THE POLITICS OF MALE SEXUALITY IN 'TERRA NULLIUS'

The lone cowboy in American Western genre televised to Australian audiences generally appeared from vast open ranges. He was an outsider, a gunslinger who heroically shot encroaching lower race immigrants before riding off into the distance (of course not all Westerns contained this narrative). In Terra Nullius (Soda_Jerk, 2017) a short excerpt of a stock man on a horse negotiating a steep embankment 'through the stringy barks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground', feeds into our mythology about Australian early male settlers as macho heroes who could muster the strength to negotiate uncharted land, epitomized in the words quoted above from Banjo Patterson's poem The Man from Snowy River (1982). This imagery of a man on horseback is juxtaposed in Terra Nullius with homosexual's having sex in dense bushland and a scene from Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee,2005) showing the Australian actor Heath Ledger (Ennis Del Mar), prompting viewers that the narrative circulates around two men (otherwise heterosexual) who engage in a secretive sexual liaison whilst herding cattle in Canada's rocky mountains. Both scenes challenge the stereotypical view of masculine identities as strong, heroic, oppressors.

Ang Lee often filmed the protagonists from a distance and dwarfed by the massiveness of the mountains he ensured that the untouched landscape remained a potent and abiding character representing alien outsiderness and otherness.

The strength of Terra Nullius is also its emphasis on landscape since Aboriginals were forcibly removed from country rendering them invisible in a continent declared nobody's land (terra nullius), thus accommodating those who could capitalize on it, such as the mining magnate Gina Rinehart who has a short cameo.

Indigenous Australians are coexistent and identified with country and in many film excerpts selected by Soda_Jerk, aboriginal invisibility is made visible in and through the land they have inhabited for over 60,000 years. They highlight Australia as one the oldest continents on earth and provide particular tableau's of the landscape focusing upon the diversity of its flora and fauna, particularly the Australian Kangaroo an indigenous species which has social, cultural and spiritual significance to aboriginal people. The inclusion of Crocodile Dundee and the television series Skippy the bush kangaroo enables them to underscore the brutal killing by male poachers of the species in their natural habit and to provide a not so subtle reference to the white fellas invasion and destruction of indigenous Australians. Ironically in the series Sonny the young protagonist appears to understand Skippy's clicking, hissing and grunting sounds as an understandable language, depicting hubris on the child's part to understand an indigenous animal. In one scene skippy's chirpings speak of our Australian obsession with the mythology of the missing white girls in (the novel and film) Picnic at Hanging Rock, when we might otherwise place significance on the removal of aboriginal people from that location to an aboriginal reserve in Healsville in 1856. Intrigue in regards to the white girls who vanished at Hanging Rock and the invisibility in this narrative of aboriginal people, the possessors and the dispossessed, is palpable and is revisited at the end of the film in which Miranda is shown in a prone position in a rugged and beautiful landscape that 'always was, always will be aboriginal'.

The inclusion of various scenes from Picnic at Hanging Rock reveal that Hanging Rock was used for recreation by white folk at the turn of the twentieth century and in this instance by schoolgirls on a picnic outing. However, historically Dja Dja Wurrung, Woi Wurrung and Taungurung tribes would gather at Hanging Rock (Ngannelong) for various men's ceremonies and the mystical/spiritual aspects of the rock contributed to their dreaming. We have to admit that mystique surrounds the school girls who disappear on Hanging Rock and when Edith says 'Except for those people down there we might be the only living creatures in the whole world' she represents the shortsightedness of the white settlers who made others not like them invisible. Whereas Miranda actually embraces the spiritual and philosophical problematics of invisibility and aboriginal dreaming when she states 'what we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream'.

Introduced and indigenous species in the film are highlighted by the inclusion of a scene from Lantana (Ray Lawrence, 2001) a film which addressed the complexity of human relationships as well as a caution via the Lantana bush (a plant from the Americas and Africa) of the dangers of species proliferation.We might also consider that the three drag queens, one of them a trans-sexual in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert are themselves a strange and alien 'species' walking on sacred ground in the Australian outback. An idea reiterated towards the end of the film with dancers who move to the iconic Goanna song Solid Rock. 'You're standing on Solid rock, standin' on sacred ground, Livin' on borrowed time and the winds of change are blowin down the line'.

