The Salt of the Earth

In 2013, when Sebastiao Salgado’s ‘Genesis’ photo exhibition was premiered in the Natural History Museum in London, I had the urge to fly into London just to see the exhibition. Such was the draw of a photographer who seemed to me both adventurer and artist, a winning combination of a dream life. It would have been extravagant for me to make that trip to London. Fortunately a year later, the ‘Genesis’ exhibition  travelled to Singapore and I got to see them in the National Museum.

The 2014 film ‘The Salt of the Earth’ is about Salgado and the extraordinary images that he has captured throughout 40 years. Some of the most stunning and seemingly unbelievable images are that of the Serra Pelada goldmines of Brazil where swarms of people climb up ladders in ant like fashion – these photographs froze in time the height and madness of the gold rush. In the photographer’s own words, “when I reached the edge of that enormous hole, in a split second I saw unfolding before me the history of mankind. The building of the pyramids, the Tower of Babel, the mines of King Solomon”.

Salgado built his career and name as a social photographer: his photos of war, grief, poverty and suffering brought the world’s attention to these plights. These are not photographs that are easy to see. What goes through a person’s mind when thrusted upon with the sight of cholera, corpses and genocide in 1980s-90s Africa? A photographer isn’t just an image-maker, he or she is also a story teller, a quality which Salgado also demonstrated through his compassionate narration in the film. And yet the photographer’s job requires the unflinching steely clicks of the camera to tell the story as it is.

The ‘Genesis’ series remain my favourite: these photographs take us to the Galapagos islands (once my dream islands!), the paw of a Galapagos iguana that reminds me of a sequined ladies’ glove, the human-like penguin colonies in the Antarctic, the eye of a whale peeking out from her oceanic home, the depths of the Amazonian jungle with polyandry ladies of the Zo’e tribe and more. The photographs remind us of our pristine natural world. And in my case, sowing more (if that’s even possible) seeds of wanderlust.

I just watched this film today at a film festival and I highly recommend it!

The Hundred-Foot Journey

I love films about food. Films with a food theme are seldom just about food: Julie & Julia, Like Water for Chocolate (Como agua para chocolate), Eat Drink Man Woman and Ratatouille depict bonds that are forged, broken and reconciled over food. One of human’s basest instincts is not merely satisfied by consumption, but also the experiential discernment in taste and the interwoven complexities of tradition, pride and innovation (or resistance thereto!). 

The Hundred-Foot Journey – directed by Lasse Hallström (director of yet another food movie that I like, Chocolat) – tells the story of cultures separated by the titular “hundred-foot’. A family of tandoori restaurateurs from India, the Kadams, first sought asylum in the UK, and then moved to Europe because “the vegetables of England have no soul, no life”. In their quest of finding a new home, the family settled in a small village in France near the Swiss border (apparently the idyllic location was filmed in the Midi Pyrenees – one of the regions I have lusted for a while!) There, they set up Maison Mumbai, a mere 100 feet away from the one-Michelin star French restaurant Le Saule Pleureur run by the uppity Madame Mallory. As her new neighbours open their restaurant, Madame Mallory bemoans “the death of class”. Competition ensues.

Like any other good movie about food, this film is a visual feast: luxuriant plump tomatos, tandoori over crackling fire, and multiple shots of golden perfect yolks sliding into glass bowls, ready to be whipped into a fluffy omelette or emulsified into scintillating hollandaise. I’m getting hungry as I write this – be sure you don’t watch the movie on an empty stomach.

Yes, it’s a ‘feel-good’ movie. It is about food, and it is comforting. 

The Grand Budapest Hotel

This is a film that is impossible to pigeon hole. Wes Anderson’s latest creation is a dazzling delight. The grand hotel in the title is located in a fictitious European alpine mountain with a lobby boy immigrant from a fictitious country in the East. But the evocation of high society’s grandeur against the hardships of the times is real.

The story centres on M. Gustave H (played by Ralph Fiennes), an idiosyncratic, vain but principled concierge whose class service recalls a time when institutions like The Grand Budapest Hotel were the standard to bear. He takes on a young pupil, the new lobby boy (Tony Revolori) and it is through the lobby boy’s eyes that the story is told. As for the plot? It is everything I love about films: a story within a story, a swashbuckling sweep of adventure, romance, humour, feuds, murder mystery, prison break (every good adventure story in my books need to have a prison break or two) and ski chase.

