Category: 2020s

Wes Anderson | 1hr 48min

In English, the quaint French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé translates to ‘Boredom on Apathy’, a wry suggestion that this may be the last place in the world a journalist would want to work. Yet it is here where the foreign bureau of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper is stationed, led by editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), and where its team of American reporters are tasked with finding stories that may be of some interest to the general public. The subjects of these articles often go about their business with all the deadpan indifference that the name of the town would suggest, and so it is entirely up to the correspondents of The French Dispatch to find life in its streets and buildings. Wes Anderson has surely closely identified with his protagonists before, but never has he tied his ethos as a storyteller so closely to characters who similarly view their profession as an opportunity to offer a jaded world their fresh insights into its own unique, distinctive beauty.

In structuring The French Dispatch as an anthology film served up in three separate episodes and a framing device concerning Howitzer’s death, Anderson reveals that he is far less concerned with any individual plot as he is with the people and culture of Ennui which these stories make up. As the newspaper nears the end of its run, there is also the nostalgic feeling that an integral part of this community will be lost, and from now on will only live on in the words of the men and women who believed in the rich history of this ordinary town. Much like the layers upon layers of flashbacks that frame The Grand Budapest Hotel, the multitude of narrators in The French Dispatch maintain an ironic detachment from the events that take place, as it is through lectures, columns, and talk show interviews that these journalists let us into worlds that one would have never otherwise expected to exist in this small, quiet corner of France.

When it comes to Anderson’s artistic construction of this town, his connection to the cinematic masters of architectural mise-en-scene and physical comedy has rarely been so pronounced as it is here. It goes without saying that all his usual stylistic idiosyncrasies are on display – the rigorous symmetry of his cinematography, the short, sharp camera movements, the heavily-curated pastel colour palettes – but when he chooses to let us sit in a wide shot to observe a man ascend multiple flights of stairs, only allowing us glimpses of him through the tiny windows scattered across the face of a diorama-like building, one can’t help but point to the use of the exact same visual gag from Jacques Tati’s French comedy Mon Oncle. In spite of these direct homages though, there isn’t much of an argument to be made that The French Dispatch comes from any filmmaker but Anderson, especially when his dogmatically formal aesthetic turns experimental in its switching between black-and-white and colour schemes within each featured article.

The first of these, ‘The Concrete Masterpiece’, is orated by J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) and follows a prisoner, Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), whose abstract nude paintings of a guard (Léa Seydoux) capture the attention of fellow inmate and art dealer, Julien Cadazio (Adrien Brody). ‘Revisions to a Manifesto’ is the second, and sees journalist Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) engage a little too closely with the young leader of a student revolution, Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet). Reporter Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) narrates the third, ‘The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner’, in which the son of the Ennui police force’s Commissaire is kidnapped by a notorious gang leader (Ed Norton), and resorts to sending in legendary police officer and chef, Lieutenant Nescaffier (Stephen Park), to save him.

The greyscale palette which dominates these retrospective vignettes builds even further on the nostalgic distance with which Anderson interprets these stories, and yet his occasional flashes of vibrant colour reveal small breaks in this wistful demeanour, whereby the past is brought transcendently into the present and affectionately embraced in its immediate, tender beauty. There are no firm rules dictating when exactly these switches occur, but there is a consistency in the emotional beats with which they are presented – an awestruck wonder when gazing upon Moses’ paintings, facing Zeffirelli’s bright-eyed idealism, or visually feasting upon Nescaffier’s delicacies. While the black-and-white newspaper format dominates much of these flashbacks, such vivid bursts of rich hues indicate the presence of some magnificent splendour that each journalist is particularly enchanted by and may have printed in colour, or otherwise playfully depict in amusing animated sequences representing back-page comic strips.