Their walkabout, a right of passage in indigenous culture but also one for Priscilla who displays an unwelcome gender preference, is reflected In Walkabout (Nicholas Roeg, 1971) in which a young city girl and her brother become stranded in the Australian bush when their father burns his car and shoots himself in the head. The children survive because they are aided by an aboriginal boy who helps them find shelter and sustenance. In this film the desert is a symbol of freedom and holds an otherworldly allure for the female protagonist who has experienced civil and 'uncivilised' society and where her nakedness induces a ritual dance from the young aboriginal boy overcome with desire. Sexual desire elicited from the emptiness of rugged and wild landscape is depicted in a close-up view of a girl's journal entry in Picnic at Hanging Rock which reads 'I don't want him to think that I'm just a rooting machine'. Men as sexual predators, brutal aggressors and racists is displayed by the inclusion of Puberty Blues (Bruce Beresford, 1981), linking the teenage girls from Cronulla exploring their sexuality with the bloody riot against Lebonese migrants in Sydney in 2005. Scenes from Mad Max and Romper Stomper themselves bloodied accounts of male aggression also reflects endemic racist attitudes against those who come from different cultures as well as tragic brutality towards our own tribe as well as others.

Terra Nullus is an audio visual collage of Australian films and television by Australian art duo Soda_Jerk. I saw it yesterday. It is currently showing at ACMI, Australian Centre for the moving image, Melbourne, Federation Square. https://www.acmi.net.au

LADY MACBETH FILM REVIEW BY JULIE CLARKE

Those who came out of the film Lady Macbeth (William Oldroyd, 2016) believing that the female protagonist Katherine (Florence Pugh) was the only guilty party in this Gothic tale should be reminded of one of the opening scenes in which her cold and detached husband, twice her age, commands her to remove her nightdress and stand facing the wall as he remains dressed sitting in a chair. He proceeds to masturbate whilst viewing her naked buttocks and when she turns towards him after hearing his altered breathing, he demands she look away. It is obvious from this scene that he has the power to command, that his desire has primacy and that she must submit her will. Paradoxically it is not her vulnerability but his that we note, for he appears unable to touch or approach her and doesn't wish to be seen whilst engaged in pleasure. In an early scene Katherine excuses herself through tiredness from an all male dinner gathering and her father in law instructs the maid to ensure Katherine remains awake to receive her husband at the end of the evening. It is obvious that she is to be always ready and able to comply to his sexual needs.

Although compliant in the household Katherine is reminded that her husband, a rich minor's son, purchased her along with some land and as such IS his possession. The fact that she wears clothes made of luxurious fabrics, has a maid and lives in a lesurely manner is evidence of her husband's wealth, power and status, however, we are alerted to her lack of status and that of her dark skinned, mixed race maid Anna (Naomi Ackie), who brushes Katherine's hair, laces her corset way too tightly, and watches her every move, by the fact that both have subserviant roles to play in this household. Race in this context underscores the obvious class differences. Indeed Anna is considered less than human and in a very telling scene is straddled and hung in cloth in an outhouse on the husband's estate. The male servants who have stripped her naked and strung her up, refer to her as a pig. When Katherine happens upon the scene, she demands that they release Anna and adopting the master's voice (in his absence), mirrors his words to her in the bedroom by telling the young men to 'turn around, face the wall and stop smiling'. In a later scene Katherine's father in law who believes Anna is responsible for wine that's gone missing (it was actually consumed by Katherine whilst he was away), demands that she walk on her hands and knees as she leaves the room because she has behaved irresponsibly, lied and behaved like an animal.

The film takes a somewhat positive turn for Katherine when her husband is called away on business and being free for the first time to venture outdoors instead of being confined to the large, empty home, where she does nothing but sleep and look out the window, she takes Sebastian, a stable hand as her lover. It is the first instance in which female desire is expressed and Katherine is insatiable, since she's had no love, attention or sexual relations with her husband that wasn't solely about his desire.

