NINA’S HEAVENLY DELIGHTS

UK, 2006, 94 minutes, Colour.
Laura Fraser, Shelley Conn, Art Malik.
Directed by Pratbha Parmar.

In recent years, Bollywood films have become very popular in the United Kingdom, often being screened in mainstream theatres and on television. At the same time, a small industry has grown up in the UK, the making of films that span the different communities, the families who migrated, especially from Pakistan and India, and the locals who have welcomed them or been hostile to them. Films include East is East, Anita and Me, Chicken Tikka Marsala. Nina’s Heavenly Delights belongs to this genre.

The setting is modern Glasgow – and the film takes a lot of trouble to include as many vistas of the city as possible. The community is Indian (with pronounced Scottish accents), especially those who run restaurants in the city.

This is very much a food movie. It opens with Nina’s father showing her how to make his award-winning curry. Nina (Shelley Conn) goes to London to avoid an arranged marriage but returns when her father dies. There is an air of competitiveness around since her former fiance wants to win the national curry competition; his father wants to buy the restaurant and one of Nina’s schoolfriends (Laura Fraser) now is part-owner. The climax is the competition screened for television. Plenty of ingredients for a curry of a film.

The spicy curry comes from an unanticipated angle. The competition goes as expected. The family squabbles are as predictable enough – involving Nina’s brother and his marrying a white girl, Nina’s mother and her memories of her own arranged marriage, the envy of the jilted fiance. The unexpected angle is that Nina falls in love with her schoolfriend who is in love with her. This lesbian aspect of the story is told with feeling, the story writer-director a woman, showing the attitudes of the family, the determination of the lover, the embarrassment of Nina – and how this all works out for a happy ever after ending. There is also a sub-plot concerning Nina’s friend who is a drag queen in the local Glasgow clubs. While the film seems a straightforward ethnic comedy, it serves as a questioning of traditional values.

KEKEXILI/ MOUNTAIN PATROL

China, 2004, 90 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Lu Chuan.

If you were told that this was a fine film about Tibetan antelope and its possible extinction, you might be tempted to put it on the long finger, the very long finger. But, you would be wrong. There is much more than the plight of the antelope. There is a very beautiful film. It is also quite a tough film.

There is probably something of the National Geographic or the Discovery channel in all of us. Exotic places exercise a beguiling fascination. The locations for Mountain Patrol are definitely exotic: Tibet and remote mountain areas of China.

As regards the very beautiful, the scenery is breathtaking, especially on a big screen. The story takes place in the Kekexili on the Qinghai-Tibetan? Plateau, 5,000 metres high. The mountains are immense and high. The plains are generally rocky, with frozen rivers and pockets of quicksand. The impact is so overwhelming that we feel that we have been taken there to feel its isolation, the cold and winds, the desolation. Yet, it is all extraordinarily beautiful.

As regards the tough, the plot needs a little explanation. We are told that it is based on actual events during the 1990s. Poachers roam the Plateau, searching for the antelopes, armed with rifles and massacring the animals, 500 at a time. Their pelts sell well on the illegal international markets.

At the same time, the locals set up a patrol group under the leadership of Ri Tai (played with gravity and authority by Duo Bujie). They pursue the poachers, the locals who do the skinning and their drivers. This time they take a young Beijing reporter (Zhang Lei). This is no easy expedition. It is physically demanding and not everyone survives.

Reports about the making of the film describe the continuous effects of altitude illnesses on all involved, the freezing conditions – and the enthusiasm of the largely amateur cast. It was a gruelling production and it is compellingly gruelling to watch.

Information at the end tells us that the reporter’s articles led to the Chinese government declaring the area a national and protected park and that the antelope numbers are increasing again.

JOHANNA

Hungary, 2005, 86 minutes, Colour.
Orsolya Toth.
Directed by Kornel Mundruczo.

Johanna is a contemporary opera film from Hungary. Music lovers will find much to interest them in a work composed directly for the screen, the music adapted to the language of images, variety of angles and shots and editing pace. Those who are not opera fans may find the film a difficult experience.

It does not begin operatically. Rather, we are in the night streets of Budapest, traffic, an accident, victims being rushed to hospital where the staff are overworked. They speak. Once inside, the music begins. And then the singing.

By the end, most audiences will recognise the parallels with the passion and death of Jesus. It was only when reading the interview with the director afterwards that I realised that I had missed the parallels with the story of Joan of Arc. The director’s avowed intention was to present a modern interpretation of Joan of Arc.

This Johanna is not a saint. She is a drug addict in the hospital awaiting treatment. The wards and corridors are dark, dank and underground, rather medieval and prison-like. However, Johanna experiences a moment of grace and change. She feels called to comfort the patients who lie asleep, in coma or in pain, the male patients. Her gift is her sexuality and this is what she offers the men. Her sexuality and behaviour are seen as scandalous by the staff except for the doctor who lusts after her. Just as Joan of Arc was pursued by the authorities and judged as immoral, so Johanna is hounded and persecuted by this medical establishment and destroyed.

