Tokyo Story

May I start by not comparing this film to a Japanese Haiku, the art of sushi, the stillness of cherry blossom… Yes, Yasujiro Ozu’s masterpiece IS Japan. It is everything that is graceful and measured, visually delicious, reserved yet with a torrent of energy running beneath the surface… But it is also more- for we have in Tokyo Story a film that transcends the cultural references so often commented upon in Ozu’s technique. Produced in 1953, this film is still considered to be one of cinema’s all-time greats. It meditates upon those questions of time and self that haunt and puzzle us to this day.

What comes through- often as a whisper- in every scene is Ozu himself. He becomes more than a director but also a teacher, a guru, a friend, guiding us through reflections and tableaux of ourselves, never judging. I can only echo Roger Ebert who says of the film: ‘It ennobles the cinema. It says, yes, a movie can help us make small steps against our imperfections’.

On the surface, it is the simplest story ever told: an elderly couple makes their first visit to Tokyo, to see their grown-up children. The children are busy with their adult, modern lives and the two elderly people upset this routine, forcing the important questions of family relationships, love and how you live life. Ozu shows us, at the same time, the bonds that hold the family together but also the necessary paths the children have carved out for themselves. The youngest daughter Kyoko (Kyoko Kawaga) still lives at home with her parents. Throughout the film she is the one still innocently holding on to the ‘ideal’ of the family. Kyoko is one of the many unmarried children in Ozu’s films who live with their parents, just as Ozu never married and lived with his mother until she died. (A complete aside but I love that he named his character after the young actress. Again you feel the largesse and benevolence of this director who raises the very smallest detail up to a higher level, giving everyone and everything their equal space in the scheme of his world, even offscreen).

Then there is the youngest son Keizo (Shiro Osaka) who works in Osaka, midway to Tokyo (as the children get older they move physically and emotionally further away). And finally, Tokyo, where the eldest son Koichi (So Yamamura) is a doctor in a suburban clinic – not right in the thick of things as his parents had imagined. He is married to Fumiko (Kuniko Miyake), and they have two sons. The elder daughter Shige (Haruko Sugimura) is also married and runs a beauty salon. The last character in the family drama is Noriko (Japan’s great star Setsuko Hara), who is not a blood relation but their daughter by marriage. Her husband was killed years ago in World War II but she has never remarried and lives alone in Tokyo.

The film observes a few days in the lives of these characters: the parents’ visit and the necessary arrangements the younger generations must make to accommodate them offering a snapshot into the realities of all their existences and the wider tribulations of human existence itself. In scenes of often heartbreaking simplicity, Ozu shows us that fine line between selfishness and compassion, the frenetic rush of modern existence alongside the ability to take time and appreciate the lives of those closest to you.

The incredible art of Ozu’s films lies in the way in which he weaves this meditative quality into the camerawork and structure of the film itself. His visual strategy does precisely what many of his characters seem incapable of- patiently observing the moment and allowing the camera to dwell for longer on each shot, each subtle movement. The camera almost never moves. The movement comes from the people within it, who are given ample space for the viewer to take in the full weight of their existence. Often he will show the empty space of a room before a character enters and will linger for a while after they have gone. The effect is one of supra-reality. Not only are we made to feel the full reality of his characters but also the energy that they impart to the spaces around them. There are no fast cutaways or overlapping dialogues – each element- including the silence in-between- is given complete and utter attention. He allows the beauty and mystery of the world to reveal itself at its’ own pace.

One very characteristic element of Ozu’s technique is the ‘pillow shot’: like the pillow words in Japanese poetry, these separate scenes with evocative images, such as the smoke rising from a train, a boat slowly passing in the distance, a quiet street or grassy hill. They represent, for me, the images we forever carry with us in our minds- that have remained so ingrained by the power of the emotion they come to represent (the distant hill in Ancora, the arranha-ceus, Albertina’s sewing machine – these are all images of a very personal emotional typology but they have the same effect of slowing you down to appreciate the life behind them).

They also make you realize the transience of this life, which is ultimately the theme this film comes to rest on. Everyone is finally brought together again when Nori tragically dies. The journey is this time for the children, leaving Tokyo and ‘themselves’ to gather in mourning and appreciate another’s life. The regret to not have done more, not have spent more time with her, been kinder to her is felt by all the family. Shukishi’s final contained outpouring of grief had me in incontrollable tears: “Oh, she was a headstrong woman … but if I knew things would come to this, I’d have been kinder to her…Living alone like this, the days will get very long.“

Ozu never once judges however. Even the most selfless of his characters, Noriko, refuses to be viewed as such or to pass judgement on the others, explaining that: ‘Everyone has to look after their own life first’. It is the bitter-sweet truth of existence – whilst life must go on, lives of others slip away, often without us being able to be as present to them as we could wish.

Ozu’s films offer an answer to this- rooted in the very substance of all the presents he takes in. We are able, for two hours, to look inwards for the people that make us.

Sur mes Levres

In sort of preparation for the much-anticipated ‘Un Prophète’, I thought I should educate myself a bit in the cinema of Jacques Audiard. I remember the last film of his I watched was the high octane ‘De Battre Mon Coeur C’est Arreté’, most suitably in the little Pagode cinema on Rue de Babylone back in 2005. It made a lasting impression, both for introducing me to the inimitable Romain Duris and because of the way its director managed to blur the boundaries between separate moral universes, never once allowing the viewer to come up for air and take stock of what was going on. In Audiard’s films you are propelled along with the characters, living what they live, forced to make the same dubious moral decisions which are the only ones available to a humanity sorely lacking in omniscience.

I can’t quite put my finger on why, but the shades of Audiard’s universe remind me of a Patrick Modiano thriller, beefed up for the 21^st century of course. Perhaps it is simply that I was reading ‘Rue des Boutiques Obscures’ contemporaneously to my first Audiard cinema experience back in 2005 or maybe it is more. Something of the crime fiction that becomes so real that its very reality is thrown into question. I cannot remember who the critic was that commented that in Modiano, his overabundance of detail lends itself to an ‘effet d’irréel’ – it was a comment that stayed with me and crops up here, once again. Audiard’s films are SO intensely gritty and real that by sheer power of detail and speed, they occasionally slip away from reality’s grasp. Both Audiard and Modiano focus on the grey in-between of this world. Which could be the worlds that other technicolour artists fail to explore: the dreary worlds of offices and prisons, average council flats and middle-age. However, whilst his may be a dirty urban star- its’ stone is cement- precisely therein lies its transcendence.

