Graphic Journey Blog

Greta Gerwig: Christmas cracker

Following on from her Oscar-nominated Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig has adapted and directed Louisa May Alcott’s classic American novel Little Women. 

The production is on an entirely different scale to Gerwig’s early films. This has a huge cast of characters, headed by Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet and Meryl Streep, backed up with hundreds of extras and a vast crew. But Gerwig has grasped it with a steady hand and delivered a faithful rendition, with a few minor dramatic changes, of this much-loved story based on the impossible, goody-goody, close-knit, loving family of four daughters (Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy) and their matriarchal, socially conscious mother, Marmee (Laura Dern). All kitted out in wonderful costumes by Jacqueline Durran. The family’s father is off involved with the civil war for 95% of the film. I’m sure you all know the story.

For the main protagonist, Jo March, Gerwig has turned again to her Lady Bird star Saoirse Ronan to play an almost identically argumentative main character: the feisty, emancipated, pushy, would-be writer Jo March, but transported back to the 19th century. Rather than running the tale in a conventional linear form, Gerwig effortlessly inserts flashbacks and forwards to great effect. It is sumptuously shot by Yorick le Saux on 35 mm in glorious Massachusetts through the seasons, all lovingly captured.

It reminded me of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), also set in the 19th century, with its frantic tracking shots and overlapping dialogue – all used by Gerwig in this film.

At times Little Women, it’s like flicking through a Montgomery Ward & Co mail-order catalogue; at other times, it’s like looking at the most beautiful Victorian Christmas card.

It is a charming film, and its release date of 25th December will make it the Christmas movie.

Terrence Malick: Poetry in motion

After sharing a slice of life through the eyes of Ken Loach's Sorry We Missed You last week, with his uncanny ability to hold up a mirror to the ‘have-nots’ in our society, my latest film experience was far removed from that modern-day reality.

I attended a pre-release screening of Terrence Malick’s latest work: A Hidden Life. At two and a half hours long, it is a magnificent, towering piece of cinema, harking back to the sweep of his early masterpiece Days of Heaven. 

 

Malick’s beautifully crafted script, of which 70% is delivered in voiceover, is based on the true story of Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), a WW2 conscientious objector. With his wife Franziska (Valerie Pachner), he lives in an Austrian alpine farming village where time has stood still for generations. In a series of visual vignettes, we are shown the first meeting of the couple and their immediate attraction and deep love for each other. Hot summers, village festivals, snowy peaks, dancing and cascading waterfalls pass by. Children are born to the couple, and Franziska’s sister comes to live with them. Working the land is hard but the villagers are close-knit and help each other, and they seem unaffected by the distant war.

But, inevitably, the war creeps up on them, and with it the spreading cancer of Nazism. The young men of the village, including Franz, are called up for a few months of military training, after which they return to their idyllic village in the mountains. Gradually, allegiance to the fatherland permeates through the community and the sound of “Heil Hitler” becomes commonplace, but Franz cannot bring himself to utter the words. Because of his refusal to show allegiance to Hitler, he and his family are increasingly ostracised by the villagers. But Franz and Franziska’s strong family bond enables them to battle on together against the villagers’ contempt for them. The local postman gradually delivers call-up papers to all the young men, including Franz. He leaves his family and smallholding to join the war in the hope that he can secure a non-combatant post. On his first day at the barracks, the new intake is addressed by the salute “Heil Hitler”. Everyone responds in kind except Franz. He is arrested and sent to a conscientious objectors’ prison, where foreign nationals and the mentally deranged are also kept. It is here that Franz is humiliated and brutalised on a daily basis. 

 

The film is then conveyed through an exchange of letters between Franz and Franziska. We see them living their separate lives: Franziska with her sister, children and mother-in-law up in the mountains, battling against the increasing hostility of the villagers. With no help to toil the land, the two sisters knuckle down to work alone through the seasons. As with all Malick films, the themes of nature, family, love and tenderness are ever present and beautifully expressed through the stunning cinematography of Jörg Widmer, greatly helped by the stunning Austrian mountain location. 

The production design by Sebastian T. Krawinkel and the costume design by Lisy Christl seem so authentic. Malick’s direction of the two main protagonists, Franz and Franziska, is amazing. The film is punctuated with original wartime footage showing the population’s chilling euphoria for Hitler and Nazism. Malik’s preoccupation with the natural environment and its ability to renew itself is given full rein in the majestic mountain location, seen through the varying seasons – from the hot, golden summers to the snowiest, most bitter winters. As with most of Malick’s films, much of the music is selected from existing works for the emotional underscoring; this film features a lot of Henryk Górecki’s and Arvo Part's compositions to great effect.

