Film Reviews PROFILE
MATTHEW AEBERHARD Who is he? Aeberhard is an established cameraman working within the nature documentary genre. He has over ten year’s experience of filming specifically in Africa. The Crimson Wing is his first project as co-director and producer with Leander Ward. How The Crimson Wing came about: ’The film’s inception came from a colourful, aerial shot we had taken of Lake Natron. The place had never been filmed before, which in itself was intriguing. We had the idea then of making a different kind of “nature” film, but we didn’t actually get out onto Natron until three years later. This project has really been six years in the making.’
About filming on Lake Natron: ’We filmed over a period of 16 months in a heat of 47 degrees. The shoot was physically gruelling and very difficult to pull off logistically. The birds [Lesser Flamingos] are extremely susceptible to disturbance, so in order to shoot within 12 foot of them we had to build these huts out on the salt lake, get up at 4am and stay there all day so the birds remained unaware of our presence. The lake looks like another planet and it’s a place that has been seen by so few people; it’s so exceptional we wanted to bring it to people’s attention.’ On trying to break the mould: ’We didn’t want this to be a typical nature documentary; we wanted to break that mould, but subtly. From the beginning we decided that we wanted the life cycle of the flamingos to be the focus and we didn’t want to let the facts dominate over the innate poetry of Lake Natron and these creatures. We wanted to tell a very human and symbolic story in which the narrative evolved from nature and wasn’t about nature.’
Interesting fact: Lake Natron is under severe threat from salt mining. 75% of the Lesser Flamingos breed out on Natron and they face extinction if more isn’t done to understand the potential impact that this mining could have on the birds’ environment. ■ The Crimson Wing is out on selected release from Fri 25 Sep.
46 THE LIST 24 Sep–8 Oct 2009
PERIOD DRAMA CREATION (PG) 108min ●●●●●
Charles Darwin’s earth-shattering publication of his theory of evolution came after a period of immense personal turmoil and self- recrimination. Critics and supporters predicted that his revelations would effectively kill God, implications that put him at odds with his devout wife Emma. To confound his torment, Darwin was also still reeling from the death of his first daughter. Jon Amiel’s Creation offers a worthy, thought-provoking insight into
Darwin’s story and boasts a terrific central performance from Paul Bettany. But unfortunately the film doesn’t take as many risks as it should, being careful not to re-ignite too many age-old debates. It’s possible that the director’s rather strait-laced approach is a by-product of the film’s BBC funding.
In the strong cast, Jeremy Northam’s family friend and priest is
under-used when a few more confrontations would have improved the dramatic tension, while Paul Bettany’s real-life wife Jennifer Connelly feels too restrained in her role as Darwin’s loving but cautious wife Emma.
Bettany, however, compensates with his portrayal of Darwin as a deeply tortured soul, still suffering from ghostly visions of his daughter and imbuing him with the anger and humility the role demands. It’s worth seeing for him alone. (Rob Carnevale) ■ General release from Fri 25 Sep.
THE ARMY OF CRIME (15) 139mins ●●●●●
The first of writer-director Robert Guédiguian’s features since The Last Mitterand in 2005 to gain distribution in Britain, the convincingly acted The Army of Crime is a honourable addition to the body of films made about the French Resistance in World War II. Very much a man of the left, Guédiguian here focuses on the story of the Paris-based Manouchian group, which comprised young émigré Communists, many of whom had Jewish origins. During 1943 they launched a series of guerilla attacks on Nazi targets and were denounced as the ‘Army of Crime’ in a notorious Vichy propaganda poster (‘l’affiche rouge’), before their show-trial and execution by the authorities just months before the Allied liberation. The filmmaker takes his time introducing us to the
Manouchian members, giving us a flavour of their home lives and personal relationships. Through the depiction of the escalating persecution of the capital’s Jewish population we understand why these men and women elected to take up arms against the occupiers. Among the partisans are an Armenian poet Missak (Simon
Akbarian) and his devoted wife Mélinée (Virginie Ledoyen), a Marxist student and bombmaker Elek (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) and a champion swimmer Rayman (Robinson Stévenin), who is also an expert marksman. Where The Army of Crime differs from earlier
Resistance dramas such as Jean-Pierre Melville’s magisterial Army in the Shadows, is that it tackles head-on one of the great taboos from that era, namely the active role played by the French police in deporting Jewish citizens to German death camps. It’s actually one of Guédiguian’s regular actors Jean-Pierre Darroussin, who is compelling in the role of the ‘ordinary’ official Inspector Pujol, calmly meeting his quota of Jewish arrests. Between the round-ups, resistance operations and savage reprisals, The Army of Crime successfully conveys a sense of normal life carrying on in summery Paris. The use of Bach’s ‘St Matthew Passion’ on the soundtrack also underpins the film’s religious sensibility, figuring the resisters as martyrs sacrificing their own lives for an ideal of freedom. (Tom Dawson) ■ Selected release from Fri 2 Oct.