On running

I have developed something of a passion for running; for the exercise and for the satisfaction of accomplishing something with my body, and also because it is a time of concentration, no stress or concerns, just the running. And I try to challenge myself, with running longer or faster, depending on the mood. Sometimes I get inspiration from others, like my friend Ellen who runs like a champ, or from reading books like What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, one of his non-fiction books. Both he and Ellen run marathons but I am hesitant to do so myself because that would make running organised and objectified. I want it to be just me and my running, preferably on empty roads in the early mornings. It is a special sense of freedom and self-sufficiency.

Although there is a lot of running in films, there are not that many films on the very theme of running. As an alumni of the University of St Andrews I should probably mention Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson 1981), but I want to emphasis three other films in this post. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson 1962), The Jericho Mile (Michael Mann 1979) and Gallipoli (Peter Weir 1981).

Richardson's film is an adaptation of Alan Sillitoe's short novel (which is as good as the film), and Tom Courtenay plays Colin Smith, the lonely runner. He is sent to a prison school in the English countryside where the Governor, played by Michael Redgrave, is very eager for the school to win a long distance race against another school and Colin, an angry young man, is his best hope. Running is Colin's passion, an escape from the bleak, unpromising life he lives. Each running session becomes a stream-of-consciousness where he can direct his anger and resentment towards something that gives him satisfaction. But it also gives him some self-esteem because he is so good at running that he has the power to decide whether to win or lose a race. Without that he would be a broken man, but now he has got something to hold on to.

In Gallipoli the running is less of a necessity but more a game, at least initially. As the title suggests it is set during World War 1 and about two Australian boys, the fastest runners in Western Australia, who sign up for fighting against the Germans in Europe. As so many others they see it as an adventure, and something that will soon be over. For Australians the battle at Gallipoli, Turkey, is still today something of a historical trauma, but also an event that has formed Australia as a modern state. It is a trauma because the battle was a catastrophe, a military blunder that ended in a massive slaughter of soldiers. (Every year, April 25, is Anzac Day in memory of that battle. Anzac is an acronym for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and the significance for Gallipoli in New Zealand is similar to what it is in Australia, as is Anzac Day.)

The two men, played by Mark Lee and Mel Gibson, first meet when competing against each other and then they walk together across the desert to Perth in order to enlist. They stop in Cairo on the way, racing towards the Sphinx, and then come to the front line which is where the fun stops and terror takes over. The film has a weakness in its portrayal of those who are not Australians, such as the Egyptians and the British, and the New Zealanders are not even mentioned; it is very much an Australian film and it feeds the myth about Gallipoli. But it is still a good film, partly because of its imagery and especially because of the final half hour or so in the trenches. The last sequence is extraordinary powerful, with the agony, tension and unbearable human cost of the war all coming together in the last shot, of a runner shot down in midstream. Here running will not save you, strong legs are no match against machine guns.

The Jericho Mile is more similar to The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner as it is about a prisoner, Murphy, at Folsom, who spends most of the time on his own, focusing on his running. In the opening sequence everybody else is seen talking, hanging out, goofing around, but not Murphy. He is running all by himself, shutting out the outside world, escaping into himself. It is Michael Mann's first film, made for TV, and it is a powerful film because of the story and of Mann's command of space and editing and because the film is almost as focused on Murphy's running as he is. Initially he runs for himself only, as in the first sequence, but over time his running becomes a protest against the system, his way of sticking it to the man if you like, and he becomes a hero to his fellow inmates. In a prison with a clear hierarchy and racial intolerance he unites them all in an almost utopian way. Here running is a liberating force, even something transcendent. This scene says it all:



There are many scenes in this film where the emotional undercurrent is enough to make anybody cry. Its weakness is the acting, or rather Mann's direction of the actors. They come across as forced, and the timing is often off. Thief (1981), Mann's next film, is his first work of greatness but The Jericho Mile still deserves a DVD/Blu-ray launch.

