Watch the trailer here

It’s a shame that so many student made films fall under the radar, often failing to get the recognition they so thoroughly deserve. While short films won’t necessarily have the budget, big-names and technical prowess of their blockbuster counterparts, websites like Vimeo and projects like Virgin Media Shorts continue to demonstrate how the most original, heart-felt and challenging cinema is being built by amateur directors.

It’s exciting, then, that Oxford’s very own Ultimate Picture Palace are showing support for the latest crop of film-making talent by screening the brilliant 40 minute movie Dan and Jon vs. The Funsultancy. I was shown the film by its writer and director Jess Park, who admitted that, tonally, it’s a hard piece to pin down. The psychedelic narrative follows idealistic music hipster Jon who loses his job as a social events co-ordinator at work because his boss outsources the role to a ‘Funsultancy’. Faced with an inability to share his love of Aldous Huxley and J Dilla, Jon neurotically retreats into his own drug-fuelled head while coming into conflict with the expressionless, robotic funsultant.

Park told me how the film’s premise derived from his second year misadventures applying for student internships, and the script is clearly conceived as a wry glance at the world of career recruitment. Much of the film’s wit points to the ludicrousness of profit-maximising corporations who vehemently seek to market themselves as trendy, forward-thinking workplaces – most hilariously manifested in the character of Steve whose obsession with ‘creative problem solving’, ‘networking’, ‘pie-charts’ and ‘infographics’ proves incomprehensible to the ears of dopey Jon.  

Yet Park seemed keen to emphasise that the film isn’t a veiled political statement. While the narrative has satirical edges, the charm of the story lies in its wizard execution which recalls the work of film-makers like Charlie Kauffman and Edgar Wright. The manically fast editing and the endlessly creative sound design stands in energising contrast with the dead-pan, understated performances, and Jon seems unwillingly trapped inside an absurdist Kafka experiment. The film had the same ironic touch which can be seen in Richard Ayoade’s latest release The Double, except imagine that The Double meets Adventure Time and that might give you a better sense of the whimsical tone which underpins the work.

It’s also wonderful to see Oxford on screen, with location shooting happening across places like Jericho and Gloucester Green. The film’s stand out scene features Port Meadow as a mental landscape representing Jon’s musical euphoria amidst a wickedly funny stand-off between Jon and the Funsultant behind the DJ decks. Admittedly, the film demands more than a pinch of salt, and those expecting a straight drama-narrative will find themselves contending with an overwhelming sensory assault –  but if you’re willing to get on board, then Dan and John vs. The Funsultancy is a deeply satisfying, even uplifting, viewing experience.

The film was made over six weekends in Trinity term last year and has been in the editing room since then, as Park played with the sound design and cuts to find what worked best. Although it’s been a long process, the end result is impressive, hilarious and heart-felt. It’s absolutely right that the film is given a cinematic screening, demonstrating how student film-making at Oxford is a thriving enterprise well worth supporting.

‘Dan and Jon vs. The Funsultancy’ is being screened at The Ultimate Picture Palace on Cowley Road on Friday 2^nd May (1^st Week) at 5PM.

Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/673466379356090/?ref_notif_type=like&source=1
Tickets (£3): http://www.wegottickets.com/event/268080

★★★☆☆

Three Stars

What is it about densely populated cities? A person, surrounded by crowds of people, can feel lonelier than if they had retired alone to the countryside. In this film, almost every speaking part is given to a character who feels this loneliness keenly, and it is no wonder that when they come together in different ways, they arrive at a tacit, sympathetic understanding of each other’s emotional vulnerability. 

Ila is a housewife in modern-day Mumbai. She has a young daughter, whom she dresses for school every morning and watches leave to catch the school-bus from her window. She then cooks her husband’s lunch for him, often under the guidance of ‘Auntie’, who lives in the apartment above and shouts down instructions to her. She arranges the food inside in an intricately constructed lunchbox, which is then taken to her husband via the services of a dabbawala. After this, there’s shopping and household chores to be done until her daughter returns home, and then, much later, her husband Rajeev, who is always busy, cold, and replies largely in monosyllables. 

One morning, the lunchbox arrives at the wrong destination. At the beginning of the film, we are shown how so many lunchboxes make their way across Mumbai, via bicycles and train, and are also shown how Rajeev’s lunchbox arrives at someone else’s desk. How realistic this set-up is – that a homemade lunchbox could be mistaken for a commercial one, over and over – I don’t know. The film never explains why this mistake is repeated endlessly. To some extent, it’s neither here nor there: the point being made is that in such a large city, as in life, lines of communication are often crossed and mixed up, leading to unexpected outcomes. As one character remarks: ‘Sometimes the wrong train will get you to the right station.’ In this case, Ila makes the acquaintance of Saajan. 

