Went to the movies yesterday with ThatChick (from That Blog That Chick Wrote) to see The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  I have to admit to having no idea what the movie was about before grabbing my frozen coke and finding our seats.  Instead of being Ms Organizer, for a change I was just going along for the ride.  I was vaguely expecting another American teen ‘coming of age’ flick, and wasn’t disappointed, but it was also much more.

While most films about teen angst in American high schools tend to fall back on the cliches of typical overly melodramatic teen angst brought on by what appears to be a never ending popularity contest, Perks brings some new depth to some very familiar themes.  The film was well cast with Charlie (played by some kid named .. hang on a sec while I look this up… Logan Lerman) and his love interest played by Hermione Granger, err I mean Sam (aka Emma Watson).  There was also a fantastic character in the unusually-comfortable-with-my-sexuality token gay guy Patrick (Ezra Miller) who was flamboyant and often dragged the others out of their shell, and along for the ride with his joie de vivre (who reminded me a LOT of Kev, aka Darkman to many of us).

Unlike most teen flicks, nothing is as simple as it seems on the surface and each of our happy trio have their own demons, ranging from a jock in-the-closet boyfriend, bereavement and guilt over loved ones lost to accidents and suicide, as well as the not fully acknowledge but latent theme of child sexual abuse.

As a group of misfits goes though, to me these guys don’t seem as ‘misfitty’ as they should.  For one, Sam is far too pretty not to be one of the cool kids (Emma Watson is all grown up so you guys can stop feeling like such dirty perverts now), Charlie is far too smart to be picked on by the other smartypants in his advanced literature class, and Patrick is far too charismatic to be socially ostracized – especially given his anti-authoritarian antics which delight his fellow classmates.

Overall this is not your typical coming of age teen drama and while it has many lighthearted moments it’s not a comedy either.  These teens display a level of maturity far and beyond what one is accustomed to expecting from Hollywood’s typical high school kids and the issues they are dealing with are also hopefully not de rigeur for your average teen.

It’s very emotionally engaging, nostalgic and funny, yet contains several scenes of profound sadness which communicated some heavy duty disheartening realisations for the audience… Seeing this film made me want to go and read the book ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower‘ by Stephen Chbosky… which in itself is quite the recommendation (Incidentally the book was banned from a number of high school libraries in the US by groups citing promotion of homosexuality, drug use and sexual behaviour… Sigh. Uptight sepos).

Go see it if you feel like indulging in some nostalgic melancholia for a few hours, I actually really enjoyed the film and I had an inexplicable desire to go and make mix tapes for the people I love which stayed with me for several hours!  🙂

PS:  If you want a proper informed opinion of the film go here (link to follow) – she actually knows about cinema and stuff  🙂

As a spur of the moment desperate attempt to get out of the heat last week, I invited my Mum to see a movie with me called ‘Back in 1942’.when she asked me what it was about my response was a somewhat vague “It’s a subtitled Chinese film about people fleeing their homes due to conditions of extreme famine while the Japanese were attacking the Chinese provinces in WWII.   It’s likely to be really long and depressing and full of human suffering, but at least it will get us out of this heat for a few hours.”  Well, with a sales pitch like that, how could she refuse?

 The film takes place in Henan province during one of China’s darkest episodes and worst human disasters of the 20^th century.  The humanitarian crisis is caused by extended drought and then exacerbated by the subsequent war with Japan affecting the region and of course inevitable government corruption hampering the miniscule relief efforts as officials refuse to report or accept the sheer scale of the famine induced disaster.. Directed by Feng Xiaogang, he kind of smacks you around the head with a tonne of bricks and leaves you with no uncertain impression of just how desperate the refugees fleeing the famine are and the extents to which they will entertain to obtain grain for their families and themselves.  This movie packs plenty of dark and completely gut wrenching punches as it drives home a message of personal and collective human suffering on a scale that is absolutely unimaginable to most comfortable Westerners.

 The narrative follows the stoical Master Fan (Zhang Guoli), a previously wealthy landowner in Yanjin county who loses everything he has, including his son, and joins the seemingly never ending stream of refugees trudging out of Henan Province in search of grain and food.  With him is his entire household, consisting of his ageing mother, his wife, his pregnant daughter in law, his beautiful teenage daughter and a stalwartly loyal family servant. While better stocked and equipped for the endeavour, Master Fan finds himself travelling the same road as the peasants who used to be his tenants and as starvation and treacherous conditions affect all travellers alike, and the class barriers and respectful manner he is accustomed to is rapidly stripped away and he eventually finds himself as destitute as the other fleeing citizens amid news that that the nationalist army is potentially going to retreat and abandon 30 million Chinese to the advancing Japanese armies.

All around, people are starving. They’re eating donkeys; stealing grain, they’re selling their children to ‘factories’ (brothels) for grain and eating ground tree bark to stay alive. With desperation comes violence, and when an avaricious thief accidentally falls into a large cauldron of boiling water, the camera leaves the scene, but the implication is that the starving refugees won’t hesitate to eat him too.

