Based on a screenplay by Jacques Tati and bought to life by Sylvain Chomet, The Illusionist brings together two names who seem perfect for one-another. It takes the mind of someone who has animated fantastic silent (ish) comedies to bring a Monsieur Hulot-esque character back to life. A hapless Magician is witnessing the death of his art, rock stars and sultry singers are taking the place of what has become a tired and old fashion form of entertainment. Out of work and desperate for money he manages to find a job in a bar in a Scottish village where he meets a nieve girl who thinks he’s a bona fide wizard, that magic really exists.  As she follows him in awe, he gets pleasure amusing the only person left who still believes in magic.

The Illusionist is melancholy at its funniest and most whimsical. While it manages to capture a time where magic was dying, it manages to revive the silent comedy. While the film has sound, it is so unimportant. The entire film is told with its visuals alone, with its delightfully charming animation that’s unafraid of the obtuse and garish, revelling in a unpolished scratchy style that remains breathtakingly beautiful. The visual comedy and sentimental story of a poor man and an innocent girl is more akin to a Chaplin film than Tati or previous Chomet films, it’s easy to draw a lot of similarities to Chaplin’s The Circus (1928). It’s pleasing to know that audiences can still be entrapped with silent comedies and that so much can be said in action alone. A simple story, adorably told, brimming with laughs and heartfelt moments, the poetry of The Illusionist can be felt long after the screening; the magic of cinema still exists.

Tokyo Sonata (2008) appears to have achieved a great deal of critical acclaim, it won the jury prize at Cannes and is being released under the Masters of Cinema series by Eureka. Tokyo Sonata tells the story of the collapse of a family in Tokyo. The father loses his high-profile job and is forced to hide his unemployment from his family, the mother is displeased with being ‘just a housewife’, the eldest son wants to join the US army and the youngest wants to learn to play the piano against his parents’ disapproval. The first half has many strengths and sets up hope as to what Tokyo Sonata can offer: a touching family portrait struggling through the current economic crisis, it reveals its cards slowly, with a touch of tragic humanity. Regrettably this falls apart, much like the family in the film, and disintegrates into a ridiculous farce. Tokyo Sonata is mostly let down by the script which, when the writer obviously couldn’t think of any way to express a characters feelings filmically, stoops to forcing characters to exclaim aloud what it is they’re thinking which is not only unbelievable, but very poorly executed.

The script thankfully denies tying up those lose ends for you, much of it being left open to interpretation, but the ending does lead to the kind of unbelievable sentimentality that even the worst kind of Hollywood films wouldn’t dare stoop to. Pardon the slight spoiler, but to attempt to convince the audience that a child, who has been learning to play the piano for six months without a piano to practice on at home, can become such an accomplished pianist, it is so patronizing it’s cringe-worthy.

It’s easy to compare Tokyo Sonata with Edward Yang’s superb Yi Yi (2000) as the themes and set up are similar and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Yi Yi was inspiration for the script. Regrettably, Tokyo Sonata is a very pale comparison, its script, cinematography, and stilted acting is void of poetry and has no semblance of real emotion. As the film aims to imbue the audience with an empty dissatisfaction with modern life, it needn’t have left the entire family devoid of any charisma or personality. If Yi Yi is a song to the struggles and beauty in the many facets of family life; Tokyo Sonata barely manages to hobble together an incomprehensible verse.

As the world already knows, Apichatpong Weerasethakul picked up the Palme d’Or this year for his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. As I cannot comment on the film, not being privileged enough to see it yet, I will share something I wrote personally about his film Syndromes and a Century. I am only gutted as I was supposed to meet him in person this week, but due to the turbulent situation in Thailand at the moment the event has been cancelled.

“Syndromes and a Century is a project that will explore how we remember, how our sense of happiness can be triggered by seemingly insignificant things. It is an experiment in recreation of my parents’ lives before I was born, which also includes the lives of those who have touched me in the present day. It will be an interpretation of distant lives and of architecture that I remain fond of, along with contemporary ones that I have around me. Time is collapsed to mimic a pattern of remembering and to manifest my belief in the idea of reincarnation. We are constantly reborn, amassing our karma, and we learn from our successive lives in order to one day finally experience a true happiness.”

