On Chesil Beach

Seen at the Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, VIC

Bea says: I was keen to see this after reading Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach when it first came out in the late 2000s; and wondered how well they would deal with the theme of repressed sex in post war Britain.

I can certainly remember an interesting conversation with my father-in-law about it, who said the novel rather hit a nerve for him - only slightly older than the protagonists in the novel, and film. 

The story centres on Edward (Billy Howle) and Florence's (Saoirse Ronan) wedding night, and their lack of knowledge and experience of sex, leading to a (spoiler alert) disastrous experience and swift annulment of their marriage.  The novel is able to focus more on their internal dialogue and on the what-might-have-been; but the film manages to convey their youth, and the first signs of the beginning of the changing social system for post war generations, which Edward and Florence just slightly miss out on, and also, and most importantly that things tend to turn out ok in the long run, even if it wasn't what we thought would or should happen at the time. 

That was something I took from the book, and although I think the ending was embellished a bit in the film, it still came across, if with less of a light touch, and is what keeps this story from being depressing.

Loved the acting and direction.  Howle and Ronan both give excellent, understated performances and the director keeps it tight.  Not sure however if one could actually complete a long walk (or run) along Chesil Beach in ballet flats however...

***1/2

Cecil says: I actually enjoyed On Chesil Beach. I like period dramas, even if the ‘period’ is now inching its way into my lifetime, and this film’s last scenes are actually set in 2007. But seeing Chesil Beach on film was wonderfully evocative for me of exciting holidays as a child down on the Dorset coast.

The sea was calm for all the scenes shot in this film, but the sound of waves crashing over the pebbles, and that amazing shaped beach, which is so visible in the film, were favourites of mine as Young Cecil.

I really enjoyed the storyline too, with its awkward undertones of sexual frustrations, connections made but then lost, and the conventions of the early 60s, still holding people back before the Swinging years came along a short time later.

I’m sure there are plot weaknesses like the fact that He doesn’t know the difference between Baguette and Brioche, even though he got a First Class Honours in History and specialised in Versailles; and the rather over-dramatic break-up as a knee jerk reaction to a first row as a couple. 

Maybe I’m seeing things through 21^st century glasses, but – in contrast to films like Remains of the Day, admittedly set in earlier times, but where the social difficulties made things ‘impossible’ for the lovers – but did relationships really break down that easily over one bad night in bed??

The people we went with found the pace a bit slow and the mood lacking humour. But it didn’t bother me, and I was gripped all the way through.

The music was lovely, too, with more nice memories of attending concerts in Wigmore Hall in my London days.

I guess we don’t go to see films for the memories or the music, but they certainly kept me engaged through On Chesil Beach. I thought Saoirse Ronan was excellent as Florence; Billy Howle also believable as Edward. Other famous faces are Anne-Marie Duff and Emily Watson, as the two mothers, and both carry off their roles well, though Duff’s ‘brain damage’ is an interesting case.

My own Mum was hit by a train door like that and she too fell to the ground, though fortunately not with the dire consequences suffered by Duff’s character.

So overall I gave On Chesil Beach a thumbs up. I thought I had read the book but actually that’s one of Ian McEwan’s works I haven’t read. And some critics say the story is better told on the printed page. Well that’s as maybe.

 I still give this film ***.5

Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool

Seen at the Theatre Royal, Castlemaine

Cecil says: We didn’t know what to expect from Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. The last time we had seen a film with a British city in the title was Manchester by the Sea, and it was neither set in England nor very uplifting. Not that Film Stars is uplifting, but once we saw in the opening credits that it starred Julie Walters and Jamie Bell, we guessed it may well be set in northern England this time.

The opening scene has Annette Bening in her theatre dressing room, as Gloria Grahame, preparing to go on stage in The Glass Menagerie. We are quickly placed into context as she puts a cassette into the player (has to be 70s or 80s then) and Elton John’s Song for Guy starts to play, so that narrowed it down to post 1978.

More from the opening scenes set the stage: Gloria is preparing her makeup and hair ahead of the performance. We see her age, which is one of the key themes of the film (what does happen to ‘ageing’ film stars, though ageing is a relative thing since I am actually older than the Gloria Grahame portrayed, and Bening is superbly well-cast, as she is only a year younger than Grahame would have been at the time). And we see her collapse on the floor just after her five minute curtain call. Sickness is the other theme that runs through this: how we deal with it, how we hide it from loved ones, and how we prioritise things in our lives due to illness.

Bell and Walters are superb, teaming up in performances that echoed their fantastic time in Billy Elliot. Bell gets to do some more dancing, only this time with Bening, and there are scenes just like in Billy Elliot down narrow back alleys and in terraced streets, only this time time they are in Liverpool rather than Newcastle.

