Senna

Who would have thought that Winnersh's Showcase cinema - bastion of the mainstream and champion of Holywood's 3D stylings - would sell out a screening of a documentary about a Brazilian racing driver? On a Tuesday. Well it did, which meant I ended up having to go to Bracknell's 'cinema' instead. Bracknell's an uninspirational enough place without the zombie fortress that is the Odeon at 'The Point', with its disinterested staff, neon lights, 'premier' seats, escalator straight on to the street and open air bus shelter ticket office. Bah - bah and humbug I say!

'Senna' is a documentary about the life of Brazilian Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna. Thought by many to be the greatest natural driving talent of his generation (possibly ever), Senna was killed in May 1994 at the San Marino Grand Prix when his car flew off the road at a fast corner. A portion of his car's suspension hit him in the head and wounded him fatally. This film tells the story of his life in F1, and though it largely skirts around his upbringing and personal life it paints a picture of a man intensely committed to what he did who represented hope for the Brazilian nation. I don't think that this view is necessarily over-sentimental or rose-tinted, at the time of Senna's death the outpouring of emotion from the sporting world was overwhelming. Brazil is a nation of extremes that idolises its sporting heros, so I can't accuse the film of using hyperbole when portraying Senna as representing more than just a racing driver.

The film is very simply put-together. By using archived F1 footage, television spots and Senna home movies the film effortlessly shows us the life of Ayrton Senna without the need for dramatisation or talking heads and with a minimum of voice-over. The film faithfully tells the story of the battles between Senna and Prost (this is definitely told from a pro-Senna viewpoint) and builds an emotional momentum towards the fatal day in Italy. Senna is painted as a man outside the F1 establishment who felt wronged by the authorities (who favoured Prost) and who's natural talents were reined in by advances in technology.

Though there is no overt implication, I felt like the film was implying that Senna (and Roland Ratzenberger) was killed by the inexorable progress of technology in F1 - and the lack of accompanying safety procedures. I felt that though there was no accusation of intent to harm, the Williams team were somewhat culpable. Their drive towards computer control and automisation in their cars is subtly blamed for affording drivers less control and turning them into passengers en route to their own demise.

This is a superb documentary that presents archive footage and allows a viewer to make up their own mind about Senna the man and the circumstances around his death. The box office takings for this film have been very high for a documentary. We're a long way from the awards season at the moment, but I would expect this to be in contention come next year.

Solaris - the Russian one obviously

I'm always going on about 'proper' science fiction, so when I actually get around to watching a film in that genre I feel under a self-imposed pressure to enjoy myself. 'Solaris' is a Soviet production from the 1970s, in which a cosmonaut - Chris - is sent to a space station to investigate reports of strange goings on. The space station was once a thriving hub of activity where scientists and military experts studied a mysterious alien planet - Solaris. Public interest in Solaris has waned though, and only 3 scientists remain.

The film opens with a series of 'mood' scenes that are a little pretentious. Lots of water and leaves and such like. We quickly move on to a terrestrial setting in which the viewer has to work hard to piece together this vision of the future from the snippets of dialogue and information provided. Characters talk of 'Solaristics' without ever being specific - at no point does a 'scientist' turn up and explain the premise. Even the background to the main character Chris, which becomes so important later on, is only hinted at. We know that Chris is to travel to Solaris to investigate the situation there, and that everyone has reservations about what he might find.

When Chris arrives at Solaris he discovers one of the scientists dead and the others warning him to not trust what he sees, even though they mysteriously warn him that what he sees will be real. It seems that Solaris is more than merely a planet, rather a unimaginable alien intelligence that manifests in the oceans of the world below the station. Solaris is somehow reaching out to the workers on the station either in an attempt to communicate or to drive them away - whatever it is, the consequences are material and disturbing. When Chris awakes from his first night sleep on the station to discover his dead wife Hari in the room - we know something strange is happening.

The best thing about these 70s style science fiction films is the way that they treat their stories as an excuse for soul-searching and philosophy - rather than reaching for the laser guns. In a science fiction film from the Star Trek mould, a character confronted with an apparition of a long dead lover would probably look for the scientific explanation and spend the rest of the film working out how to 'send them back' or 'fix the universe'. Just like in last year's 'Moon', the protagonists in 'Solaris' are aware that they're very tiny fish in the cosmic ocean. They have no hope of understanding - let alone stopping - Solaris, such is the mind-bending enormity of its alien presence. Instead of working out how to 'put things right', Chris has a crisis of humanity, in which he begins to believe that this apparition of Hari is as good as the original. What does it mean to be human? If you were confronted with a perfect copy of another person, what is the moral difference between them?

This is of course what science fiction told well can be about - by throwing off the shackles of the real world a writer can explore deep subjects with ease. 'Solaris' is a film that many will find unbearably slow, and I'm prepared to admit that several scenes are very pretentious, but it's a classic of a genre that has over the years often been distorted into little more than excuse for action set-pieces. I recommend that fans of science fiction seek it out.

Also, I love the poster for Solaris that I've stuck at the top of this review. It's
sparing with its imagery but captures perfectly the film's central premise of Chris' moral delimma over Hari's humanity. They're both looking in the mirror, and though he's concentrating on her we can only see his face. It's telling us not to worry about who or what Hari is, but how Chris reacts to her. Nice.

