Film review: The Battle of Algiers (1966)

 We've owned this film on Blu-Ray for a while but put off watching it because we were worried that it would be grim, and as it's two hours long, it seemed like a large mouthful of gruel was in the offing.  However, this turned out not to be the case: it's gripping and startlingly modern, given its cinema verité (the director, Italian Gillo Pontecorvo, for whom this is by far and away his most notable film, had as a slogan "the dictatorship of truth") approach that has it appear like documentary footage.  Not only is he using steadicams (in 1966!) but he manipulated the film stock to have a realistically newsreel-like grainy quality.  He also used hundreds of extras, so that the whole city becomes a character, and the crowd scenes are breathtaking.

On top of that he used almost entirely non-professional actors, all of the Moroccans being genuine Algiers residents that he picked up off the street because they matched the image of the character that he had in his head (in an interview also on the disk he recounts that this is almost an obsession with him, to the extent that he turned down Sidney Poitier for role in his next film in favor of another non-professional for the same reason).  Apart from anything, this tends to mean that there are some amazing faces (in particular that of the actor playing Ali La Pointe (on the right below), 

who is one of the first people we see as the film opens, and whose career we follow, although no single person can lay claim to being the protagonist).

The French did not like this film - it won the Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film festival (over Godard's Fahrenheit 451 and Bresson's Au Hazard Balthazar) but they were leery of even putting it on for fear of driving away the French.  It didn't even get distributed in France until years later, thanks to the championing of Louis Malle.  Having said that, while your sympathies are largely with the Algerian rebels (the FLN), the film does not flinch from showing them blow up innocent civilians, including in at least one case, a baby.  And the leader of the French counter-insurgency, Colonel Mathieu (played by the sole professional actor in the bunch, albeit a radical leftist supporter of Algerian independence, a tall, bulgy-eyed, slightly effete (although he fought with the French Resistance in the war) chain-smoker) is, while employing ruthless tactics, disarmingly frank and straightforward.  (Basically: "look - you tell me you want to keep Algeria.  Well, this is what it takes.  I'll do it, but it's on your head.")

The film manages to be picaresque--in the sense that there's no obvious, clear narrative, and we switch viewpoints and pick up characters and dump them without warning, and sometimes it takes you a while to work out what's going on, because the film never holds your hand--while at the same time being gripping, because of its propulsive energy and willingness to shock you.  The one concession that undercuts the fly-on-the-wall feeling is the use of music (composed by Ennio Morricone!), but that is sparsely done.  (It's also purposely non-partisan, in that scenes of dead French people being pulled out of the wreckage after FLN bombings gets the exact same melancholic theme as scenes of dead Algerians.

Some scenes: the film is almost bookended by a scene in which the French have been led to a secret hiding place where Ali, who is the last remaining FLN higher-up, is squirreled away with accomplices (including a woman and a boy, both of whom the French know are there).  

The reason the French have found it is because they have tortured somebody, 

and in general, the French forces use of torture is very openly depicted, as is one case of them executing a member of the FLN in a prison courtyard using a guillotine.  This event is witnessed by the younger Ali, as, following the 1957-set opening we flash back to 1954 where we see Ali getting arrested following a fight with a gang of French men after one of them trips him as he's running from the cops.  As with many of the characters in the film, Ali was a real character - an illiterate street thug who got radicalized in prison and rises through the ranks.  We know this is realistic because the film is based on an account written by a real FLN officer... who plays more-or-less himself in the film (he is Saadi Yacef, and he plays Jaffar (second left in the first picture above), which caused Jami to quote Conrad Veidt's character (also Jaffar - although, unlike in Disney's Aladdin, he puts the stress on the first syllable) "it is always Jaffar") and does a very creditable job, as do all the non-professionals.

One of the most compelling sequences is when we watch three women prepare for and carry out three bombings.  We watch them dressing up to appear more Western, 

be briefed on where they will collect the bombs (whose timers are already going so they have to make sure they get to their targets in time), pass through checkpoints, in one case flirt with a French soldier, 

and arrive at the crowded cafes that are their targets, where they have to push their bags out of sight, and they look nervously around the room, and we see them look at all the faces of the people that they are about to kill - mostly young people and one ice-cream-eating baby.  The explosions, when they come, are remarkably real - you have to think some stunt people got injured.

Ali's loyalty is proved when he is told to kill a policeman, only to find that they've given him an empty pistol.  

But he clubs the policeman and escapes - he's passed the test.  Another time, the French are closing in on three FLN leaders, and they try to escape by dressing as veiled women, 

but their shoes betray them and only two escape (thanks to the machine guns they have concealed).

