Der Untergang/Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel 2004)

Downfall has been sitting on my DVD shelves for a number of years now but at well over two and a half hours long I hadn't found the time to watch it. What I had been watching instead, of course, were the innumerable parodies or 'mashups' that pepper YouTube and that appear whenever an apparently minor issue produces an overblown response in the popular press and media. My first encounter with the form was after the Oasis split and I found myself laughing for the entire three or four minutes of the sequence. The juxtaposition of Bruno Ganz's incredible performance as the ranting Hitler with the banality of the Oasis split made the re-edited subtitles work perfectly. In some cases the text isn't sufficiently carefully crafted to carry off the parody but ultimately it is the incongruity of the subtitled subject matter and the enraged Hitler that make these parodies work. The most recent example - and this demonstrates how this type of parody functions - has Hitler complaining that the Vuvuzela is ruining his experience of the World Cup:



Interestingly, there are now self-referential versions that feature subtitles that complain about the removal of the parodies from YouTube, as a result of Constantin Film AG submitting a copyright claim earlier this year (here):



So what about the actual film itself? Well, there is no doubt that Ganz's performance is incredibly powerful. Despite the melodrama evident in the parodies, he produces a sustained portrait of Hitler's final days in his Berlin bunker that keeps the viewer enthralled, horrified and emotionally engaged. Much of the film takes place inside this bunker and the claustrophia and the fear that inhabit it with the personnel effectively trapped within it is almost palpable. The film's account of the capture of Berlin is also carefully managed, revealing the futility of German situation but also the cost of the war in terms of the German people, a people that Hitler is shown to have no concern for other than as an abstract concept. As Peter Bradshaw notes in his review of the film (here), it was criticised for 'humanising' Hitler but while it does indeed do this, it renders him 'in consequence, far more grotesque and sulphurous than any of the dozens of picturesque newsreel documentaries on TV. It restores to him evil's banality, in Hannah Arendt's phrase, and its silliness and cheapness. Any movie which removes the great dictator from the horrors of the camps and places him in a situation which he is history's biggest loser, risks conferring, if not tragedy exactly, then the pathos of a cut-price Götterdämmerung. But Hitler has never looked more noisome, a tatty charlatan' Bradshaw 2005).

So, the film is well worth watching, in all its harrowing grotesqueness but do make sure that you also view at least one of the many parodies that continue to circulate and will no doubt appear for some time to come. I'm waiting for the version that depicts Hitler's reaction to the fact that England are out of the World Cup...

Making my Marque DVD

My documentary on Marcos cars is now available to purchase via Jem Marsh's website (here). Jem founded Marcos with Frank Costin in 1959 and the documentary traces the marque's development, its early racetrack success and the introduction of the iconic Marcos GT. In an extended interview, Jem talks about the various models produced over almost 50 years of production and describes the highs and lows of racing, from his days in the 750 Motor Club to the Le Mans 24 hour... The film contains archive footage, photographs from Jem's personal collection and footage shot at last year's 50th Anniversary celebrations at Sudeley Castle and the Prescott hill climb track in Gloucestershire.

Moon (Duncan Jones 2009)

As always, I'm way behind everyone else with my viewing... Anyway, I've finally had a chance to see Duncan Jones' debut, BAFTA award-winning feature, Moon. And what a debut! A really impressive film with an incredible performance - or should that be performances, plural - from Sam Rockwell. As Sam Bell, Rockwell is the film. Reviewers of the film have made comparisons with Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), though few have mentioned Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972), which has similar concerns; however all these films share a desire to explore the effects of prolonged isolation and loneliness on the psyche, with a subtlety that is all too rare in contemporary science fiction. In some ways the universality of the questions that Moon considers enable it to transcend the boundaries that can sometimes limit genre films. Not only does Moon explore what it means to be human, to live and to die but it does so with incredible affective power while simultaneously demonstrating admirable restraint. There is one notable moment in the film where this understatedness is substituted for a brief instance of exuberance that made sense in the context but which jarred somewhat nonetheless. Sam Bell has returned the dying Sam to the lunar rover, struggling to carry him and place him inside the cockpit but as he returns to his own vehicle we see him jump a number of times - almost playfully - in the zero gravity atmosphere of the moon. Of course, he is hurrying because he needs to return to the base before the 'rescue' team arrive but it is a strange moment that seems to express his excitement at the prospect of a possible return to Earth. This is one of those arresting filmic moments, what Christian Keathley called 'cinephiliac moments' or what Roland Barthes, in relation to photography, called the punctum. Standing out from the background of its context, this briefest of sequences resonates backwards and forwards across the entire film, encapsulating all of its concerns in this singular instant... For this and for the entirety of the rest of the film, I would highly recommend Moon...

