PORT DOUGLAS, QLD 4877: June 30-July 10

THE beach is almost as I remember it from a few years ago. Four miles long, clear and blue water, dark green hills, except the sand near the foreshore seems yellower than I remember it. The sand away from the foreshore is the soft and familiar lovely white. A great expanse of beach. Thinking of Joel Cohen, the US director, who apparently stayed at Port Douglas a couple of years ago. And thinking about D H Lawrence and his family coastal holidays at Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire. And Virginia and the Woolf's at St Ive's, Cornwall.

Macrossan Street is the main strip. There briefly at 8:00 tonight. An older couple talking about tax and superannuation. Families in shorts and singlets. We came from Melbourne yesterday, and rain and wind and 12 degrees. But tonight, difficult. A vomiting child. All about us, palm trees, tropical vegation. Almost expect to see monkeys swinging from trees. There is a lovely saltwater pool here. A Danish couple, with their two young boys. Two Swedish films on DVD in my suitcase. Finished the five hour version of 'Fanny & Alexander' the other night.

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THIS morning we left our front gate after seeing the Danes again, and getting to know them better. Along Mowbray Street, around the corner, is the Clink Theatre, nothing showing. I looked through the window- saw row after row of red chairs. The facade is weatherboard, with a wide verandah. A lovely, modest, community theatre looking empty and abandoned.  I thought about Ingmar Bergman, and how excited he might have been, as an incidental visitor to Port Douglas. The play I ran through in my mind was an historical play, in which the fifth act spills out onto the street, the actors traversing the lawns.

Macrossan Street was filled as usual with tourists like ourselves, and art galleries, restaurants, clothing shops. I heard some American voices. Later I ran the full length of the beach, into a hot, strong wind. I went past the gentle, left leaning curve, around the right, sharp bend, past the expert kite fliers, well beyond sunbakers, idle walkers, to isolated parts where the space between the foreshore and the mangrove swamps is dangerously narrow. Marvin Gaye finished singing 'Mercy, Mercy' in the iPod, and there in front of me, some six metres away, lies a baby crocodie, seemingly basking in the sun. I stood exhausted, stunned. Several curses escaped my mouth and my heart leapt. Facing me but not moving. Its eyes sunken and looking dead. I retreated swiftly and counted my blessings to get out of there alive.

I walked with the two kids from one end of the rtail precinct to the other. At the western end of Macrossan Street you find the simple park with a slide an a solitary swing. Behind the swing, about thirty metres beyond, is the beautiful blue water, with boats gliding frequently into the marina. Enclosed in the park is a majestic and humble white weatherboard church, which features inside a square view of the blue water and purple hills beyond.

Tonight at 8:30 PM we are sitting in a cold air-conditioned lounge, whist outside the air temperature is balmy and warm and perfect.

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On the beach this morning, S waltzed up to a tall tanned woman wearing a white sarong and cradling a tiny guitar. Something about this woman intrigued S. Shw was from NZ and was warm and friendly, proffering pieces of under ripe coconut fresh from its shell. When the woman began strumming her guitar, a couple of other children gathered around. Suddenly the beach was warm and convivial and the verses of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' spontaneously broke out.

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THE Port Douglas foreshore was covered with people today. A nice, communal feeling wandering around the extensive weekend market. The marina, later, is good for fish 'n' chips and beer.

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THE beach was beautiful today, for running. The usual drag of the hot gusty wind on the way- dogged pererverance, mostly. No crocodiles. But on the way back, exhiliration. The breeze dead. Rain sheeting down. People in the water. Long quality songs. After more than a dozen kilometres, steaming along to Joni Mitchell's 'Song For Sharon'- a great feeling, and finsishing with momentum, spilling onto Macrossan Street, down its east side.

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UP at 3:00 AM for the bus to go to Cairns airport. American's from Pennsylvania. A haircut earler in the day. The barber says he hates Americans. Big, loud mouths, especially the ones from the mid-west. A final time at the beach as well. The family walking along the shore line. All of us wanting time to stand still- with work and routine beckoning. A nice surprise to have the St Kilda Football Club on the plane with us going home.

