I, Claude Monet

Seen at the Rivoli Theatre, Camberwell VIC

Bea says: Cecil and I picked this out due to its time and location; we wanted to visit this cinema which is not nearby our home at all, and were fitting it in with another event we had on in that area.  I had no idea about the "Exhibition on Screen" series prior to this, and loved it.  I have to say, it was one of the most relaxing and absorbing cinema events I have been to for a long time.  The gentle music, the images of Monet's works (often repetitive, as he was known to paint the same scene many times over), fading in and out of real life footage of the scene, whilst listening to the narration of his letters, was fascinating and I could have sat there for much longer (something I actually rarely say about film, much as I enjoy the cinema).

Monet's early life was a struggle financially and for recognition, and it was interesting to listen to the tone of the letters change into his later, more well-off and established life, and watch the development of his famous garden, which I have never visited but is now definitely on my bucket list.

Highly recommended, as is anything from this series, which I shall now be following much more closely.

****

Cecil says: The film had already started when we walked in so I’m not even sure if the contemporary scene of a small ferry tug on the harbour waters (in Le Havre, I think) with a voiceover from Monet (voice of Henry Goodman) was the actual opening scene of I, Claude Monet.

But it certainly set the tone for the whole of this Exhibition on Screen genre movie, which switched between shots of Monet’s works filling the screen and contemporary footage of the places he painted.

I actually liked the way the producers faded so easily from current day footage to paintings, and it’s extraordinary in many cases how the scenes or buildings even haven’t changed that much in upto 150 years.

I had no idea in advance that this would be the whole of the film and that there would be no characters, dialogue or plot to speak of.

All the text of the voiceovers was taken from lines of Monet’s correspondence (2,500 letters apparently), so it gives little insights into different stages of the artist’s life. But it also meant that lots of things were left unanswered.

So we get the impression that this Impressionist was on the one hand overwhelmed constantly by the beauty of the natural world around him, but was also anxious and depressed a lot of the time by the penury he appeared to be living in for many years of his long life.

He writes very openly to friends and acquaintances he obviously regards as wealthier than him, asking for funds - once even for a 20 franc note, very specific that one - and intimating frequently that he would be out in the streets if funds weren’t somehow to be forthcoming.

But we never really find out what happened when he reached the edge of destitution like that or how we got himself out of each fix he was in.

Having studied 19th century French history, I was fascinated by the absence of any comment on the political context of his life (though Wikipedia suggests he was in fact quite a leftie, which means the Paris Commune of 1870 must surely have figured in his life. It actually reminded me of Flaubert whose arty character in one novel set while the 1848 revolution was raging inside Paris was lounging around the grass outside town musing on life, while the socialists battled inside the city for radical change.

It also reminded me of a film I saw some years ago called simply London, which consisted of footage of parts of London being mentioned in the (fictional?) narrative being spoken in a voiceover. These are not the sorts of films to go to for a night out, I don’t think, but I, Claude Monet kind of worked for our mood on a December Sunday, especially in such a beautiful cinema, which is a work of art itself.

I was also intrigued by the sudden appearance of Georges Clemenceau in Monet’s life. I wonder if some sort of explanatory subtitles might have helped at points like these. How many viewers - especially in a place like Australia - would even know that Clemenceau was a key political figure of his day? And how on earth did Monet come to have such connections that he can simply mention him as ‘Georges’. An early version of ‘Tony’, ‘Gordon’ and then ‘Dave’ in the UK?

***.5  

Ladies in Black

Seen at the Regent Theatre, Ballarat, VIC

Cecil says: Ladies in Black is the kind of film I could go and see over and over again, and probably always pick up new little insights into life in 1959 (the year of my birth, funnily enough, so I don’t have actual memories of that time myself!). It stands alongside Strictly Ballroom as one of those films I will no doubt see more than once and not tire of, so it must be my top film of 2018, I think.

