Silent film? Hmm, tasty...

Protagonist George Valentin may have gone through a rough spell following the introduction of talkies to his world of silent success, but he certainly has the last word. ‘With pleasure,’ he breaths in the first spoken dialogue after a good 90-odd minutes. Oh no George, the pleasure was all ours.

The silent world of Michel Hazavanavicius’ The Artist allows for some novel surprises for the enchanted viewer. Where he does occasionally use sound, it is to play with a plot that revolves around a pivotal moment in cinema history. His ability to suddenly assault our ears with an unexpected clatter or comment is something treasured in this distinctive film. The carefully and sparsely placed noises resonate loudly and introduce the audience to a feeling of magic that a late 1920’s audience may have first found hard to believe. In this way, Hazavanavicius dodges the potential pitfall of criminalising modern cinema, and instead shows both talkies and silents as loveable genres in their own ways.

For the majority of the film, however, we hear nothing but the perfectly matched score of Ludovic Bource. This leaves scope for a unique comedy of the eye. You could mistake this as slapstick, but it is too clever for that. Mirror images, visual trickery and well-placed quotes create charming puns and associations that need no words. 

The Artist is a classic Hollywood feel-good. And like all feel-goods, it’s not short of an emotional breakdown or two before the audience receives its happy ending reward. Think It’s a Wonderful Life; totally lovely guy gets dealt a blow in life, many tears follow, but it all works out in the end with a joyfully reassuring resolution. Who can resist such entertainment?

Meanwhile, it is simply fun to watch Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo onscreen together; they both give delectable performances; their chemistry and spark is dangerously moreish. And the dog! Watch his star performance with relish.

‘Relish’, ‘delectable’, ‘moreish’ - with vocab like this you’d think I was critiquing food rather than film. Well, in a film without sound, one of my senses was perhaps feeling neglected. Perhaps my taste buds stepped up? Now if that’s not abstract analysis, I don’t know what is.

Love films, not frocks.

The age of the silent movie, the peak of Hollywood glamour, the dawn of the Cold War, the uncertain times of Thatcherism  - it seems that movie award nominators and nominees alike have become obsessed with certain iconic times in our recent history. The 20th Century has proven to be fertile ground for movie-makers in the run up to the 2012 awards season. Our national obsession with retro and vintage is manifesting itself on the big screen.

It began with the Golden Globes on 15th January and won’t end until 26th February with the Oscars, but we can expect more than your typical ‘best and worst dressed’ stories to come out from this year’s awards season. The Artist, My Week With Marilynn, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Iron Lady have all graced our scenes recently in emotive, polished fashion; a boost to the usual standard of cinema listings which can mean only one thing - there are gongs to be had.

Michel Havanavicius’ The Artist is hogging the limelight at the moment. Many are quick to reject a film so quickly recommended by so many different sources. It seems like the obvious choice. Newspapers, bloggers, critics and audiences are all applauding this stand out film, standing out in albeit a very quiet way. Although the scarcely heard of French cast may not be the first names to roll off the lips of those making awards season predictions (Jean Dujar-who?), the din of praise that this film has created will be difficult to ignore.

Across the channel, Britain is also faring well with its recent films. In the recently announced BAFTA nominations, Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has done well with 11 nominations, losing out to The Artist’s BAFTA nominee top spot by only one. Tinker Tailor showcases the very best of male British actors, in our own typically cool and softly spoken way. Meanwhile, Simon Curtis’ My Week With Marilynn, produced with the help of the BBC, is another example of British film at the heart of quality movie-making of the moment. Although American dazzler Michelle Williams steals the show, in true Marilynn fashion, her supporting actors, Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench, get some of the attention with nominations for best supporting. And it may have been American-born Meryl Streep who won the award for best actress at the Golden Globes for The Iron Lady, but it is her hair and make up team who eagerly await the BAFTAs, to see if their creepily lifelike subject will gain them any official recognition.

For those of you not so keen on recent history and what I’m going to call post-period dramas (above films may be lacking in petticoats and Darcys, but they certainly aren’t in the ‘now’), there is one film of note this award season which is actually set in current times. George Clooney stars in The Descendants, a film with a trailor as sentimental as a Jodi Picoult novel. Nevertheless, it has been received warmly by many critics and it won two Golden Globes, one for best drama picture and the other for Clooney’s performance.

But I’m afraid I have to come full circle here. It’s the obvious choice that has my backing; The Artist is a truly unique film for hugely apparent audiovisual reasons. And the awards season is always tempted by the obvious. After all, who could have been surprised last year by the winning four gong sweep of The King’s Speech at the Oscars; a typically stylish picture that ticked all the awards season boxes. The Artist is, simply put, top quality entertainment. Which is what these satin-frocked and fanciful events ought to be about.

