Author: SceneByGreen

Marcel Carne | 1hr 33min

A man and a woman, Francois and Francoise, strike up a conversation one day when she finds herself at his workplace delivering flowers. It is a romantic meet-cute that seems fated given the similarities between their names, but this is not the start of a perfect, unhindered romance. This is simply a flashback, conjured six months down the track by a panicked Francois who has shot a man and boarded himself up inside his apartment. How do these scenes with such disparate tones connect? How could this love-stricken man turn into such an anxious, bitter murderer? He himself ponders the same question, reminiscing on the sequence of events that has led to this moment.

Francois’ memories are driven by visual cues laid around his apartment, most significantly the wardrobe which now stands in front of the door. Carne uses this as an abundant source of match cuts, softly dissolving into flashbacks where Francois has the happy freedom to move in and out of that now-blocked entrance. The poetic realism movement that Carne was largely driving in this era underlies his choices to elegantly move the camera in these romantic recollections, made especially apparent in one scene by his choice to keep reframing the lovers among picturesque flowers and ferns as they stroll through a nursery in a single take.

The tender connection they share is in stark contrast to Francoise’s relationship with Valentin, who is introduced as a showman with a charismatic presence which dominates everyone’s attention. As he performs impressive tricks with his trained dogs up on stage, Francoise is relegated to the position of spectator, admiring from afar but never winning his full emotional engagement in return. It isn’t just Valentin’s narcissism and dishonesty that gnaws away at Francois, but his apparent success in keeping Francoise by his side. Francois is embittered, and Valentin’s fate is sealed after delivering a particularly cruel jab at his rival.

We dip in and out of these fatalistic flashbacks several times, returning to present-day Francois pacing around apartment, the fade to dusk outside gradually consuming him in darkness. Meanwhile, the police advance and the nosy neighbours poke their heads out their doors, peering up the stairway that leads to his apartment. In their eyes, he is a cold-blooded murderous freak to be gawked at. As they crowd the streets he leans out of his window, chastising them for the fetishising of his pain while mourning the destruction of his innocence by a man who may not have been a murderer, but was a far worse person than him.

“I’m a murderer, yes! But killers can be met in any street… everywhere! Everyone kills, everyone! Only they kill by degrees, so it’s not noticed.”

Carne’s elegant camerawork is gone here, replaced with a harsh montage quickly cutting between faces in the crowd, some sympathetic, others merely amused. When Francois finally shuts himself back inside, the space feels much smaller than before. The vice is tightening around him, the full impact of his corruption finally settling in his mind in the final few minutes, pushing him to take his own life. As we track out on that now-indistinguishable slump lying on the floor, the smoke of the police’s tear gas clouds a room of overturned furniture and shattered glass. Not only does Carne build on the masterful camerawork and mise-en-scène displayed in Port of Shadows, but his formal structuring of this bitterly nostalgic narrative makes Le Jour se Leve an indelibly moving portrait of France’s lost innocence as it headed into World War II.

Le Jour se Leve is not currently available to stream in Australia.

Billy Wilder | 1hr 55min

More than just being the name of a street in Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard is where stars fade away into the night, each one replaced the next morning by a younger, fresher luminary travelling along an identical trajectory. Norma Desmond is one such has-been who burned brightly in her youth, and yet in her old age (or at least, what Hollywood considers old) she has tumbled from the ranks of high society, her career opportunities drying up along with her youthful vitality. Though she is no longer a sex symbol, she tries to recapture that glamour in extravagant makeup and clothing, and frequently watches the old silent films she starred in, basking in her younger self’s charm and allure which has been lost over the years. No longer does she venture outside her colossal, Gothic mansion, cluttered with unsettling sculptures, archaic furniture, and framed photographs of her own likeness. Instead, she traps herself inside its dark, gloomy chambers, turning it into a tomb where unfulfilled dreams come to wither away and die.

And indeed, Billy Wilder recognises the full power in using this antiquated set as an eerie, hollow space that seems to radiate ethereality. Much like Charles Foster Kane’s mansion Xanadu, this great manor is an extension of Norma Desmond’s own hollow self-obsession that swallows her up. It is grandiose in its décor, and yet the upkeep is clearly lacking. Even when our protagonist, Joe Gillis, first arrives by pure happenstance, it carries the atmosphere of a haunted house, with voices calling out to him from inside as if he was always destined to arrive. Outside, he notes “the ghost of a tennis court” that clearly hasn’t been used in decades, and a drained pool containing nothing but debris and rats. During his stay, his presence injects some life into this dreary environment, as we see Norma visibly brighten and the unused pool fill back up with water. And yet for as long as she haunts this “grim sunset castle”, the stench of death and decay can’t be erased entirely, and somewhat fatalistically, that pool which Gillis restored marks the site of his own demise. This place is not just a tomb for Norma, but for all those who get caught up in her deathly aura.

