Best Films of 2020

 

This year I have adopted a slightly different approach given that it is hard to recall the pre-pandemic period; time has felt both stretched and condensed making perspective harder; films seen in the cinema will always be a different experience to films seen at home; and films seen in sparsely attended secure screenings, whilst a precious opportunity, inevitably feel a little peculiar. 

Accordingly, I have one clear winner (seen pre-pandemic in the cinema) and then two groups of eight films seen under widely differing circumstances which seem worthy of note. Groups of eight because I had 16 films on the list but why films are in group one or group two is simply chance although it will be apparent that there are some types of film that I really do like (such as American indies directed by women!) and that this year I think lockdown has actually led to more smaller scale films being made available to wider audiences via early streaming.

It also strikes me that whilst I watched a lot of films and that this list is solely about films which can plausibly be said to have been released in 2020 I see a concentration in my watching of newer films on domestic and social dramas. There is not a single large budget or action film and nothing truly experimental. Just well told stories which were absorbing and with characters which had resonance - at least for me. I think that is clearly the pandemic talking. 

That said, the frequent punch the air moments in David Byrne's American Utopia were a sheer, joyous release which might even occasion dancing around the lounge.

The Winner : Parasite

So, do we now all have to signal our obeisance to Director Bong? I rather think we do. This film is a deserving recipient of all the hype and expectation and exemplifies what South Korean cinema currently seems to do better than anywhere else in the filmic world: slip and slide between genres within a scene and engage in systematic deconstruction of the pernicious effects of rampant social and economic inequality.

Everyone (rightly) says go in knowing as little as possible. You'll come out having had a kind of cabin in the woods experience which somersaults between satire, farce, horror and thriller. Truly a staircase movie: this one climbs up and down from the basement but it turns out that sunshine, and indeed showers (although that might be a considerable understatement) are hardly cleansers for the lower depths.

Group One:

The Assistant : All the more troubling for being such a quiet, forensic account of small increments in moral corruption and the unspoken adjustments and that are made to accommodate exploitation by, and the egregious misbehaviour of, the unaccountable. [VOD]

Never Rarely Sometimes Always :  Astoundingly assured show don't tell film making which is completely gripping from beginning to end. [VOD]

Saint Frances :  Absolute catnip for me. Intelligent, amusing, low key, character driven, great script raising some serious with a light touch and delivering some profound moments of truth. A world that you were very happy to visit and to which you would happily come back (and indeed it is arriving on Netflix at the end of the year...)  [VOD]

Kajillionaire : Surprisingly sweet tale, delivered through a weird but diverting satire on small time capitalist ethics as a lifestyle sustained precariously by (often ill conceived) scams and contrivances to exploit others, which reaffirms the ultimate universal need for connection and affection, to be understood and to be appreciated. Anyone whose heart has not hardened into granite will surely be smiling and wiping a moist eye by the end. [LFF Home Screening]

Mogul Mowgli : Boldly conceived and executed and brilliantly performed. There is a wonderful allegory in the idea of an auto-immune disease in which some cells are not recognised by the body and are attacked as foreign and the experience of a second generation immigrant struggling to balance a career in rap (in which he can also feel an imposter) with family and community pressure and expectations. The culminating sequence in which these conflicts are at least to some extent reconciled is fabulous. [Cinema - secure screening]

Lover's Rock : Quite extraordinary in the evocation of a particular experience. The truly remarkable thing is that somehow the experience that is apparently being recreated to be filmed is in fact actually happening. So the cameras are there but the participants are not performing for them any longer. They are completely in the moment and doing it for themselves. [on the BBC!]

Shirley : At one point, the ballad ‘House Carpenter' about an innocent lured to disaster is sung and there is indeed something demonic in the eccentric, vicious but preternaturally gifted writer and her weird co-dependent relationships that simultaneously hobble and empower. 

It's an absorbing watch with some of the trademark Decker flourishes of off kilter framing, strange depth of field and rapid movement at the very front or side all of which disorientate. This all helps develop the unsettling environment into which the viewer is plunged. 

I've found myself increasingly liking her films. Madeline's Madeline certainly divided people but it really worked for me. Shirely is more conventional but retains enough oddity to make it striking. It hardly needs saying that Elisabeth Moss is very good in it but the world that spins around her is a bigger creation which is down to a very fine script and some excellent direction. [LFF Home Screening]

Mank : A cynical idealist who surrenders agency is at risk of ending up a sad, world weary, alcoholic who still knows exactly what is going on, can critique it to within an inch of its life, alienate the powerful with stiletto stabs and be a man of compassion and principle to the few - frequently the marginalised and misunderstood - who are allowed to see below the carapace.

I rather loved this film, particularly the scenes between Mank and Marion Davies in which two intelligent people have a few moments in which they can play against type. 

The film as a whole is deeply sad in the steady cataloguing of gradual alienation from the world and a quickening cycle of self destruction arising from the toxic mix of principle and despair. [Netflix]

Group Two

Little Women : (my verbatim review at the time) So, did it deserve the hype? On the whole, I think it did (and I say that as someone who is probably quite some way from the target audience, has never read the book and has a problem with saccharine drama).

It is clearly a very personal project for Greta Gerwig: she's developed a complex but immediately understandable structure which moves back and forth between time periods to address hopes and reality, causes and consequences and above all good and bad choices.

It is a surprisingly powerful account of being female in a patriarchal society and is very on point about economic power (and the lack of it).

It also zips by and has some wonderful performances: Florence Pugh is astoundingly good as is Saoirse Ronan. Given that Gerwig has chosen three of the most annoying leading men on the planet: (Saint) Timothee, James Norton and Louis Garrel it is surprising that I didn't feel the need to flee the cinema. Norton plays true to form as an emotionally stunted tree trunk but Garrel is much less irritating than usual. I just don't get the whole Timothee thing but in any case he comes across as a bit of an arse. Definitely not worthy of Flo or Saoirse.

