WHEN THE DRAGON SWALLOWED THE SUN

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Dirk Simon's documentary on the political conflict between Tibet and China originally played the festival circuit in 2010.  Since then, it's IMDB page has been blocked in China, and it is only now getting a theatrical release in the UK.  The way it plays is as a straightforward agit-doc, unashamedly presenting the cause of the victimised invaded Tibet, with its fragile culture deliberately and methodically stamped out by the Chinese. I have been quite scornful of this kind of film in the past. I always wonder whether anyone who wasn't always convinced of the case would choose to see a film on that subject.  But this documentary is different.  In this case, I feel that even those of us in the west who have a sort of kneejerk response to support Tibet in some vague manner, are getting an education into what's really going on with that cause. Moreover, given the length of time the film took to assemble, its patient interviews with many Tibetans inside the cause, we get insight that is not readily available elsewhere.

The documentary has three key messages for us.  The first is the most obvious: Tibet was an independent country in 1912, and was invaded by the Chinese in 1950.  It is entitled to its independence.

The second key message is that Tibet is almost uniquely ill-equipped to fight for that independence. It has a deeply entrenched state religion that is committed to peace - so much so that the Dalai Lama called the resistance fight to a halt.  It also has a still respected aristocracy whose scion is now a young teenager with little guidance, much doubt and great expectations of him.  There is a powerful scene where the boy goes to the state oracle for advise and is given the banal instruction to follow the Dalai Lama, who has himself just admitted that the fight for independence has failed, the compromise fight for autonomy has failed, and now he looks to his people for answers, just as they look to him.  Therein lies the contradiction of the Tibetan struggle.  They are fighting for modern liberal values from the starting position of a feudal, hierarchical, religious monarchy and the very power structures they seek to preserve as their culture are holding them back from protecting it.

The third key message is that China is not going to negotiate and the West is not going to intervene.  Just as in 1950, when the West cosied up to Mao hoping to provoke a Sino-Soviet split, today the West needs Chinese trade.  And as for China, she is playing a patient waiting game, for the Dalai Lama to die - and for all the resettled Han Chinese to dominate and dilute the Tibetan culture.

The overwhelming feeling at the end of this sometimes frustratingly edited and arguably overlong documentary is one of having been given valuable insight but also a sense of hopelessness.   There is a young Tibetan girl who is reduced to tears asking the interviewer what they should do.  Former resistance fighters want a campaign of civil disobedience at the cost of lives. The Dalai Lama feels that would be hopeless against the massive Chinese numbers.  Both sides are right.  And our minds are cast back to the opening scenes of the doc - where Richard Gere and Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak at a rally - and it all seems rather futile.  One wonders then, whether this documentary is also futile. Educating ourselves about the struggle that we know is likely to fail. It is depressing and yet utterly morally necessary.

WHEN THE DRAGON SWALLOWED THE SUN has a running time of 115 minutes and is rated 15 for the real images of tortured Tibetans.  The film will be released in the UK on August 16th.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 7 - ELENA

Russian auteur Andrewi Zvyagintsev (THE BANISHMENT, THE RETURN) has crafted a tense, deliciously minutely observed character drama in ELENA. It begins slowly with the quiet observation of a quietly luxurious but emotionally empty life. A sixty-ish neat woman, Elena (Nadezhda Markina) is more like a live-in maid to her rich husband Vladimir (Andrei Smirnov), although later we will see that there is real intimacy and sympathy between them. Still, for all that, Vladimir holds Elena at a distance, she isn't family in thee same way as his dissipated and angry daughter Katya - again a rounded character - she hates her father but they also share real sympathy. And if Elena comes second to Katya - as is made clear in the will he tells Elena he is about to sign - Vladimir has even less time for Elena's wastrel son and grandson, who live in a crummy Soviet era apartment, sponging off Elena for cash. With a few brief but effective scenes, we learn that Elena is a good woman, who cares deeply for her family, and completely believe in her desperate actions as the film reaches it's final third. 

ELENA is thus a psychological study of compelling credibility but also a fascinating look at the contrast between those who have made it in the new Russia and those still living in comparative poverty in the old Soviet structures. The implied social critique is that in a society of graft, success comes to those who play the game. Vladimir played it in his way and now Elena, her possibilities circumscribed by her age, gender and situation, must take her chances too. The power of the film comes from the superb central performances in combination with Mikhail Krichman's camerawork and Zvyagintsev's framing of the luxurious apartment and the claustrophobic Soviet block. This is also one of the rare occasions where I really responded to a Philip Glass, and didn't find it overwhelming.

ELENA played Cannes where Andrew Zvyagintsev won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize. It also played Moscow, Toronto and London 2011. It was released in Russia last month and opens in France on March 7th 2012.

