Bea says: This was our first outing to see a film in our new city of residence, Washington DC, and we walked across town from M St, past the White House to E St, to an art house cinema to catch it.
I had noticed it was running on the day's film listings in the Washington Post, and as Ishiguru is one of my favourite novelists and I had loved the book of the same name, I talked Cecil into going, although I wasn't sure it would be his bag. Despite a big name cast (Kiera Knightley), and Ishiguru's popularity, neither of us had been aware of this film before arriving in DC, so we were in the rather surreal situation of watching a film about the UK having newly arrived in another country entirely.
The film is faithful to the book, and I noticed on the credits that Ishiguru was quite involved in the adaptation. It did not however have the impact that The Remains of the Day had on screen, and I wondered if that was due to direction - it was missing, perhaps, the light yet masterful touch of someone like Ang Lee.
In fact different things came out for me in the film that I felt hadn't been as strongly emphasised in the book; one of the final scenes - of Tommy getting out of the car and screaming in anguish as he realises that there is no escaping his destiny - really affected me, but I only have a vague memory of it in the book.
The film felt a much sadder experience for me than the read had, although the overall mix of science fiction, human relationships, and themes of boundaries and questioning (at what will we stop? what does it mean to be human?) is untampered with. Perhaps this was because one of the film's core questions chimed with both Cecil and me that evening, or perhaps in the five or so years since I read the book the way I look at life and humanity has changed.
Thought provoking. Reading the book may be a better experience. I didn't rate Keira Knightley, but rarely do.
**1/2
Cecil says: I hadn't read the book, so unlike for Bea, the plot - or the basic 'thing' going on with the kids in the film - was only gradually revealed over the opening half hour or so of the film. That worked quite well, I thought.
Although I enjoyed the experience - and shared with Bea the sense of the surreal as we watched Bexhill sea front only a day or so after leaving England and flying over to the States - I actually left the cinema feeling rather empty emotionally. But maybe that was the aim of the director, since the existence of a 'soul' was the kind of existential theme running through the storyline and, 48 hours in to our 12 months over in the States, I was seriously wondering what on earth I was doing over here, and why I had come...
Given the familiarity of so many in the cast, it is rather amazing that we had not even heard of this film being made, let alone screened in the UK. I'll never quite understand film distributors across the world: we noticed also that a film we saw almost a year ago about John Lennon's life, was just coming out over here.
***
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Monday, 13 September 2010
Cemetery Junction
Bea says: I knew nothing about this film when we saw it advertised at our new favourite cinema (the Witham film club in Barnard Castle, County Durham); in fact I thought it was about vampires. I was kind of right as there is a vampire link, but it's very minor. The film is actually an outing from Ricky Gervais, which I vaguely remember being reviewed, and not very kindly.
A classic coming of age plotline, it's set in the early 70s, with somewhat questionable accuracy in terms of clothes and music, and follows the stories of three young men, and one young woman, who all live in Cemetery Junction, apparently a real place near Reading and near where Gervais grew up himself. Cemetery Junction is a dead end town, a place hard to get out of, and the film follows the four's attempts to do just that. Only two are successful.
As a woman myself I was most interested in the storyline revolving around the young woman, Julie, and her mother, Mrs Kendrick, a role that was incredibly well written and superbly played by Emily Watson - a complete show stealer for me, although it was not a main part. This particular storyline tapped into the changing times of the 70s more than any other, as Julie made strong, independent, positive choices about her life - an opportunity her mother didn't have.
It wasn't quite all as spot on as this - Cecil will tell you more - but I don't think it deserved the bad reviews it apparently got. It certainly made me think about life, choices, options, and reminded me of feeling hopeful and young, casting caution to the winds.
***
Cecil says: The opening scenes of Cemetery Junction show road traffic, with buses and cars making their way round a street corner. Ah, the 1960s, I thought to myself, only to be slightly troubled when I realised the film was supposed to be set in the 1970s. You could argue that most vehicles on the road in the early 70s were actually 60s vehicles; and my memory of those days is probably rather hazy anyway. But this was not the only thing that felt slightly out of kilter in this film.
The men's clothes bothered me too. Surely nobody in the early 1970s dressed as well as the main men did in the film - Bruce in particular had far too much style for 1974; and only the geeky Snork dressed vaguely in the way my contemporaries did. But maybe that says more about the dress-style of Hull than it does about Merchant/Gervais recollections of the time...
