Death in Venice – a fine adaptation of Mann's novella

It’s the last day of February – and therefore the last day of LGBT+ History Month – so to conclude my thematic viewing on that basis, a repeat watch of Luchino Visconti’s 1971 adaptation of Death in Venice.

Gustav von Aschenbach is a German composer in the early 20^th century. Suffering ill health, grief and a crisis in his work, he journeys to Venice to recover. At his hotel, he sees a beautiful young boy, Tadzio, and becomes utterly besotted. While never making verbal or physical contact, Aschenbach follows the boy and his family around, his own personal crises increasing rapidly, while at the same time, La Serenissima faces an increasing health problem.

The film is an adaptation of Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella, which I first read in 2001. A German friend had introduced me to Mann, recommending Buddenbrooks. Having read – and been captivated by that – I looked for more.

I knew the title of Death in Venice – but nothing more. I bought it, read the short stories that fill out most volumes and then the novella itself – albeit slowly. I was utterly blown away by the novella. Having spent the decades since my very late teens believing that Lord of the Rings was the greatest thing ever written, such a faith was utterly and irrevocably changed.

I have long attempted to write myself and, at that point, was doing so quite regularly. But I was stopped in my tracks by Death in Venice. My gods – you could do something like this in a ‘story’? The words wouldn’t come. It was some considerable time before I could even attempt fiction again.

Indeed, the Late OH and I were visiting friends on the west Irish coast, at the beginning of this century. We were walking by the sea, and I noticed that the wind was sending a fine spray of sand hovering horizontally above the beach itself – as if it were a sandy magic carpet. Desperate to describe to myself – and thereby understand – what I was seeing, suddenly the words started tumbling out of me again.

In 2010, the Late OH and I had done A Very Big Once-in-a-Lifetime Trip for his fifteeth: the Orient Express to Venice. I took a certain book by one Agatha Christie with me. When we visited again, in early 2017, I took the Mann, and sat reading it briefly on the beach in front of the hotel – Grand Hotel des Bains – in the film. It’s also the hotel in the novella, where Mann was staying when he was inspired to write it.

When my own fifteeth approached, it was a question of what I’d do. I decided that I wanted a brief trip abroad on my own, having never done so previously, for all sorts of reasons; fear and lack of money being primary.

I thought of cooking classes in Sicily and art schools in France. And found myself ultimately terrified. And then I reached a conclusion: Lübeck, where Mann himself had hailed from and where Günter Grass, another German literary laureate and personal hero, lived. And also, because the language beyond English that I know best is German, having been studying it in an – often random way – for a couple of decades now.

I recall sitting with a coffee, outside a cafe in old medieval Lübeck, blanket dove my knees (it was 'Baltic' cold!) and listening to a superb violinist play the adagiettio from Mahler's fifth symphony, an iconic piece of music that has becomes the film's theme.

That trip was a rite of passage – better late than never, I guess. But that’s an indicator of what Mann and his work means to me.

On my sixtieth birthday, in December 2022, The Late OH gave me a signed, English-language edition of three short stories by Mann. It meant – and means – so much.

I feel as though I’m going through another explosion of personal growth right now – akin with the language experience in Ireland. Watching Victim a couple of nights ago, and Death in Venice tonight, I seem to be seeing and reading more in films than I did previously. There are words in my head that would not have been in my useable vocabulary previously. Yet they’re there now. And a different way of seeing and reading is also there.

But enough of me. To the film itself. It is beautiful to watch – Pasqualino De Santis’s cinematography is wonderful. It frequently looks like an Impressionist painting. By the way, if you wonder if the green of the lagoon is accurate – yes, it is.

There are issues about how Björn Andrésen, who plays Tadzio, feels in retrospect about the film – to be clear, he has spoken of great discomfort etc, but never of any physical abuse from anyone involved in the making of it.

The film is not as subtle as Mann’s novella, but it is still a thing of great beauty – and a contemplation of beauty, and the debilitating sense of guilt about who you are at your most intrinsic level.

And then there is Dirk Bogarde as von Aschenbach. There is so little dialogue in the film as a whole, but Bogarde does so much with his facial expressions, including on some very, very long shots. It is a superb performance. And it is a superb film.

Victim: Dirk Bogarde helps the UK turn a corner on LGBT+ rights

This evening wasn’t the first time I’ve watched Basil Dearden’s 1961 noirish suspense film Victim, but there was so much more that I ‘saw’ and appreciated on a second viewing.

