225. Bridget Jones's Diary

Song - The Closest Thing To Crazy (Katie Melua)

Movie: Bridget Jones's Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001)

I had seen this before, but only remembered the ending and the scene where Mark (Colin Firth) tells Bridget (Renee Zellweger) that he likes her 'just the way she is." For good reason, as it's just about the only time the film feels genuinely romantic, and lets it characters express their feelings towards each other in a way that makes clear that they have thought about, and observed, each other. It's the one time the film is willing to accept that love and attraction are not just abstract concepts, but stem from real, recognisable human behaviour. The moment comes just after the perpetually single Bridget has fled a dinner party filled with married couples asking her obnoxious questions and giving her condescending advice. Each couple get its own brief introduction, with the actors seemingly given the instruction to present themselves as smugly as possible. The film takes on Bridget's perspective in looking at these couples with contempt, while at the same time sharing their view of her. I found it quite offputting and unpleasant.

The film goes to great lengths to humiliate Bridget as much as possible and a large part of it consists of situations that are contrived to showcase her incompetencies and inadequacies. Multiple scenes exist only to show that she lacks the skills and abilities to do her job, either as a publicist or as a television presenter, and have no punchline beyond that. A scene that shows that she doesn't know how to cook only exists so that Mark can help her and her friends can laugh at her. Zellweger gained weight to play Bridget and to appear as somewhat unattractive, yet the film makes explicitly clear that "her rack" is the main reason men are attracted to her. As mentioned earlier, the film doesn't have a particularly appealing view of love, seeing relationships mostly as necessary because of the social respect and acceptance they bring, barely ever trying to highlight (emotional or sexual) attraction, and having even less interest in conveying joy and pleasure in dating, or in just being around people in general.  

It does have a bit of a spark in the scenes between Hugh Grant and Zellweger, but that's mostly because the two actors are at the peak of their powers here, and find chemistry where there is none. The calculated, almost purely transactional view of love seen in their relationship also comes back in the scenes between Bridget's mum and dad (Gemma Jones and Jim Broadbent), and in the scenes between Mark and Stephanie (Embeth Davidtz) though in that case at least the lack of attraction in their preordained relationship is presented as undesirable. Ultimately though, all these issues would be, at least, mitigated with a more appealing, less punishing view of Bridget. Aside from it being dull, it makes Bridget not really belong to any recognisable subculture/demographic, with the exception of being a single thirtysomething, She is a young professional in the creative sector who has basically nothing in common with any of her peers. It gives the impression that she is devised as a strawman against which well-off singles can comfortably compare their own lives. 

224. La Haine

Song - Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (Edith Piaf)

Movie: La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)

At the introduction of our Media Studies screening of La Haine, we were told to pay special attention to the scene where a DJ mixes a French rap telling us to 'Fuck the Police' over Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien. The idea being that the French banlieu is taking over French mainstream culture and society. That is a fair interpretation, and I am sure is part of the intent behind the remix, but that's not the main reason why the scene works. As the DJ blasts his song from his top floor appartment the camera floats through the neighborhood, past all the council flats and playgrounds filled with people enjoying the unusual sound created by mixing Piaf's soft voice with the rap's aggresiveness. It's a celebration of the culture that binds this community, and it is directly followed by a scene in which Vinz (Vincent Cassel) is confused by a cow passing by in the street. The sight of the cow is funny, as is Vinz' bewildered look, but there is also a surreal feeling to the scene. We only see the cow from Vinz' point of view, and it may well only exist in his mind. These two scenes are a good summary of why this film works. It is genuinely interested in the lives and minds of the dissafected youths it depicts, rather than in looking from afar and lamenting the state of affairs. It's no surprise that it has a less nuanced view of journalists and news producers than of cops. 