Written before Apichatpong Weerasethakul had begun production on Syndromes and a Century I use that piece of text to reiterate my admiration and love for his films. His films are elating experiences that shower you with abundant light and happiness. Even though we differ in our beliefs on reincarnation, his films manage to become a religious experience, even if in my eyes my religion is merely ‘film’. I would need too many words to begin to try and explain the impact of his films, both on the concept of what a film can be and and my personal emotions, and I don’t have the time to do it. I only hope more people can enjoy them and see the light within them. I feel I can safely hold him in league with Antonioni, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Godard, and Bergman. I only wish I could see Syndromes and a Century in the cinema again like I did at the Cambridge Film Festival (2007), to be overwhelmed by its beauty, perplexed by it, but overwhelmed by its imagery nonetheless. And then to, just a few weeks later, get lost in a hospital and be taken back to the film and feel a great sense of joy (something that shouldn’t be associated with hospitals or being lost). We need more cinema like this. We need more people to CARE about cinema like this.

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Edit: Things turned around and he was able to make it to the BFI to talk about his project Primitive. I got to see him, and I would like to remind people to check out his installation, Phantoms of Nabua, at the BFI Southbank while it’s still there.

When I think of my favourite periods in cinema, two decades come to mind: the 1960s and the 1920s. With the amount of study and development in film techniques and theory it feels wrong that many of my favourite films come from a period when cinema was new and barely resembles what we know as cinema today. Silent films are in no way inferior to sound films and are instead a unique art of their own. While silent cinema does seem primitive compared to the kind of films we’re used to seeing today, it is due to its restrictions that it becomes a unique way of communicating. With sound and colour film starts to imitate reality too closely. The art of the silent film is in its detachment from reality, in the way silent film expresses ideas, overcoming its inability to communicate through spoken word. The moving image is the most important element of cinema, and silent cinema has to use the moving image to its full capabilities, something a lot of modern films could benefit from doing (beyond special effects).

Looking back at the history of cinema it feels like the 1910s film industry was only starting to get to grips with the techniques and art of narrative film. But in the 1920s it was really starting to come into its own, Murnau’s Sunrise (1927) and Lang’s Metropolis (1927) are seminal cinematic achievements. Just years after (with the first sound film in 1927) the art of the silent film was officially dead, over. While sound offers so much to cinema (beyond mere dialogue) I would love to have seen so many more exceptional silent films, to see the art of the silent film be able to grow and blossom beyond the short decade it had to shine. I wonder what films could have been made if silent cinema had another ten or so years to develop, what kind of things could have been achieved. Many people probably think sound cinema achieved everything it could have, that there was nothing more to be offered aside from the addition of sound and colour (and 3D?). But it doesn’t seem like silent cinema was really over, just that history dictates that silent cinema ended and so had nothing more to offer. But think about a film like The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), a film which was worlds away from what silent cinema was at the time, proof that silent films could go beyond the dramatic acting and stage-make-up which silent films are often ridiculed for by modern audiences.

One can only praise Charlie Chaplin for remaining to make fantastic silent films while the sound revolution was in full swing. Chaplin’s sentimentality works so well in silent form, the simplicity of it, the subtlety, it just gives his messages so much more power. When he makes his sentimental speeches in his talkies my eyes just roll and it feels like a slap in the face. Instead I wish those elements were cut out, or better, he instead talks (or sings) complete nonsense like in the finale of Modern Times (1936). Cinema works best when it’s not vocally direct, when the words don’t spell everything out for you, so the restrictions on what can be said in silent cinema makes for some more interesting and complicated storytelling relying on dramatic imagery.

I had to scan this image from this month’s Sight & Sound. Federico Fellini (right) and Marcello Mastroianni (left) in front of a La dolce vita poster.

Sight & Sound informs me that when it was released 1 in 3 Italians saw La dolce vita at the cinema. I could not ever imagine a film of such artistic quality getting views close to that today. After all, no one cares about art any more, they are intoxicated with the glitz and glamour, pre-occupied with instant gratification, they’re too lazy to seek something more meaningful in life and art. Wait, isn’t that what La dolce vita taught us?

