Review: A Matter Of Life And Death/Stairway To Heaven (minor spoilers)

In 1946, when they made A Matter Of Life And Death (Stairway to Heaven in the US), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were at the cutting edge of cinema. They were arguably the most innovative directors working out of the United Kingdom, at a time when Alfred Hitchcock was finding his voice with such films as Lifeboat and Notorious, and David Lean was working on that more humble beacon of Englishness, Brief Encounter.

Powell and Pressburger's previous film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, had been heralded for its special effects make up and model work, which still holds up well today. Whether they felt the weight of public expectation, or whether they felt the urge to themselves, Powell and Pressburger pushed the envelope again in service of the story; The set design, use of stock, and in-camera trickery in A Matter of Life and Death came only 13 years after King Kong, but are light years ahead of that film. Thanks to Powell's and Pressburger's mastery of these techniques, and the enduring work of a young Jack Cardiff, on only his second major feature, Life and Death stands apart from other films of the period.

The directors used these techniques to create the quintessential depiction of the afterlife in movies, which has informed popular interpretations of Heaven ever since. The imagery is so familiar to modern audiences that first time viewers may wonder whether they are having déjà vu.

However, some concepts explored in the film may seem quaint by today's jaded standards. The nature of love at first meeting, the debate over the value of a human life, and an utterly non-cynical depiction of God and his angels: all are explored without irony or reservation. The audience's enjoyment depends largely on whether they can see beyond their misgivings on these topics, and view the film as an allegorical poem.

Roger Livesey gives a generous performance as the doctor fighting to save David Niven’s life, but his mannered style does not work as well as it did in Blimp. Marius Goring stands out as the deliciously French Conductor 71; charming, mischievous and petty all at once. Kim Hunter does passable work in a thankless role, but the soul of the film belongs to David Niven, with a portrayal of wonderment and hope that glints through the stoicism which is the stock of his Britishness. It is also worth keeping an eye out for a very young Dickie Attenborough in one of his first film appearances, as a recent casualty of war.

Gentle mockery of our French and American allies runs through the film. Raymond Massey plays a grumbling, recalcitrant Abraham Farlan, sour at the British for being the first casualty of the American War of Independence. Young American airmen stepping through the pearly gates head straight for a Coca-Cola dispenser. A French pilot whitters away at ten to the dozen about the unfair circumstances of his death, to which his British counterpart responds with a pat on the shoulder and "bad luck, old boy". It is Niven's central performance, married to these details, which makes A Matter of Life and Death one of the most quintessentially British films ever made.

The choices made by Powell and Pressburger in direction also mark this film out. Most notably in the earliest days of colour film, which was then a modern marvel, one world was in glorious Technicolor, the other in drab black and white. The stroke of genius was to shoot the realm of the living in colour, and Heaven in monochrome, reversing the expectations of the day.

Of course, now that contemporary audiences are so unused to black and white, it is the scenes in Heaven which feel dislocated and fantastical. In 1946, however, Europe was reeling from the end of the second world war. The vibrance of colour in the movie reflected the keen feeling of the time that life is the most precious thing we have, and that we should revel in it. The only element of the film which hints at the melancholy of death is the metronomic chiming of the piano score in Heaven. Other than that, the film is broadly very hopeful.

My recommendation is to give yourself over to the tone of the film. If you can allow for the ebbing pain of postwar Britain, and you should find this film every bit as charming, warm, and ultimately life-affirming as those who first watched it almost 70 years ago.

Review: Rambo

Get in, get out, no messing around.

As the rather contrived title of my review suggests, this film is rather like the mission which it portrays. It exists to serve one purpose: Deliver a level of (literally) visceral action we have not seen in 20 years.

There has rarely been a vessel better suited to this type of endeavour than Stallone as Rambo. Rambo has become the movies' definitive man of action over words. The history of the character (and of the actor playing him) imbue the entire film with the sense that once that low activation energy has been reached, a chain reaction is set in motion which cannot be stopped. Put a bee in Rambo's bonnet, and he doesn't so much shake it out as eat the fucking hat, bug and all.


Do not go in expecting a parable for modern American foreign policy, or any astute political observations on the Burmese situation. Do not expect award-worthy performances or dialogue. This film is here to punt your balls into your throat, and it does so with no mercy and no remorse.


The only reason it doesn't get 5 stars is because it's too damn short.

