★★★★☆
Four Stars

The sweat drips from the low ceiling of the O2 Academy Oxford. Somehow on a damp March evening, the Oxonian audience find themselves in a humid atmosphere of discomfort unknown this side of the equator. In the midst of the increasing mist of evaporating perspiration, enter The Stranglers- pursued by an impressive setlist spanning forty years of creativity.

Emerging onto the musical scene through the supposed anarchy of the punk movement, the band describe themselves as being “punk plus and then some”- a musical genre made clear within the first two songs. Walking in on their traditional entrance music, ‘Waltzinblack’, the audience is worked into a frenzy of sinister fairground accordions. The sound brings leering clowns to the forefront of the mind: as well refreshing childhood memories of my dad playing the song as we drove down the equalling chilling sight of Southend seafront to my own.  As the instrumental comes to a close, the plodding bass and whizzing synth of 1979’s ‘The Raven’ welcomes them to the main body of the band’s live performance.  The transition is seamless, the band’s playing seemingly flawless.

The only drawback? The lack of looming founding member Jet Black behind the drums.  At seventy-six, the crashing presence has had to reduce his live performances to limited and fleeting glimpses. Don’t get me wrong, Replacement drummer Jim MacAulay does an impressive job. But no one can truly replace such a charismatic figure as Jet casting his eye out across the crowd from his stool/throne behind the drums.

A brief look around reveals a motley crew of a crowd. Like eclectic surroundings of the fairground that their accordion sounds emerge from, their gig is a “come one, come all!” affair. Aging punks stand alongside youths in a mass of sweat and dreadlocks. Both groups are eagerly jumping along to the thudding bass of ‘Peaches’ or the infectious synth of ‘Baroque Bordello’ in strangely beautiful unison.  Parents do not seem to have dragged their kids to this event. They seem to have come of their own accord to experience the same youthful joy their parents must have felt before them.

Playing a near two and a half hour set, said audience is treated to hits galore. The bizarre timing of ‘Golden Brown’ sets heads of all ages bopping along. As ever, keyboardist Dave Greenfield’s fingers seem to move effortlessly. They glide over the keys as the audience is welcomed to ‘planet Greenfield’, as lead singer Baz Warne jokes as he plays a particularly surreal note more home in the voice-box of a dalek . Controversy is skimmed with the inclusion of the anti-racist  and  clearly ironic ‘I Feel Like A Wog’: whilst ‘Duchess’ reminds a somewhat heart-wrenching lament to the disillusioned lower middle classes day-dreaming of riches sat in desolation of a run-down terrace.

But the height light of the night is by far the extended closing track ‘No More Heroes’. Bassist  Jean-Jaques Burnel begins by teasing the crowd. Thwacking the fretboard to letting out almighty cracks, he launches into the infamous introductory solo to a mesmerised crowd. Playing in beautiful union, the band remain tight and unified to the final notes. In 2014, Jet Black said of the band that “This is the best band in the world — and we’ll carry on until we can’t any more. Though we are not thinking about that”. And after tonight, his statement is proved right. 

Few films have had as tumultuous a history as Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s seminal 1982 sci-fi thriller. After a nightmare shoot on which Scott made enemies of many of his collaborators, the film opened to indifference from U.S. audiences and outright hostility from critics, garnering accusations of thin plot, glacial pacing and over-reliance on spectacle. Time and re-edits, however, have seen a dramatic reappraisal on par with Kubrick’s most infamous, and the film is now deservedly hailed as a masterwork, as well as one of the most singularly influential sci-fi movies of all time. Now, with a sequel on the horizon, the British Film Institute are re-releasing the film in cinemas throughout the country, and there’s never been a better time to get onboard. Blade Runner is a film that demands to be seen in as immersive an environment as possible.

The film is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, though rather loosely. Neither Scott nor screenwriter David Peoples read the novel during production, and the film (with its title borrowed from a totally unrelated book) was informed more on a thematic level than by the intricacies of the plot.

Set in a neon-lit, shadowy Los Angeles of 2019, the film stars Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, an ex-cop (the titular “Blade Runner”) who gets pulled out of retirement to track down and kill a group of replicants (human-created android worker-slaves, designed to look indistinguishable from adult humans) who have escaped from an off-world colony. There’s also a woman. If this is sounding very similar to another specific genre then you’re not far off the mark. Film Noir is a heavy influence on both the structure and mood, from Ford’s morally dubious anti-hero to the pervasive first-person narration that frames proceedings in the original edit.