“I, as a filmmaker, treat my works as I do my own sons or daughters. I don’t care if people are fond of them or despise them, as long as I created them with my best intentions and efforts.”

I will continue to stand by my belief that Apichatpong Weerasethakul is someone to keep an eye on, to take an interest in, to consider, because if anyone is doing anything interesting in cinema at the moment, he is someone who is doing it. His work might help to shape the future of cinema, bring about some changes, and bring in some fresh ideas (along with Abbas Kiarostami).

I wonder why there is a need to remake a film, this is a film already loved by so many, it is a film Martin Scorsese calls in his documentary My Voyage to Italy, “the purest expression of love for the cinema that I know of.” There is no denying that 8½ is an exceptional film, it’s rated at number two on the BFI’s directors’ favourite films. Why does anyone need to remake a film which is already considered one of the best films ever made? Is it really possible to surpass it? It does not need to be remade when the story exists, in cinema, in its purest form, the way it was intended. Nobody needs an inferior copy. It is possible it is just an homage, after all, Nine is a musical. But why make such an obvious homage, it’s not as though 8½ and Fellini isn’t referenced extensively enough in cinema as it is. Think about Peter Greenaway’s 8½ Women, or directors such as Terry Gilliam and David Lynch who adore Fellini’s films and are strongly influenced by him.

I see most films as an expression of an artist. When someone makes a film, they have a vision, a specific way of telling a story. It’s not fumbled together, it’s an intricate plan, possibly a powerful tool for expression. With any film created by an artist, why remake it? Why change the art, ruin it, disrespect it? I know it is for money, but that does not justify it. Look at 8½. It’s not just a film, I see it as Fellini himself. It is not merely an expression or his art, of a story, it is an expression of himself in the truest form. 8½ loses its charm when it’s not about the man who created it and the creation of itself, when he’s not looking inside himself and showing something personal and passionate. It’s not just remaking 8½, it’s destroying the man behind it, the most important figure in the film, the key that makes it work. Could anyone else have made 8½, the answer is no. But it was made, it does not need to be changed, and it does not need musical numbers.

Obviously Nine does not appear very true to the original. It’s hard to know if that turns Nine into a complete work of its own. But much like Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys it seems worlds away from La Jetee, Twelve Monkeys has destroyed the main point of the film, merely borrowing elements from the story. It is hardly a remake, but it is also not as intelligent or as interesting as La Jetee which is considerably more profound. I wonder why people do make inferior copies. Even though it’s hard to know if the copy will be better or not, but as it loses its original vision, it starts to lose its purpose. Did we really want to see Michael Bay remake Hitchcock’s The Birds?! Could that ever have been better? (Even though The Birds is not an original story I am presuming Bay was planning it as a remake of the film, not the story) Van Sant’s Psycho is an exact copy, but what is the point of that? We still have the original, why not watch that instead. Why not just sign your name over Picaso’s instead? Or photocopy the painting. Or attempt to paint it yourself. You know it’s not your work.

If I am so against people recreating art, putting an idea into their own unique vision, turning the work into something else, their own, then what is my take on turning a novel into a film, something most directors do? I respect novels as an art, but a different art. I still see the original art and idea ruined or merely interpreted, but it is turning one art into a completely different art. Turning something already in cinema into another piece of cinema is much more frivolous. Part of the art of cinema is the use of the cinematic techniques which don’t exist in novels, the visual nature, the Mise-en-scène, the colour, the sound, editing, so many elements make cinema art, and so many elements exist in a novel which cannot be expressed in film. Turning a novel into a film is an art in itself by using the language or cinema to replace the language used in a novel. It is this disruption of the original use of cinematic language which I find so disagreeable in the remakes of films. I would disagree with another novelist rewriting someone else’s novel, making it their own, just changing the words. Most of the time, fiction into films, the fiction is the more impressive piece of work. Although One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a popular film, it lacks all the elements that makes the novel great. Maybe this is why sometimes it’s best when directors chose to make films based on trashy fiction, turning it into something much more their own, not afraid to turn it into a new work of art. There is greater scope for making something your own when turning a novel into a film as apposed to recreating an already existing film.

