(John Sayles, 1987)
Matewan is a masterpiece. John Sayles' best film, and one of the greatest and most overlooked films of the 1980s, it tells the story of a Miners Strike in West Virginia in 1920 which eventually ends in horrible violence.
Sayles is a fascinating director. A true independent, with a maverick streak, he writes, directs and edits each of his own films, writes novels and short stories, acts in other films as well as working as an uncredited script doctor on bigger movies for the studios, notably Apollo 13. He was in the middle of a rich seam of creativity in the late 80s, when he made Matewan. His next film, Eight Men Out was set in the same historical period as Matewan, but in the utterly different world of East Coast Baseball. The two films do have some thematic similarities, with their stories of groups of comrades facing coercion, moral courage and the damage wrought by politics.
Sayles has always been a great writer. Each of his films, from his first, "Return of the Seacausus Seven" (1980), is beautifully written, with wise, truthful, rounded characters, nice, frequently witty dialogue and unforced, organic plotting. His visual style has been more of an issue. He can be slightly pedestrian visually, though his storytelling is always clear and his editing is natural and smooth. His solution to his visual limitations seems to have been to hire the best Directors of Photography he possibly could.
Matewan had a budget of just $4 Million, which is a tiny amount for such an ambitious film which is so dependent on a convincing, detailed period recreation for its authenticity. Sayles wisely recruited the great Haskell Wexler as his cinematographer, and as a result, Matewan is hauntingly beautiful, full of muted, dusky lighting and striking compositions.
Its plot details the arrival in the town of Matewan of a young, idealistic union Organiser, written by Sayles and played by Chris Cooper as an almost mythic figure. His attempts to unite the striking miners and the immigrant scabs brought in by the Mining company result in an escalation of hostilities by the company's thuggish strike-breakers. Alongside Cooper, there are appearances by actors who would become Sayles' semi-regulars like David Strathairn and Mary McDonnell. There is also a striking performance from Will Oldham as a young miner-cum-preacher. When I first encountered Oldham in his guise as a musician, some years after I had seen the film, I was shocked to discover that the man responsible for this music was the actor from Matewan. He's as startling a screen presence as he is a songwriter, and indeed all of the films performances are strong. Sayles has always been a fine director of actors. But perhaps his most obvious gift is a talent for Altmanesque multi-character narratives, such as City of Hope, Lone Star and Sunshine State. Matewan flirts with this sub-genre, following the effects of the strike and Cooper's arrival upon many of the people involved. Sayles' work generally has a significant political component also, and Matewan is perhaps his most explicitly political film, with its portrayal of a labour dispute as a Manichean struggle between good and evil, informed by the cynicism the distance of 60 years of labour struggle in America has provided him.
That struggle finally erupts in the film's climax, inspired by the historical "Massacre of Matewan", when the Union thugs and the miners battle in the town. Sayles' screenwriting for the studios has tended to take in more genre material than his own directorial career, but Matewan's finale seems to suggest a classic Western scenario, with the two sides meeting on a railway line before an apocalyptic gunfight begins. The shooting of this sequence itself evokes Sam Peckinpah or Walter Hill, with heads exploding like ripe fruit and the air ringing with the reports of fired weaponry. Its a fantastic, ferocious climax, unlike anything else in Sayles' career, and all the more powerful and surprising for that. It also shows him - in collaboration with Wexler - as a visually exciting director, in perhaps the only straight set-piece he has ever attempted in his career. But he shows us the consequences of such violence - characters lie dead and bleeding. Others weep over the bodies of their loved ones, and Sayles' camera takes it all in, just as it had the carnage beforehand. Its a great ending to a great film in what remains an interesting, unique career.
Showing posts with label 1980s Cinema. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1980s Cinema. Show all posts
Monday, 25 May 2015
Sunday, 1 September 2013
48 HRS
(Walter Hill, 1982)
The formula established by 48 Hrs., usually referred to as the "buddy cop" movie, would go on to become one of the most popular and successful templates in commercial cinema in the 1980s. But viewed today, 48 Hrs. stands out from most of the films it influenced.
That's because Walter Hill, at that point, was in the middle of an incredible run of genre films, beginning with Hard Times in 1975 and continuing through The Driver, The Warriors, Southern Comfort and, in 1981, The Long Riders. Each of those films is the work of a brilliant action craftsman; they are all accessible yet a little arty too, with some abstraction, a witty understanding of genre conventions, and an inventive, exciting, even poetic approach to shooting violence.
48 Hrs. is more obviously commercial, and yet Hill's sensibility elevates it, gives it a grit and a darkness which make it feel more adult than most films of its type.
The plot unites ragged mess of a San Francisco Cop Jack Gates (Nick Nolte) with convict Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) after an escaped convict (James Remar) and his partner (Sonny Landham) kill a couple of detectives. Hammond and Gates bicker, brawl and develop a wary, grudging respect for one another against a vivid San Francisco backdrop, while they violently hassle cowboys in a country bar, bully the girlfriends of the criminals they seek, stakeout a long-stay garage and drive Gates' enormous sky blue Cadillac all over the city.
As always Hill exhibits a great eye - some of the compositions and lighting during the final shootout in a misty Chinatown are fabulous - and his action scenes are thunderous and reliably visceral. But the script - co-written by Hill, Larry Gross and action specialists Steven De Souza and Jeb Stuart - is also surprisingly smart and frank. The characters are a mix of utterly archetypal and realistically complex. The villains are cartoonish bad men, set on murder and mayhem, and Nolte's Police Chief yells at him in his every appearance. Women are given short shrift too. The lovely Annette O'Toole plays Gates' girlfriend, and though their relationship is founded on a believable dynamic based on tension over commitment and her resentment about working in a bar, that translates as her mainly arguing with him. While every role of note is filled with a high-quality supporting player, its the leads that have to carry the film, and these two are more than capable. Nolte plays it dead straight, making Jack a shambling mess, all impulse-control issues and gratuitous swearing (some of the racist abuse he tosses at Hammond is shocking). In fact, Jack is a bit of an asshole, which makes his interaction with the annoying Hammond all the more entertaining. Hammond was a prototypical Murphy role - all attitude, fast-chatter and grinning charm, he is ever-likeable and funny too.
That doesn't mean the film is a comedy - though it often throws up laughs in the scenes where Reggie and Jack bicker. Generally it is extremely tough and dark. Gates and Hammond fight hatefully, nobody ever cooperates with the police, violence is always close. But all that just makes its noirish world more convincing and interesting as a venue for this ind of story.
The formula established by 48 Hrs., usually referred to as the "buddy cop" movie, would go on to become one of the most popular and successful templates in commercial cinema in the 1980s. But viewed today, 48 Hrs. stands out from most of the films it influenced.
That's because Walter Hill, at that point, was in the middle of an incredible run of genre films, beginning with Hard Times in 1975 and continuing through The Driver, The Warriors, Southern Comfort and, in 1981, The Long Riders. Each of those films is the work of a brilliant action craftsman; they are all accessible yet a little arty too, with some abstraction, a witty understanding of genre conventions, and an inventive, exciting, even poetic approach to shooting violence.
48 Hrs. is more obviously commercial, and yet Hill's sensibility elevates it, gives it a grit and a darkness which make it feel more adult than most films of its type.
The plot unites ragged mess of a San Francisco Cop Jack Gates (Nick Nolte) with convict Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) after an escaped convict (James Remar) and his partner (Sonny Landham) kill a couple of detectives. Hammond and Gates bicker, brawl and develop a wary, grudging respect for one another against a vivid San Francisco backdrop, while they violently hassle cowboys in a country bar, bully the girlfriends of the criminals they seek, stakeout a long-stay garage and drive Gates' enormous sky blue Cadillac all over the city.
As always Hill exhibits a great eye - some of the compositions and lighting during the final shootout in a misty Chinatown are fabulous - and his action scenes are thunderous and reliably visceral. But the script - co-written by Hill, Larry Gross and action specialists Steven De Souza and Jeb Stuart - is also surprisingly smart and frank. The characters are a mix of utterly archetypal and realistically complex. The villains are cartoonish bad men, set on murder and mayhem, and Nolte's Police Chief yells at him in his every appearance. Women are given short shrift too. The lovely Annette O'Toole plays Gates' girlfriend, and though their relationship is founded on a believable dynamic based on tension over commitment and her resentment about working in a bar, that translates as her mainly arguing with him. While every role of note is filled with a high-quality supporting player, its the leads that have to carry the film, and these two are more than capable. Nolte plays it dead straight, making Jack a shambling mess, all impulse-control issues and gratuitous swearing (some of the racist abuse he tosses at Hammond is shocking). In fact, Jack is a bit of an asshole, which makes his interaction with the annoying Hammond all the more entertaining. Hammond was a prototypical Murphy role - all attitude, fast-chatter and grinning charm, he is ever-likeable and funny too.
That doesn't mean the film is a comedy - though it often throws up laughs in the scenes where Reggie and Jack bicker. Generally it is extremely tough and dark. Gates and Hammond fight hatefully, nobody ever cooperates with the police, violence is always close. But all that just makes its noirish world more convincing and interesting as a venue for this ind of story.