That Wilder’s skill as a director has often been overshadowed by his remarkable flair for screenwriting should not be taken at all as a slight against the astounding filmmaking on display here. As much as Sunset Boulevard is a tour-de-force in mise-en-scène and noir lighting, the fact remains that its script is its greatest asset, and easily belongs among the greatest in film history. There is its incisive cutting right to the heart of America’s superficial movie industry, its snappy bounce from scene to scene in crisp, elegiac prose expressed through voiceover and dialogue, and of course, the nuanced construction of one of the most tragic cinematic characters in Norma Desmond, whose lines resound with both pride and misery of grandiose proportions.

“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

Though Gloria Swanson quite literally steals the spotlight of Sunset Boulevard with her elaborate performance of a crippled ego hiding behind delusions of grandeur, this is also a story of hubris for a man living his own quieter self-deception. Gillis is a struggling screenwriter who may or may not have the talent to actually make it big, and so just as Norma latches onto his youth as a path to a comeback, he hitches onto her as a doorway into the industry. The line that divides the two is far thinner than he would like to acknowledge, as he too thirsts after success and adoration from those around him, taking pride in Betty’s love for him over her boyfriend. If Norma is “sleepwalking along the giddy heights of a lost career”, then he is doing the same from the opposite direction, maintaining a contrived illusion that the key to fame can be found through reviving that which has already decayed.

And yet as all hope of manifesting these dreams plunge, such delusions only grow in magnitude, consuming these starry-eyed idealists in a magnificently surreal cocoon of falsehoods. Their fates have been written out from the start, as Joe’s voice from beyond the grave introduces his past self in third person like the two are separate people, and then emphasises the uncanniness of his destiny with a fantastically dreamlike shot looking up at his floating body from the bottom of Norma’s pool.

As for Norma Desmond herself, the performance of her own majesty was never going to break even under the most extreme pressures. In one brief moment of eminence, she has finally captured the attention of the press, public, and even Hollywood celebrities, the spotlight literally turned on her as she descends the steps of her manor for the last time. With a melodramatic monologue and a wide-eyed, theatrical advance towards us, the audience, she seems to become one with the camera, at which point the shot blurs until all definition is gone. The reason for her newfound infamy and its inevitably devastating consequences matter little. As far as she is concerned, she will forever live in this singular instant, her mind fully devoured by the same ostentatious vanity that Hollywood instils in all its most beloved, yet easily disposable stars.

Sunset Boulevard is available to stream on The Criterion Channel, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Pedro Almodóvar | 2hr

A young woman fearing motherhood, a middle-aged woman embracing it, and a mix-up of babies at the hospital – Parallel Mothers might at times look like a setup for an all-out farce, especially given Pedro Almodóvar’s familiarity with the genre from a handful of his earlier films. He at least doesn’t shy away from the comedy of the situation, particularly as Janis, the older mother, goes on denying her baby’s Asian appearance in spite of her and her sexual partner’s very non-Asian heritage. But above all else, Almodóvar is a lover of melodrama, and humour is simply one tool in his arsenal to draw out the expressiveness of such rich, colourful lives, letting the joyous peaks and devastating dips in these characters’ emotional journeys speak for themselves.

And where else would Almodóvar’s style of melodramatic pop art fit better than within an examination of motherhood itself? A sequence of playful intercutting between both Janis and Ana giving birth early on in the film sets up the two polarities of their attitudes, and indeed in certain areas the two might seem like opposites, but this is about as tidy as it ever gets in drawing distinctions between them. Once these women actually hold their babies in their arms, their lives and behaviours begin to shift. For Ana, her child signifies a way she might be able to break free from a traumatic past, and prove that her own mother’s self-admitted lack of a “maternal instinct” was not inherited. Meanwhile, Janis’s growing doubts about her baby’s parentage threatens her own desire to prove she can be a successful single mother, much like her own.

Many of the truly disturbing directions that Parallel Mothers moves in threaten the very foundation of motherhood for Ana and Janis, as for all of the differences between them, there is a shared suffering in the disconnection they feel with their babies. Penelope Cruz, Almodóvar’s long-time muse, is trusted with a great deal of emotional weight here, and in bringing such an affectionate maturity to Janis’ maternal pride and struggles she delivers one of her best performances in years.

