June 2023

volume 33
issue 5

£6.50

The
Gospel
of
Paul
Schrader
PLUS
SYDNEY SWEENEY
SPIKE LEE
ARI ASTER
FILM ON FILM festival
 A FILM BY

C H I E H AYA K A W A

OUT NOW
I N C I N E M A S & E X C L U S I V E LY O N
CURZON HOME CINEMA
 CONTENTS

FILM
ON
FILM
FESTIVAL
The way we watch films now may be dominated by

IN THIS ISSUE
digital projection and streaming, but nothing beats
the glow of a movie projected from real filmstock.
As BFI Southbank launches its first festival of Film
on Film, Philip Concannon takes a look at what makes
celluloid so special. PLUS Charlie Shackleton on the
rising popularity of celluloid among young audiences

52
26 36 46 62
COVER IMAGE: MAT THEW SALACUSE; MAIN IMAGE (TOP): MARK JENKIN’S A DOG CALLED DISCORD; SYDNEY SWEENEY PHOTO BY COREY NICKOLS/CONTOUR BY GET TY IMAGES

PAUL SCHRADER BEAU IS AFRAID GAMES ON FILM SPIKE LEE

On the eve of the release of
Master Gardener, the director
discusses his Bressonian
roots, the transcendental
style and his gripes about
Sight and Sound ’s Greatest
Films of All Time poll.
By Erika Balsom
In his new film, Ari Aster’s
enthusiasm for Freudian
subtexts, family dysfunction,
decapitation, grief and guilt
– not to mention traumatic
scenes in bathrooms –
shows no sign of abating.
By Roger Luckhurst
As The Super Mario Bros Movie
storms the box office,
we explore the evolution
of videogame adaptations
over almost 40 years,
from early duds
to recent triumphs.
By Thomas Flew
The director talks to Arjun
Sajip about his influences,
collaborators and favourite
films – and explains why
he believes he’s always
been ahead of the curve

42 REALITY
Tina Satter’s recreation of the events surrounding the
arrest of whistleblower Reality Winner is both rigorously
accurate and smartly inventive – the perfect expression
of and antidote to our post-truth era. By Beatrice Loayza
 JUNE 2023 100
ROBERT
REVIEWS CONTRIBUTORS

ALDRICH
Talking Kiss Me

6
Deadly and Baby
Jane in 1968 68 | FILMS
· Under the Fig Trees
· Beau Is Afraid
EDITORIAL · The Old Man Movie: Lactopalypse

FROM THE ARCHIVE

The complex genius · Plan 75
of Paul Schrader · Master Gardener
· Little Richard: I Am Everything
· The Eight Mountains
· Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie

9
OPENING SCENES
·

·
·
Are You There, God?
It’s Me, Margaret.
Reality
A Crack in the Mountain
ERIKA BALSOM
is a reader in film studies at King’s
College London and the author of
· My Imaginary Country four books, including TEN SKIES
· Opener: Patricio Guzmán’s · Harka (2021). Her writing regularly appears
My Imaginary Country · The Plains in publications such as 4Columns,
· Editors’ Choice · Love According to Dalva Artforum and Cinema Scope.
· In Production: the Quay · Polite Society
Brothers · Sisu
· In Conversation: · Portrait of Kaye
Tom Hardiman · Medusa Deluxe
· The Ballot of… Hlynur · Brainwashed: Sex Camera Power
Pálmason · The Dam
· Festival: CPH:DOX · Nam June Paik: Moon Is the
· Mean Sheets Oldest TV

20
IN THIS ISSUE

88 | DVD & BLU-RAY

· Twilight CHARLIE SHACKLETON
· Two films by Ernest Lubitsch
LETTERS · Everything Everywhere
is a filmmaker and writer living in
London. His performance film As Mine
Again Alive Exactly won the Immersive Art and
· Full Circle: The Haunting of Julia XR Award at last year’s BFI London

22
· Rediscovery: Laurin Film Festival and will be presented
· Archive TV: Tightrope at the Barbican Centre in August.
· Two films by Jerzy Skolimowski
· Croupier
TALKIES · The Virgin Suicides
· The Long Take: Pamela · The Bullet Train
Hutchinson on the Yiddish- · Dance Craze
powered Hester Street · Martin
· TV Eye: Andrew Male finds · Lost and Found: The
that Succession’s Roy family are Terror and the Time
trapped in Sartre’s hell
· Poll Position: Kevin B. Lee
delves into the diversity of the
Sight and Sound poll electorate 96 | WIDER SCREEN
· Flick Lit: Nicole Flattery lauds · On the undeserved obscurity of
ARJUN SAJIP
a pair of annoyingly brilliant, the French filmmaker Patricia
brilliantly annoying heroines Mazuy, plus the Norwich recently served as acting reviews
Women’s Film Weekend archive editor at Sight and Sound, and is
currently a freelance film journalist
based in London. He has written

114
for Cineaste, Cinema Scope, Little
98 | BOOKS White Lies and the Financial Times.

· Becca Voelcker on feminist

ENDINGS
111
worldmaking, Sophia Satchell-
· The close of Late Spring, Baeza on a memoir by French actor ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

Ozu Yasujirō’s gentle 1949
masterpiece is both a post-war
call for the young to begin again
and a solemn depiction of loss
and counter-cultural icon Pierre Philip Concannon, Ben Walters, Leigh
Clémenti, and Ian Christie on the Singer, Sara Merican, Beatrice Loayza,
THIS MONTH neglected early British director Jessica Kiang, John Bleasdale, Henry
IN… 2008 Adrian Brunel K. Miller, Maria Delgado, Rebecca
Harrison, Ben Nicholson, Hannah
Andrzej McGill, Phuong Le, Michael Brooke,
Wajda’s Katyń Trevor Johnston, Kate Stables and more
and European
poster art
 EDITORIAL
Paul Schrader is a symbol of cinematic
purity – just don’t mention the poll
“For seventy years the SIGHT AND SOUND
POLL has been a reliable if somewhat incremen-
tal measure of critical consensus and priorities.
Films moved up the list, others moved down; but
it took time. The sudden appearance of ‘Jeanne
Dielman’ in the number one slot undermines the
S&S poll’s credibility. It feels off, as if someone had
put their thumb on the scale. Which I suspect they
did. As Tom Stoppard pointed out in Jumpers, in
democracy it doesn’t matter who gets the votes, it
matters who counts the votes. By expanding the
voting community and the point system this year’s
S&S poll reflects not a historical continuum but a
politically correct rejiggering. Ackerman’s film is a
favorite of mine, a great film, a landmark film, but
its unexpected number one rating does it no favors.
‘Jeanne Dielman’ will from this time forward be
remembered not only an important film in cinema
history but also as a landmark of distorted woke
reappraisal.” [sic]
Paul Schrader is a complex man. On one hand,
he is an anthropologist; his understanding of ‘God’s
lonely man’ – through works such as Taxi Driver
(1976), American Gigolo (1980), The Last Temptation
of Christ (1988), First Reformed (2017) and The Card
Counter (2021) – second to none, as much a chroni-
cler of American masculinity as Mark Twain, John
Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, John Ford and
Norman Rockwell. On the other, he is a man using
It would be easy ‘woke’ as a pejorative to dismiss a shift he does not
approve of, feel comfortable with, that distorts his
to dismiss Schrader understanding of the world. In writing the above
as yesterday’s man, comment on Facebook in the wake of the Sight and
but that would be Sound poll results being published in December last
year, he positioned himself with a shrieking mass
as misguided as his suspicious of change, smelling tokenism, wokeism
views on the poll. or sinister manipulation, often a poisonous cocktail
His work continues of all three, wherever they poke their noses. And in
his righteous irritation he was wrong. While the
to be confrontational
electorate was expanded, the points system didn’t
and provocative, change. Every vote in the poll has always counted
grappling at its for one, right back to the first instalment in October
1952, a few months after Schrader’s sixth birthday.
core with identity There was no “thumb on the scale”. Like all good
and moral decay conspiracy theorists, though, he’s unshaken in his
belief, six months after the fact.
It would be easy to dismiss Schrader as yester-
day’s man, but that would be as misguided as his
views on the poll. His work continues to be con-
frontational and provocative, grappling at its core
with identity and moral decay. His latest film,
Mike Williams
@itsmikelike
Master Gardener, completes a thematic trilogy,
alongside First Reformed and The Card Counter, that
Schrader calls his “man in a room” movies. These
are films that have, in his seventies, positioned him
as director first, writer second in the consciousness
of cinephiles, after being defined for so long by his
frequent collaborations with Martin Scorsese.
He lays pain bare on the screen, asks questions of
the universe and is the antithesis of the 21st-century
American hardman, the Trumps and Proud Boys of
a fractured America, proudly ignorant and deliber-
ately blinkered. He’s a heavyweight of observation,
like Norman Mailer, seeing conflict everywhere.
Mailer famously once said, “When two men pass
one another in the street and say ‘Good morning’,
there’s a winner and a loser.” For Schrader, it’s not so
much two men who pass each other, but two ways
of life, outsider and institution.
Scorsese was the ego to Schrader’s id during
their partnership as writer and director as much as
De Niro and latterly DiCaprio have been Scorsese’s
alter egos on screen. But while Scorsese draws pri-
marily on literature and memoir as source material
away from Schrader’s pen, building epic worlds of
crime and punishment to convey his morality plays
of men and their questions, Schrader remains insu-
lar, employing a more direct line to God. He is fal-
lible, a contradiction, combative, righteous. He has
built a following of young acolytes on social media
who lap up his invective. When he lets loose, he’s
often right. When he’s down on things, it’s often for
good reason. “More and more, you have cinema that
is made for suspended adolescence,” he tells Erika
Balsom in our cover story on page 26, “the kind of
movies that you liked before you went to college,
before you became an elitist.”
Balsom notes in her introduction to the feature,
“Today, the writer-director is as prolific as he has
ever been. The broken-down horse called movies
ILLUSTRATION BY FERNANDO COBELO; BYLINE ILLUSTRATION PETER ARKLE
keeps limping on and Schrader is still astride it.”
This is a good thing. He may be cantankerous and
perhaps, at times, has the wrong target in the cross-
hairs, but he’s a symbol of cinematic purity who
understands film as art, as fable, as allegory for a
deeper, transcendental message.
A New Yorker profile earlier this month claimed,
“Three times, when he’s had a film coming out, the
distributors have asked [Schrader] to stop posting
on Facebook, where he has a tendency to make
impolitic comments.” It’s what makes him Paul
Schrader. We won’t take it personally.
OPENING SCENES
9

The social explosion
A new documentary by Chilean filmmaker
Patricio Guzmán, My Imaginary Country,
examines the recent mass protests against
inequality and poverty that have both
blighted and empowered his home nation
BY MAR DIESTRO-DÓPIDO
ABOVE
Patricio Guzmán’s
My Imaginary Country
On 6 October 2019, an increase in the
cost of travelling on public transport
came into effect in the Chilean capital,
Santiago. It led to what is now known
in the country as the estallido social, or
‘social explosion’, which took over the
city before spreading throughout the
whole country. Vandalisation of the
subway system was followed by months
of demonstrations, violent riots and con-
frontations with the pacos (police) in the
streets until, in March of the following
year, a curfew was declared by President
Sebastián Piñera.
The legendary Chilean documentary
filmmaker Patricio Guzmán was there
with his team to bear witness and cap-
ture this defining chapter of his country’s
history for his latest work, My Imaginary
Country. The film, which premiered
at the BFI London Film Festival last
year and is about to be released in cin-
emas, brings Guzmán back full circle
to another historic moment in Chile
50 years ago: the coup that toppled the
democratically elected president Sal-
vador Allende and the rise to power
of General Augusto Pinochet that fol-
lowed were chronicled in Guzmán’s
landmark three-part documentary The
Battle of Chile (1975/1976/ 1979).
When the people of Chile rose up
half a century ago, they did so in order
to defend their government. The spark
this time around came from the organ-
ised actions of hundreds of secondary
OPENING SCENES
school students, who initially went into
metro stations across the city to demon-
strate, this time against the government,
and its new charges, until they brought
the underground system to a halt. Yet,
it was not just fares that were at stake,
but rather decades of chronic inequality,
general poverty, youth unemployment,
rampant corruption and an obsolete
constitution dating from Pinochet’s
dictatorship. After only six days, Piñera
declared a state of emergency, stoking
those fires by sending military forces to
tackle the vandalism and only heighten-
ing the social unrest that eventually saw
more than three million people take to
the streets countrywide.
Guzmán, who lives in France (where
he moved after fleeing the dictatorship
in the 70s), explains how he was in the
final editing stages of his previous film
The Cordillera of Dreams (2019) when he
heard of the social upheaval that was
taking place in his country. He recalls: “It
immediately grabbed my attention, since
nothing of this magnitude has ever hap-
pened in Chilean history. But I couldn’t
just stop everything I was doing and fly
off to Santiago.”
What he could and did do was talk
to his long-time producer and partner
Renate Sachse, who got in touch with
their regular Chilean producer, Ale-
jandra Galvis. She quickly found the
members of the director’s usual team –
a cameraman, field producer and sound
 10
engineer. They took to the streets to cap-
ture key moments of what was taking
place in Santiago from the very beginning
of the revolt. When Guzmán received the
material and saw Plaza Baquedano and
its surrounding area filled with a million
people, it captured his imagination and
he flew over, arriving in time to witness
the second wave of the protests, which
ultimately led to a popular referendum
to modify the Constitution, whose first
draft was voted out by the Chileans in
September 2022.
Filming an event of this magnitude is
a challenge Guzmán finds particularly
exciting. The action was taking place
everywhere: squares, streets and build-
ings, at different times of the day, mostly
driven by very large groups of young
people, some of whom engaged in vio-
lence. “There were many shops that
were vandalised. The police were always
nearby. And whenever the Chilean
police are close by, it becomes danger-
ous because they throw tear-gas bombs
in every direction and distance. They are
quite brutal at dissolving demonstra-
tions.” They also beat some protesters
and shot rubber bullets at them, aiming
at their faces. This action left more than
400 people blind in one or both eyes. By
February 2020, 36 people were dead,
with more than 11,000 injured. Guzmán
OPENING SCENES
finds echoes in My Imaginary Country of
protest films such as The Square (2013),
depicting the 2011 Egyptian Revolution
in Cairo’s Tahrir Square – though he reit-
erates that “each city has its own face, it’s
its own person”.
My Imaginary Country is less lyrical and
more austere than Guzmán’s most recent
films such as The Pearl Button (2015) and
The Cordillera of Dreams but, he adds, “It
has a proximity not present in any of my
other features along the years.” He filmed
the protests with three cameras (includ-
ing extended use of drones) from differ-
ent angles. Sound is treated as its own
entity, separate from yet complementary
to the image. During an overhead shot of
a confrontation between the police and
the protesters, the extremely sharp and
dry sound of rubber balls hitting them,
stones thrown by the protesters at the
police and the metal of pans against a
wall can be heard in detail. Guzmán’s sig-
nature voiceover is minimal – for where
in his other films the subjects are no
longer alive, in My Imaginary Country they
are present and can speak for themselves.
“When you enter a protest such as this
one, you can hear slogans, songs, cries
and rumours, all different, like the ones at
a football match. You don’t know exactly
what’s been said, but there’s a mass of
people that shout, that howl, that march
on, and this is very interesting for the
camera angles we filmed from,” Guzmán
explains. “There’s an extraordinarily rich
soundtrack, comprising many sounds
that are impossible to disassociate from
one another, and which ultimately build
up to constitute an enduring shared cry.
And this is rare. I had never previously
encountered a film such as this one,
As one of the which expresses itself with sound” to
the point where “the footage could be
interviewees edited based mostly on sound, barely
says in the showing anybody, and it’d still be a
film, there are hugely rich work”.
When shooting under such harsh
flames that filming conditions, Guzmán draws on
burn and flames key experiences acquired across his long
that nurture. career: “When you are making films that
take place in the streets with a big dose
That is to say, of improvisation, you need to have at
you can take the ready in your head a lot of different
over a country formulas so you can tell the story in an
original way.” This is where the people
while carrying they approached for the film turned out
a flame, and for to be so helpful; mainly made up of a
Guzmán, that’s large group of women, for Guzmán
they somehow constituted a chorus, an
what Chilean interesting angle as a filmmaker.
women did “I realised women were more resolute
in their actions, clearer than many men.
They were almost always positioned at
the front of the demonstrations. They
carried homemade utensils as weapons,
such as sticks, stones and pans, which
they would throw at the police. It was
such a big mass of people carrying
torches; the feeling was that Chile was
burning, that they were setting on fire
the side of Chile they didn’t agree with.”
It’s an image that leads him to recall
what his mentor, French director and
writer Chris Marker, told him many
years ago: the first thing a documentary
filmmaker has to do is to capture that
first spark which sets the fire alight.
But as one of the interviewees says in
the film, there are flames that burn and
flames that nurture. That is to say, you
can take over a country while carrying
a flame, and for Guzmán, that’s what
Chilean women did.
The most distinctive feature in My
Imaginary Country is, without a doubt,
ABOVE
the sound of women’s voices. The film’s
Guzmán shooting in Chile testimonies only come from women:
a conscious decision that becomes
most evident when the end credits
roll, accompanied by archival material
taken during the fight against Pinochet,
which features only men. For Guzmán,
his film is not shaped by the action, but
rather by these women’s stories. “For a
long time in Chile, women have been
the ones who organise themselves to
demonstrate, to fight the police, to act
as the voice of conscience, to inform
other women. There are many Chilean
women with great political training
who illustrated very accurately what
was going on. The presence of women
also brought me closer to my other 25
films [where women largely give voice
to those who Pinochet ‘disappeared’, as
do the protagonists of 2010’s Nostalgia for
the Light, sweeping the Atacama desert
for any remnants of their beloved],
establishing a strong link between them
and my whole career.”
Guzmán’s work is mostly defined by
a relentless analysis of his own country.
Why the ‘my’ in the title of this film? “It
could have been titled ‘An Imaginary
Country’ but the central idea for me
is that this is my country, these are my
people, that was my education when
I was an adolescent at university or
when I was a child. This is the reason
why I’ve been dragging with me those
thoughts which have made me film
more than 18 features based on Chile. I
am very happy because these memories
guarantee your creative work and at the
same time nourish your own story, your
fundamental vision about humanity in
today’s world.” My Imaginary Country
bears the ultimate testament to this and
to Guzmán’s own deeply personal and
self-defining film career.
My Imaginary Country is released on
9 June and is reviewed on page 79
 11

EDITORS’ CHOICE Recommendations from the Sight and Sound team

BLUE NOW PRÉSAGES

HOME Manchester (21 May) and Tate
Modern London (27 May)
Derek Jarman’s last film, Blue (1993),
made just a few months before the
filmmakers’ death, has been turned
into a live performance to mark the
essay film’s 30th anniversary. It’s a work
that pushes the limits of cinematic
expression, with its unchanging image
of blue that fills the screen while
voices meditate on a range of subjects,
from Jarman’s treatment for HIV and
his experience of losing his sight to
musings on the colour itself. Directed
centrepompidou.fr
Commissioned as part of a Joanna
Hogg retrospective at the Centre
Pompidou in Paris, the short Présages
finds the director shooting in eerie,
neon-lit Los Angeles, including the
hotel to which she has decamped at
Christmas to write her new LA-based EROTIC 90S
feature. Hogg’s voiceover unfurls in a youmustrememberthispodcast.com
tone of matter-of-fact restraint, but her She doesn’t know it, but Karina Longworth has accompanied me on many, many walks
pain and struggle are palpable as she around London. During my maternity leave, the American film historian’s ‘Erotic 80s’, a
dwells on the recent loss of her mother, season of her podcast You Must Remember This, kept my brain in the adult world with its
writing difficulties and the sense detailed investigations into Hollywood’s mistreatment of Sean Young and Rob Lowe’s
of apartness she feels at being in an sex-tape scandal as I tried – usually in vain – to get my baby to sleep. I’ve been waiting,

by Neil Bartlett, the performance
sees actor Russell Tovey, artist Travis
Alabanza and poets Jay Bernard and
Joelle Taylor deliver Jarman’s script.
Meanwhile the film’s original composer,
Simon Fisher Turner, accompanies
them with a new live score.
Isabel Stevens, managing editor
unfamiliar place during a time of family
and communal gatherings. It’s well
worth a look, and you might also want
to check out Centre Pompidou’s archive
of previously commissioned short-
to-medium length films by Richard
Linklater, Christian Petzold, Élisabeth
Perceval and more.
Kieron Corless, associate editor
OPENING SCENES
impatiently, for the podcast’s follow-up, ‘Erotic 90s’, and it’s every bit as good as I’d hoped.
Armed with archive newspaper and magazine articles, Longworth digs into the media’s
patronising treatment of a Pretty Woman-era Julia Roberts and the stifled career of Impulse
(1990) director Sondra Locke. My favourite episode (so far), on 1991’s Thelma & Louise
(pictured above), is filled with agonising details about how Pathé promoted the film like
a good-time gal-pal movie, so as not to scare off male viewers. Longworth has a great
ability to uncover things you already knew, but had never fully absorbed, such as the
absurdity of the Thelma & Louise tagline: “Somebody said get a life… so they did.”
Katie McCabe, reviews editor

UNLIKEABLE FEMALE CHARACTERS RAZOR SHARP: THE FABULOUS

Anna Bogutskaya, Sourcebooks
Subtitled ‘The Women Pop Culture
Wants You to Hate’, Bogutskaya’s
entertaining book is a whistlestop
tour of tropes and types from the
beginnings of screen history to today,
a distaff chronology of dastardliness
from Theda Bara to Fleabag. In defining
the various ways that women on screen
BOOM! BOOM! THE WORLD VS. BORIS BECKER
have defied the unwritten rules of
On Apple TV
beauty, decorum, charm and passivity,
A world-famous tennis player at 17, winning Wimbledon in one of British TV’s most
the book introduces a cast of enduring
iconic sporting moments, Boris Becker was a giant of the court. After retiring he
favourites, including Rosamund Pike
coached Novak Djokovic to multiple Grand Slams, became a charismatic BBC
in Gone Girl (2014), Glenn Close in
commentator and served jail time for hiding assets in a bankruptcy fraud case. This
Fatal Attraction (1987) and Bette Davis
new two-part doc by Oscar-winner Alex Gibney casts the German as a lone gunman
in just about everything. Bogutskaya
in the Wild West of tennis, borrowing motifs from Leone to labour his point and
clearly relishes the task of boosting
constantly stating the obvious in a true crime-style voiceover. Gibney’s magic lies
bad girls, and her breadth of references
in his choice of subjects. Following Enron, Scientology, WikiLeaks and Lance
is impressively vast. The message:
Armstrong, the watchable Becker, eyes narrowed suspiciously, makes for fascinating
embracing unlikeable female characters
viewing. If you can act as editor, leaving half of the four-hour duration on your
is an exercise in empathy and equality.
imaginary cutting-room floor, there’s an ace story within.
I like this book.
Mike Williams, editor-in-chief
Pamela Hutchinson, ‘Weekly Film
Bulletin’ editor
WOMEN OF HOWARD HAWKS
BFI Southbank, June
Women in Howard Hawks’s pictures
could be tough cookies. They might
be reporters or saloon girls, army
lieutenants or millionaires’ daughters,
but in Hawks’s world of action and
repartee they’d always worked out the
rules of the game and played it as well
as any of the boys. They had names
like Slim, Sugarpuss and Feathers,
and were glamorously embodied by
the greats: Lauren Bacall (pictured
above in 1944’s To Have and Have Not),
Rosalind Russell, Angie Dickinson,
Barbara Stanwyck. This BFI
Southbank season sadly misses out
Elsa Martinelli’s archetypal turn
as Dallas, the wildlife photographer
in Hatari! (1962), but any opportunity
on offer to hang with Hawks’s hardy
heroines, you grab it.
Sam Wigley, BFI digital editor
 12

IN PRODUCTION
Quays to the kingdom
Eighteen years after their last feature, twins Stephen and Timothy Quay, the
celebrated animators behind Institute Benjamenta, Street of Crocodiles and
Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ video, return with Sanatorium, based on a 1937
story by Bruno Schulz, their second adaptation of the Polish author’s work
BY THOMAS FLEW

Animation is almost always an intri-
cate, painstaking and laborious process,
requiring patience from craftspeople and
expectant audiences alike, but the 18-year-
long wait for the latest feature film by stop-
motion masters Stephen and Timothy
Quay has been particularly tortuous.
It will please fans to hear, then, that the
animation on their long-gestating project
Sanatorium is now well underway. The
Brothers Quay describe the journey to this
point, by email: “Over the past dozen and
a half years we have been slowly construct-
ing decors along with the puppets, but
then commissions would come along and
we would set the project aside, coming
back to it sporadically.” With funding
OPENING SCENES
Under the Sign of the Hourglass’, Sana-
torium sees the Quays return to the work
of the Polish author almost 40 years after
their unsettling and atmospheric Street
of Crocodiles (1986), which was based on
another of his tales. The source for Sana-
torium (from a collection of Schulz stories
famously adapted by Wojciech Has as
The Hourglass Sanatorium in 1973) invokes
a dreamlike atmosphere through the
author’s richly metaphorical prose. The
Quays explain why they have returned to
his work: “With Schulz, it has always felt
that there were things that still needed
to be visually elaborated; [his] prose
seemed to represent entire kingdoms of
what animation ‘could’ be capable of and
When I ask direct adaptation and a pair of filmmak-
ers whose idiosyncratic style can take up
about their that challenge. Where Has worked in live
filmmaking action, the Quays’ approach is primarily
aesthetic, they “funnelled through the kingdom of pup-
pets”, a world which is being conjured up
are elusive at the brothers’ London studio.
in response, When I ask the Quays a question
describing the about their filmmaking aesthetic, they
are appropriately elusive in response,
‘dizzying hours describing instead their process of “the
spent inching dizzying hours spent inching forwards
forwards the the tiniest sliver of a second in order to
make that lunatic journey around the cir-
tiniest sliver cumference of an apple”. Their response
of a second’ to another question was more straight-
forward. Was there any particular inspi-

finally obtained, they are now able to turn also as a supreme challenge.” A perfect ration for this film’s visual style? “No!”
their full attention to the film. Inspired by pairing of source material and adap- From the Brothers Quay, we wouldn’t
Bruno Schulz’s 1937 story ‘Sanatorium tor, then: an abstract text not suited for want it any other way.
 13

17. The Nettle Dress

NATURAL HISTORY
BY ISABEL STEVENS
Over the last six months, since it scooped
the audience award at Cinecity festival
last October, The Nettle Dress, a 68-minute
crowdfunded documentary about the
common nettle, Urtica dioica, has been slowly
charming audiences around East Sussex,
where it was filmed. Dylan Howitt’s portrait
of Brighton-based textile artist Allan Brown
charts his seven-year odyssey to make a dress
out of nettles, rediscovering long-extinct
textile-making processes. Indeed, the film
was born out of a viral ‘How to’ video they
filmed when Brown, after two years of
experimentation, finally discovered how
to make yarn from nettles. The Facebook
group – Nettles for Textiles – that Brown
subsequently formed, now 23,500 members
strong, shows that his passion for slow
fashion made out of local natural fibres is
not an isolated one. But it was an obsession
born somewhat out of necessity: the dress
is a quest for Brown to lose himself in
after the sudden death of his wife; out of
something painful will come solace.
In this tender, meditative film, Howitt
accompanies Brown on foraging trips,
patiently observing the process of ret-
ting (rotting) and stripping nettles, and
listening as he reflects on his life, craft and
grief. It could easily have been a diatribe

OPENING SCENES
against fast fashion but Howitt largely
resists making it too political. Instead,
he tells me, he sees the film as a fairytale,
much like one of Brown’s inspirations:
OPPOSITE
the Hans Christian Andersen yarn ‘The
Dr Gotard, who runs Wild Swans’ (1838), about a princess who
the sanatorium
can only rescue her bewitched swan-cast
ABOVE brothers by knitting shirts out of nettles.
Sanatorium’s
protagonist Joseph
Howitt thoughtfully captures the scrappy
and his father copse where Brown forages across the
LEFT
seasons, prompting a reassessment of both
A drawing of one the humble and hated stinger as a plant of
of the rooms in
the sanatorium
wonder and the semi-wild edgelands where
it thrives. In one magical sequence they
chance upon a nettle in bloom shedding
pollen as puffs, almost as if it’s breath-
ing. For the director, Brown’s process is
similar to his: “Noticing where the nettles
grow tallest, the best time to pick them,
discovering how best to get the fibre and
spin it as fine as possible… years growing
in knowledge, connection to the plant and
place it grows. Documentary filmmak-
ing is nothing if not paying attention”.
See nettledress.org for further preview screenings.
The film will be released in the UK in the autumn

THE STING
The flowering
plant Urtica dioica
in The Nettle Dress
 14

IN CONVERSATION
at heart, so I begged him to
do it! He’s one of the greatest
hairdressers in the world.

Q The music is an important element.

A Koreless is a genius. He’s the modern
face of dance music, one of the
greatest producers right now. We’ve
got a similar sensibility. The score’s
like a journey through dance music:
you’ve got disco, which is the heart
and soul of dance music, then we
progress all the way through techno.

Q It reminded me of Jon Brion’s score

for Punch-Drunk Love [2002].
A You nailed it. Yeah. The soundtrack
is unbelievable. That first sequence,
after the piano has been hit by
the truck, the music under there,
is one of most astounding scores
I’ve ever heard. It’s incredible.

Q What made you do the long take?

A I’ve got older brothers and, when
babysitting my nieces, I noticed
how they were watching a make-up
ABOVE Kae Alexander and Kayla Meikle in Medusa Deluxe or hair tutorial for an hour, shot in
a single take, on YouTube and it’s
TOM HARDIMAN DIRECTOR [Joanna Hogg’s] Archipelago at uni something they don’t even think
and they were pivotal. They made about. The way we take in media is
BY JOHN BLEASDALE me look at British independent changing. You can go on Wikipedia
film and the crossovers with the art and become an expert in anything
OPENING SCENES

The cut-throat world
of hairdressing is the
subject of murder-
mystery Medusa Deluxe
A hairdressing competition featuring
cutting-edge artistry is thrown into
chaos when a leading coiffeur is found
dead and scalped backstage. Tom
Hardiman’s debut film is a long-take
tour de force featuring style to burn,
snippy dialogue and a curly plot.
Q How did you get here?
A I came from art to start with, but
saw [Steve McQueen’s] Hunger,
[Clio Barnard’s] The Arbor and
ABOVE Tom Hardiman
world and think, “Wow, there are
so many possibilities.” I got a job
in art departments on BBC kids’
shows and then managed to get into
independent film, working on Catch
Me Daddy and The Goob [both 2014].
After that, I took a chance and put
everything into a short called Radical
Hardcore [2015] – a love story about
British carpet-making. I’d planned to
write with someone, but no one was
interested in writing about carpets,
so I ended up doing it myself.
Q First carpets, now hair. How come?
A I spent a lot of time in hairdressers
as a kid. My mum went pretty much
once a week and that sowed a seed.
A huge part of Medusa comes from
my mum and her big Irish family.
The film has that sense of shared
community. It’s a story about a
community of hairdressers, all
with their differences, but brought
together through this shared passion.
Q Eugene Souleiman is one of
the hair designers. How did
he come on the project?
A I’ve admired Eugene for a long
time. He’s obviously worked with
Alexander McQueen, Maison
Margiela, Junya Watanabe, and
brings to hair what they bring
to fashion – breaking down
conventions, leaving hair half done,
leaving pins in or whatever. It’s the
same language as contemporary
sculpture, effectively: lifting the
veil, showing the artifice. It fits
perfectly with Medusa, which is a
deconstructed murder mystery
in 20 minutes. It’s about figuring
how that changes filmmaking, how
we can reflect that in storytelling?
Q It must be demanding for actors.
A It’s an experience. You’re in it
together and I know they care about
the characters as much as I do, so it’s
about handing across this person,
this character, and trusting them to
take it to the moon and back! You’re
going to perk them up, push them
sometimes, but it’s much more about
having confidence in their ability.
It’s obviously an incredibly technical
film. There’s some stuff in there that I
look at still and go: “That’s nuts.” But
there’s a collegiate atmosphere to the
actors as much as there is to the film,
and you need that because they’ve
got to have each other’s backs in
exactly the same way as [in] theatre.
If someone’s not next to the door they
should be, a 45-minute take is ruined.
Q Who are your influences?
A Robert Altman, Richard
Linklater, but also Ken Russell
and Derek Jarman. The writer
Donald Barthelme is a massive
touchstone for me. And George
Saunders. There’s something
about postmodernist writing and
the way they use humour. They
can pull on your heartstrings, do
all these different things at once.
Literature can be ahead of films.
It’s so bloody hard to make a film,
it takes a while to catch up.
Medusa Deluxe is released in UK cinemas on 9 June,
is on Mubi from 4 August and is reviewed on page 84
 BFI FILM CLASSICS

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The Godfather Part II From Russia With Love Tokyo Story Lost in Translation

Order your copies from shop.bfi.org.uk

Ebooks are available from www.bloomsbury.com/BFIFilmClassics
 16

THE BALLOT OF…

Hlynur Pálmason
Each month we highlight a voter in our
Greatest Films of All Time poll. Here
the Icelandic director of A White, White
Day and Godland shares his choices

You always need directors that BARRY LYNDON (STANLEY

affect you, but not just directors.
Musicians, painters, or just
people. In my films I sometimes
make homages; in Godland (2022),
there’s a Leonard Cohen tribute
[in the character Ragnar’s final
monologue]. But when people
say, “This reminds me of this
film or that film”, it’s not because
I thought about it intuitively.
The list was hard to make. I don’t
believe in there being ten best films,
I just chose ten films that affected
me at a time when I was really open
to being shaken. Time tells if they’re
important; obviously, the films I’ve
chosen were important to me.
OPENING SCENES
KUBRICK, 1975)
I grew up with very Western
cinema and Kubrick was the
first filmmaker to make me
doubt everything I thought
I knew. I don’t even know if
I liked it or not; I just know
it stayed with me. When I
rewatch a Kubrick film – I saw
Barry Lyndon again a month
ago – I realise it has stayed
with me the whole time. The
atmosphere is so strong. And
it’s the totality of it. It’s not
like I watch Barry Lyndon
and love, say, the script in
particular – it’s that the whole
thing is so whole. I can almost
smell it, I can feel it. It’s like

it has a surface, a sculptural

I can almost smell it,
I can feel it. It’s like
Barry Lyndon has a
surface, a sculptural
surface. There are very
few films like that. It’s
something I didn’t realise
or know how to phrase
when I saw it, but I felt
it – like you feel music
ABOVE RIGHT
Ryan O’Neal and Marisa Berenson
in Barry Lyndon (1975)
BELOW
Philip Seymour Hoffman
in The Master (2012)
surface. There are very few
films like that. It’s something
I didn’t realise, or know how
to phrase when I saw it, but
I felt it – like you feel music.
SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE
(INGMAR BERGMAN, 1973)
I came to it very late. I’ve
not seen the [1974] film, only
the original TV series. It
didn’t have the same effect
in Iceland that it did in
Sweden. Iceland wasn’t that
interested in Bergman. But
I could have picked a couple
of Bergmans; I also love Cries
and Whispers [1972]. He’s
done so many interesting
films and I mix them all up in
my head. He had this world:
he worked with a particular
ensemble, which I very much
relate to. And he shot a lot
of his films on the island
of Fårö. He’d shoot during
summer and edit during
winter, on the coast. I’m very
inspired by his approach,
his process. I’m always
interested in filmmakers’
processes – the little things,
their daily lives. Bergman is
a very interesting case study.
He had a really nice set-up.
A WOMAN UNDER THE
INFLUENCE (JOHN
CASSAVETES, 1974)
Woman Under the Influence
was the first one I saw
and it had a huge impact
on me. I didn’t know what
I was watching. And I
didn’t know how they did
it. I’d think: “How did they
do that scene? How did
they maintain that energy
and the craziness?” You’re
completely blown away
by the decisions being
made throughout the
film. I really fell in love
with its humanity and its
surprises. Every scene is
like a surprise.
CRÍA CUERVOS (CARLOS
SAURA, 1976)
My comfort watch
would be a Spanish film,
probably this one or
[Victor Erice’s] The Spirit of
the Beehive [1973], because
they make me feel really
He’s another one I came late
to. When I saw L’Argent I
was completely blown away.
The strange thing with
Bresson is how emotional
it is to watch his films. If I
were alone, I could easily
just watch and cry. It’s so
beautiful, and everything
is so elegant and scary
at the same time. He was
a big surprise.
And he’s so important
for cinema: he’s so good
with sound and was always
very vocal about it. That’s
something I don’t often hear
others talk about. [Michael]
Haneke is good on this, too:
they’re both inspiring when it
comes to sound, what it does
and doesn’t do, and how if you
have a certain visual you don’t
need to repeat it sonically, and
vice versa.
THE MASTER (PAUL THOMAS
ANDERSON, 2012)
I so look forward to seeing
his films; there aren’t many
of those kinds of filmmakers
around. Everything he does is
brilliant: so human, but with
such extreme craftsmanship.
The Master is madhouse crazy.
Phantom Thread [2017] I also
liked; I’ve seen it four times.
Normally I don’t revisit films
that often, but he’s different.
I enjoy his worlds so much, I
go there again and again.
THE GENERAL
(BUSTER KEATON, 1926)
STALKER
(ANDREI TARKOVSKY, 1979)
HIDDEN
(MICHAEL HANEKE, 2005)
I also forgot to put David
PÁLMASON PORTRAIT BY GET TY IMAGES

Cassavetes’ set-up is
different. He obviously didn’t
work in the studio way. His
films are so rock ’n’ roll, and
at the same time so personal.
I could’ve picked another
Cassavetes film, but A
warm and they would
probably make me cry.
L’ARGENT (ROBERT
BRESSON, 1983)
It’s his last film, but it’s
the first Bresson I saw.
SONGS FROM THE Lynch’s Lost Highway [1997],
SECOND FLOOR (ROY I’m so sorry. It’d be crazy
ANDERSSON, 2000) not to have him on my list.
I absolutely adore Roy Interview by Arjun Sajip
Andersson; I wish he
was my friend. He’s Godland is available to watch
just so lovely. now on Curzon Player

FESTIVALS
CPH:DOX: Youth in revolt
In Copenhagen this year, the focus fell on those left
behind to resist in Putin’s Russia, including a soaring
study of Gena, a walking work of art, in Queendom
BY NICK BRADSHAW
The Kremlin may have been pulling
down the shutters on Russia, but light
is still escaping the country: at documen-
tary festivals abroad, filmmakers are, so
far, still emerging with potent descrip-
tions of the country’s moral nightfall. A
notable focus has been on Russia’s youth:
they may not be living under bombs, or
be subject to genocidal intent, but their
futures, their freedoms to dream and
speak out, to love and explore, have also
been extinguished in Putin’s conflagra-
tion, which has left them inmates and
outcasts. To see their plight on film is to
be clear that nonfiction filmmaking in a
land of lies is an act of profound resist-
ance and essential expression.
Images of Russia on the verge of
breakdown were already striking in two
films at last winter’s IDFA documentary
festival in Amsterdam. Alexander Aba-
turov’s Paradise, a measured portrait of
Siberian villagers left alone in their rear-
guard fight against all-enveloping forest
fires, was a film of teeming symbolism,
not least of a country that should be
extinguishing its own blazes rather than
starting them abroad. Manifesto, a compi-
lation of Russian teenagers’ online video
uploads, credited to a pseudonymous
Angie Vinchito, built a shocking day-in-
the-lives survey of forsaken, abused and
desperate youth.
Further instances came to a thriving
CPH:DOX (the festival’s 20th edition)
in Copenhagen in late March. From
Russia’s neighbour-cum-satellite Bela-
rus, Motherland, by Alexander Mihalko-
vich and Hanna Badziaka, indicted the
lingering post-Soviet culture of dedovs-
hchina – the ‘reign of grandfathers’, a mili-
tary culture of brutal hazing and terroris-
ing of new recruits – by which the young
are subjugated to a corrupt old order.
The film, which won the festival’s main
DOX:AWARD, treats its subject from
several approaches: Mihalkovich’s own
testimony from his army service, read
in letters to his mother; observations
of friends divided by conscription who
find themselves on opposite sides of the
protests against President Lukashenko’s
disputed 2020 re-election; and travels
with a bereaved mother campaigning
for justice for her late son, one of many
hundreds who have died in military ser-
vice. The film takes in occasional bursts
of physical violence – recalled, or filmed
on the street – but the dominant tone,
crystallised in Siarhiej Kanaplianik’s
17
fog-shot cinematography, is a wintry
oppression, a benumbed sense of
bereavement and occlusion.
Similar twilight isolation and dismay
seeps through Sybilla Tuxen’s Silent Sun of
Russia, a painterly triptych of three young
women in limbo, refuseniks living their
rejection of Putin’s regime in the margins
of Russia or beyond, in exile. (The film
was shot from 2018 through to last year’s
assault on Ukraine.) We find them fre-
quently lying tableau-like, lit by the cold
gleam of a mobile phone screen convey-
ing more dismal news, or see their sur-
CPH:DOX roundings from high-rise apartment bal-
conies, edge-of-town outings or through
Top 5 blurred vehicle windows. “Russia is for
sad people,” says the boyfriend of one,
early on. Concludes another: “[It] will
1. QUEENDOM
never get better.”
(AGNIIA GALDANOVA)
Most indelible was Agniia Galdanova’s
2. SONGS OF EARTH Queendom, a film that combines resplend-
(MARGRETH OLIN) ently artful imagery with fluent drama
and heroic character study, and rightly
3. TOTAL TRUST won the festival’s NEXT:WAVE award
(ZHANG JIALING) for emerging filmmakers. (The cinema-
tographer was Ruslan Fedotov, who also
4. THE OTHER PROFILE won the festival’s short film award for his
(ARMEL HOSTIOU) own Away, a slice of refugee life with two
exiled young Ukrainians making help-
5. THEATRE lessly evocative public art in Hungary.
OF VIOLENCE You can watch it on the New York Times’s
(EMIL LANGBALLE & Op-Docs platform.)
LUKASZ KONOPA)
OPENING SCENES
Queendom follows 21-year-old orphan
Gena, birth name Gennadiy, a nonbi-
nary, queer agit-performance artist from
Magadan, a former gulag town in Rus-
sia’s far east. Gena – a persona at the film’s
outset, a person by the end – is such an
extraordinary standout, both visually
and politically, that she’s almost a special
effect: grocery shopping in full regalia,
BELOW
Gena in Agniia Galdanova’s
she’s like a snow-queen Struwwelpeter
Queendom crowned with a smashed wedding cake.
Reactions in small-town Magadan lend
the film deadpan comedy, yet also span
hostility and violence; she takes herself
to art school in Moscow, but there too
the climate is brutal for those walking the
street bound in tape the colours of the
Russian flag to protest for Alexei Nav-
alny. Back home, her grandad, like the
elders in Motherland, hope military service
might make Gena “a normal guy”, but
he’s also befuddled by her prospects for
earning a living. (Digital freebies “sound
pretty murky to me, Gennadiy”.) Putin’s
‘special military operation’ ups the ante:
Gena’s courage and self-confidence does
not run to stupidity, and she has now
joined her generation’s exiles; her demo
art in this film should sing to the world.
The kids are pissed off in so many lands,
with so much cause. The CPH:DOX
programme included other striking can-
vases of lost, disaffected youth: Benjamin
Mullinkosson’s The Last Year of Darkness, a
celebration of Chinese club kids partying
like there’s no tomorrow; Anhell69, Theo
Montoya’s necromantic, trans-everything
protest film from Medellín in Colombia,
seeking “a cinema of those who are left
out”. Putin, though, has made himself
the poster old bastard for everything that
needs tearing down.
In cinemas and on 12 May
On Blu-ray 17 July
 19

MEAN SHEETS
The poster for the French
rerelease of Chantal
Akerman’s masterpiece
offers a wistful tableau of
loneliness, embodied by
Delphine Seyrig
BY THOMAS FLEW
Juliette Gouret’s design for this year’s
French rerelease of Jeanne Dielman,
23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
(1975) – fresh from Sight and Sound
crowning it le meilleur film de tous les
temps (“the best movie of all time”),
as the poster proclaims – shows
Delphine Seyrig’s face warmed
by the light of a shopfront as she
looks inside, perhaps wistfully. She
may be alone, but it is a romantic
loneliness, alleviated by the poster’s
warmth and its soft, painted style.
A stunning artwork, it conjures
up images that are a far cry from
Chantal Akerman’s brilliant, yet
cold and emotionally repressed,
drama. Compare it to the film’s
original poster by Liz Bijl (bottom
left). A similar technique is used,

OPENING SCENES
with the film’s (intentional) drabness
tempered by an airbrushed design,
but here the colour palette is
considerably cooler, mirroring
Dielman’s thoughtful mood.
Akerman’s films have never been
easy to market and perhaps the use
of a painted design helps to obscure
their less commercial aspects by
adding a touch of glamour. See also
the pastel-shaded posters for Les
Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978) and News
from Home (1977) (both below), the
latter replicating the graininess
of 16mm footage to obscure the
grey, grimy New York landscape.