Flawed but compelling: Ingmar Bergman's 'The Serpent's Egg'

THE SERPENT’S EGG


I am threading my way through Ingmar Bergman’s entire film catalogue, and have been watching countless dramas with a small number of characters (chamber pieces) set on Faro island off the Swedish coast, in these latter films, home to Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman. Naturally Liv Ullman is the star of these films, along with Max Von Sydow invariably, filmed by Sven Nykvist, naturally. Very few people, living in claustrophobic and desolate conditions along the coast, mysterious elements at work, black and white film stock, all about the oppression of the mind, madness, evil, bleakness, experimentation. I am thinking of films like Hour Of The Wolf, Shame and The Passion of Anna, all from the late sixties. They are good films, but they will not be remembered like earlier ones such as Through A Glass Darkly and Persona (also on Faro), and Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, all of which made Bergman’s name. Nevertheless they are intriguing and impeccably acted and harrowing in lots of ways.

So after further chamber pieces with modest budgets in the early seventies, such as Scenes from A Marriage and Cries & Whispers (both masterpieces), comes something totally different and totally unexpected: ‘The Serpent’s Egg’.

Part of the reason we have something completely different is because of the drastic change in Bergman’s living conditions, brought on by trouble with the police and a nervous breakdown. His company was aggressively examined for tax evasion by the Swedish government in the mid seventies. Bergman was virtually arrested and treated like a criminal whilst preparing for a play at his local theatre. Subsequently, he angrily took his work elsewhere- to Berlin to make The Serpent’s Egg.

The Serpent’s Egg is in my mind Bergman’s most horrific film. It’s almost universally derided, although critics rightly see plenty of good things in it (Bergman scholar, Robert Emmet Long, is a notable exception: ‘The film is an embarrassment and was a commercial disaster.’) The latter may be true, but I find aspects of it riveting all the same.

The Serpent’s Egg is a complete shift for Bergman for many reasons. First of all he had American backing for the first time (Dino De Laurentis produced it). The film is set and filmed in Germany, not Sweden. There are a large number of people in the film, including hundreds of extras. The production crew, with the exception of Sven Nykvist, is all new to Bergman. Besides the familiarity of Liv Ullman, Bergman employed German actors he had never worked with before, as well as an American lead for the first time, in David Carradine. There is a lot of risqué language in the film as well as daring sex scenes (well surpassing The Silence in its confrontational nature), and the violence is more extreme and unnerving, including a scene showing a live animal getting flesh hacked off from its back. Finally, for the first time in a Bergman film, the language is English.

The Serpent’s Egg is surely Bergman’s bleakest film. The film starts with Abel Rosenberg (Carradine) finding his brother Max in bed, a bullet in his head and blood splayed over the walls. Abel, Max and his sister Manuela (Ullman). Abel visits Manuela at a small time cabaret venue, and they agree to continue to support each other. Abel finds himself being questioned and briefly held by the police, suspected of multiple murders. He suspects the negative attention is coming about because he is Jewish, and he may well be right. The police force him to try and identify several bloody cadavers at the morgue. The film is set in Berlin in 1923, and Germany is in a depressing state. There are Nazi thugs lurking in the streets and the currency no longer has any value. There are shadows everywhere, the streets are murky and dangerous, and Rosenberg is continually drinking and finding himself faced with many horrors, usually with a bewildered expression on his face. Almost equally unstable is Manuela who spends a lot of time crying or merely trying to survive, like Abel. Poverty is sickening and men spend their time seeing prostitutes and drinking themselves into oblivion. Rosenburg has an understandable paranoia, and like in a Kafka novel, there is always the sense that he is on the verge of some awful suffocating predicament, brought on by the State. The most sinister character in the film is a scientist called Vergerus, who has a secret headquarters in St Anna’s Clinic in which he spends his time conducting bizarre and cruel experiments on people. He gets pleasure out of seeing how people react to extreme physical or psychological stress- sometimes they suicide. Abel knew Vergerus from childhood in Amalfi, where Abel remembers that Vergerus once caught a cat and cut it open when it was alive so they could all see its naked heart beat, ‘fast...fast.’

