Category: Directors

An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

Ozu’s final film feels like a perfect summation of the rich sense of ordinary life in his work

Director: Yasujirō Ozu

Cast: Chishū Ryū (Shuhei Hirayama), Shima Iwashita (Michiko Hirayama), Keiji Sada (Koichi Hirayama), Mariko Okada (Akiko Hirayama), Teruo Yoshida (Yutaka Miura), Noriko Maki (Fusako Taguchi), Shinichiro Mikami (Kazuo Hirayama), Nobuo Nakamura (Shuzo Kawai), Eijirō Tōno (The Gourd), Kuniko Miyake (Nobuko Kawai), Ryuji Kita (Professor Horie)

Ozu’s final film feels like a luscious, beautifully filmed summation of a life’s work. Deceptively quiet, simple and gently paced, like the best of Ozu’s work it throbs with a deep understanding of the quiet joys, regrets and pains in ordinary life, where the march of time can relentlessly change and mould your world. An Autumn Afternoon returns to themes familiar from Ozu past work – you see it as almost a remake of Late Spring (with Chishū Ryū, effectively, in the same role) –with his subtly effective recognition of how each generation echoes and reimagines the one before. It’s a deeply humane film from a director who understood everyday life better than almost any other.

Once again, a man feels pressured to marry off a daughter. Shuhei Hirayama (Chishū Ryū) is a middle-ranking factory manager, whose home is tended to by 24-year-old daughter Michiko (Shima Iwashita). Hirayama’s old school-friend and colleague Kawai (Nobuo Nakamura) suggests an arranged marriage for her. Hirayama quietly lets the subject drift, little motived to shake up his home. His opinions slowly shift as he re-encounters his former teacher The Gourd (Eijirō Tōno), now a down-at-heel noodle restaurant owner, who lives with an unhappy spinster daughter. Does Hirayama sees parallels between himself, Michiko and this pair? Is Michiko bothered either way?

It’s a classic Ozu set-up: the different views and perceptions of the generations, contrasted against each other. In many ways, very little happens in An Autumn Afternoon, but in other ways a whole life-time plays out. Skilfully, with an observing, restrained (Ozu’s final film is stiller than ever) camera, Ozu observes people in the Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter of their lives. In doing so, he captures a particular moment of Japanese history, where pre-War, war and post-war generations confront the world with subtly different outlooks.

In the first darkening of the Autumn of his life, Hirayama is a quiet man with a rich vein of humour. He’s from a generation which sees itself on being more liberal than those before. He meets regularly with a bunch of former school friends, who pride themselves on holding their drink and frequently prank each other in dead-pan comic exchanges. There is a delighted ragging of their friend Professor Horie’s barely concealed sexual glee at his new (younger) wife. They have traditional values (Hirayama assumes marriage will lead to immediate resignation for his young secretary) but enjoy the post-war flourishing of Japan.

Hirayama is comfortable with Americanised Japanese culture, from bottled beers and baseball to American bars and their stools. He drinks too much, make generous offers to others and indulges his children. He’s perfectly happy with the way things are: perhaps because he already fears what his life may be like when his two youngest children flee the nest. It’s a beautifully judged performance from Ryu, genuine, relatable, quietly content but with a subtle sense of sadness and anxiety at change.

There is a sense Ryu’s Hirayama doesn’t want the world shaken, as he has already lived through enough shaking to last a lifetime. He’s a former career Naval officer, who captained a ship in the War. His late wife, it’s implied, died in the American bombing of Tokyo. (Of his children, only two can really remember her, talking about her only wearing trousers during air raids). Bumping into one of his former petty officers, the two men indulge in reminiscences and reflections of what life might have been like in victory (in an American themed bar of all places). Hirayama is drawn to return to the bar again and again, as the barmaid reminds him of his late wife (this small detail would be the entire plot of another film) – although Ryu’s quietly sombreness suggests the memory is to painful to dive into.

But this man contrasts sharply with his children. Hirayama never re-married, and his children have filled the companionship gap in his life. While Michiko matches neatly the traditional view of a Japanese woman as dutiful and guarding of the home (she wears a kimono more than any other female character), his youngest son Kazuo dresses like an American teenager and isn’t afraid to criticise his father. And even Michiko too wants to make her own choices about her life, regardless of the views of others.

The most intriguing contrast though is the marriage between his oldest son Koichi (Keiji Sada) and Akiko (Mariko Okada). Here power dynamics are strikingly different. Both partners work – indeed at one point, Akiko arrives home to find Koichi cleaning and cooking. Decisions are made between them, with Akiko frequently calling the shots. A dispute about Koichi’s plan to spend the excess of a loan from Hirayama on a second-hand set of golf clubs, sees Akiko take firm control of finances (Koichi seems to have inherited his father’s quiet desire not to rock the boat) and has the final say. It echoes, in a way, Professor Horie’s second marriage, where his wife has a level of control over his comings-and-goings that surprises Hirayama and Kawai.

Hirayama may also be quietly disturbed by a vision of what the winter of his life might be like, from ‘The Gourd’, a respected teacher of his childhood, played with a superb desperation and forced good humour by Eijirō Tōno. This once-respected man now works for customers who barely look at him and is totally reliant on a daughter miserable at her life (Ozu quietly watches her break down in tears dealing with her drunken father) and gets embarrassingly pissed at the slightest opportunity when someone else is paying. Considering Hirayama is also a heavy drinker (both men are prone to slumping forward, or swaying on the spot when under the influence) there is a lot that suggests his Winter might not be wildly dissimilar from the Gourd’s.

All of these multi-generational issues are superbly explored by Ozu, all without forced commentary, in a film that is a triumph of his distinctive style of low-angle static cameras, transitions that ground us in location, made even more striking by the film’s gorgeous use of colour (especially its reds). And the film leaves it all open to us to interpret. Because there is no right-or-wrong in Hirayama’s situation: should he let his daughter remain or help her move on and embrace her life?

An Autumn Afternoon concludes with one of the most quietly heart-breaking moments in Ozu’s cinema – under-played to utter perfection by Ryu – as Hirayama sits alone, drink swishing around his guts, singing songs of a martial Japan and facing an unknown future that might see him forced to confront the loneliness he has avoided since his wife died. As the final shots complete of Ozu’s final work – a series of cuts to parts of Hirayama’s home – it feels like a perfect final statement from an artist who looked at the small tragedies of life like no other.

Me and Orson Welles (2008)

A star-turn from McKay and a brilliant theatrical reconstruction makes a charming comedy

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Zac Efron (Richard Samuels), Claire Danes (Sonja Jones), Christian McKay (Orson Welles), Ben Chaplin (George Coulouris), James Tupper (Joseph Cotton), Eddie Marsan (John Houseman), Leo Bill (Norman Lloyd), Kelly Reilly (Muriel Brassler), Patrick Kennedy (Grover Burgess), Travis Oliver (John Hoyt), Zoe Kazan (Gretta Adler)

In the 1930s Orson Welles was the Great Man of American theatre, a genius blessed with Midas’ skill to turn everything he touched to Gold. He had conquered the stage and his success on radio transmitted his fame into households across America. All this and he was not even thirty. On top of his boundless charisma, creativity and magnetic leadership qualities, he was also vain, selfish, boundlessly ambitious and self-obsessed, seeing other people as little more than extras in his drama. It’s an exploration of the man central to Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles, combined with the film’s wonderfully fond exploration of that magical world behind the curtain in the theatre.