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There are of course also women who run, just think of Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer 1998), but this post is part of a challenge to write something about "running men". Here are the other contributors in the challenge. In English: The Velvet Café. In Swedish: Bilder och ord, Jojjenito, Fiffi, Filmitch, Fripps filmrevyer, Except fear, The Nerd Bird, Har du inte sett den?.

Here finally is a shot from Ford's Drums Across the Mohawk (1939). It is not about running but it does have a beautiful sequence of a man (played by Henry Fonda) running across open land to get help.

On wonderment in cinema

A Canterbury Tale (1944)

Max Weber has appeared on this blog before, the previous time regarding his ideas about ideal types. This post is related to another idea of his; that in the modern era society, through rationalisations and secularisations, are experiencing a loss of enchantment, of the mystical, the irrational. The term he used to describe this modern phenomenon was Entzauberung (a term previously used by Friedrich Schiller), meaning disenchantment or demystification. In a speech from 1917, "Science as a Vocation", Weber explained it as that the modern person believes "that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted."

I would like to borrow this idea and apply it to cinema, or rather; I would like to suggest that we can talk about a kind of cinema, from a number of filmmakers, that have kept this sense of the magical, the irrational. Note that "enchantment" is not referring to something necessarily joyful, but something mysterious or spiritual or strange, so calling it a cinema of enchantment might give the wrong impression. Better perhaps to call it a cinema of strangeness, or wonderment. In his book The Art and Politics of Film (from 2000) John Orr suggests that Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Parajanov, Aleksandr Sokurov and others working under communist dictatorships brought in a new style of filmmaking, which used religious symbolism to undermine social realism ("a fusion of the marvellous and the tragic") and Orr calls this "a cinema of wonder" (he also includes Theo Angelopoulos and a few others). That is not what I am talking about though, my scope here is much larger.

One example is Jacques Tourneur, a filmmaker I have written about before, and who made films where there is generally found a sense of the otherworldly, of ghosts and monsters, and also uncertainties and ambiguities about what is real and what is imagined. A contemporary example is the Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, in whose films ghosts, apparitions and spirits mingled freely with ordinary mortals.

Tropical Malady (2004)

Hayao Miyazaki is another filmmaker who likes to show gods, monsters and fantasy-figures go about their daily business.

Spirited Away (2001)

It can be found, of course, in surrealist films or magic realism, or a cinema of abstractions. But it can also appear in films that are ostensibly realistic. Films in which there are no embodiments of magic or wonders but that have what might be called a pantheistic view of nature and the world. Terrence Malick is a contemporary example of this, as in The Thin Red Line (1998). He has even made a film with the title To the Wonder (2012), although in Malick's case that sense of wonder can occasionally feel overbearing. Another example is the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in which nature seems to be imbued with a life-force of its own, and where every place has a sense of magic and wonder. In their films the spaces in which the characters find themselves deeply affect them in ways they do not understand. See for example A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I'm Going (1945), Black Narcissus (1947) or Gone to Earth (1950).

I Know Where I'm Going

Black Narcissus

One common way of letting the audience share the characters' sense of wonder is by close-ups of their faces. In the case of Steven Spielberg's films (which are generally built around a sense of awe and wonderment) it has given birth to the expression "the Spielberg face", zooming in on the face of a person looking up at something wondrous, scary, or both, which happens more or less in all of Spielberg's films.

François Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Filmmakers who might otherwise be seen as more materialistic, like Michael Mann, can also include such moments of wonder. With Mann it is often related to animals (as I have written about before here). This clip show such a moment, an encounter with two coyotes in downtown Los Angeles. After this neither man is the same any more.

Ordinary, daily life might sometimes feel dull and filled with inordinate amounts of concrete, and one of the joys of art is to bring forward other dimensions, to enchant the world, or re-enchant it, to suggest that we are not all there is. It can also be subversive, as magical realism often is. It is not a religious thing, although for some it undoubtedly is, and neither is it about a belief in aliens or ghosts, just that there is something beyond the logical and the rational, something that is undefinable, but intuitive and emotional. We do not always understand what is happening to us and why.

