SENNA

SENNA (Asif Kapadia; UK; 2010)

I am gloriously chuffed that this film has attained the positive critical and audience-based response it has, considering it wears its grainy, shaky archival-footage completely on its sleeve. I find it fascinating that the film has been attracting the “you don’t have to like motor racing to find this film compelling” plaudits, as it helps to provide some perspective on my own thorough enjoyment of this film. Y’see, I do like motor racing, (or at least I used to – year by year I find F1 in particular to be increasingly bland), and prior to this documentary have always found the subject of Ayrton Senna’s ability and personality to be somewhat fascinating, a driver who seemed to be traversing a higher realm than any of his colleagues both on and off the racing track. So, even if this film ended up being just a simple primer on his life and death, I would have perhaps gleaned some level of appreciation of this film. But what the director has done, and what the acclaim attests to, is to not merely rest on the laurels of presenting a synopsis of an extraordinary life but to sculpt and shape a riveting story from the pre-existing recorded fragments of his life.

The key to this film is the creation of a great story through intricate and masterly editing. A wonderful narrative arc is carved purely from archival footage and the voices of interviewees, starting with the brash and rapid ascendancy of a young star happy to be successful in a sport he loves, moving to his first hurdle via an incrementally bitter rivalry, peppered with the rewards of success and a growing sense of self-assurance, and steadily moving into quiet frustration with the changes in the sport (moving more to a kind of technology that largely eschews driver talent in favour of formidably unbeatable machinery), and then pensively and melancholically into furrowed foreshadowings of his own demise. This is where Kapadia utterly excels in creating a masterful film, purely from editing – as the film progresses, and Senna suffers both the frustrations of changing technologies and the concerns regarding safety on the track, we see more and more often a pensive Senna, a man trying to rub tension and worry out of his eyes, staring into the distance, lost inside his own thoughts.

And it’s here, in these moments as well, that another key to the film’s success lies. The director often selects footage of Senna in a reflective mode, the camera closing in on his face, honing in on him and lingering upon his face, capturing us in Senna’s world of quiet emotions. With precise and well-timed guidance from the voices of interviewees, we are compelled to read Senna’s thoughts and feelings. The accumulative use of carefully selected footage creates something akin to an actor’s performance from Senna’s gestures, smiles, facial expressions, body language. Hungarian film theorist Bela Balazs referred to the power of the close-up in cinema, with the ‘silent soliloquy’ of the face providing an unspoken revelation of a character’s inner state of mind. Senna exemplifies the richness evoked from deep concentration on the physiognomy of a person’s face. There is no close-up that I have recently seen that bests the silent appraisal of Senna’s face as he sits in the cockpit of his car, waiting to start what would be his final race. For a mere ten seconds we see a face that appears to register a swathe of silent emotions – sadness at the loss of a fellow driver the day before, frustration with the recent performance of his car, a melancholic half-smile showing a desperate attempt to latch on to some kind of social normalcy, and an intense pensiveness that seems to exude the impression that Senna was aware of some impending, pre-ordained tragedy.

Quick Rocket-fire Reviews (playing catch-up on 2010, part one of possible recurring story)

I'm currently in cinema catch-up mode, although this is beginning to feel like a constant state of being. Still, this past week or so has been a decent attempt at getting back into the race, having viewed three 2010 flicks, The Black Swan, Inside Job, and Exit Through The Gift Shop. Quick rocket-fire reviews at the ready!

THE BLACK SWAN (Darren Aronofsky; USA; 2010)

I am at a total loss as to how this film has garnered the critical attention it has. This is, as has no doubt been stated before, some kind of mutated distant relative to Powell & Pressburger's 1948 classic The Red Shoes, and the story of a tortured fragile female performer going mad through utter immersion into a role feels overdone and hackneyed. Sure, its visually compelling, with the fracturing of Natalie Portman's psyche yielding occasionally disquieting and eerie moments, but this is essentially a bit of a perv-fest. My partner kinda hit it on the head after we saw the film together.

I asked her what she thought, and she replied “well, you can tell it was written and directed by men.” And with that idea in the head, one can't help but start to make up the conversations going on during the creation of this film. 'Hey, let's get Natalie to masturbate.' 'Hey, let's get her to have some full-on hot lesbo rumpy-pumpy with Mila Kunis.' Give. Me. A. Break.

INSIDE JOB (Charles Ferguson; USA; 2010)

You can trust a name like Charles Ferguson. It sounds so avuncular. Or professorial. A name clothed in a tweed jacket. With elbow patches.

And trust this film I did, because it takes away the 'documentarian-as-personality' effect that Michael Moore eventually bored us to tears with, and leaves us with a chaptered narrative that deftly spells out just what the fuck the global financial crisis (or the GFC, for all the cool abbreviationists out there) was all about. Evokes the kind of “bloody hell!”, “well I never”, and “grrrr” responses that were evoked by other white-collar dirty-rotten-scoundrel docos, like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and The Corporation. There's only one slight hurdle with this kind of film though – it's so super-densely packed with information that it's easy to leave the theatre with your head on fire, trying to remember all the pieces of the story. Still, only a minor hurdle, that head-on-fire sensation.