I loved how true to real life in 1979-81 this film felt. It made me aware of having lived through that time as a uni student, with some things very familiar (price of a pint, wallpaper patterns) and others less so (The lack of cars parked in the streets in those days when ownership was probably less than one car per household, compared to the multi-vehicle homes of today).

Seeing the posters of the Liverpool Labour Party back then (and how this pre-dates Derek Hatton) reminded me of my own early activist years, and for some reason I had a vivid memory of walking home from election night in Brighton, somehow conscious that Thatcher’s victory would change the world I lived in.

Bell and Bening’s romance is both believable and extraordinary at the same time. What would a 28 year old man be doing with a woman twice his age, but Bell carries it off well, as does Bening, as she copes with fading stardom and what she fears are fading looks.

But talking of ageing actresses, Vanessa Redgrave also pops up for one scene as Grahame’s Mum. And as she always seems to do, she just stood out for her fantastic voice in the few lines she had in this film.

The film is not uplifting, but it is fun in places. It is dark and it is light. It’s really as close to real life as you can get, I guess. And maybe that’s why I enjoyed it.

****

Bea says: I knew nothing at all of this film prior to seeing (something that usually pays off, I find) and I really enjoyed this bittersweet and unusual love story.  I liked that it was between an older woman and younger man (rarely addressed), and that it was based on truth.  I also enjoyed the settings of 1970s/80s Liverpool (particularly the scene where people just stood about on the street - no one does that now), and of LA and the incredible contrast it would have been to a young person from Liverpool at the time.  It is several weeks since we have seen it now, and many, many scenes have been returning to me; dinner in Gloria's little transportable house on the beach in LA, dancing in the Hampstead flat, reading Romeo and Juliet to an empty theatre but so meaningful.  Superbly written, never overdone or overplayed by the wonderful cast.  A pleasure, as good stories should be, even when they don't follow the usual formulas.

****

The Death of Stalin

Seen at the Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, VIC

Cecil says: 

I just caught The Death of Stalin before its run finished at Castlemaine’s Theatre Royal, and I sat with friends on the sofas downstairs for the first time (though without Bea this time, sadly).

I heard mixed things about the film, but I have to say I liked it. I’m not a big fan of Armando Iannucci and found his political TV satires to be too cynical – I even saw him once at a Q&A at the Ritzy in Brixton and wanted to walk out, I disliked him so much, but was caught in the middle of the cinema that day and was stuck. Funnily enough, one couple did walk out in the middle of The Death of Stalin, for whatever reason…

I actually liked its quirky mix of personality minutiae, making it almost farcical or absurd at times (but, you know, it MUST be yukky to have to kneel in someone’s piss if you’re wearing your best suit, and I’m sure those pall bearers at funerals do have dodgy moments where they think they’re about to drop the coffin…), with the gloomy and sinister political developments as Stalin’s reign of terror comes to an end, only to be – apparently – followed almost immediately by an equally sinister regime under Beria.

I didn’t know much about Beria, to be honest, except as a Stalin thug, though some of the other personalities were familiar of course: Molotov, Khrushchev, even Zhukov. Funnily enough, I was just discussing with the friends before the film started what was the sequence of Soviet leaders, and none of us recalled who led the country between Stalin and Khrushchev – well, watch this film, and  learn.

The casting worked well for me, too. I’m not sure how American audiences will react to a cockney Stalin, or precious English-sounding Beria, but they’ll relate to Steve Buscemi’s Khrushchev, I’m sure.

Most poignant scene: the line-up of prisoners being summarily shot one by one, until the order comes through to stop the shooting, with no explanation, and we focus for a moment on the next guy in the line, whose life was so randomly saved.

What a turbulent time this must have been, and all of it a mere 36 years after the biggest upheaval of them all, with the 1917 revolution. Thinking in contemporary terms, that means looking back to 1982, and the Falklands might seem a long time ago, but it is within living memory very easily for someone of my age. So Russia went through so much in those years.

I was also remembering our encounter in Tbilisi with the family whose grandparents had served the teenage Stalin when he was sent to buy the family’s weekly supply of wine and tea (bourgeois lot, they were, apparently). None of this film was set in Georgia, but still it brought back happy memories yet again of our epic overland trip to Australia…

I was also reminded of a politics lecture I attended in 1983 at the Sorbonne, when the lecturer mentioned Stalin dying on 5 March 1953. I remember thinking: why do we need to learn such exact dates, especially when a student regurgitated the exact date a few days later. Surely it’s enough to know 1953? But then, having learnt that date at uni all those years ago, I was struck by how little snow there was on the ground in ‘Moscow’ for the start of March. Hey, but allow the film-makers a bit of dramatic licence, huh?

So well done, Iannucci. With The Death of Stalin, you have won be back as a fan.