It can be no coincidence that the titles of his films – referring to a prophet, the heart and lips- point towards some inward spiritual truth. In Audiard’s early films it is the beat, the rhythm that drums out this other level. An ‘overabundance of detail’ that vacillates on the border of something else. In ‘Un Prophète’ this ‘something else’ is made explicit. I will return to it in more detail but here Audiard uses hallucinations, dreams, prophecy to lead us to the torn up insides of his world. Once again, however, blurring the distinctions by making the unreal so present that it moves and lives amongst the characters’ stone walls.

Carla’s (Emanuelle Devos) stone walls in ‘Sur mes Lèvres’ are the claustrophobic corridors of a construction firm and her disability: she is deaf. This was the role that won Devos a César in 2002 for Best Actress and she is truly brilliant as the deaf, plain, single secretary who, beneath appearances, harbours a passion and anger that makes her the perfect new star to be born into the criminal underbelly of Paris. The exposé, as it were, reveals Carla’s normal day to day life, as a secretary in a chauvinistic office where her work often goes unnoticed and she is teased and tormented by her co-workers to the point that she often switches off her hearing aid to retreat back into silence. Everything is about to change as she hires ex-criminal Paul (Vincent Cassel) who lies about his office skills in order to get a job. An unlikely friendship develops between the two, with Carla relishing the position of power she is momentarily accorded. However, this power play is overturned as Cassel mistakenly tries to repay her generosity by making an advance on her. ‘It’s what I thought you wanted’ – and the pity for the plain deaf woman again surfaces. The only element of Carla’s characterisation I would argue is a little forced in this film (and I pick the smallest hole at this precisely because Audiard is such a master of character development) is the all too facile sexual harassment that the men subject Carla to, for her plainness. Is there not something that is threatening about her disability, representing the unknown, which is the real reason for this bullying? Perhaps that is the point in the scene where Carla steals back her project to present to the bosses, tricking her male colleague… But I cannot help but feel that there is not a real understanding of motivation – perhaps this is the very question or threat of femininity that a male-orientated director is battling with (born into the film industry, following a successful paternal role-model). Women in his films are strangely absent: either not there at all (in ‘Un Prophète’ the action takes place in the most male-centric space of all, a prison) or debilitated (Miao Lin is blind in ‘De Battre Mon Coeur C’est Arreté’, Carla is deaf). This month’s Sight & Sound magazine posed some interesting questions around this thought to Audiard, worth a read.

As Carla and Paul’s friendship develops, she becomes increasingly attracted to Paul as well as his criminal accomplice. Paul realizes that Carla’s ability to read lips, from considerable distances, can be useful to his scheme. He is being pursued by a tough gang- to whom he owes a fair amount of money- and sees this as his chance to make his escape. Paul is an intriguing character, as Audiard invests him with a certain gentleness. His and Carla’s relationship is relatively equal until the action begins to speed up at the end. He is happy to be submissive to her and within her office sphere; it is Carla who calls the shots. But as the plot unravels, Paul decidedly takes control of the action and Carla is finally ‘feminized’ by her submission to him.

Cassel is such a brilliantly ‘instinctive’ actor, as he says of himself, that his testosterone-filled performance breathes complex life into the sleazy Paul who appears at once repulsive to us and sexually attractive. The whole basis for their relationship is this sleaze, as Carla rubs Paul’s bloodstained shirt on her naked body in the dark apartment, or secretly tries on her sexy shoes when there is no one there to watch.

By filming these ‘stolen’ moments from the characters’ lives, Audiard touches the vein of raw sexuality – and fantasy, intertwined. His camera focuses close-ups just off the centre of vision so that we feel we are experiencing Carla’s plight of half hearing the full story, half grasping the reality. However, this remarkable camerawork achieves a deeper understanding of those elements on the peripheries: the multiple details, the sounds of threat and danger, the peripheral characters, in short, a whole universe of the ‘too often ignored’ by the focal lens of other directors. As another mark of his cinematic world, the scenes are often cut short so that we race from scene to scene before one is fully played out, leaving it up to the viewer to keep up with the dizzying speed of his reality.

The intensity that builds is like the heavy breathing we can hear the whole time in Carla’s mind, the thumping of a heart in ‘De Battre’ or Malik’s whirling visions in ‘Un Prophète’. Is there such a place as a hyper-reality, a hyper-sexuality with such virility that we are almost taken somewhere beyond…

Spirited Away

Hayo Miyazaki’s 2004 masterpiece ‘Spirited Away’ defies the very thing I am attempting to do: contain, condense, review – how does one categorise it? Endless critics have likened ‘Spirited Away’ to a modern Alice in Wonderland… I didn’t see this film when it first came out in 2002 and caused such a stir as what people were describing as the best new animated film. For me, six years on, it still holds that title, above WALL-E (which came first in a recent poll by IMD)… for it is so much more than a technical tour de force in animation (or, to be exact, this specific Japanese animé) – it is a film that achieves an entire world view, from a vantage point that we almost no longer but just about remember. It tells the enchanted story of a little girl, Chichiro, who crosses into the realm of the spirits, with their strange and illogical rules and rituals.

Miyazaki actually draws the thousands of illustrations himself, giving the story a watercolour warmth which translates into the characters. Many of them appear initially grotesque but Miyazaki invests a certain humanity to all his characters, just like his patient illustration, by allowing for a meditation on the motivations and urges of even the most hideous of creatures.

Watching this film almost felt meditative. You feel as though you are being guided through an unknown world with the only reference point being the urge to do the ‘good deed’ – finding the light in one’s emotional and spiritual self as the equivalent in meditation.

The story is Chichiro’s mission to save her parents. However she also ‘saves’ other lost souls along the way. It opens with her and her parents arriving in a new town. Chichiro is sad to be moving home and this initial feeling of loss and uncertainty sets the tone for what happens next. Her father takes the wrong turn and they find themselves lost in the woods, before a grand entrance with a hidden tunnel.

Her mother and father walk in, despite Chichiro’s protestations, believing it is an old theme-park like hundreds of others that were built and then left abandoned, her father tells her. They walk into a colourful ‘parallel’ fairground world and stumble upon food-stalls serving all manner of delicious treats. As her parents tuck in, Chichiro wanders off to explore the park and sees a great palace before her. She bumps into another boy, Haku, who tells her that she must leave and suddenly night falls and great blobs that look like shadows begin to crowd the streets. She runs back to her parents but finds two pigs in their place.

