The Artist

Clever

Everything about Michael Haznavicius’ The Artist, a silent film about silent film, is undeniably lovely. Just like its star, the fictional actor George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), it glows off the screen in crisp black and white, winking and smiling, charming the audience with unfettered nostalgia and an irrepressible sense of romance. Its own cultural life has been equally pleasing – building momentum from a last-minute addition to competition at Cannes to considerable critical acclaim and an emergence as the unlikely front-runner for the best picture Oscar in February. It even has a cute dog.

To watch The Artist is to be frequently delighted: by skillful physical expression, clever visual tricks and well-timed taps of feet. Its centrepiece is a wonderful sequence in which Valentin encounters the young starlet Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) on a film shoot and, distracted, fails to complete the scene, returning numerous times to his starting pose with an inch-perfect thespy frown. We know Haznavicius knows this scene is good, because he reprises it later on. Miller, now a megastar to Valentin’s has-been, recognises and recalls the moment through examining a film reel – something, of course, you couldn’t do today.

But if this is film which – as many critics would have it – is supposed to be celebrating a bygone era, or lamenting a purity lost with the move to sound, it’s not particularly convincing, or consistent. I found myself pondering how silent acting (i.e. mime), and by extension silent storytelling, seem to necessitate a certain broadness of tone. Whilst I enjoyed almost everything that appeared on screen, I was rarely engaged on a level that went beyond amusement.

Indeed, two instances which did have genuine power occurred when sound interjected: firstly, subtly, with the tap of glass on a table during the doubting Valentin’s lurid dream; then, most stirringly of all, through the oh-so human panting of the two performers after a celebratory final dance. The film loads these moments with pure electricity by strength of contrast – so what’s Haznavicius telling us? Not, if anything, about what was lost, but about the excitement of a moment in history. Film was now able to transfix us further, adding nuance and complexity beyond the limit of an orchestral score throughout.

In fact, as it happens, I don’t think The Artist is nearly weighty enough to carry anything so serious as a manifesto, one way or the other. Essentially it’s a brilliant gimmick: a feat of showmanship and a masterclass in charm, pulled off with aplomb. You know there’ll be a happy ending, because you know the film just wants you to be entertained. It’s all the better for it.

My ten favourite films of 2011

#1

So here they are. In all but two cases, I also had some thoughts at the time – click on the titles for those. Happy new year.

1. Archipelago – Joanna Hogg’s exquisitely observed study of a family on holiday in the Scilly Isles is both gloriously witty and completely horrifying. A perfect film.

2. Blue Valentine – two brilliant actors, some fabulous cinematography and a dash of non-linear narrative combine to make this truly moving and memorable film about (ill-fated) love.

3. A Separation – perfectly balanced, thoughtful and humane Iranian drama which gains enormous strength simply by treating its characters (and its audience) with respect.

4. Kill List – a brilliantly stylish, properly disturbing horror film with superb sound design and an ending that simply went for it. Thrilling stuff.

5. Tyrannosaur – Olivia Colman is incredible in this grim, powerful, violent northern tale. Peter Mullan is one of the best actors out there too. I was so transfixed I didn’t even open my packet of nuts.

6. Cave of Forgotten Dreams – not quite up there with Grizzly Man, but still wild and wonderful in the way only Herzog documentaries can be. ‘Stay here’ was the best line of the year.

7. Senna – I’m still not sure what exactly to make ‘last lap’ sequence in this film, but it had me pinned to my seat like nothing I can remember.

8. The Tree of Life – awful in parts, and yet it drew me back to watch a second time. Something about the whole thing – its utter sincerity, its ambition – was overwhelming. This film felt like an event.

9. Animal Kingdom – stylishly realised, calm but compelling Australian crime drama with a memorably demonic grandma at its head.

10. Wuthering Heights – Andrea Arnold’s stab at a classic falls away a bit towards the end. But for the first hour, this is pure filmmaking: stories through images – and what striking, primal, passionate images they are.

