Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread III

[Jevo]

My next pick is Blue Valentine.

 

[Pink Mist]

Bob the Gambler [Bob le flambeur] (1956) directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

Bob (Roger Duchesne) is a respected gambler in the seedy underworld of Montmartre who has gone straight for the past 20 years after serving time for a bank robbery. However, down on his luck he learns of a potential heist at a casino which could provide a massive fortune for him and his crew of gangsters. Melville crafts a very stylish heist movie with title character who acts effortlessly cools and an interesting milieu in Montmartre filled with gangsters, gambling, pimps, and prostitutes. There’s a lot to love in this film and I really wanted to like it more than I did however it just did not click for me. Part of this is that the film just meanders too much for he first hour. The first act is cool as it introduces the character and the setting, but once the second act happens, the film just deflates in energy until the third act when the heist occurs (or rather doesn’t). The third act though is impressive and is creatively anticlimactic and has a killer last line.

This is my first Melville and I can see the potential for why his later work is so highly praised, he is an effective stylist with an eye towards American cinema but with Parisian sensibilities. You can clearly see this film as the midpoint of the lineage from American noir and b movies to the French New Wave which would kickstart in just a few years later with films like Breathless and Shoot the Piano Player. But as for this film it is just a little too unpolished for me, but hints at a great potential in filmmaking and things to come. A solid but not overly impressive film, with a sleek aesthetic that leaves me eager to look into Melville’s other work.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Bob le Flambeau
Melville (1956)
“I was born with an ace in my hand.”

Bob is a charming rogue. An ex-con and gambling fiend, well-liked by most of those in his orbit in the Paris neighborhood of Montmarte. He’s his own worst enemy, always believing an ace is coming and always willing to help someone in need, even strangers. He’s got a good network, a young protegee, a comely young new acquaintance, an old buddy who happens to be a safecracker. Even the local police inspector likes him (and owes him a favor). All these folks (plus a few others including an unscrupulous croupier and a vengeful pimp) get wrapped up in a plot to rob a casino safe. Perhaps too many … word gets out and puts the whole scheme at risk….

There’s a lot here I love, but I’ll start at the end. From the point where Bob just cannot resist starting to gamble, through his ridiculously lucky run, to the collapsing of the heist in a hail of gunfire, killing for Paolo to being rounded up (with his massive winnings) into the cop car. It’s a moment that feels like it should be an emotional beat on paper, but it doesn’t play like that. It’s fun and almost flippant. Bob is going to live to bet another day (though he also seems destined to lose it all). It’s a good character-driven sequence of events. You feel a little bad for Paolo I suppose but he also is the reason why it all fell apart. Snitches get stitches.

Beyond the ending, I love the casino floorplan schematically laid out in an open field. Wonderful, clever touch, laying out space and proximity. Surprised I haven't seen more movies lift that idea. I'm sure there are some but I can't think of any at the moment.

We’ve covered some Melville before. He’s just damn cool. His style. His staging. His tone. He’s still being ripped off today. He certainly didn’t invent noir or cool placidity but for my money he perfected it. I consistently get a base level burst of pure enjoyment from his crime flicks.

 

[kihei]

Bob le Flambeur )1956) Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

Bob le Flambeur is made by a director having a lot of fun making an American noir-style gangster movie. It is hard to know how seriously to take the movie. Part of the time Bob le Flambeur seems like an early New Wave movie, though Melville is generally thought of as an influence on New Wave rather than being actually of the cloth. Part of the time the movie seems almost amateurish, an unintentional parody or maybe just a bad French translation. However, it is fun to watch. Bob le Flambeur is sort of a heist movie where the heist is irrelevant but the preparation is a point of interest and attention with a scene in an empty field with chalk marks designating room layouts being a real highlight. Unlike his later cooler, more realistic noir works with Alain Delon (Humphrey Bogart as a really tough dreamboat, though a very convincing one), Melville employs a shooting style that is almost rococo. While the exteriors are often beautifully shot, hopelessly slapdash and sometimes garish sets designate most of the bistro and nightclub interiors where the majority of the action takes place. The lighting is often bright to the point of glaring with lots of arrhythmic camera jumps and odd shooting angles in evidence. Some of the sets themselves look like something one might expect to find in an Ed Wood movie with cheap balsa wood panelling making do for walls. Then there is the acting. As Bob, Roger Duchesne looks more like a seedy head waiter in a zero-star French restaurant than a convincing, tough guy gangster. However, Anne (Isabelle Corey), the femme fatale, is certainly memorable. She looks like she just graduated the day before from some provincial lycee where she received a "C+" in her sole acting class. Weirdly her acting limitations actually add to her Lolita-lke allure. Yet, all this stuff doesn't add up to failure, but a kind of harmless fun, a well-intended homage to Hollywood noir that is made with genuine affection and spirit.

