Category: Family drama

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.

The Razor’s Edge (1946)

A bubbling soap full of incidents, disguising itself as a meditation on philosophy

Director: Edmund Goulding

Cast: Tyrone Power (Larry Darrell), Gene Tierney (Isabel Bradley), John Payne (Gray Maturin), Anne Baxter (Sophie MacDonald), Clifton Webb (Elliott Templeton), Herbert Marshall (W Somerset Maughm), Lucile Watson (Louisa Bradley), Frank Latimore (Bob MacDonald), Elsa Lanchester (Miss Keith), Cecil Humphreys (Holy Man), Fritz Korner (Kosti)

“What’s it all about?”: a question asked long before Alfie and it’s the one asked by Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power) as he returns from World War One to Chicago. Suddenly those garden parties and country clubs all look rather empty and shallow. Larry is engaged to Isabel (Gene Tierney), but he’s not interested in office work and domesticity. He wants to live a little bit, to find out what life is about. Doesn’t he owe that to the man who died in the war to save his life? With just $3k a year (over $50k today, which must help), he heads for the artistic life in Paris. After a year apart, Isabel decides it’s for her (£3k a year? What kind of life is that!) and marries a banker so dull he’s literally named Gray (John Payne). Flash forward to 1929 and the Crash has upturned the lives of the Chicago bourgeoisie – perhaps Larry’s inner contentment will mean more after all?

Adapted from W Somerset Maugham’s novel – with Maugham as a character, played by the unflappably debonair Herbert Marshall – The Razor’s Edge is a luscious period piece with pretentions at intellectualism but, rather like Maugham, is really a sort of a soapy plot-boiler with a veneer of cod-philosophy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – after all the suds in Razor’s Edge are frequently rather pleasant to relax in – but don’t kid yourself that we are watching a thoughtful piece of cinema. It’s closer in tone to Goulding’s Oscar-winning Grand Hotel than it might care to admit.

Our hero, Larry Darrell, should be a sort of warrior-poet, but to be honest he’s a bit of a self-important bore. Played with try-hard energy by a Tyrone Power desperate to be seen as a proper actor rather than action star, Larry has a blissful “water off a duck’s back” air that sees him meet calamity with a wistful smile and the knowledge that providence evens everything out. Be it the break-up of an engagement or the death of close friend, little fazes Larry who has a mantra or piece of spiritualist advice for every occasion. Bluntly, our hero is a bit of a prig whose middle-class spirituality has all the mystical wisdom of a collection of fortune cookies.

It’s no real surprise that the film’s weakest parts are whenever Larry engages with the vaguely defined collection of homilies and mumbo-jumbo he picks up about spirituality. All this culminates in an almost embarrassingly bad sequence in the Himalayas, where Larry stays under the clichéd tutelage of a shoe-polish-covered Cecil Humphrey as a Holy Man whose every utterance is a vague collection of Diet Yoda aphorisms. Larry, with all the self-importance of the financially secure middle class, returns to the West sublimely certain of his own higher contentment and rather patronisingly looking down on the rest of the characters as shallow, grasping bourgeoisie.

The Razor’s Edge’s insight into human spirituality essentially boils down to “step out of the rat race and you’ll be a better man” – again made much easier, since Larry “forsakes” worldly wealth but can still dapperly turn out to a fancy function in a perfect tux. To be honest it becomes a bit wearing to see the other characters treat him like a sage and more than a bit mystifying why Isabel remains stubbornly obsessed with him for her whole life.

But if she wasn’t, we’d lose a large chunk of the appeal of the movie. The Razor’s Edge’s philosophy may be paper thin, but as a soap it’s spot on. And the scheming, manipulative, vindictive, snobby and entitled Isabel is a gift of a part, seized with relish by Gene Tierney. Isabel wants Larry, not so much because of who he is but because he belongs to her, and she can’t believe he was willing to let her jilt him without a fight. The epitome of the self-obsession of the modern age that Larry has rejected, Isabel consistently puts herself first, clings to the luxuries of high living and can barely hide her bored disinterest in the tedious Gray (a perfect role for the solid but uninspiring John Payne). Isabel schemes and attempts seduction of the saintly Larry, and her hissable antics provides The Razor’s Edge with much of its enjoyable thrust.

Because as a soap is where this film is most happy. It’s actually very well staged and shot by Goulding, full of carefully considered camera moves (including a late “wham” line which we don’t see a character react to, leaving their response open to our interpretation) and skilfully using depth of plain to showcase a series of luscious sets and impressively recreated Parisian streets on sound stages. The Razor’s Edge has a lot of very professional Hollywood craft behind it.

Its event-filled sub plots also give a host of excellent scenes and fun dialogue to its supporting cast. Anne Baxter won an Oscar as the tragic Sophie, a bubbly socialite (and old flame of Larry’s) from Chicago, whose husband and baby are killed in a car accident, tipping her into years of alcoholism and (it’s implied) life as a “good-time-girl” in a seedy Parisian bar. Baxter seizes this role for what it’s worth, from initial charming naivety to tear-streaked discovery of her bereavement to fidgety attempts at sobriety after Larry decides to marry her to keep her on the straight-and-narrow (needless to stay, temptation is put in the way of the pacing, smoking, fist-forming Sophie by the blithely shameless Isabel). It’s a very effective and sympathetic performance.

Clifton Webb, at the time Hollywood’s leading waspish figure of camp, has an Oscar-nominated whale of a time as Elliot Templeton, preening but generous socialite, delighting the finer things in life (from fine wines to perfectly stitched dressing gowns) who provides a catty sounding board to Isabel and whose final hours are spent bemoaning being snubbed by a countess. Herbert Marshall delivers a perfect slice of British reserve and gently arch commentary as Maugham (the real Maugham prepared a script which was junked by the studio, ending his Hollywood career there and then), purring his dialogue with his rich, velvet tones.

It serves to remind you that The Razor’s Edge works best as an event-packed piece of social drama, which it swiftly becomes as deaths, tragedy, alcoholism, scheming and feuds pile on top of each other in the second half with the blissful Larry casting a quietly judgemental but kind eye over everything around him. For all its attempts to look into the human condition, this is where The Razor’s Edge is at its best: engaging supporting characters and a hissable villain, all leading to a series of juicy plot developments. For all its literary pretentions, it’s at best a shallow From Here to Eternity.

Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)

Davies beautiful memory piece is quite unlike any other film in its poetic virtuosity

Director: Terence Davies

Cast: Pete Postlethwaite (Father), Freda Dowie (Mother), Lorraine Ashbourne (Maisie Davies), Angela Walsh (Eileen Davies), Dean Williams (Tony Davies), Jean Both (Aunty Nell), Michael Starke (Les), Debi Jons (Micky), Chris Darwin (Red), Pauline Quirke (Doreen)

When we study the past and our memories, we see an assortment of recollections of events and motionless snapshots of moments in time. The past can feel both distant and still, a long-ago series of happenings that our mind constantly shuffles and reinterprets depending on circumstance and situation. That vibe lies at the heart of Terence Davies’ poetic dive into that foreign land of memories, where events, people and snatched moments combine, shift and contrast in a visual attempt to reproduce our own sifting of our past lives.

Distant Voices, Still Lives follows the post-war lives of a working-class Liverpudlian family. Father (Pete Postlethwaite) is a depressive tyrant, who oscillates between moments of tenderness and acts of extreme violence. Mother (Freda Dowie) is a saint-like victim, who tries her best for her children. Maisie (Lorraine Ashbourne), Eileen (Angela Walsh) and Dean (Tony Davies) grow up, marry and forge their own lives in the community, sometimes repeating the mistakes of their parents, all in largely warm and welcoming working-class community.

Terence Davies based much of Distant Voices, Still Lives on his own upbringing and memories of his family (a framed photo on the wall is of Davies’ own father). Shot with a rich, slightly sepia-toned classicism, the entire film replicates both the random workings of memory and watching a carefully constructed slide show. Events frequently are only tangentially connected to those preceding and following them: a memory of a marriage in the family, activates memories of the now-absent father at both his best and worst, a Christmas when he was affection itself, another when he overturned the dining room table in a sudden fury and demanded it cleaned up. It continues throughout the film, the narrative sliding from pre- to post-war, dictated more by tone and mood than by narrative.

It requires that you pay close attention to Davies’ film, to sift yourself through its moods and subtle shifts in tone. It opens with a carefully managed tracking shot that takes us inside the family house at an unspecified time, then fixes on a still shot on the staircase, while we hear conversation all around us. Is this happening at the same time? Or are we merely hearing the echoes of conversations past? In this film the past is both all around us and tantalisingly out of reach. Distant Voices, Still Lives is made up of frequent stationary, carefully assembled shots that resemble Mitchell and Kenyon photos that suddenly spring into movement (the image of the family preparing the wedding looks so like a photo, it’s a shock when all four actors suddenly walk out of frame). It’s a reminder that, to many of us, the past is a series of still lives, frozen in time.

Around everything, in a Dennis Potterish touch, is wrapped a musical backdrop of songs from the 40s and 50s. These tunes bring people together, knit together memories and (perhaps) even cover over and confuse events. Music is crucial in unity, the family and their friends frequently breaking into extended sing-alongs to popular tunes in the pub. It provides moments of warmth, closeness and intimacy – moments of mutual joy – which perhaps covers and balances the complex relations and struggles at home. It also makes the film often feel like an odd musical, like a sort of living slide show of images scored by the classics of yesteryear.

Distant Voices, Still Lives can be seen as a sort of poetic art installation, with its balance of still images bought to life and its poetic rhyming of events and persons. But it manages to involve the viewer, because it’s a very human film. There is real warmth and compassion in these memories and reflections. The love of a family, pulling together to survive trauma at home. Those moments of release in singing. The joy and delight – and tears – of coming together to watch a film at the cinema, swept up in the big screen emotion and imagination. Davies also finds a simple, pure beauty in the everyday: watching mother carefully tend and clean the house takes on a strange, natural beauty and power in the care and tenderness that lies behind it.

That’s particularly striking, considering the unflinching horror at home. Pete Postlethwaite is extraordinarily terrifying as a deeply unhappy and depressed man, who can process his complex feelings (and even, bizarre as it seems, his love for his family) only through anger and violence. He viciously beats his children and (in one terrible scene) his wife. He is charming and sweet with their friends. He oscillates between affection and fury. His children – particularly his son – are torn between despising the old man and wanting something – anything – from him in the way of affection. (Eileen will later bemoan his absence – due to death – at her wedding, to the disbelief and anger of her brother who often bore the brunt of his beatings). Davies’ film carries real power in its opening half, dominated by Postlethwaite’s tragic dark-heart, the ruler and gate-keeper of his home until his health collapses and he reverts to vulnerability.

The terrible impact on mother – beautifully played by Freda Dowie, in an extraordinary performance that feels like it’s been pulled direct from Davies’ memory of his own mother – dominates the emotional thread of the film. It also adds a dread to the possibility that Eileen’s own husband shows traces of jealousy and violence. But then the world is one of danger: the war could have ended the lives of the whole family (there is a striking sequence where they run trying to find their parents during an air raid warning, before finally finding the shelter and being greeted with relief and inevitable anger by their father). An accident nearly cripples Dean and Maisie’s husband – it’s echoes recurring throughout the film. Echoes touch nearly every moment of Davies film, flashes of memories activated by memories pulling together the film into an engrossing and heartfelt tapestry.

But the film’s real impact comes from the humanity that grounds it. It perfectly captures a moment of time, the bonds and interdependence of a working-class community in a film extraordinarily textured into something like a fictional documentary. The film is crammed with small moments of joyful intimacy, among the trouble and strife: friends laughing together, joy in music and film, laughing faces at shared jokes. All of this is shot with an exactitude that never manages to squash the tenderness at its heart. It’s a uniquely artistic, inventive and warm exploration of memory and time, with very few films even remotely like it – and rewatching it is a reminder of what a loss to cinema Terence Davies, a truly unique film-maker, is.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves (2023)

Delightful fantasy action-adventure, well-made fun that leaves you with a warm glow inside

Director: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley

Cast: Chris Pine (Edgin Darvis), Michelle Rodriguez (Holga Kilgore), Regé-Jean Page (Xenk Yendar), Justice Smith (Simon Aumar), Sophia Lillis (Doric), Hugh Grant (Forge Fitzwilliam), Chloe Coleman (Kira Davis), Daisy Head (Sofina), Jason Wong (Dralas), Bradley Cooper (Marlamin)

I can’t be the only person who had low expectations heading into Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves. A swords-and-spells epic based on a game that is a by-word for geeky sadness? No wonder quite a few people said “count me out”. Well, they were wrong. D&D: HAT is a left-field treat, a bouncy adventure that is both loads of fun and also true to the spirit of the original game, full of content for fans while welcoming newcomers with open arms. This is the sort of treat that years from now people will remember as one of the best adventure films of its era.

Set in the world of Dungeons and Dragons – and don’t worry about the overwhelming backstory and cultures of this sprawling role play game, they only intrude when essential to the plot – our heroes are crooks-with-hearts-of-gold: former-Harper (a sort of heroic knight) turned thief Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) and his best friend, barbarian warrior Holga (Michelle Rodriguez). They’ve been banged up in an arctic prison after a job-gone-wrong, escaping only to discover they were betrayed by oily conman Forge (Hugh Grant), who has used their incarceration to turn Darvis’ daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman) against them. To win her back – and find an amulet that could bring Edgin’s late wife back from the dead – they assemble a team for a dangerous quest. One that could become even more dangerous, since Forge is in league with evil red witch Sofina (Daisy Head).

