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Contents September 2018
28
Sapphires and steel
In a career that ran from the silents to Spielberg, Joan Crawford’s
incredible self-discipline and poise under pressure saw her
triumph in a series of demanding roles. By Farran Smith Nehme
REGULARS
5 Editorial Playing favourites
Rushes
6 On Our Radar: what to look
out for in the world of film
8 Interview: Pasquale Iannone meets
Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza,
directors of A Sicilian Ghost Story
9 The Numbers: Charles Gant finds
cold comfort in a hot summer
11 Discovery: Timothy P.A. Cooper
applauds the great Pakistani-
French director Jamil Dehlavi
13 First Sight: Lou Thomas talks to The
Heiresses director Marcelo Martinessi
Wide Angle
14 Preview: Anna Coatman on a film
tour highlighting the radicalism
of women in 1968 and after
16 Primal Screen: Bryony Dixon salutes
René Clair, a director who looked to
cinema’s past as well as its future
19 Documentary: Matthew Barrington
reports on the sometimes
heated debates at the Flaherty
Seminar on documentary
Festivals
21 James Bell finds that Bologna’s
annual festival of archive and restored
film is more vibrant than ever
95 Letters
Endings
96 David Perrin says goodbye to
Wim Wenders’s melancholy
Kings of the Road – and to the great
cinematographer Robby Müller
22
FEATURES
22
COVER FEATURE
Deep cover
Spike Lee discusses the unlikely true
tale of an African-American police officer
who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, the
subject of his latest film ‘BlacKkKlansman’.
By Kaleem Aftab
34
A time to love
Cold War charts the love affair between a
composer and a singer under Communist
rule in post-war Poland. Jonathan Romney
talks to director Pawel Pawlikowski
38
Top ranking
For his first feature as director, the thriller
Yardie, Idris Elba tapped into his memories
of growing up in Hackney to capture the
flavour of life in London’s Afro-Caribbean
community in the 1980s. By Gaylene Gould
42
Taking a line for a walk
Drawing was the creative thread of Orson
Welles’s life, far more than radio, theatre
or film, and his sketches and paintings
offer a back door to the cathedral of
his imagination. By Mark Cousins
48
Thrill of the Hunt
One of the most consistently cinematic
franchises of the last 25 years, the Mission:
Impossible films also offer a case study in
the idea of the actor as auteur, with Tom
Cruise again taking control in the sixth
instalment, Fallout. By Nick Pinkerton
34
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 1
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 EDITORIAL
Editor
Nick James
Editorial Nick James
Deputy editor
Kieron Corless
Features editor
James Bell
Web editor
Nick Bradshaw
Acting production editor
Anna Coatman
Chief sub-editor
Jamie McLeish
Sub-editors
Robert Hanks
PLAYING FAVOURITES
Jane Lamacraft
Researcher
Mar Diestro-Dópido
Credits supervisor
Patrick Fahy And so it begins. The late summer to autumn festivals
Credits associates announce their line-ups and we’re on track for what’s
Kevin Lyons
Pieter Sonke fast becoming cinema’s only international focal event –
James Piers Taylor
Design and art direction
the jostling not for festival supremacy, but for February’s
chrisbrawndesign.com Academy Awards. The four initial players in this run-up
Origination
Rhapsody
are Venice, Toronto, Telluride and New York. Telluride
Printer never announces its choices until the last minute, but
Wyndeham Group
the other three already have place-mats on the table.
BUSINESS New York comes last in the calendar, but it has
Publisher
Rob Winter
announced Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite as its
Publishing coordinator opening night offering, although the film, which stars
Natalie Griffith
Advertising consultant
Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone, will appear first in
Ronnie Hackston Competition at Venice. In a programme that has had
T: 020 7957 8916
jaws dropping at its richness, Alberto Barbera’s festival
We’re on track for what’s becoming
M: 07799 605 212
E: ronnie.hackston@bfi.org.uk on the Lido also has first dibs on Damien Chazelle’s Neil cinema’s only international focal event
Newsstand distribution Armstrong biopic First Man, with Ryan Gosling; Alfonso
Seymour
T: 020 7429 4000 Cuarón’s personal drama Roma; Paul Greengrass’s film
– the jostling not for festival supremacy,
E: info@seymour.co.uk about the 2011 Norwegian mass murders by Anders but for February’s Academy Awards
Bookshop distribution
Central Books
Behring Breivik 22 July; Jacques Audiard’s comic
T: 020 8525 8800 western The Sisters Brothers, with Joaquin Phoenix and and Julie Huntsinger?). The last three titles debut in a
E: contactus@centralbooks.com
Jake Gyllenhaal; the Coen brothers’ anthology western Venice programme that’s as heavy with arthouse fare as
Sight & Sound is a member of the
Independent Press Standards
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria it is with Oscar hopefuls. Barbera is under fire from
Organisation (which regulates the UK’s remake, with Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton; Julian French sales agents, though, for taking the Netflix films
magazine and newspaper industry).
We abide by the Editors’ Code of Schnabel’s Van Gogh biopic At Eternity’s Gate, with Cannes did not, but who can blame him when his
Practice and are committed to
upholding the highest standards of Willem Dafoe; Mike Leigh’s historical drama Peterloo; festival – which was being written off a couple of years
journalism. If you think that we have
not met those standards and want to and Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star Is Born, in which ago – finds itself first in line on the road to the Oscars?
make a complaint please contact
rob.winter@bfi.org.uk. If we are unable
he stars alongside Lady Gaga. I mention crucial cast here This may look like bad news for Cannes, but it’s too
to resolve your complaint, or if you because it’s the acting prizes that are the first target for early to tell if there’s any damage to its status. What is in
would like more information about IPSO
or the Editors’ Code, contact IPSO on a lot of these films, especially the anglophone ones. real danger of being lost under the jostling for position
0300 123 2220 or visit www.ipso.co.uk
Sight & Sound (ISSN 0037-4806)
Toronto’s world premieres offer a much more is exactly what Cannes is famous for: the singling out of
is published monthly by British Film diverse line-up, boasting Steve McQueen’s feminist great non-anglophone films from around the world that
Institute, 21 Stephen Street, London
W1T 1LN and distributed in the USA heist movie Widows (with Viola Davis, Daniel Kaluuya have no stars. These films have found it increasingly
by UKP Worldwide, 3390 Rand Road,
South Plainfield, NJ 07080 and Liam Neeson), Barry Jenkins’s James Baldwin difficult to get the kind of championing from festivals
Periodicals Postage Paid at South adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk (Kiki Layne, Stephan and the press that used to guarantee them some sort
Plainfield, NJ
James), Claire Denis’s first venture into sci-fi High Life of theatrical cinema exhibition in the major Western
POSTMASTER: Send address changes
to Sight and Sound c/o 3390 Rand (Robert Pattinson), Nicole Holofcener’s portrait of a markets. I am told, for instance, that putting “Winner
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rebellious male retiree The Land of Steady Habits (Ben of the Palme d’Or” or “...Golden Lion” on a film poster
For subscription queries and sales of Mendelsohn, Edie Falco), George Tillman Jr’s crime now has almost zero effect in drawing an audience.
back issues and binders contact:
Subscription Department movie The Hate U Give (Amandla Stenberg, Regina When it’s not about getting red-carpet friendly Oscar-
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Abacus Hall) and two India-set films – Mia Hansen-Løve’s bait films, the second-tier focus of many festivals has
21 Southampton Row
London WC1B 5HA
trauma recovery drama Maya (Aarshi Banerjee, become political debates. Here is where Toronto looks
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Juliette Binoche) and Michael Winterbottom’s The strongest, especially with its choice of BAME and female-
E: sightandsound@abacusemedia.com Wedding Guest (Dev Patel). This list is in marked directed films, but when it comes to a depth of non-
Annual subscription rates:
UK £50, Eire and ROW £75
contrast to Barbera’s choices, which include just one anglophone art films, Venice leads again, debuting, for
15% discount for BFI members film directed by a woman: The Nightingale, a gothic instance, films by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck,
ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON COOPER AT WWW.COOPERILLO.COM

Copyright © BFI, 2018

thriller from Babadook director Jennifer Kent. Carlos Reygadas, Tsai Ming-liang and Tsukamoto Shinya.
The views and opinions expressed
in the pages of this magazine or on The only film I’m fairly sure will be in Telluride is What’s at issue here is two different kinds of
its website are those of the author(s)
and are not necessarily those of the
Jason Reitman’s political comedy The Front Runner (Hugh diversity: the foregrounded issues of race and gender
BFI or its employees. The contents
of this magazine may not be used
Jackman), because it’s in Toronto but not listed as a world and the seemingly receding one of curiosity in other
or reproduced without the written premiere and is not in Venice. On a number of films – cultures. In their joy at the interest Oscar speculation
permission of the Publisher.
The BFI is a charity, (registration
First Man, A Star Is Born and The Sisters Brothers, as well as brings to them, festivals must fight to make sure
number 287780), registered at Olivier Assayas’s Non Fiction, Zhang Yimou’s Shadow and that the non-anglophone concept of world cinema
21 Stephen St, London, W1T 1LN
László Nemes’s Sunset – Toronto gets second or third bite does not fall too far down their list of priorities.
after Venice (for sure) and Telluride (perhaps, although Otherwise, the bubble of cinephilia will only reflect
who really knows other than programmers Tom Luddy ourselves in the same way that social media does.

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 5

 NEWS AND VIEWS

Rushes

Black and Banned

BFI Southbank, London, 1 September – 9 October
Sometimes, films considered subversive are
censored by governments. More often, they are
prevented from reaching an audience when the
film industry or critical and academic circles
regard them as a threat. One way or another,
the films, TV documentaries and dramas in the
BFI’s ‘Black and Banned’ season were denied
wide exposure – though one place they have
been shown is at the BFI Southbank, as part of
the monthly ‘African Odysseys’ strand. This
season selects some of the most important
titles to have played in the strand over the
years. A highlight is Lionel Rogosin’s Come
Back, Africa (1959, pictured) – once viewed as
anti-apartheid propaganda, so dangerous that
one of its stars, Miriam Makeba, was exiled.

6 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

 ON OUR RADAR

S Close-Up on Eric Rohmer

Close-Up Film Centre, London, 15-31 August

IMAGE COURTESY THE ARTIST AND KAMEL MENNOUR, PARIS/LONDON

This season revisits the human comedies
of French New Wave director Eric Rohmer,
including La Collectionneuse (1966, pictured).

S Liverpool Biennial:
Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Until 28 October
Forty artists from around the world present
work across Liverpool. The 10th edition of
the Biennial is centred on the theme of social,
political and economic turmoil, and features
much moving image art, including Mohamed
Bourouissa’s Horse Day (2014-15, pictured).

BFI NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE

S London Feminist Film Festival
Various venues, London, 16-19 August
Catch brand new work that promises to
rattle the patriarchy, plus feminist classics
such as Sama (1988, pictured), by
Tunisian filmmaker Néjia Ben Mabrouk.
BFI NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE

S The Dark Page

BFI NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE

HOME, Manchester, 6 August – 5 September

This season, which includes The Long Goodbye (1973,
pictured), delves into the literary background of
film noir, exploring the influence of, among others,
Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith.

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 7

 RUSHES INTERVIEW

SPIRIT OF YOUTH
A traumatic true crime provided
the basis for an unconventional
fairytale about a young girl
hunting for a vanished classmate
By Pasquale Iannone
The second film by Fabio Grassadonia and
Antonio Piazza, Sicilian Ghost Story tells the
harrowing true story of the kidnapping and
murder of Giuseppe Di Matteo. In 1993, the
11-year-old son of a prominent Mafioso was
abducted in an attempt to silence his father,
who had become a police informer. Rather than
employ a factual, conventionally realist style,
Sicilian directors Grassadonia and Piazza adapt
Marco Mancassola’s fable-like short story The
White Knight (2011), which views the events from
the perspective of Giuseppe’s devoted classmate.
Pasquale Iannone: Like your debut feature
Salvo [2013], your second film is set in
Sicily. It talks about the influence of the
Mafia but it’s not about the Mafia.
Fabio Grassadonia: We grew up in Sicily in the
80s and 90s, which were difficult years. During
this time, we saw a great number of literary,
film and TV works on the subject of Sicily and
the Mafia. Our intention when we started out
was not to make films about the Mafia but to
use the Mafia to explore human relationships.
In Sicilian Ghost Story we brought together our
interest in the transformative power of a romantic
relationship with the most terrible, most painful Drawing of the dark: Julia Jedlikowska as Luna
event in the Sicily of those years: the kidnapping
and murder of a young child by the Mafia. go on to develop. Starting from this image of an of the camera continues, moving past rocks,
PI: You have said in the past that for both of owl, which has a variety of connotations going going upwards. It represents a sort of voyage in
you, the writing is far easier than the shooting back to Greek mythology – the owl of Athena, space and time, an impossible journey which
process. Given that Sicilian Ghost Story is an which is able to see what humans can’t see, to tell connects life and death, reality and dream.
adaptation rather than an original story, was stories that others can’t or won’t tell. The viewer PI: On Salvo, you collaborated with
it even more difficult this time around? enters into the world of the film and isn’t sure celebrated cinematographer Daniele Ciprì,
Antonio Piazza: The writing process is laborious where they are or indeed the time period. Then while on Sicilian Ghost Story you worked
for us because it’s the time when everything we have this unusual movement of the camera, with another world-class Italian DP in Luca
is clearly delineated, including the style of the this dripping of water. This twisting trajectory Bigazzi [Il divo, The Great Beauty].
picture. This time, we were aware that we were AP: The collaboration was exceptional. We
taking a risk because although the film tells a We decided to use day for night agreed immediately on a few key points –
story which is extremely distressing and brutal, above all, that the fairytale element should be
we wanted to approach it as an impossible love to get a sense of timelessness, a evident in the look of the film. We had various
story between two adolescents. We wanted to nocturnal sequences and we decided to use ‘day
give a sense of a ghostly presence, of the soul of
kind of eternal dawn that belongs for night’ to get a sense of timelessness, a kind
Giuseppe. We were mixing two very different only to Giuseppe and Luna of eternal dawn that belongs only to Giuseppe
genres. The unifying aspect was the choice of and Luna. We used different lenses to distort the
point of view, that of the protagonist Luna. In images of the forest. Another influence was a
Marco Mancassola’s original story, the character book by British photographer Darren Almond
grows up and becomes an adult, but we decided called Full Moon [2014], even though he does
to restrict the timeframe to the period of the the opposite to us – he photographs landscapes
kidnapping. Using her point of view also meant at night and uses long exposure to get a ‘night
trying to represent her vivid imagination, an for day’ effect. Almond’s images definitely
imagination which leads to dreams, nightmares entered into our collective imagination.
and hallucinations, but which is also her great PI: As with Salvo, the role of sound is crucial
strength, because it allows her to achieve the in Sicilian Ghost Story. You collaborated with
impossible, to be reunited with Giuseppe. Guillaume Sciama, a hugely experienced
PI: The opening scene is extraordinary and also sound designer who’s worked with directors
very bold. It starts in this dark, cavernous space such as Michael Haneke and Michel Gondry.
with an owl perched on a rock and then we FG: Guillaume arrived on the set while we
move upward toward the light, finally reaching a were working with our young actors to get a
fountain from which Giuseppe is drinking. Why feel of the landscape. It’s not just a question of
did you decide to open the film in this way? capturing live sound while we film. Guillaume
FG: Right from the very beginning we wanted to would go wandering into the forest on his own to
introduce some of the themes that the film would Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia record sounds and he ended up with a wealth of

8 | Sight&Sound | September 2018


material. Antonio and I decided that we needed
a musical score, something we didn’t have in
Salvo. We involved Austrian musicians Anton
Spielmann and Soap&Skin very early on in the
production. They came to the set and we had
detailed discussions. We talked about the tones
and colours we were looking for to accompany
certain scenes. Soap&Skin also recorded ‘Safe
with Me’, a song whose lyrics reflect the film’s
themes with irony, delicacy and sympathy.
PI: Julia Jedlikowska’s lead performance is
extremely mature and complex – could you
tell me a bit about how she was cast?
AP: In Italy we don’t have professional actors of
such a young age, so the casting process for the
film was very lengthy – around nine months.
Given that our film is an act of love toward
Giuseppe Di Matteo, we wanted to cast Sicilians
in the child roles. We were mindful of respecting
their ages, as for all of them it was the first time
in front of a camera. Fabio and I visited schools
and met thousands of youngsters. We found
Julia in a secondary school in Palermo – her
parents are Polish, but she has lived in Palermo
since she was three years old. The first thing
that struck us was her walk and when we met
her we found that she was very similar to the
character of Luna – mature, very observant,
diffident toward adults. It took a long time for
us to gain her trust. We worked closely with
Julia and the rest of the young actors, not just on
their performances, but also on how to approach
what was a very difficult and troubling story.
Sicilian Ghost Story is on release in UK
i cinemas and is reviewed on page 77
THE NUMBERS
SUMMER 2018 BOX OFFICE
By Charles Gant
In the UK, cinema bookers have come to accept
that every two years – with the European
Championship and especially with the World
Cup – the film release calendar will present
a challenge. When England qualifies, film
distributors tend to steer clear of these dates,
at least when it comes to releasing major titles.
In theory, that could be good – or at least OK
– news for independent cinemas, which this
year were offered the counter-programming
likes of Hereditary and Whitney during the
World Cup. But nobody had predicted the
consecutive weeks of hot sunshine that offered
audiences more enticing al fresco pursuits.
Clare Binns, joint managing director of
Picturehouse Cinemas, describes June and
July 2018 at her venues as “soft”. Summer
is never ideal for her venues – it is usually
dominated by plex-friendly franchise fare.
“The weather, the football have all had an
extra impact,” she adds. “But we were bracing
ourselves for it, it’s not like we were surprised.”
Picturehouse Entertainment positioned
its own The Beatles Yellow Submarine
as an event-style release on Sunday 8
July, the day after England’s quarter-final
victory over Sweden. The 50th-anniversary
rerelease earned a strong £163,000
from 72 cinemas, which typically showed
the film twice that day. The fact that a
subsequent regular release has had rather
modest commercial success underscores
the importance of event programming
on days that might be hit by sunshine.
“Events attract advance bookings,” explains
David Gattens, commercial director at Glasgow
Film Theatre. “People need a reason to go the
cinema.” Filmmaker Q&As are a vital driver at
the GFT, Gattens notes. “We already had The
Happy Prince booked in for a week, and then
[its director, writer and star] Rupert Everett
suddenly announced that he was coming to
Glasgow for a Q&A. Instantly the Wednesday
evening went from zero sales to a 390 sell-out.”
INDIE TITLES AT SUMMER 2018 UK BOX OFFICE
Film
Hereditary
Sicario 2: Soldado
The Happy Prince
McQueen
Whitney
The Bookshop
Leave No Trace
Swimming with Men
Spitfire
First Reformed
The Beatles Yellow Submarine
Grosses to 22 July
Bright spot: Hereditary
While The Happy Prince has been a relative
bright spot for cinemas, successive titles in
June and July have offered slim pickings. Kevin
Macdonald’s Whitney, ambitiously released
into 231 cinemas, was a big disappointment.
Sicario 2: Soldado has no chance of matching
the original film’s £5 million UK total. L’Amant
double (£152,000) was weak for François Ozon.
In the Fade, Mary Shelley, My Friend Dahmer,
Racer and the Jailbird and UK indie Pin Cushion
fared predictably modestly. “The release slate
has been a source of frustration,” says Gattens.
Binns mentions Debra Granik’s Leave No
Trace as one that “keeps giving in a moderate
way, which we need, frankly”, but it can hardly
be compared with June 2017 indie-mainstream
titles such as My Cousin Rachel and Baby Driver.
At Glasgow Film Theatre, box office has been
12 per cent down on 2017 for the months of
June and July – one of the better results among
central Scotland venues, says Gattens. While
Scotland wasn’t in the World Cup, the event won
the attention of Scottish audiences, he says, and
the fire at the Glasgow School of Art shut the
cinema for two days. One GFT success has been
a programme of Hitchcock classics, bouncing
off the national rerelease of Vertigo (1958). The
venue also scored with Jaws (1975), which it
always screens the first week of July, and has
won a reputation locally as a fun event. “Even
if the new product isn’t rocking their boat,”
Gattens, says “we can offer an alternative.”
Release date Gross
15 June £5,498,016
29 June £2,015,534
15 June £776,630
8 June £599,058
6 July £397,895
29 June £278,410
29 June £265,283
6 July £215,486
16 July £211,464
13 July £193,709
8 July £186,046
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 9
 CULT ‘70S SLASHERS

Fully restored in HD Remastered

R d in HD
from original negative from original film elements

@networktweets Available at
/TheBritishFilm networkonair.com
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(THaVU[OL(THaVUSVNVHUK(THaVUJV\RHYLYLNPZ[LYLK[YHKLTHYRZVM(THaVU,<:(93VYP[ZHMÄSPH[LZ
RUSHES DISCOVERY
SACRED HUNGER
Shia bliss: (clockwise from top left) Jamil Dehlavi’s The Blood of Hussain (1980), Born of Fire (1986), Towers of Silence (1975) and Jinnah (1998)
Though his films are not often
seen in his homeland, Jamil
Dehlavi remains an essential
presence in Pakistani filmmaking
By Timothy P.A. Cooper
In the Pakistani city of Lahore, in a tangle of
streets surrounding a shrine associated with
the minority Shia Muslim population, stalls
sell goods that sustain the prayer economy: rose
petals to scatter on the tombs, black flags, and
DVDs of elegies and polyphonic prayers. Most
conspicuously absent are films and music, which
are considered ill-suited to the state of mourning
through which the community demonstrate
their piety. One stall has an exception to this
rule. From the backroom, a veritable archive of
videocassettes of local sermons and processions,
the store-holder brings his own precious copy
of Jamil Dehlavi’s The Blood of Hussain (1980), a
film that remains unofficially banned in Pakistan
and whose reputation circulates more tangibly
than do physical copies. Usually, searching out
this legendary film often turns up only second-
hand information, yet its presence continues to
resonate – like an overheard rumour – through
the history of the cinema in Pakistan.
Filmed in and around Punjab and the Walled
City of Lahore in 1977, The Blood of Hussain is an
allegorical tale of revolutionary struggle against
injustice and oppression. The film unfolds against
the backdrop of the annual mourning procession
for Imam Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet
Muhammad murdered by a despotic ruler more
than 1300 years ago. Faced with a military coup,
a local landowner refuses to recognise the new
regime and, like the historical Imam Hussain,
flees with his family and followers towards an
uncertain future. Dehlavi’s observations proved
to be startlingly prophetic. One month after
the film’s shoot was completed, the Pakistani
military, led by General Zia-ul-Haq, took power
in a coup d’état and imposed martial law, leading
to over a decade of state-enforced religious
conservatism. Even during production Dehlavi
was accused of subversive activity, but when
martial law was declared the filmmaker’s
passport was seized. With great difficulty, he
managed to send the unedited material out of
the country, before relocating to the United
Kingdom to complete post-production.
A rare screening of this seminal film inaugurates
a retrospective of Dehlavi’s early works at the
British Film Institute in August, which will
hopefully help to establish the filmmaker as a
leading figure in world cinema, an artist whose
vision captures the diversity and power of both
the religious and the secular in everyday life. The
enigmatic experimental short Towers of Silence
(1975) explores Zoroastrian burial rituals, in which
dead bodies are left to be devoured by vultures.
Like The Blood of Hussain, the film conjures a world
of rich religious diversity, yet one marked by
trauma and the rumblings of armed insurrection.
Among the skeletons, Towers of Silence finds
the debris, the residue of lives that remain even
after the flesh is picked clean from the bones.
In the UK Dehlavi benefited from commissions
from the BBC and Channel 4, resulting in
films that continued to explore monotheistic
cosmology and ritual procession, including
Qâf (1985), a meditation on the shifting,
transformative terrains wrought by an erupting
Dehlavi’s films retain a fierce
independence of thought as they
grapple with the entanglements
of the personal and the political
volcano; Born of Fire (1986), a religious horror set
in the jagged landscape of Cappadocia in Turkey;
and Passover (1995), a close collaboration with the
flamenco legend Paco Peña. In 1988, General Zia
died in a plane crash: Dehlavi returned to Pakistan
to make his next film, Immaculate Conception
(1992), filmed in Karachi and set amid the events
of that momentous year, which also saw the
release of Salman Rushdie’s controversial book
The Satanic Verses. This was followed by Dehlavi’s
intimate biopic Jinnah (1998), which explored
one man’s role in the birth of Pakistan and the
bloodshed that followed the partition of India.
A remarkably prolific filmmaker, Dehlavi’s
films remain popular on the festival circuit,
retaining a fierce independence of thought as
they grapple with the entanglements of the
personal and the political. Meanwhile, fuelled
by a discourse of industry decline and rebirth,
filmmakers in Pakistan are trying to give shape
to a new scene. Acclaimed works coming out of
Karachi, such as Asim Abbasi’s Cake (2017), are
kickstarting a new wave of production, often
defined in opposition to Pakistan’s exuberant,
high-octane indigenous film culture, the Lahore-
based ‘Lollywood’ of the 1960s to 1990s, which
has struggled to survive the decline of celluloid.
As Pakistani film divides into two, Dehlavi’s
ongoing career is a reminder of the importance
of that uncommon type of filmmaker able to
push beyond such binaries, whose painterly
spectacles seize on that which connects
Pakistani visual culture to the rest of the world:
pervasive, yet syncretic monotheism, profanity
and piety, the sacred and the sublime.
‘Between the Sacred and Profane:
i The Cinema of Jamil Dehlavi’ runs at
BFI Southbank, London, from 10-12
August. The Blood of Hussain and Towers
of Silence will be released on BFI Blu-ray
and DVD on 22 October
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 11
 BIRDMAN
OF ALCATRAZ
JJohn Frankenheimer’s moving and compelling biopic starring Burt Lancaster
to be released as part of The Masters of Cinema Series
in a definitive Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) edition.

AVAILABLE AUGUST 2018

Special features include: Illusion of Freedom: Richard H. Kline on John Frankenheimer’s “Birdman of Alcatraz”;
An exclusive new video interview with film historian Sheldon Hall; a collectors booklet plus more.

Website: www.eurekavideo.co.uk AVAILABLE FROM

Twitter: @mastersofcinema
Facebook: EurekaEntertainment

The 50th Anniversary 4K restoration of Philippe de Broca’s anti-war cult classic that defined a generation,
starring Alan Bates, to be released for the first time in the UK in a definitive Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) edition.

Special features include: Limited Edition O-Card slipcase; Feature length audio commentary by film critic Wade Major;
Interview with Michelle de Broca; a collectors booklet plus much more.

Website: www.eurekavideo.co.uk
AVAILABLE JULY 2018 AVAILABLE FROM
Twitter: @mastersofcinema
Facebook: EurekaEntertainment
RUSHES FIRST SIGHT
POVERTY OF RICHES
The Heiresses director Marcelo
Martinessi on his debt to Fassbinder
and why simply being able to make
a film in Paraguay is a miracle
By Lou Thomas
The personal and political are inextricably linked
in The Heiresses, Paraguayan writer-director
Marcelo Martinessi’s subtle, considered tale
of a lesbian couple facing the consequences
of economic ruin. Martinessi’s debut feature
opens with timid Chela (Ana Brun) spying on
her lover Chiquita (Margarita Irún) through
a doorway as she sells off their possessions.
Soon after, when Chiquita is sent to prison on
fraud charges and is unable to pay her debts,
Chela is forced into an unlikely new vocation:
becoming a one-woman taxi service for an
elderly women’s bridge-playing group.
Chela’s initial hesitancy slowly leads to a
newfound and hard-won confidence, echoing
the emergence of the Parayguan people from the
years under President Alfredo Stroessner, who
ruled as a dictator from 1954 to 1989. During
the Stroessner regime, only propaganda films
celebrating military heroes were allowed. “I
wanted to make a film where you could feel the
whole system of repression and this protective/
oppressive character of the dictator that
permeates society,” Martinessi says. “I grew up in
a school where we had this protective/oppressive
relationship with the teacher. The relationship
with Chela and Chiquita has a lot to do with that.”
As Chela becomes more confident in her new
role, the film opens out from the dark confines
of the beautiful scuffed old mansion the ageing
pair share, into the greater world of Asunción, the
capital where Martinessi was born. “It’s a coming-
of-age film for a 60-year-old woman. She’s slowly
coming out of a very claustrophobic space she has
been living in, forced by the economic situation,”
Martinessi explains. “On a metaphorical level
the car was important because she starts
managing her own life when she starts driving.”
We see the film through Chela’s eyes and notice
as her focus shifts, initially to smart, spiky elderly
neighbour Pituca (María Martins) when Chiquita
is jailed and Pituca needs a lift to her daily card
games – and then to the younger, carefree and
sensual Angy (Ana Ivanova), who has the biggest
impact on Chela. “Angy is the only character
that can talk about herself, her men. She bursts
into Chela’s life with the curiosity to maybe
discover sexual things herself with this woman.
She brings fresh air to a world that is very grey.”
As a film without any significant speaking
parts for men, about an ostensibly unequal
cohabiting relationship that’s set predominately
in carefully controlled interior environments,
The Heiresses recalls Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), as well
as Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy
(2014). Martinessi says, “Many directors I really
admire work with actresses a lot, so I knew I
wanted to work with actresses. Also, Paraguay
is a country that is built by women. Every time
something happens in the country, the ones
that make the country survive are women.” He
Taxi driver: Chela (Ana Brun) with Angy (Ana Ivanova) in The Heiresses, by Marcelo Martinessi (below)
adds: “In the case of Fassbinder, he made me
think the interest I had in cinema was possible.
I grew up in a country where it was extremely
difficult to watch any film from Latin America
or Europe. After the dictator left I came to
Europe and started discovering filmmakers.
We used to get films that were intimate like
…Petra von Kant or Fear Eats the Soul [1974] or
Safe [1994] by Todd Haynes. You say, ‘Wow, it is
possible to make films with a human feeling.’”
Martinessi, with his cast and crew, have created
their own film that evokes and expresses regret,
desire and optimism, with emotions running
deep within its characters in nuanced fashion.
Film festival judges have empathised – the film
won a pair of Silver Bears at Berlin this year,
including the Best Actress prize for Brun.
With the continuing success of renowned
South American filmmakers producing
distinctive work – including Chile’s Pablo Larraín
(The Club, 2015; Jackie, 2016) and Sebastián
It’s a coming-of-age film for a
60-year-old woman. She’s coming
out of a very claustrophobic
space she has been living in
Lelio (Gloria, 2013; A Fantastic Woman, 2017)
and Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel (Zama, 2017)
– alongside rising stars such as Brazil’s Juliana
Rojas and Marco Dutra (Hard Labor, 2011; Good
Manners, 2017) and Argentina’s Martín Rodríguez
Redondo (Marilyn, 2018), the continent’s
filmmaking culture appears to be in rude health.
Martinessi, however, doesn’t yet see himself
as part of a broader cinematic movement from
South America. “We see our country extremely
differently to Argentina or Brazil because they
have a history of cinema. They had film in
the 1960s and the 70s. They were able to see
themselves when they were children, a film of
their city. In Paraguay we grew up seeing foreign
images but we never saw our country, we never
saw the way we speak Spanish in cinema and
we never saw anything close in cinema.”
Nevertheless, Martinessi acknowledges
a certain kinship with Martel. “Lucrecia
Martel is from Salta and Salta is closer to my
hometown in Paraguay than to Buenos Aires,
so when I look at the character of Mecha in
La Ciénaga [2001] she feels like a relative to
me. I told her, ‘I know this woman very well.’
Lucrecia shows us that it is possible to make
cinema with these characters and this is
something I find quite unique in her work.”
For now, Martinessi is primarily concerned
with pushing cinema forward in his native
Paraguay. He was director of the country’s first
public television network from 2010 until 2012
when President Fernando Lugo was unseated
in a right-wing coup. This kickstarted a five-
year process of making The Heiresses, which
eventually took shape with funding from six
countries. Martinessi estimates three to five
films are made in Paraguay each year with only
one or two being shown outside the country.
“For me, just making the film was a
miracle,” he says. “This is early Paraguayan
cinema. There is a whole generation eager
to tell stories in Paraguay, we just need to
find the structure to make it possible.”
The Heiresses is released in UK cinemas
i on 10 August and is reviewed on page 69
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 13

Wide Angle
PREVIEW
KICKING AGAINST THE PRICKS
Commemoration of the events of
May ’68 has masked a wider context
of political agitation – in particular,
the radicalism of women
By Anna Coatman
Fifty years on, the events of May 1968 have
calcified into legend. We all know the story:
students took to the streets of Paris; the workers
joined the barricades; the world was irrevocably
altered. But change rarely happens overnight,
dissent doesn’t come from nowhere, and history
tends to remember those with the loudest voices.
“Revolt, as I understand it,” wrote the literary
theorist Julia Kristeva in her 2002 book Revolt, She
Said, “refers to a permanent state of questioning,
or transformations, of endless probing of
appearances.” Taking this idea as a starting point,
the queer feminist collective Club des Femmes,
in collaboration with the ICO and supported by
the BFI, has curated a nationwide tour of films
that expands our understanding of the summer of
’68 and explodes some of the myths surrounding
it. Through a diverse, intersectional programme
of works spanning 1966 to 1991, ‘Revolt, She
Said’ aims to shift the focus away from the riots
in Paris to show how people were agitating for
change across the world throughout the late 20th
century. The features, documentaries, shorts, live
discussions and specially produced zine that make
up the tour challenge conventional narratives
about radical political movements, reminding
us of the women and queer artists, activists and
filmmakers who have been written out of them.
Flower to the people: Kristine de Loup and Liane Hielscher in The Cat Has Nine Lives (1968)
14 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
EXPLORING THE BIGGER PICTURE
While some of the films might be familiar
– One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977) was shown
recently at BFI Southbank, London, as part of the
Agnès Varda season – others are being screened
for the first time in decades. The hope is that when
the tour is over they will remain more accessible.
“One of the main impetuses is this legacy,” Selina
Robertson of Club des Femmes explains. “Lots
of these films now have DCPs [digital cinema
packages] for the first time, like Beeban Kidron
and Amanda Richardson’s Carry Greenham Home
[1983] and Laura Mulvey’s Riddles of the Sphinx
[1977]. Hardly anyone can play 16mm anymore,
and so until now they’ve been left in the archives.”
Sadly, some films will remain there, for now
at least. Screening films from the global south
proved particularly difficult, partly owing
to the conditions in which they were made,
partly because of current resources. There
was no DCP available for Cuban director Sara
Gómez’s One Way or Another (1974), for instance.
“And there’s a wider issue about women’s film
preservation,” says So Mayer, also of Club
des Femmes. “But just how different could
film history be if we were putting the best,
most radical work at the forefront and telling
that story – we were there, we did this?”
‘It’s no good always being serious’
Part of that story is how playful radical film
can be. “We want to make the story more
complex, but also more joyful,” says Mayer.
“We want to be the beach beneath the street,
to remember that fun was a part of ’68 as well.”
While the films included in the tour engage
with ‘serious’ issues, they are also humorous
and mischievous. They give the lie to the idea
that politics is a sombre business and show
that the quest for happiness, far from being
selfish or trivial, can be revolutionary.
The films made just before and during 1968 are
the most explosively exuberant. Vera Chytilová’s
absurdist Daisies (1966) – banned by the Czech
authorities when it came out – Mai Zetterling’s
The Girls (1968) and Ula Stöckl’s The Cat Has Nine
Lives (1968) all centre on female friendships. In
each of these films, laughter (often at the expense
of men) is the manifestation of a subversive bond
between women – and punctures the status quo.
The Cat Has Nine Lives was in effect lost for
almost 50 years. Stöckl’s graduation project
(she studied at the Berlin Film School under
Alexander Kluge), the film premiered at the 1968
Berlinale and was snapped up by a distributor –
which promptly went bust. “They bought all the
16mm,” Mayer says, “and it sat on the shelf as the
creditors argued about money. It was rescued in
the 70s, but by that point Stöckl had moved on.”
Thankfully, a 4k restoration of the film was
produced last year – meaning it can be shown
again in all its supersaturated glory. The Cat is
shot in brilliant Techniscope and exquisitely
stylised, each frame artfully composed; clothes,
interiors and landscapes are captured in rich
peach, mint and sage greens, raspberry pink,
sapphire blue. Stöckl captures the spirit and
aesthetic of the flower-power age – and pokes
fun at it. One of the protagonists, Anne (Kristine
De Loup), is repeatedly seen eating flowers. In
one scene, she pushes a bike through a field of
yellow marigolds. It could be a fashion shoot –
except she’s stuffing the plants into her mouth.
 The film employs Godardian techniques such
as jump cuts and sound that from one scene to
the next lags, stops and catches up. But The Cat
diverges from more famous films of the era in the
way it catches the frisson, energy and empathy
that connects a group of young women: Anne and
her friend Katharina (Liane Hielscher), a freelance
journalist; a pop star who Katharina interviews;
the wife of the man both Anne and Katharina
seem to be involved with; and a fifth, mysterious
woman somehow linked to all of them.
Over the course of the film, Anne and
Katharina hang out, go to parties, have sex,
go on an anti-Vietnam War march, talk and
laugh about love, friendship, ennui, beauty,
work, how to be happy. Throughout, you’re
never sure what’s real and what’s not, where
dreams start and end. “It’s clear that Stöckl
worked with Fassbinder,” Mayer says. “She’s
telling similar kinds of stories about how desire
interrupts the way we live our daily lives… but
it’s funnier, less melodramatic and tragic.”
Anne, Katharina and the other women in the
film are all tied up with the same self-regarding,
polo-neck-wearing men, but really seem more
interested in each other. In one scene, Anne is
draped across Katharina, and a man insists on
swapping positions with her, to “restore the
natural order”. As if speaking to a child, Anne
asks: “Do you feel more comfortable now?”
In another scene, Katharina interviews the
pop singer, who tells her, “Ugliness makes you
unemployable.” The two collapse into giggles.
Gesturing at some press portraits, the singer
says, “Lord! Look at these pictures. I’m such a
forbidding beauty in them. I’m never supposed
to laugh… you’ve got to laugh, it’s no good
always being serious.” On the surface, it’s a
light-hearted conversation, but the women are
mocking the dry “marvellous conversations” the
men around them are having, and beginning to
unpick stifling ideas of femininity and beauty.
The Cat isn’t overtly political, yet it feels
insurrectionary. The female protagonists are
working things out, talking things through,
messing around, acting up. At this point, the
feminist Second Wave was still in its infancy, and
there’s a sense that women are just starting to
test the boundaries and come into consciousness.
The ‘natural order’ is starting to break down.
‘You occupy us like an army’
The debates and discourses of the Second Wave
are more explicit in films of the 70s and 80s. One
Sings, the Other Doesn’t turns the battle for legal
abortion into a musical; the need for affordable
childcare is explored in Riddles of the Sphinx; while
the documentary Carry Greenham Home tells the
stories of the women protesting against nuclear
arms at the Greenham Common Peace Camp.
Maeve (1981), co-directed by Pat Murphy and
John Davies, is a film about a young woman
(Mary Jackson) who comes home from London
to Belfast during the Troubles and struggles to
reconcile her newly awakened feminism with the
Irish nationalist movement. Like The Cat, this is a
film that had been practically forgotten. The one
remaining 16mm print was in a “pretty terrible”
condition, Selina Robertson says: fortuitously,
the BFI was scanning the film for a rerelease in
Rebel Angela: 60s activist Angela Davis, seen in A Place of Rage (1991)
‘Some of the most bitter anti-
feminist arguments continue
to come from men who called
themselves radicals in the 60s’
Ireland: “It’s not a full restoration but it’s going
to be made available digitally for the first time.”
While she was working on Maeve Murphy was
also involved in making Lizzie Borden’s feminist
classic Born in Flames (1983) – and both works
share a simmering political fury. In Maeve, the
men are forced to prove their masculinity by
perpetuating cycles of violence and women are
restricted to the roles of wives and mothers, their
vital contribution to politics unacknowledged.
“You behave like your struggle is completely
separate… like you’re a nation within a nation,”
an ex-boyfriend complains, as he argues with
Maeve in a graveyard. “You occupy us like an
army,” she counters. The demands of the women’s
movement were seen as subordinate – and a
threat – to the ‘greater’ cause of independence.
Maeve is torn between her old and new
lives, family and freedom. “You never looked
back once to say goodbye,” her mother tells
her, recalling the day she left for London.
Maeve is a heartbreaking film – yet, as with
Alternative Ulster: Maeve (1981)
all the ‘Revolt, She Said’ films, there’s also
humour. At one point, Maeve, her sister and
some girlfriends are walking home drunk from
a night out, when they hear machine guns
being fired. Crouching behind a wall, they
burst into laughter at the absurdity of it all.
‘Invisible in their visibility’
Pratibha Parmar’s documentary A Place of Rage
(1991) also focuses on the erasure of women from
radical movements. The newest film included
in the tour, it looks back over the decades, telling
the stories of the women of colour who were at
the forefront of the Black Power and civil rights
movements in America – at the very point they
were actively being underplayed and forgotten.
“The Black Power movement, like all
movements, made its mark thanks to the
active participation of women,” says the
Vietnamese filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha, in a
talking-head interview, “and yet... some of the
most bitter anti-feminist arguments I have
encountered continue to come from men who
called themselves radicals in the 60s… Women
continue to be invisible in their visibility.”
Over the course of this powerful, fun and
energetic film, the poet, activist and teacher June
Jordan, the academic and activist Angela Davis,
the novelist Alice Walker and others talk about
their experiences as activists – and of the African-
American women who preceded and inspired
them. “It’s sort of a film about a group of friends
and about the conversation going on between
generations,” says Mayer. Music drives the film as
much as the interviews. A soundtrack of Prince,
Janet Jackson, the Neville Brothers and the Staple
Singers gives pace and pulse and commentary.
Like another film included in the tour, Before
Stonewall (1984) – a documentary about LGBTQ+
life in the US before the 1969 Stonewall riots – A
Place of Rage centres the role of queer activists.
Jordan talks powerfully about her frustration
that anti-racist left-wing movements and
the fight for gay rights were seen as separate
struggles. “To me, the issue is the same,” she
explains firmly. “The issue is my freedom.”
Details of the tour can be found at www.
i clubdesfemmes.com/revolt-she-said/
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 15
 WIDE ANGLE PRIMAL SCREEN
THE CLAIR WATCH PROJECT
Recent revivals of films by René
Clair are a reminder that this
deliciously clever filmmaker
deserves more attention
By Bryony Dixon
At this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in
Bologna (see report, page 21) were two René
Clair restorations by the Cinémathèque
française, Two Timid Souls (Les Deux Timides,
1928) and Man About Town (Le Silence est d’or,
1947), which, apart from being fantastically
pleasurable to watch as individual films,
perfectly demonstrate “how indescribably
clever and enormously ‘smart’ a movie can be”
as the tagline for the US poster of Clair’s Le
Million (1931) put it. Clair excelled at clever
filmmaking at a time when the film industry
needed it most, during the transition to sound.
He was also a thoughtful director who liked film
history – liked looking backwards and forwards
across the sweep of this relatively young art. Born
in 1898, he lived through major transitions, from
the heroic pioneer days to the coming of sound,
and survived well into the age of television. He
even predicted the demise of the cinema as he
knew it: “Before cinema is 100 years old things
will have changed completely – we are unable
to know today what it will be.” The digital
revolution that is affecting cinema so profoundly
was just beginning at its centenary in 1995.
Clair loved the exuberance and promise of
the earliest days of film – it is this era he revisits
in Man About Town. He was working in the days
of the surrealist films of the 1920s, and students
of cinema these days will know him best for the
Dadaist comedy Entr’acte (1924), made with the
composer Erik Satie and the artist Francis Picabia
and intended as an interlude in an avant-garde
ballet. But though he was interested in the film
essay – as he put it in a TV interview later in life,
“the little film that tries to find something new”
– he preferred to make films for the masses. He
Factory of dreams: René Clair’s Man About Town (1947)
16 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
cites Chaplin, Stroheim, Griffith and Eisenstein:
“They were not working for cine-clubs.”
Having dazzled audiences with the
midsummer afternoon’s dream of Paris qui dort
(1925), Clair struck gold with The Italian Straw
Hat (1928). He followed that imbroglio farce
with another, Two Timid Souls. At this point, his
precious world of silent film was threatened by
the arrival of the talkies. Like Hitchcock, Clair
saw the changes coming and set out to put late
silent film through its paces with a virtuoso
display of technique. The result is part parody
(there is an affectionate split-screen spoof of Abel
Gance’s 1927 Napoleon – the ultimate decisive
man, by contrast with the Mittyesque hero of
Two Timid Souls), part a demonstration of the
visual storytelling that could only be done in
silent film. One of his ‘timid souls’ – played
beautifully by Pierre Batcheff – is a rookie lawyer
defending an obviously guilty wife-beater in
his first trial. We see the crime acted out as a
vignette, portraying the action as described
by the prosecution and then, contrastingly,
by the defence. Distracted, the young lawyer
loses control of his over-elaborate fabrication,
in which the defendant is bringing his wife a
bunch of flowers, and the vision he is creating
freezes, the action repeats as he tries again, and
the characters in the scene even go backwards
as he tries to retrace his train of thought.
In ‘The Art of Sound’, an article published in
London in 1929, Clair decried the commercial
juggernaut of the sound film: “The screen has
lost more than it has gained. It has conquered
the world of voices, but it has lost the world
of dreams. I have observed people leaving the
cinema after seeing a talking film. They might
have been leaving a music hall, for they showed
‘The screen has lost more than
it has gained. It has conquered
the world of voices, but it has
lost the world of dreams’
no sign of the delightful numbness which
used to overcome us after a passage through
the silent land of pure images. They talked and
laughed, and hummed the tunes they had just
heard. They had not lost their sense of reality.”
But after seeing The Broadway Melody (1929)
he realised that American filmmakers were
moving on from just matching sounds to images:
“Its makers have worked with the precision of
engineers, and their achievement is a lesson to
those who still imagine that the creation of a
film can take place under conditions of chaos
known as inspiration.” He gives an example of
this precision: “For instance, we hear the noise
of a door being slammed and a car driving off
while we are shown Bessie Love’s anguished face
watching from a window the departure which we
do not see. This short scene in which the whole
effect is concentrated on the actress’s face, and
which the silent cinema would have had to break
up in several visual fragments, owes its excellence
to the ‘unity of place’ achieved through sound.”
Clair went on to write and direct three films
that made famously clever use of non-diegetic
sound without sacrificing his elegant filmmaking
style: Under the Roofs of Paris (Sous les toits de Paris,
1930), Le Million and A nous la liberté! (1931).
In this last, a factory worker ‘conducts’, to the
sound of a far-off gramophone, a flower in a
field, giving the momentary impression it is
singing. The fact that the flower is shaped like
a gramophone horn just makes me smile.
Years later, when Clair returned to France
from Hollywood after the trauma of World War
II, his first film, full of nostalgia for his beloved
pre-war Paris , was another to make you smile.
Man About Town is a more conventional studio
movie than Clair’s earlier French films, focusing
on a love triangle (older man, ingénue actress,
young actor). It is set in a ‘factory of dreams’ in
1906 Paris but doesn’t engage particularly closely
with the world of silent film – it is a background,
rather as the Paris created by Léon Barsacq’s sets
is; still, Clair’s depiction of the world in which the
fledgling film business was beginning to spread
its wings is enchanting. We first encounter the
fairground film show – a desultory suburban
version, which the characters only enter to shelter
from the rain; for the film enthusiast who has
tried to imagine what a Bioscope tent might have
been like this must be very close; with its ‘barker’
and ornate frontage, its bench seats, cranking
projectionist, roll-down screen, lecturer and lady
pianist. It’s even better when we arrive at the
studio, run by Maurice Chevalier’s character,
Emile. He thinks he’s the big studio boss, but in
fact he’s a pushover for the terminally idle crew,
his permanently depressed leading man and the
ingénue with whom he falls in love – despite
having had an affair with her mother (!). The
sets and working methods lovingly recreate
the anarchic Pathé films of the 1900s made
in the studio at the Paris suburb of Joinville-
le-Pont: Arabian fantasies, melodramas, fairy
pantomimes and chase comedies. My favourite
detail is a huge prop spoon – presumably from
a pantomime story about a giant’s kitchen
– leaning casually against a dressing-room
wall, eliciting no comment whatever. Catch
this rarely seen Clair gem if you can.
 while stocks last

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“A CELEBRATION OF FEMALE SOLIDARITY” “MARVELLOUS”
SIGHT AND SOUND THE IRISH TIMES

“ MAGI C A L”
THE EVENING STANDARD

AGNÈS JAOUI

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IN CINEMAS
10TH AUGUST 2018

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 WIDE ANGLE DOCUMENTARY

WHAT’S UP, DOCS?

Over the five days of the annual
Flaherty Seminar, a meeting
to discuss realism in the
documentary, things can get rough
By Matthew Barrington
When I was getting ready to leave London
for the Flaherty Seminar, the one thing I was
told more than any other was: ‘Prepare for a
fight.’ The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar was
established by Frances Hubbard Flaherty in
1955, in memory of her late husband, the
director of seminal documentaries such as
Man of Aran (1934) and Louisiana Story (1948).
Its purpose is to provide an isolated space to
discuss, reinterpret and rethink concepts of
realism emerging from the documentary. But in
recent years, the Flaherty Seminar has become
synonymous with conflict among attendees.
Attending the Flaherty Seminar for the first
time, I was forced to adjust quickly to the intense
schedule, which squeezes into just five and
a half days 17 screenings – three a day – each
followed by a 90-minute group discussion with
the filmmaker and a moderator. The seminar has
come to be defined by a series of traditions – most
importantly, Frances Flaherty’s preference for an
absence of preconceptions means that no one
is told what will be screened; the audience only
finds out what they will watch as they walk into
the cinema, the lights fade and the film starts.
The post-screening discussions are intended
to be democratic spaces for conversation to
develop between practitioners, researchers
and critics, but as the sessions went on I
felt much of the interaction was fractured
and stilted, with cyclical dialogue laced
with misunderstanding and suspicion. Image conscious: Frances and Robert Flaherty in 1948, with Richard Leacock, centre
This atmosphere of distrust arises partly
from the seminar’s reputation, partly from comprised several shorts, allowing works to Karimah Ashadu, whose work focuses on
the divisive nature of some of the issues being be placed in dialogue with one another. The labour in Nigeria. Some attendees questioned
debated. As other first-timers arrived and began downside of this formally diverse selection was her relationship to her subjects, particularly
to socialise, in the air was the fall-out from the that pieces originally designed as looped and/or when she said she had no interest in showing
2017 edition, when Dominic Gagnon’s Of the multi-screen installations were shown just once her work to the Nigerian workers who feature
North (2015) – a compilation of YouTube clips in a single-screen cinema, preventing the mobile in it, and that they had no interest in her work.
posted by or featuring Inuit people – screened spectatorship some of them seemed to demand. In Makoko Sawmill (2015), for example, the
to an audience angry at the filmmaker for For a first-time attendee at the Flaherty, it camera observes Nigerian workers processing
misrepresenting Inuit communities. This is easy to come to the conclusion that certain wood, seemingly unaware or uninterested that
debate had a sharp relevance for the seminar, debates must crop up almost every year. Many they are being filmed. The gaze of the camera
which remains locked into a complex struggle saw the idea of the ‘necessary image’ in ethical is obstructed by two blue sticks that invade the
over the legacy of Robert Flaherty and his terms, leading to a series of recurring debates frame, creating an extra barrier between the
most famous work, Nanook of the North (1922), about how filmmakers should approach audience and the subject and drawing attention
a film from which the seminar takes its logo. marginal subjects. These questions, though to the camera movement. Other works by Ashadu
Underlying all of this is the history of the land important, seem more relevant to ethnographic also critique the act of looking through the use of
in upstate New York now occupied by Colgate and anthropological debate, while the Flaherty mirrors and reflective surfaces which reveal the
University, where the seminar takes place – land Seminar is essentially concerned with cinema. filmmaker’s presence. Despite her work’s clear
originally inhabited by Native American tribes. Too often discussion focused on content over critical engagement with the politics of looking,
For this year’s 64th edition, which ran from form, ignoring the ways that filmmakers and the way the artist spoke about her subjects
16-22 June, the artist-filmmaker Kevin Jerome artists engaged with the language of cinema. provoked angry reactions amongst attendees.
Everson and the curator Greg de Cuir Jr had One particular debate emerged from a This type of disagreement, based on
chosen a bold and varied programme, including screening of films by the British-Nigerian artist this year’s Flaherty having one foot in
lots of experimental works, under the title ‘The discourses of documentary and one in more
Necessary Image’. Ten artists were featured: The seminar remains locked experimental aesthetics, is surely bound to
Ephraim Asili, John Torres, Christopher Harris, recur. As the Flaherty seems to be moving in
into a complex struggle over
BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE

Karimah Ashadu, Kitso Lynn Lelliott, Zelimir
Zilnik, Sky Hopinka, Anocha Suwichakornpong,
Cauleen Smith and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz.
Instead of feature-length films, each session
more experimental directions, it will need to
the legacy of Robert Flaherty develop more flexible spaces for discussion, in
order to reflect and accommodate the diverse
and ‘Nanook of the North’ backgrounds and interests of the attendees.

