Mike Moore winning the Palme D’Or? It seems so bizarre that it is hardly surprising that in all the stories about Fahrenheit 9/11 preceding the festival, nobody had really suggested this as a possibility, despite the film being in competition. I can’t wait to see the film: I loved Bowling for Columbine, and am sympathetic to all but the most outrageous of Moore’s politics. Yet I also fear it may be terrible. Columbine I thought stood head and shoulders above Moore’s other work because he successfully reigned in many of his worst impulses. Moore has a weakness for hyperbole and half-truths that has brought down many of his other films and books, but despite the best attempts of the right to discredit Columbine, nobody really poked any serious holes in it. There is plenty of scope for a really devastating attack on George W. Bush without bending the truth, but I fear Moore’s anger and the praise heaped on him post-Columbine may have gone to his head. I can see Fahrenheit 9/11 descending into hysteria, conspiracy theories and factual error. Let’s hope I’m wrong: for all his faults, Moore popularises the left and has the kind of cross-cultural reach that usually only the right can achieve.
Film
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The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
It’s ironic that Francis Ford Coppola made his name as arguably the leading director of the 1970s on the back of The Godfather. Just when Hollywood was embracing a new wave of film school educated directors, and financing lots of offbeat, low-budget “youth” pictures trying to recapture the success of Easy Rider, Coppola broke through with a very classical studio picture. It really is, as Leonard Maltin’s guide puts it, “the 1970’s answer to Gone with the Wind:” in other words, an epic but conventional adaptation of a lengthy source novel. Later, with Apocalypse Now, Coppola would try for a more highbrow art project that better justified his “auteur” status, but here – superficially at least – Coppola’s triumph is simply one of expert stewardship. The Godfather is, first and foremost, a perfectly wrought interpretation of Mario Puzo’s novel. People sometimes cite The Godfather as an example of a film masterpiece springing from a trashy book, but I think this is unfair to Puzo. The qualities that make the film great are mostly present in the novel: if we ascribe greater value to the film version, it’s because we are more willing to surrender to the experience of pulp fiction in the cinema than in print.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
There’s a sequence late in Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich where two characters chase each other through the subconscious of actor John Malkovich. The deepest recesses of memory – such as childhood and teenage humiliations – are literalised as little mini-dramas that the characters can barge into and interrupt. The sequence lasts only a couple of minutes, but it’s easy to see it as the genesis for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the latest film based upon a script by Malkovich screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. This time the mind we rummage through is that of Joel (Jim Carrey): a forlorn, withdrawn man whose relationship with the extroverted and impetuous Clementine (Kate Winslet) is in disarray. The central gimmick is that Joel and Clementine stumble across Lacuna, a company offering erasure of unwanted memories. Joel seizes on the chance to put the relationship literally out of mind, and the central portion of the film sees Joel wandering through his own mind and exploring his memories of the relationship even as they are extinguished one by one.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir, 2003)
Plot wise, there is not a great deal to Peter Weir’s sailing picture Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British vessel Surprise is alone at sea off the coast of South America with orders to intercept the French vessel Acheron. After an opening skirmish, Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) plays a cat-and-mouse game with the French ship, which significantly outguns his own. Along the way he must deal with inexperienced officers, insubordinate and superstitious crewmembers, and particularly the doubts and war-weariness of the ships’ doctor Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany).
Review – Spellbound (Jeffrey Blitz, 2003)
The Spellbound in question is not Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller, but rather the absolutely riveting, Oscar nominated documentary about spelling bees in the United States. As with so many of the best documentaries (including the one that beat it to the Oscar, Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine), it is at once hilarious and yet kind of disturbing. It follows eight children to the National Spelling Bee, with the first half of the film patiently establishing their personalities of the contestants, and the second half showing the relentless, pressure cooker finals that utilise a gratuitously unfair (but extremely exciting) sudden death format.
The news in the last couple of weeks that Roy E. Disney (and another board member, Stanley Gold) have resigned from the board of the Disney corporation after disputes with Michael Eisner draws attention to the depressing future that faces the studio. I have no inside knowledge of the studio, so have no idea how effective Roy E. was as a board member. But even if his role was purely ceremonial, the symbolism of what’s occurred is bad enough. Roy E. Disney is Walt Disney’s nephew, and the son of studio co-founder Roy Disney. Given the elder Roy’s much larger then generally understood role in the studio’s operation (he ran the business end until after Walt’s death, and the studio was initially the “Disney Brothers” studio), Roy E. represented a direct, tangible link to the heritage of the company, which has always been its greatest asset. It’s long been easy – and largely accurate – to disparage Disney as just another soulless media conglomerate, but Roy E. was still there as a human link to the glory days of the thirties when Walt blazed his trails. (Sure Roy E. was just a kid at the time, but we’re talking symbolism here).
Star Trek: Nemesis (Stuart Baird, 2002)
There has been a long-standing tradition that the even-numbered Trek films are good and the odd numbered ones mediocre or bad. Star Trek: Nemesis – the tenth Trek film, and almost certainly the last involving the full “Next Generation” crew – mixes enough good, bad and indifferent elements that it would have been held up as vindication of that theory whether it was been odd or even numbered. The villain of the piece is Shinzon, who has masterminded a political coup in the Romulan empire by the empire’s underclass, the Remans. Story logic would dictate that Shinzon would be Reman himself, but Nemesis is founded on twin contrivances: firstly, that Shinzon is a clone of the captain of the starship Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard, and secondly, that Shinzon has somehow come into possession of a prototype for the android Data. These plot points are, on close examination, patently absurd, but they serve their purpose of providing a personal link between the villain and the hero of the piece.
The last week or so has seen the news splash around the internet that Star Wars will arrive on DVD in September 2004, without the real question being answered: which version? Despite the breathless headlines “Original Trilogy on DVD,” nobody knows if we will in fact get the original trilogy as released in 1977 to 1983 (although those willing to take a punt have tended to state that we will get the 1997 Special Editions instead).
The Matrix Revolutions (Lana and Lilly Wachowski, 2003)
I didn’t enjoy The Matrix Reloaded as much as the original, but I think one of the principal pleasures was mulling over the questions it raised but did not answer. The months between the two films have led to in-depth debate about the implications of Reloaded.
E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg), 1982
Accounts of the early development of, and inspiration for, Spielberg’s wonderful E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial talk of two early ideas that merged into one. The first was the idea of a thriller about aliens called Night Skies, involving aliens menacing a farmhouse, which included a subplot about an alien being left behind on Earth. The second was a nebulous idea about a film based on the life of children. The latter idea seems to have gone through many incarnations, being referred to variously as Clearwater, After School, Growing Up, and A Boy’s Life. Some of these may nominally have been considered separate projects (Clearwater seems to have been based on a treatment by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, while Growing Up was a Robert Zemeckis / Bob Gale script), but the common thread was that Spielberg wanted to do a small scale, intimate film about children. The greatness of E.T. can be linked to its origins in this premise: it works so well because it would be an interesting movie even without the alien.