Hugo

Wot, no specs?

At its best, Hugo is a wonderfully heartfelt tribute to what Martin Scorsese loves about going to the movies – truly a cinephile’s treat. There are nods to history all over the place, from ‘silent’/mimed romantic vignettes, viewed from a distance as in Rear Window, to elaborately choreographed slapstick à la Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. The film’s primary subject, the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès, is the highlight: Scorsese is fascinated with the physicality of movie making – the clicks and whirrs of a camera, the mechanics of a shoot – and when we see his reconstructions of Méliès’ beautifully designed, logistically miraculous early-1900s film sets, so are we.

The problem is that this sparkling homage (which dominates the last half hour) is grafted onto a much less successful kids’ film about an orphan boy living in the nooks of a Paris train station who discovers Méliès (now an older, disillusioned shopkeeper played by Ben Kingsley) and his art. We can see what Scorsese might have been thinking – it’s through a child’s eye that magic truly happens – but these early sections are hamstrung by the performances of his two young actors and a lumbering script. At times the dialogue is oddly slow, inviting the audience to search for hidden meaning where none is being communicated. Even Sacha Baron Cohen, last seen wrestling stark-naked with a 30-stone man in Borat, has had his wings thoroughly clipped, playing a stern station inspector with a nondescript accent and curiously expressionless face.

Given the technological enterprise at the heart of its subject, it’s perhaps no surprise – perhaps even appropriate – that this film is in 3D. Scorsese’s foremost new toy, however, appears to be the omnipotent camera, which swoops and dives around the train station and through the insides of clockwork contraptions as if it had no physical form at all. The first two minutes, for instance, plunges us down from the Paris skyline, along train tracks, into the station and up towards Hugo’s wide eye peering through the number ‘4’ of a giant clock. It’s impressive but also clunkingly conspicuous, having the effect of an industry demo for what modern CGI can do.

In fact as an opening it’s rather instructive: this is a film about the possibilities of cinema which forgets to create much magic of its own. It’s caught bewteen looking backwards and forwards with equal wonder – and is far less convincing when doing the latter. The 3D, as usual, adds nothing  – other than an ironic slant to a scene in a cinema (apparently based on truth) in which we watch people watching the Lumière brothers’ famous arriving train and flinching away from the screen. Of course, like countless cinemagoers since, these patrons are fooled by simple use of perspective. Their screen is ‘flat’. And as we, Scorsese’s audience, sit watching in our dark plastic glasses, nothing could be clearer demonstration of their redundancy.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

See paragraph three

With this adaptation of John le Carré’s novel, Tomas Alfredson has set himself the unenviable task of squeezing a notoriously labyrinthine plot (later reworked into a seven-part television series) into two short hours of cinema time. For a Tinker Tailor virgin, watching it is not unlike the initial experience of watching The Wire: finding one’s bearings, working out relationships, and coming to terms with the particular language involved. In this case it’s not street slang but code-words, like ‘control’, ‘the circus’ and ‘Karla’, on which no elucidation is offered. It’s a slightly distracting puzzle, and makes you want to watch the first hour again.

The film is beautiful – all dusty rooms and smoky corridors, yellows and browns and three-piece suits – and contains a masterful performance from Gary Oldman as Smiley, the retired MI6 agent tasked with uncovering a mole amongst his former colleagues. His is a face you could watch for hours – and Alfredson seems to agree. One memorable moment sees a whisky-fuelled Smiley reliving a former encounter, the camera settled on full facial close-up – one eye obscured by the shadow of his thick-rimmed glasses; the other glinting, expressive; thin lips offering the merest hint of a sneer.

The ‘frames’ of these glasses provide a motif which Alfredson uses in countless other shots, presenting the action through lace-curtained windows or half-opened doorways, repeatedly partially obscured. He’s unafraid to show us characters walking away, or the back of people’s heads. Two of the most important figures in Smiley’s life, his main adversary in Russia and his estranged wife, remain unseen throughout. This is a murky world to which, emphatically, access is not ours.

