Kensuke's Kingdom is pitch-perfect film-making

Initially premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June 2023, before being seen at last October’s BFI London Film Festival, this film based on Michael Morpurgo’s children’s book – originally published in 1999 – has now made its way to a more general release.

It tells the story of Michael, an 11-year-old boy, who sets off with his parents and older sister on a sailing trip around the world, after Mum and Dad both lose their jobs.

But Michael is less than happy – not least as his beloved sheepdog, Stella, has had to stay at home, or so we are initially led to believe.

One night, as a storm rages, Michael and Stella are washed overboard, only to wake on an apparently uninhabited desert island.

However, they find help – albeit reluctantly – from Kensuke, an elderly Japanese man who was washed up on the island decades before. Gradually their relationship evolves, as Michael learns to respect and value the environment he finds himself in, together with its wildlife, which Kensuke helps to protect. And as we discover, there are varied reasons it needs protection.

It's an excellent screenplay by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who has changed aspects of the original novel, but which certainly make sense here. For instance, in the book, the two central protagonists learn to speak each other’s language. Here, they learn only each other’s name, with communication being based more on emotion and expression.

There is also a love of art that they share and helped them learn about each other.

And their art allows the animators to be incredibly creative, from Michael’s log-book drawings coming to life on an origami boat that moves around a map of the world, to an extraordinary sequence of Japanese-inspired ink works that give the audience an insight into Kensuke’s own past.

The animation is superb – hand-drawn and combining 2D and 3D styles, which hark back to early Disney: think the 1937 Snow White and Bambi, both with lush painted backgrounds and 2D characters. As touched on above, here, there is a melding of different approaches throughout and including some simply beautiful vistas.

Directed by Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry and with a super score by Stuart Hancock, it comes in at a very pleasingly trim 85 minutes.

In terms of the voice cast, Sally Hawkins is Mum, Cillian Murphy is Dad, and Raffey Cassidy is Becky, Michael’s sister.

But the film rests firmly with Michael and Kensuke, and Aaron MacGregor and Ken Watanabe get it absolutely nailed on.

Kensuke’s Kingdom is a beautiful film – both to look at and in terms of its humanity, compassion, exploration of what family/community means, and its advocacy for the natural world.

Very, very much worth seeing.

Love Lies Bleeding: A taut, sexy thriller

It’s 1989 in a small town in America: Louise ‘Lou’ Langston is the manager of a gym, where she spends an inordinate amount of time unblocking toilets and has a sideline in dealing steroids. But change is in the air when Jackie Cleaver hitches into town on her way to a bodybuilding contest in Las Vegas, and walks into the gym to keep up her training regime.

Lou is instantly smitten. After she rescues Jackie from a homophobic incident outside the gym, she takes her back to her own home. Since Jackie plans on staying until it’s almost time for the competition, she takes a job at a local gun range, not knowing that it’s owned by Lou’s father, Lou Langston Snr, who also runs a violent criminal enterprise.

Also employed at the range is JJ, the husband of Lou’s sister, Beth, who is violently abusive to his wife. After another violent episode, things get out of hand, with huge ramifications for Lou and Jackie.

Directed by Rose Glass from a screenplay that she co-wrote with Weronika Tofilska, Love Lies Bleeding taut, sexy thriller, with themes of domestic abuse, homophobia, misogyny and revenge.

It also riffs brilliantly on tropes of lesbian lives. Here, it’s Lou – while physically much smaller than the big and muscled Jackie – that’s the butch and Jackie the femme.

If all that were not enough to recommend it, Kristen Stewart turns in a superb performance of real subtlety as Lou.

Katy O’Brian – who’s also a martial artist – is very good as Jackie, her first major screen role.

The rest of the central cast is also very good: Ed Harris doing a fine job as the creepy Lou Snr; Anna Baryshnikov as a ditzy – but dangerous – lesbian who wants Lou for herself; Jena Malone as Beth and Dave Franco as JJ.

Ben Fordesman’s cinematography conveys a sense of brooding – and also one of the vastness that surrounds the characters, suggesting a lostness in the universe. Music by Clint Mansell also adds to the tension.

Having done some bodybuilding in my time – and having once been to watch a competition – the way the gym and contest scenes are handled is excellent.

The scenes at the gun range also provide a commentary on the relationship between Americans and their guns.

All in all, a really excellent film.

