Postcards from the Screen

What other film besides CHARIOTS OF FIRE (1981, Hugh Hudson) has a soundtrack that is better known than the film itself?

THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE (1994, Nicholas Hytner) is one of those films that I would have surely never seen if I had not gone to university and studied English heritage cinema. The Madness of King George is one of those films that makes me glad I went to university.

Although surely not a masterpiece in the way I intend it, it was very enjoyable throughout. The thing I appreciated the most, perhapes, is that by the end of the film there were no clear “good guys” and “villains”: everyone is a bit of both altogether, making it thus a very mature text.

My favourite quote:

Yes, I’ve always been myself, even when I was ill. Only now I “seem” myself. And that’s the important thing. I have remembered how to “seem”.

MRS. BROWN (John Madden, 1997) is one of those films that I reckon is subject to many different interpretations according to whom is watching it. Is it pro monarchy? Is it pro Tory? Is it pro Labour?

The film is ok, but nothing much really happens in it. I guess they didn’t really have much to tell for a feature length story in the first place, and so tried to make it the longest they could. The result is that in the end one feels for the Queen, but not so much for her loyal servant, who comes a bit across as too full of himself.

I absolutely loved the evil impression that this great actor called Antony Sher gave of Benjamin Disraeli. Where did this man go? He should be a star!

I’ve been looking forward to see TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (Tomas Alfredson, 2011) since I saw the tense trailer that promised an intelligent plot along with subtle action and beautiful shots, but I had already been warned by two friends that the film was pretty much incomprehensible. And incomprehensible it was, even with the aid of subtitles. I had to read the summary of the plot on Wikipedia in order to understand exactly what happened and why. I wonder whether the novel is a more satisfying read? The shots were all indeed beautifully composed, though. This is the third film in a row were I am drawn to notice the presence of the DoP.

I was afraid that ATONEMENT (Joe Wright, 2007) would have revealed itself to be boring, but instead it was quite the opposite. Very well made under every aspect - in particular, kudos to DoP McGarvey for the magnificent shots, among which is a splendid 5-minute long tracking shot of the beaches of Dunkirk (I love long tracking shots - although they aren’t always found in films that are just as beautiful, see Altman’s The Player and Sokurov’s Russian Ark). I found peculiar the final reflections of Briony, one of the main characters of the story: what is the point in telling a story like this one? In fact, why should someone wish to tell or to listen to a bitter fictional story at all? It is something I often wonder myself, yet it is undeniable we do. Could it be that, by witnessing the pain of fictional characters we are made to care about by a skilled teller as if they were real, we find relief for our own sufferings?

Cary Fukunaga’s JANE EYRE (2011) is exactly the kind of film I was thinking about when writing about Howards End. The writer and the filmmaker never forget who the main character is, and focus on her to tell the story strictly from her own point of view, facilitating the audience’s empathy for the protagonist. I’m curious to confront it with the original novel and to earlier interpretations (such as Zeffirelli’s) to see if there are indeed differences in this sense.

This is also one of those films that make me wonder whether its beauty owes it more to the director or to the cinematographer - in this case, a man called Adriano Goldman who has already won several awards for his craft and to whom I wish to go even farther.

Mia Wasikowska was forgettable in that forgettable film that was Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, but was highly remarkable in her role as Sophie in In Treatment and confirmed to be so in Jane Eyre again. She’s also gonna go far.

I went to watch A SIMPLE LIFE (Ann Hui, 2011) a week ago alone with my father. I think the last time just the two of us went to the cinema together was when we went to see Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah in 2008, four years ago. A Simple Life was screened in one of the lesser known and attended cinemas of my hometown in Italian, although I discovered it was quite big and very well kept. It is one of those cinemas that screens only art films that “nobody watches”, as a friend of a friend once told me - well, nobody apart the hundred people who apparently follow the program of this cinema and were gathered there to see Hui’s latest.

