Well, feeling better now, so here is a ‘catch up’ post.
Among the DVDs that arrived in my post are;
Portrait of a Lady on Fire, (2019) written and directed by Celine Sciamma, starring Noemie Merlant, Adele Haenet and Luana Bajari, and shot by Claire Mathon. This French film is beautiful and subversive. With a female writer, director, cinematographer and cast it presents a direct and explicit challenge to the famous ‘male gaze’.
It is set in the 18th century, a time when women had very little freedom or agency. Marianne is a portrait painter from Paris, but to get her pictures into the important galleries she has to pretend they are by her famous father. Not because he is famous, but because he is male. Heloise is her beautiful young subject. Heloise is the daughter of a Countess. It is clear that she has no choice over who she will marry. Money is marrying a Title. Her portrait is to be sent from Brittany to Milan to be seen by her husband-to-be. The man wants to see his bride to be. She will not be allowed to look at his portrait. But this film allows women to look at women.
Heloise’s mother had engaged another portraitist before Marianne, a man, but she would not sit for him. At first she will not sit for Marianne either, so she has to pretend to be engaged as her companion - and body-guard. Heloise’s sister had avoided the same marriage match by jumping off a cliff, and her mother fears that Heloise will follow her if given the chance. When Heloise sees the portrait Marianne has secretly painted of her she rejects it too. It is not her. She has not been truly ‘seen’. But now she wants to be seen; not by the man in Milan, but by Marianne. It is clear that a painter ‘looks’ at their subject in a special way, objective but intimate. Heloise points out that she is also looking at the painter. They are seeing each other.
As her mother goes away for a few days Heloise, Marianne and Sophie, their young housekeeper, are left alone in the large old house. I will say no more about the plot. I don’t think this film is about plot.
A few years ago Sciamma wrote My Life as a Courgette, a delightful and moving animated tale about a young boy sent to an orphanage where, as it says on IMDb ‘he begins to learn the meaning of trust and love’. She also wrote Water Lilies, Tomboy and Girlhood. Learning how to trust and love - and the cost of loving - seems to be her theme. Learning takes time, and Sciamma is prepared to take time. She does not rush her shots or her plot.
I really enjoyed looking at this movie, and the ‘extra’ where the woman who actually painted the pictures used in the film talks about her craft. I strongly recommend this.
I got hold of the Australian Little Monsters mainly because it starred Lupita Nyong’o. I really enjoyed and admired her in 12 Years a Slave, Us, and Black Panther and her role in this movie seemed to be as different from those as they were from each other. Here she is a primary school teacher taking her class to a local theme park, accompanied by a Dave, (Alexander England) a single parent who fancies her. At the Park they meet Teddy McGiggle (Josh Gad), a children’s ‘entertainer’ - and then a horde of zombies escaped from a nearby US experimental base.
I have learnt to appreciate the way zombie movies have been used as either social commentaries or as comedy. Two British entries, Jane Austen and the Zombies, and Cockneys vs Zombies both amused me greatly. This Australian attempt amused me, mildly. It did not provide any social commentary. (Try Host, an early monster movie by the wonderful Korean Boon Joon Ho for that). Little Monster uses ‘very strong language, strong bloody violence and gore.’ It might amuse you. Lupita is still wonderful.
Ash is Purest White is Jia Zhang-Ke’s most recent movie (2018). It follows a Chinese woman, Qiao (played by Zhang-Ke’s wife Tao Zhao) over the first 17 years of this century. In 2001 she is a gangster’s moll in the industrial north east of China, but his fall from power – and her self sacrifice - sends her to jail. This a movie that could not have been made, or if made not seen in China - even a few years ago. Some of Yimou Zhang’s earlier movies were banned if they were seen as critical of the Party or the country. This film hardly mentions the Party but is deeply critical of the modern China and its corruption. I have been interested in Asian cinema for a long time, and this seems to me to be a welcome development in social realism. Chinese criminals have been seen before, but mainly set in pre-revolutionary times (Yimou’s Shanghai Triad comes to mind) or in Hong Kong based thrillers, such as the original 2002/3 Infernal Affairstrilogy by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, the basis for Sorceses’ The Departed. I think Ash is Purest White is well worth watching for its own sake as well as for its Sino/political/social importance.
