Archive for November, 2010

Agora

Alejandro Amenabar’s film Agora about the ancient woman astrologer and Neo-Platonist Philosopher is an absorbing tale of religious strife in Alexandria, Egypt in the declining decades of the Roman Empire. Caught between the rise of Christianity and the intolerance of the Christians for the Jews and vice versa, the Roman pagans especially the nobility who are still laying offerings to pagan Gods soon realize the extent to which Christianity has swept the Roman empire by the end of the 4^th Century A.D.

Hypatia is more concerned about the alignment of the planets and encourages logical mathematical inquiry, philosophizing over the causes of gravity, the earth’s rotational spin and an heliocentric model of the solar system, placing the sun at the universe’s centre. Her theories on relativity, mathematics and astrology were way ahead of her time and all the knowledge of the ancient world, stored at the gorgeous library of Alexandria is soon sacked by the marauding Christians, Hypatia realizes that she is in a world, which is rapidly changing its social structure in the waning years of the Roman Empire.

Her once proud father Theon, a Roman nobleman, is played with suitable panache and misguided wisdom by Michael Lonsdale, seldom seen in many features any more. Lonsdale become famous to international audiences as the arch villain Hugo Drax in the James Bond film Moonraker. He was later seen in a cameo role as the French diplomat in The Remains of the Day.

Academy award winner for The Constant Gardener,  Rachel Weisz embraces the complex role of Hypatia and relishes in the range of emotional depth and intellectual strength the character is given, especially in relation to her former slave, Davus a wonderful performance by Max Minghella, son of the late film director, Anthony Minghella, acclaimed for The English Patient and also to Orestes a Roman prefecture played by Oscar Isaac, who is hopelessly in love with her since the student days when Hypatia was  head teacher of philosophy before Alexandria was plagued by religious strife.

Agora is a superb historical epic detailing a little known time between the fall of the Roman Empire and those tumultuous days when religious fervour swept and changed the ancient world, eventually plunging the entire ancient and once sophisticated societies of Egypt, Greece and Italy into the Dark Ages.

The ending of Agora is symptomatic of the transitional times from crumbling Empire to a  new world order and while Hypatia stands firm in her beliefs as a philosopher and astronomer, she was sacrificed as a victim of her rapidly changing city, leaving her discoveries to be lost forever.

Alejandro Amenebar the director of The Others and the Oscar winning The Sea Inside uses his flare to bring the texture and brutality of the 4^th century Alexandria to life especially in contrast to the crumbling world of philosophical endeavour in favour of religious supremacy and intolerance. The sacking of the Library at Alexandria as scrolls burn and all the ancient world’s discoveries vanish is effective and is always a lesson against those who prefer ignorance to critical research. In the case of Hypatia her knowledge was her power and her greatest liability in a world ruled by megalomaniac men blinded by faith and not vision.

Jerusalema

All the hype surrounding the 2008 South African film, Jerusalema, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival is well deserved. A gangster tale to rival Goodfellas and surely proved inspirational to such films as District 9 and any future South African gangster films in the making. Whilst as local locations go, Cape Town could be used for the French Riveira or Toronto, but Johannesburg as a film location is uniquely South African, so brilliantly captured in Jerusalema and District 9, a vast urban sprawl of cosmopolitan energy to rival Rio, Mumbai or Los Angeles. Jerusalema follows the rise of Lucky Kunene from novice car jacker to Hillbrow slum lord who follows two mantras in life those by Karl Marx that all property is theft and by Al Capone, that violence is a means to the end. Not exactly savoury role models. A gangster and the founder of communism. Lucky Kunene sees himself as the Robin Hood of Hillbrow taking some dignity back to the urban slums of downtown Johannesburg, kicking out drug dealers and prostitutes and claiming the high rise buildings as his own, whilst neglected tenants languish in the outer suburbs of the urban sprawl, too afraid to venture into Hillbrow and fix up the severely neglected tenement buildings.

Gangsters Paradise Hillbow style

Where Jerusalema triumphs is Ralph Ziman’s uncompromising  and skillful direction, depicting some serious social issues in downtown Johannesburg ranging from poverty, crime, drug addiction, xenophobia and inter-racial love, whilst never losing the sense that Johannesburg is a thriving and massively industrious city, where all its citizens are earning money to survive some by less scrupulous means. Johannesburg is as much a character in the film as Lucky Kunene, played with relish by Rapulana Seiphemo with a great supporting cast of South African actors.

The violence is uncompromising, the story gripping and the humanity undeniable all packed into a frenetically shifting urban landscape which remains as uncertain as the characters which inhabit Hillbrow. Jerusalema is heavy on action, great on story line and could rival such crime epics as Goodfellas or The Departed, depicting one man’s attempt to raise above the poverty he was born in and the environment he hopes to escape. Success is naturally as elusive as forgiveness, but the point is made that quite often men can shape their environment, seize opportunities as much as circumstances can shape or break a man’s future.

