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Reviews
SHORT l-ILM COLLECTION
BEST V BEST VOL ONE
(E) 95min
(Word of MOth Films DVD retail) 0000
Best v Best is the first of what looks like an eXiting
THEATRE ON FILM
series of short film DVDs from independent film community Shooting People's newly launched label Word of Mouth Films. This premier volume provides a fascinating gauge of the health of the short film today. Kicking off with Patricia Riggen's raw but
SHAKESPEARE: THE COLLECTION
(Various) 628min IUCA DVD retail) 0...
The BBC’s current reworking of Shakespeare, featuring such relocations as
exemplary mini doc Family Portrait may not be the best way to entice new viewers but things soon get into more negotiable territory with Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor's very clever silent whodunnit Who Killed Brown Owl? (an ElFF winner no less).
Macbeth in a contemporary trendy restaurant, might show us just how strong Shakespeare’s narratives were. But for all the undoubted quality of these brave rewrites, you can’t compensate for the loss of the language. Knowing this, one is bound to seek out the Real McCoy, and these films, all but one made between 1968 and 1971, are amongst the finest examples of the too often botched business of filming Shakespeare that you’re likely to
come across, and the secret seems to be simple: don’t mess with the Bard.
For each is set in period, with the exception of a contemporised chorus (Derek Jacobi) in Henry V, and each avoids straining too much to render the text ‘relevant’; the greatest writer in the language speaks for himself. The slightest of them, Zeffirelli’s The Taming of the Shrew (1968), is pretty much the Liz and Dick show, full of camp medieval Italian pageantry and arch playing from Burton and Taylor, but some cagey comic support from Michael Hordern in particular makes it watchable. So, too, Peter Brook’s King Lear (1970) might gain too much credibility from the name of its
director, but there’s a masterful performance from Paul Scofield in the lead,
as well as the legendary Jack MacGowran, Beckett’s favourite actor, as the Fool. If the grim, fur-clad characters and bleak black and white cinematography of a blasted landscape becomes, along with the many long pauses, almost overly portentous, there’s still a ghastly kind of power
here.
Tony Richardson’s Hamlet (1969) features a very able, if at times self- conscious Nicol Williamson in the lead, and a thriller-like pace. Anthony Hopkins’ Claudius is superb, though I doubt anyone would subsequently admit to the idea of casting Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia. So too, a slightly wobbly lead mars Polanski’s Macbeth, (1971) but if Jon Finch isn’t quite the finished article, there are many compensations in Polanski’s and Kenneth Tynan’s dark, violent and relentless realisation of tone which overcome the weakness with grisly spectacle. If Branagh’s foray into English nationalism in Henry V (1989) seems ill-timed in these war-torn days, its sheer grittiness in its representation of war, and a tremendous performance by the director in the lead, gives it a power just short of Olivier’s version. There are only a few trailers as extras in this package, but who needs them when you’ve got a vast cast of Shakespearean acting talent? (Steve Cramer)
I Shakespeare: The Collection is out now.
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52 THE LIST I
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The best of the remaining UK films is Jake Polonsky's Wyndhamesque School of Life. New Zealander Taika Waititi's enjoyable road movie Two Cars, One Night brings this seven-film showcase to a close. The standard is so incredibly high (all these films are festival award winners) that it bodes well for what could be a highly collectable series.
(Paul Dale)
DOCUMENTARY PIONEERS IN ART, POETRY AND PARTICLE PHYSICS
(E) 119mins (Pinnacle Vision/The Arts COuncil England DVD Retail) 0000
At one stage one of the physicists in Ken Ghost Dance McMullen's film talks about how the most complex things often work from the simplest of bases. And that's exactly what this great film achieves. We follow art critic and writer John Berger on his round of talks with a couple of phySicists about their work. as he attempts to illustrate the differences and similarities in art and science. Berger hesitantly yet enquirineg chats to John March Russell and Michael Doser ab0ut physics in the world's biggest particle physics lab in Geneva. The discussions range over
problems of matter. memOry and time as Berger brings in passages from Borges and Simone Weil, and the physicists absorb aesthetic thinking into their scientific field. Running through the film. McMullen also shows us modern art exhibitions that seem to combine the scientific with the artistic. Extras include an hour of additional film material and interviews. a 12- page booklet featuring an introductory text by leading science communicator Neil Calder. poems by Borges and Weil and a full Berger bibliography. This is wonderfully cerebral stuff if you like that kind of thing. (Tony McKibbin)
DRAMA
SAINTS AND SOLDIERS
(15) 90min
(High Fliers/Metrodome DVD rental/retail)
COO
It's December 1944 and five American soldiers are separated from US forces during the historic Malmedy Massacre in Belgium. The men decide to walk back to the American lines through snow and bitter cold. Along the way. they stumble across a British paratrooper who has intelligence abOut a major Nazi offensive. They must reach the nearest Allies command post with the information before the bad guys do.
Directly comparable to — if not as immediately engrossing as — both Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. Saints and Soldiers is another moving wartime stOry of survival. morality. honour and friendship. As
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bemusing as it sounds. this beautifully shot and adequately directed epic has already won 13 international film awards and has been a great success on the rental market. Special features on the retail DVD (out 9 January 2006) include director's commentary and making of featurette. (Paul Logan)
HORROR I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (18) 93min
(International Trading DVD retail) 0”
There's a long and well precedented dramatic tension to the revenge drama that can be commonly traced back to the Jacobeans. It's hard to miss the possibilities inherent to the form. Sadly though. writer/director Meir Zarchi does so at every turn in this much sensationalised and long banned gore fest with pretensions.
In it, a yoong novelist (Camille Keaton) is repeatedly gang raped. and eventually turns the tables on her four macho torturers with a succession of grisly murders. That's about it. For all Spits supporters' affectations to feminism. the camera (aside from in the rape sequence. which is grimly unglamourised) spends a good deal of time perusing Keaton's body. while most of the film's other ethical pretensions are undermined by its lack of psychological depth. The lush New England-style locations are more pleasant on the eye than the male version. Death Wish. but for all that. there's little to offer fans of Boris Vian's original book or the slasher flick.
(Steve Cramer)
ALL DVDS WERE REVIEWED ON A SYSTEM SUPPLIED AND INSTALLED BY LOUD 8: CLEAR