But the timing felt wrong on a deeper level too. I don't actually believe hard-man Bruce would return home and be reconciled with his father by touching his arm. He may have gone home, yes; but then he would have showed his acceptance in far less demonstrative ways: a silent presence; almost grumpy, but no touching - not in the 1970s.
And the same applies to the even more unlikely hug between the two men on the station platform. In Hull, certainly, men did not hug in 1974. And however much further South Reading (or Cemetery Junction) might be, I do not believe that men would hug on a station platform as happened towards the end of this film. I think Merchant/Gervais have forgotten what the 70s were really like for men!
Having said all this and done all my nit-picking, I have to say I actually enjoyed this film. It has a gritty fairy-tale feel to it, if that's possible; Felicity Jones is enchanting as Julie (and yes, of course, her face was familiar because she appeared in that Anglo-French film I saw a year or so ago - and didn't like very much! - Cheri); and it leaves you with that awareness of the battles life throws up between the head and the heart. Which should we follow??
***
A classic coming of age plotline, it's set in the early 70s, with somewhat questionable accuracy in terms of clothes and music, and follows the stories of three young men, and one young woman, who all live in Cemetery Junction, apparently a real place near Reading and near where Gervais grew up himself. Cemetery Junction is a dead end town, a place hard to get out of, and the film follows the four's attempts to do just that. Only two are successful.
As a woman myself I was most interested in the storyline revolving around the young woman, Julie, and her mother, Mrs Kendrick, a role that was incredibly well written and superbly played by Emily Watson - a complete show stealer for me, although it was not a main part. This particular storyline tapped into the changing times of the 70s more than any other, as Julie made strong, independent, positive choices about her life - an opportunity her mother didn't have.
It wasn't quite all as spot on as this - Cecil will tell you more - but I don't think it deserved the bad reviews it apparently got. It certainly made me think about life, choices, options, and reminded me of feeling hopeful and young, casting caution to the winds.
***
Cecil says: The opening scenes of Cemetery Junction show road traffic, with buses and cars making their way round a street corner. Ah, the 1960s, I thought to myself, only to be slightly troubled when I realised the film was supposed to be set in the 1970s. You could argue that most vehicles on the road in the early 70s were actually 60s vehicles; and my memory of those days is probably rather hazy anyway. But this was not the only thing that felt slightly out of kilter in this film.
The men's clothes bothered me too. Surely nobody in the early 1970s dressed as well as the main men did in the film - Bruce in particular had far too much style for 1974; and only the geeky Snork dressed vaguely in the way my contemporaries did. But maybe that says more about the dress-style of Hull than it does about Merchant/Gervais recollections of the time...
But the timing felt wrong on a deeper level too. I don't actually believe hard-man Bruce would return home and be reconciled with his father by touching his arm. He may have gone home, yes; but then he would have showed his acceptance in far less demonstrative ways: a silent presence; almost grumpy, but no touching - not in the 1970s.
And the same applies to the even more unlikely hug between the two men on the station platform. In Hull, certainly, men did not hug in 1974. And however much further South Reading (or Cemetery Junction) might be, I do not believe that men would hug on a station platform as happened towards the end of this film. I think Merchant/Gervais have forgotten what the 70s were really like for men!
Having said all this and done all my nit-picking, I have to say I actually enjoyed this film. It has a gritty fairy-tale feel to it, if that's possible; Felicity Jones is enchanting as Julie (and yes, of course, her face was familiar because she appeared in that Anglo-French film I saw a year or so ago - and didn't like very much! - Cheri); and it leaves you with that awareness of the battles life throws up between the head and the heart. Which should we follow??
***
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Baaria
Bea says: We were very surprised to find this Italian gem of a film showing on a Saturday night in a very mainstream cinema complex in Hull recently, and although neither of us had heard of it we decided to see it instead of The Karate Kid.
Going on, I was somewhat concerned about the length of the film (2 1/2 hours). Regular readers know I dislike the current vogue for unnecessarily long films (most just need better and tighter editing). However, every minute of the 2 1/2 hours was needed to tell the story of Pepe and several generations of his family, from the 1920s to the present day, in the village of Baaria in southern Italy.
The film required concentration, as it was postmodern in style with the plot presented out of chronological order, and many scenes involved symbolism, magical realism and dream sequences. In fact, both Cecil and myself felt we wanted to sit right down and watch it all again, to have another chance at getting all the references.
