You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

The latest Woody Allen film finally reached Dundee last week.  In a surprising change Allen has left his home turf of New York to locate the film in London.   You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger has all the strengths and weakness of recent Allen films.  The strengths are the usual - an ensemble piece with a good cast, great filming,  great music and great directing.  The cast is an interesting mix of internationally famous stars and British stalwarts.  From around the globe come Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Freida Pinto, Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins.  The local cast includes well kent faces such as Gemma Jones, Pauline Collins, Lucy Punch and Phillip Glenister.  They all work well together and as ever Allen leads us in and out of the different strands of his tale with effortless ease.  As usual with Allen the cinematography is wonderful, with some lovely and unusual views of London streets.  It is also a very pleasing film to watch, with some beautiful and carefully crafted interiors and a fine swathe of (mostly) classic fashion on display.  Another plus is that Allen continues to resist the current fad to produce ever longer films and sticks to the traditional hour and a half or so.  This helps to keep the pace of the action tight and sharp.

Alas the usual weaknesses are there, and this time in super abundance.  The main disappointment with the film is the story itself.  Now all Allen films deal to some extent with a few key recurring issues.  One is how relationships succeed or more often fail.  Another is how to find happiness in the world here and now.  This theme nearly always involves an older man seeking solace in the arms of a younger woman (usually much younger woman).  There is a pervading nihilistic feel to all Allen films in that they are all premised on the view that life basically sucks and is meaningless.  Nevertheless his best films always manage to say something positive about the struggle for meaning and offer some kind of hope for the future, however fragile that might be.

With You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger this is not the case.  All the main characters make disastrous choices at key moments and for all but two it looks like they will live to regret it.  And for good measure just about all the main characters are pretty mean, if not downright nasty people.  The plot revolves around two failing marriages.  Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) leaves his wife Helena (Gemma Jones) for a young ditzy blonde prostitute, Charmaine (Lucy Punch), whom he promptly marries.  Helena finds solace in friendship with a charlatan fortune teller (Pauline Collins).  Meanwhile Alfie and Helena’s daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) is struggling with both her career in the art world and with her marriage to failed writer Roy (Josh Brolin).  Sally tries and fails to start an affair with her boss Greg (Antonio Banderas), while Roy does succeed in starting an affair with the young and beautiful violinist Dia (Freida Pinto), who just happens to live opposite him.  

Things then very quickly turn really bad for everyone, with little prospect of a happy ending in sight.  That is for all except Helena.  And in many ways this is what makes the film such a depressing statement.  For Helena is not only a thoroughly nasty person, who seems to have no real feelings for her daughter, but she is also clearly mad.  Under the baleful influence of her charlatan friend, she quickly loses any sense of rationality that she possessed and becomes more and more loopy and hurtful to her daughter.  After discovering the virtues of a belief in re-incarnation she finds happiness with another deeply disturbed and loopy soulmate.

It is interesting to compare this ending with Allen’s previous film, Whatever Works.  That too was about the struggle to find happiness and meaning in life.  The message of that film was that anyone and everyone could find some kind of happiness, if not meaning in life.  You just had to work out what worked for you.  In his latest film though the only people who seem to have found any kind of happiness are mad and nasty too.  Not only is there no meaning to life, there is no point in even looking for happiness. Life is just so haphazard and without reason that you are only likely to find comfort if you are a touch mad.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger also falls down in comparison with Whatever Works in terms of the writing.  Whatever Works was very funny with some great lines.  The current film has no such redeeming features.  The dialogue is lacking in the wit and sharpness that have been Allen’s hallmark.  It is just not that funny a film to overcome the remorseless bitterness and bleakness of the story. 

The King’s speech, Black Swan and Biutiful

I have only managed to see three new films at the cinema so far this year.  But what great films they were.  Each very, very different from the others.  First up was The King’s Speech, directed by Tom Hooper.  This is a mainly UK production and tells the true story of King George VI’s struggle to overcome his stammer.  As the head of the then British Empire, a key part of the role of the Monarch was to make authoritative and if possible inspiring speeches to his subjects.   The background to this personal struggle is George’s unexpected accession to the throne following the abdication of his elder brother, Edward V111 - he of the Wallis Simpson scandal.  All this intrigue and politicking is well covered in the film.