Perhaps the best thing about D&D: HAT is that it never takes itself too seriously, but also never laughs at or looks down on its source material. It sounds easier than it is: pulling off this sort of trick is extremely hard. Lean too far one way, and the jokes can suggest the cast and crew feel contemptuous about what they doing; go too serious, and the po-faced treatment of a parade of silly names and gobbledegook backstories practically invites the viewer to laugh at it. D&D: HAT though is bouncy entertainment that knows exactly when to ease off the gags for moments of drama, danger and emotion to really land. If you’d told me I’d get a bit choked up watching the end of a role-play game adaptation, I’d have said you were mad.

Pretty much every scene provides a little piece of comic business that delights, almost all of them perfectly executed by a director and cast whose affection for the original material shines out. Watching D&D: HAT you get the impression it must have been fun to make – and to successfully make that sense of fun be shared by the viewing audience is a real challenge to pull-off (take a look at the horrific Thor: Love and Thunder). But there is a real charm here that means emotional plots about loss of a partner, father-daughter divides, broken marriages, traumatised children and persecuted victims carry real impact because we invest in the characters.

That’s in large part due to some knock-out performances of comedy vigour. Chris Pine is the perfect lead for material like this: charming and fun to be around, witty without ever trying too hard (he’s the master here of the throwaway pun) but skilled enough to make us see the heart and yearning below the surface of a fast-talking trickster with a line for everything. He sparks wonderfully off the gruff Michelle Rodriguez, whose surliness hides depths. Fellow gang members Justice Smith and Sophia Lillis (both Americans juggling, it has to be said, very good accents) match them perfectly, turning potentially one-note characters into heartfelt heroes.

D&D: HAT also manages to be true to the spirit of playing games like this. Goldstein and Daley wisely avoided the obvious idea for a film of D&D (“people playing the game in the real world are sucked inside it!”) to instead create the wild, improvisational tone of the game where your decisions guide the narrative. Like gamers, our heroes are a disparate collection of people and species, all with different skills that complement and conflict, given a loosely-defined mission and responding to unexpected curveballs thrown at them by the invisible game runner (the scriptwriters and directors) that keeps them on their toes.

It also captures the way best laid plans in the game can go awry (a portal in a picture, foiled by a picture falling face down onto a stone floor) or how a sudden unlucky movement (or random dice roll) can lead to disaster – a moment perfectly captured where a laboriously detailed series of instructions about crossing a bridge are rendered moot when a character absent-mindedly places a rogue foot on the first stone and instantly collapses it. The characters have a constant feeling of flying by the seat of the pants, much like D&D players often do, and D&D: HAT wonderfully captures this improvisational wildness on screen.

It’s also a very entertaining spells-and-swords romp. There are some great set-pieces, not least a sequence in a sort of lava-filled mine (with the inevitable dragon – both dungeons and dragons make several appearances throughout) and a wild and crazy chase through a death-filled maze arena. The film throws in some inventive Ocean’s Eleven style trickery to get out of difficult situations. In all these moments the cast’s energy, likeability and blend of wit and heart makes each development sing and ensures even routine plots (Can wizard Simon overcome his self-doubt? Can persecuted animagus Doric learn to trust? Can Holga learn to be honest to the people she loves? Can Edgrin learn to put other people’s needs first?) become tender and engrossing plotlines.

It bounces along perfectly, all hugely entertainingly and with a real winning charm. It spices things up just right with some brilliantly engaging comic turns: no one does slimy insincerity better than Hugh Grant (hysterical), while Regé-Jean Page is a revelation as a hilariously earnest super-powered knight, the only character who really speaks like you sort-of-expect a po-faced D&D character to. Above all, it’s huge fun with a lot of heart. I’ve seen it twice and it knocks spots off almost every other blockbuster for the last couple of years, being purely enjoyable, clever, funny and sweet.

The Lion King (2019)

Soulless, heartless remake designed to make Disney as much money as possible

Director: Jon Favreau

Cast: Donald Glover (Simba), Beyoncé Knowles-Carter (Nala), Seth Rogan (Pumbaa), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Scar), James Earl Jones (Mufasa), Alfre Woodard (Sarabi), Billy Eichnor (Timon), John Kani (Rafiki), John Oliver (Zazu), Florence Kasumba (Shenzi), Keegan-Michael Key (Kamari), Eric André (Azizi)

We all like to pretend Disney is the custodian of our childhood dreams – that they exist on to give us even more gorgeous memories to treasure. Bollocks. It’s a corporate enterprise existing solely to create more money for shareholders. If you were in any doubt, cast your eyes across The Lion King, a bottomless collection bucket for the God of Mammon. There is literally no reason for this film’s existence, other than to lure people into the cinema for the express purpose of removing their pennies from their pockets and dropping them into Disney’s McDuck vault for the next time the shareholders want to take a dip.

Seen the original? Then you know the plot. At least Disney’s previous nakedly commercial “live-action” remakes of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin had the decency to introduce a few new plot elements so there was at least a little bit of surprise content. Even if it was tedious stuff like the Beast’s Tardis mirror to the past or the Genie’s love interest. Here the extra 15 minutes is made up solely of padding, dreadful unfunny comic and utterly unnecessary extra characters who make literally no impression (Timon and Pumbaa now run a sort of hippie commune).

Disney made huge play out of the fact this is a “live action” Lion King. That’s the selling point. So proud of this were they, that they were hilariously pissed off when the Golden Globes nominated the film for Best Animated Film. But nothing in this film is real, or live action – except, as Favreau later bragged, the first shot of the film showing the sunrise. Everything you see here is created in a computer: from the tufts of Mufasa’s mane to the grass that dances in the breeze. Far from watching a live-action film, this is an orgy of CGI wizardry that constantly pats itself on its back for the hard work and detail that went into its creation. Who cares if the result has no heart?

Because that’s the case. The Lion King is a soulless cultural abomination. It is almost entirely a shot-by-shot remake, with the only changes being the occasional introduction of new (less good) dialogue. The characters have the same conversations, with less snap, laughs and emotion. It’s the sort of film-making karaoke some people like to call affectionate homage, but instead feels like pandering and no-one having the guts to change even the slightest moment from the original. How hard would it have been to match the plot, but find new ways to film it? This however matches shots, camera moves, angles, edits – the whole damn thing. If you had a choice between seeing the Mona Lisa or watching a computer do a Mona Lisa paint-by-numbers, which would you choose?

