Darwin

Directed by Peter Greenaway and released on French TV as part of the series L’encyclopédie audio-visuelle on July 16th 1993.

Peter Greenaway gives us a quite different biographical film about one of the most influential figures in modern history: Charles Darwin.

Told in 18 tableaus, Greenaway directs the film and presents us what looks like a play. Mainly shown in Darwin’s study, a fantastic set is conceived of the ship which Darwin sailed around the world in, and we’re even subjected to a vast family feast. Debates are hinted at, but ultimately the story is told by the narrator (voiced by Jacques Bonnaffé) who eloquently recites Peter Greenaway’s grandiose script.

The narration we are provided in this script is very fair and balanced with regards to the topics at hand, and at times we are told that such and such a scene was contrived specifically for that scene and that it is the job of the costume designers or the work of a group of actors; which is what the narrator tells us when we see an asylum of lunatics acted out on screen. This is a very interesting way to give us the story and I found it to be a very refreshing way to tell a biographical story.

In typical style Greenaway gives us sweeping camera movements and rarely do you see a cut take place save for in between the tableaus. This gives us even more reason to make us feel like we are watching a play on the stage at the local theater. While the narration is very fair as mentioned, it does feels like at times that it just needs to let the characters speak and for a scene to play out: for example in the scene where all the different philosophers, naturalists, scientists, etc. were gathered for the debates and the camera just follows them all and they each stare at the camera with an unsure eye as the narrator tells us about how Darwin opposed them with his theories – but I guess Greenaway would rather let the narration tell the story and not the actors. Either way, it falls short for me due to this lack of drama and ends up feeling like a reconstruction documentary.

Even though this is how it feels by the end of the film, it does not take away from the sheer brilliance of the work itself. At times it reminded me of two period pieces: Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio (which you can find a review for here on my blog) or Leslie Megahey’s Schalcken The Painter. Both give very realistic recreations of the periods in which they were set, while actually being dramatic narrative films: that of course is where they differ with Greenaway’s Darwin. That alone is something which you can commend him for, and when you compare it with some of his other works you see the reasons why he chose to do this film in this way.

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The Last of England

Directed by Derek Jarman and released in its home country of England in 1987.

Very interesting stuff this one.

An art film consisting mostly of home videos shot on 8mm film interspersed with an at times subtle but mostly hectic score which left me at times clutching at my laptop to turn the volume down.

As many have said elsewhere it is quite a gruelling film to get through, they have also mentioned quite rightly that it definitely requires some reading prior to viewing just to get an idea of exactly what one is looking at. Once you have a general idea, then it lets you in on the theme which is hinted at throughout the film especially helped along with small samples(?) of Thatcher and others at crucial points in the piece.

As I say it’s as gruelling as it is interesting, and while I much prefer the film Derek Jarman did prior to this – the fantastic Caravaggio – the wonder of his contribution to the art of cinema ultimately shines through in the piece as a whole; a jilted letter of angst to the British culture long-gone and replaced with complete anarchy.

Beloved Enemy

Directed by Alan Clarke and broadcast on February 10th 1981 for the BBC, in England, as part of the Play For Today series.

Another of Alan Clarke’s work for television. This one was produced at the beginning of the 1980s during the period where Clarke began to be recognised internationally for his work.

The teleplay itself tells the story of a corporation who decide to outsource one of their contracts to the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War. As they work with politicians on both sides of the table to keep the story out of the press, they also try to keep the contract amid the negotiations.

It plays out through a barrage of gruelling meetings between the two companies on both sides of the table, and unfortunately it becomes a bit tiresome to get through after a while.

The story that’s being told is being done so quite well by both Clarke through his direction and the list of actors who all play their parts quite well. And while the story is quite interesting I didn’t really feel engaged as I have with much of Clarke’s other works. I think this was in part due to the rigidity of the meetings which make up the entirety of the film.