However the heart of the film is the personal transformation of George himself.  He achieves this through the rather unconventional methods of an Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue.  These are the most intense and sometimes hilarious scenes in the film.  The King does of course succeed in overcoming his stammer, just in time to make a very moving speech justifying Britain’s entry into the Second World War.

This is a very heartwarming and uplifting film, well directed with a lovely feel for the period.  It also has some trully outstanding performances.   Colin Firth has rightly been offered the highest accolades for his performance as George.  A commanding performance indeed.  However all the cast is very impressive.  Helena Bonham Carter puts in a restrained yet almost flirtatious performance as George’s supportive wife.  While Geoffrey Rush is excellent as the exuberant and determined therapist.  

Second up was Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky.   This US film takes the famous ballet Swan Lake as the background for a taut and visually stunning psychological roller coaster of a ride.   The basic story is simple enough - an aspiring ballerina is chosen to play the lead role in Swan Lake as her first major role.   However the ballerina in question, Nina Sayers - a very impressive Natalie Portman - is no ordinary girl.   She has a love hate relationship with her mother - the equally impressive Barbara Hershey.  Her mother alternately encourages and bullies her daughter, while all the tine keeping her under close surveillance, especially at home where she is surrounded by little girls’ dolls.  Nina is the classic young woman who has never been allowed to grow up.

Now she has suddenly to play the star role in the world’s most famous ballet.  A role which has two contrasting parts.  She has to play not just the pure, virginal White Swan, but also the sexually alluring, femme fatale role of the Black Swan.  And as the title of the film suggests, it is the Black Swan who exerts the most powerful pull.  It all of course proves too much for Nina.  Torn by the incessant demands from the ballet director, plagued by fears of jealousy towards a rival ballerina and driven by her mother, Nina spectacularly descends into a black hell full of gothic horror.

The film is one of almost constant movement, with ballet sequences mirroring Nina’s inner turmoil.  The music, based on Tchaikovsky’s score, is simply wonderful, and perfect for the climactic descent into hell.  The costumes are bright and vivid and the whole film is a luscious feast of stunning colour.  The performances are very good as well.  Natalie Portman in particular puts in a terrific performance.  She is equally convincing as the innocent, sexually repressed young girl and the lustful, sexually aggressive woman.  She is also a pretty good ballet dancer.  Barbara Hershey also deserves special mention as the evil mother, while Vincent Cassel is a suitably aloof and manipulative director.  A feature of the film is the many close up shots of the actors’ faces.  Usually somewhat contorted, they add to the darkness of the film and the overall sense that something is not right in the state of this ballet company.  Great film though.

The third film I have seen on the big screen was Biutiful, a Mexican, Spanish production, directed by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu.  Despite its title, which is how the english word beautiful would be written in spanish, there is very little of beauty in this film.  Other than the the beauty of the soul, perhaps.  At least that of the main character, Uxbal, played with enormous sensitivity by the great Javier Bardem.  Shot on location mainly in the outskirts of Barcelona, this is the sad and moving tale of the many tragic losers in today’s world of superficial glitter and excess.

As the film starts Uxbal is trying hard and just about successfully to keep the various strands of his life together.  HIs wife, a glorious over the top performance by Maricel Alvarez, is a drug addict who also suffers from bi-polar disorder.  At present he is separated from her and somehow manages to bring up his two children on his own.  They live in a ramshackle, untidy and not too salubrious flat somewhere in one of the poorer neighbourhoods of Barcelona.  Uxbal makes a living, of sorts, by acting as a kind of intermediary between unscrupulous employers who need cheap illegal immigrants to make any kind of profit and the immigrants themselves.  He also keeps the local police sweet with a few bribes here and there.  Though Uxbal himself does not seem to take drugs, most of those around do.  In this film we are taken right into the beating heart of the rotten underbelly of our modern world.  And not in some third world country, but in the one of the great modern cities of the western world.

