Catch A Fire

I’ve just seen a special screening of Catch A Fire introduced by its Director, Philip Noyce. It is one of the best movies about the struggle against Apartheid that I have seen. The era and settings have been recreated with great accuracy and attention to detail. Even down to the television set on which the security police monitored their interrogations. It was an old Philips set exactly like the one my parents had when I was growing up.

Philip spoke about the many advisors that contributed to getting the details right, including the ex-security police officer who helped Tim Robbins with his role. The movie was funded by Working Title, a vast departure from their blockbuster rom-com fare, such as Bridget Jones and Four Weddings.

This is a true story about the life of Patrick Chamusso, convincingly played by Derek Luke, an innocent man turned into a terrorist by the very forces that tried to quash terrorism. Although I lived through this time in South Africa I cannot reliably vouch for the authenticity of the events. We were carefully shielded by state censorship from what was really going on. Philip mentioned that when the film was recently screened at the South African embassy in London many in the audience commented that this portrayal of the brutality of the regime was in fact too mild. The movie is yet to be shown in South Africa and he is expecting a mixed reaction.

He was also concerned that the film would have difficulty ‘finding its audience’ and encouraged us to recommend it to our friends if we enjoyed it. I can do so without hesitation. Its at times a hard film to watch, but the ending, with its message of forgiveness, is uplifting and inspiring, as is the work that Patrick Chamusso continues to do with orphans at the Two Sisters charity that he founded (www.twosisters.org.za). It is based in north-east South Africa and supports orphans of the AIDS epidemic that is devastating much of the African continent. Patrick and Conney, his young wife, settled in Mganduzweni, a beautiful but poor town in the hills outside White River. A neighbour in their village died, and her two daughters were orphaned. Patrick and Conney fostered the two sisters. That was in 1999. Today they have 76 children in their care.

The Undefeated

Perhaps not the greatest John Wayne Western, but how can I resist a movie featuring both the Duke and the Rock? Its crammed full of action from Civil War battles to large scale shoot-outs with bandits and the French Army in Mexico. The relationship between the fleeing Confederate clan and the band of ex-Union soldiers led by Wayne is quite poignant. There is a great scene where a 4^th of July party degenerates into an all-out, but very good natured, fist fight. Realism is not the point here. Despite all the gun fights no one is so much as nicked, apart from the obnoxious old cook and his cat and, of course, legions of faceless baddies. As long as you check your brain at the door, its rollicking good fun. It even makes an effort at a (quite daring for its time) racial harmony message by having Wayne adopt an Indian son, who then promptly makes off with the Rock’s beautiful sixteen year old daughter.

Robert Altman

I am very sad to hear of the death of Robert Altman, one of my favourite film makers. Altman had one of the most distinctive styles among modern filmmakers. He often employed huge ensemble casts, encouraged improvisation and overlapping dialogue and filmed scenes in long tracking shots that would flit from character to character. His Gosford Park is one of those films that I never tire of watching. His filmography as Director includes some of the most loved, but also most controversial films of recent times, including Pret-a-porter, The Player, Nashville, Short Cuts, right up to A Prairie Home Companion which is still playing in the cinemas here.

Seven Samurai

Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) is an icon of Japanese and World cinema. It is the original action movie and Hollywood owes it a great debt. Quite apart from the obvious remakes, such as The Magnificent Seven, many action movie elements originated in Seven Samurai, from techniques such as dropping to slow motion in climatic battle scenes, to typical plot lines involving a band of disparate characters coming together to defeat seemingly overwhelming odds. Its essential viewing for film studies, but it also no hardship, as despite its epic 3 hours and limited dialogue, it tells a compelling story and tells it well. It is full of memorable images, notably the shots of Kikuchiyo, the suspect Samurai, who turns out to be a farmer’s son, in his stolen armour and headgear, brandishing his extra-long sword. The relationship between the Samurai and the farmers is one of the most interesting aspects and reflects the relationship that often exists between a civilian population and an external force of armed defenders. Currently we need look no further than how Iraqi civilians stand towards the coalition forces. They need them there, but at the same time they desperately want them gone.

Borat

Borat is the funniest movie I have seen in years. It has been a long time since I have left a cinema knowing that I had missed a great deal of the movie because I was laughing too much. Even now, I can’t help but laugh again and again when I recall some of the scenes. Sacha Baron Cohen is without doubt a comic genius and a pretty brave man for making this movie, which must have involved putting his personal safety on the line numerous times. I understand the police became involved around 50 times during the making of the movie. Aggravating New Yorkers on the subway or making fun of the American national anthem at a rodeo is akin to Steve Irwin picking up deadly snakes by the tail in the wild. The creatures that Cohen disturbed may be even more venomous. The rodeo scene was the funniest for me, closely followed by the evangelists, although they were funny already without any help from Cohen. This is a movie that can be enjoyed as a series of outrageous toilet jokes or as a highly sophisticated satire on cultural and social issues. Take your pick, either way it defies review and has to be seen to be believed.

Flags Of Our Fathers

Clint Eastwood has made a good, but not a great war movie. Flags Of Our Fathers falls short of greatness due to a number of problems.

One, it suffers from a difficulty common to many war movies. When you dress your actors in uniform and cover them with the dirt and detritus of war, it becomes very difficult to tell them apart. This is the reason, I suspect, that many war movies made use of a cast consisting mainly of household names. See for example The Longest Day (1962) which had Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Rod Steiger. Robert Wagner, John Wayne, Paul Anka and many others. The idea is that you recognise these faces and care about the characters even after only a small amount of screen time. The problem with using unknown actors is the audience is not able to pick out and bond with the characters quickly and then doesn't care enough about what happens to them on the battlefield. This sounds callous, but it’s a fact of life. I’m sure Mr Eastwood deliberately used actors who are not instantly recognisable so as not to distract form the realism of the film. Not that the leads in Flags are completely unknown, but they are not internationally instantly recognisable. At least not yet.

Secondly, there is the problem of it becoming increasingly difficult to shock audiences with battlefield gore. The opening sequences of Saving Private Ryan had enormous impact because it brought into the mainstream a level of realism that we had not seen before. Now, war film makers feel compelled to up the ante to keep up the shock value. They run the risk of going too far and crossing the line into schlock horror. A few scenes in Flags come dangerously close to this line. In my view these scenes were distracting and decreased, rather than increased the realism of the, on the whole, expertly staged, battle scenes.

A third and critical problem is with the complexity of the story around the photo itself. I found it very confusing and must admit that I still could not tell you who was actually in the photo and who not. I also didn’t really understand why it mattered that much.

I am reluctant to nitpick any further at a film made by Clint Eastwood, undeniably a pillar of the movie industry, but perhaps one last gripe. I think it was a mistake to shoot the film in near black and white. This, together with the extensive use of voice-over, gave it a rather old fashioned feel.

This is such a shame as the prospect of a war movie directed by Clint Eastwood held so much promise. Here’s holding thumbs that all is made good by the forthcoming second instalment, Letters From Iwo Jima.