Having said that, it is a very interesting tale about how greedy capitalist chairpersons of corporations do their best to keep politicians in line in order to secure contracts which will make them lots of money. Doing so even at the expense of a) their workers, and b) the people of countries which their actions ultimately end up effecting. These themes of nuclear obliteration and the capitalist/socialist divide are quite strong throughout the film. Many of the characters profess their capitalist ideas while those on the Russian side try to keep their socialist ideologies intact throughout the negotiations. There’s even a reference to Albert Einstein near the end, quoting that there may be a winner of a third ‘World War’, but there most certainly will not be a fourth.

As the credits suggest the film is based on a book by Canadian author Charles Levinson entitled Vodka-Cola. After a bit of digging, it turns out that Levinson was a trade unionist and spent much of his life fighting against multi-national corporations. Other books he wrote include works on inflation, the pharmaceutical industry, the relation between plastics and cancer, as well as chemical warfare. Fascinating stuff and it doesn’t leave much room to wonder why Clarke chose to work with this particular piece for one of his films.

The Gentleman Caller

Directed by Alan Clarke and aired in its home country of the UK on television on June 13th 1967.

A short half hour piece by Alan Clarke done for British television which tells the story of a visit by a man from the social (the welfare office, the dole, etc.) to a man with learning difficulties. The man who lives at home with his brother, has just quit his job the week prior. The film descends into chaos when the older of the two decides to give the man from the social a bit of a scare.

It gets even crazier which is something I most certainly wasn’t expecting but welcomed wholeheartedly especially as it allows the viewer to really look into how Clarke directed the three actors in the piece. All three actors give wonderful performances but the the way in which Clarke’s camera gets up close and personal with the characters and really lets us into the action is something I’m sure was looked at with great regard by Clarke’s peers at that time.

The highlight of the short half hour piece in my opinion is when the older brother heads out to buy a pack of cigarettes (presumably to mock the man from the social, i.e. the man spending the money he gets from the social on a pack of cigarettes – this would be frowned upon by anyone from the upper classes) leaving the younger and mentally-handicapped brother alone with the man from the social. The lack of music, which I’m beginning to think is a trademark for Clarke, really builds up the tension between the two characters and provides a welcomed break from the dialogue-heavy action.

Being one of Clarke’s earlier films, of which I haven’t yet seen that many, it’s interesting to see how his knack for directing still managed to shine through even so early on his career. Many of his other works are indeed much better and more thawed out than this one, but for any fan of Clarke’s it’s definitely a must see.

The Mack

Directed by Michael Campus and released in its home country of the USA in 1973.

Being heavily into hip hop I’ve heard so many songs and albums that sample either the fantastic Willie Hutch soundtrack or lines of dialogue from this movie. Looking at the poster I always thought Richard Pryor was the main character and its his involvement that piqued my interest in this along with the aforementioned sampling through hip hop history. Fortunately upon viewing I found out that there was so much more to this than Richard Pryor and a few bad-ass one liners.

The film tells the story of a man who, after a shootout with a rival gang, ends up being imprisoned. He comes out after a five year stretch to find his brother is now preaching black nationalism ala Malcolm X or Huey Newton. Our titular character, who has always dreamed of providing for his aging mother, decides to take the militarism of his brothers activism and funnel it into another avenue: pimping. He gets to the top of the game, but not without a few enemies.

Now if that doesn’t spark your interest, I don’t know what will. Those involved in the film say its not a blaxploitation film, and I tend to agree with them. While it does have many of the same tropes, I actually found it to be a gritty and very well done film with a stellar screenplay that keeps you wondering whats around the corner.

I was surprised to find out that many of the speeches delivered by The Mack’s brother in the film were word for word taken from speeches given by Black Panther Huey P. Newton.

The film is also historically relevant as it really does give you an insight into what life was like in these areas of America for black people during the early 1970s. It highlights the corruption of the police departments as well as highlighting the pitfalls of entering into criminal organisations such as pimping. Even so, I just couldn’t stop thinking how damn badass The Mack was through the whole picture.

Really loved this one.

Corrupt aka Cop Killer

Directed by Roberto Faenza and, while filmed in 1981, it was released in Italy in 1983 and in the country in which it is set not long after in 1984.

