Puppet Angel PWNed By Fluffy Representation Of Architectural Marvel

Here is the pictorial proof.


Last week Canyon and I went to Paris for a few days, which is why this blog went into yet more hibernation (and why, if anyone reading this has tried to contact me in recent days, there has been little or no response. Many apologies; I'll catch up ASAP). We learned a lot about Paris, and French culture, and took photos. Here are some of them. Many of these can be enlargenated using a cursor click to activate the process, FYI.

One of the things we felt compelled to do was visit the bookshop called Shakespeare and Company, as it had featured so prominently in one of our favourite movies, Before Sunset.


I had hoped that we would be able to retrace Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy's steps through Paris, but that would have involved even more walking than we already did, which made it untenable. Still, we had this as a consolation prize; a rare sighting of the Lesser-Praised Hawke-Novel.


Over the road from the world-renowned bookstore is the less well-known Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Bayeux, named after a famous carpet and a popular US university football team.


Within the cathedral are the usual churchly accoutrements, such as pews and elaborate windows. There is also, for the conspiracy theorists and Da Vinci Code fans, the infamous Swarovski Stable Scene.


This crystalline rendering of the birth of Christ has been carbon-dated to 5000BC, which has sparked much speculation about the chronology of events in the Bible. Whatever the truth behind this mysterious artifact, I think we can agree it sure does look pretty!

Speaking of pretty, here's the Venus De Milo.


It is, of course, named after the song by Television, "Venus", from their album Marquee Moon, and the fictional genius Milo Rambaldi, from the beloved pre-Da-Vinci Code conspiracy theory show Alias. This picture was taken by Canyon inside the Louvre. Here is the exterior, inspired by the terrifying Silent Hill antagonist, Pyramid Head.


In addition to Venus de Milo, the Louvre also contains the painting known as the Mona Lisa.


Named after the beloved Neil Jordan movie, starring Bob Hoskins and Michael Caine, it's a lovely painting, the epitome of beauty and classiness. I was humbled in its presence, made to feel so insignificant in the scheme of things. I doubt I was the only one who felt he should have arrived in this room wearing a dinner jacket or something. My Lego Han Solo t-shirt was not right for the occasion, but at least I wasn't this guy.


That's right, it's a National Pornographic t-shirt. Well done, sir. Da Vinci would have been honoured to have you around, that child-of-Christ concealing, codec-creating maverick.

Paris is full of relics of famous and talented people. While searching for the gallery of famous comic artist Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, I stumbled across this statue of Gaston Mangin, the inventor of the Mangina.


Such a small memorial to such a great man. However, that was more interesting than the Moebius gallery. Can someone alter his website to state that the building at 27 Rue Falguière is empty, so that no one else wastes half a day tromping through a really depressing series of backstreets? And can they go back in time to do it? For that, I'll side with Denzel Washington. Kirby Silver Surfer is definitely better than Moebius Silver Surfer.


Everywhere we went last week, we were watched by a train lady. Or, should I say, La Fille Du RER.


To put this into perspective, imagine a British movie called The Girl From The Docklands Light Railway. Actually, it does sound pretty good, though who knows if it will get a UK release. It doesn't happen that often. Still, there's an upside to that. At least we won't get to see Coco.



There were posters for this all over Paris as well, and after a day of seeing Gad Elmaleh's gurning face I began to quietly despair. I was almost tempted to see the damned thing just to exorcise myself, but without subtitles I doubt there would be much point. The trailer above is incomprehensible to me. I could have gone to see Marley Et Moi instead, with Jennifer Aniston as a private eye who dies and comes back as a dog.


It's silly to be annoyed at the posters for Coco. For all I know it's a highly sophisticated comedy, and Elmaleh is the natural successor to Jacques Tati's crown. It's just that it was everywhere, tainting the image of France as the cultural capital of Europe, home to great cinema, great food, great theatre.


