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Jemima Bucknell

Jemima Bucknell

Monthly Archives: March 2014

The Leopard (1963)

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by Jemima Bucknell in Uncategorized

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This post originally appeared at The Essential.

large_the_leopard_blu-ray2

“This isn’t the end of anything. It’s the beginning of everything.”

The Leopard continues to epitomise Italy’s legacy of ambivalence with regard to its unification. It is not only a monument of cinema, but a representative of long-held beliefs that the unsuccessful (or only unceremonious?) attempts to break down or conveniently forget class distinctions, and to assimilate the Southern states into the kingdom of the North comprise a timeline of battles and wars that replace one ruling class with another. Today these states and these social classes, though no longer composed of those noble by birth, are still separated by gaping cultural divides. Based on the historical novel of the same name penned by Sicilian aristocrat Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and adapted for the screen by Luchino Visconti, a descendant of Milanese aristocracy, The Leopardchronicles about two years in the life of a fictional noble Sicilian family following the landing of Garibaldi in Palermo in 1860.

At the centre of the narrative, and seen largely with his thoughts and observations the pivotal point for the story, and for Visconti’s camera, is Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina and patriarch of the illustrious House of Salina. He is played by the blue-eyed, statuesque Burt Lancaster whose physical performance embodies the fading monuments of his noble ancestry and provides a kind of tent pole to so may of Visconti’s deep compositions.

Garibaldi fought to unite Italy under one monarchy, instrumental in the fall of the Bourbon Empire which then ruled most of the Southern regions of Italy, known as the Two Sicilys. It is important to observe that although Garibaldi was a revolutionary, his fight was not one against the concept of a ruling class, but to promote unification under a single empire with Victor Emmanuel, of the House of Savoy, as King.

The introduction of Tancredi, Fabrizio’s nephew, played by Alain Delon, is an integral part of Visconti’s vision. Tancredi is first seen in the reflection of the Fabrizio’s shaving mirror. He is a reflection of his uncle, and also a reflection of the next generation, a modern Italy, but perhaps most importantly, he is reflective, transparent. Tancredi is fickle. He adapts himself to suit his own ambitions, taking up first with the Garibaldini or Redshirts and later allying himself with the Royal army, as an officer, which was an advantage of many of the upper and middle class young men. “He follows the times, that’s all,” argues Fabrizio in a conversation with one of Donnafugata’s peasants. The poor did not join Garibaldi, as he was interested in upholding the social hierarchies, not dismantling them.

There are several dichotomies of social nature at work and how they are represented, and create and collapse on each other is expressed in a melancholic conversation between Don Fabrizio (Burt Lancaster) and a visiting representative of the House of Savoy, paying a visit to seek the Prince as a member of the new Royal senate. The Prince, who does not believe Sicily or its people capable of any real change, attempts to explain that his place as aristocrat would not be possible without Sicily’s poor, “one is derived from the other”.

The film contains one battle scene early on, fought in the slums of Palermo, with Tancredi leading one of several groups of Redshirts against the Bourbon soldiers. In this scene we can also see the peasants of Palermo, including many women, fighting a separate battle against the ruling class, their oppressors. They chase a lone nobleman, possibly the mayor (he wears a top hat and sash) and hang him in the piazza. Here we see the chaos of the two battles that Italy is divided in, one between two monarchies, lead by Garibaldi, and the other (largely overlooked in terms of coverage in the film) of the fight of the plebiscite against the aristocracy. One battle must be won, in order to suppress the other.

Visconti’s frame is one of anarchy and fury, but the two battles occurring, though overlapping each other on the screen, are not in conflict. Tancredi politely requests of a peasant woman, in which direction has his enemy fled.

