January In Film

I plan to write a monthly film blog in 2023, as a modest attempt to start writing again. My intention is to write mini-reviews of every film or event I watch at the cinema this year. This is the first of those. Off we go.

Corsage

Vicky Krieps plays Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Elisabeth has grown weary of her life and responsibilities, as evidenced in the opening scene where she fakes a fainting fit to get out of one of her rare public engagements. She fears turning 40 and has a somewhat turbulent relationship with her husband, who resents her failure to represent the kingdom that he claims to carry the burden of. This extends to her children, who both chastise her for her behaviour and for falling out of step with the monarchy. At the time of writing, these are certainly topical themes. An amusing scene later in the film sees her daughter compliment her grace and poise during an event, when she has sent one of her servants out in disguise to pose as her.

A curious character, she’s empathetic towards the war wounded she visits in hospital yet still retains high status and sense of superiority over others. There’s one particularly striking conversation with one of her servants who is given what she believes is a final opportunity to be wed, but Elisabeth refuses, claiming ownership of her.

It’s an intriguing portrait of a historical figure I was unfamiliar with previously but overall, there is a lack of narrative impetus. I had previously seen Krieps in Phantom Thread, an underwhelming movie I assume everyone pretended to like because it had Daniel Day-Lewis in it. Unfortunately, both Phantom Thread and Corsage are more stylish than substantial. Nonetheless, she’s a compelling screen presence and I look forward to seeing what she does next.

A Man Called Otto

It’s difficult for me to be objective here. I love Tom Hanks and will probably always love Tom Hanks. This won’t be remembered as one of his finest works but it’s difficult not to be charmed by it. He plays the titular Otto, a curmudgeonly widower irritated by his neighbours and the world around him. We initially meet him in a hardware store, irked by the fact he is forced pay for rope by the foot and not by the yard.

That rope is subsequently used for precisely the purpose one might expect. What comes as a surprise is that that moment is only a precursor for an escalating sense of bleakness later. It’s at these moments that the adaptation from a Scandinavian novel and film (“A Man Named Ove”) is most apparent. A transgender character named Malcolm is subsequently introduced and seems a little bit crowbarred into the story. I would have liked to have seen his character given more screen time.

Despite those minor misgivings, it’s a sweetly satisfying narrative that could have been mawkish or saccharine in the wrong hands. Mariana Trevino lights up the film with her performance as Mariol, the new neighbour who gradually encourages Otto to let others into his life. It’s lovely also to see one of my comedy heroes Mike Birbiglia, who makes a couple of brief appearances as an underhanded official for the local estate company. You’ve seen this sort of film before, but it’s done well. A solid picture for a relaxing weekend afternoon.

Empire Of Light

Empire of Light is set in a cinema on the Kent coast that has clearly seen better days, once a facility with four screens and an upstairs bar but now reduced to Screen One and Screen Two. The film’s marketing has been heavily focused around cinema going and the romance of the old picture houses. However, despite the best efforts of Toby Jones’ projectionist character, the cinema setting feels quite incidental and a belated attempt to invoke “the magic of cinema” in the final act doesn’t quite land as a result.

The heart of the film is a workplace drama, featuring two people who are outsiders for different reasons but both struggling to find their way against the dreary backdrop of Margate in 1981. Olivia Colman provides a typically excellent performance as Hilary, the cinema’s duty manager who struggles with bipolar disorder and has been in and out of hospital. Colman has a fine line in the portrayal of quiet devastation which is used to good effect here.

Likewise, Micheal Ward produces a quietly impressive performance as Stephen, a kindly and thoughtful young man who yearns to escape to university and away from the National Front, who are stoking racial tensions which come to a head in shocking fashion. Despite the age gap between the two characters, it’s a relationship that feels genuine and watching the pair of them on screen is a joy. Come for the drama, stay for some of the most awkward sex scenes committed to celluloid.

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Another musical biopic, this one scripted by Anthony McCarten who also wrote Bohemian Rhapsody. I enjoyed that film, although it proved divisive among Queen fans and both films lean on some rather clunky expositional devices.

I think this is the better one of the two however, and it generally strikes the right balance between celebrating Whitney (“Nippy” to her family) and highlighting her latter struggles, particularly those with substance abuse. It rightfully gives her long-time friend, employee and possible lover Robyn Crawford a prominent role in proceedings, as their tight friendship is gate crashed by Houston’s “bad boy” husband Bobby Brown. One unpleasant scene with a snarling, boorish Brown hints at the direction a darker version of this story might have taken. The film elects to pivot away from depicting her final hours, deciding instead to focus on a bravura performance at the 1994 American Music Awards which provides a truly showstopping finale.

I’d recommend going to see this or picking it up somewhere down the line purely because you’ll either be introduced to or reacquainted with a truly exceptional talent, one that we lost all too soon.  I have heard Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You”* countless times in my life and even now, it still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Record executive Clive Davis (played by Stanley Tucci in delightfully sardonic form) describes her as the greatest voice of her generation. I find it hard to disagree.

