The bleak and very real life in a small village in The White Ribbon

MUCH has been written about this film already so it seems superfluous to reproduce all the facts here. Just a few comments, then, on things I noticed, from a personal point of view.


Firstly, it was captivating and charming, and brutal and disturbing, and thoroughly believable. It took a long time for the casting people to choose the children (who play a large part), and it is time well spent. The children are astonishingly good and seem very much like they belong to another time (the film is set just before World War 1 in Germany). I saw a photo of the children at Cannes in colour, and yes they look more modern, but also innocent and, to an extent, of another time, still.

The film reminded me of Bergman’s Fanny & Alexander- perhaps because of the emphasis on children, and the contrast with the adult world. I read today that the look of the film is inspired by Bergman/ Nykvist- the use of light in Bergman’s black & white films a big influence. This can be seen in shots in churches and involving the pastor, as in the Bergman film Winter Light.

There was one scene in particular that reminded me I was watching something special. The children of the puritanical pastor are walking morosely into the kitchen to receive their corporal punishment, and the enforcement of the wearing of the white ribbons. We see them only from behind and have a long shot of the closed door of the kitchen. I am in the cinema secretly hoping that the camera stays on this side of the door- that the whole scene is understated and we hear the cries of the poor children through the door, without having to unnecessarily see the awful actions. And this is what happened. The door remained shut, there was a long silence and the camera lingered on the door for quite some time. A comparison can be made here with the caning that Alexander receives from the Bishop in Fanny & Alexander- each of the ten brutal swishes is heard sharply, but we don't see the cane of Alexander, or the Bishop- we feel it in the horror on Fanny's face.

A lovely scene for its warm human interaction took place between the farmer’s son and his nanny. She is patiently answering the little boy’s questions about death, all done in a sensitive and subtle way which proves confusing for the boy. He wants to know if his nanny will die, if his father will die, if his mother has died, and whether or not he will die. His repeated questions are touching and reveal his limited understanding.

Towards the end of the film, the Baroness explains why she wants to leave her husband, the Baron. It is because she has found a better, more secure place for herself and her children elsewhere. It is all perfectly reasonable, but naturally not to him. She gives her reasons: the violence, the constant persecution, and so on- and it all may have been said by a Jewish woman to a friend on why she wants to get out of Germany in 1939.

The White Ribbon recreates the old world powerfully and stays with you a long time because the world it depicts seems so real and truthful. It depicts oppressed life in a small village, a village that is so crippled that it finds it cannot solve any of its enormous problems.

                                                                            

Ten Great Cinema Experiences

10 great cinema experiences as at April 2010


Whilst browsing through some Internet websites discussing the merit or otherwise of Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre, I came across a seductive site that details the Top 10 films of a number of academics that reside and teach in the USA. It can be quite problematic to offer a selection of the 10 best films you have ever seen. This is the case for several reasons.

Firstly, the list will continually change when the moviegoer remembers something else that he/ she may have forgotten before. Secondly, many people would find it very difficult to be totally honest. There are those that may think ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ is a great film, or ‘Forrest Gump’, but ego or pride might prevent them from listing it, feeling it safer to mention ‘Citizen Kane’ to avoid the ridicule of others and keep their reputation intact. And finally, it is extremely difficult to come up with a ‘best’ film in the first place. Is it a ‘best’ film because of the cinematography, or the acting or storyline, or the directing, or just because it left an emotional punch? And how can you limit films that have been created now for over a hundred years, to merely ten anyway? At any rate, any list is limited to the number of films you have actually seen. So just because ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ makes your list, and ‘Ryan’s Daughter’ doesn’t, might simply be because you have never seen ‘Ryan’s Daughter.’ I am yet to see ‘The Bicycle Thieves’ or ‘The Tree of Wooden Clogs’ so they can’t make my Top 10. And we are all influenced by our emotions. We might rate a film in our top ten list that in some ways is really just mediocre- it’s just that we can’t view it subjectively, and we include it because of the emotional experience that we gained whilst in the cinema.

So I have decided I will limit my list to that of the films that I can remember that had the greatest emotional impact on me at the time- that is, the top ten films that have given me the greatest cinematic joy (in no particular order). These films I will always remember with gratitude and fondness, but very few people would say they are all some of the best films ever made. There is nothing from my list that includes a film with Montgomery Clift or Marlon Brando ( two of my favourite actors), and I have seen two films in the cinema more than any other- ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘A Clockwork Orange’, and neither make the list. I think ‘Citizen Kane’ is a great accomplishment but it didn’t involve me emotionally as much as these others. These films came at the right time. I was in the mood for film watching and something about each of them- perhaps a single scene or two- left its indelible mark.