It follows through on its belief that the lives of these people are interesting, by depicting them in an interesting way. It's of course shot in black and white, and plays around with jump cuts and all kinds of other strange visual and and aural effects during scene transitions. There are moments of magical realism, such as the scene where one of the characters clicks his fingers and turns off the light of the Eiffel Tower. It has unusal shot compositions; often we'll see an extreme close-up in half a frame, with the other half being occupied by some action in the background. As Vinz, Hubert (Hubert Kounde) and Said (Said Taghmaoui) try to make sense of their community and their lives after a day of deadly riots, they are acting cool, talking shit and making shooting gestures at the camera, inviting the audience to follow their example. They meet violent cops in police custody, an old, strange Russian raconteur in a public toilet, and a guy named Asterix (subtitled as Snoopy for some reason), swinging around with nunchakus in his underwear in a a fancy Paris apartment, in a wonderfully absurd detour that plays as it could have inspired the 'Sister Christian' scene in Boogie Nights. 

Not everything in the film works, but it's always entertaining. It has swagger, sightly obnoxious swagger even. That's good! The Dutch director Sam de Jong, who made Prins, a film about Dutch multicultural street youths that's much more optimistic than La Haine, said that when shooting the film he always thought that it should be enjoyed by the milieu and the characters it depicts. I really like this idea, and it definitely applies to La Haine. The characters we see in this film would absolutely love the shit out of it. It's not just about them, but it's also for them. It's an indictment of French (film) culture that since La Haine it has, to my knowledge, barely produced any high profile movies about the banlieus/the disenchanted multicultural French youth that actually follow the approach of Kassovitz here. The brilliant Nocturama may be the most relevant exception. 

223. The Birds

Song - Albatross (Fleetwood Mac)

Movie: The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

You watch this with a smile on your face and a knot in your stomach. It's completely glorious from the opening scenes, and Melanie's (Tippi Hedren) arrival at the school signals the beginning of one of the most successfuly sustained stretches of sublimely inspired filmmaking I've ever seen. From there onward the film consists of one elaborate suspense sequence after another (the absolute highlight is the diner scene, which hilariously and steadily keeps increasing the people taking part in a conversation, derailing it from its main point and purpose, until there is a sudden disturbance at the gas station across the street), with the conclusion of each setpiece serving as the setup fot the next one. 

If this isn't enough, The Birds also has great dialogue, fantastically realised characters, an eerily effective sound design that makes the flapping of bird wings sound like war in an industrial zone, and an unbelievable commitment to craft. Creating mechanical birds that look completely realistic in close up is impressive in and of itself; training actual birds to attack actors in a way that fits the overarching vision and story is an act of gloriously irrational confidence. Hitchcock then goes even one step further by seamlessly combining the two approaches, allowing him to create some deeply uncomfortable shots, isolating frightened humans vis-à-vis large amounts of agressive looking birds on the verge of attack. Praising all this, one would almost forget that the performances are as accomplished as everything else. Even the smallest of roles is imbued with genuine, authentic character touches; for evidence, look at the waitress screaming to warn the gas pumping man about to be blown up. This directly leads to a brilliant shot of the city on fire, seen from the point of view of birds descending on it, which is shortly afterwards followed by a series of almost abstract closeups of Hedren shielding from the threat in a phone booth. 

Hitchcock's firing on all cilinders here, but he also somehow feels more disciplined than usual. The Birds follows what may well be the most influential three film stretch in cinema history, but it is to me far superior to North By Northwest, Psycho, or Vertigo. All three films are interesting, but I've always found them a bit frustrating as they feel hermetically sealed off from the real world, tying themselves up in knots to force their 'Hitchcockian' obsessions. The key to what makes The Birds special is the recognisable ordinariness surrounding the angry brids, most notably the budding romance between Melanie and Mitch (Rod Taylor). They are irresponsible playful lovebirds when they can be and mature adults when they need be.

In my piece on Portrait of A Lady on Fire, I wrote that the film understands that love is not something that encompasses and defines the entirety of our lifes, but rather that it is special, because it is something that you have to make time for next to the ordinary responsibilities of daily life. The Birds is another film that gets this. We get to know Taylor and Hedren as goofballs who fall in love with each other while playfully exploring their crush. They also understand that their love might be challenging for Mitch's mom Lydia (Jessica Tandy), who has lost her husband four years ago and is now terrified of being left to live alone, as well as to Annie (Suzanne Pleshette), a former flame of Mitch, currently a good friend of the family and the schoolteacher of Mitch's much younger sister. 

