Lincoln (US 2012)

Dreamworks and C20th Fox. Director Steven Spielberg. Screenplay Tony Kushner, based on the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski. Editor Michael Kahn. Music John Williams. Sound Design Ben Burtt. Costume design Joanna Johnston.

Academy Award for Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Academy Award Best Production Design Rick Cater and Jim Erickson.

Stephen Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s award winning film is a reconstruction of a key moment in US history and the US Civil War. In another sense it is also a biography of the most famous of US Presidents, using a key moment in his life and career rather than providing an overall picture of the man. The key moment is the point at which the US Congress, sited in Washington and the Unionist North’s territory, finally approved a constitutional amendment that abolished slavery. In a sense this was an act that addressed the unfinished business of the founding fathers when they proclaimed all men equal: except of course the enslaved Afro-Americans or Negroes (the politest term in use in that period).

This is an epic production running for two and half-hours. The cinematography, sound and production design are all of a high standard. The film’s score is impressive if occasionally overly sentimental. Daniel Day-Lewis as the President has already received widespread praise, but the whole cast is excellent. This combination of talent and performance gives the film credibility both as an absorbing story and as a history lesson. The conflicts and machinations that preceded the historic vote in the House of Representatives seems to have been bought to the screen with reasonable accuracy, though there is now a debate about the veracity of the Connecticut vote in the film: an odd lapse in what seems a convincing reconstruction.

The central figure of Lincoln emerges partly in the familiar guise seen in earlier biopics: we several times see and hear his famed ability to produce a story appropriate to every occasion. A skill that often exasperated his colleagues but also frequently effectively disarmed his opponents. Less familiar is his foray into political corruption, using patronage to manipulate the vote where morals and rhetoric have failed.

Critics have already remarked on the absence of Afro-Americans from the central focus. The film opens with a strong and brutal depiction of one of the early hand-to-hand battle involving newly recruited Negro soldiers and Confederates. But after that the plot relies mainly on Elizabeth Keckley (Gloria Reuben), a dressmaker and confidant of Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Fields), and William Slade (Stephen Henderson) the male manservant in the White House. Absent, except perhaps as part of a group of Black men who attend the day of the actual vote, is the noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass. This could be seen as an accurate reflection of the period: the preoccupation of politicians was the Union, and genuine proponents of equality between black and whites were a small (though vocal) minority. However, this dominant focus on the white, male élites has been apparent in the earlier work of Spielberg. Schindler’s List has as its main characters the Aryan Oscar Schindler and Amon Goeth: Munich (also scripted by Tony Kushner) is pre-occupied with Israelis rather than Palestinians: Amistad, like Lincoln, has as lead characters the white members of the political élite. The exception is The Colour Purple where the focus is clearly on oppressed Afro-American women.

This, of course, is part of a larger representations found across Hollywood production. The 1989 Glory, which has a much greater attention devoted to Negroes fighting for the Union in the Civil war, still relies on the character of the white officer of a Negro regiment for much of its drama. It does offer Frederick Douglass a few lines of dialogue. Spielberg has a strong sense of Hollywood conventions and history. In one of the nicer touches in the film Senator Thaddeus Stevens, a noted abolitionist, takes the House of Representatives amendment home to read to his black housekeeper and partner. This is clearly a rebuttal of the notorious The Birth of a Nation, where Stevens is presented through the character of Senator Stoneman, who is suborned by his black housekeeper and paramour.

This is the point in the film when we hear the actual amendment, read by Stevens to his partner after the historic vote on January 31^st 1865.

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (There is a second paragraph concerning implementation).

