BIFF 2013 #17: What Happened to This City? (Kya Hua Iss Shaher Ko, India 1986)

Deepa Dhanraj from the Berlin Film Festival site in 2013

There is a long story behind this film and watching it was a strange experience for me. I’m not sure what sense I made of it but the film was impressive formally and important as a historical document. What it means in terms of contemporary India is less clear and I would need a great deal of research to offer even an outline response. In his introduction, Festival Director Tom Vincent explained that he and his co-director had wanted to include a politically committed documentary as part of their 100 Years of Indian Cinema Anniversary and that when this film appeared at Berlin earlier this year, they sought it out.

This is a documentary, mostly in the form of eye-witness statements with a brief historical background and some ‘live coverage’/reportage of events in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh in 1984. Over three summer months communal riots in the city left 41 dead, many critically injured and hundreds of shops and homes looted, wrecked and in some cases set on fire. The main conclusion of the film is that these riots were orchestrated by the various political parties in the state as part of their jostling for power. The police seemed to have either turned away from the trouble or simply established curfews which made it impossible for poor people to earn a living and who therefore suffered real hardships. Only a few of the perpetrators were ever prosecuted. Before the film, Tom read out a statement by the director Deepa Dhanraj who suggested that her film was prophetic about subsequent communal riots in Mumbai and Gujarat. It’s dispiriting to think that she was right. Even so there are some positives to take away from the film.

The poor archiving facilities in India mean that films have been lost. A healthy stock of archive film helps younger filmmakers to explore the past and the issues at stake in this film depend on knowledge of Hyderabad from its days as a princely state with Muslim rulers throughout the British Raj and how that change after 1947 with the absorption into the Union and the changes in power in Hyderabad city. The most devastating part of the film for me was the demonstration in the closing stages of the ways in which the different parties (from communist to nationalist to conservative) were prepared to instruct their supporters just to vote on religious/sectarian lines. Democracy becomes farce on this basis. Can social documentaries like this change opinions by exposing these kinds of issues. It’s interesting to reflect on the impact of popular cinema addressing similar issues and the ‘New Bollywood’ film Kai po che based on Chetan Bhagat’s novel approaches the issue with its references to the communal riots in Gujarat.

What Happened to This City? also has a value as a historical document about India in the 1980s. It’s a good-looking film. Shot on 16mm, it was , like many Indian productions of the period, not properly archived but a print turned up in the Arsenal Cinema in Berlin and this print along with a negative from India enabled a German project to produce a new HD digital print. The results are surprisingly good. For me, images of 1980s India came flooding back, especially with key landmarks such as the Charminar in Hyderabad. India in those days had few cars (and those mostly old-fashioned Ambassadors) and no US branded goods. It was a less materialist and supposedly more ‘planned’ society, but corruption was rife and the police didn’t have a good reputation. Deepa Dhanraj was a brave young filmmaker. In this interview in Jump Cut magazine in 1981 she describes the ecology of political filmmaking at the time and her own work in a group making socialist-feminist films. It’s sad to think that one of the films she was making then was about piecework for women working at home that paid low rates for beautifully made garments then sold cheaply in the stores of Europe and North America. Not much changes.

The question I can’t answer is whether the appearance of this restored film on the festival circuit has any relevance for politically-committed documentary films in contemporary Indian film cultures. The industry is now more corporatised, there are co-productions and filmmakers returning from abroad. There are dozens of television channels in a more pluralistic media ecology but are there enough committed filmmakers able to fund themselves to make films like What Happened to This City? It’s good that Anand Patwardhan is still very active but I don’t know enough about what else is happening. Seeing this film has energised me to look out for more documentary material. I found this document on ‘FilmIndia Worldwide‘ published to cover the Indian entries in both Berlin and Rotterdam Festivals this year useful in providing some more names and ideas.

Bravo to BIFF for screening this film. Can we have more like it please?

