01.04: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (catch-up classic)

I wasn't too sure what I was expecting from this classic Vivien Leigh & Marlon Brando film; my only exposure to the source play comes from an episode of The Simpsons (oh, that great pop-culture teacher). For some reason, I had it in my head that Blanche has an affair with her sister's husband, Stanley. As anyone who has already seen the film can tell you, that's really not the case...

Vivien Leigh is a faded, and little loopy, Southern belle by the name of Blance Du Bois. She is newly arrived in New Orleans, where she has come to stay with her sister Stella (Kim Hunter) and Stella's brutish and brooding husband Stanley (Brando). She's a prim and proper type, not entirely suited to the hectic New Orleans lifestyle and certainly not to where she finds her sister living; in a downstairs shack in the midst of a district rife with drink and low class characters. Blanche has lost the family home and has come to (possibly) swindle her sister, as everyone back home has got wise to her game. Stanley the uneducated, violent and often shirtless caveman sees through her straight away.

Leigh (who appeared in less than 20 films in her career) is perfectly flighty and diminished, with an active and intelligent mind spinning off in various directions. She's a faded seductress and is constantly talking, constantly getting everyone to pay attention to her, to listen to her, to wait on her. Brando is in direct contrast, preferring to do most of his conversing with grunts. When they don't suffice he shouts and pushes and punches. He exudes raw, dangerous power, often of an obviously sexual nature. They disgust one another and the ensuing four months under the same, cramped roof come to press down on both of them. An explosion of some sort is inevitable.

Brando is magnetic. It's not hard to understand how he became one of the biggest stars, and finest actors, of his generation. His performance here, full of power and subtlety, is more than enough to make me want to track down more of his early work, such as On the Waterfront (also directed by Elia Kazan). And Life magazine has just posted this fascinating timeline of his life and career, to celebrate 60 years since his first screen appearance.

Though adapted from a play, and set largely in one location, the film never feels stage bound. Kazan has worked wonderfully to break the action out from the stage with a set that is both expansive and claustrophobic. He shoots and shoots and shoots from a variety of angles, often moving with the actors and keeping things alive, the tension growing. No easy answers are given in this adaptation, no quarter given; Brando is a wife-beating brute, but he's just so damned sexual Stella can't keep away from him. Your sympathy for Blanche dips and crests as you become annoyed and fed up with her, then understanding and finally crushed come the end.

The mere fact that I got to see this on the big screen, to have Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando once more stride at 24 frames per second, was wonderful. This marks the beginning (I hope) of the Embassy Theatre's programme of classic film for 2011. I know I'm not the only one who appreciates it, judging by the size of the audience in attendance. Even the Sunday matinee showing was reasonably busy. Film like these... they are cinema. At least to me. To see them at a cinema, in the dark and surrounded by strangers with the projector click-click-clicking away in the background (not that you can hear the Embassy's)... that's pure magic to me. And I'll never stop loving it.

30.03: BATTLE: LOS ANGELES

Battle: Los Angeles (or World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles if you're in not-America) is a very, very silly movie. In fact, it's kind of stupid - but not joyously so. It's a movie with one hook - a faux-documentary feel to following a group of Marines during an alien invasion. It tries to wring absolutely everything it can out of that photography choice and it is often nauseating and headache inducing. And to clarify: this is not a "found footage" type of film, like The Blair Witch Project or the more recent Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. This is more like an ADHD Bourne film.

It starts strong: right in the middle of the first stage of the invasion, with the Marine unit en route to they-don't-know-what. It immediately loses that forward momentum though when things cut back to 24 hours previous. And why cut back in time? To get to know these Marines I guess? So we maybe care about them a little when they eventually die in some alien-related fashion? Well, it would help if any of these Marines were actual believable characters. As they are, they're barely rough characterisations and speak in cliche and exposition. Yes, I don't really expect fully drawn and realised characters in this type of film, but there's got to be something more there - especially as we could have learned the same, if not more, about the characters once they hit the ground.  

And, really, you don't even have the visual effects for your eyes to distract you with. For a big, studio-based, effects heavy film a lot of the VFX look, frankly, cheap and shitty. While the cinematography (if, as the purists sniff, you can call it that) is there to all but scream at you THIS IS REAL! See, 'cos it's out of focus and stuff! What would have actually made the film more "real" would have been believable characters and decisions. Aaron Eckhart does his level best with the shoddy writing he's given. The script feels like a mash-up of Cloverfield, Independence Day, Signs and video-game cut scenes with none of the fun or inventiveness of any of them (it baffles my mind that some people are saying this is better than Independence Day. It's not).

