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?

****

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’.

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.

*****

Wadjda

Seen at The Station Cinema in Richmond, North Yorkshire

Bea says: I was expecting a film outraged - and that would make me feel outraged - about the limitations of being female in a Middle Eastern country.  Instead, this is a lovely, whimsical film largely about childhood. The young heroine, Wadjda, is a slightly tomboyish girl in the earlier years of a strict girls' high school with an intimidating headmistress who is always on the prowl looking for girls who are doing things they shouldn't.

So far, so familiar - I read countless novels with this theme when I was Wadjda's age.  Sure, the girls in the novels didn't wear a hijab niqab or burkha, but they did have to wear a uniform correctly, and were frequently hauled to the headmistress's office for not wearing a slip or some such transgression.

Wadjda has a boy who is her friend in the neighbourhood.  He goes to a different school, but they play together sometimes - and he wants to marry her.  Again, so far, so familiar - I had friends like this at Wadjda's age too, and many proposals!

Wadjda's friend rides a bike.  Wadjda wants to too, so a large part of the film is focussed on the bike that she regularly visits at the local toy shop to gaze longingly at, and her efforts to earn enough pocket money to buy it.  When I was 11, I gazed longingly at a pair of knee high brown boots in a local shoe shop as often as I could (I was rather less of a tomboy than Wadjda!), and saved my pocket money diligently - until I received them for my birthday!  Similarly, Wadjda is gifted the bike.

The adult women in her life shake their heads and scold that it is not seemly for girls to ride bikes, but it does not appear to be expressly forbidden, as Wadjda learns to ride and eventually rides her own bike with her friend (a metaphor for freedom, and equality, in the film, methinks?)

We do see some of the difficult circumstances that women experience in the film, albeit filtered through Wadjda to some extent - her mother's difficult journey to her teaching post, as she is she not permitted to drive herself there; having to provide food for the men visiting the house by leaving it outside the living room door rather than be seen by them, and her mother's painful experience of infertility following Wadjda's birth and hence being set aside while her husband and his family search for another wife to provide him with a son.
Indeed, it is with money set aside for a new dress to tempt her husband that Wadjda's mother buys the bike - again rather symbolic.

So perhaps the key theme of this gently thought-provoking film is about change, as a new generation of bike riding tomboys, supported by their mothers, grows up - perhaps there is a different life waiting for them?

***.5


Cecil says: What can I say? Again, Bea has said it all really.

I wouldn't even see Wadjda as particularly tomboyish personally. She's just a kid who wants to have fun in life and has the strength of purpose to make self-sacrifices (spending hours learning the Koran) in order to win the prize that will buy her that bike she wants.

What's fantastic about this film is knowing that it was made by a woman film director Haifaa Al-Mansour, who had at times to direct from inside some caravan or other on the set because male actors weren't allowed to see her. And yet, in spite of this, she has made a light-hearted, carefree film that is just a joy to watch.

It is thought-provoking, for sure, but it doesn't descend into the kind of angry rant that we in the west might think Saudi women SHOULD be expressing at the outrageous restrictions on their lives. And there was no shortage of tut-tutting and disapproval from some in the audience where we watched it (in Yorkshire)...

I noticed that this weekend Saudi women did hold a protest over the rules that stop them from driving. Good for them! And may they win their battle quickly.

But it's not right for us in the developed west to tell them how to achieve change in their societies, or even what change to aim for.

I think Wadjda did a great job going for her own goals. And Al-Mansour too in making this film.

We don't HAVE to be angry to achieve change...

***.5

Starbuck

Seen at The Station Cinema in Richmond, North Yorkshire.

Bea says: This was quite a lovely film, which gave me that warm glow that comes with knowing all is right with the world.

The film's main character is a 40-something bloke who has never really achieved anything much in life, although he is employed in his family business, has a girlfriend who is expecting, has his own place and friends. And that's kind of what I liked about this film - it was about celebrating the small things, the everyday and realising that what we have, if we have anything at all, is rich.  It's also about doing good things for other people.

This undercurrent carried the film through its main plot - that this man, who was a prolific sperm donor in his youth (and we do find out why later in the film), has fathered 533 children, who, now in their 20s, want to find out who he is.

So a big part of the film is about family and fatherhood, but it kind of transcended that for me (perhaps because I didn't relate so much to the fatherhood thing) and felt about inclusion, about the fact that families aren't necessarily just mum, dad and kids - that they are whoever we want them to be.

So this was a film about belonging, about doing good things, and about how just having an everyday existence is something to feel good about.

A refreshing change from the formulaic rom coms, high violence action thrillers and dull kids' films that dominate the cinemas these days.  Definitely one for a rainy Sunday.

***.5


Cecil says: Actually, Bea's right. And I have nothing really more to add!

It's not a side-splitting, rib-achingly funny film, but the kind of movie where the story keeps your attention and you get a few good chuckles along the way.

That Quebecois French is amazing, though. Must be like listening to a Geordie if you're not a native-English speaker (or rather, if you are native English speaker).

