TIFF just opened its doors and premiered with the anticipated Borg/McEnroe with Hollywood's favorite bad boy de jour Shia LaBeouf as the favorite bad boy of tennis John McEnroe, and newcomer (at least to American Cinema) Sverrir Gudnason as Björn Borg; the machine. This film (bio-pic what have you) is about the 1980 Wimbeldon match. The first Wimbeldon and Borg in his record-breaking 5th. It was perhaps the most important match of 21 year old's McEnroe's career and just so happened to be the first out of the gate. He was the only thing standing between Borg and a record of 5 straight Singles Men's Wimbeldon wins. This is all before McEnroe started a reputation of yelling at referees, throwing rackets, and just turning the whole sport into a spectacle. Don't get me wrong, he's talented AF, so the spectacle was still one hell of a sport to watch when McEnroe was playing it. That's perhaps why LaBeouf was cast. Perhaps they are kindred spirits. The film premiered a few nights ago, and LaBeouf received almost universal praise for his portrayal of the tennis legend even though he looked nothing like him nor really played tennis.
The real Borg and McEnroe minutes before their showdown. Costume and makeup are going to get major props for this.
LaBeouf is a damn good actor (as tired as that hyperbole is), and yeah I said it so you know where I stand. I haven't seen the film yet, but I'm optimistic as hell. Everything about it looks like those great sports movies that used to exist in the 80's before Disney had to go fuck it all up; one word - Miracle.
The only person that didn't praise his performance was the man himself, shocker. But I also want to see if Sverrir was any good and coming from a Swedish/Icelandic background I'm sure he's a machine, much like Borg. But what I really want to touch on and provide a good segway into the next film is the idea of sports films. In the 80's you had really great sports films; from Chariots of Fire (which started the trend), to The Natural, to Hoop Dreams, to Breaking Away. It all climaxed with Field of Dreams, and then it all went to shit. And my generation was stuck with crap like Blue Crush, Hot Shots! and fucking Varsity Blues. What the hell happened there? I'm not big into sports but my god. Yeah, have a protagonists perhaps two and make it about the primal struggle which is basically what sports is. It's about winning and losing, no philosophy, no fuss. Just simple human competition. That's drama right there. I believe that these two films are going to restore that void that's been missing in cinema. Some sports moments last forever. One of which that I'm sure everyone has heard about is the Miracle on Ice in 1980 when team USA beat the Soviet Union in the Olympics. Basically accomplishing the impossible hence the term 'miracle on ice'. Thanks Disney for ruining it for a generation that never got to live through that or experience the actual brilliance of that moment. (I didn't live through it either, but I've seen the actual footage and it was way more intense and dramatic).
The media was right there capturing every insane moment leading up to the Battle of the Sexes.
Anyway! Speaking of another thing I didn't live through (I was born in '85, ok gimme a break, I'm not that old, but I do know my history) was the Battle of the Sexes. It was a tennis match, and that's what they called it. It is also being screened at TIFF and stars Emma Stone (whatever) as feminist icon and tremendous tennis player Billie Jean King and Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs; the has-been, outlandish and flamboyant champion from a million years ago pinned in a battle of man vs. woman, which really did turn the game into a spectacle when he challenged the former to a tennis match in 1973 basically to make an extra buck and draw attention to himself. Billie Jean King reluctantly accepted, and Bobby Riggs would not stop spouting chauvinist rhetoric at her just to get people's ire up. Billie Jean King was in her prime, and with an actual battle of the sexes going on in society at the time, this tennis match drew a great deal of attention and King's inevitable victory meant a great deal to the American feminist movement. She went from icon to legend. I'm not sure if Emma Stone is the best casting, but unlike Shia LaBeouf, the original that she was portraying gave her a wonderful review.
The real Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs posing for a publicity still.
I'm excited for both films. I feel like Battle of the Sexes is going to be more of a politically skewed film that deals with the zeitgeist of the times and heavily pushes the second wave of feminism movement of that period, and Borg/McEnroe is going to be a much darker psychological exploration of athleticism and dreams; accomplished and broken. Both sound great to me and I'm really stoked.
Another film that may redeem the genre is the upcoming Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan biopic; I, Tonya starring Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding, which I actually did live through. And I really can't wait for that one because when that whole shit went down, I was actually a figure skater myself. Granted I was 8, but I never lost interest in the sport. If a film can make you fall in love with a sport that you otherwise don't care about, they've done their job.
