Beatmag’s woman in New York, ‘Shooting People’ director and film festival stalwart Ingrid Kopp, gives us the rundown on some music cinema treats coming our way…

I can happily declare that SXSW in Austin, Texas is my favourite film festival in the world. Held every March, and known better in the UK as an industry-heavy music festival, it actually brings together film, music and interactive elements in a way that always generates a great atmosphere of creativity and excitement. There is always some healthy cross-fertilisation between the different elements and the film fest pays tribute to its music sibling with the 24 Beats Per Second strand which spotlights music documentaries. Here are a few of the best I saw this year.

AJ Schack’s ‘Kurt Cobain: About A Son’ is a visual treat constructed from 25 hours of previously unheard interviews with Cobain, conducted by Michael Azerrad for his 1993 book ‘Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana’. People expecting a traditional rock biopic might be disappointed but I found it hypnotizingly beautiful and was reminded how funny and insightful Cobain could be (as well as morbid and self-obsessed!). His voice is accompanied by images from the places where he lived: Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle. About a Son was shot on film (a rarity for a documentary these days) and it looks gorgeous – a series of often abstract images that work together like stanzas in a poem. There is not so much as a photograph of Cobain until the end of the film. Perhaps even more surprisingly it uses none of his music, instead featuring a score by Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Nirvana producer Steve Fisk, as well as songs by bands Cobain loved, including the Melvins and The Vaselines. Oh, and Queen! Weeks later, I still keep thinking about this film, Cobains’s voice and the beautiful, dark, depressing landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Sitting in the dark, listening to this, had a powerful effect. Towards the end of the film Courtney Love yells down the stairs to Kurt, interrupting the interview, and I got goosebumps, as though they were in the cinema with me.

Michael Tully’s ‘Silver Jew’ was shot in only a couple of days and it creates a remarkably intense portrait of reclusive Silver Jews frontman and poet David Berman, as he embarks on a short tour of Israel with his band. I didn’t know much about them before I watched the film, but this didn’t matter because David has a poet’s way with words and his take on the world is always interesting. It also makes him a frustratingly slippery subject, impossible to pin down. Tully doesn’t ask him about his history of drug abuse and depression. The damage is evident, but it’s refreshing that this doesn’t become a film about yet another fucked-up artist. Berman doesn’t play live very often but the live music segments captured here are perhaps the least interesting element of the film. The DIY production values make these scenes feel like bad bootlegs and the sound is too raw. The music is almost besides the point in this film anyway. I don’t mean that as a criticism, it’s simply that it really is Berman himself who’s the focus. Watching him grapple with his newfound dedication to Judaism is often very moving.

Scott Walker is now in his early sixties and last released ‘The Drift’ on 4AD Records, his first album in over 10 years. ‘Scott Walker: 30 Century Man’ is a wholly fascinating film about a man who has remained pretty much unknown to us since he reached Number 1 in 1966 singing ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ with The Walker Brothers. Walker allowed director Stephen Kijak to interview him on camera as he recorded ‘The Drift’, and he is surprisingly frank and likeable. His influence is discussed here by a pretty classy selection of enamoured musicians, including David Bowie (the film’s executive producer), Radiohead, Jarvis Cocker, Brian Eno and Damon Albarn. Walker’s music is, well, weird. I have to admit that I appreciate it more than I enjoy it – but this film has inspired me to listen to more of it, with less apprehension.

Craig Zobel’s ‘The Great World Of Sound’ is not a documentary, but this pitch-perfect film, made on a tiny budget, is achingly real at times. Martin (Pat Healy) answers an ad from a shady record company looking for music producers. He and his new partner Clarence (the excellent Kene Holliday) travel around the American South where the company has placed more ads looking for undiscovered talent. The audition scenes take place in motel rooms with fake gold discs propped up on the walls, and the musicians are not actors but locals who really did answer the ads. And the catch is that the musicians are to pay 30 per cent of any recording fees. Martin starts to feel increasingly uneasy about what his company is doing to these people, some of them talented, some of them not, most of them poor, all of them desperate for a break. The film makes you laugh and squirm in equal parts, but there are no cheap laughs here. ‘Great Wall Of Sound’ has a big heart and there is real emotion in the scenes between the people selling dreams and those buying. I really loved this film and was thrilled that it was picked up for distribution during SXSW. Hopefully it will be playing in British cinemas soon.

