A famous Game, well Set, bizarrely Matched. Battle of the Sexes.

Battle of the Sexes tells the story of the 1973 tennis math between Billy Jean King, one of the top women players in the world in the 1970’s and 80’s, and Bobby Riggs, one of the best male players in the 1940’s.    Billy  won Wimbledon 6 times between 1966 and ’75, and Bobby had won the Wimbledon Triple, Singles, Doubles and Mixed Doubles in 1939, and was many times the US Champion.     

So this is a movie about an important tennis game, in terms of the equal rights women and of the claims of Feminism, well set in its period,  and a bizarre match between two of the greatest tennis players of their different periods.     But more than that.  This is a film about human beings, our passions, our failings and our fidelity.  

The game came about because Billy Jean had campaigned against the lower pay of women players and, with the active support of her husband Larry,  set up the Women’s Tennis Association, in opposition to the Lawn Tennis Association.     Bobby was a self confessed hustler and self-promoter.   With Feminism in the game being  championed by Billy Jean and Larry King, Bobby saw an opportunity to prove male superiority – and to make money.   Although he was 55, he played and beat the Australian Margaret Court, the current world number 1,  in straight sets.  

Billy Jean, 29 at the time, and who Bobby had previously challenged for a match, decided to take him on.  Bobby ramped up the public interest with a series of stunts, claiming to be a proud Male Chauvinist Pig, and they played in the Houston Astrodome in front of 30,000 spectators and a Word wide TV audience  estimated at 90 million.   The prize for the winner was $100,000.  That was not what mattered to Billy Jean, who understood the positive and negative consequences of the result.   

Early on in the film we see Billy Jean, married to Larry King,  falling in love with Marilyn Bartlett, her hairdresser.    Billy Jean is played by Emma Stone,  with absolute conviction,  and Marilyn by the wonderful Andrea Riseborough (Stone and Riseborough were both in Birdman).   So apart from a game between a man and a woman there are a number of other battles here, Feminism vs Chauvinism and sexual freedom vs prejudice. 

Although one might be tempted to see Billy Jean as the heroine and Bobby Riggs as a pantomime villain  (which he painted himself as, show man that he was), but in fact the film plays both sides of the net fairly in a number of ways.   We see Riggs as he makes the play, sure he will beat Billy as easily as he beat Margaret Court - who had taken over from Billy as women's number one - and then we see fear in his eyes as he faces the utterly focussed Billy on the court.  Steve Carrell plays the outrageous, gambling addicted Riggs well (and looks just like him), and wins our sympathy despite his faults.   

Bill Pullman plays Jack Kramer, the tennis star who helped found the LTA and became a very successful TV commentator.   Kramer is shown as being in opposition to Billy Jean’s claims for equal pay and the WTA.  Pullman is a very consistent actor – and dedicated community worker - and his son Lewis plays Riggs’ adult son.    The rest of the cast includes the multi-talented Sarah Silverman as Gladys Heldman, the WTA organizer,  Alan Cumming as Cuthbert ‘Ted’ Tinling ,  the girls couturier and confidant to Billy Jean,  Austin Stowell (Francis Gary Powers in Bridge of Spies) as Larry, Elizabeth Shue (is it really 22 years since Leaving Los Vagas?!) as Bobby’s Prescilla, and the Australian TV actress Jessica MacNamee as Margaret Court.

The bright colour and period music recreate the American 1970's wonderfully, but we also see the misogynist, homophobic – and it seems anti-Semitic -  atmosphere that pervaded even  California.    

Jonathan Dayton has previously directed many cutting edge music videos and documentaries in his time, particularly with The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, this film has the energy and pace of a music video, but Dayton does not ignore the human dimensions,  as we saw in his  Little Miss Sunshine, which also starred Steve Carrell.   The tight script is by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty, Slumdog Millionaire, Hunger Games; Catching Fire etc. ).    The music was composed by  Nicolas Brittell (Moonlight)  and the photographer was Linus Sandgren (La-la Land and American Hustle).   The Production Designer was  Judith Becker, who did such good period work in Brokeback Mountain, American Hustle and Carol, and worked with Dayton on Ruby Sparks.

