SHOSHANA**** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Preview

Michael Winterbottom's SHOSHANA is a handsomely made, meticulously researched, admirably nuanced, film about politics and policing in 1930s Tel Aviv. At that time, Tel Aviv was a new modern town established by Zionists attempting to create a Jewish homeland in British-mandate Palestine.  The film (set in Italy) gives us a sense of how attractive life must have been there at the beginning: beautiful weather, stylish clothes, wonderful music, idealist politics and civilised debate. All of this is summed up in the real-life figure of Shoshana Borochuv (Irina Starshenbaum).  She is an intelligent, beautiful, Russian Jew who came to Israel with her iconic Zionist socialist father, and retains his idealism and mission.  She wants to create a peaceful, inclusive Israel without the violence she sees in the British occupation, and so becomes a member of Hagganah, who seek to work WITH the British for eventual independence.  This stands in contrast with the militant tactics of Irgun.

The film starts with violence, but somehow it feels like flashes and fleeting compared to the ratcheting intensity that comes later.  In the first twenty minutes we see the British summarily shoot an Arab and hang a Jew. The casual racism and anti-semitism of the British is summed up in the person of Geoffrey Morton, played by Harry Melling (THE PALE BLUE EYES).  He stands in contrast with Shoshana's lover, Wilkins (Douglas Booth), who speaks Hebrew and seems to genuinely love Shoshana and Tel Aviv.  But the message of the film is that idealism and love cannot survive politics.

As the film goes on, we see the stakes rise.  As Hitler's intentions toward the Jews become clear, the need for a Jewish homeland intensifies and the flow of immigrants increases.  Shoshana is now under threat for daring to be in love with a British police officer.  The Jewish policemen working with the British are targets too. Our lovers split up under the pressure of societal condemnation and police investigation. Wilkins - our sympathetic protagonist - is now witnessing brutal interrogations and taking part in brutal police raids on suspected Irgun members, notably their leader Avraham Stern (Aury Alby). By the depressing end of an immaculate film, we are asked if anyone's humanity can survive the brutal politics that created a still-contested state. When I saw the final scenes my heart broke.  

Winterbottom directs with patience and meticulous attention to detail. The "action" sequences of police raids are tense, and well choreographed.  The political debates clear and well-articulated. I had a real sense of time and place and what was at stake. And of the invidious demands put on fundamentally good people. My only criticism of the film is that while Starshenbaum and Booth give good individual performances, I never bought into their passionate love affair. They had no screen chemistry.

SHOSHANA has a running time of 119 minutes.  It played Toronto 2023. There are still tickets available for the BFI London Film Festival.

THE PALE BLUE EYE**

Scott Cooper (CRAZY HEART, HOSTILES) returns to our screens with a gothic crime story starring Christian Bale as a jaded, grief-stricken detective called in to solve a gruesome murder at West Point in the 1830s. He is assisted by the young Edgar Alan Poe who really did attend West Point briefly.  Harry Melling gives the stand out performance of the film as the strange, mournful but intelligent young writer. The murder involves some strange, apparently ritualistic mutilations that allow for spooky slash Dickensian cameos from Robert Duvall and Gillian Anderson respectively. In fact the latter made me think of her turn in the wonderful BBC adaptation of Bleak House as this film matches a lot of that show's colour palette and elegiac tone. 

The problem with the film is that it lacks any real drive or propulsive impact either as a detective puzzle or as a horror story. I think it maybe wants to be an emotional investigation of grief instead? Even that didn't really work for me. It just felt dull and overlong. The only reason to watch it is for Masanobu Takayanagi's (HOSTILES) stunningly wintry colour-drained photography. 

THE PALE BLUE EYE is rated R, has a running time of 127 minutes and is streaming on Netflix.

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH***** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Closing Night Gala

Joel Coen's first non-Coen Brothers directorial film is a triumphantly bold, searing, fast-paced production of Shakespeare's brutal, nihilistic tragedy, MacBeth. 

This incredibly cine-literate production features stunning, atmospheric, chiaroscuro black and white photography from Bruno Delbonnel, that gives us hints of Bergman, Welles, Hitchcock and the German expressionists. We are at once in a particular place - medieval Scotland - but also in a slippery dreamworld of stripped back interiors, dream-like landscapes, and sinister shadows. Every scene is deliberately framed, composed, lit and blocked. Silhouette is important. Emergence from shadow is character. Costumes are pared down, graphic shapes and deep textures. 

Denzel Washington's MacBeth and Frances McDormand's Lady MacBeth are older than some stage and screen incarnations and this may add to their urgency to bring the three witches' prophesy into fruition. It also makes hollow King Duncan's promise to plant MacBeth and watch him grow as he already looks on the verge of retirement. Washington's hero is a straightforward military man who descends into arrogance and then fatalism in a worthy performance that didn't quite catch alight in the most memorable soliloquy "tomorrow, tomorrow...".  McDormand was far more powerful and memorable as his wife, more nakedly ambitious at first and then unravelled by her guilt. Her final anguished howls will not soon be forgotten. But for me it's Kathryn Hunter's three witches, AND, masterfully, the Old Man, who steal this film with a powerful physical and vocal performance that contorts and transforms.  She is everywhere and everything - man, woman, spirit, crow. In the smaller parts, I thought the RSC's Alex Hassell was superb as Ross, slippery in his loyalties, pivotal in hiding Fleance, and with a particularly excellent costume design. 

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH is rated R and has a running time of 105 minutes. It opened the New York Film festival and closed the London film festival. It will have a limited cinematic release in the US on 25th December and will be released on the internet on January 14th.