The film deals with universal topics which would strike a chord with most people watching - the choices we make in life, ambition, love and lust, settling down, money, home, what we leave for future generations, and, crucially, how things change around us, whilst as people, our concerns remain the same. Powerful stuff.
***
Cecil says: I actually love films like this - real epics you hardly ever see these days; and with so many characters interlinked you actually feel compelled just to go back in there and watch it all over again so that you can put together some of the connections you almost certainly missed at the first time of asking.
It's also a very reflective film, which made me philosophical on the way out, mulling over big issues, motivations for our actions and all sorts of questioning why we do things.
Sicilian culture is not something I'm familiar with, so even with subtitles for the impossible dialects (and the Romany? language), there are large chunks I'm sure I'll never get, however often I watch this film. But it didn't matter, somehow, because the storyline drew me in and held me for the whole 150 minutes.
Funnily enough I did meet a Sicilian Communist Party member on a holiday some 20 odd years ago. It would be good to meet him again now having seen this film. In the UK we tend to associate Sicily with the Mafia, and this guy I met on holiday made lots of jokes about Mafiosi to local shopkeepers in Scotland, just to get a reaction. They're not the main players in this film, but they are always there, always a threat, and it makes me wonder if my Communist holiday contact is still around today.
I didn't like what Bea calls the 'magical realism' stuff in the film, though. Never a great fan of dream-sequence type of scenes and the film tends to dip in and out of these without any Hollywood-style screen-flickering to tell you - yes, folks, you're back in dreamtime now. Funnily enough the dream bits reminded me of those ads for the olive spread at the moment where the family members fly through the air to catch falling olives.
No, but that apart, hard to fault this film. Though, I want to see it again before I give it star rating...
Going on, I was somewhat concerned about the length of the film (2 1/2 hours). Regular readers know I dislike the current vogue for unnecessarily long films (most just need better and tighter editing). However, every minute of the 2 1/2 hours was needed to tell the story of Pepe and several generations of his family, from the 1920s to the present day, in the village of Baaria in southern Italy.
The film required concentration, as it was postmodern in style with the plot presented out of chronological order, and many scenes involved symbolism, magical realism and dream sequences. In fact, both Cecil and myself felt we wanted to sit right down and watch it all again, to have another chance at getting all the references.
The film deals with universal topics which would strike a chord with most people watching - the choices we make in life, ambition, love and lust, settling down, money, home, what we leave for future generations, and, crucially, how things change around us, whilst as people, our concerns remain the same. Powerful stuff.
***
Cecil says: I actually love films like this - real epics you hardly ever see these days; and with so many characters interlinked you actually feel compelled just to go back in there and watch it all over again so that you can put together some of the connections you almost certainly missed at the first time of asking.
It's also a very reflective film, which made me philosophical on the way out, mulling over big issues, motivations for our actions and all sorts of questioning why we do things.
Sicilian culture is not something I'm familiar with, so even with subtitles for the impossible dialects (and the Romany? language), there are large chunks I'm sure I'll never get, however often I watch this film. But it didn't matter, somehow, because the storyline drew me in and held me for the whole 150 minutes.
Funnily enough I did meet a Sicilian Communist Party member on a holiday some 20 odd years ago. It would be good to meet him again now having seen this film. In the UK we tend to associate Sicily with the Mafia, and this guy I met on holiday made lots of jokes about Mafiosi to local shopkeepers in Scotland, just to get a reaction. They're not the main players in this film, but they are always there, always a threat, and it makes me wonder if my Communist holiday contact is still around today.
I didn't like what Bea calls the 'magical realism' stuff in the film, though. Never a great fan of dream-sequence type of scenes and the film tends to dip in and out of these without any Hollywood-style screen-flickering to tell you - yes, folks, you're back in dreamtime now. Funnily enough the dream bits reminded me of those ads for the olive spread at the moment where the family members fly through the air to catch falling olives.
No, but that apart, hard to fault this film. Though, I want to see it again before I give it star rating...
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Precious
Cecil says: We saw this film in one of those community-run cinemas every little market town should have, at The Witham in Barnard Castle, County Durham. The enthusiastic group run this cinema on a laptop, projector and sound system in a big, old hall which is also used for badminton and local theatre (though there's a bit of a dispute brewing over whether to develop the space, thereby losing the wonderful old music hall stage, but gaining cafes, a well-being centre and a modern cinema. Tough call, and not sure which side of the argument I'd be on).
