Seen at the Birks Cinema in Aberfeldy
Cecil says: This is an extraordinary film in so many ways: there's no dialogue at all; in fact there's a cast of one, which makes it impossible to have a dialogue; it's the first film I've ever seen where I began to feel sea sick half way through; and that is no doubt down to the amazing camera work, often underwater; and yet I was gripped all the way through, although overwhelmed almost from the start with a total sense of foreboding and fear.
I'm writing this without seeing the Oscar shortlists, but surely All is Lost has to be in there at least for its camera work, and maybe even for Robert Redford as best actor.
Robert Redford carries the part off amazingly. There he is, lone yachtsman, having a bit of a kip below deck as the film starts, and we hear the sound of what at first seems to be thunder, but then, as water laps around his feet and little kids' shoes bob around inside the boat, we realise - at the same time as Redford's character - that the boat has been holed and is slowly filling with water as it flows in the waves through the gap...a gap made by an enormous ship's contained which has clearly dropped off one of those mega freight ships.
What follows is an extraordinary sequence of human survival techniques. There's a narrative, too, as one by one, all Redford's protection mechanisms are peeled away like an onion skin, starting with the yacht's communications equipment, through the very boat itself slowly sinking, to Redford's own skin, breached in an effort to retrieve some precious item or other before all was lost.
Slowly, this hi-tech yacht, is pulled apart - though Redford has amazing knowledge of the sea and of boats, leading him to try things I would never have dreamt of doing - and then, once he has jumped ship to his inflatable life raft, we watch things continue to spiral slowly out of control, through storms, sharks, ships not spotting him and flares not working.
He writes a goodbye note to the world - the same note we heard him read out at the start of the film when the screen was totally black. And he puts the note in a glass bottle, ready to throw out to sea, so that somebody one day will know what happened to him.
He hesitates before throwing it out. And for that brief moment, it felt like the Robert Redford of 40 odd years ago before the final scene in Butch Cassidy, when he and Paul Newman know they are about to be killed and have to decide whether to jump over the fence and shoot back. Completely different scenario, but somehow there's a connection: Redford at a key moment at the start and end of his film career?
I won't do a plot spoiler because in a sense the plot, and the end of the narrative, does not matter to this film. It is all about atmosphere, human existence, survival, and how on earth we cope with losing step by step everything that protects us from the elements. And you can't get much more in touch with the elements than being ditched from an inflatable into the middle of the Indian Ocean...
***.5
Bea missed out on this one, having to spend the day at work. But in a sense, it's appropriate to watch this film alone!
Friday 24 January 2014
Sunday 19 January 2014
The Railway Man
Seen at the Gala Cinema in Durham
Bea says: I have family history connected with the plot of this film as according to family stories a great uncle of mine died on a hospital ship coming home after being a POW working on the Burma railway, so I was particularly interested in seeing it. There is a book associated with the film which I have not read, so the story of the quiet, somewhat repressed and very British Eric Lomax was new to me. But this film was as much about a marriage - and about the overall experience of that wartime generation - as it was about the Burma railway.
The film opens with a charming set of scenes - on a British train - which document Eric (Colin Firth) meeting his wife Patti (Nicole Kidman), but I will let Cecil say more about that as I know these scenes were a highlight for him. But as is the way with all good plots, things do not remain quite so rosy, and soon we are witness to Eric's post traumatic stress as the memories of his wartime experiences after the fall of Singapore affect him constantly, and we are told the story in flashback as Patti, and Eric's wartime friends, try to help him move on.
It is a terrible story, although I am sure the writers and producers did not in any way reveal the full horror of the abuse and torture that actually went on (for a start the film would have had to be certificate 18 if they did) - things I have read and documentaries I've watched about the Burma railway indicate just how bad it was, and Lomax himself says at one point - "we don't talk about it because no one would believe it". I am glad they didn't, as what we saw was harrowing enough for me, although very sobering because one of the techniques (waterboarding) is still in use today by so-called "civilised" nations. A clue to just had bad things were was the character of the The Major - starved, trembling, and totally cowed by the Japanese forces.
A few key scenes: I will never be able to watch Brief Encounter again without wanting to shout "give her one, Trevor" - one of the few laughs in this sober film; I was rather surprised to hear that the reason that the British never built the Burma railway while they were in power was because it would be too cruel (hmmm - more likely that it would be an engineering nightmare I suspect...a slight airbrushing of the colonial past I think); and whilst I found the scenes of the reconciliation between Eric and the interpreter who played a significant role in his torture very moving indeed (particularly in remembering the key message of our last film - Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom) I found myself feeling somewhat uncomfortable by the statement that "they became great friends", and really wanting to understand the psychology behind that - but I suspect that says more about me and where I am in my overall life development. Perhaps I need to get older, and less angry.
Excellent, excellent performances, writing, directing and producing - sadly there are a lot of good runners for the awards this year and this quiet film might just miss out.