Shortly after the film opens, things begin to go downhill for Uxbal and also for the migrant workers.  Inexorably downhill, much like in a Greek tragedy.   It is as if there is some terrible avenging Angel on the track of Uxbal, who will bring down anyone who stands in his way.  This is a pretty depressing film.  There is not a lot of joy in this world.  Lots of people, most of the people in fact, work very hard for next to nothing and still have to endure even more horrible suffering.  There are of course some honourable and caring people out there.  Liwei the Chinese girl who helps look after Uxbal’s children and Ige, the Senegalese mother who ends up caring for Uxbal’s children.  Both of course illegal migrants.

And then of course there is Uxbal himself.  A flawed individual who is nevertheless full of the sense of right and wrong and the need to get things right.  It soon becomes clear that he is suffering from some incurable disease, probably cancer, and he is determined to sort out as many things as he can before he finally dies.  Both for his own children and the migrant workers for whom he feels a deep sense of responsibility.  This is a towering performance from Bardem, who is in just about every shot in the film.  From wandering about, head down through the streets of dark and dirty grey looking Barcelona, to tenderly comforting his daughter, Bardem dominates the film, even more so than Colin Firth or Natalie Portman do in their films.   This is a Barcelona that few people will have seen before, really the adjacent towns of Badalona and Santa Coloma.  But it is a real world full of real people, some of whom do lead tragic lives.

Three very different, but equally great films.  Let’s hope that there are a few more treasures out there awaiting to be seen.

2010 - Highlights of the Year in Films

This post should really be titled Going to the Cinema, since I’m only referring to films that I saw in a cinema - the real film experience.  Somewhat to my surprise I found that I have seen 18 films that way.  Not that many, but more than the previous year.  I was under the impression that we went to the cinema more often and more regularly.  Still 18 films is not bad.

Most were very good and very enjoyable.  The highlights included The Secret in Their Eyes by Argentinian director Juan José Campanella, The Time that Remains by Palestinian director Elia Suleiman and Whatever Works by Woody Allen.  These were three of the films that I did review on the blog during the year.  The first one you can find here and the other two here.  All three were excellent and engrossing films.

Below are the other films that I especially enjoyed but did not manage to write about.  The three Swedish films that make up The Millenium Trilogy were definitely one of the year’s highlights.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who played with fire and The Girl who kicked the Hornet’s nest were all terrific to watch and faithful to the originals.  The books are more complicated so the directors and screenwriters had to pare the films down to the key essentials.  Which they did manage very successfully.  The first was directed by Danish director Niels Arden Oplev and the other two by Daniel Alfredson from Sweden.  All three feature great performances from Michael Nyqvist as Mike Blomqvist and Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander - she of the dragon tattoo.  It now seems that Hollywood is to make their own version of the trilogy.  David Fincher is to direct with Daniel Craig as Mike Blomqvist and Rooney Mara as LIsbeth Salander.  Will be fascinating to see just what, if anything, Hollywood can add to the Swedish films.

Two other films really stood out for me this year.  The American is a most unusual movie, at least for a USA produced film.  It is really a European film with an American star in the lead role.  Directed by Dutch director Anton Corbijn and filmed on location in Sweden and Italy it features a mainly Italian cast.  The American is played by George Clooney in a wonderful performance of few words.  A lone assassin, the American is in hide out somewhere in rural Italy.  There is no back story to Clooney’s character nor to any of the other characters, other than the prostitute he falls in love with.  Beautifully shot with a thrilling climax this was a surprisingly good film.

I was also most impressed by Revanche, a film by Austrian director Götz Spielmann.  This is another very tense film with sparse dialogue.  There are no heros or hero like figures in this tale, just ordinary people dreaming of a better life.  Unfortunately, for Alex, the main character, this involves a bank robbery.  Which goes horribly wrong and results in the death of Alex’s girlfriend, shot by a policeman.  The death shatters Alex and he slowly tries to rebuild his life while at the same time seeking revenge.  Revenge does come, though not in the expected way.  Slow moving and intense with great performances from all the cast.  Johannes Krisch as Alex in particular is very very good.