Brilliant: Salman Rushdie on The Wizard of Oz

“There’s no place home; there’s no place like home.” It’s an iconic line – and sentiment – from The Wizard of Oz, and certainly from the classic 1939 film version. But what does it actually mean?

Back in 1992, the British Film Institute launched the first four in an ongoing series of slender volumes about specific films – BFI Film Classics. That initial quartet were Double Indemnity, Went the Day Well, Stagecoach … and The Wizard of Oz.

 

The last of those was penned by Salman Rushdie, with an updated edition published in 2012.

 

Since starting a deep(er) dive into film than at any stage previously in my life, I have been getting some of these and reading them. Well … in the first case, trying to read. That was Michael Atkinson’s monograph on Blue Velvet, which I gave up on, not least because – in my opinion – it’s appallingly badly written.

 

The next one was by Dirk Bogarde biographer extraordinaire John Coldstream, on that star’s career-changing and social-challenging film Victim, which was eminently readable and informative.

 

And so to Rushdie’s contribution. Rolling in at 69 pages – without a few more including the full film credits, which all the books have – it is very, very good indeed and packed with philosophical insights in two sections. First, in an essay about the film and second, in a short story, which is effectively a very clever, and funny futuristic fantasy tale/satire about an auction for the ruby slippers. Both are centred on the concept of home.

 

If there is “no place like home”, what does that actually mean?

 

The essay starts with fascinating autobiographical insights, including some making links between the film and the cinema of India, where Rushdie grew up, and how it influenced him from early in his life.

 

He is detailed. He notes, for instance, a mention in the later stages of the film by the Wicked Witch of the West of “an insect” that she has sent on to take on our heroes. But there’s nothing else about that in the film.

 

As he points out, it relates to a cut musical number, The Jitter Bug. Bad editing! Though you can find grainy footage of said cut number here.

 

Now here I am going to go off piste a tad. I know that song.

 

I had loved The Wizard of Oz since being taken to the cinema to see a re-release of it as a child.

In the mid 1970s, at Fairfield High School for Girls, I played the Munchkin mayor in a school production.

 

Then, in late 1981, a couple of years after my family had moved to Lancaster, I was encouraged by Noel McKee, my wonderful music teacher at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School, to audition for the annual Lancaster Footlights’ Christmas show – that year, to be The Wizard of Oz. So, with blesséd parental permission (it was the first time for a non-school production), I went along, prepared to audition for Gloria (she doesn’t appear in the film, but gets to sing Evening Star in the stage version – perfect for a mezzo like me).

 

I was 18, going on 19.

 

But something unexpected happened. While at packed auditions, I was asked if I’d read in the Wicked Witch of the West’s lines in an exchange with the Good Witch of the North, for auditions for the latter part. With no pressure on me – I wasn’t auditioning, after all – I thoroughly enjoyed doing full panto cackles and ‘witchy’ voice.

I landed the role (pictured left, centre) – without even trying for it! The Christmas production was always staged for a week, with the Saturday having a matinee as well as an evening production (often punctuated by dinner at Pizza Margherita on nearby Moor Lane). It was an utter joy.

 

I remember descending the steps from the stage to the stalls, in full costume and green face paint, with children backing up into their seats as I did so.

 

Weeks later, I was in Lancaster’s department store with my mother, when a young lad came up to and said, in awe: “You’re the witch!”. I played along, hissing back at him: “Tell nobody!” His mother, just behind, was at first embarrassed and then tickled pink. The power of theatre. The power of The Wizard of Oz.

 

So that’s my personal connection. Now, back to Rushdie’s own monograph.

 

He gets pissed off at the sentimentalised ending: why would Dorothy need to flee home only to be told, at the end, that the lesson is that she should never have wanted to. Is that really the only concept of home – that is limited to where you initially come from?

 

Contextually, bear in mind that, for Rushdie himself, this was written after the fatwa against the author for writing the Satanic Verses (published in 1988) was announced in early 1989 – effectively driving him away from ‘home’.

 

A number of things occurred to me.

 

First, Rushdie shows, in many ways, that The Wizard of Oz is a rebellion against simplistic ideas of ‘home’. Dorothy flees home to protect what is most important to her – Toto. It occurs to me, what happens to Toto when she returns? Is Miss Gulch still there to demand his death? If so, what are her values?

 

Rushdie points out that, in the series of books by Frank L Baum, Oz eventually becomes home – not just to Dorothy, but also to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.

