"That's Not Love, It's a Psychiatric Disorder"

It made a refreshing change to leave my desk at 5.30 on a Friday and arrive at a Leicester Square restaurant (J Sheekey) at 5.45. We had to have an early supper as we were going to the theat-ah--my second play this year! The play in question was The Misanthrope, starring Damian Lewis, Tara FitzGerald and Keira Knightley, the latter having surprised many critics with a less flat-pack performance than usual.

I saw a couple of Molière plays (The Misanthrope and The Miser) thanks to a visiting theatre troupe that came to our school a couple of times to perform. We were given, I believe, a copy of the script with an English translation to help us understand. I get the two plays quite confused, possibly because I saw one of them before I got into French (circa 1998 or whenever it was that I fancied that half-French guy).

It all came back to me fairly swiftly, though, in the first few minutes of tonight's production — a modern (and sometimes post-modern) translation set (mostly) in the present day among the shallow, insipid ranks of celebrity and tabloid culture rather than the 17th century aristocracy. 

I had been warned when booking that my seat and the Bro's would have a "very slight viewing restriction." When we showed up, however, there was a fairly substantial pillar, which meant the far right side of the stage was completely blocked and I had to edge as far to the left of my seat as possible. I had hoped that the empty seats next to me would remain vacant throughout but sadly they were filled a few seconds before the curtain went up.

And so the play. Well, Damian Crimp's script is very sharp, very clever and very, very funny with plenty of self-mockery: the protagonist (played by Damian Lewis) is also a playwright, Alceste, and there are references to Molière, French society and to post-modernism itself. "Are you coming on to me?" asks Ellen, a journalist. "Now that's a question I'd rather was answered by a semiotician," replies John, Alceste's mate.

Damian Lewis and Tara FitzGerald (who plays a bitchy acting teacher) were both great, as were most of the rest of the ensemble. Inevitably, Keira was the weakest link, although she wasn't terrible. She plays a self-absorbed, vain, vapid American actress who swans about the rest of the cast (other actors, agents and hacks) with an air of superiority while toying with Alceste's heart. 

Keira does an OK job but her American accent was a) inconsistent and b) very whiny and high-pitched, so much so that by the end, I'm sure only dogs could hear her. Although, of course, she is playing a silly, flamboyant character, every line she uttered and every movement she made seemed like overkill and as though she was trying way too hard to avoid being described as bland and expressionless. She got a lot of laughs but most of these were really due to the script rather than to her acting.

The strangest scene (again playing heavily on the Molière references) opens with Alceste waking in a dark, candle-lit room to find a large Frenchman in full 17th century garb (wig and all) on top of him. He tells the guy to speak English and fuck off and eventually realises he's not having a dream or stuck in the ante-chamber to hell (nice Sartre reference) but in a hotel suite where a Louis XIV style fancy dress party is about to take place.

In the words of the ever wise and misanthropic Alceste, "People will speak highly of a pile of shit, if they've dressed up and spent fifty quid to see it." This is probably true but thanks to a fantastic script and some great cast members, I'm glad I went, pillar or none.

R but No R

My little winter break in the sun is about to come to an end and while there has been much activity and plenty of relaxation, I don't feel particularly rested. Never mind: fun has been had and the sun even came out yesterday morning and stayed for the weekend.

A Winter Day Trip to Dolceacqua, Italy

After a few pizza fails while visiting my parents in Cannes this week, we realised the only option was to head over the border to Italy. Our destination? The picturesque Medieval village of Dolceacqua.

Brethren

I saw two very different films this weekend, as I like to do, although the relationship between two brothers is important in both. In Brothers, the pair are actual brothers, while in Un prophète, they are more kindred spirits — fellow Arabs, marginalised in a French prison where a powerful Corsican gang of inmates rule the roost.

Despite its cast of Toby Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman, Brothers had the potential to be a really trite emofest: Maguire plays Sam, the elder son, the "good" son, a marine who is married to Grace (Portman). Gyllenhaal, meanwhile, plays Tommy, the black sheep — he is released from prison a few days before Sam returns to Afghanistan and generally gains no respect from anyone in his family, who have long since given up on him. 

Then, Grace finds out that Sam has been killed (or is, at least, missing presumed dead) and is, understandably devastated. Now, the trailer implies that from here on, we will be in cliché city and that Grace and Tommy will fall deeply in love, which will cause big problems when Sam inevitably returns having not been dead at all. Or as Joey in Dawson's Creek puts it (describing either The Last Picture Show, which is, in this episode a relevant plot point, or her own coming between two best friends):

"So, whatever I do, I'm the villain. The girl's always the villain, right? In stories like these she's always some wicked, conniving whore who manipulates her way between two brothers or two best friends."

Luckily, Brothers decides not to go down that route and is a lot more understated and complicated. We also get to see Sam in Afghanistan as he tries to make his way back to safety and the terrible things he has to go through — and to do — that explain why on his return home, he barely seems like the same person any more and while he expresses his anger and guilt by accusing Grace and Tommy of having a relationship, it is clear to us that this is just a defence mechanism. 