 Back to 1942 has a cast of thousands, trudging ever onwards through the barren wasteland of famine and locust ravaged China.  The constant stream of downtrodden, starving displaced and unwanted people – an unwanted drain on resources during the Governments’ wartime agenda – makes for a complicated drama with scenes of familial sacrifice, uncertainty, a foreboding sense of impending death for all and under the constant threat of air strikes from the Japanese as Chinese military commandeer carts and supplies and intermingle with the refugees.

As depressing as this film sounds it is also a story of resilience and endurance of the human spirit.  No matter what was thrown at these refugees, many of them simply did not know how to give up and they persevered when there was no end in sight.  It depicts a horrific period of history where up to three million refugees are estimated to have died while fleeing the famine and the Japanese, but it is a morbidly fascinating story told with heartfelt emotion that solidly engages the audience.

There was so much to take in, so much human tragedy that I would probably see this film again in order to view it without the shock.  It’s one of those films that make you feel lucky to live where we live and live when we live.

Went to see Anna Karenina last night at the Palace Barrack theatre last night as part of the gala closing for the Brisbane International Film Festival (worst facility ever btw… only bathrooms in the place are down two levels from the actual cinemas?).  Anyway, it was directed by Joe Wright and starred Keira Knightley (I think they did that Pride and Prejudice where the Bennetts lived on a farm? and Atonement as well) on what I imagine was intended to be a huge elaborate adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina but somewhere along they way, their epic saga took a wrong turn and ended up in Baz Lurhman’s Moulin Rouge… or so it felt.

The movie is visually quite stunning with elaborate and unusually theatrical set designs; hence the Lurhmanesque feel. The costumes, whilst not being strictly period are both beautifully done and exquisitely detailed with luxurious jewels all bringing together the decadent heights of Russian aristocracy. The cast is excellent, full of fantastic British actors from the phenomenally famous to the frustratingly familiar, who put in some fabulous performances.

For the most part the screenplay sticks to the story – but not enough to satisfy Tolstoy purists/traditionalists, and the truncation doesn’t appear to condense the story in a manner congruous with allowing the characters enough depth to engage people who’ve never read the book… so it actually gets (I’m reluctant to say this), a bit boring in parts, and you don’t really care what happens to most of the characters.

Keira Knightley plays the angst ridden Anna, the 19th century Russian aristocrat who is married to Count Alexi Alexandrovich Karenin, a high ranking government minister (Jude Law) who in the book seems largely indifferent and even cold to his much younger wife Anna, and has ‘interesting’ ideas about love… but in this adaptation he is the model of a victim worthy of our sympathy.  Following the book, she finds herself in love with the soldier Count Vronsky and subsequently socially ostracized (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who looks familiar but I have no idea who he is).  Meanwhile, the Konstantin “Kostya” Dmitrievich Levin and Princess Ekaterina “Kitty” Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya affair is played out by Domhnall Gleeson and Alicia Vikander in a manner that seems almost wholly unconnected to the main story.

All the characters have upper class British accents to denote their aristocratic social status, which annoyed the hell out of me given French was the preferred language of the Russian aristocracy at the time… so if they didn’t want them sporting thick Russian accents and sounding like the peasants, why not try on the slightly more accurate French accents…. yeah nit picking I know.  But it does seem if someone, anyone, is supposed to be well born in a movie they MUST speak with a British accent whether it’s set in Chicago or ancient Rome!  Grrr. Hollywood.

I have no idea who wrote the adapted screenplay (Google it, if you care) but the entire production was extremely theatrical… and by that I don’t mean ‘over the top’, but rather, set in a theatre and as a play staged within a movie, with ‘behind the curtains’ type scenes that served for alleyways and backrooms which flicked back and forth between traditional movie sets and an operatic looking theatre?  It was quite bizarre and somewhat hard to comprehend what the hell they were attempting to communicate in using this unusual and awkward cinematic device that added nothing to the story and in many ways distracted and even detracted from it?  It made no sense to me right up to the very end.  It also has an interesting dichotomy in it’s visual aesthetic as it blends aristocratic luxury with a strange decrepitude – though for the live of me I can’t figure out why?  All I can come up with is it’s an allusion to the impending social reform that led to the demise of the Russian aristocracy.

At the end of the day though, Anna comes off looking ‘psycho hose beast’ jealous or manic-depressive or something, Karenin comes out like a kind hearted, misused victimised cuckolded husband, and Vronsky pulls up exasperated and a bit bobble-headed, shallow and ill explained.  Somehow the film completely fails to convey any real sexual tension or excitement. The depth of emotional turmoil and maternal angst experienced by Anna is pretty much absent, the social inequity, potential ruin for all involved that the book is packed to the gills with, is also likewise not adequately conveyed.

Such opportunity for truly epic cinematic drama and suffering – no one does suffering, real suffering… like the Russian industrialists. All gone to waste.  Now why water all that down?  Bit disappointing really.