 

I did some checking: is this less a British/US understanding of ‘home’ and more a German one? ‘Heimat’ is one of those German words that holds within it layers of meaning. At its very simplest, it could be said to mean that home is ‘wherever you hang your hat’. Not ‘where you originate from geographically or in any other way’.

And then look at Baum’s name – and yes, he did have German heritage: ‘Baum’ is ‘tree’ in German.

 

To go further on the subject of home: given that ‘the friends of Dorothy’ is a euphemism for gay men, can we also, at this time, see that ‘home’ can refer to any community of which we choose/feel ourselves to be a part? Again, a sort of riff on heimat.

And finally, after re-watching the film, it struck me that the move from monochrome to colour is like a move from binary to non-binary. Indeed, the land of Oz is a vastly more diverse place than Kansas. Further, the Cowardly Lion is effeminate, though we learn that he is also not a coward.

Of the central four characters, Dorothy is the least camp, while many of the Munchkins are quite androgynous.

 

There are few books – let alone ones with so few pages – that can set readers thinking like this, but this is superb. And of course, it’s also superbly written.

 

Rashomon: Superb filmmaking from Kurosawa

More catch-up cinema, as I increasingly appreciate streaming. This afternoon’s choice came from browsing the ‘international’ section on Sky Cinema. I’ve seen a couple of iconic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s films, but I only knew of Rashomon by name.

In the last period of classical Japanese history, a woodcutter and a priest are sheltering from a torrential downpour in Kyoto’s Rashomon Gate. Joined by a commoner, they are discussing a recent case of the rape of a woman and the murder of her Samurai husband.

Having both given testimonies at the subsequent trial, they are bemused by the how much all of the accounts differ, including that of the murder victim, which the court receives via a Shinto medium.

The priest insists that the dead can’t lie, but even he has doubts. Who to believe?

The screenplay is by Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto, from Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short stories In a Grove and Rashomon, while cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa contributed plenty of ideas. He’s particularly famous for his tracking shots and there’s a superb one early in the film, as the woodcutter travels through a forest.

The music from Fumio Hayasaka is also worth noting – not least a bolero that echoes Ravel’s iconic one, using exactly the same beat, though changing the melodic line.

In terms of the cast, Toshiro Mifune (pictured above) shines as Tajomaru, a notorious bandit.

Machiko Kyo as the wife, Masayuki Mori as her Samurai husband, Takashi Shimura as the woodcutter and Minoru Chiaki as the priest all deserve praise.

It was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice in 1951 and an Academy Honorary Award at the 1952 Oscars and is generally credited with introducing Japanese cinema to an international audience.

Rashomon also gave its name to the Rashomon effect, which notes the unreliability of witnesses.

And it’s not difficult to see why this work has regularly featured in lists of the greatest films of all time. Extraordinary filmmaking, with an enigmatic story that ultimately finds a reason to continue having faith in humanity.

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.

 

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

Taking a sledgehammer to the uber rich

Triangle of Sadness many not exactly be up there with Brecht in terms of being a subtle approach to class, but Swedish film maker Ruben Östlund’s English-language debut – a satirical black comedy about the excesses of the uber, uber rich – premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in May, winning an eight-minute standing ovation and the Palme d’Or.

But then again, this is an unsubtle age (was there ever anything else?). There is nothing nuanced about the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Russian oligarchs or Instragram ‘influencers’, so perhaps a sledgehammer approach is the only possible one.

 

Set in three distinct ‘acts’, the film opens as group of young male models are being put through their paces at an audition. One of them, Carl, had been at the centre of a major, successful campaign a few years earlier, but has had nothing much since.

 

After watching his more successful girlfriend Yaya on the catwalk at a fashion show – she’s also a big Instagram influencer – the two dine in a posh restaurant, where a row breaks out over gender roles and equality, and who pays for the dinner.

 

Fast forward to act two, which takes place on a luxury yacht – the sort that needs armed guards on patrol and where a helicopter drops off a special delivery of Nutella to meet the whim of one of the guests. Carl and Yaya are there because of the latter’s status as an influencer.

 

The upper deck crew (mostly white) are preparing for their next cruise, being drilled by chief of staff Paula, who tells them that they must obey every demand of their guests, however cracked these might seem.

 

Below stairs (so to speak), the (mostly black) cleaners, engineers and kitchen staff are also prepping.

