Incredible beauty and shocking brutality co-exist in Terence Davies's Scottish melodrama, Sunset Song

 Terence Davies's Sunset Song (2015), based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, has the classic beauty of over Davies films, in this case to the extreme, with its many wide-screen shots of the Scottish landscape across the seasons and in various forms of inclement weather known well to anyone who's lived in or even visited Scotland - plus some extraordinary interior of the farm house and the outbuildings on a Scottish one-family planting and dairy operation, scenes with lighting that can only remind your of a Vermeer (props to Michael McDonald for cinematography) - all this and a pretty good melodrama of a plot, with amazing scenes of life throughout the farming community - wedding celebration, funeral services - as well as some scenes of almost unbearable tension (getting the horses into the barn during a midnight thunderstorm) & brutality (see for yourself). The story line, w/out spoilers, involves a few years in the life of a young woman, Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn), as she navigates family tensions in their overcrowded farmhouse dominated by the brute of a father, leading to shocking tragic deaths and ultimately her independence and then marriage to a seemingly benevolent young man from the village obvious in awe of her poise and beauty and then, as w/ SO many British films, the war intrudes and her husband is changed in dramatic (and to be honest not entirely credible) ways that threaten her life and her child's. The plot carries us along nicely, and that's all that we need to otherwise enjoy this film for its capacity to capture both the natural beauty of the Scottish lands and the look and feel of the hard life of the small farmer - the film set ca 1915 but maybe the same story could hold today. One drawback: for most American viewers the Scottish language or accent will make this feel like a film in a foreign language; some may opt for closed caption, though we decided to decipher as best we could and not intrude on the beauty of the imagery.  

Why The World of Apu is a classic among world cinema

 Satyajit Ray's The World of Apu (Apur Sanar, 1959), the conclusion of his Apu trilogy (and based on the novel Aparajito, by Bibhutibhashan Bandopodhyay) not only lives up to its reputation as a classic in world cinema, it may even go beyond its reputation, as it looks better, more original, more mysterious than it probably did back in the 1950s, as now its views of Calcutta look like time capsules, a view of another world, whereas the scenes of rural India (the slow boat ride along a winding river to the wedding site, scenes late in the film on the mountainous coal-mining region of what I think is Bengal, in winter) look even more devastatingly beautiful in their b/w imagery, which adds a sense of distance and classic taste to films of its era. The story line - young man (Apu Roy, played by great, expressive Soumitra Chatterjee, who died last week btw) leaves college because he can't afford the fees and sets off on his own, with dreams of becoming a great writer - living in a rundown, dismal apartment, his clothes in tatters, and the landlord threatening him w/ eviction - yet he has an optimistic, survivor's spirit and he looks for work (a devastating part of the film, as we see the conditions in which others, w/out his formal education, are forced to work) and carouses w/ his friend Balu as they share their dreams and optimism. The 2 guys seem entirely contemporary - and a throwback to many other great works about artistic and amorous dreams crashing against reality: think La Boheme, or Sentimental Education, or Great Expectations to name 3. Apu's life takes some dramatic twists and turns, which I will not divulge, as he experiences joy and exhilaration, young love and aspiration (with the beautiful Sharmila Tagore as his wife Aparna), tragedy, depression, and at least partial recovery and reconciliation. There are so many beautiful scenes and moments, but of particular beauty are the many shots of trains criss-crossing the smog-glutted outskirts of Calcutta as well as Aparna's arrival at Apu's dwelling, in particular the long take of her tearfully peering through a threadbare, tattered curtain her new surroundings. Also notable is the haunting score by the then little-known (in the West) Ravi Shankar. 

Joining the chorus of universal praise for The Crown (season 4)

 I will join in the praise of Season 4 of Peter Morgan's monumental series, The Crown. The series deserves commendation on every level and aspect, starting perhaps w/ the look of the spare-no-expense sets and settings for the royal family, all reconstructed and resurrected it seems in perfect period detail, both big (the airplanes, the cars, the equestrian stuff and hunting) and small (the many object d'art and portraiture in every interior). The series is of course centered on the disintegrating relationship between Charles and Diana w/ the side story being the tension between Thatcher and just about every else during her ten year reign of austerity; several of the episodes concern moments in British history in the 1980s not well known to American viewers - the disappearance of Thatcher's son during an African road rally, an intruder in Buckingham Palace - others are much better known, e.g., the Falklands War, the role of the UK in re apartheid. The lead actors are all terrific, perfectly cast and totally credible in their roles, with Olivia Colman at the top but also standouts for a # of others whom I have to look up: Josh O'Connor as Charles, Emma Corrin as Diana, Tobias Menzies as Prince Phillip, Erin Dohherty as Princess Anne, and Helena Bojnham Carter as Princess Margaret (and note that all of the minor roles are equally well cast and played). Highest praise to Morgan, as the writing (and direction for that matter) is incredibly smart, as well are constantly surprised at the twists and turns of the dialog and feel both sympathy and loathing, at various moments and degrees, for all of the royals, even Charles: How can we not pity him, even when he's at his most brutal, when we see the family he came from, the complete and total lack of affection? he's perfectly cast in this series, but miscast in life. 