With its ‘spirituality’ of the woman who is the saint and martyr and who is exploited by men sexually, the film evokes memories of Breaking the Waves. Johanna shares a perspective on women and martyrs for men that Lars Von Trier developed in that film and continued in Dogville. Many women reacted badly to this exaltation of the suffering but exploited woman, seeing it as misogynist and that charge could be levelled at Johanna.

Just as von Trier’s film was visually operatic and stylised, Johanna is literally operatic and stylised – and provocative.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

US, 2006, 96 minutes, Colour.
Al Gore.
Directed by Davis Guggenheim.

Perhaps many people underestimated the intelligence and capacities of Al Gore while he was in Congress and even when he was Vice President to Bill Clinton. Everyone has views on the 2000 presidential election count in Florida and the juridical decision against Gore in favour of Bush. Gore admits that this was very hard. But, he decided it was time to go back to an issue dear to his heart: global warming.

An Inconvenient Truth is an expertly made documentary incorporating a great deal of Al Gore’s slide show, illustrating the power of power point visuals, on the planet. He has given it all over the world, more than a thousand times. This film brings it to vaster audiences (over $20,000,000 at the US box office) and it has played at Cannes and a number of film festivals.

Throughout the film, a portrait of Al Gore, man, father, politician and campaigner, is backgrounded. It is interesting, in view of the performances of George W. Bush, to listen to the articulate Al Gore.

The lecture is quite lucid. The science of global warning is clearly explained. Consequences are presented, at times disturbingly. However, the film is quite upbeat in tone, especially in indicating what means are already available (if there is personal and political will) to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. It urges its audiences to become actively involved.

In fact, Gore speaks about ethics and refers to awareness of this planetary crisis as a ‘moral imperative’ for action. In answering a difficulty that is so frequently raised, that of economic realities and combating global warming, he has an illustration where a scales has bars of gold on the one side and the planet on the other. The gold looks tempting. And, what is on the other side? The planet itself. If there is no planet, there is no gold. If we save the planet, it will mean that we will survive and there will be economic development. While the answer is as obvious as that, it remains a mystery why so many people cannot accept it let alone act. An Inconvenient Truth with its clarity and emotional persuasion will help to make individuals and groups more alert and aware.

DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE

US/ China, 2006, 87 minutes, Colour.
Jaime Pressley, Devon Aoka, Sarah Carter, Holly Vallance, Eric Roberts.
Directed by Corey Yuen.

Though it’s not necessarily worth it, it might be interesting to have some statistics on who actually sees this film and enjoys it. It’s another computer game movie, filmed in China, with an international cast of high-kicking and chopping glamorous magazine cover girls who assemble on an extraordinarily high-tech remote island to join a no-weapon, wits and brawn competition. The advertising is for a male audience!

The plot is fairly preposterous – especially the set up on the island which takes us beyond Dr No Goldfinger or other megalomaniac villains. This time the villain is Eric Roberts whose goals are more mundane than world power. He wants technology to sell to the highest bidder and then to take the money and run.

The girls include a Japanese princess, a Texan wrestler, a safecracker and a 21 year old who wants to win, whose father invented the technology and who has been murdered.

Characterisation is not a major feature. It’s the fights, the martial arts and the combat that counts.

DIRTY SANCHEZ: THE MOVIE


UK, 2006, 94 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Jim Hickey.

This is not a review. Rather, it might serve as a warning. There are must-see films. This is, instead, a must-not see film. Let me quote the reputable British magazine, Sight and Sound: ‘…it moves from the merely vile to the truly unspeakable’. It concludes its review by claiming that it must be a candidate for the most demented film to get theatrical release.

And what is it? If you know the Jackass television series and the movies, then you know of these programs where pranksters who have little sense and no good taste take on feats of stupidity and/or crassness in the name of fun and daring. Well, Jackass does have Johnny Knoxville who can sometimes be sympathetic in films. Dirty Sanchez is a British group (three Welsh and one Englishman) who also have a television program and now attempt to outdo Jackass. They certainly do. Most of their stunts involve the body and every bodily function in mind and sense-boggling ugliness – with looong takes of them laughing their heads off at what they are doing. Most audiences, were they to stay through it all, would have to look away at least from some of the nauseating stunts.

No wonder some cultures are repelled by the West.

THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED

US, 2006, 98 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Kirby Dick.

This is a very difficult film for someone who is not American to review. It is about a particular American institution that is very different from cinema institutions in other countries. The Catholic Church also comes into this film at the end which raises the same American difficulties in a Church context.

