There are some articles you wind up regretting later on in life...but which still retain a kind of entertainment value. At Close-Up Film, writers were invited to submit their Desert Island Movies (see elsewhere on the site) and also their Room 101 Movies. This was my rather brash and sarcastic attempt at the latter. It was a breeze to write, and somehow therapeutic, but I wince at some of its sweeping statements now. Still, it's all good fun.
It was a dark and stormy night. In Leeds. Beers at the students’ union, a breezy walk through the warren of flats and bedsits that is Leeds 6. Our destination – the Hyde Park Picture House, a terraced house converted into a palace for the young cinephile. The film – Mean Streets, Scorsese’s breakthrough feature. I had never seen it but it was already part of my cultural mindscape, being a devotee of De Niro and having gazed at the movie poster in my flatmate’s bedroom during many evenings of inebriated chat.
And you know what – I walked out. The first time I had ever done so. I just didn’t get it – where was the gangster patter? Where were the cool shoot-outs? And what the hell was it all about, anyways? Reader, I still shudder at my mistake. Suffice to say, a year later, sitting in a cold, cold flat in London, with only a tiny fan heater for company, I made my penance. Idly leafing through the paper with the TV on in the background, I suddenly caught the words: “And now on Channel 4, Martin Scorsese’s seminal etc etc…” I looked up out of curiosity – and two hours later, finally turned the page.
How had I got it so wrong?
The answer, of course, lies in the fact that the best cinema always upends us at first. Those directors who are genuinely trying something original, moving their chosen art forms into different areas so that we can see the world anew, are taking a huge risk. Because they are forcing us to re-examine our critical criteria – what was deemed a good model for a film before now no longer pertains. Hence Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) and Dreyer’s Gertrud (1964) were booed at their premiere screenings. Abbas Kiarostami has said that there are two kinds of film. One “takes you hostage” by throwing everything at the audience, straitjacketing the story in a tight, linear narrative, and then letting you go with nothing at the end. The other might be a little boring, you may nod off occasionally, but weeks later, it will keep you awake at night. In some ways, a very strong negative reaction can be a favourable one…
Crap movies, on the other hand, are those that elicit no reaction at all. Once you’ve seen them, you quietly erase them from the memory. Any horror aficionado will back me up on this – in pursuing our favourite genre, we don’t half sit through a lot of muck. Take Day of the Animals (1976) in which a pre-Naked Gun Leslie Nielsen and a motley crew of survivors fend off an animal kingdom gone berserk – watch out for that squirrel! Oh, no, here comes a goose! How many TV movies do we waste our lives watching when we’re ill or unemployed, with some feisty American matriarch fighting for her kid with leukaemia? And every reviewer has to trudge through the mire that is modern popular cinema, my own particular nightmare being the rom-com – see Must Love Dogs, Maid In Manhattan, Failure To Launch…
But I can’t think of many more. And that’s the point – bad movies like this just don’t make an impression. I think they have a place, though – I’ve always felt that Film Studies courses should force their students to watch one or two of these monstrosities if only to understand why the Citizen Kanes and Sunset Boulevards of this world are so good. But the ones that stick in our craw are different. They’re the ones with pretensions to greatness, that trail a reputation, that tantalise us with a gorgeous surface and then drop their mask to reveal ugliness.
In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the poet must enter the Underworld, under the guidance of Virgil, to see the horrors of hell and its victims – the debtors, the heretics – before he can appreciate the beauty of Heaven. And during those terrible nights when the memory of walking out on Mean Streets comes back to haunt my dreams, I see myself stumbling out of the Hyde Park Picture House onto deserted streets. There is the gaping Mouth of Hell next door to Sketchley’s. And by it a figure breathing smoke – no, it’s Orson Welles puffing on a large cigar. He leads me down through the Nine Circles of Hell and in them I see these films and the people behind them…
The First Circle of Hell – The Wannabes
The Claim (Michael Winterbottom, 2000) – It’s long been my contention that there is no such thing as a bad western. The genre is so strong in visual iconography and mythical narrative that surely it could sustain the weakest director. But Winterbottom managed it. There are some people that think he can direct – an interesting theory that deserves further research. But here, despite adapting one of the most eventful books in the English language – Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge – despite minute attention to period detail and the inclusion of a scene in which an entire house moves through a snowy landscape, he turned in a film that was so dramatically inert, so turgid, that it made Young Guns seem enticing.