Anyway, the most powerful aspect of the whole approach is that there is a slight meta commentary on whether this is an adaptation of the novel or about the development of a novel to meet 19th century social and cultural requirements to sell books. Whilst this is mostly playfully done, it works really well because it underscores the fundamental point that economic circumstances limit choices and agency - particularly for these women. [Cinema - pre-pandemic]

The Truth : (Watched at the very start of lockdown) This was pure pleasure. It's very funny in a droll, understated manner and also more moving than I expected. Clearly, it's set in an almost hermetically sealed upper bourgeois society into which the rest of the world barely intrudes and the major life choices are ones that don't trouble much of the population. 

I have not always been convinced by the director: I loved some of his early films but found others too saccharine and rather unconvincing (I even left the cinema rather than sit through My Little Sister). But this one really works and I did not detect any of the blemishes associated with a director working in French without a working knowledge of the language which have been the focus of some reviews. In fact, many of the most important moments are non-verbal. 

I suspect that the current situation and a couple of glasses of wine helped snuggle me happily into a very comfortable milieu in which you have complete confidence in the actors and the focus is on family relationships which, however difficult, feel remarkably tractable compared to a pandemic. It may also have been that just at this moment if you have to be in lock down, being in a big posh house in Paris seems a decent option. [VOD]

Rocks : Vibrant, engaging, empathetic account of the lives of a diverse group of young Londoners with some knockout performances. [Netflix]

Wildfire : Deeply affecting drama set on the Irish border about two sisters’ shared psychosis and the communal and individual effects of unresolved trauma. The sequence of wild dancing to the iconic ‘Gloria’ encapsulates both the bond and the sense of desperation. The film is a timely reminder that those who ignore the past are prone to make the same mistakes; something the current UK ‘government’ seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge. [LFF Home Screening]

Rose: A Love Story : A rather wonderful chamber piece about selfless love, commitment and living with a chronic condition which, as with all the best horror inflected films, grounds a heightened scenario in empathetic characters and recognisable emotions. [LFF Home Screening]

Ammonite : Subtle examination of the intersection between class, gender and sexual orientation played out through self worth arising from work, desire and romantic love. For some, grafting always has to come before swooning; others can simply swoon. The final sequence provides a wonderful summary of the whole film. Excellent performances and a suitably gnarly, close up, focus on lived experience in all respects from rotten eggs and mud to sexual ecstasy. 

The film may suffer from over anticipation that it is a period romance. It is but it is perhaps more a genuine attempt to look at a life in a small town in the first half of the 19th century when your opportunities are narrow, life is hard and joy seems unlikely to come from others. [LFF Cinema - Secure Screening]

The Woman Who Ran : Or perhaps: 'The woman who mused about running, checked out how some other women are doing, observed the general uselessness, self-regard and antagonism of men, wanted to eat some real meat but kept on being offered a peeled apple, saw water flowing back and forth around sandbanks on a cinema screen, decided that those eddies were indeed her life, and may still be sitting there with the film on a permanent loop'. [VOD]

American Utopia : The best concert film since ... Stop Making Sense. Brilliant performances and choreography coupled with powerful messages about plurality of thought, change and agency that put a smile on your face, a spring in your step and hope in your heart. [VOD].

How Kinked Is Your Pearl?

 

The only film I have seen on successive evenings in the cinema and a late juvenile infatuation which has lasted for decades. Yes, this is The Draughtsman's Contract by Peter Greenaway.

What is the strange hold of a baroque infused murder mystery set (oh so precisely) in 1694 over what passes for my adult self?

To truly love this film I think you have to take absolute delight in your mind being engaged though your senses, to secure great pleasure from the brain being stroked and tickled by all manner of curlicued tricks and feints. 

The overwhelming nature of the film is that it fires up your synapses with aural and visual cues as you allow your mind to be wired directly into a weird baroque fuse box, the switch is flipped, the currents play and the brain lights up. 

The film offers a positive cornucopia of sensory inventiveness that takes the kinked pearl at the heart of the baroque and polishes it anew conjuring Purcell with pulsing minimalist rhythms that variously have a cocksure swagger or a staggering lilt, wigs that reach for the heavens, cosmetics that blanch already sallow faces, gardens that are drilled to a tee, exotic fruits that seem just too juicy, landscapes that Claude might have painted - but didn't. 

The baroque was never quite like this. There is an arch artificiality in most of what we see; a calculated exaggeration that plays up the strange sensibilities of a world being explored and which can be ordered, can be bent to the will through design and extraordinary gilded magnificence but also has an older savagery lying just beneath the system of contracts and law.

It is the veritable film of de trop. 

I do, however, say that the mind is engaged through the senses rather than the heart being engaged through the emotions. 

In most respects this is an emotionless film; an austere comedy in which the participants respond to the kinds of mechanical forces which are becoming understood at the end of the 17th century, with the atomism of Leibniz and the like, but also driven by practical consequences of land ownership, finance and particularly inheritance (in respect of which the director suggests legislation passed in the year in which the film is set gave married women a greater claim over the property of their deceased husbands). 

To survive one must know one's place. One is indeed constantly, and deliberately, placed. The careful hierarchy of an ordered society means that gentlemen do not chase sheep; they leave that to the shepherds. Only the arrogant parvenu might consider themselves able to change the order of things. 

Property was the currency of success, just as it was in the 1980s when the film was made (a 'property owning democracy' anyone?). Conveying the scale and nature of property and land ownership was a significant aspect of status for a member of the gentry or the nobility. 

We are not yet in the heyday of landscape gardening but the Dutch influence on garden design - coming from a country which had pretty much dug itself from the sea - is becoming more apparent. The landscape is becoming more artificial. 

So property and land are designer goods and they need to be recorded. Hence the role of a draughtsman. 

In that context, the new science of optics is very much to the fore not just in the painterly eye but in the manner of cartography and draughtsmanship. The details must be recorded and must be in the right relations one to another. 

