The Great Hack (US, 2019)

Pod person takes over planet

The Great Hack tells an essential tale of the corruption of, the already wonky, democratic process; however it does so in such an incompetent way the detail is lost in the broad sweep. It could be that the complexity of Cambridge Analytica’s debasement of the democracy is so complicated that a two-hour documentary will only be able to offer a vague impression. However, I think the decision to structure the information via two individuals, the admirable David Carroll and the conflicted Brittany Kaiser, has compromised the film. I’m not a fan of ‘expository’ documentaries, which employ an omnipotent ‘voice of god’ voiceover to anchor the meaning, but in this case it was probably the only way to ensure understanding.

However, the film has been well reviewed, The Guardian gave it five stars, and my difficulty with it may be because, having followed Carole Cadwalladr’s diligent reporting, I knew most of the content. In other words, I’ve now got my own way of understanding what happened. That said, there are moments where the documentary is opaque: for example, when a top executive of Cambridge Analytica talks about his devastation when C4 news reported Alexander Nix’s mendacity: was he devastated because his boss lied or because the company was about to go up in smoke? Steve Bannon gets a sound bite but the links between him, Farage, Trump and the Mercer family are not dealt with. The only thing I learned was that Cambridge Analytica had also screwed the 2010 election in Trinidad and Tobago..

Tech companies’ hegemony over information is a key issue of our time. The fraudulent Leave.EU has been under investigation for over a year by the Metropolitan Police and the chances of Banks, Wigmore, Bilney and co. being held to account have greatly diminished given the British Cabinet is now constituted with many of those implicated with the lies used to prise the UK out of the EU.

One sane response to The Great Hack is to get rid of your Facebook account (as I did over a year ago). PM Johnson is already using the platform to gain information prior to disseminating propaganda during the next election. It would be great to know how many people watch the film to try and assess its impact but Netflix is now also a tech company and the only time it releases figures are for PR purposes. The next General Elections in western countries are all going to be key for if the right consolidates its power then the tech companies will have no regulation to fear and authoritarianism will rule while the planet burns.

 

Loveless (Nelyubov (Russia-France-Germany-Belgium, 2017)

Haunting absence

I found Andrey Zvyagintsev’s first film, The Return, absolutely gripping but, despite the critical plaudits, Leviathan (Leviafan, Russia, 2014) left me cold (I probably need to see it again). It also failed to impress the Russian Minster for Culture as it wasn’t patriotic enough so Loveless turned to European money to be made. Whilst Loveless doesn’t match The Return, it is a gripping and beautiful film; the beauty is rather austere deriving from its compositions and bleak winter landscapes. It concerns a divorcing couple whose 12-year-old son is seen to be an impediment to the new lives they plan to pursue.

Some critics (for example, the Sight & Sound review) complained about what they saw as heavy-handed symbolism; and even Jonathan Romney, who is sympathetic to the film, argued that the use of mobile phones and laptops as signifiers of modern alienation is clichéd (both March 2018). While Zvyagintsev is not a realist filmmaker he does situate his films in particular times and places (most of the action takes place in a Moscow suburb in 2012) and so if his characters are umbilically linked to their computer technology it is difficult not to show it. The sugar-rush of notifications and messages have addicted a fair proportion of humanity it seems and a film about alienation would struggle not include this technology.

I liked the film but it rarely seemed to transcend the characters’ banality (not a criticism). There are a few virtuoso moments when we see altruistic volunteers (who actually exist, they help people find missing persons as the police are able to do little) seek the missing son: an abandoned and decrepit Soviet-era swimming pool and a massive military satellite dish loom out of the woods. Misinformation features in news reports, about the end of the world and the war in Ukraine, showing Russia suffers similar news problems to our own.

The performances, particularly Maryana Spivak and Aleksey Rozin as the rotting couple, are excellent; Rozin also appeared in Zvyagintsev’s Elena (Russia, 2011), which I enjoyed. Loveless features more explicit sex than I’ve seen in any Russian film (maybe I’ve not been watching the right ones!) and it not shot voyeuristically but as another signifier of decadence (in the sense that the result of sex, the son, is neglected).

Romney also suggests that arthouse films no longer appeal to a younger generation that have grown up in the postmodern world of accelerated imagery. Although that is a statement of fogeyism, it may be true. Box office for arthouse films, that is those that are self-consciously portentous, is rapidly diminishing suggesting that bourgeois tastes have migrated to something else; it doesn’t matter what it is, just that it be fashionable.