For Saturday night in a small town with no mainstream cinema, we were delighted to have the chance to see a film as edgy and controversial as Precious, and we were joined by about 20 other locals, so not a bad audience compared to other films we've seen since we began this blog. A nice touch too was the interval half way through, which gave us the chance to chat to our neighbour and hear more about how the local cinema group works. If only other towns could follow suit...
But, what of the film? The first thing to say is that Precious is very hard to follow without subtitles. Not being a New Yorker, nor accustomed to the language of the ghetto, I wouldn't have been able to follow much of the dialogue. Though, to be honest, you didn't need to to be able to follow the plot: young, black girl raped by her father has two babies and is abused by her violent mother. The film charts her progress through a special educational programme and her fantasies about what she might become.
It's a tough, violent film, but actually very positive in its message: kind of a black female version of Dead Poets Society or The Browning Version, if you really want a parallel.
Are the characters realistic? Hard to say, not having had much contact thankfully with that kind of life myself. But very believable and horribly convincing. I'll let Bea say more on the content of the film, but I liked it, in spite of its apparently grim subject matter.
***
Bea says: I had read a few reviews of Precious over past months, but thought we had missed the boat in terms of seeing it at a cinema, so I was thrilled when we walked past this beautiful old music hall on our first day of holiday and randomly noticed they were showing it that evening. Yes - a film that depicts the central character's very tough life fairly uncompromisingly.
Unlike Cecil, my work does bring me into contact with this kind of life experience on occasion, and in fact the character of Precious reminded me of a girl from my youth who had two babies at a very young age indeed (food for thought); I felt it was pretty realistic. The "inspiring teacher" plot was quite well done - not too sugary, the social workers (one played by a very dressed-down Mariah Carey) portrayed in a sympathetic and real way, as were the family dynamics - the mother's role in the abuse and the grandmother's fear of stepping in.
The ending didn't tidy everything up - Precious still had a long, hard road to climb - but was sufficiently upbeat not to leave the audience reeling from the hard experience of watching parts of this film. Interestingly, a number of the audience were older, even elderly, and I wondered how they had found it, so took the opporunity to chat to a few at the end. "Terrible, but thought-provoking" was their verdict; "after all it does go on, doesn't it"? How many of us, like me, remember a quiet girl who had one or more babies at a very young age?
Noticing that the film is an adaptation of a novel, I thought I might look out for it - having always dismissed Sapphire as chick-lit previously.
My final comment is on the performance of the actess playing Precious; I understand that, like in a Ken Loach film, she had no acting experience and was pulled from the "ghetto" to play the part - she did well.
***
For Saturday night in a small town with no mainstream cinema, we were delighted to have the chance to see a film as edgy and controversial as Precious, and we were joined by about 20 other locals, so not a bad audience compared to other films we've seen since we began this blog. A nice touch too was the interval half way through, which gave us the chance to chat to our neighbour and hear more about how the local cinema group works. If only other towns could follow suit...
But, what of the film? The first thing to say is that Precious is very hard to follow without subtitles. Not being a New Yorker, nor accustomed to the language of the ghetto, I wouldn't have been able to follow much of the dialogue. Though, to be honest, you didn't need to to be able to follow the plot: young, black girl raped by her father has two babies and is abused by her violent mother. The film charts her progress through a special educational programme and her fantasies about what she might become.
It's a tough, violent film, but actually very positive in its message: kind of a black female version of Dead Poets Society or The Browning Version, if you really want a parallel.
Are the characters realistic? Hard to say, not having had much contact thankfully with that kind of life myself. But very believable and horribly convincing. I'll let Bea say more on the content of the film, but I liked it, in spite of its apparently grim subject matter.
***
Bea says: I had read a few reviews of Precious over past months, but thought we had missed the boat in terms of seeing it at a cinema, so I was thrilled when we walked past this beautiful old music hall on our first day of holiday and randomly noticed they were showing it that evening. Yes - a film that depicts the central character's very tough life fairly uncompromisingly.
Unlike Cecil, my work does bring me into contact with this kind of life experience on occasion, and in fact the character of Precious reminded me of a girl from my youth who had two babies at a very young age indeed (food for thought); I felt it was pretty realistic. The "inspiring teacher" plot was quite well done - not too sugary, the social workers (one played by a very dressed-down Mariah Carey) portrayed in a sympathetic and real way, as were the family dynamics - the mother's role in the abuse and the grandmother's fear of stepping in.