Meaning is also everywhere. We are in an age of allegories. There are keys to what is presented and what is being seen. There is intended meaning in the motifs and patterns, allusions are a constant. One simply needs to know where, and most importantly, how to look.  

Wider stratagems may also be glimpsed in the clues that are hidden in plain sight; even the linen that  drapes the garden at various points, seemingly haphazard but in fact quite the opposite. 

But then there is also what the eye does not properly see. Eyes trained in optical theory may miss a great deal of what is happening all around. Statues are not supposed to move. At least in theory. But perhaps they have more to tell if only the eyes and ears are suitably open. 

The sophisticated can be terribly naive. It is indeed a thin line between genius and stupidity. 

So, why is all of this so engaging?

In part it's the history. This is one of the most important periods in English history. But it is little known. Parliamentary sovereignty is now ascendant supported by the twin engines of finance and property. The film is a microcosm of the inner workings of the elite with its detailed engagement with the stuff of contracts, land and inheritance. 

In part it is the way in which the contrivance and deliberate artifice are a perfect encapsulation of the baroque. There is so much surface that one may find it hard to see beneath. But what a surface: the house, the gardens, the costumes, even the pineapple. 

Much of this comes together in the driving contrapuntal force of the music which races the participants towards their fate, a mysterious interplay of instruments from different time periods which apes the music of the time.

So the intellect and the senses of those who like their brains to be teased are treated to an array of glorious stimuli. It can make you feel clever but also make you feel that there is more to uncover. I hope one day to see the 4 hour version of the film which is said to exist. Maybe rather like the Married Women's Property Act of 1694.

Maybe it is also a film to watch if you fancy yourself in love, but quite possibly with the wrong woman. You know that you're not quite seeing straight but you are definitely feeling something. Unfortunately you have missed the equivalent of the moving statue and rushed ahead to impending rupture and a tumble over the ha-ha. 

Which is all rather apt. 

Woke Calvinism: William Perkins in Brooklyn

In the wake of the success of Grayson Perry’s Big American Road Trip, we recently sat down in Williamsburg with the still little known Elizabethan divine (no, of course not that one) at the start of his speaking tour of the Atlantic Coast which had been stimulated by seeing a potential new congregation. 

Perkins had just arrived on The Gadfly after a journey of several months. The original plan had been to launch a new ship (prospectively called The Mayflower) but the whole enterprise had become bogged down in disputes about sourcing the timber and the precise kind of knots to use on the rigging. He entirely understood the need for rigour on these issues but still harboured hopes that the new ship would eventually secure at least a degree of renown. It would certainly be more comfortable. 

He looked paler than usual even for someone who generally exclusively inhabits the library and the seminar room and made some initial remarks suggesting a degree of envy towards ‘Greta’ who seemed to have had a much more straightforward time of it on her trip across the Atlantic. He put that down to the Swedish tendency towards Lutheranism and an easy life. 

By way of contrast, he had a ‘religious awakening’ whist at university and was reluctantly coming around to accepting the term that the tabloids had coined of being the ‘woke cleric’.

So, it is no surprise that Perkins lives up to his most well-known phrase: ‘Exegesis Is Good For You.’

He tends to speak in pamphlet form. The syntax is as dizzying as the subject matter but at least you have a good long time to become acclimatised. However, even careful listeners might find the combination of Elizabethan vernacular and a declamatory style that treats any room as if it were the size of a small cathedral a little much. Accordingly, we have edited for brevity and volume and (considerably) increased the size of the typography.

With a justified (oh goodness not that kind of justified) sense of trepidation, we began by asking him for a brief summary of strict Calvinism and why he felt it would go down so well in Brooklyn Heights. 

It rapidly became apparent that Perkins is definitely one for those who take a doppio or three with their theology. 

His latest notion was ‘double predestination’. This held that God had ordained everything that happened and had also elected some people to salvation whilst the remainder were reprobates who would be damned for all eternity for their sins. Some of them were basically being given the bum’s rush a touch unfairly given that they’d just inherited original sin but, hey, distinctions have to be maintained.  

For many it is a strange doctrine. None of those pesky works. Certainly, no indulgences. Being saved meant being chosen.

That’s why he’d felt the urge to cross the ocean. The denizens of Brooklyn were living up to this perfectly. They regarded much of the nation as reprobate and were engaged in exactly the kind of abstract musings that kept him occupied. 

We pressed him a little on where this all led and in particular how, when you don’t actually know if you have been chosen, you can be confident about being part of the in-crowd. 

Some brisk beard stroking resulted but we understood later than this was his way of maintaining equanimity. 

The point that we had failed to grasp was that whilst you could not know that you were amongst the elect; the elect would all behave in a manner that displayed their state of grace. So, if you acted in such a manner you were at least still in the game. Crucially, you were better than everyone else. Provided you performed that way, you had all the attributes that you needed.

One could see this play out in all sorts of ways. Clothes (he favoured a particular type of ruff that was only available in a small number of outlets and the suppliers were planning to open one soon after his tour had concluded), interior design (walls must always be white), church governance and consistent views on the position of the altar.

But wasn’t there always that lurking menace of those people who felt that if they were saved anyway then they could, frankly, do whatever they wanted? Hurriedly looking at our notes we mentioned some outrageous goings on in Munster but he cut us off in the manner of someone who would brook no more, muttering something about pesky anabaptists and 'that was a long time ago'.

Your correspondents had a sense that Perkins might indeed have tapped into a strong market. There was a performative equality at work here that made people feel that they belonged and that they were justified (no, not that kind of justification). 

So for now this is a small step but the sermon sessions have been selling out and whist Perkins expressed some doubts about visiting a vineyard he was reassured that Goody Martha was in charge. That would be a fitting session for his final appearance before leaving for the long journey back to England.

Your correspondents felt that the only point at which Perkins looked distinctly discomfited was when as something of a desperate sally we wondered what would happen if one assumed that there was perhaps something of god in everyone. 

