Movie Review: “An Education”

Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)

As you’re watching it “An Education” appears to be a straightforward film about a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who falls in love with a much older man in 1961. Later though, you begin to realise its surface simplicity is deceptive.

It is, in part, a coming of age movie, based on a memoir by journalist Lynn Barber that first appeared in abbreviated form in the literary magazine “Granta”.

Producer Amanda Posey bought the film rights and asked her then boyfriend Nick Hornby to write the screenplay. It took several years to develop the script and find the backing for the movie, some of which came from the BBC.

Danish director Lone Scherfig has gone to great pains, with the producers, to get the sense of period right. And that sense of period is crucial. Even though the story takes place over a decade after the end of the  Second World War, Britain was still not entirely out of that sense of post-war austerity. And these were morally strict times. A girl who had lost her virginity or got pregnant was considered to have ruined her life.

For the movie, the memoir has been structured and polished to give it a stronger narrative shape. The film doesn’t follow life exactly, but what is strong about it is that it refuses to make the characters simple  stereotypes. Perhaps it actually makes the older man a little nicer than he was in real life. Or perhaps not. The author did appreciate that she received an education from him, and education in Bergman and fine living and travelling.

In the film version Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is an A-student whose parents are determined she should go to Oxford and do well. They have ambitions for her, but those ambitions are firmly limited by their own sense of reality. They want her to earn a good living, make a good marriage. Academic education for a girl is not something to be valued for its own sake.

Although she is a class leader at school, Jenny does find her suburban existence, and her school life, stultifying. Her dream is to go to Paris, to live a wild arty existentialist life, like singer Juliette Greco. She likes to lapse into conversational French from time to time to show her precocious sophistication.

She is intrigued when David (Peter Sarsgaard) appears in her life. He is a good talker, funny, drives a maroon Bristol, and knows how to win her over. When he first sees her in the rain, he offers to give her cello a lift to keep it dry, and let her walk beside the car, as he knows she shouldn’t appear want to get in a stranger’s vehicle.

David knows that to win Jenny, he has to win over her parents, and he genuinely seems to get on well with them, although they are a little disconcerted by the fact that he is Jewish. He knows how to flatter her demure mother Marjorie (Cara Seymour) and how to persuade her father Jack (Alfred Molina) that they are both men of the world.

In fact, Jack is, although genuinely well-meaning, a limited man who doesn’t feel entirely comfortable in the world. We can see why Jenny, as a teenager, would resent his limitations. We can also see though that he is a good man.

David takes Jenny to a concert of Ravel music and then a night club, and introduces her to his glamorous friends Danny (Dominic Cooper) and his beautiful but far from clever girlfriend Helen (Rosamund Pike).

They talk about taking a trip to Oxford together, and David persuades Jenny’s parents to agree by saying they will travel an aunt, and that he knows one of her childhood literary idols C.S. Lewis. Here, one of the first shadows enters their relationship, as she sees him and Danny steal a rare map from someone’s house.

She doesn’t like this, and is tempted to break away, but he has introduced her to a new world and to walk away would mean to turn her back on that world. She can’t do it.

Like many a precocious teenager, Jenny does enjoy boasting about her older boyfriend at school. She likes her friends looking up at her, and dispenses Russian cigarettes to them, which they all smoke in as adult a fashion as they can muster.

Although David is, of course, sexually interested in her, Jenny decides that she won’t lose her virginity until her 17th birthday, preferably on a trip to Paris he has arranged. Her English teacher, Miss Stubbs, character is Jenny’s English teacher Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams) points out to her that she is pretty and clever, and asks if David appreciates the clever Jenny. Emotionally stung, Jenny blasts what she sees as her teacher’s deadened life. But Jenny, we realise, still has much to learn. And David’s deceptions are more far-ranging than she can, at this point, imagine.

“An Education” could be a movie about an innocent schoolgirl ruined, an older cad, and the stereotyped berating parents. It’s a lot more complex than that. The parents are as in love with David as is Jenny, perhaps even more so. And David does have genuine feelings for her. He at no point forces her into sex, or even tries particularly hard to convince her to sleep with him. She just knows she will at some point. And when she does, she is probably less impressed with it than he is.

