Rescue Dawn

I've just been to see Rescue Dawn, the new Werner Herzog film. I knew the story, of Dieter Dengler, the German-born pilot, who, after emigrating to the US, became a pilot in the US Air Force, was captured by the Vietcong, and escaped through the jungle, the only POW to have done so. Herzog made a documentary about him a few years ago, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, and this was a feature film version.
One of my sons is a huge fan of Herzog, and, although I've always liked his films very much, I was familiar with only a few, such as The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: the Wrath of God and knew little of much of his other work. So he lent me 2 Herzog box sets, and Herzog on Herzog, a book of interviews with him, and I was able to get to know the man and his work properly.
Where to begin! He really is a remarkable character, and I cannot begin to try and sum him up in just a few words. What does come over, in the book, and in some of the interviews with him on radio and TV, is a geniality, gentleness and openness which is quite disarming. He lives in California now, and his English is excellent. I heard an interview with him on the radio a couple of weeks ago, and it was obvious he could quite easily have talked all day, and I'd have been quite happy to listen to him.
What came over clearly was that, although he didn't say as much, Dengler was a classic Herzogian hero, and that their backgrounds had much in common. Both were born during the war, and grew up without fathers. German children at that time led punishingly hard lives, almost feral in many ways, but with a great deal of physical freedom. Herzog's father was away in the military, Dengler's was dead, and their mothers were busy struggling to survive. Herzog talks at length about it in the book, and I have to assume that he must feel a strong identification with him, not only because of his background, but also because of his free spirited character and his mercurial personality, which must have surely helped him negotiate his journey through the jungle. He seems to have been fascinated and amazed by him, as well as lost in admiration, and in the radio interview he talked about him with great affection, mentioning especially his sorrow at his recent death. So, although he saw the documentary, and helped with it, he wasn't able to see Rescue Dawn.
Christian Bale played Dengler, and my admiration of this actor (he deserves a blog posting to himself) grows every time I see him in anything. I've followed his career since Empire of the Sun, in which he produced an extraordinary performance. Very few child actors make the grade when they reach adulthood, but Bale has. His career choices have been excellent, with very few duds (I remember particularly his coruscating performance in American Psycho), and, although he's made the bigtime with Batman Begins, in which he gave the caped crusader an emotional core missing from the previous incarnations, he still appears in interesting small budget films.
Anyway, back to Rescue Dawn. It was a Hollywood production, so there were compromises, but not too many. The ending is regrettable, seems gratuitously tacked on, with no real connection to the rest of the film, which is great stuff. Herzog recreates Dengler's journey through the jungle in extraordinary detail, which is hallucinatory at times. Bale plays Dengler as an open-hearted, yet driven character, whose determination to survive, like his determination to fly planes, somehow keeps him going, against all the odds.
I must mention Steve Zahn, who played Dengler's co-escapee Duane. A gentle, sad character he falls apart, and eventually dies through sickness and hunger. Zahn gives him a heartbreaking humanity, and we feel that Duane's fate is what most of us would experience - Dengler exceptional and extraordinary, and, one has to say it, incredibly lucky.
So, not one of Herzog's greatest films, but even so, it's still streets ahead of nearly everything else. I'll be returning to Herzog in a later blog - I'm still working my way through his oeuvre, an exciting and illuminating task, and plan to see Little Dieter as soon as I can.

American Gangster

American Gangster is Ridley Scott's latest film, and I saw it the other day, very soon after it had been released. I wanted to see it on a big screen, as I knew that a Ridley Scott film would be visually exciting, and this was no exception.
It recreated the grungy 1970s setting of The French Connection, which had clearly inspired Scott, visually and thematically, and every frame was a treat. Scott has a bit of a bashing after his recent films: Kingdom of Heaven, which I saw, would have been far better without the execrable Orlando Bloom in the lead, a role for which he is clearly unfitted. It lumbered a bit, and wasn't Scott's finest hour. Then came A Year in Provence, which was apparently embarrassing - not that anyone went to see it. Scott really can't do, and musn't try to do anything approaching comedy.
Anyway, he's back on form with this, and, although it was nearly 3 hours long, I didn't lose concentration for a moment. Ifound it enthralling and engrossing, and both leads, Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington, were tremendous. I'd been a bit worried about Washington as I've found him unconvincing in several films, but he came up trumps in this, and was utterly convincing. Crowe produced an unselfish performance - another one which involved some weight gain and a bad haircut. He needed to redeem himself after some pretty naff films recently, and he did well.
So, a good, meaty, satisfying evening out. Sometimes you don't want fireworks, or brilliance, but a solid, well-made film, and this ticked all the boxes.

