Category: Biography

Becoming Cousteau

Rated: MBecoming Cousteau

Directed by: Liz Garbus

Produced by: Liz Garbus, Dan Cogan, Mridu Chandra, Evan Hayes

Written by: Mark Monroe & Pax Wasserman

Executive Producers: Julie Gaither, Carolyn Bernstein, Ryan Harrington.

Becoming Cousteau is an inspiring documentary about the man who showed the world what lies below the surface of the sea.

With eyes staring through goggles, Captain Cousteau is quoted, ‘Diving under water is the greatest distraction.’

On land we’re constantly fighting gravity.

When asked what it’s like under the surface, he replies, ‘It’s fantastic.  Imagine having no weight.’

In the beginning it was his curiosity that led him to dive deeper under water, to a place where he could dream.

When Germany invaded France in WWII he was able to forget what was happening on land.  He was able to escape into another world.  Where, for a time, he envisaged people living under the water.

The documentary is a linear biography of Cousteau’s life, from 1935 as a pilot for the Navy, to the end of his life in 1997.  His life an evolution from an underwater explorer to inventor, film maker, philosopher, husband and father to environmentalist.

Universally respected as a scientist and explorer, his voice opened people’s eyes to the beauty of the underwater world, and the danger of losing it.

Through newspaper articles and interviews, footage from Cousteau’s many films, including Oscar Best Documentary winner and winner of the Palme d’Or award, The Silent World (1956), Cousteau showed the world life under the sea and even made an impression on Picasso who was amazed by the unexpected colours and held onto a piece of coral given to him by Cousteau until he died.

Thoughts written in journals are read of Cousteau’s experiences while sailing the seas on the explorer vessel, The Calypso.

Cousteau invents the Aqualung out of necessity, technology that allows him to dive deeper into the depths.  And seeing more, discovering more he wants to take a camera with him so invents a case, so he can film underwater.

Inventor turned film maker, he created 52 TV shows as he satisfied his curiosity to explore the ocean.

His notebook was his camera.

The documentary paints a picture of a truly amazing and brave man.  Yet there’s balance in the telling with the risk of diving further than before requiring, ‘a strong head and cold heart.’

He admits his curiosity ruling his life while he neglected his family.

And with the discovery of the sea in distress from all the pollution, there’re years of pessimism and grief for the passing of his son, Philippe.

Like the black and white film made bright with splashes of fluorescent colour, the film brightens with hope – The Cousteau Society still strong today in its efforts to conserve the environment.

But I don’t think the intention of the documentary is to share a message of conservation, although this was important to Cousteau in the later years of his life.  The feeling is more a biography of a man whose curiosity led to fascination to then love and the want to protect.

Fisherman’s Friends

Rated: MFisherman's Friends

Directed by: Chris Foggin

Written by: Piers Ashworth, Meg Leonard, Nick Moorcroft

Produced by: Meg Leonard, Nick Moorcroft, James Spring

Music by: Rupert Christie

Cinematography by: Simon Tindall

Starring: Daniel Mays, James Purefoy, David Hayman, Dave Johns, Sam Swainsbury, Tuppence Middleton and Joel Clarke.

‘Never under any circumstances say, “Rabbit”.’

Revelling in Port Isaac for Henry’s (Christian Brassington) stag weekend, the London boys, Danny (Daniel Mays), Driss (Vahid Gold) and music exec and boss, Troy (Noel Clarke) are ready for some larger and yachting.  Until they end up stranded at sea and getting ‘quite burnt’.

It’s up to the local Search And Rescue to fish to them to safety.  Ironic being the crew are the local fishermen.

It’s like two different worlds collide: the city boys who own country estates and work for a record label and fishermen who risk their lives every day and sing sea shanties.

When the London boys come across their rescuers singing in the town square, boss Troy thinks it’ll be hilarious tasking Danny with signing the group to their label.  Only for Danny to see more than just crusty fishermen signing, he hears history in their voices.