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 19

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 Festivals
IL CINEMA RITROVATO
VOYAGE TO ITALY
Bologna showcased a heartrending
wartime doc, touching melodramas
and an unheralded female
member of the nouvelle vague
By James Bell
Word has definitely got out about Bologna’s Il
Cinema Ritrovato festival, the annual celebration
of archive cinema and new restorations: this year’s
was the best attended yet. Whether this growing
popularity is a cause for concern or celebration
depends on who you ask, but it certainly gives the
week-long event a vibrancy, as well as logistical
challenges. Even Martin Scorsese – who every
year is rumoured to be attending – finally made it.
Each year the festival devotes one of its
strands to a studio-era Hollywood director; this
year it was John M. Stahl, known mostly for his
melodramas. The Bologna programme included
two that were remade later by Douglas Sirk:
Imitation of Life (1934) and the Irene Dunne-
starring When Tomorrow Comes (1939, remade
by Sirk in 1957 as Interlude), as well as a glorious
vintage Technicolor print of Leave Her to Heaven
(1945). The Stahl programme was part of a
collaborative initiative with the Pordenone
festival, which in October will screen more of
his silent work and see the launch of a book of
critical essays, The Call of the Heart. We can only
hope that the retrospective reaches Britain.
Other strands included a programme co-
organised by Tony Rayns surveying the ‘rebirth’
years of Chinese cinema, 1941-51; and a collection
of films from the short-lived ‘Second Utopia’ of
Soviet cinema in the early 1930s, before the Great
Terror crushed artistic and personal freedoms.
The best of these last – that I saw, at any rate – was
Mark Donskoi’s Song About Happiness (1934), an
eccentric story of ethnic and class transcendence,
revolving around a folk musician who, released
from prison, ends up playing in a state orchestra.
The festival always includes a retrospective of
a lesser-known Italian director. This year it was
Luciano Emmer, who found success in the 1950s
as a director of ‘pink neorealism’ – films that
bore the influence of neorealism but also drew
on genres like comedy and melodrama. I caught
the grittily rambunctious Woman in the Window
(1961), starring Lino Ventura as one of several
migrant Italians working in a Dutch coalmine
who go on a weekend bender in Amsterdam.
Outside the strands are standalone screenings
of the latest restorations, among them an
impeccable presentation of Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1945
Poverty Row masterpiece Detour, painstakingly
pieced together from different elements – a
revelation after years of being available only on
shoddy public domain DVD. Other highlights
included Emilio Fernández’s Victims of Sin (1951),
a magnificently torrid cabaretera (a Mexican genre
that mixes the musical with noir and melodrama)
about a nightclub dancer who rescues and raises
an abandoned baby, against the odds and in spite
The darkest hour: the astonishing anti-Nazi documentary Lights out in Europe (1940)
of her tough existence; it was photographed with
shadowy noirish drama by Gabriel Figueroa. And
there was a great new 4K restoration of André
De Toth’s war film None Shall Escape (1944).
Characteristically dynamic and highly personal
(De Toth drew on scenes he had witnessed at
first hand during the German invasion of Poland
in 1939), it is remarkable for confronting Nazi
atrocities against the Jews while the war was still
raging, and for anticipating the Nuremberg trials.
Tucked away in the programme, French
director Cécile Decugis was an outlier. A key
member of the Cinémathèque française crowd
in the 50s, she was editor for some of the nouvelle
vague’s most notable figures: Godard (A Bout de
souffle, 1960), Truffaut (Shoot the pianist, 1960),
and, regularly, Rohmer. But she also made her
own films, beginning with 1957’s Les Réfugiés, an
account of life on the Algeria/Tunisia border, and
followed by 1965’s Le Passage, starring Edith Scob.
Without wishing to oversell them, those I saw
were well-observed little studies of relationships,
flirtations and disappointments – rather Rohmer-
esque in fact. The 33-minute Italie aller retour
(1984), for example, follows a single mother
named Clotilde who reconnects with an old friend,
Richard, now divorced and with two sons of his
own. He invites her and her son on holiday in Italy,
but though they attempt a romance Richard’s
temper and vanity become too much, and she
leaves. The insights definitely feel those of a female
director – a corrective to the boy’s club reputation
of the nouvelle vague. Sadly, Decugis died last year.
But for me the discovery of the week was Lights
out in Europe, a documentary released in April 1940
‘Lights out in Europe’ is all the
more poignant because we
know this is merely the opening
gambit of the barbarity to come
as part of the effort to sway American opinion
in favour of entering the war. It was produced
by the New York-based Herbert Kline, who had
previously made films about the Spanish Civil
War and the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia,
and uses quite astonishing footage shot by
Czech photographer Alexandr Hackenschmied,
assisted by a young Douglas Slocombe.
The film offers a panorama – Britain edging
out of the Phoney War, Europe on the precipice
of catastrophe – that feels somewhat like a
moving image equivalent of Mass Observation’s
records of life in Britain in the early months
of the war: people caught up in the gathering
storm of epochal events as they unfold, with
every conversation, every newspaper item
affected by the war and opinions changing
fast. So we see footage of both appeasers
and agitators at Speakers’ Corner, of Oswald
Mosley delivering a speech to his blackshirts,
of sandbags lining West End streets…
It’s not just Britain; the film shows German
tanks rolling into Danzig and, most haunting of
all, footage of the aftermath of a German aerial
bombardment of a train carrying refugees at
the Polish border, in which we see a gasping
young woman die slowly in an empty carriage,
her throat sliced by shrapnel. The casualties
of war are no longer statistics on a page, but
individuals, caught in images all the more
poignant because we know this is merely the
opening gambit of the barbarity to come.
It’s astonishing that the film has been obscure
for so long, until you learn that there was only
one surviving print, housed in the MoMA archive
in New York, from which a digital restoration
was made – alas, it wasn’t completed before
Slocombe’s death at 103 in 2016. Lights out in
Europe is a remarkable film and an indispensable
historical record; like so much at Il Cinema
Ritrovato, it is a reminder of how much of
cinema history remains to be rediscovered.
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 21
 Set in 1973, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman relates the re-
markable true story of how the first African-American
police officer to join the Colorado Springs Police Depart-
ment, Ron Stallworth, became a card-carrying member
of the Ku Klux Klan. It’s a premise that sounds almost
impossibly ridiculous, and Lee acknowledges how pre-
posterous it might seem by initially giving the film a
broad comic tone.
John David Washington, the star of television series
Ballers (2015-) and the son of Lee regular Denzel Wash-
ington, plays Stallworth, an affable character who is given
the lacklustre jobs in the filing department by his uni-
formed work colleagues, who use racial slurs as terms of
endearment. Stallworth’s humdrum career perks up only
when his blackness is needed to infiltrate a student meet-
ing where Black Power activist Kwame Ture (aka Stokely
Carmichael) is holding forth at the lectern. There he falls
for activist Patrice (Laura Harrier) and through this rela-
tionship is left to wonder whether he’s selling out.
Then comes the film’s comic pièce de résistance. Stall-
worth responds to a newspaper advert and through his
ability to mimic the sonorous drawls of his white col-
leagues, manages to become a member of the Ku Klux
Klan over the phone. The humour is reinforced by a
Twins-style joke, when the tall, muscular, Jewish and
very white fellow cop, played by Adam Driver, becomes
his ‘white’ stand-in at Klan meetings.
Lee is a master chronicler of American life, a director

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAMADI DOUMBOUYA

whose body of work is infused with commentary on con-
temporary socio-political issues. The climax of the New
York-set Do the Right Thing (1989), for example, turns on
the police killing of boombox-loving Radio Raheem, and
the movie is dedicated to the families of Eleanor Bum-
purs, Michael Griffith, Arthur Miller, Edmund
Perry, Yvonne Smallwood and Michael Stewart

Spike Lee, the director of ‘BlacKkKlansman’, the unlikely true tale of an African-
American police officer who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan, discusses Hollywood’s
history of racism, the importance of love and hate in his work, and how the violent
protests of modern-day far-right thugs gave his film its ending. By Kaleem Aftab

DEEP
COVER
22 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 23
SPIKE LEE BLACKKKLANSMAN

– real-life black New Yorkers who had been killed

by the police. The same film also shows some graf-
fiti proclaiming “Tawana Told the Truth”, a reference to
the 1987 Tawana Brawley case, in which the 15-year-old
Brawley accused four white men of having raped her, but
was later found by a grand jury to have fabricated her story.
The biopic Malcolm X (1992) opened with footage of the
Rodney King beating, which took place 26 years after the
film’s subject died in 1965. And Lee’s 2002 adaptation of
David Benioff’s novel 25th Hour was updated to enable its
characters to offer their furious responses to 9/11.
Given this history, the fact that BlacKkKlansman is set
45 years ago was not going to stop Lee passing judgement
on the rise of neo-Nazis in the current era, particularly
in America. Footage from the Charlottesville white su-
premacist rally from 2017 is expertly woven into the
film to question how far America has really moved since
the civil rights movement. It’s a remarkable ending to a
film that slowly veers from slight to serious, and which
also becomes a treatise on #BlackLivesMatter and #Os-
carsSoWhite with its commentary on supposedly ca-
nonical films The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with
the Wind (1939) and its musings over blaxploitation-era
pictures and President Trump.
In short, it’s quintessential Lee, replete with his signa-
ture shots and Brechtian techniques. BlacKkKlansman,
which won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Fes-
tival, is a major addition to Lee’s remarkable filmography,
one that highlights the continuing strength of white he-
gemony while issuing demands to his fellow citizens to
“Wake up!”
Kaleem Aftab: How did you hear about Ron Stallworth, the
African-American police officer referred to in your title as
the so-called ‘BlacKkKlansman’?
Spike Lee: Until [producer and Get Out director] Jordan
Peele called me, I did not know that Ron Stallworth ex-
isted, nor did I know of his book [Black Klansman: Race,
Hate and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime]. So I have
to give a shout out to Jordan Peele for giving me this op- SPY GAMES ington, who played him. John being the actor that he is
portunity, because I was not aware. The call came out of Adam Driver and John wanted to know as much as Ron could tell him about his
David Washington as Flip
nowhere. All this happened because Get Out was a suc- Zimmerman and Ron life, so the more information that he gives you, the more
cess. Jordan Peele and his co-producers had bought the Stallworth (top); Corey he has to work with to portray him.
rights to the book, and they hired two writers to write Hawkins as Black Power KA: The film starts with Alec Baldwin playing a white ex-
activist Kwame Ture giving a
the script. Then they made a list of people to approach speech at a student meeting tremist giving a hate-filled speech while images of The Birth
to direct it and I was on it. I said, “Look, I’ll direct it, but (above); and Laura Harrier as of a Nation and Gone with the Wind play on a screen behind
Kevin Willmott [the co-writer of Chi-Raq, 2015] and political activist Patrice, with him. What was the thinking behind this?
Stallworth (opposite)
myself have to do a rewrite.” SL: Kevin and I felt that we should come up with some
KA: How much of the story as depicted on screen is true, kind of old scratchy propaganda film that might have
and how much is made up for drama? been shown in the late 1950s espousing hatred. Also
SL: Well, I can’t give you a percentage, but it’s based on Alec Baldwin was constantly saying, “Spike, put me in
a true story. a film,” and in my experience timing is everything and
KA: Were you surprised to hear about a black man who was it just worked out this time. We shot all of Alec’s scenes
a card-carrying member of the KKK? in four hours and that film projected upon him is Birth of
SL: Oh yeah! And just like everyone else I automatically a Nation. I have a very strange relationship with Birth of a
thought of the Dave Chappelle skit [‘Frontline: Clayton Nation because it was screened for us during my first year
Bigsby’, about a blind white supremacist who doesn’t re- studying at NYU film school grad class. We were taught
alise he’s black] and there are still people out there who all the great things that D.W. Griffith had done in cinema,
think this film is based on that skit. The Ron Stallworth as the father of cinema, but the professor left out all the
story dates from way before that skit came out, and his socio-political aspects and issues of the film. The profes-
story is true. sor never talked about how the film revitalised the Klan.
KA: Did you meet with Ron and talk about his experience? The Klan had been dormant and as a result of this film,
SL: I met with Ron several times. The first time was when people were lynched. There is a direct correlation.
he came to Brooklyn for the read-through and he was At this point, I would like to state that I’m not one of
very helpful to all of us, particularly to John David Wash- these people that say artwork should be banned. I never

24 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

say Huckleberry Finn should not be taught in schools
because of the use of the word ‘nigger’, and I never say
Birth of a Nation should not be screened, but when you do
a screening you can’t leave out the other stuff. So my first
film at NYU graduate school was a film called The Answer
[1980]. It is about a young African-American screenwriter
hired by an American studio to rewrite and direct a
big-budget version of Birth of a Nation and, like Pierre
Delacroix in Bamboozled (2000), he fools himself into
thinking he can have free rein. So I find it strange that my
first film in film school, The Answer, was about Birth of a
Nation and I’ve come many years later to do it again.
KA: And what about Gone with the Wind?
SL: We had a class trip to see Gone with the Wind as there
was a big rerelease of the film. That’s why I got the idea
of telling parents to pull their kids out of school and take
them to see Malcolm X. Oh, I caught holy hell for saying
that [laughs]. Again, I understand Hattie McDaniel [who
played the role of ‘Mammy’ in Gone with the Wind] saying,
“I’d rather make $700 a week playing a maid than work-
ing as one,” but even though she won the Academy
Award she was not even allowed to sit with her fellow
cast members. She had to sit at the back of the ballroom.
So me being a filmmaker, a scholar and a cinephile, if
you go through my body of work it’s no secret that it’s a
critique of Hollywood cinema and it’s not a great history.
What Hollywood did to Native Americans is a disgrace: What Hollywood
fuck John Wayne, fuck John Ford. I know they tried to
make up for it with The Searchers [1956], in the same did to Native
way that D.W. Griffith did with Intolerance [1916], but too Americans is a
damn late, all of them. Hollywood has historically been
about white supremacy, the superman. disgrace: fuck
KA: In BlacKkKlansman, there is a speech attributed to John Wayne, fuck
Kwame Ture, in which he addresses how Tarzan movies pro-
moted stereotypical views of blacks. Did he actually make John Ford. I know
that speech? they tried to make
SL: It’s very important that speech in the movie, those
are his words. We compiled several of his speeches and up for it with ‘The
put it together. I didn’t write that stuff about Tarzan, Searchers’, but
those are his own words. Black people have been taught
to hate Africa because of films like Tarzan, where they too damn late
are portrayed as savages, beasts. Let’s read what Kwame
said [about his reaction to watching Tarzan movies as a
boy] – he said, “I was saying, ‘Kill the beasts, kill the sav-
ages’,” and that is how powerful movies and television
are. It’s always been my belief that one of the reasons
that the United States is a world power – not necessar-
ily as mighty as it once was – is because of culture. No
nuclear bomb is going to make anybody over the world
dance on their head, wear their hat backwards or, unfor-
tunately, wear your pants below your waist show-
ing your fucking underwear [laughs]. It’s culture.
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 25
SPIKE LEE BLACKKKLANSMAN
That is how the United States is dominating the
world. Coca-Cola, Nike, Apple, hip-hop, rock ’n’
roll, blues, when you put out stuff that changes the way
people think, talk, dance – that’s power. Bombing people
doesn’t have influence. This is my theory that the United
States has dominated the world through the export of
culture, and at the top of the list has to be movies. I
understand why countries put a limit on Hollywood
movies because they want to save their own culture. I
understand both sides of the whole Cannes and Netflix
thing. People see it – and rightly so – as American culture
coming in and taking over.
KA: In a scene between Ron Stallworth and student activist
Patrice, they discuss the merits of blaxploitation films while
out on a date. It’s a romantic scene and a political scene.
SL: That is the era that the film took place. I was in high
school when those films came out, Super Fly [1972], Shaft
[1971], the era of blaxploitation films. I didn’t have to be
black Einstein to include this. What makes the scene
hit is that we don’t just talk about blaxploitation, but we
show the one-sheet, the movie posters from the films that
were being discussed. These films made a great impact on
black folks to see themselves on screen kicking whitey’s
ass [laughs], because in all those black exploitation films
you had to kick whitey in the ass and we hadn’t seen that
before. If you think about that scene in In the Heat of the
Night [1967] where Sidney Poitier slapped the shit out of
Larry Gates and where he argued with Rod Steiger: “They
call me Mister Tibbs!” That was an earthquake.
KA: But as Patrice points out in BlacKkKlansman, the blax-
ploitation film just created a whole new stereotype – they
weren’t exactly positive images.
SL: Here is the thing: yes, it became a stereotype, but
what would have been the alternative? You had never
seen black people, or people of colour before. But you
raise a good point because there wasn’t any growth
among those films and the roles within them and so they
became stereotypes and therefore it led to the death of
the black exploitation film.
Another thing I might add is that people forget that at
the time the studios were in bad shape and so these black
exploitation films brought a new stream of money to the
studios that were struggling. They said, ‘That’s enough’
when black folks stopped coming in the record numbers
26 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
There is nothing
worse for a
filmmaker than
an audience
knowing what
is coming before
it comes. It’s
like boxing, you
have to try and
slip a jab in
IN BETWEEN THE SHEETS
Adam Driver’s Flip
Zimmerman attends a
Klan gathering and meets
with Klan members as Ron
Stallworth’s ‘white’ stand-in
(above, below); John David
Washington with Spike Lee
(opposite)
that they had before because the stories did not evolve –
it was the same thing again and again and again.
KA: Some people have seen the way you tackle the blaxploi-
tation films as taking a pop at the way Tarantino has used
these stereotypes and his attitudes. Was that in your mind?
SL: No, no, no. This is nothing to do with him at all.
KA: The film has a comic tone, but as it progresses it takes
on a more serious tone, ending with the footage from the
2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. Did you want
to use comedy to soften the audience up before punching
them in the guts with the ending?
SL: Sir, I wouldn’t use the word ‘comedy’, I would use
the word ‘humour’. It’s something I’ve done before, if
you go back to Do the Right Thing and also Malcolm X, two
serious films that have humour in and I’m not the first
filmmaker to do that. One of my favourite filmmakers,
Stanley Kubrick, if you look at Dr. Strangelove [1963],
what is more serious than a film about the extinction of
humankind? You look at Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953),
which takes place in an American PoW camp in Nazi
Germany. They are dramas on a serious subject matter
but infused with humour. I’ll give you another example,
the great script written by Paddy Chayefsky, Network
[1976], directed by Sidney Lumet, or if you look at the
great scripts by my man Budd Schulberg, two scripts he
wrote directed by Elia Kazan: On the Waterfront [1954]
and A Face in the Crowd [1957]. So it’s been done before.
I would add, though, that it’s hard to do, to get the right
mix of both. It has to be balanced. Audiences are so smart
today that you have to slip some stuff in there. There is
nothing worse for a filmmaker than an audience know-
ing what is coming before it comes. It’s like boxing, you
have to try and slip a jab in. You have to come up with
something like Muhammad Ali, the rope-a-dope [laughs].
Shout out to the G.O.A.T.
KA: In this film, are you trying to ask for unity against Trump
in the end, or are you trying to rekindle the spirit shown
during the Black Power movement?
SL: I would say the Black Power movement. Also I would
say that with this kind of White House it’s not just affect-
ing black people, it’s affecting the world. Just look at the
travesty that is happening at the border where children
are being separated from their parents – there should be a
special session in the United Nations about this bullshit.
It’s some crazy shit. It’s something that I’ve been saying
since School Daze (1988): the final words of that film are
“Wake up!” The first words of my next film, Do the Right
Thing are “Wake up!” People have got to understand that
this is not a black and white issue, it is an issue about love
versus hatred. These guys are gangsters – they don’t give a
fuck. Politicians are politicians, but at least back in the day
they would lie about it [laughs], or at least give you a smile,
whereas now this is straight-up: “We don’t give a fuck.”
In a lot of ways you may say that this is a better way,
now you know what you are dealing with, instead of
other people who promise you the world. But Trump –
I’m sorry I said his name – Agent Orange, they are not
faking, they are about making money. When you have
people with no notions of right and wrong, or ethics, the
only thing they honour is money; they would sell their
mother for a quarter. I went to see Denzel Washington on
Broadway in his last performance of The Iceman Cometh
and there is a line in that Eugene O’Neill play that seems
apt: “You’d steal the pennies off your dead mother’s eyes.”
KA: You’ve used present-day documentary footage to
emphasise action in a fictional feature film before – the
Rodney King beating at the start of Malcolm X, for example.
What is the power of mixing modern documentary footage
into period fiction?
SL: All I can really say is that I’m both a fictional filmmaker
and a documentary filmmaker. Being a documentary
filmmaker helps me when making fictional features, and
making fiction helps me with my documentaries. Right
now I’m in Martha’s Vineyard and I was in Martha’s
Vineyard last August 11th and 12th when that debacle
happened in Charlottesville. We did not go into produc-
tion on BlacKkKlansman until the fall, and I was really
moved watching what was happening on TV, on CNN,
and really it was David Duke, the alt-right, neo-Nazis and
the Klan that wrote the ending for BlacKkKlansman, that
was not the original ending. Those motherfuckers wrote
the ending at the expense of the life of Heather D. Heyer
[killed when a car was driven into a crowd of counter-pro-
testers]. Once that happened in August, I always knew I
had my ending, I just didn’t write it. My great researcher
Judy Aley had to get all that material and we put it togeth-
er. They wrote themselves into the film.
KA: I heard you really pushed for BlacKkKlansman to come
out on the anniversary of Charlottesville?
SL: That was my idea. I really wanted to. It’s very impor-
tant what happened in Charlottesville and nobody can
say that those clips of David Duke and that guy in the
White House are fake news. They can’t say Industrial
Light & Magic put those heads on other bodies – that is
not a special effect.
KA: Do you think the world is catching up with you? In the
1980s and 90s you were accused of reverse racism for
pointing out the way the white male hegemony functioned.
Some in the media would see you as an upstart. But with
#BlackLivesMatter and the success of Get Out, there has
been a reappraisal of your work, which is why the stories you
were first telling about The Birth of a Nation, as well as your
recent successful Netflix TV series of your film She’s Gotta
Have It [1986] are hitting home.
SL: When you make a film, the hope is that the audi-
ence gets it. I had Bamboozled – people didn’t get that at
all when it came out. 25th Hour – people didn’t get that
either. Nor School Daze. There are several films that over
the years have been overlooked. I don’t know if I’m
ahead of my time or not, but what I am happy about is
I don’t know if
that people are finding these films and going back and I’m ahead of my
looking at them again. That’s not the way you want it time or not, but
to happen, but a lot of factors come into a film’s release.
I’ll give you an example: 25th Hour, we came out during what I am happy
the Oscar season and it wasn’t said directly, I understand about is that
the film didn’t get any best film of the year nods, or even
actor nods, because they weren’t going to spend any people are finding
money on the film. And today, people say that it’s the these old films of
best film they’ve seen about 9/11. This is not the first time
it’s happened, nor am I unique in that regard. Look, I’m mine and going
not making comparisons, but I’m just giving examples: back and looking
Citizen Kane [1941], A Face in the Crowd, Ace in the Hole
[1951], Bonnie and Clyde [1967], they had to release twice, at them again
so there are circumstances where it doesn’t hit.
KA: Why do you think those ideas you had in the 80s really
resonate today?
SL: I would say unique vision and that the films are based
on truths that don’t get old. People are still quoting Do the
Right Thing and that film will have its 30th anniversary
next year.
KA: Two years ago Bill Nunn, who played Radio Raheem in
Do the Right Thing, died, and you wore the knuckle dust-
ers he sports in the film – ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’, a tribute to The
Night of the Hunter – to the premiere of BlacKkKlansman at
Cannes. What was your thinking behind that?
SL: I saw The Night of the Hunter [1955] at film school and
that film made a deep impression on me. I’m sorry I never
got to meet Robert Mitchum, whose character in the film
had ‘hate’ tattooed on his left hand and ‘love’ tattooed on
his right hand. One day I’m going to be dead and they
are going to go back and connect that, that’s through all
my films, and I’m just beginning to see it now, it’s what
that great speech is, the struggle between love and hate.
That’s it. That’s why I pulled my knuckle rings out of the
closet for going up the red carpet. It’s become clearer and
clearer to me. Sometimes I do stuff and you don’t know
that there is a thread but now I’m seeing it and that’s it:
the struggle between love and hate.
BlacKkKlansman is released in UK cinemas on
i 24 August and is reviewed on page 60. Special
screenings with a live satellite Q&A with Spike Lee
take place across the UK on 20 August
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 27
SAPPHIRES
AND STEEL
THE INDOMITABLE JOAN CRAWFORD
In a career that ran from the silents to Spielberg, Joan Crawford’s relentless effort, incredible
self-discipline and poise under pressure saw her triumph in a long series of demanding roles,
eliciting sympathy from audiences even when playing deeply flawed, hard-edged characters
By Farran Smith Nehme
On 27 March 1925, Movie Weekly magazine and Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer studio ran a contest to rename “a beau-
tiful young actress”, explaining that the young lady’s real
name, Lucille LeSueur, was too hard to remember and
pronounce. The top prize for the chosen name was $500
(more than $7,000 today), with 10 prizes of $50 each for
the runners-up. The winning name was to be selected by
a panel of judges, but there were a lot of ‘name that star-
let’ contests that year, according to biographer Donald
Spoto, so many that the judges got tired, and most of
them didn’t show up for Lucille’s final tally. Thus, movie
journalist Adele Whitely Fletcher chose ‘Joan Crawford’,
and the news got national play in September of that year.
Louis B. Mayer had reportedly said ‘Sueur’ sounded like
‘sewer’; for her part, Lucille complained that her new
name sounded like ‘crawfish’. But, as Whitely Fletcher
said later, that name “turned into pay-dirt with the relent-
less effort and incredible self-discipline she put into it”.
And it was the perfect creation myth for Joan Craw-
ford, who thus sprang fully formed, if not from Mayer’s
forehead, then close to it. She was ever and always a crea-
ture of the moving image, beginning in the silents, and
finding one of her last memorable roles in one strand of
the anthology pilot episode of television’s Night Gallery,
directed by a 23-year-old Steven Spielberg. More than
nearly any other great star, she became synonymous
with Hollywood. The epic season of Crawford movies at
28 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
BFI Southbank, London, offers a chance to see it happen, POISONED CHALICE
year by year, film by film, from flapper to working-class- Joan Crawford in Clarence
Brown’s pre-Code drama
girl-made-good to the darkly complex roles that marked Letty Lynton (1932), a tale of
her zenith, and finishing with films such as Strait-Jacket love and blackmail in which
(1963) that show her still in there swinging, so to speak. she plays a socialite who
gets away with murder
Those of us who revere her as a screen artist often remind
people that Mommie Dearest (1981) wasn’t a documenta-
ry. Watching Faye Dunaway’s performance will no more
show someone what the real woman was like on screen
than seeing Nicole Kidman in Grace of Monaco (2014) will
prepare a person for Rear Window (1954). The excellence
to be found in a wide swathe of her filmography demol-
ishes any attempt to view Crawford as the incarnation
of overacting.
Joan Crawford was as wholly self-made as any star
before or since. Fan magazines and even some biogra-
phers have claimed she made it all the way through high
GEORGE HURRELL/JOHN KOBAL FOUNDATION/GETTY IMAGES
school, but she always said her formal education had
ended in fifth grade, and whatever else she learned had
come from working in the movies and tireless attempts
at self-betterment. Crawford never had an acting lesson,
though MGM gave her lessons in dancing, in how to
move in period costumes and (fairly early on, for the stu-
dios knew talkies were coming well before they arrived)
elocution lessons. She was about five feet three inches tall;
that Movie Weekly contest claimed she was five-foot-
five, but then it also claimed she’d gone into films
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 29
JOAN CRAWFORD
HONOUR AMONG THIEVES
Joan Crawford with Lon
Chaney’s killer in The
Unknown (1927), and with
Clark Gable’s convict in
Frank Borzage’s Strange
Cargo (1940)
30 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
because she had tired of being a débutante. The fact
was that Crawford became a chorus girl after years
of ironing shirts in her mother’s laundry and washing
dishes at her boarding school. If the #MeToo movement
has revealed how tough it is for women in show business
now, we can only imagine what it must have been like for
a teenager in the 1920s as she moved through the chorus
lines of Detroit, then Broadway. “Her life, as with many
others,” wrote film historian David Shipman, “might be
fashioned after one of her own scenarios: struggle, fight,
get to the top, stay there.”
The earliest film in the BFI season is the best silent
Crawford made: The Unknown (1927), an arrestingly ma-
cabre vehicle for Lon Chaney, directed by Tod Browning.
Chaney plays Alonzo, a serial killer on the run, who has
disguised himself as one of the carnies by pretending to
be an armless knife-thrower. Pretty young Nanon (Craw-
ford) serves as Alonzo’s target during the act, and the
object of his unrequited love off-stage. She is also loved
by the strong man Malabar the Mighty (Norman Kerry),
but Nanon has a horror of being touched by men. Craw-
ford, in her early 20s, still had a rounded baby-face that
helps her play up the character’s innocence. The way
she recoils from male attention, reacting to contact as
though she’s been scorched – as well as Nick De Ruiz’s
performance as her repulsive, violent father – make it
clear that Nanon’s phobia is the product of sexual abuse.
It’s also easy to see why she dotes on Alonzo as a father
figure; Crawford uses her petite size to emphasise this,
angling her neck to look at him with those enormous
blue headlight eyes. Chaney at the time was one of the
most admired actors in Hollywood, and Crawford stud-
ied him carefully: “I became aware for the first time of
the difference between standing in front of a camera and
acting. Until then, I had only been conscious of myself.”
There are so many myths attached to Crawford that
entire books have been devoted to unravelling them,
but one of the most puzzling is the idea that much of her
post-sound MGM work is glossy and insipid. In the 1930s
she was at her most beautiful and, early in the decade, her
films seemed designed to showcase her ambition, that
fierce Crawford desire for admiration that made her close-
ups so intense. In Clarence Brown’s Possessed (1931), she
plays one of the first roles that would earn her the rather
snarky tag ‘shopgirl’s delight’. The reference wasn’t to her
characters’ jobs – she played a shopgirl a mere handful
of times – but rather that a Crawford film often showed
a woman who comes from nothing only to have mink,
jewels, and the likes of Clark Gable draped around her by
the final reel.
Possessed, though, is one of many women’s pictures
that hide truth under a Cinderella plot. Crawford plays
Marian Martin, a young woman who knows she is beau-
tiful, knows it’s the one real currency she has in a sexist
world, and knows too that it will all go to waste if she
sticks around her grimy factory town, filmed with sordid
flair by the director. In a minute-long scene that makes
her desperation tangible, Marian watches as a train full
of rich passengers rolls through town, all the things she
wants in life literally passing her by.
In the dark Depression years of the early 1930s, it was
scenes such as these that must have endeared Crawford
to legions of female fans, women who knew they’d never
catch that train – she would have to do it for them. Marian
eventually becomes the mistress of Mark Whitney (Clark
Gable), and with strict enforcement of the Production
Code still a few years off, the film can also take advan-
tage of their simmering chemistry, as they fall into each
other’s arms despite being overdue at a swanky party. The
two stars were having an affair, but remained a potent
screen team long after they parted ways. When Gable’s
convict encounters Crawford’s saloon girl in Frank
Borzage’s Strange Cargo (1940), made nearly a decade after
Possessed, he sizes her up with “You got class, kid. Or is it
that I haven’t seen a woman lately?” – but you know he’d
go for her on Devil’s Island, a life raft, or anywhere else.
One lifelong characteristic of Crawford was excel-
lence under pressure, and 1932’s Grand Hotel offers an
example, casting her alongside the heavyweight stars
of Hollywood’s most heavyweight studio, including
Barrymore brothers John and Lionel, Wallace Beery and
Greta Garbo. It was MGM’s way of saying she was on that
starry level, and her performance proved it; indeed, she
steals the picture. Crawford plays a stenographer, nick-
RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE (3) / BFI NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE (2)
named Flaemmchen, who supports herself with typing
and also, the movie makes clear, by providing after-hours
companionship and more for the men who employ her.
By this point, Crawford had mastered the kind of small
details that the camera loves, such as Flaemmchen’s
smirk as she exits an elevator after a bit of flirting with
John Barrymore’s Baron, or, even better, the up-and-down
once-over she gives businessman Preysing (Beery) when
he greets her with nothing but a hotel towel covering his
distinctly unimpressive physique.
 It was the kind of youthful, vibrant, utterly modern part
that was ideal for Crawford at this point in her career – a
woman whose hard times have made her a keen judge of
character, who declares that she doesn’t believe in roman-
tic love. She had carved her place in MGM’s pantheon. She
wasn’t genteel like Norma Shearer, she was certainly less
mysterious than Garbo, and she was far more earthy and
sexy than Jeanette MacDonald. Despite her uncommon
looks Crawford was, for want of a better word, relatable.
By 1939, when MGM turned Clare Boothe Luce’s play
The Women into an all-star production for which they
tested, as Rosalind Russell said, “everybody but Lassie and
Mrs. Roosevelt”, Crawford was once again ready to grab
her spotlight. Only recently she had been labelled box-
office poison after a few flops, including the effervescent
The Bride Wore Red (1937). (If it seems like every female
star in Hollywood was on that infamous “poison” list,
published in a trade paper by a group of theatre owners
complaining about stars “whose box-office draw is nil”,
that’s very nearly the truth.) Audiences never particu-
larly took to Crawford in light comedy, but if comedies
are confections, The Women is a mouth-puckering lemon
drop. And Crawford’s part, Crystal Allen – a name you
hear in the film with a frequency and emphasis similar
to ‘Dracula’ – was definitely the heavy. There’s a swag-
ger to Crystal, as when she tamps down the tobacco in
her cigarette with an aplomb Sam Spade would have
appreciated, and tells Mary Haines (Norma Shearer), the
woman whose husband she’s stealing, “You noble wives
and mothers bore the brains out of me. And I bet you bore
your husbands, too.” (Crawford had a longtime rivalry
with Shearer, stemming less from a clash of personalities
than from the fact that Shearer, as Mrs Irving Thalberg,
could and did pick roles that Crawford yearned to play.)
There’s nothing likeable about Crystal, who breaks up
a family to marry a man she doesn’t love and proceeds
to cheat on the sap. But Crawford knows the resent-
ments that animate a woman like Crystal, and uses that
to make us feel a certain affinity for her, such as when
Sylvia Fowler (Russell) and Edith Potter (Phyllis Povah)
arrive at Crystal’s perfume counter purely to needle and
gawk, and she slams back with one silky line: “I’m sorry,
but when one’s mind is on one’s own business…”
Towards the end of her MGM period, Crawford made
one of her best movies there: A Woman’s Face (1941), a
remake of a Swedish film directed by Gustaf Molander
in 1938 and starring Ingrid Bergman. The remake came
DARK STAR
Crawford wasn’t about because Crawford saw the original movie and ad-
Joan Crawford with Norma mired it deeply. A Woman’s Face, the story of a woman
Shearer and Rosalind
Russell in The Women (1939,
genteel like Norma whose personality has been warped by a childhood acci-
top), with Osa Massen in A
Shearer, she was dent that left her disfigured, marks a point in Crawford’s
Woman’s Face (1941, above), career where she was not just willing, but eager to play
and with Clark Gable in
Clarence Brown’s Possessed
less mysterious harsher characters. She had also evolved tremendously
(1931,, below))
than Garbo, and in terms of how she worked with directors, and she and
George Cukor both considered this one of their best films
she was far more together. No longer the sympathetic working-class girl
earthy and sexy
eart made good, here Crawford’s character was found slap-
ping Osa Massen’s socialite with a near-sadistic fury, and
than Jeanette seriously considering the murder of a little boy.
MacDonald
Ma It was a remarkable performance, but she had reached
a point at MGM where everything they tried seemed not
quite to work with the public. By 1945, Crawford had left
the studio; famously, she scrubbed her trailer from
top to bottom before she drove off the lot for the

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 31

JOAN CRAWFORD
AXE TO GRIND
Joan Crawford in the
demented yet genuinely
touching Strait-Jacket
(1963, right), with Wendell
Corey in Harriet Craig (1950,
far right), and in the role
with which she is still most
closely identified, Mildred
Pierce (1945, opposite)
DREAM OF LOVE
Joan Crawford in Otto
Preminger’s Daisy Kenyon
(1947, below left), and with
Cliff Robertson, her much
younger love interest in
Autumn Leaves (1956,
below right)
32 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
last time. She could have retired, as Shearer and
Garbo had already done, but her restless need to
perform wouldn’t let her. Instead, she landed at Warner
Brothers where, after her intense lobbying of a reluctant
Michael Curtiz, Crawford landed the part that is most
identified with her to this day, Mildred Pierce (1945).
Freely adapted from a James M. Cain novel that is much
more depressing, Mildred Pierce surrounded Crawford
with an exceptional supporting cast, and let her dig deep
into the grimmest aspects of womanhood in that era
(and, if we are honest, even our own).
Mildred leaves an essentially decent but feckless hus-
band and finds a certain fulfilment in building a business
from scratch, but can’t cast off the true millstone around
her neck: her love for her viperous daughter Veda (Ann
Blyth). The big moments in Crawford’s Oscar-winning
performance retain their power, such as her reaction to
a slap from Veda: “Get your things out of this house right
now before I throw them into the street and you with
them. Get out before I kill you.” But one reason that Mil-
dred Pierce still plays brilliantly is that Crawford’s small
moments are often even more pleasurable, such as when
Veda condescendingly informs her mother that “valse
brillante” means “brilliant waltz”, and Mildred responds,
with a near-smile that is equal parts ruefulness and pride,
“Does it really?”
“I like the drab. I like to play human beings in the
gutter,” she told a journalist in the 1930s, and the late 40s
and 50s gave Crawford a chance to prove she’d meant it.
Ten years earlier she might not have fitted very well at
Warner Brothers – at MGM she’d start in the gutter, in the
late part of her career she often wound up there. But Craw-
ford had arrived at her new studio just as a darker, more
psychologically fraught trend was taking hold in post-war
Hollywood. Like Mildred Pierce, movies such as Humor-
esque (1946), in which Crawford plays a rich socialite who
loses John Garfield’s virtuoso musician to the charms of
his violin, or even Possessed (1947; no connection to the
1931 pre-Code film), in which she abases herself utterly in
an attempt to win Van Heflin’s Schumann-playing engi-
neer, don’t fit certain stringent (and often sexist) latter-day
definitions of film noir, which deem it a genre for tortured
male protagonists and secondary femmes fatales. But the
view of life and fate is noir to the core.
Otto Preminger’s Daisy Kenyon (1947) is also a basic
‘woman’s choice’ film, albeit an uncommonly thought-
ful and melancholy one. Crawford is a successful maga-
zine illustrator, carrying on with Dana Andrews’s mar-
ried man but drawn to Henry Fonda’s kind veteran; that’s
a plot out of her MGM years, now deepened by post-war
melancholy and darkened by cinematography that
makes “every room look like a cove”, as the critic James
Wolcott put it. Sudden Fear (1952) found her in a damsel-
in-distress part (one Crawford picked for herself after her
Warner contract ended). She is playwright Myra Hudson,
married to a con artist (Jack Palance) who plans to kill
her for her money – except Crawford never played a true
damsel in her life. In this one, she turns the tables on her
scheming husband, culminating in a bravura dialogue-
free scene toward the end, in which Myra must hide in
 a closet as her murderous spouse slinks through a dark-
ened apartment. As Hollywood aged and toughened up,
Crawford was ready to do the same.
Take Harriet Craig (1950), Vincent Sherman’s spin on
George Kelly’s 1926 warhorse Craig’s Wife; it had seen
screen life before as a 1928 silent and a good 1936 Dor-
othy Arzner version with Rosalind Russell as the title
character. This is a domestic drama, the dark elements
coming from the personality of the title character, a
woman whose selfishness and obsession with keeping
an immaculate house drives everyone away. Crawford
makes the story about sublimation – not merely sexual
sublimation, blatantly implied in the 1936 version, but
sublimation of intelligence and ambition. Harriet tells
her niece that marriage is a bargain: household skills in
return for material security. When her husband Walter
(Wendell Corey) is about to be offered a promotion that
will take him to Japan without Harriet, she goes to Wal-
ter’s boss and persuades him, with diabolical efficiency,
that her husband has a gambling problem. Crawford
underlines the stony manipulation, but she also demon-
strates her character’s misused intelligence, wielded to
push the paternalistic boss along the road to the conclu-
sion she wants.
There are few if any movies that bring to mind the
clean-freak Christina-slapping legend of Joan Crawford
as much as Harriet Craig; according to Spoto, Joan herself
was known to joke about her cleanliness with a Harriet
Craig reference. But if Crawford was bringing herself to
Harriet, she was also bringing her sense of what a life
without a career might have been like. Crawford as Har-
riet is a cautionary tale of what happens when a smart,
calculating, highly ambitious woman has nothing but
home decor to occupy her mind.
Crawford, of course, kept her career going far longer
than many others have managed. As late as 1956 she was
playing the lead in the sensitive older-woman/younger-
man romance Autumn Leaves. She embraced 1960s films
such as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, in which the
view of ageing women was scarcely a kind one, and the
demented yet genuinely touching Strait-Jacket, the last
full flowering of Crawford as, in the words of critic Kim
Morgan, “one of the most fascinating self-inventions ever
to grace, or rather, claw her way across the silver screen”.
The biographies of the stars of the Golden Age tend to
have similar fade-outs; the star living alone, complain-
ing to the occasional interviewer that movies were no
longer any fun. Crawford played out that scenario to
an extent, retreating to her Manhattan apartment with
its vinyl slipcovers. But she never completely drew the
The big moments
blinds or sank into true bitterness. If much of the public in her performance
had moved on, Crawford was still there for the ones who as Mildred Pierce
hadn’t, answering all her fan mail, signing photos, the
grateful star to the end, as Spoto demonstrates in a single retain their power.
RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE (1) / BFI NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE (4)

anecdote from the year before her death: But one reason
She was leaving a Manhattan restaurant when a team of
construction workers recognised her and whistled loudly. “Hey the film still plays
Joanie!” shouted one of them. brilliantly is that
Smiling, she went over to shake their hands. “I’m surprised
you fellas know who I am!” “You’re one in a million,” said a her small moments
workman. “They sure don’t make them like you any more, baby!” are often more
She loved it.
‘Fierce: The Untameable Joan Crawford’ runs pleasurable
i at BFI Southbank, London, until 9 October

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 33

34 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

THE MUSIC LOVERS
Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold
War is inspired by the
director’s parents, in its tale
of the troubled love affair
between Polish pianist
Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and
singer Zula (Joanna Kulig)
A
TIME
TO
LOVE
With great economy and a powerful
emotional depth, Pawel Pawlikowski’s
‘Cold War’ charts the highs and lows of the
love affair between a composer and a folk
singer, trying to adapt to the harsh vagaries of
life under Communist rule in post-war Poland
By Jonathan Romney
In a parallel universe, you can imagine there existing an
entirely different version of Pawel Pawlikowski’s latest
feature Cold War. The other film would be a lavish, expan-
sive romance set against the background of 20th-century
Polish history; it would have a cast of thousands and daz-
zling song-and-dance numbers, be shot in vivid colour
and last something over three hours. By contrast, the film
Pawlikowski has actually made – though it too is musical-
ly rich, tells a story spanning 15 years and features some
densely choreographed crowd scenes – is a sparely told,
intimate black-and-white drama that uses ellipsis and
suggestion to squeeze its complex zigzagging narrative
into a taut but emotionally resonant 88 minutes.
If Pawlikowski’s previous period drama Ida (2013)
was an essay in narrative minimalism, Cold War is more
a case of compressed expansiveness – its super-honed
economy all the more effectively amplifying the emo-
tional charge. The result is a moving, mature drama
about modern European history, the vagaries of art in a
political world and the ways in which love can find itself
contending with pressures of the state.
Cold War follows two lovers from 1949 to 1964. Pianist
Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) is musical director to the Mazurek
folk ensemble, a government-backed young company of
singers and dancers charged with promoting traditional
Polish music and the national values it represents. A key
performer is Zula (Joanna Kulig), a young woman with
outstanding talent as a singer and dancer, a troubled past
and an unerring capacity for survival. The star-crossed
(or state-crossed) love between her and Wiktor will
endure through separations, reunions, different rela-
tionships and a stormy sojourn in Paris, where the pair
become involved in the city’s jazz scene.
Two real-life stories inform Cold War. One is that of
Pawlikowski’s parents, whose own relationship involved
divorce, remarriage and much relocation. The other story
is that of the music, inspired by the real-life Mazowsze
ensemble. Cold War begins with rural musicians record-
ed by Tomasz on a field trip, giving rough, unvarnished
performances of folk songs, which then thread
their way through the film: they are heard again
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 35
PAWEL PAWLIKOWSKI COLD WAR
in the lush choral versions performed by the Ma-
zurek choir, then transformed into nightclub jazz
(a highlight is Kulig’s smokily soulful performance of the
lament ‘Dwa serduszka’ or ‘Two Hearts’, its “oy-oy-oyyy”
refrain the outstanding cinematic earworm of 2018).
It is a story of adaptability: both partners do what they
must, go where they must, to survive and to practise their
art, at the risk of losing their souls or compromising their
love. Both adapt to the demands of an artform that is
owned by one state, Poland, but in thrall to another, the
USSR: on a visit to Russia, the choir is required to sing in
praise of Stalin.
But the film asks us to question the yardstick of ar-
tistic authenticity. The Mazurek repertoire may appear
suspect in its official idealisation of folk, while the music
heard in the documentary-style opening sequence ap-
pears to be the real stuff – the 100-per-cent-proof rotgut
to the duty-free exportable smoothness of the Mazurek
show. Yet Pawlikowski’s film is also a tribute to the real
power and virtuosity of the Mazowsze style, which he
has latterly come to value, having rejected it as a child in
his native Poland. Indeed, the harsher music of the open-
ing was actually reverse-engineered for the film, taking
the sophisticated Mazowsze repertoire as a starting point
for something designed to sound authentic or raw.
By the same token, a film that, like Ida, might be con-
sidered an authentic flowering of new Polish cinema
is itself painstakingly fabricated – a work that inevita-
bly channels images of the nation’s past familiar from
the 1950s work of directors such as Andrzej Wajda and
Andrzej Munk. This revitalisation of a Polish screen
tradition is itself a relatively new path for Pawlikowski.
Noted as a UK-based documentarist focusing on East-
ern European themes (Serbian Epics, 1992; Tripping with
Zhirinovsky, 1995), he won wider acclaim with the British
dramas Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004),
then made an intriguing but awkward detour with the
2011 Paris-based thriller The Woman in the Fifth (in which
Kulig appeared in a role unconsciously inspired, Paw-
likowski tells me, by a character in Wajda’s 1958 film
Ashes and Diamonds). His decisive shift was Ida, which
marked the director’s relocation to Poland and won him
not only the 2015 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film
but also condemnation from critics, including Poland’s
culture minister, who accused the film of defamation
over the nation’s role in the Holocaust.
Visually and in its setting, Cold War is of a piece with
36 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
Ida. But the new film is very different in tone and its emo-
tional effect. There is an austerity befitting its period, yet
Cold War revels in cinematic glamour. As Wiktor, Kot
embodies a stormy-browed artistic masculinity, while
as the mercurial, powerfully sexual Zula, too earthy and
complex to be an off-the-peg femme fatale, Kulig (who
also played a singer in Ida) gives a vibrant performance
that, many critics have suggested with more than a sigh
of nostalgia, marks her out as a new Jeanne Moreau. Cold
War also sees Pawlikowski stretching out audaciously:
it contains crowd scenes in which every extra’s face
looks dead right for the place and the period; elaborate,
exhilarating musical numbers; and a resonant preci-
sion in every image that bespeaks Pawlikowski’s desire
to make a film in which performances and mise en scène
gel perfectly.
Jonathan Romney: The idea for Cold War was on your mind
It is a story of for years. What form did you originally imagine it taking?
Pawel Pawlikowski: It was always the story of this couple,
adaptability: both because it was inspired by my parents, who were togeth-
partners do what er on and off for 40 years. It didn’t have the musical ele-
ment for a long time. There’s a treatment from 2006 – I
they must, go had it on my laptop just under the title ‘Love Story’. Then
where they must, I was reshaping Ida while shooting it, and I thought,
“Now I know how to do it: throw a lot of stuff out, cause
to survive and and effect is not important, just show what happens.”
to practise their JR: One could imagine this story told as a big chunky pa-
perback romance – instead you’ve made it very austere and
art, at the risk of compressed.
losing their souls PP: Eighty-three minutes plus credits. All my films are
83 minutes, it’s bizarre. I didn’t think of it as austere –
or compromising most of the shots I find are very sensuous. The austerity
their love is in the ellipsis, in not giving close-ups when you expect
them, not doing any hand-held and people not saying
what they feel.
JR: The storytelling takes extraordinary risks in terms of
jumps. At one point we suddenly see Wiktor in prison, then
just as suddenly he’s out again.
PP: I imposed the game – the audience either takes it or
leaves it. As long as each thing you come to is powerful
and suggestive and allows you to work out what hap-
pened in the gap… The pleasure is in imagining your way
into that space. I did shoot one explanatory scene and it
was so wrong – even when I was shooting it, I knew it
wasn’t going to go in. It was a big quarrel scene in Paris.
It was very powerful, the actors did it brilliantly, but it
felt a bit like a British realist drama. Suddenly the whole
magic was gone. It was so not the film, which relies on
image and suggestion.
JR: Returning to Poland with Ida and Cold War, working in
black and white in that period, you must have been aware of
following in a certain national cinematic heritage.
PP: Not really. I didn’t think I was reinventing myself as
a Polish director. England never interested me from a
dramatic point of view, to be honest. When I made docu-
mentaries, I never made them in England, I always tried
to go to places where history was more palpable, where
dramatic choices were faced by people.
JR: How did music become Cold War’s unifying theme?
PP: I’ve got more and more interested in music in film
– not film music, God forbid, but music which is a char-
acter in the film. I knew the Mazowsze folk ensemble
well, it was hugely popular when I was growing up in
Poland. I discovered that some people joined it in order
to escape. When they visited Paris in ’54, one woman es-
caped and told her story – nothing like our heroine but
I thought it would be a good dramatic context. Also the
music is great. I never liked it when I was a kid. This folk
stuff was coming out of radio and TV, clearly pushed by
the government in opposition to the stuff we were really
interested in: at the time, rock music; before that, jazz and
atonal modern classical music. We grew up with that
and we resented it. But recently I went to a concert and it
was mind-blowingly beautiful – old-fashioned analogue
music, vibrating voices, bodies dancing. I got swept away.
JR: The music at the start – are those ‘natural’ performanc-
es, or did you specifically ask people to play in a particular
way that they might have played after the war?
PP: Exactly. The Mazowsze music was sourced from the
people, but when I came to it, it was already elaborate
and scored, with polyphony and so on. I asked the local
performers, whom I found all over Poland, to develop
these tunes in a basic, crude way – which they did very
well, like the little girl singing slightly off key. You hear it
like that first, then in the Mazowsze style, then I asked a
Polish musician [Marcin Masecki] to do jazz versions of it.
JR: The film also pays tribute to Poland’s jazz tradition.
PP: When Stalinism ended, jazz became acceptable, or
legal, and there was an explosion. Krzysztof Komeda was
the big name [he also composed soundtracks for Roman
Polanski], Andrzej Trzaskowski, Zbigniew Namyslowski,
a whole bunch of brilliant musicians who did a version
of bebop and cool with a melancholy Slavic twist.
JR: At the start of the film, we don’t know much about the
characters’ background – do you have a clear sense of their
history?
PP: Absolutely. Wiktor was born into the intelligentsia,
he studied composition in Paris under Nadia Boulanger…
He came back before the war and played in a forbidden
café in Warsaw – he’s slightly styled on [the composers]
Lutoslawski and Panufnik, they did that during the war
to make a living. After the war he was consigned to the
scrapheap of history, as far as Communists are concerned
– a pre-war decadent.
Her story’s simpler. She’s from a small town, she has
this sinister story, which I invented because I originally
wanted her to be younger – but Joanna no longer looks
17, so there has to be a reason why Zula turned up at 23. It
was about adapting the story to the reality of the actress,
who I wanted to have at all costs.
JR: Even though Zula is naturally rebellious, she seems will-
ing to capitulate, to work with the system.
PP: She’s more planted in reality, she’s better at not going
under. He’s much more of a fragile plant. For her, the
Mazurek is a great job, she doesn’t really want to leave
Poland – where she comes from, communism is not a ter-
rible thing and she’s able to travel. She makes the most
of what’s available, there’s nothing evil or disreputable
about that.
JR: Like Ida, Cold War is in black and white – and, again, in
Academy ratio.
PP: I checked out the possibilities for colour, but by elim-
ination we went back to black and white. We were trying
to make it more dramatic, more contrasty, more punchy
[than Ida]. Here there are more layers in the background,
and the environment is more important. Giving yourself
limitations always improves the imagination, always
improves the mise en scène. That scene on the riverbank
BRIGHT STAR
Cold War (opposite,
below), directed by Pawel
Pawlikowski (opposite),
revels in cinematic glamour,
with Joanna Kulig’s
performance as Zula (above)
drawing comparisons with
Jeanne Moreau
when Zula tells Wiktor she’s snitching on him – you
have their faces, then he gets up and leaves and she jumps
into the water. Imagine if that was on a wider screen, it
wouldn’t be anywhere near as good.
JR: Your own credit on the film is unusual…
PP: “Story, image, direction.” The real job of the director is
the story and the image-making. I don’t delegate it to the
DP. I have a very good young DP, Lukasz Zal, who started
on Ida. It’s not just, “Now do your magic, Lukasz.” He’s a
great collaborator in making these images. We chiselled
the images all the time. We did a lot of takes, not just
because of the performance, but to improve the light –
“Less”, “More”, “Reframe a little.” It’s about how you build
the picture.
Usually when you make a film, you either favour the
actors or the pictures. When you favour the actors, the
pictures are functional, more or less, and you occasion-
ally have a great shot; or you favour the image and the
actors are victims of your image-making. But if you walk
this tightrope, if you get the performances truthful and
rhythmic and you get the right shot with the right back-
ground action, and no one’s disadvantaged… The perfor-
mance is part of the image.
It was very painful for the crew – on some scenes we
would do 30 takes. But for most scenes, everything would
have to work in one key image, all these things have to
work together in one shot.
JR: How are you seen now in the Polish film world?
PP: I’m a marginal figure, which is a good place to be. It
was disproportionate what happened with Ida: it was
supposed to be for a very small audience, and then be-
cause of the awards it became a political hot potato. The
government used it as a propaganda instrument: “Look
how they’re misrepresenting Poland.” A lot of people
were very encouraged by the success of Ida. Filmmak-
ing’s coming up in Poland, and the film fund [the Polish
Film Institute] is really great – I’m fighting for it not to be
destroyed by these guys who have turned state TV into a
grotesque propaganda machine.
Cold War, on the other hand, hit a nerve – it’s opened
in Warsaw, and everyone seems to be moved by it, from
the left to the right. All the critics loved it: it’s obviously
hit an emotional upsurge. Also in Poland, people laugh
at it, there are really funny lines – you don’t get that in
the subtitles.
Cold War is released in UK cinemas on
i 31 August and is reviewed on page 63
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 37
TOP
RANKING
For his first feature as director, the gangster thriller ‘Yardie’, Idris Elba tapped
into his memories of growing up in Hackney in order to capture the distinctive
flavour of life within London’s Afro-Caribbean community in the 1980s
By Gaylene Gould
38 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