****1/2
Cecil says: I liked this film, too, though I had no personal reference point for the story. It did, however, make me aware that most Brits' association with the subject has been shaped by that 1950s classic The Bridge over the River Kwai. You could almost blame David Lean for focusing our national minds on the bridge alone, not realising that there was a much larger picture, and a much longer railway being built then.
As Bea says, I did enjoy the opening scenes.
The very first shot is actually of Lomax lying prostrate on the floor reciting the very evocative poem he apparently wrote himself (and it gets a repeat during his torture later in the film) about time and clocks and life, or death.
But we then switch to his very entertaining chat-up lines for Patti on the west coast train line as they head through Warrington and up towards Preston. Anyone from that part of the country has to see this film, just for that opener.
Firth and Kidman are fantastic throughout, though I couldn't help reflecting on the age of their characters and then on their own ages as actors, which slightly distracted me through the film. Lomax is supposed to be over 60 by the time the film is set in 1980, though Firth never quite manages to look that old; and similar for Patti and Kidman, who looked a tad too fresh-faced even for a younger partner to Lomax.
My other misgiving relates a little to what Bea referred to: the slightly sanitised view of the whole railway/torture/slave labour conditions. I couldn't tell if it was the pristine nature and glorious width of the Gala cinema's screen in Durham, or the way it was all filmed, but I did feel throughout that I was watching this film rather than part of it, so I felt just slightly detached.
There were very moving scenes, though many of those moments were more associated with the struggles in contemporary life rather than the actual traumas of the wartime period.
By funny coincidence I had to do four hours of hard manual labour the day after watching this film. It was the first time I had done such physical work since I worked on a farm during the summer of 1978. And my body ached afterwards. Nothing, though, compared to being whipped and beaten while digging in hard rock for 14 hours a day in captivity. As Bea says, it is the English Major who best encapsulates how the body and mind would wilt under that sort of pressure.
And maybe the feel of witnessing rather than being part of the hard labour actually stems from the fact that Lomax was indeed lucky enough to be am engineer, so he avoided the hard labour because he was needed by the Japs to help build the lines?
****
Bea says: I have family history connected with the plot of this film as according to family stories a great uncle of mine died on a hospital ship coming home after being a POW working on the Burma railway, so I was particularly interested in seeing it. There is a book associated with the film which I have not read, so the story of the quiet, somewhat repressed and very British Eric Lomax was new to me. But this film was as much about a marriage - and about the overall experience of that wartime generation - as it was about the Burma railway.
The film opens with a charming set of scenes - on a British train - which document Eric (Colin Firth) meeting his wife Patti (Nicole Kidman), but I will let Cecil say more about that as I know these scenes were a highlight for him. But as is the way with all good plots, things do not remain quite so rosy, and soon we are witness to Eric's post traumatic stress as the memories of his wartime experiences after the fall of Singapore affect him constantly, and we are told the story in flashback as Patti, and Eric's wartime friends, try to help him move on.
It is a terrible story, although I am sure the writers and producers did not in any way reveal the full horror of the abuse and torture that actually went on (for a start the film would have had to be certificate 18 if they did) - things I have read and documentaries I've watched about the Burma railway indicate just how bad it was, and Lomax himself says at one point - "we don't talk about it because no one would believe it". I am glad they didn't, as what we saw was harrowing enough for me, although very sobering because one of the techniques (waterboarding) is still in use today by so-called "civilised" nations. A clue to just had bad things were was the character of the The Major - starved, trembling, and totally cowed by the Japanese forces.
A few key scenes: I will never be able to watch Brief Encounter again without wanting to shout "give her one, Trevor" - one of the few laughs in this sober film; I was rather surprised to hear that the reason that the British never built the Burma railway while they were in power was because it would be too cruel (hmmm - more likely that it would be an engineering nightmare I suspect...a slight airbrushing of the colonial past I think); and whilst I found the scenes of the reconciliation between Eric and the interpreter who played a significant role in his torture very moving indeed (particularly in remembering the key message of our last film - Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom) I found myself feeling somewhat uncomfortable by the statement that "they became great friends", and really wanting to understand the psychology behind that - but I suspect that says more about me and where I am in my overall life development. Perhaps I need to get older, and less angry.
Excellent, excellent performances, writing, directing and producing - sadly there are a lot of good runners for the awards this year and this quiet film might just miss out.
****1/2
Cecil says: I liked this film, too, though I had no personal reference point for the story. It did, however, make me aware that most Brits' association with the subject has been shaped by that 1950s classic The Bridge over the River Kwai. You could almost blame David Lean for focusing our national minds on the bridge alone, not realising that there was a much larger picture, and a much longer railway being built then.
As Bea says, I did enjoy the opening scenes.
The very first shot is actually of Lomax lying prostrate on the floor reciting the very evocative poem he apparently wrote himself (and it gets a repeat during his torture later in the film) about time and clocks and life, or death.
But we then switch to his very entertaining chat-up lines for Patti on the west coast train line as they head through Warrington and up towards Preston. Anyone from that part of the country has to see this film, just for that opener.
