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Couscous (La Graine et le mulet) - Review

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]

Under discussion:

The Secret of the Grain (2007)

Abdellatif Kechiche, 2007

Couscous (aka The Secret of the Grain), Abdellatif Kechiche's third feature has once again earned the Tunis born French director critical acclaim and awards a plenty. After winning the 'Lion of the Future' award at the Venice Film Festival in 2001 with his debut, 'La Faute a Voltaire' and following on the success with more awards for his second feature in 2003, L'esquive (Games of Love and Chance), Couscous finds the talented director in fine form. Composing a ensemble piece about the daily struggles of an immigrant family living in the French port town of Sete, Kechiche's latest film covers similar ground to his previous work and establishes his growing reputation as one of the primary voices of immigrant life in Europe.

Focusing on ship worker Slimane (Habib Boufares), a 60 year old immigrant from North Africa, the film follows his attempts to open a couscous restaurant after learning of his dismissal by a management downsizing and paying no regard to his 30 year service record. Slimane, a taciturn and humble man, quiet because his years have taught him that losing his head serves no purpose, decides upon the venture almost as if on a whim, as if building a restaurant; using his ex-wife's cooking, will keep his vast families together. Estranged from his family, living in his lover's hotel; a small run down room overlooking the harbour, the restaurant venture seems like Slimane's last throw of the dice for a life, he believes, that has achieved nothing.

Whilst the building of the restaurant provides the film with a narrative backbone, it's Slimane's vast army of women in his life; the estranged wife, Souad (Bouraouia Marzok), the lover, Latifa (Hatika Karaoui), his daughter, Karima (Farida Benkhetache), the daughter-in-law, Julia (Alice Houri) and his lover's daughter, Rym (in an award winning performance from Hafsia Herzi) that bare the brunt of the film. This relationship, between Slimane and the women in his life, is explored within the films opening moments with Slimane delivering fresh fish to each of them in turn. His silent and weary demeanor contrasts starkly to their energetic, dynamic vigour; whereas they are full of vim, Slimane remains placid and quiet, worn down by life.

Food, the joy's of the cooking, eating and the spiritual kinship it can offer forms two of the film's most inspired set-pieces; both centering on big banquets. Both scenes fizzle in off the hip camera work, the dialogue is partly ab-libbed and the energy is frenetic and hypnotic. The first of these scenes takes place in Souad's home, the other takes place on the restaurants opening night, with her extended family sat around the massive dinner table, minus Slimane. The scene sparkles as everyone speaks, laughs and shouts at once, plates of salivating couscous, fish and meat fill the table, each being passed along so they all get their fair share. In extended long takes, extreme close-ups and rapid camera work, the scene paints a beautiful picture of how families function; the in-jokes, the teasing, the unconditional love, all lovingly composed in classicist and humanist style.

It's this slice of life, an almost novelistic style approach to the film that makes Couscous all the more unbearable when the tone switches from the bittersweet to the tragicomic; as if it's all too recognisable and inevitably laden to go wrong. Slimane walks around the whole film like a man condemned, in fact when he does at last offer the flicker of a smile, it's a sure sign that things are about to go wrong. When the proverbial hits the fan it's, once again, up to the women to tackle the problem; most the men depicted in Couscous are either selfish, down on their luck or have simply been beaten into submission by life, as in the case with Slimane. Women on the other hand, carry on regardless; strong, forthright and able to deal with any given crisis, smiling graciously, toiling yet letting the men take all the credit.

Couscous occupies itself with the rhythm of everyday life, the cacophony of people talking at once with words going unheard and the way in which family forgive and forget. The tone of Couscous is neither miserabilist or triumphant; it meanders in the every day pursuit of happiness, family tensions and trying to get by as best you can; a tone which for the majority of the film, except for it's out of keeping finale, that feels very much in the real world. You end up caring deeply for the fate of several characters and thanks largely to the films two set pieces, you become intoxicated with the sights and smells of all that delicious food. It should come to no surprise then that by the films end I hunted high and low for the nearest couscous restaurant.

