Ad Astra – review | a secular odyssey of paternal desires

Ad Astra (dir. James Gray, 2019)

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If the genre of science fiction repeatedly finds itself, as the title offers, looking per aspera ad astra – from the Latin, “through hardships to the stars” – director James Gray returns the gaze, turning instead to the onlooker themselves. Brad Pitt is subject to an almost painterly study, his emotional muteness viewed with an intensity that rivals Miloš Forman’s scrutiny to the expressive script of Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – the contours of skin, every facial tick, slur, or pause, as fathomless as the gulf between planets. Ad Astra knowingly plays into the traditions and grammar of space opera, its thrilling ambition met with typical unoriginality. Opening in the “near future” – its blazing red typography somewhat Bladerunner-inspired – Gray paves a transcendent, Conradian journey that staggers from planet to planet, eventually settling on the blue expanse of Neptune (a rarely used, planetary set piece). It is a story of fathers and sons, or rather fatherless sons, whose Freudian longings for something more dismantle the stability of their present. Space becomes a harbour for such internal damage, a site for the dispossessed – the lunar plane, for example, a focal point of territory warfare – which, over the course of its two-hour runtime, sees its drifting astronauts yearn for firmer groundings. Inseparable from prior instalments in the sci-fi genre, Interstellar, Gravity and Sunshine the most immediate examples, Ad Astra’s voltage inspires a sense of wonder and uncomplicated mystery with each passing scene.

Brad Pitt continues his year of acclaimed roles with Major Roy McBride, the abandoned son to famed Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) – “the first man to the outer solar system […] a pioneer” – whose career in astronomics seeks to leave the shadow of, and honour, his inherited paternal legacy. In the wake of a series of paralysing, anti-matter surges, Roy is employed by U.S. Space Command to investigate, an operation that leads him to make contact with the resurrected ghost of his father – long since considered dead. (Much like Schrödinger’s cat in a steel chamber, the father is neither dead nor alive, at first, as much a figment of imaginings as he is of reality.) Clifford had originally headed the “Lima Project”, oriented in its quest to find extra-terrestrial life, whilst in orbit of Neptune, though it had since been ruled defunct by its radio silence. Such an allure, as originally sketched in Tarkovsky’s psychodrama Solaris (and its later 2002 remake), opens its protagonist to an intellectual and philosophical risk. In space, no one can hear you scream … or meditate on life, you might also argue.

It is during Pitt’s introspective musings, as captured by a roughly-whispered voiceover (in the style of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life or To the Wonder), that director James Gray distinguishes Ad Astra from the current trend of mainstream blockbusters. Re-treading his arthouse/euro-indie roots, Gray requires more than banal thrills from his audience, daring us to wait out his silences, carefully hold each word, and allow each moment to contribute to a far greater whole. “What did he find out there, in the abyss?” Roy asks hesitantly, a question posed as much to himself as it is to a wider community. Ad Astra, moreover, is not the first time its leading star, Brad Pitt, has acted alongside the use of voiceover. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Andrew Dominik’s 2007 revisionist epic, also engages a similar effect, the dramatization of the titular killing guided with a storyteller-like, third-person narration. If to this narrative it felt supercilious, it can be argued that Gray is more explicitly successful (with the occasional laughable moment) – ponderous thoughts carried with the gradually drawn cinematography of Hoyte van Hoyten, resting finally on day-old stubble or the wrinkles in the corner of eyes. It is a wonderful and highly satisfying effect.

“I've got my wife and children and they're great, and I can find plenty of joy in that,” Gray assured in an interview for Digital Spy, discussing the possibility of encountering alien life, "[but] to rely on false Gods, the idea that there's these little green men out there that'll either save us or eat us, to me that's more horrifying than having to rely on other people." It is by questioning our reliance on myth and conjecture that we are forced, when watching Ad Astra, to re-focus our ideals, if for a moment – the fictions of space exploration revealed to be simply that, fictitious, especially when we come to realise that no other life accompanies our voyage. In this case, and by pulling the carpet from beneath our feet, Ad Astra might be said to be offer a family drama more than anything else, a movement away from cheap fantasy and instead turning inward, looking far closer, far more intently at ourselves. Clifford is a relic of this old ambition, a symbolic marker of what could be achieved, and his son a force to subdue this misanthropy, a lens by which to correct the dreams of another. “The enemy up here is not a person or a thing. It’s the endless void,” a sentiment captured in the recurring image of a helmet visor – at once reflecting space and, again, faintly revealing the profile of its astronaut.

