Nobody Knows Anything

One cinema visit this week, marked with a *. Contains one Indy plot spoiler, but I guess you’ve seen the film now, right?

Trading Places (1983)

Denholm Elliott, who co-starred in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), turned up here in a role vaguely reminiscent of John Gielgud’s role in Arthur (1981). I still don’t understand commodities trading, and still don’t understand the film’s ending. Which is why I haven’t earned millions in the city and retired at forty.

The Fog (1979) 

Jamie Lee Curtis, who co-starred in Trading Places (1983), which includes a topless scene she now regrets (but we don’t), turned up here as the kind of happy-go-lucky hitchhiker that could only exist in a movie made in the 1970s. There are John Carpenter movies that are in a certain sense better movies than this (The Thing (1982) for one), but I think The Fog is my personal favourite of his work. It has the perfectly stripped down mechanics of a really creepy ghost story, is not let down by its low budget and creates the majority of its mood through atmosphere and Carpenter’s own haunting musical score. Apparently, some Hollywood assholes remade this recently; another one of those films I will never see; how can you remake perfection?

Quest for Fire (1981)

There are some films you just never get around to seeing, you miss them at the cinema, never quite catch the VHS release, find something else to watch on another channel when they turn up on TV in the wrong aspect ratio, and then finally a DVD appears with a decent amount of extras, you find it in the May Madness sale at Borders for £4.99 and suddenly you can watch it in a week when I had a 1980s thing going on. I was completely blown away by this, one of the few movies since the silent era to be almost totally devoid of intelligible dialogue, and instead reliant on the pure tools of visual storytelling, which, sad to say, not every film director is able to draw upon. It’s a very simple story (see the title), magnificently scored by Philippe Sarde, and deeply impressive in every area. And it took me 27 years to get around to watching it. Duh.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Shia LaBeouf (show me the beef) is the Jar Jar Binks of Indiana Jones. Discuss. Or rather not. How on Earth does this guy get parts in films? He can’t even act. He’s like a less attractive Jason Mewes (and Jason Mewes, lest we forget, ain’t that pretty himself). Well, it’s been a long time coming, and at least it was better than Temple of Doom. Basically, the film is about the 1950s (Area 51, atomic bombs, witchhunts), but it also touches on just about every unexplained artefact of the uncanny from Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of… series from the 1970s: crystal skulls, Nazca lines and flying saucers. You name ‘em, it’s got ‘em. Considering that the fourth movie sequel in any modern movie franchise can be as rotten as all get-out (Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) anyone? thought not), we should instead be grateful that Crystal Skull is as good as it is, and that’s still pretty good. Yes it has flaws for internet fanboys to pick over endlessly, but you know what, the whole Indiana Jones thing was only ever meant to be barely better than an old Flash Gordon movie serial anyway, and thankfully, it’s much better than that.

I took a week off, so what’s it to ya? One cinema visit in the last fortnight, marked with a *. You will note that this post’s title is accurately quoted from the film and not in its frequently misquoted form: “No time for love, Dr Jones”. It’s the little things.

V for Vendetta (2006)

Any film that ends with the destruction of the Houses of Parliament can’t be all bad, can it? It’s pretty ironic that Alan Moore embarked on his big I don’t want anything more to do with the movies snit with this film, which is a more accurate representation of his work than the two previous film adaptations, From Hell (2001) (which I didn’t think was too awful even though it’s not what Moore wrote and Eddie Campbell drew) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) (which has made it onto my list of films I refuse to see ever). What’s interesting is that Moore co-owns the copyright on the two turkeys (or one turkey and one half-baked goose from my point of view) but as part of the deal to publish and complete V for Vendetta with DC Comics back in 1988, he and David Lloyd surrendered their copyright and V for Vendetta was essentially published as work for hire, which means DC Comics could basically have done what they like with it. Enter the Wachowski Brothers who have enough respect for Moore’s work that they’re not going to mess with it too much, and V the film contains whole chunks taken almost verbatim from the original comic. But, more’s the pity, that wasn’t good enough for Alan Moore…