Liz Bijl’s original poster Guy Peellaert’s poster for Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978) Akerman’s documentary News from Home (1977)
 20
READERS’ LETTERS
MISSING PICTURE
I really enjoyed your round-up of ‘101
hidden gems’ (Sight and Sound, April).
The article prompted thoughts of my
own underrated/lost favourites, as
I’m sure it did for many other read-
ers. May I suggest the 1990 movie
All the Vermeers in New York (pictured),
OPENING SCENES
directed by Jon Jost and starring Ste-
phen Lack as a lonely middle-aged
Wall Street broker who falls in love
with a much younger woman in the
TILL DEATH DO US PART
Paul Goetzee is entitled to his opin-
ion of Allelujah (‘Letters’, S&S, May),
but if the film presents an argument
for euthanasia then he and I have very
different ideas of how we want to go.
Caspar Salmon, via email
ELEVATED TO THE GALLOWS
I was pleased to see Giovanni Mar-
chini Camia make a connection
between ‘elevated horror’ and Dario
Argento (At the Movies with…, S&S,
May). Horror has always reflected
societal ills and fears, so it’s impossible
to draw a line in the history of horror
cinema and suggest movies became
‘elevated’ after it. Those who try often
do a disservice to the excellent films
THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
It’s spiriting to see a feature on con-
temporary anime (‘The mad mad mad
mad worlds of Shinkai Makoto’, S&S,
May) so soon after Guillermo del
Toro’s call at the Oscars to see anima-
tion as a medium, not a genre. Japa-
nese animation offers an example of
how it can be enjoyed by wider audi-
ences, but we mustn’t overlook great
work made in the West, like the won-
derful family films of Cartoon Saloon
A POLISHED GEM All the Vermeers in New York (1990)
Vermeer room at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. It mixes naturalistic
performances with strikingly austere,
almost Kubrickian formalism to origi-
nal effect, and also features a superb
Charles Mingus-influenced jazz
score. And yet there is comparatively
little information about it online,
though Roger Ebert and Vincent
Canby gave it decent reviews.
Matt Phillips, via email
If Allelujah presents an
argument for euthanasia
then the letter writer and
I have very different ideas
of how we want to go
released just before Get Out ’s 2018
Best Picture nomination. Mike Fla-
nagan’s Oculus (2013), Benson and
Moorhead’s Spring and David Robert
Mitchell’s It Follows (both 2014) dem-
onstrate Argento’s enduring stylistic
influence as well as the capacity to use
genre conventions to explore anxieties
around innocence, sex and death.
Alice Hunter, via email
(Song of the Sea, 2014; WolfWalkers,
2020) and Laika (Coraline, 2009; Miss-
ing Link, 2019), and adult animated
films like Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
and Flee (both 2021). They tend to be
overshadowed by the powerhouses
pushing the idea that animation is for
kids. Perhaps audiences might learn
from Japan how to be unashamed
supporters of the medium.
Ben Dawson, Sheffield
KATZ GOT THE CREAM
To supplement Kim Newman’s
informative survey of the diverse
representations of Dracula on film
(‘Bite club’, S&S, May), prompted by
the release of Chris McKay’s Renfield
starring Nicolas Cage, I would like
to draw attention to Steven Katz’s
Shadow of the Vampire (2000; and co-
produced, as it happens, by Cage).
The film is a brazenly fictional account
of the making of F.W. Murnau’s Nos-
feratu (1922), in which the director
(John Malkovich) attempts to pass off
real-life vampire Max Schreck, played
by a deliciously committed Willem
Dafoe, as a proto-Method actor fully
immersed in his role.
A witty exploration of the ideal
of verisimilitude in art, the film is
also unusual, if Newman is right, in
foregrounding the ‘ridiculous’ and
FANG FICTION Willem Dafoe in Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
I was fascinated to read Kieron
Corless’s review of Alain Cavalier’s
Fill ’Er up with Super (‘Rediscovery’,
DVDs and Blu-rays, S&S, May – pic-
tured below). I’ve not seen this film,
but it reminded me of a screening on
British television over 30 years ago of
Cavalier’s 1981 film, Un étrange voyage,
which I had found emotionally over-
whelming by a director whose work
I did not know. As I recall, it begins
with a mysterious disappearance in
the manner of Antonioni’s L’avventura
(1960) and follows the search for the
Get in touch
Email: sightandsound@bfi.org.uk
Twitter: @sightsoundmag
By post: Sight and Sound, BFI,
21 Stephen Street, London, W1T 1LN
‘pathetic’ aspects of Bram Stoker’s
creation. In a striking scene, shot in
near darkness, Schreck reports that
the novel “made me sad”. A shadow
of his past glory with no servants
or retinue, Dracula must prepare a
meal for his visitor, Jonathan Harker,
when he himself has not “eaten food
in centuries”. “The loneliest part of the
book,” according to Schreck, is when
Harker “accidentally sees Dracula
setting his table”. Another moment of
wretchedness occurs when Schreck is
captivated by the rushes of a sunrise,
something he could only experience
in reality on pain of death. Indeed,
the images anticipate the cause of
Schreck’s own demise in the closing
scene, while also nodding to Murnau’s
US debut, Sunrise (1927).
Daniel Whiting, University of Southampton
missing loved one by an estranged
father and daughter that becomes
for them also a journey towards
reconciliation and self-discovery. I
can still remember Jean Rochefort’s
performance, which seemed to me
extraordinary even by his standards.
I’d love to see it again; it struck me at
the time as one of the finest French
films of the 1980s. Thank you for
reminding me of an exceptional film-
maker whose recognition has been
far too long delayed.
Neil Sinyard, North Lincolnshire
IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE
The Films of Laura
Mulvey and Peter
Wollen
Scripts, Working Documents, Interpretation
Edited by Oliver Fuke, British Film
Institute, 384pp, paperback, £24.99,
9781839025259, 234 x 156mm
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WKHLUZRUNDV¿OPPDNHUV,WLQFOXGHV
scripts for all six of their collaborative
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Friendship’s Death (1987), and
Mulvey’s later collaborations. Each text
is followed by a new essay by a leading
writer, offering a critical interpretation
RIWKHFRUUHVSRQGLQJ¿OP7KH
collection also includes Wollen’s short
story Friendship’s Death (1976), the
outlines for two unrealised Mulvey and
Wollen collaborations, and a selection
of scanned working documents.
The book also includes new
FRPPHQWDULHVRQWKH¿OPVIURP1RUD
0$OWHU.RGZR(VKXQ1LFRODV+HOP
Grovas, Esther Leslie, Laura Mulvey,
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Ruby Rich and Sukhdev Sandhu.
www.bloomsbury.com/BFI
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Lost in Translation
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a recent graduate in philosophy, faces
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colour palette and use of music over
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the product of an established director
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argues that Lost in Translation is not
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22 TALKIES
The Long Take
Let’s celebrate the real-life immigrant women
who inspired Joan Micklin Silver’s Hester Street
The recent Joan Micklin Silver retrospec-
tive on Mubi was full of delights, includ-
ing the director’s bittersweet feature debut,
Hester Street (1975). Bittersweet, because in
this adaptation of Abraham Cahan’s 1896
novel Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, the
marriage between two Eastern European
Jewish immigrants founders when they are
reunited on the Lower East Side. Bitter-
sweet also because, for a long time, Mick-
lin Silver struggled to find studio backing
for her first feature. “Women directors are
just one more problem we don’t need,” said
one unhelpful executive. Micklin Silver’s
realtor husband sought private invest-
ment to the tune of somewhere between
$320,000 and $370,000, and distributed
the film himself, which went on to bring
in $5 million at the box office and earn its
leading lady, Carol Kane, a Best Actress
nomination at the Oscars. Sounds like
Micklin Silver was just the kind of problem
the industry should welcome.
Hester Street is a film with a strong sense
of history and social change. It’s set at the
turn of the 20th century and concerns
the differences between a husband, Jake
(Steven Keats), who considers himself well
assimilated into American culture, and his
wife, Gitl (Kane), who arrives later, and is
slower to adapt. Well, there’s a little more
to it than that. While Gitl was back home
raising their son, Jake was courting another
immigrant, Mamie (Dorrie Kavanaugh),
whom he tricks with a false promise into
handing over her hard-won dowry. He
then spends the cash on furnishing a mari-
tal home for Gitl’s arrival. The cad.
It also has a strong sense of film history.
Beginning in 1896, the year Edison first
demonstrated his Vitascope to the New
York public, this black-and-white film is
suffused with the aesthetic of early silent
cinema. The opening scene, of a flirtation
during a dance class, is presented without
diegetic sound, to a piano accompani-
ment, telling its story exactly as it would
have done in the silent era. Inside Jake and
Gitl’s flat, the camera points squarely at the
wall, recalling the fixed-camera composi-
tions of tenement scenes in early Biograph
productions. Out in the busy market lining
Hester Street itself, one half-expects Lil-
lian and Dorothy Gish to pass each other
Pamela Hutchinson
@PamHutch
week… If I would live I must escape from
the East Side.” She became involved in
socialist and feminist politics and made
her living by writing, first for magazines
then film studios. Many of her first screen-
plays were immigrant stories similar to the
one Micklin Silver told in 1975, including
Salome of the Tenements (Sidney Olcott, 1925),
A Harp in Hock (Renaud Hoffman, 1927)
and The Younger Generation (Frank Capra,
1929). Levien branched out, though, and
had an impressive career as a screenwriter,
working in Hollywood until the late 1950s
and winning an Oscar for Interrupted Melody
(Curtis Bernhardt, 1955).
We might also choose to remember
Alice Guy-Blaché, a different kind of immi-
grant, a French film director who shot her
first film in 1896 and in 1910 became the
first woman in America to run her own
film studio. Guy-Blaché still had to fight
for her opportunities, and for her credit
in the industry. And she made a f ilm
that came to mind all too easily when I
watched Hester Street: Making an American
Citizen, from 1912. It’s a one-reel comedy,
with an educational theme, following a
Jewish husband, Ivan (Lee Beggs), and his
Hester Street has with their parcels, a ghostly relic of such unnamed wife (Blanche Cornwall) as they
early American street films as The Musket- renegotiate the unequal power dynamic in
a strong sense eers of Pig Alley (D.W. Griffith, 1912). Simi-
their marriage after they emigrate to the
of film history. larly, a sunlit scene of Jake and his son play-
States. It takes four blunt “lessons in Amer-
Beginning in icanism” to teach Ivan to respect his wife,
ing baseball in the park unreels like an early
actuality. More specifically, Hester Street similar to the interventions made by Jake’s
1896, the year recalls early Jewish-American cinema. neighbour Mrs Kavarsky (Doris Roberts)
Edison first in Hester Street. The modernising shift in
Roughly half of the film’s dialogue is in Yid-
demonstrated dish (with English subtitles), which was a their relationship is also signalled by the
popular language for silent films in New wife’s choice to remove the scarf from her
his Vitascope York nickelodeons, collapsing the transla- head, as in Micklin Silver’s film.
in New York, tion barrier for recent immigrants. At the end of Hester Street, Gitl walks
this black-and- We hear much about the Jewish Ameri- through the market with her hair uncov-
BYLINE ILLUSTRATIONS: PETER ARKLE + ILLUSTRATION BY MARC DAVID SPENGLER
can businessmen who so successfully built ered and her head held high, discussing
white film is the Hollywood studio system, but that her business plans with a new fiancé – it
suffused with the system (which created so many of the seems she adapted to the new world quite
aesthetic of early films I love) often failed women, as Mick- well after all. It is bittersweet to think of
lin Silver discovered. In honour of Hester Guy-Blaché and Micklin Silver telling sto-
silent cinema Street, let’s choose to remember a talented ries about adapting to new values, more
woman, Sonya Levien, who in 1896, aged than six decades apart, while both were
seven, emigrated with her family from a fighting to remodel the film industry on
Jewish village in what is now Lithuania. a fairer basis. That is to say, the films are
She ended up on the Lower East Side: in sweet, but the struggle is bitter.
Hester Street. The neighbourhood was
tough, she found: “A feather-duster factory Pamela Hutchinson is a freelance
swallowed up my teens at four dollars a critic and film historian

Andrew Male
@Andr6wMale
The Roys in Succession are trapped in a hell every
bit as claustrophobic as anything Sartre imagined
This time next year will mark the 80th anni-
versary of Jean Paul Sartre’s play Huis clos
(often translated as No Exit). First performed
at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in Paris
in May 1944, this vision of existential hell,
in which a man, Garcin, and two women,
Inèz and Estelle, realise they are trapped in
a windowless drawing room for all eternity,
has had immeasurable influence on post-war
culture. Condemned by their past actions,
forever defined by what their fellow prison-
ers think of them, each of the trio has been
chosen precisely to drive the others mad.
Huis clos has influenced everything from
Samuel Beckett’s plays of inactive resignation
to many of the thwarted and trapped char-
acters who occupy the post-war British and
US sitcom. Crucially, it also gave the world
the phrase “l’enfer, c’est les autres” – “Hell is other
people” – with which Sartre expressed the
idea that we are unable to exist outside of the
opinions of others.
It was Huis clos I first thought of back in
January when a US business journalist on
Twitter said of the forthcoming fourth and
final series of comedy-drama Succession, “[I’m]
looking forward to seeing how the writers
manage to manuever [sic] four adult chil-
dren to always be in the same room together
with their dad.” It was obviously intended as
a barbed line of criticism, but it also got to
the heart of why this series, which ends in the
UK on 29 May, has remained so powerful. As
the writer Naomi Fry pointed out in the New
Yorker in November 2021, Succession (2018-)
may look like a drama, but it rarely moves
like one. “It is surprisingly static,” wrote Fry,
“a brilliant tragedy-satire of the corporate
élite [in which]… a group of eccentric, petty
characters… try, again and again, to one-up
one another.”
Fry argues that the show more closely
resembles a sitcom, such as Seinfeld (1989-
98), than prestige HBO drama and, given
that its British creator Jesse Armstrong pre-
viously worked in the world of sketch shows
and comedy, most notably the long-running
POV sitcom Peep Show (2003-15) and politi-
cal satire The Thick of It (2005-12), it’s a logical
summation. Yet although incredibly, acer-
bically funny, Succession resists the beats or
structure of a sitcom, and while season one
might have vaguely conformed to the look of
the mockumentary, with its overt handheld
As it has gone
on, Succession
has grown more
claustrophobic,
abandoning
forward
momentum
while closing
off avenues of
escape for its
characters
camera style, natural lighting and location
shooting, it always had the intent of tragedy,
that promise of both elevation and entrap-
ment contained within its title.
As it has gone on, Succession has moved
ever closer to capturing the claustropho-
bic feel of Huis clos, abandoning forward
momentum while closing off successive
avenues of escape for its characters. Ever
since that moment in the pilot episode when
Logan takes his children Kendall (Jeremy
Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), Roman
(Kieran Culkin) and Connor (Alan Ruck)
into a closed room and tells them he’ll be
“staying in situ as chairman, CEO, head of
the firm” the best episodes of Succession have
been those in which the Roy siblings have
found themselves stuck with each other in
confined spaces, believing they have a say
in the future of Waystar-Royco, yet utterly
unable to make decisions. Like the trio in
Huis clos, the Roy siblings are a specific hell
for each other, moving from closed room to
closed room, each desiring validation from
the other while simultaneously finding the
other contemptible.
The particular look of these rooms in Suc-
cession is also significant. In an article for The
Ringer in 2021, Alison Herman analyses the
series’ “opulent but empty” interiors; soul-
less beige rooms that echo the moral state of
the family itself. Whether by coincidence or
ABOVE design, it’s a look that mirrors the setting of
Sarah Snook’s Shiv Roy
with her brothers
Huis clos, in which hell resembles a “drawing-
Kendall and Roman, room in Second Empire style”, referring to
played by Jeremy Strong
and Kieran Culkin,
the ostentatious style popular during the
in Succession (2018-) mid-19th century reign of Napoleon III that
23
T V Ey e
Sartre regarded as a visual embodiment of
la mauvaise foi, or ‘bad faith’, representing a
denial of the authentic and an attempt to
evade the responsibility of ‘good taste’.
Ultimately, in both Huis clos and Succession
the characters are offered ways out. Per-
haps the defining moment of Sartre’s play
is when the three characters are presented
with an open door out of their cell. After
banging and rattling at this door through-
out the play, demanding it be opened, they
no longer know what to do. “I shall not go,”
says Garcin. “No! Not into the passage!”
screams Inèz.
The irony, of course, is that whether they
go through the door or not the characters in
Huis clos will always be in hell. There are no
stakes. By contrast, throughout Succession’s
four seasons, the core triumvirate of Kend-
all, Shiv and Roman have repeatedly been
given chances to walk away from Waystar-
Royco; to leave the room. The implication
has always been that remaining there will
destroy them. How Succession will end is
unknown at the time of writing, but there
is a telling scene in season four in which
Logan’s longtime confidant Frank Vernon
(Peter Friedman) says to Kendall, about
his decision to succeed his father as CEO,
“Ken, you’ve got stuff cooking, you look so
well. Do you really want back in?” The door
is open. Should he stay or should he go?
And what lies in wait for him in the passage
beyond the door?
Andrew Male is a freelance critic
who lives in South London
24 TALKIES
Poll position
Crunching numbers to find out who prefers Kurosawa
to Kubrick reveals a peculiar kind of diversity
The 2022 Critics’ poll may be remembered
as marking a historic shift towards a more
diverse and globally representative cinema,
helped in part by an unprecedented effort
to broaden the pool of participation.
Worldwide, 88 advisers were recruited to
build an invite list of nearly 4,000 voters,
of which a record 1,639 submitted a ballot.
Still, questions remain as to how fully this
diversity was realised. True, among the
poll’s top 100, films originating outside
Europe/North America (mostly from East
Asia) rose from 13 in 2012 to 19 in 2022. This
figure matches the make-up of participat-
ing critics from outside the Anglo-Euro-
pean sphere: 17 per cent of voters came
from Asia, Latin America and Africa. Yet
the percentage was lower than in 2012.
While those regions gained 100 voters, 574
were added to Europe and North Amer-
ica, including 236 from the UK alone. In
contrast to 2012, in 2019 voters from Anglo-
phone nations were the majority.
This is a global cinematic canon imag-
ined by a geographically concentrated con-
stituency, which has led to some unusual
findings. Support for Jeanne Dielman (1975)
was uniformly strong across major regions,
nowhere more so than the US, where it
received 35 per cent more votes than Vertigo
(1958) and Citizen Kane (1941). Rounding
out the US top five are Do the Right Thing
(1989) and Killer of Sheep (1978), placing far
higher than in any other regions. This may
indicate a shift in the US toward a more
inclusive canon. By contrast, The Searchers
(1956) was in the top six among East Asian
and European critics, placed far higher
than by Americans, marking a disparity in
how its canonical status and racial insensi-
tivities are regarded.
While American films dominated US
critics’ top five, among the UK voting
contingent one has to look further down
the chart, to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) at
11 and A Matter of Life and Death (1946), at
14, to find UK-produced titles. Highest
placed by British voters was In the Mood
For Love (2000), doing better than among
Asian critics. What explains such trans-
global resonance? Does the film outdo
the likes of Brief Encounter (1945) or The
Red Shoes (1948) in expressing a quintes-
sentially British romantic fatalism? Is this
Kevin B. Lee
@ alsolikelife
a symptom of a nostalgic post-colonial con-
nection to Hong Kong? Does it gesture to
post-handover politics redirecting Hong
Kong’s cultural diaspora to the UK?
These diasporic flows may require
deeper levels of investigation, but they
haunt the poll and its peculiar kind of
diversity. Perhaps the oddest case is Japan,
where no Japanese title received more
than one vote among home critics. Not
that those films needed help; there were as
ILLUSTRATION BY BETH WALROND
many Japanese films in the top 100 as there
were Japanese critics voting: seven (many
more were invited but did not take part).
It is shocking that a country with such sto-
ried cinema had a fraction of the number of
participants that European countries had
– and those critics collectively favoured
European art cinema. Perhaps robust sup- Does In the Mood for Love outdo the
port of Japanese cinema extending beyond likes of Brief Encounter in expressing a
its domestic constituency fulfils an ideal of
cinephile cosmopolitanism?
quintessentially British romantic fatalism?
Other constituencies remain under-
served. Three African films made the top Top films in poll by geographic region (and overall rank)
100 but less than one per cent of critics Africa
were based in Africa. This raises several
The Bat tle of Algiers (=45)
questions: how can more African par-
Touki Bouki (66)
ticipation be achieved? How much is the
Black Girl (=95)
project of celebrating African cinema
Sambizanga (=136)
undertaken by non-African voices? And West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (=152)
how many African critics have relocated to
the Global North to pursue their calling? Asia
(Several submitted both African and US Tokyo Story (4)
or European locations.) Meanwhile, five In the Mood for Love (5)
per cent of critics were from Latin Amer- Close-Up (17)
ica, but the most-supported films from the Seven Samurai (20)
region hovered in the mid-100s to 200s, Late Spring (=21)
with Lucrecia Martel and Luis Buñuel Pather Panchali (35)
the main beneficiaries. Looking at regional Rashomon (=41)
results, one finds extraordinary support My Neighbour Totoro (=72)
beyond those auteurs, with consensus Sansho the Bailiff (=75)
around the radical Brazilian documentary Spirited Away (=75)
Twenty Years Later (1984) and, of all things,
Latin America
Jonas Mekas’s As I Was Moving Ahead Occa-
sionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000). La ciénaga (=136)
Why this five-hour experimental compila- Los olvidados (=157)
tion of home movies is especially exalted The Exterminating Angel (=169)
in Argentina and Chile is a question that Memories of Underdevelopment (=169)
the headless woman (=196)
deserves an article of its own.
Zama (=196)
Geographical poll statistics were compiled by Ian
One Way or Another (=196)
McDonald. Available at: ss-22.netify.app
Limite (=211)
T wenty Years Later (=211)
Kevin B. Lee is Locarno Film Festival The Hour of the Furnaces (225)
professor for the future of cinema at USI

Nicole Flattery
@nicoleflattery
Why settle for heroines who are blandly likeable
when they can be unruly and outrageous?
I can pinpoint the exact moment I fell hard
for After Claude, Iris Owens’ 1973 novel. In
fact, I can pinpoint the exact sentence.
Harriet’s friend Maxine comments on her
unpredictable behaviour and the fact that
she’s nearly 30. “What’s going to happen
to you?” she implores. “It came then,” Har-
riet thinks, “the fleeting nightmare of me,
old and grey, dispensing paper towels in
Bloomingdale’s restroom.” Every young,
reckless, deluded woman has their own ver-
sion of this nightmare, the ruin she might
turn into if her behaviour doesn’t change,
or at least abate and transition into some
form of respectability. Can her charms be
channelled elsewhere? Or is she doomed to
madly roam a Bloomingdale’s bathroom,
resigned to her own inadequacies?
After Claude is, at first, a very funny
novel. Harriet is planning on leaving her
boyfriend Claude, a French rat, over intel-
lectual differences. (They have a disagree-
ment over Pasolini’s 1964 film The Gospel
According to St. Matthew, with Harriet
describing it “as the same old religious crap
about how wonderful it is to be a pauper
after you’re dead.”) Actually, to face facts,
he’s kicking her out of their Greenwich Vil-
lage apartment because she’s unhinged, a
bad girlfriend, a numbing presence, over-
bearing company and a terrible house-
keeper. “Six months of your devotion has
driven me mad,” Claude tells her. (I adore
this upending of cliché; when so much of
what we read and see is about how to get
a man, or hang on to one, Harriet remains
singular and determined in her awfulness.)
Harriet occasionally grasps that she’s a
nightmare, but only because everyone
tells her. “You’re so furious all the time, so
rude, so disagreeable,” says Maxine. Even
she admits she’d rather “converse with a
crazed mugger than reason with myself ”.
She’s vain, selfish, lazy, self-pitying, supe-
rior. She’s also frank, energetic, intelligent,
fashionable, hilarious. You’d buy her a mar-
tini, but you wouldn’t let her into your life.
Harriet is astute about the role she
plays, too. On another of her girlfriends
she comments, “It’s clear to me that she
wants all the advantages of my stimulat-
ing personality with none of the inevita-
IMAGE: ALAMY
ble dues.” You pay a high societal price for
being this strange and memorable. Harriet
25
Flic k Lit
freewheels up and down New York City,
lying, stealing, enraging and annoying
everyone she encounters, before ending
up, like a lot of lost souls before her, at the
Chelsea Hotel. After Claude is an entertain-
ing read, but there’s something about Har-
riet’s search for a modicum of self-knowl-
edge, the barest hint of self-improvement,
that I find oddly touching.
There are shades of After Claude in
Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s 1995 film Party
Girl, another story where an adventurous
woman grows and develops. The film is
currently enjoying a deserved renaissance,
with a recent 4K restoration and Blu-ray
release. There were also live Q&As with
the film’s star, Parker Posey, and its direc-
tor at the end of April in both NYC and
Los Angeles. Posey is Mary, a party girl
with more get up and go than Harriet,
as she occasionally organises the parties.
After she is arrested for putting on an ille-
gal rave, her godmother bails her out of jail in even the most dire circumstances. They
and Mary agrees to pay her back by work-
Party Girl and are both depictions of certain periods of
ing in her library. This agreement is uneas- After Claude New York history that are heavily senti-
ily reached because Mary is so affronted might appear mentalised: life in the West Village in the
by the possibility that her benefactor 70s (about which Harriet is lacerating) and
doesn’t think she’s smart enough to work
superficial at the early 90s scene kids who dominated
in a library; spite is hugely motivating for first glance, nightclubs in Party Girl. (Posey recently
both Harriet and Mary. Mary becomes but beneath said, “We made this movie for ‘the kids’
the world’s best-dressed librarian, enjoys – as we called them – young people from
a fanatical devotion to the Dewey Deci-
the kitsch and small towns who had big dreams and who
mal System, and romances Mustafa, a sparkle they are weren’t, for whatever reason, conforming
Lebanese street-food vendor and aspiring actually rather to the status quo.”)
teacher. As she moves through the stacks, Party Girl and After Claude might appear
her idea of herself, and what she is capable subversive superficial at first glance, but beneath the
of, slowly expands. kitsch and sparkle they are actually rather
The two works don’t have everything subversive: Mary never chooses between
in common, since Harriet is more of a vil- her lifestyle and becoming a librarian, she
lain than Mary, but they share the same does both, and Harriet never gets the guy
audacious spirit, the same appetite for the back. Both were ahead of every modern
uncategorisable and spontaneous. Every- story we now see about a woman who, as
thing Mary does, from her dance moves she faces adult decisions, doesn’t know
to her outfits (the film’s costume designer whether to save or destroy herself. The
Michael Clancy, who died last year, said party doesn’t have to end but the music
the credit for Mary’s wild wardrobe might have to change. Party Girl is finally
belongs to Posey and her ability to “make getting its due but Iris Owens, creator of
anything work”) seems born of impulse, the irrepressible, unforgettable Harriet,
totally free. Like Harriet, she is working died in 2008 without even a New York Times
towards self-knowledge and is upfront obituary. Her heroine deserves one more
about her failings. “I don’t have a job,” she spin on the dance floor.
says at one point, “I’m a loser. Shoot me.” ABOVE
Parker Posey and
The two works have a similar deadpan Anthony DeSando
Nicole Flattery’s novel ‘Nothing Special’
wit, an unrelenting appetite for humour in Party Girl (1995) is published by Bloomsbury
 THE
27

In a wide-ranging interview in New York on the eve

of the UK release of Master Gardener, Paul Schrader
discusses his Bressonian roots, the transcendental
style, the Taxi Driver template and his gripes about

GOSPEL
Sight and Sound ’s Greatest Films of All Time poll
I N T R O D U C T I O N A N D I N T E RV I E W BY E R I K A BA L S O M
P H O T O G R A P H Y BY M AT T H E W S A L AC U S E

OF
PAUL In 2006, at age 60, Paul Schrader specu-
lated on how the end of his storied career
might go: “I have, perhaps, ten years of
films left in me, and I’m perfectly content to
ride the broken-down horse called movies
into the cinematic sunset.” That decade has
come and gone, and things happily haven’t
turned out exactly as he predicted. Today,
the writer-director is as prolific as he has
ever been. The broken-down horse called
movies keeps limping on and Schrader
is still astride it. This summer brings the
appeal. Schrader has thrown off the weight
of studio pressures to work independently,
making do with relatively low budgets and
holding on to final cut – securing a crucial
freedom after feeling that 2014’s Dying
of the Light had been mauled by produc-
ers. These ‘man in a room’ movies follow
solitary individuals with pasts that weigh
heavily on the present. They are stories of
guilt, forgiveness and redemption; stories
that catch their protagonists in a tangle of
worldly trouble and ask whether there is
theatrical release of Master Gardener, the such a thing as righteous violence.
concluding entry in an informal trilogy Schrader’s late style takes him back to
he began with the Oscar-nominated First the start. He is perhaps best known as
Reformed (2017) and continued with The the writer of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver
PORTRAIT: MAT THEW SALACUSE

Card Counter (2021). These uncompro-
mising films prove something that feels
increasingly impossible in our franchise-
OPPOSITE
laden landscape: American cinema can be
Paul Schrader profoundly philosophical and have popular
(1976), his second produced screenplay,
following on the heels of Sydney Pollack’s
The Yakuza (1974). But the chilly restraint
and pull away from realism found in his
three most recent films recall an even
28 PAUL SCHRADER
earlier moment, one prior to his initial
forays into screenwriting and directing.
After a strict Calvinist upbringing,
Schrader fell hard for the profane world of
the movies and became a critic. In 1969,
he saw a film that would transform his
life and propel him towards filmmaking:
Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959). As he
wrote that year in a two-part review for
the Los Angeles Free Press, this finely chis-
elled film about a petty thief “concerns the
progression of a soul from confinement to
freedom” and “end[s] with an inexplicably
spiritual act… an unpremeditated act of
love” – attributes that notably also mark
each instalment of the recent trilogy. Some
obsessions don’t fade.
Schrader’s 1972 book Transcendental Style
in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer built on the
insights he gleaned as a short-form critic,
delineating an ascetic form of filmmak-
ing that “seeks to maximize the mystery of
existence; it eschews all conventional inter-
pretations of reality: realism, naturalism,
psychologism, romanticism, expression-
ism, impressionism, and, finally, rational-
ism”. Shortly after its publication, Schrader
crossed over from theory to practice,
largely leaving behind the book’s concerns.
His films sometimes flirted with elements
of the transcendental style; references
to Bresson, for instance, are peppered
throughout his oeuvre, most obviously in
the endings of American Gigolo (1980) and
Light Sleeper (1992). But in large part, inter-
est and opportunity led him elsewhere.
Prior to First Reformed, Schrader could still
rightly assert, as he did in 1976, that “the
similarities between my critical thinking
and my screenwriting are more coinciden-
tal than anything else; they just don’t seem
to be part of the same thing”. It is only now,
in what might be the twilight of his career,
that he has begun to fully develop his own
take on an approach to cinema that began
to fascinate him so many decades ago.
In Master Gardener, Joel Edgerton
plays Narvel Roth, a horticulturist who
tends the grounds of the Gracewood
estate, a former plantation owned by
Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver).
When Norma arranges for her estranged
and drug-addicted grand-niece Maya
(Quintessa Swindell) to undertake an
apprenticeship with Narvel, the biracial
girl’s arrival upsets his carefully meas-
ured existence. Passions begin to flare.
A former white supremacist, now in wit-
ness protection and yet still covered in
tattoos that brand him with a memory
of hatred, Narvel becomes swept up in
the still-raging storm of the past – a past
that is at once distant and recent, collec-
tive and individual, and which asserts its
Schrader’s recent ongoing vitality in the present. The impulse
to violence surges up again: “I have created
films prove this life, filled it with rules,” he writes in his
something that journal, “Now seems the time to break one.”
feels increasingly Approach Master Gardener like the conven-
tional film it almost appears to be – a film
impossible in in which things like plausibility, likeable
our franchise- characters and tight cause/effect chains
laden landscape: are important – and it will fall short. But
approach it as an endeavour of cinematic
American thinking – one with the same disregard for
cinema can realism and psychologism that character-
be profoundly ise the transcendental style – and the film
yields rewards. Can a person truly change?
philosophical Is forgiveness possible? When is care indis-
and have tinguishable from harm? To what extent
popular appeal are power relations fixed in place and to
what extent are they wildly volatile? These
are just a few of the very large questions
Schrader opens, leaving it to the viewer to
ponder possible answers.
Ahead of Master Gardener’s UK release,
on a sunny April morning I sat down with
Schrader in the restaurant on the top floor
of his Manhattan apartment building. Over
coffee and croissants, we discussed his new
film, his love of occupational metaphors,
the enduring importance of Pickpocket, and
BELOW
a topic of great interest to both him and this
Joel Edgerton as the magazine: the shape of the film canon and
horticulturist and one-time
white supremacist Narvel
the significant reshuffling of the rankings in
Roth in Master Gardener last year’s Greatest Films of All Time poll.
M
aster Gardener is one of a handful of
films you’ve made with an occupation in
the title. There is Taxi Driver, American
Gigolo and, more recently, The Card Coun-
ter. You seem very interested in using
work as a way of shaping a character.
Yeah, that started in Taxi Driver. I’ve found
that when I can access personal and so-
cietal problems through an occupational
metaphor, it opens up much better than if I
try to do it semi-autobiographically. I made
a film that was sort of about my father and
another one that was sort of about my
mother. I wrote a script that was sort of
about my brother. And none of them were
successful in my eyes.
In what sense?
They just didn’t have that final level, that
final gear that kicks it in.
In your last three films, the focus on an oc-
cupation seems to be a way of setting the
individual into tension with bigger social
forces. Did you plan this as a trilogy?
I didn’t plan it as a trilogy, but at one point
someone said to me, “You know, this is a
trilogy.” I don’t know. If people call it a tril-
ogy, it’s all right.
29
‘Taxi Driver In all three films, we have solitary men
who write in journals. They are haunted
became the and conflicted; their personal histories
template: to bring them into contact with the violence
learn about the that exists at the heart of the United
States, whether it’s the Iraq War, envi-
self by finding ronmental destruction or the afterlives
a metaphor of slavery. How do these films respond
that’s not at all to these political issues? The Card Coun-
ter, for instance, both is and is not a film
like you – gigolo, about Abu Ghraib.
drug dealer,
minister, card It’s not about poker either! It usually
starts with a personal problem which
player, gardener is also reflective of a social malaise, and
– and using him then I find an occupational metaphor.
the way Bresson Going back to Taxi Driver, the personal
problem was young male loneliness. And
used pickpockets’ the metaphor of the taxicab occurred to
me. The thing about these occupational
metaphors is that you have to break
the viewer’s identification. When Taxi
Driver came out, taxi driver characters
in movies were like your brother-in-law:
a funny guy who would talk too much. I
looked at him and I said, “No, this is the
underground man. This is the heart and
soul of Dostoevsky. This is a kid locked
in a yellow coffin, floating through the
open sewers of the city, who seems in
the middle of a crowd to be absolutely
alone.” That was a good metaphor. That
became the template: to learn about the
self by finding a metaphor that’s not at all
like you – gigolo, drug dealer, minister,
card player, gardener – and using him the
same way that Robert Bresson used pick-
pockets. Pickpocket isn’t really about being
a pickpocket.
In Master Gardener, gardening is associ-
ated with care, routine and with being in
harmony with the rhythms of nature. But
it is also about control and the imposition
of will.
Right, it’s about pruning.
The idea of weeding the garden comes
up several times throughout the f ilm.
The question is: what – or who – are the
weeds?
This is a very old metaphor; it’s probably
the oldest one. We were hypothetically
born in the garden, and then driven out
of the garden. But there has to be some-
thing under the skin of it. For instance,
watching poker on television, I thought,
“That’s a strange occupation.” You just do
the same thing over and over all the time.
It’s like sitting in front of a slot machine.
I asked myself, “What makes a person
become a kind of a zombie?” And then I
had an interesting occupation for The Card
Counter. When people think about drug
dealers, taxi drivers and card players, they
have a cliché in mind. You have a little key
to tickle the viewer’s imagination. It’s like
saying to them, “Oh, you didn’t think it
was this way? This is how it actually is.”
In Master Gardener, the main character says,
“Gardening is a belief in the future.” The
viewer might say, “I hadn’t really thought
of it that way.” Or they might not think of
30 PAUL SCHRADER
a gardener being a big Robert Mitchum nothing you can do about it. I tried to ‘In Taxi Driver
type. I cast Joel [Edgerton] because avoid all those clichés, ergo, the jellyfish
he was a big hunk of a guy. Both Ethan wallpaper you see in the house. It’s not the
you’re hearing
[Hawke] and Oscar [Isaac] wanted to do conventional plantation decor. I also have his inner voice,
it, but I wanted more of a lug, someone a reverse Mandingo [1975] scene. In Man- which is coming
you don’t think of as a gardener. And so I dingo, the kitchen girl services the master
had my metaphor. of the house, but here the gender dynamic
through you
is reversed. intravenously,
Master Gardener connects the idea of weed- like nourishment
ing the garden with white supremacy. Is this a film about white guilt? It’s cer-
tainly a film about guilt and atonement
you can’t taste.
There are a fair number of hot buttons in on an individual level, but I wonder how I went to the
the film. You start with the May-December much we can also think in broader terms. model of the
romance, which used to be the norm and
now is outré. You move into revenge clichés That hovers in the background. The
existential hero
and then to the interracial clichés. I was a moment you articulate it, it falls apart. of Dostoevsky,
little concerned that people would get too There are just certain things that can’t be Camus and
hung up on these clichés and wouldn’t see said. They can be said, and most movies do
it as a character piece. So I said, “I know say them – but the moment you say them,
Sartre, where
what to do: instead of backing off, we’ll go the audience doesn’t have to think about you’re just inside
one step further and make him a Proud them. By not articulating it and using all that person’
Boy. The film will have so many hot but- these garden metaphors, something else
tons that they’ll get confused.” happens. In The Card Counter, for example,
you’re shown how to count cards. And you
‘Master gardener’ is a term in horticul- think, “Oh, the movie’s going to be about
ture. But to say ‘master’ is also to invoke that.” But it’s not about that. It’s a way to
the slave. The f ilm is set on a former pass the time, as the character says, to in-
plantation. gratiate yourself with the audience, to start
to build an empathy that then you can later
It wasn’t written that way. Originally, manipulate. This is the Taxi Driver formu-
we were going to shoot in Melbourne la: you have a guy who writes in a journal
but then they went into lockdown for 17 and goes from place to place. That goes
months. We ended up shooting it two on for quite a while. You start to identify BELOW
months early in Louisiana. The location with him, because you’re hearing his inner Ethan Hawke and
Amanda Seyfried in
in the original script was just a hypotheti- voice, which is coming through you intra- First Reformed (2017)
cal estate, but once we got to Louisiana, venously, like nourishment that you can’t
OPPOSITE
all those hypothetical estates were former taste but which is there. You’re following Paul Schrader at
plantations. So it had that iconography, his every movement. There are no other home in New York
perspectives, no other characters, no cuta-
ways. With Taxi Driver, I went to the Euro-
pean model of the existential hero of Dos-
toevsky, Camus and Sartre, where you’re
just inside that person. You get into his life
and it’s interesting enough. But maybe 50
minutes in, it starts to aberrate a little bit.
You think, “That’s odd.” And then it aber-
rates a little more. And by the time you’re
an hour and 15 minutes in, he’s no longer a
character you would identify with, but you
already have. You think, “I’ve gotten to kind
of like this guy, I sort of understand him,
but now he’s behaving in a way that I don’t
condone. What’s going to happen?” That’s
the formula.
What you say reminds me of a line in
your book Transcendental Style in Film.
You write, “ The purpose of transcen-
dental style is not to make you emote,
but to make you understand.” The idea
is to “gradually replace empathy with
awareness”. I wonder if this is a way of
thinking about what your films do and
how they relate to big political and phil-
osophical questions.
Yes. It goes back to the things that can’t be
said. You have to get the viewer to a place
where they start putting it together. It’s as
if you have two ideas and they’re like two
wires. When you put them together, the
current flows through. The question is,
how far can you pull them apart and still
have the current jump? What’s happening
between these two poles? The viewer is
making a connection. But if you ever let
PORTRAIT: MAT THEW SALACUSE
32 PAUL SCHRADER
those wires touch, there’s nothing for the know. There are a lot of people out there
viewer to do. like that.
It’s striking that Master Gardener never
offers any explanation of the protago-
nist’s conversion from white supremacy.
We never find out what makes him turn
on his entire community and become an
informant. There is an abyss at the centre
of the film. You never give it away.
Maybe because I can’t. Maybe because it’s
only hypothetical. Is it possible for a Proud
Boy to become a good person and racially
tolerant? I suppose. But movies aren’t
stories about the way things are; they are
fables. The gist of Master Gardener is, what
if? What if there was a white supremacist
hitman who for one reason or another re-
versed course? There have been a few who
have gone to the police and ratted out their
friends. If we use that as a hypothetical,
where does it take us? What if a taxi driver
was really a damaged psychopath? What if
a drug dealer was an intensely moral man
who just happens to deliver white drugs to
white people?
In an interview you did with Bresson in
1976, you said, “Movies should be about
symptoms rather than about causes.”
That feels like a good way to describe
this aspect of Master Gardener. You’re not
trying to show the root of anything; you’re
surveying all the symptoms generated by
something that the film will never, or can
never, represent.
Yes. “I was raised to hate people and
I was good at it.” That’s all you need to
You mentioned that a film needs to get to
a “final level” for you to deem it successful.
What makes a good ending? Each film in
the trilogy concludes with a heterosexual
union of sorts, but none of them can be
characterised as a conventional happy
ending. There is a strain on plausibility,
which comes back to your idea of film as
fable. In The Card Counter, you explicitly
reference the ending of Pickpocket, as you
have before in American Gigolo and Light
Sleeper. But I wondered if the famous last
line of Pickpocket could apply to Master
Gardener as well: “Oh Jeanne, what a
strange path I had to take to reach you.”
Yes. “I found a life in flowers.” How unlikely
is that? It all goes back to a day in March
1969. I was a critic at the Los Angeles Free
Press and a film student at UCLA. I went to
a screening of Pickpocket, which was open-
ing ten years after it had opened in Paris.
The movie’s not long, 75 minutes. And in
that 75 minutes, my life pivoted and defined
itself, because two things happened.
The first was that I had a religious back-
ground and was now living in a profane
world. I thought there was no connec-
tion between the two. I looked at this film
and realised that there was a connection
between the way I was raised and the way
I was living. It wasn’t a connection of con-
tent but one of style. There’s a way of doing
things that can evoke the Holy Other. You
can do it in gardens, cathedrals and music
– and you can do it in movies. That was the
seed of Transcendental Style in Film, which
‘In 1969 I saw I wrote very young and prematurely. It
ended up being my master’s thesis. I saw a
Pickpocket and connection that had been dealt with in the
thought, “I can other arts, but not in film.
make a film like The second thing that happened was
that I realised I could make films. I was
that.” He sits in not a filmmaker, but I lived in a house with
his house, writes four guys who were filmmakers and were
a diary, goes working on a Roger Corman film called
Naked Angels [1969]. They dissed me for
out, commits not making films. And I saw Pickpocket and
some petty thought, “I can make a film like that.” He
crimes, writes sits in his house, writes a diary, goes out,
commits some petty crimes, writes some
some more, more, the police visit him, he writes some
the police visit more, runs into his neighbour, writes some
him… I can do more. I can do a film like that. That was in
March 1969; two years later was Transcen-
a film like that’ dental Style and three years later was Taxi
Driver. Both came out of that 75 minutes.
I was looking at your 1972 Sight and Sound
ballot, and surprisingly Pickpocket is not
on it. You chose Diary of a Country Priest
[1951]. Since then, you’ve changed your
favourite Bresson to Pickpocket.
I had to. Country Priest was the obvious
choice because it’s the religious one and
I wanted to only choose one film by any
given director. But I thought, “If you’re
going to put a Bresson on there and you
keep remaking Pickpocket, I guess you have
to choose that!”
I wanted to ask you about the idea of the
ABOVE
Oscar Isaac as
film canon. You were going to write a
gambler and former book on the subject at one point.
serviceman William
Tell in The Card
Counter (2021) I thought myself to be Harold Bloom
 33

there for a moment and did all this re- been so much discussion around last ‘When I first up, but Coming Home [1978] and An Un-
search. It was going to be a very ambi- year’s Sight and Sound poll. married Woman [1978] seem to be a part of
tious project and then I realised that I
saw Pulp Fiction, their time.
wasn’t the right person to do it. I also lost It’s also list-mania. That clickbait thing. I turned to my
faith in the entire enterprise of the canon. wife and said, Given that you excluded recent f ilms
But since I had spent the better part of a If I understand it correctly, you are anti- from your ballot, can I ask which con-
year reading, thinking, and making notes, list but pro-canon. It’s an interesting dis-
“Everything temporary films most interest you? The
I said to myself, “I’ve got to do something tinction. I have done is second edition of Transcendental Style in
with all this work.” So I wrote a piece for now outdated.” Film, published in 2018, has a new in-
Film Comment. They’ve discovered that people are more troduction in which you talk a lot about
likely to click on something called ‘13 Best
I realised that the slow cinema.
In that article, you mention the impor- Topless Movies’ than something called ironic movement
tance of beauty and the ability to stand ‘The Best Topless Movies’. had surpassed It’s hard to keep up. They’re making slow
the test of time as important criteria for movies faster than we can watch them.
evaluating films. Another criterion you They need the number.
the existential
mention is morality. What is the role of movement. It has certainly become codified as an
morality in making a film great? Yes, they need the number. “Existential” international style. But is there anything
from the past 20 years or so that strikes
It has to do with the conundrum of the In your 2022 Sight and Sound ballot, you
now had quotes you as a future contender?
way I was raised, the inherent conundrum said that you would not consider films for around it’
of Calvinism: man is incapable of good, inclusion until 25 years after their release. I remember that when I first saw Pulp Fic-
but he must try. You won’t earn your way Most voters seem to have proceeded dif- tion [1994] at the New York Film Festival, I
to heaven, but you have to try anyway. I’ve ferently: there are so many recent films on instantly recognised it. I turned to my wife
never really fully understood that combina- the list. It’s suggestive of a film-historical during the screening and said, “Everything
tion of free will and predestination. How amnesia. I have done is now outdated.” I realised
can you be predestined and have free will that the ironic movement had surpassed
at the same time? You have to let history weigh in. I think his- the existential movement. ‘Existential’ now
tory has weighed in on In the Mood For Love had quotes around it. It’s a very important
It’s a major theme of many of your movies. [2000], even though it hasn’t quite been 25 film in film history. It would be interesting
years. Certain films just grow. Everybody to see it again and see how well it holds
Yes it is. It’s the riddle of Calvinist theology. knew Persona [1966] was a great film, but up, now that it has become the subject of
But you do have to keep trying, because it’s they didn’t know it was one of the great endless imitation. The Godfather is also the
the only way to be a decent occupant of the films. As time went by, it became clearer subject of endless imitation, but it holds up
world. And, of course, it is full of contradic- and clearer that this was a landmark in the and the imitators don’t.
tions: how do you respect life and then eat history of cinema.
a hamburger? And so slow cinema was something that
The opposite can also be true. Some- interested you primarily in relation to
There is a line in your essay about film thing can be heralded as a landmark in its transcendental style rather than being a
canons that I love: “Canon formation moment, but then fade. real passion of yours?
has become the equivalent of nineteenth
century anti-sodomy laws: repudiated in Yes. Or you have a film like The Godfather Yes. I started thinking about what became
principle and performed in practice.” If [1972], which was heralded at the time and BELOW of the transcendental style. I wrote that
Lauren Hutton and
this was true when you were writing in didn’t fade. But a lot of those films have Richard Gere in
book before Tarkovsky and was interested
2006, it’s even more true today. There’s faded. Bonnie and Clyde [1967] sort of holds American Gigolo (1980) in asking what had happened since then.
Slow cinema is for the academy, museums
and festivals. Very little of it has a theatri-
cal life. I still believe in commercial cinema.
I believe that people who invest in movies
should get their money back. We don’t
have government grants in the US. The
whole American sentiment is based on the
idea that if the film can’t make its money
back, you shouldn’t make it.

On your Facebook page, you were very

critical of Jeanne Dielman [1975] coming
in at number one.

Because they put their thumb on the scale.

Weren’t there always thumbs on the scale,

just different thumbs?

No. They did two things to rig the ballot,

and a third thing happened societally.
The first was that they vastly expanded
the contributors. You’ve got people who
are not actual film critics weighing in on
a critical poll, and the voting list goes from
500 or 600 to 2,000. That’s a big change.
The second is that they’ve counted each
film as equal [Ed’s note: Sight and Sound’s
Greatest Films poll has always counted each film
as equal]. And then you had the #MeToo
movement, which meant that everyone
34 PAUL SCHRADER

thought there should be a female a direc- you can be an elitist and a common man ‘More and more, had a taste for more engaged films, things
tor on their list. at the same time. You can thank Quen- might change. When we were experienc-
tin [Tarantino] for some of this. He’d say, you have cinema ing the multiple cultural crises of the 1960s
My friend Elena Gorfinkel likes to refer “‘Killer Car Girls’ is one of the great films.’ that is made and 1970s – anti-militarism, civil rights,
to this as the rule of one: you put just one But ‘Killer Car Girls’ is not one of the great for suspended women’s rights, gay rights, sexual freedom
woman on the list with nine men. films. No matter how many times Quentin – movies bloomed because people wanted
says stuff like that, it still doesn’t make it a adolescence, to know what was going on. What is wife-
Yeah. And so who will it be? It can’t be great film. the kind of swapping really about? There’s a movie
Leni Riefenstahl, it can’t be Ida Lupino. movies that you about it, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice [1969].
Agnès Varda… Elitism or opposition to elitism is one But when audiences don’t want important
thing, but we have to acknowledge that liked before movies – movies that, even if they’re bad,
Claire Denis? the values that have informed the canon you went to talk about substantial subjects – then it’s
have never been objective. college, before very hard to make good movies. More and
Yes. Jeanne Dielman ended up being a lot of more, you have cinema that is made for
people’s number six, seven or eight, which I don’t agree. You can go into a museum you became an suspended adolescence, the kind of movies
counted just as much as their number one. and see modern paintings and go to a pre- elitist. Movies that you liked before you went to college,
The thumb was on the scale. school and see children’s paintings and tell with people who before you became an elitist. Movies with
the difference. Parents say, “Oh, that looks people who wear capes. Will that reverse
I wonder if Jeanne Dielman coming in on just like a Franz Kline. It looks just like a wear capes’ itself? I don’t know.
top is also related to the contemporary Pollock, it’s beautiful.” No, it’s not.
prevalence of slow cinema. Perhaps it’s Is the theatrical experience important
a way of underlining the importance of It’s often said that f ilm criticism is in to you?
Chantal Akerman as a precursor to many crisis. Is this a sentiment you agree with?
filmmakers working in this mode today. It’s almost impossible to go to a museum
The crisis is not limited to film criticism. and not see a movie, or to ride out on the
I think that’s part of it. But mostly it’s It’s a crisis of film culture, which includes freeway and not see a movie. Billboards are
just the female director thing. As Tom audiences, financiers, artists and critics. now animated. Everything is animated.
Stoppard famously said, in democracy, it There was a period when film criticism But the notion of committing yourself for
doesn’t matter who gets the most votes, it blossomed, but that was because audienc- a fixed period of time in an isolated space
matters who counts the votes. es wanted better films. There was a shift to a film is like going to church. You don’t
from “Let’s go to the movies” to “Let’s go leave church because you’re bored. You
But it is important to try to move towards to a movie”. How do you find out what to go there to be bored, to just sit and think
a more inclusive idea of film history. see? You read. This made film criticism an and maybe feel something. With theatrical
elite intellectual profession, one created by cinema, people have made a commitment.
It gets back to this whole issue of the canon the market. When that market shifted and They’ve left home, paid a certain amount
and its standards. I remember speaking at print shifted, it started going away. There of money, gotten a babysitter, or whatever.
my alma mater, and a student made a com- are more film critics today than at any time They are now committed. I have them for
ment about the importance of not being in history. Everybody has a blog. But only a at least 15 or 20 minutes. With multi-chan-
elitist. I said to him, “What the heck do handful of them actually make a living out nel television, how long do you have them?
you think you’re doing in college? The of it, and it’s hard to do for a whole lifetime. Five minutes sometimes.
BELOW
whole idea is elitist. It’s about getting more So then when you talk about this four-leg- Paul Schrader,
knowledge, it’s not about being like every- ged creature of film culture, one single leg Martin Scorsese I mentioned a possible amnesia around
and Robert De Niro
body else.” There’s nothing wrong with cannot lift the horse up again. Criticism during the making of
f ilm history today, but this changed
being elitist. There is a modern myth that can’t do it on its own. If audiences suddenly Taxi Driver (1976) media environment we are discussing has
also caused a huge surge of interest in all
kinds of films from the past – a new kind
of digital cinephilia.

There’s very little that you can’t get your

hands on. If you’re willing to swim in the
polluted waters of torrents, it feels like
there is actually nothing you can’t get your
hands on – even films that haven’t been re-
leased yet. But then going to torrent sites
is like drinking from the overflow pool next
to the chemical plant.

When Philip Roth was around the age

you are now, he said he would no longer
write or read contemporary fiction. On-
Facebook, you mentioned this and wrote,
“I wonder, is that date coming for me?
And when it does, will I even recognise it?”

I’ve thought about whether to keep up.

There’s no reason to try any more. I’m
going to go back and reread the stuff that
has mattered to me. I don’t care what’s on
the cover of the book review this week.
I think that’s a very natural, reasonable
thing. But I haven’t gotten there yet. I’m
still just too damn curious.