It may have been a trick of the light, but we do think he Quaked.  

Fernando Pessoa: My Social Media

 

We caught up with the famously reclusive author in his favourite cafe in Lisboa to discuss just how disquieting he is finding it to have his heteronyms speaking simultaneously on different parts of social media. 

Readers will be aware that Pessoa has so far created about seventy five characters who speak for themselves in different styles. Some could be said to represent different aspects of an overall personality. He has dubbed them heteronyms. 

We met in Cafe Brasiliera where he has now had a statue put up outside to allow his fans to take their selfies without bothering him unduly. 

"In the past it was so much easier. Pen and ink on some scraps of paper.  I never used to publish anything, just throw it in a cupboard. Now there is stuff out there before I even know."

In some respects Pessoa should be comfortable with the idea of self curation. He's been doing it for decades speaking with different voices at different times. Crucially though he has always considered these voices as parts of an overall personality.

Pessoa continued: "There have always been people trying to psychoanalyse me and saying I have multiple personality disorder. Hey, wake up guys, I’m just self curating. It may be quite an extreme version but I was there first. But as the decades have gone on its become harder and harder. Now I find that I am being curated by the heteronyms." 

In other words, different aspects of the personality are promoting themselves and becoming increasingly competitive. 

One can appreciate this would be discombobulating. No wonder Pessoa is working his way through a number of strong looking espressos. 

Pessoa proceeded to give us some examples of how different characters want to use different media and that they always want to be in control. Too many of them are "bloody poets" he said. And you know how tiresome they can be when they don't feel appreciated. 

It’s very draining he said with that kind of fatalism which is so striking in Portuguese. The social media accounts need managing and he was constantly being asked for exclusivity. 

He was particularly concerned that given the silent nature of many of the heteronyms and their unwillingness to have any conversations other than internal ones, the apartment was becoming littered with slips of paper left surreptitiously asking him to change things to be benefit of one heteronym. Given his writing style this could have disastrous consequences and could make the task of future editors even more difficult. Not only would they be rooting around his apartment they would have to sort even more wheat and chaff. 

At this point Pessoa looked slightly nervous and asked us to make clear that the use of the word chaff was in no way a commentary on the poetic output of the Chevalier de Pas. These aristos were incredibly touchy. 

In response to what was intended to be a helpful suggestion he grudgingly accepted that Andre Breton and the surrealists might be prepared to step in to help if required given their expertise with collage. 

More generally, though, Pessoa contented himself by pointing out the irony that these adepts in social media felt the need to curry favour by aping his techniques. That seemed to be about the extent of what still passed for authorial control.

The conversation took a darker turn yet at the mere mention of passwords. Your interviewer became seriously concerned that the author looked sufficiently aghast that he might have felt the need to invent another persona on the spot to deal with the stress.

Then there was TikTok and Instagram Reels (ever the modernist, Pessoa is on trend). "The thing is the posts are there and then they’re gone. The heteronyms are asking me as the author what someone else has said and whether they need to comment on it. We've had the most terrible arguments over Instagram Stories. I had in the end I just had to ask everyone to make copious use of tagging."

Pessoa added that this led to some fairly acid asides that if he stopped inventing new characters it would be easier to keep up. New characters are clearly a safety valve of a kind but they do just store up more problems for the future. 

The intra-textual commentary by one heteronym on another is clearly particularly sensitive. After all part of the point of being a heteronym is that you can engage in a critique of your fellows. But there have to be some rules. Pessoa said that there had been some deeply unflattering photos on Instagram that had nearly led to voices actually being used. Thankfully it was mostly kept to paper. 

A more recent development was that some of the heteronyms were using auto translate. Previously Pessoa had been able to constrain them all to Portuguese but now he even had strange sounding Scots dialects cropping up. 

He added, looking momentarily as if he might again feel the need to break into an impromptu bout of fado, that auto translate tends to struggle when applied to a slight Glaswegian accent. He regretted that the engineer had taken that work experience abroad but he had been headstrong. Now he was unintelligible.

Pessoa said that he found himself retreating to the Cafe Brasiliera more and more and pretending that there was poor connectivity. When asked he said he was Anon, Charles Robert Anon (I envisaged him saying this in the style of James Bond). 

He still worked best with Bernardo Soares who was an accountant of sorts and approached these issues with a touch less emotion as long as he was allowed to wander around Lisbon and not do much work. The trouble now was that with images circulating everywhere even Soares was complaining the being a flaneur wasn't what it used to be. He might even need to spend more time in the office.

A more recent gambit to try to tamp down the competition was to put everyone on TV. There had been discussions about a version of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. "We thought about calling it (rather  grandiloquently in my opinion) "Promenading with Pessoa’s Personas" said Fernando. Sadly it came to nothing. 

"The producers felt there that there were just too many of us who were keen precisely on hiding our light under a bushel. But really the escalator pitch was the coup de grace. Frankly there were just too many of us trying to get onto the escalator and it become a physical challenge as much as anything else. I had to stop things before anyone was hurt. Physically. Psychologically though I think there was damage."

At this point he did indeed break out into fado. 

There is only so much saudade that anyone can take.  

The Big Reveal

Vegas.

It wasn’t his town.

It wasn’t anyone’s town. 

That old Italian guy had it right with his rings around hell. This was nothing but a clip-joint full of booze hounds and grifters. 

They’d flown in from Phoenix and put up in a two-bit motel on the outskirts, but they needed wheels before they took the run out past Death Valley.

So there they were in the diner watching the ball game and listening to the clients bump gums. They put the maps on the bar counter. Three hundred miles before they hit the mountains. They needed a clean sneak the next morning. No clues about where they were going. They hardly knew themselves. 

And what if the maps didn’t seem to match up. That was one for the wise heads. 

Saturday early they pinned on their diapers and headed down for breakfast. It was quiet as a morgue. Nothing out of place. Plastic. No taste to the food. No smell to the coffee. It looked like a set up. It looked alien. But they had miles to go yet before they reached Area 51. 

