), in which Neeson played, respectively, a top
Mexico are about drug dealers or louche spring- angrily smashing his guitar. But when Miguel biochemist, a US air marshal and a retired Mob
break romps, Coco’s tender and accurate depiction spots what he thinks is de la Cruz’s guitar in an enforcer. Here, his titular office drone – albeit one
of los Estados Unidos Mexicanos is long overdue. old photograph of Imelda, he decides that his hero with a distant past life as a detective – is every
These achievements are set against the must also have been his great-great-grandfather. inch the Hitchcockian everyman snared in a
sumptuous and complex background of the Miguel runs to de la Cruz’s crypt and takes the nebulous scheme. As with Non-Stop and his spry
Dia de Muertos – the Day of the Dead. Although guitar that’s lying there – only to be transported survival yarn The Shallows (2016), Collet-Serra
the festival is celebrated in many countries to the land of the dead, a bustling city that presents a character up against the clock in a
throughout Central and South America, it’s echoes the incredible architecture of Mexico constrained space, and he exploits the ins and
Mexico’s version – a mix of Spanish and Aztec City. Stuck between life and death, the only outs of his single location with resourceful glee.
traditions, incorporating the iconography of way Miguel can return to the land of the living In a typically offhand technical flourish,
artists such as José Posada – that is the best known is with the blessing of his deceased relatives. Collet-Serra chops up the regimented morning
worldwide: families gather to honour their However, they refuse to pander to his ambitions, routine of Neeson’s Michael MacCauley into
ancestors by putting their favourite foods on an and make it a condition of the blessing that he a subliminally cut multitude of near-identical
altar and cleaning and decorating their graves. will never play music again. So instead, Miguel moments from different days, the only giveaway
Coco blends these traditions with a bit of Pixar goes off with Héctor (Gael García Bernal), who being changes of clothing and weather. Sixty,
magic, as the borders between the realms of the is on the verge of being totally forgotten and and happily married to a barely seen Elizabeth
living and the dead become mutable and a young therefore banished to the ‘final death’. Héctor, McGovern, Michael has been flogging life
boy named Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) finds also a musician, claims to know de la Cruz, insurance in the city since leaving the force ten
himself trapped in the afterlife. Frida Kahlo, the and promises to help Miguel provided the boy years prior. Yet the family’s finances are strained,
masked luchador El Santo and Edward James agrees to take his photograph back to the land and when he’s abruptly laid off, Michael can’t
Olmos all make cameo appearances; perhaps of the living, which will allow him to cross bear to tell his wife. He eventually heads home
such details won’t be exciting to those whose over and see his daughter one last time. to the boondocks on the usual train, recognising
familiarity with Mexican culture begins and Although Héctor and Miguel’s journey to most of the faces on it. One, though, is unfamiliar.
ends with Chipotle, but no d la Cruz leads them to discover the
find de Joanna (Vera Farmiga), a woman claiming to be
manches, s they’re great. ungl
unglamorous side of fame, Coco gives space to a behavioural specialist, presents Michael with
Similar care is taken thes complex emotional moments without
these an unusual offer: identify a specific passenger
with Miguel. He comes g
ever getting too dreary. (The expressionist on the train and receive a whopping reward.
from a family of shoemakers: designs – alternately glowing and colourful Bewildered, but with a pressing incentive to
his great-great-grandmother tatt
and tattered and dark – also help to modulate go after the supposed prize, Michael accepts
Imelda learned the be
these beats.) Its victorious denouement offers and the lady vanishes. She returns as a less
trade after being everyon a different way to think about what it
everyone cordial voice on the phone, this time issuing
deserted by her means to live on, and how that starts by dire instructions for her charge to follow.
treating those dearest to us well. Too It’s a fateful transaction in transit, placing
The quick and the dea
dead
ad bad films for adults aren’t this smart. The Commuter firmly in the realm of Hitchcock
and Highsmith, though there are also echoes
Credits and Synopsis of David Fincher’s The Game (1997) in the
sudden incursion of chance and chaos into
Co-directed by Film Editors Animators Gael García Bernal clerk, Department Dyana Ortelli a well-ordered existence and in the seeming
Adrian Molina Steve Bloom Gini Cruz Santos Héctor of Family Reunions Tía Victoria ability of a shadowy, omniscient organisation
Produced by Lee Unkrich Michael Venturini Benjamin Bratt Lombardo Boyar Luis Valdez
Darla K. Anderson Production Designer Ernesto de la Cruz plaza mariachi/ Tío Berto
to manipulate events at will. Like Jonathan
Original Screenplay Harley Jessup ©Disney Enterprises, Alanna Ubach Gustavo John Ratzenberger Trevanny, the hapless player of Highsmith’s
Adrian Molina Original Songs by Inc./Pixar Mamá Imelda, great- Ana Ofelia Murguía Juan Ortodoncia Ripley’s Game, the cash-strapped Michael has
Matthew Aldrich Kristen Anderson- Production great-grandmother Mamá Coco,
Original Story Lopez Companies Renée Victor great-grandmother Dolby Atmos apparently been selected as the perfect patsy to
Lee Unkrich Robert Lopez Disney presents Abuelita, Natalia Cordova- In Colour carry out some dirty work. However, he’s initially
Jason Katz Germaine Franco a Pixar Animation grandmother Buckley [2.35:1]
Matthew Aldrich Adrian Molina Studios film Jaime Camil Frida Kahlo unprepared for how ruthless his watchers can
Adrian Molina Original Score Executive Producer Papá Selene Luna Some screenings be – a covert attempt to alert the authorities
Directors of Composed by/ John Lasseter Alfonso Arau Tía Rosita presented in 3D
Photography Produced by Papá Julio, great- Edward James results in a fellow commuter being literally
Camera: Michael Giacchino grandfather Olmos Distributor thrown under the bus. Further dissent only
Matt Aspbury Sound Designer Voice Cast Herbert Siguenza Chicharrón Buena Vista
encourages the forces toying with Michael to turn
Lighting: Chris Boyes Anthony Gonzalez Tío Oscar/Tío Felipe Sofía Espinosa International (UK)
Danielle Feinberg Supervising Miguel Gabriel Iglesias Mamá the screw and test his mettle. At one point, the
presence of an inconvenient corpse necessitates
Mexico, present day. On the Day of the Dead, 12-year-old la Cruz, whom Miguel believes to be his great-great-
Miguel Rivera wants to enter a talent show instead of grandfather (Coco’s father). However, when they find
some perilous contortions by Michael to
accompanying his family to honour his ancestors. His de la Cruz, Miguel learns that he stole Héctor’s songs evade capture – Collet-Serra has devilish fun
great-grandmother Coco angrily smashes his guitar. and poisoned him. De la Cruz attempts to silence placing Neeson in a succession of tortuously
Attempting to steal singing star Ernesto de la Cruz’s both of them, but Miguel’s deceased family comes to tight spots underneath the moving train.
guitar from his crypt, Miguel is transported to the land the rescue. Miguel discovers that Héctor is his real Like the hitmen in Richard Fleischer’s seminal
of the dead. Needing the blessing of his dead relatives great-great-grandfather. Returned to the land of the railroad thriller The Narrow Margin (1952),
to return to the land of the living, Miguel enlists the living, Miguel sings Héctor’s song ‘Remember Me’ to
help of Héctor, who is on the verge of being forgotten Coco. On the next Day of the Dead, Coco too has passed Michael hasn’t a clue what the person he’s
and banished to the ‘final death’. They seek out de away, but the whole Rivera family is together again. hunting looks like. He’s forced to play sleuth
through the carriages, sizing up the regulars – a

56 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

 Darkest Hour
Director: Joe Wright
Certificate PG 125m 21m

Reviewed by Philip Kemp

Winston, it seems, is in fashion. Over the past
year or so we’ve seen him portrayed by Brian Cox

REVIEWS
(Churchill), John Lithgow (The Crown), Michael
Gambon (Churchill’s Secret) and Robert Hardy
(Churchill: 100 Days That Saved Britain), besides
featuring as an offscreen presence in Dunkirk, A
United Kingdom and Viceroy’s House. Now it’s Gary
Oldman’s turn to take on those jowly features and
that distinctive, orotund voice, and his is perhaps
the most convincing rendition we’ve had yet.
The action of Joe Wright’s film is confined to
the crucial three weeks in May 1940 following
Neville Chamberlain’s resignation as prime
minister. We kick off with the ailing premier
being comprehensively demolished in the
House of Commons by Clement Attlee, while
one MP murmurs to his neighbour his surprise
that Churchill isn’t present. “He’s ensuring
his fingers aren’t on the murder weapon,”
comes the whispered reply. The line is typical
Dangers on a train: Vera Farmiga and Liam Neeson of Anthony McCarten’s script, which often
undercuts the risk of excess reverence with
characterful supporting cast including Florence frequently lending more than a touch of the sardonic wit. A similar function is discharged
Pugh, Andy Nyman and Jonathan Banks – while absurd to the close-quartered fight sequences – by Winston’s wife Clemmie (Kristin Scott
trying to avoid appearing suspicious himself. such as a bruising encounter with an assailant Thomas, faultless as ever), responding to one of
It’s an often calamitous process of trial by error, in the vestibule that eludes the attention of his indignant outbursts by telling him “You’re
with Michael pressed into a paranoiac state, headphone-clad passengers, or Neeson swinging insufferable!” and fondly addressing him as “Pig”.
seeing suspect behaviour in ultimately banal around a Stratocaster as a makeshift weapon. Churchill’s weaker points aren’t wholly glossed
asides. In one testy exchange with an obnoxious It’s arguable that Michael may have been over, either. The WWI Gallipoli disaster gets
broker, the script’s vague undercurrent of more intriguing minus his police background name-checked more than once. And at one of
anger at the 1 per cent and corporate amorality – more of an unwitting Roger O. Thornhill the uncomfortable weekly get-togethers with
becomes a momentary wave. Having had (North by Northwest) type, perhaps. Yet it’s also George VI – scheduled, at the PM’s suggestion,
his humble business attire sneered at by the overwhelmingly clear that the narrative’s job at lunchtime – the king (a shrewdly gauged
fat cat, Michael’s response, delivered with is to shake the character out of his ennui and performance from Ben Mendelsohn, never
relish by Neeson, will no doubt elicit a few return him to his true calling: being a detective. overplaying the stammer) expresses surprise at
audience cheers: “On behalf of the American If this arc is predictable, it’s never less than Churchill’s formidable alcohol intake and asks
middle classes, fuck you Goldman Sachs.” entertaining, with the film’s hurtling pace how he manages it. “Practice,” comes the reply.
As the embattled executive, Neeson effortlessly sustained through to a pyrotechnic finale. All this, though mildly exaggerated for comic
carries the movie, which dutifully caters for the There may be little of genuine originality here, effect, falls well within the bounds of plausibility.
star’s latter-day action chops. His kickass persona but in its delirious, goofy momentum, The But it’s when Churchill is at his most beleaguered
here is more appealing than the dour avenger Commuter reaffirms Collet-Serra as an expert – the Low Countries are overrun, the French
reprised in the Taken saga, with Collet-Serra practitioner of modestly budgeted hokum. army is collapsing, some 400,000 Allied troops
are boxed in at Dunkirk, and he’s isolated in
Credits and Synopsis the war cabinet, with Chamberlain and Halifax
pressing him to seek peace terms with Germany
– that Darkest Hour spirals off into the further
Produced by Richard Bridgland a The Picture Ron Halperin Vince Sam Neill
Andrew Rona Music Composed Company production Didier Lupfer Andy Nyman Captain Hawthorne realms of fantasy. First he receives a nocturnal
Alex Heineman and Orchestrated by in association with Tony visit from the king, unheralded and seemingly
Screenplay Roque Baños Ombra Films Clara Lago In Colour
Byron Willinger Production A Jaume Collet- Cast Eva unaccompanied, who in the space of a week or
Philip de Blasi Sound Mixer Serra film Liam Neeson Roland Møller Distributor so has inexplicably swung round to the PM’s
Ryan Engle Jim Greenhorn In co-production with Michael MacCauley Jackson Studiocanal Limited
Story Costume Designer TF1 Films Production Vera Farmiga Florence Pugh
side and now tells him to consult ‘the people’.
Byron Willinger Jill Taylor With the participation Joanna Gwen So Churchill does just that – boarding an
Philip de Blasi Stunt Co-ordinator of Canal+, Ciné+, Patrick Wilson Dean-Charles
Director of Mark Vanselow TF1 and Amazon Alex Murphy Chapman
Underground train, complete with cigar,
Photography Prime Instant Video Jonathan Banks Danny MacCauley
Paul Cameron ©StudioCanal S.A.S. Executive Producers Walt Ella-Rae Smith
Editor Production Michael Dreyer Killian Scott Sofia
Nicolas de Toth Companies Juan Sola Dylan Elizabeth McGovern
Production Designer Studiocanal presents Jaume Collet-Serra Shazad Latif Karen MacCauley

New York, present day. Michael MacCauley, an ex- evade police. He calls his former police partner Murphy,
detective now working as an insurance salesman, is who suggests that the passenger may be a witness in
laid off by his company. Travelling home on his regular a murder case. After dispatching an assassin, Michael
commuter train, he is approached by a mysterious identifies the witness, Sofia, who is carrying data
woman, Joanna, who offers him $100,000 if he can implicating police officers and Joanna’s organisation.
correctly identify a passenger before the last stop. When Michael refuses to kill Sofia, Joanna orchestrates
Michael initially accepts, but balks when he’s then the derailment of the train. Michael saves himself and
ordered to kill the passenger in exchange for his family’s the remaining passengers by decoupling their carriage.
safety. Another commuter is murdered when Michael Murphy, revealed to be in league with Joanna, tries to kill
attempts to alert the police. Michael tussles with an Sofia but is shot while fighting Michael. Sofia is safely
undercover FBI agent, whom he mistakes for the target. delivered to the FBI, and Michael reunites with his family.
The agent is subsequently found dead; suspected of Some months later. Having rejoined the police,
being the killer, Michael hides beneath the train to Michael apprehends Joanna in Chicago.
The lion in Winston: Gary Oldman

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 57

 Downsizing
USA 2017
Director: Alexander Payne
Certificate 15 135m 24s

and asking a compartment of assorted

plebs if he should capitulate to Hitler. They,
of course, all staunchly chorus “Never!” And just
REVIEWS

to cement the premier’s populist credentials,

when he starts quoting Macaulay’s ‘Horatius’ –
“To every man upon this earth / Death cometh
soon or late” – the verse is rounded off for him by
a young black man. (To allow for all this to play
out, the one-stop Tube journey from St James’s
Park to Westminster takes about ten minutes.)
Wright’s film never wholly recovers from this
height of absurdity, despite some spirited acting;
Ronald Pickup as a touchingly frail Chamberlain
(who was to die of cancer six months later) and
Stephen Dillane as a vampiric Halifax both make
their mark, and Oldman’s delivery of the final
‘Fight on the beaches’ speech exhibits fine afflatus.
But Winnie on the District Line? Yeah, right.

Credits and Synopsis

Produced by presents in Sir Anthony Eden

Tim Bevan association with Ronald Pickup
Eric Fellner Perfect World Neville Chamberlain The incredible shrinking man: Matt Damon, Jason Sudeikis
Lisa Bruce Pictures a Working David Schofield
Anthony McCarten Title production Clement Attlee
Douglas Urbanski A Joe Wright film Reviewed by Henry K. Miller (2013) to the broad caricatural satire of his first,
Written by
Anthony McCarten
Executive
Producers
Dolby Digital
In Colour
Spoiler alert: this review Citizen Ruth (1996), and beyond. What’s new is,
Director of James Biddle [1.85:1] See Feature reveals a plot twist appropriately, the sense of scale – the giant vista
Photography Lucas Webb on page 32 The audacity of Alexander of a perfect, sterile American city – and of sweep,
Bruno Delbonnel Liza Chasin Distributor
Editor Universal Pictures Payne’s new film lies in its with time-shifts of years coming unexpectedly.
Valerio Bonelli International willingness to ditch its high- One such leap elides the decade between
Production Cast UK & Eire
Designer Gary Oldman concept premise and move on – and then do downsizing’s invention by a team of Norwegian
Sarah Greenwood Winston Churchill it again. As might be inferred from the title, scientists, for whom it is earnestly intended
Music Kristin Scott
Dario Marianelli Thomas Downsizing takes place in a world where people as a means to combat overpopulation,
Production Clementine choose to be shrunk for reasons of economy, overconsumption and waste, to its commercial
Sound Mixer Churchill, ‘Clemmie’
John Casali Lily James
more or less, but Payne is wise enough not exploitation in the US a decade or so later,
Costume Designer Elizabeth Layton to get caught up in the thickets of practical where it has become a way to get rich, simply by
Jacqueline Durran Stephen Dillane
Viscount Halifax
what-ifs and what-abouts, and his film has the reducing overheads. Such is the appeal to Paul
Production Ben Mendelsohn rare quality of purposeful unpredictability. and Audrey Safranek (Matt Damon and Kristen
Companies King George VI Tonally, its range extends from the Midwestern Wiig), Nebraskans who choose to get small out
Focus Features Samuel West
melancholy of his most recent film Nebraska of frustration: the same time-shift reveals Paul
London, May 1940. In the House of Commons,
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain comes under Credits and Synopsis
blistering attack from Clement Attlee, leader of
the opposition, for the way he is conducting the
war. Afterwards, Chamberlain – who is ill with Produced by Music Composed Production Cast Udo Kier Dolby Digital
cancer – tells his cabinet that he must resign. The Mark Johnson and Conducted by Companies Matt Damon Konrad In Colour
Alexander Payne Rolfe Kent Paramount Pictures Paul Safranek Søren Pilmark [2.35:1]
post is offered to Viscount Halifax, the foreign Jim Taylor Sound Mixer presents an Ad Dr Andreas Jacobsen
Christoph Waltz
minister, who turns it down, saying the only leader Written by Greg Chapman Hominem/Gran Dusan Mirkovic Jason Sudeikis Distributor
the opposition will accept is the maverick Winston Alexander Payne Costume Designer Via production Hong Chau Dave Johnson Paramount
Churchill. At his home, Chartwell, Churchill expresses Jim Taylor Wendy Chuck Executive Producers Ngoc Lan Tran Maribeth Monroe Pictures UK
Director of Visual Effects Megan Ellison Kristen Wiig Carol Johnson
his doubts; his wife Clementine strengthens his
Photography Industrial Light Jim Burke Audrey Safranek Jayne Houdyshell
resolve. His newly appointed young secretary, Phedon Papamichael & Magic Diana Pokorny Paul’s mother
Rolf Lassgård
Elizabeth Layton, shocked by his verbal brutality Edited by Framestore Film Extracts Dr Jorgen Asbjørnsen Phil Reeves
towards her, is about to resign, but stays on when Kevin Tent Sube y baja/Up Ingjerd Egeberg Larry, Audrey’s dad
he apologises. Churchill has an awkward meeting Production Designer ©Paramount Pictures and Down (1959) Anne-Helene James Van Der Beek
Stefania Cella Corporation Asbjørnsen anesthesiologist
with King George VI, who disapproves of him.
Belgium and the Netherlands fall to German
forces, the French army is in retreat and the Norwegian scientists invent a process to shrink shrunk as punishment, came to the US as a refugee
British army is surrounded at Dunkirk. In cabinet, humans to a tiny fraction of their normal size, as and now lives in a shantytown on the margins of
Chamberlain and Halifax urge Churchill to seek peace a means of cutting consumption and waste. Leisureland. Paul initially uses his medical training
terms with Germany; the Italian government offers to Ten years later, Nebraskan couple Paul and Audrey to help her, but gets drawn more closely into her
mediate. Churchill phones President Roosevelt to beg Safranek decide to join one of the numerous world, helping her locate and distribute thrown-away
for US help, but to no avail. Isolated and desperate, he ‘communities of the small’ when they realise that food for her neighbours; a relationship develops.
authorises Halifax to explore what terms might be on their savings will give them a high standard of life Paul, Ngoc Lan, Dusan and Dusan’s accomplice
offer from Germany. The king, who has come round there, the cost of necessities being correspondingly Konrad all travel to the original downsized
to Churchill’s side, tells him to seek the people’s low. However, Audrey abandons the plan at the community in Norway, whereupon they learn
view. Churchill boards a Tube train; all the passengers last moment, leaving Paul shrunken and alone in that a massive methane emission from the Arctic
urge him to defy Hitler and fight on. Heartened, Leisureland, a downsized community in New Mexico. spells the end for humanity in a few hundred
Churchill sends the ‘little boats’ to rescue the troops Paul attends a party thrown by his neighbour years’ time. Though the Norwegians have built an
from Dunkirk and rallies the Tories behind him. The Dusan, a Serbian smuggler, who pours scorn on underground shelter for this eventuality, with the
opposition agrees to join a wartime coalition. In the the narrow horizons of their fellow small people. aim of preserving the species, Ngoc Lan, Dusan
House of Commons, Churchill proclaims: “We shall Afterwards Paul encounters Ngoc Lan Tran, a and Konrad reject the idea; after realising the
fight on the beaches… we shall never surrender!” one-legged Vietnamese woman who was forcibly depth of his feelings for Ngoc Lan, so does Paul.

58 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

 Eric Clapton Life in 12 Bars
United Kingdom/USA 2017
Director: Lili Fini Zanuck

to be stuck in a rut, still living in his childhood

home after his mother’s death. These scenes work
because Payne plays down the fantasy element

REVIEWS
in favour of social observation – the shrinking
procedure itself is sold like Tupperware used to
be, at specially hosted parties, and the Safraneks’
problems are painfully contemporary. But the
film jumps the tracks, for the better, when Audrey
– stop reading if you haven’t seen it – welshes on
the deal, backing out while Paul, oblivious, goes
ahead, and she leaves, never to be seen again.
With Audrey’s abrupt departure, what looked
set to be a comedy involving the differences
between the tiny and the full-scale becomes
something quite different. The downsized live in
dedicated communities, just like the outside world Slowhand Clap: Eric Clapton
but in miniature, under protective domes; what
is sold as a new life turns out to be the old one of Reviewed by Trevor Johnston appears to be holding very little back. We learn,
aimless consumption, status anxiety and petty Someone was eventually going to make a bio- for example, about the trauma of his rejection by
gripes, where the hot water in the McMansion doc about Eric Clapton, though few might have his mother, who, pregnant at 16 by a Canadian
comes out scalding and the neighbour makes a predicted that it would be the producer of Driving airman, left Eric in Surrey with his grandma and
racket. It is when Paul encounters said neighbour, Miss Daisy (1989), whose only previous feature headed off with a new lover. There’s the pain
louche Serbian smuggler Dusan (Christoph Waltz), directorial credit was the drug-themed policier of his infatuation with George Harrison’s wife
in a brilliantly chaotic party scene, that things Rush back in 1991. It seems that Lili Fini Zanuck Pattie Boyd, which we see laid out in the letter
become really interesting. Just as the audience is caught Eric Clapton at a pivotal moment when he wrote to try to win her heart. And Zanuck
getting the point – that the downsized, given the she chose him to record the soundtrack for that has also retrieved some startlingly unflattering
opportunity to start society from scratch, have movie, since the tragic death of his four-year-old archive footage of Clapton drunk, disorderly,
merely recreated an American purgatory, class son Conor in a fall from the window of a New coked-up and abusive to his audiences during
and ethnic divisions included – Payne blithely has York apartment block had left him a changed, the succeeding years of darkness and indulgence.
Dusan spell it out, allowing the film to turn again. cleaned-up man after years of self-destructive With the truly awful demise of young Conor
Paul comes to find fulfilment in good work, addictions. It also prompted a creative renaissance adding another painful chapter, there’s certainly
when he helps Dusan’s cleaner Ngoc Lan Tran in the Grammy-winning ballad ‘Tears in Heaven’, a sense that, while Clapton’s take on the blues
(Hong Chau) with her limp. She is a one-legged which featured on the Rush soundtrack. doesn’t exactly come from the same cultural
Vietnamese refugee who was downsized as Now Fini Zanuck has made what is an wellspring of suffering and injustice as, say,
punishment, and what might read on the page undeniably intimate and confessional portrait that of B.B. King or Muddy Waters, his music is
like self-serving liberal fantasy is anything but of the musician. In human terms, Clapton evidently a genuine response to a life littered with
on the screen. Ngoc Lan is a good Christian; from emotional carnage. It is rather affecting, in the
her perspective, which the film largely adopts, Credits and Synopsis film’s final stages, to see him arriving at a place
Paul is doing nothing more than his duty by of personal contentment and self-knowledge in
helping her and the mostly Latino denizens of his seventies. But by then the focus on Clapton
Produced by Composed by Company/Passion
the shantytown where she has been made to Lili Fini Zanuck Gustavo Santaolalla Pictures production the performer has become a secondary concern,
live. Ngoc Lan is a caricature like everyone else. Scooter Weintraub Sound Recordists A Lili Fini Zanuck film this being in essence one of those docs fascinated
Larry Yellen Russell Edwards Executive Producer
She speaks in broken English, and Downsizing John Battsek Stephen Haywood Vinnie Malhotra by the evidently dramatic life of someone who
has come under attack for this; but apart from Written by David Lascelles also happens to be an extraordinary musician.
Scooter Weintraub Theresa Radka In Colour
anything else, Hong Chau’s performance, Larry Yellen [1.85:1]
To some, this will seem to be giving short
which she herself has righteously defended, is Director of ©Bushranch shrift to what brought Clapton to public
Photography Films Ltd Distributor
among the strongest things in the film, making Will Pugh Production Altitude Film
attention in the first place – though, to be
the pliable, endlessly affable Paul her foil. Editors Companies Entertainment fair, Fini Zanuck does a decent enough job of
The film’s crux comes when it transpires Chris King Showtime chronicling Clapton’s 1960s output, through
Paul Monaghan Documentary Films
that the valiant effort to downsize has been for Original Score presents a Zanuck The Yardbirds, John Mayall, Cream and Blind
nought, and humanity is doomed to extinction Faith up to the high watermark of the 1970
A biographical documentary charting the fortunes
all the same. The cynic Dusan (with his partner- of English blues musician Eric Clapton, drawing
album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.
in-crime Konrad, a tremendous cameo by Udo on interviews and his own private archive. Martin Scorsese made a similar trajectory work
Kier) and the Christian Ngoc Lan decide to stay Born in Surrey in 1945, Clapton was raised by for him in 2011, with his three-and-a-half-hour
on the earth’s surface and make the best of it, his grandmother, believing her to be his mother. George Harrison doc, yet here Fini Zanuck
while Paul is tempted to join the inhabitants His obsession with black American blues records takes the brave but problematic decision to
led him to perfect his own guitar playing. He rose dispense with the usual talking heads, sticking
of the original Norwegian ‘community of the
to musical prominence during the 1960s, playing
small’ in an underground shelter where they with The Yardbirds, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers instead to voiceovers from an array of captioned
and their descendants will sit out the next few and blues-rock trio Cream, but fame did not bring contributors, including Clapton himself. Yes, this
millennia, preserving the species. (The big fulfilment. An infatuation with George Harrison’s wife smooths out what would otherwise be frequent
decision is, characteristically, accompanied by a Pattie Boyd increasingly dominated his emotional transitions from hairy youth to gnarly old age,
perfectly observed wheeled-suitcase joke.) While life, inspiring the landmark 1970 album ‘Layla and but with material of such raw emotion it also
Assorted Other Love Songs’. Rejection by Boyd
Downsizing is not not about the end of human plunged Clapton into years of self-destructive
somehow renders proceedings that bit more
life on earth, it confronts the prospect with addiction. However, when his four-year-old son academic – we never see the light in Clapton’s
minimal sentiment, and uses it to ask questions Conor died in 1991 after falling from the window of eyes, or read Boyd’s face, when they’re telling
about what the good life might consist of, here a New York apartment block, the tragedy prompted us all these painful things. For a documentary
and now. Its critique of overconsumption is Clapton to give up drugs and alcohol. In recent trading on its confessional quality, this surely
aesthetic, or philosophical, but not especially years he has found contentment with wife Melia mutes the overall impact. Ultimately, for all its
and their daughters, and has launched a charitable
‘green’; though it abhors greed and selfishness, foundation to help sufferers of substance addiction. sense of close communion with its subject, Fini
it is unashamedly individualistic. Zanuck’s film falls between several stools.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 59

 Ferdinand The Final Year
USA 2017 USA/United Kingdom 2017
Director: Carlos Saldanha Director: Greg Barker
Certificate U 106m 12s

Reviewed by Andrew Osmond Reviewed by Philip Kemp

The Story of Ferdinand was a picture book This is a depressing film. Not because it’s badly
published in America in 1936, written by Munro made: on the contrary, director Greg Barker
REVIEWS

