Stalingrad

"We'll get the Iron Cross for this. It'll look great in my coffin".

Sometimes it's a big ask to sit down and watch a film like Stalingrad. If, like me, you have the faintest whiff of knowledge about this rather decisive and infamous point in WWII, you'll know that any film about it will about as joyful as a Mormon lingerie party. Interestingly, this film about the battle and siege of Stalingrad is made from a German perspective, which also filled me with some degree of dread. I imagined it would be filled with anchronistic revisionism, guilty self-analysis, and a dirge-like willingness to draw the film out for as long as possible.

Haha, I know. I tend to make a lot of assumptions sometimes... I'm my own worst enemy. I'm not going to say that this film is free of any of the above criticisms, but I will say that it actually turned out to be an illuminating and decidedly humanistic homemade effort from the Germans. Stalingrad takes great care to portray its grunts with all the camaraderie and gallows humour that modern audiences come to expect from war films. There's a scene quite early on where a soldier accidentally shoots and kills his own friend, and he's beside himself with grief. Another soldier interrupts his hysterics and casually says, "I did the same once. It's normal in close combat", and that's that. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself, but I just thought it was a good scene because it subverts certain cliches of war whilst remaining realistic. This film strikes this interesting tone right through to the end.

Stalingrad follows a German company of stormtroopers who've just returned from a successful campaign in El Alamein. These men are tired and battered, but they're also optimistic about moving on to the eastern front after their recent victory. This is the 'normal' soldier's experience during a war; the idea that a successful campaign can only reinforce a soldier's resilience, and it serves as a contrast to the harrowing time the men are yet to face in Russia. This film suggests that the battle of Stalingrad, and it's protracted aftermath, is something else entirely when compared to regular combat in WWII. The soldiers are portrayed as a group of regular guys (there's even the requisite scene where each character talks about his job back in the 'real' world) who are more than unprepared for the Russian winter and the hell they're about to enter.

So what should you expect from this film if you should settle yourself in for the duration? A horribly realistic (and unique) view of what the Germans put themselves through in Hitler's doomed campaign to conquer Russia. The cautious M.A.S.H.-like mockery of war is fun at first, but soon this degenerates into bitterness and contempt... the madness, chaos and senselessness of the Battle of Stalingrad provides the perfect framework to explore all that goes wrong for the losing side in a war like this. There's misery, disenfranchisement, demoralisation, mutiny, and a clash of philosophies over 'contact' with the enemy.

I have to admit that I'm a little sceptical when it comes to German films about WWII. There's a lot of cultural pressure put on losing parties like Germany when it comes to depictions of their own experiences in war (and arguably, the general experiences of the 'honest' German citizen is going to be a lot worse than anyone on the 'winning' team). If a film is made about WWII from the German perspective then international audiences expect certain concessions to be made. It isn't enough that they lost the war, there's a certain degree of ritual humiliation where said losing side is encouraged (or bullied) into writing up a version of history that justifies their defeat. As a result Stalingrad features disturbing scenes of the Nazis shooting their own wounded for being traitors, and German soldiers deserting while talking critically about Nazism and the social forces that allowed it to happen. Historical hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I'm not saying that any of this anti-Nazi stuff is false, but I am saying that it feels disingenuous for Stalingrad to glorify its low-ranking protagonists by morally seperating them from the tragedies being committed. It feels inaccurate to claim that these characters had the same historical awareness as the contemporary audience watching the film. It's a rare thing to see a German-made WWII film that just portrays the events of the war as they happened, with ordinary people getting ground up by the war machine just like any other war. I guess I'm just saying that I think that politics can sometimes get in the way of truth when it comes to making a film like this.

Anyway, Stalingrad is an interesting take on WWII. There's a pall of doom that falls over the soldiers around the halfway mark where it becomes clear that whatever path they choose - whether it's following orders or refusing to follow orders - it will inevitably lead to an untimely death. It's a sad situation, and Stalingrad makes it painfully real through its cast of regular soldiers and detailed recreation of the stages this brutal battle shuddered its death throes upon.

DIRECTOR: Joseph Vilsmaier
WRITER/SOURCE: Joseph Vilsmaier, Jurgen Buscher and Johannes Heide.
KEY ACTORS: Thomas Kretschmann, Dominique Horwitz, Jochen Nickel, Dana Vavrova, Martin Benrath

RELATED TEXTS:
- Other films made about the war on the eastern front... Dogs Do You Want to Live Forever?, Stalingrad (a two part film made in 1989), Enemy at the Gate and Cross of Iron.
- There was also a television series made in 2003, also called Stalingrad.
- Also made the same year as this film was Steven Spielberg's first WWII opus, Schindler's List.
- Two other German films about WWII worth checking out - Downfall, Das Boot and The Tin Drum.

Grendel

Beowulf is a famous anglo-saxon poem from around the 9th century about a warrior (Beowulf) who slays three monsters - Grendel, Grendel's Mother, and a Dragon. This book by John Gardner is a retelling of the first part of the story from Grendel's point of view.

It's said that you need to have read Beowulf, or be familiar with it, to be able to follow this book. The writer certainly intends this, but I think only a passing familiarity is really neccessary. The above paragraph of this very review would probably be all the prior information you would need, I never really knew all that much about the poem/myth before reading this book - and I don't think it hindered my enjoyment in any way whatsoever!

Now... let me just say this: Grendel is one of my most favourite novels ever.

It's a fairly slight book, almost a novella, but it's by no means a simple work. It's a very dense and complex book that uses the basics of a medieval myth to deconstruct humanity and some of the philosophies that power the very essence of our civilisation.

Grendel is a brutish and crude figure... he is cruel and ugly and every bit the monster he is portrayed to be in other versions of the tale Beowulf. Gardner has gone to great lengths to keep his protagonist monstrous in both appearance and personality. Grendel by no means stupid though, he is confused by his own existence and angered by the differences between himself and everyone around him. His own mother is a depraved and loathsome creature that he is unable to communicate with, the local Dragon is all-knowing but nihilistic and does little to help Grendel reconcile his point of view with the world, and the village of humans that Grendel spends twelve years of his life observing, molesting, taunting and waging war on are so far removed from his own understanding of life that they fuel his confusion to the point of outright fury.

The 'hero' Beowulf himself doesn't turn up until the last sequences of the book and remains unnamed. Grendel's confrontation with the village's saviour is so ambivilent that it makes my head spin. Grendel is a miserable and bored creature, neither superior or inferior to the little people he torments... he's the original anti-hero, and this book really pulls apart the foundations of concepts like 'heroes' and 'villains' in a big way.

I can't really put my finger on why I like this book so much other than that. Grendel's detached interpretation of the village's growth and advancement likens humans to a parasitic and stupid species, and his prime motivation for wreaking so much havoc amongst them is boredom and curiosity. How can you not like that?