THE SOUND AND THE FURY
Aml Ameen as D, a young
Jamaican who is sent to
London to make a drug drop
and seizes the opportunity
to avenge his brother’s
murder, in Idris Elba’s feature
directorial debut Yardie
Idris Elba may well qualify for his very own
transatlantic trade deal. He began acting
in British television shows, but it was his
performance as drug-dealing kingpin
Stringer Bell in The Wire (2002-08) that
launched his career. Since then, he’s starred in
50-odd films and TV productions, from high-
octane action like Thor (2011) and its sequels
to quiet indies like debbie tucker green’s
Second Coming (2014). Being a bankable
black male lead was clearly not enough,
though, because Elba simultaneously
produced music and, more recently, staked
out ground behind the camera through his
production company Green Door Pictures.
Championing “diversity of thought”, Green
Door has produced a range of factual and
fiction programming, including In the Long
Run (2018), a comedy series based on his
own British-West African background.
Elba’s first feature as director comes in the
form of period drama Yardie, based on the
independent publishing sensation of 1992,
set in and sold on the streets of London and
aimed squarely at a black British audience.
Written by Victor Headley, and published by
the small-scale X Press set up by journalists
Dotun Adebayo and Steve Pope, the book
has sold an impressive 30,000 copies.
The term ‘yardie’ originated in Jamaica,
and riffed off the patois for ‘home’: ‘yard’. It
was subsequently used by Scotland Yard to
describe the Jamaicans involved in violent
drug crime who came to England in the
1970s. Set in 1970s Kingston, Jamaica, and
1980s Hackney, Yardie centres on the life of
a young Jamaican man, D (a mesmeric Aml
Ameen), whose life is changed irrevocably
when he witnesses the gangland murder
of his peace-loving brother. Traumatised
and steeped in rage, he is adopted by a
new father figure, the terrifying don King
Fox. When D is sent to London on a drug
drop, he is reunited with a childhood love,
Yvonne (a luminous Shantol Jackson),
as well as a long-lost daughter, and joins
the crew of an up-and-coming sound
system. However, his new-found peace is
interrupted by a vicious London gangster
(Stephen Graham, savouring the part)
and a chance meeting with his brother’s
killer. In the spirit of this ‘black Scarface’,
a bloody showdown is inevitable.
The project came about when Robin
Gutch at Warp Films was on the lookout for
a 1980s story featuring black and minority
ethnic characters – a pretty specific ask –
and Yardie was one of the few ready-made
stories to fit the bill. StudioCanal signed
up too, and then Elba heard about the
project. A man who grew up among sound
systems on the same streets and at the
same time as the book was set, this was a
film Elba really felt he could make. “I was
first in line with my arms fully stretched,”
he says. “I wanted to make something that
sat in pop culture but at the same time
that I could speak from the heart with.”
Gaylene Gould: Tell me about the choice to
do Yardie. This was a book you read when
you were young. What memories did you
have of reading it? What resonated?
Idris Elba: I was in my teenage years when
I first read it, it was a book that was being
circulated around the Afro-Caribbean
community. Victor Headley was selling it
out of the back of his car, and then it got
really popular, so when it came to me it was
on a reading list that a teacher gave to me. I
remember being in awe of it because it was a
novel about someone I could relate to, almost
someone I knew, coming from East London,
Hackney and Dalston. So much of the story
was set in areas I knew – like Peckham, my
auntie lived in Peckham. It was interesting
to read about a character so close to me.
GG: You’ve really captured the feel of 80s
London, and just what a different place it
was back then, pre-gentrification – the grime
of it, the colour. I could tell that you’d lived
that. How did you go about capturing it?
IE: There was an extensive prep time. It was
important to me not to take the audience
out of the film by showing anything that
resembled modern-day London. All of the
images I had in my head were from my
memory bank. Holly Street in Hackney, and
Green Lanes – I remember them a particular
way, because I used to sit in the back of my
dad’s car or my uncle’s car and just watch life
on the streets – it was my favourite thing to
do. I was adamant to keep the audience in
the 80s, no matter what it cost. Even if we just
shot a little bit of a street. Actually the great
thing we found was that even though many
parts have been gentrified, the architecture
remains the same, and we would scout the
areas that fit the bill as far as descriptions
were concerned. Our production designer
Damien Creagh dug deep, he had a museum’s
worth of artefacts from the 80s; when we
go to D and Yvonne’s flat, that whole flat
was a set, but we got little details like the
Rasta Boy poster on the wall, the white Jesus,
the open-mouth glass fish… I wanted the
audience to drop into the ocean of that world.
GG: If anyone was to ask me to pick out Idris
Elba’s directorial signature, from this one
film I’d say that it’s a real attention to detail
and tone. You’ve said Martin Scorsese’s
films had a great impact on you?
IE: I haven’t had the fortune to work with
Scorsese, but I am a fan, and when you look
at any film he does, the attention to detail
is incredible. If you imagine the camera has
layers, the first layer being the actors, the
second being the set, the third being what’s
outside of the set, he builds all of those
layers up very deeply. That was important
to me on Yardie, I wanted it to be so that
wherever your eye went, you’re seeing some
detail of the time, some detail of the story.
I was fortunate in Jamaica to have a very
willing Jamaican Film Commission, and
people who wanted to see me make
the film and have it full of detail.
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 39
IDRIS ELBA YARDIE
GG: There are great differences between
the black British culture of 30 years
ago and now. With Yardie being set among
that first generation of Caribbean immigrants,
there was a stronger sense of a Caribbean
culture then than perhaps there is now. How
did you manage that, say in terms of casting?
IE: I did an open casting because I wanted
real people, and it ended up making the
news because about 2,000 people showed
up in Hackney. The people that came were
aware of what they were coming for, and the
real people came, if you know what I mean.
I was fortunate that the extras came from
Afro-Caribbean descent, lots of Jamaicans. It’s
hard when you’re casting because you have
to scrutinise people in a weird way, but it was
important to me that all the background and
supporting characters looked real. When we
were shooting, I took the time to talk to all of
the extras and explain what we were doing.
I talked to them about body language, about
the way people move now and the way they
did back then, and to me there’s a marked
difference in that – the community changes
and the vibe changes. Babylon [1980] was a
key film for me, I had a poster of it on my
production office wall. You could just feel how
true it was to the times, and I wanted that same
feeling. I explained to the actors: “This is the
80s, it’s different: don’t think about who you
are now, think about who you could have been
back then, or who your parents were back
then – that’s who I want you to emulate.”
GG: Did Aml Ameen and Stephen Graham
feel they had a chance to reconnect to their
Caribbean ancestry by making this film?
IE: Aml’s dad is St Vincentian and his mum
is Jamaican, and Stephen’s dad is Jamaican,
mixed heritage. It was a real moment for
Stephen, because he never gets to play his
heritage – people don’t realise he has Afro-
Caribbean roots. He was almost in tears
when I asked him to play it; he wanted to
play the accent, to let his roots and culture
come out. Aml was the first actor I cast, and
we worked together for two years for him to
get his sound and the way he carried himself
right. He’s the most dedicated actor I’ve ever
worked with. You know, Jamaican people can
be a little… you don’t want to get it wrong,
because you definitely wouldn’t be able to
hold your head up again in Jamaica, ever!
They’re a proud people, and they don’t take no
‘eediat boy ting’, you know! That’s also why it
was important to have real Jamaican actors.
We did an extensive casting in Kingston.
GG: What were some of the things you
observed as an actor that helped you
manage your own set as a director?
IE: That the actor has to realise that this is
a collaboration, and the more you give the
director, the better the film will be, period. It’s
just important that you give the director the
40 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
I’ve always been an actor who tries to get on with the crew, but as the
director I’ll admit I wasn’t quite prepared for the millions of questions
trust to guide you, mould your personality
in order to get the best for the character.
Aml taught me about dedication: I could
call him any time and he wasn’t fazed.
GG: He gives a remarkable performance
– this could be his star-making role.
IE: I really hope so.
GG: What about the rest of the crew? When
you’re acting, your main relationship is with
the director. Now you’ve got to be looking at
camerawork, sound, all of those other things.
IE: I’ve always been an actor who tries to get
on with the crew – a happy crew is a better
film – but I’ll admit I wasn’t quite prepared
for the millions of questions: you’re the first
in and the last out. However, it was great
because I learned a lot of technical stuff that I
hadn’t done before, and the crew were really
supportive of that. I operated second camera
on this film, which was my first time doing
that. I was learning on the job. It was a tough
shoot, not a big budget, but we were dedicated.
GG: Music’s always been a passion of yours
and now you’ve made a film where music is
GANGSTER NUMBER ONE
Stephen Graham (above) as the villainous Rico in
Yardie, directed by Idris Elba (top)
central. The dancehall scenes felt so right.
They must have been a joy to work on.
IE: I went to those clubs – Oasis, Shanolas,
Four Aces – so I remember what the vibe was
like: the smoke, the bass, the atmosphere.
I wanted to put the audience through it. I
collaborated with real DJs, real sound boys
who loaned me some of the equipment you
see in the film. In post-production, I put a lot
of work into the sound design to try to make
that bass and that room feel real. It was a
real joy. Music is a big character in the film.
GG: I have to ask you about the violence in
the film. Knife-crime statistics are going
through the roof in London right now, and
there was a similar dynamic at the time Yardie
is set. What are your thoughts on that?
IE: I’d say the film isn’t overly violent,
compared to the book. But yes, I was very
aware of it. At the same time I didn’t want to
shy away from it. I know that modern day
London is going through somewhat of a crisis,
so I tried not to glorify. I was careful where
the violence was placed and how it was done.
Interestingly, it was a criticism from some
of the first audiences I showed the film to,
especially some of the older men, they said
it wasn’t violent enough. They felt like, “This
is Yardie, it’s going to be a gangster movie, it’s
going to be people getting shanked and shot
and all that.” But I didn’t want that. That’s a
stereotype that we’ve seen so much. I was
done with that. I had to strike a balance, which
was: make it believable, and at the same time
tone it down. I’m very aware that London has
this issue, but ultimately, in the business of
making films, you have to tell the truth.
Yardie is released in UK cinemas on
i 31 August and is reviewed on page 81
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Guillermo del Toro

A stuNning 4k restoration
of Jean Cocteau’s magical
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TAKING
A LINE FOR
A WALK
Drawing was the creative thread of Orson Welles’s life, far more than radio, theatre
or film, and his sketches and paintings offer a back door to the cathedral of his
imagination – an opportunity to glimpse his brilliant visual instincts in action
By Mark Cousins
Should movie directors be able to draw? Is there a relation-
ship between drawing and filmmaking? If you think
cinema is a story art, or a psychological art, then maybe
not.
Lots of film directors can’t sketch, but those who can
are the ones whose films aren’t only about story and
mind. Look at the graphic, erotic drawings of Jean Cocte-
au, the lovely sketches of Mike Figgis, Peter Greenaway’s
and Derek Jarman’s paintings, Caroline Leaf’s gorgeous
animated paintings, Lotte Reiniger’s graphics, Kurosawa
Akira’s colourific oils, Satyajit Ray’s magnificent designs
and, best of all, Sergei Eisenstein’s constructivist, hefty,
dancing, often sexual, sketches.
To this list add a certain Orson Welles. Given his place
near the top of the canon, I thought there was nothing
more to say about him. I’d seen all the docs and read most
of the books, and lived in that cathedral of an imagina-
tion of his for decades. And then I discovered a back door
to the cathedral, a half-forgotten door. I met his daughter
Beatrice, she showed me hundreds of her father’s sketch-
es and paintings, and the creaky, rusty door opened.
Some of Welles’s art has been published before, of
course, and it showed that he had a confident line so
swift that it ran ahead of his thoughts. Having read the
biographies, we probably knew, but had perhaps forgot-
42 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
CAPTION TO COME
ten, that he studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Pre- Caption to come caption
to come caption to come
cocious Orson discovered Cézanne there, and Van Gogh caption to come caption
and the Baudelairean Paris of the 1800s. He drew in Chi- to come caption to come
cago, and then – still in his teens – he and his alcoholic caption to come caption to
come
father Dick went around the world. Sketches from early
trips to Shanghai and Germany still survive, but it’s in
Ireland in 1931, aged 16, that we can see him, for the first
time, really sketching people’s faces. Soon afterwards,
in Morocco, he gets better – his drawings are as fast and
vivid as the bazaar of Marrakesh.
Thereafter, he drew all his life, not so much about his
films, or in prep for his films, but in the gaps between
them. Drawing for Welles was filmmaking by other
means, an eruption of frustration, a compulsion, another
way to entertain, a mode of seduction or play, a method
of creating magic, of marking a great night on a restau-
rant menu before the night was forgotten or drowned in
bellinis.
Making my film The Eyes of Orson Welles, I’ve loved
living in his graphic world. It’s more intimate, more like
a diary, than some of his cinema. More than radio, the-
atre or film, drawing was the creative thread of Welles’s
life. Go through that creaky cathedral back door and you
find something penumbral there, something mar-
ginal, deep-diving and intoxicated.
CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 43
ORSON WELLES
SETS
The Welles drawings that
most directly relate to his films
are set and costume designs.
This lovely sketch (1) in the
University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor, resembles both
his famous ‘Voodoo Macbeth’,
staged in Harlem in 1936, and
1 2
44 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS
his 1948 low-budget film version
for Republic Pictures. The ‘H’
shape – affording height, a
vertiginous quality and a sense
of ivory tower – appears in both.
The film version (2) replicates
the arch, with towers on either
side. Wet, ill-lit by moonlight,
and with heavy skies, the
set looked like an aquarium.
This aquatic feel matched the
sunken, well-like mood of
Welles’s Macbeth – as if it was
unconscious material dredged
up from the depths. Rumours of
an impending critical mauling
GRAPHIC THINKING
Talk of graphic art leads us on to
The Lady from Shanghai (1947),
which is like a long trailer to a
more conventional film. It has
many famous scenes, but this
one is remarkable. Rita Hayworth
is on a boat. She wants her
cigarette lit so passes it leftwards.
The camera follows the pass,
the cigarette, as it journeys left,
is lit, and returns, rightwards
(3). There’s no real story need
for this move (which involves
several crane shots, so wouldn’t
have been cheap). But there’s
perhaps a graphic need. Welles is
drawing with the camera here.
This detail of one of Welles’s
many Christmas cards (4) is
led Welles to pull Macbeth
from the Venice Film Festival
competition, and it did get a
critical drubbing but, considered
as a piece of graphic art, it looks
like one of his best films.
like the tracery of the shot
from The Lady from Shanghai.
It’s what you’d see if you
programmed a computerised
version of the shot. It tells us
nothing about the content of
The Lady from Shanghai, but lots
about its form, the left-right
movement of the cigarette.
Welles had a will to form, a
force that he married to other
things, particularly his senses of
character, power and politics.
5 7
6 8
CHARACTER
How about this for character? (5)
It’s a Christmas card, perhaps
from the early 1970s (Welles
dated almost none of his
sketches). It will have taken him
just two or three minutes. We
notice the confidence of line, but
also the human qualities. Santa is
drunk here – the red nose, the
massive bottle. The smile is
broad, but the sky is grey – such
an un-Christmas colour.
A bitter-sweet image. Confident,
Dionysian, melancholic. There
are scores of such Christmas
cards. Welles, such an itinerant,
seemed to identify Christmas
strongly with home, with roots.
Yet even that identification was
ambiguous, because we know
that he loved several women at
once, and had homes with his
wife Paola Mori and his partner
Oja Kodar.
It’s hard not to see the drawing
of Santa in this image of Sir John
Falstaff (6) from Welles’s great
film Chimes at Midnight (1966).
Falstaff was a drinker, dreamer,
sentimentalist, liar, lover. Welles
saw the layers in him, saw Santa
in him, saw himself in him.
The sketch marshals happiness
and sadness just as Welles in
his real life tried to couple
or contain his contradictory
tendencies – loyalty and lying,
nostalgia and modernity.
TOTALITARIANISM
This previously unseen sketch
(7) is one of about a dozen for
an unrealised film, ‘Caesar!’,
in which, according to a press
announcement in 1953, Welles
was to star alongside Micheline
Presle and Erich von Stroheim.
There are photos of Welles
scouting locations in Rome’s
EUR district, with its grandiose
Fascist buildings. Other sketches
show how Welles perceived the
EUR as a kind of beehive, which
also resembled the Colosseum.
In several sketches like this
one, Welles draws a spotlight
as overhead, interrogatory and
totalitarian. This chimes with
the lighting ideas for Caesar
(1937), his theatre version of
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,
which used lighting influenced
by the Nuremberg rallies.
Welles’s ‘totalitarian light’ is
to be found in a scene like this
(8) in his adaptation of Franz
Kafka’s The Trial (1962). The
light is accusatory, isolating,
blinding and burning.
He could also use a burning
orb of light to signify the
opposite of intimidation. In
many of his Christmas cards
(often painted when he lived in
Arizona, Nevada or California),
the sun is a bold, dominant orb,
but in these cases the image
is warm and welcoming.
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 45
ORSON WELLES DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS

9 10
BLINDNESS
Welles is arguably at his most
admirable in his courageous
campaigns against racism and
for social justice. He was fuelled
in particular by the beating
and blinding of this young
US soldier, Isaac Woodard (9).
Through a series of critical radio
broadcasts, Welles helped force
the authorities to find the police
officer who had administered
the beating and, some years
later, talked on the BBC about
the case, during which he did
this drawing of Woodard (10).
Beyond the politics of this,
which made many enemies for
Welles, the theme of blindness
or facelessness runs throughout
his work. He, such a visual man,
seems to have been particularly
shocked by Woodard’s blinding.
Conversely, he acted in a great
radio play, The Fall of the City (1937)
by Archibald MacLeish, in which
a Hitler-like aggressor advances
on a city. When the visor of his
armour is lifted, he has no face.
This (11) is one of scores of
drawings by Welles in which
the character has no face.
His film of Macbeth has several
great close-ups (12), but the
film’s visual energy seems to
migrate away from the faces
into the sets and lighting.
This undated painting (13)
– using brush, stipple and the
flicking of white paint – is one of
Welles’s most haunting. The figure
is Lear-like, lost in what could be
a hailstorm. His eyes are empty,
unfocused. Lear-blind, a source of
despair for one of the most visual
people of the 20th century.
The drawings and paintings of
Orson Welles will be exhibited in
August, in Summerhall, at the
Edinburgh Festival. The Eyes of
Orson Welles is released in UK
cinemas on 17 August and is
reviewed on page 67

11

12 13

46 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

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A strong contender for the most consistently cinematic franchise of the last 25 years, the ‘Mission:
Impossible’ films also offer a case study in the idea of the actor as auteur, with Tom Cruise
continuing to present himself as a fearless screen immortal in the sixth instalment, ‘Fallout’
By Nick Pinkerton

Franchises, for good or ill, define the popular English-lan-
guage cinema in the present century. Those who bemoan
this fact (and I count myself occasionally among their
number) will say that by thinking in terms of franchise,
filmmakers are robbing cinema of one of its greatest
assets, its concision and compression, and that the in-
creasing reliance on building ‘worlds’ rather than free-
standing movies that require no brand devotion or fore-
knowledge from a viewer has lured the cinema closer
to the serial storytelling of television – and indeed it is
hard to imagine the ultra-ambitious planned city project
of the Marvel Comics Universe without the example of
prestige TV. Those who want to play devil’s advocate to
this view (and I occasionally find myself doing this as
well) may reply that there are no hard and fast rules in
art and that any idea of cinema that can’t accommodate
Step Ups (2006-) and Final Destinations (2000-11) and Resi-
l (2002-) needs to be rethought. And anyways the
dent Evils
movies were doing the serial form long before TV and,
come to think of it, doesn’t Tom Cruise hauling ass across
the rooftops of London in Mission: Impossible – Fallout,t the
sixth entry in that series, put you in mind at least a little
bit of Musidora sur les toits de Pariss in Louis Feuillade’s
Les Vampiress (1915-16), among the first of the mighty film
franchises?
The Mission: Impossiblee films, strong contenders for the
most consistently cinematic franchise of the last quarter-
century, took their basic elements from the cathode-ray
tube, stripping for parts an old Paramount TV property
starring Peter Graves that had run for seven seasons on
CBS from 1966 to 1973, revived to little notice in the late
80s. Among the key elements retained was the concept
of an Impossible Missions Force, or IMF, a covert intel-
ligence task force taking jobs that no other agency could
handle, briefed on each via communiqués that provide
the films with their recognisable catchphrases: “Your
mission, should you choose to accept it…” and so on.
Because the franchise remains so alive and kicking, it
can be a little shocking to remember that the first Mis-
sion: Impossiblee film, released in May 1996, is old enough
to have existed at a hand-holding distance from the New
American Cinema of the late 1960s and 70s – to put it
another way, we are as far from its release today as ’96
was from The Conversation n and Chinatownn and The Paral-
lax Vieww in 1974. This sense of proximity is under-
lined by the presence of the surveillance society-

48 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

 A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE
In Mission: Impossible –
Fallout Tom Cruise’s Ethan
Hunt saves the world from
stolen nukes – far from the
first potentially extinction-
level event he and his team
have been forced to avert

September
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TOM CRUISE
In his boisterous
athleticism, Tom
Cruise is the
nearest thing
American pictures
have today to the
bounding Douglas
Fairbanks
ART OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
Each instalment of the series
offers Tom Cruise a fresh
opportunity to perform
feats of speed, coordination
and strength in his stunts,
including (below, from left)
Mission: Impossible (1996)
and the first two sequels
(2000, 2006)
50 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
obsessed Brian De Palma as the film’s director, and
through the contributions of Jon Voight as the
heavy and Robert Towne as co-screenwriter – Towne also
has a solo credit on the first sequel. With its insider dou-
ble-crosses and don’t-believe-everything-you-see deceits,
it’s a film that feels palpably connected to the loosely
defined paranoid thriller cycle of an earlier time – the
Towne-scripted Chinatown or De Palma’s Blow Out (1981).
With one foot in Nixon era ‘trust no one’ cinema, De Pal-
ma’s Mission: Impossible took a giant stride forward with the
other, indicating the future of the espionage movie after
the end of the great political drama of the latter half of the
20th century, the stand-off between Nato and Warsaw Pact
nations that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Rather than operatives of a rival superpower, Cruise’s IMF
agent Ethan Hunt has mercenaries and madmen for his
opponents, a host of anarchists, nihilists and acceleration-
ists – for the final triumph of the Pax Americana isn’t all
it’s been cracked up to be. While the IMF of the TV series
divided time between domestic and international jobs,
it is a globetrotting organisation in the films, the first of
which begins with an extraction job from a party in the
American embassy in Prague, a city that had been under
communist rule only a few years before.
Along with an attraction to exotic ports of call and
the occasional fancy-dress event – rare excursions into
opulence in these otherwise intensely goal-oriented films
– De Palma’s Mission: Impossible introduces other key ele-
ments which will recur in the sequels. The one piece of
spy tech that appears in every movie, the ultra-realistic
latex masks that allow IMF agents (and their enemies) to
slip into others’ identities, first appears with the introduc-
tion of Cruise as Hunt, ripping one aside to reveal his still
startlingy boyish face. Its gangbusters set piece, which
has Hunt and his team infiltrating the CIA headquarters
in Langley, Virginia, to make off with a valuable file, pro-
vided the film its defining image – Cruise, suspended in
mid-air by a wire harness, performing a balletic dance of
supreme balance and self-control caught in full-body long
shot. It also created a precedent for follow-ups, invariably
containing a ‘heist’-style sequence in which Hunt and his
cohort must break into a seemingly impregnable location
in order to nab a human target or information: a skydive
into a Sydney skyscraper in Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), a
break-in at the Vatican in Mission: Impossible III (2006), a
Kremlin caper in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011),
a lung-bursting submersion in an underwater facility in
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), and a club gate-
crashing that begins with a freefall over Paris in Fallout.
Hunt’s team changes from mission to mission – the
exception is Ving Rhames’s heavyweight hacker Luther
Stickell, though he is limited to a pre-credit roll cameo in
Ghost Protocol – and series producer Cruise’s behind-the-
camera personnel switch-outs as well. De Palma was in-
volved with only the first Mission: Impossible, and until Fall-
out, the second film in the franchise written and directed
by Christopher McQuarrie, Cruise has operated a revolv-
ing door policy for a host of directors du jour: John Woo (2),
J.J. Abrams (III), and Brad Bird (Ghost Protocol). This system
has allowed filmmakers with strong grips to leave their
fingerprints on a Mission: Impossible – imagine, by compar-
ison, if Eon Productions had hired Mike Hodges, John Mc-
Tiernan and Tsui Hark to make James Bond films through
the years, and helped to ward off stagnation. Each film is
of a piece with the series, but with its own personality.
Limp Bizkit feeding Lalo Schifrin’s theme song through
nu metal crunch badly dates 2, but it’s baroque and barmy
and sexy and silly, with enough Christian kitsch and gun
fu to leave no doubt that this is a John Woo picture. Bird,
reteaming with the first film’s legendary editor Paul
Hirsch, creates some of the most elegant sequences in
the series, and has the best gear, too – that rolling mirage
screen! – as befits a whiz-kid retro futurist.
While the director position has traditionally provided
the variable factor in sequels, Cruise himself is the con-
stant, and altogether the franchise operates as a case study
in the idea of the actor as auteur. The appeal of the charac-
ter of Bond has proved to be larger than any single actor,
while it is difficult to imagine an Ethan Hunt other than
Tom Cruise. In every Mission: Impossible movie Cruise is
producer and star, having initiated the creation of the
first through the auspices of Cruise/Wagner Productions,
founded with CAA agent Paula Wagner and signed to a
production deal through Paramount during a period of
sustained popular success that seemed it would last for-
ever. It didn’t, but the Mission: Impossible films have proved
Tom Cruise-proof – that is to say, resistant to the waxing
and waning of his box-office appeal as affected by his use
of Scientologist wage-slaves or, far more uncharitably re-
ceived, his outbursts of sofa-hopping enthusiasm – while
paradoxically being built entirely around Cruise, catering
to his skill set and the peculiarities of his persona.
This is most striking in the degree to which Cruise, able
to circumnavigate insurance worries in his producer role,
has used the Mission: Impossible movies to accommodate
his stuntman-star ambitions. In his boisterous athleti-
cism, Cruise is the nearest thing American pictures have
today to the bounding Douglas Fairbanks, but where Fair-
banks worked to make his feats of derring-do seem effort-
less, Cruise’s Hunt is forever just managing to hang on
by his fingertips, clinging from precipice after precipice.
Each instalment of the series offers new opportunities for
the actor to perform feats of unusual speed, coordination
and strength, invariably preceded by a promotional bal-
lyhoo campaign confirming that, yes, really, that is Tom
Cruise you’re seeing free-climbing on craggy red rock in
HANG ’EM HIGH
Ethan Hunt scaling the Burj
Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai
in Mission: Impossible –
Ghost Protocol (2011, right),
and clinging to the side of
a cargo plane in Mission:
Impossible – Rogue Nation
(2015, far right)
Dead Horse Point, Utah, in Mission: Impossible 2 or clinging
to the side of a cargo plane during takeoff in Rogue Nation
– albeit heavily trussed with cables later to be removed
via CGI. In Fallout, the now 56-year-old actor takes a Halo
(high altitude, low opening) parachute jump, drives a
motorcycle against traffic around the Arc de Triomphe,
dangles from a helicopter and, as if to do one better than
the Jackie Chan of Police Story 3: Supercop (1992), finally
climbs in and pilots the damn thing. All of this, of course,
allows Cruise to burnish his legend as a fearless screen
immortal, but it also indicates a belief in the indexicality
of the moving image apparatus that is rather movingly
old-fashioned in a moment where conventional wisdom
has it that everything can be faked in post without any
noticeable loss of veracity.
All of this is what we have come to anticipate of these
films, but what is unexpected is that Fallout is also an af-
fecting piece of work, and not only because one can sense
the passage of time in the way Cruise has begun finally to
show his age – if not in the spry stunts, then in the stubbled
cheeks that have begun a slow descent into jowliness. The
movie carries over not only McQuarrie but key cast in-
cluding Rhames, Simon Pegg (a regular since III) and Sean
Harris, the Rogue Nation mastermind who commands a
criminal shadow organisation called the Syndicate, and
this contributes to a feeling of more-than-usual continu-
ity between the movies. While the Mission: Impossibles
always succeed swimmingly on the level of spectacle,
they have less consistently been convincing on the more
intimate scale – having seen all the films more than once, I
still manage in the years between sequels to forget the few
details that constitute what we know of Hunt’s private life.
Fallout’s climax brings together Hunt and his two
most recent love interests: Rebecca Ferguson, who ap-
peared in Rogue Nation as Ethan’s UK opposite number
from MI6, and Michelle Monaghan, reprising her role
as the wife Hunt married in III and then separated from
to ensure her safety before the events of Ghost Protocol
began. There’s a real twinge of pathos in their tender and
understated reunion, a meeting between Hunt and this
old flame that occurs as he’s engaged as usual with his
real one and only: the job to which he is as pathologically
attached as Cruise is attached to sustaining himself as his
peculiar and somewhat outmoded idea of a movie star,
the hardest-working man in show business, seemingly
on his way to peacefully expiring while trussed up in
wirework in a distant dozenth Mission: Impossible.
If Hunt is in many respects the perfect Tom Cruise role,
it is due to the sense of monomaniacal absorption in the
job that is built into these films, in which – excepting
Woo’s endearing but slightly off-brand second movie –
spy games are an around-the-clock occupation that
leaves little time for cocktails and bounding between
boudoirs. This suits an actor who can and will do most Unbounded
everything for a scene – including hold his breath for six
minutes underwater – but for the life of him cannot proj- by borders or
ect a naturally laid-back air, much as the relentless pitch language, at home
of the movies seems to be in synch with our uptight, al-
ways-on-the-clock age. (In capturing something unique- everywhere and
ly contemporary, these frantic films are only outdone as a nowhere, fleet
franchise by the Resident Evil series and its vision of a cor-
porate-sponsored apocalypse.) “Running in movies since of foot above all
1981,” reads the bio, possibly intern-penned, for Cruise’s else, Cruise has
otherwise quite humourless Twitter account – but this
gets at something essential about the actor’s scrambling given us the first
screen presence, which combines Apollonian grace great post-Cold
under pressure with hell-bent-for-leather sprinter speed.
Kicking off with a time-sensitive warning (“This mes- War superspy
sage will self-destruct in five seconds”), the hectoring, in-
sistent staccato of Schifrin’s theme, and the spark of a lit
fuse, the Mission: Impossible films propose themselves as
ticking time-bombs – by the time the briefing has taken
place it’s probably already too late, and every nanosec-
ond lost makes the possibility of an 11th-hour rescue
even more remote. In Fallout, that fuse is racing towards a
grand finale in which, alongside the playing out of unre-
solved interpersonal drama, the full talents of the entire
IMF team are engaged, with stolen nukes to be defused, a
noose-wielding lunatic to be neutralised, and a helicopter
chase ending in a fraught face-off on an inaccessible cliff
ledge, overseen through parallel editing that mercilessly
ratchets up the tension as the final countdown runs out
for humanity – far from the first potentially extinction-
level event that Hunt and company have had to put the
kibosh on, to the point where you wonder how much
closer to oblivion they can cut it in the next go-around.
While the franchise has passed through many hands
over the years, you never forget your first, and in these
hair’s breadth escapes the movies still bear the imprint of
the perverse pasticheur De Palma, who’d made a special-
ity of stretching time to the agonising breaking point in
the Hitchcockian rush-to-the-rescue sequences of Blow
Out, Body Double (1984) and Raising Cain (1992). But where
De Palma’s heroes often fail to arrive in time, Cruise and
co haven’t let the side down yet – making Mission: Impos-
sible the safest bet among surviving film franchises, a cel-
ebration of streamlined speed, engineering ingenuity and
the thrill of the Hunt. Unbounded by borders or language,
infinitely mutable behind his masks, able supply to trans-
form setbacks into innovations, at home everywhere and
nowhere, fleet of foot above all else, Cruise has given us
the first great post-Cold War superspy – and as such it is
only fitting that he should embody an aesthetic as restless
and as mobile as circulating capital itself.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout is out now
i in UK cinemas and is reviewed on page 73
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 51
“ABSORBING... FASCINATING... SEDUCTIVE”
The Guardian

Paul Wright’s folk-horror

wrapped
w in an archive film with
music by Adrian Utley (Portishead)
mu
a
and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp).

ORDER FROM
BFI MEMBERS ENJOY 15% OFF
71 Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
There are still regrettable elements in this sequel-prequel,
but a musical is a many-layered concoction, and ‘Mamma
Mia! Here We Go Again’ is a slice of crisp, sweet baklava
to follow the original’s under-seasoned, stodgy moussaka

54 Films of the Month 58 Films 82 Home Cinema 92 Books

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 53
FILMS OF THE MONTH
Coming of age: Shevaun Mizrahi offers an unusually warm, complex and illuminating portrait of a group of elderly people living in an Istanbul nursing home
Distant Constellation
Israel/Turkey/USA 2017
Director: Shevaun Mizrahi
Reviewed by Hannah McGill
Even as the improved representation of
disadvantaged and less visible groups in media
and entertainment evolves from a demand into an
expectation, little focus seems yet to have fallen on
the ways in which elderly people are depicted. The
presentation of old age as a curse or a punishment
remains prevalent, as does the portrayal of old
people as infantile, monstrous or burdensome.
Meanwhile, the idea of youth as the best human
state, and young people inherently fascinating,
is rather more durable than most of the work
that very young people produce. Regrettable
though it may be in terms of lives undervalued
and stories untold, it’s not hard to understand
why such a bias exists. Sexual desirability is
linked to perceived fecundity; health problems
multiply in old age, while opportunities for self-
reinvention dwindle; frailty and incapacitation
are distressing to look upon. And regardless of our
own stage of life, old age in others is unsettling
54 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
because of the many ways in which it might
yet challenge us. At our oldest, will we still be
ourselves? Will we be in pain? Will we be wise
and warm, or bitter? And will we be alone?
This film takes a simple approach to the subject
of old age, and achieves an unusually warm,
complex and illuminating picture of some of its
myriad manifestations. Turkish-American director
Shevaun Mizrahi was studying cinematography
at NYU and working as an assistant to the US
cinematographer Ed Lachman when she began
filming informal portraits of the residents of a care
home in her father’s native Istanbul, where she
was volunteering. She shot the same individuals
and their environment over seven years.
The resulting vignettes are funny, startling and
touching. They offer an extraordinary account
of what continues to matter to people and what
falls away, and of the tenacity of some aspects of
personality and the fragility of others. A woman
tries to get into a lift that doesn’t have space for
her walking frame; it’s “just for people”, she notes
as she retreats, prompting another resident to
cry in protest, “Aren’t you a person yourself? You
are a person!” Mizrahi has picked out many such
lovely moments of human connectedness and
linguistic play. “Do you believe in life after life?”
a man asks his friend. “Yes,” comes the response,
“we will all turn into soil one day.” Later, the same
pair discuss the head injury that one of them
has sustained. “I am very sad for you, I will pray
for you,” says one. “No need for that,” responds
the stoical injured party, “God is on top of it.”
If an excess of this sort of material would have
risked cutesiness, it’s instead skilfully balanced
with interviews that go to strange, sad and dark
places, and with purely visual moments of
dreamlike intensity. (It’s apparent that Mizrahi
admires Ulrich Seidl – whose ‘Paradise’ trilogy
she worked on with Lachman – though on
this evidence her worldview is rather more
benign.) In one interview, a woman recalls in
vivid, painful detail the abuses suffered by her
Armenian family under Turkish forces during
her childhood; still afraid of the consequences
Lovely moments of human
connectedness are balanced with
interviews that go to strange, sad
and dark places, and visual
moments of dreamlike intensity

of speaking out, she asks that her real name not
be used. Elsewhere, a photographer surrounded
by his camera parts explains with poignant
good humour that he is going blind. His tic of
repeating phrases turns his speech into a song:
“There’s nothing they can do, there’s nothing,
there’s nothing, I don’t know, I don’t know, there’s
nothing, there’s nothing.” A one-time Lothario,
more fluent than the photographer but prone to
his own brand of repetition, reminisces about sex
parties (which, for the record, he doesn’t favour,
preferring “maximum two girls and me”).
Each of these conversations contains
multitudes. The Armenian woman looks back
not only at the oppression of her people, but also
at her own work as a nanny. Her pain at being
parted from one particular child, who would
now be an old woman herself, remains fresh, as
does her dislike of a mother she perceived to be
neglectful. But if the past is close at hand, so too
is oblivion. “I slept, didn’t I?” she says, after a long
moment of quiet. “I’m sorry, I drop like that.” As
the photographer talks fitfully about his earlier
life and current state of health, Mizrahi’s camera
finds mounted on the wall a picture of him in his
youth: the juxtaposition of the debonair, flashy
younger man and his elderly incarnation, at once
the same person and not, is deeply affecting. And
then there’s the Lothario, who thinks Humbert
Humbert gets a rough deal in Lolita (“He loves her
like a father”), reads pages of self-penned erotica
to the camera and, in perhaps the film’s most
disarming moment, makes a proposal of marriage
to Mizrahi. “I feel good with you,” he tells her.
“You’re nice with me. I don’t get bored with you.”
This moment lends itself to several
interpretations, which are in themselves
revealing of complicated and contradictory
ideas about ageing, gender and the act of
filmmaking. On the most obvious level, it’s
another lovely bit of character detail, telling us
about the man’s self-image and preoccupations.
Reduced to a circumscribed institutional
existence after a richly chequered life, he is
thrilled and frustrated by the focused attention
of the sort of woman who might once have
seen him as a fitting partner. His old self flickers
forth and tries to seduce her, and although he
adds caveats about her likely objections, it’s
clear that he feels he has a lot to offer her.
To some, the introduction of sex into the
relationship between Mizrahi and her subject
will stand as further disheartening evidence of
the difficulty female filmmakers face in simply
getting on with their jobs: harassment is so
endemic that it even occurs on camera. But
the power imbalance here can also be read the
other way, as a filmmaker choosing to expose
a vulnerable subject to mockery. The deluded
dotard who overestimates his romantic appeal
to a much younger woman is, after all, one of
the oldest jokes in the book… Other viewers
may regard the scene as a subtle comment on
the forced, false or temporary intimacy that can
develop between documentarians and their
subjects, and the ethical questions this raises –
Little Edie Beale’s designs on Albert Maysles in
Grey Gardens (1975) spring to mind, for instance,
as do the behind-the-scenes relationships of
porn star portrait Sex: The Annabel Chong Story
(1999), murder trial series The Staircase (2004)
and Julian Assange documentary Risk (2016),
and the startling interaction between subject
and director in the account of intergenerational
secrets at the heart of A Family Affair (2015).
Whichever way we read it, the proposal
alters the film’s atmosphere by making the
director inescapably present. Although Distant
Constellation has hitherto been hands-off in
terms of its presentation – still, meditative shots,
no clear narrative, no voiceover – Mizrahi’s
sudden repositioning as love interest reminds
The twilight saga: the vignettes of life Mizrahi captures are funny, startling and touching
Credits and Synopsis
FILMS OF THE MONTH
Producers ©Shevaun Mizrahi, Made with the
Shelly Grizim Shelly Grizim, generous support
Deniz Buga Deniz Buga of Yeni Film Fonu,
Cinematographer Production Dürin Ababay
Shevaun Mizrahi Companies
Editors Cinephil In Colour
Shevaun Mizrahi Made with the [1.78:1]
Shelly Grizim support of Yeni Film Subtitles
Sound Recording Fund, Independent
Shevaun Mizrahi Film Project, True/ Distributor
Deniz Buga False Film Festival, ICA Cinema
Catapult Film Fund
A documentary filmed between 2010 and 2017, in
which elderly residents at a government nursing
home in Istanbul are interviewed about their
memories and feelings, while construction work
takes place all around. A woman of Armenian descent
recalls the persecution of friends and relatives during
her childhood, and her own experiences looking
after the children of families wealthier than her
own. A man with an avid interest in sex and erotica
discusses the story of ‘Lolita’, reminisces about the
libidinous encounters of his past and reads his own
racy writings to the camera. The residents interact
in the lift that carries them between floors, joking,
squabbling and discussing the possibility of life after
death. A former professional photographer who is now
facing blindness as a result of cancer talks about the
loss of his sight. The writer of erotica suggests to the
filmmaker that, despite the considerable difference
in their ages, she might consider marrying him; he
later sustains a head injury, but humorously brushes
off his friend’s concern. Another resident recalls a
traumatic incident during his youth, when a friend
almost drowned. Meanwhile, the construction work
continues, with the young workmen exchanging their
own gossip and observations.
us not only that what we are watching is her
construction, but also that her presence is
affecting her interviewees and their testimonies.
And the puncturing of the fourth wall also makes
a more general point: that we are all involved
in this story, the story of ageing. Whether we
mock, moralise about or sympathise with its
effects on other people, and whatever we make
of its portrayal in the media, none of us can stay
distant from it for long. Yet it’s characteristic of
the restless verve and spirit of Mizrahi’s direction
that she doesn’t let her film settle into fatalism
or sentimentality. Around the nursing home as
she shot, construction work was taking place;
rather than present this as some regrettable
incursion of ugly modernity on sweet old age,
Mizrahi treats it with the same good-humoured
interest she applies to the residents. Time moves
on, goes the gentle suggestion; old buildings
give way, just as old people must, to the new.
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 55

The Guardians
FILMS OF THE MONTH
France/Switzerland/Monaco/Belgium 2017
Director: Xavier Beauvois
Certificate 15 135m 11s
Reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson
The opening images of Xavier Beauvois’s The
Guardians present two views of the cruelty of
war. On either side of a card announcing the
year as 1915 are two shots, presumably from two
separate regions of France but by implication
simultaneous. The first is a group of fallen
soldiers, faceless behind their gas marks and
immobile on the earth. The second is an elegant
wide shot of farmland, with a grey-haired
woman driving a horse-drawn plough. While
the horrors of the battlefield will impinge on
this home-front drama, through letters and
dreams, Beauvois’s film will not veer so close to
combat again. The guardians of the title are the
women who tend the earth during the agonising
absence of their menfolk. It’s a truism that
the war changes a man, but in The Guardians
it leaves deep mental scars on women, too.
The grey-haired woman is Hortense (Nathalie
Baye), running the family farm with her daughter
Solange (Baye’s own daughter Laura Smet) while
her two sons Constant and Georges and son-in-law
Clovis are fighting in the Great War. Her husband
Henri, fidgeting with his gnarled arthritic hands
and applying his technical know-how only to
his still and the production of wine-soup, is a
shadow of a patriarch, and takes no part in either
the farm labour or management. Henri is played
evocatively, and tersely, by Gilbert Bonneau, a
78-year-old former farmer who answered an
open casting call. The story of The Guardians
concerns the arrival of orphan Francine (the
debut of another street-cast amateur, Iris Bry),
a maid who will share the burden of the farm
work. She’s a strong, capable worker and well
liked by the family – especially Hortense’s son
Georges (Cyril Descours) during his visits home on
leave – even if she is underappreciated by them.
The film is based on the novel by Ernest
Pérochon, a schoolteacher who himself served
at the front during World War I. The novelist’s
experience may influence an early, haunting
scene in the film, in which Constant returns
on leave to his old workplace, the classroom,
and suddenly finds it impossible to speak to
the expectant innocents sitting in front of him.
Producer Sylvie Pialat gave the novel, which has
never been translated into English and which was
a favourite of her grandfather’s, to Beauvois to
adapt. In the years since his last films, The Price of
Fame (2014) and the award-winning Of Gods and
The hired hand: Iris Bry as Francine
56 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
Men (2010), The Guardians appears to have been
a labour of love for both producer and director.
It’s a betrayal in the domestic realm, rather
than the tragedies reported from the front line,
that forms the crisis of the drama – an act of
treachery that constitutes a war crime within the
women’s world of work, grief and preparations
for peace. Repeated images of women labouring,
the changing of the seasons, the devastating
appearance of an official bringing news from
the trenches – all prolong the film’s generous
running time. While it covers five years, with
each changing date marked diligently by
intertitles, the scope of The Guardians may
seem perversely intimate, given the backdrop
of global events. However, the betrayal, when
it comes, is driven by a desire to preserve land
and status, to control a lineage – reasons that
have caused many a state to enter into armed
conflict or negotiate mercilessly in its aftermath.
The Guardians is also an unignorably beautiful
film, bursting with Caroline Champetier’s
painterly and serene compositions of the fields
and forests soaking in mist or illuminated by
golden early evening sunlight. While these
beguiling images risk accusations of prettification,
of glossing over the deprivations of wartime
with luscious photography of the Haute-Vienne
landscape, they could also be taken as an invitation
for further scrutiny. Look more closely at the scenes
and it’s clear that what makes them so picturesque
is also what makes them so pitiful. That there are
young women working in the fields, with their
long skirts brushing the grass, is a sign that the
men are away at war, and the ‘guardians’ must
perform a double labour, of raising both children
and crops, often without the physical strength or
tools they need. Most powerfully, these women are
shown hacking neatly at the haystalks with hand
scythes in one extended and especially elegant
tracking shot of the harvest. It’s a testament not to
rustic charm but to the poverty of the farm-owners,
who must cleave to 19th-century methods until
they can afford modern mechanised solutions – Baye as Hortense with Descours as Georges
such as the ones Constant reports seeing at the
front, where the machine age is reaping its own men to take up the reins again, and approve their
crops. While Hortense and Solange may yet find improvements. Francine, forced into a corner by
the wherewithal to modernise the farm, they circumstances, is the only character who learns
remain mired in an older way of life, awaiting the how to modernise herself, facing the 1920s with a
new outlook, not to mention a chic appearance.
Even the attractive chalk-blue paint that
This is an unignorably beautiful brightens the woodwork of the cottages and
film, bursting with painterly farm buildings echoes the uniforms of the
soldiers, who carry the injuries and horrors of
and serene compositions of fields battle with them. It’s a horror that is ever-present
and forests soaking in mist or even miles away from the action. When the
workers pause to eat in the middle of the day, the
illuminated by golden sunlight beauty drains from the screen as, without the
distraction of their labours, they fall silent, glum,
exhausted and lost in thought. Solange compares
the agony of awaiting her husband’s return to
living in a bad dream, a psychological torture.
The film has such a nuanced relationship
with cinematic beauty that what is seen and
what is hidden within the image are equally
important – as when Francine and Georges
make love discreetly behind a boulder but are
betrayed by an untouched picnic basket lying
a few steps away. Prettiness itself is implicitly
a trap, encouraging a dangerous intimacy and
comfort. It’s when peaceably moulding butter
pats with floral motifs that Hortense and Francine
become close, and make plans for the future. It’s
a moment of fleeting happiness and confidence
that is crushed by two subsequent brutal blows
 FILMS OF THE MONTH
from the front, and it exacerbates the agony of Credits and Synopsis
what lies ahead for Francine. Such rushes of
emotion are to be feared. Michel Legrand’s score
Produced by Giovanonni Rita Productions, in partnership with Développement, Edgar
appears on only a handful of occasions, bursts of Sylvie Pialat Loïc Prian Pathé, Orange the CNC, with the Soficinéma 11 Olivier Rabourdin
music that underline a moment of expectation, Benoît Quainon Damien Boitel Studio, France 3 assistance of Pôle Développement, Clovis
Screenplay Eric Bonnard Cinéma, KNM, Versus Cinéma Limousin Palatine Etoile 13 Marie-Julie Maille
as when Francine first arrives at the farm, or Xavier Beauvois Costumes Production, RTS Radio Supported by Mission Développement, CN4 Monette
wash over a terrible sorrow, such as Hortense’s Frédérique Moreau Anaïs Romand Télévision Suisse du centenaire Productions, Procirep Madeleine Beauvois
Marie-Julie Maille co-production de la Première Jeanne
reaction to the death of her son. Francine Adapted from the ©Les Films du Worso, With the participation Guerre mondiale, Nicolas Giraud
provides much of the film’s music herself, singing novel by Ernest Rita Productions, of Canal+, Ciné+, Caisse d’Epargne Cast Constant
Pérochon KNM, Pathé France Télévisions Île-de-France, Succès Nathalie Baye
sweetly old-fashioned songs around the farm. Photography Production, Orange In association with Passage Antenne, Hortense In Colour
Although newcomer Bry is a captivating Caroline Champetier Studio, France 3 Cofinova 13, Indéfilms SRG SSR, Office Iris Bry [2.35:1]
presence, doing an impressive job of carrying much Editor Cinéma, Versus 5, Soficinéma Fédéral de la Culture Francine Subtitles
Marie-Julie Maille Production, RTS Radio 13, Cinéfeel 3 (OFC), Cinéforom and Laura Smet
of the film and its emotional weight, and Smet Art Director Télévision Suisse Supported by Loterie Romande Solange Distributor
broods powerfully as the tormented Solange, this Yann Megard Production Eurimages, Centre Developed with the Cyril Descours Curzon Artificial Eye
Music Companies National du Cinéma support of Cofinova Georges
is unmistakably Baye’s film. As the magnificent Michel Legrand A film by Xavier et de l’image Développement 3, Gilbert Bonneau French theatrical title
Hortense, she conveys the isolation of her position Sound Beauvois animée, Région Indéfilms Initiative Henri Les Gardiennes
Christophe A Les Films du Worso, Nouvelle-Aquitaine 3, Cinéventure Xavier Maly
and her grief as a bereaved mother exquisitely, with
a steady gaze and a trembling frame. And when Rural France, 1915. Hortense, with her daughter Solange, sexual relationship, while Hortense spies Solange in a
the mood of the film turns, she turns with it – her runs the family farm while her two sons and son-in-law state of undress with a GI. To distract from gossip about
role deepening to accommodate both Hortense’s are away at the front. In 1916 she hires a maid, Francine, Solange, Hortense tells Georges, before he leaves, that
pragmatic inflexibility and her terrible regret. to help with the farm work. Her son Constant and Francine sleeps with the GIs. She then fires Francine,
As the priest says, at one gloomy Mass where son-in-law Clovis both visit on leave and are clearly who soon discovers that she is pregnant. Solange
the names of the latest war dead are declaimed damaged by the war. Francine is a good worker and helps confronts Hortense over Francine and reveals that
out considerably. When Hortense’s other son Georges she didn’t have sex with the GI. Georges has returned
to a congregation of stricken women, we should visits, he is clearly attracted to Francine. Hortense asks Francine’s letters unopened, so she appeals to Hortense
“take pity on those who weep”. The Guardians is a Francine to stay on after the war. Emboldened, Francine to tell him the truth – but she does not.
rewarding and rich film, which offers a delicately starts writing to Georges. News arrives that Clovis has In 1918, Francine has the baby, and raises the child
considered and often troubling insight into the been captured, and shortly after, in 1917, that Constant alone. When Clovis returns from the war in 1919, he
lives of those left behind by history: those who, has died. When Georges is home he has terrible dreams argues with Georges over Constant’s land. In 1920,
about the front. American soldiers are stationed nearby, Francine is singing at a dance. Georges sees her but she
in the priest’s words, “still drain the bitter cup sparking Georges’s jealousy. He and Francine begin a carries on singing and taking her applause.
of life” while others march to their death.