Firth and Kidman are fantastic throughout, though I couldn't help reflecting on the age of their characters and then on their own ages as actors, which slightly distracted me through the film. Lomax is supposed to be over 60 by the time the film is set in 1980, though Firth never quite manages to look that old; and similar for Patti and Kidman, who looked a tad too fresh-faced even for a younger partner to Lomax.
My other misgiving relates a little to what Bea referred to: the slightly sanitised view of the whole railway/torture/slave labour conditions. I couldn't tell if it was the pristine nature and glorious width of the Gala cinema's screen in Durham, or the way it was all filmed, but I did feel throughout that I was watching this film rather than part of it, so I felt just slightly detached.
There were very moving scenes, though many of those moments were more associated with the struggles in contemporary life rather than the actual traumas of the wartime period.
By funny coincidence I had to do four hours of hard manual labour the day after watching this film. It was the first time I had done such physical work since I worked on a farm during the summer of 1978. And my body ached afterwards. Nothing, though, compared to being whipped and beaten while digging in hard rock for 14 hours a day in captivity. As Bea says, it is the English Major who best encapsulates how the body and mind would wilt under that sort of pressure.
And maybe the feel of witnessing rather than being part of the hard labour actually stems from the fact that Lomax was indeed lucky enough to be am engineer, so he avoided the hard labour because he was needed by the Japs to help build the lines?
****
Friday 10 January 2014
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Seen at The Station Cinema in Richmond, North Yorkshire
Cecil says: I love this sort of film and they used to make so many more of them in the 80s and 90s – I’m thinking Killing Fields, Boat People, Beko, even Cry Freedom, though I know that got lambasted for focusing too much on the white journalist involved rather than the ‘struggle’.
Cecil says: I love this sort of film and they used to make so many more of them in the 80s and 90s – I’m thinking Killing Fields, Boat People, Beko, even Cry Freedom, though I know that got lambasted for focusing too much on the white journalist involved rather than the ‘struggle’.
I’m sure there will be those who criticise this film for
glossing over so many periods of South African history, but come on, it’s not a
documentary, it’s a movie, and it does a great job synthesising Nelson
Mandela’s extraordinary life into two and a half hours. Idris Elba is brilliant
as Mandela, and once I’d got over the first few scenes where all I could see
was Stringer Bell from The Wire, I was totally drawn in.
Although it isn’t a documentary (and I sometimes wondered
why more use wasn’t made of newsreel footage), as a viewer of a certain age, I
couldn’t help remembering personal moments: those ‘where was I when...’ kind of
thoughts, though very often they were along the lines of ‘sitting in a shaded
park reading the newspaper reports of Soweto riots in 1976’, hearing the news
of Mandela’s release in my office etc etc. All so far removed from the reality
of South Africa, and yet something we all felt so strongly about back in the
70s and 80s.
I mean I used to hate all white South Africans, but this was
around the same time that I hated all Tories, and all Americans. And my hatred
wasn’t even based on any personal oppression (I wasn’t even old enough to lose
my job under Thatcher). So all of those emotions, all that hatred in that divided
world of the 1980s makes Mandela’s achievement all the more remarkable in
placating and persuading the ‘people’ of South Africa to accept a peaceful path
to democracy.
The other thing such historical biopics do is make you aware
of time or of moments in history that are turning points. Those few months from
November 1989 to spring 1990 when so much happened in the world (I had my own
significant moment in Nicaragua in those few months) and so much changed
fundamentally. The world really was a different place, and remained so until
probably September 2001. But how do you ever know how significant these moments
are when they are actually happening?
So, yes, this is a great film also because it lets those of
us who lived through that era reflect on it all.
My only question mark, in addition to the lack of newsreel
usage, was why they never had crowds singing Nkosi Sikele Afrika; it’s such a
beautiful song and it was so much the anthem of that era. But if they had, I
don’t think I’d have been able to hold back the tears...
Great movie
****.5
Bea says: I wasn’t quite sure originally about seeing the Mandela
film. I had found the press coverage of
his recent death generally quite poor, with blanket coverage which however
didn’t really say anything at all about him.
I also thought it might be a bit depressing in parts, and had read
reviews that remarked on its length and slowness as a film.
I wasn’t expecting to be completely gripped from the outset
by the story of the young (and then older) Mandela. I wasn’t expecting to be choked up with
emotion for most of the film. I wasn’t
expecting to be uplifted. But I was all
of these things, and at the end of film just felt so completely moved. It’s a great story, generally managing to
avoid cliché and well directed and acted, with a familiar face doing a great
job of playing the great man, as we are fans of The Wire.
A few moments stood out for me through this 2 ½ hour film –
and regular readers know that I am usually highly critical of over-long films,
but not this one – when I started to remember the events from my childhood and
teenage years of news watching, the concert at Wembley, and the risk Mandela
took in urging the people not to resort to violence, but to exercise their
right to vote instead. That decision,
one amongst so many, and the TV broadcast he made related to it, was a
fantastic lesson in leadership.
A must see.
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