Philomena – Dench and Coogan in heart-rending, heart-warming drama

Time for more catch-up cinema – this time, Philomena, the 2013 adaptation of Martin Sixsmith’s book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee from director Stephen Frears, which by and large sticks to the true story that Sixsmith wrote about.

In 1951, after becoming pregnant, Irish teenager Philomena Lee (Sophie Kennedy Clarke) is sent by her father to Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, where she gives birth to a baby boy, Anthony. Forced to work in the abbey laundry, she has limited contact with her son, before the nuns give him up to a wealthy American couple for adoption.

Fifty years later, Jane, the daughter of the now retired nurse Philomena, spots journalist and former Blair government advisor Martin Sixsmith at a party and suggests to him that he investigate. Initially put off because it’s a “human interest story”, he changes his mind after meeting Philomena.

With a screenplay by Jeff Pope and Steve Coogan (who also co-produced), and coming in at a tight 98 minutes, Philomena is an examination of a multitude of themes: grief and loss, sin and guilt, anger and forgiveness, faith and hypocrisy, and snobbery.

The central characters are nuanced and the film rests squarely on the shoulders of its two stars – Coogan himself is excellent as Sixsmith, while Judi Dench is simply outstanding as the elderly Philomena, in a performance that understandably earned her a seventh Academy Award nomination.

It is a deeply moving film, but never mawkish, includes moments of humour, plenty of good for thought and is ultimately heart-warming.

Very much worth watching and available to stream in the UK on various platforms.

Kneecap: A craicing political movie about Ireland

Saturday evening – and what better than catching up with another film? In this case, writer and director Rich Peppiatt’s 2024 Kneecap, about the real-life rise of Belfast’s Irish-language hip-hop trio of that name and starring them as themselves.

It starts in the late 2010s in Northern Ireland/the north of the island of Ireland, where there’s an ongoing political issue of having the Irish language being accorded the same rights as the Scottish and Welsh languages in their respective parts of the UK.

Post-Good Friday, working-class lads Liam and Naoise are essentially estranged from society and living in a world of drugs and raves. As children, they had learned to speak Irish Gaelic from Naoise’s father Arlo, a Republican who then went on the run to avoid arrest, thereby refusing to accept his own parental responsibility.

Liam has been keeping a diary, in Irish, which amounts to a sort of poetry. When he’s arrested by the NI police, having been at a rave, and refuses to answer any questions in English, Irish speaker and music teacher JJ O Dochartaighn is called to translate.

Ó Dochartaighn realises that Liam has real talent and, as a musician himself, invites the lads to his own improvised studio in a garage, where they record a track.

However, even as the trio gains in popularity, it faces real threats from Republican factions, the Northern Irish police and assorted others.

Perhaps surprisingly, the central trio – Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh, as themselves, are really excellent, with nice turns from Simone Kirby as Naoise's mother, Dolores, Michael Fassbender as Arlo and Josie Walker as a detective.

Shot in an anarchic fashion, with no shortage of swearing, lots of drug use, plus nudity and sex, it's very good and very funny indeed. Not really my kind of music, but very enjoyable.

If you only see Heretic for Hugh Grant, that's more than good enough

I don’t mind a spot of on-screen horror – just not the slasher variety. Give me the likes of Peter Medak’s 1980 The Changeling, Jonathan Demme’s 1991 Silence of the Lambs, Mike Flanagan’s 2019 Doctor Sleep, Jordan Peele’s 2019 Us or last year’s Parallel from Kourosh Ahari.

To clarify further – I don’t mind a bit of violence on screen, but in-your-face gore and slasher stuff is a no-no for me, whether it’s horror or not. It’s not limited to that genre either. I entirely understand that the likes of Deadwood and The Sopranos are top-notch, serious TV dramas, but I could only ever watch them in small amounts because the violence (both spoken and enacted) was too much for me – and that was before I’d even heard the word ‘triggered’!

The trailer for Heretic, from joint directors and writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, had intrigued me, but I wasn’t sure enough that it wouldn’t descend to a degree of slasher mode, so didn’t catch it at my local cinema, where it only seemed to have a quite limited run.

Last weekend, I decided to give it a go via streaming. I’m very glad I did, because it absolutely fits into what I can enjoy.

Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes – confident in her faith and her evangelisation – and Sister Paxton (rather less so) are following up leads on potential converts and, as a winter storm breaks, visit the home of one Mr Reed, who has expressed an interest.

A middle-aged Brit living in a slightly remote – and very weird house that appears to combine both an Escher reality and a 1940s (or earlier) aesthetic – he assures them that (vital for female Mormons) his wife is baking blueberry pie in the kitchen so they won't be alone with a man, which covers the church’s rules of what company a female is allowed to be in.

When he goes to the kitchen, the women find that the front door is locked and that they have no phone signal.

Reed slowly ensnares them into a discussion of religion in general, within which he becomes increasingly aggressive. He then offers to show them a ‘real resurrection’.

Heretic is good because it takes its subject – religion – reasonably seriously in a philosophical sense. It doesn’t belittle the missionaries or their religion (or religion as a whole) and it allows them to stand up for it. Now I’m not religious, but I appreciate that.

The script allows for some really interesting looks at how you stay true to a belief – days later, I am still analysing the ending.

Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes and Sophie East as Sister Paxton are excellently played, nuanced characters, but Hugh Grant is sublime as the demonic, yet-suave, Mr Reed.

Really worth watching this, in my view.

A look at 2024 in films

Since 2024 is now history – and since I watched more films then than in any previous year of my life – it seemed like a good idea to look back on what I appreciated most.

Most were seen in cinemas, but a few here I saw for the first time either on disc or by streaming.

So in no particular order, other than chronology of viewing …

The first big hitter of my viewing year was Poor Things (above). Given that I saw it twice in eight days, that’s probably a clue as to just how much of an impact it – not least for Emma Stone’s wow of a performance.

Next on this ‘best of’ list is The Holdovers (just watched again as part of the actual festive season).

In some ways, such a small film, but it’s a bittersweet heart-warmer, with three cracking performances at the heart of it.

Next up chronologically is Blue Velvet, which I had never seen before – indeed, I’d avoided it largely on the basis of how that iconic scene with Dennis Hopper made it look horrific. But my niece had given me a copy as a present, so I decided to give it a go – and was surprised to find it vastly better than I had been expecting.

Perfect Days (left) is an absolute gem from Wim Wenders, following a toilet cleaner in Tokyo (and thus giving the German auter, with an astonishing performance from Kôji Yakusho.

I am grateful to a friend, who is also a film reviewer, for inviting me to be his second ticket for a Soho preview.

As with Downfall, one viewing is enough, but Zone of Interest is a really important work that probes the attitudes of Nazis toward the industrial murder of the Holocaust. It's arguably interesting how we define cinematic horror. This wouldn't fit a conventional narrative of how we define a 'horror film', I don't think – it is generally very calm and avoids physical, on-screen violence (that's what you hear in the background) – but it is, without doubt, utterly horrific, and very important for that.

By complete contrast, I also watched My Neighbour Totoro for the first time (my third Ghibli after The Boy and the Heron on Boxing Day the previous year). It is an utter joy. Indeed, I saw it again, later in the year, at a cinema during an anniversary re-release.

A similar catch-up viewing came with Mädchen in Uniform, an extraordinary piece of Weimar cinema, where Prussianism meets lesbianism in a girls’ school. It was a fascinating discovery for LGBT+ History Month.

Another personal discovery came with Rashomon, having only ever previously seen Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

April brought the charm of Robot Dreams (left), the subtle, affecting and sensitive Monster, and the stranger than strange Evil Does Not Exist – the most enigmatic ending of all time? – all of which have stuck with me since.

Summer saw the taut sexiness of Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, Crossing, from Georgian-Swedish writer and director Levan Akin – a tale of a retired Georgian teacher who travels to Istanbul in search of her missing trans niece and, in complete contrast, Kensuke’s Kingdom, the hand-drawn adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s book.

Another piece of catch-up cinema that really grabbed me was A Taste of Honey, with Dora Bryan in majestic form as the horrifying mother and Rita Tushingham extraordinary on her screen debut.

Finally, my film viewing year was effectively bookended by another cinema outing that I repeated in short order, with Conclave (left), a cracking piece of entertainment, aimed squarely at an older audience, and one that has been very successful.

I made it past the 100 films in a year for the first time ever  – after re-totting and double-checking between a personal list and the Letterboxd app, it came in at 103.