For those who are not tennis fans there is just enough tennis to tell the story,  but not to bore them, and for those who are fans it looks very authentic - remembering how wooden rackets made the game so much slower then.    

But this movie is about love as much as it is about tennis.    We see Billy Jean falling in love with Marilyn Barnett.  We see Billy Jean’s husband Larry coming to terms with her developing lesbian sexuality – and her primary passion for tennis - in good grace.  No, it is more than good.  There is something quietly heroic about his love and acceptance of her, exactly as she is.   Larry and Billy Jean eventually divorced in 1989, freeing Billy to live with her women’s tennis and life partner Llan Koss, but they remained close.   Priscilla Riggs also remained married to Bobby, despite his gambling addiction.    Bobby was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1989, and died in 1995.  Billy Jean had become his friend, phoning and visiting him until the end.   She said her last words to him were ‘I love you.’

I recommend it heartily. 

The Snowman melts before our eyes.

How difficult is it to make good – or even a simply decent – movie?  

The Snowman shows us.

Start with a production team of 13 professionals who between them have made scores of good and many great movies, including Martine Scorcese (and even though we are not sure how long he stayed attached to the project once he gave up his initial Directing role his name is still up there on the credits).     

Take a best selling Scandi-noir murder mystery and get a top notch screen writer/adaptor in, Peter Straughen, who adapted Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy,  The Debt and Wolf Hall, and wrote Frank.  

Shoot the film in Norway, surely one of the most photogenic locations on earth, with Dion Beebe behind the camera (Edge of Tomorrow, Collateral, Chicago, Into The Woods, Miami Vice etc) with a cast of first class actors in front of it, headed up by Michael Fassbender and supported by Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Toby Jones,  J. K. Simmons and Val Kilmer.  

Get Tomas Alfreson to direct it, following on from his brilliant ‘Let the Right One In’ and the accomplished ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.’    

And then ask Thelma Shoonmaker, doyen of editors,  to cut it.   

I list these collaborators because the success or failure of a film does not simply depend on the Director, but on all those with executive (by which I mean decision making) responsibilities, all of whom deserve to garner the praise or to shoulder the blame.      

Some times though, I guess a plan simply does not come together.    

So with all this talent on board we can see how hard it must be to make a good, or even decent film,  because The Snowman is not good.  It is not even decent.    

Alfreson has spoken with candor about the hurry in which the production was mounted and its ‘compressed production schedule’, the need for extensive reshoots afterwards and the 10 – 15% of the script that still never got on film.    

I think that the only elements that escape unscathed are the Norwegian landscape and the images of Dion Beebe, the cinematographer,  though it is hard to blame the cast.  They can only work off the script, and that doesn’t really work at all.   Their characters are too thin to relate to, or are abandoned.   Harry Hole is pretty much the standard film-noir cop, a drunk with a chaotic private life and a reputation for professional brilliance.     Fassbender is given no chance to show the man’s brilliance, and without his character is simply sad and boring.   There is just one short scene with a young girl whose mother has gone missing  where Hole briefly comes alive.   Rebecca Ferguson and Charlotte Gainsbourg do their considerable best – but again are underwritten.   Toby Jones is superfluous, J. K. Simmons is  under – even mis – used.  Val Kilmer’s appearance and sound are bizarre.   

The plot is confused and confusing.  Soren Sveistrup, who wrote most of The Killing, was brought in to doctor the script along with Hossein Amimi, who wrote 47 Ronin, but there are still few thrills.  

So unless you enjoy watching a badly made movie – and there are perverse joys to be found in doing so for some – please don’t bother with The Snowman.   Let it just melt away without staining the reputations of those involved.  Be kind.  And remember, when  a really good film comes along ,  and they do,   be grateful.  To mix my metaphors, even with so much talent on board the ship can still sink. 

Blade Runner 2049 Blazes with Creative Fire!

In 1982 I wrote a review of Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner for the Birmingham Science Fiction Group’s Fanzine - and I was roundly condemned for praising it.      Philip K. Dick fans resented the way the film had changed his novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.’   The majority of film critics really didn’t like the movie at all.   Audiences were small.   I felt like a voice crying in the wilderness.  