A look at the China that tourists never see

 Chinese director Jia Zhangke's debut film, Xiao Wu (1997) is a curiosity, worth watching today for its up-close look at everyday life in China in the late 20th century, a life and setting that American tourists never see, and for the sheer audacity of a film a crime and dissolution among China's youth - all on what must have been an extremely limited budget. All actors in the film were nonprofessionals, working out their characters and the milieu as the project progressed; apparently the film was shot entirely w/ 16mm handheld cameras, and it looks like it, too - though that adds the the sense of place. The story line such as it is in valves the eponymous Xiao Wu, a young man who makes a pretty good living as a pickpocket working the streets and shops in an industrial wasteland of a city on the distant outskirts of Beijing. He doesn't look like much of a thief or a threat - clean-cut, always wearing a red sweater, wonky thick eyeglasses. There's some pressure from family and friends pushing him to go straight and enter a dubious though maybe ominous business in wholesaling cigarettes. All of this is just a means to give us a portrayal of life in China, far from what the authorities or the tourist industry would have liked us to see - maybe that's still true: run-down building and apartments, projects left unfinished, terrible hygiene, prostitutes running a slick business, ineffective policing, everyone chasing money, and not a thought or a moment about China or ideology - although at the end there are hints of building a new urban China to welcome the annexation of Hong Kong. 

A terrific film that uses original and documentary footage to examine the life and death of a powerful Italian leader

 Francesco Rosi's The Mattei Affair (1972) is what today we'd call a "docudrama," a retelling of the life of a man little-known to Americans today, or ever, who was entrusted toward the end of WW2 with the management of the oil reserves of Italy and over the next 20 years or so built the Italian oil conglomerate into a hugely powerful enterprise, broad in scope. Amazingly, in the process of his doing so he seems to have managed his personal integrity - no bribes, no obvious corruption, a relatively Spartan lifestyle (except for his private jet - which he makes a good case that he needs for his constant international travel), and an insistence throughout his career that the oil belongs to the people of Italy and he will do all he can to enrich his country, not himself. Well, of course, in his two decades of making deals for Italian oil reserves he makes many enemies (in particular, the U.S., which tried to undercut him with sales to the oil conglomerates, Standard Oil et al. - one of the great scenes in the film is Mattei's confrontation with a nasty American oil baron who says he won't deal with an "oil salesman"). Mattei is played brilliantly, at an extremely high energy level, by the great Jean Marie Volonte (best known to us as the police chief in Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion). Another one of the best scenes has Mattei speaking to a huge, adoring crowd in Sicily - and you have to wonder in that scene if he had or could have had political ambitions. As it happens, he died in a crash of his private jet in 1962: the scene of his plane crash opens the film, and then we go back 20 years and gradually, as Rosi builds the case that the crash was an act of sabotage. Although no foul play was detected at the time (cover-up?), an investigative team (not sure if they were journalists or filmmakers) began a new investigation in about 1970 - when one of the investigators, in Sicily, vanished and has never been seen since. It was unclear to me whether Rosins used any documentary footage (a check of Wikipedia shows that he did include scenes of himself investigating the death of his friend/colleague) but, either way, it's a powerful film by a truly courageous documentary filmmaker.

The Losey-Pinter 1967 film, Accident, is well crafted in all respects except that the leading characters are loathsome

 The 2nd of the Losey-Pinter projects - Accident (1967) - available on Criterion, is less ominous and peculiar than the first collaboration, The Servant, with it's odd camera angles and the menacing undertone of moral corruption and psychological torment. Accident is a more straightforward socio-drama and it feels much more cinematic and less like that film adaptation of a stage play. Briefly, the plot consists 2 Oxford "dons," close pals apparently, who find themselves in a deadly rivalry for the affections of a student, who herself is something of an exotic femme fatale (and who, by the way, never utter a word about their work, their ideas, or their reading). It's also a bit of a class-relations tragedy, although tempered in that the dons, or at least one of them, seems pretty damn aristo (maybe psueudo aristo, but anyway wealthy) himself. There are a few high-tension scenes, well crafted by screenwriter par excellence Pinter and well managed by the great camera work of director Losey. All that said, both films but especially this one, are headed by morally corrupt and unlikable male characters that by the end you just (figuratively) shrug and say "a plague on both your houses." Nice that the film opens with the eponymous accident, in which the young woman walks, or at least stumbles, away and her young boyfriend apparently dies - and then Pinter jumps back in time to the onset of the web of attractions and relationships and we never learn precisely what happened in the accident until the end - which, by the way, is framed by a weird and provocative closing sequence. 

A good example of Pinter's dramatic style in Losey's The Servant

 The Joseph Losey film The Servant (1963), with screenplay by Harold Pinter (based on a 1948 novel by Robin Maugham - about whom I know nothing) bears all the markings of Pinter's style as a playwright (I assume this was first a stage play?) - dialogue that's enigmatic, concise, spoken obliquely so that we have a sense that none of the characters - usually only two on stage/screen at any time - even understands what's being said. One (of the many) strange scenes takes place at a restaurant where two of the (4) main characters are having dinner - but we here more from the adjacent tables than from the principals (all of the "overheard" conversations are bleak, including a pair of Anglican priests sniping at each other and an unhappy couple, with Pinter taking a cameo role here). The essential plot: A young man, Tony (James Fox) allegedly back in England after a (allegedly) sojourn in either Africa, Brazil, or India (completely fabricated) hires a "manservant," Barrett (Dick Bogarde). The 2 have a strained and bitter relationship, with Barrett at first entirely buttoned down and subservient, but gradually we see Barrett plotting to take control of his life and of the household, bringing in his girlfriend (whom he says is his sister) to seduce Tony, break apart his engagement - which leads to Tony's firing of Barrett and to further complications. the level of tension and of mystery is high throughout with some really imaginative camera work (many mirror shots and staircase shots). One would assume that Pinter cut the novel to shreds in his adaptation for stage/screen; the film, despite its strengths, could have used some trimming during the final segments, as Barrett and Tony become buddies and accomplices (a strange implied sexuality to their time as roommates) in which the scenes become more crowded and dissolute and, at the end, as the two men become bitter rivals once again but with the tables turned so to speak; we get it - and could have gotten it 15 minutes sooner.