I must admit that I’ve been pretty poor at writing about films of late, and you might think it was because I hadn’t seen any. To be honest, I haven’t been to the cinema this year as frequently as I have in the past and it’s not solely because the experience is so dreadful these days. But then who, besides the cinema in question, should be responsible for the fact that the digital screening I saw of The Dark Knight seemed to flicker the whole way through because there was a problem with the projector.
Speaking of projectors, I actually got to peer into a projection booth a week or so ago (we were showing some ads at a plush London cinema), and there’s a fascinating amount of kit in there. It was also obvious that the projectionist who ran all four of that cinema’s screens from a single corridor, was a big Jessica Alba fan with a variety of life-size cut-outs and posters in the room.
Anyway – to the films. Jar City is based on Arnaldur Indriðason’s novel of the same name. Well – I say the same name – but in the UK, the book was published as Tainted Blood. The film seems to have had a release in the UK mainly because it’s directed by Baltasar Kormákur who previously made the only other Icelandic film anybody might be able to name – Reykjavik 101. But it’s still taken its stately time to cross the stretch of the Atlantic to reach us, having been made back in 2006. Of course, we barely have diplomatic relations with Iceland these days, but this is very much a worthwhile film.
As Indriðason’s novels have begun to gain ground in the UK, it’s worth saying up front that this film is an incredibly good dramatisation of the novel. Iceland as we usually see it, is filled with dramatic scenery, yet here we have a somewhat bleaker portrait of the country. Well worth seeing, although disappointingly, I can’t find news of any further books being filmed. A US remake does seem to be on the cards though.
Gomorrah is simply fantastic. The praise it has received in the press is fully deserved. I’ve always hated films like the Al Pacino version of Scarface (which has nothing on the original) that essentially glamourise gangsters. In Gomorrah, two of the characters – a pair of youths – re-enact scenes from that very film before they find a stash of the Camorra’s weapons. When you see them playing with the guns in a river estuary, you genuinely fear for them as they mess around with these very dangerous armaments.
The film is a series of stories that don’t so much interlock as take place in the same milieu. The squalid setting of the Naples suburb which feels utterly lawless. While some stories reveal the pettiness of it all, as the various factions of these mafia break up causing tensions, and inevitably deaths, others are more revealing. I think many are aware of the dreadful waste industry scandals that have hit Naples. This film makes it clear, as we see a seemingly respectable businessman heading to places such as Venice to sign deals to get rid of waste. In turn it’s buried, mostly illegally, with little regard for safety, in farmers’ fields. The land becomes toxic. Nobody cares.
The other fascinating story is of a tailor who tries to escape the Comorra, by teaching Chinese workers how to produce garments to the quality required by the Italian fashion industry. At one point a Milanese fashion house representative seeks bids for a batch of haute couture outfits. The various tailors outdo themselves to underbid one another and offer to complete the outfits in faster times. Nobody in charge really cares about the workers who will literally have to work around the clock to meet the deadlines they’ve been signed up for.
A Coen brothers film is always worth watching – well with the singular exception of their remake of The Ladykillers – which I only finally saw when it was on TV. Burn After Reading’s their latest, and it seems to have disappointed an awful lot of people after last year’s No Country For Old Men.
To be honest, I went in knowing exactly what I was going to get, and I got it. This comes from someone who found Intolerable Cruelty to be entertaining in its own way, and The Hudsucker Proxy to be an under-appreciated classic. So a nonsense tale of some supposed lost CIA secrets on a disc, is perfectly fine.
Is there much to be said about society in this film? Not really. There are gags aimed at much slighter subjects, but that’s not really the point. Everyone here is just having fun. There are brief moments of violence, but that’s par for the course in a Coen brothers film.
The showing I saw was the first packed, paid-for showing of any film I’ve seen in years. And that was for a 6.30pm screening (albeit in Islington). While it’s not joke after joke, I came out feeling that I’d had value for money. George Clooney’s goofy; John Malkovich’s supercilious; Brad Pitt is dumb; Tilda Swinton is overbearing; and Francis McDormand is insecure – at least initially. And the conversations between CIA officer David Rasche and his superior JK Simmons are fantastic. Well worth a trip to your local cinema – assuming it’s not too terrible.