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Luchino Visconti‘s Morte a Venezia is one of those few films that successfully manage to translate a book into cinema. When planning the film’s soundtrack, Visconti chose Mahler, whose death in 1911 partly inspired Thomas Mann’s novella. The main theme used is the 4th movement (Adagietto – sehr langsam) of Mahler’s 5th Symphony.

There’s a great anecdote about the soundtrack found in Bogarde’s biography at IMDB:

“when the lights went up in a Los Angeles screening room after a showing of “Death in Venice” for American executives, no one said anything. The silence encouraged Visconti, who believed it meant that the executives were undergoing a catharsis after watching his masterpiece.

However, he soon realized that, in Bogarde’s own words, “Apparently they were stunned into horrified silence.. A group of slumped nylon-suited men stared dully at the blank screen… One nervous executive, feeling something should be said, got up and asked: “Signore Visconti, who was responsible for the score of the film ?” — “Gustav Mahler“, Visconti replied. ” — “Just great”, said the nervous man. “I think we should sign him…”

Michael Chanan wrote in more detail about the links between Mann and Mahler in an article for Music and Musicians.

Death in Venice has become arguably Thomas Mann’s most famous and widely-read work. (Let’s face it, few people have the time and patience for Mann’s long-form novels like Buddenbrooks or Der Zauberberg.)

Similarly, Mahler’s 5th is undoubtedly the most-heard and widely-performed of his symphonies. After its premiere in Cologne in 1904, Mahler is reported to have said “Nobody understood it. I wish I could conduct the first performance fifty years after my death.” Thomas Mann might have shared comparable sentiments about his novella…

Björn Andrésen (Tadzio) and Dirk Bogarde (Gustav von Aschenbach)

Once upon a time (like ten years ago) I thought that all worldly material aspirations could be satisfied by possessing the Miles Davis Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel box set. I ended up getting Coltrane’s Village Vanguard 1961 set instead, because it was cheaper.

But now, older and wiser, I think I want something different. I saw one in a shop in Germany last year, and fell in love:

And here’s a stop-motion video of how to put the thing together:

Son of Rambow is one of those small, low-budget British films that might have disappeared without trace, had it not been for a rave reception at Sundance 2007. The film subsequently obtained significant distribution in the UK and worldwide this year.

It’s a little film, in the sense that it aims to tell a simple story well, rather than investing energy in exploring deep themes or symbolism. And it’s precisely this lack of ambition that makes Son of Rambow work. Viewers will either find this absence of guile either endearing or intensely annoying.

The basic plot is simple enough. It’s southern England in about 1983. Lee Carter (an Artful Dodger of the home counties, a bully and latchkey kid who lives in a retirement home with his older brother while his parents live in Spain) is making his own version of Rambo:First Blood. He ropes in naive, timid Will Proudfoot to act as stuntman, but Will’s imagination is soon unleashed, and once French exchange student Didier Revol and his admirers invade the project, chaos ensues.

But movie-making is not the heart of the film. In fact the only thing that prevents Son of Rambow exploding in a crayon-coloured fireball of implausibility is the unlikely friendship that develops between Will and Lee .

Will has grown up in a stern, restrictive Brethren household and Lee’s makeshift film finally offers an outlet for Will’s creativity. And Lee, a bully who is unpopular at school and deeply seeks approval from his older brother, finds Will to be the first person who doesn’t judge or manipulate him. The relationship is portrayed with sensitivity and naturalness by first-time actors Bill Milner and Will Poulter.

Sometimes the shallowness of the rest of the film lets us down. For instance, the implications of life in the Plymouth Brethren are not explored in great detail. And while Jules Sitruk plays Didier as a fantastically louche teen heartthrob, (a French Fonzie?), it is implied that Didier is much less popular back home in France – tension in his character that remains tantalisingly vague.

Despite its lightness of touch, Son of Rambo is hardly a movie for kids – it’s an adult’s recollection of what it was like to be a young in the 1980s. In this fantasy world you can perform aerial stuntwork in an abandoned power station, shoplift without sanction, and turn your 6th Form Common Room into a debauched New-Wave disco. Of course childhood was never quite like this, but for 90 minutes it’s good fun to pretend that it was.

