Somebody has to steady that ladder you're climbing: On 'Brave' and 'La Luna'

I’ve long been of the opinion that a good film, much like a good story or a good song, should keep its audience hooked right until the very end. I once, for instance, became pretty pissed with my two brothers when they started joking around near the close of Gladiator. If anything, this attitude has only strengthened since I began to take my own writing seriously, as a potential livelihood. The feeling being, in that case, that I would very much like for a given reader to pay full attention to my work throughout its entire course, and to feel rewarded in some way at the end of that experience. Therefore, it would be hypocritical, not to mention a little rude, for me not to pay full attention to the work of other artists.

So, I didn’t exactly anticipate spending the last ten minutes of Brave only part-watching. Part looking up from my nearly front-row seat [got there late], and part looking down at my notepad, sketching out ideas for what has turned out to be this article.

It isn’t that I was bored, though, or that I was so disappointed in the film that I felt the need to jot down my negative responses before it had even ground to a halt. On the contrary, I was entertained throughout. And I did follow the ending, even whilst I was writing. I still wanted to see how it all tied together. It was good, charming, and put a smile on my face.

But it is the fact that I could be so sure of exactly what was going on even when I wasn’t looking up that leads me into the point of this piece.

I don’t intend that to sound like too harsh a criticism. After all, if I were to take that tone, to lambast Brave for being ‘too predictable’, then I would be met with an all-too-obvious and all-too-deserved reposte – that being that it is principally a kids’ film. It’s not attempting to be Inception. It is a film with a clear point – a moral, even – that it wants to convey, and it would have scuppered that point entirely had the ending been different.

It is no sin for a film to seek simply to tell its tale and entertain, forsaking any major surprises. It is certainly far better to do that, and do it as well as Brave does, than it is to shoehorn ridiculous and implausible twists into a storyline and bugger it up.

On the other hand, if a film sets out to communicate a message, then, once that message is clear, it doesn’t perhaps require the viewer’s full attention. Brave laid its cards on the table well before the end, and, as such, the first half of the film was more entertaining, and arguably more essential watching. Its joys lie in its sharp, fairly fresh takes on old character types, and in the animation, art design, and soundtrack. Which combine to give the film a sense of both spectacle and intimacy. The balance between the showier scenes and the more introspective moments is well-struck. In addition, there are good laughs to be had throughout.

The second half, surprises more or less revealed, is more obviously formulaic, and, whilst entertaining, never really leaves its conclusion in doubt (unlike the far more daring and exceptional Toy Story 3).

But that’s OK.

Because Pixar made up for that before the main feature even started.

La Luna, another in their growing line of justly-celebrated short films, is a genuine gem. Delightful, on both a visual and thematic level, it is perhaps only retrospectively that its true brilliance – and the way in which that brilliance is augmented through its pairing with Brave – can be understood. [Which explains, hopefully, why it took me nearly the full length of the longer film to write anything down about the shorter one.]

When it becomes clear that the two films share the same basic intent/moral, the difference between the two forms (short and feature films), and the relative merits of each, are thrown into bright and rather wonderful relief.

That moral is, simply, that the younger generation should first pay attention to, respect, and learn from the previous generation, before they can successfully strike out on their own. It is a timeless, and perhaps rather obvious, even trite message. But it is one that both films seem convinced of.

However, whereas Brave makes this clear well before the credits, La Luna – constructed, as is common for Pixar’s standalone shorts, almost in the form of a single-reel silent movie, only with gestures and grunts instead of title cards serving as stand-ins for speech – manages to keep its theme subtly present throughout, and then still enchant and surprise with its conclusive, summative shot. The notion that the best results are only achieved through working together and learning from others certainly sounds trite when worded like that, but is conveyed in La Luna with a cinematic eloquence that circumvents the cynicism some viewers might otherwise feel.

Indeed, just as there are many writers who believe that the short story is the best and most direct form of prose fiction, there is certainly an argument to be made for short films doing the same thing within the context of cinematic fiction. In such shorts, there is no need, nor any room, for the tiresome exposition/statements by protagonists about the things they’ve learnt, which, understandably, grate with some viewers. Neither is there space for nonsensical subplots, which plague so many longer films (though not, it should be noted, Brave) and come across simply as filler.

Following this, there is a further argument to be made for more studios to throw money at short films and release them not simply for free on YouTube, but as valued works in their own right (albeit probably not at the cinema). This would be, in some ways, similar to the shift the music industry saw, as regards the focus being placed more on the downloading of individual songs rather than the purchasing of whole albums, with the corollary being that many albums ceased to display concern with functioning as cohesive entities, content instead to exist as collections of singles.

There are, of course, film-makers doing this already, and there are also kinks in this approach which probably mean it is not ‘commercially viable’ on any grand scale, at least not on its own. There’s no need for it to be, though. The argument is simply for more credence and consideration to be given to short films, not for them to supplant full-length feautures. There are things short fiction is better equipped to handle than longer variants, is all. Things it can tackle more immediately, and more effectively. Moral tales are a great example of this, as suggested by the longevity of Aesop’s Fables, amongst other works. Moreover, short forms that don't rely upon dialogue often allow the viewer to reach the story's moral/revelation in their own way, in their own words. It becomes something for the audience to discover, rather than something they must be told/have lectured to them.

On the other hand, longer-form fiction can deliver such lectures. It allows for a much more in-depth, and therefore theoretically more roundly satisfying, consideration of its chosen themes. It can also give the audience more of a good thing. If all that existed of, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark was the opening scene, it would make for a fantastic short film, and would still give a good sense of the character. However, at full length, it becomes a masterclass in adventure storytelling, and cinematic entertainment in general.

Yet, there is no need for film-makers to choose one form at the expense and exclusion of the other, as Pixar continue to prove. Indeed, perhaps it is even better if a way can be found, as the studio has with La Luna and Brave to link the forms together in some way. A great single can, after all, be improved even further through inclusion on an album of other, likeminded songs.

A more useful way, beyond this music-selling metaphor, to consider what Pixar have done here might be to look at both the short film and the main feature as being parts of an essay on the same ideas, the same central theme. The short film is the abstract – it introduces the issue, in an attention-grabbing fashion, and at least hints at what the essay’s overall conclusion will be. It’s not strictly necessary to read on to guess with some accuracy what the rest of the essay will argue, but if the abstract has done its job right, you will.

The main feature is the essay’s body – it provides examples which interrogate and demonstrate the underlying argument. These examples should, where possible, be original, entertaining, and above all else interesting. If that part of the essay has done its job right (as Brave did), then you’ll probably have reached the full conclusion before you actually read it.

As I did, enabling me to start off on this ramble in the first place.

Only, there’s one more crucial detail that I might have missed, had I still been writing at the time, and not heading for the door. A dedication to Steve Jobs. Something which was, I guess, to be expected at the end of the first original Pixar film to be made after his death, but which also suggests that Brave had to be that film. And that it had to be coupled with La Luna.

Whatever your opinion of Jobs on either a personal or professional level (or of Apple and its assorted products), it is inarguable that Pixar would not be where they are today without his early input. These two films serve as an acknowledgment and show of thanks for that, even as they demonstrate just how far the company aspires to move forwards without that input.

I’ll admit, though, that it did take the onscreen dedication to actually make me reflect upon that, and thereby to deepen a little further my appreciation of both films. Which shows that it really does pay to watch a good film all the way through to the finish. And, in Pixar’s case, that it pays to make people want to do so, whether they end up writing in notepads at the same time or not.     

The Rum Diary: Shooting the hangover, selling the binge

(Caution: Contains mild spoilers.)

It has a rickety, sweet kind of jazz, this film. Sometimes the timing’s off. Sometimes it’s on. At all times, though, it has some kind of beat running through it. Whether it’s provided by cars or cockerels or clattering keys, it always has some kind of beat.

Now, straight away, it’s important to acknowledge that this isn’t always the kind of beat you can dance to. But it’s equally important to accept that this is a film where it’s not always meant to be. It is a film swayed by the rhythms of the lifestyles and living standards of the characters on screen, not one that tries at all times to impose a contradictory melody over the top of all that. As such, it is grubby in places, and dull. And frustrating. There is the sense on occasion that people are grasping too fervently for the right word, and from there to give their chosen words meaning.

Yet, when they succeed in that, which happens far more frequently than not, the film finds a tenderness and, yes, a truth that marks it out from others you may have seen about similar situations.