Still, some parts of Paris were free from Coco. Paris is the city of romance, and so I felt compelled to visit the site of my favourite French romance, the Pont Neuf, immortalised in Leos Carax's notorious Les Amants du Pont-Neuf.



Yes, at 0:43 you do indeed see a fleeting, silhouetted glimpse of Denis Lavant's enormous schlong. Ah, Les Amants. What a movie. While the majority of heterosexual man-dom fell for Juliette Binoche in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, my own crush was formed during Les Amants and Carax's previous movie, Mauvais Sang. Both are great. (N.B. If anyone fancies buying me this, please feel free.)


Of course, Carax was unable to film on the actual bridge, seen above, so instead he filmed on a set. While standing on this stunning piece of architecture, I tried to see how much the surroundings matched the set; a silly task considering it's been years since seeing the movie, and I can't remember the exact details. While I pirouetted in an attempt to recall something, poor Canyon got more and more tired. We did a lot of walking that day.

Funnily enough, it wasn't until our last night there that we walked the relatively tiny distance to the nearest tourist trap. The apartment we stayed at was so close to the Eiffel Tower that you could smell the puddled iron. I wasn't about to leave Paris until I'd seen it, so a couple of us wandered over after an excellent meal of roast duck with duck pate, duck stew, and duck cassoulet. Here is a photo of Alec Eiffel.


He is, of course, named after the song by The Pixies.



The view from the bottom of the tower made me feel like I was docking with the Death Star.


Here is a shot of the famous Eiffel Death Ray.


This is used to repel all of the threats from outer space that have reduced the tower to a heap of melted slag in several motion pictures, including War of the Worlds, Independence Day, and Zéro De Conduite. Those previous three pictures are by me, and are flukes. These next four are by Canyon.


Yes, I have been horribly glib throughout this post, but it's merely to disguise my true feelings about the trip. Have you ever visited a place and fallen for it the instant you leave the station/airport?


It happened the first time I came to London, home of my heart even now that the substandard infrastructure drives me to distraction (and not my desired destination, 99% of the time). I thought that feeling would be replicated when finally visiting New York, but while I very much like it and want to spend more time there, there wasn't the immediate blast of emotion I had expected.


Paris, on the other hand, completely won me over. Never have I seen a city containing such effortlessly beautiful buildings, nor have I been lucky enough to visit somewhere so busy and yet filled with such charming and polite people. It's often said there is an antagonism between the English and the French, but I think that's bullshit. Even though my command of French is minimal, I felt relaxed and welcomed by Paris. My next visit cannot come soon enough.


Vive la France!

June Is the Month to Beat for R1 DVDs

Criterion, at long last, announced Alain Resnais' masterpiece Last Year at Marienbad [L'année dernière à Marienbad] on both two-disc DVD and single-disc Blu-ray (please change the cover). The disc(s) will contain Resnais' short documentaries, Toute la mémoire du monde and Le chant du Styrène (and will hopefully start the ball rolling on some other Resnais films, like Providence and Mon oncle d'Amérique, which, if Charter is your cable provider, is available free on demand from IFC until the end of the month). Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal will hit both formats in a remastered transfer; the set will include the documentary Bergman Island, which can also be purchased separately on DVD for those not planning on making the upgrade. And, Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre, which we knew was coming this month, will also hit shelves. Normally, I would gripe about three of the four Criterion titles for the month being films that have already shown up on the DVD market, but The Seventh Seal was in need of a better transfer and the lousy Fox Lorber versions of Marienbad and Andre have been out of print for a while. No Eclipse titles, unless they're announced later this week.

In other Criterion/Janus news, the third volume of Essential Art House DVDs (ie, Criterion films with the price slashed and without the special features) will be out on the 16th, and for the first time, includes a film that hasn't ever been released outside of the collection, Henry Cass' Last Holiday, which as you know was later remade into your favorite Queen Latifa/Gérard Depardieu film! The other films in Volume 3 are Ashes and Diamonds, Forbidden Games, The Hidden Fortress, Richard III and Variety Lights.

