Reviews

Steve McQueen, the artist cum film director (Tom Horn will be turning in his grave) sadly understands little of what cinema is about. He is, after all, an 'artist' (note the inverted commas) and not a filmmaker. What we have here in Hunger, if not a sensationalist portrayal of actual events and another example of profiting from what is ostensibly a tragic series of circumstances, is at very best a resorting to, once again, stark visceral imaging to which the viewer is, contrary to the 'freedom of choice' that Sands himself invoked by his decision to starve himself, coerced into aggressively. This is to say nothing of the apparent sympathetic tenor which the film sustains towards a terrorist outfit that has destroyed the lives of many innocent people and their families.

With regard to the producer's credo that this film 'provides a timely exploration of what happens when body and mind are pushed to the uttermost limit' I saw absolutely no 'exploration' of the sort, other than an infantile book-ending of sentimentalism framed around a story of Sands' childhood that in all probability never existed. Oh, and something of a vanity project centred around Fassbender's own starvation diet. This ridiculous explanandum is just another example of the convoluted rhetoric used time and again to justify a piece of work that cannot shine for itself without first being panel-beaten onto a plane for all to see.

Such forceful emotive evocations are typical of artists who pander to their audience's pity which (and to echo the Margaret Thatcher quote used by McQueen) is the most basic of human emotions. It would appear, then, that McQueen has allowed his emotions to get the better of him, a dangerous thing when dealing with such overtly political topics.

The pivotal 22 minute talkie-bit-in-the-middle includes a 17 and half minute take for which the rationale seems at best unsure. Maybe this, again, is something of the vain McQueen popping up, wanting to lick his balls because he can. The whole scene, consequently, is artificial, and wholly unnatural in terms of interaction and dialogue (in fact, it is a contrived duologue). Furthermore, the whole film smacks of convention from start to finish: man imprisoned for his ideals, man beaten up by prison guards, (cheesy silences, cheesier dialogues), slow death of man, man's life flashes before his eyes. End Credits. How many more times do we need to be inflicted with the same tripe and tedious linearity? Have you artists no imagination? Though he might know what constitutes a picture, it is clear that McQueen is not a filmmaker, indeed he freely admits this. If this is the case, then he would be wise to steer clear of such subjects which require not just the imaginative eye of the artist but a factual re-presentation of the reality of the situation, whilst avoiding at all costs the clichéd and puerile fly-on-the-finger shots, or somehow trying to make a sh*t-circle look curiously cosmic. But McQueen has proved he is still a child at heart. Whether artist or filmmaker, McQueen has a responsibility here, not just to a man's life and his ideals but to those lives that were touched (or, as the case may be, sledge-hammered) by the movement he was connected with.

The Bridge is a 2006 documentary film by Eric Steel that purports to tell the stories of a handful of individuals who committed suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge in 2004. The film was inspired by an article entitled 'Jumpers', which was written by Tad Friend and appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 2003. The documentary caused significant controversy when Eric Steel revealed that he had tricked the Golden Gate Bridge committee into allowing him to film the bridge for months during which he captured 23 of 24 known suicides which took place there. In his permit application to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Steel said he intended 'to capture the powerful, spectacular intersection of monument and nature that takes place every day at the Golden Gate Bridge'.

Do not be fooled by the vacuous comments that have opened this film. This film is not about 'suicide' nor is it about 'painting a three-dimensional portrait of each jumpers last moments' (don't make me laugh) (see Gus van Sant's Last Days for a more evocative depiction of this). It is, rather, another hollow 'documentary' that has caused significant controversy with its apparent profiting from suicide.

Using stop-motion photography with multiple cameras pointed at a notorious suicide spot on the bridge, an American Beauty soundscore, and some disillusioned Goth rocker's swan-song as a wraparound intended to increase suspense (excuse the pun), this vapid attempt at film-making has nothing whatsoever to do with 'objectivity' as one commenter stated, nor with the grimy reality that lies at the core of these somewhat final actions.

As to 'lucid and enlightening insights' delivered by 'well-spoken and competent individuals' (according to reviews on IMDb) what we have in effect are carefully prepared scripts that convey a lack of authenticity. One also gets the feeling that some of the interviewees, relatives of the deceased, are too distracted by the camera and the thought of being in a film to concern themselves too deeply with the rather sensitive point in question. The tragedy with this 'documentary' was not in 'not helping these people from jumping' as some people have argued, but in profiting from it in such a shallow and insensitive manner. Admittedly, the director thought it might prove an excellent springboard with the delicate subject matter into the world of film and, as he was quoted saying: a career in movies.