Master Gardener is released in UK cinemas

on 26 May and is reviewed on page 73

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Paul Schrader’s voting history across five editions of
Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time poll
records the fascinating evolution of his critical taste
1972
z An Autumn Afternoon (Ozu, 1962)
z Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson, 1951)
z My Darling Clementine (Ford, 1946)
z The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)
z Masculin féminin (Godard, 1966)
z La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)
z Journey to Italy (Rossellini, 1954)
z Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich, 1955)
z Lolita (Kubrick, 1962)
z Performance (Cammell & Roeg, 1970)
Your ten film limit stipulation… threatens
to reduce the critic to a familiar litany of
‘Introduction to the Art of the Cinema’
greats. Therefore I have let Jennings (Fires
Were Started), Welles (Touch of Evil) and
Murnau (Nosferatu) suffer at the hands of
Aldrich, Kubrick and Cammell/Roeg; but
what of Comanche Station, Naked Spur and
Gun Crazy?
1982
Schrader did not vote in this edition.
1992
z La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)
z Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
z Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959)
z Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
z The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)
z The Conformist (Bertolucci, 1970)
z Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
z Masculin féminin (Godard, 1966)
z City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)
z The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
These are the films that have stood the test
of time for me. Long-term relationships…
…
2002
z La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)
z Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
z Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959)
z Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
z The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941)
z La Belle et la Bête (Cocteau, 1946)
z The Conformist (Bertolucci, 1970)
z Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
z The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
z The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
FROM TOP
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928),
The Lady Eve (1941),
La Belle et la Bête (1946),
Orphée (1950),
Pickpocket (1959)
35
2012
z Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
z Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959)
z La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)
z Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
z The Conformist (Bertolucci, 1970)
z Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
z The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941)
z The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
z Orphée (Cocteau, 1950)
z In the Mood for Love (Wong, 2000)
2022
z Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959)
z Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
z Persona (Bergman, 1966)
z La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)
z The Conformist (Bertolucci, 1970)
z Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
z The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
z Metropolis (Lang, 1927)
z The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
z The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941)
I find the decennial S&S list an invigorating
critical exercise. It forces one to re-evaluate
films and their personal importance. The
fact that there are exponentially more films
to choose from complicates the task but I
see no reason to expand the list. Ten is a
convenient number. Boundaries focus the
mind. I have a few ground rules: no film
is eligible for 25 years after release, there
should be one silent film and one comedy,
experimental and art installation films are
a separate category. What I enjoy most
is the mutating nature of the lists. What
makes way for the new films? How does
one balance a film’s impact on the history
of cinema with its unique importance to
you? Should The Wild Bunch supplant The
Searchers? La Règle du jeu give way to The
Conformist? Does Kane hold up? Which
Godard? Why does Hud grow in my esteem?
Why did I come late to Persona? Is this the
year for Performance and In The Mood for Love?
For years I promoted Vertigo but was that a
measure of its undervaluation or true merit?
‘What I enjoy most is the
mutating nature of the lists.
Should The Wild Bunch
supplant The Searchers?
La Règle du jeu give way to
The Conformist? Does Kane
hold up? Which Godard?’

Ari Aster’s surreal dark comedy Beau Is Afraid might see the director moving away from the grisly
horror that made his name, but his enthusiasm for Freudian subtexts, family dysfunction, decapitation,
grief and guilt – not to mention traumatic scenes in bathrooms – shows no sign of abating
BEAU’S TRAVAILS
Stop incriminating your-
self,” Amy Ryan’s Grace
hisses fiercely, à propos
of nothing, at the bewil-
dered protagonist Beau
Wassermann over a
homely breakfast table. Yet Ari Aster’s third
feature, Beau Is Afraid, is a wig-out Freudian
picaresque journey that lets all its neurotic
complexes hang out to the max. The last
section reaches a jaw-dropping crescendo in
which any shreds of subtext are blasted away
in a welter of images of full-on sexual anxi-
ety. It is funny and horrifying, grievous and
grief-stricken, and as incriminating as hell.
No wonder Beau ends up on trial.
After his last success, Midsommar (2019),
Aster tended to deflect questions about
the next project, casually suggesting in an
online interview with the photographer
Gregory Crewdson that he was tempted
to make a “stupid comedy”. Now realised
as a monumental journey from the very first
to the very last gasp of Beau Wassermann,
he describes it to me as “a contribution to
the picaresque” – an open-ended, episodic
form perfect for outsize adventures in
American anxiety neurosis. It is funny but
also “dead serious to me”, Aster insists.
It is a thrillingly high-risk strategy for
a script Aster has nursed for many years
before honing the final version during
lockdown. He has described Beau Is Afraid
as containing “more me than anything
I’ve done before”. Since Aster’s films are
often divisive, designed to provoke, some
might see this as an incriminating admis-
sion of self-indulgence. Yet the director
also memorably describes the film to me
as “putting a stick of dynamite into every-
thing I’ve done before, and blowing it up
to see what happens”. He wants the film to
be a “funhouse hall of mirrors”, he tells me,
a Borgesian labyrinth. In a film that centres
on neurotic projection, bending the world
WORDS BY ROGER LUCKHURST
to Beau’s outsized anxieties, we have to be
careful about what we read into it, what we
consider ‘incriminating’.
Fans of Aster’s Hereditary (2018) and Mid-
sommar should know that Beau Is Afraid is
not another elevated horror but a surreal
dark comedy. It borrows its quest struc-
ture from the grand epics, although it is
less Homeric than Quixotic, less Odys-
seus returning home than Dorothy on the
yellow brick road encountering lots of hal-
lucinogenic weird shit along the way.
The passive and neurotic Beau, played
with an extraordinarily embodied com-
mitment by Joaquin Phoenix, just needs to
get home to see his mother. But the world
keeps outbidding his worst possible fearful
fantasies of it, and everything goes wrong,
all seemingly his own fault. Virtually every
line of dialogue Beau speaks begins “I’m so
sorry” in a wheedling, self-pitying tone. He
moves from apocalyptic downtown city, a
gloriously funny opening sequence, to men-
acing entrapment as a possible surrogate
son in a menacingly bright, picture-perfect
suburban house. This is followed by a brief
idyll of plenitude in the magic woods among
the ‘Orphans of the Forest’, a theatre group
that seems to be staging a play about Beau’s
best version of himself. On stage, a long-lost
dad is finally united with, and embraces, his
loving sons. Everything is green, luscious
and fecund but ends in a hail of bullets and
Beau loses consciousness again. Eventually,
way too late, he stumbles into his mother’s
terrifying modernist house, where the
sharp angles of the corridors and open-plan
chasms brim with dread.
These four chapters are interspersed
with crucial flashbacks to traumatic child-
hood memories that give propulsive force
to these final encounters with a childhood
sweetheart (an incredible Parker Posey
cameo), his mother (an imperious Patti
LuPone) and something bad in the attic.
37
Beau Is Afraid The film, then, is also an American road
movie – one that has echoes that range
borrows its quest from the solemnity of the homecoming in
structure from Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970) to the
the grand epics, knockabout farce of John Hughes’s Planes,
Trains and Automobiles (1987). And it is also
although it is a possible capstone to that venerable tradi-
less Homeric tion of comedy about neurotic Jewish sons
than Quixotic, and their domineering mothers: a bit of
George Costanza from Seinfeld (1989-98)
less Odysseus an echo of Albert Brooks’s run of com-
returning home edies up to Mother (1996) – a touchstone
than Dorothy for Aster; and possibly even outdoing
the giant critical mother who appears in
on the yellow the sky over Manhattan in Woody Allen’s
brick road Oedipus Wrecks, his contribution to the
encountering lots portmanteau film New York Stories (1989).
There’s a shared sensibility of surrealism,
of hallucinogenic guilt, toxicity and grief with the films of
weird shit Charlie Kaufman. The angle of a shot of
a body floating in a swimming pool is bor-
rowed from the opening of Billy Wilder’s
Sunset Blvd. (1950), and Aster confirmed
to me that the tortured relationship of
Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis was one
of his key reference points. Indeed, one
working title for the project as a whole
was Disappointment Blvd. The mother’s
monologue of denunciation, delivered
by a severe LuPone, is worth waiting for,
and is a monumental entry into this black
comedy tradition of terrifying mothers.
f this sounds like a rag-bag of genres
and sources, it is. As we discuss ref-
erence points, Aster says: “These
are all things that I love, and you
metabolise the things you love.” Beau
Is Afraid is one of those capacious
and frenetic movies with a run-time
of three hours and an episodic struc-
ture that allows for wildly different styles,
OPPOSITE tones and looks, including animated
Joaquin Phoenix as
Beau Wassermann in
sequences. Each frame is overloaded with
Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid information – every ad, sign and piece of
38 BEAU IS AFRAID
graffiti in the city mirrors Beau’s anxious
state (“Murder by Fuck”, “Jesus Sees Your
Abominations”). It feels similar to the crazy
pace, wild twists and overdetermined
images of Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!
(2017) or, more recently, Daniel Kwan and
Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere
All at Once (2022). Independent production
has given favoured auteurs a new kind of
freedom to follow ideas into very strange
places, the stranger the better it seems, and
streaming habits have extended running
times. Aster said he wanted to honour the
intensity and strangeness of his script, and
not compromise: the production entirely
follows through on that. Given the success
of Everything Everywhere All at Once at the
Oscars, perhaps we should start calling
this Hollywood’s New Chaotic Style.
His actors were happy too, Aster says,
to jump into this chaotic dream-logic. It
must have been an extraordinary script to
read, but Aster says “there were very few
questions. Everyone was game.” He had
wanted to work with several of the actors
– he mentions Posey and Denis Ménochet,
in particular – and they all came on board
without demur, despite the extremity of
their roles.
Yet Beau Is Afraid is also a hall of mir-
rors because it reflects back on Aster’s
earlier work. It is worth seeking out the
director’s graduation short – and viral
sensation – The Strange Thing About the John-
sons (2011) because it is clear that Aster has
been working on amplified, melodramatic
versions of what Freud called the family
romance from the very start. In that film,
it is the son who is the active abuser of his
father, while the mother is a passive figure
who wilfully overlooks knowledge of the
situation until a murderous eruption in
the last scene. It feels like Aster enters into
this primal drama, adjusting the dynamics
and replaying them in different combina-
tions, through Hereditary, Midsommar and
now Beau Is Afraid. Aster agrees with this
unity of theme, with the proviso that Beau
Is Afraid is a “deconstruction”, a forcing into
a “dead end” of this trajectory.
I put it to Aster that two features can
share coincidences but three or four begin
to reveal a meaningful sequence. All the
way back to The Strange Things About the
Johnsons, there are crucial traumatic scenes
in bathrooms. Beau’s bathtime flashback is
at the root of his psychic splitting and over-
whelming anxiety, and another traumatic
memory unfolds by a swimming pool on
a boat. These watery images – Aster
describes it as “a film you could swim in” –
are key to the film right up to the final shot
of black lapping waves over an upturned
boat. The wooden stairs that fold out of the
attic in Hereditary, revealing a horrific secret,
are reprised almost exactly in Beau Is Afraid.
 There are more repetitions. Aster’s films
have a thing about decapitation. The early
shock in Hereditary is a ghastly close-up
of a head severed in a car accident; later
there’s a headless corpse that plays a cru-
cial role in the final grand guignol scenes.
Midsommar lingers over the damage done
to the heads of an elderly couple in a shock-
ing ritual, which is the first explicit signal
of the deathly designs of the commune.
Perhaps as a sign that Beau Is Afraid is the
closing part of a triptych, this time we only
hear – and never see – a long and grue-
some description of another head lost in
an inexplicably bizarre accident, and later
see only the comical absence of that head,
not its horrific remains. (Listen out for that
voice on the phone: Aster is keen to praise
the amazing vocal performance by the
comedian Bill Hader, unseen at the other
end of the line. “He’s so brilliantly funny in
that scene,” he sighs with delight. “Joaquin
too.”) Even so, one of Beau’s many violently
angry nemeses, Jeeves, a post-traumatic
war veteran played by Ménochet in an
almost entirely wordless performance of
intense physical menace, loses his head at
the crescendo of Beau in a way that largely
defeats verbal description.
Freud had much to say about decapita-
tion as a displaced symbol of sexual anxi-
ety, and I wonder if this aligns with Aster’s
interest in passive or absent fathers. In The
Strange Thing About the Johnsons, as noted,
‘With Beau Is the father is a victim, while Gabriel Byrne
Afraid, I was plays a strikingly powerless, ineffectual
very aware of dad in Hereditary. The son of that cursed
family turns out to be useful only as a vessel
returning to that needs to be emptied out. The male
similar themes students visiting Sweden in Midsommar
as my earlier are narcissistic and needy, and ultimately
severely punished for it. The absence of
films. But this Beau’s father from his life is revealed in the
feels very much last section as one of the knottiest roots of
like the end his anxiety neurosis. “I’m so sorry for what
your daddy passed down to you,” Beau’s
of the road, mother Mona says to him, talking about
and I wanted heredity with textbook passive-aggression.
the film to Of course, such scenes open the question
of whether Aster’s films express misogyny
devour itself ’ or are interested in examining the struc-
tural roots of that misogyny in the power
imbalances built into the family dynamic.
There is so much female grief and violent
rage in these films – and Beau encounters
multiple instances of it in his travails.
Aster takes a long pause to consider
OPPOSITE TOP this. He is an intensely focused and
Nathan Lane, Amy
Ryan and Joaquin
engaged interviewee, responding hesi-
Phoenix in the film tantly but with genuine thoughtfulness as
OPPOSITE
he searches out his answers. I’ve also seen
Ari Aster him elegantly dodge questions at Q&As
ABOVE
that he explicitly calls “traps”, and like most
Phoenix during a sequence artists wants to avoid crude reductions.
in which a theatre group
seems to be staging
I fear I may have been impertinent, but
a play about Beau instead he replies: “Those are interesting
echoes that I honestly hadn’t considered.
But a lot of things strike you after the fact.
I’ve had that experience on all my films,
these things that were so clearly in my
system, and that you only see on set, or in
the editing, or even on release. But there’s
an element of parody in Beau Is Afraid, at
the same time as being deadly serious.
With this film, I was very aware of return-
ing to similar themes as the earlier films.
But this feels very much like the end of
the road, and I wanted the film to devour
itself, you know?” For the frenzied finale,
working through to what Aster calls “the
dead-end of anxiety”, he has a perfect
Freudian riposte: “I can’t really answer
for it.” Beau’s analyst (played by Stephen
McKinley Henderson), who pops up at
the beginning and end of the film, might
appreciate the answer.
If this sounds like the end of a cycle,
Aster remains cagey on what will come
next. Rumours emerged just before we
talked that the director will start shooting
a western soon, but he’s quick to quash any
further details. “I regret saying anything
about that,” he says, shifting uncomfort-
ably. “Better not to speak it about it prob-
ably.” Quite right. Let the work speak for
itself. Stop incriminating yourself.
Beau Is Afraid is released in UK cinemas
on 19 May and is reviewed on page 70
40 BEAU IS AFRAID

ASTER’S EYE
The director discusses some of the rich
visual influences that helped to define
the style and tone of Beau Is Afraid

Playtime
JACQUES TATI, 1967

“I had the assistant directing the world. There’s such a

team watch Playtime. There
is so much going on with the
background cast in the film,
and it’s remarkable for all the
attention it gives not just to
background details but to the
people populating the world.
There is no extra too deep
in the frame, who doesn’t
deserve all the attention in
joy there to search the frame
every time you see it. There’s
no such thing as watching the
same Playtime twice. It’s one
of the great celebrations of
life and human civilisation. It
parodies at the same time as
it glories in all of it. This was
important for the first section
of Beau Is Afraid.”

Invention for Destruction

KAREL ZEMAN, 1958

“When I went to Cristóbal
León and Joaquín Cociña,
the Chilean animators who
worked on the animated
section of the film, the
references I gave them were
the films of Karel Zeman,
who they also knew and
loved, especially Invention for
Destruction. We talked about
this ‘stagecraft aesthetic’
and having human beings
inhabiting this very flat, 2D
landscape. What Zeman
was doing was so ground-
breaking and thrilling, doing
these effects in-camera.
That film is one of the
great marvels and there are
so many artists that don’t
exist without Karel Zeman,
especially Terry Gilliam’s
work for Monty Python.
For the stagecraft aesthetic,
I also had the animators look
at The Ballad of Narayama
[Kinoshita Keisuke, 1958],
especially for how it deals
with transitions; the artifice
of that film is striking.
There’s a silhouette animation
transition in Beau, where I
was thinking about Lotte
Reiniger’s The Adventures of
Prince Achmed [1926] – and her
films in general.”

Sunset Blvd. A Matter of Life and Death

BILLY WILDER, 1950
“I’m sure I would never have
thought of the shot of the
body in the swimming pool
without knowing and loving
Sunset Blvd., and Norma
Desmond was something
of a model here for the
mother. But for her, I was
also thinking a lot about
the Greek gods, and when I
was writing her monologues
MICHAEL POWELL & EMERIC PRESSBURGER, 1946
Tennessee Williams was
a key reference. I wanted
‘Tennessee “For the final tribunal mind. It’s extraordinary: the
scene I had A Matter of final scene is really meant
it to be unapologetically Williams was Life and Death in mind. I to function as a piece of
melodramatic and have the
heightened poetic quality of
also a key just couldn’t really get the propaganda – it was made
design of that stadium at just after the war – but it’s
Williams’s dialogue. There’s reference – the end of the film out of my also funny and humane.”
some naturalism in the
rhythms, perhaps, but it’s
the heightened
totally operatic. She’s less of poetic quality
a person than your fears of
a person.”
of his dialogue’
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 REALITY
42
CHECK
Tina Satter’s first feature, a recreation of the events surrounding the arrest of whistleblower
Reality Winner, is both rigorously accurate and smartly inventive – the perfect expression
of and antidote to our post-truth era. The director talks to Beatrice Loayza
Reality is deceptive. At the beginning of
Tina Satter’s first feature, Reality Winner
(Sydney Sweeney) pulls into her modest
ranch-style home, the kind you see all over
the United States. Her hair is tied back into
a messy bun; she’s wearing cut-off shorts
and yellow low-top sneakers; and her voice
is distinguished by the low, creaky hum
that is the hallmark speech pattern of the
American millennial. In other words, she
seems like an ordinary young woman. Yet
at 25, she is already a military veteran and
seasoned government contractor, having
served in the United States Air Force and
worked on top-secret projects as a linguist
fluent in Farsi, Dari and Pashto. Getting
out of her vehicle, she is approached by two
shifty-eyed men who reveal themselves to
be FBI agents. Reality, it turns out, is also
a threat to national security.
Satter’s taut chamber piece unpacks
the interrogation of the real-life American
whistleblower Reality Winner, who was
arrested on 3 June 2017 for leaking classi-
fied information about Russian interfer-
ence in the 2016 presidential election. The
film tracks only a few hours in her life, and
yet it speaks volumes about the zeitgeist
in the era of post-truth politics, and it does
so with an eye toward gendered relations
of power.
Roughly a month before FBI agents
arrived on her doorstep in Augusta, Geor-
gia, Winner had sent a National Security
Agency document detailing Russian hacks
of voter registration rolls to the news web-
site The Intercept, which subsequently
published a report. Charged with treason,
she would be sentenced to more than five
years in prison under the Espionage Act.
Even in the US, Winner’s story isn’t very
well known – at least not compared with
those of whistleblowers such as Edward
Snowden and Chelsea Manning. “I wasn’t
really paying attention that summer,”
Satter tells me. “It was in December 2017
that I became intrigued with her after
stumbling upon a New York Magazine fea-
ture that went into the details of her life.
Then, after doing some clicking around, I
found the transcript.”
The transcript is the record of the FBI’s
interactions with Winner in the hours
prior to her official detention on 3 June. It
begins at the point when Special Agents
Garrick and Taylor (respectively played by
Josh Hamilton and Marchánt Davis in the
film) confront Winner outside her vehi-
cle. It then proceeds through the agents’
bizarre, circuitous questioning as several
other officers arrive on the scene and in
effect raid the young woman’s house. Real-
ity plays dumb, complying with the agents’
requests, even relinquishing her phone and
keys, despite their failure to abide by legal
protocols such as informing their suspect
of her right to remain silent.
Several recent films that blur the bound-
aries between invention and real life – like
Maria Schrader’s #MeToo procedural She
Said and Alice Diop’s cryptic courtroom
drama Saint Omer (both 2022) – lift sec-
tions of dialogue verbatim from the tran-
scripts and testimonies on which they are
based. Reality takes it a step further: all the
dialogue comes from the transcript. This is
the case with both the film and Satter’s first
interpretation of the text, Is This a Room, a
play that opened Off Broadway in 2019.
According to the director, the transcript
“looks just like a play script”. Satter, who
has worked primarily as a playwright and
theatre director, was immediately taken
by the “mesmerising” document, whose
surreal and ominous qualities are fore-
grounded in the stripped-down, four-per-
son production. The actors recite the text
on a bare stage, re-enacting the 3 June affair
in a way that calls attention to the rhythms
of the language and the fraught dynamics
behind that day’s façade of civility. With its
uncanny atmosphere and its focus on the
verbal peculiarities of the interrogation,
Is This a Room recalls the plays of Harold
Pinter, whose ‘comedies of menace’ also
gesture at the traumatic realities embed-
ded in banal conversation.
The screenplay for Reality – which
Satter wrote in collaboration with James
Paul Dallas – underlines the verbal tension
apparent in the transcript. “Because it’s a
film with a limited runtime, I had to edit
out chunks of the transcript, but I never
manipulated a sentence,” Satter says. Nev-
ertheless, the film departs from the play
in subtly radical ways, without betraying
its methodical focus on the events. Satter
employs an arsenal of cinematic effects
43
to punctuate the infiltration of Reality’s
home and her eventual confession. As
Sweeney’s Reality leans on a wall to get
her picture taken, for instance, an actual
photograph of Reality striking the exact
same pose flashes on the screen. A conven-
tional biopic will often flaunt its suppos-
edly authentic recreation of ‘true events’
through a montage of archival images in
the end credits, but this moment doesn’t
feel gimmicky. Rather, it bolsters Satter’s
underlying assumption – that truth is
often stranger than fiction – by reminding
us that what we’re watching is fabricated.
Satter also makes explicit the narrative’s
connection to the transcript by weaving
in images of the document, showing the
parts of the text that directly correspond to
what is being visualised. It’s as if the film
makes manifest the mental images gener-
ated by reading the text. When the ‘reader’
encounters confidential sections of the
document obscured by redaction bars, the
actors seem to glitch, or disappear entirely.
“I wanted to capture the sense that some
omnipotent force is taking something
away or banishing it,” Satter says.
Beyond experimenting with the raw
material of the transcript, Satter also saw
in a screen adaptation the opportunity to
“fill out [Winner’s] world visually and figure
out what it felt like for her to move through
the lawn space and house that day”. Satter
remembers, before writing the play, read-
ing about the objects scattered around
Winner’s abode – a Pikachu bedspread,
sticky notes outlining her workout regimes
– which contributed to her fascination with
the young woman. This whistleblower had
interests outside her political commit-
ments: she was a gym rat who taught yoga
and CrossFit, a single woman who fostered
dogs and had a thing for pretty journals
and feminine stationery. She owned three
firearms – one of them was pink. “I wanted
to constantly remind people that this is a
real person,” Satter says. “Her social media
presence is a fascinating element. Her Ins-
tagram is frozen in time on June second, the
day before she was arrested, and it stayed
that way until she was out of prison. That
last one is a picture of a kale bowl,” she
added, referring to one of the social media
posts scattered throughout the film.
44 REALITY
S
atter f irst connected
with Winner in the
summer of 2021, when
she was released from
prison early, due to good
behaviour. However,
the director had been
in touch with Winner’s
mother and sister since
she started working on
the play: “They were at
[Is This a Room’s] open-
ing night and at the film’s
first screening in Berlin
[where it premiered ear-
lier this year],” she says.
“They were my conduit to Reality, the ones
giving me permission to do my thing on her
behalf.” When Winner finally got the chance
to weigh in, she proved extremely hands-
off, giving Satter the space to interpret
the transcript as she saw fit. “I consulted
Reality for mostly factual details – things
like what book was on her dresser, what
bumper stickers were on her car – which
would often lead to her telling some other
small detail that would paint the picture
even clearer,” she says. “But [Reality] also
had these amazing boundaries. Some-
times she’d say, ‘I can’t talk. I have CrossFit,
let’s do next week.’” Winner, according to
Satter, developed a deeper bond with the
actors who played her – Sweeney in Reality
and, in the play, Emily Davis, with whom
Winner exchanged letters and emails while
she was in prison.
In one of the letters Winner sent to
Davis, she reportedly wrote that what
preoccupied her most before being taken
into custody was her pets – an anxiety
made clear throughout both of Satter’s
interpretations. In the play, puppets stand
in for Winner’s dog and cat, but in the film
a much greater sense of panic and urgency
revolves around the live animals; Reality’s
man-hating dog is visibly distressed as it
paces around a fenced-off section of the
yard; her cat refuses to emerge from under
the bed. As the FBI agents shuttle in and
out of her house, Reality worries that her
cat might escape, a concern that feels
trivial next to the gravity of her situation,
though Sweeney’s measured performance
lends this behaviour considerable depth.
Her fixation on the pets reads as a defence
mechanism to avoid confronting the inevi-
tability of her downfall.
Federal agents tend to be sleuthing mas-
terminds or intimidating pencil-pushers
in the movies, but in Satter’s hands, and
positioned in relation to a comparatively
powerless woman, there’s something
unmistakably slimy and manipulative
about them, too, which reflects the injus-
tice of the system they are beholden to. The
agents obsess over the animals and exhibit
a faux-concern that adds a dark layer to
the proceedings. “It becomes like a surreal
comedy routine,” Satter says. “Once Reality
has confessed, they talk about how her cat
is really fat, to lighten up things. She knows
her world is over, and they definitely know
her world is over, and yet they return to the
The screenplay animals. It’s bleak.”
for Reality Equally disturbing is the way the agents
underlines the take up space, wordlessly accentuating
Reality’s vulnerability with the domineer-
verbal tension ing nature of their movements. “Imagine a
apparent in young woman, alone, with eleven armed
the transcript. men moving around her house. It’s like the
feeling of someone coming to your house
‘I had to edit without telling you they’re dropping by,
out chunks of but built out to an overwhelming degree,”
the transcript, Satter says.
Similarly, the media’s sensationalist
but I never coverage of Winner in the months follow-
manipulated ing her arrest warped and overpowered
a sentence,’ the truth of her motivations, at worst
casting her as a scheming double agent
Satter says sympathetic to terrorist causes. With Real-
ity, Satter pushes back against this reduc-
tive portrayal.
“Reality contains these dichotomies of
political partisanship in her very being.
She’s not partisan. She’s idealistic and
believes in this country and in the rule of
law. She owns guns but then does yoga.
Listening to Fox drove her crazy, because
she couldn’t handle lies being peddled as
truth,” says Satter.
“I consider it so embarrassing to be
American, and I see myself as separate
ABOVE
Tina Satter
from the state,” she adds. “Reality didn’t.
That’s why she felt emboldened to act.
PREVIOUS PAGE
Sydney Sweeney as Reality
How else to keep a democracy alive?”
Winner in Reality
OPPOSITE Reality is released in UK cinemas on
Sydney Sweeney 2 June and is reviewed on page 78

‘I FELT LIKE I WAS
WALKING INTO A
MOMENT IN HISTORY’
PHOTO BY COREY NICKOLS / CONTOUR BY GET TY IMAGES
For rising star Sydney Sweeney, Reality presented
a new challenge: playing an actual person,
with all her complexities and contradictions
BY BEATRICE LOAYZA
You may well have seen
her in the HBO series
Euphoria (2019-22) as Cassie,
an adolescent dream girl
harbouring major daddy
issues; or in the first season
of The White Lotus (2021),
playing a caustic college
student on a problematically
luxe vacation with her
family. And with other hit
television shows (Sharp
Objects, 2018) and several
juicy independent film
projects (Clementine, 2019;
The Voyeurs, 2021) to her
name, the 25-year-old
actress Sydney Sweeney has
quickly established herself
as a top talent among a new
generation of screen actors.
In her latest film, Reality,
she portrays the American
whistleblower and former
National Security Agency
contractor Reality Winner.
Winner was 25 herself when
she was arrested on 3 June
2017 for leaking a top-secret
report about the 2016
presidential election to the
press. An unconventional
character study and
chamber-piece thriller all
at once, Reality takes place
entirely on the day of the
arrest, tracking Winner’s
emotional reckoning. The
role is Sweeney’s first time
playing a real person, and
it is perhaps the most
impressive display of her
dramatic talent to date.
“On set, I felt like I was
walking into a moment in
history,” Sweeney tells me in
a phone interview.
Sweeney wasn’t familiar
with the Winner controversy
until she read the script.
Captivated by the way
it reproduced word-for-
word the FBI transcript
of Winner’s interrogation,
she immediately filmed
an audition tape and sent
it to director Tina Satter
and the casting crew.
“When I booked the film,
I realised that I usually
45
make up these stories for experience of being a woman
my characters. With this, in a male-dominated arena –
the box was already filled, and both know what it feels
and I suddenly found myself like to challenge people’s
needing to get into someone expectations of how women
else’s head,” she says. like them are supposed to
Because Winner had behave. Winner “embodies
recently been released from so many interesting
prison, Sweeney was able contradictions,” Sweeney
to do just that. She bonded says. The whistleblower is
with the former intelligence an anime geek, a dog foster
analyst through a series of carer, a gun owner, an expert
text message exchanges in Middle Eastern languages
and lengthy video calls. and a fitness instructor. The
“What shocked me the most ultra-feminine Sweeney, who
was her sense of humour,” moonlights as a vintage car
Sweeney says. “After mechanic and has trained
speaking with her, I was able in mixed martial arts, is
to understand so much more a bit of a contradiction
about the transcript, and herself. This attraction to
how in certain moments that the complexities of human
read flat on paper, she was nature is precisely what
actually trying to be funny drew Sweeney to acting
and lighten the situation. in the first place. For her,
She used humour as an there is nothing like “putting
armour for herself, which is together the pieces to build
something I wouldn’t have a new experience”.
realised on my own.”
The film is essentially
an extended conversation
between Winner and the
two FBI agents who appear
outside her home that fateful
June day. They know Winner
is responsible for leaking
the document, but they
beat around the bush until
the official interrogation
climactically unfolds in
an empty, purgatorial
room in Winner’s house.
Before then, Winner acts
convincingly clueless, with
Sweeney wielding a cool,
detached expression that
gradually, delicately betrays
the panic raging within. Her
performance is a patchwork
of micro-expressions which
humanise an enigmatic-
seeming young woman as
she confronts the end of her
life as she knows it.
Though Sweeney grew up
in Spokane, Washington,
and Winner 2,000 miles
away in Texas, the actress
sees some of herself in
the older woman. Both,
as Sweeney sees it, are
intimately familiar with the
46

ADAPT DIE
VIDEOGAMES AT THE MOVIES
As The Super Mario Bros Movie storms the box office, and in the wake of acclaimed
prestige television series such as Arcane and The Last of Us, we explore the evolution
of videogame adaptations over almost 40 years, from early duds to recent triumphs
W O R D S BY T H O M A S F L E W

M
ario was never meant to be a
movie star. With his blue over-
alls and red cap, the mousta-
chioed Italian plumber may,
since his debut in Nintendo’s
1981 arcade game Donkey
Kong, have become gaming’s
most iconic character, but every facet of his
being was decided either arbitrarily or out
of necessity. (In fact, he almost didn’t exist
at all; he was only conjured up after his cre-
ator, Miyamoto Shigeru, failed to acquire
licensing rights to Popeye.) Mario was
going to be known as ‘Mr Video’, before an
encounter with Nintendo’s American land-
lord, Mario Segale, sparked inspiration.
His large nose and bushy black moustache
were a neat way for Miyamoto to create a
full human face with the tiny amount of
pixels at his disposal; his red cap removed
the need to animate moving hair; his blue
overalls and red shirt created visual con-
trast against the game’s background. As for
his profession and nationality, Miyamoto
explained his thought processes in 2010:
“We had a setting [in Super Mario Bros] that
was underground, so I just decided Mario
is a plumber. Let’s put him in New York
and he can be Italian. There was really no
other deep thought other than that.”
Such pragmatic and impulsive decision-
making works without issue in the world
of platform videogames, in which Mario
LEFT
The Super Mario Bros Movie
is the biggest videogame
adaptation of all time
As new
collaborations
form between
the creative
minds of
gaming and
cinema, are we
at the dawn of
a golden age for
the videogame
adaptation?
is a voiceless avatar moved via simple con-
trols. He doesn’t need to be a compelling
or even a coherent character when he only
exists as a means for the player to get to the
end of each level. He needs to be able to
fail, to die over and over again and, should
the player manage it, eventually succeed.
Other platforming series, such as Sonic
the Hedgehog (1991-), Rayman (1995-), Spyro
(1995-) and Crash Bandicoot (1996-), built
on Super Mario Bros’s foundations, creating
characters with more expressive personali-
ties, but the core gameplay of trying, dying
and trying again remained, the pleasure of
the experience coming from the player’s
mastery of the game. Despite this aspect
of gaming being irreplicable and untrans-
ferable, Hollywood inevitably took notice
of the upstart videogame industry and saw
potential in an untapped market.
Since Mario warped on to the scene,
videogames have exploded as a medium.
Games are puzzles to solve and master,
but they are also worlds to explore (Fall-
out: New Vegas, 2010; The Legend of Zelda:
Breath of the Wild, 2017) and narrative
experiences (The Last of Us, 2013; Undertale,
2015). They also include real-time events
(World of Warcraft, 2004; Fortnite, 2017)
and can be played as competitive esports
(Counter Strike: Global Offensive, 2012;
Rocket League, 2015). With this expansion
came new opportunities for adaptation:
47
the notoriously inauspicious beginnings
of the videogame film (errant cinematic
efforts, including one fascinating Mario-
starring folly) have made way for a previ-
ously unimagined diversity of offerings.
As the newly released The Super Mario
Bros Movie breaks box-office records, pres-
tige TV series push the format into fresh
directions and new collaborations form
between the creative minds of gaming and
cinema, are we at the dawn of a golden age
for the videogame adaptation?
I didn’t even know it was a
game… I saw this thing jump-
ing up and down and thought,
‘I used to play King Lear’,”
lamented Bob Hoskins when his children
showed him Mario, the character he was to
play in the new Super Mario Bros movie (the
first ever live-action film adaptation of a
videogame, set for release in 1993). Dennis
Hopper, who played dinosaur-human
hybrid King Koopa in the film, spoke to
the Los Angeles Times during production:
“The script had probably been rewritten
five or six times by the time I arrived here.
I don’t really bother with it any more.” New
pages of dialogue arrived daily as the pro-
duction lurched further into chaos.
Hoskins was right to be disheartened
by the prospect of performing the role of
a collection of pixels; various versions of
the Super Mario Bros script pitched Mario
and his surrounding universe in clashing
tones and styles – some dark and dysto-
pian, others crisp and colourful – all strug-
gling to transform Mario the avatar into
Mario the movie star. (The issue was com-
pounded, we can assume, by Nintendo’s
involvement. The production company
is notoriously protective of its intellectual
property, and would have recoiled from
anything other than an inoffensive render-
ing of its key earner.)
To distract from their dull protagonist,
the filmmakers conjured up a Blade Runner-
style urban wasteland called Dino-hattan
for Mario and his green-garbed brother
Luigi to save. Further inspiration was
drawn from the games’ never-explained
use of mushrooms as power-ups and tur-
tles as villains. Unsurprisingly, Super Mario
Bros was derided upon release, its con-
voluted plot, bizarre performances and
inconsistent production design making it
a film maudit. The driving force of Super
Mario Bros the game is to save a damsel-in-
distress princess; this end goal is retained
in Super Mario Bros the film. But what in the
game is a conceit to drive gameplay – the
satisfaction from completing the game is
the real reward, not the pixellated mes-
sage from the princess stating, “Thank
you Mario! Your quest is over.” – becomes
artificially inflated in importance when the
pleasure of gameplay is absent.
When Super Mario Bros was followed
by the dire Street Fighter (1994) and Mortal
Kombat (1995), both based on bankable
fighting game franchises, a trend appeared
to be emerging: videogame movies weren’t
any good. This so-called ‘videogame curse’
is old hat at this point, the incantation
usually cited in order to argue that it’s
48
being broken or that it doesn’t exist, but
for a spell it held legitimate sway; when,
after 20 years of efforts, the best-received
films had been directed by the critically
sneered-at Paul W.S. Anderson, there
was real cause for concern. These teeth-
ing issues (to downgrade the ‘curse’ some-
what) were likely caused by two industries
that had never worked together before
butting heads in approach, as mentioned
previously with Nintendo and Super Mario
Bros. Capcom, the studio behind the Street
Fighter games (1987-), was the primary
financier of the film adaptation, requiring
final approval on all creative decisions and
setting a tight release date unsuitable for
the unpredictable nature of film produc-
tion. Another factor often ignored is that
Hollywood produces plenty of films that
are not all that brilliant: are Batman For-
ever, Casper and Waterworld (to pick three
top-grossing films from 1995) any better
than Mortal Kombat?
Nintendo, scarred by its negative expe-
rience with Super Mario Bros, wouldn’t
take a second bite of the cinematic cherry
until the recent The Super Mario Bros Movie.
Compared with the disaster of 30 years
ago, this animated outing (produced by
Illumination, the studio behind the Des-
picable Me franchise, 2010-17, and its Min-
ions spin-off prequels, 2015-22) is a more
considered affair. The visuals are bright
and child-friendly and the simplified plot
has been given a modern twist, with the
helpless princess in a less passive role. But
Mario remains Mario, an avatar without
a player behind the controls to bring him
to life (this feeling compounded by a dire
voice performance by Chris Pratt).
Where Super Mario Bros made no
attempt to directly represent its source
material’s gameplay mechanics of run-
ning, jumping and stomping on turtle-like
enemies, The Super Mario Bros Movie does at
least nod to its gaming origins. A training
montage depicts Mario ‘dying’ repeatedly
as he fails to complete an obstacle course;
another short sequence replicates the side-
scrolling view from traditional 2D plat-
forming games. But representation can
only go so far. Without the haptic inter-
activity of user input that makes gaming a
distinct, active medium, these scenes are
empty and affectless. But Nintendo won’t
mind: the movie is busy making a mint,
swiftly becoming the highest-grossing
videogame adaptation of all time, and a
sequel has already been announced.
The only one of Mario’s fellow platform-
ing heroes to make his way to the cinema
has been Sonic the Hedgehog, whose
eponymous film does away with any
attempt at transposing gameplay into
action. (The lack of other such offshoots
is telling in itself, given Hol-l
lywood’s hunger for
fresh intellectual
property.) Sonic
the Hedgeho g
(2020) nods
towards key
gameplay
elements
(collecting
RIGHT
Pedro Pascal and Bella
Ramsey in the post-apocalyptic
television series The Last of Us
BELOW
The Netflix animated
adaptation Arcane:
League of Legends
Videogames
have come a long
way from the era
of the arcade…
and as they
borrow more
from cinema,
the act of
adaptation from
one medium to
another becomes
more seamless
golden rings, Sonic sprinting at extreme
speeds) but focuses on a generic good-
versus-evil action plot that has little to
do with the game’s own storyline. The
essence of the game is lost, the film an
empty shell into whose centre any char-
acter could be placed. It’s hard to call this
a videogame adaptation at all; it is more
a case of well-known IP being used as a
shortcut to brand familiarity and loyalty.
But the question of what exactly con-
stitutes a videogame adaptation is per-
haps overly pedantic – the definition ‘a
film or series based on a videogame’ will,
for now, suffice. The fact that there is any
room for discussion at all does raise inter
inter-
esting points about how games are used
as IP. Can the upcoming Gran Turismo,
a biopic of a teen who played the racing
game competitively and hoped to become
a professional racing driver – and which
has been described throughout its devel-
opment as “based on Gran Turismo” – be
thought of in any way
as a real videogame
adaptation? Or
what about the
in-development
adaptation of the
Just Dance series of games (2009-), which
have no characters or story, based as they
are around a player making assigned
dance moves in time with music? Perhaps
these more spurious examples – as well
as other true-life tales that offer fresh
avenues for the IP to be exploited, such as
the recent Tetris, based on the legal battle
for copyright over the eponymous puzzle
game – are simply proof of the hot ticket
that gaming has become, with studios
keen to find a way to the pixellated dollar
V
sign, no matter how outlandish.
ideogames have come a long way
from the era of the arcade into
which Mario first emerged, both
technologically and creatively.
Their graphics have evolved from
chunky pixels to ultra-high defi-
chunk
nition renderings with realistic
physics; their storylines have
lighting and ph
gone from text written in an accompanying
instruction mamanual to minutes-long cin-
sequences featuring the likenesses
ematic sequen
and voices of rrecognisable real-life stars.
becoming more like films, and as
They are becom
they borrow more
m from cinema, the act of
from one medium to another
adaptation fro
becomes more seamless.
This progre
progress in videogame develop-
ment is made apparent
a by the Tomb Raider
series of games (1996-) and their respective
adaptations. The original Tomb Raider
film adaptation
was innovative for its 3D level designs and
modelling, and
an even included animated
cutscenes (mi
(mini-movies which interrupt

the gameplay to add narrative elements
to the overall story, then a relatively new
phenomenon), with voice actors bring-
ing the characters, including protagonist
Lara Croft, to life. But when, in 2001, the
film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was released,
with Angelina Jolie as Croft, the game’s
relatively feeble story was abandoned
altogether, its antagonist Pierre DuPont
disappearing and a newly invented back-
story involving the Illuminati being intro-
duced – even the game’s locations of Peru,
Egypt and Greece make way for Cambo-
dia and Siberia. That’s not to say that the
changes made things better; the film was
still a dud.
By 2013, when the franchise was
rebooted with a game of the same name,
the graphics were drastically improved;
the newly redesigned Lara Croft looked
almost photorealistic, particularly when
compared to her original, polygonal
form. Camilla Luddington, who voiced
Croft in the game, also embodied her
through motion capture. Performing as a
videogame character had become identi-
cal to some forms of cinematic acting (as in
the Avatar films, 2009-, and The Lord of the
Rings trilogy, 2001-03), where body move-
ments are captured and digitised and then
dubbed dialogue is added afterwards.
The gap between cinema and gaming
closed further with an increase in cutscene
length. Where 1996’s Tomb Raider featured
15 minutes of footage, 2013’s version has
more than two hours, and when compiled
they become a film in their own right (this
has actually been done and is available
on YouTube, where more than 4 million
people have watched ‘Tomb Raider Defin-
itive Edition All Cutscenes Movie’). It’s
no surprise, then, that when the gaming
reboot of Tomb Raider became a cinematic
reboot (also Tomb Raider, 2018, starring
Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft), there was
a level of faithfulness to the game’s narra-
tive that was entirely absent from the 2001
adaptation – although Croft’s backstory
was largely altered. Some action set pieces
were copied almost shot for shot from the
game, including Croft’s dramatic escape
from the rusting hull of a plane teetering at
the top of a waterfall.
This newfound faithfulness to a game’s
aesthetics and plot would reach new
heights with The Last of Us, an apocalyp-
tic drama set in a world where a fungal
pandemic has caused societal collapse.
Thirty long years after Super Mario Bros
was released, this series, released by
HBO in early 2023, finally became the
first videogame adaptation to receive
widespread critical acclaim. Where the
filmmakers of Super Mario Bros had very
little to base their film on besides char-
acter appearances and a few token items
VIDEOGAMES AT THE MOVIES 49
Where the from the game’s world, the creators of The
Last of Us were gifted a complex narra-
filmmakers of tive and a cast of richly drawn characters
Super Mario on which to base their series. (A second
Bros in 1993 had series has just been greenlit, to be based
on the game’s sequel). The reason The Last
very little in the of Us has become such a beloved game –
game to base it has been cited as one of the greatest of
their film on, the all time on dozens of lists – is because it
is, as videogame magazine Edge wrote in
creators of The their review, a “riveting, emotionally reso-
Last of Us were nant story-driven epic”. The plot is just as
gifted a complex important as the gameplay, and so Craig
Mazin (who worked as showrunner on
narrative and the series alongside the game’s co-creator
a cast of rich Neil Druckmann) straightforwardly trans-
characters planted this raw material into a new format
in the way that one would adapt a novel or
play. To an even greater extent than in Tomb
Raider, cutscenes are replicated with great
faithfulness (one voice actor, Merle Dan-
dridge, even reprised her role as Marlene),
and the plot of the game is retained in its
entirety, as is the narrative arc of the game’s
central father-daughter-like relationship
between Joel and Ellie.
What also makes this act of adaptation
so seamless is The Last of Us’s settings and
subject. A plumber falling down pipes
and eating mushrooms is not in itself a
very cinematic prospect; a middle-aged
man and a teenage girl working together
to traverse abandoned cities filled with
50
videogames and
the cinema
1979
Star Trek: Phaser Strike: first game to tie in
with the simultaneous release of a film
(Star Trek: The Motion Picture).
1982
Tron: first film to depict a videogame world.
Tie-in video games explode in popularity:
Poltergeist, Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre all released.
Pac-Man: first TV series adapted from
a video game; it is watched weekly
by more than 20 million people.
1986
Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Rescue
Princess Peach! and Running Boy: Star Soldier
no Himitsu: first feature-length animations based
on videogames (released in Japan only).
1993
Super Mario Bros: first live-action feature-length
film to be adapted from a videogame.
1994
Street Fighter: first commercially
successful videogame film.
1996
The rise of machinima (films made within games):
Quake is used to create Diary of a Camper,
the first widely known machinima.
1997
GoldenEye 007: a landmark in first-person
shooter games, adapted from the titular
James Bond film.
2002
Resident Evil: first release in the longest-running
live-action videogame film franchise, with five
sequels, all written by Paul W.S. Anderson.
2009
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: largest
marketing budget of all time for a videogame –
$200 million – a figure surpassing that of
most films.
2011
Minecraft: bestselling videogame of all time;
a film adaptation is slated for a 2025 release.
2016
Warcraft: first videogame adaptation to
gross more than $400 million worldwide,
a figure only matched five times since.
2018
Tomb Raider: first of a string of videogame movie
reboots, followed in 2021 by Mortal Kombat
and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
2023
The Last of Us: first live-action videogame
adaptation to receive widespread critical acclaim.
The Super Mario Bros Movie: highest-grossing
videogame adaptation of all time; it reaches this
milestone within ten days of its release.
zombies who have – ironically enough
– fungus-like heads, is. Where the first,
unsuccessful adaptations based them-
selves on videogames whose characters
and characteristics existed solely to embel-
lish gameplay, now the properties becom-
ing films or series could just as easily have
been originally conceived as such, with
games utilising themes and characteristics
long appreciated in cinema – not least the
enduring appeal of the zombie, the 21st
century resurgence of which has been par-
tially credited to gaming’s influence.
Such is the case with the Resident Evil
series of survival horror games (ten core
titles, joined by more than 20 spinoffs
and reboots), whose adaptation into an
action-packed six-film franchise has been
commanded by Paul W.S. Anderson –
his history with the videogame movie
began with Mortal Kombat and continued
post-Resident Evil with the robust, thrill-
heavy Monster Hunter (2020). Although
these f ilms lack the emotional depth
afforded by characters who have been
developed across the length of a series
(admittedly this is never Anderson’s pri-
ority as a filmmaker), the ten-hour-plus
runtime of the combined films allows for
various subplots and backstories to be
expanded upon. Resident Evil, released in
1996, marks a significant turning point
in gaming’s relationship to cinema, with
the original game’s designer and director
Mikami Shinji inspired by the urge to
build upon what George A. Romero was
able to achieve cinematically; a year later,
Romero was recruited to adapt the game
into a film, although that iteration of the
project eventually fell through. As the film
and game series continued, the adapta-
tion became bilateral, with one character
created for the first film eventually finding
its way into the series of games. What had
started as a simple case of a game becom-
ing a film had developed into something
more complicated altogether.
Another highly acclaimed series
adapted from a videogame, Netflix’s
steampunk-style animation Arcane: League
of Legends (2021-), has almost the inverse
relationship of The Last of Us to its source
material. Based on League of Legends
(2009), a hugely successful multiplayer
game of a genre in which story is rela-
tively unimportant, the series fleshes out
the ‘lore’ (the term used in gaming for
backstory) behind playable characters by
expanding upon the threadbare informa-
tion given within the game – it’s notable
that Riot, the studio which created League
of Legends, didn’t even hire writers until late
in the development stage. Here, adapta-
tion is expansion, situating recognisable
characters in a sprawling world full of ref-
erences to in-game phenomena, the spa-
ciousness of the series format well suited
to constructing lore that explains how
sisters Vi and Jinx became who they are
in the game. Unlike The Super Mario Bros
Movie and Sonic the Hedgehog, both of which
heavily base their animation styles on their
respective games, Arcane distances itself
from the aesthetics of League of Legends,
and is all the better for it. It is beautifully
animated with striking tonal variety,
its mixture of digital 3D with textured,
sketch-like 2D brushstrokes combining
the traditional videogame aesthetics of
3D character models and cutscenes with
T
2D concept artwork.
he slippages between the medi-
ums of videogame and film are
ever-growing, from cutscene-
heavy games such as Tomb Raider
and Uncharted (adapted into a film
of the same name in 2022) that
play more like films with some
controllable elements, to Netflix’s ‘inter-
active’ films like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
(2018) or Cat Burglar (2022), where viewers
pick options that affect the ensuing narra-
tive. With narrative experiences released
on to gaming consoles and interactive
experiences on streaming services, a time
may soon come where those categories
become increasingly arbitrary – and Japa-
nese videogame auteur Kojima Hideo
looks to be one of those at the vanguard of
this intersection.
Sometimes regarded as video gam-
ing’s first auteur – he has acted as writer,
director, producer and designer on his
recent projects – Kojima’s 2019 game Death
Stranding featured Mads Mikkelsen, Mar-
garet Qualley and Léa Seydoux among its
cast, all playing motion-captured charac-
ters who matched their own appearance.
Kojima is also a close friend of filmmakers
Nicolas Winding Refn and Guillermo del
Toro, both of whom were also motion-
captured for Death Stranding (the charac-
ters’ voices were played by other actors);
Kojima has returned the favour, cameoing
in Refn’s Copenhagen Cowboy series (2022).
Kojima told the BBC that his production
company Kojima Productions will “in the
future… start making films”. With stream-
ing technology meaning that gaming, TV
and film are all now accessible from the
same physical and digital space within our
homes, Kojima said he’s “very interested in
the new format of game that will appear
[as these mediums intersect] and that’s
what I want to take on.”
Perhaps, looking back from 2063, we’ll
consider the late 20th and early 21st centu-
ries as a transitional stage towards a new,
unified form of entertainment of a kind yet
to be invented, with the aforementioned
examples only rudimentary attempts to
combine the two. Or perhaps the catego-
ries will change from ‘cinema’ and ‘gaming’
into ‘active’ and ‘passive’ media, in a similar
fashion to the way the terms ‘film’ and ‘tele-
vision’ have combined in modern business-
speak into ‘streaming content’. Until that
far off and yet steadily nearing point, we
have plenty more videogame adaptations
to anticipate, from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and
The Super Mario Bros Movie 2 to Gran Turismo
and a Death Stranding film (cast and crew
yet undisclosed), as the worlds of video
gaming and cinema become ever more
closely entwined.
The Super Mario Bros Movie is out now in UK cinemas
The Last of Us is on Now TV now and
Arcane: League of Legends is on Netflix
52

KEEPING
IT REEL
The way we watch films

from real, ph
fi now may
be dominated by digital projection
and streaming,
streaming but nothing beats
the glow of a movie projected
physical filmstock.
As BFI Southbank
Sou
festival of Film on Film,
its first fest
launches

we take a look at what

makes ccelluloid so special –
and wwhere its future lies
BY PHILIP
PHILI CONCANNON

O FOR MORE THAN
n the opening night of the
BFI’s inaugural Film on Film
Festival, preceding a nitrate
presentation of Mildred Pierce
(1945), Mark Jenkin will pre-
miere his beautiful new short A
Dog Called Discord. In it, Jenkin
hand-develops a decades-old
piece of film that came from
an unknown source, revealing
images of a dog from some time in the
early 90s. His discovery and ensuing inves-
tigation allows a family to see something
long-unseen, and to watch their beloved
pet bound across the beach once more. As
Jenkin says, “This dog, presumably long
gone, was given the chance to live again
thanks to the magic of film.”
For more than a century, going to the
cinema was tantamount to seeing a magic
trick performed every night. A series of
tiny still frames running in front of a bright
bulb conjured the illusion of life in front
of our eyes, creating large-scale images so
vivid we could get lost in them. The digital
revolution of the 21st century changed all
that, and now celluloid screenings – once a
common occurrence – have become a rare
experience. In the UK, we only have a few
film institutes, independent cinemas, col-
lectives and enthusiasts to thank for keep-
ing the art of film projection alive.
Those of us who regularly seek out
prints whenever and wherever they play
have had 8-11 June locked down in our
diaries ever since the BFI announced this
festival a year ago. The programme offers a
feast of rarely seen prints in every conceiv-
able format, ranging from 8mm and 9.5mm
curios to TV and experimental works on
16mm, all the way up to the grand vistas of
Far and Away (1992) on 70mm. Many of the
35mm prints in the programme are original
53
release prints that haven’t seen the light of
FILM ON FILM
a projector in decades, and some – like a
shrunken Technicolor dye-transfer print
A CENTURY,
of The Swimmer (1968) or the notoriously
fragile and combustible nitrate prints – are
unlikely ever to be screened again.
According to Robin Baker, head cura-
tor at the BFI National Archive, the
GOING TO THE
majority of prints shown in this festival
are “amazingly unscratched”, but they still
show signs of age. A film print is a living
entity, picking up wear and tear every
CINEMA WAS
time it is used, but for print aficionados
that only adds to their romantic allure. “I
think going in search of perfection kind of
misses the point,” Baker says. “It’s about
TANTAMOUNT TO
trying to help people see film as an object,
almost like a person or like a museum
object, and part of its story are the scars it
bears.” At 91 years old, Alexander Korda’s
SEEING A MAGIC
Service for Ladies (1932) will be the oldest
print ever screened for a UK audience,
and Baker suggests there is an enticing
sense of time collapsing as we experience
TRICK PERFORMED
these projections. “One of the biggest
thrills at the festival is showing original
release prints. You are watching exactly
the same bit of celluloid that a previous
projectionist has projected, and that an
EVERY NIGHT
audience watched at the time of the film’s
release. Imagining that makes you feel
closer to the moment it was released.
Whether you’re doing that with Mildred
Pierce or Jaws [1975], it takes you back to a
particular time and place, and I think that
adds to the richness of the experience.”
There is also an element of live perfor-
OPPOSITE
mance in every celluloid projection, with Working with film, in images
some of the prints being shown here from the BFI National Archive
and (in black and white) Mark
making unique demands on the BFI’s pro- Jenkin’s A Dog Called Discord.
jectionists. BFI Southbank in London is
ABOVE
the only UK site licensed to screen nitrate, Cecilia Roth in All About
and the inherent danger of these prints My Mother (1999)
 54

requires the most careful handling and

strictest observance of safety protocols by
the projection team. To recreate the short-
lived 1950s 3D craze, two projectors run-
ning side-by-side will be synchronised to
project prints of Hondo (1953), House of Wax
(1953) and Dial M for Murder (1954) on to
a special silver screen, and some experi-
mental works by artists like Malcolm Le
Grice and James Scott will require multi-
ple 16mm projectors to run simultaneously.
Beyond these screenings, a series of free
talks and workshops across the weekend
are aimed at reminding audiences of the
human element at the heart of this process,
and how many people it takes – from the
archive to the projection booth – to care for
a precious print and get it on to the screen.
Alongside the films that have been
retrieved from the archive, this festival
bears the first fruits from the BFI’s Keep
Film on Film campaign, launched in 2018,
which set out to strike 100 new 35mm
prints of classic and contemporary films.
Early beneficiaries of this effort include
Malcolm X (1992), Morvern Callar (2002),
Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Working Girls
(1931) and All About My Mother (1999). The
commitment to creating new prints is
heartening after many years in which cel-

luloid itself seemed doomed to obsoles-
cence. But do these new prints indicate
a genuine resurgence in celluloid projec-
FILM ON FILM
DO NEW PRINTS
in place to enable more screenings?” he
says. “Obviously, there are only a limited

tion as a viable format, or are they simply number of cinemas which have the pro-
noble gestures in the face of the inevitable? jection equipment, and if you’ve got the

Books have survived the threat of Kindle
and vinyl now routinely outsells CDs, but
for celluloid to regain any kind of foothold
in film culture, there needs to be a sustaina-
INDICATE A GENUINE
equipment, it doesn’t necessarily mean
you’ve got the qualified projectionists who
can project film. There is also the issue of
the costs involved in an age where so many

ble network that supports those who want
to show prints, and one that can make
such screenings more accessible to those
who live beyond the few cities that boast
RESURGENCE
cinemas are experiencing dire financial
situations. So, I’m interested in under-
standing whether the festival acts as a way
of increasing appetite, and if it does, I hope

a thriving repertory cinema. Baker hopes
that the interest generated by this festival
can be the spur that drives such initiatives.
“What I hope it will do is help tell us
IN CELLULOID
it starts bringing people together to talk
about what it is they might need to enable
more. I really think of this festival as a kind
of starting point.”