There are so many aspects that make this a charming watch: the coming-of-age (but not at all in a sexual way) of school-leaver Lisa (one of the big moves she makes to ‘come of age’ is to drop her androgynous name ‘Lesley’ and start a new life at work as ‘Lisa”); the arrival and gradual acceptance of ‘new’ migrants from other parts of Europe than the UK and Ireland; the social limits on behaviour and propriety, leading to some hilarious and some touching moments, as two of the Ladies in Black deal with developing relationships.

It’s all set in Sydney, so any shots with backdrop to the City and CBD are obviously computer-generated, but there is also careful filming on the harbour, managing to avoid any new build that has sprung up since the 1950s, and use of that beautiful old department store building in the city with its original façade.

As a child in Sydney in 1967, I became a geeky ‘collector’ of bus numbers and destinations, so I know that Circular Quay was the main bus destination in those days (rather than the current-day Wynyard), so the child geek in me was pleased to see Circular Quay on the front of many of the buses shown in Ladies in Black.

There were slightly melodramatic characters like Magda, who managed the up-market couture dresses in the store and was obviously used to mixing in finer circles than other shop assistants, but was having to adapt to Australia’s more working-class but increasingly affluent society.

And there were the lovely cameo characters like Miss Cartwright, who had a soft spot for Lisa from the start, and obviously wants her to make the most of the opportunities open to young women in 1959 that weren’t there for women oi her generation. She’s almost the most beautiful character in the film, managing to overcome any regrets at an unfulfilled life herself to wish well to a new generation starting out.

I was a bit confused at first over the two brunettes who were friends and colleagues of Fay. I thought they were the same person at the start, which is another reason to see this film again.

And in a sense, although Lisa was the central character, it was Fay whose story we followed as closely and who spoke for her own generation at the time: intelligent but not educated; fed up with boorish men in their lives; but lacking opportunities to break out, until the arrival of the new immigrants into Australia.

Well, these are just a few of the highlights for me. I’m sure on second viewing, I’ll find more favourite bits to comment on, so look forward to when it comes back to some cinemas for a second run…

*****

Bea says: I was very keen to see this film because when I saw the preview (at the cinema attending another film) I saw that one of the storylines is about the arrival of the "New Australians" during the 1940s-early 1970s and their assimilation into Australian life.  I am very interested in this topic, as I am the daughter of New Australians myself, and I have just started to notice with pleasure more in Australian literature and film on this - I suspect because the children of the New Australians are now well into adulthood and are writing and making films and art about their influences.

However, Ladies in Black in actually based on an early novel by Madeleine St John - who I know from her later, award winning work The Essence of the Thing; I had no idea she was even Australian, and from my (brief) recent research into her after seeing Ladies in Black I don't think she is of New Australian stock.  It turns out she was at Sydney University with Bruce Beresford, the film's director, and I suspect that Ladies in Black is a coming of age, semi-autobiographical work of hers; she is likely to have identified pretty strongly with Lisa (Lesley), who is busy having her horizons opened (by the New Australians) and reinventing herself during her summer department store job, before starting her first term at Sydney University.  I have to say that Sydney University is a pretty magical place; I spent a year teaching there on a contract in 2017, and my heart skipped with excitement whenever I walked through the main campus - it really feels like a historic place where any possibility can happen...

Other than Lisa's storyline, we follow several other of the department store staff, who are all at different moments in their lives and so the film explores such things as finding a partner, marriage and infertility, spinsterhood, work and life decisions, but with Beresford's light touch, wry sense of humour and beautiful cinematography.

It certainly really spoke to me, and to Cecil, but I have heard mixed reviews amongst friends.  But I say - go and see it; it may speak volumes to you about your life, or not, but if not it will certainly be a pleasant diversion, particularly if you have any memories of Sydney life in earlier decades.  I also gifted the DVD to my parents for Christmas.

*****

Boy Erased

Seen at the Westgarth Theatre, Northcote VIC

Cecil says: Another film seen at the Westgarth as part of my Vintage Victoria cinema search. So seen without Bea this time, too.