The famous girl in red who serves as a catalyst in the change within Schindler's attitude, symbolizing every Jew he wasn't able to save.
Let's put everything aside for the moment; Spielberg's first Academy Award, the event that it was that everyone saw, how important it is not only to the Jewish people, but for the world at large, etc. I want to talk about the filmmaking, because if I talked about absolutely everything, I'd never finish this post.
Most of all, let's talk directing. Spielberg said his decision to shoot in black and white was because he didn't want to 'prettify' any images of the Holocaust. Apparently the studio insisted for a while that he shoot in color, and he assured them that if that was the case, he wouldn't have made the film. The lights and shadows harken to something out of Orson Welles. His long time DP (Director of Photography for the layman) Janusz Kaminski is truly a paragon of his craft. He made the events of the Holocaust and the events in Schindler's life so seamless as he moves from shmoozing with Nazi's in the first scene, the the chaos of Jews pretending that they have 'essential' factory skills so that they would get a blauschein (a blue card) meaning that they could go to work for Schindler (Liam Neeson) instead of being loaded up into trucks headed for death camps. His fluid camera captures the most aggressive and most intimate moments ranging from the liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto to a conversation between Schindler and his wife.
Itzhak Stern played brilliantly by Ben Kingsley as Schindler's accountant and de facto right hand man. Their exchanges range from the mildly intellectual comic banter to some of the most harrowing moments of the film.
As a historical epic (and that's what it is, not just a bio-pic), Spielberg utilized suspense so brilliantly it astounds me even today, considering that I've seen the film way too many times (like there even such a thing). A very iconic example of this is when Amon Göth (Ralph Fiennes) stands atop his balcony with a rifle killing people off one by one. He's aiming for a young Jewish boy who told him that he couldn't clean his bathtub as much as he tried. Amon tells him (as Schindler instructed when he said that power comes from pardon) that he pardoned him, changed him mind and after a few missed shots, as the kid walks away, aware of his fate, eventually gets shot in the back.
'I pardon you'.
Another suspenful and heartbreaking scene is when a machinist gets examined by Göth, because Göth (like most Nazi's) takes his bloodlust to the extreme, and decides to kill him on the basis that he didn't make enough hinges. He knocks him to the ground and pulls the trigger, but the pistol jams. Through tears, the man tries to explain why his work was 'unsatisfactory' as Amon keeps trying to fire over and over again. Finally, he gives up and pistol whips him. The man survives, and is the one that writes the letter to the Soviets in case Schindler was captured that every Schindler worker signs on his behalf.
One of the most iconic scenes in the film of which I just spoke. It is so compelling, so terrifying, and so brilliantly executed, that it is the hallmark of perfect directing.
Now let's talk about the writing and acting. There is so much more going on than the story itself, and even with characters that have just a couple of lines, it pulls you into this film, this story, this world as if it's almost matter-of-fact. There is small humor here and there, especially with the Nazi's. A good example of this is when his accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) gets mistakenly put on a train to a camp, and Schindler goes to rescue him, despite his efforts, low-ranking Nazi's won't let him off. Schindler takes down their names and says; 'Thank you gentlemen, I think I can guarantee you that you'll both be in Southern Russia before the end of the month, good day'. Then the film cuts to Schindler walking along the train pass and yelling for Stern, while the low-ranking Nazi's follow him doing the same. Now that's good writing.
But Spielberg doesn't shy away from the stuff none of us want to see, because we don't want to think that the greatest mass genocide in modern human history happened only 60 some years ago. He does this very subtly. A man sorting valuables, obviously those that Jews who are now in camps had to give up gets handed a burlap bag, inside which are a few handfuls of gold teeth. The man takes off his glasses in disbelief, as do we if we had glasses. But back to this later.
Making the list.
