Carol.

The American authoress Patricia Highsmith wrote, amongst her other literally works, 22 novels of which around two dozen were adapted for either the TV or the cinema. Cinematic adaptions included several of her five Tom Ripley novels. The best-known adaptations are probable Strangers on a Train (1951), Plein Soleil (1960) its American remake The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), Ripley’s Game (2002) and The Two Faces of January in 2014. The latest of her novels to be served up for the big screen is her only non-crime novel and a landmark in LGBT fiction, The Price of Salt that was published in 1952 under the pseudonym of Clair Morgan. The novel was later republished under the title of Carol (2015). It tells the story of a developing love affair between a young aspiring photographer Therese Belivet and an older privileged housewife Carol Aird who is going through a rather acrimonious divorce that involves the custody of her young daughter.   

 

Carol and Therese develop a relationship.... 

....that makes her divorce more complicated....

Set in New York City in the early 1950’s it stars Cate Blanchett as socialite Carol Aird, Rooney Mara as Therese Belivet a role that raises her above the two dreadful films I had seen her in previously, namely The Social Network (2010) and the lame US remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in 2011.  Also cast in important roles are Sarah Paulson and Kyle Chandler. The movie was directed by Todd Haynes who produced Meeks Cutoff (2010) and Wendy and Lucy (2008), and whose directorial credits include Velvet Goldmine (1998), Far From Heaven (2002) and I’m Not There (2007).

....which in turn bears down on Carol. 

Haynes has elicited exceptional performances from both Blanchett and Mara from whose portrayal’s one can feel the warmth that develops between the women radiating from the screen. This along with the beautiful 1950’s clothes, superb cinematography by Edward Lachman who has previous with Haynes and a soundtrack by prolific film composer Carter Burwell, probable best known for his Coen Brothers scores, makes this a film not to be missed by anyone cinematically turned on by a good well written drama. Its just a shame that the movie was snubbed by the movie establishment and missed out on a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards - because of its subject matter?

Truth.

James Vanderbilt is a highly regarded screenwriter whose credits include Zodiac (2007) and a couple of Spider Man films but his directorial feature film debut turn’s out to be something really special. His skill as a screenwriter goes along way to explain why Truth (2015), a film that has an abundance of dialogue and no real action, is such an excitingly tense and interesting political drama. 

 

Some things you just can't believe

Based on a book Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power by Mary Mapes who was principal producer for CBS News and its prime time TV programme 60 Minutes and was best known for breaking the story of Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal which won her the Peabody Award - both her book and the movie concentrate on what became known as the Killian documents controversy. Not wanting to give too much away I'll only give a basic description of the gripping account of the journalistic scandal that caused the downfall of one of American veteran broadcaster Dan Rather (Robert Redford). 60 Minutes was said to be the last bastion of serious investigative journalism on American television. In 2004 Mary Mapes (Cate Blanchett) and her team fiercely pursued a story that George W Bush received preferential treatment to avoid the Vietnam draft. The very powerful supporters of the Bush family, and there were plenty of them in corporate and political life of America, retaliated with accusations of political bias. There followed a battle between a group of brave and courageous investigative journalists and America’s right wing elitism.

 

Class acting from both Blanchett and Redford. 

The best way to describe this unmissable political docudrama is that it’s like reading a good book where you can't wait to turn the page to see what will happen next. I've already said how good Vanderbilt's script is but it’s the cast who are really at the top of their game. Not only are there fine performances from Redford and Blanchett but also from Toper Grace as Mike Smith and veteran actors Dennis Quaid who plays Colonel Roger Smith and Stacy Keach as Bill Burkett. The scandal continues to this day with CBS refusing to advertise the movie and right wing commentators putting doubt that Truth is not the truth. I would suggest you grab a chance to see this movie before its hidden away and make up your own mind - as I did.

The Turning.

Fascinating is how I would describe the ten wee vignettes that made up the Australian film The Turning (2013). All ten stories shown in this 110-minute version are based on a collection of short stories by Tim Winton - the full version has 18 stories and extends the movies running time to 180 minutes. Winton is an Australian novelist and short story writer who allegedly draws his inspiration from landscape and places "The place comes first. If the place isn't interesting to me then I can't feel it. I can't feel any people in it. I can't feel what the people are on about or likely to get up to."[1]

First published in 2005, the collection was originally adapted into a play for the 2008 Perth International Arts Festival before becoming an award winning movie that was nominated for nine AACTA awards, one of which Best Actress was awarded to Rose Byrne. Each part of the anthology was directed by a different director including actress Mia Wasikowska on her debut directing gig, and as well as Byrne, the best known of the actors on display would probable be Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and fellow Australian actress Miranda Otto who you may have seen in I Frankenstein (2014) and the western The Homesman (2014).