From this point, Chichiro must face all manner of adversity to try and get her parents safely transformed back into humans and back home. The only way to do so is to take a job in the great building, which we discover is not a palace but a bathhouse for the spirits to come in and cleanse themselves. It is run by a sorceress Yubaba, who takes Chichiro’s name from her in her work contract. Haku warns Chichiro that she must remember it or Yubaba will steal her identity.

The bathhouse is filled with extraordinary characters, from the old grouch Kamaji who runs the boiler room and gradually softens as he gets to know Chichiro, to Okutaresama, the spirit of the river who comes in a stinking mess, having absorbed all the river pollution.

All of the characters have an element of darkness to them and are genuinely scary at times. The beauty lies in the Japanese shape-shifting Miyazaki achieves to such perfection in this film- drawing the light and the good from dark or evil. I felt like I had been taken back into the worlds of my childhood- those of Hans Christian Anderson or C.S Lewis- where you teetered on the brink of fear throughout, sensing the complexity of the world, with its darkness alongside the light.

The consistent rave reviews on this film are a testament to the mastery of Miyazaki’s storytelling and perception of the full emotional range of our reality. I was simply transported and am looking forward to finally watching his ‘Ponyo on the Cliff’, which is released in the UK this month.

Y tu Mama Tambien

Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Y tu Mama tambien’ is, without a doubt, one of the best films I have ever seen, and this is not for any complicated, stylistic, cinematic reasons. It is pure and simply because the three main characters in the film are amongst the most alive, the most subtle and true that have ever jumped out from the screen to me. People may dispute cinema’s raison d’être: whether it is to offer real and true connections to real people or to stylize the abstract, privileging episodes that give us access to places of the soul and psyche that remain often untouched. For me, there is no clear-cut reasoning: it should be anything that can expand your consciousness and understanding. Which is what this film achieves, on the level of a very real humanity. Critics, whilst unanimously praising this film, have been somewhat confounded by how to describe it, as it works on so many levels. Its self-appointed label of ‘teen drama’ is about as understated and naïve as the naivety it explores in its main protagonists. It is a film about a journey, a journey of sexual discovery and self-discovery. A journey through Mexico, through the shifting landscape of a changing political reality. And a journey through time, meditating upon the transience of human carnality and life itself.

‘Y tu Mama tambien’ tells the story of two childhood friends, Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal), and their last summer after high school, as they are about to embark upon the next chapter of their lives. The very first scene of the film sets the tone for the erotic charge of the story. The film opens with the two boys each having sex with their girlfriends, one last time, before the girls leave for Europe. Empty vows and sweet-nothings are spoken in a rush of frantic, eager physical exchange. The meaning of this playmate game is immediately emptied further, as no sooner have the girls left the country than the boys discuss who they are going to try and sleep with whilst they are free.

The object of their desires soon reveals itself at Tenoch’s family wedding party: Luisa (Maribel Verdu), the beautiful Spanish wife of Tenoch’s stuffy cousin Jano.  The boys invite Luisa on a road-trip to the imaginary heavenly beach, fantasizing at what they would do if she were to go with them. Luisa agrees to go with them after Jano calls her, telling her that he has slept with another woman. The beginning of the film, therefore, not only sets the story very much in the age and mind of two young boys, it also shows a very different stage in the life of a woman, who has been left heart-broken. It finally sows the seed for the unraveling of a friendship by observing the boy’s very different backgrounds. Tenoch is the son of a high-ranking politician whilst Julio lives with his mother and comes from a lower middle-class background. The film documents the boy’s trajectory from early seeds of knowledge to self-realization, or a growing awareness of the social issues at play in society. Whilst they appear impervious to them in the early part of the film, as children are, this social divide is slowly shown to catch up with them.

Many of these links between the characters’ emotional self-discovery as well as the contextualization within a wider Mexican social reality is achieved through the masterful use of an omniscient narrator. This is normally a cheap technique in Hollywood to rush through the action for the convenience of the plot. However, here it is choreographed within the story like a dancer who completes the two-piece, seamlessly interweaved between the soundtrack and action. The narration simply observes those spaces in the soul, mind and the space of time that cannot normally find their way to the surface. Early on, as Julio and Tenoch are boasting about their friendship to Luisa in the car, the sound cuts out and the narrator tells us the following:

“Julio and Tenoch told Luisa many stories. Each one reinforced their bond creating an inseparable entity. Their stories, although adorned by personal mythologies, were true. But as truth is always partial, some facts were omitted. It was never mentioned how Julio lit matches to hide the smell after he used Tenoch’s bathroom. Or that Tenoch used his foot to lift the toilet seat at Julio’s house. Those were details one didn’t need to know about the other.”

This is a brilliant piece of screenwriting. It condenses, into a few sentences, the great chasm in Mexican society that will forever divide rich and poor. It reveals how a fledgling seed of cynicism and shame is already born in a brotherly friendship. These are blood-ties dissected in the Shakespearean vein (pun aside).

This objective, detached stance allows for us to feel the full sting of the latent emotions the characters carry. The director chooses an almost documentary-style approach, allowing the scenes to play themselves out in a way that seem almost unscripted. The use of the hand-held camera adds to this immediacy and naturalism. One of the most powerful aspects to the film is that it is not hindered by any moralizing tone or artificial style. Whilst the sex scenes are graphic at times, there is a beauty in the openheartedness of the film towards the characters’ sexual and self-realisation.

Cuaron also seamlessly interweaves this expansive tale of adolescence and sexuality with political messages and social commentary.  An aspect of the film that is often underplayed is the way in which Cuaron transfers a political consciousness into the sexual dynamics on screen. The film takes place in 2001, one year after opposition leader, Vicente Fox, was elected as President. It was a time of radical change for Mexico, but the question lies in the very nature of ‘belief’ in the political change. The entire film appears to give the message of: ‘careful what you wish for’. Cuaron turns dreams and hopes on their head to reveal the reality of living with them once these become realized.

The main action of film takes place on the boy’s dream-like journey. The boys take a road trip to a beautiful, unreal place (Boca del Cielo, meaning ‘Heaven’s Mouth’) with a beautiful, unreal woman (the other ‘boca del cielo’ in the minds of adolescent boys) who fulfils what the boys had only thought of as a far-fetched unreality. To show the significance of the never-never land nature of their trip, Cuaron lingers on the scene at the wedding party where the boys are trying to impress Luisa, but getting caught up in their own inventions. Their stances are almost caricatured to appear naïve, with Tenoch pressing desperately up against Luisa and Julio swinging from the railings in his pantomime tuxedo. The name of the beach- Boca del Cielo- is invented on the spot by a child-like Julio chuckling to himself, whilst Tenoch is spinning a story for Luisa about their local knowledge, maturity and prowess.

