Adam goes to town

Finally a film that I have some knowledge of before seeing.  Unfortunately that knowledge made me a little unenthusiastic about this one.  A silent, 3 hour epic, about intolerance through the ages, made by way of apology for the racism in Birth Of A Nation.  Doesn't sound like a lot of fun, so I thought this might be a hard hurdle to get over.

It's a very strangely put together film, with four separate stories linked by a series of parabolic title cards and a slightly creepy recurring image of a mother rocking a crib.  The stories are a little unbalanced, with the bulk of the running time being taken up by a modern story about a poor couple who get into trouble with the law and a group of local moralisers, and a story about the Persian conquest of Babylon.  The other two stories are about the start of the St Bartholemew's Day Massacre, and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  

Somewhat to my surprise I found this really, really great.  I think the two shorter stories should probably have been left out to bring down that huge running time, as the impact does start to sag in the final third, but the main two stories are very compelling.  

The story that seemed to me to be the main heart of the film was the modern (1916) story about a young couple in poverty, who suffer a series of misfortunes at the hands of the law and some moralisers who interfere in their life quite cruelly.  This was quite hard hitting social commentary, although the story itself was a little reliant on coincidence and circumstance.

The fall of Babylon on the other hand has a huge cinematic quality that took me quite by suprirse, the set of the Babylonian courtyard was stunning and massive, and the battle scenes had an eerie intensity that puts many more recent epic films to shame.

The St Bartholemew's Day Massacre story has a fair bit less time spent on it, and never really builds up any character, so its felt less engaging, though I'm sure that there's a story that could be told around those events.

These three stories build up tension very well and end with heart-pounding races towards the final outcome.

The Passion story barely gets any screen time, and its presence seems to me to be to tie the other stories together with symbolism.

Overall this film had a kind of flair and drama that I don't readily associate with silent films, or many talkie films either.  It was big and bold, and had a very clear message.  I can't think of many films to compare it to.  It's forthrightness is maybe a little bit like Tree Of Life, and the multiple stories in different time periods linked by subject reminds me a little bit of The Fountain, but I think this film stands pretty far out on its own.  It combined a sense of historical re-enactment (some of the title cards contain facts about the period), with a strong sense of purpose that it tries to express through visual and textual poetry.  Everything is very earnest, the title cards talk about the evils of intolerance and actively, directly shepherd the viewer into a view of the story.

I find it hard to comment on much else, the acting is typically theatrical and over the top, the dialogue that is titled is stiff and blunt, but those go with the territory; it's an old film, and I think that they're fine.

Oddly, since it was made in reaction to accusations of racism, none of the intolerance in the film is directly about race.  Religion and class, but not race.  That seemed a little strange to me.

Three stars - Excellent

Aside from housing issues this film has been a reason for the lack of progress, I found this one very difficult to get through. I think that it was the fourth attempt that actually got me through it, but even then I found it tough.

Let me clarify that difficult and tough don’t equate to bad here, it’s just that I found the film so hard to follow, and didn’t feel like I was grasping its meaning, that three times I stopped watching it, thinking that I needed to start again. Well I finished it this time, though how much of it I really absorbed I don’t know.

Let me explain why I found it difficult. It’s a Taiwanese film and the vast majority of the film is not in English, i.e. subtitled. No problem normally, but this is made into a problem by a large cast of characters, and a camera that wanders so that you often don’t know who is speaking. Sounds silly really, but I genuinely found it hard to follow. The film is very sedate and slow, and has a slightly dreamy feeling to it too, which lulled me to drosiness so I found it hard to concentrate, which didn’t help matters.

But enough with the difficulty, what’s the film like? Really, really good. I think. As I say, I’m not sure how much of it I really absorbed, but what I did felt like a real, grounded film, that outwardly seemed soap opera-ish in some places, yet with a profoundity and a subtleness of dialogue that was heart wrenching in places. The production of the film is sublime, everything looks beautiful, and the camerawork is both delicate and suprising. I mean that, the director has a habit of gazing past the characters into the distance, or trailing off to the side and ignoring the dramatic action altogether, or in one short bit, just settling on the clouds as they hover above.

The film is long. Seriously long, which inevitably is another reason I found it tough. But it justifies that with a richness to the portrait it paints of its many characters and how their lives are pieced together, and how they all link together into this overall portrait of relationships between people. Any one of the interwoven stories has enough going on to be a narrative of its own, and together its an intricate and beautiful piece.

I think I need to watch it again.

I actually watched this one shortly after Touki Bouki, but never got round to the write up.  So I watched it again just a few hours ago for the hell of it.  That's probably says it all, because this is by far the most enjoyable of the films so far.

