Certified Copy - "Copie Conforme"

Cecil says: I always like Juliette Binoche. I can watch her for hours and never tire of her. So an intense film focused on the intense relationship between Binoche and ‘James’ (William Shimell), with lots of camera shots focusing straight onto Binoche’s face, was bound to keep me happy. Having said that, I think if her part had been played by any other actress, I’d have quickly tired of this film.

Isn’t it funny how, in the same way that Hollywood plots become more and more complex as audiences get wise to the ‘usual’ thriller plot, French films so often descend into more and more multi-layered intellectual game-playing?

How dull was the opening scene of this one? We hear far too much of the Englishman’s lecture to the small-town Italian audience on a pretty obscure, arcane subject: on the importance of originality in art or whether a good copy is not also as important for the story it tells.

Of course, this is probably some scene-setting allegory for the couple’s relationship? Is it real or a fake? Is the kid his or someone else’s? Does it matter that some people they meet think they are married? What is real?

I’m afraid it all gets a bit too deep for my liking, but French films like this so often do. If there’s one nation’s films that can make me feel like a philistine, it’s the French!

Basically, their relationship is a mess, but of course we aren’t allowed any normal story-telling which ends with a clear conclusion on whether it survives or ends; oh no that would be far too conventional for a film of this genre.

I think the only scene I really liked, apart from the lingering close-ups of JB, was where they meet the middle-aged couple in the square. He gives James some friendly advice: put your arm round her, it’ll solve all your marriage problems.

And the wife of insightful man does something interesting which happens so often in real life (like in photos where the fixed smile is so unnatural and the smile ‘after’ the shot is taken is often the true smile): she is asked for her reaction to a statue in the square and replies with something very instinctive and insightful, but when asked to repeat this for the art historian James, she goes all technical, pseudo-intellectual and it sounds awful. Bit like this film, really.

**.5

Bea says:

For the first third of this film I didn’t really warm to either main character – I found their play-acting at being married irritating (why would anyone who didn’t know each other well do that?). When it slowly became apparent that they were, actually, married I became more interested in their relationship issues and dilemmas, but remained vaguely irritated by their earlier play-acting at not being married! I am not sure if this was the reaction the writer and director was trying to elicit from their audience – maybe.

The themes of this film (real-ness, fakery, truth, and simplicity as opposed to complexity) are interesting enough but the film takes it pretty slowly and is very dialogue-heavy with little action. It’s not a bad way to while away a late afternoon (as we did), but we had just done a pretty strenuous coastal hike followed by tea and cakes, and I was feeling rather sleepy and relaxed with lots of endorphins – I would really have preferred something a bit more positive and hopeful on the nature of marriage and relationships. Perhaps I’ve been living in America for too long now, but I found this rather a downer.

**1/2

Of Gods and Men

Bea says:

Although I wouldn’t describe this story of a small community of French monks living in an increasingly unsettled part of North Africa as a feel-good film by any stretch of the imagination, it was however, for me, a reflective and somewhat uplifting experience.

The pace of the film was deliberately slowed down, it seemed to me, in order to match the contemplative life the monks led (prayer, singing, work – gardening, cooking, tending to the sick – eating and meeting as a community), but the film does not drag. Tension is introduced early on as rebel and government armies threaten the monastery and attached village, and conflict quickly follows within the community as the monks discuss and decide how to respond, creating a very interesting study of the nature of leadership and the dynamics of communities, teams and groups. The film follows the monks both as a community and as individuals, and in response it is difficult not to ask the question, “what would I have done?”.

Some standout scenes for me were Brother Christian walking the monastery walls in a rainstorm as he grappled with himself whether to tell the community additional information about their safety (or lack of it) that only he knew, just after they had all voted to stay on; and the moving “last supper” style scene with celebrated guests, wine and music.

I did not know this (true) story prior to watching the film, and am glad that I know it now. It is a film I think I will be returning to at some stage in the future, as there was a lot to take in on first viewing.

***1/2

Cecil says:

Unlike Bea, I wasn’t uplifted by this film. I felt like an observer all the way through; it was interesting to see the development of each monk’s view of his place in the world and in particular of his place in that world up in the remote mountains of Algeria. But I found it difficult to relate to their situation.

It’s funny, because as Bea says, it’s hard not to ask ‘what would I have done?’. But I know from reading Simone de Beauvoir (Le sang des autres) and Flaubert (Education sentimentale) that I really don’t know how I’d react in such extreme circumstances, so it almost feels pointless to speculate. My instinct, as an observer, was to think: get the hell out of there, guys; but in reality, how much would I have felt the pull of community inside the monastery or the dependence of the community outside? There’s no way of knowing until you are actually faced with such a situation.

That said, I enjoyed watching. I warmed most to old Amedee, whose tears of joy I related to and whose hideaway getaway I can imagine I might follow myself. And who could fail to love Luc, the philosophical doctor, who treats everyone, regardless of what they may have done before or the threat they might pose to him later.