A very important character is Poldek Pfefferberg (Jonathan Sagall) who actually wrote the book that the film is based on. He survived from the start of the Holocaust to the liquidation of Krakow to standing next to Schindler as he says a tearful goodbye to his workers at the very end. He is a rogue character. The first time we see him, he's mad at another seller on the black market for giving him shoe polish in glass containers instead of metal and threatens his co-conspirator. Schindler overhears his tenacity and offers him a job buying things on the black market that will be needed to shmooze with more Nazi's and eventually trade for the lives of his Jews. His mass fortune which was made by profiteering off of free labor from Jews at his company, he eventually gave up to save everyone he possibly could. 'They say that no one dies here, they say your factory is a haven, they say that you are good' a woman tells him who is desperate to bring her elderly parents into Schindler's factory. She dresses up in fancy borrowed clothes and puts on rouge and lipstick to appeal to Schindler. At first, he's furious at the fact that he's considered a Moses among the Jews, but his conscience catches up with him and he trades his cigarette lighter, his cigarette case, ties, pins, suits; everything, for his own humanity, and for theirs.
Moreover, this is not a film about Schindler, and it is not a film about the Holocaust either. This is a film about history. A history that has been preserved in survival accounts, photographs, testimonies, etc. But someone had to put the pieces together and give us a narrative that not only educated us, but touched and enlightened us. The chaos, the deplorability, the horror, and the sorrow birthed a film that in itself is history, which taught us a very important thing through its fly-on-the-wall aesthetic; That (as the ring that the surviving Jews give to Schindler says) 'He who saves one life, saves the world entire'.
'It's Hebrew from the Talmud, it says he who saves one life saves the world entire'.
Even watching it now, after so many times I can't even count, there are moments of terror, moments of contemplation, anger, but mostly moments of awe in the worst way. This is our history, not just the Jews, but all of us. A time where survival was more important than any sort of life, where hiding in excrement meant the difference between life and death, where there was real evil in the world, and eventually the righteous triumphed over it. This happened, and no one has ever or since brought it to film more comprehensively, with more brevity, and with such a sincere heart.
There are a select few people in
film that I can say are flawless, and even less that I can say I admire to no
end. One of these lucky people (were he alive I’m sure he’d be so flattered to
hear that) is Orson Welles. On the anniversary of his infamous 'War of the
Worlds' broadcast, I’d just like to pay homage to him with a blog post (again,
he’d be overwhelmed with flattery) about three of the most significant things
he ever did.
When he first came to Hollywood
they nicknamed him the ‘wiz kid’, the ‘boy genius’. At 24 he had already
conquered the fields of theater, radio, what was left for him to tackle but
film? Ironically, considering his freshman effort Citizen Kane is considered to
be the greatest film of all time, Orson famously said that he doesn’t even like
films and doesn’t see many of them. It just so happens that he was such a genius
that whatever he touched he not only succeeded in, but became the master of.
He came to Hollywood with a beard
and a ‘fuck you’ attitude that infuriated everyone, especially when they
learned that he refused to play by their rigid rules. He was the youngest
person in history at that time to have a do-whatever-you-want contract with
RKO. This was unheard of. Imagine, a studio with thousands of employees and a
solid reputation are entrusting everything to this kid who’s never made a film
in his life. They banked on the right horse. But as you’ll see, it came with a
very serious backlash, for the studio and their golden boy.
As I said, I think there are
three significant points in his life that changed it and the world as we know
it. All of them happened before he celebrated his 25th birthday. Do
you feel like a failure yet? Anyway, here they are.
Enormous crowd outside the Lafayette theater on the opening night of Macbeth.
First there’s the ‘Voodoo
Macbeth’. Quick and term-paper like backstory. In the midst of the great
depression, FDR signed for a program called the WPA (Works Progress
Administration), to help people find work. A fraction of which went to the
arts; particularly the FPA (Federal Theater Project). Orson saw a chance, and
at 19 went to Harlem to audition many African American actors
to read Shakespeare, the majority of which had never even been on a stage
before. But with Welles directing them, he made what’s known in
theater circles as one of the greatest theater productions of Shakespeare ever
made. That’s ever. It opened before he turned 20. One critic described it as
‘chaos, but very carefully contrived chaos’. Clips of it actually exist and I
believe you can youtube them. Somehow, this kid who had never directed anything
outside of school could get non-actors to recite the words of Shakespeare like
they’d been preparing for this performance their whole lives. After that I
don’t have to tell you he was the shining star of the FPA. He went on to direct Julius Caesar, which was more critically and commercially successful
than the Voodoo Macbeth, but I think that considering the circumstances, the
Voodoo Macbeth is definitely one of his greatest achievements. There are some
actors from it that are still alive and when interviewed, are still astounded by
what they experiences in working with Welles. Not only did it generate
publicity for Welles and give hundreds of out-of-work African Americans jobs,
it put a spotlight on the FPA and the importance of the arts even in the midst
of a depression. If only we could see that now and not nix arts first when we
run short of cash in classrooms.