Koch Lorber (or, perhaps, Lorber Films) is releasing Jean-Luc Godard's Une femme mariée on 2 June (thanks Eric). Though I haven't gotten official confirmation on whether or not the 5 Warner titles have really been moved to 30 June or not (Amazon still has the June date), even without them June will still be the month to beat, especially as one of the cinematic landmarks of the past twenty years Anaconda will finally be out on Blu-ray on the 2nd.

The Decade List: Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Dancer in the Dark - dir. Lars von Trier

Though I've always argued the case against describing Catherine Breillat as a "provocateuse," I'd be fooling myself to do the same with Lars von Trier. For the past eight or so years, I've grappled with the notion of Dancer in the Dark as an elaborate snuff film or the blackest comedy you've ever seen. It's as emotionally and narratively manipulative as a film can get, with very little remorse in being so. Never before had I seen a film with so much disdain for its audience, and I couldn't help but feel shat upon, seeing all the people around me bursting into tears and feeling as if my stomach had been ripped into shreds. Seeing and feeling such things was, frankly, embarrassing, and for that, I despised Von Trier. Tremendously.

This hatred would subside four years later, though perhaps out of some fear of rekindling those feelings of embarrassment, it wouldn't be until last night that I would return to Dancer in the Dark. From its first moments following the overture, as Selma Ježková (Björk) rehearses for her role as Maria in a production of The Sound of Music, the entire film came swirling back to me, without the varying layers of defense and condemnation I'd been placing upon it for years. Dancer in the Dark became something entirely different in my head, but during those first moments, it was clear that I'd never really forgotten Dancer in the Dark, the film, the same way most people have never really forgotten The Sound of Music.

With numerous reports of spats on the set of the film, one can't help but wonder if von Trier was consciously turning Dancer in the Dark into his own personal Passion of Joan of Arc; he's been quoted as being a huge admirer of co-patriot Carl Theodor Dreyer. In Dancer in the Dark, Selma is von Trier's own Joan of Arc, and Björk, who swore off acting after making the film, is his Maria Falconetti, cinematically immortalized (Björk would later star in husband Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, though her appearance wouldn't be considered "acting" by any traditional definition). Björk's performance is truly marvelous. It's a thing of uncomfortable privacy, so excruciatingly vulnerable you're almost ashamed to be watching it. The experience of watching her becomes visually exemplified during the scene where Bill (David Morse) exploits Selma's blindness by pretending to leave her trailer and discovering the hiding spot for her money. The overwhelming guilt that arises in Bill, after stealing the money, can be felt within the spectator as it becomes less clear whether it's really Selma's tears, and not Björk's, streaming down her face.

Whether you prefer the term meta-musical or anti-musical, von Trier's approach to the musical is where his brutality can be best defended. "I used to dream I was in a musical, because in a musical, nothing dreadful ever happens," Selma tells the sympathetic prison guard (Siobhan Fallon); though it's never actually mentioned, one would have to imagine Selma named her son (Vladica Kostic) after Gene Kelly. Her love of musicals provides the imagined, visualized escape from Selma's harsh reality as von Trier constructs Dancer in the Dark as a musical negatively exposed, in which everything dreadful happens. The emotional and narrative manipulation he creates becomes less an act of a sadism than of faithfulness in invoking what would have to be the inverse of escapism.