No mention of black people or of equality for black people. It points up the limitations of the Unionist North, the Amendment and the political establishment of the 1860s. Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, shows another side of this problematic: the riots in New York against compulsory service in the Civil War armies. My sense of the US myths is that these limitations are not commonly part of the iconic representation of Lincoln. Indeed Spielberg seems to want to rescue Lincoln, assassinated just after the end of the war, from any culpability for the carpet-bagging exploitation of the defeated South and the reneging on promises to Negroes. Frederick Douglass wrote after the end of the Civil War that the Negro was “free from the individual master but a slave of society. He had neither money, property, or friends.  … He was turned loose naked, hungry and destitute to the open sky.” But the film ends with a flashback to Lincoln’s second inaugural address then held in March 1865: later in the year than in contemporary elections. The speech ends with the prayer, “With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds … to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Of course, this end scene plays into the inevitable comparisons when we have the first black President just starting his second term in the White House. Some of Barack Obama’s election speeches clearly played into the Lincoln tradition. In that sense, though this has been a long cherished project of Spielberg’s, the film speaks especially powerfully to contemporary USA. Despite the celebratory tone at the end of this film the project of what the film calls ‘racial equality’ has yet to complete its long, violent and demanding journey: as indeed has the States yet to achieve peace with all nations. This has probably played large in the sensibilities of both the Academy members and audiences. The Guardian newspaper (g2 film & music 22.02.13) handily provided some comparisons between the box office performances of Academy Award front-runners. Lincoln is out in front in the USA ($177 mill) ahead of Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Argo and Life of Pi. But overseas it trails behind all the other five titles ($59 mill to Life of Pi’s $466).  And in the UK it is followed by Argo trailing the other four, (£6.9 mill to Les Misérables £36 mill). The actual Academy Awards were spread across these films (and others) but Lincoln with twelve nominations only gained two Oscars. There seems to be a disjuncture between the Academy and the indigenous audience.

It is a cerebral movie, and outside of the USA the political machinations of the Washington élite in the 1860s may lack excitement and panache. Some of the reviews offered strong put-downs. However, despite its lack of action it is absorbing from beginning to end. And Spielberg and Kushner know how to ring the changes. The historic congressional vote combines the drama in the chamber with some nicely judged scenes around the waiting Union. And the so famous assassination is quite daringly different. Hollywood can still turn out a winner when the subject and the filmmakers are fully in tune.

Stacking up the numbers on Hollywood remakes – a win for subtitles?

Trying – and probably failing – not to feel smug, I offer you this article in today’s Guardian by number cruncher Charles Gant. A week before the release of Headhunters, confidently expected to be a worldwide hit as a Norwegian film, Gant reports that MGM has conceded that David Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo will make a loss in cinemas (despite grossing over $230 million). Gant questions why Hollywood makes a seemingly pointless remake – our sentiments entirely. Meanwhile, Mark Wahlberg is reported as being interested in taking the lead role in Summit’s remake of Headhunters.

Having just read Headhunters – and enjoying it very much, I’m very much looking forward to the film and I’ll be introducing it on April 14 at the National Media Museum in Bradford as part of a talk on Nordic Crime Fiction. Please come along.

Polanski’s Ghosts

The final shot of The Ghost

There is an off-quoted line in the Black Audio Film Collective’s documentary Handsworth Songs (1986) “There are no stories [in the riots] only the ghosts of other stories.” I remembered the line when I was mulling over Roman Polanski’s film The Ghost (2010). As with other directors honoured as auteurs his films often stimulate recollections of his own earlier films: ghostly traces or memories from the previous works. Thanks to Channel 4 (who screened the film more or less in the original aspect ratio) when I watched The Ghost again some of these ghostly references reminded me strongly of his classic Chinatown (1974) The S & S review also rightly suggested ‘ghosts’ from Polanski’s Knife in the Water (1962), Cul-de-sac (1966) and Frantic (1988) among others. The reviewer (Michael Brooke) makes the point that the film closely follows the original book by Robert Harris (who scripted the film with Polanski) but suggests that the plot and story world are in part what attracted Polanski to the property. Of course, both the book and the film use familiar generic elements, but the parallels seem to be to be stronger than that. Much of the film adheres closely to the plot found in the book, as indeed does the dialogue. However, there are two significant changes, which I comment on below.

