A few of the movies I've seen lately.

Unforgiven (1992, Eastwood)

I watched this directly in the wake of watching ‘Walkabout’ ‘Days of Heaven’ and ‘Solaris,’ and in comparison with the verbal reserve and lyricism of the language used in those three movies the dialogue here seemed down-right ham-fisted and obvious. So clearly I wasn’t giving the film a fair chance – and consequently I was underwhelmed. I understand the place the film occupies in cinematic legacy – the aware return of Clint Eastwood to a genre he epitomised and then innovated within (full credit due to Sergio Leone) – and the revivification of said-genre this film was meant to represent – but 18 years on it feels dated and vaguely irrelevant. It is fun, and bloody, and dark, but lacks brilliancy. Also – Clint Eastwood is a charismatic presence but I’m pretty sure he just Can’t Act.

Having said that, Gene Hackman* merely has to half-smile and look bemused and flaming jets of thespian awesomeness scream off the screen. If this movie has any particular distinguishing excellence, it is contained entirely in Hackman’s performance.

*For some reason I kept typing ‘Hackmack.’ Must give serious thought to changing my surname to ‘Hackmack.’

Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)

Akira Kurosawa transplants the story of King Lear to a period Japanese setting, explores issues of mortality and the impotence of old-age. Colour-coded costuming, shrill arguments and extended bloodshed ensues.

Oh me-oh-my this was bo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ring. Yowsers. There’s a looooong battle sequence towards the film’s conclusion during which I got so bored I took to hitting my leg with a fry-pan just to feel alive, accidentally hit too hard, broke my leg in two places, had it set in a cast, healed the breaks, underwent palliative care and completely recovered full function of my leg before looking up to discover the damnable battle sequence was Still Dragging On.

To give it it’s due: it is gorgeous. It is the kind of film the phrase ‘indelible imagery’ lies in wait for, hoping to describe. And there is a scene, inspiration cribbed from Richard III in which Lady Kaede threatens her brother-in-law with death (even taking a knife to and cutting his throat) before turning on a dime to seduce him – which is flat-out spellbinding (she licks the wound she’s just inflicted). Unfortunately nothing else happened during the film’s running time that had me as entranced as that one sequence.

Whilst Ran doesn’t invite comparison with its source material, King Lear, my mental processes are so facile that I spent much of the running time considering why I liked Big Willy’s play so much more. And then I figured out something that informs my tastes in cinema a great deal. To sum up: I prefer figurative imagery to literal imagery.

To explain sum up: in the film, King Hidetori’s torment is more or less literally displayed. He experiences anguish, he screams and cries. He experiences rage, he lashes out. The film doesn’t utilise the poetic language or musings of Shakespeare’s play: just the plot.

Now, I love Shakespeare but I wouldn’t call him the plot king. In fact, I would say his plots are often a tad fucking awful. I mean, his plays are full of interesting happenstances and nary-a-dull-moment, but you don’t tend to come away from them going “oh, that was an impeccably structured narrative in which a succession of events organically grew one from the ‘tother to a logical-yet-surprising-conclusion.” You tend to go “oh, that bit there was a bit contrived but who cares because it was fucking awesome and everyone ended up carcing it/fucking at the end [depending on whether or not it was a tragedy/comedy]”

Ran lifts nothing from the Shakespeare play but the plot and displays it in its basest, most literal terms. Which means all the stuff that I love about Shakespeare is gone. The characterisations. The prevaricating. The figurative imagery. To wit – when Lear goes barmy he delivers his famous monologue:

‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head!”

Which I find just lovely, because on the one hand you have this marvellously evocative description of nature at its most violent, but mapped onto that is your comprehension of Lear’s psyche at its breaking point. The power of the description provides depth to Lear’s dilemma.

And I find this poly-syllabic dual-purpose verbiage must more satisfying than just watching Hidetori go a bit mad and wail at the sky.

But I’m odd like that.

Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)

Or, here are a handful of Frenchies who weren’t cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

You should watch this film, it is stone-cold cool. It depicts the struggle of a group of French resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France. It's director, Jean-Pierre Melville, is often cited as a major influence on Michael Mann, and you can see the correlations clearly - there is the same spare, cool, stylised aesthetic, characters all act in accordance with a personalised higher code, 'cept for the weasles (and nobody likes the weasles), and violence, when it does happen, is brutal, swift, unglamorous, and -well, fatal. There is a scene in Army of Shadows where the protagonist Phillipe Gerbier watches an informant be suffocated to death
and Phillipe's face is impassive throughout - cinematic violence is rarely this matter-of-fact. That the same man later dallies and exhibits great fear at having to parachute out of a plane speaks to the subtle competency of characterisation.

Whilst I'm mentioning characters - there is a woman named Mathilde, who essentailly runs logistics for the fighters. She is amazing. She is such a dude. She is shrewd, indomitable, unflinching, tough, and loving. One of the best film characters I've seen in a while.

You should watch Army of Shadows, it's cool.

More to come, I think.