Doubtless this voiceover contributed in no small way to the film’s initial negative reaction. It was imposed (along with a contrived “happy ending”) by the producers when they seized artistic control in post-production and after preview screenings in which the audience complained the film was hard to understand. Both of the original screenwriters hated it, as did Ford (who remarked that it was written by “clowns”), so much so that a rumour even begun among fans that he had purposely delivered the dialogue inadequately, hoping it would have to be cut from the film. These aspects of the film were widely condemned by critics, along with the not-quite-coherent story and the greatest barrier of all, the slow pace. So when did audiences and critics alike have such a change of heart?

For one thing, Blade Runner‘s ascension to cult status was a slow process. There is a sense that audiences were ill-prepared for the film in 1982, coming as it did off the back of Harrison Ford’s Star Wars/Indiana Jones one-two punch of the previous years. Ford was keen for a role which offered more depth than those he was quickly becoming trapped in, but viewers were not to know what was in store, especially given the misguided advertising (the film was labelled an action-adventure; each of these terms is woefully inappropriate).

But over the following years, and beginning overseas where it was more favourably received upon release, people were growing aware that the more time you spent with the film, the more rewarding it became. Yes, the film is slow, but it is far from vacuous. Rather it is deeply contemplative, and the deliberate pacing combines with visual and thematic richness to create an experience which truly gets under your skin.

Foremost among the film’s heady considerations is what it means to be human. The woman – our femme fatale that Deckard encounters early on – is introduced to him as a replicant who believes she is human, and this calls into question all he thought he knew about the nature of humanity and the clear-cut line between man and machine. Though technically only a few years old, she has been designed with artificial memories going all the way back to childhood, a terrifying idea which recalls a segment of the recent Black Mirror Christmas special.

Blade Runner is rife with symbolism, chiefly the image of the eye. In this world where humans and replicants look exactly alike, seeing is no longer believing, and even our own memories cannot be trusted. Eyes both human and man-made are the focus of shots and dialogue throughout the film, and it’s no coincidence that the leader of the replicant splinter cell, Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer) pays a visit to the scientist who designed his. “If you could only see what I’ve seen with your eyes”, Batty tells the man, in a line which he echoes later during a famous soliloquy (perhaps the film’s most enduring and iconic scene).

Hauer gives the performance of a lifetime as Roy Batty, one of cinema’s most engaging and poetic villains. Scott cast the role without even having met him, so impressed was he by Hauer’s previous work, and Philip K. Dick was delighted by the choice, calling him “the perfect Batty – cold, Aryan, flawless”. Batty spends the film trying to find a way to expand his replicant model’s four-year lifespan (an intentionally built-in safety measure), coming as he is to the end of the cycle. It’s Batty’s actions that prompt us to question our notions of man and machine; while Deckard follows orders, carrying out his task with machine-like thoughtlessness, Batty wishes deeply to be in control of his own fate. He is cold and violent, but also fuelled by deeply human desires (“I want more life, father”, he tells the man who designed him). Batty is passionate, thoughtful and loyal to his friends – human qualities which Deckard lacks, and this subversion of man/machine roles is central to the film.

Rutger Hauer

Clearly then, even in its original cut, Blade Runner was an ambitious meditation on humanity, with themes and imagery which I have only begun to touch upon. The presentation, however, left a lot to be desired. The most dramatic improvement came in 1992 with the release of the Director’s Cut. Though limited by time constraints, this retooling was done under Ridley Scott’s supervision – it did away with Ford’s voiceover and the studio-mandated ending (leaving the film on a much more fittingly ambiguous note) and overhauled the film’s editing, presenting a more coherent narrative. But Scott’s final say on the matter didn’t come until 2007’s aptly titled Final Cut. Released for the film’s 25th anniversary, this definitive version was similar to the Director’s Cut but featured digitally remastered visuals, among other small changes, and was presented alongside an enlightening 200-minute ‘Making Of’ documentary.

Harrison Ford

The Final Cut is unquestionably the definitive edition of the film, and it is this version that will be playing across cinemas nationwide for the next few weeks. The removal of the on-the-nose narration reveals the subtlety of the rest of the script; the characters are written with a degree of nuance unmatched in the genre, and much of the dialogue (Batty’s in particular) is breathtakingly lyrical. Blade Runner also looks better than ever before. Scott’s neon Tokyo-influenced L.A. is astounding in both its scope and intricacy, and the omnipresent police overwatch, as well as the searchlights which invade every last claustrophobic interior, suffuse the film with an oppressive atmosphere of inhumanity and paranoia. Vangelis’s electronic soundtrack perfects the film’s synthesis, a flawless blend of sci-fi and noir replete with mournful saxophone-centric love theme.