Me and Orson Welles charts Welles’ landmark Broadway production of Julius Caesar: a modern-dress marvel (‘the fascist Caesar’) that reimagined a sharply cut, pacey production set in a world of jackboots, black shirts and Nuremberg-esque beams of light. Welles (Christian McKay) was, of course, front-and-centre as Brutus with his Mercury theatre players (nearly all of whom followed him to Hollywood for Citizen Kane) all around him. Newest to the cast is 17-year-old Richard Samuels (Zac Efron), away from school, dreaming of being an actor and falling in love with older production manager Sonja Jones (Claire Danes). As the production stumbles towards the stage under Welles’ mercurial hand, Richard worships Welles and loves Sonja – but will his hero-worship survive sustained contact with Welles?

Linklater’s film is set in a gorgeous recreation of 1930s Broadway theatre, full of love for the greasepaint, backstage gossip and theatrical tricks that create a world on stage. It also features an astonishingly accurate recreation of this seminal production, staged and lit to perfection, which gets as close as we can to capturing some sense of the astonishing experience the first night audience had watching the sort of Shakespeare production they had never seen before (Dick Pope, harnessing his experience of recreation Gilbert and Sullivan in Topsy-Turvy deserves major credit for his cinematography here, perfectly capturing Welles’ pioneering use of light).

Welles’ flaws are slowly discovered by Richard Samuels – a charming, deceptively light and winning performance by Zac Efron. Samuels is at first bowled over by Welles charisma – and Welles enjoys the ego-trip of taking a star-struck young man under his wing, who he can tutor and mould (who, after all, doesn’t love having a disciple). What Me and Orson Welles interestingly does is to have its young lead slowly work out that Welles may be a genius – but he’s also a fundamentally, principle-free shit who never means what he says, doesn’t think twice about dropping people when they have served their purpose and largely sees conversation as a one-way street where Welles monologues and the other person listens (and certainly never, ever, contradicts – Welles never forgives correction).

But Welles dominates the film, like he dominated life. He’s brilliantly portrayed by Christian McKay in his first major film role. McKay, an unknown, was selected after Linklater was wowed by his one-man show about the Great Man. (Linklater refused calls from the producers to replace him with a more famous actor). McKay dominates the film in what is not only a superb capturing of Welles vocal and physical mannerisms, but also a capturing of his mix of utter charisma, God-given talent and overwhelmingly selfish egotism. McKay roars through every scene with the same force-of-character you imagine Welles had, bowling over everyone around him and shaping the world into what he wishes it to be. Problems of money, timing and people are waved away (or left to be fixed by Eddie Marsan’s put-upon version of John Houseman) and McKay’s Welles uses sheer force of will to turn every event, outcome and single moment into an intended triumph (whether it is or not). Me and Orson Welles brilliantly captures Welles ability to shape his world.

We see the way he overwhelms the personalities of those around him. People like Joseph Cotton (a superbly captured performance by James Tupper) both love him and know that’s he’s a selfish, arrogant git who doesn’t seem to care about anyone but himself. Others, like Ben Chaplin’s tortured George Coulouris, allow themselves to be mothered by Welles, even though they know his motivations are more for the show itself (and the glory that shall be Welles’). Welles is the guy who gives the same heartfelt pep-talk to multiple actors, and writes identical jovial thank-you cards to all on opening night. The guy who uses nicknames for those around him because it’s a way to subtly assert control. Linklater’s film recognises his genius, makes him overwhelmingly attractive in his gung-ho confidence, but – and this is the brilliant thing about McKay’s stunning performance – also exposes his deep character flaws.

It superbly captures his vanity, selfishness and self-occupation. Welles cares little for anyone, assuming he can brow-beat or overwhelm them to fulfil his wishes. That could be a set designer, furious at Welles hogging credit for his work in the programme (Welles promises this will be amended, forgets about it and then later – when it’s too late to do anything about it – bluntly says he has no intention of not taking credit). It could be the radio show he turns up to record, clearly having not read the script, walking in seconds before live broadcast and promptly improvising a superb monologue (based on The Magnificent Ambersons) which at first puzzles, frustrates and then stuns into fawning admiration his fellow actors. What’s clear is that this is the sort of behaviour you can only get away with when you are flying high and all is perfect – Welles after all would self-destruct like few others in the next few years, never again able to yield such charismatic power again.

Me and Orson Welles uses a familiar structure – a love triangle of sorts – to bring this to life. Claire Danes gives a marvellously winning performance as an ambitious and super-confident woman, trying to make her way in a male world, perhaps drawn towards young Richard because he’s more thoughtful than the rest of the men around her. (Me and Orson Welles makes clear we live in a world where the actors of the company feel comfortable taking bets on who can bed Sonja, while she is also accepts that Welles can use the women of the company like a room-service menu). Both she and Richard are perhaps the forerunners of those who will finally be pushed too far by Welles, that would leave him a perpetual outsider.

This is a fun musing on the personality of one of the greatest film-makers of all time, brilliantly set in a luxurious recreation of classic Broadway. Directed with pace and wit by Linklater, with a fine cast giving it their all (and a career-defining turn from McKay), Me and Orson Welles is light, frothy but fascinating work.

Le Mépris (1963)

Godard’s film mixes virtuoso film-making with what feels a hard contempt for audience and characte

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Cast: Brigitte Bardot (Camille Javal), Michel Piccoli (as Paul Javal), Jack Palance (Jeremiah Prokosch), Giorgia Moll (Francesca Vanini), Fritz Lang (Himself), Jean-Luc Godard (Lang’s assistant director), Linda Veras (Siren)

The title translates as Contempt and, to be honest, it’s hard not to feel a bit of the contempt when watching. Of all the Great Directors, the one I find the hardest to like is Godard. When you settle down to watch Godard, it’s hard not to escape the feeling you are steeling yourself to be looked down on. Godard wants you to know he’s watched more, read more and thought more than you about everything. Godard is playing out his fantasy of being a Hollywood director and a Great Artiste and wants you to know it. In fact, the further you move away from his debut À Bout de Souffle, the more his films become (for me) overly pleased-with-themselves statements rather than actual films.

Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) is a writer, who wishes he could be producing great novels or plays, but is actually banging out crapola dialogue to fill American producer Jeremiah Prokosch’s (Jack Palance) Odyssey-opus, a film its director (Fritz Lang, one of Godard’s idols, playing himself) is trying to turn into art rather than the cheap sword-and-sandals epic Prokosch wants. But by taking the shilling, Paul earns the contempt of his glamourous wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot), who sleepwalks her way into an affair with Prokosch. Things come to head (as such) at Prokosch’s villa on Capri.

It was shot with a larger budget and a more controlling producer than any previous (or subsequent Godard film). God alone knows what they made of this – one suspects them reacting rather like Palance’s tantrum-filled producer when he inspects the arty dailies of statues and coastlines Lang has shot (“You lied to me Fritz!”). On some level Le Mépris is Godard playing a joke on his money men. They want a steamy relationship film, with plenty of Bardot on display? Have a slow series of elliptical conversations, a languid (but wonderfully filmed) argument scene in which Piccoli takes both a bath and a crap, and here are some deliberately functional shots of Bardot’s naked back on the bed while she and Piccoli intone empty dialogue. For a film that involves extra-marital sex, groping, a gun and a fatal car crash it’s deliberately unsensational – as if Godard was showing the money men he could ram anything they demanded into the film and still make it feel like a ticking-off.

To be honest, there’s also in Le Mépris a bit of Godard’s contempt for himself for selling out, as if he realised part way through he’d made a terrible mistake by taking the money and wanted everyone to know it. You can see it in the film’s visuals, that turn the demanded cinemascope wideness (which Godard loathed) into a series of pan-and-scan shots and tight close-ups that wipe-out the impact of the grand visuals. Godard may appear in the film himself, but his real substitute is his hero Lang, here a visionary polygot (the only person who can speak the full hodgepodge of languages the characters communicate in), who gives voice to Godard’s most closely held views about cinema and the only person completely assured and comfortable with what he is doing.

