Photographer’s Gallery – Terence Donovan and “Made you Look”
In amongst the hard-faced young James Bond types in belted raincoats and beautiful, tubular, posing women, this captivating shot of Julie Christie, looking groomed but feral; there’s that smudge or graze near her elbow – bit more dirt and you could see it as a Don McCullin job. This, and the famous close-up of Terence Stamp are the stand-outs, but it’s all good.
This is the other exhibition on at the PG; New York, London, Senegal; especially good, the ones of Senegal dandies in 1904. The man on the poster in the plaid trousers is from New York in the 80s, I think.
Childhood of a Leader (dir. Brady Corbet, 2015)
I expected the Omen after the trailer, with the ominous, crashing, pulsing electro-classical score (Scott Walker of the Walker Brothers – remember?); set in France or Belgium (filmed in Hungary) at the end of WWI, as the Treaty of Versailles was evolving. It starts with footage of the fighting and the Versailles cavalcade – dozens of cars in convoy through the streets. The countryside is dark, distressed, the trees and the chateaux and houses distressed and damaged; the winter landscape, black trees, black clothes, black cars – the lighting in the picture is typical.
The film is constructed in three “Tantrums” and an Epilogue, showing the boy as an adult dictator, reviewing his troops before cheering crowds. There is a Sun emblem with wiggly rays, I think… Who is he supposed to represent? It’s based on a combination of a Sartre short story of the same name with a section of John Fowles’ “The Magus”. I haven’t got to the bit in the Magus yet, but the Sartre story has the boy growing up to be a member of a fascist group and taking part in the murder of a Jew. Bit of a stretch to becoming a dictator.
There’s nothing here that shows any insight into how a dictator might gain – as opposed to inherit – power. Where are we in the final section: America? Central Europe? The child is close by birth to influence and power, but nothing here really suggests an interest in it, beyond the exercise of his immediate will. The tantrums are not that dramatic; chucking stones at churchgoers, self-starving, refusing to dress, manipulating servants, embarrassing Mother, defying Father… Next thing, he’s dictating…
The music and visuals promise much – lots of Metropolis, a circular dome against the sky, black coats, white blouses, distressed walls, Hammershoi, Manet, a desolate winter field with a figure in the distance – but the story is paper-thin. The boy reminded me a little of Mark Lester in “Oliver” – but much more, the little girl in “Outnumbered”.
Behemoth (dir. Zhao Liang, 2015)
A nude, prone, rear view of a male torso against the grey/brown, scarred – too weak a word – devastated landscape of open cast mining, fields of green weeds before scores of massive, identical tower blocks. In such shots, triangular, straight-sided layering as of glass panes. Poetry read over shots. Coal mines, steel works, quarries, “ghost cities”, truck ballets (nose to tail, as they crawl up slag heaps to vertiginous drops and shed their loads), fire dragons blasting through the air, sparks, puddles of molten metal and clinker in the foundries. The lung patients in hospital and dying at home, the grey/black liquid from their chests filling jars. The empty cities, apartment blocks all the same, no cars on the roads, but the traffic lights operating…
It’s a rare thing; an art film and social documentary interwoven perfectly. Nearest thing I can think of would be “Leviathan”, the fishing doc.
Nicolas de Stael, Etel Adnan, Wim Oepts
No particular reason for linking these three, except that, at different times, in different places (France, Holland, Israel) they seem to have seen the world similarly
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De Stael
Oepts
Adnan
Holy Stone and Sand – WIP
Blackpaint
12.09.16
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