Category: Directors

Skyfall (2012)

Skyfall (2012)

Bold, beautiful and brilliant Skyfall is probably my favourite Bond film ever – sorry folks!

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: Daniel Craig (James Bond), Judi Dench (M), Javier Bardem (Raoul Silva), Ralph Fiennes (Gareth Mallory), Naomie Harris (Eve), Bérénice Marlohe (Sévérine), Albert Finney (Kincade), Ben Whishaw (Q), Rory Kinnear (Bill Tanner), Ola Rapace (Patrice), Helen McCrory (Clair Dowar MP)

As I watched Skyfall for the umpteenth time it suddenly occurred to me. I know I should say Goldfinger but I think this might just be both my favourite and the best James Bond film ever made. Released to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Doctor No, Skyfall manages to be an anniversary treat the celebrates Bond not with an ocean of call-backs but by telling a gripping story which plays to the star’s strengths and riffs imaginatively in both a literal and a metaphorical sense with our understanding of the legacy of the world’s best-known secret agent.

After a mission gone wrong leaves a list of undercover agents out in the open and Bond (Daniel Craig) presumed dead, MI6 comes under fire from a secret assailant seemingly determined to destroy the reputation of M (Judi Dench). With M already hanging on by a thread after that disastrous mission – Chairman of the JIC Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) is threatening her with removal – she has no choice but to lure Bond out of hiding and back into the spy game. But is the slightly out-of-shape, wounded spy ready for the challenge? The trial to find their mysterious enemy leads to Shanghai, Macau and the secretive island home of Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a Bond-like former British agent with a vendetta against M. Cure a battle of wits and wills between ‘these two last rats standing’.

Skyfall pretty much does everything right. Directed with verve, energy, intelligence and wit by Sam Mendes at the top of his game (Skyfall restored him to the front rank of British film directors), it mixes sensational action with well-acted, equally exciting character beats. It gets the balance exactly right – in the way that Quantum of Solace failed – between giving you the thrills but also really investing you in the drama. And it builds towards a final face-off that is, almost uniquely in the series, small-scale, intimate and personal (admittedly via a conflagration that consumes an ancestral Scottish castle and most of the Highlands). There is so much to enjoy here that you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be entertained. No wonder it’s the franchises biggest hit.

Mendes was brought on board at the suggestion (and persuasion) of Craig, eager to work with directors who would be recognise character was at least as important as fast cars and explosions, but also had the skill to deliver both. Skyfall is perfectly constructed to play to Craig’s strengths. His Bond reaches its zenith, a world-weary cynic with a strong vein of sarcasm, covering up deeply repressed unreconciled trauma. Craig is wonderful at conveying this under a naughty-boy grin.

Skyfall dials down the romance, Craig’s weakest string – it’s the only film in the franchise with no Bond girl (after QoS where, for the first time, Bond didn’t sleep with the Bond girl). Aside from a brief fling (with a character who is, perhaps a little tastelessly, all to dispensable – the fate of Sévérine being fudged with an uncomfortable flippancy) it’s Judi Dench who is the really ‘Bond Girl’ here. Judi Dench is fabulous in her swan-song, from taking the tough calls, voicing small regrets and quoting Tennyson. Skyfall acknowledges the surrogate parent relationship between M and Bond, something that was there from the day of Connery – every M has always inspired a filial loyalty from their 007. It’s a loyalty Skyfall reveals M ruthlessly exploits, extracting personal dedication from a host of agents, including both Bond and Silva – a man who (only half-jokingly) repeatedly calls her “Mummy” and has redefined his life around taking revenge on her.

It makes a gift of a part for Javier Bardem, channelling his eccentricity into a character who often yings when he should yang. When he’s angry he laughs, when he’s overjoyed he gets quieter. Softly-spoken, almost effeminate, he’s also a ruthless killer – his studied manner of unpredictability a superb reflection of Bond’s own tightly constructed personality. Even their first meeting together is unusual and different – far from threatening Bond, Silva seems intent on seducing him, batting his eyes, stroking his bare chest with a finger and all but inviting him for a quickie (Bond’s classic response – “What makes you think this is my first time?” surely launched a thousand slash fictions).

There is a fabulously, just-below-the-line meta slice of fun going on in Skyfall. It brings Bond back from the dead (after its pulsating opening scene ends with him falling lifelessly to a watery grave), but burdens him with a host of scars. In a series of MI6 tests he completely misses a target, collapses to the floor after a workout, blows a psychological test and is repeatedly told he’s a borderline alcoholic. (In case we miss the point, Q meets him in front of Turner’s Fighting Temeraire and pointedly comments on the over-the-hill wreck being dragged back to port). Back in the field, his gunshot wounded shoulder gives out while holding onto the underside of a rising lift and Silva asks the question we’ve all asked at time or another: Mr Bond hasn’t it all gone on long enough?

While it can seem odd that two films ago Craig was introduced as a fresh-faced youngster and now embodies all fifty years of franchise ‘mileage’, it doesn’t really matter since he so triumphantly (of course!) reasserts his relevance. It’s a lovely, not too heavy-handed, piece of meta-commentary I think is both funny and human. It also means most of the call-backs to the gloried past of the franchise are metaphorical rather than literal – making a huge change from the Easter Egg stuffed nonsense you get from other franchises. It also means the one major piece of fanservice – the return of the Goldfinger car (the film is hilariously vague on whether this means Craig’s Bond and Connery’s Bond are one-and-the-same, a thing that really annoys some people who should really get a life) – really lands with a punch-the-air delight.

Skyfall is similarly astute with its characters. When Ralph Fiennes’ Gareth Mallory is introduced, we take him for an obstructive bureaucrat, flying his desk. Each scene in Fiennes’ perfectly pitched performance peels away layers to reveal a hardened professional (a decorated Army Colonel no less) and ally. It’s hard not to cheer when he takes up arms during Silva’s attack on a Parliamentary committee (with a gunshot wound no less) just as it’s hilarious to see Bond teasingly wink at Mallory before shooting out a fire extinguisher right next to him. Q returns, embodied by a perfectly cast Ben Whishaw, as a computer genius (in another gag at the franchise he’s scornful of ‘exploding pens’ and such like gadgets). Naomi Harris is very good as (it’s probably not a surprise any more to say) a Miss Moneypenny who’s a field agent in her own right. Skyfall even cheekily serves as a sort of back-door ‘origins’ story, leaving us with a very Fleming-Universal-Exports set-up.

It throws this all together with some sensational action scenes. The opening sequence is one of the best in the series, a manic chase through Istanbul that starts on foot in a darkened room (a nice reminder of M’s ruthlessness that she orders Bond to abandon to his certain death an injured agent) cars, bikes on rooftops, trains, diggers on trains and train rooftops (via a witty cufflink adjustment). There is a gorgeously shot fight-scene in a Shanghai rooftop (Roger Deakins pretty much makes Skyfall the most beautiful looking Bond film there has ever been) and a pulsating (and very witty) chase through the London Underground before that gripping Parliamentary committee gunfight. Mendes mixes excitement with plenty of neat jokes throughout and it works a treat – and the film plummets along at such speed you can forgive the little nits you can pick (like how does Silva know where to plant a bomb on the underground eh? And why did that train have no passengers?).

It culminates in a Home Alone inspired booby-trap rigged house in Scotland (wisely a Sean Connery cameo idea was nixed, with the legendary Albert Finney cast instead) and an Oedipal confrontation in a tiny Highlands church. At the end, it gave us thrills while bringing Bond home (in every sense) and was brave enough to focus on excellent actors play in a human story of regret, loss and betrayal. It’s a film which positively delighted me in the cinema and hasn’t stopped thrilling me the innumerable times I’ve seen it since then. And I can’t imagine it won’t continue to do so!

The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)

The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)

A visionary struggles against the blind in this genre-defining slightly cosy biopic

Director: William Dieterle

Cast: Paul Muni (Louis Pasteur), Josephine Hutchinson (Marie Pasteur), Anita Louise (Annette Pasteur), Donald Woods (Dr. Jean Martel), Fritz Leiber (Dr. Charbonnet), Henry O’Neill (Dr. Emile Roux), Porter Hall (Dr. Rossignol), Raymond Brown (Dr. Radisse), Akim Tamiroff (Dr. Zaranoff), Halliwell Hobbes (Dr. Joseph Lister), Frank Reicher (Dr. Pfeiffer)

Jack Warner was convinced no one would want to watch the life story of some crusty old scientist. But Paul Muni insisted they would – and he was a star – so with a threadbare budget and host of re-used costumes (many not from the correct period) and sets The Story of Louis Pasteur came to the screen – and much to Warner’s surprise was a hit. It can look like an oddly cliché-ridden affair today: until you realise many biopic tropes we’re used to were virtually coined here.

