WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS - Venice Film Festival 2019

Ciro Guerra (EMBRACE THE SERPENT) returns to our screens with his first English-language film, based on the famous fable by JM Coetzee, and adapted by him for the screen. When Coetzee wrote Waiting for the Barbarians, it was in the context of Apartheid era South Africa, and it was fascinating to see how this provocative, political author would adapt his fable for an era, forty years later, where apartheid is over, but fear of the Other is once again dangerously real.  What he does is take his fantasy world and create something that is outside of place and time but feels more global in its reach.  The film is set in a dusty colonial outpost that feels from its costumes and customs as though it might be in the early 1900s - maybe at the time of the Boer War. From the location and food and dress, it feels like this outpost might be in North Africa rather than South Africa.  But the Others are not Africans but rather Central Asian nomads. In that sense, this nowhere place is a microcosm of the world, with small-minded white people divided between those superficially at peace with immigration and cultural diversity - and those that are violently opposed to it.

The former position is embodied in the calm, gentle, laconic figure of the Magistrate, played by Mark Rylance.  He seems to drip with compassions and decency and gently holds the balance between the colonists and the natives, highly self-aware that he is trespassing on their land.  The latter position is embodied by Johnny Depp's Colonel Joll - and later by his sidekick Mandel (Robert Pattinson).  Both men play their characters as brittle, humourless sadists, relishing their roles in fabricating a border threat, and then ruthlessly torturing the nomads who wander into town.

Of course, the point of Coetzee's book, and this faithful, visually stunning, beautifully acted, slow-burning adaptation - is to ask just who the barbarians are.  The magistrate hints that for the nomads, it's the colonists who are the barbarians, coming into their land, raping and pillaging.  He also shows how under the pressure of an aggressive policy toward the nomads, it's the colonists who become the barbarians - eventually looting and desecrating their OWN town.  Which isn't to say that the nomads don't commit their own act of atrocity, but only when highly provoked.

The most fascinating part of both film and novel is, however, the character of the Magistrate, and how far his liberal earnestness is also both delusional, and masks complex and troubling attitudes toward the nomads.  He takes pity on a nomad woman (Gana Bayarsaikhan) who has been tortured.  It becomes evident to us and to his maid (Greta Scacchi) that the Magistrate has a really weird and borderline sinister attitude to the woman.  He seems to objectify and fetishise her, and wants her to love him, even though his attentions clearly creep her out. How absurd, and thoughtless, and insulting, that he would even consider she might stay with him in the very place where she was viciously abused?

And so, the most fascinating part of this film is the question it poses to those of us who think we're on the liberal progressive side of the debate - what are the unconscious ways in which we are no better than the more obviously prejudiced people around us? 

This makes for a gripping and thought-provoking film, but it's worth pointing out that it's also visually stunning. From Chris Menges' cinematography in the North African desert, to the scenes of an almost Western nature, when the Magistrate goes to return to the girl to the nomads - to the wonderful costumes that hint at different periods. The score - from composer Giampiero Ambrosi - is also superb, and helps subtlety painfully ratchet up the tension as we enter the second hour of this contemplative piece. 

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS has a running time of 112 minutes. The film played Venice and will play London 2019.  It does not yet have a commercial release date in the USA or UK.

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is an offensive film based on a faithful adaptation of an offensive novel. To that end, the blame for this exploitative, incredible (literally) movie lies with Jonathan Safran Foer - the novelist who exploited 9-11 to further his narcissistic fictional stylings.  It's hard to see how screenwriter Eric Roth could've adapted the film while minimises the absurd central conceit that powers the film.  And as for Stephen Daldry - once again, is it his poor judgement or his inability to disentangle himself from the mawkishness and self-indulgence that pollutes the novel?

