Photos: Classiq Journal
“The authors of genuine children’s literature, then,
are only rarely and indirectly educators…
Jules Verne is perhaps the only one.
They are poets whose imagination is privileged
to remain on the dream wavelength of childhood.”
André Bazin, What Is Cinema?
Viewing
Silkwood, 1983
Mike Nichols
This is easily my favourite Mike Nichols film and my favourite Meryl Streep role. This is great visual storytelling. These are not movie stars, they are characters in the story. Kurt Russell and Cher proving themselves as actors, and Meryl Streep becoming Karen Silkwood. I was mesmerised by her, and only after I watched the film I found out that the film was based on a real life story and character, a lab technician at a nuclear plant who takes action when she starts to doubt the safety of the working conditions. A story about “a woman, her actions, her conscious, her goals, her fears.” What Meryl Streep does with her character simply made me wish I came out of every film feeling that what I saw on the screen was someone’s story, that I was part of something for 1 1/2 or 2 hours.
In the book Mike Nichols: A Life, the director recalled the moment when he saw Meryl come out from costume fitting (the great Ann Roth was the costume designer): “She came out in a very short denim skirt and cowboy boots and a tight T-shirt with her cigarettes rolled into one sleeve. And my heart started pounding. I had a kind of anxiety attack because she was so tough. She was already somebody else. She wasn’t testing the costume. She was just there, in character. It was the most startling moment.”
Nichols also recalled Streep’s infectious joy at getting to do the role. She chopped her hair short, without telling Nichols, and dyed it dark brown too, to match Silkwood’s. “In Streep, Nichols realised he had found a kindred spirit,” Mark Harris writes, “someone who liked to act the way he liked to direct, working out each moment, imagining what her character would do physically, how she would sound, move, think. Streep forged a relationship with everyone she worked with, whether costar or cast member.” “She just somehow moved her soul around,”, Nichols noted. “All the relationships in the movie were people’s relationships to her.”
Summer at Grandpa’s, 1984
Hou Hsiao-Hsien
The first Hou Hsiao-Hsien film that I saw was Taipei Story. A silhouette in white seen from behind. Wide-legged white trousers and a white shoulder-padded blazer. Low, white kitten heels clattering on the tiles of an empty apartment overlooking a similar tall building of flats. From behind oversized sunglasses, she sizes up the apartment and begins to list the electronic appliances that could fit in a corner of a room, all the ambitions and comforts of modern life, a life she seems to have been long settling in. She is not alone. He is casually dressed and, as he is mimicking a baseball player with his swinging arms, does not seem to share her enthusiasm and ideas of a dream-life. That’s the opening scene from Taipei Story, a film that captures a city and a couple with contradicting world views, a city and a couple caught between past and future, between tradition and modernity, between troubled historical identity and Western newness. A broken city, a broken relationship. I wrote an article about it, Power dressing and Sunglasses after Dark in Taipei Story, a few years back.
Summer at Grandpa’s is so different. It’s about childhood (a young boy and his younger sister are sent to their grandparents to spend the summer when their mother is hospitalised), it’s about a different kind of life, simpler, and I want to say happier. But happier here doesn’t mean that it isn’t without hardship, or sadness, or problems, or tragic moments. Happier is as in having freedom as a child: roaming the countryside with your friends, getting into trouble and getting out of trouble by yourself, and learning valuable lessons from it, reading in the afternoon with the windows open until you doze off, being around the older, wiser people representing a smooth transition into growing up, making friends during the course of an afternoon but who will forever change your life. There is such a quiet beauty and profound wisdom in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s seemingly unspectacular images of everyday life.
Singin’ in the Rain, 1952
Gene Kelly
When I first watched Singin’ in the Rain, I couldn’t stop marvelling at the all-singing, all-dancing Kelly, and at how the musical numbers were so seamlessly integrated into the plot, and such a good story it was, too. Absolute joy! Absolute genius! Now I have rewatched it with my son and we still marveled, our eyes glued to the screen, at how an actor, singer, director, dance choreographer, could also be so masculine and an athlete of that caliber.