Ad Astra is a beautifully simple picture that clothes itself with sustained philosophic reflection. If you choose to watch it, you must look past these obscuring elements to the universality of its narrative – I certainly found myself in several places. Gray undoubtedly built the apparatus of its narrative whilst looking to rival the same grandeur as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and yet, unlike the top-heavy nostalgia of films such as Interstellar, Ad Astra manages to subtly navigate its source material, achieving an effective counterweight to its intelligent agenda. Spectacle is found equally in the dazzling set pieces as it is the lyrical wonderings of Roy McBride, a wonderfully unstrained performance from Brad Pitt. It is possible that some of the ideas and their realisation here will be usurped, possibly even bettered, with later additions to the genre, but what we are given, nevertheless, is a pure example of what the wonders of cinema can achieve.

My Favourite Films: from Paris, Texas to The Wizard of Oz

From latest to earliest release date, these are the films that have affected me the most – cry, laugh, hide – and those that I will undoubtedly watch again, and again.

1. Moonlight (I) (2016)            

2. Valley of Love (2015)

3. Her (2013)

4. Under the Skin (I) (2013)

5. Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013)            

6. The Great Beauty (2013)

7. The Master (2012)

8. Killing Them Softly (2012)

9. The Social Network (2010)

10. Moon (2009)

11. Revolutionary Road (2008)

12. There Will Be Blood (2007)

13. Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

14. No Country for Old Men (2007)

15. Sunshine (2007)

16. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)

17. Brokeback Mountain (2005)

18. The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)            

19. Birth (2004)

20. Before Sunset (2004)

21. Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

22. 21 Grams (2003)

23. Lost in Translation (2003)

24. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring (2003)

25. Elephant (2003)

26. Solaris (2002)        

27. Mulholland Drive (2001)  

28. The Piano Teacher (2001)

29. Donnie Darko (2001)        

30. The Pledge (I) (2001)

31. In the Mood for Love (2000)        

32. Magnolia (1999)    

33. American Beauty (1999)

34. The Thin Red Line (1998)

35. The Big Lebowski (1998)  

36. Fargo (1996)

37. Trainspotting (1996)         

38. Before Sunrise (1995)

39. Chungking Express (1994)

40. Three Colours: Red (1994)

41. Satantango (1994)

42. Groundhog Day (1993)    

43. Orlando (1992)

44. When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

45. Dekalog (1989–1990)        

46. Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)

47. Alice (1988)

48. Akira (1988)

49. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)

50. Full Metal Jacket (1987)

51. Wings of Desire (1987)

52. Evil Dead II (1987)

53. Blue Velvet (1986)

54. Brazil (1985)

55. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

56. Paris, Texas (1984)

57. El Sur (1983)

58. The King of Comedy (1982)

59. Blade Runner (1982)

60. Fitzcarraldo (1982)

61. Vernon, Florida (1981)

62. The Woman Next Door (1981)

63. Raging Bull (1980)

64. Airplane! (1980)

65. The Shining (1980)

66. Stalker (1979)

67. Apocalypse Now (1979)

68. Manhattan (1979)

69. Gates of Heaven (1978)

70. Days of Heaven (1978)

71. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

72. Stroszek (1977)

73. Annie Hall (1977)

74. Eraserhead (1977)

75. Network (1976)

76. The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

77. Taxi Driver (1976)

78. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

79. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

80. The Passenger (1975)

81. The Godfather: Part II (1974)

82. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)   

