The DCH Blog

Argo - screening this Weds - a review
Not since Harvey Keitel snatched the Enigma machine has history been so wilfully mangled, and perhaps director Ben Affleck should be slapped on the wrist for that, but this is not, after all, a history lesson. Proving that sometimes the Academy do get in right, Oscar winning Argo is a taut, exciting and ingenious thriller, mixing comedy and genuine tension in a way that consistently works and rarely lets go. It’s tightly plotted, lovingly filmed, with a good sense of its own absurdity. It also does that very clever thing of keeping the tension going throughout, even though we know how things turned out.

CIA agent Tony Mendez is underplayed by Affleck as a man of quiet resolve, allowing the supporting cast of Alan Arkin and John Goodman to fill the screen as movie types, and this is the key to the film. With the decaying Hollywood sign as a backdrop, the movie is as much about film making as Iran. It turns to other movies for period authenticity - it looks like a Sidney Pollack film, for goodness sake – and never lets you forget it’s a story about storytelling. When Goodman tells Affleck that a Rhesus monkey could direct a film, he’s following a thread of meta-fiction that leads to a conclusion that is as satisfying as it is improbable.

So, yes, the film inflates the US role in the rescue, and has managed to offend the Canadians, the Kiwis and the Brits, but at its heart is the idea that brave folk sometimes do amazing things that are incredibly dangerous for no other reason than to help someone else. That’s an uplifting message, and it makes for an uplifting film.
By David Vass
Saturday 18th May 2013

War Requiem & Arts Award Youth Film - a review
In what has to be the oddest double bill on record, Derek Jarman’s heartfelt essay on conflict, War Requiem, was supported last night by The Diss Appearing Triangle, created by the Arts award youth project.

The Arts award film, a compendium of witty, whacky and poignant reflections on the area around the Corn Hall, was an exuberant mix of styles and techniques, with influences as diverse as Terry Gillian, Spike Milligan, and Toy Story. The highlight for me was the opening section, a collage of found footage and stressed new film, overlaid with an interview soundtrack, which showed genuine potential for greater things to come, and was oddly reminiscent of the main feature.

War Requiem was classic Jarman. Immaculately shot and composed, his gift for composition is well evidenced here, as he sets up a series of vivid tableaux reminiscent of his beloved Caravaggio. There was, as ever with Jarman, acres of Wagnerian tedium, but these were punctuated by moments of startling verve. With Nathaniel Parke, Tilda Swinton and Sean Bean in early roles, as well as Laurence Olivier’s swansong, it’s a starry cast for a non-speaking film, but while they all emote effectively, it’s the archive footage that moves. Indeed, as the film loses narrative coherence it becomes oddly more compelling, the closing montage of genuine atrocity being both difficult to take, and difficult to look away from.

Derek Jarman’s films were original, stylized, audacious, and maddening. He was a true auteur and a flag waver for the maverick filmmaker, trying to do something different with little money and lots of enthusiasm. Perhaps it was not such an odd double bill after all.
By David Vass

Thursday 16th May 2013

Faileontology - a review
Rambit Gambit’s Faileontology defies easy description. There's a fellow inventing something that does something and it can only be done the once – beyond that it all gets a little confusing. There is certainly some clowning around, and face pulling and pratt falls, but to take its farcical ambitions at face value would be to miss something darker and stranger going on.

Tom Butterworth, in his tank top and glasses, sits somewhere between Wallace and Simon Pegg, while Thomas Wilesman (complete with unfeasible beard and lab coat) makes for an unnervingly believable Germanic professor. Together, they serve up a heady brew of physical comedy and manic wordplay that was funny, in that it did make you laugh, but it was uneasy laughter. There was an underlying desperation to the claustrophobic world the characters inhabited, with more than a little Becket or Ionesco about it. Warming up for Edinburgh, there were some rough edges in evidence.

Faileontology was occasionally episodic, and not always as smart as it thought it was. But it was never predictable, and never less than intriguing, and it was easy to set aside the occasional longueur when faced with such a ferocious and original commitment to innovative work.

Devised theatre is a notoriously difficult area to work in without occasionally lapsing into self-indulgence, but for the most part Rambit Gambit pulled it off. In essence, a satisfyingly structured and thought provoking stab and staying something quite haunting about loss and friendship, while doing so in a sneakily accessible way.
By David Vass

Monday 13th May 2013