Author: Alistair Nunn

Oppenheimer (2023)

Nolan’s masterful musing on the morality of science is both challenging and compelling

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Cillian Murphy (J Robert Oppenheimer), Emily Blunt (Kitty Oppenheimer), Matt Damon (General Leslie Groves), Robert Downey Jnr (Lewis Strauss), Florence Pugh (Jean Tatlock), Josh Hartnett (Ernest Lawrence), Casey Affleck (Colonel Boris Pash), Rami Malek (David Hill), Kenneth Branagh (Niels Bohr), Benny Safdie (Edward Teller), Dane DeHaan (General Kenneth Nichols), Jason Clarke (Roger Robb), David Krumholtz (Isidor Issac Rabi), Tom Conti (Albert Einstein), Alden Ehrenreich (Strauss’ aide), Gary Oldman (President Truman), Jefferson Hall (Haakon Chevalier)

“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. These words from The Baghavad Gita are synonymous with J Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project as he witnessed the destructive force of his creation, the atomic bomb. Fittingly, Nolan’s fascinating and ambitious film opens with a reference to Oppenheimer as Prometheus: the man punished for all time for stealing fire from the Gods. Oppenheimer uses everything from thriller to courtroom drama, to explore the moral responsibilities of science: if we can do a thing, does it follow that we must?

J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is a Renaissance man and leading theoretical physicist who dabbled more than a little in left-wing politics. The woman he loves, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), is a die-hard communist, the woman he marries Kitty (Emily Blunt) is a former party member, his closest friends are all members. Associations like these will later haunt him after he is approached by General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) to use his organisational skills, political savvy and charisma to run the WW2 nuclear programme where maverick scientists work hand-in-hand with the army. Despite his position, Oppenheimer remains untrusted by many. In the aftermath of the war, these suspicions will be used by his opponents, among them Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jnr) ex-head of the Atomic Energy Committee, to bring about his downfall as Oppenheimer preaches disarmament.

Much like Dunkirk, Oppenheimer is told in two timelines, intersecting with scenes replayed from different perspectives in subtly different ways. In “Fission” we see Oppenheimer, effectively on trial in 1954 for his security clearance, recount his life story, chronological flashbacks taking us through the development of the bomb. In “Fusion”, shot in gorgeous black and white, we follow the 1959 senate hearings to confirm Strauss in a cabinet post, and see his reminiscences of Oppenheimer’s post-war struggles to control the monster he has unleashed.

Oppenheimer is a brilliantly made, cinematically adventurous film: you would, of course, expect nothing less from a distinctive talent like Nolan. Brilliantly intercutting multiple timelines, it’s a film that is as much an experience as a story. This is a behemoth, filled with moments of flair and breath-taking use of sound and vision to affect mood. In particular, the film’s oppressive sound design bears down on the viewer like the pressure of the bomb itself. This means moments when we are released from its grip carry real impact. As Oppenheimer – already plagued with doubt – triumphantly announces the successful use of the bomb, the war-like celebratory pounding of scientists’ feet disappears from the soundtrack leaving Oppenheimer’s words echoing impotently around the room.

The pounding score and epic, sweeping camerawork (even more striking, since so much of the film takes place in small rooms filled with conversation) help Nolan to build up Oppenheimer’s mythic status and simultaneously strip him bare. Literally so at one point as, when questioned on his sex life in his hearing, Oppenheimer is seen naked in the room (as exposed as he must be feeling) answering questions with a naked Jean Tatlock astride him, staring into his wife’s eyes.

Oppenheimer labours, with the best intentions, to create a weapon before the Nazis. In its middle act, Nolan’s film focuses on the propulsive excitement of creation. The thrill of obstacles being overcome and solutions being found. The joy of a diverse team coming together for a single goal. We find ourselves longing for problems to be overcome, swept up in the desire for the endgame, as anxious as the scientists when it looks like rain will prevent the vital first Trinity test of the bomb.

Oppenheimer feels the same. Powerfully, intelligently and magnetically played by Cillian Murphy, this is a man who is a host of flaws crammed with impossible genius. A charismatic room leader, who is awkward in personal interactions. A charmer who rudely fails to remember his brother’s girlfriend’s name at a party. An inspiring leader who alienates people with ease. Murphy captures every inch of Oppenheimer’s staggering intellect and delight in intellectual problems, just as he also embodies the man’s arrogance and crushing self-belief.

So, it’s as crushing to him as it is terrifying to us, when the bomb explodes and the realisation hits us. Nolan’s sensory experience of a film fades down to silence as Nolan lets the camera float across the all-consuming fire of the silent explosion (the noise only comes when the shockwave hits) and suddenly the chilling implication of this terrible weapon becomes clear. This is a device that will kill millions. Oppenheimer knows it: he slowly shrivels into haunted guilt, Murphy seeming to shrink into himself as he finally understands what he has done.

Images of nuclear destruction both obvious (ashen bodies and nuclear flashes) and subtle (the out-of-focus vibration of background around Oppenheimer, as if sensing an approach shockwave) will haunt him and us for the rest of the movie. While many scientists – foremost among them Benny Safdie’s bull-headed Edward Teller and Josh Hartnett’s WASPish but decent Ernest Lawrence – feel little guilt. But Oppenheimer, and we, can no longer avoid questions of moral responsibility raised by those such as Niels Bohr (a quietly effective Kenneth Branagh).

Are there some discoveries better not made? Because once the genie is out of the bottle, it cannot be stuffed back in again. In this new world every world power must always have more. More bombs, bigger bombs, better bombs. And it explains why, like Prometheus, Oppenheimer must be punished. The tool of his punishment being his communist sympathies, embodied in his yearning attraction to Jean Tatlock (an under-used Florence Pugh). Nolan’s film is very strong on the terrifying paranoia of the secret state, where every word or association can be collected into a terrible portfolio of witnesses you cannot question, evidence you cannot see, testimony you cannot hear.

“Why don’t you fight” cries his wife Kitty, played with a dynamic, intelligent forcefulness by Emily Blunt. I could have done with a third act built more around Blunt’s starkly honest betrayal of a woman ill-suited to being a wife and mother, trapped in a world where that is all women can achieve (and which also trimmed a few witnesses from Oppenheimer’s trial). Why doesn’t Oppenheimer fight? Nolan has his theories, carefully seeded and confidently revealed.

Oppenheimer’s post-war clashes cover much of “Fusion”, anchored by a superbly under-playing Robert Downey Jnr (his finest work since Chaplin) as the outwardly avuncular, but inwardly insecure and bitter Strauss, who sees Oppenheimer as the embodiment of all the elitists who turned their noses up at him (no matter that Oppenheimer himself is an outsider, in a world of science run by WASPish types like Lawrence). Nolan’s film explores how morality is forgotten in an environment so rife with paranoia that the slightest expression of doubt is seen as treason.

Nolan’s film needs its vast runtime to keep as many balls in the air as it tries to. It’s probably a few too many balls. I would have loved more on Oppenheimer’s outsider status, as a Jew in American science (its not mentioned that the J stands for Julius, despite his claims it stands for nothing). Similarly, I would have welcomed more time to explore Oppenheimer’s complicated emotional life, in particular the fascinatingly complex relationship of some love, a fair amount of mutual respect and a large measure of mutual convenience with his wife Kitty.

But the film’s chilling musing on the horrors science can accidentally unleash while focused on progress is superbly explored and leaves a lasting impact. It’s a feeling that continues to be sharply relevant while we struggle with the implications of AI. Was there a need for the bomb? Perhaps there was. Were we ready for the bomb? No. And it is the failure of anyone, including Oppenheimer, to even consider this until it was too late that is the coldest warning in Nolan’s epic film.