He wanted ripe fruit. He wanted blue cheese. He wanted metal cutlery. But he knew he would have to wait. There was no-one to give them the third degree, but they were European - and no-one had to know. 

The broad on the sat nav said: turn right, drive 250 miles. 

She sounded reassuring. He wasn’t buying it. 

They drove without ceasing. The mountains came closer, rising above them as the car bounced around the bends of the foothills. They were bunnies in a can. 

That afternoon, they arrived at the trail head. They felt they had just escaped stir. There was no action. The few vehicles scattered around the lot looked moribund. That was all. They quickly gathered their rags and the sacs and took a bunk through the trees.

The ground rose quickly. The maps said the path was short. They didn’t say it was steep, rocky, full of tree roots and fallen timber and skittering backwards and forwards across the side of the hill.

The ground rose even quicker. They had a mighty sweat now. There were old mine workings on the side of the valley. Who would work up here? The place seemed godforsaken. 

The ground rose vertically. They were going straight up the side of the mountain. The breathing came in gasps now like those proper lungers in the hospital, the heart pounded, the body ached. If they didn’t reach better ground soon, they would lose the light and then themselves in the block field that loomed above them.

Finally, he didn’t know how or when, it levelled off a bit. They just wanted to lie down. Any flophouse would do. 

Now there was a lake with a fringe of trees. The ground was hardly good. But it was good enough.

 

They broke out the tent and the stove and cooked up a meal. It was dusk and the lake looked cold and hostile. The peaks were jagged. They looked like they’d cut you as soon as look at you. 

As the temperature fell, they shivered in their sleeping bags but the tiredness was overwhelming. The head doctors would have had something to say about their situation but they were too jingle-brained to care.

They were behind the eight ball and no mistake.

What would the morning bring?

---------------------------

DDT and coffee. That’s what the morning brought.

At least the coffee tasted better out of the jerry can than it had in Vegas. The midges were hovering over the lake but only a dope would trust them. No one wanted to be the fall guy for the mosquitos and the deet was a lollipop; you’d trust it in the jungle to stop you going off your nut.

The next question was breakfast. There were no eggs. Hard boiled or otherwise. It was porridge or muesli. There was only milk powder and to his mind that meant muesli. For once it was safe. They were away from prying eyes. They could eat the muesli without putting a curse on themselves. In Vegas it would have been a different story. Chin music would have been certain. Likely the furniture would have been busted up. The yanks didn’t appreciate the muesli eaters. 

They brought out the maps. Now the sun was coming up. They needed to set off soon so they could rest up later. 

They found where they were. Shaver Lake. It felt an appropriate name for what had happened the day before. Now the sun was out. The tent was drying the place looked almost friendly. But they needed to work out how to get from the P.C.T to the J.M.T. If they didn’t make it then they would be bedding down in Palookaville and all the acronyms and abbreviations in the world wouldn’t help them.

There was only one problem. The maps didn’t match. He’d thought this in Vegas but then they’d had more on their minds then than some charts. The fancy pants view was that it couldn’t be far. The flat truth was they didn’t know. They decided to keep it buttoned and hope that they didn’t end in a jam. King’s Canyon was where the water was; and they needed that water. 

The path was good for once. The air was cool and they even managed some wisecracks about the hop heads who couldn’t even bring the right maps. They remembered the story of the wise guys found half dead on a mountain who claimed that they had a map. It turned out to be of Birmingham. England not Alabama.

They were off the map and off the grid. There was no need to get gummed up. Just put one foot in front of another. These were the smooth angles of the walking business. 

Behind them the mountains rose like the Alps. In fact, they were the Alps. They remembered the journey from the Dolomites and how they had become separated from their colleagues. At Verona they had taken the Birmingham plane. Just Alabama not England. 

Had it been rigged? Who knew. They’d find out when they reached Bishop. If they reached Bishop. And that assumed that they found their way from the P.C.T to the J.M.T and then to the B.P.T. Abbreviations made him nervous.

The day spread out before them. There were meadows now they were out of the trees. It must have been 9,000 feet. 

The land started to fall away; gently at first and then steeply. They had been walking for hours. They stopped for some cheese with no taste and some hard fruit. Even up here there was no point taking a chance with the stash of camembert. If someone got wind of that the best they could hope for would be to be taken for being French. 

By the late afternoon they were out on their feet. Getting back on the map should have meant the day was taped but after the third Cliff Bar they were pie eyed and that wasn’t to do with the booze. Finally round a bend and up a rise the river opened out. They were at King’s Canyon. 

Now they had the lowdown on how these maps worked. They were where the P.C.T met the J.M.T. Tomorrow they would head off up higher boosted by the new acronym. But for tonight they would park their bodies, eat their fill and watch the sunset go down in the best flophouse in the world.

 

----------------------------

Blue. The sky not the mood. 

Although it was bright enough to make your head hurt. 

They might be entering bear country, but they had no kick with the rules here. Any wrecking crew would have their work cut out in this territory so they should have a clear run up to the pass over the next few days. Quite how anyone would bring any wheels up here was a mystery for greater minds than theirs.

They stowed the tent and set off through the trees. Redwoods towering above, cool in the shade. A few miles on the trail took a turn. And so did they. 

The river was wide even if the flow was slow, but you’d be sitting on dynamite if you lost your footing and took a tumble downstream. Probably just a dunking but even so. 

It didn’t help that there were some dames on the other side dangling their getaway sticks in the water. No one wanted to look like they were having a wing ding whilst going base over apex in the stream with them looking on. 

It was hard to walk over those mossy stones without seeming pie-eyed. This was one for slow freight. There was no point giving anyone an easy laugh or throwing confetti around like it mattered. 

On the other side they were on the up and up. Literally. The path, such as it was, just went up and up. 

The temperature rose through the day to the high 30s and in the afternoon and they were up around 10,500 feet gradually coming out of the trees onto the open rock. 