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 57

 Ant-Man and The Wasp The Apparition
USA 2018 France/Belgium 2018
Director: Peyton Reed Director: Xavier Giannoli
Certificate 12A 117m 58s Certificate 12A 143m 39s

Reviewed by Adam Nayman Reviewed by Catherine Wheatley

The most enjoyable of the Marvel movies have After 2009’s In the Beginning, which starred
found a way to thematise their relatively marginal François Cluzet as a small-time con artist, and
REVIEWS

position within the galaxy-conquering home 2015’s Marguerite, about the notoriously terrible
brand. Think of Spider-Man: Homecoming’s friendly singer Florence Foster Jenkins, Xavier Giannoli
(Queens) neighbourhood vibe, or Black Panther’s continues to explore the lies we tell ourselves
full-on immersion in an undiscovered country and others. A strange, understated film, The
where the Avengers have no jurisdiction. Apparition turns on the apparent appearance of
In the case of Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man films, the Virgin Mary to a 16-year-old girl in southern
the tactical contrast has to do with scale rather France and the ensuing canonical investigation
than location. The strategy is to keep the story by Vincent Lindon’s shell-shocked war reporter.
and the spectacle literally and figuratively The very fabric of the film seems to stake
small, conveying a sense of jocular modesty its claim to authenticity. The Apparition is shot
in the face of the largest and most complex in naturalistic style by Eric Gautier; its mise en
endeavour in the history of big-studio cinema. Downsized: Ant-Man and The Wasp scène is unobtrusive, its editing measured, its
Even such winking self-effacement is ultimately atmosphere bleached-out and worn. Beginning
just a charade (these movies are all carefully being funny. Because of a malfunction in his and ending in the war-torn Middle East, where
quality-controlled product, and will continue to Ant-Man suit, Scott finds himself changing size Lindon’s reporter Jacques Mayano has spent
be until Marvel either exhausts its back catalogue at a rate beyond his control, which may not be much of his career, the film traverses the vast
or the Earth hits the sun), but it’s a good look, and an intentional metaphor for the challenge of panoramas of the Jordan desert and the French
Ant-Man and The Wasp keeps appearances up keeping one of these mega-productions under countryside as well as the cloistered interiors of
nicely. The convolution of the plot, which involves control, but registers self-reflexively all the same. a rural convent and the Vatican, capturing these
the efforts of human-shrinkage expert Dr Hank Lilly’s more controlled trajectory as the Wasp very different settings with the same impassive
Pym (Michael Douglas) and his daughter Hope (who has the same costume as Ant-Man but with lens. It’s no surprise to learn that The Apparition
van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) to rescue his wife cooler weapons at her disposal) doesn’t give her started life as a documentary looking at the secret
Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) from a 30-year exile in the same space to play around, and she’s perilously milieu of canonical investigations. Early scenes
the ‘Quantum Realm’, is just so much pro forma close to being a humourless presence in a movie set in the Vatican offer a fascinating insight into
annoyance, which is precisely (and rightly) how that tries (mostly with success) to maintain the process of verifying (or not) supernatural
Reed and star Paul Rudd treat it. The latter’s ability screwball velocity from beginning to end. Blame events and are replete with references to real-life
to keep ex-con/single-dad/reluctant superhero a posse of five male writers, perhaps, and while investigations stretching back as far as 1531.
Scott Lang simultaneously sceptical, confused you’re at it, they also have to answer for the There’s a stark contrast between the weight of
and committed to the sci-fi chaos around him mediocrity of Hannah John-Kamen’s flavourlessly all this history and the modern methods deployed
without ever going boringly square-jawed is malevolent villainess Ghost, whose powers and by Jacques’s team, which includes a psychiatrist
nothing less than the purest movie-star charisma. emotional predicament never quite come into as well as an exorcist (“to make sure this isn’t
Rudd is a wonderfully reactive comic actor, focus (her trademark ‘phasing‘ in and out of space the work of Satan”). They google their subject’s
and Reed and the cast constantly give him things is unfortunately indicative of her vagueness). background and run forensics to test for Jesus’s
to bounce off, from expertly delivered set-up The MVP of the supporting cast is probably blood type. Doctors submit Anna, the young
lines (Douglas is an adept straight man) and Michael Peña’s excitable sidekick, who not only woman at the centre of the investigation, to an
generally outmatched henchmen enemies to the re-enacts his hilarious voiceover shtick from the MRI and what looks – in a brief, disquieting shot
indignity of his own house arrest (a consequence first Ant-Man but also gets a minute to explain of stirrups that seems to reference the similar
of Scott’s extracurricular participation in Morrissey’s enduring popularity among the United ordeals rape victims are subjected to in the name
Captain America: Civil War) and a hyperbolically States’ Latino community – a total non sequitur of proof – like a cervical swab. Of course, it’s
physicalised identity crisis that never stops that pops up right when the movie needs it. no coincidence that so many of the would-be
miracles that Giannoli sketches in happened to
Credits and Synopsis women: history has shown that it is most often
women’s bodies that are the ground on which
Produced by Rise Visual Michael Peña San Francisco, the present. Scott (‘Ant-Man’) Lang is religious battles are fought. In The Apparition,
Kevin Feige Effects Studios Luis under house arrest after helping Captain America fight as in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves (1996),
Stephen Broussard Perception Walton Goggins
Written by Visual Effects Sonny Burch Tony Stark in Berlin – a move that also upset his mentor Jessica Hausner’s Lourdes (2009) and Dietrich
Chris McKenna Luma Pictures Hannah Dr Hank Pym and daughter Hope van Dyne (‘the Wasp’). and Anna Brüggemann’s Stations of the Cross
Erik Sommers Rodeo FX John-Kamen Scott is preparing to start his own security business,
Paul Rudd Crafty Apes Ava, ‘Ghost’ (2014), the female protagonist is saint, hysteric
but Hank and Hope need his help to try to rescue Hank’s
Andrew Barber Technicolour VFX Michelle Pfeiffer or liar – a forger of God, as the film puts it.
Gabriel Ferrari Stunt Co-ordinator Janet van Dyne, wife Janet from the ‘Quantum Realm’ (and suspect
Director of George Cottle ‘The Wasp’ that Janet implanted a message in his head during his Which of these is Anna? This is the question
Photography Laurence Fishburne own visit there). Meanwhile, a mysterious villainess that ostensibly drives the film’s narrative. But
Dante Spinotti ©Marvel Dr Bill Foster
Edited by Production Michael Douglas
named Ghost is trying to obtain the same technology despite some red herrings – a journalist who
Dan Lebental Company Dr Henry ‘Hank’ Pym that Hank and Hope need for their mission, leading previously dropped the case, the appearance of
Craig Wood Marvel Studios Bobby Cannavale to a series of skirmishes between them – and also to an icon with a personal meaning to Jacques –
Production Designer presents Paxton some confrontations with a consortium of gangsters
Shepherd Frankel Executive Producers Judy Greer
led by black-market dealer Sonny Burch. Scott tries to
the film is not really interested in the answer.
Music Louis D’Esposito Maggie
Christophe Beck Victoria Alonso Tip ‘T.I.’ Harris help but is worried that he’ll be caught and separated Instead, it offers a reflection on the violence
Re-recording Mixers Charles Newirth Dave from his daughter as a result; Ghost turns out to that men and women do to one another and the
Tom Johnson Stan Lee David Dastmalchian be a damaged young woman trying to alleviate a
Juan Peralta Film Extracts Kurt
possibilities for consolation in the modern age,
Costume Designer National Lampoon’s condition caused by clandestine experiments carried a time when, as Anna puts it, “Our culture of
Louise Frogley Animal House (1978) Dolby Atmos out by S.H.I.E.L.D two decades earlier. Ghost (her real
wellbeing makes us insensitive to the suffering
Visual Effects Them! (1954) In Colour name is Ava) is kept at bay long enough for Janet to
and Animation [2.35:1] return safely. Having reunited with her family, Janet of others.” Jacques may be sceptical about
DNEG miracles, but he is moved by how Anna uses
Scanline VFX Cast Some screenings attempts to heal Ava’s illness. Scott, whose actions
Method Studios Paul Rudd presented in 3D as Ant-Man have saved the day, evades FBI suspicion. her sway to open a soup kitchen and welcome
Industrial Light Scott Lang, ‘Ant-Man’ Back on good terms with Hank (and dating Hope), he refugees – in stark contrast to the statuettes and
& Magic Evangeline Lilly Distributor goes on another mission to the Quantum Realm, but
Cinesite Hope van Dyne, Buena Vista media appearances peddled by her mentors
Digital Domain ‘The Wasp’ International (UK) becomes stranded there after the genocidal actions
Lola VFX of Thanos disintegrate Hank, Hope and Janet.
(Patrick d’Assumçao and Anatole Taubman as
a pair of almost comically sinister clergy).

58 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

 Bad Samaritan
USA 2017
Director: Dean Devlin
Certificate 15 110m 23s

Reviewed by Nikki Baughan

There’s a palpable air of schlocky 90s thriller
about Bad Samaritan that could have made for

REVIEWS
an entertaining tongue-in-cheek pastiche, but
the film takes itself entirely too seriously to
come anywhere close to the kitschy heights
of, say, Pacific Heights or The Hand That Rocks
the Cradle. While those films revelled in their
glossy excess, this heavy-handed attempt from
director Dean Devlin (Geostorm) to weave
flimsy social commentary about the sins of the
wealthy into a standard torture-porn narrative
The vision thing: Vincent Lindon makes for nothing short of a bloody mess.
The only thing that saves Bad Samaritan from
What could be the harm in the love that being completely unwatchable is David Tennant.
Anna shows the world, The Apparition asks. With entitled sneer and perfect American accent,
Why does ‘truth’ matter, really? Perhaps the his rich, Maserati-driving villain Cale Erendreich
film’s most impressive sequence consists of a is light years away from the affable charm of Grand guignol: David Tennant
15-minute interview set in a sterile office block. his beloved Doctor Who. He pulsates with
Sporting a beige hoodie and tatty cardigan, pantomime malevolence, whether he’s silently women fare even worse. While Katie admittedly
without makeup and greasy of hair, newcomer observing Katie (Kerry Condon, a wonderful actor wields the film’s best line – “Now that’s how
Galatéa Bellugi’s Anna is watchful, wary and who, like the rest of the cast, deserves better) – you save someone!” she admonishes Sean, at a
very much of this world. The camera holds on the bloodied, terrified woman he keeps chained climactic moment – it’s way too little, far too late.
her face for what seems an impossible time as up in his office – through a webcam beamed As we watch extended sequences of Katie locked
she stares into the eyes of her interrogators. “I to his phone, or screeching one of his many in chains and forced into subservient behaviour,
want facts, proof,” Jacques demands. But no ripped-from-the-villain’s-playbook lines direct to the camera lingering on the whip marks on her
amount of questioning can get him closer to camera. “There will be an unholy correction!” he back, or see Sean’s girlfriend Riley (Jacqueline
the truth of what happened to Anna. In the screams at one point. “There will be fire!” Tennant Byers) slut-shamed by a naked pic and then
end she, and the film, keep their secrets. seems to be relishing the hysterical nonsense beaten to death’s door, the film offers absolutely
of the material, and is clearly having a ball. no reason for their treatment, other than the fact
Credits and Synopsis Sadly, Tennant’s enthusiasm is nowhere that, as Sean helpfully points out, Cale is mad. A
near enough to detract from the film’s multiple laughable pre-credits flashback, later replayed as
failings. The screenplay, from Apt Pupil and a dream sequence, which suggests that the young
Produced by Inc., Proximus, Anatole Taubman
Olivier Delbosc La Cinéfacture, Anton Wicker Park scribe Brandon Boyce, is a threadbare Cale’s unrequited obsession with his horse trainer
Written by Memento Films Elina Löwensohn patchwork of cliché and contrivance. Just as led to his need to treat women like animals who
Xavier Giannoli Production Doctor de Villeneuve
Script co-production Claude Lévèque Tennant’s Cale is a cardboard-cut-out psychopath, need to be broken, is offensively tenuous.
Collaborators In association Father Gallois so Robert Sheehan’s Sean is a similarly one- If all this weren’t enough, so much of the
Jacques Fieschi with Memento Gérard Dessalles
Marcia Romano Films Distribution, Stéphane Mornay
dimensional hero: a petty thief with a heart action relies on laughable coincidence – woefully
Director of Memento Films Bruno Georis of gold who discovers the imprisoned Katie inept and uncaring law enforcement, doors
Photography International, Father Ezéradot
Eric Gautier Cofinova 14, Banque Alicia Hava
while robbing Cale’s mansion. When Cale conveniently left unlocked, a well-placed bolt
Editor Postale Image Mériem uncovers Sean’s identity, he launches a violent cutter – that it becomes utterly distracting.
Cyril Nakache 10, Cinémage Candice Bouchet vendetta on his life and the people he loves. Yet Dialogue, too, is unwieldy; huge swathes of
Art Director 12, Manon 7 Valérie
Riton Dupire- With the Natalia Dontcheva Sean becomes increasingly determined to save clunky exposition and character insight clutter
Clément participation of Céline Katie from Cale’s clutches, setting his life on a up scenes and undercut any potential tension.
Sound Canal+, France Gervais Dimwana
François Musy Télévisions, Ciné+, Joachim nobler path in the process. (Because, of course, Add in a frankly bizarre score, which often swells
Renaud Musy CNC - Centre Bogdan Zamfir every troubled man needs an incapacitated – at inappropriate moments and seems to have
Costumes National du Cinéma Pavel
Isabelle Pannetier et de l’Image Animée
and preferably gorgeous – woman to rescue if been orchestrated for an entirely different film,
With the support of In Colour he’s ever going to realise his full potential.) and the only real mystery at the heart of Bad
©Curiosa Films, Région Île-de-France [2.35:1]
France 3 Cinéma, in partnership Subtitles
It will come as no surprise that Bad Samaritan’s Samaritan is how it ever reached the screen.
Gabriel Inc., La with CNC
Cinéfacture, Distributor Credits and Synopsis
Memento Films MUBI
Production Cast
Production Vincent Lindon French theatrical title
Companies Jacques Mayano L’Apparition Produced by Brian Gonosey Production production Katie Distributor
Curiosa Films Galatea Bellugi Dean Devlin Production Designer Companies Executive Producers Carlito Olivero Signature
presents a Curiosa Anna Producers Nate Jones Electric Brandon Lambdin Derek Sandoval Entertainment
Films, France 3 Patrick d’Assumçao Marc Roskin Music Entertainment Carsten Lorenz Jacqueline Byers
Cinéma, Gabriel Father Borrodine Rachel Olschan- Joseph LoDuca presents in Riley Seabrook
Wilson Sound Supervisor association with Tracey Heggins
Written by Hugh Waddell Global Pictures Cast Olivia Fuller, FBI agent
Journalist Jacques Mayano returns to France from Brandon Boyce Costume Designer Media, Richard Barner David Tennant Robert P. Nagle
a war zone in the Middle East following the death Director of Critter Pierce and Chad Doher Cale Erendreich Don Falco
of his photographer friend in an explosion. He is Photography A Dean Devlin film Robert Sheehan
David Connell ©Bad Samaritan An Electric Sean Falco In Colour
invited to the Vatican and asked to investigate the
Editor Holdings, Inc. Entertainment Kerry Condon [2.35:1]
apparition of the Virgin Mary to teenager Anna in
southern France; Jacques accepts the commission. Portland, Oregon, the present. Wannabe photographer Unable to free her, he leaves her there. Consumed by
Anna’s account of events rings true. But Jacques Sean supplements his meagre income by running a guilt, and with the police unwilling to believe his story
learns that Anna’s best friend Mériem went missing sideline scam with best friend Derek: posing as valets and the FBI moving too slowly, he takes matters into
shortly after the apparition occurred. Anna becomes outside a busy restaurant, they rob the homes of the his own hands. After Cale discovers Sean’s identity
withdrawn and stops eating. She collapses and dies, patrons as they are dining. When they come across and targets his parents, girlfriend and Derek, Sean
leaving Jacques a series of clues that lead to Mériem, swaggering Maserati-driving Cale Erendreich, Sean follows him to an isolated woodland cabin where
now living in Jordan. Jacques realises that the and Derek think they have hit the jackpot. However, Katie is imprisoned in a cage. A violent showdown
apparition appeared to Mériem, who was frightened while he is prowling Cale’s luxurious home, Sean ensues, but Sean and Katie manage to overwhelm
and fled the country; Anna was covering for her. discovers the terrified, bloody Katie chained to a chair. Cale and leave him bound to a chair as the FBI arrive.

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 59

 BlacKkKlansman
Director: Spike Lee
Certificate 15 135m 16s

Reviewed by Kelli Weston

Spoiler alert: this review
See Feature reveals a plot twist
REVIEWS

on page 22 Spike Lee’s latest film is a tale

told in twos: two heroes, two
organisations – the Black
Panther Party and the Ku Klux Klan – premised
on racial pride. Based on the true account by Ron
Stallworth in his 2014 book Black Klansman, the
film unfolds in 1973, when Stallworth (John
David Washington) becomes the first black
officer on the Colorado Springs police force
and infiltrates the local chapter of the Ku Klux
Klan over the phone. He appoints his Jewish
colleague Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver)
to act in his stead during personal meetings,
and together the two attempt to prevent the
Klan’s latest plot. What soon becomes clear is
how much BlacKkKlansman is driven by Lee’s Infiltrators: Adam Driver, John David Washington
understandable frustration and despair over the
current political condition of America, and he wobbles awkwardly between comic satire and the ‘raced’ navigate predominantly white spaces;
rarely lets the audience forget it (in one scene, overwrought melodrama, and the film spends far about the tenuousness of whiteness and the
white supremacists cry “Make America great too much time making buffoons of its villains, lengths some might travel to preserve its power
again!”). These glaring parallels ultimately their clownish ineptitude sterilising any danger – – that is to say, murderous lengths. Lee seems
overpower the film, a sweeping parable that and thus suspense – they might present. Somehow more concerned with landing particular jokes.
squanders any chance the audience might have law enforcement evades much criticism: only Bizarrely, when Stallworth expresses scepticism
of finding the story legible on its own terms. one officer, as cartoonishly evil as you might that someone as shamelessly racist as Grand
BlacKkKlansman is a film in constant expect, outwardly opposes Stallworth’s arrival Wizard David Duke (played here by a casually
dialogue with cinema: it draws playfully from on the force; everyone else seems surprisingly chilling Topher Grace) could become president
blaxploitation movies and makes acerbic use welcoming for 1973, and Stallworth rises through of the United States, it is a white cop who tells
of The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the the ranks with unusually little trouble. him he is being “naive”. And today’s audience is
Wind (1939). But it’s all curiously blaring: in one White supremacy never feels quite potent in on the gag: a man endorsed by Duke would
sequence, Klan members watch Nation, their faces enough to warrant the audience’s fear. Much indeed take the presidency. The biggest joke – in
lit with the magic, turned monstrous, that cinema will likely be made of the film’s ending, where many ways emblematic of the film’s biggest
can stir in its viewers; this is intercut with a scene Lee somewhat gracelessly attaches harrowing failure – comes near the end, when Stallworth
of a veteran activist, played by Harry Belafonte scenes from last year’s Charlottesville white reveals that he is black to Duke, with whom
no less, explaining to the black students of Boise nationalist march, including film of the car he has forged a false intimacy via telephone. A
State University how the film, legitimised by that ploughed into the crowd of counter- stunned Duke clings to the phone in horrified
the president (sound familiar?), led to the Klan’s protesters, killing Heather Heyer. This footage silence. Stallworth and his colleagues laugh
revival and, emboldened, the horrific violence packs power, but the film that precedes it triumphantly and the audience is expected to
its members visited on their countless victims. does not get to the heart of what led to such follow, but the power of the moment has been
Images wield great power; Lee knows this well, tragedy, and all the tragedies before it. clipped. Duke has been humiliated, but the
and explored it quite openly in 2000’s Bamboozled, A more artful film lies in here somewhere, film itself has come no closer to uncovering
but doesn’t quite trust his audience to get there one about the business of racial passing and how the gravity behind such devastating hatred.
on their own. And so the scene culminates in
opposing cries of “White power!” and “Black Credits and Synopsis
power!” – an obvious but perplexing juxtaposition
that yields little in the way of complexity.
Produced by Investigation of Costume Designer A Spike Lee joint Corey Hawkins Dolby Atmos
Ron and Flip’s partnership, too, nods to Sean McKittrick a Lifetime] by Marci Rodgers Executive Producers Kwame Ture In Colour and
moviemaking, putting the viewer in mind of the Jason Blum Ron Stallworth Edward H. Hamm Jr Laura Harrier Black & White
Raymond Mansfield Director of Production Jeanette Volturno Patrice Dumas [2.35:1]
director-actor relationship, as when Stallworth Jordan Peele Photography Companies Win Rosenfeld Ryan Eggold
shouts instructions into Zimmerman’s earpiece. In Spike Lee Chayse Irvin Universal Pictures, Matthew A. Cherry Walter Breachway Distributor
Shaun Redick Editor Focus Features and Jasper Pääkkönen Universal Pictures
those rare moments when they share the screen, Written by Barry Alexander Legendary Pictures Felix International
Washington and Driver, in two solid performances, Charlie Watchel Brown in association Cast Paul Walter Hauser UK & Eire
David Rabinowitz Production Designer with Perfect World John David Ivanhoe
make a winning duo with an intriguing dynamic, Kevin Willmott Curt Beech Pictures present a Washington Ashlie Atkinson
undermined at nearly every turn by uneven Spike Lee Music QC Entertainment/ Ron Stallworth Connie
writing (Lee shares screenwriting credits with Based on the book Terence Blanchard Blumhouse/ Adam Driver Alec Baldwin
[Black Klansman Supervising Monkeypaw and Flip Zimmerman Bouregard/narrator
three others, including his Chi-raq co-writer Kevin Race, Hate and Sound Editor 40 Acres and a Topher Grace Harry Belafonte
Willmott). The film seems only vaguely interested the Undercover Phil Stockton Mule production David Duke Jerome Turner
in the implications of the pair’s layered twinship,
or the peculiar fraud of a black man and a Jewish US, 1973. Ron Stallworth becomes the first black various members, including David Duke, on the phone.
officer to join the Colorado Springs Police Department Stallworth and Zimmerman discover that the Klan
man – two communities especially despised and
and is soon tasked with going undercover at a Black is planning an attack and that Patrice might be in
targeted by the Klan – performing whiteness. Power rally, where Kwame Ture, formerly Stokely danger. Zimmerman is identified as a police officer
Zimmerman confesses that he didn’t grow up Carmichael, is speaking. Stallworth meets student at his induction, while Stallworth rushes to save
terribly immersed in Judaism, and that only now, activist Patrice, with whom he begins a relationship. Patrice. By chance, the Klan’s plan is foiled when the
in the literal face of white supremacy, has he begun He directs the department’s attention away from planted explosives kill four Klan members. Stallworth
to consider his heritage. But we discover little the Black Panthers by convincing the Ku Klux Klan reveals to Duke that he is black. Patrice breaks up with
over the phone that he is white and wants to join. Stallworth because she refuses to date a policeman;
else about him and it’s never brought up again. He enlists his Jewish colleague Flip Zimmerman to hearing a mysterious knock at the door and fearing
Perhaps less could be said here if the stakes were play him in person while he continues talking with retaliation, the pair answer with their guns aimed.
more effectively established. As it is, the tone

60 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

Braguino
France/Finland 2017
Director: Clément Cogitore
Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton
Two very distinctly shot scenes of helicopter
descents play key roles in Clément Cogitore’s
Braguino, a non-fiction work of integrity and
quiet concision. The first occurs very near the
beginning of the film, taken from the perspective
of the aircraft in flight as it touches down to meet
a welcoming committee of men, women and
tow-headed youths, clearly siblings, who have
gathered to watch its arrival. This establishes
the outsider status of the filmmakers – gentle
reminders of which arrive throughout the
movie – and also establishes far better than the
onscreen latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates
the very remoteness of these people – the large,
self-sustaining Braguine family – whose lives
we are being let into. Where this introduces us
to the Braguines’ home on the Siberian taiga,
the second helicopter touchdown, which
brings a gaggle of rapacious hunters, introduces
us to the beginning of a permanent change
to that once seemingly immutable home.
By this point, Cogitore’s camera has long since
aligned itself with the perspective that it keeps to
throughout the great majority of Braguino’s slim
running time (the movie is what in Cogitore’s
native France they call a moyen métrage – a long
short, or a short feature, whichever you prefer).
Cogitore has chosen to adopt the view of the
Braguines; when the second helicopter lowers
from the sky, we see it from what is practically
the point of view of the Braguine children,
playing on the sandy island where it settles.
To be with the Braguines is, significantly, to
not be with their nearest and only neighbours,
the Kilines, who occupy the opposite shore
of the narrow waterway that slices across the
marshy landscape. Like the Braguines, the
Kilines have a pack of young children. Mostly
they are seen from a distance, curious onlookers
on the far shore, though when seen in close
quarters they look very much as though they
could be kinfolk of the Braguines. Despite all
they appear to have in common, the families
stay away from one another, for the Braguines
hate the Kilines and the Kilines presumably
hate the Braguines – think Mark Twain’s
Credits and Synopsis
Producers Sound Editor Yle production
Cédric Bonin Julien Ngo Trong A film by Clément
Pascaline Geoffroy Cogitore
Kaarle Aho ©Seppia Film, Making A Seppia Film, Making
Photography Movies, ARTE GEIE Movies production
Sylvain Verdet Production In co-production
Editor Companies with ARTE GEIE
Pauline Gaillard A Seppia Film, - La Lucarne
Original Music Making Movies, ARTE With the participation
Eric Bentz GEIE - La Lucarne, of Yle -The Finnish
A non-fiction work, filmed in the Siberian taiga.
A helicopter sets down in the remote tundra and
is greeted by a brood of yellow-haired children, the
youngest members of the Braguine family, headed by
patriarch Sacha, who has lived for 40 years in this remote
wilderness. Sacha feeds his family by hunting, fishing
and trapping, and prides himself on living far from the
rest of humanity, though the Braguines are seen to reside
in uneasy proximity to another family, the Kilines; the
Braguines occupy one side of the river, the Kilines the
other, and they share a sandy island that lies between
their properties. Sacha goes hunting and, with his eldest
son, kills a bear. There is a tense, silent encounter on the
Bare necessities: Sacha Braguine
feuding Grangerfords and Shepherdsons in
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but with a
Tolstoyan twist. Their tacit agreement to keep a
distance between them is violated in little raiding
sallies, recounted with bitterness by patriarch
Sacha, and in the film’s most memorable scene,
when the Kiline children make a foray on to the
island where the young Braguines are playing
– a sort of neutral no man’s land, outside the
defined boundaries of either family’s turf.
What registers on the faces of the children is
above all curiosity, though the manoeuvre by the
Kilines seems intended as a show of strength –
one of the movie’s joys is the manner in which
it allows us to observe how, on the micro level,
the uneasy coexistence of the Braguines and the
Kilines echoes diplomatic brinksmanship on
a macro level. There is no keeping the outside
world at bay in Braguino, which concludes on an
elegiac note, suggesting that even in Siberia, so
often a synonym for vastness and remoteness,
true impervious isolation is no longer possible.
Cogitore, of course, cannot preserve the Braguines
as they are, but in observing their austere lifestyle
he has paid it tribute in subject matter and also
in form – a film with a tightened belt, a film that
makes do with the minimum that is necessary.
Broadcasting with the CNC d’Aide à l’Innovation
Company With the support of Audiovisuelle du CNC
With the support Procirep - Société des
of CNC - Centre Producteurs, Angoa In Colour
National du Cinéma In partnership with Le [1.85:1]
et de l’Image Animée, BAL in the framework Subtitles
Région Grand of Prix BAL de la jeune
Est, Strasbourg création avec l’ADAGP Distributor
Eurométropole Development ICA Cinema
in partnership support: Fonds
neutral island between the younger Braguine children
and the preadolescents of the Kiline clan. At the dinner
table, Sacha rails against the impositions of the Kilines.
A still greater threat to the autonomy of the
Braguines arrives – a helicopter, its passengers a gang
of hunters dressed in almost paramilitary fashion, who
threaten the eldest Braguine boy with violence when
he confronts them. Sacha bemoans the despoliation
of the land by outsiders who don’t have to rely on it
for their livelihood, but is helpless to prevent their
coming. Having finally managed to restore a two-
way radio to working order, he sits with his son and
listens to a sad song sung by a distant stranger.
C’est la vie!
France/Belgium/Canada 2016
Directors: Éric Toledano, Olivier Nakache
Reviewed by Philip Kemp
Writer-director team Olivier Nakache and Eric
Toledano’s last but one feature, Intouchable (2011),
REVIEWS
scored an international hit with its feelgood story
about a quadriplegic millionaire (François Cluzet)
and the young African ex-con (Omar Sy) who
becomes his carer and liberates his uptight spirit.
A francophone echo of Driving Miss Daisy (1989),
it secreted a nugget or two of easy-to-swallow
social comment within the syrup of its simplistic
humour. The same can’t be said of C’est la vie!
(the catch-all foreign-release title of Le Sens de la
fête – Life of the Party might have been more apt),
which eschews all hints of deeper significance
to offer us spirited ensemble performances
steeped in bubbly French farce, like Robert
Altman’s A Wedding (1978) with its teeth drawn.
Altman’s film bestowed most of its attention on
the families and guests attending the celebrations;
Nakache and Toledano swing the balance
the other way, with centre stage taken by the
shambolic efforts of the wedding catering outfit
headed by the beleaguered Max Angély (Jean-
Pierre Bacri, known for his script contributions to
the edgy comedies directed by his then wife Agnès
Jaoui). The tone is set by a prologue in which Max
meets a hapless young couple desperate to do
their wedding on the cheap – the bride wonders
if they might save money by leaving the white
borders off the wedding photos – and departs
sarcastically suggesting that they ask the guests
to bring their own food in Tupperware boxes.
Unashamed crassness on this level fuels many
of the gags. Samy (Alban Ivanov), a last-minute
replacement for a missing waiter, proves so
ignorant of cuisine that he believes a turbot is a
musical instrument. It’s also Samy who causes
the lamb intended for the main course to go off,
when he disconnects the refrigerator van in order
to plug in his razor. Guy (Jean-Paul Rouve), the
superannuated wedding photographer, erupts in
rage at the guests taking shots with their mobiles,
then takes time off for a one-night stand with the
groom’s mother, while the stentorian singer (Gilles
Lellouche) is bugged with requests for smoochy pre-
war ballads. The short-fused Adèle (Eye Haidara)
blasts obscenities at anyone who aggravates her,
and Julien (Vincent Macaigne), Max’s depressive
brother-in-law, is cast into yet deeper despair on
finding that the bride is his long-lost love. Against
this tide of idiocy and rampant temperament,
Max’s fallback professional maxims – “Let’s stay
calm” and “We’ll adapt” – offer scant refuge.
Subtlety of humour, in other words, is in short
supply. Still, if you’re not seeking sophistication,
C’est la vie! passes the time divertingly enough, and
the ‘everything works out fine in the end’
finale, while nothing if not predictable, is
Jour de fête: Jean-Pierre Bacri, Vincent Macaigne
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 61
 The Children Act
USA/United Kingdom 2017
Director: Richard Eyre
Certificate 12A 105m 1s

executed with sufficient brio to slip down Reviewed by Lisa Mullen

without offence – especially the improvised A high court judge and a sickly teenager form
reggae/jazz/North African fusion number, laced an unlikely and uncomfortable bond in this
REVIEWS

with Sri Lankan flute riffs, to which staff and guests heavy-handed issues-based melodrama, adapted
happily cavort. It’s only surpassed for ingenuity by a by Ian McEwan from his own 2014 novel.
brief glimpse of a rival affair: a country-and-western The youngster in question, Adam (sweetly
bar mitzvah, complete with Apache rabbi. played by Fionn Whitehead), is a Jehovah’s
Witness and is therefore refusing to have a
Credits and Synopsis life-saving blood transfusion; the judge, Fiona
(Emma Thompson), must rule on whether
his doctors can treat him against his wishes.
Produced by Production, Eye Haidara
Nicolas Duval Gaumont, Main Adèle It’s no contest, really: we are firmly embedded
Adassovsky Journey Suzanne Clement in Fiona’s post-Enlightenment point of view
Yann Zenou With the Josiane
Laurent Zeitoun participation of Alban Ivanov and, despite a show of even-handedness in the
Written by Canal+, Cine+, TF1, Samy courtroom, there is never any doubt whose side
Éric Toledano Entourage Pictures Hélène Vincent
Olivier Nakache With the support Pierre’s mother we are on. The simple question of the law is
Director of of Tax Shelter du Benjamin Lavernhe wrapped up early, but what muddies the water
Photography Gouvernement Pierre
David Chizallet fédéral de Belgique Judith Chemla is Fiona’s decision to visit Adam in hospital – an
Editor and the Tax Shelter Héléna action that transforms each of them in the other’s
Dorian Rigal Ansous de Movie Tax Invest William Lebghil
Art Director A Quad+Ten & Ten Seb eyes. Fiona is no longer the neutral instrument
Mathieu Vadepied Films production Kevin Azaïs of a dispassionate law court, and Adam no longer Judge for yourself: Emma Thompson
Original Music In co-production Patrice
Composed by/ with Panache Antoine Chappry a faceless case number. And when they start
Bass and Piano Productions, Henri playing music and discussing poetry together, the could possibly exist. That this disappointment
Avishai Cohen La Compagnie Manmathan Basky
Sound Cinématographique Roshan emotional lines get very blurry indeed – especially comes so late is testament to Eyre’s control and
Pascal Armant In association with Khereddine Ennasri since Fiona is secretly struggling with her regrets Thompson’s devastating subtlety as an actor:
Selim Azzazi SofiTVciné 4, A Plus Nabil
Jean-Paul Hurier Image 7, Cinémage Gabriel Nacache about not having children and her grief over without her, Fiona would dissolve into absurdity
Costume Designer 11, Indéfilms 5 Bastien the infidelity of her husband (Stanley Tucci). right from the start. But even Thompson cannot
Isabelle Pannetier Developed with Jackee Toto
the support of Nicole, ‘Nico’ McEwan has a habit of wielding culture like make the thing add up. Implying that Fiona
©Quad+Ten, Ten Indéfilms Initiative Grégoire Bonnet a weapon, and this thumping disquisition on comes unstuck because she doesn’t have children
Films, Gaumont, 4, Cinémage 9 and Valéry Laprade
TF1 Films 10 Développement the life-enhancing power of music is par for the is lazy and cheap – psychology has moved on a bit
Production, Panache Dolby Digital course. His 2005 novel Saturday infamously since the days of the wandering womb – and there
Productions, In Colour
La Compagnie Cast [1.85:1] suggested that reading out a poem might be is also something preposterously sketchy about
Cinématographique Jean-Pierre Bacri Subtitles a successful defence against a home-invading the straying-husband subplot, despite Tucci’s
Production Max Angély
Companies Jean-Paul Rouve Distributor
psychopath; in The Children Act, it is a musical best efforts and his likeable presence on screen.
Gaumont presents Guy Cinefile arrangement of Yeats’s ‘Down by the Salley In the end, though, it’s the central relationship
a Quad+Ten Gilles Lellouche
production Etienne, ‘DJ James’ French theatrical title
Gardens’ that has supernatural power. On the that remains the most baffling. There might
In co-production Vincent Macaigne Le Sens de la fête page, McEwan can get away with using art as his be something tediously believable, if revolting,
with TF1 Films Julien deus ex machina, but on film the trick is harder about an ageing man becoming obsessed with
to pull off – especially under the direction of a teenage girl: we’ve seen that film many times
Present-day France. In a 17th-century chateau
south of Paris, events planner Max Angély and his
a granite realist like Richard Eyre, who bathes before. Perhaps, by reversing the sexes, McEwan
team are preparing for the lavish wedding of Pierre Fiona’s world in rational grey light and keeps hoped to make the cliché less objectionable
and Héléna. Multiple problems arise. Adèle, Max’s his camera closely, at times claustrophobically, or more… interesting? Hard to tell, and on
short-fused second-in-command, quarrels with all on Thompson’s calm, intelligent face. either count, this film fails. Quite simply, to
and sundry. Guy, the has-been wedding photographer, It is with a sense of shock, then, that you make Fiona comprehensible as a character
is more interested in freeloading canapés than in realise this film is supposed to be about a calm, would require a lot more set-up. And then
taking pictures. Max’s pedantic and depressive
brother-in-law Julien shows up in his pyjamas. The intelligent nervous breakdown – as if such a thing the set-up would be the film – not this.
expected sophisticated entertainer is replaced by
James (real name Etienne), a brash loudmouth who Credits and Synopsis
sings in fake Italian. Max, whose marriage to Nicole
is foundering, sees his girlfriend Josiane flirting
with a young waiter, Patrice. The staff are reluctant Produced by Ben Browning Rupert Vansittart London, present day. Fiona Maye, a brilliant and driven
to wear the required period costumes and wigs. Duncan Kenworthy Glen Basner Sherwood Runcie judge in the family court, spends every waking hour
Screenplay Charles Moore Reena Lalbihari
The wedding party arrives. Héléna proves to be Ian McEwan Joe Oppenheimer Samaira thinking about the difficult cases she has to rule
Julien’s long-lost love. Pierre, the groom, finds fault Based on his novel Beth Pattinson Dominic Carter on; she, however, never had children of her own. Her
with everything. Members of James’s band, who Director of Roger husband Jack feels ignored, and announces that he
shared the food prepared for the guests, suffer food Photography Paul Kemble is planning to have an affair with a younger woman.
poisoning, the main course having gone off when Andrew Dunn Cast Keith
Fighting to control her anger and grief, Fiona tackles
Editor Emma Thompson
the refrigerator truck was accidentally unplugged. Dan Farrell Fiona Maye In Colour a case in which a 17-year-old Jehovah’s Witness, Adam,
Max takes advantage of Pierre’s interminable Production Designer Stanley Tucci [1.85:1] is refusing a life-saving blood transfusion. Fiona takes
speech to source alternative supplies from a fellow Peter Francis Jack Maye the unusual step of visiting him in hospital and finds
caterer. A professional contact, Valéry Laprade, Original Music Fionn Whitehead Distributor him intelligent, intense and full of potential; they start
Stephen Warbeck Adam Henry E1 Films
arrives and makes an offer to buy Max out. After Sound Design Ben Chaplin playing music together and discussing poetry. She
dinner, Pierre appears suspended above the guests Glenn Freemantle Kevin Henry rules that the doctors can force him to have treatment.
from a hot-air balloon, but floats away when the Costume Designer Jason Watkins Later, Adam contacts Fiona to thank her and becomes
mooring ropes are loosed. A mistimed firework Fotini Dimou Nigel Pauling obsessed with her. Despite her firm insistence that she
Nikki Amuka-Bird
display causes all the lights to fuse. Max, beside ©Free Choice, LLC
cannot be involved in his life, she finds herself drawn
Amadia Kalu
himself with fury, harangues his team for their Production Anthony Calf to him; they share a confused and uncomfortable kiss,
incompetence and storms off. He receives a phone Companies Mark Berner after which she angrily sends him away. Fiona breaks
call from Nicole agreeing to a divorce. Returning FilmNation Rosie Cavaliero down at a public function when she hears that Adam has
to the event, he finds guests and staff dancing Entertainment and Marina Green stopped his treatment and is terminally ill again: by now
BBC Films present a Eileen Walsh
happily to an improvised band. Josiane dumps Duncan Kenworthy Naomi Henry he is an adult and the court cannot intervene. Fiona’s
Patrice and returns to Max. The next morning, as production Nicholas Jones emotions come flooding out as she tells her husband
everyone departs, Max tears up Valéry’s offer. Executive Producers Professor Carter – who has now returned to her – the whole story.

62 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

Cold War
Poland/United Kingdom/France/India 2018
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Certificate 15 88m 25s

Reviewed by Tony Rayns

Pawel Pawlikowski probably
See Feature doesn’t know it, but his second

REVIEWS
on page 34 Polish film (after Ida, 2013,
also shot in monochrome
and Academy ratio) is a
virtual shadow of Jia Zhangke’s second feature
Platform (Zhantai, 2000): a film about romantic
relationships in and around a song-and-dance
troupe which is buffeted by changing political
times. Obviously there are several big differences.
Jia’s film, set across the 1980s, shows its troupe
abandoning its communist repertoire as China
shifts from hard-line Maoism to state-controlled
capitalism (Taiwanese pop gets it going) and
the film comes to focus on the enervation and
disappointments of life in the new ‘liberal’ era.
Pawlikowski’s episodic film, set between 1949 Heart defect: Joanna Kulig
and 1964, charts the opposite political trajectory,
from the slow-but-sure imposition of communist man he was in Poland. Back in Poland, though, yield an emotionally (and musically) credible
imperatives and methods on post-war society Wiktor is thrown into jail for defecting and Zula arc. His cast is unimprovable (Joanna Kulig as
to the impossibility of living honestly in hard- has to marry again to access the ‘connections’ Zula more than fulfils the promise of her brief
line communist Poland. The relationships in that will get him released. Pawlikowski details scenes in Ida), but other collaborations are
Pawlikowski’s film are a lot more torrid and the catch-22s with a bluesy intensity. equally remarkable: the production design is
volatile than anything in Jia’s film, but both The title suggests a political thrust, but this consistently spot-on, right down to a framed
movies are rooted in a love for music and both end is a movie in which the political is personal: photo of Shostakovich, and Marcin Masecki’s
sadly, pessimistic about an authoritarian state’s what separates Wiktor and Zula is less the Iron score is skilled and varied enough to work as a
effortless ability to hobble personal relationships. Curtain than an intractable cold war of the heart. non-visual ‘film’ in its own right. Lukasz Zal’s
The starting point for Cold War was Pawlikowski again proves himself a director lovely cinematography here is the opposite of
Pawlikowski’s desire to make a film about his of remarkable economy: for a filmmaker who his work on Ida – elegant circular tracking shots,
parents, named Wiktor and Zula (he describes their insists that his projects begin in “chaos” he has a chiaroscuro interiors – but entirely in the service
relationship as “a never-ending disaster”), both of very sure sense of how much or little is needed of a narrative which picks out key episodes across
whom died in 1989 just before the fall of the Berlin to carry the emotional threads of individual a span of 15 years and trusts the viewer to read
Wall began toppling East Europe’s communist scenes, and of how a fragmentary narrative can the signals and cues which fill in the gaps.
regimes. He says the only way he could make
it work was to turn both of them into fictional Credits and Synopsis
characters – although he still dedicates the film
“to my parents”. So his Wiktor becomes a middle-
Produced by z o.o./Apocalypso co-production production Podkarpackiego Tomasz Kot
ageing musician, clearly with time in the West Tanya Seghatchian Pictures Cold with the support Film co-financed by With the support of Wiktor
under his belt, who rallies from the nightmare of Ewa Puszczynska War Limited/MK of Eurimages the City of Lodz the Creative Europe Borys Szyc
Story Productions/ARTE in co-production Mazovia Institute Programme – MEDIA Kaczmarek
World War II by somewhat half-heartedly joining Pawel Pawlikowski France Cinéma/ with Arte France of Culture of the European Union Agata Kulesza
a woman musicologist in recording regional folk Screenplay The British Film Cinema, Canal Plus Mazovia Warsaw ARTE France Irena
Pawel Pawlikowski Institute/Channel Poland, Kino Swiat, Film Fund Cinema/Cinestaan, Cédric Kahn
songs and recruiting villagers to perform them in Janusz Glowacki Four Television The Lodz Film Fund, Film co-financed Cofiloisirs/Curzon, Michel
a new ‘folk culture’ troupe. (In the opening scenes with the collaboration Corporation/ Mazovia Warsaw by Mazovia Region, Eurimages/Media, Jeanne Balibar
of Piotr Borkowski Canal+/EC1 Lódz/ Film Fund, The City of Warsaw PISF/Protagonist Juliette
they are Poland’s answer to Iona and Peter Opie, Image Mazowiecki Instytut Silesian Film Fund, Silesia Film Institute Pictures, Film4
albeit more interested in love songs than nursery Pawel Pawlikowski Kultury/Instytucja The Podkarpackie in Katowice Made with the In Black & White
rhymes.) And the film’s Zula becomes a survivor Photography Filmowa Silesia Film Fund Silesia Film support of the [1.33:1]
Lukasz Zal Film/Kino Swiat/ With the participation Commission BFI’s Film Fund Subtitles
of sexual abuse who poses as a villager to infiltrate Editing Wojewódzki Dom of Arte France, Aide Film co-financed by Executive Producers
the auditions for the troupe; she is soon established Jaroslaw Kaminski Kultury w Rzeszowie aux Cinémas du the Silesian Film Fund Nathanaël Karmitz Distributor
Production Design Production Monde – Centre Wojewódzki Dom Lizzie Francke Curzon Artificial Eye
as the star of its shows, as Wiktor’s lover, and, she Katarzyna Sobanska Companies National du Cinema Kultury w Rzeszowie Rohit Khattar
cheerfully admits, as a spy on Wiktor’s attitudes Marcel Slawinski Opus Film, Polish Film et de l’Image Produced with John Woodward Polish theatrical title
Sound Institute, MK2 Films, Animée – Institut financing from Jeremy Gawade Zimna wojna
and behaviour. The troupe itself, named Mazurek, Maciej Pawlowski Film4, BFI present Français, Cinestaan Podkarpackie Daniel Battsek
is quite closely modelled on the real-life Mazowsze Miroslaw Makowski in association with Film Company Voivodeship and
Costumes Protagonist Pictures A film by Pawel City of Rzeszów
ensemble, which was forced into cheerleading for Aleksandra Staszko An Opus Film, Pawlikowski Awarded through the Cast
Stalinist policies in the 1950s and still exists today Apocalypso Pictures, A Polish Film Podkarpackie Film Joanna Kulig
as a bastion of supposedly traditional folk culture. ©OPUS FILM Sp. MK Productions Institute co-financed Fund, Województwa Zuzanna Lichon, ‘Zula’

The film’s Wiktor and Zula (like, apparently,

their real-life prototypes) suffer from the ‘can’t
live together/can’t live apart’ syndrome, divided
by opposite temperaments, incompatible
ambitions and different responses to Poland’s
communist regime. Wiktor wants to defect
to the West at the first opportunity – it comes
when Mazurek is invited to perform in East
Berlin – but Zula doesn’t see the need or point.
She eventually marries an unseen Sicilian to get
the Italian passport that will allow her to join
Wiktor in his attic in Paris, but she doesn’t rate her
chances as a French chanteuse and anyway finds
émigré Wiktor to be an enervated shadow of the
Poland, 1949. Wiktor and Irena tour the war-ravaged
countryside with their manager Kaczmarek,
recruiting young villagers to audition for their
folk-culture troupe Mazurek. One candidate is
Zuzanna Lichon, known as Zula, a young woman
who is on probation for murdering her father.
Warsaw, 1951. Mazurek is a national success,
but Kaczmarek follows political orders to add
pro-Soviet songs to its repertoire. Irena resists,
and is soon gone. Zula and Wiktor become lovers;
she tells him that she has been asked to spy on
him. An invitation to perform in East Berlin offers
the opportunity to defect, but Zula chickens
out and Wiktor crosses to the west alone.
Paris, 1954. Wiktor plays piano with a jazz quintet,
and has a brief reunion with Zula one evening.
Yugoslavia, 1955. The stateless Wiktor visits
Croatia to see a Mazurek show. Kaczmarek tips off
the Yugoslav police: Wiktor is detained and deported.
Paris, 1957. Wiktor is working on a film score when
Zula shows up, now with a legal Italian passport.
They begin cohabiting and Wiktor gets her gigs as a
Polish chanteuse. But they rile each other and Zula
returns to Poland. Wiktor follows her and is arrested
when he enters Poland. Zula visits him in jail.
1964. Zula has married Kaczmarek and given
him a son in exchange for his help in getting Wiktor
released. Reunited, Wiktor and Zula take a bus to the
area where they first met. In a ruined church they
enact a ‘wedding’ and then swallow mouthfuls of pills.

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 63

 Damascus Cover Detective Dee:
Director: Daniel Zelik Berk
Certificate 15 93m 28s
The Four Heavenly Kings
People’s Republic of China/Hong Kong 2017
Director: Tsui Hark

Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton Reviewed by Adam Nayman

One of the pleasures of the cloak-and-dagger A big-time commercial comeback for the
romance is that it recalls, in sharper tones and marginalised Tsui Hark, 2010’s Detective Dee and
REVIEWS

usually with the allurements of exotic trappings the Mystery of the Phantom Flame was a broad,
and cool gadgetry, the quite mundane anxiety breathlessly plotted Tang-dynasty intrigue
that accompanies the entering into a new love choreographed by Sammo Hung but boasting
affair – the nagging feeling that, for all the fresh enough weightless CGI effects to render its
attraction, one doesn’t really know this person, or hand-to-hand combat a side attraction. Its
if they are indeed who they represent themselves massive box office in China yielded a prequel,
to be. This uncertainty is meant to be planted Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (2012),
at the core of Israeli director Daniel Zelik Berk’s which bolstered the franchise while handing
rather unsexily titled Damascus Cover, which the eponymous role of proto-supercop from
revolves around an affair between Jonathan Andy Lau to Mark Chao. It was a passing of the
Rhys Meyers’s deep-cover Mossad operative and torch (or phantom flame) that traded in middle-
Olivia Thirlby, an American photojournalist Shifting sands: Jonathan Rhys Meyers aged star power for fresh(er)-faced charm.
employed by USA Today – a publication known Chao reports again for duty in The Four
neither today nor in 1989, when the movie is Berk goes for juddering camerawork to cover Heavenly Kings, which picks up exactly where its
set, for serious, hard-nosed original reportage, and compensate for an absence of creditable immediate predecessor left off, and extends Hark’s
though this is the least of the movie’s problems. choreography, or opts for old favourites like new brand with crowd-pleasing aplomb. Having
Sustaining an atmosphere of ambiguity the city-establishing drone shot or the punch- been entrusted with an ancient, valuable weapon
requires, paradoxically, a high level of narrative to-the-face POV followed by light’s-out black. known as the Dragon Taming Mace, Dee must
control, and Berk nowhere displays the poise to Rhys Meyers and Thirlby are mannered when protect it – and the power to rule that it confers
run the shell game of shifting allegiances and maintaining their covers, but not much less so – from a variety of would-be thieves. These
double-agent duplicity that his movie sets out to once they’ve allowed their masks to slip aside, include a cabal of shady, unscrupulous illusionists
play. Damascus Cover is based on a 1977 espionage and as such their Star of David-crossed lovers enlisted by the scheming Empress Wu (Carina
novel by one Howard Kaplan, though the setting routine never vaults into pathos. (Thirlby’s Lau), a nominal villainess whose designs on
has been moved to approximately the period character is revealed to be working for the Syrian dictatorship are shown here to be the by-product
of the Berlin Wall’s fall – as established by the Intelligence Agency against Mossad, but the of even shadier manipulations. There’s also the
insertion of stock footage and conversational geopolitical specifics are mostly eschewed to rivalry between the brilliant, inviolate Dee and
references to German reunification. This is as portray regional conflict as a continuation of his pal-slash-partner Yuchi (Feng Shaofeng), a
much effort as is made to evoke the texture of Cold War skulduggery among different players.) by-the-book type torn between his loyalty to the
those times, with costuming and art-direction What enticements there are in the way of dynasty – represented by the erratic empress,
touches near to non-existent – one of the many performance come mostly from the support staff, whose whims he indulges – and a respect for Dee,
evidences here of a strained budget. This is especially a couple of plummy old-timers – Jürgen shot through with a streak of competitive envy.
in itself no sin, for when monetary resources Prochnow as a Nazi-sympathetic German expat There’s a lot of story in The Four Heavenly Kings,
are absent, inspiration finds opportunity in Syria and John Hurt as Rhys Meyers’s Mossad balanced between reams of long-ago exposition
– but it’s in creative capital that Damascus higher-up, Miki, a role that would be his last. The and real-time machinations that also make main
Cover is most bankrupt. Rhys Meyers, sallow hefty presence of these venerables, as well as the protagonists out of clownish sidekick Sha Tuo
when meant to be suave, is supplied with a 1970s source material, might suggest throwback (Lin Gengxin) and a mysterious female warrior,
handsome collection of custom-tailored suits, ambitions, but Damascus Cover embodies only the Water Moon (Ma Sichun). This pair’s tentative
but the spy games are strictly off-the-rack stuff, most insubstantial and the chintziest aspects of romance is a time-consuming diversion (the
unredeemed even by a commendable piece of downmarket moviemaking in our digital century gently raunchy comedy just drags on and on), and
run-and-gun fun. Whenever things gets heavy, – as a download, dreary, as cinema, non-existent. I haven’t even mentioned the faceless warlord
and reclusive, all-powerful monk waiting in the
Credits and Synopsis wings. In order to combat the sense of clutter,
Hark and his collaborators cultivate a healthy
Produced by and Marcys Holdings Tsahi Halevi Damascus, Syria and Israel, shortly after the fall of the sense of the ridiculous. “Here is a letter from a
Hannah Leader a BBM production Rami Elon Berlin Wall. Ari Ben-Sion, a German-born, Israeli-raised giant ape,” announces one character at a crucial
Huw Penallt Jones Executive Producers Ben Affan
Joe Thomas Gary Ellis Mustapha Jew, is posing as a Berlin businessman named Hans juncture, prefiguring a gorilla ex machina that
Masaaki Tanaka Phillip B. Goldfine Herzl Tobey Hoffmann as part of his undercover work for Mossad. sends an already crazed climax spiralling into
Screenplay Hicham Hajji Ehud After a mission goes awry in Berlin, he must undergo a the realm of the sublime: the last thing you’d
Daniel Zelik Berk Enayetullah Khan psychological evaluation before returning to the field,
Samantha Newton Andrew Loveday In Colour
during which he discusses his divorce and the death expect in a pre-medieval Chinese epic is a King
Based on the novel Sean O’Kelly [2.35:1]
by Howard Kaplan of his child. Ari’s boss Miki sends him to Damascus, Kong homage, but Detective Dee has it covered.
Director of Distributor where he is tasked with extracting a chemical weapons
Photography Cast Munro Film Services scientist; he poses as a Nazi-sympathising rug
Chloë Thomson Jonathan Rhys importer, mixing with a community of ex-Nazi expats,
Editor Meyers
Martin Brinkler Ari Ben-Sion, one of whom employs a relative of the scientist as
Production Designer ‘Hans Hoffmann’ his maid. In the course of his mission, Ari begins a
Matthew Button Olivia Thirlby romance with American photojournalist Kim, whom
Original Score Kim he discovers to be in the employ of Suleiman Sarraj,
Harry Escott Jürgen Prochnow
Production
head of the Syrian Intelligence Agency. Contemplating
Franz Ludin
Sound Mixer Igal Naor his next move, Ari contacts a deep-cover operative
Ian Voigt General Fuad codenamed the Angel, and makes plans to flee Syria.
Costume Designer Navid Negahban Reuniting with Kim at the hotel room they’ve been
Eleanor Baker Sarraj sharing, Ari reveals to her that he knows she’s playing
John Hurt
Production Miki a double game; he is confused when she saves his life
Companies Wolf Kahler in a shootout with hitmen sent by Sarraj. Ari takes
Vertical Colonel Ludwig Kim to the rendezvous with the Angel, who shoots
Entertainment Streicher and kills her. Ari provides cover for the Angel to
presents in Selva Rasalingam
association Sabri
escape, and is captured, only to be freed in a prisoner
with Xeitgeist Neta Riskin exchange between Miki and a highly placed friendly
Entertainment Group Yael party within the Syrian state security apparatus.
Mace of hearts: Kenny Lin, Sandra Ma

64 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

 Dhadak
Director: Shashank Khaitan
Certificate 12A 137m 38s

All joking aside, the superficially Reviewed by Naman Ramachandran

unpredictable silliness of the action is actually Spoiler alert: this review reveals a plot twist
quite carefully controlled, as is the script’s For millennia, Hindu Indian society has been

REVIEWS
underlying theme of authenticity versus governed by a rigid caste system, grouping
illusionism. Dee’s analogue ingenuity, which people into the priestly Brahmins, the martial
keeps him one step ahead of the bad guys, Kshatriyas, the trader Vaishyas and the labour-
distinguishes him as a true hero, while the class Shudras. With few exceptions, marriages
reality-warping spells of the evil Wind Warriors, take place within the confines of this system.
who fool their enemies into thinking they’re It is no surprise, therefore, that Indian cinema
outmatched, stand as avatars of bad-faith has time and again explored the divide between
conjuring. The battle lines are clearly drawn castes, with notable examples including Franz
between truth and fakery; whether a decorated Osten’s Acchut kanya (1936), Bimal Roy’s Sujata
Hong Kong veteran like Hark is kidding about his (1959) and Pattabhi Rama Reddy’s Samskara
own late-career reinvention as a master of fully (1970). More recently, Nagraj Manjule shot to
digitised, mass-market special-effects spectacle international prominence with Fandry (2013),
or just selling out as lavishly as possible is a in which a teenager becomes infatuated with a
worthy question for auteurist contemplation. girl from a different caste. In Manjule’s follow-
up film, Sairat (2016), a boy and girl from
Credits and Synopsis different castes in a village in Maharashtra fall
in love and are forced to elope. Sairat became
the highest grosser in the history of Marathi-
Produced by Interocular Workshop Co Ltd
Nansun Shi Visual Effect and Huayi Brothers language cinema, and was remade in the Caste shadows: Janhvi Kapoor, Ishaan Khatter
Jerry Ye Macro Graph Pictures Ltd Punjabi, Kannada and Bengali languages.
Wang Zhonglei Jiaxing Pictures Executive
Chen Kuofu Hezhong Group Producers For those who have not seen Sairat, its Hindi- any sense of conflict; there isn’t much difference
Tsui Hark Corporation Wang Zhongjun language adaptation Dhadak is a perfectly in the couple’s social status, whereas in Sairat
Producers Action Director Tao Kun
Zhang Dajun Lin Feng Wang Zhonglei
serviceable if anodyne love story with a tragic it was stark and all the more effective for it.
Chang Chia Lu ending, yet another Romeo and Juliet tale with a Caste, the great divider that bubbles to the
T.K. Yang ©Huayi Brothers
Tao Kun Pictures Ltd, Cast pleasantly fresh-faced lead pair (Ishaan Khatter, fore ever so often in Sairat, is relegated here to a
Story CKF Pictures Mark Chao who debuted with Majid Majidi’s Beyond the few stray mentions, with the emphasis shifting
Chen Kuofu Production Detective Dee Clouds, 2017, and making her debut, Janhvi to Parthavi’s family’s honour and loss of face.
Tsui Hark Companies Feng Shaofeng
Screenplay Presented by Zhenjin Yuchi Kapoor, daughter of the late Indian acting legend Khaitan has missed a great opportunity to address
Chang Chialu Huayi Brothers Lin Gengxin Sridevi). Director Shashank Khaitan brings caste issues in a mainstream Bollywood film,
Tsui Hark Pictures Ltd, CKF Sha Tuo
Director of Pictures, Huayi Ethan Juan into play sensibilities honed on the middling but it can be argued that his target audience
Photography Brothers Pictures Yuan Ce romantic comedies Humpty sharma ki dulhania simply does not care about these, preferring
Choi Sung Fai International Ltd Ma Sichun
Edited by Co-presented Water Moon
(2014) and Badrinath ki dulhania (2017), and a couple of hours of escapist entertainment.
Li Lin by Shanghai Tao Carina Lau gives Dhadak the full Bollywood treatment. That, Khaitan delivers in spades. When Parthavi
Tsui Hark Piao Piao Movie Empress Wu
Production & TV Culture
The village of Sairat is replaced by the fairytale and Madhukar elope and move to Kolkata, the
Designer Co Ltd, Wanda Dolby Atmos/ city of palaces that is Udaipur; and whereas in hardships they endure are minimal, and the
Yoshihito Akatsuka Pictures, Youku DTS:X Sairat the boy’s father was a fisherman, here so-called labours they have to perform to earn
Original Music Pictures Co Ltd In Colour
Kenji Kawai A Film Workshop [2.35:1] he is a prosperous restaurateur. It is all very a living are straight from the gilded playbook
Sound Design Co Ltd and Huayi Subtitles pleasant to look at – especially when the boy perfected in Qayamat se qayamat tak (1988),
Steve Burgess Brothers Pictures
Costume Designer Ltd production Distributor Madhukar and the girl Parthavi are playing out Maine pyar kiya (1989) and Dil (1990). Fans of
Lee Pik Kwan A Tsui Hark film Trinity Film the game of first love – but the film is devoid of Sairat had best look away from this one.
Visual Effects Associate
Mofac Creative production by China Chinese
Works Film Co-production theatrical title Credits and Synopsis
W2 Studios Corporation Di Renjie zhi
Digital Frontier Production by Film Sidatianwang

China, during the Tang dynasty. After being given Produced by Farah Khan In Colour Udaipur, India, the present. Madhukar and his university
Karan Johar Tushar Kalia [2.35:1] classmate Parthavi fall in love. She is the daughter
the powerful Dragon Taming Mace by the emperor, Hiroo Yash Johar Subtitles
Detective Dee realises that he must hide it to Apoorva Mehta Production of a local politician and belongs to a higher caste.
prevent it being stolen by anyone bent on using it Screenplay Companies Distributor At a birthday party for Parthavi’s brother Roop, the
to overthrow the dynasty. Meanwhile, Empress Wu Shashank Khaitan Zee Studios and Zee Studios couple steal away to the backyard and kiss. They are
Adapted from Nagraj Dharma Productions discovered, and Madhukar is thrashed and arrested.
instructs Dee’s colleague Yuchi to steal the mace Popatrao Manjule’s present a Dharma
in case Dee himself is planning to usurp the throne. At the police station, Parthavi snatches a gun from
Sairat (2016) Productions film
She recruits some dark magicians to help Yuchi in Director of Produced by an officer and holds the police and her family at bay
his task. Dee suspects that he is being set up. Dee’s Photography Zee Studios while she and Madhukar escape. They get on a train to
bumbling but good-hearted friend Sha Tuo becomes Vishnu Rao Executive Producer Mumbai and from there to Nagpur, where Madhukar’s
Editor Sumit Chawla uncle lives. Madhukar’s family broke off contract with
infatuated with beautiful assassin Water Moon; after Monisha R. Baldawa
she is injured during a battle, he nurses her back to Production Design the uncle because he married a woman from a different
health, leading her to have a change of heart. It is Shashank Tere Cast community. The uncle arranges for Madhukar and
revealed that Empress Wu is being controlled by a Songs Music Janhvi Kapoor Parthavi to move to Kolkata, where they live in a hostel
Ajay Gogavale Parthavi, ‘Pari’ run by the kindly Sachin and his wife. Madhukar finds
secret cabal known as the Wind Warriors, who hold Atul Gogavale Ishaan Khatter
a grudge against the emperor. It transpires that Lyrics
a job as a waiter; Parthavi works at a call centre. They
Madhukar
the increasingly strange events occurring in the Amitabh Aditya Kumar marry, have a child and move to a flat. Madhukar phones
kingdom – including the appearance of a dragon Bhattacharya Aditya, Parthavi’s his family but his father asks him not to call again, as
that seems to kill several of the magicians – are in Background Score brother they are being harassed by Parthavi’s relatives and are
John Stewart Eduri Aishwara Narkar on the verge of financial ruin. Parthavi is in touch with
fact illusions generated by the group’s black magic. Sound Design Madhukar’s mother
Dee sends Sha Tuo to retrieve a powerful monk Sohel Sanwari Ashutosh Rana her mother, but one of her phone calls is intercepted
who can help them combat the visions. During a Costume Designers Parthavi’s father by her father. One day, Roop arrives unexpectedly
final confrontation, the Wind Warriors’ deceptions Manish Malhotra Kharaj Mukherjee at the flat with some men. Parthavi asks Madhukar
Natascha Charak Ankit Bisht to serve them tea while she buys sweets from the
are unmasked, partly thanks to Dee’s use of the Nikita Mohanty Vishwanath
Mace, and their leader defeated. Dee, Yuchi, Sha Choreography Chatterjee
nearby shop. As she returns home, the dead bodies
Tuo and Water Moon await their next adventure. of Madhukar and their son fall from the flat above.

