SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE*****

Director Tim Mielants has delivered a quiet masterpiece in this film set in early 80s Ireland and based on the equally powerful, slippery novel by Clare Keegan with a screenplay by the writer Enda Walsh (HUNGER).

It stars Cillian Murphy (OPPENHEIMER) as Bill Furlong, the owner of a small coal business who is happily married and lives in a home filled with laughter and the tumbling chaos of a gaggle of daughters.  Nonetheless, as many who have scraped their way up from poverty, he can never quite shake off that feeling of insecurity and is haunted by memories of his childhood as an illegitimate child taken in by a kindly rich woman (Michelle Fairley - Game of Thrones).

The moral crisis of the film is triggered by Bill making a delivery to a convent himself, and seeing the exploitation of the girls there, and receiving a plea for help from one distraught teenager in particular. As viewers, we are sadly all too familiar with the decades-long abuses of the Magdalene Laundries, in which the Catholic Church exploited young pregnant women. The question is: what Bill will do?

As is made clear to him by the presiding Sister (Emily Watson - chilling), going against the Church means a kind of social ostracisation - and Bill has many girls to educate in the school that they run.  And yet, and yet, he all too well knows that his own mother might well have ended up in such an institution, had she not been taken care of by her kindly employer. 

The resulting film is beautifully acted and captures the claustrophobia and oppression of a small town suffocated by the Church.  The sound design is particularly notable for depicting the twin horrors breaking in on Bill's mind - of his childhood and what is happening in the convent. Just as with the novel, this is a movie that absolutely envelopes you in a certain time and place, and stirs up emotions and provokes moral questions. It is a thing of beauty and brilliance.

SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 98 minutes. It played Berlin 2024 and was released in the USA and UK in November.

A REAL PAIN***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 6

Jesse Eisenberg is such an accomplished writer, director and actor that he makes creating a laugh-out loud comedy that is also heartbreaking and profound seem effortless.  His tight 90 minute dramedy A REAL PAIN is one of the stand -out films of this year's festival: full of humanity, vulnerability, and centring a beautiful performance from Succession's Kieran Culkin.

Eisenberg and Culkin play two cousins, David and Benji, who travel to Poland to honour their recently deceased grandmother. David is clearly on edge - nervous around a cousin that he clearly loves but mortified by Benji's behaviour. It's a strange mix of envy at Benji's charisma and fear of what happens when he crashes. Culkin plays Benji as a larger than life, filterless, big kid who can be thoughtless and casually cruel but is obviously very fragile and loveable too. 

The cousins join a small private tour of Poland for Jews interested in the Holocaust. Their own grandmother was a survivor, and the tour group comprises people who also lost loved ones, as well as a new Jewish convert who himself survived the Rwandan genocide. As they journey to Lublin they see remnants of an old vibrant Jewish community with the concentration camp Madjanek clearly visible from the centre of town.

It is testament to Eisenberg's writing and direction that this topic is handled with due sensitivity but that this film is also absolutely hilarious. Best of all, it resists trite neat endings or emotional resolutions. It is a film that it is utterly confident about what it wants to say and gets the tone absolutely right in saying it. 

A REAL PAIN is rated R and has a running time of 90 minutes. It played Sundance where Eisenberg won the screenwriting award. It opens in the USA on November 1st and in the UK on January 10th 2025.

CONCLAVE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 3

Robert Harris' political procedural thriller, CONCLAVE, is one of his greatest novels and it has been beautifully brought to the screen by director Edward Berger (ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT) and screenwriter Peter Straughan (TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY). The resulting film is genuinely tense, visually stunning, brilliantly claustrophobic and occasionally hilarious.

Ralph Fiennes stars as the seemingly humble Cardinal Lawrence who is tasked with managing the papal election.  He is allied with the liberal Cardinal Bonelli (Stanley Tucci) who claims he does not want to be Pope, but come on, doesn't every Cardinal want the ultimate power?  They are united in opposing a return to reactionary religion whether in the form of the African Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), the American Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) or the Italian Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto).  

As each ballot is taken, we learn of reasons why each candidate is far from perfect. Lawrence chooses carefully what to expose and keep secret, even going so far as to break the papal seal on the dead Pope's locked door. And each ballot frames a debate about what the Church means - is it tradition or modernity - diversity or unity - progressive on race or progressive on sexuality?

What makes this procedural such an effective film? Well, the cast is exceptional. I would expect award noms for Fiennes and Tucci. But for me the highlight is Isabella Rosellini in a scene-stealing role, and the all-time most powerful on-screen curtsy. But more than the individual performances what makes this movie great is the deft way that Edward Berger creates his hermetically sealed world and helps us to understand its bizarre logic. We never cut away to waiting news crews or crowds in Vatican Square. Events beyond the walls might be heard but are not seen.  We are utterly immersed in the Conclave.  He takes us through the mechanics of the first ballot with precision and then elegantly edits the others.  He uses his editing and framing to give us a sense of moral corruption and stakes.  And then there are the visual flourishes that a 108 men in red robes against banks of white marble or teal cinema seats can give. The mood of the film is austere - the colour palette, score, even the amount of dialogue - is kept to the minimal. We are in a world where a glance, a sigh, a tug on a vape can be portentous. Bravo to a director who strips away rather than overloading us.

ALL QUIET  was a really good film that was perhaps lobbied into a greater awards tally than it deserved. Berger has moved far beyond that film with this one and it's likely awards will be even more richly deserved. Kudos to all involved.