As perfectionistic a director as Anderson is, he equally delights in the quaint imperfections of his characters and their odd fascinations, absorbing these peculiarities into his own effervescent style. Several times in The French Dispatch does he choose to freeze a scene mid-action and catch it in an immaculately staged tableau, though as he tracks his camera across it we notice the small tremors of his actors trying to remain deadly still, as if re-enacting the moment for a publicist to photograph. His love for the artifice of print journalism is only outdone by his love for the artifice of film itself, both being bound together by the passion of writers and stylists for discovering parts of the world otherwise deemed ordinary, lifting these up on public platforms for others to appreciate, and embellishing them with some modest spark of creativity. After all, no matter how tethered to the truth they are, no storyteller can resist letting a small dose of artistry creep into their work – or, if you are Wes Anderson, an enthrallingly sizeable measure of imagination.

The French Dispatch is currently available to stream on Disney Plus, and available to buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Video.

Denis Villeneuve | 2hr 35min

It is no coincidence that those literary classics considered unfilmable often make for some of the greatest displays of narrative put to screen. Peter Jackson proved the filmic potential of The Lord of the Rings in letting its dense story breathe over a 12 hour series, the Coen Brothers did the impossible in effectively adapting a Cormac McCarthy novel with No Country For Old Men, and now after multiple directors’ failed attempts to give Frank Herbert’s epic space opera Dune the cinematic treatment, Denis Villeneuve succeeds on a grand scale, digging into its Greek mythological archetypes as a compelling canvas upon which he paints out intricate civilisations, landscapes, and worlds of historic and futuristic significance.

On this level of raw narrative and visual metaphor, the impact of Francis Ford Coppola’s classical filmmaking is particularly evident. Certainly Herbert must receive the credit for conceptualising the intricate political conflict that springboards his story into the tale of a son rising to the role of family patriarch and a “Chosen One” grappling with responsibility and ego, but Villeneuve’s recognition of the power behind such archetypes allows for some especially rich visual connections back to The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. In its potent use of spiritual symbolism rooted in legends as ancient as Homer’s Iliad or the Succession Myth, Dune measures up to such cinematic classics that similarly harken back to more traditional forms of storytelling.

At the centre of Dune’s grand narrative is Paul Atreides, a young hero whose great potential is evident in his mysterious, clairvoyant abilities, and his practicing of a form of mind control known as the Voice, though at this stage of his development he does not yet wield a steady power over either. Villeneuve does well to keep his exposition to a bare minimum in this setup, a tough feat in itself given the complex mechanics of the world he is adapting, and as such it is almost entirely through his efficient visual storytelling that his majestic artistic take on Herbert’s source material reveals itself. We don’t need to be told that the mosquito-like hunter-seeker poses a lethal threat to Paul when it invades his home – the silent, nail-biting tension that accompanies its arrival is enough, just as Paul’s decision to remain deadly still to evade detection indicates its motion sensor-based functionality. In more action-heavy scenes, Villeneuve refuses to risk letting the key details of these characters and their environments disappear in the frenzy of battle, choosing to colour-code their shields to effectively indicate whether a blow has penetrated their defences.

Just as significant as Dune’s efficient narrative progression is its measured, deliberate pacing, which carries the enormous weight of the world-ending stakes at play and allows intensive attention to the development of each character and their relationships. In more energetic scenes Villeneuve bounces several subplots off each other in skilful displays of parallel editing, but otherwise he takes his time soaking in awe-inspiring establishing shots of massive ensembles, sloping dunes, and the imposing, geometric architecture that defines each location.

In House Atreides’ castle on the ocean planet of Caladan, the synthetic, pitch-black décor and costuming of its people carries an air of Gothic expressionism about it, particularly in one scene set in the dead of night where wraith-like nuns of the Bene Gesserit religious order march through an ethereal fog. In stark contrast, the planet of Arrakis is a glaring, spacious desertscape brilliantly lit by a blazing sun, throwing bright shades of yellow and white across a vast, dusty wasteland and flashing dazzling lens flares across the frame. Upon these worlds, gigantic spaceships descend from skies and rise from oceans like concrete leviathans, and yet even these manmade structures cannot stand up against the natural terrors which haunt the planes of Arrakis. Monstrous sandworms tunnel their way through its earth like water, turning these great desert vistas into unpredictable, rippling seas, threatening to swallow up humans and spaceships alike. “The desert isn’t kind to equipment,” Dr Liet-Kynes puts quite mildly. “It isn’t kind to humans either.”