Visconti uses a recurring motif of chipped and decaying statues, still beautiful and ceremonious, however merely an echo of their former splendour to represent the ruling class. He also, in effect, paints them into frames or has characters moving into their still portrait positions. The only undamaged idols we see are those in chapels. The role of Don Pirrone, the Prince’s priest, is an important one in the film, as he represents the church, that which traverses the social classes, and whom they must ultimately answer to. The church, however, has the same sense of custom of the aristocracy. We see the two united in the chapel at Donnafugata, where the family take their summer vacation. They sit still, covered in dust like relics or ghosts of themselves upon the eve of the referendum. Visconti and Lampedusa were both at odds with what exactly is lost in the overthrow of an aristocracy and there is a large contrast of movement and vibrancy in the final ball scene, and the elliptical dance between the Prince and Tancredi’s middle-class bride to be.

It is perhaps important to consider how Visconti, whose socialist sensibilities were in conflict with his birth right, managed to play out the ironies of Italy’s situation. Of course, he does so from a pedestal, and in effect his relationship to the character of the Prince, who is as often amused as he is saddened by the rise of the middle class, and whose point of view is one of condescension and not affection, is shared by the director to a degree. The film’s comedy is at the expense of the middle class who appear to be striving, and failing, to imitate aristocracy.

Italy remains a divided state with several distinct regions, speaking very different dialects and with separate, culturally rich histories. The Northern regions still think themselves superior, and the Southern regions are largely understood to be under mafia regime. The relationships between North and South remain, in many circles, to be that of a contentious nature. We see this identity crisis played out in programs like The Sopranos and in modern Italian cinema. Most recently Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah (the title suggesting both the “camorra” or mafia, and the biblical story of Gomorrah and Sodom) shows us that the Milanese fashion industry would not be booming without the mafia-run imported Chinese sweatshops in Naples. One continues to derive from the other, and the legacy of i gattopardi endures.

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Gloria (2013)

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by Jemima Bucknell in Uncategorized

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gloria, paulina garcia, republic of chile, sebastian lelio

 

A version of this post first appeared at The Essential

gloria 2013
When it comes to romance for the mature-aged — but more specifically sex scenes — there is often contention as to whether the subject is handled tastefully, and with care. Thankfully, writer/director Sebastián Lelio is not so stupid to consider such trivial things, and his splendid Gloria (Paulina García), a free spirit who attracts a trapped man, is a character in a love story, told with an urgency that any lovelorn adult can relate to, but which is truly a story about Chile.

Living in Santiago, Gloria spends days at work and nights out at bars and clubs, dancing with men she meets and sometimes taking them home. Both her children are grown and have their own families and romances to occupy them. Her neighbour rages at all hours of the night, while she cares for his hairless cat and her closest friends are a happily married couple. Gloria, despite being a woman with an insatiable lust for life, is very much alone.

One night at a club, she meets Rodolfo (Sergio Hernández), a man newly separated from his wife. They fall in love but it is not long before Rodolfo’s complicated sense of duty to his ex-wife and daughters keep him from giving himself fully to Gloria who, unlike him, has been independent for 12 years.

Many women can learn from something from Gloria (though she is actually Lelio’s stand-in for his homeland), faced with the anxiety of distance from her own family, and spending much of her dates with Rodolfo convincing him that she is enough for him, she maintains a youthful spirit, and does not compromise herself. Her efforts with all people are based on trust and love, and not the terror of being alone, or feelings of hopelessness.

Lelio has some neat structural tricks up his sleeve too, putting things in places where you’ll forget them until they can be executed for a particular effect. He also places Gloria in the very real situation of a socially energetic woman, who brushes upon all kinds of people and generations and families on a daily basis. The film achieves a great sense of community and family, engaging with the unifying condition of lost affection, broken tradition and new beginnings.

There are some small details that could have been better explained, mostly that of the specifics of Gloria’s occupation and what she has been doing in the last 12 years since her divorce but the film does show us that Gloria is living in the moment, listening to the latest pop music, dancing till all hours of the night — she is the present. She is Chile now. The details of the South American nation’s political climate are accessible enough but customs and social norms involving divorced women are a more shady area. In any case, Lelio has made a film for a modern Republic of Chile, celebrating a people with a zest for life, who need to mindful of, but perhaps leave behind, those afraid of change.