35 years later Blade Runner has for a long time been seen as seminal film-noir science fiction and recognized as a true cinematic classic.    So now we have Blade Runner 2049 and I feel like one voice in a vast crowd singing its praises.   How glad am I?   Very.    

I think Denis Villeneuve’s new film is beautiful, moving,  profound and often technically amazing.   Is it perfect?  Well, maybe not, but as Gaff suggested at the end of Blade Runner in 1982, what is?  

So here is a two part review, the first part for those who have not yet seen the new film, the second for those who have. 

For those who have not yet seen Blade Runner 2049;  I urge you to do so.  Go to the biggest, best screen you can, preferably 3D IMAXX.    I have seen it on a 2D conventional screen and then on IMAXX.    That second viewing meant a 14 hour trip to Dublin and back, leaving home at 7 am, getting back at 9 pm.   It was well worth it.    The visual grandeur and artistic ambition of the movie match the scale of IMAXX, and the 3D is superb, never in your face but subtly adding even greater depth to the experience.   And BR’49, as I shall call it henceforth, is certainly an experience.   If IMAXX is not possible then it is still worth seeing in any cinema.   

Why?   If you admire – or even love – Blade Runner in any if its manifestations,   fear not.    The script of BR’49 is shaped by Hampton Fancher, who wrote the original adaptation of Do Androids Dream.   If you are not familiar with the original film fear not.   BR’49 makes perfect sense on it’s own – even if it has so much more depth in the light (the wonderful noctiluscious light) of Blade Runner.    It is  produced by Ridley Scott  and realized by Denis Villeneuve with deep respect, complete familiarity and the courage (en-couraged by Ridley Scott) to move on.     The cinematography by Roger Deakin is fabulous.   These two, working with Production Designer Dennis Gassner,  have stayed in the Blade Runner Universe but allowed it to develop and age.   The colour pallet includes the original smoky grey concrete canyons,  the amber smog and rain and the neon candy coloured adverts of the original, plus new burnt-ochre and brilliant white landscapes.  

The casting is superb.    Ryan Gosling is Officer K, the Blade Runner tasked with ‘retiring’ old Nexus 8 replicants, the ones who seemed to have taken on an emotional  life, self awareness and self volition, making them dangerous compared to the modern versions who are programmed for absolute obedience.    The part of K was written for Gosling and he produces the best performance I have seen,  pitched somewhere between his character in Drive and that of Dean in Blue Valentine.    Harrison Ford brings an intensity and vulnerability to his reprised role as Deckard that I have not seen for a long time.    The other members of the  cast are faultless, some played by well known actors  – Robin Wright as Lt. Joshi,  K’s LAPD boss;  Jared Leto as Niander Wallace, the designer of the new generation of replicants and boss of the company that replaced the Tyrell Corp; Dave Bautista is the Nexus 8 Sapper Morton and Edward James Olmos has a cameo of his initial role as Gaff.    But many faces are relatively unknown;  the Cuban Ana de Armas,  who is K’s holographic girlfriend, the Dutch Sylvia Hoeks as Wallace’s right hand woman and assassin;  the Swiss Carla Juri as a the memory-weaver Ana Stelline; plus Barkhan Abdi, the Somalian who lit up Captain Philips and the Canadian Mackenzie Davis.     I think Villeneuve has already shown how good he is with actors in Prisoners, Secario and Arrival (I have not yet seen his Enemies).  

The soundscape by Hans Zimmer and Ben Wallfisch (who worked together on Dunkirk) honours Vangelis, often quoting him but always a for a reason, never as pastiche or out of laziness.  The musical references simply sound deep emotional bells within those who love Blade Runner.    The soundtrack of BR ’49 has been accused by some as being rather OTT, but in the IMAXX it really makes sense.  The music reflected what I was feeling, rather than telling me what to feel, and at times I needed it to be overwhelming in order to match my emotions.   At other times it has the necessary restraint.   

The visual effects are among the best I have ever seen.     BR ’49 uses 21st century blockbuster’s technology but never forgets the film’s 1980’s  art-house film-noir origins and virtues.   

