The Bigger Picture

Under discussion:

The Snows of Kilimanjaro  (1952)

Whilst I like to think myself generally well read, I have to confess to there being some very sizeable gaps in my knowledge of literature. I am in my element talking about Dickens, Austen, Chaucer or Hardy but F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are a different matter. To my shame I have never got around to familiarising myself with the works of “The Lost Generation” - the works of the great American writers based in Paris in the aftermath of the first world war.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is based on a short story by Hemingway and tells the story of an American writer, who falls into a fever after being wounded and reflects on his failures both at love and in his writing. His neglected wife takes care for him as he slips into delirium, trying to keep him alive long enough for a plane to arrive to rescue them. In doing so she must listen to him talking of lost loves and prevent him from destroying himself or giving in to his sickness.

The film opens with writer Harry Street already injured, teasing us with two conflicting accounts of how he was injured. Harry argues that his skin was broken by a thorn in a bizarre twist of fate and that led to his leg becoming infected; his wife says he injured it when saving a young man who had fallen in a fast-moving river.

Screenwriter Casey Robinson establishes in this early scene each character’s view of Street - Harry sees himself as unlucky and with self-pity, his wife thinks of him as heroic and capable. As the film plays out we learn more about these characters and their relationship, although it is far more interested in Harry’s story than Helen’s.

Feverishly Harry’s mind races back to growing up in rural Michigan, breaking up with his girlfriend and running away to Europe where he encounters the striking Cynthia Green. As their romance develops, so does his writing. On a safari trip to Africa, Cynthia falls pregnant and, with their relationship at an end, Harry’s life spirals into turmoil. He remembers another failed relationship before meeting Helen, mistaking her for Cynthia not once but twice.

These short flashbacks vary in interest and quality with the strongest being those centred on Harry and Cynthia, first in Africa and then Spain. Ava Gardner is superb as the playgirl who is challenged by the discovery that she is pregnant, realising that she does not want the same things from life that Harry does. In one scene she tries to tell him that their life will change, hoping that he will respond to the prospect of a new life with a family. The look on her face when he replies is heartbreaking and we know that their romance will be at an end.

Gregory Peck’s easy charm as Harry perhaps feels a little out of character, yet it does help to explain why women would be interested in a man that bad-tempered and cruel. He handles the sarcastic dialogue well, though at times it seems as if the film would have been better served by someone with a more severe, cutting edge in their performance.

Susan Hayward, as his wife Helen, is anonymous for large chunks of the narrative as the script requires her to mop Harry’s brow and be patient with him. Only towards the end of the picture is she really tested as an actress as Harry’s sickness worsens and she is required to treat the infection on his leg herself.

The scenes between Helen and Harry take place, for the most part, on what is clearly a soundstage recreation of a camp in an African clearing. Camera movement feels restricted at points, particularly when compared with some of the often spectacular second camera crew work that was done on location in Egypt and Kenya.

Director Henry King mostly intercuts between the soundstage material and location footage, doing an acceptable job of marrying the two together although the joins are noticeable. However there is no excusing a sequence on a lake featuring some of the worst back projection I have ever witnessed. I always try to bear in mind the technical limitations of the period when looking at an older film but the poor execution of these shots ruins what ought to have been one of the most tense sequences of the picture.

His work elsewhere in the picture however is solid and he uses the camera and lighting well to signify a mood of nostalgia and then melancholy. Sound is used well to give the film a haunting, unnerving texture, the sound of animals in the distance giving the film a real sense of place.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is not a film that has stood up particularly well to the tests of time. It is hard to overlook its bizarre mesh of stylised, staged dialogue scenes and wildlife footage shot on location or the film’s often slow pacing. Yet for all its faults the film still is affecting and, at moments, moving.

Under discussion:

Impromptu  (1991)

Apparently a musical impromptu should create a facade of perfect spontaneity, intended to hide the careful, almost mathematical constructions that make them work. It should feel almost improvised, as if it is being created at that very moment.

The title of this film by James Lapine refers explicitly to composer Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu but could just as well describe the style of the piece. Here we are introduced to a cast of brilliant, extravagant artistic personalities and we watch them interact and attempt to hide their machinations and true purposes from one another.

Impromptu tells the story of noted author George Sand (real name Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin) who became noted for taking a man’s name, smoking cigars and dressing in male attire. She shocked the establishment at the time by refusing to dress or act like a conventional woman and lived a scandalous lifestyle, marrying a baron and then leaving him aged 27 to go to Paris where she led a number of high profile affairs.

Judy Davis plays Sand and invests her with an appealing swagger exuding self-assurance and sexual energy. Like many great artists she lives life with a passionate energy, picking an obsession and then chasing it. From the earliest scenes of the movie we see this play out in the creation of her novels as she works long into the night and then sleeps through half the day.

We follow Sand’s attempts to ensnare Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, a sickly and timid young man who seems to be permanently at death’s door. When she hears his music she is entranced and is determined to have him, despite making a poor first impression on him.

Like a musical impromptu, this film has its purpose but delights in running off in comical whims, such as a duel between two of her former lovers, and throwing in unexpected twists and turns. This lends the film a floaty, dreamy quality as the characters dance around each other and the rhythm of the piece changes.

Hugh Grant is cast opposite Judy Davis as Chopin but has little chemistry with her. Characterisation of that legendary composer is slight, consisting of little more than a cough and looking a little bit sorry for himself. The film is far stronger when talking about his maladies and his temprement than when it tries to show them to us.