Of course we, like the boys, know that it doesn’t exist. It is spoken about and dreamt about but we never expect them to actually take Luisa there. Just as we do not expect their high-hopes of buying packs of condoms for their road-trip together to actually come to anything. So what happens when all of these dreams come true?

To their gleeful surprise, they stumble upon the beach, as if by magic, when a local fisherman takes them to visit the islands… after stumbling, as if by magic, on a beach late at night when they thought themselves to be completely lost.

The boy’s greatest fantasy: both of them having sex with Luisa is as badly thought out as any half-hatched, emotionally immature plan. They talk about it with great bravado and machismo but have not yet grasped the subtlety of why that is impossible, what it will do to their friendships and to their own self-esteem were they both, magically, to achieve what they want.

And, magically, they do. In a scene that follows straight after a midnight jaunt of peeping through Luisa’s bedroom window to try and catch a glimpse of her breasts. Tenoch goes into her room to ask for shampoo when Luisa seduces him, calling him to have sex with her. Tenoch stands awkwardly with his towel wrapped around his waist and as she tells him to drop it, the camera dwells on this scene for a moment to show his impotence in the face of this situation. His reticence quickly translates to over-eagerness and the whole thing is over in about three seconds.

Julio, who sees them as he comes through the door, sulks like a child and the feeling is described as how he felt when he once caught his mother having sex with his godfather. The theme of rampant sexuality and betrayal is therefore set down through the family lines as representative of the wider landscape of Mexican middle-class and high society. Julio tells Tenoch that he had sex with his girlfriend and the all-night argument that follows is the first unraveling of their friendship.

To even out the score, Luisa decides that she must have sex with Julio, and does so, in the back of the car, just as fumbling and awkward and short-lived as before. This time Tenoch storms off and curls up in a huff under a tree.

What Cuaron achieves so brilliantly is this juxtaposition of adult actions and childlike emotions and behaviour. None of this happens through their own endeavor. It is all presented to them on a plate, as if to say: there you go, now what do you do with getting what you want, when you hadn’t even mentally prepared yourself for your fantasies to come true?  The political analogy is all too obvious.

Even as the boys fantasies do come true, they begin to unravel. In the scene when the three stay up drinking late one night, the boys finally confessing to having slept several times with each others’ girlfriends, ‘y tu mama tambien’, Julio says. The erotic scene ends with the three of them going to bed together. Luisa’s prophecy earlier in the car, that their showing off about women was just the mask to hide that deeper sexual urge between the two men, comes true as they wake up naked beside each other the next day.

Luisa tells them that “Life is like the surf, so give yourselves away like the sea”.

However, whilst she has achieved self-liberation, this event marks the opposite for the two boys. The end of the film begs the question of whether liberation (political, sexual, emotional) is truly possible in this life. Or do you come to terms with it whilst you come to terms with death?

Dans Paris

When ‘Dans Paris’ was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, so many people wanted to see it that an extra session had to be added. Could this be to do with the fact that the two hottest men of modern French cinema grace its screen? (Although it must be said that in Romain Duris’ case it is in a slightly less than graceful manner this time- his acting is still compelling). Inrockuptibles, the influential, hip French magazine, called it ‘the best French film of the year’. It has had praise and disdain heaped upon it in equal measure subsequently. And I would argue that in either case, all too often for the wrong reasons. Praise, for many, comes in the conceited belief in an intellectual (superficial) connection with the film’s many allusions to the Nouvelle Vague. Disdain, for others, comes from the all too prevalent use of those very same, ‘stale’, flattening references. Both arguments fall short of really getting the point. In his homage to the French New Wave, Christophe Honoré achieves more than a false complicity with people who delight in all the allusions simply for their sake. Several of the scenes are undoubtedly entertaining in recognizing this or that technique as belonging to Godard or to Truffaut… However, it is necessary to question the point of them to get to the crux of the self-reflective process the film forces upon the viewer.

There are the scenes of Jonathan (Garrel) playing truant like a grown Antoine Doinel, a bedroom scene straight out of Breathless, Paul throwing himself into the Seine in an undoubtedly ‘Jules et Jim’ manner – in listing these I am not pretending to be clever, as neither does the film. They are so blatant that one has to question what is the purpose of this magpie-like collation? Honoré also recycles his own reference-techniques. The moments where Paul and Anna break into song reminded me of his 2007 ‘Chansons d’Amour’… but maybe there is a lot more to all this playing. And playing with techniques, playfully pulling our legs, playfully forcing us to take a look at our stuffy preconceptions is exactly what the director achieves. Against the backdrop of a more serious subject matter.

‘Dans Paris’ opens with Jonathan (Garrel) addressing the camera directly, in what he excuses as a short ‘apostrophe’. This sets the tone for the film’s wider apology for its self-consciousness. This playful self-awareness is present throughout as an antidote to the more depressing questions of the dysfunctional nature of relationships and sorrow. The action takes place in one 24 hour period, from when Paul (Romain Duris) returns to his father’s home in Paris after ending his consuming and tormented relationship with Anna (Joana Preiss). As the day passes, Paul remains closed in upon himself in his brother’s bedroom whilst Jonathan disappears into the streets of Paris, avoiding his university lectures and sleeping with three women, all the while supposedly racing to Le Bon Marché to see the Christmas displays with Paul. These two men represent the polarities of the film: the entrapment within the self and the pain of sorrow vs. the pleasure-seeking thrill of abandoning yourself to joy. It is a question of perception.

The most powerful moment for me in this film is when Paul addresses the subject directly, speaking to Jonathan’s second conquest of the day, his ex-girlfriend who comes back to wait for him in his family apartment, love sick and distraught. The pent-up force of Romain Duris’ character (in character and as actor) comes out, electrifying, as Paul recounts their dark family history: the story of their sister who killed herself at the age of 17. Is it possible, he questions, to die of sorrow? Of an ancient, engrained sorrow that some people are simply born with?

There’s a powerful question ready to plunge your mind into a downward hurtling spiral. But the film doesn’t allow that. The subtle reflections on this question are in its very structure. Rather than telling, it plays out the alternatives to dying of sorrow. Abandoning oneself to a lighter perception of life- Jonathan’s acts of living and joy. Jonathan representing the narrator, as with literature, also represents the character that we must choose or not choose to be an accomplice to.