It also feels like no one stopped for a second during their self-congratulatory film-making to ask one or two obvious questions. Firstly, I don’t think its racist to say this, but to my eyes most lions look the same. No real effort has been made to distinguish any of them from each other (with the obvious exception of Scar) – this particularly effects the lionesses who all essentially look the same. Secondly, one of the first things you’ll notice about most animals is that they have inexpressive faces that do not display emotion and that they have mouths that have not been designed for talking.

With an animated lion you can get round this. You can draw a look of fear on Mufasa’s face because you aren’t limited to only using the facial movements that a real lion can. Their faces can shift and change to match the emotions of a real person – they can look happy or sad, cynical or sarcastic, joyful or mournful. You can’t do this with a real animal, because animals don’t have expressive faces. The whole cast of The Lion King have stiff, stationary faces that never react to the emotional events around them. They often can’t even move their mouths to properly replicate speech (Favreau starts to get round this by having as much of the dialogue delivered off camera as possible).

What you end up with is a series of robotically cold shots of animals not emoting, mechanically going through the emotions to replicate a masterpiece. Mind you, perhaps it’s a good thing that the film tries to rip-off the original as much as possible because whenever it does its own thing it thuds face-first into a pile of animal dung. Pumbaa is given a hideously on-the-nose line about “I can’t stand bullies” (to replace his “they call me Mr Pig!” battle cry). Eichhorn, Oliver and Rogen litter the film with unfunny fourth-wall-leaning references which stink of over-indulged recording booth improv. A few songs are butchered (most noticeably Be Prepared) and several musical cues are reworked in a way that dramatically reduces their impact. Even the obligatory new song is lacklustre and weirdly tonally wrong for the moment it’s used.

The cast struggle, never quite sure how they should approach the content. Spare a little sympathy for Ejiofor, stuck trying to follow one of the greatest vocal performances of all time – but his response to this is to bend himself into all sorts of shapes to be as different from Jeremy Irons as possible. The result is an underwhelming Scar, who lacks presence, menace, or the glorious manipulativeness of the original. Other actors are flat-out fails, most particularly Eichhorn who turns Timon an unlikeable bitchey whiner. Only John Kani really does something that feels like a good mix of homage and original work as Raffiki – he’s one of the few genuinely African voices in a film that loudly “prided” itself on its mostly African-American cast, but still has all the lions speaking in reassuringly American accents – and casts white actors into almost every non-lion role.

But that’s a side note. The Lion King is a ruthlessly, exploitative attempt to make money. Which it managed to do to an enormous degree. So, I guess it hardly matters that surely no-one will be watching it in five years’ time. Or that its CGI created lions are expression-free automatons existing in a shiny world of non-reality. Or that the entire enterprise is a heartless, soulless, nakedly commercial stare deep into the belly of a conglomerate that sees people as nothing more than ATM machines. The Lion King is an abomination and will take pride of place in Hell’s multiplex for all time.

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Shyamalan’s opus has just enough to reward re-watching after the world learned its secret

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Bruce Willis (Dr Malcolm Crowe), Haley Joel Osment (Cole Sear), Toni Collette (Lynn Sear), Olivia Williams (Anna Crowe), Donnie Wahlberg (Vincent Grey), Glenn Fitzgerald (Sean), Mischa Barton (Kyra Collins), Trevor Morgan (Tommy), Bruce Norris (Mr Cunningham)

Does this film have the most famous twist of all time? M. Night Shyamalan’s opus is so dominated by its final reveal (look away now) that Bruce Willis was is in fact a ghost, that every single viewing of it afterwards is focused on watching every second and seeing if you can spot the joins. I’m not sure if that has made for a long shelf-life or not for The Sixth Sense, an otherwise surprisingly sweet Stephen King-ish story of a child coming to terms with a miraculous power. Is there much more to The Sixth Sense by a third viewing though – can the magician’s trick land a third time?

I’d say just about. A year on from the shooting of famed child psychologist Dr Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) by a former patient he failed to help, his traumatised wife Anna (Olivia Williams) has stopped speaking to him and Malcolm needs redemption. Could he find it with the case of troubled ten-year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment). Cole, despite his obvious good nature, is frequently moody and terrified by curious incidents. His mother Lynn (Toni Collette) despairs as Cole seemingly refuses to talk to her. Can there be truth in Cole’s belief that he can see, and talk with, dead people?

The Sixth Sense has the reputation of a supernatural chiller. But, bar a few jump scares as ghosts walk across screen to sudden, loud musical notes, it’s actually a far more gentle story. In Shyamalan’s world the ghosts are not malevolent or cruel – they are simply confused, lost souls (of course “some of them don’t even know they’re dead”) with unfinished business. They are, in other words, rather like the rest of us – and Cole’s realisation of this is actually rather sweet.

This humanity is the real triumph of the film, helped enormously by the untricksy care Shyamalan unfolds his story with. While almost every film he made since teetered from disappointment to disaster (with ever more desperate attempts to recapture the rug-pull zeitgeist to ever diminishing returns from increasingly savvy audiences), The Sixth Sense is a reminder of the road not taken. If Shyamalan had focused on small-scale, intimate character dramas like this he could have had quite the CV. His camera work is careful, often unobtrusive, gentle in its slow, immersive movement and he backs aware almost entirely from fast cutting. The Sixth Sense is really a spooky fairy tale.

It also creates an environment for four impressive actors to tackle four challenging roles. From Olivia Williams, whose marvellously detailed performance of utterly naturally not reacting goes a huge way to maintaining the film’s delicate tightrope to the (Oscar-nominated) Toni Collette, who superbly channels deep motherly love and pained helplessness under a blowsy exterior.

Bruce Willis (who only took the film on under contractual obligation) gives possibly his finest performance here. Suppressing his natural cocksure confidence into suppressed confusion and guilt, he convinces as an expert plagued with self-doubt. It’s a quiet, expressive performance that’s a tribute to the acting chops Willis had when he was moved beyond smirks.

It’s also a very supportive performance that helps bring the best out of a gifted child actor. Haley Joel Osment carries a large chunk of the film. He’s vulnerable and scared but also older than his years, alternating between the innocent excitement of a child and the weary reflection of a much older man. He creates a character you both want to comfort and also cheer for his growing strength. Shyamalan works with both actors to continually subtly shift the power balance between them without ever showing the film’s hand.

Because, of course, Cole knows the truth from the start – no one is better at spotting these things than him, and his unwillingness to speak to Malcolm within ear shot of others (such as during their first real consultation while his mother prepares dinner in the kitchen) speaks volumes. No wonder he keeps shooting him those looks of pity and concern which we, at first, interpret as fear.