Melville Farr is a successful London barrister, married – apparently happily – to Laura. But he is drawn into a scandal when Jack ‘Boy’ Barrett, a young man he had had a secret romantic relationship with (not consummated) is arrested for stealing from his employer and hangs himself in a police cell rather than risk naming Farr under interrogation.

It emerges that Barrett was one of the victims of a gang of blackmailers targeting gay men – the reason for the thefts.

Yet ironically, when he’d tried to contact Farr for help, the barrister had refused his calls, assuming that they were attempts at blackmail.

When Farr learns of Barrett’s suicide, he decides that, whatever the personal cost – and there will be a large one – he will ensure justice is served on the blackmailers.

As with any form of culture, film has the power to change minds and inform debate, but with a wider reach than, say, theatre, its potential power is increased.

The influence of Victim can hardly be overstated.

It was written by Janet Green and John McCormick, after the former had read the 1957 Wolfenden Report, which had recommended that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence”.

Green already had ‘form’ for screenplays about social issues: the 1959 film Sapphire dealt with racism in London toward West Indian immigrants. She’d also penned the excellent 1950 thriller (which sadly seems to have been almost forgotten) The Clouded Yellow, starring Trevor Howard and Jean Simmons.

Victim, however, was of a different order – explicitly proselytising against the law, not least on the basis that, as Wolfenden had stated, the law as it stood was a “blackmailer’s charter”. It was to be hugely influential in changing attitudes so that homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967.

The film faced problems with censors in the UK and US. Yet it is not remotely voyeuristic or sensationalistic. It is, however, clearly sympathetic to its gay characters – and it is equally important in another context, in that they come from more than one social class and transverse that in their relationships.

Sylvia Syms turns in a really fine performance as Laura. In an indication of how difficult the subject was, the role had been turned down by a number of actors. But Syms had worked on stage with John Gielgud – an experience that had enlightened her about the impact of the law at that time – while she had also known a family friend who had ended their own life after being accused of being gay.

Peter McEnery gives a great turn as the vulnerable ‘Boy’ Barrett. As does Denis Price as the – closeted bisexual? – theatre star Calloway.

But this ultimately belongs to Dirk Bogarde as Farr. Gay himself – but never out – he apparently leapt at the chance, after several other stars had turned the role down (including James Mason and Stewart Granger). It transformed him from a matinée idol who had played romantic, comedy and action leads, to an art-house, European and intellectual film star.

It is a searing performance. If you have only ever seen Bogarde in one of the Doctor films, alongside the likes of James Robertson Justice and Leslie Phillips, then this will be a revelation.

While remaining silent about his own personal life, it was not the only gay role Bogarde played. In Luchino Visconti‘s 1971 adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novella, Death in Venice, he held centre stage again as the gay Gustav von Aschenbach.

Victim is not only a genuinely good film – it is also a very socially significant film. If you haven’t already, check it out.

 

A film about religious difference transcends religion

It’s early 2005 and Jorge Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, travels to the Vatican after the death of Pope John Paul II in order to elect a new pope. Joseph Ratzinger – arch-Catholic conservative and inheritor of the mantle of grand inquisitor – is elected.

He treats Bergoglio with disdain, but the religiously liberal – and certainly sharing many of the core ideas of liberation theology – Argentine is the only real challenger to the Bavarian’s ascent.

Some years later, Bergoglio travels to Rome to ask permission to resign as an archbishop and return to being a parish priest.

He is astonished to find that he had booked his flight before receiving a letter from Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict XVI – calling him to the Vatican.

They meet at the pope’s summer residence, the luxurious Palace of Castel Gandolfo, where they engage in theological debate, with Benedict tetchily disagreeing with every point that Bergoglio makes.

Yet in the evening, after dinner – which Benedict always takes alone – a thaw begins as they move away from the theological and into a more personal socialisation.

However, scandal – financial and in terms off sex abuse – has been hovering over the church. And the next day, after Benedict is called back to Rome as matters worsen, Bergoglio is told to meet him there the following morning.

The Two Popes is a 2019 film, written by Anthony McCarten, adapted from his own play, The Pope.

It’s been argued that it’s easy to see its theatrical origins, but Fernando Meirelles’s direction and Céasar Charlone’s cinematography ensure that it doesn’t feel static or stagebound.

Having come from a very conservatively religious background myself (albeit from a different Christian denomination), and having gone through a fundamentalist, evangelical religious period in my teens (embarrassingly, I tried to ‘convert’ fellow pupils in the lunch break), I don’t think this will upset anyone of faith, unless they are particularly unyielding in terms of a single perspective or interpretation.