Though he never grants his audience it, von Trier utilizes the idea of the musical as the highest form of cinematic escapism almost as a condolence to Selma/Björk. For Björk, the musical numbers, which don't begin until nearly forty minutes into the film, place her in the familiar, the home from which she came. Whether singing to Cathy (Catherine Deneuve), or Cvalda as Selma calls her, in the factory or dancing next to a moving train with Jeff (Peter Stormare), von Trier allows Björk to return to her element, away from the taxation and foreignness of acting. For Selma, the visual manifestation of her Busby Berkeley dreams yields the sympathetic relief she's never given in her own "reality." The dreams transform machinery into a symphony, the assembly line into a chorus line and turn poverty into beauty. By allowing there to always be someone to catch Selma when she falls during her dreams, von Trier bestows the compassion so many people claim he lacks onto Selma. Within these musical dreams, which transpire the same way the film's "reality" does, Selma/Björk can physically and metaphorically leave the film after singing the next-to-last song, the same point Selma would make her exit when seeing a musical in the theatre. The "film" is therefore allowed to "go on forever" for Selma, and for Björk, she can then be replaced by lifelike set piece that hangs from the noose as the camera goes "out of the roof" to Dancer in the Dark's end.

The suggestion that Dancer in the Dark exposes some compassion beneath von Trier's misanthropy (which, also, if often confused with misogyny) can be largely attributed to Björk. Dancer in the Dark is such a divisive film that the arguments I make for von Trier's compassion could be easily argued as being just the opposite, a simple, and very cruel, irony. However, Björk's performance is so transcendent that it allows that illusion to endure. Then again, maybe the strength of her performance serves as the punch line of a malevolent joke. But, I suppose, what is cinema if not the greatest durable illusion?

With: Björk, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare, Željko Ivanek, Cara Seymour, Vladica Kostic, Jean-Marc Barr, Vincent Paterson, Siobhan Fallon, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård, Joel Grey
Screenplay: Lars von Trier
Cinematography: Robby Müller
Music: Björk
Country of Origin: Denmark/Netherlands/Germany/France/USA/UK/Sweden/Finland/Iceland/Norway
US Distributor: Fine Line Features/New Line

Premiere: 17 May 2000 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 22 September 2000 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: Palme d'Or, Best Actress - Björk (Cannes); Best Film, Best Actress - Björk (European Film Awards); Best Foreign Film (Independent Spirit Awards); Best Foreign Film (Goya Awards, Spain)

The Decade List: George Washington (2000)

George Washington - dir. David Gordon Green

Few directors hit their mark on their first outing, and, as David Gordon Green has shown us, few sustain the momentum of such heights (Lynne Ramsay might be the exception, but she only has two features under her belt at the moment). George Washington is spellbinding. With its Terence Malik-inspired rural beauty (cinematographer Tim Orr would shoot all of Green's subsequent features), Green crafts such unexpected tenderness and horror, a combination that usually goes about as well as oil and water. It's hard to say Green hasn't lived up to the promise of George Washington, as so many of my Zooey Deschanel-obsessed mates would list All the Real Girls among one of the best films they've ever seen. Like Ramsay's Ratcatcher, which was releasing theatrically in the US during 2000 and by no small coincidence was also released on DVD by Criterion, George Washington captured adolescence without the taste of nostalgia and romanticism so many filmmakers can't get away from. However, for me, Green, especially after the curious, though nowhere near terrible, teaming with the Judd Apatow crew last year, Green's output will probably never exceed his first feature, a glowing, poetic dream of a film.

With: Candace Evanofski, Curtis Cotton III, Damian Jewan Lee, Donald Holden, Rachael Handy, Paul Schneider
Screenplay: David Gordon Green
Cinematography: Tim Orr
Music: Michael Linnen, David Wingo
Country of Origin: USA
Studio: Criterion/Janus

Premiere: February 2000 (Berlin International Film Festival)
US Premiere: April 2000 (Los Angeles Independent Film Festival)

Awards: Discovery Award (Toronto International Film Festival)

The Decade List: Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000)

PJ Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea

To the PJ Harvey purists, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is to the enigmatic songstress what "Creep" or "Karma Police" is to Radiohead, who did however reach the creative high point during 2000 with Kid A. Radiohead snobs, who will always inch out most other bands' followings' snobbiness particularly if they're of the high school breed, have always vocalized (at least to me) the fact that true Radiohead fans would never consider those songs to be their favorites. Never. I was called out on such blasphemy to which my only response was, "Well, I'm really not a Radiohead elitist." Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is, without a doubt, Harvey's most accessible album, which to most people equates "weakest." Hearing Harvey over the speakers at a Whole Foods or a Borders would have been sacrilegious had it not provided welcome relief from hearing anything by Rob Thomas. However, in looking back at Harvey's career thusfar, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea was just another of the artist's brilliant tonal and visual experiments, a pop album that Harvey was quoted as making "just to see if she could."