Former lead singer of iconic punk rock band the Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten, stars alongside Harvey Keitel in quite the strange film I must say. Whilst the director ended up trying to market the film to the arthouse crowd, it was filmed in 1981 and not released until 1983. The film has various titles, Copkiller, Order Of Death, Corrupt, as well as its Italian title L’Assassino dei Poliziotti, just to name a few.

It tells the story of a string of murders with the victims all being police officers. Rotten’s character, a rich bachelor with a history of confessing to crimes he supposedly hasn’t committed, turns up at one of two apartments’ belong to Harvey Keitel and one of his friends and professes that he is indeed the cop killer. The film is quite clever in that it leaves you guessing throughout the entire film who exactly the murderer is.

The film as a whole, at least for me, ends up quite all over the place and doesn’t really hold up very well over time. Having said that, the performance from the punk rock singer is quite the turn especially for those who know his music. I, myself, certainly didn’t expect him to pull in such a brilliant performance. The always brilliant Keitel offers a great performance too but as I mentioned before the film unfortunately does fall flat and while the atmosphere which pervades the film is quite eery and fits in with the theme of the film, I think – among other things – that the camera lingers on much too long for much of the film.

What’s also interesting to note is the score is done by the composing legend of spagehetti western fame Ennio Morricone. Not much to say on that really, beside the fact it helped build the creepy atmosphere which fitted well with the performances.

See it only if you’re interested in seeing how Rotten performs on film – you’ll be pleasantly surprised. He’s said himself he’s proud of the film and despite not particularly liking the finished film I can definitely see why.

Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land

Directed by Sut Jhally & Bathsheba Ratzkoff and released in 2004.

This review was written on August 4th 2014.

Personally this is one of the most powerful documentaries I’ve ever seen. A break down of the media bias in the Western world (mainly America and Great Britain) toward Israel with regards to the mass slaughter of Palestinians which has been going on since whenever you want to start the clock: Herzl’s formation of Zionism in the nineteenth century; the British partition in 1948 after the break up of the Ottoman Empire; or the conversion to Judaism of the Khazar people in the 8th century. There are many points in which one can start the clock and this act alone will undeniably shape their opinion on the matter.

Based on the title of this documentary itself it isn’t surprising that it doesn’t focus on any of these suggested roots to this Israeli occupation, for that there are many many books and other documentaries. This documentary’s main focus, however, begins in the aftermath of further mass murders of Palestinians who fled to Lebanon in 1982.

This documentary is essential viewing for anyone who thinks the Palestinian people are oppressors in this conflict. Now, this is not to say that the Palestinians can be let off completely scot free; of course they are also guilty of murdering members of the opposition, but once one has the facts of the history of this matter in front of them it becomes abundantly clear that the actions of these Palestinians is merely retaliation against the ongoing occupation and mass genocide which has been and continues to be carried out against their people in the ‘Promised Land’.

I do not condone murder in any way shape or form regardless of what reason one may have for it, but it is absolutely evident that those who are being portrayed as the victims are in fact the oppressors: and this documentary does a fantastic job at explaining this. The beauty of it is that it is aimed specifically at those who have been told this sort of thing every single day by news anchors.

Tarr Béla: I Used To Be A Filmmaker

Directed by Jean-Marc Lamoure and released in its home country of France in 2013.

This review was written on April 12th 2015.

Beware to those watching this: It takes a lot of the mystique out of The Turin Horse, Bela Tarr’s final masterpiece… but it also adds a lot to it in many more ways than one. For one, it gives us the added benefit of understanding the ways in which the actors in the piece, which this documentary is essentially a ‘making-of’ of, prepared for their characters – which quite frankly gave me a much more sympathetic respect for those involved in this and many of Tarr’s other films.

It also gives us a higher appreciation, if possible, for Tarr in many respects: for he is a man who has dedicated a large portion of his life to creating these fantastic pieces of art that we have seen throughout his career, culminating in the film which this documentary follows; we also see how much passion and dedication he puts into working with his team from the musician, to the cameramen, to his partner-in-crime Agnes Hranitzky, to the actors and to the camera itself.

