Lion

It was our AGM last night and we decided to screen Lion. Usually we hold the AGM earlier, but it was just as well that we had to slip things this year to fit in with committee holiday plans as the Village Hall is also used as a polling station. It was also useful that the hall had black out curtains as the sun did not set until well after 9.00pm.

I'd seen Lion at the cinema earlier in the year and had enjoyed it very much. However I found it far more rewarding on a second viewing, noting especially the subtle way in which recollections of his Indian life slow come back into Saroo's mind as he starts searching for his past.

Here are my notes:

Lion

Australia 2016  118 minutes

Director:          Garth Davies

Starring:            Sunny Pawar, Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, David Wenham and Nicole Kidman

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Film, Best Supporting Actor (Dev Patel), Best Supporting Actress (Nicole Kidman) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Luke Davies)
• Won BAFTAs for Best Supporting Actor (Dev Patel) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Luke Davies) and three BAFTA nominations including Best Supporting Actress (Nicole Kidman)
• A further 30 wins and 67 nominations  

“There are films against which one’s head puts up a fight until, finally, the heart simply wants what it wants. Lion is one. This sweeping, sun-baked account of a life fatefully divided in childhood between two countries and families risks applying a glib National Geographic gloss to a unique existential crisis, until its sheer blunt force of feeling takes hold and the tear ducts are unlocked. Its opening stages, vividly conveying young Saroo Brierley’s accidental separation from his Indian family and subsequent Australian adoption, are unimprovable, its terror and compromised relief written in the extraordinary gaze of eight-year-old Sunny Pawar.”

Guy Lodge

After falling asleep on a train Saroo (Sunny Pawar), a five year old Indian boy, finds himself lost on the streets of Calcutta, and after being adopted by an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham) he moves to Australia to begin a new life with them. Twenty five years later the adult Saroo (Dev Patel) begins searching for his birth family in India.

The film is based on the book that Saroo Brierley wrote about his adoption and subsequent rediscovery of his birth family. The first half of the films follows the increasingly desperate life of the young Saroo after he finds himself lost in Calcutta while the second half covers the adult Saroo’s search for his family from Australia using Google Earth to locate landmarks that he could remember. This unusual structure to the screenplay departs from the traditional “three acts” of setup, confrontation and resolution, although given the nature of the story it is difficult to see how else it could have worked so well. The critical acclaim for the film reflected this with Luke Davies’s screenplay, amongst its other successes, winning a BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay and a nomination for an Oscar in the same category (it lost to Moonlight (2016)).

Salman Rushdie commented on the film’s Oscar nominations: "I would like it to win in every category it’s nominated for and in most of the categories it isn’t nominated for as well”. He admitted that he had wept “unstoppably” while watching it and added that he was "frequently suspicious of Western films set in contemporary India, and so one of the things that most impressed me about Lion was the authenticity and truth and unsparing realism of its Indian first half. Every moment of the little boy’s journey rings true – not an instant of exoticism – and as a result his plight touches us all. Greig Fraser’s cinematography portrays the beauty of the country, both honestly and exquisitely.”

Lion is Garth Davis’s first feature film as director. He started his career as an award-winning director of commercials and short films before moving into television where he directed several episodes of Jane Campion’s Emmy and BAFTA nominated series Top of the Lake (2013). Following the global success of Lion, it was announced that his next film will be a biopic based on the life of Mary Magdalene.

 

Here is the trailer:

 

An additional benefit of us having screened the film is that I'm currently enjoying the box set of Top of the Lake. I  missed it while it was on TV but read the reviews, and after seeing two episodes I can see why it was so well received.

 

 

Cannes Film Festival

It was a shock to realise recently that it was actually ten years ago that I went to the Cannes Film Festival. my former employer was a major sponsor of the festival and the trip was the main prize in a film blogging competition.

It was the first time that I had tried blogging, but once I started I could not stop...

The prize included entry to one of the festival screenings: the event itself was quite amazing, in terms of black ties, long dresses and red carpets, but unfortunately the film we saw was not that good and did not appear in any of the critics' tips for an award.

However there was time t wander around some of the other events and I enjoyed a trip around an exhibition hall in which various films - presumably many of them unmade - were being heavily promoted. Clearly some things never change and in today's paper there was a big article about the current crop of wannabees:

 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/may/26/tsunambee-clowntergeist-and-haunted-airplane-bad-cannes-films-posters

Julieta

The last few weeks have been pretty busy, so this is an attempt to get up to date before the holiday period.

The clocks went forward at the end of March and experience of past seasons has shown that the audience for our screenings declines rapidly once the evenings get lighter: hence we scheduled one final screening for the last day of March. We had chosen Julieta the first subtitled film we have screened this season, and as we set up we wondered if anyone other than the committee would turn up. In the event there was no need to worry as we had an audience of more than 20...

I was pleased to finally catch up with the film as it had been on my "to see" list since I read the reviews. I've not read any of the stories by Alice Munro on which it is based so cannot comment on the authenticity - or otherwise - of the adaptation, but I very much enjoyed the film and thought that the unresolved ending was brilliant.