Harvey, among many other things, was always skilled in opening and closing her albums on the perfect notes. For Stories, "Big Exit" was the rousing welcome we'd come to expect, and though the sound was more "polished" than, say, the Steve Albini-produced Rid of Me, "Big Exit," and the following track "Good Fortune," called to mind the one-two punch of "To Bring You My Love" and "Meet Ze Monsta" before moving into what would be the heart of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. The sense that was widely taken from the album was that Harvey had fallen in love, whether it was with an actual person or just New York City itself. But as I said earlier, Harvey's work has always been about experimentation, altering her sound, physical appearance and demeanor with each passing album; literal interpretation of her work has always been the bane of her existence, with certain critics suggesting that she had succumb to schizophrenia after her previous album Is This Desire?.

Though Stories from the City nearly retained everything that made Harvey so desirable in her earlier albums in its "accessible" form, a song like "This Is Love" briefly revealed the (wo)man behind the curtain. Whereas "One Line" and the immaculate "This Mess We're In," in which Harvey took the passenger seat next to Thom Yorke, managed to hold a striking authenticity, "This Is Love" rang a bit false as the clear rock n roll "single" off the album. "I can't believe life's so complex / When I just want to sit here and watch you undress" are appealing lyrics, but the energy of "This Is Love" feels compromised, especially against her most passionate, abrasive chansons d'amour fou.

Around this time was when my friends and I had formed a passionate love affair with the shamelessly rude Buddyhead.com, whose words of praise involved wanting to be tea-bagged by the lead singer of Mclusky and tipping their hat to Nick Cave for "wrecking Kylie Mingoue's gash." When the guys failed to come up with anything remotely filthy or clever to describe Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea when naming their best albums of 2000, I was let down, but it perhaps best reflected the fact that Harvey's experiment had truly worked. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea didn't deserve Buddyhead's usual snark (though their brand of humor went beyond just that), nor could it ever be compared to the less-fortunate attempts at accessibility from otherwise challenging musicians (hi, Liz Phair). Please excuse the lameness of what I'm about to say, but, with Stories from the City Polly Jean, you said something that I've never forgotten.

Track List

1. Big Exit
2. Good Fortune
3. A Place Called Home
4. One Line
5. Beautiful Feeling (featuring Thom Yorke)
6. The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore
7. This Mess We're In (featuring Thom Yorke)
8. You Said Something
9. Kamikaze
10. This Is Love
11. Horses in My Dreams
12. We Float

Videos

Good Fortune
This Is Love
A Place Called Home


Notable B-Side

Memphis (for Jeff Buckley)

[Note: More time will be spent toward the films of the decade, but I'll be throwing albums in the mix as well]

2009 Notebook: Vol 9

I have to write a piece on the local gay & lesbian film festival... things aren't looking good.

The New Favorites

La fidélité - dir. Andrzej Żuławski - 2000 - France - with Sophie Marceau, Pascal Greggory, Guillaume Canet, Michel Subor, Edith Scob, Magali Noël, Manuel Le Lièvre, Marc François, Aurélien Recoing, Marina Hands, Guy Tréjan, Jean-Charles Dumay

Middle of the Road

Away with Words - dir. Christopher Doyle - 1999 - Hong Kong/Japan/Singapore - N/A - with Tadanobu Asano, Kevin Sherlock, Georgina Hobson, Christa Hughes, Mavis Xu