CONCLAVE is rated PG and has a running time of 100 minutes. It played Telluride, Toronto and London 2024. It will be released in the USA on November 8th and in the UK on November 15th.

OCCUPIED CITY*** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 2

Steve McQueen (12 YEARS A SLAVE) returns to our screens with an epic and scrupulously well-made documentary that pairs contemporary Amsterdam locations with a narrator, Melanie Hyams, describing what happened there during the Nazi occupation and Holocaust.  We see everything from famous tourist sites like the Riksmuseum or Concertgebouw to domestic interiors and seemingly ordinary suburban homes.  And, shot as it was during the pandemic, we see deserted city streets during the curfew and vaccination centres. The documentary thus serves as a double documentary of the Holocaust but also Amsterdam during Covid.  Sometime the pairing of visual and narration is jarring.  Horrific anti-semitism and murder calmly narrated by Hyams over an everyday apartment. And sometimes the pairing is surprisingly resonant, such as an act of fascism narrated over footage of an antifa protest, or an anti-covid lockdown protest monitored by drones and riot police.

The film is based on McQueen's wife Bianca Stigter’s Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945r and I did find myself wondering if a book was the better format for this story. The running time of this superb film is well over four hours, including an interval. I understand that for some reviewers this has led to an overwhelming and moving cumulative impact of image after image and story after story. And I also understand that in some respects the endurance of an epic Holocaust documentary is itself a homage.  But for me, once I got to the second hour, I felt myself tire, and my mind start to wonder. I would far rather have watched this over sequential nights in parts, which is the way I typically watch and rewatch SHOAH.

OCCUPIED CITY has a running time of 246 minutes. It played Cannes, Telluride and London 2023. It opens in the Netherlands on November 24th.

WOMEN TALKING*****

Writer-director-actor Sarah Polley returns to our screens with the critically-acclaimed WOMEN TALKING.  It is based on a book by Miriam Toews which is in turn based on the true story of mass sexual assault in a Mennonite community in Bolivia in 2011.  Hundreds of women were gassed into unconsciousness in their own homes and raped.  When they complained to the Elders they were gaslit. Finally they caught a man in the act and had to decide whether to forgive, leave or stay and fight. 

This is the decision portrayed in this film. The men have gone to bail the attackers leaving the women home with the schoolteacher (Ben Whishaw).  They convene a secret vote, and when that is tied, nominate a handful of women to debate the issue and make a decision for them all, with the schoolteacher taking minutes.  The stakes could not be higher - earthly safety from attack versus expulsion from the community and therefore from the kingdom of heaven.

The range of female experience and reaction is circumscribed by the womens' subjugation. They tell us that they barely have the language to articulate what has been done to their bodies. They cannot read or write and do not possess a map with which to leave. Their religious belief and in-grained misogyny complicates their decision. But even within the limited scope of their intellectual freedom there is disagreement. Jessie Buckley's character is married to an abusive husband but sees no possibility of escape, having been told explicitly and implicitly to forgive and endure all her life.  On the other end of the spectrum, Claire Foy's character wants to fight and kill and be avenged. When we learn why she is so particularly angry it is a blow upon a bruise. 

I suspect that how far viewers respond to this film will depend on how far they are willing to accept that it is a "wild act of female imagination".  An opening title card tells us that it is, of necessity, incredible and an on-the-nose allegory of the Me Too movement.  The women are therefore incredibly articulate, despite their lack of formal education, and the dialogue and blocking can come across like a university debate on a theatre stage.  

I was willing to grant the film my suspension of disbelief, and indeed was given no choice in the matter because the power of the subject matter and performances carried me forward into this strange, anachronistic, hermetically-sealed world. It seems wrong to single out a particular player in a very strong ensemble cast, but Sheila McCarthy as Greta had a devastatingly quiet power that cut me off at the knees. 

But the visionary mind here is that of Sarah Polley, which is why it feels so bizarre that this film should be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, but Polley should be overlooked for Best Director. 

It is her vision that centres the film on the female experience, and never shows us one of the attackers, and barely lets Ben Whishaw speak except in response to what the women need. It is Polley who decides to show the attacks in flashback and from above, making us feel the horror without ever being exploitative or pandering to the male gaze. It is Polley who has the confidence to sentence us to "merely" watch women talking - women who have hitherto been forbidden from having a voice, or thoughts, or liberty. It is Polley who creates a vision of a dark, claustrophobic, colour-drained world that feels so anachronistic that even a pop song by The Monkees seems shockingly new. 

The result is a film that feels urgent, and relevant, and shocking but also sadly not so. A film that shows female anger and resignation, and challenges us to ask what kind of world we have created that these women might escape to, and what consequence their male ally will face. 

WOMEN TALKING does what all great films do - it makes us ask questions of ourselves and our society while at the same time impacting us emotionally. I felt deeply invested in the fate of these women, and heartbroken at the choice presented to them.

WOMEN TALKING is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 104 minutes. It played Telluride, Toronto and London 2022. It was released in the USA on December 23rd and in the UK last week.

YOU PEOPLE****

Kenya Barris (BLACKISH) and Jonah Hill team up to write and then respectively direct and star in this new politically charged rom-com YOU PEOPLE.  Jonah Hill plays a Jewish broker called Ezra who feels lost in life and pressured to get married. He hates his office job and has an affinity for black hip-hop culture, which he expresses in a podcast with his best - black - friend Mo (Sam Jay).  He falls in love with a black girl called Amira (Lauren London) and it all goes swimmingly until they have to meet each other's respective parents.  

