DUNE: PART TWO***

DUNE: PART TWO is probably about as good a film as one can make about Frank Herbert's iconic religio-sci-fi book. The flaws I found in this film are mostly down to how distasteful and uninspiring I find the source material - with its superficial embrace of Middle Eastern and North African culture and the fact that its female characters are almost entirely reduced to breeding vessels. I understand that I am not perhaps the appropriate demographic for the books. But Denis Villeneuve has taken it and created two films of arresting visuals and a stunning score.  Greig Fraser's IMAX cinematography is bold and beautiful and truly envelopes us in Arrakis. And Hans Zimmer is at his finest combining sandworm-commanding drums, rock guitars, and menacing prophecy-reciting choirs.

As this instalment opens, we are mere days after part one. Paul Atreides and his mother Lady Jessica have survived the massacre of their House on the desert planet of Arrakis.  Paul has proven himself a fearsome warrior to the indigenous Fremen, some of whom think he is their long-awaited messiah.  This delights Lady Jessica and Atreides loyalist Gurney Halleck, who believes the Fremen will be a powerful fighting force. But Paul's lover Chani has it right - these prophecies are just stories being used to control the Fremen.  The narrative arc is powered by the choice that faces Paul. Will he be swayed by his prophetic dreams of devastating interstellar war and reject being a messiah. Or will he exploit the Fremen for revenge on the Harkonnens and seize the imperial throne?

There is so much to love in how Villeneuve brings this to the screen. He wisely leaves the sandworms as barely seen epic creatures. The production and costume design of the Harkonnen's world and of the Baron and Na-Baron in particular are arresting. 

But the performances veer from mediocre to weak. I found something almost comical in Timothee Chalamet's petulance as Paul and was unfortunately reminded of THE LIFE OF BRIAN - "He's not the Messiah - he's a very naughty boy!" Once you see the film through that lens - "the gourd!" - there's no turning back. There was zero screen chemistry between Chalamet's Paul and Zendaya's Chani which is odd as they seem to be constantly low-key flirting on the red carpet. Christopher Walken is hopelessly miscast as the Emperor - totally bringing me out of the film with his unique American accent. Only Javier Bardem stood out as Stilgar - petrifying in his increasing religious fervour.

I suspect that performances aren't really what interest Villeneuve. He is all about spectacle. Script and character are somewhat beyond the point for him. But this leads to weird choices around narrative. 

Most obviously, Villeneuve's choice not to allow the narrative to unravel over several years problematic. It felt as though Paul's journey from young pup to Emperor had taken place over a few weeks! Is it really so easy to seize power?  And how is this going to impact the timeline around Alia, who we see as a grown woman in Paul's dreams.  Another choice I disagree with is to minimise the influence of the Guild and put all of the machinations onto the Bene Gesserit cult. 

But perhaps the biggest macro issue I have with both books and film is that there's no-one to really root for. On the one hand you have a decrepit Emperor who seems flaccid and pointless. Then there are the comically evil and therefore uninteresting Harkonnens.  The Bene Genesserit are nuts and seem to have no endgame. The Fremen are religious extremists. And Paul is a self-acknowledged harbinger of mass genocide. It's like watching Succession but without the comedy swearing.

DUNE: PART TWO has a running time of 166 minutes and is rated-PG-13. It is on global release. 

THE FRENCH DISPATCH** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 5

 

Wes Anderson's THE FRENCH DISPATCH is all whimsy and stunning design but completely lacking in meaning or profundity for all bar about 3 minutes of its running time. This gives me no pleasure to say as a great fan of his work. But the genius of GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL was marrying his unique eye with a story that both made us life but also made us cry, and tackled the most profound and moving of subjects.  By contrast, Anderson's homage to literary magazines seems deeply unambitious and frivolous and thus uninvolving and dull. This is no doubt exacerbated by a portmanteau structure that prevents or plot character development. Indeed, this may be his worst film since THE DARJEELING LIMITED.  I wonder if he is too spoiled by being able to get every actor he wants for cameos that pile up into shagpile carpet of zanily dressed but pointless characters. He badly needs an editor and some focus.

