Biutiful

This is an impassioned, ambitious and moving film. The central character, Uxbal, played by Javier Bardem, is a metaphor for us all: whilst dying, he is coping with the circumstances of his life. The film is ambitious because it seeks to embody in its few characters the state of the contemporary, globalized world, with diverse ethnicities and nationalities rubbing against each other as they struggle to find a way to survive.

The film, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is set in Barcelona, although any city would do for the film-maker's purpose. Uxbal wheels and deals among the population of 'illegals', trafficking Chinese workers and working with African street traders, whilst bribing the police to make it all work. He has a bipolar ex-wife and two children, and does his best to be a good father and to deal honestly generally. We are told at the outset that he is dying of cancer and has only a couple of months to live.

His wife, Marambra, played by Maricel Álvarez, is by turns loving, sexy, sluttish and unpredictable, but is incapable of being reliably a mother to their children who seem, particularly his daughter, to look very plausibly the product of these two people. A subversive voice in me wondered what Kiera Knightley might have made of Marambra's role. It is hard to image. This is the wild side of cinema, far removed from the sunny English gardens where Knightley is so comfortable. There are several scenes set at the family's dining table, as Uxbal alone cooks meals and nurtures and relates to his children.

The cinematography is glorious - grainy, contrasty, dynamic and imaginative. This is cinemaphotgraphy with attitude.

It is easy to read this as a political film, depicting the reality of globalization - an ideology driven by the USA for the benefit of the USA, and given the benign, user-friendly name of 'democracy'. It shows people - Africans and Chinese - uprooted and dispersed, and at the limit of desperation, with prosperity all around them, as they are stripped of their dignity in their struggle for survival. In the pursuit of prosperity no morals are required and no-one is to blame.

The perfomances of the two leads, Bardem and Álvarez, are excellent, as are the children.

Black Swan

Someone must have had the idea of making a horror film about ballet. Quite a nifty idea, juxtaposing the high art world of ballet with the baroque world of horror. All that remained was to make the film. Black Swan is Darren Aronofsky's attempt to do it.

It is about a ballerina, Nina, played by Natalie Portman, who wants the lead part in a new production of Swan Lake. The film acknowledges that Swan Lake is the most obvious and hackneyed ballet that might have been chosen, but excuses it when the director, Thomas, played by Vincent Cassell, says that he wants this production to be pared back to basics. He believes that Nina is good on control and perfection, which suits the good white swan, but isn't so good at abandonment, which the bad black swan requires. Cassell brings some authority to his part, which is nevertheless underwritten and two-dimensional, embodying the cliches of ballet-masters we may have met  before in other films; being tyrannical, severe, cruel, unpredictable and heterosexually lecherous.

Nina doesn't fit in so very well with the other people in the dance company, seeming to be more sheltered and naive than them. It soon becomes clear that the stresses in her life are causing Nina to disconnect from reality: she imagines her body failing in strange ways, peeling improbable amounts of skin from her bleeding fingers, finding scars on her back, even her legs collapse under her weight, she discovers webs forming between her toes, she misconstrues or imagines encounters; and soon we realise that we cannot be sure what we are seeing, whether it is reality or the product of her imagination.

Nina lives with her her mother in a small and modest apartment. As soon as we see the mother the casting, makeup and acting tell us what Nina is in for from her. The mother is straight out of Hitchcock by way of Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher. She doesn't disappoint, being overbearing, overcaring and over controlling, and that narrative strand plays out with no surprises.

This is not a film that respects the audience; it doesn't trust us to 'get' things without them being rammed down our throat. All the resources of cinema, particularly sound, hand-held close-up, and fast cutting are used to make sure our attention doesn't wander. The problem with this is that my attention did wander. There is a scene when Nina has a night on the town, doing drink, drugs and guys, and we go to a nightclub. It is the noisiest nightclub in a film that I can remember (thinking of Michael Mann's wonderful nightclub scene in Collateral, and the nightclub in Spike Lee's 25th Hour). The strobes strobe and the noise peels paint. Then there is a scene when, before an audience, Nina falls over as she dances. Now, as this was the first night, we can be sure that Thomas is in the wings watching anxiously and, when his lead ballerina falls over, we may be sure he's concerned and agitated. Aronofsky doesn't trust us to put these particular twos together, so we cut to his agitated face, just to make sure. God, it's so obvious. A better film-maker may have made us wait to see how his anxiety played out, but not here.

I'm sure Natalie Portman worked hard for this film, but even I could see that she's not a normally trained dancer because her shoulders don't have a dancer's mobility. This is not a very important point and it is not her dancing that makes or breaks the film. The part needs someone who can act and dance and she does very well. I was wondering why an actor who can't dance was chosen as opposed to vice versa, if that was the unavoidable choice.

