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March 4, 1963

Red Road

Director Andrea Arnolds’ Red Road is the story of a woman who carries a crushing pain inside her, and because of a random encounter feels a compulsion to confront it. It’s a slow movie – There isn’t one instance of what film scholars call exposition: Having one character say something so that WE can understand something is going on. No, Red Road leaks its story out slowly, and then it lowers the boom on us.

When one watches watch Jackie (Kate Dickey) at work, you quietly note that this is lonely way to make a living. Manning a desk in front of a large bank of TV screens, she spies daily on the people of Glasgow as part of Britains vast web of closed circuit cameras. She picks out certain people, like the man who walks his bulldog every day and the cleaning lady rocking out with her headphones. Her little familiar smile makes it s evident that she is familiar with them. She watches them from habit, and always from a distance. That seems to be by choice.

Jackie starts to emerge as a person who is somehow disengaged from everyday life. It’s hard to know why, there’s just something about her that says “loner.” Her apartment doesn’t look like it ever sees company. She has a male co-worker that she has sex with, but it is passionless and abrupt. There is no indication of any real affection between the two.

One day she receives an invitation in the mail to a wedding, and we see the first clues as to what makes her tick. The wedding is of a sister-in-law, and Jackie is plainly uncomfortable here. There’s a little conversation with an older man, who says “We only want to say goodbye to him proper.” It’s not spelled out, but we can guess who this is – Her ex-father in law. So she was married to his son, who is now dead. The threads start to come together a bit.

Then, one evening at work, Jackie spies Clyde (Tony Curran) on her video screen, and everything changes. It’s evident that this is someone that she knows, but from where? Taking advantage of the cameras, she is able to essentially track this man everywhere, including to his home: The scuzzy high-rise apartments that give the film its name. Although the film makes the CC cameras a mere plot device, it also makes a quiet little statement about their existence and use. The Brits have made the decision to forego essential human freedoms in exchange for the appearance of safety. Red Road lays open this idea, and exposes it for all to see, without making judgments about right or wrong.

The melancholy Jackie that we saw at the film’s open is now replaced by one driven by an obsession – The man in the video. No longer content to merely observe, she begins to take an active role. She uses the cameras to establish that the man works for a locksmith, and goes as far as to call his workplace, and ask if they have done a background check on him.

The film only very sparingly doles out clues as to the relationship between Jackie and Clyde, and they are easy to miss. Jackie pulls out a newspaper with his picture on the front page that announces that he has been sentenced to 10 years in jail. She pulls out baby clothes, stuffs then with socks, and hugs them. She gets into bed with 2 cremation urns. These tiny little scenes fill in a lot of the back-story for us.

Jackies pursuit of Clyde takes her right up close, and she eventually meets him. Clyde is an intriguing figure. Our exposure to him has only been through Jackie, and we assume the worst, based on the signals she has given us. To be sure, he is no angel – he’s crude, and profane, but Jackies’ early encounters with him give us a whiff of a human being, as well. We learn that he has a daughter who thinks he is dead. “That’s what her Mom told her.”

Red Road’s cat and mouse game leads to a scene of immense, unsettling power, as Jackie has sex with Clyde. The scene is explicit, and is frankly uncomfortable to watch, knowing what we know about the relationship between the two. On the face of it, it doesn’t make sense that she is there, but the immediate aftermath indicates what her real game is, and suddenly we are forced to re-evaluate what we have just watched. There are at least 2 or 3 agendas happening in this one sequence. She is using the sex against Clyde, yes. She is probably also punishing herself for what she sees as her sins. Is it possible that she enjoys it, as well? Perhaps, at some subterranean level, this is also true. There have been a couple of hints in that direction. This remarkable sequence takes the loyalties that we have built up with these characters, and pulls them apart. We are left without moral bearings.

The film looks to be heading down a road of despair, but it is rescued by another unexpected appearance on Jackies video screen. In one tiny instant, she realizes that she has a piece of common ground with this man who she considered the distillation of evil. The resolution finally comes in a beautifully done encounter between Jackie and Clyde, as they revisit the site where their fates came together. Clyde tells his story of how he made a tragic error, and Jackie about how her last words to her daughter were to “Get out of my sight.” It’s a gorgeous, heart-wrenching scene.