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Love Hurts

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by Jemima Bucknell in Uncategorized

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boudleaux bryant, country song, everly brothers, love hurst, miley cyrus, rock, roy orbison, the essential, wrecking ball

A version of this post originally appeared at The Essential

We often equate break-ups with listening to lame tunes with lyrics that we suddenly relate to, and then months later those lyrics and that melody still burn us despite regaining some sense, dignity, self-respect, taste etc. Perhaps they hurt because they embarrass us now. Because we’d never have succumbed to the allure of that little ditty if we hadn’t been in a state of disarray or temporary madness. Excuses, excuses.

Break-ups are sentimental, probably more sentimental to some than the relationships that preceded them, so I’m going to get sentimental.It is with mixed emotions that I’d like to discuss “Love Hurts” as performed by Roy Orbison – yes! – uberlols! – but there is merit in its design, particularly in its love lexicon. And hey! It’s great, albeit hammy, and the kind of thing someone would probably auto-asphyxiate to in a 90s movie.

Without getting too personal, I had a bad break-up, some years ago now. Like two years. One of those situations where you have no idea it’s coming and it hits hard and you feel very stupid, very crazy, and all your doubts about the relationship that you’d been stewing in for months are suddenly forgotten and you’re convinced, only because they’re no longer interested, that you’re meant to be together, so you make yourself insane trying to convince them of that. And unfortunately I did, and we went through it all over again about 2 months later. You live, you learn.

Love hurts. It was really hurting. I didn’t want to eat. I smoked like a chimney. I stayed in my room for an entire weekend. I screamed over the phone until I lost my voice.

I don’t like to wallow in it, friends will attest to this. I’m more of a ‘these things happen’ type (outwardly) but the only times I’d get to sit and sulk and feel sorry for myself was listening to Sun Records artists, but most frequently, by the multi-octave, tender, heavy, and occasionally yodel-y voice of Roy Orbison. (I hope my use of the word ‘outwardly’ in parentheses, twice now, will not go unnoticed.) “Love Hurts” was not a huge success for him back home. It was Australia that first put it on the radio and made a hit out of it in 1960. Previously, it had appeared as a track on an Everly Brothers album, but Orbison’s version made it a single.

The music and lyrics were composed by Boudleaux Bryant, half of a song writing team with his wife, Felice Bryant. They had written over 80 songs together before they made it into the business, in Nashville Tennessee, composing country songs for scores of white musicians.

The song, now that I have the lyrics straight, is lovely and melancholic. I used to make them up. I think “love is like a flower / holds a lot of rain” was just as nice as the accurate “love is like a cloud” but anyway, when you’re heartbroken, you hear what you want to hear.

I like words, and I don’t have a vernacular for the discussion of music that extends beyond making impressions of sounds, which I can’t convey in writing in to any great effect, so let’s look, together, at the second verse, which begins with an augmented key shift and the words “I’m young, I know”

(I’d like to congratulate Lyrics Freak for almost accurately laying out the lyrics. Most sites try to print them like a sonic translation, overuse of the return key. Idiots)

“I’m young, I know, but even so
I know a thing or two, and I learned from you
I really learned a lot, really learned a lot
Love is like a stove, it burns you when it’s hot”

I AM young, I know, but here the magic is not in this coincidence, but in the coupling of “love” and “stove”. It’s poetry. No, they are not pronounced in the same way by Orbison, “luv is like a stove”, they retain their usual oral separateness according to most English speakers after the 1930s, but I’d like to think that Yeats may have read it a rhyme, back when ‘love’ was so assonantly close to ‘loathe’.

I’m also completely beguiled by this, which I’m going to call ‘the refrain’, being not at all confident that it is one of those:

“Some fools think of happiness
Blissfulness, togetherness
Some fools fool themselves I guess
They’re not foolin’ me”

The repetition of “ess” overlapped by variations on the “fool” verb is exquisite. And “fools fool themselves I guess” is almost too much, but you’re carried off by Orbison’s crying, “me”.