2001 A Space Odyssey (dir- Stanley Kubrick)- USA: ‘The Dawn of Man’ sequence which involves apes foraging for food, learning to use a bone as both a tool and a weapon and the sudden appearance of the enigmatic monolith- this constitutes a magical beginning. I generally haven’t enjoyed the SF genre, but this is an exception because of its mysterious appeal and timelessness. The appearance of the foetus-like ‘Star child’ floating in space is one of my favourite images from any film. In between this enigmatic opening and ending is the leisurely unravelling of an intriguing storyline that raises many questions and produces a lot of what is unexpected. And despite its title, for me, anyway, the film doesn’t seem to date, which is a huge compliment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhffK5EPlNc


The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (dir Jacques Demy)- France: This was a total surprise- a film without spoken dialogue, only singing, might turn out ridiculous. But I found the romanticism very seductive, along with the beautiful colours, inspired by impressionism. It’s so beautiful to look at, especially the wintry scenes outside the umbrella shop with the myriad umbrellas dancing past. The music by Michel Legrand (‘I will wait for you’) is haunting. The ending was tragic but very apt. Guy is humbly working at the Esso service station with his beautiful brunette wife, Madeleine, and child, and Genevieve turns up unexpectedly to get petrol with the child she has had with Guy before he went to war. There is a brief longing there from Guy, but an acceptance that things turned out the way they did for a reason, and after all he is very happy. It is Genevieve, it seems, who may have missed out, wearing a mink coat and looking grand but spiritually empty. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ObVG9o2xWI




Duck Soup (dir Leo Carey)- USA: The Marx brothers were very innovative and original and made a number of very funny films, and this is the one I feel the most attached to. There is one scene in particular when the leader of the small country, Freedonia, Rufus T Firefly (Groucho Marx) has announced his country is going to war. We see myriad images of people surging forward to represent the idea of enlisting and marching off to a frenzied war, including a shot of hundreds of what appears to be dolphins skimming across water. It is totally ridiculous and very Pythonesque, at least 40 years before Monty Python. And of course there is the famous ‘mirror sequence’, possibly borrowed from Charlie Chaplin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdQ9jh5GvQ8


Desert Bloom (dir-Eugene Corr)- USA: A film that I find utterly charming that sees Jon Voight at his best playing a lame returned soldier from the Korean War, oppressed by both physical and emotional pain. Jack lives with his suffering wife Lily (JoBeth Williams) and three step daughters, the oldest who is an adolescent who often bears the brunt of her father’s anger, frustration and alcoholism (Rose, played by Annabeth Gish). Dysfunction spreads when the aptly named Aunt Starr arrives, the very glamorous sister played by Ellen Barkin, who has a brief fling with Jack. There is a lot of symbolism in the film centred around the government testing of a nuclear bomb in the 50’s and some very emotional moments between Jack and Rose, as she grows up fast in trying to understand him and make sense of the crazy world she lives in (both social and personal).



Scenes From A Marriage (dir- Ingmar Bergman)- Sweden: I have seen many Bergman films, and there are several that I have fallen in love with, from Autumn Sonata and Fanny and Alexander, to Persona and Cries & Whispers. Scenes From A Marriage seems to me to be utterly truthful, with superb acting. Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson are initially complacent about their marriage and see it as virtually perfect. So it comes as a shock to them that it suddenly disintegrates when Josephson comes home after work one night to announce that he has fallen in love with a younger woman and what’s more, he is leaving in the morning to go to Paris with her to cement their relationship. Ullman naturally doesn’t see it coming and her reaction is very real. No histrionics or shouting, just a slow coming to terms with something that is a shock and a futile attempt to accept and understand it. Part of the reason the scene seems so utterly real is probably because it comes direct from Bergman’s own life when he left one of his several wives in similar fashion years before. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3njWu3mtJb0

All Or Nothing (dir- Mike Leigh)- UK: Some of Mike Leigh’s films have what he calls a ‘hook’- that is an overriding topic or issue to satisfy the audience and his film company so they can sum up neatly what the film is about. Secrets & Lies is about the complications associated with adoption. Vera Drake is about a woman assisting pregnant women in having ‘backyard abortions.’ Life is Sweet deals with adolescent ennui and bulimia. However All or Nothing is not strongly about anything in particular- just a family living in a council estate- husband and wife and two obese adult siblings- and their associations with other people, usually tragic. Leigh’s constant, Timothy Spall, plays taxi driver Phil who is hopelessly lost and drifting, and misses the airport run every morning because he sleeps in. When equally helpless Rory (about 18) has a heart attack, both parents are forced to come to terms with the sorry state of their listless marriage. Typical of Leigh’s films is a major catharsis, and in this film Phil tells Penny (Lesley Manville) that she speaks to him like he is ‘a piece of shit.’ His crumbling and sobbing is heart wrenching and is my favourite moment in any of Leigh’s beautiful films.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiuVfsfjX0w