At its root, Red Road is a story about catharsis. Clyde knows that he was responsible for the destruction of a family. Jackie feels that it was because if her that they were put in a position to die. In a perverse way, they are lucky that their paths crossed again. As we see Jackie in the films closing moments, she is different – better. Instead of sitting in front of a screen, she is down on the street with the people. She finally seems at peace. That’s the thing about cauterizing a wound. It’s painful, but in the end, the wound heals.

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The Marquee (The Duke plays hockey)

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Monica Vitti smokes.

My Week of Movie Watching

Pale Flower – I consider a bit of an aficionado of Japanese cinema, so I was taken aback when this one showed up as one of Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies”. I had never heard of it. Ebert invokes both Film Noir and the new wave in his review, and as contradictory as those influences sound, he hits the nail on the head. If Antonioni had gone to Japan and made a Noir, this is what he would have come up with. The film revolves around a hit man just out of a spell in prison for a murder. He falls under the spell of a mysterious gambling woman who seems to only be engaged by danger. There’s little dialogue, and you have to be a little patient with the film, as it settles into its tale of two people whose sexual circuitry is all messed up. The pay-off is worth it.

Prime Cut – Lee Marvin as a Chicago leg-breaker sent to collect money from a crooked meat packer/sex slave dealer played by Gene Hackman. I’m not really sure why this one went so wrong for me. Marvin is a mobster, but if you entered the movie 15 minutes in, you might never deduce that. Hackman, as great an actor as he is, never really convinces as a heavy (Hell, his characters’ name is Mary Ann!) I liked the way the action all occurs in sunny Kansas farm country, instead of a city, and there is a well-staged shoot-out in a field of sunflowers, but overall this one disappointed me.

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The Last Command

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Linda Darnell

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The Marquee

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Gloria Grahame and Cyd Charisse

Between the Covers

Xavier and Elijah are a couple of young Cree from the forests of Northern Ontario. They’ve grown up together in a life of hunting and fishing – Living off the land. Xavier is shy and backwards. He is a ‘bush” Indian, and barely speaks English. Elijah is worldlier – He went to an English school, and is cheeky and talkative. Despite their differences, they share a seemingly unbreakable bond. When these two enlist to fight in World War I, it’s an adventure- a lark. How little they realize…

I’ve not read or seen much that does justice to capturing the numbing, sick-in-the-pit-of the stomach fear of being in the middle of combat, but Three Day Road captures it perfectly. It’s all here: The mud and trenches, the blood and entrails…and the fact that the guy trying to kill you is right over there.

The two boys turn out to be natural snipers, and Elijah quickly evolves from an outcast to a kind of mythical killing machine. As his kill total skyrockets, so does his fascination with the hunt of his quarry. His obsession begins to take on dark overtones, as he begins to collect the scalps of his victims. I was reminded of Cormac McCarthy’s great novel Blood Meridian in this book, as both novels deal with characters that are adrift in a world where mercy is absent and brutality is celebrated.

Xavier, on the other hand, struggles hard to maintain his humanity in this inferno. His love for Elijah is tempered with sadness and disgust at his friends’ transformation into a monster. Xavier grows to hate the war, and ultimately the one he loves. The novels' conclusion may be somewhat inevitable, but it's the journey that's the thing, not the destination.

Note of interest: The story is influenced by the career of real-life Ojibwe sniper Francis Pegahmagabow, who was credited with over 300 kills in WWI. He is actually mentioned in this book as “Peggy.”

I watch the beast pull up and give one last great sigh, as if it is very tired from the long journey, smoke pouring from its sides. People wave from the windows and people on the ground wave back, just as I have watched them do for days. Then men and women and children who have arrived start stepping down into the arms of others. I see a few soldiers and search among them for Elijah's face with his sly grin. The crowd begins to thin, and once again I do not see an Indian soldier with one leg.

I am turning to leave when I see through one of the windows the silhouette of a man inside. He walks slowly along the aisle, on crutches, in a uniform, a small bag slung over his shoulder. I step away from the shadow of the wall. He wears a hat, just like the wemistikoshiw do, but this one is of their army and I cannot see his face for his looking down as he slowly makes his way down the steps on his crutches. He is an old man, I think. So skinny. This cannot be the Elijah I know. One leg of his pants is pinned up and hangs down a little way, empty.

