"What's the worst that can happen?": Splice

A sci-fi/horror riff on the dangers of science - and, more specifically, the ethical minefield associated with genetic engineering and particularly human DNA - Splice has some shocks up its sleeve, delivered in a lowish budget but consistently unnerving frame. People who saw it at MIFF last year talked it up, and the presence of Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley was also promising, and it pretty much comes through - the premise is intriguing, if not fully developed, and it goes to some uncomfortable places while forcing the viewer to retain at least some sympathy for its three central protagonists (not least the alien, uncanny Dren).

Metric - Live It Out

Energetic, slightly rougher-edged precursor to almost-minor-classic Fantasies.

Tift Merritt - See You On The Moon

Another elegant modern country record from Tift Merritt, this one more spacious, perhaps more mellow than the last couple, but equally golden.

Ken Blanchard - The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey

Lent to me by PG as I begin acting again (for three months, this time) - will be useful, though more in the way of spelling out techniques and systems that one has already been applying intuitively than by actually bringing any completely new insights.

Black Swan

Black Swan is certainly intense; it's also really good. It's an extremely interior film, which makes sense given that Black Swan is thoroughly concerned with identity and everything else that lies just below the surface of consciousness; in the creeping sense of unease and disquietude, of things being somehow not right, that it produced, it reminded me of David Lynch, and of Amenabar's memorable Open Your Eyes, which figures, since, from opening dream sequence to shattering end, it shares with them a preoccupation with effacing the distinctions between the inner and external worlds, between dreams and waking life. And it's also about art, and the toll that it takes, and in this it's lifted by a brilliant turn from Natalie Portman - one simply forgets that it's her, and it never feels as if she's acting at all. Her achievement is to take us deep into Nina's mind, when that very mind is shattering before our very eyes.

Black Swan flourishes its motifs with a boldness typical of Aronofsky - mirrors, doubling, control/letting go, dreams/reality - which works to the film's advantage because its themes demand such grand treatment, particularly in the context of its structuring metaphor, the tale of Swan Lake itself, recounted early in the film as a 'white swan/virginity - black swan/seduction - liberty in death' plunge, and then played out in terms which could almost be as literal or as figurative as each viewer pleases.

I thought after seeing the film, yesterday, that my dreams might be affected, so vivid and intense an experience was it - and (unusually) that actually happened...I think it'll stay with me.

(w/ Sunny and his friend Caroline)

Jenny and Johnny - I'm Having Fun Now

It may just be knowing that this is a girlfriend/boyfriend side project, but I'm Having Fun Now feels loose, tossed off, casual. That said, it's an enjoyable listen - basically relaxed boy-girl countryish rock with a dash of indie, and it doesn't hurt that the girl is Jenny Lewis; best are "My Pet Snake" and "Committed", both of which ride super-catchy tunes while making much of the vocal interplay between Lewis and partner Johnathan Rice.

Kira Henehan - Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles

An intriguing and often very funny entry in one of my favourite sub-genres - postmodernist existential detective novels (cf The Raw Shark Texts, Icelander (*) and, of course, the grandfather of them all, The Crying of Lot 49, Murakami a neighbour too, especially in A Wild Sheep Chase (*) and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (*) mode).

      There once was a one person who
      Knew that all that she knew was untrue
      She fell asleep in her head
      When she woke up instead
      Of being one one, she was two.

In Orion, we're in the hands of a wilful and inscrutable (even to herself) narrator, one Finley, engaged on a mysterious Assignment set by the equally mysterious Binelli - an Assignment whose very nature is unclear to Finley, but which has something to do with puppets. Her syntax is curious, but then so is everything about her (in more than one sense):

      They are also an unending source of pain and fury for myself and The Lamb. We are neither of us even close to a size 9.5. Who is. A penguin. A clubfoot. A saintly redheaded sister with no need for shoes, not ever again, wafting about the clouds in her wherewithal, no doubt, in her birthday suit, in the buff, with specially made size 9.5 wings erupting from giant shoulder blades to carry her wherever she might deign to go. An entire room filled with handcrafted, timeless, useless shoes.
      One could go mad.
      One does go mad, often, and then the other one, and then both for some time, and then some shoes get thrown about and the memory of the sister desecrated and defamed and then all are yelled at and then all get crappy Assignments next time around.

