The Velvet Café

A fellow movie blogger from Sweden once told me that anyone who sits as ridiculously far back as in the third row can’t be considered a true cinephile. He asked rhetorically:

“Why would you want to have rustling and tilting heads and talking and whispers between yourself and the movie?”

To be honest I’ve spent the majority of my movie going life in the far back of the room, which is pretty stupid considering how short I am. I have a vague recollection of that it originally somehow had to do with this problem. If I had the seat in the last row I could make my own arrangements to see better, such as sitting on my knees, without having to take into consideration how this would affect the view of people in the rows behind me.

Moving forward
As years have gone by, I’ve moved forward, row by row, and nowadays it’s not rare to see me in the second or third row. Maybe I’m turning into a cinephile after all? But the first row I still usually avoid, unless there are no other options available. I just don’t enjoy too much of neck bending.

I hate having heads in my sightline as much as anyone else, but my strategy to avoid them is to look for seats on the sides, which generally are less popular. I also try to pick a seat which allows me to sit down and take as much time as I want to watch the credits or put on my clothes without having a queue of impatient people waiting for me to leave so they get passed.

Almost every time I go to a movie, I pre-book my seat over Internet. Once I get to the cinema I pull my credit card in a machine and pick up my ticket.

It’s been like this for many years in Sweden by now. The only place where the free seating remains is in the last remaining independent theatre in my city. Whenever I go to one of their shows, I just buy a ticket, enter the room and pick whatever place that is free.

Stacking in the middle
So what do I make of the reservation system? Well, I can see some disadvantages.

I often go and watch movies on my own, so it’s not a big deal to me, but for people who want to go in company with friends, I can see that there might be a bit of a hindrance of spontaneity. Assume that you buy your seats for a certain row and a few hours later your friends decide that they want to go too. In that case you can’t be sure they’ll get places anywhere close to you.

Before the Internet booking took over and we still bought the tickets at the cinema, you could also see some pretty strange placement drama going on in the theatres.  For some reason the people who sold the tickets always assumed that you wanted to sit as close to the middle as possible. And they were obviously instructed to pack the audience efficiently together, making sure that no seats would be wasted. That’s the kind of ticket you’d get unless you specifically asked for something different: a seat close to the middle in the middle row or maybe a little bit further back. As a result, you’d often end up in a small island of 10-15 people, gathered in the small centre of a huge sea of empty seats.

Those islands made us uncomfortable. I know it’s not the case in every country, but in Sweden, the personal zones are serious business. If you’re entering a bus for instance, and there are only a few people on it, you’re expected to spread more or less evenly. Sitting down next to someone in that situation would be considered creepy, hostile, bordering to criminal.

Honouring the rules about personal space, people often started to change places, spreading out a little. The problem was that you could always bet that someone would turn up late to the movie, claiming the very seat that someone just had moved to. And more often than not, this latecomer would be obsessed with keeping the right order, so instead of just taking any of the one hundred other free seats, he or she would insist on the seat thief to move away somewhere else. The entire audience would get involved, because the space betweens the rows is generally so small that you have to stand up to let people through. Oh, the joy…

Nowadays those situations won’t rise quite as often. People book their tickets online and as they pick their spots, they spread out a little, if not evenly, at least sufficiently enough not to intrude the unspoken laws about how to share a space with others without being considered a threat.

Don’t need to queue
Seat reservations are for good and for bad. The bad thing is that it’s so inflexible. If a guy who could candidate for a freak show thanks to his length sits down in front of you, you can’t adjust to the situation, moving a couple of seats, without risking to cause a mess.

The good thing about it is that you can choose your favourite spot days in advance. You don’t need to stand in a line inhaling the sickening fumes of popcorn; you don’t even have to turn up at the cinema until the movie is about to start. It’s very convenient if you’re the planning type.

So: what’s your favourite seat in a cinema? Are you the kid in the front row? Do you hide in the back? Or are you going for the sides in the hope not to get someone in front of you?

Please feel free to share your views as we’re about to enter the weekend, sipping a cup of coffee or maybe something stronger!

Cheers!

I always wondered how well the Harry Potter movies worked out for someone who never had read the books. While most of them were quite enjoyable as an illustration to or a reminder about some of the best scenes, it always seemed to me that it must be pretty hard to follow what actually was going on and to get a grasp of the myriad of characters shown on screen.