Between Something & Nothing - dir. Todd Verow - 2008 - USA - Water Bearer Films - with Tim Swain, Julia Frey, Gil Bar-Sela, Philly, Todd Verow, Brad Hallowell, Francisco Solorzano

Finding Me - dir. Roger Omeus - 2007 - USA - TLA Releasing - with RayMartell Moore, Eugene Turner, J'Nara Corbin, Derrick L. Briggs, Maurice Murrell, Ronald DeSuze

Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon - dir. Jeffrey Schwarz - 2008 - USA - TLA Releasing

The Bad

On ne devrait pas exister [We Should Not Exist] - dir. Hervé P. Gustave - 2006 - USA - N/A - with Hervé P. Gustave, LZA, Bertrand Bonello, Benoît Fournier

Shitfests

Between Love & Goodbye - dir. Casper Andreas - 2008 - USA - TLA Releasing - with Simon Miller, Justin Tensen, Rob Harmon, Jane Elliott, Aaron Michael Davies

Schoolboy Crush - dir. Kohtaro Terauchi - 2007 - Japan - TLA Releasing - with Atsumi Kanno, Kazunori Tani, Yoshikazu Kotani, Yuuki Kawakubo

Watercolors - dir. David Oliveras - 2008 - USA - N/A - with Tye Olson, Kyle Clare, Ellie Araiza, Casey Kramer, Jeffrey Lee Woods, Karen Black, Greg Louganis

Revisited: Les Autres

9 to 5 - dir. Colin Higgins - 1980 - USA - 20th Century Fox - with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, Dabney Coleman, Sterling Hayden

The International And A Man Of Mystery

There are some movies that I'm sure are made specifically with me in mind. Last year Speed Racer, Redbelt, and John Woo's magnificent Red Cliff made me incredibly happy, much as I had expected. They would have had to be total failures for me not to appreciate them on some level. This year the same applies to Ninja Assassin, Inglourious Basterds, and Transformerbots 2: Revenge of the Subset of Transformerbots Known As The Fallen Transformerbots. In different ways they all feature something that appeals to some part of my brain, be it fighting robots, Rain kicking people in the skullparts, or Nazi scalp-hunting.


Another genre I eat up with a big-ass spoon is the dour corporate thriller, which seems to be undergoing a revival thanks to the success of Michael Clayton. Tony Gilroy appears to be thriving with these movies. His next, Duplicity, looks like a frothier entry than most, a Thomas Crown Affair-style romp with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts flirting through Europe while conning evil corporate scum played by Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson. Other than the presence of the bafflingly successful Roberts, that's another movie you would have to restrain me to stop me from seeing. As I said in my Push review, I adore con movies, though it's hard to be caught out by one as you go in expecting a big shock twist in the final scene. That's deadly, as I spend the whole movie trying to figure out what that final con will be. One day I'll learn how to switch that impulse off.

Another genre piece I felt compelled to see (even though it nearly killed me to see four movies in one week) was Tom Tykwer's The International, a much-sterner, Pakula-esque kind of corporate thriller than Gilroy's forthcoming movie. Just to really sell me on it, the cast was headed by Clive Owen (this time in vengeful, non-flirty mode), Naomi Watts at her most pale, and Armin Mueller Stahl, again staking a claim to the roles that would previously have been automatically handed to Max Von Sydow. The two leads are guaranteed to raise my interests, Owen since his superb performance in Children of Men, and Watts ever since playing Jet Girl in the otherwise unforgivable Tank Girl. Yes yes, I know...


WARNING!!! INTERNATIONAL SPOILERS AHEAD!

I hadn't even noticed the movie at first, so hectic are things at the moment, until I read the usual slew of reviews on its day of release. The plot grabbed my attention instantly, even if it is doing little more than taking the standard corporate conspiracy thriller template and adding topical(ish) elements to the open slots. Owen is a former Scotland Yard police officer now working for Interpol, investigating the shady actions of a bank (the International of the title) with the help of the CIA (and pale Naomi). While everyone around Owen thinks this is a standard investigation that will proceed along traditional lines, our hero is convinced that the bank is responsible for numerous obstructive acts, from bribery to murder. No one believes him, and throughout the movie his options shrink to none, until he is forced to go off the grid to find justice.

