Un héros très discret (A Self-Made Hero, France 1996)

Un héros très discret is a major French film which won the screenplay award at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. It was released in France in the summer of the same year and created an enormous amount of interest. It was the first film by Jacques Audiard that I managed to see and I’ve always thought it of it as one of the best French films of the 1990s. Un héros très discret did respectable business at the French box-office and attracted a good deal of criticism because of its story and its view of French history of the 1940s. It tells the story of a man who ‘re-invents’ himself, generating a new identity as a resistance hero during the Liberation of France in 1944-5 and it can be seen as a gentle, but effective, satire on the national self-delusion about the experience of occupation and resistance. As a result, critics from the right have seen the film as insulting to the memory and critics from the left have argued that it does not go far enough. Part of the interest in the film is also based on the appearance of Mathieu Kassovitz in the lead role. Kassovitz in 1996 was a rising star of French cinema, who as a director made the youth picture La Haine in 1995 and who could be relied upon to give the French media some good soundbites about contemporary culture. Re-titled A Self Made Hero, the film was eventually released in the UK in April 1997. Here, it was treated very much as an ‘art’ film and assumed to be of minority interest. Nevertheless, it played to good audiences and during the first couple of weeks of its release entered the list of Top 15 films in the UK, competing with the likes of Star Wars and The English Patient. This may surprise some of Audiard’s current fans in the UK who have been attracted by his last two crime films. Un héros très discret may not be a polar as such, but its thematic of the ‘outsider’ helped by older and wiser father figures places it neatly next to Un prophète.

These notes were written for an Education Pack at the time of the film’s UK release in 1997. I have updated some of them, but in other cases it should be obvious that they refer to the 1990s. If you haven’t seen the film, please note that there are extensive SPOILERS throughout the notes.

Historical background

The narrative follows the life of the hero, Albert Dehousse, from his early teens in the 1930s through the Second World War and into the immediate post-war period. Woven into this story is what appears to be a documentary made recently in which various witnesses comment on the Albert Dehousse they knew. We are also shown interviews with the ‘real’ Albert (played by a famous French film star of the 1960s and 1970s, Jean-Louis Trintignant), who tells us something about his successes during the last fifty years.

Defeat in 1940

At the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, the French armed forces occupied a complex series of fortifications along the eastern border with Germany. Known as the Maginot Line, this was expected to act as a major deterrent to any German advance. But the German army had learned many lessons from the stalemate of the trenches in the 1914-18 war and in June 1940 swiftly moved squadrons of tanks through Holland and Belgium around the northern edge of the Maginot Line and into North East France. With the Germans heading for Paris, and large French, British and Belgian armies trapped on the coast near Dunkirk, the French government sued for peace. This massive military defeat was a terrible blow to French pride and to the honour of the French armed forces.

Vichy France

After the armistice, the Germans occupied Northern France and the Atlantic coastal area. The remainder of the country was governed from the small town of Vichy in Central France, with an administration led by the World War I hero, Marshal Petain. This ‘Vichy’ government was an anomaly during the war. It administered the whole of France, although in the occupied zone, only with German agreement. In the south, most people led a relatively ‘normal’ life. However, the true extent of ‘collaboration’ between the Vichy government and the German authorities is still difficult to determine. After 1942, with the evident threat of an Anglo-American invasion, the Axis powers moved in to control the whole country. The Germans then controlled all but the extreme South-East of France which came under Italian control.

At the time of the surrender in 1940, France had considerable military resources based overseas in colonies, especially in North and West Africa. In London, a French officer, General de Gaulle, set up the ‘Free French’ forces with the intention of releasing these resources and recruiting French soldiers who had been able to escape from German-occupied territories. The large French naval forces in African ports had posed a threat to Allied shipping and many were seized or destroyed by the British – precipitating the establishment of the Vichy regime and its claim to these overseas territories. Thus for the remainder of the war there would be two French governments – in Vichy and in London – on opposing sides. Vichy France gave the impression of being ‘neutral’ and provided the perfect location for romantic stories such as that presented in the famous film Casablanca, set in French Morocco.

The Free French

Free French forces, later termed ‘La France Combattante’, played a significant role in the Allied liberation of Europe and in 1944-5 helped to liberate France itself. The de Gaulle administration was recognised by the Allies as the true French government and was installed in Paris as such by October 1944. Throughout the period of occupation, a resistance movement was active in France and during the liberation, resistance fighters fought openly against German forces and ‘collaborators’. The period immediately following liberation saw l’épuration – the purge of collaborationists – in which thousands of those accused were summarily executed or humiliated.

France as a ‘great power’ again

In 1945, at the end of the European War, France again found itself a major power and when the demarcation lines were drawn in occupied Germany, the French military were given control of the central part of Western Germany (with the British to the north and the Americans to the south). French power was organised from the spa town of Baden Baden.

A new republic (the Fourth Republic) was constituted in 1946 and for the next twelve years French society attempted to come to terms with the aftermath of war. The post-war period was difficult for the Socialist governments elected after 1947. Charles de Gaulle (the war hero, who rather like Churchill in Britain had not been involved in the immediate post-war government) re-appeared in 1958 at a time of crisis over rebellion in France’s North African territories. His return established the Fifth Republic, which many commentators saw as a conscious attempt to restore French pride and national identity. Although de Gaulle died in 1970, his influence remains and the current opposition party in France is ‘gaullist’ to a certain extent.

Uncertain French memories of 1940-45

Every European country had problems in re-adjusting to peacetime existence and rebuilding society after 1945. Most countries were clear about the problem. In Britain there were heroes to be accommodated and debts to be repaid to the Americans. In Germany and Italy, there was defeat to be faced. In the smaller countries which had been occupied it was more problematic. There were questions about who had resisted, or who had collaborated and in some cases what had been the attitude to Nazi policies concerning local Jewish communities. But in countries like Holland, where these questions were asked and the issue has to some extent still not been properly resolved, the situation has never been quite as difficult as in France. France was ‘occupied’ and ‘defeated’ – but she was also one of the victors, invited back to the table of `Big Powers’ in 1945. For many French people in the South, the war period must have passed relatively calmly. For others things changed quite dramatically. As the director of Un héros très discret, Jacques Audiard said:

“… overnight [in 1944] we were no longer the defeated, we were the conquerors, we were no longer collaborators, we were Resistance fighters …”

The consequence was that for the next thirty years the uncertainty about what actually happened was maintained as a kind of national amnesia. Many people claimed to have been in the resistance while at the same time fingering their enemies as collaborators (but not usually in public). Commentators pointed out that if all the stories were believed, everyone in 1944 was either a resistance hero or a collaborator. This clearly wasn’t the case and contemporary historians tend towards the view that the actual numbers of active resistance fighters and collaborators was quite small – most French people were relatively passive in the way that they dealt with the war.

French cultural life since 1945

This uncertainty had profound effects for French literature, and cinema and television in particular. A useful source for analysis of these effects is French Culture since 1945 (ed Cook 1993). Rachel Edwards in this book describes the dominant forms of literature after the war as falling into distinct periods or trends. In the first, littérature engagée, she sees writers compelled to show commitment to left-wing politics and implicitly to the resistance struggle. In the 1950s a group of right-wing writers was then seen to refuse political engagement and to create novels around heroes who had been collaborators or at best indifferent to the politics of occupation. These were named ‘Hussards’ after the title of one specific novel, Le Hussard bleu in 1950. Although the Hussards attempted a critique of the official view of the ‘Occupation’, they were unable to dent the myth while de Gaulle was still a powerful figure. After de Gaulle’s death in 1970 a new generation, who had been children during the war, began to demolish the myth more effectively and Edwards refers to this as the mode rétro. These writers were effectively trying to understand their own past and their relationship to parents who themselves may have collaborated – this theme of understanding parents is clearly taken up in Un héros très discret.