And this was also my thought as I watched the newest Jane Eyre adaptation. How enjoyable is this for someone who approaches the movie with fresh eyes, not knowing anything about the story?

Cutting down
I’m not a purist in the sense that I start scolding anyone making a film adaption of a novel and I don’t expect every bit there is in a novel to appear in a movie. Sacrifices will have to be made to make it work as a movie. I never questioned why they had to leave out Tom Bombadil from the LOTR movies.

However, I expect from a movie that it stands on its own, and I’m not entirely convinced this one does. Does someone who didn’t read the book really understand why Rochester has decided to take care of the little French girl? Her mother is only mentioned in half a sentence, that’s all. Does he or she understand what’s going on in the castle at nights and what makes Jane so scared? And doesn’t the love between Rochester and Jane come rather sudden before you’ve gotten the chance to see any proper buildup?

I understand the problem the movie makers have been facing (in good company with everyone else who previously has tried to transfer Jane Eyre to the screen). The novel is so rich that it not easily can be boiled down into a two hour format. A TV series would be more suitable for this story.

So what do they do? Well, they certainly don’t rush anything. The pacing is slow and they let the camera take any time that is needed to establish a mood picturing a landscape or resting on a face.

It makes me think about Japanese design – clean, simple and mercilessly cut down like a bonsai tree. It makes me think of a dish I got at a restaurant I went to this weekend. There was a tiny, tiny little piece of fish in the middle of the plate – having the size of a small box of matches. Then there were a few dots and lines around it, painted with sauce and spices. It looked very artistic indeed. But did it make me feel fulfilled? Not entirely. It’s as if the entire movie is anemic, lacking blood and heat.

Michael Fassbender is a wonderful actor, and very handsome too, but I don’t quite recognize Rochester as I had imagined him. Where’s the tormented soul? Isn’t he supposed to be at least a little bit frightening?

Mia Wasikowska’s Jane is also on the minimalistic side. There isn’t very much going on in her face. But somehow it actually works. As she delivers the classical line – ” Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?” -  I think to myself that she’s like Jane should be – fragile on the outside, strong and sharp as a diamond on the inside.

Not much to remember
On the whole I enjoyed Jane Eyre pretty well. I liked the mood, the costumes, the setting, the cinematography and I liked how they breathed some fresh air into the story by simply chopping it up a little, not telling it in the traditional chronological order.

If they had been brave enough to make a longer movie, at least three hours, it might have been really good. Now I’m afraid I’ll probably remember it as the pale version where they had cut away a little bit too much.

Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga,  2011) My rating: 3,5/5

Warning: This post contains spoilers.

My Fair Lady has two faces.

The first face is the one of the classical musical, containing massive dance numbers, amazing costumes and some pretty catchy songs (even if I’ve heard better in other musicals to be completely honest.) It sparkles with stardom and the typical musical cheerfulness which makes me nod approvingly, saying: “see there, that’s a proper movie! Why don’t they make movies like that anymore?”

But then there’s the other face, a face which makes me confused and bothered, well, even pissed off to put it bluntly. And that’s what I’m going to talk about most in this post, because that’s where the controversy is.

One little line changed everything to me. It was the final words, uttered by Professor Higgins to Eliza, the woman he has transformed from a simple flower selling girl to a proper lady.

Leaning backwards in a lazy gesture, he says smugly:

“Eliza, where the devil are my slippers?”

And instead of turning the back to him, which would have every reason in the world to do, leaving him to brew in his own stew, Eliza walks towards him with a loving smile on her face as the violins start playing.

It’s an ending open for interpretations some would argue. Perhaps Elize will stick to her earlier vow never to see Higgins again? Perhaps she’ll go with Freddy, who treats her with respect, as an equal, open a flower shop and be happy for the rest of her life?

But my interpretation of this scene is the opposite. It looks to me as if she’ll end up marrying this creep of a man, regardless of how he treats her. She’ll willingly carry his slippers in the name of love. Just look at her eyes! Remember her previous love songs! If she would have had any intention to stick to her love for the far more deserving Freddy, of course we would have gotten a hint about it. She would have turned her back to Higgins, leaving for good. Perhaps we would even see him waiting outside for her.

