Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (2024) – D. Hinton

Martin Scorsese is omnipresent talking about film, particularly classic films and film preservation. He has 493 “self” credits on iMDb which is probably an underestimate.  Occasionally, he has made his own documentaries or essay films about his relationship with cinema and the influence of movies he’s seen on his own oeuvre, such as A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995) or My Voyage to Italy (1999).  This time, as directed by David Hinton, he talks us through his feelings about the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (and their production company The Archers).  I’m also a big fan of this duo – there are 16 reviews on my two blogs for films directed by Powell and often also written by Pressburger. I gave 5 stars to The Thief of Bagdad (1940), I Know Where I am Going (1945) and Black Narcissus (1947) and 4.5 stars to The Edge of the World (1937), A Canterbury Tale (1944), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), and Peeping Tom (1960). Scoresese has a particular affinity for the ballet films, The Red Shoes (1948; 4 stars) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951; which I still haven’t watched all the way through) as well as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943; which I need to watch again and review). He narrates his way through all the films with a healthy dose of clips and also links them to choices he made in his own films (primarily Raging Bull, 1980). He highlights the risks they took -- their experiments with plot, Technicolour, composition – and their fierce independence (leading to many ruptures with producers and companies). Scorsese also discusses his real interpersonal relationship with Powell who became a friend and mentor and who eventually married Scorsese’s longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker. He talks a lot about Powell’s love for England and his embodiment of the stereotypical English reserve.  Pressburger, a Hungarian Jew who moved to Berlin and then escaped to England, also gets his fair share of behind-the-scenes stories and clips. In all, it’s a touching and insightful tour through the Archers’ body of work, although inevitably it contains an arc that moves from success to decline and disregard. Fortunately, Scorsese isn’t the only voice heralding the cinematic output of this great duo (and they were finally re-appreciated in their lifetimes). If you haven’t checked out any of their great films, what’s stopping you?

Anora (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Anora (2024) – S. Baker

This is the fourth Sean Baker film I’ve watched and I came to it a bit late, after all the hype surrounding its Best Picture Oscar win (and the Best Director, Screenplay, and Editing wins for Baker) has died down.  I wasn’t sure if I was prepared to like it, given the Cinderella story marketing frame, to which I only barely paid attention, seemed a bit cliché. And, as the film unfolded, the blue-collar erotic dancer meets spoiled Russian heir plot seemed just an opportunity to show decadence on the screen rather than to explore any meaningful ideas about class differences.  But then the fairytale plot evaporated and the intensity and stress racheted up, scene by scene, so that this felt more like a Safdie Brothers outing (although I haven’t yet seen their solo efforts) than the keenly/wryly observed naturalistic films of Baker’s oeuvre (e.g., Red Rocket, 2021; The Florida Project, 2017; Tangerine, 2015). The chaos and breakdown of relations between the characters is both comic and harsh and although Anora (Best Actress Mikey Madison) remains the heart of every scene, there are some excellent character turns by Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan. Still, it was hard to tell if this was just a thrill ride for viewers or something deeper – and then the final scene between gangster/minder Igor (Yura Borisov) and Ani/Anora made the film for me. Not only did this provide the necessary emotional release for the character but it revealed just how many defenses had been up, perhaps for a very long time, as a protective shield necessary in a hard hard world (even if the temptation to dream about that fairytale might be omnipresent, if not fully conscious).

Pavements (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Pavements (2024) – A. R. Perry

One of the reviews on Letterboxd suggests that a viewer at a film festival needed to google Pavement to learn about the band – if this is you, this is not your movie. However, if you’re like me, owning all of their records which were on steady rotation back in the day (and therefore virtually memorised), then Pavements will be something of a trippy experience. Or let’s just say director Alex Ross Perry capitalises on the sense of absurdity and ridiculousness that was an undercurrent in the band’s work (so if that’s also something that brings a smirk to your face, I say go for it). The film has 4 or 5 strands all interwoven but skilfully edited to provide not just an historical narrative of the band but an emotional one which crescendos at the end, celebrating Pavement’s 2022 reunion shows (which I somehow skipped here in Melbourne; but did see Malkmus’s subsequent emergence in The Hard Quartet this year). We see scenes of the band rehearsing for the reunion as well as clips from the past, all the way back to the beginning, but we never get a complete song – everything is excerpts, offering tantalising primes that trigger longer memories and complete versions of unplayed songs as earworms. Everything else in the film is a form of fiction, a staged “meta” take on the “what if” aspect of the Pavement story, as in “what if” they actually became as famous as contemporaries Nirvana.  In that fan-fiction future, there’s a Pavement museum in NYC – we see the gallery opening featuring other Matador bands playing Pavement songs (snippets only, naturally), and an array of celebs (Thurston Moore et al.) mingling with the members of Pavement and the assorted hipsterati, amongst the many (catalogued) artefacts (t-shirts and weirder) from the band’s past. It seems that this event really happened, but how staged it was is hard to say (clearly there is no such museum).  Weirder still, the producers may have really issued a call for auditions for a proposed Pavement stage musical (“Slanted! Enchanted!”) – we see earnest Broadway wannabes singing their hearts out via Gold Soundz and a few dance numbers (cringeworthy, yes, but fitting in some way?). It’s possible to see Stephen Malkmus’s guiding hand behind some of this, as absurdly self-mocking as it seems. The final strand is the hardest to digest and the most distancing (at least for this viewer – is it Brechtian?). To provide more narrative grit to the Pavement story (and align it with the cliches of the music doc?), and again as a kind of fan-fiction, we are treated to a parallel version of the band’s story in which Spiral Stairs (Scott Kannberg, played by Nat Wolff) is bitter about the band’s lack of success, Malkmus (played by Joe Keery) is visibly alienated from the possibility of fame, and there’s a faux climax focused on Lollapalooza’s mud-slinging incident which leads to an intense band discussion (in contrast to the reality of the band laughing in the green room after the incident which is shown in split-screen).  The producers cast actors in the role of band members and relevant record label execs (Tim Heidecker as Gerard Cosloy; Jason Schwarzman as Chris Lombardi; founders of Matador records who also appear as themselves) and we see actors preparing for their roles by emulating historic footage of the band (e.g., using a voice coach to get Malkmus’s vocal fry just right and examining a photo of his tongue) which takes us further into bizarro-world. Ultimately, the film offers an opportunity for an extended (128 minutes) meditation/reverie on the band (with Perry using all the cinematic techniques at his disposal to keep it interesting), if that’s what yer looking for; if you don’t know the band, I suspect the film would be nearly incomprehensible. I haven’t pulled this out for a while but for a straight-up documentary of the band you might try Lance Bangs’ Slow Century (2002). For my part, I enjoyed these moments of (self-)indulgence.