But, first, what is this film about?

The quick answer is that it is about the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). It is about who and what it is, its function in American society, its influence on the cinema industry and the cinema-going public, its ratings and the people who issue the ratings. That, in itself, is interesting. However, there is another questions.

Second, what is this film trying to do?

The quick answer to this one is that the director, documentary film-maker Kirby Dick, is trying to find out how the organisation actually functions, who are the members and the nature of their appointment, what are the criteria by which they rate the movies, how they conduct appeals against their ratings, to whom they are accountable.

Another question. Thirdly, how partisan is the enquiry?

The film is a mixture of objective presentation of information and data as well as strongly felt stances about the MPAA. There are many interviews with directors who have been given the rating NC 17 which many in the US consider a death blow to the distribution and commercial success of the film. Those under 17 are not admitted to screenings so big distributors tend not to take on these films. Interviewees include John Waters (A Dirty Shame), Kevin Smith (Jersey Girl), Kimberley Pierce (Boys Don’t Cry). There are also a number of industry names like David Ansen, reviewer for Newsweek, various journalists and writers on film.

Kirby Dick shows the processes he went through concerning the rating for this film itself.

Depending on where you stand on these issues, the film is either courageous or offensive.

What is this particularly American institution which was established in 1968 and, until 2004, was under the direction of Jack Valenti. The aim of the MPAA is to give a rating for every film to be exhibited in the US. The mandate is to rate the films according to their suitability for viewing by children. Options at the moment are G, PG, PG 13, R and NC 17. The R means that anyone under 17 is able to see the film as long as they are accompanied by an adult. This means that the maximum age rating that most film-makers want is R. The consequence is that every film submitted for rating must be edited so that any child can view the film, with the R (which so many films are in fact given) meaning that an adult has to be present.

It needs to be said that the MPAA is not a government body as such like Offices of Film Classification or Censorship Boards in other countries.

What Kirby Dick and others find unacceptable is that the MPAA works in fairly complete secrecy – as to who the raters are, what their criteria are for particular ratings, and how an appeal judgment is made. Their findings are not published.

I would like to reflect on this film from my own experience in Australia which is vastly different from the MPAA (and the classifications made by the cinema office that belongs to the American Bishops Conference).

The primary difference – which makes all the difference – is that in Australia, ratings or classifications are not primarily geared to providing information to parents as to what their children should see or not see, although this is readily available. The films are considered in themselves, as works of cinema art. The classifications given by the Office of Film and Literature Classification have sufficient legal backing to honour the integrity of the film as well as safeguard children. Consumer advice is offered for parents’ – and others’ – consideration: including films of dubious merit or controversial films.

Australia had a system up till the end of 1971 which did consider suitability for children’s viewing as the ultimate criterion. In 1968, the same year as the establishment of the MPAA, the then Minister for Customs and Excise (which had responsibility for imports into the country, which then included judging suitability of films) raised the issue in the federal parliament, the first debate on censorship since 1938. Over the following three years, his office consulted everyone who worked in any way in the cinema field. Personal interviews for collecting viewpoints were held. Examples of material cut from films were screened (one in the Houses of Parliament in Canberra in 1970 dubbed the ‘blue movie’ night). All reviewers and other interested parties were invited to sit in on a censors’ board screening and discuss the criteria.

What emerged for January 1st 1972 was a new set of classifications, one of which was the legal prohibiting of anyone under 18 from seeing films which received an R, Restricted classification. Films which had previously been banned (for example Ulysses) or cut (Midnight Cowboy) could now be screened for adults without cuts and children legally safeguarded. (This acknowledges, of course, that any law can be flouted.)

This process has worked well for over thirty years, sometimes modified to provide even more useful classifications. The office preferred using the word, classifications, rather than censorship. Along with the classifications, aspects of consumer advice were provided to be used on all advertising: indications of the main areas (language, sexuality, violence etc), intensity and frequency and an opinion (only) as to whether in context, the treatment was justified or gratuitous. This advice was geared to the particular classification with its age range. Current community standards are used for establishing the details of the criteria and for any changes.

In the light of this work, it was left to specific family and/or church groups to provide their own ratings if they wished in the light of the legal classifications.

All this information as well as the details of the criteria are published by the government. When an appeal is made against a classification by distributors, groups or individuals, there is a special appeals board and the details of the decision are also published. Members of each board are government appointees, made through applications and committees, and names and background of each member are readily available.

This provides information and advice, support of the classifications by legislation and accountability to the public.

Over the decades, there have always been discussions concerning community standards and language, depictions of sexuality and violence. This is true of Kirby Dick’s film.