There's much confusion in Finley's world, not least on the question of who she is; many of those she encounters seem strangely doubled. (Not that this prevents her frequent application of 'logic' to what she encounters.) There's also a large snake, Lavendar, who is her 'beast of burden' and goes everywhere with her in a satchel, sometimes emerging to the consternation of those around. And there's also the odd recurrence of Tiki Ty's Tiki Barn, whose owner makes magnificent shrimp:

      Wherever we went, wherever the concerns in need of Investigation took us, we always stayed at Tiki Ty's Tiki Barn. And unlikely seeming as it seems, it always seemed to be exactly the same place.
      One learns that certain questions are unanswerable.
      This is why we need words like 'conundrum'.
      Tiki Ty's was always where we stayed and was always a large bright generous sort of bookstore-slash-vintage surfing memorabilia museum. The books were not necessarily about vintage surfing memorabilia; I perhaps misspoke. There were few, if in fact any, books on vintage surfing memorabilia at Tiki Ty's and perhaps in the whole of the world. Vintage surfing memorabilia being one of those memorabilias that people prefer to see accidentally or even on purpose, in person, but rarely, if ever, to read about.
      Though perhaps they would enjoy a picture book of vintage surfing memorabilia?
      This may not even be the case.
      This may be something that warrants further investigation, but perhaps by someone else.

Very pleasing indeed.

Holly Miranda - The Magician's Private Library

So you suspect that it'll turn out that you've heard plenty of this kind of thing before, indie girl hits the scene with more 'sensitivity' than actual talent or originality, and so on - but you buy the album anyway, just in case, because the passing mentions are intriguing and besides openness is important. And at first it seems like your fears might be realised, because the album seems all wispy and pretty and insubstantial, and there don't seem to be any real melodies, so what's with that?

But you keep listening, and it begins to sink in, the airy vocals emerging, from the ornate gusts and thickets, electronic and organic, of Dave Sitek's production (relevant to mention because he's really got a sound), and not longer after, the songs themselves, first the sweeping "Joints" and "Waves" (the one coming across like a more soulful, slowed-down, 23-era Blonde Redhead cut, the other sounding like a more orchestrated Cat Power, and both in a good way), then the even slower-to-reveal-themselves pleasures of songs like "Slow Burn Treason" and "Everytime I Go To Sleep", and then the whole things, in bits and pieces but with a kind of inevitability once it's started to make sense - and it turns out that this is why you keep the 'just in case' in your armory, after all, for albums like these, that just come along and surprise and disarm you and take you into their own worlds as they do it.

The National @ the Palais, Sunday 9 January

Happily for me, the way I feel about the National at the moment, as I get my first chance to see them live, is pretty much the way I felt about Wilco when I saw them for the second time a couple of years back - that is, if they're not the best rock band going around today, then I don't know who is. And the show didn't disappoint - a solid 8 out of 10 rather than anything transcendent, but still really good (and I wonder if, like that Wilco show, there might be a later reappraisal upwards, because obviously the songs were all great and I can't really fault the actual concert).

Live, it's even clearer than on record that the drummer is the real genius in the band, but the whole outfit was solid, frontman Matt Berninger's baritone selling the songs well enough and bringing out throat-shredding screams for songs like "Abel", "Mr November" and "Squalor Victoria" that demanded it, guitars squalling through their parts, and trumpet and trombone featuring throughout. They mix it up dynamically, too, emphasising different aspects of various songs that could otherwise sound a bit same-y, with the ones that really should feel like complete blasts of momentum doing just that. On their last three albums in particular, there's barely a weak song, and the set drew almost entirely from those three, and so never flagged. I really did enjoy it a lot.

(w/ Nenad + Emma & friend Matt; and David + Justine seated elsewhere)

Blue Valentine

I didn't know much about this film - both its attendant controversy and its gruelling nature had passed me by - but what I did know was enough to make me strongly suspect that it was going to be a downer (I'd intended to avoid the film, but Jade wanted to see it). In fact, it was one of the most uncomfortable films I've watched in a while - entirely deliberately so - Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams disappearing into their characters and delivering a naturalistic, almost improvised-feeling rendition of the lives of two people, unhappily married, alternating with scenes from seven (?) years previously, when they first met. (Gosling in particular is fantastic - he's an unassuming-seeming actor, but seriously talented...he was equally good in a very different role in Lars and the Real Girl.)

The discomfort came from the way that the characters are unpleasant to each other, Gosling's Dean in particular. There's physical and emotional (including sexual, which is both) violence and bullying, but more than that, there's two people just unable to get along, trapped by circumstance and by who they are; the oral sex scene which has caused so much fuss, while moderately explicit, isn't troubling at all, and that's because of its context - it occurs early in the relationship, while they're happy, before everything goes gradually to hell.