Beyond her characterisation as a mother though, Janis is also a woman intrigued by her own ancestry, and thus Almodóvar ties Parallel Mothers into a larger examination of heritage, how we relate to those who came before and after us, and the inevitability of those connections surfacing over time. Although this subplot bookends the film thematically, it doesn’t always feel as integrated with the rest of the narrative as it should be, especially since there is a long stretch of time spent in the middle without so much as a mention of it.

While Parallel Mothers does briefly set its sights beyond the confines of domestic spaces in this counterpoint, it is within its contained, homely realms that Almodóvar allows himself to indulge within his colourful filmic artifice. As a long-time devotee of those masters of melodrama from before his time such as Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Almodóvar isn’t afraid to adopt their delicate sensibilities into more outrageously gaudy set pieces, using the pretence of bright, block colours in his mise-en-scène to bring to life these feminine worlds which, by more conventional cinematic standards, might be considered dull.

In a hospital room that would be entirely white in the hands of any other director, Almodóvar renders its walls in pale greens and yellow. Back at home, there is a distinct feel of a soundstage to the interiors, as he matches costumes to the curtains, couches, and walls in loud block colours. And then beneath it all is a perky, playful strings score, rising to our attention in what is a fairly dominating mix with the dialogue, matching the plot in its sheer ludicrousness. Absurd as Parallel Mothers may get at times, the pathos which spills forth from its comedic setups is sincere, as the Spanish auteur with a love of colourful femininity delivers his own personal ode to all those wide-ranging, meaningful, and unpredictable experiences of motherhood.

Parallel Mothers is coming to theatres in Australia on January 27th, 2022.

Jia Zhangke | 2hr 23min

Despite scepticism that cooperating with the Chinese Film Bureau would compromise his creative processes and incisive cultural commentary, Jia Zhangke remains as sharp as ever in his fourth feature film, The World. With greater recognition comes greater funding, and this evidently reveals itself in his masterful choice of shooting location – Beijing World Park, a theme park which showcases miniature replicas of famous international landmarks. Though this imagery it isn’t quite as whimsical as that which would appear later in his career, there is a beautiful surrealism to the use of such diverse, recognisable architecture. With a single pan Jia shifts from a view of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, to the Parthenon, to Rome’s Mouth of Truth, these clean, pristine edifices existing in stark contrast to the dirtied interiors where the onsite staff live and interact with each other.

At this point in his career, Jia is fully embracing the Michelangelo Antonioni influence in his framing of lonely, wandering souls against such visually impressive architecture. If his previous film, Unknown Pleasures, felt like a sequential extension of Platform, then he only pushes that notion further here in The World, where he examines the new Chinese society born out of the 1980s era of economic reform and opening up to foreign investments. The results are plain to see – western and Chinese identities have meshed into a globalised amalgamation of cultural influences, and both are cheapened in the process. “The Twin Towers were bombed on September 11. We still have them,” boasts one park worker overlooking a replica of the Manhattan cityscape, simultaneously brushing over this integral part of New York’s history while taking ownership of its untarnished aesthetic.
 
Rather than building themselves up through their own ambitious creations, this corner of modern China has shrunk the rest of the world down to its level, and the effect is twofold. On one hand these people look like giants roaming around a park where everything they could want to see is condensed into a single place; on the other, they look pitifully small, opting for cheap imitations devoid of the artistic craft and culture attached to the original monuments. China certainly has its own historical landmarks to be proud of, but the nation that Jia is reflecting in The World has grown uninspired with time, trying to own everything and yet ending up with nothing.

Outside these imitations of architectural achievements, there is dedication on Jia’s behalf to the even the most ordinary infrastructure of Beijing’s Fengtai District. Much like Antonioni, his concrete and metallic divisions in the mise-en-scène are layered all through the foreground and background, separating our disaffected heroine, Tao, from those around her. Her boyfriend’s push for them to have sex drives them further apart, her one real friend speaks an entirely different language, and when she tries to make conversation with Chen, a new worker, their hopeful connection persists at odds with their harsh surroundings, adjacent to a construction site. Tall, concrete blocks with metallic spokes line up neatly in rows across an open plain of cement, and though the practical function of these formations is unclear, the emotional impact is alienating as they visually split this interaction right down the middle. As the two converse, a plane flies overhead, and Tao wistfully recognises that she doesn’t know anyone who has travelled by air.

Perhaps that is why she is so drawn to the Eiffel Tower replica which stands tall over the rest of the park, even while being a mere third the size of the real one. Jia recognises the power of its imagery, using the same stunning landscape shot of the monument overlooking a small lake as a formal motif to mark the passage of time, but Tao’s attraction to it has more to do with her own dissatisfaction with being grounded. Each time she returns to the site we watch her ride up the elevator, gazing out at the highest views she ever expects to see in her life.