The sad thing is that this way of ending the story, for how disappointing it is, isn’t taken out of the blue. This is the ugly, gritty reality. For some reason, which I’m unable to fully comprehend, there are quite a lot of women who are attracted to men who treat them like crap. They stay in abusive relationships, even if they’re risking their own and their children’s lives doing so. They send love letters to completely unknown men who are serving prison sentences for bestial murderers. I know those things happen.

You could argue that the ending of My Fair Lady actually is meant to highlight and question this situation, exposing the tragedy. The merry musical is suddenly and unexpectedly twisted into an edgy, dark and knife sharp criticism of society. But something tells me that while this interpretation is possible, it would be an after construction rather than the intention as they made a movie.

Look at all those flowers, listen to the violins, and think about this movie is marketed! I’m pretty sure it’s not meant as an irony. To me it seems more plausible that the music and the flowers are meant to reinforce what we’ve already seen – that the misanthropic professor’s heart eventually melted and that he fell in love with Eliza.

Previously she had rightfully called him out for using and dismissing her, but as she finally sees him clinging to his recording of her, she’s willing to forgive him and will overlook his flaws. After all – love conquers everything.

I got a little bit of comfort as I read a bit further about the original source of this musical, the play Pygmalion by Bernhard Shaw, which I’ve never read or seen myself. Apparently the ending has been up for discussions many times before, which prompted Shaw to make an addition with some clarifications.

“Will she look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins’s slippers or to a lifetime of Freddy fetching hers? There can be no doubt about the answer. Unless Freddy is biologically repulsive to her, and Higgins biologically attractive to a degree that overwhelms all her other instincts, she will, if she marries either of them, marry Freddy. And that is just what Eliza did.”

Thank you for that, Mr. Shaw.

There are still many women in the world who are locked into unhappy marriages with men who don’t deserve them. But at least Eliza wasn’t meant to be one of those.

And that’s how I’ll try to remember My Fair Lady –  regardless of what I actually witnessed on the screen.

My Fair Lady (George Cukor, US, 1964)  My rating: 4/5 (Because despite the ending and despite the fact that I didn’t care for Audrey Hepburn very much, especially not when she tried to fake a cockney accent, I’ve got a soft spot for old musicals.)

Addendum: I published this post at the Filmspotting forum a few days ago. This prompted another forum dweller, who has My Fair Lady as her number 1 movie to write a reply. Her reading was completely different to mine; there is no romantic love between Eliza and Higgins and there never was. It’s all about friendship. The final line from Higgins is just an ironic remark, referring to their previous discussion.

I can see her point; as a matter of fact she’s probably right. But on the other hand – if I was mislead to read in something different, weren’t many others this as well? I think it’s all the pink that wraps up the movie that lead the thoughts this way, reinforced by song numbers such as “I could have danced all night”, where Eliza certainly looks and behaves as if she just had fallen in love with Higgins. Why not be more clear on this point? For all I know it could be deliberate. The audience love to see a happy end, especially with a romantic touch. So if they see this, there’s no reason to correct them.

I may have been wrong about what happens in the end scene. But this doesn’t change the first impression it made on me.

Let’s talk about trolls.

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I mention them? Perhaps you think of someone who finds a strange pleasure in mocking and bullying strangers online? It wouldn’t surprise me. We don’t talk that much about the classical horror element from the Scandinavian lore.

There was a time when trolls were top on mind in the monster category, only challenged by dragons. But since then zombies, vampires and crossovers between spiders and reptiles from outer space have taken over as creatures you use to scare people.

Trolls are about as rare on the movie screen as they are in reality, and that’s one of the reasons why the Norwegian Trollhunter is so refreshing and fun.

In the movie we get to follow a group of students as they’re investigating what appears to be a series of bear killings. Soon they get track of a mysterious man, who turns out to be a troll hunter and they follow him as he’s doing his dirty and dangerous work.

The format – a fake documentary, put together by supposedly “found footage” has been used before in movies such as The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield. And of course Trollhunter contains all you could expect in terms of shaky camera work and arbitrary cuts, pastes and jumps. I’ve seen a few complaints about this coming from people who have seen many fake documentaries before and now question if we really need one more.  Since I haven’t watched any of the predecessors, it’s not a problem to me.