Returning to collaborate with Villeneuve from Blade Runner 2049 is Hans Zimmer with his most experimental score yet, and also undoubtedly one of his best. If turning down working with Christopher Nolan on Tenet meant that this could be written, it was a worthy trade (especially given Tenet’s already fantastic score from Ludwig Göransson). In his blending of otherworldly sound effects, Tuvan throat-singing, tribal percussion, and Middle Eastern harmonic scales, Zimmer crafts a soundscape that effectively underscores the tension between the historical and futuristic conventions at play in the film, and stretches the scope of the film even further than what its commanding narrative and cinematography can achieve alone.

Though Dune ends on somewhat of an open-ended cliff-hanger to leave room for future sequels, it does not come with the feeling that we are being cheated out of a complete story. There are pay-offs to plot and character arcs here worth savouring, especially in Paul himself whose chilling turn down a dark path in the final act coincides with a leap in his own ego, as he edges ever closer to becoming the prophesied Messiah figure so often teased. The world of Dune may have originated in the mind of Frank Herbert, but this cinematic interpretation of it comes solely from Villeneuve, whose command over blockbuster spectacle carries both the substance and artistry so often lost in this tier of epic moviemaking.

Dune is currently out in movie theatres.

Julia Ducournau | 1hr 48min

The first two feature films from French body horror devotee Julia Ducournau are very much parts of a whole, as here in Titane she effectively backs up her own credentials as an auteur with an interest in carving out her own cinematic niche of feminine sexuality, carnal violence, and acutely affecting metaphors. The use of identical character names between both films does not so much indicate a mirroring of specific traits as it does suggest a common underworld of dark secrets shared by her female characters. But where the lead of Raw, Justine, finds herself gradually being consumed by ravenous cannibalistic urges, Alexia from Titane follows a messier journey that is harder to pin down. With her protagonist’s intense attraction towards cars, her string of cold-blooded murders, and a fraudulent identity to be upheld, Ducournau sketches out a portrait of a character as unpredictable as she is brutally misanthropic, and who prefers the cold sheen of metal over the soft touch of a human.

The car collision that opens Titane and sees a young Alexia get a titanium plate fitted into her head feels strangely fated to happen. Was it she who beckoned this accident in existence, as if to bind her soul to the motor vehicle? Or was it the car who called out to her, and then sent her back into the world with a part of its own metallic substance forever grafted into her head? Either way, organic and inorganic matter are fused into one being, and even as she dances provocatively at motor shows as an adult, she maintains a steely-eyed hatred about her, detesting all things human. In a backstage shower, we watch as her hair gets caught in another woman’s nipple piercing, this knotted union of biology and steel only being resolved by Alexia forcefully ripping herself away, much to her co-worker’s physical pain.

It is also in these early scenes that Ducournau puts on her own great show of visual artistry, as she weaves her camera seductively through the show room where exotic dancers thrust and grind against the shiny surfaces of cars, conflating the objectification of women with the humanising of vehicles by lingering lustfully equally on both. Similarities may be drawn between this device and a similar long take in Raw, as both hit these cinematic highpoints rather early on and then let this aesthetic commitment fall by the wayside as they progress further.

This isn’t to say that Titane lacks style – beyond the shocking body horror of Alexia’s vehicular pregnancy and motor oil bodily fluids, there is the infrequent split diopter shot, neon-lit interior, or slow-motion dance that briefly pulls us into Alexia’s own fragmented mental state. There is also Ducournau’s glorious sound design, where clanging metal noises play out irregular beats and deep, choral vocals reverberate in stiff minor chords. But the French director’s strength is clearly in developing subtext-loaded narratives, and letting them play out in unpredictable, explosive encounters.