When he is off the steps I begin to back away, thinking it is not him. He looks up and I see his face, thin and pale, high cheekbones, and ears sticking out from beneath his hat. I stumble a little, the blood rushing away from my head. The ghost of my nephew Xavier looks at me.

He sees me at the same moment, and I watch as his eyes take a long time to register what they see, but when they do he begins to rock back and forth on his crutches. He falls to the ground. I rush up to him, kneel beside him, grab his warm hands. He is no ghost. I hold him to me. His heart beats weakly. I am struck suddenly that he is very ill.

"Nephew," I whisper. "You are home. You are home."

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Ralph Meeker

My Week of Movie Watching

The Red Shoes – Ever since my wife and I saw Black Swan, I’ve wanted to show this to her. RS is still a great film, but perhaps not for exactly the same reasons that I remember. The big pluses are the performance of Anton Walbrook as the one-minded ballet director Lementov, and the set design and choreography (especially in the great extended Red Shoes sequence). The films falters a bit, (and I stress a BIT) where it comes to the romance between Moira Shearer and Marius Goring. The two lovers don’t really get a chance to deliver any heat – The film has to tell us how in love they are, because it’s not that evident. Still, recommended.

Rabbit-Proof Fence – The true life story of two young aboriginal girls who walk 900 miles across the Australian outback after being forcibly taken from their home by Government officials. This is the story of a monumental human achievement, and for all its terrific qualities, the film doesn’t do a great job of capturing the magnitude of what these girls did. I mean, the walk took 9 weeks, and the two don’t really look the worse for wear at the end. Still, this is a good film, and a biting indictment of a shameful racist law. Peter Gabriel does the soundtrack, and it’s top notch - Its organic, ethereal, and moody. Recommended

Woodstock (Blu-Ray Directors cut) and Monterey Pop – I love Woodstock, and I try to watch it every few years or so. Putting aside what I consider the musical highlights (Richie Havens, The Who, Ten Years After, Canned Heat, Joe Cocker, Joan Baez, Sly and the Family Stone and especially Santana) it is such a perfect time capsule because of the non-music. Everything that made the sixties the sixties is here - The fashion, the drugs, the attitude (“We live in a group – what you would call a commune”), and it’s to the films credit that it spends so much time on the stuff that was happening when the music wasn’t playing. I’m fascinated at how many of the characters one remembers – The Porti-San guy and the guy who pops out of the Porti-san. The girl who has lost her sister out there. The “Stay ON the grass” guy. The naked Frisbee girl. The yoga guy. Watch this if you haven’t. If you have, watch it again.

Compared to Woodstock, the Monterey Festival in 1967 was small potatoes when you look at the numbers involved (half a million versus less than 70,000), but Monterey was the template for what was to come two years later. Again, there were some terrific performances, Like The Who doing "My Generation", (and smashing the shit out of everything), Otis Redding, Janis Joplin doing "Ball and Chain", and of course Hendrix again. This was the concert where Jimi set his guitar ablaze, and my favourite shot in this film is a quick audience reaction shot right after Hendrix’ set. Instead of cheering and pandemonium, the reaction is gaping mouths and utter shock and awe. My only musical quibble is that Ravi Shankar’s set seems to go on forever, after most of the other artists only get a minute or two onscreen. It’s doesn’t compare to Woodstock in giving the viewer the sense of what the experience was like, but I still recommend it.

2012 – If you love lotsa stuff blowing up, this is for you, because basically the whole planet blows up. This one is entertainment for 16 year-old boys, I guess. The premise is that the sun starts acting up, the earths core is boiling, and we’re all gonna die. The film centres on a writer (John Cusack), and his estranged family, and how they can make their way to China to join an enormous “ark” that has been built covertly to save the earth’s best and brightest. Hollywood being Hollywood, the bad guys are US Government officials who are willing to kill anyone who endangers the plan. The same pattern happens again and again. There is a little scene where people talk to each other, and then they are interrupted by that damn apocalypse. Cusack and family somehow outrun earthquakes, meteor showers, falling buildings, you name it. Not recommended. Really, don’t bother.