Breathless (A Bout De Souffle) (dir-Jean Luc Godard)- France: It was the quirkiness and originality of this film that struck me strongly the first time I saw it when I was nineteen. I found Jean Belmondo intriguing in his recklessness and lack of personal responsibility and Jean Sebring charming in her loyalty and youthfulness. The freshness comes about partly because of its improvised nature and its spasmodic editing in the form of jump cuts- see for example the way the motorcycle police confrontation is handled at the start. The first film of its kind that I ever saw and very seductive in its ‘coolness.’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyuK2mWwfP4



Mother and Son (dir-Alexander Sokurov)- USSR- I saw this at a Melbourne Film Festival circa 1998. People left the cinema in droves. By the end of the film there was only a handful of us left. Clearly the quietness and the stillness was too much for some people. But I felt entranced. As is the case with the lavish Russian Ark (also by Sokurov), it is a unique piece of film making. There are only a handful of words. On paper, the plot consists of one line- a son carries his dying mother on a long walk along various paths from her sick bed to what will eventually be her death bed. But it isn’t the story or the acting that is the feature here, as this is not a conventional film. I remember in particular one long, unedited shot in which the son who is carrying his dying mother in his arms appears at the bottom of the screen. In a single still shot which goes for several minutes, the pair travel from the bottom of the screen to the top and then out of sight. It is very simplistic and peaceful and full of meaning. It allows you to catch your breath and think about what you are seeing, and not feel harassed or hurried. It is the enormity of the moment that you can take your time to luxuriate in. The look of the film is apparently inspired by Casper David Friedrich. A major reason why the film doesn’t eventually become dull is that it is filmed using distorted lenses and filmed through painted glass panes. It is a seductive dream-like landscape, that fills you with emotion. The touching comfort, care and tenderness that exists between the mother and her son is very moving, a moving familial relationship that is repeated in the next film, this time between father and daughter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6b06A4oCXo




Burnt By The Sun- dir- Mikhalkov-USSR: This film takes place during an interesting time in Soviet history in the 1930’s when the Revolution turned sour and Stalin’s purges in the 30’s were taking place. As a result, the film’s charismatic hero, Bolshevik Colonel Kotov, is under physical threat from the sudden arrival of a member of the anti- Communist White Party. This ex-nobleman, Mitya is a threat to the family for lots of reasons, with his previous involvement with Maroussia, Kotov’s wife, and the potential disruption to Kotov’s idyllic lifestyle in the countryside with his beautiful wife and (real life) daughter, Nadya. The affection between the father and daughter is touching, and their relationship is at the emotional core of the film. One of the most beautiful scenes I have ever seen enacted on screen takes place with Kotov and Nadya embracing in a tranquil river. In several such scenes, father and daughter express and demonstrate their love for each other. Kotov is played by the film’s director, Mikhalkov who explained "I shot this film very quickly because I wanted my six year old daughter to play the role. . . . Children grow quickly and lose the tenderness, the simplicity, and the charm their youth carries." It is almost as if Mikhalkov made this film to memorialize those ephemeral years of absolute love when father and daughter each believe the other can do no wrong. Kotov is a beautiful man who meets a tragic end because he is living at a terrible time in which the lovely and innocent lives of good families are under siege. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_97mo12YGo

Psycho (dir-Alfred Hitchcock)- USA: A rare example of something that is incredibly popular, and at the same time incredibly good. A landmark film for its time. Incredible scenes of tension- will Marion Crane steal the money that is sitting in an enticing bundle on the bed? Will the policeman who finds her by the side of the road search the car and find the money? Will the private detective be able to ascertain that Marion Crane did more than just drop in overnight at the Bates Motel? All unanswered questions that the scriptwriters continually throw up. And there are some great lines- the used car salesman, on dealing with a flummoxed and nervous Marion Crane- ‘that’s the first time I’ve ever heard the buyer pressure the salesman’- and ‘my mother- what’s the expression? She’s not quite herself today.’ The ending of the film, with its denouement in the court room, is a bit lame and dated, but the rest fascinating and exact. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B0ad62tlAQ&feature=related

From Paris to Canberra: the Australian National Gallery

There were several pictures at the Musee D’Orsay in Paris that left a big impact on me, both times I visited a number of years ago. These included a famous Van Gogh self-portrait from 1899 that has an intense close-up of his face and is all a lovely light coloured blue with swirls in the background. The Musee D’Orsay also has his ‘Church at Auvers’ , which is situated around the corner from his grave stone in Auvers, painted in the last months of his life. Other paintings fixed in my memory from these visits include famous ones like ‘The Circus’ by Seurat, Manet’s ‘Olympia’ and Whistler’s ‘Portrait of the Mother’, as well as less well known ones like ‘La Toilette’ by Toulouse-Lautrec, ‘Closed Eyes’ by Odilon Redon and ‘The Talisman’ by Paul Serusier, all painted circa 1890.

A generous selection from the Musee D’Orsay is currently on exhibition in Canberra (Dec-April 2010). The exhibition is called ‘ Masterpieces from Paris' and I was excited to see that these last three paintings were part of it. I hadn’t expected to see pictures such as these again for a long, long time.