83. Chinatown (1974)

84. Arabian Nights (1974)

85. Fear Eats the Soul (1974)  

86. The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974)

87. Don't Look Now (1973)

88. Last Tango in Paris (1972)

89. Solaris (1972)

90. Walkabout (1971)

91. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

92. Faces (I) (1968)      

93. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

94. The Graduate (1967)

95. Belle de Jour (1967)

96. Pierrot le Fou (1965)  

97. A Blonde in Love (1965)

98. Red Desert (1964)

99. The Gospel According to Matthew (1964)

100. Le Mépris (1963)

101. 8½ (1963)

102. Vivre Sa Vie (1962)

103. L'Avventura (1960)

104. The 400 Blows (1959)

105. Vertigo (1958)     

106. The Night of the Hunter (1955)

107. The Third Man (1949)

108. Paisan (1946)

109. Dumbo (1941)

110. The Wizard of Oz (1939)

111. M (1931)

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood – review | queasy, male chauvinism that tires more than it dazzles

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

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Confident and brash in every scene, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is a picture that could have only been made by Quentin Tarantino, steeped in a heady, jukebox-charged milieu. In past interviews Tarantino has noted that he makes films he would like to watch himself, the making of films otherwise a way in which to satisfy his preference for certain sights. Something of this self-delight in his own work does translate into the glorious spectacle of LA 1969 that is so artfully reconstructed on the screen. It is a world that has perhaps been lived less than it has been dreamt, but Tarantino nevertheless displays a close attention to a certain moodscape of Hollywood cinema, a transition from the old style into that of the new. (In thematic likeness, Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind works as a unique point of reference.) However, beneath the surface of this dazzling collection of moments, it is little more than another pulp story, cardboard thin and unenthralling. Uneven scenes intersect with indulged, over-drawn moments of dialogue, before climaxing 140 minutes in with an unbearable moment of violence that is without doubt the worst element overall. Little more than one of many exploitation movies conceived in the wake of Sharon Tate’s murder by the cult Manson “family”, Tarantino guises truth with a revisionist fairy-tale that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Leonardo Di Caprio plays Rick Dalton, a buffoonish cowboy figure who lands role after role as the “bad guy” of pilot television episodes, ‘Bounty Law’ being his most successful, as well as cheap studio westerns. Glued to each of his creative endeavours is his former stunt-man double, Cliff Booth, now a valet and handyman around his luxury pad in the hills. Over a couple of days in February, the duo discover that Dalton is neighboured by the newly-famous film director Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), a familiarity that becomes all too worrying when the narrative skips ahead 6 months to the time of her supposed murder. Hollywood is a playground of expectations that all but breaks the ailing spirit of Dalton, propped up by the compliments of Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) and the wake-up calls of Booth: “You’re Rick-fucking-Dalton. Don’t you forget it!” Tarantino’s most successful moments are when the two characters interact, not dissimilar to the brotherhood of Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Tarantino conjures a pulp fantasy with Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, a seeming randomness, or carelessness, to narrative development that is met by comparably aimless events. An incredibly personal topic, it is also one that allows the personality of its maker (Tarantino) to swamp its cinematic landscape – once again, everyone speaks like a Tarantino avatar – carrying us alongside his ego more than anything.

Tarantino admitted in a recent Picturehouse interview to having worked on the script on and off for several years, moving it between script and novel form, before eventually deciding on cinema as the required medium. As a consequence of such revision, the product of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood feels incredibly unformed, almost as if we were following a process of thought more than a sense of narrative. Actions have no follow through, scenes appear incoherent against one another, and its list of characters (Sharon Tate being the remotest of all) are given almost no development. Reservoir Dogs was successful because it found urgency in the scenes that took place either side of a failed heist, inviting myth to the core of its narrative, and likewise The Hateful Eight used poisoned coffee to provoke new reactions amongst a blizzard-refuged ensemble. In this instance, with the exception of the nearby Manson cult, nothing provokes change and nothing appears to ask for it. Aesthetics reign over plot development for Tarantino, the geeky, nostalgia-fuelled era a wonderful stage to reimagine … but just a little hollow when given any true grounding. Thom Andersen’s 2003 video-essay Los Angeles Plays Itself anticipates LA’s devolvement into a set of tired, iconic images – landmarks typically used in filming, such as the giant “HOLLYWOOD” sign, governing its presentation and sentimentality. Tarantino is one of many directors who plays into the ideals of this aesthetic.