Not that there isn’t an awful lot to admire in Godard’s work here. As fits a director steeped in a love of film, Le Mépris drips with homages to cinema technique. Godard speaks the credits – Welles in Magnificent Amberson’s style – over an opening shot which is itself of an opening shot filming a crew filming the opening tracking shot of Le Mépris. There are touches of Ford, Hawks and Lang in the stylistic love of Godard’s heroes. Paul dresses like a mix of Sam Spade and Dean Martin and loves chatter about old movies (he’s very excited about the prospect of catching an old Hawks film). The tattered film studio is lined with film posters (including those depicting Godard’s former wife Anna Karina). We see the intricate procedures of film-making and post-production and Bardot even reads books about cinema in her downtime.

There is some astonishing film-making – Godard may be self-important, but he can shoot a film with grace. The tracking shots through the seemingly abandoned Cinecittà studios in Italy are beautifully done, as is the intriguing framework of the unique Capri villa and its striking staircase. The film’s highlight (and finest sequence by far, as well as its most human) is its middle act, a virtuoso choreographed sequence in the Javal’s under construction apartment (including French doors without glass, bathrooms without doors and intermittent furniture). The camera moves, brilliantly at a distance, to constantly frame these two characters interspersed between doorways, or kept apart by walls in the centre of the frame, barely ever managing to ever be in the frame together, the disjointed visual language perfect for communicating a conversation where they are never on the same page. It’s a superb way of filming partly an argument, partly a drifting out of love, partly a fumbling attempt to find common ground. There is a real emotional reality to this scene, something that isn’t present anywhere else in the film.

Even there though, it works because of its distance. Le Mépris is a strikingly distant film, Godard presenting a deliberately cold, hostile film that lacks any real warmth, empathy, wit or lightness, like he’s challenging us to swallow down this filmic medicine of cinematic inspiration and beautiful framing. Le Mépris also seems to despise its characters. Palance’s film producer (and this is a deeply uncomfortable performance from Palance, who constantly looks like he’s woken up suddenly and doesn’t know where he is) is a boorish philistine and an idiot. Piccoli’s writer is a shallow, preening lightweight who wants to be a Godard but is a hack with pretensions.

Interestingly the most intriguing character in it is Bardot – but she remains elliptical, perhaps because part of Godard can only see her as some sort of trophy or status symbol, something Paul fails to ‘deserve’ because he can’t maintain his principles. Her motivations remain a mystery and one wonders if there is much place for them in Godard’s masculine view of the world, where women are either secretaries or muses. Camille herself seems to see herself as sort of property, suspecting her husband of pimping her to a producer but then seemingly embracing that in any case (despite her contempt for Prokosch). There is an air in Le Mépris that Godard can’t really imagine either Bardot or Giorgia Moll’s Francesca (a striking presence, who has the best running joke with her rudimentary translations of Javal’s dialogue for Prokosch) as collaborators or equals to either the brutish producer or the tortured men, but people who can only be defined by their attitudes towards them.

Above all, Le Mépris wants you to know your place when watching it. To admire it, but also to know that your wishes for something more dramatic or humane are shallow, base desires. That really you should be seeking out the sort of arty stuff Fritz Lang is shooting on the island, not the page-turning nonsense the executives wanted. It’s an attitude that pours out of the film, and after a while its one that makes you want to spend your time elsewhere. Godard may be a clever guy, but he can be very poor company.

The Love Parade (1929)

Lubitsch’s delightful early musical mixes European class with battle of the sexes wit

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

Cast: Maurice Chevalier (Count Alfred Renard), Jeanette MacDonald (Queen Louise), Lupino Lane (Jacques), Lillian Roth (Lulu), Eugene Pallette (Minister of War), E. H. Calvert (Sylvanian Ambassador), Edgar Norton (Master of Ceremonies), Lionel Belmore (Prime Minister)

Sylvania has a problem with its ambassador in France, Count Alfred Renard (Maurice Chevalier) – largely that he can’t stop seducing anything that moves. Renard is swiftly recalled to his homeland… where he catches the eye of young, unmarried Queen Louise (Jeannette MacDonald), who immediately thinks he might just be the man for her. Renard isn’t averse to marrying into royalty, but quickly finds himself chafing in the role of Prince Consort – this isn’t what marriage is supposed to be, the husband doesn’t defer to the wife!

It is of course a slightly dated version of marriage, and The Love Parade could be seen as a very light piece of Taming of the Shrew style-action where a strong woman learns true happiness is sometimes being the number two. The fact that, despite this, The Love Parade is still charming, funny and more than a little delightful is partly due to the immensely skilled lightness it’s directed with by Lubitsch (it feels the whole sweet confection could burst with a puff of strong air) and the huge charm of its leads. After all, Chevalier is no-one’s idea of a Petruchio while Jeanette MacDonald manages to marry up romantic longing with being tired of the restrictive burdens of royalty, that you believe she’d be happy to share some of it out.

The Love Parade was one of the first ‘talkie-musicals’ and it’s assembled with such pace and energy by Lubitsch (at his very best) that you almost don’t notice how often its forced into static framing for the talking and singing (where couples frequently sit or stand opposite each other to burst into song). That’s because the film is awash with swift intercutting between different locations, often to great comic effect (not least cut aways to groups of ministers, soldiers and servants excitedly commentating from afar on the lead’s first date) and intermixes this with smoothly seductive tracking shots through grand Habsburg-style sets.

Lubitsch’s film however uses sound effectively and remarkably imaginatively. Establishing his confidence with it, it opens with us overhearing dialogue from outside a room before the door swings open and we see Chevalier stride in and confide directly to us. Sound is used throughout for comic effect, either in its presence – the highly suggestive ‘400 cannon blasts’ on the night of the wedding or the frustrated drumming of fingers on the table our happy couple do in the midst of an early row to the awkwardly quiet march-past of a group of soldiers trying not to disturb the Queen’s lie-in. It’s creative stuff, considering the limitations at the time, and bounces effectively off the parade of songs and witty dialogue that powers the film.

Alongside that, the film works because it’s such an interesting exploration of social mores and etiquette, not to mention a cheeky love of the sort of content code-Hollywood would have frowned on. The opening sequence revolves around the aftermath of one of Renard’s seductions, with shots of garters, a furious husband and a gun loaded with blanks (Renard seems to have a drawer full of these for just such occasions). Queen Louise is all too clearly extremely aroused by reading about Renard’s string of sexual conquests, immediately running into her dressing room to apply more make-up before she can greet him with all the coquetteish excitement she can manage.

There is innuendo throughout (“My wife has told me everything” one of Renard’s embassy colleagues announces, something Chevalier’s face tells us is clearly far from true). Lubitsch uses visual humour expertly, cutting away from Renard’s delighted recounting of one of his adventures to a shot outside where we watch Renard and his audience talking silently from the other side a window, with only their reactions clueing us into how saucy the story is. All this is classic ‘Lubitsch touch’, which thrives among these gorgeously grand sets and costumes.

The Love Parade manages to keep us feel sympathy for the likeable Renard, not least once he discovers, as Prince Consort, his duties seem to be little more than shaving (because, as he tells Louisa, he looks terrible in a beard) and resting (so he’s nice and ready for the evening’s fun later). He literally can’t eat a meal until Louisa arrives to eat first (he’s reduced to plucking an apple from a tree to beat off hunger) and finds his advice is instantly handed back to him unread by one of Louisa’s many court flunkies. Sure, you’d prefer that The Love Parade works its way into a proper partnership at the end, rather than just reversing the power to it’s ‘natural order’ but at least you can see Renard has a point.

