The underlying morale that pervades Roman Polanski’s latest cinematic endeavour is a cynically Hobbesian take on human morality: civilisation is only a superficial veneer hiding our otherwise barbaric nature. When the Cowans (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) meet up with the Longstreets (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) to discuss a recent skirmish between their young children, it doesn’t take long for Polanski to reveal that the stylish setting of a Brooklyn apartment is as much a milieu for warfare as the school playground. Once Kate Winslet’s vomit chooses Jodie Foster’s precious Kokoschka art books as its primary trajectory, the middle-class farce is set in full motion and it is obvious that the interest of Carnage lies in its observational comedy schtick, in recognising the arrogance and anxieties in all of our comfortable lives.

Originally a play by Yasmina Reza, the film is an acting rumpus for the illustrious cast. Jodie Foster reaches unseen heights of vein-popping outrage as the aggrieved mother of her self-described ‘disfigured’ boy. She really nails the role with devious efficiency, establishing a paradox of unappealing inaccessibility and heart-warming cluelessness. That said, the mystery of how she and her hardware salesman husband ever ended up together is surpassed only by the question of how they could ever afford their bourgeois apartment. Such nitpicking is unavoidable in a contrived chamber-piece film like this, especially when the whole cast accelerate from sober to pissed in what appears to be only a few sips of scotch, rather negating the whole real-time concept. The main criticism, however, should be reserved for the rather unambitious screenplay which targets some fairly low-hanging fruit without bringing anything new to the middle class coffee table. Carnage is only following in the well-trodden footprints of The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

It’s therefore perhaps best to view this film as a simple comedy of ill manners, with Polanski getting in touch with his inner Woody Allen and displaying an outright, farcical sense of humour that’s been long absent from his work. Sadly the real points that the screenplay tries to make about parental hypocrisy and social graces are suffocated under this self-aggrandizing surplus of ‘Arts Picturehouse’ amusement (i.e. where you laugh, turn to see how much the person sitting next to you is laughing, then turn back to laugh even harder). Carnage should have been an intimate exploration of middle-class fears and angst; it’s just a shame that I experienced that sense of claustrophobia mainly in the form of an anxious scan for the cinema’s exit.

TWO STARS

Becoming a fan of Brando and Dean in the formative years of adolescence left me with the indelible impression that the fifties was a rebellious age. The era was electrifying for so many reasons – Hitchcock’s pacy thrillers appealed to Cold War anxieties; Ford’s westerns were glorious and sprawling; Gene Kelly was singing in the rain – but the 14 year-old boy in me will always visit 50s cinema to meet up with just two young stars.

The voice of youth and Stanislavski’s radical ‘method acting’ married in 1950 and found an accommodating home in the body of Marlon Brando. The Men (1950) was Brando’s first feature after a thrilling stage-career which paved the way for stronger, more anguished characterizations that were made all the more exciting by naturalistic acting. In previous decades Clark Gable and Cary Grant gave Hollywood clean looks and enunciating voices but they lacked a pulse. When Brando collapsed in 1951, hands gripping his face, and bellowed ‘Hey Stella!’ it was clear that what was expected of actors would never be the same again. This was real.

  Brando granted the 50s his charming and mesmerising presence which looked effortless but was really the result of dedicated work. In an industry where acting consisted of playing a version of one’s best self, Brando worked hard to become a different person in each role. Viva Zapata! (1952) had him perfect a Mexican accent; The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) had him learn Japanese and Orientalize his face; The Young Lions (1958) had him mastering German playing a Nazi. He furnished each character with a detailed background and distinct psychology: when the object of his affection in On the Waterfront (1954) drops her glove Brando’s Terry Maloy retrieves it, unscripted, cleans it and wears it as if unconsciously communicating his desire for her. His acting was often that of the minute, yet he mastered the grandiose as well – bringing colour and life to Mark Antony in Julius Caesar (1953) and showing his musical skill in Guys and Dolls (1955).

Brando set the yard-stick for actors and James Dean swiftly took up the challenge. His tortured personal life came through strongly in his roles and what was clearly a cleansing for him proved cathartic for the audience also. His iconic cry, ‘You’re tearing me apart!’, still resonates today, whilst the father-son scenes in East of Eden (1955) are painfully, and importantly, real and do great example to display the split between traditional acting styles and the new breathtaking one that was emerging.