Suspicion befalls Katherine when her father-in-law who reminds her that she has not fulfilled her wifely duties of producing an heir, dies of mushroom poisoning, even though the stable hand sees Anna picking wild mushrooms in the forest. In a short exchange she advises him that the master will not be happy if he discovers Sebastian has been having sex with Katherine. Later, when the master returns and declares his knowledge of Katherine's infidelity she blatantly drags Sebastian out of an adjoing room and begins to caress him in front of her husband who attacks Sebastian causing Katherine to use a fireplace iron and furously beat him he lies dead in a bloody mess. Two facts are obvious here, firstly she attacks her husband in defence of Sebastian and secondly her desire to hold onto her agency occasions her to takes advantage of the opportunistic event of her husband's early return. Both Katherine and Sebastian dispose of his corpse and Katherine shoots her husband's horse to conceal evidence that he has returned to the estate.

Katherine's life is complicated by her pregnancy and the arrival of her deceased husband's ward Teddy. Although she bonds with the young child he absconds from the estate and is located on a cliff edge by Sebastian who carries him home. He confesses to Katherine that he considered killing the child, presumably because the child was not his, would most likely have a financial claim on the estate and would be taking much of Katherine's attention away from him.

Whilst the near death child was lying on the couch, Katherine, obviously intimidated by Sebastian's desire to rid them of a child that was not his, smothers the child whilst Sebastian holds him down. Unable to contain his remorse Sebastian confesses to the doctor that it was he and Katherine who murdered Teddy, however Katherine denies this and accuses Anna and Sebastian as the culprits who murdered the child, her husband and her father-in-law. The pair are hand-cuffed, arrested and carried off to their ultimate fate.

We may read this culmination to the film as underscoring the view that mixed raced individuals are less than human and more likely to commit atrocities, or we could view this as an indictment of an upper class white individual whose very status affords her credibility over inferior subjects. On the other hand we may consider Katherine's actions as a woman very much in survival mode, looking after her own interests and that of her unborn child.

At the end of the film Katherine sits quietly alone in her blue satin dress on a chaise longue staring out at the audience who no doubt perceive her as monstrous. However, her defiant pose challenges our perceptions about her actions and the circumstances surrounding them, which makes me recall that singular image of Emily Dickinson (Cynthia Nixon) in A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies) sitting in her deep blue dress in quiet contemplation considering her lonliness and unrequited love of a married man and Rachel in My Cousin Rachel, who is suspected of murdering her cousin's guardian. All three women are represented in these films as aberrant female entities of the 19th Century.

PASSENGERS (Spoiler Alert)

Loving science fiction films as I do, I eagerly awaited the release of Passengers (Morton Tyldum, 2016), which I saw yesterday at the Kino Cinema in Collins Street, Melbourne.

Passengers  is a visually stunning film. The sparse interior design of the Starship Avalon gives more than a nod to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), an interesting contrast I think with the almost Baroque, elaborate design and detail of the ship's exterior as it moves silently through space.

The Starship depicts a world not dissimilar to our own and one we are moving progressively towards. It is an environment inhabited by computer screens, avatars and holograms, automated food dispensers, electronic communication, surveillance systems and robots that look human and dispense philosophy as one liners, as readily as they fill a glass or retrieve detritus from the floor. Human beings in this Starship world are in suspended animation like those poor souls attached to life support systems in hospital intensive care units, an indictment on our current sedentary lifestyle occasioned by advanced technologies as well as an allegory of the existential anxiety experienced by the loneliness of the individual in an increasingly dehumanized, mechanized society. Already many individuals experience little human contact except that afforded by advanced communications technologies, virtual reality, robots, video, text messages and voice recognition. For Jim, human touch and feeling is essential and he demonstrates Arthur's (Michael Sheen) a robotic barman, inability to experience either by hitting him in the face during one of their various conversations.

The narrative surrounds Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), a mechanical engineer and Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) a writer, who are passengers on the Starship Avalon woken ninety years prematurely from induced hibernation on their 120 year journey to a new planet called Homestead II. Jim who wakes first due to a system failure caused by the ships impact with a celestial body, is faced with the ominous fact that he's the only conscious being out of the 5,259 crew and passengers. He discovers he is unable to re-enter his pod and return to a state of hibernation, so embarks on a series of endeavors, including an unsuccessful attempt to break through the door to the ship's control area.