The Big Idea is that a kid called Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), borderline autistic, is so traumatised by his father's death in 9-11 that he obsesses over the idea that his father might have left him one last puzzle - a key with the name "black".  So he roams Manhattan interviewing every black, looking for the lock that his key will fit - some of the time, accompanied by a mute old man call The Renter (Max von Sydow) who turns out to be his grandfather (no real spoiler there).  Eventually, he finds the lock, and we discover why his mother is being so apparently irresponsible, but none of it really feels credible.  And, as with all high concept films, the incredible nature of the premise truly undermines our empathy with the characters. That said, even without the ludicrous concept, EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE would stretch any viewers patience.  The characters either fall between the downright irritating (Oskar Schell and his mother) or the unbelievably good-hearted (Oskar's father - surely the most attentive screen dad in history).  One can only assume that it's the presence of Hanks and Bullocks - Oscar sweethearts - that got this film nominated.  Max von Sydow is sympathetic - sure - but his nomination looks like an end-of-career pat-on-the-back rather than a specific acclamation.   

All I can say is that this is hands down the most irritating, exploitative film I have seen in quite some time. I discard it.

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is already on release in the USA and Canada. It will play Berlin 2012. It opens on February 16th in Germany, Portugal, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, the UK and Japan. It opens on February 24th in Argentina, Australia, Chile and Finland. It opens on February 29th in Belgium, France, Singapore and Brazil. It opens on March 8th in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands; on March 16th in Italy, Spain and Turkey; and on March 22nd in Slovenia.  EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE has been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and Max von Sydow has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. 

London Film Fest 2010 Day 11 - ROUTE IRISH

Ken Loach is one of Britain's most uncompromising directors. His films are political, unblinking, and have a relentless focus on the reality of working class life. Even his most recent film, a comic fantasy called LOOKING FOR ERIC, was firmly rooted in the everyday petty humiliations and victories of life as a postman in a Northern town. It was, then, only a matter of time before Ken Loach gave us his take on the war in Iraq. And with his typical perception for what is at the core of an issue, he goes straight for the one truly unique facet of this war - the widespread use of mercenaries. This outsourcing of state-power - this compromise of the idea that in liberal democracies the elected government is the only legitimate source of violence - because it is only the government that can be held to account for its abuse - is absolutely key to understanding Iraq. It is the abuse of this power, widely reported in the more thoughtful media, that serves as a kind of short-hand for all the abuses of power that have come to characterise the war in Iraq. Power abused, violence unchecked, and all for no end other than the perpetuation of power and the amassing of wealth.

Unfortunately, the insights that Loach and his regular screen-writing partner, Paul Laverty, bring to the Iraqi war have not resulted in a compelling film. In fact, I found ROUTE IRISH to be near unwatch-able - it fails as a thriller; it contains a truly risible love story; and suffers woefully from the heavy-hand of didactism.

The story begins with the death of a mercenary called Frankie on Route Irish - the road from Baghdad airport to the Green Zone. His best friend Fergus, also a squaddie turned gun for hire, decides to investigate the death, convinced that the company they worked for is covering up foul-play. Fergus investigates with the help of Frankie's widow, Rachel, and the translating skills of a local Iraqi refugee. Sure enough, the video on the phone is compromising.

Let's break down why the film fails. First, it fails as a thriller. We all know the mercenaries will have committed some heinous crime against innocent Iraqi civilians and Frankie too - after all, we've all seen wikileaks and it's not like Ken Loach is going to side with the neo-cons, is it? Second, it fails the test of simple logic. Once Fergus finds the damning video, why doesn't he put it on the web? This is what his Iraqi helper tells him to do. It's what Rachel tells him to do. Fergus refuses. He says he wants to get more, better evidence. But we know what's really going on. Loach and Laverty want to extend the film - draw out the narrative - so that they can show Fergus' moral disintegration - show him resorting to torturing a witness. Or whatever. Simply put: in the age of Wikileaks, I can't take any movie seriously that doesn't just dump the evidence on the web as soon as possible.