***

Sunshine on Leith

Seen at the wonderful Palace Cinema in Malton, North Yorkshire

Cecil says: The film opens with a bunch of soldiers in an armoured vehicle somewhere in the Middle East. One of them begins to sing and is joined by the rest of them before you know it. Same things troops have done, and sailors before them, for centuries...

It was only when the two main characters are back home in Edinburgh, and begin singing again – this time with rather well-choreographed steps down the Leith streets – that it dawned on me: Sunshine on Leith is a musical.

Now, this is the second musical I’ve seen recently without knowing it in advance (Rock of Ages caught me out too), and I’m not a big fan of the genre. But Sunshine on Leith was a lot of fun, the singing was really rather good (well, it is all based on The Proclaimers’ music, so what do you expect?), and by the final scene, with the mass flash-mob in central Edinburgh, I felt like getting up and shaking my stuff with the rest of them.

I don’t know anything about film-making, so I’ve no idea how you go about transposing a stage play to the big screen, but it didn’t feel as if the producers of this movie did much transposing. Apart from the (very frequent) camera panning over Edinburgh skylines (so frequent in fact that you feel as if the Edinburgh Tourist Board had a hand in the final cut), virtually every scene felt as if it had been taken straight from the stage.

By half way through, I was whispering to Bea every few minutes, ‘I can feel a song coming up’, and sure enough one of the main characters would burst into song, usually backed by the amassed crowd of onlookers in the pub, on the steps, in the museum, wherever you liked, basically.

Plot-wise, this was a nice story about two young soldiers getting out of the army after a touch tour of duty in Afghanistan (I think), and readapting to home life; it’s about their relationships, their parents, about dreams and wavering views of where life is taking us.

If that sounds a bit deep, I’ve pitched it wrong. This is a fun film, which I’m sure most of us can relate to on one level or other. There were a few weak moments in the dialogue and the storyline, but the overall feel was positive, so who cares?

I don’t suppose you’ll see such glowing reviews from the Glasgow side of Scotland. But I’ll let Bea elaborate on that...

***.5

Bea says: 

The musical aspect of Sunshine on Leith caught me by surprise too - although I was familiar with The Proclaimer's album of the same name, and had read some blurb on the film, so knew it was about two soldiers returning from Afghanistan, and that it was set to The Proclaimers music.  "Set to" made me think that The Proclaimers would be somewhere in the background, so I wasn't expecting people to sing them, but did enjoy it.

There were some really good performers and performances here - Jane Horrocks as Jean and Peter Mullen as Rab particularly, and the stage play feel means the dialogue feels stronger than it otherwise might.  There are some slight plot lapses in my view - Rab's infidelity is rather quickly got over by Jean, considering how badly she initially reacted, at a point in the film where suddenly all the difficulties experienced by everyone were being rather quickly got over - true 1950s musical style I guess!  The Proclaimers music and lyrics is well used to hang the story together - I've seen a few of these kinds of musicals and often this is not the case!

Edinburgh stars as itself and very nearly steals the show; the rather dismissive references to Glasgow are notable by those (like me) who have a soft spot for Scotland's other big city.. 

Most touching moment?  The lyrics of Letter from America demonstrating how similar life is in some ways to a hundred or more years ago when people left Scotland for work, and for a new and hopefully better life.

A lovely feel-good film for a dull afternoon; a bit twee in its wrapping up of all the plotlines but with a little bit of poignancy to ensure it isn't forgettable.

***.5

About Time

Cecil says: If you like a story that entertains you while making you reflect on life, then About Time might be just the film for you. Surely Richard Curtis’s best film since Four Weddings and a Funeral.

We saw it at the wonderful Palace Cinema in Malton, North Yorkshire, one of those fantastic old cinemas that somehow survived the ravages of World War 2 and the 1960s/70s bingo boom.

It’s really a film about father/son relationships, with Bill Nighy fantastic as ever alongside Domhnall Gleeson (probably best-known for playing Bill Weasley in Harry Potter films, though I saw him last in Anna Karenina – which I hadn’t much liked...).

In the opening scenes I wasn’t sure I was going to relate to much of this: as in most of Curtis’s films, this is a fairly affluent middle-class English family, not as posh as most Hugh Grant characters, but just a bit comfortable, the English equivalent of those glamorous families that feature in most US TV movies.

But within a few minutes I was won over. Partly it’s Nighy’s acting and just his presence on the screen; partly the engaging storyline. I don’t want to do a plot-spoiler here, but its premise is that you can time travel back through your own life and have another go at doing things you thought didn’t quite work the first time.

Curtis clearly likes a good wedding and funeral, hence his earlier classic. And in About Time, his best moments also probably come at Tim’s wedding and the funeral of his Dad (a particularly moving scene, suggesting Curtis may well have been through that himself).

And the overall message of this feel-good film: Enjoy it while you can. Given the short release time of most film these days, I’d say the say about this film: Go and see it while you can.

****

Bea says: We dashed into the cinema to see this after running late and bolting down a plateful of noodles at the local Thai restaurant before the screening. Running in, I wondered if it would be worth it or if we should have just lingered over dinner and skipped the movie. Well, contrary to my expectations, it was so worth it.