Metropolis (1927)

Lang’s sometimes flawed science fiction epic is one of the most influential films ever made

Director: Fritz Lang

Cast: Brigitte Helm (Maria/The Machine), Alfred Abel (Joh Frederson), Gustav Frölich (Freder), Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Rotwang), Fritz Rasp (The Thin Man), Theodor Loos (Josaphat), Heinrich George (Grot), Erwin Biswanger (11811/Geogry)

It’s 1927 and for too long Hollywood had held sway over the movies. But there were plans in Germany to change that. The booming Weimar film community, arguably the artistic hub of World Cinema, felt they had a shot at claiming the sort of global success Hollywood had made its own. No expense would be spared to bring Fritz Lang’s science-fiction spectacular, Metropolis to the screen. It was met with such a muted reaction, that the original epic cut was sliced to ribbons, parts of the film lost for all time, and for decades it lived only in a mutilated form. But it was visionary and extraordinary enough to inspire virtually every single science fiction film that followed it.

Metropolis is a sprawling future city state, run by Joh Frederson (Alfred Abel). In it the rich live a gilded life in mighty skyscrapers, with private gardens, luxurious apartments and raucous parties. Beneath them – literally so – are the workers, living a Morlock-like life of drudgery in the factories and power stations that keep the lights burning. But all that could change: below ground Maria (Brigitte Helm) preaches hope for change, above ground Frederson’s son Freder (Gustav Frölich) falls in love with Maria and rejects his father’s way for the life of a prole. Frederson has a scheme of his own: to use a robot (Helm again) built by old friend (and one time rival for the affection of his late wife) the one-handed scientist Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) to replace Maria and sow discord among a potential worker’s rebellion. But does Rotwang and his creation have a game of their own?

Lang had a brief to create a film that would be a box-office hit in America. No stone was left unturned in creating his epic. Metropolis took a staggering 17 months to film, running almost three times over its initial budget. It’s extended shooting schedule was a godsend for many of its extras, struggling to make ends meet while the Weimar Republic thrashed through the after-effects of hyperinflation. It’s a magnificent monument to Lang’s superb visual styling, marrying shadow filled expressionism with sweeping epic magnificence.

Metropolis’ strengths all lie in its stunning, inventive and breath-taking design work. That has been so inspiring, it has permeated vast swathes of our culture. Filmic visions of imposing, neon-lit, skyscraper packed modern Babels (Frederer’s headquarters is an art-deco reimagining of Brueghel’s Tower of Babel) all find their roots here: from Burton’s Batman to Scott’s Blade Runner. Any robot in the movies can chase its lineage back to Rotwang’s man-machine, as any mad scientist ancestor is Rotwang (from Dr Strangelove to Back to the Future’s Doc Brown). It’s the film that invented steam-punk, with its piston-filled machines, staffed by boiler-suited workers (it’s inspiration for a zillion music videos is not surprising). Everywhere you look in Metropolis it might feel like you are seeing something familiar, when in fact you are witnessing its original generation.

Metropolis is a cat’s cradle of differing moods and designs, woven masterfully into a whole. Frederson controls the city from a penthouse suite, while his immediate staff and family live in swish, very 1920s apartments. This contrasts sharply with the industrial-punk of the factories, cathedrals of technological movement, full of gears, levers and men performing tasks with a robotic, convey-belt repetition under a series of clocks. There are real cathedrals, legacies of an old world, where God has been left behind by the new Gods of work and efficiency. Under the ground, the workers live in personality free tenement blocks and chiselled out caves, which echo churches. Rotwang works in a laboratory part Frankenstein’s layer, part bizarre lecture theatre, all seemingly housed in a ramshackle house that wouldn’t look out of place in a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale.

A fairy tale is perhaps what Metropolis is, underneath all the astonishing technical sheen and directorial mastery. We follow a hero who exiles himself to live among the poor, eventually becoming their champion, with a damsel-in-distress he must rescue from a crazed wizard. The wizard even produces a magic imposter, who threatens to bring disaster. Metropolis’ plot often proceeds with the illogical progression of a fairy tale, with characters frequently making veering changes in allegiance or unveiling dastardly schemes that appear from nowhere or make little sense.

It’s similar in Metropolis biggest weakness: it’s simplistic plot, wrapped up in a casually naïve politically theory that attempts to find a balance between left and right, but essentially boils down to “why can’t we all just get along”. It’s loud proclamation that “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart” is so vague that it allowed the film to be embraced by the left as a proto-socialist film supporting worker’s rights and the right as a film that revealed the workers as a mob and the fate of the world best left in the hands of elites who know what they are doing.

It’s part of the simplistic view the film largely takes of character and story, which frequently feels like an after-thought behind the film’s sumptuous production values and Lang’s expressive camera work. It’s also not helped by some of the acting which, particularly in the case of Gustav Frölich’s hand-claspingly camp performance, mines the depths of silent-movie ostentatiousness. Saying that Brigitte Helm is chillingly, wickedly artificial and physically disjointed as the fake Maria (a far cry from her more simpering ‘good’ self) and Abel underplays effectively as Frederson. Klein-Rogge’s insane glare and conflicting lusts also make a strong impression.

But none so strong as Lang’s mastery of visual symbolism. Freder’s terrified vision of the ‘heart machine’ that sits at the centre of the city’s power, transformed into a terrible Moloch with workers literally fed into its gaping, firey maw. Those same workers from the film’s opening with Lang’s brilliant visual conceit of shuffling, shoulder-drooping figures lurching into a gigantic elevator that lowers them into the ground. Rotwang’s birth of the fake Maria is a masterclass in light and cross-cutting, as is the simmering eroticism of the fake Maria’s dance at an orgiastic night-club, the screen filling with the slathering faces of the man she has enchanted.

It mixes with the Gothic power Lang brings the film in its closing sequence, seemingly inspired by mystery plays with their deep-rooted sins bubbling to the surface to condemn those alive today. There are echoes back to this in Freder’s dreams of Metropolis as a modern Babylon (hammered home, once, by the lost scene of a monk preaching in the cathedral) and in Maria’s Joan of Arc like status among the working classes – a mantle taken to its logical conclusion by her metallic replacement who leads a doomed insurrection. Again, all these concepts and influences are effortlessly held together into one magnificent whole by Lang’s fluidic, beautifully paced direction.

Metropolis lives today as a monument to creative science fiction film-making – it is the most ambitious and most influential science-fiction film ever, except perhaps 2001 and (in a very different way) Star Wars. It may be politically simple and its story may veer in unplanned directions and strange cul-de-sacs, but as a piece of visionary cinema it is nearly unparalleled. Even its existence today as a reconstructed, corrupted version of itself (after hours of footage were considered lost for decades) doesn’t not dim or diminish its mastery.

Rocky III (1982)

Rocky needs to build his way back to the top – again – in this boxing buddy movie

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Cast: Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa), Talia Shire (Adrian Balboa), Burt Young (Paulie Pennino), Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed), Burgess Meredith (Mickey Goldmill), Tony Burton (Duke Evers), Mr T (Clubber Lang), Hulk Hogan (Thunderlips)

Life is good for Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone)! Ten successful title defences and he is literally on-top of the world. Time to hang up his gloves right? Wrong of course. He’s challenged by hungry new up-and-comer Clubber Lang (Mr T), a brutal, never-beaten machine. Dismissive to all around him, Lang says Rocky has never taken on a proper challenger: turns out he’s right as Mickey (Burgess Meredith) only put Rocky up against challengers he knew he could beat. Lang takes Rocky apart in the fight – not before indirectly causing a fatal heart-attack for Mickey – and Rocky is a broken man. Who else can bring him back from the brink than his old frenemy, the Count of Monte Fisto himself, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers)?