Anyway, like I said, it's a fairly dense book. A lot of it is made up of Grendel's stream-of-consciousness and it's written mostly in present tense (something I found very impressive when I first read it, I'd never read anything in present tense before that I'd actually liked - I didn't think it could even be done without seeming like wank, but this book proved my preconceptions wrong). Aside from these technical achievements, it's also very entertaining, amusing and sometimes even tragic. I'm yet to find another book even remotely like it.

Pee-wee's Big Adventure

I'm a bit of a Pee-wee Herman novice. Maybe I wasn't the right age, but I never watched him when I was a kid and I didn't understand the appeal. My partner Nicole is a big fan of him, so we sat down to watch this movie together. She was in it for the nostalgia (having watched his films and TV show when she was a kid) and I was in it because it's a Tim Burton film. About fifteen minutes into it, and Pee-wee is riding his bike around while being obnoxious, and I turn to Nicole.

"Is there a point to this film? I don't get it".

She was laughing at Pee-wee's antics, and didn't understand the fact that I didn't get it. I just didn't understand Paul Reubens' schtick, nor did I understand where the film was going. As he stopped and talked to another man-child named Francis (Mark Holton) I asked tentatively,

"Are they meant to be children?"

I was starting to get a grasp on the character, but it still just seemed to be a bunch of random stuff happening.

That is, until Pee-wee's beloved bike got stolen.

I was outraged.

Pee-wee travels across America, meeting the oddest assortment of oddball midwest characters you could imagine (I was reminded a little bit of the more recent comedy, Paul). I laughed as he met each one with his own exagerrated brand of immaturity. Soon I was even doing the 'haHA!' laugh that he does (much to Nicole's annoyance). I cheered him on as he got closer and closer to his bike, and I loved the 'Hollywood' version of Pee-wee's adventure that ended the film.

It was exactly the mix of goofy hilariousous and dark, offbeat strangeness that I expected from an early Tim Burton film. It had a bouyant inventiveness that his latest films have lacked, and I can totally see how he managed to launch his career as a big name director from this movie.

Most of all though, it's Paul Reubens' film. I know Reubens has a bad wrap for his 1991 indiscretions at an adult movie theatre (it's amazing how many people jump to the incorrect assumption that he's a pedophile), but his performance as Pee-wee Herman is so oddly unique that I could quite easily see the character making a successful comeback for his fans (provided Reubens doesn't get too old in the meantime). Yes, it took me more than 20 years to get the joke, but I get it now and sometimes it takes that long to develop a true appreciation of what we don't initially understand.

DIRECTOR: Tim Burton
WRITER/SOURCE: Paul Reubens, Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol. Based on the character and TV show created by Paul Reubens.
KEY ACTORS: Paul Reubens, Elizabeth Daily, Mark Holton, Diane Salinger, Judd Omen, James Brolin, Alice Nunn, Morgan Fairchild

RELATED TEXTS:
- The early '80s TV show The Pee-wee Herman Show.
- After the success of the Tim Burton film, Reubens spun the character off into a children's TV show, Pee-wee's Playhouse. This was followed up by another film, Big Top Pee-wee.
- Sometimes I used to find Pee-wee a little remniscent of the (more toned down) Australian metafictional character Norman Gunston, who had his own TV show in the '70s, The Norman Gunston Show.
- Tim Burton's next couple of films after this were Beetlejuice, Batman and Edward Scissorhands.
- For other films about bicycles being stolen, see The Bicycle Thief and #omgimtrending.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

"Arabs not human in Germany"

In the opening scene of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, a lonely old cleaning lady named Emmi (Brigitte Mira) comes in out of the Berlin rain to an Arabic bar. The camera dramatically zooms in on her from far away, and then does the same for Ali (El Hedi ben Salem), a Moroccan migrant-worker about twenty years her junior. Thus starts one of the more improbable romances to be put on film, a tale of forbidden love that flies in the face of 1970s German society. Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the proponents of 'New German Cinema', a realism-influenced movement of filmmaking where younger directors took inspiration from the French New Wave to re-vitalise their country's film industry with the use of low budget and open-minded filmmaking. Here Fassbinder draws on the influence of Hollywood's golden era king of romantic melodrama, Douglas Sirk, to pass comment on contemporary Germany in an unlikely fable.

Emmi is a widow seemingly unaware of racial prejudice, everything about Ali and his culture is a wonder to her. Ali is a put-upon migrant worker who lives a meaningless life of work and drink. In each other they find companionship and unexpected love but Emmi is unprepared for the discrimination and ostracisation they will face and she impulsively decides to marry him. Soon her children disown her, shops won't serve them, her friends shun her and her neighbours tell her she has to clean the communal stairway because her new husband is 'dirty'. Ali is impassive to such familiar racism, and he retreats into his culture (represented by the Arabic bar) if it gets too much for him. A strain begins to appear in their idyllic marriage in due course, and the relationship seems quite doomed from this point.


There's an initial lightness to Fassbinder's film that makes it quite an enjoyable piece of enlightening storytelling. Ali is the minority in Germany, but Emmi is the outsider in his Arabic bar... and her initial alienation there foreshadows society's reaction to their marriage, a reflection of Germany's resentful attitude towards these new migrants in the '60s and '70s. The film's last act seems almost farcial in its strangeness, examining fundamental differences in Emmi and Ali that seem irreconcilable. By this point the society that discriminated so badly against them has done a bizarre about-face - a narrative twist that represents the needs of white society to adapt to the influx of multiculturalism. It's telling that the only outright positive attitudes towards their racial mixing are Emmi's landlord and the police; both are authoritarian figures, and indicate Germany's official position on discrimination - that they're at odds with the way the rest of society reacts is symbolic of the gap between the law and the attitudes of the public. The scene where Ali and Emmi eat in a restaurant that's famous for being Hitler's eating spot is pure irony, but it's also demonstrative of the way modern Germany in the '70s continued to struggle with its troubled past regarding attitudes to race.

What makes Ali: Fear Eats the Soul a real standout is the way it follows Ali and Emmi's relationship beyond simple discrimination and prejudice to look at more complex issues such as assimilation and stress through passive resistance. The film becomes a genuine dialogue about racism and the dawning of a new era in Germany, and that it also manages to be an entertaining love story is a welcome bonus. Some other films from the New German Cinema movement tend to be slowly-paced or overtly artsy (such as Werner Herzog's earliest films), but Fassbinder's film is nothing of the sort and should more than an idle curiosity for any fan of great storytelling and thoughtful cinema.