The best of the stories are The Turning about a woman (Byrne) who along with her abusive husband and her two wee daughters live in a trailer park. When she befriends Sherry (Otto) she discovers God. In Reunion its Christmas Day and Vic and Gale (Blanchett) invite Vic’s mum Carol to join them. All three are invited to their relatives for lunch but Carol gets the address wrong and they end up in the wrong house and the wrong swimming pool.  I was also impressed with Aquifer a moving story directed by Robert Connolly about a High School music teacher who hears of a tragedy on the TV news broadcast and without a word to his family drives all night back to his hometown to face a secret from his childhood. Each of the individual film’s are linked by a common emotional bond, bound together by recurring themes; the passing of time, regret, addiction and obsession. Well put together and photographed with each of the directors putting their own stamp on they’re own individual piece of work.

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[1] The Sydney Morning Herald April 2008.

Blue Jasmine.

Regular showings of Woody Allen’s ‘next great film’ have been a staple diet of the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club since its inception but to date nether You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) or the elaborate fantasy Midnight in Paris (2011) the last two films to be shown, have done nothing to impress me. I was hoping that maybe his latest offering Blue Jasmine (2013) might do the trick?

 

The good old selfish days.

Introduced this week by RBC Film Club’s very own web site guru Rachel Findlay who began the evening by telling us a little of the film’s story which involves the downfall of a rich, elegant New York socialite, the Jasmine of the title, who is married to a wealthy financier, Hal. When he is discovered to be running a fraudulent Ponzi scheme he ends up in prison. Destitute, homeless and poverty stricken Jasmine decamps to San Francisco to stay with her working class sister Ginger and her two children. Who indecently, along with her ex-husband had been one of the victims of Hal’s dodgy schemes and had lost the $200,000 they had won in the lottery. Jasmine not only clashes with Gingers lifestyle but also her boyfriend.

 

Before....

Rachel went on to explained how the films financial conspiracy was based on a real life scam that was known as the Madoff investment scandal. In December 2008 the former Chairman of NASDAQ Bernard Madoff admitted that the wealth management arm of his business was an elaborate Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation. Operators of Ponzi schemes usually entice new investors by offering higher returns than other investments, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The perpetuation of the high returns requires an ever-increasing flow of money from new investors to sustain the scheme.[1] I’m sure our host’s explanation gave the packed audience a better understanding of the back ground to the story.

....and after.

Written and directed by Allen this comedy drama has been compared to the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire. (A film of the same name was directed by the legendary Elia Kazan and starred Marlon Brando and Vivian Leigh). Blue Jasmine was beautifully filmed on location in New York City and San Francisco by the Spanish Cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, who also worked with Allen on what was probable his best film of the last ten years Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008).

 

Jasmine's wonderfully kooky sister Ginger.

As usual an interesting discussion followed the film and I certainly got the impression that most people enjoyed the it, but I think we all agreed that it was the cast that helped raise it well above the standard of some of the directors earlier outings. Led by Cate Blanchett who gave a towering performance as Jasmine, a character that was a little pathetic, pleading that she knew nothing about her husband criminal dealings but whose attempts to reinvent herself after she was brought back down to earth were priceless. The British actress Sally Hawkins played Jasmine’s wee sister, as a cross fertilization between the kooky Poopy Cross in Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky (2008) and the steely Rita O’Grady in Made in Dagenham (2010). It also starred Alec Baldwin as Harold ‘Hal’ Francis and Bobby Cannavale as Chili, Gingers boy friend, an actor you may remember from a very well received film club movie The Station Agent (2003) and 26 episodes of the TV series Boardwalk Empire.   

 

The start of a new life?

Even with the standout cast I can’t help feel that Woody Allen sleepwalks through his directorial duties, working to his familiar formula. For example there is always a character in the film that is ‘Woody Allen’, in Blue Jasmine the character is shared between the actors but you still know it’s an Allen script, you have no problem imagining him speaking some of the dialog. There’s also the Allen soundtrack, which he gets away with because it’s always classy. But the main problem with the mans work is he has no idea how to portray working class people, never getting them quite right, never getting to the basics of ordinary folk, seemingly incapable of showing them in a realistic light. In general his characters come across as dream like and artificial which is probable why I can never totally engage with his work. Never mind, his next ‘great film’ Magic in Moonlight will be along next year.

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[1] U.S Securities and Exchange Commission.

Hanna

Hanna enjoying a spot of home schooling. 

After experiencing two of Joe Wright’s previous directorial outings, the 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen romantic drama Pride and Prejudice and Atonement (2007) which was also a period drama this time an adaptation of a Ian McEwan’s romantic/war drama. His latest movie is, as they say, something completely different, Hanna (2011) is an action packed suspense thriller starring Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett. The intriguing plot involves a young girl (Ronan) that was brought up in the depths of a Finland forest to be that rare commodity, a perfect assassin! Raised and trained by her father Eric Heller (Bana) a disgraced ex CIA agent, Hanna is finally ready to tackle her fathers demons in the outside world. As she travels across Europe on her mission agents of the ruthless intelligence officer, and Heller’s old boss Marissa Wiegler played by the versatile Cate Blanchett, pursue her, which involve some very exciting chase sequences. Hanna is eventually forced to face up to some startling revelations about her very existence!

Agent Marissa Wiegler not a women to cross!!

A polished attempt by Wright to try something different, with a young actress you just can’t ignore, pure entertainment that works very well and along with the original innovative score composed by the British duo The Chemical Brothers makes an enjoyable piece of escapist distraction.