(originally published in The Outreach Connection in September 2008)
Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
Leigh has had a long and prestigious career
but there’s a definite lack of consensus on what it amounts to. Is he an
insightful chronicler of some deep truth about ordinary people, or a quirky
grump off on his own peculiar ledge? I’m not sure myself, but I think he’s
achieved his best work – with Topsy-Turvy
and Vera Drake – when focused on a
particular historical or social purpose; at other times (as with All or Nothing) the films often seem to
drift. The new movie, back in the present day, is built around the kind of
relentlessly cheerful character who’s popped up in the margins of some of his
previous films – 30-year-old Poppy (Sally Hawkins), a nursery school teacher
who goes through life with a quip for every occasion and an almost pathological
inability not to look at the bright side. Leigh is very good of course with the
banter of the English masses (at times the movie just carries you along in a
string of giggles), and although there’s little overt political content here,
the film slowly lets in more of society’s dark and drab sides. In particular
there’s Poppy’s tightly wound driving instructor, who simply can’t handle her,
and there’s a great one-off scene with a homeless man who lurches between
operatic incoherence and sharp lucidity (although Leigh has created scenes like
this before too). Ultimately, there’s not much more to all this than the
observation of Poppy’s best friend that “It’s hard being a grown-up,” which I
suppose might broadly be what virtually every great film is about. But Poppy is
a distinctive enough creation that she comes to seem almost radical. Ultimately
I don’t think the film will change anyone’s opinions about Leigh, but I was
firmly on board for the whole thing.
Achilles
and the Tortoise (Takeshi Kitano)
Actor-director Kitano’s career has been
illustrious enough to get him to the festival’s “Masters” section - he won the
top price at the Venice Festival for Hana-Bi
and his Zatoichi won the TIFF
people’s choice award in 2003. There’s a grab-bag aspect to his work, but he’s
achieved some beauty and plenty of deadpan diversion. With his last few films
he’s shaken off his tough-guy origins, but at the cost of too much
self-absorption. The new one is a nice little movie, straining for significance
(the title metaphor doesn’t count for much) built around the intriguing concept
of a dedicated life long artist who has lots of basic skill and imagination but
lacks the je ne sais quoi that
separates the notables from the also-rans. It takes us from his bourgeois
childhood, ending in catastrophic bust, through art-school hi-jinks and an
adulthood of stoic disappointments, pumped up throughout by the dazzling parade
of his unwanted creations. Kitano’s expressionless block of a presence is
perfectly suited to embodying the character’s older years. Throw in the
recurring motif of death (but always with the sheen of art) and it makes for an
engaging creation, although it’s tempting to take the easy criticism and to say
that the film, like its protagonist, is more facile and resourceful than
actually meaningful. This could of course be a clever fusion of form and
content, a structure of bluffs and double bluffs, except that Kitano’s recent
work suggests that, nah, this is actually as good as he could do.
Il
Divo (Paolo Sorrentino)
Sorrentino’s film probably isn’t ideally
suited for those who, like me, have only a vague knowledge of post-war Italian
politics (as in, it’s really dysfunctional, and a lot of people got blown up) –
even the opening explanatory screen-scroll is barely penetrable. So this is a
film where you have to go with the big picture, but then that’s all confusing
too. Artfully so of course, for isn’t the false promise of simplicity and
clarity in politics one of the great damaging illusions of our times? (cue
Sarah Palin metaphor). The subject is Giulio Andreotti, who was several times
Italian prime minister, maintained (as depicted here) a complex web of
connections while remaining personally repressed and inscrutable, and was
eventually indicted for complicity in Mafia crimes. “You’re either the most
cunning criminal in the country,” says an acquaintance, “or the most persecuted
man in Italy.” It’s likely that the film’s Andreotti – a man we see rip a page
out of a mystery novel because he doesn’t want to know the killer – couldn’t
tell you himself. The film has a silky menace that evokes the dark texture of
the Godfather films (an obvious
reference point in various ways); it also incorporates hints of Sergio Leone
and others, although Sorrentino is much more actively experimental and out to
dazzle with technique (which he frequently does, although again, not always
comprehensibly). For outsiders (and no doubt largely for insiders), the
murkiness about what Andreotti actually achieved (beyond a broad reference to
his contribution to steering through the Cold War) makes it hard to assess his
place on the moral spectrum. Still, it’s not a small achievement to make a
movie that’s so compelling while yet leaving you feeling so grievously
under-resourced.
Les plages d’Agnes (Agnes Varda)
Varda is over 80 now and has been making
films for over 50 years, most recently a series of filmic essays often drawing
on her own prodigiously creative existence. The latest is notionally based on
the importance of various beaches in her life, but this is merely the starting
point for another remarkably graceful reverie on family, friends, memory, love,
loss, art and, always, cinema. She’s a compulsive recycler (one of her
best-loved films The Gleaners and I
took off from this trait) – I’ve now seen some of this footage (such as Jim
Morrison visiting the set of Donkey Skin)
three or four times in various places, and her work knowingly draws
(detractors, although I’m not sure there are many of them, would say coasts) on
her audience’s affection for her. The film certainly rewards it though, never
more than when she once again pays tribute to her late husband Jacques Demy
(who made The Umbrellas of Cherbourg),
who she clearly still misses keenly after 18 years and discusses here more
frankly in some ways than I’ve seen before. Varda’s resources are stunning –
she visits people she shot as children in her first film La Pointe Courte; displays her extra-cinematic work from 50’s
photos of China to recent art installations; dresses up as a giant potato;
throws in some full-frontal nudity; talks (allegedly anyway) to fellow
documentarian Chris Marker, who’s hiding behind a giant cartoon cat with a
disguised voice; builds herself a makeshift beach in the middle of her Paris
neighbourhood…all connected so subtly and fluidly that almost immediately
afterwards you struggle to recall how she could possibly have done it.
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