Category Archives: Films

Barry Lyndon (1975)

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Director Stanley Kubrick with Ryan O’Neal

I remember when this came out; the media were full of it – as they had been with The Great Gatsby the previous year. There was little chance of my seeing either film at the time; I wasn’t fussed about Gatsby, but Barry Lyndon sounded fascinating. So long in the making (and so long in the watching!), the technical difficulty of shooting “by candlelight”, so many extravagant scenes and so many extras, and so many publicity stills that made it look unlike any other film. (Some stills came back to me as I watched the film.) Given that my experience of films then was basically what was shown on television, that was hardly surprising. (Although it did give me a good grounding in westerns, the Hollywood classics and war films.)

So, finally, after 50 years I got to see it on a big screen. It is slow, detached, painterly, amoral, brutal, farcical and tragic all at once. Full of familiar faces on screen for short cameos. I shall not forget in a hurry Leonard Rossiter dancing a jig in thigh-high black boots. The scene where Lady Lyndon encounters Barry for the first time is just wonderful: the lighting, the colour, and such restrained expression in the faces of Murray Melvin and Marisa Berenson. Norma Desmond would have given top marks for their eye work. Acting is done by looks and action/stillness as much as words; Ryan O’Neal is a constant presence, but more often seen than heard. It’s as if figures in half-remembered paintings by Hogarth or Rembrandt come to life to hold the stage for a while and then step back into their frames to the accompaniment of Handel or Mozart.

Had I seen it 50 years ago I think I would have found it overlong and its tone incomprehensible. It was definitely worth waiting for.

As an aside: I have been pondering on male dominance in the external world until very recently, and here is yet another example after Key Largo and The Return. (Gross generalisation alert, obvs.) So much fighting (both in the Seven Years War and informally) and yet more shoot-outs – here the duels that bookend Barry’s career from farce to tragedy. So many images and actions that were once the norm – here the bare-knuckle fight with the regimental heavy. All these might now come under the heading of “toxic masculinity”, but perhaps another way of looking at them is as a signifier of underlying violence in the world.

I see why I so often read female novelists.

Key Largo (1948)

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Director John Huston with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G Robinson

Not wise-cracking characters along the lines of “The Big Sleep” as I was expecting: Bogart was polite and self-effacing, and Bacall was a domesticated widow with a bit of a temper. Only Robinson played true to form: the embodiment of every unhinged bad guy from Nero onwards. The film was adapted from a play – which was obvious from its uneasy juxtaposition of a hostage-scenario-in-a-hurricane with wordy disillusionment at the way the post-war world had turned out. Despite all the death and destruction, pre-war gangsters like Rocco were still around, still thriving, and looking to pull the strings of politicians. Just like Odysseus though, the hero rediscovered his sense of honour and wiped out the baddies single-handedly in yet another shoot-out.

And it worked, despite the well-worn path to the final credits. I was intrigued enough by the characters and the action to be hooked; the pace was tense, and the sense of disenchantment gave it a greater depth than a standard film noir.

Following (1999)

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Director Christopher Nolan with Jeremy Theobald

Short, shoe-string, B&W and twisty. Typical Nolan non-linear narrative (you had to check the haircut) and very well-crafted. A young man spirals into gangland nastiness while looking for material for his book. I could be sniffy about plot holes, but while I was watching I was gripped and didn’t care. It unlocked a sense of nostalgia too: remembering when CDs were the norm – never mind worth stealing – and credit cards had to be ironed under carbon paper slips and signed.

The Return

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Director Uberto Pasolini with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche

Odysseus’s return to Ithaca after 20 years away, a broken man washed up on a mismanaged island. Fiennes and Binoche were brilliant, making scenes their own. Other parts though were underwritten and would have been more at home in a film with special effects by Ray Harryhausen. It was strong on the long-lasting horrors of war – for Odysseus, who lost all the men under his command, and for Penelope, abandoned and fearful of the atrocities that her husband might have been involved in. Of course, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do and so there was a shoot-out – just like any western or gangster film. Except that Homer got there first, and we’ve been reading and watching that story ever since.

Postscript: I suddenly remembered life after the warrior’s return in One Fine Day. I can’t imagine Odysseus pitching into the washing-up, and he certainly wouldn’t have had a “servant problem”!

Hundreds of Beavers

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Director Mike Cheslik with Ryland Tews

I was feeling under the weather so this was perfect viewing. Wonderfully silly and inventive. I don’t imagine I caught all the influences: it had the look of an early silent movie mixed with Bugs Bunny, Charlie Chaplin, slapstick, James Bond . . . and even Monty Python’s fish-slapping dance. Shades too of Wallace and Gromit. There was a kind of a plot involving fur-trapping and beavers building a space rocket. Unforgettable scenes included huskies playing poker by a hurricane lamp each evening – the sole survivor reduced to playing solitaire as the big bad wolves picked off the team one by one each night.

Paterson (2016)

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Director Jim Jarmusch with Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani

One of those films where practically nothing happens. (The one potentially dramatic incident is over in seconds and was not as life-threatening as it seemed at first.) It’s a week in the life of a bus driver called Paterson living in the town of Paterson – one of many mirrorings/twinnings in the film. He drives the same route every day, overhears conversations, writes poetry in a notebook and admires William Carlos Williams – who also wrote an epic poem, “Paterson”, about the city.

The film is a kind of poetic depiction of ordinary life as experienced by kindly, gentle people. They have their pleasures, their interests and their dreams which may never be fulfilled but are nonetheless fulfilling. The camera moves slowly and I had to rein in any impatience. Paterson’s (unimpressive) poems are an essential part of him – just as painting everything black and white is important to his wife. Theirs is a very loving, gentle relationship; her ambitions are a bit flaky (cup cake queen or country and western singer? . . . decisions, decisions), but she is not unsuccessful. The dog (who deserves his own Oscar) destroys Paterson’s notebook of poems, and for a while there is a sense of loss – until a chance encounter sets him back on his path.

In many ways it’s a film that transcends the quotidian life it depicts – like Perfect Days or Nomadland. Unlike some films – I’m thinking of Jeanne Dielman – there seemed to be no underlying ideology/political message. It wasn’t a Ken Loach film about a bus driver. It was about ordinary people and their relationships with other ordinary people and the world around them.

Sister Midnight

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Director Karan Kandhari with Radhika Apte

Rather like The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, this was a film about someone pitchforked into a totally alien environment – here, an arranged marriage and life in Mumbai. The similarity ended there. This was visually bold, energetic, macabre; it had memorable images, a wonderful soundtrack, an actress who dominated the screen. . . but, withal, I thought it was disjointed, even though it began and ended with train journeys. Superficial, lacking coherence and running out of steam long before the end.