Give Ridley his dues, he sure stirred up some dust with this film. I have never seen so many great and really well made French videos popping up all over the place to speak on English takes on Napoleon.
My thanks to Émilie Robbe for this wonderful critique of the historicity of Ridley’s film
I don’t blame any one in France being annoyed, irritated, amused or plain gobsmacked at Ridley’s cheek, chutzpah, his finger in the eye devil may care attitude towards historical accuracy – call it whatever you want. Would a French filmmaker wade in with a knife in the belly critique of Churchill…
Ridley takes the cake. Does he care? Not at all. The more noise the better. It’s not that I think Ridley is wrong. He’s a filmmaker, a very good one, and filmmakers, good or not, can do what they like, up to a point, I guess, with history.
I know as a filmmaker I probably would have left the top on the Pyramid. Maybe to be provocative I could have had Napoleon knock the top off the Eiffel Tower (oh that’s right, it wasn’t there then, damn!).
And Napoleon’s last big well-financed campaign, OMG, Russia, what a debacle. My only question is this: why didn’t his maréchaux take the army off him?
Years ago I saw and argued in print with a Hong Kong reviewer, who disparaged the film. And now I see how right I was to defend it!
Great performance by Al Pacino, in a deft screenplay, whose power is masked by the film presenting itself more as entertainment than biting satire – a film that puts the New York legal system to the blade.
These films are not the best perhaps, or even the best 63 films I have seen, though they would be very close to that.
I simply laid them down without prior thought of ordering or listing them in any kind or categorisation of this or that.
The only change was to add Gosford Park by Robert Altman, and to do that I dropped Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! which should not be left out, but I kept Monsoon Wedding which I adored when I first saw it and still do.
So the filmmakers and films are all great and in no way am I listing them in order of best – first to worst. There are no second-best or best here. They are simply all magnificent for all their own reasons and appeared as I remembered them and wrote them down.
Tell me what you think – offer suggestions – i.e. if you wish to.
From the moment in Annie Hall when he led Marshall McLuhan out from behind a film hoarding in a New York cinema I have been a huge fan of Woody Allen. He is America’s best writer director of ensemble urban comedies – truly a unique filmmaker.
“Believe it or not – Joe Strummer actually ran the London marathon in 1983. “I didn’t fuckin’ train. Not once. Just turned up and did it,” Strummer said. His keep-fit regime for success– “Drink 10 pints of beer the night before the race. Ya got that? And don’t run a single step at least 4 weeks before the race.” Got it, Joe…”
Well Selvedge – Believe it or not I ran the London Marathon with him – only I needed a beer so ran on ahead getting to the finishing line and over to Earl’s Court an hour earlier – finishing at 3hrs and 3 minutes.
I didn’t train either … tho’ I did for another one six months earlier
… I heard the Clash were running out of steam and wanted to give some moral support …
… Well partly not true. I didn’t know we were in the same stream of humanity on that given day – tho’ always liked them & their music … London Calling and all that … but then who gives a fuck about me and that … One day I might run the LM again …
Just so I can say Lou Alba died right here on this spot on the road which Joe Strummer ran over too … R.I.P. Joe
As a filmmaker and writer everything I saw and heard in Dark Waters was pitch perfect for me. Is this the point when an already very, very good filmmaker makes something so significant it and he cannot be ignored? On my one viewing I would say definitely yes. So, how did Todd Haynes, and the cast and crew, not receive any Oscar nominations? The answer to that is unfortunately in the film itself.
Mark Ruffalo is exceptional as the initially unsure advocate (should I, shouldn’t I take this case?) the reluctant hero turning crusading lawyer travelling deeper into the lies and cover up world of Du Pont’s immoral practices, as he takes them on in the courts. The journey is long and far from easy.
Based on the New York Times Magazine’s “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare” by Nathaniel Rich, the story is real, the deaths associated with teflon and the poisoned waters from chemical spill run-off are countable, coupled to another important fact—the film narrative is so well managed and un-histrionic in its style and delivery that it makes watching dramatic and very affecting.
The mantra told often to us by lecturers in JD units: ‘a lawyer reads, that’s what a lawyer does’ hit home as I watched the many boxes of incriminating documents and records being wheeled into Mark Ruffalo’s (Rob Bilott’s) law offices.
How was Bilott not removed from his firm? It’s to my relief and all our benefit that he kept his position and kept on fighting the actions. A roomful of long applause for all involved.
I recently saw Stanley Tucci’s 1964 Paris set Final Portrait, with Geoffrey Rush playing the lead, artist, painter Alberto Giacometti.
Not much happens in terms of the old story plot nexus but a lot goes on.
Verdict: Wonderful film, brilliantly observed. Great cast and script. Funny ironic tender sad cruel. Bring on more Stanley. 9/10
I’d give it ten out of ten but no films hit that high for me. Music, painting, literature, yes. Films, no. Too many departments, too many hands on deck for something not to go wrong somewhere.