My main problem with this film is that it cheats in setting up a narrative where we don't know what happened and anything is possible, and we get blood and sex and things leaping out of shadows. There is a scene when Thomas unexpectedly kisses Nina and she bites him. There is another scene where he invites her up to his apartment and we expect the terms of their relationship to be negotiated, probably horizontally, but he just asks her three questions and gives her homework. The three questions were 'do you have a boyfriend?', 'have you had many boyfriends?', 'are you a virgin?'. The homework is to go home and masturbate. I suppose this is so that she can practice her abandonment. In the next scene she is in her room at home, obediently masturbating, and we have a good opportunity to admire her teddy-bear collection (this is fortunate because in a later scene she puts them mercilessly down the garbage disposal chute). Then, my God, her mother comes into the room. Isn't this the number one cliche of all time - the child's fear of being interrupted by a parent while masturbating? This film isn't interesting enough to spend much time wondering which of these scenes happened. They are clearly there to make this film the potboiler it wants so much to be.

Winter's Bone

This is a grim film. It is set in the Ozark mountains and is populated by backwoods types who wouldn't look out of place in Night Of The Living Dead. I needed subtitles.

It is about Ree (Jennifer Lawrence), a seventeen-year-old who is mother to her young brother, their mother being incompetent. She learns that because of actions of her absent father their house could be confiscated and she tries to find her father, obstructed at every turn by friends and relatives she turns to for help. Finally, assuming he's dead, she tries to find his body. Spoiler coming up. She is finally led to his body, which is suspended under water. They row out to the spot, she gropes over the side of the boat into the water for his wrists, and is passed a chain saw to remove a hand to use as proof that her father is dead. This is the first time it has occurred to me to wonder whether chain saws are available in waterproof models.

I thought this scene was a step or two too far in grimness.

Jennifer Lawrence has been justifiably praised for her part.

It Happened One Night

Here is a Frank Capra film that won five Oscars and is laden with plenty of other American recognition of its quality. It stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert and is about an over-night bus journey to New York.

I have read my Janice Radway and this is a ROMANCE! Girl meets boy- girl misunderstands and dislikes boy - friction and resolution occur - girls starts to like boy - they fall in love - *****. On the way we have fun and laughter and outrageous scenes with two stars at their peak.

Forebidden, a film made by Frank Capra in 1932

Frank Capra has never loomed very large in my radar. I was stunned by this film. Stunned by its rawness, stunned by how by how it never went near to falling into the excesses of melodrama, despite having a story that lent itself to that, and amazed at how it never sought to judge its three main characters, when it might easily have done so.

The story spans more than twenty years and shows many lives blighted by unfulfilled love. Lulu, a librarian (Barbara Stanwyck, looking so YOUNG!) meets and falls for a lawyer, Bob (Adolphe Menjou). After some fun he confesses that he's married and there's no question of him leaving his wife, who is crippled by a car accident he is responsible for. After his confession Lulu rejects him and gives birth alone to his daughter. Some years later, when her daughter is about four years old, they get back together. His career progresses to the point of becoming state governor, and she accepts the role of governess to her own child, which he has 'adopted'. She has always been courted by a journalist, Holland (Ralph Bellamy), who doesn't know of her involvement with Bob but, for his own reasons, wants to 'get' the Bob, who has become well known. Bob has become frustrated and sickened by his hypocrisy but is unable to resolve the conflicts in his life. In a moment of despair Lulu agrees to marry Holland but soon after he learns, from his own research into Bob, of her connection with Bob and sees what a fool he has been. In an argument she shoots Bellamy and goes to prison. Out of prison Bob is on his death bed and Lulu is with him when he dies. She wanders off into the street, alone, an unhappy, unfulfilled and hardened person.

This film is so moving in some places I could hardly take it. Background music was not used. The film refused to adjudicate between Lulu and Bob and never sank into sentimentality. This film was of course made before the Hays code prevented films showing birth out of marriage, etc, etc (although the code was adopted in 1930 it was only enforced from 1934 to 1968). I have always been a fan of Barbara Stanwyck, so it doesn't count for much when I say that she was very good. There is an amazing before-Bob's-confession scene when he arrives at her home for supper wearing the mask of a wolf, with also a mask for her, and they cavort and played together wearing masks for five minutes or so, giving the first intimation of the drama to come.

Best films of 2010

I think the best film I saw in 2010 was Poetry, made by Lee Chang-dong of South Korea.

The still shows the lead actress, Jeong-hie Yun, who made the film after sixteen years of retirement, and the director, Lee Chang-dong. Her performance was outstanding. Lee Chang-dong has now made five films as screenwriter/director and he has won several international awards. I don't doubt that he now has a place with the best directors in the world.

This film's strengths were its deeply moving poetic quality, avoiding the drama at its heart like a dramatic elephant in the room, until the very end, when all the themes converge. Other very good films for me were:

• Of Gods And Men, a story of monks bravely staying put in a place of political instability. This film has sublime casting, perfect acting and striking cinematography.

• A Single Man, Tom Ford's first film. An adaption of a Christopher Isherwood story. The most moving romance I can remember seeing on film.

• Chongqing Blues, a story about a returning seaman trying to discover the circumstances of his son's death, and raking through the gravel of Chinese society in the process. An understated and beautifully filmed and acted Chinese film, revealing much about contemporary Chinese society.

