Photos: Classiq Journal
”Individuals are miracles, societies are not.”
Aki Kaurismäki
Left: Jeanne par Jeanne Moreau, 2023, published by Gallimard
Fallen Leaves, 2023
Aki Kaurismäki
Aki Kaurismäki is an original. His films qualify as social realism with a very dry, brilliant sense of humour. Music is also very much ingrained in a Kaurismäki film, often featuring live performances, which are usually the most straightforward comic sides of his stories. Fallen Leaves, one of my favourite films of last year, is a love story, between Ansa (Alma Pösty) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), at its heart and it’s so unapologetically different than any other kind of love story on screen that it feels so fresh and bare and rough yet magical in a way, because despite the harsh world and the deeply melancholic atmosphere, the ending is radiantly optimistic and deservedly so, unlike so many forced happy endings. Silence isn’t filled with unnecessary dialogue, characters sit in silence with their thoughts, they drift from one soulless job to another through a dreary Helsinki, unexpectedly fall in love, watch Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die at the cinema (it’s wonderful how Kaurismäki pays homage to other filmmakers by the way he uses film posters in the film), almost, tragically, don’t end up together, and yet, despite the film’s simplicity and cynicism, you are left with a feeling of sincere warmth.
Tout en haut du monde (Long Way North), 2015
Rémi Chayé
“I think the style of Long Way North is a way to look at reality through light, shapes, and colours, evoking emotion and tickling the imagination. To me, drawing is about interpreting reality – it’s a way to look at a chair, to make the spectator interpret that chair in a way that says something,” director Rémi Chayé said in an interview with Cartoon Brew after the film’s release. “One thing I noticed that was strange to the Americans is our frequent use of holds. In American animation, something has to move all the time. Europeans are closer to Japanese animation in the way that we make greater use of silence. Personally, I very much enjoy those type of Japanese films where nothing happens except drinking tea.” Those special quiet moments that give both characters and viewers the respite to just be present and take in everything that is happening on a much deeper level. Tout en haut du monde tells the story of Sasha, an aristocrat Russian girl, who in 1882 goes on an journey to the North Pole to find out what happened to her explorer grandfather who had left on an expedition and never returned. With an animation and composition that are simple and captivating and very appealing aesthetically, and its storytelling quality, the film fuels the imagination and creativity of children and adults alike.
The film was inspired by Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which further reminded me of William Grill’s Shackleton’s Journey, a firm favourite illustrated book of mine. In our interviews), William also said something that resonates with this minimalist type of storytelling: “I try and make the text as short as possible. Exposition can be patronising, and, by leaving space for interpretation, it can make for a richer experience for more readers,” and he named films and documentaries as major sources for fueling his creativity. “With film, there’s so much you can learn about composition, colour, image quality and storytelling, while documentaries can open your eyes to so many different subjects that I wouldn’t be able to access through books because I’m a slow reader! I also love looking at paintings, prints and textiles, they all give me inspiration and ideas, too.”
And further down the rabbit hole I went, as I discovered the animation and illustration work of Marie Vieillevie, Rémi Chayé’s assistant director. But I will save this story for another time.
Julia, 2008
Erick Zonca
Tilda Swinton is riveting to watch. Just think of her character, The Expert, in David Fincher’s latest The Killer. She appears in a single scene, The Last Supper, she herself might ironically call it, which is easily the sequence that stands out in the film. Or Eve, a vampire, the lover of centuries past of Adam, in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, one of cinema’s last great love stories. Or her rock star Marianne Lane in Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash, where, after surgery, she can’t speak and has to express herself through other senses – something that Swinton herself brought to the role, an idea that worked beautifully “in this claustrophobic atmosphere between these characters, where the struggle to communicate is paramount”. Her characters on screen are as chameleonic as David Bowie’s perpetual reinvention. In Julia, she is an alcoholic with her life in pieces, and who, after losing her job, forms a bond with a little boy she kidnaps for ransom. She dominates every scene, she is a dynamic mess, capable of anything, is anything but a set identity that society lays on people (and in many cases that cinema lays on its characters), and she is fascinating to watch.
St. Ives, 1976
J. Lee Thompson
One of those 1970s films I would watch just for the atmosphere and neo-noir inflictions.