Monday, 26 August 2013
THE UNTOUCHABLES
(Brian De Palma, 1987)
The Untouchables was released in the US in June 1987. That marks it out firmly as a Summer Blockbuster, or at least states that it was intended as one by its studio. But it seems to possess an insane pedigree and class for a Blockbuster. Directed by a controversial auteur who has always had one foot in the arthouse (Brian DePalma), written by one of America's greatest living playwrights (David Mamet), with a score by Ennio Morricone, costumes by Armani and a cast including two of the Twentieth Century's great male screen icons (Sean Connery and Robert DeNiro) alongside a couple of then up-and-coming new stars (Kevin Costner and Andy Garcia), the film almost seems too good to be true. And it has the temerity to be incredibly entertaining, with two fantastic DePama set-pieces, while also slyly getting in its digs at the hypocrisy of American political policies, both in the Prohibition and (by extension) Reagan eras.
It is a film of great moments and great scenes, which lessen the impact of its structural problems. After the departure of Connery's character, the narrative never really recovers the same drive, though DePalma's Odessa Steps Train Station sequence distracts the audience in the immediate aftermath of his terrific death scene. But we are buoyed by the numerous brilliant moments we have already witnessed. There is DeNiro's baseball bat wielding "enthusiasms" speech (based on an actual Capone execution of two seditious mobsters), wherein he seems to allow himself to coast and grimace and leer, almost caricaturing his own persona to highly entertaining effect. DePalma ends the scene with a beautiful aerial shot, too. Then there is Connery's selection of Andy Garcia's character for a place on the team, baiting him with ethnic slurs, until Garcia pulls a pistol on him and sticks it beneath his chin with the words: " Its better than you, you stinking Irish pig." Garcia is shy and charming here in a way he never really recovered in his career, grinning as Connery praises him.
Then there is the gun battle on the Canadian border, in which Charles Martin Smith distinguishes himself in a berserker attack on two trucks of mobsters - DePalma depicting shotgun blasts as resulting in pink clouds of blood hanging in the air, Morricone turning in something akin to a Classical Western score, Connery ending a chase-scene with a volley of gunfire into the air and the words "Enough of this running shit." And then there is the exemplary first person POV stalking of Connery before he is assassinated, the director amusing himself with his facility with the medium itself, a filmmaker with enough maturity to take on a project like this, without the auteurist quirks and motifs of much of the rest of his work, and turn it into arguably his best "popular" film.
But the best scene is a brief exchange of charged dialogue between Connery and Costner, sitting in a church-pew, captured by DePalma in a showy two-shot. Because it demands - and gets - the best from Mamet, from the two actors, and from the Director. It sets the tone for what is to come, defines the battle at the heart of the film, and lays out the crucial dynamic between the hero and his mentor. Later, just before they bust down a door into one of Capone's distillerys, Connery tells Costner that once the door is open, there can be no turning back. But really, that moment is already passed. It came when Connery laid out the fight for him and Costner asserted his desire for it.
Mamet is a proud son of Chicago, and there is a lot of that city's working class hard-boiled straight-talking in his dialogue. But much of his work as a Screenwriter for hire feels like the hackwork that it undoubtedly is, his touch barely discernible, as if he is trying to lose what makes him distinctive, subsuming himself for the good of the project. However, there is the sense that he feels something more for The Untouchables, key to the mythic history of his hometown as the story is. So his script is full of great one-liners, most of them given to Connery, and a couple of classic Capone monologues. It is also commendably tight and well-paced for much of its running time, excellent in establishing its characters concisely, and makes its odd conclusion - Ness has to break the rules, by murdering a man, in order to win - a crowd-pleasing moment.
The Untouchables was released in the US in June 1987. That marks it out firmly as a Summer Blockbuster, or at least states that it was intended as one by its studio. But it seems to possess an insane pedigree and class for a Blockbuster. Directed by a controversial auteur who has always had one foot in the arthouse (Brian DePalma), written by one of America's greatest living playwrights (David Mamet), with a score by Ennio Morricone, costumes by Armani and a cast including two of the Twentieth Century's great male screen icons (Sean Connery and Robert DeNiro) alongside a couple of then up-and-coming new stars (Kevin Costner and Andy Garcia), the film almost seems too good to be true. And it has the temerity to be incredibly entertaining, with two fantastic DePama set-pieces, while also slyly getting in its digs at the hypocrisy of American political policies, both in the Prohibition and (by extension) Reagan eras.
It is a film of great moments and great scenes, which lessen the impact of its structural problems. After the departure of Connery's character, the narrative never really recovers the same drive, though DePalma's Odessa Steps Train Station sequence distracts the audience in the immediate aftermath of his terrific death scene. But we are buoyed by the numerous brilliant moments we have already witnessed. There is DeNiro's baseball bat wielding "enthusiasms" speech (based on an actual Capone execution of two seditious mobsters), wherein he seems to allow himself to coast and grimace and leer, almost caricaturing his own persona to highly entertaining effect. DePalma ends the scene with a beautiful aerial shot, too. Then there is Connery's selection of Andy Garcia's character for a place on the team, baiting him with ethnic slurs, until Garcia pulls a pistol on him and sticks it beneath his chin with the words: " Its better than you, you stinking Irish pig." Garcia is shy and charming here in a way he never really recovered in his career, grinning as Connery praises him.
Then there is the gun battle on the Canadian border, in which Charles Martin Smith distinguishes himself in a berserker attack on two trucks of mobsters - DePalma depicting shotgun blasts as resulting in pink clouds of blood hanging in the air, Morricone turning in something akin to a Classical Western score, Connery ending a chase-scene with a volley of gunfire into the air and the words "Enough of this running shit." And then there is the exemplary first person POV stalking of Connery before he is assassinated, the director amusing himself with his facility with the medium itself, a filmmaker with enough maturity to take on a project like this, without the auteurist quirks and motifs of much of the rest of his work, and turn it into arguably his best "popular" film.
But the best scene is a brief exchange of charged dialogue between Connery and Costner, sitting in a church-pew, captured by DePalma in a showy two-shot. Because it demands - and gets - the best from Mamet, from the two actors, and from the Director. It sets the tone for what is to come, defines the battle at the heart of the film, and lays out the crucial dynamic between the hero and his mentor. Later, just before they bust down a door into one of Capone's distillerys, Connery tells Costner that once the door is open, there can be no turning back. But really, that moment is already passed. It came when Connery laid out the fight for him and Costner asserted his desire for it.
Mamet is a proud son of Chicago, and there is a lot of that city's working class hard-boiled straight-talking in his dialogue. But much of his work as a Screenwriter for hire feels like the hackwork that it undoubtedly is, his touch barely discernible, as if he is trying to lose what makes him distinctive, subsuming himself for the good of the project. However, there is the sense that he feels something more for The Untouchables, key to the mythic history of his hometown as the story is. So his script is full of great one-liners, most of them given to Connery, and a couple of classic Capone monologues. It is also commendably tight and well-paced for much of its running time, excellent in establishing its characters concisely, and makes its odd conclusion - Ness has to break the rules, by murdering a man, in order to win - a crowd-pleasing moment.
Sunday, 4 August 2013
SALUTE OF THE JUGGER
aka THE BLOOD OF HEROES
(David Webb Peoples, 1989)
Probably the greatest post-apocalyptic sports movie ever made, Salute of the Jugger is David Webb Peoples single directorial credit. He is a highly-regarded screenwriter, responsible for the scripts for Blade Runner, Unforgiven and Twelve Monkeys. If those stories have anything in common, it is a good sense of what works in genre cinema and a certain bold mythic quality to the storytelling.
His only film as director has similar qualities. It establishes its world in the opening scene, which is filmed in a few powerful, classical compositions, utilising the bleak majesty of the Australian desert locations. It is many years in a future after some awful apocalypse. Mankind lives in medievel-style market towns, scrabbling for a living. Teams of Juggers travel from town to town, playing their Game - a mix of gridiron and murder - for money and to entertain crowds. In the Nine Cities, located deep beneath the surface of the earth, civilization survives in the form of an aristocracy. The Game is played there too, in the brutal League, where Juggers are pampered and live well.
We follow Sallow (Rutger Hauer) and his team of Juggers as they encounter Kidda (Joan Chen). Ambitious, she joins the team and begins encouraging Sallow to return to the Nine Cities, from where he was banished years before, in order to challenge a league team, the only way for a "Dogtown" Jugger to get noticed and earn a nice life.
This is a post-apocalyptic world without many of the Road Warrior cliches. It feels more feudal and dark ages than Western. Salllow and his team walk across the wilderness rather than drive, and the bleached out world they inhabit recalls nothing else so much as bible movies in its visual scheme. The content is obviously different; adopting a pretty standard sports movie template of manipulative passage to crucial climactic game, it works surprisingly well. The Game allows Peoples to indulge in both sports and action scenes simultaneously, and he brings in slo-mo, montages, and sets up the conflicts and stakes for the final game with an excellent economy. The characters are all relatively quiet individuals, but Peoples dialogue is generally strong, and the starkness of his people suits this world of myth and archetype. The Game is simple, its rules and codes established in the first instance of play, a good example of the efficiency of Peoples' work here.