The Second Circle of Hell – The Morons
Judge Dredd (Danny Cannon, 1995) – For every comic book fan whose eyes light up at the prospect of another Spiderman or X-Men movie, there are a dozen others who cringe at the very thought of entering a cinema. For isn’t it here that the various works of Alan Moore have been bastardised? Isn’t it here that Batman fell into the evil hands of Joel Schumacher? Worst of all, though, was the treatment meted out to 21st Century lawman, Judge Dredd. As a kid, I revelled in the violent black comedy of 2000AD, Britain’s great contribution to the sci-fi comics universe. It was perfect for film…but then the bad news trickled through. They’d cast Sylvester Stallone, fumbled the comedy, failed to hire Paul Verhoeven and instead employed an English hack. And worst of all, they’d left it too late, so the strip’s punkish, anarchic ‘70s spirit was replaced by the neatness of the ‘90s blockbuster. Horrible.
The Third Circle of Hell – The Buck-chasers
Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003) – I once made the classic mistake of falling into a discussion about movies during a night out with friends – something every film reviewer should avoid. To be honest, the question took me off guard – “Which was your favourite story in Love Actually?” Having thought the movie was one of the worst, most saccharine, most putridly written pieces of garbage I had ever seen, I struggled for an answer but eventually blurted out “Emma Thompson” since she was the only person on screen who had bothered to act. The silence was long and deafening – I wasn’t going home with any young lady that night. The problem, of course, is that the Curtises and Hornbys of this world are practised geniuses in the art of fast-food drama – remove any traces of specific cultural baggage, replace with universal, positive images of England, play with national stereotypes like the shy British dude, mix some tasteful and some naughty jokes and round it off with a happy ending. Hey, presto – the cineburger! And people do like their fast food. Me, I’m on a diet.
The Fourth Circle of Hell – The Scumbags
Robocop 2 (Irvin Kershner, 1990)/Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992) – I’m not normally priggish about sex and violence in the movies and would nominate some of the most extreme cases – Salò (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975), Ai No Corrida (Nagisa Oshima,1976) and Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996) – as masterworks. But curiously, the two films that did upset me were billed as mainstream entertainment – they had Hollywood’s stamp of approval, you see. So, while The Daily Mail was fuming about people getting off on car crashes, they were quite happy to ignore or endorse a film which was grotesquely misogynist, that leered at lesbians, that licked its lips at Michael Douglas raping his wife over the back of a couch, and this after he and his colleagues had got worked up over the sight of Sharon Stone’s oh-so-available vagina. The adolescent mentality that finds an overwhelming fascination in women’s genitalia is the same one that revels in the non-stop bone-crunching in Robocop 2, a relentless stream of violence now bereft of the mordant wit (ironically, Verhoeven’s) found in the first movie. Such is the hypocrisy of “moral outrage” – it waits to be told where to direct its ire. And I’d lay a bet that the same people who enjoyed Basic Instinct were the same middle-class couples who dutifully turned up to Brokeback Mountain – “Oh, it was good, actually, I’m glad I went in the end” – but, at the thought of a genuine queer film where men were shown happily fucking and enjoying their relationship, would crap their pants in fear.
