Category Archives: Films

My life measured against the Commitments

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I first saw The Commitments when it came out in 1991, and I enjoyed it. At the time I lived in Basingstoke, but someone has to and we shall speak no more of that.

I next saw it last night and enjoyed it even more. What’s changed in my life, apart from an extra 18 years maturity? Well, somewhere along the line I’ve picked up a nodding acquaintance with a lot more music. I’m not sure how, from someone who still listens to Classic FM more than any other radio station (with Radio 4 a close second), but it’s happened. Part of it certainly comes down to former colleagues and associates forming The Limitations in the 1990s. That was eye and ear opening, and I owe them the thrill of recognition that I finally got at the intros to all the old soul classics.

The rest of it is just being alive, I suppose, and keeping an ear to the ground, and developing as Me. When I moved here I knew that if I could possibly afford it, I wanted to live on my own because I had never quite managed that before. I wanted to find out what I was like, without outside interference, and develop any areas that needed developing. It meant going short on stuff for a few years but it was worth it. I just hadn’t realised how worth it it was.

On to the film and, okay, the plot of The Commitments could be written on the back of an envelope: band starts up, personal differences emerge, band collapses on the brink of greatness. But (as I endlessly explain to our resident Media student, but he insists on ignoring my wisdom), it’s not what it’s about that matters in a film but how it’s about it. One of the joys of The Commitments is its sheer Irishness.

I’m sure I didn’t recognise Procul Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale back in 1991, so I completely missed the joke of it being belted out on a church organ during practice by the band’s keyboard player, together with the in-depth discussions (and the movie’s punchline) as to what the lyrics actually mean. And I certainly didn’t get the irony of playing 24 hours from Tulsa at a wedding reception. (“I hate to do this to you / But I love somebody new …”)

The keyboard player mentions in the confessional that where he used to sing hymns to himself, now he just hums “When A Man Loves A Woman” by Marvin Gaye. The priest’s voice corrects him through the grill: “Percy Sledge”. Our heroes play their first gig as part of the vicar’s anti-drugs campaign, under a banner saying “Heroine kills” (sic) with the second e mostly blanked out. At another gig an accidental collision of mike stand and bass guitar makes the bass player the earth for the entire electrical system.

The band plays soul because “the Irish are the blacks of Europe, and Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, and Northsiders are the blacks of Dublin”. And they are good. The cast were chosen for their musical ability before their acting (though neither is bad). And after two hours we get their last and best gig, where you just want to get up there and dance with them as they pound out “Try a little tenderness” and “Take me to the river” and “In the midnight hour”. As the last note plays they are glowing. They know they work as a band. They have achieved something marvellous. Then they go off stage and effortlessly self-destruct.

There is no deep message to the film, but there is poetry, as is pointed out by one of the most engaging characters, Joey “The Lips” Fagan, who may or may not have played with Wilson Pickett and Little Richard and Elvis and all the greats, but who effortlessly works his way through the backing singers. Sure, they could have got famous and made lots of money … but where would be the artistry in that?

At one point the manager, Jimmy, is waiting for the lift in a tower block and finds himself standing next to a boy and a horse.

“You’re not taking him up in there?”

“I have to,” the boy replies. “The stairs’d kill him …”

And that’s all Jimmy, and us, need to know.

Days the Earth Stood Still, as a game of tennis

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The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur: the two exceptions I will allow to the golden rule of Do Not Make Remakes.

Case in point: The Day the Earth Stood Still. The classic 1951 original gave us a film that can still hold its head up with pride today: good acting; properly thought out science fiction; a clever story; a ground breaking, eerie theremin score; Gort; and a b&w 1950s movie that wasn’t about Commies in disguise. The 2008 remake gives us … a wonderfully snarky review by Roger Ebert (Keanu Reeves “makes Mr Spock look like Hunter S. Thompson at closing time”).

1951 serves.