The film also portrays several other notable artists of the period including playwright Alfred de Musset, composer Franz Liszt, Romantic artist Eugène Delacroix and novelist Felicien Mallefille. Each are superbly portrayed by an accomplished cast but all are upstaged by Emma Thompson’s turn as the Duchess d’Antan, an aspiring socialite who wants to be surrounded by the greatest artists of her time. One scene when she welcomes them to her home, giving each a laurel wreath, is a particular delight.

These scenes set in the d’Antan estate are lively and frequently very funny, veering from bedroom-hopping farce to slapstick to teasing wordplay and a literally explosive ending. As well as satirising the misguided attitudes that patrons of the arts can develop, these scenes also explore the corrosive relationships that can develop between artists as they push each other to self-destructing ends.

Once the characters depart the estate the film sadly takes a turn towards the conventional, morphing into a more traditional romance albeit with female and male roles reversed. In these sections the film’s impromptu facade falls and its structure becomes more evident as we are guided towards an uncomfortably clean ending.

Films full of famous figures run a significant risk of revelling too much in the fame of their characters rather than entertaining with a good story. On too many occassions such films can degenerate into checklists of historical figures of the period. Thankfully Impromptu focuses instead on narrative and characterisation.

Hugh Grant’s wet Chopin is the weakest link in the film, diminishing the character’s presence to portray the composer’s fragile health. He tells us at one point that he feels almost as if he is a spirit, floating in music yet Grant conveys little sense of detachment from his physical self. It is Judy Davis as Sand that makes him believeable and her passion gives his character the stature it needs.

I wished at points that it was more ambitious and more challenging as a film. That the story would match the off-kilter nature of its central character. Yet whilst Impromptu never pushes boundaries as hard as it might, strong performances from Davis and the supporting cast and enjoyable comic moments ensure that it is a film that succeeds more often than it fails.

Under discussion:

No Country for Old Men  (2007)

No Country for Old Men is set in the Texas of the 1980s - a world that still believes in its cowboy past that is startled by the rise of drugs trafficking across its border. Whilst persuading us that this will be the story of Josh Brolin’s hunter who discovers a drugs deal gone wrong and a suitcase full of cash, this film is equally about the realisation of Tommy Lee Jones’ local sheriff that the world has changed and he no longer has a place in it.

These are powerful and lasting themes that stayed with me after the credits rolled, but more immediate is the strength of Javier Bardem’s performance as assassin Anton Chigurh. Cold, dry and terrifying, Bardem is the definition of screen presence here. Just the sight of him sat in a chair can chill, but it is in his relentless movement and relentless pursuit that he comes to life. He seems unstoppable.

Chigurh is searching for the suitcase and leaves a trail of bodies in his wake as he tries to track it down, each killed with an unpleasant, compressed air weapon that churned my stomach. The film alludes to this character’s psychology but never tries to explain it to us - a move that makes him the more chilling. From his first, almost sexual, killing experience wrestling with a police officer to the flipping of a coin, it is as if there is a beast inside of Chigurh that drives and compells him.

Searching for both Chigurh and Brolin’s hunter is Sheriff Bell, played elegiacly by Tommy Lee Jones. He is one of the old men in the title, nearing retirement and struggling to comprehend a world where killing takes place seemingly without motive and concerned about the impending tide of violence. He asks himself in a stunning opening monologue how would the famous lawmen of yesteryear have coped with such a world, the obvious conclusion being that they couldn’t. The world has changed and left characters like Sheriff Bell behind.

The chase takes all three across Texas and, at one point, two of them into Mexico. Chigurh and Llewellyn Moss bloody each other repeatedly in scrappy encounters that are dripped in tension. The Coen Brothers’ allow light and sound to star in these scenes, with Moss noticing tiny changes in the atmosphere as he prepares for the onslaught of violence.

We not only see the violence, we see the aftermath too. Both have scenes where they have to patch themselves up before the cycle of violence kicks off again. You sense that this cycle of violence could go on again and again without resolution - Moss and Chigurh are too perfectly matched. It is the unexpected interference of a third party (other than Bell) that proves decisive.

Brief mention must be made of Kelly Macdonald, perfect as Moss’ nineteen year old wife, Woody Harrelson as a cocky bounty hunter and Stephen Root as the man who hires him. Although each only has a small amount of screen time, they are so well cast that you know who they are almost immediately. Macdonald is particularly fine towards the end of the movie as she wrestles with the question of what would be best for her husband.

No Country for Old Men is a great achievement in film-making. Tense and unrelenting, it only missteps towards the end where it never shows us the confrontation we are expecting, keeping a key incident off-screen.

Watching this film, I could not help but be impressed by Javier Bardem’s chilling performance. Yet I was left in the hours that followed turning to Tommy Lee Jones’ quieter performance. This is the heart of the film, the struggle of that older man to understand purpose where there is none and to predict the actions of the unpredictable.

No Country for Old Men is an unsettling, brilliance piece of filmmaking that affects as much as it thrills. Its ending prevents it from being immediately satisfying but in many ways that only speaks to the notion that it is the unpredictable that gets us in the end. Not the ending we want, but one that fits perfectly with the themes of Tommy Lee Jones’ speech at the opening of the movie.