Good (Vicente Amorim, 2008)

A good ending can do a lot for a film.

In the case of Good, it excuses all that has gone before and, I think, justifies it.

Based in 1930’s Germany, Good is the story of John Halder (Viggo Mortensen) a university professor who gradually finds himself taking further (goose) steps into Hitler’s Nazi Party.  He abhors the Fuhrer and the politics but soon finds that within a dictatorship many things (including your career) depend on allegiance to the party.

The apparent problem with Good is that we have seen this film many times before.  A ‘good’ man seduced by fascism is the stuff of the Ibsen and Durrenmatt but this type of mid-level drama has become over familiar and Hollywood has a bad habit of turning such stories into ball-achingly worthy melodrama.  Important films that can’t help remind you of just how important they are.  It seems almost heretical to say but one of the great crimes of the 20th century has been made comfortable, fit for polite consumption and lazy finger pointing.  We can all say ‘look what happend when people did nothing’ and feel comfortable in our moral certitute… all at a nice, safe, historical distance.  For something more provocative we need to look towards those countries that lived it and movies like The Experiment (2001), The Wave (2008), The Counterfeiters (2007) and, of course, the awesome Heimet (1984).

…and so Good plods along a well-trodden path.  Yes, it does feature Jason Isaacs, Mark Strong and Steven Mackintosh but even these top rate actors can’t stop the feeling of been there done that… but then, just as you are lulled into cosy Sunday evening style drama, both you and the main character are thrust headfirst into the consequences of just going with the crowd in a finale that shoves the truth of Nazism in your face.  With a mixture of grim spectacle and detachment reminiscent of Passolini’s Salo (1975), director Vicente Amorim reminds you that this isn’t just a morality tale, but an illustration of how a nation can sleepwalk into the mechanised mass murder of millions and a slap in the face of our detachment from a very recent past.

Good is available on DVD.

Moral Panic 765: 1 Day, many idiots

“Power abhors a vacuum and the local councils of Edwardian Britain came to resent their lack of influence over this burgeoning new industry.  By the beginning of 1909 this frustration had reached fever pitch.  The Home Secretary was bombarded by a volley of petitions issued by indignant local bodies.  The rallying cry became public safety…”

Tom Dewe Mathews, Censored (isbn 0-7011-3873-4)

110 years later and we are still playing the same tired game.  West Midlands Police insist they haven’t banned anything but a local branch of Odeon say that they are not screening the film following advice from, you guessed it, West Midlands Police.

Ho hum – what are those commoners doing in the dark?  Will somebody please think of the children?  and so on and so forth ad infinitum…

Up (Pete Doctor & Bob Peterson, 2009)

What possible benefit would I have gained from watching Pixar’s latest offering in 3D?  I wouldn’t have cried more (I cried a lot) and I wouldn’t have laughed more (I laughed a lot).  It seems that the whole benefit of 3D would have been that  some of the characters would have been more pointy.  Wow.  Pixar make good films, why they feel they need to tart them up with gimmicks is anybody’s guess.  Up is a good film with an interesting premise and a magnificent central character – you don’t need to spend any more than a standard ticket to enjoy it…

…but then again you don’t need the final 60 – 70 mins either.  If you want to save time leave after the house has taken off and you will have seen a film just as enjoyable and complete as the full length version.  Okay so it will have a different message but it will be just as memorable… and less emu shaped guff.

Up is in cinemas now.

Il divo (Paulo Sorrentino, 2009)

…you see what Guy Ritchie forgets is that style should be substance.  Ritchie’s films look like gangster films because that is what he believes gangster films should look like.  The look has nothing to do with any thing; you dress boys in blue because that is what they wear and similarly you use every trick in book to make your cock-er-ney capers because people liked Goodfellas (1990).  Other directors do thing differently.  They look at the subject then wonder what form best suits it.  Hence, Paulo Sorrentino’s film looks like a gangster film because that is one of the many things that seven time Prime Minister and ‘Senator for Life’ Giulio Andreotti appears to be.

Essentially, Il divo is a modern, filmic take on Brecht’s The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui that takes a look at Andreotti’s political life and, in particular, the period between his seventh stint as PM and the hearings into his possible Mafia connections.  Filled with stylised performances (the director and his lead actor, Toni Servillo, brazenly channel Nosferatu’s (1922) Count Orlok), glacial cool absurdity and a mountain of swagger, this film is a real treat and a reminder of just how few films you see that really play with the form… oh and you can forget MP’s expenses, these guys really know how to take the piss.

Il divo is available on DVD and you would be wise to brush up on your Italian politics before diving in.