Despite it's achievements, Couscous sometimes feels rather laboured, there's an argument that Kechiche could have cut away some of the more needless vignettes of everyday life; at 151 minutes long it sometimes struggles to hold the viewers attention. There's also a case of some rather dull caricatures of white, affluent bourgeois, with their idle chit-chat and casual racism which sometimes bordered on the tedium. However Couscous is a triumph, one that's reverberated in France and on the international circuit, taking the festival circuit by storm and fawned over by critics everywhere. Despite it's few flaws, I also have issues with it's surreal and abrupt ending, I'm not about to disagree with the consensus. Couscous is a great film, one that will have you reeling for weeks after you've watched it; the film has played on me for days now, and will keep you thinking about it's themes and ideas long into the night.

Couscous trailer

Originally posted on:Film for the Soul

Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 9:02 AM by Ibetolis | with 1 comments

The Bridge on the River Kwai - Watching the 1000 Greatest Films

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The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

As voted by the Film for the Soul community. This post can also be found at The Carnival of Cinema over at Good News Film Reviews.

No. 16 - The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957) Ranked #204

"What have I done?" - Colonel Nicholson

Based on the novel of the same name, published in 1954, by Pierre Boulle, The Bridge on the River Kwai was the first of David Lean's spectacular multi-million pound epic's, followed by Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965), that brought international acclaim and Oscars galore to the already renowned director of smaller, more intimate films such as Brief Encounter (1945) and Oliver Twist (1948). Shot in extremely difficult conditions on location in Ceylon, Sri Lanka and produced by Sam Spiegel, The Bridge on the River Kwai cemented Lean's reputation as a director as well as foreshadowing the domination he was to have over the box-office for years to come.

The film opens up with a lingering shot of a hawk, hovering high in the sky, before cutting to a birds eye view of a jungle, as we take in the density the camera catches a glimpse of a spattering of crudely dug graves adorned with crosses sitting idly by a railway line. Focusing on the graves we are introduced to two raggedy clothed men, one of whom is Major Sears (William Holden), an American prisoner of war, digging the graves of his fallen comrades; fellow prisoners who have fallen due to hard labour, disease or starvation. The realities of the camp are laid bare within this opening scene, the following dialogue is littered with the gallows humour of men that have become far too accustomed to death.

Colonel Nicholson and his men

Set in 1943 in a, Japanese run, prisoner of war camp, deep in the balmy Burmese jungle, Bridge on the River Kwai is loosely based on true events surrounding the building of a railway line, by prisoners of war under orders by their Japanese jailers, attempting to connect Bangkok, Thailand to Rangoon, Burma; the infamous 'death railway'. After Sears has buried one lot of prisoners we witness the arrival of a new British battalion, led by Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), walking steadfast and proud, the entire group whistling 'The Colonel Bogey March' - a theme now synonymous with the film. In a wonderful tracking shot we watch the group slowly come in to frame through the trees, the camera seamlessly moving through the dead forest into the prisoners shack, capturing the troops and framing them in the windows.

It's an ironic moment in a film full of irony and madness, here is a British unit (told by their commanding officers to wave the white flag and surrender) full of zip and pomposity, still adhering to the chain of command. It's this theme of madness that fuels Bridge on the River Kwai; most of the film's central characters are susceptible to it's deadly grasp - Nicholson's obsession with building a better bridge than the Japanese, even if it means aiding their war effort; Sears returning to the camp he just about escaped from with his life; Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), Japanese Colonel, being driven slowly mad by an obstinate Colonel who eventually builds a better bridge than his Japanese army could ever do. Madness and insanity are abound in Bridge on the River Kwai, it hangs around like a bad odour, it all seems so futile but inevitable all the same.

Classic tracking shot introducing Colonel Nicholson

No better example of this theme is displayed than the initial meeting between Saito and Nicholson, both highly decorated Colonel's, uncanny in their similarities. On being told that all soldiers, including the British officers, must do manual work on the Burma railway line Nicholson refuses point blank to give up command of his troop, citing the Geneva convention, article 27, which stipulates that no officer shall do manual work in POW camps; in an inspired moment he even produces a copy of the document he had folded up in his top pocket. In a stand off, of pride and ego, Saito slaps Nicholson and smacks the book out of his hand, "Don't speak to me of rules. This is war! This is not a game of cricket!".

