Walkabout

This is an unexpectedly sophisticated film. I shouldn’t be surprised having seen Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now a few years ago, itself a complex, multi-layered film that lends itself to multiple interpretations. (Odd that he has not done much since The Man Who Fell To Earth in 1976?) Walkabout could be enjoyed simply as a rather strange little adventure tale about two hopelessly English kids lost in the Australian outback who are rescued by a bush savvy Aborigine, but to really get the most out of it takes a little thought and analyses. At another level it could be meant to contrast the aboriginal culture against modern Western culture, but that also is an oversimplification. What it really seems to be getting at is the difficulty that we all face of communicating beyond the boundaries created by our culture and mores. All of the characters are somehow lost because of this inability to communicate, in some cases fatally so. The vastness of the desert serves as metaphor for the great chasms between us. There are a number of point blank shots of brick walls and cliff faces that reinforce this message, for those who may have missed it otherwise. The conclusion is bleak, but the move is very effective and will have you thinking for a long time after. As a Sydney resident since the 1990’s I was particularly interested in the shots of the city from the early seventies.

No Country For Old Men

Jarvier Bardem has just won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his portrayal of an unspeakably evil man in this, the best Coen Brothers movie to date. The movie has also won Best Picture and the Coen Brothers took Best Director, all of which is well deserved. This is an enormously tense thriller. Its impossible to look away. The cinematography is beautiful, the suspense builds to almost unbearable peaks, the dialogue is utterly convincing, the characters fascinating. Whilst undeniably bleak, from a film-making perspective, there is very little not to like. It’s a powerful film – you cannot fail to be moved by it.

There Will Be Blood

This is an undeniably a great performance from Daniel Day Lewis as the utterly ruthless oil tycoon, Daniel Plainview. He has the best actor Oscar nomination and my money is on him walking off with it. He is mesmerising in the role – like a train wreck in slow motion, you just can’t take your eyes off him. I have some doubts as to whether the rest of the movie stacks up with the lashings of praise that have been bestowed on it. It seemed a tad long and yet still over ambitious in the grand scope of the story it is seeking to tell. Apart from Plainview none of the other characters are particularly well developed. The very few parts of the movie where Plainview is absent tend to drag. But these are small quibbles and on the whole this is a grand portrait of pathological greed and heartlessness, leading to madness and destruction. Very cheery stuff.

Michael Clayton

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is a “fixer” for a powerful law firm. It’s his job to clean up when one of the powerful clients of the firm or one of its own gets into trouble. He describes himself as a janitor, but he is highly valued by the firm, but not enough to be given equity or to be financially rewarded as well as its high-flying partners. Sydney Pollack, playing one of the senior partners tells him how lucky he is to have “found a niche”. This is a good movie and Clooney is terrific. The closing titles where he gets in a taxi, tells the driver to “give me fifty dollars worth, just drive” and then sits with his emotions and thoughts playing out on his face is masterful and like nothing I have seen before. It’s a shame sometimes that the media is so efficient at making us aware of an actor’s political views as the one quibble I have with this film is that it seems to suffer from a little left wing bias in that it seems to imply that large corporations routinely employ hit men and law firms have no mortal qualms whatsoever about the cases they take on. I’m even prepared to except the latter, but the former point is a bit of a stretch.

In the Valley of Elah

A terrific movie about the dehumanising effect of war, told as a who-dunnit police investigation, with fantastic understated performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron. The latter must now surely be recognised as by far the bravest and best actress of her generation. None of her contempories can claim to come close to the diversity of roles played by Theron. Here she gives an utterly convincing and straight as a dye performance as the police detective. Tommy Lee Jones is the father of a US soldier who disappears having just returned to his US base after a stint of duty in Iraq. It’s the type of role that Jones was made for and he is utterly mesmerising. I don’t know if it’s a recognised phenomenon, but after watching this movie I felt for some time afterwards as though I had a part of the Jones character in my head. I could feel his movements in some of my movements – such was the extent to which Jones draws you in.

Umberto D

Umberto D is Director Vittorio De Sica’s precise, neat ex-public servant who finds himself and his little dog Flyke in increasingly dire straits. He cannot afford the rent of even the most basic room in a boarding house where the landlady rents the room out by the hour to shamefaced couples when Umberto is not there. If he cannot pay the back rent he will be evicted and as his only option then would be to live in a shelter he would have to give up his beloved little dog. This sounds like an enormously sad tale, and yes it is, and yet there is an uplifting aspect to Umberto’s unwavering dignity in the face of his increasingly desperate plight. There is one masterful scene where he finally succumbs out of desperation to begging and then finds that he cannot bring himself to do it or even expect Flyke to do so in his stead. It’s a deeply moving film, made in the neorealist style, without a hint of sentimentality and here this technique works well. The camera only observes and does not seek to dramatise, making the unfolding story all the more compelling. Umberto is played by Carlo Battisti a university lecturer who had not acted before. For all intents and purposes he is Umberto D, no performance is necessary.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

“Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!” Another great movie quote which is remembered not quite as it was in the movie. So says the bandit leader when questioned by Fred C Dobbs, the Humphrey Bogart character who becomes completely corrupted by the lure of gold in this great John Huston movie. It’s a great performance by Bogey especially as he tips over into madness, torn between his burning lust for gold and his conscience. Another great (Academy Award winning) performance comes from Walter Huston (John’s father) as the wise old prospector. John Huston also gathered Oscars for direction and screenplay for this 1948 adventure tale and character study.