Equally, I came to it today as someone who no longer has a faith and whose background was very much anti-Catholic – though my clergyman father loved nothing better than sharing whiskey with the local priest in our time in a Pennine mill town, a relationship that was far more friendly to him than any with an Anglican cleric.

It feels apt to say here that my own journey was slow. I drifted first from evangelical fervour to fairly high Anglicanism (I liked the theatre of it).

A few years further on, travelling on a train within the outer reaches of London and sporting badges on my jacket representing the Communist Party of Britain, a Christian fish symbol (ichthys) and a green star, I was challenged by another passenger as to what that all meant. I replied that I thought of myself as a “green, Christian communist”. So yes, I know what ‘liberation theology’ means.

He had an unopened can of beer and gave it to me, getting off at the next station.

Some years later, filling out the census, I realised, with a certain amount of surprise, that I had no faith left. Under no pressure, it had dissipated. Like the smoke from the extinguished candles in this film.

A period of Dawkinesque detestation of organised religion followed, but thankfully that too dissipated quickly. Now, I can happily visit churches (not – yet – a mosque, synagogue or temple) and always do so quietly and with respect. Apart from anything else, I actually take off the inevitable hat I will be wearing.

Though isn’t that strange? When my mother married my father, women going to church would be expected to wear a hat – and keep it on (an echo of the ‘modesty’ expected in the more conservative realms of Christianity’s fellow Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Islam). Yet I always take mine off in a church – whether in the UK or abroad. It’s a very basic sign of respect for me.

As the protagonists of this film discuss, ‘times change’.

This is essentially an intellectual/theological two-hander conversation – and it’s really engaging as that. The time doesn’t feel strained.

Anthony Hopkins as Ratzinger/Benedict – as with so much work he has done late in his career – is nuanced and fantastic. There is also massive credit to be paid to Juan Minujín, who plays Bergoglio in earlier years.

However, Jonathon Pryce as Bergoglio (later, Pope Francis) arguably gives the finest film performance of his career. The pain, the guilt (over his own actions during the time of the Argentinian military junta) are clearly covered – and are very, very moving.

This really is an excellent film. Available on Netflix, it is very much worth a watch.

Zone of Interest: A haunting look at casual barbarism

Jonathon Glazer’s acclaimed film, The Zone of Interest, is about the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, who lives right next door to the camp, where he and his wife Hedwig have built an idyllic family life.

Based loosely on Martin Amis’s novel of the same name, it creates an incredibly effective picture of the casual barbarism. On Höss’s birthday, for instance, he holds a meeting with engineers to discuss plans for more effective crematoria at the camp, before being toasted by his fellow officers and enjoying cake with his family later that day.

 

Hedwig is more than happy to receive clothes taken from camp inmates. We see her try on a fur coat and, finding a lipstick in one pocket, try that too.

 

Her visiting mother muses, almost jokingly, whether a Jewish woman she knew, and whose book events she attended, had been sent to Auschwitz. And in a throw-away comment, she notes that she was out-bid for the woman’s curtains in a street sale.

 

It is the normalisation of the dehumanisation that’s vital for genocide.

 

Repeatedly, the camera tracks a figure down one length of the vast garden, alongside the wall of the camp, with its buildings, chimneys and guard towers rising above.

 

Hedwig happily takes her youngest child around the magnificent garden, introducing her to flowers, while in the distance, we hear the sounds of the camp.

 

Glazer didn’t want to show the inside of Auschwitz – and he doesn’t have to for the film to convey a real sense of horror.

 

Sound designer Johnnie Burn put together a 600-page document in order to understand the camp layout and witness statements, together with a sound library that included the sounds of crematoria, machinery, historically correct gunfire, cries of pain and trains.

 

It is a soundscape that means however perfect the Höss family’s life looks, the viewer can never see it without being reminded that it happened within earshot of industrial mass murder – and that they all choose to ignore this.

 

And then there are the two central performances. Christian Friedel as Höss is so utterly engrossed in work that it is a mission – no matter the horrific reality of it, and Friedel portrays him as cold when on that mission, yet a dedicated and loving father. Sandra Hüller as his wife is also superb – little wonder that she has picked up a raft of award nominations – as a woman who is happy to bring up her children in such proximity to mass murder.

 

Łukasz Żal’s cinematography is deceptively simple – almost ‘flat’. Yet the look works incredibly well.