Rocky III confirms that there are in only so many plots available for a Rocky film. This one shakes the formula up by having Rocky start at the top, then fall to the bottom, then rise back up again. But it’s the same story, now taking place in a slightly different style to the first two. Any sense of kitchen-sink drama is gone from Rocky III. You can see it in the body of Stallone, now a chisselled, Michelangelo sculpture. This is a cartoon with a happy ending, and the fact it’s entertaining doesn’t hide that the whole franchise was leaving reality behind.

Saying that, Rocky III makes a bigger push for tragedy than either of the other two. Stallone leans heavily into incoherent blubbing as Rocky cradles the body of his surrogate father, Mickey dying with one last growling word of wisdom. It’s, of course, the moral of all film mentors that they must eventually kick the bucket so their proteges can take their place. It shakes Rocky up like nothing before. That and the beating he takes from Lang, in a brutal one-sided beat-down.

One of the film’s claim to cult fame is of course the casting of Mr T as Clubber Lang. Growling and scowling like a cartoon heavy, with some punchy one-liners (“I don’t hate Balboa. I pity the fool!”), it’s a part that works due to Mr T’s charisma. Stallone shoots Clubber Lang like some sort of fighting lion, frequently employing slo-mo to focus in on Lang’s scowling face and flying fists, the soundtrack echoing with his roar. Mr T is the series best villain, a man so loathsomely cocky (literally no one likes him, not the crowds, the commentators, his fellow boxers…) that he propositions Adrian, shoves Apollo before the first fight and gives Mickey a heart attack.

You needed someone like that to bring together Apollo and Rocky as a super-team. Rocky III is the series first buddy-movie. It’s hard not to see something faintly homoerotic in Weathers and Stallone, bodies greased and rippling in muscles, eyeing each other up, running along beaches or the faintly sexual air to Weather’s delivery of lines about wanting a “special favour” from Rocky “after the fight”. No wonder there isn’t much time for Adrian in the film – what chance could she have when these two have such a mutual appreciation society going on? – with Talia Shire’s best scene as a sounding board for Rocky’s confession of fear about stepping back into the ring against Lang.

Saying that, the inevitable training sequence – this is the film with the quest for “the Eye of the Tiger” – is great value. It’s fun to watch Rocky pick-up Apollo’s signature Muhammad Ali style quick feet and Weathers is very good as the former champ taking vicarious revenge who forms a genuine friendship with his old rival (I love it when Apollo shadowboxes in excitement when Rocky begins to turn the final fight in his favour). Of course, montage takes Rocky from down-hearted dope (suffering from slo-mo visions which play like a half-arsed panic attack) to freeze-frame triumph. (I’ll also say Rocky III rather neatly mocks Paulie’s kneejerk racism about training with ‘these people’).

To get to these expected beats, Stallone first needed to pad out the run time – and slight plot. Surely that’s the only reason for the bizarre Act One ‘exhibition’ match which sees a complacent Rocky fight an exhibition match against wrestler “Thunderlips” (a terrible cameo from Hulk Hogan), the sort of sequence you keep thinking must be a dream but is in fact real. We also get an initial training montage structured like a modern morality play, Rocky’s lazy prep for fighting Lang sees him living like a Hollywood hotshot, while Lang trains with a monastic dedication. No surprise who is going down in the ring (even if the first fight wasn’t only thirty minutes into the film).

The rematch though doesn’t disappoint, taking its lead from Ali’s rope-a-dope from the Rumble in the Jungle. And the real coda, which is all about friendship, is sweeter than this comic book, Roy of the Rovers film has any right to be. Rocky III replays some of the elements of the first two films, this time as a comic strip, but by focusing on a bromance (and throwing in a properly hissable pantomime villain) despite the fact you know it lacks any inspiration, you’ll still punch the sky when Rocky turns that final fight and leave the film whistling Eye of the Tiger.

Aparajito (1956)

Generational clashes lie at the heart of Ray’s heartbreaking second entry in his Apu trilogy

Director: Satyajit Ray

Cast: Kanu Banerjee (Harihar), Karuna Banerjee (Sarbajaya), Smaran Ghosal (Adolescent Apu), Pinaki Sengupta (Young Apu), Ramani Sengupta (Uncle Bhabataran), Charuprakash Ghosh (Nanda-babu), Subodh Ganguli (Headmaster), Moni Srimani (School inspector), Ajay Mitra (Shibnath), Kalicharan Roy (Akhil)

Satyajit Ray initially saw Pather Panchali as a one-off, a story from the works of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, not the start of a multi-film fable on the life of its young protagonist. But, such was the impact of Ray’s debut, it almost demanded a continuation of the story. Ray then adapted parts of two Bandyopadhyay novels, re-shaping them into a tale of Apu’s late childhood and adolescence, that difficult crossing point between childhood and adulthood. In doing so, he created a film full of life but also profoundly moving and quietly devastating. Rich, confident and powerful, Aparajito may just be even more affecting than its forbear.

Beginning a few years after the conclusion of Pather Panchali Apu (played as child by Pinaki Sengupta and later as an adolescent by Smaran Ghosal) lives in the holy city of Varanasi with his dreaming father Harihar (Kanu Banerjee) and tireless mother Sarbajaya (Karuna Banerjee). Apu is still the same inquisitive, observant, fascinated child he ever was and when his father’s death leads to mother and son returning to the country, he excels at the local school. Winning a scholarship to college at Calcutta, Apu he finds Sarbajaya’s love for him smothering, just as she is heart-broken by his growing distance and reluctance to write or return to visit her.

This universal story of children struggling to outgrow their parents and their parents longing to help them grow but desire to keep them close, a situation causing pain on both sides, that gives Aparajito it’s huge emotional force. We can totally understand why Apu, swept up in the excitement of Calcutta and forging of his own life (one that has the promise of being so much more dynamic than his parents), begins to feel the ties of duty to his mother (almost alone in the world without him) constraining. At the same time, having witnessed the never-ending sacrifice, patience and quiet devotion of Sarbajaya to her son, we want to slap him for his selfishness and lack of thought.

Ray’s film is superb at making us understand the impossible burdens Sarbajaya has taken on herself to raise her son. Ray constantly frames Sarbajaya in the act of waiting: in Varanasi we never see her outside of the courtyard of their shared tenement block, constantly preoccupied with household tasks. Ray frames Sarbajaya frequently in doorways, visually presenting her as someone constantly waiting on the outskirts, shadows cast across her – someone vital for ensuring order, but easy to forget on the outskirts of rooms. It also serves to make her look constantly trapped and overburdened with duty, shadows constantly cast across her.

These burdens magnify for Sarbajaya after the death of Harihar. Apu’s decent father is still a dreamer who lacks the dedication and drive to make something of himself. Do memories of his father’s desire to become a writer ending in a fever in a tenement block, subconsciously drive Apu later? Harihar collapses near the holy river, ill from the damp of the city that he trudges through barefoot night and day, hitting the ground in a shadow lit passageway – much like his wife, as if the city has crushed him with its burdens.