***

Sweet Country

Seen at Castlemaine's wonderful Theatre Royal

Bea says: About half an hour in, I had an urge to run away from this film.  I had a sense of foreboding an absolutely nothing, nothing good was going to happen, I knew it.  But I told myself, I had to sit it out, and see it through.  It is my country's history, and it's shame.

So I stayed with it, and watched it, and it was bad (in terms of my sense of foreboding, not the film), but not all bad.  Sam and his wife evade the party hunting them down, and could have continued to if circumstances had been different.  Justice is served, and Sam is found to have been acting in self defence, with no case to answer.  I won't say any more about the plot as even this spoils enough.

Sam Neill is back to getting some good parts these days, and is fantastic as the good egg religious landowner.  Bryan Brown plays a complex character (the sergeant) well.  Great performances from all others; and the "Western" style filming and beautiful country are well done.  I am not enough of a student of the Western genre (although I have seen many of them) to have picked all the references.  The Johny Cash song over the closing credits I am sure is one of them. 

A  must-see.  The closing line from Sam Neill gives pause for thought.

****

Cecil says: Not a film I'd recommend if you need your spirits lifting. The sense of foreboding doesn't take long to take hold; in fact already in the opening scene, which just shows us some boiling water on a campfire, and a guy adding coffee (?) and sugar, while in the background you hear the noise of someone being beaten up by a nasty racist.

Sam Neill and Bryan Brown, those old stalwarts of Australian cinema, are brilliant as ever: Neill as the gentle, religious farmer who treats Aboriginals as equals; Brown as the obsessive sergeant determined to track down the fugitive Sam Kelly, who has shot the awful March.

It's something of a relief when March does get his comeuppance fairly early in the film, though by then the viewer has been put through some of the horrifying deeds and attitudes of 'white fellahs' that must have been so common back then.

Sam Neill's last line in the film does make you reflect on where Australia is at today. The judge is clearly a new generation urban type, probably up from Sydney or Melbourne. And to some extent Australia is still divided between city and country, though the country town we have chosen to live in is probably among the more progressive in Australia. But those attitudes we see from the white fellahs through most of 'Sweet Country' have probably not changed that much in some of the more remote outback towns even today.

Hamilton Morris as Sam Kelly shows great wisdom throughout plus a fantastic ability to survive in the tough outback. Archie reminded me of those Native American trackers who helped the whites in America catch up with Injuns. And Philomac is an interesting character: I quickly suspected that he might be Kennedy's son, but his survival instinct is also extraordinary, with a scary last line from him at the end of the movie. (clever casting, too, with maybe two brothers playing him as he gets older, or in flashback scenes?)

Funny coincidence that Philomac might be the son of someone called Kennedy. Because the shooting at the end, with the blood spurting over the wife in the carriage, is surely a reminder of what happened to JFK some 50 years later (though it's also a bit hard to know when the film was set, or which British Army action March and the Sergeant are supposed to have fought in).

Beautifully filmed, you could almost touch the sand and dust, and I almost began waving those flies away from my face even though there were none in the lovely old Theatre Royal in Castlemaine.

***

Their Finest

Seen at the wonderful Theatre Royal in Castlemaine, Vic

Cecil says: I saw this alone as I had the chance to stay a bit longer than Bea in Castlemaine, and this was on as a matinée, which was kind of appropriate for a movie depicting life in wartime Britain, and it was all about the making of a wartime propaganda film based on Dunkirk.

Now, I'm not normally a fan of films about making a film - they are usually too introspective, playing to a film-making audience and just a bit too self-absorbed.

Their Finest could not be further from that description. It laughed at itself, showed the real challenges of creating 'authenticity with optimism' when things don't go to plan, and even the need to create an American hero at Dunkirk as a sub-plot to try to get the American people behind the war worked precisely because it showed the plot acrobatics the writers had to go through to manage this.

It's great that the main character is a woman. Catrin Cole is well played by Gemma Arterton. We see her go through the difficulties of a relationship break-up, falling for her colleague, dealing with cantankerous actor Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy type-cast again but brilliant as ever), and slowly getting recognition for her work, as she pushes to have a stronger role for the women characters in her script.

There are fantastic comic moments, like the filming on the 'Dunkirk' beaches and the drama coaching by Hilliard of the awkward American fighter pilot pushed into the plot with no plausible role. There's the drama of the backdrop of bombings and death around (and among) them, and the terribly moving scene late on in the film when disaster hits the studio where they are filming (I'll say no more to avoid a spoiler moment).

But there's also the wonderfully satisfying moment towards the end when Catrin finally watches the film she helped to write and it plays to a packed audience who hang on every line.

It's not an emotional rollercoaster because of its almost Brechtian way of constantly switching between reality and drama. That somehow stops a complete involvement in the characters, but it is a wonderfully gripping film, with some waves of emotion.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and would happily go to see it again with Bea. Seeing it at the vintage cinema that is Castlemain's Theatre Royal made it even more memorable, though.

****