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Jacob's Ladder

Adrian Lynes Jacob’s Ladder is a maddening dervish of a movie. It’s dark, nervous, and soaked through with hallucinogenic angst. One could watch it through ten times in succession and still not have a grasp of what you have just seen. Despite all this, it works wonderfully as a portrait of a man’s descent into madness.

The Jacob of the title is Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins), a well-educated Viet Nam vet now working as a mailman. The film starts with a flashback back to the jungle, as Singer’s platoon is ambushed and suffers devastating losses. Singer himself is bayoneted and almost dies.

Pitch forward to the present, and Singer is now working in a post office, and living with a co-worker played by Elizabeth Pena. There are signs early on that there are some cracks in his psyche. Singer awakens from the Viet Nam flashback to find himself in an almost abandoned subway train. He asks a lady for help, and she is so silent and strange that it is frightening. That’s not the real kicker however – A cursory glance at a sleeping bum seems to reveal a tail like a serpent. These images defy logical explanation – This guy must be nuts, right?

Some more info is introduced. An old photo of Singers now-dead son Gabe (Macauley Culkin). We start to learn about his shattered marriage, and the tragic loss of this child.

A character from Singers past comes into play – A platoon-mate named Paul, who suffers from the same nightmarish visions. This starts to skew our view of what we are seeing, and when Paul’s car explodes in a ball of fire, it’s evident that there are more layers to this story.

The movie calls attention to the Biblical names of the main characters, and it’s interesting to investigate this in the context of the story. Jacob was the son of Isaac, and was known for having wrestled an Angel whilst on his way back to meet his estranged brother, Esau. The movie Jacob is wrestling, too, and a comment made by Jacob’s chiropractor (Danny Aiello) circles back to the biblical Jacob. “If you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.”

Then there’s the case of Singers’ woman Jezebel. The name has become synonymous with deceit and treachery, and it’s not by accident that the character has this name. It is, however, a little hard to get a firm grip on Penas’ Jezebel. She’s got a streak of treachery in her, like when she incinerates Jacobs photos of his family. On the other hand, she does seem to genuinely love him, and saves his life at one point. Like I said, she’s hard to pin down.

It’s hard to gain a toehold in this film, because Lyne doesn’t ever give you a chance to reliably stand back and decide what is real. There are passages that are plainly hallucination, sure, but he doesn’t stop there. After Jacob almost dies, and is revived, he is suddenly back with his family. It would be reasonable to assume that the previous events are imagined, but then the screenplay does a sly thing – it has Jacob jokingly reference the hallucination. “You know Jezebel from the post office? I was living with her! She had these fantastic thighs..” I found this scene not reassuring, but disorienting, like I was being teased with another layer of fog.

There’s a scene where Aiello rescues Jacob from the hospital, and again, what seems like a reprise from all the madness and disorientation actually raises a lot of questions, like how did he know Jacob was there, and how does he just waltz in and take him away? I felt the film was maybe pulling a sleight of hand on me.

I’m making this movie sound like an impossible slog, aren’t I? It IS difficult, and disorienting, but it is to its’ credit that it manages to maintain its narrative drive, as Jacob plows forward in his quest to find out what is happening to him. There is a shadowy character that we have seen briefly who seems to be following Singer, and eventually, the two men meet face-to-face. It’s here, in a barren alley that the fogs lift, as Jacob learns about a hippie chemist who made a deal with the Army to stay out of jail, and how the job he was given went horribly wrong.

This final revelation seems to lift the cloak off of Singer, and as he goes back to his old home, which seems strangely preserved in time, we think back to what the chiropractor said “If you’ve made your peace, the demons are angels freeing you from the earth.”

I spoke above about the preponderance of Biblical names in JL. The one I failed to touch on was Jacobs’ dead son Gabe (or Gabriel). The Biblical Gabriel is an angel, who is considered a messenger from God. Thus, when Jacob encounters his son again in his old home, we know why the child is there. This passage is beautifully soothing after everything we have gone through with Singer, and the expression on the man’s face as his son speaks to him is absolutely perfect – It’s sadness, recognition, love, peace, fulfillment, and relief all rolled into one divine smile.