This brings us to the central failing of this film: the lack of emotional grip at its heart. After all, in a world of wikileaks - years after Brian de Palma's REDACTED - what can a movie like this really teach us? Nothing about the facts. Anyone who wants to know can find out. So the reason to watch a movie like this can only be because empathy with well-written characters can teach us something about ourselves and give us an emotional insight that mere documentary evidence cannot give. But ROUTE IRISH fails on that score too. It's characters are too crudely, thinly drawn to be of interest. I didn't buy into Fergus. I didn't buy into his slow decline into torture. And I certainly didn't buy into his clichéd relationship with Rachel. Mark Womack (Fergus) portrays anger, frustration and guilt by shouting loudly. Andrea Lowe is wooden and two-dimensional as Rachel. The casting of British stand-up comedian John Bishop as Frankie is a distraction.  Too little space is given to the Iraqi refugees. Most damning, one of those characters actually asks Fergus why he is obsessed with the death of one Brit when so many Iraqis are dying. Isn't it just another act of chauvinism to have another film from a Western point of view? Loach never answers this point.

ROUTE IRISH is, then, a complete failure. A failure in execution at every level. I was sadly disappointed.

ROUTE IRISH played Cannes 2010 and was released in Norway in September. It will be released in France on March 16th 2011.

THE READER - slippery, but not in the way it should've been

THE READER is a movie that wants you to take it seriously as a profound discussion about complicity and moral obligation. It has a cast that drips with quality, a director with form and a screen-writer famed for his intelligence and eloquence. The source novel by Bernhard Schlick was a critical and commercial success. In short, this movie so drips with earnest good intentions that the nobility of the exercise almost, but not quite, masks stink of desperation in its bid for Oscar glory.

The movie plays, like the novel, in three parts. The first takes place in West Germany in the 1950s. A sixteen-year old school boy (an impressive David Kross) has an affair with a woman twenty years his senior (a mannered performance from Kate Winslet). They enjoy each other physically but both are evasive. He tells her what she wants to hear - that he's not a star pupil. She tells him precisely nothing. She asks him to read aloud to her. He clearly enjoys the performance. And then, one day, she vanishes and he is devastated. 

The second act takes place in the 1960s. The boy is a law student, and is taught to carefully separate moral responsibility from a narrow definition of legal guilt. He is nauseated to discover that his old lover is on trial for murdering Jews during the Holocaust and that he has evidence that will mitigate her sentence. He has to reconcile the woman he knew with the unfeeling, narrowly obedient and unrepentant woman he sees in court. 

The third act takes place in the 1980s. The teenage boy has developed into a fastidious, emotionally repressed old man (Ralph Fiennes), with a failed marriage and an estranged daughter. For a complex set of reasons he begins to record audio books and send them to his old lover. Maybe he does this out of misplaced vanity, maybe guilt, maybe nostalgia, maybe boredom, maybe a desire to connect with anyone - Ralph Fiennes' opaque performance gives us no help in making his motives out.

In a coda, the man meets with a survivor of the specific horror that his lover perpetrated - a horror for which she has still not explicitly repented. The survivor - superbly played by Lena Olin - asks the questions I had longed to ask throughout the previous hour - the questions I thought this movie would have asked and explored.  Is the mitigation - note, not the elimination - of the woman's legal responsibility for murder "an explanation, or an excuse"? With a single line the Holocaust survivor condemns the entire point of this film, which has surreptitiously asked us to empathise with, even symapthise with this concentration camp guard as a victim. It is a slippery moral equivalence to hint at, and if that's what the film-makers were about I feel they should've tackled the question more honestly rather than tucking it into a coda, let alone double-ending the film in an insultingly sentimental manner.

THE READER is on release in the US and UK. It goes on release next week in Greece and will play Berlin 2009. It opens on February 6th in the Czech Republic, Singapore and Brazil. It opens on February 19th in Australia and Iceland, and on February 25th in Belgium and Germany. It opens on March 6th in Norway; on March 23rd in Poland; on April 2nd in the Netherlands and on April 25th in Japan.