Can we take it all lightly? Check the allusions and laugh, the singing and find joy, rather than dive straight for the critical snobbery that tells us it is forced? Perception must necessarily be forced. To die of sorrow- can this be a choice…

It is a film that, against the odds of its appearance, and precisely as a result of that same appearance, leads one into questioning the choices, in perception, humans must make to cope with life. In imposing a certain playfulness over the- at-times heart wrenching- pain it explores, the film itself becomes the enactment of this mental construct.

Il Postino

I have never thought about the lyrical beauty of a postman’s job- the keeper of secrets, entrusted with fragments of human emotion that have been powerful enough to warrant pen and paper, time and contemplation. The one who remains the outsider to this vast network of passions but who also orchestrates their effect in a straightforward gesture- unconscious of the subtle power to this humility.

It is fitting that this should be the title to a film which does just that: standing back, never imposing itself, yet allowing for its network of subtle messages to create a beautiful, peaceful meditation on love, poetry and Sicilian life.

It is a testament to Michael Radford, an English director, that he accesses the very soul of Sicily in much the same way as Giuseppe Tornatore in Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. Perhaps this has something to do with ‘il postino’ Massimo Troisi, who co-wrote the screenplay. Troisi was an Italian director and actor who postponed heart surgery in order to act in the title role, as the postman Mario Ruppolo. He died the day after the film was completed- a tragedy that lends his character’s yearning for a dedication from Neruda- ‘To Mario’- all the more pathos and power.

Power because it is in the moment that the postman decides he wants to be a part of the emotional fabric he weaves that the film begins to unravel new depths to the realities of human relations, poetry and contemplation. The keys to accessing these deeper ‘truths’ are described throughout the film as the ‘metaphors’ – symbols of this world that can provoke transferrable emotions; words of poetry that can incite friendship, loyalty and love.

The inspiration for the poetry, in this case, is Pablo Neruda. The story is set in Sicily- Pablo Neruda’s exile- just after World War II. Mario Ruoppolo, a local peasant and dreamer, applies for the job of letter carrier at his local post office. Whilst Mario is practically illiterate (Roger Ebert comments that the first time we see him we think, perhaps, that he is ‘retarded’) he believes that there must be more in store for him than the dreary fisherman’s life of his ancestors. The first scene between Mario and his father shows the clash between the practical laborer and the idealist.

Mario is moved by words and romance. His life is changed forever when he is sent to deliver a letter to Pablo Neruda (Phillipe Noiret), the highlight of his so far monotonous existence. Mario becomes obsessed by Neruda and his easy charm with women, his confidence and lyrical abilities. All three are qualities that Mario sorely lacks. His attempt to interact with the waitress at the local bar, Beatrice(Maria Grazia Cucinotta), who he falls in love with, has so far been confined to staring inanely from afar. However, his friendship with Neruda is about to change all that.

It is a friendship that grows gradually and transforms into a sort of apprenticeship for life. Neruda does not teach Mario how to live but rather shows him the ‘keys’ to open his own heart to life. The analogy is poetry: through Neruda’s words, Mario is able to approach the girl of his dreams and even begins to find his own poetic voice. Indeed, one of the most honest moments of the film is when Neruda berates Mario for using one of his poems to seduce Beatrice. Here it is as though the apprentice has overtaken the master as Mario tells him that “Poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it, it is for those who need to use it.”

The balance of this film lies precisely in bringing down what could initially appear as elitist or pretentious ideas (a film constructed as a lyrical poem) to the comprehensive level of the humble peasant. This is what breathes Sicilian life into ‘Il Postino’ and allows for its ‘poetry’ to be delivered not in a purely didactic way but as a provocation, a question or a meditation.

Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Notorious’ (1946) is often described as the most sophisticated film from his early period. For Hitchcock fans, it has also become one of the most subtle and elegant expressions of his characteristic visual style. Helped along by the impeccable acting from then mega-Hollywood stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman as well as a watertight script from Ben Hecht, this was the film that earned Hitchcock the title in Hollywood of ‘master of suspense’.

Notorious is mostly set in postwar Rio de Janeiro, where U.S agents have recruited an American woman, Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) to spy on a powerful group of Nazis who are plotting retaliation. Alicia’s reputation as an international playgirl makes her the perfect person for the job. She is teamed with agent Devlin (Cary Grant) and the two almost immediately fall passionately in love. What ensues is a game of high risk, on every level, from their fiery love affair to the danger in which Alicia finds herself, literally trapped in a marriage with the enemy, Nazi agent Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains).

The suspense is so perfectly crafted in every aspect of the film- from the effective use of symbolism that permeates the script to Hitchcock’s signature camerawork that exposes the psychological dimension to his characters- that there were moments when I was genuinely torn between turning my head for the unbearable needle-like pain of not knowing who might be around the corner, to wanting to devour every moment of the perfectly structured sequences leading up to the critical events.

I won’t dwell for too long on the technical aspects of this film as there is nothing more boring than reviews that rage film geek debates about the particular effect of this or that camera angle, mainly to use code words such as P.O.V – my original thought was that this must be the camera cousin of PVC, only to discover that it isn’t anything so complicated and stands quite simply for a characters’ ‘Point of View’. Well Hitchcock’s use of the camera is analogous to this – he manages to make complicated shots incredibly accessible, in that the viewer is able to continuously draw the threads between the technique and its’ deeper meaning so that we too become agents in this game of espionage. Viewing this (indeed any Hitchcock) film- but this one is an especially fine example- you become almost viscerally aware of the art of cinema as a synaesthetic experience, drawing you in on so many levels.

I could almost break this film down and explain it through its memorable camera shots. From the very first, where Devlin (Grant) remains with his back to the camera for a large part of the scene, allowing for Bergman to lay the foundations for the complex Alicia Huberman, the ‘notorious’ society flirt and daughter of a recently convicted German spy. Bergman giggles and impetuously tells her guests, and the camera, that ‘the important drinking hasn’t started yet’, already giving us a clue as to her alcoholism and the theme of drink that becomes central to the film’s symbolism and plot. As I said, this film is almost flawless in its intricate, interweaving structure and we watch the camera’s role in this construction. By eclipsing Hollywood hero Grant and focusing on Bergman, the dynamics in their sexual repartee are set from the very start. Cary Grant plays the passively cold and unresponsive Devlin against the unrestrained, sensual and frank Alicia.