As for Grace and Tommy, you can tell in advance when they are going to kiss because they are sitting in front of a candle-lit fireplace and (crucially) there is a U2 track on the radio (Bad) over which they bond (another U2 song, Winter, having already been pimped in the credits). The kiss, though, is almost beside the point and the way Sam's daughters shy away from him on his return and just ask when Uncle Tommy is coming round hurts him more.

And while the family learns that the golden son is not perfect, the black sheep, though not becoming the model son or model brother himself, sure does do a good job renovating Grace's kitchen. The grass, each brother learns, is always greener. There is a nice parallel in Grace and Sam's two young daughters — the older one feels that everyone loves her younger sister better and that she gets all the attention. Despite the efforts of the make-up and wardrobe crews, giving Portman awful blonde highlights and making her wear an unflattering, baggy, light pink roll-neck jumper for much of the film, and despite the fact she is in mourning for a large chunk of the film, she still looks gorgeous.

Also, I finally understand why there is a plug for Carey Mulligan's BAFTA nomination for An Education in the print ad for Brothers (which I had thought was an error): she has a minor role in the latter film, playing the wife of one of Sam's fellow soldiers. With her long, blonde hair and American accent, she was almost unrecognisable after her role of gamina maxima in An Education...

There aren't many women in A Prophet. I can only think of one — Djamila, the wife of the main character Malik's surrogate brother Ryad. Malik is sentenced to six years for an unnamed offence and soon discovers that being an Arab in this particular prison ain't a whole barrel of laughs. He gets beaten up by the Corsican mafia (there is even a minor character called Corleone), who tell him he has to kill another prisoner or they will kill him. Although he then falls under the protection of the head honcho Luciani, he is never accepted into the posse and is usually forced to clear up after the other guys, make them coffee and run errands. On the other hand, his fellow Arab prisoners do not trust him because he is in with the Corsicans.

The Corsican threw me for a moment--as the film was subtitled, it isn't immediately obvious to a non-linguist when the characters switch languages. I'm not an expert in the Corsican language but it sounded a lot like Sardinian, which I do know a little about--Sardinian is one of the most archaic forms of Italian and uses a lot of forms that are much closer to Latin than in the standard language.

As the film progresses (and although it was 2h30 long, it made those minutes count and it certainly didn't drag — not when you have a scene where a carotid artery is pierced so suddenly that a huge jet of projectile blood materialises without any warning, which led to much shrieking among many audience members), Malik works his way up the prison hierarchy but it's only when he makes friends with Ryad that he starts to hope for a new life on the outside. 

Ryad, a cancer survivor, is soon to be released and once he is on the outside, he begins to help Malik out when the latter is allowed "leave" days, thanks to Luciani who wants Malik to carry out various "business" tasks for him. Malik soon sees the difference between his real friendship with Ryad and his fair-weather, bullied relationship with Luciani.

An Empathetic Cinematic Viewing Experience

When you see a movie like The Road, which portrays a world almost completely annihilated by an unexplained yet omnipotent apocalypse-in-residence (or, at least, the east coast of the USA almost completely annihilated by said catastrophe) — a world where it's always raining, always freezing and everything in it is either dead or moribund — you don't just want to watch the characters in their slow, elegiac struggle to reach the coast and even just to survive at all.

No, you want to feel their pain. Perhaps that is why the Nowheresville Cineworld decided to crank up the air conditioning to the "apocalypse" setting (this world ending in ice rather than fire), even though it was barely above freezing outside. I shivered underneath my coat with my scarf wrapped around me and truly empathised with the main characters as they shivered 'neath the old, worn blankets and dirty coats in which they slept. Their gloves looked a lot warmer than mine, however. 

Still, at least everyone in the cinema did at least appear to have showered fairly recently and no one pointed a gun or asked anyone else if they were following her, so perhaps Cineworld hasn't yet gone down the total sensory experience route just yet.

I read Cormac McCarthy's novel, on which the film is based, when I was in hospital last summer. Possibly because of the intravenous drugs I was on and possibly because my right hand was stiff and painful from being attached to a drip for so long that it made it hard to hold books, I had to read the first 50 pages three times before I got to the end. I did end up liking it but it's definitely not my kind of book. For one thing, there wasn't enough action for me (the main characters, a father and son, move maybe a few dozen miles towards the coast and find their lives threatened at various points).

For another, we never learn enough about the characters for me to care too much what happens. They are a father and son, they love each other enormously, they are among a very small number of people to have thus far warded off death mid-apocalypse, and they give each other the hope and motivation to continue in this potentially futile trek. 

The boy's mother died at an earlier stage — we find out what happened but there still isn't enough back story or information for me to engage. None of the characters has a name, either, and as a nymophile (or something that means the same but sounds a little more salubrious), I object to this; I like to know people's names and naming has always been important in my creative writing.

