Has Gravity lost its pull?

Last week I stood in HMV's store looking at the Bluray 3D DVD of Gravity, and wondered what's the point of buying it? 

I was suitably gobsmacked when I saw it last year, having driven over a hundred miles to get to a suitably large screen with 3D,  and that journey was fully justified by the experience of seeing this movie in its proper environment.    The film deserved all it's technical Oscars,   including those of the Director and Cinematographer for their joint massive achievement.    But to see it at home?  

No matter how big a screen you have - or image you can project - nothing could reproduce the immersive experience of  being in space that this film gives in a cinema.     The performance of Sandra Bullock could be admired again of course, and I think this is a more worthy contender for an acting Oscar than hers in the USA crowd pleasing - and politically dishonest - movie  Blindside.    But so much else would be lost.   Movies are made for the big screen, and none less so than this one.   I walked away without the DVD.   Better to remember the initial awesome experience rather than such a diminution.  

American Hustle Bustle

My principle enjoyment while watching the highly praised and multi-Oscar nominated movie American Hustle came from seeing Christian Bale, Amy Adams,  Brandon Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence enjoying themselves so much.  

Christian Bale has played so many dark tormented characters that I expect an on-screen air of gloom or doom to gather around him.  Here, as the hustler Irving Rosenfeld, he is louche and smart and having fun.  Irving knows that he may not be the smartest man in the room,  but he surely isn’t the dumbest or the greediest, and that is important for a con-man who depends on the gullibility and greed of his victims.   

David O. Russell, the Director and co-writer, brings Christopher Bale back together with Amy Adams after their good work in  The Fighter.   Amy,  as Sydney Prosser, Irving’s partner in crime,  is really consolidating her reputation  in these two Russell films after Enchanted and Doubt.  

Bradley Cooper is Richie Dimaso,  an (over) ambitious FBI agent.   Richie is like a Labrador, full of energy and bounce, and not too bright.   He recruits Irving and Sydney in a sting based on the actual Abscam operation that brought down a number of corrupt politicians in the 1970’s and 80’s.   I like it when Bradley shows the panic behind his character’s eyes.  Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence  complete the coming together of the leads from  The Fighter and Russell’s Silver Linings.   Jennifer Lawrence plays Irvin’s wife, Rosalyn.   Jennifer has previously displayed stolid determination (Winter’s Bone) and the kind of toughness that never diminished her femininity (The Hunger Games).   She stepped up in Silver Linings to be smart and sexy and also a little bit crazy.   Here her character is flaky and silly – though not to be underestimated.   

Seeing Bale and Adams, Lawrence and Cooper working so well together again is a joy.   Robert De Niro, also in Silver Linings, plays an (uncredited) cameo here, as a mafia boss, and the most frightening scene in the movie  is when he faces the sting team across a table, weighing them up.   Jeremy Renner, as Carmine Pollito, a Mayor who maybe serves  his people too well,   is charismatic – I  never thought I would say that.   I was also struck by Elizabeth Roem in a small part as Carmine’s wife, Dolly.   

So this movie is funny, smart, engaging – and we are told that some of the things in it actually happened, but who cares?     It is set in the 1970’s and is utterly true to the times in its tone, design and zeitgeist.   The costume and hairstyling departments obviously had a lot of fun, but again, this is not a parody of the time.    So….

American Hustle, can I compare thee to a 70’s movie?  

In 1972 Sam Peckinpah/Walter Hill’s The Getaway was showing in our cinemas.     It was hip and cool and good looking, like Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw, it’s criminal romantic leads.   American Hustle is certainly as commercial as that film, but not in any way as cynical.  

In American Hustle  everyone is trying to cheat everyone else, a common trope from the 70’s, as in Walter Hill/Bud Yorkin’s 1973  The Thief Who Came to Dinner.  In such  movies  the most attractive couple  usually win.  But here Irving is undeniably unattractive, at least physically, Bale having either ballooned for the role or donned a fat suit, or a fat belly.

Hoard Zieff gave us Slither  in 1972,  a comedy thriller perhaps closest to American Hustle.    Peter Boyle’s character in that movie had,  as Pauline Kael said,  a glint of indefatigable greed in his eye.   But Irving is not avaricious in such a ruthless way, he is simply doing the best he can with his limited gifts and unlimited confidence.  He is also,  like Boyle character, happy and lucky with the women he loves.   

