November book and film review

BOOKS

NORTH AND SOUTH, by Mrs (Elizabeth) Gaskell. An Anglican priest has a crisis of conscience, leaves his parish and takes his family from the leafy south to the dark Satanic mills of a northern town.
Mrs Gaskell was a colleague of Dickens, who regarded her as his slightly less talented kid sister. However, to be only slightly less talented than Charles Dickens is still to be very talented indeed, and in this book we see her literary skills displayed superbly. Her story of a beautiful young girl, uprooted from her origins and making her way in the unfamiliar grime and poverty of the North is as good a tale as you'll find in 19th century literature. And like Dickens, it is clear Mrs G also has an acute social sense.

THINGS FALL APART, by Chinwa Achebe. Life proceeds in a remote Nigerian village as it has for thousands of years, until the arrival of the White Man, who is determined to impose his religion and social values on the people, however unwelcome they may be.
An astounding piece of writing, the first, and perhaps the greatest of novels written in English by African writers. The reader is transported into the remote bush so vividly one can almost taste the dust and smell the woodsmoke and fragrant spices lingering in the air. A really terrific book.

THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER, by Eudora Welty. An ageing judge goes to hospital for an eye operation, but there are complications, and he dies. Left behind are his young widow and his daughter. Unsurprisingly they don't get on... Eudora Welty was one of America's leading literary figures, winning many accolades including a Pulitzer Prize in a long and glittering career. She isn't that well known in Europe however, which is perhaps our loss. This tale of nostalgia and ennui has a brilliantly subtle emotional core, and is clearly drafted by a master wordsmith.

FILMS

FATA MORGANA (1969) D- Werner Herzog. A series of images depicting mirages (the alternate name for Fata Morgana) are shown, accompanied by a soundtrack of Mayan creation and destruction myths. Werner Herzog is on the shortlist for greatest living director, but unfortunately this film is lamentable. The filmed sequences are too repetitive and frankly not interesting enough, while the soundtrack was to my ears more annoying than moving. This film came as an extra to the really outstanding documentary "Lessons of  Darkness"- which with its extraordinary sequences of the burning oil wells in Kuwait in 1991 is one of the most powerful anti-war tracts made in the last thirty years.This, on the other hand, you could safely do without watching.

ATTACK THE BLOCK (2011) D- Joe Cornish. Vampire aliens invade Earth, but most unwisely choose a sink estate in East London as their starting point. Sort of Shaun of the Dead meets Independence Day, but with a harder, grittier edge than either of those films,it is also extremely funny; indeed I would call it comedy of the year. See it. Without delay.

SILENT LIGHT (2008) D- Carlos Peygadas. Families living in a Mexican Mennonite community appear on the surface to live pious, exemplary lives. But deep down they are only people, with the same failings as the rest of us. A sensitive, highly accomplished piece, offering valuable insights into that flawed being known as homo sapiens.

PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE (A Day in the Country) (1936) D- Jean Renoir. Based on a short story by Maupassant. Two young women go on a picnic in the countryside outside Paris, where they meet two attractive young men. They pair off and one couple falls desperately in love. However, years later we find the girl in question has not married the love of her life...
This begins so well one feels one is witnessing a masterpiece. But Renoir fled to the US before it was finished, and the ending was cobbled together by other hands. The result is a terribly unsatisfactory ending. A great shame.

WHERE DO WE GO NOW? (2011) D- Nadine Labaki. The women of an Arab village, where Muslims and Christians are in a constant state of conflict go to extraordinary lengths to keep them from fighting, even to the point of hiring a crew of Ukrainian hookers to keep them diverted. It's a clever idea, but the execution is disappointing. The style is uncertain, as if they didn't know quite how to play it.

IN TIME (2011) D- Andrew Niccoll. They say time is money, and in a future world, time has become currency. Everyone is allotted 25 years; after that we have to pay up or die. A plot idea reminiscent of "Logan's Run" this film has the look and feel of "Inception", and actually has several good things about it, though I remain unconvinced by Justin Timberlake in  the lead role. His co-star Amanda Seyfried looks delectable however.

WILD ORCHID (1989) D- Zalman King. A pretty lawyer becomes caught up in the web of a lecherous billionaire. A truly appalling piece of crap, with Mickey Rourke as the tycoon enjoying himself hugely at our expense, and all round abysmally bad acting, writing and direction. In particular, Jacqueline Bisset is forced (please tell me she was forced) into one of the worst cameo performances ever seen on screen.

BODY HEAT (1981) D- Lawrence Kasdan. A down at heel lawyer (William Hurt) falls for a beautiful, but married woman (Kathleen Turner) and events take a dark turn when she suggests he murders her hubbie. A remake of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" or is it "Double Indemnity"? but in the event only a pale copy of either of those 40s classics.

SKYFALL (20120 D- Sam Mendes. An ageing James Bond is forcibly retired, but you can't keep a good man down... You might have anticipated something special with a Bond movie made by the golden boy of British cinema, and it does turn out to be a different, and superior offering from any of the Bonds in the last 30-odd years. The plot is tight, and there is a lot of good characterisation. (though I could have done without Javier Bardem's absurd haircut) And at least we've got rid of John Cleese playing "Q". My best moment: when someone sums up Bond's character by saying "Rebellious, anti-authoritarian personality due to childhood trauma" and I thought, that could be me they're talking about...

FIVE BROKEN CAMERAS P-D- Ermad Burnat. Since the segregation wall was built across their land in 2005, a village in the West Bank has held a non-violent protest at the wall every week. And an amateur film maker has been there at every one, chronicling the action. And in that time, five of his cameras have been destroyed by the army. A deeply moving document, heartbreaking actually, which vividly demonstrates the oppression and persecution enacted by an inhuman Israeli occupation force against a group of peace-loving people who are determined only to live their own lives free of harassment. Brilliant.

MYSTIC RIVER (2003) D- Clint Eastwood. An ex-con's teenage daughter is found murdered, and, mad with grief, he will stop at nothing to find the culprit. From his days as Rowdy Yates in "Waggon Train" in the 1950s,  through the Sergio Leone years as the Man With No Name, Clint has gradually grown in stature until he has now reached the status of one of Hollywood's finest film makers. And here he has perhaps approached his zenith in a sensitively made and superbly acted tail of childhood lost and pointless revenge. As the two principle protagonists, Sean Penn and Tim Robbins both received well deserved Oscars for their splendid performances.

THE PASSENGER (1975) D- Michaelangelo Antonioni. Somewhere in the Western Desert, a journalist meets a gun-runner. When the latter dies of natural causes, the journo (Jack Nicholson) decides for reasons that are never made clear, to adopt his identity. He even sells arms as his adopted role demands, but when he doesn't deliver things get a bit nasty. Some have described this as Antonioni's best film, and certainly it has a strange, dreamy quality which produces a rather hypnotic effect. Maria Schneider (you remember her in "Last Tango in Paris") is also strong as the girl Nicholson randomly hooks up with. Excellent, thoughtful stuff.