That said, there is an unexpected softness to Titane which only reveals itself late in the game, as Alexia finds unexpected companionship in a man she has developed an unusual relationship with. To a certain extent, this connection is founded upon a mutual self-deception – his wilful conviction that she is actually his son, and her hopeful belief that he doesn’t secretly believe otherwise. In the confusion of where they both stand with each other, there is also a common recognition of each other as lonely souls uncomfortable in their flawed human bodies. Where flesh and metal meet, both find moments of ecstasy in its cold, hard perfection, though it is in the messy, twisted bond that they form over this that they are ironically tied even deeper to their own inexorable humanity.

Titane is currently playing in theatres.

Justin Chon | 1hr 52min

The American immigration system of Blue Bayou is a particularly cruel beast. Antonio LeBlanc was adopted from Korea as a three-year-old by Southern parents, and though his life up to this point has been troubled to say the least, he has found a stable home in New Orleans. With the wages of a tattoo artist and a nurse supporting him and the small family he has married into, they just barely scrape by. That he was never officially naturalised as an American citizen when he was a child may not seem like a significant issue, and yet it is within this tiny loophole that US authorities happily stick their fingers and pry open into a gaping pit, within which lies a devastatingly uncertain fate back in a country he barely remembers. Needless to say, this is a crushing story that swings hard for heavy, almost melodramatic emotional beats, and yet Justin Chon grounds it well in a realist style of handheld cameras, 16mm film stock, and symbols of corrupted innocence.

Judging from the very first shot of Blue Bayou, one might expect an entirely different, and dare I say more jaw-droppingly beautiful film. We watch from a distance as a woman rows down a calm river, framed by beautiful pink florals and trees draping down around her, the relevance of which emerges over time as we revisit Antonio’s infanthood in dreamy flashbacks, revealing the painful ties that bind family members together even as time wears on. A swampy bayou that lies just outside the city of New Orleans where he lives in the present day is often the catalyst for these delicate leaps into the past, as the tranquillity of this environment inspires a deep a sense of connection with both his daughter and mother who he barely remembers. It is within these waters that he reaches his lowest point twice over, facing his own inadequacy and mortality, but as we see in an expertly edited sequence that brings the past and present full circle this is also a site of great healing and redemption, where he is inspired by the love of his family to continue his fight for his life and freedom.

The dreaminess of these formal breaks that look into his past are welcome counterpoints to the tone of much of the rest of Blue Bayou, which often sinks into outright despair and anguish at the prospect of a life being destroyed by an inefficiently bureaucratic system. Even if the world around Antonio at times lacks nuance in its construction, Chon’s performance of a man who is slowly losing his grip of it is poignantly complex, especially in those moments he lets his fear and shame override his commitment to openness with his loved ones. While others talk around him about his own fate, the camera hangs on his face, and micro-expressions as small as an eye twitch reveal a slowly disintegrating composure.

Paired with Chon is Alicia Vikander having a particularly good 2021 with confident performances both here and in The Green Knight. As Antonio’s wife, Kathy faces her own dilemma between loyalty and stability, and in one gorgeous scene she holds our attention entirely with a beautiful rendition of Linda Ronstadt’s country ballad ‘Blue Bayou’. This may be a heavy, gut-wrenching ordeal for all these characters, and yet the flashes of beauty which emerge in moments of serenity lend a quiet joy to their relationships, underscoring the significance of family ties that cannot be broken by time, distance, or institutional forces beyond their control.

Blue Bayou is currently out in theatres.

Edgar Wright | 1hr 56min

It’s not the first time Edgar Wright has played in the sandpit of horror, but where his previous homage Shaun of the Dead was a straight send-up of George Romero’s zombie flicks, Last Night in Soho treats its Italian Giallo roots with a little more earnestness and urgency. Its setup of a young woman moving to a new city to study her artistic passion even mirrors that of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror film Suspiria, but the comparisons don’t end there. What follows is a pulpy, neon-tinted nightmare, isolating and disorientating our young female protagonist in a romanticised foreign world with a dark, angry, and bloody heart.

