Category Archives: Film

30/12/2011

Melancholy Horses

By The Cultured Animal

There’s far too much going in Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia for me to attempt a proper critique just now. All I really want to say are two things. Well, maybe three … or four …

(For those who haven’t seen the film or are unfamiliar with its plot, all you need to know is: Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is chronically depressed and comes to stay with her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) on an 18-hole golf course in the country; a planet, ‘Melancholia’, has come out from its hiding place behind the sun and is now hurtling towards earth; and her father (John Hurt) likes to steal teaspoons.)

Firstly, this guy thought the cinematography sucked, but unlike Bonnie Prince Billy I’m not a cinematographer, so I’m not going to comment on that. Suffice to say, regardless of your stance on digital film vs … er … film film, Melancholia deserves to be watched in a proper cinema. Preferably a large one. I watched it in Le Grande.

Justine (Kirsten Dunst) floats down a river in her wedding gown, a reference to Shakespeare's Ophelia

John Everett Millais' famous depiction of Shakespeare's Ophelia

Melancholy Music

I will however comment on the breathtaking soundscape to the film – not the score, which was fittingly sparse, but the detailed projection of everyday noises that fill the spaces left inbetween.

I’m not sure I’ve heard a sex scene quite as real as when Justine and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) get it on in the honeymoon suite on their wedding night. All those sloppy kiss noises and ruffling tulle … (It wasn’t even a sex scene, actually – they didn’t get very far before the melancholia butted in. Three’s a crowd.)

And I’ve never heard a galloping horse the way I heard it here, so vivid I could feel Abraham’s hooves contacting with the gravel as he moved, felt Kirsten’s heels in his ribs, felt … (I’d better not spoil this bit, it’s quite emotional.)

There are many more striking instances such as these – quiet noises made loud, little things made huge. In contrast, the sparse and mainly classical score becomes heightened in a few carefully peppered moments when it crescendos to theatrically loud levels, as in a dramatic Hollywood score of old. I have a feeling that the already much talked-about scene (in which Dunst basks naked on a river bank, under the glow of the fast-approaching planet Melancholia) will become canonised as a classic film reference. The scene is rendered all the more powerful by the careful placement here of loud, symphonic music – lasting no longer than a beat – which injects a knowing, almost comical element of meta-film into the movie.

"I already took a bath."

Also, mainstream Hollywood starlets rarely get their kit off these days, so the scene was always bound to make an impact.

These heightened musical moments, contrasted against the quieter moments – and combined with an increasingly eery, sci-fi plot development – add to a thriller-ish feel in the film’s second half. If Justine’s story (Part 1) depicts melancholia, her sister Claire’s story (Part 2) expresses anxiety. These are arguably two very ‘contemporary’ illnesses: Justine’s inability to be happy despite being swamped in buckets of money (and her wedding gown) can be read as an oblique critique of all that is wrong with the affluent West; while the impending Armageddon is a strong metaphor for contemporary fears about our climate crisis and the future of our planet. I also like the symbol of melancholia as a planet: depression is often described as a black dog that follows a person around everywhere, but this looming presence on the horizon is far more frightening, with its constant threat to obliterate all life.

Dunst drags herself through the stunning, slow-motion opening sequences

It would be wrong, however, to view Melancholia only in terms of these somewhat obvious motifs. I think there’s a lot more going on here, and it deserves at least a second viewing in order to begin to decipher its many layers.

Melancholy Muse

While Melancholia is in most respects a brilliant film, I do have just a couple of nits to pick:

If Claire and Justine are close enough sisters that one looks after the other as tenderly as she does, how is it that Claire has a British accent, while everyone else is American? I know Gainsbourg’s your muse, Lars, but you clearly don’t skimp on details much smaller than this.

Also, why doesn’t that little boy cry when he should? It was creepy. But perhaps that was intended.