The strange encounter with a wolf in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009).

Mann and Animal

The body of work of Michael Mann is one of the greatest in modern cinema, or indeed any cinema. There is too much to write about for just one post, but today I will highlight the presence of animals, metaphorical and real, in his films.

In Heat (1995) Justine Hanna (Diane Venora) says to her husband Vincent (Al Pacino) "You sift through the detritus, you read the terrain, you search for signs of passing, for the scent of your prey, and then you hunt them down." It is one of many examples of links, implied or explicit, between humans and animals in Mann's films.

There is for example a visual link between Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) in The Last of the Mohicans (1992)  and Vincent Hanna in Heat. In the beginning of the film Hawkeye is running through the forest, hunting a deer, and eventually he shoots it with a rifle. Just after the shot is fired there is a close-up of his face, and in slow motion he lowers the weapon. In the end of Heat, there is the same shot, this time of Hanna's face after he has just shot his prey, Neil McCauley (Robert de Niro).

In Manhunter (1986) there is an amazing scene where the blind woman Reba McClane (Joan Allen) caresses a sedated tiger at an animal hospital, while the man who is her would-be killer (Tom Noonan) is watching, acting like if it was him she was caressing.

In Collateral (2004) when Vince (Tom Cruise) and Max (Jamie Foxx) are driving through some L.A. wasteland they encounter two coyotes, crossing the street. In one sense the two coyotes are Max and Vince, and at the same time their appearance changes everything because it happens right before there is a switch in the power structure between Vince and Max, with Max getting the upper hand.

These connections between animals and humans, and the transferring of the roles of hunter and hunted from one character to another, says a lot about Mann's view of his characters. It also seems to suggest that in this world, if you scratch the surface, you will find we are all animals, with basic predatory needs. Perhaps there are only two kinds of men in this world, savages and noble savages.

Brothers in Arms

For some reason one of the most read blog posts here is the one about the cooperation between Derek Jarman and Pet Shop Boys (found here). I thought I continue along the music track but instead of British electronica it will be British rock this time, in the form of Dire Straits. I am not a huge fan, nothing there like my deep love for Pet Shop Boys, but some of their songs are great, and Brothers in Arms (from 1985) in particular. It is a long, majestic, melancholic piece of music, and it has been used many times in film and TV to accentuate the mood, often when something important and/or sad is about to happen. Here are some examples:

The first is from the second season of The West Wing, the episode Two Cathedrals, one of the best of the series. It is when president Bartlett (Martin Sheen) has to decide whether to run for re-election or not, whether he is a quitter or a fighter.



The next clip is less amazing, but it is still good, and I happen to have a weakness for Spy Game (Tony Scott 2001) in general, so any excuse to include it. Nathan (Robert Redford) tells the story of how he recruited (or tricked rather) Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) into working for the CIA.



But my favourite might be from Miami Vice, the original TV-series, the episode Out Where the Buses Don't Run from the second season. Crockett (Don Johnson) and Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) are given a tip and drive of in the black Ferrari through the deserted streets of Miami, street lights flashing. Unfortunately I cannot embed it, but click on the link and you are there

The clip ends with the words "Executive producer Michael Mann" which reminds me that I have yet to write a blog post about Mann, despite him being my favourite filmmaker for the last decades. That love affair began in the late 80s with Miami Vice.

But to end today, here is Dire Straits's own video.

Tintin

The early Tintin albums were inspired by silent cinema, and they in turn inspired cinema. But all of Hergé's 23 proper Tintin albums, are should they be called graphic novels?, are very cinematic yet there have been few film versions. I myself have seen only one, the non-animated Tintin and the Blue Oranges (Tintin et les oranges bleues 1964), which is not based on any of the albums. I have also seen a TV-version, which was actually pretty good.

