God, The Thomas Crown Affair (the original) is such a masterful statement of cinema. From the lighting to the locations, the costumes and o Sweet Jesus the music. It hardly even matters that the story is brilliant and steamy with sexual attraction nor that Steve McQueen is so…perfectly cool nor Dunaway the perfect ingenue. It’s horny. It’s a film swollen with the purest horn.
I love it, every minute of it.
It’s film festival time in Auckland again and whilst I’ve not been too clever at getting out and seeing my picks in the brochure yet, I did manage to see The Baader Meinhof Complex yesterday. You know, recently we re-watched The Lives Of Others – another German film – and I have to say that in general, the European films I watch recently stand out from their American-made counterparts in one sense above all others: I’m interested in every single minute of them. Seriously – I can think of not one wasted minute of that film yesterday, and there were 180 of them. What is it with American made films now that they almost uniformly contain at least 40 minutes I would cut out?
Apart from all that, this film told a fascinating story in a thoroughly riveting way. Photographically and art-design-wise, it captured the mood of those troubled times in a thoroughly convincing and captivating manner. I could hardly take my eyes away from the myriad details in the set (and costume) design. If I had one complaint, it would be that the songs chosen for the soundtrack were perhaps a little too quintessentially ’60s, a little too ‘pop’ for what I imagine Baader and co to have been listening to. I’d have had them down for a bit of Can or something. Even if the Red Army Faction weren’t fans, Can and a its like would have fit the mood so much better than Bob Dylan and Co. No offence Bob.
I’d read Stefan Aust’s definitive text on the story of these guys before and found that the film told it earnestly and unselfconsciously, even adding a lot of detail that I’d not previously known. Today, thinking back on it, my one abiding thought is that it went to great lengths to provide a thorough description of the word ‘terrorist.’ When I think of what we call a terrorist today and compare it to a time when people were prepared to take to the streets against governments domestic and foreign, I feel a little sad that I could never imagine any country in the developed west where such a thing could ever happen any more.
Also fascinating was the tenderly treated (for all its horrific nature) point at which those who must resort to terror to be heard, end up hurting innocent people, often their own people, in the process. We in this day and age tend towards the view of Terrorists as irrational, unstable lunatics (a view foisted upon us at every turn by those whose purpose it suits) and it is important to remember that, generally speaking, those forced to resort to terrorism are far more politically astute than we are and quite often just by and large better educated.
I admire the RAF and what they stood for. Many of the things they were fighting against are still going on and still not a very fucking good idea. I think, as I did after reading Aust’s book, that Andreas Baader himself was a probably psychopathic maniac – a shit-disturber who was born to fight against anyone that had an interest in stopping him. But he was, in this instance, fighting against a great and real injustice and I have to respect that – I could never do it myself. Maybe the world would be a better place if they had succeeded. There’s a thought.
My old mate Michael, Canada’s top music writer, has posted a link to this clip of Julie Driscoll, whose more pop-ish work I used to have a Best Of LP ful of, tearing it up with The Brian Auger Trinity, a red hot blue-eyed soul combo. This, my friends, is my kind of music. Writ large. Listen to the drummer at the breakdown just before the end – weaving in and out of the organist’s percussive stabs. Pure magic. And Julie Driscoll, whom I’d thought of as a kind of folky-pop covers artist – wowee! She captivates in this clip. Absolutely spellbinding – her look, as TSO and I just agreed – is timlessly awesome, ditto her moves. Whoosh! That’s good.
God, you really wonder if a body cares a darn cahoot what anyone thinks of him any more when he behaves like Billy Bob Thornton behaves in this interview. It’s a totally credible music program on Canada’s CBC and not a fucking E Entertainment soundbyte jackoff interview by some gormless blonde face. And yet Billy still manages to find something to protest in the opening seconds of the interview. Well! Any respect I might have had for him as an actor (and I did) is henceforth tainted indelibly by the fact he’s a total ham-shank in real life.