Perhaps the most important of these virtues is not to do with SFX but with the pacing.    Please do not be impatient with the deliberate pace of BR’49.   I understand that some younger viewers may find the pace unfamiliar, even disturbing,  particularly those more  familiar with the fast-cuts of current Marvel and DC adaptations.    But to you I say ‘give it time.  This film will live with you for years'.   Even in 1982 some complained that the film was too slow.    But it took time (sic) to see that the deliberate pace allowed us to enter into the true depths of the movie, not to be propelled by the plot but allowed to sense the existential questions being addressed.     Blade Runner was not Star Wars.   Blade Runner ’49 is not Thor; Ragnorac.   Villeneuve has the confidence in his material to give it time.   

This is a beautiful film in the way that many paintings are beautiful even though they show us tragedy and pain.  

After my first viewing of Blade Runner way back then I wrote that the film asked me ‘What is Life?’ and answered ‘Life is precious.’   That message was so clear that I really thought I had heard the words said.    BR ’49 has the same existential depths.    Yes, this is science-fiction but, unlike so many of the filmed expressions of that genre,  both Blade Runner films  show the philosophical and emotional depth that the best written science fiction has offered us over the years.   Don’t forget, this was inspired by Philip K. Dick.    If you don’t know who he was look him up. 

The references to Blade Runner are frequent, sometime witty, sometimes deeply moving.   For instance; the first shot of BR ’49 reflects the second shot of Blade Runner,  the second shot reverses the cityscape of Blade Runner.   The first encounter of Officer K with a replicant is essentially the first (but unused) scene of Fancher’s original script for Blade Runner, which hinted at why Deckard had resigned from his job.   In BR ’49 it has more portent,  with the added mysterious challenge to the Officer K  ‘You’ve never seen a miracle’.      The original Voight-Kampff test has evolved, but whereas the first was used to detect Nexus 8s to eliminate them, here, as the BaseLine Test,  it used to check that Nexus 9s, programmed for unquestioning obedience,  have not reverted to the earlier dangerous capacity for emotions and free will.   Deckard’s hi-rise luxury pad has been replaced by K’s bare tiny flat in a hi-rise slum.  This reflects the distain in which ‘skin-jobs’ such as he are now held.    Prin is not here, but another girl, Marriette, wears the same blonde shock wig and short faux-fur jacket.    Hooded kids still ride bikes through the LA streets, and LAPD Spinners cruise the skies.   

Huge Ads from the original are still there, including those for Pan Am and Atari, but there are none for Google or Apple.   Villeneuve says that this is an alternative 2049, still contingent with  Blade Runner.   The date 06/10 plays an important part in the plot, and is of course the European style for the 6^th October,  the release date of BR ’49.  It is also a day later than the release of Scott’s Final Cut of Blade Runner.  

So, along with Mark Kermode, the film critic for The Guardian and BBC,  I heaved a huge sigh of relief shortly after the film started, aware that this is both an exhilarating celebration of the original and a superb film in its own right.    Just as Blade Runner has proved to be a worthy extension of Dick’s novel, so I believe BR ’49 is a worthy extension of Scott’s film, and the best film I have seen for some years.   Please don’t ignore this movie because it is sf, or Sci-Fi.   It is so much more than that.  

If you haven’t seen BR ’49 yet please stop reading now, as there will be ‘spoilers’ in what follows, but when you have seen it (please see it!) you can of course come back and read on.

And now for those who have seen BR ‘49, a few reflections and some bits of information you may not be aware of.   But first of all I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.   I thought Arrival was one of the best films of last year,  a truly intelligent adaptation of Ted Chiang’s celebrated short story, and therefore I had high hopes for Villeneuve’s work on BR ’49.   My hopes were fulfilled magnificently. 

Denis Villeneuve told the BFI’s James Mottram that Blade Runner was a touchstone for his own movie making, having seen it maybe 50 times.    Before then he had always wanted to see a film that took the science-fiction genre seriously, but only Kubrick’s 2001 seemed to have done so.   He saw Blade Runner as another  serious work of art.   When Villeneuve and Ryan Gosling met they agreed that the chances of getting this film made the way  they wanted to were slim, but they were going to try.   “We will give everything and try to do our best, and after that we know that people will judge us and condemn us, and will compare us to a masterpiece – no matter how good the movie is."   Villeneuve had also been given rather frightening freedom by Ridley Scott, who told him  ‘This one is yours.  You do what you want.  It’s your responsibility’.   But Scott was always there if and when Villeneuve needed him for advice.   (Sight and Sound November 2017, p26.) 