You also have the quandary of two films having remade the same book, Solaris being the most interesting example to come to mind (as there are always so many remakes of great classics like War & Peace, Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby etc). I do think it’s a shame cinema gets filled up with the same stories retold again and again, competing to be the better adaptation, or recreating itself for a new generation. However, at least there is still the ability for an artist to put an interesting stamp on the original work without defacing it. It’s about how they interpret the novel and how they communicate with their own use of cinematic language.

My least sympathetic approach to remakes is that remakes of films have to exist because the original is in black and white, silent, or in a foreign language, because the modern day American isn’t supposed to be able to handle such alien cinema. They need it to be remade, dumbed down, and filled with recognizable stars. I hate the idea that so many people don’t watch films because they are dated, and surely remakes only encourages the masses to steer away from classic cinema, instead of encouraging people to seek out the original. Some people will seek out the original after enjoying the remake, but why not seek it out before, why wait until there are remakes before you look back.

There is one thing I like most in cinema. An artist at work, an original vision, an expression of something personal. Remakes lose that edge. They’re not interesting. And they don’t even need to exist. Remaking a film appears to be a sure way to make a failure of a film, lost amongst the midst of all the original ideas still floating around. Some people do prefer remakes of certain films. But surely, when you are making a remake, you are in competition with the original. You will be compared to the original. To make a film that will instantly be compared with 8½… it’s suicide. Can Rob Marshall beat Federico Fellini?

Of course, this is all rhetorical.

Nine is a remake of a theatrical remake of 8½, quite a mouthful. It’s set to be released in December.

Renowned German director Fritz Lang took his first steps into “the talkies” with M; a frightfully honest depiction of psychological and social unrest. Possibly one of Fritz Lang’s greatest achievements in cinema history, M was a significant junction is his career. After Lang’s silent science fiction Woman in the Moon (1929) was a failure due to sound cinema being in full swing, he needed to move forward and introduce sound into his art. Released not long before the rule of Nazi Germany (which would find Lang leaving his homeland), M embodies the dramatic changes to come politically within Germany and within cinema itself.


As children return from school and play inn the streets, the shadow of Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) looms and another child is snatched and killed. The child murderer has struck again and the police haven’t a clue who he is or how to find him. Mothers fear he will strike again, police work around the clock following every lead, and the child murderer himself glares at his reflection as he attempts to deal with his own demons. The police’s futile attempts lead them to disrupting the underground and, to save their own skin, criminals and beggars take it upon themselves to catch the murderer.

Released shortly after the Kürten trial (a serial killer who raped and murdered children in Germany) M was shocking for what was seen as an ambiguously sympathetic treatment of a serial killer. Lang presents Hans Beckert as a childish man who is unable to control his own actions, Hans is even given the chance to defend himself. However, it is this ambiguity which makes M interesting. Lang never passes a firm judgement and does not point the finger of blame on any one person. Instead of merely dramatizing deplorable events, Lang presents them with an touch of documentary realism.

While M aims to impart an impression of realism, elements from Lang’s German expressionist roots continue to creep in. The combination of expressionism and realism help turn the subdued reality of the city into something more sinister, a living, breathing monster. Shadows crawl about the city as Beckert attempts to snatch a child, and as the city attempts to catch the murderer. Beckert’s presence in the unknown city has turned a bustling urban landscape into a city of crime and suspicion, where only the darkest of people survive and innocence is destroyed.

Upon first viewing, people might find themselves detached as there is no identifiable protagonist, nor any evident plight you want to involve yourself in. You follow incompetent cops, despicable criminals, the homeless, and lastly a child killer. At first you yearn for someone to be the hero, someone whose side to take, but even the children and their mothers lack the strength on screen to make you see this world through their eyes. Lang wants you to see something different in M, it’s not a story about a hero and a villain, it’s that of a city, its many different layers and how these separate members of society become a united force; a single consciousness. This idea is flawlessly embodied when police and underground criminals plan to catch the murderer, their conversations overlap and they complete one another’s sentences. Even Beckert claims he’s the same as any other man, asking who has the right to judge him. M embarks on the plight of the ‘every man’ and his force and responsibilities within society. M warns of the hysteria and destruction caused within society during a time of social and economical unrest. Drawing similarities between the criminal underworld’s hunt and castration or Beckert and the actions of the SA is all too easy, and so it’s not surprising that in 1934 Lang fled Germany and M was banned.