Watching Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, the problem of onscreen violence (typically male, typically glorified) again resurfaces – only, unlike the period works of Django and The Hateful Eight, Tarantino might be said to have a more appropriate stake. Violence is again celebrated, not met with consequence – and does he care? No, not really … and maybe we shouldn’t either. Such violence, however, was the source of most laughter in the screening I attended. Incidentally, I found myself tuned into the audiences’ laughs more than my own – desensitised to the ultraviolence of his career, laughter for many seems to be the only resort to any display of aggression or brutality. Maybe the least funny Tarantino picture so far, I strained to find anything to laugh at across its entire running time. 

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is another very watchable picture from an illustrious and extraordinarily original director, but creative mannerisms now slouch into somewhat overfamiliar, stultified moments. 

The Week in Cinema: 29.07 -- 04.08

-- a selection of short-form reviews of the films watched this week --

Aziz Ansari: Right Now (dir. Spike Jonze, 2019)

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Cushioned either side by the Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes”, Spike Jonze directs US stand-up Aziz Ansari, on softly-grained Kodak 16mm film, whose allegations of sexual misconduct are at the fore of his show. Ansari is one of several comedians whose career has demanded revaluation in the wake of the #MeToo movement – an unannounced performance by Louis C.K., in New York, was widely considered to be premature, making no reference to his troublesome past – so it is unsurprising where the material opens, here, and where it ultimately leads us. Sincere apology is felt towards his accuser (from babe.net), undoubtedly, but the succeeding conversations slightly mar this attitude, offering excuse, doubt, speaking in whispers before lunging into high-pitched screech. Jonze shifts between tight close-ups of Ansari’s face, hand-held and, for the greater part, graded to old VHS tapes, and the occasional laughing audience member. It is a choregraphed return to basics, a stripped-back performance where laughs and truths can only hope to intersect.

The Machinist (dir. Brad Anderson, 2004)

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In the OED, a ‘machinist’ can be defined twice: it is both ‘a person who operates a machine, especially a machine tool or a sewing machine’ as well as ‘a person who makes machinery’. After viewing The Machinist, it is unclear which its protagonist, Trevor Resnik (beautifully acted by Christian Bale), is supposed to resemble exactly. Trevor is both machine maker and operator, person and tool. “I haven’t slept for a whole year,” Trevor tells his prostitute and friend, Stevie, an insomniac condition captured in the grey hues and slow-burning movement of his miserable existence. An accident at the factory leads to the dismembered arm of a work colleague, whilst sowing the seeds of paranoia and doubt as to the various mysterious happenings. Bale reverse channels Robert de Niro’s Raging Bull performance, shedding 60 pounds to attain the Pterodactyl-thin physique, skeletal to the point of almost fading away. Oddly reminiscent of Sam Rockwell’s wasted character, as the old clone of Sam Bell, in Moon, so does Bale persuade us of his devotion to the role. Filled with Hitchcock, Dostoevsky and Kafka-esque flourishes, The Machinist is an artfully-made mystery thriller, upsetting and unrelenting.

The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (dir. Bert Williams, 1965)

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Opening the selection of film restorations on streaming-site #byNWR – personally curated by contemporary provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn – The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds epitomises the kind of bad-taste strangeness, the repellent allure, by which viewers are secretly mesmerised. Although Refn claims he wants “the future [of film] to be different […] an uncontrolled place of beautiful chaos,” it is a wish uniquely satisfied by this relic of the past; a picture whose stimulations go far beyond the carnal, striking something temporal and unidentifiable. Williams buries his sole protagonist, the investigative cop Johnson, deep into the airless swamps of Bible Belt America, where (chiming with the fairy-tale mystique of Night of the Hunter) spiders, madmen, and crocodiles haunt its recesses. A mysterious young girl, Lisa, is discovered as the captive bird in the nest of “The Cuckoo Inn” – defiled, reportedly, by the wants of her absent father. Ethereal in its poorly-lit, staccato set pieces, Nest of the Cuckoo Birds is every bit as dream-like as you might expect.