The landscape was huge but it didn’t matter how much lacquer you put on it, this was tough going. It would be just swell when it stopped.

But they didn’t know just how swell. 

 

However licked you were, this place could bring you back to life. It took all the tricks.

They cooked up a stew and waited for the sun to go down. As the light dropped and the temperature fell the mountains started to turn colour like the blush on an orange. They hollered and their squawks echoed around the valley. As the shadows increased, they were drunk as lords with no sign of a speakeasy. 

They were out on the roof of the world in the magic hour.

 

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Cerulean. That was the fancy pants word for the colour of the sky.

It was a good day to take a flutter at the pass. Calm and cloudless. It would be hotter than hell but if they made monkeys of themselves, they would just have to take a good long stare in the mirror. 

They relaxed into their muesli but as they put the gear into the packs the nickel finally dropped. They had too much food. That would spring the trap, goons or no goons. Only English people carried too much stuff. They’d need to palm some of it off onto the spreadsheet guys. Those were the types who calculated the weight they carried down to the last gram and ended up looking like bronzed beanpoles on pipe stems. The ones who cycled half-way across California and then ran around the P.C.T for a relax. 

The pass would be a good place to spot them. Shades, baseball caps, vests - and ridiculously small packs. They were always hungry though. That was their weak spot.

They crossed the water on the boulders. Even someone out of their noddle could manage that kind of duck soup.

The way sloped upwards to the lip of the next valley. It was greener and the ground started to flatten out. Something big was coming.

It turned out that this was the real harvest time. The doozy. The acme.

This was time to grab a little air and take it all in. Meadow and mountain in perfect combination set against that deep California blue and with more to come. 

They carried on, breathing easily now. The head doctors should send their patients up here. It could calm down a dervish doing figure eights.

The valley bent round to the right up towards the next level.

The old Italian guy had written about Paradise too. Maybe they were looking at it now. 

Hell might be in Vegas. Paradise in turned out was just half-way up to heaven.

 

They could see the pass too. More miles than it looked but what could stop them now? Even the cheese tasted better.

They’d had the Big Reveal. Now they could even face the Big Sleep if that’s what it came to.

As they left the meadows they were back on the rock. It started to look like a moon scape. Or what they thought a moon would look like. Either way it was scree and block fields. The air was thinner. 

Then they were at Wanda Lake. The water was freezing but the bugs were swarming. They drifted with the tide past that one.

Steps became slower and breathing deeper. Then John Muir Pass at 12,500 feet. The J.M.T and the P.C.T. reunited.

Sure enough, there were some spreadsheet guys up there. Sure enough, they looked ready to eat the food straight out of the packet. 

This was some kick. A Cliff Bar to celebrate then it was downhill for the rest of the day. 

Walking into the California blue with a campfire song in the heart. 

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Only a sourpuss could fail to appreciate that it was better to be going downhill than uphill in the heat of the afternoon. 

Careening down the trail could make any punk feel like a real high roller. Not that they were always careening. Sometimes they were just sitting, shooting the breeze in whatever shelter could be found on the hill. 

There was no point burning the road, particularly around the switchbacks which could make the legs go one way and the noddle the other and leave you wandering about like you were still searching for your sea legs on an ocean liner.

As the afternoon drew on, they were back down at the tree line and could look for a place to put up for the night just short of where the B.P.T junction with the P.C.T would likely be. That was a powerful combination of acronyms and they needed to be rested up for the B.P.T that would take them to the highest point of the trail and then down the pass towards Bishop.

The woods offered a range of accommodation and they chose a place close to the stream. That campfire sure seemed alluring now, so they set to work building it with a lattice of brushwood inside a ring of rocks. It took immediately. There were some fallen tree trunks to sit on and some gourmet packet food on the plates. The Baden Powell version of the high life. 

The local wildlife seemed interested in joining in too. Some deer nearby in the meadow clearly had their number and were happy to ham it up looking too cute for their own good. They knew venison wasn’t on tonight’s menu.

Finally, they turned in at the end of a big day in the big country and left the deer to their own devices. Tomorrow would take them back up to the land of the moon. For now though they could just sleep beneath it and the myriad stars that dotted a sky that had the dark sheen of fresh indigo. 

---------------------------------------------

Azure. That was another fancy pants word for the colour of the sky. At dawn, with the tree canopy, the effect was like a giant aquamarine peacock bestriding the world.  

They were going to need to strut their stuff like a peacock today too and high tail it up to the top of the pass and then all the way down as far as it went. There would be plenty of time for preening once the ascent was over. 

They blew their cover early and headed off down the hill towards the B.P.T. junction. This was a walk in the woods, but it would be over all too soon. As they turned left at fork it would be up for the rest of the morning. 

After a couple of hours climbing, they were beside a waterfall. 

 

Maybe there would be a meadow of sorts where the ground evened out above the cascade. As it turned out this was no coffee and doughnut meadow. This was a real fine joint spreading right out between the serrated peaks with the stream that fed the waterfall running through the middle and the whole thing lousy with small flowers in a rainbow array.

 

The view deserved a Cliff Bar. These would be the last green things they saw this side of Bishop Pass. 

Leaving the meadow, they moved off up to the left and could see the land becoming harsher and bleaker with the bare white rock the colour of a bleacher in some dead end resort at the close of summer. 

Now they were back on the moon. They could give it the up and down but there was no escaping the fact that this would be a slog all the way to the top. The air was thinning out once again. They sounded like someone who was on forty gaspers a day. 

The hill was playing with them. Tricking them constantly into thinking that they were nearly finished when there was just more rock ahead with that pure blue sky and the occasional stretch of water to fool them like some desperate crusader at Hattin searching for lake Tiberias.

They arrived at the pass at 13,000 feet with hardly a fanfare. There was a small sign which looked as wind-blown as they felt. And that was it. The way down looked steep at the top but would soon level out past a run of lakes. 