More Tales From Nazi Occupied Europe… Flame and Citron (Ole Christian Madsen, 2008) and Max Manus: Man of War (Joachim Ronnind and Espen Sandberg, 2008)

A while back I (far too quickly) skimmed through a selection of WWII films made in countries that were occupied by the Nazis (link).  Whilst British and American films about the period often concern themselves with tales of daring-do, banding together and noble sacrifice, the films made in mainland Europe are all unified by anger.  The anger of subjugation, the anger of suffering and the anger of betrayal.  We British had bombs and great losses rained down on us but we never saw ‘Blue Police’ on our streets, nor did our fellow countrymen form a ‘Vichy’ state.  Of course a taster of what might have been did appear in the Channel Islands (where the scars, both concrete and mental, remain) but our cultural memory is definitely more John Mills than jackboot.

Apparently made in an alternate universe where Steve Buscemi is a European action hero, Max Manus: Man of War (orig. Max Manus) tells the story of the legendary Norwegian resistance fighter who proved himself a veritable thorn in the side of the Quisling government and their Nazi chums.  As with most films in this genre, the story sweeps across several years, a surplus of characters and a mass of loss and treachery.  If one wanted to criticise, you could cite the almost complete mirroring of Paul Verhoeven’s Soldier of Orange (1977, orig. Soldaat Von Oranje) but this points to the common real life experiences of the protagonists rather than any lack of originality.

Taking it’s cue from Bent Faurschou-Hviid and Jorgen Haagen Schmitt (their codenames provide the title), prominent members of Demark’s Holger Danske resistance group, Flame and Citron (orig. Flammen & Citronen) is a much more sombre piece that follows the duo as they set about enabling various acts of sabotage and the grim business of killing collaborators.  The drama here takes a more personal route with the need for revenge becoming counter productive to Allied plans concerning D-day.

Both films excell in every aspect.  Impressive direction and historical design are supported by a wealth of excellent performances (Mads Mikklesen is particularly strong as the emotionally strung-out Citron) and strong scripts.  As with the films mentioned in the previous entry there still remains, despite the passage of even more years, the ever present feeling of unhealed wounds.  There is another aspect, however, that had not occured to me before – whilst our war cinema seems devoted to the middle-aged these stories concern the young.  Even in modern films our young actors seem to play youthful versions of old men but in Europe there is a real sense of  the strength, daring and uncertainty of youth… looking at what they went through one wonders how anyone else found the energy.

Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer, 2009)

Zombieland is many things.  Funny, creative, and coated from head to toe in lashings of blood and slo-mo, the most American of zombie movies even has the good grace to clock in at under 90mins.  As a slice of popcorn entertainment it is ‘two thumbs fresh’.  Good stuff indeed… but there is a nagging thought at the back of my mind that, well, ain’t it a shame that Matthew McConaughey didn’t play Tallahassee?

Here’s the thing; Woody Harrelson is a legend.  The guy is a fine actor and always worth watching.  With Zombieland he has found a role tailor made to his public image – an off-kilter mixture of Mickey Knox and the ever present ghost of his Cheers alter-ego.  The part fits him like a glove.  Now picture McConaughey in that role… okay, you can’t get past the image of bare-chested, inept rom-commery but just try to picture him, back in the good old days, leaning against the pool hall in Dazed and Confused (1993), all tight jeans with a pack of cigarettes tucked into the sleeve of his T-shirt… that guy there is what this film needs, a bit of amibiguity, something dangerous.

Zombieland is in cinemas now.

The Proposal (Anne Fletcher, 2009)

Plink Plonk… so goes the comedy piano that seems to underpin almost every Hollywood rom-com.

Plink Plonk… someone creeps naked down the hallway.

Plink Plonk… someone creeps naked back up the hallway.

Plink Plonk… you’ll never guess what has happened.  The door to the bedroom is locked and a naked person is trapped in the hallway… Plonk Plink.

It’s not that The Proposal is terrible or offensive in any way (Dane Cook ain’t in it), and nor is it the case that the stars, Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock, don’t do themselves justice because they do, they always do… it’s just so terribly tired, so utterly unoriginal.  I know that people like the familiarity of these films, the comfortable feeling that no matter what happens in the next ninety minutes Mr and Miss will be back together, but this is not about that – after all we know the way most genre films are going.  This is about the fact that the above mentioned scene doesn’t actually happen but it feels like it might have done and that, even as I am writing this sentence, there is a creeping doubt that it might have happened.

Plink Plonk.

The Proposal is available on Region 1 DVD now and hits Region 2 on 30 November 2009… if you can wait that long.