Rocky - Propaganda

As far as gaps in my film viewing repertoire go, not having seen Rocky was quite a big one. As if the fact that it has been relentlessly spoofed, had a recent remake and is a film that everyone else of my age group saw before the age of 10 wasn't enough - it also won the Oscar for best film. Such is its place in pop-culture that I kind of knew what to expect already - getting a shot at the big time, drinking raw eggs, running up steps and training montages. That's the whole film right? Isn't it? I guess not. Turns out my housemate has all 5 on DVD, so last Friday night it was time to make my own mind up.

Now before this review turns sour (as it's about to) I'm going to point out that I don't think I'm a joyless person. After all, on the surface of it there isn't much to dislike about Rocky - the story of the deceptively simple amateur boxer who gets his shot at the big time. What kind of self-hating moron could possible have a problem with that? Well - me. And here's why...

The American Dream is one of those intangible concepts designed to make the capitalist excesses of the USA palatable to the masses. Don't rock the boat, work hard and know your place and eventually you too might get rich and famous through hard work. Its the same gibberish that gets ordinary working class people out voting Republican (or Conservative or whatever your particular local gang of upper class apologists are called). Its exactly this gibberish that Rocky (the film) spends its runtime espousing. Consider the character Rocky. He works part time as a heavy for a small time gangster, keeps his own company, works hard and is attracted to the girl next door. What a great guy - bumming his way through his life until the world champion Apollo Creed needs some chump to batter for the purposes of television audiences. Rocky dutifully steps up to the plate for his shot at the American Dream - he's bound to lose, but if he wins he'll be champion of the world!

But don't get ideas above your station Rocky! You can't beat Apollo Creed! But if you manage to go the distance we'll pat you on the back and tell you how well you did and you'll get the girl and a small pay cheque - then you'll have made your small slice of the American Dream while Apollo Creed and his cronies run off with the rest of the pie. Is this meant to be a victory for the working man?! Is this Rocky's message to the world: that it is noble to work hard and line up for punishment at your shit job every day of your life because eventually someone will hand you your 15 minutes of fame? And when that time comes you should doff your cap and help them get even richer because one day it could be you? No Thanks.

And don't even get me started on Rocky's love interest (is it Adrian? Since when are woman called Adrian?). You know that thing they do in films where they put a woman in glasses to make her less unattractive, then she mysteriously loses them when they need her to look hotter later on? Classic example here. As soon as 'Adrian' and Rocky get together she loses her glasses and dowdy clothing - suddenly she has some kind of professional stylist buying her outfits and doing her hair. Because a woman only feels self-worth when she's with a man!

Not only did I find Rocky to be cheesy and uninspiring, I was disappointed that this is what people thought they should be showing their kids back in the 1970s. Not really a shock that this won the Oscar though given its over-sentimental view of the world. Far from being a harmless film about a guy getting his shot at the big time, I couldn't shake the feeling that this is the kind of pro-establishment stuff that Soviet propagandists could never even dream of getting away with. Perhaps this is why Communism in the USSR failed, because their propaganda was laughable in its unbelievability - whereas the USA had Holywood to pump out this self serving 'entertainment' at an alarming rate to re-enforce the status quo.

I wont be watching the rest of them.

And the boxing scenes are crap too.

Test Post

Blogger is dicking me around - hence a test post...

Hoop Dreams

The trouble with documentaries is always that the maker risks ending up telling you their own narrative. A lot of the time someone like Michael Moore might as well write their own script and use actors rather than use documentary footage. After all, his documentaries come across more like polemics than windows on the world. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with making a documentary like this, but in doing so the writer risks a crass editorialisation that can serve to undercut their argument. Michael Moore treads this line carefully, but despite the power of his films he is often guilty of crossing a line that makes him look like a raving nutter.

Hoop Dreams is nearly 3 hours of footage following two young boys - Arthur Agee and William Gates - from the Chicago ghettos over 4 years of their lives. The boys are each spotted as potential future basketball stars and packed off to a plush out-of-town high school with scholarships and dreams of glory. The film was put together from hundreds of hours of footage, showing how the boys react to the stresses put upon them out their new middle class school and how their youthful dreams of glory are slowly squeezed by the ruthlessly results-driven world of US high school sport.

By presenting footage with minimal voice-over effects, 'Hoop Dreams' is the the opposite of a heavily editorialised polemic. Viewers are left to draw their own conclusions about the US sports scholarship system. Is it a way of giving hope to millions of deprived children? Or is it a cynical way of industrialising childhood dreams? It's a system in which the underlying class and racial prejudices of US society manifest in ways both subtle and not-so-subtle, a system in which the dreams of youth are exploited while they show promise and dashed just as quickly when that promise fades. But a system none-the-less that helps a lucky few achieve fame, riches and success.

Hoop dreams is an excellent documentary. Anyone interested in the influence of sports on High School life in the USA could do a lot worse that reading Friday Night Lights - a book that charts the progress of a high school American football team over the course of a single school year. Though ostensibly a book about American football, it's really about American society, class, money, race, The American Dream and the prejudices and pains that come with an expectation to succeed.