‘La Toilette’ was first exhibited by Toulouse-Lautrec in 1890. It is one of many paintings of his of women being caught in random, private moments- along with his pictures of women at the Moulin Rouge, these were favourite topics of his. The painting is from a heightened angle exploring a red-haired woman’s sculptured back. The painting is sympathetic toward her in that she is being allowed her private moment- her back covers most of the frame- and the blue is soft and appealing. We don’t need to see her face to appreciate the beauty of the young model. Portraits like these that are in a sense intimate and at the same time so anonymous (it is after all only a woman’s back that we are privy to), must have been unusual at this time. The ‘peep hole’ nature of the painting is intriguing.

Odilon Redon is famous for his imaginative colours and side by side on the wall with some of his pictures with fantastic colours, ‘Closed Eyes’, also from 1890, might easily be overlooked. However there is something beautiful and haunting about the dreamy face and its androgynous features. Is Redon exploring death, or merely sleep? For me it seems to be suggesting some kind of spiritual satisfaction or awareness, a deep serenity and peacefulness that is very attractive. This kind of fertile ‘inner’ world of the imagination is a feature of his work and other Symbolist artists.

Finally, ‘The Talisman’ by Paul Serusier might also seem small and non-descript at first sight, but is historically a very important painting. It is a unique landscape that excited the artist and his group of friends who resided in Pont-Aven in Brittany, and had Paul Gauguin as their mentor. True to Gauguin’s style, the landscape is painted in patches of colour, and various features are discernible, such as water, a path, trees, and the rest is quite abstract, without perspective. The colours are beautifully and harmoniously integrated, and it is utterly original for its time, and enabled the small group of artists to feel completely liberated from the expectations placed upon them by artistic tastes from the past.

If you live somewhere in Australia, the exhibition is well worth visiting, especially if Paris is not within easy reach. The last painting I looked at again at the end, before leaving in a taxi to the airport for the brief trip back to Melbourne, was Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night On The Rhone’- not the famous ‘Starry Night’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York, but one just as rich with its glorious, deep blue ink sky and the gas lamps from the nearby town glowing and humming mysteriously on the darkened waters of the Rhone, in Arles, southern France. Moving and profound.

Alex Miller: Comparing 2 Novels

ALEX Miller’s newest novel, Lovesong, (Allen & Unwin 2009), has been compared by a number of critics with his earlier Conditions of Faith (Allen & Unwin 2000). It’s not difficult to see why. Both books have a strong Tunisian connection. In COF, the female protagonist leaves Australia for a married life in Paris, and travels for respite from personal problems to Tunisia for holidays. In L the male protagonist is Australian and falls in love with a Tunisian woman whilst in Paris and longs to come back to Australia with her. Longing is a major theme in both novels. Emily in COF longs for the opportunity to study history and fulfil the expectations she places upon herself to achieve some extraordinary things in research. The Tunisian woman, Sabiha, in L, meanwhile, longs to raise a family and to fulfil a savagely strong maternal urge. In COF Emily is frightened to death at the prospect of motherhood, whilst in L, the barren Sabiha almost goes insane in her desperate attempts to become a mother. The urge to create, in different ways, therefore engulfs both women. And the men in both novels have their own obsessions that predictably conflict with the desires of their wives. In COF Georges wants to start a family and live in Australia and become a first class engineer and build bridges. John, in L, wants to live in Australia too, and fulfil his ambition of working in a cafe or a restaurant with his wife. Finally, the couples in both stories experience an important event in the beautiful French cathedral town of Chartres- although Emily’s experience is by far the more significant.

Lovesong has a more complex narrative in some ways in that there is a significant third person in the story who happens to be the narrator. John and Sabiha’s story is told by Ken, a Melbourne man who is a retired writer. He has met John at a coffee shop on numerous occasions, and has decided to write John and Sabiha’s story, as told to him by Ken. We are reminded from time to time that it is a story told to us via Ken, however most of the time John and Sabiha’s story sounds like a regular third person narrative.

After we are introduced to Ken and his daughter, the heart of the story begins in a Parisian restaurant, run by Sabiha and her aunt. On page 47 John, the wandering Australian traveller, comes into the story as he dines for the first time at the restaurant. After the mutual attraction of John and Sabiha is established, he moves in and helps run the place and becomes Sabiha’s partner. Once the aunt dies it is just the two of them and they live a very happy, simple life.
The narrative flies forward a couple of years and there is restlessness in the couple, particularly Sabiha. Her obsession with wanting to have children is well and truly cemented, which places huge pressure on her relationship. Sabiha even insists that any thought of living in Melbourne is impossible without her ageing father meeting her first born. The major tension in the novel, therefore, is borne out then in Sabiha’s sadness and desperation to conceive. She goes to extraordinary lengths to become pregnant- even secretly seducing an associate of the family on several occasions- chosen because he has eleven kids. The tragedy for Sabiha is that at first she continues to menstruate thereafter and the man she chooses, Bruno, threatens to reveal their secret because he is in love with her.