Saajan works in an office shifting through pay slips and navigating accounts. He has been doing so for decades past, and now he is taking early retirement. No explicit reason is given for his decision, but we can see how tired he is in the way he draws impeccable lines with his highlighter, how he sits alone in the canteen and despondently takes the lunchbox out, only to discover something different inside. His wife has died, and his home is oppressively quiet. To add salt to the wound, an annoyingly enthusiastic young man has already been employed to take his place, and Saajan is given instructions to train him during his last month in work. 

What transpires, given these details, is in no way surprising. Ila and Saajan enter into a correspondence, at first timid, but which grows into something deeper and more complex. They exchange notes in the lunchboxes Ila prepares for him. It is revealing that Saajan notices and appreciates the difference in quality between the lunchboxes he usually receives and those prepared by Ila – yet her husband, who receives those intended for Saajan, barely notices anything. 

The reason that ’The Lunchbox’ transcends the formulas of the genre it belongs to is because of its wisdom. There is much laughter to be found here, but director Ritesh Batra knows how sad his story is – and that is refreshing, particularly when we learn that this is his first feature-length film. I almost wish he had been braver: the movie does not need the easy, slightly clichéd laughs that we would expect from this kind of heart-warmer; the fact that he does not shrink from the darker elements in these people’s lives, and leaves the story to a degree unresolved, demonstrate his intelligence and genuine empathy for his characters. It is therefore a shame when we feel the formula click in, for it is rare in a film of this kind for the audience to feel that there really is something at stake – that if these characters act decisively, the road they take will be a difficult one. As it stands, ‘The Lunchbox’ is a charming, pleasant film, and for once, it gives the audience food for thought when the credits begin to roll. When was the last time you saw a rom-com that did that? 

According to Christianity, 2014 years ago, Jesus Christ rose from the dead and was reborn. However, the holiday that we now call Easter has for even longer than that been associated with rebirth, marking as it does the start of spring. The egg as a symbol of rebirth predates Christianity and all manner of festivals centred around the Harvest have been commonplace since time immemorial. 

We humans have always liked the idea of rebirth. We naturally lean away from the idea that when something is gone, it’s gone for good. The presence of the afterlife and reincarnation in religions throughout human history shows that clearly enough. Jesus was not the first god to rise from the dead.

Ancient Greek religion and mythology contains numerous examples of what they call a katabasis – a descent to the Underworld before rising again. Heroes such as Heracles and Perseus are famous for their adventures beyond the lands of the living, as is Vergil’s (and later Dante’s) Aeneas, while Dionysus, god of wine, was himself born a second time from the thigh of Zeus. 

But religion is not the only place where our obsession with rebirth is to be found. The constant need to ‘reboot’ everything is often seen as a modern fixation. At the moment we’re seeing a new Robocop, a new House of Cards, even a new Godzilla. We had a new Spiderman only five years after the old one had disco-danced down the road out of sight and out of mind.

People suggest that this phenomenon betrays a fatal lack of creativity in the modern age. Eight of the top ten grossing movies of 2013 were sequels, and adaptations of books, reboots in their own way, dominate the box office. One of the biggest songs of last year, Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ was a straight-up blast from the past; its mind-numbingly catchy funk restarted the festival circuit career of Chic ft. Nile Rogers. Furthermore, the internet, and specifically YouTube, is painted with the complaints of self-proclaimed musical purists for whom real music is dead and anything made after 1995 might as well come encased in frozen dog shit. But is it the case that our culture has lost the ability to create new stories, new ideas? 

This is emphatically not the case. As MS MR told me at the end of last year, “there’s more good music being made now than ever before”. As the internet grows and grows, so too does the potential for new and interesting media. There’s more independent film than there has ever been, there’s more literature than there has ever been; everything grows exponentially. 

What’s more, it’s not even the right question to ask. The value of a cultural work is not determined by its originality, but rather by its innate worth. Homer’s Iliad, widely considered one of the greatest poems of all time, told a story which was known well by its audience, as did the vast majority of ancient classical literature. The art was in the telling; ancient Greek poets weaved new meanings and fresh interpretations into events which had long dwelt in the consciousness of their readership. The density of allusion and adaptation in Ovid forms part of his poetic identity. Similarly, the works of William Shakespeare were largely either based on previous plays (often in different languages) or on historical events. 

