Museum Hours

  Orbital  by Samantha Harvey is a short book about which the only complaint is perhaps that it should be even shorter, so that the lapidary sheen on this multifaceted jewel might be yet more polished for even greater effulgence; a confit for which even slower cooking might have reduced the constituents into a yet deeper and more refined reflection of their parts. As a piece of fully immersive metaphysics, Orbital probes away at our perspective on ourselves and our planet, on our simultaneous insignificance and grandeur, and on the need for a true sense of awe rather than the gimcrack variety applied in a ludicrous diminished form to the flashy and superficial attention grabbing detritus of modern existence. So why would a short piece about six people orbiting the earth in a space module open with a reproduction of Velasquez's 'Las Meninas'?  In short, because it is a 17th century painting (more on the baroque sensibility later) profoundly concerned with perspective, in w...

  "There was a silence, as if the fountain felt embarrassed or rebuffed. Then the fountain was suddenly a porcelain soup tureen, with frilled and ruffled edges. It just metamorphosed, even while she was continuously staring at it, the way an animation might transform - and Celine realised as she stared at it in amazement how disturbing she always thought soup was. Perhaps, she wondered, it was the way soup has no edges, or the way the elements which are contained in it are unprovable and undefined." The legendary film director, Andrei Tarkovsky was obsessed by pools of water, particularly the almost limitless movement that is possible within them. 'Nothing is more beautiful than water.' 'It transmits movement, depth, changes'. The most thoroughgoing treatment of this observation may be in his film  Nostalgia. With extraordinary composition of shot, Tarkovsky's obsession with water in buildings and confined spaces - particularly the sulphur pool - is plumb...

  One of the most joyful rediscoveries this year was Percy Adlon's  Bagdad Cafe  which in a wonderfully surreal manner captures the magic, literal and figurative, that a most unlikely outsider brings to the moribund, allowing them to realise what they have been missing through their obsessive introspection and to grow through the recognition of the value in difference. Could there possibly be a message in there? In the 'they do still make'em like that' category the outstanding example was the  The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan  which was pure pleasure from the tip of its épée to the handle of its poignard, running full tilt with the ridiculousness of the plot half way round France and back across the Channel without pausing for breath. Hats are worn with an angle of jaunt worthy of an Expressionist noir, swords are barely ever in a scabbard, panelling is chewed liberally and Eva Green's use of her belle poitrine auditions it for separate billing in the cast list....

  Expecting a gore fest of violence, degradation and societal breakdown? Instead we have a completely immersive social realist drama with rounded, fully recognisable people. Just people from 250 years ago. The Gallows Poll pulls off the extraordinarily hard trick of meshing (rather than mashing) language which conveys both a sense of the period but also the feeling that these are people like us.   The result is unique in achieving a kind of demotic drama that is true to experience but does not fetishise authenticity or worry about mixing modern and period language and terminology. Somehow it’s both of the time and universal to the experience of common people.  And it's vivid and funny (so very, very funny), and touching and ridiculous. A world which we enter in media res with no guardrails and just a requirement to pick up the cadence and the rhythm of what is happening. To just listen to these people talk. And how they talk. The dialogue and the delivery are amazing. The...

  Cinema going returned.  My love for French cinema was confirmed. My appreciation of the serious, austere and not necessarily ultimately uplifting was present and correct. Vicky Krieps continued to suggest that she is one of the most astounding actors at work at the moment ( Corsage , Hold Me Tight and Bergman Island to add to other stellar outings). Also confirmed was the urgent need to correct weaponised nostalgia and simple stories in favour of complexity, criticism and a warning that the siren voices of creeping social and political authoritarianism have to be confronted.  The usual 10 - 1 ranking follows but there are several films which only just missed the cut which deserve a mention particularly  Corsage ;  Il Buco ;  Bergman Island ;  Flux Gourmet  and  The Quiet Girl . 10. Parallel Mothers :  A tremendous performance from Penelope Cruz who is on screen for almost the entire running time anchors this film which is a stonking g...

  "Everybody’s crazy What’s your excuse baby? Standing in the middle waiting for something to happen." Ah, the lost and greatly lamented Veronica Falls one of my favourite jangly, indie, bubblegum, breathy, Sixties crossed with a Noughties take on Britpop inflected New Wave, covertly energetic, bands. A niche category but a good one. The song is about indecision and prevarication; everyone is as uncertain as everyone else. But perhaps it is also about paralysis in the face of things that are just too big.  In the case of the song, approaching someone you kinda like.  In the case of many humans in the early 2020s, the sense that perhaps everyone really is crazy makes one feel that actually standing in the middle isn't the worst place. The trouble is that the crazies might catch up with you anyway. Waiting no longer feels like just waiting for the weekend, for something to turn up or even to improve. The notion that things might actually get better seems fanciful in itself....