Dark Eyes Retrovision #22 - Snowpiercer (South Korea/Czech Republic 2013: Dir Bong Hoon Jo)

Is seven years enough to make a film 'retro'? Well it's certainly taken a long time for Bong Hoon Jo's fifth feature to reach Blu Ray and DVD, after its initial rapturous reception both in South Korea and France, the home of the source material. For Snowpiercer started off life as a series of graphic novels, 'Le Transperceniege,' which emerged in 1982 courtesy of writer Jacques Lob - who sadly died in 2002 - and artist Jean-Marc Rochette. The novels had faded from public attention in the intervening years, although French actor/writer director Robert Hossein had expressed an interest in making a film version in the early 1980s.

But unbeknownst to the artist, 'Le Transperceniege' had found its way to the bookshops of South Korea in the early years of the 21st Century, initially as pirated material, and came to the attention of Bong Joon Ho. The director made contact with Rochette and negotiations began for the rights of the film, which eventually started shooting in 2011.

After its initial reception, things went more than a little quiet, however. And the reason? We*nst*in. Apparently the jailed movie mogul's company had acquired the film’s distribution rights for North America, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa on initial release, and he had reportedly wanted to trim the movie by 20 minutes, and "a few other things." Bong refused and the rest is history, albeit a tawdry one.

So now Snowpiercer is finally getting a UK release, and, for those who haven't seen it yet, what a mighty film it is. Its story is deceptively simple. In 2031, the entire planet is frozen following a reaction to a chemical response intended to tackle global warming. The last of the world’s only survivors live aboard the Snowpiercer: a train that’s been hurtling around the globe for the past seventeen years. Within the carriages the remnants of the human race have formed their own divisive economic and class system - or it's been formed for them. But revolution is afoot. Curtis (Chris Evans) is the group appointed leader of the underclasses, who unsurprisingly occupy the massive train's rear compartments, with - it is assumed - life improving the nearer one is to the front of the train. Kept in check by armed guards, and reduced to eating energy bars (the ingredients of which turn out to be very disturbing), Curtis's aim is to lead a band of renegades through the train, eventually taking control of the engine and restoring equality and redistribution of resources across all compartments. But as the revolution begins, Curtis's team find out that not everything is as expected. To put it mildly.

Tilda Swinton as Mason in the brilliant Snowpiercer

The creators of the original 'Le Transperceniege' have admitted that their storytelling was an idealised left wing vision. But as Bong has proved in last year's Parasite, class, and the telling of stories about the impact of divisions, is close to his heart. The cleverness of Snowpiercer is its deployment of blockbuster sci fi moves and then gently deconstructing them. This is far closer to the works of Luc Besson and Terry Gilliam (the late John Hurt's character is even named 'Gilliam') in its collection of awkward, idiosyncratic characters mixed up with square jawed action hero Evans, particularly Tilda Swinton whose factotum Mason is equal parts Tory Shire MP and a The League of Gentlemen character. Of course in the seven years that this has been in We*nst*in hell, many of the cast have become much bigger names than they were here: Evans has proved himself in any number of Marvel adaptations, and Octavia Spencer's career (she plays Tanya, a mum estranged from her child) has rocketed.

Snowpiercer looks incredible, is full of enough little ticks and tricks to make you want to rush to see it again; it's violent, darkly humorous, and has an underlying message that is even more necessary to convey today than in the 1980s when the graphic novel first appeared. I so want to see this on the big screen (sigh). But in the meantime we can finally savour its delights in the home environment. OK this isn't a retro film: it's a tomorrow film.

Snowpiercer is available on Blu Ray and DVD from 25th May.

Blu-ray special features:

• Transperceniege: From the Blank Page to the Blank Screen
• Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton on Snowpiercer
• The Birth of Snowpiercer
• The End of the World, and the New Beginning (animated prologue)
• Characters

The Dead Don't Die (USA 2019: Dir Jim Jarmusch)

In the quiet town of Centerville, USA - 'A real nice place' reads the sign on entering - things move very sleepily. At the local police precinct, officer in charge Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) is laconic and, frankly, bored, facing but not wanting retirement. His two officers, fatalistic Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) and nervous Mindy Morrison (Chloë Sevigny) don’t have a whole lot to do. Their only slight concern in the otherwise regular town is the strange presence of new funeral home mortician, zen mistress Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton),

But things are about to change. Firstly, it's taking ages to get dark. Watches and phones stop working. There’s talk on the radio about the earth being slightly tipped off its axis due to widespread fracking. Secondly, at the local diner two staff have been savagely murdered, their bodies ripped apart and eaten by what the police think might have been one, possibly several animals. Actually the real culprits are two locals (Iggy Pop and Jarmusch regular Sara Driver), newly risen from the dead - one assumes because of the whole earth axis thing - and desirous of both human flesh and coffee – hence hitting the diner.