Visually his film looks splendid, given its limited budget. The first half, in particular, makes the Australian landscape look amazingly bleak and beautiful, while the second is a study in shadow and light in the subterranean darkness of the Cities.
And while the whole thing is a little silly, it is played with compelling conviction by the talented cast, and the storytelling is excellent throughout. It makes you wish Peoples had directed again.
(David Webb Peoples, 1989)
Probably the greatest post-apocalyptic sports movie ever made, Salute of the Jugger is David Webb Peoples single directorial credit. He is a highly-regarded screenwriter, responsible for the scripts for Blade Runner, Unforgiven and Twelve Monkeys. If those stories have anything in common, it is a good sense of what works in genre cinema and a certain bold mythic quality to the storytelling.
His only film as director has similar qualities. It establishes its world in the opening scene, which is filmed in a few powerful, classical compositions, utilising the bleak majesty of the Australian desert locations. It is many years in a future after some awful apocalypse. Mankind lives in medievel-style market towns, scrabbling for a living. Teams of Juggers travel from town to town, playing their Game - a mix of gridiron and murder - for money and to entertain crowds. In the Nine Cities, located deep beneath the surface of the earth, civilization survives in the form of an aristocracy. The Game is played there too, in the brutal League, where Juggers are pampered and live well.
We follow Sallow (Rutger Hauer) and his team of Juggers as they encounter Kidda (Joan Chen). Ambitious, she joins the team and begins encouraging Sallow to return to the Nine Cities, from where he was banished years before, in order to challenge a league team, the only way for a "Dogtown" Jugger to get noticed and earn a nice life.
This is a post-apocalyptic world without many of the Road Warrior cliches. It feels more feudal and dark ages than Western. Salllow and his team walk across the wilderness rather than drive, and the bleached out world they inhabit recalls nothing else so much as bible movies in its visual scheme. The content is obviously different; adopting a pretty standard sports movie template of manipulative passage to crucial climactic game, it works surprisingly well. The Game allows Peoples to indulge in both sports and action scenes simultaneously, and he brings in slo-mo, montages, and sets up the conflicts and stakes for the final game with an excellent economy. The characters are all relatively quiet individuals, but Peoples dialogue is generally strong, and the starkness of his people suits this world of myth and archetype. The Game is simple, its rules and codes established in the first instance of play, a good example of the efficiency of Peoples' work here.
Visually his film looks splendid, given its limited budget. The first half, in particular, makes the Australian landscape look amazingly bleak and beautiful, while the second is a study in shadow and light in the subterranean darkness of the Cities.
And while the whole thing is a little silly, it is played with compelling conviction by the talented cast, and the storytelling is excellent throughout. It makes you wish Peoples had directed again.
Wednesday, 31 July 2013
RETURN OF THE JEDI
(Richard Marquand, 1983)
The Jedi-Sith material here really works. In fact, Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hammill) line when he finally rejects the Emperor and his offer of Intergalactic power is, I think, the best and most moving in the entire Star Wars series, carrying as it does the weight of a long-running storyline, and representing the ultimate triumph of good over evil. "I am a Jedi, like my father before me." That line gave me chills on this, my umpteenth viewing (though perhaps my first in a decade). It is just a shame that so much else made me cringe.
The first act is fine; a little too derivative of the Tatooine scenes in Star Wars: A New Hope in its sci-fi exotica and array of alien beasties, but with a strong spine of story as the rebel gang from the first two films combine to rescue a frozen Han Solo (Harrison Ford) from Jabba the Hut. It features a fine swashbuckling action scene on the skiff above the Sarlac pit, though the brief, brutal disposal of Boba Fett remains a frustration; sometimes George Lucas really didn't understand the appeal of his own creation. Marquand may be the most anonymous of the three directors to have made a Star Wars film; his work here is competent and sporadically slick but never any better than that.
The second act follows Luke back to Yoda on Dagobah while the Rebel plan to attack the new Death Star is laid out. It's here that the strange disconnect between the preceding The Empire Strikes Back and this film becomes evident. The spiky screwball relationship between Han and Leia (Carrie Fisher), perhaps the strongest element of the previous film, here seems tame and underwritten, almost as if the decision was made to change the course of a particular arc. Harrison Ford, so great in the first two films, looks uncomfortable here, and Han seems tired and a little self-parodic in his bravado and squabbling with Chewbacca. Leia is similarly declawed by this script, while Lando (Billy Dee Williams) never really had any personality in the first place, besides calling Han "old buddy" repeatedly. That leaves Luke and the droids. R2D2 is as central to the plot as ever - the notion that he is the true hero of the entire series is a persuasive one, given how often he makes key contributions to events - while C3PO gets a decent little showcase when he tells a wowed Ewok audience the story of the previous films in the saga, complete with Darth Vader breathing.
Ah yes, the Ewoks. The original story set the Endor action on the Wookie homeworld, but Lucas changed his concept, the assumption being that he saw the endless merchandising possibilities presented by introducing a race of warrior teddy bears to his saga. When I was 8 I loved the Ewoks. They were funny and seemed cool. As an adult, the mix of cuteness and sentimentality (one Ewok mourning a fallen comrade) is off-putting and feels decidedly at odds with the darker elements of the series. This is only made more obvious by the way the third act (brilliantly) cross-cuts between three distinct fields of action: we have Luke in conversation with Emperor Palpatine (Iain MacDiarmad) and Vader whilst simultaneously the Rebel fleet is battling an Imperial Armada near the Death Star and on Endor, Han, Leia and the Ewoks are fighting Stormtroopers.
The conversation between Skywalker and the Sith Lords eventually, inevitably turns into a lightsabre duel and the emotional turning point for all six of the Star Wars films, and Hamill does well in such an emotionally intense scene. Only for Marquand and Lucas to cut away to teddy bears fighting bad guys. Such is the nature of Star Wars, and the Ewoks are really the origin point of the disastrous introduction of Jar-Jar Binks in the prequel The Phantom Menace.
Likewise, Return of the Jedi is the film where the nature of what constituted Star Wars changed. After the relative sophistication and emotional complexity of The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas took a step back, dumbed down a little, introduced more kid-friendly elements, and watched the cash pour in. And while it looks often brilliant in comparison to many of the summer blockbusters which it influenced, it is an oddly frustrating, broken-backed film in its own right.
The Jedi-Sith material here really works. In fact, Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hammill) line when he finally rejects the Emperor and his offer of Intergalactic power is, I think, the best and most moving in the entire Star Wars series, carrying as it does the weight of a long-running storyline, and representing the ultimate triumph of good over evil. "I am a Jedi, like my father before me." That line gave me chills on this, my umpteenth viewing (though perhaps my first in a decade). It is just a shame that so much else made me cringe.
The first act is fine; a little too derivative of the Tatooine scenes in Star Wars: A New Hope in its sci-fi exotica and array of alien beasties, but with a strong spine of story as the rebel gang from the first two films combine to rescue a frozen Han Solo (Harrison Ford) from Jabba the Hut. It features a fine swashbuckling action scene on the skiff above the Sarlac pit, though the brief, brutal disposal of Boba Fett remains a frustration; sometimes George Lucas really didn't understand the appeal of his own creation. Marquand may be the most anonymous of the three directors to have made a Star Wars film; his work here is competent and sporadically slick but never any better than that.
The second act follows Luke back to Yoda on Dagobah while the Rebel plan to attack the new Death Star is laid out. It's here that the strange disconnect between the preceding The Empire Strikes Back and this film becomes evident. The spiky screwball relationship between Han and Leia (Carrie Fisher), perhaps the strongest element of the previous film, here seems tame and underwritten, almost as if the decision was made to change the course of a particular arc. Harrison Ford, so great in the first two films, looks uncomfortable here, and Han seems tired and a little self-parodic in his bravado and squabbling with Chewbacca. Leia is similarly declawed by this script, while Lando (Billy Dee Williams) never really had any personality in the first place, besides calling Han "old buddy" repeatedly. That leaves Luke and the droids. R2D2 is as central to the plot as ever - the notion that he is the true hero of the entire series is a persuasive one, given how often he makes key contributions to events - while C3PO gets a decent little showcase when he tells a wowed Ewok audience the story of the previous films in the saga, complete with Darth Vader breathing.
Ah yes, the Ewoks. The original story set the Endor action on the Wookie homeworld, but Lucas changed his concept, the assumption being that he saw the endless merchandising possibilities presented by introducing a race of warrior teddy bears to his saga. When I was 8 I loved the Ewoks. They were funny and seemed cool. As an adult, the mix of cuteness and sentimentality (one Ewok mourning a fallen comrade) is off-putting and feels decidedly at odds with the darker elements of the series. This is only made more obvious by the way the third act (brilliantly) cross-cuts between three distinct fields of action: we have Luke in conversation with Emperor Palpatine (Iain MacDiarmad) and Vader whilst simultaneously the Rebel fleet is battling an Imperial Armada near the Death Star and on Endor, Han, Leia and the Ewoks are fighting Stormtroopers.