In Chinatown a private eye investigates first an affair with and then the death of a prominent Los Angeles citizen Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Swerling). The private eye becomes involved with the widow and her father, a corporate baron. His investigations lead him to discover fraud and corruption in the L.A. Water and Power Company. In The Ghost a writer who polishes and re-writes autobiographies for prominent people is hired to  ‘ghost-write’ the memoirs of ex-British prime minister, Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). His predecessor, Mike McAra, has died in a drowning at sea. When Adam Lang is publicly pilloried for aiding secret CIA rendition of suspects, political secrets surface and become threatening.

The parallels with Chinatown are there most obviously in the two male protagonists of these films. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), the private eye in Chinatown, thinks he knows his trade, but by the film’s finale he is clearly out in depth in the world of criminality symbolised by the Chinatown district of Los Angeles. Ewan McGregor’s Ghost appears to be a smart member of a little-publicised authorial profession; but he also is soon out of his depth in the murky world of power politics. Both men appear in a scene where they look at evidence but fail to unravel the meaning of a word at the time. Jake talks to the Japanese gardener by the Mulwray pool, and only later realises the possible meaning of ‘glass’. The ghostwriter reads the opening chapter of Adam Lang’s memoir without realising the significance of ‘beginnings’. In the end Jake survives, unlike the ghostwriter, but he is equally destroyed by a world that is far more sinister and complex than any he has previously experienced.

Both men are victims of a woman who is essentially a femme fatale, alluring but dangerous. The women are deceptive and it is unclear to what degree they are responding to the hero or merely manipulating him. Ruth Lang [Olivia Williams] of The Ghost survives unlike Evelyn Mulwray née Cross (Faye Dunaway) in Chinatown, but both are equally the puppets of powerful men: men whose public persona is far removed from their actual ruthless real selves. John Huston’s corporate baron Noah Cross is prepared to go to any lengths to profit from the exploitation of L.A.’s dependence on water: and he is equally determined in pursuing his personal power. Tom Wilkinson’s Professor Paul Emmett pursues political power and profit with an equivalent ruthlessness, though we learn far less about his personal pursuits. Noah Cross is an actual father who literally embodies a classic myth of incest and the sexual exploitation of the child: Paul Emmett is a father figure rather than literal parent: but indirectly he controls Ruth’s sexuality through the arranged marriage to Adam Lang.

The secret in Chinatown is the manipulation of water whilst in The Ghost it is the identity of a CIA agent. However, in both films it is the search to crack the secret than impels the narrative. Moreover, that basic element water is key in the mise en scène of both films. We see water in Chinatown in the reservoirs, in the ocean, in a boating lake and in the pool of the Mulwray mansion. In The Ghost it surrounds the main action, on Martha’s Vineyard Island on the US eastern seaboard, and characters constantly cross over it or walk alongside it. And in both films the action that starts to crack open the secret is the drowning of an innocent man, Evelyn Mulwray’s husband in Chinatown, previous ghostwriter Mike McAra in The Ghost. Both are made to look like suicides but in reality are the victims of a secret conspiracy. Moreover, a female witness in the case also dies, literally in Chinatown, comatosed in The Ghost. The first significant change from the plot of the book is related to the death in The Ghost. Late in the book the writer, fearing the close attentions of the CIA, meets an ex-colleague of Adam Lang, the politician Robert Rycart (Robert Pugh). He travels to New York City for the meeting. In the film they meet at the motel alongside the mainland ferry terminus for the Island. The sequence includes the writer joining and leaving the ferry, as he fears a repeat of the death of his predecessor Mike McAra. The change immediately conjures up both the plot and the symbolism of the earlier Chinatown.

There are crossovers elsewhere in the mise en scène. Both protagonists wander in desolate places like beaches and dried-up riverbeds. The framing and blocking in particular scenes offers hints as to the way the mystery will unravel. This is particularly true of the Asian servants in both households. One intriguing plot piece is that in Chinatown it is the Japanese gardener (Jerry Fujikawa) who inadvertently reveals to Gittes the key information around a man’s death by the pool in the Mulwray garden. In The Ghost, as in Chinatown, house servants are Asian, Dep and Duc. And it is the Vietnamese gardener (Hong Thay Lee) who offers the use of the car to our ghostwriter, and it is the car, which leads him to Paul Emmett and the secret behind the death of Mike McAra.