Olivier Messiaen – Apparition de l’Eglise Eternelle (excerpt)
Performed by Dame Gillian Weir
From Olivier Messiaen:The Organ Works – Volume 1: Priory [Buy]

The best gag in Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs happens in the opening scene of the film – a ridulously long, long, long slow tracking shot of a spaceship passing through the cosmos.  The spaceship seems to go on forever. The soundtrack quotes Jaws. It was my favourite scene when I was 9 years old, and I still think it’s pretty funny.

Of course, the music of Olivier Messiaen probably shouldn’t be compared to a Mel Brooks gag – in fact, a more inapposite twinning of “sublime” and “ridiculous” would be difficult to find.

But the opening minutes of Messiaen’s 1932 composition Apparition de l’Eglise Eternelle might cause a similar reaction in an audience to the spaceship scene from Spaceballs – long, long chords, slowly twisting and mutating through time, layering tone upon tone – the sound is so full-on, you might even laugh.

George Tames/NYT

Messiaen has been getting some more airplay in 2008, the centenary of his birth. Here in Oxford, his organ works have been turning up in the music lists of various colleges and chapels. To say the least, it makes a change from Bach, Wesley and Charles Stanford.

Messiaen’s sacred music is challenging, and draws heavily on a Roman Catholic cosmology that sometimes leaves me bewildered. But it is uncompromisingly modern, and rewards attentive listening.

Often devoid of the usual anchors of tempo and key, Messiaen compositions are ‘total music’ – sound that refers only to itself. The overall effect is alien and yet majestic – perhaps conveying the sense of mystery that Messiaen held at the centre of his faith.

Messiaen’s Organ, Eglise de la Sainte Trinité, Paris

American filmmaker Paul Festa has just released a film called Apparition of the Eternal Church, which is making its way around the festival circuit at the moment. It records the reactions of 31 people listening to the 10-minute Messiaen work. I haven’t seen the film, but it looks interesting!

Whether one subscribes to Messiaen’s religious views or not, his music is worth seeking out. I’m slowly working my way the 5-CD Complete Organ Works series performed by Dame Gillian Weir. It’s exhausting listening at times, but never once do you doubt that Olivier Messiaen was a genius with a most extraordinary musical gift.

Choir of Christ Church, Oxford – Kyrie: Deus creator omnium
From Taverner- Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas [Buy] [emusic]

A life of abstinence and simplicity seems a difficult thing to maintain… my resolution to give up alcohol for Lent lasted exactly 24 hours from Ash Wednesday until Thursday evening, thanks to an impromptu farewell gathering for a good colleague returning to New Zealand.

But the modest denial of a simple pleasure for 40 days (modest in my case, because – by English standards at least – I don’t drink often or much) pales in comparison to the lifetime of denial chosen by monks of the Carthusian order. Their strict code includes a vow of silence, reclusion from the outside world and a rigorous daily pattern of prayer, manual work and study.

Last night I watched Into Great Silence, the first documentary ever made about the Grande Chartreuse monastery, nestled in the Chartreuse massif north of Grenoble. It was filmed over six months by the German director Philip Gröning, who worked entirely on his own, sharing the same routine as the monks. (The monks are so reclusive that it took Gröning 16 years to gain permission to make the film).

The film is long – almost 3 hours – but it is engrossing despite the lack of any narrative and almost no dialogue. On screen, the monastery and its inhabitants create a universe that runs to rhythms utterly alien to the lives of most of us. We might even envy the simplicity of the monks’ routine as they pursue “the peace that the world cannot give”.

I was reminded a little of Tarkovsky‘s editing technique of “sculpting in time”- images and scenes are held for long periods, other shots are repeated in different contexts or from different angles. Stars rotate across the sky and seasons pass through the valley, and yet the routine of the monks remains constant and unswerving.

However, the silence is never absolute. The film is filled with the noise of daily activity and sounds of nature beyond the windows. Bells punctuate the movie just as they mark the lives of the monks. And the monks have a weekly “recreation” where they leave the monastery for a walk in the mountains, when they are permitted to speak to each other.

Perhaps the most haunting images are the portraits of the monks themselves, gazing down the barrel of the camera at several points during the film. Their expressions are inscrutable – we are forced to ask why these men have chosen to seek God through such a severe and demanding life: a life they accept with joy.

As with all humans, the ultimate spiritual motivations of the monks remain hidden from our view, knowable only unto their creator. But through the rhythms of Into Great Silence, we are offered an intimate and thought-provoking portayal of a way of living that has remained largely unchanged for a thousand years.