It’s interesting that a more natural partnership actually seems to develop between their two servants, Renard’s valet Jacques (Lupino Lane) and Louisa’s maid Lulu (Lilian Roth). Lane and Roth give energetically charming comedic performances – and also by far the most engaging and dynamic musical sequences. The highlight here is ‘Let’s be common’, that brilliantly uses Lupino’s double-jointed flexibility to stage the film’s most overtly entertaining number. There is a Mozartian quality to these super-smart servants – so much so, I’d willingly trade a few of Chevalier or MacDonald’s numbers for a couple more with them.

Which isn’t to disparage the stars. Chevalier’s comic skills are exploited to the max here – his reaction to ‘being shot’ in the opening sequence is a masterclass in timing – and it’s a part he invests with huge charm which sells Renard’s slight selfishness as genuine likeability. Lubitsch throws in a few neat gags about his accent, not least Renard’s penchant to voice his frustrations in perfect, rat-a-tat French to bewildered Sylvanians (he’s deeply disappointed when he asks one obstructive courtier if he speaks French only to get the answer ‘yes’). Jeannette MacDonald is also skilfully sharp and just frustrating enough, from her opening scene where she is poutishly pissed that he flunkies can’t find her a consort (despite the fact she doesn’t want one) to her mix of romanticism and imperiousness that runs through the film.

The Love Parade is an engaging and funny Lubitsch masterclass in his particular genre of sophisticated comedy, as well as a strikingly original use of sound and music. It remains engaging and entertaining today.

La Ronde (1950)

Ophüls masterful film is a cheeky end-of-pier comedy in smart clothes and subtle musing on filmmaking

Director: Max Ophüls

Cast: Anton Walbrook (Master of Ceremonies), Simone Signoret (Léocadie, the Prostitute), Serge Reggiani (Franz, the Soldier), Simone Simon (Marie, the Chambermaid), Daniel Gélin (Alfred, the Young Man), Danielle Darrieux (Emma Breitkopf, the Married Woman), Fernand Gravey (Charles Breitkopf, the Husband), Odette Joyeux (Anna, the Young Woman), Jean-Louis Barrault (Robert Kuhlenkampf, the Poet), Isa Miranda (Charlotte, the Actress), Gérard Philipe (the Count)

La Ronde is the sort of film many would describe as elegant and sophisticated, with its Edwardian Viennese setting, gorgeously expansive costumes and luxuriant sets. Which is perhaps part of Max Ophüls’ joke: because, in many ways, La Ronde is a sublimely naughty end-of-the-pier show where a suave Master of Ceremies (a gloriously arch Anton Walbrook, standing in for Ophüls himself), manipulates events and people to present a chain of sexual encounters that eventually loop back round through the partners to the prostitute (Simeone Signoret) who started it all. Only of course she didn’t start it, since Walbrook’s MC instructed her exactly which soldier she was to invite for a romantic knee-trembler. La Ronde is a sex comedy of manners – but it’s also an intriguing commentary on the act of film-making.

Walbrook’s MC is essentially the film’s director. He all but tells us this, as Ophüls camera (in one of the director’s signature long, roving camera moves) tracks him walking in evening garb in front of what looks suspiciously like a painted backdrop… and then is immediately revealed to indeed be one as Walbrook guides us past a film camera onto another set, changes his clothes and begins handing out instruction to actors. Over the course of the film, Walbrook will guide characters between sets (through a blatant back-stage area), take on a series of small roles to directly intercede in the action and even snip out the film of La Ronde’s most smutty part. He’ll even cue the sun to rise. Walbrook’s archly artificial performance is crammed with assurance, charm and a supremely entertaining streak of naughtiness: for what is a film director but a sort of enthusiastic child who enjoys playing out his stories for us.

It makes sense that La Ronde takes place in a curiously artificial world, that often seems to be only populated by whichever pair of lovers Walbrook happens to have introduced. Its design echoes the circular narrative of the piece. Ophüls camera frequently moves through circular tracking shots, while the frame is stuffed with circles. From the merry-go-round the MC rides on, circles are everywhere: courtyards and rooms are circular, stair-cases and walkways roll round on themselves, characters are framed through chandeliers or circular gaps in ormolu clocks. The set seems to loop around as much as the story does, characters being forced into rotation, as if they were constantly riding the merry-go-round (which indeed we see, at one point, kitted out with a whole dinner service) not in control of their own fate but driven forward by endless momentum.

It’s an endless momentum that crashes only once, the MC’s roundabout breaking down when a young lover suffers from a bout of impotence. It’s telling that, during this sequence, we get the closest we get to an adult conversation between two lovers, Daniel Gélin’s eager-to-please young man and the relaxed worldliness of Danielle Darrieux’s married woman. Just as it’s telling that the only encounter not punctuated by sex, but instead by an earnest conversation that there are more important things in a marriage than the buzz of passion, is between Darrieux and Fernand Gravey’s fusty but strangely vulnerable Husband. Aside from that, these encounters have a constant frission of desire beneath them, only rarely punctuated by more complex emotions.

In fact, there is something very stereotypically French about a film that essentially says a constant parade of sexual encounters between willing partners is perfectly harmless, so long as eyes are open and honesty prevails. It’s also striking how, from encounter-to-encounter, characters switch from seduced to seducer. Simone Simon’s Chambermaid goes from the arms of Serge Reggiani’s enthusiastic soldier (whose interest in her declines almost immediately after the deed), to shamelessly provoking the lust of Gélin’s young man who then immediately, enthusiastically, courts Darrieux. Odette Joyeux coquettishly plays along with Gravey’s extra-marital tumble and then finds herself swept up with Barrault’s poet who is putty in the hands of Miranda’s actress.

It all eventually loops us back round to Simone Signoret’s prostitute: and if there is anything in La Ronde about the cost of love, it seems fitting it should be connected to the loneliness of the only person to whom this is a professional obligation rather than a choice. Signoret makes the woman surprisingly melancholy and regretful, more desperate perhaps than anyone else for a taste of genuine connection: be it from Reggiani’s soldier (to whom she offers a free romantic encounter, which he only accepts so long as it doesn’t involve a ten minute walk to her apartment) or later from Philipe’s count, where she seems not even surprised that he awakens claiming to not remember a thing about the night before. La Ronde bookends a frequently light, sexy, cheeky film with its most tragic character (another sign of Signoret’s skill at pained neglect).

Aside from this, it’s a surprisingly light, playful and cheeky confection – one which relies on its impact from the masterfully graceful filming it receives from Ophüls, at the top of his game here. No point is made too forcefully, every scene smoothly but relentlessly builds towards a comic highlight, each shot is framed to perfection, from the gliding tracking shots to the Dutch angles and circulatory framing. This is a director’s film like few others: so, its immensely fitting it should, with Walbrook’s character, effectively make the director the key character, delightedly telling us every part of his design, guiding our eyes where to look and manipulating and positioning the other characters so they add to our enjoyment. There are few films quite like La Ronde in that all this is done with an astonishing lightness of touch. Nothing here is to be taken too seriously, or to be hammered home too hard. Instead, it’s a whimsical naughty story intended to leave you with a grin on your face when you recount it to friends.

28 Years Later (2025)

Belated sequel successfully compliments gore with thoughtfulness and surprising sensitivity

Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: Alfie Williams (Spike), Jodie Comer (Isla), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Jamie), Ralph Fiennes (Dr Kelson), Edvin Ryding (Erik), Chi Lewis-Parry (Samson), Christopher Fulford (Sam), Amy Cameron (Rose), Stella Gonet (Jenny), Jack O’Connell (Jimmy)

Following on not quite 28 years since the original (23 Years Later wouldn’t have had the same ring to it), 28 Years Later sees Danny Boyle return to the post-apocalyptic hell-scape that is a Britain over-run by rage-infected, super-fast, permanently-furious, adrenaline-filled humans (don’t call them zombies!). But those expecting a visceral, gut-punch of blood-soaked violence may be in for a surprise. 28 Years Later is a quieter, more thoughtful film, where the battlefield is for the sort of values to embrace in a world gone to hell.