Leaf, with illustrations by Robert Lawson. (Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden)
Amusing and pleasing, it’s the tale of a gentle bull, and his team take what could so easily have
Ferdinand, who loves flowers and sits blissfully been a stiff, dry study, full of posed occasions and
among them. When he’s stung by a bee and formal speeches to camera, and give us a warm,
stampedes, humans mistake him for a savage intimate picture of people working in the top
beast and send him to the bullring, but, in the echelons of the US government and – the cliché
book’s words, he “wouldn’t fight and be fierce no seems unavoidable – trying to make a difference.
matter what they did”. Finally the humans give What’s depressing is our knowledge of what is
up, returning Ferdinand to his happy home. about to follow them and demolish the results
Leaf wrote the story in 40 minutes; it’s a few of their painstaking efforts like an ill-tempered
hundred words long, complemented by Lawson’s child kicking over a stack of wooden bricks.
pictures. It became a worldwide hit. In 1938 Farmed and dangerous: Ferdinand Barker’s team were evidently given
Disney made a very faithful seven-minute cartoon unprecedentedly close access to their subjects
version (Ferdinand the Bull), which won an Oscar. with plasticine poultry in 2000’s Chicken Run. and they make the most of it, not hesitating
Now Ferdinand has been desecrated in a terribly At worst, the film feels less like Ferdinand to present them as less than infallible, even
misconceived feature-length computer cartoon than Barnyard, a cheap Nickelodeon cartoon occasionally comic individuals. We see secretary
by Blue Sky Studios, which successfully adapted from 2006 (which was memorable for having of state John Kerry, about to depart for the White
Charles M. Schulz to CGI in The Peanuts Movie ‘male’ cows with udders). The characters are House, suddenly remembering he’s forgotten
in 2015, but works none of that magic here. weak, with a particularly bad voice/design his phone and having to dash back for it; UN
Made by Blue Sky veteran Carlos Saldanha, mismatch for comedian Kate McKinnon, who ambassador Samantha Power negotiating
who co-directed Ice Age (2002) and directed Rio just sounds wrong as a bucktoothed cartoon with her six-year-old over whether she’s going
(2011), Ferdinand turns a short, elegant story into a goat. The best characters are the three Germanic to buy him a doughnut; security adviser Ben
rambling, ungainly one, adding a crowd of surplus hectoring horses, who could have strayed in from Rhodes making a farcically clumsy attempt to
characters who can’t lift a hoof to Ferdinand, DreamWorks’ Madagascar films. There’s also climb into the back seat of a limo carrying a
and dollops of crass comedy and redundant a funny scene where Ferdinand finds himself, shoulder bag. There are emotional moments
narrative. The first act has the calf Ferdinand inevitably, in a china shop and desperately too: Barack Obama embracing an 85-year-old
fleeing a farm after his dad fails to return from contorts himself so as not to break anything – a survivor of the Hiroshima bomb, Power giving
the bullring (this is a film where talking animals highlight amid the witless chases and crashes. way to tears as she addresses an audience of
know all about abattoirs but still think bulls Though tedious, Ferdinand is likely to be newly accredited US citizens (including her
stand a fighting chance against matadors). praised by some pundits for its timely message own live-in nanny), explaining that she’s an
Ferdinand ends up in a second, kinder farm – which is doubly impressive given that the film immigrant too. She was born in Ireland, she tells
and grows up to huge size with a surrogate started development six years ago. Adults have them, arriving in America at the age of nine.
family (cute girl, grumpy dog). Then there’s the often found political messages in the original The running theme of what these people are
accident with the bee from the book, at which Ferdinand, most obviously a pacifist one. It’s trying to achieve is more than once expressed by
point he’s sent back to the first farm. After that hard not to see the new cartoon as an attack on Obama: while never naively underestimating
clumsy opening, Ferdinand must still go through toxic masculinity, with the other bulls mocking the dangers abroad in the world, to always aim
many silly mishaps before the bullring finale, Ferdinand mercilessly for his gentleness. Later, to prioritise the route of diplomacy over force,
which is itself less funny and pointed than it Ferdinand comforts a bull who won’t admit that negotiation over military threat. Openly and
is in the book. The cartoon wanders from an he’s grieving for a friend, and another who’s had unashamedly partisan, Barker’s film could be
animal dancing contest, more laboured than a horn snapped off in a fight. When the broken accused of presenting a rose-coloured view of
funny, to Ferdinand saving other bulls from the bull asks bitterly if he’ll have to smell flowers the Obama administration – in particular, the
mincing machines of the abattoir. The latter like Ferdinand from now on, Ferdinand tells him word ‘drones’ is never uttered. But it’s frank in
scene already felt lazy when Aardman did it no; that’s just how Ferdinand happens to be. showing the greatest foreign-policy failure of
the presidency – Syria, where US efforts were
Credits and Synopsis blocked and comprehensively outmanoeuvred
by Vladimir Putin and his client Assad.
Significantly, this is where Power and Rhodes,
Produced by Cinematographer Chip Lotierzo Lupe Paco Dolby Atmos
John Davis Renato Falcao Anthony Anderson Daveed Diggs In Colour with their widely differing temperaments (she
Lisa Marie Stetler Edited by ©Twentieth Century Bones Dos [2.35:1] cool and considered, he brash and impulsive),
Lori Forte Harry Hitner Fox Film Corporation Bobby Cannavale Raúl Esparza
Bruce Anderson Production Designer Production Valiente/ Moreno Some screenings find themselves most at odds over what needs
Screenplay Thomas Cardone Companies Valiente’s father Gabriel Iglesias presented in 3D to be done. It seems to have been deliberate on
Robert L. Baird Music by/Music Twentieth Century Peyton Manning Cuatro
Tim Federle Conducted by Fox Animation Guapo Juanes Distributor
Obama’s part to assemble a team of people who
Brad Copeland John Powell presents a Blue Sky Gina Rodriguez Juan 20th Century Fox would all bring their own perspective rather than
Screen Story Supervising Studios production Una Boris Kodjoe International (UK)
Ron Burch Sound Editors Executive Producer Miguel Ángel Klaus
passively agreeing with each other or the boss.
David Kidd Randy Thom Chris Wedge Silvestre Karla Martinez The action runs chronologically as the
Don Rhymer Gwendolyn El Primero village mother clock ticks down to election night. Knowing
Based upon the Yates Whittle David Tennant Sally Phillips
book The Story of Supervising Voice Cast Angus Greta what we do, there’s a bitter edge to the team’s
Ferdinand by Munro Animators John Cena Flula Borg Jeremy Sisto assumption that they’ll be able to pass the
Leaf, illustrations James Bresnahan Ferdinand Hans Ferdinand’s father
by Robert Lawson Scott Carroll Kate McKinnon Jerrod Carmichael baton to like-minded successors, and that
they’ve successfully ‘locked in’ their key
Spain, the present. Ferdinand is a mild-natured bull bee, causing him to rampage. The police take him back
calf, being raised on a farm for the bullring. While his to the farm he fled from. An arrogant matador chooses
achievements over climate change, Cuba and
fellow bulls look forward to fighting, Ferdinand just loves Ferdinand as the bull for his farewell fight. Ferdinand Iran. As the image of Trump looms increasingly
flowers. His father is taken to the bullring and doesn’t organises a breakout for his fellow bulls, but is himself ubiquitous on TV screens behind their heads,
return; Ferdinand escapes and finds a much gentler captured. In the bullring, he refuses to fight, despite we’re reminded that nothing in politics –
farm, where a girl and her father treat him kindly. the matador’s goading; finally the audience takes pity especially in US politics – is ever ‘locked in’.
Ferdinand grows to enormous size. One day he follows on Ferdinand and calls for his release. He returns to the Having got to know these people, their defeat
his owner to a flower festival, where he is stung by a gentle farm with the other escaped bulls, blissfully happy.
seems all the more painful. When the horrendous

60 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

 Glory
Bulgaria/Greece 2016
Directors: Petar Valchanov, Kristina Grozeva
Certificate 12A 101m 8s

REVIEWS
Rail facts: Stefan Denolyubov

Oval and out: Samantha Power, Barack Obama Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton Gosheva. Working here with co-scenarist Decho
Though their lives are inextricably and tragically Taralzehkov, they’ve laid out an economical
results come in, Rhodes sits outside on some bound together, the two protagonists of the treatment of a story with reported origins in a
darkened steps, completely incoherent with Bulgarian film Glory don’t share a great deal of small item in the Bulgarian press. Tzanko may
shock; and as she prepares to quit her White screen time. An unlikely pair, they are a study be ripped from the headlines, but the sort of
House office, Power sadly takes down from in contrasts: Tzanko (Stefan Denolyubov) is a character played by Denolyubov, a ‘little person’
the wall the drawings her kids have made for grizzled lineman with a pronounced stammer sucked up into media frenzy and victimised by
her. We’re left with an aching nostalgia for the who lives in the countryside and has toiled away circumstances outside their control, is one that
brief period when the US was led by a mature, at his unglamorous job for fully 25 years, his cinema has had frequent occasion to revisit – the
dignified president and his intelligent team. closest companions the rabbits that he raises. His set-up is a staple of screwballs and satires, and one
age is difficult to pinpoint, for his hermit’s beard that Rainer Werner Fassbinder cuttingly made
Credits and Synopsis gives him an ancient look. Julia (Margita Gosheva) use of in his Mother Küsters’ Trip to Heaven (1975).
is a youthful 40 and favours tight, slightly The continued fascination exerted by
armorial business attire. She is professionally Fassbinder’s films comes in part through their
Produced by Brent Calkin association with
Julie Goldman Prettybird Pictures dynamic where Tzanko has been given to stasis; confrontation of the European modernist
John Battsek ©Home Box Executive Producer glib and quick-talking where he is thick-tongued; and Hollywood classicist traditions, while the
Greg Barker Office, Inc. Sheila Nevins
Cinematography Production a rising star in the ministry of transport who lives filmmaking in Glory belongs firmly in the
Erich Roland Companies In Colour in a clean, impersonal Sofia apartment with all neorealist school as it has come to us in the 21st-
Martina Radwan Magnolia [1.78:1]
Edited by Pictures and HBO
the modern conveniences. She and her husband century international festival picture. Identified
Joshua Altman Documentary Films Distributor (Kitodar Todorov) are preparing to set aside by undressy natural lighting, uninflected
Langdon Page present a Passion Dogwoof
Original Music Pictures and Motto
some fertilised embryos so that they might have performances, everyday locations that seem to
Philip Sheppard Pictures production a child at some undecided point down the line, have been selected with an eye for maximum
Production A film by Greg Barker though little indicates that this mother-to-be is drabness, and camerawork accomplished with
Sound Mixer Produced in
brimming over with the milk of human kindness. just a hint of handheld tremor, the style is often
A documentary following three of Barack Obama’s
Tzanko and Julia are brought together by a matched, as here, with subject matter that
senior aides through 2016, the last year of his piece of happenstance – he reports his discovery touches on contemporary economic anxiety: you
presidency: secretary of state John Kerry, UN of a pile of unaccounted-for money on the tracks could call it neoliberal neorealism. The Dardenne
ambassador Samantha Power and deputy national that he patrols, and her department sees in his brothers are the high priests of the form – and
security adviser and speechwriter Ben Rhodes. We civic-minded honesty a chance to manufacture we do have a handful of shoulder-level travelling
also hear from national security adviser Susan Rice
a hero, a story to distract attention from the shots here – while it has become something of a
and from Obama himself. Their chief preoccupations
are the nuclear agreement with Iran, steps towards reports of its corruption and malfeasance. It’s with national institution in neighbouring Romania.
normalising US-Cuban relations, the forthcoming fame’s interruption of his previously humdrum Early on in the film, Grozeva and Valchonov
Paris conference on climate change, and trying life that Tzanko’s problems begin. All that he are working in the register of deadpan comedy.
to negotiate an end to the conflict in Syria. really wants is the return of his engraved Slava There are a few underplayed gags that make
We see Obama visiting Hiroshima, where he watch, a family heirloom that Julia mislays; clever use of foreground and background space,
meets survivors of the H-bomb blast, and Laos,
where he apologises for the US bombing of the
misused, discarded and ignored by the ministry, particularly a long bit of business involving
country during the Vietnam War. Kerry visits the he turns for help to an opposition journalist finding Tzanko a replacement pair of trousers, and
Arctic to see the effects of climate change. Power (Milko Lazarov) who buffaloes the brakeman the touch of using a buzzing fly as a kind of refrain
visits Nigeria and Cameroon to offer US support into acting as a whistleblower, in the process every time his house is revisited is a nice one.
against Boko Haram. On election night we see earning him a dangerous new notoriety. As Tzanko and Julia’s interlocked stories move
the Obama team’s reaction to Donald Trump’s
Co-directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar along, however, a sense of ambient menace settles
victory; the film ends on inauguration day 2017,
as they prepare to quit the White House. Valchonov won attention of their own for over the proceedings, sustained through
2014’s The Lesson, also starring Denolyubov and withholding and misdirection. The film

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 61

 The Greatest Showman
USA 2017
Director: Michael Gracey
Certificate PG 104m 39s

teases at the possibility of a physical Reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson critic labels the show a “primitive circus”, but
threat to Tzanko, or even to his pet rabbits, The Greatest Showman assumes a place in a obliviously optimistic Phineas embraces the
then after a respite from these little prodding long history of P.T. Barnums on film (Wallace label, sealing his transformation from urban
REVIEWS

flicks to bring down your guard, it goes for the Beery played the entertainer twice in the pauper to “prince of humbug”. It’s a film so
lunging, knockout haymaker. It’s an effective bit 1930s) and is the second musical version of devoted to wish-fulfilment and spectacle that
of blindsiding, but for all its diligent realism, the his life, following the eponymous Broadway the ethical questions around Barnum’s freak
film is an airless affair, its shrewd deployment hit. In fitting tribute to its subject’s legendary show are glossed over and his third-act setbacks
of narrative strategies leaving little room for the tall tales, the film plays havoc with history in barely have time to register on screen.
irrelevancies that allow a movie to breathe. With order to tell a crowd-pleasing yarn. Star Hugh In contract to the earnest amateurishness
so much set-up and payoff, it’s a relief when you Jackman has fostered an ambition to play of La La Land, The Greatest Showman opts for
do encounter a scene without an immediately Phineas Barnum for years, a dream that has all-out razzle-dazzle, even if the edits and props
evident purpose, such as Tzanko drunkenly now reached the screen via first-time director sometimes hide the footwork. Jackman is
shuffling off with a prostitute. Glory puts forward (former VFX specialist) Michael Gracey, with a impressively, unwaveringly sincere, though
an artless appearance, but it’s a movie on a strict, story by TV writer Jenny Bicks and songs by La Michelle Williams as his wife Charity appears
efficient schedule, running like clockwork. It has La Land lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. less convinced by her thin character and gaudy
the aesthetic limitations of its style, with none This is not so much a biopic as a rags-to-riches costumes. Zac Efron is disappointingly bland
of the sense of discovery or happy accident. montage set to pulsating, stomping power in an ill-defined role, but Rebecca Ferguson
ballads. Opening number ‘A Million Dreams’ has great fun as seductive soprano Jenny
Credits and Synopsis sets the tone, with young Phineas singing an Lind. Keala Settle steals the show, though,
ode to self-determination while waltzing across as Barnum’s bearded lady, belting out the
a couple of decades of triumph-over-adversity: film’s most memorable song, ‘This Is Me’.
Producers ©Abraxas Film Ivan Savov
Bulgaria: Production Minister Kanchev from orphaned New York street urchin to desk With Disney alumna Zendaya in a sympathetic
Kristina Grozeva Companies Hristofor Nedkov clerk with a posh wife and young family. After role, streetdance-influenced routines, abounding
Petar Valchanov Abraxas Film with porter
Greece: the support of Mira Iskarova he loses his dull office job (in lumpen mimicry of anachronisms and tunes that ape contemporary
Konstantina Bulgarian National Galya The Crowd and The Apartment,t he gazes frustrated pop – specifically the bombastic
bomb empowerment
Stavrianou Film Center in
Irini Vougioukalou co-production In Colour
from the rows of talent-show winners – The
anthems sung by talent-
Screenwriters with Graal Films, [1.78:1] desks to the rows Greatest Showman n will aappeal best to a preteen
Kristina Grozeva Screening Emotions, Subtitles
Petar Valchanov Aporia Filmworks,
of headstones in a mar
market. It is probably
Decho Taralezhkov Red Carpet with the Distributor nearby cemetery), aan insult to this
Director of support of Bulgarian New Wave Films Phineas takes a aaudience, however,
Photography National Television,
Krum Rodriguez Central Cooperative Bulgarian gamble on a waxworks orks museum, but tha
that the film vaguely
Editor Union present theatrical title it fails to draw much h interest. Scenting champions diversity while tiptoeing
Petar Valchanov Slava
Production where the public’s real fascination around the prejudice
prejudices it claims to condemn.
Designer Cast xhibit living
lies, he decides to exhibit Precious, passing mmoments of whimsy
Vanina Geleva Margita Gosheva
Composer Julia Staykova
hering ‘oddities’
people instead, gathering (a chorus line of swa
swaying laundry, Efron
Hristo Namliev Stefan Denolyubov and parading them in the round to a and Jackman’s boozy duet) are similarly
Sound Mixer Tzanko Petrov
Ivan Andreev Kitodar Todorov
wildly enthusiastic audience. A sneering diluted. Like so many of Barnum’s own
Costume Designer Valeri humbugs, The Greates
Greatest Showman is a noisy
Kristina Tomova Milko Lazarov Hugh Jackman diversion that fails to de
deliver on its promise.
Kiril Kolev

Bulgaria, present day. Tzanko Petrov, a loner lineman Credits and Synopsis
working for the state railway, is going about his
rounds one day when he discovers a heap of euro
Produced by Production Designer Phosphene Twentieth Century Michelle Williams Austyn Johnson
notes scattered over the tracks. Reporting his Laurence Mark Nathan Crowley Lola|VFX Fox presents in Charity Barnum Caroline Barnum
findings, Tzanko is feted for his honesty in an insipid Peter Chernin Songs by Soho VFX association with Rebecca Ferguson Cameron Seely
ceremony arranged by Julia Staykova, a public- Jenno Topping Benj Pasek Shade VFX TSG Entertainment Jenny Lind Helen Barnum
relations expert at the ministry of transport. During Screenplay Justin Paul & Company a Laurence Zendaya Eric Anderson
Jenny Bicks Score by/ nineteentwenty Mark/Chernin Anne Wheeler Mr O’Malley
the ceremony he surrenders his watch, a family Bill Condon Conductors Lightstream Studios Entertainment Keala Settle
heirloom, to Julia, who neglects to return it before Story John Debney Stunt Co-ordinator production Lettie Lutz Dolby Atmos
leaving for an appointment at a fertility clinic. Jenny Bicks Joseph Trapanese Victor Paguia Executive Producers Yahya Abdul- In Colour
Julia mislays the watch, and attempts to placate Director of Re-recording Mixers Choreographer James Mangold Mateen II [2.35:1]
an increasingly frantic Tzanko with a replacement. Photography Paul Massey Ashley Wallen Donald J. Lee Jr W.D. Wheeler
Seamus McGarvey Lewis Goldstein Tonia Davis Natasha Liu Distributor
Disgusted, he contacts a muckraking journalist, Film Editors Costume Designer ©Twentieth Bordizzo 20th Century Fox
Kiril Kolev, who promises to help him find the watch Tom Cross Ellen Mirojnick Century Fox Film Deng Yan International (UK)
if he will appear on Kolev’s morning news show to Robert Duffy Visual Effects Corporation and Cast Paul Sparks
discuss endemic corruption in the railways and Joe Hutshing MPC TSG Entertainment Hugh Jackman James Gordon
Michael McCusker Rodeo FX Finance LLC P.T. Barnum Bennett
the indifference of the transportation minister to Jon Poll Raynault VFX Production Zac Efron Sam Humphrey
his reports on the problem. Torn away from the Spencer Susser Brainstorm Digital Companies Phillip Carlyle Tom Thumb
fertility clinic by the resulting PR disaster, Julia
arranges to have incriminating cash planted at New York, the 19th century. Phineas Barnum, the his distance from the troupe, excluding them from the
Tzanko’s home, leading to his arrest. He agrees to poor son of a tailor, works as a clerk and marries aftershow party. While he is on tour with Jenny, the
issue a public apology to the minister in order to his childhood sweetheart Charity, who is from a show continues in New York, despite bigoted protesters
have charges dropped, but on returning home is disapproving upper-class family. After losing his job, picketing the theatre. Phillip and trapeze artist Anne
waylaid and assaulted by disgruntled co-workers. Phineas opens a waxworks museum. It’s not a success, start a tentative romance but fear adverse reactions to
Julia, following a successful visit to the so he recruits some ‘living exhibits’, including a bearded their mixed-race relationship. When Jenny attempts to
fertility clinic, reads a news item about the lady and a dwarf. The crowds love the show, but a seduce Phineas on tour, he leaves for New York, only to
suicide of a railway worker, and worries that critic attacks it, calling it a “circus of humbug” – a find the theatre has burned down after a confrontation
the deceased is Tzanko. Stricken with guilt, she label that Phineas embraces. He hires Phillip Carlyle, between the protesters and the troupe. Charity leaves
goes on a drunken bender, waking the following a well-connected theatre producer, who arranges an him, after reading reports of Jenny kissing him on
day to discover the watch in her car. She gets appointment to meet Queen Victoria. At Buckingham stage. At rock bottom, Phineas considers giving up,
word that the deceased is not Tzanko, and goes Palace, Phineas meets renowned soprano Jenny Lind, but after securing financial support from Phillip and
to deliver the watch to him. He appears to greet and hires her for an American tour. While his success reconciling with Charity, he reopens the show as a
her with a blow from a blunt object, while Julia’s with Jenny impresses an upper-class audience, real circus in a tent. He hands ringmaster duties to
husband waits nearby, oblivious, in the car. including Charity’s parents, Phineas increasingly keeps Phillip in order to spend more time with his family.

62 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

Journey’s End Jumanji
United Kingdom/The Netherlands/Belgium 2017
Director: Saul Dibb
Welcome to the Jungle
Certificate 12A 107m 44s USA 2017, Director: Jake Kasdan
Certificate 12A 118m 52s

Reviewed by Matthew Taylor under Stanhope, who is betrothed to his older Reviewed by Kate Stables
R.C. Sherriff’s venerable WWI play Journey’s sister Margaret, but on arrival the youth finds his Keener on playful character interaction than
End (1928) has, on the whole, been well served wide-eyed notions of heroism rather muddied. twisty plotting, this glossy homage to Jumanji

REVIEWS
by its various film adaptations over the decades. One of Sherriff’s provisional titles for Journey’s (1995) lovingly spoofs 1990s videogames
Most of them – James Whale’s 1930 version for End was Waiting, and in Dibb’s film the inertia rather than the original’s board-game and pulp-
Gainsborough, Michael Simpson’s BBC TV film experienced by soldiers hanging around adventure themes. Screen homage is its jam
of 1988, and even The Other Side (Die andere Seite, and anticipating their likely obliteration is throughout, in fact, as it nods to The Breakfast Club
1931), which featured the intriguing distinction palpable (“We’re all just generally waiting for in its teen scenes, Tron in its videogame levels, and
of German actors playing quintessentially something,” muses Osborne). The compacted Freaky Friday in its kids-and-adults-body-swap
British officers – have remained rigidly faithful timeframe, comprising several days leading conceit: four high-schoolers, made to clear out
to Sherriff’s text, though Jack Gold’s Aces up to a grave deadline, may inevitably recall a storeroom as punishment for various crimes,
High (1976) exchanged the earthbound stasis Christopher Nolan’s recent Dunkirk. However, happen on an old videogame. Trying it out, they
of the trenches for the skies above (its aerial the scale couldn’t be more different – in place are whisked into Jumanji’s jungle world and
sequences were reused in Blackadder Goes Forth, of the latter’s teeming vistas there is dank transformed into the avatars they had chosen.
itself obviously indebted to Journey’s End). subterranean claustrophobia and the eerily Director Jake Kasdan concentrates on the one-
While not taking any dramatic liberties with depopulated swathe of no man’s land that note gags of his stars channelling nervy teens –
its source, Saul Dibb’s sturdy, well-acted new lies beyond. Here, there is no deliverance in Dwayne Johnson quailing as a game nerd, Karen
film, adapted by Simon Reade, persuasively the works – the company is matter-of-factly Gillan’s feminist horror at her Lara Croft-styled
revisits what George Bernard Shaw once called informed that reinforcements will not be avatar. The action sequences (outrunning rhinos,
a “slice of life – horrible, abnormal life”. forthcoming. Save for the climactic onslaught Indiana Jones-style booby-trapped corridors) are
For the men of C Company, anxiously of Operation Michael, the action is confined eye-popping but hold little jeopardy, despite the
awaiting the imminent German offensive to a surprise raid on a German position – ‘three game lives and you’re really dead’ concept.
of March 1918, the attempt to maintain a conducted in daylight, as Stanhope grimly It’s visually lavish, lesson-learning,
slim semblance of normality becomes key to notes, so that the top brass will receive their family-friendly fun. But the laughs dilute the
coping with the fragile nature of existence in intelligence in time for dinner. The sequence excitement, and ensures it never achieves the
the trenches. In the case of Stephen Graham’s is a jolt of chaotic movement after the queasy jolting fear that the original conjured up.
Trotter, the focus is on routine mealtimes and stillness of the dugout, and it takes a while to
the often unidentifiable cuisine dished up by process the loss of a major player off screen. Credits and Synopsis
deadpan cook Mason (Toby Jones). Hibbert Within a strong ensemble, Bettany shines as
(Tom Sturridge), an officer faking neuralgia the kindly Osborne, who takes Raleigh under his Produced by Effects and Anthony ‘Fridge’
to avoid combat, distracts himself by crowing wing when Stanhope can’t bear to; a scene prior Matt Tolmach Animation Johnson, ‘Franklin
William Teitler Sony Pictures ‘Moose’ Finbar’
about romantic conquests in London, while to the raid, with Osborne calming the lad’s nerves Screenplay Imageworks Karen Gillan
Osborne (Paul Bettany) prefers to reminisce with banal talk of hot drinks and gardening, Chris McKenna Stunt Co- Martha Kaply, ‘Ruby
Erik Sommers ordinators Roundhouse’
about tending his rockery in the New Forest. is particularly moving. Claflin’s tormented Scott Rosenberg Gary M. Hymes Nick Jonas
Then there is Stanhope (Sam Claflin), the Stanhope is on a par with Colin Clive’s portrayal Jeff Pinkner Oakley Lehman Alex
Screen Story Bobby Cannavale
company’s traumatised captain, who has found in Whale’s original, while Butterfield is well Chris McKenna ©Columbia Pictures Van Pelt
a more direct way to banish the reality of the cast as the earnest novice. And regular Ben Based on the book Industries, Inc. Ser’Darius Blain
Jumanji by Chris Production young Anthony
dugout: the bottle. “You’ll find him changed,” Wheatley collaborator Laurie Rose once again Van Allsburg and Companies Madison Iseman
says Osborne to Raleigh (Asa Butterfield), the proves his knack for photographing landscape, the film Jumanji Columbia Pictures young Bethany
[1995], Screen Story presents a Matt Morgan Turner
naive young recruit whose first posting this lending the trenches an earthy immediacy that by Greg Taylor, Jim Tolmach/Seven young Martha
is. Raleigh has excitedly volunteered to serve previous adaptations of the play can’t match. Strain, Chris Van Bucks production Alex Wolff
Allsburg, Screenplay A film by Jake young Spencer
by Jonathan Kasdan Rhys Darby
Credits and Synopsis Hensleigh, Greg Executive Nigel
Taylor, Jim Strain Producers Marc Evan Jackson
Director of David Householter Principal Bentley
Photography Jake Kasdan
Produced by Production Wednesday Films Made with the Cast Rupert Wickham Gyula Pados Dwayne Johnson Dolby Atmos/
Guy de Beaujeu Sound Mixer A Saul Dibb film support of the Sam Claflin General Rayleigh Edited by Dany Garcia Auro Barco
Simon Reade Bryn Thomas Developed with BFI’s Film Fund Captain Stanhope Rose Reade Mark Helfrich Ted Field In Colour
Screenplay Costume Designer the assistance of Executive Producers Asa Butterfield Margaret Steve Edwards Mike Weber [2.35:1]
Simon Reade Anushia Nieradzik Anyway Productions Anthony Seldon Second Lieutenant Production
Based on the play by Supported by the Will Machin Raleigh In Colour Designer Some screenings
R.C. Sherriff and the ©Journey’s End Tax Shelter of The Natalie Brenner Toby Jones [2.35:1] Owen Paterson Cast presented in 3D
novel by R.C. Sherriff Films Ltd/The British Federal Government Sam Parker Private Mason Music Dwayne Johnson
and Vernon Bartlett Film Institute of Belgium and The Mary Burke Tom Sturridge Distributor Henry Jackman Spencer Gilpin, ‘Dr Distributor
Director of Production Tax Shelter Investors Charles Auty Second Lieutenant Lionsgate UK Production Mixer Smolder Bravestone’ Sony Pictures
Photography Companies In association Steve Milne Hibbert John Pritchett Jack Black Releasing UK
Laurie Rose BFI and Wales with uFund Christian Eisenbeiss Stephen Graham Costume Designer Bethany, ‘Professor
Editor Screen present in Produced with Ivan Dunleavy Second Lieutenant Laura Jean Shannon Shelly Oberon’
Tania Reddin association with support from the Robert Norris Special Visual Kevin Hart
Trotter
Production Designer Metro International Welsh Government David Grindley Paul Bettany
Kristian Milsted Entertainment and Media Investment Sue de Beauvoir Lieutenant Osborne The US, present day. During high-school detention,
Music British Film Company Budget Bastien Sirodot Robert Glenister nerdy Spencer, arrogant athlete Fridge, loner Martha
Hildur Gudnadóttir and Umedia a Fluidity Produced by Adrian Politowski colonel and vain Bethany are sucked into Jumanji’s jungle
Composer Films production Third Wednesday Gilles Waterkeyn Miles Jupp
Natalie Holt Produced by Third Films Limited world by an old videogame. Their new avatar-bodies,
Captain Hardy
the opposites of their real selves, help them bond
and take risks. Each only has three game ‘lives’,
Northern France, 1918. Raleigh, a naive young officer, company should stand its ground for as long as some of which they lose. They are tasked with
is posted to the frontline trenches to join an infantry possible. Stanhope threatens to shoot Hibbert, an saving Jumanji by retrieving the Jaguar’s Eye jewel,
company awaiting an imminent German offensive; officer feigning neuralgia, for desertion. Osborne and stolen by villain animal-whisperer Van Pelt, and
he is excited to serve under Captain Stanhope, who is Raleigh are selected to lead a surprise daytime raid returning it to a giant statue, high on a mountain.
betrothed to his sister Margaret. However, Stanhope to capture a German officer. The operation succeeds, Battling through the game’s levels to find the jewel,
is now a tormented alcoholic, who confides to his but Osborne and many others are killed. The German they fight Van Pelt’s motorcycle henchmen and his
lieutenant Osborne his horror at being responsible offensive is launched the next day, decimating the animal hordes. They recruit Alex, a teen trapped
for Raleigh, and his fear that Margaret will learn company. When Raleigh is killed, Stanhope emerges in the game since 1996. Finally escaping a rhino
of his drinking via the boy’s letters. Stanhope is on to the trenches, just as more shelling destroys horde, a jaguar pack and Van Pelt, they help Spencer
informed by his superiors that no reinforcements the dugout. Margaret receives Raleigh’s first letter, scale the mountain and reinsert the jewel. Returned
will be provided for the coming attack, and that the which relates his admiration for Stanhope. to real life, they find Alex a happily grown man.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 63

 Jupiter’s Moon
Hungary/Germany/Monaco 2017
Director: Kornél Mundruczó
Certificate 15 128m 33s