Contact, 1997
Robert Zemeckis
The scene that I will always remember from this science fiction film remains the one from the very beginning, with a small Jena Malone who, inspired by her father, is experimenting with amateur radio and wireless communication. That part alone has the power to awaken the sense of adventure in every child. I wish I could capture it in a balloon and show it to all children.
Sideways, 2004
Alexander Payne
After watching The Holdovers, I wanted to view Sideways again. 20 years on, it’s as good as it’s ever been. Set in California’s wine growing region, the film pairs two best friends, played Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church, on a road trip that gradually descends into farce. Film still photographer Merie Weismiller Wallace described it best in our conversation: “Sideways was an odyssey of humour and human failure, and shooting it became a celebration of capturing director Alexander Payne’s uncanny vision and comedy of farce.” Robert Neubecker’s poster was another great interpretation of the film. The poster perfectly captured the increasingly uncomfortable and tense relationship of the two by encapsulating them in a bottle in a simple line drawing, while the background is green, the colour of the lush verdant landscape of the film’s location. A witty and creative representation of the film in a time when an illustrated poster would only break through every few years. Illustrator Robert Neubecker takes us behind the story of his poster.
The Holdovers, 2023
Alexander Payne
I have had the pleasure to talk at large about The Holdovers with the production designer, Ryan Warren Smith, about how the film was made, the instinctive choreography of collaboration, the transportive recreation of the 70s and settling the characters, and us the viewers, in that world, and so much more in our interview. Later this week, costume designer Wendy Chuck, who has worked on every Alexander Payne film since Sideways, and I will unlayer more aspects of filmmaking.
The Sundance Film Festival has wrapped, but I wanted to leave here these words by Robert Redford on what led him to found Sundance. “I wanted to have a sense of place. I wanted to create a sense of home. I wanted to have a sense of community. I wanted to be able to do projects that were different from the run of the mill. So this is how this thing started. Storytelling needs a sense of place, I think it begins with a sense of place.”
Reading
Jeanne par Jeanne Moreau. A visual and written self-portrait of a legend.
Next on my reading list:
Burma Sahib, by Paul Theroux. Before he was George Orwell, he was Eric Blair, a member of the colonial police in Burma. Paul Theroux’s new novel is inspired by George Orwell’s years in Burma. Writer Sophy Roberts recommends it as her novel of the year so far and it will be the subject of her one of her up-coming podcast episodes, Gone to Timbuktu.
Island of the Blue Foxes, by Stephen R. Bown. The story of the largest, longest, and best-financed scientific expedition of all time, known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic and never before fully told.
Listening
The album: Journeyman, Eric Clapton
The soundtrack: The Holdovers
The Podcasts:
Brattlecast. At one of America’s oldest bookshops, Brattle Book Shop, there are just as many stories to be told outside the pages as in them. Bookseller Kenneth Gloss and co-host Jordan Rich like telling stories and that’s what keep you keep on listening, their entertaining conversations and histories surrounding Boston’s favourite spot for bibliophiles.
The Rennae Stubbs podcast. The best tennis podcast. Period. Hosted by Rennae Stubbs, former tennis player and co-founder of Racquet magazine, and their cultural attaché Andrea Petkovic. Listening to their daily dispatches from the Australian Open was the highlight of the tournament.
Making
There was a time when music album art mattered. Cover art before Photoshop and digital technology. Everything was so natural and abounding creativity, so perfectly imperfect, so human. The 60s, the 70s. An era that shaped entire generations in how they perceived the music from that time. And now photographer Anton Corbijn (who has become almost as famous as the bands he shot) made a documentary about it: Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) – Hipgnosis was the design company before they came apart and before Corbijn came along.
Exploring
The World Press Photo exhibition, Sottopasso di Piazza Re Enzo, Bologna, 3-25 February. Organised by Cineteca di Bologna, home of one of the largest film archives of the world and one of the most important institutions in the preservation of world film heritage, the exhibition showcases the best and most important photojournalism and documentary photography of the last year.
The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Gone to Timbuktu, Sophy Robert’s podcast on the art of travel. Wachstumsversuche, with Sarah Schill. Sirene, Racquet, and Yolo Journal, all in print.
”I call it magic. So cinema from now on will be
more or less seen only in festivals. Let’s say five years,
no, not even five, three years, commercial cinema is dead.
We were lucky to be born when we were.”
Aki Kaurismäki, 2012