For me, these two actors are what 50s cinema is all about – in an era dominated by traditional values, Brando and Dean gave voice to a feeling of frustration and desire for change that was bursting to be expressed. When asked what they were rebelling against, they replied ‘What’ve you got?’

A Useful Life

Ultimate Picture Palace, Cowley

This short Paraguayan film is a must-see for cinephiles, telling the story of a life devoted to film and the art of cinema with strong echoes of the classic Cinema Paradiso. 

The Hothouse

Oxford Playhouse, until 4th February

The ambitious, expensive Pinter production finally arrives,  with high expectations to meet. The play follows an excessively bureaucratic mental institution through the machinations and political power plays of its staff. Doors vary, 2.30/7.30/8pm, Tickets £10-£15.

Love Interruption

Released 7th February on Third Man Records

A year after the White Stripes announced their breakup, Jack White releases solo single ahead of his forthcoming album, Blunderbuss.. 

Visions of Mughal India

Ashmolean, until 22 April

From the private collection of artist Howard Hodgkin,  this exhibition of Indian paintings is displayed for the first time in its entirety. See www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions/mughalindia/booking for ticket details.

Being Human

Starts 5th February, BBC3

The supernatural comedy-drama returns, sans Vampire  Mitchell, as the gang returns to their house in Barry Island to deal with the aftermath of  the third series, some new friends and some new enemies.  9pm.

Oxford Gargoyles

Copa George St, 7th February

Oxford’s leading jazz a capella ensemble return with a mix of Disney toe-tappers,  grooving funk and, of course, classic jazz. Doors 8.30pm, tickets £4/£2.

Justin Cartwright’s voice is quiet and almost sounds English, but the lick of his ‘yeah’ sounds a bit like ‘ja’ and you catch glimpses of the South African underneath. The South African-born London novelist was visiting Oxford to attend a party at Wolfson for a friend, and before I met him in Quod Bar, I spied him roaming Radcliffe Square, reacquainting himself with old haunts.Cartwright’s education at Oxford in the mid-sixties was not unexpected: his family had a tradition of going to Oxford, and his boarding school had a strong connection to the Rhodes scholarship. Despite this fast-track, Cartwright first earned a degree from the University of Witwatersrand before coming to Trinity to study PPE. ‘I had an absurdly wonderful time,’ says Cartwright, admitting that he didn’t do much while at Oxford, although he ‘worked hard at the end’.

Oxford was an odd experience for this colonial: feeling directly at home, Cartwright began to talk ‘more English, quickly, without trying.’ There was an ‘immense sense of living in a society which takes culture seriously.’ Cartwright is less sure that that’s as true about England now.Cartwright eulogises Oxford in The Secret Garden: Oxford Revisited, a work of non-fiction I read eagerly two years ago, waiting to submit my own application. Though Cartwright never wrote an ‘Oxford novel’ per se, his novel The Song Before It is Sung is partially staged at Oxford, telling the story of an Isaiah Berlin-figure investigating the final hours of an Adam von Trott-like character involved in the plot against Hitler. Berlin, who paced the High Street outside Quod and had rooms just opposite, Cartwright pointed out to me, was a political idol of his.As the author of twelve novels (collecting a Booker nomination, a Whitbread Novel Award and the Hawthorden Prize along the way), numerous screenplays, and reviews, Cartwright exhibits a rumbling sense of energy.

After graduating from Oxford, he worked as a copywriter, finding he was quite good at the ‘cheap and cheerful’. A fellow copywriter who made a lot of money writing sexy novels enlisted Cartwright to try his hand at a few. Cartwright, finding he had an ease with words, wrote a few thrillers and then decided to work at literary fiction around the age of 37 (when Cartwright was 24, his brother was kind enough to remind him that at his age John Updike had already published three novels). Cartwright’s familiarity with the publishing world facilitated this switch, and he wrote Interior which ‘was pretty good, very well received’ and though it didn’t sell well convinced Cartwright he had a voice.It becomes clear from talking to Cartwright that writers — especially those with growing families — cannot afford to be romantic about a writing career. ‘When you’re moderately well known,’ Cartwright says, ‘there’s the assumption that you’re making scads of money, which just isn’t true.’ Though he is now able to make a decent living from his pen, Cartwright had to work a day-job for most of his writing career, serving as a screenwriter, a director of commercials, election campaigns and documentaries. Cartwright was lucky enough to choose whatever caught his fancy, whether it was lions hunting at night or the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was present a few weeks before Mugabe got rid of Joshua Nkomo, one of his co-leaders, supposedly saying ‘It’s very difficult having two leaders in a party.’ Little did Cartwright realise how far Mugabe would push that sentiment.Cartwright has continued to be interested in South African politics and literature. But despite being a novelist who has treated Africa in several novels, Cartwright never wrote an apartheid novel. ‘The issues were not that morally complex,’ says Cartwright. ‘We knew it was wrong; it was not very nuanced.’ Cartwright believes that though his prediction that South African writers would be put out of business at the end of apartheid was proved spectacularly wrong, he doesn’t think South African literature is in a good place at present. The culminated effects of apartheid and poor education mean that ‘people are not writing very well’.‘People say ‘I’m African’, but you’re not. Let’s face it, you’re not African. Africans don’t regard white people as African whether or not you try.’

