04.11.2010

Celluloid standouts

Jim Moody summarises the highlights of the London Film Festival

For range and quality, London Film Festival 2010, which ended last week, once again largely comes up to expectations. Among standout works this year were John Akomfrah’s The nine muses, Ken Loach’s Route Irish and John Sayles’s Amigo. But these were just some of the impressive films on display.

Migrant musings

Lyrically translated, The nine muses (director: John Akomfrah) takes us on an epigrammatic journey inspired by ancient Greece. But instead of the Aegean and Attica we gaze across icy expanses of sea lapping Alaska and its crisply clean snowscapes, and hear apposite readings from a wide array of authors. We begin to imagine the frosty reception awaiting many migrants who came to British shores from the Caribbean and other sunny climes. Some readers may experience déjà vu: John Akomfrah’s installation Mnemosyne in London and West Bromwich was this film’s precursor.

Readings thread the work’s nine musings on a necklace of illustrations, making intense connections between Arctic and archive images of migrants, and such voices as Richard Burton (reciting Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood), Derek Jacobi (Milton) and Marcella Riordan (James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegan’s wake).

The anonymous ‘other’ gazes on snowy roads and landscape and from icy shores and ships dressed in primary colour anoraks. And from the frames of documentary footage hopeful migrants look forward to meeting their new neighbours in Britain, while others report on a less than friendly reception.

Iraq mercenary

Route Irish (director: Ken Loach) is the code name of that most dangerous road in Iraq, running between the airport and the occupiers’ corral, the Green Zone. Fergus mourns his childhood friend, Frankie, who was killed in Iraq while working as a mercenary (or ‘contractor’) under him. At first sight, those who put themselves in harm’s way for payments of £10,000 a month would not naturally engender a great deal of sympathy, especially from those of us who are opposed to US and UK operations Iraq and Afghanistan. But there is more to it than that. For if these ‘lads’ were making small fortunes, the companies they worked for were making huge fortunes.

But Fergus becomes disturbed about the circumstances leading up to his friend’s death. Although Frankie had been killed in an ambush carried out by insurgents, his employers had been taking inordinate risks. As Fergus asks more questions about Frankie’s last few weeks in Iraq, he uncovers war crimes.

Of course, none of the over 150,000 ‘contractors’ - US, British or whatever - faced prosecution for the murders and other depravities they carried out in Iraq. Mercenaries were granted immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law by the notorious Order 17 of the Coalition Provisional Authority headed by top American in Iraq, L Paul Bremer. This licence to kill did not end until 2008. In 2003 one of the US companies providing mercenaries in Iraq, Blackwater Worldwide, got $21 million in a no-bid contract just for guarding Bremer.

Things take a nasty turn when the company finds another use for its attack dogs: eliminating troublesome elements who might expose what it had been up to and thus ruin its nice little earner in Iraq.

Old US imperialism

Amigo spells out what it was like on the ground, in a small Philippine village, when the US ‘liberated’ the country from Spanish colonialism in the 1899-1902 war of independence. Director John Sayles, no stranger to controversy, teases the threads of ‘race’ and class from the complex weave that was late 19th century Philippine society.

At the bottom of the social hierarchy are the Chinese coolies, who appear disposable to all sides in the conflict. The peasant mass of los indios were almost equally looked down upon by Spanish colonialists, here represented by the village’s haughty Roman Catholic priest, Hidalgo (Yul Vazquez), who is released from his makeshift village prison by the new invaders. Of course, the US soldiery in the main has no better view of the populace. Indeed, although the village headman Rafael (Joel Torre) does his best to protect the inhabitants, his attempt at a modus vivendi does him personally no good at all.

Despite some fine words from the US, its attack on and occupation of the islands was to usurp Spain as coloniser, not to help Filipinos govern themselves. As Amigo discloses, revolutionary forces led by Emilio Aguinaldo were victorious against Spain in 1899. But once the US reneged on agreements made with Aguinaldo, they immediately turned against the US occupation. That was the canvas upon which Sayles paints so well the tensions, betrayals and personal disasters visited upon Filipino combatants and villagers alike thanks to US aggression. The effect of imperialist boots on the ground clearly has not changed a great deal over a century.

