Museum Hours

The usual end of year countdown focusing on films that I saw this year which are on their first release: so some of these were in festivals and have yet to open in the UK including my number 1 which is one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Period.  I have been slightly perverse by including two films at 9 and 10 to which I actually gave slightly lower scores than a couple of films that don't quite make the cut ( The Souvenir and For Sama ) but which I felt on reflection had an audacity and a promise that made them worthy of inclusion. Also bubbling under were Booksmart, Can You Ever Forgive Me, The Irishman, The Nightingale and Bait . So here goes .... 10. Zombi Child  : An audacious high wire juxtaposition of physical enslavement and unrequited love, both states of being half alive and half dead, given an additional twist through the intercession of Haitian voodoo and contextualised through colonial power relationships. Oh, and it’s also d...

The final episode of this extraordinary series included one of the single most audacious and hermetic  pieces of choreography that one could ever hope to see in a tale of violent redemption among the yakuza.  Or indeed in most other contexts. At the climactic point at which multiple plot strands have plaited together, including through a butterfly effect from the other side of the world, in perfect union on a London rooftop with a motley array of hardened types facing off and a teenager poised - literally - between life and death one might legitimately expect either another blood soaked confrontation or a deus ex machina intervention.  Instead what takes place would not have been out of place in high opera or ballet.  The scene fades slightly to monochrome, the movement becomes formalised, more characters appear and everyone becomes quite literally a choreographed version of themselves. They  move together and apart, they cling for a momen...

As the UK enters a period of political dictatorship and the gradual abrogation of democracy for at least the next month - but frankly who knows with the crew we have in power now, in a month they'll probably have decided to do away with elections too - what are we mere playthings of the latter day Sun Tzu to do? In that regard, it may be instructive to consider the reaction of at least some citizens of the former Eastern Bloc countries to their dangerous and repressive governments which they simultaneously regarded as profoundly ridiculous and incompetent. The Czech New Wave film makers in particular developed a delightful sense of absurdity in the face of authoritarianism with lengthy, often rambling dialogue, dark humour and non-professional actors frequently focused on the rather haphazard and not entirely successful love lives of their protagonists.  So, particularly given that we need more young people to outvote the elderly bigots, perhaps our reaction should be ...

"Things can only get better Can only get better if we see it through That means me and I mean you too So teach me now that things can only get better They can only get, they only get, take it on from here You know I know that things can only get better" Was 1997 as good as it gets for us? That was the question posed at dinner a few evenings back to a group of self-identifying left leaning progressives deeply unhappy at the recent  coup  and the new 'government' comprised almost entirely of people so alien as to be barely recognisable as members of the same species.  That kind of conversation tends to  oscillate, sometimes at speed, back and forth along the spectrum from demoralised to utterly incandescent.   For many of us there is a sense of profound pessimism. Increasingly people openly discuss emigrating; seeking dual nationality or an Irish passport or moving to Scotland and hoping that it might become independent. In a word flee...

One of the most pernicious aspects of contemporary political discourse is the obsession with an imagined past which is defined in specific ways to support current prejudices.  Along with outright xenophobia, nationalism (and in some cases a hefty sprinkling of neo-liberalism), the current wave of authoritarian populists play heavily on nostalgia, producing a weapons grade, moonshine version which they hope is powerful enough to strip away rational engagement and overwhelm scepticism. Sadly, for far too many it does. Nostalgia for the individual can be comforting; a way of reflecting on good times with added sunshine. Yet just like the absurd idea that held good for far too long that the state should budget like a corner shop or a household, community level nostalgia is a dangerous notion that necessarily privileges one view of the past over all others.  Worse, it is deliberately uncritical engagement. Things were so much better when - there were fewer peopl...

The annual countdown which was particularly tricky this year given that the top three films were amongst the best I've ever seen. On another day these might have ended up in a different order. There is also still room for late drama given that before midnight tomorrow I am aiming to have seen two other films that will be contenders: Roma and Shoplifters . So there may be an addendum but for now here goes .... 1.  The Favourite  about which I have waxed lyrical  previously . It absolutely requires your attention, preferably wearing a postmodern take on a periwig. 2.  Leave No Trace   Perfection. Incredibly moving yet utterly understated both in style and as a corrective to the predisposition to judge without taking the time to gauge where value resides for others. Everything is precisely measured right down to the very final image of a piece of bracken curled naturally but in such a way as to resemble a seahorse. The full resonance of that image...

“A whole way of life lies before me. I sense the loves, the secrets, the souls of all those who worked so that this woman in front of me on the tram should wear around her mortal neck the sinuous banality of a thread of dark green silk on a background of light green cloth”. The Book of Disquiet is full of such amazing, heart stopping moments captured in limpid yet often hugely dense prose. The genius of Pessoa is obsession with the fragmentary and the momentary and yet appreciation that behind each fragment and moment lies a whole world. A ‘whole way of life’.  Such it is with the green thread on a woman’s dress on a tram in central Lisbon. An everyday journey with everyday people and yet the thread, perhaps a cousin to the madeleine in Proust which stimulates memory of specific past events, is a surface glimpse of an entire past which is comprised of all of the separate individual contributions that have led to that woman wearing that dress with that thread bein...