Reports have recently surfaced regarding the film’s planned sequel, though details of the project are few and far between. Scott is involved in a producing capacity, and has indicated that shooting will begin in 2015, based on an initial screenplay draft by Scott and Hampton Fancher, co-writer on the original film. Ford is also slated to return in a supporting role, and in terms of plot details Scott has offered only that the film will feature a female protagonist, and involves a search for Ford’s character.

Denis Villeneuve is attached as director, an interesting choice with a strong track record, but fans of the original remain apprehensive – though he has two stone cold classics to his name in Blade Runner and 1979’s Alien, Ridley Scott is notoriously inconsistent, especially in recent years (his most recent film, Exodus: Gods and Kings, was lampooned by critics). It remains to be seen how any sequel will be able to justify its own existence, being as it is that the original stood so well on its own and offered no clear avenues for potential follow-ups. Other involvements remain up in the air – will Vangelis return to score the sequel? For me, as for many fans, his music is so inexorably linked to Scott’s vision that it’s difficult to imagine the one working without the other.

However this project turns out, it won’t affect Blade Runner‘s mighty reputation. This visionary neo-noir masterfully blends a beautiful, awesomely immersive world and profound thematic content. It is essential viewing for film fans and sci-fi fans of all predilections, and has had a dramatic impact on all that followed, from Ghost in the Shell, the seminal cyberpunk anime, to informing the look of Gotham City in Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy. But through these decades of influence, Blade Runner remains a unique viewing experience, one which may never be equalled in the genre. You owe it to yourself to get to your nearest cinema, and watch this one up on the big screen.

★★★★★

Five Stars

I was surprised by how little known and averagely-rated The Tale of Princess Kaguya, which netted Studio Ghibli’s first Academy Award nomination since Howl’s Moving Castle, was in the run-up to its release. It received some surprisingly mixed reviews based on what seemed to me fairly shallow criticism: that it was too slow-paced to keep the attention of its younger audience.

There wasn’t a single child watching when I went to see it at the cinema, and the subtlety of its themes was by far suited to a more mature audience. If reviewers were expecting one of Studio Ghibli’s usual charming adventure fantasies, they would obviously be disappointed. The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a troubling mix of dark folk-tale and harsh reality behind incredibly beautiful aesthetics.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a fairy tale which unravels fairy tales. Its beginning places magical occurrences in the realm of the possible, whereas later scenes seem to question a simple acceptance of these events. In one of the strongest echoes of folk-tale, the princess’s five suitors each go on a quest to find a seemingly unobtainable object in a bid to win her hand. In the end, they pay craftsmen to create these objects for them or are swindled by traders purporting to sell such things, inventing incredible stories of their quests in the process, to add credibility to their tale. The film allows us not to take these ‘magical’ happenings at face value, so that the events of the film can be interpreted in ways relevant to ordinary human experience.

These interpretations, although gently implied, can lead to conclusions dark enough to not seem out of place in the work of Isao Takahata, creator of Grave of the Fireflies. The contrast between earth’s chaotic cycles of life, of joy alternating with sorrow, are rendered in gorgeous watercolour. This is contrasted against the cold, quiet black-and-white precision of eternal life on the moon, Princess Kaguya’s true home. The effect is to suggest that the ‘life’ she momentarily wants to return to in her deepest anguish can only be death; she forgets all her experiences on earth when she returns.

The film creates other contrasts which are hardly straightforward. The life she lived in the woods as a child was one of companionship and closeness to nature, but also of near-starvation and hard work. Despite her certainty that she could have been happy in that life, and the way in which she is made to deny all emotion when living as a subjugated female aristocrat, I felt as if she was merely telling herself a story which she found comforting from her present perspective.

Her aristocratic life is, distressingly, one which can only be escaped by death or by dreams, and two of the most moving scenes of the film are only revealed as dream-sequences after they have occurred. As she imagines breaking out of her confinement, shedding her stifling layers of luxurious robes to race through a landscape that becomes increasingly abstract with dark scribbles of charcoal, it is as if her mental distress unravels the art of the film.