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Criterion Channel

 

[kihei]

PM: up to bat next. No rush.

 

[Pink Mist]

Faust (1926) directed by F. W. Murnau

During a devastating plague, a disillusioned alchemist (Gösta Ekman) makes a deal with the devil (Emil Jannings) to gain the power to cure people and restore his youth - in exchange for his soul. Based on the German folktale and Goethe’s play, this was Murnau’s final German film before leaving for Hollywood and it is an impressive example of his German Expressionist style. The story is a tale of the battle between good and evil, darkness and light, and Murnau’s camera emphasizes this struggle through superb cinematography and use of lighting and shadows. Murnau uses all his tricks up his sleeve in this film to great effect – double exposure, dynamic camerawork, gliding, scale effects, superimposition and so on – and while I know how he accomplishes these tricks (for the most part) it is still impressive at the creativity and mastery of Murnau’s effects and it is captivating to watch. It almost feels like he’s just showing off at times but it works effectively in a story which in its essence is about trickery and magic.

The first half of the film is the strongest, as it is a gothic nightmare in a village struggling with the plague and faith, and I find the back half less compelling as it becomes a mish mash of genres as Faust becomes seduced by the devil’s powers and the film becomes a bit of a sex comedy at times before transforming into a melodrama finale. However, the effects keep the viewer engaged whenever the plot drags in the second half. An exceptionally clever film, though perhaps just a tier below Murnau’s masterpiece Nosferatu.

 

[Pink Mist]

My next pick is Captain Blood (1935) directed by Michael Curtiz. Arrrr!

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Faust
Murnau (1926)
“No man can resist evil. The wager is on.”

A classic tale of temptation and virtue. An angle and the devil bet on the whims and soul of a man. That man, Faust, an old alchemist, makes a deal with the devil to save his town from the plague. It works, but the townspeople fear him when they realize he cannot be near a cross. He makes another bet, to return to his youth and when his life was grand. Temptations escalate. The slope grows ever the more slippery. His life deteriorates into more paint and loss. But just when it seems the devil has won his bet ... love conquers all. Whomp whomp, Mephisto.

I’m probably going to have to retire my ol’ silent movie bit because I feel like I’ve repeated it so many times here. I liked having it because I like it when I don't like things (in part because I think I'm a pretty easy grader in general) and silents were a thing that I could reliably be like, "Yo, not for me!" I historically found many of them dull and as much as I wish it wasn’t the case, many just challenged my ability to pay attention. Both a personal failing and a personal reality. Battleship Potemkin was a historic exception for me, but since I’ve joined this merry band of misfits movies like Haxan and Sunrise and Pandora’s Box and now Faust have obliterated my perceptions of the limitations of a silent movie. So RIP my old excuse.

The artistry on display here some of it’s pretty rudimentary but it didn’t make it any less rad for me. In fact the artificiality of the miniatures and effects, the expressionist angles — adds all the more to the fantastical story. Murnau packs the frame with a constant string of attractions to hold my attention. Sets with oversized beer barrels, a camera craning down through the floors of an Italian palace. There’s a clear mastery here to say nothing of the nightmare/dream like qualities. If anything the age of this and the dated techniques make it even more effective than I think it could possibly be in a more modern adaptation.

 

[kihei]

Faust (1926) Directed by F. W. Murnau

Mephistopheles makes a wager with an archangel that he, the devil, can corrupt a good man's soul. Faust is his victim, a good man who pays a terrible price for a kind act--though unfortunately he doesn't stop there. As late as the '60s when I was just getting into film there were a number of serious critics who continued to champion the superiority of silent film over the sound variety. They always seemed like old, delusional cranks to me, but their aversion persisted for decades. Truth be told, I had never seen very many silent films other than comedies, and I had little understanding of the wonders that silent film had to offer. Gradually that changed. I still wouldn't claim that silent film was superior to sound film, but I am open to an argument that there is close to near equality. As I now believe, cinema is a visual medium first and foremost, and words are secondary to image in many of the movies that I admire most. As the great silent film directors from around the world lacked the ability to express language in anything other than short intertitles, by necessity the image ruled the silent film aesthetic.