And besides – come on! This is different. It’s a movie about trolls, real trolls, as spotted in Scandinavia. Of course we need it!

Considering the low budget, the trolls and special effects were surprisingly well done, without being particularly scary. I’m generally quite squishy and I didn’t have to close my eyes once. There was blood and a few killings, but it’s not the sort of movie where you get invested in the characters and care all that much about them. On the other hand I was thoroughly entertained, giggling a lot at tongue- in-cheek humor and the various intricate revelations about the true nature of trolls and what power lines really are for.

I’m not sure how well Trollhunter will work for an international audience. For someone who grew up with trolls in fairy tales, and can recognize the associations, it was a pleasure to watch. I suppose some of this will pass unnoticed for a foreigner. On the other hand there’s always the stunningly beautiful scenery to enjoy. A product placement from the Norwegian Tourist board?

I read somewhere that they’ve sold the rights to an American remake of this movie. It boggles my mind why someone would like to do that. The whole point with  Trollhunter is that it’s so thoroughly Scandinavian.

Here’s to the hope that the trolls will find those people and bite their heads off!

Trollhunter (Trolljegeren, André Øvredal, NO 2010) My rating: 4/5

It’s time to continue our journey through my life in movies. You know the rules: one movie for every year I’ve lived. Except for when I cheat.

The films aren’t necessarily the best of the year. Sometimes they’re on the list for memory reasons or because they say something about me.

At the age of 43, I have way too many years to cover to squeeze them all into one blog post.

In the first part of the series I took a stroll through the years 1967-1982, starting with The Jungle book, ending with Blade Runner with a lot of science fiction and music in between.

Let’s get on the road again!

1983  The Day After /  The Meaning of Life
The year is 1983 and I’m 15 years old, struggling to figure out what life is about – if we’ll have any at all. Like other children of my generation I was dead certain the world would blow up in a nuclear war including US and Soviet. The Day After was mandatory to watch at school and for us it was more of a documentary than speculation. But I was wrong. TheBerlinwall fell and the world became more complicated – shaded instead of black and white – and I actually stopped worrying about a third world war.

The question about the meaning of life is still hanging in the air after all those years. I still don’t know what it is and I’m not convinced the answer is 42. But I figure Monty Python came pretty close in The Meaning of Life:

“Well, it’s nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”

1984 Karate Kid
Thinking of Karate Kid still makes me smile. Mr Miyagi, teaching karate with painting and washing assignments.  Not to speak of his habit to kill flies with chopsticks and that peculiar balance act on the beach. I still nourish a dream of learning some martial art one day. They say it’s never too late to start.

1985 Out of Africa / The Purple Rose of Cairo
A few years ago I went with my family to Tanzania. It was the journey of my life, a homecoming. They say this is the origin, where we all came from, and it was as if every cell of my body agreed. Or as another fan of Africa said to me: “Africa isn’t a place. It’s a disease”.

Once you’ve gotten the African bug you can’t get rid of it and a part of me will always long to go back. It’s been a while since I watched Out of Africa. But I can still remember Meryl Streep’s soothing voice-over:

 “I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up; near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.”

The Purple Rose of Cairo is a pretty obvious choice, isn’t it? If you go as far as to blog about movies, you’re deeply into it. It’s a delightful movie about movies, teaming with romance and nostalgia. It’s also signed Woody Allen, who probably is my favourite director or at least the one I’ve watched most over all those years.

1986 The Name of the Rose
The Umberto Eco novel with the same name made me feel clever. At the core it’s a crime fiction, but it’s disguised in philosophy and a wonderful, historical setting which makes it to something more. The movie adaptation starred Sean Connery. Like a good wine he only gets better the older he gets.

1987 84 Charing Cross Road
There were books everywhere in my childhood home. Even in the bathroom. And yet it wasn’t enough to satisfy my hunger for literature; I used to fetch huge stacks of books from the library, reading them at a rate of one a day. Nowadays the books have to compete with movies and other distractions, and I don’t read quite as much. But deep down I still consider myself a bibliophile. But as much as it’s a movie about the love of books, it’s also a movie about long distance friendship, which is the one I probably understand best. I’ll get back to this further on.