Reviewed by Michael Brooke

On the evidence of his five features to date,
Kornél Mundruczó is one of contemporary
REVIEWS

cinema’s most thoughtful theologians. The full-

length opera Johanna (2005) transplanted the
miraculous aspects of the legend of Joan of Arc
to a Hungarian hospital; both Delta (2008) and
Tender Son (2010) offered oblique variations on
the return of the prodigal son; and White God
(2014) channelled Robert Bresson’s Au hasard
Balthazar as much as Sam Fuller’s White Dog in
its tale of the cruel exploitation of a faithful dog
by distant bureaucrats and hands-on oppressors.
Co-written by his White God screenwriting
partner Kata Wéber, Jupiter’s Moon is Mundruczó’s
most conceptually complex film by some
distance, its ambitions signalled by an opening
title that introduces us to Jupiter’s moon Europa,
believed to have a potentially life-bearing
saltwater ocean under its icy surface. This and
the story’s premise about a young Syrian refugee,
Aryan Dashni (Zsombor Jéger), who finds himself
blessed/cursed with supernatural powers after
being shot while trying to enter Hungary illegally,
have caused the film to be labelled as science Hope floats: Zsombor Jéger
fiction, but it’s more of a magical-realist parable.
Indeed, Europa is never subsequently mentioned, slowly floating down the side of a block of flats; at the world has rarely seemed more complex or
but the notion that present-day Hungary has another, the surrounding room and its contents convoluted, our appetite for the miraculous may
become an alien world policed by men in black similarly defy gravity, to the alarm of its other, be greater than ever, especially if it’s couched in the
masks reminiscent of Star Wars stormtroopers non-levitating, no-longer-sceptical occupant. form of easily graspable images that can be spotted
is pervasive throughout. The alien-visitor At its Cannes competition premiere last year, merely by looking up (a running gag concerns how
theme is underscored further by light-relief Jupiter’s Moon was often criticised for an excess rarely people do this). Even Stern the arch-sceptic
interludes, such as Aryan trying to cope with the of ambition, and it’s true that in its keenness to can be converted by the simple touch of a hand
trappings and rituals of a five-star restaurant. cram in multiple hot-button issues (religion, on his head as he kneels to tie Aryan’s shoelaces,
The man who has brought him there, his homosexuality, racism, medical negligence, the a modern substitute for foot-washing. And if we
mentor-cum-exploiter Gábor Stern (Merab refugee crisis, Islamist terrorism) and even genres never truly understand where Aryan’s coming
Ninidze), is calculatedly inscrutable at first, (action film, suspense thriller, fish-out-of-water from, Jéger’s appealingly wide-eyed performance
denouncing torture, rape and child massacres comedy, philosophical art movie), it sometimes makes it clear that he shares our bafflement
in the Bible while shushing a pair of evangelical runs the risk of seeming much more diffuse and about what’s happening to him: holy innocents
Christians who ask him what he believes in. He’s hard to read than Mundruczó’s earlier films. But are a common theme in western culture, but few
a refugee-hospital doctor who also facilitates this may be Mundruczó’s point: at a time when have the latter quality in such abundance.
various black-market activities inside the camp
– as police chief László (György Cserhalmi) Credits and Synopsis
pointedly says, when asking him to censor an
official medical report: “You should overlook
Producers of Hungarian András Bálint The Hungary-Serbia border, the present. Ambushed
some things that I do, just as I do with you.” But Viktória Petrányi National Film Fund, voice of Gabor Stern by border-patrol forces, Syrian refugee Murad drowns,
Stern can’t overlook the fact that Aryan seems to Viola Fügen Eurimages, Film Farid Larbi
and his teenage son Aryan is shot by police chief
Michael Weber und Medienstiftung bearded Syrian man
be exhibiting all the characteristics of a Biblical Michel Merkt NRW, Mitteldeutsche Máté Mészáros László. Aryan is taken to Dr Gábor Stern’s refugee-
angel aside from visible wings, not least because Written by Medienförderung, ambulance driver camp hospital, and levitates in front of him. Fired
Kata Wéber Medienboard Szabolcs after refusing László’s request to censor any mention
of his potential as a nice little earner. (Although, Cinematographer Berlin-Brandenburg Bede-Fazekas
since he’s raising money to pay compensation for of refugees being shot, Stern takes Aryan with him
Marcell Rév A film by Kornél policeman
Editor Mundruczó Lajos Valázsik to Budapest. A conversation with his girlfriend Vera
a botched operation, Stern may also see Aryan’s Dávid Jancsó With the financial Musi plants the idea that Aryan might be an angel. While
arrival as an opportunity for personal atonement.) Production Designer support of NMHH - Péter Haumann László looks for both Aryan and Murad (whose corpse
As often with Mundruczó’s films, individual Márton Ágh National Media and Zentai is unidentified), Stern shows off Aryan’s powers to
Composer Infocommunications Zsolt Nagy
set pieces are technically astonishing, starting Jed Kurzel Authority, Creative tattooed boy various people for money: one is so unsettled by it
with an extended five-and-a-half-minute take (or Sound Europe MEDIA Zoltán Mucsi that he kills himself. Determined to find his father,
Gábor Balázs Produced by waiter Aryan quizzes other refugees prior to confronting
seamlessly knitted series of takes) that follows Costume Designer Proton Cinema, Ákos Birkás someone he recognises – one of a group of Islamist
Aryan’s progress between dense woods either side Sabine Greunig Match Factory György
terrorists about to trigger a mass metro bombing.
Stunt Co-ordinator Productions, KNM Sándor Terhes
of the Serbian-Hungarian border, incorporating Gáspár Szabó Executive Producers Bárándy Murad and Aryan’s passports are found in the wreckage,
a panicked underwater interlude and a desperate Eszter Gyárfás making them suspects. Stern visits the widower of a
sprint for his life that must have been even ©Proton Cinema, Júlia Berkes In Colour woman who died on his operating table and offers him
Match Factory Judit Sós [2.35:1] money; it’s refused. In the morgue, Stern identifies
harder on the camera operator than it was on the Productions, KNM Subtitles
Production Murad’s body. Vera informs on them to László, who
actor (Marcell Rév’s cinematography displays chases them, but is thwarted when Aryan floats away.
Companies Cast Distributor
a similarly propulsive energy later, especially The Match Factory Merab Ninidze Curzon Artificial Eye Reunited with Aryan, Stern checks into a hotel. A
during multiple car chases). CGI-assisted scenes presents a Proton Doctor Gabor Stern former colleague betrays Stern to László, who goes
Cinema production Zsombor Jéger Hungarian
of Aryan levitating are rendered all the more to arrest Aryan. Stern confronts László in the lobby,
in co-production Aryan theatrical title
disorientating by the backgrounds lurching in with Match Factory György Cserhalmi Jupiter holdja but is shot before he and Aryan can escape to the lift.
Productions, László László catches them on an upper floor. Aryan leaps
sympathy, as if channelling Aryan’s own vertigo, KNM, ZDF/Arte Móni Balsai through the corridor window, floating above the city.
and each successive set piece offers visual variety: With the support Vera In the street below, a child shuts his eyes and counts.
at one point, all we see of Aryan is a shadow

64 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

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 Last Flag Flying Lies We Tell
USA 2017 United Kingdom 2016
Director: Richard Linklater Director: Mitu Misra
Certificate 15 124m 35s Certificate 15 109m 35s

Reviewed by Ryan Gilbey Reviewed by Nikki Baughan

The names and some of the Over the past two years, UK filmmakers
See Rushes background details may be have been showcasing the four corners of the
REVIEWS

page 10 different, and the language country in exhilarating ways. In Hope Dickson
stripped of much of its Leach’s The Levelling, for example, the Somerset
notorious coarseness, but Levels became the backdrop for the burdens
Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying is in part a of adult responsibility; Alex Taylor’s Spaceship
belated catch-up with the navy buddies at the saw Guildford as the setting for a fantastical
centre of Hal Ashby and Robert Towne’s salty exploration of modern adolescence; and in Francis
1973 comedy The Last Detail. (Both films are Lee’s blistering debut God’s Own Country, the wild
based on novels by Darryl Ponicsan, who also landscapes of Yorkshire perfectly underscored
co-wrote the screenplay for the new film with the emotional unfurling of the film’s embittered
Linklater.) Matching the cast of that earlier protagonist. In first-time filmmaker Mitu Misra’s
picture to the performers here is a mug’s game: version of modern England, however, Yorkshire
Bryan Cranston, as Sal, could just about pass becomes the setting for blunt-edged cultural
muster as an older version of Jack Nicholson’s warfare, with battle lines drawn along the most
Billy Buddusky, but Steve Carell as Larry, who Vets in a spin: Cranston, Carell, Fishburne obvious racial and gender clichés. While Lies We
enlists his pals’ to accompany him as he takes Tell’s overarching theme may be the devastating
home the body of his son, killed in the Iraq War, is politicised by their adventure together: Richard ripples of secrets and lies, it lacks any hint of
no Randy Quaid. Then again, Linklater – himself after being mistaken for a terrorist (his surname, narrative stealth or dramatic complexity.
the king of the cinematic waiting game, what Mueller, sounds a bit too close to ‘mullah’), and The film sets its tone immediately, with
with the Before trilogy (1995-2013), spread over Larry when he discovers that his son didn’t die a high-powered Demi (a brief cameo from big-
nearly three decades, and Boyhood (2014), which glorious death in combat, as the army claims, but name draw Harvey Keitel) being driven to an
took 12 years to make – is not really fashioning was shot in the head while on a drinks errand. extramarital tryst by his loyal right-hand man
a sequel. He’s using The Last Detail instead as a The latter revelation occurs in the film’s most Donald (Gabriel Byrne). “The only men who get
springboard for reflecting on how little the US, effective scene, when the men are adrift in the caught are the ones who don’t love their wives
and especially its foreign policy, has changed boundless white of the hangar at the military enough,” says the cocksure Demi – only to then
or progressed in the intervening years. base where fallen soldiers are presented to their die of a heart attack. Tasked with cleaning up his
Some half-hearted comedy is wrung from families in closed coffins. This stark, dazzling employer’s love nest, Donald comes face-to-face
the fish-out-of-water exploits of these middle- aesthetic becomes cleverly symbolic of the action with the beautiful young Amber (Sibylla Deen).
aged Vietnam vets let loose in the turn-of-the- of the scene, with no corners left for the truth to While he initially dismisses Amber as a
millennium world. They examine newfangled hide in, no shadows to protect the military’s lies. prostitute, it transpires that she is, in fact, Demi’s
mobile phones with a quizzical bemusement It’s the one moment when Linklater appears long-term mistress and also a trainee lawyer.
more suited to Daryl Hannah’s mermaid in to be thinking cinematically. The rest of Last Flag But she is from a strict Muslim family, so any
Splash (1984), while musing on how context is Flying is structurally halting and dramatically hint of her clandestine relationship could be
altered by the passing of time. Sal, for instance, meagre. The script is rife with sentimentalised ruinous both to her reputation and to her career.
can’t believe that people now pay to go on odes to the contribution of the military, obvious When Donald is persuaded to help her destroy
holiday to the place where tens of thousands of points about the language of governmental all computer and phone evidence of the affair,
his countrymen, and millions of Vietnamese, betrayal across the years (WMDs, the phrase he is slowly drawn into her world and the long-
lost their lives. From the moment we first see ‘Stay the course’), and banal instances of held secret – concerning an arranged marriage
him complaining about a police reality show contemplation, such as when Larry watches to, and subsequent divorce from, her vengeful
(he wants to know why the cops are never seen footage of Saddam Hussein’s dead sons on cousin KD (Jan Uddin) – that consumes her.
bringing corrupt CEOs to book), Sal is marked television and says: “I lost one, he lost two.” Although Indian-born Misra is credited
out as the firebrand of the group, while Richard The performers sleepwalk through the usual as co-screenwriter, alongside Ewen Glass
(Laurence Fishburne), now a preacher, urges buddy-movie shtick, and there is little here to (TV’s Hollyoaks) and fellow first-timer Andy
caution at all times, and the softly spoken Larry surprise audiences already of a liberal mindset, McDermott, there’s no real sense of authenticity
lies somewhere in the middle. Each man is let alone sway or entice those who are not. or sensitivity here. There are kernels of truth in
the depiction of the British Muslim experience,
Credits and Synopsis particularly the disconnect between older
generations still tied to tradition and youngsters
with a more western identity, focused through the
Produced by Sandra Adair Production Big Indie Pictures Reverend Richard O’Toole
Ginger Sledge Production Designer Companies Executive Producers Mueller uncomfortable prism of the arranged marriages of
Richard Linklater Bruce Curtis An Amazon Studios Harry Gittes Yul Vázquez In Colour young girls who have no say in their own future.
John Sloss Music presentation Thomas Lee Wright Colonel Wilits [2.35:1]
Screenplay Graham Reynolds A Detour Karen Ruth Getchell J. Quinton Johnson Yet rather than exploring these issues on their
Richard Linklater Production Filmproduction/ Washington Distributor own terms, Misra attempts to shoehorn them into
Darryl Ponicsan Sound Mixer Zanzero Pictures/ Deanna Reed-Foster Curzon Artificial Eye
Based on the novel Chris Strollo Cinetic Media Cast Ruth
a standard thriller format, with the multicultural
by Darryl Ponicsan Costume Designer production Steve Carell Cicely Tyson elements amped up to such a histrionic degree
Director of Kari Perkins A Richard Larry Shepherd, ‘Doc’ Mrs Hightower
Photography Linklater film Bryan Cranston Graham Wolfe
that it becomes almost pantomime. Amber’s
Shane Kelly ©Amazon Content Produced in Sal Nealon John Redman parents, for example, are one-note religious
Film Editor Services LLC association with Laurence Fishburne Jeff Monahan zealots, completely unconcerned about their
children’s happiness. “When are you going to stop
The US, 2003. After his son Larry Jr is killed while a convenience store), decides that he doesn’t want
on a tour of duty in Baghdad, the recently widowed him to have a military funeral after all. The army
judging us by British standards?” spits Amber’s
Larry ‘Doc’ Shepherd calls on two old friends who surrenders the coffin reluctantly but the plan to mother, in one example of the on-the-nose
served with him in Vietnam 30 years earlier. Sal transport it in a hired van is derailed when Richard dialogue, when her daughter confronts her about
Nealon, a rabble-rouser who now owns a bar, and is arrested, mistaken for a terrorist. Once freed, he her arranged marriage. “You should thank Allah
Richard Mueller, who is now a reverend, agree to joins the others travelling by train, accompanied by you were 16 and not 12.” KD, meanwhile, is a
accompany Larry to view his son’s coffin before the the young soldier Washington, who served alongside moustache-twirling villain who abuses women,
burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Larry, who Larry Jr. Back at home on the day of the funeral,
discovers that the official story about his son dying Larry opens a letter written to him by his son, passed loans his pregnant girlfriend out to his henchman
in battle is a lie (he was in fact shot from behind in on by Washington, in which he says he loves him. and has his sights set on Amber’s younger sister.
As Amber, Australian star Deen shows

66 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

 Love Is Thicker than Water
United Kingdom/The Netherlands 2016
Directors: Emily Harris, Ate de Jong
Certificate 15 105m 12s

Reviewed by Hannah McGill

Like last year’s Kids in Love (2016), this UK
romantic comedy-drama sees a young man

REVIEWS
sample life’s riches via an affair with a louche,
high-born woman, only to see the romance
falter because her gilded world cannot easily
accommodate his relative ordinariness. To
this strangely rigid notion of British social
class Love Is Thicker than Water adds startling
regional and ethnic stereotyping: Johnny
Flynn’s Arthur is Welsh, which the film treats
as akin to being a semi-housetrained animal,
whereas the Jewishness of Lydia Wilson’s
Vida is pointed up by her whole family
Adultery life skills: Gabriel Byrne, Harvey Keitel being rich, frail, bitchy aesthetes who bring
up the Holocaust in every conversation.
strength and determination, but these qualities Modern hipster trappings – fairy-lit Hackney
are no match for the relentless subjugation lofts, fur-trapper hats and a soundtrack of fey La Vida loca: Lydia Wilson, Henry Goodman
her character endures, not only from the men indie folk – don’t disguise the old-school sitcom
around her but also from the camera, which conservatism through which the film filters of sex before midnight”; they speak mostly of
lingers over her, and her appalling treatment, difference. Visiting Arthur’s family in Port steelworks, and have no time for art, unless it
with voyeuristic glee. (The only man who treats Talbot for the first time, Vida baffles the oiks involves Richard Burton, who is a god to them.
her with any respect is Donald; even then, the by asking for herbal tea. Shortly thereafter, she Perhaps the film’s biggest problem, however,
script forces her to attempt to seduce him.) This is fastidiously appalled at being served fish is its failure to convince us that anything stands
is meant to be Amber’s journey to freedom, yet and chips – and even more so when one of in the way of its central couple other than one
she is never allowed to be in charge of her own Arthur’s lairy sisters barges in for a pee while of them just being horrible. Romantic heroines
story. Indeed, while its aim may be to shine she’s in the bathroom. Indeed, controlling don’t have to be perfect, but it aids audience
a light on the Indian community’s outdated their urine seems to be a family problem: identification if they’re not downright loathsome.
treatment of women, Lies We Tell overplays the one character of colour, Arthur’s half- This is Vida after Arthur’s father dies and she
this rampant misogyny to such a point that it brother Llion (Alex Lanipekun), signals his accompanies him home to Port Talbot for the
becomes the very thing it is trying to condemn. lack of common ground with Vida’s family by funeral: “What the fuck am I doing here?” And
pissing all over their bathroom. Well – black this, when Arthur asks her if she’ll wait for him
Credits and Synopsis and Welsh? Who let him off the leash? while he spends a bit of time there with his
Might the peculiarly tone-deaf take on British widowed mother: “No, I won’t fucking wait! It’s
class and culture be down to writer and co- not a war! If you stay here, we’re done!” For Vida,
Produced by Adam Howe KD
Andy McDermott Reece Ritchie director (with Emily Harris) Ate de Jong being seemingly, the only distance more impossibly
Malcolm Scott ©Bradford Nathan no Shoreditch millennial but a Dutchman active onerous than that between middle and working
Danny Gulliver International Film Gina McKee
Screenplay Associates Ltd Heather in filmmaking since 1976? Indeed, perhaps class is that between London and Wales. She also
Ewen Glass Production Nicholas Farrell he’s had this script under his bed for a while, punches Arthur hard in the face and smashes
Andy McDermott Companies Anthony Quest
Story Presented Manzar Sehbai-Pal
for despite the studied contemporaneity of the a camera he can ill afford to replace – yet in the
Mitu Misra by Bradford Zulifikar music and fashions, the film’s placing in time film’s final assault on sense and logic, when
Screenplay International Film Harish Patel
Development Associates Haji
is highly peculiar. Not only does digital and reconciliation looms, it’s he who apologises to
Jon Sen Developed in Emily Atack mobile technology play an improbably slight her. Romcoms tend to rely on us rooting for a
Irfan Ajeeb association Tracey role in the young leads’ lives, but the Welsh union. It’s an interesting shift to find oneself
Mitu Misra with Bradford Harvey Virdi
Director of International Film Banu characters have apparently been disinterred rooting instead for one partner to run away
Photography Associates Limited Harvey Keitel from the 1950s. They are interested, says as far and as fast as he can – but presumably
Santosh Sivan Executive Demi Lampros
Editor Producers Arthur, only in “beer, rugby and three minutes not quite what the filmmakers intended.
Chris Gill Santosh Sivan In Colour
Production Mark Platts [2.35:1]
Designer Credits and Synopsis
Jane Levick Distributor
Original Music Cast Miracle
Composed by/ Gabriel Byrne Communications Produced by Emily Harris + Robert Blythe London, the present. The whirlwind romance between
Music Produced by Donald Ate de Jong Ate de Jong George Davies cycle courier and aspiring animator Arthur and cellist
Zbigniew Preisner Sibylla Deen Written by Executive Producers Remy Beasley
Sound Recordists Amber Ate de Jong Jennifer Darling Brenda Davies Vida hits snags when they meet each other’s families:
David Mitchell Mark Addy Director of Andrea Scarso Vida’s mother is unwelcoming to Arthur, while Vida is
Martin Beresford Billy Photography Max Benitz In Colour upset that Arthur’s relatives are Welsh and working
Costume Design Jan Uddin Zoran Veljkovic [2.35:1] class. The couple throw an engagement party, at which
Editor
Arthur’s father has a heart attack and dies. Shortly
Bradford, Yorkshire, present day. After philandering Antonio Ribeiro Cast Distributor
Production Designer Johnny Flynn Jinga Films afterwards, Vida’s mother also dies. Arthur decides
businessman Demi dies of a heart attack, his loyal Charlotte Pearson Arthur Davies to stay on with his mother in Wales, which infuriates
right-hand man Donald is tasked with cleaning Music Supervisor Lydia Wilson Vida; they split up. Arthur’s animation mysteriously
out his love nest; he meets Demi’s beautiful young Johnny Flynn Vida Berliner appears online, becoming a viral hit. Vida inherits
mistress Amber. A trainee lawyer from a devout Sound Design Juliet Stevenson
Rob Prynne Ethel Berliner £500,000 from her mother’s estate. Vida’s father
Muslim family, Amber enlists Donald’s help in Wardrobe Henry Goodman visits Arthur’s mother, and they decide to hold a joint
destroying the evidence of her affair. This is made Sam Perry Levi Berliner memorial service for their spouses. At the party, Vida
more difficult by the meddling of her violent cousin Al Weaver tells Arthur that she has quit music and intends to
KD, from whom she is divorced. Finding a video of ©Barnsbury Adam Berliner
Pictures Ltd
retrain as a GP. Arthur apologises to her for what went
Alex Lanipekun
Amber and Demi together, KD threatens to divulge Production Llion Davies wrong in their relationship, and they kiss; but the
her secret to her family if she interferes in his Companies Jessica Gunning party ends badly when Arthur’s homophobic brother
upcoming marriage to her younger sister. When Barnsbury Pictures Emily Davies Llion beats up Vida’s gay brother. On their way home
Amber successfully stops the wedding, KD has her Ltd, Mulholland Ellie Kendrick to Wales, Llion confides to Arthur that it was he who
killed. Donald confronts KD at her graveside; when he Pictures BV, Master Helen Berliner
Media, Ingenious Sharon Morgan uploaded the animation. Arthur and Vida reunite.
shows no remorse, Donald runs him over in his car. present a film by Sara Davies Arthur’s animation is displayed in a London exhibition.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 67

 Makala
France 2017
Director: Emmanuel Gras

Reviewed by Hannah McGill

“Time is going by so fast,” frets solemn,
hardworking Kabwita near the start of this
REVIEWS

documentary, as he contemplates the challenge

of amassing enough cash to progress the building
of his family home. Viewers who have just
watched Kabwita painstakingly hack down a
vast tree and prepare its wood for sale as charcoal
may beg to differ, for ‘fast’ is one quality few
would claim for this film. We will go on to watch
Kabwita leave his home in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo to transport the charcoal
(the ‘makala’ of the title), precariously tied in
bundles on a pushbike, for sale at city markets;
what seems ‘fast’ to Kabwita, pressured as he is by
poverty, the changing seasons and the demands
of growing children, is rendered languorous
and beautiful to us by the loving attentions of
director and cinematographer Emmanuel Gras.
If the danger of aestheticising and exoticising
the struggles of the poor is clear and present in
a film such as this (and if it’s a distinct challenge
not to wonder if Kabwita might have preferred
a lift on the camera crew’s truck to being filmed
by them as he pushed his bike along endless
roads), the unfussy respect Gras confers on
his subject elevates this portrait from mere
voyeurism to a generous and elegant meditation
on what it is to work. The initial scenes in which
Kabwita chops down the tree, in a landscape so
depleted by slash-and-burn farming practices
that his family often subsists on rat meat, gather
elemental force as he proceeds, until we seem Road trip: Kabwita Kasongo
to be watching a mini-drama encompassing all
of man’s relationship with nature. When the renders them all the more touching. Never does in his own act of prayer. Whether Kabwita is
tree falls, with Gras’s camera coiling around its the director pin Kabwita down to speak to the a regular churchgoer, or has simply stumbled
beautiful branches, we’re at once triumphant camera about who he is or how he feels. We into an environment that speaks directly to his
for the indefatigable Kabwita and heartbroken gather what we can about him largely from the wearied mind, we’re not given to know; but the
for the dwindling remains of a forest now play of light and emotion across his determined film’s shift from poetic evocation of the practical
barely worthy of the name. Lovely, yearning features. Elsewhere – as when man, bike and into the spiritual realm is both startling and
cello refrains, composed and played for the film bundles trundle on through the pitch darkness, effective. Religious or not, we can’t help but share
by Gaspar Claus, remind us what other uses silhouetted against the light of nocturnal in Kabwita’s relief as he hands his worries over
humans have found for the bodies of trees. campfires – he’s unashamedly glamorised as a to his God. Like the opening sequence with the
Kabwita’s subsequent journey cross-country figure of myth, a young and beautiful Sisyphus. tree, the scene glories in the strange specialness
to sell his charcoal is played as a very low-key The parable-like quality of the film becomes of being human – of being an animal driven
road movie, reminiscent in its driven simplicity literal when Kabwita enters a church, there to to transform and conquer and mythologise
of David Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999). Where experience a lively sermon on the subject of what surrounds it, and then to plead for divine
Alvin Straight was played by an actor and adopted “the journey of the honest man”, and to engage help with all the resulting difficulties.
a lawnmower as his means of transport out of
ornery eccentricity, Kabwita is playing himself, Credits and Synopsis
and proceeds on foot because he has to. But Gras,
like Lynch, drip-feeds information to keep us
Produced by Performed by of Ciné+ and Canal+ This work has With the support In Colour
engaged with a story that is as much about one Nicolas Anthomé Gaspar Claus International benefited from Fonds of Procirep, Angoa, [1.78:1]
man’s private character, aspirations and regrets Written by Sound With the support of d’aide à l’innovation Région Île-de-France, Subtitles
Emmanuel Gras Manuel Vidal the Région Auvergne- audiovisuelle from the SCAM bursary
as it is about the global forces that influence Filmed by Rhône-Alpes, and the the Centre national Brouillon d’un rêve, Distributor
his destiny. We learn early on that Kabwita Emmanuel Gras ©Bathysphere Région Île-de-France du cinéma et de of the La culture Dogwoof
Editor Production In association with l’image animée avec la copie privée
can be touchy and sensitive as well as stoically Karen Benainous Companies Cinémage 10 With the participation project, the Sacem
productive; he whimpers and moans as his wife Original Music Bathysphere presents A film by of Région Auvergne- for the creation of
Composed and With the participation Emmanuel Gras Rhône-Alpes the original music
Lydie removes splinters from his feet, prompting
her to accuse him of exaggerating the pain. A documentary filmed in the Democratic Republic help him to rebuild his bundles. On the road, thieves
He is also, we go on to discover, an attached of the Congo. Kabwita, a young husband and father, attempt to extort money from him for allowing him to
and concerned parent: fretful about sourcing the cuts down a tree to turn into charcoal, which he pass; he bargains down their prices. He visits Lydie’s
right medicine for one of his children; unwilling will travel far and wide to sell. He hopes to use the sister, who is looking after his daughter Divine; he
proceeds to buy metal sheets for the roof of the house leaves a pair of shoes for the girl but declines to see
to even see another, who lives away from home, he is building for himself, his wife Lydie and their her, as the parting would be too painful. He barters
in case having to part from him again upsets her small children, one of whom is sick with persistent with customers in markets; everyone asks for big
too much. Acknowledgements of fatherhood as diarrhoea. With Lydie’s help, Kabwita prepares the discounts on his wares. He purchases medicine for
a complex emotional engagement, rather than charcoal. He ties it in enormous bundles on to his his child, and goes to see a merchant about buying
a duty or chore imposed on men by women, are bicycle and sets off. Along the way he meets and metal sheets, but they are far too expensive for him.
talks with other charcoal sellers. A bus strikes his He visits a church and listens to sermons about how
rare in any genre; the careful, unobtrusive manner
bicycle, knocking his load into the dirt, but the others an honest man proceeds through life. He prays.
in which Gras observes these revealing moments

68 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

Phantom Thread
USA 2017
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Certificate 15 130m 23s

Reviewed by Adam Nayman

Control freaks abound in the
See Feature films of Paul Thomas Anderson:

REVIEWS
on page 20 takes one to know one, as the
saying goes. Phantom Thread’s
high-end fashion designer
Reynolds Woodcock, who custom-makes
dresses for royalty and hoi polloi in London
circa 1950s, is as much a model of obsessive-
compulsive mania as Daniel Plainview in There
Will Be Blood (2007); this master-dressmaker
works in softer and more pliant materials
than the wildcat oilman, but is similarly
uncompromising about his process and results.
In contrast to his much lauded, Oscar-winning
performance in Blood, Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t
shoot the works in Phantom Thread. In fact, in
what he has declared will be his final role, he
cedes the movie to his much less heralded co-star,
the Luxembourgeois actress Vicky Krieps. It’s a
gesture that is both in keeping with the script’s
tricky, point-of-view-shifting structure and
with Anderson’s own imaginative immersion
– after two decades of fixating on macho Last mannequin standing: Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps
masochism – inside a female consciousness.
It’s a reversal that makes the director’s eighth Danvers; she’s there to keep the man of the house formal restraint. Acting for the first time as
feature his most ambitious and surprising. from succumbing to true romance.) It’s when his own cinematographer, Anderson opts for
In Inherent Vice (2014), Anderson worked Alma decides that she wants more, and Reynolds a trim efficiency of camera movement that’s
dutifully to Thomas Pynchon’s epic, novelistic begins to worry about what that intimacy is so much more refined than his brash 1990s
template and skilfully integrated his own going to do to his aura of aloof impenetrability, features that he could be a different filmmaker.
obsessions about damaged societal outsiders and that Phantom Thread begins to cultivate its At the same time, the cloistered, claustrophobic
the mythology of his native Los Angeles. Phantom devastatingly funny domestic subtexts. Not compositions and precise, intricate stitching
Thread, which is Anderson’s first movie set fully only does Krieps hold her own with Day-Lewis of Dylan Tichenor’s editing don’t delimit the
outside California, serves a different Master. in the scenes where Alma begins to impose her script’s expansive, suggestive ideas about
Its clear dramatic model is Alfred Hitchcock’s will on Reynolds, but she sustains Anderson’s creativity and co-dependency, nor do they
1940 adaptation of Rebecca, in which a nervous, precarious perspectival conceit, which is to constrain the interpretative spaciousness of a
untutored young woman is brought into the get inside the mindset of a (supposedly) great work that critiques the allure of surfaces without
confidence (and marriage bed) of a mysterious, artist’s muse (basically what Darren Aronofsky tarnishing its own. Phantom Thread’s apparent
fabulously prosperous older man only to find tried and failed to do last year in mother!). severity is a brilliant disguise that only really
herself dwarfed in his affections by the memory The tension between Anderson’s wicked sense unravels in retrospect: what’s underneath is a
of his departed first wife. PTA’s cinephile- of humour and his immaculate craftsmanship battle-of-the-sexes comedy that ruthlessly strips
prankster side finds expression in naming – the latter placed in even sharper relief by away layers of archetype and artifice to arrive
his Second Mrs de Winter stand-in Alma – a scenes depicting Reynolds’s own meticulous at its maker’s most nakedly happily-ever-after
possible salute to Hitchcock’s wife and editor process, legible but not underlined as an ending to date – a resolution whose casual
Alma Reville (and Hitchcock himself is paid allegory for filmmaking – is potent stuff. It’s insanity bypasses Hitchcock, makes a beeline
homage in the Day-Lewis character’s surname). made even more so by the relative sense of for Buñuel, and gets there in one piece.
The Rebecca figure, meanwhile, is not a dead
spouse but, in another plausibly Hitchcockian Credits and Synopsis
nod, the spectre/structuring absence of Reynolds’s
late mother, who did a number on her son to
Produced by Pictures presentation Dr Robert Hardy England, 1950. Fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock
the point that he’s become England’s suavest, JoAnne Sellar in association Harriet Sansom meets waitress Alma while visiting the country;
most seductive commitment-phobe. Dashing Paul Thomas with Perfect Harris
he takes her back to his cottage and uses her for
Anderson World Pictures Barbara Rose
and handsome when he goes out on the town Megan Ellison A JoAnne Sellar/ Lujza Richter measurements for a new dress. His sister Cyril arrives
and given to massive appetites – he meets Daniel Lupi Ghoulardi Film Princess Mona to help, and Alma observes the siblings’ intense,
Written by Company production Braganza perverse co-dependency; the older woman intimidates
Alma when she serves him a hilariously heavy Paul Thomas Executive Producers Julia Davis
her. Over time, Alma becomes Reynolds’s live-in
breakfast while working in a restaurant in the Anderson Adam Somner Lady Baltimore
Editing Peter Heslop girlfriend and fully integrates into his professional life.
countryside – Reynolds is a Bluebeard whose Dylan Tichenor Chelsea Barnard Dolby Digital Cyril warns her brother that she may be overstaying
manor is home not to the corpses of ex-wives Production Design In Colour her welcome. Alma alters Reynolds’s routine and,
but to a wealth of dresses, each measured Mark Tildesley [1.85:1] one night over dinner, he lashes out, criticising her
Music by/ Cast cooking and suggesting she leave. In retaliation,
to the contours of live-in lovers long since Orchestration by Daniel Day-Lewis Distributor
discarded as easily as their formal wear. Jonny Greenwood Reynolds Woodcock Universal Pictures Alma poisons him using mushrooms, which weaken
Production Vicky Krieps International him to the point that he needs her to care for him
At first, Alma feels like an outsider in the Sound Mixer Alma UK & Eire (during the night, he hallucinates a vision of his late
House of Woodcock (go on, read that sentence Adrian Bell Lesley Manville
mother, wearing a wedding dress). After recovering,
Costume Design Cyril Woodcock The film has no
and try to deny that this is a comedy). But she Mark Bridges Camilla Rutherford credit for Director he proposes marriage, and they are happy for a time,
soon grows cosy in her role as Reynolds’s prize Johanna of Photography. until mutual resentments resurface. One morning,
mannequin, assuming pride of place in the ©Phantom Jane Perry Alma makes Reynolds an omelette with the poisoned
Thread, LLC Mrs Vaughan mushrooms, and he eats it, seemingly aware of her
household and unnerving Reynolds’s older sister Production Gina McKee
Companies Countess Henrietta plot; he understands that he needs to be controlled
Cyril, played by Lesley Manville. (In the Rebecca- and cared for, while she accepts a hybrid role as
A Focus Features Harding
esque schema of the script, Cyril is an update and Annapurna Brian Gleeson wife, mother and muse to an impossible man.
of the sinister, manipulative housekeeper Mrs

