The Engine

Edvard Munch , (1974) dir Peter Watkins This film, a biopic of the 19th century Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, first screened on TV in Europe in the mid-70s and recently re-released surrounded by a certain contrived controversy concerning ‘market banning’. The problem with Watkin’s film is that it is simply an unending dirge, focussing on the most negative, depressing facts of existence. It’s easy to see why, after an initial enthusiasm, the film sank without trace until its recent re-release and restoration on DVD. The director confusedly blames this on a ‘free-market conspiracy’ but this is all about Watkin’s paranoia, probably coupled with an ego far beyond his talents, a consequence of his undoubted intensity, intellectualism and unbelievably dull way of viewing the world. The film is a litany of facts and dates which fills in for any real emotional warmth exuded by the characters or any insight either into the life of Edvard Munch, the lives of 19th century women, the rela...

Kenny, (2007, Australia), dir Clayton Jacobson, starring Shane Jacobson Kenny is a new comedy from Australia that seeks to break the Hollywood stranglehold and in so doing invoke a new angle on life. Filmed as a parody or pastiche (mockumentary is the term used by most reviewers), it follows Kenny on his daily routine, working as a portaloo installer for events and festivals in Melbourne. Things are relatively quiet but then the midsummer madness begins, events like The Melbourne Cup and the St Kilda Festival provide a backdrop to Kenny’s constant ruminations on life and shit, something that might be called toilet wisdom. But the film never goes for all out belly laughs, but is as likeable and gentle as Kenny himself. The narrative drops half way through, as Kenny goes to an expo in Nashville, chats up an air hostess, makes a deal in Japan via a businessman he dubs the Sushi Cowboy. Other memorable characters in the film are Kenny’s workmates, his father, brother and son. Kenny is...

LOVE WILL TEAR US APART: CONTROL directed by ANTON CORBIJN (2007) This film retrospectively summarises the late ‘70s period after the impact of Punk Rock and the Sex Pistols and before the advent of Thatcherism. It is nostalgically filmed in black and white, underlining the bleakness of the northern setting (Macclesfield in Cheshire). Ian Curtis emerges as lead singer of band Warsaw which then transforms itself into Joy Division . Curtis is a self-absorbed, narcissistic youth dreaming of pop and poetic fame. He comes across as insecure, arrogant, selfish and individualistic. In short, all the needful qualities in his chosen profession. The period is summarised brilliantly but the film is bleak and painful to watch, as Curtis fails to cope with success, relationships and epilepsy. He’s depicted as helpful and conforming too. The band is tinged with fascism, as Joy Division refers to a special division of comfort women in WW2 (depicted in the novel The House of Dolls by Yehiel ...

Sicko, dir Michael Moore How does an obese man with no regular job pay his healthcare insurance in a country that has no universal healthcare scheme? The answer is that he makes a film advocating universal healthcare in America. This is Sicko by Michael Moore, riddled with complex contradictions too numerous to mention. Sicko puts American free market capitalism under the microscope once again in order to tell us what we already know: it has many inadequacies. But what he doesn’t tell us is this: so does Michael Moore. In the first half of the film Moore details all the problems inherent in giving over healthcare to the market. There are people performing their own rough and ready self-operations; people threatening large corporations with a new expose of their corrupt practises by Moore himself before Moore has even made his film; people crossing over the border into Canada to (illegally) take the free healthcare on offer there. What happens when a young girl has a very high B...

In the art of seduction, Parsifal will always retain its rank - as the stroke of genius in seduction. - I admire this work; I wish I had written it myself; failing that, I understand it. - Wagner never had better inspirations than in the end. Here the cunning in his alliance of beauty and sickness goes so far that, as it were, it casts a shadow over Wagner's earlier art - which now seems too bright, too healthy. Do you understand this? Health, brightness having the effect of a shadow? almost of an objection? - To such an extent have we become pure fools. - Never was there a greater master in dim, hieratic aromas - never was a man equally expert in all small infinities, all that trembles and is effusive, all the feminisms from the idioticon of happiness! - Drink, O my friends, the philtres of this art! Nowhere will you find a more agreeable way of enervating your spirit, of forgetting your manhood under a rosebush. - Ah, this old magician! This Klingsor! How he thus wages war agains...

The German Historical Museum, Unter den Linden, Berlin The German Historical Museum is a very dull, predictable museum indeed. If Germans really wanted to underline the most facile, obvious, dull, boring aspects of their history, then the German Historical Museum would be that monument. Treating German history as a linear essay, a parade of facts and dates dotted with the biographies of Great Men, the German Historical Museum trots out all its dullness over and over again. Proceeding from early German History by way of middle German History, we eventually get to late German History. There is so much predictability in this Museum it is difficult to know where to begin. Firstly, the early and middle parts of German History are dealt with cursorily, displays of (obsolete) armour, paintings of Great Men (Martin Luther). Then we get to WW1. There is a display of (obsolete) weaponry, including terrifying Medieval trench weapons that look as if they belong to the middle bit of German History...

Parisfal, (1982) dir Hans Jurgen Syberberg It’s difficult to believe that this film is now 25 years old, since it feels so modern, so contemporary when most other film on offer is dim, clichéd re-tread. Syberberg has dared to re-interprete Wagner’s last, most brilliant opera Parsifal , offering us a cinematic, poetic delicacy served up together with Wagner’s incredible music. There’s a whole range of reference to art history, the history of Germany and the history of Wagner’s era that is impossible to sum up at one viewing. The only thing that seems dated is the heavy-handed Freudian phallic object/castration symbolism that does seem very, very 80s, old-fashioned, ridiculous, bizarre even. Instead of allowing the audience to draw its own conclusions from Wagner’s text, Syberberg once again imposes his own interpretation, as with his docu-film interview with Winifred Wagner. The imposition seems violent, but it can also be revealing and refreshing. Like Syberberg’s Ludwig – Requiem for...