Another (unappreciated?) Mike Leigh film and a baseball documentary

Yet more evidence that Mike Leigh is an unappreciated film writer and director: his 1983 movie Meantime, which I for one knew little about (thanks, Criterion, for making this and other Leigh films available this month!) but seems to me a domestic drama of the highest order – would have played well on stage, too, I think – that perfectly captures the angst of its time and place: the dreary “council housing” on the outskirts of London in the ‘80s, a time of massive unemployment, distrust of government, the rise of skinhead violence. He centers the movie on a family of four, the ever-grumbling unemployed father, the constantly haranguing mother always about to explode with anger, and the two 20-something sons, living at home, sharing a tiny bedroom, one of whom (Colin – played by Tim Roth, who steals the show with his understated performance) w/ serious retardation. The film is much darker than any other Leigh film I’ve seen, with the unrelenting bickering and screaming making it for some a piece of difficult viewing; but there’s a subtle sweetness that binds the two brothers as they, to a degree, put up a united front against family pressures, particularly from those of the officious aunt, a small step above the rest of the family in her marriage to a guy with an office job (and troubles of his own, of course), who tries to hire Colin to do some work at her apartment at an insultingly low wage rate. (Helps both of us, dunnit?, as she might have said). Should rank up there w/ some great British films of the 50s such as Loneliness of the Long-Distrance Runner as thoughtful and fearless accounts of working-class struggles during times of economic distress. The unusual score – harpsichord and, I think, oboe – is terrific in signifying the dissolves from one “scene” to the next.

 

Also last night finished watching the 2014 documentary The Battered Bastards of Baseball, by MacLain and Chapman Way, account of the 1970s independent (i.e., not associated w/ any Major League club) minor-league team, the Portland Mavericks. The team was put together by actor Bing Russell (who was apparently extremely knowledgeable about the sport), after a lackluster Class AAA minors team moved out of the city. He filled the team, it seems, through open tryouts and basically took a bunch of players passed over, for one reason or another, by all the Major League franchises. The team performed surprisingly well on the field for its, I think, 4 seasons, and did extremely well at the gate, generating enthusiasm and national sports coverage before folding and making way for AAA franchise (part of the Mariners system, I think). The doc has its moments, but its problems as well. First of all there way too much of the material is narrated by talking heads – unfortunate, but maybe necessary as there is so little good archival footage. Second, the film never really explains how the franchise was so successful on the field – how could a team of undrafted players do so well? Were these guys older and more mature than the Class A competition? Today, I think this kind of success would be impossible, as the draft is so much more sophisticated and scouting so much more thorough that it was in the 1970s. What’s undisputed is the success at the gate, but that may have more to do w/ the incompetence of the previous Portland franchise; surely, a city the size of Portland, Oregon, is large enough to support a minor-league team, and the surprise is not so much the success of this franchise as the failure of its predecessor.

Fun to watch the 8-part series The Eddy, despite some flaws

Jack Thorne’s 8-part series on Netflix, The Eddy, is engaging and watchable and will without a doubt spawn at least one follow-up season. The show centers on Elliot Udo (Andre Holland), an African-American ex-pat and owner of a jazz nightclub, the eponymous Eddy, and the musical director of the house band – as well as the father of an extremely likable though bound-for-trouble teen, Julie (Amandla Stenberg) who’s come to live w/ him after a falling-out w/ his ex/her mom. Over the course of the “season: we get to know most of the players in the jazz band and we follow Elliot on his struggles to support and guide the band, manage his tempestuous relationship w/ the lead singer, and deal with a criminal element that wants to buy into his enterprise and use the club as a laundromat for drug/counterfeit money. The plot itself is flimsy, and the pacing of most episodes is slow to glacial, but it’s best to accept this series for what it is: a study in character and in group interaction, the development over time of complex life/work/family relationships, and an homage to the ex-pat jazz scene still thriving, I guess, in Paris today. Each episode includes extensive jazz interludes as we watch the band prepare for performances and a studio album. Sadly, I wish the musical score was better – it’s neither avant garde nor memorable in an upbeat, pop manner – in fact I can’t remember a single tune or set of lyrics. Individually, though, most of the musicians are excellent, or seem to so me, and its fun to watch them perform and interact, musical quality aside.