In both films photographs provide key evidence for the investigation. In particular a photograph of long ago that reveals an important but unknown relationship: Adam Lang with Paul Emmett in The Ghost and Noah Cross with Hollis Mulwray in Chinatown. The more recent film also uses technologies not available when Chinatown was produced or set. But in both cases the investigation depends partly on information provided by individuals and partly by commercial or state institutions: public records in Chinatown and the Internet in The Ghost. Both the L.A. Water and Power Company and the Central Intelligence Agency appear as large, secretive and corrupt institutions, balefully exploiting rather than protecting the citizenry they are supposed to serve.

The final shot of Chinatown

In particular it is the final scenes of the films that have so many common elements. Both Jake Gittes and the ghostwriter are bought down by hubris. Jake meets the chief villain Noah Cross to expose his crimes, only to be overpowered by his henchman. The ghostwriter presents his discovery of the secret to Rachel Lang, who tells Emmett and death follows. In the final sequence of Chinatown shots are fired as a car drives away, the car halts, horn sounds and a girl screams. A crowd gathers, and then we see the dead woman. As Jake is led away into the darkened and emptying street, newspapers blow across the desolate space. In The Ghost a car speeds towards the writer and us. We hear a car bump, and see concerned or shocked pedestrians run towards an ‘accident’. As the light fades the pages of a manuscript blow across the desolate space. The latter is the second major change from Harris’ book and is similar to the way that Polanski altered the original script for Chinatown by Robert Towne.

Viewers are likely to take away a similar feeling from both movies, a tragic end in failure. The powerful remain unscathed and unexposed: the innocent have died: and the well-meaning but ineffectual hero has failed in his quest. There is a telling line in Chinatown spoken by Lieutenant Escobar (Perry Lopez) to Jake Gittes, “it takes a while for a man to find himself’. The tragedy of both of these films is that the man in question fails to find himself, or at least finds himself too late.

Ecosse’s Wuthering Heights

A 'wuthering' view

Opening film of the 25th Leeds International Film Festival.

UK 2011. In colour and 1.37:1. 128 minutes. UK certificate 15.

Producer, and founder of Ecosse Films, Douglas Rae, came along to talk to the Press after the morning screening of this new film. When asked about the production he said film production was always difficult, but this more than most. He praised his director, Andrea Arnold as uncompromising but incredible.

Ecosse films was set up in 1988. It started out making documentaries and arts programme. The company commenced feature film production in 1997 with Mrs Brown. Since then its features have included Charlotte Gray (2002), Becoming Jane (2007), Brideshead Revisited (2008) and Nowhere Boy (2010). Rae remarked that their output is divided evenly between original scripts and literary adaptations. But the above titles also suggest another thread, a distinctly English [within the larger British culture) sensibility. It also has a feel of the Public Broadcast ethos: one of the features for Television was Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree (2005). This is also a part of the strand of the heritage area, though with a modern irreverence visible at times. One can see the appeal of Emily Brontë classic. Whilst there have been a number of earlier film and television versions, it retains an enduring appeal. And the themes of the outsider, of regional distinctness, and of class conflict, suggest the possibilities of a very modern reading.

It seems that several different directors were considered over the pre-production period, though I thought none of the name mentioned seemed as suitable as the final choice. Arnold has made her name with two gritty, realistic contemporary urban features. However, they also show an interest in landscape and in nature. Moreover, both films are concerned with the traumas of love and sexuality, with the violence that passion can arouse, and with people’s responses to personal conflicts. These are also at the heart of Brontë's masterpiece, with the most passionate story in English literature, but one which also features a high degree of violence. What makes this film distinctive in Arnold’s output, less that it is a period story than that the primary focus is on the male protagonist, Heathcliff. That he is black is in fact truer to the novel than most people remember. [See also Whitewashing Heights by Paterson Joseph in The Guardian November 12^th].