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (Banksy; UK; USA; 2010)

It's kind of boring to dwell on whether the film is a hoax or whether it's 'real', and I'm presuming that this line of enquiry has already been speculated to death. Watching the slow exchange of roles, as film-maker becomes street artist and street artist becomes filmmaker, is both remarkable and hilarious. Watching the arc of transformation of the obsessive amateur filmmaker Thierry Guetta is both wince-inducing AND jaw-dropping in the same moment. If Thierry Guetta/ Mr Brainwash is the real deal, then seeing him unintentionally out-prank the arch-prankster Banksy himself has to be the funniest thing I've seen in ages.

Ultimately the film is most interesting for its active interrogation of authorship, the recording of memory, and the intense and almost tragic desire to never forget. But sometimes it's so important to forget. Just like I've forgotten that film I just saw, what was it again, The Black Pigeon? The Slack Swan? Aronofsky Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest?

sleep, furiously

SLEEP, FURIOUSLY (Gideon Koppel; UK; 2009)

Is this superb, quiet piece of slice-of-life cinema melancholic or uplifting? A bit of both, really. There's a sense of something nostalgic and archaic in many of the scenes shown in this meditation on a small Welsh community. The slow and gentle accumulation of simple images and simple tasks builds an incremental sensation of a certain rural essence incrementally disappearing. Vocations are shown that appear to belong to a bygone time, most notably a mobile librarian, who meanders his van steadily and purposely through the Welsh hillsides. Humans are often framed in landscapes that dwarf them, consume them. For two or three minutes we watch a cake being made, but the cake is a simple jam-filled sponge-cake, something that evokes grandmotherly memories. These scenes provoke childhood memories, of pre-internet trips to the library to get my knowledge fix, of walks in the country, of eating a home-made cake that I probably haven't tasted since I was a kid.

But it's a little too easy to get caught up in a melancholic reverie of ways of life disappearing. Because this film is really an indication that these things that are easily pigeonholed as 'nostalgic' are actually intrinsic aspects of the inhabitants of this Welsh hillside community. The mobile librarian is a recurring motif that attests to this. In an age of absolute accessibility, it is defiantly wonderful to see a mobile library bopping about the countryside, providing residents with a regular fix of literature. The familiar chats that the librarian has with his regular clients allude to a kind of interlocutory warmth that is missing from most consumer/provider exchanges these days. This is perhaps a not about capturing a way of life before it disappears altogether, but about recording the determined existence of this community in an era that is predicated on speed and immediacy.

OVER YOUR CITIES GRASS WILL GROW

(Sophie Fiennes; France / UK/ Netherlands: 2010)


German artist Anselm Kiefer has lived and worked in a old former silk factory in Barjac, France, since 1993, and for the past ten years has slowly been transforming this place, and its surrounds, into a gallery-space which is really one giant artwork. This extremely engaging film meditates on the intricate, otherworldly landscape of Barjac, as well as presenting Kiefer constantly engaged in extending and developing this strange and surreal miniature city. Fiennes is not afraid to let the work speak for itself, as slow moving shots pan through labyrinthine tunnels, across monolithic art-works hanging in their own rough-hewn gallery arenas, and over towers of large, semi-broken concrete slabs, all rising from the ground as if the earth has recently spat out some ancient ruins. These long sequences, aided by a fantastic score by Gyorgy Ligeti, are sublime – the music, the art, and the stately motion of the camera make for wonderfully hypnotic cinema. But even more engaging is seeing Kiefer at work, his creativity seeming to be a constant flow that pours forth new ideas at a startling rate of knots. When we see Kiefer at play with a new work, we get to see someone who inhabits the skin of an artist without pretension, with simplicity, verve, and natural grace.

TRASH HUMPERS

(Harmony Korine; USA; 2010)

If I'm trying really hard, I could say that this film is an examination of geriatric boredom, a representation of a brutally-intense desire to remain youthful through childish and trangressive behaviour. But really, this is just a film about a handful of folks who have slapped on some face-rubber to make them look old, running around simulating a host of unruly acts for giggles. Korine's previous films were admiral attempts at concocting a new language for cinema, and while this film is a continuation of that desire, it is more annoying than challenging. I wonder if this film could have been truly creepy and boundary-pushing if the performers chose to really act as if they were old, rather than relying on Freddy Krueger-style face make-up to simply look old.


As a short episodic moment in one of Korine's other films, this may have been genuinely brilliant, but at 78 minutes, the repeated humping of trashcans, jerking off of various fauna, and creepy sing-alongs just start to grate on the nerves. Maybe that's the point, but I can't help feeling that this could have been stronger if it was more macabre than silly. If I want to see hi-jinx with people wearing rubber prosthetics, I'd rather watch an old episode of Bo'Selecta.

