March 2016 book and film review

BOOKS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS, by Marlon James
It is Jamaica, 1978. A certain singer is emerging as the most popular musician in the world, but certain factions within Jamaica's gangland would have him dead. His house is raided, dozens of shots fired. He is shot, but survives by some miracle. Will the attackers try again, or have they made their point? And why is the CIA interested?

Some of my friends say I spend too much time reading books from the library of the Dead Novelists Society, but here is a book which won the Man Booker Prize only last year. And my goodness, is it a cracker. With each chapter narrated from a different point of view, all of them heavily deploying Jamaican patois, a web of tremendous complexity and subtlety is created, taking us deep into the dark and dangerous world of West Kingston, where the police rarely venture and local dons rule the roost- until they're murdered, either by their colleagues or a police force shot through with corruption.

This is a terrific book, showing Marlon James to be a major new talent in the world of writing. This lad will go far...

THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL, by Anne Bronte
An attractive and intelligent woman falls for a gorgeous rake, believing she will be able to iron out his faults once they are married. Oh boy! Was she ever wrong. Sounds like women of the 1840s were no different from those of today. "He's broke but I can fix him" is a plaintive cry you'll hear even today, forgetting the fact that people aren't very good at changing, even when everything tells them they should. Usually people change only when they have to. 

The subtitle of this book might be "Marry in haste, repent at leisure", because that is the essence of this finely wrought little piece from the lesser known Bronte sister. Some have criticised the book's naivete when it comes to describing the goings on of sexually active folk, perhaps with some justification, though her description of a man descending into alcohol (and ?opium) abuse is more authentic, perhaps because her brother Branwell provided an ideal model in her own home.

AGNES GREY, by Anne Bronte. A young woman  finds employment as a governess to two boisterous children who have little interest in learning. Indeed, the little boy is never happier than when pulling the wings off  songbirds. And when she points out this loathsome practice to his mum, she observes that God put dumb animals on this earth for our use. Agnes counters that the Bible says nothing about it being OK to torture them, and she is let go pretty quickly. She finds a new position, this time to two adolescent girls, one a hoyden (that's a tomboy to you and me), the other a pretty, dizzy thing who is determined to snag the local knight, regardless of what kind of a man he is. Does this remind you of anything?
The writer George Moore describes the narrative of Agnes Grey as being "as simple and beautiful as a muslin dress", which is hard to argue with. Only half the length of The Tenant, it is a more complete tale, perhaps because Anne stayed within the bounds of her own experience. They are both, however, fine novels, and well worth exploring.

WIDE SARGASSO SEA, by Jean Rhys. Antoinette, a beautiful young white Jamaican girl with an inherited fortune, is married off to an Englishman, who fails to appreciate her vulnerability, even starts to refer to her as Bertha, because he prefers that name. Thing is, she likes her own name just fine. She enlists the help of her cousin who is a practitioner of voodoo, to make him love as he should, but when he finds out he is furious, and another wedge is forced between them. The poor, self absorbed idiot is both beguiled and repulsed by her in equal measure.
A little further explanation is necessary. The Englishman's name is Rochester, and Antoinette/Bertha is destined to become the mad wife locked in the attic made famous, or infamous, by Jane Eyre.

Confession time. I started to read this book in my early twenties, and didn't get past page six. I guess I found its idiosyncratic, totally original style wasn't for me at that tender age. Put 40 years of reading experience in between, and now I find it to be one the most extraordinary, brilliant pieces of writing I have ever come across. The descriptions of first Jamaica, and then Martinique, are so vivid you can feel the heat, taste the rum and smell the exotic flowers that inhabit every page. And the exploration of the minds of the protagonists is no less remarkable. Astounding.

FILMS

HAIL CAESAR! (2015) P/D- The Coen Brothers. In the early 1950s, a top Hollywood actor (George Clooney) is midway through filming the latest Biblical epic when he is kidnapped by a communist cell. It falls to Eddie Mannix (an excellent Josh Brolin) to sort out the whole damn mess. This real-life figure was Tinseltown's most skilled "fixer", smoothing over the peccadilloes of their stars and keeping them out of the press. Which means he's a busy guy. A leading actress, a sort of Esther Williams-type character (Scarlett Johannsen), gets pregnant just when she needs her stomach to be flat for the camera, and Eddie has to sort that too.
The Coen brothers have established a rep as two of the most talented film makers in America, and occasionally their films (Fargo, The Big Lebowsky) aspire to true greatness, though other offerings have not been so well received. This film has not gone down well in all quarters, though I found it most enjoyable, with solid acting performances all round, great costumes and a good script. Perhaps the only thing that doesn't work is Tilda Swinton playing identical twin Hollywood reporters. Why did they do it? It wasn't necessary.

EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960) D- Georges Franju. A renowned surgeon's daughter loses her face in a car wreck. He pioneers a technique of facial transplant, though rejection problems have frustrated his efforts thus far. He needs more faces, and obtains them through the simple recourse of murdering young women and putting their faces on his daughter's. Perhaps one day it will work, but how many innocent women have to die before it does?

This film caused a storm when it was released in France, with many objecting to the extremely unpleasant subject matter. It died something of a death, but was then rediscovered after such luminaries as Jean Cocteau pronounced it a miracle of poetic expressionism.
Today, with our sensibilities blunted by a plethora of far more violent movies, its horrors might seem tame, but it remains one of the most atmospheric and  disturbing films I've seen in along time.
Go for it, but be prepared.

VICTOR VICTORIA (1982) D-Blake Edwards. In 1930s Paris a pretty singer (Julie Andrews) is struggling to get work until a new found gay friend (Robert Preston) comes up with a novel idea: pretend to be a man being a female impersonator. Overnight her fortunes are reversed. It's such a clever idea I'm surprised nobody came up with it before. I mean, how hard can it be for a woman to pretend to be a woman? Meanwhile a visiting American tycoon (James Garner) is entranced by him/her and indeed worries he might be turning gay himself.
Blake Edwards clearly had a lot of fun directing his wife in this complicated comedy of manners, and it does work pretty well, though for a comedy there aren't many laughs. Blake Edwards has in my opinion made two really outstanding films: A Shot in the Dark, one of the funniest films ever made, and the terrific Days of Wine and Roses, which charts the descent into alcoholism of a husband and wife. This film doesn't go into that exalted category, but it is watchable,especially if you, like me, have a bit of a thing for La Andrews.

PRIDE (2014) D- Matthew Warchus. At the height of the miner's strike in 1984, a group of gays in London want to help out an embattled mining community in the South Wales valleys. Despite initial reservations, the village decides to accept their help.
And there you have it. One of those feel-good, life-affirming movies Britain is so good at making. You can trace its provenance right back to The Full Monty, via Calendar Girls, Billy Elliott and Made in Dagenham. And that's no bad thing. All those films were good and went down a storm not only here but around the world. This too has received a lot of praise, though I was not wholly convinced, despite sound acting from all the usual suspects, Bill Nighy, Paddy Considine, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton.

AMY (2015) D- Asif Kapadia. Being a chronicle of the short life and turbulent times of Amy Winehouse, by general consensus one of the most talented female jazz singers to emerge since Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. The talent just oozed out of her pores since childhood, and when she was discovered in her teens it seemed a glittering career was ahead of her. But her problems, like her genius emerged early on. Wanting to be fashionably thin, she found that vomiting after meals proved a highly effective method of weight control, but as so often the problem began to overtake her as she entered adult life. That, and some unfortunate choices in men, who introduced her to drugs, first E and ganja, then coke and smack. Add to that the most pernicious addictive drug of all, alcohol, and you have a disaster in the making. The rest, as we all know, is history.

This is a highly professional and deeply affecting documentary, graphically showcasing her prodigious talent but also pulling no punches in depicting the villains of the piece: Blake Fielder, her husband, who grafted his own serious drug problems directly onto her, her mum, who knew about her bulimia almost as soon as it started but did nothing about it, and her father, who did his best but couldn't resist using the media for his own ends, much to Amy's frustration.
A fine piece of documentary film making

LA PISCINE (1969) D- Jacques Deray. The idyll of two lovers (Alain Delon and Romy Schneider) in a villa on the Cote d'Azur is interrupted by the arrival of her ex, with his incredibly sultry 18 year-old daughter (Jane Birkin) in tow. They hang around for a while, as the sexual tension within the group begins to escalate. Something, as they say, has gotta give, but what?
The movie is erotically charged in a way only the French seem to achieve, but the drama, always understated, is also powerful. The film has been recently remade as A Bigger Splash, with Dakota Johnson in the Birkin role while Tilda Swinton plays the Schneider part. I haven't seen it yet, but it'll have to go something to match this effort. Formidable.