So, the film is about a literary review editor played by Bill Murray and the magazine he created as demonstrated by three stories from the magazine brought to life. The first is a prison love story about an homicidal maniac artist (Benicio del Toro), his muse / guard (Lea Seydoux), his agent (Adrien Brody) and an art critic (Tilda Swinton).   The second is about a 1968 student demo led by Timothee Chalamet and reported on by Frances McDormand.  The third has a food critic (Jeffrey Wright) recall the kidnapping of the son of a police chief.  

There are some, but not enough, laughs in the film.  Anderson flicks from colour to black and white for no real reason.  The only scene of any power is where Jeffrey Wright's critic, clearly influenced by James Baldwin, recalls how he was once arrested for being gay and the editor saved him.  

Every mirror needs a dark backing so that we can see our reflection in it.  Anderson needs to bear that in mind.

THE FRENCH DISPATCH is rated R and has a running time of 108 minutes. It played Cannes, San Sebastian and the BFI London Film Festival 2021. It opens in the USA and UK on October 22nd.

KURSK: THE LAST MISSION aka THE COMMAND

In the wake of watching and obsessing over HBO's superb CHERNOBYL I thought I'd check out thew new film by Thomas Vinterberg - KURSK: THE LAST MISSION aka THE COMMAND.  As with Chernobyl, it's a tale of tragic loss of life in a Soviet/post Soviet system that is riddled with poor quality equipment, poor maintenance, bad decision making, cover ups, and honest working class men betrayed by their superiors.  In this case, the men are submariners running a test exercise in the Barents Sea. This may be 2000, over a decade after Chernobyl, but it's a similar story - an initial accident confounded by an unwillingness to do the right thing immediately. The Russians don't have rescue vessels of their own, having sold them for hard cash (they were taking rich tourists down to see the wreck of the Titanic.)  And when the British and the Norwegians offer help, the Russians refused at first - an unforgivable delay.

Vinterberg's film is a straightforward and earnest affair.  He does well at capturing the claustrophobia and camaraderie of the submarine and Matthias Schoenaerts (Vinterberg's FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD) is really superb as the charismatic protagonist. The film feels less authentic and more broad-stroke heroes and villains when it gets out of the submarine.  Max von Sydow is straightforwardly the bad guy as the Russian admiral who refuses help.  Colin Firth is straightforwardly decent and square-jawed as the British naval officer trying to help. It's a shame that the script doesn't quite allow for any convincing character building.

KURSK: THE LAST MISSION is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 117 minutes. It played Toronto 2018 and was released in the USA last month and in the UK this week.

IT'S ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 11

ITS ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD is the least Dolanesque of all of Xavier Dolan’s films. Rather than a three hour epic of melodrama, often with extreme mummy issues and queer themes, set to an 80s synth-pop soundtrack, we get a relatively taught if no less histrionic 90 minute chamber drama. This is because the film is based on a stage play rather than Dolan’s own musings. The film stars Gaspar Ulliel as a famous author returning home to his estranged family after a 12 year absence to tell them he’s dying. But as the family bicker and fight and make-up over lunch, the tension mounts as to whether he’s actually going to do the deed. We sense that his tongue-tied sister-in-law (Marion Cotillard) actually figures out his news early on and tries to facilitate him telling at least his elder brother (Vincent Cassel). And it may be that the elder brother also figures it out near the end and tries to protect their little sister (Lea Seydoux) from the news. The mother (Natalie Baye) meanwhile - gloriously larger than life in typical Dolanesque form - seems to be utterly in the dark. 