You can’t escape that the film’s pretence, on repeated viewing, demands the viewer to reach some tenuous conclusions on how Ghosts operate. I think there is just enough there to suggest – from the sudden appearance and disappearance of ghosts – that they operate like we do in a dream, suddenly finding themselves in places with no memories of how they got there. They can move some objects, but only if they allow themselves to “see” them. They imagine what their own appearances are (the film implies Malcolm always appears in his blood soaked shirt to Cole, it’s just we see Malcolm’s perception of himself as a suited psychiatrist) and are subconsciously drawn towards people who can see them or who they have unfinished business with. The pretence just about sustains itself.

But is there more to the film than that? Pleasingly – and a little to my surprise – there is. While The Sixth Sense is more spooky than terrifying, that’s because it’s a film where helping and caring for people is the answer. No matter how horrific looking the ghosts seem, they are really scared people looking for help. This realisation – and the way Cole seemingly decides to commit his life to helping them – is actually extremely affecting. It’s a basic message of not judging a poltergeist by its cover, that really works.

It’s these beats that really work on a second or third viewing. I would trade the whole “he’s a ghost” twist for that gorgeous final scene between Collette and Osment in a car, where he finally confesses and shares a family secret from the grave to Collette’s initial confusion, anger and then emotional release. It’s a beautiful scene (it surely nailed Collette an Oscar nomination) and is the finest moment of Shyamalan’s career. It also shows the heart of the film – this is a parent-son film (with two parents), that’s about learning to love and accept. Everything else is really just set-dressing.

The magic trick (and Shyamalan hints at the sleight of hand he’s pulling by having Malcolm perform a similar distraction trick) may lose its mystique, but it then allows you to focus on the emotion that made you care about the trick in the first place. And, let’s be honest, the emotional heart is really what made the film a phenomenon. Any film can have a rug-pull twist – but it only really connects if people already cared about what they were watching. The Sixth Sense focuses on making sure we invest and it’s that which makes the film last, when all the glitz of the trick has faded.

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Brilliant courtroom drama, full of enigmatic questions around the nature of truth

Director: Justine Triet

Cast: Sandra Hüller (Sandra Voyter), Swann Arlaud (Vincent Renzi), Milo Machado-Graner (Daniel Maleski), Antoine Reinartz (the Prosecutor), Samuel Theis (Samuel Maleski), Jehnny Beth (Marge Berger), Saadia Bentaieb (Nour), Camille Rutherford (Zoé Solidor), Anne Rotger (the President)

What is a trial? A forum for discovering the truth? Or a theatre where the best story wins? Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning courtroom drama, explores this and takes its place as one of the finest courtroom films made. Complex, fascinating and compelling, it asks searching questions about the unknowable nature of truth. Presenting only perspectives, recollections and conflicting inferences based on the same handful of facts, it places the viewer in the same position as the jury: ultimately we must choose a version of the truth “we can live with”.

The trial revolves around the death of Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis), lecturer and amateur house renovator, discovered dead by his son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) having fallen from the attic of their Grenoble chalet. Did he fall, jump or was he pushed? Suspicions fall on the only suspect: his wife, famous novelist Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller). Sandra’s story doesn’t quite stack up and her assurance that they were in a difficult but loving relationship isn’t supported by the facts. A dramatic court case begins, in which both the prosecutor (Antoine Reinartz) and Sandra’s lawyer, old friend Vincent (Swann Arlaud), lay out compelling, but utterly conflicting versions of Sandra and Samuel’s marriage, with their son Daniel (the only real witness) caught horrifically in the middle.

Anatomy of a Fall only shows us facts that a jury could have. We open no more than an hour before the fateful event, with Sandra’s interview at home with a young student (Camille Rutherford) halted by an unseen Samuel playing an instrumental cover of 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P. at deafening volume. Is his playing of loud music an everyday event (as Sandra says) or a passive aggressive move designed to disrupt the interview of a wife he is jealous of? We don’t know because we never get to see their subsequent confrontation, as we follow Daniel walking his dog, returning find Samuel’s body.

This sets the tone for the superbly uneasy courtroom drama that follows. Throughout, Samuel is literally a ghost. The film finally shows him only when a recording he made of a vicious argument between the couple is played to the courtroom. Triet cuts from the courtroom to a flashback so we can see Sandra and Samuel’s increasingly heated conversation, where he condemns her for selfishly dominating their lives, while she accuses him of a martyr complex and blaming her for his own failures. But the second the recording hits a disputed physical clash we cut back to the courtroom and hear only the sounds themselves and their interpretations from prosecution and defence.

Those interpretations are effectively stories, and Anatomy of a Fall makes it clear a compelling and relatable story is essential. Taking a leaf from Anatomy of a Murder (a clear inspiration), it’s less the facts and more the presentation that is likely to win either conviction or acquittal. Vincent carefully coaches Sandra on her version of events – the loving relationship turned sour by her husband’s depression, bought on by his guilt for the accident that left their son visually impaired – advising her on tone, wording and when to stress certain points and which to avoid. He flatly tells her an accident is something “I don’t believe” and stresses their only chance is to establish Samuel’s suicidal intent. Lawyers aren’t paid to find the truth: they are paid to secure verdicts.

There is an added complexity as Sandra, a German, must conduct the trial in French, her third language, rather than her preferred second language of English. Language is itself a topic of debate in the marriage – her French husband Samuel accuses Sandra of forcing him and French-speaking Daniel to meet on her preferred ground of English, rather than improve her French. She counters that English makes them all equal, speaking a second language. In the trial, Sandra struggles to articulate her points, floundering for precise words. Eventually the pressures of the trial force her to revert to English, which is then translated for the rest of the court.

Superbly played by Sandra Hüller, Sandra is an assured professional, struggling to understand how she has ended up in this position. She can be distant and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Unspoken as it is, it’s clear for police and prosecution she doesn’t fit their profile of a grieving widow. Every beat of Hüller’s performance is brilliantly open to interpretation: is she anxious about the pressure on her son, or scared about what he might say? Is she filled with stoic regret or did she never care for her husband? Even when she switches to English in the court, is this a result of pressure or because it is easier for her to elaborate a story in this language?

The truth is increasingly sidelined. We see no reconstruction of the possible crime, only two (both convincing) versions of it presented with models and computer graphics that outline first a murder then a suicide, both plausibly explaining how a suspicious blood splatter appeared on a shed. A psychiatrist arguing passionately for Samuel’s clear-headedness and determination to live, is blamed by Sandra for getting him hooked on anti-depressants. Sandra’s novels are dragged into the trial (on the excuse that she has talked extensively about their autobiographical content) – was her use of Samuel’s idea from his abandoned novel theft or agreement? We can never be sure.

