On The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

A script that has been in development for years The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was saved by Ben Stiller who directs and stars and does an excellent job at both. With CGI it’s now easy to capture the day dreaming’s of a man who falls between hopeless romantic and hopeless. What is far harder is to capture the sense of loss and recognition that these day dreams are both a problem for Walter, yet at the same time the solution and Stiller achieves this through his subtle performance and direction.

Early on in the film the premise of a missing negative that captures the ‘quintessence of life’ and should be the final cover of Life Magazine is set up. Walter’s search for this negative is the film and that the revealing of this photo does not disappoint is one of the more impressing features of this story. As well as one of the more satisfying endings in comedy, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty manages to be almost universally engaging through its live your dream, take a chance mantra. These are platitudes, but the film comes across as charming not preachy. At the same time it manages to make an interesting point about the digital age and the lack of real world experiences that come with it.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty feels like it came from an earlier time of cinema comedy, but looks like it was made today. It’s a nice mix and a funny and charming piece of cinema.  

On Too Much Talking with All is Lost

We take it for granted, that in cinema we’ll be told what is going on and more and more, that we’ll be told what to think; who is good, who is bad, what they are thinking? But these are not the origins of audio visual storytelling. The earliest silent films were accompanied by live orchestral or piano music. Audiences had no problems interpreting these narratives and they have no problem now, they just might not know it. After all, a single photograph tells a story and if it isn’t anchored by a headline, we all bring different readings to it.

All is Lost, while much more involved than a single image and even more than a silent film is as good as silent cinema by today’s standards. One character, less than a page of dialogue and two settings (yacht and raft) ensure All is Lost is sparse cinema. But it is also powerful cinema and its timing is prescient in so much as it is like Gravity (2013) at sea and reinforces the power of beautiful images to tell stories. These films tell us (and All is Lost much more so) that we don’t need the heavy handed exposition dialogue that panders to audiences’ laziness and need to be walked through a narrative with their hand held. The lack of dialogue, yet the clarity of the narrative do make us question how much dialogue is really needed.  

We know nothing of Robert Redford’s man in All is Lost (not even his name), but we can piece it together and find a relatable character through images and music alone.  And what is refreshing is that the lack of anchorage makes All is Lost a far more open piece of cinema as there is much more scope for audiences to reach individual interpretations of the film, a film which may at first appear to lack all meaning.

On Marking the Death of Analogue with The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

With The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001 – 2003) Peter Jackson created a world that juxtaposed realism and fantasy with great skill. This accomplishment waned a little as the films progressed until The Return of the King (2003) was a CGI extravaganza, that relied less on the real world locations of the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), arguably the best of all the Middle Earth films.

With the increased use of CGI Jackson was able to stage hugely impressive battle scenes. Impressive as they are they lacked the intimate that made Fellowship so successful. This pattern seems to be being repeated in Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, although in slightly different ways.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) had the charm and the danger of Fellowship, and while it was aimed at a younger audience, it was engaging and fun cinema. The middle part of the trilogy, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is far greater in scope than Journey, covering great distances and many, many characters. It is in the latter that the problem lies. We spend little time with the majority of the dwarves, the most of whom are scenery. Other characters are shoehorned in and these are important characters whose significance will come to light in the final part, but here they are so thinly drawn that there is little attachment to them. How can we care that Bard slays the dragon, vanquishing his family’s curse, if Bard has less than twenty minutes screen time?

The Desolation of Smaug becomes like the latter Lord of the Rings film, an experiment in technology. And what Jackson has achieved is groundbreaking, but also highlights the slow death of analogue. The cameras that Jackson has developed for this film result in what can only be described as hyper-realism. The image (even in 3D) is so sharp that it is uncomfortable. It is far closer to what we expect from BBC HD nature documentaries than what we are used to from film. This is unsettling because the actors are presented in such vivid details it feels intrusive. More positively, the CGI blends with the image and is therefore incredibly impressive, especially Smaug who is close to, but not quite as successfully rendered as Gollum.