It's shocking how little The International deviates from convention. Europe is traversed many times over, bugs are found in phones, pencil-pushing superiors shut down investigations with the phrase "You've no idea what a shitstorm you've created!", hyper-capitalist bad guys are as nonchalant as you can be without starting every sentence with "Meh", and assassins know where video cameras are located in airports and tilt their heads accordingly.


That adherence to convention is almost laughable at times. In one scene our heroes have gone to Milan to meet Umberto Calvini (played by Luca Giorgio Barbareschi, with the finest head of hair cinema has seen in years), a politician who is willing to give them the lowdown on what The International is trying to achieve with their plan to facilitate the sale of a few measly missiles. It's a fantastic stream of exposition, linking international banking to arms deals and profiting from war and the crippling debt it generates, turning the people of the world into indentured slaves.

Thrilling stuff, and based not only on the BCCI scandal of recent times (rather cheekily, The International is officially called the International Bank of Business and Credit), but also the kind of revelations you could find in John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman, as well as being a not-too subtle dig at the International Monetary Fund's method of generating indebtedness in the countries it "helps". It's the kind of revelation you don't expect to see in a mainstream movie, unless it really is a sign that people are waking up to the unsavoury practices of our financial institutions, and seeing that Capitalism is a system that can easily be abused to wreck billions of lives when ethics are compromised and regulation is removed.

Sadly, that scene ends with Calvini hilariously announcing that he doesn't have time to give Owen and Watts any more info at that moment, even though it surely couldn't take long. The dialogue goes exactly like this:

You'll have to excuse me, I'm afraid. I couldn't possibly give you that easily explainable piece of information you desperately need, because of Reason X. I have to go outside to give a speech to my supporters on a stage in the middle of a plaza surrounded by buildings that provide a perfect vantage point for numerous snipers, and as you can imagine, this being Italy, the movie birthplace of corruption, the head of the Carabinieri has almost certainly been bribed into helping cover it up. Kindly wait for a few minutes, and when my brains exit stage left, please rush through a panicky crowd in a futile attempt to get to me. You could also solve the crime that the few honest policemen cannot figure out while you are here. Use those techniques from CSI and a modicum of common sense to do so. That will prove entertaining to the audience, and will please me while I watch from the afterlife.

Okay, he doesn't say all of that, but he might as well have done.


The International sure does love the idea of political assassinations. The film begins with Owen's partner getting killed in much the same way Georgi Markov was killed in 1978, and ends with a Mafia hit that brings up memories of the murder of Roberto Calvi. Inbetween those scenes, so many people get shot by unseen assailants that by the midpoint of the movie you expect every character filmed in medium frame to suddenly erupt in squibby death. A lot of the time that is indeed what happens.

So why, if the movie is so predictable, did I think it was the best film I saw last week, far superior to Franklyn, Push, and Zack Snyder's lamentable waste of time and money, Watchmen? Mostly because I lap this stuff up with a spoon. The lone avenger, abandoned by everyone, facing down the might of the corporate-military-industrial complex in a heroic last stand, assailed by the seemingly unvanquishable monolith of The System, and dwarfed by their sterile, inhuman steel architecture; that's the stuff. The Parallax View, Michael Clayton, All The President's Men; even the fantasy sub-genres like The Matrix or the first X-Files movie; I can't get enough.


Just to make me even happier, Clive Owen does a fantastic job as the rumpled loner, out of his depth but driven to break the law to find the truth. He even gets to wear his trademark long coat, that has served him so well in Children of Men and Shoot 'Em Up, making him look like a rumpled, handsome Jacques Tati driven to the edge by the vicissitudes of modern life. With every new performance I like him more and more.