And with as bold an artistic stroke as the one Wright paints with here, it isn’t too surprising that there are some disparate elements which don’t quite stick, especially in the final act when a sudden character swing lacks the proper foreshadowing that might have allowed it a little more finesse. Such flaws are easily forgiven though as Last Night in Soho otherwise handles its tonal shifts with great confidence, especially as it begins to edge into Hitchcockian territory in its shocking narrative turns and perverse fascination with murder as a psychological weapon. More specifically, Wright engages with the cultural exploitation of women that pervades historical eras we are all too happy to filter through rose-coloured glasses, emphasising the shifts in perspective it takes to properly examine these historical injustices.

By endowing Ellie, a young, aspiring fashion designer, with the unique gift of clairvoyance, these points-of-view are very much literalised in the film. With this ability she is able to glimpse deceased loved ones in mirrors and, when she moves into an old London apartment, adopt the identity and perspective of Sandie, a gorgeous, blonde nightclub singer who resided in the same room back in the Swinging Sixties, through her dreams.

While Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy fully inhabit their own characters, they are also up to the challenge of shifting their performances ever so slightly in reflections of the other, especially as both represent two separate generations of women who have moved to London with big dreams, only to find gendered obstacles in their way. Wright delights in letting his fluid, kinetic style flow naturally through the duality of these identities, as both Ellie and Sandie switch in and out of each other’s positions in deftly choreographed sequences and find their reflections taking on their counterpart’s appearance, all while pieces of both identities are gradually absorbed into the other.

Mirrors are crucial to Wright’s formal ambitions in expressing this relationship, but they also prove to be integral in his stylistic statement as they distort and multiply characters in twisted compositions, become frames through which his camera moves, and force us to question our very understanding of Ellie’s physical reality. It doesn’t take long for him to entirely erode that sense of geographical space either, as the London of Ellie’s dreams gradually turns into an ever-shifting labyrinth of unpredictable doorways that throw her across the city’s clubs, alleyways, and buildings. Wright’s usual hyperactive editing style may not be entirely present here, but Last Night in Soho is still identifiably from the mind of the director whose inspired transitions and camera movements shape our perception of time and the manner in which it flows around his characters.

Wright has never been a slouch behind the camera, but Last Night in Soho may be his greatest effort in mise-en-scène to date, especially in his intensely expressive colour palette of reds and blues that emerge through lens flares and vivid neon washes, flashing through the windows of Ellie and Sandie’s apartment where the past and present converge in a gruelling, sensory nightmare. Though there are horrific figures that stalk and chase Ellie through her dreams and visions, the real threat here goes beyond any one monster – it is the violent, misogynistic exploitation filling every corner of this culture that poses real mortal danger to both women. Without a corporeal figure to pin this terror down to, it is instead in Wright’s haunting, disorientating atmosphere that we feel these physical worlds break down, and are led into the frightening liminal space that is left by the absence of such conveniently clear-cut divisions and identities.

Last Night in Soho is currently out in theatres.

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.

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.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul | 2hr 16min

The silences ridden through Memoria could go on for thirty seconds, a minute, or five minutes, but at a certain point during these stretches, time begins to disappear altogether, and a realisation begins to dawn – these are not silences at all. There is an aural effervescence carrying through almost every second of the film, lulling us into a meditative state through the rustling of leaves or the trickling of a creek, and then every so often slapping us out of it with a sudden eruption of noise. Indeed, Memoria is a film obsessed with the dissection, manipulation of, and submission to sound, and its representation of… what exactly?

In the attempts of Tilda Swinton’s Scottish expatriate, Jessica, to trace the source of a mysterious sonic boom that only she can perceive, she is led down an enigmatic path. She describes the noise as “a rumble from the core of the Earth” or “a ball of concrete hitting a metal wall surrounded by seawater”, trying to connect it to the ground beneath her feet and material objects, much like those archaeologists working on a nearby dig site who pursue tangible, historical truths. Like so many of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films though, such concrete resolutions aren’t so easily attained, as the places we are taken to often remain in some liminal, psychological space that can only be manifested in delicate soundscapes, some depicting natural environments, and others entirely unearthly.