It’s interesting to see how many of my choices have appeared in some of the lists I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks or so. Obviously, a lot of this is down to personal taste etc, but I was surprised that Monster didn't seem to be getting any mentioned – only to discover that was initially released in 2023 and appeared on a number of top 10 lists at the end of that year.

I also feel quite chuffed at the variety of films – not only in this list, but in my list for the whole year. I feel I’ve really taking my viewing habits to new levels. So here's to 2025’s viewing! 

Inside Out 2 is another joy

A bit of a film-watchy day to mark the end of the year, and the opportunity to catch up on Inside Out 2. I’d only seen the first film in August, but it resonated, so I was always going to watch the sequel.

Riley is now 13 and guess what – puberty! So new emotions – led by anxiety and including embarrassment – step in to try to take over her new teenage life.

 

Really sweet, but also full of things that even I, as a 62-year-old can recognise. Th cringe was huge.

 

Is Joy right … or is Anxiety right?

 

A great screenplay from Pete Doctor, Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley, with Doctor also at the director’s helm, this is a really good sequel (there may be a third film), which illustrates the mental and emotional difficulties facing young people.

Beautifully realised and with a great voice cast, it’s well worth watching.

It's a cracking film, Gromit

Today was time to catch up with Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the new stop motion adventure of the inventor and his faithful (if frequently exasperated) hound from Aardman Animations, directed by the legend that is Nick Park, together this time with Merlin Crossingham.

A sequel to the duo’s second outing – the Oscar-winning The Wrong Trousers in 1993 – it sees the return of penguin arch villain Feathers McGraw, who (spoiler alert) has not been rehabilitated by his time inside the local zoo/prison.

In the meantime, Wallace has come up with an AI garden gnome, Norbot – initially with the intention of it helping Gromit in his beloved garden. But as with all of Wallace’s inventions, what starts out with the best intentions has a tendency to go awry.

And as Wallace becomes ever more enamoured of his new creation, Gromit’s nose is pushed out of joint – reminiscent of The Wrong Trousers – when the perpetually broke inventor unwittingly accepted Feathers as a lodger.

With a screenplay by Mark Burton, Vengeance Most Fowl is a 79-minute delight, jam-packed with gags – watch out for a brilliant visual reference to an iconic Bond villain, but there are many, many more.

It also gently points out the problems that modern technology can create – so apt that the film itself is hand-made animation and not CGI.

The northernness of it all is a joy – there’s even a local newspaper article on the Lancashire references in it.

Ben Whitehead proves wonderful as the ‘new’ voice of Wallace. He’s voiced Wallace in games and stuff before, but this was his first major time in the role for a film since the original voice of the inventor Peter Sallis retired in 2010.

Reece Shearsmith is suitably creepy as Norbot, while Peter Kaye reprises his voice role as over-promoted but not very bright copper Albert Mackintosh, who first appeared in Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Lauren Patel is very good as PC Mukherjee, who – even new out of training – seems to have a much better idea of proper coppering.

All in all, this is an absolute delight. No wonder it’s already picking up award nominations. And personally, I’ll be watching again, because there is no way I can have seen and registered all the gags! I suggest you get started now.

PS: A special mention for the mainstream critic who notes (in an otherwise very positive review) that: "only a pedant would complain that penguins aren’t "fowl" as such" ... well no. But Feathers uses a red rubber glove on his head to disguise himself as a chicken. And guess what ... chickens are fowl.

Conclave is top-class, grown-up entertainment

Conclave, adapted from Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, is possibly not the sort of film I would usually think of watching – though I enjoyed The Two Popes when I streamed it in February. I might not have any faith left myself, but given my heavily religious background (very evangelical Methodist) I can still understand and appreciate Biblical debate, and almost inevitably find myself retaining an interest in religion in general.

I only really became aware of this film when seeing the trailer last week and, finding some of the rave reviews it’s been getting (including from the likes of Mark Kermode), decided to give it a go.

It opens with Cardinal-Dean Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) hurrying toward the Vatican to oversee arrangements after the pope has died. Aside from mourning his religiously progressive leader, it means that Lawrence will now have to organise and oversee the conclave of the world’s Catholic cardinals that elects the next pope.