Pantheon movie of the month - KES

Recent viewings of a few Mike Leigh films and the costume drama ANOTHER COUNTRY sent me back to KES. Why? Well, like Mike Leigh, British director Ken Loach concerns himself with sympathetic, realistic portrayals of life in the under-class. In KES, Loach straightforwardly adapts Barry Hines' novel, "A Kestrel for a Knave". It's the tale of a teenager living in rural poverty in Yorkshire in the late 1960s. He's the butt of casual ill-treatment at home and institutionalised ill-treatment at school. The schoolboys may have been privileged in ANOTHER COUNTRY, but the arbitrary meting out of violent justice is the same as in KES. The tragedy is, of course, heightened here because the kid has no chance of succeeding in life if school doesn't work out. There's no fall-back position - no second chance.

If KES is a great film it's not just because it chronicles the in-built inequality of the education system. Viewers come back to it, and critics love it, because it pulls off that rare feat: it is deeply tragic without ever feeling manipulative, mawkish or sentimental. Our protagonist manages to take a shy step toward happiness and purpose when he starts training a kestrel. He's even encouraged by a kind teacher. I can't describe how gratifying it is to watch this poor kid actually take centre stage in front of a black board and gain the respect of his class-mates as he tells them about his hobby. Of course, Loach can't resist grim reality and the denouement is heart-breaking. Truly heart-breaking because you feel that the tragedy is credible and probably commonplace. Young kids, with bags of potential, slip through the cracks, not just because of indifference but because of active cruelty.

KES was released in 1970 and is available on DVD.

THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA - Don Quixote in Mexico

To my mind, THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA is the most compelling and extreme film that I have seen since HIDDEN. Not extreme in terms of violence, alhough there is plenty of that, but in the way in which a Park Chan-Wook film is extreme. There is an absurd internal logic that is carried out to its demented conclusion, and because of the surreality of the events, the film is often extremely blackly funny.

The first half of the movie is set in a Texan border town inhabitated by the kind of washed-up, hopeless individuals that we found in Steven Soderbergh's BUBBLE, but treated with a lot less condescension. Tommy Lee Jones plays a rugged but warm-hearted rancher called Pete, who is mourning his good friend, an illegal Mexican immigrant called Melquiades Estrada. The story of Melquiades' death is told in flash-back, in an award-winning script by Gulliermo Arriaga. Arriaga used the same non-linear narrative structure in 21 GRAMS but I feel he does so to greater effect in THREE BURIALS, partly because the inter-cutting is less extreme and so feels less like an exercise in technique. We see layers of their personalities peeled away as we become more and more engrossed in the plot.

Around half way through the movie, it takes a right turn into altogether starker, more philosophically absurd territory that will be familiar to fans of Sam Peckinpah. Tommy Lee Jones' character, Pete, and Barry Pepper's character, Mike Norton, take a journey into Mexico. For Tommy/Pete, it is a journey to the logical conclusion of his personal code of honour and friendship.. Flashes of madness mingle with flashes of absolute clarity and humanity. For Barry/Mike, it is a journey that involves gaining empathy with the Mexican illegal immigrants that he once treated with such cruel indifference. Both actors turn in absolutely compelling performances and Tommy Lee Jones fully deserves his Best Actor award at Cannes.

If I had to find a flaw with this film - and I am struggling - it perhaps lies in a single scene where Barry Pepper's character casually forces himself onto his wife. She is not so much raped as too bored to object. I couldn't help but think of those lines from The Waste Land: "Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference." It is not that the scene is done badly, but that it is done at all. I feel that we would perfectly understand the character of Mike Norton, and the choices Luanne Norton goes on to make, without it. Moreover, in the wake of MONSTER'S BALL and the visceral scene starring Choi Min-Sik in LADY VENGEANCE, it seems like so much cinematic shorthand.

Like I said, THREE BURIALS is not for everyone, and not for every occasion. We all have times when we want fast cars and guns, or something a bit more obvious with a clear beginning, middle and end. But I really do think this is a great film, if you catch it in the right mood and just go with it.

THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA premiered at Cannes 2005, where Tommy Lee Jones won the Best Actor award and Gulliermo Arriaga won the Best Screenplay award. It has since been on release in the US and France and opens in the UK on March 31st 2006. You can read a fascinating interview with Arriago here.