After many conversations with Arthur, who suggests he enjoy the now, rather than dwelling on what is absent in his life, a philosophy associated with mindfulness, Jim appears to accepts his fate. He engages in the many pleasurable pursuits available to him. He eats, dances and plays sport with holographic avatars. He sleeps, walks around naked, grows his beard and dons a suit that enables him to safely walk in space. However compliant and pleasant Arthur is, Jim notes that Arthur cannot feel and so, his apparent human qualities remain sterile. A period of depression follows in which Jim considers suicide. However, this is not the only dark moment of the film for each time Jim engages with the barman we are reminded of Kubrick's other masterpiece The Shining (1980) and the sinister act that follows after Jack leaves the bar, heralding perhaps Jim's excursion into an immoral and irretrievable act.

After walking through a room filled with sleep pods he is attracted to a female passenger called Aurora. He accesses her electronic file and discovers she's a writer. He consults the hibernation manual with a view to waking her and is immediately faced with the moral dilemma of whether or not he should embark on such an endeavor, knowing full well she would never reach Homestead II and would be psychologically scarred as he has been by being prematurely woken from his journey. We are aware that he has been awake and without human company for one year and has exhausted all possibilities on the ship so can understand his desire for human company.

The problem many might have with this film is that the woman he wants to wake in order to lesson his boredom on his long and arduous journey is young, attractive and intelligent. The other issue of course is his total self-absorption and his utter selfishness at wanting to intervene in the course of Aurora's life. One must ask, if he has the ability to wake people from hibernation he might have done a little more research and attempted to wake technicians capable of identifying and fixing the damage done to the space ship.

He wakes her and their relationship is immediately built on a lie for he omits to tell her why she's awake when everyone else is asleep. He discovers quickly that unlike him she has a gold pass and is able to access better quality food for him. She has become more than useful and becomes Jim's love (sex) interest. She is, according to Arthur 'a great choice'. Jim is fully aware that given he's the only male awake on the ship Aurora would direct her libido towards him. He's in the ideal position of having no competitors for her affections and, apart from her own resilience and determination, she would be totally reliant on him. Everything works in his favor until she is innocently told by Arthur that Jim is responsible for waking her up. She is, of course extremely angry and unequivocally inconsolable, but is called into action when a number of vital systems on the ship begin to corrupt the general workings, causing chaos, her near death and the early awakening of chief deck officer, Gus (Laurence Fishburne) who advises Jim and Aurora that there are multiple system failures including damage to the reactor, which they attempt to fix. Jim's tether on his space suit breaks loose after he has successfully vented the reactor and Aurora retrieves and resuscitates him, saving him again from dying alone. He later discovers that the scanner pod will enable only one individual to be re-hibernated and he offers this service to Aurora, who decides to remain with him.

The final scene in the film shows the crew and other passengers entering the main deck, which is overrun with various flora and fauna, which must have been grown and nurtured by Jim and Aurora during the past eight eight years. One can only imagine that this scene serves to reveal how the main protagonist have humanized their environment by introducing a natural/organic, rather than a synthetic one on the ship and we are expected to believe that Jim is exonerated for his initial behavior by the fact that they have obviously discovered a way to reconcile the past. A voice-over suggests that Aurora has written the book that she began shortly after she was woken by Jim.

I am left wondering what was Homestead I?. Is it a name for Earth or was it another planet that was inhabited by human beings? The final scene does not reveal the presence of children so one can only assume that they were elsewhere on the ship or Jim and Aurora did not produce any progeny. I found this visually interesting film, but fraught with problems.

(As usual, please forgive any spelling or typographical errors). OK, hopefully all errors corrected at 2.08pm.

CALVARY ~ a short film review

I didn’t expect to shed tears within the first few minutes of watching CALVARY (John Michael McDonagh, 20145) this morning, but the amazing view of Benbulbin with its flat surface and sheer drop to glorious hills below and the craggy rocks of the Irish sea coast were absolutely sublime and the music composed by Patrick Cassidy made an emotion swell up in me that can only be explained by events I experienced ten to fifteen minutes before entering the cinema.

