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.

London Film Fest 2012 - Day 9 - EVERYDAY

There were two French women next to me in the screening of Michael Winterbottom's new film, EVERYDAY. They talked throughout the film and would sometimes laugh at strangely inappropriate moments.  Normally, I would've asked them to be quiet, but as it turns out, eavesdropping on their banalities was about as much entertainment as I got in the 90 minutes runtime of the film.  Which is not to say that the film isn't well-made. It's just that nothing actually happens.

Shot over five years, the film is about a family living through the imprisonment of the father (John Simm). This involves the mother (Shirley Henderson) gathering up her four kids in rural Norfolk, and taking trains and buses to get to a variety of prisons in which the father is held. We see that both parents love their kids and each other.  Casting the kids from the same family also helps bring an air of intimacy and authenticity.  And by shooting over the prolonged period, we get a real sense of changing seasons and passing years.  I liked the family and I sympathised with them.  The problem is that basically nothing happens.  The dad comes out on day release, then parole, then for good.  The family are happy to see him come home. The End. There's no grim explanation of what he did, or of his chances of re-offending. No social context at all. And because the family is, by and large, loving and warm, no drama to speak of.

The result is that EVERYDAY may not be the worst film I've ever watched, but it's certainly one of the dullest. Shame on writers, Michael Winterbottom and Laurence Coriot (HUNKY DORY) for wasting such a good cast and a terrific score from Michael Nyman. 

EVERYDAY played Telluride, Toronto and London 2012 and will be broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 14 - HUNKY DORY

Minnie Driver is the only recognised name in Marc Evans' musical drama HUNKY DORY.

Welsh director Marc Evans (SNOWCAKE, MY LITTLE EYE) bravely takes on a "concept" film with his new musical coming-of-age flick, HUNKY DORY. Minnie Driver (with impeccable Welsh accent) plays a teacher in a Welsh school, putting on a musical version of Shakespeare's The Tempest that incorporates the popular music of 1976 - David Bowie, Nick Drake, The Beach Boys - the year in which the movie is set. And while Driver is the only recognised name actor, she's actually not the person carrying the film. Rather, the young cast of talented kids steal the show, with the lead schoolboy Aneurin Barnard making an impressive debut. 

I found the movie earnest, joyful, but uneven and unsure of what it wanted to be. French writer Laurence Coriat (WONDERLAND) has penned a script that isn't an out-and-out big dance number musical in the manner of GLEE or HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Indeed, it seems to want to be one of those authentic realist teen flicks of the US indie movement - AMERICAN GRAFFITI or DAZED AND CONFUSED. And even then it can't resist one of those plot devices that seems totally out of scale with all that preceded it - stupidly clumsy deus ex machina. Combining social realism and musical numbers is a hard trick to pull off, and HUNKY DORY is no BILLY ELLIOT.

HUNKY DORY had its world premiere at London 2011 and has no commercial release date yet.