Persepolis (2007) *

Marjane Satrapi’s solution to the nobody’s going to mess with my comic book dilemma was to co-write and co-direct herself the animated version of her two original, autobiographical graphic novels. Satrapi draws on the tradition of Art Spiegelman’s Maus in relating the history of the Iranian revolution of 1979 through its impact on both herself and her own family. I think what Persepolis is really about is the Iran that doesn’t exist anymore, and may in fact have never existed, but an Iran that could be, perhaps, one day, if the mullahs can be banished and the country returned to the people who suffer there today. Because however bad life was under the Shah, and it wasn’t great, life has become far more irritating under the prescriptions of the religious figures and Sharia law that now dominates everyday life in Iran. What Satrapi makes abundantly clear is that Iran is now a totalitarian state, dominated by Orwellian doublespeak and doublethink; it’s anti-woman, anti-freedom, anti-life and pro-ignorance. Yet the spirit of the people who’ve remained endures and the banning of decadent Western cultural influences only makes their acquisition that more desirable. The one ironic result of the idiotic regime that now dominates Iran is that Persepolis is going to be the must-have DVD in Tehran this year, and there’ll be as big a market for it as there was for the forbidden Iron Maiden tapes that Satrapi cottoned onto back in the 1980s. Because at least Iron Maiden were alive in a country morbidly obsessed with suppressing life.

Apollo 13 (1995)

One of the least enticing results of the invention of the internet is that all those losers who don’t believe man landed on the moon now have somewhere to gather to display their ignorance. This kind of non-thinking is right up there with holocaust denial or believing that 9/11 was actually a controlled demolition instigated by the White House (when all the evidence to the contrary indicates that this White House isn’t even capable of a shabby cover-up of the smallest screw-up, never mind one of the most pivotal moments of recent history). I guess there will always be idiots who can’t cope with the reality of what’s in front of them and have to seek out fantasy and bullshit with which to fill their empty lives. It’s all very sad. Apollo 13 would fit right in with the milder end of these cranks, because, hey, Jim Lovell and Fred Haise never set foot on the moon, so how do we know anyone else did? This mythological nonsense dishonours one of the few shining achievements of the 20th Century and all of the men and women who’ve laid their lives on the line to push it forward, to whit the entire space programme that has transformed all of our lives irrevocably in ways it is impossible for us to measure, but ridiculously easy for stupid twats to disavow.

The Paper (1994)

Ron Howard directed films before The Paper (I’ve even seen some of them), but none of them are as good. The Paper is where Howard really caught my attention as a filmmaker, and of course, with his follow-up, Apollo 13, announced his arrival with authority. Before The Paper, his films try too hard to be all things to all people; after The Paper, his films are content to be true to themselves. The rise in quality is palpable. There is one exception, however, and that would be How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), which I like to pretend Ron Howard did not direct; it’s another one of those films I will never see.

Ellie Parker (2005)

What was Naomi Watts’ life like before Mulholland Dr. (2001) broke and made her a star? Somewhat like Ellie Parker’s perhaps, certainly the endless rounds of useless auditions and humiliating callbacks for essentially worthless pieces of crap, none of which contain decent roles for women but instead trade on the most obvious cliches and archetypes. The first 20 minutes or so of this film, shot, written and directed on video by one of Watts’ co-stars in the original Mulholland Dr. pilot, Scott Coffey, were filmed in 1999, with the rest being filled in over the years in which Watts rose to fortune and glory, while her fictional counterpart probably gives the whole Hollywood thing up and vanishes into obscurity. Watts is so good an actress in this film that it really is an utter mystery that no one could see it until David Lynch did. How many more Ellie Parkers are there out there, drowning in soaps and bad dialogue, just waiting for the right break or slice of luck that will showcase their talents and pitch them into the big leagues? Quite probably, a lot. Kinda frightening, isn’t it?

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

What stood out for me this time was the terrific dialogue courtesy of screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, although I have no idea why I was moved to rewatch the Indiana Jones trilogy at this time. It’s a mystery. The dialogue is witty, subtly adult in nature and eminently quotable. It certainly doesn’t seem the result of marketing decisions, which sadly can’t be said of…

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

…where the thinking appears to have been: Well, this Indiana Jones thing appeals primarly to kids, so we’ll put a lot of kids in the sequel, and then combine kids with black magic and human sacrifice to make it a for all the family smash. Oops. The inclusion of a kid sidekick normally spells death for a franchise (Exhibit A: Batman Forever (1995) introduces Chris O’Donnell as Robin) so Lucasfilm were damn lucky to be able to go on and make…

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

There is only one reason why this film wasn’t called what it could have been: Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, can you guess what it is? Of the three films, this is actually my favourite; it’s the most fun, it has Sean Connery and Spielberg has a further decade of filmmaking brilliance behind him, which allows him to hit every grace note in the script with style and elan. It’s probably also one of the first examples of screenwriters being induced to give the actors something to get their teeth into (in this case, the father/son dynamic between Henry and Indiana) which in actuality has almost nothing to do with the principal attractions of the film to the moviegoing public: thrills, spills, stunts, it’s the third Indy film, we’ve got to check this out. Both Jurassic Park (1993) and Twister (1996) employ a similar dynamic. No one goes to see these films to watch dinosaur attacks teach Sam Neill’s character to reconsider his views on fatherhood or to watch tornadoes save Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt’s marriage; nevertheless these are still employed as actor-attracting employment devices. Again, the reason Jurassic Park was a hit was the dinosaurs, and the reason Twister was a hit was the tornadoes. But these aren’t what attracted the actors to the projects in all likelihood; it was these other elements, which in terms of box office appeal, are of almost no interest whatsoever.