‘What’s that song?’ Danny asks Alwyn (Tuppence Middleton), the daughter of man-of-few-words, the words never wrong, Jim (James Purefoy) – ‘That’s the rock’n’roll of 1752.’

Based on a true story, Fisherman’s Friends is about the discovery of these ten men, and the journey from singing to raise money for the village Lifeboat Association to a million pound record deal with Universal Music, a top-ten album and playing the Pyramid stage at the world famous Glastonbury Festival.

But there’s more to these crusty sailors than a fine set of pipes.  There’s the history, the proud Cornwell folk defining those on this side of the river Tamar, and them on the other side – like the emmets (the Cornish word for ants): those who come across and are a pain to get rid of.

There’s some PG humour that doesn’t get too carried away, to keep the boat floating along the storyline – see what I did there?  Yep, that’s me getting carried away with the nautical theme because I enjoyed the ride, damn it.

The film reminded me of the songs we’d sing in primary school (What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor included) and dancing to folk music with kids from other local schools.  And the gymkhana with the bag pipes and dog jumping competition.

It reminded me about community and generations of families buried in the same cemetery and knowing a place.  Really knowing a place and people knowing you.

So rather than the underdogs winning and signing to that record label, there’s thought to place and where we stand in it and being able to take a man by his own merit.  Including Jago (David Hayman), Port Isaac’s number one bingo caller.  Bless him.

So yeah, I got a little swept away in the story.

And the guys did a good with the singing, no ‘taking the piss’ required.

Pavarotti

Rated: MPavarotti

Directed by: Ron Howard

Produced by: Ron Howard

Written by: Marc Monroe

Featuring: Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, José Carreras, Bono.

Before even the first images appear, the cinema is filled with the chittering and warbling of birdsong, and I can only suppose that some kind parallel with Pavarotti’s voice is being drawn. In fact, when the vision comes up, I find myself swooping over the Amazon jungle looking down at the serpentine loops of the river.

As Pavarotti’s story unfolds, director and producer, Ron Howard, not only ushers us behind the scenes, but invites us onstage and even takes us on the road with the maestro. While Luciano Pavarotti may have been born with, ‘One of the most clearest and passionate voices, heaven on earth,’ it took a very earthly degree of physical exertion to fill an entire concert hall with a single voice. Without a microphone. Without an amplifier. And certainly, without speakers.

Despite a long induction emulating his father’s singing, Pavarotti initially qualified as an elementary school teacher. The decision to take on the long training to become a tenor was an enormous leap of faith, ‘You don’t become well-known in a day. You don’t know your destiny’.

According to his wife Adua Veroni, Pavarotti was not a person who ever planned things and that was certainly the case for his international debut. He took the stage as a stand-in playing opposite Joan Sutherland, but was more than a lucky break. Pavarotti was in awe and he believed that Sutherland’s breathing technique allowed him to become a serious professional. During a rehearsal, Sutherland invited him to feel the muscles in her diaphragm. Much to Pavarotti’s amazement, they were responding, even before Sutherland had sung a single note.

For the operatic tenor, the high C is the epitome, but it is not a natural range in the way a bass or baritone is and to achieve the fluency that makes it seem effortless requires more than talent. So, when Pavarotti performed nine high Cs, he created opera history. Likening it to horse jumping, when the Maestro of the High C was asked whether he knew he would be able to reach the note, he replied with a contrary smile: ‘No. That is the beauty of my profession’.

According to Placido Domingo, the art of the opera singer is to share the emotion of each particular word: ‘If you pronounce it well you get the rhythm immediately.’  For Pavarotti, it was a matter of technique: ‘You measure your breath’. The public will not know what you are doing, but they will feel it. But, for all of the art and the artifice, Pavarotti’s wife felt that he was so suited to his operatic repertoire because he was a ‘bumpkin’ at heart.