All in all a good year for movies.  My pick of the bunch has to be The Secret in Their Eyes, a quite outstanding film with just about everything - suspense, action, humour, romance, social comment and wonderful performances from all the cast.  Next year I intend to get to the cinema more often as I know I missed out on quite a few good sounding films.  The King’s Speech and The Black Swan are already pencilled in for early next year.

2 Argentinian Films

Argentinian films are more conspicuous by their absence than anything else.  At least over here in Scotland.  However the recent award of the Oscar for Best Film in a Foreign Language to an Argentinian film may help encourage more cinemas to show films from Argentina.  I must admit that I have seen hardly any Argentinian films so it was with no great expectations that I went to see The Secret in Their Eyes, the winner of the Oscar which was shown last month at the DCA.

As it turned out this is a very good film and well worthy of the Oscar.  Directed by Juan José Campanella and based on the novel by Eduardo Sacheri, the DCA billed the film as a thriller, which surprises me as it is not at all like a thriller.  It is in fact quite difficult to categorize the film.  There are elements of various genres in the film.  On the original posters it is billed as "a crime, a mystery, a love".

While the acton does revolve around a murder and the tracking down of the murderer, this is only really the backdrop as it were to the film.  In the first place the murder took place some 20 years or so earlier and we soon find out who did the killing.  So there is no great mystery to be resolved there.  However these scenes take place in the dying years of the Presidency of Eva Perón.  This was the beginning of the "dirty war" against civilians and the murderer was released to act as an agent of the secret police.  This brought the film`s protagonist, Benjamín Espósito, the legal counsellor who led the case into conflict with the secret police, and Benjamín has to flee Buenos Aires to find work in provinces.  This does provide us with some edge of your seat moments, but these are not prolonged enough to justify calling the film a thriller.

All these events are told in flashback as Benjamín, now retired and back in Buenos Aires, tries to write a novel about this case and in particular find out what happened to the murderer.  Many of these scenes are quite comic as Benjamín`s assistant, Pablo Sandoval, is often drunk and the pair of them make a suitable odd couple.  It is in fact Pablo who makes most of the breakthroughs in the investigation.

However the heart of the film for me was the simmering, but unfulfilled romance between Benjamín and his then boss, Irene Menéndez Hastings.  She comes from an upper class background and Benjamin can never quite summon up enough courage to declare his love.  Now that he is retired and researching for his novel he is often in contact with Irene again, who is still the boss of the department.  It is clear that their feelings have not changed, but can Benjamín overcome his fears?

This is an exquisitely filmed work with a tremendous cast.   Guillermo Francella as Pablo Sandoval and Pablo Rago as the husband of the murdered woman are excellent.  However the two leads are simply outstanding - Ricardo Darín as Benjamín and Soledad Villamil as the lovely and demure Irene.  Darín in particular puts in a powerful performance and his role dominates the film.  However he and Villamil clearly have some chemistry between them and you can feel the tension and hidden passion in their scenes together.

As a Scot I was particularly taken by the first appearance of Soledad Villamil.  Introduced as the new boss of the department her last surname - Hastings - was pronounced as in Spanish, ie without sounding the H.  Immediately, Irene corrected the person and stated that her name was pronounced with the H as Hastings was a Scottish name.  Oh, how easily we Scots can be pleased.  Even for non Scots this is a great film and well worth seeing.

To complement this post I thought I would briefly recommend the other Argentinian film that I have seen recently.  This was last year and was shown on TV.  Nine Queens (Nueve Reinas) was produced in 2000 and was written and directed by Fabián Bielinsky.  It also stars Ricardo Darin.   Here he plays a con artist who enlists the help of another, younger conman in order to carry out another money making scam.  This revolves around the Nine Queens of the title, which refers to a rare group of stamps.

