The Seventh Seal

The Seventh Seal has been re-released and I took the opportunity of going to see it with a friend the other day. I had seen it before, on television, many years ago, but to see it at the cinema was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
It is extraordinary, magnificent, and I felt to see it once barely scraped the surface. It's packed with resonance and meaning, and it's picture, not only of medieval everyday life, but of it's world-picture and thought-processes, is matchless.
Actually, on second thoughts, Tarkovsky did it with Andrei Rublev, a film I plan to revisit soon, but it's rare. A world of The Seventh Seal is a world in which scientific thought did not exist on any level; in which religious faith and superstition were the organising principles of everyone's life. The world was a strange, mysterious place and science was unknown. It's a funny film as well, though, with none of the trademark Scandinavian lugubriousness, which, as far as Bergman was concerned, was always a myth anyway There is so much richmess in this film that a single viewing doesn't do it justice, so I think I might break a habit and get myself a copy. The friend who came with me to the cinema had never seen it before and was similarly overwhelmed. We came out of the cinema discussing it excitedly, all the way to the car park. Sometimes it happens, and it always reminds me the enormous part cinema plays in my life. Whatever else is going on, you can always lose yourself for a while, and there's nothing wrong with that, in fact it keeps you going, and something as good as The Seventh Seal amazes and delights. It lit up that dreary time of year when cinema often seems exhausted; the summer blockbuster season's winding down, and the Oscar contenders aren't in the cinemas yet, so, a real treat in every sense.

The Bourne Ultimatum

I enjoyed The Bourne Ultimatum very much when I went to see it this week. It's a real roller-coaster - an action movie that really is all-action. It barely stops for a minute to draw breath. But it's really well-made; directed by Paul Greengrass, who was responsible for the previous Bourne film, The Bourne Supremacy. Greengrass is fast becoming the director of the moment, and it's not hard to see why. Somehow his films, whatever their subject (sober, as with United 93, or all-action) have dramatic weight, an essential seriousness of purpose which marks them out as exceptional. And, of course, there was Matt Damon. I've always really liked him, even as far back as the Good Will Hunting Days, but it was The Talented Mr Ripley that really drew attention to the fact that here was an exceptional actor. He's not the greatest-looking leading man; with his snub nose and blank expression, but that actually works in his favour, as his looks aren't conventional in the Brad Pitt mode. BP really has to work hard to achieve substance and sometimes manages it, but his looks are always working against him. Damon essential anonymity is a blank canvas which can reveal greater depths. I thought he was superb in Ripley, in fact the whole film was grossly underrated. He seems to be getting better and better with age, now he's losing all that puppy fat. His CV since Ripley is patchy, but there are some fine performances lurking there. He was superb, I thought, in The Departed, and I have yet to see The Good Shepherd, but have high hopes for that. He's particularly good at playing characters with a secret - it's that blank canvas again, and the character in The Departed, that of the upright cop who is secretly a member of the underworld, was perfect for him.
He's starring in the upcoming Imperial Life in the Emerald City, another Greengrass project, for which I have very high hopes. I was planning to read the book anyway soon, and have had it recommended to me - it's about life in Iraq's Green Zone, but I know little else about it. I shall look forward to it with great anticipation anyway.
There's not much else to say about The Bourne Ultimatum, excepet that I think the Bourne films have been largely responsible for the reinvention of James Bond in Casino Royale. There's little in the way of special effects and gizmos, just action. And the Bourne films have the added bonus of having a mysterious central character. The ending is suitably open, yet highly satisfying at the same time. Great stuff!

The Sopranos

Although I saw it when it was on TV a while ago, I decided to watch the latest, sixth, and final series of The Sopranos on DVD, so I'm renting it from Amazon. My son, who's living with me at the moment, hadn't seen any of it, although he's seen all five of the preceding series, so it seemed like a good idea to watch it again.
Well, what can I say.....it made me want to see the whole lot again from the beginning. I've heard it compared to King Lear in its complexity, depth and range, and I can't disagree. There is so much going on in each episode - it repays repeated viewing.
Series 6 starts off conventionally, (by the Sopranos' standards) with Tony, the capo, having to deal with his ageing uncle Junior's increasing dementia, and the associated family conflicts. Junior shoots him at the end of the episode, and he is now in hospital in a coma, suffering a succession of near-death experiences which dramatise a major crisis of identity.
It's the character development that stands out - and the series' dramatisation of the way in which each generation in its turn tries to deal with the burden of the preceding generation's misdemeanours. Tony's inner life is also a major theme, and his regular visits to Dr Melfi, his psychoanalyst provide a running commentary on the action.
The language is a baroque distillation of Italian-American English, and in every episode there's a line or two that takes your breath away. I'm seriously considering getting the whole thing on DVD and watching it with the subtitles turned on as I'm sure I must have missed a great deal. Anyway - I've stayed spoiler-free, so am awaiting with huge anticipation the last half of series 6 which apparently we may get later this year, which gives us the finale. I know it's been controversial but that's all I know - what series ending isn't controversial?