Another time two FLN fighters are in an upstairs window taking pot shots at those below.  Mathieu appeals on them through a bullhorn 

to give up and they say they will lower their weapons in a basket, but instead put a bomb in it.  You feel sorry for the soldier who comes to collect the basket - right up until the point that he looks up and tells them to hurry up, followed by a racial slur.  Still, being blown up might be a bit much.

Children also participate: one in particular manages to acquire the microphone for the French PA system and tells a crowd of native Algerians who are being herded by French soldiers that the FLN will free them.  This might be the same one, however, who is in the cubby-hole with Ali at the beginning, and after all but Ali have been captured or killed (one of them, Larbi Ben M'Hidi, gives a great press conference, responding to a reporter who calls the FLN cowards for using bombs in baskets with "is it not cowardly to drop napalm on innocent villages from planes?  Give us your bombers and we'll gladly give up our baskets"), we return and watch as Ali and co., on refusing to come out, are blown up.  But then, two years later, suddenly (we are told) a mass uprising happens and the people suddenly are on the march again.  The film closes with a close up of a woman in the crowd shouting slogans in exultation.  And we know, of course, that liberation followed soon after, because this film followed very soon after that!  And that's sort of the marvel of the film: how did they get everyone to recreate the events when they were so raw?  Where did they get all the white French characters, essentially playing the bad guys?  Really the star of the film is the Casbah, seen before in the film Pepe Le Moko, but the best film set a film ever had, with its impossibly narrow, winding, labyrinthine streets and endless steps and rooftops.  Anyway, a breathtaking film, whose influence on later films is incalculable.  Without Pentecorvo there would definitely have been no Paul Greengrass, that's for sure.  Don't be like us - don't put off watching it because you think you can't handle it.  It's not depressing, it's bracing!  They really don't make 'em like they used to - except that nobody but Pentecorvo used to make 'em like this either.

Happy Birthday Frederick!

 

New clothesline

 What with Spring being in the air

,,,our thoughts turned to clothes drying.  The result:

Happy Easter!

 

Signs of Spring

 ...which takes forever to arrive in Michigan.

Film review: Knockabout (1979)

The third of the Sammo Hung movies I bought Jami for her birthday and about in the middle.  It's also the debut of Yuen Biao, who stars in a role that was Sammo's until he decided to give it to Biao and create a new role (the mentor, who for once isn't the one who gets killed) for himself.  Actually he's sort of the second mentor to Biao's "Little Pao," because (in a twist) the first one turns out to be the principle antagonist of the film.  Let me explain.  Little Pao and his brother (Big Pao, of course) are a team of scam artists 

whom we meet (actually after meeting Sammo's beggar, who otherwise disappears for much of the first part of the film) as they pull off rather an ingenious scam on a banker and his son.  First Little Pao sells a tiny piece of gold to the banker's son (who has a distracting huge fake hairy wart), then, as he's standing just outside, is presented with a letter from a supposed emissary from his uncle (in fact Big Pao), which he gives to the banker to read to him, claiming to be illiterate.  The letter says that the accompanying package is 20 ounces of gold for him.  He then sells the gold to the banker, who is delighted, when he weighs it, to find that it's actually 28 ounces, so he thinks he's get a steal when he only pays for 20 ounces.  But, of course, the gold isn't really gold, as the banker discovers, and they follow the Pao's to the restaurant they said they were going to.  Surprisingly, the Paos are not only where they said they'd be, they are pleased to see the banker and son, and act surprised and indignant to be accused of being dishonest, and start a fight with the bankers' men which is disrupted by the (comedically cartoonish) "Colonel Baldy" of the local constabulary.  After the bankers have made their accusation, Pao retorts that yes, that lump is fake gold but that it's not the one he sold because it's bigger.  "My gold was 20 ounces, as revealed in this letter from my uncle and the receipt I got for it".  Of course the bakers are screwed because they can't admit they tried to get 8 ounces for free, and to add insult to injury, Pao produces the money the bankers gave him to find that it's also fake (painted rice wafers) so they have to pay up again.  The brothers retire to divide their loot in a local abandoned building in the woods, but get into a fight when Little tries to cheat Big that ends up with Sammo's beggar making off with both bags of money, replacing one of them with different fake money, a fact that they only discover after they try to make their money back at a local casino, which then becomes the scene of a massive brawl. So, now our pair has no money.  Their only collateral is Big's jade ring, a gift from their father 

