The Week Our Government Decided Against Feeding Starving Children
I tend to start these pieces with an exasperated sigh and a disgruntled look
back at another week with another pile of anger and cynicism. So, this week 319
Tory MPs voted against a proposed bill to give children free meals because apparently,
they can’t afford to. It is a disgusting act of greed and genuinely one of the
most disturbing displays of the transparency of this government. I don't really
want to dwell on it that much but there's nothing more to say than don't let
these scum get away with it again, I can’t believe it took something this
extreme to make so many people condemn the Conservatives for their greed and
gluttony. I'm a film student who has lived a relatively comfortable life and
often found my way with people who are empathetic and open, but I still never
really understood how you can so easily not be invested in politics. I heard
someone, who was 20, saying that they never paid much attention to politics and
it has never impacted them and I was shocked, I didn’t think it was possible to
so easily play so ignorant to what is happening right now, but people are in
their bubbles as much as I am in my bubbles and perhaps I shouldn’t dismiss so
quickly. I just worry because as the youth of the country it is in our hands to
promote change and drive a new wave of hope, but maybe that's just what I see
in my echo chamber and change isn't just around the corner. It has been a weird
week to say the least, it's hard to really get anything done when the world
around you seems frustrating and aggressive.
I had a first draft of this paragraph that was incredibly down and
incredibly pessimistic but I think my slightly hungover and exhausted brain was
just focusing on by far the littlest most pointless grievances and in the
context of things my week has been wonderful. Online studying is of course
nowhere near the same as in person, it is frustrating, awkward and often feels
like a waste of time but there isn’t anything I can do about this. The last
thing I want this blog to be is just an endless run of me complaining about
things when in reality, I've got it pretty good! It was a week of new exciting
things, I've kind of fully settled into the big city and I am actually loving
my time here, the second I've started properly doing things and finding the
right balance between work and pleasure this will be completely worth it. I
took a wonderful trip to see the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Tate, which was
a moving and at times overwhelming piece of history that I adored. I've made
some wonderful friends and feeling like I can finally feel a bit relaxed, I'm
not great at meeting new people and it's refreshing to just feel comfortable.
In a time where we have a government who couldn’t care less about its people
unless they happen to own Wetherspoons and everyone is always angry at
everyone, it’s refreshing to be able to relax every now and then and just enjoy
something small and insignificant. Anyway! here's what I had to wade my way
through this week:
Ugetsu
For the week focusing on mise-en-scene (the art of decorating the frame) our
professor chose a 1953 Japanese film that was honestly just not my type of
thing. I think about this a lot but when we watch a lot of classical films, I
can't help but separate this idea that I've seen everything this film has done
a thousand times better since. I'm sure at the time it was revolutionary and
overwhelmingly compelling, but 67 years later, I got nothing out of this and
found it to be a wildly inconsistent and messy film that just about lost me
completely. The concept of mise-en-scene is so broad that honestly, we could
have studied anything here and there just wasn’t that much going on to really
sink my teeth into. The plot of a family becoming victims of a terrible war is
one of quite a lot of untapped potential, the issue comes down to film's focus
and the fact it spends so much time wandering down paths away from actually interesting
concepts. The dated attitudes and the highly inconsistent plot makes it a bit
of a chore to sit through, I could appreciate it for how well designed and put
together some elements are but a lot of the time I found myself abrasively
uninterested in the film as a whole.
L'Eclisse
This is another in a repeated pattern of films that I have studied which is
the idea that I appreciated this film more than I actually enjoyed it, there's
a lot of interesting ideas and I really enjoy the perspective of the Italian
Modernist film but it is a slow chore to get through. The story revolves around
a young woman splitting up with her fiancé and meeting a man at the stock
market and slowly falling in awkward inconsistent love. The European ideal of
stories revolving around a 'wandering protagonist' is something I usually love
but the film is once again let down by its pacing and focus, I just kept
wanting to scream at it to move on from an idea that doesn’t really add much. I
like the idea of making a romance about the tension in a new relationship, the
fact the film keeps peeling back layers and confronting the idealist
perspective is something I find fascinating but it does this in a way that is
contrived and often incredibly messy. The film is, and I'm quoting from my
Professor here, "purposefully boring" in order to stimulate the idea
that this couple aren’t meant to be but even when intentional, I found it hard
to really get into what the film was saying because the pacing and characters
are aggressively unlikable. I wish I enjoyed this more and I genuinely think if
you cut it down to 90 minutes, you'd get a really concise and interesting
conversation on romance, instead of an overloaded mess.
Beau Travail
After two films I genuinely lost my mind over, it was brilliant to watch a
film I genuinely love. 'Beau Travail' is a film from beloved director Claire Denis,
and it is wonderful. I've probably described at least one film a week with the
phrase 'quiet and mediative’, but this is certainly a quiet and mediative film
that doesn’t overextend itself and takes pleasure in simplicity. Based on the
life of a cynical and obtuse Officer as he manages this small regiment and his
own personal troubles, the film is an existential beauty, exploring the depths
and dangers of the militaristic life and how it manipulates and breaks the
people within the system. I adored this, Denis is an iconic director who's
famous for films that explore human movement and the beauty of the body, her
style is almost balletic, occasionally operatic yet incredibly subjective and
realised. She studies these people with her camera, embracing every action with
a sense of admiration and understanding, there are set pieces in this film that
completely blew me away with the choreography and camera. I'd strongly recommend
this if you are into quiet and simple films with a lot to say, bear with it and
let it fully take you in.
Everything Else
You'd have thought being a film student who is 30 seconds away from BFI
Southbank wouldn't have waited a month before going but unfortunately I never
worked out anything, until this week when a friend took me to see 'Oldboy'
(2003). A Korean action masterpiece that I absolutely fell in love with, this
film might just be the most fun I've had in the cinema in a long time, there's
something about how over the top yet insanely well done that makes 'Oldboy' an
absolute masterpiece. It is silly, graphic, hilarious, shocking, disturbing and
somehow beautiful without every losing me, I was entranced in the impressive
action and the ridiculously compelling characters and plot. There are twists
and turns that I was completely absorbed by it knows what it wants to be and completely
focuses on being an entertaining and captivating spur of madness and honestly,
I loved every second of it. I'd strongly recommend it and I'm going to
hopefully go through the rest of Park Chan-Wook's work, a concept I am so
excited for. I also finally got around to watching 'Anomalisa', I've been a big
fan of Charlie Kauffman's work for a while, 'Being John Malkovich' it one of my
favourite films of all time but I only recently got into his own directorial
work and over the last few months loved 'Adaptation' and 'Synecdoche New
York'. 'Anomalisa' is a heavy yet beautiful film, a film that is raw and
upsetting yet so surprisingly human and Kauffman's signature absurdist joy is
there but played with an intricate attention to the human constitution. It is
not an easy watch, it's not a film a lot of people will enjoy but was entranced
and exhausted by 'Anomalisa' in every way, it blew me away and left me in quite
a state. Go in knowing nothing, for both 'Anomalisa' and 'Oldboy' and I hope
you fall in love with them as much as I did.
And that just about does it! Another week of shouting at the government from
my laptop and crying over sad films from my laptop. Thanks for sticking with
me, thanks for reading and go shout at the nearest Tory MP. See you next
week!