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.

****

Hidden Figures

Seen at Roxy Cinema in Nowra, NSW

Cecil says:  At last an uplifting film, after we had unwittingly been to a whole series of gloomy or depressing films so far this year. Everyone knows the plot by now, I’m sure: brainy black women get jobs at Nasa in the early 1960s, as the US tries to catch up with the Soviets in the space race.

But Nasa in 1961 is still very male and very white, making for tough day-to-day life for our three heroines. There’s the ten minute dash to the nearest ‘colored women’ toilets; there’s the coffee pot for ‘coloreds’; there’s the supervisor role without supervisor pay.

But Hidden Figures follows in the footsteps of Dead Poets Society or Good Will Hunting (except that it is now the brilliant minds of black women that have to be nurtured and recognised rather than white males, privileged or not). And then it suddenly becomes a little bit Hollywood formulaic…

It got me and Bea discussing on the way home, not about civil rights and opportunity (we’ve discussed that at length before) but about potential and whether you need actually to fulfil your potential to be happy in life. All these films are about the downtrodden or suppressed coming to life and being true to themselves and blossoming.

But what if you have all that knowledge and ability, but actually don’t wish to use it; or have some experience of using and decide enough is enough? Wouldn’t it be interesting if one of these genius characters one day decided that after a few years of being a genius and getting recognition, they could also tap into other skills or other aspects of their character.

Are they wrong to abandon a road so clearly marked out, where their skills are being used to the full? Or are they in fact just rounding their personality and experiencing everything that life has to offer, even if that means abandoning an apparently successful career.

I basically did that five years ago and am much happier. Though when I watch films like Hidden Figures, it does make me wonder if I am using my skills to the best of my abilities.

Bea is also approaching a similar crossroads in life. So, strangely enough this film was a good launchpoint for a very contemporary dilemma and questioning of life direction for both of us. Even though it was a half fiction, half true story of discrimination in the 1960s. Sometimes, you have to let the subject take you where it needs to.

I wonder if any other couple had such a thought-provoking talk about their own lives after seeing Hidden Figures?

Bea says: I very much enjoyed this film (and its fantastic costumes!).  I am an avid Woman’s Hour listener, so had some background into the licence taken with the plot and event timeline in the film, but that kind of thing doesn’t really worry me as I am quite happy with slightly fictionalised accounts of true to life events.

It was a great film about civil and women’s rights together (I consider myself well up on these issues but had not known of the important role black women had played at NASA in the late 1950s/early 1960s at all), and again a good film for our times.

Not much to pick on here; Kevin Costner breaking down the “no coloreds” sign to the women’s toilet was perhaps a bit contrived (one area where licence was taken with the plot, apparently).  Like Cecil, the most interesting thing for us was our conversation afterwards about using/not using talent…

Highly recommended – and feel-good!

***1/2

Alone in Berlin

Seen at the Roxy Cinema in Nowra NSW

Cecil says: There was something terribly depressing about Alone in Berlin. That probably isn’t the film’s fault, actually. It probably has more to do with the current political situation around the world, and the realisation that in some ways we are closer now in 2017 to a rise of fascistic-style behaviour and morals than we have been at any time since 1945.

OK, so the plot here is: Berlin couple (superbly played by Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson) lose their only son at the front in France in 1940 (the opening scene of the film), so while the rest of the country celebrates, they are in mourning. And when Otto (Gleeson) gets criticised at work for not doing more for the cause and the country, he responds gruffly by saying ‘no man can give anything more valuable than his own son’, or words to that effect.

There then follows a lonely campaign to drop hand-written postcards in doorways, staircases, in hallways or entrances all over Berlin, with one-liners criticising Hitler and Nazism.

This is a rare portrait of Germany at war seen from Germany, or at least seen from the point of view of a dissident in the middle of the German capital.

The savagery of the Gestapo is somehow all the more horrific as it is carried out against their own people. We start to sympathise with the poor detective assigned to track down the mystery postcard-writer, and we witness his moment of realisation when he too gets a beating from the Gestapo because he has not managed quickly to find him out.

There have been criticisms of the accents of the lead actors. And it’s true it does ring a bit false to have English native speakers trying to act in a pseudo-German accent. But after a while you get used to it and the main parts are extremely well played.

I didn’t know until the credits that the film is based on a novel by Hans Fallada (“Jeder stirbt fuer sich allein”), and its grey depressing tone reminded me totally of my own A level years when Fallada was again on our reading syllabus (“Kleiner Mann, was nun?” – about a simple guy trying to get through the Depression – yes he did joyous themes, that Fallada).