Bit by bit over his career, Jia has been stepping further outside the realm of pure neorealism by introducing artificial elements to his narratives, and he pulls it off here with mixed results. The animated interludes simply don’t gel aesthetically with everything around them, lacking the beauty, meaning, and finesse with which Jia frames so many of his live-action images. Where it works much better is in the surreal, haunting ending in which two characters do finally find a melancholy connection with each other, their final words asserting in a dreamlike voiceover that “This is just the beginning.” Tao, like so many others, has been told to be satisfied with the shrunken husk of a world she has been handed, but her discovery of something which transcends the worldly structures and barriers of modern-day China makes for an especially stirring payoff to her discontent, restless wandering.

The World is available to stream on The Criterion Channel.

John Boorman | 1hr 27min

Point Blank could have almost been a conventional crime thriller in some alternate universe. ‘Almost’ is the key word there, because as much as this film straddles a line between high and low art, John Boorman’s manipulation of pulpy violence and a doggedly determined protagonist points towards something a little sharper and more sophisticated than the material would suggest. With great freedom granted to him in the final cut, Point Blank transcends all genre trappings, as Boorman’s confounding plot and leaps in time extracts a dizzying fever dream from the encounters, deals, and interrogations conducted by one wronged man across the city of Los Angeles.

That this man feels such an urge to correct the injustice committed against him is ridiculous in the first place, given that the money stolen from him had already been stolen from someone else. But Walker is not going to let go of $93,000 that easily, especially since the transgressor is a close friend and associate, Reese, who has additionally left him for dead. Theories that everything after his shooting plays out as a hallucination in his dying mind aren’t totally unfounded, though it is worth noting that even in this first scene we are already disorientated by the cutting between three parallel timelines – his recruitment, the operation, and his half-conscious body lying on the floor of a jail cell, pondering the sequence of events leading to this moment. And then, quietly he wonders to himself…

“Did it happen? A dream… a dream.”

Answers don’t come easily here, especially given how obfuscated Walker’s character motivations are. The fuss that he is making over such an inconsequential amount of money in his mission for vengeance doesn’t go unnoted by surrounding characters. “Do you mean to say you’d bring down this immense organisation for a paltry $93,000?” remarks one. “Somebody’s gotta pay,” retorts Walker, though Lee Marvin delivers it as less of a threat and more a weak assertion of justice. In this Californian underbelly, he may have once been an intelligent, fearsome figure, and yet now as he chases up loose ends in an ever-unravelling mystery, he simply looks like an old, lost man, falling back on the only thing he has left – his sheer power of will. Marvin was only 43 years old when he shot this film, but in this role he looks as if he could be anywhere upwards of 50, and so even as he marches forward with steadfast conviction in his quest, there is a weariness contained in his performance, and a frustration by the lack of sense in this unsettling urban landscape.

But more than just seeming slightly unnerving, these Californian cities which he traverses are also truly formidable in their magnificent structures, overwhelming and isolating Walker with their off-kilter angles and imposing scale. While a narrative comparison might be able to be drawn to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo in its surreal, wandering descent, visually Point Blank is closer to a Michelangelo Antonioni film in Boorman’s tremendous use of architecture to divide and obstruct characters in an environment of stone, metal, and glass, rigid in its unified patterns.

The manner in which these surroundings consume their inhabitants is literalised in one particularly demented scene in a night club, in which an unhinged performer who ad libs over a repetitive guitar riff is introduced to us in the centre of a large, gaping mouth projected upon a screen. In the same scene, right after a violent brawl that sees Walker come out on top, his face is drenched in a red neon light, dripping down his face like bright, bloody rain.

And then as if to sink us even deeper into the psychological chaos of Walker’s mission, Boorman leads us through flashbacks which unfold in dreamy montages and slow-motion. The images just float on by as wistful voiceovers play out over the top, almost like if Terrence Malick were to take a dark turn into experimental neo-noir. The narrative jumps around in non-linear patterns, as a kiss shared between Walker and his sister-in-law, Chris, on the floor of her apartment match cuts to her bed, where they continue to embrace. And quite peculiarly, the confused expression on Walker’s face seems to indicate a similar disorientation to our own, as if a chunk of time between both instances has completely disappeared.

Indeed, Walker is barely a free agent in this constantly shifting world, and he knows it. As Point Blank reaches its denouement, he chases down a disembodied voice speaking over an intercom system, which may as well be his own self-critical inner monologue even if it sounds like Chris’.

“You’re played out. It’s over. You’re finished. What would you do with the money if you got it? It wasn’t yours in the first place. Why don’t you just lay down and die?”