The scam becomes ever more complicated as more and more characters become involved.  With a fair amount of double dealing going on, you are never sure until the very end just who will come out on top.  This is a very clever and subtle film with fine performances from all the cast.  Ricardo Darín and Gastón Pauls play the two conmen and dominate the film though the supporting cast are all good, especially Leticia Brédice as the love interest.  I enjoyed both these films and must somehow try and see more films from Argentina.

Two Films and a Novel

I have not managed to get to the cinema to see as many movies as I would have like, but recently I did manage to fit in two, and both were very good.   The first was The Time That Remains by Palestinian director Elia Suleiman.  Though a Palestinian, Suleiman was born in Nazareth and is therefore an Israeli citizen.  And it is the experience of Palestinians in Israel that forms the basis for the film.  It is though a very personal account as it tells the story of Suleimans’ parents.  It is not however a conventional narrative, rather a series of vignettes, some bordering on the surreal.  These vignettes begin with the war of 1948 and the creation of the state of Israel.  For the Palestinians this period is known as Al-Nakba, the catastrophe.  As Israel triumphed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians either fled or were forcibly ejected or surrendered.  In all cases great brutality was used against them.  Both physical and psychological violence and these opening scenes are quite terrifying.  You really do feel you are the one being blindfolded and forced to kneel on the ground in an open field, not knowing if you will be shot or not.   The rest of the film essentially shows us what it is like to live as a defeated and second class people.  Life goes on, but there is a pervading sense of hopelessness about this life.  Suleiman is suggesting that for Palestinians living in Israel, life has lost its meaning and purpose.  Thus we are shown a series of ever more absurd vignettes in which the Palestinians are the put upon victims.  There is not a lot of hope in this film.  The title itself is somewhat enigmatic.  The time that remains - for what?  Just to keep on living?  This seems to be the lasting impression from the film - live goes on and each character has to work out whatever works to help them live through the time that remains.  A very powerful and impressive film, though not a bundle of laughs.

Whatever Works is of course the title of Woody Allen’s latest film.  And after a series of not very successful films shot in Europe, Allen has returned to his real and spiritual home - Manhattan.  Though not one of his masterpieces Whatever Works is a very fine and very funny film.  Though the premiss of the  plot is that life sucks and is pretty much meaningless, this is a surprisingly upbeat film.  There is in fact a happy ending for just about every character.  As in all good Woody Allen films the central character is either Allen himself or an Allen lookalike.  In this case he is played by Larry David who is primarily a comedian and writer and star of an American sitcom.  David’s character is a more strident and arrogant version of Allen.  He really doesn’t like the world, especially his fellow human beings, most of whom he despises for their ignorance, incompetence and lack of taste.  Like Allen though, he is Jewish, though an atheistic Jew and his performance is peppered with sarcastic one-liners.  This is in many ways a typical, almost old fashioned Allen film.  The main character has a nihilistic outlook on life and twice tries, and fails, to kill himself.  Again, as in most Allen films he is somehow saved by the attractions of a very much younger woman.  This time she is a rather naive and innocent southern belle, played with spirit and charm by Evan Rachel Wood.  Somehow she and David hit if off.  Though their affair does not last it lasts long enough to bring about the beginnings of change in the Larry David character.  Life may suck, it may even be pointless, but happiness when it comes is wonderful, so seize it any way you can - whatever works for you.  In the latter part of the film this motto  extends to all kinds of other characters, all of whom somehow end up finding happiness.  A fine return to form for Allen and a film well worth seeing.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a novel by French writer Muriel Barbery, who teaches philosophy in her day job.   Like the two films, this novel is also about how to cope with living in a pretty senseless and ugly world.   This world is so irredeemably nasty it seems that the only way to cope is by either retreating into your own world or to commit suicide.  For these are the paths chosen by the two main characters in the novel.  And more different they could not be.  The main character and the hedgehog of the title is Renée Michel who is the 54 year old concierge of an apartment building.  Though from a poor working class family, Renée is a self-taught lover of erudition and all things of beauty.  However she hides this from all of the very rich residents whom she despises as part of a snobbish, parasitical and ignorant elite.  Her way of coping with the world is to create her own little sanctuary in which she all alone can continue with her quest for knowledge and where she is free to appreciate the beauty of artistic creations.  The other main character is Paloma the 12 year old daughter of one of the rich and snobbish families who live in the apartment block.  However Paloma too is appalled by the world as it is.  In her case she despises the despicable vacuousness of her family and their friends.  Her solution though is to commit suicide on the day she turns 13.  In the meantime she keeps a journal of her profound thoughts and the movements of the world.  A real precocious child is Paloma.  Most of the novel consists of Renée’s and Paloma’s sarcastic and biting critiques of modern day France and their meditations on the beauty to be found in nature, art and language.  There is not much of a plot and what little there is comes in the form of a new resident, the very cultured and intelligent Mr. Ozu.  A retired Japanese businessman he acts as a catalyst for the denouement of the novel.  By a series of accidental meetings Mr Ozu manages to engage with both Renée and Paloma.  Through his gentle proddings and kindness both women come to realize that they are not alone in their love of art and beauty.  This causes both to reconsider their current approach to life.  Opting out of life no longer seems such an elegant choice.  But what will they do?  This is a lovely little book.  The choice of a Japanese as the catalyst for change is most appropriate as Muriel Barbery now lives in Japan and has clearly been much influenced by Zen Buddhism.