From a film lover’s point of view this sharpness of image is difficult to accept. The grain of film is missing and that grain and Hollywood shine are what made cinema so magic. Cinema is about suspension of disbelief, but that does not mean that the image has to become hyper-realistic. Advancements in technology are important and necessary, but surely they can be balanced with a more traditional look. 

Side note: The 2D version of the film is a far more authentic cinema experience, aesthetically. Yet the problems in pace and pitch remain.

On Kill Your Darlings

For his first feature John Krokidas has chosen a challenging subject. Trying to capture the feeling that inspired the beat generation. And for all its skill in acting and direction (the look of the film is impressive), Kill Your Darlings suffers from the same problem that Walter Salles’ On the Road (2012) suffers from.

To put the events on screen, whether they be the murder that Ginsberg was embroiled in, or his experiences at Columbia University is one thing and achieves the goal of creating fluid narrative cinema. But what the film cannot achieve (and what must be incredibly hard to achieve) is the ability to capture an artistic movement; the sensation of being a part of something exciting without knowing quite what it will lead to. Literary movements, like the beat generation, are really only open to study years after they’ve passed or begun. Even those inside it as it were happening (for Kill Your Darlings this includes Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs) were probably unsure of what they were doing. But, Krokidas has created a confident piece of cinema and tackled a difficult subject with more accomplishment than more seasoned directors. 

On Documentary and Leviathan

It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Only this time it’s true. Leviathan is an almost wholly pure documentary from ethnographic filmmakers Lucien Castiang-Taylor and Verena Paravel. Through the use of small, easily attachable digital cameras Castaing-Taylor and Paravel have created an immersive experience of a deep sea Atlantic fishing ship, the name of which we never know and the crew of which we barely meet. In many ways Leviathan is pure documentary. There is no non-diegetic music and neither Castaing-Taylor not Paravel are ever heard or seen. Many of the shots are abstract at first as they deny us any form of narrative framing, instead forcing us to work to interpret the images, whether they be an extreme close up of a fish eye or a flock of seagulls seen from under the water. The advantage of their cameras is that they allow the access into the most intimate of spaces.

Of course no documentary can be entirely pure. The images are still selected by the directors (although this is always the case) and end credits reveal this unnamed vessel set sail from the same port that the fictional Pequod from Moby Dick set sail, immediately creating intertextuality. A later scene also shows one of the unnamed crew members slowly falling asleep while watching a reality TV show about deep sea fishermen, creating a sense of comedy. Yet Leviathan remains a fascinating watch and some of the most startling imagery seen in documentary cinema. 

On Looking Back with Nebraska

Thematically, Nebraska is about America looking back and it is therefore fitting that stylistically, it is shot in black and white. Alexander Payne’s film follows OAP Woody Grant a man in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, trying to reach Lincoln Nebraska to claim $1,000,000 from a marketing company. A $1,000,000 everybody but Woody knows is a myth.

To reach Lincoln, Woody embarks on a road trip with his son and is joined by the majority of his close and extended family as he nears his destination. The idea of the American dream being a myth has often been explored, yet its current examination is prescient.

The heart of America is being ripped out by a failing economy and growing inequality and it is in America’s heart that we find ourselves with Nebraska. Payne fills his frames with sparsity. From the crossroads towns with a bank, a couple of bars, a garage and a car rolling through to the vast, unmanned spaces of America’s farmlands; still standing, but no longer being worked. Lincoln is the biggest place we visit and even this feels devoid of life. Only the interiors of Woody’s family homes are full of vivacity as Payne reminds us that the work may have gone, but the heart of the people endures.

