Hope Springs

Directed by David Frankel, written by Vanessa Taylor, with Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones and Steve Carrell.   99 minutes. 

I first saw Meryl Streep,  before her film career started,  in a TV programme  about Joe Papp’s Central Park production of  The Taming of The Shrew.    As Katherine she leapt off the screen.     My wife and I asked each other who is this woman?    We soon found out.   Since then she has often played or impersonated  well known fictional characters or well known real people fictionalised, from The French Lieutenant’s Woman, through Sophie’s Choice, to Karen Blixen and Karen Silkwood,  Lindi Chamberlain in A Cry in The Dark, in The Devil  Wears Prada and The  Iron Lady .   So it is unusual to see her playing a suburban housewife in a simple domestic romantic comedy.    It is also unusual to see a film carried by two actors in their sixties.       It is very unusual for late middle-aged sex to be portrayed on screen.    And when did we see Steve Carrel in a non-comic role?     Hope Springs is an unusual film because it displays all four distinguishing marks.   I think it is a quietly distinguished film – and thoroughly enjoyable.  

Kay and Arnold  (Streep and Jones) have been married for 31 years.   They met at University where he taught and she studied accountancy.     They have two grown up children and live a middle-income suburban life.  They have slept in separate bedrooms   for four years since Arnold hurt his back and found the single bed more comfortable.    Kay doesn’t mind that too much, as he snores.  They have not had sex for four years.   Kay does mind that.   It is not the sex she misses most but the intimacy; the simple physical evidence of still being loved by the man she loves.    So one day she invests in a week of ‘intensive couples therapy’ with Dr Feld, (Carrell).   

Arnold tells her she can go,  on her own.   When he does join her he grumbles and expostulates and pours scorn on the Doctor and his processes and  intimacy ‘exercises’.     But eventually they do begin to talk.   Watching Meryl Streep’s character listening to Arnold when he reluctantly shares his own sexual fantasies is a lesson in understated reactive comic acting.    Watching Tommy Lee Jones’s character as he slowly realizes what is at stake - his marriage -  and moves beyond his fear and anger into attempted courtship is a lesson in  emotional truthfulness.   Arnold is a strong, determined, tired man who has worked  hard for 30 years to support his married life.  Now he has to realize how precious that marriage is to him and summon up the energy to save it.   

Watching the two of them as they fumble and fail, fumble and fail again, until eventually they fumble and fail better, is a subtle, funny, charming and sometimes moving experience.    Only one episode on their emotional and sexual odyssey seemed to me misjudged.   Of course ultimately there is both sexual and marital healing.   But somehow, thankfully,  that resolution  never felt inevitable.    

I wonder if any couples will find watching this evidence that ‘the truth will set you free’  encourages their own intimate truth telling.   It is not about sex, but affection and intimacy.   Maybe it will, because it seems to be a very honest film, with truthful acting,  carefully written,  photographed, edited, scored, designed, dressed and directed.   I don’t expect any Oscar nominations for this film, but I don’t expect to see any better acting this year either.    And how nice it is to see Elizabeth Shue back on screen,  albeit  in a very minor role.   And Steve Carrell being straight.   At 99 minutes Hope Springs never outstayed its welcome.

Bob Vernon.

Anna Karenina; a tract for our times

'Anna Karenina’ Directed by Joe Wright, Screenplay by Tom Stoppard from the novel by Leo Tolstoy. 12A. 130 mins.

President Obama is asking his voters a profound question. Do they want a society where the winner takes, and keeps, all? Or do they want a society that recognizes and respects the needs and dignity of all it's members? This is an ethical question because it is about the ultimate value of our fellow human beings. Some believe that any society that gets its ultimate values wrong contains the seeds of its own destruction. Its values are not ‘real’, but artificial. Tolstoy lived in a society that depended on serf labour. He saw the ethical falsity of that. Maybe that is why he condemned the theatre as vanity. His society was the real charade, a farce masking a tragedy, elegant but ugly, where highly defined hierarchies and etiquettes decorously dressed moral sewers.

It is ironic that Anna Karenina has been filmed for theatrical screening at least four times. I suggest that Joe Wright’s film is the best by far. After Atonement and Jane Eyre we may take it for granted that his films will be carefully cast, beautifully photographed and scored and skillfully directed. We know that Tom Stoppard’s uses the theatre to pursue truth in philosophy, science, politics, and personal relationships.

So when they film most of the action in this adaptation within a theatre they are making a point. Some have found this metaphor alienating. That may be part of the intent. This is an artificial false society, portrayed as such. Even choreography is used subversively. Servants dance in circles to meet their master's every whim. At the Society Balls the aristocratic dancers employ elaborate gestures, intertwining their hands and arms gracefully, but with no true contact, no genuine intimacy.