The conversation between Skywalker and the Sith Lords eventually, inevitably turns into a lightsabre duel and the emotional turning point for all six of the Star Wars films, and Hamill does well in such an emotionally intense scene. Only for Marquand and Lucas to cut away to teddy bears fighting bad guys. Such is the nature of Star Wars, and the Ewoks are really the origin point of the disastrous introduction of Jar-Jar Binks in the prequel The Phantom Menace.
Likewise, Return of the Jedi is the film where the nature of what constituted Star Wars changed. After the relative sophistication and emotional complexity of The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas took a step back, dumbed down a little, introduced more kid-friendly elements, and watched the cash pour in. And while it looks often brilliant in comparison to many of the summer blockbusters which it influenced, it is an oddly frustrating, broken-backed film in its own right.
Sunday, 3 March 2013
SOUTHERN COMFORT
(Walter Hill, 1981)
Southern Comfort may just be Walter Hill's most acute and perfect film.
By the time he directed it, he had enjoyed a lot of critical and commercial success. Indeed, he was on a run of high quality few directors get to experience in an entire career - from The Streetfighter/Hard Times in 1975, through The Driver and The Warriors in '78 and '79, to the beautiful The Long Riders in 1980. That last film, Hill's first Western, indicated that he had perfected his voice; it is a little arty in its use of genre, elliptical plotting and Hill's embrace of slow-motion as an almost abstract method for filming action. And yet it is accessible - full of action set-pieces, funny, and with a little romance too. Hill made films which could appeal to a mainstream audience and a cineaste at the same time, which explains his enduring popularity with critics.
That success may explain how audacious Southern Comfort is. Hill had the confidence to make it perhaps his starkest film, with a stripped-down approach taken to the setting and characterisation. The back story is dealt with in the fantastically economical opening scene, which also establishes every character in five minutes or so. We are following a troop of Louisiana National Guardsmen on a training exercise in the Bayou. They are a disparate group of personalities, including a few quiet, suburban middle-class types with respectable jobs, a couple of gung ho hillbillies, some ex-Army men who take it all more seriously than the others, and a few loners, only there because they absolutely have to be. In the early stages of a long march through the swamp they steal (they assure themselves its borrowing) some boats they come across. When the men they presume to be the owners of the boats appear on the shore, one of the men shoots at them. The men on the shore - cajun hunters - dive for cover, and then return fire, not understanding that these National Guardsmen are armed only with blanks. A bullet kills the commanding Officer of the National Guard, and the others flee terrified into the bayou. Thus begins a long slow hunt as the group is whittled down by the hunters, by nature and by internal conflict until only a handful remain, desperately clinging to life as they attempt to escape the swampland.
Placing his characters in such an extreme situation allows Hill to test and define them the way he likes - through action. Some panic, a few wilt and one or two snap. The genuine heroes are the ones who keep thinking, who keep their heads. All of this is demonstrated in tight, convincingly fraught dialogue exchanges and some intense action sequences. The heroes who emerge are Spencer (Keith Carradine) a cynical, urban wiseass, and Hardin (Powers Boothe), a new Texan transfer into the squad who is disgusted by the arrogance and stupidity of his comrades even before their ordeal begins. Among the weak links are a terrific Fred Ward as Reece, an aggressive hillbilly who relishes the opportunity for violence the situation provides him, and Alun Autry as Bowden, an uptight High School football Coach who is seemingly driven mad by events.
The way the men turn on one another, the way the chain of command proves ineffective in such a situation, and the way their characters reveal themselves are all neatly executed by Hill and a cast filled with great character actor faces. Action films with such solid characterisation and tight plotting have always been rare, and Hill allies that with his customary action filmmaking - the attacks and fights here are brutal yet elegantly composed, the logic behind each shot and cut clear and beautifully crisp.
Boothe and Carradine offer one of the most interesting buddy-relationships ever seen in this genre; they barely like one another, yet the gradual growth of respect between them is tellingly, convincingly played, and each is excellent in his role.
Southern Comfort offers more than all I have described; Hill's film presents an obvious (though never overstated) allegory for Vietnam, artfully underlined in the final freeze-frame. It is also, for long stretches, a beautiful piece of pure cinema. Andrew Laszlo's cinematography offers a rich symphony of browns and greens throughout, and plays with the light thrown by the murky swamp water and the dulled skies glimpsed through the branches above. Through this the men, themselves in dull green, trudge, making the sudden appearance of civilization in the form of a Cajun village in the last act feel like a moment of alien contact in a sci-fi film. This is all soundtracked by Hill's most frequent collaborator, Ry Cooder, whose atmospheric slide guitar score could not be better.
Southern Comfort may just be Walter Hill's most acute and perfect film.
By the time he directed it, he had enjoyed a lot of critical and commercial success. Indeed, he was on a run of high quality few directors get to experience in an entire career - from The Streetfighter/Hard Times in 1975, through The Driver and The Warriors in '78 and '79, to the beautiful The Long Riders in 1980. That last film, Hill's first Western, indicated that he had perfected his voice; it is a little arty in its use of genre, elliptical plotting and Hill's embrace of slow-motion as an almost abstract method for filming action. And yet it is accessible - full of action set-pieces, funny, and with a little romance too. Hill made films which could appeal to a mainstream audience and a cineaste at the same time, which explains his enduring popularity with critics.
That success may explain how audacious Southern Comfort is. Hill had the confidence to make it perhaps his starkest film, with a stripped-down approach taken to the setting and characterisation. The back story is dealt with in the fantastically economical opening scene, which also establishes every character in five minutes or so. We are following a troop of Louisiana National Guardsmen on a training exercise in the Bayou. They are a disparate group of personalities, including a few quiet, suburban middle-class types with respectable jobs, a couple of gung ho hillbillies, some ex-Army men who take it all more seriously than the others, and a few loners, only there because they absolutely have to be. In the early stages of a long march through the swamp they steal (they assure themselves its borrowing) some boats they come across. When the men they presume to be the owners of the boats appear on the shore, one of the men shoots at them. The men on the shore - cajun hunters - dive for cover, and then return fire, not understanding that these National Guardsmen are armed only with blanks. A bullet kills the commanding Officer of the National Guard, and the others flee terrified into the bayou. Thus begins a long slow hunt as the group is whittled down by the hunters, by nature and by internal conflict until only a handful remain, desperately clinging to life as they attempt to escape the swampland.
Placing his characters in such an extreme situation allows Hill to test and define them the way he likes - through action. Some panic, a few wilt and one or two snap. The genuine heroes are the ones who keep thinking, who keep their heads. All of this is demonstrated in tight, convincingly fraught dialogue exchanges and some intense action sequences. The heroes who emerge are Spencer (Keith Carradine) a cynical, urban wiseass, and Hardin (Powers Boothe), a new Texan transfer into the squad who is disgusted by the arrogance and stupidity of his comrades even before their ordeal begins. Among the weak links are a terrific Fred Ward as Reece, an aggressive hillbilly who relishes the opportunity for violence the situation provides him, and Alun Autry as Bowden, an uptight High School football Coach who is seemingly driven mad by events.
The way the men turn on one another, the way the chain of command proves ineffective in such a situation, and the way their characters reveal themselves are all neatly executed by Hill and a cast filled with great character actor faces. Action films with such solid characterisation and tight plotting have always been rare, and Hill allies that with his customary action filmmaking - the attacks and fights here are brutal yet elegantly composed, the logic behind each shot and cut clear and beautifully crisp.
Boothe and Carradine offer one of the most interesting buddy-relationships ever seen in this genre; they barely like one another, yet the gradual growth of respect between them is tellingly, convincingly played, and each is excellent in his role.
Southern Comfort offers more than all I have described; Hill's film presents an obvious (though never overstated) allegory for Vietnam, artfully underlined in the final freeze-frame. It is also, for long stretches, a beautiful piece of pure cinema. Andrew Laszlo's cinematography offers a rich symphony of browns and greens throughout, and plays with the light thrown by the murky swamp water and the dulled skies glimpsed through the branches above. Through this the men, themselves in dull green, trudge, making the sudden appearance of civilization in the form of a Cajun village in the last act feel like a moment of alien contact in a sci-fi film. This is all soundtracked by Hill's most frequent collaborator, Ry Cooder, whose atmospheric slide guitar score could not be better.
Wednesday, 27 February 2013
MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR
(George Miller, 1981)
A solid argument can be made for director George Millar as perhaps the greatest storyteller in 1980s cinema. That argument would revolve - for the most part - around Mad Max 2.
The international success of the first Mad Max film afforded Miller the opportunity to make his sequel bigger and better in more or less every way.
And so he goes for broke; by the start of this film society and civilization have entirely broken down, allowing him to utilise the beautiful emptiness of his Australian Outback locations to represent this post-apocalyptic world. Ex cop and "shell of a man" Max (Mel Gibson) is now every inch the Road Warrior of the title, roaming the wasteland in his souped up police car in search of food, gasoline and weapons, battling with gangs of marauders for possession of anything valuable in the wilderness.