Defence of the Realm (UK, 1985)

When the fourth estate meant something

As I remember it, Defence of the Realm was well-received when it was released; I certainly enjoyed it at the time. The film follows investigative journalist Nick Mullen (Gabriel Byrne) as he digs into a politician compromised as a possible spy. What’s striking now is how naive the film seems (or is it me?), although the idea that the security services use the press to disseminate propaganda wasn’t new it seems to suggest it is surprising (The Sunday Times‘ ‘death on the rock’ story rubbishing witnesses to the state-approved assassination of IRA members in Gibraltar was just around the corner). I suppose you could take Mullen’s naiveté to be a narrative device, though the ‘world weariness’ of Byrne’s persona makes it difficult to believe he would be so gullible, to lead the unsuspecting in the audience through to the ‘horrific’ realisation about the corruption of the British Establishment.

The film is an effective thriller, though the newsroom and printing presses are oddly ‘unbusy’ too often. Denhom Elliott is excellent as the ‘shabby malcontent’ who has seen it all but now observes the world through the bottom of a glass. Another aspect that dates the film is the marginalisation of women: Greta Scacchi doesn’t get much to do.

Are people more aware nowadays about how the press is both compromised by proprietors’ commercial interests (noted in the film) and their links to the security services? Whilst social media has facilitated the expulsion of bile into the ‘public sphere’ it has also served as a tool of education. Media Lens‘ analysis, for example, must surely have lifted the scales from many people’s eyes about the corruption of the fourth estate (which is meant to hold those in power to account) and Mark Curtis is always informative on foreign policy.

It’s easy to assume that things were better in the past but I find it hard to believe any newspaper would have had the front to suggest that Boris Johnson is fit to be Prime Minister before the ‘post-truth’ age. Fake news is not new but brazen lying by politicians, and not getting held to account for it, is a curse of our times. Part of the problem we have in the UK is the complete failure of the BBC as a news organisation (Tom Mills is an excellent commentator on this); whilst it’s always been an Establishment mouthpiece (one Director General who tried to fulfil the BBC’s news role, Alisdair Milne, was forced to resign by a Thatcher appointee) its editorial decisions have shifted so far to the right that it can no longer be considered centrist (there are too many examples: giving a platform to the ‘far right’; not only the failure to investigate Leave.EU’s criminality but inviting them to spin their version whilst ignoring their accusers; the vilification of Julian Assange; hit jobs on Corbyn and so on.

Defence of the Realm reminds us of the controversy of nuclear weapons on British soil that precipitated the Greenham Women protests. How they were vilified by the press at the time, just as Extinction Rebellion is now! There’s a, not particularly good, exhibition on at Manchester Art Gallery, Get Together and Get Things Done, that shows us what the Establishment vilifies as an unacceptable attack on the status quo, is often later eulogised (co-opted) if the protest succeeds.

On Dangerous Ground (US, 1951)

The dark soul of noir

Nick Ray’s On Dangerous Ground is a brilliant hybrid noir-melodrama where the join between the genres is obvious. The first part of the film takes place in the darkness of the city as Robert Ryan’s troubled cop, Jim Wilson, beats the shit out of ‘pond life’ is followed by a snowy landscape and the blind Mary (Ida Lupino) who may redeem him. Ryan is his usual volcanic self; even when he’s calm an explosion is in the offing. Lupino’s role is a difficult one to pull off; trying to be not sympathetic just because she is blind. Ward Bond,  a right-winger is perfectly cast by left-winger Ray, is the gun-toting vigilante seeking vengeance for his daughter’s death. They are all excellent.

George E Diskant’s cinematography is brilliant: capturing the ink black darkness of the city streets and the almost white-out of snow covered landscape. According to Bernard Eisenschitz, in his biography of Ray, some of the camerawork is handheld. It certainly looked like that in one scene of a beating being meted out by Wilson’s fractured psyche; that must have taken some doing with the heavy cameras. The score is one of Bernard Herrmann’s best so no superlatives need to be used in describing it.

I first saw the film, under the late Victor Perkins’ tutelage, at Warwick University in 1980 and remember thinking the ending ‘corny’. Apparently Lupino and Ryan improvised the final scene, not finding the scripted (by Ray and AI Bezzerides) return of Jim to the city satisfactory. Although it seems to reconcile the two, Ray’s final shot is of a snowbound landscape suggesting that all may not be well.

The antithesis of noir setting

Bezzerides also scripted Kiss Me Deadly (1955), one of the grimmest of noirs, and On Dangerous Ground dips into the same territory: the ‘under-age’ prostitute (top pic) ejected from the bar by Wilson is seen to be followed out by a man; utilising the code of dissolve/cigarette smoking, Wilson has sex with an informant who is later beaten up for her troubles. There’s a superb opening sequence of Wilson’s ‘team’ preparing for work: two have loving families whilst he lives alone. Ed Begley has a telling cameo as the police Captain who’s more concerned about the quality of his breakfast than on-going investigations.