The Story of Louis Pasteur remixes huge portions of Pasteur’s life to make it more dramatic: the man who was the leading scientist in France for almost thirty years is repackaged as an outsider and laughing stock, constantly scorned by the medical establishment until (but of course!) he is triumphantly hailed as a genius by the same doctors who mocked him for years. Sound familiar? The film charts Pasteur’s efforts to discover vaccines, first for anthrax in sheep (leading to a famous test where 25 sheep were vaccinated and 25 were not, then all of them exposed to the disease, killing all the unvaccinated sheep) then rabies in dogs and treating those bitten by rabid dogs. Pasteur uses his unparalleled knowledge of microbes which (but of course!) every other doctor says cannot possibly have anything to do with infection.

There is a lot to enjoy in The Story of Louis Pasteur, an undeniably old-fashioned “Great Men” view of history that manages to turn bacteriology into effective entertainment. It recasts history into an easily digestible tale of visionaries and scoffers – but, crucially, no real baddies – crafting a series of small steps towards scientific discoveries into flashes of inspiration and triumphant revelations. Science is made simple, plain and understandable with Pasteur to talk us through a few shots of microbes under microscopes. At its centre we have a stubborn maverick determined that it is his way or the high-way and who won’t listen for a second to anyone questioning his theories.

There is something rather touching about the film’s admiration for science and celebration of an altruistic quest to make the world a better place. It carefully outlines the dangers of surgery and poor hygiene in medical practice – it opens with a doctor murdered for failing to save his killer’s wife, the reason for his failure pretty clear from the haphazard way he chucks medical equipment into a bag (dropping some of it on the floor en route). This lack of hygiene affects rich and poor (even Duchesses are not safe), in particular women in childbirth. Its truly the enemy of mankind, as a caption explaining the 1870 war stresses (European squabbles being a distant second). This is a problem that is truly noble to take on.

And it motivates Pasteur. Paul Muni is on Oscar-winning form as Pasteur, brilliantly precise and superbly conveying great intelligence mixed with an arrogant self-assurance. But Pasteur’s egotism comes not from vanity but from simply knowing more of which he speaks than anyone else. He’s also a man consumed by a sense of duty to the world: when his work can literally save lives (be they either animal or human) he will not let scorn stand in his way. Muni captures all this wonderfully, creating a prickly man with a playful streak determined to do the right thing the right way (Pasteur may disagree with his critics, but woe-betide their assistants disrespectfully doing the same).

Dieterle’s film crafts a series of excellent set-pieces to present Pasteur as a visionary ahead of his time. To make this really land, he’s therefore completely altered into being seen as a crank and pariah by everyone around him, rather than the influential scientific leader he actually was. This might be poor history, but it’s much better drama. From a furious encounter with Napoleon III (who won’t wear the idea his hand-picked doctors might be wrong about sterilization) to the Medical Academy publicly poo-poohing Pasteur’s outlandish ideas that vaccines might prevent anthrax. To give a face to this mocking of Pasteur (from an establishment we are told is totally wrong on every count) the film invents Dr Charbonnet (well played by Fritz Leiber), an honest but pig-headed critic who exists to be wrong (for noble reasons) on almost every single issue.

Noble as important: this film want to stress everyone acts for decent reasons, so that its final celebration of Pasteur is unblemished by deeply personal rivalry. Charbonnet and Pasteur are both framed as decent men and their relationship allows for plenty of fun melodrama, such as Charbonnet injecting himself with Pasteur’s (fortunately for him) weak rabies sample to ‘expose’ his ideas. When Pasteur’s daughter falls ill in childbirth, but of course Charbonnet is the only doctor available: he humours Pasteur’s sterilisation rules in exchange for a signed letter from Pasteur rubbishing his own theories (Muni’s shuffling flash of conflict that flows across his face at this moment is very well done). But of course, Charbonnet and Pasteur eventually reconcile in honour and decency.

This forms a fun thread throughout the movie, that’s never less than well-staged by Dieterle, with pace and energy. The anthrax test is very dynamic – all celebrating crowds and circus side-shows – and the dramatic appearance of a host of Russian peasants (led by Akim Tamiroff’s bombastic doctor) desperate for a cure for rabies-induced sickness is well-executed. Some beats work less well than others. Donald Woods gets dealt a rotten hand as the dull son-in-law of Pasteur. The women in Pasteur’s family get even worse, with most of Josephine Hutchinson’s lines being of the “stop trying to cure anthrax and come to bed Louis” variety. The costumes are bizarrely all-over-the-place (the women look more like Southern Belles) and there is a reassuring cosiness about everything.

But that’s also one of its most successful features. The Story of Louis Pasteur is a little twee – but it’s also effective. It’s why it laid down a template that worked for countless films that follow (A Beautiful Mind pretty much follows its model and won an Oscar for it 65 years later). That’s because there is also a feel-good factor to see someone who is, without doubt, in the right triumphing over the stubborn. With a great performance by Muni, it’s a rewardingly entertaining biopic.

Dune: Part 2 (2024)

Dune: Part 2 (2024)

Villeneuve’s triumphant sequel continues to raise the bar for science fiction films

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet (Paul ‘Muad-Dib’ Atreides), Zendaya (Chani), Rebecca Ferguson (Lady Jessica), Javier Bardem (Stilgar), Josh Brolin (Gurney Halleck), Austin Butler (Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen), Florence Pugh (Princess Irulan), Dave Bautista (Rabban Harkonnen), Christopher Walken (Emperor Shaddam IV), Léa Seydoux (Lady Margot Fenring), Souheila Yacoub (Shishakli), Stellan Skarsgård (Baron Vladimir Harkonnen), Charlotte Rampling (Gaius Helen Mohaim)

Denis Villeneuve had already taken on the near-impossible in adapting the unfilmable Dune into a smash-hit admired by both book-fans and initiates. In doing so he set himself an even greater task: how do you follow that? Dune Part 2 (and this is very much Part 2, picking up minutes after the previous film ended) deepens some of the universe building, but also veers the story off into complex, challenging directions that fly in the face of those expecting the sort of “hero will rise” narrative the first Dune seemed to promise. Dune Part 2 becomes an unsettling exploration of faith, colonialism and cultural manipulation, all wrapped up in its epic design.

Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) have escaped the clutches of their rivals House Harkonnen and it’s corrupt, sadistic leader Baron Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgård). Escaping into the deserts of Arrakis, they take shelter with the Fremen, vouched for by tribal leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem). It transpires Paul fits many of the conditions of the prophecy of the Mahdi or Lisan al Gaib, the promised messiah of the Fremen. Paul is uncomfortable with this – and the growing devotion of the likes of Stilgar – but also recognises the potential this has for marshalling the Fremen for his own revenge on the Harkonnen’s. Its further complicated by his knowledge the prophecy was embedded into their culture by the mysterious Bene Gesseri, the religious order that quietly controls much of the Empire, not to mention the hostility of Chani (Zendaya) the woman he loves, as she believes the Fremen should save themselves not rely on an outsider.

These complex ideas eventually shape a film that avoids simple good-vs-evil narratives and subtly undermines the very concept of the saviour narrative. Dune’s roots in a mix of Lord of the Rings and Lawrence of Arabia have rarely been clearer. Not least in the perfect casting of the slightly androgenous and fey Timothée Chalamet as Paul (with more than a hint of Peter O’Toole), barely knowing who he is, drawn towards and standing outside an indigenous community based on strong tribal loyalty, tradition and the grim reality of life in a hostile environment. 

A large part of Dune 2 deconstructs Paul’s heroism and his (and Jessica’s) motives. When Jessica – who takes on a religious figurehead role with the Fremen – starts stage-managing events to exactly match the words of the prophecy, does that count as a fulfilment? Paul is deeply uncomfortable with positioning himself as messianic figure for an entire race, effectively weaponising their belief for his own cause. But he’s also nervous because he is also an exceptionally gifted person with powers of persuasion and prophetic insight that mark him out as special. As Paul allows himself to more-and-more accept the role he has been groomed for, how much does it corrupt him? After all, he gains absolute power over the Fremen – and we all know what that does to someone…

Paul’s messianic possibility is also spread on very fertile ground. Javier Bardem’s Stilgar represents a large portion of the Fremen population, who belief in this prophecy with a fanatical certainty. The dangers of this is subtly teased out by Villeneuve throughout the film. At first there is a Life of Brian comedy about Stilgar’s wide-eyed joy as every single event can be twisted and filtered through his naïve messiah check-list (“As is written!”) – even Paul’s denial he is the messiah is met with the response that only a messiah would be so humble! This comedy however fades as the film progresses and the militaristic demands Paul makes sees this same belief channelled into ferocious, fanatic fury that will leave a whole universe burning in its wake.

