The Last Picture Show (Director’s Cut)

(Peter Bogdanovich/1971/USA) 

Opening to the sound of wind with dust and scrub blowing across the screen the sense of desolation is rife from the get go; we are in small-town, back end of nowhere America. “Everything is flat and empty here”, utters Ellen Burstyn a few scenes in and perfectly describes the context within which we are viewing the characters. They are trapped in a nondescript existence where the biggest concern is the college football team and how badly they are doing. But slowly life creeps on and there is growing up to be done but within this context of flat and empty existence. So the growing up we see is predicated on boredom and the warnings from the adult world are not to get stuck, to try and make the best of what you have or get out altogether. 

The Last Picture show is like Wilder’s Our Town in existential crisis. It references the Wild West repeatedly, Ford’s Wagonmaster is advertised at the cinema, which stars Ben Johnson who plays Sam in this film, and the last picture show of the title is Howard Hawks’ Red River, a western that focuses on a dysfunctional Father Son relationship. All around are damaged relationships, Sonny and Duane both live in a boarding house with one parent for example and the setting is exactly one of those towns that would have prospered at the time of the idealised American Western. Even the name of the town, Anarene, seems to mimic that of Abilene, the town in Red River. There is also a character called Abilene, the slick pool shark who works for a big oil company. The film seems to be a comment on the cultural idea of the Western, the myth of the American West would appear to have ultimately benefited corporate interests but the reality of that myth are economically desolate towns like Anarene. Where has the pioneering spirit of the past gone? These people are reduced to sexual transgressions to allay the boredom of a town with only a cinema, poolhall and cafe as social outlets. 

It’s a tremendously layered film but its beauty is in being presented so simply. Using black & white film and a shooting style reminiscent of the 50’s The Last Picture Show could have been made in 1951, the year it’s set, rather than 1971. Bogdanovich was making a work of art and presaged a golden age of Hollywood that would embrace the auteur and those daring to be a bit more experimental within the mainstream. There is no score, just ambient sounds and songs that occur within the film, on the radio or jukebox and quite often cue the emotional status of the scene. It’s at once bleak but also deeply emotionally resonant. It lay a marker down for the decade to come whilst referencing back to lodestones like Citizen Kane and is one of the finest movies to ever come out of America. It is at its most basic a human film examining small-town relationships and the striving to experience something of life before it’s too late. But on a deeper level it examines the spiritual desolation caused by cultural idealism, the disillusionment that occurs in the dichotomy of the mythic America of the western and the reality of the modern day American west.

(5/5)

Brigsby Bear

(Dave McCary/2017/USA) 

Brigsby Bear is a sweet little comedy that explores ideas around creativity and its usefulness in helping get over traumatic events. The general message seems to be that embracing our passions and in some cases, obsessions, can be a positive thing. There are nods to geek fandom and hobbyists and a warm acceptance of this culture. Its only flaw is a slight tweeness at times. If you haven’t seen it and want to, stop reading now because discussing the story is impossible without spoiling the beautiful weirdness of its opening section.

James lives with his folks in a bunker, protected from the toxic air above ground and does chores as well as poring over new episodes of a show starring Brigsby the Bear. When he’s freed from the bunker by police and returned to his real family almost 20 years after being abducted the transition back to normal life and a world he’s never experienced is not smooth. The biggest problem is his favourite thing in the whole world, Brigsby, doesn’t actually exist and there ain’t going to be any more episodes. But this in itself becomes his route to reconnecting with his family. He decides to make his own film finishing the adventures of Brigsby once and for all, indulging his imagination and reshaping the trauma of his previous existence into something positive. Heart warming and funny and gently acerbic, this is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.

(3.5/5)

The Human Scale

(Andreas Møl Dalsgaard/2013/Denmark) 

Jan Gehl is a Danish architect who pioneered a move away from transport focused urban planning in the 70’s towards a more human, experiential centred planning philosophy. This documentary quite plainly, through the use of talking heads, outlines his approach and how it has influenced and been implemented by planners around the globe. Broken into five chapters it looks at various cities where Gehl’s approach has worked and could work. The piece on Christchurch in New Zealand after the terrible earthquake of 2011 is most revealing and a little surprising. The fact that the civic authorities went to the populace and sought their opinion on how to rebuild was heartening but the eventual reappraisal by central government in the face of private interests was typical. It was nice to see local government win out by legislating against any retraction of the peoples will. It’s a very informative film but isn’t very engaging. If you have an interest in the subject it’s going to broaden that understanding but it’s not going to light any fires in you either. I can’t imagine anyone stumbling across this and lasting through it all without some prior knowledge or interest in Gehl. But that aside it’s a decent, straightforward piece on a very pertinent and interesting concept for these times; personally, however, I think we have gone too far in damaging the environment for piecemeal adjustments to traffic and city living to counter or effect the real problem of pollution and overdependence on fossil fuels. That’s not Gehl’s goal obviously but I found myself coming to that conclusion repeatedly as I watched.

