The Week in Review - 25/4/10

My Week in Review will be short this time around - most of the films I've seen this week are from the Festival of German Films and reviewed separately. I'm also more time poor than usual.

FILMS:

• Beneath Hill 60 (Jeremy Sims, Australia, 2010)
• Soul Kitchen (Fatih Akin, Germany, 2009)
• Das Weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, Austria, 2009)
• Les parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy, France/West Germany, 1964)
• La baie des anges (The Bay of Angels, Jacques Demy, France, 1963)
  
• Aimée & Jaguar (Max Färberböck, Germany, 1999)
• Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey, 2005)
  
• Kurz und schmerzlos (Short Sharp Shock, Fatih Akin, Germany, 1998)

DVD:

• The Twilight Zone (Series 1, 1959)
  

Beneath Hill 60
Director Jeremy Sims must have a thing about confined spaces. First it was Last Train to Freo, which took place almost entirely in a single railway carriage, and now it's Beneath Hill 60, largely confined to the tunnels and trenches of World War I. Based on the diaries of Oliver Woodward, it's about the true story of the Queensland mining engineers that were recruited specifically to dig beneath the enemy in Europe and blow up with explosives their strategic positions - in this case Hill 60 in Belgium.

The cinematography is very nice, and if the sets look real, it's because it was shot largely underground and in trenches. It must have been grueling for the actors who are often covered in mud. While the film has been criticised by some for cutting periodically to Woodward and his future wife in Queensland just prior to the war, I think it offers both a relief to the audience of the claustrophia of the tunnels and also offers a wider palette of drama to appeal to audiences. It may not be as gutsy a war film as some, but it's certainly a view of war from a perspective that we've not seen before and the most remarkable thing is that it's never been made into a film before. It seems that the hype and jingoism of Gallipoli has overshadowed other worthy stories.

The film has been criticised for the intrusive use of music. I agree, but fortunately it's only in two or three places. Unfortunately, they're key moments and I just wished they'd toned it down a little, even though it's not fatal. I also thought the friction between Woodward and his superior officer (Chris Haywood) was a little cliched.

The most pleasant surprise for me was how well Sims utilised Brendan Cowell. I recently applauded David Michôd's clever use of Ben Mendelsohn in Animal Kingdom, and similarly Cowell has been used against type. His laid-back Aussie bloke persona worked very well as social satire in television's Life Support but it seems that every role since has boxed him into the same character. In Beneath Hill 60 he plays it straight, with none of those cliched mannerisms.

I've often mentioned the homogeny of Australian films in recent years, and how 2009 may have been a turning point by injecting diversity into the films being made here. Beneath Hill 60 is also a welcome addition to the variety of films that Australian audiences can embrace, and international audiences, too, for that matter.

The Twilight Zone
I've been watching this first series intermittently over the last week or so. It's kinda kitsch, of course, but fascinating as well. It's got the film noir-type voiceover, it's got the cold-war/space invasion paranoia of the era, along with the trivialisation of new-age concepts we take for granted now. It's also highly moralistic - not all episodes, but many have a paternalistic attitude in upholding society's values, a somewhat last breath for the Hays code, perhaps. Anyway, as a forerunner to shows like The Invaders, Kolchak: The Night Stalker and X-Files, it's great viewing. I've bought the definitive set and plan to watch all six series.

The Week in Review

FILMS:

• Atonement (Joe Wright, USA, 2007)
• No Country for Old Men (Ethan Coen & Joel Coen, USA, 2007)
• The Party (Blake Edwards, USA, 1968)
• The Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, UK, 1963)

DVD:

• Curb Your Enthusiasm - 2nd Season (Various directors, written by Larry David, USA, 2001)

Atonement
The more I thought about this film, the more I hated it. It had components that were technically well put together (the scene at Dunkirk in particular) but just don't work as a whole. It uses various devices that are too clever, too self-conscious, too manipulative and have been used many times before but to much better effect. I could go on and on and bag it, but I'd rather provide a link to the ABC's At The Movies Message Board where I've expressed myself quite at some length, along with other people's thoughts.

No Country For Old Men
Seeing this for the second time, I liked it just as much, but picked up various nuances and small details that eluded me the first. My earlier comments are here. I could easily go see it again, particularly as there's a vacuum of decent films, as there usually is this time of year. It's a pity ACMI doesn't have something decent on, like the Kubrick retrospective they held this time two years ago.

The Party / The Pink Panther
This was a Peter Sellers/Blake Edwards double screening at the Astor. Sellers spoofs an Indian in one and a French in the other. Yet both roles were perhaps unsurprisingly similar - the bumbling buffoon that capitalises on people's amusement with ethnicity. They were both good fun, especially the first.

Curb Your Enthusiasm
I first encountered this brilliant series when I went to the US in 2003, at which time the third season was about to start and HBO was screening repeats of seasons 1 & 2. At first, the series seemed a bit raw and under-produced compared to Larry David's more widely-known Seinfeld. But after a few episodes, this series has really gotten into my blood. It's more risque than Seinfeld with a more of a reality look about it. David plays himself, or at least a version of it, which viewers can recognise as Seinfeld's George Costanza (a fact that is played upon in this series). I particularly like one character's foul-mouthed, heavy NY-accented description of David as a "fucking four-eyed fuck". Hilarious stuff, brilliantly written and well put together. I have five of the series on DVD (a sixth has been completed in the US, but not yet available on DVD), and I'm slowly working my way through them.

This is a description of the show, from the official website:

Each half-hour episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm features verité-style footage of David (playing himself) at home, at work and around town, as he gets into predicaments with fictional and real-life personalities. With cast regulars Jeff Garlin (as manager Jeff Greene) and Cheryl Hines (as wife Cheryl) reprising their roles, the series features appearances by guest celebrities playing themselves or character roles.

Candid, unsparing and self-deprecating, Curb Your Enthusiasm brings the off-kilter comic vision of Larry David--co-creator and co-executive producer of one of the most lauded comedy series in TV history, Seinfeld--to HBO. The series blurs the lines between reality and fiction, as David (playing himself) and a cast of real and fictional characters are followed around Los Angeles by a ubiquitous camera that chronicles the private, often banal world of a (relatively) public man.

Having evolved from the 1999 HBO special Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, this series proves how seemingly trivial details of one's day-to-day life--a trip to the movies, a phone call, a visit from some trick-or-treaters--can precipitate a "Murphy's Law" chain of misfortune to hilarious effect. Like George Costanza in Seinfeld, the protagonist of Curb Your Enthusiasm has a knack for getting himself into uncomfortable situations that end up alienating him from peers and acquaintances.

To keep the narrative fresh and spontaneous, Curb Your Enthusiasm is shot without a script; the cast is given scene outlines and often improvise lines as they go. The result is an unpredictable format that's unlike anything else on TV.