Ezra's parents (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny) are embarrassingly but unintentionally racist. Their racism is the kind that comes out of a lack of experience of inter-racial friendship, cultural ignorance, but an awkward desire to be woker-than-woke. It is no less demeaning to its target despite its lack of intentionality.   Amira's parents (Nia Long and a very subdued Eddie Murphy) are political activists inspired  by the deeply anti-semitic Louis Farrakhan, but after an early skirmish we never actually get into that.  Their racism seems intentional and well-considered, born of experience and ideology.  They simply do not trust or want their daughter in a non-black relationship.  

Things come to a head and then resolve in true rom-com style.  That is achieved through Ezra's mum apologising to Amira for her behaviour and - natch - on behalf of all Jewish people. Amira's dad apologises for his prejudiced behaviour toward Ezra, period. We never actually interrogate the anti-semitisim inherent in Farrakhan's teaching. Clearly there's an asymmetry here that David Baddiel has rightly called out, especially as it so clearly demonstrated in his superb and polemical essay Jews Don't Count. 

The thing is, I really agree with David Baddiel and I know I should mark this film down on account of it, but honestly, I just had a lot of fun with this film. It may be flawed but I think it made an earnest and honest attempt to deal with the reality of inter-racial dating in contemporary so-called liberal America. The conversations between Ezra and his friend Mo were fascinating, provocative and frankly entertaining. I would legit listen to that podcast if it existed. I believed in Jonah Hill's confused, frustrated and then touchingly sweet boyfriend. I believed in Amira's smart, strong, creative, supportive girlfriend. I rooted for them. And if the end was hokey, well that's just the genre, and if the apologies were imperfect, even that felt like a wish-fulfilment fantasy that wouldn't have happened IRL. So yeah, I really enjoyed YOU PEOPLE and I admired the relatively restrained deeply felt performance from Jonah Hill. More of this, please.

YOU PEOPLE has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated R. It is streaming on Netflix.

THE WONDER*****

THE WONDER is one of the best movies I have seen this year: sublime cinematography and score; a breathtakingly good central performance from Florence Pugh; and a script that takes us deep into discussion with ourselves about the nature of faith and family. Kudos to director Sebastian Lelio - who seems to specialise in giving us films that interrogate and shine a light on complex female characters in tough situations - whether in GLORIA, A FANTASTIC WOMAN or DISOBEDIENCE - the latter also deeply concerned with the interactions of religious extremism and our physical experience.

The woman in question here is Florence Pugh's Libby - a Crimean War nurse and widow despatched to central Ireland to sit watch over an apparently miraculous young girl called Anna (Kila Lord Cassidy) who has sustained herself for months despite not eating.  People are already travelling from far and wide to observe this miracle, and Anna's demeanour is one of serene acceptance of her role. Her mother and father are deeply religious and resist Libby's common sense scientific injunctions to let the girl eat, even if by forced feeding.

Libby's ally in scepticism is the journalist William (Tom Burke). He bears the scars of earlier experience, just like Libby, and they find common cause against the insular town elders and priest (Toby Jones most notably and Ciaran Hinds).  

It soon becomes clear that we are living in a world where the consuming or withholding of food is a weapon and a punishment and a martyrdom. This is an Ireland not far gone from the horrors of the Famine, which touched William's life particularly tragically.  We are also in an Ireland so doused in religion that fasting takes on meaning and martyrdom, and perhaps penance. Survival by merely eating is then relegated to the profane. Modern viewers cannot help but see prefigurement of further colonial injustices with the forced feeding of hunger strikers, and their modern day self-described martyrdom. And of course, where there is religious control we are now - sadly - conditioned to expect abuse.

The highest praise goes to Florence Pugh in a performance that is full of humanity but also resolute strength and intelligence.  I also loved the real-life mother daughter combination of Elaine and Kila Lord Cassidy. The former in particular is playing one of the most ambiguous and elusive roles as Anna's mother and I am still debating her motivations.

Behind the lens we must start with DP Ari Wegner (THE POWER OF THE DOG) who creates a film of oppressive interiors where the Dark Ages of religious belief feel as though they have been manifested in a house.  This contrasts with Libby and Will walking through open wild moors allowing us to breathe for a moment.  Then we have an excellent script - written by Alice Birch who also adapted Pugh's breakout film LADY MACBETH.  The screenplay is adapted from a book by Emma Donoghue, most famous for ROOM. It is so full of layered meaning and slipperiness that I am left in awe. Last but not least we must mention composer Matthew Herbert (A FANTASTIC WOMAN) with an eery, spectral score that gives the scrupulously period film an uncanny and anachronistic feeling that hints at the subject matter that transcends the era of the film.

THE WONDER is rated R and has a running time of 108 minutes. It played Telluride, Toronto and London 2022 and is now on release on Netflix.

UNICORN WARS - BFI London Film Festival 2022 - Day 10

Alberto Vazquez' UNICORN WARS is essentially a one-gag film, but what a gag! Cuddly Care Bears-adjacent teddy bears are fighting a brutal war against innocent looking unicorns, inspired by religious zealoutry and the belief that the unicorns have stolen the Magic Forest. Conscripted into the army, poor Gordi has body image issues and a heart of gold.  But his twin brother Azulin, resentful at being born second, is a vainglorious pyschopath whose true nature is unleashed during an army expedition into the Heart of Darkness.  While Gordi makes friends with an injured unicorn and wants peace, a brutalised Azulin becomes a tool of the religio-fascist regime. 

