The Turin Horse

I don't know whether Bela Tarr will keep to his word and not make another film but, if he does, he will have finished his film-making career with his best film. The Turin Horse is about very little and yet it is about everything. It is a symphony with wind, a horse and two humans.

In it we see the daily routine of an elderly man, Ohlsdorfer, and his daughter, who live a minimal existence in a rudimentary cottage in a God-forsaken place in central Europe, presumably Hungary. We see six days of their lives, each day introduced by a title. The highlight of their routine is their meal of a single boiled potato each, eaten with their fingers from wooden plates in about five minutes. When they rise in the morning Ohlsdorfer drinks two glasses of the local firewater, palinka, while his daughter goes to the well to fetch two buckets of water.

They have a horse which, at the beginning of the film, is linked to Friedrich Nietzche, and this little back-story succeeds in keeping the horse in our attention. In fact the horse, remarkably, in it's enigmatic speechlessness, becomes the emotional centre of the film. The Hungarian rain and mud that we became familiar with in earlier Tarr films is here replaced by a hellish wind, audible on the soundtrack throughout the fim. Even going outside is difficult, and the atmosphere is always laden with leaves and dust. There is a visit by a neighbour to fetch some palinka and, after he has unburdened himself of a political rant, he is sent on his way with a disparaging put-down by Ohlsdorfer. There was humour of this type in earlier Tarr films. Otherwise few words are spoken other than by Ohlsdorfer, who is elderly and slightly handicapped, to give instructions to his daughter.  Early in the film the daughter expresses a query that I'm sure is on many viewers' minds when she asks her father, after a brief conversation about woodworm, 'What's it all about, Papa?' He replies that he does not know. So little happens and yet I was gripped because the slightest change or incident in the routine makes one wonder where it will lead. One by one things on which their simple life depend start to fail, until the continuation of their life seems impossible, and the film fades to black. I was reminded of Beckett by the timeless fundamental nature of the world it depicts but with, instead of Beckett's abundance or words, Tarr's abundance of cinema.

The music is striking. It is a simple repeating dirge-like motive that could easily have come from Philip Glass. The wonderful monochrome cinematography, much of it in the near-dark interior of the cottage, is by Fred Keleman, the film-maker who made Abendland and the unseeable Frost, a film whose ownership is still the the subject of contention. Both Tarr and Keleman work in the European tradition of 'slow' cinema, traceable to Tarkovsky.

Compared to The Turin Horse, the other films I have seen recently have the weight of TV commercials. This film left emotions and images that will stay with me for a long time.

Moonrise Kingdom

This is a return to form for Anderson, after the wilderness of Steve Zissou and and The Darjeeling Limited. When I saw it the audience clearly enjoyed it, and there was even a half-hearted attempt by the audience to applaud the film at the end, even though most of them preferred to skip the amusing credits. It would be difficult to watch many frames of this film without immediately identifying them as the work of Wes Anderson. We have busy compartmentalised sets, diagrams and boats, all permeate by tongue-in-cheek visual humour.

There is a gold-star cast including Anderson regular Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand and Harvey Keitel. But despite the humour and the cast I was left unsatisfied because the humour doesn't sustain the film. It is a ninety-four minute joke that flags in places. There are some very good jokes, but I didn't really care about what was going on and the cast, with the exception of Bruce Willis who is very good, were required to parody rather than act, so I thought they were wasted. As an Edward Naughton fan I was very disappointed; and Tilda didn't do much for her fee.

I can see that this is a return to form for Anderson who, after Zissou and Darjeeling I had given up on, thinking that he had lost his way. Now he is back on track but I recognize that his track is not for me. All is not lost because I did enjoy Rushmore, Tenenbaums and Mr Fox, but I shan't be hurrying to see Anderson's next film.

The Kid With a Bike

This film, by the Dardenne brothers, is about a young boy, Cyril, who has been rejected by his father and who takes the duration of this film to accept that fact. We see him first search for his father, then make contact with him. He is initially living in an institution and is then taken in hand by a hairdresser, Samantha, who wants to care for him. She is played by Cécile de France who, like the film, is Belgian. She is the first star that the Dardenne brothers have used. I admired her in The Singer and in Un Secret and in this film she is excellent.

The film is very moving as Samantha tries to help Cyril to cope with his rejection and when she in turn has to cope with Cyril's bad behaviour, particularly when Cyril falls under the influence of a local hoodlum who wants to use Cyril as a junior partner in crime.

Corpo Celeste

This film has strong similarities to last year's Love Like Poison - both are coming of age films of a young female set in a strongly religious context. Corpo Celeste was made and is set in Italy and, like Love Like Poison, it is a first feature film by a female director, Alice Rohrwacher, who also wrote the screenplay.

