Another bunch of films, of mixed quality…

Trust*, Hal Hartley (1990, USA). Hartley has two films on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, and I can’t honestly see why he even has one. I can only guess he was the US independent film-making scene’s darling in the 1980s. He doesn’t translate to the UK. Or perhaps it’s just me. Maria is dumped by her jock boyfriend when she tells him she is pregnant, and the news causes her father to die of heart failure. Matthew is an electronics genius who thinks he’s some kind of alpha male. The two become involved. And, er, that’s it. Everything is resolutely amateur, the characters are not at all believable, and the central story – the relationship – is neither engaging nor dramatic. I really don’t see the appeal of Hartley’s movies. I thought his The Unbelievable Truth was singularly unimpressive, and wondered at its presence on the 1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die list, and I can only say the same of Trust. I will say, however, that Trust is very 1980s – but that’s hardly a compliment. Still, at least I can cross it off the list.

Capsule, Andrew Martin (2015, UK). Someone mentioned this film to me assuming I’d already know of it given its subject. But I hadn’t. So I checked it out, the DVD was cheap, so I ordered a copy… The story mostly takes place inside the first British spacecraft, which is supposed to have beaten both the US and the USSR into space. Now, I know all about bending the history of the space race, I have won awards for doing as much, after all – kof kof – and I’m fully on board with a British astronaut orbiting the Earth in 1959 in advance of both the USA and USSR. (Stephen Baxter and Simon Bradshaw wrote an excellent short story, ‘Prospero One’, on the same subject.) Unfortunately, I’m not in the slightest bit convinced by Capsule’s alternate history. Just look at the DVD cover, it looks like a Mercury capsule. Why would the British design a space craft that looked just like a Mercury capsule? And if they did, you’d expect the interior to resemble a Mercury spacecraft, where as the one in Capsule looks like the sort of interior designed by someone who doesn’t know much about spacecraft. And then there’s the story itself. By it’s very nature, it’s going to consist mostly of a camera focused on a single bloke in a pressure suit crammed inside said spacecraft. The plot of Capsule is about his dealings with the people on the ground through his radio – UK, USA and USSR. There is, I admit, a clever twist in the tale; but the journey to that point is not convincing and sadly lacking in drama. Disappointing.

Nuummioq, Otto Rosing & Torben Bech (2009, Greenland). One weekend, I tried to work out the countries from which I’d seen at least one film and, by extension, which nations’ movies I had yet to see. And Greenland was one of those countries on the not-seen list. So I went looking for some, discovered the Greenlanders had made several over the decades, and bought Nuummioq, AKA The Man from Nuuk, because it sounded interesting. A Greenlandic casual labourer finds his view of life changing when he is diagnosed with testicular cancer. He could get treatment, but in Denmark. Meanwhile, an ex-lover has returned, and the two rekindle their relationship. One of his two friends has an idea for selling glacier ice to gullible Westerners (don’t laugh, there’s already a brand of bottle water that boasts it’s made from glacier water), and he persuades the man from Nuuk to help him film a commercial. So they take their boat up the fjord into the country, where they normally hunt… and go stay with the sheep farmer, who has a complicated history with them and their families… And this is solid Nordic drama, well-written and well-acted, with some amazing Greenlandic scenery. I’m surprised it’s a not better known. I had to buy a DVD copy in order to see it, but it was by no means a wasted purchase. And I plan to watch more Greenlandic films too. Recommended.

Le boucher*, Claude Chabrol (1970, France). I’ve seen half a dozen films by Chabrol, and I know he’s highly-regarded, but every film I’ve seen by him has felt somewhat meh. Le boucher was, I admit, much better than the others I’d seen. A man and a woman meet at a wedding in their village – he is the butcher of the title, she is the school mistress. They begin seeing each other. Meanwhile, someone has been murdering young women in the area. The school mistress’s suspicions gradually fasten onto the butcher, and when she finds his lighter at one of the crime scenes… The film plays the thriller plot very much as a social drama, and is far more concerned with the relationship between the two than it is the crimes being committed. For a start, the murders are off-stage, and second, the police are not presented in a flattering light – it is, not after all, about them and their investigation. Unfortunately, this does mean the final act, when the butcher realises he’s been rumbled, comes across like a cut-price The Shining. What most people are likely to remember of the film, however, is the school trip to the Grottes de Cougnac, a large cave system – althoughly, I suspect, chiefly from the weird scenery more than anything else. Le boucher takes an interesting approach to its story, and if it feels a more solid than innovative it’s probably because time hasn’t been especially kind to it. But on balance, I think it probably belongs on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list.

Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg (2015, USA). In 1957, the FBI catches a Soviet spy. When it comes to prosecuting the man, a lawyer specialising in insurance law is asked to defend him. Rather than do the perfunctory job expected of him – because this is Tom Hanks, in a Steven Spielberg film – he is determined to see his client treated with fairness and dignity, and due process, and also avoid the death penalty. Which he manages, chiefly by suggesting the Soviet spy would then be available to trade in the future should the USSR catch a US spy. Which proves pretty damn handy when the Soviets shoot down Gary Powers in his U-2 and goes on trial in Moscow for spying. And so the two sides arrange a swap, but this turns complicated when  the East Germans grab a US student studying in Berlin, and while the US government is happy to let him rot in prison, Hanks insists he’s included in the exchange. While it’s certainly true that governments don’t seem to much care about the human cost when in pursuit of goals – especially those for the millitary-industrial complex or intelligence community – Spielberg’s career-long insistence that one good man can mitigate that tendency is getting both tiresome and damaging. Hanks specialises in playing an Everyman, and yet in all his films he is quite clearly something special to achieve what he achieves. It’s completely disingenuous. It’s like celebrating a billionaire for being a patron of the arts, when in fact society should not be relying on the largesse of the wealthy to fund the arts. Charity does not begin at home; it should be systemic. And interesting though historical incidents such as that in Bridge of Spies are, and no matter how well Spielberg evokes the era in his production design and photography, you’ve still got a film which presents the wrong message (look it up on Wikipedia – the film takes liberties with history; and Abel, the Soviet spy, was a fascinating man). Meh.

A River Called Titas, Ritwik Ghatak (1973, India). For the last couple of months, I’ve been putting A River Called Titas on when I’ve had a little too much to drink and I just want to sit back and just look at pretty pictures without having my intelligence beaten to a pulp. In the past, I’ve used All That Heaven Allows, Sokurov’s The Second Circle or Whispering Pages, or the first episode of Sokurov’s Spiritual Voices, or one of James Benning’s California Trilogy… but of late, I’ve been using A River Called Titas instead. Unlike those other films, it is black-and-white, and while it has a beginning, middle and end, it’s more a series of linked stories than an actual plot. It opens with two young girls, who live in a Malo village on the banks of the Titas River in what is now Bangladesh, discussing which of the village’s fishermen they will marry. Some fishermen from a village across the river visit the village during a festival, during which it is attacked. Kishore, one of those visiting fishermen, saves Rajar Jhi, and a marriage is arranged between the two. But on their journey to Kishore’s village, their boat is attacked by pirates, who kidnap Rajar. She manages to escape them and is taken in by some villagers. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know her husband’s name, only the village from which he came. The story jumps ahead ten years. Kishore has lost his mind after losing his wife. Rajar now has a ten-year-old son, Ananta. She sets off to find her husband, and arrives at his village. But he does not recognise her. A young widow, Basanti, one of the two girls in the film’s opening, helps her. During a festival, Kishore and Rajar meet up. He carries her away, but is set upon by the villagers and beaten to death. Before he dies, he recognises Rajar as his wife. In trying to save him, she drowns. Basanti takes care of Ananta. This is by no means a cheerful story, and I’m not entirely sure what draws me to it. The photography of the river is beautiful, and the way the characters’ stories loop in and out of each other is cleverly done. (The film is based on a novel, of the same title, by Adwaita Mallabarman.) Like Satyajit Ray’s films, this is Indian realist cinema – although at least one of the cast seems a bit more Bollywood than everyone else – and the focus is very much on presenting Malo village life as it really existed. I’m not entirely sure what it is that draws me to A River Called Titas – and although I find the only other two films by Ghatak I’ve managed to source on DVD, The Cloud-Capped Star and Subarnarekha, equally excellent, they don’t draw me quite as strongly. Ghatak made eight feature-length films before dying of tuberculosis at fifty-eight; he also made a number of short films, and even wrote seven books… Only the three films mentioned above are available in the Anglophone world. This is very annoying – he has become one of my favourite directors. Even more annoying, the BFI version of A River Called Titas I own was made from a poor print. There is a Criterion box set which includes a restored version of the film. I want it. And I just know I will love a proper restored print of A River Called Titas so much more than I do my current copy.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 807