It is clear that the American public seems to be more apprehensive about aspects of sexuality than of violence. Many European countries take opposite stances. (It can be said that for many Christians, they are puritanical about sex but permissive about violence whereas many ‘liberals’ (for want of a more accurate word) are puritanical about violence but permissive about sex.)

One of the features of this film is that it uses the MPAA’s tendency to permit scenes of graphic violence but be wary about anything related to sex. Examples are shown. There is a tendency, especially in ratings from the Churches, to mention specifically in their advice something like ‘fleeting rear nudity’, not helping parents and other readers to acknowledge the reality of the body and make the distinction for ‘sexualised nudity’ (a point made in this film). Once again, so many religious people tend not to discuss the implications of depictions of violence while ‘liberals’ tend not to discuss the implications of depravity and decadence and the distinction between love and lust. This is a limitation of this film, although Kevin Smith makes the point that the worst aspect of human behaviour is rape – something that could have been followed up to lead to more nuanced discussion about sexuality on screen.

Most Western countries seem to have a government body for classifications which respects both the protection of children and the integrity of a film. This seems to be a challenge to the mind-set of the MPAA and other bodies in the US which provide ratings.

HEROES AND VILLAINS

UK, 2006, 104 minutes, Colour.
David Raymond, Jenny Agutter, James Corden.
Directed by Selwyn Roberts.

This drama, with comic touches, does not work particularly well. Trying to come to grips with it while watching, I wondered how and where a television channel would program it to get some ratings. That didn’t seem to work either.

Heroes and Villains is quite ambitious, especially since the writer, David Raymond, was 26 when it was filmed. He is also the main star, his first film, which can give the impression that this is something of a vanity project.

The film is about London twentysomethings who are branded as losers and who set up a business where suspicious spouses and partners can hire them to contrive a meeting where they flirt (and film the encounter as proof of infidelity for the client). They initially make a lot of money but then conscience comes to some of the group – though it takes a lot more time for the hero to wake up to himself.

Probably the main difficulty is the writing which does not always work and which sometimes is too arch, even platitudinous, to be convincing. And some of the acting is too strained or overdone.

It is made for audiences in their twenties who may share some of the situations and crises of the characters, but even then it is limited.

HARD CANDY

US, 2005, 104 minutes, Colour.
Patrick Wilson, Ellen Page, Sandra Oh.
Directed by David Slade.

This is a grim two-hander that shows the two going through gruelling experiences – and the demands made on the audience are extremely gruelling as well.

The prologue to the film is a conversation in an on-line chat-room, a certain amount of flirting with an agreement for the two to meet. He is a 32 year old professional photography. She is an extraordinarily precocious 14 year old who proceeds to lead him on – and he is easily led. Then all hell – for him – breaks loose.

The dynamics for the meetings are based on her desire for vengeance for the death of a friend who has been victim of predators for under age girls. He is her target. For most of the rest of the film, we witness her subjecting him to psychological torture with well-articulated taunts to his conscience and personality. She also subjects him to a home castration operation, urging him ultimately to hang himself.

He tries to bluff his way at first, then, as he is bound and prepared for the cutting, he breaks down, remembering a traumatic story from his childhood, pleading and weeping. For some moments, the roles are reversed but, by and large, she is in control.

Whether one wants to share this experience, very well acted and conscience-jolting concerning the behaviour of offender as well as avenger, seems unlikely for most audiences. It is all the more intense because it is quite claustrophobic as action is mainly confined to his home, the director’s technique tends to stay with close-ups of faces and the colour design is stark and cold.

Patrick Wilson, better known as a musical theatre star on Broadway (and Raoul in the film of The Phantom), makes the perpetrator credible, a smooth operator who has been found out. Ellen Page is extraordinary as the girl, generally supremely assured and confident in her role as judge and executioner, intelligent, articulate and relentless.

CURIOUS GEORGE

US, 2006, 86 minutes. Colour.
Voices of: Frank Walker, Will Ferrell, Drew Barrymore, David Cross, Eugene Levy, Dick van Dyke
Directed by Matthew O' Callaghan.

Glad I saw this with some four and five year olds rather than eight or nine year olds. The latter would have thought it just for littlies. The littlies seemed to be engrossed with it more or less, though they still had to drag parents out for toilet breaks.

Actually, for this age group it is quite charming in its way, relying more on action and antics rather than characters and dialogue. For adults, it is a benign version of King Kong where inept academic explorer from America, trying to do an Indiana Jones, wants to discover a long lost idol but finds, instead, a curiously cute little monkey. It is only fair that George, the monkey, go to New York since, with Madagascar and The Wild, the process seems to be that cartoon animals are fleeing New York zoos for African climes.

Will Ferrel voices the bespectacled hero turned adventurer and Drew Barrymore his teacher girlfriend. Dick Van Dyke is the proprietor of the museum.

Colourful and sweet.