It is on this stage that Anna (Kiera Knightley) meets and falls passionately in love with Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). I think Knightley outdoes Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh in her portrayal of a woman driven mad by passion. Jude Law plays her upright husband in a way that invites our sympathy. Matthew Macfadyen, as her brother, Oblonsky, accepts his own promiscuity with a resigned but cheerful bonhomie. Domhnall Gleeson plays Levin, an earnest young landowner seeking, like Tolstoy, a just way to order his life and estates.

At the end of the film his new wife, Kitty (Alicia Vikander), washes a dying man’s body. In this action she gives those earlier ball-room movements true grace, a compassionate intimacy that strikes her husband dumb with wonder. He has just learnt, from one of his workers, that it is not reason that teaches us how to live, but love. He rushes home to share this revelation with his wife, but Kitty's actions are enacting what Levin has been seeking. What she is doing is socially unacceptable and absolutely right.

At one level Karenina is about the marriage contract, love and adultery, but it is also about the social contract imposed by the rich and powerful on the poor and powerless. As much as any cuckolded spouse or betrayed wife they too are being shafted. Those in power are faithful to nothing except their own desires and interests.

Is anybody watching? asks Count Vronsky nervously, as Anne initiates adulterous lovemaking in the woods. And she looks upwards. She knows God is watching. But the church offered no critique to these hedonistic Tzarist aristos. Today the Russian Orthodox Church offers no protest as the Riot Pussies’ criticism of Putin is condemned as blasphemy. In our own Western ethical and economic crisis our churches too seem muted or compromised. What does it say now, in a world were wealth is ever flowing upwards, with conspicuous consumption mocking those compelled to live on an unliveable 'living' wage, and in a Britain where a government run by old Etonians is making the poorest pay for the folly of the richest, the 1% who run or ruin our world. Our so called 'celebrity' culture offers the proletariat junk food, junk television and Mac-jobs, and offers the individuals, but never the bottom 40% as a whole, the false promise of escape through the lottery, the X factor, or Big Brother. When oh when did that last term lose it's literary and political meaning? Spin, Orwell, spin, alongside Tolstoy and Kafka.

Anna Karenina is surely a tract for our own times.

2011; a great year for British films and proof you don’t need Hollywood big bucks to make great movies.

Among this years low budget hits Attack the Block was written and directed by Joe Cornish (from the TV Adam & Joe Show). This is an exciting funny and acute take on the alien invasion theme. It honours its filmic inheritance, but does not, a la Shawn of the Dead, parody it. Wyndham Towers is the tower block in South London attacked by aliens and defended by black teenage hoodies. It stars no-one you have heard of, mostly new faces, but they are convincing and engaging. It speaks up for inter-racial and inter-generational understanding, and is a kind of coming-of-age movie. Boys become men, or at least step towards true courage and dignity.

Monsters was made for less than £500,000, mainly because it was written directed, designed and photographed by one man, Gareth Edwards, with a cast of two, a largely improvised script and home-made special effects - again by Mr. Edwards This is Science-Fiction again, but with very different aliens, and a love-story. The director, actors and sound man traveled across Mexico looking for locations and recruiting amateurs as they went. No doubt he will be offered mega-bucks for his next movie, but Monsters showed that he does not need them to entertain us.

Ken Loach usually works on a low budget too (perforce) and his Route Irish is as committed and passionate as any of his works. Route Irish is the dangerous road that led through the Green Zone from Baghdad to the airport during the 2^nd Gulf War and subsequent occupation. British troops in Iraq were gradually replaced by ‘private security personnel’ aka mercenaries (often the same men who had served as soldiers there). Mark Womack plays such an exSAS trooper, trying to find out what led to the death of his mate, played in flashbacks by the Scouse comedian John Bishop. But this is no comedy. It is a political and personal thriller, with serious intent. If you appreciate Loach’s films, see this.

I will include Eire as British in order or praise The Guard, written and directed by J M McDonagh, and starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Rory Keenan and Mark Strong. This was shot around my beloved Galway Bay, Gleeson’s homeland, and he plays the local Police - or Garde - sergeant, caught up in a drug plot being investigated by the FBI agent played by Cheadle (who played such in Traffic). This is a culture-clash comedy, a buddy movie, a comedy caper, and utterly unPC. I loved it.