Blood trickling down his chin, Nicholson merely composes himself and retains the document now sitting in the dust and so begins the merry dance of the battling wills. The scenes between Saito and Nicholson are the heartbeat of the film, the resolute and pride before a fall Colonels taking each other on in a battle neither will eventually win. Despite beating and throwing Nicholson in the 'oven'; a small tin shack that sits alone, unimpressive in the middle of the glaring sun, Saito admits defeat, realising he needs Nicholson more than Nicholson needs him. Without the help of Nicholson, Saito will miss his deadline and will be obliged to commit hari-kari, in an omission to the British Colonel, Saito says

"Do you know what will happen to me if the bridge is not built on time?'
"I haven't the foggiest"
I'll have to kill myself. What would you do if you were me?"
"I suppose if I were you....I'd have to kill myself."

This scene, conducted over a bottle of Scotch and a plate of corn beef, is one of the films more poignant moments. There's something about Nicholson admission to being home only for 10 months in his 28 year service and Saito's acknowledgment that he's not a military careerist and that he learned to speak English at University in London, that strikes at the core of the films underlying focus on character, on humanity, rather than exploiting binary good and evil. It's to the films credit that the Japanese aren't demonised, or that the British come off as the good guys, in Lean's eyes all of them are as mad as each other.

Playing in the backdrop to Saito and Nicholson, Sears has meanwhile attempted and just about succeeds in escaping from the camp, a feat which will ultimately destroy him. The character of Sears comes into his own in the second half of the film; an extra weight to the first half that helps to explain the function of the camp but doesn't develop the character beyond a caricature. Sear's doesn't subscribe to the same moral code as Nicholson or Saito and is only interested in looking out for number one. On learning that he's been lying about his rank Major Warden, played by Jack Hawkins), excellent here as the Oxford Don turned commando, gives him a catch-22 ultimatum; return to America in disgrace or take the suicide mission in returning to the camp to blow up the bridge.

Nicholson and his beloved bridge

The construction of the bridge becomes an obsession for Nicholson, a self-gratifying egotistical driven project which he hides behind notions of raising the troops morale. Dr. Major Clipton (James Donald) isn't convinced and becomes the voice of the spectator, "The fact is, what we're doing could be construed as - forgive me sir - collaboration with the enemy. Perhaps even as treasonable activity. Must we work so well?" Again this is refuted by Nicholson, yet you can see the madness bubbling away, under the surface. In the capable hands of Alec Guinness, Colonel Nicholson's madness is free of facial ticks and bouts of frenzy, he plays him stoic, dignified and controlled, the madness slowly erupting towards the end of the film with slow and twisted logic before his final epiphany and one final act of sanity.

First and foremost The Bridge on the River Kwai is a fantastic yarn, brilliantly acted and carefully paced. Lean's epic is filmed on a grand scale yet totally able to concentrate on the nuances of character and narrative, never losing touch with the essentials of the story and giving us a film full of visual flair and grandeur. It seems a shame that this sort of film making is now lost, contemporary films of this scale aren't made with half the intelligence, or ideas, of Lean's anti-war epic. Playing against the war genre, a tagged on action/adventure story during the second half of the film involving Shears and Warden feels more genre orientated, Lean occupies himself with the futility and insanity of war, the death throes of imperialistic empires and how the madness spreads to all involved.

The film's final moments are legendary; the steady drip feed of madness finally explodes on the screen in a bout of insanity so destructive it's hard to watch. As the commando outfit rig up the bridge with explosives, the British troops enjoy a put together show; Nicholson walks upon his creation, a placard now decorates the structure declaring the builders responsible are the British army, this is the proudest moment of his career. His madness peaks the next day, moments before the arrival of the first train, when he discovers one of the explosive wires connected to his love, now exposed in the river bed that has, unexpectedly, receded from the night before.