The cardinals have been readying themselves for this – positioning themselves for possible election and campaigning among the rest of their number. The primary contenders are Aldo Cardinal Bellini, an American liberal (Stanley Tucci); Joseph Cardinal Tremblay, a Canadian moderate (John Lithgow); Goffredo Cardinal Tedesco, a right-wing Italian who wants the Mass to be said in Latin again (Sergio Castellitto); and Joshua Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a popular Nigerian candidate with conservative social views.

But on the eve of the conclave, one Vincent Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) arrives in the Vatican – a Mexican archbishop apparently appointed by the late pope without anyone else knowing – and working as the cardinal of Kabul in Afghanistan. Suspicions are raised.

There were already whispers about the pope’s last hours and final meeting, and Benitez’s presence only adds to the suggestions of conspiracy and dodgy doings.

The scheming between the candidates and their supporters is barely hidden – though it involves noir whispered talks in quiet corners and comments that only a cardinal that didn't want to be pope would be a suitable one. But who doesn't, at some level, harbour the ambition?

In terms of the performances, it is a wonderful ensemble cast – and that absolutely includes not only all the actors named above, but also Isabella Rossellini as senior nun Sister Agnes, who gets to deliver a truth bomb that is magnificent – and conclude it with a gesture that has seen audiences laughing at screenings (not just the one I attended).

Edward Berger’s film is pretty much perfect as a piece of grown-up entertainment. It’s intelligent. It’s quite easy to see that the world of the Catholic church presented here could also be the corporate or political worlds, so this is not ‘about’ religion. It’s about ambition, power and the gaining and use of that by human beings who, even at their best, are not perfect.

I’ve tended to avoid films of much over 90 minutes in the last year: this comes in at two hours, but Berger’s direction means this doesn’t feel close to that. The pacing is spot on for the tension. Peter Straughan’s screenplay from Harris’s novel is superb: dryly witty, never condescending. It feels so timely, given what the world is seeing today in terms of regressive politics.

Similarly, Volker Bertelmann’s soundtrack is spot on. Stéphane Fontaine’s cinematography is a joy. The mostly muted colours – creamy marble, greys and whites – set against cardinal red – are stark. Some scenes have a feeling of having been choregraphed to almost Busby Berkley levels – cardinals in the rain with their uniform white umbrellas, shot from above, is just one, while the ceremonial aspects and rituals are superb, treated with complete seriousness and respect, yet also revealing the performance and theatre at the centre of church life.

A little personal note here for context (well, I did start this post with one!).

Until I stopped attending church altogether in my mid-twenties, I had drifted away from evangelical Methodism and toward high Anglicanism. I appreciated the theatricality, performance and ritual of services. And I continue to very much appreciate religious music – not the Gospel songs of Billy Graham-style crusade rallies, which haunt me unpleasantly, but works such as the requiems of Mozart, Fauré and Britten.

But let's get back to the review.

If I have any slight complaint, it's that the character of Tedesco is perhaps made to be overly obviously awful. He stands in the refectory vaping, yet refuses to stand for prayers in the Sistine Chapel – just two shows of contempt for most of his brother cardinals, despite he himself being the one that wants 'tradition' brought back. But perhaps that's being over sensitive when we live in a world full of real pantomime villains who are actually very dangerous.

As Lawrence, Fiennes is outstanding. For all the very carefully played camp of the film in general (it's a balancing act Berger gets spot on), his is a stunningly subtle performance. Acting with the eyes, as it were, is an absolute art and he is as good at it as Anthony Hopkins. His own inner struggle so often needs no words to be crystal clear. If he isn’t in the Oscar noms next spring, there’ll be something wrong with the film world.

And the ending – true to the book – is done with real class, even though it may not be quite what some would expect, given its extraordinary topicality.

I cannot recommend it highly enough. Seriously superior entertainment, with an actual ethical heart and message.

A sensitive exploration of what being queer means

Layla is the feature debut from non-binary British-Iraqi drag artist and film maker Amrou Al-Kadhi, and uses a deceptively traditional romantic story to explore the difficulties of navigating a life caught between queer and religious/ethic identities.

Layla (deadname Latif) is a non-binary drag queen from a Muslim family, who is living in London with three queer friends and has already become a star within their community.

 

However, they’re also trying to balance this with not being out to their family and, when they go back to visit, perform a conventional straight cis role. They are convinced that they cannot possibly be who they really are with their own family.