Two more British films had bigger budgets, but did not use them for flash-bang-wallop. Strictly speaking Never Let Me Go is also science fiction, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, (though of course if a novel is good surely it cannot be science fiction!). Carey Mulligan Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley live in a parallel present to our own, and a darker one. Their performances are quietly underplayed, its moral message understated. and both are all the more moving for it. The film is beautifully shot, and scored.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor is adapted from John le Carre’s novel, directed by Tomas Alfreson, the Swede who made the brilliant Let the Right One In. Competing with the beloved 6 hour long BBC/Alex Guinness version is a hard task, but Alfreson concentrates on the feel as much as the plot, and it is not the world of James Bond. MI6 is presented as a seedy, squalid, suspicious, sexist, snobbish world (oh, rather like Bond’s after all). A wonderful (if rather under-used) British cast, includes Gary Oldman as George Smiley, Kathy Burke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt and Mark Strong. Despite the convoluted plot Alfreson has the courage to take his time, to allow us to watch Smiley, watching, thinking, suppressing his responses. A friend of mine said she loved it, but hadn’t a clue what was going on. I give thanks that an intelligent demanding movie topped the charts.

Another film with a British Director and leading actors is The Debt. John Madeen directed Mrs. Brown and Shakespeare in Love, but this is different, a thriller about an Israeli Mossad squad’s attempt to kidnap a Nazi war criminal and take him from East Berlin back to Israel to be put on trial. But the snatch goes badly wrong. Thirty years on we see the fall-out from that failure. Helen Mirren plays the older version of the agent played as a younger woman by Jessica Chastain, and Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds play her colleagues. This remake of an Israeli film has a script worked on by Peter Straughn, who also contributed to the adaptation of Tinker, Tailor…. and is a taut political thriller with a moral edge. What is the debt, and to whom is it owed?

Of course the biggest budget went to the last Harry Potter; the Deathly Hallows part 2. in which David Yates ‘brings the closure that Potter fans have been seeking and dreading – something they and Harry have in common.’ (BFI) For years I assured parents worried about the ‘witchcraft’ element that this series was simply a morality tale about the victory of good over evil, of love over hatred, and Harry did not win his battles by being a better magician than Voldemort, but by the courage and loyalty of his friends (and Hermione doing her homework!). The question was never 'will Harry defeat Voldemort', but how. Now we know that J K Rowling was a Christian all along, but did not publicize it. If I had, she said, everyone would work out the ending.

Source Code was the second film by the British director Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie, who had a critical hit with his low budget sf hit Moon in 2009. This time he used his bigger budget well, with Jake Gyllenhall and Michelle Monaghan (so good in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) a convoluted plot and great special effects – but the message is that love conquers all. Ahhh. Stylish.

There have been some great classic DVD/Blu-ray releases this year including Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Scorcese's Taxi Driver, and Blood Simple, (both the Coen Brothers dark original and a hilarious Chinese version by Zhang Yimou, of Hero, House of Flying Daggers and the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony fame). Also John Carpenter’s hilarious Dark Star, another low budget triumph and Douglas Trumbull’s prophetic Silent Running, and Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth and West Side Story.

So, three good new sf films and the release of three sf classics. Three handsome literary adaptations, and the best year of the British film industry for some time. I hereby declare 2011 to be a good vintage!

Light in the Darkness; films for Advent

light in the darkness

A season of films around this theme in preparation for Advent.

(Light shines in the darkness. Christians believe that the light of Christ will not be overcome by darkness. These films explore darkness in different dimensions; the political, commercial, personal, in grief, guilt and the shadow of Auschwitz. All of them are in their own ways difficult to watch, or to hear. Those in the early stages of grief may find Truly, Madly, Deeply to much to handle. Those who find 'strong language' -as the BBC coyly puts it) will struggle with Precious. Two have subtitles, and that may be difficult for some viewers. When we show films we are responsible to those we invite, so let us be careful, and make clear what people can expect. )

Persepolis; an animated autobiography about a girl’s life under in the Shah’s Persia, during the victory of the Ayatollah, her exile in Paris and return to Tehran – a funny account of dark political times. (Cert 15)

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) has to address corporate darkness and his own complicity in corruption as he seeks justice for a colleague driven to madness by their companies activities. (Cert 15)

In I've Loved You So Long, Kirstin Scott Thomas plays a woman released from prison after 15 years, trying to rebuild her life and relationship with her sister. (In French with subtitles)

I'm a Cyborg is an unsettling romance set in a Korean mental asylum, directed by the celebrated Korean Park Chan-Wook, (Cert 15, subtitles) Precious is abused, rejected, illiterate and dangerously over-weight. This is our toughest film, but is about people’s capacity to learn, grow, and flourish, when their preciousness is recognized. (Cert 15)

Truly Madly Deeply (Julie Stevenson & Alan Rickman) is a passionate story of love, life and death. ‘Ghost for the thinking classe’s, both funny and demanding.

Life is Beautiful in Roberto Benigni’s film, even when Guido’s family is overshadowed by the Holocaust. This Italian film was nominated for 3 Oscars in 1999. (subtitled)

The Fisher King, directed by Terry Gilliam, is as visually fantastic as we would expect, but also a funny and moving story of guilt, grief, love, madness - and free Video club membership.