It’s curious for an ostensible ‘whodunnit’ to expand so little on the very characters (tinker, tailor, etc.) who drive the plot by being under suspicion. In fact, their portrayal by such a stellar cast is about the only thing that helps us distinguish between them – and when the culprit finally is revealed, the moment delivers surprisingly little narrative punch. Perhaps that’s the point: it’s not really about the discovery, but Smiley’s journey – but then I have to admit I was also unsure about what exactly he’d learnt from the experience, or how he’d grown. So perhaps that’s the point, for those unacquainted with the book, at least: this highly stylised visual accompaniment will remain – like Smiley himself – a quiet, elegant enigma.

Pause

Between the walls

In about three hours I’ll be starting a PGCE – which, by all accounts, is not going to leave me with hoards of spare time in the months to come. So, whilst I hope to keep things going on this here blog one way or another, posts might inevitably become fewer and further between for a while. Just so you know. Thanks to everyone who’s been good enough to read these ramblings so far, and especially those who have taken the time to comment – it really does warm the cockles of my heart. I’ll keep you posted.

Kill List

The music sounds like this shot looks

Kill List opens emphatically in media res: a woman, her face in close up, screaming abuse at her husband whilst their fearful young son listens in his bedroom. The couple are Jay and Shel, both former soldiers, now living in comfort in the hills near Sheffield. When Jay’s friend Gal (also ex-army) brings his new girlfriend round for dinner, there follows an evening of tension, and another blazing row. Think Mike Leigh, less sharply observed but with a harder edge. I couldn’t decide whether these sudden arguments suffered from a slight weakness in acting or if it was intented that they appeared launched into with such relish.

Also unlike the unintrusive Leigh, Ben Wheatley composes his stories with a highly stylised mixing pot of sight and sound: dialogue from one scene will bleed into images of the next (or previous) whilst sharply cut shots (of, for example, a melancholy hug) contribute meaning and depth with beautiful economy. The music, woozy and resonant, links it all together, and achieves an intriguing effect as the film progresses: on at least two occasions, I was unsure whether a prominent sound was extradiegetic or part of the characters’ experience, adding an extra layer to the general unease.

Jay and Gal make their money as hit men; we see Gal persuade his friend out of temporary retirement to take on the titular job. It soon becomes clear that Jay has what we might call ‘issues’ – giving himself reasons to go outside his remit and commit some pretty horrific acts. The film doesn’t shirk from showing these properly: one scene in particular, involving a hammer, is reminiscent of the infamous fire extinguisher shot in Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible. Indeed Wheatley has some Noé-esque comments to make about the depiction of violence in films (at 3:25 in this video). It’s a position with which I think I’m in broad agreement.

What seems like an (excellently made) post-traumatic Iraq war film than takes a major turn for the weird in its final section, almost eschewing the rest of the film entirely – but it works. Aided by the music and some deft camerawork, the ‘discovery’ sequence here was one of the creepiest things I’ve seen for a while. It’s great to see a director confident enough to plant a seed of doubt early on – in this case, Gal’s girlfriend carving a strange symbol on the back of her hosts’ bathroom mirror – and leave it to gestate, unelaborated on for the best part of an hour. Wheatley is similarly happy to leave loose ends untied when the credits roll: his is a horror film that leaves you surprised and confused – ‘disturbed’, in the best sense of the word.

Time

Ah.

I recently discovered that in 1986, Andrei Tarkovsky wrote this:
 
I think that what a person normally goes to the cinema for is time: for time lost or spent or not yet had. He goes there for living experience; for cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances and concentrates a person’s experience – and not only enhances it but makes it longer, significantly longer.
 
I was struck – not only because, as an obsessive cinemagoer myself, I recognised it – but by its apparent unerring prescience. After all, visionary director or not, the Tarkovsky of 25 years ago could barely have predicted the mobile phonecalls, instant messages, news feeds and twitter streams that would come to define our everyday experience. These are the conditions that lend his statement extra weight in a modern context: amidst the abundance of information and interaction, there is never a dull moment – but also never a spare one. Time itself begins to take on the guise of an increasingly precious commodity.