Cartwright is merciless in discussing the current South African government. He was never an African National Congress supporter, despite several of his university friends being in Mbeki’s government. ‘I never really wanted to belong to the ANC. I desperately didn’t want to belong to some closed system of belief.’The new South Africa is ‘stimulating, if you don’t live there’. Cartwright speaks with the kind of weariness behind South Africa’s white-flight phenomenon. ‘It’s difficult, it doesn’t work anymore. That’s what [J.M. Coetzee’s] Disgrace was all about. If you don’t accept the new realities whatever they are for better or for worse, you’d better leave. And Coetzee left.’When I asked Cartwright if he believed the novel still has social power, Cartwright gave an unequivocal yes. ‘We seem to forget — if you take South Africa as an example — the true story was told in novels.’ Having just read the South African novelist Andre Brink’s autobiography, Cartwright recounts the story of Brink’s father, a magistrate, beating a child-servant to death because of a small transgression. It took eight hours. This is the sort of incident which was later reported to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee and was ‘completely devastating’.Cartwright’s recent novel, Other People’s Money, is a state of the nation novel about the recent credit crash. He is currently writing a screenplay of the novel for a four-hour film treatment. ‘There’s a lot of dialogue, pretty sequential, intentionally quite straightforward in a Dickensian way. Some of my novels are quite tricky, but this isn’t.’ Other People’s Money shares genetic material with the Dickensian novel: after years of thinking Dickens was ‘sentimental and shallow’ Cartwright realized that ‘there’s immense craft involved.’

Cartwright has few bugbears about the new media, although he does say that ‘its problem is that it gives everybody the chance to think they can write. That sounds elitist but I don’t think it is. There’s a kind of fervour to express oneself.’Saul Bellow was repeatedly mentioned as an influence on Cartwright, especially Bellow’s novel Herzog. But Cartwright also read Hemingway (‘like most people at that time’), and came early to Updike. Updike and Cartwright were friends, and Cartwright was asked to write the introduction to the paperback edition of Rabbit at Rest, the final book in Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy. ‘You’re going to say I don’t read women,’ Cartwright says with a sideways smile, but he holds up Marilynne Robinson as proof. ‘John loved Marilynne Robinson.’ And of course, if you’re South African, you would have read the Nobel winning novelist Nadine Gordimer. ‘I know her reasonably well,’ says Cartwright, ‘she’s difficult but highly intelligent.’ When I asked Cartwright if he found friendships with writers helpful or destructive, he suggested they were inevitable. Of course, friendships between writers are fraught with natural competitiveness. ‘I think most writers think they’re better than the critics think they are,’ says Cartwright. ‘But I can’t complain. I’ve had a pretty good roll so far.’

 

Just before Christmas a few thousand people were getting letters and phone calls offering them their places at Oxford. They have the rest of the year to fully indulge in the fantasy of their lives to come. If they haven’t already, they will most likely read Brideshead Revisited. The slightly more adventurous will notice a few other books that traditionally pop up this kind of list: Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson, Philip Larkin’s Jill, and the surprise winner of last autumn’s Blackwell’s poll, Dan Holloway’s The Company of Fellows.

With Noughties, Ben Masters has taken a shot at this list. What he certainly has not done is brought anything new to the genre. It’s hard to imagine that this novel would have flown with Penguin if the Oxbridge pedigree had not been able to accompany his handsome author photo on the back cover.

The plot of Noughties would serve to fill a few episodes of Hollyoaks. It has the anguish of the long-distance school-to-uni relationship; the drama of pregnancy, abortion, and suicide attempt; the guilt and adrenalin of romantic treachery and dancefloor hookups. Any of this might have avoided the banal in other hands. Instead, Noughties tries to cover the modesty of its narrative with the wet towel of literary allusion.