Roger Deakins was also there from the start.  Deakin and  Villeneuve essentially rewrote the movie on their storyboards.    The design was crucial, and Villeneuve felt secure in the film-noir of the LA streets and interiors, but less so when moving out of the city while still trying to keep the dystopian feel.    They were also aware that 35 years on, and with all the advances in CGI, it would still be hard to match the quality of Scott’s SFX work with Douglas Trumbull.    I was glad to see Syd Mead’s name in the credits of BR’49, an acknowledgment that his future-design work on the original Blade Runner was crucial to both films.   

Villeneuve and Deakin  were joined by Dennis Gassner, who did such great production design work on Skyfall, The Golden Compass, Big Fish and The Truman Show among many others, and  I think Villeneuve, Deakin and Gassner have succeeded in putting us firmly in the Blade Runner world.    I enjoyed the opening white landscape of the solar farm as a witty counterpoint to the polluted cityscape of Blade Runner,  and the opening shot of K’s eye came back to me later, asking ‘if the eyes are the window to the soul   does K have a soul?’  

‘To be born is to have a soul’, he tells Lt. Joshi.   ‘You’ve been getting on fine without one. ’ she replies, but surely K, or Joe, having a soul includes the capacity for love, and K/Joe loves even his holographic girl-friend, Joi.   He knows she is not ‘real’ or even unique.  Her 50 foot projection is on the streets – and no doubt in many other homes, but he still wants the best for her.   (Joi shares some characteristics with  Samantha, Spike Jonze's Her)

.  

And Joe really does not like killing.  ‘Please don’t get up.’  he pleads with Sapper Morton, knowing that if he does so he must kill him.    He would always prefer taking a replicant in to ‘the alternative.’

As the film progressed some of us had surely come to believe that Joe was ‘the child’.   When he comes to discover that he is not,  that his childhood memories are not his own, I thought that his utter dismay is beautifully underplayed.   Being shot in silhouette added to the restraint.  

At the end of the movie Deckard ask Joe why he has acted as he has, bringing him to see his daughter.  Joe does not answer, but I don’t think he has to.   Compassion directs him.   ‘What is life?’ the first film asked me.  ‘Precious’,  the second film still answers.   And ‘to die for the right cause; it is the most human thing we can do.’ says Freysa, the leader of the Nexus 8s, reminding us that Sapper forced Joe to shoot him to protect his secret, a secret he, like Deckard,  had protected for decades of loneliness. 

Luv is Wallace’s ‘best angel.’    Neither Wallace nor Luv had heard Roy Batt’s quote  "Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores; burning with the fires of Orc" at the end of Blade Runner.    That line was, of course, inserted by Rutger Hauer, but is a misquote of William Blake’s ‘America; A Prophesy’, which actually reads

"Fiery the angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd.  Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc." 

So rising angels became falling angels.   Does that echo The Book of Revelation, with Lucifer falling from the Heavens?  Maybe, but maybe not.  If Hauer really knew his Blake, where the Orc is not the familiar Tolkien evil figure  but rather a ‘largely positive figure of creativity, passionate energy.  Some scholars thing that (the Orc)  embodies the young striking down the old, and has parallels in the revolt of a son against the father.   As the replicants of Blade Runner try to revolt in order to renew and extend their lives, and fight their way towards their creator Eldon Tyrell, the imagery is apt’’.  (Bryan Thao Worra from his website theoworra.blogspot ie.)    That sums up Roy’s mission pretty well. 

Both films raise the question of what it means to be human.    Does BR ’49 answer the question of Deckard’s true nature?    We know that Harrison Ford always believed that the audience needed a human protagonist to identify with, and he was it,  but Ridley Scott has long asserted that Deckard was a Nexus, and inserted the famous Unicorn day-dream to prove it.     In BR ’49 Deckard is not as tough as Joe, but he wasn’t as tough as Roy either.   The question remains open.    So is Ana a human/replicant hybrid, or were both Deckard and Rachael a new species; fertile Replicants?   That is what Wallace wants of course, millions, trillions of self-replicating  slaves to expand his empire.  But he doesn’t want them to have human emotions or free will - no more Replicant rebellions thank you.    And yet even his ‘best angel’, the deadly Luv, sheds a tear as she kills Joshi.    Maybe her programming was slipping too.   Either way in BR ’49 we have a hero, K,  who is certainly not human.   Does he still have our sympathy? 