In M Lang manages to make innovate use of sound to great effect right from the opening seconds. While the screen is still blank the sound of children singing can be heard, and from then on Lang uses sound to present what isn’t there, what cannot be seen, and what is being hidden. While mastering sound in his first “talkie”, instead of dramatic music (for M is devoid of a musical soundtrack) the frequent complete omittance of noise conveys the harsh desolation of the city and its eerily tragic causality.

M is obsessed with what isn’t there, and not only in its use of sound. Hans Beckert is the driving force behind the film yet remains unknown throughout the first half. More troubling than the unknown face of a killer is the detached approach to the murders themselves. The fate of the children who are kidnapped by Hans Beckert won’t shock modern audiences after the array of violent slasher movies audiences are exposed to, where we are accustomed to the screams and blood embellished in cinema. Instead the audience is left to their own imagination, haunted throughout the film by the hidden image of the murder, the haunting absence of the child, and their loss echoed in the whistle of The Mountain King. Lang’s use of suggestion in M forces the audience to consider the message he’s trying to make, what it is he’s trying to show us, or not show us, and in such it becomes a powerful immersing experience.

Whether a dark thriller or deep socio-political debate, or even just to witness the German cinematic master at his best, M succeeds on all levels. Successive viewings uncover an intricate plan and use of cinematic techniques without the film ever becoming stale. M’s anonymity and ambiguity grips the audience with suspense, paranoia and fear as it informs us that the murder is amongst us, and within us.

Kazuhiro Soda’s documentary on a mental health clinic in Japan observes patients and staff in great depth. Patients gradually unravel their stories and how the clinic has helped them. Never relenting the films shows all, the camera never quits. Dr. Masatomo Yamamoto is seen as a God in the eyes of his patients and a hero to everyone else, he has sacrificed everything to give those with mental illness the care and attention they need. If Mental has one objective, it’s to make it clear that the world (or at least Japan) needs more people like Dr. Masatomo Yamamoto. Even Kazuhiro Soda is given a God like quality for he is one of the few individuals not afraid of them and willing to listen to their tales. Most of the patients stories are unextraordinary apart from a charismatic poet’s insightful and well expressed views on life, they’ll fill you with wonder.

While too much time is spent capturing every moment no matter how mundane, through the madness there is still a desire to live, and to live as easily and peacefully as possible. With money and the quality of mental health care being cut in Japan, Mental is a final cry for help to stop ignoring those who are most vulnerable, to give them a voice and listen to everything they have to offer. It’s not all completely crazy.

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Davy Mitchell is your stereotypical geeky intellectual. He totes glasses, has an uneven haircut and inept social skills. He’s just released a collection of short stories called ‘Things People Do to Each Other’ and is on a road-trip with his brother to promote the book. Davy’s brother is his polar opposite, he’s cocky and always gets the women who Davy is unable to pull himself. Fate plays Davy a hand and one night he receives a phone call from a sultry woman who, much to his surprise, initiates phone sex. A relationship evolves from these mysterious phone calls and Davy begins to learn about what it is to love and to live.

Being witness to Davy’s skills with the ladies is often cringe-worthy, but that’s half the fascination, watching something you secretly wish to avert your eyes (and ears) from. Easier with Practice is soft and sweet, a tender glance at every aspect of Davy’s tragic life, from his old grey sweater to his tiny apartment where he eats froot loops. It’s easy to laugh at this antihero, however it’s easier to sympathize with his complex emotions and the dilemmas he has to face.

Unflinching long shots bring tension to what Davy admits to being a boring road-trip. Instead of finding freedom, he finds himself suffocated by a love that can never be real. Easier with Practice offers an ambiguous character study with natural casting and dialogue which leads exactly where you expect it, clinging to the cliché that love is blind.

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