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colin-cooper
Reviews
The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)
Loach's ability to sweep you up in his action, movement and drama has never been so marked.
The critics who condemn this movie for its IRA sympathies are missing the point. Loach shows you the IRA in its early days, when its sole purpose was to fight the armed and uniformed occupiers of their land. They owed the English nothing. The English had treated the Irish with little but brutality for centuries, and the appearance in 1920 of a new but still brutal military force, the Black and Tans, was too much. Every decent young Irishman sympathised with the movement to fight them. It was only later that the IRA turned to terrorism against civilians, using bombs to kill the innocent along with the guilty. Understand that, and you will not fall into the trap of labelling the film 'anti-British'.
The film has been called 'one-sided'. Of course it is. It's not the function of a work of art to present a balanced argument. Was Picasso's Guernica a balanced argument? If in addition to the horror of the bombing it had presented the point of view of General Franco, who was fighting what he believed to be the threat of communism, Picasso's masterpiece would have been laughed at. The Wind That Shakes the Barley deserves to be treated as art.
L'innocente (1976)
Languid pace no problem.
The languid pace of Visconti's last film is not a problem for me. He was an old man, directing from a wheelchair, and had slowed down a lot. Think of it as the long slow movement of a symphony by Mahler - whose music, you will remember, he used in Death in Venice - and it will make more sense.
What I want to know is more about Gabriele D'Annunzio's novel. One commentator claims that the male lead is a kind of 'atheistic hero' faithful to his beliefs, and that Visconti subverts the author's intention by showing him as a rich aristocrat as selfish as he is unpleasant. Can any authority on Italian literature shed any light?
Caché (2005)
A brilliant film that holds the attention of the mind with a grip of steel.
The reviewer who described Hidden as 'not top-notch cinema' has some explaining to do. I have seen fairly few films in my life that I would describe as 'top-notch', and this film would be one of them. The absorbing exploration of guilt in a family context, the dazzling technique that does not need music (as Hitchcock did) to accentuate the horror of sudden violence, the brilliant building up of tension (again without music), the secure hold on the attention from the very opening, all these things mark Michael Haneke out as a director of the highest rank. If this is not top-notch cinema, what on earth is? I will take care not to miss any future film by him. And I will certainly watch Hidden again.
The Way to the Stars (1945)
I remember the wartime years in Britain very vividly, and feel that Asquith and his actors got it exactly right.
I was in the British armed forces from 1944 to 1947, and I can confirm that this movie gets the feel of the period exactly right.. Anthony Asquith and the actors breathed life into the cardboard of Rattigan's characters. I didn't like it when I saw it all those decades ago - too sentimental - but now that I can see it more objectively I rate it very highly indeed. One piece of plotting puzzled me: why does Johnny Hollis agonise about the mail from home he never receives? Was it intended that his wife should die or leave him, thus freeing him to court the widowed Iris? This in fact does not happen, and the film ends in a rather downbeat way.
Tristana (1970)
Yet another Buñuel masterpiece.
Luis Buñuel had a mastery of screen technique attained by very few directors. Confronted by the script of Tristana, what contemporary director would know where to start?
Buñuel's attention to detail is extraordinary. Every scene is packed with visual interest. In some strange way, the decor forms an essential part of the structure; it is a facet of Buñuel's unique vision. Moreover, he not only knows exactly when to end a sequence, but how to end it. For instance, when Don Lope (Rey) puts down the dog and walks away, the camera follows not him but the dog: an endearing and brilliant touch, and there are many more. Compelling throughout, even spellbinding.
If this film were a framed picture hanging in a gallery, thousands would come to see it and Buñuel would be acclaimed as a great artist. He was a great artist, in fact, but the cinema is an ephemeral form and people forget. We need to buy the videos and watch these fine movies from time to time, just to remind ourselves that a film can be a significant art form and not merely a commercial product cynically synthesised to extract the largest amount of money from the greatest number of people.