Ray struggled in the constraints of Hollywood; his career started as the industry started its slow decline which, arguably, is still going on (not financially) but artistically with its over-reliance of remakes and sequels (although the North American box office is creaking under the heap of banality). Ray’s films crop up on television with some regularity but The Lusty Men (1952) is nowhere to be seen.

The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana, Poland, 1975)

Capitalists on the make

I saw the 140 minute release of The Promised Land, it was originally three hours but Polish TV broadcast an eight-part version in one hour episodes; a bit like the reworking of the first two Godfather films I imagine. It is certainly a film of epic scope, based on a classic Polish novel by Władysław Stanisław Reymont, detailing the febrile atmosphere in Łódź in the latter years of the 19th century. Karol, Moryc and Maks are, respectively, Polish, Jewish and German friends who are determined to build a cotton factory. Given a number of mills are being burned down for insurance purposes at the time, this is a dicey undertaking.

I must admit to struggling to follow the narrative in some parts. It covers a number of years, but it wasn’t clear how many, and eschews straightforward characterisation; I’m not sure if Moryc was at some points conspiring against his friends and Karol’s infatuation with a married woman is not entirely convincing. However, this is an Andrzej Wadja film and the direction is often stupendous as is the art direction by Andrzej Halinsk; the use of colour is often stunning. As is the setting; Łódź, Wadja discovered when making the film despite having been a student in the city, retained many of its old factories and the scenes in the mill, with the looms, have a documentary quality (see below). Tonally, though, the film is varied and melodrama crops up throughout, particularly toward the end. I’ve nothing against melodrama, but the mix with the sometimes elliptic narrative, and realism of the factory scenes, is somewhat uneasy. Very uneasy is the characterisation of the Jewish money lenders. Apparently the film was accused of anti-semitism in America when it was nominated for an Oscar though the accusation was articulated, at a press conference, by someone who hadn’t seen the film. I doubt Wadja was anti-semitic as the money-grubbing isn’t limited to Jews in the film; indeed it is Karol, a son of a Polish aristocrat, who is seen as the most corrupt in the devastating ending of the film.

Looming disaster

The comparison to The Godfather is also relevant given the three are characterised as gangsters on some occasions. The scene where Moryc faces down the money lender emphasises this as we watch him prepare for the meeting by choosing carefully his clothes; particularly his hat. At the end of the scene he winks at the camera.

A lot is packed into the film, maybe the three hour version would make the narrative clearer, and it would no doubt reward a second viewing.

The Miraculous Virgin (Panna zázracnica, Czechoslovakia, 1967)

Sinister fascists?

Štefan Uher’s Slovak film, that was banned post-’68, is an example of nadrealizam; a neologism conjured to avoid association with surrealism, which the right associated with Jewish culture (Sigmund Freud). Slovakia had sided with Hitler during the war. As such it can be expected to be a difficult film to follow as its dream-like narrative isn’t meant to be logical. However, it becomes clear that the artists’ infatuation with the ‘virgin’, Anabella (Jolanta Umecka), is an amour fou as they project their desires onto her. Anabella flits from one man to another vaguely amused by their attentions. Umecka made her debut in Knife in the Water and this was her last film, five years later. On the Second Run DVD there is a ‘finding Anabella’ extra: a short publicity film showing Uher’s quest for an actor to play the role. There are also excellent interviews with Slovak scholars about the film.

The film is set during the war, at the start there is an air raid where people take shelter in what is ostensibly Bratislava’s railway station but it was actually filmed in the amazing Brno conference hall, which has an extraordinary vaulted ceiling. As is common in eastern European ‘new wave’ films, the black and white cinematography, by Stanislav Szomolányi, is exceptional. As far as I can tell this is the only film by Uher available on DVD (in the UK at least) which is unfortunate as Peter Hames, in The Czechoslovak New Wave (IB Tauris), rates The Sun in the Net (Slnko v sieti, 1962) and The Organ (Organ, 1965) more highly.

I’m sure I missed a number of references in the film; in the picture above do the threatening men represent fascists? Artists who attempt to break conventions are always seen as fair game by reactionaries as they offer new ways of seeing rather than the old. The artists, mostly visual but including a poet, are mostly portrayed as pathetic in their infatuation or is that the way I’m reading the film? I presume the ‘virgin’ is a reference to Catholicism but religion seemed to be absent from the film.

Nadrealizam

The surrealism is superbly presented: a character’s hand suddenly turns into an eagle’s talons; another jumps through a mirror and so on. I’d love to see more nadrealizam.