In what proves to be a fatal decision, Nicholson alerts Saito to his discovery as both men follow the wire to it's source. The interplay between the main characters in this one last scene of utter insanity is short and very bittersweet, as the bodies start to fall around him; Sears at his feet having decided to join the war effort after all, dying, looks up and shouts at him "I should have killed you when I had the chance". We know how he feels. Slowly you see it dawn on the once great military man - "What have I done?" - madness has swept him up and moral judgment has flown out the window. Watching the whole event is Dr Major Clipton, once again he voices the audiences reaction, with a startled look on his face, unable to say anything else he simply says:

'Madness!....Madness!'.
Originally posted on:Film for the Soul

Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 9:02 AM by Ibetolis | with 0 comments

Eastern Promises - Review

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Eastern Promises (2007)

David Cronenberg, 2007

Still reveling in body horror, the excess of human behaviour, the perverse and the profane, Cronenberg has rightly earned his international reputation as an astute director and auteur. Learning his trade with a string of low-budget horror films, in which intelligent and genuinely shocking images awed audiences time after time, Cronenberg has escaped being pigeon-holed by working in other genres with relative ease; mostly with successful results. Following on for the widespread success of A History of Violence; his 2005 film about a one man's attempt to hide from his violent past, Eastern Promises again establishes his versatility and touches on the themes he's explored for the past 35 years.

Set in a murky underworld of London, focusing on a Russian contingent dealing in the sex-slave trade, Eastern Promises paints a dark and disturbing world of cheap lives and organised crime. London is covered in a permanent film of gloom, penetrated rarely with the odd glimpse of sun, with rain-strewn streets, looming shadows and confined, low shot interiors and exteriors, giving the feel of a city trapped in its own squalidness. London has rarely looked this miserable. In the midst of this hopelessness and misery enters Anna (Naomi Watts), a pediatric nurse, working at a London hospital, who happens to help save a premature baby but unfortunately not the young, badly beaten, 14 year old mother, who had previously staggered into the building, hemorrhaging heavily before passing out.

Anna, having suffered a miscarriage some months before, strikes up a bond with the child, and on finding a diary written by the mother, something she was clutching before she died, Anna decides to track down the nearest relative to the young girl before the child becomes lost in the social care system. In the process of getting the diary translated, from it's original Russian, Anna finds a business card of a restaurant amongst the pages, hoping someone can help her trace the girls family she decides to give the place a visit. The address leads Anna to meet restaurateur Semyon (Armin-Mueller-Stahl), an elderly Russian whose warm welcome masks the horrific part he plays in the poor girls life. In being introduced to Seymon we enter the world of the Vory V Zakone (Russian Mafia); who adorn their bodies with a series of tattoos; symbols that represent their standing in the organisation.

A mystical, almost intense, reference surrounds the adorning of these tattoos for the Vory V Zakone; a series of fierce, colourless symbols, placed in symbolic parts of the body by rank and accomplishment; much like an army officer with a chest full of medals. This is vintage Cronenberg territory; transgression and body transmogrification in full swing. We witness an almost erotic scene in which Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), in the midst of being tattooed, half naked, lying back, casually smoking a cigarette, is perfectly at one with the needle, the ink almost caressing his body.

Nikolai receiving the totemic tattoos

Despite a first-rate screenwriter, Steven Knight, who also delved into similar territory about the plight of the migrant underclass with a previous script for Dirty Pretty Things (2002), plus the huge talent of Cronenberg, all too often the film feels clunky, cluttered and bereft of drama. The casting for instance is something of a puzzler, casting an Australian as a Brit and using a Frenchman and an American as Russian gangsters, whose accents from time to time wander into stereotype land, something that began to grate towards the end of the film; the biggest sinner being Vincent Cassel playing Seymon's son Kirill, often too big and too bombastic, his character soon becomes archetypal and clichéd. Mortensen on the other hand plays Nikolia with powerful, understated menace, a peruser of carnage who could, from the look of him, either hug you or rip off your head.

Surprisingly, for Cronenberg, Eastern Promises feels muted, understated, lacking in depth and missing his bold brush strokes. Scenes of greatness flicker sporadically and moments of sheer horror; a scene in which Nikolia clips the fingers off a corpse or that first opening murder, are few and far between. So it's with annoyance, rather than celebration, that we witness one of Cronenberg's finest moments; Nikolia's naked fight, with two fully dressed assassins in a public bath-house. This amazing scene, honest in his brutality and fierceness, feels like it sprung out of a different film, such stark and brave film-making feels so out of place in this otherwise turgid, plodding tale.

