Reviews

Top work Mr Marr. Endearingly eccentric, enthusiastic, exhilarating overview of Britain. Of course there are gaps and highly debatable views, but he got all the top stories on the screen and reminded (hopefully) hundreds of thousands of people how we got to where we are. This is the sort of thing that makes history shimmer and excite - whetting the appetite for more in-depth explorations of each of the powerful stories that made up this wonderful series. I particularly enjoyed the episode that covered Harold Wilson - a time that i know little about but this programme made me want to dive into it and explore. And fragments of childhood memory came back to me during the episode on the 80s - my father's hulking mobile phone and the disappearance of my village bobby to go to the miners' strikes. Very evocative. Running over all of this was Marr's rich and engaging language - his presenting was the icing on the cake. Overall, Bonkers but brilliant.

Just saw this at RESFEST 10 at the NFT in London and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A man bites off his tongue and, once it has been revived by nuclear waste. it proceeds to bring mayhem and destruction to town. And then ? I'll say no more. My only criticism is that it was perhaps a little too long and could have been more ruthlessly edited. There were sections where the film lost a little impetus. But the animation was good quality, the story original and the visual gags were brilliant. Particular highlights were the cat fishing for squirrels - tremendous playing around with perception and great cunning from the cat - and the taxi journey - winningly peculiar and nonsensical. It was a pleasure to be able to see a film like this, alongside other innovative and/or quirky shorts. I would really like to see some more by this director.

I enjoyed this film in many ways, and it would be hard not to enjoy something so carefully and thoughtfully put together. The camera-work reflects the ramshackle but cheerful nature of the journey, the leads play with good humour and understatement. The characters they meet are deep enough, even though their relationships are fleeting, and i think we are able to believe that this journey changed che. But the whole film suffered terribly from the subtitling (although i concede that the screenplay may also have its faults). I didn't believe in the dialogue, the expressions used and the tenor of their conversations sounded too modern, and the clunkiness of some of the dialogue was gobsmacking: "sometimes you just gotta tell death to go to hell" ? sweet me...

Last night I went to the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank to watch a screening of the digitally restored print of this silent film, accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra, playing music written by Laura Rossi. I was nervous about the application of music to a silent film, as I am about the application of music to any film, but more so. Whilst there can be no doubt about the power of music to augment the impact of a scene, this manipulation of our emotions can also be crass, offensive, or a complete failure. There were times during this film when the music was the perfect partner - the rendering of the wind over the battlefield was incredible and terrifying. But the accompaniment of drum-bursts for the firing of artillery pieces was less-than-impressive. And there were moments when i wished the film would be left to speak for itself, such as the filming of the first charges; some men slid back down the muddy faces of the trenches, one thought initially because they had lost their footing, but it was soon clear that they had been killed before they had even set foot in no-man's land. For me, this moment would have been made powerful by silence, because there are no words or sounds for the sadness and futility of such things. Finally, on the music, the accompaniment of cheerful marching tunes when the lads marched back from "a successful attack", left me with a sour taste, but i think this says more about the film than the music. Laura Rossi could hardly provide sarcastic or barbed rejoinders (in the manner of Kipling or Sassoon's poetry) to these moments of propaganda. This is where the film falls down (but is still fascinating and valuable) in that, for the most part, it is content to talk up the British Army, the power of bombardment, and the success of its attacks. Even the images of dead men and horses are tempered by the smiling faces of 'jolly tommys' and the jaunty, cheery tone of the titles boards. What this unique visual record of the battle needs is to be seen in context, against the terrible losses of battalions such as the Accrington Pals, and the pitiful gains of this style of warfare. I never fail to be impressed, however, by the efforts of the institutions on the South Bank to bring amazing documents like this out of obscurity. Well done to them, and to Laura Rossi for her attempts to soundtrack this one-off film.

What an excellent film ! You could criticise it for a couple of minutes for a vague-at-best sense of direction, but really you should just sit back and soak it all up. Mark Bilyeu makes a wonderful centrepoint for the film: combining gentle humour with deep feeling about his home and his family. He has a lovely voice to boot, and his music, whether solo or as part of Big Smith, is much like the man (and very good). He is backed in the film, as in the band, by his charming, and huge, cousins. What else ? The close-harmony family singing was beautiful and uplifting, and the sense of community and tradition inspiring. All of this soundtracked with music that was by turns haunting, ancient, raucous, comic, patriotic, and deeply religious. This film, taken together with Search for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, which i also saw at the NFT, compered by Jim White himself, has opened my eyes to America, beyond the terrifyingly narrow-minded view that many Europeans hold of the country, and its countryside people. Now I'm going to go out and find a washboard...

Although I have some difficulty with aspects of reviews of this film that I have read (where they posit that Albert has essentially turned the tables fully on all of his tormentors), I cannot disagree with what seems to be the consensus: that this is a film that has been put together with admirable care and dedication (witness the long gestation period from first buying of script to beginning shooting to ending shooting), with great results. Troy Garrity is great as the lead, and Bruce Dern was terrific as mr McNally, and with so little screen time at his disposal. Randy Quaid is good, but has the easiest job, I think. being slimy, with that tan, that jacket and that 'tache, was never going to be too hard. What is best about this film is that the cast is mostly unknown, (or in some cases forgotten about) at least in the UK, which allows you to concentrate on the narrative and the emotions of the piece. This is a natural bonus of being a small, indie film. But it also allows things like the closing shot of the fishermen walking across the snow, which lasts for such a long time. How would you get away with that in the mainstream ? The story is of a small-time con, set in a small town, generally a call for two or three big stars to act as trailer trash and show their comedic skills. Such movies always come off as fake and slightly condescending. None of the same is true here. This film feels honest and tender. Congratulations to all involved and to the NFT for bringing it to these shores.

I think that the only other user to have commented on this film may have missed some of the point. The actions of the characters are not hard to understand. Fausto is a womaniser because he does not take love and its attendant responsibilities seriously. Alberto and Riccardo booze and smoke and hang around because those are the roles designated to some men in adult gangs of this kind. Moraldo sees Fausto's womanising and is torn between loyalty to the camaraderie of the group and to his friend and love for his sister, resulting in him helping Fausto to protect Sandra from the truth.

With regards to the lack of character definition of the characters, I don't think that this should be seen as a problem. Their inability to escape the attraction of a casual life robs them of character and their love of the gang robs them of individuality. The interchangeability of their looks and the swapping of facial hair styles illustrates the dynamics of a gang - shared vocabulary, shared likes and dislikes, playing off each other.

I think that this is a perfect distillation of the aimless lives of adult males, unable to break away from the gang. Whether this is Fellini's best or not, it is a very affecting study of small-town ennui and male relationships.