February 2015 book and film review

BOOKS


DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, by Jeff Kinney. Twelve year old kid has a best friend but plays a nasty trick on him and has a best friend no longer. Worse still, his former friend has stolen his idea to become most popular kid in class. Will things work out before the denouement? Of course they will. This is a little portrait of life in small town America where nothing stays bad for too long.


I kind of enjoyed this little tale along with its sometimes hilarious illustrations that augment the text  considerably. This book is one of those publishing phenomena where a relatively simple idea catches the imagination of the public in a way which was hard to see ahead of time, and ended up so successful it spawned a highly profitable film version not to mention at least one sequel. I read this book in three enjoyable hours and I have to say I am a little envious at the brilliance of its original concept. Being original is hard, but boy is it a recipe for success...


SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE, by P.D. James. In a 1960s general hospital a nurse is demonstrating the procedure for introducing a naso-gastric tube, but instead of placing an innocuous liquid into the stomach, somehow pure bleach is substituted and the nurse dies a horrible death. An accident, or deliberate murder? Tall, lean, cerebral Adam Dalgleish is brought in to investigate but before he has even parked his bum at his desk another nurse is found dead. This case looks like suicide, but in Dalgleish's world nothing should be taken for granted. Everyone in the hospital starts furiously covering each other's backs, as staff in hospitals always have, and still do, but Dalgleish has the brains and the gravitas to cut through the lies and concealment and come up with a solution.


P.D. James died in December last year after a glittering career writing detective stories, many of which were turned into highly successful television shows. Until now I had never delved into her oeuvre so I thought now was the time to pay her a minor tribute. The market is saturated with detective crime novels of inconceivable variety; even so the novels of P.D. James have found a niche in British society in a way many authors must envy. You can see why. This novel, an early one in her extensive canon, is well written and holds the attention from the outset. As someone who worked in NHS hospitals from the early 1970s onwards I can attest to its high level of authenticity. And I didn't work out who dunnit until James chose to tell me. Superior crime fiction.


THIRTEEN HOURS, by Deone Mayer. A young American girl is running for her life through the mean streets of Cape Town. She has just seen her companion have her throat cut, which somehow adds to her sense of urgency. Her pursuers seem perfectly happy to kill anyone who gets in the way of their recovering what the girl has in her possession. Meanwhile, in another part of town, a wealthy record producer is found shot and an initial appraisal suggests his alcoholic wife did it. Somehow inspector Benny Griessel has to deal with both of these cases simultaneously. Staff shortages in post Apartheid South Africa are biting deep...


This novel, translated from the original Afrikaans gripped from page one. We get right inside the character of Benny Griessel almost immediately, along with the motley multi-racial crew  of colleagues he works with, while the villains are equally well drawn. Of course the beating heart of any detective story is its plot, and this one works really well, as the diverse threads within it slowly but inexorably begin to converge. Good stuff, and clearly an excellent translation.


FILMS


SHOAH (1985) (documentary) D- Claude Lanzmann. In 1974 Claude Lanzmann decided to make a film about the holocaust. Eschewing all the terrible stock footage that the world is so familiar with, he opted instead for a series of in-depth interviews with the various players in history's greatest example of genocide: the survivors, the guards, the officers and the civilians in the countries concerned, especially Poland, where much of the slaughter was carried out. Some of the interviews were conducted with a hidden camera (you can tell these immediately from the grainy quality of the film) but most were conducted quite openly, and it is quite astounding how candid his interviewees were persuaded to be. Slowly, sedately, we are guided through the banality of  evil which sums up the holocaust. Most telling for me were the interviews with the Polish civilians, whose anti-Semitism still shines brightly thirty years after the events. One man was asked if he approved of the mass deportations and exterminations and he replied: "No! They took the women too, and some of those Jewesses were really good looking women!" Pressed for an outright condemnations of the Nazi's behaviour, however, he refused to give one. Lanzmann got himself in hot water with the Polish community in the US when the film came out, who complained bitterly of their unsympathetic portrayal. But the interviews speak for themselves...
Lanzmann wished to do full justice to his subject, and took nearly twelve years to complete the project. And at 545 minutes it is certainly the longest film I have ever seen. Was it worth the effort and emotional exhaustion which such a subject is bound to bring about? Definitely. This is unquestionably one of the greatest documentaries ever made.


THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN (2005) D- Roger Donaldson. Burt Munro (Anthony Hopkins) is something of a cult figure in Invercargill, New Zealand, owing to his ability to ride motor cycles very fast indeed (that's right, the Indian in question is a vintage American motorcycle, not some quick-off-the-mark Native American). He decides to have one last try at setting yet another speed record on the legendary Bonneville salt flats in the state of Utah. So he undertakes an epic journey (with his bike) across the great Pacific to relive his glory days. But he's an old man now, and has to rely on the kindness of strangers even to find his way there; surprisingly there seem to be no shortage of such souls in the Land of the Free...
I love these languorous, whimsical tales that sometimes emerge from the Antipodes, and this one is skilfully directed and well written. And although Hopkins was criticised for his accent in the film, the fact is that you will hear a multiplicity of varied accents when you visit Australasia- in other words, I thought it was just fine.