Shame Q and A: heavy on the Q easy on the A

It is Glasgow’s pride and joy; the tallest cinema in the world, a movie fan’s fantasy with 20 screens over six floors, situated in a city that loves ‘gaun tae the pictures’. And it is always refreshing when such an iconic attraction uses its facilities to not merely screen several daytime showings of the Chipmunks’ Chipwrecked and assign sickening numbers of its screens to Harry Potter - but also to show something interesting.

On 10th January, Cineworld Renfrew Street was one of the 68 cinemas across the UK and Ireland to screen an advance showing of Steve McQueen’s Shame, a boldly stylish yet bleak portrayal of sex addiction and depression. Following the film was a special Q and A with the director, along with cowriter Abi Morgan, beamed in via satellite from the Curzon Mayfair in London.

It was a strange sort of static atmosphere in the cinema, as the Glasgow audience watched semi B-listers file into their seats from the other side of the country, heckling at a none-the-wiser Janet Street Porter. There was even a loud boo when the London-based presenter failed to mention Glasgow in a brief list of cinemas taking part.

Following a short and humble introduction from its director, the film began. Opening almost as a scrapbook, fleeting images from one area to another instantly introduce us to protagonist Brandon’s life - ignoring family phone calls; chasing women on the subway; masturbating in the shower; walking in circles; lying naked and vacant. Brandon is fearlessly played by Michael Fassbender, who commands the screen with his slick reservedness,  which is juxtaposed in private by a destructive compulsive nature. As a successful white collar man, his double life allures to that of Patrick Batemen, one of fiction’s biggest characterisations of the double life of the the cool and affluent. It may not share Ellis’s them of murderous violence, but McQueen’s research topic of sex addiction proves to be similarly destructive.

Working against Fassbender’s surliness is his openly vulnerable sister, played by Carey Mulligan. This family relationship often appears less than wholesome, but no sexual contact is ever explicitly implied. Nevertheless, McQueen instills an uneasiness in the viewer as we struggle to trust the characters’ ability to behave as normal, healthy people.

As stated by McQueen in the following Q and A, the viewer can expect no ‘Warhorse sunset’ at the end of Shame. The film closes without answers, throwing up instead the kind of questions that a worried mother may ask about her troubled child. This resonates with an audience which have just been exposed to the fact that for Brandon, the compulsive sex addict, there is no cure, only the need for some sort of control which he may never find.

Fassbender is hot and up-and-coming. A glimpse at this month’s cover of GQ will tell you that. But it is these good looks, this handsome success, which is picked apart by McQueen; Shame is a presentation of the veneer, of the totally together man’s man who is falling apart inside.

Scandophobia in the world of film

When did this Scandophobia start and when will it end?!

First Alfredson’s Let the Right One In wasn’t good enough for Hollywood. Apparently its simultaneously frightful and tender plot could only be improved by one thing - the English language. A similar approach was applied to much celebrated TV series, The Killing, now available to viewers in a more palatable American accent. And now The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo gets the same treatment.

Each of these remakes has occurred within no more than four years of the original. Is this really necessary?

What is added to our experience as the viewer? Daniel Craig’s pseudo-Swedish accent? Swedish people in Sweden talking Sw-... English? No thanks, I don’t buy it. Subtitles aren’t that bad.

A most unfortunate movie crime

That is not the Sherlock I know. Apologies for the snooty literary conservatism, but when Harry Potter was adapted for the big screen, the teenage swot wasn’t miraculously transformed into a hard-man, martial arts expert. So why is it, then, that Guy Ritchie has corrupted my Sherlock into some sort of Bruce Lee of the 19th Century?

The plot in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is practically nonexistent. Reading Conan Doyle, I got a lot of pleasure from those bits when everything comes together; the clever eureka moment that features in any whodunnit worth its salt. Amid showy explosions and slo-mo judo kicks, any such cleverness is lost in this film.

Ritchie’s sequel relies on Robert Downey Jr.’s kooky portrayal of the leading man, a performance which is at best bearable and at worst mildly irritating. And don’t start me on Watson. The special relationship between Law and Downey Jr. - so often cited when justifying this movie franchise as ongoing - is self indulgent in a film where the only laughs come from a naked Stephen Fry. How lazy.

In fact, for want of a better, ruder word, I might has well have just watched Ritchie, Downey Jr. and Law all mutually masturbate for a couple of hours.

Elementary, my dear. Not a clever film.