Nikolai with Anna (Naomi Watts)

It's unfortunate that Eastern Promises fails to deliver, as there are times when you feel it's going to spark into life but all in all it just comes down to fleeting moments and ideas; often it feels and plays out like a TV movie. There's a real lack of substance to this film and added to the poor narrative is a plot-twist, as unnecessary as it is insulting, that adds nothing to the story and seems like a cop-out. Eastern Promises proves to be one of those films that despite all the elements being right; stellar cast, talented script writer, influential maverick director and a story, peppered and ready for the taking, fails to hit the target on nearly all fronts.

Originally posted on:Film for the Soul

Posted Sunday, August 17, 2008 6:01 PM by Ibetolis | with 0 comments

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid - Watching the 1000 Greatest Films

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Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

This post is part of Graham's 'Film Ignorance' over on his great blog Movies et al. Please check it out for yourself and follow his own brand of film ignorance, which is nearly as bad as mine.

No. 15 - Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)

"This country's getting old and I aim to get old with it". - Pat Garrett
Ranked - #525

Seen by Peckinpah as the ideal film in which to stamp his authority and vision of the western frontier, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid has the air of a film that should have been a masterpiece; seeing as Peckinpah had begun his revision of the Western with Ride the High Country and taken it to it's bloody conclusion with The Wild Bunch, the mythology surrounding the friends turned enemies was almost too good to be true. Pat Garrett was going to be his crowning glory, the apex to where he'd been going all his directing life. Yet, from the very beginning the film was riddled with problems with budgetary issues, time restraints and technical faults leading to expensive re-shoots and haemorrhaging money. Finally, studio bosses stepped in and producer James Aubery took control of editing, taking a hefty 18 minutes out of Peckinpah's version.

In effect the released theatrical version was rejected and disowned by cast and crew, Peckinpah kept his original version and only showed it to friends and family for the next 10 years, finally getting a release in 1988. In this revised release, the bookend sequence of Pat's death is reinstated; one can only imagine what a mess studio executives made of this film, leaving out these vital scenes takes away any form of pathos and removes a vital narrative element. However despite the reinstated scenes, Pat Garrett is still less than satisfying, never really finding it's place amongst the sprawling array of characters, vignettes of violence and muted, hushed dialogue.

Kris Kritofferson (Billy the Kid) and James Coburn (Pat Garrett)

The film's opening sequence, the one reinstated in Peckinpah's cut and the version for which I base this review, starts some 27 years after the events, those surrounding the death of Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson). Garret (James Colburn) is mowed down by the same men that once hired him to kill his old friend, each shot is delivered in clinical Peckinpah slow-motion whilst the action cuts back and forth to a scene of chickens buried up to their necks being used as target practice. The shooters show themselves to be Billy and his gang, the action flashbacks to 1881 and Pat rides into town, orders up a whiskey and tells the boys that things are changing.

The original script by Rudy Wurlitzer called for the friends to only meet once at the end of the film, Peckinpah's inspired change to this was to start with the recriminations; Garrett meeting his maker at the hands of the same people that hired him to kill Billy. Its to Peckinpah's strength as a story-teller that insisted Garrett and Billy meet at the beginning of the film, knowing that the audience needs to see that unique friendship for themselves. Garrett warns Billy that he has 5 days to leave the territory and lying beneath this slightly strained meeting is a nettled and furtive friendship, one that is eating Garrett up inside as he spends the rest of the film trying as he might in avoiding the inevitable finale.

Despite this promising beginning Pat Garrett doesn't really leave the starting blocks, choosing to keep us at a distance for the majority of the film by not developing the story, it's as if the film burnt itself out with that staggering, awe inspiring opening gambit. Alongside Kristofferson and Colburn, a whole plethora of genre stalwarts and old Peckinpah regulars fill out some of the film with worthy cameo's, if only for the majority of them to be shot down, including; Jason Robards, Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong, Chill Wills, Jack Elam, Richard Jaeckel, and Dub Taylor. There's poignancy in these old-timers deaths (especially Slim Pickens looking across the river, eyes widening as he awaits his death), all the while Coburn marches through the county, armed with a shotgun and dressed in black, an angel of death, lamenting and snarling, bringing down the end of a genre.