For me, this is cinema at its most stunning and thrilling. It is beautiful, poetic and moving. Malick is 100% back on form. And it’s wonderful that films like this are still being made. I found it mesmerising.

 

Walking in Van Gogh's shoes: At Eternity's Gate.

Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh

Following on from his beautiful 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' (2007), Julian Schnabel brings us 'At Eternity's Gate', an intense portrait of the painter Vincent Van Gogh, played brilliantly by Willem Dafoe.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Like his earlier film, Schnabel's has used his considerable visual sensibilities to get behind the eyes of his main protagonist. In the case of 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, it was Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a catastrophic stroke leaving him totally paralysed save only for his left eye. This was conveyed by very sensitive and inventive use of the camera and lenses.

In 'At Eternity's Gate' you are not only seeing through Van Gogh's eyes, but you are inside his head, and walking in his shoes. This, captured by cinematographer, Benoît Delhomme, via a relentless use of handheld camera work in following Van Gogh's frantic footsteps through mud, rocky terrain and the long wild grasses of Provence accompanied by the intense blinding glow of the beating sun. Schnabel's has attempted to express the euphoria and excitement that Van Gogh felt about nature and his urgency to interpret and capture it on canvas.

Often when an actor is trying to 'act' the painter it is, more often than not, rather naff, but Dafoe pulls it off magnificently, apparently having been coached by Schnabel's on how to hold and paint with a brush. And even the spoof Van Gogh paintings and sketches are very passable. No need to go too deeply into the story, as we all know what finally happened to poor Van Gogh. I thoroughly enjoyed this intensely visual film. Here is the trailer.

Journey into Space

As I watch SpaceX's Dragon 'live' in 2020 arriving at the International Space Station. Here is a blog post from 2009.

Since childhood I have always loved science fiction films, being fascinated by the progress in space exploration and all the hardware that goes with it. This was the comic that I used to read…

 – Well, I say read, but I mostly looked at the pictures and copied them using my amazing three-coloured Biro (whose story can be found elsewhere on this blog, if you are into Biros that is).

This was my badge from the Associated-Rediffusion Television Space Club from 1956.

 
I have put all of the sci-fi films that have impressed me most in chronological order starting with Destination Moon, 1950 directed by Irving Pichel. This was one of the first science fiction films to attempt a high level of accurate technical detail telling the story of the first trip to the moon. And the astronauts wore some natty coloured outfits…

Conquest of Space, 1955. Directed by Byron Haskin. A team of American astronauts leave their space station on the first mission to Mars, but the captain's religious beliefs cause problems…

Forbidden Planet 1956. Directed by Fred M. Wilcox. When Adams and his crew are sent to investigate the silence from a planet inhabited by scientists, he finds all but two have died. Featuring ‘Robbie the Robot’ and the stunning mini-skirted Anne Francis...

 2001, 1968 Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Monkeys, monoliths, HAL (the willful onboard computer) ...

and the meaning of life made this film both pretentious and wonderful in equal measures. It created the benchmark for all sci-fi films that followed...

Silent Running, 1972. Directed by Douglas Trumbull. A lone crewmember of a spaceship harbouring Earth's last nature reserves goes ape when he is ordered to jettison his beloved onboard forest return to earth... 

Dark Star, 1974 Directed by John Carpenter. The crew of the Dark Star are on a 20-year mission to create a highway in space by destroying planets that are in the way of navigation routes. (remarkably similar to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to come four years later as a BBC Radio drama) After a series of mishaps Mother (see HAL in 2001), the ship's computer, can no longer persuade Bomb not to detonate. Even the dead captain is of little help in arguing with Bomb who is bound to do his duty...

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977. The mother of all spaceships. A visual spectacle and I wanted to be up there in line with Richard Dreyfuss to leave the earth with those cute little aliens...

Alien, 1979 directed by Ridley Scott. ‘In space no one can hear you scream’ went the by line. But they certainly could hear you in the cinema. I saw this at a cast and crew screening without any knowledge of its content and was completely traumatized for days after...