• How I Ended This Summer, A Russian film set in a remote arctic meteorological monitoring station. It was named Best Film at the London Film Festival. This is a strong drama with very powerful acting in a remote and stunning location

• Up In The Air, a George Clooney vehicle made by Jason Reitman. While being entertaining this film has an elegant and complex screenplay that resonates with many meanings.

Honourable mentions should go to I Am Love a bold and back-to-basics melodrama, with the 'melo' provided by John Adams, The Secret In Their Eyes - a fresh drama extended over lives and time, Shutter Island - outrageously entertaining hokum, The Maid - a Spanish drama in which not much happens very dramatically, Gainsbourg - a very imaginative realisation of Serge Gainsbourg's life with excellent casting,  Mother, a film from South Korea, Certified Copy, Kiarostami's first film made outside of Iran, 3 Seasons In Hell, a Czech film about events in Czechoslovakia in the period between 1947 and 1949, seen from the point of view of a rebellious poet, Leaving, a story of blind lust and passion, Manila Skies, a film from the Philippines showing a man being dragged down by the difficulty of life in Manila and finally acting desparately and The Illusionist, a very moving animated film based on a screenplay by Jacques Tati. On a different day I might have put any of these films into my top list.

I also saw many very good old films, including The Leopard, Pandora And The Flying Dutchman, Ozu's Tokyo Story and Late Spring, Metropolis, Went The Day Well, Sammy Going South, The Shop Around The Corner and Agnes Varda's The Gleaners And I.

My top cinema event of 2010 was - well, there were two! At the Chichester Film Festival I saw Tony Palmer present his South Bank Show film about the Wagner family. This film will be released on DVD in 2011 in a feature-length version. Palmer has become knowledgeable about Wagner as he also made a film about him starring Richard Burton. In support of the South Bank Show film he showed a filmed dramatized biopic of Wagner made in 1913! The film is 90 minutes long and only two prints remain. Wagner in the film is played by an Italian comedian who looks strangely like Wagner. Palmer sat at the front with a microphone and talked the audience through the film - a very special experience!

But this was capped a couple of days later when Palmer presented his film Bird On A Wire, a film Palmer made about Leonard Cohen in 1972 and which then became lost. Recently the audio master tapes were found along with editing fragments of film, and Palmer has reconstructed the film from memory using 3000 fragments. This is a significant document about an important artist in his prime and it has extremely moving moments. Palmer believes that many of the takes of Cohen's songs are better than the takes on the albums that made him famous. Palmer showed the film and talked about it for a hour. I am very pleased to have the DVD.

The most moving films were Poetry, Of Gods And Men, and A Single Man.
The most interesting films were Chongqing Blues and How I Ended This Summer
The most entertaining and enjoyable were Shutter Island, Up In The Air, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman and Gainsbourg.
Best non-fiction was Bird on a Wire followed by John Pilger's The War You Don't See. A film about embedded journalists and how the media collude in government lies and deception and pass on to us the propaganda.
Notable acting: Annette Bening in The Kids Are All Right, Kristin Scott Thomas in Leaving,  Jeong-hie Yun in Poetry, Grigory Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis in How I Ended This Summer and all the monks in Of Gods And Men.
Best film music: Shutter Island, I Am Love

If I could take a DVD of just one of these films to a desert island it would be Bird On A Wire

Disappointments were:

• Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, a very fine-looking film that says very little about someone who's not very interesting, I was bored. Maybe I'm not as taken by pole-dancers as I should be.
• Inception, a film targeted at a demographic with far more taste for hackneyed and cliched shoot-em-up scenes than I have, all overlain with impenetrable and tedious mysticism
• The Social Network, a not-bad Friday evening flick, but unworthy of the attention it has received in best-film lists. It has very good cinematography and looked very good up on the screen, but the drama lost its way.

Films I still haven't managed to see are The Arbor and Police, Adjective.

The film I'm really looking forward to seeing next year is Biutiful.

Into The Wild

I saw this film on TV. It was directed by Sean Penn and released in 2007. It is based on the life Christopher McCandless who, after graduating, went off into the wilder parts of the USA to escape the materialistic and professional world of his parents. The film is recounted in voice-over by his sister, who knew very little of his life because he cut off all communication with his family. This may seem unsatisfactory but it works. We see many 'Marlborough Man' stereotypes living in caravans and working on farms.

Towards the end he meets and elderly man, played by Hal Holbrook, who comes to want to adopt him. Holbrook won several best supporting actor awards for his part. There is much beautiful camera-work, some of it slightly tricksy , with use of split frame and freeze frame. The film starts at the point where McCandless comes across an abandoned bus, which he temporarily adopts as a home. The film then moves chronologically forwards while flashing-back to the parts of his travels before the bus.

McCandless finally died of starvation at the age of 23 and his body was discovered a couple of weeks after his death. McCandless's story inspired a written account by Jon Krakauer, and it is on this that the film is based. This account has some misunderstandings, including the false notion that McCandless died after eating poison berries.

This is a moving and deeply-committed film and Sean Penn is to be respected for having made it.