Then again, his eight-year-old daughter described her father as a thief, because he went to work each night with a suitcase full of fake moustaches and beards. For Pavarotti, ‘the opera is something fake that little by little becomes true’.

On camera Pavarotti seemed so confident and cavalier, but behind the scenes, before every performance, Pavarotti would lament, ‘I go to die.’ According to José Carreras, ‘The voice is a demanding mistress, anything will affect it’.

In his later years, Pavarotti performed with many contemporary musicians. While the focus is on his unlikely friendship with Princess Diana and Bono, he also performed with Elton John and Lou Reed among many others.

Little by little, Howard builds a lifelike portrait of an extraordinary life, but his documentary, overflowing with texture and detail, still cannot cram it all in.

Judy

Rated: MJudy

Directed by: Rupert Goold

Written by: Tom Edge

Produced by: David Livingstone

Starring: Renée Zellweger, Finn Wittrock, Jessie Buckley, Rufus Sewell.

I’ve often wondered how those lucky souls who have an inborn gift, the ones who are so effortlessly feted and adored, so often come undone. So badly.

For Judy Garland (Renée Zellweger) there was a price for ‘earning a million dollars before you’re twenty one’, and the dark side of her gift slowly becomes apparent as she vainly searches for a way to leave London and return home to her children.

Shown in a combination of flashbacks and flash-forwards, the movie alternates between a fifteen-year-old Garland filming, The Wizard of Oz and the final months of her life spent performing in London at the height of the swinging 60s, with surprisingly close parallels between the two very distant eras of her life and her role in the famous film.

When the Judy opens, Garland is strolling through the set of ‘the yellow brick road’ with a faceless studio executive. She’s not sure that she is ready to take on the role of Dorothy Gale and the man in the grey suit, while appearing to have her best interests at heart, is slyly grooming her, as he both soothes and at the same time subtly threatens: ‘Judy, you give those people dreams . . . ‘The rest of America is waiting to swallow you up’.

Winning the role away from Shirley Temple, Garland finds that her contract has reduced her to nothing more than studio property, at times working up to eighteen hours a day and watched over by a pair of the studio’s henchwomen. Beneath the pair’s unforgiving gaze, even sneaking a single fried onion ring, or maybe two, as she sits in a café attempting to flirt with Mickey Rooney is taken as a serious breach of the rules. Lonely, sleep deprived and starving, the price of Garland’s success is to wage a war on her body that denies the most basic of human needs. And to ensure that her needs stay denied, the Wicked Witch of the West and her eagle-eyed sister are prepared to do whatever it takes: whisking away hunger with amphetamines and granting sleep with barbiturates.

In any contest, the man in the grey suit was always going to win.

Flash forward thirty years and Garland is alone in the bathroom of her hotel suite, unable to finish dressing and barely able to raise a croak from her damaged vocal chords. She is a broken woman. It takes a fairly brutal shove from her production assistant Rosalyn Wylder (Jessie Buckley) to get her onto the stage. But when the lights come up and the beat counts in, Judy sings. And the audience is entranced. Until the lights are dimmed, when once again she is a broken woman surviving on pills and unable to sleep.

While Garland might have been one of the first to succumb to America’s amphetamine epidemic, that’s not the focus of this drama.

Woven through the story of Garland’s titanic struggle with her gift is a very personal search to find love and her pursuit of it eventually does bring a sense of what love is for her. In the title role, Renée Zellweger is unflinching and her portrayal of Judy Garland deeply affecting, while Finn Wittrock is irresistible as Garland’s dashing lover and husband number five.

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché

Rated: GBe Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché

Written, Directed and Produced by: Pamela B. Green

Co-Written by: Joan Simon (Writer, Executive Producer)

Executive Produced by: John Ptak, Joan Simon, Geralyn Dreyfous

Narrated by:  Jodie Foster

Cast Including: Alice Guy-Blaché, Patty Jenkins, Diablo Cody, Ben Kingsley, Geena Davis, Ava DuVernay, Michel Hazanavicius, and Julie Delpy.

