A Distorting Lens of Directors

You Were Never Really Here

In one piece in Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler: Celluloid Tirades and Escapades (2000), Joe Queenan waits in the lobby of a multiplex, fully prepared to hand actual money to any member of the public who can name the director of the movie they have just watched. It did not cost him much. Even the ‘name’ directors didn’t register. I suspect that most other people recall their visits to the cinema in order of preference.

One pleasure of a new Borderlines programme is looking for work by directors who have delivered the goods in the past. They all have of course or they wouldn’t be in the schedule. When a former Borderlines selection is screened on Film4 I know it’s going to be worth catching. If someone made a Super Size Me for watching every new release, six hundred in the UK alone last year, I wonder which part of mind & body would fold first? There are many directors whose body of work I don’t know – but I do know that online reviewers rave about every single one. Here are my ravings.

Jeune Femme

There was some excitement among film society types in 1999 when Lynne Ramsay’s first feature Ratcatcher was released. Here was a new, young, female Scottish director who could really put a film together. In 2002 this excitement spread to the review sections of selected broadsheets when she followed it with Morvern Callar: Samantha Morton’s portrait of a modern woman sans archetype to a 'hold the zeitgeist' soundtrack. It was Generation X’s Lady Bird (2017) sans box office, leur Jeune Femme (2017) de l'époque. Since then Ramsey’s rate of output makes Stanley Kubrick look like Takashi Miike. To give you some idea of how long it’s been, Morton’s characters are still low-waged but they’ve moved beyond casual sex in the Costa del Sol. She played the cook in August Strindberg’s Miss Julie (2014). After Morvern Callar Ramsey spent two years adapting an early draft of The Lovely Bones – and then Alice Sebold’s novel was completed, published and became a best-seller. Peter Jackson directed the movie version in 2009; it stars a 14-year old Saoirse Ronan. Source: The Guardian 

It was another 9 years until Ramsay’s third feature, another adaption of a novel, the uncompromising We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011). The next person to describe Lynne Ramsay’s work as “uncompromising” or "long-awaited" could have clichés in their copy. By way of comparison, Michael Winterbottom directed 13 features between 2002 and 2011. Since 2011 Ben Wheatley has directed 5 films without surpassing his work on BBC3 Johnny Vegas sit-com Ideal. The long-awaited You Were Never Really Here (2017) is Lynne Ramsay’s fourth picture.

The Third Murder

You may have seen Nobody Knows (2004) by Hirokazu Kore-eda at Borderlines 2014. You may still be recovering. In modern day Tokyo four abandoned siblings are left to look after themselves. Kore-eda played me like an accordion for 141 minutes. His latest is at Borderlines 2018: The Third Murder.

Loveless

During Borderlines I seek out depressing Eastern European movies that my local picture palaces would never dream of screening. So I’m always in the market for the latest by Andrey Zvyagintsev. His Elena (2011) was particularly bleak; I want to see how Loveless (2017) portrays today’s Russia. The plot also sounds a bit close to a notorious Christopher Morris sketch, Unflustered Parents, from his BBC Radio 1 show Blue Jam (1997 to 1999).

A Fantastic Woman

Billy Wilder watched Brief Encounter (1945) and wondered about the unseen character who lends Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) his flat. What was his story? Then he made The Apartment (1960). Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria (2013) was inspired by Laura Branigan’s disco classic of the same name (1982). All together: “Will you marry for the money? Take a lover in the afternoon? Feel your innocence slipping away; don’t believe it’s coming back soon. And you really don’t remember? Oh, was it something that he said? Are the voices in your head calling, ‘Gloria?’ Gloria, don’t you think you’re falling? If everybody wants you, why isn’t anybody calllllling?” Now that’s a character description. It’s a Film4 regular. Lelio returns with A Fantastic Woman (2017), a big winner at the Berlin Film Festival. There have been many, many movies about gender identity. There are the ones you’ve heard of and the rest are plotted against deranged and exploitative, scattered beyond the Psycho (1960) to Dressed to Kill (1980) trend-line.

Lean on Pete

Andrew Haigh directed 45 Years (2015) – in my opinion the smartest British movie this century – so I am looking forward, quietly, to Lean on Pete (2017). I notice that it stars Steve Buscemi and Chloë Sevigny. Before her name grew an umlaut Chloe Sevigny’s second movie, Trees Lounge (1996), was Steve Buscemi’s first movie as director. He was an alcoholic who worked an ice cream van; she wore leggings and hung out. In 1994 Jay McInerney took seven pages in The New Yorker to call Sevigny “the coolest girl in the world”. Buscemi was still a bit cool because he’d played Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs (1992). Trees Lounge wasn’t that great – it took me two goes to realise I’d already seen it – but it was the mid-1990s, the internet was coming closer and the World was getting ready to party like it was 1999. Lean on Pete will be their second movie together.