Unabashedly English through and through in telling the tale of an unabashed Englishman of the early 20th century, there's a good nature running all the way through this film as it uses the character as allegory to the decline of the Empire and of a certain way of life.  It's whimsical and satirical, but also very affectionate and loving towards it's bolshy, buffoonish protagonist, who I certainly couldn't help but like, for all his flaws.  Roger Livesey I only know previously  from A Matter Of Life And Death, but he is superb as he milks this part for all it's worth, hamming it up as the toffee-nosed Clive Candy.  Deborah Kerr has an odd triplicate role as three women who affects Candy's life at various points throughout the 40 years-ish spread of the film, and Anton Walbrook is a voice of patience and reason as Candy's German friend, which must have been rather a shock when the film was released in the middle of World War 2.

I loved this film, as it romped through a half century of war and evolution of the British Army and Britain place in the world.  It wears its themes on its sleeve, but takes such joy in telling the story around this absurd man, with an absurd moustache, living through some pretty absurd times.

This one demands attention from the very start, with graphic footage of animal slaughter.  I can't say that endeared me to it much, but it's definitely a way to make sure your audience is ready and watching.  And... I didn't get it.

I don't feel like the opening did the film much of a favour as I was expecting something significant from it, but instead all it delivered was a meandering paragraph of narrative, characters who are paper thin yet still manage to be dislikeable, and alternately headache-inducingly frenetic and boringly static editing.  It felt like a 30 minute short film about a couple of chancers intercut with a documentary about a Senegal community.  Nothing was happening for large amounts of time, things that weren't interesting went on for far too long, and anything approaching action was over in a whizz.  And I already mentioned that the main characters, a pair of moaning, uncharismatic petty thieves, were thoroughly dislikeable, despite sharing just a couple dozen lines of dialogue.

I don't know what this film is doing on this list, maybe its the new wave influence and unconventional (i.e. schizophrenic) editing, maybe it's the unromantic portrayal of Africa and its characters, but I really, really didn't like this film.

Or, Fear Eats The Soul.

This film was pretty unassuming, but had a rather strange uncomfortable feeling throughout, presumably not unlike the alienations and uncertainties of its characters.  I wasn't sure where this was going for a good portion of the film, it's a rather unusual story about a romance and quick wedding between an aging German woman and a Moroccan immigrant.  The rather down and out look and setting of the film made me expect something cynical about the relationship, but actually it's quite a sweet story of kindness and companionship being stretched in the face of discrimination and the negative opinions and expectations of others.  Maybe that was the point, maybe I'm one of the bad guys of the film, not having a little faith in the couple on screen.  

The film had a realism and bleakness in the background that made the simple relationship of the central characters all the more lovely, and the downs and further downs of their relationship are quite touching.  Not heart wrenching exactly, as it seemed to be a film that was deliberately keeping a distance from big cinema, lovelorn speeches and kisses in the rain.  Not that kind of film at all; the acting, the script, and the filmmaking were all restrained, quiet and unshowy.  I watched this about a week ago, and knew that if I wrote about it straight away I wouldn't capture it, and I think I was right; the fact that it is so unshowy means that the impression takes a while to build, and I keep thinking back to it's small intimacies and liking it all the more.

From almost the opening scene it's clear what the big star of this film is; the movement of the camera is incredibly striking, it glides through the room and follows its characters with a charming curiosity and interest in them and their frivolously wealthy lives.  The sets are sumptuous in an almost casually ostentatious and opulent way that is never seen in films any more, and this is firmly rooted in the classical cinematic traditions of acting and stoic chasteness.  The narrative and characters have a coolness about them that is both dryly funny, and quite enchanting, as the imperturbable husband, the flighty and vacuous wife, and the romantic interloper dance their dance.  That's a literal dance, as the centrepiece of the film is a stunning sequence where a love affair unravels over the course of many interspersed ballroom dance scenes.  It's beautiful to behold, and I'd say from that scene alone it is clear why this film is held in high esteem.

Sadly, I felt that high watermark fade away in the third act, where melodrama takes over, and the carefully assembled relationships fracture and motivations get muddled.  The plot isn't especially sophisticated, nor is the love story as engaging as it needs to be to justify the drama, and when the grace of the characters starts to fail the frivolity of it all becomes exposed, which isn't helped by the puzzling gimmick of pointedly never telling the Countesses name.  It's not of consequence, so why make it a point of not telling the audience?

I liked the charm and silly intrigue of the first act, and loved the coolness of the second, but the third didn't make much sense to me.  It was beautiful to behold throughout though, technically just about perfect.

So some friends and I have decided to commit to the Herculean task of watching the Top 101* films on the Sight and Sound critics list of the greatest films ever, see here: http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/critics/

I've seen some, but shamefully few, and I'm not going to make any claims of being a good critic, or of not completely missing the point carelessly often, but I'm going to write up my thoughts on each film immediately after I've watched it here.  Also, because it's a running joke between me and my fellow watchers, I'm going to callously add a star rating on the Halliwell scale, where 1 star is good, 2 excellent, 3 exceptional, and 4 perfect.  Anything less than good doesn't even get a star.

And here it goes...

A few hours sleep, before more trainage and then the wedding tomorrow afternoon. If today’s train troubles are the end of it then I’ll be happy, deffo don’t want anything going wrong tomorrow.

All packed up and about to head off for Warsaw via Berlin, so just a few final photos…