In the face of such overwhelming odds and with such little justification for his own conviction, what else is there to do? Such a quiet relinquishing of power is the only ending that makes sense for a man so desperate to exert his own will over a world that refuses to bow down. And besides, considering the violent deaths ridden all throughout Point Blank, perhaps Walker’s sad, uneventful retreat into the shadows is the best he could have ever really hoped for.

Point Blank is currently available to stream on The Criterion Channel, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Michael Mann | 2hr 2min

As an urban parable constructed out of criminal archetypes and moral dilemmas, Thief does not present us with an overly complicated narrative, and yet it is in this relative simplicity that Michael Mann provides a compelling canvas upon which he maps out a neo-noir world of clean-cut, towering skyscrapers and dingy neon clubs. In the light of day, thieves and gangsters run their criminal fronts inconspicuously, scoping out the architecture and layout of the city from a distance, formulating their covert schemes. And then each night when a cloak of darkness is thrown over the sprawling metropolis and the dim, downtown lights flicker on, these men silently gather to execute their plots with meticulous precision, their apparent insomnia fuelling both a bleary-eyed fatigue and a hyper-alert, mental focus.

Mann’s commitment to expressing both these psychological states in his patient editing and moody lighting in dark environments is beyond remarkable – it is the stylistic lynchpin upon which this morose, unpredictable world is fleshed out in all its complexity. His dedication to soaking the city streets between each take so that the neon signs, street lamps, and car headlights would bounce off its wet surfaces pays off massively in its aesthetic impact, giving the tarmac a metallic sheen much like the reflective windows and cars of the city. The radiance of these lights doesn’t go terribly far, but they do illuminate the grime of their surrounding environments which might otherwise go unnoticed under the bright light of the sun.

Meanwhile, the mesmerising pulses and drones of Tangerine Dream’s 80s synths fill the soundtrack with an electronic ambience, pulling us into the same groggy, sleep-deprived state of exhaustion that haunts these characters. Perhaps this dark, mangy setting is a result of the people who inhabit it, or perhaps they have been shaped by the sordid, corrupt cityscape of Chicago – but either way both are crooked extensions of each other.

Caught up in the centre of this world is Frank, an ex-convict who, like the rest of his associates, is a total professional when it comes to conducting high-stakes jewel heists. He is loud and brash, and yet he possesses a dissatisfied, unresolved tension between his hyper-intense lifestyle and his desire to settle down with a wife and kids.

On one hand, he knows he is good at what he does. One can’t help but be reminded of the heist from John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle in the sheer focus and precision of these sequences, as Mann similarly details each intricate step, displaying the precariously thin line that is drawn between success and total failure. The editing is also thoughtfully paced here, emphasising the laser-focused expertise which pierces through the fatigue of their world. Even later when Frank’s activity takes a louder, more violent turn, his concentration doesn’t sway from the task at hand, as explosions and shootouts are drawn out in stunning slow-motion.

And then there is his relationship with Jessie. “I don’t mix apples and oranges,” he states matter-of-factly, believing he can compartmentalise such disparate areas of his life. But the darkness of the world outside is consuming, continuing to remain in the background during a pivotal conversation in a diner roughly a third of the way through where he commits to a life with his lover. This proves to be anything but a clean-cut break.

The direction that Thief goes in would return in later films as a major fascination of Mann’s, but here in his debut his artistic voice comes out bold and fully-formed, a rarity for any first-time filmmaker. In his examinations of the battle between law and crime that rages on inside the psyches of morally grey men, crowded urban spaces play an important role as settings for such characters to gather and conduct their schemes. In a more hopeful film, one might optimistically think that these environments could even inspire some form of comradeship. And yet as Mann sketches out so poignantly here in Thief, sprawling cities are not conducive to such healthy lifestyles. To escape these haunting metropolitan landscapes might bring some peaceful resolution, but such an effort may very well destroy you first.

Thief is currently streaming on Stan and The Criterion Channel.

In 1990, Martin Scorsese blew both critics and general audiences away with mob flick and tour-de-force of filmmaking, Goodfellas. In 1991, he followed that up with the less-praised but still-dark psychological thriller, Cape Fear. And then two years later in 1993 came The Age of Innocence – a romantic period film, adapting the 1920 novel of the same name by Edith Wharton. On one hand, this is a significant change of pace for a director whose claim to fame is gritty masculine dramas about working-class men. The vividly colourful flower arrangements, archaic furniture, and lavish costumes are a far cry from the dingy New York streets of Taxi Driver or the stark black-and-white photography of Raging Bull.