Don Siegal’s 1973 Charley  Varrik was entertaining enough, but we had no idea why Charley, played by Walter Mattau as a Walter Mattau tribute act, would go robbing banks for a living.    He was essentially the same character we saw as a retired spook in Hopscotch seven years later.   But in American Hustle we do understand exactly why Irving  and Sydney go agrifting.

The Sting (1973) was built on its conmen star’s charisma, but American Hustle is much better plotted and the characters much more sympathetic and alive.

Steelyard Blues (1972)  employed the charms (and anti-establishment reputations) of Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda, but the plot was scrawny and what was meant to be amusing turned out to demean the very people it was meant to  be applauding.  American Hustle never does that.   

Bradley Cooper does not exploit his cuteness as say, Ryan O’Neal used to in the 70’s,  and Amy Adams fleshes out the kind of ballsy female we saw in the 1950’s and 60’s but who were too often coarsened or exploited in the 70’s.

The whole tone of American Hustle is different to these movies.   It is not a look back in anger, or even in indulgence.    It is not even a look back in  parody.     I am reminded of  the way Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973)  transplanted the 1950’s of Raymond Chandler’s noir into the brash Hollywood of the 1970’s,  without ever betraying it’s heart.     Noir is essentially romantic,  as it’s bruised but hopeful Private Eye Galahads  show us as they turn up their collars and walk the mean streets.    Altman  underlined this by placing the harsh spotlight of 70’s Tinsel Town’s  heartless chic on his forlorn knight.   Marlowe and all he stood for was now out of time, an anachronism.   It must be said that many critics and  Marlowe fans  hated the movie.  Could it be that it revealed too clearly the saintly sleuth’s essential ineptitude?    Raymond Chandler said of his script for the original  Long Goodbye ‘I didn’t care whether the mystery was fairly obvious,   but I cared about the people.’     It feels as Russell and Singer also care about the people in this, much less obvious,  mystery. 

American Hustle does not transpose the 1970 into the 21st century.   But it benefits from the long, affectionate but not over indulgent  perspective that time – and perceptive scriptwriting  and directing can bring.   Russell co-wrote the script with  Eric Warren Singer, who also wrote The International.

 American Hustle  is as deep as a puddle, and made simply to have fun and splash about in.   I think I enjoyed it more than any of the 1970’s films I have mentioned above, and I am glad it has been recognized as a piece of superior entertainment.     But it has done it’s job and I have no reason to see it again.    I simply look forward eagerly to whatever David O. Russell and his friends do next time.

PS. The excellent soundtrack contains a new recording of Grace Slick’s White Rabbit,   commissioned by Russell and sung by the Lebanese American singer Mayssa Karaa in Arabic.    I have loved Slick’s chromium plated voice for forty years, and  this was a huge hit in 1967, from Jefferson Airplane’s second album Surrealistic Pillow.   This radical new reading only adds to the pleasure.   Well done Russell.  I cannot wait to find Mayssa’s  recordings of the poems of the 13^th century Persian mystic/philosopher/poet Rumi.    

An Officer and Spy.

An Officer and Spy – and a good movie in the making?

Robert Harris has written a number of good novels exploring history and alternative history.   Some have been turned into films;  Fatherland, set in a modern Germany after the Nazis won WWII (the USA did not join in), Enigma, set in Bletchley Park,  Archangel  in Soviet Russia (Stalin had a secret son and some want him to take over), and The Ghost,  in which it seems that a 21^st century British Prime Minster may have played – or have been played – into the hands of the CIA.   He has also written about classical Rome, in the voice of Cicero in Imperium and Lustrum, and also Pompeii.    Harris has also written non-fiction biographies and books of political analysis.

Harris has the skills of a forensic journalist, sifting through masses of information  in order to provide a reliable – or deliberately unreliable – narrative.   And now he has written a book about a man who had similar skills,  plus considerable determination and physical and  moral courage.   This is the real life Georges Picquard, a French Army Officer and Intelligencer,   who for ten years pursued the truth about the guilt or innocence of Captain Alfred Dreyfuss, the man found guilty of treason in 1895 and sent to Devil’s Island.    In order to conduct this investigation – which he believed was simply his job and a matter of honour – Picquard faced treachery, threats, persecution and imprisonment.    Harris tells the story in his protagonist’s  voice and paints a deeply convincing portrait of the man and his times.   