 

When they meet Max after a performance at a corporate London Pride do that goes spectacularly – and very funnily – wrong, the pair quickly start developing a romantic bond. But they’re also streets apart in terms of their lives. Max is from a well-to-do, white, middle-class family who are accepting of his rather beige gayness, but when Layla meets them, it’s clear that there are underlying issues around racism, Islamophobia and class.

 

And to add, Layla’s newly-married sister is moving to London with her husband.

 

This is a very sensitive film, while also being very frank. It is very unjudgmental and also helps to really explain what, for many LGBT+ people, ‘queer’ means.

 

Al-Kadhi’s direction and screenplay are excellent. Bilal Hasna as Layla is simply superb, while Louis Greatorex as Max is also very good. Indeed, It’s a very fine cast all around.

 

This was screened earlier this year at the BFI’s Flare festival and is now on more general release. It’s a very good addition to LGBTQI film.

The Man with the Answers is utterly charming

The Man with the Answers is writer and director Stelios Kammitsis’s quirky and charming 2021 film that combines being a gay romantic drama with a beautifully photographed road movie.

It opens in Greece, where Viktorias, a former champion diver, is now working in a furniture factory. His mother left Greece some years before to go and live with her new partner in Bavaria and, when her mother dies, she doesn’t bother to either return for or contribute to the funeral, leaving Viktorias to sell his diving medals to pay for the send-off for his beloved grandmother.
 
Grieving and depressed, he decides to take his mother’s abandoned Audi and drive to Germany to visit. On the ferry from Greece to Italy, he encounters Mathias, an eccentric German student who persuades Viktorias to let him join the trip – and from there, to guide him away from the motorways and into a more scenic route as they head north, in what becomes a much more enlightening trip.
 
It's a gentle film that uses its 80 minutes to delicately plot the development of the relationship between the two men, which is often fraught – and perhaps particularly the development of trust.
 
Vasilis Magouliotis and Anton Weil as Viktorias and Mathias respectively are thoroughly engaging and convincing. Stella Fyrogeni as Angeliki, Viktorias’s mother, gives a nice performance in the late stages of the film.
 
Antonis Kataris as the funeral director is worth a mention as for being quite effectively creepy at seeing the death as a way of mounting up the profit.

And Thodoros Mihopoulos’s cinematography is excellent.
Really enjoyable – and currently streaming on Sky.

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.

Crossing – a class piece of queer cinema

Lia, a retired teacher in a small Georgian town near the border with Turkey, is starting a search for her estranged niece, Tekla, who is trans. She had promised her dying sister that she would find her and bring her home.

Teaming up with Achi, the layabout brother of a former pupil, who claims to know that Tekla has gone to Istanbul and to have her address there, they cross the border into Turkey and take a coach along the Black Sea to that historic city.

 

There, they face dead end after dead end, but then they meet Evrim, a trans woman with a law degree who volunteers for trans rights group Pembe Hayat (Pink Life, a real organisation, founded in 2006), who agrees to help them.

 

The film also shows us children trying to eke out a living on the streets – in particular, Izzet and Gülpembe (Bünyamin Değer and Sema Sultan Elekci), with Evrim having to use her legal training when the former is arrested for alleged pickpocketing. This is important, in going against an idea that trans (and LGBT+ generally) activists are only interested in a single issue.

 

Crossing is Georgian-Swedish writer and director Levan Akin’s fourth feature. It premiered at this year’s Berlinale in February, winning the Teddy jury prize for best queer film in Berlin, before going on to pick up further awards at further festivals.

 

It’s very much character driven and, although it’s comfortably under two hours, it still takes the time to do this without rushing.

 

The title might seem obviously related to being trans, but it’s also about other forms of transition – and very much of growth. Lia and Achi both grow in ways that are unexpected – and delicately developed. It’s also worth noting that Akin’s portrayal of the small trans-female community in Istanbul is empathic, dignified and far from simplistic.

 

The film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Lisabi Fridell, showing us an Istanbul that pulses with life – largely working-class – including cats.

 

But ultimately, the success of the film rests on the performances of the three main characters.

 

Lucas Kankava is excellent as Achi: on the one hand, street wise, while on the other, naïve, and desperately lacking affection in his life.

 

Deniz Dumanlı as Evrim is also excellent, giving the character real complexity: full of positivity and without any sense of victimhood.

 

But at the heart of this is Lia, and Mzia Arabuli gives a performance that manages to be both incredibly understated and yet an absolute powerhouse of emotion.