The story is of a mother and daughter who move back to a poor town in southern Italy after a period living in Switzerland, and it focuses on the efforts of the daughter, Marta, played by Yio Vianello, to resettle in the community as she takes instruction in the Catholic church for her catechism. We are led through several telling and moving scenes as, in her growing awareness, she starts to question the authority figures around her and the path that she has embarked on.  Her sister is spiteful to her and her mother remained a rather shadowy figure. The film is very subtle as it shows her experiencing her first period and then cutting her hair as a mark of her growing autonomy.

A Dangerous Method

This is the story of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Sabina Spielrein. A book was written about these people by John Kerr, and Christopher Hampton wrote in 1997 a screenplay based on the book and intended as a vehicle for Julia Roberts. This never came to fruition, and Christopher Hampton adapted his screenplay to a play, The Talking Cure, which had great success at the National Theatre in London, starring Ralph Fiennes and Johdi May. In 2002 David Cronenberg made, with Ralph Fiennes, the film Spider and, through his acquaintance with Fiennes, Cronenberg became interested in The Talking Cure. Christopher Hampton adapted his play back into a screenplay which became this film, A Dangerous Method. So - Is it a book? Is it a play? Is it a film? You decide.

Spielrein, played by Kiera Knightley, acting for all she's worth, was initially Jung's patient. The film recounts how she became his lover and subsequently became a psychiatrist. Jung was married with an increasing number of children, and whether there was ever a physical relationship between him and Spielrein is pure speculation, but it makes a good story. Jung is here played by the ubiquitous Michael Fassbender, and Freud is played by Vigo Mortensen. Freud in this film is really a spectator on Jung's antics, and these do lead to split between them because of Jung's deceptiveness.

This is a period film with some tendencies towards the worst of period films - idealisation of imagined past manners, immaculate interiors, beautifully-maintained old cars, scenes set in front of beautiful old buildings with immaculate grounds. etc. For Cronenberg this represents a considerable step towards the middle of the road. This film is dialogue-bound and not very cinematic. Worst of all, despite having been written by a respected playwright, it has some terrible lines. Cronenberg has said that he was drawn to this project. My only question is: what was he thinking?

I am not a fan of Keira Knightley but here she acquits herself well, with much effort and commitment. I couldn't understand why she was given a bath with her clothes still on, but I'm not worrying too much about that, although it was a bit disappointing. Mortensen has the best part as Freud while Fassbender's Jung seems young, one-dimensional and uninteresting. The story is really a romance dressed up in the paraphernalia of psychiatry and, although the film is not long, I found myself looking at my watch several times. There are some BDSM scenes which, I suppose, were useful when the trailer was made.

Rampart

This film embodies one of the raw essences that make me love cinema - it is hard-boiled and cynical in a tradition that goes back to Chandler and beyond, and to the best films noirs of the 1940s. It has wonderful cinematography that is simultaneously noirish yet very colourful and bright, contrasty, with burnt-out whites. It has an amazing cast, including Robin Wright, whose fan club I joined straight after seeing State of Grace, Ned Beatty, Sigourney Weaver and Steve Buscemi.

Co-written by its director Oren Moverman and James Ellroy, it is the story of a tough and cynical cop, Dave Brown, played by Woody Harrelson, in possibly the best part of his career. Womanising and filled with hate, he is torn between his two ex-wives, his daughters, and a crisis in his career brought on by an excess of violence. He is improbably self-aware and articulate as he copes with his superiors, seeming more savvy than them, and expressing the existential essence of the film. We are challenged to wonder whether he is in any way sympathetic and whether he is capable of redemption; whether he is producing the culture which he inhabits, or whether he is a product of it.

Moverman and his cinematographer, Bobby Bukowski, had a great time with a very mobile camera, achieving a noir style and conjuring many abstract images. There is one scene, towards the end, where Brown descends into a 'lower depth' of drugs and depravation where the film risks parody, but otherwise this is a treat for the movie-lover.

The Descendants

This is Alexander Payne's first film since he made sideways in 2004. It is an adaptation of the first novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings who collaborated closely with Payne on the film, even to the extent of being, along with members of his family, in the film.

This is, of course, a George Clooney film and he is excellent, playing an unhappy man coping with two daughters and wearing bad shirts, while his wife lay dying.

Some people have spoken of this film as a comedy but it is moving and tragic, yet laced with irony and humour in the way life can be for those who are sensitive to see it; and this is what Payne does so well.

Seeing this film made me think of Robert Redford, who was the previous generation's star of American cinema. Both Clooney and Redford are good-looking and serious, being politically engaged and directing films of their own. I like Redford but I'm now starting to think that I prefer by a small margin Clooney because of his modesty in taking unglamorous parts, and because he has made more angry and politically engaged films.

I think The Descendants stands up well as a George Clooney and as an Alexander Payne film.