Blade Runner, 1982. Deckard, a blade runner, has to track down and terminate 4 replicants who hijacked a ship in space and have returned to earth seeking their maker. Scott marked out the territory for the look of the future brilliantly.  

 Solaris, 2002.  Directed by Steven Soderbergh. No not the earlier Tarkovsky version (which I admired) but the stunningly beautiful remake with a sublime soundtrack by Cliff Martinez. A troubled psychologist is sent to investigate the crew of an isolated research station orbiting a bizarre planet with hallucinogenic tendencies…

Sunshine, 2007 Directed by Danny Boyle. A team of astronauts are sent to re-ignite the dying sun 50 years into the future but are sidetracked by a signal from an earlier, believed to be, failed mission...

And I’m pretty sure that the diving suites used in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954, must have inspired the costume designers. Directed by Richard Fleischer…

 See what I mean?
 
Moon, 2009. Directed by Duncan Jones. Astronaut Sam Bell has a bizarre encounter with himself at the end of his three-year stint on the moon, where he, working alongside, yet another HAL like computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth batches of a resource that has helped to alleviate our planet's ailing power problems. This film is a pure delight to any sci-fi movie fans because of the many references to early films of the genre. Pure self-indulgent pleasure...

 

 

 

Behind closed doors

This is the work of Canadian born photographer and video artist Fred Muram.

One Day I Will Learn How to Fix Things

He lives in Seattle and has a bunch of dedicated friends who help find locations, props and people to inhabit his very personal vision of the world. Fred finds beauty in the mundane and ordinary. His work has wit and a bizarre narratives that sets the mind racing. Here are two images from his series ‘Kissing The Ceiling’ ...

And these two from Fred's 'Rug series'...

Wonderful examples of his eccentric take on the everyday...

Ordinary interiors with extraordinary things going on.  They have a quiet intensity about them and they do make me smile. Fred also has a nice blog here.  He is currently in Wyoming, at an artist residency. They have given him a large studio with nothing in it except a single bed, two tables and two chairs. He says, 'It is a bit daunting because it's like staring at a blank canvas without any paint. I have been planning to roll a 300 lbs. tractor tire down a hill, but whiteout conditions and cold weather have put those plans on hold for a couple days.' Well, with our current weather Fred couldn't even do it in London.

Deep Focus

This Bill Brandt RDI…

 

1904-1983. He is one on my all time favourite photographers and a rare Royal Designer for Industry photographer. I think this is because he had the eye of a graphic designer, without actually being one. His epic works, The English at Home 1936 and Britain by Night 1938 were benchmarks in documentary reportage. But for me  his nudes of the 40s, 50s and 60s are a demonstration his ability to find a new perspective on this classic subject… 

East sussex coast 1958

London 1953

Baie des Anges, France 1958

East Sussex Coast 1959

He’s use of extreme wide-angle lenses and high contrast black and white makes for a dynamic graphic presentation…   

Campden Hill, london 1949

This ‘deep focus’ style was pioneered in the cinema of the late 1930s… 

 

the above is a still from the 1939 Russian film The Great Citizen directed by Freidrich Ermler which clearly had and influence on the young Orson Wells who, along with the great cinema photographer Gregg Toland, experiment with extreme wide angel photography to great dramatic effect in Wells’s 1941 film Citizen Kane...

 Undoubtedly the presentation of CitizenKane affected many photographers, whether consciously or unconsciously. And this photographic influence continued in many black and white films well into the 70s. Here are some examples…  

Ivan the Terrible 1944 directed by Sergei Esenstein

Onibaba 1964 directed by Kaneto Shindo

Repulsion 1965 directed by Roman Polanski

Seconds 1966 directed by John Frankenhimer

 Alice in Wonderland 1966 directed by  Jonathan Miller.

Delius: A Song of Summer 1968 directed by Ken Russell.

The Last Picture Show 1971 (above) and Paper Moon (below) 1973...

both directed by Peter Bodanovich. All of these are examples of just how rewarding  black and white films can be as a visual spectacle, and how reciprocal the relationship has been with stills photography. And I can assure you that all of the films featured above are a must if you are vaguely interested in the art form. To see more of  Brandt's work, up close and personal, you can't do better than visit the V&A  Prints and Drawing Room where you can sit in a beautiful warm space,  are kitted out with some very smart white gloves and an attentive librarian will bring you original prints of Brandt's work to peruse for as long as you want. It's wonderful and completely free.