Talking of the 1990s, spotting Claire Denis in the Borderlines 2018 brochure made me smile. I am very fond of the Nenette et Boni (1996) OST by Tindersticks, a Nottingham band who contributed to or composed six of her soundtracks. Nine of these numbers were compiled on a cover-mount CD free with the May 2011 issue of Sight & Sound (Volume 21 Issue 5). I was also reminded of screening the superb Beau Travail (1999) at Worcester Film Society, a few years before art house film societies were scuppered by, erm, Film4, the internet and a flood of cover-mount DVDs.

Let the Sunshine In

Seeing Juliette Binoche and Gérard Depardieu cast together gave me the giggles. Let the Sunshine In (2017) will be the first film to star both but it will not be their first memorable co-production. An entertaining little tiff began when Depardieu opined (2010): “Please can you explain to me what the secret of this actress is meant to be? I would really like to know why she has been so esteemed for so many years. She has nothing. Absolutely nothing! She is nothing. Compared with her, Isabelle Adjani is great even if she's totally nuts. Or Fanny Ardant - she is magnificent, extremely impressive. But Binoche? What has she ever had going for her?”

La Binoche responded in a dignified fashion: which is to say she landed a few digs whilst responding in a dignified fashion. They put on a great show. Recently, Depardieu starred in Marseille (2016), a Netflix series that garnered frenzied reviews in France. The rest of the World quite liked it however and he’s making a second series. He was also in Valley of Love (2016) with Isabelle Huppert. His gut dwarfed Death Valley. Binoche’s previous Borderlines appearance was last year’s surreal comedy Slack Bay (2016). Opinion was divided: I enjoyed it. The local linguists were in hysterics every time Inspector Malfoy spoke. And one-eighth of the audience left long before the end.

Sight and Sound (December 2017) observed that Happy End (2017), “Michael Haneke’s most interesting film since Hidden (2005), and also superior to his back-to-back Palme d’Or winners The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012)” was his first feature since 2003 not to win a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. To the magazine’s own surprise it did not feature in their ‘Best Films of 2017’ poll. The Borderlines 2018 selections Zama, Western, Faces Places, Loveless, 120 BPM, You Were Never Really Here, God’s Own Country, The Shape of Water, Lady Bird and Let the Sunshine In all made the Sight and Sound Top Twenty. Such slips are relative. I really enjoyed The Lobster (2015) and so did many others. I could not find a cinema screening Yorgos Lanthimos’ follow-up, The Killing of the Sacred Deer (2017), nearer than Bristol. Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell are in it! Some movies just disappear.

Journey's End

Finally, Journey’s End (2017) adapts R. C. Sheriff’s 1928 play of the same name. It was first filmed in 1930 and has been made for television at least five times since then. The BBC’s 1954 version, probably live to air, starred Bryan Forbes, whose The L-Shaped Room (1962) is part of this year’s Borderlines programme. The book Hollywood’s World War I Motion Picture Images (Bowling Green State University, 1997) notes that the public appetite for war films waned after World War I – until The Big Parade (1925), a $10 million making hit for MGM, found “a kind of perfect neutrality between embarrassing flag-waving and noxious despair”.

It was followed by What Price Glory? (1926), based on a long-running Broadway play, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Journey’s End (1930), The Road to Glory (1936), The Road Back (1937), Three Comrades (1938) and many more depictions of life and death in the trenches. As many movies again were set among ‘the young Knights of the air’. In 1929, one of these, Wings (1927) was the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture. It might be worth watching a few of these for context then revisiting The Marx Brothers’ war movie Duck Soup (1933): “You're a brave man. Go and break through the lines. And remember, while you're out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in here thinking what a sucker you are.” This was before The Great War was re-made with a more convincing bad guy.

Journey’s End (1930) is of particular interest because it was directed by James Whale. Whale was born in Dudley, Worcestershire in 1889, the sixth son of a blast furnace man and a nurse. During World War I he served as a second lieutenant in the Worcestershire Regiment. He spent the final year of the conflict as a Prisoner of War. It was at the Holzminden POW camp that he first became involved in theatre. Ten years on he directed the premiere of Journey’s End, casting the little known Laurence Olivier in the lead role. Journey’s End soon transferred to the Prince of Wales Theatre where it ran for two years. In 1929 Whale was called to Broadway to direct Journey’s End there. It ran for a year. In 1930 he directed the movie version. In 1931 he directed the definitive Frankenstein. Well, how do you picture the monster?

Robin Clarke