The “education” of the titles isn’t just the academic education she gets as she applies for Oxford, and which is threatened by her relationship. It’s also the education she gets from the relationship itself. David tells her at one point that he did not go to Oxford. That he was educated in the university of life. And in awakening her to live music, Bergman movies, France, great food, and moral complexity and duplicity, David provides exactly that education for her.

It’s a strength of “An Education” that we see two sides of almost every character, of almost every event. David persuades sitting tenants to leave their homes by moving a black family in next door. That’s unscrupulous. But then it’s the people’s own racism that encourages them to move out.

Jenny’s father Jack is hardly a culturally enlightened man, but he does have a heartbreaking scene in which instead of reprimanding his daughter, he acknowledges his own part in the events that have brought them to near disaster. Many of the performances here are finely judged. Carey Mulligan has been nominated for several acting awards for her performance as Jenny, and you can see both how naïve and how pretentious she is at the same time. Sarsgaard makes David far more complex than a synopsis might suggest he would be. Molina and Seymour as Jenny’s parents suggest a life beyond what we actually see, with disappointments and trials barely only hinted at.

“An Education” itself has been nominated for several film awards and has been praised by many reviewers. You might not be quite sure as you’re watching it whether it really deserves all this praise. But I do agree with those who feel that there is a lot going on here that you cannot necessarily see at a first glance.

It is ultimately, very forgiving about the foibles of human beings, and perhaps that the main reason why, despite a perhaps too pat ending, it resonates more deeply as you consider it

In the Show – 2nd February 2010

Art and Shopping

Despite the popularity of the idea of the starving artist, most artists would prefer not to starve thank you very much. Like the rest of us, they need to earn a little money from time to time. Few people in Hong Kong have more of that money than the property developers who own our shopping malls. And some of them even spend some of it to support the arts. But the relationship isn’t always an entirely comfortable one.

Movie Review – “Broken Embraces”

In his new film, “Broken Embraces”, Pedro Almodovar tells the story of Harry Cain (played by Lluis Homar), a blind screenwriter who was once a sighted film director by the name of Mateo Blanco. At one point, after one of his collaborators suffers an accidental drug overdose, Harry tells the story of how, as Mateo, he had fallen in love with Lena, played by Penelope Cruz, and how that passion altered his life irrevocably. Gary Pollard is in the studio to tell us more.

Hong Kong Salsa Festival

And to end the show, salsa, as dancers Yanqing Choo and Richard Tholoor, singer Chris Polanco, and festival organiser Joseph Ennin, give us a taste of this week of dance and song at the 2010 Hong Kong Salsa Festival.

Movie Review – “Broken Embraces”

Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)

I invariably go to an Almodovar film with the certain knowledge that I am at least going to enter a world I know and enjoy, perhaps more on some occasions than others. For movie lovers, at least those with a sense of film history, his works are often as much about other films and film-makers as much as they are about their apparent subject.

“Broken Embraces” references Douglas Sirk, Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, and even his own early “Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown”. It isn’t Almodovar on top form, but it’s still good to watch, particularly the first half.

It begins by introducing us to the pseudonymous screenwriter Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), who was once known as Mateo Blanco. Formerly, under his real name, a film director, he was once sighted but is now blind. His longtime production assistant Judit (Blanca Portillo) helps him keep his affairs in order, and her son Diego (Tamar Novas) helps him write his scripts.  His life is going well, if superficially enough.

That begins to change when he hears news of the death of corrupt financier Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez), who once produced one of his movies as a director, “Girls and Suitcases.” Also, a young gay man who calls himself Ray X (played by Ruben Ochandiano) turns up at Harry’s door and says he would like him to help write a script. He wants to make a fiction film that is an act of vengeance against his father, who not only largely neglected him but also disapproved of his sexual orientation.

Harry is disturbed by the young man’s request, and says he will not help. He also asks Diego to look through some old photographs. One of them shows Ray X as a younger man, on set while Harry was directing, under his former name, “Girls and Suitcases.” He is the son of the dead financier.