War stress

In our name (director: Brian Welsh) deals with the effects on soldiers of participating in the war in Iraq. In the case of Suzy (Joanne Froggatt), who returns home to north-east England, what she experiences is magnified by being married to another soldier, Mark (Mel Raido). What is worse, Suzy can only communicate her growing stressfulness to another, male soldier who was on her tour of duty. This enrages Mark, whose default response is physical, with predictably dire consequences (though not exactly as might be envisaged). Meanwhile, Suzy’s post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) goes untreated and leads her in a downward spiral towards disaster.

Given what squaddies are expected to do and experience in theatres of war, the time bomb of PTSD has yet to explode in significant numbers. While ex-forces personnel are already proportionally over-represented in UK prisons, it usually takes around 17 years for PTSD to fully develop. So we can look forward to high old times from 2015 onwards, as many of those who were in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2000 ‘come on-stream’ in this way.

Best of the rest

Special treatment (director: Jeanne Labrune) is what is given by both psychiatrists and prostitutes. In this depiction, both professions are well represented (and drawn).

Hands up (Romain Goupil) shows that is possible to get inside the skin of a political subject without preaching. Kids see straight through adult political bullshit and take direct action.

Sensation (Tom Hall) has a particular take on prostitution. When Donal’s dad dies he inherits the farm and can indulge his sexual appetites, though he cack-handedly starts at it by engaging the services of a prostitute, for whom he falls.

Robinson in ruins (Patrick Keiller) is a follow-up to the director’s London and Robinson in space, though this time the voiceover is by Vanessa Redgrave. Abstrusely ‘picturesque’ views of the current state of the south of England bring a new way of looking at the capitalist crisis, among other things.

The Taqwacores (Eyad Zahra) transcribes Islamic comic strip to real life in Buffalo, New York. These are Muslims as you have probably never seen them - what with a burqa-wearing grrrl, a skater and a skinhead to the fore. Based on Michael Muhammad Knight’s novel of the same name, whose fictional subculture then prompted people to aspire to its characters, creating a new reality.

Of gods and men (Xavier Beauvois) tackles a clash of culture, religion and politics in a cauldron of fundamentalism, dealing with a real incident from the Maghreb’s recent past.

Waste land (Lucy Walker) takes a tour round the world’s largest rubbish dump, Jardim Gramancho, in Rio de Janeiro. ‘Discarded materials’ artist Vik Muniz takes a master class in transforming junk into artworks, which aid some of the garbage pickers gain new insights and some confidence.

Dhobi ghat (Kiran Rao) is a debut feature using only one established actor, Aamir Khan, who plays artist Arun. Unlike most Bollywood movies dealing with cross-class romance, this sharply observed film handles it as it is much more likely to happen in the real Bombay.

Conviction (Tony Goldwyn) casts Hilary Swank brilliantly as the sister, Betty Anne Waters, of convicted killer Kenny Waters (Sam Rockwell). Betty Anne comes good and gets herself a law qualification, all the better to battle for her bro. Engrossing as are the best of such ‘miscarriage of justice’ tales.

Miral (Julian Schnabel) takes a story of growing up in east Jerusalem from the formation of the state of Israel to the beginning of the ‘peace process’, refracted through the eyes of a woman, Miral (Freida Pinto), whose experience of the 1989 intifada brings outrage and consequential doubt to the non-violent approach.

Mandelson: the real PM? (Hannah Rothschild) permits us to accompany the former business secretary at work and rest (hardly at all) from October 2009 to June this year. Kinnock’s ‘evil genius’ epithet was never more apposite.

Rare exports: a Christmas tale (Jalmari Helander) is a hilarious chiller that combines Yuletide children’s adventure with the shockingly macabre.

I wish I knew (Jia Zhangke) takes a trip around old and new Shanghai, peppering old timers’ reminiscences in talking head spots that cast an intriguing light on the pre- and post-revolutionary city.

Autumn (Aamir Bashir) is set in Kashmir, or at least the Indian-occupied part of it. Never flinching from how the national question impinges on Kashmiris’ lives, through young Rafiq’s (Shahnawaz Bhat) experiences, the film admirably portrays how life is lived there.

Black swan (Darren Aronofsky) and White Swan are, as every aficionado of Tchaikovsky’s Swan lake knows, danced by the same principal ballerina. How taking these roles can affect and reflect both the artist’s life and her commitment has never been so tellingly told.