After a viciously terrifying opening set on the day of the original outbreak – in which vicar’s son Jimmy flees, terrified, from his home after a gang of infected literally rip-apart or infect his family sand terrified telly-tubby-watching friends – we flash-forward decades. Britain is now quarantined and nature has reclaimed large chunks of the land. The few remaining survivors live in protected communities, like a group on Lindisfarne, protected by a causeway flooded at high tide. In the community, 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), is taken to the mainland by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to claim his first infected kill, while his confused and ill mother Isla (Jodie Comer) sits at home. But Spike will learn things about himself and his father on the mainland – enough for him to decide to risk taking his mother to meet with the mysterious Dr Kelson (a magnetically eccentric and softly-spoken Ralph Fiennes, in a performance that defies all expectations), who lives in isolation and may just know how to cure her.

Boyle’s film is kinetic and vicious at points, but also has a magnetic beauty as his camera flows across a world in some-ways unchanged from 2002 and in others utterly alien. Scavenged supplies are full of technology from the earlier noughties. The remains of things like Happy Eater restaurants are everywhere, and (proving not everything is bad) the Sycamore Gap tree remains standing. Buildings and villages are overgrown with plant-life and trees. Colossal herds of deer – enough to shake the earth – roam the countryside. In many ways the future is once more the green and pleasant land, with the Lindisfarne community sharing supplies and relearning skills like farming and archery (echoing the days of Henry V, with Boyle calling back to this with a series of shots from OIivier’s film, it’s a compulsory skill as the safest way to kill infected).

There is no chance of salvation or change here. That’s made very clear to us, with the Act Two arrival of Edvin Ryding’s scared Swedish soldier who tells us plainly that being stranded on the island is a death sentence. The world has left Britian behind and they way Erik describes it, all iPhones and Amazon deliveries, is as familiar to us as it is utterly incomprehensible to young Spike. This is not a film about fixing, averting or liberating the island. It’s a film about existing in a permanent state where mankind is no longer the apex predator.

Boyle’s film, with an excellent and thoughtful script by Alex Garland, is therefore all about defying expectation. Spike’s journey with his father is less about a terrifying chase from hordes of infected (though there is plenty of that), or him hardening himself in a brutal world. Instead, it’s about Spike’s nagging doubts about his father being confirmed. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a very good as a man who is brave and protective, but morally weak and desperate for approval. He’s the sort of man who harangues his son into executing restrained infected (even children) and takes every opportunity in between dutiful caring for his wife, to slip off to his girlfriend. A man who brags on their return as if his son was some sort of Hercules, when Spike knew he spent most of his time missing with his arrows and in a constant state of terror.

28 Years Later captures that sinking feeling children can have when they realise beyond doubt that their parents aren’t perfect. Alfie Williams is excellent as a caring boy, who doesn’t see sensitivity and humanity as weaknesses in the way you suspect his father does. Who sees through his father’s need to promote himself and is disgusted by it. And finds himself drawn closer to his sick mother (a carefully vulnerable performance from Jodie Comer) and finding he has more affinity for a world that still has a place in it for decency, where going back to help someone is not written off as foolishness.

It’s a film that raises fascinating questions about the infected themselves. While millions of infected passed away – their rage filled minds unable to carry out basic tasks like eating or drinking – the small percentage who survived, seemed to retain enough of themselves to maintain some sort of life. They move in herds – or, as some of the obese ground-crawlers do, in a bizarre family unit – and they even have leaders. ‘Alphas’ – those who the disease caused to grow to humongous proportions (in every organ) – direct their charges. And they have intelligence: our main Alpha ‘Samson’ enraged at the death of his comrades, holds back from an attack until the moment is right, mourns the loss of a female infected and maintains a relentless pursuit for reasons we’d recognise from thousands of movies.

28 Years Later uses this to force us to ask questions about ourselves and when human life ceases to matter. To Jamie, the infected have ceased to be human and killing them a duty. But Spike is forced to start to ask: what right do we have to decide there are less human than us, these people who were like us perhaps moments before? Beyond self-defence, is killing them as noble as all that? 28 Days and Weeks Later featured the instant slaughter of anyone with even a suspicion of infection. Years questions this like never before. Everyone on this island is a victim, and the infected deserve just as much memoralizing as victims as the uninfected.

It makes for a surprisingly quiet and meditative drama – even if it is punctuated by moments of shocking blood and gore, from heads and spinal cords being ripped out to a blood-spatted TellyTubbies screening in a vicarage – and one that demands you think almost more than it demands you be thrilled. With exceptional performances, especially from Alfie Williams, it’s a different but mature sequel that redefines aspects of the series. And, based on its jaw-droppingly bizarre ending, its sequel will only take this thinking further.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Kubrick’s enigmatic masterpiece will open your mind in the same way as its mysterious monoliths

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Keir Dullea (Dr. Dave Bowman), Gary Lockwood (Dr. Frank Poole), William Sylvester (Dr. Floyd Heywod), Douglas Rain (HAL 900), Daniel Richter (Moon-Watcher), Leonard Rossiter (Dr. Andrei Smyslov), Margaret Tyzack (Elena), Robert Beatty (Dr. Ralph Halvorsen), Sean Sullivan (Dr. Bill Michaels)

When I first sat down to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey I was a teenager. It quickly became clear I had no idea what I was getting into. Somewhere in my mind I pictured an experience a bit like Star Wars. What I wasn’t ready for was the enigma wrapped in a mystery Kubrick actually made. Watching it was rather like a teenager chugging back a fine red wine as their first drink: I spat it out and reached for a can of Fosters. Appreciation for that sort of stuff has to grow with age. Today, for all Kubrick can be self-important, this is visionary, individualistic, ground-breaking film-making. A truly unique piece of film artistry and a masterclass in sound and vision, presenting something unanswerably different. No wonder its impact has stretched through film, like the monolith’s on mankind.

2001 could arguably be about everything and nothing. It was developed by Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke, working in tandem to produce both script and Clarke’s novel. But Kubrick flew in a radically different direction. While he and Clarke populated the novel treatment with greater context, Kubrick felt (as the film reached its conclusion) that explanations weakened the film. Its power lay in maintain the mystery. Kubrick cut a voiceover, trimmed out characters, sliced out dialogue and removed all references to aliens behind events: he left the film itself as a mysterious artifact, the viewer could touch it and experience their own unique odyssey into the unknown.

Split into four chapters, we are taken from the dawn of our civilisation to (perhaps) the dawn of our next civilisation. A prologue shows the arrival of a mysterious monolith on prehistoric Earth, where a group of ape-like humanoids encounter it and learn to use tools (namely to hunt and kill). Millions of years later, mankind’s early colonisation of space discovers another mysterious monolith, buried millions of years earlier. A mission is sent to Jupiter years to find out more about its origins. On that mission, all the crew bar Dr Dave Bowman (Kier Dullea) are killed when on-board computer HAL seems to malfunction. Bowman is left alone to encounter a monolith circling Jupiter which takes him into the infinite, a whole lifetime lived in minutes in a dream-like French drawing room, before his rebirth into a giant space baby.

What’s extraordinary about all this, is that Kubrick does nothing to place any of this into an understandable context. 2001 is a sort of Last Year at Marienbad in Space, a journey into a series of questions with no answers – but yet somehow never feels unsatisfying. It’s also fascinating as a work that feels profoundly philosophical, but with very little actual philosophy or insight in it. Instead, what the film supplies is a sort of raw, elemental power that makes you tremble to your very bones. You can feel it worming inside you, its unfathomable imagery, haunting audioscape and sometimes impenetrable logic making it even more engrossing.