In arguably one of her greatest roles, Bergman draws together every strand of heroine: from the jet-set heartbreaker to the stoic double agent and the innocent girl hopelessly in love. She appears at once powerful and vulnerable. The exchanges between the two lovers are consistently combative and provocative and swing from the tenderest displays of affection to the cruelest, most damning remarks. Alicia’s apartment in Rio becomes the arena for these two conflicting urges in their twisted love affair. One of the shots that remains the most famous is the endless 3 minute kiss scene, which Roger Ebert notes was famous in its day for being ‘the longest ever kiss in the movies’. The kiss in fact had to be made up of wistful pecks, cheek brushings and breathings to comply with the production code but it makes it all the more erotically charged. The characters never leave each other’s arms, yet their passion remains unfulfilled. By the time Devlin returns to the apartment, the other side to their sadomasochistic love plays out. Having learnt of her assignment, which is to seduce and ‘land’ (the script only ever hints at the prostitution of Alicia in order to get around the code but the terminology used comes so close to lend it a crass, insensitive feel, rather like the U.S agents’ unforgiving attitudes to her) the enemy- Sebastian- Devlin’s pride and possessiveness manifest themselves in sheer spite. His cutting remark when she inquires as to whether Sebastian is married: ‘bet you’ve heard that line before’ reveals his jealousy which she takes as scorn and misunderstanding of her ‘questionable’ past.

This is the highlight of the film for me (aside from the theme park ride we are taken on with the camera) – the way that Hitchcock so brilliantly orchestrates the role of the individual ego and role play in relationships, which, far from ending up protecting yourself, almost costs you the love of your life and life itself. It is a profound lesson in the danger of putting up false barriers and misleading appearances. The irony in the game between the two protagonists is that Alicia, whilst having to play a role as her job- a role she takes so far to the point of marrying a man she isn’t in love with to win the affections of her true love and fulfill her patriotic duties- is theatrically honest in her exchanges with Devlin. All her taunting and witty ripostes contain an element of truth: “I was fishing for a compliment from my dream man”. That is, begging for a word of love from him to stop her accepting her mission. He takes it for bravado; too wounded by selfish pride, he cannot see that he is effectively sending her into a lion’s den. “Dry your eyes baby, it’s out of character” – a character that he creates for her to ultimately protect himself for fear of his own feelings. Hecht’s witty screenplay is nothing short of genius, in the emotional subtlety that is drawn alongside the flawless plot.

A shot which cannot go unmentioned, and is often cited as the film’s best, is the ‘key shot’, when the camera swoops slowly down from the landing above Sebastian’s ballroom and ends up focusing, close up, on the key that Alicia is holding, all in one virtuoso movement. The significance of this long shot is that the success of their mission depends on the passing of this key (a brilliant Hitchcockian MacGuffin) to Devlin in order to open the cellar and uncover the wine bottle (drink being another leitmotif) containing uranium, the ‘key’ to the Nazi plot. We are literally left on tenterhooks throughout this sequence. The symbolism of alcohol and drink is developed throughout the film- the champagne bottles running out at the party almost leads to the two being unmasked. Throughout the film, Devlin uses Alicia’s ‘alcoholism’ as another distancing technique, preferring to give himself half-hearted excuses about her illness than face up to the truth: that he cannot protect himself from his love for her. But it is the coffee cup scene where the symbolism reaches its full significance. With the camera closing in on the cup, Sebastian mothers’ knowing face and finally Alicia’s realization that she is being poisoned.

The last scene, where Devlin must save Alicia from imprisonment by her murderers, draws together all the elements from this masterfully crafted movie. A dying Alicia descends the staircase with Sebastian and Devlin, the two men who read her wrong: one for being taken in by her role playing; one for pretending to himself that her frankness was nothing more than role playing. Through the lessons expressed in Bergman’s character, Hitchcock was ahead of his time in unpacking chauvinistic attitudes to women, by placing her intelligence and courage on a higher footing. Devlin lashes out at his superior for questioning Alicia’s ‘character’:

“She may be risking her life, but when it comes to being a lady, she doesn’t hold a candle to your wife, sir, sitting in Washington playing bridge with three other ladies of great honor and virtue.”

It is a powerful statement. Yet Hitchcock leaves his male characters somewhere a little behind, still strangely afraid and mistrusting of the female. In Notorious, appearance and reality are dangerously confused, both in the games of international espionage and emotional matters of the heart.

Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde existed for me as myth long before I ever saw the real thing. Casting my mind back, now, to those childish symbols that it conjured up- guns, sweethearts, America, gangsters- I cannot help but also feel that what was passed down to me was the pure, original excitement this film carried for my parents’ generation. Watching it again, it is impossible to rediscover those ‘myths’ in themselves, for a new landscape to the mythology has necessarily been created – tinged with echoes of Godard, Kubrick, Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis- that sets off any reference points to an understanding of this film.

- Perhaps to enrich it. Certainly we have come a long way from some of the initial reviews of 1967, which reduced any meaning in Bonnie and Clyde to the comic and grotesque. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther famously decimated the film (although more famously perhaps for having felt the wrath of Pauline Kael whose exultant review on Bonnie & Clyde came to define her career):

“A cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cut-ups in Thoroughly Modern Millie”

I confess I haven’t actually read Kael’s full review and intentionally won’t until I have written this one as, aside from undoubtedly feeling dwarfed by it, I think it is also important to try to take this film on face value (i.e. attempt to remove some of the layers of myth superimposed by history but more importantly, to see past some of the hype that has given it a mythological force in criticism alone).

If on the one hand I do agree with Kael, in theory, for disagreeing with Crowther’s simplistic review- Bonnie and Clyde goes far beyond a ‘slapstick comedy’- there is still something to be said of holding on to the ‘lighter’ treatment of guns and violence that my childish self came to understand as the film’s reality.

What Crowther picks up on is precisely this jazzy, glamorized treatment of brutal violence, which was a novelty to audiences in 1967. Today, after the likes of ‘Clockwork Orange’, ‘Natural Born Killers’, or any of the more recent Tarantino films, we can hardly engage with the film on this original shock-factor level. And yet, there is something strangely disturbing about its glossy veneer- as we follow the incredibly handsome pair around towns with white picket fences and picturesque little banks, all bathed in a warm, Technicolor glow- that is hardly consistent with the violent acts the pair commit. One of the most surprising, for this shock quality, is the first time Clyde shoots a man, sloppily in the face so that half of it is entirely blown off. ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ was the first American film to really dwell on this level of gore, pioneering the use of slow camera motion to focus in on violent acts. Not the ‘fun and frolics’ Hollywood of before – and this is where the film begins to carve out its own, individual landmark on American cinema.

