October 2014 book and film review

BOOKS


EDWARD WILSON'S ANTARCTIC NOTEBOOKS, edited by D.M. and C.J. Wilson.
After Captain Scott himself, the most revered man to have died on the return from the South Pole in 1912 was undoubtedly Dr Edward Wilson. Described by Scott as the finest man he had ever known, Wilson was a talented naturalist and highly skilled watercolourist, as well has having endless stores of energy and strength, which is why Scott included him in the last party. He was also a devout Christian, literally devoting his life to living according to Christ's teachings.


This beautifully produced book contains many of Wilson's watercolours which show, inter alia, the extraordinary subtlety of colours in the Antarctic sky as the sun slowly rose over, or sank below, the horizon. Most of his pictures are tucked away in the archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute because they deteriorate rapidly on exposure to light. But here they are reproduced with loving attention to detail, the new advances in digital printing having enabled remarkable authenticity to be achieved. Reading the book and looking at these pictures was deeply moving, cataloguing as they do a great man's final days, engaged in a grand scheme of scientific discovery that would ultimately cost him his life.


THE BEST OF CORDWAINER SMITH.
Can you imagine a world 6000 years in the future? 16,000 years? That's what Cordwainer Smith did in the late 40s and 50s, inhabiting it with genetically engineered cats that can talk, robots that can read minds, and humans with such powerful minds they can fold space.
Cordwainer Smith (his real name was a scarcely more plausible Dr Cornelius Linebarger) imagined all this and more. His stories come down to us as if transported direct from the future in some sort of time capsule. The concepts he introduces are so strange, even the words used are unfamiliar sometimes, and the characters so exotic that we find ourselves strangely involved in his uniquely realised Universe.
Rather special.


IN TRANSIT, by Anna Seghers. As France falls before the Nazis, a young German man escapes from a concentration camp, swimming across the Rhine before finding his way to Paris. He adopts the identity of a writer who has killed himself and, holding his papers, makes his way to Marseille where he launches a campaign to flee his oppressors and make a new life in the New World. He soon finds this is the hardest job in the world, doubly so as half the time he is pretending to be someone else. He meets a handsome woman who is also trying to escape, but won't leave until she finds her husband- and guess who that is: the very man whose identity our hero has adopted. Can he keep the secret from her and still achieve his aim of leaving Europe with her? It seems an impossibly difficult task, which doesn't stop him trying. And trying...


Described by some as one of the greatest short novels of the 20th century, Anna Seghers has produced a multi-layered work of great depth and subtlety, but one which also captures the attention at the most basic level. It is exciting, gripping even, in its  depiction of a whole army of displaced people who are desperate to escape the tyranny of the Nazis, but as in a book previously reviewed here, B Traven's The Death Ship, they are up against foes almost worse than storm troopers with machine guns: the implacable forces of bureaucracy and indifference. Terrific.


FILMS


GROSSE POINT BLANK (1997) D- George Armitage. A freelance hitman (an excellent John Cusack) takes a commission in his home town, where by sheer coincidence his old high school reunion is also taking place. He'd like to reconnect with an old flame (Minnie Driver), but he has a job to do. There are other small complications too, like another hitman who has been paid to kill him. It's all a bit too complicated for our hero, who just wants to score with his old GF.
Superior "hitman with a heart" movie with splendid performances all round, especially from John Cusack, who could put this film along with The Grifters in his claim to be placed in the front rank of  Hollywood actors.


THE FROZEN GROUND (2013) D- Scott Walker. A hooker bursts into an Alaska police station claiming to have been abducted at gunpoint. Her story sounds plausible until she names her assailant, a local baker with strong ties to the community who surely couldn't be capable of such a terrible act. Could he? Only one detective believes her story (Nick Cage) and it seems he's up against the whole town when he insists he's onto the right guy.


Based on the true story of Robert Hansen, who in the 1970s kidnapped a series of young women, flying them into the icy wastes of Alaska, where he let them go- and hunted them down like game. I admired this film, with John Cusack (yep, him again) playing the super-respectable Hansen with ice-cool menace, and Vanessa Hudgens as the hooker with guts enough to help bring her kidnapper down despite the odds.


THIS IS NOT A FILM (2011) D-  Jafar Pamali and Mojtaba Mirtakmash. An Iranian film maker is under house arrest for speaking against the government. He's desperate to continue working at his art, so he begins to make a film of his life within the prison of his home. As he doesn't do much, the film threatens to be a bit dull, but what emerges is an absorbing study of artistic frustration: what we see is a subtle and moving portrait of a man determined to fulfil his creative destiny. Scenes like the one where he simply observes the bin man going from floor to floor in his apartment block picking up the rubbish become somehow transformed into an epic tale. An extraordinary effort.


BRANDED TO KILL (1967) D- Seijun Suzuki. The number three ranked hitman in Japan botches his latest job and finds himself targeted by the number one guy. Add to this some very complex relationships with a girlfriend with a death wish and a wife who would also like to kill him and you have one very strange movie. You could call it a sort of Japanese noir, or you could call it an amazing piece of existentialist cinema. Whatever you call it, this is as revolutionary a film as you could wish to find: certainly as bold as say, Breathless or Les Enfants Terrible.
To summarise, wow!


MUD (2012) W/D- Jeff Nichols. While fooling about on a small island in the middle of the Arkansas river, two twelve year old boys come across an odd fellow living there. They rapidly fall under the spell of his downhome charisma and start to help him out in small ways: bringing him food, procuring tools to help him repair a small boat and passing messages to his girlfriend (a sultry, trailer-trash Reese Witherspoon). Then they hear the state police are searching for a man accused of murder. Could it be their guy?
This movie flows slowly, rather like the great river around which is centred, but a denouement is just around the next bend and we just know it ain't gonna be pretty. Well written and skilfully directed, this is another example of how Matthew McConnaughey, who plays the eponymous lead, has come of age, placing him now at the forefront of Hollywood acting talent.