We're fixed to Garrett throughout, Kristofferson's Billy never seems anything more than a ghostly figure, self-involved and prone to posing, we don't feel anything for him; whereas Colburn's Garrett is a fully rounded figure, dignified yet hollow, compromised and beaten. He trundles on regardless, fully aware that in killing Billy he's signing his own death warrant. He realises that the West is changing and rather than being swept up by it all he becomes part of the establishment never fully immersing himself in the 'New World'; in selling out to the man, he loses his soul. There are echoes of Peckinpah's life being played out here by Garrett, the feeling of compromise (with the studio), the crushing of the individual and rise of the organised, conglomerate new order. Maybe a Peckinpah of old would have been Billy; refusing to sell out, reckless with the world at his feet but now there was only Garrett, taking everything down with him as puts an end to it all.

The films stand out scene; it gets me every time.

A lot is made of Bob Dylan's score and the use of 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' aside; used sparingly and beautifully as Sheriff Colin Baker (Slim Pickens) prepares to meet his maker, it doesn't on the whole, work with this film. It jars with the images we see on the screen, as if the entire enterprise was made for an entirely different film; fractious working sessions with Jerry Fielding, an experienced film scorer, probably didn't help, seeing as Fielding held little regard for Dylan's music. Dylan also took a starring role as the figure 'Alias', a role which apparently shortened by the week until he was nothing but a footnote in the entire film, starting off with a strong introduction; where he dispatches of man using a knife to almost a nothing role for the rest of film; reduced to reading a menu out loud.

Peckinpah depicts a west falling apart at the seams, a lawless territory slowly becoming domesticated with politicians, money men and big business, which in turn leads to one Peckinpah's key themes; that of the expression of violence of man in these conflicted and compromised new societies. For all the film's problems, Peckinpah still gives us a stunning looking film on the screen, proving once again that his style and staging are second to none. The west has never looked so forlorn, desolate and hell-bound, with nothing but angry displaced men, disposable women and a decaying old guard slowly ebbing away, dotted around the barren wasteland waiting to die.

In the final sequence, Garrett tracks Billy down to Fort Sumner, approaching the house in the middle of the night, Garrett takes his chance and shots Billy dead, falling to the floor in another of Peckinpah's patented slow-motion shots. After his death Garrett turns to a mirror and shoots his reflection; shooting the man he has become proves futile and death will eventually catch up with him nearly 30 years later. Once Garrett has killed Billy a little crowd emerges and one man accosts him, calling him a "chicken-shit" and asks rhetorically "when are you going to learn you can't trust anybody, not even yourself Garret?" That man was Peckinpah, quite literally in a cameo as an undertaker, harassing and shouting down his mirrored self; berating himself in the public arena for selling-out to the man.
Originally posted on:Film for the Soul

Posted Sunday, August 17, 2008 6:01 PM by Ibetolis | with 0 comments

Gone With The Wind - Watching The 1000 Greatest Films

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Gone With the Wind (1939)

No. 14 - Gone With The Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)
Ranked #62

'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn' - Rhett Butler

Years in the wilderness, endless casting auditions for the role of Scarlett, directors replaced, several sackings all over, the largest price paid for a debut novel, reluctant lead actor and one massive headache for everyone involved, Gone With The Wind had a lot to live up too and boy did it ever deliver. Since the day that producer David O. Selznick paid $50,000 for Margeret Mitchell's debut novel, 'Gone With the Wind', a frenzied circus has surrounded the epic saga ever since.

Published in 1936, ten years after Margeret Mitchell first started the massive tome, Gone With the Wind became an instant best seller, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. Plans for the film adaptation were already underway and the huge task of finding a actress that was able to fulfill the role of southern belle Scarlett O'Hara were already proving difficult. Gone With the Wind is as infamous for it's final product as it is for it's audition reels, an endless stream of talented actresses were linked or auditioned for the part, including Lana Turner, Susan Hayward and Joan Bennett before relatively unknown, at the time, English actress Vivian Leigh snagged the part in 1938.