The last woman in England to watch SPECTRE, watches SPECTRE

Despite my avatar name, I actually don't like Bond. His glib superficial sado-masochistic fantasy world of spying struck me as thin soup compared to the morally murky but properly Romantic world of John le Carre. Insofar as I liked Bond, it was to appreciate the role that escapism and big brand consumerism has in all of our lives. In other words, if I must have Bond, let it be Bond - kiss kiss, bang bang - Roger Moore's arched eyebrow - absurd gadgets. And so I have struggled with Daniel Craig's Bond films, filled as they are with existential angst. They're Bond trying to be Bourne, lacking in self-confidence, desperate to show that they KNOW the very concept of Bond is absurd in our post-millennial world. Nowhere is this more obvious, nor as grating, as in SPECTRE.

THE LOBSTER - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Seven

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

THE LOBSTER is the latest film from the fascinating Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos and his first English language feature. It’s a savage social satire on the modern pressure to date and find a perfect match - the superficial metrics upon which people find their partners - and the judgment thrown on the weirdos who stay single. Colin Farrell plays one such schlubby loner who checks into a hotel where he has 45 days to find a perfect partner. If he fails, he will be turned into the animal of his choice - a lobster. The pressure is harsh - Ben Whishaw plays a grieving widower who checks in a mere six days after his wife has passed away. As the movie passes into its second hour, Farrell’s character escapes into the woods and joins a renegade band of militant Loners, as well as the soon to be love of his life, played by Rachel Weisz. It’s credit to Lanthimos that he shows the loners to be as militant as the couples, and for exploring just how far one should go for the person one loves.

George Ghon comments on MYSTERIES OF LISBON

How do I translate a dream into a film, without losing its delicate intricacies and keeping a storyline so elaborate that it almost becomes confusing – this question seems to have been on Raul Ruíz’s mind a lot. In the Mysteries of Lisbon, he has been spinning the imaginations (or was it all real, in the end?) of a young boy named Joao, just Joao (Joao Arrais). Maybe he is an orphan, maybe even the priest’s illegitimate son. His lack of a last name cuts off any possible family ties, which makes him a strange fellow for his peers in a catholic boarding school in 19th century Lisbon. After an attack in the hallway, led by the classroom bully, the handsome and fragile Joao becomes unconscious, and the storyline starts to unfold over time and space.

A reclusive countess, caged up by her choleric husband in a slowly decaying castle of regional importance, appears and reveals herself as Joao’s mother. The back-story comes to light, the countess, Angela (Maria Joao Bastos) slowly reveals the secrets of her illegitimate relationship of which Joao is the result. Or rather she lets it reveal by the Padre Dinis (Adriano Luz), the central character of the film who seems to know it all. Midway through the film another loop is made into pre-Revolutionary France, where the padre himself gets to know his past, told by the thought-to-be lost father whom he eventually meets. The film is full of those seemingly strange coincidences where people randomly cross and then discover their mutual history, how their lives have been linked through events in the past.

The Mysteries of Lisbon is a grand project, a four and half-hours of footage that show a lot, historic drama at its most complex. The intriguing observation of Ruìz’s ambitions, however, are the current implications, or in other words, the social parallels to a society, which we thought to be so different from our own, 21st century one. Aristocracy does not permit social upstarts too easily. Not true, says Ruíz. There always was a meritocracy. If you manage to make enough money, as Alberto de Magalhaes (Ricardo Pereira) did in occasionally shady ways, acquiring a title and social respect is not too much out of this world. Equally, the other way round, a title does not protect from falling down the social ladder, as the Marques de Montezelos (Rui Morrison) demonstrates, who loses all his possessions and ends up as a beggar on the graveyard, where, though, he still manages to extract more money from visitors than his fellow outcasts.