BIFF 2013 #13 1913 Massacre (US 2011)

On Christmas Eve 1913 in the mining town of Calumet, Michigan a group of miners and their wives and children were having a party in the Italian Hall when somebody shouted “Fire!”. In the ensuing panic, 74 people lost their lives, 59 of them children crushed and asphyxiated as they tumbled down the stairs. This happened during a strike at the copper mine. Ever since there has been controversy surrounding who started the rush for the doors and why so many died. In 1941 Woody Guthrie wrote a song about the events and called it ’1913 Massacre’. In the documentary discussed here Woody’s son Arlo Guthrie plays the song in the town’s impressive theatre. A little later he visits the memorial for those who died which comprises a plaque at the sight of the last surviving brick arch of the Italian Hall (demolished in 1984). At the site of this memorial he tells us that he’s learned a great deal about American history over the years – not in a classroom or from a book, but from songs. The film turns out to be about the song, about the memories and about the narration of  history. And now this film has become part of that history. It’s clearly a history that needs to be retold for succeeding generations and also as an example of a ‘people’s history’.

1913 Massacre is a conventional documentary film but it is skilfully constructed so that it enables several discourses around the history, culture and politics as well as the personal tragedies of that day. Directors Ken Ross and Louis Galieri have put together eye-witness (or family memory) testimonies with home movies (what looks like 8mm and video footage), archive footage from the early twentieth century and even a corporate film from the mining company with Arlo Guthrie’s presentations to camera, his performances of the song and various statements by local historians. The filmmakers have worked on the film for many years, shooting hundreds of hours of interviews. Ken Ross is the filmmaker who has also taught film and Louis Galieri was first a university teacher of history and literature before moving into film production. The background to the filming of 1913 Massacre is covered on the detailed film project website.

I think I knew the name ‘Calumet’ but I certainly didn’t know the story and the film has resonated with me in many ways. Some years ago I remember being told about a similar incident in a Yorkshire coal-mining district during roughly the same period when 16 children died in a crush trying to leave a film showing in a public hall in 1908. This Wikipedia page also refers to an even worse disaster in Sunderland in 1883 when 183 children were killed in a crush at the Victoria Hall during a children’s variety show. Each of these three disasters took place in working-class communities in urban areas where the first mass entertainment venues were being developed. What was lacking was what we would now know as ‘risk assessment’ and specifically the development of ‘emergency exits’ with doors opening outwards to allow crowds to ‘spill out’ in the event of fire or other emergencies. The direction in which the doors opened was a key issue in the Italian Hall disaster and discussion of this is supremely important in the film.

The filmmakers have found photographic evidence to show that the doors at the Italian Hall opened outwards, refuting what many of the townspeople have been told over the decades. Responses to the question “which way did the doors open?” are edited together with everyone saying “inwards”. It is then pointed out that it is suspicious when everyone trots out the same line. So, did someone block the doorway and then spread the rumour that the doors opened the ‘wrong way’? The film’s audience realises that the ‘disaster’ became a political issue.

Calumet was part of an extraordinary community in Northern Michigan in the 1910s. One of the biggest copper-mining regions in the world attracted migrant workers from Italy, Poland, Finland and many other parts of Europe. In 1913 workers began a major strike against the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company – which didn’t want to see a unionised workforce and which persuaded the local authorities to send 2,000 armed National Guards to police the workers’ demonstrations. This was the context for the Italian Hall ‘massacre’ which the workers believed was started by a scab and exacerbated by deliberate police inaction/obstruction. The filmmakers present this material fairly dispassionately but in a key scene they record a group of supporters of the company who are then challenged by a previously ‘neutral’ speaker. In this way, the apologists are exposed. I wish I knew more about US labour history, but I’ve always thought that it was the brutality of the US capitalists and their hired thugs, especially towards migrant workers in the first three decades of the twentieth century, that prevented the development of democratic socialism in the US becoming part of mainstream political life and paved the way for the greedy materialist Amerika of the rest of the twentieth century. Imagine what a democratic socialist America might have done with all its wealth and the goodwill and hard work of its workers. Woody Guthrie had the imagination to promote that vision. “This land is our land” – for all Americans, not just the rich. That’s why he could see that the Italian Hall massacre was an important political-historical event.

Here’s the trailer:

and a short clip of the responses to the film after it was screened in Calumet:

The DVD of the film is available via the website. Watching the film brought back memories of similarly themed documentaries such as The Wobblies (1979), the story of the International Workers of the World (available in full on YouTube) and features such as The Ballad of Joe Hill (Sweden/US 1970), sadly unavailable and also Claude Jutra’s classic Mon Oncle Antoine (Canada 1971) set in a ‘company mining town’ in Quebec in the late 1940s. Watching 1913 Massacre in the UK on the day before the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, the biggest union-basher in UK history, has made me think a great deal about the narration of ‘people’s history’. I suspect that I’ll return to these films.