We watched this film in the lovely old Jane Pickens Theater in Newport, Rhode Island; one of those 1920s movie theatres that seem to have survived so much better in the States than back home in the UK. Just a shame they don’t use the beautiful Wurlitzer that sits down at the front of the theatre!

A shame also that they didn’t show the cast of the actors playing the monks in the final credits (Was there a reason for that?). I had to google search for that and I should warn anybody doing the same thing: don’t start looking up the Star Trek cast of the 2007 edition under the same title, as that film came up ahead of this version…

***

Water for Elephants

Cecil says: Seen in Southampton, Long Island, part of the very affluent Hamptons.

So nice to see a little local cinema thriving on a Saturday evening. This was the first time we had had to queue up for tickets anywhere across America since we went to the Byrd Theater in Richmond. I’m not sure why the bulk of the audience was in the over 60s age bracket. Maybe because all the teenagers we lined up with were heading off to see Bridesmaids, or Pirates 4!

We had chosen to see Water for Elephants, though. This is a story of a love triangle in a circus in early 30s depression (and prohibition) America. A very romantic film, not so much because of the characters involved with the triangle, but because of the inevitable romance associated with life on the road as part of the circus. Amazing really that there haven’t been more film set in circuses over the years, but look at how powerful they are when they do get made (La Strada, Wings of Desire, that knife-throwing French film with Juliette Binoche about 10 years ago).

Reese Witherspoon was OK as the female love interest, but I struggle with her, having first seen her in Legally Blonde and I just can’t get that ditsy image of her out of my mind. The young Polish lad who woos her once he gets onto the circus is supposed, I guess, to be the heart-throb interest for the film. But there was little spark between them and when the ‘love scene’ finally happens, I was more distracted by the suddenly incontinent oldies heading off to the loo than I was by what was happening on the screen (maybe that was WHY they all headed off toiletwards at that point).

Best performance by far was the all-powerful husband and ringmaster, played by Christoph Waltz, who managed well the scary character-shifting of the demented tyrant, while combining bullying with insecurity once the bedroom door closed on the world.

A film in the ‘road movie’ genre, though it was on the rail tracks. Great 1920s/30s costumes. And a wonderful reminder of how many stories the old folk around us have to tell, which is something I’ve come to appreciate more and more in recent years.

***

Bea says: I don’t have the same reservations as Cecil about Reese Witherspoon, having seen her for the first time in Walk the Line, and I thought she did a good job here playing a vulnerable to abuse, hostage-to-fortune young woman. Like Cecil I thought the weak link was Robert Pattinson playing Jakob – I thought his acting wooden with little flair, although he may have been hampered by the scriptwriting, which I felt could have been better, having read part of the novel that this film is an adaptation of.

The film was very sumptuous (despite its Depression setting) and beautiful to watch and reminded me of nothing so much as that old classic The Greatest Show on Earth with Sinatra and Heston, also about a love triangle, as I recall (Australians of my age will remember seeing it on Bill King’s Picture Show, a sad loss to Saturday night TV), and, like Cecil, some of the other classic circus-set films and novels.

I had been somewhat nervous about witnessing cruelty to animals, real or faked, in the film, and indeed there was some faked, and according to recent newspaper reports there have been accusations of real issues regarding the training the elephant(s) would have required in order to perform the circus tricks in the film. This makes me feel somewhat ambivalent towards the film.

However, putting that concern to one side, this was a diverting way to spend an evening –rather like seeing an old time classic.

**.5

Source Code

Bea says: We saw this futuristic, sci-fi thriller in Southport, North Carolina, while holidaying with friends. We encouraged our friends to come along by saying that a trip to the cinema is a great way to get a sense of the local community. Well, I’m not sure where the local community was that night, but they sure weren’t at the cinema – there were two other people watching the film with us.

The film is a kind of sci-fi version of Groundhog Day – a young soldier finds himself re-living over and over again the final 8 minutes of a Chicago commuter train journey before it is bombed. His mission is to identify the bomber and report back. As he re-lives the experience over and over, he begins to make sense of his own situation and identity.

The film delves into the popular science of quantum physics in a fun sort of way (the existence of multiple realities and worlds) and although fairly instantly forgettable was quite gripping while on the screen. Not destined to become a classic – but then again, I thought that about Groundhog Day when it first came out!

**

Cecil says: As Bea says, this was OK on the night, but also so forgettable that I have nothing to say, now that three weeks have elapsed since we saw it.

The only thing that struck me was the timing of our seeing this film about a bomb on a train. It was the night before bin Laden was killed, with all the heightened security ever since and the fear that al-Qaeda’s next American targets might be on a train. Hmmm, how long would this film stay on release if that were to happen?

**.5