I was glad that the film didn't overly play up the contrast between the 'early' scenes and the later ones - there are plenty of signs of what's to come in those early sequences, though much more light and promise too. It makes it more realistic, though of course it's that realism which causes much of the squirming.

So definitely a downer (though the actors' comments at the very end of this interview gave me a slightly different perspective on it), but impressive.

The King's Speech

The King's Speech did make me think about how debilitating it would be to have even a moderately severe speech impediment, even if one's job didn't (as did Firth's George VI's) entail inspiring a wartime nation through public broadcasts - or, for that matter, general talking (as mine does). It's a good film, the central relationship likeable, the more minor characters well drawn, and the story (rather surprisingly) engaging, though I can't imagine rewatching it.

(w/ Sunny)

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

Deerhunter have never really registered, but I bought Halcyon Digest after hearing part of it in a record store; no wonder it caught my ear, because it has bits and pieces of a lot of my favourite things, from Cocteau Twins chime to Wrens-esque jangle and post-Arcade Fire modern orchestral indie-rock. Anyway, it's all good, very good actually, the two standouts being the epic "Desire Lines" and "Helicopter", both absolute killers.

On Sofia Coppola: Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, Somewhere

Rewatching Lost in Translation, it wouldn't have been at all suprising had my viewing been overlaid by an awareness of the way in which the nature and quality of Bob and Charlotte's experiences, interactions and inner lives in Tokyo (and Kyoto) precisely, metaphorically, profoundly reflects my own experience of the world and my place in it. But it's a mark of the film's quality that, while watching it, those kinds of thoughts weren't uppermost in my mind; instead, I was absorbed by the relationship between Bob and Charlotte themselves, and their experiences, alone and together, in the strange land where they find themselves and each other. Of course, there's a strong element of identification and recognition in my response to the film - but that element remains always just below the surface, or perhaps is glimpsed only in fleeting moments, a snatch of music, a blurry night city landscape, a still moment alone above everything.

I usually think of The Virgin Suicides as my favourite Sofia Coppola film, but Lost in Translation is probably her most perfect - the way in which it invokes the aloneness of the two main characters, and the sense of transience, quiet alienation and inevitable failures of understanding and communication which are always there but merely especially evident in a foreign country, and then sets that against the desire for connection and the unexpected, miraculous way in which we occasionally, briefly find it, is note perfect, as is its ending. (cf 1, 2)

What The Virgin Suicides does that Lost in Translation doesn't is that it really stirs me - it produces pangs that feel almost physical. It was five years between the first time I saw it and the second, and it's been another five to now, the third, and it feels like the way I've responded to it on each of those occasions has been basically the same: what I wrote about it after that second watching still rings true (...coming to hold collective memories of times we hadn't experienced...).

All of Coppola's films feel very personal (it's impossible to imagine someone making such perceptive, subtle films without themselves possessing the sensitivity that animates them), and it's tempting to see this one, her first, as the most personal of the four to date - but it's in the sensibility that she brings to it rather than in the details of the story or characters (after all, it's an adaptation - and a notably faithful one - of the Eugenides novel), and it's that sensibility that has so drawn me in the past, and still does, intensely, bittersweet, languid, melancholy, cryptic.

So, after The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation came Marie Antoinette, which I'd been keenly anticipating and wasn't at all disappointed by. I can count on the fingers of one hand the people who I know who like the film (and I've sure talked, and argued, about the film with a lot of people) - in fact, it would top out at two - but I think that most people just aren't wired in the way that you need to be for MA to pierce, as it does me.

Going by extemporanea, I'd seen Marie Antoinette those first two times on the big screen (the first time with KB, who did like it, and then a second time on my own) and not since, but I could swear there'd been another time, on dvd - perhaps I forgot to note it, whenever it was. In any event, to watch it again is to be reimmersed in its many pleasures - visual, musical, associative.

* * *

This recent round of rewatching was, of course, inspired by Somewhere; Lost in Translation on Monday, The Virgin Suicides on Tuesday, Somewhere itself at the Nova, again with KB, on Thursday, and then Marie Antoinette tonight (Saturday).

And I liked Somewhere, a lot actually, though I wonder if I would've liked it as much had it been directed by someone else. It looks and feels very much like an independent film (in the American sense) - a reminder that, for all of her ubiquity and ability to score A-list Hollywood actors for her films, Coppola is fundamentally an arthouse director - and it has the slowness and contemplative air of the genre. Not much happens, but what does happen (or fails to happen) is closely observed.