In the 1970s the impact of the mode rétro was increased by the release of two films in particular. The first was made in 1969 by Marcel Ophuls, himself the son of the great German director Max Ophuls who worked in France in the 1930s and 1950s. Le Chagrin et la Pitié, a title referring to the ‘sadness and shame’ of the wartime period, is a long documentary made for television, in which many people talk about their experiences of occupation and liberation. The French state at this time controlled television relatively tightly and the film was banned from broadcast. It was however shown in cinemas and created a massive debate both in France and abroad, effectively exploding the myth of ‘resistance’ that had been built up and almost institutionalised as part of the culture. It is no coincidence that the debate around Ophuls’ film came after the death of de Gaulle – the film was not aired on French television until 1981. In 1974 a fiction feature film, Louis Malle’s Lacombe Lucien, added fuel to the debate with the depiction of a young country boy’s apparent drift into the employ of the Gestapo, the German security force, during the latter stages of the war and his subsequent corruption. Malle was a leading filmmaker of the period and the screenplay for the film was co-written by Malle and Patrick Mondiano, a novelist from the mode rétro school. The film is similar to Mondiano’s 1970 novel, La Ronde de nuit and expresses similar concerns to those in his first novel La Place de l’Etoile (1968). A common theme in these stories is the role of anti-semitism in French society and the extent to which this is part of the experience of collaboration/resistance. Louis Malle returned to the subject in 1987 with a film based on his own memories of Jewish children being deported from France, Au Revoir les enfants. By this time some of the force had gone from the revelations that such a film could afford.

The legacy of the war in the 1990s

By 1996 it was over fifty years since the war in Europe had ended – yet it was still possible to generate debate about what happened during the war and how social and cultural life changed after the war ended. Debates about the investigation of war criminals were still current in the UK and in France, the revelations about President François Mitterand’s wartime past, which emerged in the years before his death were front page news. These revelations are referenced in Un héros très discret, through the use of the ‘documentary’ inserts which suggest that the Albert Dehousse character, despite being ‘found out’ could still go on to achieve high political office.

In what ways might these debates have an impact on the relations between young people and their parents? – this is one possible approach to Un héros très discret.

National identity and youth

The depiction of France in wartime in this film and others is one of a number of factors which will in some way help to shape the ideas which French youth have about what it means to be a French citizen in the 1990s. Part of this will be worked out in their attitudes towards their parents’ and their grandparents’ generations. The history outlined above suggests that the current generation of French parents might have themselves grown up in the 1950s and 1960s, believing a myth about resistance. In turn, this will perhaps have been part of that generation’s sense of national pride – certainly in evidence in French government policy in the 1960s and early 1970s.

It is dangerous to ‘read off’ attitudes and beliefs from characterisations in films and novels – films are not simply ‘slices of reality’, they are carefully constructed to produce particular meanings. But they do prompt us to think about issues in particular ways.

One approach to studying Un héros très discret may be to ask ourselves what could be the effects of particular memories or official histories of war in different countries. In Britain, for instance, there clearly have been problems for a country which ‘won’ the war, but in some ways ‘lost’ the peace. Britain’s role as a world power has gradually diminished since 1945.

Young people in the UK may be relatively unconcerned by this lack of international status, but it is a problem for older people and may be linked to current debates about our relationship to Europe. (In a contradiction, it was also noticeable that many young people were easily caught up in the war against Argentina in 1982, whereas those with memories of war were sometimes more inclined to caution.) We might also consider the impact of the first American failure in war, in Vietnam in 1975 – how do you cope with defeat, when you are still the most powerful nation on earth? Most recently, how would we feel to be young Bosnians or Serbs in the aftermath of civil war? What is at issue here is: “what does it mean to be French and to live with a past which includes the myth of resistance?”

The filmmakers

The following extracts from the press conference for A Self-Made Hero during the Cannes Film Festival gives some idea of how this and other arguments about the film might be developed: …

Q: Does it not bother you that the character Albert weaves an entire tapestry of lies to create himself anew? And were you generalising about the French character?

Director Jacques Audiard: No and no. But let me say that Albert is an odd character – and what is important is that he does not lie. He insinuates, but mostly he lets other people draw conclusions from his own silence. And you must remember that after the war, with records and government in such chaos, it was necessary for many people – whether they were in hiding or had somehow lost their identity – to declare an identity, providing they had two witnesses who would confirm the story. So it would be possible to convince two people, then convince the officials… right? And remember, he did nothing bad. He simply tried to create a life he never lived.

Q: Is the character based on any historical figure?

Writer Jean-Franco Deniau (writer of the novel that Audiard adapted with Alain Le Henry): Yes, it was a man I met at the end of the war – he was large, imposing figure. The less he spoke, the less risk he took. I added details to make the story work. But he was very interesting, and nobody figured out how he had accomplished this enormous leap into heroism until much, much later. His success had something to do with the general principle – commonly accepted – that there are two kinds of fighters: those who talk about it and those who fight.

Q: Speaking as an American and looking at French history as an outsider, may I ask if one of the purposes of this film is to de-mystify the French resistance? It seems to be such a big deal, and yet, we all know that every society has an urge to undermine icons.

Jacques Audiard: Louis Malle was reproached for trying to address collaboration long ago when he made Lucien Lacombe. And others have had to listen to cries about betrayal from similar conservative quarters. It took 40 or 50 years to realize that France did not deserve its place at the victors’ table. The main challenge here is to create a situation where the criteria of truth are lost – one by one. I used the book as a starting point, but yes, I guess I was trying to make us examine the basis of our beliefs in any kind of heroism.

Q: The movie reminded me of similar attempts – say, Forest Gump or Being There in which the hero is perceived as one thing, but he is in fact a simple person.

Jacques Audiard: Forest Gump is a success in terms of American illusionism. I guess in both cases we are dealing with pathological processes. But a Gump digest of the US is a very different thing from what Albert is in Un héros très discret. It’s true that I tried to avoid anything that would incite nostalgia for the past – those golden years after the war when we bathed in our ideas of our own heroism. For example, Truffaut recreated a look and used period ambience in The Last Metro. But I absolutely avoided any attempt to romanticise the era we are watching in this film.

Deniau, the writer: The problem with life is it’s just a draft.

Q: Isn’t it possible that this film is really about the emotional and political tyranny of the older war generation over the young? And how difficult it can be to get a job in France? To enter into a society without having the will or courage to be a hero?

Audiard: Yes, French society is very codified.

Source: Karen Jaehne, Film Scouts, http://www.filmscouts.com/interviewshertre.html

Mathieu Kassovitz – a modern French star

Mathieu Kassovitz made his name internationally as the director of one of the most important youth pictures of recent times, La Haine, in 1995. This film set out to follow the adventures of three youths from the suburban housing projects in the 24 hours following a riot in which one of their friends is shot by the police. The three comprise an African-French boxer and his two friends, one a ‘beur’ (second-generation Arab-French) and the other Jewish. The subject matter and the casting clearly set out to challenge ideas about youth and identity in France.

Mathieu Kassovitz and Sandrine Kiberlain

Kassovitz himself won the best director award at Cannes for La Haine and he has been compared, in terms of the impact of his work as an actor/writer/director, with the African-American director Spike Lee. His next directorial effort was Assassins, produced by Jodie Foster and dealing with violence in society – this film failed badly and Kassovitz has yet to make a follow-up, but he has continued to act, e.g. in The Fifth Element for Luc Besson. His earlier film, Metisse (1993), which is also known as Cafe au Lait, was about a young girl who is pregnant and does not know whether the father is Jewish or a black Muslim. This was not released in the UK. Kassovitz also acted in the previous film by Jacques Audiard, Regarde les hommes tomber (1994). Every cinema needs its stars and controversial characters. Kassovitz is the undoubted star of French independent/art cinema. He is seen both as an intelligent filmmaker and as a ‘bad boy’ who can be rude to the establishment. At the press conference for Un héros très discret the reporter compared the appearance of Kassovitz as being like “a sighting of Elvis”.