PROJECTION AS
at the BFI and others: who would like to
be doing this? What is the appetite from ‘Film on Film’ is at BFI Southbank, London, from
audiences? What measures need to be put 8-11 June. For details, visit whatson.bfi.org.uk

A VIABLE FORMAT,
OR ARE THEY
SIMPLY NOBLE
GESTURES?
ABOVE
Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer (1968).

LEFT
Mark Jenkin’s A Dog Called Discord
 55

TAKING
In Jeremy Cooper’s disarmingly tender
little novel Brian, published in May by
Fitzcarraldo, the eponymous protagonist
lives a life of anxious solitude, until he finds
purpose in cinephilia, as a devoted patron
of the BFI Southbank in London. There,
“There was a whole new crop in the seats,
all younger than me,” says Hall, “and I’m
only 36.” A generation who came of age
long after 35mm left the multiplexes, and
for whom streaming had provided a lifeline
during two years of pandemic restrictions,

STOCK:
he joins the ranks of “a disparate group of
middle-aged men, six or seven most nights,
whom he had observed with envy in their
self-absorbed discussions in an isolated
corner of the foyer”. Any cinema worker will
be familiar with these men, who populate
the front-row seats of arthouses the world
now seemed hungry for a mode of cinema-
going more familiar to their parents, and
a more ambitious strain of cinema to go
with it. “We’re hoping to do a Maya Deren
screening, and I’ve mentioned it to a few of
the new young regulars. They’re like, ‘Oh,
Meshes of the Afternoon is one of my favourite

HOW
over. They aren’t just regulars; indeed,
Brian eyes with suspicion those who fre-
quent the BFI but talk “as-often-as-not
of non-film things”, in contrast to his own
clan, the ‘buffs’, for whom cinema takes
precedence. Some of the novel’s younger
movies.’ I could not imagine one of my peers
saying that when I was in my twenties.”
In Chicago, at least some of the credit for
these broadened horizons should go to Hall
and her colleagues, who have instilled the
city’s repertory film culture with a youthful

PROJECTING
readers may reach for a different word, in
recognition of an obvious truth: Brian has
become a ‘bagman’.
The term alludes to the ratty supermar-
ket bags of indeterminate contents that
often accompany these enigmatic figures
vigour, while championing a sincere, seri-
ous cineliteracy. But the trend can be seen
just as clearly elsewhere. At a recent 35mm
screening of Pasolini’s Salò (1975) in Central
London, I was surprised to find myself – at
31 – among the older members of the audi-

ON FILM IS
from screening to screening. The ubiqui-
tous accessory, both practical and unsightly,
is a fitting symbol for the bagman, who
is marked not only by a cinephilic mono-
mania, but an attendant disregard for the
social norms of the cinema itself. This lack
of consideration manifests in ways some-
ence. Admittedly, as the lights came up, I
saw that half of my younger peers were
already excitedly exercising their bragging
rights on Letterboxd, but as post-screening
rituals go, it didn’t seem so far from the tra-
ditional bagman debrief, rife as it is with
boasts of once shaking the hand of Fritz

MAKING A
times rude (few ushers are without their Lang or spotting Larry Olivier coming out

tales of bagman belligerence) and some-
times merely bizarre. Last year on Twit-
ter, Little White Lies editor David Jenkins
bemusedly recalled “a bagman, front row of
[BFI auditorium] NFT2, drinking Vimto
FILM ON FILM
of the bogs at the National.
Much of the UK exhibition sector has
been slow to respond to this emergence of
a younger, more diverse audience for films
and formats typically thought to skew old,

COMEBACK
In recent years, what was once a niche
pursuit largely confined to older
audiences has found growing popularity
with a younger, more diverse cinema
crowd eager to experience the authentic
flicker of celluloid on the screen
BY CHARLIE SHACKLETON
from a glass Heinz ketchup bottle”.
If the bagman treats one thing with rev-
erence, it’s a film print – and woe betide
the cinema that screens one of inadequate
condition, or worse still, opts not to screen
it at all, in favour of a digital presentation.
Stories of disruptive exclamations (“Bad
print!”) and entitled demands for ex post facto
compensation abound, and yet it’s hard
not to feel some measure of respect, even
gratitude, for a group so steadfast in its
support for celluloid. Whatever their flaws,
the bagmen flew the flag for analogue film
when few else would, in the wake of its
near-annihilation a decade ago.
PROJECT AND SURVIVE
“When we started, it was much more niche,”
says Becca Hall, co-founder of the Chicago
Film Society, which began programming
celluloid in the city in 2011, “and a lot of
the people who cared were older people.”
This audience, for whom the sudden rise of
digital projection represented a break with
a lifetime of celluloid supremacy, became
the bedrock of the society’s following, and
Hall and her colleagues came to know its
members well. “There’s six of us who run
the organisation and most of us are present
at any given screening, behind the ticket
counter, or introducing the film, or in the
booth, so we do get to know people. When
you do a regular film series, you get to know
your regulars.”
Steadily, though, that audience began to
expand – most markedly when screenings
resumed following a long Covid hiatus.
white and male. Only a handful of British
venues routinely project analogue film,
despite more than 50 having the capacity
to do so. That discrepancy can be partly
attributed to practical factors: the cost and
inconvenience of shipping prints, the lack
of active film projectionists outside major
cities, and the standard requirement that
archival prints be screened on a two-pro-
jector ‘changeover’ system, so that the mul-
tiple reels that make up a feature film can
be screened back-to-back without needing
to be stitched together. In North America,
the changeover system is the norm at even
the smallest arthouses, whereas in Britain,
single-projector ‘platter’ or ‘tower’ systems
are common in all but the most handsomely
appointed booths.
Even accounting for these hurdles, there
seems to be a widespread underestima-
tion of the audience for celluloid, even
among those venues at which it is routinely
screened. At the BFI Southbank, a screen-
ing’s projection format is rarely announced
from the stage, let alone the provenance of
a film print or the identity of those oversee-
ing its presentation. Perhaps these details
are presumed not to be of interest, but the
disproportionate attendance at analogue
screenings implies an appetite that would
extend to a few contextual details. Indeed,
while the page on the BFI’s website dedi-
cated to upcoming celluloid screenings
is notoriously difficult to locate from the
home page, public enthusiasm ensures the
sporadic circulation of the URL across
social media, like cinephile samizdat.
 56
“There is some delicacy in finding the
right balance of context to give an audience,”
says Rob Hughes, a curator at the Austral-
ian Cinémathèque in Brisbane. “One doesn’t
want to throw the doors to the sausage fac-
tory wide open, but people clearly do appre-
ciate being given some insight into what
can be an opaque journey to get the film on
screen at a venue like the Cinémathèque.”
A generation who came Hughes and his colleagues screen from ana-
of age long after 35mm logue film as “a preference and a priority”
and see the decision to do so as “a chance
left the multiplexes, to look at celluloid as a medium, and have
and for whom streaming that conversation with our audience about
the unique histories of different film prints.
had provided a lifeline Audiences like hearing that a print has come
during two years of from some place in particular, that it’s a print
of a certain era, affected by the runs it’s had
pandemic restrictions, in the past.”
now seem hungry for He cites a recent screening of Joris Ivens
and Marceline Loridan’s A Tale of the Wind
a mode of cinemagoing (1988), from an original French release print.
more familiar to their The film contains French and Mandarin
dialogue, and the Cinémathèque had hired
parents, and a more a specialist to synchronise digital English
ambitious strain of subtitles with the projection, but as the Man-
darin sections already had French subtitles
cinema to go with it engraved throughout, the additional Eng-
lish text would need to be shown below the
screen. Unfortunately, the Cinémathèque’s
in-house digital projector – already tasked
with displaying pre-show material – could
not be angled low enough, and so an addi-
FILM ON FILM
tional machine was drafted in for this sole
purpose. “So we had four projectors going,
and as I introduced the film to tell the
audience about this set-up, I could see them
getting more and more gleeful.”
Where such transparency is not forthcom-
ing, DIY operations have sprung up to plug
the gaps. In New York, the independent
platform Screen Slate has been publishing
comprehensive listings for the city’s art-
house and repertory circuit since 2011, with
prominently displayed information on pro-
jection formats. London has its own, rather
makeshift equivalent, a Google Sheet run
by archivist Jasmine Soliman and software
engineer Alexander Ross, accessible to those
who support its operation with a monthly £3
donation. Their ‘RepCinema’ spreadsheet
is often dominated by a venue that’s done
more than most to bolster contemporary cel-
luloid culture in the UK, the Prince Charles
Cinema, whose populist programming
ethos puts the lie to celluloid’s contempo-
rary reputation as the preserve of a rarefied
elite. Alongside the Salò screening I went to,
its current 35mm slate includes everything
from Mississippi Masala (1991) to Beau travail
(1999), via a double bill of the atrocious live-
action Scooby-Doo movies (2002/2004). All
will be projected on a platter system, the
cinema lacking the changeover set-up that
would unlock access to the world’s premiere
film archives and, presumably, their superior
Scooby-Doo prints.
One such institution, the George East-
man Museum in Rochester, New York, has
since 2015 been running an annual event
showcasing the rarest sight in analogue
cinema. The Nitrate Picture Show offers

one of vanishingly few opportunities any-
where in the world to view nitrate film, the
famously flammable stock that dominated
the first 50 years of cinema history. Nitrate
remains beloved of enthusiasts for its lumi-
nous texture and deep colours, but festival
director Peter Bagrov sees the event’s appeal
as more than just aesthetic and technical.
“ To me, the most important thing is
authenticity. You know, there are beauti-
ful reproductions nowadays but people do
spend a fortune to go to the Louvre and look
at the Mona Lisa.” Likewise, when you watch
a film from an original release print, “you get
a step closer”. At last year’s festival, a simi-
lar thought crossed my mind while watch-
ing G.W. Pabst’s Joyless Street (1925) from an
almost century-old print, with a live piano
accompaniment by Philip C. Carli. Sitting
among hundreds of others in the Eastman’s
grand but somehow intimate Dryden Thea-
tre, I felt witness to an experience utterly
foreign to modern life, and one that will – as
Bagrov is quick to point out – soon disappear
entirely: “The Nitrate Picture Show is a finite
festival. I can probably guarantee ten years.”
After that, nitrate’s natural propensity for
shrinkage will render those few prints that
remain too misshapen to project. Even run-
ning them in their current state, and thereby
risking damage to a scarce resource, has led
to scepticism from some within the archival
film world. “A very esteemed colleague once
compared us to spoiled billionaires who eat
extinct animals,” says Bagrov, who prefers
an analogy of public service: “If you treat an
art object with care, whether it’s a Matisse, a
57
FILM ON FILM
Picasso or a Rembrandt, then you can also
exhibit it. Same thing here.”
The festival’s founder, legendary archivist
Paolo Cherchi Usai, made a few impromptu
remarks before a screening of Rope (1948) at
last year’s edition, characterising Hitchcock’s Rarely are we fully
real-time thriller as perhaps the definitive
example of cinema as a performing art – a live conscious of the
collaboration between those in the booth and mechanical process
those in the auditorium. Famously, in creat-
ing the illusion of a continually unfolding of projection, but
narrative, Hitchcock overcame the ten-min- nor are we ever truly
ute time limit of 35mm camera magazines by
hiding cuts in moments of screen darkness, unaware of the intricacy,
for instance when a character crosses the path and precarity, of the
of the camera’s lens. Less often remembered
is Hitchcock’s very different solution to the illusion unfolding
20-minute time limit imposed by projection before us. Like any
reels. Rather than expecting projectionists
to perfectly time a changeover in a fleeting live performance, the
instant of darkness, he inserted an overt cut success of a screening
at every reel change, using eyeline matching
to ensure the audience would themselves is heightened by the
mentally paper over the disjuncture. That
Rope is often misremembered as a single take,
possibility of its failure
when half of its cuts are as blatant as those of
any other film, is a testament to the seamless-
ness of this collaboration between filmmaker,
projectionist and viewer.
A symbiotic conception of cinema chimes
with the thinking of Robin Baker, head
curator at the BFI National Archive and
programme director of the inaugural Film ABOVE
Loading a reel of film on
on Film festival, which will reinstate nitrate to the projector
and a wide variety of other film formats at
OPPOSITE
the BFI Southbank in June. “The flicker of At the cinema in The Smallest
the image as it’s projected, the sound of the Show on Earth (1957)
 58
‘I worked for years on
an Early Bronze Age site
and I remember finding
the rim of a beaker and
wanting to put it to my
lips. I thought, “Somebody
drunk out of this 4,500
years ago and I’m the first
person to touch it since
then.” It’s not dissimilar
to watching a film print,
and feeling a connection
to all the people who’ve
watched it before you’
ROBIN BAKER, HEAD CURATOR,
BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE
FILM ON FILM
BELOW
A projection booth at BFI
Southbank in London
reel changes – all of that positions you at the
centre of a mechanical process that projec-
tionists are putting on.” Rarely are we fully
conscious of this process, whose product –
cinematic spectacle in all its variety – easily
overshadows its method, but nor are we ever
truly unaware of the intricacy, and precarity, of
the illusion unfolding before us. Like any live
performance, the success of a film screening
is heightened by the unspoken possibility of
its failure.
At the centre of that performance is the
film print itself. Few cinematic artefacts are
the subject of greater fetishisation, but Baker
– who worked as an archaeologist before
moving into film – views celluloid through a
distinctly anthropological lens. “I worked for
years on an Early Bronze Age site, digging
up pottery, and I remember finding the rim
of a beaker and wanting to put it to my lips.
I thought, somebody drunk out of this vessel
4,500 years ago and I’m the first person to
touch it since then. It’s not dissimilar, for me,
to watching a film print, and feeling a con-
nection to all the people who’ve watched that
print before you.”
THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS
To acknowledge the value of yesterday’s audi-
ence is also to insist upon the importance of
today’s, and perhaps that accounts for the
heightened sense of community often found
at analogue screenings – and the comfort that
comes with it. Even the willingness of the
bagman to disregard the social mores of con-
temporary cinemagoing – to swig his Vimto
from a ketchup bottle while others sip their
overpriced craft beers – might speak less to a
disdain for fellow audience members and more
to a feeling of rare public ease. If, for him, the
environment of the cinema is so welcoming
that it provides licence to act as we all do in the
privacy of our own homes (that is, strangely)
then our goal should surely be to extend, not
curtail, the privilege. Indeed, among younger
cinephiles, ‘bagman’ is increasingly used less
as a slur than as an ideal, and a knowing self-
descriptor: the booking of a number of rarely
screened Godard prints at the Ciné Lumière
is an opportunity for “unrivalled bagmannery”;
sneaking Greggs sausage rolls into the Prince
Charles before a 35mm Gummo screening is a
“god tier bagman flex”.
What little divide remained between the ur-
bagmen and the rest of the cinephile audience
has, for me, been bridged by a recent develop-
ment at – where else? – the BFI Southbank,
which last year lifted a longtime moratorium
on commercial advertising to allow the
screening of a Lloyds Bank advert before
each feature presentation. Outraged, one of
the venue’s resident bagmen began shouting
“Rubbish!” at the climax of the ad’s soupy
montage of galloping horses and prefab social
realism. At first, no one took much notice, but
over time his complaint began to gather pock-
ets of support. Today, it’s regularly met with
cheers, from the youthful back row to the bag-
strewn front.
Charlie Shackleton’s film The Afterlight screens at the Film
on Film Festival at BFI Southbank, London, on 10 June
 60

THE ENGLAND
FLICKS
LONDON
C Barbican T win C The Station Cinema
C BFI Imax 70mm A Bloomsbury Theatre
C BFI Southbank & Studio UCL
T win , 70mm A Cafe Oto

LIST
C Birkbeck Institute for
the Moving Image
C The Castle Cinema
C Ciné Lumière T win
C Close-Up T win
C Curzon Soho
C The David Lean
Cinema T win
C Everyman Screen
on the Green
Café and live music
venue that also hosts
screenings on multiple
film formats
A The Cinema Museum
T win
Museum dedicated to
cinema history with
a regular screening
programme

UK cinemas, film clubs NORTH EAST EAST C

and festivals keeping
alive the art of
projecting on film
COMPILED BY ISABEL STEVENS
AND THOMAS FLEW
C Picturehouse @ FACT
Liverpool 70mm
C Star and Shadow
Cinema
Newcastle upon Tyne
C Tyneside Cinema
Newcastle upon Tyne
C
Genesis Cinema
Institute of
C Abbeygate Cinema
Bury St Edmunds
Contemporary Arts T win
Frequent screenings on
C Aldeburgh Cinema film, including regular
Suffolk strand ‘Celluloid Sunday’
C Arts Picturehouse C NFTS Studios
Cambridge 70mm C Odeon Luxe Leicester
C King Street Cinema Square 70mm
Ipswich T win C Phoenix Cinema
C The Rex C Picturehouse Central
A Goethe-Institut
A The Ronson Theatre at
the Science Museum 70mm
A Tate Modern
FC A Nos Amours
Collective founded
by Joanna Hogg and
Adam Roberts whose
screenings have included
a lengthy Chantal
Akerman retrospective

C Cinema
NORTH WEST Berkhamsted 70mm
FC Cambridge
C Prince Charles
Cinema 70mm
FC The Badlands Collective
Host special events
FILM ON FILM

A Arts venue C The Plaza Film Projects C Regent Street Cinema of underscreened
FC Film club/collective Stockport T win Specialists in open-air C Rio Cinema movies, usually
FF Film festival C HOME screening events C Ritzy Picturehouse on 35mm film prints
Manchester T win
T win Twin projectors FC Bigger than Life

Denotes a venue with Bespoke events

twin projectors, meaning with an emphasis
that it is able to screen on 35mm screenings
BFI archive prints

70mm 70mm YORKSHIRE AND

Denotes a venue with
a 70mm projector THE HUMBER
C Abbeydale Picture
House Sheffield T win
C Cottage Road Cinema
Headingley
C Hyde Park Picture
House Leeds T win
C Pictureville Cinema
at the National Science
and Media Museum
Bradford 70mm
C Showroom Workstation
Sheffield T win
C The Void Cinema
Sheffield T win

EAST MIDLANDS
C Broadway Cinema
Nottingham
C Phoenix Leicester T win
C QUAD Derby

TOP
The Star and Shadow
WEST MIDLANDS
in Newcastle upon Tyne C The Electric
Birmingham
RIGHT
The Cinema Museum C Warwick
in London Student Cinema
Coventry T win , 70mm
OPPOSITE, TOP
The Slindon Cinema
A Warwick Arts Centre
in Arundel Coventry
 61

SCOTLAND NORTHERN
IRELAND
C The Cameo Edinburgh C Queen’s Film Theatre
C Dundee Belfast
Contemporary Arts T win C The Strand Cinema
C Eden Court Inverness Belfast
C Glasgow Film Theatre
T win , 70mm
C The Hippodrome

C
A
Bo’ness
The Kino Cinema Leven
Macrobert Arts Centre
Stirling
WALES
A Centre for C Chapter Arts Centre
Contemporary Arts Cardiff T win
Glasgow
FC Alchemy Film
& Arts Hawick Every effort has been made to
Community- make this list as accurate and
focused collective who complete as possible. If we have
programme screenings missed a cinema, arts venue
both locally and or film club that you frequent
internationally or run, please let us know at
FC Screen Bandita sightandsound@bfi.org.uk
Edinburgh
Specialists in 8mm
and 16mm screenings
with a focus on
underappreciated female
filmmakers

FILM ON FILM
FC Cigarette Burns
Genre specialists who
FC The Vito Project
LGBTQ+ specialists SOUTH WEST
screen 35mm and 16mm who screen at C Curzon Clevedon
in and around London The Cinema Museum C Plaza Cinema Truro
FC CINÉ-REAL FF BFI Film on Film C Watershed Bristol T win
A 16mm-exclusive film Festival T win , 70mm FC Dirt in the Gate Movies
club with a screening The UK’s first festival Bournemouth
room at Umit & Son, wholly dedicated to Specialist 35mm
Lower Clapton screening works solely exhibitors of classic films
FC The Duke Mitchell on film, from 8.5mm FC Film Noir UK Bristol
Film Club to 70mm Dedicated to the world of
B movies and obscurities film noir and presenting
at the Prince Charles
SOUTH EAST
new restorations
Cinema and FC Matchbox Cine Bristol
King & Queen pub Independent film
FC Kennington Bioscope C Chichester Cinema exhibitor, specialising
Screenings of rare silent at New Park in cult film; also award-
films at the Cinema C Connaught Cinema winning subtitlers
Museum with live Worthing FC South West Silents
musical accompaniment C Curzon Oxford The best of silent cinema,
FC King’s College London C Duke of York’s exhibiting both in the
Cinematheque T win Picturehouse Brighton South West and across
Regular screenings C Slindon Cinema Arundel the UK, they also run
for staff, students C The Ultimate Picture Film Noir UK
and alumni of King’s, Palace Oxford FF Cinema Rediscovered
plus wider University A Norden Farm Centre
Bristol
of London students for the Arts Maidenhead Held every July, this
FC Lost Reels Regular screenings at festival from Watershed
A series of classics, this multi-purpose shows the best of
curios and forgotten gems cultural space, which is rediscoveries and
on vintage 16mm film also a theatre and gallery restorations before a
FC The Machine That FF Cinecity Brighton wider UK tour
Kills Bad People Part of the Brighton Film FF Slapstick Festival Bristol
Bi-monthly club at Festival, which takes Holds both silent and
the ICA run by Erika place each November, comedy screenings and
Balsom, María Palacios Cinecity also programmes live stand-up events
Cruz, Beatrice Gibson year-round events
and Ben Rivers FF Chichester International
FC Unicorn Nights Film Festival
LGBTQ+ film events A festival in August
hosted at the Prince that includes archive
Charles Cinema screenings at Chichester ABOVE
and Slindon cinemas The Hippodrome Cinema in Bo’ness
 SPIKE GOT GAME
62

During a trip to the UK to receive a BFI Fellowship and look in on the restoration of his 1992
epic Malcolm X, the director spoke to Sight and Sound about his influences, collaborators and
favourite films – and explains why he believes he’s always been ahead of the curve
FILM ON FILM

INTRODUCTION AND INTERVIEW BY ARJUN SAJIP

Restless doesn’t cut it: for four decades and film proper, She’s Gotta Have It, into a 2017-19 award, and to visit the BFI National Archive,
counting, Spike Lee has been crafting feature Netflix series of the same name. His relevance which has been overseeing a new 35mm print of
films, shorts, documentaries and television remains undimmed: in Sight and Sound ’s recent his epic biopic Malcolm X (1992), due to premiere
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MISAN HARRIMAN

series, largely but not exclusively centred
around African American experiences. His
creative output also encompasses adverts – he
co-founded his own ad agency, Spike DDB,
in 1997 – and music videos; he’s dabbled in
remixes himself, having expanded his 1986 debut
Greatest Films of All Time poll, Lee’s Do the
Right Thing (1989) was voted 24th, the highest
a Black director has ever placed on the list.
Earlier this year, Lee was awarded a BFI
Fellowship in recognition of his contribution to
film culture; he flew to England to collect the
at the BFI’s Film on Film Festival in June. In
an interview with Sight and Sound at the BFI
Southbank, Lee held forth on his influences,
his inspirations, and his lively interactions
with a host of Black legends as iconoclastic
and artistically irrepressible as Lee himself.

ON STORYTELLING
I’ve never seen filmmaking as distinct blocks
– “You are a narrative filmmaker, you’re a
documentary filmmaker, you’re a director
of commercials, you’re a director of short
films.” For me, it’s all filmmaking and the
way I see filmmaking is telling stories.
In a lot of ways, the director is a conductor
and the cast and crew are the orchestra. And
everybody has got to be playing the same notes
that are written, which is the script. Everybody
has to understand what the film’s about; in this
they’re led by the conductor. Even though [the
director wants] contributions from everybody,
we have all got to be going the same way.
At the beginning, the core team included
Ernest Dickerson, my director of photography;
we went to film school together. Ernest shot all
my films at NYU, and then he shot She’s Gotta
Have It, School Daze [1988], Do the Right Thing,
Mo’ Better Blues [1990], Jungle Fever [1991] and
Malcolm X. The costume designer was Ruth
E. Carter, the production designer was Wynn
Thomas, the editor was Barry Brown and the
scores were done by my father, Bill Lee. That
was the core. But then people go off and do their
own thing, so you’ve just got to keep it going.
‘My father didn’t go to films; his
big thing was sports. My mother
was a movie fan. I’m the eldest
among my siblings, so I was my
mother’s movie date. She took
me to see Mean Streets, which
made a great impression on me’
ON INFLUENCES
My father didn’t go to films; his big thing
was sports. My mother was a movie fan.
I’m the eldest among my siblings, so I was
my mother’s movie date. She took me to
see Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets [1973],
which made a great impression on me.
Visual artists that have influenced me?
Gordon Parks, Roy DeCarava, Irving Penn,
Richard Avedon. They enhanced my worldview
– how they could tell stories with a still camera.
There’s an old classmate of mine who told
people that The Deer Hunter [1978] was my
favourite film and that’s the reason why I
became a filmmaker. Not true at all. We went
to the movie together, and I did not come out
of the theatre saying, “Now I’m going to be
a filmmaker.” I mean, The Deer Hunter? That
whole scene with the Russian roulette, that
never happened, that was made up. The Viet
Cong did not put an American prisoner of
war in this deadly Russian roulette situation.
It was fabricated, it never happened.
63
ON THE DOUBLE
DOLLY SHOT
I did not invent the ‘double dolly shot’ [a
shot in which both the actor and camera are
mounted on wheels and moved in the same
direction, creating a floating sensation], and I
can’t remember where I first saw it, but I think
Ernest and I came up with the term. The first
time we did that shot, it was in Mo’ Better Blues
– it was just something to do. But then Ernest
and I made a decision that we can’t use this shot
unless it has some [specific resonance in the
plot]; we wouldn’t just do it for the heck of it.
I’d got to know Malcolm’s widow, Dr Betty
Shabazz, very well. She told me that she felt
Malcolm knew he was going to be assassinated
at the Audubon Ballroom. I told Ernest this,
and right away we said, “We have to use a double
dolly shot there, when he’s on his way to the
Ballroom.” Accompanied by the great song ‘A
Change Is Gonna Come’ by Sam Cooke, it’s
probably our best use of the double dolly.
FILM ON FILM
‘In a lot of ways, the director
is a conductor and the cast
and crew are the orchestra.
And everybody has got to
be playing the same notes’
ABOVE LEFT
John Savage in The
Deer Hunter (1973)
ABOVE & OPPOSITE
Spike Lee
LEFT
Giancarlo Esposito as
Buggin’ Out in Do the
Right Thing (1989)
 64
ON BEING
MISUNDERSTOOD
My first film to be misunderstood was Do the
Right Thing: when it premiered in Cannes,
several American journalists – I don’t even
want to call them journalists – started this
campaign that Do the Right Thing would incite
African Americans all across the nation to
riot [upon its release] in America in June.
With Do the Right Thing, we told the truth.
My previous film, School Daze, had ended
with Laurence Fishburne saying the words
“Wake up”; at the start of Do the Right Thing,
Samuel L. Jackson says the same words.
The other film to be misinterpreted, I would
say, is Jungle Fever. People thought the film
was saying that interracial marriages should
not happen, which is not the case at all. What
people missed about that film, and for me the
film’s most important message, was that a crack
epidemic was wiping out generations of Black
and Brown people. And many years later we’re
still dealing with the after-effects of that.
I don’t really worry about [how my films will
be received]: people are going to think what
they think, and people might have their own
preconceptions of who I am. I know what I’m
trying to do, I know the story I’m telling. And
FILM ON FILM
sometimes people don’t get it right away. 25th
Hour [2002], people didn’t understand that. But
now, people speak of that film highly. So, not
to brag, but I just think that we’re ahead of the
curve in discussing these issues in these films.
‘I don’t really worry about [how
my films will be received]:
people are going to think what
they think. I know what I’m
trying to do. And sometimes
people don’t get it right away’
ON AN ONGOING
LABOUR OF LOVE
To me, Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront [1954],
written by Budd Schulberg, is one of the greatest
films of all time. Schulberg and I co-wrote a
screenplay called ‘Save Us, Joe Louis’ about
the boxers Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, their
friendship and the two fights they fought, in
particular the second one. Many, many people
thought that whoever won that fight would
determine the outcome of World War II.
Franklin Roosevelt summoned Joe Louis to the
White House before the second fight, and Hitler
and Goebbels [saw Schmeling as potential proof
of Aryans] being the master race. We haven’t
got the film made yet, but it’s going to happen,
I promised Budd we’re going to make it.
‘To me, Elia Kazan’s On the
Waterfront, written by Budd
Schulberg, is one of the
greatest films of all time’
ON NEW YORK FILMS
There are so many great New York films, but
one film that is very special to me is Dog Day
Afternoon [1975]. In pre-production for Inside Man
[2006], I screened the movie three or four times
to the crew and the cast. Sidney Lumet is an
overlooked filmmaker. So, in homage to Sidney,
we did two things: I found the actress who was
a hostage in Dog Day Afternoon, Marcia Jean
Kurtz, and cast her as the hostage in Inside Man.
Also, in both Dog Day Afternoon and Inside Man,
pizza is delivered to the hostages. We [used the
same] actor who delivered pizza to the hostages
in Dog Day Afternoon. And if you look closely at
the pizza box, you’ll see the pizza is from Sal’s
Famous Pizzeria [the establishment at the centre
of Do the Right Thing]. So we tied it all up.
I’ll name another great New York film, this
one directed by Billy Friedkin: The French
Connection [1971]. The car chase scene begins
outside the stop for my high school, John
Dewey High School in Brooklyn. That scene
where Gene Hackman is chasing the subway
train, that’s still one of the greatest chases
I’ve ever seen. They didn’t have a permit
to [shoot that scene on location], they just
went out and stole those shots. Friedkin did
what he had to do. I remember waiting in
line for two hours in the freezing cold for The
Exorcist [1973], and I got to meet Friedkin
too. We had a very nice conversation, and
he signed my French Connection poster.
‘In pre-production for Inside Man,
I screened Dog Day Afternoon
three or four times to the crew
and the cast. Sidney Lumet is
an overlooked filmmaker’
LEFT
Do the Right Thing
ABOVE LEFT
Eva Marie Saint and Marlon
Brando in On the Waterfront (1954)
ABOVE
Willem Dafoe and Denzel
Washington in Inside Man (2006)

ON ADVERTS
The ad I’m most proud of would have
to be the Nike commercials, featuring
Michael Jordan and the Mars Blackmon
character from She’s Gotta Have It [played
by Lee], which sent the brand into the
stratosphere. Those had the most impact.
Two executives, Jim Riswold and Bill
Davenport of the ad agency Wieden+Kennedy,
had the Nike account. They saw She’s Gotta
Have It and it was their idea to pair Mars
with Michael. They called me up and said,
“We love your movie, love Mars. We want
it to be in black and white. You play Mars
again and you can direct it too. But there’s
one catch: Michael’s not seen She’s Gotta
Have It, doesn’t know who you are.”
Many years later, I finally got enough
courage to ask Michael why he went with
me. He could have easily gone with big-
time commercial directors; I’d never done
a commercial, and She’s Gotta Have It was
my first feature film. He answered, “Well,
motherfucker, you’re wearing my shoes.”
ON HOLLYWOOD
AND RACE
There’s always a danger that [Black stories]
will get co-opted [by the Hollywood system
for profit]. I’ve been on record for several
years saying that a lot more Black people
need to be working in the industry, behind
and in front of the camera, but we’re still
not at that stage where everything is equal.
Particularly for Black women. It’s two steps
forward, one step back, and it’s going to be
a constant battle until Black and Brown
people get in the room where gatekeepers
decide what we’re making and not making.
The main goal of my film Da 5 Bloods [2020]
was to demonstrate that Black people have been
fighting for the United States forever. The first
person to die in the War of Independence was a
Black man, Crispus Attucks. But if you look at
the history of American cinema, we get left out
of many war movies as if we did not participate,
we did not fight, we did not die for this country.
Fast-forward to today, when Black and Brown
people are being shot down left and right by
the police. With Da 5 Bloods, we wanted to
expose this irony where we fight for this country,
but the country we love kills us, even today.
There’s this term: ‘post-race’. The idea that
just the act of Barack Obama placing his hand
on Abraham Lincoln’s bible [during his 2012
swearing-in ceremony] would mean, hocus
pocus, that race would be gone. But you
saw what happened next. I feel that Agent
Orange – I don’t say the guy by his name – was
in response to eight years of a Black man in
the White House. We saw what happened on
6 January [2021] at the Capitol Building.
‘The goal of Da 5 Bloods was to
demonstrate that Black people have
been fighting for the US forever’
LEFT
She’s Gotta Have It (1986)
BELOW
Da 5 Bloods (2020)
SPIKE LEE 65
ON MUSIC
I love music; I think that’s pretty evident in
the use of music in my films, both songs and
score. I have very different tastes. Look at He
Got Game [1998]. Many people told me that
having a film that features Public Enemy
and Aaron Copland [on the soundtrack]
was crazy. But I knew that it would work.
I’ve been blessed to work with some great,
great musicians – individuals who saw my
work and reached out to me [to do their
music videos]. When Michael Jackson called
me, I hung up on him three times, because
I didn’t believe it was him on the line.
Miles Davis had a reputation; he’d call you
a motherfucker the second he saw you. When
I walked on to the set [of the music video to
Davis’s ‘Tutu Medley’], he said, “Spike, I have
too much respect for your father, so I won’t call
you ‘motherfucker’.” My father’s a jazz bassist;
Miles knew my father’s work, his playing,
his composing. So that was a big moment
for me, that Miles knew who my father was
and respected him too. I just did what Miles
told me to do. I was in awe, to be honest.
Stevie Wonder is a cinephile. He goes to
films – he has someone describe to him what’s
FILM ON FILM
happening on the screen, but he’s listening.
Innervisions is one of my favourite albums of all
time; I’ve always loved the song ‘Living for the
City’. I keep a catalogue of songs in my mind,
and that’s one of those songs; I wanted it to
soundtrack the scene in Jungle Fever set in the
‘Taj Mahal’, the den of crackheads, but I wanted
Stevie to write all the film’s songs. A lot of people
warned me, “Stevie’s notoriously slow. He’ll never
make the deadline.” But Stevie came through.
He also sang ‘Ribbon in the Sky’ at my wedding.
There’s always been great love between us.
It was an honour for me to work with Prince;
I still shake my head that he’s not here. You know
the guitar that has the Prince symbol [as the body
of the guitar]? I asked him one time, “Can you
please give me a guitar like that?” Prince looked
at me like I had three heads. But then a year later,
this big guitar case shows up at my house. And it
was the guitar I’d asked for a year before. When
I saw him after that, I said, “Can you sign it for
me?” He said, “Spike, I’m not signing that guitar.
And if you ask me again, I’m taking it back.”
Malcolm X is available to watch on subscription on BFI Player.
A new 35mm print of the film will screen at the Film on Film
Festival at BFI Southbank, London, on 10 June. Do the Right
Thing and Chi-Raq are also available to rent on BFI Player
To watch the full interview (pictured below), visit
bfi.org.uk/sightandsound
“Emotional, “A humane,
radiant sympathetic movie...
and smart” Léa Seydoux sparkles”
THE TELEGRAPH THE GUARDIAN

“A profound
“Glorious” and captivating
TIME OUT
portrait of love”
THE WRAP

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 R E
V
68
FILMS
00
LOREM
Under the Fig Trees, Beau Is Afraid, Lorem Ipsum
Plan 75, Master Gardener,
Little Richard: I Am Everything,
The Eight Mountains,
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,
Are You There, God? It’s Me,
Margaret. and more

I E
W S
88
DVD & BLU-RAY
96
WIDER SCREEN
Broken Lullaby, Bluebeard’s Eighth On the little-known films of
Wife, Everything Everywhere Again French director Patricia Mazuy,
Alive, Full Circle: The Haunting of and the Norwich Women’s
Julia, Laurin, Tightrope, Croupier, Film Weekend archive
The Virgin Suicides, The Bullet Train,
Dance Craze, Martin and more

98
BOOKS
A new volume on feminist
worldmaking, a 1973 memoir
by French actor and filmmaker
Pierre Clémenti and a
study of the work of British
director Adrian Brunel
 68
bit of village gossip – it does set us up for
Under the the film’s tendency to happen upon con-
Fig Trees versations in medias res and let us hear just
a little of what’s being said before moving
on. These snatches of talk suggest lives
TUNISIA/FRANCE/SWITZERLAND/GERMANY/
QATAR/ITALY/MALTA 2022 and relationships that exist beyond the
confines of what we see on screen.
DIRECTOR ERIGE SEHIRI Sehiri co-wrote the screenplay with
SCREENPLAY ERIGE SEHIRI
GHALYA LACROIX Peggy Hamann and Ghalya Lacroix,
PEGGY HAMANN who also co-edited the film, and whose
CINEMATOGRAPHY FRIDA MARZOUK
EDITORS GHALYA LACROIX collaborations with Abdellatif Kechiche
HAFEDH LA ARIDHI (from Games of Love and Chance, 2003, to
MALEK K AMMOUN
MUSIC AMINA BOUHAFA Mektoub, My Love, 2017) have a similarly
COSTUME DESIGN NABILA CHERIF loose, naturalistic feel. Together, they
CAST AMENI FDHILI
FIDE FDHILI quickly establish a handful of key charac-
FETEN FDHILI ters and relationships, between which the
film then drifts freely over the course of
SYNOPSIS
the day. Seventeen-year-old Melek (Feten
Tunisia, the present. A group of workers Fdhili) is surprised to find herself work-
are collected by their boss and driven to
ing alongside Abdou (Abdelhak Mrabti),
an orchard, where they will spend the day
picking figs. Teenager Melek finds herself the old flame her heart still aches for.
working with her ex-boyfriend, who has Abdou has returned to this region, after
returned to town to settle family business, a long absence and following the death
while their foreman tries to find out who has of his parents, to lay claim to the land
been stealing from him. now owned by his estranged uncle, the
very land that is being harvested in this
REVIEWED BY PHILIP CONCANNON
film. Meanwhile, Sana (Ameni Fdhili)
is devoted to her boyfriend Firas (Firas
Erige Sehiri has adopted a deceptively Amri), but he doesn’t display the same
simple structure for her debut narrative level of commitment towards her, seem-
feature Under the Fig Trees. The film opens ing more focused on the figs that he can
as the day breaks, with a small band of stash away and sell for his own profit.
agricultural workers standing by the The details of these mini-dramas are
side of the road, waiting for their ride to gradually revealed to us as we listen to the
work, and closes with the return journey. characters talk, with the conversation in
In between these commutes we spend a Under the Fig Trees ranging from the banal
FILMS
day in the orchard, where these people to the perceptive. We hear titbits of scan-
collect figs; we watch them work, listen dal and gain an insight into the delicacy
to them talk, and gain a brief window required when plucking figs (“Breaking
into their lives. The first words we hear a branch is like breaking an arm,” a new
in the film are “She took everything and employee is warned), but when the work-
left,” and while this stray comment doesn’t ers gather to operate in pairs they reveal
mean anything in the overall scheme of more of themselves. Often these conver-
the movie – it’s just two women sharing a sations have a hushed, covert quality, as
Erige Sehiri maintains a
documentarian’s eye on this milieu,
and cinematographer Frida Marzouk
makes us feel like eavesdroppers
with the way she shoots her subjects
in tight close-ups, the shadows
of the branches flickering across
their faces as they are bathed in
the gorgeous Tunisian sunlight
co-workers huddle together beneath the
trees, avoiding the suspicious gaze of the
foreman Gaith (Gaith Mendassi).
The conditions and power dynamics
of labour are a keen area of interest for
Sehiri, who has a background in journal-
ism, and whose documentary Railway
Men (2018) explored the parlous state of
Tunisia’s rail network through the experi-
ences of those who work on its lines every
day. In Under the Fig Trees, she maintains a
documentarian’s eye on this milieu, and
cinematographer Frida Marzouk makes
us feel like eavesdroppers with the way
she shoots her subjects in tight close-ups,
the shadows of the branches flickering
across their faces as they are bathed in the
gorgeous Tunisian sunlight. Marzouk’s
ability to utilise natural light is one of the
film’s marvels. The opening shot is of a
character silhouetted against the dim
glow of the dawning sun, and the film
THAT ORCHARD PHASE is gradually illuminated by the growing
Abdelhak Mrabti as Abdou, Feten
Fdhili as Melek (below); Fide
daylight as the hours slip by, with Mar-
Fdhili as Fide (below right) zouk occasionally swapping her intimate

approach for wide shots that allow us to
orient these characters in place and time.
The way Sehiri and Marzouk compress
the span of a day into 90 minutes and
allow us to get a sense of the characters’
bucolic surroundings is sometimes remi-
niscent of Bertrand Tavernier’s A Sunday
in the Country (1984).
Sehiri has assembled a cast of non-
professional actors for this film and she
found a number among them who have
beautifully expressive faces – notably
Feten Fdhili, whose large eyes make
the meek and sensitive Melek’s heartfelt
yearning for love so tangible. She is fre-
quently paired with Fide (Fide Fdhili),
and while these two young women are
a study in contrasts in terms of their per-
sonalities and the way they present them-
selves, there is a tangible desire among
both for something more from life than
this rural region can offer them. Like any
girls their age, they have mobile phones
and Instagram accounts that give them a
view of a world and a life that lies out of
reach, and they both appear to be drawn
to Abdou, whose return from years living
in a more metropolitan area has imbued
him with a degree of glamour.
However, while Melek moons over
her lost love, Fide scoffs at the traditional
views of love and marriage espoused
by her and Sana. “Men aren’t every-
thing,” she says. “Love is bogus.” Fide
has a gently flirtatious relationship with
her boss (who later attempts to assault
Melek, in the film’s sole moment of genu-
ine threat), earning a ride in the front of
the truck while everyone else is crammed
into the rear, but she maintains all rela-
tionships on her terms, and she cuts a
strikingly distinctive figure among her
fellow female workers with her long,
tousled hair often falling uncovered.
Under the Fig Trees began life when Sehiri
met Fide Fdhili and began to develop a
screenplay around her, and it’s not hard
to see why she was so taken by this char-
ismatic young woman.
Fide’s independence and self-posses-
sion must seem alien to the older genera-
tion of women who work alongside her at
the orchard. Sehiri’s chief focus in Under
the Fig Trees is on her younger characters,
but she also gives space to these senior
figures. In particular, she gives one of the
film’s most resonant moments to a veteran
worker called Leila (Leila Ouhebi), who
recalls a man she loved in her youth but
was forbidden to marry. She still holds a
candle for him and even harbours a desire
to be buried with him, and as she sings a
lamentation, she breaks down and weeps.
What are the younger women thinking
as they listen to Leila’s memories? Will
they be free to choose their own path, or
are they destined to tell a similar story in
years to come?
That sense of uncertainty reflects the
mood of the country in which Under the
Fig Trees was produced. It has been more
than a decade since Zine El Abidine Ben
Ali was ousted by the popular protest
that sparked the Arab Spring, ending
his 23-year rule; but the years that have
followed have been defined by political
instability and economic hardship. Sehiri
ends her film with an image of solidar-
ity, with the workers again climbing into
the back of Gaith’s van and singing and
laughing as dusk begins to fall; but with
Tunisia sliding back towards authoritari-
anism under Kais Saied, what the future
holds for the young Tunisians portrayed
in this film is anyone’s guess. All they can
do is take things one day at a time.
In UK cinemas from 19 May
69
q&a
ERIGE SEHIRI DIRECTOR
BY K ATIE MCCABE
Q Fide [Fide Fdhili], one of the key
characters in the film, had previously
worked as a fruit picker. How did
you come to work with her?
A I changed the film I was going to make
for her. I met her in front of a high
school and she was yelling at another
girl. I went with her and her friends
[to an orchard]. They were picking
cherries. I really felt like I was seeing
a painting, with women and men on
the trees. And so I decided to change
the film I was writing at that time.
FILMS
Q Can you tell us a bit about why
you chose the fig orchard as
the setting for the film?
A My father is actually from this region.
Figs were part of the family so I knew
how it worked. The tree is almost
sacralised, it’s like olive trees. It’s in the
Koran, it’s in the Bible. Eve, you know,
was hiding with a leaf from the fig tree.
And of course, the fruit itself – it’s a
metaphor of the fragility of their lives.
Q There’s a real sensuality to the film.
I want to ask about your decision
not to not show physical intimacy...
A First of all, I was working with non-
professional actors. I had to talk to the
parents, some of them were under 18.
And it’s still a conservative country. I
had built the trust with them to say, “I’m
not going to do something that could
offend you…” I feel like they’re giving us
a lesson of flirting. I think in Europe,
we don’t flirt that way any more.
Q You have said you were listening to
the protest song ‘L’Estaca’ while
working on the film. Why was that
an important song for you?
A Because it’s a revolutionary song and it’s
also about solidarity and work. We had
an Arabic composer who did an Arabic
version with a female voice. It brings
something into the story. In the whole
film, we don’t ever ever talk about what
happened in Tunisia ten years ago. At
the same time you feel the revolution,
in the way that the women speak.
 70
Beau Is Afraid
CERTIFICATE 15 178M 2S
DIRECTOR ARI ASTER
WRIT TEN BY ARI ASTER
CINEMATOGRAPHY PAWEL POGORZELSKI
EDITOR LUCIAN JOHNSTON
PRODUCTION DESIGN FIONA CROMBIE
FILMS
MUSIC BOBBY KRLIC
COSTUME DESIGN ALICE BABIDGE
CAST JOAQUIN PHOENIX
NATHAN LANE
AMY RYAN
SYNOPSIS
Beau is a single, middle-aged man living in a
general state of guilt and fear. After his plans
to visit his overbearing mother go awry and
he fears she has died, he begins a bizarre
journey across a violent urban landscape,
a disquieting suburban area and an arty
woodland enclave.
REVIEWED BY BEN WALTERS
In Ari Aster’s films, love is a trap, and an
unsurvivable one at that. His first two
features offered versions of our society’s
most frequently celebrated bonds – the
nuclear family in Hereditary (2018), friends
and partners in Midsommar (2019) – as,
at best, pathetically insufficient and, at
worst, conspiracies of murderous vio-
lence and radical depersonalisation. You
squirmed at these films’ brutality – torn
flesh, crunched bones, cadaver-based
folk art – but what really disturbed was
the sense of their protagonists’ very self-
hood being undone. Maybe, you realised,
they were never really people at all, in
the sense of truly individuated subjects
with genuine agency, but simply pawns
or devices in nefarious schemes beyond
their ken. (‘Characters’, you might say.)
These stories built to breathtaking cli-
maxes in which the utter unravelling of
the central characters’ personal identities
and intimate bonds were also moments
of ecstatic triumph for the conspiratorial
collectives in fact driving the action –
execution as coronation, coronation as
execution. These collectives were in both
cases matriarchal, built around maternal
figures whose apparent provision of care
proved to be the wielding of harmful
power. The uncanny dramatic irony of
the narratives was underscored by exqui-
sitely detailed production design, full
of winks and nudges gesturing at what
was ‘really’ going on. They also showed a
penchant for geometrically striking archi-
tecture and the framing of older people’s
naked bodies as frightful and grotesque.
Versions of all these elements recur in
Aster’s third feature, Beau Is Afraid. Beau
(Joaquin Phoenix) is a middle-aged sad
sack living in a shabby apartment in a
death-trap building in a broken-down
part of an American city. The accidental
scuppering of plans to visit his overbear-
ing mother sets him off on a picaresque
ordeal across a pseudo-surreal, dystopian
version of the United States. From the
feral urban free-for-all on his doorstep,
he moves through a creepy suburban
family milieu and a discombobulating
arty woodland enclave before homing
in on the most disturbing environment
of all: his mom’s place. There are hobo
home invasions, terrifying teens, perplex-
ing plays, weeping wounds, secrets from
the past and intimations of the future.
Various moments recall Kafka, Twain,
the Book of Job and Charlie Kaufman.
It’s less a story about human beings in
human situations than a trippy gamut of
threats and feelings. It’s a lot.
The source of horror in Hereditary
and Midsommar was a realisation that
the characters’ choices didn’t matter
and the apparently comfortable worlds
they inhabited were elaborate cages.
Reality grew nightmarish, dream-logic
momentum granting barely enough
time for peripheral anxieties to become
understandings of persecution before
helplessness set in. Beau, however, is an BEDTIME STORY
infantilised inadequate fearfully inhabit- Joaquin Phoenix as Beau
ing an unaccountable hellscape, lacking
even rudimentary human bonds because
his monstrous mother did such a number
on him. He’s sympathetic – poor bastard –
but hardly identifiable. Nor is there much
sense of story momentum in his hapless,
increasingly bloodied wanderings. Heredi-
tary was long, Midsommar longer, but both
felt propulsive. This is even longer and its
episodic structure and haywire fantasia
setting make it feel longer still. It’s hard
to thrill to the turn of the screw when the
wheels have already come off.
The characters don’t deliver in psy-
chologically naturalistic terms either –
though, taken as types, there’s much to
enjoy in Phoenix’s almost cartoonishly
unremitting guilt, fear and confusion, and
the icy magnetism that Patti LuPone and
(in flashbacks) Zoe Lister-Jones bring to
Beau’s mother Mona and Nathan Lane’s
garrulous suburban paterfamilias. The
dreamlike tone is helped by Fiona Crom-
bie’s richly weird production design, gar-
nished with outlandish storefronts, post-
ers and magazines. And the film leans
harder into comedy than Aster’s others,
from deadpan absurdism and gonzo slap-
stick to the running gag of people con-
stantly telling each other how sorry they
are, in a world without empathy or care.
Random violence and public humili-
ation notwithstanding, sex might top
the long list of things Beau is afraid of,
thanks to maternal conditioning by way
of Freud and the brothers Grimm. This
overdetermined Oedipal smothering ulti-
mately brings the film’s overblown fanta-
sia right back home, insisting that there’s
most to fear from those who should care
the most. Just because you’re paranoid,
doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
And, in an Ari Aster film, they will.
In UK cinemas from 19 May
 71