Watts has much less to do, but I'd happily watch her play a switchboard operator for two hours. The supporting cast are great too. Patrick Baladi (forever to be known as David Brent's super-competent boss in The Office) is amusingly slick and obstructive as the IBBC lawyer who gets in Owen's way. Ulrich Thomsen is suitably impassive and creepy as the IBBC head who calmly leads his bank down a immoral path. Bryan F. O'Byrne radiates unnerving professionalism as the assassin that Owen chases for much of the movie.


Best of all, Mueller-Stahl does superb, haunting work as the former Stasi officer who has sold his soul to Capitalism, still performing terrible acts but now so dead to the ramifications of his actions that he no longer cares who he works for or what political beliefs they hold. An interrogation scene between him and Owen that comes late in the film is chilling, even though, yet again, Eric Warren Singer's script serves up a beige platter of "truth this" and "justice that". The committed performances transcend the humdrum dialogue.

The only real variable when deciding whether or not to watch this was Tom Tykwer. I've only seen Lola Rennt, which was a lot of fun and doubled as a great introduction to the sorely underemployed Franka Potenta. Other than that, I've missed out on Heaven, his adaptation of Kieslowski's last script, and even though I have recorded Perfume seemingly dozens of times via Sky+, it always gets deleted before I get to see it as we need room for Daily Show, Colbert Report, or Grand Designs. Some day, you weird-looking film based on a beloved German novel. Some day.


I've always had the impression that Tykwer was like the German Danny Boyle, randomly throwing wacky visuals at the screen with little care for whether the scene needed them or not, or what the overall tone of the movie should be. It's not really fair of me to assume that on such little evidence, but this reputation has existed whether or not I've seen them. Considering the material he is working with here, would he wreck the movie with endless, pointless flashiness?

The answer is hell no. Tykwer turns in a classy, restrained, but exciting thriller, swallowing any showy impulses to deliver a taut conspiracy piece. Even better, he delivers a couple of superb set-pieces. The first, the murder of Owen's partner, builds brilliantly from innocuous calm to panic and death, and all it features is a heart attack and Clive Owen crossing a road. Tykwer takes what should be a simple scene and imbues it with horrible menace. Not bad for one minute of film. De Palma would have been proud.


The second is the lauded shootout in the Guggenheim Museum, with Owen attempting to apprehend the assassin who has been busy killing the majority of the supporting cast to that point. What starts as a simple tail ends up being a bloody and brutal massacre, leaving the gallery shattered and bullet-ridden. In a way it's probably a terrible scene, being far more violent and extreme compared to the mild thrills to that point, but a setpiece as thrillingly staged as this deserves praise, especially when it is shot and edited with such clarity and attention to detail. Even more impressive, the scene is filmed on a set built to the exact specifications of the original building. It boggles my mind. Some of the effects are rough and ready, but no matter. It raised the blood pressure brilliantly, and certainly throws Owen's life into such turmoil that he can no longer afford to play by the rules, thus setting up the finale.


For all of the predictability of the conspiracy plot, as well as some glaring illogicalities (the final confrontation ends with an unbelievable leap of logic, and I don't mean Owen's sudden ability to travel internationally despite the warrant for his arrest), it was a satisfying experience. Would it get on my end of year list? Not a chance, unless we're in for a terrible year. However, I'm thrilled that Tykwer, a director I had ignored in the past, has been able to serve the story so well, intelligently staging the action and the suspense, creating a coherent visual template (all cold steel, granite and glass, until the finale in an alien locale where all bets are off), and not distracting the audience with extraneous narrative and/or visual trickery.


That ability to adapt his style to the material has given me new respect for his talents, even if The International is merely on the right side of average. There is a possibility that his next project will be an adaptation of David Mitchell's stunning novel Cloud Atlas, produced and co-developed by the Wachowskis. Of all the dream projects seemingly made with me in mind, that has now become the ultimate.