The film is exactingly stylish and rhythmically rhapsodical. Every frame is planned to the dot. Yet it flows and oozes with nostalgia. It is a film about genteel manners, of a time past. But the film is also about the human bond and loyalty, and that is timeless.

 

Shark fighting & Dragon slaying on TV

Reality TV – it’s just another name for contests being broadcasted on screen. If there is one reality TV show that I would sign up for, it would be Amazing Race (not the Asian version which doesn’t seem to have the budget to go anywhere truly exciting). Given the amount of posts on this blog about travel, is that hardly surprising?

Silent film – The Artist

I don’t usually go to the cinemas on a weekday. On pure chance invite by a friend and blind faith, we watched this marvellous black & white silent film The Artist directed & written by Michel Hazanavicius.

Yes, you read that right: it’s a black & white silent film. This French production is funny, poignant, bittersweet and pure delight.

Won’t say too much here. I would certainly recommend this movie!

Enchanting Midnight in Paris

It’s really not hard to be charmed by Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s latest creation and love letter to Paris. Probably anyone who loves the City of Lights would find even more reason to enjoy the movie. In a way, Midnight in Paris portrayed what I think is most beautiful and charming about Paris – the night.

The movie itself is very beautifully made, almost magical – in sync with the fantasy elements of the story: the movie opens with a series of postcard-like montages of iconic Parisian landmarks and then the picturesque lily pond which perhaps inspired Monet. The main character, an American writer Gil (played by Owen Wilson) visits Paris with his fiance and her parents. While wandering through Paris at midnight, he steps into the 1920s, and soon he meets Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Josephine Baker, Cole Porter, Picasso, Degas, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Dali. In real life, Paris was the mecca for these writers, artists and musicians. In Gil’s fantastical escapades, the bohemian nostalgia is enhanced by the cinematographic effects of golden hues, rosy tints and warm soft lighting, which just made everything glow, and Owen Wilson even blonder.

Some may find Gil’s infatuation with Paris silly. But bathed in such romanticism peered through rose tinted lenses (and literally so), Midnight in Paris, to this tourist is very swoon-worthy. Suddenly, I wish I was in Paris again.

Israelis & English

Watched a couple of movies last week.

(I)

I managed to drag a friend – who then dragged another mutual friend – to catch a movie at the 19th Israeli Film Festival. At my suggestion, we watched The Matchmaker directed by Avi Nesher.

First of all, I didn’t know that this is the 19th time that an Israeli Film Festival has been held in Singapore. The only reason I spotted this one was because I saw a big poster of it at a cinema one day. I wonder where else was it publicised. Secondly, it seems like there are many film festivals going on in town lately. There’s another one that’s on-going now – the Singapore International Film Festival. Don’t get me wrong; I love watching movies. These film fests screen quite a number of films, most of which come with promising synopses. But perhaps because of the limited budget and/or promotional impetus, these movies are only screened once or twice. So timing choices for viewers are limited.

The Matchmaker is a gem, although my companions did not seem as enthusiastic as me (partly because of seating – we were 3 rows away from the screen). The movie is a bit of a coming-of-age tale, set against the backdrop of a Mediterranean-esque seaside town of Haifa, with an array of characters and a variety of plotlines. I especially liked Maya Dagan’s performance as Clara, a woman whose elegant sophisticated exterior belies the fragility and broken sparrow beneath. The titular character, the Matchmaker, played by Adir Miller, is in love with Clara. Slightly scarred and a limp, he is a smooth talker with his clients and potential matches and takes on the role as mentor to his summer apprentice (through whose eyes we see the story unfold), seldom betraying his tortured past and his shadowed present.

(II)

He’s dapper. He’s got cutting-edge tech gadgets. And he works for MI7. This goofball version of James Bond doesn’t get any funnier with all the action sequences, espionage, British accents, superhuman physical comedy (the way Rowan Atkinson twitches his eyelids is baffling)  and a risky brush with the subject of Her Majesty herself.

For a roaring laughing good time, catch Johnny English Reborn.

Thus spoke the King

Haven’t blogged in a while, and just have to mention that I watched The King’s Speech a few weeks ago!