The tram I caught was held up in Bridge Road, Richmond and feeling hot and claustrophobic I got out of and walked until I reached the tram further ahead in the row. When I entered the tram, which was blocked by an ambulance, people were talking about the poor woman who had a heart attack on the tram and was now being treated. I sat next to a woman who was worried that the holdup would make her late for the funeral she was to attend. When I got off the tram the cap of a young boy was blown off by the fierce wind. I noticed it on the track and called to a man further on down the platform to pick it up if he could. He stepped onto the tracks and picked up the cap unknowing that a tram was bearing down on him. He stepped back onto the platform within seconds of the tram arriving.  A less agile person might have been hit, but as it was he was safe. I couldn’t help but think that if it had gone the other way that I would have felt incredibly guilty. The child and his mother came over to thank me when I handed them the hat. I explained that it was a man who retrieved it not me. Barely two minutes later a woman tapped me on the arm and handed me my gloves, which had obviously fallen out of my pocket.  I have to admit that as I walked towards the Kino Cinema in that cold, gusty wind I had an overwhelming feeling of the connectedness between people, their kindness and the strangeness of life and its unusual events.

CALVARY deals with dark events in the history of the Catholic Church and its impact on individuals sexually abused by members of the clergy within a rural Irish community. It also deals with people’s decisions and how they reconcile within themselves what is good and evil. It doesn’t pull any punches. I first tasted semen was when I was seven years old is the first words we hear in the film, delivered by a disembodied voice to a priest in a dark confessional. They are the words of a parishioner who tells the priest that he will kill him next Sunday because he is a good priest.

The film, at least in the first half, appears balanced by irony and humor, however it quickly descends into darkness that many viewers may not be comfortable with.

This is an impressive film of high intensity, beautiful scenery and magnificent acting. However that beauty is almost always outweighed by less than beautiful scenes, such as the one of freshly slaughtered beef hung in cold storage, or the scene in which Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors (1533) is urinated upon

Wikipedia entry. Holbein 'The Ambassadors'

The elongated, distorted skull appears strangely out of place in this painting in which there is order and symmetry, and in which the objects themselves point to a rational ordered universe.  It is an uncanny reminder that no matter how much control humanity exerts over nature that death reigns supreme.

The painting, which depicts two men, one an aristocrat, the other a clergyman is a mirror of the scene between Father James (Brendan Gleeson) and Michael Fitzgerald (Dylan Moran) the local squire who empties the contents of his bladder upon his painting. The painting also appears to divide the world equally between science and religion since both men are depicted as almost the same height; however concealed behind the green curtain on the left edge of the painting one can just make out the image of a partial crucifixion, suggesting that indeed humanism has almost displaced Christianity. John Carroll, in The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism Revisted, 2004 argues that although the subjects of the painting represent humanism, Holbein has created a painting that shows that in the face of the ‘white terror’ of death, that humanism has no solution. ‘The most learned men have no answer to death’ (2004:33).

As expected the film broaches guilt, suicide, lust, desire, adultery, death and belief and leaves many questions unanswered. The ending is expected and final, with just a hint of the notion of forgiveness, although there are many who would not be so forgiving.

CLOUD ATLAS - a short refrain

In their 1987 masterpiece A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrena, Deleuze and Guattari structure their book like a refrain that permeates and transcends various time frames. Indeed, in their own words the book ‘has very different dates and speeds’ (p.3). They jump from the year 1914 through to 10,000BC, then to 1923, 587BC forward to 1874, 133, back to 1730 etc; moving forwards and backwards like a broken stylus skipping over thin grooves in a black vinyl record, a memory or sound just audible in the distance through some half opened window on a Spring morning. Parts of a track ring out and are then punctuated by something new, a different mood.

It is to their chapter 1837: Of the Refrain that I turn when thinking about aspects of the film Cloud Atlas and in particular the piece of music Cloud Atlas Sextet that forms part of the narrative. The music is composed and becomes obscured by its association with one sexualized gesture, a departure, a death (suicide), and is the soundtrack in the film that connects different time frames and ideas.