I could have compared the plot structure to Ulysses and the faux-nonchalant lingo to The Rachel Papers; I could have picked out the paraphrases of Ginsberg and Keats. But no need, for Masters helpfully provides an ‘author’s note’ at the end. ‘This book contains numerous literary resonances, allusions, and quotations (mostly adapted and distorted), including…’ Joyce, both the Amises, and all the rest.

In a way, the author’s note, in the ultimate ‘dick move’, threatens to put the book on a new level, its meta-textual playfulness, in the manner of Nabokov, undercutting the careful distinction between author and protagonist. Because Eliot Lamb, our antihero, is a prize knob. His louche punnery and self-besotted angst, his easy buy-in to each cheap snobbery, mark him as the justified target of every tabloid anti-Oxford sneer. It is clear that Masters knows this, and that he also knows that Eliot is himself. He has employed a useful and popular trick for the debut novel: write your worst self.

There’s a therapeutic element to the technique. Get it all out. The characterisation of Eliot has all the self-consciousness that Eliot himself lacks. I’m almost surprised Masters didn’t list David Foster Wallace in his note. But this self-flagellating approach covers a multitude of grimy sins, too. Eliot’s world is hyper-stylised, more constricted than any actual Oxford bubble. His friends are more cardboard than even your own nerdy tute-partner or floppy-haired rah nemesis. You won’t find them here. But what is most horrifying about this book is the chance that, reading it, you might see yourself.

Apparently more money is given to animal charities than to their two legged (and depressingly non winged) counterparts in the UK. Perhaps it is with this in mind that Spielberg recently announced he had finally ‘realized that I’d made my first British film with War Horse. Through and through.’ In this sprawling epic, whose glowing sunsets, hopeful close ups and a score that is bordering on the dictatorial, the lingering sense is one far more akin to ‘golden age ‘ Gone with the Wind Hollywood than to a ‘British sensibility’. This is despite the obvious dialectic effort made by actors attempting to re-create an authentic Devonshire accent, whilst remaining intelligible to American audiences.

In this way, War Horse falls into a bracket of Hollywood films enraptured by the picturesque ‘old worldliness’ of our Isle. Braveheart, the heroic tale of a commoner who single-handedly unites 13th century England and Scotland, starred the once-bankable Mel Gibson, who also directed the picture. Similarly sentimentally gluttonous in all its sensory modes of assault, for me Braveheart failed to tap out so much of a tear, other than those spent on its eye-searing length of 177 minutes.

It is then to a hero’s face-off that War Horse packs it’s watery punch (I cried continuously from approximately 7 minutes in until the end); an easy defeat. If likeability could be measured in face-length, bewigged Mel is reduced to a speck in Joey the horse’s lengthy features. Obviously Spielberg has been taking tips from the Advertising gurus behind The Brooke Charity ‘donkey rescue’ advert. Here the donkey narration ‘yesterday, today, tomorrow, every day the same. I work till I can’t take another step’ is enough to lead the most stiff-lipped to Plathian depths of despair. Joey shares this heavy load, from his first encounter with a harness and plough, to the genuinely frightening flight sequence through ‘no-man’s land’, barbed wire fences in tow.

Perhaps it is peculiar to the horse, whose natural physical majesty evokes such extreme attachment. The sadness of animal-cruelty has been cinematically exploited on a regular basis, with the ‘horse-tales’ lead by National Velvet, featuring a young Elizabeth Taylor, and of course, the equine godfather Black Beauty. In both, episodes of horse sickness and/or maltreatment are denouements of emotion, often used to mirror exterior troubles. In fact, my childhood memories of these films can only recall a strangling desire to ensure the welfare of the horses, eclipsing any wider social commentary, and I’m unsure if it would be different now. Here War Horse differs, perhaps through a combination of the intertwined narrative of War and Joey, with Spielberg’s extensive preoccupation and practice in ‘shooting’ the battlefield, ranging from Schindler’s List to the War Horse-esque Saving Private Ryan. The emotional pull of War Horse is a kind of hybrid of all of these films, with references extending to the casting of David Thewlis, famous for his work in Harry Potter, The Big Lebowski and Kingdom of Heaven, though ever remaining, for me, the caring-yet-sickly ‘Jerry’ from Black Beauty.