It's not all bad, however. There are moments of pure visceral thrills and you really come to believe Eckhart as the tougher than nails Staff Sergeant Nantz. If there really must be a sequel, it could do worse than following Nantz once more into the breach. The film also works as an excellent way to blow out the cobwebs in your brain, just from it's sheer frenetic sense of action, action, ACTION! But if you're looking for a grunts vs. aliens film you really can't do better than Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. Everything that Battle: LA gets wrong, Troopers gets right: from the action, to the sly subversive intent, to the gore, comedy and fun.

26.03: IF GOD IS WILLING AND DA CREEK DON'T RISE

I did not make it to anywhere near the amount of films I wanted to at the recent Documentary Edge Festival in Wellington. There were various reasons ranging from being too damned busy to just being not damned bothered. The one I did make sure I saw however was Spike Lee's examination of New Orleans 5 years after Hurricane Katrina and more recently, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise is really two two-hour HBO specials, played together and is the follow-up to Lee's When the Levees Broke (which I unfortunately missed at an earlier Documentary Festival). Lee canvasses a wide range of people: going back to folk he talked to in When the Levees Broke, regular folk just trying to get on with their lives, New Orleaneans still displaced from their homes, mayors, the ex-Governor, intellectuals, journalists, actors, emergency workers... You get the idea. And the best thing he does is just let them talk. He does not try and insert himself into proceedings, doesn't ambush people in positions of power or goad anybody. He's just there, occasionally encouraging, occasionally questioning but otherwise, this is just the people of New Orleans and those associated with her recovery. 

Lee kicks things off with a suitably angry performance by a spoken word poet and this gives you a real sense of the frustration, anger and broken promises endured by these folk. But Lee isn't just focusing on this: we cut directly to the jubilant build-up to the New Orleans Saints at the Super Bowl - the first time they had ever made it. The sense of joy and anticipation, from the crowd at the stadium to the people crammed into bars is palpable. And when the Saints win... it's an explosion of carnival revelry and just a huge exhalation for a city that has faced a lot in recent times. 

But as great as the Super Bowl win is for the city, there are plenty of people still hurting. There are those who still bear the scars of Katrina; physically yes but, more often, emotionally and psychologically too. From projects dwellers who are kicked out to make way for condos, to people who have lost family or their support systems (such as schools). New Orleans seems to be a city whose infrastructure is still struggling to get it back on it's feet. And, as someone describes it in the film, Katrina is like a nuclear bomb that has exploded in the psyche of New Orleans. And this is, of course, when the new Governor decides to shut down the only dedicated mental health facility in the city. There are, sadly, many more tales like this in the film. And they're all told with such passion and honesty by the people involved (or, what you suspect may be honesty. With some of the political figures involved you can just never be sure as to whether they're covering their own asses or not).

The second half (or Part Two if you will) focuses on the wider tragedy of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It's a surprising shock to be reminded, helped by footage of the pipe gushing, that this went on for near to 3 months. This is a large scale environmental disaster that no-one outside of Louisiana seems too concerned about cleaning up. Not only does it directly affect people's lives and livlihoods but it has destroyed (and continues to do so) the wetlands and marshes that are such fertile breeding grounds. The fact that this happened, and that one of the most powerful, wealthiest countries in the world cannot get it's act together enough to help these people out... it's infuriating. This goes beyond thinking that some people just gotta help themselves. It's well and good to do that, but when you're life is destroyed by something entirely outside of your control, you need a little help sometimes.

Lee employs studio and location interviews. The studio interviews tend to suffer the most from... almost a tic; Lee frequently cuts from a frontal close-up on the subject to a profile. Often in mid-sentence and it really only distracts and annoys. But in the larger picture, it really becomes a minor quibble. Because what Lee has assembled here is akin to a patchwork quilt, or a kaledioscope: there is a full-range of people and views & impacts covered with an, at times, remarkably acute focus. This is a, well, it's a huge film that manages to take a lot in in it's 4 hour run-time. And this has made it very hard to write about - unlike a lot of recent documentaries there is no "narrative". This is just people - from artists to parents to activsits to teachers to journalists to emergency workers to mayors to governors to celebrities to Lee himself - trying their best to pick themselves and others up and march on. It is angry, joyous, shameful, disturbing and hopeful. Seek it out.