Pocket film reviews 2007

I'M NOT THERE:
It is said that "I'm Not There" is the first fictional treatment of the
life of Bob Dylan that has been approved by the artist. It is not
surprising. It is a long winded exercise in mythmaking - packaging some
incredibly imaginative sequences and performances with long sequences
of great tedium. This is clearly not intended as a literal treatment of
the Dylan life story but as an exploration of the multi-levelled nature
of the man, his elusiveness, his own tendency to obscure and cloud and
offer variable versions of his own biography. (The first volume of his
so-called autobiography did something similar with its absurd razor
sharp recollections of events in Greenwich village 40 years ago -
descriptions of people's facial expressions, of the light on snow etc.
Good writing etc... but unreliable). Well this film plays in the heart
of unreliability - and aspires to reflect this genius through versions
of his life, cutting back and forward in time, but not really reaching
into the present beyond the use of a few relatively recent songs. The
latest Dylan we encounter here is the born-again man. The Neverending
Tour of the past fifteen years is not alluded to. The most powerful
central core of this film is the mid-sixties Dylan, shot in stark black
and white, with Cate Blanchett offers a dynamic performnance as the
electric muse - probably for most Dylan fans the moment of his greatest
achievement. The evocation of this era is offered in a crackling and
sharply scripted series of pssages - though even here a degree of
cliché is included (The Philip Jacobson style BBC cultural pundit is a
cartoon and the cues to "Ballad Of A Thin Man" are so predictable!)
There are plenty of cute references to other films, photography,
quotations etyc - Jonathan Miller's Alice, The Beatles, Dick Lester,
Robert Frank etc. which are fun. ) However this is a film that is
really rather unlikely to reach out beyond those already intrigued by
the whole Dylan phenomenon. As a narrative it is as meandering as his
own "Renaldo And Clara" venture and at times seems genuinely
interminable. The passages featuring the Richard gere version of Dylan
are the weakest - evoking the Big Pink/Band/Back to American roots era
of Dylan after the "motorcycle crash". Some of the lines given to the
"ghosts of Dylan in this film point to that core elusive self that Dylan
protects - particularly when the Sixties electric Dylan starts talking
about the music being "traditional" in a way wholly other than the idea
of folk as popularised in the early sixties. I believe few who pay attention would asrgue with the idea of Dylan as a creative genius. I'm not sure this film offers much illumination on the nature of thast genius.
Again one can quibble with certain details - the sequence where Pete Seeger is seen going for an axe at the Newport folk festival for instance (read White Bicycles by
Joe Boyd to see this as another cloud of myth) but that may not be the
point since the film is layer upon layer of myths and half truths and
rumours. All in all though a long and not especially profound ride.
Listen to the music instead. It could have been an hour longer with no
gain or loss. There is sadly a sort of smug hipper than thou quality
about the whole exercise.

THE VALLEY OF ELAH
"IN €œThe Valley Of Elah€" directed by Paul Haggis is the most impressive and moving film I have seen in a very long time. It is redeems one'€™s faith in the possibility of film’s offer a profound experience - moral, emotionally intense, subtle and unflinching in seeking to discover and present difficult truths. It also includes a performance that is truly magnificent - €“ Tommy Lee Jones as the father of a young solider in Iraq. This is an austere film without sensational violence or overt simplistic moralizing. Instead its story about the fate of a young man returned from Iraq unfolds in a dry but compelling fashion to show how this conflict has wounded the West in unexpected ways – and to finally lay bare the latent brutality at the heart of the male condition. It isn'€™t going to win awards or huge audiences because it is is too uncompromising and its message at once too subtle and too challenging. Haggis who made €œCrash†has moved upwards and onwards with this and though it is not without faults - the use of an Annie Lennox song at the end for instance - €“ its tone is otherwise assured. We see a decent patriotic American have his illusions stripped from him - €“ a rite of passage that can be seen to embody the growing pain of a nation whose hubris is perhaps also disintegrating. Stunning.

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD

This is a terrific film about myth and psychology. It's long (over two hours) and slow, but also posssed of an elegaic beauty for which, terrific credit to the director of photography Roger Deakins who deserves an Oscar for his work. The evocation of an America on the cusp of the modern is superb but at the heart of this is a set of wonderful acting performances by Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck and Sam Shepard. As a stidy of a socipath its superb, and as a dstidy in the disintegration and dissipation of mythic status is has an almost Shakespearian elementalism. Terrific.