Much of Paul’s hesitancy is based on his visions of a blood-soaked jihad that will follow if he indeed “heads south” and accepts the leadership of the Fremen’s fanatical majority. The question is, of course, whether the desire for revenge – and, it becomes increasingly clear, a lust for power and control – will overcome such scruples. Part of the skill of Chalamet’s performance is that it is never easy to say precisely when your sympathy for him begins to tip into horror at how far he is willing to go (Villeneuve bookends the film with different victorious armies incinerating mountains of corpses of fallen foes), but in carefully calculated increments the Paul we end up at the end of the film is a world away from the one we encountered at the start.

Villeneuve further comments on this by the skilful re-imagining of Chadi, strongly played by Zendaya as an intelligent, determined freedom-fighter appalled at the Fremen exchanging one dogma for another. In the novel a more passive, devoted warrior-lover of Paul, in Dune Part 2 she becomes effectively his Fremen conscious, a living representation of the manipulation Paul is carrying out on these people. In her continued rejection of worship – even while she remains personally drawn to Paul – she provides a human counterpoint to Paul’s temptation to follow his father’s instructions and master “desert power” to control the worlds around them.

Deplorable and evil as the Harkonnen’s are, do Paul’s ends justify his means? And where does it stop? Dune Part 2 sees the Harkonnen’s subtly reduced in status. Dave Batista’s brooding Raban proves an incompetent manager of Arrakis. Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron is crippled by an assassination attempt and increasingly buffeted by events rather than controlling them. The film’s clearest antagonist becomes Austin Butler’s chillingly psychopathic junior Baron Feyd-Rautha, a muscle-packed bald albino, obsessed with honour and utterly ruthless towards his own subordinates. (Introduced in a stunningly shot, black-and-white gladiatorial combat scene that showcases his insane recklessness and twisted sense of honour.) But increasingly they feel like minor pawns in a game of international politics around them.

Villeneuve allows Dune’s world to expand, delving further into the cultural manipulations of the Bene Gesserit. This ancient order not only controls the Emperor – a broodingly impotent Christopher Walken – but also manipulates the bloodlines of great houses for their own twisted breeding programme, as well as inject cultures like the Fremen with perverted, controlling beliefs. While Villeneuve still carefully parses out the world-building of Dune – you could be forgiven for not understanding why the Spice on Arrakis is so damn important – it’s a film that skilfully outlines in broad strokes a whole universe of backstairs manipulation.

Among all this of course, Dune remains a design triumph. Grieg Fraser’s cinematography ensures the desert hasn’t looked this beautiful since Lawrence. The production and costume design are a triumph, as is Hans Zimmer’s imposing score. Above all, the film is brilliantly paced (wonderfully edited by Greg Walker) and superbly balanced into a mix of complex political theory and enough action and giant worm-riding to keep you more than entertained.

Dune Part 2 is a rich and worthy sequel, broadening and deepening the original, as well as challenging hero narratives. It turns Paul into an increasingly dark and manipulative figure, whose righteous anger is only a few degrees away from just anger (he’s no Luke Skywalker), who starts to see people as tools and moves swiftly from asserting Fremen rights to asserting his own rights (overloaded with different names, its striking when Paul chooses to use which names). In a film that provokes thoughts and thrills, Villeneuve’s Dune continues to do for fantasy-sci-fi what Lord of the Rings did for fantasy, creating a cinematic adaptation unlikely to be rivalled for decades.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969)

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969)

Savage satire on the cruelty of entertainment, heavy-handed at times but also ahead of them

Director: Sydney Pollack

Cast: Jane Fonda (Gloria Beatty), Michael Sarrazin (Robert Syverton), Susannah York (Alice LeBlanc), Gig Young (Rocky Gravo), Red Buttons (Harry Kline), Bonnie Bedelia (Ruby Bates), Michael Conrad (Rollo), Bruce Dern (James Bates), Al Lewis (“Turkey”), Robert Fields (Joel Girard), Severn Darden (Cecil), Allyn Ann McLiere (Shirl), Madge Kennedy (Mrs Laydon)

Wheeling out the desperate for entertainment was a mainstay of TV for much of the early noughties with the Simon Cowell factory repackaging human lives for entertainment. But it’s hardly a new phenomenon. During the Depression in 30s America, the country was gripped by a new craze: dance marathons. In exchange for prize money and (perhaps!) a shot at stardom, regular people came off the streets to dance (or at least move around the dance floor) for as long as possible (with short breaks every hour). These shows went on and on, hour after hour, day after day for months at a time, with the audience paying to pop in and gawp.

It doesn’t take much to see how class comes into this. The competitors are the unemployed and out of luck, attracted as much by regular food and a roof over their head. The audience are rich and comfortable, tossing sponsorship bones towards the manufactured ‘stories’ that take their fancy. The event is controlled by a manipulative, alcoholic MC (Gig Young) spinning stories and drama for the crowd. As days turn to weeks the contestants become ever more haggard, drained and physically and emotionally shattered: cynical Gloria (Jane Fonda), homeless Robert (Michael Sarrazin), aspiring actors fragile Alice (Susannah York) and distant Joel (Robert Fields), retired sailor Harry (Red Buttons) and bankrupt farmers James (Bruce Dern) and his heavily pregnant wife Ruby (Bonnie Bedelia).

Pollack’s viciously nihilistic satire throws all these into a hellish never-ending treadmill of physical movement and psychological torture that leaves each character washed out, drained, doused in sweat with sunken, sleepless eyes. You can clearly see the links from They Shoot Horses to Rollerball all the way to The Hunger Games. It’s a grim look into part of the human psyche that, ever since the Colosseum, takes pleasure out of watching the suffering of others for entertainment. The crowded audience – eating popcorn and cheering on their favourites – are as indifferent to the sufferings of the contestants as the organisers with their quack medical teams.

Designed to gain the maximum sense of claustrophobia – once we enter the hall for the dance competition, we never see the outside again for virtually the whole film – the film constantly grinds us down with the exhausting relentlessness of the show. Pollack intercuts this with brief shots of Robert being questioned by the police – moments we eventually realise are flashforwards, making it clear tragedy is our eventual destination. A siren that sounds like nothing less than an air raid warning is repeatedly heard, warning competitors any brief respite they have is coming to a close. The actors become increasingly shuffling, wild-eyed and semi-incoherent in their speech and actions, grimly embodying characters acting on little sleep, in situations of constant strain.

But then that’s entertainment! Part of the thrill for the crowd – whipped up by Gig Young’s showman, a man who oscillates between heartless indifference and flashes of sympathy for his stars (hostages?) – is watching them push on through never-ending pressure. It’s clear to us as well – from their desperate, fixed determination to complete any physical challenge set and the relish with which they consume any food given – that the contestants will tolerate anything just to have, for a few weeks, a taste of something they couldn’t hope to get living on the streets.

Their desperation doesn’t even enter into the moral calculations of those running the show. In fact it’s something that makes them easier to manipulate. Part of the MC’s calculations is creating a relatable story of suffering for the chosen few ‘leads’ any one of which can lead to a triumphant feel-good ending. Potential love-matches are pushed together, sentimental favourites are promoted. Alice’s fine clothing is quietly destroyed by the team running the show because it doesn’t fit a narrative of penniless dreamers. The participants are crafted into “characters”: the ageing Harry as the “Old Man of the Sea”, Gloria and Robert – thrown-together, last-minute partners –as star-cross’d lovers (despite their extremely tense personal relationship).

It all gets too much for the contestants. Serious medical conditions are not unusual – the frequent refrains from the (so-called) medical staff that “we’ve got a dead one” before exhausted, unresponsive contestants are slapped or thrown into ice baths to revive them speaks volumes. When a contestant does indeed die, the event is quietly hushed up for the audience with another feel-good fantasy of noble retirement. Those desperate for a shot at stardom – something they have no hope of getting from a show designed to turn them into drained-out zombies for the entertainment of the masses – are reduced to quivering messes. None more so than Alice – played with a heart-rendering fragility by Susannah York channelling Streetcar Vivien Leigh – who begins the film confidently performing a Shaw monologue and it ends it barely connected to reality.