Here are my notes:

Julieta

Spain 2016       99 minutes

Director:          Pedro Almodóvar Pedro

Starring:            Emma Suarez, Adrian Ugarte, Daniel Grao, and Inma Cuesta

Awards and Nominations

• Nomination for Palme d’Or at 2016 Cannes Film Festival
• BAFTA Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film
• A further nine wins and 45 nominations

“Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, his most moving and entrancing work since 2006’s Volver, is a sumptuous and heartbreaking study of the viral nature of guilt, the mystery of memory and the often unendurable power of love. At times, the emotional intrigue plays more like a Hitchcock thriller than a romantic melodrama, with Alberto Iglesias’s superb Herrmannesque score … heightening the noir elements, darkening the bold splashes of red, blue and white.”

Mark Kermode

Antia abandoned her mother Julieta without warning 12 years ago and has not spoken to her since. As a result of a chance encounter which gives her news of her daughter, Julieta returns to her former home to look for Antia while at the same time reviewing the events that led to their estrangement.

The film is an adaptation of three short stories from the book Runaway by Nobel Prize winning author Alice Munro in which the same character appears at different stages of her life. Almodóvar is a great fan of Munro’s writing and earlier in his career had been interested in adapting the stories as his first English language film. He had discussed making the film in Vancouver, where Munro had based her stories, with Meryl Streep playing the main character at 20, 40 and 60 years old, but abandoned the project  as he was unhappy about filming outside of Spain and was uncomfortable about writing and filming in English. Years later he revisited the script but, at the suggestion of his production team, the film would be made in Spanish and set in Spain. He had originally intended to call the film Silence, the title of one of the short stories, but changed this to avoid confusion with Martin Scorsese’s historical drama Silence which was released in 2016.

 After the socio-political satire of I’m So Excited (2013) Almodóvar explained that Julieta was a return to drama and his “cinema of women”, but that the tone was different to his other feminine dramas such as The Flower of My Secret (1995) All About My Mother (1999) and Volver (2006). Despite the proposed involvement of Meryl Streep in his earlier attempt to film the stories Almodóvar now decided to cast two actresses to play the younger and older versions of the film’s protagonist. Almodóvar has often been inspired by classic Hollywood and European films and the double casting in Julieta is a homage to Bunuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) in which two actresses play younger and older versions of the same character. The influence of Hitchcock is also visible in the film and its soundtrack has deliberate echoes of the Bernard Herrmann’s classic soundtrack for Vertigo (1958).

The film received its international premiere at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where it was received warmly but did not win any awards. It subsequently received a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Language film (losing out to Son of Saul) but, somewhat controversially, was omitted from the shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2017 Academy Awards in Hollywood.

Here is the trailer:

 

A Street Cat Named Bob

This was a bit of a surprising choice for our most recent screening, as the reviews of the film, while respectable, had not pointed to anything exceptional in it. However I had not realised how successful the book had been and in the event we had one of our best audiences so far this season.

I've not read the book, but apparently the film makers made significant changes to some of the minor characters.  Nonetheless it worked well, and Bob, playing himself, was brilliant. From the credits I noticed that in total five cats played Bob: this was not immediately obvious, but there were a few scenes in which his ginger tabby markings seemed to move around a bit.

Here are my notes:

A Street Cat Named Bob

UK 2016          103 minutes

Director:          Roger Spottiswood

Starring:            Luke Treadaway, Joanne Froggatt, Anthony Head and Bob the Cat

“Dogs are plucky, loyal, lifelong companions. With cats, it’s sometimes just enough to make it through the night without getting our faces clawed off. That said, Bob, who appears as himself in this film (alongside six other ginger feline lookalikes), is a particularly gorgeous specimen. And Bob’s weapons-grade cuteness is almost enough to power this slight but warm-hearted film by Roger Spottiswoode (a veteran of the animal/human buddy movie genre, he also directed Turner and Hooch).”

Wendy Ide

 James Bowen (Luke Treadaway) is recovering from drug addiction and is trying to earn his living as a busker. When he finds an injured ginger cat (Bob the Cat) in his flat he takes it to an RSPCA vet for treatment and from that point on their two lives become intertwined.

The film is based on the book of the same name by James Bowen and Garry Jenkins. Bob used to accompany Bowen as he worked as a busker and videos of them appeared on YouTube, which led to an article about them in the Islington Tribune. The article was read by a literary agent who had been responsible for the UK publication of Marley and Me; she saw the potential in the story and introduced Bowen to the writer Garry Jenkins. Their subsequent book has sold over a million copies in the UK alone and has been translated into 30 languages.

Roger Spottiswoode began his career as a trainee editor and edited several early films by Sam Peckinpah. In the 1980s he moved into directing and in addition to Turner & Hooch (1989) his most notable films have included Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), with Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s science fiction action thriller The 6^th Day (2000).