Facts and figures on the film’s release

Un héros très discret had a budget of 29 million francs (approx. £3 million or $4.5 million) according to figures quoted on the Internet Movie Database. This is high by British standards (a film like Trainspotting had a budget of around £2 million). The French audience for the film was around 400,000 admissions – a French box-office of around $2 million, the American box office was $120,000 and in the UK, £266,000. The backers of Un héros très discret include television interests.

What would be a comparable film in the UK? It is difficult to think of a film which could have a similar profile – an historical theme, a relatively unconventional (i.e. non-realist) approach and a relatively large budget. No commercial UK producer would attempt such a project and the films produced with backing from Channel 4, BBC or ITV network companies would be unlikely to agree such a budget. As a possible comparison, the successful ‘historical’ film by the well-known British director Ken Loach, Land and Freedom, had a much smaller budget and despite a very good reception, a smaller UK box office. In fact, when Land and Freedom was released in France it opened in more cinemas than had been possible in the UK. (Some British films, especially those of Loach, will run in a Paris cinema for months, even when they appear in London’s West End for only a week or two.) Unfortunately, despite its accessibility, Un héros très discret was unable to reciprocate and play to bigger British audiences than those in France. Un héros très discret opened on eleven London and selected provincial screens on April 4 1997. After its first week it entered the UK Top 15 at No 12 with a screen average of $4,789. Two weeks later it had widened its release only marginally to 14 screens and held on to No 14 spot. Un héros très discret did well as the only foreign language film in the chart at the time (following on from the success of Ridicule). But it did not do the business it deserved. The UK ‘art’ market has been seduced by American independents and it is noticeable that the new Woody Allen film, Everyone Says I Love You, opened on April 17 1997 with a screen average of $7,772 on 30 screens – this is the kind of business that a film as good as Un héros très discret should expect to achieve.

Reading A Self Made Hero

The film works on several levels. At the centre is a strong narrative about a familiar character in the literature and film of many countries – the charming liar. Much of the pleasure of the film comes from the engaging performance of Mathieu Kassovitz and the various strategies that the character devises to ingratiate himself into the community of resistance veterans. These are real narrative pleasures. We are fascinated by his preparations and intrigued by the questions the narrative raises: will he succeed, will he be found out? Albert is a seemingly naive character and we know that his motives are, if not pure, at least inoffensive and non-exploitative. In fact he is swept along by the success of his deceit and is in the later scenes a seemingly reluctant deceiver. This makes the story seductive and we as audience complicit in the deceit. Everyone in the film seems eager to help Albert become an effective liar or deceiver. Yvette’s father teaches him to be a salesman and to win through with his smile and personality. Odette gives him advice on how to be an effective lover (although doubts remain about his sexuality). The Captain takes him in hand and sets him up as an effective beggar and con artist. Monsieur Jo provides him with the network of contacts he needs.

We are seduced by Albert’s transformation as easily as the veterans he meets, but this seduction is undercut by the director with a range of devices which make us feel uncomfortable. The mock documentary interviews suggest that Albert eventually created a whole career in public life, despite being found out – the establishment will allow uncomfortable events to be forgotten. The inserts of actual documentary footage remind us that none of the events in the fictional narrative are in any way unlikely – indeed they were commonplace. The surreal inserts – the musicians playing the background music, Albert growing up and flying like a bird recorded in stop-motion – are the most interesting aspects of the formal structure of the film. Given the generally seductive nature of the narrative, they cut across our easy identification with characters. In conjunction with the documentary material – real and fake – they serve to confront us with the central question. Are we all complicit in the cover-up, the self-delusion which became a national condition in France? This doesn’t work on an emotional level for a UK audience, but it is apparent nonetheless.

There is a discourse of fakery in the film. The director has said that he wasn’t interested in the use of ‘authentic’ period props. He wanted to make the history ‘fantastic’ rather than ‘realist’. He also wanted to make a comedy and he increased this element from the original novel. Yet despite the director’s intention, audiences are still likely to read the ‘lack’ of authenticity in some scenes as a comment on the history. The staging of the scenes is perfunctory and we concentrate on the performances and the relationships. It also reminds us that the past is still with us in terms of the lies being told. The casting of Mathieu Kassovitz raises a further question of anti-semitism. Kassovitz is a well-known figure in terms of his Jewishness and this period of French history has aroused fierce debates about the treatment of Jews under the Vichy regime. At various points in the plot, Albert uses a suggested Jewish identity to help his deceit – a neat reversal of the occasions when ‘real’ Jews must have done the opposite to escape attention from the Gestapo. As the Sight & Sound reviewer Michael Temple points out, this film gives us a French director directing a Jewish director, playing a French ‘faker’ pretending to be Jewish.

Further ‘deceptions’ occur in Albert’s relationships with first the Captain and later the German butler/servant, Ernst. The Captain is openly gay and we can legitimately ask if his easy relationship with Albert is one of adoptive father to a young man who had never known his own father, or of an experienced lover with a novice. At the end of the film Albert spends a drunken night with Ernst – again centring on the role of father. Is it also significant that the most obvious threat to the security of Albert’s secret comes from the all-male camaraderie of the Army group in Germany, first on the tennis court and then in the showers where the lack of a wound is obvious. The tennis scene takes us back to the two earlier moments in the film where the young Albert watches the players, perhaps seeing their game as some kind of symbol of manly endeavour. This second discourse of uncertain sexuality is related to the idea of fakery via the casting of Jean-Louis Trintignant as the older Albert. Trintignant was the great sex symbol of French cinema in the 1960s and we might read this as more evidence of Albert’s deception – was he really as sexually diffident as the story makes out? In a final twist on the subject of Albert’s sexuality, there is the clear indication that Servane and Yvette are just as interested in each other as they are in Albert. What does this add to the film’s overall interest in deception and the unreliability of appearances?

A Self Made Hero is in some ways a postmodernist film. It deals with appearances and deceptions rather than attempting to make its points through realist presentations of evidence. It is a mix of comedy and satire and uses the ‘star personae’ of Kassovitz and Trintignant. Both actors were also in Audiard’s previous film Regarde les hommes tomber, in which Trintignant plays an ageing criminal and Kassovitz the slow-witted young man he ‘adopts’. From some of the director’s comments, his intention appeared to be to make a film which would afford the pleasures of the postmodern – an ironic, amused detachment. But the issue of the myth surrounding the period of resistance and collaboration is still live and sensitive (note here the references to the ‘exposure’ of Mitterand’s past in the Cannes reports) and many audiences in France will have resisted ‘detachment’ and taken the film as parable.

References

Jacques Audiard talks to Chris Darke, ‘Monsieur Memory’ in Sight & Sound, April 1997

A Self Made Hero was reviewed in all the UK ‘quality’ daily and Sunday newspapers between April 4 and April 6 1997

Suggested essay titles/discussion topics

1. What do you think the film says about ‘national memory’ – in this case the French memory of resistance?

2. How do you ‘read’ the insertions of mock documentary and the fantasy sequences in the film?

3. Research the idea of the postmodern and explain how A Self Made Hero measures up as a postmodern text.

4. How would you describe the narrative of A Self Made Hero in terms of its resolution? Is it ‘open’ or ‘closed?

5. Check out the previous Jacques Audiard film, Regarde les hommes tomber, which also features Kassovitz and Trintignant. Does the comparison justify the idea that Audiard has some kind of ‘authorial’ presence? Do the films share any other features apart from the two actors?

Ushpizin (Israel 2004)

Malli (Michal Bat-Sheva Rand) and (Moshe (Shuli Rand) admire the 'perfect citron', an essential part of the Sukkoth celebrations in 'Ushpizin'

What do we expect from Israeli Cinema? The 10 or so films produced each year in Israel all tend to benefit from ’soft money’ – funding from public sector organisations in Israel or for European co-producers. Many of the films tend to be ‘internationalist’ in outlook so that they are accessible to film festivals and arthouse distributors around the world. These tendencies have been criticised as leading to a ‘formula’ in terms of style and to a focus on what are seen as ‘peripheral’ subjects – meaning not that the subjects are unimportant, but that the stories are about Israeli Arabs, contact with Palestinians, ‘marginal’ figures in Israeli society etc. I’ve seen Ushpizin described as belonging to this group, even though, for those outside Israel, it looks on the surface as if it is offering a glimpse of a specifically Israeli community. In fact (like many films) it is both ‘local’ and ‘universal’ and the characters it depicts are both ‘marginal’ and ‘only human’.