When Diego is confined to bed after an accidental drug overdose, he asks Harry to tell him what is going on with the mysterious Ray X, and how they came to know each other . Surprisingly, Harry agrees to tell him, and the movie flashes back to 1992, when Harry was Mateo.

Lena (Penelope Cruz) is a secretary for the financier. She is also a would-be actress who formerly worked as a prostitute to support her ambitions. Her boss is attracted to her, and knows more about her past than he lets on. When her father, who is dying of stomach cancer, desperately needs to be admitted to hospital, Lena asks her employer to help her. He places the man in a private clinic. The unspoken agreement is that she will become his mistress.

Mateo is looking for an actress for “Girls and Suitcases”. Lena wants to star in it, so she persuades him to audition her. He isn’t initially sure that he wants her for the film, but is instantly romantically smitten by her.  He gives her the part.

Ernesto knows that this will change the balance of power in their relationship and is afraid he will lose her. So he asks his son, Martel (later to become Ray X), to be on the set, ostensibly to shoot a “making of” video. He also hires a lip-reader (Lola Duenas) to look at all the video Martel shoots and tell him what the director and his actress are saying to each other.  This video asks another layer of film within film.

Inevitably, life and film begin to impinge on one another. Ernesto, for all his faults, is desperately in love with Lena, and horrified by the brutal way she describes her relationship with him to Mateo. She has only been staying with him so he will not destroy Mateo’s movie. When she decides to leave him, he pushes her down a flight of stairs, but then rushes her to a hospital.

Eventually though, Mateo and Lena escape to the island of Lanzarote, deciding that their relationship and her safety is more important than the film. Ernesto, decides to complete the movie, and to premiere it, in the hope that it will draw the lovers back into the open.

That’s as far as I’ll go with the story, even though the pleasure of Almodovar movies is more in how the story is told than in the narrative itself. There are still a few more twists and turns to come, as well as at least one revelation about another character that is not the surprise that Almodovar intends it to be. We also learn why Harry said goodbye to his old life and his old name.

“Broken Embraces” is enjoyable, and is also for Almodovar a chance to pay homage to the skills of Penelope Cruz. He even has her channelling Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren at different points. There is the highly coloured art direction we’ve come to expect from him, particularly in “Girls and Suitcases”, the film within the film.

For all that, it is not Almodovar on top form. In recent years I’ve been very impressed by “Talk to Her” and “Bad Education”. “Broken Embraces” doesn’t reach those heights.

There are times here when his homages become rehashes.  A long monologue confession at the end falls flat, even as it’s bringing us a revelation or two that don’t seem all that much of a surprise, or even all that important in the long run.

Also, his characters function too much at the service of the plot. To some degree their inconsistency, or ambiguity, particularly in the case of Lena, comes across as deliberate. She is cruel at times, as well as being a victim. But in other areas, things are handled superficially. Mateo for instance does take his sudden blindness somewhat easily in his stride. “Broken Embraces” is more about plotting than about the emotions of real characters, and that draws us back from them further than we would like.

“Broken Embraces” mixes comedy, particularly in the quotes from “Girls and Suitcases” and tragedy, although it’s a weakness that the tragedy doesn’t cut very deep, for the audience at least. Ironically here, while everyone is talking about what a terrific movie the re-edited “Girls and Suitcases” is, the extended scene we see from it does not live up to those comments. In fact I was wishing it were shorter. Yet its echoes of “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” also make us realise, and miss, the vivacity of that earlier movie.

Flaws or not, “Broken Embraces” has its temporary delights. Longtime Almodovar fans won’t want to miss it.

In the Show – 26th January 2010

Alternative “Art on Loan”

Launched in 2003 by the Arts Development Council and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, “Artwork On Loan” enables people to have art in their homes even if they could not otherwise afford it. However, all the pieces on loan are reproductions of framed images of the artwork, even if sculptures. Jasper Lau, the curator of the “Wooferten” art space in Shanghai Street is organising an alternative version of “Artwork on Loan”.