This is not your childhood's care bear animated series.  Vasquez makes that clear in the opening scenes that show a bear washing his balls and taking a piss.  There's a kind of infantile pleasure every time we see a bear doing something vile, like beating another bear up, or the iconic heart-design used in care bears bent to a more evil purpose.  There's also a more serious commentary on - I guess - the Spanish civil war, and every other example of religious nutters inspiring endless war and strife.  You could argue this film has the same subject matter as THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN.  The most sinister character is the Catholic priest teddy bear who sends the cannon fodder teddies off to war, and watching Azulin eventually take his place as an icon of nihilistic violence.

All this takes place amidst animation that's genuinely beautiful to behold. Acid bright pinks and blues and greens - a stunning depiction of the magic forest, and a true understanding of colour and form.  I can't wait to discover more of Vasquez' work.

UNICORN WARS has a running time of 85 minutes and played the BFI London Film Festival.

AFTER SHERMAN - BFI London Film Festival - Day 6

AFTER SHERMAN is a stunning new documentary from director Jon Sesrie Goff that's insightful, provocative and often visually stunning. His camera roams through the landscape of coastal South Carolina looking at the rural areas where his ancestors were slaves, and where after emancipation they were promised freedom on their own newly acquired plots of land. It's rare to find a film that feels so rooted in the land, and so well understands how our cultural and racial roots can be so liminal for those of third, fourth, fifth generations that somehow the rootedness of property - even property in a land that enslaved or colonised you - can become hyper-important and symbolic.  I see that same search for a physical representation of belonging and birthright in the Asian diaspora too.

What is shocking for a British viewer, not as well versed as one might be in contemporary and historic race-relations in the South, is how far the relationship to a particular state might remain fraught. We see it again and again in this documentary, with people discussing their decisions to leave the South and head North for jobs - their experience of comparative racism in either place - and sometimes, in their decision to head back "home".  One of the most powerful moments is a casual conversation among contemporary young black Americans discussing where to live, and you just realise the weight of politics that sits within that conversation.

The documentary is also powerful for showing us how the fight for civil rights is intertwined with the black church, and its central role as a rallying point, community builder, and truly self-owned institution in a world where few if any institutions are open to the black community.  To see some members of the church express faith, deep faith, and the ability to forgive, is humbling - if perhaps baffling - to a person of no faith.  That centredness on the church stems from Jon Sesrie Goff using conversations with his father, a minister, as a framing device and through line for his film.  That I left this film feeling a sense of hope and understanding, despite the fact that it frankly discusses racially motivated violence, is a tribute to all involved. 

AFTER SHERMAN has a running time of 88 minutes. The film played Tribeca 2022 and is playing the BFI London Film Festival.

AFTER LOVE - BFI London Film Festival - Day 9

Aleem Khan's AFTER LOVE, is a deeply moving drama that is told with a controlled, spare austerity and visual style that is truly impressive in a debut feature.  The film stars the superb Joanna Scanlan as Fahima - a white English woman who converted to Islam when she married her husband many decades ago.  As the film opens we see a scene of normal and apparently happy domesticity before the husband quickly dies. Fahima discovers an ID card and mobile phone among her late husband's effects with messages from a woman - Genevieve - in Calais. It soon becomes clear that her husband had another family a mere 20 miles away across The Channel.  Fahima takes the decision to go and confront this woman, but in a very telling moment, she is mistaken for a cleaner, and in a state of shock, assumes that role and discovers more about the Calais family. 

So much is said and left unsaid about the immigrant experience in that assumption that she's a cleaner, and in setting the film in Calais.  Indeed, in the film as a whole, there is very little dialogue. Scanlon shows Fahima's reactions through her physical and facial acting.  There's also something extremely clean and disciplined and austere about how Khan chooses to show her journey. A great example is Fahima's journey across the Channel is a bus, which is shown with three rather elegant  scenes of her sitting in exactly the same place on the bus and on our screens, cut to show the passing of time.  Khan also has a beautiful way of capturing still tableaux and landscape. When he moves his camera, it is with slow and deliberate intent.

In the other roles Nathalie Richard is a great foil for Scanlon as Genevieve, but it's really Talid Ariss who steals the show in a role I won't name for spoilers.  Both contrast nicely with Scanlon's Fahima in their ease with expressing their emotions.  By contrast, there's a moment near the end of this film where Fahima embraces someone but pauses beforehand, unsure about whether she's going to allow herself this moment of emotional catharsis. It's as though she's been waiting all film to exhale.  The power of the moment is intense. 

AFTER LOVE has a running time of 89 minutes. The film played Toronto and London 2020. It does not yet have a commercial release date. 

BY THE GRACE OF GOD / GRACE A DIEU

Francois Ozon's BY THE GRACE OF GOD is a film that stands apart from the rest of his oeuvre.  Showing he can match his style to the subject, he has made a sober, reflective, beautifully paced and acted film about the most serious of topics - that of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, and to compound that crime, its institutional cover up for decades.  By now we are sickeningly familiar with the story of paedophile priests being found out, and simply moved on to another parish to commit their crimes on another unwitting flock.  We are familiar with the heartbreak testimony of survivors and the seemingly interminable process of bringing these men to real criminal (as opposed to ecclesiastical) justice. But this film remains compelling because it's such a delicately, beautifully mined character study of how a group of men cope differently with their abuse.  And despite the darkness of the material it's ultimately a quiet film that builds to something rather hopeful and wonderful  - as these men form a kind of familial supportive bond. That might or might not be enough for all of them to pull through their trauma, but it's in this carefully mined character study that the film is at its most compelling.

