thedozinglion Reviews

Yves Saint Laurent (2014)

An excellent companion piece to L'Amour Fou

[8/10 · 21 January 2014]

I have just watched Yves Saint Laurent and found it to be a visually sumptuous film which totally captures the dying days of the elite formal couture houses before bursting into the hedonism of modern global fashion brands. An excellent companion piece to L'Amour Fou (2010), giving an insight into the tempestuous but private relationship between YSL and Pierre Bergé through the pitch perfect acting of Pierre Niney (Yves) and Guillaume Gallienne (Pierre).

The film charts YSL's career from his early years at Dior in the late 1950s through to his iconic Ballet Russes collection of 1976. The world of the late 1950s is perfectly captured with elegant Dior designs, stylish models and a jazz score that matched the chic Parisian apartments the characters inhabit.

In one such apartment Yves meets Pierre Bergé, the man he will spend the rest of his life with both privately and professionally. For Pierre is the man who orchestrates the creation of YSL as a couture house. He gives Yves the confidence to "create on my own terms" and show the world his own particular view of feminine beauty and elegance.

Their relationship mirrors Giancarlo Giammetti and Valentino Garavani who together also created an iconic fashion house and sustained a personal relationship for over 50 years. Their story too is wonderfully and humorously captured in the documentary The Last Emperor (2008). However, one is left with a sense that Giancarlo and Valentino had a much more stable relationship to that of Yves and Pierre. The YSL movie captures during the 1960/70s Yves' erratic excesses with drugs and sex and Pierre's jealousy and need for control.

But this expose of their difficult relationship in no way detracts from the exquisite design throughout the movie. From the elegant, well documented interiors of Yves and Pierre's Parisian apartments, to the bohemian Moroccan lifestyle they enjoyed with the likes of Loulou de la Falaise and Karl Lagerfeld.

This film was a joy to watch with a standout performance by Pierre Niney, whose voice and mannerisms made Yves live once again.

The Great Beauty (2013)

Like Swimming in Honey

[10/10 · 7 September 2013]

This film is a modern masterpiece of Cinema. Luca Bigazzi's cinematography is beautiful, with elegant tracking shots of Rome that draw the viewer into the loveliness of Jep's world (even if age and experience seems to have robbed him of the ability to feel and see this great beauty himself).

The enchanting score of choral works by David Lang (I Lie), Vladimir Martynov (The Beatitudes), John Tavener (The Lamb) and Arvo Part (My Heart is in the Highlands) give depth to the wonderful images of Rome. This haunting soundtrack replaces the need for dialogue and adds intensity to Servillo's melancholic performance.

Servillo's acting is superb from his moments of dry humour to the heartbreaking intensity of those feelings he cannot quite hold on to.

La Grande Bellezza gives a window into Roman life that is probably only fully understood by a fellow Roman. However all can appreciate the aesthetic pleasure of Sorrentino's Rome and the bittersweet meanderings of its characters.

This is a cinema of the highest order, imbued with elegance & style. For the viewer it is like swimming in honey. Grazie Signore Sorrentino.

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Walk to the Beat of your Own Drum

[10/10 · 7 September 2013]

"Carpe Diem" is the line often quoted from the 1989 film Dead Poets Society to signify making the most out of life today. However for me the real theme of the movie is better encapsulated in the quotes by Thoreau and Frost on "walking to the beat of your own drum" and "following the path less travelled". A rebellion away from conformity towards individuality.

Robin Williams is cast in the role of John Keating, the idealistic new teacher at Welton Academy a conservative prep school during the late 1950s. The school is a milder version of the Bunker Hill Military Academy of TAPS (1981), exacting control through "tradition, honour, discipline and excellence". In essence an expensive factory designed to process boys into men of standing and position at the expense of their uniqueness.

Keating's teaching methods allow his students to struggle against not only the school and its lifeless dogma but also family and society's convention. Unlike Kevin Kline's William Hundert in The Emperor's Club (2002), Keating is not interested in shaping the character of the boys he teaches but unlocking their potential. Early in the movie he instructs his class to rip out the antiquated Introduction to Poetry in their textbooks which looks to take the soul out of the verse and replace it with a formula for understanding. This is much like the ethos of the school itself which seeks to remove the identity of the boys to supplant it with a tried and tested docility.

The two main leads are played well by the then rising stars Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard. Their forming of the Dead Poets Society being the central form of rebellion in the film, a midnight meeting group off campus, breaking school regulations while allowing the boys to read the great freethinking poets of the past and their own adolescent compositions to one another.

However the true rebel in the movie is not a student but Robin William's quixotic Keating, a free-spirited thinker who challenges the autocratic system in place and give the power of thought to his students. He is the polar opposite of Michael Redgrave's Crocker-Harris in The Browning Version (1951), a man whose passion for teaching has been eroded by years of apathy from his students leading to a teacher of rote rather than reason.

Keating forms the midpoint in a trilogy of non-conformist characters played by Williams over a three year period starting with army disc jockey Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning Vietnam (1987) to Dr. Malcolm Sayer in Awakenings (1990). All three fight their prevailing systems (military, academia and medicine) to aid those within it. Williams is well able to embody the radical troublemaker effectively although his schizophrenic personality is toned down in each subsequent film. He is at his best as an actor when he is not playing for laughs but using comedy to flesh out his characters and tell a story.

In a memorable scene Keating takes Thoreau's quote from Walden and has the boys acts it out:

"If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away."

Having the self-conscious boys walk around the school courtyard in their own style forces them to have awareness of their individuality much to the disapproval of the watching headmaster. Keating in the scene also quotes Robert Frosts poem The Road Not Taken:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

These quotes perfectly represent the concept of not accepting the majority voice as the absolute truth but instead putting yourself and your beliefs at the center. For what good is life if it is half lived without creativity and freedom of choice and action.

However the power of freethinking that Keating gives to his student ends in tragedy. To fight against the system and society can be difficult for those unaccustomed to it. Keating is held responsible by the school for the loss due to the fear of the parents and staff of his methods, which have unleashed the raw potential in his students.

Alas, there is no Scent of a Women (1992) defiance by the students when the headmaster looks for informers against Keating, all the boys of the Dead Poet Society sign, in effect, his expulsion papers. But the final scene does give hope that these young men will grow up with more than just honour and loyalty that the school demands. They will also have a heart and mind open to their own ideas and beliefs, they will never tamely believe or do what is told them but will seek out the truth as they find it.