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 65

 Dirtbag The Legend of Fred Beckey
USA 2017
Director: Dave O’Leske
Reviewed by Michael Hale
For those unfamiliar with mountaineering slang,
director Dave O’Leske helpfully defines the word
REVIEWS
‘dirtbag’ in the opening stages of his documentary
on the life of legendary climber Fred Beckey: it
is, he says, “a person who dedicates his or her
entire existence to climbing, while abandoning
employment and other societal norms in pursuit
of this nomadic lifestyle”. The considerable
physical demands of climbing, coupled with
the arduous travel to and subsistence in
mountainous places, mean that the hardcore
‘dirtbag’ lifestyle is usually associated with
climbers still enjoying the first flush of youth.
The mythical and obsessive Beckey, the
film tells us, was “the Bob Dylan of mountain
climbing”, the platonic ideal of a dirtbag
miraculously made flesh: a man famous in the
climbing community for having made more
first ascents of significant mountains in North
America than any other, and for remaining
focused on climbing in old age, having eschewed
opportunities for financial gain and family ties
along the way. The filmmakers start documenting
Beckey in 2005, when he is already in his eighties,
and check in with him over the next decade or
so, interspersing this footage with sequences
on his most significant climbs decades earlier.
Technological advances in recent years
have allowed cinematographers to capture the
drama of mountain climbing in even the most
modestly budgeted films – look no further than
Jennifer Peedom’s Mountain (2017) for some of
the most breathtaking achievements in this
field. This poses a challenge for O’Leske, as
the material shot in the modern day features
an elderly Beckey, often far removed from
spectacular peaks, while footage of the man
in his prime is somewhat limited due to the
time period involved and his preference for
ad hoc climbs over large-scale expeditions.
What O’Leske does have, though, is a treasure
trove from Beckey’s heyday, comprising
photographs, diaries and, best of all, annotated
mountain illustrations, often sketched while
perched on a rock face. O’Leske employs
these elements dynamically, with zooms
and depth-heightening effects applied to the
photographs, and the sketches are redrawn on
screen to underscore the beautiful lines picked
out by Beckey’s pioneering routes. Significant
mountains are introduced with a formal black-
and-white photograph, stylistically reminiscent
of the work of Ansel Adams, which adds a sense
Credits and Synopsis
Produced by Original Score production in
Dave O’Leske Brad Anthony Laina association with
Jason Reid Cliffhammer Lucid Visual Media,
Andy McDonough John E. Low Mind Vise
Colin Harper Plank Sound Mixing Executive Producer
Producer Durin Gleaves Colin Baxter
Adam Brown
Story ©Fred Beckey In Colour
Dave O’Leske
Film, LLC [1.78:1]
Darren Lund Production
Jason Reid Companies Distributor
Director of Patagonia presents Jonny Tull/Through
Photography a Through a Child’s a Child’s Eyes
Dave O’Leske Eyes Productions film Productions
Edited by A 2R Productions,
Darren Lund Centripetal Films,
Jason Reid Roped In Productions
66 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
Out on a climb: Fred Beckey
of the majestic challenge these landforms pose.
However, the parts of the film focusing on
Beckey’s earlier years do become somewhat
repetitive – perhaps inevitably given the
subject’s monomaniacal life – with commentary
occasionally reiterating points previously made.
Much is made of Beckey’s lack of interest in
parlaying his mastery of climbing into financial
security, but the film misses a trick by not
recording his views on the Instagram-savvy
athletes making a living in mountaineering today.
Elsewhere, questionable editorial judgement sees
Beckey’s relations with women (apparently many
and brief) compared to a “gypsy burning through
horses”, while a politically incorrect reference to
the term ‘third world’ also slips through the net.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the sections
dealing with Beckey’s later life (he died in 2017)
are the strongest in the film. The elderly Beckey
refuses to compromise his lifestyle, remaining an
incorrigible rogue by all accounts, and continues
making increasingly quixotic summit attempts
despite vastly reduced physical abilities. His
moving determination not to give up a life’s
obsession divides those around him. Reinhold
Messner, generally acclaimed as the greatest
climber in mountaineering history, and the
subject of Werner Herzog’s 1984 documentary
The Dark Glow of the Mountains, opines that Beckey
would be better off spending his final years
doing something creative. Others feel that the
climbing fraternity can act as an effective support
network for the unmarried and presumably
childless Beckey. The end credits see some of the
more apocryphal stories in the Beckey campfire
canon brought to life by animation; there can be
little doubt that the legend is just beginning.
A documentary on the life of American mountain
climber Fred Beckey, still climbing in 2005 despite
the onset of old age. Earlier in life, numerous first
ascents of mountains gain Beckey a pre-eminent
position within the climbing community, but his
single-minded approach leaves no room for commercial
success or a life away from the rock face. In his
late eighties, Beckey works on a book detailing his
favourite North American climbs, and is determined
to ascend four mountains that have previously
eluded him. He fails in these attempts but even in his
nineties remains committed to the outdoor life.
The film ends by noting that Beckey died in 2017,
aged 94.
The Equalizer 2
USA 2018
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Reviewed by Kim Newman
Denzel Washington often stars in films that aspire
to be the start of a franchise – playing Walter
Mosley’s private eye Easy Rawlins in Devil in a
Blue Dress (1995), Jeffery Deaver’s quadriplegic
sleuth Lincoln Rhyme in The Bone Collector (1999)
and A.J. Quinnell’s determined bodyguard John
Creasy in Man on Fire (2004). All appear in follow-
up novels, but stalled as big-screen heroes after
a single outing apiece. Perhaps surprisingly, The
Equalizer (2014) – a light update of the American
TV show (1985-89) – is the first of Washington’s
potential series vehicles to yield a sequel.
Just as the show’s lead role was a retooling
of the persona that Edward Woodward first
developed in the less conventional British spy
series Callan (1967-72), so Washington’s McCall is
informed by the actor’s performances as Rawlins,
Creasy and another middle-aged superspy in
Safe House (2012). Tailored to Washington’s
gravitas and presence in the same way that
Jack Reacher, Bryan Mills and John Wick are
to the screen personae of Tom Cruise, Liam
Neeson and Keanu Reeves, McCall is another
noir-ish lonely man of integrity, devastating in
action against groups of much younger men,
ruminating over past tragedies as he lives
a minimalist life in theoretical retirement,
stalking through standard case-of-the-week
stories. It’s a factor that Washington likes to play
inspirational heroes – McCall spends almost as
much time persuading a young black man not
to get sucked into gang life as he does fighting
his rogue ex-colleagues in order to avenge his
former boss. Melissa Leo, held over from the first
film, is too quickly killed off – it’s about time
a middle-aged, charismatic female lead got an
action franchise of her own, and Leo would be
top of pretty much everyone’s list for the gig.
Like its predecessor, The Equalizer 2 runs
long and slow for a simple genre exercise. Its
self-contained equalisations – rescuing a child
abducted to Turkey by a runaway father, battering
a roomful of young white execs who have done
something non-specific but dreadful to a female
intern, a Harry Brown-like invasion of a drug
gang’s lair – are livelier than the main storyline.
Like many rebooted premises, this makes the
mistake of getting too personal too early. Bryan
Mills is family-focused in his rampages and John
Wick misses his dog (and wife), but McCall is
supposed to be a dispassionate vigilante – going
into action for justice rather than for vengeance
or to purge his own dreary demons (guilt
over a wife killed by a bomb meant for him,
as represented by a symbolically abandoned
home). The first film pitted McCall against
generic tattooed Russian mobsters; this comes
up with even blander villains, rogue spooks
who can’t hold the screen against Washington’s
telling, minimal glances and frowns.
The script, by Richard Wenk – who wrote
and directed the lively Grace Jones horror
comedy Vamp (1986) before becoming go-to
guy for manly middle-age-spread franchises,
with contributions to the Expendables, Mechanic
and Jack Reacher sagas – leaps about oddly all
over the map. Needless trips to Belgium and
Washington DC are conveyed by stock shots of
planes taking off and landing when the story
 The Eyes of Orson Welles
United Kingdom/USA 2018
Director: Mark Cousins
Certificate 12A 114m 40s

REVIEWS
Mean mode: Denzel Washington

could more profitably be confined to Boston,

before heading to a hurricane-beset abandoned
coast town for a protracted but effective final
one-against-four fight in the wind and rain.
For all its creakiness, The Equalizer 2 delivers
on its brief, with Antoine Fuqua – who worked
with Washington on the much more peppery
Training Day (2001), a film not designed to Thinking eye: Orson Welles
have a sequel, and another possible franchise
reboot, The Magnificent Seven (2016) – staging Reviewed by Ben Walters artworks speak for themselves. Cousins
suspenseful confrontations as McCall politely In 1934, when he was still frames them within a sequential thematic
intrudes into the safe spaces of bad guys and See Feature a teenager, Orson Welles argument engaging with Welles’s formative
makes clear, reasoned arguments before breaking on page 42 published acting editions years, his admiration for working people, his
out martial-arts moves and gunplay. In these of three Shakespeare plays, intemperate passions, his fascination with
set pieces, the build-up is as important as the produced with his teacher and power and his appreciation of the absurd. It’s a
payoff, allowing Washington a hint of twinkle friend Roger Hill. ‘Everybody’s Shakespeare’, as rich and rewarding approach to a full life, able
as McCall relishes the prospect that baddies the project became known, was widely used in to encompass Rembrandt and Rita Hayworth
will make ill-advised moves rather than defuse schools for decades and remains exceptional, and offer new vistas on familiar biographical
the situation by doing the right thing. not least for its evidence of Welles’s precociously moments, including Welles’s vociferous defence
vivid talent and its dramaturgical urgency and of a black veteran assaulted by a policeman
Credits and Synopsis irreverence in an era of fusty bardolatry. The most and the emotional toll of his banishment
compelling element of the books, though, might from the editing of Touch of Evil (1958).
be the illustrations with which Welles furnished The work on show derives from a trove to
Produced by Jenny Gering Miles Whittaker
Todd Black Stunt Coordinators Orson Bean them, a bountiful array of proposed set designs, which Cousins was given access by Welles’s
Jason Blumenthal Jeff Dashnaw Sam Rubinstein lighting arrangements, character sketches and daughter Beatrice, as well as other archives, and
Denzel Washington JJ Dashnaw Bill Pullman
Antoine Fuqua Fight Coordinators Brian Plummer dramatic blocking. Dazzlingly diverse in style, some of it is animated to reveal lines walking
Alex Siskin Mick Gould Melissa Leo accomplished yet seemingly breezy in execution, across the page or washes seeping in. The
Steve Tisch Lin Oeding Susan Plummer
Mace Neufeld Matthew Rugetti Jonathan Scarfe
they constitute the microcosmic public debut styles are eclectic, dynamic, usually intensely
Tony Eldridge Resnik of Welles’s genius, a register of storytelling that characterful. Here, exaggerated but not quite
Michael Sloan ©Columbia Pictures Sakina Jaffrey
Written by Industries, Inc. Fatima
harmoniously melded the narrative and the caricatured, are the individuals sketched on
Richard Wenk Production Kazy Tauginas visual, the heroic and the absurd, the tale and the hoof during teenage travels in Ireland and
Based on the Companies Ari its telling. ‘Everybody’s Shakespeare’ insists Morocco; here, simple and oppressive, is the
television series Columbia Pictures Garrett A. Golden
created by Michael presents Kovac that Shakespeare – in fact, drama – is not essence of the stark lighting marking Julius
Sloan, Richard An Escape Artists/ only text but image too. Welles was known Caesar on Broadway and The Trial on screen;
Lindheim Zhiv/Mace Neufeld Dolby Atmos
Director of production In Colour for his voice but he thought with his eyes. here, almost audible in their pomp and clatter,
Photography A film by Antoine [2.35:1] Welles sketched, drew and painted throughout are ideas for knights at Shrewsbury; here, in
Oliver Wood Fuqua
Editor Executive Distributor
his life, as preparation for theatre and film work, wistful, broken ochres and whites, is the scorched
Conrad Buff Producers Sony Pictures as a form of conversation with loved ones and and florid Arizona desert that kept Welles
Production Molly Allen Releasing UK
Designer David Bloomfield
simply for the pleasure of image-making. In company later in life. There’s a heroic canvas
Naomi Shohan The Eyes of Orson Welles, director Mark Cousins of Don Quixote and another of a matador, each
Music by/ brings this aspect of Welles’s output to the fore flecked with celestial light and sentimentality.
Conducted by Cast
Harry Gregson- Denzel Washington in an unprecedentedly sustained way, offering Most intimately, there are the private
Williams Robert McCall a discursive, affectionate and insightful tour communications. Across dozens of Christmas
Production Mixer Pedro Pascal
Edward Tise Dave York of the world as Welles filtered it through his cards, trees grow more abstract and Santa gets
Costume Designer Ashton Sanders fingers on to paper and canvas. It’s a love letter bigger, bleaker and boozier. Self-caricatures, in
Boston, present day. Former secret agent Robert to Orson, with Cousins’s epistolary second- which depression and apology mingle with
McCall occasionally uses his skills to right wrongs person voiceover conjuring Welles as a live humour and self-aggrandisement, give us Orson
on behalf of innocents. McCall’s former boss Susan interlocutor, informing him of the ways the as devil, Orson as sadsack, Orson as regal roué.
Plummer, one of the few who knows he’s still alive, world has changed since he died in 1985, There are numerous connections, implicit
is murdered while on assignment in Belgium. McCall noting how life has become more visual, more and overt, to Welles’s film work. Early cartoons
contacts his former colleague Dave York while
looking into Susan’s death, and discovers that connected and more alienated, tantalising him and elements of artistic study are linked to
York is himself the killer and working with a rogue with news of the internet and demonstrations later output: perhaps the Thorne miniature
faction to ‘clean house’ by murdering other agents. of cheap digital filmmaking technology. rooms on show at the Art Institute of Chicago
York and his crew kidnap Miles, a youth McCall has Some looming, angular cityscapes aside, influenced the precise interiors of Citizen Kane
been mentoring, as leverage. McCall returns to his Cousins avoids aping a Wellesian aesthetic, (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942);
former home, in a coastal town currently beset by a
hurricane, and bests the killers in battle, saving Miles.
instead revisiting key biographical sites maybe the ‘real people’ glimpsed and
with poignant stillness and letting Welles’s delineated in Marrakech anticipated

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 67

 The First Purge
Director: Gerard McMurray
Certificate 15 97m 25s

those filmed in Brazil for the unfinished Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton

It’s All True. Welles’s bold, charming and The fourth instalment in the stone-dumb, style-
experimental 1950s travelogues might have allergic James DeMonaco-created Purge franchise,
REVIEWS

illustrated this point further but, as so often, The First Purge sets out to answer the question:
the TV work doesn’t get much of a look-in; even “How did the Purge begin?” But it raises another,
Orson Welles’ Sketch Book (BBC, 1955), a rare even more intriguing quandary: “How do you
project structured precisely around Welles as make a movie about a race war that’s this boring?”
draughtsman, is glanced at rather than fully The First Purge is the first instalment of the
unpacked. There is, however, extensive and series without DeMonaco at the helm – though
welcome exploration of The Lady from Shanghai he is on screenwriting duties – and although you
(1947) and Mr Arkadin (1955), two campy, could hardly do any worse than the original, the
baroque features commonly overlooked or handover to director Gerard McMurray proves
downplayed. Their grotesque, irregular, dreamlike to be a lateral move. In The First Purge, as in the
and sometimes surreal pictorial gambits are more franchise as a whole, we find the problems
appreciatively framed by Cousins’s articulation plaguing contemporary genre cinema, in
of Welles’s voracious visual sensibility. particular horror, in their most clarified form.
There’s also a lot of love for the Shakespeare Beginning with 2013’s The Purge, each fresh Survival stills: Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade
adaptations – the misty claustrophobia of Macbeth entry in the series has presented the gruesome
(1948), the architectural deceptions of Othello spectacle of a ‘high concept’ – the idea of an lead Nya (Lex Scott Davis) has a close call with
(1951), the tragic clowning of Chimes at Midnight annual 12-hour free-for-all in America, during an assailant who blindly gropes at her crotch
(1966) – that loops back to the passionate which time ‘do what thou wilt’ is the whole of from his subterranean hidey-hole, there is a
conviction of ‘Everybody’s Shakespeare’. Cousins the law – in search of an actual movie to attach throwaway line about “pussy-grabbing”, while
unearths an extraordinary clip of Welles on The itself to. It would be tough to stake a claim for the presently heightened and much commented
Dean Martin Show in 1968, applying his Falstaff any of these films as art, and so the pro-Purge on atmosphere of racial animus is made the
makeup with a paintbrush, momentarily lost argument goes that the social commentary of very oxygen of the film, which reveals that the
in the mingling of storytelling, painting and the movies, however muddled they may be as Purge was invented as a means to calculatedly
performing. The Eyes of Orson Welles conveys statements about US anger and race- or class- cull the US population of its black underclass.
the sense of art as a reflexive way of being in based resentment, compensates for any of the Along with Nya, the hero of the piece is
and dealing with both world and work. In rampant narrative or aesthetic failings in the neighbourhood drug kingpin Dmitri – a part
the mansion of Welles’s genius, many rooms works themselves. A more cogent argument that Y’lan Noel fills with a broad-shouldered,
remain uninventoried. Here, Cousins offers might be made for the movies as pure junky good prowling physicality. He looks primed for a
an exemplary guided tour through one of the times, though they lack the threat, scurrility, worthy action sequence that he never chances
most intimate and revelatory chambers. comic daring or jerry-rigged ingenuity that would across, even in a climax that pits him against
elevate them into the first order of trash, and here mercenaries who are butchering the residents
Credits and Synopsis only the impossible performance of a clearly of a low-income residential tower block, a
adrift Marisa Tomei comes close to camp value. sequence that has the misfortune to recall
The premier Purge of the (all together now!) the early project-clearing scene in Dawn of the
Producers Executive Don Quixote (1992)
Mary Bell Producers Othello (1951) Age of Trump, The First Purge does for the Dead (1978). All the wrong lessons have been
Adam Dawtrey Mark Bell La terra trema contemporary American scene what Saw VI learned from that film’s director, George A.
Writer Mark Thomas (1948)
Mark Cousins Michael Moore Macbeth (1948) did for the post-2008 financial crash period – Romero, remembered for his perceived social
Cinematographer Film Extracts The Immortal that is to say, rifles indiscriminately through commentary rather than for the tangible feeling
Mark Cousins The Third Man Story (1968)
Editor (1949) Prince of Foxes
the headlines for any potentially exploitable of societal breakdown and frenzy that he invoked
Timo Langer Touch of Evil (1958) (1949) buzzwords to fling about willy-nilly in the through a fine-tuned film sense. The First Purge
Composer Mr Arkadin (1955)
Matt Regan The Trial (1962)
hope of enlivening an otherwise cynical, rote has things to say about contemporary America,
Sound Mix/ Citizen Kane (1941) Voice Cast and incompetently made waste product with but who doesn’t? And who cares, if it only has
Sound Design The Magnificent Jack Klaff jolts of audience recognition. And so, when another pathetic yowl to add to the din?
Ali Murray Ambersons (1942) Orson Welles
Animation and Man of Aran (1934)
Visual Effects Cradle Will In Colour Credits and Synopsis
Danny Carr Rock (1999) [1.78:1]
Me and Orson
©Bofa Productions Welles (2008) Distributor
Limited When Strangers Dogwoof Produced by Production Marisa Tomei US, the near future. Crazed drug addict Skeletor talks
Production Marry (1944) Jason Blum Companies Dr May Updale, on camera about his desire to unleash violence.
Companies It’s All True (1993) Michael Bay Universal Pictures ‘the Architect’ A political party called the Founding Fathers
A Bofa Production in Chimes at Andrew Form presents in Rotimi Paul
association with the Midnight (1965) Brad Fuller association with Skeletor has taken control in Washington, and has proposed
BBC and Filmstruck Bird of Paradise Sébastien K. Perfect World the implementation of a ‘Purge’ – one night when
Supported by the (1932) Lemercier Pictures a Platinum Dolby Digital the rule of law will be suspended and the populace
National Lottery The Lady from Written by Dunes/Blumhouse/ In Colour encouraged to release their antisocial impulses.
through Creative Shanghai (1947) James DeMonaco Man in a Tree [2.35:1]
Scotland F for Fake (1973) Director of production
Staten Island is chosen for a test run, with low-
Photography Executive Producers Distributor income residents encouraged to remain during the
A documentary about Orson Welles’s visual artwork, Anastas Michos James DeMonaco Universal Pictures experiment by the offer of a payment, which increases
including drawings, paintings, set and production Edited by Steven R. Molen International according to the level of their participation. Nya, an
designs, greetings cards and illustrations in Jim Page Luc Etienne UK & Eire activist protesting against the experiment, stays
Production Designer Jeanette Volturno
personal correspondence. Director Mark Cousins’s Sharon Lomofsky Couper Samuelson behind to look after members of the community, as
voiceover takes the form of a letter addressed to Music does her younger brother Isaiah, an aspiring drug
Welles, informing him of changes to the world in the Kevin Lax dealer looking to avenge himself on Skeletor. Isaiah
years since his death in 1985 and articulating the Sound Mixer Cast is working for Nya’s ex-boyfriend Dmitri, a drug
Ken Ishii Y’lan Noel
main contours of his life and career: his childhood, Costume Designer Dmitri
kingpin. As the violence escalates on Purge night, the
adolescence, early travels and training; his personal Amela Baksic Lex Scott Davis experiment’s chief theorist Dr May Updale realises
and political engagement; his appreciation of love Stunt Coordinator Nya that much of the carnage is being committed by
and passion; his fascination with regal power and Hank Amos Joivan Wade outside mercenaries; she is killed because of this
authority; and his appreciation of the absurd. Cousins Co-stunt Isaiah discovery. Mercenaries go through Nya’s tower
Coordinator Steve Harris
spends time with Welles’s daughter Beatrice and Mike Massa Freddy block, killing residents, but Dmitri brings their
visits many locations of significance to Welles. mission to a halt. The Purge is declared a success.

68 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

The Heiresses Hotel Transylvania 3
Paraguay/Uruguay/Germany/Brazil/Norway/France/Italy 2018
Director: Marcelo Martinessi
A Monster Vacation
USA 2018, Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Certificate 12A 97m 57s
Certificate U 97m 13s

Reviewed by Maria Delgado coterie of friends across the city. Through Angy Reviewed by Kim Newman
In an early scene in Marcelo (Ana Ivanova), the confident, sensual daughter The first flourish of American horror cinema
See Rushes Martinessi’s accomplished debut of one of Pituca’s friends, Chela comes out of her – Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The

REVIEWS
on page 13 feature, the introverted Chela shell: she takes a new pride in her appearance; Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and
(Ana Brun) pushes away her she shyly tries on Angy’s sunglasses and puffs The Wolf Man (1941) – established a pantheon
partner of 30 years, the more on her cigarette, like a teenager tentatively of monsters. These films were so transgressive
gregarious Chiquita (Margarita Irún), claiming exploring something for the first time. that a British censorship campaign analogous to
that she smells of cigarettes and alcohol. The pair This is very much a woman-centred film. the later witch-hunts against horror comics and
have returned from their friend Carmela’s 50th Men are largely peripheral presences – evoked video nasties convinced Hollywood to abandon
birthday party and it’s clear that their predicament in conversations, they are mainly unreliable and such terrifying unpleasantness for several years
– Chiquita is facing fraud charges and a prison unfaithful. Angy’s on-off partner hovers at the in the late 1930s. Yet, by the late 1940s, the
sentence looms – is now public knowledge. “Don’t edges of the frame, cropped slightly out of focus. monsters were playing foils to comics Abbott and
be so dramatic,” Chiquita tells Chela. But for Chela, Carmela’s 50th party appears entirely populated by Costello. The revival of interest in these films in
a painter who has existed in Chiquita’s shadow, women. Angy’s friends Vero and Cata are divorced. the late 1950s was propelled by nostalgia – so,
the future looks uncertain and too dramatic for These women are, however, also part of an elite while Hammer films were making Dracula,
comfort. She is unwilling to get out of bed, and sits class that makes very clear assumptions about value Frankenstein and company shocking again, US
in silence in the dark rooms of their large house in and rank. Pituca talks with disdain of the difficulties monster culture was more likely to be taming the
an affluent district of Paraguay’s capital Asunción, of securing good maids, while Chela criticises her icons in the likes of the sitcom The Munsters, the
snapping at concerned friends and new maid kindly live-in servant Pati. In a deeply stratified novelty record ‘Monster Mash’ or the animated
Pati, whom Chiquita instructs in the preparation society, Chela finds it hard to part with possessions musical comedy Mad Monster Party? (1967).
of the cantankerous Chela’s drinks and pills. inherited from her wealthy family. Possessions The Hotel Transylvania films – notably
The dark, largely empty interiors of the imposing symbolise status, and without them she feels bereft. more lasting and successful than such stabs
house that Chela rattles around in like a ghost are Through stillness, the smallest arch of an eyebrow at resurrecting the monster franchise as Van
duly contrasted with the busy, colourful patio of the and shift of an eye, Brun brilliantly conveys the Helsing (2004), Dracula Untold (2014) and The
prison where Chiquita is held. The Caribbean green disorientation of a woman who has always relied Mummy (2017) – is a contemporary incarnation
of the yard and the reds and blues of the inmates’ on others to service her needs and whims. of this approach. All the monsters are tamed
and visitors’ clothes and makeup – as well as the As with Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria (2013) – which and domesticated. Dracula (voiced by Adam
dancing, talking and activity of the crowded space also had a middle-aged protagonist – the soundtrack Sandler in a hokey Bela Lugosi imitation)
– mark a sharp divergence from the house’s dark offers a wry commentary on the action. The elegant is a sweet, harassed, over-controlling father
rooms and yellowing wallpaper. Her father’s old crooner who sings Demetrio Ortiz and María Teresa (and grandfather); the Frankenstein Monster
Mercedes car, which the couple is planning to sell, Márquez’s Paraguayan classic ‘Mis noches sin ti’ (Kevin James) is a big dumb lug who keeps
provides a new space for Chela to engage with the (‘My nights without you’) at Carmela’s birthday losing parts of himself not stitched on firmly
world. Its front window gives her a space for looking party foretells what is to come for the forlorn Chela. enough; the Wolf Man (Steve Buscemi) and
out, contrasting with her furtive glances through Spanish crooner José Luis Perales’s ‘Me llamas’ his mate (Molly Shannon) are weighed down
half-open doors as she spies on those who come to (‘You’re calling me’), a song about moving on, plays by a litter of uncontrollable pups; and an array
view the household possessions that are up for sale. as Chela drives Angy and her mother to hospital for of other monsters famous (the Mummy) and
As the film progresses, Chela emerges both the latter’s medical treatment. And the final credits minor (the chupacabra, famous in Mexico for
literally and metaphorically from the shadows. roll to the melancholy sounds of Maya Belsitzman exsanguinating goats) slither around in the
Acerbic neighbour Pituca (María Martins, with and Matan Ephrat’s ‘Recuerdos de Ypacarai’ margins doing spot gags, the most inspired
the faded glamour of an elderly Bette Davis) (‘Greetings from Ypacarai’), a song whose lyrics featuring a green gelatinous blob styled after
provides her with a sense of purpose, asking her suggest that Chela’s disappearance may be more the 1950s science-fiction film menace.
to ferry first her and then her bridge-playing lasting than Chiquita may initially suspect. This threequel threatens to take a fairly
desperate turn – when a series is flagging, sending
Credits and Synopsis all the characters on holiday usually betokens
a lack of ideas – but actually perks up after the
fairly rote Hotel Transylvania 2. It sidesteps the
Produced by Filmproduktions, República - Cabildo, Cinématographie et FSA - Fundo Setorial Chiquita, ‘Chiqui’
Sebastián Peña Esquina Filmes, Norsk Asociación Cultural de l’Image animée, do Audiovisual, ZDF, Ana Ivanova problem of many animated sequels of revisiting
Escobar Filmproduksjon, La Comuneros, Cultura Ministère des ARTE, Film und Angy characters whose arcs were well and truly
Marcelo Martinessi Fábrica Nocturna Paraguay, Tetã Affaires étrangères Medien Stiftung
Written by Productions Arandupy Sãmbyhyha et du Développement NRW, World Cinema In Colour finished in the first movie (cf Shrek, Kung Fu
Marcelo Martinessi Production - Secretaría Nacional international, Fund, Kulturstiftung [2.35:1] Panda) by bringing in an antagonist who might
Director of Companies de Cultura, Tetã Institut Français des Bundes, Subtitles
Photography La Babosa Cine Rekuái - Gobierno Co-production fund: Internationale
be a genuine threat to the genial creatures and
Luis Armando Arteaga in co-production Nacional TorinoFilmLab Filmfestspiele Berlin, Distributor stirring some authentic thrills into the jokey mix.
Editor with Mutante Financed by the With the support of Federal Foreign Office, Thunderbird
Fernando Epstein Cine, Pandora Fondo de Fomento the Creative Europe - Goethe Institut, Releasing
An amusing, nicely spectacular early
Art Director Filmproduktions, Cinematográfico y MEDIA Programme of Museo Nazionale montage shows a dashing Count Dracula
Carlo Spatuzza Esquina Filmes, Norsk Audiovisual ICAU, the European Union del Cinema Paraguayan inflicting a series of defeats on the blustering,
Sound Designers Filmproduksjon, La Coproducción National and Executive Producers theatrical title
Daniel Turini Fabrica Nocturna Minoriataria international Sebastián Peña Las herederas monster-intolerant Dr Van Helsing. The
Fernando Henna Productions ICAU 2016 funders: FONDEC Escobar climax (which mixes competitive DJs
Rafael Álvarez Made thanks to the Supported by Sør Paraguay, Uruguay Marcelo Martinessi
Costume Designer financial support of Fond - Norwegian Audiovisual, Ancine
Tania Simbrón Programa Ibermedia South Film Fund - Agência Nacional
With the support With the support of do Cinemas, BRDE Cast
©LaBabosaCine, of Congreso de Aide aux Cinémas - Banco Regional de Ana Brun
Mutante la Nacíon, Centro du Monde - Centre Desenvolvimento Chela
Cine, Pandora Cultural de la National de la do Extremo Sul, Margarita Irún

Paraguay, the present. Long-time partners Chela and
Chiquita are having to sell some of their more valuable
possessions – crystal glassware, antique furniture,
paintings, silverware – because Chiquita is facing fraud
charges. With Chiquita subsequently imprisoned, Chela
has to manage on her own, with only new maid Pati
to help. Asked by her elderly neighbour Pituca, who is
fearful of a wave of violence in the city, to drive her to her
regular bridge matches, Chela soon finds herself also
chauffeuring Pituca’s friends, even though she doesn’t
have a driving licence. This brings her some welcome
income and a new circle of acquaintances, including
Angy, the daughter of one of Pituca’s bridge-playing
set, to whom she is increasingly attracted. Chiquita is
released from prison and sells Chela’s car. She calls
out to Chela, who has disappeared with the car.
Captain blood: Hotel Transylvania 3

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 69

 In Darkness
United Kingdom/USA 2017
Director: Anthony Byrne
Certificate 15 101m 5s

and a parody of Clash of the Titans) has a Reviewed by Trevor Johnston

steampunk-cyborg version of the great In London’s Mayfair, there’s a quiet bit of open
monster-fighter (Jim Gaffigan) summoning space called Brown Hart Gardens, which might
REVIEWS

the kraken with ‘evil beats’ and presiding over possibly have inspired the fictional address
another fall of Atlantis – here, a lost monster of Blackhart Gardens, the upscale place of
civilisation. Less effective is an easing into the residence of Natalie Dormer’s blind pianist
late-middle-age romcom market – it’s a wonder in this psychological thriller. As the story
they missed calling it The Best Exotic Transylvania begins, Dormer’s Sofia is poised yet vulnerable
Hotel – with widower Dracula recapturing his – even more so after her upstairs neighbour
‘zing’ with Ericka (Kathryn Hahn), the conflicted takes a fatal plunge out of the window and
descendent of his arch-enemy. (She is, though, skulduggery is evidently afoot – leading us to
a terrific and oddly disturbing character design expect a blind-girl-in-peril flick along familiar
– nimble, pliable and weirdly perky.) Dracula’s Wait Until Dark lines. However, several pointed
daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez), who propels glimpses of that Blackhart Gardens street sign
the plot, and human husband Johnny (Andy suggest there might be more to the seemingly
Samberg), who has to be shoehorned into the demure heroine than we first imagined,
climax, were the rebels in the first film, but are as writer-producers Dormer and Anthony
now stuck with being sensible while the older Byrne set out to wrong-foot the audience.
and younger generations do the comic shtick. Under Byrne’s confident direction, it’s fair
Given that any popular children’s film is now to say that there are some effective frissons, See no evil: Natalie Dormer
likely to be the subject of repeated on-demand not least the opening, which plunges us into a
viewings – demanded of parents by young horrific close-up strangulation reminiscent of It all builds to a finale that collapses in a heap
enthusiasts – the trick of crafting one is to cram Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972), before pulling back after delivering one of those rethink-everything
every frame with easy-to-overlook detail, like to a film-score session with Dormer tinkling the zingers, which in this instance just doesn’t sit
the marginal jokes that artist Sergio Aragonés ivories. Later, there’s a just-so moment when two convincingly with what has gone before. Still, like
used to scribble between and around the frames major characters begin a significant conversation some of the wonkier gialli from the subgenre’s
of MAD magazine’s movie satires. This offers a in a foreign language; yet elsewhere the film early-70s heyday – seemingly a reference point
few sweet sillinesses (including the conceptually displays a willingness to take on expansive here – there are elements to enjoy, even as the
bizarre ‘son of blob’ character, an animate lump of themes without quite having the narrative plot stumbles. Admittedly, Dormer is somewhat
seasick) and just enough macabre touches (deck wherewithal to dramatise them effectively. over-tested by the darker emotional elements
quoits played on a grid of chalk corpse outlines) If you’re one of those noir-hardened viewers of the writing, but Byrne’s direction does well
to serve as a reminder that these monsters are, who squirm when characters needlessly divulge with some keenly chosen locations, including
after all, still at least mildly monstrous. nuggets of information for the hard-pressed the National Gallery and the concrete-and-steel
writers to deploy as plot points further down cavern of Westminster underground station,
Credits and Synopsis the line, be duly warned. Here, for instance, the captured by cameraman Si Bell in saturated tones
doomed upstairs neighbour unaccountably that prove cumulatively unsettling in effect.
decides to confess the name of her previously The standout, though, is Niall Byrne’s music,
Produced by Sony Pictures Asher Blinkoff
Michelle Murdocca Animation presents Dennis ‘secret’ perfume, whose import then rebounds which unabashedly presents itself as a thriller
Written by Chris Parnell clunk-clunk-clunkety-clunk through the rest of score in the post-Herrmann mode and like,
Genndy Tartakovsky Stan, fish man
Michael McCullers Voice Cast Joe Jonas the movie. Even harder to take, however, is the say, Pino Donaggio in his pomp, brings a chill
Editor Adam Sandler the kraken rather glib fashion in which Balkan war atrocities beauty to the long string lines and icily effective
Joyce Arrastia Dracula Chrissy Teigen
Production Andy Samberg Crystal, invisible
are woven into the unfolding thriller plot, with keyboard interjections. A strong showcase for
Designer Jonathan woman the evil actions of a Bosnian Serb war criminal the Irish composer, then, though for key creative
Scott Wills Selena Gomez Mel Brooks
Music Mavis Vlad, Drac’s dad
acting as a convenient sharpener for the heroine’s duo Dormer and Byrne, the verdict is that they
Mark Mothersbaugh Kevin James Jaime Camil intensifying jeopardy rather than carrying any probably need to demand more of themselves
DJ Music Frankenstein, ‘Frank’ el chupacabra genuine resonance with a very real recent conflict. as writers if they’re going to progress.
Tiësto Fran Drescher
Re-recording Eunice, wife of Dolby Atmos
Mixers Frankenstein In Colour Credits and Synopsis
Michael Semanick Steve Buscemi [1.85:1]
Tony Lamberti Wayne, werewolf
Character Designer Molly Shannon Some screenings
Craig Kellman Wanda, werewolf presented in 3D Produced by Director of Sound Designer A film by Anthony Ed Skrein Joely Richardson
Senior Animation David Spade Ben Pugh Photography Sebastian Morsch Byrne Marc Alex
Supervisor Griffin, invisible man Distributor Adam Morane- Si Bell Costume Designer Executive Producers Emily Ratajkowski
Alan Hawkins Keegan- Sony Pictures Griffiths Edited by Nat Turner Rory Aitken Veronique In Colour
Michael Key Releasing UK Josh Varney Tom Harrison-Read Joshua Horsfield Neil Maskell [2.35:1]
©Sony Pictures Murray the mummy Anthony Byrne Paul Knight ©In Darkness Limited DI Oscar Mills
Animation Inc. Jim Gaffigan US theatrical title Natalie Dormer Production Designer Production Jan Bijvoet Distributor
and MRC II Abraham Van Hotel Transylvania Written by Sonja Klaus Companies Cast Zoran Radic Shear Entertainment
Distribution LP Helsing 3 Summer Anthony Byrne Music A 42 production in Natalie Dormer James Cosmo
Production Kathryn Hahn Vacation Natalie Dormer Niall Byrne association with XYZ Sofia Niall
Company Ericka, ship’s captain
London, present day. Sofia, a young blind woman, is a effect a violent rescue then flee the scene. A wounded
pianist who works on film soundtracks. Her upstairs Sofia’s hospitalisation intensifies Mills’s suspicions.
Mavis worries that her widowed father Count Dracula, neighbour Veronique, daughter of controversial Serbian Sofia hands over the USB stick to the duplicitous
who runs a hotel for monsters, is overworked. She politician Zoran Radic, dies after falling from her Alexandra in exchange for a precious family photo. After
books him – and the hotel’s entire population of window. Detective Mills questions Sofia, but both are Veronique’s funeral, Sofia, having discovered that she is
monsters – on a cruise through the Bermuda Triangle unaware of the involvement of hired assassin Marcus, Radic’s daughter – he raped her blind mother – misses
to the lost city of Atlantis. On the trip, Dracula is working for his security consultant sister Alexandra an opportunity to kill him. Radic eliminates the double-
smitten with Ericka, the human captain of the cruise on behalf of Radic to confirm Veronique’s disloyalty. crossing Alexandra, and visits Sofia’s flat; during a
ship – but she is a descendant of his nemesis Dr Marcus correctly suspects that Sofia is in possession struggle, he accidentally falls to his death, leaving her
Van Helsing and is plotting with her half-machine of a USB stick incriminating Radic, and learns that as vengeance only partially assuaged. Sofia embraces the
ancestor to use an Atlantean artefact to kill off the sole survivor after her Bosnian family was murdered wounded Marcus, who had tried to come to her rescue,
monsters once and for all by summoning the kraken by Radic’s men during the Balkan conflict, she is now thus revealing that she has been feigning sightlessness,
to destroy them. However, Ericka sees the good in plotting to kill Radic herself. In turn Radic sends his having assumed the identity of her murdered blind
Dracula and helps to thwart Van Helsing’s plan. henchmen to attack and abduct her, only for Marcus to sister. Mills arrives too late, as Sofia makes her escape.