For all the misdirection and twists in this story, however, JL saves the biggest till the last. An epilogue flashes back to Viet Nam and we encounter Jacob after he has been brought to the hospital. Theories abound about what this scene means. Is it an hallucination? Is it what really happened, and everything we have seen the hallucination? I have my own theory about it. Coming immediately after Jacob has again encountered his dead son, I think that this scene is a “reboot”, where Jacob has somehow erased all the pain and paranoia of his post-war life. Just have a listen to the song playing in the background during this sequence. The singer is Al Jolson, and the song? The song is "Sonny Boy".

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The Art of Showing Nothing - An Interview with Robert Bresson

This is another interview from Charles Samuels landmark book Encountering Directors. Samuels spoke to Bresson in 1970, and the two covered most of Bressons’ work to that point in this lengthy conversation. Samuels’ discussions are notable in that he actually has the balls to tell these great filmmakers how they might have done their job better. Enjoy.

My commentary on Bressons' A Man Escaped

My Week of Movie Watching

This is actually a few weeks worth.

The Kings Speech – It’s like someone sat down with a “How to win an Oscar” kit and put this movie together. First of all is the lead character with the disability (Much like Rain Man, Forrest Gump, My Left Foot, etc). Add in sumptuous costumes and set designs. Add a couple of high-profile stars in Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter, and fill in with the cream of Brit character actors (Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, Timothy Spall). Yeah, it’s easy to look at this film and be cynical, but I have to say I still enjoyed it. I never knew the story of King George and his stuttering, and the way that the abdication of Edward VIII is woven in is well done. Guy Pearce is terrific as the monarch who gave it all up. Recommended.

Mouchette – I always have hits and misses with the films of Robert Bresson, and this is one of the latter. The story concerns a troubled French girl, her dying mother, and her abusive father. Mouchette’s life is a hard one, and it gets worse as she suffers a rape at the hands of a man she trusts. Bressons’ protagonists are always tight-lipped, and Mouchette maybe more so that any other. The films’ heartbreaking finale will leave you grasping for answers. I sort of recommend this, but I don’t put it in the class of the great A Man Escaped, which I consider Bresson’s masterpiece.

Proof – Little-known Australian film from the early 90’s concerns Martin (Hugo Weaving), a blind man who takes photos of his everyday life and has a friend (a young Russell Crowe) describe them to him. There’s also a housekeeper (Genevieve Picot) whose relationship with Martin is a jumble of sexual attraction and calculated cruelty, and who begins a clandestine affair with Crowe. This film is low budget, and looks it, but it redeemed by stellar performances by the three leads. It’s definitely worth a look.

Between the Covers

Wheeler Burden did not think of visiting Berggasse 19 until the third day in Vienna, or at least there is no mention of it in the journal he kept with meticulous care from almost the moment of his arrival. The first days he spent adjusting, you might say, to the elation of newness and the spectacle of this city he knew so well in theory but had never actually visited. Then the practicalities settled on him, followed by a deep feeling of displacement. Wheeler was a long way from home with no means of either identification or support. But before the gravity of the situation set in, he was almost able to enjoy himself. Much of the first day, of course, he was busy marvelling at his mere presence in such a magnificent and imperial city. It was 1897 Vienna, after all. The first hour, we learn from the journal, he spent clearing the fog from his mind and pulling himself painfully back to full awareness, emerging from the miasma of what seemed like a long uneasy sleep, and from the catastrophic precipitating event he was nowhere near ready to remember.

Wheeler wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed to 1897 Vienna. If that premise makes The Little Book sound like a Back to the Future-esque bit of triviality, rest easy. Guided by the notes of his old teacher, the venerable Anaud Esterhazy, Wheeler unravels the mysteries surrounding his family; His war-hero father, who was murdered by the Gestapo and his beautiful, yet repressed grandmother. Also making appearances are Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Mark Twain, and an eight-year-old Adolf Hitler. Turn of the century Vienna is captured beautifully here: A vibrant city of art and music, albeit one rife with an anti-Semitism that would plant the seeds for the horrors to come 40 years later.

An article on the creation of The Little Book, which was a decades long labour of love for author Selden Edwards.

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Britt Ekland

The Marquee (A gallery of Archers)

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The Last Detail

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Cloak and Dagger

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OK - THIS is Lilli Palmer

Sex

Lilli Palmer

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