The city seems very different to the young Apu. Ray’s camerawork is gentle, full of leisurely sideways pans, which serve to make the city appear to us as it does to Apu: a never-ending stream of visual wonders. Pans across the riverbanks of the Ganges, full of beautiful temples and river vistas look as magical to us as they do to the young boy. Similarly, the Dickensian hustle and bustle of the city itself, full of streets and alleyways that Apu and his friends rundown with glee feel like treasure-troves of adventure, rather than the never-ending streets trudge they look like when we see them from Harihar’s perspective.

Ray’s camera frequently brings us back to the searching, questioning, fascinated eyes of young Apu, always expanding his horizons. Education and the wonders that books bring him, far beyond the horizons of his mother who can only think about how to bring about tomorrow, offer a similar excitement. Young Apu excels at school and delights in trying to share the wonders he has learned – about science, astronomy and geography – with his mother. Ray shows a mastery of simple montage as years fly by in minutes as we see each of Apu’s passions before a masterful transition with a slow zoom in and out on a lit candle carries across years from Apu as a child to an adolescent.

An adolescent who feels the pull of a world away from what he increasingly sees as the smothering pull of his mother. It is, of course, impossible to watch this without feeling how unfair – but also how natural – this is. Your heart breaks as Apu heads off to Calcutta with only a single cursory glance back to his devoted mother. The mother who still packs his bag, gives him her savings – and asks him to come home as often as he can. You can understand why a young man finds this constraining, even as you want to tell him how sharp his regrets will be as Sarbajaya’s health begins to fail (naturally, the boy falls asleep as his mother timidly confesses her fear of old age and sickness to him).

Apu loves his mother, there is no doubt about that. One vacation, arriving at the train station to return to Calcutta, he decides to turn back (claiming he missed the train) to spend one more day with his mother. He still relies on her wisdom and unreserved love and he thinks often of her in the city. But he’s a teenager and wants his freedom. Sarbajaya even understands this, just as her heart breaks for the loss of and loneliness his departure brings. Is there a sadder shot in the movies as Ray focuses on Sarbajaya slowly sinking down as Apu walks away to his future?

The impact is only increased by the gloriously moving, hollow-eyed performance of Karuna Banerjee, exhausted but untiring in her work to protect family and home. It’s a performance of quiet, bubbling grief and loss tightly packed under optimism and support for her son – a grief that only the audience sees. Smaran Ghosal is also very fine as the adolescent Apu, a boy we can never dislike for very naturally wanting to forge his own path, in a performance that feels extraordinarily real.

The humanity shines out again in Ray’s follow-up to his debut. Moving confidently from location to location, in a novelistic structure translated perfectly to the screen, Aparajito is rich, beautifully told and carries real, unbearable emotional punch for anyone who has ever been a parent or child. Another masterwork in a mighty trilogy.

The General (1927)

Keaton’s masterpiece, less of a comedy and more an inspiration for hundreds of action films

Director: Buster Keatson & Clyde Bruckman

Cast: Buster Keaton (Johnnie Gray), Marian Mack (Annabel Lee), Glen Cavander (Captain Anderson), Jim Farley (General Thatcher), Frederick Vroom (Southern General), Charles Smith (Mr Lee), Frank Barnes (Annabel’s brother), Joe Keaton (Union General)

The General frequently features in the lists of greatest comedies of all-time. It’s a bit of a misnomer: while The General has its fair share of jokes, it’s really a sort of action film. A Mad Max: Fury Road with gags, the greatest chase you’ll ever see and one of the most dynamic stunt spectaculars ever made. It’s Keaton’s apogee, one of the most influential and greatest films ever made. If you’ve ever seen a stunt-filled epic, you’ve seen something that takes inspiration from the tireless physical tricks Keaton pulled here and the stunning, cinematic grace he films it with. The General is a classic that is instantly, and constantly, rewarding.

Keaton plays Johnnie Gray, a respected engine driver of the South with two loves in his life: Annabel (Marian Mack) and his steam engine The General. He’s about to propose to Annabel when the Civil War breaks out. She wants him to enlist: he tries his best but is rejected, unbeknownst to him, because the army considers him more valuable as a train driver. Mistakenly seen as a coward by Annabel, she vows never to speak to him again. A year later The General is hi-jacked by Union soldiers as part of a surprise offensive. Johnnie gives chase in a second engine, The Texas, unaware Annabel is aboard the kidnapped General. The wild chase takes Johnnie North then South again to bring Annabel home and report to the Confederate army the approaching attack.

The General was the most expensive film Keaton’s company had ever made. No expense was spared in bringing two period-accurate engines to the screen, with everything shot in location (in Oregon, admittedly, due to the Tennessee not being keen on staging a Civil War Keaton comedy) and all executed in perfect period detail. The film contained the most expensive single shot ever mounted – costing a whopping $42,000, it would show a real bridge collapse and hurl a real engine into a real river (Keaton filmed in long shot, with real horses moving around near the bridge, to stress this was a real stunt not a model). Despite all this, the film was a box-office disappointment.

Why? Well frankly, I’m not sure the world was ready for something that promised itself as being a comedy set during what was still a raw scar in the American psyche. The marketing material also promised more laughs than you can shake a stick at – a misrepresentation of a film that is more a stunt-filled poem than a slapstick riot. For those expecting The Navigator, The General was a disappointment. For us today, it is one of the great American films, a piece of cinematic mastery.

The General is for a large chunk of its run-time (almost 40 of its just under 80 minutes) a glorious chase, in which every sequence show-pieces invention at high-speed. The majority of the stunt filled tricks were executed by Keaton himself, surely at some considerable risk to life and limb. As you watch him bound over railway carriages, dive through port holes, sprint alongside steaming trains or sit atop the hurling railway sleepers to remove obstructions, you can only marvel at his physical dexterity and commitment.

Keaton’s character is also subtly, and impressively, different from his other roles. These were often defined by their haplessness – would-be detectives and empty-headed heirs. But within his professional sphere, Johnnie is a master. He knows the capabilities of engines and dynamics of the railroad better than anyone. He is relentless and endlessly inventive in overcoming myriad problems just as he can use his knowledge to place near-insurmountable barriers in the way of his pursuers.

The opening of the film stresses the respect people hold him in – he’s hero-worshipped by children, greeted warmly by all and has no doubts about asking Annabel to marry him. Sure Johnnie can get pre-occupied and miss the bigger picture – a few times, he is almost left behind by the steaming train while resolving problems on the line – and away from the train, especially when he joins the soldiers in the film’s finale, he suffers from the same clumsy, cluelessness as Keaton did fighting to defend his ship in The Navigator. But he’s also brave, indefatigable, ingenious and relentless. He’s more of a model for every action hero maverick since than you could imagine.

And those stunts! Keaton was a master film-maker, framing the action to accentuate its speed, scale and reality. The camera runs alongside the train, demonstrating its speed by showing objects move by. The action is frequently framed in medium and long shot to demonstrate its scale and the grandness. This goes for Keaton bounding across carriages and for simple gags, such as the famous shot of a forlorn, jilted Johnnie sitting on a drive rod of the moving train, lifted up and down as it shunts forward. The complexities of this chase are always made clear and camera angles are key to the various attempt each train makes to stop the other. This is placed above the standard comedic reaction close-ups audiences expected – but make for a richer, more rewarding film.