For anyone interested in cinema, this will be a refreshing look at the way in which an artist makes his work – and his final work at that.

You can find my review for The Turin Horse by clicking right here.

Filmmaker Quote of the Week #3

Stanley Kubrick
Directed by 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and others.

“No work of art has ever done social harm, though a great deal of social harm has been done by those who have sought to protect society against works of art which they regarded as dangerous.”

Go Go Second Time Virgin

Directed by Koji Wakamatsu and released in its home country of Japan in 1969.

This review was originally written on January 10th 2013 and published on my Letterboxd profile.

Made during the latter years of pinku’s first decade, Go Go Second Time Virgin tells the story of a woman, twice raped, trying to find someone to kill her. She finds a killer, as equally sadistic as her but he can’t kill her nor can he have sex with her as he is impotent. The film opens with a rape and from the on we’re given gory, masochistic and unsettling imagery throughout. Late in the film, a murderous manga is intercut with images of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. Clearly a reference to the Manson murders, but there’s no real reason for it whatsoever. By the time the film has finished, it does resolve the problems it presents to the viewer but to be quite honest it’s never quite satisfying on a whole.

For it’s time, it was a very very brave film but the film itself has no real moral compass despite how well made it is and how elegantly moving the score is. The direction by Koji Wakamatsu, who recently passed late last year after being hit by a taxi cab in Tokyo, is quite extraordinary.

I eagerly anticipate delving into some of his more gorier works.

Secrets Behind Walls

Directed by Koji Wakamatsu and released in its home country of Japan in 1966.

This review was originally written on February 25th 2013 and published on my IMDb profile.

Another early pinku from the late great Koji Wakamatsu.

This time the film focuses more on the human condition rather than the sexual aspects that define this genre (the other film from him that I’ve seen, Go Go Second Time Virgin, which I have reviewed here, is definitely a shining example of that).

Secrets Behind the Wall tells three or four different stories of couples/families living in the same apartment complex, all of whom intertwine somewhat whether it be as a result of adultery or just a neighbourly get together. Many of the characters display similar emotions and feelings as each other and its quite clear that with this Wakamatsu was focusing significantly on a post-war Japan as well as exploring the dullness of family life.

Like many films of its ilk, it becomes a hypnotic tale of debauchery as the film unravels.

As a footnote, I’d like to commend the incredibly good score – strangely enough it seems the best pinkus also have the best scores.

Propaganda

Directed by Slavko Martinov and released on the internet in 2012.

This review was originally written on 26 September 2013 and published on my IMDb profile.

Here we have a propaganda film… about propaganda… made under the guise of a North Korean film… but actually made by filmmakers from New Zealand.
Get your head around that!

Despite the terrible and hypocritical starting point of attempting to experiment with the propaganda that the film itself has such a disdain for, it does provide a chilling insight into the decline of Western civilization and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that fascism – erm, sorry, I meant capitalism – is the driving force behind the way the most powerful nations on earth are built, structured and lead and that the only way out of this is by a social revolution that will never come without mass destruction.

23

Directed by Hans-Christian Schmid and released in its home country of Germany in 1998.

This review does contain spoilers.

23 is based on the true story of a hacker who gets caught up in a massive web of conspiracies as he works with the Russians and other hackers to find government information in return for cash payments. This is the basic idea for the film.

While I do not want to delve too far into the subject matter of the ideas discussed in the film, I do want to explain them at least to a little degree. In the film, the main character is brought up around the ideas of the Illuminati through a trilogy books by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea entitled Illuminatus. These books were ultimately inspired by a vast treasure trove of information which the two authors came across when working as editors for Playboy magazine in the 1960s. A lot of the information was sourced from letters they would receive from readers and many articles were indeed published pertaining to the Bavarian Illuminati and other conspiracies about Jewish bankers and political assassinations. While much of this information was true, what Wilson and Shea did was to weave a detective story in between the information to distort much of the truth and let people make their own minds up about this material. They are not the only authors to have done this. We can point to Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum and Lindsay Clarke’s The Chymical Wedding as just two examples.