‘Great World Of Sound’ director Craig Zobel co-produced David Gordon Green’s debut feature ‘George Washington’, which was released and adored back in 2000. It turns out that many SXSW filmmakers have links to Green, and now a whole new movement has been christened, describing the work made by the directors following in his wake: mumblecore. Mumblecore films are the ultra-indie creations – ‘Hannah Takes The Stairs’ is the current defining example – screening at SXSW this year that respected film blogger and journalist Anthony Kaufman points out are “far closer to the origins of ‘70s and ‘80s American indie cinema than just about anything in [Sundance’s] Dramatic Competition.” Another label for this genre is ‘Slackavetes’, in recognition of its debt to John Cassavetes. Aaron Hillis at Cinephiliac has drawn a lovely diagram to show how all the peeps making these films are connected (www.cinephiliac.com). Meanwhile, Andrew O’Hehir at Salon argues that the narrative features at SXSW this year were divided between the mumblecore gang and the Grindhouse camp, lead by Robert Rodriguez and his films about “shotgun-wielding hobos” (www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/03/13/sxsw_2/index.html), and that SXSW has become a festival that produces a “kind of long-term, deep-focus forecast of film-making themes and trends that aren’t quite on the mainstream radar screen.” The future of film, or a bunch of hipsters farting in a jar? Maybe a little of both… but I love these films and these are some great filmmakers. Go SXSW!

Anna Wood tackles the challenging sounds of freeform jazzer Albert Ayler, then bathes in the immense quiet of ‘Into Great Silence’

My Name is Albert Ayler
Dir: Kasper Collin
Cert tbc

Into Great Silence
Dir: Philip Groning
Cert U

Is it true that sometimes a man (it’s usually a man) suffers a more elegant, lonely pain than most of us will ever suffer and the music they make is part and parcel of that suffering? And is it true that there will, inevitably, eventually, be a documentary about it? They suffer, and we reap the musical benefits – but the film isn’t always such a pleasure. ‘DiG’ (about Anton Newcombe and The Brian Jonestown Massacre) is dull and uncritical, overlong and adoring, and not a good film; ‘The Devil and Daniel Johnston’ is a good film, though, and so is ‘New York Doll’. So is ‘Last Days’ (not a documentary about Kurt Cobain, but very nearly); it’s a rich new genre. Now comes ‘My Name Is Albert Ayler’, another film about a gifted and disturbed artist, and it has the advantage of being about a free jazz musician who most of us (and I hope I’m not presuming too little of Beatmag readers) know little or nothing about, a handsome young man who played alongside Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, and who was found dead in New York’s East River in 1970, aged 34.

The music he played is dizzying, straight-to-the-bone jazz, sometimes raging, sometimes flying, and sometimes making you want to weep and you’re not sure why. Ayler played tenor saxophone, and had some big ideas about himself. “I believe I am a prophet,” he announces in one of the taped interviews used like a voiceover here. Other lines of his are repeated, like a slow riff: “This is the only way that’s left for musicians to play. All the other ways have been explored,” and “People have to listen to this.” They are all statements that implicate misery and loneliness: the rest of the world is wrong; one day they will understand; I don’t care what they think but I can’t stop being angry about it; my way is the only right way. Most of us, if and when we harbour these thoughts, do not have a creative gift silently encouraging us in our opinions. Or friends, fans and family watching our greatness, not sure what to do. Ayler says, “My imagination is beyond the civilisation in which we live,” and it sounds terribly arrogant for a moment, until it sounds desperately lonely.