 

Then we meet some of the guests, including Dimitry, a Russian who has made a fortune “selling shit” (manure) and his wife Vera; elderly English couple Clementine and Winston (I said it wasn’t subtle) who made their dosh by selling arms to protect “democracies” and bemoan UN bans on landmines; Jarmo, a lonely tech millionaire; and Therese (and husband), who can only speak a single sentence in German – “in den Wolken” (“in the clouds”) – following a stroke.

 

The captain, meanwhile – American Marxist Thomas Smith – is nowhere to be seen, locked in his cabin with a shed load of booze. After a few days at sea, he is finally coaxed out to attend the captain’s dinner.

 

Unfortunately, this coincides with a very bad storm.

 

Act three takes us to a deserted island, where a small number of survivors have washed up. Several of the guests have made it, together with ship’s mechanic Nelson and toilet manager Abigail.

 

At which point, the question arises of just who among them knows how to ensure that they can survive, to build a fire or find food? And, therefore, who should be the leader among them?

 

At a whopping 149 minutes, it’s overlong. It doesn’t particularly lag, but it’s impossible not to feel that it couldn’t have been pruned some more. The storm section alone, which provides some brutally funny moments – yes, the rich really do vomit and shit like we mere mortals – lasts 15 minutes.

 

And while also funny, a scene where, in the middle of that storm, the captain and Dimitry sit locked in the former’s cabin, drunkenly trading quotes about capitalism versus Marxism/communism over the ship’s public address system, probably over-eggs the pudding.

 

The opening fashion industry sequences are very funny in their mocking of the ridiculousness of that world. The island scenes have some good takes on masculinity, power relationships, class, race and more.

 

By and large Östlund’s script and direction work. None of the characters are wholly ‘bad’, although all the privileged lack a self-awareness of their relationships with the rest of the world.

 

And the ending is smart, effectively forcing the viewer to make their own moral decisions.

 

It’s a really good ensemble cast, including Harris Dickinson as the comically naïve Carl and Charlbi Dean as Yaya – tragically her last role, before she died suddenly in August.

 

Woody Harrelson gives a fine short turn as the captain, while Zlatko Burić as Dimitry, Iris Berben as Therese, Viki Berlin as Paula, Oliver Ford Davis as Winston and Henrik Dorsin as Jarmo also provide in good performances.

 

But arguably the best of the lot comes from Dolly de Leon as Abigail. We don’t see her until the third act – unless we simply not been aware of her presence, given her lowly position? How apt a point that would be. But from then on, so much turns and rests on her.

 

All in all, Triangle of Sadness is an enjoyable exercise in punching up at extreme privilege. And it doesn’t lose anything in taking such a Rottweiler approach to its theme either.

 

• Triangle of Sadness opens in the UK tomorrow, 28 October, and is screening largely at independent cinemas.

Belfast – seeing The Troubles through a child’s eyes

Belfast, the semi-autobiographical film written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, opens with what could be viewed as a rosy-tinted remembrance of life on a working-class terraced street in Northern Ireland’s capital in the late 1960s.

As nine-year-old Buddy returns home one summer evening, brandishing a wooden sword and a dustbin lid shield, playing at being the knight of his daydreams, the streets are full of children playing – ‘were there really so many children?’ you might think – while adults hang around chatting.

 

But just as you might be thinking that, a masked gang arrives to start a riot and things turn seriously nasty. They don’t care if children, women, the elderly – Protestant or Catholic – gets in the way.

 

Because this is August 1969, and the aim of the violence is really quite simple: to create a climate of fear that tells the Catholic residents on this mixed street that they must leave. Or terrorism, as we might call it.

 

The film shows a series of episodes in Buddy’s life at this time. His Pa (Jamie Dornan) is working in England as a joiner and can only visit every few weeks, so the family of Buddy (Jude Hill) and his older brother Will (Lewis McAskie) is held together by Ma (Caitríona Balfe), with help from grandparents Pop (Ciarán Hinds) and Granny (Judi Dench).

 

The character of Pa can feel like a bit of a type at times – he likes the horses to the detriment of the family finances, but he does also have greater complexity.

 

The family is Protestant but not particularly religious and gets along perfectly fine with its Catholic neighbours. However, as Pa continues to refuse the increasing threats of the local Protestant gang leader Billy Clanton (Colin Morgan) to get involved in their sectarian ‘improvement’ of the area, the danger for the family, as to the community as a whole, grows.