Of course, this is all because of one simple fact. Everything is a rebirth of something. There’s a reason that critics go on about an artist’s ‘influences’ in reviews and interviews, saying that the artist draws upon X, or conjures up images of Y. While one might easily be drawn into thinking of rebirth as an opportunity for a clean slate, the truth is more complicated. Jesus, risen from the dead, is still Jesus, but his existence has taken on a whole new meaning. A man who is reincarnated into a snail may in some mystical way still be the same person, but his is a different existence entirely.

Similarly, Shakespeare’s retelling of the story of Othello has a whole other life to Cinthio’s original tale, the new Godzilla starring Bryan Cranston is worthy of being judged on its own merits, and Trinity’s Cherwell, while connected to Hilary’s, has a new lease of artistic life. This is not to say that the new shouldn’t be compared to the original, but merely that it must be recognized as a piece of art in its own right. 

This is often my response to people who complain when film adaptations of books don’t match up to the original. It doesn’t matter in the slightest that in the book of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, it isn’t Éomer who leads the charge at Helm’s Deep. The film exists separately, and while its proximity to the original allows for a certain amount of interpretational crossover, it certainly doesn’t preclude its changing elements of the original story. 

The reboot is a part of human existence; it’s not going away, so stop complaining about it.

1. The birth of Satan

    from Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Based on the novel of the same name, Rosemary’sBaby is a genuinely terrifying horror film from Roman Polanski, in which a sickly looking Mia Farrow becomes paranoid that she is the victim of a hellish conspiracy. It is a psychological thriller, toying with the viewer’s sympathy, emotions and sanity. Featuring marital betrayal of epic proportions and an unforgettably chilling final shot, this is a horror film so subtle that at times the viewer is unsure whether or not it is a horror at all.

2. The Birth of Venus

    by Sandro Boticelli (1486)

The sea-shell has long been a metaphor for a woman’s vulva. This Renaissance painting depicts the goddess Venus arriving naked at the sea-shore in a giant shell. The iconography of the painting is much debated, with mythological, political and religious readings all equally plausible. Pagan readings suggest that the painting is an attempt to replicate ancient depictions of the Goddess, while Christian ones see Venus as Eve before the Fall, the Madonna, or both.

3. This Woman’s Work

    by Kate Bush (1989)

Kate Bush likes writing about women and wombs (see also ‘Room for the Life’ and ‘The Kick Inside’). This song, from 1989’s The Sensual World, was written for the film She’s Having a Baby. It deals with childbirth from the perspective of the father, sat outside the waiting room and also metaphorically “outside / this woman’s work… now his part is over”. Opening with the heartbreaking “pray God you can cope”, ‘This Woman’s Work’ is a moving picture of the anguish of a complicated birth.

Way back in the misty annals of time that was my first term at Oxford, I went to play ice hockey. I forget why exactly, but I do remember that every time I tried to hit the puck I forgot that I was on skates, attempted to sprint, and landed flat on my face – or at least, my hands.

Somewhere around fall no. 7 I injured my right hand and had to go home, where I had terrible, terrible nightmares about what would become of me in Oxford, trying to do an English degree without the use of my writing hand.

Writing is lifeblood here. For Humanities students, it’s like breathing. We study the written word, pick it apart, analyze every inch of its possible meanings.

Mathematicians and Scientists have their own universal writing system made up of numbers and symbols and equations, and Computer Scientists can write in a code that tells computers what to do.

Among all the creations of man, writing is the supreme intellectual achievement. It was invented as many as six separate times, in places as distinct from one another as Central America, Africa and China.

In historical linguistics, monogenesis refers to the idea that all human languages are descended from a single ancestral language.

Whether we accept this or not, the earliest efforts began with simple pictures, strokes and dots to record objects and numbers. When it came to recording the innermost workings of our brains and hearts, a more complex system was required.

The first known ‘script’ came about in the 4th Millennium BC, with the development of ‘proto-cuneiform’ and later ‘cuneiform’ writing – wedge-shaped marks made on clay tablets with a blunt reed stylus.

The inventors of this form of writing were the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, the area of the Middle East which also gave birth to the earliest cities, farms and technology.

The Cuneiform writing system was in use in various forms for more than three millennia. Meanwhile, the Egyptians were developing hieroglyphs – the combination of pictures and signs which is still one of the most complex and beautiful writing systems ever devised.