York’s fine performance is one of several in the film. Young won an Oscar as a MC Rocky, the consummate showman who sometimes surprises us with flashes of humanity (which he clearly drowns with the bottle) before his professional ruthlessness kicks in. Red Buttons is excellent as the rogueish Harry who realises he’s out of depth far-too-late, Bedelia and Dern very good as an experienced couple earning a desperate living from marathons. Particularly fine is Jane Fonda who grounds the film with a gut-punch of a performance of barely concealed rage, deep-rooted self-loathing and brutal, angry cynicism as a woman who understands exactly the show she is in but has no choice but to play along, while hating herself for doing it.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They feel in many ways ahead of its time and for all time – after all, entertainment like this hasn’t died out. Pollack’s film is harshly lit, and his direction is very strong, even if the film does sometimes make its points with a little too much repetitive force. It’s also a film – with its metaphor of suffering horses standing in for suffering people –a fraction too pleased with its own arty contrivance (a slow-mo and sepia tinged opening lays on its symbolism a little too thick, while its flash-forwards yearn a little too much for a French New Wave atmosphere). Michael Sarrazin isn’t quite able to bring depth to the – admittedly deliberately blank Robert – making him an opaque POV character, a role he effectively surrenders on viewing to Fonda.

But despite its flaws, They Shoot Horses Don’t They is a remarkably hard and incredibly bleak film on human nature, which doesn’t let up at all as it barrels to its almost uniquely grim and nihilistic ending. It offers nothing in the way of hope and paints a world gruesomely corrupted and completely indifferent to the thoughts and feelings to the most vulnerable in it. It is ripe for rediscovery.

Cries and Whispers (1972)

Cries and Whispers (1972)

Bergman’s heart-rendering, challenging and compelling family drama: a slice of raw pain

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Harriet Andersson (Agnes), Ingrid Thulin (Karin), Liv Ullmann (Maria), Kari Sylwan (Anna), Anders Ek (Isak, the priest), Inga Gill (Aunt Olga), Erland Josephson (David), Henning Moritzen (Joakim), Georg Årlin (Fredrik)

It came to Bergman in a dream: a red-lined room, where four women dressed in white whisper intimate secrets to each other. It became one of his most elliptical, horrifying and haunting films, a cryptic puzzle about life and death, faith and despair, love and hate, sex and violence and almost every human experience in between, all filmed within an imposing (and beautifully shot) red-walled house that turns more-and-more into a nightmareish Satre-style trap. Cries and Whispers sits alongside Persona as one of Bergman’s most successful reaches for the sublimely unknown and if it doesn’t quite touch Persona’s astonishing mastery, it’s remarkable by every measure.

Two sisters gather to nurse a third as she goes through the final days of a long, painful illness. Karin (Ingrid Thulin), the oldest, is professional, distant and repressed; Maria (Liv Ullman) the youngest is sensual, flighty and slightly selfish. The dying Agnes (Harriet Andersson) yearns for love and affection, but is a natural outsider. Agnes is most devotedly cared for by the maid Anna (Kari Sylwan), a young woman who lost a child a few years ago. As Agnes’ final days approach, all four mull on life, their decisions and choices, each trying to grasp some understanding about the great mystery of life.

Cries and Whispers feels like a savage slash of raw pain. Perhaps no other film in Bergman hits like such a punch to the gut. In this red-lined house, everyone is silently screaming behind the whispers (literally so in Agnes’ case, the film opening with Harriet Andersson writhing in wordless agony on her bed for an almost unbearable shot held for almost four minutes). All four of these characters are carrying mountains of disappointment, despair and disillusionments on their shoulders, none of them able to see a way out of the constant grind of simply struggling through existence. You could argue that Agnes has the easiest path in death.

The overbearing red walls – not to mention the fades to ‘red-out’ that seem to drown out the faces of the four women as each stares into the camera before their own memory or dream is staged by Bergman – begins to feel increasingly like a trap. The lack of natural light adds even more to the sense that this is taking place in some sort of prison or oppressive womb, cooking up traumas. There doesn’t seem to be any escape from this pressure-cooker atmosphere (rather like the claustrophobic trappings of The Silence and Persona), with reality starting to fracture and dissolve.

It becomes clear there are decades of unspoken tensions between the three sisters. Karin and Maria seem to be tending for their system more out of duty than love: Maria sleeps through her watch, while Karin feels like a dutiful professional rather than a loving sister. There is precious little sense of intimacy between them. So much so, that both sisters will utterly reject (in a late dream sequence that topples into a nightmare) even the hint of tenderness or contact with the deceased Agnes (Maria will run, screaming, at the very idea). It’s the same between Maria and Karin, who seemingly have nothing except blood in common.

But then they could hardly be two more contrasting women. Liv Ullman is superbly multi-layered as a woman who feels at first flirtatious and light-hearted but emerges as manipulative and selfish with a rich vein of self-loathing, compensated by a malicious pleasure in hurting other people. Her sexual fascination with Erland Josephson’s aloof doctor is based less on his qualities and more on his frank deconstruction of her physical flaws, accentuated by the deep pain and distress the affair causes her husband. Similarly with Karin, she alternates between reaching out to in shared sisterly closeness, then denying she ever felt or said such things a day later.

Like other Bergman films there is dark implication of incest in the relationship between Maria and Karin. In their moments of reconciliation, their physicality (all stroking and kissing) stinks of sexuality, their unheard whispers incredibly suggestive. Is this a foul secret what that has made Karin so deeply disgusted by physical intimacy? This is after all a woman who (in a flourish where I feel Bergman goes too far) cuts her vagina with a piece of glass and defiantly smears the blood over her face in front of her husband to prevent him from claiming his conjugal rights.

Ingrid Thulin is extraordinary as Karin, a deeply repressed woman utterly bereft in the world, who secretly yearns for closeness and contact. She seems though to have a very little idea how to build emotional bridges with people, her manner reserved and cold, unable to even treat the dying Agnes as anything other than a duty. If Maria quietly delights in making people feel bad and is disturbed by feelings of warmth, Karin is unable to even begin to arouse feelings of any sort from other people. She lives in an isolation that has left her deeply unhappy.

Strangely, Agnes herself might even be the happiest – and she’s dying. Agnes is the only person Bergman allows to narrate her own flashbacks (the other three are all introduced in voiceover by Bergman himself). Beautifully played by Harriet Anderson as a woman full of hope, despite the appalling pain of her illness, she is a strange beacon of contentment. The priest at her wake (a beautifully delivered monologue from Anders Ek) even confesses he cannot help but question the strength of his own faith compared to the spirituality of Agnes. What sign is there of God in this world when he punishes with such excruciating pain the purest person in the film?

Harriet Andersson’s performance is not only almost unbearably in its raw physical commitment to pain, but also a quietly moving in its emotion. Agnes is a woman longing to be closer to her sisters – envying Maria’s closeness to their mother as a child (the mother is also played by Liv Ullman) – feeling closer to her mother only when observing her in solitary moments of pain. Her happiest memory is of the three sisters as adults, contently laughing together on a swing. This willingness to embrace love – always a matter of key importance to Bergman – singles her out from the two-faced Maria or the repressed Karin.

It also explains the link to Anna, played with a quiet observance by Kari Sylwan. Frequently silently, moving through the frame or performing duties, Anna is the only person in the house who categorically loves and respects Agnes. It’s she who cares for her, who tends her, nurses her through her pain and most readily responds to her desire for closeness. There is, in fact, a hint of sexual familiarity between the two – it’s very possible to imagine them as lovers. Do Agnes’ family recognise – and envy – that breach of distance, that leads them to offer only the smallest reward for her service and a curt dismissal after Agnes’ death?

Or are Anna’s motives as clear cut and noble as they appear? Grieving the (clearly relatively recent) death of a child, perhaps Anna uses Agnes to fill emotional holes in her own life. Her dream-like fantasy of Agnes’ after death rotates around Anna taking almost complete possession of her deceased mistress, dismissing the sisters and cradling the dying Anna in a pieta like grasp that resembles a mother and child rather than lovers. Is Anna desperately using this moment of death, just as Karin and Maria do, to fulfil longings in herself?

All these ideas are superbly explored in Bergman’s beautifully paced and powerful work, like the best of his films a hauntingly intriguing and challenging work that lingers long in the mind after it finishes. With four very different, but extraordinary performances, at its heart it may at times be a little too intellectual and Bergman may at times go a little too far, but for its extraordinary exploration of raw, vicious pain it can be hard to beat. A challenging but extremely necessary film.

