April 29: From Up on Poppy Hill/Kokuriko-zaka kara (2011 -- Gorō Miyazaki)

★★★★★

This film has lots of what I like to see when go to a Studio Ghibli project.  I enjoy the lush visuals, the somewhat stilted characters, the unlikely narrative, and the Japanese cuteness.  At Ghibli, these elements always seem to come together to create something that’s deeply fleshed out, internally consistent as well as absolutely unique and absorbing.  To watch From Up on Poppy Hill is to enter into an aesthetic space that exists only in this particular film, and while you’re there, you give yourself to its complete world with its own imaginative rules.  The what-if atmosphere is warm and tender, not only arising from the rich imagery of the port, the gardens and the clubhouse, but also from the adolescent fantasy that informs the movie.  From Up on Poppy Hill has hard-working teens, gallant teens striving against obtuse adults, teens consumed with the excitement of learning, and teens dealing with romantic awakenings.  And all of this to a nostalgic soundtrack that harkens back to accessible 60s jazz and some pop.  The film is a satisfying immersion in a deeply imagined and rendered world.

It’s not hard to imagine an element of meta-signification in the film either.  Aside from the teen romance that is fraught with complication, From Up on Poppy Hill deals with the tension between the past and now.  The baroque clubhouse is facing demolition to make way for the new era that the 1964 Tokyo Olympics will usher in, but heroes Umi and Shun have a vision for the restoration of the old building, partly gleaned from the beauty of the renovated boarding house she helps run.  The film calls for preserving the past as we move into the future.  This is the same approach that director Gorō Miyazaki takes in making this film.  The son of Ghibli master Hayao Miyazaki, Gorō builds on the achievement of his father rather than abandoning the Ghibli approach to go in a different direction.  The rich visuals and intensity of imagination he brings here extend the approach to anime that his father has developed, and Gorō even has his father Hayao as a scriptwriter, ensuring that From Up on Poppy Hill builds on this tradition.  And Gorō succeeds convincingly  from up on his own Poppy Hill  by following  in the footsteps of those who worked before him in this absorbing film about respecting tradition. 

April 27: Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington (2013 -- Sebastian Junger)

★★
I found this documentary to be disappointing.  The great strength here is that we see lots of Tim Hetherington’s work, both video and stills, and the work is dynamic, personal, loving and warm.  Hetherington says early on that his interest is the humanity that survives in war, and we see this humanity in war photo after war photo and in the behind-the-scenes video we watch of Hetherington at work with his subjects.  He likes the people he photographs.

But Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? stumbles when Hetherington isn’t onscreen.  Junger intimates a different motivation for each different theater Hetherington works in.  He says that Hetherington  wants to show war by photographing its effects in Liberia, but he also says Hetherington is interested in the soldiers’ posturing to get keyed up.  Later, it’s male bonding that interests Hetherington in Afghanistan.  And in the six-year period the photographer stayed in Liberia after the war, his interest is……well, Junger doesn’t say at all.  We're not sure why Hetherington decided to leave Liberia, and we don't know why he wanted to go to Afganistan.  Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? moves from one idea about Hetherington’s work to another, leaving us with a series of touching, compelling moments, but it ultimately fails to give us a core to help us understand this artist who worked as a photojournalist.  In fact, it doesn’t even try.

It’s hard to leave this film without an appreciation of Hetherington’s work since we get to enjoy so much of it.  However, as a documentary, Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? disappoints because we can’t learn more of the aesthetic behind Hetherington's work or of what motivated it.  The important takeaway from the film is that we lost a talented documentarian when Hetherington was killed in Libya, and that counts for something anyway.

April 25: Lawrence of Arabia (1962 -- David Lean)

★★★★★

April 21: Brief Encounter (1945 -- David Lean)

★★★★★

April 18: Blithe Spirit (1945 -- David Lean)

★★

Blithe Spirit must rank among the most trivial of David Lean’s work, and it’s safe to guess that it’s not Noel Coward’s star achievement either.  This film takes the interest in spiritualism, already gently mocked in the character of Sylvia in This Happy Breed, and turns it into the butt of full scale wit.  Exaggerated characters strike poses and engage in repartee, but overall the film lacks punch or insight.   Or, for that matter, originality.  Blithe Spirit putters along like a stylized, commercial theatrical production, telegraphing its next plot turn well in advance.