Max comes across a Gas pumping station transformed into a fortress and being protected by a group of survivors (dressed in white, brown and beige) from a terrifying army of leather-clad marauders outside. Covetous of all that petrol, Max volunteers to help the defenders in their attempts to escape to the Coast with the oil...
Among other things, Mad Max 2 is the finest Western of the '80s. It may lack (most) Western iconography, but all the elements are there, in disguise: a lone hero with his own distinct code of honour and a reluctance to join a community, an isolated Fort besieged by savages, incredible widescreen desert landscapes, and long, brilliant action sequences. Miller includes a few genre signifiers to make it clear: many of the weapons used come straight from Westerns, from Max's shotgun to the bows used by the defenders. The marauders, while generally wearing (hugely influential) mixes of biker and bondage gear, are often given Mohawks and Mohicans, and the massive final action set-piece recalls nothing so much as the central action scene in Ford's Stagecoach, with the heroes vehicle pursued and attacked by a mobile band of aggressors.
But what is really impressive here is the stylish economy of the storytelling. So many of these scenes are pure cinema - no dialogue, no exposition, just sound and movement. Miller's compositions are fabulous (cinematographer Dean Semler does great work here too), his editing tight as a drum, and he pulls off a number of bravura shots which never feel remotely ostentatious. This is reflected in the story. The plot is simple, the characters bold and mythic. Villains who never speak a word of dialogue are given vivid personality through body language, wardrobe, performance and Miller's direction. Indeed, near-mute characters such as the Feral Kid and Wez are uniquely memorable and iconic, and the elemental sense of mythic weight behind this story partly explains just why it was so influential (it kicked off a wave of cheap post-apocalyptic action movie imitators).
But if that sense of starkly generic world-building was relatively easy to emulate, then Miller's awesome approach to orchestrating and mounting action scenes was not.
The organic nature of the stunt-work and the fact that we know these are real cars being driven by real people gives these action scenes an impact largely lost in the contemporary cgi era, and also demands a level of ingenuity and invention from Miller which is perceptible. The climactic chase here is a stunning example of sustained craft - visceral, thrilling and hilarious, it maintains an unbelievable level of spatial coherence throughout, as multiple mini-threads and arcs criss-cross and collide during a fifteen minute sequence. Miller demonstrated that this sort of impressive control of big action storytelling with a mythic ring to it could be applied to Childrens cinema with his later work on the Babe films and Happy Feet, but this film remains his masterpiece, and is easily one of the greatest action films ever made.
It helps that the cast is filled with unfamiliar Australian faces and that Gibson was at his most beautiful and charismatic in the early '80s - he smoulders and scowls his way through the film in magnetic fashion, as only a true movie star could.
A solid argument can be made for director George Millar as perhaps the greatest storyteller in 1980s cinema. That argument would revolve - for the most part - around Mad Max 2.
The international success of the first Mad Max film afforded Miller the opportunity to make his sequel bigger and better in more or less every way.
And so he goes for broke; by the start of this film society and civilization have entirely broken down, allowing him to utilise the beautiful emptiness of his Australian Outback locations to represent this post-apocalyptic world. Ex cop and "shell of a man" Max (Mel Gibson) is now every inch the Road Warrior of the title, roaming the wasteland in his souped up police car in search of food, gasoline and weapons, battling with gangs of marauders for possession of anything valuable in the wilderness.
Max comes across a Gas pumping station transformed into a fortress and being protected by a group of survivors (dressed in white, brown and beige) from a terrifying army of leather-clad marauders outside. Covetous of all that petrol, Max volunteers to help the defenders in their attempts to escape to the Coast with the oil...
Among other things, Mad Max 2 is the finest Western of the '80s. It may lack (most) Western iconography, but all the elements are there, in disguise: a lone hero with his own distinct code of honour and a reluctance to join a community, an isolated Fort besieged by savages, incredible widescreen desert landscapes, and long, brilliant action sequences. Miller includes a few genre signifiers to make it clear: many of the weapons used come straight from Westerns, from Max's shotgun to the bows used by the defenders. The marauders, while generally wearing (hugely influential) mixes of biker and bondage gear, are often given Mohawks and Mohicans, and the massive final action set-piece recalls nothing so much as the central action scene in Ford's Stagecoach, with the heroes vehicle pursued and attacked by a mobile band of aggressors.
But what is really impressive here is the stylish economy of the storytelling. So many of these scenes are pure cinema - no dialogue, no exposition, just sound and movement. Miller's compositions are fabulous (cinematographer Dean Semler does great work here too), his editing tight as a drum, and he pulls off a number of bravura shots which never feel remotely ostentatious. This is reflected in the story. The plot is simple, the characters bold and mythic. Villains who never speak a word of dialogue are given vivid personality through body language, wardrobe, performance and Miller's direction. Indeed, near-mute characters such as the Feral Kid and Wez are uniquely memorable and iconic, and the elemental sense of mythic weight behind this story partly explains just why it was so influential (it kicked off a wave of cheap post-apocalyptic action movie imitators).
But if that sense of starkly generic world-building was relatively easy to emulate, then Miller's awesome approach to orchestrating and mounting action scenes was not.
The organic nature of the stunt-work and the fact that we know these are real cars being driven by real people gives these action scenes an impact largely lost in the contemporary cgi era, and also demands a level of ingenuity and invention from Miller which is perceptible. The climactic chase here is a stunning example of sustained craft - visceral, thrilling and hilarious, it maintains an unbelievable level of spatial coherence throughout, as multiple mini-threads and arcs criss-cross and collide during a fifteen minute sequence. Miller demonstrated that this sort of impressive control of big action storytelling with a mythic ring to it could be applied to Childrens cinema with his later work on the Babe films and Happy Feet, but this film remains his masterpiece, and is easily one of the greatest action films ever made.
It helps that the cast is filled with unfamiliar Australian faces and that Gibson was at his most beautiful and charismatic in the early '80s - he smoulders and scowls his way through the film in magnetic fashion, as only a true movie star could.
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
DEATH WATCH
(Bertrand Tavernier, 1980)
This unnervingly prophetic film is a product of an era when Science Fiction was still sometimes a genre for grown-ups. This is science fiction without any other generic component; with no aliens or spaceships or futuristic weaponry or fight scenes. Instead what we have are ideas and emotions, the stuff of drama.
Set in a near-future where natural death has been more or less cured by medicine, the story follows two characters. Ronny (Harvey Keitel) allows the television corporation he works for to install a camera behind his eyes. He can no longer sleep or dream, but everything he sees is recorded, forever. The purpose of this procedure is to allow him to monitor the rare death of an individual for a new show, "Death Watch". The chosen individual is Katherine (Romy Schneider). Except Katherine rejects the opportunity, preferring to die alone, with dignity, and goes on the run from the contract she has signed. So Ronny's boss (Harry Dean Stanton) dispatches him to find and befriend her in her last few weeks, and the show goes out as planned. But there are concerns about Ronny's health and sanity, and about Katherine's plans for her own demise.
The show "Death Watch" would sit comfortably on modern television schedules, and a few of the conversations in the film about the morality of the project (Katherine tells the tv executive: "For you, everything is of importance and nothing matters") play like editorials from todays newspapers.
That script, by David Rayfiel, is serious and earnest in an old-fashioned way, its characters patiently drawn, its pacing deliberate. Tavernier conjures up a thick atmosphere. Shooting in Glasgow in 1979, he has captured an industrial city as it ceases to function and just before the inevitable resuscitation of the 1980s, and so Death Watch is filled with lovely shots of this crumbling, once-magisterial city, its wastelands and backstreets, the skies above rolling with black unease.
If it is a trifle unrelenting in its gloominess - and Pierre William Glenn's photography ensures that it is never less than beautifully downbeat - well, that may be because it deals in big themes. Tavernier and Rayfiel are interested in death and our response to it, and their character study of Katherine finally suggests that for her, death is a rebellion against the dystopian world she lives in, where there is little capacity for either misery or joy. The final act - playing out by a Loch, where Katherine is reunited with her ex-husband (Max Von Sydow) has its own intensity of feeling, a genuine spring of regret and sadness which is extremely affecting.
It is, however, an odd film, tonally uneven and perhaps a little too ambitious. The moments of poetry sprinkled throughout do not always blend with the melodrama and contrivance of much of the material. But the cast is tremendous - Keitel's nervy presence contrasts nicely with Schneider's luminous spirit, and they both have terrific scenes with Dean Stanton - while Tavernier's direction is masterful throughout. He captures Glasgow and the Highlands with a few exhilarating crane shots, and chooses to film a chase through the docks in one long, incredible steadicam movement. His determination to be serious also works, ultimately, in the films favour, granting it a chilly gravitas denied to much science fiction.
This unnervingly prophetic film is a product of an era when Science Fiction was still sometimes a genre for grown-ups. This is science fiction without any other generic component; with no aliens or spaceships or futuristic weaponry or fight scenes. Instead what we have are ideas and emotions, the stuff of drama.