It has taken me a few years to catch up with Pixar’s Coco. Lee Unkrich co-directed Toy /Story 2/3, Nemo, Monsters Inc, The Good dinosaur, Ratatouille and Monsters University between them, and even if only Toy Story 3 is really in my Pixar favourite list I really trust the brand. And I really enjoyed Coco, as our Mexican boy hero enters the bizarre Land of the Dead to challenge his family’s ban on music making by finding his famous singing great-great-grandfather. The music and visuals burst from the screen, the plot is complex enough to engage, the voice cast is great and I am glad to have caught up with it. Good family fun.
Bob Fosse’s semi-autobiographical film All That Jazz is very different. He made it in 1979, after Lenny, 1974, in which Dustin Hoffman channelled Lenny Bruce, and then Cabaret, which Fosse choreographed and directed. This is a searing honest fictionalised account of his hard working, hard playing, hard loving, hard drinking, hard drug taking life. It is not, however, self-aggrandising; he had no need to do that. He is still the only person ever to win an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy in the same year. He really was phenomenal. Roy Scheider impersonates him amazingly well, and Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking and Leland Palmer represent some of the women he loved – and who loved him. Great and suitably over the top acting and dancing. If you enjoyed his Cabaret I think you will enjoy this, and if you ever had an interest in Lenny Bruce I think Hoffman gives one of the performances of his life in that film.
Before the great shut-down I was lucky enough to see house Rocketman at a big screen movie house. I was really good to see Rocketman with a good sound and vision. It is a big movie with big set pieces that deserve to be seen and heard as well as possible. Written by the experienced Lee Hall, (Victoria & Abdul, Billy Elliot, War Horse) and directed by Dexter Fletcher fresh from having finished off Bohemian Rhapsody after Bryan Singer was fired. Unlike that Freddie Mercury ‘homage’ this is an amazingly honest bio, authorised by Elton John who was a co-producer. We see Elton growing up in his dysfunctional family, then an early descend into a living hell of alcohol and drug abuse, unable to deal with his success of his sexuality.
The story is only slightly fictionalised, being topped and tailed by an imaginary group therapy meeting in which Elton ‘unburdens’ himself. He marches out of his Madison Square concert in full ‘Red Dragon’ costume and into the group declaring that he is an alcoholic, a drug addict, a sex addict – and a shopaholic. And he was not kidding.
But Elton survived. Not only survived but grew into the committed, generous, drug and alcohol free, happily married man we know today. I am sure that this is partly because of his musical talent and sheer determination, but also because of the genuine love and friendship that eventually counter-balanced the abuse of others. Chief among these must be Bernie Taupin, the lyricist. I was glad to see his musical partnership celebrated in this movie, and Jamie Bell portraying him.
But when it comes to ‘portraits’ Taron Egerton is magnificent as Elton. When he takes over from Matthew Illesley and Kit Conner, who play Elton as a child and teenager (and do so very well), Taron is Elton. The whole cast is praiseworthy; in fact almost every aspect of this production has won awards, including the Oscar-winning song (I’m gonna) Love me again.
That is not ‘an Elton John’ song. I don’t think Elton has ever written a song. He has written the music to Bernie Taupin’s words. That is why these songs are never Elton’s autobiography. They may refer in some ways to the life Elton has lived, and Bernie witnessed and to some extent shared, but Bernie’s words always came first. I am sure Bernie does not mind, or if he does he ‘minds all the way to the Bank’), but lyricists are just as important as composers, as all the great song-writing teams show, from Gilbert and Sullivan through Kern and Hammerstein, the Gershwin brothers, Lerner and Loewe, Kander and Web (did you know they wrote Cabaret and Chicago?), David and Bacharach, Lennon and McCartney - and Taupin and John. More to come in Part Two.