BY THE GRACE OF GOD has a running time of 137 minutes.  The film played Berlin 2019 where it won the Silver Bear. It also played the BFI London Film Festival. It is now on release in the USA and in UK cinemas and on the Curzon Home Cinema streaming service. 

THE TWO POPES - BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Day Seven

I realise that all reviews are subjective reactions, but this will be even moreso than normal. I can't pretend to review a film about the two living Popes without referencing my own complicated history with the Catholic Church and deep feelings about both characters. What I can say is that director Fernando Meirelles (CITY OF GOD) and writer Anthony McCarten (DARKEST HOUR) have created a movie of rare compassion and good humour. The only criticism one might make is in the asymmetry of its interrogation - more of which later.

As the film opens, we see the death of John Paul II and the election of Benedictus XVI aka the old Cardinal Ratzinger.  We see this in brilliant visual-kinetic form, with quick cutting and sumptuous production design taking us into the theatre of the College of Cardinals and their ancient rituals.  It's an election fought between doctrinaires and reformers, and the conservatives win. Ratzinger is depicted then and throughout as vain, power-hungry, in love with the trappings of his office. He is German - so comes from the rich heart of the Catholic world.  His rival, the future Francis I, is a reformer, modest by nature, from the periphery of Catholicism - the poverty of rural Argentina.

We quickly move Benedictus to his moment of crisis. The Church is beset by scandals over the Vatican Bank, and most heinously the child sex abuse scandal.  It was Ratzinger's role in covering this up, in his role prior to being Pope, that made me cry when he was chosen.  He struck me as more concerned to save the reputation of the Church than to protect innocent children. And then of course he shocked us by announcing his retirement!  Not entirely unprecedented but shocking all the same.

This decision, and his alleged conversations with his chosen successor, form the meat of the film.  I have no idea if the two men met on such terms, or if Ratzinger ever had a change of heart that made him advocate for a reformer. I severely doubt it. But as presented, this is a deeply moving relationship.  At first, Ratzinger keeps his motives to himself, and keeps Francis at a distance, literally backing away from a hug.  But as the conversations develop we suddenly realise that we are moving into the sacrament of confession, mutually performed by the two priests.

It is posited that Francis is motivated by penance - for his collaboration with the totalitarian regime in Argentina when head of the Jesuit church there.  After this he has a change of heart, of conscience, is stripped of his power, and becomes a liberation theologist in the poorest parts of Argentina.  From conservative to quasi Marxist is quite the leap.  As Ratzinger so eloquently puts it, Francis must accept the mercy he believes the Church should embody.  He is absolved.  In this part of the story, told movingly in flashback by a simply marvellous Jonathan Pryce, I was equally impressed by Juan Minujin as his younger self. 

We then move to Ratzinger's confession. I am not sure what Mereilles' motivation was, but here is where we get the asymmetric interrogation. While we go through the emotional grind with Francis, we barely here Ratzinger's confession. The film almost skips over his handling of the child sex abuse scandal as if too appalled to go there or maybe - just maybe - too respectful of the office and its previous holder to accuse a Pope?  He too is absolved, and seems relieved. This is far less satisfying.

We then move to the film's final act.  Francis is elected, eschews the "cabaret" and sets about changing the Church. He speaks to climate change, reaches out to the poor, to refugees in Lampadusa.  And we are led to believe that his friendship continues with a comedy watch of the world cup final between Germany and Argentina at the end.

Overall, I found this to be a profoundly moving film, especially as regards the depiction of Francis.  When he is elected and moves to the balcony to make his first ever speech as Pope, I had tears in my eyes.  And yes, I know that Ratzinger was given an easy ride, but I would like to think that everyone is capable of redemption, forgiveness, and peace, and if this indeed why and how the previous Pope retired it brings me genuine happiness. I just wish I could believe it. 

TWO POPES has a running time of 126 minutes and is rated PG-13.  It played Telluride, Toronto and London 2019. It will have a limited theatrical release on November 27th before being released on Netflix on December 20th.

DISOBEDIENCE

Sebastian Lelio follows up his superb A FANTASTIC WOMAN with DISOBEDIENCE - a drama based on the novel by Naomi Alderman - set in London's Orthodox Jewish community.  It stars Rachel Weisz as a Ronit and Rachel McAdams as Esti - two girls who fell in love as teenagers and realised that they were gay.  Their reactions were, however, different. Ronit left the community, went to New York, and has become a successful photographer, although has never fallen in love with anyone else.  Esti stayed in the community and married their childhood friend Dovid (Alessandro Nivola).  She lives an apparently straight life, teaches in an Orthodox school, and is trying to make the best of things.

The movie opens with Ronit's father, a revered Rabbi, making his final sermon on the idea of free will and disobedience.  He collapses and dies, and Ronit returns for his funeral, setting the events of the film in motion.  Her character is difficult - at times I winced at her unwillingness to make nice just for the few days she's back - insisting talking about business at a sabbath meal even though she knows its offensive, or playing with wearing an orthodox wig.  But as I watched the film further I realised that this was exactly the point.  Ronit can't make nice - that's why she had to leave.  That's why she isn't Esti.  And yet as the film progressed I realised that Esti was actually the more interesting character, because while she appears to be compliant, she was actually the one who contacted Ronit and precipitated her return.  And so the discovered kiss at the centre of the film that triggers its second act crisis of conscience is not an unbelievable risk, and one that stretches credulity, but once again in Esti's character.  She wants to be discovered, triggered, and is in some sense using Ronit.