A few ‘Easter Eggs'.   Ana offers K Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire to read.   His responses in the BaseLine Test are  a quote from Pale Fire, and novel with an ultimately unreliable narrator.  

Gaff folds an origami sheep; do Anroids dream of electric sheep?  

Deckard has carved wooden animals the names of which each start with the letters of Racheal. 

The name on Sapper Morton’s Farm Polytunnel is Tselina, Russian for Virgin Land.

Ana Stelline = anastelline, an antiangiogenesis peptide.  ‘Angiogenesis is a normal and vital process in growth and development, as well as in wound healing and in the formation of granulation tissue. However, it is also a fundamental step in the transition of tumors from a benign state to a malignant one, leading to the use of angiogenesis inhibitors in the treatment of cancer.’ (Wikipedia).   The bioengineering of replicants was full of genetic dangers, as Tyrell told Roy, and Ana has severe problems.  

The film was shot in Hungary, Spain, Iceland, Nevada and Mexico.    

And now for those with a theological bent.  Could replicants be the next phase in evolution?   That is a question that the current quest for AI raises.   Replicants are not AI Robots of course, they are bio-engineered.   Back in the 70’s some (ok, a few) ethicists were asking if cloning could be used to produce humanoids with less intelligence and self-awareness, creatures that were essentially sub-human,  and could therefore be used in situations too dangerous for fully sentient beings.  These  expendable slaves could help spread humankind into the Galaxy, and many people think we do indeed need to do that if we are to survive.  So does Wallace – and did those ethicists – have a point?   

Should we use whatever means we have to secure our survival?   Does this ultimate end justify any  means?    If we can do it should we do it because  refusing to do so would be a  betrayal of our species?     Do other species  constitute an acceptable sacrifice for the survival of humankind?   Even bio-engineered ones?

If we see ourselves as the Crown of Creation, the ultimate achievement of evolution,  or as ‘made in the Image of God’, then we might find that moral logic inescapable - even if unpalatable.   Of course we are already mindlessly pushing countless other species to extinction, not for our survival but for our convenience or simply because we do not care enough to change our behavior. 

Some people however,  even people of faith such as myself, do not see humankind as the Crown of Creation at all.    We see our species as simply one twig on the many branched bush of evolution rather than the top most branch.   We see evolution as contingent, not purposeful.    We are not what evolution –never mind Creation – are all about.   We humans may have temporary dominance, but we are not using it well,  and as the first Earth species to understand the consequence of our actions we bear responsibility for the damage we are doing.     We do not believe that ‘God will look after us, because we are uniquely precious’.    

So maybe we do need something ‘more human than human’ to evolve, with our intelligence and adaptability but with a more developed moral sense, and an awareness that they are simply part of the natural order, not superior to it.      Maybe we are simply mid-wives to the Orcs or the rising Angels.     

Meanwhile, however, we humans do have the capacity to create works of art,  such as Blade Runner, and Blade Runner 2049, celebrating the best of humankind while still questioning it, showing that passion and compassion are among our most worthy characteristics,  and that love is real for us. 

Some people even believe the Good News is that ‘God is Love, and those who live in Love live in God and God lives in them.’    So Love is ultimately real if God is Love, because if God is, then God must be ultimate reality.   Nothing could be more real than God, as Paul Tillich pointed out long ago.   

‘I know what is real’, says Deckard at the end of the movie.   He surely does, having spend nearly 30 years living alone to protect his child.     Even Wallace knows that this has ‘cost him nothing less than everything’.     Maybe Joe also knows, and whatever Deckard may be, we know what Joe is.   And so, eventually,  does he.  Maybe that is why his  peaceful death on screen so deliberately echoes Roy’s.  One may die in the rain, the other in the snow, but we hear the same requiem for both.