The Fifth Circle of Hell – The Zeitgeist Surfers
Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) – Here’s a tip – avoid any film that is billed as “cool” or “of its generation”. Because if Easy Rider’s anything to go by, cool is bloody boring. I mean, drugs, motorbikes, girls, wide open spaces – I’m all for it. But surely that combo shouldn’t be tedious? I’ve had more fun watching a Public Information film. And the problem with these cats that fancy themselves on the cutting edge is that it’s all so present tense, man. The zeitgeist is a tricky beast, always changing. Fashion tries to keep up but, in doing so, damns its creations to being dated the moment popular culture moves on. So it is that cinema history is littered with once glittery has-beens whose lustre has long since faded – The Graduate, Saturday Night Fever, Reservoir Dogs…
The Sixth Circle of Hell – The Pretentious Europeans
Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1998) – Every so often a film comes along that reminds you that Americans do not have a monopoly on bad taste and that the illustrious vessel SS European Arthouse has some rum crewmembers aboard. Take Catherine Breillat. Her idea of style is to show some – ooh, shocking! – hardcore sex scenes, denude them of any eroticism, have her main character almost monosyllabic and prone to some of the most inexplicably masochistic behaviour known to man. It’s as though the filmmaker believes the audience should be punished, but unlike the punter who’s paid his dominatrix, we’re not getting any pleasure for our pains. And there’s a brotherhood of ascetic monks out there – they call themselves critics – who seem to revel in this self-flagellation as if it represents the true path to paradise. It can be the only reason for the success of Michael Haneke…
The Seventh Circle of Hell – The Avant-Gardists
A Trip To The Louvre (Jean-Marie Straub/Daniele Huillet, 2004) – The first thing that riled me was the filmmakers’ insistence on having this shown at the London Film Festival without subtitles. Apparently, Joachim Gasquet’s conception of Cezanne’s commentary on art was so brilliantly written, it couldn’t possibly be translated. As if Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Dante haven’t all been converted successfully into hundreds of different languages. But I thought, what the hell, I know a bit of French, I’ll get the gist of how the movie works. Oh, unhappy day. At first, we are treated to shots of famous paintings from the Louvre with Cezanne burbling away in the background. Beautifully-framed shots, I grant you, but that’s all. And then – get this – the film starts all over again with the same shots, sometimes in a different order, and with a second or so of their time on screen shaved off so the commentary occurs at a fractionally different place to when we last saw the painting. What is happening here is a ruthless tearing-up of the contract between artist and audience – the one that states that the viewer gives the artist room to manoeuvre as long as they respond with some form of stimulation. It is a cold arrogance that assumes that the spectator should watch this intellectual games-playing, that they ought to recognise it as worthwhile and that, if they don’t, it is somehow their shortfall. It’s an attitude that infects the art world at the moment – the artist does not have to engage the audience on their level, and solipsistic obscurity is welcomed. It’s as if it’s the spectator’s duty to step up and bear any amount of intolerable boredom in the confirmation of said artist’s reputation. I’m glad to say only three people were left when I walked out of the screening – but if those three people were our self-appointed cultural arbiters, we’re in trouble.
The Eighth Circle of Hell – The Smiling, Damned Villains
Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, 1972) – With Godard, of course, we’re in the presence of the greatest con-man of the 20th century, the petit Right-Bank bourgeois who dicked around with film in the early ‘60s without producing anything of lasting emotional force, then got politics and peddled the most tokenist, adolescent left-wing polemics you could wish for, then retreated to a nice Swiss villa to inveigh against the evils of the capitalist world. If an American had produced such trite overviews of the political spectrum as Godard, he’d have been laughed out of Cannes. And while we’re on the subject of Americans, how come they are often the target of Godard’s anger while France gets away scot-free? I’m pretty sure there are no French soldiers or military actions by the French government portrayed in the opening montage of Notre Musique (2004). What’s the matter, Jean-Luc? For all your so-called radicalism, are you really just a little flag-waver, or, as one of my friends put it, a “De Gaulle de poche”? You want the height of Godard’s incisive satire? It’s Jane Fonda holding up a picture of a penis. Oh, please.
The Ninth Circle of Hell – The Gargantuanly Overrated
The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) – You search for a film for years only to discover that it’s fool’s gold – there can be no greater disappointment for the cinephile. Certainly, Visconti’s film glitters – beautiful locations, gorgeous ball gowns, elaborate camera movement. But underneath this gilded surface, it’s tacky and vulgar. The Leopard belongs to a select group of films made by directors who yearn for Europe’s golden years – the Belle Epoque, if you like – of wealth, aristocracy and waltzes. These films are dressed in the garb of satire, pretending to undermine and criticise the ambition of the upper classes, but really they’re nostalgic for all that finery. There’s little to separate Visconti from any other period costume guff, but he’s Italian and a self-proclaimed Marxist, all of which gives his films more caché than the heritage dramas soft-peddled by Merchant Ivory. And so it was that when the fully-restored version was announced to the world a few years ago, most cinephiles got out the champagne. I reached for the razor.
Satan (or, as we know him, Alan Parker)
The Life of David Gale (Alan Parker, 2002) – There he lies in the foulest pit of hell, in a frozen sea of ice, spewing forth more determinedly populist pap, manipulating his audience in the crudest manner, bashing them over the head with his relentlessly kinetic style, hammering home every “meaningful” point in the narrative. And he thinks all British cinema should be like this. Truly, he is the Beast. Let us not contemplate his visage for too long. Suffice to say, in The Life of David Gale, he managed to make even Kate Winslet seem like a bad actress. There can be no greater crime.