A child in the dark, gripped with fear, comforts himself by singing under his breath. He walks and halts to his song. Lost, he takes shelter, or orients himself with his little son as best he can. The son is like a rough sketch of a calming and stabilizing, calm and stable, center in the heart of chaos. Perhaps the child skips as he sings, hastens or slows his pace. But the son itself is already a skip, it jumps from chaos to the beginnings of order in chaos as is in danger of breaking apart at any moment’ (D & G, p.311)

The music is the rope that enables Meronym to reach the top of the mountain – ‘you fall and I will catch you’ (remember Superman in film of the same name assures Lois with these words), all ropes are that which joins one thing to another, a bridge, a safe way across. ‘Our lives are not our own’ (Sonmi - 45, Cloud Atlas), they sing a refrain, carried, if you like, if not on the wind then on that which the wind moves softly on our thoughts and actions; a spreading cone that spreads powerfully outwards, like the fallout from an atomic mushroom cloud (and in the film a nuclear disaster is desired to protect the interests of those who control the distribution of oil) – a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world and a tsunami is generated in another  Old Seoul will disappear under water, but for the moment in the film it sits uncomfortably beside Neo Seoul. Each action just a small drop of water in an ocean comprised of millions of drops of water.  Old souls as well as new souls come into being in this strange and wonderful song in which pure bloods (humans) are served by fabricants who survive by being fed protein from flesh of recently killed clones of their own kind. We think we are contained within our skin, our thoughts, our everyday actions, sometimes significant, mostly not, just commonplace, ordinary for much of us and yet that action thought resonates wider than we imagine.

‘This was the first time a full blood had been kind to me’ says Sonmi-45, a genetically engineered fabricant, slave worker and her non-anglo social status links her immediately with Autua the ‘nigger’ stowaway, the wetback and the devil (always an outsider) who tells Zachry (Tom Hanks) that Meronym the female offlander – a member of the Prescients wishes to deceive him. In the film race transcends borders or challenges those clear boundaries that we uphold, stop the boats, keep the asylum seekers out, or make sure that the limits are well secured through senseless murder as in another contemporary science fiction film Elysium. ‘I don’t not believe that we stay dead long’ is believed by many of the characters in Cloud Atlas, but not by Rufus Sixsmith who holds the bloodied body of his lover Robert Frobisher as he lies in the pure white porcelain bath after committing suicide, but to Sonmi-45 ‘Death is only a door, when you close it another opens’. And it this is just a portion of the refrain; the poetic melody that moves through the film. Highly recommended. 

Reluctant Fundamentalist

I'm working on two acrylic paintings and yesterday I went to the Rivoli Cinema to see The Reluctant Fundamentalist ( Mira Nair, 2012). The films opens with a passionate Qawwali - Sufi devotional music, sung by a group of men at a Pakistani ritual and between views of them singing this haunting refrain, the director cuts to a scene of an academic being kidnapped in the city of Lahore. The film manages to maintain this balance (if you like) between art and violence (real and symbolic), insiders and outsiders, two worlds - America (in particular Wall Street where the primary protagonist works) and Pakistan where he was born; the ease and disease of Changez (Riz Ahmed) who is torn between his dreams of fame and fortune, possible only in America where (in his words) 'there is an equal playing ground', his love of both America and Pakistan, and being forced to assess his life post 9/11 in a climate in which Pakistani's were considered with much fear and suspicion. This is an interesting film that asks us to 'listen to the whole story, rather than parts of it'. I felt that the color, beauty and sounds of Pakistan - the stunning views and internal exquisite decoration of a blue Mosque, Atif Aslam’s rendition of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Mori Araj Suno, the amazing clothes and the devotional nature of the populous, seemed to render the glass towers and corporate life in America, by contrast, just a little bland.

Changez, a Stanford graduate and an individual fully inculcated into high finance is surrounded by the passion of others, and from the opening scene in which he walks away from the celebration, always appears on the edge of art and literature. His father is a published poet and yet Changez does not appear to understand the relationship between art and life, indeed he berates his new lover because she used photographs she'd taken of him and words they exchanged between themselves in her solo art exhibition - he does not understand the artistic sensibility of using events in your life as inspiration.

I enjoyed this film because of the contrasts and the struggle. I'd highly recommend it.