70 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

Leaning into the Wind Andy Goldsworthy
United Kingdom/Germany 2016
Director: Thomas Riedelsheimer
Certificate PG 97m 15s
Reviewed by Hannah McGill
Seventeen years have passed since the release
of Thomas Riedelsheimer’s Rivers and Tides,
an admired screen evocation of the practice
of the English-born, Scottish-based artist
Andy Goldsworthy. This follow-up revisits
Goldsworthy, now in his early sixties, and
offers him space to consider in his own low-key
but self-possessed manner the ways in which
he and his work have evolved over time.
The themes of ageing and revisiting are
directly relevant, since the central preoccupations
of Goldsworthy’s work are permanence,
ephemerality and the physical effects of time. He
works directly with nature’s objects and processes,
intervening in the landscape and using materials
– such as rocks, mud, icicles or leaves – to imitate,
embellish and otherwise comment on organic
forms. One of his ongoing projects involves a
tree long since felled by Dutch elm disease: he
monitors its cracks and beautifies them with
snow and leaves. Goldsworthy is, presumably,
Riedelsheimer’s tree – although as the artist
observes, he will likely be the more ephemeral
object. “There’s no doubt that the rest of that
tree will outlive me.” So too will the sturdier and
more monolithic of his works, some of which
we see under construction here, though the film
is a bit vague about what is happening where.
These grand commissions underline that
Goldsworthy is an establishment artist, known
– in a British art scene that has long thrived on
the generation of controversy – for work that
is pleasing to the eye. His style is also a fit for
a current British trend for psychogeography
and highly individualistic nature writing,
which – to quote a recent piece by Joe
Kennedy in New Socialist magazine – “both
commodifies an idea of wildness and quietly
campaigns for a patriotic traditionalism”.
Is Goldsworthy’s work political? Is it the
opposite thereof? He’s not drawn on this here,
though he acknowledges the inward-looking
aspect of his practice: “It does make sense of
my life, what I make.” At one point he notes
that introspection need not be considered
separately from commentary on nature.
“Nature’s everywhere, so why even mention
it? When I work in the city I work with nature.
When I work with myself, I’m working
with nature.” It’s an interesting thought, the
logical conclusions of which could have been
productively explored – is heavy industry
Credits and Synopsis
Producers ©Skyline de Botton, John
Leslie Hills Productions, The Caulkins, Leslie Hills
Stefan Tolz Human Touch Limited A film by Thomas
Photography and Filmpunkt Riedelsheimer
Thomas GmbH, Germany
Riedelsheimer Production In Colour
Edited by Companies [1.78:1]
Thomas Skyline and Filmpunkt Part-subtitled
Riedelsheimer in association with
Music/Guitar/ Creative Scotland Distributor
Keyboard Supported by the Curzon Artificial Eye
Fred Frith National Lottery
Sound through Creative
Douglas Fairgrieve Scotland, Robert
Tobias Müller Hiscox, Roger Evans,
Felix Riedelsheimer Aey Phanachet,
Ford Folliard Sakurako and
William Fisher, Miel
Into the wild: Andy Goldsworthy
nature, since humans make it? Are changes
to the physical environment or the climate
natural, if human activity engenders them?
It’s not in the nature of this film to challenge
Goldsworthy, however. For the most part,
that’s fine: he is an engaging speaker, with a
combination of modesty and fervour that goes
some way to clarifying just how he has contrived
to plough such a specialised, eccentric and
physically demanding furrow for so long. The
interview material is earnest and at times rather
touching, while the scenes of Goldsworthy’s
work being made by him and others pay
eloquent tribute to pieces and processes that
are at once rugged and elegant, intricately
involved and bracingly simple. A dramatic
modern jazz score by Fred Frith, meanwhile,
ensures that things never feel overly cosy.
It would have been gratifying, however,
for the film to offer some insight into how
Goldsworthy’s work and life are paid for. That’s
his business, of course; but in an age when
supporting themselves and their practice is
a challenge akin to leaning into a hurricane
for most artists, it arguably behoves the most
successful ones to be transparent about how
they’ve managed it. Who’s paying for him to
work in Brazil and San Francisco and southern
France? Him? A patron? Public funding? Money
may be unromantic, but it’s no less a part of
Goldsworthy’s creative ecology than his materials
and ideas, and it doesn’t grow on trees.
A documentary about the British sculptor and land
artist Andy Goldsworthy, who is seen at home in
Dumfriesshire and around the world, working on and
explaining his landscape interventions and his work
with natural forms. Once a mostly solitary practitioner,
he now works with the assistance of his teenage
daughter Holly Goldsworthy. In Ibitipoca, Brazil,
Goldsworthy learns about the construction of floors
from clay and bull dung; at home in Scotland, he keeps
track of the cracks and decay in an old tree felled by
Dutch elm disease; in Edinburgh, he decorates public
walkways with precise stripes of vibrantly coloured
leaves. He also visits sculptures made many years ago
near Lancaster, where he studied, and works on large-
scale projects in San Francisco, Missouri and France.
Mamma Mia!
Here We Go Again
USA/United Kingdom/Japan 2018
Director: Ol Parker, Certificate PG 113m 40s
Reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson
Must we go again? Mamma Mia! (2008) was a
clumsy mess and a one-film case for the artistry
REVIEWS
of the playback singer. Now we are back on the
Greek island of Kalokairi, and continuing our
prurient investigation into mother Donna’s
summer of free love as a graduate and the
parentage of her daughter Sophie. Twenty-
five years later, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried)
is opening a hotel in her mother’s honour.
Despite the parallel timelines, the film has
next to no plot, and what events do transpire
are often unexplained or swiftly dropped.
However, the second film has been
benevolently touched by the hand of Richard
Curtis. Deadpan humour and frequent pratfalls
undercut the cheesiness of the set-up, in which
each turn of events, no matter how slight, is
celebrated with an enthusiastic performance
of a Swedish pop classic. Can we name the
band, to thank them for the music? Foolish
not to, for they haunt the film as eerily as
Meryl Streep’s Donna, now a year deceased,
inhabits picturesque Kalokairi. Despite that,
no one ever mentions their name. It’s like one
of those movies about the shuffling undead
that never utters the word ‘zombie’. Say it
once and, just maybe, Abba-cadabra, Kalokairi
will disappear in a puff of patchouli smoke.
Cast aside any fears that the primary goal
is to sell package holidays and compilation
albums, because this time at least they have put
on a diverting show. Ol Parker (The Best Exotic
Marigold Hotel), who co-wrote the script with
Curtis, directs with assurance and some flair.
The film starts slowly, but hits its stride when
young Donna (Lily James) reaches Paris and
encounters Harry, a posh, stammering, awkward
Brit, all too familiar from the Curtis repertoire
but here a hilariously clammy caricature by
Hugh Skinner. Soon Donna and Harry launch
into the film’s best routine – a wildly whimsical
rendition of ‘Waterloo’ in a French restaurant.
Nothing else in the film will be quite so enjoyably
daft, not even an armada of guests entering
harbour while grooving to ‘Dancing Queen’.
James proves a more engaging co-lead
than Seyfried, and thankfully doesn’t
attempt to impersonate Streep. She sings
well, and as her narrative includes three
accelerated handshake-to-heartbreak
romances, she has bountiful opportunities
to dive in and out of the back catalogue.
Donna’s backing singers and best friends Tanya
(Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters)
return and threaten to steal the show, not least
when Baranski breathes unexpected passion
into lines such as “Be still my beating vagina.”
Jessica Keenan Wynn and Alexa Davies provide
unerringly accurate imitations of Baranski’s
and Walters’s shtick in the flashback storyline.
The three dubious fathers also return, with
Pierce Brosnan twinkling his way through self-
conscious gags about his notorious vocals, and
Stellan Skarsgård and Colin Firth forming a
creaky slapstick double act, best limited to the
fringes of this feelgood comedy. Cher, as Sophie’s
deadbeat grandma, needs to do little more than be
Cher, of course, rocking up in a helicopter
and crooning ‘Fernando’ to a long-lost lover.
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 71
 The Man from Mo’Wax
United Kingdom/Japan/USA 2017
Director: Matthew Jones
Certificate 15 115m 32s

There are still regrettable elements in Reviewed by Jason Anderson

this sequel-prequel. The Greek people James Lavelle undoubtedly assumed that
and their poverty are used as little more than he’d get a more flattering kind of treatment
REVIEWS

backdrop, many of the jokes – and the costumes when he first enlisted director Matthew Jones
– are still cheap, and Sophie is still insipid. to film his group UNKLE’s 2006 world tour.
But a musical is a many-layered concoction, Instead, the documentary that emerges a
and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a slice decade later is franker and more revealing than
of crisp, sweet baklava to follow the original’s any such promotional tool might’ve been.
under-seasoned, stodgy moussaka. It helped that Lavelle proved an uncommonly
rich subject, being a music-world figure whose
Credits and Synopsis degree of savvy and ambition was equalled by
his penchant for hubris and self-sabotage. As a
DJ alongside Gilles Peterson at the London club
Produced by Perfect World Jessica Keenan
Judy Craymer Pictures a Littlestar/ Wynn night That’s How It Is and the co-founder of the
Gary Goetzman Playtone production young Tanya Mo’ Wax label, Lavelle became a prime mover in
Written by Presented in Cher
Ol Parker association with Ruby Sheridan, 1990s British dance culture while still a teenager.
Story Dentsu Inc./ ‘Grandma’ Yet when he started UNKLE with his greatest
Richard Curtis Fuji Television Meryl Streep
Ol Parker Network, Inc. Donna
discovery – American DJ and producer Josh Davis,
Catherine Johnson Executive aka DJ Shadow – he demonstrated aspirations
Based on the original Producers Dolby Atmos/
musical Mamma Benny Andersson DTS:X/Auro11.1
beyond the finding and fostering of talent that
Mia!, written by Björn Ulvaeus In Colour is the fundamental function of anyone in A&R From the ashes: James Lavelle
Catherine Johnson, Rita Wilson [2.35:1] (the industry term for artists and repertoire).
originally conceived Tom Hanks
by Judy Craymer, Richard Curtis Distributor The fact that the original title for Jones’s film thereby rooting this story in the kind of cluttered
based on the Phyllida Lloyd Universal Pictures was Artist and Repertoire highlights a core theme environment that’s all too familiar to the many
songs of ABBA Nicky Kentish Barnes International
Director of UK & Eire here – which is the rancour that Lavelle provoked vinyl crate-diggers we meet here. The first of
Photography by blurring the boundary traditionally separating these spaces is glimpsed in footage shot by
Robert Yeoman Cast music-business mavericks from the creatives Lavelle during his inaugural trip to California to
Editor Christine Baranski
Peter Lambert Tanya in their stables. As one early Mo’ Wax partner meet Davis. Hundreds of thousands of records
Production Pierce Brosnan
Designers Sam
laments: “You’ve got a problem if the owner of fill DJ Shadow’s dimly lit basement lair, and
Alan MacDonald Dominic Cooper the label wants to be the main artist on the label.” the friendship we see forming in Lavelle’s
John Frankish Sky Even Lavelle loyalists note the complications jittery video will become key to UNKLE’s most
Score by/Score Colin Firth
Orchestrated and Harry and tensions created by his lack of conventional successful incarnation. But by the time their
Conducted by Andy Garcia artistic abilities (such as writing or playing music) first album arrived in 1998, the connection
Anne Dudley Fernando Cienfuegos
Production Lily James and his need for others to execute his big ideas. had already fractured, and the film presents
Sound Mixer young Donna While The Man from Mo’ Wax follows a the friendship as the first of many casualties
Adrian Bell Sheridan
Costume Designer Amanda Seyfried
conventional doc structure as it charts its of Lavelle’s demands on those around him.
Michele Clapton Sophie Sheridan subject’s rise, fall and last-act resurgence, Jones When we later see Lavelle in another space,
Choreographer Stellan Skarsgård
Anthony van Laast Bill/Kurt
finds more inventive ways of framing Lavelle’s this time a facility filled with the artefacts of
Julie Walters saga. The canniest tactic is to bracket it with his own career, the mood is very different from
©Universal Studios Rosie scenes set in two very different storage spaces, the one in DJ Shadow’s crypt. Given that the
and Legendary Alexa Davies
Pictures Funding LLC young Rosie earlier, brasher Lavelle was so clearly driven
Production Josh Dylan Credits and Synopsis by the belief that the next record you find (or
Companies young Bill
Universal Pictures Jeremy Irvine make or release) can change your life, to witness
presents in young Sam this weathered middle-aged man forlornly
association with Hugh Skinner Produced by Ltd/The British Made with the
Legendary Pictures/ young Harry M J McMahon Film Institute support of the surveying his boxes of old Mo’ Wax 12-inches
Matthew Jones Production BFI’s Film Fund and UNKLE action figurines is a cruel reminder
Brian A. Hoffman Companies Executive
Director of BFI, 28 Producers of what comes of the bravado of youth.
The Greek island of Kalokairi, the early 2000s. A Photography Entertainment Jay Hoffman The final irony is that those boxes also contain
year after the death of her mother Donna, Sophie Morgan Spencer & Goldfinch Mary Burke
Edited by Entertainment Kirsty Bell
the stuff of Lavelle’s comeback. His triumphant
is ready to open her hotel. She rows over the phone Alec Rossiter presents a Capture curating of the 2014 Meltdown festival is all the
with husband Sky in New York, and is disappointed Sound Re- production In Colour
that two of her fathers, Bill and Harry, won’t make recording Mixer A Matthew Jones film [1.85:1]
sweeter given the bloated wreck that UNKLE had
it to the grand opening. She decides not to invite George Foulgham Made with the become – its lowest ebbs are presented in vérité-
her grandmother Ruby, because she is unreliable. support of Sony Distributor style scenes of recording-studio outbursts and
©We Are Capture A Capture film Trafalgar Releasing
In flashbacks we see Donna as a young woman, breakdowns as tense as anything in Joe Berlinger
graduating from university and travelling to Greece. and Bruce Sinofsky’s Metallica: Some Kind of
She meets three men: Harry in Paris, Bill at a harbour A documentary profile of James Lavelle, who first Monster (2004). Indeed, the only piece missing
on mainland Greece and Sam on Kalokairi. She came to prominence in London’s music community
has flings with them all. It’s Sam who breaks her in the early 1990s as a teenage DJ and record-
from Jones’s thorough and sometimes brutally
heart – he has a fiancée back in England. Donna store clerk. In 1992, Lavelle co-founds Mo’ Wax, an honest portrait of Lavelle is a closer examination
is comforted by Bill and her friends Rosie and innovative record label that reflects his love of jazz, of UNKLE’s visual component. After all, Lavelle
Tanya. When she discovers that she is pregnant, hip-hop and sample-based electronic music, genres had conceived of the project in loftily cinematic
she doesn’t know who the father is, and decides that soon converge in the sound known as trip-hop. terms, citing 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and
to stay on the island and raise Sophie alone. Lavelle reaches the height of his success in the late
In the 2000s, a storm threatens to ruin
Blade Runner (1982) as influences. He would best
1990s with the release of albums by Josh Davis, aka
Sophie’s opening party. However, Bill and Harry DJ Shadow, and UNKLE, a collaborative project with achieve his union of sound and vision in the
make it to the island with Sky. At the party, Davis and guest singers such as Thom Yorke. Lavelle’s video for ‘Rabbit in Your Headlights’, in which
Sophie tells Sky she is pregnant, and the news falling-out with Davis presages difficulties with later director Jonathan Glazer combined Thom Yorke’s
spreads among the crowd. Ruby makes a surprise partners in UNKLE, whose struggles are compounded eerie warbling with the sight of Denis Lavant
appearance and is reunited with a long-lost lover. by a wider decline in the music industry. In 2014, an being repeatedly struck by cars in a tunnel before
Nine months later, everyone reassembles opportunity to curate the Meltdown festival in London
for the baby’s christening, where Donna leads to a public acknowledgement of Lavelle’s
somehow rising in a final show of strength and
appears to Sophie in the chapel. achievements and a reconciliation with Davis. defiance. Even if Lavelle’s travails aren’t quite as
harrowing, his resilience is just as surprising.

72 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

Mission: Impossible Fallout
USA/People’s Republic of China 2018
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Certificate 12A 147m 12s

Reviewed by Henry K. Miller

Spoiler alert: this review
See Feature reveals a plot twist

REVIEWS
on page 48 A hundred years ago, Louis
Aragon invented a new way of
seeing films, specifically those
“dear old American adventures” that discovered in
everyday images of modernity – “the vertiginous,
1,000-eyed facade of the thirty-storey house” –
something marvellous, “a novel poetry for minds
able to respond to it”. Two-thirds of the way through
the sixth Mission: Impossible, Ethan Hunt (Tom
Cruise), seen from directly above, runs up the inside
of the dome of St Paul’s, runs across its roof, jumps
across a series of alleys, runs through offices, jumps
on to the roof of Blackfriars Bridge, runs across
it – tracked from the side, framed against the city
skyline – then to Tate Modern, where he follows his
prey, August Walker (Henry Cavill), in a lift to the
very top of the chimney – only to see Walker and
his confederates fly away in a helicopter. Hunt is
shown standing amid the thickets of skyscrapers,
almost all of them erected in the years since his first
visit to London in 1996, in a dizzying aerial shot.
Why is Walker being picked up from the
top of Tate Modern, exactly? Because it looks
extraordinary. Why, earlier on, do Hunt and
Walker, a CIA agent who has been imposed on Bonjour vitesse: Tom Cruise
Hunt’s IMF team, need to parachute into Paris
– through a lightning storm moreover – rather for a man who – for the good of mankind – cannot that continuity is generally ignored, however,
than, say, use rubber masks as usual? Well, there return it, much as we assume he would like to. there is plenty of repetition. The bad guys in this
is a narrative explanation, but it fools no one: Age is the obvious subtext – Tom Cruise is one have exactly the same motivation as the bad
the real reason is that it makes possible some of 56, only a few years younger than Alec Baldwin guys in Ghost Protocol – nuclear war as purgative,
the most astonishing images of the year – the and Angela Bassett, playing his two bosses, both making way for something better – and this is at
camera makes the leap first, looking up at the unthinkable as field agents. His gravity-defying least the third time that Hunt has been framed
plane as Hunt comes to the edge of the ramp. refusal to hang it up is another part of the appeal as a mole. One tends to go along with the idea
Another of the most thrilling sequences is a of the series: it was as long ago as 2006, at the start that the plot is only there to deliver the next set
motorcycle chase through the centre of Paris. of M:I III, that Hunt was relegated to training piece, but writer-director Christopher McQuarrie
There is always chatter about the realness of duties, but the slate was wiped clean after that. was once responsible for The Usual Suspects, one
the stunts in a Mission: Impossible movie, but Like other possible replacements before him, of the best-constructed screenplays of the 1990s,
what matters is the IMAX sensation of almost Jeremy Renner does not return as Brandt. For all and proof that plots can be marvellous too.
being hit by cars, however it’s achieved. It
can’t be a coincidence that this chase passes Credits and Synopsis
through the avenue de l’Opéra, one of the
roads built by Baron Haussmann in the late
Produced by Cheap Shot Angela Bassett Berlin, present day. Ethan Hunt’s Impossible
19th century, sweeping away the old arcades Tom Cruise Stunt Co-ordinator Erika Sloane Missions Force team botch an operation to buy
evoked by Aragon in ‘Le Passage de l’Opéra’, Christopher Wade Eastwood Vanessa Kirby
nuclear material, allowing it to fall into the hands
McQuarrie The White Widow
published in 1924. “Future mysteries,” he wrote Jake Myers ©Paramount Pictures Michelle Monaghan of the Apostles, a network of anarchists led by the
then, “will arise from the ruins of today’s.” J.J. Abrams Corporation Julia shadowy John Lark. The team capture the nuclear
Written by Production Wes Bentley scientist being used by the Apostles to build three
Part of the Mission: Impossible franchise’s charm Christopher Companies Patrick
is that it has never bothered much with continuity. bombs, and trick him into giving up his secrets.
McQuarrie Paramount Pictures Frederick Schmidt
Based on the and Skydance Zola To retrieve the bombs, Hunt and CIA agent
Fallout makes more of an effort than most entries. television series present a Tom Alec Baldwin August Walker parachute into Paris, where Hunt,
It has the bad guy from the last instalment, Rogue created by Cruise production Alan Huntley posing as Lark, makes a deal with the White Widow,
Nation (2015), and Rebecca Ferguson, that film’s Bruce Geller A Bad Robot a mysterious broker, to obtain the nuclear material
Director of production Dolby Atmos
star turn, is back as rogue MI6 agent Ilsa Faust. Photography In association with In Colour in return for the rescue of rogue MI6 agent Solomon
Reaching further back, it has Vanessa Kirby in a Rob Hardy Alibaba Pictures [2.35:1] Lane from French custody. Meanwhile, Walker tries
Film Editor Executive Producers to frame Hunt as a mole within US intelligence.
pleasing performance as the daughter of Vanessa Eddie Hamilton David Ellison Some screenings Hunt captures Lane and gets him away from
Redgrave’s character in the first film. It also Production Designer Dana Goldberg presented in 3D
both the Apostles and Ilsa Faust, who is trying to
Peter Wenham Don Granger
has Michelle Monaghan as Hunt’s consciously Music IMAX prints kill him on MI6’s orders. Just as Hunt’s team are
uncoupled wife – heroine of the third film, but left Lorne Balfe 148m 24s about to exchange Lane for the nuclear material
out of all but one scene since then because Hunt, “Mission: Cast in London, however, Walker is exposed as Lark,
Impossible Theme” Tom Cruise Distributor and with the help of the Apostles spirits Lane
according to the fourth film, Ghost Protocol (2011), Composed by Ethan Hunt Paramount
Lalo Schifrin Henry Cavill Pictures UK away, killing the IMF’s director in the process.
has to be a man without attachments. Except that Hunt’s team, with Ilsa, trace Lark and Lane to an
Supervising August Walker
the mutual attraction between Hunt and Ilsa – Sound Editor Ving Rhames NGO camp in Kashmir, where a nuclear detonation
Hunt’s deadly equal and sometimes rival – was James H. Mather Luther Stickell would poison the water supply of much of the
Costume Designer Simon Pegg
the mainspring of Rogue Nation. This one ends world’s population. Arriving there, they discover
Jeffrey Kurland Benji Dunn
with the two not dissimilar-looking women in Visual Effects Rebecca Ferguson that the camp is also home to Hunt’s estranged
DNEG Ilsa Faust wife Julia. While Hunt chases Walker to retrieve
Hunt’s life standing by his field-hospital bed, one Lola VFX UK Ltd Sean Harris the detonator, Ilsa kills Lane. In the nick of time,
whispering a secret we can’t hear into the other’s Bluebolt Solomon Lane the team manage to defuse the weapons.
ear, apparently bonding over their shared affection

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 73

 The Negotiator
USA 2017
Director: Brad Anderson
Certificate 15 109m 13s
Reviewed by Trevor Johnston
Originally released in the US as Beirut but rather
blandly retitled for the UK, this combines
REVIEWS
Graham Greene-ish character study with a hint
of action thriller and a reminder that intractable
political problems in the Middle East are far from
a modern development. Archive footage renders
Beirut in the early 1970s as a Mediterranean
hedonist hotspot, before the story’s opening
gambit brings a terrorist gun battle right into
the front room of Jon Hamm’s happily settled
US diplomat Mason Skiles. In Tony Gilroy’s
screenplay, the young Palestinian boy that
Skiles has unofficially adopted turns out to
have a brother suspected of involvement in the
Munich bombings, whose militia crew swoop
to retrieve the lad before Mossad get to him –
killing Skiles’s Lebanese wife in the process.
It’s a convincingly mounted moment of
outrage, powerful enough to prompt a decade
leap forward in time, with Hamm’s character
now a broken alcoholic trudging his way through
industrial dispute resolution on the US East
Coast. He is, however, about to be drawn back to
the Lebanese capital, now ravaged by civil war,
where his former youthful charge has grown up
into a Palestinian splinter-group warlord and
has just kidnapped the US head of mission.
There’s an element of dramatic contrivance
to all this, but it’s not too far beyond the realms
of possibility, and it facilitates a drama that takes
a contemporary audience though Lebanon’s
historical cluster-conflict by placing a relatable
American antihero at the heart of the narrative.
The least persuasive element is, in fact, the degree
to which Hamm’s embittered former diplomat
is prepared to put his own life on the line as
the 1982-set kidnap saga unfolds, given that
the opening chapter is not given quite enough
screen time to mark out the bounds of loyalty
that he is supposed to feel for both the Palestinian
abductor and the one-time US colleague who
is being held. Still, once we accept the scenario
for what it is, there is much to enjoy here.
Credits and Synopsis
Produced by Arad Sawat Production
Shivani Rawat Music Companies
Monica Levinson John Debney Bleecker Street
Mike Weber Sound Design and presents a Radar
Tony Gilroy Supervision Pictures production
Written by Lon Bender A ShivHans Pictures
Tony Gilroy Ruy Garcia production
Director of Costume Designer A film by Brad
Photography Carlos Rosario Anderson
Bjorn Charpentier Stunt Co-ordinator Executive Producers
Editor Othman Ilyassa Ted Field
Andrew Hafitz Steven Saeta
Production Designer ©High Wire IP, LLC
Beirut, 1972. US diplomat Mason Skiles relishes
life in the cosmopolitan capital, where he and
his Lebanese wife Nadia offer a home to a young
Palestinian refugee, Karim. At a glittering soirée,
State Department colleague Cal Riley informs Skiles
that Karim has a brother, Abu Rajal, a terrorist
believed responsible for the Munich Olympics attack.
Suddenly the party is engulfed in gunfire, as Abu’s
Palestinian militia snatch Karim to prevent Mossad
getting to him; Nadia is killed in the crossfire.
Boston, 1982. Skiles is a washed-up alcoholic
working as a negotiator in industrial disputes. He is
summoned back to the now war-torn Beirut by the
State Department to secure the release of Cal, who
74 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
Divided loyalty: Jon Hamm
For one thing, it’s surely Mad Men mainstay
Hamm’s finest big-screen outing to date,
recalling late-period Gig Young’s work for
Peckinpah, for instance, as his booze-sodden,
crumpled former alpha male hides his personal
disintegration behind a veneer of glazed self-
confidence. Hamm’s fine contribution joins
a veritable rogues’ gallery of performances
from stalwart character types including Shea
Whigham, Mark Pellegrino and Dean Norris,
each embodying various degrees of CIA shiftiness
as the film points up the moral compromises
on all sides, reserving particular scepticism for
US endorsement of Israel’s eventual ill-fated
incursion into Lebanese territory. It’s a layered
approach that suggests care has been taken, and
certainly it all looks worryingly convincing,
with bombed-out 1980s Beirut recreated via
a combination of Moroccan locations and
subtle digital enhancement. Then again,
although he is these days seemingly saddled
with the status of mid-ranking journeyman
director, Brad Anderson is – as he showed in
2001’s effective ghost story Session 9 and 2008’s
affectionate railway thriller Transsiberian – an
absolute dab hand at whipping up a persuasive
milieu on a relatively modest resources.
Cast Alon Moni Aboutboul Part-subtitled
Jon Hamm Roni Niv
Mason Skiles Idir Chender Distributor
Rosamund Pike Karim Signature
Sandy Crowder Jonny Coyne Entertainment
Dean Norris Bernard Teppler
Donald Gaines Leïla Bekhti US theatrical title
Nadia Skiles Beirut
Mark Pellegrino
Cal Riley Hicham Ouraqa
Abu Rajal
Larry Pine
Frank Whalen
Shea Whigham In Colour
Gary Ruzak [2.35:1]
has been kidnapped by the adult Karim’s Palestinian
splinter group. Skiles acts through loyalty to his old
friend Cal, while Karim’s motive is to exchange Cal for
the believed captive Abu. Brief ‘proof of life’ access
allows Cal to warn Skiles to trust cultural attaché
Sandy Crowder rather than senior US officials Gaines
and Ruzak, who favour a potentially bloody Israeli
invasion. With Crowder’s help, Skiles outmanoeuvres
both Israeli intelligence and the US higher-ups,
effecting a hostage exchange from which Cal emerges
alive, though Abu is killed by a Mossad sniper.
A closing archive montage shows the bloody
aftermath of the Israeli incursion, with US Marines
killed when drafted in to protect American interests.
One Note at a Time
United Kingdom 2016
Director: Renée Edwards
Certificate PG 95m 9s
Reviewed by Jason Anderson
One of many colourful contributors to Renée
Edwards’s documentary about the post-Katrina
travails of the New Orleans music community,
Mac Rebennack is a gravel-voiced septuagenarian
who was a heroin user for 30 years and continues
to cope with the effects of hepatitis C. And yet
the man better known as Dr John somehow
qualifies as a model of health and wellness
compared with many of Edwards’s subjects.
One might assume that Rebennack’s fame
and success mean he’s better able to handle
his issues than less prominent local musicians
like Paul Pattan, a blues guitarist still adapting
to the loss of one foot in a motorcycle accident
and all his possessions in the hurricane a year
later. A roguish drummer whose devotion to
Louis Armstrong inspired him to leave his
native London for Louisiana in the early 1960s,
Barry Martyn is one of many battling diabetes.
Wardell Quezergue. a revered bandleader,
producer and arranger whose credits include
such canonical New Orleans hits as the
Dixie Cups’ ‘Iko Iko’, continues to conduct
recording sessions despite his failing sight.
All three are reliant on the New Orleans
Musicians’ Clinic & Assistance Foundation,
which Edwards’s film presents as an invaluable
resource for a community imperilled not only
by the many changes in the city wrought by
Katrina but also by America’s ongoing healthcare
crisis and its disproportionately severe impact
on the poor. Shot by Edwards over a period of
four years, One Note at a Time offers a dispiriting
look at the conditions for the musicians who
may help draw tourists to the French Quarter
but who remain chronically undervalued.
Indeed, Bethany Bultman – a social activist who
co-founded the clinic with her husband Johann
in 1998 – ruefully says that they receive more
funding from a rotary club in northern Germany
than from the whole of the US combined.
Judged as a fundraising tool for a worthy
institution, One Note at a Time has great utility.
Sadly, it’s more disappointing in other regards.
Clogged up with minutiae about the clinic’s
history and funding woes, Edwards’s film often
feels lacking in structure and focus. While the
many skilled raconteurs among her cast of
interview subjects provide some choice moments
– as when Martyn runs through an inordinately
long list of former wives, before wisely
concluding that his latest treats him the best –
the film is so crowded that only a few figures are
able to stand out with any degree of vividness.
Most disappointing of all is the shoddy quality
of the music segments. Often poorly shot and
lit, the performances do little to highlight what
makes these players so vital to the city’s cultural
life. Thankfully, Edwards also includes more
vibrant scenes of the jazz funerals and ‘second
line’ parades that honour several interview
subjects who didn’t live to see the completed film.
A fleeting appearance by actor Clarke Peters –
who played a stoic Mardi Gras Indian chief in the
HBO series Treme (2010-13) – is a reminder of the
much greater richness of David Simon and Eric
Overmyer’s drama, which also used the stories of
New Orleans musicians as a means of portraying
the traumas Katrina inflicted as well as the pre-

After the flood: One Note at a Time
existing inequities it exacerbated. Nevertheless,
One Note at a Time serves a noble purpose as
a warning about what this place will lose if it
can’t care for the citizens it ought to treasure. As
Rebennack laments: “If the musicians ain’t got a
chance to live, what chance has the music got?”
Credits and Synopsis
Produced by ©One Note at a In Colour
Renée Edwards Time Limited [1.85:1]
Cinematography Production
Chad Owen Company Distributor
Andy Schonfelder One Note at a Munro Film Services
Edited by Time Limited
Renée Edwards Executive
Composer Producers
Ray Russell Paul Woolwich
Sound Editor Craig McCall
Paul Mallett Sara Giles
A documentary about the many challenges facing
members of the music community of New Orleans
as they struggle to afford medical care and maintain
their livelihoods in the years since Hurricane Katrina
in 2005. For many of them, their primary means of
accessing healthcare is the New Orleans Musicians’
Clinic & Assistance Foundation, a non-profit
organisation funded largely by donations from
outside the US. The clinic’s ageing, ailing clientele
includes Barry Martyn, an English-born drummer
and mainstay of the city’s jazz-revivalist bands,
and Wardell Quezergue, a long-time arranger and
producer who helped create distinctive brands
of jazz and R&B. Another local icon, Mac ‘Dr John’
Rebennack, is one of many who assist the clinic’s
fundraising efforts. Though several community
members succumb to their health problems during
the period depicted in the film, others gain comfort
and strength from the New Orleans jazz-funeral
tradition, a unique means of celebrating their lives.
Signs of a cultural resurgence spurred by a new
generation of musicians provide further hope.
Searching
Cyprus/USA/Russian Federation 2018
Director: Aneesh Chaganty
Certificate 12A 102m 14s
Reviewed by Kate Stables
This may not be cinema’s first ‘screencast’ drama
(a film that takes place entirely on a computer
screen), but fans of 2014’s lurid teen shocker
Unfriended aside, it’s the first desktop thriller most
of us will catch. Director Aneesh Chaganty’s clever,
thought-provoking take on the ‘missing child’
genre, which unfolds completely via its hero’s
tech, reflects our screen-mediated lives back at us.
Like many parents, recently widowed David
(an understated John Cho) communicates with
busy high-schooler Margot via messaging and
FaceTime, only discovering after 36 hours of
online silence that she’s ditched an all-night
study group and camping trip and is missing.
Has he never heard of ‘Find My iPhone’, now the
prime parental surveillance tool? As he trawls
Margot’s laptop for clues, while Debra Messing’s
all-business detective Vick runs the police case,
David’s panicked social-media searches and
FaceTime interrogations of his daughter’s fellow
students reveal her hidden isolation. Becoming
a keyboard gumshoe, creating spreadsheets of
classmates’ alibis and ferreting out Margot’s
passworded Youcast confessions and covert online
friendships, he discovers how little he knows her.
Perceptive rather than alarmist about teen
online activity (as 2010’s predator tale Trust and
2014’s addiction-obsessed Men, Women & Children
were), Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian’s
script unwraps how the internet has restructured
social relations. Searching uses David’s online
investigation adroitly, as the route to both
emotional and narrative discovery. Since plot is
really all it’s got, his frantic web-diving creates
a fast-moving chain of leads, motives and alibis,
the film packing in many more feints and twists
(bad friends, a dodgy relative, the emergence of
a taped confession) than a conventional drama.
Time’s passing is usefully compressed by swiped
message windows, announcing a social-media
storm of FindMargot hashtags and – once her
car has been found in a nearby lake – the defiant
online conspiracy theory of #DadDidIt.
Racing towards the denouement, editors
Nick Johnson and Will Merrick switch nimbly
Credits and Synopsis
Produced by Edited by Emily Moran
Timur Bekmambetov Will Merrick Stunt Co-ordinator
Sev Ohanian Nick Johnson John Branagan
Adam Sidman Production Designer
Natalie Qasabian Angel Herrera ©Bazelevs Ent
Written by Music Production
Aneesh Chaganty Torin Borrowdale Companies
Sev Ohanian Production Screen Gems and
Director of Sound Mixer Stage 6 Films present
Photography Eric I. Bucklin in association with
Juan Sebastian Baron Costume Designer Bazelevs a Timur
All the film’s events are presented as videos, TV
news footage or messages, within a screencast.
San Jose, present day. Margot, the 16-year-old
daughter of recently widowed David, has gone missing
after an all-night study group. Police detective Rosemary
Vick discovers that Margot had fake ID and drove
out of town. David trawls Margot’s laptop messages,
social-media accounts and video blogs. All her IRL
and online friends provide alibis, including confidant
‘FishandChips’. Via clues in her video blogs, David finds
Margot’s keychain at Barbosa Lake. Her car is recovered
from the lake, and volunteers search the area. The
abduction becomes a social-media phenomenon. David
REVIEWS
Mediation: John Cho
to video footage from live TV news coverage
or David’s in-home surveillance cams, which
ups the sense of immediacy and jeopardy. Cho,
emanating a short-fused despair at this point,
transmits David’s panic effectively, curling on
to the floor in sudden dread in the background
of one grimly fixed shot. But Messing’s efficient
playing is fractured into video snippets, and
Michelle La’s lonely Margot barely registers.
Overall, the film’s screen-surface detachment
prevents the viewer from engaging deeply with
any of the characters. Dealing with the child-
shaped hole in a parent’s life is what connects
this kind of story with its audience, not just the
unwrapping of a mystery – close, quiet moments
of parental anguish are what distinguish Prisoners
(2013) or the TV original of Edge of Darkness from
more obvious fare. So peering at David’s ordeal
through Searching’s small webcam windows
reduces its emotional heft significantly. Though
it mostly rises admirably to its formal challenge,
making a virtue of its necessities, the film’s format
hobbles it noticeably in a bloodless home-video-
and-Google-search intro on David’s wife’s death
(it’s no Up) and in its breathless and faintly unlikely
finale. Packed with knowing commentary on our
wired world, it won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature
Film Prize at Sundance this year for its take on
technology. Nonetheless, silver-screencasting feels
more like this year’s ingenious cinematic conceit
than a brave new world of desktop drama.
Bekmambetov Cast Pamela Nam Kim
production John Cho Michael Porter
Produced with David Kim Dominic Hoffman
financial support of Debra Messing
DOSSOR Mediafond Detective In Colour
Executive Producers Rosemary Vick [1.85:1]
Ana Liza Muravina Joseph Lee
Mariya Zatulovskaya Peter Kim Distributor
Igor Tsay Sony Pictures
Michelle La
Margot Kim Releasing UK
Sara Sohn
attacks one of Margot’s school friends for tweeting
false information. He sees his brother Peter’s hoodie in
Margot’s car. Peter confesses that he supplied Margot
with weed. Detective Vick finds the body of Margot’s
apparent assailant, ex-con Randy, who has left a taped
confession. Margot is presumed dead. By chance, David
discovers that the picture on FishandChips’s user profile
is a stock photo. It transpires that Vick has lied. She is
arrested at Margot’s memorial service. Her son Robert
stalked Margot online with a fake profile and pushed her
into the ravine when she took fright at their meeting.
Vick covered it up and framed Randy. The police search
the ravine. Margot is found badly injured but alive.
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 75
 Sicario 2 Soldado
USA 2018
Director: Stefano Sollima
Certificate 15 122m 17s

Reviewed by Tim Hayes

Barring the odd artistic brainstorm, action
sequels usually go one of two ways. If the original
REVIEWS

filmmakers are enticed to return, or a brave

producer seeks out a maverick replacement, you
can get an escalation of whatever quirks and
intensity helped to make the first movie worth
doing. If the main reason for a sequel is to will
a franchise into existence or tempt lightning
to restrike exactly the same spot, then things
can meander towards vague disappointment,
sometimes drifting all the way on to the straight-
to-VOD rocks. Lumbering a film with a title
like Sicario 2: Soldado is a pretty clear suggestion
of which way the wind is blowing in this case.
The new movie deploys quotas of black-ops
skydivers and international terrorist rendition,
but the tension and moral quandaries of Sicario
(2015) are conspicuously absent, not least since
that film didn’t employ skydivers and trips to
Somalia to conjure them in the first place.
In the absence of Denis Villeneuve and Roger
Deakins, Sicario 2 is directed by Stefano Sollima
and photographed by Dariusz Wolski. The
writer, though, is a returning Taylor Sheridan,
presumably wielding clout having followed his
Sicario script with Hell or High Water (2016) and
Wind River (2017), which he also directed. Back Used cartel salesman: Benicio del Toro
too are Josh Brolin’s CIA black-ops expert Matt
Graver and Benicio del Toro’s dour freelance killer action-hero playbook – appropriate, given the yoking the war on drugs to the unending war on
Alejandro Gillick, now commissioned by the way that Gillick proves to be indestructible. terror. Graver and Gillick are let loose south of the
US government to carry out a covert false-flag Perhaps this would all feel better if the film border by a US government desperate to stem the
operation against Mexican drug cartels. Sicario were directed with Villeneuve’s understanding influx of Muslim terrorists, a covertly condoned
famously allowed Graver to say a few loaded lines that form can matter more than content. But few hi-tech mission of slaughter and the stealing of
of dialogue before the camera panned down to films are, and Sicario 2 is all content. The film has children that lands somewhere between Kathryn
reveal a pair of character-defining flip flops, and helicopters and missile attacks, and hears the roar Bigelow and the Jason Bourne universe, without
a sense of how Sicario 2 is going to pan out comes of the big machines, but nothing as atmospheric or being as idiosyncratic as either. As is often the
in the protagonist’s reintroduction, a ground-level tactile as those seconds in Sicario when a motorcade case, the film shows all attempts at executive
tracking shot that allows his footwear to enter bounces over bumps in the road, actors and camera subterfuge by cartoon politicians to be a total
the film long before his face. He shortly plonks crew suddenly lurching into the air, or the shots bust, achieving nothing except an endless cycle
his Crocs on a table roughly six inches in front of vehicles speeding around kids playing ball, an of death that scythes the young down like wheat.
of the camera, for emphasis. Meanwhile Gillick, everyday intrusion they just ignore. Instead of But the film is so prosaic about it that people have
who spent the first film preparing to revenge those human elements, Sicario 2 follows its action- apparently left the cinema under the impression
himself on the man who beheaded his wife and thriller urges into an impersonal geopolitical arena, they had watched something conservative.
threw his daughter into acid, finds the same arc
jumpstarted again: the sequel pits him against Credits and Synopsis
the cartel boss who ordered the executions,
rather than the man who carried them out, a
fine distinction that Sicario neglected to clarify. Produced by ©Soladado Shea Whigham US, present day. Following the interception of a suicide
Basil Iwanyk Movie, LLC Andy Wheeldon bomber at the Mexican border and a subsequent
These two alpha males charge around the Edward L. McDonnell Production Elijah Rodriguez
Molly Smith Companies Miguel Hernandez
terrorist attack in Kansas City, the US government
Tex-Mex area in a cloud of broad-brush character concludes that Mexican drug cartels are helping
Thad Luckinbill Columbia Pictures Catherine Keener
business, such as Gillick being humanised Trent Luckinbill presents a Black Cynthia Foards, CIA terrorists to enter the country. CIA operative Matt
through a knowledge of sign language – of all Written by Label Media Deputy Director Graver is covertly authorised to foment a war between
Taylor Sheridan presentation
the infinite options available, the film picks one two cartels, in order to disrupt their operations. Graver’s
Based on characters A Thunder Road Dolby Digital
that’s already having a high-visibility cinematic created by Taylor Pictures production In Colour associate Alejandro Gillick kidnaps Isabela, daughter
Sheridan Executive Producers [2.35:1] of cartel boss Reyes, implicating a rival cartel in the
moment elsewhere – while Sicario’s beleaguered Director of Ellen H. Schwartz abduction. Meanwhile, teenager Miguel begins low-level
FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is absent and Photography Richard Middleton Distributor work for the Reyes cartel, and acts as guide for illegal
Dariusz Wolski Erica Lee Lionsgate UK
much missed. The (hopeless, wrong) criticism Edited by migrants crossing the border. Betrayed by corrupt
of Macer was her alleged feminine weakness, Matthew Newman US theatrical title Mexican police, Alejandro and Isabela are forced to head
when in fact the sight of someone lawful trying Production Designer Cast Sicario Day of for the border on foot, while Matt is ordered to cover up
Kevin Kavanaugh Benicio del Toro the Soldado the failed operation by killing both of them. Alejandro,
to reconfigure their moral compass in the Music by/Score Alejandro Gillick
whose wife and children were murdered by the Reyes
face of circumstances is among the greatest Produced by/Cello, Josh Brolin
cartel, becomes protective of Isabela. At the border,
Halldoraphone, Matt Graver
strengths of character a fictional creation can Piano and Bowed Isabela Moner they are discovered by the cartel; Isabela is captured
display. Compared with that, Graver’s stoic Instruments Isabela Reyes and Miguel is compelled to shoot Alejandro in the head.
Hildur Gudnadóttir Jeffrey Donovan Matt rescues Isabela, but then defies orders and takes
woe at being ordered to kill his old friend and Sound Mixer Steve Forsing
Gillick’s growing compassion for the daughter David Brownlow Manuel Garcia-Rulfo her back to the US, deciding to place her in a witness
Costume Designer Gallo protection programme. Alejandro survives his shooting
of the man he hates are weak sauce. Although Deborah L. Scott Matthew Modine and, though gravely injured, evades his pursuers.
Isabela Moner plays the teenager with vivid Stunt Co-ordinator James Riley, A year later, Alejandro visits Miguel, telling him
spark, the quandary she creates for Gillick is a Doug Coleman Secretary of Defense
that they need to talk about his future as a hitman.
Strong Man’s Dilemma straight out of the 1980s

76 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

Sicilian Ghost Story
Italy/France/Switzerland/USA 2017
Directors: Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza

Review by Pamela Hutchinson

Asleep or awake, Sicilian
See Rushes teenager Luna is always

REVIEWS
on page 8 dreaming, and she maintains
an unshakeable confidence
in her visions. She is quietly
convinced that they are not just imagination but
shadows of “things that might exist”. In Fabio
Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s mesmeric
Sicilian Ghost Story, the schoolgirl with her head in
the clouds leads a narrative that hovers constantly
between hallucination and reality and between
the realms of life and death. With soft-focus
imagery veering towards abstraction and subtly
elliptical editing, the film takes on the texture and
logic of a dream, lulling us into following Luna
into a waking nightmare. As such, it’s hard to be
sure whether what we’re seeing is truth or fancy, Lost in a forest: Julia Jedlikowska
or whether the protagonists are alive or dead.
We first encounter Luna in the woods, waking nightmares, Don’t Look Now (1973). radiates an unnaturally healthy glow among the
sneaking up on her crush with love letter in The writer-directors sustain the tone fatigued and shadowy figures surrounding him.
hand. The object of her desire is hunky classmate beautifully and the result is a hypnotic movie The adults dress in black and lurk in darkness,
Giuseppe. He’s athletic, handsome and so at that is as beguiling as it is bleak. Luca Bigazzi’s and the teenagers aren’t much brighter. Glass-
peace with nature that a large butterfly perches cinematography is exquisitely textured and eyed, jaundiced, frail and soiled, Giuseppe’s body
on his fingertips. Other animals in the forest unnervingly nuanced, navigating glowering betrays the unseen brutalities of his ordeal in
rupture the Disney idyll, though – the ferret skies, shady forests and murky underwater captivity, while Luna is subjected to (an entirely
that scratches Luna’s ankle, the rabid dog that sequences, supported deftly by Cristiano unconvincing) head-shaving as a punishment
chews on warm rabbit flesh before snarling and Travaglioli’s fine edits. In one memorably for defying her parents. The most viscerally gory
chasing both teenagers. This moment of peril chilling dissolve, from Giuseppe’s face to a dark image is an underwater shot sustained for so
catalyses their transformation into a couple. scene, the pinpricks of light in his eyes remain long that it takes on a spectral cast – a dissolution
Newcomers Julia Jedlikowska and Gaetano in view for a disturbingly long time. Each tiny of essence rather than a destruction of flesh.
Fernandez are suitably charming and gleam represents the lights from his small Amid the sombre, gauzy palette, the use of a
convincingly naive and youthful, but the film’s cell windows, implying a psychic connection particularly vivid blue forms one of the film’s
sinister sound design of whipping wind and with Luna that breaks his prison bounds. most intriguing threads. Like Sicilian Ghost Story
amplified heartbeats assures us that something The film delivers on its title promise of a itself, this visual clue seems at first innocent,
terrible is about to happen. Sure enough, ghostly apparition – but the figure in question then lethal – and ultimately liberating.
Giuseppe is soon absent from school for days
on end, with no explanation. Dissatisfied Credits and Synopsis
with adult indifference to his plight, Luna
tries to raise a search party. When that fails,
she inadvertently allows her subconscious
Produced by Antonella Cannarozzi of cultural interest du Monde, Centre Cast Rosario Terranova
Nicola Giuliano with the economic National du Cinéma Julia Jedlikowska Scannacristiani
to hunt for him instead. Jedlikowska offers a Francesca Cima ©Indigo Film, contribution of the et de l’Image animée, Luna Baldassare Tre Re
Carlotta Calori Cristaldi Pics, Mact Ministero Dei Beni e Institut Français Gaetano Fernandez Venatura
thoroughly impressive performance as the Massimo Cristaldi Productions, JPG delle Attività Culturali In association with Giuseppe Nino Prester
dream-adventurer, trapped in stasis while her Written by Films, Ventura Film e del Turismo Cofinova 13, Indéfilms Corinne Musallari Giuseppe’s
Fabio Grassadonia Production With the support of 5, Filmcoopi Zurigo Loredana grandfather
best friend Loredana grows up without her Antonio Piazza Companies Regione Siciliana, Supported by Chiara Muscato
Lorenzo Curcio
and her almost-boyfriend vanishes from her Loosely based on the Indigo Film, Cristaldi Assessorato Turismo Sundance Institute Mariano Giuditta Perriera
story Un cavaliere Pics and Rai Sport e Spettacolo Feature Film Program Maurizio Bologna
reach. When Luna shouts that Giuseppe is “my bianco by Marco Cinema present a Uffico Speciale per il With the support
Andrea Falzone
Nino
whole life”, it could be teenage infatuation, or an Mancassola co-production of cinema e l’audiovisivo of Eurimages Federico Finocchiaro In Colour
acknowledgement that she is lost to the shadows. Director of Indigo Film, Cristaldi in the context of Made in collaboration Calogero [2.35:1]
Photography Pics with Rai Cinema Programma Sensi with Omnia Film Vincenzo Amato Subtitles
The truth, which emerges dream-style rather Luca Bigazzi In co-production Contemporanei An Indigo Film, Luna’s father
than being announced, is that Giuseppe has Editor with MACT Cinema Cristaldi Pics, MACT Sabine Timoteo Distributor
Cristiano Travaglioli Productions, JPG Developed with Productions, JPG Luna’s mother Altitude Film
been kidnapped by the Mafia – the village’s Art Director Films, Ventura Film, the support of the Films, Ventura Film Filippo Luna Entertainment
silence is really omertà. The film is inspired by Marco Dentici RSI - Radiotelevisione Fondo Bilaterale Made with the U’ Nanu
Original Music Svizzera per lo Sviluppo di support of the Vincenzo Crivello
a grisly real-life incident, the 1993 abduction Soap&Skin With the support Coproduzioni di Opere Regione Lazio Fondo the German
of a boy whose ex-mafioso father had turned Anton Spielmann of the Programma Cinematografiche Regionale per il Gabriele Falsetta
Sound Europa Creativa Italo-Francesi Cinema e l’Audiovisivo
informant. Grassadonia and Piazza’s first film Guillaume Sciamà dell’Unione Europea With the participation Executive Producer
Giufà
Dino Santoro
also took a Mafia theme, but in this their second Costume Designer Recognized as a film of Aide aux Cinémas Francesco Tatò Chiodo
feature they graft fairytale and mythology on to
Sicily, present day. Teenagers Luna and Giuseppe are but is sustained by thoughts of Luna. His captors move
the criminal case. From the temple ruins by the school friends who fall for each other, even though him to a new location – the half-built house. When
coastline to a minor character’s lament for the Luna’s mother disapproves of Giuseppe’s family. When Luna returns from hospital, Loredana introduces her
primeval forest ruled by Pan and the appearance Giuseppe is absent from school without explanation, new boyfriend and his cousin; all four go to find the
of an owl as a familiar-cum-messenger, we’re Luna and her friend Loredana dye their hair blue and half-built house by the lake, but have no luck. At night,
repeatedly reminded of ancient myth. Luna distribute ‘missing’ posters to call attention to his Luna sneaks on to a truck driven by one of Giuseppe’s
becomes the Prince Charming to Giuseppe’s disappearance. It becomes apparent that Giuseppe kidnappers. She rescues Giuseppe’s ghost from the
has been kidnapped by the Mafia because his half-built house and they appear to escape together
Sleeping Beauty, at other times Red Riding Hood father turned police informant. One day, on a picnic to the lake. In reality, Luna is eating rat poison in the
lost in the trees, or Snow White resisting her stern with her father, Luna walks into the lake and has a basement of her home, while at the half-built house
mother. Only one reference is dumped a little vision of a half-built house where she is convinced the Mafia men murder Giuseppe, dissolve his body in
too heavily – a red duffel coat, transferred from Giuseppe is being held. She is hospitalised after this acid and dump it in the lake, where it runs into the sea.
one character to another, seemingly in honour incident, which is taken to be a suicide attempt. Loredana raises the alarm and Luna is saved. We see
Meanwhile, Giuseppe is deteriorating in captivity her laughing and playing with friends on the beach.
of Nicolas Roeg’s classic tale of lost children and

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 77

 Skyscraper Spitfire
USA 2018 Directors: Anthony Palmer, David Fairhead
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber Certificate PG 99m 23s
Certificate 12A 102m 25s

Reviewed by Kim Newman Family is all very well, but what about white-hat Reviewed by Trevor Johnston
It almost goes without saying that the elevator heroes who fight to save everybody else’s family? With 2018 marking the centenary of the Royal
pitch for Skyscraper is ‘Die Hard inside The The whole film has been bolted together from Air Force, it’s not surprising that the occasion
REVIEWS

Towering Inferno’. If it clicks at the box office, the other sources. Besides the obvious influences, should be marked by a documentary focusing
always amiable Dwayne Johnson could land the premise is cribbed from Sir Arthur Conan on what’s arguably the service’s most iconic
a mash-up franchise by delivering the likes of Doyle’s ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, where a fire forces aircraft, the Supermarine Spitfire. The plane’s
‘Predator inside The Poseidon Adventure’ or ‘Speed a blackmailer to reveal where the macguffin crucial role in defending the skies during the
inside Earthquake’ for the foreseeable future. is hidden (though Sherlock Holmes just uses a Battle of Britain in 1940 has long loomed large
Before acknowledging the (many) drawbacks of smoke bomb rather than actually burning down in the national consciousness, part of the proud
this approach to cinema, it has to be admitted Irene Adler’s house). Getting away from cerebral perception of resilience during those darkest
that director Rawson Marshall Thurber (who mystery, the story development is basically the hours, though of course its clean lines and ellipse-
last worked with Johnson on 2016’s Central arcade game Donkey Kong, as an indomitable shaped wings (with their distinctive tips) have
Intelligence) and a multinational army of effects player avatar struggles up through literal levels of also made it a poster boy among military aircraft
and stunts folk stage a succession of seemingly increasing difficulty in order to save his princess of the period. What’s perhaps slightly unexpected
death-defying suspense sequences with the (Will’s daughter dubs herself Queen of the Pearl) is to see this material in the cinema, when its
sort of verve that moistens palms and makes from an ogre (that Johnson’s nemesis isn’t a gorilla obvious home might seem to be television – yet
vertigo-sufferers look away from the screen, might well be down to the fact that he went that the opening widescreen images of a still-flying
as characters dangle from very high places route in the recent Rampage), while baddies try Spitfire gliding through the clouds over the
facing additional peril from the flames. to thwart him. The climax is lifted from the hall- Home Counties strikingly demonstrate why
From his earliest film appearances to his of-mirrors shootout in Orson Welles’s Lady from such footage deserves to be seen in theatres.
franchise-boosting turns in the Fast & Furious Shanghai (one of the most frequently imitated That the planes are still operational at all after
movies, the Artist Formerly Known as the Rock sequences of all time), theoretically made fresh many decades – the last models were produced in
has become the master of genial improbability. by staging it on top of a burning building. 1948 – is no mean tribute to the original design,
Here, cast as a security analyst with a prosthetic Missing in action are the subtextual elements and indeed to the hard work and enthusiasm of
leg and an ideal family, he is as ferociously that give popcorn movies some heft. Chin those dedicated to keeping them in the air. Credit
dedicated to saving his loved ones as he was Han’s tycoon developer Zhao Long Ji does is also due to the expertise of producer John
in 2015’s San Andreas, though this time he’s amazingly stupid things for plot purposes – Dibbs, responsible for newly shot aerial footage
battling a burning Hong Kong tower called the such as designing a fire-safety system that can that adeptly displays the Spitfire’s grace in the air
Pearl rather than earthquake chaos in California. be overridden from an easily stolen tablet – but and the manoeuvrability enabling one model,
Earlier generations of action heroes went into isn’t depicted as the sort of hubris-ridden type even at this venerable age, to loop the loop.
overdrive when they had to avenge murdered whose overextended projects went up in flames Such impressive visuals, interspersed through
families or expunge childhood traumas, but or down in storms in 1970s disaster movies. In the film’s fairly straightforward historical survey,
Johnson’s screen character is so family-protective the end, in another poached line (from 1955’s The do however give the rest of the running time
that if he were cast as young Bruce Wayne he’d Quatermass Xperiment), he looks at his smoking something to live up to. Co-directors David
take out the mugger before Batman could be v
giant needle and vows to rebuild, without even Fairhead and Anthony Palmer’s assemblage of
born. The edge of Die Hardd – where Bruce Willis qualm expressed by architect Paul
the qualms testimony from various elderly surviving Spitfire
was fighting to save his estrangedd wife – is Newma to fire chief Steve McQueen
Newman pilots, alongside archive footage from WWII and
ough Neve Campbell
carefully filed off, though in The TTowering Inferno. For all its perils, earlier, plus a dip into The First of the Few (1942),
is given plenty of good d stuff to do as the Skyscra
Skyscraper is light in the bad-guy Leslie Howard’s enduring biopic of designer
orable twins, however,
hero’s wife. Their adorable depart
department. Next to the evil crew R.J. Mitchell, doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel
have only one character ter trait between of Die Hard (1988), or even Under in stylistic terms, but is done with intelligence
thma) and simply
them (the boy has asthma) Siegee (1
(1992) and Cliffhanger (1993), and an eye for the little details one might not be
serve as rescuable plotot tokens to focus the villa
villains here are one-note types – expecting. We learn, for instance, that the narrow
on while glossing over er the rickety accented master boss, weaselly suit, shifty spacing between the undercarriage wheels
he plot.
nature of the rest of the embitte
embittered best friend, martial artiste made the Spitfire something of a challenge to
drago
dragon lady – who pose less threat steer on the ground. It’s also disarming that they
Dwayne Johnson than the flammable art direction. find room for the controversial theory that the
distinctive wing shape may have been influenced
Credits and Synopsis by German manufacturer Heinkel via a Canadian
engineer who worked for the company in the
1930s before joining Supermarine in Britain.
Produced by Steve Jablonsky Cantina Creative Thurber film Mr Pierce Adrian Holmes
Beau Flynn Production Supervising Executive Producers Byron Mann Ajani Okeke Elsewhere there’s affecting testimony from
Dwayne Johnson Sound Mixer Stunt and Fight Dany Garcia Inspector Wu the pilots as they recall how, as young men
Rawson Marshall David Husby Coordinator Wendy Jacobson Pablo Schreiber Dolby Atmos/
Thurber Costume Designer Allan Poppleton Eric McLeod Ben Auro 11.1 barely out of their teens, they were faced with
Hiram Garcia Ann Foley Eric Hedayat Hannah Quinlivan In Colour the prospect of protecting their country’s very
Written by Visual Effects ©Legendary and Xia [2.35:1]
Rawson Marshall and Animation Universal Studios Tzi Ma Part-subtitled
future – adopting the terrifying-sounding
Thurber Industrial Light Production Cast Fire Chief Sheng technique of flying straight at the Messerschmitts
Director of & Magic Companies Dwayne Johnson McKenna Roberts Some screenings
Photography Image Engine Legendary Pictures Will Sawyer Georgia Sawyer presented in 3D
escorting the Luftwaffe bombers, trying to
Robert Elswit Visual Effects and Universal Pictures Neve Campbell Noah Cottrell take them out rather than get caught up in
Edited by Iloura present a Legendary Dr Sarah Sawyer Henry Sawyer Distributor dogfights with the enemy’s superior numbers.
Mike Sale MPC Pictures production Chin Han Kevin Rankin Universal Pictures
Julian Clarke Umedia A Flynn Picture Zhao Long Ji Ray, man with International Super-8 footage from onboard cameras inside
Production Designer Revolt 33 Studios Company/Seven Roland Møller hostages UK & Eire the Spitfires’ wings brings this vividly to life,
Jim Bissell UPP Bucks production Kores Botha Elfina Luk
Music Whiskeytree Inc. A Rawson Marshall Noah Taylor Sergeant Han but the film also takes pains to eschew flag-
waving triumphalism, culminating in the pilots’
Hong Kong, present day. Working for tycoon Zhao A crew of villains led by extortionist Kores Botha reflections on the waste of life occasioned by
LongJi, security expert Will Sawyer signs off on take control of the safety systems and set a fire years of conflict, and their hopes that Europe
the safety measures for the Pearl, the tallest in the building in order to force Ji to hand over a
building in the world. Will and his family – wife flash drive that could expose their many crimes.
may never again go down the same route.
Sarah and children Henry and Georgia – are the first Will climbs into the burning building to rescue Indeed, the heroism on display here is more
inhabitants of the building’s residential section. his family and defeats Botha and his gang. inclusive than we might have seen in the
past, with room for a proud surviving Polish

78 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

 Tag
USA 2018
Director: Jeff Tomsic
Certificate 15 100m 24s

Reviewed by Matthew Taylor

On the theme of growing old, the comedian
George Carlin once suggested that one of the

few benefits was the freedom to withdraw
from any social obligation merely by claiming
to be tired. This doesn’t seem an option for
the childhood buddies of Tag, who have spent
every May since 1983 playing the titular game,
despite being geographically separated as
middle-aged adults. Based on the eccentric
real-life exploits of ten Spokane natives – and
an ensuing Wall Street Journal article – debutant
feature director Jeff Tomsic’s knockabout
tribute to these unapologetic men-children is
handled with an amiably light touch, though
its laughs are scattershot and its tone uneven.
Anchoring proceedings is the fiercely
committed Hoagie, played by Ed Helms in the
umpteenth variation on his well-worn nerdish-
everyman shtick. Having learnt that Jerry (Jeremy
Renner), the gang’s reigning champion, never
tagged, plans to bow out after his upcoming
nuptials, Hoagie urgently rounds up the
Sky high: Spitfire remaining players: big-shot CEO Bob (Jon Hamm,
whose initial alpha-male typecasting is quickly
pilot and a nod to the contribution made by subverted by an exquisite slapstick pratfall),
his countrymen’s dedicated RAF squadron, divorced stoner Chilli (Jake Johnson) and neurotic
plus recognition of the vital work of the Air paranoiac Kevin (Hannibal Buress). Along for
Transport Auxiliary, which deployed primarily the ride are Hoagie’s belligerent wife Anna (Isla
female pilots to get the Spitfires from the Fisher) and WSJ journalist Rebecca (Annabelle
factories to the airfields. It says much about Wallis), who’s eyeing a story on the group – the
the film’s willingness to remember all who latter a particularly flimsy creation, called on
served that its most memorable moment is mainly to supply bemused reaction shots.
the sight of the indefatigable 100-year-old As the friends convene in Hoagie’s boyhood
Mary Ellis, reunited with the Spitfire she basement – a frozen-in-time sanctuary where
signed at the point of wartime delivery; a poster for Nevermind still adorns the wall
her name is still there and the plane’s still – there’s little sense of regret or melancholy,
proudly flying, more than 70 years later. despite the wildly varying ways in which the
men’s lives have panned out. Compared with,
Credits and Synopsis say, the curdled male bonds of Edgar Wright’s
The World’s End (2013), where youthful abandon
has long since been dulled by adult compromise,
Produced by Production In Colour
Anthony Palmer Companies the men of Tag are all too eager to stay young
David Fairhead British Film Distributor through tomfoolery. Indeed, George Bernard
John Dibbs Company presents Altitude Film
Gareth Dodds an Elliptical Wing Entertainment
Steve Milne production with Credits and Synopsis
Director of Haviland Digital
Photography and Mark Stewart
John Collins Productions
Director of Aerial Executive Produced by Photography Eric Linden
Photography Producers Todd Garner Larry Blanford Jayson Dumenigo
John Dibbs Trevor Beattie Mark Steilen Edited by
Film Editor Christian Eisenbeiss Screenplay Josh Crockett ©Warner Bros.
David Fairhead Keith Haviland Rob McKittrick Production Designer Entertainment Inc.
Original Score Patrick Mills Mark Steilen David Sandefur Production
Chris Roe Mark Stewart Screen Story Costumes Companies
Mark Steilen Designed by A New Line Cinema
Based on the Wall Denise Wingate presentation
A documentary portrait of the British single-seater Street Journal article Music A Broken Road
entitled It Takes Germaine Franco production
fighter aircraft the Supermarine Spitfire, which
Planning, Caution Production Executive Producers
was in service before, during and after WWII. to Avoid Being It by Sound Mixer Richard Brener
The film combines archive material with newly Russell Adams Matthew Nicolay Walter Hamada
shot testimony from surviving Spitfire pilots and Director of Stunt Co-ordinators Dave Neustadter
aerial footage of restored planes still flying today.
Acknowledging this distinctive aircraft’s place in the US, present day. Every year since 1983, childhood
British national consciousness, the film examines friends Hoagie, Bob, Jerry, Kevin and Chilli have
its genesis through designer R.J. Mitchell’s work played a game of tag during the month of May. Hoagie
on early 1930s seaplanes and assesses its critical gathers Bob, Kevin and Chilli in their hometown
role in the Battle of Britain, plus the subsequent of Spokane, Washington, for a final attempt to
defence of Malta and the D-Day landings. Surviving tag the hitherto untouchable Jerry, who plans to
pilots commend the aircraft’s handling abilities, retire from the game after his upcoming marriage.
and also decry the waste of life during the conflict; Accompanying them is Hoagie’s wife Anna, plus a
Mary Ellis, one of numerous female pilots who reporter who is considering writing a story on the
flew Spitfires from the factory to RAF airfields, friends. Tricking and trapping his opponents, Jerry
is reunited at the age of 100 with the plane she easily eludes all attempts to snare him. In exchange
signed her name on at the time, still in use today. for wedding invitations, the group pledge to Susan,
REVIEWS
Untouchable: Jeremy Renner, Jake Johnson
Shaw’s aphorism that ‘we grow old because we
stop playing’ is amusingly misattributed by the
film’s characters to everyone from TV guru Dr
Phil to evolutionary philosopher Karl Groos.
Wright is also brought to mind in the whip
pans, crash zooms and wacky slo-mo that Tomsic
deploys during the film’s cheerfully bruising
action sequences. A man with the uncanny
reflexes and agility of a ninja, Renner’s Jerry
easily gives his hapless opponents the slip, and
there’s some fun cinematic sleight of hand
to be had with his cunning tricks and use of
misdirection. Undaunted, the others are forced
to step up their game. Helms has a showstopper
disguised as an elderly woman in a shopping-mall
standoff; elsewhere, the pressure to locate Jerry
almost results in a waterboarding incident.
There is, however, only so much of this zany
pursuit the film can sustain, and the pace slackens
as the ultimate deadline of Jerry’s wedding nears.
What’s more, Tag seems undecided on what sort
of comedy it really wants to be; it can feel torn
between droll provincial satire in the mode of
Alexander Payne and the profane cuddliness of
a Judd Apatow joint. Tomsic has a good eye for
an absurd sight gag, but tends to over-egg other
strands – Chilli’s eventually tedious conspiracy
theorising, for one. A mawkish element creeps
into the story later on, but it’s upstaged by
genuinely funny end-credits footage of the
real-life taggers clowning around – a fleeting
low-key pleasure that has no time to grow old.
Hans Ritter Rashinda Jones Lou Seibert
Cheryl Deakins
Leslie Bibb Dolby Digital
Cast Susan Rollins Colour by
Ed Helms Jon Hamm Fotokem
Hogan Malloy, ‘Hoagie’ Bob Callahan [2.35:1]
Jake Johnson Jeremy Renner
Randy Cilliano, ‘Chilli’ Jerry Pierce Distributor
Annabelle Wallis Lil Rel Howery Warner Bros. Pictures
Rebecca Crosby, Reggie International (UK)
reporter Nora Dunn
Hannibal Buress Linda Malloy
Kevin Sable Thomas Middleditch
Isla Fisher Dave
Anna Malloy Steve Berg
Jerry’s pregnant fiancée, not to target Jerry at the
ceremony. When Jerry can’t be found, the group
pressure his contacts into revealing his whereabouts.
He is finally cornered at an AA meeting, but leaves
with Susan when she appears to suffer a miscarriage.
The wedding is declared off, but the group discover
that this is a hoax concocted to keep them away.
They gatecrash the ceremony, where Susan admits
the ruse. As the couple complete their vows, Hoagie
collapses while trying to tag Jerry. Hoagie reveals that
he has cancer, and may not survive for next year’s
tag season. Jerry allows Hoagie to tag him at last.

