A Prophet

It's rare for a director to have a 100% strike rate, to never make a film counted as less than "good". There's usually one dud lurking in the filmography. Jacques Audiard, however, falls into this special category, Maybe it's his slow working methods - he produces a film every 3-4 years - but the lack of quantity is compensated by the sheer quality (the split-time converging narratives of See How They Fall, the ironic take on the Resistance myth in A Self-Made Hero, the deaf heroine outsmarting the men in Read My Lips, and best of all, the brilliant reworking of James Toback's Fingers into a totally Gallic thriller) His latest film continues this astonishing run.
A Prophet may be 2 1/2 hours long, graphically violent (a razor blade execution, an almost-eye gouging with a spoon, a shooting inside a car), and male-dominated but it grips from the start, remains breathlessly thrilling and psoitively flies by. A lot of the audience involvement is down to a towering central performance by Tahar Rahim (Audiard always gets the best out of his young male leads) It's not built around acting pyrotechnics but is instead quiet, watchful, thoughtful as befits Malik's trajectory: from fearful newbie to budding crime lord. The key to this rise is education, both the socially-sanctioned variety, and the more dubious criminal kind. When he arrives in prison, he's borderline illiterate. Ironically, it's the initial influence of the man he's forced to kill that pushes him towards the classes run in prison, further strengthened by a fellow Arab, Ryad, who becomes his closest friend. Language is likewise a powerful force in the film. Malik speaks both French and Arabic, already giving him an advantage over the ruling Corsican gang. He proves a quick study and the years of being a lackey for the Corsicans enables him to pick up their language too, which he cannily doesn't reveal. As far as they are concerned he's merely one of the despised Arabs. The fact that they don't know any Arabic proves to be vital later on, during a meeting with Malik and Ryad to arrange a hit. Malik's outsider status with both groups becomes an advantage in the hands of a naturally intelligent young man.
The vast majority of the film is grittily realistic as one would expect with the prison milieu, and yet there are surreal interludes with the reappearance of Malik's victim, Reyeb. Rather than being disturbed by these visions, Malik grudgingly tolerates this ghostly intruder and in one scene is amusingly disgusted by the smoke billowing from Reyeb's slashed throat as he smokes a cigarette. Proceedings throughout are punctuated by wry humour (the roll-call of the Corsican gang ending with the very un-Italian "el Djebena" for instance) though it's a fair distance into the film before we actually see Malik himself smile - and when we do it's a wonderful moment, as the audience realizes it wants to see that smile again. And we do: it's there when Malik takes his first plane journey and gazes at the clouds, and as he plays with Ryad's baby. Even as Malik becomes more ruthless, he never quite loses a certain innocence and vulnerability. It's there in the expression on his face while on the plane, the way he interacts with Rayd's family and how he's rather stay on the beach, gazing at the ocean instead of visiting a prostitute. A dangerous man, yes, but there's not really exaltation in his eyes as the now-isolated Cesar, former prison kingpin, is humilated in the prison yard just as Malik had been at the beginning. There might even be a glimmer of compassion for this hated man in that unreadable expression. It's only January but already there's a serious contender for film of the year.

Up In The Air

Is there a more watchable actor than George Clooney? He can coast through films on that effortless charm, but he's at his best when directors look below the smooth surface: the manic shenanigans with the Coens or the wounded, betrayed operators of Syriana or Michael Clayton. Ryan Bingham's surface calm masks an emotional void. He's only at home when in transit (he's also in pursuit of the Holy Grail of 10 million airmiles) and the days when he's grounded are to be dreaded. His apartment might best be described as functional - who needs the human touch when they're never there? He apparently never sees, or wants to see, his family, and his relationships are strictly casual. And then there's his job: he fires employees on behalf of gutless bosses. We should loathe this man, and yet we don't. Partly it's due to that Clooney charm, but Ryan's sardonic voiceover let's us into his mindset, and he's thoroughly professional when dealing people one of life's traumatic moments. His life runs like a well-oiled machine - his packed suitcase is a work of art and he moves effortlessly through the obstacle courses that are airports and hotels.
And then newbie Natalie comes up with a money-saving plan: fire people over the computer. No more airmiles, no more blissful isolation. Ryan has to take her on his final round of dismissals, and this gives rise to some hilarious exchanges. Ryan uses the full force of his withering humour to crush her during a sacking roleplay, blithely throws away her belongings when she's forced to repack in the middle of an airport, and generally challenges her worldview. Yet cracks are already showing in his facade. He's forced to cart around a cardboard cutout of his sister and her fiance (to photograph in front of various landmarks) which immediately wrecks his packing routine; he has to awkwardly comfort (publically!) a sobbing Natalie after she's been dumped, and most catastrophically of all, he might even be falling for his latest no-strings bedmate. Alex (their initial flirting revolved around a showing off of loyalty cards) Although you might think you know where all this is going, you don't, not quite. Yes, lessons are learned, family ties are reestablished and heartless technology is defeated but Ryan's world has subtly shifted off it's axis and not necessarily to his benefit. He's back in the airport but it's magic is gone, and the female of the species has proved to be far more unsentimental and pragmatic than the male.