Amongst all this looking back (searching for a more secure time?), Woody insists on going forward. From the first scene where a police officer asks him where he’s going and Woody points forward he never defers from this path. At first we may believe Woody’s perpetual motion to be blind trust, but even when he discovers the myth and accepts it in his taciturn manner, Woody still moves forward; he realises the past is gone and the present is difficult. Woody simply wants to leave something for his children. Is Woody the modern middle American, screwed by big business but remaining resilient? Whether Woody is evocative of the current economic problems in America (an issue referred to explicitly once) or whether the whole narrative is suggestive of the greed and unfortunate naivety of different sets of Americans is up for debate. Either way, Nebraska remains a beautiful and touching piece of cinema.

On Blue is the Warmest Colour

That there are no good roles for women in Hollywood used to be a far more ubiquitous statement than it is now. In Europe, female actors have probably always faired a little better. That women in film exist purely to be sexualised was a far more common theory than it is now, one most popularly proposed by Laura Mulvey as the Male Gaze. In Blue is the Warmest Colour we are witness to two of the most powerful and engaging performances from two young female actors; newcomer and protagonist Adele Exarchopoulos and the slightly more experienced Lea Seydoux. But does the film, so focused on the lives of women, do anything to advance the idea of women as purely symbols for male objectification? And was it even attempting to?

The ferocity with which these two actors undertake their roles is astonishing and it is the performances that on first viewing make the film such a powerful experience. The director and writer Abdellatif Kechiche frames them in intimate close up and lights them beautifully, so that contrasting ideas of realism and romantic beauty are perfectly juxtaposed.

Blue is the Warmest Colour won the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 2013 and for this reason has received a lot of press. It has also made it on to the lists of many critics’ best films of the year, another reason why it has received a lot of press. It also contains some of the most explicit sex scenes in a film that has gained this level of attention and achievement and sits outside of pornography. And it is within the sex that one may become agitated by the film’s aims.

The narrative follows the romance of Adele and Emma. From the first glance and meeting the parents, through to the honeymoon stage and routine happiness setting in; the fights, the making up, the suspicion, the affair and the break up. The last of which is incredibly emotional cinema. It is therefore natural that sex is a part of this narrative and a film for adults must not feel that it needs to bypass this natural and necessary feature. Yet, the way Kechiche films the sex scenes and their regularity throughout the second act is transgressive. Our observing an intimate romance starts to feel uncomfortable and arousing, the combination of which is jarring.

Kechiche films Adele and Emma’s sexual activities through the eyes of a man wanting to glamorise sex between two women. These scenes stand apart stylistically from the rest of the film. There is no music, far fewer close up shots and in length they go beyond any other scene. We are no longer following Adele’s first real love, we are watching male fantasies in an environment of heightened excitement, for in the cinema, we are not used to seeing this. What Kechiche was attempting to achieve with these scenes is unclear (he would have known the controversy they would create), but it is credit to his two actors that they can keep this love story so involving amongst the explicit sex scenes. 

On Catholicism and Philomena

Catholicism comes under subtle, but harsh criticism in Stephen Frears’ new film, Philomena. Although the larger slice of the credit for bringing Philomena to the screen goes to Steven Coogan as writer, producer and actor. As a biography this is far more interesting than the rock and roll rags-to-riches-to-rags biographies that are usually made and that is because Philomena is real. It is immediately relatable even though the subject matter is horrifically difficult and will be unique to most audiences.

The good guy of the film (although nothing is black and white) is Coogan’s journalist and to some extent Philomena, although she is a little too resigned, understandably, to be a hero. The bad guy is the Catholic Church, here represented by a convent in Ireland. While Philomena refuses to blame the church, the film paints her as a figure of the past, while Coogan’s Sixsmith presents a more contemporary view and his often savage critique of the church and religion rings true. Yet Coogan and Frears recognise the difficulty of their subject matter and allow the audience to judge, without judging themselves. Although they gently push the audience towards a criticism of Catholicism.

Philomena manages to successfully be a balanced criticism of Catholicism, with particular focus on the convent where Philomena was forced to stay. An environment that was occasionally kind, frequently cruel and without doubt an incredibly oppressive religious environment. The cruellest part is that interviews with the actual Philomena Lee reveal the film to take few liberties.

Philomena is a quietly impressive piece of cinema.