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.

No (Chile/US/France/Mexico 2011)

Chile / USA / France / Mexico 2011, Director Pablo Larrain. Screenplay adapted Pedro Peirano from the play Referendum by Antonio Skarmeta.

Like the Chilean director’s earlier films, No is set during the military dictatorship presided over by General Pinochet. We are right at the end when the Junta bowed to international pressure and organised a Referendum. To the surprise of the military, observers and many Chileans it lost this plebiscite. An important factor was the campaign, fronted by fifteen minutes daily on national television, to vote ‘No’. The campaign relied to a large degree on professional public relations experts. It is that campaign that is the central focus of this film.

It is a film definitely worth seeing. At times humorous, at time dramatic, it had an excellent cast headed by Gael García Bernal. The film includes footage showing the coup and the brutal repression of the Chilean working class and their organisations and parties. It also uses the actual television material from both right and left in the Referendum campaign: at times impressive, at times banal, and at time almost surreal.

The film was shot on a 1983 U-matic video camera, which gives a fairly uniform appearance to both the filmed footage and the archive material. The whole film has a sharp, tawdry look due to this. In fact, Pablo Larrain’s earlier Tony Manero had a low-budget tawdry feel which also matched its subject matter.

My major reservation was a rather lightweight political stance. This seems to follow on from the approach that was adopted in the actual television campaign in 1988. And there are clearly strands of irony in the presentation. But there is not a developed sense of the politics of the different class fractions and factions involved. Terms like ‘communist’, ‘socialist’ and ‘fascist’ recur frequently. However both the left and the right at this moment were somewhat disparate coalitions of differing social forces, and this the film misses out on illuminating this. Certainly other films from Chile have managed to deal effectively with the political landscape under the dictatorship. I also felt that the film subscribes to a view that probably over-emphasises the contribution of the television adverts: but the absence of other factors in its plotting also contributes to this lack of overall illumination.

My other reservation was technical and may only apply to the UK release. The U-matic video format gives an aspect ratio of 1.33:1: the ratio that preceded sound film, when the addition of an optical track produced 1.37:1. In the UK (and presumably in most territories) the film is distributed as a Digital Cinema Package. This comes (I think I am right) in a standard 1.85:1, with other ratios printed within the standard format. For 1.33 or 1.37 you get the central image bordered by black framing. On 35mm the projectionist could adjust the framing to the ratio: on DCP it comes ‘baked in’. Good quality cinema presentation involved bringing the black masking to frame the appropriate ratio. This is what usually happens at the Hyde Park Picture House where I viewed this film. They also continue the honourable tradition of opening the curtains at the start of the screening. Not so with No. For some odd reason the subtitles (in yellow) have been printed so that they frequently extend beyond the 1.33 ratio into the black borders. This means the black masking is unusable. Why, I don’t know, though it did seem that the font of the subtitles was larger than usual. I found this very distracting. I can usually flick my eyes up and down to accommodate both the image and the titles: with this film I had to flick to left and right to read all of the titles. I actually missed a few. The film is distributed by Network Releasing, but I could not see an end credit for titling, so I am not sure who is responsible.

So I feel it is a bit of a problematic movie, certainly in the UK. But it is still worth seeing. It is a distinctive film with a distinctive subject matter.

Borgen Season 2 (Denmark 2011)

A wonderful melodrama composition featuring Birgitte (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and behind her Cecilie, Birgitte’s husband’s new partner. (High res image courtesy DR taken from the website at http://www.linktv.org/borgen/press)

The second season of Borgen has now reached halfway on BBC4 in the UK (having aired in Denmark in Autumn 2011). I don’t think I’ve waited so eagerly for something on TV for a long time. But what’s it like the second time round? I’m conscious that I might be watching it in a different way – or perhaps reflecting more on what I’m seeing.