The song’s physicality, its “scars”, “mars”, “burns” are all injury of an intimate, subtle, and yet, permanent nature. The most obvious antonym would, I suppose, be Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” which, I have no doubt, is working for a lot of girls going through explosive, demolishing break-ups at the moment – maybe they’ll be embarrassed later, and maybe they should be now, and maybe they shouldn’t be? I can’t weigh-in on that.

I like “Love Hurts”, but I think I’m a total cornball, and love is cornball anyhow. And it doesn’t hurt me to say that, despite whatever remedy works for you, wallowing in a mid-tempo country song, helped me stabilise somewhat. Until the next thing, anyway.

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Muriel’s Wedding 20th Anniversary

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by Jemima Bucknell in Article, Film

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20th anniversary, adventures of priscilla queen of the desert, australian cinema, bill hunter, blu-ray, muriels wedding, quirky comedies, rachel griffiths, rhonda, strictly ballroom, toni collette

muriel

A version of this post originally appeared at theessential.com.au

The nineties are remembered as a time in Australian cinema of camp vibrancy, of colourful, loud films that embraced and celebrated otherness. Along with The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert and Strictly Ballroom, Muriel’s Wedding launched the careers of its cast and makers, made us laugh, got us singing and dancing, moved us to tears — plus, they all featured Bill Hunter (he actually filmedPriscilla and Muriel at the same time).

These three “quirky comedies” are grouped together because they were released within two years of each other and they had commendable box office and international success. They also filter Australian culture through a feminine eye and are about performance, singing and dancing, the love of fabulous costumes and gowns, gossip, romance and getting married. All three films were actually written and directed artfully and lovingly by men, but it isMuriel that has a female lead.

Muriel Heslop (Toni Collette) is an unemployed, unmarried, overweight, socially awkward and dishonest 22-year-old with a well-known father in local politics, and a group of pretty friends who think she is cramping their style. She lives at home in the Queensland beach town of Porpoise Spit and has two obsessions: ABBA and getting married. After being arrested for theft, and publicly humiliated, Muriel steals money from her father (Bill Hunter) and takes a holiday to an island resort. There she meets Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths) a freewheeling, outspoken, and adventurous girl who attended the same high school as Muriel. Rhonda defends her, she loves ABBA, they dance to “Waterloo”, sing to “Fernando” and become instant friends. Muriel runs off to Sydney to live with Rhonda, and the two reinvent themselves. It is not long, however, before her past catches up with her, and when Rhonda is suddenly diagnosed with cancer, Muriel can’t cope and retreats back into her obsession with weddings.

P.J. Hogan’s superb script is one of well-structured satire. Tania Degano and her chorus of twit friends are mean and thoughtless to shy, odd Muriel, but that cruelty offers the film’s finest comic dialogue, and also a diving board for Rhonda’s triumphant shut-downs.

The characters all have their own moments of habitual oddity, and they are all charming. Betty (Jeanie Drynan) makes tea by putting a tea bag in a cup of water and placing in a microwave. Perry (Dan Wyllie) kicks an empty carton of milk around, while commentating an AFL grand final of which he is the champion.

The film is also devastating. Watching Muriel fill an album with Polaroids upon Polaroids of potential wedding dresses is immensely sad and then there’s Betty, whose confusion and inattention slowly unravel into a mental breakdown. Hogan is able to switch from colourful comedy, to deathly sterility with care. He loves his subjects, even Muriel’s despicable father, Bill Heslop, earns our sympathy when looking out over his barren, smoking backyard, which Betty set on fire before taking her own life.

Hogan’s magnificent ending sets Muriel aside from its contemporaries. It combines the journey of Priscilla with the coming-of-age quality of Strictly Ballroom in a famous reversal of James Stewart’s excited return to his hometown in It’s a Wonderful Life. Here, the girls bid farewell to the hideous, “progressive” structures that men like Muriel’s father have littered the beachfront with, while ABBA’s disco hit “Dancing Queen” carries them out of Porpoise Spit forever. What is so special about Muriel’s Wedding is that the women rescue each other and manage to find a happy ending despite being broke, paralysed and divorced with no career prospects or romantic interests. Muriel and Rhonda are, to this date, unrivalled as the freest women in Australian cinema.

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