In fact, watching the film, you can grow to admire Johnnie so much you start to wonder what he sees in Annabel. Perhaps Keaton, to an extent, wondered the same. Annabel is kidnapped, tied up, caught in a bear trap, tossed around in a sack and doused in engine water. Is this woman being partially punished by the film? After all, it’s her demand that Johnnie turn his life upside down to fight in (what we know) will be a brutal war – and her kneejerk condemnation of him – that sets events in motion. Does she need this humbling to learn her lesson? It perhaps helps her and Johnnie become an ever more effective partnership on their flight back South, setting traps and keeping the engine going (with the odd comic misunderstanding, one of which sees Johnnie running down then back up a hill to reboard the train) that leads to their eventual reconciliation.

Interestingly, what’s less comfortable with The General today is its avoidance of the core issues of the civil war. Slavery never rears its head, and the film takes a largely sympathetic view of the romantic Southern gentlemen vs the nefarious Northerner, with their under-hand schemes. Peter Kramer, in an excellent BFI book, lays out a compelling argument that The General exposes, especially through its final battle sequence which sees real people die and a hapless Johnnie charging into heroics like a lost child, the dangerously blind embrace of violence in the South and a subtle criticism of a horrific war that led to so many needless deaths. While there might be beats of that under the surface here (especially if you are familiar with the shocking death toll of the war), it’s not enough to overcome the generally sympathetic view of the Confederacy and its leaders.

But politics is not at the heart of Keaton’s film. The appeal for him, just as for Johnnie, was that engine and, by extension, the glory of the chase. Only someone who loved trains as much as Keaton could have made such a guilty pleasure of plunging one thirty feet to its doom on camera. And in Johnnie Flynn he created a genuinely little-guy hero, a character who shared his dynamism and pluck and, above all, his love for all things mechanical.

The General isn’t a comedy really – there are few real belly laughs in it, and the film is played straight by all and sundry, devoid of reaction shots. Its laughs come in shock at its audacity, its epic scale and from how much it causes you to invest in the trials and tribulations of its lead character. It’s an action film that you embrace with fervent love, because it’s pure, unadulterated, cinematic beauty. It’s a masterpiece.

Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 (2023)

Action and impossible stunts continue to deliver entertainment in Cruise’s running and jumping franchise

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Hayley Atwell (Grace), Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell), Simon Pegg (Benji Dunn), Rebecca Ferguson (Ilsa Faust), Vanessa Kirby (Alanna Mitsopolis), Esai Morales (Gabriel), Pom Klementieff (Paris), Henry Czerny (Eugene Kittridge), Shea Whigham (Jasper Briggs), Cary Elwes (Director Denlinger), Greg Tarzen Davies (Degas), Frederick Schmidt (Zola Mitsopolis), Charles Parnell (NRO Director), Mark Gatiss (NSA Director), Indira Varma (NRO Director)

When they promote Mission: Impossible films, the stunts are front-and-centre. So much so that the film’s life-risking (what else?) stunt of the Cruiser driving a motorbike off a cliff and parachuting to safety was not only in every trailer but they even released a social medial film showing how it was done. Mission: Impossible films are thrill rides – and knowing what you are going to get doesn’t reduce the excitement of getting it. There’s plenty of excitement in Dead Reckoning Part 1 but that desire to entertain doesn’t always work when the film tries to tackle more emotional content.

Dead Reckoning starts, Hunt for Red October-like, with the sinking of a radar-invisible Russian sub (there is even a neat twist on that film’s switch from Russian to English). The disaster is caused by its AI supercomputer, known as The Entity. While intelligence agencies compete to control it, the Entity uses its ability to predict every outcome to plot world domination. The only threat it predicts? Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) of course. Ethan will stop at nothing to destroy this threat, in a country-hopping adventure with his regular team (Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Rebecca Ferguson) that rotates around mysterious thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) and a ruthless old enemy of Ethan’s, Gabriel (Esai Morales).

Dead Reckoning is, of course, huge fun. Shot over years, due to Covid (responsible for its budget ballooning to an eye watering $300 million) it never lets events go on too long without throwing in a twist and turn filled set-piece which plays off its lead characters’ skill under pressure. Despite the vast numbers of set-pieces, you rarely shift in your seat, because each is paced to perfection with just the right balance between tension and wit. That long shooting process also means its villainous AI plotline (clearly the makers binged on AI drama Person of Interest beforehand) seems zeitgeist rather than something from science fiction.

The film is a masterclass in shooting action. The recent Indiana Jones film threw in a seemingly never-ending three-way car chase. Dead Reckoning probably dedicates more time to its jaunt through the streets of Rome, but it’s always clever enough to keep shifting gears. We go from shoot-out, to Cruise and Atwell handcuffed together and awkwardly sharing the driving, to switching of cars (a ludicrous yellow mini which even Ethan can’t work out, impotently turning the windscreen wipers on and off), pratfall spins down the Spanish steps, all with a free-wheeling sense of improvisational fun that only comes from months of careful storyboarding and determination to never settle for “things move fast until they stop”.

Dead Reckoning is a reminder that no-one since Buster Keaton puts themselves through as much as Cruise does (it seems fitting the finale builds towards the biggest train crash since The General). It’s Cruise’s USP: he does it for real. Even at 60 he pushes himself in the way few actors have ever done. Run full-pelt through the streets of Venice? Climb along the roof of a speeding train? Fight two actors half his age in a cramped corridor? You can sort of understand why the film doesn’t shirk on dialogue paying tribute to Cruise/Ethan’s superhuman determination and endurance (and the film is a further reminder Ethan’s only flaw is caring too damn much).

Let’s not forget also Cruise pretty much produces and co-directs these missions. Dead Reckoning is a triumph of the producer’s art – McQuarrie and Cruise are practised experts at pulling together locations, resources and expertise. They are equally ace at assembling tense sequences that don’t involve death-defying stunts. A first act cat-and-mouse chase around a huge Dubai airport sees Cruise tracking Atwell, while dodging a US government team sent to capture him, while Pegg hunts for a suspicious bag, while Cruise is also tracked by Morales. None of this involves stunt work (although Cruise and Atwell both learned how to perform sleight-of-hand tricks in camera) just timing and an ability to constantly present events in a dynamic way. This is consummate box-office ride assembly, marshalled to perfection with all the skill of expert showmen.

The set pieces are so gripping, it sometimes draws your attention a little bit too much to how perfunctory all the joins can be. A host of British actors (Gatiss, Varma and rent-a-villain Cary Elwes) gather in a room to throw plot statements at each other. The conversations between the team are often dominated by the narrative need to establish who will go where and why. The script has a tendency to demonstrate how people feel by having them bluntly state it (“My friends matter more to me than anyone!”). When trying to be human, rather than a thrill ride, it can stumble.

It’s perhaps why the moments that aim for tragedy feel like they land slightly awkwardly, as if you aren’t quite sure how sad you should be feeling. Dead Reckoning throws in an emotional mid-act that strains for a depth a film primarily designed to entertain popcorn munchers, isn’t quite able to deliver on. Put simply, the film can’t afford to have Ethan get caught up in grief when ten minutes later we need an exasperated Cruise to jump off a mountain. This ride don’t stop for anyone.

The film also suffers from the characters spending the entire runtime chasing a mysterious key which they have no idea the purpose of, but the audience has had explained to us in that opening Russian prologue. This is a series that thrives best on carefully concealing things from us, on the characters having a card or two up their sleeves. It somehow doesn’t quite work that we are more aware of the bigger picture than the characters. It makes Dead Reckoning feel like an extended opening act.