Though there are any number of visually beautiful films from the silent era, the works of F. W. Murnau stand out even in a crowded field. His expressionism seems subtler to me than other instances by his contemporary German directors (Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, for instance). Murnau expressionism doesn't overwhelm his stories so much as complement them. Where the sets and the make-up are the stars of Caligari, in Faust, it is the story that provides opportunity after opportunity for visual expression. The expressionism is far more fine-tuned for specific effects than it is in Wiene's work. The initial sight of Mephistopheles as we seem to look up a cliff at his partially hidden face is both chilling and an eye popper. The devil looming over a village like like a malignant cloud gives us another subtle cue to the stakes involved here. Gretchen and her baby's plight in the snow provides an extended sequence of images that suggest that nature itself might be mad. Those are only three quite different examples of dozens of instances in this film where the image darkly colours the story, becomes central to the emotional impact of the story. These scenes and sequences are masterful compositions that also affect the audience on a deep psychological level. Weine's expressionism tended to actually distance me by stating the obvious that Caligari is a madman. Murnau's draws me in and I feel for the human plight involved in being caught in a hopelessly inescapable trap.

All that being said, I'm not even sure I would rate Faust as my favourite Murnau movie, not with Sunrise, The Last Laugh and Nosferatu to consider as well. Anyone who fancies visual cinema will find a feast to explore in his work. Of course, some of the more disquieting images may not go away when you want them to.

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[Jevo]

Faust (1926) dir. F. W. Murnau

Mephisto and an Archangel makes a bet that Mephisto can corrupt and righteous man's soul. In return the Devil will win dominion over the Earth if Mephisto is successful. Mephisto sends a plague to the town where Faust, an elderly alchemist, lives. Faust prays for help, but nothing happens. In frustration he burns his alchemy books and the bible. One of the books falls open to a page showing how to get power by making a pact with the Devil. He starts out making a 24 hour deal. Faust removes the plague, but gets shunned by the townspeople when he can't face a cross. He hides, and makes an additional pact which will give him youth, earthly pleasures and a kingdom. In Parma a beautiful young dutchess is getting married. Faust has Mephisto dispatch the groom, while he charms the bride. Just as he's about to make love to her, his pact runs out, he has to make it permanent to continue, and he does.

Murnau's last German movie is an adaptation of one of the best known German legends. The story takes inspiration from Goethe's Faust, but also other editions of the story form the story in the film. It's not a bad start point for a movie, but I feel the story drags a bit in the middle, while the movie really picks up again in the ending as the Gretchen and Faust relationship falls apart. Gösta Ekman plays Faust, both young and old, and he does a really great job portraying both parts of Faust. I didn't actually realise it was the same actor until after I finished the film, so praise should go to the make up as well, because that's a surprisingly good old-man make up they've done here.

Murnau is a visual mastermind, and his style is perhaps the primary thing that people think about when the say German Expressionism. The way he uses light and shadows is unrivalled. In that regard Faust is one of his best works, and there are many fantastic shots throughout the movie. He starts out with a fantastic shot of Mephisto engulfing the town in his wings, blocking out the light and blowing a pitch black smoke over the town. It looks great and is filled with symbology. Murnau really takes the freedom the folklore setting gives him in regards to using this kind of imagery. Rarely in this film does Murnau strive for making sets look realistic. Instead he purposefully enhances them, both with and without the help of special effects, in order to increase the symbolic value of the imagery. The works of Murnau and his experimental style, as well as other contemporaries in silent era, have without a doubt left a lasting mark in cinema language today. But in some ways cinema language feels more defined now. There are still movies who challenge the cinema language, but you rarely see it in big budget movies, and Faust was a big budget movie in its time. And there's still a lot of what Murnau did which didn't make it into the current cinema language. So the movie manages to feel fresh and different still 95 years after it was made. And that's one of the interesting things about watching these old silent films, because many of the best of them have an energy of a lot style and technique more or less being made up as they went along. You don't often get that anymore. It's a special kind of fun.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

The Clockmaker of St. Paul
Tavernier (1974)
“We don’t understand our own kids so we try to understand someone else’s.”