I missed it at Auckland Film Festival last year though it was one of my top pics but finally watched it on DVD this weekend. The Band’s Visit (2007) is a tightly edited 24 hours in the life of a police band from Egypt who cross the border into Israel for the opening of an Arab Cultural Center by invitation. By dint of their non-Hebrew speaking nationality and a lazy trumpet player who just wants to score, they end up in a small town that is a few crucial letters of the alphabet off from the one they’re supposed to be at and find themselves at the mercy of strangers. The characters cover most important human traits and are portrayed with little romance and schlock: the stoic Band boss forced out of himself by his awkward circumstance, the pretty, kind, wanton, broken-winged cafe owner who seems born too big for this small town and the romantic trumpeter, devoted to Chet Baker if it’ll get him laid. The bleak surroundings of a small Israeli town make an opressive but fitting backdrop and the music is absolutely, charmingly, haunting. Short, sweet and lovely, this little film took me by surprise. 4.3 out of 5
A couple of films have taken our fancy lately – on DVD because there’s no cinema now, with the restless Rage Rampage in our lives. It’s been refreshing to see two films that handle sensitive subject matter intelligently by offering up some humour as a digestif.
First off Adam’s Apples (2005) (or, phonetically in the Danish accent “Aidamss Aippless” which, to me with my lowland-Scots-thinking-tongue, raised a titter every time it was uttered). A colleague in Berlin listed this film as evidence that Ulrich Thomsen, who was in the picture we were there working on, was an actor to be respected. I wish I’d have watched this film then. It’s a quirk-ridden comedy that shies away from neither taboo nor convention – in the way that Von Trier’s Dogme clasic “The Idiots” did. So, many of those used to Hollywood’s velvet-gloved handling of issues such as alcoholism, racism and sex crimes, may blanch. Mads Mikkelsen, previously known to us only as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, does a blinding turn as Ivan, the effervescent country minister seemingly unable to see anything but good in anything or anyone. The backbone of the film involves Ulrich Thomsen’s Adam – a pyrotechnically violent paroled skinhead challenging Ivan’s seemingly unshakeable faith, producing a highly literal but endlessly funny portrayal of the perennial good/evil struggle. Ivan runs a parole program in which offenders are released into his care in exchange for their listening to his sermons and helping out around the rectory so the supporting crew of a fat, greasy rapist, a ropy alkie and an arabic burglar with a penchant for firearms is a perfect crash mat for Ivan and Adam’s increasingly intemperate bouts. Hilarious, refreshing and highly recommended – 4 out of 5.
Next, Towelhead (2007)- an often brutal coming of age story as seen through the eyes of a 13 year old Lebanese American girl. It’s a brave move for anyone to tackle pedophilia in any way but to tackle it with such a fantastically well written script that truly leaves few cracks for haters to winkle their way into is something only the likes of Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, American Beauty) could have pulled off. Pull it off he does. I’m still thinking about the conflicts of morality it brought up. Amazing performance from the always believable Aaron Eckhart and what will surely be a career-launching stint by Sumer Bishil who plays Jasira, the protagonist in the piece. Similarly, fans of Six Feet Under, apart from getting another taste of Ball’s genius, will recognize Peter Macdissi (the creepy Art Teacher Olivier) as Jasira’s fiery, aloof, indignant father. Jasira’s blossoming sexuality, seen as a threat by her mother on the east coast, fares equally poorly on the west coast with her father – a puritanically misogynistic snob. Her father’s emotional and physical absence creates a vacuum into which Barry, a horny redneck groomer of a neighbour (Eckhart) and Michael, a double-horny black classmate gladly slip. In the referee role between sexuality and religious morality is Melina a pregnant, suspicious, caring, politically correct neighbour, played by Toni Collette. It’s a heady mix and the tension build is well crafted and tight. Highly recommended – also 4 soup bowls out of 5.
Gay romance on film surely ranks among the easiest targets – a fact not lost, apparently, on these people who have reenacted it in 30 seconds. starring bunnies. These monkeys, also, remake it variously as “BrokeBack To The Future”, “The Empire Brokeback”, and there’s something for the kids too, in “Spongeback Mountain”. The old trick of making Lego porn has also been given renewed inspiration here ina Brokeback stylee.
Nice one Robbie!.
and o Sweet Jesus the music. It hardly even matters that the story is brilliant and steamy with sexual attraction nor that Steve McQueen is so…perfectly cool nor Dunaway the perfect ingenue. It’s horny. It’s a film swollen with the purest horn.