(2.5/5)

Ilo Ilo

(Anthony Chen/2013/Singapore) 

A moderately well off Singaporean family hire a Filipino maid and the changed dynamic of the household brings them to a new awareness of themselves as a family. The kid, Jiale, is unruly and his parents are disconnected, distant and wrapped up in work. The whole family seem like assholes and sympathy for Terry, the housemaid, is immediate. However as the film unfurls and we peek into each family members perspective it becomes more obvious why each one is troubled in their own way. Terry acts as a common touching point and opens the family up to their emotional needs so they begin to recognise how they’ve been lacking in support for each other. This is a lovely film, set against the economic crisis of 1997 in Asia the stresses and worries of that backdrop colour the story onscreen. Terry’s own story is evidence of the effect of financial insecurities, an immigrant worker, working far from her family, isolated and struggling in a foreign culture. Ilo Ilo shows how a family unit can adapt and defend itself against the pressures of the outside world and that no matter what happens, life goes on and going on together is far better than muddling through alone.

(3.5/5)

Mattress Men

(Colm Quinn/2016/Ireland) 

Mattress Men is a recession tale refracted through the phenomenon of Mattress Mick, a Dublin business man who re-invented himself using social media to survive the economic downturn. The mastermind behind this reinvention is Paul Kelly and it’s his story which is at the heart of the documentary. In debt, struggling to keep his relationship together and provide for his kids, Paul throws himself into getting Michael Flynn’s business back on its feet using guerrilla advertising and the persona of Mattress Mick. Lack of recognition for his efforts causes a rift between Kelly and Flynn but Mattress Mick has gotten too big to be brought down by personal conflict. Their relationship becomes a microcosm of post recession Ireland: Flynn, the business entity using every resource to weather the storm of the downturn, and Kelly, the employee, accepting conditions outside the norm for fear of that same storm. We see little of the real Michael Flynn, most of his dialogue is related to his business and how he can progress things otherwise he is seen flitting in and out of offices or waiting in corners on the sets of the videos Kelly makes to keep the Mattress Mick ball rolling. Paul Kelly is the real star, he singlehandedly creates a position for himself refusing to be ground down by the austerity that is crippling his personal life. And it’s his personal life that injects pathos into this film; his story becomes the real concern. There is a niggling feeling of things being too perfect when he lands a long sought contract from Flynn which will help him with his welfare status but assuming it as uncontrived one has to wonder how much this new situation will actually help him. Knowing Flynn as the astute business man he has projected throughout, having someone on contract and off the payroll surely suits him just fine. But this is a disservice to a man who employs someone fulltime to walk the streets dressed as a mattress, seems to be on genuinely good friend terms with all his staff and speaks fair and honest words about Kelly towards the end of the film. Whatever the truth, Mattress Men makes for absorbing viewing. 

(3.5/5)

Baarìa

(Giuseppe Tornatore/2009/Italy)

An Italian film that takes inspiration from a load of other Italian films, most notably Amarcord and Cinema Paradiso, Baaria just about gets away with it due to its charm. The first half hour is likecinematic ADHD as the camera flits rapidly from scene to scene building up a sense of the town itself and the host of characters that are the focus of the following couple of hours. It’s well executed and the story in and of itself is ok and keeps you watching as the trials and tribulations of the town and region are reflected through the history of one family. But there’s a lot of de ja vu here too and you can’t help but think you’re watching a patchwork quilt of someone’s favourite bits of those other movies. If you can let that go and allow Baaria bring you along it will tug at the heart and warm it up before the credits roll for sure.

(2.5/5)

Eyes Without A Face

(Georges Franju/1960/France)

What’s immediately striking about this film is the opening scene of a lady in a car with a manic score pronouncing a state of dramatic tension. Its similarity to the car scene early on in Hitchcock’s Psycho is remarkable especially as both films were made and released in 1960 so neither director was influencing the other. Synchronicities aside Eyes Without A Face is a psychological horror movie about a plastic surgeon attempting to reconstruct his daughters face after a car crash. His methods stray into morally reprehensible territory and the resulting effects on all involved are devastating. The story plays out nicely and the thematic score is an ear worm, working brilliantly throughout to cue immediate tension in the viewer. It falls down a bit in terms of direction; it was Franju’s first foray into feature films having established himself as a documentary filmmaker. Some scenes are slightly wooden in both dialogue and acting but it redeems itself with a superb and surprising ending. Frequently described elsewhere as poetic, the final images strike an eloquent note and show why it’s considered a classic. The influence of much of the imagery and themes in Eyes Without A Face can be seen in films like Halloween, The Skin I Live In or Face/Off for example.

(3/5)