Robertson, Peterson and Morrison investigate and become aware that the local cemetery is indeed giving up its dead to roam the streets and attack at will. These zombies, rather like the ones in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), hold on to some vestiges of their former life and are driven to revisit the places they knew when alive (the undead shambling outside a drugstore muttering ‘Xanax’ amuses, and there's a strangely tragic sequence with kids wandering around the detritus of a candy store looking lost and vulnerable).

The police of course have never seen anything like this. Morrison breaks down, Robertson just feels powerless, but Peterson acquires some inner strength: it is he who works out that the only way to kill the undead is through a ‘head shot’ and subsequently becomes rather proficient at this, much to the distaste of Morrison, who may have a certain attraction to the gawky police officer.

Sabre wielding oddball Zelda, briefly surprised when two of her dead charges wake up while on the morticians table, seems to have anticipated the return of the dead and takes on the mantle of chief zombie despatcher. And when a group of kids drive into town, described as 'hipsters' by the locals and surely cannon fodder for the zombies - in line with a million other undead films you’ve ever seen - the stage is set for a massive zombie slayathon.

I’ve probably made The Dead Don't Die sound more fun than it is. The first hour is well set up. There are the usual quirky characters found in Jim Jarmusch’s previous movies: Steve Buscemi plays the town bigot, complete with 'Make America White Again' baseball cap; Adam Driver as officer Peterson is suitably and typically awkward (his arrival on the scene in a Smart car, scrunched up inside in a vehicle clearly too small for him, may be the funniest shot in the film); Tom Waits as the almost feral woodlands dwelling Hermit Bob – who gets to narrate some of the film – looks very much like the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz (1939); Rosie Perez as the ‘say what you see’ TV reporter Posie Juarez is good value; but the star of the piece is flaxen haired be-robed Swinton (her character name, like that of Perez, a kind of mangling of her real one). Zelda’s Scottish brogue contrasting with her glacial features, stilted, sudden movements and odd speech (seeing Peterson’s Star Wars key ring she comments “Ah. Excellent fiction” and describing herself as an "accumulator of local information") makes one suspect she might not be entirely human.

But sadly Jarmusch’s film, once set up, does not know where to go. The zombie attack scenes are initially well staged (the despatched undead break into a shower of black dust rather like the vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) but there's an increasing sense of purposelessness, and the realisation that Jarmusch's movie is maybe just him having fun with some friends (in contrast to his more substantial 2013 take on the vampire movie in Only Lovers Left Alive). There's nothing wrong in that of course, but the director's reheating of themes previously visited by others and liberally referencing those movies within the script (a car which looks like Johnny's vehicle in the first scene of Night of the Living Dead is described as "very George Romero") gradually turns The Dead Don't Die into an increasingly inert homage to some much better movies. I mean, Romero offered us the conclusion that the zombies in Dawn of the Dead are basically us in a different form, but he made that point over 40 years ago. There's some fourth wall breaking along the way which assures the audience that the whole thing is probably a meta directorial in joke, but by then we've wearied of the lack of pace, the plodding set pieces and, well, the point of the thing. Disappointing.

Suspiria (Italy/USA 2018: Dir Luca Guadagnino)

Remakes are as old as film itself. And while I don't generally subscribe to the 'why bother?' argument for that very reason, it doesn't stop me holding the opinion that most updates of original movies offer very little. But I keep an open mind because sometimes a remake does provide a new perspective on the source film, while being important in its own right. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

Suspiria was the remake that shouldn't have happened. The original held such canonical status that any attempt to update or reboot it met with incredulity in fan and critical circles. But when the trailers started to appear the dissenting voices quieted somewhat. Revisiting the original movie it's clear that Dario Argento was much less bothered with narrative drive and more with set pieces, spectacle and overall mood. While this makes the original timeless, its occluded storytelling leaves lots of questions unanswered (and which failed to be fully responded to in his sequels Inferno (1980) and the belated final part of the trilogy Mother of Tears (2007)).