This is Germany at the time of Hitler positioning himself for power, and the world of Berlin is frightening and disturbing in the extreme. The only optimistic part of the whole film is that Rosenberg escapes his confinement and is wandering loosely at the end of the film. However we are still left with the sense that he will not avoid a destructive end.

There are some impressive scenes and compelling moments:

- Abel becomes impatient whilst waiting at the police station, and seemingly unhinged, he makes a manic and useless attempt to escape the maze of cold steel bars and cold railings along endless corridors. Being a trapeze artist, Abel is fit and agile, and the camerawork is frenzied and frantic, and the movement is compelling. Bergman has characteristically resisted having music in the background, and you obtain an incredible sense of Abel’s claustrophobic predicament. It has been said that Bergman, unlike Hitchcock, is not good with ‘action’, but this scene belies this. Eventually cornered, Abel cowers like a trapped animal, shrieking, and is savagely beaten with truncheons.

- Manuela’s cabaret is raided by whistle blowing Nazi thugs. The camera pans across the faces of concerned onlookers as some kind of proclamation is read out on stage in German. The Jewish man Abel has been talking to is single out, and a Nazi gently removes his glasses, and folds them carefully and neatly into his shirt pocket. He then places a hand behind the Jewish man’s head, and begins pounding his face onto a wooden table. Abel and Manuela look on in close up. Then the whistle blows again and the whole place is lit up in flames.

- The little films that Vergerus shows Abel near the end of the film are shockingly compelling. A woman goes insane because she is subjected to the prolonged crying of a baby. A man is given a dose of a drug called Thanatoxin that places him in unbearable agony. A revolver has been placed at his disposal, but at the moment when the man feels compelled to use it, he places it into his mouth to discover it isn’t loaded.

The Serpent’s Egg is grim but in its vision of Berlin in the 1920’s, when conditions are so shockingly poor, and the fabric of society is completely torn, it provides us with a chilling explanation for why the country would soon be ripe for someone like Adolf Hitler.



‘And therefore think him as a serpent's egg

Which hatch'd, would, as his kind grow mischievous;

And kill him in the shell.’

(Julius Caesar)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-G6iPqPHDg

colm toibin in melbourne

MY friend Tristan and I met in Rose Street, near Essendon Station. Tristan teaches at a local girls’ school. He was halfway through a coffee at a cafe so I joined him. Together we read some of The Age, then boarded a train with a friend we bumped into, and headed for the city. Colm was due to start at 6:30, so at 5:00 we were very early. The night was slightly balmy and very clear- beautiful walking weather. There were a lot of people in the city, which there generally is at this time. The mood was positive, although it did seem that people were rushing, walking against lights. I saw two people slip right to the ground when standing on the same street corner. They got up quickly and tried to look nonchalant, as you do in that situation.

Tristan and I misjudged the location of the talk. We thought it was around the corner from the State Library in Lt Lonsdale Street, in a place called The Wheeler Centre, who were the people promoting the talk in the newspaper. So we didn’t want to drift too far from there, and decided to eat at an indoor shopping mall opposite. The food was terrible, but I didn’t care. Expectation was building. We ate and we could see that we still had quite a bit of time so further south down Lt Lonsdale Street we walked towards a little pub/ bistro for a quick beer. On the way we met the third person on this excursion, Bridget (originally from Co. Clare), a friend from work.


The three of us talked about books in this quaint pub. I had never been here before, and with its bohemian style, and its foreign beers, records and turntable, and European decor, I suddenly felt I was in a different country. For me this kind of atmosphere added to my anticipation. We left with not a lot of time left, and I walked imagining I was in Colm’s shoes, a foreigner embracing the excitement of a new and unfamiliar city.


The complication of the evening took place outside The Wheeler Centre, in that I suddenly realised it wasn’t the venue at all, and we quickly walked up Exhibition Street to Collins Street, and the Collins Street Baptist Church, anxious suddenly about the time. What was I thinking? I knew the talk was going to take place here. A true snapshot of my usual muddled forward planning.