The well-crafted plot of Elio Petril's 1970 film and why it still rings true today - Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion

Elio Petri’s film Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) won’t in my book win an belated awards for design, cinematography, or score – to me the look of the film was very 1970s ugly with lots of chrome and plate glass, the editing was frenetic and choppy, the score ( by the well-regarded Ennio Morricone) was unsettling and weirdly comic in the most inappropriate moments) – but it’s a film well worth revisiting because of the odd and improbable yet well-constructed plot. In essence, at the outset we see a seemingly virile middle-aged man engaged in rough sex w/ a woman whom we correctly assume to be his mistress, and in the midst of their rough sex he slashes her w/ a razor blade and kills her. Was this a planned murder, or did the rough sex go too far and off the rails? We never definitively learn the answer – but what’s so striking is the behavior of this man: Instead of calling for help or hiding the extensive evidence, he wallows in it – dragging the soles of his shoes through the pool of blood, taking a long shower, standing face-to-face outside the doorway of the apartment building so that he’s sure to be recognized. What’s up? We soon learn that he’s the director of the homicide division for the Rome PD – just about the get “promoted” to the “political” division. So we sense that because of his power he’s immune to the evidence he’s planted and that the worst decision would be for him to try to hide or destroy evidence. And he’s right – almost no one suspects him and those who do or might are too intimidated by his power. The man above suspicion is played by Gian Maria Volonte, and he gives a nearly great performance: cruel, brutal, and scary, especially in his rants against “political” prisoners (i.e., anarchists, Marxists, et al), an outburst we could possible hear today from our idiotic president.

Edward Burtynsky's photos raise moral and aesthetic questions

Watching Jennifer Baichwal’s 2006 documentary on the works of the photographer Edward Burtynsky, Manufactured Landscapes, you can’t help but look with astonishment and wonder at his photographs of industrial production, waste, and effulgence; you can’t help but feel that these are astonishing and even beautiful photographs – and then of course you feel guilt and remorse for even thinking that these scenes can have aesthetic value. On the one hand, these are documentary records of the pain and suffering so many suffer and endure; on the other hand, EB has found a formal beauty in some of these haunting photographs. Yes, you can’t help but look at the volcanic pyramids of coal waste, as the military precision of a Chinese manufacturing super-factory, at the cities crushed to ruin to make way for the Three Gorges Dam in China, at the eerie hulks of scrapped cargo ships broken down to shreds of steel in a dockyard in Bangladesh. But all of these “manufactured landscapes” include the people who live and work within – often with the jobs of the most mind-numbing tedium or the most lethal danger, and with no notable protection from injury. So through these photographs (and at the documentary showing how EB made them) EB is raising our awareness of several global crises: industrial pollution, worker safety and exploitation, lives uprooted to make way for “progress.” His intentions are impeccable. Yet what does it mean for us to look at these photos in a museum or gallery? If we see the photos and treat them as works of art, as pieces of aesthetic beauty, are we guilty? Have we been conned? Are EB and Baichwal exploiting those whole live and work in these landscapes, by mining their suffering for voyeurs like us?

A Czech New Wave film that feels dated but has its moments

The 1963 Czech “New Wave” film Something Different, the debut of director Vera Chytilova, feels dated and heavy-handed today, but it’s still worth watching as a glimpse into the lives of people in Eastern Europe in the 1960s. The film tells two parallel stories: Eva, a famous Olympian gymnast, in training for her final competition (the gymnast Eva Bosakova plays herself) and a young mother/housewife, Vera, struggles w/ the difficulty of raising a child in the cramped and uncomfortable conditions that even so-called professional families endured (her kitchen, her apartment, look nothing like an American or western European kitchen would have looked like in that era), and in particular with the indifference of her obtuse husband. We get the message: the housewife’s life is as difficult and challenging as the life of the superstar athlete, and the athlete endures pain and fear and even humiliation (by her male coaches) as she pushes herself to perfect ever more difficult feats. The film would be stronger if either segment had more of a plot – the Vera sections in particular, in which the extramarital affairs (of both husband and wife) feel tacked on and not really credible – though her confrontation w/ her husband at the conclusion is the emotional high, or low, point. As to Eva, seeing her as a coach to a young athlete, at the end, is even more satisfying than watching her triumphant performance: Supportive, rather than abusive, coaching is the answer, across the board.