Seriously, the whole play was recorded. The sound kind of sucks and picture quality is sub par, but the content is worth it.
The second was a year later.
20-year-old Welles was already an established radio actor with that baritone
bellowing voice. He was so popular that he actually hired an ambulance to drive
him around New York City so he could make it to every recording no matter where
because he figured out that there was no law that said you had to be sick to
travel in an ambulance.He finally
decided to take this a step further. As a child, he loved magic, and was a
skilled illusionist. Now, he was ready to drop his biggest magic trick on the
world. He chose the classic H. G. Welles story 'War of the Worlds' as his
source material, he decided that he would broadcast it, with all of the
showmanship and drama that only Welles could manufacture. He did not broadcast
a disclaimer before it saying ‘this is just a reenactment’, but went full force
with the story, landing his Martians right in the middle of America’s
dinnertime. He knew that the most popular radio show at the time was one that
would cut away to some commercial every now and then, and used those intervals
when people were changing the station to put the whole nation into a state of
panic. He stood in the middle of his radio actors with a long conductor’s stick
and cued everything with the precision of a surgeon. If you listen to the
broadcast (you can buy it on iTunes), it’s unbelievable. You can’t blame anyone
for actually buying the fact that they were being invaded by aliens and the
world is in a full on panic. He plays a newscaster that narrates a horror he
sees in front of him with people screaming in the background. ‘People are
flocking to the East River, thousands of them’ he would report as the chaos
continued and just when it reached its zenith, he went silent.
The infamous pause that Welles held, and everyone in the studio as well as across the country held their breath.
Everyone was
literally glued to their radios at that point because they thought that the
broadcast had been discontinued and the employees eaten by Martians. People who
participated in this broadcast remember the image of Orson standing there with
both hands in the air, holding that silent pause as long as he could. Even they
were relieved when he finally started speaking again. Welles later said of the
incident that ‘most people would have been thrown in jail for that, and I got a
Hollywood contract’. After the truth came out, and Welles had a press
conference where he played dumb saying that he had no idea that the nation was
taking the broadcast seriously, everyone in Hollywood understood that this is a
man who could put on a serious show and get everyone’s attention. With two
amazing achievements under his belt, his next logical step was to conquer the
movie world.
Welles directing Kane, smoking a pipe which Hollywood also inexplicably hated.
Ergo his third greatest
achievement. At 23, he arrived in Hollywood with a contract that no one had
ever heard of; total creative license and access to whatever he wanted.
Hollywood vets like John ford and Cecil B. Demille hadn’t ever seen such
leeway, and they gave it to a kid who’d never made a movie in his
life. Fortunately for him, he had a lot of help. A wealth of seasoned
professionals helped this cinema neophyte create what we now consider to be the
greatest film of all time; Citizen Kane (1941). Gregg Toland came into Welles’
office one day, plopped his Oscar down on his desk and said that he would be
honored to photograph the picture. His childhood friend Joseph Cotton was
already a respectable actor when he was cast as Kane’s best friend Jedediah
Leland, but there was no question who would play Kane himself. At that time,
Welles began hanging out with renowned screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz; a
talented, shrewd writer with a huge alcohol problem.
To achieve those iconic low angle shots that accentuated the figure in the frame as being incomprehensibly tall and powerful, Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland tore up the floor of the set and mounted the camera in the hole.
