Monkey's Blog - with a little help from Alice

Yet MORE marvellous movies! 
 [UPDATED 10 MARCH & 19 APRIL 2013]

Well, the Oscars have now come and gone, with no great surprises. But there have beeen several cinematic treats since then: To the Wonder, Cloud Atlas and Stoker have all wowed us!

Claudia Winkleman and Danny Leigh do a great job on Film 2013: their views are often in sharp contrast, and they joke about with each-other, so it's always enjoyable and interesting. A shame BBC iPlayer only gives it a week of catch-up time. However, they both somewhat disparaged To the Wonder in their review.

We really liked the film. The "Wonder" in question was first glimpsed as a red rose in the frost, atop Mont Saint-Michel. Alice says it also symbolised the initial ecstasies of "being in love", which fade when love is perceived as not fully returned. I've never gone in for all that sloppy stuff myself, so I can't comment.

Parallel with the story of the lovers, we also have Javier Bardem as a priest struggling with his faith, "What is this love that loves us?" yet still managing to preach and visit the needy. (A role reversal from that figure of doom he played, together with a gruesome haircut, in No Country for Old Men.) The beauty is also contrasted with scenes of pollution and poverty - again brilliantly captured by Emmanuel Lubezki.

Claudia and Danny debated whether they could bear much more "twirling" by the female leads, but Claudia imagined it might be fun to do all that joyful running through the fields, to which Danny added, "looking winsomely back over your shoulder"!
I think he said winsomely. . .

I told Alice I fancied some winsome twirling, so she inserted  me into a Malick sunset scene. [Click for the full glory.]

The film as a whole is a typical Terrence Malick offering, with absolutely gorgeous images (see here), philosophical musings and lots of voice-over with little live dialogue. Just the sort of thing we really like! Some detractors say he's degenerated into self-parody, yet other reviewers appreciate his unique skills. See also bfi's Film of the Week.

Cloud Atlas was much preferred to The Wonder by Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman. Claudia and Danny variously called it "bonkers" and "stoned" but she admitted she loved it all the same. Hannah McGill's review is titled "Breathtaking action, profound emotion, dark sense of fun and sheer deranged brilliance." Sums it up!

There are six stories told, all in different time-frames. Having thought David Mitchell's novel rather pretentious and very confusing, Alice much preferred this interpretation, which she found more understandable, with the links between characters made by having some of the cast take on several different roles. Some-one has even constructed this "infographic" [What!] chart to explain the film's complexities. You can right click here for a larger version, but go to Cinema Blend for an explanation and to see it full size.

There was considerable inter-cutting of the different time periods, also pointing up the overall themes. But most importantly, it all looked totally wonderful. I especially liked the futuristic city, which reminded me of one of our very favourite films, Blade Runner. I thought it was altogether a great load of fun, and somehow at the same time very serious too. Alice got quite swept away by the whole experience. Certainly worth the price of a cinema seat!

From a photo by Dan Winters

The film actually had three writer-directors. Two of these were the unusual Wachowski siblings, responsible for the ground-breaking Matrix films (a yes to those - we do like our sci-fi) and the third was Tom Tykwer, who made the bizarre Perfume.

There's a fascinating article about the Wachowskis in The New Yorker which tells how the three directors wrote the screenplay of this "unfilmable" novel together. At one point they had hundreds of differently colour coded index cards, representing separate scenes, spread over the floor in different arrangements, until they found a sequence which satisfied them. A real labour of love.

In a video at Time Entertainment, David Mitchell himself says it's as though the Wachowskis "dis-assembled my Lego novel and re-assembled it in the shape of a film."

There is another in depth, informative and extremely interesting interview with the siblings at A.V.Club. We've picked a few quotes to whet your appetite: "Cinema is a social art form. You cannot make a piece of cinema by yourself"; "The main character in [Cloud Atlas] is humanity" and "the most interesting art is open to a spectrum of interpretation". Plus some intriguing insights about the Matrix. Go check it out!

Park Chan-woo's Stoker has been described by the screen-writer, Wentworth Miller, as a "horror film, a family drama and a psychological thriller." It is indeed all of that, and if we were to describe the plot, you would think it nothing much out of the ordinary in such a genre. However, what makes it extra-ordinary, is the comsummate style of the cinematography, cutting, and sound. Reviewers use phrases like "gorgeously mounted"; "ominously beautiful"; or "startling and sensual images".

Dear Alice was well nigh swooning in her seat, it was the best visual feast she had laid her eyes upon for quite a while. And full of suggestive symbolism: see Mark Kermode. If you've been following our film-based posts, you will by now have realised that Alice's highest appreciation is usually for the pictorial aspects of a film, and those directors who really make full use of the potentials of this truely spell-binding art form.

Yes, yes, but let's not get overly pretentious. Sometimes I just want a rollicking good story, without too much of the fancy stuff. Don't we all?

Alice also expects the highest standards of acting, and was not in the least disappointed by any of  the stirling cast: Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, and Nicole Kidman. I thought they were all horribly convincing, too.
Ummm, is that right?  Oh - you know what I mean.

So, folks, To the Wonder, Cloud Atlas and Stoker all get top marks from both of us!