Set in a near-future where natural death has been more or less cured by medicine, the story follows two characters. Ronny (Harvey Keitel) allows the television corporation he works for to install a camera behind his eyes. He can no longer sleep or dream, but everything he sees is recorded, forever. The purpose of this procedure is to allow him to monitor the rare death of an individual for a new show, "Death Watch". The chosen individual is Katherine (Romy Schneider). Except Katherine rejects the opportunity, preferring to die alone, with dignity, and goes on the run from the contract she has signed. So Ronny's boss (Harry Dean Stanton) dispatches him to find and befriend her in her last few weeks, and the show goes out as planned. But there are concerns about Ronny's health and sanity, and about Katherine's plans for her own demise.
The show "Death Watch" would sit comfortably on modern television schedules, and a few of the conversations in the film about the morality of the project (Katherine tells the tv executive: "For you, everything is of importance and nothing matters") play like editorials from todays newspapers.
That script, by David Rayfiel, is serious and earnest in an old-fashioned way, its characters patiently drawn, its pacing deliberate. Tavernier conjures up a thick atmosphere. Shooting in Glasgow in 1979, he has captured an industrial city as it ceases to function and just before the inevitable resuscitation of the 1980s, and so Death Watch is filled with lovely shots of this crumbling, once-magisterial city, its wastelands and backstreets, the skies above rolling with black unease.
If it is a trifle unrelenting in its gloominess - and Pierre William Glenn's photography ensures that it is never less than beautifully downbeat - well, that may be because it deals in big themes. Tavernier and Rayfiel are interested in death and our response to it, and their character study of Katherine finally suggests that for her, death is a rebellion against the dystopian world she lives in, where there is little capacity for either misery or joy. The final act - playing out by a Loch, where Katherine is reunited with her ex-husband (Max Von Sydow) has its own intensity of feeling, a genuine spring of regret and sadness which is extremely affecting.
It is, however, an odd film, tonally uneven and perhaps a little too ambitious. The moments of poetry sprinkled throughout do not always blend with the melodrama and contrivance of much of the material. But the cast is tremendous - Keitel's nervy presence contrasts nicely with Schneider's luminous spirit, and they both have terrific scenes with Dean Stanton - while Tavernier's direction is masterful throughout. He captures Glasgow and the Highlands with a few exhilarating crane shots, and chooses to film a chase through the docks in one long, incredible steadicam movement. His determination to be serious also works, ultimately, in the films favour, granting it a chilly gravitas denied to much science fiction.
Sunday, 9 September 2012
THREE O'CLOCK HIGH
(Phil Joanou, 1987)
Aping the "one day" approach which had proven so successful twice over in the hands of John Hughes (on Ferris Buellers Day Off and The Breakfast Club), Phil Joanou's debut feature Three O'Clock High adds a twist of the premise from a classic Western. The title acknowledges as much without suggesting quite how strange a mix of tones and influences this film is.
Jerry Mitchell (Casey Siemaszko) is a somewhat anonymous, nice guy High School student who manages to offend the legendarily tough new boy at school, Buddy Revell (Richard Tyson). Revell announces that he and Jerry will fight at 3:00, after school, in the parking lot. From then on, an increasingly desperate Jerry struggles to prevent the fight, trying to buy protection, get himself put in detention, flee the school, and have Buddy expelled, all in vain. Amidst all of this, his new age friend Anne (Franny Perrins) wants them to "connect", the police are investigating the theft of the float (by Jerry) from the school shop, his best friend Vincent (Jonathan Wise) makes things worse when he tries to help, various school authorities loom, and the beautiful Karen (Liza Morrow) seems to have taken a newfound interest in him.
There is much here familiar from many other '80s teen movies; the high school itself is so generic it functions almost as THE American High School, densely populated by mainly White kids from a broadly middle class background, thronging in its palatial stairwells, locker-lined corridors, and its football field. These kids are often given peculiarly eccentric characterisation, their quirks and tics as fully-developed and assured as those of any adult, from Buddy's psychotic blankness to Jonathan's 1940s newsman schtick.
Then there are the nicely-drawn parallels between the school and a prison, underlined here by the sinister authority figures Jerry encounters (Joanou emphasises all this with an overuse of low angle shots) and a few plot developments: intimidation in the toilets, hushed blood money payments to tough guys in the yard.
For all that, it's oddly unfunny, Joanou proving far more comfortable with drama than he is with comedy. His approach to the comic material is scattershot; there is slapstick here, a little satire, some comedy of embarrassment. But hanging over it all is the big clock of the plot and it's countdown to Jerry's showdown with Buddy.
Siemaszko is fine throughout and Joanou and Tyson succeed in making Buddy quite terrifying, immovable in his stubborn desire for combat, his use of violence shot for impact, emphasising his brutality and lethal forcefulness. That showdown, when it comes, is heightened to an almost operatic level, and terrifically satisfying.
Joanou favours a few too many showy angles and ostentatious directed moments, but he's a solid storyteller too, and the Tangerine Dream score works better than one might imagine in such material.
Overall, its an unusual, distinctive take on the teen movie, and one that just about works, a few minor flaws aside. It suggested that Joanou had massive potential as a director, potential that he never really fulfilled.
Sunday, 13 May 2012
STREETS OF FIRE
(Walter Hill, 1984)
The main problem with Streets of Fire is its leading man. Michael Paré may have briefly been the next big thing, may have been extremely handsome, and may have looked the part of the action hero matinee idol. But he couldn't act.
Not in the way many other action stars can't act; those sort of stars generally know their limitations and play themselves and variations thereof repeatedly. No; Paré just seems an empty vessel, posing his way through his scenes. He is almost expressionless, utterly devoid of charisma, and wooden in each of his line readings.
He plays Tom Cody, an ex-Army drifter summoned back to his big City hometown to rescue his old flame, the rock singer Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) after she is kidnapped, mid-song, by a Biker gang, the Bombers, led by Raven (Willem Defoe). Cody teams up with Aim's new boyfriend and manager Billy Fish (Rick Moranis) and the tomboyish fellow veteran McCoy (Amy Madigan) to bust into the Bombers hideout, then get Ellen back across the City.
The final part of that plot is familiar from Hill's other work - a group of disparate personalities fleeing together across a hostile landscape describes the plot of both The Warriors and Southern Comfort, but this is a very different piece of work to either of those spare, stylish action classics.
The opening subtitle describes it as a "Rock & Roll fable", and it seems to take simplicity as the defining quality of that particular form; stripping everything down to its most basic core. That means that the characters are mostly cliched types fulfilling generic roles. The setting is more interesting; Hill aims for a timeless comic book world, a mixture of 1950s and 1980s styles, neon-lit and rain-slicked. There are a mix of influences and references: the villains are a leather-clad Biker gang like something from a 60s movie, the hero brandishes a rifle one handed, Western fashion, and the music is utterly 80s, with songs written by Jim Steinman among others.
The plots simplicity works well; offering a satisfying, predictable three-act structure allowing for action, humour, romance and a big final showdown. But the dialogue is more problematic. Everybody talks in a hard-bitten tough guy manner, making bad jokes as they ceaselessly mock and chide one another; and it's a little tiring and extremely one-note.
Some of the cast handle it better than others; Madigan sounds natural whereas Moranis sounds forced. Paré, for his part, sounds like a small boy trying to sound tough.
Hill retains his skill with action - all of it exaggerated here with thunderous sound effects and visceral cutting - and his eye for the pop beauty in an urban setting, but this feels like a film thatbgot away from him to some extent. Its a little too big and wild, a little too odd and strange to ever really work. And having a leading man who cannot lead doesn't help at all..
The main problem with Streets of Fire is its leading man. Michael Paré may have briefly been the next big thing, may have been extremely handsome, and may have looked the part of the action hero matinee idol. But he couldn't act.
Not in the way many other action stars can't act; those sort of stars generally know their limitations and play themselves and variations thereof repeatedly. No; Paré just seems an empty vessel, posing his way through his scenes. He is almost expressionless, utterly devoid of charisma, and wooden in each of his line readings.
He plays Tom Cody, an ex-Army drifter summoned back to his big City hometown to rescue his old flame, the rock singer Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) after she is kidnapped, mid-song, by a Biker gang, the Bombers, led by Raven (Willem Defoe). Cody teams up with Aim's new boyfriend and manager Billy Fish (Rick Moranis) and the tomboyish fellow veteran McCoy (Amy Madigan) to bust into the Bombers hideout, then get Ellen back across the City.
The final part of that plot is familiar from Hill's other work - a group of disparate personalities fleeing together across a hostile landscape describes the plot of both The Warriors and Southern Comfort, but this is a very different piece of work to either of those spare, stylish action classics.
The opening subtitle describes it as a "Rock & Roll fable", and it seems to take simplicity as the defining quality of that particular form; stripping everything down to its most basic core. That means that the characters are mostly cliched types fulfilling generic roles. The setting is more interesting; Hill aims for a timeless comic book world, a mixture of 1950s and 1980s styles, neon-lit and rain-slicked. There are a mix of influences and references: the villains are a leather-clad Biker gang like something from a 60s movie, the hero brandishes a rifle one handed, Western fashion, and the music is utterly 80s, with songs written by Jim Steinman among others.
