Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Cecil says: As the camera pans over the main characters in the opening scenes, it lands on great actor after great actor: John Hurt, Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, Toby Jones, Bendict Cumberbatch. You know this is going to be a great film, even if you have vague memories of that really good TV series back in the late 70s, which dramatised the same story.

And sure enough, this is a top quality film: can’t beat the plot (Le Carre); the cast (see above); and the filming (in ‘MI6 HQ’; in the dingy flat of ‘Control’; in the bars of Budapest).

It’s another reminder of how much the world has moved on since those dark days of the 1970s when, again, you had to pick sides and, if you were playing for one side and pretending to be on the other side, you had to weave a very complex web of intrigue behind you in order not to be found out.

Of course, when the TV series was made in 1979, the Cold War was still going strong, so it’s a tribute to the quality of the story and the novel that it stands the test of time to make such a good film so many years on.

It reminds me of a time (the 1980s) when friends of mine had their phone tapped; and another period (the late 60s) when my parents were approached by Special Branch wanting information on student troublemakers.

It probably still happens today, but somehow, from the Odeon Seniors morning in Darlington, it all felt a long time ago, and all the better for being historical...

***.5

Bea says: A strong (Le Carre) story, and a super-strong cast make this a winner from the outset – although let’s face it, this cast could be reading nursery rhymes and it would still be fantastic. The plot does require concentration, and it would be helpful to have read the book before perhaps, or at least be more familiar with the Smiley series than I am.

But concentration pays off eventually, and in this world of high level spying there are no friends, no enemies and no one can be trusted…

Also interesting were the subplots around relationships, Smiley’s and those of his colleagues; in fact this interested me more than the spy plots (and I think it was supposed to).

I heard Le Carre interviewed recently, commenting on Spooks, and he was rather dismissive of it, saying it made spying look like it was all women and fast cars, and in fact it was nothing like that at all – really?

***.5

The Ides of March

Bea says: This was one of those great experiences where I knew relatively little about a film, and loved it. All I knew about this one was that it was something to do with US politics, and as Cecil and I are just returned from Washington DC, it fitted with our recent experiences.

For me the film was about the process of disillusionment. It follows a few days in the working life of Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling), a young and talented staffer to the democrat presidential candidate, the film opening with the candidate, Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney) delivering an inspiring speech about the future of America, and Myers watching with face shining with hope and belief.

As the days progress however, Myers unwittingly uncovers a secret about Morris, and he also lets his talent go slightly to his head, unwisely mis-timing a set-up meeting with the opposing candidate’s people, and even more unwisely confiding in head staffer Paul Zara (the brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman) about it.

In retrospect, I am not sure how well these actions actually fit with Myers’ character – a highly experienced, talented and bright young up and coming staffer might not have made these mistakes. However, Zara promptly boots him off the campaign, and Myers promptly uses his knowledge of Morris’ dirt to get Zara booted off and get himself back on the campaign.

In the final scene Morris is giving yet another inspiring speech about the future of America, and Myers watches him, stony faced.

Beware indeed the ides of March….made me want to read Julius Caesar, and how many films can you say that about?

***.5

Cecil says: As Bea said, coming just after our year in Washington, it all felt very plausible and very real, though it leaves you without much hope or belief in the future...There was a dark tone to this film, emphasised perhaps by the long scenes totally devoid of soundtrack, so it felt all the more real because, let’s face it, most of our conversations are not backed by violins or trumpets, however much we may fantasise about such things.

The trouble with US politics, even more than politics in the UK, is that it is so tribal. You’re either Republican or Democrat; you’re with Candidate X or Candidate Y; you have to choose sides. And if you want a great career in the political scene, you damn well need to make sure you choose the right side (though can’t be bad when the ‘loser’ in this film goes off with a $1m contract with a consultancy afterwards – but I guess, as Bea said after the film, if that’s not what you wanted, then you will go off head hanging low and tail between your legs).

The whole world became aware of the notion of the political ‘intern’ during the Clinton Administration. Bea and I got to see lots of them on the West Wing before we went to DC; and then met loads of those types for real along the corridors of the Capitol (though the interns I worked with personally were not at all like Monica Lewinski!). And, sure enough, in Ides of March here’s another character that fits the ambitious, but glamorous intern image, playing a crucial – but ultimately tragic – role in this film.

I think maybe I saw this film a little too soon after my year in Washington, where my contact with this political world left me more cynical than awestruck, and if you’re already cynical about politics, then this film will do nothing to move you in the other direction.

Having said that, written by George Clooney, directed by George Clooney, and starring George Clooney, is this the opening bid in a presidential campaign for 2016?

It’s a good film, though and deserved more of an audience than the dozen or so souls who braved a dark night down at the Station in Richmond...

***

The Concert

Bea says: Seen in rather delightful circumstances at our local Town Hall as part of a Town Twinning scheme, and I was able to enjoy a glass of red wine and cheese as I settled into my seat, laid out caberet-style.