The major drama in COF, meanwhile, lies with Emily and her desperate need NOT to conceive. Like Georges, she is deeply ambitious, and she sees the onset of children as a serious threat to her ambitions to research a book she wants to write. Emily becomes inadvertently pregnant (like Sabiha, eventually), and like Sabiha, the father is not her partner. The drama plays itself out as Emily seems to be ignoring the fact that she is heavily pregnant, and despite the cold winter, quietly creeps out of bed day after day to go to the Paris Bibliotheque to continue her research. Much to the dismay of Georges, the baby is not Emily’s chief concern.
There are beautiful passages in Lovesong. Sabiha’s encounters with Bruno are well written. There is great tension when we wait with bated breath to see if Emily’s deceit will be uncovered. Bruno continues to visit John and Sabiha’s eating house after each betrayal, and the tension in the air is incredibly thick. I found myself becoming mildly absorbed in Sabiha’s desperate quest to become pregnant at any cost, and the music and the food described in great detail in the restaurant is captivating and appealing.

I can’t help thinking that Lovesong pales in comparison with COF, however. Emily is a much better drawn character than Sabiha and her longing seems more moving. Georges is hugely significant in his own right. His fierce desire to become one of the world’s great engineers is equal to any ambition of Emily’s, and this is touchingly illustrated in a long passage in which Georges adoringly details the kind of work that is involved in the tendering process to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge. John is simply not as intricate or interesting as Georges.

The peripheral characters in Lovesong, with the exception of Bruno, are unremarkable. This is true of the ‘retired’ narrator, Ken, as well, despite efforts to make him more complex by introducing passages with his disaffected daughter. It seems that Ken is, in fact, unnecessary. Perhaps Miller placed him in the narrative in a vain attempt to make his story more complex. With COF, this was unnecessary because the story was divergent and captivating enough. In COF we meet the extraordinarily gay friend Antoine, the complex priest, the austere matriarch in Georges’ family, and the beautiful and loyal servant girl, Sophie, who keeps Emily’s secrets from Georges, but is sadly compromised by doing so.

In terms of quests, I found Emily and Georges’ quests to be much more convincing and significant than that of Sabiha’s and John’s. Of course the desperate desire in a woman to bear a child can be tragic and as a subject matter very moving. However, the potential tragedy for a woman who is pregnant and at the same time deeply ambitious and trying to restrict her femininity is for me more intriguing. The denouement, in which Emily abandons her new born daughter and chooses academia in Tunisia instead is breathtaking and some would say outrageous. The train leaves Paris with little Marie and Georges on it, and Emily remains on the platform:

The guard slammed the door and turned the handle. Georges let down the window and leaned out. The train lurched and began to move. Emily and Georges looked at each other. “Goodbye,” she said.
The train gathered speed and rolled away along the platform. Georges leaned from the window, his hand raised, “You can still change your mind,” he called.
They watched him until the curves of the tracks took him from their sight.
Emily leaned against Antoine. They turned and walked away toward the barrier.
“What have I done? I am a monster.” Her voice was stricken with disbelief, regret, bewilderment, sorrow. (p.p. 399-400).

The desperate desire to find contentment is at the heart of both novels and both Sabiha and Emily go to great lengths and take great risks in their attempts to achieve it.

The Beatles, analysed

A BOOK by Ian MacDonald, written in 1994 (Fourth Estate) called Revolution In The Head has kept me captive during my lazy, tired late at night moods. It’s primarily a book that dissects the music of The Beatles. It is a thorough exploration of the way they recorded the songs on their albums, from who played lead guitar, and who was responsible for the handclaps and special effects that are a feature of some of their songs. The writer uses a lot of technical musical jargon that is beyond my comprehension, but I find it fascinating all the same. Apparently McCartney wrote ‘Birthday’ ‘on the spot before the others arrived ‘, on their way to his house to watch the first British TV transmission of ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’, in honour of Little Richard. MacDonald explains that the song bolts from ‘an A major blues to a C major boogie by means of a drums passage , a screaming crescendo on E major , and a brief Cream-style guitar/ bass unison.’ I will take his word for it.