This struggle for the best story has an increasingly damaging impact on their son Daniel. Beautifully played by Milo Machado-Graner, Daniel is a quiet, sensitive, precocious young boy, whose accidental visual impairment becomes crucial. Certain at first of what he saw and heard, we see his certainty crumble during police-escorted reconstructions at the scene (the loud music making what he claimed he heard from where, impossible). On the stand he tries to reconcile his love for both his parents with knowledge of their arguments. At home with his mother, he becomes increasingly withdrawn and closer to his court-appointed guardian Marge (a superbly conflicted Jehnny Beth).

It is Marge who gives voice to, perhaps, Anatomy of a Fall’s central message. The truth is, in the end, the story we choose to believe, the one we can live with. Anatomy of a Fall presents us with multiple choices but no definitive answers. It is up to us to listen to the evidence and decide on Sandra’s guilt or innocence. Triet’s superb film throws in a final additional mystery with a late piece of evidence that is even more open to interpretation than anything else, a story that could be argued as a late realisation or an elaborate lie. We even see Samuel again, as the witness recounts words they claim he said, but this time we just see him lip synching to the audio of the witness’ testimony – are words literally being put into his mouth? The truth is what we make of it, and as subjective as any story.

Anatomy of a Fall is a brilliant courtroom drama and a scintillatingly human story with a superbly enigmatic performance from Sandra Hüller at its heart. Triet and Arthur Harari’s script is sharp and marvellously balances objective and subjective facts. Triet directs with a tight, pacey assurance, with a striking series of final images that remain open to viewer interpretation as to who is protecting whom and why. Fascinating, compelling and open to endless reconsideration and reinterpretation, Anatomy of a Fall can take its place as one of the definitive courtroom dramas on film.

Sansho the Bailiff (1954)

Mizoguchi’s masterpiece, a stirring, humane fable tinged with the tragedy of the real world

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi

Cast: Kinuyo Tanaka (Tamaki), Kyōko Kagawa (Anju), Eitarō Shindō (Sanshō the bailiff), Yoshiaki Hanayagi (Zushiō), Ichirō Sugai (Minister of Justice Niō), Ken Mitsuda (Fujiwara no Morozane), Masahiko Tsugawa (Zushiō as a Boy), Masao Shimizu (Taira no Masauji), Chieko Naniwa (Ubatake), Kikue Mori (Priestess), Akitake Kōno (Tarō), Ryōsuke Kagawa (Donmyō Ritsushi)

You could imagine the lead characters of Sansho the Bailiff as Hansel and Gretel. There is a fairy tale quality to Sansho the Bailiff, combined beautifully by Mizoguchi with a throbbing humanism. Imagine a fairy tale named after The Wicked Witch of the Gingerbread House then spliced with the trauma of captivity. Mizoguchi’s film is a gorgeous, deeply moving and heartbreaking fable, that yearns for us to hold to our inner goodness but shows the terrible struggle to sustain this in a cruel world and the terrible costs we go through for glimmers of hope.

Based on an old Japanese folktale, an eleventh century feudal official is unjustly dispatched into exile. He leaves his family with a mantra: “without mercy, man is a beast. Even if you are hard on yourself, be merciful to others.” A few years later, while travelling, his wife Tamaki (Kinuyo Tanaka) and children are tricked and sold into slavery. Tamaki becomes a prostitute on the island of Sado, her children slaves on the estate of the brutal Sansho (Eitarō Shindō). As young adults, the son Zushiō (Yoshiaki Hanayagi) has buried his humanity as a cruel overseer but his sister Anju (Kyōko Kagawa) still clings to hope and her father’s principles. Can Zushiō’s principles be reborn, despite the brutality of their surroundings?

Mizoguchi’s film is a masterpiece on man’s capability to inflict suffering and cruelty, most particularly on women. Although full of qualities of a classic folk tale, Sansho the Bailiff is grimly realistic and unflinching about the suffering that slavery can inflict and remarkably unblinking in the human cost escaping from such a world can be. There are no fairy tale endings in Sansho, no clear victories, no satisfying conclusions. For every flash of hope, there is the grim realisation of the cost others have paid to achieve it. In particular, women carry an appalling burden of sacrifice.

The family is cruelly invaded in Sansho suffering a double separation – first the other members from the father, then the wrenching separation of mother from children. Shot throughout with a calmly controlled focus by Mizoguchi, with long takes combined with carefully controlled angles that frequently give a terrible distance to events, making the viewer feel powerless to prevent them. Tamika – played with extraordinary humanity and depth of emotion by Kinuyo Tanaka – suddenly understands what is happening and responds with a desperate struggle (which sees her faithful servant unceremoniously dumped off a boat to drown) while her children struggle hopelessly on land. Superbly subtle editing and framing that stresses distance (placing mother and children at opposing ends of the frame in alternate shots) only add to the sense of a family being torn apart.

This is as nothing to the grim world of Sansho’s estate. Slaves who do not work are beaten. The children are thrown into a shack and bluntly told to work or die. Anyone attempting to escape the estate is brutally branded. Old retainers at the end of their working life are expelled to die in the hills. Even Sansho’s son Tarō (Akitake Kōno) can’t bear life on the estate, refusing to brand recaptured slaves (much to the contempt of his father) and leaving for a life as a priest. Mizoguchi wants to show us a world where humanity has no concern for its brothers and sisters. Later we will see no one in power really gives a damn about the morality of estates like Sansho.

In this environment, the son gives up and makes the sacrifices he needs to survive. He becomes dead-inside, forgetting his father’s words and killing his humanity, the man Tarō refused to be. He will brand a recaptured slave (an old man who welcomed him on his arrival years ago) without a second glance. Yoshiaki Hanayagi’s eyes are dead, his spirit a curled animal which has forgotten itself. It’s his sister Anju, beautifully played with sensitivity and hope by Kyōko Kagawa, who clings to their past life and the belief that they can return to it.

To make that return, it’s Anju who will make terrible sacrifices. Sansho the Bailiff is awash with the cost of the world’s cruelty and lack of humanity on women. Tamika is torn from her children, her faithful servant drowned. On Sado, Tamika’s desperate attempt to escape and find her children sees her dragged back to the brothel and hamstrung to prevent her trying again. The dream of seeing her children again – captured in a beautiful sequence as she hobbles to the top of a cliff and sings notes of her sad song of longing for her children – becomes almost a curse, a continual beating on a bruise that will never heal, a longing others will taunt her with.

Memory lies through Sansho the Bailiff like a golden thread. Moments of quiet nature remind Tamika of her husband. His words will be constantly repeated by his family, the last-remaining link to an old life and principles that feel impossible to sustain in their new one. To close your mind to memory and the past, as Zushiō does, is to kill part of yourself. Tamika’s song of yearning is a new memory link. These memory links are strong – they have to be to try and sustain us.