Obviously I enjoyed the movie very much and I plan on watching it again, or better still, buy the DVD (the film makers should give me brownie points in the form of unlimited movie passes). I had been waiting for 6 months for this movie to come to Singapore, and wondered if not for the awards hype, would it have even reached these shores? Hence, it’s marvellous how the numerous awards and accolades it received helped boost the movie’s exposure and number of screening days.

What a wonderful performance by Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter! And although many reviewers describe this movie as a bromance between the Duke-then-King George VI (Firth) and his speech therapist Lionel Logue (Rush), I thought Carter’s performance as the Duchess-then-Queen Elizabeth subtly but resolutely shone alongside the brilliance of the two men. And the story itself! An inspiring tale of a man’s eventual success in overcoming his stammer. It doesn’t really matter at all that said man is supposedly privileged given that he eventually became the King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth as well as… [pausing to take a breath] … Emperor of India, King of Ireland and Head of the Commonwealth. If anything, being a stutterer and a monarch did not quite go hand in hand:

Duchess: [Using the name “Mrs. Johnson”] My husband’s work involves a great deal of public speaking.
Lionel Logue: Then he should change jobs.
Duchess: He can’t.
Lionel Logue: What is he, an indentured servant?
Duchess: Something like that.

Oh yes, I’m also gushing over the script’s understated humour and irony under the pen of writer David Seidler (who also had to overcome his own struggles with stammering). By understated humour I don’t quite mean the F-word bit (which I won’t give away) although that was undoubtedly comic. I mean gems like the one above and this one:

Lionel Logue: [as George “Bertie” is lighting up a cigarette] Please don’t do that.
Duke: I’m sorry?
Lionel Logue: I believe sucking smoke into your lungs will kill you.
Duke: My physicians say it relaxes the throat.
Lionel Logue: They’re idiots.
Duke: They’ve all been knighted.
Lionel Logue: Makes it official then.

So, even though I think Christopher Nolan’s Inception is awesome, yay to David Seidler for winning the Oscars for Best Original Screenplay.

And then there are the camera angles and the style of the film: loved the off-centred style of filming, especially during dialogues between Logue and the Duchess and that between Logue and the Duke. The latter’s scene showcase the first meeting between the Duke and Logue  –  where in the world did the production crew find that quirky-looking wall in Lionel Logue’s office?

This music-phile is also smitten with the soundtrack. Kudos to composer Alexander Desplat. And the production’s choice of an unhurried Allegretto from Beethoven’s 7th Symphony played over the climatic wartime speech by the King – at the end of it, I had the urge to get up from my cinema seat and applaud!

So what if this historical drama is not entirely accurate as some commentators say? I think the point of any movie is whether it stirs the hearts of the people who watched it. To me, The King’s Speech is movie magic with style and inspiration.

 

Laughing Cow in soup

Caught this French movie on Okto. The title in English is Hunting and Gathering which makes no sense whatsoever to me. The title in French is Ensemble, c’est tout which could mean “Together, that is all”. The latter certainly makes more sense about this story of 4 unlikely characters who came to live together in a big apartment with antique furnitures.

I enjoyed this quirky movie which features dreamy-eyes Guillarme Canet (who plays Franck) and Audrey Tatou (Camille). The actor who plays the stuttering Phillibert is adorable. I don’t understand French by the way. But I was laughing away at the subtitled dialogue. Or maybe that’s just an indication of how big of a nerd I am. Here’s an example:

Franck brings Camille on a motorbike to a friend’s place for a pig-slaughtering rite. They arrive after night fall. Camille who is underweight and always feeling cold says she’s frozen after the bike ride.

Franck’s friend – who was not expecting Camille – asks Franck, “What (who) did you bring?”

Franck replies, “Something frozen.”

Ok, believe me, it was a lot funnier in the movie – even when I’m just reading off the subtitles.

Another scene that I liked:

Phillibert is in the kitchen, preparing food. Franck walks by and asks him what is he doing.

Phillibert: making soup (for Camille who is sick)

Phillibert continues to do something off camera.

Franck (who is a chef by profession): La Vache Qui Rit in soup?!

 

Smiling in the face of contradictions

Irony is the bringing together of contradictory truths to make out of the contradiction a new truth with a laugh or a smile.

– Jane Austen in Becoming Jane

 

Re-watched a bit of Becoming Jane last night on Okto and just remembered how much I enjoyed it.