Film review: If.... (1968)

 

Well, color me impressed.  Of course I know Malcolm McDowell primarily for A Clockwork Orange, which I love, but this earlier film almost makes that one look tame.  Think One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by way of Stalky & Co., with a dash of Lord of the Flies.  There's not exactly much of a plot, and there are occasions when it devolves into surrealism, which I don't appreciate, given how realistic the vast majority of the film is (because once you've seen one patent absurdity, like a vicar being produced out of a giant drawer in the headmaster's study, you question everything else in the film), but other than that, it's a rendition of public (i.e. private) school life that's shockingly matter-of-fact about its casual brutalities and rampant homosexuality.  I honestly can't believe this film was made in 1968: most of the films that I used to watch on Channel 4 in the 80s were pretty much pale copies.  And, as with Clockwork Orange, in watching this you can't understand why McDowell didn't become the biggest star in the world.  He is (a) beautiful, and (b) just the most magnetic screen presence imaginable.  

Actually, pretty much everyone acquits themselves well in this film (the film is stuffed with faces that will be familiar to anyone who watched British telly in the seventies, even if the only one I can put a name to is Arthur Lowe), although nobody else leaps off the screen like he does.  The one thing that dates the film a little is its attitude to women.  You could say that a progressive attitude towards women would not be representative of the culture that the film is effectively savaging, but, as I said, the attitude toward homosexual love (one pair of boys, one older, one younger, in particular) is much more forward-thinking.  There are a couple of moments of female nudity that are part of the surrealism I objected to earlier, and as such, came across as a bit gratuitous.  But maybe that's because I don't have an artistic soul.  There is also, of course, a lot of killing at the end - the film is notorious for ending with the heroes camped on the roof of the school shooting everyone, 

something that seems a lot more real and more simply murderous than rebellious these days.  But McDowell makes us care for Alex DeLarge, and he does the same for this film's Mick Travis.

Part of what the film does is it presents a fly-on-the-wall overview of a term or two at "College House" at a very prestigious school (apparently it was filmed at director Lindsay Anderson's own old school, which, on this showing, he loathed with a passion).  The film opens with the first day, and we loosely follow on new student 

as he is taught the ways of school - whom you are allowed to talk to (not the "whips" the name in this school for the prefects), where you as a lowly first year (or "scum" - thankfully they don't use the Stalky & Co. lingo of "fag") have to store your gear (in a common room called "the sweat room") and so on.  But it isn't long before a mysterious figure, most of his face covered with hat and scarf, enters the school carrying his trunk.  This is the returning Mick Travis, and his face is covered, we soon see, because he has grown a mustache over the break, which he knows he has to shave off before school starts. 

("When do we get to live?" he murmurs as he does so.)  His two acolytes (Johnny and Wallace, the latter of whom is a pretty boy who will end up in bed with a younger boy who falls for him 

(and who joins them on the roof at the end)) soon join him and we have the threesome that forms the center of the film 

(except on the occasion that just Mick and Johnny go into town (starting handcuffed together for a reason that is unexplained, except possibly as a reference to The Defiant Ones) steal a motorbike from a showroom (charmingly, they're all BSAs - occasionally you are jolted into the fact that this was filmed in the 60s), vroom off to a transport cafe in the middle of the country, where Mick and the waitress 

(who also joins them on the roof at the end) act like animals and then roll around naked (did this really happen or is this one of those surrealistic moments?) while Johnny sits demurely by, thoughtfully placing a saucer on top of Mick's coffee to keep it warm.  There is a "fly on the wall" aspect to all this, and you never get the feeling you get inside the heads of the characters, even as we watch our three buddies drink and talk about their hopes and philosophies in their study that is papered with all kinds of pictures cut from magazines (mostly nude women and soldiers, but Che and Lenin also make an appearance).  Mick spouts nonsense about violence being pure or some such and they talk about the worst ways to die.  Mick suggests being flayed alive, and notes that that was how the Crusaders killed their enemies, sending the "neatly folded" skin back to their relatives.  (Tellingly, the film was originally called "Crusaders" and in the credits, our heroes are referred to as such.)  Meanwhile Johnny says cancer and quietly reveals that his mother took 6 months to die of it, a fact that is just left out there without a response.  Things come to a head when the whips decide that the Crusaders need bringing to heel and thrash them, Johnny and Wallace just 4 times, but Mick around ten, at which point the die is cast and we race towards the shootout on the roof.

I can't really explain what makes the film so gripping - as I have indicated, it's very picaresque, and on paper might be thought to have a lot in common with Godard's (frankly rather tedious) Weekend.  But the sheer quality of the film-making and McDowell's central performance elevate it.  It helps that it's absolutely beautiful.  It does cut between color and black and white, but is mostly color, and the cinematographer is the same (Czech) one as the famously gorgeous Amadeus.  Watch it - for my money it's much better than, and far less dated than another film centered around a disturbed Travis, Taxi Driver.  McDowell > De Niro all day!