The Week in Cinema: 22.07 -- 28.07

-- a selection of short-form reviews of the films watched this week --

Decalogue, “Dekalog: The Ten Commandments” (dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988)

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Premiere: 10^thDecember, 1989

Written by: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz

Starring: Artur Barciś, Aleksander Bardini, Krystyna Janda, and others

Ten commandments. Ten episodes. Ten lives whose metropolitan stories are conceived out of a Krakow housing project – occasionally coinciding in doorways, lift shafts – whilst searching for greater purpose beyond their locality (even if, with time, they do return to their dwellings once again). Each episode is as fragile as the human lives they sculpt, glass-like objects whose value does not solely reside in transparency or sequence, but rather in their independence from one another; almost as if, alike to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, each are to be murmured by wayward pilgrims, separately, on the course of some holy journey. Kieslowski orientates each episode around the breaking of a scriptural commandment. Over the course of the series, however, such examples of trespass are borrowed or gifted from one episode to another, each fragment aligning themselves to multiple rules, multiple voices. Interpretation is therefore fluid – Kieslowski has never openly discussed the recurring presence of the solemn onlooker, for example, a patient, pained witness to all that unfolds – with the intersection between sense and meaning once again vulnerable, as if the Decalogue itself might fall apart if viewed out of order. It is inevitable that what holds Kieslowski’s cycle together is in fact the people whose lives are observed, the men, women and children who are innocently watched by the camera – whether beautiful or unbeautiful, their faults are open to our judgement and inspection. Natural performances are guided by the naturalism of their lives, an aspect of its writing commended by Kubrick in a foreword to the published screenplay, remarking that “they [Kieslowski and Piesiewicz] have the very rare ability to dramatizetheir ideas rather than just talk about them.” Episodes 5 and 6 were later adapted into theatrical-length cuts – A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love – but, like with their eight counterparts, the series perfectly inhabits the short form allocated by television. Aside from the ordinariness and simplicity of each story, they closely engage with the nature of small-screen entertainment, neither too grand or verbose as cinema might demand, only small, precious, and measured works. Decalogue is undoubtedly Kieslowski’s magnum opus, the closest life could ever come to art without brushing flakes of its paint from its surface. Television everyone must watch in their lifetime.

Jurassic Park (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993)

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Opening one of the most profitable franchises ever conceived, Jurassic Parkconfirmed the talents of its director, Steven Spielberg – who in the same year delivered Holocaust-drama Schindler’s List– whilst lifting a relatively standard script to unimaginable, ever-inspired heights. Spielberg himself inevitably resembles the billionaire philanthropist John Hamond (played by Richard Attenborough), whose dream island of dinosaurs is at once, for audience of the 90s and of today, “something real, something that wasn’t an illusion, something they could see and feel.” A breathtaking classic of 90’s blockbuster cinema.

The Dead Don’t Die (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2019)

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Jim Jarmusch delivers zombified opera with his latest picture, The Dead Don’t Die, flitting loosely between the oddball townsfolk of fictional US town ‘Centreville’ on the dawn of apocalypse. George A. Romero’s cult classic Night of the Living Deadis acutely remembered in Jarmusch’s addition to the genre, but also somewhat recast, and painfully so, as glacial storytelling dredges up well-used motifs to unoriginal effect. Zombies burst from the ground in the wake of a disturbance to the planetary axis – an act of environmental revolt, perhaps – stirring up the comfortable existence of a relatively bored community; in particular, that of the useless, laconic police squad (a triad played by Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloë Sevigny). Like their past selves, the Zombies gravitate to what they previously knew – whether sports activities, WIFI, or coffee (as witnessed by Iggy Pop’s corpse) – whilst feasting on the flesh of whosoever they come across. Jarmusch’s film is peppered with glorious moments, (the sight of Farmer Miller’s (Steve Buscemi) cows galloping into the distance, or Tilda Swinton’s morbid antics) but they are short and far between. Self-conscious irony becomes increasingly painful as scenes repeat, characters circle one another, and the infrequent and tedious allusion are made by Adam Driver to the fictitious narrative. An incredible ensemble cast is unable to resurrect a half-hearted effort.