And the words of her song travel. A new slave in the estate speaks of the sad song, to Anju’s delight – finally contact of a sort with her mother. In a moment of magical spiritualism, the words Tamika sang on the cliff seems to travel across the wind to be heard by her children at their lowest point. Zushiō in particular seems to wake from a deep sleep, and suddenly finds the humanity he had so brutally repressed. Mizoguchi shoots these moments with the same affecting simplicity – but it’s that carefully composed, painterly minimalism that gives them such huge power.

This powerful minimalism is nowhere more effective than Anju’s supreme sacrifice (the fate of women in Mizoguchi’s world). Giving Zushiō the chance to escape, Anju becomes aware that torture for knowledge of where her brother went is inevitable. With serene certainty she walks into the river to drown herself, moving with a sense of freedom she has not known for years. In a single shot we see her walk until Mizoguchi cuts away then back to show bubbles calmly rising to the surface of the water. It is an act of love, stunningly simple and hugely moving – and apiece of a world where freedom and any trace of goodness can only come about through irreversible sacrifices.

Like a folk tale Zushiō is restored to his father’s office, but finds he can make few changes. Slavery is abolished at Sansho’s estate – but the system cannot really be changed. The slaves know this to – they take their chance to sack the estate, aware that fortune’s wheel could return them once again to servitude. Sansho learns nothing from the events, and the suspicion is the next governor will pardon him (after all he brings more revenue in than anyone else). Sansho is the real world and he is inescapable – so much so he even owns the name of a film in which he is a minor player.

It builds towards the final conclusion on a windswept beach, perhaps one of the most heart-rending moments on film. In a Western film, this would be a scene of joyful reconciliation in which two damaged people heal through sharing grief. Mizoguchi had lived through the horrors of war and knew this would have been a lie. Reuniting doesn’t wash away the pain or heal the wounds – physical or spiritual – and doesn’t change the world. It’s just two people on a beach, clawing towards a moment of peace in a difficult world.

Sansho the Bailiff is clear-eyed and realistic about a world where people hurt each other and care nothing. Told with a classic, artistic simplicity, it is both a deeply moving and deeply spiritual piece, a great humanistic artist making his ultimate statement on the nature of the world. An essential film.

Apu Sansar (1959)

Satyajit Ray’s trilogy comes to close with another masterfully done small-scale story of hope and loss

Director: Satyajit Ray

Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee (Apu), Sharmila Tagore (Aparna), Alok Chakraborty (Kajal), Swapan Mukherjee (Pulu), Dhiresh Majumdar (Sasinarayan), Sefalika Devi (Sasinarayan’s wife), Dhiren Ghosh (Landlord), Tusar Banerjee (Bridegroom), Abhijit Chatterjee (Murari)

As he stands, consumed with despair, watching a train rush perilously close to him, does Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) remember when he ran with excitement after the trains as a boy? Apu Sansar, the conclusion of Ray’s breathtakingly humanist trilogy, concludes another cycle in Apu’s life; one touched, as with the previous ones, with loss, tragedy and a dream of hope. Beautifully filmed, simple but deeply affecting, it’s a breath-taking culmination of this masterful trilogy.

Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) is now a young man longing for a career as a writer in Calcutta. Attending the marriage of his friend Pulu’s (Swapan Mukherjee) cousin Aparna (Sharmila Tagore), he finds himself surprisingly roped into the role of groom to take the place of the unsuitable intended (as part of Hindu tradition to prevent the risk of Aparna never marrying). Returning with Aparna to Calcutta – and a life of poverty she is unused to – their romance flourishes into a happy marriage, until tragedy strikes leading to Apu tumbling into years of drift and depression.

Apu should be used to tragedy by this point. In Ray’s series, death has always raised its deadly force in his life. In Pather Panchali his beloved sister passed away from sudden illness. In Aparajito the death of his mother leaves Apu stricken with guilt and grief. It’s natural that Ray’s subtle trilogy continues to look at how closely tragedy and sadness dog hope and contentment. Tragedy this time strikes Apu out of the blue, a searing, raw pain that Ray conveys to us almost entirely through a series of still, tender shots of Soumitra Chatterjee’s face as Apu’s world falls apart around him.

Ray’s film, with its beautiful observational style and low-key camera work (and use, at several points, of low angles) reminded me sharply on this viewing of Yasujirō Ozu. Apu Sansar follows in Ozu’s footsteps in its careful, focused study of the lives of ordinary people and how whole worlds of love, hurt and joy can be contained within small rooms. Unlike Pather Panchali or Aparajito, there are few shots of the widening countryside or the scale of the cities. Instead, Apu’s world seems smaller and more intimate, its focus on his apartment and a few other locations, site of momentous events that will shape his life.

Marriage is at the heart of that. His relationship with Aparna has an inauspicious start, Apu roped in as a husband due to the mental incapacity of Aparna’s intended. (There are hints that the possibility of a replacement husband being expected lie behind the last minute, out-of-the-blue invite Apu receives from his friend Pulu which, if true, does add a slightly more manipulative quality to his amiable college friend). The two of them don’t know each other and have little or no idea if they even have anything in common. Their first night together is one of slightly awkward, exploratory talking and it leaves the viewer wondering if common ground can be found.

But Ray sketches out the development of this relationship into something strong, living and (eventually) heartbreaking with a mastery of little touches and his skill with montage and transition. Aparna is at first thrown by the poverty of Apu’s life in Calcutta (similarly to the Dickensian nature of Aparajito he lives in a rain-soaked apartment on a month-to-month basis). But she sets to work to turn this place into a home and soon little touches abound that denote their growing closeness. A cigarette pack hidden under Apu’s bed that Aparna has written a message in, pleading him to smoke only after meals. Late night conversations – which involve a brilliant Ray cut as the camera zooms into the fan between them and out again as a transition finds them sitting again opposite each other on a different night. The pleasure Apu takes in buying her the smallest gifts and the pride Aparna has in turning his home into something cleaner and more decent.

The future seems bright for them. In Ray’s trilogy the future and the march of time and civilisation has often been represented by trains. This theme continues masterfully in Apu Sansar, however this time with the train taking on a more sinister, dangerous presence. Apu’s apartment overlooks a major railway junction his home frequently invaded by the sounds of the train and an onslaught of smoke from the engines. Rather than offering tempting possibilities, this increasingly feels like an intrusion, an outside force intruding into the haven that Apu and Aparna are trying to create.