I feel as if my brain is slowly being trained out of its ability to concentrate, as if afflicted by some as-yet-unclassified modern form of ADHD. I don’t think I’ve finished a book since I left university – I’ve started lots, but always get impatient before the end, moving on to the next book, or article, or review, or email, or blog post, or podcast on the list. I can’t sit through a DVD without pausing it to get a drink, or answer a text, or look up the film on IMDb. My own blog is written only at the dead of night, when it feels as if the rest of the world has stopped and finally there’s some time to use, space to think. I can’t remember the last time I was bored.

Amongst it all lies the oasis of calm that is cinema. Somehow, when those lights go down, normal life is brought to stop: there is literally nowhere to look but at the screen, nothing to do but give yourself over to the images it holds and adjust to the rhythms it suggests. As brilliantly shown by Christian Marclay’s The Clock (the exception that proves the rule) narrative film exists on its own temporal plane, unconnected to the minutes passing outside the auditorium or even the time experienced by the actors, directors and editors who create it. The best experiences leave you unaware of what day it is, or where you are, or how you got there – until suddenly the screen goes black, the credits roll and reality bursts back in.

In fact, I can remember the last time I was bored – it was undoubtedly in a cinema. But ‘boredom’ in this context is a rare luxury – ‘slow’ films like Archipelago or Meek’s Cutoff provide a pleasing respite, giving your eyes time to see and your brain time to process a depicted fictional circumstance, without the multiple stimuli normally competing in everyday life. At some points there might not be much actually happening on screen – but that’s ok. Thoughts can wander, images can linger and phrases resonate. You’re offered the chance to think about the world in a way the real world doesn’t often allow.

Time lost or spent or not yet had. I think I’m discovering what it is that keeps drawing me back. There’s no decorum, and the performers can’t see you – so you can wear what you want and sit how you like without fear of showing a lack of respect. In that dark space you are, essentially, given your own little world in which to wallow – untempered pleasure, brought about through the marriage of physical comfort with gentle intellectual massage. I wonder if I’ll ever grow out of it, and come to a stage where the appeal begins to decline. It doesn’t feel like it at the moment.

Project Nim

Nim Chimpsky (it's like Noam Chomsky)

James Marsh, the documentarian who rose to prominence with the Oscar-winning Man On Wire in 2008, is a master at weaving a satisfying narrative out of complex reality; a storyteller at heart, rather than a scrupulous detailer of history. This latest film charts the life of a chimpanzee, Nim, who was raised as if a human child by a group of American scientists during the 1970s, in an attempt to discover if he could learn language. Its (captivating) archive footage is intercut with dramatic embellishments to aid the ebb and flow: when Nim is described as having a tantrum and throwing a chair through a window, we see a blurry sequence depicting just that. It’s skilfully constructed, with emphasis on the ‘constructed’ – but this authorial sculpting is so clear that it barely feels manipulative.

The potential themes are fascinating – the boundary between humans and animals, language acquisition – but it quickly becomes clear that Marsh is less interested in the science of the experiment than he is in the people who conducted it, and their testimonies as recorded by his contemporary interviews. It’s a stance that’s neatly both reflective of and driven by the scientists themselves, who also appear to have been less preoccupied by the chimp’s experience than they were their own. The project’s leader, Herb Terrace, comes across as something of an arrogant creep, apparently bonking everyone in sight whilst neglecting to record any data on Nim’s progress (never mind wellbeing) during the research at all.

