Once a year our little West Coast Town is
taken over by traditional Irish music fans and students from all over the world
for Willie Clancy Week, honouring the memory of a legendary local piper. The population increases 10 fold, so everyone is called on to offer B & B,
including me. Afterwards I treated
myself to a week in Dublin, enjoying access to the theatre and a more
metropolitan cinema. By the way, if
you want to stay in Dublin it is worth checking out the accommodation at
Trinity College, where student suites are available, right in the heart of the
city, with free parking, and the freedom
to cook you own food if you want.
To the west of the city centre, in
Smithfields close by the main train station, you find the Light House
Cinema. This is a great cinema, part
of the Europa network and the British National Theatre live broadcast
group. The architecture is imaginative,
spacious and houses a couple of bars/cafes.
So what did I see?
First of all the restored version of Orson Welles’s
Touch
Of Evil. Oddly enough this
movie also explored the ‘ends and means’ dilemma explored in The East reviewed below. This movie was made in 1958, when Welles’
was initially hired to play the part of Quinlan, a corrupt cop working on the
Tex/Mex border. He virtually rewrote
the original script and, at the insistence of Charlton Heston, took over the direction. As soon as it was shot the studio fired
Welles and butchered the final cut.
It took forty years before it was recreated (much to the credit of
Heston) in something like Welles’ version.
I had only seen the mutilated
version before , and it was so good to see it more or less the way Orson wanted
it to be cut, and on the big
screen, as noir as noir can be. Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich and Dennis
Weaver joined Welles and Heston. It
must be on DVD now.
Two days later I was back (having been The Gate Theatre the night
before to see Brian Friel's translation of Turgenev's A Month in the Country) to see the National Theatre’s live broadcast of Everyman. Carol Ann Duffy adapted this 15th
century morality tale, in which we are all (as Everyman) confronted with the
reality of death and the question of whether or not our lives have been well
spent. Rufus Norris directed, with Chiwetel
Enjiofor as Everyman, Kate Duchene as God/Good Deeds and Dermot Crowley as her
heavy, Death.
Duffy’s script is decidedly 21st century, using both heightened and demotic
language, sometimes properly (and very) vulgar. Enjiofor
brings enormous physical and emotional energy to his role, the Irish actor Dermot Crowley plays Death
with relish, and Kate Duchene is the cleaning woman
You
find me at my work –
She
who cleans the room before the party
Mops
up afterwards… a vicious circle…
Skivvying
for those who are immortal.
Or
think they are…
who also happens to be God. She is deeply unhappy about what Everyman thinks is success, and by
what we are doing to her Creation.
For I
perceive here in my Majesty
How
all mankind grows worse from year to year,
Cavorting
with Wrath, Greed, Sloth,
With
Pride, Lust, Envy and with Gluttony.
It
seems to me that Everyman has had enough
of me
Or
takes my name in vain. The angels weep
To
see the ruins of the Earth;
The
gathered waters, which I called the seas,
Unclean,
choking on themselves.
The
dry land – fractured fracked,
The firmament so full of filth,
My
two Great Lights, to rule the day and night,
have
tears in their eyes.
I loved it, but most of all Duffy’s wonderful
script.
Another night at the theatre (this time a
student production back at Trinity College) and then the new Irish film The
Song of the Sea. I
say Irish, and this is as Irish as can be, but even though it cost less than £5
million to make, it still needed European money to help the Irish Cartoon Saloon
to get it made.
This is a cartoon, but the Cartoon
Saloon’s house style is unique, as previously
seen in their Book of Kells. It takes on
board the style of the ancient illuminative scriptures and uses the two-dimensionality of the screen with profound
seriousness as it brings together two ancient Irish legends. David Rawle (Moone Boy) is the boy with the silkie sister, Brendan Gleeson is his Lighthouse keeper
father, and Lisa Hannigan provides a voice - and her music.
I was simply ravished by the beauty of this
movie. Go see it on the big screen if
you possibly can.
Back home at last I watched Birdman
Or (The unexpected Virtues of Ignorance).
I had heard so much in praise of this, but I had also heard a lot of
praise for Babel, Alejandro
G. Innaritu’s earlier film, and was disappointed by it (in the main). No disappointment here though; I thoroughly enjoyed this.
Much has been made of the fact that the
whole film seems to be one take. It’s
not, of course, but the edits are skilfully hidden, and the actual uninterrupted
scenes are indeed sometimes very long. Not as long as in the live theatre of
course, where only the scenes or acts break up the action. And I had just seen Everyman; one long
take. Impressive though the
choreography of Birdman is, along with the discipline of the actors who have to hit every
mark not only in the right place but at exactly the right time, that does't seem to me to be the point. The movie is set in a
theatre, as a new play is rehearsed, previewed and eventually performed. Ironically, the rehearsals and even performances
are continually interrupted. There is no flow. The lives of the actors keep getting in the
way – their lives, problems and egos. All of the them
are looking for meaning and coherence in their own lives, but the play will not
deliver it to them. There seems to be wonderful irony here.
Michael Keaton plays the self-referential
role of the actor who was a Tent-pole movie hero twenty years beforehand, cf his Batman, and who now wants, needs, to make a comeback
in something with more artistic authenticity. He is wonderful. Edward Norton plays what may also be a somewhat self-referential role as the gifted but difficult actor who steps in at the
last moment to make or break the play.
The wonderful Naomi Watts is simply wonderful, again, Emma Stone and
Andrea Risborough (another of my favourite actresses) also offer great
support.
Of course the real hero must be the
cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, whose
work in Sleepy Hollow, Y Tu Mama Tambien, The New World, Children of Men, The Tree of Life and Gravity puts him up there among the
truly greats.
So what a lucky man am I. Someone called me a Culture Vulture, but culture is not a rotting corpse, it is a lively body of ongoing work, and it feeds my soul in so may ways.