During one of their
drinking binges, Mankiewiecz spilled the beans about his frequent trips to San
Simeon. San Simeon was the home of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. It
was literally a castle; the property on which it sat (also owned by Hearst) was
half the size of Rhode Island. There was a veritable plethora of juicy gossip
Mankiewicz disclosed to Welles and a light bulb went off in his head. After sitting
on his ass in the hot California sun for months at that point, Welles finally
figured out what the boy genius would do for his first film. He’d make the
story about a gargantuan figure; the embodiment of the American dream; a man
who has everything, except a soul. He was smart enough to thinly veil the story
by giving his main character a different name and setting the castle in Florida
instead of in San Luis Obispo where San Simeon was, but that was basically all
he changed. You’ve seen the film probably so I’m not going to get into plot or
anything…if you haven’t my god what’s wrong with you? Anyway, what happened in
the aftermath was something not even Welles could run from. Gossip columnist
and devoted slave of Hearst, Louella Parsons, demanded an early screening and was livid by the
end of it. She immediately told Hearst that it was all about him and painted
him as a bitter old lunatic, alone and alienated in his giant palace full of
‘stuff’. But what really stuck in Hearst’s craw was the depiction of his then
mistress, later wife actress Marion Davies, whom they painted as a gold digger
and a whiney floozy; a party girl without much of a brain. Hearst knew how much
power he had and showed up in every studio head’s office with a thick folder of
scandalous news that he had kept out of his papers as a favor, threatening to
reveal all of it if they dared release Citizen Kane. He wanted every single
print burned, and the studio heads had a meeting where the general consensus
was to comply with Hearst’s demands. After all, they didn’t want orgies,
hit-and-run accidents, and the fact that they were all Jewish to come out. That
last part isn’t even a joke. Hearst literally threatened to expose that fact,
which apparently back then wouldn’t be so great. Oh the blatant racism of those
times.
Hearst and Marion Davies at one of their many costume parties at San Simeon. Apparently if you were a movie star and invited up there and didn't go, the order would go out, and your name was kept out of every Hearst paper. Enjoy this ridiculous party, I command you!
It was 1940 and Europe was
engulfed in the Second World War. With Hitler and the Nazi party being the
constant diet of the newspapers, Welles used this to counter their decision. He
made the argument that at a time where there is no freedom of speech and
blatant persecution of races, religions, and political groups in
Europe, that they couldn’t possibly do the same thing in America. After all, we
stand for something…even the studio heads. They couldn’t deny he was right and
RKO released the film in 1941. The critics loved it, the public loved it, but
it didn’t matter. Hollywood still hated and resented Welles for being so
arrogant (considering he had total license to be) and the film was completely overlooked. It had a regular run in theaters and really didn’t gross that much.
At the Academy Awards that year it won only one Oscar for Best Original
Screenplay, which was really an award for Mankiewicz even though it was shared
with Welles. It wasn’t until Andrew Sarris and other critics, particularly from
Cahier du Cinema and the general French New Wave, started mentioning it as their
favorite film that it became relevant again and now we all know it to be that
really amazing film that we just haven’t gotten around to seeing because it’s black
and white, long, and dated. Fuck you, watch it.
Well there’s the three. After
that, Welles’ career became somewhat of a black hole. No one wanted to neither
hire nor work with him. His ego preceded him and everyone basically said;
‘thanks but no thanks’. By the time he was 30, he looked about 50, was about
100 pounds overweight, and totally box-office poison. He had played by his own
rules his whole life, and everyone allowed it, everyone except Hollywood. Then
and still, they have a ‘it’s my way or the highway’ sensibility. And Orson chose
the latter. He died miserable and alone, because being Orson Welles, he couldn’t
even make a marriage work considering that in his life, it was always Orson Welles who came first. But that doesn’t matter. Even though the majority of his life
was a decline, this is a man who had accomplished things we can only dream of
doing perhaps once in our lifetime. He did 3 before he was old enough to rent a car.
The legacy he left behind remembers that. We didn’t hear much about Welles
after he turned 30, because we remember him as that ‘boy genius’ that turned
everything he touched into gold. Yeah he was difficult, yeah he was
self-obsessed, yeah he was probably an asshole…but above all, he was
perhaps the greatest genius of the 20th century; a renaissance man
who could take on anything, except his own demons. In my life, I don’t think
anyone has influenced me more than Welles. He didn’t set any new standards
because his standards are totally unachievable. But he did gift us with his
talent, which is literally incomparable, and even 70 years after his golden
age, there has been no one that has come anywhere close.
