Les Baricades Misterieuses

Francois Couperin was a 17th century French Baroque composer. Now, I don't want to pretend like I know from 17th century French composers. But that doesn't mean the spell that "Les Barricades Misterieuses", which I heard for the first time a few weeks back in The Tree of Life, is less all-encompassing than any it might cast over someone classical music-literate. It haunts my waking hours. It reduces me to near-tears in office. And what a tremendous title! What mysterious barricades is Couperin talking about? The piece is so simply and elegantly constructed that barricades are the last thing that come to mind.

Rabbit Hole

Films about couples who’ve lost a child are invariably a bruising experience. Often, it’s not just the dark subject matter but also the fact that directors faced with such material often try to break though the sorrow with shocking dramatic devices. Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now had a serial killer dwarf. Lars Von Trier’s cheery Antichrist had genital mutilations. By those standards, Rabbit Hole is pretty tame. Sure, Nicole Kidman starts stalking a high school student and Aaron Eckhart trades group therapy for getting stoned in a car, but compared to a self-disemboweling fox, that’s practically normal.

Rabbit Hole is about a couple, Howie and Becca Corbett, who lost their son in a car accident outside their house. Eight months have passed since the tragedy but they’re still struggling to return any semblance of normalcy to their lives. The film shows how all-pervasive grief can be, how it can ruin anything from a conversation with a friend to a trip to the supermarket. David Lindsay-Abaire’s script, adapted from his own 2005 play, allows Howie and Becca moments of humour and spark, but their personalities mostly remain submerged, like icebergs in a sea of sadness.

Grief without catharsis is one of the least rewarding cinematic experiences, which is why so many sad films end up veering towards violence, be it physical or mental, or high drama. Former indie director John Cameron Mitchell may have considered these devices tawdry, but the downside of this restraint is that Rabbit Hole remains tied-down in its grief. Early on when Becca says “Nothing will ever be nice again,” one assumes it’s just a low moment. By the end, though, you end up agreeing with her. Though there’s little to fault in this movie, there are hardly any moments you’d like to take away with you either.

A version of this piece appeared in Time Out Delhi.

Reeling

A Time Out piece I wrote, about the Hollywood Musicals festival (Fri Aug 19-Sun Aug 21) at the American Centre. Rocky Horror got cancelled but I'm including the writeup I did for it here, mainly because it gives me an excuse to hear "Hot Patootie Bless My Soul", which is hands-down the funniest title in rock 'n roll, again.

Berlin, Astaire, Berkley, Kelly, Rogers, Crosby, Caron. If they’re all in heaven together, that cloud they’re on must be one non-stop party. Rather like the films they left behind. This fortnight, revisit classic song-and-dance films at Celebrating the Hollywood Musical, presented by The American Centre and Cine Darbaar. The eclectic selection dates back to 1929, but also includes releases as recent as 2007. Here’s our picks from the line-up.

Top Hat (1935)

Hollywood ignores the Depression and heads to a Europe of the imagination, with Venice recreated, art-deco style, in a studio. Dale Tremont is awoken one night by someone tap-dancing on the floor above her. The culprit is Jerry Travers, and since he’s played by Fred Astaire and she by Ginger Rogers, we all know where this is headed.

Reasons to watch: Dance equals love whenever Fred and Ginger are together onscreen. Watch them tear up the floor in “The Piccolino”, and tear up yourself when they do “Dancing Cheek to Cheek”.

An American in Paris (1951)

Gene Kelly is an expatriate painter (why doesn’t he get a job dancing?) who, despite his wealthy patron’s advances, only has eyes for Leslie Caron, who’s engaged to someone else.

Reasons to watch: Eye-popping colour, the smoothest of opening scenes and a stunning climactic ballet (with one of the sexist moments in filmed dance), all of which bear the overblown touch of director Vincente Minelli. Oscar Levant as a misanthropic pianist is great too.

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Gene Kelly meets Debbie Reynolds on a 1920s movie set. He’s a star, she’s dubbing for his opposite number. They dance, sing, fall in love, dance some more.