Which leads me, surprisingly, to the most fascinating character of all in the film - Dovid, played beautifully in a career-best performance by Alessandro Nivola.  In a film that is very respectful of the orthodox community, Dovid comes across as an intelligent man really trying his best to understand his wife's feelings, humble and empathetic.  He's the person in the community who is welcoming to Ronit despite their suspicion of her.  He's the person who really tries to understand how to do the right thing.  It's a truly moving depiction of a religious man without judgment or hypocrisy, and so rare to see on screen.

DISOBEDIENCE is rated R and has a running time of 114 minutes. It is available to screen on demand at Curzon Home Cinema and on limited release in cinemas.

THE ACCOUNTANT OF AUSCHWITZ - UK Jewish Film Festival

THE ACCOUNTANT OF AUSCHWITZ is an urgent and tightly drawn documentary from Matthew Shoychet about the recent trial of Oskar Groening, a nonagenarian ex-SS officer living an ostensibly nondescript life in Germany until prosecuted for accessory to mass murder.  Featuring commentary from luminaries such as Alan Dershowitz - a most fascinating interview with the grandson of Rudolf Hoess, the man who ran Auschwitz -  as well as interviews with the holocaust survivors who became co-plaintiffs, the doc takes us efficiently through the process of the trial, while also facing head on the difficult philosophical issues it raised. First and foremost is the question of whether there is a statute of limitations on criminal guilt. The second is whether someone who did not literally put the gas into the chamber can be accused of murder.  The third is whether, in terms of moral guilt, it is possible or desirable to forgive. 

On the first question, the documentary takes us through the shameful way in which much of Europe tried to conveniently forget the Holocaust in the decades after the way, and reintegrated former Nazis into civilian life. In that sense, THE ACCOUNTANT OF AUSCHWITZ is the logical sequel to THE WALDHEIM WALTZ, also playing at the UK Jewish Film Festival.  As one of the plaintiffs says, he is all we have - if we have to establish legal guilt through Groening, then we'll take that.  On the second question, the historical attitude has again been quite slippery, but the doc makes the convincing argument that although only a cog in the machine, that killing machine could not have operated without its cogs. Not everyone can claim to just have been doing their job, or involved with the slave labour part of the camp, or too scared to say no. On the third question, the doc shows both sides of the argument. We have the compelling argument from a survivor and plaintiff that the only true way to triumph over an enemy is to forgive.  But you have the evident disgust of others.  These are not simple or easy questions to deal with.

Perhaps the most powerful message of the doc is just how relevant how we treat the perpetrators of the Holocaust is today.  This is not simply a matter of writing historic injustices - although that is also of paramount importance. How we treat murderers also sends a signal to those who would perpetrate genocide today. And perhaps the fact that justice will seek you out, no matter how long it takes, will do something to prevent the ongoing mass murders of people based on race or religion.  It's also important to get the facts on the record to defang deniers and to remind the younger generations of what happened so that they can be alert when they see anti-Semitism rise again. To that end, this documentary is utterly timely, and does not shy away from showing the anti-Semitic chants of the neo-nazis in Charlottesville.    

THE ACCOUNTANT OF AUSCHWITZ has a running time of 78 minutes.  It does not yet have a commercial release date in the UK but is playing the UK Jewish Film Festival.

The 22nd UK International Jewish Film Festival takes place between 8th-22nd November 2018 at cinemas across London, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow http://ukjewishfilm.org/

BACK TO BERLIN - Preview

BACK TO BERLIN is a moving and beautifully constructed documentary by investigative journalist Catherine Lurie-Alt. It uses the framing device of a group of motorcyclists retracing the route of their ancestors who participated in the Maccabian games 80 years ago, to re-examine their shared history of the Holocaust and to comment on contemporary anti-semitism. The results are deeply personal, raw and affecting but also insightful.  

The games were started as a kind of PR slash morale-boosting stunt for Jewish athletes in the 1930s - a decade that would see the infamous Berlin Olympics where German Jews were explicitly banned and even more horrifying - many countries put pressure or finagled it so Jewish athletes weren't selected so as to appease the Nazi regime.  Accordingly, it is particularly poignant to see contemporary riders cross Europe to Berlin where the 2015 Maccabian games was held in the stadium so closely associated with the most horrific period in Jewish history.  

The really affecting this is seeing descendants of holocaust victims and survivors retell their stories, intercut with footage from the 1930s and 1940s of persecution and violence. The frustrating and deeply awful thing is seeing how racial and religious prejudice still manifests itself along the journey through Eastern then Central Europe and up to Germany. Very early on, we see a Greek man explain how it's still controversial to fly an Israeli flag - alone among national flags - in Greece.  Later we see a grand-daughter here a son recount the story of his mother's escape from persecution in Hungary in the very spot where it took place. And yet in this very decade, those riders have to have a police escort because Jews continue to be persecuted. The most poignant part of the documentary sees the riders take a detour to Auschwitz - a horror their ancestors couldn't have imagined. It's genuinely shocking to realise that this seemingly lost distant nightmare is still a waking horror for a survivor who recounts how he was on a train to Auschwitz and survived because of the quick-thinking of his mother.  It's this personal testimony that makes this film so vital and urgent today - especially, at a time of resurgent racial violence.

BACK TO BERLIN has a running time of 79 minutes and is rated 12A. The film will be released in the UK on November 23rd 2018. 