The film left both of us in a sombre mood, though I’m sure when they started filming it, we had no idea there would be all the political upheaval of Brexit and Trump. But somehow, the mood of the time does feel as dangerous as Germany in the 1930s, and – God forbid – some of us may indeed have to be discreetly placing postcards on doorsteps in years to come, if things carry on the way they seem to have done for the last 12 months.

So, well acted; good story; but a bit grim for me, this film.

***.5

Bea says: Whilst not a feel-good experience, this sobering film was beautifully filmed, directed and acted.  I always like Emma Thompson (Anna), and she was certainly showing her versatility here, although the performances that stayed with me were those of Otto (Brendan Gleeson, also showing his versatility), and interestingly enough the performance of the actor who is (wrongly) about to be arrested by the Gestapo for the Quangel’s crime; as I don’t recall his name I can’t find him in the cast list.

It was not a feel-good experience, but it was a very interesting exploration of grief, and how there can be a purpose after dreadful loss.  This purpose also held the long married couple together after the death of their son; perhaps bringing them closer than they had been in some time, and the final scenes reinforced that.  So it was not all darkness.

Cecil has said it better than me above, but in our times – sobering.

***1/2

Manchester by the Sea

Seen at the lovely old cinema in Cronulla in Sydney's south.

Cecil says: When I first heard people talk about Manchester by the Sea, I had thought for some reason that this would be a gritty northern England film, a kind of kitchen-sink drama, with maybe  some urban fantasies about creating sandy beaches in the middle of Salford or the Northern Quarter.

Well, gritty this film was, in a sense, though American gritty is always a bit different from UK grit. Sure, we have the average Joe the janitor, struggling to make ends meet and trying to keep his plumbing and electricity customers happy as he fixes things in a run-down Boston apartment block.

Casey Affleck is excellent as younger brother to Joe, who dies and leaves Casey in charge of his teenage son. It’s interesting to note that Casey is younger brother to Ben, so I guess he must know all too well how to play the younger brother role, not that we see much of Casey’s character Lee’s older brother, except through the many flashbacks that litter this film.

Lee has a tragedy of his own to deal with, and the nature of that tragedy slowly comes to light as the film develops. It all culminates in an extraordinarily sad scene towards the end where Lee bumps into his ex-partner in the street and they recognise what has happened between them.

I shan’t give any more away for fear of giving a spoiler to readers of this review.

But you will get the drift that this is not a bundle of laughs or a joyous experience. In fact, we both left the cinema on a beautiful sunny afternoon in the lovely beach suburb of Cronulla feeling totally drained and almost depressed. So if you need a pick-me-up, Manchester by the Sea is not for you.

Lucas Hedges plays the 15-16 year old Patrick very well; it’s tough to lose your father at that age, when you need everything to be all about you. And he suddenly has to get Lee involved in some of his scheming and story-telling as he tries to date several girls at once and get violent on the ice hockey pitch.

But again, this film is all about getting through the tough times and dealing with every day issues. It’s compelling, but really not easy viewing. Even the moment where Lee and Patrick seem to have finally agreed on a way forward for the boat Patrick inherited did not end up being a turning point. I mean, I don’t miss the rose-tinted glasses of 1950s Hollywood, but this story could have a tad more smiles than it did.

The main joy for both me and Bea was seeing a town we know and love on the eastern seaboard. Essex, Massachusetts was where much of Manchester was filmed and it brought back fond memories of a wonderful weekend – and many more fabulous road trips we had while we lived in the States.

I hear Manchester is up for a few Oscars this year. Hmmm, not sure about that, but then I rarely do like film that win Oscars, so no change there then.

***

Bea says: I was really looking forward to seeing Manchester by the Sea.  Unlike Cecil, I had read enough about it to know it was set on the north-eastern seaboard of the US; and that it was some kind of gritty family and relationships drama.  

Gritty it certainly was!  I am in a busy and often challenging phase of my life right now, and, well, I could have done with a bit more escapism and a bit less “real life” on a rare free Sunday afternoon.  

It’s not even a weepy, it’s so grim that it is beyond tears really.  However – it is very well written, very well acted and very well produced, and it’s not often you see that in a film these days.  The haunting story and the performances of both Affleck and Williams has stayed with me – a few weeks later I can still remember key scenes in clear detail, almost word for word.  It’s highly deserving of any awards.