And then there is the third form of sound that manifests in Memoria – the artificial type, which is produced by sound engineer, Hernan, as he assists Jessica in determining the source of the loud, disruptive bang that continues to plague her everyday life. Together, the two spend a good length of time in his studio, warping, compressing, and equalising a sound until it is identical to the one Jessica hears. It is a lengthy scene, but it also might be the least challenging of the film, as we all too easily invest ourselves in this manufactured recreation despite it not actually offering any real answers. It is the attempt at taking back control over this sound which we admire in Jessica, and yet as if in response to her assertion of agency, the universe itself shifts around her – or is it perhaps that she is just remembering things incorrectly?

The first sign that something might be off is the discovery that a man she has believed to be dead for a year is in fact alive and well, a fathomable mistake for someone to make given how malleable and tricky memory can be. But then Hernan disappears off the face of Earth with no trace of his existence other than within her own mind. If this shift comes from exterior forces, then perhaps the introduction of another man also named Hernan who offers his own wisdom is a gentle push from the universe towards understanding the sound on a deeper level than mere artificial reconstruction.

Despite this being Weerasethakul’s first film shot outside of his native Thailand and his first in English, any notions that this is his grab at mainstream appeal are very quickly dispelled by his languid pacing and inscrutable narrative turns, challenging us to tune into the eerie, introspective frequency that Memoria operates upon. He has always employed long, static shots with such formal rigour, and here whenever he cuts from one of these it feels like its own tiny disturbance in the fabric of Memoria’s peaceful flow, much like the persistent sonic boom.

Although the story is far removed from the jungles of Thailand, there is still beauty to be found in his urban interiors and overgrown forests, with both aesthetics effectively dividing the film in two halves, separating the material from the spiritual. In the former, Weerasethakul often sets his camera at diagonals in his tiny dioramas, beholding the parallel and intersecting lines which make up these unyielding spaces, and then in one shot he lets us linger on an empty plot of glass inexplicably encased in glass, like a meagre piece of nature left for us to observe, but not interact with. Later, he fully relishes every second spent on a lush, verdant riverbank, the rustic furniture of the ‘new’ Hernan spread out through the intensely green palette made up of thick grass and foliage, providing a soothing setting for Jessica’s great revelation.

And yes, there is indeed an answer to the great mystery at hand, though it doesn’t come easily. It isn’t just surprising because of its genre-bending implications, but because so much of Memoria is spent focused on what lies beneath the Earth, that we hadn’t even begun to consider turning our eyes upwards. As for why this noise seems to be contained within Jessica’s own mind, it would be no great spoiler to point to the title of the film itself. Traces of the past manifest as echoes in the present, and Weerasethakul delights in immersing us even further into a soundscape where the soft patter of rain fades into the first true bit of silence we have heard in this film, before giving way to the aural evocation of a memory previously recounted in conversation. The second Hernan, the man who assists her along this road, is simply another enigma in this story, becoming a pure representation of memory in his rejection of new experiences, and his ability to recall everything that has happened in his life.

As Memoria hands itself over to a mesmerising montage of Columbia’s dense jungles and canopies in its final minutes, there is some relief to be found in the relative simplicity of these images compared to everything that has come before. Weerasethakul’s touches of magical realism are sure to mystify and perplex viewers, though the true test of patience is his slow-burn narrative, which simultaneously invites us into its quiet rhythms and challenges our desire for to keep leaping forward to the next big plot point. It is the past, not the future which he sets his sights on here, and in these delicate reflections our minds are lifted away from the artificial progress and constructions of the material world, and dropped into a serene sea of memory.

Memoria is coming soon to theatres.