‘Ushpizin’ refers to ‘visitors’ who should be welcomed in during the Orthodox Jewish festival of Sukkot which commemorates the period spent in the wilderness by the Jews after the Exodus from Egypt. Families erect temporary huts in outside yards where meals are taken and families will sleep for a week. Visits to the synagogue must be made with the men carrying four items (‘four species’) symbolising the resources available in the wilderness – myrtle, palm, willow and citron. There is much symbolism in all of this, explained in detail on various Wikipedia pages.

The film focuses on a couple living in a Hassidic community in Jerusalem (references are made to ‘Breslau’, which my research suggests actually refers to a town in Ukraine, not the German/Polish city, as the origin of the particular style of the rituals in the film). The couple have run out of funds, since as tradition demands, the man is studying and the woman is not allowed to work outside the home. They fear that they won’t be able to celebrate Sukkot and that their prayers for a child will not be answered. However, two pieces of good fortune provide both a temporary dwelling for Sukkot and the funds to buy food and the ‘four species’. They also receive an unexpected visit from two men, only one of whom is known to the husband. This visit proves the catalyst for a series of events which will transform the couple’s life together.

Once I got past the details of the Orthodox life-style – which wasn’t as unfamiliar as I expected – I realised that this was actually a well-known narrative premise. I was reminded of the Jewish stories that have come out of Eastern Europe and seeped into Anglo-American literary culture. The focus on the citron (devout Jews are supposed to buy the most ‘perfect’ specimen they can find within their means) seems to fit many such stories. The ‘visitors’ are characters from many plays and films – seemingly sent to the couple as a ‘test’ of their beliefs and integrity and their self-knowledge. The same story could have taken place in many communities. The ‘authenticity’ of this particular representation lies partly in the fact that the couple are played by a real-life couple who like the characters in the film are relatively recent converts to the Orthodox Jewish lifestyle. Shuli Rand who plays Moshe, the husband, retired from his acting career when he converted and presumably returned for this role (he also wrote the script) because he believed it would promote understanding. The director, Giddi Dar, is, I think, a secular Jew according to the reviews.

I enjoyed the film and it certainly kept my interest as an unusual drama with touches of social comedy. I was also intrigued by the various reviews I found. Mainstream critics and reviewers tended, I think, to be a little condescending to the film, giving it quite high ratings but not really attempting to explore what it meant. Jewish audiences seemed very grateful that somebody had put such a story on the screen. I’m not sure what I think about it as an Israeli film. It is set in Jerusalem (which was the pilgrim city for the original celebrations) and Orthodox communities are gradually moving into the city with the possible outcome that there will be clashes with other communities, especially in the old city. But there are relatively few references to the details of Israeli life today, except for mention of one location in the city as being ‘where the Iraqis are’. Moshe is said to come from Eilat which is down on the Red Sea. I find these little sociological details fascinating, but I guess it is wrong of me to want more of a sense of what other, secular, Israelis make of communities like this – and how different or similar they are to Orthodox communities in the UK and North America.

The Road

Father and son travel the wilderness

USA 2009 – Certificate 15.

Screen adaptation by Joe Penhall: direction by John Hillcoat.

This film is clearly a ‘message movie’. But, for me, the most stimulating moment in the screening was among the preceding adverts. The first was by Act on CO2. It presented a father reading an illustrated moral fable to his young, blonde-haired daughter at bedtime. We saw the animals and natural settings that succumbed to the man-made toxic pestilence. At the end the young girl asked her father, ‘Is there a happy ending?’ It struck me that if she was a few years older she could see the film that I was about to watch. In this post-apocalyptic tale the opening shows a world where there is clearly not a happy ending for the animal kingdom, for nature and for human society.

The following contains some plot information: however, I think the plot’s trajectory is fairly obvious from the opening moments.

The film is an adaptation of a highly praised novel by Cormac McCarthy. I found the book an absorbing and powerful fable, but (like No Country for Old Men) that its minimalist style has definite limitations. The minimalism is drastically reduced in the film medium. We are immediately shown facial expressions and character movement: the actual detail of the devastation: and intriguing detail in the background: all amplify the bare bones of the novel. The filmmakers accentuate this tendency partly through cinematic style, for example the use of the overhead, dramatic wide shots: but mostly by the often obtrusive accompanying music. I cannot remember many musical riffs in my imagination when I read the novel.

The filmic approach also gives added emphasis to other aspects that are found in the novel. This applies especially to the roles of female characters. In The Road Charlize Theron (woman) plays the lead female. The fact that she is a star just makes it more obvious that her character is subordinate and marginal to the men: and she also has a negative function in the narrative. In fact, in both the book and the film, men trudge off into the wilderness (here father and son played by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee), with the women frequently left behind in the world of domesticity. In this case, though, the domestic world has collapsed. Man and the wilderness is a common motif in popular films: the Hollywood Western is mainly constructed round this situation. McCarthy’s books tend to be westerns as well. But equally in the broader US culture the situation has almost mythic status. (Leslie Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel offers an excellent analysis of this tendency).

A more problematic treatment, not in the book, concerns African-Americans. I think there are one or more among the extras, including in a gang involved in cannibalism. However, the one black character (Michael Kenneth Williams) presented centrally in a sequence is the thief.  In the book McCarthy describes this character thus, “Scrawny, sullen, bearded, filthy. His old plastic coat held together with tape.” Making him a black character might seem neutral casting, but that is not the case in the sort of capitalist society where racist stereotypes are still powerfully present.

Critics have commented on how the film softens or downplays aspects of the novel – the treatment of cannibalism is a good example. Joe Penhall was asked about changing the written story for the film and suggested that movies were ‘subject to immutable laws’, [Interview on Night Waves, Radio 3, January 7th 2010]. This is over-emphatic, though mainstream films are subject to powerful conventions. These are apparent at the film’s ending. On the seashore setting there is one extra character (uncredited) as loaded in connotations as the wilderness itself. I think you will recognise him/her as soon as you watch the final scene.

Romcoms, Clooney and Streep, Audiences and Critics

George Clooney and Vera Famiga in Up in the Air

A strange couple of days returning to mainstream Hollywood Cinema (though one of the films is probably thought of as ‘independent’). I’m struck by the fact I have spent four generally pleasurable hours in a cinema only to come out and read some rather odd reviews. Is it me or are reviewers particularly dense these days?

First up is Up in the Air in which George Clooney leads Jason Reitman’s follow-up to Juno. I was grabbed immediately by the credit sequence which offers a delirious montage of aerial shots of the US cut to a very distinctive take on Woody Guthrie’s alternative national anthem This Land is Your Land by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. There are many signs that this is a movie from the director of Juno; the fast-cutting montage of procedures; the acoustic folk songs and the appearance of J. K. Simmons and Jason Bateman (very fetching with a beard and reminding me of Xabi Alonso – no higher praise from a forlorn Liverpool fan). And then there is a perky, irritating (until made human) young woman. The big difference, of course is Clooney in Cary Grant mode and, most of all Vera Famiga. Famiga offers one of the most erotic performances I’ve seen in a long time. Why isn’t she in more such roles? I still remember Scorsese’s disappointing The Departed in which she was anything but disappointing. The film also reminded me of Clooney’s previous erotic highlight – with Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight – a film which shares a similar mise en scène of hotel bars and bedrooms with the sexy clink of whisky tumblers and the clunk of the hotel room door.