'Documentaries' like this are unbalanced, tainted (forget the 'objectivity' of our lead commenter - suicide has nothing to do with being objective, nor for that matter with stop-motion photography or kitschy slushy disco-pop), and cosmeticized to such a degree (look no further than the poster) that it loses any real value of the bare-bone realities of suicide before the opening credits have even appeared. What we have in effect then is a trashy take on 'suicide' that tries its best to wow audiences in the most over-simplistic and dumbed down fashion and which revels in these 'joyous jumps' (I can almost hear the camera crew saying 'just one more and we've got a wrap') and sensational faces of death which represent, as one of the few commentors that made any sense on this subject said, the 'money shots' in what is surely a grubbier film than any porno.

The Bridge is not a documentary, nor does it even approach the accolade of film, rather it is just another example of puerile ideas exploited to further careers in what these people think is cinema, but is in effect, just another dirty little business intent on making money by whatever means possible.

Yella is something of an amalgam of Carnival of Souls, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and Jacob's Ladder. These derivatives notwithstanding, Yella shows flashes of genius in its compositional elements - it is a very quiet film for instance, very serenely composed as the underlying score of Beethoven's piano sonata suggests, and certainly not a waste of time. My summation is that as the eponymous heroine is dying she experiences the reverie of life, and, as in a dream, things become mixed up, hence here, the new guy Philip is in fact the old guy who kills her by driving his Landrover off the bridge. Note the physical resemblance between the two for a start. If you watch the film there are many residual effects like this: the bourgeois family for example represents her dreamlike aspiration of a future taking real form; she imagines a possible world for her as it might have happened in those few fleeting moments as the life goes out of her. There is a definite dreamlike, lackadaisical quality about the whole thing. Another film that springs to mind, which resonates on some level, is Paolo Sorrentino's exercise in style, Le Conseguenze dell'Amore. In some ironic way, this title would not be out of place for Yella.

Skyfall.

Or should that be Scuffle? From the frenetic opening sequence I thought to myself, oh no, not again, not quantum of solace all over… Admittedly, it wasn't quite as terrible as QOS - there was a fine title sequence and something of a storyline here, but the fast, 5 frames a second, explosion-filled, 'most-is-more' juvenility was still ever-present, a philosophy that is symptomatic of today's economic and metaphysical decline. Furthermore, Daniel Craig, bless him, is completely devoid of any quality whatsoever to the point that where towards the end standing at the head of the pass of Glencoe in a typically misty morning, he utters dispiritedly, plagiarising both Terminator and The Dark Knight Rises (both of whom had some feeling in it), 'There's a storm coming..'. As blank as a blank cheque.

No, Daniel, there is no storm coming. What is coming is the usual third act of explosions and gunfire and dead bodies and hesitations and more gunfire, and a helicopter and more hesitations and of course the cliché just-in-time-finishing-off-the-baddie. What is wrong with these baddies? Have they not seen any action films before? Have they lived a life completely devoid of cinema and DVDs? Do they not realise that he who hesitates is doomed, and that he who hesitates not once but three times is even more doomed? But no, obviously not. It's just an insult, plain and simple, and completely negates any intelligence that you had hitherto invested in the typically dastardly Bond baddie. It's pathetic. It might be entertaining for a 12 year old… and then it dawns on me, most grown ups who are lauding this are 12 year olds.

For someone who has been showered with accolades in the past several weeks for being the 'best Bond' in the 'best Bond film ever', Craig is not even man enough to say, 'C'mon, c'mon, surely not.' He just sits there, all dolled up like he just fell out of an action man box and smiles. He is terrible as Bond and the fact that many critics laud him as the best is indicative of their invertebrate status as human beings and the confined boxes they operate within (their fear of standing up and kicking against the pricks). OK, so Casino Royale and Craig's entrance to the Bond franchise was a fine piece of work (thanks for the most part to the gentle pacing, the bubbling menace from Mads Mikkelson's 'Le Chiffre' character, and some outstanding set-pieces). There was also, like in so many cases of artistic endeavor, a fair bit of beginner's luck involved on the part of Craig in his alternative view of the chauvinistic spy.