I have liked Michelle Williams ever since her Dawson’s Creek days, and have watched her career develop with interest; and although she doesn’t have a lot of screen time in this film, what she does is riveting.  Affleck is similarly good; although since seeing it I have read a lot about his behaviour off screen, which is rather less palatable.  I loved seeing beautiful Essex as the location, and I really, really want Michelle Williams’ coat.

****

Jackie

Another solo viewing for Cecil, this time in a fairly busy Glasgow Film Theatre

Cecil says: I have to say I thought Natalie Portman was excellent in the role of Jackie Kennedy in Jackie. I haven’t really enjoyed her acting or her parts in other films I’ve seen, but for me she captured the mood perfectly of the former First Lady through her first week or so of grieving after JFK’s death.

This film is all about bereavement, especially when your loved one was in the public eye, so it won’t be a barrel of laughs you’ll get when you see it.

I chose to go to see Jackie on a gloomy afternoon in Glasgow at the exact moment Trump was being inaugurated as the next President of the USA. It seemed a poignant moment to see a film like this, and while the Kennedy Beautiful People were potentially the start of everything (the ‘swamp’) Trumps says he wants to get rid of in Washington, there’s something about the values JFK stood for that feel a million miles away from what we have in America today (and I mean today 20 January 2017, not 19 January and the eight years previous to this day).

It was also an appropriate time to watch Jackie, as the added burden of being the widow of the head of state meant she had to vacate the White House pretty damn quickly, with no period of grace the Obamas have just had. So we watch how the removal guys move in and Jackie lives with fears of being destitute in the future (as, we are told, happened to Lincoln’s wife after he was shot). It’s all very well knowing that she would end up with a multi-millionaire, but at the time, that would have been a major concern for her personally and for her kids.

The film cuts constantly between the journalist who has been sent to write a feature on Jackie and his interview with her, the flashbacks of her memories from the fateful day (plus a rather interesting TV broadcast she did to show the American people the inside of the White House back in 1961), and the practicalities of organising the funeral, what form it should take and how to protect the kids.

Billy Crudup was good as The Journalist (Theodore White, though he is never named), but this film is all about Natalie Portman, and she is surely in line for an Oscar nomination for this performance.

Apart from the horrific moment of JFK being shot in the head, though, this is not a tear-jerker or heartstring puller. Maybe that is the numbness of grief, or maybe it is because the whole story is really the telling of the tale for the journalist, who inevitably takes away the emotion from the copy.

Whichever it is, Portman is good; LBJ comes across as heartless and power-hungry, and Bobby Kennedy as a protective brother-in-law who is all too conscious of how things will look in public. “They’re blaming me for getting LBJ sworn in in Dallas”.

To go home from this to watching Trump getting sworn in, I felt more grief sitting in front of my telly than I had in the cinema. Hats off to Portman, though, for this one.

Oh, and final shout out for John Hurt, who played the Irish priest admirably. So good to see him back on the big screen. Great to see there are roles for him still, and long may that continue.

***.5

Silence

Cecil saw this one solo at the Waterfront Cinema in Greenock

Cecil says: Looking at Martin Scorsese’s filmography, I realise I haven’t been to one of his movies for over 30 years. He’s not a prolific director, but he’s just not my type, usually, so After Hours was the last Scorsese I had seen before Silence.

I have to say Silence is beautifully filmed (in Taiwan, by the way, not Japan, where the story is set) and the storyline reaches epic proportions, with its nod to films like The Mission or The Piano in telling of Europeans heading to far off shores in various spiritual quests.

The film opens in 1633, with young Jesuit zealots wanting to head off from the sanctuary of their friary in Macau to try to find Ferreira, who has gone AWOL over in the Far East, where the Japs are cracking down on Christians.

I suppose we are meant to empathise with the two young protagonists and to share their hopes of saving souls over there and finding their lost brother. But I found it hard to care really what happened to them, and rather hoped that the Japanese would find them out in order to preserve their own local culture. I found myself wondering how the film might have been shot by a Japanese director, looking at how locals felt about these foreign invaders trying to influence their society.

It’s only about an hour into the story when we first hear a little of what the Japanese authorities’ thinking is on the Jesuits. But when Rodrigues finds himself face to face with the Inquisitor, the Japanese head honcho is portrayed more like a sort of mediaeval Joker character out of a Batman film. I guess Scorsese needed to do that for his American audience.