Benjamin (dir. Simon Amstell, 2018)

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Simon Amstell writes and directs a bittersweet, measured story of faltering love affairs and toppling male youths. Colin Morgan (of Merlin, The Happy Prince) stars as Benjamin, a talented film director struggling to deliver his second feature, whose relationship with men on and off set complicates his own uncertainties and groundings in life. It is a film for and by contemporary masculinity, yet one that offers no solution to its own fallibilities and errors in judgment. Comedy is weighted against thoughtful dourness, a scale that doesn’t allow one quality to slip and overwhelm the other, at least not entirely. Benjaminfelt like a collection of scenes without any apparent cohesiveness, which is likely the desired effect, but ultimately does little to reward its slow viewing and half-way pretentious script.

The Great Hack (dir. Karim Amer, 2019)

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Another ambitious, Netflix-produced documentary is launched with The Great Hack, one that will undoubtedly generate Oscar buzz at the close of the year. Amer boldly confronts what is potentially the most considerable threat to 21^st-century democratic policy, the systematic harvest of online data – virtual residue of our online behaviour preyed upon by companies such as Cambridge Analytica, who also supply resources for political campaigns such as Leave.EU and Trump’s presidential team. The Great Hack is in many ways an unredemptive tale, even with its effort to expose the legal and moral corruption of Cambridge Analytica and others, its Orwellian visions all too real and all too repeatable for the next generation.

The Week in Cinema: 15.07 -- 21.07

-- a selection of short-form reviews of the films watched this week --

Too Old to Die Young (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, 2019)

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Premiere: June 14, 2019 (Amazon Video); episodes 4 & 5 at Cannes Film Festival, 2019

Created by: Nicolas Winding Refn, Ed Brubaker

Starring: Miles Teller, Augusto Aguilera, Cristina Rodio, and others

Too Old to Die Young is the latest offering from enfant terrible Nicolas Winding Refn, a ten-part canvas of ultraviolent, Trump-era opulence. Now a popular terrain for auteur directors (Campion, Scorsese, Lynch, to name a few), event television is once again used as a fertile ground for provocative entertainment. Each episode envisaged as a ‘chapter’ – of varying lengths, ranging between 30 to 90 minutes – a typical Refn picture is inflated to a thirteen-hour lumber, striking its audience dumb with its real-time unfolding. It is not difficult to find yourself intrigued, repulsed even, by its cinematic grammar: slow, minute-length shots; the occasional, tinsel-like flush of its electronic soundtrack; or the sculpted, ultra-masculine presences that occupy each scene … to name a few. Such visual humidity lends itself not only to stupefaction, but also to an exquisite, magic realism.

Stone-faced cop Martin Jones (played by Miles Teller) witnesses the murder of his partner whilst on patrol, exposing the long-planned design of a Mexico-American cartel, Jesus, who is seeking to avenge the death of his mother. As later revealed, Jesus and his equally dangerous brother, Miguel, broil over who is to succeed as figurehead of their family dynasty, whilst both captivated by nightly dreams of their dead mother. Jones, meanwhile, finds himself plummeting into a world of sadistic violence and pornography whilst instated at a new LA district, balancing the job and his role as boyfriend to a 17-year old model, Janey Carter, whose billionaire father exposes yet more toxic sexuality. Slowly, each world grazes the other in a style not dissimilar to planetary collisions – bruising, irreparable and protracted. 

Its title, moreover, seeks to ambiguate our understandings with its core paradox: a) are these characters beyond the time that ‘die[ing] young’ would have provided, ‘too old’ to be who they were in time past; b), are these figures attempting to salvage a form of protection (or glory) once found in youth, yet now endangered by their own age and knowledge; or finally c), could it refer to people who are at once aged and ageless, individuals who appear to belong to another time yet are made to suit their present.