THREE MORE
The Old Man Movie: or Up (2009): successful farmer Old Milker loses it all in
a mushroom cloud of dairy when his prize cow explodes ESTONIAN ANIMATIONS
Lactopalypse after not being milked. Cut to the present day, and now
another farmer, the Old Man, provides the neighbour- BY ALEX DUDOK DE WIT

ESTONIA 2019 hood with milk from his prize heifer. When his hapless
CERTIFICATE 15 87M 57S grandchildren Aino, Priidik and little Mart arrive from
the city to stay, however, things go awry. The kids acci-
DIRECTORS MIKK MÄGI
OSK AR LEHEMA A dentally allow the cow to escape, resulting in a desperate
WRIT TEN BY MIKK MÄGI pursuit to prevent another ‘Lactopalypse’ as the rogue ani-
OSK AR LEHEMA A
STORY MIKK MÄGI mal’s udders swell. Watching these events, the deranged
OSK AR LEHEMA A Old Milker, now a disgusting part-man-part-milk hybrid,
PEETER RITSO
CINEMATOGRAPHY URMAS JÕEMEES seizes his chance for revenge, hiring three local unem-
NAIL (HEINO PARS, 1972)
LEAD ANIMATORS EGERT KESA ployed workers armed with chainsaws to hunt down the
OLGA STALEV Nails quarrel, perform
EDITOR OSK AR LEHEMA A cow themselves. circus tricks and flirt ill-
SET DESIGN TRIIN PAUMER The rudimentary animation style is part of the film’s advisedly with a hammer
SVEN-TÕNIS PUSK AR
ANU-LAURA TUT TELBERG rough-hewn charms – the clay figures’ pasty faces, bulbous in this delicate stop-motion
MUSIC STEN-OLLE MOLDAU appendages and immobile mouths almost daring the audi- short by the great Soviet-
LAURI K ADALIPP era director Pars. These
VOICE CAST JAN UUSPÕLD ence to connect with its basic, unrefined characters and
MÄRT AVANDI aesthetics. In their first feature, writer-directors Oskar are the simplest characters
INDREK OJARI imaginable – essentially
Lehemaa and Mikk Mägi also provide several incongru-
straight lines (though made
SYNOPSIS
ous character voices, bringing a welcome adult edge to the of rubber, not metal, for ease
crude slapstick and toilet humour. The only slick things of animation) – yet Pars’s
In a remote Estonian village, three visiting children accidentally
on view here are Old Milker’s oozing creamy tears and crew tease out expressive
free their grandfather’s prize cow. They race to find it, since
after 24 hours without milking, its udders will explode. buttermilk blood. performances, the nails
Meanwhile, vengeful ex-dairy farmer Old Milker recruits a The cow-chase plot allows for an expanded series of slinking and hopping their
chainsaw-wielding gang to hunt down and kill the cow to avoid loosely connected vignettes in which Lehemaa and Mägi way sensuously through the
the ‘Lactopalypse’. really go for broke. There’s a woodland hippie festival whose skits. As others have noted,
they are cousins to the lamps
supposedly free-loving participants get gleefully – and liter-
REVIEWED BY LEIGH SINGER in Pixar’s Luxo Jr (1986).
ally – skewered; a horny ancient tree spirit with a novel use
for a tractor; and a super-sized villain showdown which
If the Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer and the South Park recalls certain Disney or Transformers climactic battles, but
crew launched a joint takeover of Aardman Animation, which heads in a gross-out gag direction no family-friendly
they might come up with something as surreal and puerile film would dare go.
as this madcap, very funny, somehow sweet-natured Esto- It’s fascinating, though, how such an unrepentant film
nian stop-motion comedy. Expanding on the viral Vanamehe also espouses right-on messages: city kids glued to their
Multikas web series of shorts, starring the cheerfully sinister phones need to commune more with nature, and animal

FILMS
Old Man farmer character, the feature raises its narrative rights trump enslaved dairy production. Thankfully, this BREAKFAST ON THE GRASS
stakes to a potential ruminant apocalypse, while the bodily is never at the expense of outlandish visuals, a well-timed (PRIIT PÄRN, 1987)
function- and bovine-inspired clowning is arguably filthier swear word or a flatulent pig. If that’s your kind of animated Pärn’s career took off in the
than ever. Call it Creature Discomforts. critter feature, you’re in for a grand day out. dying years of the Soviet
The story’s bizarre background is laid out in an archive Union, as diminishing
newsreel style reminiscent of Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004) In UK cinemas from 2 June censorship allowed him
more freedom to satirise his
society. This film, a study
of grim, melancholy lives
behind the Iron Curtain, is
the best and most haunting
example. Pärn’s absurdist
wit and loose, often
grotesque caricatural style
have had a huge influence on
global animation: the team
behind Rugrats (1991-2006)
was surely watching.

MANIVALD (CHINTIS
LUNDGREN, 2017)
Lundgren’s films are
coloured in pinks and
reds, and populated by
horny anthropomorphic
animals whose sexual antics
evoke human foibles and
vulnerabilities. In Manivald,
a hunky handyman wolf
disrupts the uneasy domestic
life of a 33-year-old fox and
his mother. The film’s sweet
nature and surrealism are
typical of Lundgren. A spin-
PRIMAL CREAM The Old Man Movie: Lactopalypse
off series is in the works.
 72

Plan 75 Hayakawa’s remarkably muted way of

rendering brutality, dissent and the dev-
SAVE THE EXPIRY DATE
Baishō Chieko as Michi
recently reconciled relatives; in the lonely
glare of a small, dimly lit apartment.
astating chasm between generations is At first glance, Plan 75’s inductees are
JAPAN/FRANCE 2022
CERTIFICATE 15 113M 7S
apparent from the outset. A massacre at willing parties. Hayakawa’s exposition-
a care home for the elderly is suggested heavy first half shows us how partici-
DIRECTOR HAYAK AWA CHIE by a blood-splattered gun and the rotat- pants are provided with a 24/7 chatline,
SCREENPLAY HAYAK AWA CHIE ing wheel of a fallen wheelchair. Plan 75 is afterlife arrangements and a ¥100,000
BASED ON A STORY BY HAYAK AWA CHIE
JASON GRAY executed by young and middle-aged civil reward. But as we become acquainted
CINEMATOGRAPHY URATA HIDEHO servants with breezy nonchalance and with the rich inner lives of two characters
EDITOR ANNE KLOTZ
ART DIRECTOR SHIOK AWA SETSUKO bureaucratic efficiency; colourless gas in particular, Michi (Baishō Chieko) and
MUSIC RÉMI BOUBAL sends the initiative’s participants gently Yukio (Takao Taka), we learn that they
COSTUME DESIGN OK AMOTO K ANAKO
CAST BAISHŌ CHIEKO into that good night. Even the one act have less agency over their decisions than
ISOMURA HAYATO of resistance to the plan is represented one might imagine.
TAK AO TAK A
STEFANIE ARIANNE in the most understated way: we see only It becomes clear that ageing with dig-
the impact of brown liquid on a poster, nity is not just an ethical question but an
SYNOPSIS thrown by someone offscreen. economic one. Indeed, Hayakawa’s stir-
A struggling elderly woman, Michi, grapples Hayakawa’s quietly realist treatment of ring film is less an argument about the
with a life-or-death decision when the the dystopian premise makes for haunting merits and ills of euthanasia than a sear-
Japanese government introduces Plan viewing. The mellow dialogue and casual ing interrogation of how capitalism has
75, a voluntary euthanasia scheme for the pacing suggest an absence of conflict. made it too expensive to grow old with
aged. However, what is first presented as
a permanent reprieve from existence soon
But it is precisely the ordinariness of Plan dignity. As housing precarity, unemploy-
becomes a way for Michi to rediscover life. 75’s visual scheme that pricks the viewer’s ment and unwieldy application processes
conscience: it is disconcertingly easy to for pension schemes chisel away at the
REVIEWED BY SARA MERICAN imagine the plan being implemented in characters’ self-esteem, the movie makes
many countries with ageing populations. it clear that in a neoliberal schema, the
The sombre, noirish sensibilities of cin- elderly are simply a hindrance to Japan’s
With Plan 75, director Hayakawa Chie ematographer Urata Hideho – who pre- f inancial growth and technological
begins her feature film career by posing viously shot the darkly incisive, Golden progress. The initiative of the title
a moral question about the end of life. Leopard-winning Singaporean film A embodies a telling inconsistency in the
In her imagining, the Japanese govern- Land Imagined (2018) – help convey the government’s approach to elder care: for
ment, following a spate of hate crimes sense that not all may be well. Unease can all the plan’s talk of the dignity of death,
against the elderly, introduces an opt-in be detected in the glance two Plan 75 par- scant effort or resources are put towards
euthanasia scheme, ‘Plan 75’, for those ticipants give each other on their death- enabling a dignified life.
aged 75 and above. beds; in a shared car ride between two The bulk of the work of caring for the
geriatric population in the film has fallen
on the shoulders of migrant workers like
FILMS

Maria (Stefanie Arianne), from the Phil-

ippines – an example of how ‘unwanted’
jobs in countries like Japan have propped
up booming remittance economies in
other parts of Asia. We first see Maria
working at an elderly care home, but she
is hard-pressed for money: her daughter
has a heart disease and requires surgery.
An acquaintance tips Maria off about a
better-paying job with Plan 75, which
involves sorting the belongings of the
deceased. Maria witnesses a colleague
pocketing valuable items, and is encour-
aged by this colleague to do the same.
Even in death, society is set up to wrest
every last cent of value from a person’s life.
Maria is cheered on by her community
as she fights for every dollar to nurse her
young but sick daughter back to health
– yet society barely flinches at Plan 75,
which pushes many healthy elderly
people to choose euthanasia in the name
of national duty and self-sacrifice. At one
point, Maria falls asleep at work, and a
vision of an old person lying on a hospi-
tal bed gives way to an image of a young
girl sitting by a window. It’s the visual
equivalent of a rhetorical question: is the
sanctity of life contingent on one’s age?
Plan 75 expresses the escalating anxi-
eties about one’s silver years in Japan,
which has one of the world’s most rapidly
ageing populations. But the film’s explo-
ration of life’s sacredness, and its tender
portrait of elderly relationships, tran-
scend cultural specificities; it’s a resonant
lesson in humanism.

In UK cinemas now

Master Gardener
DIRECTOR PAUL SCHRADER
WRIT TEN BY PAUL SCHRADER
CINEMATOGRAPHY ALEX ANDER DYNAN
EDITOR BENJAMIN RODRIGUEZ JR
PRODUCTION DESIGN ASHLEY FENTON
MUSIC DEVONTÉ HYNES
COSTUME DESIGN WENDY TALLEY
CAST JOEL EDGERTON
QUINTESSA SWINDELL
SIGOURNEY WEAVER
SYNOPSIS
Norma, the proprietor of the Gracewood
Estate in Louisiana, relies heavily on her head
gardener, Narvel. When Norma’s tearaway
great-niece becomes an orphan, the dowager
entrusts her to Narvel as an apprentice. She
shows promise, and grows increasingly close
to Narvel – but the gardener harbours a dark
secret that threatens their blossoming bond.
REVIEWED BY JESSICA KIANG
All it takes is for an unsmiling man of evi-
dent self-discipline and slicked-back hair
to sit at a spartan desk and begin to write
in a journal, and you know you’re in a late-
period Paul Schrader movie. In the deeply
peculiar, but from certain angles fascinat-
ing, Master Gardener – the third film in a the-
matic trilogy, with First Reformed (2017) and
The Card Counter (2021) – the man is Narvel
Roth (Joel Edgerton, blunt and superb
as ever) and the desk is in the monastic
shack he occupies in the grounds of the
grand estate whose gardens he oversees.
The hair is side-parted and severe, and
the journal entries consist mostly of horti-
cultural observations, intoned in Narvel’s
uninflected voiceover so tersely that they
take on the heft of haiku.
But this would not be a Paul Schrader
film if that were all there is to Narvel.
Underneath his carefully concealing
clothes is writing of a far uglier sort – tat-
toos, covering his torso, of white suprema-
cist slogans and swastikas. Narvel is a
reformed neo-Nazi, who some years earlier
turned on his former gang and now has
been hidden away by his minder, Deputy
Neruda (Esai Morales), in this unlikely job
under this unlikely name. At Gracewood
Gardens he has found, if not peace, then
equilibrium and a vocation for garden-
ing that has gained him the loyalty of his
small, diverse staff. His green thumb also
appears to be the main reason he enjoys
special attention from Norma (a fabu-
lously haughty Sigourney Weaver), the
lady of the manor – well, that and a shared
tendency toward neatness, him in spotless
overalls tucked into somehow tidily mud-
died boots; her in pressed, pleated pastels,
an occasional cardigan over her shoulders
her only concession to casualness.
Soon, though, we’re shown how much
weirder that relationship is. Sometimes,
Narvel is summoned to Norma’s bed-
room, where, when he disrobes to reveal
the tattoos he’s ashamed of but perversely
– perhaps self-punishingly – has not had
removed, Norma’s eyes glitter. Disturb-
ingly enough, it’s with something other
than horror. So, it’s not surprising that
when Norma orders Narvel to take on
her estranged great-niece Maya (Quin-
tessa Swindell) as an apprentice, she does
so with evident distaste for the young
woman’s mixed-race heritage. There are
moments of violence later in this oddly
shaped redemption narrative, but none
more vicious than Norma’s brittle, entitled,
racist disdain, especially once sharpened
by sexual jealousy when she perceives the
attraction between Maya and Narvel.
Never one to shy away from contro-
versy, here Schrader runs toward it and
gives it a big hug, in the brazenly multi-
level-triggering relationship that blossoms
between a fortysomething white guy with
‘White Pride’ emblazoned across his shoul-
ders and a Black woman half his age who
is introduced to us in a ‘No Bad Vibes’
T-shirt. Even without the racial and age-
gap politics, Maya and Narvel’s romance
73
would be problematic: once again,
Schrader has only sketchily outlined a
HEDGE OF DARKNESS
Joel Edgerton as Narvel Roth,
Quintessa Swindell as Maya
preternaturally forgiving female character
who exists mainly as a conduit for a sinner-
man’s redemption.
Yet certain offbeat, anti-climactic
choices work to upend our expectations
of strict dramatic realism: the avuncular
FILMS
rather than romantic chemistry between
the actors, the muted photography, the
clipped, non-naturalistic dialogue and
the gardens shown not in riotous splen-
dour but in dry brown die-back periods.
Master Gardener is strangely abstract, which
damps down many of the real-world ten-
sions it invokes and then doesn’t much care
to explore. The nature of Narvel’s past sins
is of less interest to Schrader than the fact
of them, as a kind of cosmic imbalance
that needs to be righted through atone-
ment. What is distinctive is a seed of very
un-Schraderian optimism, late in a career
more often defined by despair or nihilism
or religiously accented torment.
Along with the general air of unreality,
this uncharacteristic hopefulness makes
Master Gardener, with its obvious meta-
phors and archetypes, a kind of fairytale,
in which Narvel is the princess in the
tower, Norma his cruel captor and Maya
the rescuer whose kiss can set him free.
Sometimes the fantasy gets clumsy, as
when Narvel buries his head in Maya’s,
erm, lady garden, and is suddenly hallelu-
jah-ing down a night-time highway lined
with garish CG flowers. But mostly the
pruned-back simplicity makes a fable out
of a fraught scenario, much as a designer
makes a formal garden out of a wilderness.
It’s a vision of the world not as it is, but as
Schrader might, surprisingly, wish it were:
with all the weeds pulled out, and where
there’s no nature – however overgrown
with hatred and violence – that love and
good pair of secateurs cannot tame.
In UK cinemas from 26 May
 75

Little Richard:
I Am Everything
USA 2023
CERTIFICATE 15 101M 17S

DIRECTOR LISA CORTÉS

CINEMATOGRAPHY KEITH WALKER
GRAHAM WILLOUGHBY
LEAD EDITOR NYNEVE MINNEAR
MUSIC TAMAR-K ALI BROWN

SYNOPSIS

A documentary about the musician Little

Richard and his ascension to the rock ’n’
roll pantheon from humble beginnings in
Macon, Georgia. It takes in his influences,
his musical legacy and his defiant queerness,
which was complicated by religious guilt.
Friends, musicians and academics weigh in
as talking heads.

REVIEWED BY ARJUN SAJIP

Like most of the great 1950s rock ’n’

rollers, Little Richard is arguably best
served by compilation albums – any
creditable example is shot through with
his unrelenting intensity and irrepress-
ible panache. But most of the screamer’s
best-ofs hitch their wagon to his formida-
ble body of mid– to late-50s hits, sidelin-
ing his early R&B singles, the musical
digressions of his 60s and 70s comebacks,
and his born-again Christian songs. Lisa
Cortés’s documentary about the icon
appraises him from a variety of angles,

creating a dazzling hall of mirrors: we see
him reflected everywhere, while Richard
himself, despite his boundless outward
confidence, struggles to reconcile the
many selves he spent his life constructing.
We begin with a brief excerpt from a
1972 BBC interview that has, thanks to
social media, enjoyed renewed exposure
in recent years. Little Richard, wearing
eyeliner and a studded crown-shaped
headband, with carefully tended eye-
brows and a repertoire of camp hand
gestures, hollers: “Let it all hang out with
the beautiful Little Richard from down
in Macon, Georgia!” (to which the mild-
mannered interviewer responds, “Were
you always so shy?”). It hints at the docu-
mentary’s most transgressive argument:
that one of the originators of rock ’n’ roll –
a multi-billion-dollar industry and a foun-
dation stone of post-war popular culture
– was not only Black, but proudly queer.
Whether or not this comes as a sur-
prise will depend on how familiar you are
with Little Richard’s media appearances
over the years. Many of the charms and
narrative beats of Cortés’s documentary
are on display in that 11-minute BBC
interview, in which Richard’s queerness,
as well as his confidence and propen-
sity for trash talk (markedly similar to
Muhammad Ali’s in its rhymes, rhythms
and wordplay), are unabashed; the seg-
ment, available on YouTube, also covers
the star’s religious conversion and his
alternating graciousness, bitterness and
gratitude towards the white artists who
enjoyed greater success with his music
than he did.
Perhaps the most interesting conten-
tion raised in Cortés’s film is that Rich-
ard’s gender nonconformity, though
undoubtedly radical, was in fact a precon-
dition of his success. It supposedly took
the edge off his masculinity and made
him seem less of a sexual threat to white
girls in a world where the Black teenager
Emmett Till, barely a fortnight before
Richard recorded his touchpaper-light-
ing hit ‘Tutti Frutti’, had been murdered
and mutilated for allegedly whistling at
a white woman. But Richard himself
unpacked this point, very articulately, in
a 1997 interview with US talk-show host
Tom Snyder – excerpted in the film, and
again easily findable on the internet.
Cortés’s film, then, is a compilation of
sorts – a largely chronological assemblage
of the known facets of Little Richard. For
viewers unfamiliar with Richard’s story
or the history of rock ’n’ roll, the docu-
mentary makes for an engaging primer.
The influence of gospel singer and guitar
maestra Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the seg-
regation of Black music from white in the
American charts, Richard’s childhood
as one of 12 siblings in a poor Georgia
household – the personal and histori-
cal context is efficiently but evocatively
sketched out.
What feels subversive in Cortés’s
treatment is her deft weaving of queer
histories and subcultures into the well-
worn cloth of rock ’n’ roll history. Richard
FILMS
started out as a drag queen with the stage POMPADOUR AND CIRCUMSTANCE
Little Richard
name Princess LaVonne, and was taught
how to play piano (and wear a magnifi-
cent pompadour) by Esquerita, a gay
performer several years his junior. Billy
Wright, another openly gay musician,
was also a key influence, and helped Rich-
ard score his first recording contract.
The f ilm is most poignant when
exploring the consequences and com-
plications of Little Richard’s intersect-
ing identities – Richard being arrested
multiple times for his Blackness and
queerness, or renouncing his homosexu-
ality when in the throes of his evangelical
convictions, which welled up periodi-
cally throughout his life. Little Richard
was “very good at liberating other people
through his example,” says pop music
academic Jason King: “He was not very
good at liberating himself.”
Cortés ends with a rapid-fire montage
of the countless musicians that have
walked the path Little Richard blazed:
the Beatles, Prince, Lizzo, Lady Gaga,
Harry Styles… It recalls a quote from
earlier in the film that, in typical Richard
style, combines wit with bitter insight.
“We built a hell of a highway,” Bo Diddley
growls, in an archival chat with Little
Richard and Chuck Berry. “People are
still driving on it,” Richard adds, “and they
ain’t payin’ no toll.”
On Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime now
 76

The Eight It’s 1984 when Pietro (played as a child

by Lupo Barbiero) first arrives in the Ital-
direction, travelling to the Himalayas and
gaining success as a writer. Bruno, on the
SLOPE OPERA
Alessandro Borghi as Bruno,

Mountains
ian Alps for a summer holiday with his
mother (Elena Lietti). At his first meet-
ITALY/BELGIUM/FRANCE/UK 2022
ing with Bruno, the difference between
CERTIFICATE 12A 147M 5S the pair is stark. Pietro is a soft-spoken
11-year-old in bright woolly jumpers and
DIRECTORS FELIX VAN GROENINGEN shiny hair; Bruno (played as boy by Cris-
CHARLOT TE
VANDERMEERSCH tiano Sassella), slightly older, is all wellies
WRIT TEN BY FELIX VAN GROENINGEN and cow muck. Pietro is spoiled without
CHARLOT TE
VANDERMEERSCH being brattish; Bruno is foul-mouthed
DIALOGUE COLLABORATOR PAOLO COGNET TI without being a thug, but he does have
BASED ON THE NOVEL
LE OT TO MONTAGNE BY PAOLO COGNET TI to interrupt their play to milk the cows.
CINEMATOGRAPHY RUBEN IMPENS They literally speak different languages:
EDITOR NICO LEUNEN
PRODUCTION DESIGN MASSIMILIANO NOCENTE Bruno teaches Pietro the dialect of the
MUSIC DANIEL NORGREN village where he is the only remaining
COSTUME DESIGN FRANCESCA MARIA
BRUNORI boy, other families having fled in the face
CAST LUCA MARINELLI of an economic reality that has made rural
ALESSANDRO BORGHI
FILIPPO TIMI life untenable.
ELENA LIET TI Despite the idyllic setting, the friend-
SYNOPSIS
ship has its complications. The boys both
have dysfunctional relationships with
Young Pietro travels with his family every
their fathers, and Pietro feels some jeal-
year from their Turin home to the Italian
Alps for their summer break. One year, he
ousy when his parents, having appraised
befriends Bruno, a boy of the same age. We Bruno’s situation, want to take him back
follow their friendship, with its attendant to Turin for schooling. When this falls
ups, downs and culture clashes, over the through, the boys grow distant. Pietro,
next two decades. alienated from his father (Filippo Timi),
wanders from job to job without much
REVIEWED BY JOHN BLEASDALE direction. But after his father dies, Pietro
(now played by Luca Marinelli) discovers
Only city folk think of nature as Nature, he had stayed close to Bruno (Borghi),
complains Alpine native Bruno (Alessan- who now promises to build Pietro a
dro Borghi). All that local people think house in a remote patch of the mountains.
of are things you can point at with your The surprise is how the film matures
finger: trees, a stream, a meadow. And with the characters. The trajectory is not
FILMS
Luca Marinelli as Pietro
other hand, throws himself into the idea
of living like his ancestors, a man of the
mountains, herding and milking cattle
and making cheese.
The nature of their friendship is almost
anti-dramatic. When Bruno falls for a
former girlfriend of Pietro’s, there’s no
jealousy or fight; everything is resolved
in a simple phone call. When one of
the friends needs help, he asks for and
receives it. A bad falling out is resolved
the next day. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Moun-
tain (2005) inevitably comes to mind,
given the film’s pastoral setting and long
arc of time, but it is good to see friendship
here portrayed with as much complex-
ity as sexual relationships so often are.
Marinelli and Borghi are superb, opening
up to each other in moments of intimacy
yet able to switch to a relaxed matiness.
A further pleasure will be had for those
who saw their previous pairing in Clau-
dio Caligari’s 2015 film Non Essere Cattivo
(‘Don’t Be Bad’), where the two actors
won fame as a pair of drug-dealing friends
on the periphery of Rome.
Their performances here are captured
in Ruben Impens’ neat Academy-aspect
cinematography. The framing of every
shot is exquisite and the sense of place
and time, the steepness and prospect
of the mountains, the snow and fresh-
ness of spring are palpable. Daniel Nor-
gren’s soundtrack is often surprising

yet, watching Felix van Groeningen and
Charlotte Vandermeersch’s adaptation of
Paolo Cognetti’s prize-winning novel The
Eight Mountains (2016), a saga of a friend-
ship from youth through adulthood, it’s
impossible not to weigh such abstrac-
tions as countryside and city, civilisation
and the wild, oppositions that play out in
many comparable stories of camaraderie
– Mark Twain’s half-civilised Tom Sawyer
and his friend Huckleberry Finn, say, or
Johanna Spyri’s Heidi and her goatherd
friend Peter.
of childhood friends growing distant: as
adults they become much deeper friends
than they were as children – no searching
for lost innocence here – and their grow-
ing maturity, finding better versions of
themselves in their understanding of each
other, is wonderfully portrayed by the two
actors. The building of the house over the
course of a summer becomes the objec-
tive correlative of their friendship. They
enjoy the isolation, swimming in the lake,
and conversation. Pietro – Berio, in dia-
lect – lightens up and finally finds some
and touching.
One criticism is of an unnecessary
voiceover all too redolent of John-Boy’s
novelistic musings in The Waltons (1972-
81). Some will balk at the leisurely two-
and-a-half-hour running time – but in
the mountains the air is clearer and time
moves at a different pace. And Bruno
and Pietro have a bond you can point at
with your finger and say, there it is: there’s
a friendship.
In UK cinemas now

This both is and is not a film about Parkin-
Still: son’s. Fox was diagnosed at the height of
A Michael J. Fox Movie his fame, coming off the Back to the Future
trilogy, in 1991, but the story he wants to
DIRECTOR DAVIS GUGGENHEIM
tell, he says early on, is not a simple one
CINEMATOGRAPHY C. KIM MILES of a career cut short in its prime. Fox was
EDITOR MICHAEL HARTE already disillusioned with Hollywood, and
PRODUCTION DESIGN MAT THEW BUDGEON
MUSIC JOHN POWELL Still is a nuanced meditation on the price of
COSTUME DESIGN BEVERLY HUYNH success. Whether that is meant to include
WITH MICHAEL J. FOX
Parkinson’s is left unsaid: the disease is still
SYNOPSIS incompletely understood, but what the
A documentary about Michael J. Fox, made in collaboration film shows is a young Brat Pack-adjacent
with the star, who appears in the present as an interview star working and (more euphemistically)
subject and in semi-staged scenes showing his daily life as partying too hard.
a man with Parkinson’s. The film also incorporates extracts Fox narrates, talks directly to the camera,
from his film and television work, archive footage and and is shown going about his day, and the
reconstructions. film’s subtitle seems about right: this is
the story Fox wants to tell. The director is
REVIEWED BY HENRY K. MILLER
Davis Guggenheim, though, best known
for An Inconvenient Truth (2006), who uses
a mixture of home video, archive footage,
and clips from Fox’s acting performances
– plus some uncanny reconstructions,
sometimes woven in with and difficult to
distinguish from the other material. The
clips are largely chosen to resonate with
the film’s main themes: overwork and suc-
cess-worship in the 1980s, then secrecy in
the 1990s. These are often so pointed that
it is again hard to tell whether they are real,
BACK TO THE PRESENT Michael J. Fox or if the writers were in the know.
The film is less squeamish when it comes to depicting Margaret’s ambivalence about organised religion
ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET.
It is the summer before sixth grade and
Are You There, God? 11-year-old Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder
It’s Me, Margaret. Fortson) is in a neighbour’s garden, parad-
ing through sprinkler spray in a borrowed
CERTIFICATE PG 105M 59S
bikini. Back at home, a collection of
stuffed animals furnishes her bed. Marga-
DIRECTOR KELLY FREMON CRAIG ret’s parents, Barbara (Rachel McAdams)
WRIT TEN BY KELLY FREMON CRAIG and Herb (Benny Safdie), have recently
BASED ON THE BOOK BY JUDY BLUME
CINEMATOGRAPHY TIM IVES traded in the family’s bohemian apartment
EDITORS NICK MOORE in New York for a life of suburban bliss in
OONA FLAHERTY
PRODUCTION DESIGN STEVE SAKLAD New Jersey circa 1970. It is against this
MUSIC HANS ZIMMER backdrop that Margaret must navigate
COSTUME DESIGN ANN ROTH
CAST RACHEL MCADAMS a new set of social rules, as well as the
ABBY RYDER FORTSON indignities of her changing body, if she
ELLE GRAHAM
is to survive the trenches of adolescence.
SYNOPSIS The daughter of a Christian mother and
Born to a Jewish father (Benny Safdie) and Christian a Jewish father, but raised without a faith
mother (Rachel McAdams), 11-year-old Margaret navigates to call her own, Margaret begins to pursue
the obscure rules that govern puberty and organised religion her own relationship with God, flirting
in this wholesome adaptation of Judy Blume’s pioneering with religion and exploring her spirituality.
coming-of-age novel, originally published in 1970. More than 50 years after it was pub-
lished, writer and director Kelly Fremon
REVIEWED BY SIMRAN HANS
Craig wittily adapts Judy Blume’s beloved
novel of the same name, which has been
challenged and even banned because of
its candid discussion of puberty. Fremon
Craig, who directed the underrated teen
movie The Edge of Seventeen (2016), marries
a natural comic instinct with deep sensitiv-
ity towards the loneliness of growing up.
She’s a good match for the empathetic, no-
nonsense Blume, though Fremon Craig’s
approach is softer, and a touch more sani-
tised. Rather like TV adverts for sanitary
towels, with their blue liquid and smil-
ing women dressed in tennis whites, the
ROOKIE BLUME Rachel McAdams as Barbara, Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret graphic realities of periods, for example,
77
The heart of the film is Fox and his
family’s private struggle to come to terms
with the disease. In 1988 he had married
his Family Ties co-star Tracy Pollan, whose
career, as he admits, instantly took a back
seat: she raised their children while he was
shooting movies, still in semi-denial about
the diagnosis and self-medicating with
alcohol and pills. At one point Fox says he
saw Parkinson’s as karmic retribution, but
this is to provide insight into his state of
mind, rather than an attempt to moralise
the inexplicable. Fox pulled back from
movies to the more manageable routine
of television, and went public about his ill-
ness in 1998, while starring in the sitcom
Spin City (1996-2000): here the clips show
him working to mask the symptoms.
Still does not dwell on Fox’s subsequent
career, including his fundraising, and it
could have said more about his later tel-
evision roles – notably his choice to play
a lawyer who shamelessly exploits his tar-
dive dyskinesia to win over juries in The
Good Wife (2009-16) and the spin-off The
Good Fight (2017-22). There are other points
where the film might have probed deeper,
but Still is sincere and affecting without
being solemn.
In UK cinemas and on Apple TV+ from 12 May
FILMS
are bloodlessly alluded to rather than
rudely discovered.
The f ilm is less squeamish when it
comes to depicting Margaret’s earnest
ambivalence about organised religion,
which she discovers to be a minefield of
confusing rules and regulations. She visits
a synagogue with her conspiratorial pater-
nal grandmother Sylvia (Kathy Bates, fab-
ulously decked out in costume jewellery
and velvet), experiences a gospel service in
a Black church and tests out Catholic con-
fession. No dogma brings her the spiritual
guidance she craves.
Cleverly, Fremon Craig draws a paral-
lel between the restrictions and double
standards of both religion and woman-
hood, as well as the herd mentality that
appears to govern both. At her new
school, Margaret falls in with Nancy
Wheeler (Elle Graham, a gifted comic),
who speaks about boys and bras with
brattish confidence. She invites Margaret
to a vigilantly regulated secret club, which
prohibits her from wearing socks with her
penny loafers (Margaret’s mother winces
in anticipation of her daughter’s blis-
tered feet). McAdams especially is a joy
to watch as the hippyish Barbara, an art
teacher-turned-housewife whose journey
of self-determination mirrors her daugh-
ter’s. Her particular mix of breezy and con-
flicted feels in tune with the overall mood
of this film, which has a surprising ability
to undercut its own cuteness.
In UK cinemas from 19 May
 78
Reality Director Tina Satter goes into granu-
lar details in this story of the 25-year-old
American whistleblower Reality Winner,
DIRECTOR TINA SAT TER arrested in 2017 for leaking a report that
WRIT TEN BY TINA SAT TER
JAMES PAUL DALLAS confirmed Russian hacking of US presi-
CINEMATOGRAPHY PAUL YEE dential voting systems. Satter, adapting
EDITORS JENNIFER VECCHIARELLO
RON DULIN her acclaimed 2019 play Is This a Room,
PRODUCTION DESIGN TOMMY LOVE mines dialogue verbatim from FBI agents’
MUSIC NATHAN MICAY
COSTUME DESIGN ENVER CHAK ARTASH own transcripts of their wholly recorded
CAST SYDNEY SWEENEY visit to Winner’s home. The expertly
JOSH HAMILTON
MARCHÁNT DAVIS staged and modulated result lends an eerie
hyperreality and tension to the already the-
SYNOPSIS atrical and uncanny act of interrogation.
Its screenplay drawn verbatim from official FBI recordings, Remarkably, given the semi-experi-
Reality is a dramatisation of Bureau agents’ pre-arrest mental stage source, Satter casts TV star
questioning of Reality Winner, the young woman who blew Sydney Sweeney (The White Lotus, 2021-)
the whistle on Russian interference in US elections by as Winner, and without directing her to
leaking documents to investigative outlet The Intercept.
deliver a righteous yowl of outrage. Not
REVIEWED BY NICOLAS RAPOLD that that would have fitted the transcript,
which supplies the film’s chillingly banal
circumstances: Winner is arrested after
arriving home in Augusta, Georgia, with
groceries. She answers the FBI agents’ ini-
tially desultory questioning while searches
of her single-storey house proceed. Her
biggest concern is the welfare of her cat
and dog – as an NSA contractor (a Farsi/
Dari/Pashto linguist), she thinks it might
all be a routine security check.
Those pets – and her CrossFit rou-
tines, and other everyday details – soon
become the subject of questioning as the
LADY IN THE LEAK Sydney Sweeney as Reality Winner agents shift toward hardball inquiries and
Occasionally the aesthetic approach is too fussy, especially when combined with a soaring score
FILMS
A CRACK IN THE MOUNTAIN
In Il buco (2021), an exquisite meditation on
A Crack in the Mountain the activities of the Piedmont Speleologi-
cal Group, director Michelangelo Fram-
martino made Calabrian cave exploration
DIRECTOR ALASTAIR EVANS feel a little like a mission to the moon.
FILMED BY ALASTAIR EVANS
EDITED BY ALASTAIR EVANS That analogy is echoed in Alastair Evans’s
compelling new documentary A Crack in
SYNOPSIS the Mountain, which focuses on the largest
A documentary about one of the world’s largest natural known natural cave on the planet: Hang
caves, Hang Son Doong in Vietnam. Through interviews Son Đoong in Phong Nha-Ke Bàng
with explorers, local workers, expats and activists, the film National Park, Vietnam. Among the
reveals the challenges facing the site and the surrounding contributors to Evans’s film is Bill Stone,
area due to the cave’s increased commercialisation and CEO of Stone Aerospace, who describes
ongoing plans for development.
how his childhood dream of becoming
REVIEWED BY ALEX RAMON an astronaut shifted to a fascination with
cave exploration – caves being, in Stone’s
words, “the last terrestrial frontier”.
Evans’s film centres on the conflicts sur-
rounding Son Đoong’s future, which has
been contested since 2014, when plans
were announced to build a cable car into
the site. Such plans would dramatically
increase visitor numbers but, dissenters
argue, destroy the cave’s ecosystem.
At first it seems that A Crack in the Moun-
tain will privilege white, Western perspec-
tives such as Stone’s in this debate. The
early sections of the film primarily com-
prise the reflections of members of the
British expedition team that first surveyed
and measured Son Đoong, as well as the
visitors for whom the cave has become an
integral and – at a $3,000 price tag – decid-
edly exclusive part of the Phong Nha tour-
GROT TO GET YOU INTO MY LIFE A Crack in the Mountain ist experience.
give her room to incriminate herself. But
Satter’s high-fidelity approach shows the
totalising control of the all-male FBI team,
whose personal queries cannot count as
banter, given the power dynamic. (Periodi-
cally, ‘glitch’ visual effects signal moments
in the investigation that remain censored
from the record.) It’s all ambiently menac-
ing, though the khaki-clad lead questioner
is played nebbishy by Josh Hamilton as an
affably self-assured company man (his col-
leagues skew don’t-mess-with-me burly).
Winner, an Air Force member and ama-
teur weightlifter, has a self-deprecating
humour and easygoing distractedness
that Sweeney (who is about Winner’s age
at the time of arrest) channels aptly. It’s
possible to wonder whether Winner didn’t
protect herself better because, at some
level, she felt that she had done the right
thing in informing voters of the threat to
democracy. But not even sharing the gun
enthusiasms of her FBI agents – who don’t
blink when she says she has a pink AR-15
and a Glock – can save her from handcuffs.
Winner was later sentenced to five years
by the very Trump Administration that
was helped to power by Russian agents;
Satter’s trenchant film uses the foregone
conclusion of its structure to underline the
tragic injustice of its heroine’s fate.
In UK cinemas from 2 June
While the remarks of these contribu-
tors are engaging, the film grows in power
when it widens its scope to include con-
flicting Vietnamese voices. Especially
vital in this regard are the contributions
of Lê Nguyen Thiên Huong, co-founder
of the #SaveSonDoong movement, and
author/activist Đang Hoàng Giang; both
lay out the arguments for the cave’s pro-
tection from corporate exploitation, and
describe the challenges of protesting in an
oppressive one-party state. Contrasting
with these critiques are the perspectives
of the local porters for whom Son Đoong
tourism provides a much-needed source
of income.
Despite the emphasis on talking heads,
Evans – the principal cinematographer
as well as director, producer and editor
– strives to make the film an arresting
visual experience befitting the richness
of the subject. Occasionally the aesthetic
approach is overly fussy, especially when
combined with a soaring score that’s too
calculated in its efforts to create an atmos-
phere of mystical awe. But many shots
are haunting, capturing the cave’s natu-
ral beauty in breathtakingly immersive
images. Throughout, wider contexts are
deftly sketched, but it’s the central conflict
between environmental protection and
economic opportunity that the film fleshes
out with nuance and insight.
In UK cinemas from 26 May