Film review: Donkey Skin (1970)

 

Well this is an odd film.  It's part of our Jacques Demy box set, and I've long been intrigued by it, but Jami lacked my curiosity, so I decided to watch it in the first of man evenings when she's driving back from her NEW JOB at Wayne State (that I have TOLD her to blog about).  Apparently it's based on an actual fairy tale by Charles Perrault, the author of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty, which goes to show that the only reason fairy tales don't seem totally bizarre to us is that we're familiar with them.  Either that, or this is a particularly warped one.  It starts innocently enough, with a happy king and queen (the latter played by Catherine Deneuve in a brown wig) and their daughter (regular Catherine Deneuve).  Immediately you are struck by the strange combination of incredible costumes and decor and rather low-budget locations.  They're obviously using actual castles, which is understandable, I guess, but they seem a bit stolid next to the incredibly whimsical outfits (I pity the actors having to take themselves at all seriously while poncing around in those outlandish clothes).  Anyway, the first jarring moment (after the clothes) is when you are told about the Kings' amazing stables, and then how pride of place is given to a lowly donkey, at which the voice over says something to the effect of "but you'll understand why when you find out about its marvelous gift" and cut to a shot of the stable floor and the donkey's hind hooves, and suddenly a shower of gold coins and jewels crashes down from above.  Yes, the donkey SHITS TREASURE.  But don't get too attached to it...  All is well in this strange kingdom where the color blue predominates to the extent that many of the servants have blue faces (and one statue is actually a naked woman painted blue, whose eyes follow you about). However, very quickly the idyll is destroyed because the queen gets deathly ill.  She makes her heartsick husband promise that if he does remarry he must marry somebody more beautiful than her.  Then she expires.  Distraught, the king rudely sends his daughter out of his sight and goes into full-on mope.  However, his advisors believe that the state needs him to re-marry and pressure him, and he grudgingly acquiesces, but insists on honoring his wife's wish.  All the princesses thereabout, however, are, while rich, either old or ugly or both.  Finally his advisor brings him a painting of the last remaining princess and he finds her ravishing.  Guess what?  It's his own daughter.  And guess what further?  He sees this as no barrier to them getting married!  Yikes.  Fortunately his daughter is not so sanguine and recruits her fairy godmother to help get out of this.  

The fairy godmother's plan involves increasingly unreasonable gown-based demands (one that looks like weather, one that is bright as the moon, one that is made of gold), but not only does the King meet every demand, his uncomplaining manner has the daughter softening on going through with the wedding!  The final demand that the godmother comes up with is (you guessed it) to demand the skin of that magic donkey.  And, despite this probably undermining the economy of the kingdom, the king accedes and leaves the skin on the princess's bed as (he thinks) she sleeps.  But instead, the godmother attaches the skin to the princess 

and sends her off with a magic wand to a neighboring kingdom (with a red theme, right down to red horses) where she will work for a hideous old woman who spits toads as a scullery maid, and be insulted by all the villagers for her appearance and smell.  (However, once inside her forest hut, she magics a very nice bedroom and gets to take the skin off and sit around in her gold dress.)  

Pretty soon the prince of the red kingdom, who has been directed to her hut by a magic talking rose, peeks through the window and falls for her, but instead of confronting her he goes home, pines on his bed, and demands that a servant go and ask "Donkey Skin" to bake him a cake.  She does, and includes in it her ring, which allows him to do a Cinderella with all the maids of the kingdom, only with them inserting their finger into a ring that only the slenderest of fingers can manage (yes, lots of pervy sexual imagery in this fairy tale).  (Humorous scenes of hucksters selling finger-shrinking ointment to desperate suitors.)  Finally Donkey Skin shows up and they wed.  (But before they officially meet, they meet in a dream and sing a song and moon about.  There's a fair amount of singing in this film, but nothing to rival either The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or The Young Girls of Rochefort.)  Anyway, the film ends with her father 

and the fairy Godmother showing up in a helicopter, whereupon the fairy godmother reveals that she is marrying the king, which is a more plausible explanation for why she was opposed to the princess marrying him than any morality, by which she does not appear particularly motivated.

Very French.  But weird even by their standards.  Catherine Deneuve certainly proves she's game, at least.  Is it a kid's movie?  Well, I guess if you're French...

After the storms

We had some fantastic storms last night - tornadoes were supposed to touch down in Burton and Grand Blanc. We just got lightning and a lot of rain and wind. Clearly the storms brought down a LOT of trees..