The Godfather Part III (1990)

The Godfather Part III (1990)

The third film in the series is a decent effort – but pales in comparison to the others

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Al Pacino (Michael Corleone), Diane Keaton (Kay Adams-Corleone), Talia Shire (Connie Corleone), Andy Garcia (Vincent Corleone), Eli Wallach (Don Altobello), Joe Mantegna (Joey Zasa), George Hamilton (BJ Harrison), Bridget Fonda (Grace Hamilton), Sofia Coppola (Mary Corleone), Raf Vallone (Cardinal Lamberto), Franc D’Ambrosio (Anthony Corleone), Donal Donnelly (Archbishop Gilday), Richard Bright (Al Neri), Al Martino (Johnny Fontane), John Savage (Father Andrew Hagen), Helmut Berger (Frederick Keinszig), Don Novello (Dominic Abbandando), Franco Citti (Calo)

Coppola wanted to call it The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. He got his wish decades later with a belated re-edit release. But at the time, the studio wasn’t having it: this would be a full-blown Third Part to The Godfather. Problem is, those are some very big shoes to step into and The Godfather Part III wasn’t the genre-defining masterpiece its predecessors was. Instead, it’s a decent, melancholic gangster film with touches of King Lear. However, when you are following the sublime being “pretty good” winds up looking like “pretty awful”. The Godfather Part III became the infamous “fuhgeddaboutit” chapter in the saga, the one for completists and those who watch out of duty. On its own merits its fine, but perhaps it was a doomed venture from the start.

It’s 1979 and Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) has aged and mellowed. All his life he’s talked about getting out, and now it seems he finally has. He’s set up a charitable foundation, he’s been honoured by the Vatican and is rebuilding relationships with his children: daughter Mary (Sofia Coppola), now head of his foundation and son Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio), an opera singer. Even Kay (Diane Keaton) is speaking to him again. Michael is grooming Vincent (Andy Garcia), illegitimate son of his brother Sonny, to take over the reins of the crime family. But then, they drag him back in. Bailing out the Vatican Bank, Michael finds is double-crossed by a collection of Euro-banking crooks, corrupt Church leaders and rival Mafiosi. Will he survive the dangers a return to Sicily will bring?

The unspoken secret of The Godfather is that everyone was always there for the money: they just also had something to prove the first two times and the fire in their bellies to turn gangster grist into cinematic beauty. Fast forward 15 years later, and there hangs an air of “give the studio what it wants” about Part III, coupled with a willingness to rest on laurels. Coppola agreed to do it because his last few films were bombs and he needed the money. Pacino demanded – and got – a massive sum. Keaton coined it. Robert Duvall asked for $1.5 million, didn’t get it and walked. Coppola agreed to turn the script around in lightening time to rush the film to the screen for the inevitable box-office and awards bonanza. No one involved really did the film for either love or passion.

Coppola’s script, written to a deadline, is torn awkwardly between two plots, neither completely satisfactory. His interest lies with the question of whether absolution (of any sort) for Michael is possible. This is the film Coppola wanted to make, but it keeps losing ground though to the other, a complex conspiracy thriller, riffing on real-life events in the Vatican. This conspiracy is frequently dense, difficult to follow and (frankly) not particularly interesting as it trudges through Papal politics and investment banking, seeming existing to provide faces for the inevitable violent montage of inventive hits.

A Part III that zeroed in on Michael himself, his guilts and shame, would have been both distinctive and unique. But The Godfather Part III fudges this. Crucially, the Michael we see here – for all he would have mellowed with age – feels very different from the cold, buttoned-down, calculating figure from the first two. Pacino – perhaps remembering the pressure of Part II that left him exhausted – invests it with more “hoo-hah”. This twinkly Michael, smiles to hide his regrets – when you feel, in reality, years of pressure would have turned him into even more of a murderous Scrooge. I also can’t believe he would be this close to his now adult children. Pacino embraces the moments of raw pain when they come, but this character just doesn’t quite mesh with his previous performances (and his hair looks just plain wrong).

The rushed production further fatally holed this personal plot below the water-line. Duvall was originally intended to serve as the film’s ‘antagonist’, the film planned as a very personal battle between the last two ‘brothers’. Duvall’s departure ripped the heart out of this script, his role redistributed between George Hamilton’s anonymous lawyer, Talia Shire’s Connie (now turned inexplicable consigliere) and Eli Wallach’s treacherous Don Altobello. None of these make any real impact. Rushed production also meant Winona Ryder dropped out of the crucial role of Michael’s daughter, Coppola taking the (disastrous) last-minute decision to cast his daughter Sofia instead.

Sofia Coppola has suffered more than enough from lacerating reviews of her performance (the level of vitriol poured on her is shocking to read today). Let’s just say, while a great director, she is no actor. But then, neither really is Franc D’Ambrosio playing her brother. Both children never become either interesting or dynamic presences. Since their relationship – and the flowering of it – with Michael is crucial to the film’s emotional impact, it’s a fatal flaw. No matter how hard Pacino works, these scenes just don’t ring true. There is no sense of decades of anger and resentment. The drama seeps out of the family scenes and Mary becomes such a flat and two-dimensional character that her impact on the other principle characters never engages.

Sofia Coppola similarly struggles in her romantic scenes with Andy Garcia, again despite his best efforts. Garcia is the best thing in the film, full of cocksure confidence and instinctive cunning, channelling the best elements of Sonny and Michael into a character we’d dearly like to see more of. His facing down of two murderous home-invading hoods is the film’s most memorable moment while Garcia also does excellent work charting Vincent’s slow acceptance of the tragic sacrifices – the killing of parts of your nature – that being ‘the Godfather’ demands. Diane Keaton is also excellent as a far more seasoned and stronger Kay than we’ve seen before.

The Godfather Part III has several fine moments, even if it never coalesces into anything more than a decent film. Coppola restages with assurance and poise versions of previous scenes from the saga – a Little Italy festival assassination, Sicilian countryside violence, an assassin surreptitiously moving through a quiet building, Kay closing a door by choice, the montage of killings – mixed with large scale moments (a helicopter attack on a crime boss meeting is the film’s most ‘action moment’). He works really hard to channel a sense of melancholy: Michael is crippled with diabetes, plagued with guilt for his brother’s death, running to stand still and do the right thing. Pacino’s strongest moments are these moments of rawer emotion: his cloister confession to the future Pope is a masterclass in letting simmering pain suddenly rush to the surface.

But The Godfather Part III always feels like a perfunctory re-heat of key moments, not quite mixed successfully with a redemption (or lack of) tale. This film needed to be a more sombre, focused story about an army of chickens coming home to roost. It needed a stronger sense of Michael desperately scrambling to bring back together the family he was so desperate to protect that he destroyed it. Instead, it’s torn between recapturing old glories and being hampered by fudged attempts to provide emotional depth, linked to a poor structure, unfortunate casting choices and lack of focus. It’s not a bad film – but it is not a great one. And for the third in the greatest series of all time, that wasn’t good enough.

Memento (2000)

Memento (2000)

Nolan’s Hollywood debut is still a mesmerising, inventive and inspiring noir thriller

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Guy Pearce (Leonard Shelby), Carrie-Anne Moss (Natalie), Joe Pantoliano (Teddy), Mark Boone Jnr (Burt), Jorja Fox (Catherine Shelby), Stephen Tobolowsky (Sammy Jankis), Harriet Sansom Harris (Mrs Jankis), Callum Keith Reinne (Dodd)

Memento is a twisty-turny thriller of man who can’t remember anything that has just happened to him. But it’s also a tragedy of a man who actually can never forget. Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) has anterograde amnesia, a condition that prevents him forging new memories. Every few minutes or so, his memory resets and he forgets what just happened to him. But he can never forget what happened to him immediately before his condition: the murder of his wife by a mysterious assailant. Effectively, Leonard lives forever in that last moment he remembers: it has always just happened, and has shaped his life into a relentless search for revenge.

It’s a realisation I made after a watching again Christopher Nolan’s sophomore calling-card, surely one of the most complete artistic statements of intent Hollywood has seen this century. You can see the roots of all that was to come here, from Batman to Oppenheimer, via Tenet, Inception and Interstellar. Memento is a gripping thriller and also a playful and intriguing dance with narrative conventions, largely told backwards (each seven minute or so section in colour occurs after the scene that preceded it) but also featuring a black-and-white parallel narrative that takes place (it is revealed) chronologically, that eventually links up with the other narrative (the film, effectively, ending somewhere in the middle of the story).