(Little has already long since hocked his.) So they try to pull a scam on an "old" (clearly a younger man in a grey wig, although the character is in fact old) man in a restaurant, 

whereby they plant the ring inside his bag and then claim that he's stolen the bag.  Along comes Colonel Baldy again, but this time there's no trace of the ring in the pack.  They've been outfoxed!  So they wait to ambush the old guy in a field, but get the crap beaten out of them.  (Little knows some Kung Fu - enough to have done pretty well in the casino brawl, but Big just copies Little.)  Their response is to run after the old guy and beg for him to take them on as disciples.  He does, and seems to be a fairly benevolent figure, until, when set upon by two fighters ("Snow white" - a very effete figure with white pancake makeup - and "Seven Dwarves" who is in fact quite tall and bald (something that will be used to good effect when he acquires a profusion of Loony Tunesesque lumps on his head during the battle)) 

we see our old guy literally murder them.  This is still not enough to scare our Baos off until, having gone on ahead to a restaurant while the old guy stopped off at his house, Little gets tired of waiting and accidentally oversees the old guy be referred to as "Old Fox" by a detective who has been tracking him, and said Old Fox murdering him, too.  Little is about to sneak off, when Big arrives (having also got tired of waiting) and gives away to Old Fox that Little's been here a while, which means Old Fox has to kill both of them.  

Well, sadly he gets Big, but not before he's sacrificed himself in order that Little can escape.  While hiding in the woods, Little chances on Sammo's beggar, and, after a brief comedic interlude where he steals Sammo's chicken dinner and Sammo takes revenge by getting him to drink water that he's washed his feet in, Little gets Sammo to agree (by losing a bet) to take him on as a pupil.  Then we get the obligatory training montage, which in this case is very entertaining, as Sammo is a little bit sadistic towards Little (still mad about the chicken?) and has him do ridiculous things for a while, before training him in his bizarre "mish mash" and "monkey" styles.

And then that sets up the massive final battle between Sammo (who, it turns out, is also a detective in disguise, albeit a cowardly one) 

and Little, and Old Fox.

Isn't it amazing how many variations you can make on a very basic theme of Young Upstart Gets Comeuppance, Trains, Loses someone precious, Fights villain.  This one is certainly a very solid contribution to that tradition, and this particular transfer is gorgeous. And Yuen Biao, besides sporting an enviable huge seventies mop of hair, does some truly breathtaking flips, kicks and stunts, fully justifying Sammo's faith in him as star material.

Film review: Mickey 17 (2025)

This should be better than it is.  It's an adaptation by the director Bong Joon Ho, whose last film was the wonderful Parasite, of a very fun book I read a couple of years ago (called Mickey 7 - Mickey dies 10 fewer times in the book).  But somehow, while entertaining in parts, it falls well short of the greatness that might have been.  Perhaps this was predictable: while Bong's Korean-language films tend to be great, his previous Hollywood film was the similarly underwhelming Snowpiercer.  But at least that one knew what it was - a straightahead thriller.  This one seems torn between genres - and while that can occasionally work (see American Werewolf in London) it needs very careful handling.  Here the comedic elements undercut all the others, with the effect that it is impossible to take the serious stuff seriously.  But before I say more on that, let's sketch the plot.  The titular Mickey has to get off the planet in a hurry because he's pissed off a loan shark who likes to kill his debtors in excruciating ways.  However, berths on ships leaving Earth are in very short supply with massive competition for each one.  The only role for which there is no competition is for "expendable".  This is the aspect that makes the story interesting for fans of the English philosopher Derek Parfit.  Starting in the 70's Parfit introduced the Star Trek transporter into the stodgy world of Anglo-American analytic philosophy: Parfit was defending the idea first found in John Locke's work that we are not our bodies (or our souls, if such things exist) but rather what makes each of us us is the contents of our minds.  That is, very crudely, if I remember being X, then I am the future version of X, even if X had a different body.  Thus, contended Parfit, even if a teleporter destroyed our original body and created a new one from scratch at our destination (rather than somehow transport our atoms alone the beam), we would survive the trip so long as the new body had all the memories, personality et al. of the original.  The idea of Mickey 7/17 is the transporter without the transporting.  That is, an expendable is somebody whose complete body blueprint is on file, and who regularly records their mental contents, 