Like most decent music documentaries, this has a gallery of wise, wonderful people with googleable names. There’s a Scandinavian contingent, calm and wholesome, from Ayler’s time in Sweden: drummer and ex-lover Ann Westerman (who exudes goodness), Bengt Nordstrom (who first recorded Ayler, in Sweden), Lionel Marshall (a kind, sweet-faced drummer)… and a New York contingent, a little tougher and just as loving: Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock (men who seem to me like they could each have a pretty great documentary made about their lives. Drummer Sunny Murray is stern and surly and kind, and has stories to tell; Gary Peacock is a particularly handsome double bass player who was fasting when he first met Albert, in pursuit of enlightenment). Albert’s family cooperated with director Kasper Collin, too – his father, Edward, and his brother, Donald. Most of the film’s problems lie here. We are given the impression that Albert’s troubles, and his early death, stemmed from troubles with his family (a father with high expectations, an envious, sometime mentally ill brother and – so predictably – a domineering mother) but we also get the impression that this is just the cod-psychology view that the director holds. Albert’s lover and musical collaborator at the time of his death, Mary Parks, is subtly painted as yet another domineering woman, someone who took control of Ayler and isolated him from his brother, although Ayler himself described it in a different way: “It was a blessing for me to meet her. She takes care of things.” (In the film’s credits, Donald and Edward are listed as Albert’s father and brother, but Collin describes Mary with almost audible disdain as “the woman who Albert lived with when he died.”)

Even with these shortcomings, it’s an interesting film, and a valuable collection of archived footage from a musician who’s had a loyal cult following but not enough of a public airing.

To find real calm and inscrutability, and not a sniff of voiceover or cod psychology, watch ‘Into Great Silence’. Instead of explanations, quiet. Instead of music, quiet. Instead of theories, silence. This astounding documentary is so far being given an extraordinarily limited release, which is a shame not only because it’s a wonderful piece of cinema but also because it has such ambitious, calm, roomy images and themes that it really need to be seen on the big screen. A two-and-a-half hour film about French monks who rarely speak, watching this is a bit like meditating – you get fidgetty, then you get annoyed, then you get tired, then you get fidgetty again, then your mind starts to relax, you have thoughts and feelings bubbling up and floating away, and you come out feeling strong and calm and ineffably well.

Beatmag Film Editor Anna Wood chooses her flicks of 2006, in no particular order (can also be used as guide to what DVDs to spend your Christmas HMV tokens on)

Grizzly Man
“I am a warrior. I will be one of them. I will be the master.” Timothy Treadwell made friends with the bears he lived with for 13 summers in Alaska, but they did not make friends with him. This is another great film from Werner Herzog, and the most brilliant in a year of brilliant documentaries.

Brokeback Mountain
And yet ‘Crash’ won Best Picture, demonstrating that the Oscars are more about pretty frocks than great films. ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is as good as Citizen Kane. So there.

The Squid and the Whale
A marriage collapses, and two children are trapped beneath the rubble. Another in the long and noble line of bleak yet somehow life-affirming films (see also ‘The Death of Mr Lazarescu’, ‘United 93’, ‘New York Doll’).

United 93
Minute by minute account of what we know happened and what we can intelligently guess might have happened on the fourth plane – the one that that went down without hitting its target – on 11 September 2001. Made with the finest intentions and incredible skill, and with the help and support of dozens of those involved in the actual events.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston
Daniel Johnston, musician beloved of Thurston Moore, Kurt Cobain and Jason Pierce, is a man whose life has been so cool and so awful that this tender, smart documentary about him can’t help but destroy a little of that nasty myth about how madness is a bit, you know, rock’n’roll.

New York Doll
Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane was the bass player with The New York Dolls, and a particularly lovely man with a particularly strange life story. Another doc about a deeply loved, not-actually-that-well-known musician. This one has a happy ending though. Kind of.

Capote
Yes, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is brilliant, but so is everything else about this film. It looks cold and hard (but with great style and some fine looking cocktails) at the dark, selfish aspects of Capote during his investigation into the murder case that was the basis for his seminal book ‘In Cold Blood’.

The Death of Mr Lazarescu
A simple film, long and slow and inaction-packed, depicting the tedious death of Dante Remus Lazarescu, an old and not especially endearing man hitting the end of his days alone (but surrounded by doctors and nurses) in Romania. A wonderful film which (like our lives, I hope) is not done justice by the description of its parts.

The Departed
Martin Scorsese! Jack Nicholson! Ray Winstone! Martin Sheen! Matt Damon! (Don’t you love him too since Jason Bourne?) Violence! A good old-fashioned twisty gangster plot! Did we mention that this is Scorsese AND Nicholson, together? Maybe you can do justice to this film with a description of its parts. Great songs, too.

Shortbus
Yes, there’s real sex in it, and it makes you feel good about the world and life in general. That’s more than you can say for any porn you’ve ever watched, isn’t it? Maybe there’s something for us all to think about there. Meanwhile, watch this. It’s not just about the sex, you know.