Season 1 established that there would be three central characters and this has continued in Season 2. Birgitte as Prime Minister and Kasper as her political adviser are engaged in trying to keep the coalition government in power, but both have issues with their partners/families. Meanwhile Katrine has left her job at the TV company and joined the tabloid edited by the disgraced Labour Party leader. Katrine also has a new partner of sorts with Episode 1 showing her growing professional relationship and friendship with the older journalist Hanne who has a drinking problem. The structure of each episode has remained the same with an ‘external’ issue concerning the government involving each of the three protagonists to a different extent. Each has also got an ongoing personal narrative and at least one of these is advanced in each episode – and sometimes two or all three. My impression is that the central political narrative is beginning to fade into the background at this halfway point. The political stories seem more cut and dried, more neat somehow. Birgitte seems to solve a problem in a skilled but not altogether plausible way. She appears much harder and more pragmatic. In one sense of course this makes sense as she is likely to change with experience – but the writers seem less interested in the political stories and more in how the three central characters are under stress.

I think that this shift – if it exists and isn’t just a function of my own shifts in how I’m reading the narrative – means that the overall narrative is becoming more of a melodrama. The serial structure does allow for reflection over 10 weeks in the Danish case (and over several months between each season). In the UK there are two separate episodes/stories transmitted one after the other which perhaps alters our readings here slightly but I think I am reacting to each episode as if it was just another episode of a well-loved soap opera. That sense was confirmed after episode 5 when we have just seen the return of the PM’s secretary Sanne to her old job. It’s almost that like Birgitte, we’ve missed Sanne’s warmth.

Kasper and Katrine follow Birgitte to Afghanistan in Episode 1 of Season 2 (picture credits as above)

If it is getting more like a soap or perhaps more like a telenovela, I have to say that the tension for me is all about Kasper and Katrine. There seems little mileage in Kasper’s attempt to set up home with his new partner Lotte and Katrine has just gone through a whirlwind change of jobs (four, over six episodes). I want Katrine to be happy and Kasper to get sorted out. Birgitte is clearly going to have more problems with her children. I know that many viewers are fond of Birgitte’s husband Philip but I’ve always found him a bit dispensable. I’d rather Birgitte found someone more interesting. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind if Birgitte got to grips with some more complicated politics and left the shenanigans to Kasper.

On a recent Late Review, there was discussion (à propos of the revamp of Yes Minister on Sky) about how politics are treated in British drama/entertainment. The suggestion was that we are just too cynical in the UK and can only take politics as satire/comedy in shows like The Thick of It or thrillers like House of Cards. I didn’t quite follow this and there didn’t seem to be any suggestions as to why 1 million of us watch Borgen or even more followed West Wing so avidly. Perhaps we need a telenovela that extends beyond the remit of the UK’s community or institution-based soaps? The Danish political world is institutional of course, but it is also exotic – and oddly glamorous. Or at least Kasper and Katrine are glamorous if not the politicians. What does anyone else think?

King’s Game (Kongekabale, Denmark 2004)

Lars Mikkelsen (left) as the spin doctor feeding the naïve Ulrik (Anders W. Berthelsen)

Was this the blueprint for Borgen (and The Killing to some extent)? I missed it altogether on its limited UK release in 2005 and caught it as a VOD offer from Lovefilm (I think it is also available on DVD, but at a price). King’s Game was a major box office and critical winner in Denmark as the first film from Nikolaj Arcel, recently nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar with A Royal Affair, one of our films of the year. It is based on a novel by a politician and deals with internecine strife in the Centre Party in Denmark during an election campaign.

The central character is Ulrik, a young journalist played by Anders W. Berthelsen (the father of the abducted child in The Killing III). He suddenly discovers that he has been offered the chance by his newspaper to join the team covering ‘parliamentary affairs’ at Borgen. He has no previous experience of politics except that his father, now a businessman, was once Justice Minister for the Centre Party. His first visit to Borgen occurs when the Centre Party is in disarray after a car crash puts its leader into hospital. He is seriously ill and there are fears for his life. Ulrik is then offered a story (in an indirect way) about the ‘next in line’ at the Centre Party – by the party’s own spin doctor (nicely played by Lars Mikkelsen (Troels, the mayoral candidate) in Killing I. How long will it take the naïve Ulrik to twig that he is being set up? I won’t spoil any more of the plot except to point towards other similarities with Borgen such as the prospect of the first female Prime Minister in Denmark.