An Icelandic film on the life of a woman whose job it is to flag travelers using stolen or fake passports

The low-key Icelandic feature And Breathe Normally (2018), directed by Isold Uggadóttir, gives us a look at the effect of tightened border security has on many people – inside and outside of the system – and also shows the inadequacies of the systems of social and economic support, for citizens and deportees alike, even in a country as seemingly egalitarian and prosperous as Iceland. The story line, in brief, follows a young single mom on the verge of bankruptcy who’s a candidate for a job checking passports and documents of travelers who stop in Iceland en route to America and other destinations of supposed freedom. A handful are traveling on fake or stolen dox, and it is her job to flag these cases and send the woeful travler off to holding cells, imprisonment, and most likely deportation. Through a series of somewhat absurd coincidences, the woman’s life becomes entwined with the life of an African woman whose fake passport she flagged; over the course of their sometimes strained friendship, both learn abou the lives of others, and in the end there’s a lovely moment of salvation. It’s a small-scale film, sad at times, and it successfully fulfills its modest, low-budget ambitions.

Is Almodovar's Pain and Glory a work of autofiction?

Pedro Almodovar’s film Pain and Glory (2019) is a rich and complex narrative of a type that we don’t see often today, at least in films from the U.S. It’s a story about a 60-something film director at a point of crisis in his life and his career – which may call immediately to mind 8 ½, though the crisis and the personality of the struggling director differ widely. In P&G the director Salvador (Antonio Banderas) has suffered lifelong maladies of extreme pain and has neither written nor directed a film for many years and is feeling physically and mentally unable (unwilling?) to begin a new project. He learns from a friend that a local arts group has arranged a screening of a film – his most famous? – from 30 years back, and they want Salvador to be present for a post-screening Q&A, along with the star of the film, Alberto (Asier Exteandia); problem is, the two had a falling out during the production and have not spoken to each other in 32 years. Neverthless, Salvador reaches out to his one-time nemesis and they agree to the proposal – which leads to many complications. Most notably, Salvador develops a heroin addiction – and during his many drug-induced dream states he recalls, and the movie flashes back to, his impoverished childhood as a precocious student, father mostly absent, raised by a devoted mother (Penelope Cruz), with whom, as we see late in the film, he is still close though he feels that he has failed her as a son. Over the course of the film, we see Salvador gradually and tentatively confront his addiction and other health issues, come to terms with his mother, become more open about his homosexuality, and begin a new creative project that may give him some hope of relief from his pain, both physical and psychological. Throughout, the film has fantastic visuals and the most striking color schemes, part of Almodovar’s trademark style – and the conclusion, which I will not divulge, involves a 4^th-wall-breaking surprise that makes us thing anew about the entire movie. We can only hope, at the end, that P&G isn’t an Almodovar “autofiction” (there’s a funny moment in which the adult Salvador discusses autofiction with his mother); artists are liars, so to speak, so perhaps the suffering so evocatively depicted is not (entirely) his own.

A rare and fascinating look at the process of recording an "original cast" album from a Sondheim musical: Company

For anyone with any curiosity about what goes into the making of a Broadway musical, DA Pennebaker's documentary, Original Cast Album: Company (1970) is a must-view. Pennebaker was invited to shoot the recording of the cast album for the Sondheim musical, which Pennebaker apparently thought would be a few hours of watching the cast do a few takes and wrap up the recording. The session - on the Sunday following opening week - ran for what seems to be about 16 hours, wrapping at 4 a.m. Monday, with some loose ends still to tie. As we watch his hour-long take on this process, we get a sense of the extreme difficulty of the work entailed - Sondheim's score was exceptionally challenging in and of itself - and we see w/ a growing wonder the attention to detail that accompanies every take - sometimes 8 or more takes for a given #. Between takes, Sondheim consults w/ the singers on what to an outsider seem like the tiniest of nuances - pronunciation of a particular word, a minor key shift, a single missed note - that one by one seem trivial but at the end we see how the need for and devotion to perfection lifts the recording up the highest level. The killer at the end is Elaine Strich's recording of Ladies Who Lunch, which seems to most viewers, I'm sure, a smash on the first take - but no, much more is in store, and the payoff is there at the end. All told, this doc is a rare look at the many aspects of the art of musical theater - recording, acting, singing, timing, writing, adapting - that has to bring to any viewer a new appreciation of the challenge of putting on a seemingly seamless show.