The ending didn't tidy everything up - Precious still had a long, hard road to climb - but was sufficiently upbeat not to leave the audience reeling from the hard experience of watching parts of this film. Interestingly, a number of the audience were older, even elderly, and I wondered how they had found it, so took the opporunity to chat to a few at the end. "Terrible, but thought-provoking" was their verdict; "after all it does go on, doesn't it"? How many of us, like me, remember a quiet girl who had one or more babies at a very young age?
Noticing that the film is an adaptation of a novel, I thought I might look out for it - having always dismissed Sapphire as chick-lit previously.
My final comment is on the performance of the actess playing Precious; I understand that, like in a Ken Loach film, she had no acting experience and was pulled from the "ghetto" to play the part - she did well.
***
Sunday, 1 August 2010
Partir (Leaving)
Bea says: A promising storyline and at least one big name (Kristen Scott-Thomas) - this could have been so much better. The first half to two-thirds was indeed quite good, the plot following Kristen Scott-Thomas as she began to try to break free from her stifling upper middle class life in provincial France (married to a doctor, two teenage kids, no life of her own etc).
When trying to return to her profession as a physiotherapist, she meets Spanish builderIvan, who is building treatment rooms for her at the family home, and they begin a passionate affair. Kristen Scott-Thomas' character gets in deeper and deeper, confessing all to her doctor husband (cue highly emotional scene between the two of them, which is realistic and well done), and leaving him for a life of squalor and poverty with Ivan.
So far so good - the stresses and strains this would have placed on their "love" would have been good to explore - what would she have done, faced with a life of council flats and fruit picking? Would her feelings have lasted, or would she have returned to her husband after all?.
However, the plot then loses it somewhat and the female character behaves in increasingly desperate and odd ways - selling her Cartier watch at a petrol station to pay for fuel, "robbing" her own home of expensive art and getting Ivan (who has a criminal record) to sell it on, with disastrous consequences, which ulitmately lead to her returning to her husband and the film's difficult to believe climax. The histrionics take away from what could have been a subtle and powerful exploration of a not commonly examined area of female life.
**1/2
Cecil says: Regular readers will know how important a film's opening scene is in my view for setting the tone and atmosphere. Here we had a still shot of a staircase at night with the only sound that of cicadas, so we knew it was somewhere hot, but then came the crisp crackling sound of...popcorn from the couple behind us in the cinema. I really do hate the noise of sweet wrappings, the crunch of popcorn and the slurp of fizzy drinks being sucked through a straw. So 'Leaving' made me feel like doing just that since the popcorn continued through most of the film...
The film should have grabbed me more easily, I thought. English person living in France (been there, though never in Nimes); professional reflexologist (done that, though not full-time); passionate affair (ahem, NOT done that, but it's always interesting to watch...).
But I felt little empathy for any of the three main characters. In fact, the person I could relate to most was the teenage son, dealing with his conflict of loyalties between two parents going in different directions. But his was very much a cameo role. The husband was odious; the Spanish builder was a Spanish builder, ex-con; and Kristen Scott-Thomas just kept doing unbelievable things, as Bea says.
So, how about the sex scenes? (I was talking recently to someone who judges a film on the quality of the sex scenes). They were passionate for sure, but they also made me feel like a voyeur; was this because I had little empathy for either of the main characters or was it intentional on the part of the director? The film focused mainly on the Scott-Thomas character, and the director was a woman, so you could expect the sex scenes to focus on the woman's view or perceptions of what was going on; but - maybe because of camera angles (pretty hard to film up from the bed??) - aside from close-ups of Kristen's face at key moments, they didn't feel terribly new or different from many other male-directed films.
And the ending. I shan't give it away, but is that REALLY a likely outcome for such an affair???
**.5
When trying to return to her profession as a physiotherapist, she meets Spanish builderIvan, who is building treatment rooms for her at the family home, and they begin a passionate affair. Kristen Scott-Thomas' character gets in deeper and deeper, confessing all to her doctor husband (cue highly emotional scene between the two of them, which is realistic and well done), and leaving him for a life of squalor and poverty with Ivan.
So far so good - the stresses and strains this would have placed on their "love" would have been good to explore - what would she have done, faced with a life of council flats and fruit picking? Would her feelings have lasted, or would she have returned to her husband after all?.
However, the plot then loses it somewhat and the female character behaves in increasingly desperate and odd ways - selling her Cartier watch at a petrol station to pay for fuel, "robbing" her own home of expensive art and getting Ivan (who has a criminal record) to sell it on, with disastrous consequences, which ulitmately lead to her returning to her husband and the film's difficult to believe climax. The histrionics take away from what could have been a subtle and powerful exploration of a not commonly examined area of female life.