The production has also been well served by a number of Arnold’s regular collaborators. The cinematographer Robbie Ryan also worked on the earlier Red Road (2007) and Fishtank (2009). His efforts on this film won him the coveted award at the Venice Film Festival. The film is shot almost in the Dogme style using a handheld camera and prodigious close-ups. The exteriors uniformly rely on natural lighting, whilst the interiors use very low levels, almost imperceptible. Both the Editor Nicolas Chaudeurge and the Production Designer Helen Scot worked on the earlier features. And the Sound Designer Nicolas Becker and the Sound Recordist Rashad Omar have worked previously with Arnold. The sound track is another fine feature of the film, with predominately location sound filling in with the noises of the countryside and nature. Even the majority of the music is diegetic.

The screen story is by Olivia Hetreed, who also worked on Girl with a Pearl Earring. Arnold’s entry into the production meant entirely reworking the screenplay. And the plot leaves out much of the action in the original novel [unlike the 1992 version, which follows the complete novel, more or less]. Essentially the story is told from the point of view of Heathcliff: so when he is off the page the film offers an ellipsis. [Essential action is retold in the dialogue]. I thought this worked well, though a friend felt that this left out Cathy’s motivation, an important aspect in the novel. This is an aspect which presumably will disappoint some fans of the book, but I do feel that it captures the poetic aspect of the novel.

Happily the film relies on Yorkshire locations. Rae said that Arnold spent six months scouting locations. The Heights and much of its surrounds were filmed in Western Swaledale. In summer this is great walking country, with splendid views, winding but interesting paths, and some excellent hostelries for mealtimes. In winter the countryside is grimmer: rain, wind and mist can surround one and the terrain is rich in tufts and frequently very muddy. The film certainly realises the Yorkshire sense of ‘wuthering’. And the Heights is a working farm, candlelit, rough-hewn and prey to the elements. Rae’s fellow producer Kevin Loader commented: “It’s the hardest shoot I’ve ever been part of; there was a constant awareness of wind and water, the darkness and the harshness of the elements. But it brings home that kind of isolation and closeness to the natural world.”

The early part of the book, the developing relationship between young Cathy and Heathcliff, takes up about 70 minute of the film. Then we have a break when Heathcliff leaves angry and frustrated. The second part of the film treats the events after Cathy’s marriage but does not carry the tale to the end of the book. This runs for about 50 minutes. The first section of the film has the developing passion and obsession between young Heathcliff (Solomon Glave) and young Cathy (Shannon Beer). This is powerful drama, and the terrain and the landscape are an integral part of the force of the story. The film uses a range of natural objects, particularly stones and feathers, as props and as metaphors. The supporting cast, including other non-professionals alongside the lead pair, make this an effective portrait of an early C19th household and hamlet.

The second part of the film involves both the Heights and the Grange, the later the home of the affluent Linton’s. A Press colleague thought this part rather slow. I did not find this, but I did feel a change of pace and intensity. I think this is in part because the central pair of Heathcliff (James Howson) and Cathy (Kaya Scodelario) are now played by a non-professional opposite a professional actor. Arnold explains her aim: “We looked for non-actors for the Heights and actors for the Grange. I wanted the Heights to be raw and untamed and elemental and masculine and the Grange to seem mannered and more feminine and careful.” [In fact, the casting division is not quite as strict as this, but the contrast is there]. This expresses the repressive nature of the situation, the early film being oppressive rather than repressive. This is underscored by the disparities between the Heights and the Grange: the latter all lights, decorum and social niceties. It is symbolised in one way by Cathy’s hair: mainly down and loose early in the film, now pinioned up behind her head. Some ringlets do hang down which distinguishes her from Isabella whose hair is firmly bound up. It is also affected by the more conventional use of metaphors: one of the few false notes in the film for me was a cage containing a canary in the Grange, seen in close-up at least twice. But this repression is the way that the tragic tale of Heathcliff and Cathy runs: repressions of class, gender and ethnicity

The film has divided critics strongly. However, interesting films frequently do this. For, like the star-crossed lovers, and the original novel, this is a film on the edge.

NB A report in Tuesday’s Guardian suggests that James Howson as the ‘older Heathcliff” had his dialogue dubbed: though this does not seem to appear in the credits.

Rona’s earlier review of the film.