Fast forward to 8:20 to see the audition reels for Scarlett O'Hara

We begin in 1861 on a Georgian plantation, the O'Hara estate, Tara, Scarlett is devastated to hear that her on/off beau Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) is to be married, to the gentle and demure Melanie (Olivia De Havilland), this hopeless, obsessional, love fuels the film. It's obvious from the off why the casting of Scarlett was so vital for she is the film; the hypocrisy, the beauty, the war, the passion, the destruction, the brutality, all of it runs parallel with this spoiled little rich girl.

Scarlett decides she will confess her love to Ashley at a barbecue party being held at his family plantation, in admitting her feelings; in typical Scarlett style, Ashley admits to having feelings for her but, quite wisely, states that Melanie makes a better wife. Witnessing this exchange is the irrepressible Rhett Butler (Clark Cable), smart mouthed, cynical and more than a match for Scarlett, he slowly, much to his better judgment, falls in love with her; obviously spotting similar qualities in her that he possesses. Their first meeting is as heated as it will continue to be throughout, snapping at each other with this delicious trade off:

Scarlett "You, Sir, are no gentleman,"
Rhett "And you, miss, are no lady."

Scarlett with Mammy (Hattie McDaniel)

Scarlett's obsession leads her to marry Melanie's brother, Charles, in order to make Ashley jealous and becomes her best friend in the process. Charles dies shortly after and Scarlett seems more concerned, not with the trifling matter of losing a husband, but by having to wear black; it's totally in keeping with her selfish nature that fashion should be at the foremost of her preoccupations. Along with Rhett, these main characters become interlocked in a kind of quadrangle relationship against the backdrop of the civil war, the bombardment of Atlanta, the repercussions and the rebuilding of a shattered old world.

Gone With The Wind is a film of two halves, quite literally having an intermission separating the epic. The first of which is often captivating and thrilling covering the time period of the Civil War and Sherman's march through Atlanta that lives up to the films epic reputation. The scenes covering the siege of Atlanta whilst Melanie gives birth are nerve wrangling and deftly executed. In escaping, with the aid of Rhett, from the ravished city we are treated to the films finest set pieces; the shot of the burning house in the background as the flee for their lives displaying love and loss on a grand scale and that haunting shot of 'the field of the dead', which will long live in the memory, carefully depicts a hopeless cause in face of the inevitable.

Scarlett walking through the field of the dead

The second half, by comparison, feels flabby and over melodramatic; pretty much how I preconceived the whole film to be, suffering from a lack of fine tuning and a clear idea of where the film is going. Scarlett has now become hardened and bitter, promising never to let anyone take anything from her ever again, becoming more Machiavellian in her actions. Despite the second half trailing behind the first, the first scene of act two, set on the derelict land of the now destroyed Tara, features one of the films most devastating moments; Scarlett killing a rouge Yankee solider in cold blood.

This is the Golden Age of Hollywood in epic and grand style, often regarded as the jewel in the crown of the era, Gone With The Wind was lavished with the best that money could buy, from acting talent to technology with a rumoured budget of $3.7 million. Everything is pumped up the max; the sets are bigger, the music louder and the acting is larger, there are quite literally hundreds of costume changes throughout and the amount of extras for the scenes in Atlanta are off the scale.

As god as my witness, I'll never go hungry again

A romanticised, sentimental version of historical events about the 'good ole' south, with slavery, and all references to 'negroes' and the Ku Klux Klan omitted from the script, Gone With The Wind paints a picture of plantation life that could only have been made possible by the exploitation of this excluded race. Mitchell's original novel was sanitised for the big screen in order not to upset mainstream audiences, as well as some high ranking officials still affiliated with white supremacist groups. The nominal black characters such as Mammy and Prissy (Butterfly McQueen) are shown to be happy with their lot in life and probably better off in this mythical world.

However, what else was I supposed to expect? Given the original text, the era of which this was made and the amount of money behind it, Gone With The Wind was never going to be anything other than mythic tales of a world long gone. It's this vivid romantic style that sweeps the viewer off their feet from the very beginning and in parts this film is simply astonishing and quite ahead of its time. The cinematography, at times, is breath-taking and Leigh and Gable simply fizzle whenever they're on the screen together, sexual chemistry oozing from every possible pore. Same can't be said however of co-star Leslie Howard as the wet, insipid Ashely who feels as if he's strolling through the film and other characters such as Melanie, Mammy and Prissy are nothing more than fodder to keep the story moving.