Lean doesn’t rise above this material either.  Sight gags and double exposures work to create some interest, but Lean’s editing acumen and Ronald Neame’s cinematographic touch are largely absent here.  There’s even a continuity problem as the driver and passenger in a car inexplicably switch places at one cut.  There is some nice use of color palette in the Technicolor – Elvira’s green complements the colors of the first séance, and Ruth’s subdued orange blend nicely with her room – but there’s little to distinguish the color scales here from those in other Technicolor productions of the time.

As my friend Lou says, this film lacks spirit.

April 16: This Happy Breed (1944 -- David Lean)

★★★★

No sophomore slump here.  David Lean’s second collaboration with Noel Coward (and Ronald Neame) again pairs good character study with the cinematic to describe bedrock England.  This Happy Breed follows a middle class family though the two decades between WW I and WW II, showing the domestic values that underlie what is quintessentially English and the factors that stress them.

A lot of the characters in This Happy Breed recall those from In Which We Serve, and when the characters don’t obviously correspond, their qualities look familiar.  From the film’s opening panorama of London that slowly zooms in on a middle class neighborhood with gardens uniformly filling each identical back yard, the British affection for horticulture almost becomes a metaphor for the British character.  “We do things slow in this country,” Frank tells the impetuous leftist Sam, who will later become his stolidly middle-class son-in-law.  Steady, calm, and methodical with an eye to the future, -- these are the qualities of a good gardener and a good Brit.  Like the Chief of In Which We Serve, Frank tends his garden and his family conservatively, adjusting to whatever immediate crises arise so that he can get back to his happy equilibrium.

But This Happy Breed shows us that the British conservative isn't rigid because the British heart prods the conservative to adapt.  Ethel shows this dynamic the most clearly when she rejects her daughter Queenie because of the girl’s socially shameful behavior and her undermining the marriage of another woman.  Celia Johnson’s hardworking, determined Ethel vows never to speak to her daughter again for these social transgressions, but when the occasion for their reunion comes, the mother’s heart can’t hold out against her conservative values, and mother and daughter are reunited.  There’s a similar reunion between Queenie and Billy, the very decent suitor she has previously rejected as boring.  Billy has been diligently working his way up the ranks to be able to afford marriage while Vi has been learning that red dresses and the Charleston aren't what she really wants.  After their divergent paths, the two are able to embrace middle class, married bliss by the time the film ends.

There are other echoes of In Which We Serve in this film, too.  We again have an crabby, elderly, female in-law residing in the house, Ethel’s mother, and she’s continually bickering with a younger woman, Ethel’s sister Sylvia.  And the stolid middle class life in this film is punctuated by the same events as the middle class life In Which We Serve, a wedding and a Christmas celebration with paper decorations.  Both of these two Lean/Coward collaborations show the British middle class as stolid but open to change as compelling family needs dictate.

This Happy Breed doesn't have the sudden cinematic flourishes like the opening of In Which We Serve or the editing dazzle we see in some scenes in that film, but there are moments of cinematic pleasure here.  The opening with the London cityscape that ends in the garden of a single home has its thrill while it's also telling us that we’re seeing the story of but one little family among many.  And without a line that says, “This is the story of a family.”  Lean, and perhaps Coward, trust cinema enough at this point that they don't need expository dialog.  Another scene adapts theater technique to the screen.  The scene opens with Ethel’s mother and Sylvia listening to some upbeat jazz when they are interrupted by Vi with the bad news of Reg's death.  The peppy music continues unabated on the soundtrack while the two burst into tears and flee the room, creating an ironic emotional counterpoint.  The music continues while Vi goes to the garden to tell Frank and Ethel of their loss, but the camera stays in the room, motionless as always, with the jazz going.  Frank and Ethel reenter the room some moments later, clearly devastated, but the music continues at the same volume and the camera continues its static gaze.  It’s not hard to see this exact staging in a theatrical production, but it works well on film, too.

The cinematography makes the boldest film statement of This Happy Breed.  We know it’s Technicolor from the credits and from more traditional uses of the process like we see in the ranks of brightly dressed soldiers marching in the parade with red accents on their uniforms.  But most of the film uses Technicolor in an unusual way to create rich, muted brown and grey hues, from the drab wallpaper to the drab upholstery to the drab clothes.  The film can show color --  it does so in the Christmas decorations and in Queenie’s dance sequence – but Technicolor here only reinforces the drabness of the family’s environment, which is an appropriate corollary to the family’s conservative values.  There’s nothing too extravagant in behavior, values or décor with this middle class, British family.

This Happy Breed is a solid film that gives an insightful reading of bedrock British values.  Because of the film’s clear sympathy with the characters it portrays, it doesn't idealize, patronize or satirize.  By staying in the realm of drama as much as it does, This Happy Breed gives us a perspective on a certain segment of British society between the two wars.