It seems that when presented with the facts themselves, we are usually inclined to just bat away any ideas of anybody controlling any aspect of society just as preposterous – but when you are presented with this information in terms of a story and something which you can relate to, it really makes you think: what if something like this really is going on?

Well this is the idea of the main character in this movie. And it turns out that he is right. But not necessarily because there is a big cabal out to get him. But because he breaks the law and hacks into various government systems which he probably shouldn’t have done in the first place. Oh, and he does it to get information for the Russians. How convenient. Now of course the story itself is true, but you can find out for yourself that much of the film was contrived for entertainment purposes just as most films are; that fact alone should make you sit back and think just for a moment about the events in the film.

The film itself I did actually think was quite funny and, although I thought the main character’s performance was severely lacking in any kind of actual emotion, for the most part I enjoyed it and loved the subject matter.

As I’ve actually read quite a lot of Robert Anton Wilson’s work already I found many of the in-jokes that connected all of this information together quite fascinating. Ultimately though it’s not a film about the Illuminati. It is a film about a conspiracy against someone who breaks the law however. That alone should tell you that maybe there isn’t a big organisation out to get everybody. Read Wilson’s books, and decide for yourselves.

The number 23 itself, if you do delve into Wilson’s work, will give you quite the conundrum, as you can see it does for the character in this film. I myself, since reading Wilson’s work, have come across it on so many occasions. To give you just ONE example, at the time of the writing of this blog post, on the day it has been posted the 2nd of January 2018, there are 23 comments on this destroyallcinema WordPress site.

In 2007 Jim Carrey starred in another film about this number, The Number 23.

To Encourage The Others

Directed by Alan Clarke and broadcast on BBC Two in England on March 28th 1972

This review does contain spoilers.

An absolutely harrowing tale about two youths who are caught on the rooftop of a building, one of whom has a gun. The younger one, the one with the gun, shoots and kills a police officer and wounds another. This of course all happens while the older one, a quiet, dyslexic, and described as having the mental age of a child, stands watch already arrested by the police. After bustling the two teenagers back to the station, the officers seem to concoct a story which incriminates both the shooter and the older suspect in the murder of the policeman.

What follows is at times trying to get through, but with the film being 90% courtroom drama what can you expect? Of course this was what I wasn’t expecting about the entire film. But this is a useful tactic by British directing genius Alan Clarke, in that it gives you a glimpse into what the real tragedy of this story is: the political aspect of it.

I can’t say much more really without giving too much away because if you do go and see this film or research the story you will find out for yourselves, all I need to say is that it is a very political film about a story of which you need to know – one of the final cases of capital punishment in the history of the United Kingdom.

Another of late director Alan Clarke’s great filmography, this film is a really heartbreaking tale of one teenager’s life which is turned upside down in part by his friend, but for the most part, by the system which failed him and many others like him.

Interesting to note that there was another adaptation of this story in 1991 entitled Let Him Have It starring Christopher Ecclestone and Tom Courtenay as the two teenagers. I’m yet to see this version.

Crips & Bloods: Made In America

Directed by Stacy Peralta and released in its home country of the USA in 2008.

This documentary is a frightening look into the history of the oppression of minorities in the United States of America pretty much since its inception. It was of course the political activism of the 1960s and ’70s which ultimately gave birth to the gang violence which is so eloquently displayed in this film through the use of news stories and interviews with gang members from all across the country.

The way in which it looks over the entire history and doesn’t hold anything back is one of the best things about the film. I feel that the emergence of crack cocaine definitely helped fuel the violence in these communities especially during the 1980s but I guess it didn’t really impact the gang culture too much as there isn’t much by way of that topic in this documentary.

Having said that it is fleshed out with interviews of family members of those who have been slain in gang violence and really gives you a glimpse into the dark side of the American life that hasn’t really been portrayed in any form of media so far as I can see.