All in all, a really good film – and definitely one that goes straight into the lists of important LGBT+ movies.

Supernova – an incredibly beautiful and sensitive film about dementia

Tusker and Sam have been a couple for years and are taking a campervan trip to the Lake District to revisit some of their favourite places and reconnect with family and friends.

After that, Sam – a classical pianist – is to give a recital that he insists will be his last, as he is determined to care for his partner, who has been diagnosed with early onset dementia.

But Tusker – a writer himself – has other plans which, as they head north, he hasn’t shared.

Written and directed by Harry Macqueen, this is an incredibly sensitive exploration of a couple facing not simply mortality, but the incremental nature of the mortality that dementia inflicts on people.

It is never mawkishly sentimental, but is intensely moving – not least in being an unflinching look at a relationship of length, with the joking and bickering as well as the tenderness.

The cinematography from Dick Pope is beautiful. I was born just to the east of the Lake District: my family moved to Bolton when I was three, but we visited regularly for a substantial part of my childhood and youth, staying with family friends who ran a corner shop in Tebay or those who had a fell farm not far away.

The latter stays in particular were some of the happiest days of that part of my life. Though I haven’t been back for many years, it all felt instantly familiar, and the lingering shots of the nature of the area are simply gorgeous.

While there’s a section of the film where there is a – very good – supporting cast, this is essentially a two-hander. And Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci as Sam and Tusker respectively are both on absolutely superb form. Enormous subtlety and nuance from the pair.

The film originally premiered at the 68th San Sebastián International Film Festival in 2020, and then the following year in US and UK cinemas, Supernova is now streaming on Netflix.

It’s a difficult subject, but Macqueen and team have made a very, very fine film – and ultimately, an uplifting and grown-up one about love. Make sure you have tissues close by.

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.

 

Evil Does Not Exist – or perhaps it does, in Hamaguchi's enigmatic eco-parable

Single father Takumi – we’re led to believe he’s a widower – lives with his eight-year-old daughter Hana in the peaceful village of Mizubiki, not far from Tokyo. Takumi is an odd-job man, who primarily acts as a woodcutter, and as the collector of water from a pristine stream for a local restaurant to cook its noodles in. He also spends time teaching Hana about the environment – how to identify trees, plants and animal tracks.

But his life – and those of the rest of his community – is suddenly disrupted when a Tokyo company plans to create a glamping site in the area, for Tokyoites to chill.

 

The company is racing against time to get construction started, so that it can claim a post-pandemic financial grant, and it sends two members of a talent agency that has branched out into PR to go and address a meeting in the village and smooth the way and be able to claim, in a totally perfunctory way, that it has undertaken a consultation.

 

But the villagers are not impressed. Top of their list of concerns is that the planned sceptic tank is not remotely adequate and will, given where it is to be sited, pollute the water for the village itself and for villages further downstream.

 

The two company apologists are taken aback both by the level of objection to the scheme and the sophistication of those objections, but essentially deflect the questions.

 

However, we learn that, while their direct bosses fit the bill of rapacious capitalism, they are both deeply discomfited by it – and their roles within it. But when they head back to Mizubiki, ostensibly to offer Takumi the job of caretaker at the glamping site, events take a series of unexpected turns.

 

Writer and director Ryusuke Hamaguchi has produced an absorbing, meditative film that both engages and, ultimately, confuses. The ending is an enigma squared and then squared again.

 

The lengthy opening has the camera looking upward toward the trees as it moves through a winter woodland. Yoshio Kitagawa’s cinematography is superb: wonderful, lingering shots of nature are beautiful and make clear what we are (ultimately) looking at, while Eiko Ishibashi's score adds to the sense of something haunting.

After this opening, the film focuses on Takumi’s work and routine. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the first part of Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days. There is something almost hypnotic about it.

 

It’s a slow film, but that is not bad, because it has meditative qualities. The cast is excellent. Hitoshi Omika as Takumi manages to combine gentle and dark. Ryo Nishikawa as Hana gives a remarkable performance.

 

Ryuji Kosaka as Takahashi and Ayaka Shibutani as Mayuzumi the corporate employees, are very good.

 

Hamaguchi does not provide easy solutions. But this is an eco-parable that will live long in the mind – whatever the ending means and however you personally interpret it.