 

Glazer – who also wrote the film – has received nominations too. The film itself has already picked up awards, including the unique double of best British film and best film not in the English language at the recent Baftas.

 

Burn, together with Tarn Willers, have also been rewarded for the sound.

 

It is in many ways a very calm film, but most certainly not a comfortable one. It is, without doubt, an extraordinary piece of filmmaking that will not be easy to forget.

Orlando – throughly entertaining queerness

It was time for another spot of film catch-up this evening – and back to an effort at being thematic for LGBT+ History Month – with a first viewing of Sally Potter’s 1992 adaptation of Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel of the same name.

The film opens in 1600, with aristocratic youth Orlando pondering over his loneliness and his desire to write poetry. When his family is visited by Elizabeth I, the aged monarch takes to him, making him her “mascot” and granting him property and money. There’s one condition: “Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old”, she orders.

In the novel, there is no explanation of how Orlando becomes immortal, but Potter added this to the film to suggest how this occurs, feeling that a cinema audience would need at least a hint.\

As part of the wider court of James I, he becomes utterly besotted with Sasha, a beautiful Cossack, who is visiting with her father. But when she dumps him, he’s left to muse on the “treachery” of women.

Time passes and, in the 18^th century, the eternally unchanging Orlando – nobody ever comments on this, ‘because it’s England’ – is appointed ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. There he enjoys a brotherly friendship with the Khan, before participating in a battle.

Shocked at seeing his first violent death, he flees and falls into a deep sleep for seven days. On waking, he discovers that he has become a she. Heading back to England, Orlando is stripped of her home on the basis of being a woman – and thus effectively “legally dead”.

Somehow, she continues living there until the time of Victoria, where she has an accidental meeting with Shelmerdine, an American revolutionary, with whom she enjoys a passionate fling, before he departs for home. She refuses to join him – and muses on the “treachery” of men – before her life takes her into the 20^th century, through the mud of Flanders and beyond, to 1990s London, where she has a young daughter.

It's not a devastating script, but there is wit – not least in the wonderful to-camera shots of Tilda Swinton as Orlando, where Potter has her break the fourth wall.

It is beautifully shot – cinematography was by Alexsei Rodionov – and beyond Swinton’s fabulous performance, which really grounds the film, it has a wonderful ensemble cast.

Billy Zane posts a nice turn as Shelmerdine, but one of the real joys here is Quentin Crisp as Elizabeth I – “the Queen of Queens”, according to Potter – which also adds to the queerness of the whole thing.

Then there’s Jimmy Sommerville, Kathryn Hunter, Simon Russell Beale and Toby Jones among many other familiar faces, while John Wood provides a delightful cameo as a bumptious, elderly archduke who falls for Orlando.

Potter’s direction moves things at a nice pace – easy to expect an epic, given the century-spanning scale of the story – but it’s just 93 minutes. She also wrote the screenplay and the music (the latter, along with David Motion and, for one song, Sommerville).

It’s thoroughly entertaining – and with the added spice of the gender politics, not least in terms of the differing attitudes toward men and women throughout history.

And as Vogue put it in 2020: “Nearly three decades later, Sally Potter's Orlando is more topical than ever”.

My Neighbour Totoro – taking joyful to the extreme

Back in mid-autumn, as I was coming out of the initial dark phase of my partner of 34-plus years having died, I started rather frenetically booking cultural events. The quoted reviews on the trailer for the return of the RSC production of My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican particularly caught my eye. One, from The Stage, declared that it was a “huge healing hug of a show”.

Got me right there. I had no knowledge of Studio Ghibli or any of its films, but a “healing hug” sounded like a bloody good idea! I bought a ticket.

I mentioned this to my niece who, while envious of the theatre ticket, told me in no uncertain terms to ‘see the film first’.

Then, as we neared Christmas, I saw cinema trailers for a new Studio Ghibli film, The Boy and the Heron. It looked worth watching – so I made it the centre of my Boxing Day. And was blown away.

I subsequently ordered Tortoro and Spirited Away on discs – better than streaming, not least given the home cinema set-up I have.

Spirited Away was the centrepiece of my New Year’s Day – and I loved it.

And so I came to watching Totoro this evening, as my theatre date with the Japanese troll is on Monday.

Wow – just wow.

It’s set in 1950s Japan, where kind university professor Tatsuo Kusakabe and his daughters Satsuki and Mei (10 and four years old, respectively) move into an old house in a rural environment, close to a hospital where their mother is recovering from a long-term illness.