So I wonder,  could this be the next Harris film?    Sadly I hope it wont be, because the tale he tells, though admittedly simplified, may still be too complex to reduce to a film script.    I remember the recent attempt to turn  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy into a movie.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film, but that was because I know the original novel’s plot from the book and the famous BBC six part adaptation.     That meant that I knew what was missing.    This was principally the back-ground and character of the MI6 officers, one of whom was the mole, the traitor.   But as this was about treachery the character and motives of the suspects was crucial.

But Tinker, Tailor was a novel.    Harris’ book is a retelling of a true story, and a hugely important one at that.   The Dreyfuss Affair (as it is often called, as if this diminishes it as  a matter of limited importance)  is still relevant today,  involving – as the book cover says – ‘an intelligence agency gone rogue, justice corrupted in the name of national security, a newspaper witch-hunt of a persecuted minority, and the age-old instinct of those in power to cover up their crimes’.   We only have to consider the British Government’s current refusal to inquire into the death of Alexander Litvinenko,  or the evidence gathered – and revealed – that profoundly questions the Lockerbie conviction,  to admit the scale of GCHQ and NSA’s searches of web archives and their hacking of mobile phones and emails, or to release terrorist ‘suspects’ who have never been charged,  in order to see parallels.

An Officer and A Spy  is an important book about an important event.    If it is filmed I hope it can be done with integrity, and if it is not I highly recommend the novel.  

My own most admired films of 2013 films

These are in no particular order, and include some from 2011/12 that I was slow to catch up on and a 1991 release I had not seen for 20 years.

Gravity – for the amazing visual achievements of Director  Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki plus  Sandra Bullock’s role and performance.

The Counselor – Ridley Scott’s film from Cormac McCarthy’s script confused many critics by not being what they expected – a Hollywood thriller – but is an inexorable morality tale very well told, with a great cast and handsomely shot by  Dariusz Wolski.

Captain Phillips – for the two lead performances by the seasoned pro Tom Hanks and the non-professional Barkhad Abdi, Paul Greengrass’s Direction and  Barry Ackroyd’s cinematography.  How true it is to the actual events is another question.

The Life of Pi – amazing beauty and skilful story telling as Ang Lee attempts Yan Martel’s mysterious novel and Claudio Miranda shoots it.  It may not ‘make you believe in God’ but will ask which Grand Narrative you prefer.

Cloud Atlas – what courage it took to tackle filming David Mitchell’s novel – and what wit it took to make it so well.  The Wachowski siblings worked with Tom Tykwer plus a stellar cast and  John Toll and Frank Grieber behind the cameras.  But do read the book.

The Great Gatsby.    Luhrmann’s is for me the authentic film of the book, and Leonardo DiCaprio the essence of Gatsby.   Catherine Martin, aka Mrs. L, provided the immaculate Production Design as usual and Simon Duggan was the DP.

About Time – Richard Curtis’s  movie has all the virtues of the traditional small British film showing there is really no need to ape Hollywood.   Romanticism does not have to slip into sentimentality. 

Macbeth – the National Theatre’s Kenneth Branagh production is the best version of the Scottish Play I have ever seen.   The language shines as diamonds in the mud and blood.   Alex Kingston is a powerful and sexy Lady M. but the real star is Mr. William Shakespeare. 

The Sound of My Voice.   Independent movies rule in Zal Batmanglij’s work with Brit Marling’s second film.   (this was first released in 2011, but it took me time to get to see it, and I haven’t yet seen her East.) 

Zero Dark Thirty – Jessica Chastain, Kathryn Bigelow and  Mark Boal provide the most sympathetic – because the most honest – account ho Intelligence services works and of the CIA’s exhausting hunt for Osama Bin Laden.    Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence are surely the decade’s great acting finds. DP Greig Frazer.

Silver Linings Playbook.   David O. Russell brings us ensemble playing at its best, led by the wondrous Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in the happiest and least sentimental movie I have ever seen about grief and mental illness.  DP Masanubo Takayanagi.

