The Book Thief

Tomorrow is the first proper screening of our new season and we will be showing The Book Thief.  I've not read the novel , but it's a film I've wanted to see for a while - despite the less than enthusiastic reviews. 

After binging on WW1 history books recently I've now moved on to Nazi Germany and after finishing The Origins of the Third Reich, which covered German history from unification through to 1932/33, the second volume - The Third Reich in Power - covers the period up to war in 1939.  The final volume The Third Reich at War covers the period from 1939 to the end of the Third Reich, and that is next on my reading list.  The books are all masterpieces of research and writing and put the whole terrible history of the rise of Hitler and the Nazis into fascinating context.

Hence this film has come along at an opportune time.

As I could few reviews that could offer  positive headline quotes I've selected a few anti-Nazi (and anti anyone else who burns books for political or ideological reasons) quotations instead.

Here are my notes:

The Book Thief

USA 2013                    131 minutes

Director:                      Brian Percival

Starring:                        Roger Allam, Sophie Nelisse, Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for Oscar for Best Score (John Williams)
• 3 wins for Sophie Nelisse 
• A further 4 nominations.

“Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too."

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

 “You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police.  Yet in their hearts there is unspoken - unspeakable! - fear.  They are afraid of words and thoughts!  Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden.  These terrify them.  A little mouse - a little tiny mouse! - of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic."

            Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

In Nazi Germany Liesel (Sophie Nelisse), an illiterate young orphan is taken in by foster parents Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson).  Liesel learns to read and after witnessing a Nazi book burning begins to steal books to read.  Her story is narrated by Death (Roger Allam) and he finally tells what happened to Liesel after she survived the war.

The film is based on the Young Adult novel of the same name by Australian author Marcus Zusak that was on the New York Times Best Seller List for more than four years.  However although a work of fiction the story is set against genuine historical events: from the time that it consolidated its seizure of power in 1933 the Nazis instituted book-burning campaigns against authors whose work was deemed subversive or which undermined Nazi ideology; Kristallnacht was a Nazi pogrom against Jews in both Germany and Austria in November 1938; and the Second World War broke out in September 1939.

Brian Percival started his career with the BBC where he directed several prestige projects including adaptations of North and South, The Ruby in the Smoke and The Old Curiosity Shop.  Since then he has worked for ITV where he has directed six episodes of Downton Abbey. The Book Thief is his first film. 

Here's the trailer:

And here's the sound track

 

Marketing Failure

We always plan to show a popular film for our AGM, but generally do not want to screen something tht would attract paying punters elswewhere in the season: hence we'd decided to replace Saving Mr Banks with The Book Thief, and when w discovered that this was not available we'd chosen Life of Pi - and I'd written the notes.

But no one had told our marketing guru and so we'd sent out a email advertising Saving Mr Banks.  We had a surprisingly good audience for a sunny June evening but we were  not sure what they'd turned out to see, and so we had a vote and Saving Mr Banks won. I enjoyed it very much and did not have to write any notes and if we do screen Life of Pi next season then I will have the notes ready.

Here's the trailer for Saving Mr Banks:

On a silly note, I also like the re-cut trailer for Scary Mary Poppins:

 

Life of Pi

And so we reach the end of another season and it's time for our AGM.  We generally try to choose a film that is going to be popular and this year our choice is Ang Lee's Life of Pi.

Here are my notes:

Life of Pi

USA 2012                    127 minutes

Director:                      Ang Lee

Starring:                        Suraj Sharma, Tabu, Gerard Depardieu and Rafe Spall

Awards and Nominations

• Won four Oscars including Best Director and Cinematography, and nominations for seven further Oscars including Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay
• Two Golden Globe nominations including Best Film and Best Directior
• A further 52 wins and 70 nominations

“[Ang Lee’s] magnificent new film is a version of Yann Martel's Booker prize-winning novel, Life of Pi, adapted by an American writer, David Magee, whose previous credits were films set in England during the first half of the 20th century, Finding Neverland and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.  From its opening scene of animals and birds strutting and preening themselves in a sunlit zoo to the final credits of fish and nautical objects shimmering beneath the sea, the movie has a sense of the mysterious, the magical.  This effect is compounded by the hallucinatory 3D, and in tone the film suggests Robinson Crusoe rewritten by Laurence Sterne.”