Seraphine

I suspect that not many people will have heard of Seraphine Louis (or Seraphine de Senlis as she's probably best known), let alone seen any of her paintings. Amid the (male) heavyweights of early 20th century art she barely merits a footnote, and yet her work - on the evidence of this film - has both a deceptive simplicity and a vivid beauty, with jewel-like colours bursting from her canvases. The film makes the time-honoured connection between creativity and madness, with the latter refracted through her intense religious devotion (though that doesn't prevent her "appropriating" melted candle wax from the church) From the start she's an eccentric figure, though perfectly harmless, while a remark by the Mother Superior of the convent where she grew up indicates that she has a history of mental illness. When Wilhelm Uhde compares her to Van Gogh in being ahead of her time, the viewer makes another connection too. It's never clear when or why she began painting - at the start of the film she's already squirreling away materials for her next work - though her affinity with nature helps explain the subject matter. The film also emphasises her ordinariness. She's a rather dumpy figure, with a slightly odd walk, and the camera spends a lot of time gazing at her hands, which are a working woman's hands. Fleshy, with stubby fingers, they are the very antithesis of what we might consider an artist's hands, and yet we see those fingers smoothing paint onto canvas, playing as much a role as her paintbrushes. Despite the stunning art, she could have remained completely undiscovered but the film's other key character, the German art dealer Uhde is instantly entranced. Unfortunately war, class and economics all conspire over the years to thwart any recognition for Seraphine (when Uhde and his sister are forced to flee France at the start of WWI, they take a Rousseau painting with them and leave everything else behind), and ultimately results in her final incarceration in an asylum. It's a slow and episodic film, requiring a certain amount of patience though the pacing does produce a suitably surprising reveal of the first painting that we see. Much can be forgiven for the glorious art that the film shows to us.

The Road

For the best part of a year I have been waiting to read Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It's been sitting on my bookshelf while I waited for the film to be released, and while I got irritated every time the release date changed. I know from past experience that reading a book before seeing the film version guarantees several hours of frustration in the cinema. Watching a film without all that prior knowledge and strong images already in my head, however, often makes for a far more objective viewing experience.
I don't know (yet) how faithful John Hillcoat's version of The Road is to the written text but I would guess that the novel has considerably more explicit - and horribly memorable - violence (to this day, I remember passages from Blood Meridian that I'd much rather forget) Not that this is a drawback for the film. The hints and suggestions are more than enough to indicate the widespread cannibalism in this dying world. Imagination is always more effective at conjuring horrors and the mere sight of certain objects results in a sense of dread. Equally horrifying, but in a different way, are the sights and sounds of the planet's death throes. An ever-present rumbling dominates the soundtrack, while sudden fires break out, and most unnerving of all, trees suddenly crash to the ground, tearing their roots up as though the earth is rupturing from within. Against such forces, what hope can there be?
The film doesn't flinch from portraying this despair. Suicide haunts the movie, either as a physical reality or a terrible possibility. One of the Man's chief lessons for his son is how to use their gun to kill himself, though if necessary he will have to find the will to kill the boy himself. These scenes carry an enormous emotional heft as we understand the man's overwhelming love for his son. This relationship carries us through the narrative as they trudge through one of the most desolate landscapes seem on screen. This is a world without colour - even the sea is no longer blue. Browns and greys are everywhere, which makes the splashes of red even more shocking and indicative of the savagery prevalent among the survivors of this unnamed catastrophe. It's a dreadful world but what you remember is the relationship between the father and son. Viggo Mortensen's endlessly expressive eyes let the audience know everything he can't bring himself to say to the boy, and his gaunt frame and haunted face convince us that we are watching a dying man, one racing against time to pass on all he knows to his son. Haggard and desperate, he's resilient because he has to be. There's an unbearable sadness to the final scenes as the Man lies on the beach, waiting for the end. Even if it isn't ultimately as good as the book, it's still a tremendous film.

Nowhere Boy

Anyone expecting a film debut by a renowned British artist as original and thought-provoking as Steve McQueen's Hunger will be sorely disappointed. Nowhere Boy is an adequate (but no more) biopic but lacks anything to distinguish it from the pack. The cinematic basics are all present and correct but there's no spark to make it special. Nor did I for one second buy Aaron Johnson as the young John Lennon - far too comfortably middle class, with an accent that wanders (a problem for other cast members too) Matters perk up a bit once that glorious early rock 'n' roll enters proceedings but the film as a whole remains mired in mediocrity.