No cinema visits this week.

Downfall (2004)

At the cinema, the film’s impact was considerably lessened as there seemed to be only one speaker working behind the screen, or maybe a couple for limited stereo. At home in 5.1 DTS, the oppressive nature of the film’s sound design becomes a substantial character in its own right, as the Russians inexorably close in on Berlin and Hitler’s bunker, pounding both the end of the Nazi regime and the viewer with artillery round after artillery round. In Britain, channel Five has become the Home of Hitler, packing the schedules with unending Führer documentaries, and the standard view of Hitler is that he was some kind of demon or monster. What Downfall does, I think, is very reasonably point out that Hitler was one of us, a human being with our own vanities and weaknesses. I think terms like evil, demon and monster when applied to very human criminals are deceptively unhelpful. They position the monstrosity of the acts of these people on an almost supernatural plane, and remove them from everyday reality. When what we know from what took place in the Balkans a mere 10 years ago is that the line between civilisation and barbarity is very thin indeed.

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

William Goldman, originator of the title of this blog, is still rightfully pissed that the only country where this film failed at the box office is America, where no critic was prepared to believe the events of the narrative, despite every single one of them actually having occurred in Holland in 1944. One thing the DVD gets right where VHS failed is to illuminate the photography of Geoffrey Unsworth, one of the great British cinematographers, whose love for soft focus, filters and natural light only ever registered as grainy noise on videotape. The most disconcerting element of the film is its galaxy of big movie stars, at once the reason the film got made and perhaps another reason why it failed for American film critics. Films about failure are always more interesting than films about success.

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005)

Having just read Chronicle Volume One, I wanted me some more Dylan, and this nattily assembled documentary from Bob’s childhood to the famed (not faked but most convenient) motorcycle crash in 1966 that took him away from the live stage for eight years and into infamy. Very clearly, there’s still something troubling about the transition from Robert Zimmerman to Bob Dylan that gets the old boy’s goat even after all these years, and neither he nor anyone else is able to provide anything resembling any reason for it, apart from the obvious implication that Dylan wanted no part of his Jewish heritage, and it might have been stopping him and his local bands from getting gigs. This isn’t the only thing that gets glossed over. What is represented quite brilliantly is how vastly important Dylan was in the culture of the time, and how magnetic he was as a live performer. After the crash of ‘66, all of that went away and Dylan set off on the long slow journey into night that continues to this day, his talent diminished and his influence ebbing away with every cruddy concert appearance and mediocre record, all of this despite any brief flare of brilliance being acclaimed as a sign of messianic hope for the faithful, soon to be dashed by yet another officially endorsed Krusty the Clown style disaster – Dylan jukebox musical, anyone?

A Mighty Wind (2003)

The folk scene in the New York of the early 1960s chronicled so earnestly in No Direction Home is here gently satirised by the combined forces of the Christopher Guest improv troop. The primary idea, which is a doozy, is that the three groups presented in the film were all middle class folk singers who “Never Did No Wanderin” and were merely pretending to be hobos and drifters and authentic. (Rather like Bob Dylan, in fact!) Greeted on its release as the slightest of the Guest films (a position since reoccupied by For Your Consideration (2006)), A Mighty Wind has become reassuringly funnier on each viewing. Few scenes in cinema have as much hilarious impact as the precise nature of the religion the leaders of The New Main Street Singers are currently following.

War of the Worlds (2005)

In which special effects reached such a level of verisimiltude that it was as if there has been a real alien invasion, and Spielberg’s cameras just happened to be around to capture it. This film does nothing to counter my opinion that Spielberg is currently on the hottest streak of his filmmaking career, which has run since Jurassic Park (1993), the only minor blip being the last third of Amistad (1997). Every film is more surprising, more varied, more interesting, more adult, more engaging than the one that preceded it. This may all come to an end with Indiana Jones 4 (2008) of course, but I wouldn’t bet on it. I wouldn’t bet on it at all.