But the film’s glamorous appearance, for me, goes beyond mere convention or a technique to ‘acclimatise’ audiences to a new heritage of brutality and violence in film. Although I have grown up with films on the surface far more violent than Bonnie and Clyde, they do not achieve the same subtle messages that this peculiar combination of gloss and grit, senselessness and truth manages to convey. What Crowther unwittingly picks up on, in condemning the characters’ behaviour, is precisely the mindset of the characters themselves, who do not stop to question the acts they are committing but impulsively carry on, propelled forward by all the excitement. The ‘light exterior’ of the film expresses this hedonistic, childlike, thrill-seeking urge.

Thematically at least, Bonnie and Clyde was not new in itself. We must remember that Godard’s Breathless set the precedent for crooks and lovers fleeing the authorities and getting caught up in murder far above their heads. There are countless films, now, which deal with the theme of lovers on the run who perpetrate sick acts to fuel their lust for a twisted life and, more often, each other. But this is the simple axis Bonnie and Clyde refuses to work on. As a modern viewer you feel almost frustrated that they do not have a frenzied sexual appetite to match their violent acts. How perverse is that? Perhaps it isn’t actually a question of perversion but formulas that audiences become accustomed to. Violence + perverted sexuality = tick, we understand. As modern viewers, we have been fed this formula over and over again. Bonnie and Clyde offers no such clear-cut answers for behaviour and so we are left in a state of perplexity. Just as the cinemagoers in 1967 would have been but for the film breaking with very different codes that they had come to take for granted. It is a film that therefore subverts expectations from either side of its historical timeline and stands very much alone.

Exactly as its characters do. For me, what Arthur Penn did so brilliantly was to make his outlaws neither sinister freaks nor cruel tyrants. They are Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, unsettlingly beautiful and at times gawky and fragile. As Bonnie says in her poem that immortalizes them:

“They call them cold-hearted killers
They say they are heartless and mean
But I say this with pride
That I once knew Clyde
When he was honest and upright and clean”.

They (or we, the audience) cannot revert to usual points of reference and so we are forced to really take this one on its own merits and face value. The strange relationship we build with the characters is a mixture of friendship and pity not hatred for cold-hearted killers (although Bonnie’s claim that Clyde was ever upright and clean, we know form their first meeting, is a tall one. It is as if she herself has come to recreate and internalize their reality).

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect to the film is the love between Bonnie and Clyde. Once again Penn subverts expectations by making the hero, Clyde, impotent – shy and embarrassed about his failings, although openly honest about them: ‘I told you I weren’t no lover-boy’. And one of my favourite quotes from the consistently witty dialogue is Miss Bonnie’s: ‘Your advertising’s just dandy… folks would never guess you don’t have a thing to sell’. And yet their love is almost truer than many of the thrill-seeking, sex-seeking modern-day pairs. The moments throughout the film where Clyde protectively lashes out at anyone who dares cross his Bonnie, his awe for her, how they put up with each other and above all, how they discuss the far deeper issues that plague an individual’s consciousness – these are perhaps the true displays of a love that signifies ‘until death do us part’, which also turns out to be exactly the case. Far more than a lustful frenzy to satisfy basic urges.

Bonnie Parker: I don’t have no mama. No family either.
Clyde Barrow: Hey, I’m your family.
Bonnie Parker: You know what, when we started out, I thought we was really goin’ somewhere. This is it. We’re just goin’, huh?

Clyde Barrow: I love you.

Bonnie and Clyde are neither evil nor primitive, as it has often been said. They turn to crime to sate- what- boredom of small-town life? Or larger life ennui? I came across a passage in a wonderfully dog-eared edition of a 1963-4 Cahiers du Cinéma that a friend gave me. This was written about Arthur Penn’s work three years before Bonnie and Clyde but I believe it sums up what I am trying to say:

Tout le contraire d’un cinéaste de la neutralité ou de la résignation: le monde n’est pas une donnée inerte, mais le théâtre d’un combat perpétuel, qu’il faut entreprendre avant de savoir s’il sera gagné ou perdu. La tragédie, ici, se débarrasse de l’idée de Destin pour être, à chaque instant, dans le risque d’échec. La violence n’est plus un jeu, ni un spectacle, mais une nécessitée et une méthode.

Violence, here, is a necessity, which sets the characters free, closer to the instinctive symbolism of violence and mythology of a child:

Il leur faut réinventer, redécouvrir le monde à partir de ce chaos original où l’intelligence se refugie dans la violence des nerfs…

Manhattan

I didn’t really like any of the characters in this film. Which I suppose was to be expected: I think I admire Woody Allen’s films as much for the way they exasperate me as for their pure and enviable wit. Like his clever-clever characters: such pains in the neck but ultimately engrossing for all that ego that brims so close to the surface.

Of course, first to be expected, two years after the success of ‘Annie Hall’, was the same battle of neuroses between Woody Allen (here 42 year old Isaac) and Diane Keaton (here Mary, the somewhat pretentious and emancipated journalist and lynchpin in the love-triangle involving Isaac and his best friend Hale). Then there is Meryl Streep’s fantastic cameo as the bisexual ex-wife, who has left Isaac for a woman and is writing a book about their marital breakdown. And finally the wildcard, Mariel Hemingway- playing Maria, Isaac’s high school girlfriend- whose heartwarming yet somehow vacant and subtle acting earned her an Oscar nomination in 1979.

“Gossip is the new pornography”

Says Isaac of his wife’s retelling of all the sordid details that led to the end of their marriage. Manhattan is filled with pithy one-liners that contain a whole city syndrome in their punchiness and polished wit. This early one caught my attention- it was the first thing I wrote down and have since been mulling over its wider significance in Manhattan. It seems to contain the two basic strands that, for me, the film deals with: the social need for acceptance and the sexual need of human beings. It perfectly belittles the notion of ego in characteristic self-deprecating Allen humour, as it strips the intellectual force of the characters to mere concern for ‘gossip’ or how they are being received. It strips the physical act of love to its basic urge and self-gratifying, alienated form. In short, this is the self-obsession that sums up the characters’ behaviour in Manhattan.

To describe the film as a love story (at least in the conventional sense) is surely missing the point. Yes, several of the apparent ‘love’ arks are present in the film- from the love triangle between Isaac, Mary and Hale) to the realization of the unlikely yet ultimately truer love story of Allen and seventeen year-old Tracey- but none of these actually persuaded me of any depth of amorous feeling. If anything, it is the lack of love within these relationships that comes across and gives the film its real meaning. Which is that the film deals instead with self-love. In characteristic Allen style, Manhattan is peopled with neurotic, self-obsessed, highly-strung and intellectualized characters, too caught up with their own virtuoso performance to stop and question who and what it is that makes their lives worth living. The other is merely a prop or a sounding board, an emotional arena for the obsessive recital of the self.