One of the best Christmas presents I got this year was a DVD of some old family films shot on 8mm and Super 8. Images I hadn’t seen since I was a child, all bathed in that curious watery light that only small-gauge filmstock can create.

The family’s stockpile of 8mm films go back to 1948, (well before my time!), but the earliest parts of my childhood were recorded on Super 8, until the cost and hassle of processing the films became too great.

New Zealand had no film processing labs in those days, so the films were posted to Kodak in New York to be developed. As VHS cameras and cassettes became affordable, the idea of recording home life on filmstock seemed rather quaint.

Watching the films now, it seems we spent a LOT of time on the beach, or playing outside – but of course the low-grade film worked best in natural sunlight, so the camera was used mainly in summer and then only during daytime.

Unfortunately there isn’t too much naff 1980s stuff to laugh at except for my first bike (red chopper-style with a banana seat and trainer wheels), our short shorts and the swingball set at my aunt’s house. (Maybe this is all really 70s stuff – NZ was still under import restrictions and we tended to be about 5 years behind the rest of the world.)

Long, dark evenings in an English January are perfect for editing silly videos to put on Youtube, so I messed around with a 2.30min highlights package. A few of the cats and grandparents are no longer with us, but way back then, it seems like we were all having fun.

The music is by The Cutters, a band from northern California. You can buy their stuff and get free mp3s on their site.

The Golden Compass tries valiantly to work as a film, but doesn’t quite make the grade. It has to pack a lot of action into a family Christmas feature, and so we are not allowed to linger over any particular aspect.

In its haste to recreate the broad sweep of Philip Pullman‘s novel, the narrative dashes breakneck from Oxford to London to Norway to Svalbard, via airships, horseless carriages, gypsy paddlesteamers and the back of a talking polar bear.

There is little time to contemplate the themes of the trilogy, let alone the magnificence and strangeness of Lyra’s parallel universe. This is a pity, because it is thematic and inter-textual depth, coupled with extraordinary leaps of Pullman’s imagination, that make the books such a joy.

The actors are pretty good, and make a fair fist of a spartan script. Nicole Kidman‘s Mrs Coulter is magnificent in gold lamé, slinky and seductive, although at times her charm is so oily that it seems incredible that anyone could ever trust her with responsibilities at the General Oblation Board.

Sam Elliott is pitch-perfect as Lee Scoresby, the six-shooter packing, Twain-esque balloonist (apparently Samuel L. Jackson was suggested for this role… now THAT would have been something to see!).

Even Christopher Lee drops by to play Saruman- oh sorry, Count Dooku – or some other slightly anonymous evil dude lurking in the corridors of power. I was left wondering if the Magisterium was trying to cut its budget by subcontracting villains from the Sith and subletting office space in the tower at Isengard.

But Dakota Blue Richards manages to carry the film. Her Lyra seems to provide a perfect mix of stubborness, curiosity and vulnerability that allows the rest of the Pullman universe to revolve. If they do film The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, one wonders how they will find a young male actor to match her in the equally demanding role of Will Parry.

The Oxford scenes were fun to watch, simply for all the location spotting. The kids get to run across parts of Christ Church meadow that are closed to the public in our universe. The fictional Jordan College is an interesting amalgam of Exeter (Pullman’s old college), Queen’s and Christ Church – Cardinal Wolsey proving his prescience by building Tom Quad large enough to allow the docking of airships, even if the fountain of Mercury (made famous in Brideshead Revisited) had to be removed.

So overall, it’s a fun movie to watch, although I’m not sure how much you’d understand if you haven’t read the books. We’re left with a film that looks magnificent, but provides little more that a thumbnail sketch of the original story, with a few set-piece action scenes to tie it all together. Not disappointed, just moderately let down.

For New Zealanders, it is easy to view this as an archtypal kiwi film. There are certainly aspects of this work that will resonate strongly with a native audience: the need to escape our islands, the sense of landscape, the particular characters in the community, and the accents of the actors. For kiwis of a certain age, there is even a “Dougal Stevenson” moment.

Director Brad McGann (currently battling cancer again) has done a great job capturing the landscape of inland Otago, and reflecting the culture of a small town in New Zealand’s South Island. But this is a film that anyone, anywhere will enjoy. Beautiful to look at, and genuinely moving.

I know there are many non-NZ readers of this blog. If your experience of NZ cinema begins and ends with Peter Jackson, this film is well worth seeking out.

Crowded House – She Goes On
From Woodface: Capitol 793559 [Buy]