Descombes is a watch/clock repairer in the town of Lyon. He’s separated from his wife and distant from his son. His life is work and food and drinks with friends. Then tragedy strikes. His son is accused of murder and is on the run. Reporters begin to bang down his door. The police ask questions. They want to find the son. Restaurant patrons whisper. The motive is a question. Love? Politics? Revenge? Political/labor operators smash the windows of his store. All the while he is tortured by how he may have failed as a father. The lovers finally are caught and father and son have their reunion and a gentle, shared understanding.

The story unfolds entirely through Descombes’ perspective. We learn as he learns. We experience his missteps with the press, his issues with the police, the side looks he gets in restaurants. It unfolds almost like an investigation, but it’s an internal exploration, not really a piecing together of the crime. The kid definitely did it and while the motive is questioned, the inevitability of his capture and penalization isn’t. It’s scaffolded like a crime flick, but is ultimately more personal.

The heaviest lifting is done by Philippe Noiret’s basset hound face.

Clockmaker is the first feature from French director Bertrand Tavernier who died earlier this year. He’s one of those classic versatile, reliable creators. Unheralded? Maybe a little relative to his peers, though this could be my U.S. blinders showing here. I don’t know how many of his films are going to crack best lists, yet every one I’ve seen (six or so?) is reliably good (Captain Conan) even borderline great (Coup de Torchon). That’s where I’d stack Clockmaker. There’s a gentle, even-keeled-ness to the film that’s made its impact last longer with me. It’s easy to imagine the same material turning into a big, righteous showcase for the father character. I’m glad this doesn’t.

By sheer coincidence I also happened to be reading an early 70s French detective thriller by Jean-Patrick Manchett called No Room at the Morgue and I was struck by how many of the small details overlapped — anti-Arab sentiments, union backlash, potentially false political motivations — I say this for no other reason than to shamelessly plug Manchett’s work, which tends to overlap with these times and places and sentiments if that is of any interest.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Next: Roland Joffe's The Mission.

 

[kihei]

I haven't seen this particular Tavernier but I am really looking forward to it. I was fooling around with the idea of making Tavernier's Daddy Nostalgia (with a fine performance by Dirk Bogarde) my next pick, but I will push it back a little.

 

[kihei]

The Clockmaker of St. Paul (1974) Directed by Bertrand Tavernier

The Clockmaker of St. Paul has been described as a thriller. If I put, say, Z, North by Northwest; and Purple Noon in my top echelon of thrillers, The Clockmaker of St. Paul would land in the very bottom echelon of the category. Not because it isn't a good movie, but because it so desperately seems to want to take the thrill out of thriller. Michel (Philippe Noiret) , a clockmaker who now lives alone, whose wife first left him and then, two years later, left him a widower to boot, learns that his semi-estranged son is charged with committing a murder. This certainly shakes up the clockmaker's life, but you would hardly notice because he seems so stoic about existence in the first place. There is no mystery here to solve--his son readily confesses. Inspector Guilboud (Jean Rochefort), the detective pursuing the case, has come to enjoy Michel's company; he hands Michel an alibi for his son on a silver platter, a veritable gift. But, by this time, Michel only wants to join in solidarity with his son. The murder has the unintended consequence of facilitating a reconciliation between father and son. So what we have is a character study of the father that trumps the crime of the son. Michel is indeed guilty of what is as close as you can come to an existential sin: he has lived for too long an unexamined life, a flaw that pretty clearly predates his wife's departure, a flaw that could have possibly have been a reason for her leaving in the first place. A radical shift in his reality, thus, is just the shock he needs to rediscover his authenticity. He finally becomes both father and friend to his son, a son who is, for good or ill, already an authentic self..

It's a good little movie once I adjusted the stakes involved and started looking at the movie as about character rather than mystery. Part of the fun is watching two veteran French actors play off one another. Noiret seems to walk with a little raincloud hovering just over his head--his hangdog countenance suggests Christopher Robin's Eeyore. But he can show a very wide range of emotion on that often impassive face. And Rockefort is always fun with a perpetual hint of devilishness about him. Of the two he would be by far the more interesting dinner companion, but their rather civilized clash of personalities gives the movie some of the zest it needs to stay compelling.