As Brexit continues morphing out over the coming months, I think we should begin sharing experiences of what it has been like to live in and freely travel around Europe before our rights disappear. That ‘good’ the young of Britain in particular are about to lose. An automatic right to be in and travel inside Europe without a visa, attend universities, work without foreigner status conditions, to learn languages, share in the life as citizens of Europe with equal rights.
What the Europe Union does well is not to look towards obvious economic stimulants as bridges to future social, cultural and economic activity, but looks at the social and cultural stimulants, which when aggregated from individual life-changing experiences multiply in exponential societal ways, not only in and across Europe but across the world. Europe is a civil and cultural force unlike any other.
Here is an early pre-Freedom-of-Movement personal European experience, before freedom of movement was even instituted, giving reason, to my way of thinking, why Europe is so good for societies and individuals worldwide. Does that make me a Europhile? Well, yes, perhaps it does. I don’t see that as bad, quite the opposite and I will explain why.
The Odeon of Herodes Atticus. The ancient Odeon was built by Herod Atticus 161 AD, and is situated at the foot of the rock of the Acropolis with the Parthenon as a backdrop.
The Odeon of Herodes Atticus is an ancient open theatre, one I discovered in 1981 on my first trip to Greece. Vernon Kidd in the New York Times, described a 1981 Athenian summer component in a plethora of Europe-wide festivals, The Athens Festival awaiting travellers…“plays of Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes … presented by the National Theater of Greece, the Amphi-Theater, the Art Theater and Northern Greece State Theater. Tickets: from $1.20 to $6. July 5 to Sept. 25.”As Kidd’s NY times article detailed, Ancient Greek theatre in the ancient Odeon space was only a small part of a Europe-wide extravaganza of arts festivals in the summer of 1981.
So, unaware of any of the above, one late July ’81 evening, I wandered up the road from my Plaka hotel to the Acropolis, this young filmmaker, then a resident of Hong Kong. As darkness gathered, I sat myself on a perimeter wall to take in the dusk scene, facing south I believe, staring down from my spot at the well lit Odeon of Herodes Atticus theatre way down below me. What looked like a rehearsal was going on. Intrigued very quickly by what I was seeing, I returned to the entrance road to the ancient site, that I had initially walked up to on one side, and took another path another way, hiking down the hill to find out what it was I was been watching going on. A poster outside the Odeon announced that the Athens Summer Festival’s was showing The Acharnians by Aristophanes. Had I see a play by Aristophanes before? No.
I returned to my hotel and the next day found a ticket seller in Athens and bought a ticket for the play – prices of the day ranged from $1.20 to $6. I also found a Penguin translation of the play in a bookshop, read it, and no wiser I have to say, set off the following night to see the performance.
The Acharnians was first performed in 426 BC. A strident anti-war play it is credited with being the oldest staged Greek comedy. I didn’t know what to expect because the Penguin translation in English did not make anything very clear. Still, I had seen the rehearsal. That was enough. The play itself would do the rest.
The Odeon theatre is an extraordinary space, but on a hot July summer’s night it is other-worldly, the night air made translucent by light was alive with what looked like tiny floating tips of flowers, rising in the warm air all throughout the amphitheatre. In jeans, t-shirt, sandals surrounded by Greeks many in evening dress I felt a rank outsider. Yet nobody cared about me for good reason. They were there to see a play, a very important play in the ancient Greek canon, as I soon learned.
What truly resonates with me most, forty years later, is how an ancient play, interpreted, performed and directed as it was, was made so relevant to and for a 1981 audience. Filled with dance, mime, mask, and music, George Kounis’ (or is it Kouns?) production literally lifted me off my seat. This was not a stilted play from Ancient Greece, the sort of production I remembered too well from university productions staged in a garden back then. The Penguin translation was swept from my mind.
Dicæopolis, a native of Acharnæ and an ex-soldier, returns disillusioned from the Persian wars, heartsick at the miseries and stupidities of the conflict. Not shy in making his views known, with earthy gestures he rails against his fellow citizens, while a chorus of startled, indignant citizens in white masks, odd hats and fantastic bed square sewn quilt costumes, rush in dance formation from one side of the stage to the other, all this happening in a cacophony of startling music and sound effects, as the chorus remonstrated and argued with him and each other. The audience was in stitches inside minutes. I didn’t understand a word, yet understood everything.
As a writer it is hard to communicate the effect this experience has had on me on that hot 1981 July night. As I later discovered, this was the western world’s most ancient comedy, and the mime, dance, costume, design and performances, had Greeks all around me almost ‘rolling in aisles’. When the played ended and the old director was helped on stage after the performance to a rousing reception – I felt as if theatre itself, not only the ancient Greek concept of ‘spectacle,’ had finally been made clear to me.
photograph by and courtesy of Berthold Werner 2017
Swimanog 