1988 Big
It probably wasn’t a coincidence that Hollywood came out with three movies the same year, which all were about people swapping bodies with each other. Big is the only one I still remember. Maybe it was because it starred Tom Hanks, who was perfect for the role as the boy who suddenly finds himself trapped in the body of a grown-up. Thinking closer about it – aren’t we all?

1989 Dead Poets Society / Le Grand Bleu
Dead Poets Society. There’s something strange about my relationship to this movie. As far as I can remember I liked it when it came out. I liked it a lot. But over the years I’ve started to grow a strange antipathy against it and I can’t quite pinpoint why. Maybe I’ve just been overexposed to it. But if you ask me now for a movie about a charismatic teacher challenging a rigorous school system, breaking the policies, I’d rather recommend the French movie Les choristes from 2004. Its feels fresher and it also contains some gorgeous choir music. However, I decided to put Dead Poets Society on the list because of the referrals to Thoreau, whose book Walden has had an influence on some of my life choices – and I’m not just thinking of “carpe diem”.

Le Grand Bleu (The big blue)  is a beautiful movie about free diving. I’m quite a bad swimmer myself – I never learned how to crawl properly and failed as I tried to take a dive certificate many years ago. The underwater world may have rejected me, but I still admire it from the sideline.

1990 Cyrano de Bergerac
My making of this list has been a two-step process. The first was to pick the movies. The second was to write about them. It’s been a while between the two steps, and to my embarrassment I don’t remember clearly what I had in mind when I picked Cyrano de Bergerac for my 1990 movie.

Was I thinking of the fact that the guy has a big nose? OK, I don’t have the most beautiful nose in the world; a plastic surgeon would probably think I could benefit from a “nose job”, but do I really care that much? I don’t even use make-up!

Perhaps it was something about Cyrano de Bergerac’s self consciousness. I have a tendency to question and pick on myself a lot. Or maybe I wanted to give a nudge to my love for anything French, including Gérard Depardieu, who had his international breakthrough in this movie. Anyway – Cyrano made his way to this list and I’ll let him stay there.

1991 The Commitments
I played bass guitar in a punk rock band for a little while. This career took an abrupt end after less than a year, after someone broke into our repetition room and stole all the instruments. To be honest I think we would have dissolved anyway and my playing and singing is of the quality that I’d better keep it to myself. The Commitments on the other hand were awesome.

1992  Scent of a woman
I love rhetoric. Just love it. Al Pacino’s final speech is brilliant and makes my eyes a bit dusty.

1993 Groundhog Day / Shadowlands
Groundhog Day  because I wanted to share my love for it. It’s one of those movies I can watch over and over again, never growing tired of it. How appropriate considering its plot!

Shadowlands – a love story based on the life of the writer C S Lewis – because I love everything bittersweet and because Anthony Hopkins is awesome. It also is a marker for my lifelong love for the Narnia series – far less wordy than the modern fantasy and yet so rich.

1994 Four Weddings and a Funeral
I’m not particularly good at socializing. While I don’t lack friends completely (especially not online ones, I’ve never had the close, family like circle of buddies as pictured in Four Weddings and a Funeral and in TV series like Friends and How I Met Your Mother. On the other hand: hanging out with yourself isn’t as bad as you may think. This is how you do it.

1995 Apollo 13 / Braveheart
Apollo 13 because it’s about astronauts. I could as well have picked Capricorn One or The Right Stuff. They all represent my life-long fascination for space travel. My first dream job, at the age of four, was “queen”. But it didn’t take me too long to realize it probably was out of my reach, and strictly speaking not a “job”. And that’s when I decided to become an astronaut. I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’ve given up about it by now.

I don’t know if Braveheart is a great movie. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t; I can’t tell. I never finished it. For the one and only time in my movie watching life I left the cinema half way through. This was in 1995, when we had one toddler at 1 year and another at 2,5. Life was hectic to say the least, with little room for activities on your own. One night we had managed to get a babysitter, going to see a movie for the first time in ages. The poster informed us about the length and we made our arrangements accordingly. But as we watched the movie, we got increasingly worried about the laid-back pace. It wasn’t going anywhere and when we reached the time when it was supposed to be finished, it was evident that we were far, far away from the actual end. Our stress level increased with every minute and we stretched it for a while before we acknowledged the defeat. That poster had been far off in the time estimation. As far as we knew Bravehart could go on all night and we had an agreement with the babysitter. So we left. After complaining to the theatre we were compensated with new movie tickets. But we used them for some other movie, so I’m still left hanging about the whereabouts of Braveheart.