Far from a stunt, this is ingenious, exciting story-telling from Nolan, superbly recreating some idea of what it might be like to never remember why you are somewhere, where you have been or whether you have ever met the person you are talking to before or not. You could say the story, once rearranged in chronological order, is simple – but everything is easy to follow with a map.

Memento’s structure reflects part of Leonard’s perspective, forcing you constantly to watch the film in the moment and never be able to apply your wider knowledge of the narrative. No matter how familiar I become with the film, I find I inevitably become as confused and lost as Leonard is, your mind struggling to reorder and reinterpret “later” scenes as you discover the “earlier” ones, the whole film fracturing into mini-arcs (the chase where a bemused Leonard doesn’t know at first whether he’s chaser or chase; the bar conversation that starts in the middle; the mysterious woman who appears in a bathroom, and so on).

Even more ingeniously, we realise Leonard is essentially ‘re-born’ with every cut-to-black. He will never feel anger towards someone who wronged him minutes earlier or fondness towards someone who was kind to him. The Leonard dead-set on a goal one minute will cease to exist the next, with only any notes remaining to guide him. Essentially, Leonard is constantly handing over to himself: even he knows this: that decisions he makes in a moment effectively carry no implications, because he won’t remember them. He will never feel guilt, or regret, shame, pride and delight.

Leonard prides himself on making his life work through a rigorous system of mental conditioning. His short-term memory may be destroyed, but his ability to “learn” has not. He talks proudly of his system: carefully written notes, annotated polaroids of key people, places and objects, certain things always kept in certain places and, of course, a body littered with tattoos of crucial facts about his wife’s murder. What’s ingenious about Nolan’s film is that, like Leonard, we never know the context of any of this. When Leonard makes a note, what prompted him to do it? Like him we don’t know.

That lack of context exposes, over the course of the film, the nonsense of Leonard’s system. Trusting notes – particularly written by himself – implicitly from moment-to-moment, leaves him wide open to manipulation. If he has a polaroid of an object with the note “This belongs to you”, he will assume it is true. If someone produces evidence of a friendship or mutual interest, he will believe it. Even more chillingly, we discover Leonard himself is more than capable of leaving himself breadcrumbs he knows his future selves can (and will) misinterpret. After all he’ll never remember the deception and will never waver in the belief that he would never deceive himself.

Like Leonard we can never know the truth about the people he talks to. Should we listen to the message “don’t believe his lies” about the ingratiating weaselly Teddy – especially since the film “begins” with Leonard shooting him in the head as the killer of his wife. Or is Teddy, played with a perfectly smarmy, smart-alecky wit by Joe Pantoliano, the friend he claims to be? Does Natalie, the quiet but helpful woman who has also lost someone (memorably played with a beautifully balanced mix of the austere and tender by Carrie Anne-Moss), deserve the absolute trust Leonard accords her based on his annotated polaroids? After all, the manager of the hotel he’s staying at (a marvellously droll cameo from Mark Boone Jnr) cheerfully confesses to ripping him off, since he knows Leonard won’t remember it next time they speak.

What becomes clear is that Leonard, for all his surface assurance and confidence is a raw emotional mess, utterly lost in the world he inhabits and trapped forever in an emotional state of raw grief and fury, his politeness a ‘learned’ habit as much as his mantras and endlessly repeated stories. Guy Pearce gives a fantastic performance of a character both deeply vulnerable but carrying reserves of bitterness that are intensely dangerous when unleashed. Pearce’s empathetic performance, low-key and underplayed throughout, helps us build a deep connection with Leonard, making the audience want him to succeed, while never hiding the possibility of danger in a man who knows nothing about the world around him other it has deeply wronged him.

It’s that hidden emotional state Nolan’s twisting film hides in plain sight throughout. After all, we know Leonard is capable of acts of violent rage – its literally the first thing we see him do. Opening the film with a shot of a Polaroid developing, played in reverse (so the image gets fainter), Nolan even shows us at the start that the facts will become less clear as the film progresses. Despite both these things, it’s frequently shocking how what we think of Leonard and those around him changes.

It’s told with a superb streak of film noir, but also a dark wit (after all, a guy who you can be as blatant false to you as you like because he’ll act like your friend five minutes later, is inherently funny) that means sucker-punch moments when we make crucial discoveries about objects, characters and even the story of Sammy Jankis (a similarly afflicted man, investigated by pre-accident Leonard in his old life as insurance claims investigator) land with a real wallop.

Memento is truly unique, a near unrepeatable trick expertly pulled off by a director who even in his second film was able to present a complex, multi-layered narrative with the assurance of a veteran. What’s interesting about Memento is that, away from the mechanics of how it is told, there is very little self-conscious flash or bombast about it. It uses flair when it serves the story, but otherwise lets events speak for itself. And it unfolds like an onion, each layer rewatch revealing a fresh new layer that shocks the senses. Superbly acted and brilliantly made, it’s a modern noir masterpiece.

The Old Oak (2023)

The Old Oak (2023)

Loach’s swansong is a passionate, if slightly out-of-time, call for peace and understanding

Director: Ken Loach

Cast: Dave Turner (TJ Ballantyne), Ebla Mari (Yara), Claire Rodgerson (Laura), Trevor Fox (Charlie), Chris McGlade (Vic), Col Tait (Eddy), Jordan Louis (Garry), Chrissie Robinson (Erica), Chris Gotts (Jaffa Cake)

The OId Oak is likely the swansong for 87-year-old Ken Loach, Britain’s leading independent film-maker and high-priest of left-wing political cinema. It’s an engaging valedictory effort, crammed with fine Loach touches. But it’s a film that feels slightly politically out-of-time, which works better not when making tub-thumbing points but as a simple plea for a love and understanding. There are worse things Loach (who I’ve sometimes found rather trying for all his brilliance) can sign off with.

In a small town near Durham, TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner) is a former miner and passionate union man now struggling to keep his pub, The Old Oak, alive in the face of mounting costs. World-weary, he is roped into helping Syrian refugees settle in their new homes in the town. Many locals, bitterly feeling the town has been left behind by government, can barely hide their fury at these refugees. But TJ finds they re-ignite in him a desire to make the world a better place, particularly as he forms a fatherly friendship with Yara (Ebla Mari), a passionate young photographer, who doesn’t know if her own father is alive or dead and wants to build links between the refugees and the local community.

The bond between TJ and Yara is at the heart of this gentle film, with Loach drawing beautifully natural performances from Dave Turner (a former fireman union boss) and Ebla Mari. One of Loach’s greatest strengths has always been his ability to poetically draw out hugely endearing relationships. TJ and Yara are a perfect example, two people who recognise loss and isolation in each other. TJ’s purpose in life has gone, never finding anything to replace his union campaigns of the 80s, estranged from his family and going through the motions to keep his pub alive. Yara has lost her home and everything she has known, the only memento of her father being her treasured camera, facing hostility from all around her.

The Old Oak centres this relationship in a passionate cry for empathy between different communities. The refugees arrive lost, isolated, confused and scared, fleeing conditions far harsher than many of the people in the town could understand. Far from having an easy-ride (as many accuse them of, seeing them get free homes and furniture) they desire nothing else but to go home, but are forced to make the best of it here. It’s a perspective that never occurs to many of the townspeople, seeing them only as interlopers not victims with whom their community – that has never really recovered from pit closures – has more in common with than they suspect.

TJ and Yara both recognise this – and want to build bridges not burn them. Much of The Old Oak revolves around TJ’s efforts to convert his disused back room – a shrine to union action when the room was the heart of the mining community – into a food bank to support both refugees and local alike. Loach’s humanitarianism comes to the fore here in the brief stories we hear about the users of this food bank: the small boy who can’t believe the food is free, the sulky teenager who finds care she rarely encounters elsewhere, the proud boy promised his ‘secret’ thathe needs the food bank will be kept. These are real people, with real problems, which Loach excels at bringing to life.

Loach is equally skilled at subtly staging personal pain. The director of Kes hasn’t lost his touch with the staging of deaths of beloved pets. The emotional pull TJ’s dog Mara has over him – much of his life’s meaning coming from tending for this small dog – and the impact of her loss is beautifully played with a raw grief by Dave Turner and staged with maximum emotional impact by Loach without a stroke of sentimental manipulation. Just as the smashing of Yara’s camera in the film’s opening moments by an unpleasant yob, berating the arrival of these interlopers, carries real impact from the gentle desolation on her face. The building of relationships, instigated by mutual pain and a hope for a better future, is The Old Oak’s strongest material.