PUSHOVER (1954) D- Richard Quine. A hard bitten detective (Fred McMurray) is given the job of surveilling a gangster's moll in the hope it will lead to him plus the 200 grand which was stolen in a recent bank robbery. Unfortunately he falls for her almost immediately (understandable: she is played by Kim Novak in her movie debut, with the kind of face and body anybody would wreck their career for) and teams up with her to get the girl, and the money for himself. But as in all the best Hollywood noirs, things soon begin to go horribly wrong.
Accomplished piece of movie making, with some rather strange parallels with Double Indemnity: a femme fatale, a grand plan which falls apart very quickly leaving a bloody conclusion. It doesn't have the sheer class of that classic, but it's still highly watchable.


THE EXILES (1961) D- Kent McKenzie. In the run down area of Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles, a group of Navajo Indians have left their reservation in Colorado and are trying to make new lives in the big city. In a way, not much happens. The men hang around the house for most of the day, getting over their hangovers while their women clean around them. When night comes they're out on the thrash again. At one point one of the men molests another Indian girl. He is quite brutish about it, and she slaps him. Annoyed and frustrated at her rejection he knocks her down. Yet only a few minutes later all seems forgiven and forgotten and the lads continue their partying until dawn. Finally they return home, where their women have been waiting for them all night long.
This film reminded me strongly of a Roberto Bolano novel: at one level it's just a group of people interacting and trying to have a good time. But it is far more than that: what emerges is for me a crucial piece of cinema- deeply insightful, compassionate and tragic in its portrayal of the disastrous consequences of the collision of two disparate cultures, the one far more powerful than the other. It was considered to close to the bone for American cinema distributors: they denied it a showing in the States for nearly forty years- thereby depriving American audiences of one of the finest films made throughout the 1960s And that is the real tragedy of this movie. It told a truth that Americans weren't ready to hear. Are they yet?


AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013) D- David O Russell. A couple attempting a financial scam are collared by the FBI and recruited to front up an even bigger scam to entrap a major league bad guy.
This film went down well in the States, where it received an Oscar nomination and there is a sustained energy about it which is highly seductive. But Bradley Cooper as the FBI agent was not believable to me. He was too excitable, too neurotic and far too erratic to be what I would consider to be FBI material. I could be wrong though. Christian Bale, however, is much more convincing as the scammer turned FBI narc, and Amy Adams who plays his wife is also good. Her gowns certainly won my approval. She wears many different ones in the course of the movie, and they all give a new meaning to the word cleavage. Apologies. As my wife would say, down boy...


THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013) D- Martin Scorsese. Being the life and times of Jordan Bellfort, Wall Street rogue trader and general larger than life diamond geyser. In the course of three long hours, we get to the heart of the man, and what lies at his heart, apparently, is a neatly folded $100 bill, which is waiting to be turned into more of the same. It's all about the money, stupid, and nothing else matters, not trust, not loyalty, not a moral framework, unless that moral framework is screw the other guy before he screws you. Jordan Bellfort is a real person, who was finally taken down by the FBI for insider trading, but not before he had made millions for himself and several other unscrupulous associates.
But is it a good film? I'm afraid the answer is no. For me it was a good hour too long, and lacked the polish we have come to hope for from one of America's leading auteurs. Scorsese has made, in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, three of the best films to come out of America in the last forty years. He has also made some appalling dogs, notably Gangs of New York and Casino. I am sorry to have to report that, despite a rapturous reception on his home turf, in Wolf  he has made another in the latter category. Leo di Caprio is a fine actor, but here he is only asked to rant and rave for three hours and that just isn't good enough. Shame, I wanted to like it.


ALL IS LOST (2013) D- J.C. Chandor. A lone yachtsman in the middle of the Indian Ocean wakes from a deep sleep to find his boat has snagged a half-submerged container and been holed above the water line. Demonstrating the truth that you can fix absolutely anything with gaffer tape, he effects a repair. All seems well, but our ancient mariner (a gnarled but still beautiful Robert Redford) knows that all he has to do is hit some rough water and the whole thing could fail. Then he espies storm clouds off the port bough. Oh, shit...
This is a very unusual film: There is only one cast member, and there is scarcely any dialogue. In fact about the only thing you do hear him saying is an occasional  "Oh, shit". The rest is one man's struggle against the elements, elements that seem to be conspiring to kill him. Remind me not to go ocean sailing in a small boat any time soon.
Despite its unusual nature, this film works surprisingly well. Redford completely captures the attention as he uses his intelligence and manual dexterity to keep death by drowning at arm's length for long enough for another boat to find him.
Some have criticised the ending, which I shall not spoil for you. Endings are hard, I know. But you judge for yourself. It's well worth it.


BARBARA (2012) D- Christian Petzold An attractive East German doctor (Nina Hoss) has fallen out with the authorities by having had the temerity to ask for an exit visa, and is sent to a provincial town near the Baltic coast to cool her heels. Knowing the Stasi are watching her every move, she still contrives to have a life of her own- albeit a rather dangerous one. Every month or so her apartment is raided and she is subjected to a full (and I mean full) strip search. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, she spends much of her mental energy working on ways to get the hell out of there. Finally a chance arrives, but by now she has befriended a young girl who was admitted to her hospital with an overdose. Will she run regardless or will her new friend keep her confined in her little hell?
Made to high professional standards and with great human warmth and compassion, this languid tale of fear and loathing in the East Germany of the 70s creeps into the soul, leaving this viewer not a little moved. Excellent work.