Tag: Ster Kinekor

Predict and Pick the Films that Might Win the Awards on Oscar Night February 9

~ debeernecessities

1917 poster

It’s time once again to try your hand at predicting the 2020 Academy Award winners and heighten the Oscar Buzz!

Ster-Kinekor’s annual Oscar Buzz started with a red-carpet screening last week, featuring the Golden Globe winning war film 1917, directed, co-written and produced by Sam Mendes reviewed by DIANE DE BEER.

 

This is just one of the Oscar-nominated films currently on Ster-Kinekor screens along with finalist for Best Foreign Film, Les Miserables. There’s Renee Zellweger’s much rewarded turn in Judy, which has earned her another shot at Best Actress.

 

Jojo Rabbit, Ford vs. Ferrari, Little Women, Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Parasite and The Irishman are all vying for the top honour of Best Film.

 

1917

DIRECTOR: Sam Mendes

CAST: Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay

SCRIPT: Sam Mendes, Krysty Wilson-Cairns

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Roger Deakins

MUSIC: Thomas Newman

 

The reason we know so much more about World War 2 than World War 1 has much to do with movies. When the second one came round, movies were part of the equation. That’s a huge marketing tool and we’re still watching different versions today.

Another stumbling block was the static nature of World War 1. It was basically fought from the trenches, a much more difficult story to tell visually.

According to Mendes, this one had been with him a long time and had been waiting for the technology to catch up before it could be told. With the movie dedicated to his grandfather, Alfred H. Mendes, whom he describes in interviews as a “great storyteller”, he grew up listening to the stories of a soldier who was a messenger for the British on the Western Front. In the meantime he was involved on a large scale with two Bond films, which prepared him for a work of this magnitude.

But then he made it even more difficult for himself. As a theatre maker first, he knows he has to engage his audience. This is done by bringing his two protagonists up close and personal to the action. In fact, the focus is constantly on the two young soldiers, Blake (Chapman) and Schofield (MacKay), two little- known actors who wouldn’t detract from, yet be the story.

In this one, the bit parts are played by star actors like Mark Strong, Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch. And it works magnificently as you buy into this hair-raising task being given to the young lads  with the additional impetus of the one’s emotional attachment with a brother being part of the bargain.

They have to warn a British commander that the retreat of the German army is a trap to draw them into what would be a massacre. There are no radios or any other way of getting this message to the troops, who will die in their thousands if the advancement isn’t stopped.

The drama is set and the action starts almost immediately with enough drama to keep everyone pinned to their seats. As the two young men travel as fast as they can on foot, we see the devastation they find along the way. There’s no missing the rats scuttling for food as seriously as the soldiers, and small details like  flies circling a dead horse become part of the grim picture.

But these are minor. We might not have seen as many movies, but the casualty count of that war, about 40 million, rank it as one of the deadliest. Bodies become part of the visual journey as they appear absolutely everywhere.

This might not be a fighting movie as such, but war is always the narrative as the two soldiers are determined to do their duty for their fellow countrymen. It’s a story about the horror of war whether fought in the trenches or by drones, but it’s also about valour, making the right choices and not even considering the weight of the task if it means saving lives – even those of the enemy, on occasion.

Depending on which way you watch this, more than the movie itself, the making is quite astounding. But that has always been a Mendes trademark, think American Beauty but in this fighting landscape, perhaps Road to Perdition is more telling. It’s played like a theatre piece.

And in 1917, because of the way the story unfolds, the choices made, you are cast in the centre of the drama every step of the way.

There’s no glance across the hills on the other side to show the enemy lurking. If they can’t see it, neither can you. And that’s the real drama of the story which is constantly in a state of high tension as the two men make their way beyond enemy lines wherever this may be. It’s also the way it is shot, walking each step together.

The narrative sometimes runs away with itself trying to impose all the emotions found in waging a war. That’s impossible and it cannot but become mawkish where one wonders whether some of  it really needed to be part of the story. The sentiment is understood, but the telling of it stumbles and falls.

There are a few such incidents, none of which was necessary. Sam Mendes is an extraordinary storyteller. His recent Lehman Trilogy on NT Live bristled with imagination and every decision he made contributed to the masterpiece.

Similarly here with the way the story unfolds and the many decisions he had to make about crucial elements in the dramatisation of this war-time epic. It is the story that is sometimes burdened with incidents added on to make a specific point which is already part of the narrative and the character.

The valour of these two men can never be questioned, even when they do it themselves. That they portray the best there is when it comes to sacrifice and serving your fellow human beings – even the enemy – is evident. A more stripped down version without some of the embellishment would have served the film better.

And yet, because of the way Mendes made the film, there are these two strands that run side by side and pique your interest throughout: on the one hand there is the story as it is told and on the other, the marvellous movie-making which is what earns him the accolades and statuettes I believe.