Reasons to watch: The elasticity of Donald O’Connor in “Make ’em laugh”. Jean Hagen as Kelly’s co-star, with a voice so ridiculous it earned her an Oscar nom. The title track, in which Kelly uses everything from a lamppost to a stern cop to augment his hypnotically graceful moves.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Tim Burton’s macabre vision found a perfect match in this 1979 Stephen Sondheim musical. Based on a Victorian pulp serial, it’s the story of a barber out to avenge his wife’s death. Sondheim’s cerebral melodies guide the viewer through shaving contests, throat-slittings and the baking of human meat pies.

Reasons to watch: The emotion that Alan Rickman and Johnny Depp, neither of them trained singers, bring to their rendition of “Pretty Women”. The artistry of production designer Dante Ferretti, also responsible for creating the grimy, cruel worlds of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Two lovebirds out on a rainy night take shelter in a castle: a standard B-movie start for a B-movie that set its own standards. The young couple are soon beset by dozens of perverted cross-dressing glam-rockers, led by Dr Frank-N-Furter of Transsexual, Transylvania.

Reasons to watch: The possibility, however remote, of this being the one link between Elvis and Lady Gaga. The song titles: “Sweet Transvestite”, “Dammit Janet”, “Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul”. Tim Curry, who is so outrageously winning as Dr Frank-N-Furter it’s difficult to believe this was his first onscreen appearance.

Anatomy of a scene: Boogie Nights

The animal strains of “Spill the Wine” have just started as the chauffer in suit and tie walks towards the pool. Maybe it’s because he’s fully clothed but the camera has no use for him and is diverted to the black man in the red Roy Rogers shirt arguing with his girlfriend about whether the cowboy look is coming back. He gets up in disgust but we only follow him as far as the next table where a Hispanic man is trying to get word through to Jack via a lady so pale it feels like a medium-size slice of irony to put her in such strong sunlight. From there it’s on to a Joni Mitchell look-alike drawn to a table with an insultingly healthy man who’s doing lines. He has powder to spare but the camera is distracted yet again, this time by something sylph-like walking through like no one’s watching, taking a drag, disdainfully throwing the rest away. Seven small steps and she’s swimming away and surely now you’d expect that pesky camera to quit its stalking. But the water’s so tempting it dives in right after her. Eric Burdon’s voice gains in echo as her legs thrash decisively, propelling her away from us. Abandoned, possibly a little disappointed, the camera bobs like a cork on the surface as a man in orange trunks does a jack knife, the bubbles rushing up like a toast to a summer day so intoxicating it could scarcely be real.

This one-take scene is from Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterful Boogie Nights. As the director acknowledges in his DVD commentary, it’s a very close replica of a similar poolside scene from the 1965 Soviet-Cuban production I Am Cuba. While the debt to the original is undeniable, there is one key difference – the mood. In I Am Cuba, the sunshine is deceptive. You may be watching people get high but you’re not encouraged to feel high yourself. In Boogie Nights everything is dappled and smooth, and you’re being asked to either glide by or jump in. It’s like you could pause this scene at any point and years later still be able to recall what that particular day was all about just from looking at that one isolated moment.

Watch: The Boogie Nights scene and the I Am Cuba one.

Bitte Orca

There is no need for a song-by-song examination of The Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca. They all cohere into a trilling, thrilling whole. The numbers cast fond glances at art rock and modern R&B but refuse to settle in with either. The guitars are largely unplugged, with very little strumming, something which helps keep the songs unmoored and fresh even after multiple listens (I still can’t pin the individual tunes down in my head). Instead of riffs, there are complicated plucked figures – swirls of sounds that the voices can dance around. The drumming is splashy, crashing in when you least expect it, a necessary bit of violence to offset the delicacy of the vocals and guitars. It all comes together, song after song; in the enchanting backing vocal of “Cannibal Resource”, tossed at lightning speed between the three female vocalists; in the invigorating violence of “The Bride”; in the way “Fluorescent Half Dome” breaks down into what sounds like the end of the party and the dawn of a new day.