Inspired by the ‘video-nasties’ so fundamental to Refn’s own creative expression – you only have to look to MUBI to find his #byNWR euro-porn restorations at hand – both he and co-screenwriter/co-creator Ed Brubaker sculpt a vision of America abandoned to its own corruption. Sexual and racial violence twin with Trump-era politics in a kind of double-helix model, an axis about which each episode revolves, again and again. A self-confessed narcissist – “I'm a pornographer. I make films about what arouses me. […] Very rarely to understand why I want to see it and I've learned not to become obsessed with that part of it" – Too Old to Die Young is soaked with such private indulgence, gratuity and style. If the allurement of television violence is what Refn seeks to illustrate, or, rather, the attraction we all feel towards witnessing suffering, then it somewhat succeeds as a self-reflective project. I suspect he might not entirely know exactly what he has delivered.

Voyage to the End of the World, “Ikarie XB 1” (dir. Jindrich Polák, 1963)

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Adapted from a novel by sci-fi philosopher Stanisław Lem – an author best known for his 1961 classic Solaris, later mastered by Tarkovsky – Ikarie XB-1 stages a spaceflight across the universe in search of life on the planets of Alpha Centauri (balls of cloud, mostly), with various misfortunes along the way. Serio-comic in mood, in particular, with its onboard love affairs, stately dinner parties, and all-male downstairs gymnasium, the film juxtaposes gravity with weightlessness, seriousness with levity. Polák buries his characters within its anamorphic format, the majority of scenes shot within extensive, tomb-like corridors, its walls filled with enough flashing buttons to compete with Fred M. Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet. A joyous precursor to Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Sunshine.

The Clowns, “I Clowns” (dir. Federico Fellini, 1970)

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Inside the cinema of Federico Fellini, clowns are a familiar resident, often performing, often integral to some grand project. But Fellini isn’t interested in their profession, as such, rather their hidden mortality (often held in the face), as exposed by age, melancholy, or in the corner of the frame – white faces, like Gelsomina in La Strada, that emit a kind of emotional purity. I Clowns is a study of such faces, of Fellini’s own fascination with the art of clowns, inside a trifurcated narrative of childhood reflection, interviews, and a final requiem to a star of the stage. It is rare that a director brings new colour to a well-worn topic, but Fellini manages it, successfully, with beauty, tenderness and a reverence to the clowns themselves.

Apollo 11 (dir. Todd Douglas Miller, 2019)

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Composed out of never-before-seen, 70mm archive footage, Apollo 11 triumphantly restages the experience of the 1969 moon landing, almost as if they knew it would one day (50 years later, perhaps) be replayed on cinema screens. In many way, Miller has helped facilitate a document of social history, otherwise indisputable evidence of the past; viewed from 2019, it is such records that hold truthful against the modern storm of fake news. Similar to a current trend in documentary filmmaking, Apollo 11 features no voice-over narration, aside from material available at the time, a method that allows each image to breathe and engage purely from its visual standpoint. It is a highly accomplished piece of work, with no aspect of the work compromised or seemingly neglected. Inspirational and breath-taking in equal measure, Miller delivers an artful work of spectacular reach, a moment in time not to be forgotten, but instead celebrated as a totem of what collective passion can achieve.

The Week in Cinema: 08.07 -- 14.08

McQueen (dir. Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, 2018)

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A glimpse into the life and career of fashion maverick Lee Alexander McQueen, whose from-rags-to-riches tale is wrought into an intimate, celebrative portrait. For one who became disillusioned by the art world – untethered, by fame, from what he knew and loved – McQueen himself is grounded and fully realised by a remarkable number of voices, individuals whose lives he had enlightened, or, in some instances, severely damaged. Savage beauty is dared and trodden on the catwalks, a form of personal biography clothed within the macabre, sexuality and earthly reverence. Across chapters or “tapes” (as the documentary refers) named after his infamous collections, McQueen’s passage as artist is closely discerned, tripping between provocation, curiosity and inspired originality, before collapsing at his suicide in 2010.