The church doesn’t suffer too badly in this movie. The priest is the hero; all the good deeds he performs deflect from questioning his moral authority. Contrary to modern fashion, a women’s convent is not portrayed as emotionally restricting prison, where unwanted women are shuffled in for political reasons by their husbands or fathers, but appears to be a spiritual sanctuary that genuinely offers a valid alternative to the worldly way of life. It provides an identity and social security, both assets that sometimes get lost in the free roaming lifestyles of early 19th century aristocracy. 

It is - that’s how I see the film in the end, the elaborate fantasy of a boy who tries to construct an identity, a history for himself in his dreams. 

MYSTERIES OF LISBON played Toronto, London and New York 2010. It was released in 2010 in France and Portugal. It was released earlier in 2011 in China, Taiwan, Spain, the Netherlands, the USA and Chile. It is currently on release in the UK.

Random DVD Round-Up - THE LAST MISTRESS / UNE VIEILLE MAITRESSE

Catherine Breilliat's French period drama is a beautifully played tragedy that never feels starchy or staid although it sometimes feels just plain bizarre. Okay, so maybe this is 1850s French high society but how many people do you know who talk in intimate detail about previous liasons with their future mother-in-laws? Such is the implausible framing device of Barbey d'Aurevilly's novel and this new movie. A young rake is sitting in his future mother-in-law's salon explaining his entanglement with a prostitute called Vellini. As a young man, Ryno (Fu'ad Ait Aattou) had dismissed Vellini as old, crumpled and vulgar, but no sooner had he said those words than, Mr Darcy-style, he fell into erotomania. They conduct a ten-year affair until Ryno throws Vellini over for a diametrically opposite, virginally pure, rich young girl. Soon after the wedding, Ryno spirits his bride away to the coast in order to escape temptation. But temptation follows him, with tragic consequences. Desire cannot be fettered.

THE LAST MISTRESS works because it balances attention to period detail and visual flair with an apparently modern take on sexual relations, not to mention solid central performances from Fu'ad Ait and Asia Argento in a role that seems made for her. It's a costume drama for people who prefer LA REINE MARGOT to Jane Austen, with none of the austere trauma of NE TOUCHEZ PAS LA HACHE.

THE LAST MISTRESS/UNE VIEILLE MAITRESSE played Cannes, Toronto and London 2007 and was released last year in France, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Russia, Australia and Turkey. It was released in the UK, Brazil and South Korea earlier this year. It is now available on DVD.

London Film Festival Day 2 - LA BELLE PERSONNE

LA BELLE PERSONNE is French auteur Christophe Honoré's loose adaptation of Madame de la Fayette's La Princesse de Clèves. In Honoré's version, the tale of unrequited and unconsummated love takes place in a dreary Parisian high school populated with over-sexed pupils and staff. In uncharacteristically slippery style, Honoré completely side-steps the moral difficulty with teacher-pupil relationships. Indeed, his film has a curious democracy to it - pretty much everyone - young, old, gay, straight - is emotionally wrecked by love.

Léa Seydoux plays the enigmatic Junie who transfers into school and begins a relationship with earnest Otto (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) even though she doesn't really love him. Thereafter she falls for the dishy Italian teacher, Nemours. (Louis Garrel in an unusually low-key performance - and all the better for that). Nemours clears the decks for a relationship with Junie but is curiously resistant to pursuing her. And Junie in turn is sceptical about Nemours' capacity to remain interested once the relationship is consummated - hence an emotional stand-off.

The story is economically told and nicely photographed, and doesn't feel like a TV film that somehow stumbled into a cineplex. However, I have to say that despite all the constant blubbing, I found it to be a rather slight film. I think this is because Honoré has a tendency to compose his films like a series of over-wrought French pop videos. He indulged this fully in LES CHANSONS D'AMOUR but even here, he sometimes seems more interested in the moody close-up than emotional truth. Indeed, it was with great dismay that I found Honoré slipping back into his lip-synching addiction in the most dramatic scene of the film, reducing it to pop video banality.

LA BELLE PERSONNE is a TV movie. It opened last month in France and Germany and played London 2008.