But this film is not so completely removed from Scorsese’s artistic fascinations that it feels like some impersonal oddity in his filmography. It is not just that he had dabbled in other genres outside his wheelhouse before, but his protagonist of Newland Archer is yet another character in Scorsese’s long line of male antiheroes with fatal flaws. On top of that, having frequently praised the swooning period romances of German auteur, Max Ophüls, The Age of Innocence may also be Scorsese’s most direct homage to the innovator of moving cameras and long takes.

As such, it is in his turn to the quiet, passionate yearning of two lovers bound by constrained cultural restrictions of 1870s upper-class New York that he surprisingly feels right at home, deftly tracking his camera through opulent 19^th century mansions, following characters through colossal rooms, and then letting it detach to observe beautiful paintings hung upon vivid red walls, like it has a mind of its own. Meanwhile, a voiceover lifting lines straight from the novel plays over the top, at times introducing us to the characters who emerge within these unbroken takes, and then at other times listing off the period-specific items and people which his camera seems to obsess over.

“…a hired chef, two borrowed footmen, roses from Henderson’s, Roman punch, and menus on gilt-edged cards.”

There is something of Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad in these hypnotic descriptions and rolling camera movements, though the significance goes beyond simple aural rhythms or its grounding of this narrative in a materialistic, aristocratic culture. Much of what this voiceover fussily lists off are antiquated artefacts that contemporary audiences cannot attach specific meanings or purposes to, but instead fill in with a vague, even mystical sense of nostalgia. They belong to a “hieroglyphic world” where “the real thing was never said, or done, or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs,” and as such they present to us an invitation to interpret this era through a lens of subjective impressionism – a lens which our protagonist, Newland Archer, is all too happy to adopt himself.

Such a romanticisation of old-fashioned ideals might not be so readily apparent in the restless, frustrated attitudes of this New York City lawyer though. Despite Archer’s engagement to May Welland, the young, respectable daughter of a wealthy family, his encounter with her scandalous cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, quickly gives rise to an ardent, passionate affair between the two, as well as a frustration directed towards his society’s uptight Victorian ideals. There is an allure to the other side of the Atlantic where Olenska has spent much of her adulthood, and where bohemian lifestyles have eroded the rigid structures of high society. If only he were to live in a civilisation where performative gender roles and meaningless traditions were completely devalued, then maybe then he wouldn’t have to keep up this image of decorum, and he would be able to submit to his true romantic feelings.

And yet, in spite of these dreams, he paradoxically finds himself attached to the idealism of such archaic standards as well, particularly in how they preserve the innocence of his sweet, virtuous wife, which he cannot bring himself to destroy with honesty. Where Olenska dresses in red satin and black lace, and the settings of their passionate encounters seem to radiate vivacious scarlet palettes out to the wallpaper, curtains, and carpets, May is clothed in virginal white dresses. As much as Archer begrudges the neat conventions of 19^th century New York, he thrives on the existence of this duality – and it makes a late reveal that May is not so naïve all the more devastating for him.

Liminal as they may be, memories are the only space where such fantasies can exist without contradiction or tension, and Scorsese heavily commits to maintaining the tone of an impressionistic look into the past, removed from its immediacy. The past-tense narration and the imagining of letters as being spoken in direct addresses to camera work to establish this sentimental, slightly artificial reminiscence, but it seeps even further down into Scorsese’ delicate long dissolves, dreamily flowing from one shot to the next like a fluid, effortless recollection. As Archer ages through the decades, a combination of camera pans and these dissolves drift through a single room in his manor, brushing over milestones in his life that have taken place since the departure of Olenska.

Back in days of his youth, the notion that he might at least maintain his May’s innocence gives some justification to his decision to remain by her side, and yet as 19^th century social conventions fade and May’s life is cut tragically short, he still cannot bring himself to elope with Olenska, the woman he claims to love most. After all, who knows what troubled reality he may face if they actually were to settle down together? This fantasy of the past is far more preferable, and as such their relationship only exists in how he chooses to remember it. We recall a scene earlier in the film where Archer stares from a distance to her standing on a pier, facing a bright, golden ocean like an ethereal, unreachable figure. But within the comfort of his own memories, the past is malleable, and it is in revisiting this moment in his own mind that she finally turns to meet his gaze. The age of innocence as Archer perceived it might not have ever existed, but when filtered through a lens of self-absorbed nostalgia, it can manifest in whatever form he wishes.

The Age of Innocence is available to rent or buy on YouTube and Google Play.

Cary Joji Fukunaga| 2hr 43min

It has been a long six years since Daniel Craig’s last James Bond film, Spectre, was released in 2015, and it has felt even longer given that No Time to Die was one of the very first films to have its release date pushed back when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. In keeping the timeline of this series somewhat parallel to our own (though obviously falling back a year for the aforementioned reason) there is a jump of five years into the future early on – but not until after we get two prologues, one of which is set a couple of decades ago in the past, and a much longer one which picks right up where Spectre left off, with Bond living a paranoid retirement in Greece. No longer a 00 agent, mistrustful of a world brimming with enemies, and living entirely off the grid, this is the most jaded and guarded that we have ever seen Craig’s interpretation of the British spy.