Mistaken Musician

When the horses were stirring and Gainsbourg came down to calm them, I suddenly mistook her for Patti Smith, who, fittingly, prattles on about a baby sister in “Horses”. I’ve since discovered that Smith’s wonderful memoir Just Kids – one of my favourite books this year – is being rewritten for the screen, and plenty of people have already suggested Gainsbourg is ideal for the role.

Perhaps Von Trier has ambitions to direct it? Well, the book did make me cry, and there’s no denying Von Trier gets his kicks from emotional porn.

And here’s a final bit of trivia: Smith was mad keen on Rimbaud. Rimbaud wrote a poem called Ophelia. Here’s some bits of it:

On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily;
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils…
… 
For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
… 
The wind kisses her breasts
…
The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her …
 

And so we have come full circle. And a very cultured circle at that.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Film, Music

29/12/2011

The Human Side of the Iron Lady

By The Cultured Animal

Meryl is spectacular as Maggie in the new biopic of Britain’s first female Prime Minister – albeit with nicer cheekbones.

A jubilant crowd behind the just-sworn-in Thatcher, in stark contrast to scenes of public unrest later in the film, and in Thatcher's career.

The Iron Lady has a good stab at humanising one of the most important women in history. This is mainly executed through the foregrounding of present-day Thatcher: an elderly, lonely woman suffering through grief for her deceased husband and battling with dementia. It’s perhaps an obvious premise to juxtapose the frailty of old age against the formidable power of Thatcher’s former self, but it is also structurally very fitting as a film device, as her increasingly fragmented mind experiences uncontrollable flashbacks into the past. The effect is moving and real, depicting the emotional difficulties of Alzheimer’s in a way that can be related to beyond Thatcher’s story alone.

The film boasts an excellent cast, including a brilliant performance from Olivia Colman (The Office, Peep Show, etc.) as Thatcher’s daughter – complete with fake nose and posh accent – and a plethora of unexpected but pleasing cameos from the likes of Richard E. Grant and Anthony Stewart Head. Jim Broadbent is endearing as jovial husband Denis, injecting a sense of humour into Thatcher’s serious, one-woman mission.

This is a beautiful looking film full of delightful colours and contrasts, with the hair and make-up departments getting special prominence in the film’s credits (Streep had a stylist all of her own). Thatcher’s always blue outfits evoke both a sense of patriotism as well as her steely demeanour, while her juxtaposition as a single female literally swamped by a crowd of male parliamentarians is as gobsmacking as it is inspiring.

Sexism is of course touched upon, but not examined in depth as a main theme – Thatcher was a conservative after all, not a radical feminist. Her response to sexism is mostly to ignore it altogether, or simply to take it in her stride with humour and gusto. “Shall I play Mum?” she says to the US ambassador, offering him a cup of tea, shortly after her belligerent tirade asserting Britain’s refusal to budge on the Falklands, and her threat that “many men have underestimated me before.”

Though Thatcher’s vision for Britain may have been misplaced in many ways, the film expresses her sheer conviction that her “tough decisions” were right for the country, and perhaps the film‘s strongest point is its subtle critique of Britain today. It has the ageing Thatcher say to a younger admirer, “It used to be about doing something. Now it’s about being someone,” while in the opening scene she escapes her carefully guarded residence to buy a pint of milk at the corner store, and a young (black) youth rudely and impatiently pushes past her at the counter.

It is also timely, of course, to remember the violent protesting which took place under Thatcher’s government. In contrast to this year’s riots, which were variously described as individualist, purposeless acts of violence and greed, the tumult during Thatcher’s era was far more overtly political. Present-day Britain is thus depicted as a product of the vacuousness and destructiveness of the cult of individualism that plagues the West today.

Which is more than a little bit ironic, given Thatcher’s belief that “there is no such thing as society”, and that placing accountability with the individual is the key to a prosperous Britain.

My friend commented on how apolitical this film is, but I wonder.

And then there’s this.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Economy, Fashion, Film, Politics

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