I found the film to be very entertaining and pleasingly presented in CinemaScope with crisp and sometimes noirish cinematography. The cast is very strong, especially for a first film. As well as Berthelsen and Mikkelsen, I also recognised Lars Brygmann (who suffers a very similar fate to his character of Troels Höxenhaven in Borgen 2), Nicholas Bro (Justice Minister in The Killing II) and our old friend Bjarne Henriksen (Theis in The Killing I and the Defence Minister in Borgen 1 and 2). This time Henriksen plays a crucial role as a television interviewer. The other lead in the film is played by Søren Pilmark who has an impressive CV but doesn’t appear to have been in either of the two serials that have been successful in the UK. The roles for women are not so good in the film and the principal role of a female political leader is played by the director’s sister Nastja Arcel.

It was interesting to see a more ‘cinematic’ presentation than is usually offered by Borgen, but this came mostly via the thriller elements. I missed the family melodrama elements of the serials and it was interesting that one of the best scenes in the film involved Ulrik dealing with his father – in the presence of his wife. This lack of background for the main characters is possibly the main weakness of the script – but then the film is only a 100 minutes or so and much of the time involves the twists and turns of the investigation. The film has also been criticised for the seeming simplicity of the plot and the ease with which the naïve journalist  is able to tie things together. Fortunately, Berthelsen is such a good actor that I think we go along with him. His character is also resourceful and determined – which makes an interesting dramatic mix with naiveté.

I’m surprised that I haven’t come across references to Kongekabale in discussions of Borgen. I’m sure that British fans of the TV serial would find it an interesting and enjoyable precursor. Here’s a trailer with English subs:

Les neiges du Kilimandjaro (The Snows of Kilimanjaro, France 2011)

The opening shot of Snows of Kilimanjaro – the union meeting in which the 20 men to be made redundant are chosen.

I’d almost forgotten about Robert Guédiguian – which is a terrible admission since I like his films very much. This one left me in tears and emotionally drained with just a small nagging doubt about the politics. My emotional response suggests that this is a very effective family melodrama and I do think that it is a perceptive and intelligent film about contemporary political ideas. The whole enterprise has been undertaken with love and a clear principled stand.

The basic premise is not unlike the beginning of Couscous (La graine et le mulet, 2007) with an older worker made redundant in a dockyard and the consequent issues around marriage/partners and family conflicts. In this case however, Michel is also a union steward faced with redundancies that the union can’t (or possibly won’t) fight. He puts his own name into the lottery to decide which twenty men will go and duly picks himself as one of those to go. We learn that Michel is a lifelong socialist whose hero is Jean Léon Jaurès (the great French socialist leader from the turn of the century who was assassinated in 1914) but now he is contemplating retirement in his late 50s.

At first everything is fine and Michel and his wife Marie-Claire are given a wedding anniversary present of a safari holiday in Tanzania including a trip to Kilimanjaro by their children. But then something very disturbing happens that shakes up the couple and their closest friends, Raoul (Michel’s closest workmate) and his wife Denise, who is also Marie-Claire’s sister. I won’t spoil the narrative, but what happens certainly puts Michel and Marie-Claire into a difficult position and forces Michel in particular to question his own actions. Did he really fight for the jobs of the younger workers who were made redundant. Has he become old and complacent, just another passive member of the bourgeoisie? What he and Marie-Claire do then (she has her own concerns and takes her own line) causes a rift with their grown-up children, both of whom have families, in a scene that has echoes of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. At the same time, a potential rift between Michel and Raoul also hinges on what we might see as traditional working-class politics and the response to moments of crisis.

Robert Guédiguian is perhaps the nearest French equivalent of the Ken Loach-Paul Laverty school of filmmaking. He has made several films set in the working-class districts of Marseilles. All of these films feature Ariane Ascaride (Guédiguian’s wife) and often Jean-Pierre Darroussin – and here the two play Marie-Claire and Michel. Like Loach, he also has a regular script collaborator, Jean-Louis Milesi. Guédiguian also sometimes makes specific use of his own Armenian ancestry, here represented by the references to Jaurès who was also part Armenian. The other inspiration for the film was a poem by Victor Hugo. The poem and a speech by Jaurès can be found in the Press Pack from Mongrel Films.

The political observation at the centre of the film is that in Guédiguian’s view there is no more a ‘working class’, at least as a coherent entity. Employment has changed in France as in most of Western Europe so that unionisation has been weakened by the loss of large-scale employment in factories, shipyards, mines etc. Younger workers especially have only experienced the individualist ideologies of the modern workplace. Subjected to consumerism, de-regulation and all the other soul-destroying aspects of modern capitalist culture, they have never experienced the solidarity of the unionised workforce, nor realised what those working-class movements won in terms of employment rights. It isn’t their fault and in many ways they do face a tougher world.