It’s often been said the only character in 2001 Kubrick related to was HAL, the emotionless but sinister computer. In fact, I’d say the character Kubrick most relates to is the Monolith. For, essentially, what is it but a film director: a master manipulator holding all the cards, knowing all the answers and choosing what to share with us? We understand nothing in a film without the director’s guiding hand. Like the Monolith, 2001 has such overwhelming awe and majesty that people are drawn to it while barely understanding it. That’s a Godlike power I feel Kubrick relates to.

2001 is a master-class of the director’s art. The visionary beauty of its imagery is breath-taking. From its sweepingly empty vistas of the barren rocks of pre-historic Earth to the serene majesty of space, this is a film filled with indelible images. There is a true power in the geometrical perfect, bottomlessly black Monoliths that make them something you instantly can’t look away from. And don’t forget that 2001 has one of the two greatest jump cuts in history (the other, of course, being in Lawrence of Arabia), as an ape celebrates victory by flinging a bone into the air that cuts suddenly into a similarly shaped space craft as it falls.

Kubrick’s imagery of planets in mysterious line-ups, or the sun emerging over the top of the Moon have helped define how we think of space. His vision of mankind’s future, full of pristine surfaces, corridors that curve and rotate to create gravity has a power behind the simplicity of its design. So mind-bending is Kubrick’s vision of entering the Monolith – a kaleidoscope of colours hurtling towards the camera – that only the knowledge of his control freak self would let you believe that he (unlike many of the film’s viewers) never once dropped acid.

But the real genius Kubrick used was to match the stately, patient beauty of his images – and you can’t deny that 2001 is a film that frequently takes its time – with striking, perfectly selected classical music. You can argue what Kubrick does here is piggy-back emotional and spiritual effect from the work of others. But his choice of musical score is unfailingly, undeniably perfect: there is no chance Alex North’s rejected score could have had the same power. The deep rumblings of Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra so perfectly captures the endlessly, unknowable power of space, time and the Monolith itself that it’s now become a landmark piece. The scenes of the ships in space are given a balletic beauty by being perfectly cut to Johan Strauss’ The Blue Danube. Could the Monolith have had both the power and unsettling sense of the unknowable without the sound of Ligeti’s Reqiuem? There is not a single decision to combine sound and visuals in 2001 that isn’t perfect.

And it only adds to the mysterious power of a film that can be deeply unsettling. If there is a transparent philosophical idea in 2001, it’s that mankind uses tools for conquest; the Monolith at first inspires a progression from the empty posturing of rival ape-tribes, into head-smashing violence. And, millions of years later, mankind is still two tribes (East and West), with weapons that could blow each other out of existence. But, whether that was the aim of the Monolith we never know. Just as we never really know what’s going on with Bowman’s fast track life through his neoclassical hotel (though I find something terrifying at Bowman encountering increasingly older versions of himself in silent trepidation).

Is 2001 optimistic or pessimistic about the future? I think Kubrick is aiming for letting us make up our in mind – after all this is our own private communion with his monolith. It matches his own natural inclination for distance. The humans in 2001 are almost impossibly stoic: space travel is no more exciting to them than a plane trip to a frequent flyer (the curved space station is basically an airport, which the character’s treat with the same time-killing blaseness as we do at a terminal). Messages from family members are twice watched by different figures with impassiveness. HAL’s control of the ship is so total, you wonder what the crew is for. Has the Monolith-inspired technology stunted mankind – now we are so dependent on machine that we just cogs in their workings, has progress stalled? 2001 could really be about mankind’s rebirth for a new life.

The HAL sequence – a precursor in many ways to The Shining in its unsettlingly invasive atmosphere – sticks in the mind as it has easily the most dialogue, plot and overt drama. HAL is a brilliant creation – Douglas Rain’s emotionless voice subtly shifting from strangely sweet to terrifyingly relentless to surprisingly sympathetic when he meets his end – and the sheer terror of these technological marvels turning against us (a space probe that shifts into a sort of monster, followed by a jump cut to HAL’s glowing red eye is just breathtakingly brilliant).

But if 2001 is short of narrative drive, surely that was Kubrick’s point? To keep 2001 as a mysterious encounter with no real answers. It opens and closes with two thirty-minute sequences devoid of any dialogue (the last word we here is “mystery”) and gives us such a blast of the senses that it feels more like being flung into a void of unanswerable questions. I was certainly not ready for that when I first watched it. But now, I just have to bow before Kubrick’s mastery. This inspired so many, its power is felt in thousands of works of art since. And it does this because it balances awe, wonder and mystery in a masterful way few other films can. You learn nothing in 2001. It has no real message, argument, or philosophical points, But yet it leaves you utterly satisfied, bursting at the seams with the power of your own imagination. That’s masterful film-making.

Sergeant York (1941)

Patriotic flag-waver with a great performance from Cooper and plenty of genuine heart

Director: Howard Hawks

Cast: Gary Cooper (Alvin C. York), Walter Brennan (Pastor Rosier Pile), Joan Leslie (Gracie Williams), George Tobias (“Pusher” Ross), Stanley Ridges (Major Buxton), Margaret Wycherly (Mother York), Ward Bond (Ike Botkin), Noah Beery Jr. (Buck Lipscomb), June Lockhart (Rosie York), Dickie Moore (George York), Clem Bevans (Zeke), Howard Da Silva (Lem), Charles Trowbridge (Cordell Hull)

In 1941, after Japanese bombs landed on Pearl Harbor, America needed patriotic big-screen heroes. Few stood out more than Alvin York. A young man (over ten years younger than Gary Cooper) who had lived a youth of drunken rough-and-tumble before he found the light. When America joined the First World War, the 30-year-old York was called up. A gifted sharp-shooter, York was perfect for soldiering – but had to wrestle with his conviction to stick to the Commandments from the Good Book. Finding a solution to his moral quandary, York fought in France where his sharp-shooting instincts saw him almost single handedly capture a German machine gun embankment and 132 Germans (it’s an achievement that sounds pure Hollywood, but is in fact entirely true).

It’s an inspiring hero story that Warner Brothers bought to the screen at the perfect time, it’s release seeing tales of streams of young men walking from the cinema straight to the enlistment office. Producer Jesse L Lasky spent no less than twenty-two years attempting to persuade the notoriously publicity-shy and modest York (just as in the film, the real York couldn’t wait to leave the glitz and glamour of his triumphant homecoming behind and return to his fiancé, farm and work with the Church) to grant him the film rights to his life. York agreed only with the advance of Hitler, a hefty payment to his Church and a promise that no-less than Gary Cooper would play.

Cooper was reluctant – pointing out he was far too old to play this national hero – but really no other actor could have done it. Cooper won his first Oscar for the role, and it’s his understated sincerity and decency that really sells the film. He turns what could otherwise by a potentially cloyingly perfect man into someone utterly sympathetic and endearing. There is an aw shucks quality to Cooper, as he captures York’s modesty, his shrugging off his accomplishments as no more than his duty, his palpable discomfort with attention (be it from congressmen or his fellow Tennessee farmers commending his shooting) and a deep-rooted genuineness in his love for his beau Gracie (Joan Leslie giving a commendable performance of endearing brightness that helps you overlook she was 24 years younger than Cooper – thankfully she doesn’t look it).

Cooper’s performance powers a sprightly, very enjoyable film by Howard Hawks (who picked up his only Oscar nomination for this) that manages to transcend the danger of being an overbearing flag-waver. (Don’t get me wrong though – this film waves the flag so much, you can practically feel the strain in its arms). Hawks produces a film that in many ways owes as much to The Adventures of Robin Hood as an heroic All Quiet on the Western Front. Despite the patriotic focus being the final few Acts, as York carries out his act of astonishing heroism, the film’s real heart is in the opening half and the conversion of a man who is never-too-naughty into one who casts aside the demon drink, works hard to earn what he has, and puts his faith and the good of others before his own concerns.