The film takes its time in portraying this challenging situation, making clear that Annie and Lydia don't feel too easy about what's happening, while also being mature and loving enough to understand that they should adapt to the situation. At the same time, Melanie and Mitch, aware of the feelings of these people they care about, are careful and delicate in their behavior towards them. As a result, the potential challenges to the film's central relationship are solved relatively painlessly, because all key characters are reasonably well-adjusted human beings who respond plausibly to kindness, pleasantness and love. This applies to Bodega Bay as a whole. It's an ordinarily pleasant place to be. There are no hidden disturbances beneeth the surface, but it's not an utopia either. Similarly, as a place that is one hour away from San Franciscio, it's not a great metropolis, but it's also not a town that finds the need to define itself in opposition to the big city. 

Hitchcock establishes the city and the characters' relationships long before the birds attack, which allows the attacks to be a fully separate phenomenon. They are no metaphor for anything, they don't serve a lesson to Bodega Bay or to its people, they are no punishment or premonition, and they don't give us any insights into Bodega Bay, Mitch or Melanie. They are just a thing that can't be explained and that has no rhyme or reason to exist, and not just from the fictional perspective of Bodega Bay. The film itself could easily exist without the birds. It would just be a comfortable romantic comedy about two likable mature people with a shared sense of humor, a shared love for each other and the people around them and a shared commitment to this love. This set up just makes the bird attacks, and the characters' response to them, more visceral, more uncomfortable and more tense. 

222. The Crying Game

Song - Lola (The Kinks)

Movie: The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)

Aside from the lads in Four Lions, Fergus (Stephen Rea) may be the least sutable terrorist recruit in cinema. He is not the quickest of wits, and neither the world's most physical guy nor its most passionate. He is also naive and easily manipulable. Everything that happens in the film is basically the consequence of him being led on to do something he either doesn't want to do, or wouldn't be doing if he used his brain. Rea plays Fergus as a kindhearted person, who genuinely wants to do good in the world, but doesn't know his place in it. It's as unwise to volunteer for the IRA when you don't have a firm grasp of your loyalties or your ideals, as it is to date a transgender person if you are unsure about your feelings and sexuality. In both cases, Fergus doesn't seem to have great commitment to the cause. It feels like he does things mostly because he accidentally stumbles into situations he doesn't know how to get out of, and wouldn't know what to do with his life even if he did. 

I think this characterisation of Fergus is the strongest, most interesting part of the film. Which is also why it doesn't matter all that much if you know the big twist in advance (also it's not the only unexpected turn the movie takes), namely that Dil (Jaye Davidson) who presents herself as a woman, is a biological male. It's in retrospect quite amusing that the film's producers (led by Harvey Weinstein) made quite a show of telling critics and audiences not to spoil the twist, when it's an important plot point that Fergus should have been aware of what's going on. Besides that, the more subversive element of the film may be that Fergus' obsession with Jody (Forest Whitaker), a British cricket-loving soldier who dies in the IRA-plot Fergus botches, is the reason he seeks out Dil in the first place. It's relatively ambiguous to what extent Fergus is still attracted to Dil after finding out the truth about her. On the other hand, he takes up a job as a construction worker next to a cricket field, and wakes up in the middle of the night in cold sweat after dreams of a cozily-dressed Forest Whitaker pitching at him. In any case, it's probably too easy to say this when you know the twist in advance, and when you watch this film in 2023 when queer genders and sexualities are much more present in mainstream media, but from the moment Dil's on screen it seems pretty transparent what's going on. That's not a knock on the film, in fact, it only makes it more fun. It's clear how much it enjoys slowly giving you visual and narrative cues to build up to the big moment, though there are just a bit too many events in the film which sacrifice belevable characterisation for smooth storytelling. 