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 79

 Uncle Drew
USA 2018
Director: Charles Stone III
Certificate 12A 103m 12s
Reviewed by Violet Lucca
The bar isn’t very high, but Uncle Drew might
be Hollywood’s most successful attempt yet
REVIEWS
at translating something that works on the
internet to the silver screen. The film has its
origins in a series of YouTube shorts starring
basketball star Kyrie Irving and other NBA
athletes disguised beneath old-age makeup,
dunking on unwitting amateur players. These
‘adutainments’, produced for Pepsi Max, traded
on the absurdity of the gameplay and the
goofy, faux-profound wisdom espoused by old
ballers in ESPN talking-head sports docs.
The film version begins with one such
documentary, a fake 30 for 30 about Irving’s
character Uncle Drew, a player who changed
the game but mysteriously disappeared after the
first of Harlem’s famous Rucker Park streetball
tournaments. Various basketball luminaries make
cameo appearances, gushing about the indelible
mark that Uncle Drew left on the sport: Steve
Nash, Pee Wee Kirkland and Dikembe Mutombo
(who does his trademark finger waggle) all
appear, as does Jerry West, claiming that the
NBA logo isn’t really based on him but on Uncle
Drew, sans afro. This simulated hagiography
turns out to be every bit as predictable as Uncle
Drew’s actual story, which is just a variation on
the ‘getting the team back together’ storyline.
Yet thanks to the talents involved, it’s far
more than just a series of ‘inside basketball’
jokes – something you can’t say about any old
movie starring athletes in rubber prosthetics.
Dax Winslow (Lil Rel Howery of Get Out fame)
works at Foot Locker to fund the streetball team
he coaches in the hope of winning the Rucker’s
$10,000 prize. (A nightmare sequence – which
is also a flashback – reveals that, after having a
game-winning shot blocked as a child by his rival
Mookie, Dax refuses to play.) He is devastated
when Casper, the lone superstar player he’s
pinning his hopes on, leaves to join Mookie’s
team; and his girlfriend (the great Tiffany
Haddish) kicks him out after an embarrassing
video emerges of him trying to pry brand new
Jordans off Casper’s feet. Wandering around
Credits and Synopsis
Produced by Music presents a Temple
Marty Bowen Christopher Lennertz Hill production in
Wyck Godfrey Production association with
Written by Sound Mixer Pepsi Productions
Jay Longino Erik H. Magnus Executive Producers
Director of Costume Designer Louis Arbetter
Photography Johnetta Boone Aziel Rivers
Crash Marc Gilbar
[i.e. Karsten Gopinath] ©Summit Colin Smeeton
Edited by Entertainment, LLC Perry Rogers
Jeff Freeman Production Jeff Wechsler
Sean Valla Companies Erik Feig
Production Designer Summit John Fischer
Douglas J. Meerdink Entertainment Michael Flynn
New York, present day. Basketball coach Dax maxes
out his credit card after buying jerseys for his team
in preparation for the Rucker Park tournament. Dax’s
star player Casper joins the team of his nemesis,
Mookie, and his girlfriend Jess kicks him out. While
looking for a new team, Dax finds Uncle Drew, a
legendary streetball champion now in his seventies.
Uncle Drew agrees to play for Dax on condition that
they get his teammates – Preacher, Boots, Lights
and Big Fella – back together. While most of the
80 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
Old guns for hire: Kyrie Irving
looking for a new team, Dax sees an old man
mocking a group of basketball-playing teens (“a
million-dollar play and a five-cent finish”) and
defeating their mouthiest member one on one.
Of course, this turns out to be the legendary
Uncle Drew, and he takes Dax on a cross-country
journey in search of his former teammates and
a new sense of confidence. The rest of the roster
– Preacher (Chris Webber), who passes a baby
around his back during a baptism; Boots (Nate
Robinson), a wheelchair-bound chess whiz with
a very attractive granddaughter; Lights (Reggie
Miller), a nearly blind power forward; and Big
Fella (Shaquille O’Neal), who owns a karate dojo
and likes to listen to Buddhist chants – haven’t
played in decades; so rusty are they that, during
a pit stop, they are beaten by a schoolgirl team.
But their skills are restored when Uncle Drew
gives each of them a memento (or in the case of
Lights, prescription goggles), and nearly every
game they play afterwards is a blowout. Save
for the stupid sports sloganeering (‘You miss
100 per cent of the shots you don’t take’), there
is no bigger message than that this is a sport
that can bring greatness out of some of us –
and that if you really want to play basketball,
you gotta get yourself some fresh Nikes.
Mike Upton Nate Robinson JB Smoove
Boots Angelo
Lisa Leslie Wesley Witherspoon
Cast Betty Lou Mario
Kyrie Irving Erica Ash Thomas Mills
Uncle Drew Maya Duke Tango
Lil Rel Howery Tiffany Haddish
Dax Winslow Jess Dolby Digital
Shaquille O’Neal Nick Kroll In Colour
Big Fella Mookie [1.85:1]
Chris Webber Aaron Gordon
Preacher Casper Distributor
Reggie Miller Mike Epps Lionsgate UK
Lights Louis
teammates are happy to see Uncle Drew, Big Fella is
still angry at him for sleeping with his wife. To their
competitors’ dismay, Dax’s team beat all of them.
During one of the final games, Big Fella collapses and
is taken to hospital. Preacher’s wife Betty Lou agrees
to fill in for him. During the final minutes, Lights and
Casper are both injured, so Dax and Mookie take
their place. Dax hesitates to make the game-winning
shot, but Uncle Drew encourages him and they win
the tournament. Dax kisses Boots’s granddaughter.
Under the Tree
Iceland/Denmark/Poland/Germany/Norway 2017
Director: Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson
Certificate 15 89m 8s
Reviewed by Hannah McGill
A vast tree creates neighbourhood conflict in
this Icelandic drama: its branches block out
the light, claims the prickly and highly strung
Eybjörg (Selma Björnsdóttir). If she seems like
the enemy to the tree’s possessive custodians
Baldvin (Sigurdur Sigurjonsson) and Inga
(Edda Björgvinsdóttir), we are about to discover
that Eybjörg’s own mood is darkened by an
inability to conceive a child with older husband
Konrad (Thorsteinn Bachmann). Baldvin and
Inga, meanwhile, carry around a tragedy of
their own; and their son Atli (Steinthor Hróar
Steinthorsson) is facing gathering marital strife
with his wife Agnes (Lára Jóhanna Jónsdóttir).
Everyone, in short, has something vast, many-
branched and deeply rooted hanging over them.
Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson’s third feature
– he previously directed Either Way (2011) and
Paris North (2014) – begins as an uncomfortably
bitter drama, bereft of a single character who isn’t
horrible, before letting in some light and some
human warmth during its second act, and finally
lurching into coal-black comedy and bloody
vengeance. A spectacularly capable cast manage
this changing tone without faltering, helping to
ensure that emotional inconsistency feels more
like a facet of life than a failure of the filmmaking.
The melodrama that builds between the
characters is sometimes emotionally punishing
and often straightforwardly irritating, but
never uninvolving. It can feel somewhat dated,
its claustrophobic focus on the petty woes of
well-off suburbanites recalling the fashion
for domestic malaise that briefly gripped
Hollywood around the millennium. If this
film has its own overhanging tree, it might be
American Beauty (1999), for here too we find
men driven to horny doofusness or caveman
rage by the unfair demands of marriage and
respectability; women driven unreachably mad
by grief and frustration; and neighbour-on-
neighbour sniping hitting homicidal heights.
The weaknesses of Under the Tree resemble
those of American Beauty, too, though the
performances here are far more nuanced: at its
worst, it plays things both too silly and too sour
to merit the emotional investment it’s asking
for. This problem is embodied in the character
of Inga: though Björgvinsdóttir plays her with a
sludgy coldness that’s as painfully convincing
as the wine stains on her lips, both the excess of
cruelty that Inga displays and the punishment
she’s subjected to feel awkwardly pitched
between emotional truth and misogynistic
parody of postmenopausal witchiness. It’s a
shame the film wasn’t guided more by its best
scenes, in which it sums up entire long-standing
relationships in brief interactions and defies
expectations without sacrificing credibility.
When Agnes finds Atli masturbating to an old
sex tape of his ex Rakel (Dóra Jóhannsdóttir),
their exchange is at once absurd, agonising and
utterly persuasive: his hopelessly blatant lies,
which are also partially true; her mix of pain
and contempt; the appalling, all too predictable
appearance of their small daughter at the door.
Subsequently, when Atli reconnects with Rakel,
we might predict either ill-advised sex or a
moralistic dressing-down. Instead, Rakel suddenly
 Yardie
United Kingdom 2018
Director: Idris Elba
Certificate 15 101m 40s

Reviewed by Henry K. Miller

Like its drug-mule protagonist,
See Feature Yardie comes with baggage.

REVIEWS
on page 38 Victor Headley’s independently
published novel of 1992 moved
thousands of copies without
broadsheet or BBC approval, attracting a black
readership that was not generally well served.
It was soon enough picked up by the BBC for
adaptation, and a script was commissioned from
Neighbourhood rot: Scheving, Steinthórsson Mike Phillips, but the series never materialised,
and a decade later Phillips could be found
supplies him with what none of his family has attacking Headley’s “pretence of authenticity”,
seemed able to give: generosity, wisdom and good derivative plotting and canny hype machine
advice. It’s a disarming moment, and a reminder aimed at credulous white liberals. Meanwhile
that narrative shifts can come from characters Sukhdev Sandhu, whose book Phillips was
being unexpectedly kind, as well as from actions reviewing at the time, offered a partial defence Mean streets: Aml Ameen
growing inexorably more cartoonishly extreme. of Yardie’s “ruffness and vigour”, aligning it with
Balance is key in the film’s technical the disreputable pulp tradition of Richard Allen shot dead at a soundclash; here he reconnects
presentation as well, with Monika Lenczewska’s in the “secret archive of metropolitan art”. with Yvonne (Shantol Jackson), the mother of
dim-hued cinematography alternating This film adaptation, directed by Idris Elba, his child, a saintly nurse who wants none of
pushy sunshine with glowering cloud, and raises what are old questions of representation his foolishness. There are outrageous betrayals,
intelligent sound work adding edginess. and respectability in a quite changed context. last-minute escapes, threats of sadistic violence
What was to at least some of its original that are never quite acted on, and a montage
Credits and Synopsis readership an urgent dispatch from the unknown sequence of D living the good life after ignoring
territory of London’s Hackney is now unfamiliar King Fox’s instructions and instead selling the
in a different way – a period piece evoking a time kilo to the Turkish mafia of Green Lanes.
Producers Companies Scheving
Grímar Jónsson Netop Films in Ása when dealers didn’t even have pagers, let alone As in Elba’s television series In the Long Run,
Sindri Páll co-production with Dóra Jóhannsdóttir mobiles. Conversely, semi-gentrified Hackney is which presents an almost diametrically opposed
Kjartansson Profile Pictures, Rakel
Thórir Snær Madants, One Selma Björnsdóttir well-trodden ground, practically synonymous vision of the 1980s Hackney he grew up in,
Sigurjónsson Two Films Eybjörg with the media class of the 2010s. Headley mellow where this is grim, genre conventions
Screenplay Co-financed Thorsteinn
Huldar Breidfjörd by Danish Film Bachmann
supposedly wrote the novel to drum up interest – here revenge thriller, there sitcom – too often
Hafsteinn Gunnar Institute, Icelandic Konrád in a film version, and any adaptation, then or inhibit the personal touch, but not always.
Sigurdsson Film Centre, Polish Lára Jóhanna
Story Film Institute, Jónsdóttir
now, tests the limits of how much ‘ruffness’ a film, Elba’s best directorial decision by far is to
Huldar Breidfjörd Eurimages, Nordisk Agnes always more capital-intensive than a novel, can keep the novel’s patois – not every line will be
Director of Film & TV Fond Sigurdur allow – especially one with the establishment comprehensible to non-speakers, but the gist is
Photography In association Sigurjónsson
Monika Lenczewska with RÚV, ARTE, Baldvin imprimatur of the BFI and BBC Films. clear and the effect comes off. Along similar lines,
Editor ZDF, Di Factory Edda The plot, as Phillips said, is derivative in the the music selection is excellent – and the sound
Kristján Lodmfjörd A film by Hafsteinn Björgvinsdóttir
Production Design Gunnar Sigurdsson Inga extreme. D (Aml Ameen), a Jamaican gangster design is properly bassy. Among the cast, Jackson,
Snorri Freyr Supported by Steinthór Hróar sent to London by Trenchtown don King Fox a virtual newcomer, is especially impressive,
Hilmarsson Icelandic Film Steinthórsson
Music Centre, Danish Film Atli
(Sheldon Shepherd) to sell a kilo of cocaine memorably so in the first scene shot in the
Daniel Bjarnason Institute, Polish Film to local boss Rico (Stephen Graham), seeks to English sun after many in the gloom, when she
Sound Design Institute, Icelandic In Colour
Björn Viktorsson Ministry of Industries [2.35:1]
avenge the death of his peace-loving brother Jerry, tells D she has no desire to return to Jamaica.
Frank Mølgaard and Innovation, Subtitles
Knudsen Eurimages, Nordisk Credits and Synopsis
Sylvester Holm Film & TV Fond, Distributor
Costume Design ZDF-ARTE Eureka
Margét Einarsdóttir Entertainment
Produced by Production Yvonne Jamaica, 1973. Jerry organises a soundclash
©Netop Films, Profile Cast Icelandic
Gina Carter Companies Stephen Graham
Pictures, Madants Sigridur theatrical title to end a gang war. Just as gang bosses
Robin Gutch Studiocanal, BFI, Rico
Production Sigurpálsdóttir Undir trénu
Screenplay BBC Films and Fraser James Skeets and King Fox shake hands, Jerry is
Brock Norman Brock Screen Yorkshire Piper shot dead by a young yardie, Clancy.
The suburbs of Reykjavik, the present. Atli is caught Martin Stellman present a Warp Everaldo Creary Ten years later, Jerry’s brother ‘D’ is himself a
Based on the novel Films production Jerry Dread yardie working for King Fox. When D beats up a
by his wife Agnes watching a sex tape of himself with by Victor Headley Developed in Sheldon Shepherd
his ex, Rakel. He retreats to the home of his parents, rival, putting himself in danger, King Fox sends
Director of association with King Fox
Inga and Baldvin, who are involved in an escalating Photography Studiocanal Naomi Ackie him to London to lie low and sell a kilogram
dispute with neighbours Eybjörg and Konrad over the John Conroy Supported by Mona of cocaine to East End gangster Rico.
Editor the Yorkshire Riaze Foster D, fearing that the unstable Rico will kill him, seeks
large tree on their property. The disappearance and
Justine Wright Content Fund Clancy out his wife Yvonne, a nurse who moved to Hackney
presumed suicide of Atli’s brother Uggi continues Production Designer Made with the Nadine Marshall
to cloud the family’s interactions. Kicked out by Damien Creagh support of the Miss Hammond some years earlier with their daughter, Vanessa. Against
Agnes, Atli is denied contact with their daughter Original Music BFI’s Film Fund Calvin Demba Yvonne’s wishes, D sells the cocaine to the Turkish
Asa. He briefly kidnaps Asa from school, but then Composed by/ Executive Producers Sticks mafia. He is caught by Rico’s gang but escapes. Vanessa
Produced by Dan MacRae Akin Gazi is abducted as a warning and taken to Yvonne, who
returns her. Baldvin finds his tyres slashed. Atli and Dickon Hinchliffe Danny Perkins Arif
Agnes meet, and he pleads for forgiveness, telling demands that D pay Rico; he does so. However, when
Production Joe Oppenheimer Johann Myers
her that the sex tape is from long before they met. Sound Mixer Hugo Heppell Beenie D discovers that Clancy is in London and working for
Inga’s cat disappears; she blames the neighbours. Robert Flanagan Mark Herbert Antwayne Eccleston Rico’s gang, he seeks to avenge his brother. Yvonne
Costume Designer Mary Burke young D tries to intercede by approaching Clancy, who is
She and Baldvin install CCTV cameras, and he sets
James Keast Ben Roberts Rayon McLean traumatised by what he did. On the occasion of a
up a tent in the garden, in which Atli begins sleeping. Idris Elba Skeets
Inga has the neighbours’ dog put down and stuffed, ©Studiocanal soundclash, King Fox flies to London to straighten
and leaves it at their door. In the night, Konrad Limited, The British In Colour things out. Realising that Rico is a loose cannon and
chops the tree down; it falls on to the tent, and Film Institute, Cast [2.35:1] that D was right not to trust him, King Fox kills him. In
British Broadcasting Aml Ameen the aftermath, D learns that King Fox ordered Clancy to
Atli. With Atli in hospital, Baldvin attacks Konrad; Corporation, D Distributor
a bloody fight ensues in which both appear to die. Yardie Ltd Shantol Jackson Studiocanal Limited
kill Skeets back in Jamaica, and that Clancy killed Jerry
Inga sees her cat, alive and well, in the garden. by mistake. Clancy kills King Fox and D kills Clancy.

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 81

 Home cinema
HOME CINEMA
Consider her Lily: Dietrich as Shanghai Lily in Shanghai Express (1932)
FATALE ATTRACTION
The sexual sophistication of
Josef von Sternberg’s films with
Marlene Dietrich makes modern
cinema look tame and childish
DIETRICH AND VON
STERNBERG IN HOLLYWOOD
MOROCCO / DISHONORED / SHANGHAI
EXPRESS / BLONDE VENUS / THE SCARLET
EMPRESS / THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN
US 1930/1931/1932/1932/1934/1935; Criterion; Region A
Blu-ray/Region 1 DVD. Extras: interviews with film scholars
Janet Bergstrom and Homay King, von Sternberg’s son
Nicholas, Deutsche Kinemathek curator Silke Ronneburg,
and costume designer and historian Deborah Nadoolman
Landis; documentaries on Dietrich’s German origins and
status as a feminist icon; 1936 radio adaptation of Morocco,
featuring Dietrich and Clark Gable; video essay by Cristina
Alvarez López and Adrian Martin; The Fashion Side of
Hollywood (1935), publicity short with Dietrich and costume
designer Travis Banton; 1971 Dietrich TV interview; booklet.
Reviewed by Graham Fuller
To watch the six consecutive modernist
masterpieces in which Josef von Sternberg
directed Marlene Dietrich at Paramount
between 1930 and 1935 is to realise how far
Hollywood has receded from making art in the
service of adult dynamics and the psychological
82 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
complexities behind them. Released together
in Criterion Blu-ray and DVD box-sets, Morocco
(1930), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express (1932),
Blonde Venus (1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934),
and The Devil Is a Woman (1935) – the gleaming,
high-definition restorations demonstrating the
near three-dimensionality of von Sternberg’s
devotional mise-en-scène – constitute the most
idolatrous and sexually ambiguous iconisation
of a female star in film history: one who inspires
unending desire in both men and women. It is
notable in this era of celebrating genderqueerness
how much more sophisticatedly current a figure
Dietrich seems than Greta Garbo – but then
Garbo didn’t have a von Sternberg to elicit her
erotic multivalence in a visionary suite of films.
It is unfashionable in film criticism to draw too
much on the private lives of stars and directors in
analysing their work. With admirable academic
restraint, Gaylyn Studlar, author of the crucial
psychoanalytic and feminist study of the six
Paramount films, In the Realm of Pleasure: Von
Sternberg, Dietrich, and the Masochistic Aesthetic
(1988), refuses to comment on how the duo’s
personal relationship informed their work. But
that is to avoid the subject of the masochistic
feelings that Dietrich surely inspired in von
Sternberg and which became the dominant
theme of their collaboration. These films echoed
and cemented the torturous emotions unleashed
in von Sternberg as an adolescent, as reported by
him in his autobiography Fun in a Chinese Laundry
(1965). How Dietrich-like, minus the braids,
sounds the heartbreaker recalled in this passage:
“The event of these tender years, as the age of
fourteen approached,” he wrote, “was a deep
plunge into puppy love. The Viennese girl of that
time had the most graceful posture, a proud stride
no longer in existence, and the one I had selected
to love for all eternity was queen of them all. She
had long swinging braids, was lithe and alluring,
and had a magic formula for both movement
and repose; the mold was thrown away after she
had been formed. She permitted me to worship
her, and in turn she worshipped herself. It never
entered my mind to touch this fragile vision,
as it might have dissolved. But a more practical
friend of mine with no such apprehensions
closed that chapter for me when I caught
them one day wrapped around each other.”
Von Sternberg almost certainly fell in love
with Dietrich at first sight on seeing her in a
Berlin play when in 1929 he was casting UFA’s
The Blue Angel, the first film to incarnate the
Dietrich persona’s amoral indifference to male
sexual jealousy. According to Fun in a Chinese
Laundry, von Sternberg overcame the hitherto
unsuccessful actress’s reluctance to play Lola-Lola
in that movie and then moved into full Svengali
mode for the next six years – always allowing that

Dietrich was the auteur of her image as much
as von Sternberg was the auteur of the films.
Though his obsession with Dietrich broke up his
marriage, little is known about their affair, and
David Thomson has speculated that the director
may have withheld from indulging his passion
for Dietrich the better to feed his cinema. In
Hollywood, von Sternberg would have found that
Dietrich was not to be possessed by any one man.
Central to that cinema – which absorbs
impressionism and German expressionism and
simultaneously anticipates screwball comedy, the
1940’s woman’s picture and, especially, film noir
– is the Oedipus complex and the fetishisation
of Dietrich. Central, too, is the art-direction
aestheticisation on Paramount sound stages (plus
Californian locations for the Shanghai Express
railroad) of exoticised versions of Mogador,
Vienna, China, the Deep South, St Petersburg, and
a Spain so artificial that Paramount was forced to
suppress The Devil Is a Women to protect Spanish-
American trade agreements (the Franco regime
banned it outright). These abstract, borderline
surrealist heterocosms are the playgrounds
for Dietrich’s amused, ironic tantalising of the
men ruinously in love with her. The triangular
configurations of Morocco, Shanghai Express,
Blonde Venus and The Devil Is a Woman (as well
as The Blue Angel) are not literally Oedipal, but
they are none the less suggestive of Oedipalism
because Dietrich’s liberated enchantresses
consign fatalistically lovestruck men – played
by Adolphe Menjou in Morocco, Warner Oland in
Shanghai Express, Herbert Marshall in Blonde Venus
and Lionel Atwill in The Devil Is a Woman – to an
emasculated status. Menjou, Oland, Atwill – like
Professor Rath in The Blue Angel and the much
cuckolded husband in von Sternberg’s swansong
Anatahan (1953) – are moustachioed surrogates
for von Sternberg, such was his pathological
investment in these truth-bearing farragos.
In contrast, the virility, masculine beauty, and
stoicism of Count Alexei (John Lodge) in The
Scarlet Empress preserve him from the humiliation
dished out by the Dietrich character to the von
Sternberg archetype, and even to the stiff-upper-
lipped Doc Harvey (Clive Brook) in Shanghai
Express, but it’s not for want of the lady’s trying:
The Scarlet Empress is not so much triangular as
polygonal. Dietrich’s virginal Prussian princess
Sophie morphs into the depraved Catherine the
Great, who entertains multiple military studs and,
taking sexual revenge on Alexei for his affair with
the late empress, suffers the besotted but stoical
count to admit a captain rival to her bedchamber:
such taunting is the expression, surely, of feverish
masturbatory fantasies on von Sternberg’s part.
Prior to insulting Alexei thus, Catherine catches
on hanging ropes in a stable and rocks from side
to side, her mouth open, in front of his hulking
form. The tease is exquisite in its sadism.
The fetishisation, as is well known, took
the form of dressing Dietrich in dozens of
elaborate gowns, furs, blouses, men’s suits, and
accessorising her with jewels, buttonholes and
cigarettes and concealing veils, hats, gloves,
scarves, masks and fans; by the time of The
Devil Is a Woman, the feminine apparition has
Did von Sternberg sicken at
the knowledge of Dietrich’s
omnivorous sexual appetite
and agency in real life?
become absurdist. The film’s expressionist and
baroque environments with their screens, nets,
slats, partitions, and windows and distracting
objets d’art and sculptures (the iconic gargoyles
in The Scarlet Empress), streamers, balloons,
and confetti (the masked ball in Dishonored, the
carnival in The Devil Is a Woman) play a similarly
obfuscatory role, for they determine the amount
of light that emphasises or anoints the pale
planes of Dietrich’s face and her cheekbones: in
his pursuit of art for art’s sake, the dappling and
fragmentation of light was von Sternberg’s other
subject. The medium close-up of Shanghai Lily
trembling as she stands on the platform between
the train coaches as it nears its destination – and
Lily’s possible final parting with Doc (Clive
Brook) – is just the most famous example of
von Sternberg’s use of chiaroscuro. That it is
Lily’s pain, not Doc’s, we register most forcibly
is a reminder that Shanghai Express, Morocco,
Dishonored and Blonde Venus are more concerned
with the sexual and emotional subjectivity of
the Dietrich character, not that of the men in
thrall to her, whereas the opposite is true in The
Blue Angel and The Devil Is a Woman. The chilly
Scarlet Empress is split between the ensorcelling
of Dietrich’s young Princess Sophia by Alexei,
then by her captivation (as Catherine) of him. It
is she who triumphs in the end; for the audience,
that means it’s her look that conquers all. In
making clear his fealty to the supremacy of the
feminine image, von Sternberg both countered
the misogynistic flavour of the paintings of
women produced en masse by Victorian and
fin-de-siècle artists and pre-empted the hegemony
of the male gaze as described by Laura Mulvey.
It is Dietrich’s femmes fatales who choose and
Fetish and Cary: Dietrich with Cary Grant in Blonde Venus (1932)
HOME CINEMA
pursue their lovers, except in Blonde Venus, in
which millionaire Nick Townsend (Cary Grant)
does the chasing and is permitted to seduce
Dietrich’s nightclub entertainer Helen Faraday/
Jones. Did von Sternberg sicken at the knowledge
of Dietrich’s omnivorous sexual appetite and
agency in real life? The films are fraught with that
possibility. Von Sternberg was initially egalitarian
about the pain that love causes men and women:
Helen, Amy Jolly (Morocco), Marie Kolverer/
Agent X27, and Shanghai Lily are martyrs. Over
the course of the cycle, though, cynicism sets in:
Catherine and The Devil Is a Woman’s cheerfully
wanton Concha Perez are less sympathetic
figures than their predecessors, and they are
saved only from Lola-Lola’s sentimentalised
sluttishness by their vitality, wit and hyperbolic
sartorial fabulousness. Fixed on Catherine and
Concha, von Sternberg’s gaze turns perverse.
The mass-mediating of the word ‘fetish’
tends to neglect its psychological significance,
which among modern film scholars Studlar
has done the most to contextualise in the von
Sternberg/Dietrich films. In his 1927 essay
‘Fetishism’, Freud writes that a fetish is “a penis-
substitute” for the mother’s missing phallus,
which the little boy did not wish to relinquish
because its “lack” symbolises his own potential
castration by his father. Occasioned by this
“fright”, female genitalia become objects of
fear universally for boys, who as (heterosexual)
men transmute them into objects of desire.
To overcome the horror, males permanently
memorialise the missing penis by fetishising
surrogate objects like fur, underwear, dresses
and shoes or body parts like noses and feet.
The substitute is both a “token of triumph
over the threat of castration and a safeguard
against it”. The role of the fetish is to both
“disavow and affirm” the castration of women.
Sternberg’s use of clothes and accessories to
build Dietrich’s allure makes a persuasive case
that they are a substitute for something,
though, of course, feminist critics argue
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 83

against the phallocentric notion that boys
HOME CINEMA
perceive the absence of penises in their
mothers as a lack. They agree more with Lacan,
who contended that the power mothers wield
over their sons is itself phallic because of the
phallus’s absence. This has special resonance
for Dietrich’s wearing of men’s evening dress in
both Morocco and Blonde Venus. Making her stage
entrance in black top hat and tails in Morocco,
Amy Jolly is a phallic object for both the girl
in the audience she tentatively kisses and the
legionnaire Tom Brown (Gary Cooper), who
feminises himself by placing behind his ear the
flower Amy tosses him. In Blonde Venus, having
become destitute in Texas and given up her young
son (Dickie Moore) to her husband, who cannot
forgive her affair with Nick Townsend, Helen
resurrects herself as an internationally popular
and icy-hearted nightclub entertainer: she
reappears wearing a white top hat and glittering
white tails, in which guise she insouciantly
makes it clear to Nick that she is no longer in need
of his financial support. Dietrich’s masculinised
femininity brooks no male advantage. Blonde
Venus has been widely criticised for the ending
that restores Helen to the bosom of her family
– a sop both to family-minded Depression
audiences and the Production Code – and for
reneging on the sexual life, which generally
burns longer than love in von Sternberg’s world.
Yet some women would undoubtedly deny
their sexuality if fulfilling it meant parting with
a child. Conveniently, Helen’s passion for Nick
seems spent – it doesn’t have the persistence of
Amy’s passion for Tom Brown or Shanghai Lily’s
for Doc Harvey. Or von Sternberg’s for Dietrich.
The Criterion box set has plenty of
supplements. Film scholar Homay King, the
author of Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema,
and the Enigmatic Signifier (2010), analyses
exoticism in von Sternberg’s films, especially
in Shanghai Express, and is insightful on the
non-stereotypical role of Anna May Wong as
the Chinese prostitute (Shanghai Lily’s secret
sharer) who gets away with murder. Fellow
scholars Mary Desjardins, Amy Lawrence and
Patricia White talk about the modernity of
Dietrich as both a feminist and queer heroine.
Nicholas Sternberg discusses his father’s
legacy, and Gerd Gemünden Noah Isenberg
reflect on Dietrich’s German origins.
Silke Ronneburg, curator of the Deutsche
Kinemathek, assesses the museum’s Marlene
Dietrich Collection, which was founded on the
star’s hoarded belongings and mementoes, and
explains who “the real Amy Jolly” was. There’s a
Lux Radio Theater recording of Morocco starring
Dietrich and Clark Gable; a short promotional
film featuring Paramount costume designer
Travis Banton and a silent Dietrich modelling one
of his creations; and a song, ‘If It Isn’t Pain’, that
never made the final cut of The Devil Is a Woman.
Interviewed by two respectful television hosts
following a concert performance in Denmark
in 1971, Dietrich herself appears humble and
extremely guarded. She still had her Maximilian
Schell-directed documentary ahead of her, but
36 years after her monumental collaboration
with von Sternberg ended, she knew that his
pictures did all the talking that was necessary.
84 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
New releases
THE ADDICTION
Abel Ferrara; US 1995; Arrow Video; Region free Blu-
ray; 82 minutes; 1.85:1. Extras: audio commentary
by Ferrara; new making-of documentary; archival
doc materials; new interviews; original artwork.
Reviewed by Michael Atkinson
Many of Abel Ferrara’s 20th-century movies had
the sense not of trying to capture the grungier
territories and flavours of New York, but of
actually having been birthed out of a downtown
basement bar, equal parts ramshackle form,
liquored-up pretension and indulgent ardour
for the underbelly. This seamy riff on modern
Aids-era vampirism leaps from academia to the
gutter and stays there, and the two worlds are
made to uneasily conjoin, as Lili Taylor’s wary
philosophy grad student is essentially raped
(by vampy Annabella Sciorra) and turned into
a night-dwelling blood addict. Metaphors are
thick on the sidewalk, as her descent from cool
user to flat-out alley junkie is indexed with both
genocidal history (a My Lai lecture, a Holocaust
exhibit) and relentless discussions about
phenomenology and relativism; everyone from
Spinoza to Heidegger is name-checked more than
once, and Nicholas St John’s script comes off as
a genre project that pre-empts and incorporates
its own subtext-doped film-geek reviews. Even
the film’s concept of vampirism is low-rent, with
virtually no sex or religion in the mix – it’s simply
predation, in a moral universe of eat or be eaten.
All of which can be fun but also wearying;
for one thing, the over-use of vampirism for
symbolic purposes since the 90s has taken the
burnish off Ferrara’s dirty ditty, and for another,
despite being so filthy with overt philosophy,
it actually does very little thinking. (On the
plus side, Ken Kelsch’s inky black-and-white
photography is still creepily gorgeous, and often
suggestive of the atrocity news images we’ve
seen, and Christopher Walken’s cameo as the
vampiric elder statesman/high-functioning
addict is a small, fast-thinking masterpiece of
Walkeniania.) At least a quick, pungent taste of
pre-9/11 American grunge, this remains a genre
film, half-thought-out and executed with zest.
Disc: Beautiful transfer, and a delightful mess
of reminiscences and growling interviews.
BLACK PETER
Milos Forman; Czechoslovakia 1963; Second
Run; Region-free Blu-ray/DVD; Certificate PG; 90
minutes; 1.37:1. Extras: archival interview with Milos
Forman; audio commentary by Michael Brooke; new
interview with actress Pavla Martínková; booklet.
Reviewed by Andrew Male
Towards the end of Milos Forman’s second
full-length Czech film, 1965’s Loves of a Blonde,
the parents of a young pianist are interrogating
a naive boarding-school girl who’s arrived on
their doorstep following their son’s insincere
post-coital invitation to come and visit. “He’s
an idiot,” says the father at one point. “An idiot,
and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Discussing the differences between his Czech
and American movies, Forman said, “The Czech
movies [showed] life as it is, while [the American]
movies are wonderful fairytales.” However,
one constant across almost all his films was the
idea of the central male ‘rebel’ as some kind of
idiot: Randle P. McMurphy (One Flew over the
Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(Amadeus, 1984), Larry Flynt (The People vs. Larry
Flynt, 1996), Andy Kaufman (Man on the Moon,
1999) – all are men driven as much by deep
insensitive stupidity as heroism or genius.
In this beautiful restoration of Black Peter,
Forman’s feature-length debut, we find this idiot-
hero in his formative stages. Looking like a slack-
shouldered cross between Jeremy Renner and
young Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ladislav Jakim
plays Petr, a 16-year-old grocery store detective
whose free time is spent ineptly romancing local
girl Asa (the cooly beautiful Pavla Mart´n ´ ková).
Forman said Black Peter was about a young man
“trained to be… an informer” but, fascinatingly,
it’s a training that fails, not through any
knowing act of rebellion, but through Petr’s own
ineptitude: he inexpertly spies on the shoppers,
peeps at Asa at the local bathing stalls, and
fails to apprehend anyone: state surveillance
undermined by apathy and incompetence.
In using non-professional actors and real
locations, with Jan Nemecek’s gorgeously fluid
long-take cinematography – a 20-minute set
piece at a dancehall captures all the haphazard
drama of teen romance – Forman was creating
a cinema of resistance by simply depicting
chaotic, free-flowing human nature.
In the final scene, as Petr’s father (the brilliant
Jan Vostrcil) bombards his son with old-country
platitudes, the camera freeze-frames on dad’s
exasperated face. It’s a move lifted from Truffaut’s
The 400 Blows (1959) but, brilliantly, Peter himself
continues to move within the frame. Ignorant,
unknowing, free of ideology, Petr remains free.
Disc: 4K restoration, contemporary interview
with Pavla Martínková, plus top-drawer
audio commentary by Michael Brooke
and liner notes by Jonathan Owen.
DARK BLUE
Ron Shelton; US 2002; Arrow Video; Region B Blu-ray;
Certificate 15; 118 minutes; 2.35:1. Extras: commentary by
Ron Shelton; making-of documentary; featurettes on the
look of the film and its portrayal of cops; trailers; booklet
Reviewed by Craig Williams
Dark Blue (2002) was only Ron Shelton’s
second non-sports film as director, but it offers
an intriguing counterpoint to much of his
preceding work, with the bantering, fraternal
locker room culture of Bull Durham (1988) and
The Walken dead: The Addiction (1995)
White Men Can’t Jump (1992) transposed into
something darker, more pernicious among the
police force of early 1990s Los Angeles. Based on
a story by James Ellroy and featuring a livewire
performance from Kurt Russell, it is about police
corruption on the eve of the LA riots in 1992,
very much the milieu of screenwriter David
Ayer, who strove to make the territory his own
as writer on films like Training Day (2001) and
director of films like End of Watch (2012). But the
picture is at its best when Shelton unshackles
himself from Ayer’s over-plotted screenplay
(it is the only film he directed but didn’t write),
allowing him to reflect on the broader themes
playing out in the margins of the story.
This is particularly notable in the treatment
of the Rodney King trial, coverage of which plays
on televisions and radios throughout the film – a
constant reminder of the wider context in which
the events of the film unfold. Indeed, there’s a
distinct sense of an impending moral reckoning,
of time running out on the old order. Better still
is the way Dark Blue posits the LAPD of the early
90s as the rotten endpoint of frontier mythology.
“Law enforcement has been my family business
since Los Angeles was a frontier township,”
Russell’s Sergeant Eldon Perry says during the
film’s pivotal showdown. “I was raised to be a
gunfighter by a family of gunfighters.” It’s no
coincidence that an important plot point involves
the force’s sole shining light, Ving Rhames’s
Assistant Chief Arthur Holland, deciding whether
to go back east, leaving the Gomorrean frontier
of Southern California to languish, or to stay
and help save it from itself and become a bold
new iteration of the traditional western hero.
Disc: The extras are mostly archival material,
including several detailed featurettes covering
both the production and its broader context –
including insight into Ellroy’s original script,
which was intriguingly set during the Watts Riots
of 1965. There’s also an excellent commentary
track by Shelton, who speaks passionately about
the material, while revealing himself to be a true
cop movie savant as well as a shrewd script editor.
DETECTIVE BUREAU 2-3:
GO TO HELL BASTARDS!
Suzuki Seijun; Japan 1963; Arrow Video; Region B Blu-ray;
Certificate 15; 89 minutes; 2.35:1. Extras: introduction by
critic Tony Rayns; trailer; booklet notes by Jasper Sharp.
Reviewed by Trevor Johnston
Four years before his bosses at Nikkatsu finally
lost patience with Suzuki Seijun’s penchant
for wilfully aestheticising the studio’s standard
genre assignments – firing him after the far-
out gangster flick Branded to Kill (1967) – this
offering with the same lead is a taste of what’s
to come. This was the prolific Suzuki’s first
teaming with chubby-cheeked leading man Joe
Shishido, who somehow conveys the requisite
renegade cool in a story about a private eye
infiltrating a yakuza gang behind a Tokyo turf
war. Shishido’s also nimble enough to mug along
with Suzuki’s playful approach to hard-boiled
fare, turning to a spot of spontaneous night-club
crooning or even posing as a priest’s son so as
not to blow his cover. The comedy sidekicks
may be a bit of a pain, the supposedly tough-guy
gang surprisingly non-threatening, but every so
Tokyo Joe: Joe Shishido in Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! (1963)
often Suzuki chucks in a spectacularly angled
composition or fills the screen with crimson red
lighting. All very diverting, but notwithstanding
the decidedly un-Japanese massed gunfights,
perhaps a bit lacking muscle. Definitely one to
see if you’re exploring the Suzuki filmography,
though not quite first off the shelf.
Disc: The transfer does well by Suzuki’s
distinctive gun-metal and red colour
schemes. Detailed notes from Jasper Sharp
and a typically persuasive Tony Rayns
video intro fill in the context admirably.
TWO FILMS BY
ROGER DONALDSON
SLEEPING DOGS
Roger Donaldson; NZ 1977; Arrow Video; Region B
Blu-ray; Certificate 15; 107 minutes; 1.85:1. Extras:
commentary by Donaldson with leading man Sam Neill
and actor-writer Ian Mune; 1977 and 2004 making-
of docs; trailer; booklet notes by Neil Mitchell.
SMASH PALACE
Roger Donaldson; NZ 1981; Arrow Region B Blu-ray;
Certificate 18; 108 minutes; 1.85:1. Extras: commentary
by Donaldson with racing driver Steve Millen;
making-of doc; trailer; booklet notes by Ian Barr.
Reviewed by Trevor Johnston
Looking at these two discs, you’re tempted to
think Roger Donaldson hasn’t really had the
credit he deserves for kickstarting New Zealand’s
subsequent outpouring of celluloid achievement.
Maybe his subsequent uneven Hollywood
filmography (eg, Cocktail, 1988; Dante’s Peak, 1997)
has worked against him, but what we have here
is absolute bedrock stuff. Sleeping Dogs (1977), for
instance, was the first fiction 35mm feature ever
made in the country, a combination of shoot-’em-
up, road movie and dystopian political fable, which
proved there was a substantial local audience
for Kiwi film product. Its success at home and in
foreign sales helped bring the New Zealand Film
Commission into being, and it (albeit reluctantly)
backed his even stronger second feature Smash
Palace in 1981, a startlingly raw portrait of corrosive
masculinity against a car-nut background, which
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showed in Cannes and already had a critically
fêted New York opening before it arrived back
home. With this one-two punch, Donaldson
delivered commercial viability plus arthouse
credibility, an evident catalyst for everything
else that followed in the native industry.
They’re holding up pretty well too. The
thoroughly enjoyable debut benefits from the
presence of a 30-year-old Sam Neill, understated but
amiable as the errant father grudgingly involved
with armed resistance against the fascist regime.
As a low-budget cautionary tale it compares
favourably with, say, Romero’s The Crazies
(1973), and endearingly throws everything at the
screen – including urban riots, RNZAF jets and a
passing Warren Oates. The follow-up, though, is
far more emotionally authentic in its treatment
of a disintegrating marriage, with the late Bruno
Lawrence magnetically bloke-ish as the loving
father dangerously caught up in his automotive
ambitions, and a surprisingly fair portrayal for the
wife who doesn’t share his axle-greased dreams.
Donaldson’s classically assured direction copes
unflappably with edgy sexuality and four-wheeled
stunts alike, and while it’s understandable that
Hollywood beckoned, there’s an intimacy and
personality here he never quite recaptured. Smash
Palace in particular stands as an overlooked gem.
Discs: Excellent transfers, showcasing
the luminosity of New Zealand locations.
Worthwhile making-of material on both titles
too, ported over from earlier DVD editions,
as indeed are the useful commentaries
– Neill’s wry contribution to the Sleeping
Dogs track is a notable highlight.
FOOTSTEPS IN THE FOG
Arthur Lubin; UK 1955; Powerhouse Films/Blu-ray;
90 mins; Certificate PG; Aspect Ratio: 1.75:1; Extras:
Interviews – Josephine Botting on the film, Steve Chibnall
on Belinda Lee, Kat Ellinger on the film’s gothic origins,
Theatrical Trailer, Image Gallery, Essay booklet.
Reviewed by Kate Stables
A ‘gaslight noir’, Lubin’s murk-and-
mahogany Technicolor thriller combines
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 85
 New releases
double-crossing master and maidservant
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intrigue with Edwardian period chills, at
the genre’s last gasp. Famous in the 1950s for his
Francis the Talking Mule films, Lubin took the
project “to remind producers that I can direct
people too”, creating a switchbacking take on
the ‘woman-in-peril’ theme. Stewart Granger,
opposite his then-wife Jean Simmons, invests his
wily wife-killer with alternate glee and gravitas.
Lenore Coffee and Dorothy Reid’s sharp script
sets the balance of power see-sawing between
him and Simmons’s demure blackmailing
maid, scared at her own daring but set on class-
climbing. Kat Ellinger’s extras analysis is acute
about how both characters exhibit a dualism
that makes the film dodge expectations. Darts
of black humour enliven the dialogue (“I do
like to see a widower grieve proper. It lends tone
to a funeral”), and stalwarts like Peter Bull, as a
beady lawyer, make the courtroom scene crackle.
However, Simmons, pert and tender with longing
for a new life, is the film’s outstanding turn,
revealing a steeliness unseen in her early 50s
epics. Christopher Challis’s deep, rich Technicolor
points up Wilfred Shingleton’s creepily opulent
sets, which Dilys Powell, fascinated by a colour
‘gaslight’ picture, enjoyed seeing wreathed in fog
of a novel “sand, moss and heather mixture”.
Disc: A fine transfer which shows off the
film’s cluttered period interiors, firmly
demarcated for upstairs and downstairs folk
respectively. In a well-rounded extras package,
Josephine Botting’s detailed analysis has the
edge. But Steve Chibnall’s fond dash through
starlet Belinda Lee’s career, from Frankie
Howerd to Mondo Cane, is the eye-opener.
THE GOALIE’S ANXIETY
AT THE PENALTY KICK
Wim Wenders; West Germany/Austria 1971; AX1
Entertainment; Region B Blu-ray/Region 2 DVD;
Certificate 12; 103 minutes; 1.37:1. Extras: introduction
by Wim Wenders; Restoring Time documentary;
1968 short Same Player Shoots Again; booklet.
Reviewed by Brad Stevens
Although Wim Wenders’s fiction features over
the last two decades have, with a handful of
exceptions, been desultory affairs, to return to
the director’s first professional film, The Goalie’s
Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, is to be reminded that
Wenders was among the key auteurs of the
1970s. If his recent Submergence (2017), despite
(or perhaps because of) the self-consciousness
with which it tackles ‘important’ themes, has no
particular reason to exist, Goalie’s Anxiety is the
work of an artist who knows exactly what he is
doing, how to do it, and why it needs to be done.
Like Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner
Fassbinder, Wenders was exploring that dilemma
faced by a generation of Germans growing
up in the shadow of fascism, who perceived
American culture as hopelessly contradictory,
a vehicle of both liberation and imperialism.
The necessity of viewing post-war Germany
through the prism of an American influence
which can be neither unambiguously embraced
nor decisively rejected dominates The Goalie’s
Anxiety, with its focus on a goalkeeper, Joseph
Bloch (Arthur Brauss), who commits a motiveless
murder while wandering aimlessly through a
86 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1971)
landscape defined at every point (movies, music,
postcards, currency) by emblems of Americana.
It is ironic, then, that Wenders’s subsequent
attempts to become a US filmmaker, treating
these emblems in a purely celebratory fashion,
routinely found him indulging in precisely
the kind of aimlessness he subjects to such
penetrating critique here. It’s doubly ironic that
this uncompromised work of Bressonian rigour
(even moments of humour and gestures of
affection are marked by intimations of sadness
and cruelty hovering just out of reach) has finally
become available again, after an absence of
several decades (it was released on VHS by the
BFI’s Connoisseur Video label), in a compromised
form which obscures its central concern: many
of the American songs used on the soundtrack
having been replaced with newly recorded
material due to copyright problems. The result
comes dangerously close to refashioning The
Goalie’s Anxiety in the style of those late Wenders
projects in which popular music serves a merely
ornamental function. The damage has clearly
been minimised as much as possible (tracks
by Roy Orbison, The Tokens and Van Morrison
are still present), but the loss of Creedence
Clearwater Revival’s ‘Long as I Can See the Light’
from a scene in which Bloch attempts to dance
after being beaten up is especially regrettable.
Disc: Aside from the limitations noted above,
the restored 4K digital transfer is splendid,
perfectly reproducing the late Robby Müller’s
cinematography. Extras consist of a new
13-minute introduction by Wenders (who
bizarrely claims that he mixed the film in
mono “because stereo hadn’t been invented
yet”), a 15-minute restoration documentary
from 2015, and the director’s earliest surviving
short. The booklet contains a perceptive
essay by Jason Wood, and several other useful
texts. A Region 2 DVD is also available.
IT HAPPENED HERE
Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo; UK 1964; BFI; Region
B Blu-ray and Region 2 DVD dual format; 100 minutes;
1.33:1. Extras: featurettes; interview; archive films; booklet.
Reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson
Produced over eight years, on a scrappy budget
of around £7,000 and featuring a cast of mostly
amateur actors, It Happened Here punches far
above its weight. This eerie, speculative war
film, directed by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew
Mollo (both teenagers when the project
began), imagines life in England under Nazi
rule following an invasion and occupation
during World War II. Its studious attention
to detail and semi-documentary style, using
both 16mm and 35mm, necessarily enhances
the realism in scenes of fascist rallies and Nazi
propaganda on the streets of London. The lead
character is Pauline, who considers herself
“as political as a lamppost” but is drafted into
the National Socialists as a military nurse
when she is evacuated from her village – she’s
horrified by war but dangerously susceptible
to the rhetoric. It’s a rough, provocative film,
one that engages with the politics of war rather
than the combat, and for which the phrase
“hard to watch” is positively a compliment.
It’s perhaps facile to suggest that the film
makes for especially chilling viewing at this time
– it’s always been a shocking prospect, and the
film was especially controversial on its release,
when the filmmakers were accused of anti-
Semitism. However, in a post-truth culture, the
newsreel film-within-the-film that recomposes
the history of World War I and the rise of the
Blackshirts into a path to the Nazification of
England may have become yet more sickening.
What we are told happened here in the past is
dependent on what is happening here now.
Disc: The full version of the newsreel is one
of several extras on this release of the BFI’s
new restoration of It Happened Here. It is joined
by making-of footage, trailers, archive films,
a feature-length interview with Brownlow,
a book of essays, image gallery and a bizarre
excerpt from an Italian documentary that,
staggeringly, assumes the film was genuine.
KING OF JAZZ
John Murray Anderson; USA 1930; Criterion; Region
B Blu-ray; 98 minutes; 1.33:1. Extras: booklet, video
essays, archive shorts, featurettes, deleted scenes.
Reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson
An early movie musical showcasing Paul
Whiteman and his orchestra sounds like a simple
proposition, but King of Jazz (1930) is a strange
beast. In lurid two-strip Technicolor, this revue-
style musical whips through a series of flashy
musical numbers, lightning-fast skits and even
an animated sequence set in “darkest Africa”.
It’s a lavish affair, if stagy, and features such
familiar names as John Boles, Bing Crosby (in his
first screen appearance) and silent comedienne
Laura La Plante. The red-and-green palette does
begin to grate after a while, as does the humour
and oddly stilted, perky tone. Produced by
Carl Laemmle Jr at Universal for an estimated
$2 million, this is an awesome spectacle, though,
representing musical-theatre legend John Murray
Anderson’s sole directorial credit on film.
King of Jazz is never less than fascinating –
right up to and including the notorious “melting
pot” finale, in which music from all nations is
performed and popped into a cauldron to produce
all-American jazz. That this jazz soup contains
flamenco, bagpipes and an English hunting
party singing “D’ye Ken John Peel?” but not a
single musician of colour is a mind-boggling
reminder that white America’s idea of jazz
was very different then. The most challenging
number is surely the rendition of George
Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, requiring
a shade that two-strip Technicolor
Revival
A TOUCH OF CLASS
In the early 1960s, Woodfall
Films transformed the way
the British working classes
were portrayed on screen
WOODFALL: A REVOLUTION
IN BRITISH CINEMA
LOOK BACK IN ANGER / THE ENTERTAINER /
SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING /
A TASTE OF HONEY / THE LONELINESS OF
THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER / TOM JONES
(TWO VERSIONS) / GIRL WITH GREEN EYES /
THE KNACK… AND HOW TO GET IT
Tony Richardson/Karel Reisz/Desmond Davis/Richard
Lester; UK 1959-65; BFI; Region B Blu-ray/Region 2
DVD; 921 minutes (885 minutes DVD); Certificate 15;
1.37:1/1.33:1. Extras: audio commentaries; BFI Southbank
panel discussion; interviews; excerpts from Royal Court
productions of Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer and
Luther, and Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King; short films: O
Dreamland, Holiday, Lancashire Coast, We Are the Lambeth
Boys, Momma Don’t Allow, Ten Bob in Winter, Food for a
Blluuusssshhhhh!, The Peaches, Captain Busby; ‘USSR
Today’ newsreel excerpt; Mitchell & Kenyon 1901 shorts.
Reviewed by Philip Kemp
In the 60th anniversary year of its founding (by
Tony Richardson, John Osborne and Canadian
producer Harry Saltzmann), Woodfall Films
has been widely credited with transforming the
image of the British working classes on screen,
lending them individuality and dignity. And
rightly so; although it could be suggested that
the process had been prefigured by certain of
the Ealing films, such as Charles Crichton’s
Dance Hall (1950) and Basil Dearden’s Pool of
London (1951). (There’s some Ealing/Woodfall
continuity in personnel, too, with editor/
screenwriter/director Seth Holt editing Saturday
Night and Sunday Morning and senior Ealing
sound editor Stephen Dalby showing up on
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Girl
with Green Eyes and The Knack.) It could also be
noted that Woodfall itself backslid now and
again in this regard: the working-class characters
that feature in Richardson’s period romp Tom
Jones (1963) are largely treated as comic figures,
subservient or venal – or, quite often, both.
What also becomes clear, though, from the
extras lavishly included in this nine-disc box-set
is that Woodfall lastingly revolutionised the
culture of the British film industry, introducing
a looser and far less hierarchical work structure.
Several of the interviewees – directors, actors,
crew members – recall the freedom they
experienced on Woodfall productions; some
of them – as Desmond Davis notes – having
entered an industry where a DoP expected to
be addressed as ‘Sir’ by lesser crew members.
Much of this, it would seem, can be directly
attributed to Richardson, whose relaxed attitude
to filmmaking – described by interviewees as
“inventive”, “unpredictable” and “anything but
by the book” – made for easy-going, communally
Prole model: Albert Finney as working-class hero Arthur Seaton in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
creative shoots. This approach was enhanced by
his predilection for location shooting; having
reluctantly agreed to some use of studio sets
in his capacity as producer of Karel Reisz’s
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, he leapt
at the chance to shoot every scene of A Taste
of Honey (1961) on location – the first British
feature film ever to use this technique, rapidly
followed along the same track by Loneliness.
(The cinematographer for both of these was
Walter Lassally, in his first assignments for
Woodfall; his preference for using natural light
dovetailed perfectly with Richardson’s ideas.)
While engaged on launching his cinema
career Richardson had begun working with
George Devine (later to play Squire Allworthy in
Tom Jones) at the Royal Court, where the English
Stage Company adopted a similarly iconoclastic
stance in the face of the traditional West End
theatre world (dominated at the time by the
likes of Binkie Beaumont). An unexpected but
welcome bonus of this box-set is four excerpts
from classic Royal Court productions, billed in
the accompanying booklet as ‘The George Devine
Memorial Play’ and including three virtuoso
star performances – Laurence Olivier as Archie
Rice in Osborne’s The Entertainer, Albert Finney
in the title role of Luther (also Osborne) and Alec
Guinness as Berenger in Ionesco’s Exit the King.
A further source for the Woodfall ethos, and
for Richardson’s realist aesthetic, was the Free
Cinema movement powered by himself along
with Reisz and Lindsay Anderson. Here again
there’s a link to Lassally, who shot four of the
key Free Cinema shorts: Anderson’s Thursday’s
Children (1954, co-directed with Guy Brenton),
Reisz and Richardson’s Momma Don’t Allow (1956),
Several interviewees – directors,
actors, crew members – recall
the freedom they experienced on
Woodfall productions
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Anderson’s Every Day Except Christmas (1957)
and Reisz’s We Are the Lambeth Boys (1959). Two
of these – Momma and Lambeth – aptly feature in
the box-set, along with Anderson’s O Dreamland
(1953); plus two cheerier full-colour efforts
from John Taylor (John Grierson’s brother-in-
law): Holiday (1957) and Lancashire Coast (1957).
Some early (1901) Mitchell & Kenyons shot
at Morecambe (venue for the location scenes
in The Entertainer ) and a brief 1929 newsreel
item, Morecambe Carnival, make for a diverting
backdrop. But the three more recent shorts
included in this set mark a precipitous decline
from the realist pinnacles of Free Cinema.
Elizabeth Russell’s Food for a Blluuusssshhhh!
(1959), Michael Gill’s The Peaches (1964) and
Anne Wolff’s Captain Busby The Even Tenour of
Her Ways (1967) are so self-consciously quirky,
they’re now all but impossible to watch.
If these three make for incongruous inclusions
in the set, there are also some surprising
omissions. Two of the discs, no less, are devoted
to Richardson’s Tom Jones – the 1963 theatrical
release and the 1989 Director’s Cut. Yet nowhere,
either on the discs or in the booklet, are we
told what the differences are between these
versions, or why Richardson, two years before
he died, was belatedly impelled to make the
changes to his Oscar-laden costume romp.
The Director’s Cut runs some seven minutes
the shorter of the two since – as it turns out
on scrutiny – a few minor scenes have been
excised. It would have been good to learn why.
But this set of the first nine Woodfall features,
along with its wealth of supporting extras, offers
an invaluable overview of the company that
changed the face – and values – of British cinema.
It would be good to see a follow-up – Woodfall Two:
The Revolution Consolidates? – that could include
some neglected items from the company’s later
productions. All the more so since several of them,
such as Mademoiselle (1966), The White Bus (1967),
Inadmissible Evidence (1968) and Laughter in the
Dark (1969), aren’t currently available on disc.
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 87
 New releases
simply couldn’t achieve – the production
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bravely summons a sickly turquoise.
Disc: This release was made possible by a heroic
4K restoration, reincorporating cut sequences
and reconstructing that distinctive colour
palette. The Blu-ray adds a full, informative
audio commentary discussing its place in
jazz history. Four video essays by the restorers
James Layton and David Pierce offer an insight
into the making of this remarkable film.
An introduction by jazz and film critic Gary
Giddens, deleted and alternate scenes, four
vintage shorts and an interview with singer and
pianist Michael Feinstein complete the mix.
THE NAVIGATOR:
A MEDIEVAL ODYSSEY
Vincent Ward; NZ/Australia 1988; Arrow; Region B
Blu-ray; 90 minutes; Certificate 12: 1.85:1; Extras:
appreciation by Nick Roddick; documentary Kaleidoscope:
Vincent Ward – Film Maker; trailer; booklet
Reviewed by Michael Brooke
Films about time travel between the medieval and
modern eras are usually played for easy laughs.
All credit, then, to Vincent Ward for not only
managing to present with an entirely straight
face a potentially absurd narrative – about a
group of 14th-century Cumbrian peasants
fleeing the Black Death by literally tunnelling
through the globe to find themselves in late
1980s New Zealand – but for also achieving
perhaps the cinema’s most convincing
impression of what the modern world might
look like to an unforewarned medieval mind.
The scene in which visionary protagonist
Griffin (Hamish McFarlane) is unexpectedly
confronted by a bank of dozens of shopfront
televisions showing an Aids commercial
featuring the Grim Reaper could have been just a
throwaway sight gag were it not for Ward’s acute
awareness of how someone exclusively brought
up on verbal and static representations of such a
figure might respond to being confronted with
the seemingly genuine article. “Without you,
we’re blind”, says one of Griffin’s companions
to him, but they all instinctively recognise the
importance of a church spire, the focal point
of their quest, at least as much out of practical
necessity as religious conviction: it’s the only
cultural anchor-point they can identify. (They
wouldn’t – couldn’t – consider the possibility
that the present-day church might not be quite
as far-reachingly influential as hitherto.)
Random freeze-frames recall German
expressionism, Dreyer, Bergman and Tarkovsky
– presumably intentionally; today’s viewer might
also glean more coincidental parallels with other
films set in medieval worlds, such as Marketa
Lazarová (1967), Anchoress (1993) or Hard to Be a
God (2013), they’re tightly knitted into a texture
that’s clearly Ward’s own. Indeed, the visual
fearlessness is so startling that it acts as a sobering
reminder that Ward’s career never flourished into
what once seemed not just possible but likely.
Disc: The New Zealand Film Commission’s
high-definition restoration transfers very nicely
to Blu-ray. Extras favour quality over quantity,
with Nick Roddick (on video) and Kim Newman
(in print) offering enthusiastic appraisals, while
a 1989 New Zealand television documentary
88 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
Sympathy for medieval: The Navigator
about Ward’s career up to The Navigator
offers a more practical (and considerably less
alarming) method of trans-global time travel.
NEON BULL
Gabriel Mascaro; Brazil 2015; Second Run; Region-free Blu-
ray/DVD; Certificate 18; 104mins; 2.39:1. Extras: interview
with Gabriel Mascaro, filmed at the Film fra Sør festival in
Norway; ‘The Making of Neon Bull’ featurette; booklet
Reviewed by Ben R. Nicholson
Mid-way through Brazilian artist and filmmaker
Gabriel Mascaro’s sexually frank festival hit
Neon Bull (2015), about life at a vaquejada (a
form of Brazilian rodeo), there is a literal neon
bull, daubed in fluorescent yellow paint. The
creature’s purpose in its single scene is similar
to that of other bulls that appear; to be corralled
and chased down by mounted cowboys.
Metaphorically, though, it is entwined with
the closest thing the film has to a protagonist,
Iremar (Juliano Cazarré), who wrangles cattle
by day but designs women’s clothing by night,
longing to work in a garment factory.
The lack of driving narrative is perhaps
a product of Gabriel Mascaro’s background
in documentary (this is his second fiction
feature); his previous preoccupations with
inequality – especially memorable in his 2009
documentary High-Rise, which looked at the
lives of Brazil’s wealthy elite – re-emerge here.
He depicts quotidian lives via protracted takes
in sun-parched dust and the strip-lit nights shot
by Cemetery of Splendour (2015) cinematographer
Diego García. To some extent, the subjects’
consistent distance from the camera and the
mundane directness of their sometimes explicit
actions mimic nature photography – blurring
the boundaries between man and beast.
In one scene a man lies caressing a horse in
an almost romantic encounter, in another a
woman dances for a braying male crowd in a
revealing costume designed by Iremar, her face
hidden beneath a horse mask. Early one morning
Iremar slinks out of his hammock to steal a
soiled porn mag from a sleeping colleague. Far
from the scene that we might expect to follow,
he takes a pen and draws an outfit on to his nude
model, subverting the audience’s expectations
of his rugged masculinity. These moments
slowly erode distinctions – of species, gender
– crafting something approaching cinematic
equality within a sensual, tactile microcosm.
Disc: The accompanying booklet features
an interview with Mascaro by critic David
Jenkins. On the disc are an interview with
Masaro from the Film fra Sør festival, a
theatrical trailer, and a making-of featurette
highlighting the workshopping process and
the physicality of the actors’ preparations.
PERSONAL PROBLEMS
Bill Gunn; USA 1980-81; Kino Lorber; Region-free Blu-ray;
164 minutes; 1.33:1. Extras: Previously unseen preliminary
version directed by Gunn; deleted and extended scenes;
original six-part radio drama; interviews with creators Ishmael
Reed and Steve Cannon, and actor Sam Waymon; Q&A
footage from the 2018 restoration premiere; theatrical trailer.
Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton
The reclamation and recognition of the brilliant,
oft-frustrated career of African-American author/
playwright/screenwriter/director/actor/genuine
one-off Bill Gunn won’t be complete until his
1970 studio feature debut Stop is rescued from
oblivion, but the emergence of his diptych
television experiment Personal Problems, dubbed
a “meta-soap opera” by co-creator and novelist
Ishmael Reed, is nevertheless a titanic step
forward. Previously seen only in distressed
and truncated versions with a soundtrack
compromised to the point of rustling inaudibility,
this home video release of the painstaking 2018
restoration is nothing less than a coup, a chance
to discover a work that as much challenges and
deconstructs conventional modes of popular
television entertainment as Gunn’s Ganja & Hess
(1973) did horror and blaxploitation tropes.
Personal Problems is a quotidian drama,
documenting the everyday events in the life
of a middle-class black family unit and their
attached friends, hangers-on and sidepieces.
Johnnie Mae (Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor), a
nurse at Harlem Hospital, is something like the
central character of the two extant episodes
of what was a proposed full series. She is seen
interacting with her gruff husband, Charles
(Walter Cotton), more interested in TV reruns
of The Guns of Navarone than their marriage; her
stepdad, Father Brown (Jim Wright, a veteran
of Orson Welles’s 1936 ‘Voodoo Macbeth’); her
ne’er-do-well couch-surfing brother, Bubba
(Thommie Blackwell); and her boyfriend,
musician Raymon (Samuel L. Waymon), who
serenades Johnnie Mae into a dam-burst of tears,
the entire scene captured in one devastating
unbroken cut, the sort of thing practically
unheard of in the vocabulary of the small screen
then or now. (The rough-edged, natural light
videography is courtesy of a then-quite-young
Robert Polidori, not yet a photographer of note.)
An extreme outlier in both form and, through
its habit of privileging fine-grained behavioural
nuance rather than cliffhanger plot contrivance,
in content, Personal Problems is a fair candidate
for the home video rediscovery of the year.
Disc: Kino’s package allows one to track the
Personal Problems project’s every iteration on
the way to the final – if not finished – product,
beginning with the original radio playlet
version as aired on co-creator Steve Cannon’s
WBAI radio show, and continuing into the
Gunn-directed video pilot. Also including a
trove of extended and discarded scenes, the disc
offers not only a quietly revolutionary work
of American moving image art, but unique
insight into the circumstances of its creation.
Television by Robert Hanks
HEIMAT