Be Natural is an investigative biography, taking writer and director Pamela Green eight years to piece together the life of one of the first director’s of film: Alice Guy-Blaché.

Most enthusiasts, film professionals and critics will sight the Lumiéne brothers. The responses will vary.  Rarely will the name Alice Guy-Blaché be mentioned.

The documentary is shown like a mystery, while asking the question – was she overlooked in the history books because she was the first female director?  Writing, producing or directing 1,000 films, then going on to build her own studio, Solax in the U.S, alongside the likes of Paramount Pictures and Universal, how has this titan of the industry been forgotten?

Greene sets about investigating, showing her search with animated maps tracing her travels; the conversations with sources from Alice’s relatives, to archives and museums, while travelling to France, Brussels and through-out the United States.

We’re taken on the journey as each detail is revealed and highlighted with the red outline of a magnifying glass as narrator, Jodie Foster, details the findings, to cut to interviews of actors, directors, relatives and found footage of an interview with Alice herself, giving insight into the difficulties she had, not as a film maker, but to get credit for her own work.

The documentary travels back in time, to Alice’s beginnings, to her first job as a secretary working for Léon Gaumont, where at 23, she was to make one of the first narrative films ever made, La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy) (1869).

This was a time when film was first invented, the company Alice worked for in France, Gaumont Film Company, selling cameras to the scientists, the inventors, to the leaders of their industry; where anything new or different was recorded like a stock shot – the ocean rolling in and tourist attractions from around the world.

There was no thought of using film to tell a story.

The general consensus was that film would pass as a fad.

For a woman to have such control was unnoticed because no one thought filmmaking would last.  Alice was able to find a place in the industry.

So how is it that no one has heard of Alice Guy-Blaché?  How did she get forgotten?

Even though Alice wrote her own memoirs, and that she corrected the historians time and again, her body of work was mostly lost leaving silence around her phenomenal success.

I felt the injustice, not because Alice was a female film maker, but because one of the pioneers of film-making had been so completely overlooked.

Historical documentaries aren’t my usual go-to for movie watching; yet, Greene has gone to great lengths to keep the sheer volume of information clear and interesting.

Using montages and layered screens and unique ways of showing shots of photos held by relatives; magazines thrown, one on top of the other, and the slicing of Alice’s films to show her work, kept the investigation moving like a quick wit (rather than a dry news story).

I could see the huge amount of information Greene managed to amass, the amount of work and effort obvious in getting history right this time.  To give Alice, finally, her due.

Just one of her many moments of forward thinking, we learn that Alice had notes all over her studio, including a large sign, Be Natural.  ‘That’s all I asked of them,’ she says of her actors.

And in the end all Alice wanted was acknowledgement of her work.

For those interested in cinematic history, this documentary is a gift.  For those not looking for a history lesson, this is a doco that is more investigative, more about the revealing of a mystery shown in an interesting and clever way.

Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968)

Mystify Michael Hutchence

Rated: MA15+Mystify Michael Hutchence

Directed by: Richard Lowenstein

Written by: Richard Lowenstein

Produced by: Maya Gnyp, John Battsek, Sue Murray, Mark Fennessy, Richard Lowenstein, Lynn-Maree Milburn, Andrew De Groot

Executive Producer: Maiken Baird

Music by: INXS, Michael Hutchence, Ollie Olsen, Max Q, Kylie Minogue & Nick Cave, Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm.

With a noted very special thank you to: Tiger Hutchence – Geldof.

Michael Hutchence: ‘The trouble is hanging on to a fixed point long enough to understand it.’

I grew up with INXS, clearly remembering watching Michael Hutchence on TV performing on stage at Wembley Stadium (leading to their album, Live Baby Live) and feeling something stir.