July has been blown out like a candle

Hogbacks fungi

Film review: A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

I doubt if I'll sell anyone on this film who hasn't already decided to see it, because it's rather a downer and it's nearly FOUR HOURS long (we watched it in three installments).  However, it is widely regarded as a masterpiece (as is the last film by the same director which we've also seen (also a downer and very long) called Yi Yi), and I know I will be thinking about it for a long time.  I did see it described by admirers as a "coming of age" film - which is a bit like describing Ivan's Childhood or Kes as the same.  It certainly centers around young adolescents (although the cast is as sprawling as one of the characters' favorite books (War and Peace - I have to say, he described it in such a way that it sounded gripping) - apparently there are over 100 speaking roles) but there's a perpetual sense of dread hanging over the whole affair such that you never really feel the usual joy you get from films of that category.  You do get a very vivid sense of a time (the turn of the 50s into 60s) and place (Taipei, Taiwan), and apparently the director was meticulous in recreating not just the look, but the way people spoke then (although, of course, we were just following the subtitles). The central character is a tall skinny boy of about 13 whose real name is Zhang Zhen (which is the actor's name, too, and he's gone on to be in many things, most recently the first of the new Dune films) but whom everyone calls Xiao Si'r, which apparently means "little 4th," because he is the 4th of 5 children (that alternate between boys and girls).  The film begins with his father at a meeting with a teacher who is informing him that Si'r has done poorly at an exam and so has to be moved to a night school.  

Apparently these are less prestigious.  They don't go all night but they do seem to let out when it's dark.  The father was a peasant in China who educated himself and married a teacher, and they fled with their family to Taiwan when the Nationalists, whose side they were on, were driven out by the Communists.  It's hard to pick up all the politics from the film, but I gather the Nationalists set up an authoritarian government in Taiwan that lasted into the '80s (and had just ended when this film was made), and people from China were regarded with suspicion.  The father is very principled, so much so that at a later meeting with S'ir's teachers he actually argues S'ir into a worse demerit than he had been facing because the father regarded it as unfair.  The father's fate runs parallel to the turbulent events in S'ir's life - his younger generation is becoming more estranged from their parents because of the huge influx of American influences, and in particular, Elvis.  The funniest part of the movie is watching Taiwanese youth, and in particular, S'ir's tiny friend Cat, singing Elvis songs phonetically.  

S'ir's oldest sister transcribes the lyrics for Cat.  As you can imagine, even though the film is full of Ozu-esque long unbroken shots, and Tarkovsky-esque closeups of liminal spaces, a lot can happen in 4 hours of screen time, so I won't try to cover it here, but the arc of the film is S'ir sliding further into juvenile delinquency, through little fault of his own (part of it is feeling powerless, not just in affairs of the heart - he falls for a girl called Ming, 

who is first the girl of the missing charismatic leader (oddly named "Honey") of the gang S'ir is loosely affiliated with, and then later it seems she is many people's girl and no-one's - but also in what is happening to his father and thus his family under the corrupt government and secret police.  Main events: the gang is called the Little Park boys and is under the dubious leadership of Honey's lieutenant Sly (well-named).  He's a weaselly little toe-rag but his father owns a dance hall that the Elvis-impersonators long to play at.  The Little Park gang is at war with a rival gang called the 217s, whose druggy leader hangs out at a pool hall (that S'ir's older brother gets hustled at, driving him to pawn his mother's watch, which means the eldest sister, she of the transcribing skills, has to give him money to buy it back).  Sly agrees to a truce when the leader meets up with him, which is essentially a sell-out, but driven by a desire to make money off the hall, because the point of the truce is to have a concert there.  The night of the concert, Honey shows up from hiding, dressed as a sailor.  

He's been laying low after killing a 217 member supposedly over Ming, and demands that the 217 leader come out and fight him.  

(Earlier in the day he hangs out with S'ir, which is where we hear about how he read War and Peace in hiding.)  SPOILER: when he's not expecting it, the rival pushes him into oncoming traffic and kills him.  This prompts members of the Little Park gang to make a deal with another, older gang, one of whose members was friendly with Honey, to take out the 217 leader and anyone in the clubhouse, and then move on to Sly.  The scene in the pool hall is a real standout set piece: it takes place in a typhoon with the power out, and the younger Little Park gang members are just not prepared for how brutal their new allies are going to be.  Suffice to say Honey's killer gets his, as do an awful lot of his compatriots.  You'd think this would be the climax of the film, but we're only about halfway through!  Weirdly, no mention is made of this incident - none of the adults seem aware that a large number of teenagers have been brutally murdered in their neighborhood.  It doesn't help that the night of the raid S'ir's father gets hauled in by the secret police, so that when he arrives home, soaked and shell-shocked, nobody gives a shit about his problems.  And it's pretty much downhill from there, even though he has a rich friend who does his best to initiate him into the world of partying and girls, as well as shooting guns.  

It's not as if S'ir becomes evil - he actually saves the life of the obnoxious, drunk local shop owner (shortly after contemplating clouting him with a rock) and he clearly has a rigid code of honor, but somehow it gets twisted and things gallop towards tragedy.  And lest you think it melodramatic, it's actually based on a real event from that time and place.  I'm not sure what lesson we're supposed to learn (or what the significance is of the flashlight, which is a running theme, or the announcement on the radio of people who have successfully passed important exams, which bookends the film) but it manages both to feel very specific and universal, a West Side Story/Catcher in the Rye but in the setting of the infusion of mainland Chinese into Taiwan at the same time that Western influences were also flooding the island.  More from the Guardian here.