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 69

 The Post
USA/India 2017
Director: Steven Spielberg
Certificate 12A 115m 47s

Reviewed by Adam Nayman

In the HBO documentary
See Feature Spielberg (2017), the filmmaker
REVIEWS

on page 42 talks about writing stories

with the lens of his camera.
The visual style of The Post
is that of a veteran pounding out something
on deadline. The story goes that Spielberg
pushed back production on two other features
– including the massively budgeted Ready
Player One – in order to get the film into US
cinemas for December, and there’s no denying
the timeliness of the material. Watching the
Washington Post’s publisher Katharine Graham
(Meryl Streep) agonise over the personal,
institutional and ethical implications of printing
top-secret government documents – which
means risking her newspaper’s already failing
financial health and incurring the wrath of
the Nixon White House – can’t help but be
compelling in the context of its own historical
moment, the early 70s, to say nothing of a present
tense where ‘fake news’ is alternately a baseless
accusation and an alt-journalistic imperative.
If anything, though, the film’s snugness (and,
arguably, smugness) as a Trump-era allegory Paper chase: Meryl Streep
is also part of what’s wrong with it. Whatever
its various satisfactions as a righteous, all-star her courage, so that each fine-grained gesture moment featuring swelling music and smiling
Hollywood entertainment – the sort of movie and expression is almost beside the point. reaction shots – The Post makes its audience feel
that wins Oscars, and all that implies – its flaws The overall goal of The Post – beyond a good without working through the ways that
are myriad. For one thing, Spielberg’s timing deceptively light quality of entertainment, America’s print media has become compromised
feels off in trying to replicate the pace and which it more or less delivers, especially when and even complicit in wide-scale obfuscation
urgency of a historically contemporaneous excellent character actors like Tracy Letts and in the ensuing decades. That would be a tricky,
drama such as All the President’s Men (1976). Bradley Whitford are given space to do their troubling subject. What’s going on in The Post
Here, when the camera isn’t hurtling showily thing – appears to be peddling reassurance about can at best be viewed as whistling optimistically
through hallways, it’s plunked down so that both the importance and continued viability of in the dark, and at worst as the sort of gently
Streep and Tom Hanks – playing the paper’s a free press. If the first point is so self-evidently reactionary nostalgia that hangs over a lot of
editor, Ben Bradlee, who was impersonated to true as to be redundant (it’s difficult to imagine Spielberg’s work (including Bridge of Spies).
Oscar-winning perfection by Jason Robards in what a movie arguing otherwise would even And then there’s the matter of the very
Alan Pakula’s classic – can talk at each other and look like), the second is a bit hard to swallow in final scenes, which are embarrassing in
the audience about the gravity of their decisions. such sugar-coated fashion. By turning Graham the way they simultaneously flatter and
It’s not that the seriousness of the subject- and company’s eventual Supreme Court victory insult the viewer’s intelligence and sense
matter is up for debate, or even that Spielberg over (faceless) agents of government censure of history. It’s the sort of broad, nudging
and his collaborators don’t have their hearts into a crowd-pleasing climax – a ‘we did it!’ reference you’d expect from Forrest Gump.
in it. But it’s disappointing that a director who
doesn’t just write with his camera but, at his Credits and Synopsis
best, paints vivid, detailed canvases, has arrived
at something bland and impersonal. The Post
Produced by Music by/Music Production Spielberg film Tom Hanks Carrie Coon
lacks the noir-ish shadows and serrated wit of the Amy Pascal Conducted by Companies Logos: Participant Ben Bradlee Meg Greenfield
director’s 2015 Cold War thriller Bridge of Spies Steven Spielberg John Williams DreamWorks Pictures, Media, Amblin Sarah Paulson Jesse Plemons
Kristie Macosko Production Twentieth Century Partners Tony Bradlee Roger Clark
(which used Hanks far better), and its focus on Krieger Sound Mixer Fox and Reliance Executive Producers Bob Odenkirk David Cross
process – how a lead becomes a story and is then Written by Drew Kunin Entertainment Tim White Ben Bagdikian Howard Simons
Liz Hannah Costume Designer present in Trevor White Tracy Letts Zach Woods
transformed into a physical, printed newspaper Josh Singer Ann Roth association with Adam Somner Fritz Beebe Anthony Essaye
– doesn’t hum in the same way it did in Lincoln Director of TSG Entertainment Tom Karnowski Bradley Whitford
Photography ©Twentieth Century An Amblin Josh Singer Arthur Parsons In Colour
(2012), where the depiction of backroom political Janusz Kaminski Fox Film Corporation, Entertainment/ Bruce Greenwood [1.85:1]
manoeuvring was electric and exciting. Film Editors Storyteller Pascal Pictures Robert McNamara
While Lincoln was clearly designed to Michael Kahn Distribution Co. and Star Thrower Cast Matthew Rhys Distributor
Sarah Broshar LLC and TSG Entertainment Meryl Streep Daniel Ellsberg E1 Films
function as a re-election commercial of sorts Production Designer Entertainment production Katharine Alison Brie
for Barack Obama, The Post plays – perhaps Rick Carter Finance LLC A Steven Graham, ‘Kay’ Lally Graham
unintentionally, but no less potently – as a Washington, 1971. After agreeing, against the advice of will have legal and financial consequences for the
fantasy of a Hillary Clinton administration. some of her board members, to make the ‘Washington paper and its staff. As pressure mounts from all
Streep’s poised, presidential performance is Post’ into a public stock offering, publisher Katharine sides – from her concerned advisers, from Bradlee
an act of wish-fulfilment, lending measures Graham is confronted with a crisis. Her editor-in-chief and his staff, and from the White House of President
of empathy and wisdom to each one of Ben Bradlee is determined to locate and publish a Richard Nixon – Graham finds the courage to give
series of classified documents about the US’s role in the story the go-ahead. She and her staff then
Graham’s vertiginously difficult decisions on the Vietnam War. Despite her friendship with secretary wait anxiously for the outcome of a series of court
the night the Post is meant to go to press with of state Robert McNamara (who commissioned the decisions. The freedom of the press is finally upheld
excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, exposing study, which has been smuggled out of a government by the Supreme Court and the ‘Post’ is vindicated.
government attempts to mislead the public office by idealistic whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg), The film ends by flashing forward to the Watergate
about the Vietnam War. She’s impeccable, but Graham recognises the importance of the story. break-in, which will also be reported by the ‘Post’,
However, she is worried that publishing the material eventually bringing down Nixon’s presidency.
the script keeps prosaically reminding us of

70 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

Renegades Rey
France/Germany/Belgium 2016 France/Chile/The Netherlands/
Director: Steve Quale Germany/Italy/Qatar 2017
Certificate 12A 105m 11s Director: Niles Atallah, Certificate 12A 90m 20s

Reviewed by Trevor Johnston Reviewed by Hannah McGill

Whether the setting is WWII or the aftermath The obscure tale of French lawyer and explorer
of the Gulf War, the likes of Brian G. Hutton’s Orllie-Antoine de Tounens becomes a torrid

REVIEWS
1970 programme-filler Kelly’s Heroes and David O. tangle of conflicting accounts, related via a range
Russell’s 1999 highlight Three Kings have already of elaborately anti-naturalistic approaches,
made the prospect of nabbing your enemy’s in this 2017 Rotterdam competition selection
looted spoils an enticing one. Where both those (it took the Special Jury Prize). “Who do you
antecedents displayed a certain mischief in the think you are?” de Tounens (Rodrigo Lisboa) is
telling, revolving around American protagonists repeatedly asked by his local guide, Juan Bautista
with not-exactly-noble motivations, this Luc Rosales (Claudio Riveros). The answer is that
Besson-produced offering puts a charitable spin de Tounens thinks he is the rightful king of the
on events by turning its snaffled Nazi gold into Mapuche people of Patagonia and Araucanía.
the prospect of humanitarian aid for beleaguered To the Chilean authorities, however, he’s a
Bosnia during the 1990s Balkan conflict. Hence French agent provocateur seeking to inflame
its action-man crew of US Navy Seals get to shoot their ongoing conflict with the Mapuche. And
guns, pilot copters, take out Bosnian Serb heavies to the Mapuche themselves? They’re reserving
and dive for the stolen bullion at the bottom of judgement, since the elder who is supposed to
a lake – but their activities take place under the Stealth freaks: Sylvia Hoeks have handed Tounens his mandate has died.
auspices of a Nato-led peacekeeping force. Given It’s perhaps not surprising that cinema, a
that this is the era of Srebrenica, hardly a shining nod here, and together with director Steven Quale medium highly reliant on pioneering egotists and
hour for UN-sponsored intervention, perhaps (a long-time associate of James Cameron, going acts of cultural appropriation, retains a fascination
the humanitarian angle is understandable. back to The Abyss and Titanic) they conjure up with explorers and colonial pioneers. From The
What’s rather less believable is the key plot some arresting images, such as the divers entering Holy Mountain (1973), Aguirre, the Wrath of God
component involving the destruction of a huge a sunken church, torchlight beams glancing off (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982), to Apocalypse Now
dam by Yugoslav partisans during WWII, which the stained-glass windows in the watery depths. (1979), The Mission (1986) and The New World
left the town where Nazi forces stashed their Clearly a lot of effort has gone into this, (2005), filmmakers have sought to highlight the
stolen French gold and massacred the locals under yet it’s all in service of a project whose bland moral ambiguity of adventures abroad, while
a newly formed lake. Yet only the granddaughter characterisation and forgettable cast suggest revelling in the mad grandeur of the ideas and
of a child escapee from the slaughter now knows a script that went before the cameras several personalities involved. More recently, Ciro
what’s under the water. Did nobody else ever polishes short of the finished article. It’s hard Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent (2015) chose to
notice the missing village or the burst dam, or to get terribly worked up about the exploits of privilege the indigenous side of such an encounter.
think about recovering the victims’ bodies? the film’s quintet of adventurers when there The story told in Rey is a blank canvas for
The screenplay, by Besson and Richard Wenk, is only the most rudimentary differentiation ideas about colonialism. Given the scarcity
simply thrusts on regardless, clearly keen to get between them; when they have their diving of real-world facts about de Tounens and his
to the business of locating and retrieving the gold gear on for the grand finale, it’s hard to tell plan, he may be regarded as a colonial exploiter
from the depths, here visualised with old-school who anyone is anyway. Thank goodness in the asserting a dubious claim in pursuit of profit,
craftsmanship that involved building an entire circumstances for the ever reliable J.K. Simmons or as a positive force against the mistreatment
village in a studio tank in Malta, then flooding as their martinet commander, who brings more of the Mapuche by the Argentine and Chilean
it so that these sequences could done for real, authority and comic timing to his role than it governments; as the tool of larger foreign powers
in camera, rather than falling back entirely on probably deserves, but at least injects some zing that the Chilean authorities believe him to be, or
CGI. Production designer Hugues Tissandier and into the movie. Elsewhere, an honest B-picture as the less interesting figure in a story that’s really
underwater DP Pete Romano certainly deserve a plod is about the best you can say of it. about the moral decisions taken by Rosales. The
film does play with those variable interpretations
Credits and Synopsis – sometimes signalling them with cartoonish
directness, as when the mutually mistrustful de
Produced by Stunt Supervisor Programme of the Paris, 1944. German soldiers raid gold deposits
Tounens and Rosales shoot each other suspicious
Luc Besson François Doge European Union from the Banque de France, and a convoy drives side-eyes across a campfire – but for the most
Raphael Benoliel ©EuropaCorp -
Written by Studio Babelsberg to Yugoslavia to hide the booty there. part it’s less concerned with political whys
Richard Wenk Production Cast In 1995, as war rages in Bosnia, US Navy Seals, part and wherefores than with the murky, mutable
Luc Besson Companies Sullivan Stapleton of the Nato-led peacekeeping mission, mount a covert
Directors of EuropaCorp presents Matt Barnes
notions of place and power that underpin it all.
operation to kidnap a Bosnian Serb general, making a
Photography a EuropaCorp, Charlie Bewley Highly theatrical courtroom scenes, in
Brian Pearson Studio Babelsberg Stanton Baker daring escape in a stolen tank and causing considerable
Underwater: production Sylvia Hoeks collateral damage. US admiral Levin admonishes the which the actors wear masks of papier-mâché,
Pete Romano With the participation Lara Simic five-man team, and orders them to take a break from emphasise the stylised, ritual nature of
Editor of Canal +, OCS Joshua Henry
Florent Vassault and C8 Ben Moran
duty. Chief petty officer Barnes and his comrades find officialdom and the arbitrariness of officially
Production Designer A Steve Quale film Diarmaid Murtagh a purpose of their own, however, when local bar owner sanctioned positions, rights and borders. The
Hugues Tissandier Produced with the Kurt Duffy Lara, girlfriend of team member Stanton, asks them to prosecutors pass to the jury de Tounens’s
Original Music support of Deutscher Dimitri Leonidas help her retrieve the French gold from a nearby lake. As
Composed, Filmförderfonds, Jack Porter
a boy, Lara’s grandfather was the only one to escape
sketched-out bill of rights for his new kingdom,
Arranged and FFF Bayern, Clemens Schick
Produced by/ Medienboard Berlin- Petrovic when Nazi forces massacred everyone else in the signed by French officials Lachaise and
Conducted by/ Brandenburg, FFA Ewen Bremner village, before partisans blew up the neighbouring dam Desfontaines. But does the document bear the
Guitars/Electric - Filmförderungsan- Lance Corporal to drown the Germans in revenge. She now wants to
Bass/Tamburica/ stalt, Filmförderung Jim Rainey
stamp of authority that would transform it from
Melodica/ Baden-Württemberg J.K. Simmons
use the proceeds to set up a humanitarian foundation. words on paper to a mandate to reign? Come to
Percussions/ With the support Levin Barnes’s men draw up plans to locate and refloat
that, do Lachaise and Desfontaines even exist? As
Keyboards/ of the Belgian Tax the bullion, using ‘borrowed’ US equipment and
Programming Shelter system of Dolby Atmos helicopter support. However, Bosnian Serb forces de Tounens describes bringing the Frenchmen
Eric Serra the Belgian Federal In Colour with him to Araucanía, the footage that we see
Sound Government via [2.35:1]
have been trailing them, and drop explosives into
Patrick Veigel Belga Films Fund Part-subtitled the lake just as the Seals are reaching the surface unspooling is of him traversing the forests alone.
Guillaume A EuropaCorp, Studio with the spoils. Levin, who has discovered their plan, Perhaps, after all, he is just insane. But if he is,
Bouchateau Babelsberg and Distributor sends a helicopter gunship to their rescue, killing the
Didier Lozahic Belga Productions Signature his insanity is mirrored by that of a bureaucracy
Matthieu Dallaporta co-production Entertainment Bosnian Serbs. He announces a high-profile return of
Developed with the the gold to France – but has diverted half of the funds
that has become madder the further it has
Costume Designer
Esther Walz support of the MEDIA to Lara’s new foundation to help rebuild her country. separated itself from the very land and
people over which it seeks dominion.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 71

 Roman J. Israel, Esq.
USA/Canada/People’s Republic of China/United Arab Emirates 2017
Director: Dan Gilroy
Certificate 12A 122m 9s

The film finds its only calm in the Reviewed by Jason Anderson
company of the Mapuche people An honourable if often bewildering attempt to
themselves, who call things as they see them revive the outmoded forms of the high-minded
REVIEWS

and are unconcerned with status. Indeed, Hollywood legal drama and the Sidney Lumet-
it’s hard not to share their slight weariness style character study, Roman J. Israel, Esq is full
with the melodrama pitched into their midst of peculiar elements, the most peculiar being its
by this earnest, delusional Don Quixote. title character. Until the slick mid-film makeover
The liberal deployment of degraded and that may be the most stupefying development
damaged film stock and crackly sound, in Dan Gilroy’s uncharacteristically erratic
meanwhile, presumably seeks to affirm the screenplay, he’s presented as a man who checked
idea of unreliable memory and ephemeral out of American society in 1975, judging by his
human concerns, though the fact that such unflattering Afro, his baggy burgundy suit and
effects are so favoured by experimental the steady stream of vintage jazz, funk and soul
filmmakers renders them something of a on his fuzzy orange headphones. Played by any Roman in the gloamin’: Ejogo, Washington
cliché, however lovingly they’re applied. actor who wasn’t of Denzel Washington’s calibre,
Roman most likely would’ve remained a series they deserve. But then Gilroy’s ambitions are
Credits and Synopsis of stereotypical markers of neuro-difference stymied by Roman’s mystifying bid to chuck
(“He’s a bit of a savant,” says someone, in case his ideals and live the high life, and by the
viewers hadn’t noticed) and musty cultural subsequent pile-up of clumsy contrivances.
Produced by d’Amiens, Hubert Black & White
Lucie Kalmar Bals Fund, Corfo, [1.85:1] reference points. But as he’s done so often before, Worse yet, all of these events are supposed to
Screenplay EAVE Puentes, Subtitles Washington gives such texture and depth to his take place within a thoroughly implausible
Niles Atallah Binger Filmlab
Director of With the Distributor character that he’s very nearly able to mask the three-week timespan – which may explain
Photography participation of HOME Artist Film incoherence of the movie that surrounds him. Colin Farrell’s occasional inability to disguise
Benjamin Aide aux Cinémas
Echazarreta du Monde, Centre English subtitles title
The second directorial effort by screenwriter his confusion as his own character makes a
Editor National du Cinéma King Dan Gilroy after Nightcrawler (2014), the film rapid-fire transformation from Gordon Gekko-
Benjamin Mirguet et de l’Image
Art Director Animée, Ministère
shares its predecessor’s aspirations to be the style sharpie to newly idealistic crusader.
Natalia Geisse des Affaires kind of modern-day morality play that was Though some of these problems were
Original Music étrangères et du Lumet’s speciality and was once not so rare on possibly exacerbated by the decision to cut
Sebastián Jatz Développement
Rawicz international, studio release slates. Whereas the earlier hit 12 minutes and reorder scenes following the
Sound Recordists Institut Français strongly evoked Network (1976), with its tale of original version’s poor reception at Toronto in
Claudio Vargas Supported by
Peter Rosenthal TorinoFilmLab - a sociopathic cameraman who was uniquely September, they’re also indicative of a structure
Production Award attuned to TV viewers’ appetites for true-life that’s surprisingly rickety for a writer of Gilroy’s
©Mômerade, Diluvio, and Audience
Circe Films, unafilm Design Fund
carnage, here the model seems to be The Verdict ability. Just as disappointing – especially given
Production With the support (1982). Like Lumet’s star vehicle for Paul Newman, all the trappings as an old-school social-issue
Companies of the Creative
A production of Europe-MEDIA
Gilroy’s collaboration with Washington (which drama – is the short shrift the film gives its
Mômerade, Diluvio in Programme of the the actor executive-produced) uses the lowest ostensible subjects: the legacy of the civil
co-production with European Union rungs of a badly flawed legal system as the context rights movement in the post-Obama present
Circe Films, unafilm, Recipient of
EYE Filmmuseum, post-production for the smaller story of a man caught in an ethical and the corrosive effects of a plea-bargaining
Kiné-Imágenes, grant from Doha crisis he has largely engineered for himself. system that Roman assails as “butchery”.
Sonamos Film Institute
With the support of Produced by For much of the film, the plan goes exceedingly Nevertheless, it’s almost worth enduring
Aide aux Cinémas Mômerade, Diluvio well, even if some of the more promising tangents the movie’s many missteps just to watch
du Monde - Centre Co-produced by
National du Cinéma Circe Films, unafilm,
– such as Roman’s inability to understand what Washington makes of its most minor
et de l’Image EYE Filmmuseum, how African-American activism has changed moments – such as when Roman grumbles
Animée, Ministère Kiné-Imágenes,
des Affaires Sonamos
during the decades he has spent working in his about the metal detector that causes a Gil Scott-
étrangères et du Executive law firm’s back room – get less attention than Heron album to disappear from his iPod.
Développement Producers
international, Catalina Vergara
Institut Français, Niles Atallah Credits and Synopsis
Netherlands Film
Fund + Hubert
Bals, Film- und Cast
Medienstiftung Rodrigo Lisboa Produced by and IN Splitter, L.P. Cast Los Angeles, present day. Roman J. Israel is a defence
NRW, TorinoFilmLab, Orllie-Antoine Jennifer Fox Production Denzel Washington attorney with a prodigious memory but limited personal
Doha Film Institute de Tounens Todd Black Companies Roman J. Israel, Esq.
Denzel Washington A Columbia Pictures skills. When his partner and mentor dies of a heart
Development Claudio Riveros Colin Farrell
Written by presentation George Pierce
attack, Roman discovers that their firm is in debt.
supported by Juan Bautista
Fonds d’aide au Rosales Dan Gilroy in association with Carmen Ejogo Looking for a new job, he meets civil-rights activist
développement du Director of Macro Media, Topic Maya Alston Maya, who is intrigued by his idealism. He also attracts
Photography Studios, Cross Linda Gravatt
scenario du Festival In Colour and the interest of successful criminal lawyer George
Robert Elswit Creek Pictures, Vernita Wells
Edited by Bron Creative, The Pierce; he agrees to work for George, but remains
Amanda Warren
Chile, 1858. French lawyer Orllie-Antoine de Tounens John Gilroy Culture China - Image Lynn Jackson focused on his plans for a class action suit that will
believes that he is the chosen king of the Mapuche Production Designer Nation Abu Dhabi Hugo Armstrong reform the plea-bargain system. George assigns Roman
people of Patagonia and Araucanía, and must Kevin Kavanaugh Content Fund Fritz Molinar to the case of a teenager being tried as an accomplice
Music A Jennifer Fox/Escape Sam Gilroy
unite them against their Chilean and Argentine James Newton Artists production in the murder of a convenience store clerk. Hoping to
Connor Novick
oppressors. However, the Mapuche leader with Howard Executive Producers Tony Plana
make a deal, the young man tells George the killer’s
whom he claims to have agreed this has died, and Supervising Derek Dauchy Jessie Salinas location, but is then murdered in prison. Betraying
the tribespeople are not convinced by his claims. Sound Editor Ben Ross DeRon Horton his own code of ethics, Roman secretly divulges the
Margit Pfeiffer Aaron L. Gilbert Derrell Ellerbee
De Tounens’s local guide, Rosales, betrays him to Costume Designer
killer’s whereabouts in order to collect a $100,000
Alex Lebovici Amari Cheatom
the Chilean authorities, who believe him to be a spy Francine Jamison- Steve Ponce reward from the clerk’s relatives. Maya pursues Roman
Carter Johnson
for France. In court, the prosecution picks holes in Tanchuck Michael Bloom romantically but is confused by his newly lavish
de Tounens’s story, and Rosales portrays him as a Adam Pincus Dolby Digital lifestyle. The killer, now in prison, threatens Roman,
violent revolutionary. De Tounens continues to insist ©Columbia Pictures Charles D. King In Colour telling him he knows about the reward. Roman is
Industries, Inc., Kim Roth [1.85:1]
that he has a right to the lands, complaining that CCP Inner City Film Poppy Hanks murdered in the street by an associate of the killer.
none of his ‘subjects’ has been called to testify. He Holdings, LLC, Macro Betsy Danbury Distributor
The final scenes reveal that Roman returned
is sentenced to exile, with execution if he returns Content Fund I, LLC, Brian Oliver Sony Pictures the money before he died, and that George will
to Chile. De Tounens dies in France in 1878. Bron Creative Corp. Releasing UK continue his work by filing the class action suit.

72 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

Song of Granite
Ireland/Canada 2017
Director: Pat Collins

Reviewed by Ben Nicholson

Much of Pat Collins’s career,
See Rushes both in his documentary output

REVIEWS
page 8 and 2012’s fiction debut Silence,
has been devoted to portraying
the palimpsest of myth,
history and landscape that is his native Ireland.
These interests coalesce into perhaps their most
dynamic and resonant form yet in his new film
Song of Granite, an ostensible biopic of sean-nós
singer Joe Heaney, whom he paints into folkloric
tradition with a vacillating arrangement of fiction
and documentary. Along with the influence of his
own prior practice, Collins has taken inspiration
from cinéma vérité and the ethnographic work of
Robert Flaherty, in particular his 1934 study of
survival off the west coast of Ireland, Man of Aran.
The introductory text to Man of Aran states
that the fight for existence and independence is
“a fight from which [the man] will have no respite
until the end of his indomitable days”. This could
well be a description of Collins’s fictionalised
version of Heaney, who becomes a symbol of the
various elements of Irish identity that fascinate the
director, not least the salt-of-the-earth everyman
and peripatetic labourer. There are a number
of scenes that could almost have been snipped
directly from Man of Aran – the whole of Song of
Granite is shot in crisp, textured monochrome
– particularly those detailing Joe’s childhood in Folk hero: Macdara Ó Fátharta
Connemara around 1930. A later one sees the
adult Joe (at this point played by singer Mícheál rather to create an impression of the man through concert, like when archival footage shows the
O Confhaola) at ease while building a dry stone discrete but related moments from his life. real Joe as a lauded performer in America while
wall in the rugged Irish countryside. It’s a brief They act like the individual stories about a great O Confhaola is seen evoking Murnau’s The Last
aside, a character grace note, which carries great hero that conflict and entangle to form a single Laugh as a downtrodden doorman in a hotel.
pathos after Joe’s migration to Glasgow for dock complex vision, or like keys played together as A third actor, Macdara O Fátharta, plays
work, with documentary audio from the real Joe’s the chords in an elegiac hymn. The same effect is Joe in his later years, when he worries about
son describing his father’s prolonged absences. gleaned from the fluid definition of ‘biopic’ that dying in a foreign land and when his legacy
“You always had your eye on the horizon,” a friend Collins adopts, allowing him to shift from fiction is on his mind. It creates the impression of
reminds him, but Joe feels cursed to wander, like to documentary to supposition with complete Song of Granite as a lament for Joe, another
Mad Sweeney of Celtic legend. He never feels freedom. A consistency of deeper truth allows song passed down to be sung of the heroes
more at peace than when fleetingly rooted in his for moments that should be jarring to work in of yore, now returned to the land.
own soil, either literally or when in communion
with the ghosts of his home through song. Credits and Synopsis
“I suppose they go way back to the poets who
wrote them long ago,” a young Joe (Colm Seoighe) Produced by Inc., Harvest Films Ltd Cast A portrait of Irish folk singer Joe Heaney (1919-84),
speculates about the unaccompanied ballads that Alan Maher Production Mícheál Ó Confhaola combining drama, documentary footage and music.
his father has bequeathed to him, “but we still Jessie Fisk Companies Joe in his 40s
Martin Paul-Hus A Marcie Films,
Ireland, c1930. Joseph Heaney is a quiet boy living
Macdara Ó Fátharta
sing them.” They take on a spiritual dimension Producer Amerique Film Joe in his 60s
in a Connemara village with his parents. A series of
in the hands of Collins, who emphasises their Pat Collins production with Jaren Cerf vignettes describe his adolescent life: cutting up
Written by Harvest Films, South Rosie potatoes for farming; fishing for lobsters at night;
importance within both the local village Pat Collins Wind Blows, Roads Pól Ó Ceannabháin dancing a jig on the shore; learning about the Bible in
community where Joe grows up and within the Eoghan Mac Entertainment Pádraig Ó hÉanaí
the local schoolhouse. Throughout all this runs a rich
Giolla Bhírde In association with Kate Nic
immigrant communities that he later joins. A Sharon Whooley Bord Scannán na vein of traditional folk songs, which Joe learns from his
Chonaonaigh
night of songs in a Glasgow pub ends with a spine- Director of hÉireann/Irish Film Máirie father. The boy’s shyness stops him singing in public,
Photography Board, Broadcasting
tingling solo from O Confhaola that conveys, in Richard Kendrick Authority of Ireland,
Peadar Cox though he performs reluctantly to his classmates.
Darach Decades later, in the 1950s and 1960s, an adult
an unbroken take, the beguiling power of sean- Editor TG4 and with the Griogair Labhruidh
Tadhg O’Sullivan financial participation Joe is working in Glasgow’s shipyards. He wanders
nós singing, regardless of the words being sung. Griogair
Production of Société de Lisa O’Neill the streets drunk with a co-worker; he watches
It’s like a voice from the old country reaching Designers Développement Damien Dempsey his children play from a window, before leaving
through time and space, and makes for one of Pádraig O’Neill des Enterprises singers in Dublin pub the kitchen without a word to his wife. A night of
David Blanchard Culturelles - Québec, Colm Seoighe
the most haunting scenes in recent memory. Composers Téléfilm Canada young Joe
singing with other Irish workers in a pub leads
Collins’s take on Joe ties him to the land in a Delphine Measroch A film by Pat Collins to Joe performing to a rapt crowd. Interspersed
timeless way, as when “the mountains stretched Guido Del Fabbro Developed with In Black & White with these scenes is documentary footage of Irish
Sound the support of [1.85:1] migrant labourers, and also audio of Heaney’s
into the sky”. He is, as a result, equated with the John Brennan Bord Scannán na Part-subtitled children candidly recalling their father’s absences.
Sylvain Bellemare hÉireann/Irish
characters of Irish legend, the types who would Bernard Gariépy Film Board Joe eventually embarks on a voyage to North
Distributor
inhabit such songs: Finn MacCool, Mad Sweeney Strobl Executive Producers Thunderbird America, where he works as a doorman and seems
and Heaney himself He’s as complicated as those Costume Designers Philip King Releasing to long for home. In the years preceding his death
Louise Stanton Tina Moran
famed characters too: “Sometimes I don’t know,” Joe worries about his legacy, and records songs for
Nicole Pelletier Keith Potter
posterity. Archival footage shows him performing
he confesses, “if I’m the warrior or the beast.”
©Marcie Films Ltd, in Rhode Island in 1966, before the film returns to
This mythic quality is reinforced by the 9338-0415 Québec Ireland, where Joe meets his younger self by a river.
decision not to follow a single linear narrative, but