Up in the Air is clever, witty and polished and works like a dream for the first two-thirds of the narrative. Clooney is Ryan, the urbane corporate executioner who flies around the US clocking up airmiles and trying to avoid coming ‘home’ to his rented room. He prefers the anonymity of relatively upmarket hotels. The ‘inciting incident’ is the sudden appearance of young Natalie (Anna Kendrick) a psychologist with a plan to fire execs via iChat or its equivalent. Ryan is compensated for this threat to his livelihood by meeting the perfect ‘woman on the road’, Alex (Famiga). So, we have three narrative lines. Will Clooney/Ryan successfully educate/humanise Natalie, can he maintain his solitary lifestyle and will his relationship with Alex develop further than just an occasional night together? Of course, these are inter-related in interesting ways. If Ryan can convince Natalie that firing someone needs a human touch (he is obliged to take her with him on a trip around several clients) he will inevitably challenge his own previously impermeable sense of distance from what he does. And this may in turn make him weaker in the face of the desire he feels for the delicious Alex. In this respect, the script carefully tempts Ryan into a return to his childhood home to attend the wedding of his younger sister, taking a surprised Alex with him. Presumably, Ryan is so dense in terms of social knowledge that he just doesn’t realise that weddings (like funerals) are deadly affairs where all kinds of family skeletons and dangerous social relationships are routinely given an airing.

When I glanced at reviews, I wasn’t surprised by the large majority of glowing, nay gushing, reviews, but I was slightly taken aback by the isolated very ‘anti’ reviews. I do understand the argument that says the film ultimately becomes a conservative commentary on marriage and family life. I did feel that the ending was somehow not satisfactory, but I’m not sure why. In many ways the film is like Juno in that it can be read in different ways. Whereas the dilemma in Juno was about abortion, here it is about remaining childless by choice and not succumbing to the peer pressure to conform to bourgeois family life. This speaks to me much more than the pregnancy question and I’m not sure the last third of the film is as ‘conservative’ as some critics claim. Perhaps it’s just a problem in the script that will take two or three viewings to sort out. I certainly won’t mind watching it again. The other point in the film’s favour is that it does inhabit a real world of ‘downsizing’. So it’s a grown-up comedy with a slight satirical edge and three great performances plus some neat technical work and assured direction.

Up in the Air is perhaps a ’smart cinema’ comedy – although that term is now possibly out of date. The film has a coldness and a cynicism which is ’smart’, but it also has scenes of real human warmth. This makes it, in the crass terms of modern Hollywood, too clever to be mainstream. What then of It’s Complicated by the woman who a large segment of American critical opinion seems to hate, Nancy Meyers?

Meryl Streep and girlfriends in the 'old kitchen' in It's Complicated

I didn’t see Something’s Gotta Give, probably because of Jack Nicholson’s gurning and I avoided The Holiday because of similar misgivings about Jude Law and Cameron Diaz. (The truth is their personas are too young for me.) Having said that, I quite enjoyed What Women Want despite Mel Gibson. It’s Complicated teams Meryl Streep with Alex Baldwin and Steve Martin in a comedy with a plot that could easily have figured in a 1930s Hollywood studio picture. All three play well and though there is nothing particularly exciting about the aesthetics of the film, I found it to be perfectly acceptable Saturday night entertainment – especially for us aged people who can be quite entertained by middle-aged sexual dalliances.

The plot sees Jane (Streep) as a (very) successful artisan baker in Santa Barbara who after ten years divorced from Jake (Baldwin) stumbles back into a relationship with him during the graduation weekend celebrations for their son. Jake has re-married a younger woman who is now sending him to the fertility clinic in the hope he can father another child. Meanwhile, Adam (Martin) is designing Jane an extension for her (already extensive) house. Adam has divorced more recently and is seeking a woman near his own age.

When I turn to the reviews listed on IMDB, I find first of all that most of them are by male reviewers who don’t take kindly to Ms Meyers – a veteran of what might be called ‘family comedies’. This is unfortunate, but at least fits the stereotype of male reviewers. More surprising, the couple of women whose reviews I read were completely dismissive of the film. They complained about the grown-up children and I would concur with this to the extent that the three of them didn’t look old enough to have been to university and they were particularly wimpish (apart from the excellent John Krasinski as the putative son-in-law). But they aren’t particularly important to the plot. No, the real reason to despise the film is either because it is ‘kitchen porn’ or because it doesn’t deal realistically with the sexual desires of 60 year-old women. A good example of this is MaryAnn Johansen at ‘flickfilosopher’. She manages to combine these two critiques in this way:

“Perhaps the most distasteful thing about Meyers’ films, which include the recent Something’s Gotta Give and The Holiday, is that we’re simultaneously meant to rejoice and be thankful that Meyers is condescending to give in to the outrageous reveries of women who have nothing but fantasy left — or so we’re meant to accept is the case — while she also underlines how ridiculously impossible those fantasies are. It’s like with that amazing kitchen. That’s the “before” kitchen, the one not good enough for Jane, the one she needs to clear away to make room for the “real” kitchen she has always desired. That’s how awesomely awesome Jane is, and how pathetic you the viewer are: the kitchen you’re swooning over is the one she can’t wait to get rid of.”

Now, perhaps I don’t understand this, but I think that Ms Johanson is suggesting first that Nancy Meyers, one of the few women to consistently write and direct films in mainstream Hollywood over a long period (I guess that Nora Ephron and Penny Marshall are the others concerned with comedies) is condescending to audiences by offering them enjoyable fantasies. Her crime is that the fantasies aren’t realistic? This is Hollywood we are talking about. Since when has a mainstream audience worried that a Hollywood comedy is not realistic? And as for kitchen porn, what is fundamentally wrong with drooling over expensive kitchens. Alright, the ostentatious wealth on display is something that bores me in Hollywood movies – but it has always been there. As one of the astute commentators on Johanson’s site points out, we don’t object that Katherine Hepburn is a wealthy socialite in Bringing Up Baby or that Myrna Loy and William Powell inhabit a world of wealth in the Thin Man series. That’s Hollywood.

The real question is what older women in the audience make of the film and how they identify with Jane’s dilemma (choosing between Jake and Adam or remaining celibate). Of course, I don’t know, but given Meryl Streep’s current fanbase post Mama Mia and the fact that in It’s Complicated, she looks great without being lifted or filled in (there is a nice joke about this) and generally amuses, I’d be surprised if the film ‘missed’ with that particular demographic.

There is what I assume is an in-joke in the movie when Jane and Jake sit down with their children to watch a DVD for the first time since the marriage ended and the film Jake chooses is The Graduate. There are quite a few connotations/referents here. The Graduate involves a young man (Dustin Hoffman) sleeping with an ‘older woman’ – his fiancée’s mother (played by Anne Bancroft). In It’s Complicated, John Krasinki’s character is in the same familial relationship with Jane/Streep and he does have an interesting role in the narrative. At the time of The Graduate, Anne Bancroft was just 36. Hoffman was 30 and Katherine Ross, playing Mrs Robinson’s daughter was 27. So here was a highly-rated film in which a female star was ‘old’ enough to play the mother of an actor just nine years younger than she was. At least we have progressed now to the point where Meryl Streep at 60 can play a character who is described in the press notes as ‘fifty-something’. Finally, when Jane watches Hoffman in The Graduate, there is the further irony that Hoffman and Streep played a divorced couple in Kramer v. Kramer in 1979 (in which the divorced father attempts to bring up the child of the marriage – a question raised about Jake and his new wife and small boy). I’m sure Meyers was very conscious of these points when (I assume) she chose the movie extract.

I’ve not always been a Streep fan, but she’s turned into what once was called a ‘real trouper’, so good luck to her.

Global cinema news and comment

2009 seems to have come to a rousing end in terms of cinema box offices around the world. We commented on 3 Idiots and broken records in Hindi Cinema in the last post and most of the world knows that Avatar has given James Cameron the the No2 box office film of all time already. With $1.33 billion worldwide and counting there is now an outside possibility that Avatar will catch Titanic.