LE DONK AND SCOR-ZAY-ZEE

(Shane Meadows; UK; 2009)


Shane Meadows first films in the mid to late 90's were a British mini-revelation, with a loose, comic, semi-improvised flavour. As Meadows has gained more experience and bigger budgets, he's moved away from this free-flowing style, but with this shambolic little thing he's gone back to his beginnings, and then amped it up a notch. By framing his old style inside a mockumentary that seems to be the modern day rapper 'n' roadie version of This Is Spinal Tap, Meadows is exploring newish terrain. Ultimately, this film is a vehicle for comedic brilliance of Paddy Considine – although Scor-Zay-Zee is the real-life rapper and 'the one with all the talent', it's Considine's portrayal of exuberant, forthright, and ridiculously control-freaky Le Donk that steals nearly every single scene in the film. His childlike temperamental attitude so often teeters on the edge of creating outright chaos, but there's enough sincerity and good inside him to keep his boat balanced upright. Lovely how Meadows himself becomes an active viewable component to the film. Short, sweet, and kinda spot-on.

OIL CITY CONFIDENTIAL

(Julien Temple; UK; 2008)

I have a soft-spot for Temple's rockumentaries, and although I am personally not as interested in the subject of this doco (Dr. Feelgood) as I was for his previous subjects (The Sex Pistols and Joe Strummer), Temple's signature style of whipcrack editing and playful yet stylish composition makes this yet another strong offering. The Filth and the Fury was speedy and occasionally hyperactive, while Joe Strummer; The Future is Unwritten was more contemplative. Oil City Confidential is a mix of both. Temple relies on a lot of fast-paced footage, inserting archived clips from film and TV to accentuate points being raised by the subjects, and this adds a delicious verve to the film that mirrors the verve of the band. Temple also shows that his flair for assigning a larger framework to a musical subject is also as sharp as ever, as a core component to Dr. Feelgood's character and sound is derived from their upbringing in Canvey Island. By the end of the film we get a true sense of how location and milieu seep into the heart and soul of a band. And Wilko Johnson is a great interviewee, all smiles, jokes, and candid and wistful commentary.

DOWN TERRACE

(Ben Wheatley, UK, 2009)

Saw this as part of a double-bill drive-in event with the aforementioned Survival of the Dead. What the hell was this doing on a drive-n schedule? As an examination of family values, a double-bill with Survival makes sense – but not a drive-in double-bill. Drive-ins connote cheap flicks, loud flicks, thrills, spills, and chills. This was, in essence, a family drama, and suits a theatre, not a space filled with cars.

Although not a horror film, for a family saga it is very bleak, but not afraid of using surprising moments of comedy to complicate the flavour. Essentially it feels like a UK cousin to Animal Kingdom, following the gradual disintergration of a family and their loose-knit gangster clan through utter paranoia and hair-trigger tempers. The film is not afraid to extemporise on the quotidian aspects of the family, and these slow mundane passages allow for some colour and contrast to the brief bursts of violence.

SWEETGRASS

( Lucien Castaing-Taylor; USA/ UK/ France; 2009)

A slow gently-paced documentary about sheep and sheep-herders? Mmmm, sounds riveting.

For the first third of the film it seemed liked the director was happy for the film to amble off down an inconsequential path. It looked nice, but it lacked focus – shots of sheep being herded into a pen, sheep being shorn, lambs being birthed then reared – all fine, but rather ho-hum. Unlike other cinema verite approaches, there appeared to be no engagement with the subject, just a disinterested taste of being-there.

But when a flock of of several hundred sheep are herded into the Montana mountains for summer pasture, then the film finds it's direction. By narrowing the focus to two herders, alone on the mountain with their horses, sheep-dogs, and sheep, the film took on a sense of verve and vigour. Nothing overtly dramatic occurred, but a relationship starts to develop between the camera and the herders, and this newfound relationship begins to alter everything we see. The flock of sheep take on a new context, become more than just sheep. The whole herding experience is shown as a delicately-balanced relationship between man, his horse and dod, and the swathes of sheep that teem across the face of the mountain. The fragility of this particular tradition and vocation come to light in the exposition of herders grappling with the elements, with predators, and with the frustration of having to tend to flocks of wayward and peripatetic creatures.

FOUR LIONS

(Chris Morris; UK; 2010)


To make a comedy about ridiculously inept suicide bombers sounds like a pursuit in the name of bad taste. To have made the subject not only funny but also acceptable as an insightful mode for humour is something of an achievement. The fascinating thing about Four Lions is that it mostly avoids bad taste, shock value, and cheap laughs. This is genuinely amusing film about a very unamusing subject, and the director is not afraid to add depth and solidity to the would-be bombers, to make them likable as much as funny.


Chris Morris nicely dismantles the comedy trope of the warm fuzzy moment, making scenes that should be alarming resonant instead with warmth – I'm thinking here of the scene of the wife and son of one of the bombers bonding proudly with him over his decision to martyr himself, or the typical come-together-as-a-team-to-conquer-all moment as the bombers put aside differences in order to travel to London to complete their mission to kill themselves and others. These moments provoke a smile or laughter, but similar to Brecht's model of distanciation, there is a sliver of space to pause for thought, to wonder about why you are laughing.