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 73

 Star Wars Episode VIII The Last Jedi
USA 2017
Director: Rian Johnson
Certificate 12A 151m 38s

Reviewed by Kim Newman

Spoiler alert: this review reveals a plot twist
In his 1980 parody song ‘Yoda’ (to the tune
REVIEWS

of The Kinks’ ‘Lola’), Weird Al Yankovic

imagines the plight of Mark Hamill/Luke
Skywalker circa The Empire Strikes Back: “The
long-term contract that I had to sign says I’ll
be making these movies till the end of time.”
The viewpoint character of George Lucas’s
original Star Wars trilogy, Hamill’s Luke suffered
somewhat – upstaged by his cooler friends
and relations, removed from the happy ending
allotted to Princess Leia (Luke’s putative love
interest, until she turned out to be his sister) and
Han Solo, and shunted off to be the equivalent
of a hermit monk while the rest of the galaxy far,
far away got on with business. While Harrison
Ford became a major movie star/grouch icon
and Carrie Fisher a notable writer/wit, Hamill
was wandering through low-rent stuff like The
Guyver (1991), Time Runner (1993) and the remake
of Village of the Damned (1995), doing his most
impassioned work as the demented voice of the
Joker on various animated Batman projects.
For Hamill and Luke, Rian Johnson’s entry in
the long-running series (given the pastiche of
chapter-play format, it should perhaps be labelled Let there be lightsabres: Daisy Ridley
a serial) is a belated opportunity to get their due.
Glimpsed at the end of J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars The salty white topsoil churns to reveal blood-red a ribbing administered long ago and far away
Force Awakens (2015), Hamill finally dominates a dirt as men and machines scramble against in the first and best of the Star Wars parodies,
Star Wars film as a grizzled, regretful presence – a each other. Johnson, unlike Abrams or Gareth Ernie Fosselius’s short Hardware Wars (1978).
former apprentice turned master, contemplating Edwards in the 2016 flashback entry Rogue One, At one point, Johnson – probably the best
his many failures yet returning with the grey leavens political high seriousness and fan-service director to sign up for the franchise and certainly
gone from his beard for a climax in which he tear-jerking with enough charm and humour the best writer-director – has droid R2D2 spur
stands up to a ridiculously overwhelming attack to prevent The Last Jedi becoming the biggest on a disconsolate Luke by replaying the ‘you’re
(“Fire every gun we have at that man,” snarls downer ever delivered at Christmas by the Walt my only hope’ holo-message from Leia that
his nephew-nemesis) and departs mysteriously. Disney Company. Star Wars has a poor track kicked off the whole saga in Star Wars. It’s an
The previous instalment was a last hurrah for record with cuteness and comedy – no one is achievement that this particular tale of defeat
Ford in this universe – though Han Solo is due clamouring for the return of the Ewoks or Jar Jar and death – by the end of the film, the entire
back in a prequel next year – but this is all about – but the guinea pig/penguin/puffin-like Porgs, rebel alliance can fit in one small spaceship – can
Hamill, with a side reverence for the genuinely natives of Skywalker’s island retreat, infest odd convincingly deliver its own spark of hope… an
departed Carrie Fisher (who cedes a little space corners of the film (and the Millennium Falcon) abused stable boy on a backwater world, head
to Laura Dern’s chic Vice Admiral Holdo). without becoming cloying. The neatest inside full of the tales of Luke Skywalker, plays with
It’s a valedictory entry, as obviously patterned joke has what seems to be a shot of a landing a broom as if it were a light sabre, and looks
on The Empire Strikes Back as The Force Awakens spaceship turn out to be a steam iron, paying back to the stars for adventure in a just cause.
was on Star Wars (1977), though Johnson plays
more tricks on long-term fans who think they Credits and Synopsis
can detect where character arcs are going. In
Empire, Luke and his master Yoda are separated
from the rest of the gang on a spiritual retreat/ Produced by ©Lucasfilm Ltd Maz Kanata A distant galaxy. The warships of the oppressive
Kathleen Kennedy Production Domnhall Gleeson First Order, commanded by General Hux, pursue the
training exercise; here, Daisy Ridley’s Rey nags Ram Bergman Company General Hux
Written by A Lucasfilm Ltd Anthony Daniels
fleet of the Resistance. Pilot Poe Dameron leads
the reluctant master to school her in the ways a costly mission to destroy the First Order’s most
Rian Johnson production C-3PO
of the Force, while a large cast of old and new Based on characters Executive Producers Gwendoline Christie formidable ship, but is demoted by Admiral Leia
friends and enemies struggle through their created by J.J. Abrams Captain Phasma for disobeying orders. Rey – a young woman with
George Lucas Tom Karnowski Kelly Marie Tran
own subplots and a great many awe-inspiring potentially great supernatural powers – has tracked
Director of Jason McGatlin Rose Tico
explosions. Like Empire, this chronicles a Photography Laura Dern down Luke Skywalker, last of the Jedi Knights. She
Steve Yedlin Vice Admiral tries to convince him to rally to the Resistance, but
disastrous period for the Resistance – a term, Film Editor Cast Amilyn Holdo he has been disillusioned since his nephew/disciple
incidentally, taken from The Force Awakens and Bob Ducsay Mark Hamill Frank Oz Ben Solo turned against him and swore allegiance to
Production Designer Luke Skywalker Yoda
embraced by real-world critics of President Rick Heinrichs Carrie Fisher Benicio del Toro
Supreme Leader Snoke of the First Order. Finn, a former
Trump – because penultimate episodes must Music General Leia Organa DJ stormtrooper, and Rose Tico, a recently bereaved
take us to the brink of disaster before a valiant John Williams Adam Driver Resistance worker, recruit rogue DJ to disable a device
Production Ben Solo, ‘Kylo Ren’ Dolby Atmos on Snoke’s flagship, which the First Order are using to
rally in the final chapter. All the heroes’ plans Sound Mixer Daisy Ridley In Colour
track the Resistance fleet, but DJ betrays them. Rey
fail – which means John Boyega and new face Stuart Wilson Rey [2.35:1]
still believes Solo, who has taken the name Kylo Ren,
Costume Designer John Boyega
Kelly Marie Tran spend most of the film haring Michael Kaplan Finn Some screenings is redeemable, and stands with him when he murders
down a plot cul-de-sac – and the cause of good Stunt Co-ordinator Oscar Isaac presented in 3D Snoke – only to be shocked when he takes command
Rob Inch Commander of the First Order. Leia’s forces take refuge on a barren
only avoids extermination by kamikaze gestures. Visual Effects Poe Dameron Distributor
There’s plenty of emotion and spectacle, & Animation Andy Serkis Buena Vista
planet and Ren (her son) leads an attack against
Idustrial Light Supreme Leader International (UK) them. Luke intervenes so that the surviving rebels can
with Adam Driver’s Ben Solo/Kylo Ren the & Magic Snoke escape in the ‘Millennium Falcon’, at the apparent cost
most complicated character in the entire saga, Lupita Nyong’o of his life. Luke’s example inspires others to resist.
and a terrific final skirmish on a planet whose

74 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

Tempestad
Mexico/The Netherlands/Canada 2016
Director: Tatiana Huezo

Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton

Mexican-Salvadorean documentary-maker
Tatiana Huezo’s Tempestad is a film of disparate

REVIEWS
parts that leaves space for the viewer to find
the connections. This is true, firstly, of its two
parallel narrative strands. The great majority of
the movie’s dialogue is delivered in voiceover
monologue by two different women. The first
to be heard is Miriam Carbajal. Miriam is never
seen speaking on screen, and we never get a
definitive visual identification of her, though
we do glean certain facts from her narration:
that she is the mother of a young son, Leo; that
she had a leg amputated at some point earlier
in life; and that she was imprisoned at a Gulf
Cartel-run prison in Matamoros for human
trafficking, a crime she did not commit. Guilt or
lack thereof is in this case apparently a matter
of very little concern – Miriam describes being
told before her imprisonment that she will be
serving as one of the ‘pagadores’, a purely symbolic
conviction to make the police look proactive,
doing time for other people’s crimes. The second
voice, which comes with a kind, weathered
face behind it, appears nearly a third of the way
through the movie, and is that of Adela Alvarado, Conviction politics: Miriam Carbajal
a middle-aged woman who comes from a long
line of circus people, and who today operates offer up ready readings – as Miriam begins to ominously masked, are overwhelmingly a force
a small family circus. These two women take describe witnessing the cavalier killing of a fellow of men; the civilians that she lingers on are a more
turns guiding the movie, and as they do, one prisoner, for example, the accompanying image mixed bunch, but her camera favours the female,
is compelled to ask why, exactly, their stories is that of a labourer shovelling away dirt at the often alone, pensive and, implicitly, vulnerable.
have been matched. Being narrative-minded shoulder of a road, as though digging a grave. This reads as an attempt to universalise Miriam’s
creatures, we might even anticipate an eventual More generally, the purpose of the imagery in the experience – identified only as a voice, she might
merging of these separate accounts – is Miriam Miriam sections seems to be to build and sustain very well be any one of these women, and their
kin of Adela’s? Are they headed for a meeting? an atmosphere of hovering, imminent threat. fate might well be hers. This single guiding
An answer, of sorts, arrives in a scene that is a Huezo has an eye for inclement, leaden skies, and concept doesn’t take long to take root, however,
rupture, the longest piece of onscreen dialogue in her film is fairly filled with footage of Mexican and though Huezo and cinematographer
the film, when Adela is seen dissolving into tears federal police armed to the teeth, interrogating Ernesto Pardo find several resonant and
during a convocation with female relatives. This travellers at roadside checkpoints, patrolling striking framings, a few different, complicating
precedes her describing the kidnapping of her the highways or just milling about menacingly. points of approach or distinct, variegated
daughter Monica, a university student believed If their presence is meant to be in some way movements might have helped Tempestad to
to have been sold into sex slavery or worse with reassuring to the citizenry, the content of Miriam better bear its running time. The movie can’t
the full knowledge and connivance of the local and Adela’s narratives tells us that it shouldn’t be. be faulted for the conscientious duty it does to
police. Here, then, is something like a connection The police officers that Huezo chooses to show, its subjects, though this failure to shift gears
– not only are both women mothers separated stocky in their black body armour and often shuts it off from the highest demands of art.
from their children by cruel circumstance, but
Miriam has gone to prison for human trafficking, Credits and Synopsis
the illegal industry that has sucked Monica into
its nebulous depths. All that is missing – and this
Producers Maupomé Film and Video, S. de Made with the With the support of [1.85:1]
is very much the point – are the actual culprits. Nicolás Celis Tatiana Huezo R.L. de C.V. - Terminal support of Grupo Instituto Mexicano Subtitles
If the relationship between the testimonies of Sebastián Celis Original Music Films, S.A. de C.V. Cuprum, Grupo de Cinematografía
Screenplay Leonardo Heiblum Production Cleber, IDFA Bertha Made with the Distributor
Miriam and Adela clarifies somewhat with the Tatiana Huezo Jacobo Lieberman Companies Fund, Fondation Alter Estímulo Fiscal de la ICA Films
passage of time, that between the dialogue and Director of Sound Designer Pimienta Films Cine, IMCINE, Los L.I.S.R. (EFICINE)
Photography Lena Esquenazi presents in Cabos International Executive Producer
the imagery in Tempestad remains ambiguous. As Ernesto Pardo co-production Film Festival 2013, Jim Stark
Miriam begins her monologue, there is an almost Editors ©Pimienta Films, with Cactus Film & Gabriel Figueroa Film
Lucrecia Gutiérrez S.A. de C.V. - Cactus Video Terminal Fund Desarrollo In Colour
descriptive quality to the accompanying scenes.
Her narration of leaving the prison, for example, is
Mexico, present day. A documentary matching narratives is at first ambiguous, until Adela discusses
matched to images looking out of an unidentified the recorded testimonies of two women with the kidnapping of her daughter Monica ten years
crumbling structure through punctures in the images captured across the countryside. previously. Monica remains missing, one of the
concrete walls; and when she describes going to Miriam Carbajal, a young mother never definitively countless victims of the human-trafficking rings that
a bus terminal with the intention of travelling identified on screen, describes being taken from operate in full view of, and in connivance with, the law
back home across Mexico to reunite with her her airport job and arrested on trumped-up human- – the criminals that Miriam has served time for. Miriam
trafficking charges, then shipped off to a prison in begins by describing her release and homecoming,
son, we are obligingly given images of a terminal Matamoros that’s privately run by the Gulf Cartel and images of bus travel across the countryside
and a bus driving through the countryside. for a shakedown profit. Miriam testifies that she was accompany her story; there are also images of the
The bus, the ribbon of rugged road ahead and guilty of nothing, her imprisonment merely a symbolic omnipresent police force, which gives the sense of
the terrain that both women pass through will gesture by the federal police, who confessed as Mexico being under the control of a hostile occupying
remain constants, though as Miriam’s dialogue much during her booking. Miriam’s account switches army. Adela’s story is illustrated with scenes of circus
with that of Adela Alvarado, who is seen with her life, climaxing with her making herself up as her clown
turns to recounting her time inside the prison, the
extended family in the small circus that they run. character. Miriam’s narration ends as she is reunited
relationship between speech and image changes, The relationship between these women’s with her son Leo, and with images of water and rebirth.
suggesting loose visual analogy. Some pairings

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 75

 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
USA/United Kingdom 2017
Director: Martin McDonagh
Certificate 15 115m 10s

Reviewed by Graham Fuller

Halfway through Martin McDonagh’s stylish,
bitter black comedy Three Billboards Outside
REVIEWS

Ebbing, Missouri, a fawn appears before Mildred

Hayes (Frances McDormand) as she’s planting
flowers beneath one of her three billboards. These
signs ostensibly protest the failure of local sheriff
Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) to find the
killer and rapist of Mildred’s teenage daughter
Angela, but they have taken on the quality of a
lurid memorial. For the first time in the film, and
only because she’s alone, Mildred drops her hard-
as-nails act when she sees the fawn. She tenderly
addresses the visitor, speculating whether it’s
Angela reincarnated. “Well, you’re pretty, but you
ain’t her,” she says. After the fawn has wandered
off, Mildred bows her head and almost sobs.
Mildred’s encounter with the fawn is highly
reminiscent of the scene in which Helen Mirren’s
HRH is fleetingly confronted by a soon-to-be-
butchered stag near Balmoral in The Queen (2006)
– a metaphor for the hounding to death of another
beautiful young woman. It comes shortly after
a revelatory flashback to an argument between
mother and daughter: Mildred won’t let Angela Justice writ large: Frances McDormand
use her car because she’s been smoking pot all day;
Angela sneers that her mother is a hypocrite, as she McDonagh has proceeded quite cynically What places Three Billboards in a higher
used to drink-drive with Angela and her brother as a filmmaker. In Bruges was beautifully shot emotional register than its two predecessors
Robbie in the car. It’s true, Mildred admits, but she and glitteringly written, but what was the is the tragic poignancy of Angela’s death
did it only because her husband Charlie had been point of it? Seven Psychopaths was an ingenious and the sincerity of the sorrow Mildred
hitting her. These details convincingly sketch in but heartless postmodern metafiction about expresses to Willoughby and Anne. The late
the family’s wretchedly dysfunctional history. The screenwriting that became tricksy by the end rapprochement between Mildred and Dixon
exchange ends with Angela snapping that if she and lacked the richness of Spike Jonze and – played to perfection by McDormand and
can’t have the car then she’ll walk, and maybe she’ll Charlie Kaufman’s like-minded Adaptation Rockwell – begins when he tells her where they
get raped on the way – to which Mildred passively- (2002). McDonagh has also shown too many can find the rapist drifter who has menaced
aggressively retorts that she hopes she does. debts to Quentin Tarantino – the cancer- Mildred and beaten up Dixon. It turns into
That Angela was indeed raped that night as afflicted Myra (Linda Bright Clay) facing something much more hopeful when they
she was dying, and that her body was burned down the man about to shoot her (Harrelson) confess to each other that they’re uncertain
by the killer, explains Mildred’s attempt to in Seven Psychopaths closely echoes Dennis whether or not they’ll kill him – McDonagh
alleviate her crushing feelings of guilt by lashing Hopper facing down Christopher Walken in persuasively rejecting the eye-for-an-eye morality
out at Willoughby’s police department. It’s a the Tarantino-scripted True Romance (1993). jokingly discussed in Seven Psychopaths.
form of therapeutic transference, desperate and
unwarranted but understandable. Mildred’s Credits and Synopsis
refusal to remove the billboard signs – even
though Willoughby says he’d do anything Produced by Carter Burwell Finance LLC Diarmuid McKeown Willoughby, ‘Bill’ Penelope
to catch the killer, that the law prevents him Graham Broadbent Production Production Rose Garnett Sam Rockwell John Hawkes
Pete Czernin Sound Mixer Companies David Kosse Officer Dixon Charlie Hayes
carrying out widespread DNA testing, and Martin McDonagh Jonathan Gaynor Fox Searchlight Daniel Battsek Abbie Cornish Peter Dinklage
that he is himself dying of cancer – elicits Written by Costume Designer Pictures and Film4 Film Extracts Anne Willoughby James
an appalled silence from the sheriff. The Martin McDonagh Melissa Toth present a Blueprint “Don’t Look Lucas Hedges Kerry Condon
Director of Pictures production Now” (1973) Robbie Hayes Pamela
conversation evokes Jean Renoir’s words from Photography ©Twentieth Century A Martin Zeljko Ivanek
La Règle du jeu (1939) – “The awful thing about Ben Davis Fox Corporation, McDonagh film Cedric, desk sergeant In Colour
Film Editor Film4, a division Made in association Cast Caleb Landry Jones [2.35:1]
life is this: everybody has their reasons.” Jon Gregory of Channel Four with TSG Frances McDormand Red Welby
Mildred comes closer to expressing guilt Production Designer Television Entertainment Mildred Hayes Clarke Peters Distributor
Inbal Weinberg Corporation, and Executive Producers Woody Harrelson Abercrombie 20th Century Fox
when she apologises to Willoughby’s wife Anne Music TSG Entertainment Bergen Swanson Sheriff William Samara Weaving International (UK)
(Abbie Cornish) for perhaps contributing to his
subsequent suicide, though Anne absolves her Missouri, present day. Local resident Mildred Hayes rents Willoughby shoots himself. Dixon, grief-stricken,
of blame – Mildred is transparently innocent, three dilapidated billboards from advertising manager clubs Welby and throws him out of his first-floor
Red Welby. Mildred’s signs denounce popular sheriff Bill office window. New sheriff Abercrombie fires Dixon.
as she well knows. Though taken seriously by Willoughby for not solving the rape and violent murder of A crop-haired guy menaces Mildred. Willoughby
police officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), the her teenage daughter Angela seven months previously. posthumously pays the next month’s rent for the
feud between Mildred and Willoughby had in Willoughby tells Mildred that, lacking DNA billboards. Dixon torches them. Mildred firebombs the
fact become a collusion, as evidenced by Mildred evidence, he cannot catch Angela’s killer, and that police station. Burned in the blaze, Dixon is hospitalised
stepping outside their enmity to sympathise – he is himself dying of cancer. Angela’s depressed alongside Welby, and apologises to him. Mildred and
“Oh, baby” – when he coughs blood during one brother Robbie berates Mildred about the billboards. the dwarf James, who has provided her with an alibi
When dentist Geoffrey criticises her, she drills one for the time of the fire, go on a disastrous date.
of their confrontations. As usual, McDonagh is of his thumbnails. Mildred’s estranged husband Dixon eavesdrops on the crop-haired guy boasting
alert to how conflicts are codified into games Charlie nearly throttles her. Macho racist police about raping and burning a woman. He beats up Dixon,
by opponents who share affinities: Colin Farrell officer Dixon, in reality a pathetic mother’s boy, but Dixon gets his DNA. The crop-haired guy was
and Ralph Fiennes’s characters in McDonagh’s steps up the feud by arresting Mildred’s black serving overseas when Angela was killed. Dixon and
In Bruges (2008) and the two opposing ‘teams’ in co-worker Denise for marijuana possession. Mildred resolveanyway to drive to Idaho, where his
After spending a perfect day with his wife Anne car is registered, to kill him. They set off the next day,
Seven Psychopaths (2012) all set playground rules
and their two small daughters, the terminally ill their desire to kill the crop-haired guy already waning.
before embarking on western-style shoot-outs.

76 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

The Unseen Walk with Me
United Kingdom 2017 United Kingdom 2017
Director: Gary Sinyor Directors: Marc J. Francis, Max Pugh
Certificate 15 108m 13s Certificate PG 93m 56s

Reviewed by Kim Newman Reviewed by Richard Combs

Ever since Don’t Look Now (1973), marriages ‘Walk with me’ is a phrase that is both a
fractured by grief over the loss of a child have fair summary of the physical action in this

REVIEWS
been rather overused in horror-suspense films – documentary about Vietnamese Zen Buddhist
usually, just to give characters some relationship master Thich Nhat Hanh and the essence of
wheels to spin until they are haunted (The his invitation to spiritual awakening. A lot of
Changeling, 1980) or attacked by psychopaths walking (mostly in silence) is done by Nhat
(Vacancy, 2007). Gary Sinyor’s The Unseen works Hanh and his community of monks and nuns
harder on this underpinning, disguising itself at Plum Village, the centre he has founded
as a study of upper-middle-class family trauma in south-west France. The film begins with a
for about half its running time, before venturing single file of devotees in the woods, and then
very politely into slasher-stalker territory. expands to a group with Nhat Hanh in the
Jasmine Hyde and Richard Flood are middle, taking their walk at a slow devotional
unnervingly convincing as the shattered parents, pace. Connecting with Mother Nature is a way
who both find that they can no longer trust their of enacting the quality of ‘mindfulness’ that has
senses in the aftermath of their son’s drowning become Nhat Hanh’s now widely known – and
under the cover of a basement swimming pool. The walls have ears: Jasmine Hyde enacted – method for living in the here and now.
The film literally privileges the viewpoint of The walking groups proliferate through the
Hyde’s Gemma, with the camera eye sharing both as a failed pharmacologist provides him with a film, especially once visitors from the everyday
her periods of fuzzy vision (the first thing to blur supply of suspect sleeping pills; and his hobby as world arrive at Plum Village by tourist coach,
is a page from the Bible she is reading aloud to a recordist of birdsong means he has a stalker’s or when the order goes on one of its lecture
record an audiobook of the Book of Psalms) and toolkit of surveillance equipment on hand. tours to the US. Silence may no longer be as
her complete blindness over the equally deep- There are almost equal genre precedents for strictly observed here – children join busily
seated troubles of Flood’s Will, who starts hearing psychopathic violence directed at temporarily in the walking – but still there is something
things (his son’s ghostly voice) at precisely incapacitated heroines from charming called ‘sacred silence’ which can be a pathway to
the same time his wife stops seeing them. strangers and from brooding husbands, and mindfulness, to peace and serenity. As one of the
Given that these are the sort of people who Sinyor keeps seesawing between the male nuns explains, “Silence can absorb all sounds. It’s
have a basement swimming pool – and can leads, who have a knack for being threatening like a black colour is the absorption of all colours.”
think of nothing when Will, in the throes of but having semi-plausible excuses for it. Thus Walk with Me doesn’t attempt to delve too far
incipient religious mania, asks if they have while Gemma is slowly noticing things amiss into the quality of mindfulness – which has been
committed any sins worth such punishment with the helpful newcomer in her life, it’s one of the complaints levelled against the film
– there’s an air of brittle smugness to their pre- possible that her husband is going violently – and only offers brief glimpses of what is said
bereavement lifestyle that risks alienating the off the rails – in an attempt to reach the dead on Nhat Hanh’s speaking engagements. Equally
most empathetic viewer. However, this edge of child, he lights candles in church and creates a terse titles summarise his biography prior to the
estrangement serves the plot, which needs to homemade pentagram. At one point, Gemma founding of Plum Village: “In 1966 Zen Buddhist
keep ambiguous the nature of the threat posed. wakes up to find that he has left her alone in master Thich Nhat Hanh was forced into exile
Simon Cotton’s Paul comes into the film the wilderness to be closer to their son’s ghost. following his efforts to bring about peace during
as a blurry Good Samaritan, a soothing voice Like a lot of paranoid suspense films, the Vietnam War.” The exile ended when he was
who helps Gemma through her first serious The Unseen works best when its menace is given permission to return to Vietnam in 2005.
episode of impaired vision (diagnosed as a indeed unseen. It may be a little low-wattage Instead of a straightforward account of
form of panic attack). Later, when she finds a in the thrills department (though there’s an either the movement or its founder, Walk with
stranger in her home, she screams and sets off unnerving sequence as Gemma is struck blind Me offers a not always complementary split,
an alarm… before Will reassures her that Paul while driving on a motorway in the rain), but a two-tier recounting of both. Most
is her mystery lifesaver. Reassurance is only Sinyor – previously a comedy specialist (Leon of the film is taken up with its visual
temporary, however, as omens continue: Paul the Pig Farmer, Stiff Upper Lips) – works creepy
lives alone (with “no wife and no wifi”) on a tricks with blurs, sounds, whispers and glances.
remote Lake District estate, where Gemma and However, the finale seems embarrassed by horror
Will are invited to stay to escape their grief. conventions it feels obliged to follow – all the
There, only a single upper-storey room has shaky way to a happy family coda that’s somehow
mobile-phone reception; Paul’s shadowy past chilly in its return to stultifying normality.

Credits and Synopsis

Producer the support of the [1.85:1] England, present day. Gemma Shields and her
Gary Sinyor BFI’s Film Fund husband Will are grief-stricken after the accidental
Written by Executive Producers Distributor
Gary Sinyor Richard Donner Miracle drowning of their young son Joel. Gemma suffers from
Director of Philip Hodari Communications spells of hysterical blindness. Blundering out of her
Photography Leslie Lipowicz house into the road, she is rescued by Paul Deitch, a
Luke Palmer Michael Rosenberg stranger who takes her to hospital. When medication
Editor Joe Sinyor
only partially alleviates the problem, Gemma and
Paco Sweetman David Tucker
Art Director Will take advantage of Paul’s offer to put them up
Joe Waters at a guest house on the estate he is renovating in
Composer Cast the Lake District. However, it transpires that Paul
Jim Barne Jasmine Hyde is an obsessive stalker who has bugged the Shields
Sound Designer Gemma Shields
Tom Jenkins Richard Flood home and is playing back recordings of Joel to drive
Will Shields Will mad while planning to take Gemma for his own.
©Magnet Films 5 Ltd Simon Cotton Gemma fakes a blind spell to force Paul to reveal his
Production Paul Deitch true nature. Paul murders a taxi driver Gemma has
Companies Sushil Chudasama
Magnet Films
called in an attempt to escape, and makes a potentially
Himesh
presents lethal attack on Will. Gemma overpowers and kills
Developed with In Colour him. Later, Gemma and Will dote on their new baby.
In a Buddha world: Walk with Me

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 77

 Youth
People’s Republic of China 2017
Director: Feng Xiaogang
Certificate 15 135m 18s

documentary of events and customs Reviewed by Roger Clarke

at Plum Village and on tour: the rituals The cinema of South-east Asia is no stranger to
of dress; the preparation of food; monks and films about acting and dance troupes. This most
REVIEWS

nuns shaving their heads; the wrapping of the recent iteration comes from Feng Xiaogang,
sticks that are used to sound a gong every 15 the ‘Chinese Spielberg’, who is immensely
minutes to bring devotees out of their daily popular in his own country but generally little
activities and back into the present moment. known in the west, despite the succès d’estime
Alongside this there is a first-person narration, of his 2016 feature I Am Not Madame Bovary.
spoken by Benedict Cumberbatch and taken Youth is by any standards a musical. It’s
from Nhat Hanh’s own journals, Fragrant Fame bloodied by the theme tune of MASH,
Palm Leaves, which recounts a struggle that with perhaps a nod to the ‘scar dramas’ of
we don’t see dramatised in the film’s calm the 1980s, such as Xie Jin’s Hibiscus Town.
flow of lyrical imagery: “I had always thought Indeed, it’s almost as if the Fifth Generation
of myself as a solid entity. But suddenly I never happened, so determined is the director
saw that the entity I had taken for me was to avoid nuance and refinement in his big
really a fabrication”; “I became a battlefield. I push for sentiment and melodrama.
experienced destruction upon destruction.” The film follows the fortunes of a man and a
Curiously, with the existential struggle taking woman over 40 years of tempestuous Chinese
place solely on the soundtrack, this frees the film history, beginning in the 1970s, when they
visually to become something else: a performance are both young dancers in an army cultural Red flag: Miao Miao
piece, almost carnivalesque. We may not hear too troupe providing entertainment for the soldiers
much from Nhat Hanh, but we see the crowds – mostly stylised propaganda performances of the film – busy with grandiose camerawork,
gathered in his arenas, with banks of lights and of uplifting Maoist doctrine, but inevitably cinematographer Luo Pan borrowing heavily
microphones. One advertising display features suffused with aspects of ancient Chinese culture. from, yes, Steven Spielberg, but without
his name beneath those of Elvis Costello and By the end of the film, these two have become incorporating Spielberg’s ability to develop
Tony Bennett; and during a visit to a juvenile invalids, damaged goods, witnesses to vast character. There’s a lot of whizz-bang and tears,
detention facility, one of his acolytes attempts social change and losers in the transition to but little soul. The lush and over-upholstered
to describe him to the inmates: “You know modern wealth – a process that often favours orchestral score verges on the infantile.
Yoda in Star Wars? He’s a little bit like that.” the most selfish (a theme also partly explored Poor Xiaoping is sent mad by the sights she
in Jia Zhangke’s recent Mountains May Depart). witnesses, and is cured only when she attends
Credits and Synopsis We first meet elfin and enthusiastic He the last ever performance of her old troupe, led
Xiaoping (Miao Miao) as a new recruit in the out to the fields in a restorative dance. In the
troupe, and it doesn’t take long for the ‘mean third and final act, which becomes increasingly
Produced by Production Distributor
Marc J. Francis Companies Thunderbird girls’ to get on her case, bullying her about her stretched in narrative competence, some of
Max Pugh Speakit Films Releasing clothes and her hygiene. A rather poignant the old troupe have become rich, while Feng
Written by presents in
Marc J. Francis, association with incident, when she filches a uniform to have is reduced to arguing with corrupt officials
Max Pugh SunnyMarch a film a photograph taken, seems a portent of bad who have impounded his vehicle – he is
Narration from by Marc J. Francis
Fragrant Palm & Max Pugh
luck and pack rejection. (That photograph, now scraping a living delivering books and
Leaves: Journals Supported with a reassembled after a bitter tearing-up, resurfaces doesn’t have the means to pay them off. That
1962-1966 by production grant at the end of the film, 40 years later.) Meanwhile, he is a disabled war hero means nothing.
Thich Nhat Hanh from Sankalpa,
Cinematography Bertha Foundation Liu Feng (Huang Xuan), who accompanied The film hit the news after being sensationally
Marc J. Francis Executive Xiaoping to the camp, always keeps an eye out dropped from the release roster in China prior
Max Pugh Producers
Edited by Nick Francis for her, and their fates seem inextricably linked. to the recent party conference, with political
Marc J. Francis Himesh Kar The film segues from a large number of observers straining to explain the reasons. The
Max Pugh Chade-Meng Tan
Music Composed William G.A. Moore gratuitous shower scenes, which linger on the truth is there’s nothing in this film that would
and Arranged by women’s bodies, to a second-act reverse, when displease the status quo – it’s largely on-message,
Germaine Franco narration by
Sound Designer Benedict
in 1979 the dancers are sent to the front of the right down to the attack on corruption. Made
Anna Bertmark Cumberbatch Sino-Vietnamese War and there made to suffer almost entirely for the domestic market, it’s not
©Speakit In Colour
horribly. The wartime attacks are – like the rest destined to be celebrated in years to come.
Productions Ltd/ [1.78:1]
Max Pugh Part-subtitled Credits and Synopsis
Documentary. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen
Buddhist master, has founded the Plum Village centre Producers Production Dingding Lin China. The film follows the fortunes of a man and a
in south-west France, where he puts the philosophy of Wang Zhonglei Companies Li Xiaofeng woman over 40 years, beginning in the 1970s, just
mindfulness into practice with a community of young Wang Zhongjun A Zhejiang Dongyang Shuwen Hao before the death of Mao Zedong. He Xiaoping joins
Gong Yu Mayla Media, Huayi Wang Tianchen
monks and nuns. (In 1966, Nhat Hanh was exiled from Song Ge Brothers Pictures, Can Chen an army cultural troupe, having been recruited by
Vietnam because of his efforts to bring an end to Qi Jianhong iQiyi Motion Pictures Wang Keru handsome and kind-hearted lead dancer Liu Feng. A
the war.) Excerpts from his journals recounting his Zhang Fangjun (Beijing) Co., Beijing ‘Little Ballet’ country bumpkin, Xiaoping is teased and scolded by her
struggles to establish an authentic sense of self are Written by Sparkle Roll Media, Sui Yuan fellow students, especially when they find out that her
Geling Yan Beijing Jingxi Culture Drolma
read over scenes of his acolytes (who have forsworn Based on her novel & Tourism Co.,
father has been imprisoned as a political undesirable.
sex) going about their daily routines. Every 15 Director of August First Film Dolby Atmos/DTS:X Feng, meanwhile, harbours a crush on one of the other
minutes, chimes are sounded to bring them back into Photography Studio production In Colour dancers. In 1979, the Sino-Vietnamese War breaks out,
an awareness of the immediate moment. Coaches Pan Luo Executive Producer [2.35:1] and the members of the troupe come face-to-face
bring American visitors to Plum Village; the visitors Editor Feng Xiaogang Subtitles with the horrors of the conflict. Xiaoping loses her
Zhang Qi
join in communal activities such as long walks to Production Designer Distributor mind, and Feng an arm. The troupe is disbanded.
reconnect with Mother Nature. Nhat Hanh goes with Haiying Shi Cast Trinity Film Later, with the economy shifting towards modern
members of the order on a speaking tour to the US. A Music Huang Xuan capitalism, life has improved for many of the troupe’s
nun makes a rare visit to her father in an old people’s Zhao Lin Feng Liu Chinese former members, but not for Xiaoping and Feng.
Dai Xiaofei Miao Miao theatrical title
home. The group conducts a teaching session in Sound Xiaoping He Fang Hua
She is still recovering from her incarceration in a
a juvenile detention centre. One monk visits his Terry Tu Zhong Chuxi mental hospital; he is scraping a living delivering
family and goes through photo albums detailing his Costume Designer Xiao Suizi books. They find each other again and live out
youthful hopes of romantic and business success. Xiaoli Liu Yang Caiyu their days as a devoted but unmarried couple.