Here are some other news stories that you might have missed in all the Hollywood fanfares:

China has had an amazing year at the cinema with an increase in box-office revenues of 44%. This came after 600 new screens were added last year, bringing the country’s total to 4,700. Out of the total, 1,800 are digital and nearly 800 are 3-D screens. The revenue increases came partly from higher prices in new multiplexes appearing in shopping malls. There is still a restriction on Hollywood titles that are allowed an import certificate, but 5 blockbuster US titles were in the Chinese Top 10 for 2009 – no wonder the studios are eager for more entry opportunities and co-productions.

In France, admissions are up to over 200 million making 2009 the best year since 1982 and securing No3 slot for the French cinema market after India and the US. Hollywood still managed 49.8% and French producers bagged a very creditable 37.1% leaving 13.1% for the ‘Rest of the World’.

In both the UK and France, the video industry has bounced back in 2009. In the UK, the increase in Blu-Ray disc transactions has compensated for the decline in the traditional DVD market and the sector’s overall performance expected to improve during 2010 driven by HD TV sales. In France action against pirates and a reduction in the cinema release window (i.e. DVDs released after a shorter period following the cinema release) has seen the volume of transactions rise by 30% and value by 7%.

The value of the Spanish box office also broke records and Spanish producers took 15% of their own market. Polish admissions rose to 38 million (an increase of 4 million) with 29 Polish productions generating over 8 million admissions. Three Hollywood animated films topped the box office chart. In the Netherlands, admissions were up as well with a big increase in the value of the market. Hollywood took 70% of the Dutch market. In Italy, admissions were flat but value rose – attributed to higher prices for 3-D screenings, something that has been mentioned in several territories as a cause for optimism in the industry. Anyone want to comment on that – I haven’t been to a 3-D screening yet.

(Most of this info comes from the excellent Cineuropa site – see the headlines in the left sidebar.)

Global Bollywood? 3 Idiots (India 2009)

Raju (Sharman Joshi), Rancho (Aamir Khan) and Farhan (Madhavan) as the '3 Idiots'

It is already the the most successful Hindi Cinema release worldwide. Statistics for the Indian Box Office are notoriously difficult to verify so I’m simply quoting Screen International which places 3 Idiots at No 6 in the ‘Global Box Office’ with $35 million after just 10 days on release in 18 territories, including $4.7 million in the US and $1.8 million in the UK. The UK success prompted a Guardian piece on January 8 by Nirpal Dhaliwal. I found one of his earlier pieces on Slumdog Millionaire to be simply provocative but this piece seemed quite sensible as he tried to argue why the film’s success would not lead to a ‘crossover’ into the British mainstream. I was also intrigued by the success of 3 Idiots when I realised that it was an adaptation of some kind of Chetan Bhagat’s novel Five Point Someone and that it starred two of  my favourite actors, Aamir Khan and Madhavan.

The story outline sees three students arriving as freshers at the prestigious ‘Imperial College of Engineering’ (which at one point uses location shots of the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore). This trio turn out to be  something of a disruptive influence in the normally controlled atmosphere of such a high-class ‘grades factory’. The narrative is driven by two separate but related conflicts between the leader of the trio, ‘Rancho’ (Aamir Khan) and both the college Principal and the top student of the year-group, Chatur. The narrative structure, however, employs a long flashback so that the film begins and ends in the present when Chatur has summoned the trio to return to the college they left ten years previously in order to prove who has become the most successful in their subsequent careers.

The first comment I should make about the film is that it is well-made and certainly entertaining. It lasts 170 minutes and I wasn’t bored for a moment. The performances are all excellent and it’s easy to see why Aamir Khan is a major star (his 2008 film, Ghajini, was also the biggest Bollywood film of the year). I laughed aloud on several occasions and the film prompted the kind of emotional response that I often get, against my will, with the best Hollywood features. But I have several lingering doubts about the film – mainly, I think, because of the original book and also because the film prompts consideration of one of the strongest trends in recent Indian Cinema – the attempts by Bollywood producers to find new themes to engage the emerging Indian middle classes and to bridge the NRI and domestic markets in appeal.

Chetan Bhagat’s book has been a huge success in India. The paperback I bought in India announces itself as the ‘138th impression’ (since 2004). I don’t know much about Indian publishing, but I think that suggests a hit. In the bookshop in Kolkata, Bhagat’s novels held the top three slots on the bestseller list. His first title to be adapted for a film was One Night in a Call Centre. I haven’t seen the film but I enjoyed the book (which was also published in the UK). The New York Times has announced that Bhagat is the “biggest-selling English-language novelist in India’s history”. This is quite an important point. Bhagat represents a new kind of literary fiction in India targeting younger middle-class readers with experience of the university rat-race and the NRI opportunities. His books don’t get nominated for literary prizes such as the Booker – like Aravind Adiga or previously Arundhati Roy or Vikram Seth – but he speaks directly to the new generation. In some ways, his books occupy the same market sector as Vikas Swarup and it is interesting to compare how Swarup’s Q & A and Bhagat’s Five Point Someone were adapted to become Slumdog Millionaire and 3 Idiots respectively.

In the case of Slumdog, Simon Beaufoy took a rather rambling narrative with lots of subplots and streamlined it into an Oscar-winning film script. Almost the opposite happened to Bhagat’s book, a rather slight comic novel which was transformed into a Bollywood blockbuster with far more plot and some extra characters plus the usual choreographed set pieces. I’m not suggesting that either adaptation was more or less successful or that books are better than films – simply that the adaptation process is different because a British film and a Bollywood film are quite different in their address to audiences. Nirpal Dhaliwal’s point is that 3 Idiots will never achieve the global success that Slumdog managed. I think that he is probably correct, but on the other hand, I think that a different adaptation of Bhagat’s novel could produce a film that would attract audiences in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and many other places where the education system creates enormous pressures. What would Simon Beaufoy have done with it?

So, what is the difference between book and film? I don’t want to introduce spoilers so I’ll stick to broad differences. Screenwriter Abhijat Joshi and director Rajkumar Hirani first of all changed the lead character of the novel. The novel is written in the first person by Hari, the least ‘dramatic’ of the trio of characters, and the mysterious ‘leader’ of the group is Ryan. Hari becomes Farhan (Madhavan) in the film and Ryan becomes Rancho. The third character Alok becomes Raju (Sharman Joshi) and he is not really changed. The switch involving Hari/Farhan and Ryan/Rancho is essential for Bollywood in making sure that the narrative drive comes from the role occupied by the main star. The novel is more subtle in that Ryan is the catalyst for action, but he is not in any way heroic. He remains mysterious and ambivalent. The second main difference is in the analysis of the education offered by the college. The film is clever and witty in pointing up the faults of the college’s pedagogy, but in the end it has to see its heroes ‘win’ in some way (especially Rancho). As the title of Bhagat’s novel suggests, his whole narrative involves the trio rejecting the tyranny of grading so that they can still be human beings even though they are in the ‘five point something’ section of the pass list. This is the crunch because both narratives, although comedies, do include the tragedy of suicide. But Bollywood still struggles with being too ‘down’ so it feels the necessity to include a screwball rom-com and two ‘marriage’ set pieces as well as lots of other devices that push the dark side into the background. There are other differences. Kareena Kapoor is in my view miscast as Neha/Pia, the Professor’s daughter who in the novel is Hari’s girlfriend, not Ryan’s and a naive 18 year-old, not a glamorous medical student. I also missed in the film the little touches that suggest that we are somewhere in real India, not the fantasy world of Bollywood. In the book these include visiting the ice-cream parlour and the cheap cafe where the trio eat paranthas. I’m not suggesting here that the novel is a realist account of going to college – it isn’t. But it does allow the real world to creep into the comedy and that may mean that it provokes a little more thought.