Like the rest of the world, I saw that Michael had that something.

What this documentary shows is that Michael wanted to be more than a pop star.  He wanted fame.  And he wanted to be an artist.

Usually I’m scribbling notes and at times drifting during a screening, thinking of a phrase to write.  But I was absorbed into this documentary because there was so much footage of Michael.  Those eyes.  That heart.

Director and writer, Richard Lowenstein knew INXS and Michael personally, directing most of their music videos and the film, Dogs in Space (1986) with Michael starring as the lead (and part of my, If you Haven’t Watched You’re in for a Treat, List).

Lowenstein notes, ‘There finally came a time when I felt that the hype had calmed down and enough time had passed for someone who had known him well and respected that relationship, to physically and emotionally tell a genuine and respectful chronicle of his life.

That’s when the interviews began.’

The documentary is made up of footage of Michael taken by family and friends and himself with voice-overs from those who were close to him – Kylie Minogue tries to explain their intimate relationship admitting it was exactly what it seemed, the dark and worldly Michael introducing Kylie to the sensory delights.

And we witness his relationship with super model Helena Christensen, as they gallivanted around the South of France, living the dream.

Early girlfriend and long-time close friend, Michele Bennett and Helena had never spoken publicly about Michael, until being interviewed for this film.

Michele Bennett, Kylie Minogue, Susie and Kell Hutchence (Michael’s parents), Tina Hutchence, Rhett Hutchence (sister and brother) and ‘Ghost Pictures have opened up their extensive archive of never-before-seen personal 35mm, 16mm and home video for this film. Many other informants and sources have supplied photographs, sound recordings and rare documents seen for first time.’

It was so easy to think Michael was just this superficial, sexy guy.  But the story of his life, in this documentary at least, depicts a sensitive dreamer who worked hard.  Who made the band INXS his family.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him alive and well in those early days, only to get my heart broken again by his ultimate suicide.  Yet, there’s answers here, which I appreciate as a fan.

Whether the film gives us insight into all that happened during Michael’s heady days, I’m not sure.  The band members weren’t given much of a voice but were shown alongside Michael, on stage, backstage.

What struck me was the revelation of the attack that occurred in 1992 in Copenhagen, when he was outside a pizza shop with Helena.  The traumatic brain injury (TBI) he suffered lead to a complete loss of his sense of smell and 90% of his sense of taste.  And he kept the injury a secret.

The later years of his life were buried in controversy after his relationship with Paula Yates became the London presses favourite topic.

All I remember from the time is the much-publicised divorce and custody battle Paula fought against Sir Bob Geldof, and the drug abuse of Paula and Michael.

Here, we’re shown the effect the controversy had on Michael while his condition took it’s toll, the symptoms from his TBI looking like the effects of drugs.

Michael says of life, ‘Sometimes it clicks and sometimes you’re fighting against nature.’

It was a pleasure to see, once again, the performance of Michael on stage and to see behind the scenes of this surprisingly shy man.

It’s a haunting documentary that satisfies the curiosity while breaking the heart.

Michael Hutchence: 1960 – 1997.

Heavy Water

Rated: MHeavy Water

Directed by: Michael Oblowitz

Produced by: Red Bull Media House and All Edge Entertainment

Distributed by: Adventure Entertainment

Best Surfing Film in the 2017 Byron Bay International Film Festival 

Winner of the 2018 Wavescape Category in the Durban International Film Festival

‘Either the water lets you go.  Or it doesn’t.’

Watching surfing guru, Nathan Fletcher tell the story of his life, I can see how bad the drive to find that edge can be.  And how rewarding.

Heavy Water is a documentary driven by Nathan’s dream to surf a big-wave by dropping from a helicopter: A Helicopter Acid Drop.

I can’t imagine the coordination, balance, strength and shear will/balls/tenacity it took to successfully pull-off this feat – the first of its kind.  But on the 21st of April, 2017 – Nathan succeeds.