The reverence of the church with its lovely white walls seemed fitting somehow for Colm Toibin’s talk. This was my third occasion with him, and I knew what to expect. A beautiful rich Irish voice, a warm and engaging manner, an unpretentious casualness, humorous and slightly self conscious, open and honest, and above all, interesting and intelligent. We were almost late- as a result, we were sitting in the balcony seats, ‘up in the gods’, like a rock concert with its large volume of people. I felt impressed and pleased for him that a quiet one- off visit to Melbourne would attract this much attention.


Colm was here primarily to promote his more or less recent novel, Brooklyn. Throughout the course of an hour, he completed three readings from it. The two that I best remember concerned the main character, and immigrant from Co. Wexford making the most of a forced situation, living in America. This was of an early chapter in which Eilish is sad and feels trapped because it is designated that she is the family member going to America, when she desperately would prefer it was her older sister, Rose. Eilish thinks of her packed suitcase forlornly, and reflects on the fact that the next time the suitcase will be opened, it will be in a new, unfamiliar country. It would be so much easier for her to continue her safe, ordinary life in Ireland.


Another reading Colm chose was of a time in the novel in which the poor people of Brooklyn are celebrating Christmas, 1951, in a charity house run by Father Flood, who introduced Eilish to Brooklyn in the first place. Eilish is working here this day, serving customers meals with friends. She suddenly sees a man that she momentarily mistakes for her father, and there is an odd little connection here, as the old man sings to the congregation and calls Eilish out of the crowd to share it with him.


Colm covered a disparate range of topics, some of which were familiar to me from interviews heard or read previously. He spoke of the challenges of teaching writing as an Irishman in America. He spoke of the difficulty of ‘getting somewhere’ as an Irishman in England, compared to the relative ease of finding something good in America (he put this down to the class system, not mentioning the Troubles). He spoke of the cheek some Irish people have when complaining about newly arrived Polish or Nigerian émigrés, because of the diaspora of Irish people all over the world for many years. Colm is apparently feeling more enamoured toward the Church again these days.


Colm spoke freely as well about the writing of his book. He was keen to create a strong, sympathetic priest in Brooklyn, as a kind of homage to the priests in former years who have helped immigrants settle in foreign countries ( a variation, he says, on the usual sordid association we read about in the papers almost daily). He created a lesbian passage (in the change rooms of Eilish’s department store) because he ‘couldn’t resist.’


The evening flew by. I watched my Irish friend’s face as he spoke of Ireland, and wondered if she was suddenly homesick at hearing tales of her former homeland in a warm and familiar accent. I looked around at others and marvelled at the shared experience and wondered what they had read and what they knew. There was time for a solitary question before it was wrapped up. I wanted to ask which parts of Brooklyn were the most difficult to write and why, but lacked the courage. A man in front somewhere asked whether or not the magical clothes dumping scene in the Venetian waters in The Master was true, and Colm explained that apparently it was, and was something he heard from a contemporary of Henry James on a radio programme somewhere many years ago. It is amazing how writers pick up little bits of information to use. Colm is using this technique of being alert to outside information in his new book, apparently, which is based on an anecdote from Lady Gregory’s diaries. Apparently James had a good idea for a story which didn’t eventuate, and Colm is going to do or has done something with it.


The evening ended with a long queue for book signing. I had three hardback works that hadn’t been signed and queued patiently. As I got to the front, I wasn’t absolutely sure I would be recognised. It had been at least a couple of years we had last met. Suddenly I saw a glimmer of recognition in his eye. He rose and tousled my hair commenting on how short it now was, and then asked how the kids were. I wanted to stay and talk but I felt the pressure of those waiting behind me, and tumbled outside, half running towards Parliament Station, exhilarated. A nice, warm night. Nothing too dramatic and no epiphany or sense of wonder. But exhilaration all the same at meeting, once again, one of the best writers of our generation.


May, 2010.

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.