An Attempt At Structure - New Year, New Nothing.
Ft. Do The Right Thing, Bowling for Columbine, Soul
Happy New Year! Last time I was
doing one of these I was couped up in my tiny student room in the centre of
London celebrating vaccine news and the fact things looked to be improving.
Currently I am back in my home up north, snowed in, just getting over an
underwhelming Christmas, New Years and Birthday, witnessing an attempted coup
in America, and settling into Britain's third lockdown. It has been a very long
month, full of bad news and miserable revelations and my 2020 attempt at
optimism was really tested during the last few weeks. Something about being
faced with such change, we are out of 2020 and I'm now a year older, yet the
fact nothing feels like it has changed, and life feels a bit 'two steps
forward, one step back' right now' has made it quite difficult. However, that
is a naive and pessimistic perspective, the vaccine is here, and we are in the
home stretch now, I think it is almost like the novelty of lockdown and the
uncertainty of the future has made this step backwards especially difficult. I don’t
know what 2021 is going to look like, I may not be going back to my student accommodation
for some time and the world is in a critical moment of change. There's so much
to digest and think about that you honestly end up getting overwhelmed and
having to take a step back. Coronavirus has been a part of our lives for a year
now, it is so difficult to look back at summer, when things were looking up,
and to not feel utterly defeated right now, without even considering what the
world is going to look like once the majority is vaccinated.
Old habits die hard, evidently,
as I begin one of these posts with a miserable spiel about the state of the
world. I've been feeling drained due to the fact it feels like we are back to
square one, when we are not at all, we are making progress and the world isn’t
as scary as it seems. I think once my studies pick up and things begin to
change, I will (hopefully) look back at this miserable perspective and laugh.
I've missed writing these, but the whirlwind of events over the Christmas
period made it hard to have any motivation at all. There is something therapeutic
about writing something personal, I've always loved having this blog to upload
pieces that weren’t mechanical and were from the heart. I have a lot of hope
right now. I know people who have been vaccinated and I pray that the future
will look bright. Over the last month I have obviously watched a lot of things,
so I've decided to just pick a couple of important first watches and do my
usual little write ups on them.
Do The Right Thing
I am woefully uneducated when
it comes to the work of Spike Lee, he is a director I have humungous respect
for and his perspective on filmmaking is brilliant, but I've never really gone
back and looked through his properly. Whilst staying at some friends, we
watched Do The Right Thing and I obviously absolutely fell in
love. I knew bits and pieces about this film, I knew that it was about race
issues and was Lee's perspective on the issues of the time. But what I didn’t
expect was a film brimming with personality and life, full of refreshing
characters and style bubbling over the edge in each scene. it confronts so many
serious issues but in a way that never sacrifices characters and narrative, Lee
writes a set of people and lets them breathe and brings in the racial politics
as an inevitable piece of these people's lives. And these people are what make
the film, a gorgeous ensemble cast full of passionate performances and
intricate relationships, my favourite being, of course, Giancarlo Esposito in a
very different role to what we expect of him these days. There is so much
humour and energy in each scene, as well as some stylistic elements that feel
earned and incredibly charming, they all combine together to build that final
act which is one of the most effective sequences in film history.
Bowling For Columbine
Talking about Michael Moore is
like walking on eggshells as people seem to violently hate the guy from both
political sides. Personally, I find him to be a fascinatingly inconsistent
person with his heart in the right place (for the most part) and an inescapable
awkward naivety that dampens a lot of his films. Often deemed his most
effective work Bowling For Columbine is a documentary about
the Columbine shootings and gun violence in America as a whole. I had to watch
this for an essay, and I didn’t love it but I appreciated what Moore is trying
to here, I saw someone (admittedly in a Letterboxd review) refer to his films
as 'Fox News for Liberals' which I completely see. He oversimplifies and dramatizes,
often using his humour and style to distract from his lack of political nuance,
however I do agree with the points he is making. I just feel like he makes them
in a way that is not to educate those who disagree, but to appeal to an
audience he already has. He is a fascinating figure and I'm sure everyone has a
very specific take on the guy.
Soul
Evidently, I am a big Pixar
fan, I was the perfect age to grow up on their films and have found them to be
a comforting part of my adult life. I spent some of the first lockdown doing a
big ranking of all the Pixar films and it made that time actually much more manageable.
So, I was extremely excited for their latest release Soul and spent
Christmas Day eagerly waiting to watch it. Thankfully, it was incredible. I was
blown away by this film, Pete Docter is renowned for making some of the best
films Pixar has to offer and once again he brings a story full of heart and gorgeous
ideas. It is a bit more abstract and ambitious with some of its concepts than
something like Inside Out and the films biggest flaw is that
it simply too ambitious for its own good. As a result, when the film commits to
an idea and pulls it off the effect is brilliant, it works completely and there
is one specific scene in this film which tackles such a brave emotional subject
in a complex and rewarding way. Visually it is extraordinary, which is to be
expected for Pixar, but I especially love how much attention is given to the
other worldly aspects. It is an emotional spirit of brilliance, full of ambitious
ideas and beautiful storytelling that really ended this year well.