78 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

 Home cinema
HOME CINEMA

Dark doings: (clockwise from top left) The Big Combo, Force of Evil, Secret Beyond the Door and The Dark Mirror

WHERE THE GENRE ENDS

A fine collection of Hollywood together four works that are unique and seductive An attempt by Lang and producer Walter
texts purely on their own terms, without the Wanger to beat Hitchcock at his own game,
noir highlights the wild variety organising (and limiting) noir categorisation. with their own super-Rebecca, Secret stars Joan
of the films that are lumped Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, few Bennett (Mrs Wanger at the time) as a dreamy
of the critics Arrow has enlisted use the term ‘noir’. heiress who marries a charming British architect
together under that label Rather than subjecting the films to prescriptive (Michael Redgrave) only to discover he is a
discussions of structure/plot/character/setting/ near-penniless widower with a teenage son,
FOUR FILM NOIR CLASSICS morality, they concern themselves with the a disfigured housekeeper, a wife who died
THE DARK MIRROR / SECRET BEYOND THE specifics of each production, focusing on how set in suspicious circumstances, and a series of
DOOR / FORCE OF EVIL / THE BIG COMBO problems and practicalities, directorial freedom rooms in his New England mansion where
Robert Siodmak / Fritz Lang / Abraham Polonsky / Joseph (or lack of it) dictate the films’ look and mood. he recreates the scenes of famous murders.
H. Lewis; US 1946/1947/1948/1955; Arrow Academy; In discussing Robert Siodmak’s 1946 “This one went wrong from the beginning,”
Region B Blu-ray and Region 2 DVD dual format; Certificate psychological thriller The Dark Mirror, a film Lang told Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg in
PG; 363 minutes; 1.37:1, 1.78:1. Features: extensive about an extreme form of sibling rivalry, in the 1969 book The Celluloid Muse. Both Michael
commentaries and essays on all four films; The Big Combo which Olivia de Havilland plays identical Brooke in his booklet essay and Alan K. Rode in
original screenplay; radio plays; reprints of contemporary twin sisters, David Cairns is excellent on the the audio-commentary approach Secret as a near-
reviews; writings by Lang, Polonsky and Cornel Wilde way Eugen Schüfftan’s split-screen special incoherent document of ruin, a film, as Brooke
Reviewed by Andrew Male effects and Siodmak’s own on-set attempts to reminds us, “about the complexities of married
Has ‘film noir’ had its day as a critical term? disguise the use of doubles – heavy shadows life and human relationships whose principal
Apologies for this incendiary opening gambit, across the face, slow tracking shots from the collaborators were themselves either married
especially in this review of Arrow’s impressively rear, particular camera angles – contribute (Wanger/Bennett) or in a romantic relationship
assembled and gorgeously remastered four- to the film’s unsettling look and mood. (Lang and screenwriter Silvia Richards)”.
disc box-set, but after reading the essays in It’s film analysis that holds hard to that
the collection’s beautifully presented 58-page old Jacques Rivette aphorism, that every film Few of the critics here use
hardback book, and especially after listening to is a documentary of its own making, and it’s
the in-disc commentaries, two things stood out. an approach that pays dividends, especially the term ‘noir’. Instead, they
One was the impressive individual qualities of
each film. In terms of studio creation, authorship,
when we get to the collection’s second
psychological thriller, Fritz Lang’s Freudian-
concern themselves with the
artistry and individual style, Arrow has brought gothic snake-pit Secret Beyond the Door. specifics of each production
80 | Sight&Sound | February 2018
 HOME CINEMA
The film is only more rewarding as a result,
when you realise the glazed defiance of Joan
Bennett’s performance and Michael Redgrave’s
New releases
look of locked-in panic were as much a result
of Lang’s brutalising treatment of them on
set as of their ability to inhabit their roles, or THE APARTMENT on Wilder and Lemmon by David Cairns. There’s
that the spiralling madness of Secret’s final Billy Wilder; US 1960; Arrow Academy; Region B Blu- also a new interview with Hope Holiday, the
half-hour is effectively documentary evidence ray; Certificate PG; 125 minutes; 2.35:1. Features: book, actress who plays Baxter’s barfly pickup; vintage
of a director driving his production company featurettes, commentaries, screenplay, trailer. interviews with the cast and crew; a making-of;
and his own career into the ground. Reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson a Lemmon profile; plus screenplay and trailer.
A bigger problem with the noir category The Apartment may be set during the Christmas
emerges when analysing a sui generis holidays but, despite its sophistication and THE CHAMPION: A STORY OF
work like Abraham Polonsky’s 1948 film, peerless wit, it offers little in the way of festive AMERICA’S FIRST FILM TOWN
Force of Evil. “Most [noirs] were constrained cheer. This is a romantic comedy macerated in Marc J. Perez; US 2015; Milestone Film; Region-free
by budget, genre and studio,” explained moral corruption and director Billy Wilder’s DVD; 35 minutes; 1.85:1. Features: additional vintage
Polonsky. “Force of Evil is a genuine free trademark cynicism. Inspired by the British doc Ghost Town: The Story of Fort Lee (1935); eight
expression of a point of view. We own it.” weepie Brief Encounter (1945), but transferred vintage silents, totalling more than 2.5 hours of
Force of Evil was a one-off – a poetic realist to mid-century Manhattan, The Apartment is restored footage; booklet with contextual essays.
Cain-and-Abel tale of two brothers (played by as much about loneliness and self-loathing as Reviewed by Michael Atkinson
John Garfield and Thomas Gomez) brought it is about love. And yet, the joy of its airtight This two-disc package, by way of a few modest
down by the numbers racket and, by extension, script by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, its docs and a collection of unassuming early silents,
American capitalism, made with almost complete bittersweet score by Adolph Deutsch, and Joseph limns the entirely forgotten tale of Fort Lee, New
artistic control by a group of socialist New LaShelle’s gleaming monochrome widescreen Jersey, which between 1909 and 1913 became the
York Jewish intellectuals during the very brief cinematography make it a film to savour – not American centre of film production, predating
cultural ascendancy of the ‘Hollywood Left’. to mention the famous forced-perspective sets the Southern California enclaves. Fort Lee was
In discussing Force, Andrew Spicer, Frank by Alexandre Trauner, which transform an conveniently across the river from downtown
Krutnik and – in back-and-forth audio office block into an anonymous dystopia. Manhattan, where landscapes for westerns,
commentary – Glenn Kenny and Farran Jack Lemmon plays the hapless C.C. Baxter, Hometown USA melodramas and cliffhangers
Smith Nehme variously trace the look of the a desk jockey at a New York insurance firm were hard to find; in 1912 D.W. Griffith shot The
film to Cocteau, Vigo and Edward Hopper, who is so much of a loser at love that instead of New York Hat and The Musketeers of Pig Alley in Fort
and the dialogue to the King James Bible. The enjoying flirtations of his own he lends his flat to Lee, and Edison was merely the first to use the
physicality of the performances is a constant his sleazy colleagues for their adulterous trysts. cliffs known as the Palisades for action scenes. A
theme – how the mood and weight of scenes Shirley MacLaine plays Fran, the unattainable few entrepreneurial independents quickly realised
shifts depending on how Garfield and Gomez object of his affection, a charming lift operator that saving travel costs from the city by building
employ their physical presence within the frame. whose heart is broken by one of those duplicitous studios in Jersey made sense. It began with the
It’s analysis that relocates the film with its office creeps: a callous boss played by Fred smalltime outfit labelled The Champion (later
makers and its audience, rather than its critics. MacMurray, returning to the insurance business to be folded into the Universal amalgamation
As Krutnik argues, Force of Evil’s place in 70s noir after his previous turn for Wilder in Double devised to challenge Edison’s trust), and spread
criticism is problematic; its lack of box-office Indemnity (1944). Lemmon and MacLaine make to branches set up by Pathé, Eclair, Willet, Kalem,
success – and the philistinism of earlier audiences an adorable couple, two lost souls in the mean and Alice Guy-Blaché’s Solax. Theda Bara, Mary
– both being exaggerated in order to justify its streets, but sharing an ambiguous attraction Pickford and Mack Sennett all began their careers
critical rescue from oblivion. Eddie Muller’s right up until the film’s famous last line. in Fort Lee; even the African-American pioneer
breakdown of The Big Combo similarly pushes Disc: The film appears here in a really gorgeous Oscar Micheaux filmed there. Only a handful
against standard readings. Instead of approaching new 4K restoration, taken from the original of years and one Hudson River-freezing winter
it as a work authored by either embattled auteur camera negative, with deep blacks and crisp later, the West Coast beckoned as the more
Lewis or cinematographer John Alton, Muller detail, and Arrow Academy has gone to town on sensible all-purpose station for the industry.
views this cruel, brutal crime thriller as, in part, this Blu-ray release, extras-wise. It begins with an From the earliest Champion film (1910’s The
a battle of industry hierarchies between its illustrated 150-page book featuring three essays Indian Land Grab) to Perez’s 2015 doc (really, a
star Cornel Wilde and the fast-working hired on the film. The excellent set of supplements on paid-for promotional film produced by the Fort
hand Lewis, the emerging ugliness of Wilde’s the disc includes a full-length audio commentary Lee Film Commission), this is amateur night, and
cop character neatly echoed in the crude edits from Bruce Block, an introduction and scene all the more fascinating for that. Perez’s zippy,
Wilde the star made to Lewis’s long takes. commentaries by Philip Kemp, and a video essay digitally busy film can be clogged with stirring
Muller, the president of the Film Noir music and wistful chapter titles, but the 1935
Foundation, has written extensively on the amateur film Ghost Town: The Story of Fort Lee, by
genre and would be the last person to argue for non-professional New Jerseyans Theodore Huff
the invalidity of noir as an organising term for a and Mark A. Borgatta, is pure home movie, a silent
certain kind of post-war Hollywood cinema. But dirge for collapsing studio buildings abandoned
his analysis, along with the others here, focuses only 16 years earlier. “Whole towns ‘somewhere
on how films are shaped by institutional and in France’” – a title card reads – “were built and
individual factors, rather than say, how they reflect ‘destroyed’ on the lot where the High School
post-war society or tick noir’s stylistic or narrative now stands.” The eight vintage films, made
boxes. In identifying and rescuing such films for between 1910 and 1912, and including a Florence
closer analysis and regard, the noir devotees of the Lawrence one-reeler and the earliest version
70s and 80s did immensely valuable work. But each of Robin Hood, are rough-hewn samples of the
individual film is its own site of complexity and era’s thousands of films, most now lost forever.
to see the four here singled out for their difference, Discs: Adequate-as-can-be digital sprucings of
in a box-set that has anthologised them for their neglected antiques, with the foreseeable
supposed similarities, was a source of deep joy. Unholy office: Jack Lemmon in The Apartment degree of trauma and decay.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 81

 New releases
GUNS AT BATASI European village ripe with gothic atmosphere. labourer, sporting worryingly blond eyelashes
HOME CINEMA

John Guillermin; GB 1964; Signal One; Delightfully sharp image quality allows us to and the obligatory trousers held up with string.
Region B Blu-ray and Region 2 DVD dual format; enjoy the autumnal tones of the leaves that litter Macho man saves the naughtily independent girl
Certificate PG; 103 minutes; 2.35:1. Features: audio Fisher’s frame, as well as a naughty chance to in the end, of course, but one wonders whether
commentary by actor John Leyton; trailer. chortle at the cheapness of the gorgon’s barely- marvellous marriage to her stiff-jawed saviour
Reviewed by Trevor Johnston wiggling barnet and, conversely, the liveliness will be any less of a prison than that attic room.
The poster copy for this quintessential exercise of Lee’s hefty proto-Lord-Summerisle wig. Discs: The finished package was unavailable
in post-colonial hand-wringing sounds Cushing and Lee’s absence is felt in Michael for review, but it includes a fine essay on Fanatic
suspiciously like they’re trying to sell another Carreras’s Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964), by Dr Josephine Botting. Aficionados will enjoy
Zulu: “Outnumbered but never outfought!” runs but 1920s-style pulp thrills abound. Mysterious an abundance of trailers, mini-docs, interviews,
the hyperbole. “Besieged in a jungle powder keg men sport fezzes, brash desecrators get their and essential nerdy stuff, including the Super 8
half way between heaven and hell.” All of which cloth-fisted comeuppance, and an explorer’s silent cut-down of Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb and
makes it sound like those restless natives are in for beautiful daughter (Jeanne Roland) is romanced a 1970s comic-strip adaptation of The Gorgon.
another pasting from Her Majesty’s armed forces, by a roguish chap (Terence Morgan) with a
when the film’s actually an anguished accounting natty ancient-Egypt-meets-atomic-era temple THE PRIVATE LIFE OF
of much-changed political realities eight decades in his basement. The plot is indistinct, and SHERLOCK HOLMES
on from the derring-do at Rorke’s Drift. Set in a this particular mummy may be even less Billy Wilder; USA 1970; Eureka Entertainment; Region
fictional African republic in the aftermath of a expressive than Lee’s ancient undead upstart, B Blu-ray; Certificate PG; 125 minutes: 2.35:1. Features:
British handover, it sees the UK military reduced but he does have a nice line in heavy breathing, video interview with Neil Sinyard; The Missing Cases
to the status of bystanders when regime change and can squash heads with his fusty feet. (50 mins) – presentation of deleted sequences; deleted
puts a rather fiercer independence movement in Maniac (1963) is an enjoyably improbable epilogue scene (audio only); archive interviews.
charge, many of whom have previously received Psycho-influenced thriller. Crisply shot in ’scope, it Reviewed by Kate Stables
political mentorship and army training from sees Kerwin Mathews’s gadabout artist unwisely “I want to change the image of him. He’ll still be
the Brits. Standing his ground at a rural outpost, helping his lover (Nadia Gray) free her mad tall, aesthetic and cerebral. But he’ll be real,” Billy
however, is Richard Attenborough’s by-the- hubby from prison. Beautiful French location Wilder insisted to his biographer in 1969. His
book sergeant-major, who’s not about to take settings – especially a creepy quarry, used to lavish, melancholy comedy-drama concentrates
orders from anyone who isn’t his commanding great effect – draw attention from improbable on Holmes as a disappointed romantic,
officer, precipitating a tense stand-off. accents and a ludicrous sub-Hitchcockian plot. misogynist and dope fiend, happily engaged
Credited to novelist Robert Holles and various Last, and best, is Silvio Narizzano’s Fanatic in Odd Couple sparring with Colin Blakely’s
other hands (including Peeping Tom writer Leo (1965) in which a dangerously headstrong young energetic, blundering Watson. Severely lopped
Marks), the screenplay’s pretty sceptical about lady (Stefanie Powers) foolishly visits her dead down from its planned four-episode roadshow-
the rebels’ idealistic credentials, makes no bones fiancé’s mother (Tallulah Bankhead, eye-rolling length before release, it flopped with audiences
about Britain’s utterly diminished authority, like a trouper, no doubt drawing inspiration expecting a spoof or a Basil Rathbone-style
and reserves most sympathy for Dickie’s old from the ladies in 1962’s What Ever Happened mystery. The curious viewer can play detective
warrior, a near-caricature of punctiliousness, to Baby Jane?). This fearfully modern painted and appraise the missing sections, whose script
but no racist even if his paternalist attitudes hussy is promptly imprisoned in the attic, to be pages, stills and sections of original footage
are shaped by years of sterling service. A superb force-fed porridge and passages from the bible are connected up as storylines in the extras. In
showcase for a great character actor, and forever more, lest she sinfully marry another chap truth, the deleted scenes feel a tad laboured.
Guillermin’s composed widescreen filming (monolithic man’s man Maurice Kaufmann). There’s much to admire, however, even in the
gets the most out of it, while understandably Peter Vaughan, meanwhile, is brilliantly sinister witty and wistful truncated 125-minute version,
struggling to convince us the Pinewood backlot in one of those parts where he prowls around handsomely mounted on veteran Alexandre
is a convincing ringer for more exotic climes. the woods with a shotgun, and Yootha Joyce, as Trauner’s impeccably detailed sets (real cobbles
Disc: A sharp transfer is the selling point, the Bankhead’s tormented maid, reminds us she was for Baker Street). Robert Stephens’s arrogant,
solo commentary from co-star John Leyton a fine actor. Donald Sutherland is an only-in-it-for- faintly Wildean Holmes delivers Wilder and
agreeable but somewhat repetitive. the-money vision in crumpled denim as an idiot I.A.L. Diamond’s cutting dialogue with relish.
His waspish ennui anticipates today’s highly
HAMMER VOLUME ONE: strung TV incarnations of Holmes (Mark Gatiss
FEAR WARNING! admits that he and Steven Moffat borrowed from
MANIAC / THE GORGON / THE CURSE Wilder’s bromance for Sherlock). Christopher
OF THE MUMMY’S TOMB / FANATIC Lee’s smoothly cynical Mycroft (“I’m the only
Michael Carreras / Terence Fisher / Michael Carreras / actor to have played both brothers,” he boasts
Silvio Narizzano; UK 1963/1964/1964/1965; Indicator/ in the extras) adds to the general elegance,
Powerhouse Films; Region-free Blu-ray; Certificate 15; as does Miklós Rózsa’s yearning score.
344 minutes; 1.85:1/1.66:1/2.35:1/ 1.85:1. Features: Disc: Cinematographer Christopher Challis’s
documentaries, audio commentaries, cast and crew Scottish landscapes come up soft and green
interviews, introductions; The Gorgon comic-strip adaptation, in this pleasing transfer. If Neil Sinyard’s deft
originally published in House of Hammer magazine; analysis is the key interview, Christopher Lee’s
The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb Super 8 Version; Die! reminisces also offer pleanty to savour, and
Die! My Darling!: alternative presentation of Fanatic with editor Ernest Walter’s frank admission that he’d
the US title sequence; booklets with new essays by Kim have changed Wilder’s downbeat ending.
Newman, Marcus Hearn, Kat Ellinger and Jo Botting.
Reviewed by Vic Pratt PULP
Four lesser-known shockers from the Studio Mike Hodges; UK 1972; Arrow Video; Region B Blu-
that Dripped Blood emerge resplendent in this ray/Region 2 DVD (separate releases); Certificate
splendidly random box. First up is Terence Fisher’s 12; 95 minutes; 1.85:1. Features: interviews (Hodges,
final outing with Peter Cushing and Christopher cinematographer Ousama Rawi, editor John Glen,
Lee, The Gorgon (1964). Possibly the least known producer’s son Tony Klinger), trailer, booklet.
of Fisher’s works with the dynamic duo, this is Reviewed by Michael Brooke
a period-set tale of an ancient Greek monstress The cinematic equivalent of the difficult
on the snake-haired prowl in a misty Mittel- Playing it ghoul: The Gorgon second album, the noir pastiche Pulp

82 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

Revival

HOME CINEMA
SCREAMPLAY
Forty years after it was released,
Dario Argento’s visionary horror
classic looks more bizarre and
more gorgeous than ever
SUSPIRIA
Dario Argento; Italy 1977; Cult Films; Region B Blu-ray;
Certificate 18; 98 mins; 2.35:1. Extras: new Argento
interview; audio commentary by Kim Newman and Alan
Jones; interview with Argento and Claudio Simonetti;
interview with Simonetti, Norman J. Warren and Patricia
McComack; feature: The 4K Restoration Process
Reviewed by Michael Blyth
Two of the hottest tickets at last year’s BFI
London Film Festival were Luca Guadagnino’s
summertime swoonfest Call Me by Your Name
and the 4k restoration of Dario Argento’s baroque
shocker Suspiria. Italian roots aside, the two films
are poles apart in terms of style and content, a fact
which makes Guadagnino’s upcoming remake
of Argento’s beloved girls’ school screamer such
a tantalising prospect. While remakes of much-
loved horror classics are no surprise these days, it
is a testament to the iconic status of Argento’s film
that Guadagnino should choose to follow up his Coven ready: Jessica Harper as Suzy Bannion
much-lauded hit with a reimagining of it. Forty
years after he changed the face of horror cinema, Deep Red (1975), Suspiria is above all a sensory Given the quality of the transfer, it is a pity that
Argento’s influence remains pleasingly palpable. experience, not a logical one. While the Cult Films’ packaging fails to match the beauty
For audiences today, Suspiria is perhaps whodunnit frameworks of Argento’s crime capers of the film. Their cover image, a reproduction
the definitive Argento film – the one that demanded they made at least some sense (albeit of the design used for the previous Nouveaux
immediately springs to mind when considering not much), the fantastical nature of Suspiria freed Pictures/Cine-Excess and Cult Films release, is
the auteur’s eye-popping set pieces and penchant him from the shackles of rational storytelling, a far cry from the bespoke artworks we have
for operatic violence. So closely associated is allowing him to focus on style and atmosphere. got used to seeing from some specialist home
the film with its director that it is easy to forget Argento already had a reputation as a master cinema labels (check out Arrow Video’s recent
that this exercise in supernatural excess came visual craftsman, but Suspiria allowed him to Argento reissues The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
as a shocking departure at a time when Argento experiment more than ever before, to refine his and Phenomena to see how it should be done).
had built a reputation for sleek and stylish giallo vision and enhance it. Nowhere is this more Still, it’s what’s on the inside that counts,
pictures, which traded in black-gloved killers evident than in the lurid, still astounding colour and there are some decent extras to enjoy
and maverick detectives, rather than ghouls scheme. Cinematographer Luciano Tovoli’s use here – a new 27-minute interview with
and goblins. From Suspiria’s hyper-styled, of imbibition Technicolor to retain colour in Variety’s Nick Vivarelli and Argento himself,
nightmarish opening moments, in which the film print (a process used for The Wizard of and an hour-long documentary about the
a young American ballet student arrives in Oz and Gone with the Wind) bathes the film in a 4K restoration process are the highlights.
Germany during a ferocious storm, it is clear wash of unnatural light, resulting in a primary Elsewhere, other extras, such as the audio
Argento had abandoned the ‘real world’ – even glow so rich as to feel entirely otherworldly. commentary by Kim Newman and Alan Jones,
before the witches have come out to play. Given Argento’s painstaking efforts to create a and interviews with the likes of Goblin’s Claudio
The dancer in question, Suzy Bannion (Jessica truly unique visual experience (and aural one too Simonetti, horror director Norman J. Warren
Harper), eventually arrives at her destination, the – let us not forget to mention the multi-layered and critic Patricia McComack are gratefully
prestigious Tanz Dance Academy in Freiburg, soundscapes of prog-rockers Goblin), Cult Films’ carried over from the previous release.
Germany, only to find its doors locked. Frantically similarly meticulous work is much appreciated. It is worth noting the similarly timed
trying to gain access, she sees another student Restored in accordance with Argento’s original arrival of an alternative 4K restoration from
fleeing in crazed terror. The next day, when Suzy Technicolor Dye Transfer specification, TLE US label Synapse of the original uncut,
is welcomed into the school, she learns that the Films’ 4K scan looks every bit as vibrant as you uncensored Italian 35mm camera negative
young woman from the previous night has been would hope, more than doing justice to Argento’s with colour correction supervised by Luciano
found murdered. As Suzy adjusts to her new outré vision. Meanwhile, once degraded or lost Tovoli. This Region A release also features
home, a series of strange events pile up – her frames have been reinserted to produce the a host of additional extras not found in the
health deteriorates and she is put on a special most complete version of the film possible. Cult Films set, including commentaries by
diet, she hears strange noises in the night, the Argento scholars Derek Botelho, David Del
school is plagued by a maggot infestation and, of From the hyper-styled, Valle and Troy Howarth, a 30-minute visual
course, more disappearances. It is not long before essay by Michael Mackenzie, a featurette on
Suzy realises that macabre powers are at work nightmarish opening moments, the German locations and a retrospective on
here – but who exactly is running this school?
Co-written with Daria Nicolodi, Argento’s
it is clear Argento had the making of the film – all wrapped up in a
lovingly designed steelbook. Completists, no
then partner and star of his previous film, abandoned the ‘real world’ doubt, will want to own both editions.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 83