Review: Hell In The Pacific (Spoilers)

Hell In The Pacific

Released: 1968

Directed by: John Boorman
Written by: Reuben Bercovitch (story by), Alexander Jacobs, Eric Bercovici
Cinematography by: Conrad L. Hall
Original Music by: Lalo Schifrin

Cast:
Lee Marvin
Toshirô Mifune 

Synopsis:
[from the IMDb] A shot-down American pilot finds his way to a small, unpopulated island where he hopes to find provisions. He soon discovers that he is not alone; there is a Japanese officer marooned on the island also. Will they continue to fight each other to the death, or will they reach a modus vivendi?

Review:

Only Boorman's third film as a director, this film came hot on the heels of his seminal sophomore film, Point Blank. Snaffling that film's star, Boorman took quite a risk with a script devoid of any meaningful dialogue, relying entirely on the performances of the two actors.

While a little slow to start, the story is not short of exciting and amusing turns, and for the greater part manages to avoid mawkish predictability. There are a few bum notes, most notably the weakly painted finale, which undoes a lot of the good work done in the last act. Up until then, however, the film displays remarkable depth for such a limited narrative. In Mifune and Marvin, Boorman had two of the most magnetic stars cinema has ever known. Boorman extracts from them riveting performances that are almost theatrical in nature (by necessity of the serpentine script), and these elevate the material far above the potential pitfalls of its am-dram premise. Conrad L. Hall's typically brilliant camerawork allows us to forget that most of the movie plays out on a stretch of beach shorter than a post office queue, imbuing the film with a grander scale from the get-go. A restrained (read: non-jazz) but cleverly orchestrated score by Lalo Schifrin also serves to bring this small story into greater relief.

Marvin's portrayal of a nameless American bomber pilot thrives on have-a-go adventurism, undiminished (perhaps even reinforced) by the limited canvas within which his story plays out. Modern day familiarity with Marvin's usual persona renders his enthusiasm a little unbelievable on occasion, but the gruff strength and menace for which Marvin became iconic is carefully woven through the film in metered measure. He takes to engaging his uncomprehending counterpart in one-way conversations. By contrast, Mifune's professional Japanese Captain remains stoic and superficially unresponsive to these attempts, resulting in some in effective grating. Mifune's seeming immutability and occasional paroxysms of choleric illustrate well his quest for empowerment through control of his circumstances, and he too wrings as much as possible from what is essentially a mute performance - for there are no subtitles or voiceover, and when he speaks, which is seldom, it is in Japanese.

The two men's ways of dealing with this impossible situation are both treated with equal respect by director Boorman, and they are never drawn in predictable parallel. Certainly, the characters live and breathe the symbolism of their respective nationalities, Marvin embodying the American dream of risky endeavour, open borders and free enterprise, Mifune the unflinching work ethic, protectionism and sense of duty of the Empire of Japan.


For the most part, this plays well, but the game of "fetch" is a peculiar and somewhat unwelcome beat: The implicit cruelty of the game is completely undone by Mifune's blank refusal to play along, and Marvin seems to be almost more amused playing it himself than he would have been watching the bound Mifune play, as this sadistic streak is not displayed anywhere else in his portrayal. The whole scene sits uncomfortably with the social picture Boorman is attempting to paint, even if as a political statement it might hold a little water. The movie may have been better off without this particular scene.

*Spoilers ahead*

That said, the film manages to avoid any half-baked attempts at a simplistic meeting of the minds, for even on their shared enterprise, the building of the raft, they squabble and argue. It is only after the two set sail that the film finally suggests its broader outlook - that the world is populated by peoples of irreconcilable differences. In the closest proximity the two characters have shared, on the raft the men do not communicate at all, save to offer each other silent assistance. In so doing, the movie deftly illustrates that while it is compassion that makes us human and unites us, such compassion is born of a hardship of our own making. Equally, once they make land and find the abandoned fort, and in perhaps the most satisfying portion of the film, the two men share each others good fortune for a short while. Nevertheless, before long old grievances again rear their heads, and in so doing Boorman finally reminds us again of our irrefutable tribalism.

The war, a purely theoretical backdrop for most of the movie, comes home to roost in the closing beats of the film. In those final frames of the fort being blown apart as the two men's exchanges escalate, Boorman might then have made a timely analogy to the Cold War, perhaps. As the events of the last 40 years have shorn the film of that insulation, however, the ending now appears a rather weak and lazy, or even worse, clumsy piece of writing. Films ending on a simple downer aren't as acceptable as out-and-out tragedies these days, and the looming, pervasive sense of inevitability that would be required by a modern audience just isn't there.

*End Spoilers*

If you can disregard the few issues outlined above, however, you have a film in the greatest storytelling tradition - a tale of two contrasting people, which illuminates who we are and how we relate to each other. Perhaps the final aftertaste is a little sour, though, as Boorman invokes Sartre in the very title:

Hell, in the Pacific or elsewhere, is other people.