MaD Conference in Hong Kong

This week, Hong Kong’s Kwai Tsing theatre was home to a 3-day conference that featured 25 speakers from 10 countries, as well as workshops and competitions. The aim of the MaD or “Make a Difference” conference was to encourage students to be more creative, in every area of life and career.

Movie Review “The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus”

In our movie review, Gary Pollard talks to us about Heath Ledger’s final film, Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”. Filled with Gilliam’s trademark surreal visuals, it’s the story of a traveling vaudeville show, a magic mirror, and a pact with the devil.

Angela Fensch Photo Exhibition

This year is the 20th anniversary of Germany’s reunification. The Goethe-Institut Hongkong is highlighting it by focusing on the topic of ‘change of time’. Until the 20th February, in the Goethe Gallery, the institute is presenting a photo exhibition by Angela Fensch called “‘Women Portraits Children 1989 and 2005”. It features images of women and their children in East Germany taken 16 years apart.

Studio Performance -” Stars and the Moon”

And finally, we present another song from the musical “Songs for a New World” which will be performed in the upcoming City Festival, as Emma Thomas sings “Stars and the Moon”.

To see a streaming video of the show, please click here

Movie Review – “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”

Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)

Like so many of Terry Gilliam’s moves, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” takes place mostly in the director’s brain. If that’s somewhere you enjoy being and you are not too fussy about how it’s furnished today, you will likely enjoy the film. For me, at the ten-minute mark I realized it was going to be exactly like this for the remainder of the two hours. Some have given it good reviews. For me it was atrocious bordering on unbearable.

Those who’ve followed Gilliam’s career will know that he’s a director whose style is mostly centred on his visual sense. He first came to public attention with his surreal animations for the TV show  “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. The same sense of the surreal has persisted though most of his work, and he is indeed visually very inventive. “The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus” is, if nothing else visually inventive, even though the newer computer generated imagery he is using is no longer as unique as his earlier more physically created images. Anyone can do this now.

The problem is that beyond the visuals Gilliam needs a good story or characters who draw us in to make the film cohere. Perhaps the most successful example of this priicniple in operation was “Brazil” but then that was co-written with Tom Stoppard, so a greater degree of narrative is to be expected.

“The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus” is co-written with Carles McKeown, who is no Tom Stoppard and not able to persuade Gilliam that his work needs more of a thread to tie it together.

The imaginarium itself is a horse drawn mobile theatre the size of a double decker bus. On its first appearance we think we may be in for a period movie, but it’s soon revealed that we are in Gilliam’s own vision of modern London. The vehicle travels around, stops at various locations, opens out, and reveals a ropey vaudeville style show within.

On stage, the aged and apparently frail Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) sits atop a clear plastic cylinder that is meant to suggest he is levitating in the air. He’s aided by a group of performers that includes his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) who is about to turn 16, Anton (Andrew Garfield) who is in love with her, and a dwarf named Percy (Verne Troyer).

In a twist on the Faust legend, Paranassus has made a deal with the devil in the past. One of the more interesting aspects of the movie is that the devil, also known as Mr Nick, is played by singer Tom Waits, although even he has an uphill battle in maintaining audience interest in the character throughout.

Just a few days before Valentina becomes sixteen, the devil turns up again, and reports that he’s about to collect his prize. Parnassus realizes that there’s not much he can do about it, but the devil, always one for a wager, decides that whoever can win the next five souls over to his cause wins the battle.

It’s not easy to quite figure out exactly how the souls are won one way or another, and the movie doesn’t have enough logic in it to work that out either. It seems that Parnassus, who was once a monk reciting a story that kept the universe in motion, represents all the wonders of creativity and awe, while the devil represents the quotidian, the lack of imagination, the dull.

The contest is complicated by the introduction of Tony (Heath Ledger), a man they find hanging under a bridge. At first they are not sure whether Tony has attempted suicide or was hanged there by somebody else. He’s a bit of a smoothy, and Valentina soon develops a crush on him, to the considerable dismay of Anton.

