iPad Round-Up 8 - ALBATROSS

ALBATROSS is a nicely observed British coming-of-age drama by debut director Nial MacCormick and writer Tamzin Rafn.  It stars Felicity Jones (LIKE CRAZY) as Beth, an earnest intellectual teenage girl living in her parents seaside boarding house. Her mother (Julia Ormond) is the put-upon wife of a one-hit wonder author (Sebastian Koch).  Into the mix comes Emelia (DOWNTON's Jessica Brown-Findlay), a teenage tearaway who conducts an affair with the father, and befriends the daughter, leading rather predictably to a confrontation about the implicit betrayal staged over Beth's Oxford entrance interview weekend.  There's nothing massively new here, but I liked the performances, and there was something convincing about both Beth and Emelia - both girls aware that they are sexually attractive but not yet in control of it. I also liked Sebastian Koch as the wastrel father. ALBATROSS isn't a stand-out film by any means, but it is an interesting enough watch, and I look forward to MacCormick's next feature. 

ALBATROSS opened in the UK and Ireland in 2011 and is available to rent and own.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS/DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN - The Good German

THE LIVES OF OTHERS is a technically accomplished, well-acted thriller set in the Communist East Germany of the early 1980s. It is a world where the avowed mission of the state is, simply, to know everything, and where the ability of an artist to perform is governed by his or her willingness to please the State and its high-ranking officials. In this world, an oleaginous Minister is eager to bed a famous actress called Christa. In order to clear away her lover - a dramatist and loyal Party man called Georg - the Minister orders a 24 hour surveillance operation that will obligingly turn up something incriminating.

The set-up is dealt with quickly. As is the redemption of a loyal Stasi spy named Wiesler who is running the investigation. We are meant to believe that a man so imbued with the Party line - whose life is enmeshed in the State - would become the stalked couple's protector upon hearing a piece of classical music. In short, that good art can change a man - and that each man has the innate capacity to change for the better. After that event - marked by a melodramatic tear trickling down Wiesler's cheek around forty-five minutes into this two and half hour film, the movie is all police procedural with a little how-dunnit thrown in to string out the run-time into a mawkish 1990s reunion.

Some critics have knocked the writer-director for training his eye on the one Good Stasi operative, so giving a misleading impression of the horrors of the DDR. In their eyes, THE LIVES OF OTHERS is like the SCHINDLER'S LIST of post-war German film. Like them, my sensibility errs toward the grim majority case rather than to the optimistic exception. Nonetheless, an artist is free to tell the story he chooses - we can only judge him on the results. And, from an early conversation in the film, I conclude that the director specifically wants to make the point that while the Communist functionaries are cynical and believe in humanity's greed, the artists believe in humanity's capacity for good and for change and they ultimately triumph. The director of this film is then, by his hand, charged with making us believe this to be true.

Sadly, I found the prompts for Wiesler's change of heart rather glib. So that, despite an outstanding score, great acting and visual style, THE LIVES OF OTHERS was, for me, over-long and pat.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS played Toronto and London 2006, where it won the Satyajit Ray Award for best debut feature. This was presented to the director by Sir Richard Attenborough earlier tonight. The movie also won the Best Foreign Language Oscar, 2006. The film was released in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland and Sweden last year. It opened in the Czech Republic, Poland, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Portugal, the US, Japan, Israel, Spain, the Netherlands, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, Mexico, Slovakia and South Korea earlier this year. It is currently showing in Australia, Slovenia and Italy and opens on the UK on April 13th. It opens in Argentina on April 19th and in Iceland on May 4th 2007.

*Plot spoiler - moreover, why didn't the editor of Spiegel simply smuggle the typewriter out with him after the article had been written. It would have been risky, sure, but not more so than smuggling it in and infinitely less risky than leaving it in Dreyman's apartment.

BLACK BOOK/ZWARTBOEK - provocative war-time thriller

BLACK BOOK is a Dutch film that deals with the tricky business of Dutch collaboration with the Nazis. Much like the history of Vichy France, this is a vexatious issue, and BLACK BOOK does much to chip away at the image of the Netherlands as the country that attempted to save Anne Frank. There are no comic-book evil Nazis and brave heroic Resistance leaders: everyone is complicit to a greater or lesser extent. In this sense, it is a movie with a very important message.

The movie is at its best when it shows the real vulgarity and mob-violence of the Nazis. We see fat, decadent Nazis singing kitsch songs as prisoners are executed beneath them. And then, in the final act, we see so-called freedom fighters carrying out vicious punishment beatings and petty humilations on alleged collaborators. The Dutch are seen as sometimes heroic, sometimes anti-semitic - always self-interested.

It is full credit to Paul Verhoeven's instincts as a mainstream entertainer than despite it's flashes of sociological and political insight, BLACK BOOK never bows under the weight of its subject matter. Despite a run-time of two and a half hours, the movie rips along at a rollicking pace thanks to its structure as a thriller, or whodunnit. Our charming, beautiful heroine quickly moves from her hide-out with an ironically anti-semitic family, to a botched rescue attempt, to working for the Dutch resistance. She infiltrates the Gestapo headquarters and seduces the man in charge. She is stitched up by a Dutch traitor who is shopping rich Jews to the Nazis in return for a share of the loot. In the final act, she must clear her name with the aid of a certain lawyer's Black Book.

The film works well as a thriller, although the final half hour, with a chase through the countryside and a painful exposition of whodunnit seemed a little bit Scooby Doo. (If it weren't for you pesky kids....) The orchestral score is hammy and patronising and there are just a couple of scenes - notably the use of a pendant near the end of the film - that teeter over the edge into sentimentality.

In the final analysis, while this is a Dutch independent film, it is still a Paul Verhoeven flick, and to that end the best and worst of Hollywood are evident here. Slick production values, yes, but also that tendency towards emotional manipulation. Nonetheless, BLACK BOOK really is a thrilling thriller, featuring a great central performance and a provocative political agenda.

BLACK BOOK/ZWARTBOEK premiered at Venice, where it won the award for Best International Film, and showed at Toronto and London 2006. It has since been released in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Israel. It opens in the UK on January 19th 2007. It opens in Italy, Spain and Switzerland on Feb 9th and in LA and New York on March 9th. It opens in Argentina on April 5th.