3 Idiots has been warmly received by reviewers in India and I’ve only found one very negative review so far, but it’s a persuasive one. Indian Auteur treats the film as following a trend in offering an apologia for the Indian middle classes and their contradictory attitudes towards current issues in Indian society. In a nutshell, these are films that seem to criticise the system which oppresses  the rising middle classes but in reality simply gives in and accepts the oppression. Indian Auteur’s reviewer, Anuj, has certainly seen many more Bollywood films than I have and he comes up with many good ideas about how to make an ideological analysis of trends. Here is an extract:

The Hindi cinema screen slowly becomes the medium through which the Indian middle class extracts its revenge over what over suppresses it in the modern day world – it mocks the bourgeois, exposes the hypocrisy of the richer class, and ridicules the concept of a hierarchy. The villains are now overtly stern college professors, autocratic bosses, corrupt politicians or when the film is brave enough to admit its audience’s greatest villain – the government itself. Most of these films feature innocuous heroes drenched in the uneventfulness of their own lives, the conduct of their own private ambitions, and the fulfilment of personal causes; until an event or their realisation of the fallacies of a system they are unwillingly, but not unconditionally a part of; jolts them from their slumber and propels them on a path of retribution so soaked in acknowledgement of its audience’s wishful fantasies, that the films usually refuse to question the validity of a popular opinion, instead letting it become the text for their images, and in a way, merely playing it out on the screen.

One film that does come up in discussion is Rang De Basanti (2006) which coincidentally features the ‘three idiots’ themselves in lead roles. I enjoyed that film but was a little worried about its ending in much the same way as Anuj – I can see that I need to see some more and come back to this analysis. Rang De Basanti reminds me of one other reason why films like 3 Idiots might struggle to cross over in the West. Aamir Khan plays a student in both films. In Rang De Basanti, I think the plot does suggest some reasons why he might still be a student (the actor was then 41). In 3 Idiots, Khan is 44 – just five years younger than the actor who plays the Professor. Khan is a great actor and much of the time he could actually be a 21 year-old. Even so, could you imagine a Hollywood comedy in which Brad Pitt played a freshman? (If 3 Idiots was a Hollywood film, it would be like a mix of American Pie and Dead Poet’s Society without sex, drugs and only a little bit of rock ‘n roll.)

The debate about 3 Idiots will develop. There have already been news stories about disputes between Chetan Bhagat and the producers. I hope there will be more discussion about the novel and the adaptation and the general direction of contemporary Indian Cinema.

Postscript

Thanks to Nick for pointing out that the UK literary critic Robert McCrum has used his column in the Observer Review to explain the Chetan Bhagat phenomenon and by implication to expose the Indian literary critics who denounce/ignore him.

Pomegranates and Myrrh – Al Mor Wa Al Rumman

Kamar visits Zaid in prison

Palestinian Territories, France, Germany 2008.

Screened at the 23^rd Leeds International Film Festival 2009.

Running Time 95 minutes.

Languages, Arabic, Hebrew, English with some English Subtitles.

Director: Najwa Najjar, Screenwriter: Najwa Najjar.

Note, plot information included.

The film opens with the wedding of Kamar (Yasmin Elmasri) and Zaid (Aashraf Farar) in Ramallah, in the occupied Palestinian territories. Zaid owns an olive grove and an olive press. Kamar’s own interest is a local dance group. Shortly after the wedding Israeli soldiers turn up on Zaid’s land with a notice of confiscation. There is a scuffle and Zaid is arrested and imprisoned under ‘administrative detention’. Most of the film follows Kamar as she copes with the situation but also attempts to continue her own life, in particular her membership of the dance troupe. There are periodic visits to Zaid in prison, and at one point he is held in solitary confinement. Kamar’s life becomes more complicated when Kais (Ali Suliman) joins the troupe. He is a choreographer whose family was exiled to Lebanon at the start of the occupation in 1948. By the end of the film the troupe have performed a dance event supervised by Kais, Pomegranates and Myrrh: Zaid has finally been released from prison and there is tentative reunion between him and Kamar: but the olive grove remain under Israeli occupation.

The film deals with an important issue for Palestinians, the creeping theft of their land under a variety of guises by the Zionist regime. The soldiers claim that the confiscation is because ‘boys threw stones’ from the land. The soldiers then claim that Zaid ‘threatened and attacked’ them to justify his imprisonment. Zaid imprisonment lasts several months and we glimpse the bureaucratic methods used by the Israeli’s to delay any possibility of justice. At the same time Jewish settlers start to occupy the confiscated groves, and at one point vandalise the disused olive press.

However, the prime focus of the film is the situation of the young wife, Kamar. Along with the pressures of the confiscation and her husbands imprisonment are those of friends and family who believe that her dance activities and growing friendship with Kais are unseemly. Eventually the Director of the troupe, incensed by Kais’s interest in Kamar, cancels the planned event that Kais is rehearsing with the dance troupe. The dance finally takes place in a disused playground. And it is during a performance that Kamar and Zaid exchange smiles that suggest their future together.

The film makes an interesting comparison with the 2008 film, Lemon Tree (Etz Limon, Israel, Germany, and France). There is not only a common plot problem, in this case the confiscation of a Lemon Grove, but also shared actors. In Lemon Tree Haim Abbass plays the widow, Salma Zidane, whose grove is under threat because an Israeli Minister moves into the adjoining house: in Pomegranates and Myrrh she plays Umm Habib, the owner of a small café. The café hosts an important scene as Kamar and Kais are forced to spend a night there during an Israeli curfew. Ali Suliman (Kais in Pomegranates and Myrrh) plays the Zaid Doud, the young Palestinian lawyer who conducts Salma’s case. Lemon Tree is clearly the more didactic film: [not a weakness despite the claims of certain mainstream critics]. For me the main weakness was that this didactic tone was rather one-note: it did not develop all the complexities of the situation. For example, Pomegranates and Myrrh has a much stronger sense of the wider context and Palestinian communities. An aspect of the one-note tone is the recurring use made of the folk song, Lemon Tree, which I felt did not stand frequent re-playing. Lemon Tree also offers a closer look at the Israeli protagonists; the film ends without Salma recovering her land, but with Mira Navon (Rona Lipaz-Michael) leaving her ministerial husband, Israel Navon (Doron Tavory) out of disgust for his oppressive actions. In Pomegranates and Myrrh the Israeli soldiers are almost faceless, and the settlers are uniformly shown in long shot.

Haim Abbass as Umm Habib

Pomegranates and Myrrh seem to me to subordinate the political issue to the personal. So much of the plot focuses on Kamar’s personal difficulties and the developing relationship with Kais. This is reinforced by the film’s ending, when the audience are left with what seems to be a re-united husband and wife without a clear reference to the confiscated land. The writer and director commented on her approach to the issue and the story:

“The idea for the film started with the beginning of the second Palestinian Intifada. …When violence, hate and anger became the only life around me, it almost broke my spirit and soul, and my faith in humanity. I needed to find a way to survive, to find hope in what seemed to be a hopeless situation, to breathe again despite the suffocating weight of frustration. Yet in this search I was also confronted with barriers in a Palestinian society – those which can hinder individual development, dreams and aspirations but none as challenging as those which force people to turn to losing themselves when despair, uncertainty and loss prevails. Writing offered me the escape I needed and a way to release my frustrations. The result was ‘Pomegranates and Myrrh’. I took the story of a Palestinian female dancer trying to fulfil her dreams in a conservative society…. The film is in some ways a prediction of how a worsening political climate and the consequent lack of hope can directly affect Palestinian daily life, pushing the society to further isolate itself and the individual to regress into conservative traditionalism and religion if there isn’t hope, determination and a continuation of life. … It is my hope [that this story] will ultimately deepen the understanding of the present Palestinian story, transcending the barriers of culture and language.” (Leeds Festival Catalogue).

I have to question how far the emphasis of the film on the personal as to the political really does ‘deepen understanding. It is a staple of the commercial, entertainment film, even when it addresses contemporary political contradictions, to focus on the emotions of individual protagonists. This tendency {I believe] weakens and dissipated political issues. This is not a criticism that I would apply to the earlier Lemon Tree.