That smooth storytelling is in great hands though. Jordan is a great director who effortlessly turns his film from a hostage thriller into a romantic drama, and then into lurid pulp. Near the end, there is a sequence crosccuting between an IRA assasination plot and the central confict between Dil and Fergus,  that is filled with so much tension, surprise and original character beats, it's a reminder of why a good Hollywood mainstream thriller can be the ideal of movie fun. It also makes the way over-the-top ending much more palatable than it would have otherwise been. It's helped by Miranda Richardson, who finds great delight in injecting her flirty, resourcesful IRA asssasin with a huge dash of 90's ironic cool. Jim Broadbent too deserves a shout out for his small role. He plays his characterstic kindly, somewhat corny, working class father figure, portraying a waiter in the bar Dil and her friends attend. He mostly serves as msidrection - focusing on him you may miss that this is not the kind of bar folks like him tend to attend -, but still manages in his brief time to give his character a compelling inner life.  

221. The Dead

Song - The Family Tree (Venice)

Movie: The Dead (John Huston, 1987)

Similarly to Toni Erdmann and The Farewell, this is a film that should speak to Eastern European immigrants (and their loved ones that remain behind), despite not being remotely about them. It's about a Dublin gathering of family and friends taking place on 6 January. In Christian-Orthodox cultures that is Christmas Eve, in Ireland it is Epiphany, which is ostensibly what this crowd here is celebrating. But The Dead doesn't present this as a celebration of a cultural religious holiday, but as a celebration of a family tradition, not unlike the namedays that are quite popular in Eastern Europe, which are essentially family gatherings that celebrate their own existence. They are attended by blood relatives and others who are close to the family, and there is always somoene there whose presence and connection to everyone else is a bit inexplicable, especially to the younger generations. One of my favourite things about The Dead is that you are not always very sure how everone is related to one another and why they belong to the party. Yet Huston also makes clear that everyone is beloved by all, takes care of all, and genuinely enjoys each other's company, without necessarily having the time of their lives. The conversation may not always be enthralling, but that's part of the point. The party is about showing love, respect and courtesy to people who matter, have mattered of could matter to you, in ways you may not even always directly grasp. 

The hosts of the party are Kate and Julia (two sisters, one in her late middle-ages, the other much older) and their niece Mary Jane. They are all accomplished veteran musicians, respected in the musical and theater circles of Ireland. Most people at the party are similarly cultured and knowledgeable; before dinner the guests dance waltzes, only to be interrupted by a guest's musical performance or literary recitation. During dinner, they discuss the latest play in the theater and the lost glory of the Irish opera scene, remembering all the great soprano's that used to come to Dublin and now mostly go to Vienna and Milan. The scene is not played at all for comedy; I got a laugh out of it. Every person from former Yugoslavia probably has been at a family gathering where the elderly have wistfully reminisced about the lost cultural glory days of Belgrade or Sarajevo, in pretty much the exact tone and words used here. It's quite interesting too that the most respected man at the party, aside from the hosts, the one who gives the big speech during dinner, is Gabriel (Donal McCann), a man who despite having been brought up with the ideals of this family's culture of 'sophisticated 19th Century Irishness' (the film takes place in 1904), is not much of a purveyor of them. Sure, he has (and shows) great respect for all of it, but is a journalist writing for the English Daily Express who would rather go on holiday to Germany or Belgium than to Galway. One of the guests at the party derisively jokes that Gabriel is not an Irishman, but a 'West-Briton'.

John Huston famously made this film (almost literally) on his deathbed. It explains why the film doesn't have much of a plot, but it is more about capturing the sense of loss of cultures, people and memories. He most succesfully does that in a montage (much slower than what you are used to in regular 80's movies) during a musical performance by the most elderly sister. While she sings, he cuts between various spaces (an empty staircase, the room where all the coats are held) in the house and objects relevant to the family's history. Notable too is the great gentleness with which he filme everyone, but especially scenes involving the elderly, always making sure to show the care with which they are being approached and emphasising the attention being paid to make sure that even the most fragile people can feel included at the party. 