Iron Man 3.   Shane Black put the franchise back on course after the disappointment of IM2.  This is the best IM yet, fast, funny, thrilling and refusing to take itself too seriously.  It was 2013’s biggest box office hit, which actually gives us some hope for Hollywood.   The DP was John Toll. 

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.   It must be have been hard to make part 2  engaging, but Frances Lawrence’s effort  shines, working from Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt’s adaptation of Suzanne Collins novel.  Jennifer Lawrence delivers again and we have Phillip Seymour Hoffman added to the mix.   Thank goodness Young Adult lit does not have to be simplistic – or non-political.  DP Jo Willems.  ( I also have high hopes for the Zemekis/Kaufman adaptation of Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking!)

Rust and Bone - I didn’t know what to expect of this Jacques Audiard film, but what I got surprised shocked and moved me.    With Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts.  Stephane Fontaine DP. 

Beasts of the Southern Wild – blew me away.  Who need Hollywood Studio  blockbusters when a tiny cooperative/community of dedicated professionals and non-professionals can intrigue, amaze and overwhelm us so? Behn Zeitlin, directing his first main feature, interviewed over 3000 young girls before finding 5 year old Quvenzhane Wallis to play Hushpuppy.  Time well spent.   The Oscar nomination for a (by then) eight year old was also well deserved. Watch and wonder.

Raise the Red Lantern – I saw this lustrous Zhang Yimou film 20 years ago and have been looking for a decent copy (with English subtitles) ever since.  The cover says it only has Thai subs, but it’s wrong.  Thank you, Remaster Edition.  Starring Gong Li.  

A word about Cinematographers and Directors of Photography.

When Orson Welles directed his Citizen Kane he insisted that the credits read A Film by Orson Welles and Greg Toland.    Toland was the Director of Photography.   Toland brought together so many new cinematic techniques, and invented a few others,  to produce a masterpiece, and Welles (even Welles) knew he could never have made this film without him.  

Any established Director will want to appoint their own DP, and any new one should be provided with a safe pair of hands behind the lens by the film’s producers.  The other key element in bringing a film to the screen is of course the Editor, but I will write about them at a later date.  

For now let us consider the varied talents of the men (and they are all men) who set the lights and cameras for the films listed above.   Some of them work consistently with the same Directors and have built up a joint understanding that helps realize the vision of the Director.   Others have varied CVs regarding both colleagues and genres.  I have only mentioned some of their well known movies below, but the Independent Movie Data Base website (IMDb) is a rich fund of information.

Before Gravity Emmanuel Lubezki worked with Terrence Malik on To The  Wonder as well as the Coen Bothers’  Burn After Reading   and Cuaron’s Children of Men, Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow.  Also Lemony Snicket; a Series of Unfortunate Events, Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in The Hat, Meet Joe Black, and Y Tu Mama Tambien

Dariusz Wolski  (The Counselor) previously filmed Scott’s Prometheus and all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, plus Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland and  Sweeney Todd and films as varied as Dark City and Crimson Tide.

Barry Ackroyd (Captain Phillips) has Bigelow’s  The Hurt Locker,  Ken Loach’s  The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Carla’s Song, Land and Freedom  and United 93, Coriolanus and Green Zone in his portfolio.

Greig Frazer (Zero Dark Thirty) was the cinematographer or DP on Snow White and the Hunter, Killing Them Softly and the US version of Let Me In.

Masanubo Takayanagi (Silver Linings Playbook) previously filmed   Warrior  and  The Grey.

John Toll (Iron Man 3);    Cloud Atlas,  Legends of the Fall, Braveheart, The Thin Red Line, Vanilla Sky,  Gone Baby Gone.

Frank Grieber;  Run Lola Run, Perfume.

Jo Willens (Hunger Games; Catching Fire) filmed  30 Days of Night and Hard Candy. And may have already shot  Hunger Games parts 3 & 4.

Stephane Fontaine (Rust and Bone);  The Prophet and  The Beat My Heart Missed.

Some Directors started off as cinematographers, Zhang Yimou being a prime example.     I see  about thirty of my favourite movies named in this article,  suggesting that the men behind the cameras are almost as important as the men and women in the Director’s chair.   The auter theory needs adapting to include collaborators.