Bertrand Tavernier is an underappreciated director, especially in North America. He is never mentioned in the same breath as the iconic directors of Europe--Godard, Truffaut, Resnais, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Antonioni, Bergman, Bunuel, Visconti, et al. And it is true his work is not as distinctive as the work of those directors. Yet he has about a dozen fine, well crafted movies to his credit including Coup de Torchon; Sunday in the Country; Life and Nothing But; Round Midnight; and Death Watch which everybody seems to like but me. He may suffer from the Howard Hawks/John Huston dilemma, that is, making good films in so many different genres that he never developed a definable signature style. Another thing these movies all have in common is that they are intelligent. He makes movies for adults with brains, not all directors do.

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[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

I also did not like Death Watch! Easily my least favorite of the five or six movies of his I've seen. I like the Hawks/Houston comparison. There's nothing particularly distinct about Tavernier other than he's good at his job.

If there's one thing I would've wanted a little more from him it would be more adaptations of American hard-boiled crime books. Coup de Torchon (based on a Jim Thompson novel) is great. I also liked In the Electric Mist (a James Lee Burke book), one of only a handful of U.S. productions Tavernier made. It's an entertaining southern detective mystery with a good Tommy Lee Jones being Tommy Lee Jones performance if you like Tommy Lee Jones being Tommy Lee Jones.

 

[kihei]

I also did not like Death Watch! Easily my least favorite of the five or six movies of his I've seen. I like the Hawks/Houston comparison. There's nothing particularly distinct about Tavernier other than he's good at his job.

If there's one thing I would've wanted a little more from him it would be more adaptations of American hard-boiled crime books. Coup de Torchon (based on a Jim Thompson novel) is great. I also liked In the Electric Mist (a James Lee Burke book), one of only a handful of U.S. productions Tavernier made. It's an entertaining southern detective mystery with a good Tommy Lee Jones being Tommy Lee Jones performance if you like Tommy Lee Jones being Tommy Lee Jones.

I like Tommy Lee Jones being Tommy Lee Jones which means I like Tommy Lee Jones just about all the time. Thought your basset hound face reference to Noiret was too perfect for words.

 

[Pink Mist]

The Clockmaker of St. Paul [L'Horloger de Saint-Paul] (1973) directed by Bertrand Tavernier

Descombes (Philippe Noiret), a clock and watch maker in Lyon, who is separated from his wife and distant from his son who lives with him, is visited by the police one morning to be informed that his son is on the run after murdering a security guard at a nearby factory. Despite the premise which would lend easily to a mystery or thriller film, in the hands of Tavernier the film instead is a quiet character study of a man shattered by the news. The only mystery here is not if his son did the crime, but rather in how Descombes’ relationship with his son became so distant and strained. This is my first film that I’ve watched by Tavernier, a director I’ve in fact never heard of, which seems partly due to the fact that he never seemed to make a splash across the Atlantic, but I was hooked from the very first scene of the film of Descombes and his group of friends hanging out sharing a meal at a restaurant. The restaurant scene effectively set the table for the character of Descombes, a man loved by everyone except for his son, and the politics of the film which is a critique of the post-’68 French state that exposes the rot underneath the veneer of the Pompidou presidency and in which youth turn to nihilistic murder. Noiret carries the film as we follow his sad and depressed character, in a France in which 89% of citizens are allegedly happy, effectively expressing the exasperation and confusion over how things came to be as he comes to terms with his son’s nihilism and anger and ultimately embraces it. Very effective political “thriller” (or rather anti-thriller) and I’m keen to look into more of Tavernier’s filmography and will start at some of the recommendations in this thread.

 

[Jevo]

The Watchmaker of St. Paul (1974) dir. Bertrand Tavernier

Michel is a widowed watchmaker in Lyon. One morning the police shows up by his shop and asks if he knows where his car is. The car has been borrowed by his son Bertrand, who hasn't returned home yet, but there's nothing unusual about that. Slowly is revealed to Michel that Bertrand has killed a man, and is now on the run together with a girl. Michel is shocked. He knows nothing about the victim or the girl. Parallel to the police investigation Michel tries to understand why his son has become a murderer.

This is an interesting take on the crime genre. Here we don't follow the police officer trying to track down the culprit, or the culprit trying to stay away from the police. The cat and mouse game is gone. Instead the focus is on the bewildered family member who's desperately trying to figure out how his son became a murderer. Slowly the realisation that he isn't as close to the boy as he thought he was also dawns on him. The two have been alone together for almost the boy's entire life, they should be close and Michel have taken this for granted. Michel is not a confidant for Bertrand. He doesn't mention girlfriends or personal struggles with him, but he does so with other adults without Michel knowing. In the end a murder conviction is what brings them closer. For a parent this film has to be like a horror. Not only finding out your child is a murderer. A revelation which might even be worse than having your kid be on the other end of bargain. But to realise at the same time that you do not know your own son at all has to be a gut punch, and you feel Michel getting it several times throughout the film.

