AFTER LIFE: more questions asked than answered

There's no escape from bureaucracy even after death if AFTER LIFE is to be believed.
Rather than shuffling off this mortal coil and straight through the doorway to either heaven or hell there's a waiting room in a drab school building, an interview and some homework to be navigated first.
This low budget 1998 Japanese drama, shot in a semi-documentary style, follows a group of recently deceased people as they pass through this nondescript way station en route to eternity. Each of them is assigned to a caseworker who, after notifying them officially that they are dead, asks them to choose one memory from their life to take with them into the here-after.

Once selected, the caseworker and his colleagues will recreate the memory in a short film to be screened to the deceased before every other memory is erased from their mind and they're sent on their way.
For some it's an easy decision while others struggle to recall anything meaningful or worthwhile despite encouragement and gentle guidance from their caseworker.
AFTER LIFE's concept of an afterworld run by civil servants through which the newly dead are forced to transit is nothing new. I was reminded of the 1944 Warner Brothers drama "Between Two Worlds" with the wonderful Sydney Greenstreet as the white suited celestial examiner whose stamp of approval was required to pass through the Pearly Gates.
But in director Hirokazu Koreeda's imagining we are not judged for our actions on Earth nor asked to justify our behaviour. The task of the caseworkers here is not to determine who is worthy of heaven and who should be damned to hell. In fact it's made clear early on that these alternatives don't even exist. Their job is to encourage each of the deceased to review the entire span of their life and come to a thoughtful decision on which moment of it was really most important to them. Which one memory will keep them happy through all eternity.
There's much here to engage our curiosity, from the participants' complete lack of distress at being dead, to grappling with the idea of being burdened with just one memory for the rest of time and beyond. Surely even the happiest recollection will eventually drive you mad if it's the replayed over and over with no ability to switch it off.
AFTER LIFE also leaves the notion of the ultimate hereafter to our imagination. No one expresses any interest in their final destination and no information is offered. Perhaps the dead are too engrossed in appraising their past to wonder about the future.
What I found most disconcerting is that this after life appears to exist on the same plane as life as we know it now. Traffic passes by on the street beyond the school and, in one sequence, a young caseworker walks into the city centre and looks in shop windows as the yet-to-be-deceased pass her by without reaction. She is a ghost in their midst, visible yet unseen.
This all adds up to a story that will frustrate those who insist on a strong degree of closure at the end of their films. The relentless focus on the everyday, sometimes mundane, activities of the caseworkers and their clients leaves no time for exploration of metaphysical ideas of life after death. 
That's not a criticism it's a compliment because it leaves us space for our imagination to roam. Thought-provoking and tender yet unsentimental, AFTER LIFE will definitely provoke reflection and debate.

BEING THERE: thought provoking brilliance

If Peter Sellers is remembered at all today, it is for the series of ‘Pink Panther’ films he made in the 1960s and 1970s as the comically inept Inspector Clouseau.
But even that is a fading memory, as a new generation of moviegoers grows up believing Steve Martin created the character in 2006’s abominable retread of ‘The Pink Panther.’
Much like Martin, Sellers also squandered his talent and tainted his reputation with a series of mediocre and painfully unfunny films but, similarly, he was also capable of brilliance.
BEING THERE is a stunning example of the British comedian’s talent when he chose the right material. He displays a depth and maturity he had rarely if ever shown before, and hints at what more he could have done had he lived.
Sellers spent almost a decade trying to persuade a studio to make the film. It finally went before the cameras in 1979, just a year before his untimely death from a heart attack.
The result is one of my top three all-time favourite films.
Sellers plays Chance, a fifty-something year old man-child who’s lived his whole life in the confines of a Washington DC townhouse, tending to the garden, and protected by a wealthy and kindly benefactor.
When he isn’t gardening he is watching television. As he’s never left the house his only knowledge of the outside world comes from what he has seen on tv.
When his benefactor dies, the lawyers throw Chance out onto the street, leaving him helpless in an unfriendly and unsupportive world that is totally beyond his limited powers of comprehension.
Fortunately a traffic accident brings him into contact with Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine), the young wife of the elderly, sick, and incredibly wealthy industrialist and political powerbroker Benjamin Rand (played by veteran Hollywood leading man Melvyn Douglas).
Fearful of a lawsuit, she takes Chance back to the Rand mansion where Rand warms to the younger man, mistaking his simple-minded references to gardening for profound political observations.
Before long and completely without his doing, the people around him have transformed Chance the Gardener into Chauncey Gardiner, a mysterious and influential political advisor with the ear of the US President (Jack Warden), and the one man that everyone who’s anyone in DC wants to meet.
On one level BEING THERE is a critique of the cultural impact of television on the United States. Chance relates everything in the outside world to what he’s seen on tv, and one of the film’s most intriguing aspects is director Hal Ashby’s choice of real television clips from the era. Anyone who grew up in 1970s America will find much that they recognize, but its meaning in the context of the story is less clear.
Despite repeated viewing I’m still trying to fully understand the message of this film, and that’s what makes me keep on coming back to it. Each time I watch it I’m left with something new to think about.

BEING THERE is also a sharp and very black satire on the inability or refusal of America’s political elite to accept people at face value, preferring instead to project their own interpretation onto the actions and behaviour of others, to create meaning and significance which just doesn’t exist.
Chance remains totally oblivious to the misunderstandings of those around him. He is the same mild mannered, simple minded man at the story’s end as he is at the beginning. What has changed are the people around him. Those who protected him from the harsh realities of the world have been supplanted by ruthless political operators who see in him their best chance to attain their selfish objectives.
Sellers was deservedly Oscar nominated for his performance, while Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The whole film is beautifully cast and directed, and the Rand mansion (actually the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina) where much of the film is set is particularly atmospheric.
Satirical, funny, dramatic, subtle, and thought provoking, BEING THERE is a neglected masterpiece of 70s cinema. Do your bit to restore it to its rightful place in cinema history. Watch it.