Marcos: Celebrating 50 Years

I have been working on a documentary, celebrating 50 years of Marcos, since last summer's celebrations at Sudely Castle and Prescott. The film is a no-budget production, shot using equipment borrowed from Roehampton University (the day job). I am now nearing completion and in anticipation of the finished product, I am posting a short trailer that gives a flavour of last August's event, when probably the largest gathering of Marcos cars ever, in a single venue, took place. The film itself contains an extended interview with Jem Marsh, as well as archive footage from the early 1960s... Click here for a higher resolution version.

'Scallop', Maggi Hambling (2003)

Aldeburgh in Suffolk has long been a special place for me. The home of Benjamin Britten and of Adnams bitter (well, almost - it is brewed just down the coast in Southwold, where my grandmother had a house, which was more or less next door to the brewery), it sits squat against the North Sea coast, huddling bravely against the wind and the sea that batters and erodes this resilient but ever shifting stretch of shore. The sound of the shingle being dragged constantly backwards and forwards in the undertow of the breaking waves characterises the beach at Aldeburgh and provides it with its own peculiar kind of music. Britten's 'Four Sea Interludes', from his opera Peter Grimes, are seen by many as one of the most perfect musical evocations of this moody, cold and often grey expanse of water. Although Aldeburgh is a wonderful place to holiday during the summer months when one can often experience a more benign sea, blue and bathed in sunlight, it is the darker, autumnal and winter Aldeburgh that has stayed with me; the town as last stand against the watery invader that seeks to grasp it and pull it into the sea as it did with the medieval port of Dunwich a few miles away. I haven't been to Aldeburgh for some time and so had not yet had a chance to see Maggi Hambling's surprisingly controversial sculpture, 'Scallop', which sits on Aldeburgh beach, mid way between the town and its neighbour, Thorpeness. Apparently the scallop has been daubed with graffiti on a regular basis with many locals objecting not so much to the artefact itself but to its positioning on an open and unspoilt section of beach, designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty (read about this here). While the sculpture does have a rather strange silhouette as one approaches it along the beach from Aldeburgh, once close up it does impress. For me, its shape and colour reflects the swell and hue of the sea, while associations with sound are manifest too, as the tubular ridges evoke the hollow sections of brass musical instruments. The text that is etched into the steel - 'I hear those voices that will not be drowned' - comes directly from Peter Grimes and serves as a powerful reminder that the sea along this coast has claimed many lives over the centuries, just as the ever present Aldeburgh Lifeboat reminds us of the precariousness of the fisherman's profession and the dangers of the sea. Unfortunately, Adnams doesn't travel well (it really is a wonderful beer when drunk sitting on the Aldeburgh sea wall) and perhaps this scallop, not found naturally on this stretch of coast, has ultimately travelled rather too far for some...

Teeth (Mitchell Lichtenstein 2007)

Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival in 2007 and winning the Special Jury Prize for Jess Weixler's performance as Dawn, Teeth is a little horror film that evidently knows its film theory... Steven Shaviro argues (here) that the film is 'gruseome, campy and affecting in more or less equal measure - though the affectingness ultimately wins out'. Having read a number of positive reviews of the film and being particularly interested in psychoanalysis and cinema, I felt certain that I would find much in this film to enjoy; however, the film's knowledge of film theory - the psychoanalytic in particular - runs the risk of reducing the film itself to nothing more than an exposition of the kinds of psychoanalytic readings applied to countless horror films that take teen transformation and body anxiety as their subject matter. The film, for me at least, is strangely unaffecting, operating as something of an academic exercise - an undergraduate student film essay that has Carol Clover's Men, Women and Chainsaws clearly flagged in its bibliography. Weixler's performance, however, is undeniably impressive and it does capture the affect and the inherent comedy of her inner 'dentata' rather well - there are some great lines in the film, delivered with perfect pitch and timing. Ultimately, though, I had hoped for more from the film than was actually delivered...

End of an era...

I have decided to sell my beloved Fazer 'Thou', after four years of ownership. Without question the best motorcycle that I have ever owned, it has proved adept at everything asked of it. Used as a commuting tool day in day out, all year round, it has also worked as a hugely exciting sports bike as well as an excellent tourer. I will be very sorry to see it go but the roads have just got too dangerous. When you cover high mileages on a bike I suppose that there is a certain statistical inevitability to the occasional spill but with so many car drivers distracted by their mobile phones, MP3 players and sat. navs (and a recent RAC survey just highlights this), it just feels more likely than ever a more serious accident will eventually happen. So, I have decided, after biking for most of my life, to move back to four wheels for the commute to work; however, my new vehicle will need to be something more than just a tin box, especially as I am now going to be spending more time sitting in traffic. Watch this space as I track down an appropriate car...