War Horse is undeniably simplistic, particularly in its sustained correlation between ‘goodies’ and horse-lovers, vs. ‘villains’ who care more for winning the war than tending to a lame horse. The result is a plaintively emotional film, that throws you in a darkened room and forces you to watch all the goodness, bravery and sunlight in the world be repeatedly held at gun-point, whilst pummeling your stomach with a bat if your sobs aren’t quote convulsive enough. 

There is no point in saying War Horse ‘doesn’t work well’, because it works more than well. The majority of people will leave the cinema satisfied; their hearts full and tear ducts empty. So how can that be wrong? Films are made for certain audiences and Spielberg is the audience whisperer. He knows what the mass crowd generally respond to — gone are the days of Jaws and Close Encounters where there was room left for doubt – and his target demographic of the ‘something in my eye’ types will no doubt be won over by this tooth-rottingly sweet tale of a boy and his horse. As for me, the film takes a few tentative steps in the right direction before drudging itself into a saccharine coma of fairytale morality.

We begin with Albert (Jeremy Irvine) bonding with his father’s recently purchased horse named Joey on a farm in Devon. These opening scenes are pleasantly whimsical, unapologetically revelling in the archetypal rural Britain, complete with Wurzle ‘oo-arr’-ing, weathered cloth caps and an overprotective goose. But, facing financial ruin, Albert’s father suddenly sells Joey to the cavalry for the efforts in World War One, and so begins the plodding emotional journey that charts the eponymous animal’s cross-continental odyssey through the entire four year breadth of the war. What attempts to be a record of hope and courage in the face of conflict soon becomes so episodic that it feels as if the narrative structure was assembled from a batch of individual instalments of a History Channel series. Such a picaresque approach to the brutal folly of war struggles to elevate the characters we meet above a one-dimensional caricature. And how can we identify with a horse supposedly pining for its soulmate when it appears quite content to be anywhere that has some spare hay lying around?

Of course the bloody battlefield sequences are viscerally effective, but these sporadic forays of flair make up only a fraction of the film. What’s left in their absence, depending on your personal affinity for childhood yearning and adult grief, is either a heart-warming tear-jerker or a fairly daunting assault of weepy denouements. It has its share of exhilarating moments – a tracking shot of Joey bolting through No Man’s Land is truly breathtaking – yet these epic-scaled set pieces are smothered beneath an increasingly tiresome parade of grindingly overwrought emotional payoffs. There’s even a scene where Joey becomes entangled in barbed wire, which cynically tugs on the heartstrings with almost surgical skill. ‘War Horse’ milks its tears through mawkish tenacity, picking away until it draws its blood, and continues to bludgeon you into submission with endless emotional clichés until, after 146 minutes, our equine hero finally runs into the waiting arms of Spielberg-sanctioned immortality.

1.5 STARS

In the depths of Oxford’s bitingly cold winter, the cast of Cabaret invite you to join them within the decadent warmth of 1930’s Berlin’s Kit Kat Klub. Musicals are always a risky (and in this case, risqué) business, and in all fairness to Cabaret, it’s certainly atmospheric- I am informed that a portion of the audience will be invited to sit on stage and offered wine. Unfortunately when the cast begin cajoling the audience to sing along, the effect was cheapened slightly due to a distinct lack of enthusiasm and participation, and I wonder if Sabi’s penchant for breaking the fourth wall has not been properly thought through. Granted, with a bigger audience the whole thing might have been less uncomfortable, but as it stood it was pretty agonising. 

Of course, Cabaret is a musical that is designed to incite discomfort. The sexual decadence and Nazi themes were certainly out in full force in this interpretation; with the former being utilized to great comic effect. However, it did strike me that too often sensuality was sacrificed for overbearing vulgarity. Additionally, the character Emcee tended to oscillate between the asexual film version and hypersexualized character present in numerous stage productions, and I rather wish Sabi had made his mind up. Cliff was similarly unconvincing, lacking the enigmatic writer’s charisma that would surely be needed to hook Sally. Her character, masterfully presented by Alice Pearse, was easily the strongest aspect of the piece thanks to excellent comedic timing and a powerful singing voice.

In short, the innovative directorial ambition behind this version of the musical is laudable in its attempt to truly immerse one in the seediness of the Kit Kat Klub,  but it is ultimately  let down by lack of commitment and weak performances. This is not to say that sitting at the cabaret tables of the O’Reilly, you are unlikely to enjoy yourself; the effect might be quite different on opening night, with the adrenalin rush and atmosphere of a real crowd hopefully giving Cabaret the boost it needs. 

3 STARS