Parnassus’s main weapon in the battle for people’s souls is a fake mirror on the imaginarium’s stage. Although it looks like a cheap prop, it is the doorway to a constantly changing world that responds to the imagination of anyone who enters. What you experience here depends on what you are. A woman who is obsessed only with shoes and handbags finds herself in a landscape of giant pastel coloured shoes.

Within this world people have a choice. To pursue their desires, or to take the path to becoming a better person. If they choose to be better, Parnassus can claim the soul. Otherwise Mr Nick wins.

It’s the world inside the mirror that is of course Gilliam’s trademark fantasy world, but even before you get there you may be given visual nausea by his over-reliance on extreme wide angle lenses to create a sense of oddness, or aural nausea by the non-stop jokey interjections of assorted characters. It’s thanks to this world beyond the mirror that the film was able to be completed when Heath Ledger died half way through production. Shooting of the real world segments had been completed. Gilliam changed the script so that beyond the mirror he could become Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, each of whom looks superficially like him, but represents a different dimension of his character.

Essentially though, the role of whatever plot I’ve outlined is to provide a frame on which Gilliam can hang his visuals. In some ways it reminds you most, in Gilliam’s work, of “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” but even there Gilliam was rather better served by having a real literary creation on which to base his story. “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” is, and it’s not a phrase I use lightly or frequently, too self-indulgent.

Gilliam turns the movie into a non stop fantasy fest. None of the characters is ever allowed to be more than caricature, and so there’s no real involvement here.

Yes, I know I should have been kind, as many reviewers have decided to be, and said that Heath Ledger’s final film was terrific. It’s not. It is, more than anything a Terry Gilliam film, and it’s Gilliam at his most unrestrained. That’s an acquired taste that I have acquired only in moderation. If you can’t get enough of Gilliam it may be more to your taste. I couldn’t wait to get out from behind that magic mirror, and indeed out of the cinema.

In the Show – 19th January 2009

Ma Desheng

Until the end of this month, the Kwai Fung Hin gallery is presenting, at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, an exhibition called “The Story of Stone” by Chinese artist Ma Desheng. Ma Desheng moved to Paris early on in search of more creative freedom. He became part of the diaspora of Chinese artists living in France, creating ink paintings combining the Chinese medium with western forms. His career was affected by a car accident in 1992, which crippled hjim and killed his wife. He now paints again, and was in Hong Kong this week.

Two Wongs Go to Sea

Regular viewers of The Works will remember that last month we featured works from the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Architecture\Urbanism. On Saturday, one of those works, Kacey Wong’s “Paddling Home”, took to the water as part of an art performance with designer Stanley Wong called “Two Wongs Go to Sea.”

Movie Review: “Invictus”

Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus” begins in 1994, shortly after Nelson Mandela (played here by Morgan Freeman) emerged from 27 years in prison and became president of South Africa. That was a remarkable achievement in itself. What made it even more remarkable was Mandela’s clear political vision of what kind of healing the country needed. One of the vehicles he used to achieve that healing was the country’s national rugby team, the Springboks, captained by Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon). Gary Pollard tells us more.

Eric Rohmer

We look again at the work of Eric Rohmer, who died last week. Born Jean-Marie Maurice Schérer, Eric Rohmer took his pseudonym from two famous artists, actor and director Erich von Stroheim and writer Sax Rohmer. A key figure of the French New Wave, Rohmer is known for his sometimes ironic use of dialogue. His characters’ words and their desires are often severely at odds.

Songs For A New World

And in our studio performance this week, we interview Bethan Greaves, director of “Songs for a New World”, and listen to Joyce Wong and Rick Lau sing an excerpt from one of those songs.

Movie Review – “Invictus”

Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)

It’s easy to underestimate what a remarkable career Clint Eastwood has had. The trajectory from TV show star to director isn’t in itself necessarily unique;  George Clooney has done the same thing, and done it faster. But for the era in which Eastwood was making the transition it was much tougher.