MacDonald critiques the songs at the same time, and it is this aspect that is one of the most enjoyable. For example, in reference to ‘What Goes On’ from Rubber Soul he is at his most dismissive, writing ‘Starr sings dolefully, Harrison trots out his Chet Atkins clichés, and another two minutes and forty-five seconds are filled.’ If you have heard this song, you’ll know exactly what he means. And yet, there are a number of very controversial dismissals as well.
The book is also about the sixties in general and the way The Beatles were influenced a lot by what was going on around them and their own musical tastes. It is clear that people like Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan were two of the biggest influences. Drugs played an enormous part too, particularly on Lennon and his obsession with acid from 1966 (Revolver) and heroin during the latter years. Drugs seemed to have had both positive and negative effects on the band. Lennon had an unproductive period somewhere between Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour in which McCartney threatened to become the main drive behind the band, and yet at this time there were a couple of brilliant Lennon exceptions, very drug-influenced: I Am The Walrus and Strawberry Fields Forever (along with A Day In The Life, arguably his best songs). Evidence of acid impacting on McCartney’s song writing too, can be found, even in a song as sweet and seemingly innocent as Penny Lane: ‘although she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway..’
It is the observations about the following songs that I found the most interesting:

- MacDonald carps ‘Across The Universe’ as a product of someone who was ‘permanently tripping’ and written in ‘a mentally drained state in the early hours of the morning.’ He refers to the ‘plaintively babyish incantation’ that appears in the song, its ‘vague pretensions and listless melody’, its ‘inspired lethargy’ and whilst ‘rarely boring... (Lennon) made an unwanted exception with this track.’ Interestingly, the high female backing voices belong to two teenage girl fans who were standing outside on Abbey Road and were invited in on the spur of the moment. What a day for them.

- Of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ we are informed that the song took about 37 hours to record, including two sessions getting a version right that was eventually scrapped. The author calls the ‘quadruple internal rhymes of the middle sixteens pedantically contrived’ and refers to a ‘browbeating self-importance which quickly becomes tiresome’- in other words, not a fan.

- MacDonald is at his most scathing of another Harrison song- ‘Piggies’. He calls it ‘an embarrassing blot on his discography’ and seems to object to its ‘uncharitable’ and ‘industrial strength vitriol’ as much as anything- no objections with the music per se, just the message. Of The White Album, the author considers ‘Long, Long, Long’ to be Harrison’s greatest work- ‘the real George’, as he puts it.

- Going back to 1966, MacDonald completes an analysis of the 12th British single, McCartney’s ‘Paperback Writer’ and Lennon’s ‘Rain’, their ‘finest B-side.’ Apparently there is laughter from Harrison and Lennon heard in the background, and the chanting of Frere Jacques during the second verse is proof that the two weren’t ‘entirely serious’ in their participation of this song. ‘Rain’, on the other hand, mostly recorded on the same day, can be celebrated for Starr’s ‘superb soloistic drumming’ and McCartney’s ‘inventive high-register bass.’ MacDonald doesn’t see it as simply a joyous song with banal lyrics about the changes in weather. He offers a long discussion about the song’s complex imagery in a paragraph beginning: ‘the song’s rain and sun are physical phenomena experienced in a condition of heightened consciousness...’

- Earlier The Beatles recorded ‘You Won’t See Me’ and ‘Nowhere Man’ ten days apart on Rubber Soul. MacDonald notes that the band ‘were too tired by late nights ‘ during the recording of the former song so that they simply repeated the ‘irritating “oo-la-la-la’ backing vocals from Nowhere Man and stupidly placed the two songs side by side on the record- ‘the most inept piece of sequencing on any Beatles LP.’There are countless other criticisms that MacDonald makes of The Beatles music, some of it surprisingly to me and at other times deservedly so ( the clutter of half-songs on the too expansive White Album an example.) As Nick Hornby and others have reportedly done, it’s great to concentrate intently on the music and listen out for the ‘luckiest accident in any Beatles recording’ which is the vibration of a wine bottle sitting on a cabinet as McCartney plays a note on a Hammond organ; or the irreverence of Lennon in the latter choruses of ‘Baby You’re A Rich Man’ becoming ‘Baby you’re a rich fag Jew’ (a la Brian Epstein.

Joni Mitchell: A Tribute- Melbourne October 23 2009

THE advertisements in The Age newspaper in the month previous filled me with anticipation- a large picture of Joni Mitchell from her ‘Blue’ period with the words ‘Joni Mitchell Tribute- tickets on sale Monday.’ The word ‘tribute’ was unfortunate because it meant it wouldn’t be the real thing. Joni hasn’t toured Melbourne since 1984. I don’t even remember her being here. The closest I have ever come to her is to smell her stale smoke when I visited George Martin’s Air Lyndhurst Studios near Chalk Farm in London in 2002. I saw somewhere that she was recording her ‘Travelogue’ CD here with a large orchestra. Unfortunately I was two weeks late. A man behind the front desk saw the regret written on my face and took me to the tiny vocal booth where she sang her beautiful words. I imagine she’d had a multitude of cigarettes during what would have been marathon recording sessions.