Anna Wood investigates the very different worlds of Leonard Cohen and British government public information films.

Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man
Dir: Lian Lunson
Cert PG

Somewhere between Johnny Cash and Neil Young sits Leonard Cohen, nudging his way up the league of maudlin, troubled 1970s greats who we forgot about for a while in the ‘80s. It’s a shame that this film won’t do much to bring anyone new to Cohen; if you’re not already a fan, listening to Nick Cave sing ‘I’m Your Man’ in a big-band, leg-kicking style that’s more Puppini Sisters that Zen brother will not make you want to buy Cohen’s Greatest Hits. Nor will hearing Cave (a man who thinks staring off camera and sighing is the way to demonstrate gravitas and sincerity) explain what a huge whopping great big deal it was to hear his friend’s older sister play ‘Songs Of Love And Hate’ in the Australian suburbs when he was a kid. We don’t need any more pompous talking heads telling us how great anything is. Nor do we need Bono (who’s actually less annoying than Nick Cave here) explaining that Cohen is “our Keats, our Byron.” What? Why can’t Keats be our Keats? What are you talking about?

Luckily, Leonard Cohen’s contributions here blow Nick Cave gently and effortlessly out of the water. There’s a good, silly story from Rufus Wainwright about the first time he met Cohen (in underpants, cooking noodles, feeding an injured baby bird with bits of sausage from the end of a toothpick), and a few warm words from Kate and Anna McGarrigle (talking about Montreal, their home town and Cohen’s), and one great line from Bono. But Leonard Cohen gives all the best lines, as is quite fitting, really. If only Channel 4 would have all its contributors spend 30 years studying Buddhism before appearing on those Top 100 programmes, they would deserve four hours of our lives.

The performances of Cohen’s songs are even patchier than the talking heads. None is great. Antony’s voice is beautiful, but a damaged, heartbreaking tremor like his is too much on a damaged, heartbreaking song like ‘If It Be Your Will’. Rufus Wainwright nails ‘Chelsea Hotel’, but has a touch of Michael Barrymore and Saturday night TV about him. Beth Orton, Jarvis Cocker, Martha Wainwright, Rufus Thompson, and his mum, Linda… it’s a cosy, well-bred (and slightly inbred) line-up. I’d rather hear the songs sung by Leonard himself, though, and on my own or in a bar with some friends, not at the Sydney Opera House (where these performances were filmed, in January 2005, during a Cohen tribute night), with classy lighting and jazzy backing singers. The film closes with footage of Cohen at the Slipper Room in New York, singing ‘Tower of Song’, with U2 as his backing band. It’s fine, but it doesn’t half look like he’s miming. (Over the final credits we get him, at last, singing ‘I’m Your Man’. Hopefully at this point Nick Cave’s heart is sinking with the shame.)

Bono talks about wishing he’d written Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’: “Lots of writers step up to the abyss, few look over the edge and laugh when they get there.” It’s a brilliant image (Bono, you can write!), and it’s also something you can’t imagine Bono doing (Bono, you can’t write that well!). Cohen, meanwhile, is tempted to start writing again… “It’s not a bad idea,” he rumbles. “It’s becoming more and more attractive to me, as we drink.”
Cohen also reads out a preface he wrote for the Chinese translation of his 1966 novel ‘Beautiful Losers’. It’s a humble, sweet, funny preface, and he’s pleasingly, un-humbly pleased with it.

Cohen has studied Buddhism since the 70s, and the two seem to be a very good fit. “I have no regrets, and no occasions for self-congratulations,” he begins, in his belly-warming bass voice. It takes him a year to write a song, apparently. The simplest bit of maths disputes this assertion, but you get the idea. He tries things over and over again, and – patiently, Zen-like – doesn’t seem to see much difference between getting things right and getting them wrong. “You’ve got to see how it works, then throw it away,” he explains. Clear as mud. The wise diamonds trickle out of his mouth.” You’ve got to go to work every day, but you’re not going to get it every day,” and, “You abandon your masterpiece and you sink into the real masterpiece,” and “The real mandate is not to fulfil the mission [given to you by your family]. Stand guiltless in the predicament in which you find yourself.” My favourite is written on a picture he made: “I never found the girl, I never got rich, follow me.” In fact, the most dreamy-eyed he gets about anyone is when talking about the man who brought him to Buddhism, Roshi, swooning, “He deeply cared, or didn’t care, I’m not sure which it is, about who I was.” It does seem to be a satisfying and rather beautiful friendship.