This sense of invasive menace is captured exquisitely in a beautiful but haunting shot as Apu stands on his balcony – the train sounds build and then smoke from the engines pours across the balcony and seems to envelop Apu. His home can be a place of wonder and beauty, but its harmony is always under siege from transportation that, like time, relentlessly moves forwards. It’s the train that will carry Aparna away from Apu, back into the countryside for her fateful lying in before giving birth. It’s a gift of a toy train – a chance at a future together – that Apu’s son will throw in his face five years later. It’s the same train, that dangerous future finally left behind, that Aparna’s father will clutch to him as Apu heads into a more hopeful future. Throughout trains intrude, threaten and signal danger and separation for Apu.

Soumitra Chatterjee is excellent as this young man who has seen so much, learned so many things, but also seems destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Like his father he is a dreamer, planning a loosely autobiographical novel and beginning to exhibit the same Micawber-like expectations that something will turn-up. Perhaps over time, without tragedy, Aparna might have become his mother, beaten down with the burdens of being the sensible rock for a flighty man unable to settle.

Perhaps tragedy is what is needed for Apu – Apu Sansar is notable for its lack of romanticism for poetic longings and its favouring of embracing actual responsibilities. There are few other films where the destruction of a nascent novel could be met with such bitter-sweet acceptance. Certainly, no Western films, where the dream of having it all is baked in. The Apu Trilogy is partially about accepting things as they are and taking on your responsibilities: dreams and self-focused desires have no place in that. After all the trilogies hero, perhaps even more so than Apu, is his mother Sabarjaya who gave everything to give Apu opportunities.

Apu finally accepts his place in this cycle after years of denial and grief by seeking to build a relationship with a son he has never met. Ray charts this slow thawing between strangers with a delicacy and emotional force striking in its simplicity. It’s really striking to me how each film in this trilogy is slightly shorter than the one before, as Ray mastered that less really can be more with every frame: that sometimes the emotional force of a single glance can be greater than that of a tracking shot. Apu Sansar is a film brimming with confidence, from a director who has mastered his aim and subject. A heart-breaking, but also heart-warming, conclusion to a great trilogy.

The Lesson (2023)

Sinister family mystery, full of good moments that don’t come together into something that really works

Director: Alice Troughton

Cast: Daryl McCormack (Liam Sommers), Richard E. Grant (JM Sinclair), Julie Delpy (Hélène Sinclair), Stephen McMillan (Bertie Sinclair), Crispin Letts (Ellis)

Liam Sommers (Daryl McCormack) strides onstage for an interview about his literary debut, that has set the world alight. How did he get the inspiration to write about a domineering patriarch in a rich country house? Flashback to Liam’s summer spent as an English tutor to Bertie (Stephen McMillan), who is trying to get into Oxford to impress his domineering father JM Sinclair (Richard E Grant), Britain’s leading literary novelist. The Sinclair household bubbles with suppressed grief over the accidental drowning of JM and Hélène’s (Julie Delpy) older son Archie in their private lake. As Sinclair puts the finishing touches to his new novel – and ropes in Liam to help him as “final lap amanuensis”, what secrets will Liam uncover about this family?

The Lesson revolves heavily around its oft-repeated pithy mantra from JM Sinclair – “Great writers steal”. So often is this repeated, that it drains much of what little surprise there might be about the true origins of JM Sinclair’s latest tome. It’s a fitting mantra from the film that feels like a mood piece, assembled from little touches of other filmmakers (Kubrick for starters), reassembled into something just a little too pleased with its reveals and secrets-within-secrets structure, but is well enough made that you are willing to cut it some slack.

Effectively all filmed in a single location, the Sinclair’s luscious house (a mix of the modern and the classical) set amongst rich private grounds, it’s well directed by Alice Troughton, who makes effective use of angles and transitions (particularly its cuts back and forth between the working practices of Sinclair and would-be novelist Liam, which subtly stress both their similarities and differences) to enhance mood and an air of unknowable menace. The camera drifts with a chilling intimacy across the fateful lake, giving it a sense of ominous power and mystery.

The film is at its strongest in its opening sections (like Sinclair’s novel, it is divided into three parts with short prologues and epilogues). Within a self-contained theatrical space, tensions and resentments between the family are carefully but not pointedly outlined. The father who switches between indifference, annoyance and gregarious enthusiasm. The mother who feels like both a dutiful supporter and a resentful slave. The prickly, difficult son scared of affection, who attempts (unsuccessfully) to ape his father’s authoritarianism, but is crying out to be hugged. Troughton skilfully cuts between these characters, frequently positioning them at opposing sides of the frame, setting them at visual odds with each other.

In the middle of this, Liam becomes an out-of-place, equally unreadable presence. Very well played by Daryl McCormack, full bluntness mixed with inscrutability, Liam is impossible to categorise and totally outside the upper-class formality of the Sinclair home (with its servants, home fine-dining accompanied with classical music and casually displayed artwork). He’s Irish, working-class, Black and sexually ambiguous. But he’s also hard for us to read: is his admiration for Sinclair something that could tip into resentful violence? Does he really like Bertie, or does he see him as a tedious, brattish child? As the prologue sets up, is he an innocent or a destructive, vampiric presence?

These beats are neatly set up in The Lesson’s opening parts, added to by the presence of a Pinteresque butler (a fiercely polite Crispin Letts) whose status and loyalties prove equally hard to read. Liam’s slowly becomes an intimate figure in the house, moving from a servant occasionally allowed to dine with the family, to Sinclair’s IT consultant, proof-reader and one-sided sounding-board for conversations about his novel, becoming an object of sexual fascination for Bertie and Hélène and given the late Archie’s clothes to wear (adding an Oedipal frisson to his flirtation with Hélène).

Ambiguity however slowly gives way as The Lesson continues, as it fails to weave its initial jarring mood into a reveal that feels truly satisfying, logical or surprising. This effect is magnified by the fact the more time we spend with Sinclair, the more it’s made clear he is less complex than we think, but simply an egotistical monster. Richard E Grant has huge fun with this larger-than-life braggart, a man so competitive that he feels compelled to aggressively slap down Liam’s draft novel as “airport trash” and smilingly telling him he has “done him a favour” by encouraging him not to write. But Sinclair’s monstrous, bullying self-importance sign-posts a little too clearly where the plot is heading.

The final reveal that we have been witnessing a secret plot unfold in front of us feels like a flawed attempt to add a narrative coherence to a series of events that would be impossible to pre-plan. This also relies on chance events and skills (events hinge on Liam’s near-photographic memory). The final ‘answer’ is also too clearly sign-posted from the opening, leaving you expecting a rug-pull that never comes.

The Lesson has a good sense of atmosphere in its opening half and some strong performances – Julie Delpy is very effectively unreadable as the enigmatic Hélène – but for all its sharp direction, its plot is too weak to be truly rewarding on a first viewing or give you a reason to want to return for a second lesson. Despite some good scenes, a bravura Grant and a subtle McCormack, the resolution of its quiet atmosphere of tension and inscrutability doesn’t quite ring true.