Now, I like Richard Curtis's films. Like everyone else, I loved 4 Weddings and I've kept up with his output and seen, and enjoyed, what followed, although I don't think anything has been quite as standout as the original and first. I expected this to be enjoyable, but not particularly earth-shattering or memorable.

But actually, it either caught me in a nostalgic, reflective mood, or it is particularly well drafted and written. I found myself close to (pleasant but rather sad) tears of nostalgia during the first part of the film, as I remembered my own young days in London - restaurants, rain, parties, rain, being walked home by someone you might just fancy, more rain...

And I was thoughtfully introspective during the second part, as the young couple we follow through the story have children and cope with life, and death, and family. There is a wedding, a funeral, at least one Christmas, and a few births, and then the charming quirk of the film: some time travel, all accompanied by a well-chosen soundtrack and great performances by all, but particularly the wonderful Bill Nighy.

We had a long drive home from the Palace Cinema in Malton which was quietly and mistily atmospheric after the show, and the mist rolled in and out as we drove over the North York Moors , talking about the film and our lives before we met.

This morning I rang my Dad and we talked, and he and Mum shared a joke and a laugh while we talked. It's good to have family. Even though, I mused last night, no one in my close circle of friends has really had the kind of longevity the couple in the film had - for those who had it, the whole babies/perfect life thing didn't happen, and for those for whom it did, the relationships didn't necessarily last But - families we all still are, nevertheless.

See this if you would like a poignant reminder of years gone by, or need to be reminded that life is good, sometimes.

***.5

Frances Ha

Bea says:  We went to see this mostly because it looked the least heavy of the two films on at the Glasgow Film Theatre on Monday night  (we were celebrating a birthday after all).  The synopsis sounded OK – it sounded like a chick flick actually.  

I hadn’t seen Noah Baumbach’s previous work, but the notes given out before the screening suggested that he had some serious fans and was well considered critically.

And it wasn’t long into the film that I thought about something I’d read about in the Metro recently – the Bechdel test, which asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk about something other than a man.  I’d been struck by how few films pass the test (the Metro had rated some notable recent films), including a number of films written, produced and/or directed by women (and apparently about half of those that do pass only do so because the women talk about marriage and babies instead of men).  I think Frances Ha would pass the test – just about. 

There is a lot of talk about men (and some about marriage and babies), but there is also talk about careers, mistakes, successes, dreams and life in general.  It was good to see a film where the men were peripheral to the two central characters – I can’t remember when, or if, I’d ever seen that before.

I also fairly quickly after the start of the film thought about the TV series The Girls, which I have never seen actually (not sure it’s available yet on Freeview in the UK) but have read and seen things about, and I suspect this film has some similarities – the lives of current 20-something women, and their experiences of life and sex. 

These days I am a 40-something woman, but I remember those years like they were just yesterday, and this film rang very true indeed, particularly so in its portrayal of close female friendships and the post-university years.  It’s well written, well-shot in black and white, well acted and, crucially, well directed.

I’ll be catching up with Bambach’s back catalogue and looking out with interest for his next collaboration with Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote this.

****

Cecil says: What I liked most of all about Frances Ha is that it told a story without needing a conventional beginning, middle and end. It was just a chunk out of someone’s life; more than a snapshot because it lasted about a year or so, but we enter into Frances’s life as she has a play-fight with her friend Sophie, and we leave her inserting her name into her new apartment letter box, as the next stage in her life begins.

For the first half hour or so I wasn’t sure about this film. It felt a bit like an episode of Friends, with an arty edge to their lives, and maybe a touch of Billy Elliott, with the dancing school and lessons being key to large parts of Frances’s life. But by the end, I didn’t feel the need to compare it to any other film (certainly not to Annie Hall, as one reviewer has done); it felt like it had a place in its own right.

A couple of small things I wondered about: this film is in black and white, but I didn’t even notice that until a scene about half way through when Frances is at her parents’ house (played by the actress’s real parents).

Suddenly her Mum talks about a red baking tray and a green angel for the Christmas tree. I guess the director had some reason for throwing in the colour thing, but it just left me wondering why.

And then the discussion about Paris at that oh-so-awkward dinner party. I guess we are meant to think of the couple who have an apartment in ‘the sixth’ as being pretentious because nobody surely at a dinner party in New York would refer to the 6^th without adding the explanatory ‘arrondissement’.

And I don’t want to be a pretentious nit-picker myself (well, actually, I do) but as someone who has lived in Paris, you’d not get a beautiful corner apartment in the rue Vaugirard with a primary school playground right underneath your window, so, again, you kind of wonder why the director did that, too.

Overall, though, I liked this film.

It reminded me a lot of my own awkward time at aged 27, when I too was not quite sure where I wanted to be and things were just slowly sorting themselves out in a direction I’d be happy with.

Because of the way the film leaves Frances with no ‘ending’, we just don’t know what direction her life may take next, but there are signs that things are sorting themselves out for her.

So it even has a feel-good factor at the end as well.

****