  • 1951: gets straight into the action.
  • 2008: utterly missable prologue set in 1928, in which a lone mountaineer (Keanu Reeves plus a beard) encounters a strange glowing sphere which, presumably, takes a DNA sample so that he can be recreated later, though why anyone would want to recreate Keanu is a problem not tackled.
  • Score: this is a bit of a cheat but the alternative would be to give 2008 minus points from the off. So, by sheer virtue of doing nothing, 1951 leads 15-love.
  • 1951: flying saucer lands in the national mall, Washington DC and is immediately surrounded by troops.
  • 2008: big glowing sphere lands in Central Park, New York and is immediately surrounded by troops.
  • Score: 1951 let itself down a little by jumping on the flying saucer bandwagon, though what we saw was impressive. It was blank and featureless; when it opens and closes it does so without even leaving a seam behind. But it is still obviously a flying saucer. What the 2008 sphere is and how it works is anyone’s guess. Utterly alien technology, totally unlike anything seen on Earth. 15-all.
  • 1951: spaceman Klaatu emerges and is shot by a panicking serviceman. Gort emerges behind him and destroys a couple of tanks before Klaatu tells him to stop. After which, he just stands there.
  • 2008: as above, though Gort doesn’t at this point cause any destruction and just looks scary.
  • Score: new-Gort looks scary because he’s a 50′ tall CGI robot. Old-Gort was a mere 7′ man in a shiny suit – in fact two shiny suits, one with the zip in front and one behind, so that it could be filmed from any angle and appear seamless. Both have the same basic humanoid layout, with a single beam weapon hidden behind a visor in the head area, but old-Gort comes across as much more menacing because he’s there and doesn’t look like something off a Playstation. 30-15.
  • 1951: in hospital, Klaatu is revealed to be Michael Rennie. His default expression throughout the movie is a slightly quirked smile, like a parent so totally in control of his toddler that he will let the kid think he’s the one in charge. When that smile vanishes – and it does – you know you’re in trouble.
  • 2008: Klaatu eventually becomes Keanu Reeves, a man who we know from Bill & Ted and Parenthood can in fact laugh and smile and have fun, until 10 years ago he got typecast in The Matrix and hasn’t cracked a smile since.
  • Score: On that basis alone I would make this 40-15. However, whereas old-Klaatu wore a (fairly futuristic looking) spacesuit, new-Klaatu is clad in an organic false skin akin to a placenta that everyone at first assumes is his natural form. This nicely follows the philosophy of his sphere – it’s so advanced it doesn’t resemble anything we have, and is therefore nicely sfnal. So, 30-all.
  • 1951: Klaatu has a conversation with a bone-headed government functionary, is told it will be impossible for him to address the UN, and is put under lock and key from which he effortlessly escapes – though we never see how.
  • 2008: as above, though this time we do see how he escapes and for the first time get an inkling of just how unstoppably powerful this man is.
  • Score: Very nice. The functionary is slightly more sympathetic, but whereas the 1951 version could never have seen ET, she must have so her actions are even more inexcusable. 30-40.
  • 1951: Klaatu, now in civvies, finds lodgings at a Washington guest house with a diverse mixture of fellow guests, including war-widow Helen Benson and her son Bobby. As plan A, address the world leaders, isn’t working, Bobby fairly plausibly sets up a meeting with Einstein-alike Dr Barnhardt, world-famous scientist and thinker who happens to live in a quiet DC suburb.
  • 2008: Klaatu goes on the run. We have already met Helen because here she is one of the scientists drafted in to handle him, and one of the few to be sympathetic towards him. He gets in touch with her and uses her help to meet up with – um – one of his own race who has been here for the last 70 years. Here we learn that the plan is to exterminate humanity to save the other forms of life on the planet. Smaller spheres start emerging all around the world – presumably they were here all along, or had slipped past our defences – and creatures of all kinds start heading into them. Watching human scientists deduce: “it’s an ark!” Helen then sets up said meeting with Dr Barnhardt.
  • Score: this is where the 2008 story breaks down. So they’ve been here all along? So they intend to exterminate us anyway: it’s a foregone conclusion? So what possible purpose does Klaatu’s public arrival in Central Park serve? Deuce.
  • 1951: Klaatu meets Barnhardt, points out the errors in his life’s work and agrees on plan B – he will address a meeting a world scientists and thinkers.
  • 2008: Klaatu meets Barnhardt, points out the errors in his life’s work and agrees that maybe humanity deserves a second chance – he will call off the extermination, if he can.
  • Score: here the new version actually improves on the original. Part of that is the surprise choice of actor for Barnhardt who plays the role completely straight; part of it is the convincing meeting of minds; part of it is that some shots and dialogue are lifted directly from 1951, but reworked. The ease with which Klaatu is persuaded to call of the extermination, however, robs it of a point. It would have been a pretty weighty, well-thought-out decision in the first place and so not something to be randomly overthrown by a field worker. So, score steady at deuce.
  • 1951: Klaatu is betrayed to the authorities by Helen’s irritating boyfriend. Shot and killed, but not before giving Helen the famous instruction that should Gort go on the rampage, the words “Klaatu barada nikto” will calm him down again.
  • 2008: Klaatu is betrayed by Helen’s even more irritating stepson. Nice one!
  • Score: Advantage 2008.
  • 1951: Gort goes on the rampage. Helen calms him down with the safe phrase. He retrieves Klaatu’s body and, back in the ship, manages to bring him back to life.
  • 2008: Gort goes on the rampage and begins the extermination, for no particular reason except perhaps irritation with the humans who keep trying to blow him up or take samples out of him.
  • Score: Nice visuals – new-Gort dissolves into a storm of nanobots that destroy anything artificial, and which goes on a rampage across the US. But it still raises the question – why now? Why not the moment he landed? Deuce.
  • 1951: Klaatu addresses his meeting. We’re under observation, and the powers that be are worried about us. If we keep on as we’re going, they’ll step in and destroy us. Oh, and Gort, who we’ve all assumed is Klaatu’s servant? Actually it’s the other way round. He’s one of a corps of galactic peacekeepers. Don’t make them angry. Bye!
  • 2008: Klaatu’s human body is destroyed getting back to his sphere, a victim of the nanobots, but he still manages to call off the attack. The sphere takes off. It’s all over.
  • Score: Pathetic ending. Advantage 1951.
  • 1951: The Day the Earth Stood Still: this actually occurs earlier, but I put it here for ease of comparison. Barnhardt persuades Klaatu that we could do with a demo of his power, so he arranges for (almost) every electrical device on the face of the planet to come to a halt. For 30 minutes, 12-12.30 eastern seaboard time. Crucially, that “almost” does not include hospitals, aircraft in flight … it’s a benign but terrifying demonstration of his total superiority, and of course it just convinces certain parties that he Must Be Destroyed.
  • 2008: The Day the Earth Stood Still: the price for humanity’s continued existence is that the EMP that disables the Gort-swarm also disables all electrical devices on the face of the planet, presumably for good.
  • Score: So, hundreds of thousands have already been killed by Gort, millions more will die of starvation and humanity is knocked back to the Stone Age. But look on the bright side – the race survives, Earth abides, and bratty stepson finally accepts stepmother as his new mum! Gee, thanks so much. Game very definitely 1951.