Late Review - MR NICE

Director Bernard Rose takes a break from contemporising Russian literature, with his straight-ahead adaptation of Howard Marks' autobiography, MR NICE. The charm of Marks' story is that he stands against the cliché of the drug dealer typically seen in films. He doesn't grow up in a mean urban setting - he doesn't push drugs to survive - he isn't particularly flash - he doesn't do whores - he's faithful to his wife and kids - and he studiously avoids Class A drugs - both dealing them and taking them. In fact, he is rather more like a hero of an Ealing Comedy - stumbling into drug dealing quite by accident and permanently amused that he is getting away with it.

Marks was basically just another middle-class kid studying at Oxford and smoking hash when a mate asked him to do a favour and drive a car stuffed with drugs back from Germany. Marks was quite happy to quit teaching for easy money-making and soon hooked up with the Provos to bring his hash into UK airports without the inconvenience of customs checks. Before long he's got the biggest outfit in the UK and tries to crack America. Moreover, he's been recruited by his old college chum to be a spy in Kabul - after all, he moves in circles they can't penetrate! The first time he's busted for dealing he gets off on grounds so spurious he seems to be amazed, but he does eventually serve time - and not because of hubris, or narcissism, or betrayal - but basically because he was too bored to quit.

The film is charming and fun, and uses a deliberately lo-fi amateurish style, with live action footage digitally inserted into grainy old vintage footage of the 60s and 70s. Rhys Ifans is suitably bumbling and charming as Marks and he and Chloe Sevigny as his wife seem genuinely in love. I also love David Thewlis - who has just that edge of danger required to play the Provo, Jim McCann. The charm and the fun is entirely in keeping with Marks' carefully cultivated persona as Mr. Nice. Yes, that was his real alias, but he also wants to be seen as basically a good guy. To that end, this movie drips with family values, and to watch it, one would think that his wife and daughters never blamed him for one second for being absent from their lives. The film also refuses to question how far his involvement with the Provos was morally pretty nasty - after all, the dodgy money they were earning wasn't going into real estate, was it? And there is a deliberately cultivated equivocation about how far he ever really did any spying for the British.

So, MR NICE is basically a rather fawning film - frothy, light, charming, disposable. It doesn't get to grips with Howard Marks - but provides him with a yet another self-justificatory platform. Is that bad? Who knows. But there is something rather, well, distasteful in an international drug dealer who consorted with the IRA palming himself of as a charming rogue.

MR NICE is currently on release in the UK.

Random DVD Round-Up 2 - NO RESERVATIONS - formulaic rom-com bilge

NO RESERVATIONS is a deeply unexciting romantic comedy based on the much more nuanced German film MOSTLY MARTHA. Catherine Zeta Jones plays the highly-strung ambitious chef landed with her niece (the ubiquitous Abigail Breslin) after a family tragedy. Calculating boss Patricia Clarkson decides that CZJ can't cope with work and family and brings in boho chef Aaron Eckhart to take over. CZJ hates him. Then she loves him. And it all end schmaltzily ever after. A thousand feminists die. Philip Glass composes a typically over-bearing score.

NO RESERVATIONS squelched into theatres in summer 2007 and is available on DVD.

UNDERTOW - There are some things we just don't need to see

Josh Lucas mud-wrestling a squealing pig, his pale ass-cheeks wobbling over the top of his muddy britches. No, sir. We also do not need to see inferior remakes of cinematic classics, no matter what the pedigree of the director. No matter how impressive David Gordon Green's first two films were, there is no excuse for this blatant rip-off of The Night of the Hunter. In this version, Dermot Mulroney plays John Munn, the father of two kids, living in the backwoods of Georgia in savage conditions. One day his younger brother Deel Munn, played by Josh Lucas, shows up. He's after some old Mexican coins that Mulroney inherited from his father. This being one of Green's trademark "Southern Gothic" flicks, the fight for the coins soon turns violent. So the two kids abscond, chased by their sinister, murdering Uncle. Now, despite my deep scepticism as to the point of remaking (broadly speaking) The Night of the Hunter, there is a lot to like about UNDERTOW. Apart from Josh Lucas, the cast is outstanding. In particular, Jamie Bell and Devon Alan are captivating as the two young Munn boys. The evocation of mood - from photography to Philip Glass' score - is also first class. However, whenever Josh Lucas appeared on screen I was totally taken out of the movie thanks to his hammy over-acting. He plays menacing by opening his eyes *really* wide and getting all shouty in the manner of Al Pacino's more hammy performances. And when he starts on his sinister rampage he just reminded me of Jason Lee in My Name is Earl. And that's about as menacing as the English pace attack. (i.e. not very.) To sum up, there are worse looking films out on DVD this week, but I doubt if any are more frustratingly mis-cast.

UNDERTOW screened at London 2004 and went on limited release in the UK last autumn. It was released on DVD yesterday.