For Your Eyes Only, 1981
John Glen
It’s the gritty realism of the Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig films that I love the most in all of the Bond movies. Then there is Sean Connery’s From Russia with Love. There is also In Her Majesty’s Secret Service that has something special about it. And, finally, there is Roger Moore’s For Your Eyes Only, which I consider one of the best in the series, and reviewing it again recently on a projector in the garden, made me enjoy more than ever before the great actions scenes and amazing locations, Corfu, Meteora, Cortina d’Ampezzo. Coming after Moonraker, that had put James Bond on the orbit and into the space age (bigger and more spectacular was the aim), For Your Eyes Only was shaped as a more serious and realistic spy thriller anchored on a young woman, Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet), whose parents are killed by an assassin. There is also Bond’s personal story that we are reminded of at the very beginning of the film when Bond goes to the grave of his wife – that was a first in the history of the Bond films. But what makes For Your Eyes Only stand out even more though is that there is also the tough side of Roger Moore’s Bond that is being explored more than in the other films he appeared in. The director, John Glen, wanted to tap deep into the character, not just by showing his humane side (Glen had the idea with the grave scene), but also by revealing a hard edge that was characteristic more of Sean Connery’s Bond. Glen knew that they had to steer away from the much too gimmicky and fantastical scripts and to tone down the humour in the other Roger Moore Bond films. It worked beautifully and it is an important part in the evolution of Bond on film. Now I am looking forward to seeing where Denis Villeneuve will take next movie in the franchise.
Reading
Braided elegance that blossoms beautifully in idyllic remoteness, pottery work as an integral part of living, friends and indigo plants growing together the whole year round, an independent movement in the distinguished Japanese calligraphy: Craftland Japan is a voyage through Japan’s remote artisan ateliers, core values and centuries-old craftsmanship traditions, a great journey into the world of makers and artists and their creative minds and skills. “Things made by hand have a feeling of one’s heart because the hands and heart are directly connected. I want to show my children the way I work. There are many choices for everyone in how to live and how to earn money, but I want to teach them to try things. It’s easy to enter a company and have a salary. But to make money with your skills in making things you like is not easy, to be independent is not easy. I want to show them different options to life.” – Kazuto Yoshikawa, woodworking artist
Françoise Sagan’s Un profil perdu (Scars on the Soul – unfortunately it is out of print and I haven’t found any good edition to link to) is part essay, part novel. I prefer her as an essayist: it’s where you continuously remark her cool intelligence, her forward thinking, her freedom of the thought and clarity of mind.
Jacques Cousteau’s The Silent World. A reminder that every great explorer’s greatest achievement is not how far he or she has gone, but the ability to remain humble in front of nature.
Listening
The soundtrack: Singin’ in the Rain
The concert: Stereophonics, Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone, Rome, August 29th
The album: Make ‘em Laugh, Make ‘em Cry, Make ‘em Wait – Stereophonics
Making
Joyas, by Anna Westerlund, my favourite ceramics and jewellery designer. With every new item, Anna Westerlund seems to rise above her craft. There is hand and heart into what she makes, something new I haven’t yet seen, and a timeless concept behind her work than is endlessly inspiring.
Exploring
There are some places you enter and that instantly speak to you. You feel that everything is at it should be, and that it satisfies your sense of curiosity and beauty and discovery, all under the same roof. Paraphernalia, in Athens, is one such special place under the Mediterranean sun. A wonderful miscellaneous collection of products, from art and design books (it’s where I found the book Craftland Japan), local art, Japanese stationery, magazines, accessories, cosmetics and homeware, and, most importantly, knowledgeable, kind and well-cultured staff.
On an end note
Dominic Lees talks to Natasha Lyonne about the limitations of AI in filmmaking and the related risks. It was disturbing to find out about the AI-generated spoof videos of Wes Anderson’s film style, to which Natasha responded: “What a perfect filmmaker! To recreate his images – it’s so, so disturbing… Wes has to live a whole life to become the quality of human being that he is, who sees the world in such a specific way. This really robs from him, and to make from him something sort of comedic on your computer in like ten seconds is deeply disturbing. It’s pretty obvious that it should not be legal. And certainly should not be legal without him getting a very serious payday.”
“Wes has to live a whole life to become the quality of human being that he is, who sees the world in such a specific way.” We are way past the limits that should have been drawn long ago. Where to now?
The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Ruthie’s Table 4 with Ruth Rogers. Fashion Neurosis, with Bella Freud. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Racquet’s Rennae Stubbs tennis podcast. Gone to Timbuktu with Sophy Roberts. Sirene Journal, Racquet, and Waves & Woods in print.
”If the actors are good enough,
something really begins to happen: Life occurs.
Meryl woke me up. This time, I feel – knock on wood –
I’ll remain awake.”
Mike Nichols, Mike Nichols: A Life