Boy Erased has had good reviews. It even got a mention at my little local film club as a film on release that we should all see. But I actually found it a bit depressing, and even made me think of a kind of LGBT version of Handmaid's Tale, seeing a dystopian America, where the religious fundamentalists rule and anything outside the very orthodox around gender and sexuality is to be not only hidden but punished.

The trouble is, unlike The Handmaid's Tale, however real that may become, Boy Erased is based on real life characters so this really did happen.

Basically it is about a gay man, whose father is a church minister preaching about moral rectitude week-in, week-out, and his Mum goes along with what the father wants.

And what the father wants, after getting advice from other awful church elders, is to send his son off for conversion therapy to help him rid himself of the sin of homosexuality.

The whole concept is deeply disturbing, as are some of the scenes both inside the 'education' centre, and in Jared's own initiation into gay sex, where he basically gets raped.

It all ends up OK, and Jared manages to come out of it - still gay, of course - with his mind and his family relationships intact, but this is not a feel-good movie. And I was dying to ask the gay couple next to me what they made of it; what their overall feeling at the end was? Depression at the oppression, or lifted up by the outcomes?

I didn't feel able to ask them and they left just before I did.

Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe are good, though I'm not sure why they cast two Aussies in these middle American roles. Lucas Hedges is excellent at Jared Eamons.

Not the most uplifting end to a lovely afternoon at the Westgarth

***

Hello Hemingway

Seen at the Latin American Film Festival at the Westgarth Theatre, Northcote VIC

Cecil says: I went to this one on my own as part of my Vintage Victoria project, because I wanted to see the Westgarth Theatre. So I just chose whatever film they had on next.

I was really pleased to see this Cuban period drama made in 1990 so not a new release, but interesting as it was set in 1956 as political unrest was growing in Cuba.

Funnily enough, it came hot on the heels of our seeing Ladies in Black (still not quite done our review of that one), which was also set in the 1950s and had as its central focus a school girl coming-of-age.

The Cuban one was fascinating and showed the difficulty of the bright, bookish Larita, who dreams of getting a scholarship to study in the States, but is up against a bunch of posh kids from private schools. It's not her education which lets her down, but her lack of connection and her rather unsettled home life.

Things are difficult at home as the uncle she lives with (along with her Mum and auntie, cousin and grandmother) loses his job as a policeman. It's not a job he enjoys anyway, as he has to see things he can't describe to the ladies at home (presumably torture of left-wing revolutionaries and activists), but he is the main breadwinner in the household.

Suddenly Larita's dreams of university and getting to America seem stupid romantic fantasies to the rest of her family, and indeed to her revolutionary boyfriend Victor who wonders why she'd want to leave him and the Association just when things are getting interesting.

It's a classic tale of dreamy teenagers, passionate politics, poverty and survival, with some lovely observations on life threaded through it.

Hemingway is visible but out of reach. That is Hemingway himself, since he lives in the mansion up on the hill and he is seen from time to time, but never seems to be home when Larita needs his help.

But also Hemingway's novels, which Larita discovers via the most endearing character in the film, the guy who runs the local bookshop, but which her boyfriend Victor regards as romantic rubbish and a fantasy.

I loved the shots of the coastline in Havana, the Malecon. Especially as I have been there for one of my old jobs. What intrigued me even more was that this film was made three years even before I was there in 1993 so must have looked pretty similar to what I saw myself, even though supposedly set a few decades earlier. (After all, one of the beauties of Havana is the old buildings and cars, since nobody has had money to do terrible 'development' since the revolution in 1959).

I really enjoyed this film and was very glad I had timed my visit to the Westgarth to coincide with its start in the Latin American Film Festival 2018.

****

Leave no Trace

Seen at the Star Cinema in Eaglehawk VIC. And seen by Cecil alone as Bea is away :-(

Cecil says: I really liked this film about a father and daughter who live outside mainstream society, first in Oregon and then in Washington State. It’s actually a coming-of-age film, though not in the usual Hollywood way.