Why Douglas is an excellent follow-up to Hannah Gadsby's Nanette, which you should see first

It’s probably a good idea to see them in sequence, that is, to first watch Hannah Gadsby’s first hour-long special (Nanette) and than watch her slightly longer special, Douglas (2020, both on Netflix). They’re unlike any other comedy routine, and, though she bristles at the label, each is something like a one-person play: The first a mix of some really funny routines, most focused on the life and troubles of a lesbian woman, with some personal monologue that’s insightful and frightful and extremely moving – as well as pointedly political – about trauma she experienced in childhood and young adulthood and about her strained but loving relationship w/ her family. The sequel or follow-up, Douglas, is in many ways a more conventional comedy routine, with some hilarious sections on the must unlikely of topics, for ex. “Where’s Waldo?” and Renaissance art (HG was an art-history major, and it’s amazing how much material this background provides for both shows). Much of Douglas is strangely “meta-comic,” as she comments are her own art and on the routine that she’s presenting; it’s not nearly as confessional and introspective as Nanette, but it does include a divergence into the topic of autism, with which HG tells us she’s been diagnosed – it’s both funny and painful to hear her account of her difficulty in “fitting in” in various settings, such as elementary school, where her persistant and insistent line of questioning befuddled even the most patient of teachers.

Two characters who get what they deserve in Visconti's period-piece melodrama

There are some really fine scenes in Luchino Visconti’s melodramatic period piece, Senso (1954), and we can see in this early film much evidence of Visconti’s over-the-top direcrtorial style and his interest in filling the screen with lush interiors abundantly decorated and w/ a pulsating “classical” score that at times dominates the action (I think most of the score is from a Bruckner symphony – one of my least-favorite composers, though after seeing this film I thought maybe cinema scores would or should have been his metier). In brief, the film – based on a 1880s novel by Boito and set mostly in Venice in the 1860s at a time when Venice was under Austrian occupation and Garibaldi was leading troops in Italy to kick out the occupying army and unite the country – is about a young, married Countess (Livia) who is seduced by a falls in love w/ a young Austrian officer (Franz), who weirdly is played by an American actor (all the dialog was later synched in, in Italian and German). Livia, who starts out as an Italian patriot in league w/ the resistance, ultimately betrays the resistance in order to reunite w/ Franz – but when she does so she – at last – recognizes that he has duped her and that he’s a horrible and corrupt man: two terrible people who pretty much, in the end, get what they deserved. Clearly, Visconti would have been thinking, in making this film, about the German occupation of France and about the fate of the collaborators, particularly women who fell in love w/ German officers and soldiers (and perhaps harboring some shame about the role of Italy in the War). Among the great scenes: the opera scene (Il Trovatore) at the opening that erupts into a demonstration, the surprise when Olivia tells her husband she’s been having an affair, the battle scenes that I believe give us among the most vivid and probably realistic sense of military battles in the late 19^th century, and Franz’s drunken rampage at the end, when Livia stupidly shows up at his doorstep, unannounced. If only we cared at least a little about the lead characters and their relationship – but we know, and see, much more than they do and we know where this story is headed.

A film worth watching as we approach the "edge of democracy"

Petra Costa’s 2019 documentary, The Edge of Democracy, is a close-up, inside look at the top leadership in Costa’s native Brazil, going back two generations, o the time of her parents’ youth. Her parents, young activists, were imprisoned and tortured by the brutal government; today, her mother is a strong voice for political reform and plays a minor but significant role in PC’s project. But most of the documentary focuses on the most recent leadership in Brazil, with amazing inside access that somehow PC managed to get, most likely through her friendship w/ and ties to the populist leader and former president “Lula.” What we see over the course of the film is the corruption and bribery endemic to every aspect of Brazilian political life, as well as the tumultuous and vindictiv govonernment that impeaches and convicts sitting presidents in what are clearly acts of political vengeance rather than justice. We also see some incredible footage of the brutal and near-riotous struggles on the floor in the Congress – far wilder and more violent than we’ve yet to see in the 21^st-centurty U.S. – and the powerful and often frightening street demonstrations in suppport of (or opposition to) various political leaders. The end result is the rise to power of the tyrant Bolsonaro. If we could time travel and move this film back to, say 2015, we in the U.S. would shrug and say “it can’t happen here.” Today, though – it’s a different world and a different story, and we can’t help but see this documentary as a warning, maybe a prediction, as to where the U.S. government could be heading; to parallels between Bolsanoro and our so-called president are harrowing, and the riotous street scenes heralding his ascension to power seem frightfully prophetic. All told, it’s a powerful and timely documentary – a little tough at first to follow, for most in the U.S., and PC’s English-langauge voice-over narration is a little to understated and soft-spoken – but these are quibbles, as we in the U.S. approach the edge of democracy right now.