My Imaginary
Country
FRANCE/CHILE 2022
DIRECTOR PATRICIO GUZMÁN
SCRIPT PATRICIO GUZMÁN
CINEMATOGRAPHY SAMUEL LAHU
EDITOR LAURENCE MANHEIMER
MUSIC MIRANDA Y TOBAR
NARRATOR PATRICIO GUZMÁN
SYNOPSIS
Patricio Guzmán interviews women activists,
writers, journalists, and political scientists
who reflect on the causes and impact of the
2019 social protests in Chile. Using footage
and photographs of the protests, Guzmán
explores the movement for change that led
to Gabriel Boric’s victory over far-right
candidate José Antonio Kast in the 2021
presidential elections.
REVIEWED BY MARIA DELGADO
It is possible to read My Imaginary Coun-
try as a poetic dialogue with Patricio
Guzmán’s two earliest f ilms, which
depicted the optimism of Salvador
Allende’s first months in power – The First
Year (1972) – and the struggles to pursue
a democratic vision for the country: The
Battle of Chile (1975). Guzmán’s work is as
much about the past (how we construct
history/ies) as it is about the present (how
we understand the moment we are living
in). Since Nostalgia for the Light (2010), his
documentaries have dissected features of
the Chilean landscape which are adroitly
linked to the legacy of Augusto Pinochet’s
dictatorship. In My Imaginary Country,
the inequalities of a democracy built on
the foundations of a constitution drafted
under Pinochet are presented as the root
causes of the estallido social (what Guzmán
terms “a social outburst [that] set Chile
on fire”) that erupted on 18 October 2019.
Student protests against a hike in metro
fares sparked months of mass demon-
strations and disturbances, which led
two years later to the election of the left-
winger Gabriel Boric – the world’s young-
est elected head of state and the youngest
president in Chile’s history.
Guzmán’s film is structured around a
series of interviews with women activists
at the forefront of the protests: a photog-
rapher alleges she was shot in the eye by
police while documenting their violence;
a medic who attended to the wounded
speaks of the dangers they faced. Guzmán
was not in Chile when the protests broke
out, but returned in 2020 to investigate
what happened, acting on advice Chris
Marker gave him when he was working
on The Battle of Chile: “When you want to
film a fire, you must be ready at the place
where the first flame will appear.” He was
too late – as he acknowledges in the meas-
ured, calm voiceover that is such a distinc-
tive feature of his films – to witness the
first flame, but instead captures the voices
of those who were on the frontline, as a
means of dissecting a defining moment for
Chilean democracy.
Guzmán, off camera, asks his inter-
viewees probing questions: why don’t they
trust politicians? What did people want
most from the estallido social? What is the
most dangerous thing that could happen
here? Footage of the protests is deployed
to support the women’s testimonies. Tear
gas, water cannon and shots aimed at
protesters show the aggressive military
and police presence on the streets, with
dangerous echoes of the Pinochet regime,
– what political analyst Dr Claudia Hess
terms “paying the price for not acknowl-
edging or resolving the problems inher-
ited from the dictatorship”. The graphic
imagery of police violence is both brutal
and shocking: “I can’t believe I’m in pre-
sent-day Chile,” Guzmán comments as
police fire in the camera’s direction.
Ultimately, My Imaginary Country is a
galvanising film, showing what this grass-
roots activism has achieved. The scale of
the movement is deftly captured by the
camera sweeping up to photograph the 1.2
79
million people who marched to Santiago’s WALLED REVOLUTION
My Imaginary Country
Plaza Baquedano on 25 October – what
Guzmán calls the largest public protest in
Chilean history. The writer Nona Fernán-
dez’s comments about the country being
on fire are framed by footage of protest-
ers chanting “Chile has woken up” and
flames illuminating the large flag-waving
crowds at night. The neoliberal culture
in which everything and everyone has a
FILMS
price is challenged by the creative energy
visible in the street art, the percussive
street music created from the banging
of pots and pans and the animated sing-
ing of the crowds. Colectivo Las Tesis’s
anthem for feminist agency shows a new
model for collective leadership – indeed,
Guzmán categorises the estallido social as “a
movement without leaders”. Both student
activist Valentina Miranda and Mapuche
linguist Elisa Loncón are elected – as a
member and president respectively – of
the Chilean Constitutional Convention,
tasked with rewriting the 1980 constitu-
tion. Guzmán shows the estallido social is
about the very process of constructing an
inclusive democracy, one that recognises
and redresses the patriarchal abuses the
women describe.
Demands for healthcare reforms,
enhanced education opportunities and a
new constitution propelled Gabriel Boric
into power on a mandate of change. The
aftermath of the September 2022 plebi-
scite on the redrafted constitution, which
saw 62 per cent of voters reject the pro-
posed changes, may temporarily slow
down the filmmaker’s hopes that “the
country we imagined will become reality”.
But in 2023, as the country begins a new
constitution-writing process, the momen-
tum that Guzmán identifies, with women
at its core, drives a powerful vision for
Chile – one linked to Allende’s democratic
goals and attuned to a 21st-century sen-
sibility committed to reimagining social
equity across all aspects of its structures.
In UK cinemas from 9 June
 80
MUD, DEBT AND TEARS Adam Bessa as Ali
Harka
DIRECTOR LOTFY NATHAN
WRIT TEN BY LOTFY NATHAN
CINEMATOGRAPHY MA XIMILIAN PIT TNER
EDITORS SOPHIE CORRA
THOMAS NILES
PRODUCTION DESIGN MOHSEN RAIES
MUSIC ELI KESZLER
CAST ADAM BESSA
NAJIB ALLAGUI
SALIMA MA ATOUG
SYNOPSIS
Ali is a squatter on a Tunisian construction
site who makes a precarious living illegally
selling petrol. He’s saving money to pay a
smuggler to get him to Europe, but his plans
are thrown off when his father dies. Ali must
support his sisters and raise money to pay off
one of his father’s debts.
REVIEWED BY JOHN BLEASDALE
FILMS
One of the inciting incidents of the Arab
Spring was the self-immolation in Decem-
ber 2010 of a 26-year-old street vendor
called Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia.
The result of prolonged precarity and
years of harassment by state officials, his
violent death proved a lightning rod for
nationwide unrest at the endemic corrup-
tion that made so many Tunisians’ lives
nigh-on impossible. Large-scale pro-
tests ensued, the country’s president was
ousted the following month, and the rest,
as they say, is history… except that it isn’t;
not really. The years have passed but the
old problems of inequality, corruption and
injustice are still present, and are the sub-
ject of a furious denunciation in Harka, an
impressive fiction debut by the Egyptian-
American director Lotfy Nathan.
Ali (Adam Bessa) is a brooding young
man with a tormented soul. He spends
his days flogging black-market petrol out
of jerrycans on a street corner, and his
nights sleeping in an abandoned build-
ing site. All the while, he is stowing away
cash with a plan to head for Europe. His
loneliness and isolation are only partly
alleviated by his ne’er-do-well pal Omar
(Najib Allagui), with whom he has little
in common except poverty.
This hardscrabble life is already as
claustrophobic as an escape tunnel, but
the prospect of freedom shrinks further
when Ali’s brother (Khaled Brahem)
turns up to tell him their father has died,
and leaves their younger sisters, Alyssa
(Salima Maatoug) and Sarra (Ikbal
Harbi) in his care. Things turn even
worse when a collector arrives from the
bank with the unwelcome news that Ali
has inherited his father’s debts along with
his responsibilities. There appears to be
some trauma from an unexplained past
event which instigated Ali’s alienation
from his family, and which even now has
him preferring to sleep in yard rather than
take a room in what is in effect his house.
But Ali is no passive victim of circum-
stance. He takes on more risk ferrying the
bootlegged fuel cross-country; he seeks
out his brother to demand financial help;
he even tries to get the city to give him
his father’s old job, which he believes by
rights should be his. But he is stymied at
every turn, and a simmering fury begins
to build.
In the way it addresses social injus-
tice, Harka is both character study and
thriller. Eli Keszler’s soundtrack provides
a pounding percussive agitation that per-
fectly suits Ali’s pent-up rage; Maximilian
Pittner’s camera probes Ali’s mental state
as it starts to splinter, while also vividly
capturing all manner of wider settings,
from chaotic urban streets to dreamlike
landscapes. The drives to the border give
the film more scope, and Ali the oppor-
tunity to move up the criminal hierarchy,
but even here it’s a game of snakes and
ladders, and the young man soon finds
himself back at the beginning.
All the while, Bessa’s performance
coils tighter and tighter. Ali is a man of
few words, but there’s nothing impas-
sive about his silence: when he begins to
lose his grip on his situation, it becomes
clear that he’s a lit cigarette surrounded by
explosive fuel. The bribery he has to con-
tend with doesn’t just rob him of money,
it leaves him without a place in the world,
without dignity. A brief visit to a tourist
resort gives an idea of the gap between
him and the wealthy first-world visitors,
who look through him as if he doesn’t
exist. Ali’s occasional expressions of affec-
tion – especially toward Alyssa, to whom
he gives a puppy – are telling: teaching
her to pick up the puppy by the scruff of
its neck rather than cuddle it, he could be
expressing his own attitude to love.
Alyssa is also the chronicler of the
f ilm, providing a voiceover narration
that turns Ali’s story into a fable of sorts.
This attempt to humanise Ali from the
outside, to contain him in a family drama
rather than see him nakedly on his own
difficult terms, risks coming off as a com-
promise; director Lotfy Nathan might
have trusted his audience more here. But
Alyssa’s contribution provides an impor-
tant female voice in a very male world of
injustice, and her framing of events is a
minor distraction in a film with such a
persuasive and powerful accusation to
make. Nathan offers a deeply pessimistic
view of Tunisia’s predicament. The poor
are still desperate, and now, the film’s
ending suggests, even the most extreme
measures might no longer provoke popu-
lar protest.
In UK cinemas now
The Plains
FRANCE/AUSTRALIA 2022
DIRECTOR DAVID EASTEAL
WRIT TEN BY DAVID EASTEAL
CINEMATOGRAPHY SIMON J. WALSH
EDITED BY DAVID EASTEAL
CAST ANDREW RAKOWSKI
DAVID EASTEAL
CHERI LECORNU
SYNOPSIS
Shot largely from a forward-facing camera positioned on the
back seat of a car, this three-hour film captures the evening
commutes of a legal worker in Melbourne as he speaks on
the phone to his wife or his mother or gives a lift home to
one of his colleagues.
REVIEWED BY SAM WIGLEY
David Easteal’s extraordinary debut feature puts us in
the back seat of a middle-aged Australian legal worker’s
car as he drives home from the office each day. From a
fixed position between the driver and passenger seats,
the camera observes a journey that, through repetition,
becomes familiar to us: Andrew gets into his car and
drives off down a suburban road before joining the busy
freeway. Most days, en route, he’ll call his wife, Cheri,
to let her know he’s set off, and also his mum, who has
dementia. On some days, he gives a lift to a younger col-
league, David (played by Easteal himself ); otherwise,
he’ll listen to talk radio.
The Plains was filmed over the course of a year, record-
ing Andrew’s evening commute in unbroken takes that
paradoxically emphasise both the sameness and the dif-
ference of these journeys. No less than the clock radio
flicking around to 6am each morning in Groundhog Day
(1993), the sound of the power-lock mechanism unlock-
ing before Andrew gets into his air-conditioned car
at the start of each trip becomes an aural marker of a
cyclical routine. But there’s something subtler at play in
Easteal’s film than a critique of white-collar drudgery.
A number of screens concentrate our gaze in The
Plains. There’s the car windscreen, that widescreen view
through which we see the passing world: other cars,
roadsides, the liminal spaces of arterial Melbourne.
Each journey begins some time after 5pm, and among
many other things The Plains is a documentary about
the way the daylight dims at different times of the year,
as Andrew’s car drives on through the gathering twi-
light. Our barometer for tracking these changes is the
dashboard clock, another screen that draws the eye.
Then there’s the rear-view mirror, which – excepting
a moment near the end of the film – gives us our only
glimpses of Andrew’s face. Aside from this, we get to
know him only through his chatty conversation: The
COMMUTE WITNESS David Easteal as David, Andrew Rakowski as Andrew

Plains is a work of intimate portraiture told without us
properly seeing its subject.
The film’s minimal set-up superficially resembles Locke
(2013), Steven Knight’s car-bound drama in which Tom
Hardy, in full view of the camera, holds down a succes-
sion of speakerphone conversations as he drives from
Birmingham to London. But Locke’s melodramatic
plot mechanics and more restless visual vocabulary gave
Knight’s film the air of a high-concept radio play con-
sciously opened up for the screen. In its formal rigour
and emphasis on duration and the accretion of detail,
Easteal’s project is more in lane with the structuralist
avant-garde of Michael Snow and James Benning – per-
haps most especially the latter’s 1975 film The United States
of America, made in collaboration with Bette Gordon,
which tracked Vietnam-era America through the wind-
screen of two travellers making a cross-country drive.
Straub-Huillet’s History Lessons (1972), with its lengthy
windscreen odyssey through modern Rome, could be
another reference point, not to mention Chantal Aker-
man’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
(1975), with its concentration on daily routine and the
infinitesimal deviations from it that can reveal volumes
about a character.
The Plains derives much of its fascination from the
ambiguous line it treads between documentary and
drama. Easteal is a practising barrister, Andrew one of
his former colleagues, but – though it’s impossible to
tell from the film – their naturalistic dialogues were in
fact mainly scripted, and the life events that enter into
the conversation are a mix of reality, reconstruction
and fabrication.
Through Andrew’s sociable patter, fragmentary
details of a life emerge as vivid off-screen space: fric-
tion with his boss, his parents’ lives as Polish émigrés,
his attitude to having children, his relationship with
Cheri, the second home they keep in a remote part of
Victoria (which we see in snippets of drone home-movie
footage that make for disorientingly surreal interludes
between some of the commutes). Over three hours,
we get the measure of a man and grow familiar with
the genial flow of his speech – his tics, intonation and
midlife philosophising.
The dialogue between Andrew and David evolves
from colleague-to-colleague awkwardness to a warmer
rapport, and when, on the later drives, we learn that
David is leaving his job to pursue a legal course, or that
the health of Andrew’s mother has rapidly deteriorated,
such shifts hit us like Jeanne Dielman forgetting to turn
a light off. Life has jumped on in the splice between two
shots, and what had seemed, for all its onward move-
ment, to be a film about stasis reveals its larger theme
as impermanence.
On Mubi now
CHILDHOOD’S END Zelda Samson as Dalva
Love According
to Dalva
BELGIUM/FRANCE 2022 CERTIFICATE 15 87M 49S
DIRECTOR EMMANUELLE NICOT
WRIT TEN BY EMMANUELLE NICOT
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF JACQUES AKCHOTI
BULLE DECARPENTRIES
CINEMATOGRAPHY CAROLINE GUIMBAL
EDITOR SUZANA PEDRO
PRODUCTION DESIGN CATHERINE COSME
MUSIC FRÉDÉRIC ALVAREZ
COSTUME DESIGN CONSTANCE ALLAIN
CAST ZELDA SAMSON
ALEXIS MANENTI
FANTA GUIRASSY
SYNOPSIS
After police raid the house 12-year-old Dalva
shares with her father, she is taken into care.
At first, Dalva is bewildered by claims that
her relationship with her father was abusive.
But the new relationships she forges with her
care worker and peers lead her to question
her upbringing.
REVIEWED BY CATHERINE WHEATLEY
How to describe that strange, shimmering
age when girls are caught between child-
hood and adolescence? Proust’s jeunes filles
en fleur? Nabokov’s ‘nymphet’? Tweenag-
ers? None of these words quite capture
the ambivalent oscillation between inno-
cence and experience we see in, say, Sophie
(Frankie Corio), the young heroine of Char-
lotte Wells’s Aftersun (2022), cautiously dip-
ping her toes in the water of teenage sexu-
ality. Or, a little older, Mia (Katie Jarvis)
in Fish Tank (2009), her dancing flipping
between silly and seductive.
In Emmanuelle Nicot’s first feature, Love
According to Dalva, schoolgirls twist their
hair and giggle, delivering lip-gloss kisses
and teasing insults to the boys in the play-
ground. At the neighbouring care home
where Dalva (Zelda Samson) is resident,
her fellow boarders shimmy into cropped
tops and drag kohl along their eyelids,
rehearsing for the adult courtship rituals
that wait just out of sight.
Twelve-year-old Dalva is not like these
other girls. She doesn’t consider herself
a girl at all, but “a woman”. A still, poised
presence, Dalva wears stockings, court
shoes, pencil skirts; sheer blouses and
pearl earrings. She keeps her long red hair
in a strange, 1940s chignon. She refuses to
smoke because it’s “vulgar”. The other girls
make fun of her mannered speech and her
81
upright bearing. Her care worker tells her
to change into something more appropriate
for a child of her age.
But Dalva doesn’t know what that is,
because Dalva has never had a childhood.
At age five, she was kidnapped by her father,
who kept her confined indoors, moving
house every few years to avoid detection.
He home-schooled her, chose her clothes
and dyed her hair. At some point, he began
raping her. Not that Dalva would call it
that: as her therapist says, she doesn’t know
the difference between love and making
love. The film opens in medias res, as Dalva
is dragged kicking and screaming from the
man she calls ‘Jacques’, and for most of its
running time she desperately tries to make
her way back to him. When finally they are
reunited at the prison where he is being
held, she stands up, and in one sudden ges-
ture throws off her parka, revealing an open-
backed lace dress. She’s at once passionate
and regimented: a soldier standing to atten-
tion. “You look beautiful,” he tells her.
Set largely in the residential home where
Dalva is placed, Nicot’s realist social drama,
cast largely with non-professional child
actors, calls to mind Samantha Morton’s
TV drama The Unloved (2009) and Fred
Baillif ’s La Mif (2021), which also centre
on the care system and the children who
pass through it. It also shares certain ter-
ritory with a number of post-#MeToo
rape revenge narratives – Promising Young
Woman (2020), I May Destroy You (2020),
and Season 3 of Broadchurch (2017), to take
FILMS
three examples – in that it consigns the hor-
rific catalyst for the drama to the offscreen,
focusing instead on the aftermath. Surpris-
ingly, given the subject matter, it is not an
especially arduous film to watch. The most
shocking moment arrives during a school-
yard game of truth or dare, when one par-
ticularly spiteful girl asks Dalva: “Have you
sucked off your dad?”
Samson – in a remarkably assured per-
formance – is closed off, inscrutable. The
camera stays close, pushing in on her sullen
little face, thickly covered in make-up, scru-
tinising her along with the doctors and
care workers to ascertain the extent of the
damage. It’s her film, and she carries it, but
she’s lent able support by Alexis Manenti
(the bullying policeman in Les Misérables,
2019) as her keyworker, and fellow new-
comer Fanta Guirassy as Samia, her room-
mate. Samia is the daughter of a sex worker
and in many ways Dalva’s mirror image: she
teaches Dalva to be a child, but is herself
terrified of growing up, knowing all too well
what it means to be sexually mature. While
Dalva rushes towards womanhood, Samia
beats it back, wearing baggy tracksuits,
refusing make-up, for fear she will see her
mother’s face looking back at her.
Throughout the film, across various rela-
tionships, Dalva struggles to separate sex
from affection. A rather too-neat ending
belies the suggestion that overcoming such
traumas as Dalva has seen is the work of a
lifetime, and that for children like her and
Samia, adulthood – and the end of state
support – is far from a happy prospect.
In UK cinemas now
 82
Polite Society
USA/UK 2022 CERTIFICATE 12A 104M 27S
DIRECTOR NIDA MANZOOR
WRIT TEN BY NIDA MANZOOR
CINEMATOGRAPHY ASHLEY CONNOR
EDITOR ROBBIE MORRISON
PRODUCTION DESIGN SIMON WALKER
MUSIC TOM HOWE
SHEZ MANZOOR
COSTUME DESIGN PC WILLIAMS
CAST PRIYA K ANSARA
RITU ARYA
NIMRA BUCHA
SYNOPSIS
Ria, a teenage karate enthusiast, is shocked when sister
Lena agrees to an arranged marriage within their Muslim
community. Convinced that the relationship is harmful
FILMS
to Lena’s happiness, Ria and her friends spy on Lena’s
prospective husband and engage in a series of fights while
trying to stop the wedding.
REVIEWED BY REBECCA HARRISON
By turns a spy thriller, martial arts movie and sci-fi fan-
tasy, Nida Manzoor’s Polite Society playfully expands
the parameters of the kitchen-sink family melodrama,
wresting the kitchen sink from the wall and throwing
it full force at the audience to tell the coming-of-age
story of Ria, a karate-loving British Pakistani teenager.
A diligent practitioner of martial arts, Ria Khan
(Priya Kansara) longs to forge a career as a stunt-
woman; meanwhile, her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya),
recovering from depression, doubts her own ability to
develop a career as an artist. Their parents, while sym-
pathetic to the girls, anxiously feel that both sisters are
jeopardising the veneer of respectability that mother
and father have worked hard to maintain within their
genteel, judgemental suburban community. But when
Lena becomes romantically involved with genetic sci-
entist Salim Shah after an encounter coordinated by
their mothers, Ria begins a rebellious campaign to
save her older sister from conformity.
At its heart, Polite Society is a feminist exploration
of women’s agency under patriarchy (which, the film
makes clear, is not only upheld by men). Ria and her
friends equate marriage to a man with oppression;
Salim’s wealthy mother Raheela repeatedly talks about
giving up her life for her son; and while Lena seeks
liberation in love, her romantic future is being decided
by others. Sending up everything from family relation-
ships to beauty standards, Polite Society focuses consist-
ently on women; their responses to social conditions
are varied, complex, and guaranteed to cause conflict.
While the film addresses the objectification of
women’s bodies literally – this is not a story that
relies on metaphor or subtlety – there is nuance in its
SPOTLIGHT
Nida Manzoor
BY REBECCA HARRISON
In a career spanning film and
television, a feature and shorts,
writing and directing, one thing
connects Nida Manzoor’s work to
date: a refusal to be put in a box.
From a Muslim Pakistani family,
Manzoor’s career path looked set
to follow a neat, professional – and
very respectable – path into law by
way of a politics degree at UCL.
MARITAL ARTS Priya Kansara as Ria, Ritu Arya as Lena But, like Christopher Nolan
before her, she began making
consideration of tensions between anglophone and
Pakistani culture. Scenes of Lena and Ria dancing
films as a member of UCL’s Film
Society. Encouraged to explore her
to British rock music in their lounge are intercut with creative side since childhood (she
Raheela and her friends critiquing the sisters’ West- and her siblings play instruments,
ernised habits. That the older women are indulging and their co-written songs feature
in a quintessentially British activity as they take high in the 2021 Channel 4 comedy
tea in an upmarket hotel underlines the hypocrisies series We Are Lady Parts), Manzoor
that underpin their values. The film also suggests that realised that her heart lay in film
the Pakistani caste system translates approximately and television. Early shorts such
into the British class system, with the sisters’ mother, as Arcade (2013) and 7.2 (2014),
Fatima, keen to improve her social standing through demonstrate some of her ongoing
association with Raheela, and uncomfortable differ- stylistic and thematic interests,
ences between the two families’ levels of wealth. with whiplash-fast edits, bold pal-
As the sisters, Kansara and Arya hold the film ettes, even bolder young women,
together even in its more preposterous moments, and and pop-culture references aplenty.
it’s a joy to watch their characters grow and unfold After a period at CBBC, Man-
as they fight social conventions. Manzoor gives the zoor worked on BBC3 comedy
film some edge by emphasising the pent-up aggres- Enterprice and her own series
sion of Ria and her schoolgirl gang; in fact, the sheer Hounslow Diaries (both 2018) before
brutality of Ria’s fights is at times shocking, the realism directing two episodes of Doctor
of certain violent scenes often jarring with the film’s Who in 2020. Her break-through
broader cartoonish style. It’s a register – more common with We Are Lady Parts came
in Indian cinema than in British – that prompts reflec- soon after. The central characters
tion on our expectations about who gets to commit – young, Muslim women who
physical violence on screen, and where they do so. play together in a punk band –
Manzoor choreographs action with panache. Ashley demonstrate Manzoor’s talent
Connor’s cinematography and Robbie Morrison’s edit- for writing women who are at
ing afford every blow the time and space to land (no once wise and silly, anarchic and
mean feat when compared with higher-budget movies conformist, serious and funny.
that pass by in a blur of special effects). There are nods Citing influences including
to Edgar Wright, Tarantino, Peele and 80s martial Jackie Chan, Edgar Wright and
arts movies – telling that Manzoor’s reference points old Hollywood movies, her first
are films made mostly by men. With Polite Society, she feature, Polite Society, challenges yet
proves that women’s struggle to break into traditionally more gendered and cultural ste-
male-dominated genres is completely unjust. reotypes. A second series of We Are
Nonetheless, Manzoor’s concept – which draws Lady Parts is reportedly in produc-
heavily on her 2014 short 7.2 – has less impact in the wake tion, and though Manzoor recently
of numerous other ‘kick-ass’ women on screen, from told the Guardian, “Hollywood
Atomic Blonde (2017) to superhero movies such as Harley isn’t quite calling – I just moved to
Quinn: Birds of Prey (2020). Her use of fight scenes to Bristol!”, with her flair for genre
convey the strength required of women in a patriarchal filmmaking, the director should
context is diluted by their more commercially minded be in demand for years to come.
exploitation of violence. And while some elements feel
transgressive for a British Asian comedy (notably the
quasi-incestuous closeness of the mother-son relation-
ship), the conflict between young, progressive women
and their conservative elders feels a little worn.
A mishmash of genres safety-pinned together with
a reliance on recognisable stock characters and narra-
tive beats, Polite Society is saved from cliché by an anar-
chic sense of fun and Ria’s punk sensibility. It’s a bold
and brash calling card from Manzoor, who playfully
challenges society’s expectations about British Asian
women both in front of the camera and behind it.
In UK cinemas now

Sisu Sisu takes place in a familiar movie universe
in which German soldiers speak to each
other in English and the grizzled hero
CERTIFICATE 15 91M 11S
says almost nothing at all. The film’s title,
DIRECTOR JALMARI HELANDER
however, cannot easily be translated for an
SCREENPLAY JALMARI HELANDER international audience. What the Finnish
CINEMATOGRAPHY KJELL LAGERROOS word connotes is ‘a white-knuckled form of
EDITOR JUHO VIROLAINEN
PRODUCTION DESIGN OTSO LINNALA AKSO courage and unimaginable determination,’
MUSIC JURI SEPPÄ a quality that manifests ‘when all hope is
TUOMAS WÄINÖLÄ
COSTUME DESIGN ANNA VILPPUNEN lost’. The definition’s lurid phrasing is sug-
CAST JORMA TOMMILA gestive of an alternate history for Jalmari
AKSEL HENNIE
MIMOSA WILLAMO Helander’s satisfyingly grisly action thriller.
Surely in some other dimension, the story
SYNOPSIS of Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila), a
1944: following the signing of the Moscow Armistice former soldier turned gold-hunter who will
between Finland and the USSR, Nazi forces wreak stop at nothing to protect his bounty from
devastation in the Lapland wilderness as they withdraw the Nazis, exists as a pulp novel sitting on
from Finland. When prospector and former Finnish army a rack in a Helsinki bus station circa 1958,
commando Aatami encounters a convoy of German soldiers
and captured Finnish women, the SS officer in charge
back when memories of the war were not
attempts to take his gold. A vicious battle ensues. as faint as they may be for Sisu’s viewers.
Conversely, it’s easy to imagine this as
REVIEWED BY JASON ANDERSON a Nordic answer to the punchy brand of
WWII thriller that emerged in the 70s,
when the spaghetti-western templates of
Sergios Leone and Corbucci were applied
to tales of Nazi savagery and Allied venge-
ance. Of course, genre aficionados may
just see a whole lot of Inglourious Basterds
in Sisu’s onscreen violence, which includes
mine explosions that send body parts in
all directions and hapless enemy troops
deployed as bullet-ridden human shields.
That said, Sisu has enough brio to rise
TO HELSINKI AND BACK Aksel Hennie as Bruno above the current standards of similarly
Surely in some other dimension this story is a pulp novel sitting on a rack in a Helsinki bus station circa 1958
SISU
Portrait of Kaye Ben Reed’s Portrait of Kaye is a loving,
kitschy monument to one woman’s life,
presided over by Kaye herself, a lifelong
UK 2021 agoraphobic who acts as freewheeling tour
CERTIFICATE 12A 56M
guide and storyteller. While the London-
DIRECTOR BEN REED er’s funny tales and curious asides abound,
CINEMATOGRAPHY BEN REED they accumulate into a richly textured
EDITOR BEN REED
account of several interwoven lives. Kaye’s
SYNOPSIS
mother once told her that, if she could live
her life again; she’d have been “a high-class
A charming documentary about a septuagenarian
agoraphobic, Kaye, who has spent the vast majority of her
prostitute”. Kaye makes this revelation with
life within the four walls of the same London house. Her a twinkle in her eye, but as we learn more
story is conveyed through a series of comical soliloquies to about her mother and father’s relationship,
camera, combined with cutaways to kitschy clutter and old it becomes emblematic of her mother’s
home videos. life, lived without physical intimacy after
a devastating heartbreak. In Kaye’s own
REVIEWED BY BEN NICHOLSON
story, we hear about a neighbour, Lorenzo,
with whom Kaye has become infatuated
since her husband’s recent death. It begins
as a throwaway remark about a crush on
a handsome young man but evolves into
a far more poignant tale of romance, inti-
macy and what it means to be isolated.
There is something theatrical about
the film’s set-up. Kaye relays anecdotes
directly to the camera, animating them
with cockney patter and colourful detail,
while typically framed against the satu-
rated and crammed interior that she’s
spent 70 years looking at and adding
paraphernalia to – from the page of a
30-year-old calendar to a tattered scrap of
Christmas wrapping paper. A playwright
NOT GOING OUT Kaye Mannion and set designer at the top of their craft
83
Tarantino-indebted fare. Moving briskly
from one burly set piece to the next, it’s
equipped with a bracing sense of economy
and drive – Helander’s preferred mode for
mayhem proves as brutal and relentless as
his protagonist. Convincing even in the
film’s most ludicrous moments, Tommila
invests proceedings with the same stony
gravitas he conveyed as the Santa Claus
hunter in Rare Exports (2010), Helander’s
enjoyably gruesome feature debut. Tom-
mila’s hard-nosed sensibility as Aatami is
well-complemented by Mimosa Willamo
as Aino, a female captive who’s increasingly
emboldened by Aatami’s rising kill count.
For all the pleasure viewers may take
in the sight of nameless Nazis being dis-
patched and dismembered, they may
be surprised by the film’s solemnity, too.
Helander takes pains to root his revenge
fantasy in his country’s harrowing experi-
ences at the hands of both German and
Soviet forces. The worst of the suffering
may be suggested by the presence of Aino
and the other captives sitting stone-faced
in one of the German convoy’s trucks. And
while there are perhaps questions to be
asked about raising the spectre of wartime
sexual violence within the neo-B movie
context that Helander embraces, at least
Sisu’s creator makes sure there’s plenty of
payback to go around.
In UK cinemas from 26 May
FILMS
couldn’t have fashioned a more perfect
distillation of a particular working-class
milieu – a world of music halls and seaside
photo opportunities that Kaye herself,
ironically, has little direct experience of.
The form allows her the space to express
herself but also echoes the limitations of
a life restrained by walls, and the hoarded
trinkets that connect her to, and shield
her from, the outside.
While the film is, to some extent, a
60-minute monologue, in which Kaye
guides the audience through her personal
snow-globe universe – one populated by
a library of VHS tapes, bawdy jokes and
pictures of Barbara Windsor – the director
feels ever-present. Reed rarely interjects
but Kaye’s recurring phrase of “what d’you
reckon, Ben?” reminds us that she is per-
forming to someone in the room. This not
only emphasises her larger-than-life per-
sona but also draws our attention to the
evident reciprocal warmth of their relation-
ship. Reed lived next door to Kaye for a
time, and the affection that he has for her
shines through in this gem of a film. It is
part character study, part time-capsule, but
somehow far more expansive than either of
those terms might immediately suggest.
Much like its protagonist, Portrait of Kaye
transcends its confines through the pres-
ervation of memories.
On True Story Film from 18 May
 84
Medusa Deluxe Brittle as a split end, artificial as a rainbow
ombré dye-job, British director Thomas
Hardiman’s flashy, ornate debut Medusa
CERTIFICATE 15 100M 34S
Deluxe is set in the never knowingly subtle
DIRECTOR THOMAS HARDIMAN
world of competitive hairdressing, on
WRIT TEN BY THOMAS HARDIMAN finals day, when one of the key contestants
CINEMATOGRAPHY ROBBIE RYAN turns up dead.
EDITOR FOUAD GABER
PRODUCTION DESIGN GARY WILLIAMSON Hardiman ups the gaudiness ante with
MUSIC KORELESS a showily faked one-take approach. It adds
COSTUME DESIGN CYNTHIA LAWRENCE-JOHN
CAST ANITA-JOY UWAJEH another string to superstar cinematog-
CLARE PERKINS rapher Robbie Ryan’s bow, and there is
K AYLA MEIKLE
giddy fun to be had from a murder mystery
SYNOPSIS that, snaking through the dressing rooms,
A regional hairdressing competition is thrown into chaos bathrooms and corridors of a single maze-
when one of its regular contestants is found dead and like location, unfolds in real time. But the
scalped. Tensions rise and relationships fray as the hair- flamboyant style is lathered atop a thin-
obsessed community try to tease out the killer’s identity. ning plot that’s about as unconvincing as
a comb-over, and as backstage catfights
REVIEWED BY JESSICA KIANG escalate – the scissors sharper than the
quips – it’s hard not to think of the eternal
hairdresser’s injunction against perming
and colouring on the same day: there’s only
so much one head can take.
The opening is a kinetic joyride through
an enormously magnified CGI landscape
of styling tools, in which hairbrush bris-
tles are thick as tree trunks. One such
brush is wielded by temperamental, potty-
mouthed stylist Cleve (Clare Perkins, for-
merly of EastEnders) who is primping her
‘fontange’, a wildly elaborate updo topped
off by a fluorescent three-mast model ship.
All but ignoring the poor girl sat rigid
beneath her teetering creation, Cleve vents
EVIL UNDER THE BUN Lilit Lesser as Angie like an X-rated geyser to frenemy Divine
FILMS
The flamboyant style is lathered atop a thinning plot that’s about as unconvincing as a comb-over
MEDUSA DELUXE
This lecture by the f ilmmaker Nina
Brainwashed: Menkes posits that the sexualisation of
Sex Camera Power female characters in mainstream cinema
is embedded in conventions of cinema-
USA 2022
tography and editing, and directly causes
CERTIFICATE 18 107M 54S real-life male violence against women.
To prop up her argument, Menkes calls
DIRECTOR NINA MENKES upon Laura Mulvey’s influential 1975 essay
BASED ON THE TALK
‘SEX AND POWER: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’,
THE VISUAL LANGUAGE talking heads who echo her own perspec-
OF CINEMA’ BY NINA MENKES
CINEMATOGRAPHY SHANA HAGAN tive, and numerous film clips.
EDITOR CECILY RHET T Cinema has given us myriad depictions
MUSIC SHARON FARBER
of male and female bodies, and Menkes’
SYNOPSIS examples span nations, budgets and
In a talk illustrated with clips and interviews, filmmaker
styles, from Metropolis (1927) to Crazy Rich
Nina Menkes argues that almost all the cinema she regards Asians (2018). Leaving aside how many
as ‘mainstream’ extends patriarchal power by presenting of the excerpted films can be categorised
women as objects for the male gaze, thus contributing both as ‘mainstream’ (Human, Space, Time and
to male violence in wider society and to women’s under- Human, 2018? Titane, 2021?), what’s striking
representation as filmmakers. is the removal of context. Often, Menkes
uses films that in fact forcefully critique
REVIEWED BY HANNAH MCGILL
male dominance or female objectification.
Any such intention is leapfrogged over
in her enthusiasm to accuse filmmakers.
Studying a sequence in Raging Bull (1980)
in which Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) is seen
speaking but her voice not heard, Menkes
declares: “Maybe that’s why, when a young
woman shows up to pitch a film to a male
executive, he just sees her mouth moving,
but he doesn’t hear a single word she
says!” Denis Villeneuve is smeared even
EYES WIDE SHUT Brainwashed: Sex Camera Power more directly for Blade Runner 2049 (2017),
(Kayla Meikle) about all the ways the just-
discovered scalped body of their chief rival
Mosca is inconveniencing her.
They bicker over motive and killer –
maybe one of the models or stylists, or the
event’s silver-tongued, silver-ringed, silver-
fox organiser Rene (Darrell D’Silva)? He
was in a relationship with Mosca before
Mosca fell for Angel (Luke Pasqualino),
with whom the dead man was, at the time
of his gorily radical final haircut, raising a
baby. And who is the surly security guard
(Heider Ali) who keeps borrowing wet
wipes to clean blood off the staff lockers?
Cleve and her catty, cartoonishly drawn
gang are more interested in these ques-
tions than Hardiman’s screenplay is: the
cursory plotting is highlighted when, in
order to resolve it, the film breaks its own
rules with a well-choreographed but cheat-
ing flash-forward. And while Ryan’s cin-
ematography, Fouad Gaber’s slyly hidden
edits and composer Koreless’s restless, per-
cussive score keep things clipping along,
the claustrophobia of the one-take con-
ceit, which works well in more grounded
one-takers like Boiling Point (2021) and Vic-
toria (2015), does the larger-than-life per-
formances few favours. A style reliant on
spontaneity doesn’t quite gel with a genre,
like murder mystery, that needs structure.
It makes Medusa Deluxe, for all its diverting
razzle-dazzle, a bit of a follicular folly.
In UK cinemas from 9 June
seemingly because it features an attractive
AI character. “Just think what women feel
when they go and see this film!” Menkes
intones. Perhaps that the AI explicitly
illustrates the empty image-led commodifi-
cation of sex? Or that the film also features
several highly effective human women,
whom Menkes ignores?
Then again, a lecture that castigates The
Silence of the Lambs (1991) for its serial killer
character Buffalo Bill (who is not, in case
you haven’t seen it, the aspirational hero
of the piece) clearly has zero intention of
shooting straight.
It’s interesting that one of Mulvey’s
observations, cited at length by Menkes,
concerns the alleged practice of showing
female bodies in discrete sections, but
male bodies complete. If it’s unfair and
diminishing to separate a body into parts
rather than grant it the power of complete-
ness, isn’t it similarly disreputable to do the
same to the work of another artist?
“With films that are considered part of
the canon, there is a reticence to even ques-
tion how they were made or the stories that
they tell,” one commentator here declares.
Well, there’s a claim we can be very glad is
completely baseless. Abundant discussion
of these issues exists. Most of it is fairer,
more complex and more useful than this.
In UK cinemas now
 85

THREE SUDANESE GEMS

BY LEILA LATIF

TAJOUJE (1977)
Gadalla Gubara is widely
accepted to be the father
of Sudanese cinema. He
was a vital member of the
Sudanese arts scene that
thrived in the 60s and 70s
before the 1989 Islamic
military coup. His first
feature is considered his
finest work – a romantic
SUDAN IMPACT Maher El Khair as Maher
melodrama about two tragic
lovers from different tribes
The Dam Compellingly threaded together, such aural details illus-
trate how these disenfranchised figures are overwhelmed
in the east of Sudan.

by uncertainties both personal and political.

FRANCE/SUDAN/GERMANY/SERBIA/QATAR/LEBANON/UNITED
ARAB EMIRATES/GREECE/THE NETHERLANDS 2022
In contrast to the observational style of these vignettes,
the latter half of the film swerves into the realm of magi-
DIRECTOR ALI CHERRI cal realism. Once relieved from his duties at the brickyard,
WRIT TEN BY ALI CHERRI Maher hops on a borrowed motorcycle and rides into the
GEOFFROY GRISON
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF BERTRAND BONELLO depths of the desert, where he is secretly building a tower-
CINEMATOGRAPHY BASSEM FAYAD ing mud idol of his own. The creation of this otherworldly
EDITORS ISABELLE MANQUILLET
NELLY QUET TIER edifice, which has tree branches as arms, feels like a recla- YOU WILL DIE AT
ART DIRECTION ABBAS ALKHALIFA mation of agency. As Maher tends to his growing totem, TWENTY (2019)
MUSIC ROB
[I.E. ROBIN COUDERT ] his labour ceases to be transactional, transformed into an A tentative new era of
CAST MAHER EL KHAIR act of love and worship. More than a natural resource to be filmmaking commenced
MUDATHIR MUSA with Amjad Abu Alala’s You
SANTINO AGUER DING ruthlessly extracted, under Maher’s dexterous hands mud
Will Die at Twenty – the story

FILMS
becomes a source of renewal as well as an expression of dis- of a young man struggling
SYNOPSIS content. In a dream sequence reminiscent of Apichatpong with growing up, having
Maher, a bricklayer in Sudan, works on a construction site for Weerasethakul’s films – which imagine a holistic commun- been prophesied to die
a colossal dam. His evenings arrive with a mysterious project, ion between human and nature – the golem-esque structure on his 20th birthday. Its
as he secretly tends to his own muddy structure in the middle suddenly becomes sentient and ominously enquires after philosophical approach to
of the desert. As a revolution rouses his country from slumber, coming of age combined
the restlessness of Maher’s soul. “Why are you wandering
Maher’s edifice suddenly comes to life. with Abu Alala’s elegant
so?,” the idol asks, a question to which the young man has
and richly pigmented
REVIEWED BY PHUONG LE no answers.
cinematography saw the
From this point on, the narrative of The Dam, and Maher’s film win Venice’s Lion of the
actions, are increasingly mysterious. An open wound on Future award and become
For a film that mostly takes place outdoors, among the vast, his back, previously a dull discomfort, begins to fester and the country’s first Academy
breathtaking deserts of northern Sudan, Ali Cherri’s fea- spread, its scaly appearance resembling the dry, cracked soil Award submission.
ture manages to cloak its sprawling vista in an atmosphere that runs alongside the river Nile. As the violence inflicted
of mystery. Primarily known as an artist, Cherri has previ- on the land turns eerily corporeal, other unsettling incidents
ously directed two acclaimed shorts, The Disquiet (2013) follow. After witnessing the dead body of a co-worker float-
and The Digger (2015), which explored the geography of ing upstream, Maher is driven to his own act of brutality: he
violence. A concluding chapter to the trilogy, The Dam sets bludgeons a stray dog to death.
its sights on the Merowe Dam, a colossal structure erected Utterly random in its ugliness, the scene is intended as
by a Chinese company that hires precarious local workers some kind of exorcism of inner demons, but it comes off as
on the cheap. A destructive force to the ecological system, intellectually hollow. Though critical of the way the work-
the project also cruelly displaces the local Manasir commu- ers are treated as if interchangeable, The Dam unwittingly AL-SIT (2020)
nity, an indigenous tribe which has dwelled beside the river commits the same sin with this shocking moment, denying After the success of You Will
Nile for centuries. In casting Maher El Khair, one of the Maher a perceptible emotional interior. The character’s Die at Twenty, Suzannah
Mirghani used much of the
bricklayers on the site, as the protagonist, the film builds destructive behaviour is treated as yet another mystical
now-experienced Sudanese
a beguiling tension between documentary and fiction, the manifestation of the violence embedded in the landscape. crew for her short. It is
real and the symbolic. Straying away from its initial material analysis of labour and set in a cotton farming
Guided by the rhythm of the workers’ daily tasks, which exploitation, the film ends up overindulging in allegories village, where teenager
involve producing hundreds of identical bricks from wet and myths, which inadvertently flatten the very real geo- Nafisa is torn between
mud, The Dam poetically emphasises the tactility of manual political conflicts of Sudan into impenetrable abstractions. the prospect of marriage
labour. Patiently observing the men who toil under the As Maher’s wound magically fades and his mud idol crum- to Nadir, a successful
burning sun, the camera lingers on their dirt-stained hands bles into the ground, the ending vaguely gestures toward a Sudanese businessman,
and her childhood crush
and legs, a physical imprint of the exploitation thrust upon transcendental catharsis. However, without the thematic
Babiker. For guidance, she
their bodies. Their exertions are also rendered in sonic and conceptual specificity of the director’s previous efforts, turns to her charismatic
terms. In place of dialogue, the sounds of shovels digging the film languishes in a state of inertia. With the 2019 mass grandmother, ‘Al-Sit’, and
into the earth or fire crackling inside the numerous kilns protests in the background, a historical moment steeped in confronts her need for
coalesce into a hypnotic symphony. Also woven into their revolutionary potential, it is strange and misguided for The agency and the far-reaching
arduous routines are the spectral voices of TV and radio Dam to detach itself from this collective fervour for change. potential of a generation of
broadcasters covering the 2019 military coup that put an young Sudanese women.
end to Omar al-Bashir’s decades-long rule of the country. In UK cinemas now
 86

Nam June Paik: ingenuity. Gallerists and curators sketch

out the polyglot Korean artist’s impres-
SCREEN CAPTURE
Nam June Paik
(1973), a Fluxus video mash-up that aired
on public television station WGBH-TV,
Moon Is the sive background – PhD in philosophy,
classical music training. A plucky, playful
and Good Morning, Mr. Orwell (1984), a live
event broadcast around the world via sat-
Oldest TV score by Sakamoto Ryuichi accompanies ellite and featuring the likes of the musi-
clips of Paik smashing a violin in his per- cian/performance artist Laurie Ander-
USA/SOUTH KOREA/UK 2023 CERTIFICATE 12 109M 6S formance piece One for Violin Solo (1962) son, the pop band The Thompson Twins
and gleefully toppling over a piano in and the dancer Merce Cunningham, real-
DIRECTOR AMANDA KIM
CINEMATOGRAPHY NELSON WALKER Hommage à John Cage (1959). ised Paik’s vision of merging accessible,
EDITED BY TARYN GOULD These glimpses of Paik’s raucous per- popular entertainment formats with high
THEME BY SAK AMOTO RYUICHI
ORIGINAL SCORE WILL EPSTEIN formances and installations portray him art in unprecedented ways.
WITH as a subversive figure in the art world, Talking heads describe the production
NAM JUNE PAIK’S
WRITINGS READ BY STEVEN YEUN while footage of him tinkering with TV of Good Morning, Mr. Orwell as, essen-
sets and pushing his face into a large blob tially, a hot mess – recalling sound issues,
SYNOPSIS of white goo reveal an impish trickster control room drama, and host George
Amanda Kim’s debut feature documentary and natural entertainer. But when the ini- Plimpton swigging far too much cham-
chronologically maps out the life story and tial bombast clears, we see still another pagne on air. In an archival interview Paik
artistic trajectory of the Korean multimedia version of the artist – as a young boy in excitedly describes his directors panick-
artist Nam June Paik, often referred to Japanese-occupied Korea, living with ing during the New Year’s day broadcast.
as ‘the father of video art’. Rich in archive the threat of punishment for speaking “I just let it happen really,” he says, laugh-
performance and interview footage, it
his own language. “My problem,” says ing. The so-called failures of the produc-
examines Paik’s influence on pop-culture
aesthetics and his prophetic observations
the voice of actor Steven Yeun, reading tion, he notes, made it more interesting.
about digital technology. from Paik’s writings on leaving Korea Because Paik’s work plays with televi-
as a young man, “is how to communi- sion and media, it seems, on the face of it,
REVIEWED BY SARAH FENSOM cate better.” Language becomes a major well-suited to the documentary format.
theme of the documentary, and for much But often the sense of rhythm and dura-
of its remainder Paik’s story is punctu- tion that’s so important to his composi-
Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV begins ated by his efforts to harness technology tions, performances, video and film pieces
as many documentaries about artists do – to communicate across boundaries. (like Zen for Film, a silent 16mm work from
with a profusion of news clips, interview As we follow the artist to Munich, then 1965 which consists of image-less film
excerpts, exhibition posters and archival New York, then back to Korea, we wit- being projected on to a blank screen for
footage of the subject and his works. ness his pioneering use of television tech- eight minutes) feels out of synch with the
From the cacophony, disembodied voices nology in works such as TV Buddha (1974). quick-moving, montage-heavy narrative
emerge, referring to Paik as “the father of This breakthrough installation, which of Moon Is the Oldest TV.
video art”, “the Nostradamus of the digital features a Buddha statue apparently Certainly the documentary is a pol-
age”, “a cultural terrorist” and a prophet of transfixed by its own image on an adja- ished affair – witness the Sakamoto score,
FILMS

the internet. Modern-day artists such as
Ulysses Jenkins and Marina Abramović
weigh in as talking heads, praising Paik’s
cent television set, was the culmination
of Paik’s decade-long exploration of TV’s
avant-garde possibilities. Global Groove
Yeun’s thoughtful readings, beautifully
designed multilingual titles demarcat-
ing different periods of Paik’s life, and
the impressive access to archive material.
There are lovely visual ideas, too – pieces
of footage separate into numerous rectan-
gles floating in a black void, creating the
illusion of a multi-channel video installa-
tion in a museum. But beneath the glossy
production values, director Amanda Kim
is beholden to the conventional format
of artist documentaries – particularly
frustrating when the artist in question is
known for their disregard for convention.
At one point Paik is quoted as saying,
“I’m not really concerned about so-said
art world, I’m concerned to whole world”
– a notion that Kim, perhaps unintention-
ally, takes to heart. Flitting superficially
from artwork to artwork, the film doesn’t
quite know how to really get to grips
with Paik’s oeuvre or ideas, or how to
position him amid the wider emergence
of new media art. Instead, it settles for
portraying him as a soothsayer, a cultural
emissary, or an information architect. In
this treatment, the mere fact of Paik’s use
of technology and his ability to predict
trends – like creators having their own
TV channels, à la social media – seems
to have higher value than his art-making
practice as a whole. Kim’s lack of inter-
est in truly examining her subject from an
artistic point of view makes the film feel
less like a documentary befitting Paik’s
questing pioneer spirit, and more like a
high-end product.