Any of those lakes would have had them hopping back in Europe. Here they populated the valley in all their fineness and serenity. They were quite the sight. 

The afternoon heat was high. They passed a few walkers starting out on their way up and smiled to think what lay ahead for those boys. But they didn’t show their hand, just smiled encouragement and carried on down the trail towards the way out. 

By now they were desperate for petrol fumes. Not like some hop head but to know that the trail head was near and that the packs could be dropped. 

They’d have to tighten the screws a little on some drivers to hitch a lift into town. This might be the moment to bring out the English accents which had a most unusual effect, particularly on dames. It seemed that even without the floppy hair, or indeed any hair, that accent just had some people weaker at the knees than an entire bottle of hooch or six days in the Sierra. 

The ride safely arranged they sat back and breathed in the sirocco of hot air that blew in through the open windows and could dry the throat quicker than a skinful of bourbon. 

When they tipped out in Bishop the sidewalk was hotter than a griddle-pan just off the stove. They still needed a final ride to the trail head to pick up the car and the rest of the gear. 

Time for those accents again. And fancy meeting someone who had been to college in England too.

She has a good hard laugh when she heard where they’d started out. Only the real crazies go straight up the mountain to Shaver Lake. Little wonder they hadn’t seen anyone else.

When they were back in Bishop there was just time to line up the hotel and head for the burger bar which seemed to be the high class joint in town.

They were so desperate they ordered a root beer. That didn’t taste so good. But the cans of Sierra Nevada were on the way too for which they would happily have paid twenty large. Each.

Finally then, they sat on a bench on the outskirts of town as the sun went down behind the hills they had walked for the past week and chewed on their burgers, washed down with the very finest, coldest, beers in the history of the whole wide world.

Writing In White Ink

"Point of view is becoming my subject" says Sofia, the central character of this fabulous novel.

This is indeed a densely imagined discussion of points of view: how we view ourselves and how we are viewed by others and how the two are interpreted, particularly by - and through - language.

The text of the novel is prefaced by a short quote from Hélène Cixous' The Laugh of the Medusa and one could see what follows as an exercise in ecriture feminine; the approach to writing that Cixous proposed which would allow women to describe themselves in ways which reflect how they engage with the world and their own consciousness.  

Sofia's estranged father who left her mother many years before perhaps encapsulates the perspective which enraged Cixous: 

‘Sofia is a waitress for the time being’ my father said in Greek.

I am other things, too. 

…I do not resemble an acceptable femininity from my father’s point of view. '

‘How do we set about not imagining something?' is the apposite question posed at one point. Not imagining is a reflection of curtailed perspective. 

An anthropologist by training, Sofia works in a coffee shop and is now in Spain looking after her mother who has problems walking and is attending a clinic in Almeria. As her mother is weaned off her extensive medication and starts to walk and drive in a way that suggests that she actually has no physical problems with her legs, Sofia is stung by the medusas (the jellyfish in the sea in which she bathes) into starting to observe herself and others in quite different ways. In effect she anthropologises herself.

‘Anthropologists have to veer off track otherwise we would never rearrange our own belief systems’

In this she becomes involved with Ingrid and Juan (who runs the treatment table for jellyfish stings). With the latter in a relatively straightforward way. With the former with an extraordinary level of complexity in which Ingrid appears as a whole range of different aspects of womanhood, ironically from the original meeting in which Sofia sees her shoes under the cubicle in the women's bathroom and thinks she is a man to an athletic horsewoman reminiscent of the Amazons of ancient legend. 

‘Ingrid and Juan. He is masculine and she is feminine but, like a deep perfume, the notes cut into each other and mingle’.

The anthropologic process entails Sofia understanding her mother and understanding herself and the reciprocity between them; the milk that supported her as an infant continues to inform the way that the world is interpreted and described.

In a little over 200 pages the reader has been given a dense, rich, allusive exposure to the complexity of how we invent ourselves and the significance of our relationships with others which seems to reach right back to antiquity.

You Are History: The Man Who Saw Everything

‘I don’t want to talk about it now’

But you must” she said firmly ‘You are history’

There is no conceivable way to do justice to the absorbing, subtle complexity of this novel in a few, inevitably rather schematic, observations. But here goes.

All that you really need to know is that the main protagonist (Saul) suffers two traffic accidents, both on the zebra crossing made famous by the cover of the Beatles' Abbey Road album. These incidents occur in 1988 just before the fall of the Berlin Wall and in 2016 just after the referendum on UK membership of the European Union. Two pivotal events in European history. 

The book is concerned with the way that the perception, experience and recollection of events is mediated between the individual and the wider world. One lives through events in both senses of the word: through in the sense of being present on the journey and through in the sense of being an actor - doing, and not doing, things during those wider events.

History happens to us and through us and there are parallels between how we behave and how the wider world is taken to behave. We may study East German dictatorships because our father was a bully. We may wish to leave East Germany for Liverpool because the Beatles offer a sense of artistic freedom which must, surely, be reflected in that city.

The way that this becomes apparent in the novel is little short of wizardry. To be ludicrously schematic about it one can see it as a series of palimpsests relating to different time periods when the external world changed markedly or was about to change. However, these palimpsests tilt and intersect vertically rather than just sitting one over another. Intersection is the product of the individual who provides the vertical connections. And the external palimpsest alters its angle depending on the relationships between the individual and other individuals who were also observing the same events.

This is dizzying particularly when past and present and future start to bleed into each other through these points of intersection within the mind of a character:

‘I’ve mixed then and now all up’

To which his girlfriend from 1988 (Jennifer) replies:

‘That’s what I do in my photographs’

And indeed photographs are crucial. There is quote from Susan Sontag in the frontispiece about how photographs turn people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. But these are for the benefit of the person taking and viewing the photographs - not the subject.

There is no reciprocal. As the 1988 Jennifer says: ‘Its not as if its my life’s work to help you see me. I’ve got other things to do’.