DIRECTOR: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
WRITER/SOURCE: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
KEY ACTORS: Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbera Valentin, Irm Hermann, Marquard Bohm, Walter Sedlmayr

RELATED TEXTS:
- This film was influenced directly by the Douglas Sirk films All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life. Both Sirk's films and Fassbinder's film went on to influence the Todd Haynes film Far From Heaven.
- Fassbinder's other most well-known films are The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, The Merchant of Four Seasons, The Marriage of Maria Braun and Berlin Alexanderplatz.

AWARDS
Cannes Film Festival - won FIPRESCI Prize and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. Also nominated for the Palme d'Or.

Knight and Day

"No one follows us or I'll kill myself and then her"

I'm fully aware that I'm in some kind of critical minority here, but I think Tom Cruise is fantastic. I've said it before but in terms of iconic stardom he's the modern day equivalent of John Wayne, playing variations on a strictly defined screen persona and mining the same vein over and over to find nuance in his performance. Here he gently pokes fun at his action persona, a slightly campy take that says more about his confidence as an actor than any amount of 'tell-all' interviews. He plays a cheerfully paranoid superspy with an Ace Rimmer-ish skill for charming people; the sort of role that Cruise can make effortlessly entertaining.

Everything in Knight and Day is positioned from the point of view of June Havens (Cameron Diaz), and the best aspect of the script is the fact that she ducks in and out of this bigger story and the ways she gets re-introduced to it at each point. But, with this in mind, this means that it feels wrong when the film suddenly switches to Cruise's point of view towards the end. It breaks the bubble.

I won't bother getting into the plot, it's pretty standard stuff and plays a Hitchcock-lite game of is-he-or-isn't-he-crazy? It's basically The Tourist, but more tonally focused and aware of what it's doing (which is ironic because Cruise was meant to be in The Tourist but ultimately pulled out before it went into production). In the '90s Knight and Day would've been considered new, sharp and dynamic (ala True Lies) but now, well, it's fun enough, but it also isn't anything special. Apparently it was considered a box office bomb in the U.S. despite the fact that it made a big profit in the international market. All I can say is, just check your expectations at the door and you'll enjoy it.

DIRECTOR: James Mangold
WRITER/SOURCE: Patrick O'Neill
KEY ACTORS: Cameron Diaz, Tom Cruise, Paul Dano, Peter Sarsgaard, Maggie Grace, Mark Blucas, Viola Davis,

RELATED TEXTS:
- See also The Tourist, with which this film shares more than a few similarities (including a poor reception from the critics).
- The corrupt-CIA agent plot is just about in every modern American action thriller in this increasingly cynical post-9/11 world, other examples include: The Expendables, Red, The A-Team and The Losers.
- Tom Cruise action films... Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible II, Mission: Impossible III, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Top Gun, Minority Report, War of the Worlds and Collateral.
- Cruise and Diaz previously starred together in Vanilla Sky.

Life of Pi

The Life of Pi is a wonderful, fantastic and intense novel that won the Booker Prize in 2003. Part coming-of-age, part-survivor story, part-folktale adventure and part-examination of multiple religions, this is a very complex book told in a simple and engaging manner.

Piscine 'Pi' Patel is the son of a zookeeper in India. The first third of the book deals with Pi's early life and his exploration of Christian, Hindu and Islamic faith. He decides to adopt the facets he likes of each religion, much to the chagrin of his local religious leaders. This faith in a self-made form of faith belies a strength of character in the slight and unassuming Pi that foreshadows the traumatic journey that is to come.

Pi's father decides to sell his zoo and relocate the family to Canada. En route, the ship sinks. Pi finds himself on a lifeboat with some animals from the zoo... a hyena, a zebra, an orang-utan and a Tiger named Richard Parker. A battle of wills ensue between the various animals, with Pi desperately trying to stay alive amongst them. Eventually it is only himself and the tiger left, and he realises he must keep this animal healthy and happy in order to survive.

For a story so odd it's told fairly realistically up until this point, but after a fashion it veers into a different kind of territory. Pi and Richard Parker reach a very bizarre island inhabited by Meerkats and the events that transpire here will test your suspension of disbelief.

This is a brilliant book. Various animal behaviour theories are employed by both Pi and the author, to help keep both the book and the boat afloat respectively. The dark and disturbing undercurrent that colours some of the book is an achievement in subtlety, and the lack of anthropomorphism is impressive as well.

The events are told in flashback by Pi to the author (Yann Martel), and at the book's end we are given two scenarios for what may or may not have happened on the boat for the 227 days that Pi survived at sea. What version of events you choose to believe no doubt reflects on the sort of person you are. I choose to believe in the fantastic adventure shared by Pi and the tiger.

Run Lola Run

Run Lola Run is a one-of-a-kind film that looks at a do-or-die scenario and plays it through three times to show a variety of outcomes. Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) is a bagman for some bad gangsters and he (mainly through his own stupidity) manages to lose a significant sum of mob money. He rings his girlfriend Lola (Franka Potente) and tells her she has twenty minutes to help him find 100 000 deustch marks, otherwise he's going to rob a supermarket to get the money himself. The scenario plays out three times, and each time a variation occurs quite early on that influences the way events will play out. It's an interesting way to look at themes of free will and determinism, but the biggest aspect of its appeal is the dynamic way it tells its story(s). So, as I know this is a Higher School Certificate text in Australia, rather than write a standard review I'm just going to look at the techniques this film uses... the 'distinctively visual' ways in which it presents a story.

Section 1

• Black and white cinematography is used to denote a flashback, in this case the scene where Manni leaves the money behind on the train. The earliest films were in black and white, so black and white is now often used to connotate something that has happened in the past. If a filmmaker makes a conscious decision to shoot his or her film in black and white (EG. Schindler's List, Raging Bull) it's usually to help evoke a bygone era. In Run Lola Run it becomes shorthand for events that have happened before the main narrative of the film.
• A series of flashes (quick cuts to another scene) are used to show the process of Manni remembering/realising he left the bag behind. These flashes start out as quick and short to represent flashes of memory, and slow down to represent the process of a memory coming to the forefront of Manni's mind as he realises what he's just done.
• Repetition of the phrase "The bag" is used to highlight its importance.
• The homeless man's thoughts are rendered in colour, to represent the fact that these thoughts aren't memories but imagined possibilities. They are bright and vibrant because the bag of money means excitement and a positive future for this dejected individual.
• Still photos are used to depict flash-forwards for minor characters, this differentiates these future micro-narratives from the larger present day narrative. The use of photographs suggests a documented history, showing the viewer that this is a future history for a particular character.
• Lola's red hair is a conscious decision on the director's part (a piece of trivia: Potente couldn't wash her hair for six weeks because she had to ensure her hair stayed bright red). It ensures that Lola stands out at all times, and might also be representative of other things (such as the idea that red cars go faster... maybe?)
• - Split screens are used to show things that are happening at the same time. Another way to show this would be to intercut the scenes (cross cutting), but Run Lola Run is a fast and kinetic film, and favours getting this information to us in half the amount of time by showing things concurrently.
• Scenes featuring Lola and Manni are shot on film, whereas scenes featuring tertiary characters are shot on video. The use of video suggests an artificiality, whereas using film to depict the two protagonists shows their importance - they're at the centre of the film.
• Slow motion is used for the end of this section of the film, rendering Lola's death as extra-dramatic, and demonstrating the way our impression of time can change in such dramatic instances.
• The fade to red (rather than the traditional fade to black) denotes the end of the first segment, and also highlights the emotional intensity felt by the two lead characters.