In the Shadow of the Moon

In the Shadow of the Moon is an account of the moon landings, which took place in the dim and distant past, i.e. 1969-72. I went to see it last week with one of my sons, who is especially interested in space travel and has read quite a bit about it.
I found it entralling, and extremely moving. To start with, it brought back a flood of memories - I was at home, looking after my parents' house while they were on holiday. I can't remember if their TV was black and white or colour. I know that colour had been around for a couple of years, and my father liked to acquire new technology as soon as he could - they had ITV and BBC-2 as soon as possible.
Anyway, all I remember was some flickery pictures, and after the initial amazement, feeling fairly underwhelmed - space travel had become part of the landscape in the 60s - just another thing that happened. Also, teenagers then were far more exercised over the war in Vietnam - I remember marching through the streets of Oxford shouting 'Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?' and attending a meeting of the Young Communist League, where it was all 'explained'. In the end I didn't join, as I had other more pressing things going on in my life, such as my appearance and my social life.
I can see now what an extraordinary, amazing event it was. Those men are the only people alive who have ever stood on another celestial body, and seen the earth from space. They experienced it differently, but all were profoundly moved, their lives and the ways in which they saw life, changed utterly. My son has the book A Man on the Moon which I read a while ago, so I knew a bit about it, but it was still good to see them in person. Michael Collins, who sat in the capsule while Aldrin and Armstrong landed on the moon, the first men to set foot on it, was a delightful character - he could have become bitter and twisted, eaten up by the knowledge that he missed out, but he didn't - quite the opposite. He proved a great interviewee, amusing, optimistic and intelligent.
Armstrong. the first man to stand on the moon, was absent, and having read the book, it wasn't a surprise, he's always been a bit of a recluse, and who can blame him? And to be the first does confer a special status that must sometimes be difficult.
There will come a time when these men are no longer with us, and there doesn't seem to be much of an appetite to go to the moon again. What struck me, looking at the footage now, is how home-made it all was, the spacecraft looked like the sort of thing a child might cobble up, perhaps with the help of an ingenious parent. Now it would have to be impossibly high-tech. Another thing that struck me was how muted and constrained was the reaction at Mission Control by today's standards. Yes, there were cheers, but only the most modest air punching and no high-fiving. That simply would not happen now, everone would be going berserk. And the reaction in the newsrooms, TV newsreaders were suitably awestruck, but again, there was little in the way of triumphalism. How different that would be today! The hysteria would be almost unbearable.
So, a fascinating glimpse into history, great stuff.

My Boy Jack

My Boy Jack was on ITV this evening, Remembrance Sunday. I watched it as I was a) intrigued by the story of Kipling's extremely shortsighted son, who was killed in battle in World War I, aged eighteen, b) interested in seeing if Daniel Radcliffe could act at all, and c) trying out an ITV dramas again, just in case it was any good.
Well, it wasn't. It seems that no young actor today is remotely capable of the received pronunciation that would have been the norm in 1914 - even older actors struggle with it. But, to make matters worse, the dialogue was frequently dreadful - it's as if being on ITV means that everyone has to talk as if they're on Eastenders. Carey Mulligan, who played Kipling's daughter was especially at fault, and I cringed every time she opened her mouth.
Radcliffe valiantly tried his best, and put on a creditrable performance, but his part was grossly underwritten, and he really didn't have much to do other than lend his name to the production for publicity purposes.
I don't know a great deal about Kipling, but what I do know is that he was an extremely complex, intelligent and perceptive man. Here, he was a mouthpiece for simplistic patriotism. Once again, I was left deeply dissatisfied by an ITV drama, which, when you consider the great productions, such as Brideshead Revisited, it has made, is very sad. I tend to have zero expectations these days, and end up wishing I hadn't wasted my time. Meanwhile there's a new BBC production of Cranford coming soon for which I have high expectations.