Tom, really well played by Thomasin McKenzie (did they give the character that name only after casting, I wonder?), is a resourceful teenager who is learning how to cover her tracks in the woods, how to pick and cook mushrooms and how to survive in the wild of the woods (though the film makes it seem far from wild, and actually extremely serene).

But as the film develops, you realise that she is in fact just following her Dad wherever he goes, and he is the more restless one. There’s a vague reference to the loss of his wife (she barely remembers her Mum), and lots of hints that Will (Ben Foster) has come back from some tour of duty with the armed services and suffers nightmares and probably PTSD as a result.

Tom actually quite likes some of the places they briefly stop in. She enjoys community, meeting others, and quickly settles before her dad wants to move on again.

The film is made with Tom as the central character. We learn more about her than about her Dad, and as they move on yet again, we as viewers share Tom’s frustration at her Dad’s need for constant movement.

I loved the shack community in Washington State, with the wonderful woman who keeps bees, and the older couple who sing lovely harmonies by the campfire.

It’s the side to America Bea and I loved when we lived there, even though we didn’t actually meet such marginal communities ourselves, but it showed that sense of community and togetherness that we did see a lot of, and it felt a million miles away from the America of Trump supporters we see more of on the TV usually.

I won’t spoil the ending for those who haven’t seen the film yet, but there’s something very mature about Tom in the final scenes, as she allows herself to feel emotions but takes a decision that goes with her heart.  

I found it very thought-provoking and atmospheric, peaceful and insightful. Not a rip-roaring tale, but a film very suited to my mood that sunny Sunday in October.

***.5

Mary Shelley

Seen at the Theatre Royal in Castlemaine, VIC

Cecil says: A second film in a day is a bit like having that second coffee in the morning: the second one has to be really top quality to be satisfying because the first one met the addictive need. 

Sadly, Mary Shelley just wasn’t quite good enough to warrant being our second film, and by the end I was wondering how long there was still left to go, and how many more extra bits they could add to the story.

I wasn’t alone in this, though. The woman next to us got her mobile phone out half way through and began reading stuff off it, much to my annoyance. She moved after a few minutes, but when I glanced back some time later, she was still in the cinema, on the back row and still on her phone.

So that’s at least two of us who thought Mary Shelley wasn’t as gripping as we had hoped.

I did get caught up a few times, and enjoyed learning about the connections between Shelley and Byron, Shelley and Wollstonecroft, and even to learn that Mary Shelley was with the poet Shelley and took his name. I must admit I hadn’t even known that beforehand.

But somehow it didn’t retain my attention. I found myself observing the action on the screen, wondering why this felt like a 6^th form end-of-year production (was it the hair, the look, the acting, the script?); wondering if it would have worked better as an 8-part TV drama? And wishing they’d just get on with producing Frankenstein!!

Byron was the worst, somehow. Felt a bit like someone trying to be Alan Rickman in Robin Hood. All evil and doing terrible deeds.

The process of writing was interesting. How an idea is born and how it takes on a concrete form with characters and plot developing as you experience things in life.

It was tragic how all these talented (if aimless) people died so young, and extraordinary that most of the things that happened to them happened in their teens. Maybe that’s why it felt like that 6^th form production. They were all supposed to be 6^th form age…

***

Bea says: A very interesting story, which despite having a degree in English Literature I knew precious little about - like Cecil I hadn't even realised that the "Shelley" in her name was from the poet Shelley, and certainly had no idea her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft! 

The story was strong enough for me to remain interested; but again, as Cecil says, it did rather feel like a 6th form play (I suspect the makeup and costume designers might have been young...).  Certainly made the whole Romantic poets thing look a lot less romantic; and didn't bear comparison with On Chesil Beach, which we had seen right before.

**

On Chesil Beach

Seen at the Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, VIC

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

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

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

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

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

***1/2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 I still give this film ***.5