 

And while it seems fanciful when Pa tries to suggest emigration to Australia or Canada to Ma, when he is offered permanent employment in England, with the prospect of better pay and better housing, the increasing threat moves them closer to a decision.

 

But for Ma – and for Buddy – the prospect of leaving their home, families, friends and much more is terrifying.

 

While Branagh’s film has already garnered awards and much praise, it has also been criticised in some quarters for being overly sentimental and for downplaying The Troubles.

 

I’m long enough in the tooth to remember reports from Northern Ireland – and of bombings in England. I remember bomb hoaxes at my girls’ grammar school on the outskirts of Manchester in the 1970s, when we would stand for ages in the cold while the fire brigade checked the building. Because you couldn’t afford to be casual.

 

I remember too, the revived IRA campaign – the bombs in the City of London, one of which rattled the windows of the flat that The Other Half and I shared, one evening when I was home alone. It was terrifying. And another on a morning when I looked out from our bedroom window and saw the cloud from the explosion rising around the Nat-West building, less than a mile away. The south-west of traditionally working-class Hackney is a stone’s throw from the City.

 

In other words, I most certainly would not play down the history of what happened.

 

But back to Branagh’s film specifically. It makes clear, for instance, that the British troops sent to Belfast to stop the violence seemed remarkably forgetful about who they were supposed to be protecting. It is full of the menace as it shows thugs taking over neighbourhoods and, tragically, dividing communities.

 

It nods to the role Protestant clergy played in the demonisation of their Catholic neighbours (and the hellfire-and-damnation sermon rings absolutely true for this daughter of an evangelical minister).

 

No, it is not some sort of Ken Loach take on Northern Ireland, but I suggest that, if it was, it would have fewer viewers overall, with the potential for less education of more general and less obviously politicised audiences. Perhaps some will actually go and read TA Jackson’s Ireland Her Own after seeing this?

 

Wikipedia describes it as a “comedy-drama”, but while there are some laughs, I think this completely downplays what Branagh has achieved. The Troubles are still raw – see Brexit and the Good Friday Agreement – and I think that this opens up the possibility for a wider audience to perhaps see it differently.

 

Plus, sectarianism and bigotry is as big a problem as ever, across the world. Just as Taika Waititi’s 2019 comedy-drama Jojo Rabbit viewed Nazism from a child’s perspective, and pointed up how children are taught – groomed – into intolerance, so this views the situation in Northern Ireland through a child’s eyes. Yet in avoiding adult sophistication, it makes similar points very clearly. And one could add that, for many English audiences in particular, it might be a slight surprise to see who the thugs are.

 

But back to this film. The cinematography from Haris Zambarloukos is wonderful. The use of music from Van Morrison works perfectly, the decisions on the use of occasional colour are interesting and Branagh’s use of pop cultural references works well.

 

On the performances, there is not a bad one to be seen, but perhaps the big plaudits go to Hill who is remarkable in the central role, and Balfe, who gives a powerhouse turn. Hinds and Dench offer the sort of support grounded in their vast experience and abilities that one would expect.

 

All in all, very much worth seeing.

This way something clever comes

For many of us, if we were not streaming much before the pandemic, that has changed since COVID-19 invaded and changed all our lives.

The Other Half and I, for instance, had one streaming service beforehand (Amazon, as a by-product of other things) and now we have ... well, at least three more than I’m aware of, all of which are for the screening of films or TV and not as a by-product of lower delivery charges.

In general terms, I’d say they’re pretty good value, but it strikes me that, in terms of cinema, that they could be seen as a very positive development.

Between 2016 and the start of the pandemic, the OH and I had developed a big cinema-going habit. For instance, we managed 21 cinema visits in 2018, with 19 the following year.

Of course, 2020 was the first year of the pandemic and we managed just five, of which Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (which we’ve seen in two different National Theatre stage productions) we streamed just before Christmas that year, which came at additional cost, since we'd just lost our wifi service after a big blow-out that lasted into February, and streamed it, therefore, by linking a 4G phone to the TV.

Last year, remarkably – and in spite of the very best efforts of COVID – we managed 12 cinema visits and one streaming of a just-released film (Green Knight, which was on nowhere near us in sensible terms).

The cinema has felt the safest place we can visit, because we can walk to and from our local, and it’s not difficult to choose screenings at the multi-screen cinema we regularly visit that have few people in attendance.