Guadagnino's version cleverly takes the key plot points of the original film - a dance studio run by a coven of witches, with a war between the three founding 'mothers' into which newcomer Susie Bannion is admitted - and gently re-assembles them, producing a movie which feels both naggingly familiar and very different - it's a hard one to pull off, but he succeeds.

His Suspiria is set in the Berlin of 1977: the timing is important. Not only is it the same year that the original film was released, but it was also a time of Bowie and Iggy's occupation (there's a Bowie poster on one of the dance student's walls to prove it) and huge civil unrest in the city, what with the tensions between east and west and the rise of the Red Army Faction via the Baader-Meinhof gang. Guadagnino exploits these tensions, even gently suggesting that they are in some way the product of the spiritual war going on within the City's Markos Dance Academy.

Described as 'six acts and an epilogue set in divided Berlin' the chapters of the film gracefully progress, taking their own sweet time to gradually generate a mood of decay and even ennui. Whereas Argento's movie was bathed in primary colours and full of overexcited characters, Guadagnino's version visually utilises muted shades and hues, and has a cast whose general temperament could best be described as 'listless.' Fittingly the Markos academy, while seeming very similar to the building in Argento's original, looks old and in poor condition here, and its location by the Berlin Wall subtly integrates it into the country's turbulent history. This version of Suspiria doesn't trumpet its arrival, but insidiously creeps up on you (even the title sequence dispenses with the film's name by having it superimposed on a passing U-Bahn sign), and its two and a half hour running time doesn't drag as a result.

The director holds back on the violence too, although the threat is ever present. One scene early on, where one of the students is despatched in an empty mirrored studio, her flailing limbs broken and smashed by an unseen presence while, in another room, new arrival Bannion (Dakota Johnson) is executing the same moves via an audition piece, is shocking partly because of the quiet sequences that bookend it.

Tilda Swinton is on restrained top form as Madame Blanc (a role more melodramatically realised by Joan Bennett in the 1977 movie), ruling the dance academy and tutoring the pupils in rehearsals of an extended piece called Volk, which was originally devised at the end of the Second World War. The dance will acquire huge significance towards the end of the film as the power struggle between the 'mothers' erupts (the only point in the movie where the grand guignol excesses of the original are revisited); its development also strongly suggests the complicity of the rest of the students in relation to the events that are set to unfold. Also connecting to the war is a new character of Dr Josef Klemperer (subsequently disclosed to be Swinton herself under heavy facial prosthetics) who is carrying out an investigation into the Academy based on the disclosure of a former pupil, one of his clients. His treatment at the hands of the victorious 'mother' at the end of the film added a coda of sadness to the movie that I wasn't expecting; equally unexpected was some light humour, courtesy of the coven at rest.

Thom Yorke's score is as moody and unobtrusive as the film which it soundtracks (although I could have done without his instantly recognisable voice which took me out of the film somewhat), and I liked the ambiguity and pathos of its conclusion. Suspiria is a movie which challenged and exceeded my expectations. It handles its many changes of tone without affecting the overall structure of the film, and its emotional sweep was unexpected but powerful. It's a film I'd happily see again and again, it's that bloody good.

Suspiria premieres at the London Film Festival on 16 October 2018 and is released theatrically from 16 November.

Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (UK/France/Japan/USA 1998: Dir Jonathan Maybury) - notes from an introduction to a screening of the film at East Dulwich Picturehouse 27 June 2017

When Francis Bacon died in 1992, he was far from the archetype of the reclusive artist who dies in relative obscurity. The ‘towering giant in the wilderness of post war art’ (to slightly misquote Brian Sewell) had lived and loved in the public eye, whether in Soho’s drinking dens, public openings or numerous TV interviews. Bacon’s life was a classic fusion of the high and the low where art and the messy existence of living were inextricably linked.

It was therefore only a matter of time before someone would attempt to capture this life on film.

So when Jonathan Maybury, artist, friend of the art world and a film director who had cut his teeth on underground projects (including partnerships with Derek Jarman) stepped forward to take on the task, it sounded like the director was the ideal selection – Jarman, perhaps THE perfect choice to make the film, had sadly died in 1994.

Originally planned as a BBC production with support from the British Film Institute, LOVE IS THE DEVIL quickly expanded to a big screen project. And here the nerves set in, particularly on the part of the Arts Council for England, who had already agreed funding.

Why the nerves? Well in the six years since Bacon’s death at the age of 83, interest in the artist had grown immensely. He was the subject of three biographies, at least four major posthumous retrospectives and a host of smaller exhibitions. So the prospect of a filmed biography now had a lot riding on it - and this was to be Maybury’s first feature.