There is also a shot of Anjelica Huston, playing Gabriel's wife, standing in front of stained glass listening enraptured to a beautiful musical performance, while her husband silently looks at her, that reminds the audience that even a fragile John Huston had not lost his sense of showmanship. It's the shot that leads to the final 20 minutes of the film, that literalise everything that had come before and use great dramatic gestures to bluntly reflect on life, love and death. I can see why Huston (and James Joyce, the film is adapted from one of his short stories) included these scenes, but they turn the personal, vulnerable and gentle reflection on loss from before into statements of a more generalised grand universality. That's absolutely not needed here. 

220. Fanfare

Song - Het Land Van Maas En Waal (Boudewijn de Groot)

Movie: Fanfare (Bert Haanstra, 1958)

An absolute nothingburger of a movie I greatly enjoyed recently is 10 Years, released in 2011, about a bunch of recent college graduates going to their high school reunion. It contains a killer cast, including (but definitely not limited to) Oscar Isaac, Aubrey Plaza, Channing Tatum, Kate Mara, Rosario Dawson and Ron Livingston. Some of these people had just broken through or were about too, and this film shows why better than many of their superior movies. 10 Years only works because some of the most charismatic people alive talk wittily, flirtingly and interestingly about the challenges, problems and pleasures of contemporary college graduates. It's a highly entertaining, easily enjoyable idealisation of contemporary post-college graduate life, induliging in all the fantasies all students at some point have had about how glorious their life will be. Fanfare is sort of the same movie, but about the pittoresque small town life in the Netherlands of the 1950's. The Netherlands of the 1950's really liked hearing and seeing such stories about itself, and this became the most succesful Dutch movie of all time. Over 2,5 million people went to see it in the cinema, a record that has since only been surpassed by Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight (basically its polar opposite!) in 1973. I had never heard of it before and didn't much care for it, but it certainly has its charms, mostly thanks to the warm, loving characterisation of the village, and its people. 

Fanfare is about two rival restaurant owners from the small village of Lagerwiede (a fictional town, in reality Giethoorn, one of the many Dutch cities to have been called the 'Dutch Venice') who bring their rivalry to the municipal brass band, forcing it to split in two. That's a huge problem as the mayor (stern, but caring for his citizens) has signed the band up for a local competition and each city can have only one entry. The city now has to decide whether it will represented by the boisterously jovial Geursen (Hans Kaart) or by the gravely serious Krijns (Bernard Droog). Geursen is the better musician and has more members in his band, but Krijns' crew has stolen and hidden the instruments. Hilarity is supposed to ensue as one party tries to bribe members to become the biggest brass band, while the other tries to retrieve the instruments. 

Director Bert Haanstra is one of the filmmaking pioneers of post-war Holland, specialising in documentaries observing daily life in the Netherlands. He even has an Oscar and two additional nominations to show for it. The most curious element of Fanfare seems to be a consequence of this background. The film begins with an introduction to Lagerwiede by a presenter, who, similar to a talking head in a contemporary documentary, unobtrusively walks around the village, and among its citizens, making various observations about this community. The same thing happens at the end of the movie, but in between this man appears several times as a regular character in the film. Standing a bit apart from the main action, he gently calms down and offers valuable advice to the frenzied citizens crossing his path. He is introduced as a music expert, but beyond that he is also presented as a man of clearly superior sophistication and general intelligence, who also dresses better and pays more attention to his appearance and his disposition than the average citizen of Lagerwiede.  

Unforutnately Haanstra's documentary interests don't do Fanfare's comic intentions much good. It plays as slapstick at half the speed. When things should get zippy, there are cuts to shots of ducks calmly floating along, farmers milking their cows, ordinary citizens walking along the canals, and endless rowing boats transporting musical instruments from one place of hiding to another. This approach reflects the leisurely life in the village, and presents a quite idyllic portrait of authentic Dutch rural life (several characters in the movie point out that they have returned from Amsterdam to the village), but it hinders the film from becoming truly funny. It did help Giethoorn become a very popular tourist destination, to the extent that it is currently an almost Disneyified version of an authentic Dutch town, massively bringing in Chinese tourists. 

