Week 36 - Another Year; Treasures from Budapest

I haven't been to cinema for ages, so it was great to watch a movie on a big screen last week, not on our tiny TV. Mike Leigh is one of my favourite directors and his latest feature Another Year has all his trademark attributes. At the centre of the story is Tom and Gerri, a content family of a geologist and councillor living in London suburb and spending weekends in their allotment. Actually, their life seems so idyllic, that it is unreal. Throughout the year various relatives and friends visit their house and most of their lives are grim – much unhappiness, loneliness and overeating. However, for me the friends seemed realistic and human, whereas Tom and Gerry's life was too ordered. The repeated visitor is Gerri's collogue Mary. In her fifties and single, she is putting a brave face and also smiling, but we see that in her friend's home she finds desperately needed company and warmth. The characters are at times too stereotyped and the pace could be slow. It is not the greatest of Leigh's films, but nevertheless, enjoyable. 

Treasures from Budapest at the Royal Academy contains some true jewels from the Hungary's Museum of Fine Arts. When one thinks about cities with immense art collection, Paris, Viena and Berlin come to mind, not the smaller states in Central Europe. How surprising to discover that Budapest has a museum to compete on global art tourism market. The collection was started by Esterhazys dynasty, whose members collected art through centuries and donated it to the nation. In London exhibition we are invited to the tour from 14C religious art to 21C modernists. Raphael's icons, da Vinci drawings, Rembrandt's portraits, impressionists and many unseen paintings by Hungarian artists – they all here. How much more treasures were left in Budapest? 

Week 35

Everything's connected. A few weeks ago I read Omega Point by Don DeLillo, in which a character is a film maker. He mentions a movie entirely filmed in one shot and that caught my interest. The film is Russian Ark directed by Alexander Sokurov and released in 2002. It is a poetic excursion around the Hermitage seen through the eyes of the Traveller. He is accompanied by the European. The couple walk from room to room and meet many of the former palace residents (amongst other Catherine the Great and the last Russian tsar Nicholas II). They encounter not only historical figures but also today's tourists. So not much actions here, but what you get more than enough is preaching to the Russians by the European. It all does look poetic, but to the point of being boring. One is left with the notion that the director first thought of creating a film in a single shot and only then decided on the story. All in all, Russian Ark is an appreciative yet failed attempt to create a milestone in cinematography.

The final scene of the movie has a massive ball with live orchestra. It was great to recognise the conductor as Valery Gergiev from the many LSO concerts seen in the Barbican hall. Everything is connected. 

Week 34 - Novecento; Blasted

Some years ago I lived through an Alessandro Baricco phase, reading most of his translated works. Looking back now, I don't think this Italian writer is that great. Nevertheless, a sensation of nostalgia and excitement rippled through me once I got the tickets to his monologue Novecento at the Trafalgar Studios. Novecento is about a great pianist who was born on a liner to America and never set a foot on terra firma. The storyteller is his friend, a fellow musician who is played by Mark Bonnar. Bonnar pulls off the performance well and the one and a half hour flies by, although at times there is too much details and explanations. 

Disturbing. A perfect word to describe Blasted by Sarah Kane revived at the Hammersmith Lyric. Among other cruelties, there is rape, cannibalism and abuse graphically shown on the stage. But the play is disturbing because it leaves you with a wide range of questions. Some are rather technical – What did the playwright mean? Where is the play set? When? What links the characters? And others are philosophical – What is the point of war? What does it mean to be human? What are the limits of love? The play starts with a man and a teenage girl in a plush hotel room. The next morning we find out that there is a war. Maybe it's in the Balkans (but both characters are clearly British)? The hotel room is blasted by the bomb and the man struggles to survive with a soldier. That is the plot in the nutshell. Confusing and disturbing, but it was an interesting form of escapism. It doesn't have to be all West End and happiness, one can escape to hell to appreciated the reality. 

Also this week saw Shun-Kin by Complicite at the Barbican.

Week 33 - The English Patient; Tribes

My good friend Milda never watches a film adapted from a book she has read and vice versa. I think I will follow this rule myself from now on, as too often the movie is not good enough because the book was so much better. This weekend I watched The English Patient, a 1996 epic showered with Oscars. The film tells the story of a forbidden love between a dessert explorer and his sponsor's wife set in the late 1930s. From time to time the plot jumps forward towards the end of WWII where we see the main character badly burnt and trapped in an Italian villa with a bunch of eccentric housemates (a Canadian nurse, a thief with Cavaraggio as a surname and a Sikh kipper). As they try to find out the identity of the mysterious patient, his memory goes back in time and the love story unfolds. It is all tragic and epic with beautiful dessert shots and fabulous frocks. But I couldn't help to compare the movie with the book, especially as there had been so many changes made in plot and in characterization. The most interesting thing is that I didn't enjoy either, but for different reasons. The book was too poetic and the film too slow. 

Mixed feelings after Tribes at the Royal Court. Yet another middle class Jewish family on stage with their not very relevant problems (for example, the Guardian publishing an interview in Society section). Three adult children are back to live with their writer parents. They sit around the table and all just talk, argue and bicker, which is quite funny to watch. All except one, who is deaf. But he seems to be the most sane among them. He brings his deaf girlfriend home, who gets mildly shocked by the family's rudeness, and finally moves out, as the girlfriend helps to get him a job through the deaf community. That is the first act. The second turns all crazy with random kisses, lots of shouting and cheating. After the first act we compared it to intelligent TV entertainment, whereas after the second 'Where Did It All Go Wrong?' was playing in my head.