The process of chipping away at these emotional barriers is gradual, but the shift that occurs does end up feeling all the more earned for the time it takes to cover such an expanse of character development. Over the course of the film we watch the man transform, from a lonely, isolated figure cut off from everything that ever brought him happiness, into a domesticated family man – a role that no version of Bond has dreamed of touching before. Though there is some air of sacrosanct mystique that is stripped from the character in the process, it is replaced with something truly refreshing in the canon: vulnerable, humanistic mortality. The wisecracking man of action we met in Casino Royale is still very much present, but No Time to Die presents us with an older, more mature Bond who takes deadly risks not out of a sense of reckless, thrill-seeking invincibility, but out of a selfless understanding of how one small life might be more important than his own.

Along with the regular Bond crew of Ben Whishaw’s Q, Ralph Fiennes’ M, and Naomi Harris’ Miss Moneypenny are two new allies: one in the form of Ana de Armas’ fresh-faced, bubbly CIA agent Paloma whose brief team up with Craig calls back to their chemistry in Knives Out, and the other being Lashana Lynch’s spiky Nomi, the new MI6 agent who has nabbed Bond’s old code, 007. During Bond’s retreat into the shadows, these associates and their world of covert espionage has kept ticking along without him, and so it is only natural that he takes its continued functionality as a small hit to his ego. What it does still need though is someone who can secure its ongoing safety, and with a new bioweapon on the horizon he is called back for one last mission.

In the tradition of casting established actors with a knack for chewing scenery in the role of Bond villains, the addition of Rami Malek to the cast as poison merchant Lyutsifer Safin pays off more in his flamboyantly damaged presence than in giving real weight to the threat he poses. And as he is written, Safin is a nasty villain indeed, particularly given how invasive his key weapon is in binding its victims to their own inescapable genetic code. The body horror which comes as a result of this devastating creation shouldn’t be surprising given the viscerally violent territory this franchise has previously traversed, and yet it does feel even more intimately disturbing than much of what we have seen before, both for its functional implications and its immediate, visual impact. As a scourge which manipulates the closest possible bonds shared between humans, family becomes both a fragile treasure and a saving grace to this re-inspired Bond, providing a devastating friction in his love and fear of such attachments.

Stepping into the shoes of Sam Mendes. who oversaw the previous two Bond films, is Cary Joji Fukunaga. Even considering the flaws that plagued Spectre, it is hard to argue against Mendes as being anything less than a brilliant director of set pieces, and as such a high bar is set for Fukunaga – maybe a little too high given the heights of cinematic action that Skyfall hits. Nevertheless, his command over thrilling struggles in sinking ships, high-octane chases through the streets of Greece, and the stark beauty present in one vast, concrete compound set is commendable, particularly in the latter where expressionistic angles and low-key lighting setups create a cold, daunting atmosphere around the ultimate test of 007’s duty of care. Craig’s run of Bond has been defined by a gritty innovation in pushing the character archetype in transgressive new directions, not all of which have landed, but it has also been more interconnected than any others which have come before it. Fortunately under Fukunaga’s care, No Time to Die closes it out with an explosive bang, a stirring farewell, and a touch of poignancy that few action stars would be able to pull off with as sincere a tenderness as Craig.

No Time to Die is currently playing in theatres.

Terence Davis | 2hr 17min

It was only inevitable that a writer-director as dedicated to lyrically drawing out the voices of those who live in the crevices of recent British history as Terence Davies would take a real-life poet as his subject of examination. But it is also in moving closer to horrors of war than he ever has before that Benediction becomes his most scathing look into the past. As a decorated World War I soldier, Siegfried Sassoon speaks with first-hand experience of the war effort, particularly condemning the “political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.” As much of Benediction explores the troubled drama of Sassoon’s personal life, Davies breaks up the narrative with the poet’s elegiac musings playing out over black-and-white archival footage of the frontlines, filtering this grim reality through the mind of an artist driven to eloquent expressions of anger, melancholy, and heartbreak.

Though Sassoon accepts his position as an outsider, being both a soldier declared unfit for service and a closeted homosexual, he finds great relief in letting his thoughts spill out in the written word, and similarly finds himself drawn to other men who pursue their own forms of self-expression. Early on, he and his poet friend, Wilfred, engage in a tango brimming with sexual desire, and later when he meets actor and musician Ivor Novello playing a cheeky tune on the piano, Davies very slowly tracks his camera forward, like one magnet being drawn into the field of another. As Sassoon continues to move between affairs, Davies’ narrative sprawls outwards in tangential and, at times, messy ways, touching on many lives in a large ensemble which isn’t always as fully fleshed out as one would hope.

But within the midst of it all, Jack Lowden’s performance of a young Sassoon remains a powerful force, delivering a humility that at times verges on self-loathing, and yet never loses its sensitivity and warmth that so many others lack. Where the proclamations of Novello that his talents are a gift to his country reveal a toxic, untempered arrogance, Sassoon stands in stark contrast to such narcissistic manners. As he recognises, there is an unavoidable “egotism” which lies at the heart of his desire for his artistic catharsis to be heard. The mere fact that he possesses such self-awareness though reveals an authentic modesty to his endeavours, as he strives to create beauty in a world that he believes is very much lacking it.

Beyond the immediate, rousing impact of Sassoon’s poetry, Davies ensures that such efforts are not in vain either, crafting an impressionistic world around him that seems to spring forth from the poet’s ideals. The graceful camerawork and photography that we have come to associate with Davies’ elegant style is unfortunately toned down here in Benediction, and one might theorise this is a sacrifice he makes to let the ‘important’ subject matter speak for itself. But this is not at all to say that it is gone entirely, as he is still making purposeful choices in letting his images flow along in delicate long dissolves, connecting scenes in effortless match shots as simple as that of a tennis court drenched in rain to Sassoon swimming in a pool. In more significant moments, Davies will circle his camera around to the back of Sassoon’s head as the background morphs around him into a sort of photographic mural of the war, visually manifesting those memories which continue to motivate his poetry.

Indeed, these subjective, personal accounts of history are what fascinate Davies above all else, and towards the end of Benediction in perhaps its greatest shot, his long dissolves literalise the fuzzy intangibility of such memories. We watch an older Sassoon played by Peter Capaldi stand framed in the window of his home of 1940s Britain, the frosted glass partially concealing his expression as he gazes out at the rain. Just off to his right, images of his past loved ones fade in and out, still present with him but ultimately incorporeal, separated by that pane of glass that leaves him just as indistinct as them. As Davies illustrates, it is not his face, but his words that will survive the disappearing decades. Words that carry moving indictments of a war all too heavily focused on “aggression and conquest”, which demonstrated a refined ability to speak for many other Brits who felt the same way, and that restored the world with at least a tiny bit of beauty that was lost in a traumatic, global conflict.

Benediction is out in Australian theatres on 21st April, 2022.

Preston Sturges | 1hr 7min

Not much about Christmas in July is terribly festive, but it is a fitting title nonetheless given how much Preston Sturges fills the film with his own brand of wholesome benevolence. Our hero, Jimmy MacDonald, is an office worker lost in a sea of desks. He has his eyes firmly set on the American Dream, and then one day a prank gone wrong sees him believe he has won $25,000 cash in a slogan competition for a coffee company. The instant that he believes in his own success, his entire attitude changes. His sudden boost in confidence is enough to earn him a promotion, an office, and a personal secretary, with even the executive of the company running the contest believing that he is the real winner. As for the actual slogan itself – it is nothing less than lame, wordy, and confusing.

“If you can’t sleep at night, it’s not the coffee, it’s the bunk.”

And yet there is something endearing about Jimmy’s whole-hearted conviction in the cleverness of his quip. Within Sturges’ world of naive, incompetent businessman, such self-assured belief is infectious, as the slogan’s apparent success spurs on a surge in popularity until everyone who once saw it as a meagre attempt at humour convinces themselves of its brilliance. After all, it won a contest judged by a board of professionals. How could it not be? Even Jimmy’s own boss uses it as the basis of his own judgement.

“I think your ideas are good because they sound good to me. But I know your ideas are good because you won this contest over millions of aspirants.” 

The comedy in Christmas in July is a little more low-key than the usual Sturges outing, especially since the focus isn’t so much on the slapstick or zany antics than being a satire of American success. But his trademark commitment to running gags and expeditious pacing is present even this early in his career, and the faith individuals place in mainstream opinions rather than thinking for themselves is a perfect target for a director with such a skill in crafting farcical escalations. A more cynical film would make Jimmy a selfish egomaniac, but here he is a sincerely good, compassionate man, and as such it isn’t hard to get behind his stroke of good fortune, or conversely fear his inevitable downfall. It may not belong among his greatest works, but thanks to Sturges’ comical screenplay, Christmas in July strikes an easy tonal balance of skepticism towards corporate America and a comfortable, agreeable comedy.

Christmas in July is not currently available to stream in Australia.