Cohen’s brief comments on his own songs are, predictably, some of the most cherishable parts of the films. He famously told a music journalist that ‘Chelsea Hotel #2’ is about Janis Joplin, and he still chides himself for it. “It’s the only time I’ve been so indiscreet. So ungallant,” he sighs. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” Then adding, rather sweetly, “Janis wouldn’t have minded; it’s my mother who would mind.” It’s a beautful song, and Janis surely wouldn’t have minded: she’s “so brave and so sweet”, and why would anyone have a problem with giving Leonard Cohen head on an unmade bed? Plus, of course, the best line is hers: “We are ugly, but we have the music.”

How to Survive the 1940s, and various Central Office of Information films
Cert PG

Last month our government’s own Professor Lindsay Davies, the National Director of Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (yep, that job title is real), was advising us to use hankies and wash our hands more often this winter as part of the official defence against the likely flu pandemic. “Coughs and sneezes spread diseases,” she reminded us – echoing the 1948 public information film which created that line.

The British Film Institute, in cahoots with the Central Office of Information (yes, such a coolly, cosily Orwellian institution exists too), has just released an anniversary collection of public information films which are showing in cinemas around the country. Since 1946, the COI has made short films to warn us about perils large and small, as well as a few things which don’t even fit into that huge remit. There is, for example, a 12-minute piece about how annoying it is to be a secretary in the 1950s and how, if you’re dictating a letter to Miss Jones, it really helps if you speak slowly and clearly. Mostly, though, the films are about keeping healthy, happy and safe. The older films from the 1940s are slow, ponderous, ten minute affairs. There is gorgeous lighting, pace, drama, characterisation. They are dull but effective, like an Allen Carr book. There’s a bit of flair about them: a word straight to camera from a lead character, ‘Third-Man’-style zither music, heavy noirish shadows, slo-mo chase scenes, background music that stops when a character flicks off the radio. There are even end credits, and there are moments of existential confusion: “You may think accidents only happen to other people but remember, to someone else, you’re another person. But wait a minute, that’s absurd, you’re you!” It’s a pleasingly random selection of dangers, from food poisoning to syphilis, dealt with gently, with grace and kindness, and a few hilariously English warnings: “It may be a bore to walk to a pedestrian crossing, your feet may ache, but it’s better than not having any feet.” The whole effect is calming – odd, really, as in a way it’s very alarming viewing (Most alarming is the danger of food poisoning, which seems impossible to avoid, what with unhygienic butchers, mice-ridden cafes, housewives who rummage about in the bin while making tea, and pub landladies with filthy glasses).

It all goes a bit celebrity in the ‘70s. Teach your children to swim (with encouragement from a young Rolf Harris, wearing a little pair of trunks in 1973); don’t pull on the tablecloth (“Charley says, ‘The hot water from the teapot hurts him very much’.”); wear a seatbelt (“Clunk click, every trip,” as Jimmy Saville warned, using a gruesome loose-egg-in-a-box visual to further persuade us). I especially like Alvin Stardust warning a little girl who crosses the road recklessly: “Hey, you must be out of your tiny mind.” That’s told her.

There’s more, though, beyond the nostalgia and the laughing at the quaint English people. Watching the films in chronological order, the casual distaste for women (complete with mother-in-law jokes) gives way to raised consciousness. A 1969 film explains why young women need to invest in their careers now so that they can have more satisfying lives and greater options once the kids leave home. The one that has no place in this smooth canon of public health and reassurance is the 1975 Protect and Survive film. Without ever mentioning ‘nuclear’, it explains calmly, with diagrams rather than actors, what to do with dead bodies “after an attack is over”. Of course there is no mention of what to do to avoid the danger in the first place – how could there be? – and there’s a blackly surreal, yawning gap between the film’s ostensible target – to make practical suggestions – and it’s real one – to make citizens feel that there might be some point in taking any notice of them. The only reassurance here comes with the knowledge that this campaign sparked Protest and Survive, bolstered CND and inspired Raymond Briggs’ ‘When the Wind Blows’. And at least our government no longer pretends that, if we are annilhilated by nuclear enemies, hiding under the kitchen table and putting the corpses in the garden will help.