The Manchurian Candidate

I saw The Manchurian Candidate (the 2004 version) the other night and, while I did enjoy it, I kept thinking how much better the original was. Denzel Washington as Captain Marco, the chief protagonist, who becomes increasingly suspicious of the Raymond Shaw, the candidate for vice-president with whom he served in the army, was fine, as usual, but the plot, with its origins in the Cold War, had been changed to accommodate the present day, and suffered accordingly. The baddies were a faceless corporate body instead of oriental Communists and it was far harder to feel the same level of paranoia. In 1962 the Cold War was still raging, whether justified or not, and the film's release coincided with the Cuban missile crisis to add an extra layer of fear and loathing. It featured one of Frank Sinatra's best performances as Marco, and Laurence Harvey was suitably sinister as Shaw.
Having said that, Liev Schrieber was an excellent substitute for Harvey in the new version, but was underused compared to Harvey - he simply didn't have enought to do. One of my favourites, Meryl Streep, played Shaw's mad mother, and was, as ever, superb, even though, really, she was in only second gear.
It wasn't bad for a remake, but, in the end, all it did, as is the case with so many remakes, was make me want to see the original as soon as possible, not just to compare it with the remake, but simply to enjoy a really great film. It's one of those movies that you never forget - it's so well put together and structured that it shows up so many of todays' films for the sprawling messes they are, and I spent most of the time waiting for the famous 'trigger line': 'Why don't you pass the time by playing a nice game of solitaire' but it never came. In fact I can't remember what was used as a substitute, it was so inconsequential. I felt the ending was a bit incoherent and messy, in fact the whole film lacked the blazing clarity of the original. As ever with remakes, I was left with the question - why? It was OK and the stroy is such a good one that it would be hard to make a bad film from it, but, in the end, the original remains the benchmark for paranoia films.

Harry Potter (again)

Well, I've now watched Harry Potter's 2,3,& 4, in the interests of research. I wanted a) to get a better idea of what the hell was going on no.5 as I hadn't a clue who anyone was or what was going on, and b) find out what all the fuss is about - get a feel for the zeitgest, I suppose.
I'm calling them by their numbers as I can't remember the titles of each individual film - I know what they are, but keep forgetting which one's which.
Anyway, back to the films. I enjoyed the 4th one the most, which I do remember is called HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It had a tighter narrative structure and a better defined plot. The others sprawled in an ungainly fashion and seemed to be a series of episodes and events rather than an actual story. I don't know if the book was better suited to a filmed narrative as I still haven't read any of them, and to be honest, I can't see myself spending any more time on the whole saga than necessary.
The 4th film had HP growing up, and it becomes clear that Daniel Radcliffe, unlike most of the other young people in the film, can actually act and so, as the central character, holds the film together well. I noticed that John Williams, the celebrated veteran film composer, did the music for this one, which means that the loud, insistent, syrupy music of the earlier films, isn't sprawled all over the action, another improvement, as it's now much more subtle and nuanced.
The director is Alfonso Cuaron, the Mexican director resonsible for The Children of Men, which I thought was an exceptionally fine film, and Y Tu Mama Tambien, which I haven't seen, but I've heard good reports about it.
Anyway, it was an interesting exercise, but I'm glad it's over. I'll watch the new film again at some point, but I'm not desperate as I've had enough of HPP for the moment. All the films are far too long - they would all be improved by tightening up; there are far too may scenes which go on and on and on unnecessarily. I would think that about half an hour could easily be lopped of each of them without destroying anything in the plot, and it would improve them enormously. The adult characters are a mixed bag; another plus point for no.4 was Gary Oldman's appearance as Sirius Black - he also appears in no.5. Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith are also reliably effective, and none of them make the mistake of hamming it up, which, unfortunately, neither Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson can resist doing. Honourable mentions, too, for David Thewlis and Ralph Fiennes, who although he doesn't feature much, exerts a suitably brooding and terrifying presence as the arch-villain, Voldemort. The secret in being an adult in a children's film, is to take it completely seriously, to approach it in the same way as any other piece of work, and this is the mark of the true professional. Most of the adults pass the test admirably, but Branagh and Thompson, I think, fail disastrously, both hamming it up - I found them virtually unwatchable.
I can see why kids love them - they have a strictly-defined universe, good and evil, the boarding school setting is irresistable and provides fodder for all sorts of sub-plots and minor character studies. The children are pretty good, and it's interesting to see them growing up, though Isome are doing it more successfully than others - I'm not sure about Ron, he's an OK actor, but an irritating character, though Hermione's blossoming nicely into an interesting personality.
Anyway, there we are - I'll now return to the 2 Werner Herzog box sets I've borrowed from one of my sons, with some relief.

