It’s true that the writer Miguel de Cervantes was kidnapped and held for ramson in Algiers in 1575 by Muslims. Despite the hopes of his kidnappers, his family could not afford to pay the ransom and so he remained in captivity for five years. During this time he discovered his skill for storytelling, a skill that not only amused his fellow captives but also brought him into contact with the bored and lascivious Hassan Baja, regent (or Bey) of Algiers from 1577 to 1580 and from 1582 to 1587. The whole movie is suffused with homoeroticism, which I’m not really sure was reflected in de Cervantes’ real life- a bit of 21 century mischief there, I suspect. I knew absolutely nothing about de Cervantes, and have never read or seen Don Quixote, so it was all new to me.
I loved the book H is for Hawk (see my review here) but somehow watching a movie, rather than reading a memoir, means that you are rather more judgemental because you are viewing from the outside. I found Macdonald’s grief as interpreted through Claire Foy completely convincing but also indulgent. Children are meant to bury their parents: the real tragedy is when it happens the other way around. I just wanted to shake her and tell her how lucky she was: to have her own health, a career in front of her that other people would give their eye-teeth for, a loving family and a very good friend. That very good friend, played by Irish actor Denise Gough was excellent- she actually nailed an Australian accent. The acting depicting a mental breakdown was excellent, but I found myself losing patience with the main character: something I didn’t do in the book.
Watching a movie like this on an aeroplane is probably not the best way to see it. A friend had spoken positively about it although she did mention in passing that it was long, and that it felt twice that length. I should have taken more notice of the second part of her comment, because it felt interminable. Worse still, I had PAID to watch it on Jetstar (terrible airline….) so I was determined to watch to the bitter end. I don’t know why I did because I have absolutely no idea what happened or why all these gloomy people were living in a rural farmhouse. And as for the last scene?- beats me. It was beautifully filmed, with a stultifying other-worldliness but … no thanks
It seems to me that the most dangerous time in a war or revolution is when the pendulum swings to the other side. Loyalists are now collaborators, traitors are now heroes. Twelve year old Nanning lives with his family on Amrum, one of the North Frisian Islands on the German North Sea coast. His mother’s family originally came from Amrum, but Nanning is treated as an outsider. It is the dying days of the war, and his mother is heavily pregnant and her husband is at war for Hitler’s Germany. Both parents are staunch Nazis, and Nanning is a member of the Hitler Youth. But as Hitler suicides and Germany surrenders, the villagers whose loyalty to the Nazis is paper thin, shun Nanning and his mother. As in The President’s Cake, a young child is charged with finding food in an economy of want, and in this case Nanning is searching for white bread, butter and honey for his mother, who has refused to eat since Hitler died. Nanning’s acceptance of National Socialism came naturally to him, as it was the politics held by his parents, but as the war draws to an end, he sees his parents in a new light and begins to question what he had seen as certain.
At times the film veered into some strange David Attenborough-esque nature photography, and the main child actor had an uncanny similarity to my own grandson. But I enjoyed the movie, and its slow complications
It’s all a bit silly, really. Jodie Foster plays Dr Lilian Steiner, a Jewish-American psychiatrist, and she speaks in French here, sprinkled with the occasional English swearword. (Foster has been speaking French since childhood. She used the money from Taxi Driver to buy an apartment in Paris, and it has been her second home ever since).
Dr Steiner’s practice isn’t going well. A long-standing patient is angry with her for stringing out his appointments for years, after a single session with a hypnotherapist cured him of his smoking habit. Another patient, Paula, has committed suicide- so it is said- and the family blames her. She finds herself unable to stop crying, so she has an appointment with the hypnotherapist who was so successful in curing her ex-patient of nicotine addiction. Under some very rapid hypnotism, she falls into a sequence in an orchestra where she and her patient Paula are lovers, shot by Paula’s husband, and Nazi henchmen, led by her son, invade the orchestra pit. All rather strange.
Moreover, the now dry-eyed Dr Steiner begins to suspect foul play in her patient’s death. First she thinks that Paula’s daughter murdered her, and then she turns her suspicions on her patient’s philandering husband who stood to benefit from his inheritance from Paula, which had been bolstered by a legacy she had recently and conveniently received from her aunt. And so Dr Lilian goes on her hunt for evidence, dragging along her ex-husband Gabriel, and together they indulge in some amateur sleuthing which I think finally resolves the mystery of Paula’s death. Along the way she falls in love with her ex-husband again, and embarks on a better relationship with her son. (Really, she’s a pretty crap mother and grandmother).
It was okay, although it felt longer than its 103 minutes. Jodie Foster was very good, although during the movie she seemed to transmogrify steadily into Julia Gillard. It was a bit silly, though
French, with English subtitles.
My rating: 3/5
Watched because: I was interested to see Jodie Foster acting in a French film.