Still, The Road is a good film. The acting is solid, the cinematography is striking if not beautiful, and given that not a lot happens, there was a surprising amount of dramatic tension. However, for me, it's not enough for a film to be composed of a number of good elements — if there isn't good character development and it doesn't have that extra sizzle, I might like it but I will never love it. 

The same is true of the novel: it is beautifully written and very moving, without being overly depressing or maudlin, but although the father and boy's love for each other is portrayed powerfully and movingly, without me really knowing who these people are, I couldn't get hooked. And I realise that this isn't a deficiency of the novel (or the film); just my own preferences.

Beyond the 800-Year-Old Rainbow

My alma mater is having something of a celebration having reached the ripe old age of 800. Actually, it turned 800 last year but apparently with all of last year's fun and games, they must have ran out of time for the grand finale — because sure, there's always so much going on in Cambridge. 

Anyway, the said grand finale turned out to be a little son et lumière show, which I thought sounded a bit lame and which meant I didn't bring my camera into work today. This was a shame because it was actually very pretty and apparently so newsworthy that it even made the London free paper this morning.

Undeterred, I made a little detour to Market Square on my way home this evening, just in time to see Senate House — the very building in which I obtained my BA and my (ah hem) MA only a short time ago — all lit up and with a seriously cool PowerPoint presentation projected onto its walls. Nowheresville as you have never seen it before... There were also some crazy ass bells ringing too, which I suppose counted towards the son part of the entertainment.

I had no time to stop and stare so I just snapped a few iPhone pics by precariously sticking my hand between the bars of the fence around Senate House. Not a bad sight for what may well be my penultimate Monday in Cambridge. Well, until St John's turns 500 next year and if they want me to ever donate money to the college, they had better have a really kick-ass party and they had better invite me.

All That Glisters Is Not a Gold Executive Card

It always surprises me how quickly the Golden Globes come around. One minute it's Christmas and you're stuck in Blockbuster City and the next, you're looking at the nominations for the various categories, which, this year at least, don't seem to correlate very closely with the movies you've seen and loved over the past year.

Before I could make the selections for my favourite in each category, however, I had to go to see Up in the Air, the latest film from Jason "Juno / Thank You for Smoking" Reitman. I often enjoy a bit of Clooney and I'd wanted to see the film when it premièred at LoFiFest but by the time I'd booked all of my tickets to see Clive's performances, Up in the Air was all booked up. Never mind — although it was very entertaining and Le Clooney was very good in his usual charming-but-cynical role, I didn't laugh quite so much as I did during Juno.

Clooney plays a guy who travels 320-odd days per year on business — his business being firing people on behalf of wussy bosses — and who has millions of air miles and every executive club card available but not much in the way of a personal life or indeed a life. His apartment is almost bare — there isn't even a Nespresso machine! 

Le Clooney meets two women, one of whom is a fellow frequent flier he encounters in a bar at a corporate hotel and the other works at his company. In fact, she is a bright young thing who basically wants to start firing people over Skype instead of in person; Clooney objects, mainly because he likes his life of travel rather than because he worries about the effect it would have on the firees. He is charged with training up the Bright Young Thing in the art (or is it a science?) of firing people and they take to the air together.

As the film progresses, thanks to the two women, Clooney starts to see the error of his ways and so it is perhaps a surprise that when someone utters the line, "Your real life? I thought I was part of your real life," it is said to him not by him. Luckily, the ending is rather trite although Clooney is a lot more fun to watch when he's being the regret-free, (emotional and physical) baggage-free cynic than the slightly emo "oh hey, have I wasted a large portion of my life with my crazy attitudes?" guy who surfaces towards the end of the film.

So, onto the Globes. As ever, these aren't my predictions, just my favourites in each category. Hopefully, by the time the Oscars roll around, I will have seen all or almost all of the films in each of the major categories and I will have more to choose from (equally, I hope that the films included come Oscar-time fit more closely with my thoughts on the best films of the past year).

• Best film (drama): Up in the Air (although I would really have categorised it as a comedy — relative to other films I've watched at least) — I've seen four of the nominees
• Best film (comedy/musical): Julie & Julia — I've only seen that and (500) Days of Summer and it was a tough call; neither was outstanding for me
• Best director: Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds) — I've seen four but if I'd seen Clint Eastwood's Invictus yet, I suspect I would have voted for that instead
• Best actor (drama): George Clooney (Up in the Air) — by default as it's the only film I've seen, though I plan to see Invictus, A Single Man and Brothers
• Best actress (drama): Carey Mulligan (An Education) — by default but she was great
• Best actor (comedy/musical): Robert Downey Jr. (Sherlock Holmes) — out of the three I've seen
• Best actress (comedy/musical): Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia) — I've seen Duplicity too but I was too busy looking at Clive to notice Julia Roberts much
• Best supporting actor: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) — by default
• Best supporting actress: Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air) — almost by default
• Best foreign language film: Broken Embraces — but I suspect when I finally see A Prophet, I'll rate that more highly
• Best screenplay: Up in the Air

I don't watch enough TV to pick from the TV categories but suffice to say Mad Men, Jon Hamm and January Jones get my votes.