byronic :: mad bad and dangerous to know

Hari Kunzru, here 

      Have you forgotten what we were like then       when we were still first rate       and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

      it's no use worrying about Time       but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves       and turned some sharp corners

      the whole pasture looked like our meal       we didn't need speedometers       we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

      I wouldn't want to be faster       or greener than now if you were with me O you       were the best of all my days

I adore Paul Thomas Anderson but really struggled with The Master, so I'm delighted to see we're finally back on. IV presents some unusual characteristics for a PTA film, particularly where his use of film syntax is concerned: gone are the trademark long takes and long shots in favour of snappy editing, and characterisation is conveyed through a larger number of close-ups than we're used to. The camera moves around a lot more. The film feels smaller - in ambition, breadth, duration than The Master and TWBB. But it's is such a quintessentially PTAndersonian work - and in no way a minor piece of his oeuvre. 

The huge amount of plot - confusing, randomly intricate and genuinely laugh-out-loud baffling - is there to unravel around one small kernel of wisdom, delivered with genuine warmth through Joaquin Phoenix's masterful performance (to me so much more impressive than his nervy, pervy antics in The Master). Did I mention it's also really funny? Yeah, this film is fucking funny. And it's great to see PTA return to a place where the viewer's enjoyment is also important - something that was crucial to his work before the portentous There Will Be Blood.

Ultimately, what makes Inherent Vice work for me is this. The film is about the search for something that is irretrievably lost, bound to go bad if fleetingly recaptured. And yet the film remains optimistic and serious about its own investigation. Keep searching but don’t care too much; life will hurt, amuse, surprise you - it seems to say. It’s no exaggeration that it reminded me of Hamlet: 

We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is ’t to leave betimes? Let be.

Lichtgrenze (light border), an installation to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall #BerlinerMauer.

Between 1990 and 1991, aged 10, I first became aware of politics beyond my little neck of the woods in Italy. We read Primo Levi, and Partisan veterans came to our primary school to tell us about their experiences of World War II. Some of them had been deported to concentration camps and had tattoos on their arms that were permanently etched into my memory. They scared me and made me very angry.

Then the overthrow of Ceaușescu happened in Romania. We watched it on TV, talked about it in class. Previously we’d only ever discussed nuclear power and the explosion in Chernobyl (the radiation destroyed our vegetable patch).

In early 1990, Italy’s portentous ex-President Sandro Pertini died, and I wrote an award-winning essay about his legacy (such as my understanding of it could be as a 10 year old).

In the space of three weeks in 1991, I carried out my first conscious political acts: I donated my pocket money to HIV research on World AIDS Day and joined Greenpeace.

When the Berlin Wall was torn down a flood of hope pervaded Europe. If you remember the all-pervasive sense of the power of change on the night Obama was elected, it was like that but x10.

I grew up in a world that was palpably more and more interconnected - there were no stitches in its history and no borders in its maps. I was raised trilingual in a consciously multicultural place, a deliberate effort to make European citizens out of my generation. It doesn’t matter how isolationist (short-sighted, bigoted, downright foolish) and anti-European my chosen country of residence is, I feel and am European. Which means that “io sono italiana”, “I am a Londoner”, “je suis française” all signify the same thing: “civis romanus sum”. My history, my culture and my politics amount to this: an understanding of borders as something you push until you can demolish them, until everyone can be free to travel, work, love, vote, learn and live as a respectable citizen and contribute a piece to the global puzzle - in liberty to experience, respect, exercise, and be guaranteed all civil and human rights that citizens deserve.

"Everything is going so well. You bet on the downfall of this country and you won."

Forget The Great Beauty, forget I Am Love: Paolo Virzì's Human Capital is the most perceptive and imaginative parable of contemporary Italy's skewed aspirations and obsession with the lives (and the money) of others.

While the story is interesting enough, the characters are well-sketched, and the acting is very good - particularly from my favourite Italian actor, Fabrizio Gifuni (The Best of Youth) in a dislikable role as the wealthy hedge fund owner and pater familias - Human Capital is very much a director's film.

I must admit I am surprised: I have always liked Virzì's quirky comedies but didn't expect him to find this new depth and an impressive ambition in his work. His visual style has none of Sorrentino's baroque flourish, nor Guadagnino's austerity and coolness - it's simpler, warmer, quite sentimental. There are at least four scenes I found completely preposterous - one in each chapter. And yet the whole film hangs together remarkably well. Virzì displays an understanding of human relations (particularly those of younger people) that is completely missing in many of his Italian peers' work.

The script uses Stephen Amidon's novel set in Connecticut and repurposes its critique of WASP bourgeoisie towards a more encompassing study of Italian social climbing. There are also echoes of Buñuel, AmoresPerros, Flaubert channeled via Franzen, even some nods to Wes Anderson. And of course the story could be well be another riff on the themes of money, class and car crashes composed by the greatest of them all, The Great Gatsby. 

The result is a film that has at the same time a fiercely contemporary face and a timeless inner moral spine, an Italian story that can be relocated anywhere in the world where there are haves and have-nots. Some parable indeed.

This is what I'm doing on Friday. It's a crazy expensive ticket for a rep movie, but the price is right when it's for the right cause: it's hard to quantify just how much this film means to me. It was my first encounter with Shakespeare, Thoreau, Tennyson. My brother and I watched it a hundred times, my parents worried that Neil's suicide would make an impression on our far too young minds. It certainly did. But not as much as that central dictum: "carpe diem. seize the day. Make your life extraordinary." It should be no surprise to anybody who knows me well that I have suffered, and I have had therapy, and I was saved (temporarily, because it's a constant battle against that big black dog) from my own depression by the realisation that I misunderstood that idea. An extraordinary life doesn't mean success, wealth and fame, it doesn't mean triumph, boasting, power, measuring yourself against others. An extraordinary life is one spent believing that every day has something to offer, no matter how small or large. Fighting every day to keep going, be kind, stay open. Choosing to adjust navigation techniques depending on the ebb and flow. It's hard work, an extraordinary life. I will be able to quote along tomorrow, through some inevitable tears. So don't judge me if I give my hard-earned cash to Secret Cinema hipsters*, or I fall for the easy emotion of a celebrity death. I'm nothing but an idealist trying to grow up.  Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

* All profits from the screening are going to charity. There will be other screenings in different venues, to be announced on the Secret Cinema social channels.