THE GHOST (2010) D- Roman Polanski. Pierce Brosnan plays a former British Prime Minister who has engaged a ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) to write his memoirs. Things go well at first, but then McGregor uncovers some documents suggesting his boss may have been involved in shady dealings at the highest level. If our boy goes public Brosnan is finished, but from that point on the ghost himself is in serious jeopardy...
A barely concealed take on Tony Blair, this Polanski effort has all his usual hallmarks: a good script, good players and a directorial elan that has not failed him for fifty years. Good stuff.


THE WIND RISES (2013) D- Hayao Miiyazaki (Studio Ghibli) In the 1920a a young Japanese apprentice aircraft designer is noticed by his seniors and his talent nurtured. He is even sent to Germany to learn from the world's leading aircraft manufacturers. Along the way he falls for a beautiful young Japanese aristo and even gets mixed up with anti-fascist agents within Germany, before returning home where he eventually is responsible for one of Japan's most successful fighters: the Mitsubishi Zero.


Studio Ghibli has established a reputation for making beautifully wrought animated features and this fictionalised biopic is a typical example; indeed, it was the highest grossing film in Japan in 2013 and made a lot of money in America too. It isn't as good as the 2005 classic Grave of the Fireflies, but that was one of the greatest animation features ever made, so the comparison may not be fair. It's still pretty good though.


THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT (2004) W/D- Eric Bress and J Mackie Gouber. An American high school teen (Ashton Kutcher) discovers one day he has the ability to travel in time. And as his life has gone seriously awry he quite understandably wishes to relive some of his less happy life experiences and arrange a better outcome than the first time. Unfortunately, as so many time travellers have discovered, this process is full of pitfalls for the unwary...


The "Butterfly Effect" is the name given to a concept introduced by the physicist Edward Lorenz which has to do with "amplified causality loops": when transcribed into graph form it does indeed resemble a butterfly in flight. You can google this if you wish; suffice it to say that it accounts for that famous adage that a butterfly beating its wings in China can engender a hurricane in some other part of the world. Personally, I put this idea in the same category as the "six degrees of separation" thing, ie unprovable and probably wrong, but you know how concepts like these grab the public's imagination. As for the film, I rather enjoyed its dark, claustrophobic feel which was reminiscent of Donny Darko, and I rated Ashton Kutcher too in one of his earliest leading roles.


ENOUGH SAID (2013) D- Nicole Holofcener. Recently divorced Julia Louis-Dreyfus allows herself to go on a date for the first time in a while, and she chooses a James Gandolfini (in his last major film role before his untimely death last year) who is in a not dissimilar situation to hers. JLD is a masseuse, and one of her clients is the lovely Barbara Keener (she was the good looking alien Picard fell for in Star Trek: Insurrection) and she spends most of her time slagging off her ex. It isn't long before we, the audience, discover that her ex is none other than, you've guessed it, James Gandolfini, though the truth does not reveal itself to the lovers for some time.


An intelligent and well made rom-com with excellent acting all round. JLD shows that she is the genuine article, and James Gandolfini showed that he could still hold an audience without ever shooting anyone.


3.10 to YUMA (2007) D- James Mangold. Ben Wade, a notorious bad man ( Russell Crowe) is finally arrested and committed to trial in nearby Yuma. But first he has to get there, and his gang is determined to bust him out before he does. A struggling farmer (Christian Bale) is paid the money he desperately needs to guard the prisoner. When the threat from Wade's gang becomes lethally apparent, other deputies begin to fall away, leaving Bale alone to take him to the 3.10 train.


This film is a remake of the very fine original production in 1957, with a supremely laconic Glenn Ford in the Wade role. This could be another case of the totally unnecessary remake, but here I make a rare exception. This is an excellent re-interpretation, far more violent than the original as we might expect, but retaining the subtlety of the original and portraying the sensitive, almost loving relationship that gradually develops between captor and captive with considerable skill. A western for the Millennium.


MISTER PEABODY AND SHERMAN (2014) D- Rob Minkoff. A hyper-intelligent dog adopts a young orphan boy; together they have a variety of mystifying adventures, some courtesy of the time machine Mr Peabody has invented.


Based on an American animated TV series, this film looks pretty good, as indeed it should do, considering it cost more than $140 million to make. But it did not gell with the public, barely making its money back. Why? I think we have the same problem here as with Polar Express, where a dazzling look could not make up for unengaging characters and a lacklustre script. There are jokes, just not particularly funny ones. Disappointing.


PADDINGTON (2014) D- Paul King. A family of bears befriends an intrepid British explorer in the depths of the Peruvian jungle. Later, when their habitat is devastated by earthquake one member of the family decides to travel to England to look him up. Strangely, all trace of the explorer seems to have vanished, and the bear, named Paddington after the station in which he is discovered, goes to live, on a strictly temporary basis, with a middle class family in Kensington. However, a gloriously evil Nicole Kidman plays a taxidermist who would love to have said bear in her collection of stuffed animals. OMG!


Attention makers of Mister Peabody and Sherman: this is how you make a quality kids film. First you have an iconic character that is almost universally loved. Then you take the project to a highly talented screen writing team who knows how to construct a cracking script. With jokes. Funny jokes. Then you choose some top acting talent to bring it to life. Finally, you make a genuinely salient point about society, namely that Britain has a long history of accepting the unfortunate and threatened from other nations and giving them a loving home- UKIP take note. I am told that the high tide of UKIP's success in the European elections is definitely receding as more and more people are coming to realise what a disaster to Britain it would be if they gained real power. This film illustrates how UKIP will never really get anywhere in Britain- because we're a country that cares- and not just about ourselves.