There is an interesting comment by a ‘reader’ on the Internet Movie Data Base site. One writes, “Although not explained, it is maybe interesting to note that pomegranates were eaten by souls in the underworld to bring about rebirth. Hellenic mythographers said both Kore and Eurydice were detained in the underworld because they ate pomegranate seeds there. Myrrh was traditionally an aphrodisiac.” In this sense the film’s tile reinforces the personal issue.

Cinematically Pomegranates and Myrrh is more interesting than the earlier film. There are occasional long shots, usually for establishing a scene or as transitions between scenes. Much of the movie is shot in mid-shot and close-up. This relentlessly emphasises the enchainment of the Palestinians: also present in the mise en scène in the frequent use of bars and enclosures. The films’ opening follows the wedding party on their way to an Orthodox Church for the ceremony. Their journey perforce is through an Israeli checkpoint and alongside the ‘apartheid wall’. This style also reinforces the sense of the restrictions that are laid on the heroine.

However, I felt this style was rather over-done: the continuing close-ups do feel very oppressive and frequently frustrate the viewer’s view of the settings. Another quirk I thought not completely successful was the frequnet shots of feet, especially during the dancing by the troupe. A colleague told me that Film Schools advise students that shots of feet make a useful transition, and I have this sense that they are often excessive in contemporary cinema. Despite these reservations Pomegranates and Myrrh is an absorbing film and it generates emotional involvement both around its central issue and the involved protagonists.

Pratidwandi (The Adversary, India 1970)

Siddhartha (Dhritiman Chatterjee, second from right) receives his queuing slip as one of the many candidates for an interview.

This may be the Satyajit Ray film that speaks most directly to me – possibly because I first saw it when I was roughly the age of the protagonist and I can still relate directly to how he might be feeling.

The Adversary is usually quoted as the first film in Ray’s ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ but I would place it as the second of the four contemporary Calcutta films (I notice that Ray’s biographer Marie Seton does this as well) or even the third of the more modernist films dealing with contemporary Bengali urban life beginning with Nayak, (The Hero) in 1966.

The Adversary begins with a negative sequence showing a funeral. Then we meet Siddhartha, a young man of 25 who is seeking work in an endless round of interviews. His father’s death led to the abandonment of his medical training after two years. Siddhartha’s younger brother Tunu is still a student but has now become a supporter of the Naxalites (the Marxist revolutionaries in West Bengal who are beginning to disrupt everyday life in Calcutta). The only breadwinner in the family is Sutapa, Siddhartha’s sister. She is a successful secretary angling to become the PA of the boss. Siddhartha ‘fails’ an interview because, in an often-quoted scene, he gives the ‘wrong’ answer to a question about the most significant event of the last few years when he suggests the courage of the ordinary people in the Vietnam War rather than the moon-landing. He then finds himself moping about the streets of Calcutta and sponging off his friends who are happier sampling the fleshpots of the city. The only opening appears to be via an old contact from his time in student politics.

At home, Siddhartha also faces the responsibilities of being the eldest male in the household and he feels that he must put pressure on his sister to give up her job when gossip about her and her boss reaches their mother. At the same time he is torn between admiring his younger brother’s political convictions and feeling that he should advise him to take a more conventional path. All around him Calcutta is on edge but one night he meets a young neighbour, Keya, and begins a relationship. Of course, she has her problems as well. I won’t spoil the ending if you haven’t seen the film, but I found it satisfying in one sense at least. Much as though I would have liked to be Tunu, I know that I couldn’t be. On the other hand Siddhartha is more or less exactly how I was at that age (including giving ‘wrong’ answers at interviews).

Why is it that I want to give a good kick up the backside to most of Ray’s middle class young men, but not Siddhartha? (I’m quite sympathetic to the young man in The Middleman, but he is rather naive and easily led.) Partly, I think it is the playing/direction, but also the location in a clearly adumbrated family situation and the portrayal of a recognisable urban milieu. It struck me that Ray captures something about Calcutta in 1970 that echoes Paris, London and North American cities – this film seems both the most rooted of Ray’s films in the modern India and the most universal (i.e. applicable to all great urban centres). If this sounds odd, remember that over a period of four or five years from 1968 to 1973, UK cities experienced mass demonstrations, strikes and power cuts, bombs planted by the IRA etc. Siddhartha is struggling to work out what to do with his life with everything around him disintegrating. He doesn’t just turn away from it, but tries to do something – to find a moral code to live by. Satyajit Ray himself gives the clue to his own motivation in making the film:

“There is no doubt that the elder brother admires the younger brother for his bravery and convictions. The film is not ambiguous about that. As a filmmaker, however, I was more interested in the elder brother because he is the vacillating character. as a psychological entity, as a human being with doubts, he is a more interesting character to me. The younger brother has already identified himself with a cause. That makes him part of a total attitude and makes him unimportant. The Naxalite movement takes over. He, as a person, becomes insignificant.” (from an interview in Cineaste Vol 13 and reprinted in Art, Politics Cinema: The Cineaste Interviews, Dan Georgakas & Lenny Rubenstein (1985) London: Pluto Press)

Here, I think is Ray’s stance in one neat statement.He goes on to say that you could make an ‘Eisensteinian’ film about the Naxalites, but to do so you’d have to focus on the leaders – the people who make the decisions. This is where I disagree with Ray – or at least I would hope that he is wrong as I respect his view of what is possible for a filmmaker. Why isn’t he interested in what motivates Tunu as well as Siddhartha? I haven’t seen his post 1975 films, so perhaps he does attempt to find out what happened to the revolutionaries later on? He’s right that Siddhartha is an interesting character and he does use his story to raise what is happening in the social/political world, but his refusal to deal with the reality of people with even harder decisions to make is disappointing.

The feel of the film is also down to the adoption of several devices used to explore the inside of Siddhartha’s head as well as the tensions in the environment. So, as well as the opening sequence, the film also moves into negative on a couple of other occasions and there are several dream sequences with expressionist imagery (Siddhartha sees his sister ‘exposing herself’ to the cameras of fashion photographers and his brother facing a firing squad), sudden flashbacks to a childhood with rural sequences and also to lectures that the young medical student would have attended. These latter come when Siddhartha is looking at a variety of women and add a comic tone to the otherwise grim round of despondency. (These inserts are similar to those in Dusan Makaveyev’s glorious satire Tragedy of a Switchboard Operator (Yugoslavia 1969)). Noticeable too are the backdrops to scenes. In one, huge and noisy crowds spill across the Maidan as Siddhartha and Keya meet on the roof of a new office block on Chowringhee.

I’ve seen these devices referred to as inspired by the French New Wave, but the dreams follow much older conventions and negative sequences were there in German Expressionist films of the 1920s. It’s more I think that that the mix of stylistic devices is translated through the editing style – the transitions to flashbacks are quite abrupt – to create a disturbed and disorientated sense of time and place, compounded by the explosions and crowds on the street. Many of the scenes also take place at night and with the power cuts and failing lights the image is decidedly noirish. Unfortunately, I was watching the UK DVD distributed by Mr. Bongo and it isn’t very good. It looks like a poor copy of an American print with barely readable subs, a juddery image in the action scenes and very little tonal range overall.

In any consideration of Ray’s treatment of the characters and setting we should also remember that this is another adaptation, following Days and Nights in the Forest, from a Sunil Ganguly novel. Much of the novel is available in English via Google Books. Scanning through a few pages, it looks as if Ray has changed the structure and streamlined the cast of characters, but the tone seems closer to the novel than in the case of Days and Nights.

On a final personal note, I’m amazed to recall that during my first teaching job in 1976 I hired this film on 16mm (VHS cassettes were still to be introduced) and played it to several classes of 17 year-olds during a week. These were not film students but vocational students (e.g. science technicians, telecomms workers etc.) coming to me for General Studies. I don’t remember an uproar and they weren’t all asleep. Similar students watched Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and some of Joris Ivens’ documentaries made in China. Nowadays I know some university teachers who would hesitate to show a film like The Adversary to undergraduates. Is it teachers who have changed – or students or film culture?