But I have never felt the need for any film adaptations. For me the albums have been enough, and I have been a Tintin fan since I was a young boy. I have read them in Swedish, English and French, and I even have an album in Japanese at home. I know them all very well, and I adore them. Especially the style, Hergé's ligne claire, which has become a very influential and easily recognisable style. Another thing about them is how they grew over time, developed in many different ways. Hergé changed when the world changed, both the global world and his own personal world, and the albums changed with him. First they were imaginative but rather crude, and in the case of Tintin in the Congo (Tintin au Congo 1931, re-edited colour version 1946) embarrassingly racist. Then came the middle period of such work as the anti-fascist King Ottokar's Sceptre (Le Sceptre d'Ottokar 1938, re-edited colour version 1947) and then the late masterpieces with the emotionally complex and beautifully illustrated Tintin in Tibet (Tintin au Tibet 1960) as the high point. That album, I think, is one of the greatest drawn art work of the 20th century. Other highlights are Blue Lotus (Le Lotus bleu 1936, re-edited colour version 1946), the album with which Hergé stopped being "just" a cartoonist and became an artist and storyteller, and the double feature The Seven Crystal Balls (Les 7 boules de cristal 1948) and Prisoners of the Sun (Le Temple du soleil 1949).
Now Steven Spielberg's film The Adventures of Tintin is here, and I saw it yesterday. Spielberg has been a fan of Tintin for several decades and got the rights from Hergé's, or to use his proper name Georges Remi's, wife in 1983, after Remi had died. Remi liked Spielberg's films and was happy for him to have the rights. But it has taken a long time before anything came of it.

I liked the film. For one thing it looks great, it is witty and it got a very strong drive. But somehow what is good about the film is also a problem. Spielberg has such a strong personality as a filmmaker, his style is easily recognisable and forceful and it all but negates Hergé's presence. What I mean is that although based on two albums there is very little left of the feel, texture and style of Tintin, whereas almost every shot clearly signals Spielberg's presence. It is not so much an adaptation as an appropriation. These means that there is a strong sense of wonder, and dazzling displays of visual imaginations, Spielberg at the top of his game. But there is also a certain breathlessness to the film, which I feel is a bit inappropriate. Hergé's albums are not breathless, they are more measured. Also, I did not like John Williams music, and there was too much of it at that. One thing that has got lost altogether is the subconscious level. Hergé filled his albums with hallucinations, dreams and nightmares, elements which he sometimes took from his own dark secrets. But the film is all surface.

They have taken the album The Secret of the Unicorn (Le Secret de la Licorne 1943) and blended it with The Crab With the Golden Claws (Le Crabe aux pinces d'or 1941, 1943). They are not related, but since they have taken so very little from The Crab..., I suppose they just wanted that album's first meeting of Tintin and Haddock . But when I saw the film and the traitorous first mate Allan appeared I thought, almost angrily, "Hey, he's not supposed to be in this adventure!" Then I realised what they had done and calmed down. It also says something about the quality of the film that I immediately recognised Allan, even though I was not expecting him to be there.

Of the new things that has been added to the film (but which are not in any album) a car chase, involving a hawk, a tank and a collapsing damn, was particularly breathtaking, even though they took place in a stereotypical fantasy of a Middle East kingdom. But the best part of the film was the opening, after the title sequence. It takes place on a square where there is a market, and a man is drawing a picture of somebody else. But we do not see the faces of either man. When the faces are revealed we see that it is Georges Remi drawing Tintin. I thought it was a nice gesture.

So there it is. A meeting between two of the most successful makers of popular art in the 20th century, Hergé and Spielberg (and Peter Jackson on the side), has resulted in a film which is both a dazzling piece of film, and a disappointment. It actually ties in well with what I wrote not long ago about adaptations. It is also fun to consider which other filmmaker's would have been suitable. A version of The Castafiore Emerald (Les Bijoux de la Castafiore 1963) by Ernst Lubitsch or perhaps even by Eric Rohmer would have been something. A Michael Mann version of The Calculus Affair (L'Affaire Tournesol 1956) would be interesting as well. But the beauty of the albums is still unsurpassed.

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There is a very good documentary about Tintin and Hergé called Tintin et Moi (Anders Ostergaard, 2003). Not sure of its availability but look for it, it is worth the effort.