Also, while Clooney has always clearly been a thoughtful actor, who has gone on to be a thoughtful director, there is nothing about Clint Eastwood’s performance as Rowdy Yates on “Rawhide” or the man with no name in the spaghetti Westerns, or “Dirty Harry”, that would lead one to expect him to so frequently buck the trend as a director.

 As an actor, Eastwood worked with some good directors, including Don Siegel, and – of course Sergio Leone – but his own career behind the camera, in his best work, owes little to them. Films like “Bird” and “Mystic River”, and now “Invictus” show a sensibility that is remarkably resilient to the demands of commercial Hollywood. And yet Eastwood manages to pull audiences in all the same.

 “Invictus” is two kinds of film, neither of which is truly original and either of which can be a predictable mess in the wrong hands.

On the one hand, in its story of Nelson Mandela’s determination to overcome racism and heal the wounds of the past, it could be one of those conscience tugging films designed to make us feel morally smug simply because we have sat through it. We’ve had plenty of those recently, so much so that even if you are already against wars in Iraq or anywhere else you can be offended by the self-congratulatory feeling you get while watching them.

The other aspect of the movie is of course the sports story, the story of the Springboks rugby team, which is not expected to win, and whether it can overcome its underdog status.

 The story begins in 1994, shortly after Nelson Mandela (superbly played here by Morgan Freeman) emerged from 27 years in prison and became president of South Africa. That was a remarkable achievement in itself. What made it even more remarkable was Mandela’s clear political vision of what kind of healing the country needed.

As a prisoner, and indeed as s black South African he had hated the Springboks and the white supremacist attitudes the team represented. Non-whites tended not to watch the rugby matches at all, or if they were forced to, would cheer on whoever was playing against their country. Not only did the typical non-white in South Africa not like the Springboks, the rugby fans disliked and distrusted the people who made up the majority of the population.

After Mandela’s election, black South Africans wanted the team dissolved. He knew that this would only serve to increase white fears of being subjected to marginalization and revenge, so he talked them into keeping the team, and its one black player, in the game.

 The captain of the team, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) comes from a fairly standard white background. His father rails about how the black South Africans will take over and push the whites out, and about how cynical he is about Mandela’s improvements, including his position to give himself a pay cut. All Pienaar really wants to do is to improve the team’s game. As shown here at least, he’s not terribly committed to politics or to racist causes. Mandela wants the Springboks to be a symbol of the new South Africa, so the two of them have a common cause. But Mandela has demands to make as well. He does want the team to go into the townships, to learn how the majority of people in the country live, and to teach them the game of rugby.

 Over tea, one of Mandela’s favourite British legacies, Mandela shares with an initially skeptical Pienaar the inspirational poem that helped him get through his time in prison. He talks to him about leading by example and – that old sports cliché, doing better than you can do, and he makes it clear that the team will have the support they need to win the World Cup.

Apart from the story of the team and its wary acclimatization to the new look nation, the film gives us a microcosm of the racial tensions in the country through the characters of Mandela’s team of bodyguards. The team, initially all black, says they want more help to keep him safe. They are horrified when he assigns a group of Afrikaners, likely the very men who would have been trying to beat them up and put them in prison before the country’s major changes.

Key to the film, although some will hate it for this reason, is the movie’s general restraint. Where most directors would have used music and dramatized situations to get us emotional, Eastwood and his scriptwriter Anthony Peckham, pull back from the elements lesser talents would have maximised to move us. The screenplay is adapted from John Carlin’s dense “Playing the Enemy”, a book that shows the intelligence with which Mandela makes decisions that prevent the country sliding into civil war.

Freeman is one of my favourite actors, and of course it is a delight to see on of my favourite actors playing one of my most-admired human beings. He brings authenticity to the past, rather than doing an impersonation of Mandela. He also manages to suggest the depth in Mandela that the movie doesn’t always want to go into. The story of Mandela’s broken marriage to Winnie Mandela is sketched in lightly.