Three very different artistic creations, though all united by a pervading nihilistic outlook on life.  This need not lead to despair - there are too many things of beauty around to be discovered and experienced,  These three works for example.  You just need to create your own meaning for life - whatever works.

Séraphine

Séraphine is a new film by French director Martin Provost. The film is a tender and moving tribute to the rather sad life of French naïve painter Séraphine de Senlis. This is another slow moving film with little in the way of dialogue. The film begins in the summer of 1914 and the opening scenes show us the everyday life of Séraphine, who is by then in her 40s, as she goes about her business as a cleaning maid to various rich households in the small town of Senlis. This long opening sequence also shows Séraphine almost haphazardly collecting a strange mix of items. She picks bunches of plants and flowers, steals some blood from the local butcher and pockets molten candle wax from the church. We are well into the film before we see Séraphine actually painting. For she is an untutored artist who paints in silence and in private in her own tiny garret of a room.

The scenes of her painting are among the most intense in the whole film. She can only paint at night and consequently is only shown in semi-darkness, the room barely lit by oil lamps. Most of her painting is done either on all fours, crouching above the canvass, or lying on her side beside the canvass, as if caressing a child.

Her work is only discovered by accident when the German art critic and collector, Wilhelm Uhde, sees one of her small paintings lying around a neighbour’s house. The local families do not value Séraphine’s work - she is just a maid. But Uhde is most definitely impressed. However this is summer 1914 and war is about to break out and Uhde, as a German has to flee France. Séraphine is left undiscovered as it were and spends the following 13 years in much the same way - working as a cleaning maid and painting whenever she can.

The real breakthrough does not happen until 1927 when Uhde, back living in France, once again by chance rediscovers Séraphine’s work at an exhibition of local artists. This time he is in a position to buy some of her works and sponors her to paint more. However her new found riches do not bring her any peace of mind, and she gradually descends into mental illness. This is compounded by the effects of the great depression which force Uhde to stop paying for her work. Soon after she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital and she stops painting.

The film does not really explain her mental collapse, though it does hint at some possibilities. Séraphine is a deeply religious person and her painting clearly stems from some kind of religious inspiration. She was brought up by nuns and does not appear to have any close friends. Indeed apart from Uhde and another maid, just about everyone treats her very badly and either bully or mock her. Her paintings seems to serve a personal need and are in some sense not really for sale. Her brief exposure to the world of commerce only seems to destroy whatever equilibrium she had. In the film her growing mental breakdown is captured by her preparations for her own wedding - to whom is unknown, Christ himself?

The final scenes are of Séraphine in the psychiatric ward. She now has her own room, and this time though the room is bright and clean and Séraphine wanders freely out into the sunny countryside to find peace with the trees and plants. It is an amazing contrast to the semi-obscure conditions in which she brought her paintings to life.