Section 2

• Animation is used to depict the crucial scene where Lola starts her run. Each time this sequence is shown there is one significant difference that affects the course of events.
• The red filter is used for the scene of Lola and Manni lying together on the bed. This clarifies this scene as being outside of the main narrative, it's most likely an earlier time (though it could even represent something else, like a scene set inside Lola or Manni's head). Red is also a colour often associated with love, a theme that links in with the intimacy of this scene.
• There's a brief moment where Lola is running and she passes a homeless man, and the camera swings back to show this man running away after she accidentally bumps into him. The camera, much like the viewer, is doing a double-take as we realise that this is the same homeless man who took the money at the beginning of the film. In films, the camera only ever shows us things that are significant. The camera doesn't show us anything that the director doesn't want us to see, and this moment is a prime example of this.
• Interestingly, because Lola is delayed by the fact that her leg is hurt, it means that her father reacts badly to the news his mistress gives him - suggesting that his disappointment with Lola in the first section influenced his choice in that same section of the film.
• The safety catch on the gun is interesting too - we saw in the previous segment that Lola had to be told to take the safety catch off her gun. In this scenario she already knows how to use a gun, suggesting that she has either somehow learned from the last scenario or that she knew how to use a gun all along.
• An overhead shot is used to show Lola running past the ambulance after it goes through the glass sheet. The point of this overhead shot is show the layout of the environment in the aftermath of this accident (it's almost like a crime scene, or a topographical photograph).

Section 3

• Another red scene is used as a transitional device between the second and third sections of the film.
• This time an overhead shot is used to show Lola running in the third section, showing the viewer that this is literally a new perspective on events.
• It should be noted that the camera is almost always moving, a technique that helps create and maintain the film's sense of momentum and pace.
• There are more shots of a slower nature in this last segment, suggesting that this is the section that will be different to the other two... it's the one that's not like the others, this is the scenario that will allow Lola to slow down and stop running.
• The gambling allows Lola and Manni to double their prize... in the other two scenarios they only ever manage to get 100 000 marks. As they gamble it means they come out with twice this amount, a pertinent comment on the themes of free will and fate.
• Freeze frame ending: everything finally stops. This is the end of the story, we don't see anything more after this, it's final!

DIRECTOR: Tom Twyker
WRITER/SOURCE: Tom Twyker
KEY ACTORS: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Armin Rohde, Joachim Krol

RELATED TEXTS:
- Twyker followed up Ron Lola Run with another German film, The Princess and the Warrior, which featured some of the same cast.
- Run Lola Run can be seen as a 'puzzle film' (films from the '90s onwards that focused on increasingly complicated plots, often in a non-linear fashion). Other examples include Pulp Fiction, Memento, the Infernal Affairs trilogy, 11:14, 21 Grams, 12 Monkeys and Go.

AWARDS
BAFTAs - nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
Independent Spirit - won Best Foreign Film.
Sundance Film Festival - won World Cinema Audience Award
Venice Film Festival - nominated for Golden Lion.

Brief Encounter

"How odd of you to notice you were living with a stranger in the house"

David Lean caused a bit of a stir with this film back in the mid-'40s. He'd already made a couple of films in the early '40s, but none had previously achieved the impact that Brief Encounter had. With it's underlying themes of middle class values and taboos, Brief Encounter fights a quiet battle between appealing to a predominantly middle-class British audience and daring to address the ironclad value system that kept this same class insolvent. Lean takes a one-act play as the basis for this small scale film, and pours all his youth and energy into making it as dynamic as possible - utilising conversational second person narration, extreme close ups, off-kilter camera angles, and non-linear storytelling. In a way, it's his Reservoir Dogs.

Laura (Celia Johnson) is a middle class married woman whose chance encounter with a dashing, erudite doctor (Trevor Howard) leads to an awakening of passion that sends her into a spiral of depression and panic. Her moral foundations are shaken to the core, causing her a great deal of distress as she imaginarily relates the tale to her unwitting, good-natured and unadventurous husband (Cyril Raymond). Laura is a woman standing on the cusp of transgression, she and her doctor fall in love but are yet to act on it, and Brief Encounter famously relates the tale in flashback - wistful, despondant, guilty, and sad. It's a story in vignettes, gathering context like a train gathering speed, and lending weight to Laura's social treachery.

"(We) crept out of the theatre, as though we were commiting a crime"

I had to catch myself a few times, I almost thought that Laura was actually commiting a crime in the legal definition of the term - such is the uptight 1940s context of this film and the society that created it. The inherent repression of the English middle class was so widespread and ingrained in British culture in the 1940s that even daring to admit the possibility of extra-marital love was quite scandalous. This was an era in film that forbade unpunished adultery on the screen (this was even enforced in America by the Hays Code), so it's quite surprising for this film to not depict Laura and Dr. Alec as villains.

It probably also helps that the film is brilliantly conceived, structured and edited. The combination of Lean and Noel Coward with the train station setting and all that steam and smoke is simply iconic. The steam is symbolic of the fog of immorality that descends upon the characters, or a metaphor for Laura's judgement becoming clouded. Lean also heightens the sense of scandal by cutting away the first few times the secretive couple kiss, and offers us a ghost of a devilish smile on Laura's face - which is tellingly shown only via her reflection in the train window, thus representing the intangible possibilities that are just out of her grasp. It's all these masterful little touches that build such a vivid picture of the characters.

I have to say that I didn't much like Celia Johnson's performance as Laura, but maybe I just generally wasn't a fan of the character's constant self-loathing (which can seem a little melodramatic when viewed from a more modern context). In general this film becomes something less than the some of its parts when viewed outside of the context of 1940s England, and the main reason it stays afloat beyond this era is that it happens to be a little atmospheric snapper that demonstrates all of David Lean's visually iconic inventiveness.

DIRECTOR: David Lean
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by David Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame. Based on a play by Noel Coward.
KEY ACTORS: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey, Cyril Raymond, Everley Gregg, Valentine Dyall

RELATED TEXTS:
- The one-act play Still Life, written by Noel Coward in 1936. This was part of a cycle of plays written by Coward called Tonight at 8:30.
- The film was re-adapted as the play Brief Encounter in 2008, and as an opera of the same name in 2009.
- Brief Encounter; a TV remake of the film in the '70s that starred Richard Burton and Sophia Loren.
- The '80s film Falling in Love is very much a modernised American version of the same story (even down to the inclusion of trains).