The film's vision of the hedonism and excess of Hollywood life is rendered in dull colours and shades - a striking contrast to Marie Antoinette's sparkling, brightly-lit court of Versailles (in Coppola's rendition, an antecedent of modern Hollywood) - and that artistic choice fits with the gentleness of the film's tone and approach. While Somewhere is squarely concerned with the hollowness of the Hollywood lifestyle, it's content to observe, highlighting the culture's many absurdities (the deadpan shooting of the pole dancing scenes and Johnny's reactions, for example, is hilarious) and contrasting the warmth of Johnny's relationship with Cleo and Cleo's own good nature and level-headedness, rather than taking a more overtly satirical or cutting approach to its subject.

It's a quiet film, but nonetheless satisfying. There are some small epiphanies - Cleo in the car, Johnny breaking down on the phone at night afterwards, the final scene - all of which add something, though I would've preferred it had the film ended (as I'd thought it was going to) with the slow zoom-out long shot of Johnny and Cleo sunbathing side by side on deck chairs; for me, it didn't need that final scene with Johnny getting out of his car and walking into the future, though perhaps I'll feel differently next time I watch it.

There are things that set Somewhere apart from Coppola's previous films, most notably its slowness and the sense of distance to it. The Virgin Suicides is overtly bathed in nostalgia and narrated through the distorting lens of memory and recollection, but in themselves those are immediate experiences and sensations, even if their subject is a past event. Lost in Translation takes a pair of adults in a foreign land, constrained by the roles that life has forced upon them, and takes us directly to the heart of their relationship in a way that's characterised by interiority and practically forces us to bring our own experiences and readings into how we understand their interactions. And Marie Antoinette makes a hyper-coloured dream of its 'historical' milieu and shows us what it is to be a bauble in such a glittering setting in the only way that it's possible to understand such a character - through flash and surfaces, and glimpses of the feelings and quiet desolation that lie below them.

But while the protagonists of those films are cryptic and, in at least some (and, really, probably in all) cases unknowable, in Somewhere, Johnny seems blank - he doesn't know who he is, and he doesn't have the inner resources (except, perhaps, until the very end) to change his circumstances. He has a role in his world that he plays, but he's utterly disconnected from other people and from any real understanding of himself. And the film dramatises (enacts) that distance, creating a detachment in how we observe Johnny and his world while at the same time drawing our attention to it. (The film's use of music is typical - while it often begins playing as if it's part of the film's 'soundtrack' and therefore separate from the events of the film itself, in all but one or two instances, Coppola is careful to show us that the music is in fact part of the film's narrative, playing from a stereo or a sound system somewhere.)

That said, Somewhere has much more in common with Coppola's other films than it is dissimilar. Like those other films, it avoids psychologisation of its characters; instead, the mysteriousness of people's inner lives (even to themselves) is highlighted, as are the spaces between people, and the failures to 'only connect' - with others, and with the world at large - which inevitably follow. And, while it's slowed down, it shares with Coppola's earlier films a certain dreamy sensibility which gives those thematic preoccupations a wistful, poetic colour.

* * *

Movies came up, as they often do, in a conversation with CStCW a few weeks ago, and I mentioned Godard, Wong Kar Wai and Sofia Coppola as three who I love. C wholly endorsed the first two, but balked at the third (and particularly Marie Antoinette) and was entirely puzzled by my liking of her; the conversation made me think about just what it is that I like about Coppola's films so much, because there's no doubt that they do resonate with me.

Godard (at least in his golden period) emphasises the disjointed and essentially constructed nature of experience, understanding and narrative in his riffs on cinema and artistic form, but with flashes of sentiment that emerge in the gaps (perhaps unwittingly, despite his best efforts) and defy any attempt to read or experience his films in a joyless, anti-humanist fashion; WKW has adopted the new wave ethos and married it to a giddy romanticism, all ecstatic expressionistic stylised swoons which defy the alienation that is so often the defining aspect of his characters' experiences; and then there's Coppola, about whom I've already written a mini-essay above.

Each has a distinctive cinematic idiom through which form and content are matched and expressed; for me, what all three have in common for me is that they make films that are essentially cinematic renditions of the way that I see and experience the world, rendered in a heightened, poetic fashion - Godard's take is more cerebral and WKW's more emotive, but Coppola's is the most immediate and the most piercing, the closest to a literal depiction of the world as it appears ('phenomenologically') to me. Coppola's films speak to me - I guess that's enough.