What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[robertlouis]

"12 Years A Slave'.... phew, an emotional tour de force. Women in the film business were weeping at the screening I attended last night. This is almost unrelenting in its grimness, in its presentation of a story that takes us to the very heart of the inhumanity that was the slave trade. Some scenes are almost unwatchable. It is a terrific antidote to Tarantino's crass "Django Unchained" film on the slave trade from last year which presented it as a mass entertainment shoot-em-up film. (It did have its moments - but only as a cartoon). This film is NOT entertainment. Chiwetal Ejiofor might well win an Oscar for his portrayal of the central character in this true story, but that is beside the point really. So might Steve mcQueen the director. It's focus is unrelenting. His directing awesome in creating a mood of intense oppression. (The river journey into slavery is haunting and clever in its use of thrashing paddles and noise to evoke the journey from freedom to enslavement). And one scene captures perfectly just how cowed and terrified slaves were. The main figure, Soloman Northrup, faces a near lynching. He is left dangling in a sunny glade near the plantation house his feet scarcely touching the muddy ground and keeping him from death. The afternoon passes as he dangles almost choking, his face a rictus of agony. In a single long long shot McQueen shows us the other slaves coming and going, children playing, but no one daring go to him and help.

In some ways the film echoes some of the issues that Primo Levi dealt with in "The Drowned and the Saved" - his last book about the Holocaust. In another scene the central character is forced to whip someone. He does it eventually after some resistance. Not to save his own life but because of pressure to protect others. The film is unflinching at looking at the compromises and cowardices that are forced upon the wretched at the hands of their oppressors - forcing complicity from those who are powerless. But at a terrible loss to the sense of self of those who do survive.

The viewer's salvation from despair is to remember that, in the West at least, this is now history - even if the complex legacy remains a festering sore at the heart of our culture. But it is also a reminder that inhumanity and cruelty are at the heart of human affairs. Not entertaining - but a film of majesty and demythologising power.

As I say, I'm apprehensive of both the subject matter and the apparently unflinching treatment, but McQueen's other films, Hunger and Shame, have both been outstanding in their utter honesty and have also featured the finest performances of Michael Fassbaender, who is rapidly becoming an unmissable screen presence.

[Prospero]

And he is remarkable in this film also.

[bluesoul]

[B]This film is NOT entertainment. Chiwetal Ejiofor might well win an Oscar for his portrayal of the central character in this true story, but that is beside the point really. So might Steve mcQueen the director.

they both won't. if they were american, they'd already have won 13 BET awards and 2 oscars each. they're best chance now is to win a BAFTA then shilling hard

[luvs2lick1385]

Last film I saw was Last Vegas.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. The entire cast was great but Kevin Kline was superb

[professor snatch]

Just watched The World's End with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg.

Was all going great until that blokes head fell off in the bogs and blue stuff oozed out all over the place.

10 more mins and I switch off... pants!

Yet 'PAUL' was so fucking good!!!

3 tits? Yeah man!

[Prospero]

"Hannah Arendt" - as a glutton for punishment i watched yet another film about a depressing subject. This is a partial biopic about the German born Jewish philosopher and writer who attained fame and infamy with her controversial magazine feature, then book, on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, "Eichmann In Jerusalem." What upset huge numbers of people and many of her friends was Arendt's attempt to understand the nature of the evil committed by Eichmann in the Final Solution and the complicity of some Jewish community leaders in the programme. She of course coined the phrase 'the banality of evil.' The trouble is this film by Margarethe von Trotta is stilted, dry and rather dull.

[Stavros]

I can't say I have been impressed by von Trotta's films, her need to preach makes her films too stilted, like essays. Also not sure why Arendt merits this treatment -there are a lot of people like this whose work/lives have been interesting who do not benefit from being the subjects of a feature film (Walter Benjamin? Paul Celan?) -there could be material for a tv documentary but why go to the expense of hiring all those actors to pretend to be Hannah, Martin Heidegger etc? Eichmann in Jerusalem is a fascinating book, and her study On Revolution is interesting but doesn't explore the phenomenon with the comparative analysis you can find in many other works, and the essays collected in Men in Dark Times are also interesting but in reality high class journalism rather than political theory or social philosophy. Fact is she was not a major thinker -a case of special pleading here I think, something von Trotta tried with Rosa Luxemburg. I haven't seen the film and the clip doesn't inspire me to. As far as German women directors are concerned, it is a pity Helma Sanders-Brahms has not reached a wider audience though her films may be even bleaker than the one reviewed here.

[kenneth67]

[Prospero]

Well Stavros - as i said - the film is not good so don't bother.

[robertlouis]

Well Stavros - as i said - the film is not good so don't bother.

Never mind chaps. Borgen is back on BBC4!