Bitte Orca’s that rare album which really is impossible to categorise, not because it hops or melds genres because it creates its own. If they are influences, they have been consumed and absorbed into the bloodstream of the band’s sound. Though I thought of Talking Heads the first time I heard them, and later Bjork (the band has collaborated with both), the Projectors are their own idiosyncratic snowflake. Talking Heads always seemed to be heading towards the groove in their songs; the Projectors are constantly dodging it (except on “Stillness is the Move”, a possible clue as to why this track was deemed most fit for radio play). And while they share Bjork’s off-kilter approach to vocalisation and sound, their harmonic juggling is based around melodies more welcoming than those of the combatively experimental Icelandic songstress.

No vocal combination has ever sounded the way the Projectors do on Bitte Orca. The reason is more than the sum of three superb female singers – Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian, Haley Dekle – and Longstreth’s pleasant falsetto. It’s the way their voices are arranged, how they work in harmony and counterpoint to each other, how traditional ideas of backing vocals are transformed into something as unpredictable as birdsong. Most of the songs have Longstreth or one of the girls laying down the main melody, and the others circling and adding to it with little fills. Some of these interjections are like cuckoos peeping out of a clock, others like a bunch of children rushing through the door. The exhilaration of not knowing when or where the next voice is going to come at you from is what sets the Projectors apart from other superb contemporary vocal groups like the Fleet Foxes, who take their cues from the Beach Boys and other, more recognisable sources. It’s also what set Bitte Orca apart from the other albums released in 2009. And earlier that decade.

The winner by knockout: Coke Studio Pakistan

I thought it might be unfair to slam Coke Studio India for not matching up to the magnificence that is Coke Studio Pakistan. In its first week anyway. So I waited a month, and from what's been trotted out till now, it looks like that sudden burst of brilliance everyone here's been hoping for isn't forthcoming this season.

Two songs, one from our Coke Studio, the other from Pakistan's. "Chitthiye" is limpid, inoffensive, swamped by the same all-pervasive synth sound that won't leave any of CSI's songs alone. It's...what's the word...contented. "Alif Allah-Jugni", on the other hand, is a stream of energy so taut driving that it sounds like it couldn't settle down if it wanted to. Why this difference? It's not the singers; Chauhan and the Wadalis are in the same vocal league as Shafi and Lohar. It's in the attiutude. It's the difference between rock and pop. It's in the annoying girl-group chorus they have in "Chittiye". It's the reason why Pakistan produces great rock bands and we don't, and why their Coke Studio success is something we have not, and from the looks of it, will not replicate.

Hereafter

Hereafter begins with a recreation of the 2004 tsunami that devastated South-east Asia. It’s a tremendous sequence, eschewing overwrought visuals and concentrating on the suddenness and the sheer kinetics of the event. After it’s over, director Clint Eastwood seems to say, okay, everyone’s had their fun, now it's time to watch a real movie. The result is a film about the afterlife that’s moving at times but ends up frustratingly slight.

Matt Damon plays George Lonegan, a psychic whose talent is forging a “connection” with people who’ve recently lost someone close, and helping them contact the spirit. Marie Lelay is a French reporter who, after a near-death experience in the tsunami, has started having visions of her own. Marcus is a young British boy who can’t let go of the memory of his lost twin. Eastwood and writer Peter Morgan seem to set these stories up to converge, but then refuse to let them do so till the very end. Instead, we get subplot on subplot, some of which involve Marcus’s drug addict mom, a potential love interest for George (Bryce-Dallas Howard in fine form) and Marie writing a book on the afterlife. Compared to his earlier Frost/Nixon, Morgan’s script is a letdown, trading insight for generalities. And even though Eastwood provides a lovely score and some witty directorial touches – a driver pausing to check his breath as an afterthought after hitting a kid in the street, an aerial pan of San Francisco as a nod to the opening credits staple in the Dirty Harry series – his treatment of the dead is too restrained and polite to bring the screen alive.

A version of this review appeared in Time Out Delhi.