**1/2
Cecil says: Regular readers will know how important a film's opening scene is in my view for setting the tone and atmosphere. Here we had a still shot of a staircase at night with the only sound that of cicadas, so we knew it was somewhere hot, but then came the crisp crackling sound of...popcorn from the couple behind us in the cinema. I really do hate the noise of sweet wrappings, the crunch of popcorn and the slurp of fizzy drinks being sucked through a straw. So 'Leaving' made me feel like doing just that since the popcorn continued through most of the film...
The film should have grabbed me more easily, I thought. English person living in France (been there, though never in Nimes); professional reflexologist (done that, though not full-time); passionate affair (ahem, NOT done that, but it's always interesting to watch...).
But I felt little empathy for any of the three main characters. In fact, the person I could relate to most was the teenage son, dealing with his conflict of loyalties between two parents going in different directions. But his was very much a cameo role. The husband was odious; the Spanish builder was a Spanish builder, ex-con; and Kristen Scott-Thomas just kept doing unbelievable things, as Bea says.
So, how about the sex scenes? (I was talking recently to someone who judges a film on the quality of the sex scenes). They were passionate for sure, but they also made me feel like a voyeur; was this because I had little empathy for either of the main characters or was it intentional on the part of the director? The film focused mainly on the Scott-Thomas character, and the director was a woman, so you could expect the sex scenes to focus on the woman's view or perceptions of what was going on; but - maybe because of camera angles (pretty hard to film up from the bed??) - aside from close-ups of Kristen's face at key moments, they didn't feel terribly new or different from many other male-directed films.
And the ending. I shan't give it away, but is that REALLY a likely outcome for such an affair???
**.5
Sunday, 25 April 2010
La Rafle (The Round-up)
Cecil says: The film is set in wartime France and deals with the fate of the Parisian Jewish community. It tells the story of the 'Vel d'hiver', the indoor cycling arena where 13,000 Jews were rounded up pending their transportation elsewhere. It's France's equivalent of the Chile football stadium in 1973, but not really talked about much and I only know of it because I studied contemporary French history.
The fact that I saw it with 40 others on a midweek evening in its 7th week of screening shows how popular the film is in France. That may be linked to the fact that Strasbourg (where I saw the film) has the 2nd biggest Jewish community in France; it may say something about the lack of French films that do really go into the nastier side of French 'collaboration' during the war. It may just be linked to the incredible popularity of cinema in France in general (I can think of no film that would run in Leeds - a comparable city in the UK - for 7 weeks and still get an audience of 40 on a midweek evening).
It's by no means a great film, however. There's a little too much of the Hollywood style, which surprised me in a French director: a bit too much at the beginning showing us how nice these families were, just normal, every day people leading their normal every day lives, setting the scene for when the Round-up happened (but this intro felt too like Apollo 13 where we spend half an hour getting to know the mundane, but normal lives of the American astronauts, before the "Houston problem" moment)...
We watch developments through the eyes of a young Red Cross nurse, free to come and go, but sent in to help the Jewish doctor who is also interned but is treating the sick among the 13,000. She stays with them as long as she can, from the Velodrome to their camps outside Paris and only loses touch when they are finally transported off to some other camp.
It's a shame Bea couldn't join me to see this film because she may have had different insights through the eyes of the Red Cross girl that were perhaps lost on me. It certainly felt strange not to have Bea around to swap thoughts with (and it makes for an unbalanced blog entry too, sadly).
There was a little bit too much focus on the cute little boys who were part of the two families we watch as the film starts. There's no plot twist as in Sophie's Choice; they are all separated from their parents, but somehow the dramatic moment didn't have the impact it was probably meant to have, and I felt the mournful hand waving just reminded me of Les 400 coups and felt cliched.
The only character I could relate to was the Trotskyist father, who feels responsible for his family but desperate that he can do nothing to save them.
There were some nice touches, like the kids who are too young to know their family name: "What was your father called?" "Papa"...And the heroic firemen who came in to turn on the taps in the Velodrome after they had been left for days without water.
But right at the end, as the credits rolled, and we read that "only 6 adults out of the 13,000 rounded up survived the war", I couldn't help thinking: surely that would have been a more interesting film: to show how these guys got through it, rather than doing some sentimental picture based on the fate of the nice little kids...