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated for Best Actress (Celia Johnson), Best Director and Best Screenplay.
Cannes Film Festival - won Grand Prize of the Festival.

The Off Hours

"When did you get so sad?"

The Off Hours is a low-budget independently-made film that seeks to explore the twilight world of a night shift waitress at a truck stop. Indie stalwart Amy Seimetz (The Myth of the American Sleepover, Wristcutters: A Love Story) plays said waitress Francine, an aimless twenty-something who finds herself treading water in one of life's cul-de-sacs (sorry, bit of a mixed metaphor there). When she isn't earning a minimal wage in her depressingly low-key job she's hanging out with a band of no-hopers, but a budding relationship with an unlikely truck driver starts to challenge her status quo, and she begins to come to a realisation that her life is going nowhere.

Writer-director Megan Griffiths helms this digi-indie mumblecore effort with an unshowy confidence. She uses the 'world of the night shift' to explore ideas relating to people who've become out of sync with the waking world, and what this could do to a person in both the long and short term. At Francine's highway diner there are a collection of disparate characters all searching for direction; the curmudgeonly owner/short-order cook, the surly slavic woman, the truck driver who used to be a banker, Francine's slacker friends... these people are in the midst of awkwardly trying to feel each other out and discovering the boundaries of the space in which they operate. It's all a bit sombre and slightly melodramatic, but it's also understated enough to maintain a certain edge of realism that 'bigger' films would give their left nut to achieve.

According to wikipedia and some of the spin around The Off Hours, this is the first film to recieve an SSF tag. This doesn't really reflect on the quality of the film, but I think it can be seen as an extension of where it's coming from. The use of prefabricated (secondhand) materials could be viewed to be as much a stylistic decision as it is an environmentally-conscious one, as it links in with the aforementioned realism. I will say that this isn't a fast-paced film, it might even be fair to say that it doesn't have any pacing at all as the film isn't concerned with plot. The Off Hours is about character and environment. The quiet slowness of the film perfectly captures the tone of the small hours experienced in the world of the night shift worker, it's not really the sort of thing that films normally get made about, so I appreciated the way it achieves a very particular atmosphere and uses this to look at wider questions relating to the human condition.

DIRECTOR: Megan Griffiths
WRITER/SOURCE: Megan Griffiths
KEY ACTORS: Amy Seitmetz, Ross Partridge, Tony Doupe, Scoot McNairy, Gergana Mellin

RELATED TEXTS:
- Megan Griffiths previously wrote and directed First Aid for Choking, and is currently finishing off the film Eden. She also made the short films Eros and Moving.
- I found some stylistic similarity with the film Frozen River (mainly in the camera work). See also other indie films such Wendy and Lucy, Cold Weather and Hannah Takes the Stairs.

Snowtown

"You don't have to worry mate, they're nobody. No one gives a shit".

Take a look at that poster. This image is synonymous with the film's central relationship, that between convicted serial killers John (Daniel Henshall) and Jamie (Lucas Pittaway). John looks over James' shoulder like a puppet master, and it's a dynamic that made some of these horrific events possible if we're to believe that the film flies that closely to the truth. For the uninitiated, Snowtown tells the story of one of Australia's most horrific crimes, the brutal murder of some eleven known individuals by an informal gang led by John Bunting in the South Australian town of Snowtown. The victims were infamously stored in barrels of acid hidden away in a disused bank vault, the full extent of these crimes remained unrevealed to the Australian public until the release of this very film. Director Justin Kurzel was given unprecedented access to police files on the Snowtown murders, and what he's done with this shocking true story is actually quite astonishing. Rather than pinning out the events in exhaustive detail like some Pay-TV telemovie, Kurzel has created a naturalistic recreation of the context of these crimes, a vividly real character study that somehow gives the illusion of a complete lack of artifice in constructing scripted scenes - making it feel almost like a documentary. Scarily so.

Snowtown is a socio-economic lowspot in South Australia, a welfare-supported area of incisive suburban boredom where Jamie Vlassakis has grown up with his brothers and single mother Elizabeth (Louise Harris). Snowtown shows us lazy glimpses of this life, Jamie's encounters with sexual abuse and the wider interaction of the town's community as they deal with their own issues outside of the view of the police (who barely figure in this forgotten corner of rundown housing). Into Jamie's life comes John, his mother's charismatic new boyfriend. After dealing with his bullying older brother and a sexually abusive former step father, Jamie is more than receptive to a strong new father figure in his life. John more than occupies this role, he eventually controls Jamie on some very subtle and insidious levels... he's a man with delusions of godhood, getting pleasure through controlling others. Jamie is a young man who doesn't know any better, he doesn't have any aggressive tendencies and after getting picked on for so long he's ready to comply with John's suggestion to 'grow some balls'. John begins remaking Jamie in his own image, and soon the boy is inducted into an inner circle under John's tutelage - an accessory to the murder of suspected pedophiles in a community that is both intolerant of police interference and has a perception that the system has failed them. It eventually becomes apparent that John's motives go beyond vigilantism and encompass more sinister undertones.


The journey from talk to action is a big part of Snowtown's muted narrative. John starts out using homophobia and hatred of pedophiles as an excuse for sadism but his real motivation is that he simply likes playing games with people. The scene where he and Jamie cut up a kangaroo to put it into a bucket to be thrown onto a man's porch chillingly foreshadows the barrel-work to come, and the tension that arises from what the audience knows is ahead renders certain scenes incredibly hard to watch (witness the scene where John asks Jamie to shoot his dog). When the murders start there's this concept of those who 'deserve' it (pedophiles, junkies) but somewhere along the line John doesn't even bother trying to justify it anymore, and none of the other characters even comment on this - outlining the darkness that fuels much of the film. Basically the film is saying (though there's nothing basic about this film) that John Bunting was a sociopath, and the absence of law and order in this godforsaken community gave him the freedom to escalate this deficiency into horrifying action, and Jamie's role initially seems to be to bear witness to this sociopathy, though the scene where he eventually joins in is fraught with conflicted emotions (another one of those hard to watch scenes).