But this ride is fun enough for now. Atwell is charming, funny and has superb chemistry with Cruise; Morales is a chillingly arrogant villain, Klementieff enigmatically vicious as a near-wordless henchman. Whigam and Davies are good fun as contrasting agents vainly chasing the uncatchable Ethan. And above them all is Cruise: jumping, running, diving, punching and generally putting life-and-limb on the line, all to entertain us. Maybe he is a bit mad, but it’s impossible not to applaud him.

Asteroid City (2023)

Anderson’s quirk filled film is a triumph of his own style but lacks the depth of his best work

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Jason Schwartzman (Augie Steenbeck/Jones Hall), Scarlett Johansson (Midge Campbell/Mercedes Ford), Tom Hanks (Stanley Zak), Jeffrey Wright (General Gibson), Tilda Swinton (Dr. Hickenlooper), Bryan Cranston (Host), Edward Norton (Conrad Earp), Adrien Brody (Schubert Green), Liev Schreiber (J.J. Kellogg), Hope Davis (Sandy Borden), Stephen Park (Roger Cho), Rupert Friend (Montana), Maya Hawke (June Douglas), Steve Carell (Motel manager), Matt Dillon (Mechanic), Hong Chau (Polly), Willem Dafoe (Saltzburg Keitel), Jake Ryan (Woodrow), Grace Edwards (Dinah), Aristou Meehan (Clifford), Sophia Lillis (Shelly), Ethan Josh Lee (Ricky)

Every time I go and see a Wes Anderson film, I hope I might fall in love again. Eventually, I’ll find something in Anderson’s overly distinctive, quirky style that I love as much as The Grand Budapest Hotel. Maybe the romantic in me is dying, because I think its never going to happen. Certainly it doesn’t with Asteroid City a film I sat watching thinking “I know some people will love this more than life itself, but for me sitting here it feels like waiting for the rapture”.

Asteroid City is another of Anderson’s films that’s an intricate puzzle box where the pieces shift like the brightly coloured squares on a Rubrik’s cube. It’s filtered through several layers of remove: we watch a 50s TV announcer (Bryan Cranston) introduce a stage performance of a playwright’s (Edward Norton) long-running play that is itself an entrée to a wide-screen, technicolour production of a host of eccentrics, including a recently widowed photographer (Jason Schwartzman), his grouchy father-in-law (Tom Hanks), a glamourous Hollywood star (Scarlett Johansson) and several others accompanying their kids to a remote town in the desert for a young stargazing and science competition co-sponsored by an army general (Jeffrey Wright), when the whole town is thrown into quarantine after a stop-motion alien drops in, looks around and flies off.

Somewhere in Asteroid City there is an interesting, slightly sad, meditation on grief, loss and ennui struggling to get out. The alien arrival makes everyone question the nature of the universe and their place in it. It’s easy to see the influence of Covid on a town flung into quarantine, and the resulting state of uncertainty throwing everyone off kilter. We are following a man who has recently lost his wife, being played in this film-within-a-play-within-a-TV-show by an actor who was (we discover) recently lost his own partner. At one point this actor asks the director if he is ‘doing it right’, if he is getting the emotion or the author’s intention: “just tell the story” the director (Adrien Brody) responds. I think that’s part of a message about just live and let the big questions take care of themselves, of trusting that we can do our loved ones proud. That’s an interesting, rewarding point.

But it’s lost in Anderson’s pitiless device, his never-ending quirk and the deliberately distancing, artificial nature of his world and the monotonous, arch delivery his script, camera work and editing imposes on a series of actors. What this film desperately misses is a leading player with the strength and independence of a Ralph Fiennes or a Gene Hackman: someone who can bring depth and a sense of reality to the stylised Anderson world, while still delivering something perfectly in keeping with his tone. To put it bluntly, Schwartzman is, to put it bluntly, not a sufficiently engaging or interesting actor to communicate his character’s inner turmoil under the surface which the film’s inner meaning requires. He too naturally, and trustingly, settles into the Anderson rhythm.

In this crucial role, he’s a misfire. With our leading player too much of an artificial character, someone we never believe is anything other than a construct of the film’s author, inhabited by a collaborator who doesn’t bring the independence or new vision the director needs, the more the deeper emotional layers of the film are drowned. Instead, the film becomes a crushing onslaught of style and trickery, devoid of any sense of reality at any point.

It eventually makes the film feel overly smug, too pleased with-itself, too taken with its intricate, tricksy construction. It is of course a triumph of art design and the photography is gorgeous, from the black-and-white of the TV studio and theatre, to the 60s tinged, artificial world of Asteroid City, crammed with its obviously fake skylines and vistas and technicolour inspired feel. That at least its impossible not to admire. But it’s also a mighty artificial trap that enfolds the entire film – and eventually the audience – in a world of weightless, arch, eyebrow-cocked commentary that promises a lot but winds up saying almost nothing of any interest.

There are performances to admire. Scarlett Johansson is very droll and finds some depths as an star actress struggling with a concealed depression. Tom Hanks looks most like the actor who feels like he can break out of the Anderson mould and discover some genuine emotion. Jeffrey Wright demonstrates few actors can do Anderson dialogue better than him, Bryan Cranston very droll and perfectly observed as Ed Murrow style TV man and Adrien Brody is loose, fun and inventive as the play’s director. But yet its everything inside this framework that feels somehow empty.

What I want from Anderson is someone to come in and shake him up, to point out that he is not betraying his aesthetics or style by injecting a small dose of reality and humanity into it. When he has done that in the past – moments in Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and, above all, The Grand Budapest Hotel – he has delivered movies that are inventive, fun and playful but also carry real, lasting emotional impact. When he delivers in-jokes like Asteroid City, it feels like a party you have been invited to where everyone speaks in some made-up language they’ve not told you about in advance. And after not very long, all you want to do is to get up and leave.

Pather Panchali (1955)

Satyajit Ray’s first film in his glorious Apu trilogy is one of the finest neo-realist films about childhood ever made

Director: Satyajit Ray

Cast: Kanu Banerjee (Harihar), Karuna Banerjee (Sarbajaya), Subir Banerjeee (Apu), Uma Das Gupta (Durga), Chunibala Devi (“Auntie” Indir Thakrun), Shampa Banerjee (Young Durga), Reba Devi (Sejo Thakrun), Aparna Devi (Nilmoni’s wife), Tulsi Chakraborty (Schoolteacher), Binoy Mukherjee (Baidyanath Majumdar)

The filming of Panther Panchali is almost as famous as the film itself. Ray set up on the first day of shooting having never made a film before, working with a cinematographer who had never shot a roll of film before and two inexperienced child actors he had not auditioned. He shot the sequence of quiet, observant young Apu (Subir Banerjeee) and his rebellious older sister Durga (Uma Das Gupta) walk in awed wonder through a field to discover a train whooshing by. Ray later wrote he learned more that day “than from a hundred books”. You can tell: so majestical, magical and mesmerising is the sequence (admittedly the one we see in the film was a reshoot) you can’t believe it was made by a novice. It was the centre-piece of Ray scrapping together funding for the rest.

Pather Panchali was adapted from the novel Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay – in a stunning act of loyalty, Bandyopadhyay’s widow turned down a large sum from a production company for the rights because she had promised them to Ray. Ray turned it into a masterful slice of life, that expressed everything he had worshipped from the neo-realism of Rossellini and De Sica (The Bicycle Thieves, which Ray adored, is surely Pather Panchali’s father) and the detailed, masterful camerawork of Jean Renior (who Ray and photographer Subrata Mitra had witnessed at work on The River). It became Ray’s calling card, and a pivotal moment in Indian cinema, a masterpiece that helped redefine the artistic boundaries of the country’s film industry as well as an award-winning international hit.