Chloé Zhao | 2hr 37min

It isn’t Terrence Malick, but it is about as close to Terrence Malick as Marvel will likely ever get – Eternals is what happens when studios relinquish a tiny bit of control to a director as dedicated to the artistic side of filmmaking as Chloé Zhao. Auteurs such as James Gunn, Ryan Coogler, and Taika Waititi have also been granted such freedoms before with resounding results, and though the critical reaction to Zhao’s effort has been a little more dampened, it surely belongs up among the most ambitious efforts by Marvel to reinvigorate the mega franchise with a fresh, exciting voice, this one bringing a certain sensuality and expressiveness to its stylings.

Tasked with the heavy duty of introducing ten new superheroes, each with distinct personalities and powers, Zhao fittingly turns the entire Earth and all of its history into her massive canvas upon which the relationships between these immortal beings explode into fights, arguments, and yes, sex. The Eternals were sent here some millennia ago by the mysterious Celestials to defend us from demonic monsters known as Deviants, though these creatures unfortunately prove to be little more than superficial CGI threats that consume nothing but valuable screen time. As it turns out, the most compelling conflict of the film emerges between the Eternals themselves. This fragmentation may, on some levels, bear similarities to that which drives the tension of Captain America: Civil War, but clear-cut sides of “us vs them” are not a luxury which these aliens can afford. Each of them come at the same crisis of faith from entirely different perspectives, having spent the last few hundred years relating with humans in their own ways.

For Druig, the mind-controller, the potential to pacify humans into a forced peace is a real temptation, while the engineer of the group, Phastos, only finds devastation and heartbreak in humanity’s squandering of his gifts. Such variation in poignant experiences leads them to separate corners of the world, where some integrate into society, others set themselves up as idols to be worshipped, and the remainders go into hiding. As they reunite, hard decisions with world-ending stakes must be made, but even then there remains an uncertainty, as they come to accept that siding against humanity need not necessarily come from a place of evil.

The complexity and scale of such questions of utilitarianism and faith could only be explored in an ensemble of this size and against a setting this epic, spanning from ancient Babylon, through the Gupta Empire, and on to World War II. Zhao commands an intimidating narrative structure in her frequent flashbacks to these epochs, with each one posing an ethical quandary that hammers the wedge between the Eternals just that little bit deeper, but the most impressive achievement here is exactly what one would hope from the director of the gorgeous Nomadland – quite simply, her mastery over natural lighting, landscapes, and wide shots are unrivalled in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the Malick influence is palpable. Perhaps the Eternals’ ship is more evocative of Stanley Kubrick’s Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the tranquil adoration which she heaps upon shots of the sun set against the pitch black vacuum of space might as well have been drawn from Malick’s The Tree of Life, and when we linger on a shot of Angelina Jolie’s Thena standing waist-deep in a lake reflecting the golden light of a sunset, Zhao’s love of The New World seeps through.

Such brilliantly elemental imagery erupts at the climax of the film in an explosive battle of lava, water, sand, wind, and ice, though one can’t help but feel that even as Zhao has appropriated the Marvel formula to a setting that plays to her strengths, she is still effectively bound by some conventional comic book plotting that she isn’t quite comfortable with. How many other directors though would cut away to a shot of the sun peeking from behind drifting clouds in the immediate aftermath of a battle though? It is evidently in these quieter, more pensive moments where she relishes the artistic freedom granted to her by the studio, and she makes each one count.

The polarising reaction with which Eternals has been met is baffling in the sense that there are aspects of Zhao’s filmmaking which are clearly leagues above so many others modern blockbusters, but it shouldn’t be all that much of a surprise given the massive swings she is taking here. Perhaps some complaints about lengthy exposition dumps aren’t too far off the mark, even if those sequences are still brilliantly rendered visually, and there are some forced gags where Zhao’s voice is momentarily lost. But if those flaws are the price we pay for Marvel films which are little more experimental with narrative structure and cinematography, or more ambitious in balancing several character arcs at a time, then one would hope that these are the risks the studio might take more of in the future.

Eternals is currently playing in theatres.