The plots simplicity works well; offering a satisfying, predictable three-act structure allowing for action, humour, romance and a big final showdown. But the dialogue is more problematic. Everybody talks in a hard-bitten tough guy manner, making bad jokes as they ceaselessly mock and chide one another; and it's a little tiring and extremely one-note.
Some of the cast handle it better than others; Madigan sounds natural whereas Moranis sounds forced. Paré, for his part, sounds like a small boy trying to sound tough.
Hill retains his skill with action - all of it exaggerated here with thunderous sound effects and visceral cutting - and his eye for the pop beauty in an urban setting, but this feels like a film thatbgot away from him to some extent. Its a little too big and wild, a little too odd and strange to ever really work. And having a leading man who cannot lead doesn't help at all..
Friday, 11 May 2012
THE SOUTH
Aka EL SUR
(Victor Erice, 1983)
El Sur may well be the single most beautiful Film of the 1980s. Erice's use of natural light and, more particularly, of darkness, is spectacular, and worthy of comparison with Caravaggio and Vermeer. The opening scene is a perfect example. The titles appear over a black screen, then lightness enters the frame almost imperceptibly, until we can make out a window in the corner. Slowly light illuminates a room; a bed, some ornately detailed wallpaper. Someone is sleeping in the bed, and as the scene progresses - the narrative handled almost entirely through offscreen dialogue, telling us that a man has gone missing, his wife frantically ringing around in search of him - we watch that someone wake and rise.
She is Estrella (Sonsoles Aranguren), and she narrates the story as an older woman, reflecting on a pivotal part of her life, when she lived in Northern Spain with her parents, before her fathers suicide. The majority of the film involves her investigation of her memories of her father, and his mysterious past in pre-Civil War Southern Spain.
Erice has his favourite themes - childhood, myth, memory - and this story allows him to tackle all of them. But he tends towards the elliptical and enigmatic, necessitating some effort on the part of the audience. That effect is exaggerated here by the flashback structure, and only the voiceover narration clarifies some of the more obscure plot points. But the themes are always prominent as Estrella seeks to understand her own idea of her father as an almost mythic figure with magical abilities (he divines water and studies hypnosis) and the connection of that with her mythologisation of the South itself.
That makes El Sur sound dry, but it never is. Erice has far too poetic and nuanced a sensibility, and this film is far richer in humanity than The Spirit of the Beehive, his superb debut. Here Estrella's life is complicated by her family, her ruminations and fantasies lent an edge by the realities and implications of Spanish National (and her fathers) history. Scene by scene this is an extraordinary piece of cinema, beautifully shot and toned, and filled with lovely acting.
The circumstances of its production - only half of Erice's script was shot, after a producer pulled financing - suggest it should feel far less complete and coherent than it actually does, and though it ends without any real narrative closure, that ending is moving and in keeping with the lyrical mysteries characterising the rest of the film.
Not only the most beautiful film of the 80s, then, but one of the very best films from that decade.
(Victor Erice, 1983)
El Sur may well be the single most beautiful Film of the 1980s. Erice's use of natural light and, more particularly, of darkness, is spectacular, and worthy of comparison with Caravaggio and Vermeer. The opening scene is a perfect example. The titles appear over a black screen, then lightness enters the frame almost imperceptibly, until we can make out a window in the corner. Slowly light illuminates a room; a bed, some ornately detailed wallpaper. Someone is sleeping in the bed, and as the scene progresses - the narrative handled almost entirely through offscreen dialogue, telling us that a man has gone missing, his wife frantically ringing around in search of him - we watch that someone wake and rise.
She is Estrella (Sonsoles Aranguren), and she narrates the story as an older woman, reflecting on a pivotal part of her life, when she lived in Northern Spain with her parents, before her fathers suicide. The majority of the film involves her investigation of her memories of her father, and his mysterious past in pre-Civil War Southern Spain.
Erice has his favourite themes - childhood, myth, memory - and this story allows him to tackle all of them. But he tends towards the elliptical and enigmatic, necessitating some effort on the part of the audience. That effect is exaggerated here by the flashback structure, and only the voiceover narration clarifies some of the more obscure plot points. But the themes are always prominent as Estrella seeks to understand her own idea of her father as an almost mythic figure with magical abilities (he divines water and studies hypnosis) and the connection of that with her mythologisation of the South itself.
That makes El Sur sound dry, but it never is. Erice has far too poetic and nuanced a sensibility, and this film is far richer in humanity than The Spirit of the Beehive, his superb debut. Here Estrella's life is complicated by her family, her ruminations and fantasies lent an edge by the realities and implications of Spanish National (and her fathers) history. Scene by scene this is an extraordinary piece of cinema, beautifully shot and toned, and filled with lovely acting.
The circumstances of its production - only half of Erice's script was shot, after a producer pulled financing - suggest it should feel far less complete and coherent than it actually does, and though it ends without any real narrative closure, that ending is moving and in keeping with the lyrical mysteries characterising the rest of the film.
Not only the most beautiful film of the 80s, then, but one of the very best films from that decade.
Thursday, 18 August 2011
CONAN THE BARBARIAN
(John Milius, 1982)
Robert E Howard's "Conan" stories are pulp at it's most fevered and breathless. Howard loved his creation and the world he put him in, and that passion is obvious in his writing; vivid and excited, his descriptions of violence and sex are adolescent and stirring, the intensity undeniable and addictive. John Milius takes himself a lot more seriously than anybody making a movie of such material ought to, and so the tone of his Conan the Barbarian is odd, dissonances obvious throughout.
Milius has something serious in mind, and as such his film begins with a Nietzsche quote (no matter that its the most bumper sticker Nietzsche line possible), takes much of its worldview from Nietzsche, and features some portentious exchanges about pagan gods, philosophy (prompting Conan's famous line about what is "best in life", which Milius cribbed from Genghis Khan) and even a good dose of satirical intent. The "snake cult" who represent the villains here are an amusing shot at hippies and new age living, and Conan's violent destruction of their organisation very much a right-wing fantasy.
But for all that, the script (co-written by Oliver Stone) takes many scenes and ideas straight from the pages of Howard, and so there are sorceresses, giant snakes, charming thieves and usurper kings here, bound together by a series of often semi-incompetently staged action scenes. Milius isn't interested in action, but that is the heart of Conan; he is a Warrior, a fearsome, almost unbeatable one, something that Howard underlines with plenty of fight and battle sequences, and something that is rarely communicated by this film. Still, it works. Schwarzenegger cannot even project emotion, but his presence is inarguable, his charisma obvious even in this early lead. He may lack the ferocity and cunning of Howard's Conan, but he is a movie star, even here. Milius casts around him with some class - James Earl Jones and Max Von Sydow show up - and Sandahl Bergman is good value as Conan's Valkyrie lover, Valeria, while a series of smoking hot Euro-babes, some of them soft core stars like Nadiuska, who appears fleetingly but memorably as Conan's mother, appear in small parts.
The production design is handsome and the lovely Spanish locations give the whole enterprise a surprising whiff of the spaghetti Western, gritty and battered, suggesting an ancient World and old gods.
It is beautifully shot with a genuinely epic sweep, and Basil Poledouris' fantastic score is perhaps the films true star: rousing, romantic, melodic and thunderous, it is one of the best soundtracks of the 1980s, and contributes immeasurably to the films majesty.
By the end, Milius has made Conan a sort of Nietzschean übermensch, killing his "father" in order to replace him (a similar ending to Milius' script for Apocalypse Now and his friend George Lucas' Star Wars saga) and taken elements from lots of cultural sources; samurai cinema, the European Epics of the '50s and '60s and John Ford. The influence of Ford is telling; Milius is an old-fashioned director, and his scenes play out solidly, often a little stiffly, without the spark or imagination some filmmakers might have brought to the material.
But Conan does at least punch out a camel.......
Robert E Howard's "Conan" stories are pulp at it's most fevered and breathless. Howard loved his creation and the world he put him in, and that passion is obvious in his writing; vivid and excited, his descriptions of violence and sex are adolescent and stirring, the intensity undeniable and addictive. John Milius takes himself a lot more seriously than anybody making a movie of such material ought to, and so the tone of his Conan the Barbarian is odd, dissonances obvious throughout.
Milius has something serious in mind, and as such his film begins with a Nietzsche quote (no matter that its the most bumper sticker Nietzsche line possible), takes much of its worldview from Nietzsche, and features some portentious exchanges about pagan gods, philosophy (prompting Conan's famous line about what is "best in life", which Milius cribbed from Genghis Khan) and even a good dose of satirical intent. The "snake cult" who represent the villains here are an amusing shot at hippies and new age living, and Conan's violent destruction of their organisation very much a right-wing fantasy.