A flying sequence between her and her only real love interest Sutemaru recalls Chirio and Haku’s flight from Spirited Away and perhaps deliberately so, in a film that is suited to self-conscious evocations of other films and other stories. Or perhaps it’s merely drawing on Studio Ghibli’s general use of flight as representative of thwarted love.

Its radical difference to Takahata’s other films suggests his great flexibility as a director who bravely but rightly trusted in the suggestive power of folk stories and beautiful, cleverly-deployed imagery to carry the film.

★★★★☆

Four Stars

In the introductory video to National Theatre Live’s screening of A View from the Bridge, the artistic director of the Young Vic, David Lan, makes a cogent point. We already think we know how this play should be performed, and he’s right. Arthur Miller’s 1956 story about a Brooklyn docker family on the verge of tragedy is one with which many theatre goers (and English Literature GCSE students) will already be familiar.

But it soon becomes clear that Belgian director Ivo Van Hove’s take on A View from the Bridge is no conventional production. Van Hove condenses the play to its essence, defamiliarises it, and presents it to us in a way which is both refreshing and arresting. The resulting production has proven so popular that it is now enjoying a run in the West End, and is being broadcast in cinemas across the country as part of the National Theatre Live programming.

National Theatre Live is having a bit of a moment. The initiative, which records performances in London and then screens them across the world, now forms a staple part of many independent and chain cinemas’ output. It launched in summer 2009, and is now well into its stride with over 3.5 million viewers in more than 1,100 venues.

But with the ticket prices usually higher than normal film screenings (an eye-watering £17.50 for an adult at the Phoenix Picturehouse), do they really offer enough for the money? For £17.50, I admit I’d be reluctant. NTLive is hardly a feasible audience outreach strategy at such a prohibitive cost. But for the more tolerable sum of £8.00 (which I paid at the Odeon in Manchester), A View from the Bridge offered an evening of fantastic theatre at great value.

Van Hove’s avant-garde influence on the production is felt immediately. The set is minimalist in the extreme – blank walls, no furnishings, largely drab costumes. The stripped-back surroundings put pressure on the actors to nail Miller’s complex web of character motivations. A challenge to which the cast rise admirably.

Mark Strong is utterly magnetic as Eddie Carbone; the longshoreman with a consuming love for his niece, Catherine. When two relatives from Italy begin to encroach on his territory and threaten his honour, Eddie’s paranoia drives him to destruction. Strong strikes the delicate balance between emasculated vulnerability and dominant aggression, as Eddie is slowly stifled by his jealousy.

Emun Elliott brings a quiet, menacing gravitas to industrious immigrant Marco. The moment when he holds a chair aloft in an assertion of strength is dramatised to biblical proportions by Van Hove’s choice of near-celestial lighting and choral crescendo. This quasi-religious tone is echoed by the striking physical composition of the scenes. At times, the way the characters position themselves to emphasise the power dynamics at play feels as carefully calculated as an Italian Renaissance painting.

Breezy ingénue Catherine is portrayed competently by Phoebe Fox, and the scenes with her sidelined aunt Beatrice, played by the excellent Nicola Walker, betray her slightly sinister acuity in a way which never feels heavy-handed. Similarly, the niggling sexual undertone to Eddie and Catherine’s relationship is accentuated from the start, though Strong and Fox keep it at a controlled simmer rather than over-emphasising its sordid quality. Still, Fox is most convincing in her comic interludes with flamboyant upstart Rodolpho (Luke Norris) – even if her Italian-American accent is less than perfect. Rodolpho himself is sweet and eager without being saccharine. His exclamation of “My little girl!” to Catherine in their moment of passion is downplayed, but still wonderfully jarring.

The whole cast deserve to be lauded for the superb, seething tension they maintain throughout. Van Hove’s decision to do away with an interval pays off. By the time the play nears its emotional climax, the intensity has reached electrifying, almost unbearable levels. Van Hove’s avant-garde leanings also find expression in his decision to have the stage directions vocalised by lawyer/narrator Alfieri in the heat of conflict. Far from being irritating, this bold move was reminiscent of a court record being relayed, and gave a delicious sense of fatalism to the rapidly evolving action.

So can the intensity of the theatre experience be effectively transmitted across a cinema screen? For the most part, yes. I was certainly gripped by the unfolding action, and the filming is unobtrusive enough to make the experience feel immersive. It is remarkably easy to forget you’re in a cinema auditorium and I doubt I was the only person fighting the compulsion to applaud at the end. That said, the surprising (and slightly gimmicky) nature of the final scene elicited a couple of sniggers from the cinema audience – a reaction it is hard to imagine would have happened in a theatre environment.