Philip French

The film is based on the best-selling novel by Yann Martel, a fanatasy about an Indian boy called Piscine (“Pi”) Patel who survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker as his companion.  The book became a global best-seller – although many of its readers must have thought it was unfilmable.

Several other directors had planned to direct the film before Ang Lee took on the project.  The initial plan was for M Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) to direct, but after he chose to direct Lady in the Water, the studio discussed the project with Alonso Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Gravity).  He passed on the opportunity in order to direct Children of Men, and there were subsequently discussions with Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie and Alien Resurrection), who began work on his own screenplay but made no further progress.  In 2009 Fox Pictures finally hired Ang Lee to direct, and although the projected budget of $120 million caused a further delay, filming finally started in January 2011.

One of the costly elements of the budget was Lee’s decision to film in 3D.  He explained this choice in an interview:

"I thought this was a pretty impossible movie to make technically. It's so expensive for what it is.  You sort of have to disguise a philosophical book as an adventure story.  I thought of 3-D half a year before Avatar was on the screen.  I thought water, with its transparency and reflection, the way it comes out to you in 3-D, would create a new theatrical experience and maybe the audience or the studio would open up their minds a little bit to accept something different."

The film opened to widespread critical acclaim, with the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes stating:

 “A 3D adaptation of a supposedly ‘unfilmable’ book, Ang Lee's Life of Pi achieves the near impossible—it's an astonishing technical achievement that's also emotionally rewarding.”

Here's the trailer:

 

Cinematic Foreplay

I love the description of the time you have to wait before a director reveals the monster as "cinematic foreplay":

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/05/17/godzilla_2014_shows_the_monster_an_hour_in_does_it_work_the_data_on_how.html

Having recently watched Pacific Rim I agree with del Toro's comments about his film: it started with a climax and built up from there.

It's also good to see the mention of Night of the Demon. 

I'd read about this and had to hunt it down, but it was definitely worth the search.  I think it would have been far better if the monster had not appeared in the first scene: our imagination is always far more effective than anything a director can show - especially in a film that was made far before the pre-digital age.

The Woman in Black is another recent example where there is a significant delay before we see the monster/ghost - and the delay builds up the tension. 

It also occurred to me that the final sequence at the station might be a deliberate echo/tribute to Night of the Demon.

Cannes Film Festival

Seven years go I attended the Cannes Film Festival for the first time.  My then-employer was a major sponsor and each year there were a few tickets provided for employees.  In most years the tickets were handed out after a ballot of interested parties - so there was little chance of winning - but this year the company decided to set up a blogging competition.  I was one of the winners - and I haven't stopped yet.

The organising team were more keen to tell us about the logistics  for the trip, but they could not answer my first question: what screening were we due to attend?  So many films now regarded as masterpieces received their first screening at Cannes, but sadly what we saw was Les Chansons d'Amour:

I didn't manage to find a single review of it and inevitably it did not feature in any of the awards.

I still read all the reviews from Cannes avidly, and sometimes enjoy a good review of a bad film rather than a rave about a masterpiece.  This year Peter Bradshaw's description of Grace of Monaco featuring performances so wooden that they were a fire risk made me laugh our loud several times:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/14/grace-of-monaco-cannes-review-nicole-kidman
 

Best Adaptations of Novels

I think it was Phillip Pullman who commented on the close relationship between novels and cinema, in that both genres have the ability to direct the viewer/reader to what the director/author wants to focus on - as opposed to the the theatre where the audience is free to concentrate on whatever it wants to.

Thus it's interesting to see such a range of novels in this list of the best adaptations:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/books-life/6166774/25-best-book-to-film-adaptations.html

It's difficult to argue with most of them, and I'm particularly pleased to see The Remains of the Day, which I thought was one of the best adaptations ever, on the list.  It's also good to see the Harry Potter films as well as The Lord of the Rings trilogy included: both of these were epic in every sense of the word.

the only addition I'd like to make is to propose Notes on a Scandal, which is a brilliant version of an excellent novel that at first reading seems impossible to adapt.

 

Are these the best shots in cinema?

I like the idea of someone collecting the best shots in cinema and have just followed Geoff Todd on Twitter:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/10807513/Are-these-the-15-best-shots-in-cinema.html

I have David Thomson's Moments That Made the Movies on my shelf and I dip into it from time - it's that kind of book.

His slection of films is eclectic, although it does include the usual suspects.  But what makes it intersting is the choice of image to represent each film.  Some of them are truly unexpected.  It's an excellent book