Film
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‘THERE WERE PILES OF DEAD ANIMALS ON EVERY HIGH STREET’ Hitlist THE BEST FILM & DVD RELEASES*
✽✽ A Serious Man The Coen brothers dig their Jewish roots in a new comedy. See review, page 49. General release from Fri 20 Nov. ✽✽ Glorious 39 Stephen Poliakoff’s wartime thriller. See preview, left and review, opposite. Selected release from Fri 20 Nov. ✽✽ French Film Festival Still going strong with fantastic Tati and Eustache retrospectives. GFT, Glasgow and Filmhouse, Edinburgh until Thu 3 Dec. ✽✽ The White Ribbon Michael Haneke locates the cradle of Nazi fundamentalism in a northern German village in the days before World War One. GFT, Glasgow and Cameo, Edinburgh, out now. ✽✽ Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno Documentary about the abandoned masterpiece. Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 27–Mon 30 Nov. ✽✽ Cold Souls Spiritual identity theft drama with Paul Giamatti. Selected release, out now. ✽✽ Fantastic Mr Fox Roald Dahl classic lovingly realised by Wes Anderson. General release, out now. ✽✽ An Education Quality adaptation of Lynn Barber’s memoir of blind love in 1960s London. Selected release, out now. ✽✽ Boom! Long unavailable on DVD, Joseph Losey’s adaptation of this late Tennessee Williams play starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton needs to be seen to be believed. See review, page 51. Out Mon 30 Nov (Second Sight). ✽✽ Christiane F Influential 1981 drugs and sex docudrama featuring a killer soundtrack gets its first decent DVD pressing in over ten years. See review, page 51. Out now (Arrow).
Shooting the past Stephen Poliakoff wanted to take the subject of Nazi appeasement and turn it into a thriller for the big screen. Brian Donaldson hears how he succeeded
T here’s a moment early on in Glorious 39 when an elderly gent played by Christopher Lee warns a teenage relative that ‘it’s not always a good place to go, Michael, the past.’ Once the story unravels, we see exactly why some stories are best hidden. It’s a statement but that could just as easily have come from naysayers of writer and director Stephen Poliakoff’s work. Yet, while much of the 56- year-old’s back catalogue (The Lost Prince, Perfect Strangers) has explored the hidden truths in the pasts of families and societies, it has never been a trawl into the archives for the sake of it, instead enlightening the present by keeping a handle on past deeds.
For Glorious 39, Poliakoff (pictured) has dipped into the weeks before and following the outbreak of World War Two, when the talk among the British aristocracy was for the need to appease Hitler and stay out of any continental conflict. Into that mix, Poliakoff throws in an actress, the adopted Anne (Romola Garai) whose father (Bill Nighy) is a high-ranking politician but whose connection with the secret service and their pernicious campaign in silencing critics of Chamberlain’s policy is unclear. With Anne trying to find out exactly who is behind a series of close friends’ deaths, the film is paced almost like a conventional thriller, running somewhat contrary to the stately feel of Poliakoff’s small screen output. ‘I have always liked suspense stories and thrillers,’ he notes. ‘Obviously we have Hitchcock, while one of my favourite films is Rosemary’s Baby. We’re not a huge country like America, but there has to be more at stake than a heist that goes wrong or money buried
48 THE LIST 19 Nov–3 Dec 2009
behind the chimney, and I was extraordinarily interested in what a close run thing it was that we didn’t do a deal with Hitler. Anne doesn’t know who’s on her side and who’s betraying her and I wanted to get across a feeling of a world falling apart where people once felt safe and secure.’
If the people of Britain experienced unease about impending upheaval, just think how the pets of the land must have felt, not able to stay with their masters, who were heading out to the countryside or down into bomb shelters, and being systematically put down. ‘It was something I stumbled upon when I was researching the film and I was so grabbed by it. One book described the piles of dead animals on every high street in London so while you clip clopped to the post office you had to pass these dead cats, dogs, rabbits and budgies. It must have been so horrific in reality, but was also such an eerie harbinger of what would have happened if we had become a Vichy style state.’ While Glorious 39 is being trumpeted as Poliakoff’s return to cinema (his big screen adventures from the 90s include Close My Eyes and Century), and with him having recently spoken out at the ‘Kafkaesque’ and ‘Orwellian’ procedures within BBC committees, he still hopes to write again for the corporation. ‘There’s obviously a lack of money all round but drama is still incredibly popular and one of the defining things on television and therefore in our culture.’
Glorious 39 is on selected release from Fri 20 Nov. See review, opposite.