Added to this there were concerns that his music video CV (Maybury directed a number of seminal videos including Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’) might produce rather lightweight product. Worse, the original plan was to base the film on Daniel Farson’s 1994 biography of Bacon, which is infamous for its detailed anecdotes about Bacon’s hitherto undisclosed sexual preferences – although interestingly the book had only been bought to secure rights for the project. So fearing that Maybury would produce a glossy video style film concentrating on the seedier elements of the painter’s life, assistance from the Bacon estate was not forthcoming, and the Arts Council (whose then chair was Lord Gowrie, a friend of Bacon’s) withheld their proposed grant. The official line was that it was too soon for a Bacon biopic.

Maybury rejected the original script for the film, which he felt was too heavily reliant on the Farson biography, and decided to re-write it himself. The rewrite led funding bodies to rethink their original nervousness, and money was released from the Arts Council and the National Lottery, effectively green lighting the film, albeit with the removal of some of the more creative swearing to appease the Arts Council.

But in other quarters people remained unconvinced: the Bacon estate refused to participate, allowing none of the artist’s work to be used in the film; and David Sylvester, whose published interviews with Bacon are some of the most important writings on the artist, refused for any of his printed words to be used in the script and wanted nothing to do with it. 

Love is the Devil is set between 1963 when Bacon first met the 29 year old George Dyer and 1971 when Bacon’s lover died via an overdose of drugs and alcohol. The film is by no means an attempt to survey the artist’s entire life (indeed it doesn’t cover Bacon’s relationships before and after Dyer), but is instead an attempt to view the world through Bacon’s eyes, through the prism of his relationship with and loss of the thuggish Dyer, who functions both as lover and artistic subject.

Maybury creates a fractured world, full of mirror images, frightening visions, alcoholic gossip in Soho drinking dens, and Bacon’s abiding obsession with his art to the exclusion of all else. The director deliberately shoots in short vignettes, often filmed in long shot or from a height – he has described this approach as being like brushstrokes which, when collected together, produce the final picture. And indeed many scenes in the film are lit and photographed in an approximation of the subjects of Bacon’s absent paintings.

The enforced lack of Bacon’s art in the film is in my opinion a key to its success – it dispenses with the traditional art bio clichés of the creation of great works and is less distracting for it, allowing more room for the intensive and self-destructive relationship between artist and muse to take centre stage. A stark minimal score from Ryuichi Sakamoto adds greatly to the tension.

The performances here are everything. Derek Jacobi as Bacon is stunning. He was not Maybury’s first choice for the painter – that was Malcolm McDowell, who turned the role down – and while Jacobi occasionally looks uncannily like Bacon he is by his own admission not a mimic actor – therefore the Bacon he creates is both a mixture of the painter that we’ve seen in many TV interviews and Jacobi’s own interpretation. Bacon emerges as a manipulative, callous, passionate, highly intelligent and extremely funny man, who never made a secret of his being gay but also relished the secrecy of the scene, particularly in the years before homosexuality was partly decriminalised in 1967 via the Sexual Offences Act. As Maybury has pointed out. Love is the Devil is a ‘homosexual’ film rather than a ‘gay’ film.

Similarly Daniel Craig as George Dyer is a revelation in his first cinematic lead role – he was picked after impressing Maybury and producer Chiara Menage with his performance as Geordie Peacock in the 1996 BBC hit Our Friends in the North. With a minimum of dialogue and a hugely physical performance (a combination that he used with considerable success and a much bigger paypacket in his James Bond role) he is a man on the edge, hopelessly besotted with Bacon but seemingly unable to make eye contact with his lover.

Other actors to watch for are Tilda Swinton as The Colony Room’s founder Muriel Belcher, almost unrecognisable and heavily pregnant at the time of filming. There’s also a blink and you’ll miss it appearance from Antony Cotton (aka Sean from Coronation Street) in his first big screen performance.

As a contribution to ‘Independent Queer Cinema’ Love is the Devil is important, in its presentation of non-heterosexual characters as unashamed outsiders from the rules of conventional society. But the film is more than that – it’s about passion, and passion for art. It’s also from Maybury’s perspective a triumph of ideas over budget, full of terrific creative touches, where necessity demands that a woozy drunken scene is best lensed through the base of a glass ashtray, and the roof of Islington Town Hall stands in for a New York hotel, complete with stars and stripes flag.

Enjoy the film.