**.5
Bea says:
As Cecil said, I couldn't join him for this one, as he was in France alone until I joined him at the weekend. When he told me about it though, I was reminded that during the week I had been watching some TV one evening and had caught a repeat of Ray Mears' programme on Extreme Survival. I quite like this series, as I like to imagine how I would cope in a survival situation (not very well, probably).
This episode was set in Poland, and had been about a group of Jewish people who had escaped the ghettos in the nearby towns and had survived the war by living in the forest, using survival skills. By the end of the war, the group was over 1000 strong, and contained men, women and children. They had even taken on the Nazi troops locally, guerilla-style. What made Mears' programme so interesting was that not only did he explore the survival skills used (e.g. the first thing newcomers were taught was how to make a fire without matches or flint), but he included interviews with two remaining survivers about their experiences. It was fascinating.
I have been to the velodrome Cecil talks about - we once went to a cinema near there whilst in Paris and had lunch in a bistro opposite. Although seemingly a pleasant suburb, and there were lots of people in the bistro heading off to a sporting event at the velodrome, there was a sinister air about the place - which I felt before Cecil told me its history. Places remember, even if people don't want to.
The fact that I saw it with 40 others on a midweek evening in its 7th week of screening shows how popular the film is in France. That may be linked to the fact that Strasbourg (where I saw the film) has the 2nd biggest Jewish community in France; it may say something about the lack of French films that do really go into the nastier side of French 'collaboration' during the war. It may just be linked to the incredible popularity of cinema in France in general (I can think of no film that would run in Leeds - a comparable city in the UK - for 7 weeks and still get an audience of 40 on a midweek evening).
It's by no means a great film, however. There's a little too much of the Hollywood style, which surprised me in a French director: a bit too much at the beginning showing us how nice these families were, just normal, every day people leading their normal every day lives, setting the scene for when the Round-up happened (but this intro felt too like Apollo 13 where we spend half an hour getting to know the mundane, but normal lives of the American astronauts, before the "Houston problem" moment)...
We watch developments through the eyes of a young Red Cross nurse, free to come and go, but sent in to help the Jewish doctor who is also interned but is treating the sick among the 13,000. She stays with them as long as she can, from the Velodrome to their camps outside Paris and only loses touch when they are finally transported off to some other camp.
It's a shame Bea couldn't join me to see this film because she may have had different insights through the eyes of the Red Cross girl that were perhaps lost on me. It certainly felt strange not to have Bea around to swap thoughts with (and it makes for an unbalanced blog entry too, sadly).
There was a little bit too much focus on the cute little boys who were part of the two families we watch as the film starts. There's no plot twist as in Sophie's Choice; they are all separated from their parents, but somehow the dramatic moment didn't have the impact it was probably meant to have, and I felt the mournful hand waving just reminded me of Les 400 coups and felt cliched.
The only character I could relate to was the Trotskyist father, who feels responsible for his family but desperate that he can do nothing to save them.
There were some nice touches, like the kids who are too young to know their family name: "What was your father called?" "Papa"...And the heroic firemen who came in to turn on the taps in the Velodrome after they had been left for days without water.
But right at the end, as the credits rolled, and we read that "only 6 adults out of the 13,000 rounded up survived the war", I couldn't help thinking: surely that would have been a more interesting film: to show how these guys got through it, rather than doing some sentimental picture based on the fate of the nice little kids...
**.5
Bea says:
As Cecil said, I couldn't join him for this one, as he was in France alone until I joined him at the weekend. When he told me about it though, I was reminded that during the week I had been watching some TV one evening and had caught a repeat of Ray Mears' programme on Extreme Survival. I quite like this series, as I like to imagine how I would cope in a survival situation (not very well, probably).
This episode was set in Poland, and had been about a group of Jewish people who had escaped the ghettos in the nearby towns and had survived the war by living in the forest, using survival skills. By the end of the war, the group was over 1000 strong, and contained men, women and children. They had even taken on the Nazi troops locally, guerilla-style. What made Mears' programme so interesting was that not only did he explore the survival skills used (e.g. the first thing newcomers were taught was how to make a fire without matches or flint), but he included interviews with two remaining survivers about their experiences. It was fascinating.
I have been to the velodrome Cecil talks about - we once went to a cinema near there whilst in Paris and had lunch in a bistro opposite. Although seemingly a pleasant suburb, and there were lots of people in the bistro heading off to a sporting event at the velodrome, there was a sinister air about the place - which I felt before Cecil told me its history. Places remember, even if people don't want to.
