A Day In The Life of the London Film Festival

It’s raining. A typical slate grey October London by the South Bank. A good day to be inside watching movies! I’ve got high hopes for Angel, the new film by Francois Ozon who’s back with another literary adaptation with Charlotte Rampling. It was well received at the Berlin Film Festival and the word is it harks back to the gloriously rich melodramas of the past á la Douglas Sirk. The story of a girl who goes from being a grocer’s daughter to successful writer of romantic fiction, it stars Ramola Garai who impressed in I Capture the Castle. I’ve never read any Barbara Cartland but that seems to be the world of Angel. Her life seamlessly flows with the dream-like quality of those romances. Confection is very much to the fore, indeed while I accept it doesn’t fall into pastiche it feels so sweetly fabergé, you’re waiting for the night to draw down on the splendour of Paradise House. I start to feel as though the dull outside world would be a relief. 

It does bring to mind a curious fascination to revisit those TV mini-series of the 80s so beloved by ITV. I remember Lace and wonder if that kind of soap opera might have gained a certain vintage? I recently saw the original Bourne Identity and while most sane viewers would see it as a horrid and dated 80s adaptation – why did Richard Chamberlain have to wear blusher when he was playing a trained assassin? - Jaclyn Smith is all about post-disco sophistication – so good! But as for Angel, I’ve had enough. I decide to walk out. I guess by the end things become more troubled but this looked to be a long way from achieving any real emotion. The point with Sirk’s melodramas, (homaged well by Todd Haynes in Far From Heaven) is that you actually feel moved. 

Overall, this Festival has had a good line-up of Films. Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There was a real highlight; it’s a biopic I suppose, but before that it stands as a truly original work. It takes it’s form as much from the history of cinema as it does Dylan. You don’t need to be a fan of Bob Dylan to admire it. There is the surprise screening later on which I’m hoping is going to be something better than The Prestige which showed in the same slot last year. It’s a Hollywood film and there’s a rumour it’s There Will Be Blood, P.T. Anderson’s epic tale of greed and loss with Daniel Day Lewis, which would be a treat as its release date isn’t till Jan 08. After Angel I see there’s a Rita Hayworth Musical which should be an uplifting release from the resolutely miserable weather. 

Tonight and Every Night from the fine British director, Victor Saville is a war-time Musical set in the Windmill Theatre. It’s plot is like Terrence Rattigan’s classic WW2 film The Way to the Stars – the girl who waits at home to see if her dashing pilot will return safe from a mission. All very arms across the Atlantic, and inevitably headed for a poignancy which only the awfulness of war brings. The script is quite unremarkable but the direction sparkles for the musical numbers. In particular, Marc Platt’s audition scene and a climatic scene where dancers appear to walk from a movie screen onto the stage. Understandably lacking in the risque content of the actual Windmill Theatre it does have the marvelous sheen of Hollywood Musical reality, a long way from the miserable reality of war-time London. The cinematography and set design are a delight and with Rita Hayworth I can see the point in its restoration.

Before the Surprise Screening it’s off for a vital refuel in Chinatown. I’m by myself so I seem drawn to Wong Kei’s as the respectable choice for the lone diner and I read they’ve supposed to have improved. A shame the New Piccadilly on Denman Street has closed its doors to make way for redevelopment. I never knew of it existence tucked between Shaftesbury Ave and Piccadilly Circus till earlier this year (do check Russell Davies excellent eggbaconchipsbeans blog for a celebration of the old fashioned café). Feeling full on pork belly, duck and rice I make my way towards Leicester Square. 

The suspense over the Surprise Screening has added a distinct buzz. The crowd seem like an unpretentious lot of cinema-goers which is refreshing to see for a big screening in Leicester Square. It turns out in spite of my own hunch to be The Coen Brother’s new film No Country For Old Men. It’s been very well received so far so a fine choice although There Will Be Blood would have been its first public screening outside of an obscure festival in Austin. Well, firstly, they’ve retreated from their dalliance with mainstream Hollywood, and gone straight back to form with a dark, brutal noir set in the South. There is certainly blood in this one. As befits an adaptation from a Cormac McCarthy novel this is a world where the law is always overshadowed by a deeper curse of violence. Set in the burnished country of the Texas border, the scene of drug wars since the 80s, casual bloodletting is the order of the day. The pace is masterfully measured. It takes some time for things to get going but when they do it makes for the most thrilling film The Coen Brothers have done, albeit a flawed one.

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) a hunter wanders into the remains of a drug deal gone very wrong. Apart from the corpses he finds 2 million dollars in a case and the drugs cargo. Deciding to make off with the money like most people would, he strangely returns later on that night to the scene. Now he becomes the hunted! His main and most dangerous pursuer Anton Chigurh, might as well be evil personified. I can’t remember the last time I saw so terrifying a villain in a film. Bardem’s performance dominates the film with its controlled menace, which finds in inflections a detail to the psychopathic murderer, which have little rival. Tommy Lee Jones has a Western statesman-like role as a cop trying to find Moss before his hunters reach him. Although philosophically central it feels like he’s there for the sake of the voice-over at the start and end and incidental to the main chase. Motels figure greatly as does Chigurh’s preferred means of death – a curious pressurized rifle. It seems you only have to wander into his path to be visited by death. Indeed, great though all the tension is you start to wonder about Chigurh’s casual approach to his killing. He’s distinctive looking and a mass murderer but there’s no proper man-hunt for him!

Any McCarthy story is going to fall short of conventional resolution and a number of times No Country For Old Men very adeptly sidesteps audience expectation but they have established so well a hard kernelled sense of reality that you wonder how easily the tension is crafted. This is part reflection on the fallenness of a hard land, a noired Western; it conjures a story that bridges too much in tone between the contemporary and the extreme exploits of story-telling. It features something like their best work but it finally fails to convince.

Charles Maclean