This is a fantastic movie. Nine year old Lamia has been chosen from among her classmates to bake a cake to celebrate President Saddam Hussein’s birthday. We do not know what happened to her parents, as she lives with her very old grandmother who has just lost her job working in the fields. Lamia and her grandmother are ‘Marsh Arabs’ who live on the wetlands of the Tigris-Euphrates river system. Even though Saddam was later to punish the Marsh Arabs for insurrection by draining the swamplands, the people of the river at the time of this film have great fear of the President, and Lamia knows that she and her grandmother will be punished if the cake is not made. But where are they going to pay for the ingredients? Her grandmother takes her into the city to buy the ingredients but Lamia learns that she is to be left with a woman as a shopworker and she runs away. So the film turns into a quest to find the ingredients, while at the same time keeping herself safe. I had the same feeling watching this as I did with the movie ‘Lion’ when the little boy is left in the station: such an innocent child in a world where people are so suspect. The end of the movie left me speechless: speechless in anger at the corruption and disparity in wealth between the Iraqi elite and Saddam Hussein in particular, who had not need of this cake; and speechless with sorrow at the ending which made my heart sink.
I read ‘The Stranger’ many, many years ago- although the version I read was called ‘The Outsider’. I couldn’t really remember all that much about the book except Meursault’s rather listless detachment with everything. The film places rather more emphasis on his relationship with Marie than I remembered, and the woman abused by his neighbour Raymond is given a name here- Djemila. The film finishes with her, rather than him.
I know that the director decided to shoot it in black and white to convey heat, but I don’t know that it worked that well for me. The water even looked choppy and cool at one stage (although it probably wasn’t). I would have liked to have seen it in a stark, dazzling white heat in colour, instead. It is subtitled, but there is relatively little dialogue and the subtitles were easy to keep up with.
This movie is just SO good. I hadn’t heard anything about it, but I’ve been feeling that the world has taken its eyes from the Gaza Strip and the Israeli settlers are taking full advantage of our inattention. I wanted to remedy that.
It is told over three generations from the 1948 Nakba, through to the intifada of the 1980s and up to the 2020s. A wealthy Jaffa family is forced to flee their home and orchards, ending up in a crowded enclave where the grandfather still rues leaving Jaffa, imbuing his young grandson with passion for their home land.
Now, I’ll admit that this movie might not be to everyone’s taste but, attending as I do a spiritual fellowship (Unitarian Universalist) which also has its roots in 18th century non-conformism, both in UK and United States, I was interested to see this 21st century take on the Shaker religion- or as they were first known in England, the Shaking Quakers. The movie focuses on Mother Ann Lee, whose adherents believed was Christ returned in female form (she didn’t claim this herself, mind) . She was part of a general evangelical revival at the time, when there were many predictions of the Second Coming and the end-of-times. Born to a poor Manchester family, the film depicts her as always repulsed by sex, and probably takes liberties with the nature of her marriage, which resulted in four children, none of whom survived. No real wonder, then, that celibacy was one of the hallmarks of their sect, which is never good for attracting or increasing congregational numbers. On the basis of a vision, she took some of her followers to America, where they established a community and then, in order to keep the numbers up, she and, even more, her brother William travelled evangelizing and seeding new communities in different states of America. Their numbers peaked in the 19th century (i.e. after Mother Ann’s death) but now there are only three according to the internet, two according to the movie.
It took me a little while to realize that it was a musical (how strange!) and once I relaxed into that genre, it didn’t concern me so much that characters burst into song at the drop of a hat. Some of the songs were based on Shaker hymns (albeit much modernized) and the soundtrack used lots of bodily percussion with stamping and slapping during the dances.
I did find myself wondering “why this film now?” After all, films are hugely expensive undertakings and financiers need to be convinced that there’s an audience for it. Apparently director Mona Fastvold had a lot of trouble getting funding, and it was probably funded out of the pockets of Kaplan Morrison, who also produced The Brutalist. Searchlight pictures, a subsidiary of Disney, did the film distribution. I’m sure that the Christian movie production network would have distanced themselves from this heresy-filled movie, and faith and ecstasy are not a normal part of your mainstream historical movie. I found myself wondering if the movie harked back to a simpler, faith-filled time or perhaps the voluntary celibacy embraced by some young people today.
Jean Valjean comes over as the real good guy in the musical Les Mis but in this backstory, which actually appears in the original book, he’s no good guy. It’s 1815 and he has just been released from prison. Penniless, homeless and marked by his yellow convict passport, he is treated with suspicion by the villagers of Digne. He is taken in by Monseigneur Bienvenu, who lives with his sister and servant. He is a violent, frightening presence and he takes advantage of the opportunity to steal the silverware, only to escape punishment when the Monseigneur claims that he had given it to him.
This story was actually reprinted as ‘The Bishop’s Candlesticks’ in an anthology of children’s stories that my mother had before me and my husband said that he read it as part of a school reader when he was a kid. With its religious overtones and rather heavyhanded ethics, I don’t know that it would make it as children’s reading today (to say nothing of the language level). Although it’s an engaging exploration of forgiveness and redemption, which a child would benefit from, this is not a children’s film, with a fairly graphic depiction of imprisonment and menace.
My rating: 4/5
Seen because: it was a preview for the upcoming French Film Festival. It has English subtitles.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 