The children start seeing – and interacting with – varied sprites and supernatural beings, including Totoro, a giant (fluffy) troll.

There are familiar themes from the Ghibli films I’ve previously seen: children finding themselves in new environments after a move; lonely, disoriented and distressed by family loss; nature, adventures that lead to supernatural encounters.

It is a short film (blessings be upon the studio!) but absolutely gorgeous and utterly joyful! By the end, I had tears streaming down my face while also wearing a Cheshire cat (like the cat bus) grin.

Directed and co-written by Hayao Miyazaki, it is an absolute joy. Wondrous.

Prussianism meets lesbianism in 1931 school drama

In Mädchen in Uniform, the apparently difficult Manuela von Meinhardis (‘you’re big for 14’ – ‘I’m 14 and a half’), whose mother died when she was young and whose father serves in the Prussian military, is enrolled by her aunt at an all-girls boarding school headed by strict disciplinarian Fräulein von Nordeck zur Nidden.

An emotional child, she is drawn to teacher Fräulein von Bernburg, who has a considerably kinder attitude toward the girls than the head and the rest of the teaching staff.

 

But while most of the girls have a crush on the teacher, for Manuela it becomes more serious, with hints too of the same from Fräulein von Bernburg.

 

While this is a film from Germany’s extraordinary Weimar era, you probably won’t guess at how it works itself out.

 

Written by Christa Winsloe (with FD Andam and based on Winsloe’s own play, Gestern und heute – Yesterday and Today), it’s set firmly at the start of the 20^th century.

 

The themes are clear – from the head’s austere version of “Prussianism”, insisting that even if the school is struggling financially and the girls go hungry as a result, “poverty is not a sin; poverty enobles”; that the girls come from military and aristocratic stock and will, ‘God willing’, become mothers to more Prussian soldiers.

 

“Discipline and order” are paramount here.

 

None of this is far-fetched. I went to the state Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School in the late 1970s and into the 1980s – and the head in this film reminds me absolutely of our head then, Miss Owen (albeit the film version is infinitely thinner) with her deputy, Mrs Rigby, reminiscent of Fräulein von Kesten, a smarmy adjutant.

 

It is a remarkable film that I ‘discovered’ via a BFI list of 30 best LGBT+ films.

Directed by Leontine Sagan – her first film – and with an all-female cast, it’s astonishingly filmed, remarkably naturalistic – yet with nods to the visual look of German Expressionism – and wonderfully acted. The stand-out performances are from Hertha Thiele as Manuela, Dorothea Wieck as Fräulein von Bernburg and Emilia Unda as the headmistress.

A really powerful lesbian film for LGBT+ History Month.

Andrew McMillan's debut novel, Pity, packs a big punch

Pity, award-winning poet Andrew McMillian’s debut novel, is, at under 200 pages, feels hardly much longer than the archetypal ‘slender volume of verse’ –  but don’t let that deceive you, because this packs a powerful punch.

Set in a former mining village near Barnsley (where the author hails from), it tells the story of the men of three generations of the Banks family: Brian, his sons Brian and Alex, and Alex’s son, Simon.

The brothers had followed their father down the mines – there being little alternative at the time. Simon, born into an era after the miners’ strike and the pit closures, works in a call centre by day and as a drag performer at night. He has recently started a relationship with Ryan, a security guard in a local shopping centre who wants to become a policeman.

A group of patronising, nameless academics, spending time in the village to record the memories of those who lived through the tumultuous 1980s, observe that the years since the strike have seen almost every trace of the industry that once sustained have been obliterated.

And they are bemused that the locals they talk to are reluctant to talk of those times – and not least of a disaster that hit one of the local pits.

McMillian tells his story in sparing terms – though throughout the book, there are brief sections that describe the local men leaving their homes in the morning to go to work, over and over; the grim reality of the ride down the pit shaft in the cage, and the bleak, dangerous work, as the coal dust works its way into the lungs of the miners.

These sections have an incredible poetic quality. Not that they romanticise the industry – quite the opposite. It feels like a nod to WWI poetry.

In the first such section, as the men walk to their work, McMillan writes: “The village, on their shoulder now, still asleep, not watching the migration of tired bodies. One of the men once said that he thought he could hear the coal ticking. Another man told him to stop talking daft. And beneath their feet, a mile down, history; waiting to be hacked into chunks and pulled out.”

It’s a motif that is repeated with slight variations throughout.

Part of the power of the novel is that it doesn’t pander to any sentimental attachment to the industry – or indeed, to the strike – while also portraying the contemporary world of work as far from perfect.