He holds you in the palm of his hand throughout. That’s a gift not many can claim. Sam Mendes has it in abundance and even when he doesn’t achieve it all, it’s still pretty spectacular.

 

Humanity the winner in Dunkirk

~ debeernecessities

By Diane de Beer

dunkirk3 (002)

 

DUNKIRK
DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan
CAST: Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance, Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy
RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes

 

Recently watched Cries from Syria on the Sundance TV channel on DStv (still available) followed by Dunkirk on IMAX (best way to see it) and I was struck how all these years later, the war – whatever shape it takes – remains the same.

If only it was shoot and kill, at least you would be gone and the suffering would be over. It’s not that easy. And as to be expected, it is usually the innocent, those who didn’t want this or see it coming, that pay the highest price.

The Syrian story, still ongoing and getting worse after five years and counting with the Syrian leader whose appalling regime started all this, going even stronger albeit without a livable country and less than half its people, tells the horror.

In Cries of Syria, a young boy (perhaps 8 years old) reaches what he thinks is a place of safety after he has fled his country following years of hardship and fear of dying, crossed the seas with a 50 percent chance of drowning, and stayed in a kind of clearance camp before moving further on foot to find refuge.

He finally reaches what he thinks is perhaps a haven only to find what he describes as the following: “They threw bread at us as if we are dogs!” Eight years old and at the end of a journey crossing half the world to find somewhere safe – and that is what he finds?

All this while the world is watching and talking about the refugee crisis. These are real people being affected – on a daily basis. Not even a toddler’s body discarded by the sea on a beach make a difference.

Perhaps then it is easier to look back at a Dunkirk with the focus on individual stories but also heroism as people go to the rescue of their countrymen in the face of great personal danger.

It was an extraordinary time and because of that, the director wanted to hone in on what it was like to be there. It’s not about huge fighting scenes or masses of people (all 400 000 of them) waiting to die, gathering on a beach with nowhere to go.

He didn’t want to make use of CGI or as little as possible. He wanted it to be up close and personal so that you could experience not the bravado of wars but the intensity, the fight for survival and life. Similarly to that young boy waiting to be fed after years of battling simply to survive.

dunkirk1 (002)
Fionn Whitehead personifies the struggle for survival

He does have the big names but someone like Tom Hardy playing a fighter pilot for example sets off in a plane at the start of the film and then disappears off the screen until right at the end. Kenneth Branagh as the commander, Mark Rylance as the brave boat owner who takes off for Dunkirk to save as many soldiers as he can with the unknown Fionn Whitehead as the young soldier battling for his life, are the few faces we get to see more of.

Yet Dunkirk is not about the actors, who in fact get very little time to speak. It’s about the stories, the way war works, the savagery of thinking you have survived only to be tumbled into yet another crisis which has to be overcome.

Nolan has made many films, most of them in different genres, and he knows what he’s doing whether you’re a fan or not. With this one he set out to tell a very particular story and probably we take from it where we come from and who we are.

We live in a world with not only vicious wars being waged but nuclear battles being threatened by two power-drunk men. This is when we have to ponder the results achieved of those fighting their battles in this way.

Those young men on the beaches didn’t ask to be there at that particular time and whether they fought well or valiantly didn’t define their lives. For each one of them it was probably about getting out at the end – some do and others don’t.

So when given a choice, we shouldn’t turn our heads, we should talk rather than feed that war machine that rules the world in so many ways.

Dunkirk confirms that message in many different ways.

PS: Saw Hokusai, a documentary  of the British Museum exhibition, Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave at Brooklyn Cinema Nouveau, which my sister had just been to see at the British Museum.

Filmed in Japan, the US and the UK, Hokusai focuses on the work, life and times of Katsushika Hokusai, painter and printmaker of the Edo (Modern Tokyo) period. Hokusai is regarded Japan’s greatest artist, who influenced Monet, Van Gogh and other Impressionists.

It was amazing and the cinema quite empty (which isn’t always the case when the artist names are perhaps more familiar) But again I was reminded of this extraordinary privilege we have with these screenings on artists and their current exhibitions.

Similarly for the NT Live theatre productions which allow us to see the latest work at London’s National Theatre or the Young and Old Vic, the Donmar and others.

Check it out. And watch those screening times. These are short runs but all worth seeing. It is as close as you will come this far away to see people like Helen Mirren and Judy Dench on stage while the play is still running in London.

The next screenings to watch out for later this month in Cinema Nouveau around the country is Renoir – Revered and Reviled from August 26; and the theatre productions of  Angels in America Part 1 (starting August 19) and Angels in America Part 2 (starting on September 2).