Is that a Tsunami? No it's just Moses walking casually as the Red Sea hurdles behind him
Ok so, I decided to spend most of today in, and HBO in all of its wisdom was showing Ridley Scott's 2014 'biblical epic' Exodus: Gods and Kings. I knew the film got like almost universally horrible reviews except for some douche at Rolling Stone magazine, and that was to be expected. As a Jew who has watched Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments (1954) every time it's broadcast on NBC right before passover, and as a Jew on the whole, I almost lost it. Of course I'd heard the incendiary comments that Christian Bale (who played Moses) say that Moses was one of the most barbaric people he'd ever researched. Um...really? Most biblical scholars would disagree. On top of which, Ridley Scott himself defended his 'creative choices' to have those very recognizable miracles in the Old and New Testament including the 10 Plagues of Egypt and the Parting of the Red Sea as 'natural occurrences'. Now, I'm all for different depictions of history, perhaps more modernized and appropriated for an audience that can't comprehend miracles decided by a burning bush. It is 2015 after all, but if you're a self-proclaimed atheist perhaps you should veer away from a movie who's source material is the Bible. Just sayin'. Also, maybe don't cast Aryan-looking actors from Wales and America to play messianic icons from Ancient Egypt and the Middle East. As I said, it's 2015.
I don't want to nitpick (too late) but I remember some historian being really enamored at the fact that in this scene (where they are building the iconic Great Sphinx of Giza, the face seems to have very European features, you almost expect Michelangelo Buonarroti to be sculpting it)
But I was not only offended as a Jew, as a person with a passion for films more so. As a Jew I don't get offended that much. But as someone who grew up with those stories and no matter what spiritual changes I have made over my growing up, I still hold those stories (whether accurate or even possible) to be close to my heart. I love sitting around a Passover table and people telling their different recollections of one of the most interesting and moving Bible stories that exists, at least for people in my tribe. I came into it with hesitation, but I just had to see it, because those aforementioned miracles would have to appear somehow. But the film was devoid of any emotion, and generally empty and had no heart whatsoever. This is surprising from a man who single-handedly revived the Ancient Roman film with Gladiator and fucked up his own legacy of sci-fi horror with Prometheus.
Seriously, only good part of this film, in perhaps on of the most heartbreaking scenes. The story goes that after 9 plagues, Moses warned Ramses ominously of a tenth that would be more devastating than the rest but wouldn't say what it was. After this, the proud Pharaoh finally capitulated, and Edgerton plays all of that beautifully.
Dragged for over 2 1/2 hours (granted Demille's version is well into 3 hours and change), this film kept all of the humanity out of it, not to mention pawned off the fascinating plagues and the most fascinating thing of all whether imagined or true; the parting of the Red Sea to be neutered into something that just naturally happened. Yeah, these might be fairy tales, but hey we all fell in love with Star Wars didn't we? What neutered the whole Darth Vader evil thing? Backstory. But I'm getting off topic. Aaron Paul as Joshua was almost laughable, and the fact that Moses has to talk to a messenger of God named Malak (the literal Hebrew translation into 'messenger of god') instead of talking to a burning bush was even more ridiculous than have Christian Bale talk to a burning bush.
Demille's version is notorious for being one of the most inaccurate portrayals of the Exodus, but it was so much fun. Anne Baxter (right) plays a woman who didn't even exist much less cause a riff of jealousy between supposed brothers Ramses and Moses. Nevertheless, it was fun. And that's all filmmaking needs to be!
The only thing that stood out was the casting of Joel Edgerton as Ramses II. As we've learned from Yul Brynner from the Demille film, this is a Pharaoh that's a full on sadist. Even with his wife, he gets off at the suffering of others. And even coming close to that kind of iconic performance was a feat. I mean, Brynner totally stole the movie, especially for us women. Edgerton was perfect because he always seems to take a crap movie based on great source material (we all remember Gatsby) and make at least his performance brilliant, which he does. He's the exact type of angry and emotional that could play a conflicted and hardened narcissistic Pharaoh obsessed with his own legacy, not realizing an uprising is imminent.
You think recreating the mass exodus of over 300,000 Jews out of Egypt is arduous? Imagine how Demille did it in the 50's with no CGI?