It’s the political content that never quite pulls itself into focus. Loach’s sympathy for the working-class community is clear. He demonstrates forcefully these communities have been left with almost nothing, lacking hope or purpose and facing lives of underfunded lack of opportunity. No wonder kids bristle when they see refugee children given old bikes and toys for free. Or that locals bristle at seeing houses assigned for free after they have had to scrimp and save to buy theirs. But I wonder if Loach finds himself slightly confused with some of the prejudices and lack of socialistic international brotherly love in some of the working class today.

Loach has always clinged to the idea of the workers of the world uniting. But throughout The Old Oak he tacks away from really facing the racially-based anger and prejudice in some working class circles and avoids tackling where some of this racism and xenophobia comes from. Or facing the fact that it’s more widely shared, on some level, by more people than he might care to think. (He seems more relaxed linking it to old battles – inevitably one of the most hostile is the son of a scab from the mining days.)

The film shows the angry grousing of the many of the regulars, but avoids getting under the skin of why they are angry about this invasion of their space, eventually writing them off as simply lacking true working-class solidarity. While sympathising with the struggles faced by many of the working class, as a consequence of decades of under investment and alienation from the status quo, Loach feels uncomfortable with acknowledging how some of this has fed into prejudice – or how the working-class dreams of Scargill have been corrupted into “us and them” ill-informed ranting.

Instead, Loach wants to fast-track to a picture he’s more comfortable with, showing many of the local community perform sudden 360 turns towards acceptance and brotherly love, with remaining racists written off as bad apples. The creation of an atmosphere where the younger generation are encouraged to feel xenophobic racial hatred – kids beat Yara’s brother outside of the school, filming it to post on YouTube, where it is watched with glee by some of the regulars – is unaddressed. It’s telling Loach seems certain getting everyone together for an old-fashioned socialist sing-along will help solve problems. It feels like a naïve, if touching, idea that doesn’t really ring true.

The Old Oak sometimes feels like a film from a man slightly out-of-step with the times (the many clumsy shots of phones playing YouTube videos adds to this). It’s a film made up of effective scenes – including a heartfelt sequence in Durham cathedral – but not quite drawn together into a satisfying whole, with so many plot developments kept off screen that it starts to feel it hinges on contrivance. It works best as a simple, human plea for love and understanding – but a more accurate understanding, or a willingness by Loach to really turn a harsh eye on the negative side of the working-class communities he has dedicated his life to, seems to have evaded it.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Chilling Holocaust film, its unseen horrors only overheard give it supreme power

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Cast: Christian Friedel (Rudolf Höss), Sandra Hüller (Hedwig Höss), Ralph Herforth (Oswald Pohl), Daniel Holzberg (Gerard Maurer), Sascha Maaz (Arthur Liebehenschel), Freya Kreutzkam (Elenore Pohl), Imogen Kogge (Linna Hensel), Johann Karthaus (Klaus Höss), Lilli Falk (Heidetraut Höss), Louis Noah Wite (Hans-Jurgen Höss)

A family enjoys the delights of a summer day beside the river. They laugh, splash each other with water and amble home to their villa, next to where father works. They tune out the all-too-familiar sounds of that workplace to enjoy a family dinner. They are living the dream, out of the city, with a home and beautiful, landscaped garden. The family is Rudolf Höss’. The workplace is Auschwitz. The sounds are of the unimaginable horrors that make their life possible.

Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust movie is unlike any other ever made. Taking a Martin Amis novel as inspiration, Glazer creates a hauntingly observant film where the plot is simple (Höss works at Auschwitz, the family enjoys a series of everyday events, Höss gets re-posted, his wife remains in their home, Höss later returns to continue his work) but every single frame implies never-seen horrifying events. While the family are indifferent to the distant sounds of trains arriving, industrial churn, gunshots and screams, we can’t be. The only thing that separates the Höss’ heaven of their intricate garden and charming home from the hell of Auschwitz is a single wall.

Glazer’s film never leaves the house for the camp, meaning what we hear is our only clue to what is happening. The Zone of Interest uses sound like almost no other film I’ve seen. Sound designer Johnnie Burns creates an overwhelming soundscape that suggests horrors. The low rumble of industrial sound, the background hum of screams and cracks of gunshot, ignored by the family as white noise. It’s brilliant and sickeningly immersive that never for an instant lets you forget where we are. Glazer complements this with half-seen sights, the most striking the steam of a train arriving visible over the wall of the house, that add to our grim knowledge of what’s happening out of shot.

Glazer lets events play out with a chilling naturalism. Shot on concealed digital cameras with no artificial lighting, there is very little studied here at all. Instead, everything plays out with a terrifyingly low-key sense of reality. Conversations are at times mumbled, movements have a mix of casual and procedural and everything is kept determinedly undramatic. What emerges is the mundane, character-less nature of the Hösses. These people are evil in the sense that the wickedness of their deeds hasn’t even crossed their minds. Two sociopaths who pride themselves on their respectability, presiding over an industrial killing machine.

The film brilliantly balances a lack of overt events with acres of horrific implication. Fishing with his children, Höss steps on a half-seen jaw-bone and suddenly plucks them from the lake, running home with them to practically bleach them clean with the servants left to scrub the bathroom – it’s never stated that human remains are being washed from them, but the look on the face of these servants speaks volumes. (Höss later records a coded memo chastising his team for their lack of care, like a middle manager furious at an untidy storage room.) Hedwig’s mother wakes at night with her room flooded with red light. Opening a curtain to investigate, the camera sees her look of horror, a handkerchief covering her nose, while we only see the faint reflection of flames on the window. Moments like this fill the film, the implications of horrors out of shot.

At its heart, Zone of Interest brings startlingly to life Rudolf Höss, a man who admitted to murdering millions but wanted it known he did not tolerate overt cruelty to his victims. Played with a precise blankness by Christian Friedel, you realise if Hitler had charged him with organising the Reich’s stationary he would have gone about it with the same commitment and passion-free precision as he does mass murder. Does Höss have any idea, deep down, of his vileness? As he carefully, obsessively marches around the house every night shutting off lights and closing doors, is he subconsciously trying to defend his family and shut out reality, bury his knowledge of his evil in household procedure, or is he just as obsessive about this as he is in everything else?

His wife, played with a middle-class, aspirational coldness by Sandra Hüller, seems to have convinced herself she can enjoy all the benefits of the life of an Auschwitz camp commandant, without needing to think seriously about where it comes from. She tries on luscious clothing, brought to her from the camp, and obsessively tends and cares for her garden. Not that it stops her from lashing out at her servants like a petty tyrant. So devoted to her home is she, she refuses to leave it on Höss’ transfer back to Berlin, believing it to be the perfect place to raise her children.

It’s the children that subtly bear the brunt. As the film progresses, the damage to them becomes more and more clear, especially after Höss is reassigned and his attempts to control the environment are ignored by his successor. The daughter who cannot sleep at night, constantly walking the house. The younger son who overhears the forced drowning of a victim and mimics the guard’s cruel authoritarian “humour”. The older son who locks his brother in the greenhouse and mimics the hissing noise of gas. The Höss family are laying the roots to destroy their family in their obsessive desire to build a blinkered perfect home for them.

There is only one note of true kindness in The Zone of Interest. During his research, Glazer discovered a young Polish girl made it her mission to leave fruit at night for the inmates, hidden throughout the camp. Glazer captures this with thermal imaging cameras (eager to maintain his “rule” of no artificial light), giving this girl a sort of mystical, fairy-tale quality (we once even see her while hearing Höss read to his children at night). However, even this act of kindness is corrupted – the forced drowning is caused by a fight over an apple, presumably left by this child.

The Zone of Interest does lose some of its impact when it follows Höss to Berlin – it’s a film that flourishes best as a claustrophobic piece, focused on the house and its grounds. You could argue that The Zone of Interest is effectively a short film, expanded into feature length, making the same point over again. But, on reflection, part of the point is the power of the thudding repetition of that message, the overwhelming impact of people indifferently carrying on in the face of pure evil.

Does Höss realise this on some level? The Zone of Interest concludes with Höss dry-retching on the stairs – he’s such a shell he doesn’t even have enough in him to vomit up – before seeming to stare right out at us into the darkness. Glazer then finally takes us into the camp – to see the museum it is today, quiet, still, tended to with care by the staff. Höss’ life’s work is to create a memorial to his barbarity, where dedicated staff will make sure the picture of evil remains unblemished by dirt. It’s the first-time sound really drains out of the film and it makes for a powerful moment.