The only love in the film that is true and stands up in its own right is, of course, Woody Allen’s love for New York. The film is a romantic tribute to Manhattan, filmed in black and white because, as he says in his opening voice over, New York is a city that will always exist for him in black and white. Some critics have described this opening sequence of one of the best openings of any movie. It sets New York at the forefront of our minds from the outset, as the character that dominates. We can forgive the other essentially unlovable characters because their neuroses are part of the energy of this great city’s force.

As Roger Ebert says, the film is ‘a breathtaking hymn to the idea of being in love in Manhattan’ (note the use of the word ‘idea’ – it is not the power of love itself but the power of the scenario and setting which seems conducive to a certain type of love). The real affection that therefore shines through is that for the scenes and rhythm of the big city. The film opens with a wide shot of Central Park at dawn and from there, takes us across the high-rise cityscape and into all Allen’s much-loved New York nooks and crannies. These are obviously still within the specific elitist boundaries of his intellectual coterie- from Zabar’s deli to the Guggenheim museum- but they convey his personal and profound LOVE for New York.

What also makes the New York setting so memorable in this film is the personal touch of Gordon Willis and his much-celebrated cinematography. I would argue that for all the highly-strung (high pitched) and frenetic notes to this film, the naturalistic and artistic images Willis conjures up provide a counterbalance that lend to it poetry and pathos. Like a frenzied conductor, therefore, Allen brilliantly strikes up all the separate elements against the musical score of Gershwin to create this sense of hopeless searching and alienation in the self. The fast-tempo, staccato, impetuous jazz sounds the rhythm of the characters’ desperate personal quests for life-affirming experiences, in their heady race through the city.

…as captured in Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ which Manhattan opens to:

Cinema Paradiso

Giuseppe Tonrnatore’s ‘Cinema Paradiso’ is above all a love story; a story that traces a grown man’s emotional journey back to the great loves of his past: from his Sicilian home to his first childhood sweetheart and at the very centre of it all, his early love affair with the Cinema. Through a long, narrative flashback (reminiscent of Fellini’s use of the retrospective viewpoint in films such as 8 1/2), Salvatore- now a successful film director- revisits his past and the people and places who make up this emotional landscape.

Cinema Paradiso is an incredibly moving film, which manages to go beyond the danger (clearly there early on) of over-sentimentalizing a specific nostalgia to engage the viewer in a universal sense of nostalgia- for the people and pasts that we all carry with us. Through watching this film, I was taken back to the dusty cobbled streets of Porto, where I would walk with Aurea to buy the bread or sitting at Albertina’s sewing machine, carving our names into the wooden frame. The film invites you to look past life’s layers of experience- that have formed our adult self- and cut to the heart of it, rediscovering the people who truly made you what you are.

The story begins with a snapshot of the grown-up Salvatore (Jacques Perrin), living the fast life in cosmopolitan Rome. He is abruptly plunged back into his past- to his homeland, Sicily, which he has been absent from for thirty years- when he discovers the news that an old friend of his has died. Lying beside his most recent fling, he is taken back to memories of his childhood and his relationship with Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), the projectionist at the local cinema- Cinema Paradiso. We see the life of the younger Toto (the mischievous Salvatore Cascio) in the remote Sicilian village of Giancaldo in the 1940s, raised by a struggling single mother, who has become a widow in the war and also by their  friend and local cinema projectionist Alfredo, who takes on the paternal role. For Toto, his greatest love at the age of eight is the cinema. Sneaking his way in at every opportunity and eventually persuading Alfredo’s to teach him the workings of the projection booth, Toto begins his apprenticeship to film.

We immediately understand the power of film to compensate for a deprived life; the cinema is the hub of activity for the locals: the place that remains full of life, despite the hardships outside. It is a symbol of hope and optimism. When the old cinema burns down, instead of marking the death of this hope, it takes it into the new era of the ‘Nuovo Cinema Paradiso’, built through the collective passion of the town (significantly, with lottery money).

Whilst at first I expected the reincarnation to bring with it some sort of negative effect on the original, childlike ‘purity’ of the cinema- and the hints at prostitution, drinking, shouting inside might lead you into that- this thought was rapidly dispelled as I realised that what this achieves is a complete stripping out of any such snobbery from film. Whilst the films being shown on the screen reflect a profound knowledge of the medium (in an autobiographical note Tornatore tells us that the theatre in his own hometown used to show everything from Kurosawa to popular Chaplin films), any elitist attitude about film is made to fall down, for he sets them in the cinema of the people, for the people. Here the villagers laugh, cry, argue, drink, cavort, breast feed, sleep, fall in love… It marks a complete leveling, which in fact brings us closer to the ‘purity’ of the medium and its humanistic power.

One of the most beautifully photographed scenes is where the Paradiso is besieged by the villagers, all desperate to watch the latest film. As the manager chucks them out, Alfredo uses a mirror to reflect the cinematic image on one of walls of the houses on the square. The camera pans in on the image, sliding across the walls, as though taking on a life of its own. Tornatore thus demystifies any modern elitist notions we might have about the cinema by giving it back to the people and letting them treat it in whatever way they deem best – which, coincidentally, becomes the most pure and true response. They are moved to tears and to laughter ‘despite’ themselves. One of my favourite scenes is where an old drunk pre-empts all the words to a great film, which he knows by heart (it is likely that he cannot read, like the two other men who have discussed this earlier) showing the simplest and most moving engagement that film can hope to inspire.

This is the undercurrent of honest emotional truth that carries through the film until the end. I found myself crying uncontrollably in the final scene where Toto watches the gift that Alfredo has left him, a memory of his childhood and a message for his life. It is a reel of film of all the cuts of the kisses from all the films that had to be censored in those early days. One after another, they hammer back the point of keeping hold of that one true love. ‘To love one person…’ his aged mother tells him on his return, that is what she would wish for him. This refers to the many strands of love on the different levels I mentioned earlier. It is Elena but it is also more: it is keeping hold of the pure loves of our childhood. Remaining true to the pure love of film.

One of Alfredo’s teachings which I am yet to fully understand is his ‘parable’ to Toto, where he tells him about the lover who, on the princess’s request, remained under her balcony for 99 days, but left before the hundred days were up, that would prove his love to her. Toto himself enacts this by standing watch under Elena’s window for days on end. Does it mean that we all, sooner or even at the very latest moment, turn our backs on the love that has made us? On a history that has shaped us?  Surely, this film and the emotional response it provokes is a cautionary tale…

Cinema Paradiso won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1989.