For instance, on my birthday late last year – Saturday 11 December – we went to see Stephen Spielberg’s West Side Story on our nearest Vue’s biggest screen, with approximately 30 people occupying the 430 seats. How safe can you feel these days, in an indoor space, outside your home? We felt perfectly safe that afternoon.

 

But streaming has also meant that we have caught films that we might not have pencilled in for cinema attendance. Just over a week ago, with Ormicron case numbers finally falling in London, we saw Spider-Man: No Way Home at the cinema. And thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

The day after, we got around to streaming Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog.

Wow. Just wow. I’m not sure that, even in a pandemic-free world, I’d have gone to a cinema to see that (which rather makes a fool of me), but a paid-for streaming service ensures that (presumably) the producers get a cut of the takings, rather earlier and presumably at a greater level than if one had to wait a year or more to watch it at home.

And presumably such a mixed release also increases the number of people who see the film.

 

But back to The Power of the Dog specifically. It is a simply stunning film: performances, visuals, music, themes ... all utterly superb. Over a week later, I simply can’t get it out of my head.

 

And similarly today, when the OH and I watched the Apple TV+-produced The Tragedy of Macbeth.

 

It has had a limited cinema release – however minimum a cinema release, that is what is needed in order to ensure that a film qualifies to be considered for the Oscars – but it’s mainstream release was, in effect, on Apple TV+ on Friday and we had signed up to AppleTV+ primarily because we wanted to see it.

 

This is another superb film. I have seen some comments suggesting that the two central performances are somehow ‘underplayed’. These seem to be put about by people who apparently imagine that Shakespeare must be performed in an histrionic manner and can’t imagine it not being so.

 

I’ve seen at least five stage productions, reviewing at least three (one in Spanish) and on that basis, I’ll dare to suggest that I have a clue.

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the Macbeths are simply superb. These are controlled performances – no hysterics, sure, but the control helps ensure that the descent into madness in both of them is utterly believable.

And Kathryn Hunter as the trio of witches is creepy beyond belief.

The cinematography – it was shot entirely on stage, entirely in B&W – is simply stunning. This is a visual masterclass. Some have suggested that it echoes Fritz Lang, but it’s much more a case of being influenced by German Expressionist cinema in general, with a nod to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, plus a big dollop of the lonely, alienating nature of the paintings of Giorgio de Chrico.

The reality is that Joel Coen has created possibly the finest cinematic telling yet of Macbeth – and yes, that includes Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood – while having to work in a world where the cinema was not, physically, easy. And streaming almost certainly means that more people will view the film now, early in its release, than would have done so if its release was limited to a few cinemas, as many ‘arthouse’ films are.

We will only really find out in time how this all pans out, but perhaps streaming and cinema can live alongside each and, indeed, actually benefit each other. I very much hope so.

 

Cruella: Flawed, yet arch but subtle fun

Cruella

For those of us of a certain age, Cruella de Vil is one of Disney’s most memorable – and least likeable – villains. Having had the pleasure of playing a classic villain on stage in a Christmas show – and being able to relish the response of the children in the audience (including one who spotted me without make-up while in a shop a short while later) – I enjoy a good villain at least as much as the rest and possibly more.

 

But while, as an adult filmgoer I almost had the hots for Antony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector, killing and skinning dogs to make a coat is simply beyond the pale. Though to add from a personal perspective, it always helps for me if a villain is a little bit arch; I give you 2003’s Underworld, and Bill Nighy as Victor, and Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham as further examples.

 

Perhaps it was the trailer that made me want to see this – or partly the lure of being able to, once again, actually be in a cinema – or a bit of both, but after a first post-lockdown cinema visit last week made me feel comfortable in the environment (it was Peter Rabbit 2, in case you’re curious), this was too tempting to miss.

 

An origin story for de Vil, it is set primarily in the 1960s and ’70s, allowing for a ridiculously good soundtrack and some wonderful costumes, and it tells the story of how Estella becomes Cruella and, along the way, invents punk.

 

It looks wonderful, but it’s also a cracking story of being different – of being an outsider who is expected to conform and the soul-shredding struggle of trying to do that.

 

That soundtrack? It includes the Stones, Bowie, Nina Simone, The Clash, Queen, Judy Garland, Nancy Sinatra, Blondie and Ken Dodd, plus a new song from Florence + the Machine, and is a major force for why the film works (by and large).