A few of these truths are ones that might be considered universal – the comments on the spread of big business, on the doings of bastards worldwide, both then (1960) and now.

Some, however, are more specific, and arguably targeted at a slimmer portion of the audience. The portion that are primarily wanting to see the type of film that some advance rumours have promised them, a film about the evolution of a writer, and about the finding of one’s own voice. Now, there are some – many perhaps – who might mock that notion for being simplistic, or otherwise just daft and out of touch with how the adult world works. After all, it’s the sort of notion that turns up in kids’ films isn’t it, like in The Little Mermaid or Shrek, this idea of finding and embracing your true identity?

It’s that kind of argument, though, which suggests that the biggest problem for emerging artists in any field is not that everyone’s a critic, but that everyone’s a cynic. Ideas like ‘truth’, in the romantic, Bohemian sense, have, in some circles, come to seem so pat, so banal, that it appears a large portion of the audience for any fiction, written or filmed, no longer expects or demands it. I grant you that the counter-argument about more and more film-goers being interested purely in big-budget special effects, big breasts, and big bastard robots instead of feel and mood and character has long since become trite itself, and yet it daily requires more and more effort to see beyond that argument. Once word has gotten around about The Rum Diary being slow and moody, and about the way that people talk and want to write about their anger instead of just smashing stuff up – as it has begun to – it won’t do as well at the box office as other films that are not the same way. Which means it will not be seen by as many people.

Which is a hellish shame.

Not because The Rum Diary is the funniest film since Withnail & I, or even the best film based on a Hunter S. Thompson book, because it isn’t, on either count (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas still retains that honour). Rather, this is because it knows a feeling – a clutch of feelings – and it runs with them and gets inside them and, if you’re willing to give it your attention, makes those feelings come alive. It contains a lot of talk about ideas, and is more incisive and original in its judgements on some than on others, but, in this way, it displays an understanding of the way in which sometimes talk and words are what comprise a given person’s way of passing through the world.

To this end, it doesn’t shy away from scenes of sitting at a typewriter, or from lengthy conversations, but then, neither does it shy away from voiceless things, and from putting on clear display those times when words are inadequate or even just plain bloody useless. At all times, however, this film gives those words, and that way of expressing and receiving ideas a deep and full respect.

And perhaps the importance of that kind of thing is overlooked in the current cinematic climate, is dismissed as being naïve, or ‘idealistic’. But here is a film that is unafraid to step up and say that it needs to be looked into again, and which has the capacity, one would hope, to make certain viewers remember how to try to be that way themselves. Indeed, at its heart is a bravely existential quest, which, if considered in a different way, may well seem utterly ludicrous, but which when looked at through the eyes of the protagonists (especially Depp’s character, Paul Kemp), has real meaning. This is a film that follows its characters in pursuit of something that actually, utterly matters to them, and wants to make it matter to its audience in turn.

This is, however, not something that comes across very well in the advertising for the film, displaying very clearly (if inadvertently) the duality and conflict at the film’s core. The trailer and the posters suggest that it is much more concerned with the greasy glamour of this early part of the Hunter S. Thompson myth. That it is a shiny, wasted-looking roadtrip through the main streets of some exotic clime (Puerto Rico, in this case), with occasional stop-offs indoors to drink. That The Rum Diary is a jumped-up fantasy of the Gonzo lifestyle, in the same way that Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing is. Those that go into the film expecting that will probably be disappointed, and may well have overlooked the deeper themes running through both films, failing to understood that Fear and Loathing… could only have turned out how it did after Hunter had been through the 60’s, and that, at the end of the 50’s, he was in a very different situation. As was America.

Bearing that in mind, Bruce Robinson makes the right decision early on in the film to get on board with that early Hunter, and the preoccupations of that time, rather than trying to shoehorn more mayhem into places it doesn’t necessarily fit. And it is when he makes that decision that the film truly becomes interesting, and sets itself apart from the pack, as it were.

It is, in light of the earlier discussion of cynicism as regards Kemp’s desire to find his voice as a writer, perhaps entirely fitting that this moment should involve a mermaid. Or, at least what seems to be a mermaid at first. In fact, the seeming-apparition that emerges from the water next to the pedello Kemp has taken out for an evening drift is a young woman named Chenault; a beautiful young woman who immediately captivates the writer, and seems to symbolise all the glamour of the new American rich swarming into Puerto Rico. At this point, it appears that expectations of this film becoming a gloriously diverting romantic adventure are about to be realised, with Depp doing one of his sublime double-takes as the lady swims away, hinting that more such shenanigans are to come. And yet, the line he utters at that point is a far more accurate, and surprisingly subtle, indication of things to come: ‘Oh God, why did she have to happen? Just when I was doing so well without her.’

This is a film that, rather than being constructed à la the trailer purely to fulfil some tropical caper quotient, is very much of the opinion that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Plotwise, it could almost be accused of being composed solely of red herrings, and of having a cop-out ending – if, that is, it weren’t so defiantly focused more on the life and less so on the plans. This teased romantic subplot does indeed lead somewhere, but not perhaps the somewhere one might expect, and it doesn’t come to dominate the film in the way that other events do. And this is simply because these other events/personages just get in the way. Indeed, Depp’s question is one that his character could well ask about most events in the film. Particularly the arrival and insistent reappearances of Moberg.

Ah, Moberg… The closest link this film has to Robinson’s masterpiece Withnail & I, and also, arguably, its closest link to Fear and Loathing…, Moberg is a riot in man’s (unwashed) clothing. A booze junkie who regularly consumes ‘470 proof’ alcohol and has a collection of old Hitler speeches on record. As well as an SS hat, lurking about somewhere amongst his belongings. He is also, on that evidence, another piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit in with the holiday hi-jinks vibe suggested by the trailers (which probably explains why he doesn’t really turn up in them too much), though he is crucial to Robinson’s take on the issues and events involved. Rather than attempting at all times to glory in the brilliance of Kemp (and, therein, the brilliance of Hunter S.), he approaches the figure in much the same way that Thompson did himself, from time to time; with an iconoclastic, unsympathetic, but still drearily affectionate eye (the ending of Thompson’s essay, ‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved’ comes to mind).

There is a lot of misery here, and confusion, and even a touch of self-loathing. Perhaps too much for the film to be fully uplifting at the end. It is, after all, scathingly cynical in its own way. Hunter’s brand of cynicism, however, (and, clearly, Robinson’s) is one born from anger and frequently channelled into an attempt to rectify a situation, or at least to confront a problem head-on, even if this is only through some kind of art. The downer periods are necessary, are essential for this approach to be fully understood – it is hope in spite of, and because of, hopelessness. Pissing in the wind, perhaps, but always keeping focused on where you want to aim.

A tricky business, we can all agree.

Certainly, it is a tough ask to persist with that approach, both in life and art. To wear at all times not rose-tinted spectacles, but dark glasses so as the daytime world outside doesn’t hurt your eyes/your head too much, even as you refuse to stop looking at it. As such, the film is prone to maudlin moments, to periods of quiet, unsettling reflection. All of which are in keeping with the situation Kemp is in, and which are important to the story’s progression. Moreover, for those who may be/have been in similar situations, this is (as it ever is, when you discover one of your idols was once in a similar pedello to that in which you’re currently adrift) curiously cathartic. The few scenes in which mention is made of his former (more romantic) aspirations of being a straight up novelist are handled with a kindness and an understanding that is refreshing and all too rare – even within the world of the film, writing like that is viewed either as a waste of time (by Kemp’s boss, Lotterman), or as a means to exploit and manipulate others out of their cash (by the property magnate, Sanderson).

But then, the whole film is a dialogue between ‘artistic integrity’ and ‘commercialism’. At the edges of the narrative, at all times there is the notion that whatever scraps of paradise Puerto Rico at that time may have held, they are crumbling, in as much a state of disrepair as the American-run newspaper that Kemp finds himself producing shonky horoscopes for. Furthermore, it is increasingly evident that those spaces are being taken over by banks, by business interests, about to be filled up with hotels like a Monopoly board; indeed, that, as with a monopoly board, those hotels are going to dominate income, and result in those that don’t have them going very swiftly skint. Here again, the film could be accused of naivety, of a kind of simplicity in its outlook and its politics, and, worse still, of being hypocritical – it is, after all a big business venture itself, to a degree; a Hollywood product, with arguably the biggest male star in the world as its marquee name – and yet in its freewheeling attitude to narrative, and in the way in which it is frequently more attentive to the hangover than the binge (from the opening scene of a particularly ruinous morning after onwards), it remains stridently faithful to its low-down, grubby, truth-seeking ideals. It plays the game just enough to give itself chance to have its core ideas heard.