Midsommar (dir. Ari Aster, 2019)

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Midsommar announces its director, Ari Aster, as one of the foremost innovators working in contemporary horror, even if the chrysalis of that genre has since hatched in the wake of his latest flight. It is a branch of cinema in process of change, an audacious forward movement – in almost every respect, intellectually and aesthetically – that dresses itself in tradition (“the clothes of a […] horror film”, as remarked Aster), whilst immersing you in a modern, sensory experience. Out of the opening blizzard does tragedy ensue for the family of Dani Ardor (played by Florence Pugh), a trauma carried into the wreckage of her failing relationship to Christian, and further, as the narrative unfolds, into the daylight luminance of Hälsingland, Sweden. Occupied in such an ancestral commune, the “midsummer” celebrations ingratiate the small group of visiting Americans – tourists, unknowingly, to a kind of quasi-pagan safari – beginning with dance, the taking of food and drink, and later in their violent, Bacchanal operatics. “It’s just like theatre,” their friend Pelle confesses, a premonition figured into the topsy-turvy world of its church, the familiar (eating, sleeping, sexual intercourse) made foreign by its performance, contorted (not unlike the countenance of their disabled, attic-bound Oracle, a product of such corruption). Events tumble into farce, whilst laying the tract for Ardor’s own, female rebirth, an awakening from grief into … well, something entirely fantastical. Aster looks to the rural spirituality of Ingmar Bergman, whilst, and more fixedly, seeking to channel the premise of Robin Hardy’s 1973-classic, The Wicker Man. In this translation does Midsommar harvest more than was perhaps intended, each film lulled into a protracted and relatively tedious exposition of day-to-day strangeness, amassing a curiosity-cabinet of oddities that work counter to its intended effect. If Hereditary found allure in choice and selection, Midsommar is an overly concentrated equivalent, gorging its audience with too much palate and colour. Ambitious and euphoric, the need to distress ultimately takes precedence over anything truly frightening, a nauseous gestation of sunlight, community and fairy-tale wickedness. In broad daylight, so are the worst horrors enacted – nobody is exempt of sight in this picture. Ari Aster is a filmmaker to watch closely, even if from a distance.

Liam Gallagher: As It Was (dir. Gavin Fitzgerald and Charlie Lightening, 2019)

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Pugilistic, brazen, self-important … but also forty-five years of age, family oriented, and with a growing sense of humility. Just a few reflections gleaned from ex-Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher, whose career since the turbulent breakup is honestly recounted – at first plummeting, but, with a few new initiatives, gathering momentum and success. Stylistic and Instagram-esque in cinematography, As It Was is largely one-on-one with Liam himself – a series of interviews and voiceovers, old and new – whilst live performances are usually abridged to highlight offstage vignettes. (In his Glastonbury 2017 performance, for example, only a few minutes of stage time are actually shown.) So much of what gives Liam Gallagher traction, however, is the ever-present memory of his brother, Noel, more sure-footed in his career, and whose life Liam appears to be defining/re-defining himself against. As It Was is a loud, boisterous jeer of self-validation, a musical act of reinvention.

Too Late Blues (dir. John Cassavetes, 1961)

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In a clip from A Personal Journey through American Movies, by Martin Scorsese, John Cassavetes emphasises the need “for […] characters to really analyse love, discuss it, kill it, destroy it, hurt each other, do all that stuff […] in that picture polemic of what life is.” To Cassavetes, the philosophy of love is the centre around which all should orbit. It is not unsurprising, therefore, that in Too Late Blues – Cassavetes first major Hollywood-produced picture – the object of love is what brings about the most damage. Idealistic Jazz leader “Ghost” Wakefield – whose career consists of playing outdoors, with no audience – meets the nobody singer Jess “Princess” Polanski at a party, inviting her to join the group. The two begin a relationship, but quickly find themselves engulfed by unhappiness. Opportunities are spoiled and wasted; the most infamous of which arises out of Jess’s declaration of love to Ghost, after being beaten to the floor by a drunkard, which he violently rejects. Cassavetes characters do not understand what love is, or, at least, they tell themselves they will never understand it. An American echo of Fellini’s I Vitelloni, Too Late Blues is a study of people who are wasted, emotionally and spiritually, left only to hurt one another and wander across the remains of the day. It is not surprising that Scorsese found inspiration in such scenes when making Mean Streets and Taxi Driver.