Hawks shoots this part of the film with a palpable energy and a rough-and-tumble sense of humour. It’s there from the film’s opening as Walter Brennan (in a role he invests with all his wheezy, twinkly dignity) finds his sermon constantly interrupted by the gunplay of the drunken York and his buddies. There is a light humour when Margaret Wycherly – a little too ethereal for my taste as York’s saintly mum (although her casting does make York and White Heat’s Cody Jarrett siblings) – archly observes that, even when drunk, her son’s accuracy with a shooter is second to none. That’s the skill of Sergeant York there: in it’s end is it’s beginning, York is already deeply skilled and as his slightly embarrassed reaction shows when he sobers up, reformation is not a long journey.

A large part of the success is making York one of us. Striving to save the money he needs to buy the farmland of his dreams, Hawks provides a sweet montage of York undertaking no end of backbreaking, thankless work and returning home to tick off his slowly accumulating dollars under the smiling approval of Ma. When, after all his work, he finds the land has nevertheless been sold (because the owner never believed this previously idle lush could hold on to his hard-earned pennies), his outrage at the breaking of another man’s word is a clarion call to all of us who have played by the rules and been shafted. When his conversion comes, it’s not as out-of-the-blue as it could seem, but a logical conclusion for a journey we’ve watched him go on.

It’s undercut with scenes that drip with Hawksian skill. A marksmanship competition is crammed with a playful Robin Hoodesque skill. A bar-fight that the drunken York gets wrapped up in is so full of comedic tumbles and prat falls it’s hilarious. York’s constantly being fetched for various tasks by his kid brother is expertly played for subtle laughs. Alongside this, the romance between York and Gracie (and the off-screen slapping he hands out to a rival who treats her with disrespect) is beautifully handled.

The only real Hawksian touch missing is that little slice of cynicism, that ability to look under the skin of a legend (like with Wayne in Red River) and see a more flawed person. York basically is perfect, and in a film dripping with patriotism there can’t be any fault with either the army or the moral question of whether gunning down your fellow humans is alright in the service of your country. There is a version of Sergeant York where his commanding officer’s invitation that he take some time and read his way through the history of America (a replacement good book) was an act of naked manipulation of a guileless man. Or where we see the sort of guilt at his taking of life that the real York felt, play out across Cooper’s face. There’s none of that here.

In fact, after the vibrant, playful, heartfelt first few acts, you feel Hawks felt less interested in the war itself. There is a functionality about the final acts of Sergeant York as York aces his shooting tests on the range (although the flabbergasted reaction of his training officer and York’s apologetic manner at his failure to only manage five dead-on bulls-eyes on his first time using an army-issue rifle are funny). Hawks spices it up with York’s turkey-shoot metaphor, and a warm supporting turn from George Tobias (as a New Yorker soldier) and York’s gobble-gobbles to distract his German opponents. But, for all the realism of the trenches, there is an air of duty about this sequence.

But then Sergeant York works not because of the deed, but the man. And the film’s success in investing us in a man who could very easily have been all-too-perfect, in a playful and energetic first half works wonders. With a very fine, perfectly judged performance by Gary Cooper, this may not be Hawks most characterful work – but as the sort of film to showcase a man who inspires you to achieve acts of heroism, it hits the target perfectly.

Mickey 17 (2025)

Indulgent, over-long satire that mixes painfully obvious political targets with on-the-nose comedy

Director: Bong Joon-Ho

Cast: Robert Pattinson (Mickey 17/Mickey 18), Naomi Ackie (Nasha Barridge), Steven Yeun (Timo), Toni Collette (Ylfa Marshall), Mark Ruffalo (Kenneth Marshall), Patsy Ferran (Dorothy), Cameron Britton (Arkady), Daniel Henshall (Preston), Stephen Park (Agent Zeke), Anamaria Vartolomei (Kai Katz), Holliday Grainger (Red Haired recruiter)

In 2050, everyone on the colony ship to the planet Niflheim has a job. Even a washed-up loser like Mickey (Robert Pattinson). His job is the most loserish of all: he’s an ‘expendable’, hired to die repeatedly in all forms of dangerous mission or twisted scientific and medical experiments, with a new body containing all his backed-up memories rolling out of the human body printer. The one rule is there can never be more than one Mickey at a time – so it’s a problem when 17 is thought dead and the more assertive 18 is printed: especially as they are flung into a clash between the colonisers and Niflheim’s giant grub-resembling lifeforms ‘Creepers’. Can Mickey(s) prevent a war that the colony’s leader, a failed politician and TV-star Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his socialite wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), want to provoke?

It’s all thrown together in Bong Joon-Ho’s follow-up to Parasite which trades that film’s sharp, dark social satire and insidious sense of danger for something more-like a brash, loud, obvious joke in the vein of (but grossly inferior to) his Snowpiercer. Mickey 17 is awash in potentially interesting ideas, nearly all of which feel underexplored and poorly exploited over the film’s whoppingly indulgent runtime of nearly two-and-a-half hours, and Bong lines up political targets so thuddingly obvious that you couldn’t miss these fish-in-a-barrel with a half-power pea-shooter.

Mickey 17 actually has more of a feel of a director cutting-lose for a crowd-pleaser, after some intense work. Mickey 17 is almost a knock-about farce, helped a lot by Robert Pattinson’s winning performance as the weakly obliging Mickey 17 who grows both a spine and sense of self-worth. A sense of self-worth that has, not surprisingly, been crushed after a lifetime of failure on Earth leads him to series of blackly-comic deaths (the film’s most successful sequence) that has seen him irradiated and mutilated in space, gassed with a noxious chemical, crushed, incinerated and several other fates.

Not surprisingly, there is a bit of social commentary here: Mickey is essentially a zero-hours contract worker, treated as sub-human by the businessmen and scientists who run this corporate-space-trip. It’s an idea you wish the film had run with more: the darkly comic idea of people so desperate to find a new life that they willingly agree to have that life ended over-and-over again as the price. It’s not something Mickey 17 really explores though: right down to having Mickey sign on due to his lack of attention to contract detail (how interesting would it have been to see a wave of migrant workers actively pushing for the job as their only hope of landing some sort of green card?).

Mickey 17 similarly shirks ideas around the nature of life and death. Questions of how ‘real’ Mickey is – like the Ship of Theseus, if all his parts are replaced is he still the ship? – don’t trouble the film. Neither does it explore an interesting idea that each clone is subtly different: we’ve already got a clear difference between the more ‘Mickey’ like 17 and his assertively defiant 18, and 17 references that other clones have been more biddable, anxious or decisive. Again, it’s a throwaway comment the film doesn’t grasp. Neither, despite the many references to Mickey’s unique experience of death (and the many times he is asked about it) do questions of mortality come into shape: perhaps because Mickey is simply not articulate or imaginative enough to answer them.

Either way, it feels like a series of missed opportunities to say something truly interesting among the knock-about farce of Mickey copies flopping to the floor out of the printer, or resignedly accepting his (many) fates. Especially since what the film does dedicate time to, is a painfully (almost unwatchably so) on-the-nose attack on a certain US leader with Mark Ruffalo’s performance so transparent, they might as well have named the character Tonald Drump. Ruffalo’s performance is the worst kind-of satire: smug, superior and treats it’s target like an idiot, who only morons could support. It’s a large cartoony performance of buck-teeth, preening dialogue matched only by Toni Collette’s equally overblown, ludicrous performance as his cuisine-obsessed wife.

Endless scenes are given to these two, for the film to sneer at them (and, by extension, the millions of people who voted Trump). Now I don’t care for Trump at all, but this sort of clumsy, lazy, arrogant satire essentially only does him a favour by reminding us all how smugly superior Hollywood types can be. So RuffaTrump fakes devout evangelical views, obsesses about being the centre of attention, dreams of his place in the history books while his wife is horrified about shooting Mickey because blood will get on her Persian carpet. It’s the most obvious of obvious targets.

