2023 highlights and hidden gems

Napoleon

While I expect historians will have justification for complaint, I had an absolute blast watching this speed-run of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix). When our slightly odd-ball protagonist accepts a mission to re-take the French port of Toulon from the despised British, he kick-starts a chain of events that will eventually make him emperor of France. And then an exiled prisoner. Then emperor again.

Look, history takes a back seat here, as the real story concerns Napoleon’s twin passions: battle and Josephine. The latter is played by Vanessa Kirby, so one can understand his obsession. Frustratingly, we never really get to the bottom of their relationship, which causes some of the domestic scenes to drag a little. Nor do we really see what makes them tick. Watching their very public divorce, I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry. But their interactions, while funny, or shocking, or just plain weird, are never dull. 

And on the battlefield, this movie really kicks up a gear or two. I’m very surprised this was only given a 15 certification in the UK, as the violence is extremely gory and intense. From the slightly chaotic seige of Toulon, through icy Austerlitz, to a final, staggering showdown at Waterloo, the battle scenes are equal parts beauty and horror, as the technial brilliance of military tactics meets the bloody simplicity of flesh and sabre. Also – slightly random thought – but the costuming for the men in this movie is astonishing. They all look incredible – the bright colours, the embroidery and ostentation, the capes and the boots and the hats! It all comes together wonderfully, and although the cinematic release ran to over 2 and a half hours, there is supposed to be a 4 hour cut that I cannot wait to get my hands on. 

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning

While not technically a flop, the latest installment of the Mission: Impossible series did get a little swept away by the cinematic onslaught that was Barbenheimer. Which is a shame, as this is one of Ethan Hunt’s strongest outings yet. 

When a rogue artificial intelligence threatens global stability, Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team are tasked with tracking down two halves of a key which will, theoretically, disarm this technologically superior enemy. But when a ghost from Ethan’s past (Esai Morales) re-emerges, the line between enemy and friend becomes blurred, as Ethan starts to question what he is really fighting for. 

Strong performances underpin a plot which barely pauses for breath, as we rattle through stunning set-pieces across a smorgasboard of gorgeous locations. Rooted in the ever-brilliant stunt work that has become the Mission: Impossible hallmark, Dead Reckoning is a stylish and absurdly enjoyable gem.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

While it failed to set the box-office alight, this fifth and final Indiana Jones film is a worthy swan song from one of cinemas greatest characters. Harrison Ford gives his best curmugeonly and vulnerable performance yet, as our now-retired archeologist finds himself dragged into a race against time to prevent a sinister plot by an old enemy, the Nazis. 

While it lacks Spielberg’s directorial brilliance, there’s a lots to enjoy in this pleasingly old-fashioned, globe-trotting adventure. Mads Mikkelson is, of course, perfectly malign as the Nazi egg-head Voller, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge brings snark and energy as Indy’s new found side-kick. While the action is engaging, it’s the film’s willingness to wear it’s heart on it sleeve that really resonates. Nostalgia abounds, but doesn’t overwhelm proceedings, as faces from the past pop up to help out, while also reminding us how old we’re all getting. The film cheekily succeeds in having a finale that is both brilliantly overblown, and tenderly low-key. And that final acknowledgement of Indy’s aging, of all that he has lost, and what he still has to live for, gives the whole Indiana Jones saga a poignant and fitting finale.

Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse

My final word of 2023 has to go to my favourite film of the year. Following on from the practically perfect Into the Spiderverse is a nigh-impossible task, but this joyous, beautiful, endlessly inventive sequel over-delivers in every possible way. While it wasn’t easy, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) has finally found his feet as Spiderman. However, life as a superhero is just one damn thing after another.  And what begins as a minor altercation with an adversary called The Spot, ends with Miles starting to realise just how complicated existance can be. 

While the concept of the multiverse isn’t a new one to cinema, this is the most comprehensive and dramatically satisfying presentation of it that I’ve seen. It shows how diverse and downright perculiar life across the multiverse can be, and how all these seemingly disparate parts are intricately connected. Far from diluting the responsibility that comes with making choices, this multiverse actually makes choices even more important and potentially dangerous. 