No such luck in Skyfall. It is simply cliché after cliché in a monumental two and a half hour grand cliché, eventually ending up with Albert Finney (who looks as if he's just been dug out from Rannoch Moor itself) telling the baddies before blowing them away with his sawn-off shotgun, 'Welcome to Scotland'. OK, I smiled, maybe even chuckled, but only because of the berserker spirit we Scots have in the depths of our hearts. Our backbone (once upon a time) stood upright. Where is the backbone of these film critics who ordinarily despair at such cliché-ridden acts of violence and such facile 'most-is-more' enactings? Suddenly, when watching Skyfall, they become blind and deaf, clutching onto their careers for dear life lest they lose their jobs, their livelihood, for daring to question the work of such monumental status-men. To be sure, Scuffle is not without its moments - I can think of two - but in a film that is almost three hours long, surely this is not good enough.

In the orient, though perhaps not in Shanghai's obnoxious cityscape, they have a saying that in order to reach enlightenment, first you must kill the Buddha. Well, I say, enough already with Bond. It's all getting rather tired and weak. Kill him already. Kill the Bond.

Though it appears to be a film about a serial killer and death, Manhunter is a film primarily concerned with the immanent nature of 'life' and the absolute. The symbolic allusions to eastern thinking in Manhunter are manifold. It appears to deal with the very nature of enlightenment itself. There are markers all over. It is a film peppered with clues which make the viewer as much the forensic detective as Will Graham himself. I mean, look at those gleaming white offices, that sparklingly white cell of Lecktor's, Lecktor's all-white uniform, the sedated tiger, the inflorescence that pervades to the very core of the film straight from the strangely alive opening titles; even the architecture is grounded in the complexity of curves and ethereal whiteness.

Some of the clues reveal the essence of this oriental philosophy here:

The killer distorts his face deliberately with a stocking; he pens a letter which speaks of his great 'becoming'. His home is cosmically decorated with maps of galaxies and nebulae. He is obsessed with seeing, a seeing that Mann reinforces all the more by introducing a woman who is blind. Perhaps the clues are too many in fact. There seems to be too much information that eagerly seeks the approval of Mann's hypothesis: that seeing is both the key to enlightenment and the escape from darkness.

Even the killer's death scene lays him out in the form of a butterfly, suggesting the eventual chrysalis of the killer's mind into the realm of nirvana. His becoming is realized in death. His macabre death pose is oddly peaceful and reminiscent of Jarmusch's later squashed haloed head in Dead Man.

In amongst all the talk, two key and very short dialog scenes stand out above all others:

The scene with Lecktor on the telephone, where Lecktor explains to Graham why he felt depressed after killing someone.

We don't ask for our natures, they're issued to us along with our lungs, our pancreas and everything else. Why fight it? Didn't you feel so bad because killing him felt so good, and why shouldn't it…? Lecktor asks.

And the scene just before the last act when Graham discovers how the killer knew so much about the family's home security, where he says to Jack, (Dennis Farina's character):

My heart bleeds for him as a child. Someone took a kid and manufactured a monster. At the same time as an adult he's irredeemable. He butchers whole families to pursue trivial fantasies… as an adult someone should blow the sick fu#k out of his socks….

Do you think that's a contradiction Jack? Does this kind of understanding make you uncomfortable?

As the killer achieves realization in death so too does Graham appear to achieve it in life. It is said that everyone achieves nirvana at the instant of one's death. The key, though, appears to be able to self-realize whilst still alive. Graham, with his epiphany in the hotel room, appears to do this.

Moreover, and perhaps more obviously symbolic, the film is book-ended in the oceanic space of the Pacific Ocean, and the great peace of water. It is this absolute emptiness upon the edge of which the Graham family stands at both the beginning and the end of the film. The ocean itself represents 'before birth' and 'after death'. It is, in effect, oblivion, (a symbol that Mann uses later on in 'Heat' in a pivotal scene with Robert Deniro)

Whether it is Manhunter's lighting or sound score, everything points to this oblivious and mystical aspect that underlies all life. Yet unlike many blatantly mystical films Manhunter never lingers on its symbolism, and never appears contrived. It helps that the central performances are solid and believable, whether Petersen as cop, or Noonan as killer; or the periphery characters of Graham's wife, Kim Greist, and the son, or Brian Cox as Lecktor, and Farina as the other cop. The casting agent should have got an award for assembling such a marvelous and capable team.

Together with The Keep and Thief (and to a certain extent, Heat), both interesting (and sinister) films in their own right, Manhunter represents Mann's trinity that explores the circuminsessional penetration of all things, enlightenment, and the darkness of ignorance.

Any profound film, book, poem, reveals its essence in its paradox. Ripley's Game is no different. It is a paradox that plays out under the guise of an ordinary film. To this end, it is a film that is enveloped by its own protagonist-antagonist, the paradox of Tom Ripley, a Veneto-dwelling American, seemingly devoid of morals and feeling, yet with all the sensualism and erudition of an epicurean sybarite.