It also doesn’t seek our ‘pity’ and portrays the men as strong, yet also vulnerable and flawed.

There is little in these crucial passages to suggest that any of the men would regret not having to trudge to the mine. Yes, there’s an element of community, but it comes across more as something comparable to men going into battle rather than something remotely joyous.

And within this context, McMillian makes a wider exploration of male identity, community, relationships, sexuality and fear. In maintaining an emotional distance from his characters, he has increased the power of this. And in a splendid example of how this can work (see Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice), by the end you really do care about these men.

This is a seriously good novel about working-class, male experience in the late 20^th and early 21^st century. Very much worth reading.

Perfect Perfect Days – an absolutely glorious new film from Wim Wenders

Perfect Days is the latest film from veteran German auteur Wim Wenders. It premiered at last year’s Cannes Festival, picking up two prizes, including best actor for Kôji Yakusho.

It has been nominated for best international feature at the forthcoming Academy Awards, becoming the first film not directed by a Japanese director to be nominated as the Japanese entry.

So ahead of the film opening in the UK on 23 of February, it’s easy to see why there are serious expectations.

Middle-aged Hirayama works cleaning public toilets in Tokyo – a job that he takes great care and pride in. His life is a simple and highly ritualised one. He hardly ever speaks, but is polite, respectful, helpful to – and concerned about – everyone he comes into contact with.

Beyond his job, he enjoys listening to music on old-fashioned cassettes, takes care of a small indoor garden of tiny, potted trees and reads literary books each night in his humble and simple home. He eats, bathes and takes his lunch in the same places – the latter, in a park, where he photographs the trees on a compact, non-digital camera that he buys a new roll of film for on his day off once a week. On that same day off, he visits the same small bar.

The first part of Wenders’s film shows us this is extraordinary detail, where it acts, in effect, as a meditation on meditation – a film about living as mindfully as possible and taking pleasure in the simple things in life. There is something of the monk’s life about Hirayama. But there is a constant of joy constantly found in the smallest things.

However, when Hirayama’s carefully structured life is disturbed, we start to learn – obliquely, leaving the viewer to draw conclusions and realise the pain that is present – that he must have had a previous life that was quite different to the one he’s living now.

The film had an extraordinary conception. Wenders was approached by the Tokyo Toilet project to visit a city he loves and to make small documentaries about the project, which had seen top architects design 17 public toilets in the Shibuya district of the city – architecture being another Wenders passion.

Visiting to see said toilets, Wenders decided a fictional feature film would be a better way to showcase the new conveniences – and he convinced the project leaders that he could make such on a small budget and film it in the same 16 days they’d factored in for the mini docs.

The result is quite extraordinary – hugely dependent on an astonishingly beautiful performance from Yakusho as Hirayama.

Wenders wrote the film alongside Takuma Takasaki, with Frank Lustig as cinematographer.

The toilets themselves are obviously crucial to this – and they are quite extraordinary pieces of civic architecture. Yet even as the camera explores them in detail – and although they were prime motivation for the film – they never threaten to overwhelm it.

And Wenders pays as much care and attention to the Tokyo urbanscape in general, so often coming back to focus on the city’s Skytree tower, which seems to be at the hub of a physical circle within which Hirayama lives and works. This is, in part, a love letter to the city and to its culture. And that culture is absolutely a working-class culture.

There is also a thread that runs through the film, between the days, of B&W images of Hirayama’s dreams, created by Donata Wenders.

And then there is the soundtrack, from The Animals to Patti Smith to Nina Simone – and a couple of Japanese tracks, including a Japanese cover of The House of the Rising Sun – and an absolute needle drop of Lou Reed’s Perfect Day.

It’s two hours long. You might think that, from my description here, it sounds a tad tedious. Funnily enough, I saw it last night at a press screening, courtesy of a friend, who before it started, was bemoaning a film they’d seen earlier that day by a favourite director, which was an example of slow cinema and had prompted the comment that perhaps that type of film was done for.

This, on the other hand, is mesmerising, beautiful cinema. Wenders has, one critic noted, made his “lifetime masterpiece”.

And I will reiterate: Yakusho’s performance is simply outstanding. And yes – that includes an incredible final shot. This is amazing filmmaking.

Interview with Wim Wenders

Guardian architecture feature about the Tokyo toilets

New Yorker interview with Wim Wenders

Beryl Reid kills it as a sadistic lesbian in '60s London

Robert Aldrich’s 1968 film, The Killing of Sister George, was based on a 1964 stage play of the same name, by Frank Marcus. That was a black comedy, but the movie was sold much more a as a “shocking drama” – 'melodrama' would be more accurate – with a far greater explicitness about the lesbian relationships that are a central feature than the original.