Into The Wild

As I was watched this the story and ultimate plight of young John McCandless (or Alexander Supertramp as he renames himself) left me somewhat cold. What an incredibly dumb thing to do, I thought. And the rambling travel and adventure that led up to his last days in a deserted old bus in the middle of the Alaskan wilds, seemed to me just as pointless as his end. But perhaps, in hindsight, I was feeling grouchy and tired at the end of a long day (I watched this on a flight home to Sydney from New Zealand), because as time has gone by I feel much better about this movie. McCandless story has stuck with me and his philosophy and uncompromising stance has made me think, which is after all what good movies are supposed to do. The self-portrait of the actual McCandless at the end of the film made me sit up and pay closer attention. Here is a true story which in all likelihood has been reconstructed with remarkable accuracy. I understand Sean Penn took great pains over interviewing the characters that crossed McCandless life in the period portrayed here. Emile Hirsch gives a completely committed performance and literally wastes away before our eyes.

3.10 to Yuma

I loved this movie. It’s an old-style western, a real shoot'em up, set in the time when men were men. Not a trace of irony, stylisation, excessive violence, spaghetti westernism or any of the other –isms that have infected the modern western. It restores the western to being about values and integrity. The actors are all excellent. Russell Crowe is perfect for this sort of role. Were the western still as popular as back then he would surely have been a modern day Duke. Christian Bale, an actor who never fails to deliver, is compelling as the struggling rancher who agrees to take the lethally dangerous outlaw Ben Wade (Crowe) to meet the 3.10 train to take him to Yuma prison in exchange for payment of $200 which will save his family farm from the debt collectors. This is a remake of the movie of the same title made in 1957 starring Glenn Ford.

Dead Man

I saw this Jim Jarmusch cult “classic” at the Art Gallery last night. They present free screenings on Wednesday nights. I’m tempted to say that the price was just about right, but I think that would be unnecessarily cruel. Truth be told I quite enjoyed this strange ramble through the twisted Western landscape. It’s a slow journey – the duration of the train ride at the start of the movie is enough to test anyone’s patience. There is a lot of time to contemplate the mysticism and meaning of the movie and to admire the cinematography. The almost sepia black & white print works well and reminded me of those old photos of the West that you sometimes see with the odd looking Indians dressed in crazy combinations of tribal and modern clothes. I laughed a number of times and whilst this film will never set the world on fire I can understand why it has a solid cult following. Depp is at his quirkiest.

The Wild Bunch

Sam Peckinpah’s epic western shoot’em up. Highly controversial when first released in 1969, this is still quite a violent offering. It marks the departure from the Western of old where gunfights produced not so much as a skerrick of blood and there was a nice clear delineation between goodies and baddies (often down to the colour of their hats). In The Wild Bunch it is fairly hard to take sides. The robbers, led by William Holden, reveal themselves to be men with a fair degree of heart and integrity, whilst the law, represented here by a band of incompetent bounty hunters led by Robert Ryan, seem to lack any degree of backbone and display reprehensible behaviour. The exception is Robert Ryan’s character, but it turns out he used to operate on the wrong side of the law himself and would probably feel more comfortable back in the saddle with the bunch. Finally, we can at last all unite in hatred of the truly despicable Mexican generalissimo and take delight as he and his army are summarily and bloodily dispatched by the Wild Bunch, before they too join the seemingly endless litter of dead bodies on the ground at the end of the movie. William Holden is particularly effective as the ageing gunslinger, looking for a way to earn a living “beyond his guns”.

Victim

It may seem strange to talk about science fiction when discussing this 1961 drama and police procedural, but that is exactly what it reminded me of. You know, the type of science fiction film where the political and legal structure of the world has changed in the future to such an extent that it is barely recognisable from the world we inhabit today (think 1984, but also countless others). The time in which Victim is set, at least to the extent of its subject matter, is unthinkable in the modern context. It is set in the time when homosexuality was against the law in the UK and US. Most people, like me, will be staggered to learn that homosexuality was only made ‘legal’ in the UK in 1967. Up until then, the law prohibiting homosexuality was known as ‘the blackmailer’s charter’ as it provided such a lucrative lever over a vast section of the population. During these times more than 90% of blackmail cases involved gays. I found this so incredible that I had to check the facts, thinking at one point that the whole plot was a work of fiction. This is a fascinating film for the insight that it provides into those times and events, not just in the subject, but also its location (London). Quite a few scenes provide glimpses of the city in the early sixties, which are fascinating – note the motor garage and petrol station on Fulham Road, Kensington, just down the road from the Michelin building, which then probably sold tyres and now houses the swanky Bibendum restaurant. The performances are spot on. I have not seen many Dirk Bogart movies, but intend to rectify that omission.