HOME CINEMA
Edgar Reitz; Germany 1984; Second Sight; Region
B Blu-ray; Certificate 15; 889 minutes; 1.66:1. Extras:
documentary Heimat – The Hunsrück Villages:
Stories from the Film Locations; interviews with Reitz,
actor Marita Breuer, Christian Reitz, film producer
Jan Harlan; visual essay by Daniel Bird; booklet.
Groping around for a point of comparison
for Heimat in anglophone culture, the closest
I could come up with was The Archers, the
BBC’s venerable rural radio soap. Even I’m
not convinced; but it is worth stopping for a
moment to think about the things these two
everyday stories of countryfolk have in common:
a historical sweep matched with intimate
domestic detail, a shift between tragic and comic
registers, acting that is subtle and moving played
against outright hamming, a poise (not always
maintained) between playing it straight and
winking to the audience – this last trait linked
to an ambivalent attitude toward conservative
rural values, which are treated as both sacred and
suspect, at moments grabbed with both hands,
elsewhere picked up gingerly with the tongs of
irony. Perhaps that should be expected. Edgar
Reitz’s monumental TV series is to some extent
the offspring of the West German post-war genre
of Heimatfilm, wholehearted celebrations of the
nation’s heartland and its supposed pastoral
roots, and aren’t we all like that to our parents?
We love them, and they annoy the hell out of us.
One important difference between Heimat
and The Archers is the impulse behind them. Heimat When the series first screened in Britain the
While The Archers originated (at the same
historic moment, the late 40s and 50s, that the BBC was so inundated with demands from viewers
Heimatfilm was in its flower) as a public service,
to promote good agricultural practice, a trigger
who had missed episodes that it promptly repeated it
for Reitz was the US miniseries Holocaust (1978),
which accommodated Nazi genocide to the has just walked home from a PoW camp in France. and chimneys are mentioned glancingly; the
narrative rhythms and emotional expectations His arrival in the village of Schabbach, drinking in only Nazis are either stupid or unpleasant. At a
of primetime. The Americans, he wrote angrily, the familiar sights and sounds, feels conventional party he throws for the village, the returned Paul
“have stolen our history through Holocaust”. enough; his reunion with his blacksmith father, glosses over the late unpleasantness, declaring:
Shortly afterward, the success of Rainer joining him at the forge and, without a word, “Hitler wasn’t from the Hunsrück” – the self-
Werner Fassbinder’s 15-and-a-half-hour Berlin taking up their old working routine, is touching. congratulation is clear, but it’s the case, too, that
Alexanderplatz (1980) gave German television Then he turns from the forge to see his mother, these people don’t make history, they just live in it.
the confidence to finance long-form, artistically Katharina, at the door to their house; she beckons The narrative in these earlier episodes
ambitious series. Reitz conceived of a long series, him, but before he embraces her he must stop sometimes has a fantastic, mythic quality,
partly autobiographical, tracing the history of to perform an important duty: as she beams on enhanced by random-seeming switches from
an extended German family from the end of approvingly, he undoes his flies and takes a hearty black and white to colour, and the flashes of
World War I to the present; he set it in his native piss on the ground outside the house. Just like us? colour that illuminate monochrome scenes
territory, the Hunsrück, a low, thickly wooded In fact, a large part of what draws you into (which surely influenced Spielberg’s use of the
mountain range on Germany’s western edge, next the series is its embrace of the peculiar and the device in Schindler’s List, 1993). Post-1950, within
to Luxembourg, a conservative area with its own enigmatic – the central enigma being Paul’s Reitz’s own memory, when the focus tightens
distinctive dialect. And he did not compromise abrupt disappearance at the end of the second to Maria’s sons, we’re mostly in colour; but with
with the schedules – each episode takes as long as episode. With his departure, the weight of the more realism comes flabbier storytelling – self-
it takes, sometimes more than two hours. It was story passes to his wife, Maria (Marita Breuer, conscious, derivative, distracted by Hermann’s
a huge success, leading to two sequels – Heimat whose luminous presence holds the whole artistic ambitions and Reitz’s suspicion of
2, set in Munich in the 1960s, and the post-Cold thing together), left alone to bring up their two modernity, his need to tell moral fables about
War Heimat 3, as well as two standalone films. sons, Anton and Ernst. The strongest episodes business and materialism. But even this gives
And the success was global: as the film producer follow her through the 30s – the rise of Nazism; rise to powerful moments. Near the start, Paul
Jan Harlan recalls in one of the interviews the building of a road connecting the Hunsrück rides in a bi-plane, over the Hunsrück, thrilling
packaged with this fine Blu-ray release, when the to the outside world; an affair that gives her at the leisurely unfolding of the land beneath
series was first screened in Britain the BBC was so a third son, Hermann; the war that takes her to gentle guitar music (Nikos Mamangakis’s
inundated with demands from viewers who had older sons away for a time; and, afterward, Paul’s score grows on you). At the end, Maria’s funeral
missed episodes that it promptly repeated it. Its brief return: rich but coarsened by 20 years is interrupted by low-flying jets, and suddenly
impact, Harlan suggests, was due to the outside in America, and unable to say why he left. we’re in the cockpit, the same landscape now
world realising for the first time that Germans It is a kind of pastoral idyll, though it makes hurtling past, to the discordant thunder of an
were people just like them. I’m not so sure. The no bones about the underlying insularity and organ, nothing but a green rush, the threat
first episode begins in 1919 with the return to his narrowness. One complaint about the series of gravity. Look how far we’ve come, this
native heath of Paul Simon (Michael Lesch), who has been that Reitz soft-pedals Nazism: Jews moment asks: and was it such a great idea?

September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 89

 Lost and found
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
HOME CINEMA
OVERLOOKED FILMS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE ON UK DVD OR BLU-RAY
A radically reimagined Japanese
version of Emily Brontë’s classic
novel of amour fou deserves a lot
more attention than it’s had
By Jeff Billington
Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel opens as the narrator
Lockwood, fleeing city life for the tranquillity
of the countryside, stumbles into an alien world
of brash farmers, feral children and spectral
visions. Yoshida Yoshishige’s 1988 adaptation
opens as a would-be grave robber in a blasted
volcanic hellscape is sliced to death by a wild-
haired force of nature – we aren’t in Yorkshire
any more. Wuthering Heights has inspired more
original versions than most endlessly adapted
19th-century novels – including ones by Luis
Buñuel (Abismos de pasión, 1954), Jacques Rivette
(Hurlevent, 1985) and Andrea Arnold (2011) –
but Yoshida’s relocation to feudal Japan could
be the most radical. Often lazily compared
to Kurosawa’s Shakespeare adaptations,
Yoshida’s oblique vision is influenced by
Georges Bataille, Shinto religious tradition
and Noh theatre as much as it is by Brontë.
Feudal Japan’s rigorous social hierarchy would
not permit equivalent relationships between the
novel’s two families (the agrarian Earnshaws and
the landed Lintons), a problem Yoshida sidesteps
by making the two branches of the Yamabe
family of equal status: they are priestly guardians
of the Mountain of Fire, tasked with appeasing the
mountain’s angry god. Since Olivier in William
Wyler’s 1939 film, Heathcliff has been portrayed
on screen as a brooding Byronic hero, but the
analogous foundling here is a satanic maelstrom,
dubbed Onimaru for his resemblance to a demon
– played brilliantly by wild-man action star
Matsuda Yusaku, who died the following year.
Onimaru takes whippings and beatings
stoically, while laying into the locals when
they attempt to run him out of town. Heathcliff
may never belong at Wuthering Heights, but
Onimaru’s presence on the mountain unleashes
elemental forces, the earth steaming at his
presence; his arrival at the House of the East
is declared an ‘affront to the gods’. The film’s
Cathy equivalent, Kinu (Tanaka Yuko, a prolific
actress who has voiced several Studio Ghibli
productions) is initially Onimaru’s sole ally,
but the gynophobic religious structure sees her
heading for a post-pubescent life of isolation
as a priestess until, using what little agency
she has, she marries her cousin Mitsuhiko, of
the House of the West, for the sole purpose of
remaining close to Onimaru. Yoshida illustrates
how trapped she is by framing scenes through
windows, doors and gates; colour-coding –
orange and yellow candle light, grey volcanic
ash, brilliant white kimonos – emphasises
the contrast between the holy Yamabes and
the earthly passions of Kinu and Onimaru.
90 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
Bad dreams in the night: Yoshida Yoshishige’s thoroughly Japanese Wuthering Heights
Heathcliff here is no brooding
Byronic hero but a satanic
maelstrom, dubbed Onimaru
for his resemblance to a demon
Onimaru departs, but returns from the capital
a military commander, appointed by the Shogun
to exercise his power over the mountain, and
declaring himself an “evil serpent… an angry
god”. Kinu dies, promising to “drag him into hell”
with her to protect her family and pacify the
mountain gods. Rather than merely pining for
his beloved, Onimaru plunges into a deep and
brutal depravity in his vengeance on the Yamabes.
He infuriates the villagers by riding into town
and holding court in a brothel. He rapes Kinu’s
sister-in-law. He saves the injured Mitsuhiko from
a band of raiders (in a scene which resembles
the samurai-splatter Lone Wolf and Cub series),
only to taunt him as he lays dying. He also has
Kinu exhumed not once, but twice, howling
in distress at her progressively mouldering
WHAT THE PAPERS SAID
‘T
‘This is not the movie you
want to screen after a lady’s
w couple ejected from the sacred world.
ttea. It has nudity, incest,
s
sexual abuse, maggots,
s
spurting blood that goes
b
beyond Sam Peckinpah and
a
adoringly tended skeletons
tthat go beyond Psycho.’
Kathy Huffhines ‘Detroit
K films being rediscovered, it’s time to re-evaluate
Free Press’, May 15 1988
corpse. In the film’s strangest sequence, a group
of monks dance through the village in a rite of
exorcism, but Onimaru remains unmoved.
Yoshida (who some Kiju), whose monumental
Eros + Massacre (1969) was a key work of the
Japanese New Wave, had absented himself
from cinema for over a decade, returning in
1986 with A Promise (Ningen no yakusoku). He
rejected his earlier political and formal concerns
to concentrate on cinematic exploration of
familial taboos: incest and euthanasia in A
Promise, necrophilia in Wuthering Heights.
Onimaru longs to be reunited with Kinu,
not spiritually but corporeally, his moral
decline mirrored by her physical decay.
Most adaptations omit the second half of
the novel entirely, but Yoshida allows the next
generation to restore rightful order to the
physical world. Kinu’s daughter brandishes
her mother’s circular mirror – one of the film’s
many Shinto symbols, a bridge between physical
and spiritual worlds. Unafraid of Onimaru, she
taunts him and joins forces with her cousin
Yoshimaru (in opposition to the name Onimaru,
his name suggests goodness and justice) to free
themselves and the mountain of his curse, the
Houses of East and West reunited. Onimaru,
apparently mortally injured, reappears to take
Kinu’s coffin over the horizon, the earthly
Wuthering Heights was shown at both
the Cannes and London film festivals, but
attracted little attention from the English-
language film press – it wasn’t featured in
Sight & Sound’s round-up of those festivals, for
example. With Yoshida’s Art Theatre Guild
this work by one of Japanese cinema’s most
challenging and individual talents.
ADVERTISING FEATURE
UNDERSTANDING
KUBRICK’S 2001:
A SPACE ODYSSEY
By James Fenwick, Intellect Books, 260pp,
hardback, £70/$93, ISBN 9781783208630
Scholars have been studying the
films of Stanley Kubrick for decades.
This book, however, breaks new
ground by bringing together recent
empirical approaches to Kubrick
with earlier, formalist approaches to
arrive at a broader understanding of
the ways in which Kubrick’s methods
were developed to create the unique
aesthetic creation that is 2001: A
Space Odyssey. In the film’s 50th
anniversary year, the contributors
explore its still striking design,
vision and philosophical structure,
offering new insights and analyses
that will give even dedicated Kubrick
fans new ways of thinking about
the director and his masterpiece.
bit.ly/2DCNm1O
HOW DID
LUBITSCH DO IT?
By Joseph McBride, Columbia
University Press, 756 pages, hardback,
£30, ISBN 9780231186445
“How Did Lubitsch Do It? is one
of the most indispensable film
books I’ve ever read, not only a
rigorously researched and considered
biography and an illuminating
analysis of Lubitsch’s technique
but a broader study of how culture
affects filmmaking and vice
versa.” – Filmmaker Magazine
“McBride subtly and concretely
describes the change in cinematic
tastes over the course of a century.
We who love cinema and Lubitsch
should be grateful to have such
a book in our lifetime, and it will
be the definitive work for years
to come.” – Molly Haskell, author
of From Reverence to Rape: The
Treatment of Women in the Movies
cup.columbia.edu
STUDYING IDA
By Sheila Skaff, Auteur, 102pp, paperback,
£9.99, ISBN 9781911325628
“Sheila Skaff has written a lucid,
intellectually expansive account of
one of the most important Eastern
European films of the last decade. She
casts a wide net into relevant areas
of Polish cinema, music and poetry
to highlight Pawel Pawlikowski’s
sources for his best film to date,
opening perspectives for readers to
investigate what she rightly calls
the ‘cultural predicament’ Ida has
posed. At a moment when highly
politicised debates are raging in
Poland about what memories of World
War II are appropriate, Studying Ida
makes a most useful contribution
to the ongoing discussions.” Stuart
Liebman, professor emeritus of film
studies, CUNY Graduate Center
www.facebook.com/
AuteurPublishing
THE ART OF DEFIANCE
Graffiti, Politics and the
Reimagined City in Philadelphia
By Tyson Mitman, Intellect Books,
160pp, paperback, illustrated,
£28/$37, ISBN 9781783208982
The Art of Defiance is an ethnographic
portrait of how graffiti writers see
their city and, in turn, how their
city sees them. It explores how
becoming a graffiti writer helps
disenfranchised urban citizens
negotiate their cultural identities,
build their social capital and gain a
voice within an urban environment
that would prefer they remain quiet,
passive and anonymous. In order
to both demystify and complicate
our understanding of the practice of
graffiti writing, this book pushes past
the narrative that links the origins of
graffiti to criminal gangs and instead
offers a detailed portrait of graffiti as a
rich urban culture with its own rules
and practices. To do so, it examines
the cultural history of graffiti in
Philadelphia from the early 1970s
onward and explores what it is like to
be a graffiti writer in the city today.
bit.ly/2uYGyJF
September 2012| Sight&Sound | 91
 Books

THE MIDAS TOUCH

BOOKS

HOW DID LUBITSCH DO IT?

By Joseph McBride, Columbia University Press,

576pp, ISBN 9780231186445
Reviewed by Dan Callahan
Ernst Lubitsch died aged 55 in 1947: “twenty
years too early”, according to François Truffaut.
And so his reputation as a master director of
sophisticated comedies and musicals steadily
declined, in part because he wasn’t around to be
interviewed about his work by a new generation
of cinephiles such as Truffaut, Peter Bogdanovich
and Joseph McBride, the author of this labour
of love, which seeks to restore Lubitsch and
his once-famed ‘touch’ to cultural primacy.
The definitive biographies of Frank Capra
and John Ford previously written by McBride
revealed all of their extensive personal flaws
while celebrating their tricky achievements as
artists. This book on Lubitsch is different because
McBride is offering a lengthy critical study with
some biographical underpinnings rather than a
critical biography. He admits in the conclusion
that he wanted to write this book about Lubitsch
“if only to make it possible to see all his films”.
McBride has been working on this book for
nine years, but spent several more in preparation
for it. He travelled to Berlin and visited the
building where Lubitsch lived as a child and
young man, and he notes with relish that this
block of apartments is laid out like a maze, with
all kinds of unexpected doors, which most likely
influenced Lubitsch’s noted use of doors as comic
and sexual punctuation marks in his films. The importance of being Ernst: Lubitsch
His father was a Russian Jewish immigrant,
and the Lubitsch family were secular, assimilated time and the class differences that determined two films: Mauritz Stiller’s sophisticated comedy
Jews in Berlin. His parents ran a women’s some of those responses. He dismisses the Erotikon (1920) and especially Charlie Chaplin’s
clothing shop that was close to the one seen in delightful The Merry Jail (1917) but celebrates A Woman of Paris (1923), with its subtlety and
his seriocomic masterpiece The Shop Around the the style and oddity of early Lubitsch comedies ellipses. When Lubitsch came to Hollywood
Corner (1940). Lubitsch’s only child, Nicola, says like The Doll and The Oyster Princess (both 1919). and made his first comedy masterpiece The
that the shop specialised in tailoring for large The biggest challenge for Lubitsch enthusiasts Marriage Circle (1924), he exposed the reality
women, and Lubitsch’s mother did most of the has always been finding a productive way to of how many marriages work and also made
work while his dandyish father was out having approach his historical epics, such as Madame his audience mentally complete what he had
a good time. Lubitsch was the youngest of four DuBarry (1919) and Sumurun (1920), which were visually suggested. Hitchcock revered Lubitsch as
children, and he was a delicate child, both spoiled not particularly suited to his talents but were a creator of what he termed ‘pure cinema’, which
and neglected, and set on getting his own way. important advances for him career-wise. McBride made the audience very active participants.
Lubitsch joined Max Reinhardt’s theatre effectively contrasts Madame DuBarry with Jean Making coherent cases for the series of
troupe and played minor comic roles, the sort of Renoir’s La Marseillaise (1938) and makes a case innovative musical films that Lubitsch made with
‘spear carriers’ in Shakespeare plays that he later for its neutrality of tone and for the chutzpah of Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald in the
celebrated in To Be or Not to Be (1942). Reinhardt its heroine, who is like Lubitsch’s Pinkus in her early sound era proves troublesome for McBride,
taught him a lot about stagecraft as well as how cheerful willingness to do anything to get ahead. and he mainly sidesteps the most dramatic event in
to ‘ride the laugh’ and not start speaking again McBride goes into a lot of detail about how the Lubitsch’s personal life: when he found out that his
until audience laughter had subsided entirely. young Lubitsch was profoundly influenced by long-time screenwriter Hanns Kräly was having an
While he worked in the theatre at night, affair with his wife, which led to an embarrassing
Lubitsch was starring in and then directing his Hitchcock revered Lubitsch as physical altercation on a dance floor in 1930 that
own ‘store comedies’ during the day, such as Shoe was reported in the papers. In his movies, Lubitsch
Palace Pinkus (1916). McBride’s range of references a creator of what he termed regularly asserted that a little deceit is essential
is impressively thorough in the chapters covering
the German years, and he lays out the various
‘pure cinema’, which made the in marriage, but in his life it didn’t work out so
neatly. Maybe his great urge for what could be
responses to Lubitsch’s screen character of that audience very active participants called ‘indirection’ in his films – his need to say

92 | Sight&Sound | September 2018

something without saying it or to show something
without showing it – stemmed from his need to
transform some of the more painful realities of life.
But as his work matured, Lubitsch began to let
darker realities come through. Writing about the
extremely refined and stylised romantic comedy
Trouble in Paradise (1932), McBride gets across the
sense that there is a world on the brink of ruin just
outside the art deco doors, and that ruin could be
both economic and personal. Yet when he tried an
outright serious film like The Man I Killed (aka
Broken Lullaby, 1932), Lubitsch wound up with a
strange piece of anti-war camp because he couldn’t
fully shut down his comic instincts.
Lubitsch had a lot of trouble trying to adjust to
the Production Code censorship that set in by 1934,
but he rebounded with Ninotchka (1939), a romantic
comedy with a hard political edge. McBride reports
that Lubitsch had visited Russia in 1936 and been
horrified by what he had seen, and Stalinism is the
target of some of the sharpest jibes in Ninotchka.
This political audacity reached its height with To Be
or Not to Be, a comic film about Nazism that plays
on a knife-edge of risk that no other filmmaker
would have dared chance or been able to control.
McBride’s books on Capra and Ford are so
excellent partly because his energetic, combative,
direct style matches the style of those filmmakers.
But Lubitsch was the master of indirection, and
McBride’s attempts to reach definite conclusions
about Lubitsch’s films can feel overly blunt,
and definitely repetitious. McBride often
circles back to an argument he has already
made here just when we think we are moving
forward, and this quickly grows wearying.
James Harvey’s Romantic Comedy in Hollywood:
From Lubitsch to Sturges (1987) is still the gold
standard when it comes to critical studies of
Lubitsch, because Harvey is just as indirect and
subtle as Lubitsch himself. Harvey doesn’t startle
these films and relentlessly interrogate them, as
McBride often does, but takes you scene by scene
and sometimes line by line, making the meanings
in them emerge naturally, thoughtfully and sexily.
McBride quotes from Harvey’s book here enough
to make you miss that kind of delicacy, yet his book
is still valuable for the new detailed attention he
gives to Lubitsch’s underseen German films.
McBride’s project in this book is an admirable
one: he seeks to restore Lubitsch to some of his
former eminence. But as a teacher of film at
San Francisco State University, he also seems
intent on placating some of his more puritanical
students, tying himself into knots trying to
justify the sexual mores of Lubitsch’s films when
anyone should be able to see that a Lubitsch
woman is in most of the important ways a
modern woman, and a sexual woman who will
not often be denied her freedom and pleasure.
When he was dying, Lubitsch thought he would
be forgotten along with his films. He thought
that “any movie” wound up as a “tin can in a
warehouse; in ten years it’s dust”. Lubitsch didn’t
think he had a “fighting chance” for survival,
but he was wrong. Most of his films are still here,
and his reputation should rise steadily as long as
those films are seen where they work best – on
large screens with appreciative audiences.
MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION
The Outrageous History of Film Buffs,
Collectors, Scholars, and Fanatics
By Anthony Slide, University Press of
Mississippi, 248pp, ISBN 9781496810533
Reviewed by Henry K. Miller
Part memoir, part history, Anthony Slide’s
book – at least his 251st, if the jacket is to be
believed – earns that subtitular “outrageous”.
Both the behaviour of its subjects – the
community of film obsessives in which Slide
has moved for more than 50 years – and Slide’s
axe-grinding treatment of them belong to the
scandal sheets; and yet it is published by an
academic press and thoroughly researched.
This contradiction underpins the whole
book, which is filled with a not unjustified
rancour towards the academy, but is equally
despairing of the lack of professionalism
which has marked the realm of the buffs. It is
at its most interesting when demonstrating
the largely unacknowledged contribution
which the latter have made to ‘respectable’
film culture, academic film studies included.
As a history, Magnificent Obsession is practically
a group biography, naming and frequently
shaming scores of film buffs, but taken together
it provides a synoptic perspective on Classical
Hollywood’s afterlife. Slide’s obsessives –
cigarette-card collectors, autograph hunters, fan-
club members, convention attendees, the writers
and readers of little magazines like his own the
The Silent Picture – were at the apex of a pyramid
of retrospective fandom, the lower tiers of which
were serviced by television, especially in the days
when the talent was still on the chat-show circuit.
Most of the film buffs described in
these pages were fellows, many
of them were gay, and many
of them lived unhappy lives
Number one fan: chat-show host Joe Franklin reputedly had Otto Preminger on his show 155 times
Slide devotes a chapter to New Jersey chat-show
host Joe Franklin, who “would boast, with some
BOOKS
conviction, that he was in large part responsible
for the nostalgia craze”, and who reputedly
had Otto Preminger on his show 155 times.
But for the most part Slide concentrates on
more obscure figures, and the fans of more
obscure films. A flavour may be sampled in the
tale of the hapless fellow who chanced upon
Sylvia Sidney in the shop he worked in, and told
her he had recently seen her in Confessions of a
Co-Ed (1931), “to which the actress’s response
was, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’” Most
of them were fellows, many of them were gay,
and many of them lived unhappy lives. “Bodies
undiscovered or unclaimed is an ongoing theme
in the history of film buffs,” Slide writes; a grim
irony since the buffs were themselves dedicated
to discovering and claiming that which no one
else wanted till they found a market for it.
What is most fascinating, though Slide
remarks upon it too little, is how often the
collectors’ collections – not infrequently of
pirated material – ended up in major archives
whose relationships with the buffs, while alive,
was never especially warm; though Henri
Langlois, the co-founder and longtime director
of the Cinémathèque française, was, as Slide
says, a buff in a bureaucrat’s role. Indeed, Slide
himself occupies a parallel position as a scholar
without academic credentials or pretensions; one
contribution of importance for my own work,
for example, is his interview with the cinema
manager Elsie Cohen, published in 1971.
Slide has no time at all for the buffs of the
comment-box era, “bitter men, undeserving of
encouragement”, whom he contrasts with the
“sweet, gentle, and kind” buffs of yore, a strange
characterisation coming after a book’s worth of
murder, paedophilia and halitosis. No doubt eBay,
IMDb and YouTube have destroyed much of the
infrastructure of film buffery, which was based
on scarcity and arcane knowledge, but surely
the best of this tradition lives on in the work of
Karina Longworth, Farran Smith Nehme and
Pamela Hutchinson, none of them discussed.
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 93
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FEEDBACK
READERS’ LETTERS
Letters are welcome, and should be
addressed to the Editor at Sight & Sound,
BFI, 21 Stephen Street, London W1T 1LN
Email: S&S@bfi.org.uk
PLUM CRAZY
Of all the great writers attracted to Hollywood
for the money and then shabbily treated,
the only one who kept the bitterness out of
his subsequent works was P.G. Wodehouse.
Writing about his 1936 novel Laughing Gas
(‘100 novels on cinema’, S&S, August), Nick
James notes that “one learns little about movie
folk”. This is true, but I would suggest reading
Wodehouse’s 1935 collection Blandings Castle
and Elsewhere: the last five stories, grouped
under the head ‘The Mulliners of Hollywood’,
skewer the film industry of his day perfectly.
For an allegedly true account of his days in
the film industry, read Wodehouse and Guy
Bolton’s Bring on the Girls (1954). Most of the
book is about their lives on Broadway, inventing
the modern musical with Jerome Kern, but the
last few chapters see them in Hollywood.
A wonderful novel about the film industry
is Len Deighton’s Close-Up (1972), written
after Deighton produced the film of Oh! What
a Lovely War (1969), using his own script.
P.J. Stanford By email
GET WITH THE FLO
One disappointing absence from your welcome
and informative feature on novels about
cinema (S&S, August) was William J. Mann’s
The Biograph Girl (2000), in which a 107-year-
old woman in a nursing home turns out to be
Florence Lawrence, the first film star known
to the public by name. Lawrence’s (actual)
death in 1938 turns out, in the novel, to be a
case of mistaken identity. Much of the book
is a first-person account of early filmmaking,
recommended to all silent film enthusiasts.
Dave Howell Ilkley
LORRA LAUREL LAUGHS
Thanks to your ‘100 novels on cinema’ feature
(S&S, August) my books-to-read list has expanded
considerably. In return I’d like to nominate novel
number 101: in he (2017) by John Connolly,
an elderly Stan Laurel endeavours to come to
terms with his turbulent private life and almost
as turbulent career. As you’d expect, Oliver
Hardy and Hal Roach feature prominently, as
does Chaplin, portrayed here as a singularly
unsavoury and malevolent genius. Connolly’s
affection for his subject, his recreation of 20s
and 30s Hollywood and his ear for dialogue (the
imagined conversations between Stan and his
long-suffering agent, Ben Shipman, are priceless)
make this a worthy tribute to Stan and Ollie.
Terry Hanstock Nottingham
BUDD DIAMONDS
A footnote to your fine article on a box-set of
Randolph Scott and Budd Boetticher westerns
(Home Cinema, S&S, July) is surely called for
to explain the one film missing – 1956’s 7 Men
from Now, which revived Scott’s career and
brought fame to Boetticher and screenwriter
Burt Kennedy. John Wayne was busy with
LETTER OF THE MONTH
HORIZONTAL HEAVYWEIGHTS
Fifty odd years ago, and long before
smartphones, a UCLA film graduate called
Jim Morrison observed that humans had
metamorphosed into “a pair of eyes staring in
the dark”. Last year his namesake Bill Morrison,
director of Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016),
noted that “cultural memory has a shelf life of
eight to 10 years and then people forget.” Nick
James’s editorial on “memory, cinema and
social media” (‘Imitation of life’, S&S, August)
was a reminder of how true their words are.
Many false narratives have evolved about
the medium since I discovered it in earnest
in the late 80s/early 90s. It has almost been
entirely forgotten, for instance, that around
that time there was briefly a major push
towards a new era of gravitas. The artistic and
commercial failures of The Sheltering Sky,
The Searchers and didn’t see anything special
in Kennedy’s screenplay. When he learned
Robert Mitchum had offered to buy it, though,
he decided to get the film made, and was
persuaded by Boetticher and Kennedy to hire
Scott, whose career he considered finished;
the rest is movie history. For the full story,
consult Robert Nott’s Last of the Cowboy Heroes
(2000), which has a foreword by Boetticher.
John Scott Glasgow
IN YOOTHA IS PLEASURE
While Robert Hanks’s article on Harold Pinter’s
screenplays is excellent (‘Pause and effect’, S&S,
August), it does strike a slightly jarring note
when he trivialises Yootha Joyce’s later work
after her excellent performance in The Pumpkin
Eater (1964). She may well have been typecast
as Mildred, but made many fine appearances
before Man About the House (1973-76) put her
off-centre stage, including ‘quality’ films such as
A Man for All Seasons (1966) and Charlie Bubbles
(1968). She was that standby of British films, a
jobbing character actor. In the words of Kenneth
Williams she was “a lady who made so many
people happy and a lady who never complained”.
John Allison Warwick
The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Godfather:
Part III (pictured), Texasville and Havana in
1990 were entirely due to their directors,
all 1970s heavyweights: Bertolucci, De
Palma, Coppola, Bogdanovich and Pollack.
GoodFellas – the peak of 90s US cinema –
was the exception that proved the rule.
One suspects that Orson Welles – who
is mentioned by Christopher Nelson and
Enrico Calligari in connection with digital
culture (Letters, S&S, August) – would
have embraced streaming, CGI and digital
filmmaking and thrived in modern cinema
and television. Too bad he didn’t live to see it.
The ‘movie brats’ had their second chance:
unfortunately, like Welles’s Ambersons, they
never really seemed to move with the times.
Will Goble Rayleigh, Essex
LOW-GORE HEROES
Adam Scovell has no warrant for the suggestion
in his article on Michael Reeves’s Witchfinder
General (Endings, S&S, July) that the director
was influenced by “the bright, bloody shootouts
of pre-1970s Sam Peckinpah and Don Siegel”.
There is no graphic violence in Peckinpah’s
work prior to The Wild Bunch – a film Reeves
could not have seen, given that he died in
February 1969, four months before the film
was released. Neither can Siegel be invoked
in this respect, though Reeves, apparently,
was an enthusiast. The first overt bloodletting
in Siegel’s films is in Dirty Harry (1971).
Scovell is right that Witchfinder is difficult
to watch, a comment underlined by your
correspondent Roger Brown (Letters, S&S,
August); but the rigours Reeves inflicts on
audiences should not be represented as calculated
antitheses to the films of the two older directors.
Les Hooper Glasgow
Additions and corrections
August p.63 The Escape: Certificate 15, 101m 8s; p.67 Hearts Beat Loud:
Certificate 12A, 97m 1s; p.69 Iceman: Certificate 15, 96m 12s; p.72
Mario: Certificate 18, 123m 45s; p.75 A Prayer Before Dawn: Certificate
18, 116m 36s; p.77 The Receptionist: the review misnamed the actor
playing Anna: her name is Shuang Teng; p.80 Summer 1993: Certificate
12A, 98m 10s
September 2018 | Sight&Sound | 95
 ENDINGS…
KINGS OF THE ROAD
Wim Wenders’s elegiac road movie,
beautifully shot by the late Robby
Müller, ends with the parting of its
melancholy travelling companions
By David Perrin
“Everything must change – so long, R.” So goes the
farewell note that Robert (Hanns Zischler) writes
to Bruno (Rüdiger Vogler) the morning after a
night spent in an abandoned American military
outpost at the end of Wim Wenders’s epic three-
hour road movie Kings of the Road. Their journey
in a converted truck has been a slow drift through
the hinterlands of West Germany, treading the
border to the East, following a fixed itinerary of
sparsely populated villages where Bruno repairs
film projectors in the declining local cinemas.
Robert, a linguist, becomes his unexpected
travelling companion, the pair thrown together
after a comically botched suicide attempt in
which Robert plunged his car into the Elbe river.
For the two introspective men mobility
becomes something sacred, a way of life that keeps
the world at a safe distance. They talk sparingly,
communicating their feelings through rock ’n’
roll records, movies and American novels. Each
is uncertain of the future, and burdened by the
question of how to go on. Robert has left his wife.
Bruno, travelling the same route for two years,
longs for companionship, yet retreats behind a
barrier he has erected between himself and others.
Even the country they move through – towns and
cinemas lost in the worn fold of a remote post-war
Germany – looks as if it is slipping out of time.
Something – indeed, everything – must change.
96 | Sight&Sound | September 2018
Wenders shot the film with a small crew
along the German border in the four months
between – as the opening credits reveal – 1 July
and 31 October 1975, making the story up as
they went along. Kings of the Road is one long
sprawling movement towards the moment
when Bruno and Robert transition from being
rootless passengers to pedestrians nurturing an
idea for the future. Trucking along at a soothingly
slow pace, the film, though lacking any sort of
identifiable plot, is guided by the places Bruno
and Robert move through, with each station and
encounter along the way uncovering a repressed
facet of their personal history: references to
fathers lost in the war, scarred childhoods and
fractured pasts. The pastoral landscape, too,
quietly reveals the presence of history through
the East German watchtowers in the distance
and buildings punctured by bullet holes.
Finally halted in their travels by the East
German border, the two spend the night in the
defunct American observation post – a remnant
of the war. Inside, the walls are covered in lurid
graffiti, pin-ups and the names of American cities
scrawled by homesick GIs. Only here are they
able to escape the trappings of their brooding
self-absorption. They get drunk on whisky; speak
about their loneliness, of the impossibility of
living with women. It is also here that Robert
utters the film’s most memorable line: “The Yanks
Robby Müller’s lens gives
everything that wooden ruinous
look one finds in Walker Evans
photos from the Great Depression
have colonised our subconscious” – a comment
on America’s post-war cultural dominance.
Their drunken talk eventually leads to a clumsy
fistfight, like characters in a western. It’s a kind of
showdown, solidifying their friendship, and in the
morning they part ways, with Robert taking the
train and Bruno hitting the road alone once more.
It is a tender conclusion to a journey fraught
with latent conflict, a warm empathetic attitude
towards the figures and the landscapes that would
not have been possible without one of Wenders’s
most important collaborators – the great
cinematographer Robby Müller, who died in July
this year. Shot in beautiful monochrome, Müller’s
expansive cinematography covers the landscape
in a gentle veil of summer light. The landscape
breathes under his gaze, and is as inextricably
present as the desert in a John Ford film. Müller’s
lens gives everything that wooden ruinous look
one finds in Walker Evans photographs from the
Great Depression era, transplanting an archive
of images associated with a particular period of
Americana to a no man’s land Germany: Texaco
gas stations, rolling prairies, dilapidated sheds,
deserted towns, tractors and farmers. His delicate
play with light is nowhere more evident than in
the concluding interior scene: Bruno and Robert, lit
solely by two candles, emerge out of the darkness
of the GI shack like two bedraggled saints, while
the camera caresses the details of the amateur
inscriptions on the walls, bestowing upon them
the revelatory significance of cave drawings.
In the final gesture of the film we see Bruno
sitting in his truck tearing up his itinerary,
suggesting the end to his life on the road. For
Müller – that king of the road behind the camera
– the end too has come. So long Robby.
 OFFICIAL SELECTION
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