Indeed, when the time comes to choose between the potentially-limitless glamour of the nouveau riche island life, and the potentially-limitless (judging by Moberg, at least) squalor of a life of investigative journalism/writing, Robinson makes the same choice as Kemp does. His film demonstrates a familiarity and fascination with both sides of the coin, but is only ever really hoping for it to land on tails when it finally falls. And this is the right choice for the material. As Withnail & I demonstrated, Robinson has an affinity for those who may not always meet their own high expectations, moral or otherwise, and, moreover, refuses to abandon them unacknowledged to their plight. As a director (and writer), he seems fully willing to follow such characters doggedly, wherever they might be headed, and, in that respect as well as others, the ending that the film reaches is entirely fitting. It is not ambiguous in the sense of it being a cliffhanger, but, rather, it presents a picture of a man figuratively at the bottom of a cliff, intent on beginning another long climb.

Still, it isn’t a particularly glorious, celebratory ending, and certainly not in keeping with the way in which most other recent films or TV series (such as State of Play or The Wire) have tackled the subject of investigative journalism. In failing to deliver a showdown between the two conflicting parties, it does somewhat go against accepted cinematic conventions on such matters. It would be more than understandable to find that a large portion of the audience consider it a cop-out. After all, final reel showdowns can still be phenomenally entertaining occurrences (most recently, those in Drive and The Ides of March have thrilled me immensely), and so the absence of one here (between the human players, at least) can be seen as another reason for any potential commercial failure on the film’s part.

And that is, as I mentioned earlier, a problem, in so far as it will probably stop as many people as should see it from seeing it – at least until it is released for home viewing. But, from an ideological standpoint, it is an honest move. To have the business dealings and the intimations of corruption overcome by something as seemingly trifling as petty jealousy is a left turn, but one that, amidst the feel and sensibilities of The Rum Diary, feels right. That it gives far more time to the little foibles and shenanigans of the underdogs than to those of the ‘bastards’ is admirable, and, in the manner in which it does it, rare. There is genuine and surprising warmth to the minute-long scene in which Kemp breaks free from watching a cockfight and stumbles across a beautifully bedraggled little alleyway, taking pictures of people and the burnt-out carcasses of cars. It is a note thrown in but not dwelled on, an improvisational tweak that adds to the film’s developing mood rather than detracting from it. That warmth, again unexpected, is there at the end of one car racing scene (teased in the trailer as being something a little different to how it actually is). Whilst the film comes to seem, in terms of most environs selected in the latter half of the film, almost anti the standardised escapist drama it could have been, it does hold an escapist sensibility all its own.

If things are going to go wrong, and if the bastards are always going to find a way to grind you down, then, this film suggests, you must always try and make the most of the moments before they do. A wonderful example of this, and a rare point at which standard cinematic escapist tropes and The Rum Diary’s escapism overlap, occurs in the final third of the film, and serves as the culmination of the romantic arc. Sitting in the scummy apartment that Kemp shares with his photographer Sala, Kemp and Chenault share a moment of clarity, staring deep into each other’s eyes, as gentle piano music rises. Cut to Kemp behind a shower curtain, and Chenault’s hand reaching out to pull that curtain back, stepping, still-clothed, into the spray. Sharing a kiss. Cut to the bed, and the beginnings of a tender, soft-focus love scene –

Cut to one of Moberg’s Hitler recordings blaring out from the other room. Cut to Kemp, cock-blocked and flustered, walking into the other room to discover Moberg sitting in a chair by the window, wearing his SS hat.

Harsh. But it is precisely Moberg’s classless act of cockblocking that provides a perfect summation of Robinson’s approach. There are several moments throughout the film when he presents the viewer with the tantalising hint that this may become another glossy travelogue romance, bathed in sun and soaked in ocean breakers. But, each time, he undercuts these moments, or, rather, just cuts into them, going for some below-the-surface thing. Or, quite often, has some bastard (either a purposeful one, or an accidental one, such as Moberg) enter from stage left and undercut them from within. Indeed, by the time that the latter turns up in his SS hat, it is firmly assured that nobody will be mistaking anyone else for a mermaid anymore.

This, perhaps more than any other point in the film, explains why its commercial prospects, despite Depp’s star power, are less-than-rosy. It is one of those brave (even if not entirely successful) films that attempts to mobilise the audience’s mind to considering concepts that might otherwise go overlooked in such a movie, to wake the audience up from the dream, as it were – the one thing that the film’s arch-capitalist advises Kemp that one should never do. In that way, it is a truly, if subtly, subversive piece of entertainment. It praises Hunter S. Thompson, but it praises the reasons and approach that underpins the mythology of the man, rather than relying solely upon the surface tenets of that mythology. It doesn’t give the people what they might think they want – boozy wreckage everywhere – and, therefore, doesn’t really give them what they may have been tempted to pay for. What it does provide, however, is (to paraphrase and re-appropriate the Oscar Wilde adage that Kemp quotes about midway through) a sense of the value of things, rather than simply the price. Of the value of thinking hard about your dreams before chasing them, rather than simply buying into somebody else’s just because you saw it advertised somewhere. Of the value of carefully chosen thoughts and words over indiscriminate action. Of not simply being passively cynical and allowing various heinous exploitations to continue, but of at least trying to channel that cynicism into rage and from there into some degree of change.

This is, of course, a very grandiose aim, and, at times, it is an idea above the film’s station, but the ebullient contrarianism of the piece has an undeniable charm and zing. It is a film in which things that you want to happen don’t, things that you don’t want to happen do (often, but not always, because of bastards), and which suggests that the best you can usually manage in the aftermath is to write something honest about the way you feel, hoping that the right people get to read it.

The big screen of cinema, with its still-inherent promise of fantasy and escapism, is a tricky medium for such a message, told in such an at-times spare and moody tone as this; as some commentators have suggested, it may well be better suited for the smaller screen, and for repeated watching at home. However, if a viewer is willing to accept that with The Rum Diary, as with life, sometimes the timing is going to be on and at other times off, and is willing to sit still through the parts that aren’t made to be danced to, then it’s likely they’ll not only enjoy it, but truly appreciate what it is trying to do.

Because, after all, it really does have a rickety, sweet kind of jazz.

Slow Dancing in a Darkened Room

'Slow dancing' may very well be may favourite term. It is almost certainly my favourite way to go about most things that I do. Even, and perhaps especially, when my mind is moving fast. It conjures up an image, a sensation, an ethos that is at once both deeply balletic and classical, and yet simultaneously lustful and anticipatory of anything going under the broad and oft-salacious heading of 'ACTION'. It implies grace and, with it, a longing to be yet more graceful still. It indicates a full and yet forever inconsecratable desire to turn to volume down on everything in life that doesn't move you, to dim the colours of the things in life that cause something deep inside of you to pulse and rage with bitter, aimless anger - to turn that volume down and dim those colours forever. It is a warmly isolated, tender state, un-intruded upon by shameful/shameless political machinations, by money-grabbing, money-hoarding, money-loving, by the (mostly metaphorical) whoring out of souls that are not yet well-rounded enough to be enjoyed by anyone, to be appreciated as having a worth that is above all that whoring, and so are instead mocked endlessly, jeered on and cheered on into their messy, celebrated end - hounded into that hallowed place that is the Z-list. It elicits in participants a utopian glee, seducing them with the notion that there is a calm situation, a completely chilled-out space, in which they may exist (alongside company of their own inscrutable choosing). That human nature has a zenith, a peak, and that 'slow dancing', in whatever form, may very well be it. The nadirs of that same nature just peel away like last-year's snakeskin, to crinkle in the dust.

But those nadirs do remain. They have to. There has to be a bleakness out there for the art of 'slow dancing' to become and remain what it is. It is only, some may very convincingly argue, possible to truly enjoy a moment of pure peace if you accept that peace with the knowledge that, at some point or another, it is going to slide down again into some kind of pit. You have to take the rough with the smooth, as they say, in order for either notion to have meaning.

And so I find myself thinking of slow motion tonight, late as it is and sober as I am, and, in particular, of the way that some directors use it as a means of coming to terms with that duality, with that price that must be paid for beauty. And by 'in particular' I mostly mean Sam Peckinpah.

Now, it cinematic terms, I mostly grew up avoiding anything that looked old - either in a black and white sense, or a 60's/70's faded-denim-type film colouring sense (bizarre to those who know, as those are the very things I love most often in films now). Peckinpah was unheard of and unsought after. I wanted action (though a different kind, in many senses, to that alluded to above), and plenty of it. Of course I did. I was a boy growing up into my teenage years at the arse-end of the 90's and action films were where it was at. Well, that or watching copies of 18-rated 'gross-out comedies' that some schoolfriend or other had acquired. But that wasn't really my bag. Not enough shit getting blown up. Not enough heavily-muscled Austrians looking for invisible aliens amongst the rainforest mist (I do not mean to suggest, however, at this point that my tastes in action were always so refined as Predator. No, sir. I would watch any old shit if the TV guide listed it as an 'action thriller' or, less frequently, and 'action comedy'. Even Steven Seagal films that weren't Under Siege or the somehow terribly entertaining one with Michael Caine in it (I watched Hard to Kill once, and could not believe how little actually happened in the first 45 mins, or how deftly and impressively the director managed to keep me watching the remainder of that steaming heap unfold (Still, that itself was a more impressive effort than the two Dolph Lundgren efforts I actually properly had a go at watching (Masters of the Universe doesn't count, because that was a He-Man film, and therefore not an original Lundgren property.) Silent Trigger, which, aside from including Gina Bellman who would later go out to be both hot and hilarious in Coupling, had little to recommend it; and Red Scorpion, which, to the best of my recollection, included a couple of gun battles lasting a sum total of 5 mins (in a film of about 2 hours), and lots of shots of Dolph running around in the desert pretending to be a Russian commando gone AWOL (or some such shit).). As well as many a film containing the vast repository of charisma that is Marc Dacascos (in fairness, Sanctuary was not half bad). So, please, feel free to assume the worst about my tastes at that time. Or now, for that matter, if you count Dolph and Seagal amongst your action-movie idols.). (I honestly have no idea if I have the correct number of brackets or full-stops in there, but I'm tired, so I'll skip the edit.)

I wanted action, and so the discovery of John Woo was a revelation. I distinctly recall that Hard Target, with none other than Jean-Claude Van Damme, was the first of his films that I saw, and I recall equally well being blown away by it. Sure, I know now that it's not as original as it seems, but that's one of the joys/drawbacks of growing up - the constant evolution of your knowledge as regards the limits of the known universe. When I was 14 (or so), Hard Target was the dog's bollocks (as they say, and I haven't said myself for years). Partly because I was still riding high on the buzz of seeing JCVD kick down a tree in Kickboxer, and I was willing to watch him in anything at the time, but also because John Woo just made everything look so cool! Everything that wasn't nailed down had a chance of being blown the fuck up, or crashed through by a speeding car or motorbike or motorboat or Belgian. And if something extra cool happened, you could be sure that some part of it was going to happen in slow-motion. Including, and particularly, a bad guy getting roundhouse-kicked in the face by the 'Muscles from Brussels'.

Action. Movie. Gold.

But both Kickboxer and Hard Target were showing on TV tonight, and I watched neither. I made no effort to watch either.

Perhaps that has to do with Face/Off. Probably the second John Woo film I watched. Oh, I loved it at the time, impractical science and glorious scenery-chewing and all. But the last time I watched it, I dunno... the bottom had kind of fallen out, and I couldn't quite say why. Maybe I was just too grown-up and cultured for that kind of thing (stop sniggering at the back!). Perhaps I'd simply seen it too many times to be surprised by it any more. Don't get me wrong, it still did what it was supposed to do, more or less, but that was no longer enough. Not even the slow-motion shoot-outs could save it.

Because I was starting to suspect that sometimes Woo was throwing them in just because he felt he had to. To appease the people in his audience like the teenaged me who'd demanded and expected that sort of thing from him. I can't say for sure this is how he felt, but that's not important. It's how I felt on recent reflection. I'd seen, a few years prior, The Killer, one of his early masterpieces, with Chow-Yun Fat, and the slow-motion seemed honest in that, and there was a sense that he was using it for a reason. The gulf between sensations emitted by the post-midnight watching of that film, and the whatever-time re-watching of Face-Off was nearly immeasurable. And it wasn't until I became more acquainted with Peckinpah, and with what slow-motion meant to him, that I was able to put my finger on what exactly was at the root of that gulf, was at the base of that chasm, chiselling it further apart.

The problem is, to me, that, whilst misery is the starting point for the action, it gets lost too often beneath an enjoyment of that action for action's sake. As a viewer, you are drawn to the madness of Travolta's performance in particular, and to the batshit sight of Cage trying to play straight opposite him but all the time waiting for his opportunity to get in on the fun. Slow-motion is there just because it can be. It looks cool, so it might as well be.

There just isn't a real reason for it, is all.

It was Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia that what made me understand just what was missing. What lesser directors than both Peckinpah and Woo cannibalised from both of their works and whirled through the machine until even Woo couldn't give it much meaning any more. In that film, Peckinpah winds everything up brilliantly for the first half. Real alarm clock tension stuff. And then in the second half, after a rather pivotal event which I will not divulge here, he lets that tension slide. And the slow-motion comes out, and he makes sure it captures not the zenith of human nature, but the nadir. He uses slow motion to invert the timeless idyll, and to show the horror of what happens when the seclusion of that slowed-down peace is invaded. To suggest a world that is so envious of such peace that it seeks to crush it out before it can be fully enjoyed for any proper length of time at all.

One scene in particular, which has been copied, consciously or not, in a great many films since (and is, to some degree a copy of a shot from an earlier Peckinpah film, The Wild Bunch), conveys this inversion, and indeed perversion, of an ideal better than most others in the film. It involves a shoot-out between two parties, one on either side of a dusty Mexican road, and the kernel of that sequence is simply a long-held slow-motion shot (interrupted a couple of times by cuts to what's happening across that road) of a man firing a sub-machine gun. In now-clichéd fashion, cartridge cases tumble down into the dirt, clinking, bouncing, scattering asunder; muzzle flare sits at the end of the gun like a kind of tropical flower, twirling, blowing in the wind. And then that man is killed, his trigger-finger remaining squeezed upon the trigger and he keeps firing. All in slow-motion, as hideous as it is mesmeric. The peaceful moment ruined and pockmarked with holes. (It would also be useful to make reference at this point to the late Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde here as well, which uses slow-motion for a similar effect.)

In what I was going to try and make my first book (but am saving for a later date, when I can make it slightly more better and whatnot), I have the main character making this observation:

Slow things are what people secretly want to be. What I want to be. When they found slow motion and put it in films it was like watching a second stretched out to a minute’s length. Some people say that movie stars will live forever once they’ve been up on the screen, that once their name has been in lights then they’ll be in lights forever, but if someone is on the big screen in slow motion then surely they’ll live even longer. Death scenes happen in slow motion because it is postponement, and if the rest of the time were like that, death would just be pushed further away. Love scenes happen in slow motion because love should be outside of time, because love should be made a new eternity with each breath, because sometimes slow motion makes the people look good.

And I thought that was appropriate to this discussion/ramble, and so went right ahead and jammed it in. Whilst the part about 'death scenes' in this passage seems to be making a slightly different point about their usage, it isn't really. It isn't as full of a consideration of all facets of the deployment of slow-motion in such cases, of course, but it does touch on the fact that directors such as Peckinpah used the form to suggest the trauma of violence and its ruinous effects on mankind, as well as reflecting on the strange and worrying (though perhaps not always unexpected) similarities between the experience of joy (in the above passage given as 'love') and pain, and the way that such similarity allows for the potential of one to corrupt the other.

As with all these things, however, the original intention becomes mislaid and diluted through overuse, to the point where it is perfectly acceptable for one of the most haunting and effective uses of slow-motion (in Oliver Stone's Platoon) to be parodied quite mercilessly in Tropic Thunder. Now, whilst I am far from against the spoofing of such things (as long as it is done, as it largely is in Tropic Thunder, with some measure of intelligence and wit), it can easily be seen that such parodies can, retroactively, render the initial scenes devoid of their original intention, so as modern viewers can watch older films and assume, quite reasonably, that slow-motion is being used simply because it's cool, and for no other reason. It renders whatever serious comment the directors may have been aiming to make largely ineffective, turning the volume down on the wrong things. Draining away the colours with which they were trying to communicate. Leaving only the snakeskin up on the screen.

Yet, a lot of people keep watching, and they don't seem to mind. They'll happily shell out the money to see things explode in slow-motion and high-definition and 3(unsatisfactory)Dimensions. And so I sometimes feel, when it comes to cinema at least, that I am not so much 'slow dancing' with those always of my choosing, but simply with those who are left behind when the rush to see 'new' things has started, still searching for a beating heart and a working mind, and finely-honed technique being used for a definite reason. For works of art that aren't just made to make money, but to make a point too.

Bodywork

I recently watched My Left Foot for the first time. And it has caused me to start seriously thinking, in odd ways, about the titular appendage on my own body. About the things I do with it, day in and day out.

After much contemplation, I have concluded that the activities it carries out can be broken down into three main groupings (including estimates of the time dedicated to each activity, which, my maths being awfully shaky, have mostly just been plucked out of the ether):

1) Tapping idly on the ground whilst I sit behind a desk (roughly 60% of the time I'm awake).

2) Walking from room to room, including up stairs (roughly 5% of the time).

3) Tapping idly on the ground whilst I sit on the sofa (roughly 35% of the time).

I don’t, however, use it to take vinyl records from their sleeves and drop them into place on the player, as Daniel Day-Lewis (as Christy Brown) does in the film. Neither do I use it to write, either simple messages or poetry. Or to paint. Or to turn the pages of a book whilst I am reading. Or even really to play football, these days – I am indeed struggling to recall the last time I kicked a ball in anger, or in wonder, or simply out of a passionate need to be part of that game, that sport.

Of course, they do say that necessity is the mother of invention, and perhaps the chief reason I don’t do any of those things with my own left foot is because I don’t have to. Unlike the late Christy Brown, I do not have a condition which renders it most practical to employ my left foot as the chief instrument of my physical work.

And, yet, I haven’t really been doing any of those things with other parts of my body either of late. The record player in my house does not currently work – a fact I could use as a handy excuse to get around this act of laziness – although I doubt I would have used it recently even if it did. Maybe this is down to the fact that the vast majority of my music collection is now located on my computer, available to me at a few clicks of a mouse button. But I don’t think that excuses me either. In fact, I think it makes the situation worse, because I find myself these days constantly choosing the options in life which involve the least movement (well, in most cases…). I find it easier to e-mail a message than to write out a letter and walk to the nearest mailbox with it swinging in my hand. I find it easier to move a couple of analogue joysticks and push a few buttons to shift players around a not-really-there field than to go outside and have a kickabout with an actual football. Granted, again there are probably other reasons I could give for that, such as the fact that it seems unimportant to do so now because a fair percentage of people playing actual football at my age are getting paid metric shitloads of money to do so.

But that isn’t a good enough reason. That is, in fact, the problem.

It just doesn’t seem enough to want to do things, even little things, purely because of the enjoyment you get out of it anymore. It’s not enough to want to use a record player because your dad has an awesome selection of vinyls and because lifting then dropping the needle feels kinda like opening a door at a concert hall, making the music-listening experience feel just that little bit more immediate and visceral and real. Or because you love those first few scratchy sounds before The Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night album starts playing. Perhaps it’s part of being an ‘adult’, especially one so financially challenged as I, but I am beginning to find it increasingly difficult to look beyond those factors, that not-enough-anymore business, when I’m considering what I’ll actually get out of an action. Perhaps the bottom line of such thinking is: if I’m not going to get any reward for this, monetary or otherwise, then why bother?

Why not go the easy route instead?

Why not find everything I need outside of food and drink on the Internet, the great Information Superhighway?

After all – I feel like I’m always telling myself on some strange kind of tape loop – that’s what most other people out there are doing. Because it’s easy.

To be sure, the world of Christy Brown was a very different one in a lot of ways, his life starting in the 30’s in and amongst the backstreets of Dublin, and the reason he felt, and continued to feel, like such an outsider due to his cerebral palsy was perhaps because that world was primarily a physical one. No Internet. Not nearly as many phones. No video games. Just the walls of a house and then the cumulated housewalls of a street. Real fresh air and real raining sky looking down. Real mud. Real bruises from a punch or a bad tackle. Real kisses and real hugs whenever there were kisses and hugs to be had. None of this xoxoxo bullshit. No instant messaging being pulled off the bench as a substitute for proper conversation, that with face to face and eye to eye. Mouth to mouth.

Maybe that’s why Christy Brown felt so compelled to try as hard as he did to find his voice, to undergo seemingly endless hours of speech therapy; to agree to go in goal when his brothers were playing football and use his head to stop any shots that came his way. It could well be that, born today, he would simply have resorted to using computers and the Internet as a means of communication, might never have painted out of frustration or of anger or of love. Might never have written all those poems.

The way that Day-Lewis plays him, though, and the way that he himself comes across from the things that I’ve read, I don’t think that would have been the case. I’d very much like to think it wouldn’t have. Because My Left Foot is one of those rare films that, for me, achieved the glorious feat or being properly inspirational, just through the unvarnished way in which it seeks to tell of one man’s life, in which it educates the viewer as to the complexities of Brown’s existence. It is not simply a standard triumph-over-adversity tale. It is a case of a triumph over normality, of a man wanting at first to be accepted and to fit in, despite his condition, but then finding that his talent allowed him to transcend the norm, allowed him to communicate in more powerful ways ( I haven’t yet checked out too many of his paintings, but his poetry is extraordinary). And, most importantly, despite dark periods, he didn’t let those talents go to waste.

Now, as I’ve said, it’s possible that his physical drive and ambition to communicate more fully with the world was, in some ways, down to the conditions of the society in which he lived. Was because outside is where most of the action was. After all, we humans are, to admittedly varying degrees, products of our environments. That being said, it seems that, these days (a term I am perhaps overusing in this piece, possibly suggesting an oldness, and a grumpiness, that is not entirely mine), too many things take place online, that too much of ‘socialising’ is conducted through social networks, that sites like Facebook, for example, are becoming the hang-out point of choice for a great many people of an evening. Don’t get me wrong, there are advantages to such social networking – the ability to ‘poke’ your friends whilst you chat to them is certainly one. As is the ability to click endlessly through pictures of old nights out with good friends, instead of doing your damnedest to arrange another one. Of course, it is far cheaper than actually doing anything for real, and, if you accidentally say the wrong thing during a ‘conversation’, you can always blame it on your little brother getting on your computer whilst you were elsewhere, using your left foot (and your right one) to walk to another room and fix up a drink. And did I mention ‘poking’?

I’m a hypocrite, though, and I’m sadly, painfully aware of it. I’ve spent a lot of time lately bitching (to myself, mostly) about the Internet, and Facebook in particular, and yet here I am, posting on my blog and no-doubt soon linking to this page on FB. Because the Internet is what is was established to be, more or less. An easy, convenient means of communication. And FB is the main way in which I can (hopefully) keep in touch with a lot of people I might otherwise lose contact with. So, in spite of my ranting and frustration at the system, I will most likely persist with my current level of usage. I will most likely continue to send e-mails, rather than writing out letters, because it is more simple, and allows for messages to reach the intended recipient almost instantly, as opposed to a time-delay dictated by the actions of the postal service, exactly as it was designed to do.

I do want to strive, however, to do more things out in the world, to actually achieve some things physically for a change. Even if, at first, it’s only handwriting more articles before typing them up. Handwriting more of my own poems, so I can get to work compiling another collection following the planned release of my first at the end of this month. Even if it’s just walking outside in the autumn rain more often, coming back cold, wet, miserable and happy that I’ve still got a body to get soaked to the bone.

Because that’s what this is all about, really. I need the actual flesh of my body to feel necessary again. I need to make it work, and then work harder. I need to know and remember my left foot and my right foot and my right shin and my left shin and my knees and thighs and dick and hips and my stomach and chest and left shoulder and right shoulder and my arms and hands and fingers and mouth and tongue and eyes. And I need to make them work.

Is it long enough?

That is the question that has been hounding me of late.

Is there enough substance there?

You see, I have recently been readying myself for something, to send my first novella off to a literary agent with the aim of getting one such person suitably invested in hawking my wares to a publisher, and thenceforth onwards to the great wide world.

But there are a few problems that have lingered within the manuscript since the first draft was completed, nearly two years ago, which have thus far led to me delaying this grand send-off, postponing the day when I will stand at the dock's edge and smash an overpriced champagne bottle upon my story's hull, standing there until it has long fled my view and tripped across the blue arc of the horizon. Not least of which problems is that I'm now hideously worried that such an unwieldy metaphor as that may have somehow escaped my roving, pernickety, editorial eye.

More pressing, however, is the worry that it simply does not contain enough. Enough joy. Enough fear. Enough questioning. Enough answers. Enough characters. Enough passion. Enough prudish control. Enough reason. Enough sensations.

Fair enough, it is, and has been from the start, only a relatively short story (I am attempting, failingly at times, to resist the urge to refer to it as a book until it actually has been granted a wraparound cover and a spine), only about 34, 000 words as of the last draft. And, whilst it is perhaps not as common as it might be, there are numerous works of fiction I have read that have been about that length and thrilled me, connected with me, and challenged me immensely. Perhaps not much happens in some of them either. Like Of Mice and Men, for example. And yet, in some way, it seems to happen more deeply, more fully. Maybe that I do not see this entirely in my own works, whether I sought to weave it in completely or whether I was simply aiming for something lighter, is down to both an over-familiarity with the text and also to a lack of confidence or, rather, of having too much when I'm criticising and not enough when I'm creating.

Whatever it is, I cannot shake it.

It has recently been suggested, however, by one test-reader, that it would work better as a play, or, more properly, as a film. That the problems I am having with it are problems brought about by the fact that I have written it as a very visual, sensual experience (or have, at least, attempted to), and that, these days, people may be more willing to engage with it if it were to find such a form, rather than becoming a short, and possibly overpriced, book.

I have been thinking on this possibility for the best part of a week now, and, whilst it had crossed my mind how I might like to see it directed and framed and structured on a cinema screen in the past, I had always considered it in terms of being an adaptation, never really a straight-up, first-hand film. I cannot say I am not intrigued by this new turn, to the same degree as I cannot say I am not becoming bored with constantly re-editing it as a book and trying to maintain the restrained, though intimate and full-felt, style of it. It pains me to think that two years of work on it, constantly refining and re-defining my purpose with it, to get each sentence just so, to convey the missing parts of the main character just as surely as the faulty workings that remain, will be, essentially, left behind or otherwise transmogrified in this transition. That I would have to trade in words, descriptions, for pictures, sounds.

Because, as much as I love films, I have never truly made one yet, and yet I have written stories. I can write them whenever I want. I can even try and make them great. Whether that is a goal I meet, it is a goal I am free to try for. I have control when the tips of my fingers grip a pen, or press and hammer and simply touch words out on this keyboard of mine. Words are my chief medium at present, and so I am worried, perhaps, that if I were to leave them in some way behind for this project, I would be giving something of myself up.

At the same time, however, I am more than well aware that such not-much-happening stories can be made into films without ever seeming too short or too shallow, if done right. If one abides by the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, then one can easily understand why this might be the case. After all, though it can take a writer a great many sentences to fully convey a sense of one character's emptiness, or fear, or self-doubt and self-loathing, or self-love, sometimes independently of the machinations of what people may term plot, a film-maker can do it simply with one well-framed and well-timed shot of the character's eyes, controlling the lighting, controlling the sound - without having to evoke such things in a manner that may be taken in as many different ways as there are readers, some of which may miss the point entirely, and therefore end up not connecting with the character, not appreciating or enjoying the tale that is currently in the telling.

Of the two Wong Kar-Wai films I have seen, the latest was Days of Being Wild, and it illustrates this point brilliantly. In essence, the story is thin, vague, not, in a synopsis, packed with too many major occurences. A young man makes a habit of seducing women and then leaving them, living a raw yet curiously unfulfilling life. That is the meat of the story, and yet telling you that does not really give anything away, because the films chief revelations and delights are visual ones, aural ones. It is not as fascinating, electric and sorrowful as his In the Mood for Love, but it is absorbing nonetheless, and ascribes a depth to these characters' lives in a way that does not seem underdeveloped, as it may in a short book.

It is indeed, the sort of film I may well like to make.

However, this first novella is, likewise, the sort of novella I wanted to write, I am forced to conclude, or else I wouldn't have written it. If I have given off the impression that I am not proud of it, then I did not mean to, because I am. Rather, I think the problem is that I am just not sure other people would want to be involved in the story in that way - I do not think it would sell too well, if at all, as a book. And that, unfortunately, is what it comes down to, when you are trying to get published, it seems, when you are trying to get your work out into that great wide world. It is alright producing things the way you want to produce them if you do not intend to depend on them for your livelihood at some point in the future. But, if you do, then there has to be a point at which you give the audience more for their money... doesn't there?

And, if forced to choose a means of making a living, I can think of none I would choose above this - storytelling, whether with words or pictures. So, with that in mind, I suppose I must come to a conclusion soon about exactly which fashion I want the first voyage of this first big(ger) story to take.

Whilst that decision is being made, however, I intend to send another work off, a work that really cannot be anything other than a book, not right now anyway, because I have written into it a celebration of words and of personal honesty in art, in life. Curiously, it is not only about this, but about giving up, about moving on, about learning how to do both well. I should perhaps point out that it too is technically a novella, with around the same number of words as the first, although it is a couple of thousand words longer.

And, as they say, every little helps.

A Kind of Magic

I put most of my faith, whatever there is, into film. Even though film is not real and I know it is not real, it moves me, when it is used well, and so I believe in it.

Yet, that faith is being tested.

More and more films seem, to borrow Chuck Palahniuk's potent and prescient phrase, like 'a copy of a copy of a copy'. News of them (pictures, trailers, adverts, reviews...) gives me the feeling that I am trapped inside some insomniac daze, tripping round through half-formed dreams, unable to connect with the visions that I see before me. Fills me with an inexplicable rage that some people, somewhere, are killing one of the things I love, one of the things that helps me get by, trying to take it away from me. They pile old story upon old story upon old story and they do not even try to make it fresh or vital, these nameless, faceless persecutors of my peace and quiet content.

As ridiculous as this may or may not sound, such a line of thought often sends me on small downward spirals, renders me inconsolable on odd evenings, left staring at my own work on a screen and not being sure there is a space for it in this cowardly new world, typing occasional words, untyping them straight after. Because, you see, my faith in film is tied up with my faith in fiction full stop. And, well, that faith is tied up with everything I find myself doing and thinking and dreaming about. It almost goes without saying that to lose belief in one's own dreams is a terrible thing.

And so that is why I am immensely grateful that, alongside the triumphs of Inception and Toy Story 3, I have recently seen another new film that went counter to that spiral, even as it seemed to feel the same as me. Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist is an animated film, hand-drawn, which deals, in essence, with the death and closing down of the Vaudeville era. Its hero is an old stage magician, the kind who pulls a rabbit out of a hat and whips bouquets of flowers from out of nowhere, from out of his sleeve. Watching his act in the opening scenes, one does not find it hard to explain his ever-diminishing audience. His rabbit is a mad one, near-impossible for him to control, and there seems little passion left on his old face to suggest that he cares much that he is one stage anymore. He travels to a few theatres, showing off the poster he carries round with him, so that he might get some money. That is all. He wants to entertain, of course, but only now, one gets the uneasy feeling, because he won't get paid if he does not.

So far, this itself may well sound like a copy. Maybe even a copy of a copy. It is not the most startling and fresh premise, I'll admit. But then, it is based on an old script by the late French comic Jacques Tati, and so to expect something bang up to date, on Inception’s level, for example, would be perhaps expecting too much.

Perhaps you could say that I went in, then, on the basis of these first scenes, expecting too much. And yet I was enraptured, captivated by every detail up there on the screen. Even though most of the scenes and scenarios were closed-in, small-scale affairs, there was always something kicking at the walls in them, opening the windows and reaching outside. The film was beginning to seem itself like the magician’s mad rabbit trapped inside his old hat…

Which, of course, is exactly how it is meant to feel.

Because this film seems to be not just a story but a mission statement. Where did the magic in the movies go? Chomet seems, at least in part, to be asking. And he seems also to be asking, more deeply, more furiously: Was there ever any to start with? This is the work of a director frustrated with how things are, angered that the things most filmmakers seem to have chosen to copy are not the best aspects of the truly great films that have come before, but are instead the cheapest, easiest tricks from films that have simply sold well, without challenging anyone. Films that don’t finally awe the audience with whatever they’ve been hiding up their sleeve because, quite simply, they have nothing there.

Unlike Chomet’s first film, Belleville Rendez-Vous, a wild and brilliant film about human endurance and about making the best of bad situations. Unlike this one, which pulls off the greatest trick of all, which shows it hand, and all its sorrow, and yet still somehow gives you hope, just through its very being.

There are several unshakeable images in the film, of such incredible power and suggestion that it is impossible to think that they are not copies. Or rather, that they do not feel like copies, to the point that you do not wish to question if they are. One of these in particular, involving the moving of a book's pages means so much, both within the film and outside of it, that I will not say more about it, except that it is worth watching the film for that moment alone.

Indeed, that there are other, even more enchanting moments is all that I will add. Because, well, this is a film that should be seen rather than heard about. It is, after all, bad form to talk too much about magic tricks, especially ones that have you believing them, in spite of yourself.

Beer and Flip-Flops in West Yorkshire

It starts as it ends, with The Wire…

But first, first we need to be in Leeds. In an art gallery.

Now, the ‘we’ I am using at this point is not the editorial, not some half-baked device to make you the reader, feel more involved. No, this ‘we’ simply involves myself and a fellow who will (in order to protect his identity, and to stop anyone with medical knowledge who may happen to know him from worrying constantly about his health) be referred to henceforth as the Brumlord. Or B, for short.

At this early juncture, I feel I should make a small digression from the stated path and explain more about his character. He is, as his nom de guerre, suggests, from Birmingham, and doesn’t often camouflage this fact well. Indeed, upon his arrival in my sunny county the evening prior to our being inside the aforementioned art gallery in Leeds, he had been picked out as one of those folks ‘not from around here’ when he asked for directions to one of the local supermarkets, a great wide building staring at him from just a little down the road. Because of such moments, he is also not renowned for his sharpness. However, to misjudge him on this front would be a mistake. He is a fine, cultured gentleman given to surprising insights and expressions of refined taste too seldom seen these days.

Indeed, why else would we have been in an art gallery at half past two in the afternoon with the sun coming down so brilliantly and with such uncommon warmth outside? We passed first through a few rooms holding sculptures, possibly constructed by a German, or a Dutchman, or some other such European-man of genuine talent and invention. Most of the pieces were white, and stick out in my memory as though they were hemmed in by black walls, although it is entirely possible that they weren’t. One piece, I recall, reminded me of the sort of conical shells one might find, puckered and in early decay like a week-fallen autumn leaf, strewn on a cold Welsh beach. It lacked a hollow, however, some place to which it would be possible to place one’s ear and listen entranced to the rolling out and inwards of the sea. The Brumlord seemed impressed with the display, face set in gentle wonder.

Crossing the covered bridge suspended between that section of the gallery and the main building, we noticed something to which we would return later.

We came to a large annex, a kind of centrepiece of the place, holding vast canvases as big as walls in small houses, and trundled around, occasionally taking a seat to gaze upwards into certain pieces, noting the way the lights played across the oil-paint glaze. It seemed to dance as poets write of it dancing across the giant fjord in a picture by a Norwegian who had at one time been favoured by Kaiser Wilhelm. We were impressed, and I, having seen this picture before, took great pains to point out aspects of its perspective I enjoyed.

On the floor above we took strange pleasure from disliking the absurd abstract pieces, especially the one that screamed across its enlarged canvas like a man’s testes exploding, rather unfortunately, in a sickly purple shade.

We had coffee in the largely empty café and discussed the exhibits, voices quiet and reserved. Opinions muted, un-vulgar.

Passing down onto the lowest floor, we spent a scarce few minutes in the crafts gallery, leafing through a selection of posters with increasing speed, and attempting to be unsubtle in our watching of the ladies behind the desk. When they started watching us back we came to the mutual conclusion that we should take our leave. That this jaunt was in danger of going sour.

Through the open exit door we stepped out into sunlight that seemed, at least to my eyes, to swim a little, or to stand still whilst objects swam inside it. Even to my recently more light-sensitive eyes, it seemed to border on being oppressively bright. As we turned to look at the thing we had noticed from the bridge earlier, there seemed no point in hiding it further. We were quite drunk. And soon to get drunker.

That thing was a pub.

We were already three drinks (of varying and ever-rising alcohol %) in and that number would double comfortably before we progressed from this somewhat-hidden booze-manor to some other joint. Sitting on a slanting bench in the courtyard, however, it was in our conversation that the day’s (and, indeed, the long weekend’s) intent began to see clarity.

We discussed, B and I, our usual range of topics – best film actors of their respective generations; best films including those actors; how incredibly fine Sigourney Weaver looks in Alien – but then we reached, after maybe a couple of beers, the point at which we suddenly became taken with the idea of making a film of our own. Now, this is an idea that has been floated about between us in the past, of course, sometimes even when sober, but somehow it has never felt as real and urgent as it did at that point right then. There was sincere conviction as we agreed to this intention. The sort of sincere conviction that only seems to come about these days when alcohol is involved and restrictive urges are peeled back, fear of embarrassment ditched like an old mattress at the side of an obscure country road.

However, this pact comes with one proviso: that whatever film we make must be unlike any other film ever made. That it must speak of and to something original and unique within our beings.

Unfortunately, it turns out that originality is one tricky fucking business – a conclusion we came to quickly in what followed of that strand of talk.

This was not just an observation on the state of new cinema releases (or, indeed, new fiction releases of any kind), but also an observation on the difficulty of maintaining a sense of true individuality within this society, and of leading a life that passes down paths un-trodden. And the ramifications, the negative vibes, generated by that observation, deepen, arguably unavoidably, the more one thinks about it. For instance, we were far from the only people talking and drinking in that bar, and maybe not even the only ones talking about film, name-checking titans like Scorsese and Sergio Leone. Neither were we the only ones to end up in a karaoke bar that evening and make total arses of ourselves – but more on that later.

The question arose in my mind, or, rather, has been arising there for some time, of what precisely constitutes an original? What defines a specific singular human being? Obviously, the clear scientific answer is DNA, is all the little quirks of genometry (don’t think that’s going to catch on…) that determine a person’s appearance, scent, susceptibility to various impulses and stimuli, sensitivity to various tastes. But is this enough? If it was, then surely each person would be a species unto themselves.

Perhaps, following that, the pursuit of originality beyond that is symptomatic of a wider misanthropic streak within me, a desire to distance myself from others in the herd, not just because they are a herd, but because they are a herd of the same animal. They are, as beasts, essentially alike. I know I would not be the only one to feel that way, certainly, but I don’t think that is entirely the case. Like most humans, I have periods where I crave company, where I hunger for the crush of the crowd. I am a social animal, and suffer when I am out of society for too long.

The issue is, I think, that I just don’t want to stay in the crowd so long that it defines me, that it subsumes me, and everything I could be outside of its grasp.

Perhaps the Brumlord feels this too, although I don’t ask. I suppose he does, from time to time. In fact, I guess that was why we were there, in that art gallery and that pub courtyard and then in that Italian restaurant spending far too much on two (admittedly tasty) fillet steaks. To quit that feeling, and reassert our individual selfness and togetherness. We feel original, the Brumlord and I. We move through Leeds differently to how the other people seem to move.

Perhaps the Scottish fellow noticed that about us. Detected it in our aura. Maybe that was why he came up to us and began to show us his litany of medication and describe the methods by which he fleeced various ‘stupid’ English doctors – whom he reassured us he loved – out of such pills. Maybe that was why he proceeded to inform us the reason why he had those pills was because he was a paranoid schizophrenic. Fair enough, we thought. This man is a one-of-a-kind as well. Mad as a hunter waving his honey-dipped dick at a bear, but certainly one-of-a-kind.

But then the Scostman broke a cardinal rule of this order of ours, of unspokenly-self-conscious originality – he tried to further ingratiate himself into our small group of two, by trying to offer his wine around, and then trying to follow us to dinner.

This was not on. It was our party and not to be crashed. Nothing personal, you understand, but once you let one in then you have let them all in, and our table just didn’t have room. No way was I jostling for elbow room whilst cutting my steak. No fucking way. Neither, in fairness, was I about to listen to further tales of how one of the kinds of pills he had was so strong he used to cut heroin with it in prison and deal it around, especially not whilst sipping calmly on my cool Italian beer. B, also, was unlikely to continue getting drunk in the easy manner that had thus far characterised the day with that chap sitting there and constantly referring to him as ‘Big Man’, on account of his unexpected height (he is not tall, especially, certainly no taller than I, and so I am forced towards the conclusion that the Scotsman assumed I was hanging out with someone of the vertically-challenged nature – a Brummie midget if you will. Now, whilst I have nothing against either Brummies or [insert politically correct term here], the chances of finding me with a person who combines both attributes is slim – not only because I do not currently know anyone matching that description, but also because they would doubtless throw my perception of my own individuality clean into the gutter. My ego, such as it is, is particularly fragile at the moment, and could not take such a beating.)

Anyway, to return to whatever point I was making, B and I were getting utterly whammed. To (re)assert our separate and combined personas, or somesuch. The bar we hit up after the Italian place (from which we considered walking off without paying, although somehow couldn’t get off our posteriors quickly enough) was good, served relatively cheap drinks and had a fairly comely wench (do people still use that term? Fuck it…) for a barmaid, but it was the guest appearance by three people hawking a new vanilla liquor that made the place for us. Firstly, this was because the two lasses in the group were the kind of girls usually chosen to hawk new products to drunk, horny men, and, secondly, it was because they were giving out free flip-flops as well as free shots of the stuff. Now, these flip-flops were, unfortunately, bright orange, which is why I left my pair on the table when we abandoned that place for pastures new, but the Brumlord was not so picky. As far as he was concerned, these were free, fair-quality footwear, and be-damned if he was missing out on such a bargain.

So we set off for our next destination, B with the flip-flops, in their plastic sheeting, stuffed inside his back pocket. We had three cigars left between us and smoked two as we walked. To a cash point. Natch. It was there, however, as we debated the options for our next port of call, that the Brumlord had to part with his beloved new footwear. There was nowhere decent, I reasoned, that was going to allow him to enter their premises looking either as though he’d curb-stomped Mr Tickle, or sat on him, depending on where he was storing the offending toe-garb at the time. Reluctantly, he laid them, with a solemnity usually reserved for long-treasured family pets, upon the half-wet ground and we reached another bar, our fractured conversation there to continue.

Before entering, we stood across the street, sharing the last cigar, breath travelling out like mystic whispers of the revelation we, unknowingly, found ourselves caught within.

For a moment, allow me to suggest that you picture that scene as it might happen on a movie screen. How the smoke might cloud out across and through the celluloid grain. Given only that fragment of film, we could come across to different viewers as criminals, detectives, lovers, or just great mates out on the town. But, with just that fragment to work with, there are other options too. For instance, it is possible that, for the two minutes, perhaps, that the shot is held, we are just two beings in existence, and that is our story. Before and after and context and surrounding earth and civilisation are currently unavailable contraptions, unnecessary tools of understanding. In that fragment, we are beyond understanding, and we belong and speak only to ourselves. We are a daydream, and it is not for anyone else to know our minds, just as it is not for me to know his, nor he to know mine, not fully. Picture that, and conclude only that it constitutes something you haven’t seen before, if only because it is something you still cannot see. The suggestion of the vision’s presence is often more important than the vision itself – the essential truth of the quest narrative. The realisation of the vision is the end point, but that end point does not exist without the germination, the slow and tantalising expansion, of the notion that the vision is out there somewhere to be seen.

The problems begin, however, when you stop merely picturing this scene and start seeing it. That is when the rot of unoriginality sets in.

In all the cities in all the worlds, at the same moment at which B and I were standing there, trying to gauge whether our show of old-school manliness and camaraderie was going to be enough to convince the burly bald bouncer at the next destination to admit us (an issue that needed to be resolved hastily, both of us having ‘broken the seal’ some time previously…), many others would be doing the same thing…or at least looking like they were doing the same thing, visual perceptions of actions being pretty much as important as actions themselves…

The questioning comes again, a scabrous and unnerving presence in some sector of the think-war zone behind my eyes. Out in the ‘real world’, just how exactly does one maintain one’s self? How does one maintain the hope of not only boldly going where no man has gone before, but boldly going there how no man has gone before? How does one remain individual without becoming too self-obsessed to interact with others and lead a ‘normal’ human life?

Perhaps one can’t.

Perhaps I can’t.

Perhaps B can’t.

Or, perhaps, the trick lies in just freewheeling, and facing up to the world as it comes. In letting your circumstances help define you. After all, the story of a life is inseparable from the story of all the roads that life has travelled. Just cling on to the fact that, whether you look the same and end up doing the same things as countless others, there are quirks in your actions that separate you, and there are vast gulfs of difference between some of your thoughts and many of theirs.

For instance, for all the doubtless many people undergoing similar mental crises (an overstatement of the case, perhaps) at this moment in time, and all of those writing blogs about the experience, I can guarantee that I am thinking and writing about two things in two completely induplicatable ways to everyone else. I am thinking and writing about myself and about the Brumlord and the spaces we occupied at times that nobody else could possibly have occupied them.

Suddenly, I know that I don’t have to try so hard to constantly assert this fact, when it is just that, a fact.

However, I also know that this knowledge, this confidence will somehow become eroded, and that I will feel pressed, more and more, to issue forth proofs of this life being mine. I will growingly feel compelled to leave my mark. That is at the base of why I write, isn’t it? Because I not only feel I have something to say, but because I hope it is something nobody else would say, not quite. I have taken cues from many (occasionally obvious) sources, even in the writing of this piece, and yet I hope it will end up being mine when I roll the final full-stop out. Furthermore, I have recently completed the first draft of a novella that deals with this very same problem, the struggle to so strongly become oneself that oneself becomes little more than that struggle, and often the weaker for it.

But I was onstage then, in a karaoke bar, and belting out ‘Smooth’ by Santana Ft. Rob Thomas, and I was utterly wankered. B, well, he was out in front of the stage, dancing as though rhythm and style were foreign concepts, even more wankered than I. And this was the zenith of our day/night. This was us being us, and, in recollection, I can see the point at which we hit this final stretch – it was in the discarding of those hideous orange flip-flops. That was the snakeskin-shedding moment, the acknowledgement that things must sometimes be abandoned in order for the great wheel of living to keep on turning, joyous and clean. Carrying them around any further would have been weighing us down, and when we were constantly redefining our own potential during our racing about the city and the city’s bars, that was simply no good.

And it is that notion of the wheel that is crucial here, that is key, that brings us back full-circle to The Wire.

We spent the Saturday recovering (with another few boxes of beer and a few cocktails) and embarking upon the completion of our 3-year quest through the entirety of the aforementioned TV show. We sat there hungover, drunk, entranced. It felt quietly monumental, as though we were at last catching up with the avant garde of our generation, skipping the queue at last after lingering, hellishly bored, in the line for too long. And then the series-closing montage happened, and a curious awareness began to wash over me. We saw characters and ideals depart, just as we witnessed others step up to take their respective places. And so, without wishing to go all Lion King–soundtrack, I think it became clear then that, even if there truly are no new stories to tell, there are renewed and renewable ones. There are stories that can be revisited and made fresh just through their coming from a fresh time – it all comes down to a multitude of factors coming together in some semblance of harmony, to the stars all being aligned.

And yet, as the screen fades to the credits, then to black, and then crackles back around to that glorious, glorious song, I have a conflicted sensation. I am satisfied, deeply content, and yet concurrently aware that something is missing. That something, some small mystery, has vanished. It is how I always feel at the close of something I have completely enjoyed. It is how I feel the morning after, watching the train depart back to Birmingham, standing halfway up the steps that lead from the platform and back to the street. In my head as well, however, is some new knowing that three years can indeed be fitted, at a push, into four long days.

So, there really is no need to sit around and mourn for too long the ending of something truly original, because the originality of that piece does not disappear as soon as it has been encountered. Classics remain classics because they were good enough, and different enough, in the first place to have staying power. That is why B and I have sat around many a time discussing our cinematic heroes, our treasured films. That is why we keep sitting around together. We help define each other, just as our other friends help define us and we them. It’s a needlessly complicated business, thinking all this through, the mathematics of self and identity, but what it comes down to, I suppose, is being sure of all the things that make you feel good, or affect you unavoidably in some other way, and clinging on to them as the wheel turns, just trying not to fall off as you wait for the opportunity to give those things a fresh spin.

Indeed, as the ever-sage Brumlord remarked in summation upon reaching the aforementioned final credits: ‘Shit. We’ll just have to start it again now...’