Yet characters and relationships are at the heart of the movie. The warmth and messiness of family life is wonderfully conveyed. How growing up is as much about loss as it is about gain. The way life always seems to run just ahead of our understanding, for parents as well as for the young. And it’s so stunning! Scene follows gorgeous scene, in a dizzying, almost outrageous display of visual storytelling. The film is stuffed full of images that couldn’t possibly be created in real life. Half a dozen times I remembered thinking, “That must be the most beautiful shot in this movie. Oh, no – THAT one is.” Yet it’s all so well managed, it looks effortless. Other superhero movies look lumpen in comparison. And the story isn’t over yet. As we left Miles trapped in the wrong dimention, and the whole multiverse on the edge of collapse, I cannot wait to see how this wonderful story ends.

Hope you had as much fun reading this as I did writing it. What did you enjoy seeing the most in 2023? What are you most excited for next year? Let me know, and best wishes for 2024!

Barbenheimer (Barbie, 2023 & Oppenheimer, 2023)

It’s a mood, it’s a phenomenon, it’s the double feature we never knew we needed.  For those four people on planet earth still unaware, Barbenheimer is the watching of two very different movies back to back.  Barbie is the neon-soaked story of how a simple, stereotypical Barbie doll encounters The Real World and learns the meaning of life.  Oppenheimer tells how J Robert Oppenheimer created the nuclear bomb, and was then sold down the river by the US government.  Watching Oppenheimer first, followed by a spot of lunch, then back in for Barbie was one of my most enjoyable ever days at the cinema.  And for all the obvious differences between these two films, I couldn’t help but notice how strangely similar they were.

This most unlikely film combination really shows the strengths and limitations of Hollywood film.  For starters, they both looked incredible.  Oppenheimer is mostly people talking in rooms, but it’s gorgeously stylish, and full of pleasing abstract flourishes  (Sack the sound mixer though – I missed a good quarter of the dialogue).  Barbie is, of course, a riot of colour and girly glamour.  The set design and costuming are especially good.  Yet there is a sense that everyone took their work here seriously, that each element was deeply, thoughtfully considered.  Playtime is, after all, a very serious business. From Barbie’s dream houses to the drinking glasses at the party with the tiny flamingos, scenes overflow with perfect scale replicas of the original toys.  Multiple re-watches would be needed to catch all the clever little details.  

And yet, both films are deliberately, frustratingly shallow.  For all the time-shifting bells and whistles, Oppenheimer swerves all consideration of the moral complexities of nuclear weaponry.    What happened to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention the indigenous and Hispanic population of Los Alamos, are entirely ignored.  We know that JR feels bad, but that’s about it.  Perhaps the story is a deliberate, bathetic arc from unlocking the mysteries of the universe to petty Washington power plays and masochistic anti-communist witch hunts.  That would perhaps satisfy if we also learned something of the man himself. But though the ending has stark, haunting power,  RJ remains a distant, unfathomable figure even after the credits roll.

However, performances in both films are phenomenal.  The Oppenheimer cast is frankly outrageous – brilliant, committed performances across the board – as yet more famous faces pop up to join proceedings.  Rami Malek!  Josh Harnett!  Gary Oldman!  Cillian Murphy has finally, finally be given – and delivered on – the role of a lifetime.  Almost painfully thin, bright blue eyes contemplating the possibilities and horrors of his creation, Murphy is never less than mesmerising.  And Robert Downey Jnr continues to demonstrate why he’s the best loved man in Hollywood.  It seems less that he has physically transformed into the role, more allowed himself to become the savvy, vicious, thin-skinned Strauss.  

And in counterpoint to the confected outrage at Barbie’s supposed ‘anti-man’ stance, I would respectfully point out how entirely ancillary women are in Oppenheimer.    I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the first ‘I am become Death’ scene.  The film also does that infuriating thing of having a man disagree with a woman he met thirty seconds ago, and her immediate response is to sleep with him.  We never even find out if Jean died by suicide or murder, she’s that unimportant.  Yeah, it was the 40s. But it’s still a tiresome, flattened presentation of two characters I would like to have seen more of. 