The story of Michel is very delicately handled by Tavernier. There's no melodrama, Michel is a quiet man who rarely have shows big emotions. He has plenty of emotions though, and Tavernier and Noiret as Michel show them plenty, but always in a restrained manner. Tavernier balances the emotional exploration of Michel very well with the why and the where of the murder and the son, and it all comes together and forms a very compelling little film with a lot of things to like.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Big budget, good cast, great premise....trailer makes this movie look like it's be a turd. I dunno why they do this, attach shitty directors that make films for a target demographic of like 15 year olds when making it a more serious and engaging action film could turn these into such a better success. Not like they don't have the direction to do it with films like Incecption or BR2049 paving the way. Even Edge of Tomorrow.

There's a reason this is going directly to streaming video.

 

[Jevo]

Mr. Turner (2014) dir. Mike Leigh

The film follows the last part of JMW Turner's life. An eccentric English romantic painter. He is very dependent on his father and his housekeeper Hannah Danby, the latter of which he doesn't appreciate nearly as much as he should. His father's death affects Turner greatly, and his eccentricity grows further after this. Outside of the art world Turner generally likes to stay incognito and travels under a pseudonym and with a false backstory. In Kent he ends up staying with Mr. and Mrs. Booth several times when he rents a room in their seaside house whenever he is visiting. After Mr. Booth passes, Turner starts a relationship with Mrs. Booth, and eventually buys a house for her in London and moves in with her under the name Mr. Booth.

Turner is a strange choice for a biopic. He's a fantastic painter, but his life story while peculiar, is hardly a thrill ride. Mr. Turner also more takes the form of a character study rather than a traditional biopic, and as character Turner is interesting. One side he's an incredibly accomplished painter praised by colleagues and the art buying aristocracy alike, and he mingles with these groups seemingly with ease. Although he does often seem to want to avoid them. On the other hand he's a very private person who doesn't like the attention he gets from his fame, and often likes to avoid it when possible. And as masterful as his paintings are, he is himself also a deeply flawed individual. Apart from his father he doesn't appear to appreciate the people in his life nearly as much as he should, and even takes advantage of them on occasion as well. He directly shuns his daughters and seems to wish they didn't even exist. His eccentricities also seems to grow further after the loss of his father, and generally as he ages. There's no redemption arc for Turner in this film. He probably does realise the effect the way he acts has. But appears unwilling or unable to change how he acts. He is a through and through bad person though, he has love to give. Mainly to his father, and later Mrs. Booth. But he's a regular flawed individual, who's flaws are perhaps highlighted even further because he's they are contrasted by his mastery in painting. Mike Leigh presents Turner in this manner, and manages to make him compelling, without seemingly hiding his bad sides. Timothy Spall's acting is supreme and brings Turner to life in a fantastic way. All these eccentricities and small things that Turner does all the time are presented so naturally by Spall that you'd think they were his own. Leigh and Spall also never overplays any of these eccentricities for cheap laughs. There are plenty of laughs in the film, and Turner is often the source of them, but never in a way where Turner is undermined for the sake of a laugh.

Turner's paintings are often categorised by landscapes with dramatic weather and/or dramatic events. The visual side of Mr. Turner is basically the polar opposite of a Turner painting. Most of the movie takes place inside on some beautiful sets, with closest thing to a landscape shot being a calm sea with a few picturesque boats through a window. There are of course a few sweeping landscape shots, but never in a style that would seem to indicate Turner. It seems a very delibrate choice that the visuals of the film are very un-like Turner's style. And I think that's a good choice, as you'd be left chasing a style that doesn't look good on moving pictures. And the film is a beauty to look at as it is. The cinematography is great, both in the beautiful outdoor shots, but especially in the main indoor scenes.

Mr. Turner got a lot of praise when it came out, and for good reason, but it doesn't get talked about much anymore, and audience reactions were perhaps more muted than the critics'. But I really appreciated coming back to it, and I think it's one of the more underrated movies of the 2010's. Visually it's among the best of the decade, and likewise for Timothy Spall's performance.