A scene shortly after that, when the Rodrigues is paraded through the town as a prisoner felt like a 21^st century version of a 1950s western, when the Injuns have captured the film’s hero and he is being prepared for the pot or the scalping stake. Made me wonder how American audiences – especially the Trump supporters – would view a scene like this?

Of course, this is Portugal (well Portuguese Macau), not America, but these are Christian heroes trying to spread the Truth to the far east, so surely they are the goodies?

Well, I’m not sure that really was Scorsese’s message.

The character who comes out of Silence the strongest is Ferreira himself – played by Liam Neeson. He is more grounded as the new Buddhist monk he has become; he is a pragmatist, and has bought his survival with a virtually normal life in compensation for sacrificing his ‘faith’.

I had to wonder also if someone forced on Scorsese the very last scene of what lay in Rodrigues’ hand as his body was laid to rest. No spoiler here, either, but it felt trite to me, and not very believable.

I’m not really sure why the film is called Silence. It’s true, there are many scenes with no soundtrack and the protagonists need to stay silent in order not to be found, though the opening and closing scenes sound as if they have a background noise of cicadas or frogs chirping in the undergrowth. And it reminded me that the only place on earth I ever experienced total silence was the North Pole. But that has nothing to do with this film.

It’s a marathon, too, by the way. Be prepared for 2h40m of your life to be spent watching this one.

***

The Legend of Ben Hall

Seen at the Gala Cinema in Warrawong, NSW

Bea says: I really enjoyed this tale about legendary bushranger Ben Hall, who I vaguely remember hearing about at school, as the "gentleman bushranger" and who was famously shot in the back by the troopers (Boo! Hiss!).  I have to admit that the film certainly took a romanticised view of bushrangering - although there were moments that gave the necessary jolt as to the potential violence they could use; the trooper who was shot outside the pub and a father of 8 children; the scene where Ben Hall torches the draper's shop.  I am sure it was terrifying to be waylaid by a bushranger on route between Sydney, Goulburn, the goldfields and Melbourne.

But I enjoyed the story's attempts to get inside the head of Ben Hall a bit - interestingly, it struck me that Ben's separation from his wife and resulting custody battle seemed strangely modern.  I also enjoyed the depictions of 1860s life in Australia, the beautiful scenery and the knitwear - I was thrilled to see the knitters credited for it at the end!

My main critique would be that the film is a bit derivative of the old Westerns in style - I thought of John Ford and Cecil did whisper Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to me at one point,,  I would like to see Australia finding its feet with a more individual style of cinema perhaps; thinking about The Man from Snowy River and Breaker Morant; were they as derivative as this film? (I would need to watch them again to know).

Jack Martin was also rather a dish!  A great bit of escapism.
***


Cecil says: I have mixed feelings about The Legend of Ben Hall. It's beautifully filmed in rural Australia and takes place in parts of New South Wales and Victoria that we know fairly well. But I felt it slightly overdid the romanticisation of a man who basically was a thief and a bit of a thug, no matter that he was the 'gentleman' bush ranger.

I did like the opening scene of the film, where they showed an original 19th century photograph of the man himself, with firm set jaw and unsmiling face, and then let the photo fade and the actual face of actor Jack Martin appear superimposed. The actor looks amazingly similar to the character.

I think we are supposed to empathise with the bush ranger who never killed anyone, who was shot in the back by trappers (uniformed police or soldiers of the time) and who was probably a cut above most of his contemporaries in intelligence. The thing is, call me conventional, but I actually didn't sympathise, and at each moment in the film when he almost gets caught, I found myself wanting them to get him to put an end to the misery he was causing lots of ordinary citizens of the time.

He may well have been idolised and fantasised about by lots of young women at the time, especially those in loveless marriages or with small town boredom as the only future visible for them, but again I'm afraid these characters just reminded me of the teenage girl hangers-on to school gangs in my own days; the kind of girls who egged their boys on to even nastier deeds against whoever their latest victim might be.

And my other problem with the film is that nobody's justification for whatever action they took came across as virtuous or seeking of justice, apart possibly for the hapless leader of the group who did finally track Hall down and stop him (hapless because none of his troops actually listened to his orders at the end).

So this certainly isn't a feel-good movie and I felt even more put out as my emotional pull seemed to run counter to the way I think the director was trying to push me. It's kind of how I feel when I watch Ken Loach films (and why I hesitate to go and see his latest by the way).

And yes, it did feel like Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. I know in that film we all felt warmth and love for the Paul Newman and Robert Redford characters, but they were probably as vicious as Ban Hall and his cronies at around the same period...

***