*The most iconic key change of all time? Possibly.

Chicago

This 2002 film adaption of the Broadway musical originally written by John Kander, Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse in 1975 took me by surprise. From the moment a sultry Catherine Zeta-Jones appears on screen as Velma Kelly to perform an electrifying “All That Jazz”, the songs and performances captivate from start to finish.

Rene Zellweger excels as Roxie, the girl next door turned cabaret star, with a twinkly eyed Richard Gere providing a fun turn as the hotshot lawyer attempting to get her out of jail. There’s fine support work too from John C Reilly as Roxie’s husband (the dictionary definition of a “schmuck”) and Queen Latifah as the prison warden, who performs one of the best songs in the film (“When You’re Good To Mama”) with considerable gusto.

As with most musicals adapted for the screen, the action in the film is not particularly cinematic, despite the occasional stylish sequence. But that’s easy to forgive when the songs are this good and the performances this entertaining. It’s fair to say also that subtlety and plot are basically non-existent. If you were pushed to look for a message, it’s how morality and decency will always take a back seat to celebrity and scandal. But above all else, people love a show. And what a supremely entertaining show it is.

Chicago took home Best Picture at the 2003 Oscars. It’s unusual for the Academy to make such a crowd-pleasing selection. Then again, the old razzle dazzle is pretty hard to resist.

NT Live: The Crucible

The first of their screenings in 2023, the National Theatre will presumably be hoping for another successful year following the unprecedented smash hit of Prima Facie. In all honesty, I have never been captivated by plays in the same way that I am by film and live music and for that reason, I suspect they will not be a frequent fixture of this blog. Hopefully something might capture my interest further down the line.

Thanks to GCSE English, The Crucible is probably the only play that I know back to front. It is very difficult to find a fresh take on Arthur Miller’s “Red Scare” allegory and there is no serious attempt to place proceedings in a more contemporary setting. The staging is simplistic but elegant, although I was amused to note the heavy use of a rain machine, as was also the case in Prima Facie. They might wish to consider a different method of setting a mood in future productions.

I had forgotten that there are no scene changes across The Crucible’s four acts. It’s a testament to the pacing and quality of Miller’s dialogue that the play never seems to drag across its over two- and half-hour runtime. The performances are mostly strong too, though there is the occasional accent drifting all over Massachusetts in a manner that I’m going to describe as “Wahlbergian”. The stand-out is Fisayo Akinade as Reverend Hale, who expertly portrays a man previously of steadfast belief who slowly realises he cannot prevent the harrowing sequence of events that follows. All in all, a solidly entertaining production.

Tar

Cate Blanchett plays Lydia Tar, a celebrated composer with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. The film follows her journey towards what promises to be the defining moment of her career, a live performance and recording of Mahler’s 5^th Symphony.

Although Blanchett provides a terrific performance as the exceptionally talented but fatally flawed Lydia, I wanted to like this much more than I did. There’s an early combative scene with Tar as a guest lecturer at Juilliard where she addresses one of her student’s dismissal of Bach for being a misogynist cisgender white man. Instead, she contends that identity politics is an unhelpful lense through which to view his work. It’s a much more nuanced take on “the culture wars” than I’m used to seeing, one of several themes established early on which go frustratingly unexamined later.

The film undeniably finishes strongly in a surprising and impactful final act, but it’s something of a frustrating slog to get there. For much of its runtime it moves at a glacial pace and the signs of Lydia’s history as an abuser are often so subtle as to be virtually non-existent. A certain amount of reading between the lines is evidently required but as a viewer, you’re left wishing you had rather more to go on. This has been very well reviewed, and I can understand why others have seen things in it that I didn’t. To me however, it feels as though an intriguing premise has been wasted. Though of all the films I’ve watched this month, it is the one I’d most like to see again.

Babylon

This film is not so much a love letter to Hollywood as a series of pornographic postcards to Hollywood. And not so much a film as a series of frenetic, hedonistic set pieces. Subtlety and character development go by the wayside early on, around the point where an elephant defecates on screen at length. Thank goodness then that those set pieces are hugely entertaining, with a higher laugh quotient than I had anticipated. There’s much to enjoy here, from Justin Hurwitz’s jazzy soundtrack (including a melodic nod to his and director Damien Chazelle’s previous work on La La Land, which I suspect would provide an interesting companion piece to this film) to a delightfully mad cameo role for Toby Maguire. Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt are not particularly stretched as the as the out-of-control starlet and washed up old star respectively, but they’re enjoyable performances all the same.

I remain steadfast in my belief that no film needs to be longer than two hours in duration, but it’s perhaps fitting that a film dedicated to the bloated excesses of Hollywood in the first half of the 20^th century exceeds the three hour mark. There’s a scene in which one of Brad Pitt’s many wives (a Broadway actress) describes cinema as a “low art” which is a succinct description of this movie. It isn’t one for the intellectuals, but sometimes you just want to go to the cinema and watch Margot Robbie fight a snake. It’s tremendously ill-disciplined but also great fun.