PATH OF BLOOD

PATH OF BLOOD is a truly fascinating and disturbing documentary that takes us inside the Al Qaeda campaign of terror inside Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2009.  The documentary has been expertly curated by director Jonathan Hacker and editor Peter Haddon from 500 hours of footage provided by Saudi security services of their own raids on Al Qaeda facilities, and of Al Qaeda's own home videos of their training camps, actions, funerals and recording sessions.  The result is a deeply insightful and uncomfortably personal glimpse at how a terror cell behaves.  At times, these are goofy kids, preening for the cameras, or playing school sports day games in the desert. And then in a flash they pose with rocket launchers and don suicide vests to deliver final statements to camera before a suicide mission.  We see them rehearse manoeuvres to kill, and we see them dead.  In the particularly disturbing scene shown above, we see a young dead man being kissed by his colleagues before his funeral. We also see the devastation he has wrought - blasted buildings, blood-stained blankets covering bodies, shattered window panes and bloodied car-seats, offices, homes. This is not a documentary for the faint-hearted.

The discipline of the documentary is not to use talking heads to comment on the action. Although this is, at times, frustrating, because it allows the hypocrisy of the Saudi ruling family in simultaneously sponsoring Wahhabi fundamentalism, it is - on the whole - the right decision, because it keeps the focus firmly, claustrophobically, on the terrorists.  Through their own words, deeds, reactions,  and propaganda, voiced by Tom Hollander, we have a sickening view of their mindset.  Their actions are sometimes very hard to watch indeed.  We see an American expat blindfolded and tortured.  The video cuts to black but we continue to hear the audio as he is threatened with a beheading that we know will occur. This is brutal viewing:  92 minutes has never felt so long but for the right reasons.  

If PATH OF BLOOD is rightly disturbing it's also compulsory viewing for all of us who live in a world that is still subject to terror, whether from Al Qaeda or its even more vicious stepchildren, ISIS and Boko Haram. On a more meta level it's also fascinating to just see Saudi Arabia - a country that is so closed off to us and yet seems to dominate so much political discourse. Just seeing ordinary streets, houses, offices is of itself fascinating. And of course the fact that the footage was released is of interest in trying to pick through the runes of what Saudi leadership's actual position is on fundamentalism. 

PATH OF BLOOD has a running time of 92 minutes and is rated R. The movie will be released on DVD in the UK on November 26th.

MARY MAGDALENE

MARY MAGDALENE is a truly beautiful, nuanced, finely acted and imagined film that genuinely does something new with a hackneyed story. It stars Rooney Mara as Mary Magdalene - not a reformed whore and temptress of popular myth, but a thoughtful, caring woman who has the fortitude to escape an arranged marriage to follow an inspirational leader.  She becomes his companion and befriends the apostles - but there are no leering gazes or temptations. Rather a quieter tension about interpreting Christ's message and legacy.  To Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor), she is a distraction. His aim is worldly power in Jerusalem. For Mary, the meaning of Christianity is compassion and personal kindness. Somewhere in this miscommunication is a tragic and awful misunderstanding on the part of Judas.

Director Garth Davis (LION) has created a quiet film of great passions with a studious script by Helen Edmundson and Phillippa Goslett taking back seat to imaginatively created moments. Early on we see a terrified Mary exorcised in a lake at night by her father and brother because she refuses to marry. It's a stunning imaginative invention.  Later, when Christ (Joaquin Phoenix) wrestles with a possessed man he seems himself in reflection. And is there anything as heartbreaking as Tahar Rahim's Judas on his knees begging Christ to resurrect his dead daughter? All of this carries an emotional weight because it stands in contrast to the muted dun-coloured palette of Greig Fraser's photography, the simplicity of the exterior landscapes, and the austerity of Johan Johannsson's score. But at the moments when Davis uses CGI and set pieces - he is also superb. The rendering of turn of the millennium Jerusalem from a distance is quite breath-taking - as is his evocation of a temple crowded with people, money-lenders and blood sacrifices. 

MARY MAGDALENE has a running time of 120 minutes. 

THE VENERABLE W - Day 6 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

Barbet Schroeder’s THE VENERABLE W is a deeply painful and provocative documentary about a buddhist monk who has incited genocide against the muslim Rohingya ethnic minority in Burma.  It's shocking for two reasons. First, it's a savage indictment of a religion that we think of as basically lovely and harmless and, in its leader the Dalai Lama, charming and beatific. And yet here we have a member of that same religion spouting hate speech that is so similar to Hitler's depiction of the Jews as to be chilling.  It makes you wonder why the Dalai Lama has been conspicuously silent in condemning these actions, and how the hate speech that began to really gather strength well over a decade ago, has been allowed to culminate in the current refugee crisis. It also exposes the hypocrisy of a religion whose priests are meant to take a vow of poverty but who sport very expensive smartphones.  Maybe these are also donations from worshippers looking to improve their karma? The second reason why it's shocking is that a woman who has been raised to the level of modern day saint by the international community - Aung San Suu Kyi - does absolutely nothing to prevent the genocide.  Apologists may say she's constrained by her alliance with the military dictatorship that truly runs Burma, but her claim that the the Rohingya are burning their own homes is absurd.  

One can only be grateful that Barbet Schroeder - a long-time documentarian of evil - took the time and patience to expose this scandal.  And that he had the intelligence to approach the Venerable Wirathu and appeal to his vanity in order to get him to participate in the movie.  And there's the power of the film - we see Wirathu calmly and pompously espouse hate speech against muslims of a kind and savagery that would make Marine le Pen blush.  He is damned from his own lips.  The power of the film is to show the clear link between the speech and its consequences - footage of soldiers and Burmese civilians beating the shit out of muslims and burning mosques. It's a savage indictment of racial and religious prejudice and makes a great companion piece to AZMAISH - also showing in the festival - which chronicles the rise of anti-muslim violence in India.