 

The performances are delightful. Emma Stone as the eponymous Cruella is wonderful: arch – yet far, far more subtle than that might suggest (hint: arch can also be subtle). Emma Thompson as the Baroness, her nemesis, is a wonderful sparring partner, visually channelling Holly Golightly in places, and. ore than visually channelling Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly/definitely-not Anna Wintour in The Devil Wears Prada in others.

 

Mark Strong is excellent – and also very subtle – as the Baroness’s butler, while Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser provide the perfect – and not obviously simplistic – level of support as the Dickensian child crooks who ‘adopt’ Cruella’, only to end up being led by her.

 

Oh ... and the dogs are great too.

 

There is a criticism, though – and that is that is too long by around 15 minutes. Director Craig Gillespie should have knocked 15 minutes off the 134-minute run time – without losing any scenes. There is no bad scene, but it should all have done with just that bit more pace.

 

However, back to the pluses: it looks utterly fabulous and has a pleasing darkness, but with some laughs too. This is Disney channelling DC’s predilection for the dark, but also understanding Marvel’s use of humour – and thereby arguably handing DC a lesson (though trailers for July’s The Suicide Squad suggests that DC might have finally latched on to why Marvel is streets ahead of them in such stakes).

 

It’s dark in a good way – arguably a Joker for a younger audience. And I cannot give it greater praise than that, even with that quite serious pacing fault

A Secret Garden for our age

In 2019 BC (Before COVID) when The Other Half and I were still regularly visiting the cinema on our way home from work on a Friday, we had already seen, more than once, the trailer for a new adaptation of Frances Hodgson’s Burnett’s classic children’s novel, The Secret Garden.

Trailers are teasers, of course  but this one provoked optimism and indeed prompted me, in February this year (still just about BC) to re-read the book.

 

The copy had been my mother’s, which I had brought home when I cleared my parents' home after their deaths. 

It was a new edition from 1942, with colour plates, a tattered dust jacket and inside, a loose, unfilled bookplate from the token with which she had almost certainly bought it for her eleventh birthday.

On the bookplate was a picture of a giant tulip growing up from bombed urban ruins.

I hadn't seen the bookplate for years but, while I remembered it visually, it was only this year that I felt a sense of what it was about.

 

On 3 May the year, CE (COVID Era), on the third anniversary of my mother’s death, the book and plate found itself in a poem I wrote about her.

 

Today, I finally caught up with the new film, released in a hodgepodge of ways, given the pandemic, including via Sky Cinema.

 

The novel was written in 1911, but Burnett's work avoided any of the cloying sentimentality that might have been left over from the Victorian era. Both Mary Lennox and her cousin Colin are unpleasant children: as we discover, that is a direct result of their respective upbringings, and redemption and reform is possible.

 

Mary has been orphaned; Colin has lost his mother and been confined to a room in the family manor by, in effect, his father’s utter terror that his son is weak and will die like his mother before him.

 

Here, the film has been updated to 1947. And it suits a version of the story that reflects today’s far greater awareness and understanding of psychology, of mental health and ill health, of grief, loss and much more.

 

It also chimes with our growing understanding of the restorative – and indeed, redemptive – nature of nature. This is a film that, without doing so clunkily, acknowledges the benefits of nature for mental health, and thereby presents a subtle but strong environmental message too.

 

Nature needs to be healthy for us to be healthy. We cannot exist separately.

 

Jack Thorne’s script is to be applauded for all this – and for its eschewing of an easy sentimentalisation of the story; for making Mary and Colin both initially unpleasant, but also understandable and redeemable. It’s a fine line, and one that the film charts well.

 

Director Marc Munden lends the story a sense of the magical that is far more pronounced that in the novel, but it works – again feeding into that environmental theme.

 

This is a small cast, but Dixie Egerickx as Mary, Edan Hayhurst as Colin and Amir Wilson as Dickon are excellent as the children upon whose shoulders any sense of believability in this fable rests.

 

As the adults, Colin Firth as Lord Craven and Julie Walters as housekeeper Mrs Medlock are … well, precisely what you’d expect from a pair of such fine actors.

 

If I have a criticism, it’s primarily that Dickon and his sister (Isis Davis) are not seen as fully as they are in the novel and that we don’t get as full a sense of the Yorkshire moors in the film as we do in the novel.

 

But this is probably a bit whiny – and I have to say that I do love the giant rhubarb!