It’s a sedate, gentle, un-bombastic but quietly moving and engrossing drama focused on the nitty-gritty of life. Set in a small Indian village in the 1910s, we follow the lives of pre-teen Apu, a dreamer who takes after his Micawberish father Harihar (Kanu Banerjee) and his close relationship with his sister Durga, whose penchant for rebellion and stealing causes no end of strive with their harassed mother Sarbajaya (Karuna Banerjee). The family lives in poverty and Sarbajaya carries the burden, driven to quiet, repressed despair at the stress of constantly making ends meet and increasingly resentful of Harihar’s elderly relative “Auntie” Indir (Chunibala Devi) who she sees as taking but offering nothing. Despite, this we follow the childish delight Apu and Durga see in the world around them, a world in which darkness eventually (inevitably) intrudes.

Some have argued Ray’s film – and the subsequent films that followed in this landmark trilogy – had such international impact because it fit naturally into international perceptions of India as a rural, poverty-stricken nation. But that’s to do a disservice to the emotional humanism of Ray’s work and the universal themes of childhood, family and the fears of not being able to provide for it.

Pather Panchali, for all the lyrical beauty which Ray shoots it with, is cold-eyed and serious about poverty. There is nothing noble and sentimental about having no money to afford food. The strain of it is carving lines into the face of Sarbajaya, reduced to quietly pawning what possessions they have and frustratingly berating the dreaming Harihar who believes a career as a writer is just round the corner. The shame of poverty is a major theme: Sarbajaya cares nothing if Harihar’s employers are made aware of the family’s desperate need to for the money they owe him, but she will not countenance the shame of accepting charity from neighbours. Debts are repaid as a priority, at several points a relative’s offering of a few rupees is adamantly refused and Sarbajaya is appalled and shocked by Durga’s habit of stealing fruit from a local orchard owned by the village elders.

That orchard was once the property of Harihar – and its more than implied he was conned out of it by the villagers over imaginary debts. Its where we first encounter the young Durga, a delightful, playful and inquisitive child, running free and unashamedly stealing fruit and bringing it home for herself and “Auntie”. Its just another reason for Sarbajaya to resent the presence of this old woman in her household, as well as the close bond “Auntie” has with both her children, with Sarbajaya constantly playing the role of harsh authority figure.

The constant refrain of the train whistle at crucial points from the distant train tracks serves as a reminder of the possibility of change and escape. But it also means to the children a wider world of excitement and opportunity. Pather Panchali is about a child’s eye view of the world – we are literally introduced to the child Apu with a close-up shot of his eye has Durga wakes him for school. Ray’s film carefully follows their experiences and innocence, where every day presents the possibility of adventure and wonder. The struggles of the adults are unknown for them.

Pather Panchali is a great film about childhood. Apu and Durga run through fields, play and fight, share a deep and caring bond. They follow sweet sellers, wonder at the arrival of theatre troupes and brass bands, stare in awe at projected images of Indian landmarks. The entire village and its countryside is a wonderland to them, and the problems of life are something that they don’t need to concern themselves with. Ray shoots the film with a realism tinged with a pre-Tarvoksky love for the beauty of nature: lingering shots follow raindrops on lakes, the willowy blowing of plants in the fields and the movements of nature.

Through it all he draws superb performances from the children, frequently cutting to reaction shots that ground us in a children’s-eye-view of the world. It’s all there in the magic of that pursuit of the train. The freedom of the fields, the joy of running, the mystery of distant sounds and then the impactful glory of the train itself. Alongside this, there is a beautifully judged score by Ravi Shankar that captures both the mood of this humble village life, but also the exurberance of childhood.

It can’t last though. Mortality and tragedy intrude on this life. And just as Ray shot joy with a simplicity that carried a magical pull, so he calmly and unobtrusively observes pain and suffering in a way that will tear your heart out. The film’s episodic look at life becomes darker and more painful, rewarding the patient viewer (and you do need patience for Ray’s leisurely pace) with a powerful connection with the characters – and a final shot that leaves you longing to know what will happen to them.

Beautifully paced, atmospheric and immersed in a world that feels very real, Pather Panchali feels like the work of a master, not the plucky work of debutante. Perhaps that was a result of the nearly two years Ray took to make the film (he couldn’t believe his luck that the children did not noticeably age), allowed him the time few film-makers have to find every single moment of beauty in his story. Or perhaps he was simply that good to begin with. Either way, it became a landmark film – and led to a swiftly answered call for the story of Apu to be continued.

Go West (1925)

Keaton meets his finest leading lady – a cow – in this adorably charming comedy

Director: Buster Keaton

Cast: Buster Keaton (Friendless), Howard Truesdale (Ranch owner), Kathleen Myers (Ranch owner’s daughter), Ray Thompson (Ranch foreman)

Keaton had been unconvinced by Seven Chances, the theatrical farce he’d been asked to film that saw him chased left, right and centre by women. Perhaps his reaction to playing a somewhat cold man pursuing and pursued by ladies persuaded him to try something completely different. What if he could make a film where he removed the “romantic” girl from the equation altogether? Could Keaton make an affecting comedy where his character’s strongest bond is to a cow?

Go West is Keaton back to his best, a glorious Western spoof (a happy return to the grounds of Our Hospitality). Keaton is Friendless, a hard-working guy adrift in the cut-and-thrust of the world. So much so that, visiting New York, he is literally trampled by bustling crowds. He heads out West to try his luck, becoming a ranch hand on a farm. There he finally meets someone who sees him as a friend – ‘Blue Eyes’, a cow who like him is an outcast from the herd. For the first time both of them has a friend – but what will Friendless do when Blue Eyes is to be packed off to a Los Angeles slaughterhouse?

You would never think that a man and a cow could be as sweet as they are together in this film. Keaton spent almost a month with the cow who plays Blue Eyes, going everywhere with her, feeding her and spending weeks with her. By the time they came to filming, the cow followed him without the slightest hesitation and never once seemed anything less than completely comfortable in his presence. Keaton (half) joked he never had a better leading lady than Blue Eyes – and his earnest, gentle and sincere playing of this friendship between man and beast gives Go West its heart.

Taking a gentle pop at DW Griffith again – Friendless and Blue Eyes both share names with leading characters from the director’s Intolerance – Keaton creates a film that many have called his one excursion into pathos but, for me, is all about creating character and story and having it service comedy. The laughs come faster for me in Go West than a farce like The Navigator because Keaton invests real warmth into this unlikely screen partnership. You invest in their story – these two outsiders, lonely and illtreated on the ranch, who find themselves as unlikely soul mates – and once you have that investment, you laugh along with their exploits.

Keaton also creates a variation on his usual character. Friendless is stoic but unlike other Keaton characters, he’s not bumbling or naïve, instead he seems to have accepted that he has no place in the world of men. Unlike other Keaton characters, he’s got an impressive ability to teach himself new skills rather than relying heavily on imitating others and reading instruction manuals. Friendless, slowly, picks up the skills of a ranch hand himself. Sure, he bungles his first attempts – his hilariously poor saddling of a horse (the saddle almost on the horses’ rump) being a case in point – but give him time and he’ll get there.

He’ll even win odd moments of respect. He gets two bulls back into the pen through skilful, unfazed, use of a red handkerchief (two ranch hands look on in grudging respect). He improvises an elastic string for his tiny pistol which works surprisingly well. He spots a cheat in a card-game and then skilfully disarms him (by placing his finger in the way of the trigger). In the film’s closing act – where a herd of bulls walk wildly around Los Angeles – he’s able to herd them back together with a great deal of skill, cunning and improvisation. He’s he’s undeniably good at the things he does – and gets better.