1996  Secrets & Lies
Show me the family that hasn’t got their share of secrets and lies. I’ve had my share, a heritage going through generations until someone finally puts an end to it. Mike Leigh unfolds layer after layer until the characters are naked and we realize that all those protecting covers of lies and secrets and silence actually hurt more than they do any good.

1997 Life is beautiful
Over the years I’ve watched a lot of Holocaust movies and read many concentration camp novels, but two works stand out among the rest, hitting me harder than anything else. One is Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus I and II. The other is Life is beautiful, the story of the father who makes his son believe that the death camp is an entertaining competition, as a way to protect him from the horrors. For its dark theme it’s strangely uplifting.

A few words to wrap it up
Life is beautiful. And even if it isn’t we might as well pretend it is, because it makes us feel better.

It’s time for a break and this seems like a good point. So let’s have a cup of coffee, put on a nice movie and wrap ourselves into a blanket of Friday night cosiness.

Cheers!

—
Other parts in this series:
My life in movies part 1 1967-1982
My life in movies part 3 1998-2011

OK, this isn’t breaking news, but have you noticed how few women there are around in the film industry? Probably you have. But I actually hadn’t reflected over it until recently.

However I’ve crawled out from the rock I’ve been living under and I’m standing here, scratching my head, wondering what the f… is going on.

Can you give me a good reason why over 90 percent of the movies that come out from the Hollywood factory should be directed by men? I can’t and believe me – I’ve tried hard to come up with something. We’re not talking about fire fighting, mining or some other traditionally heavy job requiring a physically strong body. We’re talking about people who spend their days thinking, talking, leading, negotiating, marketing, occasionally being creative. Why wouldn’t women be as interested or successful at doing this?

Filmspotting’s interviews
My new insight was triggered a little while ago by one of my favourite podcasts, Filmspotting. It wasn’t anything they said on the show though; it was completely unintentional. I was visiting their website and landed on a page where they had links to the guest interviews they’ve had over the years. It contained various sorts of film workers, mostly directors and actors as far as I could tell. And when I looked at the pictures it suddenly struck me how few of them who were women – a total of five out of 60 interviewed persons.

Since the hosts of the show never have come across as misogynists, I suspected that the numbers might have to do with the looks of reality. This was confirmed as I started to google about to see what all this was about.

From the website Women and Hollywood I got some statistics from 2010:

• Women directed 7 percent of the top 250 grossing films
• Women wrote 10 percent of the top 250 grossing films
• Women comprised 15 percent of all executive producers
• Women comprised 24 percent of all producers
• 18 percent of all editors were women
• 2 percent of all cinematographers were women

Taking a risk
The question is: why is it like this? Is it because women don’t want to make movies? Maybe they don’t accept to work insane hours for a low salary, maybe they prioritize family before making a career? Is it because they’re bad at making movie? Well, how could you get good at it if you never get quite get the chance? Or is it because men won’t let them make movies? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a combination of all of it.

In my search for an answer I stumbled upon an article on this topic where they quoted Jodie Foster:

“I don’t think it’s a plot and these guys sat around and said let’s keep these women out,” Foster said. “I think it’s like race psychology. When a producer hires a director, you’re hiring away your control completely. You’re bringing on somebody that will change everything. When you give that amount of power up, you want them to look like you and talk like you and think like you and it’s scary when they don’t, because what’s gonna happen? I’m gonna hand over $60 million to somebody I don’t know. I hope they look like me.”

It sounds plausible to me.

The question is: Is there anything we can do about this? Do we even need to? What’s the problem if nine of ten directors are guys?

Well to start with the last question, I imagine diversity brings us more variation. I don’t suggest women make one sort of movies and men a different one. We’re all individuals and can’t be sorted into boxes that easily. But it sounds likely that by leaving out almost half of the population, you would miss out some perspectives and experiences that could have added something.

Special treatment
In Sweden the numbers are far more even. In 2010 about 30 percent of the directors were women and 40 percent of the producers.