But, good as Freeman is, “Invictus” also reinforces that Matt Damon is an actor of rare integrity. Sure. We are used to seeing people bloating up and thinning down for parts, but what Damon does here is almost braver than that. He fits into the rugby team, and into the South African background so convincingly he is almost not recognizable as a star of the movie. It’s a remarkably unassuming performance, one that doesn’t intend to draw too much attention to itself.

The movie ends of course, with a rugby match, against the New Zealand All Blacks, A match that South Africa is certainly not expected to win. As with the complexities of the country’s politics Eastwood doesn’t go too far in informing us about what’s going on. Mandela and Pienaar of course are there. The mixed race bodyguard team is there. People all over the country are watching or listening to the match. Even for me, neither a rugby fan nor a nationalist, it’s easy to see how this is a moment of unity, a defining moment for a wounded country. Of course, it’s not going to solve all the problems that the nation faces, and “Invictus” constantly reminds us of those. But it could be able to provide a moment of transcendence in a country that needs such moments.

Clint Eastwood has made a well crafted, intelligent, and worthwhile movie that rewards attention to its details more than it provides you with a conventional story. There isn’t a villain here to fight, except history. One of the successes of Invictus is that it leaves you feeling that even a bitter history can sometimes be overcome.

In the Show – 12th January 2009

Eileen Chang in Hong Kong

Chinese author Cheung Oi-lin, or Eileen Chang, wrote the story on which the movie “Lust, Caution” was based. Now the Hong Kong Film Archive is presenting a retrospective of her work. This week, we look at Eileen Chang’s Hong Kong connection, and talk to the man who has become her literary executor.

Film Review – Farewell to Eric Rohmer

For the majority of Hollywood directors, film is about big production values, spectacle, and an emphasis on plot over character. Lots of explosions too. But for the French movie director Eric Rohmer, who died yesterday, film was mostly about the human, and more specifically about how desire and the search for love could sometimes contradict or confound intellectual rationalisation.

The Guqin – An Instrument for Self-Improvement

Last weekend, audiences had the chance to hear, in an appropriately atmospheric setting, the Nan Liang Gardens, the sounds of an instrument that’s changed little throughout the thousands of years of its existence: the guqin. We talk to guqin players and sintrument makers.

Harpist Dan Yu

On the Saturday 23rd January and Sunday 24th, young Chinese harpist Dan Yu and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra reveal two contrasting characteristics of a rarely featured solo instrument. The harp. On Saturday night they highlight the rhythmic athleticism of Buenos Aires-born composer Alberto Ginastera. On Sunday afternoon it’s the classicism of the 18th Century, as they pair harp and flute as soloists for Mozart, and play 20th century composers Copland and Bernstein. Dan Yu gives us a preview.

Click here for streaming video

Movie Review – “Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs”

Reviewed by Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call”)

“Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” is based on a children’s book written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett that was first published in 1976. The book was about a town called Chewandswallow that was much like any other except for its weather, which came just three times a day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

According to the publisher’s description the difference was that “it never rained rain and it never snowed snow and it never blew just wind. It rained things like soup and juice. It snowed things like mashed potatoes. And sometimes the wind blew in storms of hamburgers.”

All this seems ideal for the townspeople, until the weather takes a turn for the worse. The food becomes larger and more copious, spaghetti storms occur, and the people ran away fearing for their lives.

The book is very simple, only 32 pages long, and perhaps notable more for its illustrations of the meteorological foodstuffs than for its plot. Essentially, it doesn’t have much of a plot.

Well, to turn a 30-page story into a 90 minute 3D movie, you do – unless you are Michael Bay perhaps – need a plot. First-time movie directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who previously worked on the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother,” had to bring in some of their own ideas while not missing out on what people liked best about the original. And they seem to have succeeded. Almost every major image from the book finds a place here.

It’s set in Swallow Falls, which is described to us as “a tiny island hidden under the A in Atlantic”. The island was once a major sardine provider, but fell on tough times after people decided that sardines didn’t really taste so good. Its hero Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) is a young inventor whose inventions and gadgets, including ratbirds, have a way of not quite working out for the best. After his mother dies, his father (Voiced by James Caan) longs for him to help out in the family bait and tackle store, but Flint can’t give up on his inventive dreams.