The Zone of Interest really lingers with the viewer. Glazer’s subtle and unflashy work builds the film into a powerful experience piece that leaves a lasting impact. It’s a film that grows even more powerful as you unpack the subtleties of its exploration of the banal nature of cruelty and the lasting impact of inhumanity on ourselves and others. A truly unique and important film.

Chimes at Midnight (1965)

Chimes at Midnight (1965)

Welles reimagines Shakespeare’s Henry IV as a melancholic tribute to lost glories

Director: Orson Welles

Cast: Orson Welles (Sir John Falstaff), Keith Baxter (Prince Hal), John Gielgud (King Henry IV), Margaret Rutherford (Mistress Quickly), Jeanne Moreau (Doll Tearsheet), Alan Webb (Justice Shallow), Norman Rodway (Henry Percy “Hotspur”), Walter Chiari (Justice Silence), Michael Aldridge (Pistol), Tony Beckley (Poins), Charles Farrell (Bardolph), Patrick Bedford (Nym), José Nieto (Northumberland), Fernando Rey (Worcester), Keith Pyott (Lord Chief Justice), Andrew Faulds (Westmoreland), Mariana Vlady (Lady Percy), Ralph Richardson (Narrator)

For decades Sir John Falstaff was the part Welles couldn’t get out of his head. He’d already made two attempts at re-working the first Henried for the stage, with Age of Kings in the 30s (where Welles played Falstaff in his twenties) and Chimes at Midnight in 60’s Dublin with Welles again as Falstaff and Keith Baxter as Hal in what would be Welles final stage performance. Welles was fascinated with the roistering knight so when he was offered a film of Treasure Island by a Spanish producer, he agreed on condition he could make Chimes at Midnight at the same time with the same cast. Naturally, this being Welles, not a frame of Treasure Island was made, but with Chimes at Midnight he created possibly his most influential Shakespearean work.

Surely, it’s no coincidence the two literary characters Welles felt the closest affinity to was the windmill-tilting wandering fantasist Don Quixote and the mountain of rogueish humour and memories of Golden Years long-gone, Sir John Falstaff. Welles arguably altered the interpretation of the Fat Knight for generations. Before Welles, he was a “Hail Fellow, Well Met” comic, the exuberant force-of-nature Prince Hal must sadly cast aside for the throne. But Welles knew, like few others, what a wasteland missed opportunities, lost glories and achievements-that-never-were lay behind the raconteur. His Falstaff might be cheeky and sometimes jolly, but he’s also a mountain of melancholy, a playboy with no achievements, his glory days long gone. Even without the rejection, there is no future for Falstaff, only hazy memories of a past long gone.

Chimes at Midnight brilliantly repackages, recuts and recombines several Shakespeare plays (not just Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 but also Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry V and touches of Richard II) to reframe this story around Prince Hal and Falstaff and away from both Henry IV and the politics of rebellion (now embodied by Norman Rodway’s bombastic Hotspur). Structure is imaginatively reworked, with Part 2’s recruiting scenes appearing before Part 1’s Battle of Shrewsbury and ingenious touches such as Henry V’s decision to “enlarge that man who railed against our person” retroactively applied to Falstaff rather than a nameless offender.

Welles makes Falstaff a mix of terrible influence and proud parent – no coincidence that a half-smile of pride crosses his face when Hal finally dismisses him. They banter and bounce off each other, but there is a world-weariness. Baxter’s Hal is beginning to focus his mind on the responsibilities that come with the throne. Falstaff alternates between awareness and denial that their salad days are on borrowed time. Strikingly, both of their most prominent soliloquies are overheard by the other. Hal’s secret plans to reform as King is delivered with steely regret by Baxter, while Falstaff stands a short distance behind him; later Falstaff’s mocking of honour in the aftermath of Shrewsbury is impatiently half-listened to by a Hal already starring towards the future. These are two characters who know each other, their flaws and their ruthlessness, more than they might like.

Chimes at Midnight is Welles’ lament not just for Falstaff but for the whole idea of a Merrie England. The film is a set in a wintery land, covered in cold snow and deeply unwelcoming. Mistress Quickly’s inn is a run-down building in farmland, Henry IV’s breath can be seen in his chilly castle, Silence and Falstaff huddle around a flickering fire after a wintery walk. There is a tiredness around the antics of Falstaff’s gang. Falstaff responds to Doll Tearsheet’s attentions with an impossibly weary “I am old Doll, I am old”. We are living in the winter of a whole way of life, which Hal will comprehensively kill off in favour of realpolitik. The days of dreamers like Welles-Falstaff are numbered.

Welles stresses these differences by shooting events in various locations in strikingly different ways. The Boar’s Head Tavern uses more fluidic camera-work, with events frequently happening in multiple plains – characters appear above others on balconies or at the head of stairs – with the action filled with raucous, swiftly choreographed interplay. This contrasts with the Cathedral-like classicism of Henry IV’s court. Where the Boar’s Head is confined and intimate, Henry IV’s medieval palace has towering stone walls, beams of light flowing down from large windows, courtiers still and quiet while Henry effectively speaks to himself, the exact opposite of the boisterous egalitarianism of The Boar’s Head. Justice Shallow’s ramshackle home of bittersweet memories sits somewhere between the two, where the melancholy Falstaff is closest to Henry’s regrets.

Chimes at Midnight is filled with this sort of superb visual language. The film’s centrepiece is a truly impressive set-piece of cinematic flourish, the Battle of Shrewsbury. A masterclass in fast editing, quick cuts and brilliant framing (that makes 200 extras look like a thousand) this scene captures in microcosm the film’s theme of the death of old-fashioned principles. It starts with a knightly charge and degenerates into mud-strewn, brutal hand-to-hand combat with death agonising and swift. You can see the roots here of Saving Private Ryan, with Welles not using cutting, adjusted film stock and montage to create something really visceral and even shocking, as bodies are forced into the mud or cry out in agony – and our fat ‘hero’ trembles and hides to avoid the barbarity.

This is certainly Welles’ finest acting performance in his Shakespeare films. While always a more limited actor than remembered (a combination of laziness and stage fight), Welles was born for this role. His Falstaff builds off an element of self-portrait: a man still capable of lighting up a room with humour (as seen in his delightful ‘mock trial’ of Hal) but who knows he has achieved only a fraction of what might have been (never before have references to Falstaff’s past glories felt more sad) and that only the march towards death awaits. No wonder Keith Baxter’s excellent Hal, clinging to the last chance to let his hair down, is torn somewhere between love, pity and good-natured contempt for this man. The interplay between the two is perfectly pitched.

Chimes at Midnight is filled with rich performances. It may also be Gielgud’s finest Shakespeare performance on film, his rich, fruity tones turning monologues into musings on self-doubt and regret, distancing the coldly austere king even more from the boisterous knight. (That voice is also a gift for the other actors: Welles, Baxter and Rodway all showcase impersonations of Gielgud’s distinctive voice.) This Henry is so full of doubt, bordering on contempt, for his son he may even believe Falstaff’s claims to be the true killer of Hotspur. Rutherford is wonderful as Quickly, earthy and caring; Rodway, from charging across the battle to impulsively springing out of his bath to meet a messenger clutching only a towel makes a superb contrast with Baxter’s calculating prince. Webb’s disappointed Shallow and Moreau’s kindly Doll also make an impact.

Chimes at Midnight’s main impact though is to reimagine these plays in a highly influential way – just look at the BBC’s more recent The Hollow Crown where the Henry IV productions are so indebted to Chimes it might as well be a remake, while Branagh’s Henry V is virtually a tonal sequel. Rarely again would these be plays seen as near-comedies with a sad-but-necessary final act. Instead, they became sadness-tinged meditations of lost chances and missed opportunities, with productions set not in Olivier-style pageantry, but Wellesian chill.

It’s a film tinged with melancholy, so it’s also fitting that as well as a swansong for a lost time, a “Merrie England” past where everything was possible and the future was golden, it’s also the last narrative film completed by Welles (all others would be either documentaries or filmed lectures). When Falstaff, thanked but coldly dispatched, exits clinging to the fantasy of a glorious return but heading towards death, it’s hard not to see Welles himself shuffling away, never again to persuade a young prince (or film producer) to give him a chance again. It’s a moving metatextual ending to a film that reinvents Shakespeare and expertly exploits the tools of cinema.