There’s also a lot of plain weirdness: for such apparent free-lovers, these people use horribly clinical phrases like ‘sexual contact’ when describing their relationships with each other, and seem oblivious to the fact that actions such as breast-feeding a chimpanzee might be considered outside of normal behaviour. Uncanny shots of Nim dressed in human clothing abound, and you feel sorry for him throughout. Only one truly sympathetic human character emerges: Bob Ingersoll, a primatologist who at least attempts to engage with Nim on his level (if such a thing is possible) and continuously campaigns for his improved living conditions. The contemptuous way in which this evident animal-lover dispenses the word ‘notepad’ when describing another more studious professor is a joy to behold.

The film loses some momentum in its final third, when the half-baked project is given up with vague conclusions, and the oddity gives way to plain sadness as Nim’s lonely latter years are revealed. I found Marsh’s stylistic touches aesthetically pleasing: eerie, slow pans of his static interviewees which reminded me of The Arbor, and huge white block capitals to supply a name upon each introduction. But I couldn’t escape the feeling that its central exposé – of the vanity and peculiarity that can afflict academia – was neither revelatory nor particularly important, compared with what was promised by the set-up. Perhaps the material dictates: the film is disappointing in the same way as the outcome of the botched experiment. But as such it did feel somewhat slight – an incidental, if highly watchable, piece of modern documentary.

The Referees

'Thief... clown... fairy', according to the Poles

Start to think about football referees and the question quickly presents itself: who on earth would be one? Famous but not celebrated, physically fit but not skilled. Earning a fraction of the wages of those in the same sphere. Good jobs going unnoticed, bad jobs anything but. Does it take a special kind of madness? Belgian documentary The Referees (or Les Arbitres), released on DVD next week, doesn’t purport to have the answers – but certainly opens a window for us onto these strange, marginal and sometimes lonely lives.

The film is the result of special access granted by UEFA to director Yves Hinant, whose crew followed various officials around on their everyday business during Euro 2008. The trick is that you barely notice they’re there: those being filmed only ever talk to each other, never looking into the camera or at an off-screen interviewer. We see a wrong decision anxiously mulled over amongst the officials themselves, and a father’s pride expressed to random local over a pint. The viewer is left with the convincing illusion that there is no camera: this is genuine, fly-on-the-wall stuff.

One major effect is to swiftly eliminate the idea that referees might ever be biased. The pressures illustrated here are manifold: the respect of fellow professionals, the hopes of friends and loved ones watching on television and the incredible level of scrutiny performances are subject to, via UEFA assessments. One excruciating scene sees a poor linesman sitting through countless replays of an incorrect offside decision in a room of colleagues, having to describe his own mistake (and what he should have done instead) like a naughty schoolchild. Later, Howard Webb is the subject of death threats and comparisons to Hitler – and his family home afforded extra security for fear of attack – after the award of a last-minute penatly against Poland. Which team is fouling which is clearly never the issue here: these guys are just desperate that they get every decision right.

Then there’s the film’s true calling card: its footage of the games themselves. Tracking his subjects around the pitch, Hinant uses a compelling camera technique (one I’m not sure I’ve seen before) which somehow focuses on everything in shot – so that at times its possible to watch players in close-up, referee in the centre and baying crowd in the background all at once. What’s more, the sound is mixed so that chanting and other noises are dulled, whilst the headsets linking the referee, his two linesmen and the fourth official are brought to the forefront – much, presumably, like these men must try to do in reality. It’s fascinating to listen in: at one point a referee cautioning a particularly burly player is reminded ‘don’t back off Peter!’ and you can watch as he visibly forces himself to a stop. They shout things like ‘dive!’, ‘yellow!’, ’18!’ and constantly tell each other ‘well done’. Howard Webb calls all the players ‘my friend’.

Are they mad? Perhaps, but no more so than the rest of us. The foibles uncovered by Hinant here include a melodramatically delivered hotel-room speech about ‘courage’, a bizarre kissing routine performed moments before a match, and – most endearingly – one linesman practising his flag-waving technique in front of the dressing room mirror. These human touches are a relief; indeed it’s difficult not to leave the film with the impression of a football world which could do with taking itself less seriously. The clearest and most sensible comment is made by one Swiss referee, in the midst of battle, to a raging player. ‘We are not gods. We make mistakes. I am sorry.’