Ryan Gosling is the absolute star of Barbie, hitting the mark as Ken every single time.  He deliverous every ridiculous line with absolute commitment, drawing an almost painful reaction of equal parts pity and derision.  You really could not imagine anyone else in the role now. It’s a pleasingly unironic performance, utterly convincing as this needy, showy, half formed thing.   Poor Ken, never really understanding himself or the world around him.  And certainly not Barbie, for all his protestations of love. 

Which takes us to Barbie’s biggest problem.  Ken is by far the most interesting character in the movie.  In it’s determination not to upset the boys, Barbie forgets who its main character is.  Our Barbie herself is appallingly inert as a character.  She goes to the real world, comes back again, has an existential crisis-nap (fair) and then grows a vagina.  I realise she is literally a doll, but you’d think acquiring humanity would mean showing something of a personality?

I kept expecting the film to surprise me.  To have a moment that would really hit home.  When Barbie talks with her maker, I hoped we might see her grow old (bit of foreshadowing with the lady at the bus-stop?) But, no. Only a few anodyne, insta-filtered snap shots of family life.  Is that all womanhood really is?  Would she finally react with unexpected glee at developing cellulite?  Embrace the messy, glorious physicality of being a woman?  Nope. Just has an appointment with the gyno. It’s all – fine.  I just kept waiting for a gut punch moment of power, of resonance, or even rage; but the film is almost willfully simplistic, refusing absolutely to get it’s knifes out, and really deliver on it’s satirical potential.   Yet it’s also far too self aware to satisfy as just a bright and breezy tale about a doll.  Maybe hopes were too high, but I can’t help but think that there’s a bloody good film in here somewhere.  At least President Barbie got the memo:  ‘This is Barbie’s dream house, mother-f****r!’

I had never intended to see either of these films at the cinema, but those marketing folks got me.  And I have to admit, Barbenheimer really made for a wonderful day of cinema.  Minor grumbles notwithstanding, I couldn’t be happier with the shot in the arm this cultural phenomenon has given film.  UK cinemas haven’t been this busy for a decade.  Barbie is currently cruising past a billion dollar gross – the first female directed film ever to do so.  Oppenheimer  has already made five times it’s budget.  After covid, and now heading into the SAG-AFTRA strike, this unique film experience has arrived just in time to remind us why we love – and need –  the movies. 

What did you think?  Were the memes better than the movies?  Did you watch Barbie first?  Did you you find Allan to be an unexpected delight? As ever, let me know!

The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel

***spoilers below!***

‘The Howards don’t think about the future, not the way we do.  They want it to look like the past.’

It’s 1536.  Anne Boleyn is dead, and the man tasked with her destruction is going from strength to strength.  Rising from blacksmith’s boy to Lord Privy Seal, Thomas Crowell is now the most powerful commoner in England.  But with no rank and few friends, our protagonist finds that with his every success, the stakes are getting higher and higher.  In a time of religious and political upheaval, surrounded by enemies at home and abroad, how safe is our man Cromwell?  How safe is anyone?

The Mirror and the Light is almost nine-hundred pages long.  And the first thing I did when I finished reading it was to start all over again.  With the first two books in the trilogy, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel became the first woman to win two Booker awards.  With The Mirror and the Light, I strongly suspect she’ll become the first person ever to win a third.

The story follows straight on from its predecessor, charting Cromwell’s continued efforts towards protestant reformation of England, while furthering his own position, and keeping his head attached to his shoulders. Cromwell navigates the marriage of the King to Jane Seymour, attempts to quell the traitorous old families of England, and makes his final, fatal failure with the marriage of Henry and Anna of Cleaves.  The court of Henry VIII has been fertile ground for storytellers in recent years, but familiarity has reduced its potency; even the bloodshed has become a cliché.  But here the violence is very real.  Execution is a horror, martyrdom much worse.  Even the commonplace brutality of a drunken father has heart-rending intensity and disturbing, long-term consequences.

Cromwell himself remains a fascinating character.  Brilliant and resourceful, he is always battling the past, trying to drag his country and his family into a new and better future.  By turns vicious and funny, loyal and ruthless, he is a man of great capacity and ingenuity.  He weaponises his own low birth, making references that unsettle and undercut the highborns who would sneer at him. But these remarks are also an attempt to hold on to what is fixed, or at least known.  What is family history if not an attempt by the living to understand their place in the world?