Woody Allen

I've been thinking about Woody Allen recently, having just read a biography of him by John Baxter. What a difficult, complex personality he has, yet reading about him illuminates a great deal of the darker highways and byways of his life.
I've always loved his films and think that some of them are, and will remain the best films made by an American in the late 20th century. For me, his finest film is Crimes and Misdemeanours, a film I can watch repeatedly, such is its richness and sheer entertainment value, coupled with plenty to think about. I've never managed to sit through his Bergman-esque ventures into seriousness, such as Interiors, though I've heard that Another Woman is worth watching. I think that his best films retain an element of comedy, even when it's deepest black, as in Deconstructing Harry, another favourite of mine.
I've heard he's famously bad with actors - I don't know how true this is, but they seem to queue up to work with him. He's brought the best out of many of them - certainly Mia Farrow has never produced such good performances with anyone else. And Judy Davis, Alan Alda, Martin Landau, Dianne Weist, Barbara Hershey, Max von Sydow among many others have produced their best work for him.
Crimes and Misdemeanours was the beginning of what I believe is his best period - his 1990s films are his funniest and cleverest. Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Radio Days, The Purple Rose of Cairo are all films I can watch over and over again. They have an inventiveness, style and lightness of touch which recalls such masters as Preston Sturges.
His work became darker for a while, and Husbands and Wives and Deconstructing Harry are as black as night, but still highly watchable and entertaining, with some great performances.
In recent years his output has been extremely variable - I enjoyed Sweet and Lowdown and Match Point very much, but Melinda and Melinda less so. His most recent work has failed to find a distributor in this country - shamefully, though I suppose it'll eventually find its way to DVD. He's over 70 now, so is finding it difficult to find suitable parts to play, but Woody Allen substitutes can be found, though they vary enormously in quality. John Cusack managed it very successfully in Bullets over Broadway, but I've written elsewhere of Kenneth Branagh's disastrous attempt in Celebrity.
He seems to have fallen in love with London, and Match Point, while it had the same relationship with reality as his portraits of New York, yet I really don't think it matters. After all, film is an imaginative response to life, and produces its own form of poetry. Manhattan celebrates New York, and is a personal response to someone to whom it is central in his life. His portrait of London may be a fairy-tale version, but what's wrong with that? Realism is an overrated quality in film - see the films of Powell and Pressburger, slated when released but now hailed as masterpieces.
Allen's London in Match Point captured perfectly its excitement and buzz - those scenes in Tate Modern with the view over the river had an iconic quality about them. I've heard he's making more films in London, so we'll see....
I've glossed over the Mia Farrow/Soon Yi episode - what can you say? One will never know what really happened, and Allen is clearly a complicated and damaged personality. But Farrow is as well, with her compulsive children-collecting and serial relationships, so there's probably a lot more to it all than meets the eye. But does it affect my view of Allen as a film-maker? Not at all. Deeply unpleasant people of all kinds have made great films, and they should be judged according to their quality not by the personality and private lives of the people who made them.
On the subject of great film directors - I haven't forgotten about the death this week of 2 of the greatest, Antonioni and Bergman, and I'll be writing about them soon, when I've had a chance to think about them at length.