But that's the only point I can give it. Everything else was an abomination, and not in the Biblical context, though that had a lot to do with it, but in a film context mostly. It was a white washed version of again, one of the most amazing and mind-blowing stories in biblical scripture, that both old and new testaments acknowledge. Jews, at least reform Jews (as in Jews that don't care so much and just identify as such) don't treat the Old Testament as the holy gospel where absolutely every damn word is true and though about 4000 years old should be taken literally. It's just a book of stories, at least to me, and the holidays based on things like the Exodus out of Egypt or the Maccabean Revolt (Hannukah) are based on lessons that are universal; that every man is entitled to freedom, that being stubborn will alienate you, and if you have faith, no matter if in god, or yourself, or something greater than you, you will come out on top even under the most implausible odds standing in your way. I would hate it that when I have a family of my own, and NBC suddenly stops broadcasting the classic Demille film, albeit a total break from the actual context of the story of Moses and began showing Exodus: Gods and Kings instead which i not only an abomination of filmmaking, but of biblical stories, which I am sorry but perhaps should be left alone. Yeah, modern audiences aren't so much buying it anymore, well let's just say they are disinterested. I honestly don't think I've ever rolled my eyes so much...and I've seen Interstellar.
Below, stuff on Demille's film, seriously, just watch that instead.
So I couldn't sleep and was perusing the Instants for something to watch that I'd already seen and didn't have to really pay attention to and have the sandman sleep me away. Boy did I make a mistake. I had seen The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) when it first came out, was very impressed and then sort of forgot about it. Big mistake. It's one of those quiet lightning films. Very much a historical epic, and told so matter-of-factly and with such bravado, directed by the absolutely brilliant Ken Loach, The Wind is up to par with cinematic classics like Schindler's List (1993).
Director Ken Loach on set.
Ken Loach could very well be the best English filmmaker of our time. And I say this with great difficulty because I am a huuuuuuuuge Mike Leigh aficionado, I can't sing his praises enough, and yet Loach always seems to have that subdued fire that elevates a film from interesting to unforgettable. Here's the irony. It's a film about Ireland's struggle for independence and it's directed by a British guy. Not Neil Jordan, not Jim Sheridan, a dyed in the wool Brit, and it couldn't be more visceral and more honest. That being said, Loach has been around for quite a while, slowly permeating his cinematic style. They should have a makeshift word called 'Loachesque' because his aesthetic is as unique to a filmmaker as someone like Fellini. British directors like Steve McQueen are trying to somehow imitate it, but nothing can quite compare to the rawness and the guts that Loach brings to his cinema.
The birth of the IRA
Back to the film. It's 1920, and the Irish uprising is boiling under the surface, particularly in the small provincial towns where men and women are terrorized constantly by the Black and Tans. A 17 year old kid is brutally beaten to death because he wouldn't say his name in English only in Gaelic, which ignites a guerilla spirit in the towns people including two brothers Teddy and Damien O'Donovan (Pádraic Delaney and Cillian Murphy respectively). They decide to become militant and now there's no turning back. It's full on guerilla warfare, and it's absolutely brutal. Now you might think you know about the struggles in Ireland because you listened to a Cranberries CD and watched that Michael Collins film back in the day, but Ken Loach shows you how it ALL went down, and he leaves no stone unturned. There are scenes that are downright painful to watch, and you know what? They should be. It's a piece of history that needs dramatization, and no film does it better.
There are many films about the IRA, none quite so honestly reflect its infancy and the dedication it took for these Davids to defeat the Goliath of the British Empire to win the Republic back for themselves.
There is literally no break for the audience, which I usually hate, because Lars Von Trier does that and I tend to find that selfish. If you make a film like Dancer in the Dark (2001) at the end of which every audience member is contemplating different ways to kill themselves then you didn't make the film for your audience did ya? But I find the relentlessness of this film to serve a greater purpose. It brings the violence, the pathos, and the eventual redemption to that much higher of a cinematic plane. Basically it makes it stick. And though the film is sans happy ending (I mean why should it have one?) It's about the IRA not Norma Rae (hey that rhymed), there is a sense of relief the audience receives in the end because they all now feel that they've lived through a painstaking two-hour history lesson and now they actually know some shit.
Damien (Murphy) faces the firing squad while his brother who has betrayed him, Teddy (Delaney) pleads with him to give up names of his resistance movement which he ultimately refuses to do.
Some films are meant to entertain, and some are meant to educate usually the latter we group into the documentary pile. But with Ken Loach's guidance and his cinematic realism the likes of which we haven't seen since probably Rossellini, there seems to be very little difference between what actually happened in the hills of Cork, Ireland almost a century ago and how we see it dramatized for filmic purposes. There is absolutely no suspension of disbelief here, and that is very much intentional. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2006, it deserved it, it's on Instant it's been there forever, if you haven't seen it, first of all, shame on you, second of all go do it!