The fact that Jerusalema was not selected as a contender for the 2008 Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards is more  to do with it not entirely being in Xhosa, whilst the thought-provoking subject matter could rival any recent Foreign Language Film winners, like The White Ribbon and Pan’s Labyrinth.

Never be ashamed of lust…

Eyes Wide Open

In a staunch and insular Orthodox Jewish community, a drifter arrives, Ezri looking for work and accommodation. Aaron, a married father who has re-opened his father’s Kosher butcher shop in Jerusalem offers Ezri a place to work and to sleep upstairs from the business. Ezri is young, handsome and seems out of place in an essentially conservative society, harbouring a talent to draw and a deeper homosexual feeling towards Aaron. Initially their relationship is purely platonic, but its very difficult to separate feelings when they work, pray and basically spend all their time together. The sexual tension is rife, especially in a neighbourhood which has already demonized another man for having an affair with a young woman, contracted to be married to someone else.

Ezri invites Aaron to step out of his comfort zone and travel out of Jerusalem to some sacred waters for spiritual cleansing. Soon their intimacy turns to passion in the backrooms of the Kosher butchery, and Aaron enters a forbidden relationship with Ezri in a tightly-knit neighbourhood which is already threatening to boycott his business for being unorthodox. Elders from the synagogue advise Aaron to let Ezri go as his reputation suffers, for the sake of the moral fibre of a community that cannot suffer from the foolish love between men.

To have a window into another belief system so different to one’s own is a privilege enough, and this Israeli film is remarkable that it was ever made in the first place, with the financial backing of the Israel Film Fund and is fascinating not just at the perceptive look at an orthodox community, the strict social customs and the religious traditions which bind it, but also at the taboos which also threaten to dissolve the very strands that hold that community together.

Marriage, family and children are sacred and non-conformity is frowned upon as a deviancy left to drifters. Eyes Wide Open is a riveting film, held together by the brooding and simmering performances of Ran Danker, who shines  as the seductive and outgoing  Ezri and Zohar Strauss as the morally conflicted and claustrophobic Aaron  both entwined in a relationship as doomed as that portrayed by the Wyoming cowboys Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar.

Herding cattle and desire at Brokeback

Both Eyes Wide Open and Brokeback Mountain depict forbidden relationships between men that are at supreme odds with the environment that they are forced to inhabit but cannot relinquish. As for Ezri, like Jack Twist, both would be more comfortable in cities like Paris, Toronto and Rio de Janeiro, but have to accept the consequences of taking risks for the sake of desire in a hostile world.

The Social Network

 Canadian director David Fincher’s latest film The Social Network could fit more comfortably in the made for TV film category, but is nevertheless a fascinating examination of how one idea can affect the world.

The Social Network traces the rise of the Facebook phenomenon from the frat houses of Harvard to going global, the lawsuits that ensued and how the lives of over 500 million users have been transformed by using of Facebook from Silicon Valley to Henley-on-Thames, from Brazil to Cape Town, from Sydney to Toronto.

Harvard Harassment

Jesse Eisenberg makes a superb entrance in a major role as Mark Zuckerberg the genius behind linking the Ivy League American University social networks from Harvard to Stamford and supersedes any former attempts by creating a user-friendly interface for virtual network, sharing photos and updating one’s relationship status, now known universally as Facebook. Love it or hate it, the rise of Facebook is now a commercially viable form of communication, which has taken the digital world by storm. Fincher’s film shows the rise of the Facebook phenomenon from Zuckerberg’s cocky online response on his blog after being spurned by Erica, a lovely cameo by Rooney Mara at Harvard to his rise through several collaborations firstly with Eduardo Saverin, a diversely perceptive performance by Andrew Garfield, and then with Napster founder Sean Parker, the colourful and confident character suitably played by Justin Timberlake, proving that his acting abilities are certainly maturing.

Fincher responsible for some high end thrillers including Seven, The Game, Fight Club and Oscar nominated Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a prolific choice for a film which if left in the hands of a lesser director, could have become a slightly drawn out geek match about intellectual property rights, failed love affairs and immense wealth bestowed on a set of twenty-something’s who surely were given an added advantage already being at Harvard in the first place. The Social Network is an engrossing look at a very recent digital phenomenon and the ingenuity, entrepreneurial savvy  and success of three men who clearly realized that they had discovered a gaping hole in the social fabric of Anglo-American society and filled that void with a network which combines privacy with a sense of community.

Global Phenomenon

Facebook, like the invention of the light bulb, the car, and most obviously the internet is here to stay and will definitely grow, transform and has embraced the real 21^st century notion of a global digital village. Watch out for a wonderful performance by Armie Hammer playing both the affluent, rowing crazy twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and of course the cleverest part of The Social Network is the poster, – You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies, reminding the viewer of a similar poster?

Every face tells a story…