Most (but not all) of the violence is implied, so anyone looking for a gorefest will be sorely disappointed. The film isn't about that, and Kurzel made the right decision not to revel in the violence so that the film wouldn't be about that. In a way the film is similar to Animal Kingdom and The Boys in its focus on the truths behind the criminal underclass, it's an Australian counterpart to the American film Winter's Bone in that it offers an unflinching view of our own white underclass shackeld by their poverty. But, having said that, in this film no concession is made at all to traditional crime film narratives... it's a naturalistic snapshot of the psychology and culture behind the killings. There is a certain assumption implicit in the film that the audience will know the essence of what happened with the Snowtown murders, so a lot of the details aren't really made clear and the film therefore remains primarily a mood piece. It's like an in-depth essay where you have to choose to talk about just one thing, and Kurzel chose to talk about why John and Jamie did what they did, rather than the how and what.

In light of this, certain details get glossed over or excised. Details regarding the social security fraud aspect are left out but it's not as if the film is saying this didn't happen, it just doesn't give up its time to discuss it. Also, Robert Wagner's role in the murders isn't really examined in any capacity... the character is present but little insight into his role is given to the audience. The problem is, the closer we get to the details behind these heinous crimes the less logic or sense there is to it. John Bunting had a hatred of homosexuality, and one of his first victims was Robert Wagner's boyfriend, yet John didn't want to kill Robert and Robert was happy to be his accomplice. It doesn't make any sense, yet these are the facts, and the film glosses over some of these things in favour of not confusing the audience or losing its way. Suffice to say, the full extent of these crimes are probably too much for one film to deal with sufficiently... I mean, and this is something else never mentioned in the film, in reality Wagner even ate some of their last victim!

One more thing before I finish, Daniel Henshall's performance in Snowtown is instrumental in the film's effectiveness. He's spot-on in capturing the uneasy confidence and smirking calmness of a real sociopath, he never overplays it but he's also never less than magnetic. It's a tour-de-force.

DIRECTOR: Justin Kurzel
WRITER/SOURCE: Justin Kurzel and Shaun Grant. Based on the real life Snowtown murders.
KEY ACTORS: Daniel Hensell, Lucas Pittaway, Louise Harris, Richard Green, Aaron Viergever, Bob Adriaens, Frank Cwiertniak

RELATED TEXTS
- Snowtown: The Bodies in Barrels Murders, a non-fiction true crime book by Jeremy Pudney.
- For more on realistic looks at Australian crime in film, see Animal Kingdom, Little Fish, The Boys and The Combination.
- As mentioned, the American film Winter's Bone looks at a similar white underclass and its endemic crime.

AWARDS
Cannes Film Festival - won FIPRESCI prize (special mention).

American Comedies of the 21st Century Part 5

This continues on from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.


Bridesmaids
It isn't very often that a female-orientated comedy actually manages to be funny (or funny enough for a male audience) and I think a big part of Bridesmaids' success is down to the casting of Kristen Wiig, a genuinely funny actress. All too often 'female' comedies (IE. Chick flicks and romantic comedies) are dominated by comedic vacuums like Katherine Heigl or Julia Roberts - they get cast because they're famous, not because they're funny. Bridesmaids bucks this tradition, and is standout hilarious from start to finish as a result. Wiig takes her chance to shine and throws herself into it with a gutso that Ms. Roberts would probably find undignified. Sure, a lot of the film's success hinges on set pieces like the dress-fitting and plane scenes, making it feel like a bit like a female version of The Hangover, but for my money it's a better film than any other comedy in 2011 because everything is perfectly pitched and there are absolutely no weak points in the script or cast.

DIRECTOR: Paul Feig
WRITER/SOURCE: Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo.
KEY ACTORS: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O'Dowd, Jill Clayburgh, John Hamm, Rebel Wilson, Matt Lucas, Wendy McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Terry Crews
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Just Go With It
Geez, Sandler just really phones it in for a paycheck sometimes, doesn't he? In this (loose) remake of The Cactus Flower, Sandler gives the same performance he gives in all his 'normal' comedies as layer after layer of half-arsed farce unfolds in the holiday location of Hawaii. Leaving aside the many holes in the plot, this film is elevated slightly by a much better supporting cast than Sandler's last paypacket Grown Ups (which was quite easily the laziest film Sandler has ever made). Aniston and Sandler have a good chemistry together, and it was surprising to see Nicole Kidman doing a comedic variation on her ice queen routine, but I could've done without the 'cute' actress-kid and Sandler's ridiculous cousin (played by Nick Swardson). The fake identities aspect of the film is a tired concept that really only weighs the film down, and I kinda think Sandler and Aniston might've done better to make a more straight-forward romcom (or at least attenmpted something original).

DIRECTOR: Denis Dugan
WRITER/SOURCE: Allan Loeb and Timothy Dowling
KEY ACTORS: Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Nick Swardson, Nicole Kidman, Dan Patrick, Brooklyn Decker, Dave Matthews, Bailee Madison, Griffin Gluck, Kevin Nealon
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Arthur
Russell Brand mines his wildchild image further with this remake of the 'classic' Dudley Moore hit comedy. I can't say I was ever a huge fan of the original Arthur, so I don't really feel an attachment to any particular elements this remake may have trodden on in the quest for fresh laughs. Brand treads an easy line between drunken space-waster and charming clown (I dare say the acting involved was fairly minimal), and I guess one's opinion of the film will depend on how they feel about Brand himself. I like Brand, and I found this film to be an unexpected delight. Helen Mirren and Greta Gerwig are endearing (in very different ways) in their supporting roles, and the whole thing is quite funny in the freewheeling, self-indulgent kind of way that a lot of films are afraid to embrace. Top notch. A glorious orgy of wit and comedic spectacle.

DIRECTOR: Jason Winer
WRITER/SOURCE: Peter Baynham. Based on the 1981 film by Steve Gordon.
KEY ACTORS: Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, Greta Gerwig, Jennifer Garner, Luis Guzman, Geraldine James, Nick Nolte, Evander Holyfield
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30 Minutes or Less
This movie is about what it would be like if one of those half-baked bank robbery plans that every 20 year old stoner comes up with was actually put into action. Jesse Eisenberg plays a pizza-delivering slacker who gets manipulated by a silver-spoon redneck (Danny McBride) into robbing a bank. Aziz Ansari co-stars as Eisenberg's partner-in-crime, and the film gets big points from me just for having Ansari in it as it's great to see him doing his hilarious schtick in a film. Eisenberg is trying to break away from awkward Michael Cera-territory but I don't think his nerdy/intellectual WASPness really suits this laidback Seth Rogen-esque kind of role. The film also cheats a bit, it doesn't really end properly - a lot of the plot is left unresolved, which I think is a big no-no when it comes to 'everything goes wrong' comedies (Date Night, Pineapple Express). Part of the fun ise seeing how the hopeless characters get out of the impossible situation, something that 30 Minutes or Less glosses over. That aside though, the film is still a whole tonne of fun... funny and unpredictable in the right places, and Ansari and McBride are always good comedic value.