The town mayor, Mayor Shelbourne (Bruce Campbell) wants to try to reinvent the town as a tourist destination, a kind of Sardine World. However, on the day the mayor and a former child advertising idol Baby Brent (Andy Samberg) are to open the new theme town, Flint and his monkey assistant (voiced by Neil Patrick Harris) mess up.

Flint has been devising a machine that can make any kind of food out of water, but it hasn’t been working very successfully because he doesn’t have enough power for it. On the day of the opening, he plugs it into the town power grid. It actually works, although the excess power sends it careening through the town and up into the sky.

On the first day of the machine’s operation, it doesn’t only mess up the town, but also the on screen debut of wannabe weather girl Sam Sparks (Anna Faris).

Once firmly installed in the upper atmosphere the machine begins to suck in clouds and produce a flow of cheeseburgers, pancakes, bacon and eggs, and jello, whatever Flint asks it to create. The showers of food do what the Sardine World idea couldn’t achieve, turn the town into a major tourist destination, which changes it’s name to Chewandswallow.

At first, everyone’s delighted, including the mayor who grows bigger and bigger from eating the assorted foods that fall from the sky, but – as in the book – things begin to get out of control. The machine starts to take on a life of its own, producing massive metereological storms, including spaghetti tornadoes, that threaten to engulf not only Chewandswallow, but also – in a parody of disaster movies – all the towns that contain major world landmarks, starting with New York.

Flint, Sam (who is more intelligent, even nerdy, than she pretends to be), his monkey assistant, and the former child idol Baby Brent, all decide they must risk their lives and fly up into the sky to stop the machine. But there is a problem. Its food producing capacity has become so powerful it has begun to produce sentient food, including walking roast chickens and threatening Gummi Bears.

The film contains one reference after another to pop culture, but they seem somehow more innocent and less knowing that is often the case. The introduction of the first burger-shaped cloud formation is prefaced by a Spielberg-like montage, of wide-eyed, wide-mouthed reactions. The jokes come think and fast. There’s also one visual pun after another, particularly an almost psychedelic sequence or two, including a trip inside a giant Jello palace.

There’s another nod to pop culture in the casting of Mr. T as the town cop. And the final attempt to destroy the machine bring s references to “Independence Day” and “Star Wars,” among others.

The 3D isn’t the most dazzling I’ve seen in the past twelve months, but works well enough. Viewers of a certain age may well find themselves reminded of the Beatles “Yellow Submarine” movie in some of the food inspired animation scenes.

It’s a neatly designed script, although not ambitious, setting up issues to be resolved and then finding simple enough solutions to them. Yes, it does have more plot than the book, but the emphasis is not on the story but on the comedy and the visuals.

It’s not trying to be anything particularly earth-shattering, just a nice good-natured entertainment. In this it succeeds. Maybe you shouldn’t see it if you’re suffering from indigestion though. I doubt it will help.

In the Show – 5th January, 2010

In 1999, the former Hong Kong Fringe Festival was transmuted into the City Festival. Apart from the performing and visual arts, the festival includes cultural exchange projects, heritage and living history programmes, workshops on urban studies, and more.

It has also, each year, spotlighted different cities around the region, including Adelaide, Kaohsiung, Seoul, Bangkok, Shanghai, and Singapore.

This year, it’s looking a little closer to home, to Guangdong, and among the acts featured will be many Guangdong-based folk musicians.

Three years ago, producer Emmanuel Benbihy asked 21 directors to each make a short segment focusing on a different neighbourhood of Paris. For a movie called “Paris, je t’aime”. Now he’s returned with a similar formula in “New York, I love you”. This time there are fewer directors, and perhaps New York doesn’t have quite the same romantic cachet as Paris. Gary Pollard tells us more.

The day before we aired was the final day of the Hong Kong-Pinoy Theatre Festival, which had been running since December 4th. Organised by The Asian People’s Theatre Festival Society, it included a series of workshops that encouraged people from different ethnic groups to share their stories. We spoke to some of the participants.

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