It’s made worse that the film’s corporate satire is as compromised and fake as the conclusion of Minority Report. It’s a film where a colonialist corporate elite defers to a preening autocrat, keeps its colonists on rationed food and sex and sacrifices workers left-and-right for profit. But guess which body eventually emerges to save the day? Yup, those very corporate committee once they learn ‘the truth’. Mickey 17 essentially settles down into the sort of predictably safe Hollywood ending, with all corporate malfeasance rotten apples punished. For a film that starts with big anti-corporate swings, it ends safely certain those in charge will always do the right thing when given the chance.

Much of the rest of Mickey 17 is crammed with ideas that usually pad out a semi-decent 45 minute episode of Doctor Who. Of course, the deadly, giant insect-like aliens are going to turn out to be decent, humanitarian souls – just as inevitable as the mankind bosses being the baddies. It’s as obvious, as the film’s continual divide of its cast list into goodies and baddies.

Mickey 17’s overlong, slow pacing doesn’t help. An elongated sequence with Anamaria Vartolomei’s security guard who has the hots for Mickey 17 (every female in the film, except maybe Collette, fancies him proving even losers get girls if they look like Robert Pattinson) could (and should) have been cut – especially as that would also involve losing an interminable dinner-party scene with Ruffalo and Collette. The final sequence aims for anti-populist messaging and action – but is really just a long series of characters saying obvious things to each other. Despite Pattinson’s fine performance – and some good work from Ackie – Mickey 17 is a huge let-down which, despite flashes of Bong’s skill, feels like a great director cruising on self-indulgent autopilot, taking every opportunity for gags over depth or heart. Not a success.

Alexander the Great (1956)

An odd epic, which both loathes its subject and also presents him as a golden-boy

Director: Robert Rossen

Cast: Richard Burton (Alexander the Great), Fredric March (Philip II), Claire Bloom (Barsine), Danielle Darrieux (Olympias), Barry Jones (Aristotle), Harry Andrews (Darius), Stanley Baker (Attalus), Niall MacGinnis (Parmenion), Peter Cushing (Memnon), Michael Hordern (Demosthenes), Marisa de Leza (Eurydice), Gustavo Rojo (Cleitus the Black), Peter Wyngarde (Pausanias), William Squire (Aeschenes)

No one in history achieved so much, so young as Alexander the Great. He conquered most of the known world before he was thirty and left a legend that generations of would-be emperors found almost impossible to live up to. He did all this, while remaining a fascinatingly enigmatic figure: either a visionary nation-builder or a drunken man of violence, depending on who you talk to. Alexander the Great, in its truncated two hours and twenty minutes (sliced down from Robert Rossen’s original three-hour plus) can only scratch the surface of his story and that’s all it does.

As the great man, Richard Burton flexes his mighty voice in a film that splits its focus roughly equally between the early days of Alexander and his troubled relationship with both his father Philip II (Fredric March) and his mother Olympias (Danielle Darrieux) and his own kingship and conquest of the known world until his early death. Surprisingly, perhaps because the world is so vast, it’s the first half of the film that’s the most interesting – perhaps because showing up the internecine dynastic squabbles between petulant royals are more up director and writer Rossen’s alley than global dominance.

Perhaps as well because it feels pretty clear Rossen doesn’t particularly seem to like Alexander. Over the course of the film, the pouting monarch will prove to have a monstrous ego (even as a teenager fighting Philip’s wars, he cockily re-names a sacked city after himself), ruthlessly slaughters opponents after battles, is prone to fits of rage, informs his followers with wild-eyes that he’s God himself, leads his army into the dried out hell of the deserts of the Middle East and turns (at best) a blind eye to his mother’s plans to assassinate his father and then murder his father’s second wife and baby son.

The film culminates in a shamed Alexander kicking the bucket more concerned with maintaining his legend for future generations than assuring any kind of future for his kingdom. But the sense of hubris destroying the great man is never quite captured. This is partly because the grand figure we are watching lacks any personal feelings or fear. He can’t seem to experience loss or grief and only understands negative events in terms of their impact on his reputation. And he never seems to truly learn from this – even when he harms friends, his regrets are based around the impact such action will have on how those around him see him. At the same time, Rossen can’t quite follow his heart and make a real iconoclastic epic meaning he instead leaves titbits here and there for the cinema-goer to hopefully pick up among the spectacle.

As such, Alexander is still pretty persistently framed as we expect a hero to be, with a rousing score backdropping Burton’s speeches and poses, even while the film seems deeply divided about whether this guy who conquered most of the known world and lay waste to Babylon was a good or bad thing. While acting half the time like a egomaniac tyrant, the film still carefully partially shifts blame for his character flaws onto his mother’s Lady Macbethesque influence (Darrieux does a good line in whispering insinuation) or Philip’s bombastic egotism (March, growling with impressive vigour).

Rossen has far more admiration for people like the fiercely principled Memnon (a fine Peter Cushing) who refuses to compromise only to be rewarded by a post-battle one-sided butchering from Alexander after his offer to surrender and spare the lives of his men is turned down. Even Michael Hordern’s Demosthenes comes across as a man of principle, certainly when compared to Alexander’s Athenian-of-choice Aristotle, interpretated here as a pompous windbag cheer-leader for dictators. Oddly even Harry Andrews (possibly, along with Niall MacGinnis’ wily Parmenion, the films finest performance) as Darius comes across as a man of surprising human doubt under his regal exterior. But, perhaps because of choppy-editing cutting down a complex story into just over two hours, Alexander the Great can’t resist framing its hero as a sun-kissed golden-boy, towering above everyone else in the film.

Watching Alexander the Great you get the feeling the film has effectively entombed him as a marble statue, so devoid is he of fundamental humanity. Perhaps this was Rossen’s solution to shooting a film about someone he seemed so devoid of human interest and sympathy for. There is a reason why Charlton Heston – the first choice for the role (can you imagine!) – called Alexander the Great “the easiest kind of picture to make badly”. Frequently Alexander the Great tips into a sort of sword-and-sandles camp made worse by how highly serious it takes itself. Not helped by Burton’s all-too-clear boredom with the part and contempt for the material, Alexander strikes poses and delivers speeches as if he’s been ripped straight out of Plutarch or a bust display in a museum.

Apart from rare moments – usually in the first half as he processes his complex feelings of love and loathing for his overbearing father – he is almost never allowed to be human. His friends – most notably his famed best-friend (and lover) Hephaestion – are reduced to a gang of largely wordless extras and only Claire Bloom’s Barsine is given any scope to talk to him as if he’s a man rather than just a myth. It gets a bit wearing after a while as you long for something human about the man you can cling onto.

It’s also a shame that Rossen seems uncomfortable with shooting the battle sequences. The battles of Granicus and a combined Issus-Gaugamela look rather like damp scuffles over shallow streams than some of the mightiest clashes of the Ancient world. Rossen communicates no visual sense of either strategy or scale (despite the bumper budget). Similarly, the grand sets look too theatrical and never quite as impressive as they should do, despite some fine painterly compositions. Rossen can never quite find a way to make his hundreds of extra seem like thousands and he falls back in the second half to communicating Alexander’s success through a tired combination of map montages, voiceover and repeated shots of men marching left to right and burning cities.

Alexander the Great is a deeply flawed epic. It’s neither swashbuckling fun that bowls you along, or a breath-taking piece of historical spectacle. Nor is it psychologically adept or insightful enough to show you something truly different about its hero. Instead, it tries to straddle both ways of thinking and ends up collapsing in the middle. If only Rossen had found his own Alexanderian solution to cutting this Gordian knot. Instead, the film just ends up a cut-about mess that fades from memory all too soon.