For fellow surfers and adrenaline fans that understand the skill involved, this is an exciting feat to watch.

But it’s the story leading up to The Drop that makes this documentary an absorbing film.

Director, Michael Oblowitz states, ‘I’m a surfing anthropologist and my baseline is good storytelling.’

A Hollywood director who surfs to escape the pressures of his career, Oblowitz decided it was time to combine his two passions, ‘To make surf movies that are unlike any other surf movie ever made’.

The documentary flows along the timeline of Nathan’s life, from growing up in San Clemente, California, where he learned to walk and talk and surf all at the same time.

There are voice-overs and interviews and footage giving insight into the Fletcher family, pioneers in surfing, from: Herbie Fletcher starting the motorised wave-ski tow-line drop, to Nathan’s brother Christian who started the aerial surfing trend and even his grandfather, big-wave original Walter Hoffman.

Riding a wave that can kill you is a family tradition.

Heavy Water is a biography showing the tight-knit circle Nathan ran with growing up, with mates like Darrick “Double D” Doerner, Danny Fuller and legendary Jay Adams (the original DogTown Z-Boy) talking skateboarding over footage of the guys skating in an empty swimming pool, the grimace of tough coolness hard-won and admired – the punk-rock style changing the face of skateboarding forever.

Nathan adopted the style, using the skate moves on the water, wanting to jump higher and higher.  Eventually leading to his pursuit of big-waves.

Nathan and mates like Bruce Irons would be constantly checking satellite weather patterns searching for ‘Code Red’ swells and then travel to places like Fiji, Indonesia and Tahiti to ride waves called the Himalayas, Jaws, the Mavericks – massive, dangerous waves that can crash you into a 60-foot crevice and hold you under, never knowing if you’ll get to the surface in time, or drown.

Seeing how big those wave are from the perspective of the ones riding them; to see the awesome power of the pull of water literally gave me goose bumps.

The film has footage of guys like Andy Irons and his brother Bruce, and Sion Milosky pushing their limits, all dancing with death – some making it through, some not.

Christian Fletcher states that those lost in the water are immortal, forever at the age they died doing what they love.  It’s the ones left that miss them.

The intensity and risk creates a spiritual bond, the documentary giving insight into what it takes to get to such a high level – some of the guys ending up in jail after pushing the limits too far.

Nathan leaves his entire life behind to compete in a comp in Tahiti, scoring 10, then another 10, going home a professional surfer.  Only to arrive to nothing – no home and no wife.

He lived in a van for two years, chasing waves.

The film takes away the glamour of the glossy magazine shots and shows the reality of what it takes to get those photos.

The footage of Nathan and Bruce back in Tahiti, leading to that famous shot of Nathan awarding him the XXL 2012 Ride of the Year shows the motivation and spiritual mindset needed to get to that headspace.

This isn’t a stylised promo for surfing or any branding, Heavy Water is the story of a guy who wants to continue the family legacy with all the risk and reward that goes with it.

Rocketman

Rated: MA15+Rocketman

Directed by: Dexter Fletcher

Written by: Lee Hall

Produced by: Matthew Vaughn, David Furnish, Adam Bohling, David Reid

Executive Produced by: Elton John, Steve Hamilton Shaw, Michael Gracey, Claudia Vaughn, Brian Oliver

Starring: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Gemma Jones and Bryce Dallas Howard.

‘You’ve got to kill the person you were born to be and become the person you want to be.’

Rocketman is the biopic of the ‘magnificent’ Elton John.

The film introduces the man, the musician, the stage performer in dramatic fashion: a red daemon with glittery horns and red feathered wings.  We see the ending to the chaos of his success.

‘I am Elton Hercules John’, he states to Group in rehab with the admission of addiction: the drugs, the sex and of course the shopping.

We’ve all heard of Elton John – I’m certainly aware of his fame and the costumes he’s worn during his performances.  But what this film shows is who Elton used to be: Reginald Dwight, the piano prodigy.