Dear John
Bea says: Cecil and I toddled off to our local cinema to see this one - and it was a pretty forgettable experience. The film is taken from a fairly well-known book by Nicholas Sparkes, and the plot is relatively predictable: boy (wrong side of the tracks, serving in Iraq) meets girl (well off, at university) on spring break in their hometown. Whirlwind two week romance follows; he returns to Iraq planning to leave the army at the end of his tour, she goes back to college.
September 11 happens. He stays in army out of a sense of duty to his country, she marries someone else, sending him a "Dear John" letter. Fast forward several years. They meet again, instigated by him when he drives to her family's ranch on the evening following his father's funeral; and they spend an evening talking and rediscovering each other (not sexually), and at the end of the evening they part again - water under the bridge and all that.
I fully expected this to be the film's ending. Then a very weird final scene which seemed like it didn't belong at all - her in a cafe in what was possibly Paris and him locking up his bicycle outside to come in and meet her. Not sure what this was all about - perhaps the test audiences didn't like the non traditional ending so they slipped in an extra scene?? It didn't seem to fit at all well, and I would be interested to know if the book finishes that way.
This might have been a good film had there been any sense of connection or chemistry between the two main characters, but the supposed depth of their relationship was not really very believable. It also might have been deepened as a film if any of the side stories were followed more fully - the autism storyline which ran through the whole film for example, or some more exploration of how events can change who we are and the course of our lives in many ways. This was really the theme of the film, but it failed to be explored, giving way to a formulaic Hollywood romance instead.
*1/2
Cecil says: I have very little to say about this film. I have rarely felt so little connection with a series of characters. The rich American teenager scene has never been one I could really identify with, so no matter how much of a thinking person Savannah (I mean, honestly!) was, her family's big house with big garden parties and horses in the paddock out back belong to a world that I will never feel in touch with.
As for the Iraq veteran guy, I was equally disconnected, and this to such an extent that even the scenes with him at his dying father's bedside did nothing to move me, even though I went through the same experience less than a year ago.
No, the only guy I could vaguely see myself in was the clumsy idiot at the beginning who knocks his girlfriend's bag off the pier into the sea and then doesn't have the guts to jump in and fetch it (enter our soldier hero...).
You don't have to identify with characters to get involved in a movie. But if there is no connection, then the film has to be good to draw you in. And "Dear John" was simply not good enough...
*.5
September 11 happens. He stays in army out of a sense of duty to his country, she marries someone else, sending him a "Dear John" letter. Fast forward several years. They meet again, instigated by him when he drives to her family's ranch on the evening following his father's funeral; and they spend an evening talking and rediscovering each other (not sexually), and at the end of the evening they part again - water under the bridge and all that.
I fully expected this to be the film's ending. Then a very weird final scene which seemed like it didn't belong at all - her in a cafe in what was possibly Paris and him locking up his bicycle outside to come in and meet her. Not sure what this was all about - perhaps the test audiences didn't like the non traditional ending so they slipped in an extra scene?? It didn't seem to fit at all well, and I would be interested to know if the book finishes that way.
This might have been a good film had there been any sense of connection or chemistry between the two main characters, but the supposed depth of their relationship was not really very believable. It also might have been deepened as a film if any of the side stories were followed more fully - the autism storyline which ran through the whole film for example, or some more exploration of how events can change who we are and the course of our lives in many ways. This was really the theme of the film, but it failed to be explored, giving way to a formulaic Hollywood romance instead.
*1/2
Cecil says: I have very little to say about this film. I have rarely felt so little connection with a series of characters. The rich American teenager scene has never been one I could really identify with, so no matter how much of a thinking person Savannah (I mean, honestly!) was, her family's big house with big garden parties and horses in the paddock out back belong to a world that I will never feel in touch with.
As for the Iraq veteran guy, I was equally disconnected, and this to such an extent that even the scenes with him at his dying father's bedside did nothing to move me, even though I went through the same experience less than a year ago.
No, the only guy I could vaguely see myself in was the clumsy idiot at the beginning who knocks his girlfriend's bag off the pier into the sea and then doesn't have the guts to jump in and fetch it (enter our soldier hero...).
You don't have to identify with characters to get involved in a movie. But if there is no connection, then the film has to be good to draw you in. And "Dear John" was simply not good enough...
*.5
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