I would call that decent, but it’s not considered enough, and because of this, the Swedish film institute has given out extra financial support to movies with female directors. Recently the film festival of Stockholm announced a scholarship of 700 000 dollars to a director, but it’s only available to women.

I’ve never been a big fan of special treatment to women as a way to promote equality. In the ideal world we don’t need it. Quality should be more important than gender and there’s no reason why women shouldn’t be competitive in their own right. Discriminating male directors by giving them less financial support is not the way to go.

On the other hand I can see what they’re trying to do. The more we talk about how few women there are in the film industry and how tough it is for them to get by, the fewer women will be inspired to try it out. Or as someone who recently made a research report about why women are in minority in the film industry put it:

“To recruit women to the film production you need to create an image of the film industry which tells you that women can survive there”.

She has a point. The question is: can you create this image without handing out subsidiaries?

Media has a certain role in this, no doubt. The portray they give of the women who actually have made it to Hollywood will affect how they’re regarded by the industry, and can also inspire or scare away potential female movie makers.

And that’s when I came to ask myself: what am I doing in those regards? Do I make an effort to make women more visible? Probably not. Just throw a glance at my blogroll. Out of 37 linked blogs, only two are run by women as far as I know of, and both of them are Swedish.

All this has given me food for thought. How can we make the movie industry into less of a men-only business?

I don’t have the answer yet. But at least I’ve woken up and realized that the question is valid. That’s a start.

If you’re going to watch The Illusionist in a DVD version, I’ll give you a piece of advice: don’t worry about the subtitles. You haven’t missed to check them and they aren’t broken. It’s all working as intended.

Trust me, I know after going through quite an ordeal before I finally accepted that the barely audible grunts I heard from characters once in a while weren’t something you needed to understand or bother about. Basically The Illusionist is something as rare as a silent movie in cartoon form.

Bittersweet and nostalgic
Based on a manuscript by the French film maker Jacques Tati, it stars an animated version of Tati himself. It tells the story about a magician, whose career must have peaked many years ago. Replaced by more modern forms of entertainment, such as rock bands, he sees his art form and income fade away and has to start taking any job that comes in his way. The performer who once upon a time filled theatres is now hired to make tricks with women’s bras to grab the attention to a shop window. Touring in Scotland the magician gets to know a girl who he develops a father-daughter like relationship with. But like everything else, that too will come to an end.

I can’t really say that I’m familiar with Tati’s movies; as a matter of fact I’ve avoided them since I’m quite cold towards slapstick humor. However you don’t need to love Tati to enjoy the movie. It stands perfectly well on its own.

It’s a simple little story, bittersweet and melancholic as the score, but never overwhelmingly so. It brought me more of nostalgia than despair. There will be a time in our lives when we’ll have to acknowledge and accept the course of time, moving out from the spotlights, leaving room for the next thing to come. We’ll set the rabbit free and we’ll feel sad, but we’ll learn to live with it.

Edinburgh
I will also remember this movie for the beautiful drawings, so nuanced and delicate, different in style from the more distinct, colorful and computer made graphics we usually see in animated movies.

I visited Edinburgh for the first time this summer and fell in love with it at first sight. Together with New York, Paris and Visby, it’s one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen. Hence I was utterly delighted when I found out that more than half of the movie takes place in Edinburg. It looks very much as I remember it, possibly a little prettier, leaving out the most dominant tourist industry elements from the picture. It’s a feast for the eyes – especially for Scotland romantics like me.

In case you haven’t realized it already: The Illusionist probably works best for an adult audience. Not because it has violent or sexually explicit content – it has neither. It’s rather the opposite situation; I think many children will find it too slow and quite hard to understand and engage themselves in. Take it as a heads-up in case you’re looking for a movie as a baby-sitter. There are other films that are far better for this purpose. I guess I’m preaching for the choir. It’s been quite a while since we assumed that anything that is drawn targets kids.

On the issue of magic
A last word of caution – Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this in case you’re sensitive about spoilers. But I think I need to do it anyway in order for anyone to be misled by this movie. There is a little misconception, you see. At one point we’re told that there are no magicians, stated as if it was a matter of fact.

That’s a lie.

I’m with Calvin & Hobbes. It’s still a magical world. We make it so.

The Illusionist (L’illusionniste, Sylvain Chomet, FR 2010) My rating: 4/5