April 12: In Which We Serve (1942 -- Noel Coward & David Lean)

★★★★
In Which We Serve opens with some of the most self-congratulatory credits I've ever seen.  Staring Noel Coward, written by Noel Coward, art director for Noel Coward, Noel Coward’s music performed by…, and finally directed by Noel Coward, with second credit to David Lean.  And after this orgy of Coward self-promotional credits, In Which We Serve becomes a long, beautiful montage that portrays the construction and launch of the HMS Torrin in a way that  pure cinema, and much in style of Eisenstein.  I wonder if the completely unnecessary line of dialog that introduces this montage – “This is the story of a ship” – was the contribution of the film’s headliner, perhaps anxious that the real director’s mastery of cinema was a threat to the playwright’s presumption.  If so, Coward should indeed have felt threatened because the cinematic in In Which We Serve outshines the actors’ lines.

In Which We Serve is a film of flashbacks, far more than could be achieved on stage, and the skill of Lean is that we don’t get lost in the complicated narrative line. We first watch a disciplined Captain Kinross lead the crew in the HMS Torrin’s naval battle, but the ship is sunk by an aerial bomb, and a group of crew members assemble at a float. This is the film narrative’s base because much of the rest of the movie is flashbacks from three men at the float: Cpt. Kinross, Shorty, and CPO Hardy.  Lean cuts from each several times, each time joining the main character at a different time in his life, and it’s to Lean’s credit that viewers can follow the story.  In only one sequence – when we go from the float to Shorty’s flashback POV to Kinross’ flashback POV to the ship – did I get confused about where I was in the film.  Otherwise, the time and POV are very consistent and very clear.

And In Which We Serve presages how fruitful Lean’s collaboration with cinematographer Ronald Neame would be.  There’s a beautiful few seconds of film as the train with Shorty and Freda barrels from the left of the frame and heads deep into center screen, the low camera angle perfectly capturing the sun reflecting off its windows as the train rushes toward a break in the clouds.  It’s a brief moment is cinematic thrill.  Less serendipity than skill, another moment in the film has Lean and Neame directing a group of men as they leave the Torrin en mass.  As they head down the dock in eager anticipation, they separate and pass the young sailor who regrets his panic in the earlier battle and is sadly walking slower.  As the lights go down, the faster group streams off screen, and the young sailor is left walking alone in silhouette.  It’s another moment of  film beauty.  In another worthwhile moment of cinema, Lean does some flashy editing to give the scene with the wedding photographer punch.  These are moments of pure cinema that make this film worthwhile.

But credit Noel Coward with some of the most effective and unique elements of this propaganda film.  In Which We Serve puts a finger on the British qualities that will help it win this war.  It endorses duty above all, in the enlisted men and officers as well as in their wives.  And faced with hardship at the front and at home, the British suffer, but they endure and they sacrifice.  There’s no sentimental reward for the characters in this film; their reward is that they’re still alive.  It’s hard to imagine a French or American propaganda film that would endorse the values we find in this one.

Another great strength here is the scope of vision in the screenplay.  Not only does it span upper class to lower, but it gives as much weight to the women at home as it does to the men on the ship.  And these women have some complexity and depth.  Cpt. Kinross’ wife repeatedly complains about her husband’s devotion to his ship and his duty, often so strongly that there’s a sense that her humor is masking a genuine unhappiness.  Yet like him, she does her duty and stays with him and their kids.  We also watch Freda leave Shorty at the dock entrance after their honeymoon, and we see her begin to assume the role of Navy wife that Mrs. Kinross and Chief Hardy’s wife have already demonstrated to us.  There is no crying or dramatic expression of emotion here or anyplace else in the film; the British keep their upper lip stiff. 

It’s also through the women that we see that the dangers in the war are as potent at home as they are at sea.  In Which We Serve involves us as much in the lives of Chief Hardy’s wife and mother-in-law as it does in any of the characters, but these two affectionately-quibbling women are suddenly killed in one of the blitzkrieg strikes against London.  It’s a testimony to scope of the screenplay that we experience this as a loss of characters and not as the male character losing an important part of his life.  Such independently important female characters are not common in film of the time, and certainly not in what’s basically a propaganda film.

In Which We Serve is a happy joining of the sure hand of a cineaste to the instincts of a skilled crafter of narrative.  Lean and Coward’s first collaboration surpasses its genre aspirations and moves into a deeper artistic field.