In UK cinemas from 19 May

 88
DVD & BLU-RAY

and stale…”) while also part of a powerful

Twilight visual conception that’s more than a little

reminiscent of Tarr’s later films. That said,
when Twilight premiered, Tarr had only
made Damnation (1988) in his mature style,
Finally available in something other than muzzy VHS, György his previous films having adopted a more
social-realist approach.
Fehér’s lugubrious, mesmerising version of a much-adapted Like Tarr, Fehér favours exceptionally
existential crime story by Friedrich Dürrenmatt shows that there long takes (there are just 50 or so shots
are other ways of making 50 shades of grey seductive on screen across the film’s 100 minutes), often with
little outwardly happening. Similarly, two-
REVIEWED BY MICHAEL BROOKE way conversations are usually an excuse for
lengthy scrutiny of the listener’s face rather
than that of the speaker. One particularly
An occasional colleague of both Miklós so murky as to be borderline unwatchable. remarkable shot lasts nearly six minutes,
Jancsó (as an actor) and Béla Tarr (as More than one extra on this disc, as well as bookended by prolonged extreme close-
a producer), György Fehér (1939-2002) the booklet, reminisce about a tantalising ups of a man’s unshaven, heavily mous-
served an apprenticeship in Hungarian and often frustrating first encounter with tached face, initially as he’s being berated
theatre and television before making just Twilight along these lines. by his wife, and then in the aftermath of a
two cinema features, Twilight (Szürkület, Not that this new 4K restoration, shown frenzied tabletop incident that might be
1990) and Passion (Szenvedély, 1998) – the at Berlin in February (after a 2021 preview either marital rape or consensually cathar-
latter premiered less than five years before in London) and soon to be released on tic rough sex, all set to a soundtrack that
his death at the age of just 63. Produced at Blu-ray on both sides of the Atlantic (Arbe- suggests that their home’s weatherproof-
a time when international interest in East- los is handling it in the US), banishes the ing is paper-thin. There’s no privacy in this
ern European cinema across the board was murk. On the contrary, the murk is an inte- environment, and seemingly no end to the
at a very low ebb, Fehér’s films were barely gral part of Fehér’s approach, atmospheri- surrounding landscape.
seen outside festivals and swiftly forgotten, cally faithful to Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The cinematography isn’t so much
only to be very slowly revived as the 21st source novel (“Outside, the fog hovered black and white as a set of endless varia-
century progressed, for much of that time in front of the window, a dull, faceless twi- tions on a general theme of grey, especially
courtesy of VHS-quality off-air recordings light that crept into the little room full of emphasised by the many prolonged shots
from Hungarian television, with picture books and stacks of files. The air was chilly of the camera drifting unmoored through
 89

Friedrich Dürrenmatt had already stripped the

classic detective story down to its barest essentials
– he even subtitled the book ‘Requiem for the
Detective Novel’. György Fehér goes even further,
reducing the narrative elements to occasional
anchor points in what is otherwise a relentless
but mesmerising study of tone and texture

DVD & BLU-RAY

landscapes defined more by gentle undula-
tions than clearly marked features. Almost
every exterior is suffused with moisture
of some kind, usually drifting fog or tor-
rential rain, and the interiors feel similarly
oppressive. Echoes of Werner Herzog’s
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) abound on
the soundtrack – both films repeatedly
use music by the band Popol Vuh and a
choral arrangement of the Georgian folk
song ‘Tsintskaro’ (which was sampled by
Kate Bush in her 1985 track ‘Hello Earth’).
Sometimes this sort of thing is needlessly
distracting, but not here, with the music
underscoring the pervasive suggestion
that a potential vampire, or at least recidi-
vist child-murderer, might be lurking just
off camera throughout.
For, despite outward appearances,
Twilight is a crime thriller (as was Passion,
which was the fifth screen version of James
M. Cain’s 1934 novel The Postman Always
Rings Twice). It is adapted from The Pledge
(1958), itself adapted from a screenplay
that Dürrenmatt wrote the previous year.
The best known out of quite a few film
and TV adaptations of The Pledge is Sean
Penn’s 2001 feature, which starred Jack
Nicholson as the troubled detective who
comes to believe that the prime suspect
in the vicious murder of a young girl was
MONOCHROME SET
Judit Pogány as Woman
in Overalls, Erszébet
Nagy as Little Girl (above
left); István Lénárt as
Psychologist (above)
György Fehér; Hungary 1990;
Second Run; region-free
Blu-ray; b&w; in Hungarian
with English subtitles;
Certificate 15; 100 mins;
1.66:1. Extras: new interviews
with Chris Fujiwara, James
Norton, the Quay Brothers,
Peter Strickland, other
extras TBC; booklet.
innocent, notwithstanding his confession
and subsequent suicide.
In Fehér’s film, the detective (unnamed
here, Matthaï in the novel) is played by
the grim-faced Peter Haumann: initially
a frequently mute witness to frustrat-
ingly slow investigative proceedings, who
gradually comes to play an increasingly
proactive but potentially unethical leading
role, since the only truly fruitful source of
information is a very young girl who may
be in line to become the next victim. Dür-
renmatt had already stripped the classic
detective story down to its barest essen-
tials (he even subtitled the book ‘Requiem
for the Detective Novel’); Fehér goes even
further, reducing the narrative elements to
occasional anchor points in what is other-
wise a relentless but mesmerising study
of tone and texture – not least aurally:
the sound of fingers painstakingly sifting
through broken glass in search of crucial
evidence is as compelling as any music.
Second Run has wanted to release
Twilight since the label’s inception back
in 2005, and has given the film the deluxe
treatment here, starting with a superla-
tive audiovisual presentation courtesy of
the Hungarian National Film Archive
that makes the off-air bootleg seem like
an entirely different film. Not all the
planned extras were available for view-
ing at the time of writing, but the evident
enthusiasm of the critic Chris Fujiwara,
the writer James Norton, and filmmak-
ers Quay Brothers and Peter Strickland
is both infectious and educational (for
instance, Strickland’s digression into the
sense of space offered by Hungarian prep-
ositions that has no direct equivalent in
English). Stanley Schtinter has written a
garrulous booklet essay which offers valu-
able material on Fehér’s pre-Twilight career
that’s otherwise hard to come by. Along
the way, he alludes to the “legal slurry”
that has restricted the distribution of
both of Fehér’s features, and he concludes
with the real-life detective story of his
own elaborate attempt to track down the
film’s seemingly vanished co-star Erszébet
Nagy – this includes a journey through the
film’s actual landscape, described in col-
ourful terms (“Blue beech, Austrian oak,
red pine”) that seem incongruous when
set against the oppressive grey of Fehér’s
own treatment.
Tarr fans will doubtless snap this up
without any hesitation (and are very
unlikely to be disappointed), but so
should anyone else curious to sample the
work of a clearly major talent who has
been neglected for far too long.
 90
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE
AGAIN ALIVE
Keith Lock; Canada 1975; Black Zero; region-free
Blu-ray; 72 minutes; 1.33:1. Extras: commentary by
Lock; documentary about returning to Buck Lake;
video essay by Stephen Broomer; interview with
Lock; short film by Lock, Going (1975); booklet.
REVIEWED BY BEN NICHOLSON
Two films by Ernest Lubitsch Black Zero is a new physical media
label, based in Toronto and founded
BROKEN LULLABY
by preservationist, historian and
Ernst Lubitsch; US 1932; Powerhouse/Indicator; Region B Blu-ray; b&w; English artist filmmaker Stephen Broomer,
SDH; Certificate PG; 77 minutes; 1.37:1. Extras: audio commentary by Joseph which is described as “a celebration
McBride; audio lecture by Scott Eyman; The Men I Killed (2023) – video essay
comparing Broken Lullaby with Frantz (2016), based on the same play; gallery; booklet.
of Canadian underground cinema”.
Among its first tranche of releases
BLUEBEARD’S EIGHTH WIFE exploring the fantastic diversity of the
country’s experimental filmmaking
Ernst Lubitsch; US 1938; Powerhouse/Indicator; Region B Blu-ray; traditions was Keith Lock’s mesmeric
b&w; English SDH; Certificate PG; 88 minutes; 1.37:1. Extras: audio pastoral diary film Everything
commentary by Eloise Ross; 1984 audio interview with Claudette Colbert;
short film United States (Eric Ambler, 1944); trailer; gallery; booklet. Everywhere Again Alive (1975).
Lock shot the film in the early 70s
REVIEWED BY HENRY K. MILLER during a period in which he lived
at Buck Lake, Ontario, as part of
These two lesser Lubitsches from Indicator clarify where his a commune of artists who built
true strengths lay. Also known as The Man I Killed, the war film and maintained a homestead in the
DVD & BLU-RAY
Broken Lullaby (1932) is everything To Be or Not To Be (1942) is not: wilderness, inspired by the back-to-
maudlin, overwrought and full of bogus humanist sentiment. In the the-land movement. The film captures
immediate aftermath of the Great War, a French soldier travels to the progress of their project as they
Germany to find the family of the young man he killed in the heat erect buildings, till the land, wrangle
of battle, and duly falls in love with the dead man’s grieving fiancée. animals and reconnect with a natural
It now seems an outlier among Lubitsch’s American films, but this world that modern society has largely
is not how it was seen at the time. Dwight Macdonald called it the discarded or consumed. Although it
film “in which he indulged his weakness for being taken seriously lacks a specific narrative progression,
and which he therefore considers his chef-d’oeuvre”. the passing of the seasons creates an
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938) is more like it: a screwball comedy overall sense of change and renewal,
of remarriage with Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper, he an strongly emphasised by title, which
American millionaire in France, she a penniless aristocrat, scripted evokes the recurrent reawakening
by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett – their first collaboration. of spring. The presentation of
As if in defiance of the very idea of seriousness, there is a running nature ranges from its alteration by
joke about the spelling of ‘Czechoslovakia’, very much in the news human hands to far more elemental
in 1937-38, and the whole thing is a silvery-white dream of art sequences.
deco flats and (on Colbert) sensational outfits. It has a celebrated It is perhaps in the avant-garde
opening sequence, and many good gags along the way, but lands flourishes found in unusual sound
awkwardly between the authentic pre-code heartlessness of Trouble design, intermittent colour fields
in Paradise, made the same year as Broken Lullaby, and the heartfelt and the presence of patterns and
The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Lubitsch’s next film but one. hieroglyphs imposed on the images
(Remarkably, all three were the work of the same screenwriter, that the film’s ritualistic undertones
Samson Raphaelson.) are made manifest. The meaning of
Lesser Lubitsch is still Lubitsch, and Broken Lullaby in particular these mysterious interventions and
has more Lubitsch ‘touches’ than some of his more celebrated titles. disruptions must be intuited. The
An earlyish sound film, it makes bold use of the newish technology: colour fields seem to create discrete
the outstanding sequence shows the central couple walking around vignettes from the observational
town accompanied by a chorus of bells – the sound of the local footage but also elide the time
gossips, unseen, opening their doors to get a better look. between them to create a shifting,
ambiguous continuum. The
Disc: The weaker film gets a stronger package: Broken Lullaby has logograms, on the other hand, conjure
an excellent commentary by Joseph McBride, author of a recent a distinct sense of the mystical and
critical study of Lubitsch, and an audio lecture by Lubitsch’s arcane that only heightens the film’s
biographer Scott Eyman. There is also a fine video essay by connection to the land and some deep,
Michael Brooke comparing the film with François Ozon’s Frantz atavistic past.
(2016), a more convincing film about grief and survivor’s guilt
adapted from the same source material. The extras on Bluebeard’s DISC: Like the other discs released as
Eighth Wife include an on-stage interview with Colbert – one of part of the Black Zero launch – Arthur
the ‘everyone adored…’ school, but valuable all the same – and a Lipsett’s Strange Codes, 1975; John
propaganda film of 1944, United States, intended to explain the Hofsess’s Palace of Pleasure, 1967) – this is
history and culture of the Americans to their British allies. Written brimming with bespoke material. As well
and directed by spy novelist Eric Ambler and mostly consisting of as director interview and commentary
library footage, it is difficult to imagine anything less Lubitschian, track, it includes a video essay by
but it is interesting nonetheless. Its tenuous connection to Broomer, a film documenting Lock’s
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife is a voiceover by supporting actor David recent return to Buck Lake, and Lock’s
Niven. Both main features look and sound as good as they ever will. newly restored short film Going (1975).
FULL CIRCLE: THE
HAUNTING OF JULIA
Richard Loncraine; UK 1978; BFI; region-free
4K UHD & Region B Blu-ray dual format, 2
discs; English SDH; Certificate 15; 97 minutes;
2.40:1. Extras: commentary by Richard Loncraine
and Simon Fitzjohn; introduction by Kim
Newman; interviews with Loncraine, Fitzjohn,
composer Colin Towns, actors Samantha
Gates, Tom Conti, associate producer Hugh
Harlow; stills and transparencies; booklet.
REVIEWED BY PHILIP KEMP
For its cast alone (Mia Farrow, Keir
Dullea, Tom Conti, Jill Bennett,
Cathleen Nesbitt) Full Circle might
have been expected to reap a fair
reputation – not to mention the fact
that it took Best Picture prize at the
1977 Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival.
Yet the second feature by Richard
Loncraine (Richard III, 1995; The
Gathering Storm, 2002) got minimal
distribution, was largely written off as
being ‘slow’ or ‘too subtle’ and, for four
decades, sank into obscurity.
It was in 2016 that film historian
Simon Fitzjohn saw a rare screening
of Full Circle at the BFI. “Stunned
into silence by the film’s sadness and
power,” his “mission became clear:
how do we lift this film out of the mire
and back into public consciousness
via a rerelease?” Now, after six years
of persistent effort, and with the
enthusiastic help of Loncraine and
producer Peter Fetterman, he’s
succeeded in doing just that.
Full Circle (US title: The Haunting
of Julia) might have enjoyed greater
success had it matched the brutality,
the insistent impact of other horror
movies of the era – The Omen (1976),
say, or The Shining (1980). But, faithful
to the Peter Straub novel from which
it’s derived, there’s an insidious,
brooding sense of melancholy that
grips our attention – much enhanced
by director of photography Peter
Hannan, with his preference for
natural over artificial light, and Colin
Towns’s haunting soundtrack.
Farrow’s performance, as the mother
who, after her daughter’s agonising
death, comes to believe that the
house she’s moved into is haunted
by the girl’s vengeful spirit, rivals
the one she gave in Rosemary’s Baby
(1968) – well-matched by Conti’s as
her caring best friend and Dullea’s
as her controlling husband. Once
again, BFI Flipside has brought us
a well-deserved rediscovery. It is, as
Loncraine modestly remarks, “nearly a
good movie”.
Disc: An excellent, atmospheric
restoration; and with the exception
of Farrow and Dullea, we’re given
interviews with most of the main
participants in the film, along with
Fitzjohn. A lively intro by Kim
Newman adds further value.

REDISCOVERY
Robert Sigl; Hungary/Germany
1988; Second Run; region-free
Blu-ray; English and German
versions, the latter with new
English subtitles; Certificate
18; 84 minutes; 1.85:1. Extras:
interviews with stars Dóra
Szinetár and Barnabás Tóth,
cinematographer Nyika Jancsó;
short films by Sigl, The Christmas
Tree (1983) and Coronoia 21 (2021);
archival documentary The Making
of ‘Laurin’; video appreciation
by Jonathan Rigby; deleted
scenes; trailer; booklet.
BY HANNAH MCGILL
GRIMM OUTLOOK
Dóra Szinetár as Laurin
Laurin
Robert Sigl’s rich gothic portrait of adult betrayal
and childish resilience in the face of ambiguous,
irrational peril is a German-language Night of
the Hunter and a modern Grimm’s fairytale
Replete with gorgeous imagery, and con-
veying an atmosphere at once ominous
and serene, Robert Sigl’s gothic thriller
takes familiar tropes to fulfilling places.
Dóra Szinetár plays the eponymous 19th-
century nine-year-old, whose lack of adult
support – her father is away at sea, her
mother has been taken from her by a mys-
terious accident, and the care she receives
from her grandmother is inconsistent
to say the least – leaves her perilously
exposed to an untrustworthy world. The
German village in which Laurin lives in
is nothing if not sleepy; but sleepers
dream, and it is increasingly apparent to
the young girl that strange things occur
there, with children in particular at risk.
These dawning realisations are con-
veyed by Sigl and Hungarian cinema-
tographer Nyika Jancsó via long shots
of Szinetár’s face which express not so
much fear as the continuous, private pro-
cessing of information. This is the child
not as victim, but as nascent detective;
and in common with that of other uncon-
ventional screen detectives, from Ida
Arnold in Brighton Rock (1947) to Agent
Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks (1990-2017),
her power is increased by her psychic
sensitivity and openness to the irrational.
Laurin is at the age, moreover, when our
fading fear of fictional monsters crosses
over with our growing awareness of
real ones, and thus rightly perceives the
threat to the children of her village as at
once supernatural and bluntly, horribly
real. The unseen and irrational imperil
Laurin, but also protect her: it is her
knowledge of stories that allows her to
read the situation, and her belief in the
continued influence of her dead mother
that informs her bravery.
Laurin’s transition from passive
dependent to righteous avenger echoes
both the resilient child-heroes of Grimm
fairytales and the ‘final girls’ of horror
cinema; but like this film’s clear precur-
sor The Night of the Hunter (1955), which
reminds us that it really is “a hard world
for little things”, Laurin locates its fantasy
elements in a world in which children
also suffer plenty of wholly ordinary and
familiar injustices. The murderer at large
is only the worst manifestation of a spec-
trum of adult betrayals that takes in the
reckless drunkenness of Laurin’s grand-
mother, the petty sadism of her teachers,
and her father’s endless absences. Like
the children of The Night of the Hunter,
however, Laurin finds her childishness
an advantage: her fear of the dark is per-
fectly sensible, and her belief in monsters
is what allows her to see one coming. Let
adults faced with evil deny, avoid, ration-
alise, self-medicate and make faraway
wars: Laurin remains close enough to
her instincts to understand exactly what
she’s up against.
It’s a further interesting aspect of Sigl’s
vision that despite the film’s intense,
sometimes unsettling focus upon Szine-
tár’s small body and luminous face, it is
not her person that the antagonist desires.
In a perceptive acknowledgement that
victimisation is not just for girls, and that
predators often select their victims from
among the already very victimised, it is
the slight and haunted Stefan (Barnabás
Tóth) who faces sacrifice on the altar of
adult appetites.
Laurin’s references to The Night of
the Hunter pleasingly restore that film’s
German influences – both the folklore
collated and published by the broth-
ers Grimm in the 19th century, and the
expressionist art movement of the early
20th – to a German context, although
Laurin’s cultural identity is complicated
by its Hungarian setting and predomi-
nantly Hungarian cast. Did Sigl, shooting
91
just ahead of the fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989, intend a larger metaphor about the
failure of German patriarchal authority?
There’s no interview with him in this Blu-
ray package to enlighten us, although he
did conduct the included 2017 interviews
with Szinetár, Tóth and Jancsó, and is
seen in youthful firebrand mode in a con-
temporary making-of for German televi-
sion. To Jancsó – son of the great Hun-
garian director Miklós Jancsó – Laurin’s
social messages pertain to “the rigidity
of society, upbringing, parents, commu-
nity, church”. The cinematographer is
also interestingly upfront about Laurin’s
neglect, observing that it was never even
shown in Hungary, and declaring himself
“jealous and angry, a bit” at the adulation
lavished on Michael Haneke’s similar The
White Ribbon (2009) two decades later.
The actors also note the film’s obscurity, if
DVD & BLU-RAY
more cheerfully, with Szinetár expressing
pleasant surprise at occasionally being
recognised for her role in Laurin rather
than for the theatre and music career she
subsequently established in her native
Hungary. The making-of feature con-
cerns itself earnestly with the vagaries
of German film funding at the time, and
the associated difficulties in getting films
made and seen, let alone drawn into the
mainstream consciousness. “With Lau-
rin’s budget,” the voiceover observes, “you
could make just one episode of Dallas.”
Increased critical interest in and aware-
ness of the strands of cult cinema that
inform Laurin – Italian giallo; the fleshy
arthouse fairytales of Walerian Borow-
czyk – make this a ripe moment for its
re-appreciation. It is a slower burn than
some of its influences, contenting itself
with shadows and implication for a long
while before the true nature of Laurin’s
mission kicks in, and showing so little
actual violence that the 18 certificate on
this release seems unnecessarily restric-
tive. But the third act stints on neither
catharsis nor spectacle, with unearthly
floods of colour lending thrilling literal-
ism to a young girl’s assertion of her power
and calling both Carrie (1976) and Vertigo
(1958) to mind. The Blu-ray presentation
is exquisite, fully honouring the film’s rich
colours and expressionist compositions.
Both German- and English-language
versions of the film are included; the
former is the better performed, and ben-
efits here from a new subtitle translation.
Also included are deleted scenes, schol-
arly assessments of Laurin by Jonathan
Rigby and, in the booklet, James Oliver,
and two short films by Sigl.
 92
ARCHIVE TV
Ron Francis/David Foster;
UK 1972; Network; Region
2 DVD, 2 discs; b&w;
Certificate PG; 325 minutes;
1.33:1. Extras: image gallery.
REVIEWED BY ROBERT HANKS
DVD & BLU-RAY
COLD WAR KIDS
Spencer Banks (far right) as
Martin Clifford in Tightrope
Tightrope
Back in the 1970s, of course, children were
expected to take a convoluted 13-part Cold War
spy thriller in their stride. We didn’t have to be
spoonfed the plots, like kids these days
They’re the happiest days of your life,
aren’t they? Scrapping in the playground,
loitering in the corridors, gabbing about
who got off with whom at the disco,
which teachers you fancy, who put what
on question three and what you’re going
to do after A-levels. And, of course, the
web of conspiracy and secret terror at the
heart of which your school lies.
The idea of school as the heart of
weirdness is familiar today, from Buffy the
Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) to Wednesday
(2022). But back in 1972, Tightrope was a
genuine oddity – not that it seems espe-
cially normal even now.
The hero is Martin Clifford (Spencer
Banks), a sharp-witted, not physically
impressive sixth-former at rural Redlow
Comprehensive who, shortly before
A-levels, is recruited by an eccentric spy-
master called Forrester to assist in root-
ing out a ring of spies Forrester believes
is working from the school – they are
presumably gathering intelligence on the
nearby American airbase where Martin’s
father works as a handyman. Martin is
particularly well placed to hunt for clues
about the Dalek-like ‘Voice of Truth’, a
mysterious presence that has started
interrupting schools TV broadcasts (just
about the only thing you could watch
on TV before lunchtime on weekdays in
the 70s), making enigmatic suggestions
about members of staff and encouraging
pupils to rebel – topical in the post-’68
era. Martin throws himself into the work,
surprisingly unsceptical about Forrester’s
bona fides even after the spymaster (or is
he?) shoots him with a tranquilliser and
transports him to his secret lair, adorned
with suits of armour and an organ
on which Forrester plays, Dr Phibes-
style; he still swallows it when Forrester
instructs him to fail his A-levels, throwing
away his chance to get out of Redlow.
Victor Pemberton’s script has an
improv energy and ricketiness, and over
13 episodes the plot twists, red herrings
and absurdities mount up, so that it gets
quite hard to follow what’s going on. It
doesn’t help that what we have here is a
corrupted version – the original colour
tapes were wiped, and what survived is in
black and white, with shoddy sound qual-
ity (Network’s no-frills package doesn’t
include subtitles, either). Somebody
is using the school pigeons – the what,
now? – to send messages; somebody
else is breaking into the pigeon loft to
dispose of them. Is it Mr Elliot, the boho
art teacher with the goatee, the comb-
over, the Afghan jacket and the secret
Hungarian past? Or Miss Walker, the
glamorous science teacher, who is caught
hastily rubbing nonsensical chemical for-
mulae from the blackboard and lurking
near the airfield perimeter? Mr Harvey,
“pin-up of the sixth form”, with his sus-
piciously bouffant hair, sharp lapels and
boldly flared trousers? Who broke into
Martin’s house? Why has Martin’s dad
been arrested? Who are those teenage
hikers, with their cagoules and big ruck-
sacks? Why has Mrs Ruggles in the vil-
lage shop got a revolver in a cheese dish
under the counter, and what’s she doing
with a secret room and a radio transmit-
ter? What’s the landlord of the village
pub up to? How does Martin manage
to knock out a pair of adult professional
thugs after a single ju- jitsu lesson?
Some of the answers to those ques-
tions are implausible; and as I say, there’s
a lot going on, so I’m not entirely sure
what all the answers are. Quite a lot of
the twists depend on the fact that two
out of three apparent spy factions turn
out to be on the same side, but one of
them hasn’t been told, which actually
strikes me as quite realistic. The tone is
protean, sometimes gesturing towards
the real sadness of Martin’s situation – he
has no mother, he doesn’t get on with his
father – and Cold War paranoia, some-
times throwing itself wholeheartedly
into the adventure, but undercutting any
sense of threat with a note of absurdist
comedy. As Forrester, John Savident, a
Raffles of the acting profession, has no
trouble stealing most of his scenes with a
faintly camp, disdainful weariness. Banks
is stuck with playing it straight and some-
times ends up overdoing indignation or
incredulity in an effort to lend conviction
to Martin’s predicaments.
Tightrope is a companion piece to Time-
slip (1970-71), another ATV children’s tea-
time drama with ambition: Ruth Boswell,
script editor for Tightrope, had created the
earlier show with her husband James, and
Pemberton and Tightrope’s directors, Ron
Francis and David Foster, had worked on
episodes. In Timeslip, two children in an
English village had stumbled on a secret
research project and travelled forwards
and backwards in time, visiting alterna-
tive dystopias and trying to undo them.
Both shows sit at an interesting angle
to other fictions of the period in which
English idylls turn out sinister and unut-
terably strange: The Prisoner (1967-68) is
evidently an influence on Tightrope, which
also has some kinship with the folk-horror
Play for Today Robin Redbreast (1970), and
David Rudkin and Alan Clarke’s Penda’s
Fen (1974), in which Banks gives a much
richer performance as a baffled teenager
trying to make sense of the world. (He’s
not the only one who went on to more
interesting things: David Munro, who
played Mr Harvey, quit acting to pro-
duce and direct documentaries with John
Pilger, including Year Zero: The Silent Death
of Cambodia, 1979.)
Other spy fictions come to mind: For-
rester, whose single fight scene is a neat
piece of not-quite slapstick, owes a lot to
Patrick Macnee’s Steed in The Avengers
(1961-69); it’s probably coincidence that
the main location is Sarratt, the village in
south-west Hertfordshire where John le
Carré placed the spy school in his novels.
But perhaps it’s a bad habit, trying to
place TV shows within the culture and
estimate their significance; perhaps all
that needs saying about Tightrope is that
a silly, rambling thriller aimed at children
can still grip and entertain adults.

CROUPIER
Mike Hodges; UK 1998; Arrow; Region
B Blu-ray, 2 discs; English SDH; audio
description; Certificate 15; 94 minutes. Extras:
audio commentaries by Hodges/critic Josh
Nelson; interviews with screenwriter Paul
Mayersberg, actor Kate Hardie; archive audio
interview with Hodges; documentary about
Hodges; trailer; gallery; poster; booklet.
Two films by Jerzy Skolimowski REVIEWED BY PAMELA HUTCHINSON
The late Mike Hodges’ penultimate
IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE
feature, Croupier (1998), is an enjoyably
grubby, self-aware neo-noir set in
HANDS UP! a down-at-heel basement casino in
Jerzy Skolimowski; Poland 1965 /1967-81; BFI; Region B Blu-ray, central London. Appealingly brooding
2 discs; b&w and colour; in Polish with English subtitles; Certificate Clive Owen provides fatalistic third-
15; 145 minutes; 1:66:1/1:85:1. Extras: commentaries by Polish film
person narration as aspiring novelist
scholar Michał Oleszczyk; introduction by Michael Brooke; archive
audio interview with Skolimowski; stills galleries; booklet. Jack, who finds inspiration for fiction
in his night shifts at the blackjack
REVIEWED BY TREVOR JOHNSTON table. Despite his ascetic nature and
the qualms of his store-detective
The resurgence of the octogenarian Polish maverick with girlfriend Marion (the impeccable
the acclaimed Eo has helpfully turned the spotlight back Gina McKee), he is drawn into the
on Skolimowski the youthful prodigy. Brought up within criminal underworld, led astray by
a somewhat privileged background in one-party Poland, his fellow dealers, dodgy geezer Matt
the teenager certainly never lacked confidence: he was a (Paul Reynolds) and brittle Bella (Kate
published poet, playwright, amateur boxer, jazz groupie Hardie). When Alex Kingston’s South
and screenwriter for both Andrzej Wajda (Innocent Sorcerers, African femme fatale Jani slinks into
1960) and Roman Polanski (Knife in the Water, 1962) before the casino one night, Jack’s corruption
he’d even finished film school. There he combined years’ is all but certain.
worth of student exercises into a through-composed first A close cousin to Hodges’s first
feature, the remarkable Identification Marks: None (1965). film Get Carter (1971), Croupier quotes
Pragmatically, he played the central character, mooching American style but is thick with
ichthyology undergrad Andrzej Leszczyc, whom we see region- and period-specific detail
spending his last hours of freedom before shipping off for that transport the viewer far from
military service. Having weaselled out of it once before, he’s Hollywood. There’s a touch even of
now agreed to a spell in uniform, perhaps to give his life the Belmondo in Á bout de souffle (1959)
discipline it currently lacks, as the film unspools a series of in Jack’s tendency to throw a loose
long-take tableaux displaying the ennui and limited horizons Bogartian overcoat and fedora over his
facing Poland’s 1960s young. The mastery of mood and already anachronistic black-tie uniform.
mise en scène is already fully formed, and if there’s a peacock Croupier is a pulpy tale, well played,
element to the film’s first-person framework, admirers of the and offering some timely light-touch
nouvelle vague will surely find much of it chiming in sympathy social commentary. It takes a bleak
with French cinema’s new freedoms. view of the Britain that had so recently
Skolimowski traced Leszczyc’s twentysomething voted for the optimism of New
misadventures through two subsequent envelope-pushing Labour and before that swallowed
features – Walkover (1965) and Barrier (1966), both due the promises of the National Lottery.
for Blu-ray release by Second Run – before running Hodges’ sure eye for urban decay
into censorship issues with 1967’s Hands Up! (pictured lingers on grime in these West End
above), which led to Skolimowski leaving the country streets, which stand in stark contrast
for a peripatetic international film career. This time the to the airless, mirrored casino in which
protagonist is among a quartet of medics exploiting the money is transformed instantly from
system to line their own pockets, while also reminiscing hard currency into plastic tokens and
about their misdeeds in the communist youth organisation. the house always pockets the profit.
A switchback of egotism and self-loathing, it’s an eye-
catchingly theatrical enterprise, undone perhaps by a disc: A vivid, pristine transfer.
foolhardy yet memorable Stalin gag. A state ban lasted Generous supplements include an
until 1981, inspiring Skolimowski to add a then-and-now engaging set of reminisces from
preamble, where vivid footage from his acting gig on the Hodges himself on one of the two
war-torn Beirut shoot of Volker Schlöndorff ’s Circle of audio commentaries, plus interviews
Deceit exemplifies the psychic trauma of a world gone badly and essays. The highlight is David
wrong. Linked to the earlier Polish material, its instinctive Cairns’ superb feature-length
combination of seemingly disparate elements is risky, documentary on the second disc,
maddening, haunting and very Skolimowski. featuring an in-depth interview with
the garrulous 89-year-old Hodges, who
Discs: The restored print of Identification Marks: None is offers fascinating details about his life,
graintastic, that of Hands Up! exquisitely sharp. The whole career and films, sharply supported by
package is exemplary, with Michael Brooke’s video primer, archive footage. He recalls in particular
Michał Oleszczyk’s lucidly revealing commentaries, and an the difficulties of getting distribution
archive audio recording of Skolimowski’s 1983 appearance for Croupier after the original backers
at what was then the BFI National Film Theatre and a very walked away, and how it subsequently
useful booklet providing generous context. became a word-of-mouth hit in the US.
93
THE VIRGIN SUICIDES
Sofia Coppola; US 1999; Studio Canal; region-
free 4K UHD/Region B Blu-ray/Region 2 DVD
(separate releases); English SDH; Certificate 15;
97 minutes; 1.66:1. Extras: Soundtrack by Air – new
interview with J.B. Dunckel and Nicolas Godin;
Revisiting the Virgin Suicides (2018); interview with
author Jeffrey Eugenides; making-of feature;
Coppola short f ilm Lick the Star (1998).
REVIEWED BY K ATE STABLES
Sofia Coppola’s alternately sharp and
dreamy take on Jeffrey Eugenides’
1970s-set novel came from her wish to
create “a film for young women that
treats them with respect”. Fleshing
out the five isolated Lisbon sisters
as mysterious objects of chivalric
fascination to the suburban local
boys, the film counters the insistent
male gaze (from sidewalks, across
classrooms, and even cross-street
telescope surveillance) with the girls’
own teasing stares. The camera
lingers on Josh Hartnett’s cool school
heartthrob with girlish giddiness,
delights in Kirsten Dunst’s love-
DVD & BLU-RAY
hungry Lux leaping into his car to kiss
him with animal ferocity. It’s a film
about observing and being observed,
deepening as the girls are reduced
to staring at the forbidden outdoors
when their religious mother (a subtle,
sombre Kathleen Turner) puts them
under house arrest.
Coppola creates an impressionistic
effect, neatly folding in the boys’
wishful fantasies of the girl’s inner
lives alongside the drifty, fragmented
memories that make up the narrative.
Her sparse dialogue is often piercing,
however, as when the calmly suicidal
Cecilia (Hanna Hall) schools Danny
DeVito’s appalled psychiatrist: “You’ve
obviously never been a 13-year-old
girl.” For a first film, it shows an
astonishingly light touch in refusing to
spell out the Lisbons’ gradual loss of
hope. Instead, there’s a pulse of muted
despair in Cecilia’s sadness over
species extinction, in the Lisbons’
obsession with travel brochures, in
their coy, bubble-lettered, sticker-
spattered notes to the watching boys.
Cinematographer Ed Lachman’s
expressive use of colour is emphasised
in this ravishing 4K reissue, which
shows off the subtle palette shifts,
from the girls’ trinket-littered pastel
bedrooms to the flat beige prison of
their living room, and the acrid green
mists of a toxic-themed debutante
party. Like the soundtrack (70s rock
and Air’s melancholy, synth-heavy
score), it provides a perfect frame for
the film’s emotional yearning.
Disc: Air’s thoughtful account of their
initiation into soundtrack writing
is the only newly filmed extra. The
behind-the-scenes footage is worth a
look for the sheer number of Coppola
relatives pitching in on set.
 94
THE BULLET TRAIN
Satō Junya; Japan 1975; Eureka Classics; Region
B Blu-ray; in Japanese with English subtitles/
English; Certificate PG; 152 minutes (Japanese
version)/114 minutes (English-language version);
2.40:1. Extras: export edit with English dub; audio
commentary by critics Jasper Sharp and Tom
Mes; interview with Tony Rayns; Kim Newman
on mad bomber movies; interview with Satō
biographers Masuto Tatsuya and Nomura Masaaki;
archive featurette with Satō; trailers; booklet.
REVIEWED BY TREVOR JOHNSTON
In the 1970s, with Japanese homegrown
cinema in the commercial doldrums,
retooling Hollywood disaster movies
for local consumption seemed a viable
option. Hence Toei rested their yakuza
flick production line to take on this
high-concept offering, involving a bomb
threat to the country’s pride and joy, the
high-speed rail network. Unsurprisingly,
the response from Japan Railways to
the proposed title, which translated
as ‘Shinkansen Big Explosion’ (toned
down to The Bullet Train for export),
was far from positive, but the studio
DVD & BLU-RAY
pressed forward, casting Ken Takakura
as the disgruntled engineer who builds
a device primed to detonate once the
Tokyo-Hakata super-express drops
below 80 km/h. The film was later
touted as the inspiration for Jan de
Bont’s 1994 blockbuster Speed, though in
a worthwhile extra on this disc director
Satō Junya’s biographer points out The
Bullet Train is itself a rejig of the 1966
Rod Serling TV movie The Doomsday
Flight (well worth checking out), shifting
the setting from a commercial airliner to
Japan’s Shinkansen train service.
Satō’s film is good value, with adept
model work supplementing trackside
footage of real trains. The longer Japanese
cut delivers fascinating state-of-the-
nation observations in the margins of a
neatly turned action suspenser. There’s a
surprising degree of understanding for the
ostensible villains, as discarded artisans
and disillusioned former student radicals
make a stand against the juggernaut of
industrial prosperity, while the trigger-
happy police are clearly not favourites of
the fair-minded Satō. While the cut-down
international export version rattles along,
the expansive original delivers much more
depth than expected from such a mass-
market offering.
Disc: The 2K transfer preserves the
distinctive look of vintage Fujicolor,
and lavish extras deliver in spades. The
dream team of Japanese film experts
Jasper Sharp and Tom Mes pace
themselves over a fact- and insight-packed
commentary, while Tony Rayns and
Kim Newman contextualise impeccably.
Satō’s biographers dig into the making-of
details, and a fascinating Satō interview
ported over from a previous US edition
is another valuable element. With both
versions of the film included, one could
wish for nothing more.
DANCE CRAZE
Joe Massot; UK 1981; BFI; Region B Blu-
ray & Region 2 DVD dual format, 2 discs;
Certificate 12; 88 minutes; English SDH;
1.66:1; Extras: Arena film ‘Rudies Come Back’
(1980); out-takes; restoration demo; booklet.
REVIEWED BY K ATE STABLES
Pulsing with energy, Joe Massot’s
sharp, short and unabashedly
sweaty 1981 concert film adopts
the driving rhythm of the 2 Tone
bands it celebrates. Massot, veteran
of psychedelic oddity Wonderwall
(1968) and a harrowing stint on
the Led Zep doc The Song Remains
the Same (1976), abandons the
‘shot from the third row’ norm,
for cinematographer Joe Dunton’s
stage-weaving Steadicam. Sticking
tightly to Madness’s Suggs as he
dance-shuffles in and out of strobe
lights, or chasing The Selecter’s
Pauline Black as she darts about
the footlights, the film captures
the furious intensity of the
performances.
Beady editing catches the jokes,
feints, sudden scuffles and dance-
breaks that marked the bands’ on-
stage relationships, differentiating
the lounge-tinged punk-ska cabaret
of The Specials from the comedy
‘nutty boy’ stylings of Madness
and the rowdy group holler of
Bad Manners. Shortlived all-girl
band The Bodysnatchers deliver
the catchy ‘Let’s Do Rock Steady’
with brio, the camera saluting their
intense individual concentration in
contrast to the exuberant antics of
male bands. There’s the occasional
bat squeak of rude-boy misogyny,
but the charisma of Black and The
Bodysnatchers’ Rhoda Dakar stop
things feeling like a boy’s club.
Forty years on, the political anger
about working-class life and the
racist ultra-right exploding from
songs like The Specials’ ‘Concrete
Jungle’, or ‘Too Much Pressure’ by
The Selecter, still seems punchy and
topical. For an occasional breather,
Massot inserts a fake projection
snafu and some wry 50s Pathé news
reports on ‘hep’ teenage scenes:
“The cats say you’ve had it at 20,
squares!” According to Dunton,
on the film’s original release this
playfulness backfired badly with
American audiences, who freaked
out, assuming that the projector
had broken down, causing Rank to
withdraw the film.
Disc: Excellent sound quality
(Jerry Dammers approved the
remastering) and image clarity are
pleasing. As is Adrian Thrill’s BBC
Arena profile of 2 Tone records,
prising terse, eye-rolling answers
from The Specials.
MARTIN
George A. Romero; US 1976; Second Sight; region-free 4K UHD &
Region B Blu-ray dual format, 2 discs; Certificate 18; 95 minutes; 1.37:1.
Extras: soundtrack CD; four commentary tracks by Romero, Tom Savini
et al; documentary Taste the Blood of Martin; short film J. Roy – New and
Used Furniture (Tony Buba, 1974); interview with composer Donald
Rubinstein; making-of feature; trailers; booklet; collector’s cards.
REVIEWED BY KIM NEWMAN
Martin (John Amplas), who seems to be a withdrawn young
man, commits a well-planned rape and murder on a train,
though in his head he imagines a gothic romance version
in which he’s a seductive vampire rather than a “freak rapist
asshole”. Then, he arrives in Pittsburgh to be met by his
nattily dressed cousin Cuda (Lincoln Maazel), who labels
him ‘Nosferatu’ and announces that he will save his relative’s
soul and destroy his body.
Director-writer George A. Romero would never be drawn
on the ‘Is he or isn’t he?’ question of whether Martin Matthias
– who shares his surname with the vampire figure played by
Anthony Zerbe in The Omega Man (1971) – is a teenage serial
killer who believes or pretends to believe he’s a vampire.
Cuda and Martin agree on what he is, but differ on what a
vampire is – an unageing monster, one of several born into the
family thanks to a curse, or a mutant who exists apart from
humanity but isn’t a supernatural being. Martin is either 19
or 84, one of the many sly bits of referential wit worked into
a film (another is a fight between characters called Martin
and Lewis) that interweaves poetic realism in its depiction
of a decaying community left to rot by the recession of the
steel industry with Martin’s attempt to continue his predatory
pursuits – motivated as much by sex as bloodlust – without
Cuda driving a stake through his heart.
It’s a complicated, sensitive piece, with remarkable work
from Amplas in his only starring film role – rough around
the edges (effects man Tom Savini would still like a retake
for mismatched shots of a crucial gore effect) but full of
melancholy, disturbing sequences. At Cuda’s grocery
store, Martin is harried and abused by his cousin’s elderly,
aggressive female customers – while at the supermarket
where he scouts for victims, women customers have to run a
gauntlet of harassing youths in the parking lot. Martin plans
and executes his attacks meticulously, though his victims
consistently refuse to play out the parts he’s imagined for
them, while regular human crooks and cops and bystanders
bungle bloodily through impromptu violent encounters that
Martin simply walks away from.
Martin is even honest enough to call up a night-time radio
phone-in show to explain the vampire lifestyle – and becomes
a minor celebrity nicknamed the Count, which prompts a
quietly chilling, ominous post-credits musing, “I’ve got this
friend… who I think might be The Count.”
Disc: The new Ultra High-Definition transfer is optimal,
showcasing the grit and the beauty of the film and its
locations (revisited by some of the principals in a sweet new
documentary), and the booklet includes a range of interesting
writing from expert commentators (Alexandra Heller-Nicolas
makes an especial impression, stressing an often overlooked
or excused aspect of the protagonist in her piece ‘Freak
Rapist Asshole’). Still missing is Romero’s longer, black-and-
white original cut, which remains in legal limbo. Both Blu-ray
and UHD versions are also available as separate releases.

LOST AND FOUND
The Victor Jara Collective,
Guyana 1977
BY JONATHAN ALI
COLLECTIVE MEMORY
The Terror and the Time
IMAGE: VICTOR JARA COLLECTIVE @ AUTONOMEDIA
The Terror and the Time
This explosive film details an under-reported episode
from the latter days of the British Empire – the 1953
military intervention to remove the democratically
elected government of British Guiana
Guyana occupies a particular place in
world reckoning. Geographically speak-
ing it’s part of South America, yet in
terms of its history, society and culture,
Guyana is in the Caribbean. The coun-
try has produced writers and artists of
renown, including the novelist Wilson
Harris, author of the modernist mas-
terpiece Palace of the Peacock (1960), and
the abstract painter Frank Bowling, sub-
ject in 2019 of a career retrospective at
Tate Britain.
Less well known is Guyana’s contri-
bution to cinema, especially that of the
Victor Jara Collective in the 1970s. Two
films, both documentaries, bear the col-
lective’s name. The first, their only feature,
sought to create an intelligent and urgent
form of politicised nonfiction cinema in
the country, where before there had only
been a handful of Hollywood-type fiction
films. Shot in black and white and on
16mm, The Terror and the Time remains a
sui generis triumph of anti-colonial cinema.
The story of the making of The Terror
and the Time is as noteworthy as the film
itself. The Victor Jara Collective had its
beginnings at Cornell University, New
York, in a Marxist study group whose
members included Rupert Roopnaraine,
a professor of comparative literature
from Guyana who had left the country
to attend Cambridge in the early 1960s.
Encouraged by the historian and political
activist Walter Rodney, his compatriot
and author of the seminal text How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa (1972), Roopnaraine
returned home in 1975, accompanied by
several members of the study group, eve-
ryone freshly trained up in the basics of
filmmaking as their chosen form of soci-
etal intervention.
It was an opportune moment for the
newly formed collective, which had taken
its name from the Chilean musician mur-
dered in 1973 by the Pinochet regime. A
decade after independence from Brit-
ain, Guyana had, with overseas finan-
cial assistance, set up a film centre that
included post-production facilities. The
collective, inspired by Octavio Getino
and Fernando Solanas’s epic of Third
Cinema The Hour of the Furnaces (1968),
presented the government with a script
for a five-part film on the political history
of Guyana and the formation of its major-
ity working-class population, made up of
the descendants of enslaved Africans and
indentured Indians.
Though the ambitious script met with
the approval of the nominally socialist
administration, the funding to produce
it wasn’t there. The collective agreed to
rewrite the script in three sections and
shoot the first part. In return, the state
provided the use of its facilities, as well as
camera equipment and film stock. They
also gave the collective the run of the
national archives. The resulting film, a
75-minute version of the collective’s origi-
nal vision, was astonishing.
The Terror and the Time opens with a
quote on the deleterious effects of colo-
nialism from Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched
of the Earth (1961), before relating events
in 1953 in what was then British Guiana,
when internal elections were allowed for
the first time and a multi-ethnic, working-
class party unexpectedly won the most
seats and formed an administration. Soon
the government of the recently crowned
Elizabeth II, under Winston Churchill,
seeing communist influence everywhere
and alarmed by increasing labour distur-
bances, would suspend the new constitu-
tion, land troops and arrest the leading
ministers. Interwoven with this narrative
is an analysis of the country’s colonial his-
tory, from slavery onward, laying bare the
ongoing exploitation of the masses both
95
economically and culturally. Finally, the
Guianese experience is contextualised
within the contemporary global strug-
gle for liberation, which included British
atrocities in Kenya and the UK – and a
US-instigated coup d’état in Iran.
The film achieves all of this without
recourse to omniscient voiceover or
explicatory text. Instead, it deploys – det-
onates might be a better word – newsreel
and original footage as well as press clip-
pings in a montage strategy reminiscent
of Santiago Álvarez and Joris Ivens. In
one shocking sequence, footage of a
dying beggar is intercut with meat being
butchered and images of newspaper
advertisements for imported luxury prod-
ucts, while ‘(How Much Is) That Doggie
in the Window?’ jauntily plays on the
soundtrack. Such stretches are set against
contemplative sequences with an original
DVD & BLU-RAY
score fusing Afro and Indo music tradi-
tions. They also provide the film with its
only narration, the Guyanese poet Martin
Carter reading from his volume Poems of
Resistance (1954).
Also part of the film were interviews
with individuals key to events of 1953,
who by the 1970s were political oppo-
nents of the increasingly authoritarian
party in power. The government invited
the collective to either take the testimo-
nies out or hand the film over for com-
pletion. The implications were obvious.
Quietly, the footage of The Terror and the
Time was removed from Guyana – some
of it, according to one story, in a profes-
sional cricketer’s kitbag. The film was
eventually finished in New York, the
remaining parts of the triad never to
be made.
Forced out of Guyana, the Victor Jara
Collective were unable to screen The
Terror and the Time to the primary audi-
ence for whom it had been created. Exhi-
bition in Caribbean diaspora communi-
ties in North America and Europe did
take place, as well as within wider pan-
African and anti-imperialist contexts.
Renewed interest in the work of the col-
lective has led to recent screenings of the
film, and it can also be viewed online via
the Internet Archive. A restoration, led
by collective member Lewanne Jones, is
planned; one hopes it can happen sooner
rather than later. In the last decade, the
discovery of oil in Guyana has meant a
predictable scramble by multinational
corporations for the country’s new
wealth. If audiences – in Guyana and
elsewhere – ever needed the provoca-
tions of The Terror and Time, it is now.
 96
Unknown country:
WIDER SCREEN
the films of Patricia Mazuy
The French director’s bracing films are little known in the
UK, but a recent Blu-ray of her dazzling 1989 debut, Peaux
des vaches, offers a chance to reappraise her fascinating career
BY DAVID THOMPSON
“I wanted to show the countryside as
no one does in French cinema.” This
was Patricia Mazuy’s response when
asked about the inspiration behind her
first feature, Peaux des vaches (sometimes
translated as ‘Thick-Skinned’), released
in 1989. A trenchant, uncompromising
depiction of filial conflict in an agricul-
tural community in the north of France,
the film was championed by leading
critic Serge Daney, won the Prix Public
at the Angers Film Festival and was
screened in the Un Certain Regard sec-
tion at Cannes. But after a short life in
cinemas, Peaux des vaches disappeared
for more than 30 years, and was only
restored and rereleased in France in
2021. Now it is available in a handsomely
packaged Blu-ray/DVD combo, the only
major film by Mazuy currently on disc
with English subtitles.
The film, like much of her output, has
an intense and abrasive force that, as
her statement suggests, does little to
prettify or sentimentalise the land and
those who work it. The first, startling
image is a close-up of a cow’s eye. Two
brothers, Gérard and Roland, josh each
other drunkenly and start a fire in a barn,
only to see a man hiding out there perish
in flames. An abrupt cut moves us on
ten years; after doing time in prison for
their ‘crime’, Roland returns home to find
that Gérard has moved into industrial-
ised crop-framing, married local nurse
Annie and fathered a little girl. The
film explores the unresolved tensions
between the two men, their awkward
physicality together culminating in a cha-
otic, mud-spattered fight. Annie in effect
becomes the eyes of the audience (at one
point, we even see through a veil placed
over her head), struggling to understand
what drives these tortured individuals.
Born in Dijon in 1960, Mazuy’s own
background was a rural one. After study-
ing at the prestigious HEC business
school in Paris, she ran a cinema club,
and her film career began when she
encountered Agnès Varda in Los Ange-
les. After assisting on Jacques Demy’s
Une chambre en ville (1982), Mazuy co-
edited Varda’s Vagabond (1985) with the
director. These experiences brought her
close to two of the cast in Peaux des vaches:
Sandrine Bonnaire and Jean-François
Stévenin. Stevenin, who died in 2021,
was a prolific if unclassifiable figure (once
compared by Claire Denis to Robert
Duvall) who began acting for François
Truffaut and later directed three features,
one of which – Passe montagne (1978), also
about a close male relationship – was a
major inspiration for Mazuy. On screen,
he possessed the capacity to shift unex-
pectedly from charm to menace, and as
Roland in Peaux des vaches his emotional
instability becomes the main engine of
the film. Bonnaire’s own immediate, rare
Like much of intensity had already been demonstrated
in Maurice Pialat’s A nos amours (1983)
her output, and Vagabond. Completing Mazuy’s trian-
Peaux des gle was Jacques Spiesser, with Stévenin’s
vaches has an daughter Salomé playing the young girl
who forms a curious bond with her uncle.
intense and The shoot proved to be a real challenge
abrasive force for Mazuy, who initially felt she would be
that does little more creative if unprepared but soon dis-
covered she had to change her strategy.
to prettify or To her sadness, she fell out with her dis-
sentimentalise tinguished cinematographer Raoul Cou-
the land and tard (a key figure to New Wave directors
Godard and Truffaut), who left the shoot
those who early and took no credit. Part of their con-
work it flict concerned the film’s colour scheme,
as Mazuy wanted the night scenes to be
dominated by orange light and not be the
standard blue. In the restoration (person-
ally supervised by the director), the hues
are almost hallucinatory, from the men-
acing yellow of the giant agricultural
machines to a near-symbolic use of red,
always the colour of alarm, underlined by
IMAGE: LA TRAVERSE
ABOVE Roland’s recurring nose bleeds. Mazuy’s
Sandrine Bonnaire
in Patricia Mazuy’s
choice of music also underlines the brutal
Peaux des vaches (1989) side of country life, with harsh folk-rock