Anna Wood comes face to face with two of life’s crux occasions – death and Beastie Boys concerts

Awesome: I Fuckin Shot That!
Dir: Nathanial Hörnblowér
Cert 15
(Cinema and DVD)

In October 2004, the Beastie Boys handed out 50 digital and hi-8 cameras to fans who’d bought tickets for their hometown gig at New York’s Madison Square Gardens, plus another 11 to friends and crew. They were told to keep shooting through the entire show, and their footage has been deftly cut and pasted together by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch (directing under his favoured pseudonym Nathanial Hörnblowér) and a team of four editors. The result is a film that is a little bit more than post-pub background noise for men of a certain age, with a hoard of Fat Lace magazines and a skateboard in the loft – although it would serve that purpose very well.

The image quality is terrible most of the time, and wildly changeable. The less light there is, the grainier the image. The whole thing teeters on the brink of boring; sometimes there’s a hint that the filmmakers themselves got bored during post-production – they start playing with solarisation, making the image black and white, or negative, making it look like animation. There’s also a point where I realise that however talented Mixmaster Mike (the fourth Beastie, kind of) is on the decks, scratching is pretty boring, too.

But I also realise that the songs are still great songs (the sound quality certainly wasn’t recorded by amateurs). And I hadn’t thought before about the worldwide goodwill and fondness that drenches the Beastie Boys. Everyone likes them, or everyone of a certain generation. Adrock was one of the first men I found sexy, when I was 13 (yep, always had great taste). Now that I’m 32, Adrock is about to turn 40 and he’s still hot. Phewee. There’s a touch of gimmickry about them, a bit of novelty band (even if they have been going 25 years), and something a bit startling about three middle-aged men still in their tracksuits, still acting with that childish and childlike way, all excited and silly and playful. But the politics of the Beastie Boys, this open and energetic approach, and the handing out of cameras so that the audience can capture the band: these three things sit well together, come from the same place. The Beastie Boys have become an institution, and this ramshackle, honest film proves it without pomp and with plenty of chutzpah.

The Death of Mr Lazarescu
Dir: Cristi Puiu
Cert 15

We all die, and if we’re lucky we get old first. Is our life of making friends and families just a way of buffering ourselves against death, investing in people who might stick by us as we get old and helpless and lonely? Is our death and our fear of death the impetus for everything we do? ‘The Death Of Mr Lazarescu’ does exactly what it says on the tin. An old, but not that old, man lives alone in Bucharest, drinks the local moonshine (“double-strength alcohol, burnt sugar and a vanilla pod, but no chemicals”) and wakes up one day vomiting, with a headache. That evening he calls an ambulance, and then asks his neighbours for help. There is talk of a sister in Targu Mures. His daughter is in Canada. The first we know of her is when we notice the Kim Wilde posters in one of Mr Lazarescu’s rooms: the signs of an absent child. Lazarescu is alone, he is perhaps not that likeable, he may be an alcoholic. Like ‘United 93’, ‘The Death of Mr Lazarescu’ documents details and behaviour without spin or judgement. The film is occupied by different people who show strange combinations of caring and unkindness. The ambulancewoman who is Lazarescu’s most constant companion as he dies sticks with him, takes him from hospital to hospital to find him help, but is oddly detached, too. The neighbours show some kind of gruff, affable concern and offer advice and medication as well as moussaka, but can’t be bothered to go with him to the hospital. Other characters are part of other, livelier stories that we don’t see: another neighbour who borrowed a drill; a romance in the first hospital; a local bus crash. Mr Lazarescu is the blank, dying centre of the film and they all distance themselves from him, as if death can be avoided, like loneliness, if you just manage not to get too close to people who have it. Lazarescu is chided for drinking because people around him assume that is what is killing him, and as if being teetotal would make you immortal. There is morbid talk of ulcers and colon and liver before doctors settle on a subdural hematoma and neoplasm as the causes of this impending death: his brain is bleeding and he has liver cancer. By this time, we’re so aware of how much can go wrong with our bodies, like cinema-bred hypochondriacs, that it’s no surprise that our protagonist has not one but two deadly conditions. In hospital, doctors seem to take Lazarescu’s body from him, just as illness and death do. They question him without explaining their questions, they tap him with a little hammer, get him to look up, down, left, right. He is washed and shaved ready for an operation, and his body seems to have less and less to do with him. With each new encounter, with each new doctor, nurse or surgeon, he has to repeat his name: Lazarescu Dante Remus. It’s a beautiful name. As he dies, the name fades, he becomes more and more distant from it, it no longer seems relevant. He begins to mumble, about his family, and the doctors don’t understand him. He is making no sense to others: a supreme form of loneliness, and a detachment, a step towards death. His final thoughts, about family, unexplained names, are a little bit like the ‘Rosebud’ in Citizen Kane: family is what matters in the end, apparently, or at least what you’re thinking about. (I am more convinced, I think, by another image from Citizen Kane: the young woman with the white parasol, glimpsed once and never forgotten). Death is not a moment, it’s a long time. This film takes a long time too, but it’s not so much boring as honest. Illness, loneliness, dying can be dull. It’s shot with handheld digital cameras, and the lighting is ugly; it looks as cold and unadorned as it is. In the end, Lazarescu, Dante Remus Lazarescu, would have been better staying at home and dying alone on his stinky sofa, in front of a good film. Not this film though: what would you want your last film to be? Not this, something with a little more beauty, just a bit.