The Devil’s Double

Cooper, trooper

More of me elsewhere: I reviewed the slightly odd The Devil’s Double, a film chock-full of Dominic Cooper and which comes out tomorrow, over at HUH Magazine. It involved going to a swanky press screening and everything. You can read the result here:
HUH Magazine – The Devil’s Double

There are also some new and exciting additions to the links section on the right, so check those out too if you fancy it. Otherwise, carry on.

Poetry

How do you like them apples?

Every Korean film that arrives on these shores seems to involve rape or death – or both – and Poetry is no exception. It shares its narrative trigger with Park Chan-Wook’s trend-setting Oldboy: the suicide of a teenage girl, throwing herself into a river following an act of sexual deviance. And some of the shots here are incredibly similar – I fancy director Lee Chang-Dong might even have used the same bridge. But compared to Oldboy and its increasingly violent successors, Poetry turns out to be a much tamer, more contemplative watch – a film which washes over you like the deceptively cool waters of its opening and closing shots.

The protagonist here is Mija, a ‘chic’ but unassuming sixty-something living in a modest flat where she cares for her teenage grandson, Wook. At the outset, she is struck by two disturbing pieces of information: first, a diagnosis from her doctor of the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and secondly the discovery that Wook was involved in the circumstances leading to the girl’s suicide. She divides her time between cooking for Wook, earning money as a maid to a housebound stroke-victim, and meeting with the parents of the other boys implicated in the wrongdoing, who are seeking damage-limitation. Amidst it all, she decides to join a poetry class.

Actress Yoon Jeong-Hee, who was lured out of retirement for the role and spends almost the entire duration on screen, keeps most things internal, understanding that film acting is often about the merest twitches on an otherwise unperturbed face. It’s a perfect performance for her character, who barely confronts her grandson about the central unsavoury incident and ‘forgets’ to bring it up when sent to the victim’s mother to do just that. Only in her classes does she articulate any real emotion – she yearns to write a poem but cannot rediscover the inspiration of her youth (when she had ‘the poet’s vein’ – defined by her sister as ‘liking flowers and saying odd things’).

Somehow two and half hours pass with no let-up in the film’s gentle pull, despite the lack of major narrative development. Instead, there’s a weight of sadness that builds incredibly effectively – almost surreptitiously – as the scenes roll by. Interspersed with the basic plot are beautifully delivered, highly personal monologues by the poetry group’s members, many of whom have no other lines in the script. Shot exclusively as talking heads, we assume these confessions are being delivered to the rest of the class, but can’t be sure. Are these characters stepping out of the film to talk directly to us?

The ending reaches for the profound and transcendental, less clunkily than The Tree of Life, but nevertheless in a fashion which left me bewildered rather than swept away – and certainly under the impression that writer/director Lee’s true gift for ‘poetry’ exists in images, rather than words. But I think he earned this final extravagance. Poetry is a film of considerable craft and with a huge heart – a graceful, melancholy, meditative treat.

Haneke love

Great man

I need to get more into lists, I think. One man who’s got them down to a tee is David Harris, esteemed author of Chop’s Top Fives and (more importantly) Fulham fan. When he asked me to contribute, I took the opportunity to express my admiration for Michael Haneke, genius director and (more importantly) author of the very words from which this blog’s name is derived. To see what I had to say, click here:
Chop’s Top Fives – Top Five Haneke Films

HP7B

Most of the film was this colour

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is officially a cinema sensation, bringing a record-breaking £23.75m worth of people into the cinema during its first three days of UK release. By contrast, The Tree of Life, which some big noises in France recently adjudged the best film of the year, made just over £400,000 in the same time period when it opened last week. The universally praised A Separation has taken more than two weeks to generate half of that.