A Simple Life is a film that depicts a slice of the last days of an old servant’s life, exploring her relationship with the youngest son of her masters whom she raised almost as her own child, who pays for her retirement home after she has a heart attack. It is shot with a style reminiscent of documentaries, with long takes and a cinematography apparently unstylized and natural, which instead hides the craft of very careful and fine filmmakers. If this was a Hollywood film, it would tell the story of the servant Ah Tao who heals her godson and her nurse’s wounds by making them fall for each other right before passing away. What happens, instead, is that life flows like it really does - without dramatic changes, just passing by, leaving many questions unanswered and leaving many of the main characters’ problems unresolved. And yet it does manage to tell a story - the story of an old woman’s affection for the simple things in her life.

I’m glad I saw it.

Tonight I watched another heritage film that had been suggested me in university, HOWARDS END (James Ivory, 1992). By the end of the film, I wondered whether I may have guessed a characteristic of 19th/early 20th century storytelling, that I hope was better analysed and explained by more educated scholars whose works I am eager to read, if they do exist. What I am starting to feel is that Victorian and Edwardian narratives (I am thinking about Dickes, Austen and now Forster) were somehow foreign to the concept of “point of view”, but rather preferred an omniscient narrator whose telling of the events put distance between the reader and the protagonist, hence blocking the process of identification with them.

To be more specific to the film: the protagonist of Howards End is Emma Thompson’s character, Margaret Schlegel - but rather than focusing on her life as the eldest Schlegel sibling, the film often deviates from what is strictly about her to depict the lives and thoughts of the characters surrounding them. What could be a way to build dramatic irony, weakens instead the possibility for the viewer to put themselves in Meg’s shoes and understand her conflicting feelings - the love for her sister Helen and the need to build a secure life for herself marrying Mr. Wilcox. For example, what if Howards End had been made with the same approach that was employed with A Single Man, where the world is always filtered through the protagonist’s eyes? Would have it been more effective? Would have it favoured the process of empathy, and triggered more intense emotions in the viewer?

Moreover: in the end, who is the kid walking with Helen’s baby in the field?

It is not the first time that I notice watching a sequel back to back to the film(s) it comes before gives me the impression that it allows me to appreciate it (and maybe understand it?) better than all those who watched it when it first came in the theatres, years after having seen the original. Many, in fact, regards The Godfather: Part III to be the weakest of the trilogy, but when I saw it shortly after the first two ones, I found it to be the most touching and moving of them all. While the Part I was very “straight to the point” and Part II (by the most regarded as the best of them) was the first all over again in a bigger budgeted, enhanced version, the third was a completely new, different and mature story about moral doubt, old age and love - the pure, honest love of a father for his family.

The same happened to me with ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE. I liked it more than the previous film, which I watched just the other night. Although there were apparently still many historical inaccuracies, I find myself more prone to forgive the filmmakers this time around, given the great spectacle they were finally able to put together. The character of the queen was much more interesting and in my opinion much better explored, and the director devised also more cinematographic frames worhty of this name.

Will a third and final film come in another 9 years?

Since I started studying heritage cinema in university I have been longing to watch Shekhar Kapur’s ELIZABETH (1998) expecting great visuals, great acting and a great story. While the acting was fine, I have to say that I found the visual style of Kapur to be somewhat regular - not bad, but nothing too daring or striking as well. Even the story left me somewhat disappointed: while it wasn’t boring, it did not engage me nor make me care much for its characters either. Everything just “happened”, but without provoking any emotional resonance in me. But the most disappointing thing of all is perhaps the amount of historical inaccuracies (artistic licenses?) portrayed in the film, so much that it could hardly be defined a “historical film”. While I do understand that real life does not occur with the same pace and structure required by drama, I wonder whether all these changes were indeed necessary, and an interesting film could have been made by staying faithful to what are believed to be the true events of such an important period of British history.

Despite it all, I can’t wait to watch the sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age.