 Rediscovery
HOME CINEMA

IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA
In his pioneering documentaries, move, setting a peripatetic pattern that the son of future works like the superlative Jaguar.
would follow. Jean studied civil engineering, The material that makes up that film, finally
the French filmmaker Jean Rouch and fled the European conflagration in 1941 screened in 1967, was originally filmed in the
explored the vast diversity of to ply his trade working for Travaux Publics in mid-1950s, following Rouch’s spending years
Niger, then still a French colony. While on the in the field studying the myths and traditions
Africa – and gave Africans a voice job, he was entranced by animistic possession of the Songhay peoples. Having first trekked
ceremonies, which inspired the same part of him along, camera in tow, with a trio of Songhay men
EIGHT FILMS BY JEAN ROUCH that had been besotted with the irrationality travelling on foot to the coastal Côte d’Ivoire,
MAMMY WATER / THE MAD MASTERS / MOI, UN of surrealism. Returning in 1946 after having Rouch years later made an assemblage of the
NOIR / THE HUMAN PYRAMID / THE LION HUNTERS / served in the engineering corps of the Free French footage for two of his subjects, friends and
JAGUAR/ LITTLE BY LITTLE/ THE PUNISHMENT Army and started an anthropology doctorate, longtime collaborators Damouré Zika and Lam
1956-71; Icarus Films/ Region 1 DVD; 19/ 29/ 74/ 93/ 81/ he brought along a camera, a spring-loaded Ibrahim Dia, who would provide the film with a
93/ 96/ 64 mins; 1.33: 1; Features: Documentary Jean 16mm Bell & Howell purchased at a Paris flea jocular, freewheeling, and loquacious voiceover
Rouch, The Adventurous Filmmaker by Laurent Védrine market, and got down to his life’s work. from the vantage-point of settled adulthood.
Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton The earliest Rouch films contained in this new Damouré and Lam, crack improvisers who
“The cinema isn’t for us. It isn’t for poor people.” four-disc set by Icarus Films, redressing a dearth of have the natural rapport of a double-act, return
So says one of the protagonists of Jean Rouch’s available English-subtitled works by the director, in the remarkable Little by Little, a variation
Moi, un noir, ‘Edward G. Robinson’, an immigrant are Mammy Water and The Mad Masters, both dated on Rouch’s best known film, 1961’s Chronicle
to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, from Niger, who came 1956. The latter film, one of Rouch’s most infamous of a Summer (1961), which likewise reverses
with dreams of a better life but instead finds and unshakeable, observes a meeting of members the usual direction of the ethnographic gaze
himself a peon day-labourer at the port, living in of the Hauka possession cult. Black natives of Accra to study the Parisians. Our heroes are here
the Treichville slums. What Robinson says is, in in present-day Ghana, then the British-controlled playing representatives of a successful trading
one sense, belied by his Hollywoodised nickname, Gold Coast, they congregate to participate in a concern in Ayorou, Niger, charged with studying
and those of his friends, who go by the sobriquets ceremony which involves roasting dog meat and the ways of city living in preparation for the
Tarzan, Dorothy Lamour, and Eddie Constantine. giving themselves over to a lather-lipped, jerky- company’s building of a high-rise headquarters,
Even if they have to scrimp to go to the movies, limbed trance state in which each Hauka takes a set-up that allows for comedy that plays like
they’re all of them self-styled stars – their on an alter-ego such as the general, the governor, a more provocative version of Sacha Baron
imaginations colonised by American cinema or the corporal of the guard – strutting, ridiculous Cohen’s man-in-the-street ambush work – at
while their land is colonised by Europe – featuring parodies of the high-handed colonial ruling class. one point Damouré is found wielding calipers
in the films of their own lives. In another The Mad Masters, which was awarded Best to practise phrenology on confused Parisians.
sense, however, it gets at an essential truth of Short Film at Venice in 1957, helped to establish Little by Little is the movie that best exemplifies
filmmaking – shooting a movie is an expensive Rouch’s name as a documentarian, but Moi, un the absurdist, anarchic sense of humour that is
process, and to wield the cinematic apparatus noir was the film that indicated the direction one of the constants in Rouch’s cinema, along
you have to be able to pay the price of admission. with his enormous affection for Africa, which in
This barrier of access is what Rouch was Rouch described ‘Moi, un noir’ footloose films like Jaguar and The Lion Hunters
attempting to get around in Moi, un noir, a can be felt in all its diversity and vastness, a
feature film that he describes in his introductory as being made with, rather than continent impossible to explore in full. There is
narration as being made with, rather than
about, its subjects – a work of what would be
about, its subjects – a work of much, too, that remains to be discovered of the
sprawling Rouch filmography – a journey that
termed participatory ethnography. Rouch participatory ethnography this set is the first leg towards accomplishing.
commands the camera, but the story of the
film, shot without synch sound, is told in post-
production voiceover by its stars, principally
Robinson, who fills in his own dialogue when
not describing the circumstances of his life and
expressing his hopes, frustrations and fantasies,
including an erotic reverie. (Re-viewing the film
after reading the Cuban-American artist Coco
Fusco’s accusation of having been clumsily
“sexually accosted” by Rouch, his salacious
side seemed more than usually evident.)
In his artistic practice, at least, Rouch’s
approach towards power dynamics was rather
more laudable. His stated intention of ceding
some decision-making power in shaping the
narrative of Moi, un noir was more than a merely
symbolic one, and he would be responsible
for training generations of young African
filmmakers and showing their work abroad, his
pupils including Oumarou Ganda, the film’s
‘Robinson’. Moi, un noir was shot at a point when
Rouch had already been in and out of Africa for
much of his life. He was born in 1917 in Paris,
his mother a painter, his father an explorer and
naval meteorologist who kept the family on the Theatre of the absurd: Jean Rouch’s Little by Little (1971) shows off his anarchic sense of humour

84 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

New releases
reunited the writer-director, producer and

HOME CINEMA
star of the previous year’s breakout hit Get
Carter, but it’s so tonally different that audiences
of the time were understandably nonplussed.
It’s still an acquired taste today, with Michael
Caine’s pulp-novelist protagonist narrating
his own story in such parodically hardboiled
fashion that the proceedings frequently threaten
to break out into full-blown metatextuality.
The central scenario errs just on the right side
of plausibility – Caine, self-exiled to Malta, is hired
to ghostwrite the memoirs of Mickey Rooney’s
retired Hollywood heavy, a George Raft wannabe
spending so much time with real gangsters that
he imagines himself to be one as well. However,
what surrounds it is crammed with so many
improbable coincidences, gratuitous visual and
verbal gags (Hodges knew Malta well, but it’s
tempting to assume that the island was picked
specifically for one joke about a living Maltese
falcon) and other noir references (including
Lizabeth Scott’s last screen appearance, as a
neofascist politician’s wife) that it has at least as
much in common with Hodges’s similarly tongue- Blades of glory: Okamoto Kihachi’s The Sword of Doom (1966)
in-cheek Flash Gordon (1980) as it does with his
more straight-faced thrillers. It might not have celebrated source novel display his characteristic (Mifune has a comparatively small role here
worked at all if it wasn’t for Caine’s effortlessly imprint, and Clayton’s facility for shooting his too) but without any sense of a greater purpose,
unfazed performance as a man who bangs out performers like ghosts floating through the except insofar as it’s possible to argue – or at
equally unlikely scenarios for a living and who frame adds another distinctive element. In the least for Ryunosuke to convince himself – that
isn’t about to be upstaged by one concocted by end, school-of-Antonioni isn’t the half of it. all his victims in some way signalled their
others: he rarely came closer to matching Robert Indeed, Anne Bancroft’s contribution as the desire to die shortly before he obliged them.
Mitchum’s deceptively lazy-looking insouciance. despairing protagonist, popping out a gaggle The abruptness of the decidedly open ending
Disc: This new restoration substantially of kids in some vain attempt to take root in the is explained by the original plan to film more of
advances on previous video releases, not least world, all the while drifting loose from errant Nakazato Kaizan’s multi-volume source novel,
thanks to the direct input of cinematographer third husband Peter Finch, is so powerful that but it follows what must be one of 60s Japanese
Ousama Rawi, one of a quartet of engaging such considerations of cinephile taxonomy cinema’s most thrilling action set pieces, a marvel
interviewees. The booklet includes an essay by become secondary. Her meltdown in the Harrods of widescreen framing, intricate choreography
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas that usefully unpicks food-hall is properly distressing, yet even more and forensically precise cutting as Ryunosuke
the film’s multiple layers, and a fan letter J.G. notable is the close-up in the final scene, where slaughters a seemingly endless parade of
Ballard wrote to Hodges after seeing the film. her telling internalisation of the character’s enemies, some of whom might be figments of
struggle against her consuming demons is his increasingly disturbed imagination. The
THE PUMPKIN EATER simply heart-shredding. She’d already won an imagery here becomes overtly expressionistic
Jack Clayton; GB 1964; Powerhouse/Indicator; Region- Oscar for Arthur Penn’s The Miracle Worker, as he slashes at shadows, screens and sounds
free Blu-ray; Certificate 12; 109 minutes; 1.85:1. Features: but it really doesn’t get any better than this. before finding flesh-and-blood victims on whom
selected scene commentary by historian Neil Sinyard; Disc: The beautiful transfer picks out every to take out his by now wholly demented rage.
interviews with Jeremy Mortimer, actors Frances speck of detail in Ossie Morris’s black-and-white Disc: A very clean high-definition transfer of
White and Fergus McLelland, camera operator Brian lensing, while the highlight of a worthwhile an occasionally contrasty but mostly satisfying
West; gallery; trailer; notes by Melanie Williams. extras package is Jeremy Mortimer’s affectionate source. There’s only one substantial on-disc
Reviewed by Trevor Johnston yet clear-sighted recall of his novelist mother extra, but Criterion regular Stephen Prince
These days Jack Clayton’s precisely calibrated Penelope’s unconventional personal history. rarely pauses for breath on the commentary,
drama of a disintegrating female psyche looks offering a full monograph’s worth of close
increasingly like one of the great films of the THE SWORD OF DOOM analysis, while Geoffrey O’Brien’s essay
60s, but recognition has been an awfully long Okamoto Kihachi; Japan 1966; Criterion UK; Region offers useful historical and literary context
time coming for a box-office disappointment B Blu-ray; Certificate 12; 120 minutes; 2.35:1. in more immediately accessible form.
which received a surprisingly lukewarm critical Features: critical commentary by Stephen Prince,
reception on its initial release. Opinion in this trailer, printed essay by Geoffrey O’Brien. WHEN THE WIND BLOWS
very organ was that a British director had dared to Reviewed by Michael Brooke Jimmy T. Murakami; UK 1986; BFI; Region B Blu-ray and
go all Antonioni, a clear act of aesthetic temerity Of the 1960s samurai films that are easily Region 2 DVD dual format; 84 minutes; booklet, featurettes,
and evidently to be slapped down. Perhaps at available in the UK, The Sword of Doom is one of commentary, music and effects track, archive film.
that juncture British cinema had yet to earn the the darkest and most psychologically intriguing, Reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson
right to be given parity with the continentals, thanks not least to the fact that Nakadai Tatsuya’s Children’s author Raymond Briggs, famed for
but it’s hardly as if enveloping melancholia, a protagonist Ryunosuke is established as an The Snowman and Fungus the Bogeyman, was
caustic portrayal of bourgeois patriarchy, and amoral sociopath from his very first appearance, probably the last person anyone expected to
direction clearly attuned to the emotional mood as he’s seen slaughtering a defenceless elderly write about a nuclear holocaust. Nevertheless,
music of individuals in their environment were pilgrim seemingly at random. A formidable he published When the Wind Blows in 1982: a
all celluloid territory Antonioni held in sole swordsman whose eyes convey far more than black comedy about a middle-aged couple in a
ownership. As The Pumpkin Eater unfolds, you his sparse dialogue (especially when he lowers country cottage following government advice to
might sense nuances of Bergman and Buñuel too, them just prior to delivering a fatal blow), he survive a nuclear strike. In 1986 it was adapted
yet the lacerating verbal evasions and ironies in dispatches his enemies with a deft casualness into this striking mixed-media animated
Harold Pinter’s adaptation of Penelope Mortimer’s that recalls Mifune Toshiro in Kurosawa’s Yojimbo movie, with bumbling James and Hilda

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 85

 Television by Robert Hanks
HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR
HOME CINEMA

Various; UK 1980; ITV/Network; Region B Blu-ray; Certificate

15; 702 minutes; 4:3. Features: ‘Guardian of the Abyss’
widescreen version; commercial break stings; ‘Rude
Awakening’ opening montage raw takes; image gallery.
It’s surprising, looking back, to realise what
you could show in a primetime Saturday night
slot nearly 40 years ago: blood, sex, flashes of
nudity or near-nudity, sexualised violence… One
indication of how far House of Horror overstepped
the bounds is my own adolescent memory of ‘The
Carpathian Eagle’, an episode featuring a serial
killer who, apparently believing herself possessed
by a centuries-dead Hungarian countess, follows
her practice of stabbing her victims in the chest
with a ceremonial knife before ripping out
their hearts: the frisson of arousal and terror
is still vivid (and – a quick straw poll of other
middle-aged men reveals – not just for me).
Perhaps the lesson is that you can get away
with outrageousness if you camouflage it with
banality. Hammer heroes and villains are, by
and large, creatures of the suburbs, living in dull
semis or minimally picturesque cottages around
Wendover, Hazlemere, Hemel Hempstead,
driving mid-range saloons, apparently buying
their clothes at M&S or C&A. The horrors that
overtake them are mostly familiar: werewolves,
cannibalism, over-responsive fetish dolls, satanic
cults. Every one of these 13 dramas contains
situations you remember from somewhere
else, plot twists you can see looming a mile off
(if you haven’t guessed the secret behind the Hammer House of Horror ‘The Carpathian Eagle’
revenant rapist in ‘Visitor from the Grave’ in
the first 10 minutes – well, congratulations on features a killer who stabs her victims in the chest with
leading a life so filled with novelty and surprise).
But though the dramas rarely terrify, they
a ceremonial knife before ripping out their hearts
do often manage to instil a sense of unease, a
feeling that you are being drawn into something the script’s conviction that the Latinate term for the gap between location film and studio
nasty. Perhaps the banality of setting and plot ‘wolflike’ is ‘vulpine’. Now that horrifies me. video is a little too glaring. No extras.
even adds to that; it’s a world that, even without Disc: OK source material, but Blu-ray
the interventions of slashers, time-travelling seems an unnecessary luxury. PIPKINS: THE COLLECTION
witches and ex-concentration camp guards Michael Jeans et al; UK 1973-81; ATV/Network;
with a bent for behavioural experimentation, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Region 2 DVD; Certificate U; 1200 minutes; 4:3.
might feel constricting, even strangulating. Michael Darlow; UK 1979; BBC/Danann; Region- Features: episode commentaries, cast interviews,
Though we’re living in the permissive society, free DVD; Certificate 12; 225 minutes; 4:3. extracts from missing programmes.
there’s an underlying sense that we’re not At the opposite end of the TV drama spectrum, ATV’s children’s series was a response to
comfortable with it: sex is the gateway to evil – a classic adaptation at times almost paralysed Sesame Street, and the influence is clear in the
to being slashed by a serial killer, attacked by a by its desire to do right by the source material. backyard setting, the mix of live action with
werewolf. At bottom, the morality is Victorian. That’s disappointing, given that it was animation and the mingling of people and
Throughout, there is pleasure to be had from written by Jack Pulman in between the two puppets; less clear in the inexpressive puppet
spotting the actors – on the way up to or down crowning achievements of his screenwriting faces – Topov the monkey, in particular, has an
from stardom (Brian Cox and Peter Cushing in career – I, Claudius (1976) and the brilliant Eyes Without a Face quality. In the beginning,
‘The Silent Scream’), or at the midpoint of careers World War II farce Private Schulz (1981). the central character was puppetmaker Inigo
that should have been bigger (Angela Bruce, Michael Darlow’s production creates a lively, Pipkin, but actor George Woodbridge’s sudden
Anthony Valentine, Anna Calder-Marshall). almost Dickensian sense of urban squalor, death during the second series meant a switch
The most effective episode, by some way, is Edinburgh standing in for St Petersburg. in title and style, with the narcissistic Hartley
‘Rude Awakening’, written by Gerald Savory and As the existentially tormented murderer Hare and his Brum-accented sparring partner
directed by Peter Sasdy, about an estate agent Raskolnikov, John Hurt, who could do so many Pig, who was a pig, taking centre stage. The
who keeps awakening from nightmare into varieties of strangeness, projects anguish but slapdash, hit-and-miss quality makes it hard
nightmare, at every turn punished for a murder perhaps not enough of a sense of what might to recommend for pre-schoolers; but it is
he has only dreamed about. There is pathos and cause it. Timothy West, as the policeman anarchic, eccentric and sometimes very funny.
creepiness in Denholm Elliott’s performance, Porfiry Petrovich, gets better lines and makes Disc: The programmes are transferred from often
and in the limp Carry On, man-made fibre-clad the most of them, adding a dash of wit and dreadful video-tape sources and presented in
sexiness of his fantasies. The dull implausibility intellectual lightness to proceedings that need random order. Unusually generous extras include
of ‘Witching Time’ is vindicated by Jon Finch’s it. Siân Phillips is on stirring form as Katerina brief extracts from the original Inigo Pipkin series,
nervy central performance; and ‘Children of Ivanovna, stepmother of Raskolnikov’s beloved with scripts credited on screen to Sam Selvon –
the Full Moon’ – Diana Dors as a lycanthrope Sonya (a sensitive, luminous Yolande Palfrey). can this really be the distinguished Trinidadian
matriarch – is both compelling and ludicrous, Disc: The picture isn’t quite sharp, and as author of The Lonely Londoners, who co-wrote
with its school-play transformation effects and in so many BBC dramas of the 70s and 80s, the film Pressure (1975) with Horace Ové?

86 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

New releases
Bloggs voiced beautifully by John Mills mind). But exceptionally gifted and visionary

HOME CINEMA
and Peggy Ashcroft. The score by Roger though Harryhausen undoubtedly was, he
Waters and title song by David Bowie provide an didn’t direct the features that bear his name,
unsettling note beneath the comedy. It’s a curious, nor script them – although, as Cook notes, “it
wonderful film, directed by Jimmy T. Murakami might have been better if he had”. So when
with a combination of whimsy, humour and those films are let down by inept scripting
World War II nostalgia that slowly gives way or duff acting – as films in the Harryhausen
to icy terror and tragedy. When the Wind Blows canon so often are – the faults can scarcely be
pokes fun at the ludicrous precautions advised laid at the door of their special effects creator.
by the authorities. as James and Hilda prepare Of the present trio, these weaknesses are at
to crouch behind a door for 14 days, with tinned their most blatant in First Men in the Moon. Despite
food and boxed-up paperwork. But then there’s a credit for Nigel Kneale as co-screenwriter,
the sting: what if the bomb really did drop? the script – an adaptation of H.G. Wells’s 1901
While the film’s varied tones and styles are novel – is heavy-handed, jettisoning the original’s
sometimes distracting, the charm of the central Freaks and Greeks: Jason and the Argonauts more subtle reflections in favour of knockabout
couple and the devastation of the final scenes are comedy. There’s sluggish direction from Nathan
undeniable. James and Hilda can only understand There are joys too, however simple: Hélène Juran; Edward Judd makes a stolid lead, Lionel
their impending fate through their memories Louvart’s camera feels like an eighth sibling Jeffries gives a shouty, hammy performance
of the war, and likewise this time capsule of as the kids industriously construct toys out of as the scientist Cavor, and poor Martha Hyer
Cold War politics and propaganda continues to farm produce or hang out around the TV or up (playing Judd’s girlfriend) is dragged along to
be a reference point for the ultimate threat. A trees. Louvart is right there with them, shooting provide intermittent decorative interest.
masterpiece of chilling British understatement, between their father’s legs or rushing to school Harryhausen’s contributions are relatively
it’s an unforgettable modern classic. with them under the protection of a tarpaulin limited: there’s a giant caterpillar that briefly
Disc: This dual-format DVD/Blu-ray release from the rain. What the film manages so menaces the Earthmen, some Heath Robinson
from the BFI is wisely stocked up with extras: marvellously is to balance a sense of entrapment machinery, and the insectoid Selenites
a feature-length doc on Murakami, vintage and freedom. The feeling that their mother is (moon-dwellers) swarm bug-eyed across the
making-of, an interview with Briggs, chatty in a cage is ever present (a move may split up lunar sets. The Selenites’ leader, the Grand
audio commentary and an isolated music and her family and would take them away from Lunar, who lives in a huge green jelly, is oddly
effects track. A 1975 government information the haven of the countryside) but Veysset and reminiscent of Dan Dare’s nemesis, the Mekon,
film, Protect and Survive, drives home the terror Louvart show ripples of anarchy surfacing as from the British children’s comic Eagle.
of the nuclear threat. The booklet features well as glimpses of the bliss of motherhood that Matters improve in Mysterious Island,
essays, credits and illustrations. Despite movies rarely witness. Veysset has made only two adapted from Jules Verne, with gutsy direction
occasional specks, the high-definition transfer films in the 20 years since. Let’s hope this vital from Cy Endfield and John Prebble – best
nicely renders the film’s complex textures. release allows them and her more prominence. known for his popular accounts of Scottish
Disc: The restoration and transfer fully capture history – co-credited for the slightly more
WILL IT SNOW FOR CHRISTMAS? the chromatic warmth and chill of the seasons literate script. Michael Craig makes a spirited
Sandrine Veysset; France 1996; BFI Region B Blu-ray and in Louvart’s vivid 16mm cinematography. hero, and the cast includes Joan Greenwood
Region 2 DVD dual format; Certificate 12; 91 minutes; 1.66:1. Extras include insightful reflections on the (rather wasted) and Herbert Lom as a dignified
Features: Interviews with director Veysset, cinematographer film from Veysset, Louvart and Reymond Captain Nemo. From Harryhausen we get
Hélène Louvart and actress Dominique Reymond and an essay by critic Jonathan Romney. some relishably threatening monsters: a giant
Reviewed by Isabel Stevens crab, a giant chicken, giant bees (all, we’re
Sandrine Veysset’s impressive debut is even THE WONDERFUL WORLDS told, the products of Nemo’s experiments in
more remarkable given that she made it at the OF RAY HARRYHAUSEN, VOL 2 ‘horticultural physics’), plus an underwater
age of 30, determined to make a feature rather MYSTERIOUS ISLAND / JASON AND THE nautilus, shelled and tentacled to baroque effect.
than start with shorts and considering she had ARGONAUTS / FIRST MEN IN THE MOON The matte paintings of the Pacific island are
little experience behind the camera (she had Cy Endfield / Don Chaffey / Nathan Juran; UK impressive, and there’s a fine volcanic eruption.
done some production design on Leos Carax’s 1961/1963/1964; Indicator/Powerhouse Films; Region-free Standout here is Jason and the Argonauts. Not
films and worked as his driver). So easily could Blu-ray and DVD dual format; Certificate PG; 101/104/103 for its hero: Todd Armstrong’s limited acting
her tale of seven children and their mother minutes; 1.66:1/1.66:1/2.35:1. Features: Mysterious Island: skills are sorely exposed. But, as in Island, there’s
have slid into sentimental social realism: living intro by Ray Harryhausen; two commentaries; interviews a rousing score from Bernard Herrmann, and
in a rundown farmhouse in Southern France, with Harryhausen, Michael Craig, Ray Andrew, Kim Newman; Harryhausen’s creative genius is seen at full
they toil on the land, exploited by their ogre- two featurettes; Super 8 version; score; image gallery; comic stretch: the screeching harpies, the lumbering
like father who channels the profits of their book; trailers. Jason and the Argonauts: two commentaries; giant statue of Talos, the multi-headed Hydra
labour into his ‘legitimate’ family nearby. interview with Harryhausen; featurettes: The Harryhausen and, most fondly remembered of all his creations,
Out of this bleak subject matter arrives a Legacy, The Harryhausen Chronicles; storyboards; trailers. the sword-battle with the skeletons. In an
film that is alive to the rhythms of family life First Men in the Moon: commentary; introduction by interview Harryhausen tells us he early on nursed
and a child’s perspective on hardship. Drama Randall William Cook; interviews; featurettes; score; image ambitions to become an actor, but soon realised
brews slowly from summer to winter as the gallery; trailers; trailer commentary by John Landis. he wasn’t gifted for it; instead, he achieved “an
colours are drained out of the landscape and Reviewed by Philip Kemp indirect way of acting” through the models
the backstory of the nameless mother and Can Ray Harryhausen be considered an auteur? he so painstakingly created and animated.
father is quietly revealed. Farm life is never According to Randall William Cook, in the So – Ray Harryhausen, auteur? Perhaps
seen as idyllic – Veysset, who grew up on a introduction to First Men in the Moon included not. But Kim Newman, in his comments
farm herself, was familiar with the hard labour in this set, he’s “the acknowledged auteur of the on First Men, gauges it better: these films,
required. So much of the film unfolds to the films that bear his name”, and in the interview he suggests, were “built around the
picking of crops, the children and their mother with Harryhausen himself that accompanies Jason personality of Ray Harryhausen”.
tending tirelessly to them day and night. All and the Argonauts, John Landis also says as much. Discs: Scrupulous 4k (Jason, First Men) and
the actors (including the only professionals, But how far can this suggestion be justified? 2k (Island) restorations bring up all the
Dominique Reymond and Daniel Duval, who The director of a film may well stand as its detail with startling clarity: the colour in
play the couple) spent months getting acquainted auteur; so sometimes can a screenwriter, even Jason is particularly splendiferous. Extras
with the land in preparation, and it shows. occasionally a producer (Val Lewton comes to are lavish to the point of extravagance.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 87

 Lost and found

FOUR FRIENDS
HOME CINEMA

OVERLOOKED FILMS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE ON UK DVD OR BLU-RAY

Late in his career, Arthur Penn
directed some clunkers – but
this downbeat, intelligent tale of
60s America isn’t one of them
By Geoff Andrew
It remains one of the great mysteries of mid-20th-
century American cinema: how could Arthur
Penn – the acclaimed and highly successful
director of New Hollywood landmarks like Bonnie
and Clyde (1967), Alice’s Restaurant (1969), Little Big
Man (1970) and Night Moves (1975) – have become
by the end of the 80s, for many moviegoers, a
forgotten man? Even before his remarkable hit
with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, he’d made
a name for himself with such highly regarded
titles as The Miracle Worker (1962), Mickey One
(1965) and The Chase (1966); but by the second
half of the 80s he was reduced to making a
relatively routine espionage thriller (Target, 1985), Chicago hopefuls: Craig Wasson, Reed Birney, Jim Metzler, Jodi Thelen and Michael Huddleston
a forlorn remake of Joseph H. Lewis’s My Name
Is Julia Ross (Dead of Winter, 1987), and a comedy
vehicle for TV magicians (Penn & Teller Get Killed,
America is more complicated the older man, long denied any chance of social
mobility, believes his son should follow him
1989). Thereafter it was back to television, where than Danilo realised: lives are and toil in the steel foundry, whereas Danilo,
he’d cut his teeth directing drama in the 50s. encouraged by the youthful optimism of the early
Penn’s decline was so steep and sudden it led constrained by class, money, 60s, wants to play his clarinet, go to college, see
David Thomson, a great admirer of the early and ethnicity, politics and war more of America… and more of Georgia, with her
middle-period films, to begin his essay in The dreams of fame, fortune and creative freedom.
New Biographical Dictionary of Film with the stark lose her virginity, thereby driving her, to his regret, But America proves more complicated than he
question, “What has happened to Arthur Penn?” to direct her attention elsewhere – in this respect realised: lives are constrained by class, money,
In examining how the director had become the film echoes Maupassant’s observation that “le ethnicity, politics and war. Danilo’s encounter
“nearly a nonentity”, Thomson – unlike many bonheur n’est pas gai”: to attain a state of happiness with an industrialist’s family exposes – with a
– rightly allows that The Missouri Breaks (1976) is no easy thing. This theme also inflects the shocking scene that exemplifies, in a manner
stands alongside his most impressive work, but narrative insofar as it interrogates the migrant’s characteristic of Penn, the nation’s propensity for
seems to have scant regard for Four Friends (1981), dream of America as a land of plenty and freedom, violence – how inward-turned the upper-classes
which he includes among those last films which to which Danilo and his stern, devoutly working- can be. Likewise, racism may rear its ugly head at
“are as if made by someone else”. Here I beg to class father subscribe in very different ways. the most unexpected moment, a woozy hippie
differ with David, for while there are scenes in Like a far darker version of the relationship dream may turn into a deadly nightmare.
the movie which are a little clumsy – notably a between Dave and his stone-cutter dad in Breaking Tesich and Penn for the most part chronicle
barroom brawl that lurches into broad, slapsticky, Away, the generational conflict between Danilo the changes of the 60s with a light touch – a sign
bad-taste comedy – the film is far from negligible. and his father (Miklos Simon) reflects their of the precise times depicted might be a ball
With its partly autobiographical script by respective experiences of American society: emblazoned with the profiles of JFK and Jackie, a
Steve Tesich, the award-winning writer of Peter Smokey Robinson song, or the TV transmission
Yates’s Breaking Away (1979), Four Friends centres of the first moon landing – so that the separate
on Yugoslav immigrant Danilo (Craig Wasson) WHAT THE PAPERS SAID destinies of the four friends never feel merely
and his three closest friends at the Roosevelt subservient to the overarching social history. Why
High School in East Chicago: handsome jock did the film fail and disappear for decades? The
Tom (Jim Metzler), Jewish mortician’s son David ‘W
‘What [Four Friends] likes of Vincent Canby and Roger Ebert applauded
(Michael Huddleston), and Georgia (Jodi Thelen), demonstrates is the
d it in the USA; in the UK, if memory serves, the
a determinedly free-spirited rebel who claims ttenacity of roots and the Guardian’s Derek Malcolm, the Observer’s Philip
to be the reincarnation of Isidora Duncan and pull of tradition: a natural
p French and Time Out’s Paul Taylor all wrote
with whom all three boys are in love. That’s phenomenon ignored by
p enthusiastic reviews. Perhaps it paid the penalty
the situation at the start of the 60s, anyway; as most analagous movies,
m of having no stars in the cast; perhaps, despite
the seismic decade proceeds, friendships are where the campus revolts
w the comedy, it was too downbeat; or perhaps
tested, dreams dashed, and time takes its toll. and alternative cultures are
a after Star Wars (1977) and Heaven’s Gate (1980),
It’s a coming-of-age saga, then, which cutt off
ff from
f all
ll other
o forms of life, generally there was little appetite for the adult concerns
rhymes the personal with the political, but less not only excluding but occluding the older of the New Hollywood cinema. ET would
portentously – and less distinctively – than John generations. Here there is no ignoring appear the year after Four Friends, offering a very
Milius’s in many ways similar Big Wednesday the places and the people that were a different take on friendship, America and life.
(1978). But it’s also a tale of love’s torment – formative influence’ This piece is dedicated to the memory of
Danilo’s shyness and romantic aspirations lead Tom Milne ‘Monthly Film Bulletin’, July 1982 Paul Taylor, man of cinema (and football) who
him to reject Georgia’s suggestion that he help her sadly passed away two days after it was written.