This month, Anna Wood assesses ‘United 93’, Paul Greengrass’s take on 9/11, while a DVD reissue of Escape to Victory provides a rather less demanding history lesson

United 93
Director: Paul Greengrass
Cert: 15

United 93 shows events, as best we can imagine them or piece them back together, on the morning of September 11 2001 on the fourth plane, the one that was hijacked but didn’t hit its target in Washington, in which the passengers realised what was happening and attacked their hijackers. We see it almost in real time, over 111 minutes, with no context, no characterisation, no hindsight, almost like a crime reconstruction.

By showing us events so clinically, director Paul Greengrass allows us to think in greater detail about 9/11, and remember what happened and how it affected us and continues to affect us. There’s no subplot, no romance, no human interest stories, no crass dramatic flourishes, just a basic, powerful rendition. The clinical depiction gives us a macro-lens clarity, it allows room for all kinds of questions and reflections, for thoughts to creep in, for reactions and feelings we may have forgotten about to resurface.

At the start of the film, we see something of how bustling and busy Air Traffic Control centres are; we’re reminded of how jobs can be so boring and still so important. It induces a dull panic. With all that detail and procedure, all those hundreds of people working in ATC, how was anyone going to be able to see what was happening or act quickly enough? The first hijacked plane is being followed on the ATC screen, a green blob going in the wrong direction. “We’ve lost it. It’s disappeared somewhere around Manhattan,” says one controller. Moments later the World Trade Centre is on fire, but some time passes before those tracking and advising planes link their missing aircraft to the burning building. Meanwhile, Flight United 93 is taking off, with no warnings, no useful contact, no clue. There’s no one to blame here, we just see it as it happens.

There’s no political criticism in the film either. Clearance from the President to shoot down hijacked plane is sought, but the President cannot be found. Nor can the Vice-President. Now we know where Bush was, and that he fled to a bunker after he heard about the attacks. Here, we just see the phonecalls being made, professionals trying to find out if they are allowed to use fighter planes to bring down commercial aircraft. After the controllers realise that their fighter planes aren’t actually armed, we hear the desperate suggestion, “What if we ram them and then eject?” It feels odd that we are so gripped when we know what’s going to happen. Would fighter planes have made any difference by that point anyway?

We see the details, the humdrum, the polite but impersonal interactions; the unappetising plane food, the liquid soap and little taps in the toilets, the cheap curtains between first class and standard. We hear the phonecalls to loved ones, as well as a call by one hijacker to his own loved ones before he boards the plane. There are a couple of hammy lines, a couple of tacky shots, but the pivotal points, the embarrassment of seminal moments, are handled with surgical calm. The view of the World Trade Centre through the plane window is easy to miss; when we hear “Let’s roll”, it’s not some action-movie line, it’s part of a longer, fearful, determined utterance. When the planes hit, there’s no music, no drama, just the impact and the calm, contained reactions of those in the ATC tower. Some of the actors are actually staff who were working that day.

