Philip French

RIP Philip French:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/philip-french

I am a lifelong reader of The Observer and until his retirement one of the regular highlights of the paper was Philip French's film review.

It was from his writing that I began to learn that cinema can be much more than what is on at the local multiplex, that it has a history that constantly influences even the most anodyne of commercial releases, and that it is possible to write well about even the worst films.  he also had a brilliant sense of humour and could never miss the chance to work a cringe-making pun into an otherwise serious review.

He will be sorely missed!

A Little Chaos

I'm finally back on track in terms of writing my notes for films: the hours of daylight are getting shorter with a consequent reduction in the time I can spend on gardening leave - everything outside has never looked better.

This week's film is all about gardening, and I even managed to add a quote from Simon Schama to add an extra layer of cultural reliance.

Here are my notes:

A Little Chaos

UK 2014                      117 minutes

Director:                      Alan Rickman

Starring:                        Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alan Rickman and Stanley Tucci

“Even before the first chateau [at Versailles] by Louis Le Vau, the park was made the setting for entertainments that catered to the king’s hunger for self-aggrandisement. Whether they were ostensibly performed in honour of military victories, the king’s latest mistress, or both, they used bodies of water as theatrical platforms on which spectacles that flattered his omnipotence could be performed.”

Simon Schama

Landscape and Memory

After being appointed by King Louis XIV (Alan Rickman) on a project in the gardens of Versailles Andre Le Notre (Matthias Schoenaerts) employs Sabine de Barra (Kate Winslet), a woman with an unconventional sense of gardening, to help him complete the work.

Allison Deegan is an actor and wrote an initial version of the screenplay 17 years ago while on maternity leave.  She had admired Alan Rickman after seeing him on stage in Les Liaisons Dangereuses and sent an unsolicited copy of the screenplay to him; he responded favourably and announced that he wanted to direct it.  However despite his support his other work commitments, especially his ongoing role as Snape in the Harry Potter films, meant that the film had to wait.  Initially Deegan had written the role of Le Notre for Rickman, but the extended delay in its production meant that his age made him more suited for the role of Louis XIV, a character who perhaps echoed his responsibilities as director of the film.

On its release the film received generally positive reviews with Tim Robey in The Telegraph commenting:

“If you see only one film about 17^th century landscape gardening this year, it ought to be A Little Chaos, a heaving bouquet of a picture.”

Woman in Gold

We screened this film at the beginning of October. After reading the reviews I was not expecting too much - inevitably I have to write notes on films I have not seen - but in the event I was impressed.

The background to the film is the major crime of the twentieth century, but the film managed to make it personal, as well as shining a light on to an aspect of the Holocaust that is perhaps generally forgotten, but which still has an impact today.

Here are my notes:

Woman in Gold

UK/USA 2015              109 minutes

Director:                      Simon Curtis

Starring:                        Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Bruhl, Katie Holmes and Tatiana Maslany

Maria Altmann was gracious and warm, the kind of woman referred to in another era as a grande dame. Her face was lined, but her bright brown eyes still held a gaze of wonder.

“It is a very complicated story. … People always asked me, did your aunt have a mad affair with Klimt? My sister thought so. My mother – she was very Victorian – said ‘How dare you say that?  It was an intellectual friendship.’ ”

Maria looked up at a reproduction of Adele’s portrait on the wall, regarding her face thoughtfully.

“My darling,” she said finally, “Adele was a modern woman, living in the world of yesterday.”

Anne-Marie O’Connor
The Lady in Gold

 

Sixty years after she fled from Nazi persecution in Vienna an elderly Jewish woman, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren) begins legal action to retrieve possessions that the Nazis had sized from her family. These include the painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (subsequently known as the Woman in Gold) by Gustav Klimt which after the war had been hung in an Austrian art Gallery. 

Maria Altman’s struggle to recover the Woman in Gold had already been told in a 2008 documentary film called Adele’s Wish as well as in a book called The Lady in Gold, and although inevitably there have been a few minor changes to the events of her life to make it work in dramatic terms the feature film has brought her story to a far wider audience.

Despite the success of Maria Altmann in the long and complex legal struggle depicted in the film even today in Austria the government is still displaying an irresolute attitude towards returning property stolen from their Jewish owners: Stephan Templ wrote a book that catalogued hundreds of Jewish-owned buildings seized by the Nazis that have never been returned to their rightful owners, and was subsequently found guilty of defrauding the state after omitting the name of an estranged aunt from a family restitution claim. His appeal against the sentence has received the support of 75 Holocaust historians from around the world against and an Austrian journalist who is also a Holocaust survivor commented:

“The only reason Templ was prosecuted is that he touched a nerve with his book, which reminded Austrians how they stole Jewish property”.

For Austrians Klimt’s painting of the Woman in Gold was part of their national identity, although other examples of his work in Austria did not survive the war. In1895 he had been commissioned to produce three massive paintings for the Great Hall of the University of Vienna, but a public outcry from political, aesthetic and religious groups meant that they were never displayed in this location, and in 1945 retreating SS forces destroyed all three paintings.