A cinema screening is never going to match the raw presence of a performance seen in-the-flesh. But if the aim is to deliver a feel of the play, and, as Ivo Van Hove professed in his video interview, to “reach an audience as big as possible” in the process, then NTLive hasn’t done a bad job at all. A standardised, lower ticket cost would strengthen the initiative, but this production of A View from the Bridge certainly deserves to be seen.

★★☆☆☆
Two Stars

When Julianne Moore glided to the Oscars podium to accept her Academy Award for best actress this past March, she was carried there on the back of years of wonderful performances in brave, daring films. Still Alice, in which Moore turns in another tour de force as the titular Alice, is unfortunately not one such film. The film is staid, disjointed and inescapably naff, except for the few wonderful individual performances it features. Thankfully it’s smart enough to allow Moore to shine. What we’re left with is a terrific performance in search of a film.

Directed by husband-and-husband team, Wash Westmoreland and the late Richard Glatzer, the film follows the mental decline of a Columbia Linguistics professor after the discovery that she is afflicted by a form of early onset Alzheimer’s. The later revelation that her condition is hereditary places her deterioration at the centre of a dysfunctional family drama. She begins to forget words, faces, and places. In the film’s lone stylistic idiosyncrasy, the focus pulls in close to Moore, who expertly shows us the sheer terror at the centre of the blur around her. Glatzer and Westmoreland are at least able to serve Moore’s talent.

She struggles to convince her husband, played by Alec Baldwin, that her mental deterioration needs to be taken seriously. Baldwin is given little to do as the minor villain of the piece but delivers beautifully in his precisely underplayed final scene opposite Kristen Stewart, who stars in a supporting role as Alice’s daughter.

Stewart, too, is wonderful. As always, she’s an unpredictable presence on screen, filled with a nervous, lively energy. She listens, lives and reacts in front of the camera, rather than performing. Elsewhere, Kate Bosworth never quite elucidates the coherent core of her character, and the inexplicable texture of her face’s skin distracts amidst a cast of such expressive performers.

The film lacks momentum beyond merely watching Moore expertly navigate the different stages of Alice’s deterioration. It lays breadcrumbs here and there which later pay off in variably satisfying ways. The film feels listless, almost cruel, subjecting its protagonist to debatably unnecessary humiliations. It crawls to a close, but thankfully not before allowing Stewart and Moore to deliver a note-perfect emotional resolution.

The film’s made for television feel is matched by an uninspired, drab visual palate and a vaseline-smeared lens. The film findspurpose in its greetings-card level belief in the power of love and living in the moment, but doesn’t reach for much profundity beyond the obvious gravity of terminal illness, and the loss of self. A terrifying premise is squandered by the film’s unimaginative, prescriptive qualities.

More so than its similarly illness-based sibling The Theory of Everything, which also brought Oscar glory to Eddie Redmayne, the film dances uncomfortably around its elitism-laced premise. Still Alice locates its true tragedy in the loss of Alice’s greatness, as her superior intellect and revered brilliance gradually leave her. The film’s tastefully decorated open plan homes and Hamptons cottages are the stability against which Moore’s unpredictable descent is contrasted. The film seems overly concerned with the terror of reality impinging on a middle class idyll.

Beginning with 1995’s Todd Haynes collaboration Safe, through Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Cookie’s Fortune, Far From Heaven and 2007’s Savage Grace, Moore has delivered virtuoso performance after virtuoso performance. She continues to be awardable for practically any film she has deigned with her presence. Even this past year, her insane, dark, vanity-free turn as a narcissistic, damaged former starlet in Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars deserved the lion’s share of recognition. It’s a far braver performance in a far better film than Still Alice, yet lacking the politeness required of any serious Oscar bait, and thus unfortunately overlooked. It’s to Moore’s credit that she is willing to take great parts in otherwise bland material, as she elevates the film above its limited aspirations. She treads a meticulously drawn line between tasteful and expressive.

If the film ultimately connects, it’s because it is smart enough to stay out of the way of its talented lead cast. It’s a competently made film with little to say, beyond advocating Moore as the greatest working actress in American cinema. It’s a shame her Oscar finally came to her for a film so entirely safe and undeserving of her. Hopefully the ‘cache boost’ attached to her new gold statuette will get more of Moore’s avant garde fare into multiplexes.