riffs from Theo Hakola and – heard on a
jukebox – a Triffids song with the telling
refrain, “Blood is thicker than love”. Some
of Hakola’s invention evokes the sound
world of westerns, and Mazuy herself has
never been shy of declaring her love for
that genre, with its hallowed directness
in placing violently opposing characters
against elemental landscapes.
Although Peaux des vaches acquired
something of a cult reputation – it was
singled out by Jacques Rivette, among
others – Mazuy’s subsequent career has
not been a smooth one. Another of her
films has also suffered the fate of being
very hard to see. In 1994 she made Tra-
volta et moi for the TV series Tous les garçons
et les filles de leur âge, in which an amazing
line-up of directors – Chantal Akerman,
André Téchiné, Olivier Assayas, Claire
Denis, Cédric Kahn, among others –
were commissioned to make hour-long
films about their adolescence that would
centre on a party. The results were mostly
brilliant, and Téchiné’s Wild Reeds and
Assayas’s Cold Water even enjoyed cinema
releases in extended versions, but the
(very expensive) music rights only gave
the other films a short television life.
Mazuy’s contribution is a surprising,
insolent and witty story of a Travolta-
obsessed teenage girl connecting with a
Nietzsche-reading oddball at a party held
in a skating rink, and its current obscurity
is a great shame.
Mazuy was next approached by a
producer to adapt a novel about the
mistress of Louis XIV, Madame de
Maintenon, and the school for girls she
established at Saint-Cyr, west of Paris.
Saint-Cyr (2000) may have been a period
costume film but again Mazuy didn’t shy
away from its setting in a harsh, unremit-
tingly muddy countryside. Isabelle Hup-
pert played the formidable lady whose
hopes of liberating young girls through
education are stymied by the lascivious,
male-dominated court. Mazuy’s severe
approach even included the commis-
sioning of a stark, astringent score by
John Cale. Subsequently, she made two
rather eccentric films placing horses
centre stage: Basse-Normandie (2004), a
documentary about a bizarre project to
perform an equestrian version of Dosto-
evsky, and Sport de filles (2011), a fiction set
in the world of dressage.
More recently, Mazuy has returned
to her fascination for films noirs and
westerns, with two features focused on
serial killers. Paul Sanchez Is Back! (2018)
destabilised audiences with its comic
elements, while Saturn Bowling (2022)
provoked controversy for an extended
scene in which consensual sex abruptly
turns into a very violent murder. As in
Peaux des vaches, Mazuy devised a story
of two brothers reunited in an unspar-
ing, macho world. While her films are
rarely comfortable viewing, Mazuy’s
passionate artistry deserves a much
wider audience.
A DVD/Blu-ray set of Peaux des vaches is out
now from La Traverse (latraverse-films.com)
Norwich Women’s Film Weekend archive
The online archive for this key UK festival, which ran from 1979-89, offers
a chance to drink from the twin wells of activist and cinephile nostalgia
BY PAMELA HUTCHINSON
Step back in time, to a late October weekend in
Norwich 1979. If you make it as the lights dim,
you are about to watch Helke Sander’s The All-
Round Reduced Personality (1977), a film praised by
Derek Malcolm with these puzzling words: “I’ve
seldom if ever seen the feminist argument put
more intelligently.” If you don’t know it yet, you’re
in on the start of something special: the trailblaz-
ing Norwich Women’s Film Weekend. Initiated by
Ginette Vincendeau, encouraged by Laura Mulvey
and organised by a group of scholars and activists
called Cinewomen, this women’s film festival ran for
a full decade. Each year brought a mix of program-
ming that was designed to provoke conversations
about women’s filmmaking and the representation
of women in film.
Where else could you see, on the same weekend’s
bill, Amy Heckerling’s coming-of-age comedy Fast
Times at Ridgemont High (1982); Women of Steel (1984),
a documentary by the Sheffield Film Co-operative
about female munitions workers in World War II;
and Irish filmmaker Pat Murphy introducing the
British premiere of her latest film Anne Devlin?
All were on the lineup at Norwich’s Cinema City
for this feminist three-dayer in 1985. If you weren’t
actually there, or you were but the memories are
misty, a new digital resource has gathered the fes-
tival’s printed matter online for the opportunity to
drink deep at the twin wells of activist and cinephile
nostalgia. Online, you can browse the programme
for each edition of the festival as well as admire the
eye-catching posters and read the booklets burst-
ing with essays and filmographic detail. The films
shown, and the ideas raised, are still vital topics of
debate for feminist film scholars and critics.
Each edition of the festival was staged on the
principle of accessibility, with a creche, free accom-
modation and affordable meals. The ethos of the
event was to facilitate conversations around the
films. And with schedules that included modern
women’s, feminist and queer filmmaking, with
ABOVE (From left) Heba Saleh, Ginette Vincendeau, Biddy Fisher, Caroline Merz, Teresa Grimes and Pat Treasure in Norwich in 1985
97
overlooked works from decades past and clear-eyed
reappraisals of popular classics, those conversations
were bound to be passionate, even provocative.
The weekends showcased work by contempo-
rary filmmakers including Chantal Akerman, Sally
Potter, Lizzie Borden, Julie Dash, Yvonne Rainer
and Jane Campion. The screening of Catherine
Breillat’s controversial feature Virgin (36 fillette, 1988)
at the final festival caused a particularly heated con-
versation, with the director present to respond to
some often outraged comments from the audience.
The leaflet warns that while some critics acclaimed
the film as a masterpiece, it had been “condemned
by some reviewers for being pornographic”. Else-
where, in 1986, an exception was made to screen
a film by a male director: bodybuilding documen-
tary Pumping Iron II: The Women (George Butler,
1985) “What are we looking at?” asked the screening
notes, preparing delegates for “a fascinating look at
women in a previously male-dominated environ-
ment”. The events also made room to revive archive
work deserving of fresh attention by Alice Guy,
Lois Weber, Germaine Dulac, Dorothy Arzner, Ida
Lupino, Muriel Box and Jill Craigie.
These conversations are still continuing. In 2023,
WIDER SCREEN
with Jeanne Dielman enthroned at the top of the
Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, the
programming at Norwich Women’s Film Week-
end may seem less radical and more fundamental
– which is all to the good. Still, many of those film-
makers from the archive are still waiting for wider
recognition. Some, like, say, Alice Guy, are undergo-
ing cycles of forgetting and remembering all over
again. Reading through the archives of this festival
reminds us how a sometimes subtle shift in perspec-
tive can make the film landscape seem new all over
again, underscoring the revolutionary potential of
courageous film programming.
To browse the archive, visit
norwichwomensfilmweekend.wordpress.com
 98

feminist from a heading in Trinh’s 1991 essay col-

worldmaking and
the moving image
EDITORS ERIK A BALSOM AND HILA PELEG
PUBLISHER MIT PRESS
PAGES 512
ISBN 9780262544528
REVIEWED BY BECCA VOELCKER
Fomo (fear of missing out) was real last
autumn. I was one of many who didn’t
make it to Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der
Welt (HKW) to visit No Master Territo-
ries: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving
Image, an exhibition of documentary and
experimental film and video curated by
the London-based film theorist Erika
Balsom and the Berlin-based curator
Hila Peleg. Published as a companion
to the exhibition but more than capa-
ble of holding its own as a standalone
reader, Balsom and Peleg’s edited volume
relieved my Fomo quite a bit.
The book is a substantial compilation
of writings, ranging from the scholarly
and essayistic to poetry, memoir and
conversation. Functioning as a diverse
conversation with films from the exhibi-
tion and wider engagements with femi-
nism in its many variations, the politics
of representation in nonfiction film, and
the fate of the canon, the book performs
what the Vietnamese filmmaker and the-
BOOKS
lection, When the Moon Waxes Red: Repre-
sentation, Gender and Cultural Politics, and
Trinh’s work is one of the key referents
for the exhibition and book. With their
focus primarily on the period between
the 1970s and 1990s, both survey a period
when feminism and women’s liberation
were taking hold internationally, albeit
in far from universal terms. But history
speaks to the present in this book. His-
torical essays are reproduced alongside
newly commissioned pieces that inter-
pret them. For example, paired with the
American filmmaker Chick Strand’s 1974
essay ‘Woman as Ethnographic Film-
maker’, readers will find a conversation
with Counter Encounters (a contem-
porary collaboration by the filmmakers
Laura Huertas Millán and Onyeka Igwe
and the curator Rachael Rakes), reflect-
ing on Strand’s approach today.
Connections between place and
gender are central concerns of the book.
Refusing a single-issue politics (because,
as the activist and writer Audre Lorde
put it, “we do not live single-issue lives”),
Balsom and Peleg understand the phrase
No Master Territories as an abolitionist cry
against structures of patriarchal and colo-
nial violence. Inscribing land and body,
society and self as intersecting sites of
struggle, Trinh’s phrase announces a pro-
ject for imagining alternatives. This work
of critical imagination is what the book
and exhibition’s ‘worldmaking’ describes.
builds on a feminist tradition of research
and curatorial initiatives that attend to
filmmaking practices developed to the
side of the mainstream, and often in criti-
cal opposition to it. Looking elsewhere to
discover the marginalised, however, risks
reinforcing precisely the territorialism
the exhibition and its participants resist.
Balsom and Peleg are careful to address
this issue, and reproduce Lis Rhodes’
1979 essay, ‘Whose History?’ to help artic-
ulate the perils of prescribing a canon.
What many of these films from the
With no master 1970s, 80s and 90s speak of is the trou-
bled place of gendered identity within
template of what cultural production. Chantal Akerman’s
feminist film deeply interrogative films are key exam-
should be, the ples. The exhibition and book are care-
ful to select films and filmmakers like
book gathers Akerman who problematise any move
a selection to essentialise gender as a monolithic
of films that identity. Citing the British feminist Lola
Olufemi, Balsom and Peleg understand
is diverse yet ‘woman’ in a “maximally inclusive sense”.
coherent in its Providing this definition is crucial to the
drive to present book and exhibition because it helps
articulate a powerful rebuttal of several
‘women’s kinds of feminism that operate exclusion-
lives in their ary or essentialising mechanics.
particularity With no master template of what
feminist film should be, the book gath-
and variability’ ers a selection of films that is diverse yet
coherent in its drive to present “women’s
lives in their particularity and variabil-
ity”. Films range from Haneda Sumiko’s
observational documents of rural Japan,

orist Trinh T. Minh-ha calls a process of
“speaking nearby”. Trinh uses this phrase
to describe her self-reflexive approach
to filming subjects from ‘nearby’ – that
is, from her own situated and embod-
ied perspective. Each contributor to the
book understands this approach, writing
in engaged and imaginative ways that
offer a personal entry to the film under
discussion, and give readers room to
reflect themselves.
The exhibition’s title, No Master Ter-
ritories, anticipates this respectful space
for engagement and difference. It comes
Worldmaking entails a struggle for repre-
sentational orders and ways of living that
do not subordinate or constrain.
The phrase No Master Territories also
describes an approach taken by many
filmmakers discussed, and by Balsom
and Peleg as researcher-curators, that cri-
tiques the territorial work of canonisation
in art and film historical disciplines. No
wonder the lexicon for discussing mas-
terpieces as works of seminal importance,
produced by genius, have etymologies
loaded with male reproductive faculties.
Looking elsewhere, No Master Territories
BELOW
Grupo Chaski’s Miss Universe
in Peru (1982), one of the films
discussed in Feminist Worldmaking
and the Moving Image
to Marta Rodríguez and Jorge Silva’s
very direct approach to denouncing neo-
colonial forms of worker exploitation in
Colombia. Different again is Forugh
Farrokhzad’s lyrical approach to those
excluded from Iranian society, seen in
her 1962 film The House Is Black, which is
presented in the book through film stills,
a poem by Farrokhzad from 1964 and an
interpretative essay by Sara Saljoughi,
commissioned for the book.
Farrokhzad’s poem and film stills are
thoughtfully laid across a double-page
spread in one of the book’s many dynamic
combinations of image and text. My
favourite spread is a film still in which the
protagonist of Barbara McCullough’s
Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purifi-
cation (1979) sits with spread legs in the
ruins of Los Angeles’ Watts district,
which has been cleared for the construc-
tion of a highway. Taking up space across
the central margin of the pages, as she
does the desecrated landscape in the film,
the protagonist triumphantly embodies
the emancipatory possibilities of women
of colour reclaiming space – in her case,
through dancing and ceremony, and in
the case of McCullough and many other
women in the book, through filmmaking.
Reclaiming space, but without ter-
ritorial narratives of mastery, the book
itself is a satisfyingly weighty tome of
critical creativity. Its citational generosity
embodies a wider feminist philosophy of
giving credit and sharing knowledge. I
know I’ll be reading, citing and sharing it
with my students, colleagues and friends
for years to come.

A FEW PERSONAL
MESSAGES
AUTHOR PIERRE CLÉMENTI
PUBLISHER SMALL PRESS
PAGES 153
ISBN 9781734838213
REVIEWED BY SOPHIA SATCHELL-BAEZA
On 24 June 1971, the life and career of
French actor, underground filmmaker
and countercultural icon Pierre Clémenti
were irrevocably ruptured when his five-
year-old son Balthazar opened the door
to plain-clothed policemen. Ransacking
the place, officers allegedly found cocaine
and hashish and arrested the actor on
drug charges. (The house where he was
staying ran a hippie open-door policy: this
detail formed a key part of the defence).
Clémenti would spend 17 months in two
Roman prisons before being released due
to insubstantial evidence, but, as Balt-
hazar notes in the foreword to Clémenti’s
1973 memoir A Few Personal Messages,
“He was forever haunted by his time in
prison.” The last film Clémenti directed,
Were Brunel’s films in the 1920s forerunners of a neglected English avant garde or
shrewd attempts to cash in on the commercial market for entertaining shorts?
Adrian Brunel
and British Cinema
of the 1920s:
The Artist versus
the Moneybags
AUTHOR JOSEPHINE BOT TING
PUBLISHER EDINBURGH
UNIVERSITY PRESS
ISBN 9781399501354
PAGES 240
REVIEWED BY IAN CHRISTIE
Adrian Brunel has long been one of
the enigmas of British film history. He
appears in the indexes of most studies
of the inter-war period, and his 1924 bur-
lesque Crossing the Great Sagrada remains
an unexpectedly modern satire on the
vogue for exotic travelogues. With bla-
tantly recycled shots, outrageous char-
acters (Prince Olarf of Yugo-Slowa), and
mocking titles (“Direction in which we
thought we were going”), this seems to
anticipate Monty Python by almost half a
century. So This Is Jollygood (1925), another
burlesque unfortunately lost, mocked
Hollywood domination, anticipating
Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapich’s
landmark short Life and Death of 9413: a
Hollywood Extra (1928).
But were these forerunners of a
neglected English avant garde, as some
The Sun (1988), would certainly seem to
back this up. An experimental punk pol-
icier framed with Clémenti’s distinctive
psychedelic iris shots, the short revisits
key moments in his arrest and imprison-
ment some 17 years earlier, recollecting
the “energies which time had scattered”.
Well, much of that energy can be
uncorked in A Few Personal Messages,
published soon after Clémenti’s release
but which has only now been translated
into English, by Claire Foster. Chart-
ing his unconventional route into acting
from bumming around semi-homeless
on Paris’s Left Bank to working under
some of the greatest directors of his, or
any, time, from Buñuel and Visconti to
Pasolini and Bertolucci, A Few Personal
Messages is, most potently, Clémenti’s
searing manifesto against prisons, artis-
tic censorship and repression of any
kind. Detailing his time in jail, from riots
and hunger strikes to the daily injus-
tices of the carceral system, Clémenti’s
text strongly recalls Oscar Wilde’s 1905
prison letter ‘De Profundis’, in tracking
the artist’s spiritual development behind
bars and identification with his fellow
inmates, many of whom brought Wilde
ADRIAN BRUNEL AND BRITISH CINEMA OF THE 1920S
have hopefully claimed, or shrewd
attempts to cash in on the commercial
market for entertaining shorts? Jose-
phine Botting’s welcome and scrupulous
account of Brunel’s frustrated career
reveals they were both. Emerging from
the editing company that Brunel and Ivor
Montagu had established in an alleyway
off Shaftesbury Avenue in London, they
made good use of the skills that had been
learned in salvaging British features,
including Hitchcock’s earliest work.
Brunel’s ambition seems to have been
to make ‘artistic’ films on his own terms,
which he only achieved with his debut
feature, The Man Without Desire (1923).
Made on a shoestring, partly on location
in Venice, this romantic time-travel fan-
tasy “brought together a group of artistic,
bohemian co-creators and skilled techni-
cians… with lavish sets and costumes [to
create] an exotic and indulgent atmos-
phere.” The cameraman Henry Harris
had worked with Abel Gance on J’accuse
(1919), and contributed some extraordi-
narily atmospheric images which, as Bot-
ting notes, impressed even Rachael Low,
British cinema’s sceptical historian.
This f ilm would also launch Ivor
Novello as Britain’s great silent-era star,
although in one of the many ironies of
Brunel’s career, he was denied the chance
to direct Novello’s breakthrough film
The Rat (1925). Throughout the decade,
Brunel was suspected of ‘highbrow’ ten-
dencies, and regarded cautiously by the
99
“out of the bitterness of lonely exile into
harmony with the wounded, broken and
great heart of the world”.
In the wake of recent celebrity court-
room dramas from Wagatha Christie to
Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘Ski-gate’ affair, the
media circus around Clémenti’s trial feels
oddly of the moment. The courtroom is
packed with long-haired hippies and the
darlings of the avant-garde. The presid-
ing judge appears “in awe” of Fellini, who
attests to speaking to Clémenti for a long
time and never having the impression
he was high. A judge remarks that “Clé-
menti’s physical appearance embodies
the characteristics of a drug addict”, while
Clémenti describes the judge as beauti-
ful. And so on. Elsewhere in the book are
enjoyable anecdotes about his iconoclas-
tic if patchy acting career, like the time
Alain Delon found him wandering the
streets of Saint-Germain and invited him
on to Visconti’s film set in Rome. Then
and there, Clémenti followed him to
Italy. Later, in the courtyard of Visconti’s
palace, the Italian director took his hands
in his own and remarked: “For a greaser,
you have the hands of a prince.” And that’s
how he ended up in The Leopard (1963).
BOOKS
mainstream industry, not least for his
association with the Film Society. Yet his
major successes, a home-front war film,
Blighty (1927), and the hugely popular
melodrama The Constant Nymph (1928),
could hardly have been more traditional.
For the latter, he was teamed with thea-
tre producer Basil Dean, making his film
debut, in what proved a difficult collabo-
ration. At the premiere, Dean remem-
bered being “jostled by huge crowds of
fans who mistook Adrian for myself and
me for him… a fitting comment upon the
mix-up of functions that had attended the
somewhat painful process of making the
film.” The Constant Nymph topped a 1929
Film Weekly poll of readers’ favourite Brit-
ish films, with Blighty and Brunel’s Noel
Coward adaptation The Vortex also on the
list. Yet within several years of the new
sound era, Brunel would find himself
relegated to ‘quota quickies’, alongside
apprentice directors such as Michael
Powell, and thereafter to propaganda
shorts and early television drama.
As an archivist, Botting has benefited
from the unusual amount of evidence
available as a result of Brunel’s compul-
sive hoarding to reach a valuably nuanced
view of his achievement, which is also a
commentary on changing attitudes
within British criticism. Not a neglected
auteur, nor a frustrated avant gardist,
she reveals, but an intelligent, opinion-
ated filmmaker struggling to survive the
vagaries of British production.
100
FROM THE ARCHIVE
MY BRILLIANT
CAREER
The formidably talented and still somewhat underrated Robert Aldrich, director of classics
such as Kiss Me Deadly and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, looked back candidly at
the highs and lows of his career in an in-depth interview from the late 1960s
SIGHT AND SOUND, WINTER 1968-69. BY JOEL GREENBERG
he Thalberg Building, Culver City,
California: follow its long plain corridors,
climb a couple of flights of prosaic stairs
and turn several corners and you will
eventually reach an office that sometimes
serves as the temporary headquarters of
the Aldrich and Associates company. An
inner room, rather murky and cluttered,
its main furnishings a mountainous
desk and a number of big black leather
chairs, discloses a burly, bespectacled
man who looks as if he might have been
a formidable college footballer. This
is Robert Aldrich, and he was indeed
a formidable college footballer. He is
now an even more formidable veteran
of countless Hollywood in-battles, and
creator of a body of films which at their
best reflect his own urban-American
energy and his preoccupation with the
morality and ethics of violence in an
amoral, violent world. Over Coca-Cola,
he talks briskly and often pungently of the
vicissitudes of a movie director’s career,
and after the interview – although it is
well past office hours and the building
is practically deserted – he will confer
long into the evening with a colleague
on the preparation of their new film.
Movie-making, for Robert Aldrich,
is clearly a 24-hour a day activity.
Q How did you enter movies?
A I was about to leave the University
of Virginia in 1941 when I
approached an uncle who had some
movie interests in California. He
gave me a production job for six
weeks at $25 per week, saying, “I
never want to see you again.” My
job was that of production clerk, a
position that has since been done
away with. It was the lowest form
of human life here, the guy below
the book-keeper and below the tea
boy. They were finally unionised
about 1942 or 1943 and became
third or fourth assistants. I made
the jump from fourth to first
assistant director rather hurriedly
thanks to World War II. I was
thrown out of the Air Corps after
a day and a half because of some
old football injuries, and owing
to the wartime shortage of young
manpower I quickly rose from first
assistant to production manager.
Q What were some of the pictures
you worked on at this period?
A I was very lucky in my assignments.
I worked with Lewis Milestone
on about four or five pictures
when he was just about at the
peak of his career – although he
mightn’t consider it the peak.
I worked with Chaplin, with
Joseph Losey and Bill Wellman,
and also with some terribly bad
directors whom there’s no point in
naming – although you learn just
as much from the bad ones as you
do from the good ones, strangely.
Q What were Enterprise
Studios like to work for?
A Enterprise embodied a really
brilliant idea of a communal way
to make films. It was a brand
new departure, the first time I
can remember that independent
filmmakers had all the money they
needed. But we wasted – that’s
presumptuous – the company wasted
an awful lot of money, energy and
effort on bad material, on improperly
developed material, because its
story selection and picture execution
ALL IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE
were not what they should have
been. There’s an ethnic saying here:
“A fish stinks from the head.” Well,
there was no head of that studio.
There were a lot of very talented,
experienced, intelligent people
 FROM THE ARCHIVE 103

‘Mickey Spillane’s
book [Kiss Me Deadly]
had nothing. We
just took the title
and threw the rest
away. The scriptwriter,
A.I. Bezzerides, did
a marvellous job,
contributing a great
deal of inventiveness.
That devilish box, for
example – an obvious
atom bomb symbol –
was mostly his idea’

OPPOSITE & LEFT

Ralph Meeker and Marian
Carr in Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

ABOVE
Meeker and Maxine
Cooper in the film
104 FROM THE ARCHIVE
among its various branches, but
there was no knowledgeable guy
to run the shop. But for about
two or three years before it went
down the drain I would guess that
it had a better esprit de corps,
and more interest and excitement
going for it among its employees,
from the labourer to the star,
than any place in Hollywood.
Personal relationships between
the employees and management
were extraordinary, and they paid
the top dollar to all technicians.
Thus they got the best technicians
from every major studio in town.
Q Did Enterprise have an ethic,
an orientation towards stories
with social significance?
A I think that happened, but it would
be unfair to say that was its ‘aim’. As
the Irish say, this was just before
the ‘troubles’, and the talented
people in that period – there were
exceptions, of course – tended to
be more liberal than the untalented
people, and because they were
more liberal they got caught up in
social processes that had political
manifestations which later proved
to be economically difficult to live
with. In its search for talented
and interesting people Enterprise
hired a great many followers of
that persuasion, and its pictures
consequently began to acquire
more and more social content.
Q How did you come to direct your
first feature, Big Leaguer [1953]?
A At MGM they’d formed a unit
jokingly called ‘the sons of
the pioneers’ in which sons of
producers who had worked with
Louis B. Mayer were producing tiny
little features. Dore Schary, who
didn’t have a very outstanding record
here, was nevertheless a pretty
wise fellow, and he recognised – in
his capacity as studio production
head – that with fellows like that
as producers you had to have
directors who knew what they were
doing. Herbie Baker, who wrote
the screenplay for Big Leaguer,
a baseball story, had been with
Carl Foreman at Enterprise and
suggested my name to Schary.
That’s how I got to do the film.
Q How did you become associated
with Hecht-Lancaster [a
production company formed
by Burt Lancaster with his
agent Harold Hecht]?
A That went back to the time when
they were still kind of sprawling
and struggling and had gone to
Columbia on a two-picture deal.
They needed someone to watch
the store because Harold Hecht
wasn’t too well acquainted with the
physical and financial side of picture-
making and wanted an experienced
production manager. I went there
as ‘assistant to the producer’, which
was really just a glorified way of
paying me more money so that I
could be their production manager.
Q And your first film for them as
director was Apache [1954]?
A Yes. They let me do it because they
wanted a ‘bright young man’ they
didn’t have to pay much money to.
A great deal of what I wanted to
say about the Indians in Apache was
lost. The original script ended with
the hero, Massai [played by Burt
‘I worked with
Chaplin, with
Joseph Losey
and Bill Wellman,
and also with
some terribly
bad directors
– although you
learn just as
much from the
bad ones as you
do from the good
ones, strangely’
OPPOSITE
Joan Crawford and Bette
Davis in What Ever Happened
to Baby Jane? (1962)
BELOW
A script reading of Hush,
Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964),
with Joseph Cotten, Davis,
Aldrich and Crawford, whose
part in the film was ultimately
taken by Olivia de Havilland
when Crawford fell ill
Lancaster], going back up to a shack
to be shot needlessly in the back by
Federal troops. That was the script
I’d been given, that was the script
I’d approved, and that was the script
I’d shot. Two or three days before
shooting on the picture was due to
finish United Artists prevailed upon
Hecht to shoot two endings. I don’t
know how it is in other countries,
but in this country when you have
somebody suggest two endings
you know they’re going to use the
other one. So I refused to shoot the
alternative ending and for about
two days Burt [Lancaster] agreed
that the original ending was what
this picture was all about. Then for
reasons best known to himself he
changed his mind. Now once Burt
had changed his mind it made little
difference if I refused to direct the
other ending because the next day
they could have got someone who
would. The point was lost because a
$500-a-week director had no hope of
prevailing against Hecht-Lancaster
and United Artists. With the
original ending I think the picture
would have been more… ‘significant’
is a pompous word, but I think it
would have been more important.
You make a picture about one thing,
the inevitability of Massai’s death.
His courage is measured against
the inevitable. The whole preceding
two hours becomes redundant if
at the end he can just walk away.
Q Did you have a more amicable
relationship with Burt Lancaster
on Vera Cruz [1954]?
A Burt is not an easy man to get
along with, but quite responsive.
On Apache we had a much better

relationship, I think, than either
of us anticipated. On Vera Cruz
it was less amicable. This was
because Burt, until he directed The
Kentuckian [1955], thought he was
going to be a director, and when
you’re directing your first great
big picture you don’t welcome
somebody else thinking he is going
to be its director. There were also
a few differences of opinion about
concepts and about action. Since
Burt directed The Kentuckian I think
he’s probably a more valuable actor.
Q Kiss Me Deadly [1955] has become
a kind of ‘cult’ picture, particularly
among some European critics.
What are your views on it?
A I was very proud of the film. I think
it represented a whole breakthrough
for me. In terms of style, in terms
of the way we tried to make it, it
provided a marvellous showcase
to display my own ideas of movie-
making. In that sense it was an
enormous ‘first’ for me. I’ve never
denied that. I think what irritates
some people – and I’ve been
misquoted about this so many times
– is that they think I have disowned
the importance of the film. I haven’t.
What I have said is that it has an
importance juxtaposed against a
particular political background,
an importance that’s not justified
if it’s juxtaposed against another
one that by accident happens to
fit. It did have a basic significance
in our political framework that we
thought rather important in those
McCarthy times: that the end did
not justify the means. Once you got
outside the United States the whole
importance of that disappeared,
and the French and others read
into it all sorts of terribly profound
observations. Now the moment
you denied that alleged profundity
they thought you were discrediting
your own work and their opinion
of it, which wasn’t the case.
Q To what extent did you use
Mickey Spillane’s original book?
A The book had nothing. We just took
the title and threw the rest away. The
scriptwriter, A.I. Bezzerides, did a
marvellous job, contributing a great
deal of inventiveness to the picture.
That devilish box, for example – an
obvious atom bomb symbol – was
mostly his idea. To achieve the
ticking and hissing sound that’s
heard every time the box is opened
we used the sound of an airplane
exhaust overdubbed with the sound
made by human vocal chords when
someone breathes out noisily.
Q Autumn Leaves [1956]
seems to have been a very
uncharacteristic subject?
A I guess self-survival made me do
that one. People were getting pretty
‘On The Garment collective in their criticism of the
violence and anger and wrath in
Jungle I was pretty my pictures, although these things
stubborn, and weren’t intentional, and I thought it
Harry Cohn, the was about time I made a soap opera.
I was also a great fan of the Butlers
head of Columbia, – Jean Rouverol and Hugo Butler –
was pretty and this was her original story. I had
stubborn, and they always been a Joan Crawford fan
too, but we had big problems with
wanted to change her on Autumn Leaves. About a week
the focus, the force, before work on the picture began,
the direction of Miss Crawford wanted her own
writer to come in and rewrite, which
the picture. I refused to allow her to do. At 2am
I wouldn’t do it on the morning before we were due
and Cohn fired me’ to start shooting, I received a phone
call saying she wouldn’t be there
later that day unless her writer could
attend, to which I responded that if
her writer showed up we would not
shoot. Looking back, I really think
that’s the only way you can properly
deal with Miss Crawford. The
writer didn’t show up but she did,
and we proceeded. But she didn’t
talk to me for about four or five days.
She took direction, she did what
she was supposed to do, but there
was no personal communication.
Then one day she was doing a scene
terribly effectively: I forget which
one. I was really touched, and when
she looked up after finishing it I
tried not to be obvious in wiping
away a tear. That broke the ice,
and from then on we were good
friends for a long, long time.
OPPOSITE
Aldrich with Robert
Ryan and Ernest Q What were the circumstances
Borgnine on the set of
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
of your quitting direction of
The Garment Jungle [1957]?
BELOW
Burt Lancaster shooting
A That was a strange experience.
Vera Cruz (1954) I don’t remember another occasion
FROM THE ARCHIVE 107
of a guy getting fired for wanting
to shoot the picture that he’d been
assigned. Usually, if you’re fired,
it’s for wanting to change the
script. The film’s producer, Harry
Kleiner, had written a terribly
tough, controversial script and as
we started getting into it – it was
shaping up as a pretty good picture
– they suddenly realised that they
had no intention of making that
kind of a document; they wanted
to make ‘boy meets girl in a dress
factory’. I was pretty stubborn, and
Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia,
was pretty stubborn, and they
wanted to change the focus, the
force, the direction of the picture. I
wouldn’t do it and Cohn fired me.
I’ve never seen the finished film,
although I’m told that about half
or two-thirds of it is mine. I had a
great fondness for Cohn. Naturally
I think he was wrong in firing me
but that’s beside the point. I think
he ran a marvellous studio. I think
that system is better, I think he did
it as well as anybody could do it.
He wasn’t in the money business,
he was in the movie business. I had
a chance to have a reconciliation
with him later – a reconciliation in
terms of doing other work – and I
didn’t go. I’ve always regretted it.
Q The Last Sunset [1961]?
A A very unpleasant experience. The
whole thing started badly, went
on badly, ended up badly. Dalton
Trumbo had done a screenplay.
This was just towards the end of the
McCarthy period and he had yet
to be given a screen credit, though
Otto Preminger had promised him
108 FROM THE ARCHIVE
one for Exodus [1960]. He quit his
concentration on The Last Sunset
to concentrate on the Preminger
picture and by the time he came
back to our film it was too late to
save it. Now I think that, all things
considered, Trumbo was 2,000 per
cent right. There was an enormous
principle involved here. He was
the first writer to break through
the blacklist, he was going to force
a change in the whole California
concept of blacklisted writers. That
was certainly much more important
than making Kirk Douglas look
well, but it didn’t solve the problem
of making The Last Sunset any
better. Rock Hudson emerged
more creditably from it than
anyone. I found him to be terribly
hard-working and dedicated and
very serious: no nonsense, no “I’ve
got to look good” or “Is this the
right side?” If everybody in that
picture, from producer to writer
to other actors, had approached
it with the same dedication it
would have been a lot better.
That’s not my way of saying that
Mr Hudson is Laurence Olivier,
but he was certainly much more
honestly involved in that venture
than anybody else I can think of.
Q Were Davis and Crawford
your initial choices for the two
principal parts in What Ever
Happened To Baby Jane? [1962]?
A Yes, right from the beginning. I’d
never met Davis. I did write her
a letter saying that she might not
want to do the picture but she
would have to admit it was the
best role she’d ever had, and if she
didn’t feel that way she shouldn’t
see me. After two weeks she wrote
back declaring that it was rather
presumptuous of me to say that,
but it was certainly a good enough
role to warrant discussion.
Q Was there any ill feeling
between the two stars on
the set of Baby Jane?
A None. I think it’s proper to say that
they really detested each other, but
they behaved absolutely perfectly:
no upstaging, not an abrasive word
in public. Nor did Miss Davis allow
any enmity with Miss Crawford
to colour her playing of the scenes
in which she was supposed to
torment her. People who loved
the violence of it read that into it
and thought it was inherent, but
it wasn’t. They both behaved in a
wonderfully professional manner.
Q Is it true that Davis didn’t
like herself in the part when
she first saw it run?
A She’d never seen the complete
picture before seeing it with me
at Cannes, and I don’t think she
was prepared for the experience
of seeing it among lots of people.
She, more than I, decided on her
Baby Jane make-up, that ugly chalky
mask. I’d say it was 80 per cent
Davis and 20 per cent Aldrich,
whereas on Hush, Hush Sweet
Charlotte [1964] it was very close
‘About five minutes
into the picture
I heard this
quiet but kind of
desperate sobbing
beside me and
turned to Bette
Davis wondering
what the hell was
the matter. “I just
look awful,” she
wept. “Do I really
look that awful?”’
Q Were you pleased with her
A I thought she was wonderful. But
Q What was the origin of Hush,
A It came from a three- or four-page
BELOW
Beryl Reid, the star of
The Killing of Sister George
(1968), talking to Aldrich
to 50-50, maybe 55 per cent Aldrich
and 45 per cent Davis. She did not
realise, I think, what the cumulative
effect of seeing herself like that
would be. About five minutes into
the picture I heard this quiet but
kind of desperate sobbing beside me
and turned to her wondering what
the hell was the matter. “I just look
awful,” she wept. “Do I really look
that awful?” Miss Davis is a strange
lady. She has been misled so many
times, and placed her confidence
so many times in situations and/
or people that didn’t pay off, that
she’s naturally terribly hesitant to
trust anybody. Once she trusts
you, however, she’s marvellous.
performance in Baby Jane?
I also thought – the public won’t
agree, and certainly the critics won’t
agree – that the job she did in Hush,
Hush Sweet Charlotte, because it
was a much more difficult, narrow-
edged part, and took much more
talent and time and thought and
care, was a better performance
than Baby Jane, which was such a
bravura, all-out gothic eye-catcher
that everybody thought it superior.
Hush Sweet Charlotte?
original idea by Henry Farrell,
author of the Baby Jane novel,
that I found very exciting. I also
wanted to reteam Davis and
Crawford. Then Miss Crawford
fell ill and was replaced by Olivia
de Havilland. And Crawford
was sick, seriously sick. If she’d
been faking, as some reports then
suggested, either the insurance
company would never have paid
the claim or she would never have
been insurable again. Insurance
companies here are terribly tough,
there’s no such thing as a made-up
ailment that they pay you off on.
Eventually the insurance company
offered us the alternatives of
finding a replacement for Miss
Crawford or scrapping the picture.
As you can well imagine, there
were great arguments about whom
we should get. A number of ladies
were considered, all of whom
for a variety of reasons were not
acceptable to all parties. There
was also a contractual problem in
that Davis had star approval. Until
then it had been academic because
she had approved Crawford, but
it now became vitally important.
Obviously the ideal candidates
would have been Vivien Leigh and
Katharine Hepburn. Now it’s not
necessary that it should become a
matter of public record why Davis
didn’t want either of those ladies.
It is fair to say, however, that it had

nothing to do with their talent. But
there are deep-seated personal and
historical reasons why she didn’t
want them. I won’t say that Olivia
was third choice, but Olivia was the
first choice that was acceptable.
Q What script problems did you
have on The Dirty Dozen [1967]?
A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the
producer Kenneth Hyman had
bought the property, a novel by E.
M. Nathanson, after I had tried
to acquire it when it wasn’t even in
galleys, just a step outline. Then
they had about four or five scripts,
the last one written by Nunnally
Johnson. This would have made
a very good, very acceptable 1945
war picture. But I don’t think that
a 1945 war picture is necessarily
a good 1967 war picture. So I
brought in Lukas Heller. Metro
must have had about $300,000
tied up in aborted Dirty Dozen
scripts by then, and I wanted a
whole new concept. Well, despite
considerable resistance, we got a
whole new concept, and with the
exception of [film critic] Bosley
Crowther I think you will discover
that most people adored – that’s a
pretty rich word – were fascinated
by the anarchy of the picture’s first
two-thirds and were excited and/
or stimulated and/or entertained by
the last third. The first two-thirds
were Mr Heller’s contribution
towards making it a 1967 picture
and not a 1947 picture and the
last third was a pretty high-class,
well-done war adventure.
Q How do you go about
preparing your films?
A I give my art director, William
Glasgow, a concept, and he comes
back with the drawings. It’s very
subtle. Sometimes it gets terribly
complicated when we use a model,
but very rarely; we did use one on
Charlotte and The Legend of Lylah Clare
[1968]. As I approve or disapprove
of his suggestions his ideas snowball
and gradually become better and
better. Glasgow did a marvellous
job on 4 for Texas [1963], and an
even better one on Charlotte, which
doesn’t show because it’s in black
and white. I believe I gave him his
first credit as an art director, and
we have been associated ever since.
He’s a very dedicated, quiet kind
of fellow, and also very stubborn.
Q Do you pre-plan your films in detail?
A It might seem a silly thing to say, but
one pre-plans one’s pictures if there’s
time. What you find is that you run
out of time. You can’t let other things
intrude on rehearsals even though
you’ll pay for it later. You concentrate
on rehearsals at the expense of
other things so you often have to
do a certain amount of improvising
while shooting. Ideally, I’d like to
pre-plan my pictures in their entirety,
and on some there’s time to do that.
Hitchcock is said to do it. Milestone
did it. I think it’s too rigid. We used
to have terrible problems with
Milestone. He’s a marvellous cutter
and director, but he would pre-plan
and pre-sketch a scene so much that
if an actor wanted to depart from
it by even one little bit the whole
preparation went for nothing.
Q How do you view the
contemporary filmmaking scenes
in the US and in Europe ?
A Among contemporary European
directors, I love Godard and
Chabrol; I think Chabrol is terribly
underrated. As for Hollywood
– I could be wrong, this is not a
nationalistic point of view – but
it’s my opinion that we have just
as many talented directors and
actors here as anywhere else in
the world. What has happened is
that this industry has gone into
the money business and not into
the film business, and since they
are in the money business they
tend to look for guarantees and
protections and things like that
before everything else. Because of
the inundation of the more honest,
more frank European pictures
we were breaking away from that
tendency for quite a while, but
now that’s been offset owing to the
enormous revenues that American
films can make through being sold
to television. All of a sudden there’s
a fresh upsurge of this conservative,
play-it-safe, let’s-sell-it-by-the-foot,
very average mundane material.
And I don’t know the answer to
that. We have such staggering
labour costs here. I don’t say they
are unfair but they are high. You
can’t make a good film without
taking time over it. Morgan: A
Suitable Case for Treatment [1966] cost
no money, but Karel Reisz took
66 days to make it. Well, you can’t
shoot 66 days in this country for
under two million dollars. I don’t
know how you are going to break
through at the idea level. A guy
comes to you and says he wants to
make a daring, controversial piece
of material. Now to make that well,
to make it as well as the Europeans
make it, he’s got to take the same
amount of time. But he can’t do that
because the Americans in charge of
handing out the money aren’t going
to give him the required amount.
They might give him – if he’s an
extremely talented, well-known guy
and the ideas aren’t too explosive
– one-tenth of the money he needs.
But one-tenth of the money he
needs is not going to buy him one-
third of the time he needs, so he
can’t come over with a good picture.
And I don’t know the solution.
109
‘What has ‘A DIRECTOR IS A RINGMASTER,
A PSYCHIATRIST AND A REFEREE’:
happened is that THE CAREER OF ROBERT ALDRICH
this industry has
Robert Aldrich was born in 1918 into a
gone into the wealthy banking family in Rhode Island
money business and studied economics at university.
During the Depression his increasingly
and not into left-wing politics placed him at odds with
the film business… his family – this rift was cemented when
Aldrich dropped out of college and joined
there’s an upsurge RKO Studios as a production clerk in 1941,
of this play-it- prompting his father to disinherit him.
Having been discharged from war service
safe, let’s-sell-it- due to injuries, Aldrich was able to pursue
by-the-foot, very a career as an assistant director, first at the
politically progressive Enterprise Studios,
average mundane then as a freelancer, working with Joseph
material’ Losey, Edward Dmytryk, Charlie Chaplin
and Jean Renoir. Several of Aldrich’s
collaborators were pursued by the anti-
communist House Un-American Activities
Committee, but despite his support for
them he was never targeted.
After a stint in television, Aldrich
directed his first feature in 1953, the
baseball drama Big Leaguer, but it was
his Apache and Vera Cruz (both 1954 and
starring Burt Lancaster), which not only
served notice of a considerable talent
but also brought significant commercial
returns, enabling Aldrich to set up his
own company. His next film, the dazzling
noir Kiss Me Deadly (1955), made for
United Artists, was the real gamechanger,
catapulting Aldrich into the front rank
of directors. Here he not only elicits a
compelling performance from Ralph
Meeker as Hammer but also pushes the
violence and murky morality to the limit.
After a run of striking works including
The Big Knife (1955), Attack (1956) and
Autumn Leaves (1956), Aldrich directed a
few less well-received films until restoring
his reputation with the camp black comedy
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962),
starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
In 1967 Aldrich directed The Dirty Dozen,
another massive commercial success, and
then in 1968 the lesbian drama The Killing of
Sister George, starring a brilliant Beryl Reid.
In the 70s he made several notable films,
including Ulzana’s Raid (1972) and Emperor
of the North Pole (1973), before retiring in
1981. He died in 1983 of kidney failure.
THE ORIGINAL ISSUE
PUBLISHED IN
SIGHT AND SOUND, WINTER 1968-69
INTERVIEW BY
JOEL GREENBERG
 2008
111

THIS MONTH IN…

In the wake of
the excellent
BFI and
Kinoteka Jerzy
Skolimowski
season in
London in April
(and the new BFI
DVD releases
of two of his
films: see review
on page 93),
BARBET SCHROEDER
this seems the
Terror’s Advocate was the latest film by the about the rise of terrorism over the last
perfect moment Iranian-born but mostly France-based 50 years. As critic Geoffrey Macnab
to look back at a director Barbet Schroeder (pictured pointed out: “Schroeder is far too subtle
above), about the lawyer Jacques Vergès, to attack Vergès on open ground or
Sight and Sound who’d made a name for himself defending even to editorialise through authorial
special from figures such as Klaus Barbie, Carlos voiceovers. However, he is keen to let us
the Jackal and Slobodan Milošević. For know the company that Vergès keeps. It
June 2008 dedicated to Eastern and Central Schroeder, however, this fascinating film makes the fact that Vergès disappeared,
European cinema. Romanian cinema in particular was not just a portrait of Vergès but also for eight years, at the height of his career,
the starting point for a wider discussion all the more intriguing.”
was riding high at this time, with Cristian Mungiu’s 4
Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days having bagged the Palme REVIEWS
d’Or at the previous year’s Cannes. Nick Roddick I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND
reported from Bucharest on where the Romanian Jiří Menzel’s film was another adaptation
new wavers might be heading next. Rounding off a of a novel by his friend Bohumil Hrabal
(the most celebrated was the the 1966
sterling edition were interviews with Czech veteran Czech new wave classic Closely Observed
Jiří Menzel and Polish maestro Andrzej Wajda, a Trains). Geoffrey Macnab was respectful
but recognised that some edge was
profile of Skolimowski and overviews of Hungarian now lacking. “Today, Menzel is a senior
cinema and East European documentary. figure in the Czech film industry and
there’s no one left to complain about the
COVER political subtext in his movie, or to try to
censor the sex scenes. No one will doubt
The striking cover design with its filmmaker, who was born in London to the skill and exuberance with which he
elements of the surreal and macabre Polish parents. A quote by Harold Pinter continues to bring Hrabal’s work to the
COLOSSAL YOUTH
makes clear reference to the fascinating about Klimowski’s work also captures screen. What he arguably now lacks is
history of film poster art from Central the flavour of certain strains of Central The lead review this month was of Pedro any real sense of subversiveness.”
and Eastern Europe, some of which have and East European cinema. “He looks Costa’s Colossal Youth (pictured above)
appeared in our Mean Sheets column. at things
g head-on,, but at the same time a prime
p exemplar
p of ‘slow cinema’ and MONGOL
This cover
ver was designed by Andrzej upside down and inside out, round the one of the handful
han of truly great films Sergei Bodrov’s film was the first in a
Klimowski,
wski, an illustrator, novelist and corner and through a shattered keyhole.” from this century.
centu Jonathan Romney was planned three-part biopic of Temudjin
suitably impressed.
impre “Colossal Youth comes (aka Genghis Khan) and received an
across as a heroically
her patient film. Like unexpected Oscar nod for Best Foreign
Straub and Huillet
Hu – the subjects of his
INSIDE STORY Language Film, alongside Katyn.
2001 portrait Where
W Does Your Hidden Michael Brooke was hugely entertained
Andrzejj Wajda’s latest film Katyn (pictured, right) Smile Lie?? – Costa
Co favours stillness and by its lavishly mounted spectacle and
about the
he Soviet massacre of more than 20,000 Poles uninflectedness.
uninflectednes The film was shot over location work but also pointed to the
in 1940,, was the first to be released in the UK since 15 months, with
wit Costa often shooting fact that Mongolians had been critical of
1990 following
llowing its huge success and political impact up to 30 takes per scene, resulting in its accuracy. “Even those less versed in
in Poland.
nd. As Michael Brooke explained, Wajda’s 320 hours of footage.
fo The finished work Mongolian history and culture might be
reputation
ion in the UK had waned since his heyday feels as if it ha
has slowly crystallised, like a taken aback by the uncritical treatment
from thee 1950s to the early 80s, but this film looked mineral deposit.”
depos of a legendarily ruthless figure.”
set to reignite
eignite interest: “If Katyn is ultimately good
rather than
han great Wajda, its cultural
and historical
torical ELSEWHERE IN THE ISSUE
importance
ance is
already assured. · Werner Herzog
Herz and Terence Davies · Reports from Nottingham’s British
It markss the talk about ththeir new films – Encounters Silent Cinema Festival and the
latest entry
ntry in a at the End of the
t World and Of Time and Bermuda Film Festival.
complexx cinematic the City, respectively
resp – in an Edinburgh · A review of a DVD box-set of Jim
film festival ppreview. Jarmusch’s collected films, volume 1.
IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE

dialoguee with Polish

history that Wajda has · Interviews w with John Sayles and
been conducting
onducting for over Bruce Webe
Weber.
half a century.”
entury.” · An interview with Argentinian A 12-month subscription to Sight and Sound
includes full access to the 91-year archive
director Lucía
Luc Puenzo about her of the magazine. Visit bfi.org.uk/sight-
intersex drama
dram XXY. and-sound/magazine/subscriptions
 EDITORIAL

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1 14
ENDINGS
Late Spring (1949)
The close of Ozu Yasujirō’s gentle film about a widower
striving to see his daughter married is both a post-war call
for the young to begin again and a solemn depiction of loss
BY MAT THEW HOLDER
A man sits alone in a room at night. He
can relax now; his daughter was married
earlier in the day. Reaching for an apple,
he begins to peel it with a knife, stops,
lets the strip of skin fall to the floor and
sighs. His head bows and we cut to a
final shot of waves lapping against a
shore in moonlight. Late Spring seem-
ingly ends as calmly as it had begun.
But what to make of the ending? The
f ilm’s tranquil conclusion follows an
unexpected revelation of deception and
manipulation, and we are left unsure
whether it is a happy or sad one. What
normally would be climactic events, such
as the central character’s wedding, are,
due to Ozu’s elliptical style, absent from
the film. Are these narrative absences the
source of Late Spring’s ambiguity? Partly,
but the deception that ends the film also
disturbs any conclusive meaning of what
we have seen.
Late Spring is the story of a father, Pro-
fessor Somiya Shukichi (Ryū Chishū),
and daughter, Noriko (Hara Setsuko),
who share a house in a Tokyo suburb.
At 27, Noriko is expected to marry, and
according to her father they have no
future living together. But Noriko does
not want to marry, and this is the prob-
lem around which the tale turns. Her
reasons are various: she doesn’t want
to leave her father alone; she is against
marriage (sexual repression is suggested
throughout the film, for example when
Noriko calls a family friend ‘filthy’ for
remarrying); and she is happy with her
position as his de facto wife. But cir-
cumstances are against her and she is
outmanoeuvred. The film ends on her
(arranged) wedding day, split between a
‘before’ in her full wedding dress and an
‘after,’ with Shukichi confessing that he
has deceived his daughter into marriage
by pretending to her – and the audience
– that he would also marry.
The deception seems to come out of
nowhere. To this viewer it landed like a
blow, shaking what had been an absorb-
ing, gentle film, and leaving one if not
quite grasping for breath, then search-
ing for meaning. Made in 1948-49 when
Japan was under US-led Allied occupa-
tion (1945-52), perhaps the ending might
be usefully thought about in the context
of the film’s production.
Films at this time were routinely
assessed by the authorities using guide-
lines (a code) provided by the occupy-
ing powers under the Civil Censorship
Detachment. The code explained to
Japanese artists that it would not tell
them what to present but expected
them to “break away from the past… and
make a significant contribution toward
building a free, democratic Japan”. Often
this meant prints were edited if they
questioned the occupation or appeared
contrary to the liberal-democratic values
espoused by the Allies.
One battleground was the repre-
sentation of traditional culture. It was
thought that films incorporating such
elements could help engender anti-
democratic values, even militarism. Yet
traditions do feature in Late Spring. The
film opens with a tea ceremony, and later
scenes show a Noh play and a visit to
the temples of Kyōto. In particular, the
film is constructed around the profes-
sor’s manipulation of his daughter into
an arranged marriage, a tradition under
pressure with the inclusion of rights for
women in the new Japanese constitution
in 1947. With the professor’s trick on his
daughter in mind, is the deception also a
nod to the censors – a kind of ‘look at all
these traditions I’ve sneaked past you’?
Ozu’s message, however, seems to be
more playful than a simple anti-occupa-
tion (or anti-Western) sentiment. For
example, when Noriko is out on her
bike with a male friend, laughing, flirt-
ing and feeling the wind in her hair, tick-
ing many of the censors’ boxes (what
else is that sign directing us towards
Coca-Cola doing?), the film shows us
a happiness that will in all likelihood
be spoiled by marriage. More specu-
latively perhaps, there is a reading of
the ending that speaks of the period’s
devastation and societal collapse rather
than censorship.
With a generation stuck between tra-
dition and modernity, and a country of
depleted energies (and a lack of men)
struggling to start again, it could be
argued that the shock created by Late
Spring’s ending is that it is really a begin-
ning. Noriko’s future stems from a favour
by her father whose ‘good’ deception To this viewer, the deception at the
breaks the status quo; this is a message end of the film landed like a blow,
that would resonate. As well as being leaving one if not quite grasping for
a call for the young to begin again, the
ending is a depiction of loss. In the final breath, then searching for meaning
moments we realise that the professor’s
favour has left him alone, sacrificing the
happiness he and his daughter have had
in each other’s company, in the name of ABOVE Professor Somiya Shukichi, played by Ryū Chishū,
an uncertain future. faces the future alone in the closing scenes of the film
 ★★★★
CHARLOTTE VINCENT AND KATIA KHAZAK PRESENT

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“A VISCERAL SEARCH
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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

IN CINEMAS A FILM BY

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