DIRECTOR: Ruben Fleischer
WRITER/SOURCE: Michael Diliberti
KEY ACTORS: Jesse Eisenberg, Aziz Ansair, Danny McBride, Nick Swardson, Michael Pena, Fred Ward, Dilshad Vadsaria
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Your Highness
The idea of James Franco and Danny McBride going on a medieval fantasy quest whilst toking up and chasing women sounds great in theory (and looked great in the trailer), but the balance between comedy and serious fantasy in Your Highness is largely misjudged. Franco is too much of a straight man and the jokes (whilst funny) are offset by too much in the way of serious fantasy questing. I think some comparison could be made to Will Ferrell's adventure film Land of the Lost, though in this case the adventure element just didn't really do it for me. McBride has been gettinfg stronger as a comic actor since his success with Eastbound and Down, but it's a shame that this wasn't capitalised more by pushing the film away from expensive CGI-laden fight scenes and more towards hilariously offensive silliness. Natalie Portman isn't really all that funny either, and more should have been done with Zooey Deschanel's character instead as she had a lot more potential for solid laughs.

DIRECTOR: David Gordon Green
WRITER/SOURCE: Danny McBride and Ben Best
KEY ACTORS: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Toby Jones, Justin Theroux, Charles Dance
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Paul
A couple of hapless and socially awkward sci-fi geeks tour America's UFO hotspots and have their dreams come true when they meet a fugitive alien named Paul (Seth Rogen). It's Starman meets Fanboys, a sweet-natured but foul-mouthed road movie and a throwback to a non-cynical form of comedy-adventure that isn't afraid to do things that feel good (much like Paul himself). Simon Pegg and Nick Frost seem a little watered down in comparison to their Edgar Wright-directed films, but this is probably a necessity as it allows their characters to contrast effectively with the laidback alien. Jason Bateman stands out in a stock-standard Man in Black role due to his increasingly assured sense of rhythm as a big screen comedic actor, and also watch out for a gazillion references to famous sci-fi/adventure films from the 1970s and 80s. This is a really fun film that will apppeal to a certain geek-savvy audience, and is most definitely not for kids (despite the 'cute' CGI alien).

DIRECTOR: Greg Mottola
WRITER/SOURCE: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
KEY ACTORS: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, Blythe Danner, Jo Lo Truglio, Sigourney Weaver, Jane Lynch, David Koechner, John Carroll Lynch, Jeffrey Tambor
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Horrible Bosses
I'm sad to say that this film noir-inspired comedy is hugely overrated. This makes me sad because I expected big things from it due to its dream cast. I guess this is one of those cases where the film's trailer just gave too many of the good jokes away... Colin Farrell barely features, and I think they would've done well to streamline the cast a little bit by getting rid of Jason Sudeikis. Charlie Day, despite being the least well-known cast member, easily gives the standout performance as a sex-offending dental assistant. Okay, so Day pretty much just reprises his character from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but it's so great to see him on the big screen interacting with A-listers like Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston. Horrible Bosses is actually quite plot-heavy, borrowing from the Hitchcock classic Strangers on a Train to create one big frustrating mess of Things Going Wrong. It's not a terrible film, but it's also not the gutbuster that the trailer suggests it is, and I didn't find myself laughing all that much.

DIRECTOR: Seth Gordon
WRITER/SOURCE: Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.
KEY ACTORS: Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Donald Sutherland
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Bad Teacher
Cameron Diaz has a shaky relationship with comedy (she's good at it, but the projects where she tries to showcase it, such as The Sweetest Thing, aren't always that great) so it was nice to see her headline a sharp bad taste comedy in the mode of Bad Santa. There isn't a whole lot to this film, it's pretty much a ripoff of the first season of Eastbound and Down (even with the character of Lynn standing in for Eastbound and Down's Stevie), and sometimes I felt that the bad taste could've been taken a bit further. The characters and plotting are basic at best, but there are more than a few solid laughs that make the film a fun and pleasant experience. Also, Justin Timberlake's character doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it is nice to finally see Jason Segel playing someone who doesn't have any loserish tendencies.

DIRECTOR: Jake Kasdan
WRITER/SOURCE: Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky.
KEY ACTORS: Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segel, Lucy Punch, Phyllis Smith, John Michael Higgins, Molly Shannon, Thomas Lennon
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Gulliver's Travels
If you ever feel like losing a couple of braincells in exchange for zero entertainment, then I heartily recommend Gulliver's Travels - a 'sassy' update of the classic novel that re-imagines Gulliver as a modern day slacker played by Jack Black. Remember when Jack Black was hip and funny? Well, if you do, this movie will erase that memory once and for all. This is lowest common denominator comedy aimed at undemanding family audiences. Black's one-note brand of comedy wears thinner than ever within several minutes, and a talented cast of transatlantic comedians go to waste in this bombastic and incredibly unfunny fantasy-drama. The plot is tired and tedious, and Black seems bissfully unaware that the varnish of his particular brand of humour has completely worn off.

DIRECTOR: Rob Letterman
WRITER/SOURCE: Joe Stillman and Nicholas Stoller. Loosely based on the novel by Jonathan Swift.
KEY ACTORS: Jack Black, Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Amanda Peet, Billy Connelly, Catherine Tate, James Corden, Chris O'Dowd, T. J. Miller
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Crazy Stupid Love
This film sees directors Glenn Ficarra and James Requa follow up their underappreciated gem I Love You Philip Morris with a more crowd-pleasing comedy. It feels like they've deliberately mined some less offensive material than usual in order to appeal to a more mainstream audience. Normally this would feel cynical to me but the heart of their work as filmmakers isn't reliant on this sort of thing, and Crazy Stupid Love never feels less than meaningful, nor does it take easy pathways through its themes. Steve Carrell plays an alternate version to his character from Date Night, surviving through a scenario where his marriage wasn't saved. He's forced to go out and learn how to be single again with the help of a young uber-lothario played by Ryan Gosling (a character so confident it seems like a talking version of his character from Drive). Carrell and Gosling are surprisingly good together, and the humour is on the dark side but always realistic. This is a film about real life, a romantic comedy that uses sentiment sparingly btu effectively. It's not the boring film it sounds like, and watch out for a great twist about two thirds in!

DIRECTOR: Glenn Ficarra and James Requa.
WRITER/SOURCE: Dan Fogelman
KEY ACTORS: Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, John Carroll Lynch, Marisa Tomei, Kevin Bacon, Analeigh Tipton, Josh Groban

The Infinitive of Go

The Infinitive of Go is the kind of old school hardcore science-fiction that isn't really all that popular anymore. It's pulpish, but in a good way, and slots right into an era of genre-writing that has pretty much disappeared. The author, John Brunner, was a prolific writer who churned out these wild, speculative novellas that raised more questions than they answered and splashed a mighty rainbow out into the void of the undiscovered. The science might be a little dated at times, but it's still a heck of a lot of fun.