At five-years of age Regi was able to hear and play anything on the piano.

And he goes on to succeed as a pianist, in the classics, eventually finding himself backing a blues and soul group, Bluesology.  He asks the lead singer of the group – how can an overweight white man become famous?

By performing his own songs.

Reginald has the music but not the words.

When the lyrics of Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) are thrown in his hands while auditioning for an agent, it’s fate.

And the performance Regi makes at the Troubador, where Neil Young plays to sell-out crowds, is something like magic.

The trick of this film is how that magic is conveyed through the screen to get that feeling where the moment has arrived.  The Life Defining Moment.

I could feel the pressure before Regi’s performance.

But instead of freezing, he becomes something else.  He becomes Elton John.

He Becomes, taking everyone up with him.

I saw Taron Egerton in Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) and remember Elton made a cameo appearance in this, I’ve got to say, disaster of a film.

But worth it if it brought these two artists together.

Taron is, yep, magnificent in his role as the tortured, messy and heart-broken genius.  I can’t think of anyone else better suited to play the part.  Taron also performed all the songs.

Which leads me to highlight, Rocketman has moments of being a musical.  Well, is a musical; a genre I find hard to stomach.  It’s just cheesy when someone sings what should be spoken, really knocking me out of the fantasy of reality on screen.

I was worried when I saw the 50s styled dances, twirling with their washed-out petticoats circling the colourful five-year-old Reginald.  But as Taron played those Elton John songs, it was more like a concert with surreal illumination, reflecting the state of mind of the man performing, night after night.  His success explosive.

There’s a story to be told about this shy extravert (a contradiction but a point made about the man and his complex layers); there’s heartbreak and being alone, up above, on the cloud of his success – above the clouds because he’s so high.

And there’s redemption, growth and his nana (Gemma Jones): ‘Crumbs, that was energetic.’ She says, bless her white cotton socks.

Makes that meteor, right up there in the stratosphere somehow relatable.

Despite its musical elements, I found Rocketman completely absorbing.

Matangi /Maya /M.I.A.

Rated: MA 15+Matangi /Maya /MIA

Directed: Stephen Loveridge

Featuring: Maya Arulpragasam

‘This is what happened to a kid whose dad ran off to be a terrorist:’ Life doesn’t turn out the same way as someone whose dad is a banker, a lawyer or a fireman.

Maya’s choice of words is interesting. Usually, it would be the other side using such highly coloured and provocative language to describe the man behind the Tamil Tiger resistance movement. Partisans might be expected to use terms such as liberator or freedom fighter.

Maya was eleven when her mother and her siblings fled the war zone in their native Sri Lanka, to resettle in the refugee enclave in London. Although, the family was warmly welcomed into the fold, life was still harsh. Maya felt as if she didn’t fit in anywhere: she was ‘shot at in Sri Lanka’ and ‘spat at in Britain’. Music was her consolation and she would drift off to sleep listening to British pop through her headphones. That was, until they were burgled. Maya could do nothing but watch as her radio was carried off to a neighbouring flat.

It might have been one of the lowest points in her life as she lay awake listening to the music spilling out from the flat across the way, but it was a turning point, too. Up until then music was Madonna and the Spice Girls, but when Maya heard her first hip hop beats it was an epiphany. She was listening to people with something to say, and hip hop was the way to say it.

While her sister was lamenting the lack of birthday and Christmas cards from their father, Maya found a source of strength and identity in his absence. Her father was fighting for ‘a human rights problem’, everything was ‘inhumane’ for the Tamils in Sri Lanka. ‘What he’s done to us, made us so strong. We are so independent. Fearless fighters.’ But, rather than taking up arms, Maya turned to documentary film making to express her activism.