I thought I’d take my haughty self along, then, to see what all the fuss was about before it finally came to an end. As a literary and cinematic Potter virgin, entirely ignorant of my horcruxes from my griffindors, I was relying purely on cultural osmosis to help me through. Plot-wise, it was surprisingly ok: I don’t think I got everything, but I got the gist. What I hadn’t realised was how derivative JK Rowling’s world is – of JRR Tolkien (the battle bits), Enid Blyton (Englishy/school bits) and even Jim Henson (goblin Griphook channelling Labyrinth’s Hoggle). No bad thing, necessarily; all the best stories are old.

The star of the show, Daniel Radcliffe, has a thankless task as the dull-as-dishwater all-round good egg at the centre of it all. Or perhaps it’s just that he can’t act: something about his face does seem fundamentally vacant, and he carries himself around with shoulders locked, as if searching for gravitas, à la George W Bush. Towards the end, his reaction to learning of his own impending death is not unlike the facial expression one might expect from someone realising they’d left an umbrella on a train.

Then there’s his two sidekicks, Hermione and Ron, who – in this film at least – appear to serve little purpose at all, other than as sounding-boards for our hero Harry’s thoughts. In three separate scenes during the first half-hour, they literally stand in the corner of the room, silent, whilst Radcliffe carries out expository conversation with the person they’ve gone to meet.

I'm still not sure what a 'deathly hallow' is

What’s notable is the way in which this personality vacuum at the centre of the film is so bountifully surrounded by the great and the good of British acting. Helena Bonham-Carter, Jason Isaacs, Michael Gambon and John Hurt all get their few lines – the camera even whizzed past Jim Broadbent a couple of times – and with all that talent gathered in one place, it’s difficult not to begin to think of what might have been in a parallel universe, in which the kids were killed off in episode one.

Ralph Fiennes is the highlight here. Not unlike Jessica Chastain in The Tree of Life, he whispers to children in voiceover – although one quickly suspects that Voldemort is somewhere at the other end of the good/evil spectrum. His anti-nose make-up is brilliantly creepy, and he slithers every line out with gleeful malevolence – although Alan Rickman as Severus Snape wins delivery of the film for his fantastically over-the-top discharge of the phrase ‘equally guilty’ during a particularly ominous headmaster’s announcement.

I suspect I might have enjoyed the more heavily school-based plots of the earlier films over this one. At least in the Hogwarts sections there was the occasional suggestion of some much-needed wit: one of the film’s only throwaway lines (and a welcome tonal respite) sees Maggie Smith tell Julie Walters ‘I’ve always wanted to use that spell’ after summoning some particularly solemn looking rock-based guards. Otherwise, for a kids film about magic and goblins, it does seem to take itself incredibly seriously.

The filmmaking itself is perfectly accomplished, if unremarkable – a reminder that these Potter releases are not so much films as services to the books, whose revered status amongst a loyal and large-scale fanbase was always going to compromise any serious invention on screen. Would I have been more moved had I sat through all eight? Perhaps. As it is, I must confess that my interest continues to lie in the incredible box-office – by definition, getting people into the cinema that never normally go – but little else.

The Tree of Life

Cinematography = good

Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a high-minded, high-concept, sincere and solemn film. It begins with what appears to be a ray of light and some choral music, then a fifteen-minute surge of words and images – boys playing, Brad Pitt glaring, Sean Penn worrying – that hint vaguely at a plot but will not let us settle. It’s a memorable experience – the camera, aptly, swoops in and amongst these scenes in disorientating, near-nauseating fashion. I think I liked this bit.

Then, all of a sudden, abstract CGI shapes and colours fill the screen. I was confused, not to mention worried that Malick was following Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void in attempting to extract profundity from Windows Media Player visualisations. But then: ah, planets forming. Dinosaurs roaming. This was some kind of history of the cosmos, like an updated Fantasia or high-budget Discovery Channel doc. Occasionally someone from the cast (who knows who) would offer breathy voiceover about the ‘way of nature’. I’d worked out what I was watching, but it remained unclear why.