88 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

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September 2012| Sight&Sound | 89

 Books
BOOKS

Hands of the ripper: Gustav Diessl as Jack and Louise Brooks as Lulu in G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929), based on a pair of plays by Frank Wedekind

THE AGES OF LULU

PANDORA’S BOX lead in Pabst’s film, she was rediscovered in Hutchinson’s highly sympathetic and well
the 1950s and elevated to the status of one researched book is therefore a welcome and long
of the most luminescent of screen icons. overdue addition to the BFI Film Classics series.
By Pamela Hutchinson, BFI Film Classics/ I can still recall my first sighting of Pandora’s This book is particularly valuable in detailing
BFI Palgrave, 105pp, ISBN 978184457966 Box, on a goodish 16mm print at a university film the origins of the film, how it came to be made
Reviewed by David Thompson society in the mid-70s (we still await a Blu-ray at all and the striking personalities involved.
Pandora’s Box (1929) is one of those miracle release of the superb 2009 restoration). Instantly Pandora’s Box is based on two plays by the once
movies – a film in which director and star were I saw an actress whose performance was totally scandalous figure of Frank Wedekind, whose
engaged at the right time in the right studio modern, whose beauty was hypnotic and whose work and life were inextricably involved in
on the perfect subject. In an earlier epoch, its erotic allure was supreme. At that time, finding the smashing of sexual taboos. The plays were
director Georg Wilhelm Pabst, born in Austria, out about Louise Brooks involved a fair amount first performed in 1906, but since then have
was regarded as one of the greatest, exploring the of research, though I was pleased to discover my proved almost impossible to stage, not least
potential of silent cinema to the highest level. near-namesake David Thomson’s The Biographical for the singular problem of casting Lulu, the
He brought a new lustre to Garbo in The Joyless Dictionary of Film singled her out as “one of the free spirit who is at the centre of every scene
Street (1925) and plunged into Freudian fantasy first performers to penetrate to the heart of screen and desired by all the other characters. She is
with Secrets of a Soul (1926). Then he embraced acting”. Kenneth Tynan’s brilliant and influential a dancer who has been kept by a newspaper
the coming of sound in his intense war drama New Yorker profile appeared in 1979, and shortly magnate, Dr Schön, while sharing her body
Westfront 1918 (1930) and made pure cinema in after that Brooks’s wonderful writings were with other men she encounters. When Schön
his 1931 adaptation of Brecht and Weill’s The collected as Lulu in Hollywood. She even became announces he is to marry a respectable young
Threepenny Opera (in many ways superior to visible again, revealing her shrewd insights woman, a jealous Lulu overwhelms him to such
the stage original). But Pabst’s reputation soon when interviewed in Kevin Brownlow and David an extent that he has to surrender to her (this
wavered, and by continuing to make films under Gill’s television series on the American silent scene in Pandora’s Box was rightly singled out
the Nazis, and subsequently refusing to show cinema, Hollywood (1980). Through restorations
regret, his name became severely tainted. In the and DVDs, it has been possible now to see more Is Lulu a shining feminine
case of the star of Pandora’s Box, the American- of her films, with even a fragment from one
born Louise Brooks, the opposite was true. Never of the lost titles rediscovered just last year. But light cutting through a corrupt
particularly celebrated at the time she made
movies, rejected by Hollywood and spurned
the movie that everyone returns to is Pandora’s
Box, as Brooks’s incarnation of Lulu remains so
patriarchal society, or a victim
by critics as not up to the task of playing the far above all her other screen roles, and Pamela of her own uninhibited lusts?
90 | Sight&Sound | February 2018
by the critic J. Hoberman, who observed that the Silver Shirts, the American National Party, the
“few movie moments are more electrifying than HITLER IN LOS ANGELES KKK, and others. Lewis set up his own spy ring

BOOKS
Brooks’ radiant smirk of triumph”). But on their as early as 1933, years before the FBI identified
wedding day, a tussle with a gun ends with Lulu fifth columnists as a real threat. G-men and the
How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots
shooting Schön. She evades prison with the help Los Angeles Police Department were fixated on
Against Hollywood and America
of Schön’s son Alwa and a frustrated, selfless communism throughout this decade, and law
lesbian admirer, the Countess Geschwitz, but By Steven J. Ross, Bloomsbury, 432pp, enforcement officers seemed predisposed to
financial ruin leads Lulu to London where a ISBN 9781620405642 conflate the Red menace with Jewish influence,
first attempt at street prostitution results in her Reviewed by Tom Charity a recurring thread in Nazi propaganda. (Ross
murder by Jack the Ripper. Hutchinson takes Hitler in Los Angeles? The title carries an has sobering statistics about the prevalence of
us through this narrative in unerring detail, undercurrent of the absurd, a whiff of the anti-Semitism in the US in the 30s and early 40s.
underlining Pabst’s significant departures from Ferris wheel rolling off Santa Monica pier As late as July 1945, 67 per cent of Americans
the original and demonstrating how Wedekind’s in Spielberg’s 1941 (1979), or Der Führer agreed that “Jews have too much power and
palindromic structure is compressed but also strolling around Warsaw in Lubitsch’s To Be influence in this country”, according to one poll.)
heightened through the film’s imagery. or Not to Be (1942). But it shouldn’t. While Lewis’s remarkably effective amateur
The play has receded a little over time Adolf never made it to the States in person, intelligence operation notched up several
and today we are more likely to experience his ideas found a receptive audience among important successes: sowing discord between
Wedekind’s drama through Alban Berg’s German émigrés and American isolationists. the German-American leadership, containing
astounding opera Lulu, regularly performed In February 1939, 22,000 attended a fascist and countering propaganda efforts, and
around the world. A recent production seen in rally in Madison Square Garden. keeping detailed files on Nazi sympathisers
London and New York, directed by the artist Throughout the 1930s, America’s most working in the film, ship and aviation
William Kentridge, made explicit reference to successful export industry (an industry industries and on their wealthy patrons. Ross
Pabst’s film and the image of Brooks, revealing predominantly run by Jews, many of them shows that Lewis’s information fed into the
just how far the film continues to pervade European émigrés) scrupulously avoided any early hearings of the House Un-American
our ideas about Wedekind’s creation. For mention of Hitler or National Socialism. In his Activities Committee (instigated to counter
the opera singer Barbara Hannigan, whose study City of Nets, Otto Friedrich argued that this Nazi supporters) and facilitated the swift
dream was to perform the character, Lulu is was primarily for commercial reasons: Germany round-up of agitators when war was declared.
the “architect of her own destiny” and “one was simply too lucrative a market to offend. But Lewis’s most dramatic coup came in
of the most honest people I have ever met”. Historian Steven J. Ross fleshes out that picture October 1937. It involved actor Victor McLaglen’s
Is Lulu a shining feminine light cutting by showing how Germany’s consul to Los Angeles, brother Leopold, a 6’6” former world ju-jitsu
through a corrupt patriarchal society or a Georg Gyssling – pursuing Joseph Goebbels’s champion, a veteran of the Boer War and World
victim of her own uninhibited lusts? It’s the agenda – exercised pressure behind the scenes to War I, and a rabid anti-Semite: he hatched an
question that makes Pandora’s Box such a keep Hollywood movies neutral and the US out of implausible but heartfelt plan with Kenneth
challenging and controversial dramatic tale, the war. Gyssling was not above cautioning actors Alexander, head of the Los Angeles Silver Shirts,
and it’s also why Pabst’s uncompromising with relatives still in Germany that participation to assassinate leading Jewish Angelenos, a
and totally unsentimental film has dated in anti-Nazi films could prove problematic for “wholesale slaughtering” to “start a worldwide
so little. As Hutchinson adroitly points out, them. And he warned studios that their movies stink”. The fascists’ hit-list included Jack Benny,
it pictures “female sexuality not as moral could be banned in Germany. In this, Joseph Breen, Herbert Biberman, James Cagney, Eddie Cantor,
weakness but as an eruption of pleasure”. She who oversaw the enforcement of the Production Charlie Chaplin (not Jewish, but a bête noire for
notes that everything turns constantly on how Code, was an ally: defamatory portraits of foreign the Nazis even before The Great Dictator was
much men’s desire for Lulu is transformed heads of state were prohibited. Most studio chiefs released in 1940), Sam Goldwyn, Al Jolson,
into hate, and how far money potentially capitulated. When an explicitly political project Fredric March, Louis B. Mayer, Paul Muni, Joseph
poisons all the relationships throughout. did get made, it didn’t stay that way. Louis B. Schenck, Sylvia Sidney, Walter Winchell and
Furthermore, the complexity of the subject Mayer was quick to expunge anything Gyssling William Wyler – as well as Leon Lewis. McLaglen
matter is deepened in the film through the took issue with in Frank Borzage’s adaptation of planned to hire White Russian hitmen to carry
relationship of its director and star. Brooks Erich Maria Remarque’s Three Comrades (1938). out the murders with pipe bombs, as many as
was chosen for the role (which almost went to But this is only a small part of Ross’s fascinating 24 assassinations in one night. Fortunately, one
Marlene Dietrich, then a minor German actress) tale. His focus here is not on Hollywood per se, but of his co-conspirators was an undercover agent
because Pabst saw her in Howard Hawks’s A on the actions of a Jewish lawyer, Leon Lewis, who working for Lewis, and the plot was foiled.
Girl in Every Port (1928) and recognised how took it upon himself to set up surveillance of the Lewis and his operatives emerge as authentic
her very artlessness gave her a special intensity German Bund (Association) in Los Angeles, of the heroes. Especially impressive are the efforts
on the screen. Brooks would later claim she consulate, and of several German and American of mother and daughter volunteers Grace
couldn’t act, only be herself. She was more fascist organisations that sprang up in the 30s: and Sylvia Comfort, who risked their lives
than willing in interviews and in her writing infiltrating numerous Nazi cells. Someone –
to discuss her free attitude to sex and refusal to Spielberg? – should really turn this tale into a
play by anyone’s rules. As Hutchinson tells us, movie. In a sense it wouldn’t be the first time:
Pabst readily exploited the antipathy of most Hollywood’s first overtly anti-Hitler propaganda
of the German cast for the Yankee imposter, film, Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), was ‘ripped
and perhaps, as Brooks suggested, he regarded from the headlines’ in classic Warner Bros style,
her with much the same ambivalence as Dr and inspired by the exposure of Germany’s spy
Schön did Lulu. When Pabst and Brooks met operations in the US, which had been brought
some years later, he wearily warned her she to trial just four months earlier. It was a case
would suffer the same fate as Lulu, and indeed that prompted many in the US to rethink its
the carefree actress did fall on hard times until isolationist instincts – Breen among them. Lewis’s
her final years of rehabilitation. As this book work laid the foundation for the prosecution, but
makes very clear, rarely has the blurring of a characteristically he shied away from publicity
screen role and real life been so fruitful for a and the FBI took the credit. Now wouldn’t
creator and so tantalising for the audience. Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) be a bad time to set the record straight.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 91

 MOVIES THAT MATTERED

More Reviews from

a Transformative Decade
By Dave Kehr, University of Chicago Press,
272pp, ISBN 9780226495545
Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton
BOOKS

There are two kinds of writing about film. One

treats movies as star vehicles, or bellwethers
of social and political phenomena, or triggers
to personal recollection. The other assesses
them as a series of decisions made from post- to
pre-production intended to tell a particular Killer queen: Monica Vitti in Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Mystery of Oberwald (1981)
story, crystalise a particular feeling, or express a
particular ethos, and makes the effort of reverse- press and, like 2011’s When Movies Mattered, it grappling with both Straub and Huillet’s Moses
engineering to get back to the root of authorial draws from pieces written during his Chicago und Aron (1973) and Michelangelo Antonioni’s
intention, and to then measure that intention Reader years, here mixed with contributions to 1981 shot-on-video feature The Mystery of
against accomplishment. In general, I believe Chicago magazine. The magazine pieces include Oberwald, an opportunity for the author to
the former type of writing is much easier to do a handful of appraisals of directorial careers draft an early perspicacious theory of what
than the latter and my reason for thinking this as a whole (Budd Boetticher, Jacques Rivette), constitutes video aesthetic and exhibit his
is simple – there is so much more of it about. as well as work in the line that is presently more than usual attention to colour palette.
Dave Kehr, programmer at New York’s Museum designated as the ‘think piece’, discussing Jonathan Rosenbaum, who followed Kehr at
of Modern Art and former vocational film critic, such topics as sequel-mania, the decline of the Reader, notes correctly in his introduction
is one of the best to ever work at the reverse- the popularity of the western, and the rise of to the book that Kehr has the stuff of “a first-
engineering end of the profession. He has been home video technology. The lion’s share of rate literary critic” in the capsule discussions of
a staffer for the New York Times, New York Daily the pieces collected in Movies That Mattered, relevant authors that pop up in various pieces.
News and Chicago Tribune, but it was at his first though, are in-depth, roll-up-the-sleeves analyses Studio-era Hollywood is also an important frame
gig at alternative paper the Chicago Reader that of individual films released in Chicago from of reference for Kehr, but he brings it into play in
he was given the most column space in which to 1974-86 – that is to say, good ol’ reviews. some interesting and unexpected circumstances.
propound his particular nuts-and-bolts brand of While auteurism is sometimes reductively Discussing Xie Jin’s Legend of Tianyun Mountain
auteurism, forged under the influence of Andrew discussed as though it were only an elaborate (1980), for instance, Kehr muses on the analogy
Sarris and through autodidactic immersion ruse to rehabilitate the ‘assembly line’ product between the old studios and the Party-controlled
at the student-run Doc Films society while of the Hollywood studio system as art, the mainland Chinese film industry, and he lauds
studying English at the University of Chicago. variety of films discussed in Movies That Ann Hui’s Boat People (1982) for its loyalty to the
Movies That Mattered is the second collection of Mattered reflect Kehr’s admirable catholicity tradition of the classical melodrama – the same
Kehr’s work to be published by his alma mater’s of interests. He doesn’t duck any comers, tradition he criticises Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

“venture into the realm of Hammer Gothicism, compression”. Unfortunately, this particular
THE FILMS OF whether they like it or not, their works bear the skill is one Dixon doesn’t share. The synopses
TERENCE FISHER undeniable stamp of Fisher’s approach… Whether contained in this book roll out at truly punishing
or not he directs the film, this world is his.” length; any sneaky film studies undergraduate
The book is Dixon’s update of a 1991 keen for an easy fix on Fisher’s work will find
Hammer Horror and Beyond
publication that had a far better title – The Charm it’s probably quicker just to watch the films
By Wheeler Winston Dixon, Auteur, 418pp, of Evil: The Life and Films of Terence Fisher. (That than plough through Dixon’s plot round-ups.
ISBN 9781911325338 book also had an exceptional introduction by Another problem is that, contrary to the
Reviewed by Jonathan Rigby the director John Carpenter, sadly abandoned blurb’s claim that the book has been “entirely
On 7 July 1947 Terence Fisher arrived at here.) Dropping the word ‘life’ from the title was
Highbury Studios to start shooting his first a shrewd move, given that Dixon’s biographical Fisher’s directorial style was
film, a genteel ghost comedy called Colonel sketch is somewhat perfunctory – failing, for
Bogey. Twenty-five years later, on 27 October example, to mention Fisher’s first wife. Even methodical, elegantly framed, yet
1972, he departed Elstree on completion of his
final work, Frankenstein and the Monster from
the director’s career is strangely represented. A
chronological trip through his pre-horror phase
punctuated by dazzlingly staged
Hell – which, as its title suggests, isn’t genteel gives place to a disorganised second half in which outbursts of action and violence
in any way. In that quarter-century span his his Frankenstein and Dracula films are lumped
directorial style – methodical, elegantly framed, together in sections of their own, after which a
yet punctuated by dazzlingly staged outbursts chapter of scattered ‘Satellite Projects’ (largely
of action and violence – brought about, as films Dixon deems failures, among them The
the critic Jean Boullet put it, “la résurrection Mummy, 1959; and The Phantom of the Opera,
collective aux grands archétypes du Fantastique”. 1962) is followed by ‘Six Late Films’ that Dixon
Historical nuts and bolts of the ‘7 July 1947’ considers classics – though at least one of them,
variety are not Wheeler Winston Dixon’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) was actually
concern in The Films of Terence Fisher: Hammer made less than halfway into Fisher’s career.
Horror and Beyond. Indeed, you’re more likely Dixon accords Fisher’s early work far more
to stumble across generalities like “[Fisher] space (and reverence) than it usually commands,
would not attempt a sequel [to Dracula] until invoking Bertolucci, Clair, Renoir, Cocteau,
1966,” which is out by a full year. Instead, Dixon Lang, Rossellini, Vigo, Ophuls, Rohmer and
underlines Fisher’s crucial importance to the Godard in reference to such films as To the
post-war development of gothic cinema. The Public Danger (1947), Portrait from Life (1948),
idea that Hammer itself, rather than Fisher, was Marry Me! (1949) and Face the Music (1953).
somehow the auteur is countered here in Dixon’s Also, when speaking of Stolen Face (1952) and
assertion that when other Hammer directors Four Sided Triangle (1953), he rightly hails “the
(Don Sharp, John Gilling, Freddie Francis) surreptitiousness and skill of Fisher’s narrative Terence Fisher on the set of The Gorgon (1964)

92 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

for bowdlerising, diagnosing Robert Benton’s
film as “a very timid melodrama, afraid of the
very emotions that it attempts to exploit”.
Movies That Mattered reflects a criticism of
enthusiasms for the most part, though in its
final section, ‘Autopsies/Minority Reports’,
we find Kehr in demolition mode. Even his
damning appraisals are measured and devoid
of showboating but, like Sarris, he has a way

BOOKS
with the deadly barbed epigram. Describing
David Lean’s A Passage to India (1984), for
example, Kehr writes: “For Lean, fiction is a
foreign land, and, like a good colonialist, he
sets out simultaneously to explore and reform
it. The films he sends back are his trophies,
so many boars’ heads ready to be mounted
above the mantel” – one of those judgements
that feels like the epitaph for a reputation.
This instance aside, Kehr usually registers
as sympathetic to old and often unfashionable
workhorses still toiling in a fast-changing
industry, including Stanley Donen, Robert Aldrich
and Ingmar Bergman, whose Fanny and Alexander
(1982) is given a sensitive reading. Of the big-name
New Hollywood movie brats he is slightly more
leery: Spielberg, De Palma and Coppola all get
taken to the woodshed, while work by Schrader,
Zemeckis and Bogdanovich is praised. As in his
last collection, Kehr does some of his finest writing
here on Clint Eastwood, in these years still very Village of the damned: Patrick McGoohan as Number 6 in The Prisoner
much not a critical darling, discussing Eastwood’s
screen persona as it is reflected in his directorial fortunes and worsening ulcer in his struggle
work, both of which mark him, as “a master of the I AM (NOT) A NUMBER with Number 6 (McGoohan), before eventual
art of holding back”. It’s a compliment that Kehr dismissal from the post – an arc made pointless
deserves in turn. With little recourse to persistent when the episodes were broadcast the other way
Decoding The Prisoner
personal pronouns or adjectival overkill, he around and weeks apart. Number 6 wins many of
has created a body of work that beneath the By Alex Cox, Kamera Books, 224pp, his other battles too, leaving a string of Number
surface vibrates with pure movie love. ISBN 9780857301758 2s cowed, sacked, chased out of The Village, or
Reviewed by Tim Hayes dead awaiting resurrection by the resident mad
Filmmaker Alex Cox’s book about The Prisoner scientists. Cox sees a particular skill-set behind
revised and rewritten”, it is essentially as it was TV series coincides with the show’s 50th Number 6’s victories, and from there determines
in 1991. Dixon notes that lost footage from anniversary, which has already spurred a fresh the prisoner’s original profession (not a former
Dracula was recovered in 2011, and that improved Blu-ray set of the episodes and a reshowing spy), the identity of the mysterious Number 1
special effects were controversially applied to on television – although far enough down (not McGoohan), and the overall purpose of
The Devil Rides Out (1968) the following year. the programme guide that stumbling upon The Village itself, which makes for a playfully
But otherwise he recycles several Hammer it accidentally was the only way to discover bonkers retooling of the available evidence.
myths that were exploded long ago – notably it. Television has moved on from The Prisoner, It also continues Cox’s efforts to grapple
Fisher’s contention that Hammer had little or something Cox addresses as part of a belief with the after-effects of the Cold War and the
no trouble with the BBFC, which now seems that modern series are lauded to the skies but cultural shadow of the mushroom cloud, which
laughable. Dixon even refers in the present hobbled by a sedate pace, sombre demeanour remains deadly serious. Having fallen out of
tense to people long dead, such as Peter Cushing, and a determination never to actually end. But favour among film financiers and viewers – the
cinematographer Jack Asher, composer James The Prisoner – which follows the Kafkaesque global fan club of his Repo Chick (2009) probably
Bernard and Fisher’s widow Morag. In addition, plight of ‘Number 6’, played by Patrick meets under the roof of the present writer –
the book’s ‘Gothic Impulse’ chapters drag in slabs McGoohan, who is inexplicably trapped in a Cox authored a forensic analysis of the JFK
of film theory (quoting Annette Kuhn, Laura mysterious village community from which assassination in time for the 50th anniversary
Mulvey and others) that are never successfully he repeatedly tries, and fails, to escape – will of that event in 2013, and has lately written a
integrated with Dixon’s own text. Among the only ever be 17 divisive episodes of theatre and series of online jeremiads against escalating
book’s other peculiarities is a reference to David ritual, enigmatic from the off, before ending nuclear tensions in the era of Donald Trump.
Spenser appearing “in race drag” in 1959’s The in a notorious bad trip via Philip K. Dick and Tension between The Prisoner’s apparently
Stranglers of Bombay (strange to direct this at a Sri Samuel Beckett, emerging from the tensions of libertarian ethos, its circular conclusion and a
Lankan cast member, rather than, say, Warren the Cold War and curtailed by friction between simultaneous fascination with the kind of thing
Mitchell) and the claim that Fisher “refused star Patrick McGoohan and funder Lew Grade. Cox terms “the miniature, the semi-practical
to become involved” in Hammer’s latterday Cox puts each episode under the microscope and the twee” is all part of its dislocating effect.
lesbian vampire films, when in fact he was only individually, in the order they were filmed rather Cox is surely right to detect a sign of intent from
prevented from directing Lust for a Vampire than broadcast, which undoubtedly sorts out some McGoohan in opting to make ‘Free for All’ the first
(1971) by the after-effects of a road accident. accidental narrative kinks. Two episodes featuring post-pilot episode, in which a docile electorate
Of course, the book was never published that Colin Gordon as overseer Number 2 are clearly votes Number 6 into a position of power and
doesn’t contain a few errors. But it’s sobering a pair, tracking the administrator’s declining then loses interest, and also right to see the
to recall that the earlier edition of this one melancholy settling over the psychedelia in the
featured a still of Christopher Lee as Mycroft in Alex Cox believes modern TV final episode, ‘Fall Out’. Number 6 winds up back
Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes where he started, on the streets of Westminster,
(1970) and identified it as Lee playing Sherlock series are lauded to the skies but still labelled a prisoner by the end credits of
in Fisher’s Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace
(1962). Even more sobering – a quarter-century
hobbled by a sombre demeanour his own show, free only to drive the soon-to-be
paranoid and over-surveilled streets of HM Open
later, that photo, and that caption, are still there. and a determination never to end Prison London, the same as the rest of us.

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 93

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READERS’ LETTERS
Letters are welcome, and should be
addressed to the Editor at Sight & Sound, LETTER OF THE MONTH
BFI, 21 Stephen Street, London W1T 1LN
Email: S&S@bfi.org.uk SPOILED ROTTEN
OF MONSTERS AND MEN
While I wouldn’t disagree that the sexual politics
of Blade Runner 2049 are problematic, I must take
issue with David Lane’s attempt to characterise
the scene in which the villanous industrialist
Niander Wallace murders a newborn replicant
as revealing of the filmmaker’s misogyny (Letter
of the Month, S&S, January). To me it seems
to be one of two key scenes that illustrate the
sequel’s narrative advance on its progenitor.
The original Blade Runner depicts Wallace’s
predecessor Tyrell as proud and paternal. He has
an emotional range Wallace conspicuously lacks.
As in Philip K. Dick’s source novel, the replicants
lack empathy while the humans are becoming
dehumanised. 2049 shows that this process has
become complete: as shown in the scene Lane
objects to, Wallace is simply monstrous, lacking
even a creator’s love for his work. Other humans in
the story barely register as characters. The burden
of empathy has passed to the replicants, holograms, Nick James’s round-up of British cinema comes in many shapes and sizes. How about
hybrids and the eternal ‘is he or isn’t he?’ Deckard. (‘The Year in Review’, S&S, January) gives new You Were Never Really Here, The Death of
The other scene is K’s debrief, in which the meaning to the phrase ‘spoiler alert’, damning Stalin, Dunkirk, Three Billboards…, The Party,
subtly probing Voight-Kampff test has been a brilliant, expansive year for British film Dark River, Lean on Pete or the near-perfect
replaced by a discordant word salad that seems (including all the debuts he mentions, and then Paddington 2 (above)? The last is a wonder
designed to batter its subject into submission some) with a myopic and well-worn diagnosis. of a film that delivers its hard stare at the
rather than extract an empathetic response. The He confesses to not yet having caught up world through candy-coloured glasses –
entire human world has been reduced to a human with Michael Pearce’s Beast, but I wonder something Nick James might receive from me
din, desensitised and exploitative (and not just of how many other British films have gone the next time we cross paths at the office.
women – there’s an extended sequence of child unnoticed here? Relevance, dialogue, invective Ben Roberts Director, BFI Film Fund
slavery that’s gone largely uncommented upon).
That the audience can still react with revulsion
to the cruelties of 2049 is to the film’s credit. this masterpiece each New Year’s Eve, at home MAKING A MURDERER
Kate Halprin By email or in hotels, alone or attached – until finding my Not having known about the 1908 novel
own Ms Kubelik and becoming a mensch at last. L’Enfer, I’m fascinated by Stephane Duckett’s
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO Jon Medcalf By email suggestion that it was a more likely inspiration
David Lane expresses discomfort over the female for Robert Bloch’s Psycho than the Ed Gein
replicant’s horrific death in Blade Runner 2049, SOUL MATES murders (Letters, S&S, December).
but this scene is supposed to be horrific (Letter Kim Newman’s review of Carnival of Souls (Home In his autobiography, Bloch downplayed
of the Month, S&S, January). It is supposed to Cinema, S&S, December) fails to mention the the Ed/Norman link, claiming he “knew
highlight the ambition, insanity and frustration most obvious inspiration for the film: ‘The very little of the details concerning the [Gein]
of a character in the film. It highlights the Hitch-Hiker’, an episode of The Twilight Zone case, and nothing about Gein himself”.
moral ambivalence shown towards replicants broadcast just a couple of years earlier. The plot, In his online article ‘Norman, Is That You?’,
(a major thrust of the narrative). That is its with Inger Stevens haunted by a mysterious film historian Tom Weaver relates the impact
entire point. It makes Wallace ruthless and hitch-hiker, is practically the same, with a on Bloch of a man named Calvin T. Beck. The
dangerous. It is rightly difficult to watch. few details changed. It was originally written reclusive Beck self-published a genre-related
Yes, there is an argument that a filmmaker’s by Lucille Fletcher as a radio play, which was magazine named Castle of Frankenstein, and
vision and/or philosophy can be interpreted produced Orson Welles in 1941 with music his corpulent appearance resembled Bloch’s
from her/his work but to accuse a filmmaker by Fletcher’s husband, Bernard Herrmann. description of the Bates Motel proprietor. On the
of the same morality or character as R.J. Laaksonen Helsinki, Finland rare occasions Beck ventured out of his house,
shown by her/his worst fictional monsters his possessive mother insisted on accompanying
on screen seems utterly perverse. OH, BROTHER! him, and she was often heard haranguing him.
Alan Miller By email Since David Thomson, in Warner Bros: The In yet another premonition of Psycho, Beck’s
Making of an American Movie Studio (Books, father suffered a stroke and spent his last
HOPE AND GLORY S&S, December), places significance on Jack years secluded in an upstairs bedroom. Bloch,
Already thrilled to embrace Arrow Academy’s Warner’s wide mesmeric smile, it’s a shame Beck, Stefano, Hitchcock, Perkins, Herrmann...
Blu-ray 4K restoration of Billy Wilder’s The Jack is misidentified in the caption with the Where does one start or stop when trying to
Apartment as a pre-festive self-gifting binge, I photo accompanying your review as well as trace the men who created young Norman
was delighted to read Mark Cousins’s erudite in the piece. That’s the youthful, grinning Jack and made him so haunting on screen?
and touching take on its final line (“Shut up and second from the left, not yet sporting the pencil Preston Neal Jones Hollywood
deal”) and his consideration of how a Sheldrake moustache that would serve as what Thomson
USA has matured (Endings, S&S, January). calls “italic overlining”. The dour and for all Additions and corrections
Having discovered The Apartment in the early we know toothless suit at the far right is Albert January p. 76 Bingo The King of the Mornings: Certificate 15, 113m 36s;
p. 80 The Dinner: Certificate 15, 120m 25s; p. 70 Hostiles: Certificate 15,
1980s, I’ve updated a battered VHS tape through Warner, perfectly cast as the studio’s treasurer. 133m 17s ; p. 83 Human Flow: Certificate 12A, 140m 15s; p. 93 Sanctuary:
DVD and Blu-ray across a 27-year ritual of viewing Gerry Putzer New York Certificate 15, 89m 31s; p. 94 Shot Caller: Certificate 15, 120m 28s

February 2018 | Sight&Sound | 95

 ENDINGS…

WILD STRAWBERRIES

Ingmar Bergman offers a rare note haunts him. The unhappiness of his eventual parents enjoying the passing of their own time
marriage rears its head too, strangely linking alone while their large family enjoy themselves on
of optimism at the close of his great potential academic failure with his failure to a boat tethered nearer to the house. The father is
work, with the doctor finding solace be a loving husband. Even the recapitulation fishing, the mother watching on. Both are waving
of the unhappiness between his son and back fondly but the sight is not a simple one. Borg’s
in a memory of family contentment Marianne has been avoided until this trip. It expression shows us he is witnessing something
appears he has been resigned to accepting the profound, beyond words. For his parents are
By Adam Scovell loneliness of the passing years rather than trying content, even in just that brief moment away
The main character in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild to confront his ghosts. As one character asks from the confrontations that have characterised
Strawberries (1957), Professor Isak Borg (Victor him, “Have you looked in the mirror, Isak?” the memories in the earlier half of the film. Borg
Sjöström), an eminent bacteriologist, spends The film’s final shot links his dream-world reminisces about such childhood memories, so
the majority of the film travelling back through of good and bad memories but finds solace he says, to calm him before sleep; a soothing proof
his memories and worries. Though in actuality rather than torment. Time has been a key worry that his life was not actually hopeless at all.
he is travelling by car to Lund to receive an throughout the film; the handless clock in both The screen fades from his memory-scape to the
honorary degree, in Bergman’s terms the terrain his first dream and in his elderly mother’s room contented man in bed, having faced his demons
we inhabit is not simply a physical realm but implies a waste or loss. Is Borg really worried on the road and now ready for sleep. It’s Bergman’s
a psychic one too; journeys are both inner that his life has been meaningless? Bergman most emotional ending; seeing a youthful vision
and outer experiences. It is not an inanimate could have ended with a continuation of this of home through the older eyes of experience. One
collection of roads, hills and houses but a pessimistic streak – he did as much the same feeds into the other, a bright and brilliant light
skin that holds time within its scars. Borg is year in The Seventh Seal – but he knows that shining through the dusty murk of a pessimist’s
accompanied by his daughter-in-law Marianne contentment before death is a more powerful prism. The hollowness and meaninglessness
(Ingrid Thulin), who has joined him even and complex conclusion. The doctor’s true love he had perceived in his life was only an illusion
though she is planning to leave Borg’s son, Evald guides his older self gently through a field to a caused by the timidity of not looking directly
(Gunnar Björnstrand), following a disagreement lake to see something. Bergman shows us the back. Fear over who we once were will always
about the fate of their unborn child. Along man witnessing his past as a gift; the gift of a crop up from time to time. Bergman ends on the
the journey, the pair meet various characters, memory. Light is shining on his face, flickering reaction to this realisation, arguably the whole
including a trio of youngsters, one of whom, in his almost tearful eyes. It’s an image that drive of the film captured in one moment. There
Sara (Bibi Andersson), resembles Borg’s lost love. embodies totally a moment of happiness. is no naivety in regarding such warm memories
The interactions between these characters and But what does Borg really see in that final shot? from the days when wild strawberries grew
other passengers cause the melancholic doctor The sight we are presented with is an idyll, his freely in the garden, just an awareness that the
to drift off into dreams, reveries and memories. best of days and the worst of days sat side by side
Looking back is an addictive action whose It’s Bergman’s most emotional and always will: “Today, tomorrow, forever.”
potency increases as memories accumulate. Wild Strawberries screens as part
But Borg has lived a life of avoidance, fearful of ending; seeing a youthful i of ‘Ingmar Bergman: A Definitive Film
the pain in his past. His lost love seems to hold
the greatest power in his earlier memories,
vision of home through the Season’, which runs until March at
BFI Southbank, London, and at selected
suggesting this is the source of the pain that older eyes of experience cinemas nationwide

96 | Sight&Sound | February 2018

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