As a result, it struggled to get past the censors on both sides of the Atlantic, while some reviews were deeply critical, with at least one accusing Aldrich of ‘coarsening’ a subtle play.

It’s become more critically appreciated as time has passed – and it seems a fair bet that that’s largely a consequence of considerably greater acceptance of lesbianism within our society, but in 1968 – only a year after decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK (lesbianism had never been illegal) – the very blunt portrayal of a toxic lesbian relationship must have had a lot more power to shock that it does today.

Middle-aged actor June Buckridge plays ‘Sister George’, a lovable district nurse in a fictional, long-running BBC television soap opera, Applehurst. Off screen, she’s the opposite of her much-loved character – gobby and coars; a cigar-smoking heavy drinker; masculine in appearance and with a decidedly sadistic side to her.

We see that particularly in her relationship with her younger live-in lover, Alice. But if tensions in their relationship already exist, June’s problems are exacerbated by her fears that her character is going to be killed off – worries that are not helped by her own behaviour, including toward TV producer Mrs Croft, as she spirals out of control.

It’s a fascinating watch for all sorts of reasons. Joseph F Biroc’s cinemaphotography is very stagey in places, but at others, it’s quite exhilarating. The opening title shots, as June walks home along a series of streets, are really impressive.

There’s an interesting costume contrast here that illustrates the – apparent – power dynamics between June and Alice: the former in a heavy, brown tweed suit standing over the latter in pink baby doll pyjamas. It would be more than a bit of a cliché now, but was probably quite powerful at the time, as would have been the couple's appearance at a lesbian party in male drag.

But the film really relies on the three central performances. Coral Browne is in steely form as the apparently conventional Mrs Croft, while Susannah York as Alice is both believably childlike and vulnerable, but convincingly hard-nosed when required.

Having created the role on stage – and won a Tony when the play transferred to Broadway – Beryl Reid was no shoe-in for the screen version, with Bette Davis and Angela Lansbury both being offered it. I love both of them, but thank goodness Reid got it. It’s a barnstormer of a performance, not least in the convincing way she portrays not only June, but in the contrasting Sister George.

You can see why Aldrich wanted Davis, having worked with her on his 1962 camp classic, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? – and this film has a sense of the same macabre camp – but casting Reid was absolutely the right decision.

Well worth seeking it out if you haven’t seen it – and not least in LGBT+ History Month.

The Royal Tenenbaums – an absolute catch-up joy

Playing catch-up again, I started the weekend – and it’s going to be a fairly busy (for me) few days of film watching – with sticking a disc on to watch Wes Anderson’s 2001 The Royal Tenenbaums for the first time.

Tony and my first encounter with Anderson’s utterly individual style was via a disc of Grand Budapest Hotel, on the particularly enthusiastic recommendation of a friend/colleague who is also a part-time film critic (and is taking me to a critics’ screening next week).

We were seriously impressed – so much so that we saw the next three Anderson releases in the cinema.

And as that implies, we continued to like – and increasingly ‘get’ – what we were seeing; not least, in terms of Anderson’s cinematic vernacular.

Early this evening, half an hour after finishing work, after feeding Otti cat and doing a bit of house work, I popped a Blu-ray of Tenenbaums into the slot and sat back with a tumbler of Hotel Chocolat chocolate salted caramel vodka.

It’s brilliant – I mean the film (though the booze is excellent too).

A family with Royal Anderson at the head is full of success and childhood genius, yet falls from that with bickering, betrayal, deceit and also the sheer fear of others knowing the truth.

The style is totally Anderson: colour palettes, mannered dialogue, short scenes as ‘chapters’, dysfunctional relationships, narration, and an incredible ensemble cast.

Gene Hackman, as the titular Royal Anderson, is arguably not an obvious Anderson-type actor, but gives a superb performance in one of the last films before his retirement. Such a great contrast to the likes of Popeye Doyle. Without doubt one of the finest of his career.

Angelica Huston as his wife is also simply wonderful, bringing a contrasting quietness to this central relationship.

I was astonished to learn that Owen Wilson co-wrote the script with Anderson as well as playing a significant role. Until relatively recently, I’d only seen trailers of Wilson in films that looked (to me) like they were a waste of time – until Tony and I saw him in the first season of Loki. And were a tad re-educated. Here – never mind finding his CV credentials being buffed by his writing credit, it’s also a very good performance, and he looks … well … buff’.