I cannot imagine that there is a more timely, relevant or necessary film to watch at this year's festival and yet I was saddened to see that the screening was two thirds empty. Where were all those bloggers using their free passes that were watching BEAST an hour earlier?  It's also a savage indictment of modern film criticism and amateur journalism that they couldn't be arsed to both watch this film or put a spotlight on the issues it highlighted. Shame on them.

THE VENERABLE W has a running time of 107 minutes.  The film played Cannes, Melbourne, Locarno and London.  It opened in France earlier this year. 

ABU: FATHER - BFI London Film Festival 2017 Preview

Arshad Khan's biographical documentary is fascinating and beautifully constructed. Using a mixture of family photos and home videos intercut with animation, clips from Western and Bollywood films, he creates a compelling and authentic collage of life in 1980s Pakistan and then as an immigrant in Canada.  His childhood seems impressively liberal - he dances with his siblings to Western music.  But he knows he's different, and when dressed by his sisters in girls' clothes he is molested. Later, his father becomes increasingly religious and thus disturbed by his son's homosexuality. He tries proselytising in the car in Canada, and then confronts his son and asks him to get psychological help - equating homosexuality with alcoholism - something that can be recovered from.  But at least Arshad is out of the closet, working as an airline steward, and discovering the gay subculture.  9-11 proves to the tipping point, as for so many others.  His parents become even more extremely religious and he becomes politicised. This is where I found the documentary to be the most fascinating - because it takes us into tv clips of radical preachers that we might not otherwise see and shows the impact on a previously liberal family.  The mother who used to dance to Pakeezah songs in her living room now refuses to leave the house without the permission of her husband, and thinks her son is belligerently refusing to be straight.  They make pilgrimages and there is a kind of rapprochement between father and son, but ultimately this is a story about failed connections and irreconcilable differences. Arshad's articulate sister posits a theory that when immigrants fail to find an easy entrance to a different society then can fall back on religion because it's a place of belonging and easy answers.  In this discussion of why assimilation fails, and why liberal humanist values do not translate, this documentary moves from being a personal journal to of universal and urgent relevance today.  In that, it makes a superb viewing partner to the equally provocative and interesting AZMAISH: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE SUBCONTINENT - also playing at this year's festival.

ABU has a running time of 80 minutes. The film is playing the BFI London Film Festival 2017. There are tickets available for both screenings.

THE DEAD NATION - BFI London Film Festival 2017 Preview

This year's festival contains a handful of absolutely searing documentaries showing societies where violence and hatred are endemic, but none quite as slippery and tragic as Radu Jude's THE DEAD NATION.  

His film does two things. On one level it's a straightforward linear account of just how quickly Romania succumbed to anti-semitic fascism in the 1930s, as told in the memories of the Jewish doctor Emil Dorian. We hear this shocked liberal well-informed man tell us how Jews have been expelled from medicine, then from civil society altogether - to the point where he must even prove his right to citizenship.  The new fascist Romania moves quickly to barbarism - he calmly tells us how Christians now have several ways of referring to Jews - "dirty Jews" etc - and how the Jews have been to put to hard labour, and how many cases of frostbite he's had to treat.  Set against these everyday terrors, news comes from afar, of massacres, rapes, trains  of Jews being sent away, and then with alarming precision, the testing of a new gas on 400 Jews, now dead.  The Holocaust comes with a slow certainty from afar, and how can we say that "ordinary" people didn't know when one could read of such gas experiments in the newspaper?  Dorian even hears news from abroad - such as Thomas Mann condemning the German nation for allowing this to happen.  Finally, methodically, we move through the years to 1945 and the war is over.  The Soviets are now hailed as heroes and Dorian sceptically predicts that they too will use anti-semitism to control the nation.  There's a wry hope for elections, but it's as if we're in on the joke. Romania will remain governed by totalitarian populists. 

Set against this straightforward and deeply affecting narrative, we have the subversive use of photos and songs to echo, contradict or debate the doctor's account. The photos are black and white plate photographs taken in a professional studio in a rural town, selected by editor Catalin Cristutiu from a trove of 8,600 such pictures recently discovered.  So when Dorian tells us that the Roman salute has become mandatory, we see photo after photo of proud peasants, professionals, happy families, children, all giving the terrifying salute.  Increasingly, as the war begins, those photos feature men in uniform, proudly displaying guns. Of course, the photos don't show the terror unleashed on the Jews - but rather the smug bourgeois men and women who perpetrated it.  So when Dorian describes some of the Christian women who become fascist thugs, we see happy domestic pictures of contented mothers. The feeling of unease and of half-truths is emphasised by the use of propaganda speeches and songs.  The language used is that of tinpot fascists the world over - purity, strength, unity, family, sacrifice, loyalty. No mention of the race that will be sent to the Gas Chambers to achieve this apparent utopia.  The songs, the close part harmony of men marching to war, is even more sinister when placed against Radu calmly reading the memoirs of a sensitive doctor, wondering how artists and poets cope in such times. 

THE DEAD NATION is a beautiful, provocative and unique film that tells us a lot about how quickly a country can slip into violent anti-semitism, but also something profound about the way in which we choose to present ourselves and the lies and equivocations that mark the so-called historical record. It's a superb film and a worthy contender in the LFF Official Competition.

THE DEAD NATION was released earlier this year in Romania. It is in the Official Competition of the BFI London Film Festival and tickets are still available for all three screenings.