 

[kihei]

Mr. Turner (2014) Directed by Mike Leigh

Mr. Turner is a biopic of 19th century naval and landscape artist J.M.W. Turner. It is a big biopic in the sense that director Mike Leigh, from first gorgeous establishing shot to last sad image, provides a lavish canvas on which to examine part of Turner's life. The film commences in Turner's middle age when he has already established himself as an important and innovative artist, his huge landscapes, often dominated by sky and sea, suggesting impressionism far more than realism. Leigh makes an interesting and risky choice starting his biopic so late in Turner's life and letting him just basically amble about getting into one thing than another. The question is why? Like his countryman Ken Loach, Leigh usually focuses on movies about working class British people and their concerns (High Hopes; Love Is Sweet; Secrets and Lies; Vera Drake). Initially Mr. Turner seems to be a departure from the norm. But class makes up a very big part of the movie; indeed it provides the context in which Turner's life and work exist. Turner was born just after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and died when it had become certain that the old way of doing things was gone forever (a key scene near the end of the movie shows Turner fearful of this new invention, photography). This is a period in English history when people believed in a so-called natural order that ensured the continuance of the status quo--God in His heaven, everything in its proper place and all is right with the world--which was extremely beneficial for the aristocracy and the rich land owners but much less so for everyone else. But in Mr. Turner, everybody still accepts this canard, that life is ordained to be exactly the way that it is. Leigh subtly shows us the consequences of this social hierarchy. Some characters, especially women, have no voice at all; others have only a modest foothold on respectability, while anomalies like Turner can flit among different classes but only because of the recognition of the greatness of his art. The most striking contrast in the film is not between the wealthy and the poor but between the two women in Turner's love life, his near-destitute servant Hannah with whom he mates like a barnyard animal and his last lover Sophia who is poor but possesses an early, tenuous form of middle-class respectability. One ends up with fond memories; the other left to suffer in abject poverty.

Mr. Turner seems to have something else on its agenda as well: to demystify any romantic notion of the artist that might still be out there. Turner is a genius at what he does, and he is not a bad man by any means. But he is about the furthest thing removed from a dashing Lord Byron or a broody Percy Bysshe Shelley as it is possible to imagine. He shambles along looking like an ambulatory groundhog, he grunts and snuffles like a pig, his table manners are atrocious, and his sexual instincts appear to be pre-historic. Great art can come from mediocre people or worse--that always seems a bit counter-intuitive but Leigh easily builds a convincing case. Timothy Spall as Turner is great. He eats up huge chunks of scenery and is often very funny in the process. It is the kind of oversized performance you don't see much anymore, recalling master hams like Alistair Sim and Charles Laughton. In fact, Spall would make a great Scrooge, a great Toad of Toad Hall (from The Wind in the Willows), a great Fool in King Lear. As an actor, he does not appear to have an ounce of vanity at all. Mr. Turner doesn't seem the least didactic, yet it has some good points to make anyway. And the paintings are lovely to behold, worth a trip to the Tate Gallery in London.

MUBI

 

[kihei]

My next pick will be Satyajit Ray's Devi (The Goddess). Currently available on Criterion Channel.

 

[Pink Mist]

Mr. Turner (2014) directed by Mike Leigh

The slogan “All Cops Are Bastards” has been in the popular discourse for close to 100 years by now, but based on having watched enough biopics about artists I think I’ve noticed another trend: All Artists Are Bastards (unfortunately AAAB doesn’t quite role off the tongue like ACAB). Seriously is it possible to name a single biopic about an artist (painter, musician, film star etc) where they aren’t a bastard of some sort? Brilliance and being a piece of shit seem to go hand in hand – or at least for the people worth making a biopic about. Which brings me to Mr. Turner. Mr. Turner places us immediately in JMW Turner’s (Timothy Spall) middle age. He’s creates beautiful paintings, has a nice workshop and private gallery in London, and is already recognized as a master in British landscape painting. He also pays no attention to his former mistress or the two children he’s fathered, has little time for his housekeeper aside from exploiting her sexually, and has god awful table manners. And the grunting, by god the grunting. Mr. Turner doesn’t speak words, he speaks through a series of grunts, mmmhhhs, and growls like a wild animal. In short, JMW Turner is a mess of contradictions, but no question about it he is a bastard.