One man who plays himself in the film, Ben Sliney, is a counterpoint to Bush: he was there, and he took what action he could. He was the Federal Aviation Authority’s director of operations, and 11 September was his first day on the job. Sliney grounded all flights when he realised the US was under attack: around 4200 planes that were up in the air were ordered down. This was a relatively small, courageous decision on a day full of decisions by ordinary people that shook up some of our ideas about what courage is.

Remembering things is not so simple as it sounds. No one has forgotten 9/11, but remembering is more than storing away a date along with some rage, anxiety and incomprehension. It’s an ongoing process. The events on that morning were the epicentre of so much, and the start of wars, but the people on those planes – or in the two towers – didn’t know who was killing them or why. Looking at this depiction of them is as disturbing and upsetting as it’s bound to be, but with our five years’ distance, our five years that approximately 3000 people didn’t have, it’s powerful and almost a relief to look so closely one part of the events, to think about it in these close-up terms. In our eagerness to remember, a film which meticulously documents events as they may have happened, with rigour and an even hand, is invaluable.

Escape to Victory
Director: John Huston
Cert: PG

No doubt through some kind of PR cunning rather than coincidence, ‘Escape to Victory’ is being rereleased on DVD just ahead of this year’s Germany-hosted World Cup. For anyone who isn’t familiar with the film, it tells the tale of Allied prisoners of war who play a match against Nazis during WW2 and in the process, escape (I’m hardly giving the ending away – it’s in the title after all.)

It’s really a terrible film in all kinds of ways, but then one reason it’s so loved by millions is because it’s so clunky and naive. There are no pretensions here, and barely any acting. The ridiculous plot is helped along by step-by-step dialogue from a cast who can play football but can’t necessarily play their parts. Michael Caine, perhaps the ultimate clunky-dialogue actor, stars as a former England player, Captain John Colby. The match is arranged when Colby is recognised in the POW camp by Nazi Major Karl von Steiner (Max von Sydow), who played for Germany before the war. To add to this fabulous bit of footballing coincidence, the camp also holds Bobby Moore and Pele, plus Osvaldo Ardiles, Mike Summerbee, Co Prins, John Wark, and other Euro stars of the 70s whose names evoke delight and wistful sighs from a certain kind of man down the pub.

This strangely pedigreed cast also helps explain why this film is so good, even though it’s so bad. Von Sydow is a brilliant actor (that was him in ‘The Seventh Seal’ and ‘Pelle the Conqueror’), Caine is a national institution; ‘Escape to Victory’ was directed by John Huston, who 40 years earlier shot ‘The Maltese Falcon’, and 20 years earlier, ‘The Misfits’. They were past their peaks, but it was quite a team making this film. And that’s before you put in the footballers – and Sylvester Stallone. ‘Escape to Victory’ was made in 1981, and post-‘Rocky’, pre-‘Rambo’ Stallone was a pretty perfect choice for the GI goalkeeper (although it’s best not to think about Steve McQueen in The Great Escape while you’re watching Stallone do his sporty, cocky thing). Is there any other film with such a brilliantly blokey cast?

But the key to the film is how it deals with the Nazis and, obliquely, with the Holocaust. Like the best kind of bloke down the pub, it’s absolutely matter-of-fact, generous and good-hearted, without being at all realistic. Colby has five East European footballers pulled out of labour camps to play with the Allies (no one ever says Jewish or concentration camp, perhaps they wouldn’t have, I don’t know). The men arrive, skeletal, lousy. These five are actually, logically, the nub of the film. They are the reason the others agree to go to Paris to play in a huge Nazi propaganda match, and the reason they agree to attempt an escape. Most of these men are risking their lives when they could just go back to their frankly rather cushy camp, but the Eastern Europeans would be going back to their deaths and so they all must play.

At the end of the climactic match, when our boys make good their escape with the help of the crowd (“Some of the Resistance are on the pitch…”), the score is actually a draw. It’s still a victory for the Allies, of course, and Sydow watches paternally as Stallone, Caine, Pele and the others are pulled into the crowd, covered in civilian clothes. Sydow gives us a regretful, humane Nazi, one who dreams of “solving arguments with football rather than war,” but one who would be despicable under any scrutiny. But this isn’t about the Nazis and the evils of war, it’s about unity, loyalty and the positive force of football. Really. Which might make it a perfect 2006 World Cup DVD release.