OBLIVION Short review

Bubble machine http://conceptartworld.com/?p=21236

I saw Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013)  today and whilst it drew some of its themes - cloned humans & machine futures from sci-fi and horror genre, it didn't have the usual run of monsters and aliens and instead drew the audience into the realm of dream and remembrance, rather than the visceral. I loved it & particularly enjoyed the reference to the Empire State Building, though couldn't help but think of both A Love Affair to Remember (1957) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and I suppose that the audience was invited to make this association, because Oblivion has at is base a love affair or rather, the memory of one. I enjoyed hearing Procul Harum's 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' & all things retro shown in various film sequences that take us, as well as the primary protagonist Jack Harper (Tom Cruise)  back to the way the world was before the apocalyptic destruction of Earth's Moon by scavengers. The film is set in the year 2077 and for much of the film's running time we see only a few actors - Jack Harper, Victoria (Andrea Risborough), Jack's communication officer, and Sally (Melissa Leo) Jack and Sally's mission controller. Around midway the other players are introduced. The CGI in this film was absolutely fantastic and the drones were convincingly sinister & dangerous to all things human. If the plot was a bit thin it was certainly balanced by the fact that this is a great action movie. The scenes in which Jack fights off the drones in his amazing flying, bubble machine and his fast maneuvers through various buildings and terrain reminded me a lot of Luke's adventures in Star Wars, but mostly the scenes appeared typical of the action shots in video games. Overall, I was impressed by the machines in this film, so elegant and yet so deadly. Daniel Simon, the designer of the bubble flyer and drones made this film look so futuristic.However, what held the movie together for me was the somewhat quirky and interesting sound track from French band M83.

AMOUR: Film review by Julie Clarke (Spoiler)

Just before Georges (Jean‑Louis Trintignant) quietly places a large pillow over the face of his sleeping wife Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) who became paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair due to a operation gone wrong on her blocked carotid artery and a further stroke rendering her bed bound and unable to speak coherently; Georges tells her a story about when he was a young boy sent away to camp. He had promised he would send his mother a postcard each week with a drawing of stars on it if he was not enjoying his experience. He remembered feeling that he was reaching for her through a kind of cage. This story somehow calms Anne who has been calling out to him in pain and in the brief moment of her peacefulness he smothers her. A pigeon that has entered their apartment once before appears just after Anne’s death, but this time Georges manages to capture and release it, a metaphor of the fact that he had freed Anne from her psychological and physical pain. She had earlier in the film expressed a desire to end her life.

Amour (Michael Haneke, 2011, France) is a brilliant film with impeccable performances, but unfortunately it’s filmed in such a way that the audience members feel like they are in the room with these two brave people. The intimacy of the actors, the way they relate to each other, the obvious love and tenderness even in times of frustration could not have been portrayed so accurately. Georges utter devotion to his wife and her struggle to maintain some sense of self (that never actually leaves in his eyes) but which we see deteriorate particularly in scenes in which she has urinated in the bed and later when Georges is shown by a nurse how to change Anne’s nappy. These scenes and the one in which she is spoon fed  and dribbles and chokes each morsel, is absolutely heart-wrenching! I had to take a ten minute break from the film because I kept crying. Emmanuelle Riva was so convincing that I could no longer look at her.  I can’t image anyone seeing this movie without projecting self onto the actors. I suppose that it is a measure of the talent of these two people to have solicited such an audience response. One of the significant aspects or devices used in the film is that time appears to have slowed down. Each of the ordinary, everyday activities, such as eating, reading, listening to music, preparing for bed are stretched out and in some small way this feeling of time being extended reflects the way Anne must have felt confined to her bed and utterly dependent upon Georges.

And on that note, if you are over sixty years of age with all of the worries about stroke, heart attack, cancer, dementia etc. that already play on our minds, then be warned that this film is not going to make you feel happy. It’s probably the saddest, challenging, anxiety producing, depressive film I’ve ever seen. I can totally understand why Georges euthanized Anne and I can understand her desire not to be less than she previously was as a skilled piano teacher, mother and companion and her desire to end her life. 
A couple of days ago I was thinking about Euthanasia and placed initial thoughts on this blog. Click here