But for all that, the script (co-written by Oliver Stone) takes many scenes and ideas straight from the pages of Howard, and so there are sorceresses, giant snakes, charming thieves and usurper kings here, bound together by a series of often semi-incompetently staged action scenes. Milius isn't interested in action, but that is the heart of Conan; he is a Warrior, a fearsome, almost unbeatable one, something that Howard underlines with plenty of fight and battle sequences, and something that is rarely communicated by this film. Still, it works. Schwarzenegger cannot even project emotion, but his presence is inarguable, his charisma obvious even in this early lead. He may lack the ferocity and cunning of Howard's Conan, but he is a movie star, even here. Milius casts around him with some class - James Earl Jones and Max Von Sydow show up - and Sandahl Bergman is good value as Conan's Valkyrie lover, Valeria, while a series of smoking hot Euro-babes, some of them soft core stars like Nadiuska, who appears fleetingly but memorably as Conan's mother, appear in small parts.
The production design is handsome and the lovely Spanish locations give the whole enterprise a surprising whiff of the spaghetti Western, gritty and battered, suggesting an ancient World and old gods.
It is beautifully shot with a genuinely epic sweep, and Basil Poledouris' fantastic score is perhaps the films true star: rousing, romantic, melodic and thunderous, it is one of the best soundtracks of the 1980s, and contributes immeasurably to the films majesty.
By the end, Milius has made Conan a sort of Nietzschean übermensch, killing his "father" in order to replace him (a similar ending to Milius' script for Apocalypse Now and his friend George Lucas' Star Wars saga) and taken elements from lots of cultural sources; samurai cinema, the European Epics of the '50s and '60s and John Ford. The influence of Ford is telling; Milius is an old-fashioned director, and his scenes play out solidly, often a little stiffly, without the spark or imagination some filmmakers might have brought to the material.
But Conan does at least punch out a camel.......
Monday, 27 June 2011
CUTTERS WAY
(Ivan Passer, 1981)
One of the great opening credit sequences sets the tone; a long fade from dark to a black & white slow motion shot of a parade approaching on a sunlit street. Ghostly mariachi band music muffled on the soundtrack and then Jack Nitzsche's eerie, haunting score oozes up: a disturbing mix of feedback, Glass harp, zither and electric strings picking out a melody of ghostly beauty. The image blooms into colour, a dancing girl at the head of the parade, her hair strikingly blonde in the sunlight.
Made at the beginning of the 1980s yet a true product of the 1970s, Passer's adaptation of Newton Thornburg's fine novel is a California Noir, downbeat and brokenhearted from start to finish. The plot has the simplicity of great genre storytelling: a handsome beach bum witnesses a man stuff a body into a dumpster one stormy night. When he realises it was the local millionaire business mogul, his crippled Vietnam veteran buddy refuses to let it go and they embark on a quest for some sort of justice. That synopsis sounds drab, but the glory of the film is in fact not the plot. The characters instead take precedence, and the twisted eternal triangle at the centre of the tale are unforgettable. Jeff Bridges, looking like the golden god movie star his interesting choices never quite allowed him to become, plays Richard Bone, the slacker-cum-gigolo whose refusal to commit to anything has left him cynical and empty. The only thing he seems to really care about is his friendship with Alex Cutter. Cutter, left with only one each of his eyes, arms and legs by the Vietnam War, is played with extraordinary rage, wit and energy by John Heard, whose career never again approached such heights. Here he makes Cutter hilarious, pitiful and terrifying all at once; lashing out at all around with a tongue sharp as razor wire, he is still a romantic beneath the bruised exterior, as his final play for an idealised justice reveals. The scene where he milks his injury and veteran status for sympathy with a Policeman after drunkenly thrashing a neighbours car is a rare light scene in an otherwise grim piece of work.
Lisa Eichhorn matches the men as Cutter's bitter, lonely alcoholic wife Mo, sharing a couple of devastatingly painful scenes with Bridges.
The plot moves slowly as instead Passer lingers with these people, allowing the discomfort and regret of their entwined lives to sink in. But when the plot does kick in late on, our emotional investment makes it wrenchingly powerful.
Passer's direction is inconsistent; often perfectly judged, he sometimes lapses into lazy tv establishing shots which seem out of place with the quality of the script and the performances. The climax, when it comes, also carries a whiff of 80s tv, but its ambiguity and bleak tone give it a haunting quality that Nitzsche's score only underlines.
One of the best Hollywood films of the 1980s.
One of the great opening credit sequences sets the tone; a long fade from dark to a black & white slow motion shot of a parade approaching on a sunlit street. Ghostly mariachi band music muffled on the soundtrack and then Jack Nitzsche's eerie, haunting score oozes up: a disturbing mix of feedback, Glass harp, zither and electric strings picking out a melody of ghostly beauty. The image blooms into colour, a dancing girl at the head of the parade, her hair strikingly blonde in the sunlight.
Made at the beginning of the 1980s yet a true product of the 1970s, Passer's adaptation of Newton Thornburg's fine novel is a California Noir, downbeat and brokenhearted from start to finish. The plot has the simplicity of great genre storytelling: a handsome beach bum witnesses a man stuff a body into a dumpster one stormy night. When he realises it was the local millionaire business mogul, his crippled Vietnam veteran buddy refuses to let it go and they embark on a quest for some sort of justice. That synopsis sounds drab, but the glory of the film is in fact not the plot. The characters instead take precedence, and the twisted eternal triangle at the centre of the tale are unforgettable. Jeff Bridges, looking like the golden god movie star his interesting choices never quite allowed him to become, plays Richard Bone, the slacker-cum-gigolo whose refusal to commit to anything has left him cynical and empty. The only thing he seems to really care about is his friendship with Alex Cutter. Cutter, left with only one each of his eyes, arms and legs by the Vietnam War, is played with extraordinary rage, wit and energy by John Heard, whose career never again approached such heights. Here he makes Cutter hilarious, pitiful and terrifying all at once; lashing out at all around with a tongue sharp as razor wire, he is still a romantic beneath the bruised exterior, as his final play for an idealised justice reveals. The scene where he milks his injury and veteran status for sympathy with a Policeman after drunkenly thrashing a neighbours car is a rare light scene in an otherwise grim piece of work.
Lisa Eichhorn matches the men as Cutter's bitter, lonely alcoholic wife Mo, sharing a couple of devastatingly painful scenes with Bridges.
The plot moves slowly as instead Passer lingers with these people, allowing the discomfort and regret of their entwined lives to sink in. But when the plot does kick in late on, our emotional investment makes it wrenchingly powerful.
Passer's direction is inconsistent; often perfectly judged, he sometimes lapses into lazy tv establishing shots which seem out of place with the quality of the script and the performances. The climax, when it comes, also carries a whiff of 80s tv, but its ambiguity and bleak tone give it a haunting quality that Nitzsche's score only underlines.
One of the best Hollywood films of the 1980s.
Sunday, 16 January 2011
TRON: LEGACY
(Joseph Kosinski, 2010)
Narratively slight - and by slight I mean utterly predictable, its each and every beat familiar from a hundred other Joseph Campbell-borefest post-Star Wars genre films with dully one-dimensional characters and a leaden adherence to screenplay structure 101 - Kosinski's sequel to Steven Lisberger's 1982 Tron resembles that film by creating enough visual wonder to just about compensate for it's shortcomings as a piece of storytelling. For here is a fully realised world completely suited to 3D; a beautiful world of digital sheen and neon slickness, arc lit and perfectly hi-def in every frame. It is exquisite.
It makes a couple of desultory attempts at relevance; the Microsoftesque firm at the centre of the story wants to maximise profits by cheating users, while the Flynns think access to software should be free to all, yadda yadda yadda. .Luckily Kosinski can do action competently, and when his film is really pumping, when Daft Punk's exceptional soundtrack is filling the air with beams of synth and beats as fat as a sumo, when figures leap and roll away from glowing discs or fly along upon motorbikes as if they're riding hockey pucks, and that computer screen sky sucks all the light out of the frame, it is almost breathtaking. A fine visceral and sensual experience then, even if the undoubted highlight is the opening Tronification of the Disney logo.
Narratively slight - and by slight I mean utterly predictable, its each and every beat familiar from a hundred other Joseph Campbell-borefest post-Star Wars genre films with dully one-dimensional characters and a leaden adherence to screenplay structure 101 - Kosinski's sequel to Steven Lisberger's 1982 Tron resembles that film by creating enough visual wonder to just about compensate for it's shortcomings as a piece of storytelling. For here is a fully realised world completely suited to 3D; a beautiful world of digital sheen and neon slickness, arc lit and perfectly hi-def in every frame. It is exquisite.
It makes a couple of desultory attempts at relevance; the Microsoftesque firm at the centre of the story wants to maximise profits by cheating users, while the Flynns think access to software should be free to all, yadda yadda yadda. .Luckily Kosinski can do action competently, and when his film is really pumping, when Daft Punk's exceptional soundtrack is filling the air with beams of synth and beats as fat as a sumo, when figures leap and roll away from glowing discs or fly along upon motorbikes as if they're riding hockey pucks, and that computer screen sky sucks all the light out of the frame, it is almost breathtaking. A fine visceral and sensual experience then, even if the undoubted highlight is the opening Tronification of the Disney logo.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)