The film is beautifully shot with exquisite performances from Yolande Moreau as Séraphine and Ulrich Tuker as Uhde. Excellent though the actors are, the film is mainly a triumph of cinematrography. Few films bring out so clearly that cinema is a visual medium. A great film.

You can see some her works here.

The White Ribbon - Das Weisse Band

The White Ribbon is the latest film by Austrian director Michael Haneke. It is set somewhere in rural northern Germany in the year before the outbreak of the First World War. Ostensibly the film is about the strange and malicious happenings that occur during that year - the local doctor is thrown from his horse, a woman worker dies in the sawmill, the Baron’s son is abducted and beaten, a boy with Down’s syndrome is attacked and almost blinded. Are these and other happenings just accidents or there is something more disturbing afoot? The film starts as if it might be a who done it mystery. And towards the end it almost builds up to a mystery solving exposé. But nothing is really revealed, for these happenings are merely the fixed points in what is essentially a study of an inward-looking and repressed community.

Our view of this rural community comes from the local teacher, who, now an old man, looks back at the events of that year. He does this in part by a voiceover narration and in part by his presence in the film as the young teacher. As the teacher much of his contact is with the children of the village. And it is the children who are the stars of the film. Both in terms of the outstanding performances by the young actors and in terms of their pivotal role in the film. Most of the unusual happenings involve children in one way or other. They are either the protagonists or they are the ones who suffer the consequences.

And the consequences tend to be pretty brutal. This is a portrait of a repressed and fearful community in which both physical and psychological punishment is inflicted on those who transgress. In this village sex is shown as something brutal or abusive or as something to be repressed. The white ribbon of the title refers to a ribbon used by the local Pastor. Ostensibly a symbol of purity and innocence, in the film it becomes a symbol of oppression and shame when he forces his teenage son and daughter to wear a white ribbon as a form of punishment.

It is also a deeply conservative and hierarchical society, which is dominated by the Baron and to a lesser extent by the local Lutheran Pastor. Everyone else lives in awe of them. Anyone who challenges their authority is likely to suffer.

The film is shot throughout in black and white which both gives the film an old fashioned look and emphasizes the threatening and foreboding atmosphere which suffuses every scene. Most of the scenes are indoors or in some constrained setting and the film does have a claustrophobic feel about it. There is a sense of not being able to escape, either physically or psychologically. None of the characters are particularly attractive neither in character nor in appearance. Just about everyone has a dour, almost hateful expression. The only two characters who are at all attractive are the young teacher and his fiancee. Significantly, both are from other villages and they are in contrast to the villagers they are mainly seen outdoors.

The cast is pretty much perfect. All unknown to me and probably to most non German audiences. The Pastor is particularly good and one can easily imagine being terrified by his mere presence. The children as already mentioned are excellent and they all have a sort of dull, haunting and slightly frightening look about them. The direction and camera work is a wonder in itself. Haneke likes to hold on to a scene for a long time. For example we see a corridor and the doors at its end. The camera holds this view for what seems like forever and hardly anything happens. Someone enters or leaves or somebody just passes by. We are left wondering, not quite sure what to expect. Just this sense of claustrophobia and surreptitiously eavesdropping and slightly fearful for what we might see.

At the very beginning of the film we hear the voice of the old teacher setting the scene and he suggests that these painful events "could perhaps clarify some things that happened in this country". Knowing what did come next in the 1920s and 30s not just in Germany, but in many, if not most parts of Europe, encourages us to view the film as something more than just a German children’s story - the film’s subtitle in German. For it would be the children of this pre First World War world who would come to full maturity in the 20s and 30s. According to Haneke, the film is about the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature. This is certainly a very powerful film and without a doubt one of the best films I have seen this year. It is a simply riveting and majestic film - a true masterpiece.

Julie and Julia

Last Monday afternoon in Zürich just about everything closed down for some kind of shooting competition for boys. Not sure what they were shooting – just hope it wasn’t other boys. Anyway, given the limited options we decided to go to the movies and the pick of the bunch appeared to be Julie and Julia. And a very good choice it turned out to be.