Our story here concerns the invention of a teleportation device. The first volunteer for a live 'posting' (transportation from one point to another) arrives safely, but he demands various passwords and classified information before detonating a suicide bomb. It's assumed that something went wrong and he went crazy, but the explanation turns out to be something more bizarre. Our hero, Dr. Justin Williams (the inventor of the teleportation devices) decides to post himself before allowing the project to be shutdown. On arrival he discovers that he has shifted into a reality slightly different to his own. It appears that 'posting' actually transports the subject to a parallel universe.

From here the events spiral out of control... with no way of returning to the original universe the book starts in, the book instead focuses on a much bigger picture. Along with Dr. Williams we explore parallel universe theories and the way the passenger can affect where he ends up when he is posted. The book does a kind of u-turn (or throws a curveball, whatever metaphor you prefer) when an injured astronaut must be posted down to Earth in order to be saved. Of course, he'll end up in another reality, but hey - at least he'll be safe. What comes down to Earth in his place though doesn't appear to be human. And this is where things get really weird.

I can't go into it too much because it would spoil the book. It's only a short book - around 150 pages or something like that, and everytime you think you've figured out where it's heading it decides to switch things up a bit. The ending is a little oblique and mysterious, but I think this is part of the book's charm. 2001 has a weird ending (well, the movie does anyway - can't comment on the book, haven't read it) but I think this is part of what makes it so great. It's just a cool sci-fi thing, to leave things open-ended and up for interpretation.

Anyway, if you're after this book a good place to look for it would probably be Amazon or any 2nd-hand bookstores - they're often filled with stacks of these kinds of books.

A Woman is a Woman

"The truth should look different to a lie"

Jean-Luc Godard's output in the 1960s really is quite startling, in a way he's like the Beatles of filmmaking... directing and writing fifteen films in just seven years, making them quickly and effeciently with little fuss and yet also pioneeringt many breakthroughs in his treatment of the film medium - doing for film what the Beatles did for pop music in the same short yet prolific amount of time. He methodically subverted or reinvented each genre, exemplifying the gleeful anarchism of youth in his deliberate disregard or breaking of the rules. A Woman is a Woman is a musical without songs, a Dadaist and anti-realist work where the presence of the camera is acknowledged and the role of the viewer becomes an active part of film's narrative structure. With this in mind, it's a little bit difficult to unpack in traditional film-review terms, so I'll break it down piece by piece instead.

The Plot: Anna Karina plays Angela, the central character of the film and the genesis of all its plot mechanics. She's a stripper in an absolute dive of a club, but this doesn't get her down. She wants a baby with her boyfriend Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy) so that he'll marry her, but he is more than resistant to the idea. Emile's best friend, Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo), is in love with Angela, so she starts playing the two men off against each other by manipulating their affections for her, in the hope that this will get her what she wants - marriage and a baby.

"Is this a tragedy or a comedy"
"With woman, you never know"

Dialogue: The dialogue between Emile and Angela (and sometimes others) is highly trivial and extra-referential (as opposed to intra-referential), despite the underlying themes of commitment and family. In a way, these themes aren't really all that important. It's a traditional story given a self-consciously post-modern treatment which makes it more about the relationship between the film and the viewer as it positions the viewer in a more active and critical position. By making the plot so seemingly irrelevant and disconnected from the characters (achieved through the aforementioned trivial dialogue, or through scenes like the one where Angela and Emile carry out an argument solely by showing each other book titles), Godard forces the viewer out of a passive position.

Editing: This is also why Godard plays with traditional narrative by disrupting it with unconventional editing. He calls attention to the artifice of the film so that the viewer is jolted from their default position of just sitting there and watching events unfold, they will instead suddenly be aware of their own relationship to the film and their part in interpreting it to create meaning. Of course, this could manifest itself in the form of annoyance or dislike towards the film, especially if the viewer is unaccustomed to watching films in an active fashion. The adoption of tropes associated with the musical genre links into this as well, Godard plays with sound and music to explicitly demonstrate how these elements should, can or do work... a technique that also represents the film's leaning towards Dadaism.


Dadaism: This was a movement from the early 20th century that employed exagerration and the ridiculous to subvert traditional ideologies in art. Specifically, it worked to destroy aesthetics through offending sensibilities that respected traditions associated with art. Some examples in A Woman is a Woman...

• The romantic swell of music heard as Angela reads about contraception.
• The scene where Belmondo and another guy discuss a debt owed and begin exchanging insults accompanied by over the top musical cues.
• Angela performs a song in the strip bar, but the music abruptly drops out each time she sings.
• The contrast between bright, vivid colours (symbolic of traditional set and costume design in the musical genre) and the squalid nature of the Parisian streets.

The cast: Anna Karina is a real find. As Angela she's adorably cheeky, a demonstrates a youthful self-confidence in her peformance that's actually quite rare. Her exuberance is completely at odds with the manipulative and lowly nature of the character (more evidence of Dadaism in the film). Jean-Paul Belmondo has only a supporting role, but he's very much a counter-culture hero - witness his flippantly serious refusal to make good on a debt: (Other man) "Are you going to pay?" (Belmondo) "No, never", and then he walks off!

The French New Wave: Godard's body of work from 1960 to 1967 referred and paid tribute to specific aspects of cinema history. In A Woman is a Woman there are hints of reflexivity that he would follow up more comprehensively with the film Contempt. When Karina first appears as Angela she looks directly at the camera and smiles, a fleeting moment of conspiratorial knowing that's integral both to her performance and to the viewer's relationship with the wider film. When she performs in her dark and depressing striip bar there are only two ro three unenthusiastic punters, but really - she's performing for the camera. This is a film that knows it's a film. She later deliberately flubs her lines and seems to accidentally drop an egg (prompting crying) and it blurs our comprehension of what is happening... how much of this is scripted?

A crucial part of the French new wave (and auteur theory) was the belief that interpretation should be put into the hands of the spectator. The director's personal beliefs should be represented in the film, but their control over the meanings inn the text would be relinquished in favour of objective realism (rather than the more traditional ways that cinema manipulates and recreates reality for the benefit of an easily assimilated narrative). It's a movement that called attention to itself, and was (and is) more about the processes of storytelling than about the stories being told.

DIRECTOR: Jean-Luc Godard
WRITER/SOURCE: Jean-Luc Godard
KEY ACTORS: Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy

RELATED TEXTS:
- See Godard's later film, Contempt, for more about the relationship between film and viewer.
- Godard's other films from this '60s period are Breathless, The Little Soldier, My Life to Live, The Carabineers, Band of Outsiders, A Married Woman, Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou, Masculine Feminine, Made in USA, Two of Three Things I Know About Her, La Chinoise and Weekend.