Which is to say, I don’t think pointing out the contradictions between genius and dastardly behaviour is that interesting. Artists being eccentric and difficult to work and live with is nothing novel and is a tired theme in biopics. Leigh creates a sprawling landscape of Turner’s late life, but I think it is a little too sprawling and unfocused. Badly in need of an editor to trim the fat of this film as it had no business being 150 minutes long. I think this film would have been a lot better if it were a tight 100-110 minutes instead of this 150-minute monstrosity. The film does not really take off and is a little too restrained for its own good making it a tedious watch as it ran out of steam early on watching this eccentric painter’s goofy behaviour and grunting over and over again for over two hours. Most of these sequences add nothing to the story and just padded its runtime and made it a bit of a slog to watch. The production design and Spall’s performance are undeniably good; every frame of this film could be a painting and Spall’s performance is a totally committed performance of the painter; but the film desperately needed a good edit to make the film a lot more focused.

I did enjoy the thorough takedown of John Ruskin though, those scenes can stay

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Mr. Turner
Leigh (2014)
**disapproving grunt**

The final two decades of life of British painter JMW Turner. The arc here isn’t unlike that of more contemporary artist bios. Fame. Temptation. Personal foibles. Loss. Declining power/the threat of being made obsolete. Just so happens to be a about a painter in 1800s Europe rather than a musician in 1960s U.S. or swinging London or wherever.

There’s a stellar performance here by Spall who seems to be in a near constant dyspeptic state. Even when he has moments of happiness he can’t help but convey it via a grumble. There’s a lot of physicality here with how he carries himself and moves. One scene that particularly stands with me is later in the movie when he’s yet again being scolded by his former lover for neglecting their child. Leigh shoots him from behind. We hear his responses but can’t see his face. We can, however, see his hands and though as he speaks he’s still conveying his resigned message, his hands are twisting and grasping at each other in deep discomfort. Then there are the grunts. Lots of grunts. But one of the amazing things about Spall’s work is you actually become able to discern ones of approval from disapproval.

I almost regret comparing Philippe Noiret to a basset hound because jowly ol’ Spall almost seems even more like one. I also watched a Walter Matthau movie recently and damn if he too didn’t suddenly resemble a basset hound to me. I appear to have the breed on my brain.

Leigh’s an interesting filmmaker in that he seems to have two tracks of interest — contemporary “kitchen sink” working class British tales and historic portraits such as this or Topsy Turvey. Dissimilar on the surface but not by much. There’s still a bit of a daily grind and class struggle element within. That’s particularly evident with Turner’s housekeeper and sometimes lover. She’s in a second even sadder movie and Leigh does a masterful job of slowly unveiling that.

Transferring the life of a fellow creative person to the screen is often a tricky proposition. It’s hard to show why and how an individual is great at what they do. Explanations are often trite and cliché and actual execution is tough because we already know the end product (a painting, a song) and the telling of the tale often can’t match the ending we already know. Leigh wisely sidesteps this by not doing too many “ah ha!” moments. Real life inspiration is seen (and often rendered beautifully) and we do see Turner at work but the movie never devolves into a dry academic recounting.

My big criticism is that I really really really felt the length. This is a recounting of two decades or so so it isn't an unfair expectation that the movie is long and at times ponderous, but despite some of the notable positives, I'm not sure how often I'd revisit.

 

[kihei]

Pink Mist's review got me thinking. Are there movies that are portraits of artists as non-bastard types. Gotta say, not many, especially on the male side of the gender divide. Here are some tentative contenders, tentative because I would need to see some of these again to be sure:

Maudie--
Seraphine--though I don't know if either should count, because they are more like portraits of the artist as an unlikely person, odd duck movies

Basquiat--Seemed like he was having fun most of the time and was enjoyable to be around

Porttrait of a Lady on Fire--definitely not a bastard type

The Horse's Mouth--Gulley Jimson (Alec Guiness) certainly disreputable but he is not mean-spirited (as I remember) and is very funny. One of Guinness best creations (he wrote the script)

My Left Foot--the artist's life is miserable, but I don't remember him being a bastard. Great Daniel Day Lewis performance

Exit through the Gift Shop--Banksy definitely no tortured soul

The Girl with the Pearl Earring--Vermeer was demanding, but more like a product of a particular class system than an out-and-out bastard

Wasteland--a documentary about an artist and a very special collaborative work, so maybe it shouldn't count. But it is so original and such a stunning achievement that I thought I would include it.

But, yeah, some of these might not count, and I haven't been able to think of any others that I have seen.