Conclave (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Conclave (2024) – E. Berger

I watched Conclave for Easter but it barely triggered a memory of my Catholic high school past (apart from the fancy dress, there’s little to no religious content here).  Instead, I was reminded of Advise and Consent (1962) where liberal Henry Fonda’s nomination to be Secretary of State is subjected to game-playing and deceit by both sides of politics, in an effort to block or confirm his appointment.  Here, there are more than a few rivals for the Popedom, including liberal Stanley Tucci, conservative Sergio Castellitto, ambitious John Lithgow, and the first viable African candidate Lucian Msamati.  Ralph Fiennes is the Dean of the Cardinals whose job it is to organise a conclave to elect the next pope when the old one suddenly passes away. He’s ready to leave the Vatican due to a spiritual crisis but commits to managing the conclave as a sort of final act, even as he is drawn into the political intrigue, with candidates jockeying for position and their dirty laundry aired by their opponents (or uncovered via investigation by Fiennes). Although the film feels grim at times (since this is “serious” business), as it proceeds and the tension and speculation grow (with vote after vote unsuccessful – only grey, not white, smoke sent up the Vatican’s chimney), it suddenly exploded for me into something a bit more berserk.  The director, Edward Berger, plays the audience, letting the melodrama erupt into something more absurd (unless you are willing to believe that God has sent a message to Fiennes). To top things off, after the pope is chosen, there’s a surprise coda at the end of the film, like the last chocolate egg discovered once the hunt has concluded. This final offering reverberates beyond the final credits, a remarkable curveball to strike out the last batter and leave the other team and most spectators speechless. You can see why Peter Straughan’s screenplay (adapted from the book by Robert Harris) won the Oscar, even though the acting prowess on display did garner noms for Fiennes and for Isabella Rossellini as a nun who intervenes at a key moment. The only question that remains is whether the film’s contribution to political discourse could be read as less-than-serious (given all that’s preceded it) when in fact it’s worth genuinely absorbing.  

 

Nosferatu (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Nosferatu (2024) – R. Eggers

Everyone knows the story by now, having seen the Murnau (Max Schreck), Herzog (Klaus Kinski), Coppola (Gary Oldman), Universal (Bela Lugosi), or Hammer (Christopher Lee) versions of Bram Stoker’s Dracula on film.  Murnau changed the names (from Dracula to Orlok, Harker to Hutter, Jonathan to Thomas, Mina to Ellen, and so on) but was still sued by Stoker’s widow. Director Robert Eggers retains Murnau’s names in this new version but, although it starts out as such (and includes some of the “authentic” or previously shot locations), this is not the same faithful remake that Herzog already made in 1979.  Instead, this is another “variation on a theme” wrought by a director for whom the material is very near and dear (he directed a high school drama production of the story). He claims he only made the film because he found a new angle: Orlok and Ellen have an original bond that precedes her marriage to Hutter which sets the plot in motion and draws Orlok to her, all the way from Transylvania to the fictional German city of Wismark.  Hutter’s journey to the Count’s castle (sent by Herr Knock/Renfield), his stopover in the Gypsy village, and his nights with Orlok remain similar but Eggers adds his exquisite visual panache, production design and sound design (as displayed in his previous films: The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), and The Northman (2022)). Indeed, this version of the classic tale feels bigger and bolder (perhaps because I saw it in the cinema) and very soon, we have left the original narrative behind, leaving only its contours.  Lily Rose-Depp is magnetic (and also feral) as Ellen, Willem Dafoe provides some comic relief as Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz (the Van Helsing counterpart), and Bill Skarsgård is, uh, very different from previous portrayals, as a gruesome Orlok (as a decomposing Hungarian nobleman). In the end, Eggers takes us someplace new, not scary (although there are a few jump-scares for the target audience) but definitely uncanny. Ultimately, he reveals the Count as, yes, evil but also as pathetic as anyone hopelessly obsessed can turn out to be.