Possibly the best I’ve ever seen Gwyneth Paltrow; Bill Murray is lovely, subtle and warm in his role, and Danny Glover adds real dignity, grace and warmth too.

I realise I haven’t mentioned Ben Stiller, who in general, I feel an active dislike for on the basic of what I see as, being in infantile bollocks. I was moving to that view here. Until late on, when he showed the ability to move from the least nuanced character to one experiencing a real revelation.

Luke Wilson too, is less well known than his brother. But really does give a great performance in this as the desperately unhappy tennis genius.

Funny and moving. Absolutely loved it. What a great start to the weekend!

 

All of Us Strangers – a moving meditation on relationships

Adam is a middle-aged screenwriter living on his own in an almost-deserted new tower block in London, from where he can gaze down and across the city, a reflection of his lifelong loneliness.

Struggling with his latest project, he becomes aware of another resident on a lower floor. When Harry turns up at his door, drunk, with a bottle of Japanese whisky, and propositions him, Adam is quick to rebuff.

The next day, he takes a train and visits the home where he lived until he was 12, when his parents died in a car crash. There he finds it completely unchanged – and his parents are living there, frozen at the ages they were when they died.

Between increasingly frequent visits, as his parents get to know their adult son, Adam begins a relationship with Harry, where they share not only sex, but a tentative exploration of their emotions and fears.

Director and screenwriter Andrew Haigh’s feted film is based on the 1987 novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada and is a quiet and very still meditation not only on grief, but also isolation and the fear of rejection within all our relationships.

Inevitably, given that Adam and Harry are gay – as is Haigh himself – the issue of coming out and acceptance (or lack) of being LGBT is a central part of this meditation and the script allows for an exploration of changing attitudes toward sexuality, from the time when Adam’s parents were alive to the present day (including generational differences of using gay’ or ‘queer’ to self-describe).

Weighing in with the look back to the 1980s is the use of pop hits from Adam’s childhood – Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s The Power of Love is an absolute needle drop here – but the likes of Alison Moyet and The Pet Shop Boys are further musical pleasures that also work as a musical counterpoint to the bitterness of an era of Section 28 and the Aids panic.

Jamie D Ramsey’s cinematography adds a sense of unreality to this unconventional ghost story with his use of soft focus in places throughout.

Beautifully paced, this is a four-hander, with Andrew Scott in superb form as Adam, his silences every bit as effective as his words.

Paul Mescal as Harry is in fine form, revealing the character’s vulnerability and tenderness.

Jamie Bell and Claire Foy are wonderful as Adam’s parents, in tricky roles that could have been clunky stereotypes reflecting those ’80s attitudes.

The central pairing raises some interesting questions about current conversations on casting: should only actors who understand the ‘lived reality’ be cast as, say, LGBT, disabled or some ethnic characters?

Here, Scott is gay, but Pascal is not. If you go down that route, would it logically follow that, for example, Dev Patel should not have played David Copperfield? I’ll leave that with you.

In the meantime, All of Us Strangers is a very moving and thought-provoking film that never descends into sentimentality or simplistic tropes. And perfect for LGBT+ History Month.

Lady Day – a delight that avoids all the obvious tropes

Greta Gerwig’s 2017 feature debut, the comedy-drama coming-of-age feature Lady Bird, is a delight.

Catching up on the director/writer’s back catalogue after seeing Barbie just before Christmas, I managed, on the one hand to wonder how I missed it at the time, but also to feel joy that I can have that experience now.

Christine McPherson is in her final year at a Catholic high school in Sacramento, California. Her family is struggling financially  and her relationship with her mother is particularly strained – she refuses to call herself by her given name, but calls herself instead, ‘Lady Bird’ – but she harbours dreams of getting a place at a prestigious East Coast college, where there’s some ‘culture’.

That might sound like a wide open door for tropes and cliches, but Gerwig takes it and makes it into something so much more complex and emotionally satisfying.

It benefits from an excellent supporting cast – not least Timothée Chalomet, Bernie Feldstein, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith and Lucas Hedges.

But Saoirse Ronan as the titular character and Laurie Metcalf as her mother, Marion, take it to a new level.

A late scene has the camera hold on Metcalf’s face for an age, as her character comes to an emotional realisation – it is a wonderful scene from actor and director alike and just one example amid many.

Absolutely no wonder that it has garnered so many awards and such praise.