After a full 40 minutes, the decent film within this froth finally gets going. Malick places us in the company of small-town, middle-income American family living in the not-too-distant past. We watch as three boys are born to Jessica Chastain, an angelic figure who speaks exclusively in whisper and is at one with butterflies. Pitt is her disciplinarian husband, a more complex, tortured soul who ‘hugs’ his children by grabbing them into his midriff and batting them on the head.

The boys’ upbringing makes for gripping and distinctive drama, excellently conveying childhood confusion, love, fear – and a sense of potential violence that’s achieved despite never showing much. I think this is partly down to Pitt’s superb performance, his eyes all troubled and jaw permanently clenched, and also the brilliance of Hunter McCraken, playing the eldest child Jack, shuffling around with extreme awkwardness and always looking ready to flinch.

The film concludes with a section apparently depicting the afterlife which I can’t even be bothered to describe. I love Sean Penn’s world-weary face but he is wasted here as the adult Jack, wandering around on a vast, grey beach, hugging what appear to be the lost souls of his former family. I found it overblown and meaningless.

The most powerful moments in cinema are often those which occur in our own minds as viewers – implied on screen but not spoken, or taking place just out of shot. The Tree Of Life works best when, in its middle section, it reins itself in and allows its messages to seep in slowly, under your skin. But this is ultimately a maximalist film which refuses to leave anything to the imagination: if Malick wants you to think about religion, he will impose continuous disembodied utterances about ‘the grace of god’; if he wants you to consider our place in the universe, he will actually depict the creation of the universe. A germ of a stunning piece of work is in there somewhere – but this is a film that leaves you wanting less.

Trailers

Last week a trailer appreared on the internet for a new adaptation of John Le Carré’s novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It’s out in September and apparently features every single British actor you can think of. After you watch it, I will attempt to explain why it’s a great trailer. Here it is:

 
And here’s why it’s great:

1. The music. The music makes it, really – especially those menacing violins over the section with the actors’ names at the end. And it’s same score throughout: any trailer which shifts its tone midway by changing the music is TOO LONG.
2. The big black fades between shots at the beginning (I’d have kept them throughout). These provide a touch of chic, a ‘dark’ atmosphere, and best of all only allow the briefest of glimpses at the images they bridge, so as not to spoil them for the film itself.
3. No inane voiceover, and minimal explanation of what’s going on.  There’s a mole at the top of something and he’s been there for years. He could be any one of five men. Great, that’s all I need to know.
4. It offers some juicy lines without revealing how they relate to the plot. ‘He’s become so ugly’; ‘We’re not so different, you and I’. Who’s ugly? Who and who aren’t different? No idea – good.
5. It’s short. A minute is more than long enough to fulfil the above: establish a tone, show some images, explain the germ of the plot and show who’s in it.

Contrast this with Larry Crowne’s trailer: filling the maximum allowed length of two and half minutes, it tells you that Tom Hanks is a nice guy who loses his job so goes back to college, where he’s taught by Julia Roberts, who initially sees him as annoying but then grows fonder of him, before eventually they get together. Isn’t that the whole film? With a plot so bad, I’d have thought you’d be especially careful not to give it away.

And it isn’t just trash that suffers from trailers in this way. Have a look at this one for The King’s Speech – are there any bits of the film you can remember which aren’t in there somewhere? Often trailers for upmarket fare are lazy, spoilerish showcases of ‘best bits’: see Black Swan, True Grit, Pina. These seem impressive at the time – I was blown away by Pina’s – but chronically lessen the impact of the film itself. You end up wishing you’d never seen them.

I always thought that the point of a trailer was to whet your appetite, not blend the whole meal together and stuff it down your face in one go. So here’s an idea, which might especially apply to thoughtful, arty-type films – why not simply show one well-chosen scene, uncut? Perhaps an early exchange between two characters, which serves to set some of the plot in motion. No context or explanation, but a showcase for acting and writing – ending with the title of the film, the name of the director and when it’s out. I’d be intrigued.