Milesi’s script and Guédiguian’s direction produce a film narrative that manages to be both provocative in terms of asking difficult political questions and also warm-hearted and celebratory of the central loving relationship between Michel and Marie-Claire. I think that you could argue that the ending is still in some ways ‘open’ and that not all issues are tidied up, but certainly on a sunny day, eating outside on a terrace overlooking the port, Marseilles isn’t quite like a wet Wednesday in Greenock or Salford which might be the location in a British social realist equivalent.

My nagging doubt is the omission of any analysis of the reasons for the collapse of unionised employment – or real engagement with what the union needs to do to support and educate younger workers. The film isn’t really interested in the work of the men – we never learn what exactly they do, whether they are dockers, ship-repairers or whatever. Perhaps I’m asking for too much. This is a romantic melodrama with a leavening of contemporary political concerns – and it is very enjoyable. The title has a double meaning referring to the dream of visiting the mountain, and a popular chanson which has memories for Michel and Marie-Claire.

 

LFF 2012 #3: El taaib (The Repentant/Le repenti, Algeria-France 2012)

Rachid meets his father in his home village after deciding to ‘repent’

By the time of my third film of the day, I was very tired and this was a demanding film in the circumstances. This interesting review from Cine-Vue suggests that the film was well-chosen as part of the ‘Debate’ strand of the festival (a slide on-screen announces this after you’ve sat through the rather tedious festival filmed introduction sequence of a young woman watching films and stuffing herself with popcorn). I’m not sure that simply giving us ‘Debate’ – almost as a command – works for me, but having an Algerian filmmaker or critic present to introduce the film would have been good. LFF is actually quite good at this kind of thing.

Merzak Allouache is a veteran Algerian director (born in 1944) and I remember with pleasure his 1996 film Salut Cousin! about a North African visitor’s sometimes comic adventures in Paris while staying with his cousin. This new film is very different. A statement during the credits tells us that a ‘Repentant’ is the official term used by the Algerian authorities for ex-soldiers from the Islamist guerrilla groups who fought in the Algerian Civil War and who were prepared to come down from the mountains and forests, hand in their weapons and report to the police before resuming ‘normal’ life. One such is Rachid, whose appearance at the beginning of the film in his parent’s village creates a local stir with some villagers attacking him as the only available possible murderer of their family members. I didn’t pick up the precise time period for the action in the film but historically the story would fit in the period around 1999-2000 following the passing of legislation about ‘civil concord’.

Rachid reports to the police in the neighbouring town. He is offered a job in a café-bar arranged via the police and expected to start naming names. But when he discovers the identity of the local pharmacist, he feels compelled to act without telling the police. I won’t spoil the narrative. Suffice to say, we don’t know at first why the pharmacist is so important or where the story is going to go. Narrative information is given to us sparingly and there is a palpable sense of unease. The film is quite short (87 mins) and it ends rather abruptly. I think I agree with the Cine-Vue reviewer that some of the characters such as the (very reluctant) café owner and the local police chief who set up Rachid in his new identity need more time on screen.

The Algerian Civil War was brutal in many ways and it clearly isn’t ‘over’ yet. I think it’s to the film’s credit that it doesn’t succumb to over-optimistic outcomes. When I reflected on the narrative afterwards I thought this was a restrained and powerful little story. Having said that, I’m not sure what there is to debate. It’s a neglected war in terms of histories and contemporary media coverage, especially in the UK and it shouldn’t be – especially given recent events in the rest of the Maghreb and elsewhere in the Arab world. The film doesn’t take sides or explain why the characters behave as they do, it just shows us some of the terrible consequences of civil war. Allouache himself says that he wanted to “question the amnesia” about the war in Algeria itself. He lives in France and made the film on location in just 20 days with little co-operation (but no banning restriction) from the Algerian cultural authorities. (See his statements in this Euromed Audio-Visual report – including some interesting comments about film culture in Algeria.)

The film was another to be screened in Cannes in Directors Fortnight and it was given a prize by Europa Cinema distributors. I hope it does get a wide release but I think, unfortunately, that it will be a hard sell in the international market. All the more reason then to be grateful to the LFF for bringing it over.