Hamer Hall on St Kilda Rd in Melbourne is an impressive building which encourages fashionable dress and a hushed atmosphere. There was quite a crowd in the foyer about twenty minutes before opening, consisting of mostly middle aged people, the range somewhere between, say, thirty and sixty- sixty five. I looked around to see if I could see someone I knew (I was by myself). My first thought was to be mildly impressed- to see all these people who were interested in Joni, who like me liked her enough to pay $100 to her a tribute. Then suddenly I felt this powerful sense of being alone. Here I was surrounded by so many like-minded people, yet I didn’t know anyone and didn’t feel I could walk up to strangers and say ‘hey, is ‘Hejira’ your favourite album too?’ I think the reason for this weird alienating feeling was that I know very few people who have listened to Joni beyond ‘Both Sides, Now’ and ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, and absolutely nobody who likes her as much as me and can recite all the words to ‘Borderline’ and ‘Two Grey Rooms.’ So here I was confronted at last by hundreds of people I could theoretically have a gorgeous conversation with on topics I love for the first time, and yet they all seemed self-contained, introspective and unattainable. Once I entered the Hall, and saw that I was so close to the stage, this feeling quickly dissipated.

Seven women teamed up to pay Joni tribute- some a bit obscure, a few quite well known in these parts. They rotated the songs very well. They either sang solo with simple accompaniment- as in ‘Blue’ and ‘River’, for example, or did backing vocals for each other on more complex arrangements as in ‘Raised On Robbery’, ‘A Free Man In Paris’, ‘Come In From The Cold’, etc. They sang spectacularly well in unison on a couple of occasions. The unexpected opener- ‘Shadows And Light’- was powerful, as was the chorus of ‘The Circle Game.’
The first set was enjoyable, but a little predictable. I didn’t purchase a programme, so I didn’t know which song would be next. However, besides the opener, almost every song came from either ‘Court & Spark’ or ‘Blue’: two great albums, but many great Joni records ignored.
I found the final set more interesting simply because the singers borrowed from a greater range of Joni’s material. This time there was an eclectic mix of songs, some of them my favourites, from ‘For Free’ and ‘Edith and the Kingpin’ and ‘Chinese Café/ Unchained Melody’ to ‘Coyote’ and ‘Cherokee Louise.’

The singers were clearly very involved in what they were performing. These are songs they would have sung countless times either by themselves or in small company. This was evidenced by one song more than any others- the sublime ‘Hejira’ sung by Virna Sanzone, like it was the last song she would ever sing, every line producing a face filled with tortured emotion. The audience warmed up too and more well known songs like ‘Woodstock’ and ‘You Turn Me On (I’m A Radio) received rapturous applause. To the singers’ credit, more obscure numbers like ‘Snakes & Ladders’ and ‘Be Cool’ from the 80’s were also warmly received.
I had an irritating woman behind me who was a self-appointed Joni Mitchell expert amongst her friends. She had evidently sung on stage at Hamer Hall before and knew in some capacity one of the singers. When asked by her friends what made Joni so endurable with her audience, she answered ‘Joni has always had a good manager.’

The singers were: Katie Noonan, Wendy Matthews, Virna Sanzone, Kristen Berardi, Louise Perryman, Rachel Goudry, and Tania Bowra.

The music was beautiful, the songs were sung with deep emotion and appreciation, and the backing band was subtle, right down to the bass player’s impersonations of Jaco Pastorious. A lovely night, but alas, no ‘Amelia’- tut, tut.

Wild Strawberries

WILD Strawberries is a pretty simple and familiar story about a self-confessed, lonely old man who re-evaluates his life and comes to realise that he has developed a certain negativity and cynicism about everyone and everything that has affected his own life and those around him. He is a highly respected professor of medicine who knows that there is a large gap between the success of his public life, and the way he has conducted his private life.

The professor’s name is Isak Borg (played by Victor Sjostrom) and most of the film is about the car journey that takes place between his home town in Sweden, all the way to the university town of Lund, where Borg will be given an honorary doctorate for his services to the community.
This is a screenplay that Bergman developed whilst he was in hospital recuperating from an ulcer. It comes just after The Seventh Seal in 1957, and was at the time Bergman’s greatest critical success. The film had success in places such as Cannes and the USA, and for the first time he was being compared to other European directors like Fellini.

The idea came to Bergman when he visited his childhood town of Uppsala in Sweden. He walked up to the house where he was raised with his grandmother and had the urge to turn the door- handle and step into the house. He imagined what it would be like to re-enter the idyllic time of long ago. Isak Borg does this very thing in a number of dream sequences in Wild Strawberries.
Isak Borg travels to Lund with his daughter in law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin in her first Bergman film outing). Their conversation is at first strained. Both have stories to tell- Borg of his disturbing dreams and Marianne of her marital difficulties with Borg’s son, Evald. However both are self absorbed and not particularly interested in what the other has to stay. That will change as Borg has a series of real and imagined encounters that alter his attitude and thinking, culminating in genuine warmth between he and Marianne in the last moments of the film.