The Concert, although ostensibly a French film, is largely in Russian and about life in Russia in the past, and currently.It centres on the conductor and members of a once-famous orchestra, who fell out of favour during the Brezhnev regime and were declared Enemies of the People – and yes, some went to Gulags. The rest disappeared into a life of obscurity and manual, dead-end jobs. Until, by chance, they get the opportunity to impersonate the Bolshoi orchestra for one night in Paris.

What follows is an often slapstick comedy as they secure dodgy funds and passports, and travel to Paris to play together after a 30 year break. However, running throughout is a deeply touching storyline about the hardship and sacrifice of those who survived the communist regime,
and those who didn’t.

I won’t say too much more – if you see it yourself I don’t want to spoil the storyline. But see it if you can – it is beautifully filmed, directed and acted, and the music is divine.

***

Wuthering Heights

Bea says: Took myself off to see this for a Sunday matinee last week at our local cinema – the Station - as Cecil is seeing films on another continent at the moment.

Since I now live in North Yorkshire I thought this revisit of the Bronte classic would be appropriate (although strictly speaking the Brontes lived in West Yorkshire), and chose it instead of The Help. Notentirely sure I made the right decision there!

Well, it was certainly atmospheric, and earthy, with numerous rather long shots of the moon, heather, a flower, etc etc. Everyone looked very, very cold throughout, and everything was very, very muddy. Thelanguage was rather more coarse than I remember in the book, and there were some sex scenes I don’t recall either. But the aim I suspect the director (Andrea Arnold) had – of getting across the base nature of humanity – is achieved. Other than that I wasn’t overly impressed and rather suspect this film will vanish into oblivion.

The film covers only the first part of the book (rather a mistake I always think – it leaves the story hanging, without resolution), and is rather slow in pace – when 2 hours in Cathy stilled hadn’t died, I wondered if I should leave, as many others who had commenced the screening with me had done.

The acting was generally of a good standard; the styling annoyed me (I don’t think Cathy would have worn blue eyeshadow as a young girl, living as she did on a remote Yorkshire farmhouse in an era where only prostitutes and actresses wore makeup...in fact, and this may have been deliberate, the young Cathy looked like she’d stepped straight off a modern day street. At any moment I expected her to check her iphone.)

Arnold is rather the flavour of the month at the moment I gather, and this has achieved quite good reviews, and I guess is it is good to see a young director tackling this literary classic.

I never really liked this book, and find the character of Cathy very irritating, so don’t feel particularly precious about its interpretation – unfortunately I just felt this had been interpreted rather boringly (and it is going some to make the usually quite melodramatic Brontes boring!)

**

Life, above all

Cecil says: This is a South African film, made with German backing, which seemed a little odd, until I searched around the subject and discovered that the white South African director now lives in Germany.

It's about a young girl, just going into puberty, who has to take on the head of family role as her step-father descends into alcohol and drug abuse; her mother gets more and more sick as the film progresses; her baby step-sister dies; and her other step sister and brother need looking after.

The big, unspoken issue (at least until more than half way through the film) is AIDS. Are they or aren't they affected? It's a question that hangs over the people immediately involved, and it hangs in the air over the rest of the village, who speculate, jump to conclusions and take on almost vigilante-like stances in case the disease has hit their neighbourhood.

I don't normally read reviews before writing my own, and tonight as I read some of the professional reviewers' thoughts, I realised why. What is it about so-called professional reviewers that they feel they have to deconstruct a film, pull it apart, look at its weaknesses, and above all analyse it. Why is film review such an intellectual (or academic) exercise? Why can reviewers not tell us how they related to the film instead???

I found myself like an outside observer in this film. Was that because it was all about the black community in South Africa (not a single white actor, though that actually felt quite refreshing)? Was it the subtitles and a language I could not understand (and yet, I quite enjoyed the sound of this language and found the subtitles very readable)? Was it because the focus was on a 12-13 year old girl taking on responsibilities I could not relate to?

I actually don't know why I felt hardly any emotion or involvement in the characters (though I thought Chanda was brilliantly acted by a first time actress Khomotso Manyaka), though the storyline carried me through from start to finish.

Maybe it was because the main resonance in my own life story concerns something that happened before I was even born: my parents also lost a baby and struggled to deal with their grief for most of their lives afterwards; like the parents in Life Above All, they chose not to tell their other kids initially what had happened, but in our case with long-term emotional damage resulting from the very protective secrecy they had attempted to impose.

Actually, in the case of the family in this film, the fact that baby Sarah's death is kept from the two young kids leads them to continue to play with her in their fantasy games, with almost disastrous consequences. I didn't really take a message from all this, but it did strike me how enormously difficult infant death is to deal with for all family members, however they die.

I saw this film in the wonderfully-named Knickerbocker Cinema in Holland, Michigan, along with about 100 others. The cinema is now run by the local university, which is great, but I couldn't help wondering why more students were not present and why I was almost the youngest person in the audience...

***