Can you guess the line?

As the second half of the film comes to a close, Scarlett realises that she has loved Rhett all along but it's all too late as Rhett delivers the immortal line and walks out off her life, seemingly for good. It's a fitting end to the epic yarn, that at bum numbing 222 minutes manages to keep you glued to your seat. Fleetingly brilliant, all together entertaining yet ever so slightly over-rated, it's easy to see why this film has lasted the test of time and is adhered as the pinnacle of a golden age of film making in Hollywood. It's more of an event than a film, as the number of websites set up worshiping its mere existence will testify to, I certainly recommend all film fans to watch it with a large pinch of salt.

Originally posted on:Film for the Soul

Posted Friday, August 15, 2008 6:04 PM by Ibetolis | with 0 comments

Bizarro Blog-A-Thon: Three Men and a Little Lady - Review

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Three Men and a Little Lady (1990)

Emile Ardolino, 1990

As if Leonard Nimoy's prequel three years earlier, the divine Three Men and A Baby, wasn't enough, along came Emile Ardolino's inspired sequel, Three Men and a Little Lady (see what they did there? Genius), a film so deft and delicate, so refined and reserved that surely only a poet, no a sculptor, could have shaped this film any better. Starring three of Hollywood's biggest players, (seriously how did they manage to put together this star studded cast?) Tom Selleck (Peter), Ted Danson (Jack) and, wait for it, Steve Guttenberg (Michael), along with Nancy Travis (Sylvia), sporting an English accent so realistic it's as if she were born in Buckingham Palace, this surely goes down as one of the finest ensembles ever, well, assembled.

Moving the action on five years after the events of Three Men and a Baby, we now join little Mary (Robin Wiseman) her three father's and her mother living together as one big happy family in New York. Or so it seems on the surface, however Sylvia, Mary's mother, craves more stability and although there is enough electricity between her and Peter to light up Las Vegas, Peter can't bring himself to say he loves her. Believing that he would be stepping on Jack's toes (Mary's 'biological daddy' - is there a more loving reference to a father than that?) if he asks to marry Slyvia, he keeps his feelings hidden. Selleck's performance of restrained love goes down as one the greatest, his arching of the eyebrows only ever beaten by Roger Moore, his stumbling over words matching that of Hugh Grant. Beautiful.

Hilarious!

In a comical, and eventually devastating, error of events Peter leaves it too late to say anything as Sylvia accepts a proposal of marriage from English theatre director, Edward (Christopher Cazenove), who shockingly wants Sylvia and Mary to stay in with him in England after they marry. Broken hearted and resigned to losing both Sylvia and Mary, our three bachelors try to recover their glory days by throwing one of their old 'infamous' parties; with hilarious results. After the debacle, our three men realise they can't live without their ladies and on learning of Edward's plans for Mary, sending her to a robotic, everyday English school, (typical Englishman, can't trust them) they decide to stop the marriage; Will Peter be able to tell Sylvia that he loves her in time? The tension is unbearable.

Three Men and a Little Lady comes into it's own when the action moves to England; surely their hasn't been a more realistic portrayal of English society in cinematic history? Ardolino wisely and astutely goes for realism, something seriously lacking in Britain's home spun directors such as Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and Shane Meadows, depicting an England that, finally, I recognise and identify. Awkward, repressed and bumbling, living in estates and castles, conniving (sometimes I can't even trust myself) and cold, depressing and stuck in the 19th century - no director has ever caught the England I know so clearly and with such clarity, I salute you Mr. Ardolino. We all do, thank you.

Probably the greatest sequel of all time, hell with that, probably the greatest film of all time, Three Men and a Little Lady delights through out. From it's effective and realistic portrayal of everyday family life to it's tear-jerking finale; is their anyone who doesn't cry at Peter's poetic declaration of love? "I even love her liver mousse". Words fail me how good this film actually is, so as a treat I've saved the best till last. If only Public Enemy had this way with words maybe they would have been as great, please bow to the pure genius that is, 'The Mary Rap'.