Professor Borg’s first dream takes place at the start of the film, but the most significant one is at the wild strawberry patch at the place of his adolescence. Unbeknown to those around him, he silently watches activities of his extended family that took place long ago and is able to see for the first time the courting of his beloved cousin Sara (Bibi Andersson) by his brother Sigrid, whom she’ll eventually marry. Sara confides in her cousin that she finds Sigrid ‘brazen’ and ‘exciting’ but she is emotional because of the goodness in Isak who is ‘moral’ and ‘sensitive’ and talks often of sin. Listening to this dialogue stirs feelings of ‘emptiness’ and ‘mournfulness’ in Isak, and probably regret.

Borg’s second significant encounter takes place when he visits his elderly mother. She is cold, distant and unhappy. She complains about a lack of visits from her children and grandchildren. It is significant that she finds the room cold when nobody else does. It is as if she is almost a corpse, and her room is a tomb. Isak doesn’t stay long. Despite the time lapse in their seeing each other, it is not a happy re-encounter. Here we have a perfect illustration of a lack of warmth in Isak’s family.

This leads directly to Isak again evaluating his life, and again it is in the form of a dream from the past. This time Sara can see him, and she holds up a mirror to his face and tells him ‘You’re an anxious old man who will soon be dead.’ Later after she wanders off he sees an image through a window of the amorous couple, Sigfrid and Sara, about to enjoy a romantic meal, and watches on in pain. He has been unable to communicate those kinds of feelings to her.

The most surreal aspect of this sequence is when the Professor is forced to undergo a mental examination to see if he is capable of practising his profession. The lighting and interior of the rooms he enters reinforces the idea that this is going to be some kind of test or trial. Borg notably stumbles on the question of what the principle duty of a doctor is: to ask forgiveness. It is an answer that he is unable to identify.

When Borg, still dreaming, hears his deceased wife talk about his ‘utter coldness’, he discovers his punishment will be loneliness. This is another of the sequences that will lead to Borg’s redemption- and leads perfectly onto a scene in real life again in which Marianne talks about the coldness and emptiness inside her husband, Isak’s son, Evald. He has told Marianne ‘I feel the need to be dead- absolutely dead’ and castigates her for wanting to bring their unborn child into the world. This is the crux of the film- that Evald is a sad product of a sterile and unhappy upbringing, one that Isak must come to terms with for being the engineer of it. The theme is also explored in a play by Ibsen, one of Bergman’s favourite dramatists. In 'Ghosts' the sins of the father have a devastating impact on his young son as he struggles to make his own independent way in the world.

Isak has had his doctorate bestowed upon him at Lund. It is now late at night and Isak’s redemption has come in the form of a new found tenderness between he and his daughter-in-law. Things with Evald, however, are still problematic. The coldness and alienation that exists between them will not be so easily thawed. A final dream sequence is significant. Isak is back at his childhood home as an old man and with the youthful Sara. She takes him to see his parents who are fishing by a river. There is a beautiful new softness and tenderness in Isak’s features, which we haven’t seen before.

This scene was filmed in the late afternoon, beyond the agreed time that Sjostrom was prepared to work. Bergman was earlier able to coax him into playing the part of Isak Borg partly by promising the 78 year old he would stick to a deadline of 4:30 each afternoon so Borg could be home having a whiskey before dinner. A difficulty with the light meant that Borg was asked to stay on, and as Bibi Andersson leads Sjostrom down a hillside on his way to seeing his ‘parents’, Sjostrom was cursing and extremely irritable at the inconvenience of it all. A close look at the scene and his body language reveals a hint of the anger that Sjostrom felt as Andersson clutches him by the arm.

This is a key film in Bergman’s oeuvre. Woody Allen has sung its praises, claiming that Wild Strawberries, The Magician, The Seventh Seal and Cries & Whispers are the biggest moments of Bergman’s career. I would agree with the latter two, but would prefer to throw in Fanny & Alexander and Scenes From A Marriage before the first two. Of course it has great moments, and Sjostrom is a memorable character.

However there are a few things about the film that leave me a bit cold. First of all, I find Sjostrom very likeable throughout, which is a problem considering we are asked to accept the importance of the redemption of his character, and to find him disagreeable and irascible for the first half.

Secondly, there is a lighter, less serious strand in the plot that doesn’t work for me. The less successful of Bibi Andersson’s dual roles is the character (again called Sara) whom Borg and Marianne pick up hitchhiking with her male friends on the way to Lund. She is very playful and a bit silly and quaint, and her two doting companions often argue and wrestle, and take part in an unconvincing existential debate. Bergman dealt with this themes about the existence of God so brilliantly in his previous film, The Seventh Seal, that it comes across as trivial and unconvincing this time around.

Finally, as in the case to a lesser extent in The Virgin Spring, the whole film seems a bit too moralistic and obvious, almost as if Bergman is delivering a sermon based on lessons about the way you shouldn’t live your life. The heartening thing is, I suppose, is that it is never too late to learn these lessons and make amends.