so that they can die often in the service of their mission and be "reborn" (reprinted) every time this happens.  This is Mickey's fate - he goes outside the spaceship and is exposed to lethal radiation, and has to die slowly so that the boffins inside can record everything that happens.  When they get to the planet, he is the first person to walk on the surface and breathe its air, and in so doing contract the local virus and die repeatedly in messy and painful ways until they can work out a retrovirus to make it safe for all the non-expendables.  As you can imagine, this idea is a fecund one, not just for metaphysics: Mickey's existence is a wonderful analogy for the lives of any oppressed person whose life is lived for the benefit of others.  And the book explores these ideas in, if not enough detail, at least more detail than the film.  Which is odd, because one imagines, given Parasite, that this was the aspect the drew Bong to the story.  But he rather bottles it by insisting on a comedic tone to the proceedings.  (And perhaps his leading man/men Robert Pattinson 

is also to blame, as he portrays Mickey 17 as a barely competent boob with a sub-Jerry Lewis way of speaking.  Oddly, while critics were lukewarm on the film, Pattinson is almost universally praised, perhaps because the critics thought the plot irredeemable and just wanted to laugh.)  Anyway, the film actually opens with Mickey falling through the ice of the planet, failing to be rescued by his no-good friend Timo, and apparently devoured by the largest alien life on the planet, the giant centipede-like creatures called "creepers" 

that live in tunnels below the ice on the frozen planet called Niflheim that the humans are attempting to colonize.  Just as he's about to be swallowed (or so it appears) we flash back to what brought him there (Timo was his partner in the failed venture that led to them fleeing the loanshark, but somehow he didn't need to become and expendable to come along.).  Oh, and there's a complicating factor: something Bong added to the book (or at least altered) is that the colony is being led by a failed Earth politician/religious cult-leader Kenneth Marshall (played, or should I say "overplayed" - although the part is an invitation to chew the scenery - by Mark Ruffalo) 

and his wife Ylfa (more effectively underplayed by Toni Collette).  There is an analogous figure in the book, but clearly Bong wanted a Trump figure to "satirize", and so we get the oafish-and-not-sinister-enough Marshall, again siding with silliness over horror.  Anyway, after the flashback we return to Mickey 17 not being eaten, and in fact being rescued by the creepers.  This is another complaint, although I'm not sure how it could be easily fixed: the film gives away what should be a twist, that the creepers are not the enemy.  In the book I remember a good portion when the humans are terrified that their base is going to be overrun by monsters, which I think this film could have used to ramp up the stakes and get some narrative tension going.  Anyway, when Mickey 17 gets back to base he (of course) finds out that he's been assumed dead and they've already printed out his replacement.  This makes them "multiples," which are illegal, owning to shenanigans with the psychopathic creator of the printing process.  (Another difference with the book: an effectively chilling episode therein is the inventor taking over an entire planet forcing Earth to take the drastic step of destroying the whole thing.  In the film, he just prints himself out twice more and the triplets take turns stabbing homeless people for kicks.)  Something the film retains from the book is Mickey's girlfriend Nasha being super-keen on a threesome, and in fact the film expands on this by having Mickey and Nasha being sex-positive to the extent of designing their own little animated Karma Sutra.  But again, this is played for laughs rather than eroticism, although in this case that's a relief.  In the book there's no indication that Mickeys 17 and 18 are fundamentally different, but the film wants 18 to be a rather violent badass, so it has somebody trip over a cable in the personality-implantation stage of the printing process to explain how they can be so different in personality (something Pattinson very effectively conveys).  I seem to recall the book containing a stretch where 17 and 18 manage to co-exist without their duplicate nature coming to light (all kinds of possibilities: one talks to X without the other knowing and so on) but the film dispenses with that - perhaps there will be a director's cut.  

Anyway, partly because Mickey is such a cartoonish figure, it's hard to take anything that happens to him (even when we know he won't ever be reprinted) too seriously.  The film does do a decent job of conveying what Parfit calls "the branch-line case" - which is where, even if we believe that the re-printing enables a single Mickey to be effectively immortal, this intuition is undercut if ever there is overlap in the time of existence of two Mickeys, because the experiences the duplicate gains while the original is still alive cannot be said to be those of the original, and, in fact, cases like this are used to attack the idea that teleportation actually does preserve identity.  But the weight of this conclusion is lost in the light froth that this film becomes.

So, overall, fun to look at but I am disappointed that the very serious ideas about personal identity and exploitation that are there to be amplified in the original story are trivialized by the rather farcical presentation.  It's as if Bong lacked the courage of his convictions and rather sneered at the material.  That's not to say that I think the film should have been humorless - it's certainly possible to include moments of hilarity in a very serious work (something I would argue Bong did himself very effectively in The Host and Parasite) - it's more that it's unserious.  And as Steve Martin said, comedy is a serious business.  And so is Philosophy.

Windstorm!

 We had a pretty massive thunderstorm last night.  We only seem to have lost one large branch but others were not so lucky: