Richard Mascall's Weblog

Yes, Somebody Was There

On Thursday afternoon we went to the Cineworld Haymarket to see the latest Michael Caine film, Is Anybody There ? We were a little dubious once we found our seats because they were so low compared with the heights of the backs. Hardly anyone else was there so we did not find out if there would be a problem with viewing over the heads of people in front.

I first saw Caine in the 1964 film, Zulu. In Is Anybody There he plays a magician who ends up in an old people's home, and the story consists of how he and the 8 year old son of the couple running the place build a relationship.

As can be imagined, there are many sad moments but these are accompanied by cheering scenes. I had thought there might be more magic tricks in the film and the plot was unsurprising if not predictable in many ways but there was still enough to keep us interested from start to finish.

Adding in the film's brevity and its welcome lack of swearing, with just the one lapse, this is a film we can certainly recommend.

Learning Lessons From "The Class"

After going to the Ideal Home exhibition Show (see yesterday's comment) yesterday, we went on to see "The Class". This film tells the story of a French schoolmaster teaching his class of Parisian 13 to 15 year olds over the course of a year.

It is a captivating story, engaging because the characters, including the teacher, at different times invoke our sympathy, our support, and our condemnation. I believe the adults are professional actors while the pupils are real pupils given a script too, but you would never guess it from the realistic way they deliver their lines.

The film, which has only about three or four sets, is shot in a fly-on-the-wall style, complete with hand-held camera-shake occasionally.

As for the story itself, it is best not to give too much away but suffice to say it is a reminder how difficult a job it must be to teach in a secondary environment, especially in today's world where the pupils come from so many different backgrounds.

Grand Gran Torino

We popped down to The Screen at Oxted yesterday to see Clint Eastwood's latest film, "Gran Torino". It had a plot which seemed rather predictable at first but, for me at least, turned out to have a few surprises both in events which I predicted not happening and vice versa. Scenes of humour, excitement, and sadness occurred and my attention never wandered.

One complaint I had was that the characters were either "goodies" or "baddies" and you were never posed a question about were your sympathies should lie. Perhaps also the church was portrayed in an over-generous light and there were one or two rather unlikely coincidences and assumptions. And, as so often, there was too much swearing (ie more than zero).

But overall it was an enjoyable film which I would recommend.

A Full Helping of Milk

After we went to the Rothko exhibition yesterday, we went to see the Gus van Sant film "Milk", starring Sean Penn as Hervey Milk, the homosexual activist who managed to get elected to a post on the San Francisco city council back in the 70s.

It was a very entertaining film, with several interesting characters and a fast-moving plot. Hervey's fate is revealed at the beginning of the film and anyway I remember the story from the time but this did not diminish the impact.

There Will Be Blood ... and Bewilderment

It is 15 months since I last went to the cinema (see here), an omission which has been due to the lack of opportunity rather than a lack of attractive films. "Michael Clayton", "Ratatouille", and "In The Valley of the Moon" all seemed worth a visit, for example. And perhaps this lack of exposure to contemporary film dramas means I am out of tune with what to expect.

That might be the explanation of why I was so puzzled this evening by what the critics all said was a fine film, "There Will Be Blood". Roger Ebert and Peter Bradshaw were just two who praised the film, and it was nominated for lots of Oscars, with Daniel Day-Lewis winning Best Actor. Yet throughout its 2 hours 25 minutes, I kept asking myself what it was all about.

It was clear that it was the story of a man who started with little and made money out of oil, true. We learnt a lot about him and two of his relationships, one with a young churchman on whose land he develops an oil-well, and the boy he introduces as his son. There was action, tension, and incident. The music was atmospheric, and some of the photography was on a grand scale (though not in the Lawrence of Arabia class but then, what is ?). But I often could not understand why the characters did or said what they did. And there were scenes that just made me question why the director included them.

Some of the reviews draw comparisons, unfavourable ones, with "Citizen Kane" and I can see some parallels. But whereas Kane was an unpleasant man that one could still find oneself empathising with, and even admiring, I found Daniel Plainview almost no more than a hateful one-track monster, with no redeeming characteristics. So what have I missed ?

Casino Royale

I am a great James Bond fan. I can remember back in the Sixties reading a comic strip in the Daily Express my father used to bring home each evening. Then I read most of the books up to the ninth, Thunderball, which if I remember correctly had a bullethole in the cover.

Of course I went to see all the films as they came out. Later on, when I met Pam in 1972 we went to see a rerun of OHMSS, the one where the Diana Rigg character is shot dead in the final scene. Pam hadn't seen it before and I can remember walking away from the cinema and noticing that Pam wasn't replying to anything I had said. When I looked at her it became clear why : she was crying.

I now have the box set of the first 20 Bond films on DVD and we are working our way through them in sequence, one every three months. So far we have seen the first five, and it is interesting to see what still works and what doesn't. Perhaps the most corny aspects are the trailers, which are so stilted.

Anyway, that's a very long introduction to reporting that last night we went to see the latest Bond film : Casino Royale. It received pretty good reviews in general, but my reaction was more mixed. I liked the luxurious settings and the throwaway lines but found the action sequences too long and difficult to follow. Often I wasn't sure who was shooting who, or why. The idea, apparently, was to make Bond more serious and rounded a character, but that for me is not what James Bond is about. Surely he is a fantasy figure, so any attempt to make him more human and complex is misguided, in my view.

But for all that, it was an enjoyable experience and I look forward to seeing it on DVD when I reach that place in the sequence (in about four years, at the current rate).