Eastern Promises

Eastern Promises is not for the faint-hearted - none of David Cronenberg's films are, but this one is very scary. The London it portrays is both familar and very strange - populated by Russian gangsters, steeped in the codes and rituals of the labour camps and the black economy. Their modus operandi is brutal in the extreme, yet at the same time, convivial family gatherings and seasonal festivals all take place, populated with nicely-spoken children, complete with perfect English accents almost certainly learnt at exclusive English prep schools. The film is telling British society, 'This is how your world is, now, and you'd better get used to it'.
Viggo Mortenson was scarily superb - I heard Mark Kermode call him, in his review on Radio 5, the new Robert DeNiro, in his commitment to his roles and the film, and the lengths to which he's prepared to go in inhabiting his character. Apparently he spent a great deal of time in Russia, meeting some extremely dodgy character, and perfecting his accent. I thought he was remarkable as the low-ranking taxi-driver for the criminals, complete with tattoos acquired in a labour camp.
The film had mixed reviews, with many claiming it wasn't as good as the superb History of Violence. I thought the ending was a bit tacked on, and didn't quite hang together, but taken as a whole, its portrait of the post-Communist Russian incursion into London was compelling and eye-opening, especially an eye-wateringly scene in a bath-house which left me gasping.

Control

I went to see Control the other day - it had been on for a while but somehow I'd not been able to get to see it for various reasons, so I'd resigned myself to missing it. Then I found it on at a small local cinema which specialises in second runs, and it was showing at 2.00 in the afternoon. I don't usually go to evening screenings as I'm usually too sleepy to stay up too late. So, I thought I'd make the effort to see it, and I'm very glad I did.
It was saturated in the atmosphere of the Seventies and I almost felt the film as well as saw it. The late-seventies is probably my favourite period for music, although I was well into my twenties. Sixties music is almost too familiar - it's embedded in my DNA, and I know most Sixties songs by heart. I spent hours listening to the radio, and on Radios Luxembourg and London tracks would be repeated endlessly. Seventies music started badly, and I could never like Led Zeppelin and their ilk however hard I tried (although I have a sneaking fondness for Kashmir), and , although I was a big fan of West Coast stuff at the time, as my boyfriend, later husband was, and still is, an ardent Deadhead, I tired of it eventually.
When punk took hold, it was a response to what was increasingly seen as a bloated, self-indulgent musical culture. Tracks would drag on for hours, and musicians saw themselves as heirs to Beethoven and Mozart. There was much talk of classical-rock, or jazz-rock 'fusion', but the music press, led by the NME were beginning to actively promote something called 'punk'. Something was in the air.....
My brother-in-law worked in a record shop in London, so we began to receive a flood of free albums, by bands, mostly British ones, that I'd never heard of. It was great stuff, and I loved it. Talking Heads, Television, Joe Jackson, Graham Parker, and all the punk bands, the Pistols, Buzzcocks, the Clash - all were a bracing blast of very fresh air. Joy Division were a bit different, more doomy, blacker, and when Ian Curtis died they seemed to disappear off the map. My children were getting older, and there were more of them, and life took over, so music began to take a back seat. Eighties music wasn't much to my taste anyway. So that's why the music of the late Seventies still has a hold on me.
Back to the film - its depiction of its period was extraordinarily vivid - the phone boxes, the grim interior decor, the clothes; all were recreated with a realism that was palpable, because it was felt as well as visualised. It made me realise once again, the extent to which life has changed in the 1990s, with the advent of mobile phones and the internet -this was a world in which they did not yet exist, there was no virtuality, everything had to be done manually. It was a world my parents, brought up by Victorians, recognised - it now seems antideluvian.
Curtis was a deeply troubled soul - it's funny, but in the film, he seemed happiest at work, dealing with the unemployed at the Jobcentre. It seemed to suit him, being a civil servant. On stage, performing, he was consumed, tormented - it made a compelling spectacle, but destroyed him. Sam Riley didn't just portray him, he inhabited him intuitively. He was terrified of losing control, but exulted in it simultaneously. It looked marvellous, the monochrome depiction of Macclesfield made it look beautiful, but never idealised. A great film, I thought, a tremendous achievement.