Go West has several great jokes, many of them initially based around Friendless’ place as an outsider. Selling his remaining goods to a pawnbroker in the films opening, he forgets to remove his shaving kit and mother’s picture from a desk: of course, the pawnbroker immediately charges him for taking the goods (making his money back in moments). On the ranch, Friendless inevitably times his arrival at the daily meals with everyone else finishing up and leaving the table, forcing Friendless to leave as well (he doesn’t eat for days on this ranch). His clumsy attempts at ranch life leads to several pratfalls of inevitable high-standard.

But it all starts to change as he forms a friendship with Blue Eyes. He’ll bend over backwards to help her. He’ll stay up all night with a gun to protect her from wolves. He’ll strap antlers to her head to help her ward off bulls. He’ll shave a brand (thank goodness he grabbed that shaving kit) into her back to save her from the fire. And he’ll raise what money he can to try and buy her and, when that fails, he’ll jump on a train to travel with her to save her.

It leads into the film’s action packed third act. It starts with a classic Keaton piece of business. Trying to earn the money to buy Blue Eyes, he buys into a rigged poker game. Calling the dealer on cheating, the ranch hand pulls a gun and orders Keaton “When you say that – SMILE”. Will cinema’s most famous stony-faced comic finally crack a grin? It’s a lovely in-joke – and Keaton’s two fingered mouth push grin the perfect response, as his ingeniously shrewd solution to prevent violence. Jumping on a train from here (this is another classic train sequence from a Keaton film) he dodges bullets from an attack from outlaws and ends up the only man on board with an army of cows.

The final sequence – a series of sight gags as cows invade shops, Turkish baths and street stalls in Los Angeles before Keaton dons a red-devil suit to lead them back into a holding pens in a perverse twist on Seven Chances – is sometimes overlong, but offers plenty of delights. But none match the sweetness and innocence of that friendship between man and cow. Keaton’s chemistry with Blue Eyes – and his understanding that the beauty of silence makes animals as legitimate characters in many ways as humans – shines out. It gives the film a real heart and tenderness that grounds all the jokes in something real, as well as providing the film with real stakes (because, after all, Blue Eyes is in danger of being turned into one).

Go West is often overlooked in the Keaton CV but, despite being a fraction overlong, it’s a warm, tender and sweet story packed with excellent gags. This isn’t manipulative pathos – instead this is Keaton using humanity to deliver a unique sort of pure romance. This is possibly one of the finest films about friendship ever made – and Blue Eyes stands with Balthasar as one of the greatest animal actors on screen.

Agnes of God (1985)

A chamber piece play is expanded into something less enigmatic or satisfying

Director: Norman Jewison

Cast: Jane Fonda (Dr Martha Livingston), Anne Bancroft (Mother Miriam Ruth), Meg Tilly (Sister Agnes Devereaux), Anne Pitoniak (Mrs Livingston), Winston Rekert (Detective Langevin), Guy Hoffman (Justice Joseph Leveau)

In a Montreal convent a naïve, other-worldly young novice, Sister Agnes Devereaux (Meg Tilly), has given bloody birth to a baby, that now lies strangled in a waste paper bin. The courts must decide if Sister Agnes is fit and capable of standing trial. That decision will be based on the recommendation of hard-smoking psychiatrist and atheist Dr Martha Livingston (Jane Fonda). Spending time with the devout young woman, Dr Livingston finds herself drawn to her and determined to discover why this girl who knows nothing of sex became pregnant. But she also butts heads with Mother Miriam (Anne Bancroft), the stern head of the convent, equally determined to protect Sister Agnes.

Jewison’s film – adapted by original playwright John Pielmeier – is a not entirely successful transfer of a three-hander chamber piece into cinema. The play, at its best as a series of monologues and duologues, deliberately left events open to interpretation: we have only their words and recollections to base conclusions on, all within an increasingly claustrophobic single-room set. Much of that pressure is lost in this film version, exposing instead the play’s flaws.

The “opening out” of the play focuses on introducing new characters and scenes. Unfortunately, these tend to stick out like sore thumbs. They invariably involve Dr Livingston talking to thinly sketched characters outside of the convent, who deliver stilted and dull dialogue that feels like clumsy padding. Members of the Canadian court take her on and off the case. A priest suggests she has an anti-Church bias. A brief visit to her Alzheimer’s suffering mother. A detective boyfriend passes her the odd file. All of these encounters feel exactly like what they are: scenes introduced solely so that we can see people other than the three principals.

They contrast greatly with the weightier and more engaging scenes between the three women, the meat of which is carried across from the stage play. Played with a high-pitched, breathless naivety by Meg Tilly (Oscar-nominated), Agnes is almost child-like in her interpretation of what the Lord demands of her and seems barely capable of understanding the adult world she finds herself in. She is enthralled by the ringing of bells and the sound of birds. She wants to make herself the perfect image of what she believes God wants.

It demands every inch of Dr Livingston’s professional expertise and ability to draw confidences and make psychological leaps to begin to understand this godly young woman’s psyche. Fonda is very good in a part that demands hard work with none of the flashy histrionics the other two roles have. Fonda makes Livingston a consummate professional, with a touch (not least in her constant parade of cigarettes) of the maverick to her, someone who never takes no for an answer and constantly drills deeper and deeper.

In many ways this makes her a kindred spirit for Anne Bancroft’s (also Oscar-nominated) Mother Miriam. Late to her calling, Bancroft brilliantly embraces a big, chewy part as a seemingly stern, slightly exasperated stereotypical head nun who reveals reservoirs of humanity and a strong sense of duty of care for her charges. It’s a standard twist on the grouchy older character who hides an affectionate smile, but Bancroft performs it with gusto and cements her clashes with Livingston in genuine resentment at the doctor’s initially glib assumptions about life in the convent.

The debates and confrontations between Miriam and Martha – and their attempts to both protect and draw truths from Sister Agnes – are the dramatic meat of the film and by far its most engaging moments. The problem is, the film’s attempt to expand these points with flashbacks and the grim reality of the camera undermines the suggestiveness of the original play,.

Like Equus – which demonstrated how real horses and a graphic horse-blinding scene can make a thoughtful play crude and clumsy on film – Agnes of God falls back into a POV flashback of choral singing, flying doves and undefined shadows to try and picture how Sister Agnes became pregnant. The implication seems clear that this was therefore something supernatural in this. (The film’s unsubtle love of stigmata blood smeared on various white clothes and walls hammer this home further.) What on earth does the film want us to take from that?

Especially as it ends with a confused up-beat ending, with an idyllic looking Sister Agnes (very different from the play’s bleak final monologue for Dr Livingston). If, as Sister Agnes (and maybe a part of Mother Miriam) believes, this child was conceived by God, what on earth does the film want us to make of Sister Agnes murdering (presumably) the second coming? When Sister Agnes, under hypnosis, rants and raves about her hatred for God, is she talking literally – or are we meant to think it is because the Lord has let a bad thing happen to her?

It ends up feeling incredibly unsatisfying, raising questions around faith and divinity, but pointedly running away from them and any implications they might raise. A braver film would have either kept the original’s inscrutability, or it would have dived into a truly critical look at religion and a world where God (at the very least) allows suffering. Agnes of God does neither. Despite good performances, it substitutes unsubtle bluntness for suggestion and insinuation.