Morricone's music, as impeccable as ever, opens the film in Berlin with a slow subtle score before embarking on the clavicembalo (harpsichord) and a beautiful aerial shot of Malkovich's little red fiat coursing through the hills of Treviso.

Ripley's Game, based on Patricia Highsmith's novel about the amoral Tom Ripley and his exploits, is a fantastically underrated film which, due to its high-art European status (it was shot on location in Germany and Italy and concerns itself with art first and foremost), was largely passed over in favour of more exciting, and faster moving films. It was a huge financial flop (costing over $30m and recouping barely a tenth of that), and in spite of opening on the big screen in Europe, went straight to DVD in the states.

The locations, notably Berlin and the Veneto, are part of the film's charms (dare I say characters in themselves) along with those of the triumvirate of Ripley (Malkovich), Reeves (Winstone), and Trevanny (Scott). The casting is marvellous here, and the three protagonists play off each other's strengths and weakness beautifully. From the very off, the uncouth philistine, Reeves (stoned and waxing as lyrically as he can of Berlin's architecture) aside the Renaissance man Ripley (calm and collected and slightly disgusted at Reeves' crassness), is an absolute joy to watch in its theatricality and Cavani's direction as they walk across the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin's Mitte district with a view to pulling off a not-so-ambitious art heist.

It's almost as fine a scene as one a little later where Winstone's character presents Ripley with a garrotte as they walk across another of Berlin's platz's. Here, we see Malkovich living up to his philosophy as he toys with the garrotte in plain sight as if it were a scarf. 'I don't worry about being caught' he says later on in a remarkable scene in a train station bathroom, 'because I don't believe anyone is watching.' It is this total lack of paranoia which manifests itself as a detached coolness, almost palpably terrible in its calmness, that Malkovich (avowedly a man that has never felt embarrassed) carries off so well in his quiet unruffled countenance. Of all the actors who have played Ripley in their various incarnations - Delon, Damon, Hopper, Pepper - Malkovich is by far the one whom Highsmith herself would have recommended for the role. Indeed, one wonders if it is Malkovich playing Ripley or Ripley playing Malkovich such is the quiet strength of his performance.

The plot, though itself flawed, struggles a little here and there to tie (garrotte) things up, and leaves a couple of holes (emphatically, not made by bullets) here and there. But it is the plot's unconventionality, garrottes and pokers instead of guns, philosophy instead of mathematics, art instead of science, that makes the film so wonderfully watchable. It is certainly a film that, perhaps like Ripley should he ever get collared, deserves a fair trial.

Ripley at one point calls himself a 'creation' and 'a gifted improviser' when Trevanny asks him who he is. Trevanny doesn't seem to understand. He has never dreamed, never improvised, he seems completely lacking in any spontaneity to the point of pathology. Perhaps this is what leukemia does to you (Trevanny we quickly learn is dying, which explains his succumbing to Ripley's outlandish deal), but perhaps not. The final scene has Trevanny in a moment of what can only be called total spontaneity, doing (or more significantly being) something that Ripley cannot himself understand. For a brief moment, and it shows on the lips of Trevanny, the roles have been switched. The master has become the protégé, the protégé become the master. It is a turnaround of some aplomb, as the circle closes and completes itself.

Trevanny's name itself seems to have inspired (or have been inspired by - the timeline is a little muddy here) the airport paperback writer and American film scholar Rodney William Whitaker whose later book and bestseller Shibumi (1979) appears under the pseudonym Trevanian and has all the hallmarks of Ripley's presence, as the following quote illustrates: "Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanour, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is…. How does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that…" It appears that Highsmith's Ripley had cause to inspire. 'All I know is that we're in a constant state of being born.' In this disclosure of Ripley's, again in the bathroom (is not the bathroom the place of revelations?), he perhaps divulges his own bodhisattva nature, not quite Buddha yet (whose birth has by his very (un)nature finished), but on the path. He doesn't quite know why he is helping Trevanny in the farcical train scene, but perhaps this is why: to lead Trevanny to his own awakening. This eventually accomplished, (nirvana comes to most at the point of death), Ripley can return to the music, to the clavicembalo which his mistress caresses so gently, and to the art of living which characterizes the one who has achieved what Whitaker later calls Shibumi. Yet, the question remains, and here is the paradox - that within Ripley's understanding and supposed enlightenment there is an obscurity. There is a darkness, and the angst of still being constantly born.