219. The Breakfast Club

Song - Don't You (Forget About Me) (Simple Minds)

Movie: The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985)

I always like long dialogue-driven scenes/movies, allowing characters to speak and speak, trying to articulate the emotions, feelings and ideas they have been wrestling with. The Breakfast Club of course contains many such scenes, with the highlight being Andrew's (Emilio Estevez) monologue about why he ended up in detention. Hughes lets the scene unfold patiently, focusing mainly on Estevez, only ocasionally cutting to the reactions of the other kids. As a result, the scene becomes about more than just his words. We are aware of Estevez' (the best actor of the bunch, together with Molly Ringwald) thinking about what he wants to say, earnestly trying to find the right words and thoughts. His monologue is as much about revealing certain truths to himself, as it is about revealing them to the group. You get the sense that he felt bad about what he did, and that now he finally really understands the specific reasons about why he feels bad about it, and what drove him to act in the way he did.  The others expose themselves in similar ways, and it's obvious that all the asides, jokes, bullshitting and ball-busting that came before helped make these epiphanies possible, that jokingly giving each other a hard time, probing each other's defenses, also forced everyone in the group to think about themselves and understand their own problems better. 

I liked The Breakfast Club more now than when I was its target audience. I had last seen it over a decade ago, and was always quite resistant to it. I found the idea that dark trauma is all that binds teenagers of different backgrounds to be quite unpleasant and obnoxious, especially in combination with its claims to universality. Some of this can be attributed to its legacy; at some point it seemed as if every mention of The Breakfast Club was acommpanied by the addition that it was the ultimate film about the teenage experience or some such nonsense. Hughes' writing is not innocent though - the five teens at the center are clearly presented as teen archetypes and starting the movie with Don't You Forget About Me, and the famous David Bowie lyrics from Change immediately signals that you are expected to find the film an unforgettable, meaningful experience. 

Some of these problems persist - the film still often gives the impression that it is trying really hard to be the voice of a generation, or the voice of an experience. But for the most part, watching it now, I thought The Breakfast Club stands out for its specificity. It doesn't play like a film about five average teenagers in a room who accidentally discover that that they are all victims of parental abuse and neglect. Rather, it plays as a film about five very specific teenagers who are vicitms of parental abuse and neglect and an exploration of all the ways in whch that can affect their lives. It has some suprisingly dark moments, and I found it quite interesting that for much of its first half this is barely an ensemble movie. It's pretty much all about Bender (Judd Nelson), the most obviously traumatised character. Everything that happens in the film is initiated by him, and we only get to know the others through their responses to him. 

A couple of years ago, Molly Ringwald wrote a great article about her relationship with John Hughes, discussing how she thinks the films hold up now that contemporary (pop) culture is more aware of abuses of power. She argues that she still is very proud of the films she's made with Hughes, seeing them as great movies with valuable insights, but that she does feel uneasy about the sexism and racism at display in some of them. I haven't seen Sixteen Candles, which I understand is the biggest culprit in this context, but Ringwald does mention her discomfort with the scenes of sexual and verbal abuse in The Breakfast Club. Ringwald writes that she is hesitant to show these scenes - directed at her character Claire by Bender - to her daughter, which is quite understandable as they are quite vicious and unambigously unpleasant. It's impossible to see them as cute teenage clowning, and (maybe speaking too much from the current perspective) I don't think Hughes intended them as such. Bender and Claire do get together at the end of the film, but this is not presented as a purely romantic moment (and fits in the context of their characters). Nelson in particular doesn't play it as if the vengeful feelings Bender had towards Claire have now completely disappeared. Such a nuanced consideartion doesn't apply to the criticsms related to the makeover/characterisation of Allison (Ally Sheedy). Sheedy does her best with what she's given, but Hughes doesn't really know what to do with that character and it often seems like he has included her as a punching bag.