The belief of some animists that photography steals the soul has some resonance here as well as the sense that consent to being observed can never truly be given because the observation relating to the photograph can never be fully and consistently consented: photographs are very clearly owned throughout the novel. As the subject you can never know who owns you in the future. 

There is a huge difference between Saul mixing up time and Jennifer mixing up photographs. The latter does, however, have profound implications for the former.

Spectres and revenants haunt the novel. They populate the intersections. 

My father was sitting on a chair near the telephone

'You're dead' I whispered

He laughed 'Not yet'.

In other words people 'die' in terms of how far the impact and implications of their death have been processed.

Haunting can also alter in nature. Changed perspective in the present can alter the way that someone is perceived in the past. This may happen when there is a physical interaction in one time period. In one gorgeous, completely breathtaking moment it is said that : ‘I reached for her new older hand with my new older hand’.

There are parallels and doublings throughout the novel: the jaguar which supposedly wanders in the old East Berlin; the car accidents involve a Jaguar car. In other words the 'jaguar' is one of the points of vertical intersection: the shards of glass lodged in the brain of the victim are like the Stasi getting inside the head of the dissident making them imagine that they can be punished for their thoughts. 

To be more fanciful one also wonders if the spookiness is also quantum. In the old East Berlin there is a statue of an astronaut called: Man Overcomes Space and Time. Are these entanglements and intersections between time periods also a reference to non-local effects and the spookiness of the quantum world in which the particles that make the universe run have what in everyday terms are wholly bizarre connections. Is time, in those terms, an emergent phenomenon which reflects network effects?

These wonders are to be found in a book which could be summarised as being about crossing a road in central London. But successfully crossing a road is not only down to you. 

‘You’ve been trying to cross the road for thirty years but stuff happened on the way’.

Lockdown Throwback

The first few weeks of lockdown and the relative dearth of new films have allowed some delving back into previous decades, in particular the 1960s and 70s for reacquaintance (including the stellar MUBI retrospective of Jean-Pierre Melville including Un Flic, Le Doulos and others as well as Bresson's Les Dames Du Bois De Boulogne which I haven't covered here) and new discoveries.

The Last Metro (technically 1980 but hey) which felt like such an appropriate film for the moment - the power of art to survive the worst of circumstances. Powerhouse performances from Deneuve and Depardieu and by the time the swelling romantic music rolls over the credits there's not a dry eye in the house.

The Innocents (1961) Much imitated, rarely if ever fully bettered, this is one of the great psychological horror films. The setting, direction, cinematography and foley are pitched perfectly. The casting seems inspired: Deborah Kerr conveys just the right balance of prim governess with a religious upbringing and genuinely empathetic protector which allows her to share the experience of the possessed. 

The resulting psychological inflammation is tantamount to a fever which can only be resolved by bringing everyone to crisis point. Unlike many of the imitators, The Innocents is rigorously, internally consistent which means that we view proceedings with a genuine investment in the fate of the characters.

Murmur Of The Heart (1971) This is, I think, the jazz version of growing up in the mid 1950s. Jazz is the score and it's also the tempo - with all of the dizzying changes of key and built in improvisation that implies. 

The protagonist has an ostensibly structured, provincial, bourgeois life and family but one that in practice is far from conventional. A distant father barely engages; a doting but also rather exotic mother can hardly stop herself. Finding himself between these poles, pushed away by one and pulled by the other, the son's trajectory through adolescence - or the short section that we see in this film - is both heightened and erratic. 

His sentimental education in this context is shown in a series of droll set pieces which range from the physical comedy of 'spinach tennis' which breaches decorum but little else, to much more emotionally wrought and transgressive behaviour.

The whole is suffused in a warm and safe glow. There is no sense of real peril and the family ends up in the equivalent of a group hug laughing out loud whether from relief, incomprehension or smug self-satisfaction. For all the bad behaviour on display the indulgence does not seem misplaced. This is coming of age more as farce than tragedy.

Images (1972) A largely forgotten curio with a highly committed central performance from Susannah York, Images comes across as having some of the feel of Don't Look Now, some pretensions to the psychological heft of Persona and some clear reference points in the paranoia of Repulsion. Sadly it doesn't really stand comparison with any of these apparent inspirations. 

The major failing is that one never feels remotely involved with the characters. Much of what is seen is happening inside Susannah York's head and her mental illness, schizophrenia or mania is disturbing but also distancing. That said the film does at least have an overall coherence and Altman resists just throwing everything at the wall.

Eva (1962) A Jeanne Moreau masterclass. There's an impeccable, untouchable depth to her amorality which is perfectly suited to punching all of the bruises of someone who simply pretends to amorality but harbours deep self-loathing, vulnerability and guilt and needs someone as bad as they consider themselves to be to give them consolation. Naturally she doesn't.

That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) High emotions in some very low places but 'that most important thing' remains elusive in terms of genuine reciprocity: the performer and the observer seemingly cannot truly connect. Despite the grotesqueries of plot and setting, which doubtless act as a commentary on a world seemingly in inexorable decline, the film is curiously engrossing. This undoubtedly owes a great deal to the luminous Romy Schneider who was probably incapable of being anything other than riveting.

Une Chambre En Ville (1982 yes, OK) A musical about domestic tragedy set during a workers strike in Nantes in the mid 1950s. It shouldn't work. It mostly does. 

So, that's quick survey of some of the films watched during this very strange period in our lives. Do I draw any conclusions from the choice? 

A retreat to the comfort blanket of the past. I have no doubt that for example The Last Metro reflects a sense that however bad it gets there is always resilience and hope. 

A good deal of psychological turmoil being portrayed on screen.

An opportunity to disinter some films that I haven't seen for a very long time and to see whether they still stand up. With gems like Murmur of the Heart, admittedly by one of my all time favourite directors Louis Malle, the answer is undoubtedly, resoundingly, yes. So these films retain their power  to offer some sustenance, however awful the current circumstances.