Haunted by footage of a women her own age in the jungle armed with assault rifles, Maya returned to Sri Lanka hoping to reconnect with her extended family and find some answers: ‘How do women survive in the jungle’ just on a day-to-day practical level and ‘Why was it me that got away?’ Following that visit, MIA was born, and she released her debut album, Arula (named after her dad). A million copies were downloaded from Napster. ‘It happened so fast.’ Finally. MIA had a microphone, and there was no question she was going to use it.

Subversive and defiant, instead of ‘cookie cutter videos with beautiful girls’, MIA started out with a clip of, monkeys and the jungle, before moving on to exploits and video clips that would bring her both international stardom and notoriety. Because, ‘the worst thing they can do to you is make you irrelevant’.

Well, they can try …

But the woman who infamously flipped the bird to the audience during a half-time performance with Madonna at the Super Bowl in 2012 and the singer/songwriter of ‘Born Free’—a song that accompanies a deeply disturbing music clip where pale-skinned, red-haired boys are brutally hunted down by faceless military types clad in black body armour—will not be going quietly.

Roma

Rated: MA15+Roma

Directed and Written by: Alfonso Cuarón

Cinematography: Alfonso Cuarón

Produced by: Nicolás Celis, Alfonso Cuarón

Starring: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Fernando Grediaga, Jorge Antonio Guerrero, Marco Graf, Daniela Demesa, Carlos Peralta, Nancy Garcia, Diego Di Cort and Verónica Garcia.

The 75th Venice International Film Festival, Golden Lion winner

Based on the semi-autobiographical upbringing of writer and Academy Award winning director Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men (2006); Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2010); Gravity (2013)) in Mexico during the 1970s, Roma feels like a legacy left as a gift that we all get to share.

It’s not often I see a film that speaks to the heart of things with perfect balance; a sigh at the end because there’s a kind of sadness it’s finishing but also a happy sigh because it all feels complete.

From the opening scene, Roma slows everything down with the flow and splash of water used for cleaning the concrete squares of a courtyard with the reflected image of an aeroplane flying overhead.

Here, we’re introduced to the family: wife, Sofia (Marina de Tavira) and husband Antonio (Fernando Grediaga) and the children, Paco (Carlos Peralta), Pepe (Marco Graf), Sofi (Daniela Demesa), grandma Teresa (Veronica Garcia).  And the two nannies, Adela (Nancy Garcia Garcia) and Chloe (Yalitza Aparicio).   But really, the two young nannies are part of the family.  As is the ever-pooing on the courtyard squares, Borras the dog.  And the galaxy car that fits into the courtyard-come-garage by a mere centimetre each side…

I love the humour of the film, mounted heads of previous pet dogs included.

And the love and tragedy of the characters is perfectly captured in black and white moments so although a quiet film about life and family, I was mesmerised by a story shown by an observer with a particularly knowing eye; from the heart of a wise and old soul like young Pepe talking to Chloe about his past life as a pilot, ‘back when I was old’.

The film is just full of wonderful treats like the hills that look like they have skirts and the rubbing of vinegar on sunburnt shoulders so the children smell like salads.

We’re shown this deeply personal story of a family that managers to subtly open a door on the rarity of life captured that goes deeper than an emotional level.  There something spiritual here as Chloe is shown with the love of a young boy who sees her soul so clearly.

Even with the tragedy of heart break, there’s strength; even through earthquakes and government seizing land, the Indigenous population living in slums, and fathers leaving their children, there’s an ever evolving resilience where keeping close helps get through all the scary; where scenes of baby bottles amongst the wine and ashtrays are a sign of the times and forest fires alight on New Year’s Eve: there’s always the slow drone of an aeroplane overhead.

I loved this film, the quiet, the sad, the love, the beauty, the simplicity of people living their lives shown with amusement and a rare honesty that fills you up.  Now that’s film making.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp_i7cnOgbQ

Subscribe to GoMovieReviews
Enter your email address for notification of new reviews - it's free!

 

Subscribe!