Film Fanatics
I like to sit above the computer, so I can keep eye-contact with whomever is the Typist.
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Goodness me, I've been really busy recently.
I'll just have to add several posts pretty quickly, IF I can...
Alice says, "One of them had better be MINE!" I say, "Catch-up first."
Last week I went with - well, I hesitate to name names, what with all the hullabaloo between Alice and Vera. Let's just say all three of us were "present in spirit" (another of those stupid, illogical human sayings) at a meeting of the Film Appreciation Group. They meet in the local Art-House cinema. Outside there were banners advertising the upcoming Edinburgh International Film Festival - so we got our programmes inside.
First they discussed films they had seen in the last month. One most of us had seen was Albert Nobbs. It had received variable reviews, and we were divided on it. It certainly exposed how difficult it was for women to be independent in late 19th century Ireland. I particularly admired the stalwart Janet McTeer as the initially mysterious Hubert and remembered how superb she was in Portrait of a Marriage as the bi-sexual Vita Sackville-West.
A few of us also saw Even the Rain, about a film crew shooting (in Bolivia because it's cheap) an account of Christopher Columbus's conquest of Hispaniola. They discover a local protest about water supplies mirrors the events in their movie. It worked really well on many levels: casting and rehearsals for the "film-within-the-film"...
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[Vera, typically, suddenly interrupts to say that technique goes back to Shakespeare's Hamlet, and in her Student Theatre Group she
played the boy who played the Player Queen. Alice, who did an M.A. in
Drama and Theatre Arts, says somewhat spitefully that if Vera knew her Literary History properly she'd realise the device goes back even earlier than
WS, and anyway why wasn't she Ophelia if she thinks she was so good an
actress.] You two, just shut up! As I was saying... and there were "finished" excerpts from the inner film, and then memories of some of the characters too. It dealt with extremely serious topics: colonialism; racial predudice; ecological issues and pollution; big corporations using their financial muscle to oppress indiginous peoples, but also the power of impassioned protest. (My household - that's a tactful term, isn't it? - supports both Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace.) One of the film crew has to make a crucial moral choice towards the end. It was very moving.
We three [??? - Typist] also saw The Monk.
The others in the group said "Trust you!" Vera says she remembers the book being sought after when she was at school. It was "naughty", like Lady Chatterly was, causing all that fuss in 1960. This French language film (set in Spain, just to confuse us Brits) was really well acted, with that magnificent Vincent Cassel in the lead, and the cinematography was simply delectable. That can make or mar a movie, can't it?
The very next day, I got taken to see Death Watch, even though this was another "Trust you!" choice when the Film Group was told of the plan (most of them went to The Angel's Share). It was a restoration of the 1980 original, so a bit dated in style, but fascinating. Set in a futuristic Glasgow, it explored the idea of Reality TV long before it became the sad feature of our culture it now is. It also examined attitudes to death (like that Damien Hirst we saw at the Tate Modern.) .jpg)
And we do like Harvey Keitel.
Vera says, "Ooo, The Piano!"
Alice says,"That scene. You know."
And DON'T click on this link to the official UK website if you want to see it totally fresh.
You have been warned!
Whew! That was a mammoth blog to get looking right. Our standards are very high...