Here is the trailer:

 

The Girl on the Train

Our most recent film only came out on DVD this week. It was based on a popular best-selling novel, which I had not read, and so we had a good audience for the screening, including several people we had not seen before.

While researching the film in order to write my notes I'd read the plot and so knew roughly what was going to happen. However the fragmented storyline muddied the water sufficiently to keep me on the edge of my seat. My only complaint was that one key flashback was subsequently (and crucially) proven not to have happened: thus I felt a bit cheated because of this.

Here are my notes:

The Girl On The Train

USA 2016                                111 minutes

Director:                                  Tate Taylor

Starring:                                    Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux and Luke Evans

Awards and Nominations

• BAFTA Nomination for Best Actress (Emily Blunt)
• A further three wins and five nominations

“In the end, however, the whole movie rests upon the shoulders of Emily Blunt, and she holds it all together brilliantly, even as her character is falling apart. From the intimacy of My Summer of Love, through the “hangry” sorcerer’s apprentice of The Devil Wears Prada to the sci-fi action heroine of Edge of Tomorrow and the blindsided FBI agent in Sicario, Blunt has proved herself to be a mesmerising presence in a range of genres. In Rachel’s fractured personality, we see echoes of Blunt’s previous screen lives, refracted through a prism of self-destruction that somehow never alienates the audience. Retaining the British accent that makes her even more of an outsider in this scary New World, Blunt convinces completely as a drunken fish out of water. This train may not be bound for glory, but her disruptive company is worth the price of the ticket.”

Mark Kermode

Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt) becomes infatuated by the sight of a seemingly perfect couple visible from her daily commuter train. On one day she sees something that shocks her, and driven on by intrigue and obsession she starts to uncover the truth of what has happened.

The film is based on the best-selling thriller of the same name by Paula Hawkins, although for the purposes of the film the action has been relocated from London to New York. The conceit of the book echoes the classic Agatha Christie detective novel 4.50 from Paddington (filmed as Murder She Said (1961) with Margaret Rutherford playing Miss Marple for the first time), but the dark themes of the story in its cinematic version carry distinct echoes of the work of Hitchcock, especially in films such The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Rear Window (1954).

Emily Blunt began her career on the stage in the UK before moving into TV where she won an award for Most Promising Newcomer for her role in My Summer of Love (2004). She won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in the TV film Gideon’s Daughter (2006) and shortly afterwards made her Hollywood debut in the comedy The Devil Wears Prada (2006), for which she received both BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress. Since then she has demonstrated her versatility as a performer with roles in many different genres including historical drama (The Young Victoria (2009)), science fiction (The Adjustment Bureau (2011)), and a musical (Into The Woods (2014)). She is currently filming Mary Poppins Returns in which she has been cast in the title role.

Director Tate Taylor also began his career as an actor with roles for both TV and cinema before making his name as a director with The Help (2011) (for which he also wrote the screenplay). He followed this with Get On Up (2014) a biography of the musician James Brown and currently has various projects as director in development.

 

Here's the trailer:

 

 

The History Behind Denial

There is no such thing a coincidence, and the day after my post on Denial there was a long interview with Richard J Evans in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/14/richard-evans-interview-holocaust-denial-film

It was interesting to see that focus of the film had to be on Lipstadt to make it work as a drama, but it was the three years of detailed work that Evans and his team carried out made it clear to Lipstadt's team that they had probably won the case before it started: what remained to be decided was the scale of the victory.

I also read that Richard Evans had locked horns in exchanges with Michael Gove over the teaching of history in schools. I've read his Third Reich Trilogy and am currently reading The Pursuit of Power, his new history of Europe in the 19th century: all have been excellent and I will certainly read more of his work.

Denial

I'd wanted to see Denial ever since I'd read an interview with David Hare about the writing his screenplay for the film. I'd known about the subject matter of the film in general terms but had not been aware of the details. The film seems to have had a relatively limited release but I managed to catch up with it and was very impressed: in an age when a government spokesman can talk of  "alternative facts" and politicians can question the value of "experts" it was a timely reminder of the value that an eminent historian can bring to the real world.

For obvious reasons the exchanges in the court scenes were lifted verbatim from the official transcript, but what was not clear until I did some research on line at home was the timescale of events: Richard J Evans and his team took three years reviewing Irving's published work and tracking his quoted back to their original sources: it was their work which proved the truth of the statement about David Irving in Lipstadt's book . Evans subsequently wrote a book - Telling Lies About Hitler - about his role in the case which I am currently reading and it is both fascinating and horrifying in equal measure.

Evans dismisses Irving's key document that supposedly exonerates Hitler from culpability for the extermination of the Jews is absolutely damning:

This supposed key document in Irving's arsenal of alleged documentary proof of Hitler's lack of culpability for the extermination of the Jews had long been regarded by professional historians as nothing of the kind. He could only present it as such by ignoring the logical contradictions in his reading of the document, by ignoring is immediate context and by suppressing all the uncertainties with which it was associated.

This is definitely one for us to screen at our film society.

Here is the trailer: