Closely Observed Trains (1966): review: 5 /10

 *

Staff at a small railway station are sex-obsessed. A junior staff member is encouraged to pursue sex. 

Inexperienced and impotent he takes his life in despair. This takes place against the back-drop of World War Two German occupation and a plot to blow up a munitions train.

The film is highly stylised. Well made but insensate, often boring and claustrophobic, it  leaves feeling one short changed, perhaps even somewhat morally revolted.

Ruby Sparks (20120: review: 5/10

A young, celebrated writer is frustrated in finding love and in his craft: one of his characters comes to life.

The film drags because of Dano's horribly mannered acting, his drippy facial expression, and the poor pacing of the plot which at most merits a film of twenty minutes.

The Great Debators (2007): review: 5/10

In the 30s, in racist Texas, a black teacher trains a black college dabating team: despite interpersonal difficulties, largely inspired by a pretty girl with a dimple, they prove formidible in debates with other colleges.

This is an essay in moral obviousness: we might be better served by a film which illustrated with less suffocating self righteousness the genesis of the civil right movement, and whose lead characters had the tiniest complexity: but as this film comes from Ms Oprah Winfrey's stable so we should expect nothing else.

I'd be curious to see a film describing the corrosive effects of self-righteousness on the American people -a quality which Americans seem delighted to export. This would be a film which parodies moral worthiness and all the bossiness and mental lethargy that comes with it, and which describes the nausea it induces in gentle souls who prefer to mind their own business.

The Big Heat (1953): review: 5/10

A police detective investigates the unlikely suicide of a colleague, to find himself under atack from a consortium of well-placed ne'r-do-wells.

The film lacks the sense of delight needed to animate it's darkness. The women aren't alluring poison flowers, the hero is one-dimensional, and the photography lacks the adventurousness of Lang's other films. The sets look cheap too.

Nor has it that necessary sense of threat, of pressure: everything shunts along rather formulaically (if one can ignore the many odd decisons taken by the hero, such as his decision to leave bis wife and child at home immediately after recieving a threatening phone call there) and though the film is certainly watchable, it isn't one of the great noirs.

The Lady Says No (1952): review: 5/10

Priggish Dorinda Hatch writes a book advising women to abstain from relations with men. David Niven plays the oily journalist whose dubious charms overcome her principles.

Enjoyable because of Niven's charm, with a few good one-liners.

Maria's Lovers (1984): review: 5/10

A traumatised veteran returns from a Japanese POW camp to his town in PA, where he marries his long time sweetheart.

As he suffers from erectile disfunction, the marriage is not a great success and everyone goes a little crazy.

This is a depressing film, whose message seems laboured despite the fine acting and interesting scenes of forties life in a Russian-American community.

The Answer Man (2009): review: 5/10

In middle class Philadelphia, the charmless author of self-help books assists a bookshop owner and begins a relationship with a chiropracter.

Coy, somewhat preachy offering, albeit made with a definate efficiency.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008): review- 5/10

An irreverent English journalist gains employment in a New York magazine.

Rapid, silly, and enjoyable film, but which lacks the satirical bite that is required to make it the intelligent farce that Toby Young's book deserves. This is, I think, because satrire needs more true anger behind it to succeed.

Katyn (2007): review- 5/10

A film about Soviet mass murder of Polish officers during the Second World War and subsequent decietfulness regarding responsibility for this crime.

In style it is episodic, with various confusing time leaps: this makes it difficult (probably impossible- my Brazillian wife was totally lost) to follow for those unfamiliar with the history of the Katyn massacre and Polish history and its various wartime borders.

It is unclear what the main objective of the director was: to evoke sympathy for those involved in events, or to examine historical memory, or to show how history is manipulated?

I don't think the film can be said to be a success in any of these terms: the characters are not memorable, (it's hard to identify with anyone- we hear about their professions but there is no construction of character, albeit of the most cardboard sort); the historical events are very unclearly narrated and the issue of the manipulations of historical memory is examined in insufficient detail (where, for instance are the voices of the ex-patriot communities, who maintained truthful accounts?). So the film feels muddled: it has the qualities of a disturbed dream.

The film also suffers from gloominess. If this criticism seems absurd, given that that it concerns mass murder, then that is to forget that it is first of all a film: and must succeed in maintaining the viewers interest as a temporal art form. Gloom militates against this because gloom is fatalism, and fatalism leads to the belief that the destinies of the main characters are pre-determined, and this in turn prevents one from caring much about the dilemmas they face as their outcome is already known.

A temporal medium such as film must succeed on a "I want to know what happens next" level, and this film doesn't because the narrative is too confusingly related and the characters too lightly sketched and because their fates can be pre-supposed.

Put another way, the characters aren't presented with real choices. Compare this film to "Bridge over the River Kwai': where moral dilemma acts in every scene to animate the film. Likewise, it's used to enliven "Schindler's List". This film does not offer moral drama because there is no lever acting upon the consciences of the oppressers -alternately Nazi, Soviet or Polish communist or a-moral Polish (while "honour" is the lever acting on both the British leader and the Japanese in Bridge on the river Kwai)- so any dealings with the baddies have a predictable outcome.

One response to my criticisms is to say- "oh but the events don't allow another approach". But surely it is the job of the director to trace an effective narrative: a narrative that is both truthful and successful as drama.

*

No film can do everything: perhaps this film attempts too much. I can't help thinking if a much more conventional format- either a linear documentary, or the dramatisation of the life of a heroic individual, Hollywood style (viz. Schindler's List) would have been a more successful means for describing the events and effects of Katyn.

It might be argued that the "disturbed dream" effect is indeed what the film is really about, and that I am asking the film to suit an audience (international, young, uneducated) that the film is not intended for. To that I would say that even I, approaching middle age, who has a good-ish grasp of events (being half Polish) found the film hard to follow.

If the film is intended as a sort of catharisis then it isnt emotionally affecting, because the means of identification offered viewers are through national symbols, not though characterisation or artistic effects (most notably apart from Penderecki's score, which is magnificent). And the film contains few memorable or beautiful images. This is a pity and is surprising because Wayda's films are usually visually very striking.

Single White Female (1992): review- 5/10

A lesbian psychopath moves in to share a New York apartment with a female computer programmer who has just separated from her fiancee.

The film begins excellently, and is beautifully shot with a wonderful score.

But it has too few ideas to support its length, and thus becomes wearisome.