Remakes. Don’t.

A vampire that doesn’t suck

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I could never be or have been J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer, because it honestly would never occur to me to write a novel about teenage wizards or vampires. Not having completely sold out on my early ideals (yet, give it time) I try to make each novel different, and as far as I’m concerned everything that can be said or done about either genre has been said and done. What I’ve read of Rowling and heard of Meyer only confirms this opinion.

I will admit this could potentially backfire because it means I could never have written John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Låt Den Rätte Komma In / Let the Right One In either, which is a vampire novel and a bloody good one and everyone ought to read it. Or failing that, watch the movie, which I’ve just done and which sticks pretty close to the book though loses some of the subplots and depth.

Not that it particularly says anything new – it owes too much to Interview with the Vampire for that – but it says it very well. Much more Ingmar Bergman than Neil Jordan. That novel featured Claudia, a little girl who was vampirised at an early age and thus fated to be a child-shaped immortal with a taste for blood. It followed the consequences of this idea through with remorseless logic. Similar set-up here, except that even as a human Claudia was a brat, and Eli is actually quite pleasant. Yes, innocent people must die to feed Eli’s unfortunate habit, because if s/he (the gender is ambiguous in the novel, less so in the movie) takes any nutrition from source then the source must be killed or become vampirised themselves. Eli didn’t ask to be made into a blood sucking monster, but since that is the hand that fate has dealt … The logic is followed through just as remorselessly, but because Eli is fundamentally sympathetic, the triumph of the novel and film is that we understand. We’re rooting for Eli.

It’s satisfyingly bleak and Swedish and so we can thank our lucky stars Hollywood never picked it up. In fact, Hollywood couldn’t pick it up. Hollywood simply could not produce a movie which climaxes with a gang of twelve-year-old bullies being dismembered. The vampire would have to pay for it. Or, the bullies would have had to have done something truly evil to deserve their fate. Or at the very least, make them older. No, they’re just bullies, faces cherubic and voices unbroken, and no, the vampire doesn’t pay for it.

Eli does it because she’s protecting her friend, Oskar, a lonely, alienated boy of 12. And Oskar would rather go along with a creature who can’t help the fact that people must die for her to live, rather than the human bullies who may be small children but were there entirely by choice.

And, being 12, Oskar can’t help pushing his luck, like deliberately making Eli demonstrate exactly what happens if you do enter without permission.

I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface. Read Roger Ebert’s review, and either watch the movie for the story-lite (e.g. missing out on exactly how Eli became a vampire, and her relationship with the man she lives with who gets her blood) or, best of all, read the book.