ECLIPSE:overwhelmed by inertia

Michelangelo Antonioni's ECLIPSE is a masterpiece of hypnotic boredom. To describe it as languid would be to grossly insult things generally considered to move at a slow pace - like snails and tress.
Even the word meandering suggests something able to generate faster forward motion than the narrative of this 1962 film.

ECLIPSE is hynotically boring because it drains the viewer of the willpower to look away and indulge in a more stimulating activity such as blinking while breathing.
I knew within minutes that this film was going to be more boring than a roomful of accountants discussing socks yet I found myself totally unable to do anything about it. ECLIPSE sedated me to the point where it became too much effort to stop watching.
And now that the experience is over and I've regained the use of my free will I find I'm troubled by the cinematic equivalent of post traumatic stress disorder.I'm having these terrible flashbacks to Monica Vitti's really unconvincing interpretation of the emotional torment when a relationship ends.
Please... somebody, make her blank-faced acting go away........ 

PULP FICTION: it's just so 1994

Last night I watched PULP FICTION again for the first time since it's original cinema release back in 1994.
As the story unspooled whole scenes and chunks of dialogue came flooding back to me. Not because I was one of those Quentin Tarantino anoraks who memorised every frame and every line of the script but because so many others did and then talked about them - on tv, on the radio, in print, and in everyday life. 

Anyone who was around in 1994 would be hard-pressed to forget John Travolta's description of the French version of the McDonald's Quarter Pounder with cheese, or Samuel L.Jackson's expletive laden recitation of Ezekiel 25:17, or Christopher Walken recounting how one of his prisoner of war comrades hid a wristwatch in his ass to keep it safe from his North Vietnamese guards..
This hip, irreverent, pop-culture laden dialogue was writer-director Quentin Tarantino's trademark. It had been perfected in his directorial debut "Reservoir Dogs" two years earlier, and that film's incredible success had made him the hottest property in Hollywood. Stars queued up for the chance to work with him have a little of that coolness rub off on them and their career. PULP FICTION brought John Travolta back from the dead and confirmed Jackson as the hippest actor in town.
But what appeared so exciting, fresh and original 16 years ago felt contrived and tedious upon second viewing last night. The plot repeatedly ground to a halt while Jackson and Travolta spewed minute after minute of mostly pointless dialogue. If I met either of these characters in real life they'd have to hold their gun to my head to compel to listen to their self-indulgent ramblings.
The fault for this lies less with Tarantino than with popular culture (in the form of the tabloid media, manufacturers of pop culture posters and postcards, and those sad mo-fos who deludedly believed that memorising chunks of film dialogue would make them 'cool') which elevated everything about PULP FICTION to such unrealistic heights of adulation that a fall was inevitable. 
For me this film has not stood the test of time. What had been fresh, funny and original in 1994 is now tiresomely annoying and an ordeal which (for academic reasons) had to be endured.  

IN BRUGES: Cold blooded killers to warm the heart

Two men sit on a bench on a bridge overlooking a canal ruminating on life. The older one, Ken, spells out his philosophy:
“At the same time as trying to lead a good life I have to reconcile myself with the fact that – yes – I have killed people. Not many people… most of them were not very nice people.”
Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and his protégé Ray (Colin Farrell) are two of the most likeable cold blooded hit men you are ever likely to meet.
They’re on the run after a hit in London that went wrong. Handed his first assignment by gang boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) Ray murdered not only his intended victim but also a six year old boy, hit by a stray bullet.
Packed off to the beautifully preserved medieval Belgian city of Bruges by Harry because he has fond memories of a childhood holiday there, the two men find themselves at a loose end. Ken’s happy to kill time taking in the sights but a cultural experience is the last thing that Ray is interested in.
Haunted by the death of the little boy but not so grief-stricken that he doesn’t want to have a good time, Ray sets his sights on beer, women and getting out of Bruges. To him it’s the most boring place on earth.
In an accompanying DVD featurette Farrell describes the script for IN BRUGES as not like anything he’s read before, and he’s right. The story is an exhilarating mix of black comedy and tragedy which stands as a totally original piece of entertainment rather than simply summoning to mind a dozen other similar films.
The credit for this belongs largely to writer and first time feature length film director Martin McDonagh. In Ray and Ken he has created two wonderfully memorable and believable characters that the audience can’t help but come to empathise with despite their bloody profession.
The jug-eared warm-hearted worldly wise Ken and the scruffily handsome, street smart, childlike and political incorrect Ray are an endearing odd couple brilliantly brought to life by Gleeson and Farrell. Gleeson brings class and credibility to any project he works on, but Farrell is a revelation.
To watch him at work in this film is to appreciate how his talents have been wasted in empty Hollywood blockbusters like “Miami Vice” and “Alexander.” This guy can really act!
The story’s third major character, Harry, doesn’t make his first appearance until over an hour in, but he’s well worth the wait. If Fiennes weren’t up against such stiff competition his humourless and psychopathic south London gangster would have stolen the film – he’s that good.
Rounding out the quartet is Bruges itself. The film captures not only the medieval beauty of the city but also the dull damp chilly light of a European city out of season. The picture oozes an atmosphere which is hard to quantify but easy to sense.
IN BRUGES comes with an R rating and that’s not just because of the violence. There's an awful lot of swearing and one word in particular is uttered so many times that it gets its own – very funny - DVD extra.
Personally I’m more offended by bad film making than bad language so I have no hesitation in recommending IN BRUGES as one of the most genuinely entertaining films that I've seen in a long time.