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.

LA DANSE; THE PARIS OPERA BALLET

(Frederic Wiseman; USA/ France; 2009)

Another superb offering from Wiseman. With each subject he chooses he seems to be able to reach into the core of it and allows the spectator to meditate on any meanings that may drift into view. He presents the Paris Opera Ballet, as a labyrinthine affair, often taking us up from catacombs and sewers below the building, moving us up level by level with Ozu-like shots of empty hallways and stairwells, until we reach a rehearsal room with instructors endlessly getting dancers to rehearse and repeat. There is no sense of build-up with these rehearsals, no movement from beginnings of rehearsal to opening night – dancing is presented as one ongoing mass of training, rehearsal, performance. Wiseman focuses also on the administration, costume design, lighting design, and even building maintenance, to present a huge interconnected picture of this institution. It often feels that this place almost floats unconnected to the city it belongs to, and is filled with an infinite amount of rooms. Effortless and captivating.

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.

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD

(George A. Romero; USA; 2009)

Romero seems to have found a new lease of life with the return of his zombie franchise 6 years ago, and after 2004's Land Of the Dead and 2008's Diary of the Dead, this latest film keeps up the momentum. While Land was large-scale and epic and Diary was a re-telling of the original story to fit the 21st century, Survival is small-scale and old-school. The locus is mostly one island, and the focus is upon the clash between two clans, one eager to exterminate all walking dead, the other eager to keep them alive and experiment with them to find some kind of solution. Romero continues to offer tales that are less bleak than the earlier ones in his series, filled with more comic moments and a sliver of hope in a ruined world. As ever, there is a depth to Romero's film that the gore and creepiness of the living dead belies. Not a complex film, but not so straight-ahead and simple either.

MEDAL OF HONOR

(Calin Peter Netzer; Romania; 2009)


This is only the second feature film from Calin Peter Netzer, whose name will not be as recognisable as other Romanian directors heading the Romanian New Wave, such as Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, or Corneliu Porumboiu. Yet this grand film is an extremely worthy entry into the growing body of work that comprises this creative flowering of Romanian cinema. Buoyed by an extremely engaging lead performance, this tale of a miserly selfish elderly man, who receives a medal honoring his services in WW2 for actions he cannot recall, starts slowly and paces itself patiently. The humour that occurs through his ornery and penny-pinching behaviour in the early stages of the film gives way to a deeper sense of irony, as the reasons for his wife and son not speaking to him are incrementally revealed. The protagonist becomes trapped inside a fervent belief of his importance and relevance, and the film delicately teases out the growing sensation that this man, who does not appear to have the capacity to relate, learn, develop, or atone, is perhaps a metaphor for an old, extinct representation of Romania. The end scene is simple, elegantly composed, and quietly forlorn.

FILM SOCIALISME

(Jean-Luc Godard; Switzerland/ France; 2010)


The legend of Godard seems to be so formidable that it really shouldn't have surprised me that this mid-afternoon screening was sold out. This is Godard's third film since his sprawling masterwork Histoire(s) du Cinema, and each film Godard has made after this magnum opus makes me feel as if this has truly been the true endpoint of his film-making. While In Praise Of Love and Notre Musique managed to adequately harness a tendency towards the elliptic, Film Socialisme seemed to meander within willful obtuseness. Like the cruise ship that was the locus of the first of three movements within the film, the film seemed to be large and important, but not going anywhere in particular. The first section was filled with enough metaphors, both visual and otherwise, to keep the film afloat, but the second section, based around a family at a gas station, was over-long and tedious. The Godardian occurrence of the recitation of text as treatise or political tract fell flat, and was not aided by the removal of all verbs from sub-titles. As verbs imply existence and action, I couldn't help feel that their removal from the sub-titles indicated the death or stasis of language or expression. As a concept this is fine, but in terms of cinematic presentation this felt as if the film itself was in a state of paralysis, a kind of rigor mortis.

ADDENDUM; It is now two weeks after seeing this film, and I feel I need to temper my original views a little. Perhaps the expectation of seeing something truly magnificent blighted my experience of the film, and in the mad-dash hurry to get my thoughts out of my system, I've performed a slight disservice to the film. Furthermore, I was hungry, and I believe one's full undivided attention needs to be given to this kind of film - if my belly was full, perhaps it wouldn't have left me feeling kind of grumpy. In hindsight, Godard has achieved something with the first section and the last section that many film-makers choose to ignore - to overtly dissect, examine, critique, and proffer outright opinions on the state of the world we inhabit, the culture that shapes us, the past we are trying to forget and the future we are trying to destroy. Histoire(s) du Cinema was truly monumental, and it's as if I am struggling to imagine Godard after this event. But of course there are films post-Histoire, and these films are still unusually lucid beacons that survey the current landscape. Godard's choice of digital for Film Socialisme creates some extremely cinematic moments, with the overloaded sounds and bleeding dark hues of a nightclub creating one the most resonating nightmarish shots of the whole festival. The mid section still leaves me cold - it felt laboured and wearying, but then again, this was when I started to drift into reveries about dinner. I scrap my original score and amend to 3 stars - I feel that a return viewing at a later date (with a happier stomach) may result in a more settled experience.

CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH

(Chuan Lu; China; 2009)
Clearly a film that depicts the massacre of 300,00 Chinese people by the invading Japanese army in Nanking in 1937 is going to be heavy work, and considering the utter gravity of this brutal moment in 20th century history, it is to Lu Chuan's credit that City Of Life and Death carves a harrowing and horrific furrow for 135 minutes. There is no room for sweetening the experience with saccharine or heroism, but the relentless and epic depiction of the horrors of Nanking make for demanding but astonishing viewing.

By not having an outright protagonist in the film, but instead having a handful of key characters that we return to over and again, allows the film to circumnavigate its brutal exposition with an observational and semi-objective eye. The film mixes small-scale with large-scale, connecting personal dramas to the larger tragic schema – shots zero in on individuals faces reacting to the horror of their predicament or the minutiae of the event, then sweep out to take in the plight of hundreds and hundreds of people. It is the epic scale of these latter shots that really have punch – a church full of hundreds of Chinese all raising their hands in surrender, a swathe of deserting troops trampling civilians to get out of the city, hundreds of captured soldiers being gunned down in one large-scale execution.

The point of view is not solely from the Chinese, as the film focuses on a couple of Japanese characters who observe and participate in the atrocities, but ultimately the film shows killer and prey as part of a universal intertwined whole.