The 2nd Millenium BC saw the climax of writing’s developmental stage, with the emergence of the Phoenician alphabet. This was spread across the Mediterranean by merchants, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures, ‘birthing’ the earliest forms of alphabets that are still used today, such as Arabic and Greek script – and by extension Latin, Cryllic and Coptic.

The oldest form of writing that is still in use is the Chinese script, which dates back to around 1200 BC, and is still in use in a fairly similar form.

Even today, the story of the beginnings of writing is far from complete. Extensive study led to the eventual decipherment of cuneiform; the Rosetta stone helped us to understand hieroglyphic text -yet there are still ancient writing systems that have been discovered in places such as Crete, Mexico, Iran and Pakistan that remain mysterious.

It is because of writing that we can see inside the mind of people dead millions of years, enabling us to pass down stories upon which whole cultures – and whole degrees – are based. 

There’s nothing better than good, honest crackpots. Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions, by John Michell, is a collection of just that – people who, for whatever reasons and in whatever field, have found themselves at odds with the world. The New York Times neatly summed it up as ‘some of the most outrageous and beguiling oddballs who have ever walked through history’.

For example, in the 19^th Century an ongoing battle raged between science and the ‘flat-earthers’, those who were convinced that the world was in fact a flat disk. The battle was centred upon a mile long stretch of canal in Cambridgeshire, the Old Bedford Level. A number of experiments were carried out, scientifically sound and mediated by an impartial judge. And yet both sides got exactly the results they wanted! A similar group were active in America, only they were not flat-earthers, but hollow-earthers, believing us to be living on the inside of a globe. Likewise, their own experiments proved conclusively that the earth does in fact curve upwards.

Michell never derides or laughs; he is, though, brilliantly funny. And these stories allow him to be so. John Rutter Carden, a dreadfully persistent lover, who kidnapped his unfortunate beguiler, was known as ‘Woodcock’ Carden, because he seemed impervious to gunshot, fired at him by his Irish tenants, who were none too keen on his modern idea that rent should be paid. After his failed attempt at kidnap, though, he became a local hero; a ballad was even composed for him.

The book, through its wit, offers a deep insight into human nature; we can recognise a little of Henry Lee Warner, of Walsingham Abbey, in all of us; he was so excessively kind that he couldn’t bear to reprimand the local villagers, who therefore freely made use of his estate, stealing timber and horses, using his land, and generally treating his property as their own.

All the characters in this book have one thing in common – they were completely obsessed with their various causes and notions, obsessions which took over their lives, in some cases destroying them entirely. Quite often, as in the case of the Irish priest who opposed loans with interest, they are in fact more sane than the people who derided them. The book is a standing testament to humanity’s obsessive, credulous and courageous nature.

To say the internet has changed everything is to state the obvious. It is also obvious to say that it has changed the book. But perhaps less obvious is just how. This is no mere superficial change, a transfer of mediums and a slight adjustment of the financial structure of the publishing world. This is a radical change in content.

To the publisher, e-books are scary, but have to be embraced – publishers have to roll with the times. They are well aware of the dangers of illegal downloads, and of simply being bypassed by self publishing authors. To the author, e-books are also pretty terrifying, but there seems to be hope. The authors themselves takes a much larger cut of the royalties – a self published work selling on Amazon for a reasonable price will win back 70%! It’s also a chance for those yet unpublished to simply get their work in the pubic eye.

But with e-books priced so incredibly cheaply, many buyers purchase books based purely on price. The testimony to this stands in the onslaught of the 99p book, and the fortunes it has made; Fifty Shades of Grey is just one example of a hit which was rocketed to fame first as an e-book.

This works very well for popular, populist books. But it’s useless for someone expecting to sell even such a large number as 40,000 copies. More serious books take considerably longer to write, and, by their less populist nature, sell fewer copies. This is simply bad economy – as Dr Johnson observed, ‘no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money’.

The result? The world of authorship will divide: those who write for money will have to churn out populist reads. Anyone else will be forced to rely on day jobs, or more likely private income. Instead of making the world of books more democratic, by allowing anyone to publish, e-books will actually relegate the serious author to the realms of the extremely well-off.

This is of course an overly gloomy picture – hopefully people will always be prepared to spend more on a book they want to read. Hopefully, enough people will favour the hard-copy ink and paper. Maybe, the rather dryer authors will be forced to spice it up a bit, perhaps no bad thing in itself. But there is a danger worth noting, that in a world where many buy books based on price, the smaller selling, but professional author, could become a thing of the past.