Written and directed by Nora Ephron, this is a lovely feel good movie, based on not just one, but two true stories. Unusually the characters in the two stories never really overlap or meet. The film starts in New York in 2002 and introduces us to Julie Powell who is thoroughly fed up with her life. She would like to be a writer but currently works in a call centre, answering the calls of people still suffering from the after effects of the 9/11 tragedy. The only saving grace in Julie’s life is her love of cooking. One evening her husband suggests she starts her own blog about her love of cooking. Which she does and to make it even more of a challenge she decides to cook every recipe in the classic (at least to Americans) cookery book – Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julie’s story takes us through the ups and downs of the year she spends completing her challenge.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking was in part written by Julia Child and the second story is about the ups and downs in her decade long attempt to learn how to cook and then get her book published. This section of the film covers the immediate post second world war period and is set mostly in Paris, where Julia is the rich wife of an American diplomat. Like Julie, Julia is also thoroughly fed up with her life and is determined to find something useful to do. She loves eating and decides to learn to cook professionally, which she does successfully and in the process gets involved with two other women in composing a book on French cooking for American housewifes. This project takes much much longer than expected, but eventually in the early 1960s she does succeed and becomes something of a diva in the world of American cooking.

The two stories unfold some 50 years apart and in different continents, but the film goes back and forth between the various scenes from Julie and Julia’s lives. And of course the book on Mastering the Art of French Cooking provides a continuing and meaningful link between the two stories. Though the essence of the film is the struggle of two women in different eras to make something of their lives, the situations of each character could not be more different.

Julie’s life is pretty miserable. She works in a very stressful job in a nondescript open plan office in which she spends all her working day in a tiny little cubicle masquerading as her workstation. Her supportive husband works for an architecture magazine and it is clear that neither earns much in the way of money. In consequence they live in a tiny apartment in Queen’s, above a pizzeria and beside a very noisy road. It is in this environment with her tiny kitchen that Julie sets about making all the 524 recipes from Julia’s book. All in the space of one year.

On the other hand Julia leads what most people would imagine is an almost idyllic life. With rich parents and a well off husband she can do pretty much what she wants. And in the film she is always shown in opulent surroundings. She does of course have to overcome a variety of prejudices against women making their own way in the world – an even more daunting challenge in the 40s and 50s than today.

Though this is essentially a feel good comedy, the film does not shy away from showing the darker side of America, past and present. The working and living environment of Julie in the early years of the present millenium does not present America in a very flattering light. Long stressful hours, cramped and uncomfortable living conditions are not much of a recompense for working professionals. In the case of Julia, they live through the McCarthy years and this forms the background to their movements. Her husband is even recalled to Washington to face a grilling about his views and acquaintances. All this provides the film with just enough worldly realism to counterbalance its predominantly positive message.

All films depend to a large extent on the cast and in this case all the actors are excellent. Amy Adams and Chris Messina as Julie and her husband Eric, make a fine couple with senstive portrayals. Amy Adams in particular gives an engaging and convincing performance which shows Julie as someone who is both energetic and always on the edge. It is however the other pairing who steal the show. Stanley Tucci gives a stellar performance as Paul Child. This is an understated and subtle performance which conveys Paul’s loving and ever attentive support to Julia, but nevertheless manges to portray Paul as a man of substance in his own right. It is though, Meryl Streep who dominates the film with a magisterial performance. She radiates her presence throughout every scene she is in and from those who knew the real Julia, Meryl Streep has succeeded in presenting a convincing representation of her mannerisms. There is a haughtiness and grandeur to her performance which seems to me to capture the rich American abroad to perfection. The Julia character is though a really nice person, full of charm, warmth and love. It is almost as though she sails through life somewhat above the mundane tribulations of the rest of us.

Before watching this film, beware! The meals which are shown in their full glory require copious amounts of real butter, cream and wine. Red meat features a lot as well. I’m a little surprised that in the UK and America the film hasn’t come with a government health warning. Still for the rest of us – Bon Appetit!