The past is never far away.  Long buried memories resurface, forgotten sins emerge, skeletons are unearthed, and eyes of painted goddesses peer out from under a coat of hastily applied whitewash.  Even as saints and their shrines are dismantled and scattered, the dead are not easily forgotten.   Norfolk’s long-dead parents still demand their prayers.  Even Henry’s past queens still clamour for attention.  Cromwell chafes that Anna of Cleaves becomes ‘Anne’ to the English, as ‘HA’ insignia is once again emblazoned on bibles and flags and stained glass windows.  Katherine’s stray pomegranates can still be found lurking in the masonry, and silent Jane stares out from her portrait with her little son, Edward.

Are the living doomed to spend their days in the shadow of the dead? Always compared and found wanting?  Henry desires always to be the brave, handsome gallant of his youth; if young Anna’s unguarded expression casts doubt on his daydream, then it’s Anna who has to go.  The present is bifurcated, as inconvenient truths are both widely known, yet never openly admitted. Henry is aware that Cranmer is married, but he also knows the priests of England are forbidden to marry.  Therefore, so long as he remains useful, Cranmer is not married.  But that can change in a heartbeat if he should cease to be necessary.  And so portraits are turned to the wall, initials unpicked from embroidery, personal titles added or removed.  But the facts are only hidden, not erased.

Where then is that line between past and present?  When does the future begin?  One of the weaknesses of historical fiction is that we already know how the story ends.  But here, time isn’t the linear construct we’re used to.  The past presses up behind us, and the future looms in front; the present is that shifting, formless space between.   Facts emerge from the past and reshape the present; history is constantly reimagined to facilitate a new future; the future itself is both solid and mutable, endlessly reshaping itself as possibilities force themselves forward and recede.   By destabilising our understanding of how ‘history’ itself operates, the story fizzes and fibrillates with wonderful immediacy and momentum.  Far from waiting for certain events to play out, I found myself scrambling to keep up.   At any given moment there is a fantastic sense that anything could happen.  It’s thrilling, but also unsettling.  Best leave your assumptions at the door.

Mantel’s prose remains vivid, crisp and lyrical, finding moments of beauty while retaining an unsentimental view of human nature.   Dialogue is strong and expressive, and neat visual touches are deployed to great effect: Christophe in his tartar’s hat; Anna of Cleaves being washed in the Thames like a piece of laundry; the street walker with particoloured hair; the wind snatching Cromwell’s hat as he enters Westminster for the last time…

And so the end comes with an appalling sense of inevitability.  Cromwell barely even puts up a fight. Those subtle miscalculations and misplaced loyalties come back to haunt him, and yet the charges against him are such fragile stuff you can’t help but rankle at the injustice.  Was it always going to be this way – the lowborn brought down by the establishment?  Or was Cromwell’s destruction his own doing?  Were his failings personal or practical?  Was his fate ever really in his own hands?  We’re given no answers.  After all, this story lies between reality and fact, history and fiction.  Endings are beginnings, Mantel has told us; make up your own mind.

We met Cromwell as a beaten boy, lying broken on the cobbled floor, and we leave him on the block, a broken man.  Or rather, he leaves us.  His life ends in his execution, but the story he was part of started long before his birth and continues long after his death. This magnificent trilogy is the story of Thomas Cromwell, a reimagining of a man so long derided by history.  But it’s also a story about history itself, how it is made and unmade, and why it matters to us just as much as it mattered 500 years ago.

The physical traces of a life can tell a story, but not the whole story.  Little remains of the man Cromwell, but much of what he achieved was long-lasting. The monasteries he tore down were never rebuilt.  The Great Bible, the first authorised translation into English, was completed and distributed in 1539.  Yet the simplest trace of this man is perhaps the most evocative, saying as it does both too much and not enough.  It’s down in Windsor, in the original record of the Order of the Garter, and it’s still legible: ‘Thomas Cromwell, traitor.’

What did you think?

Were you as bowled-over as I was, or did the story leave you cold?  Did you re-read the first two books before you launched into this one?  I missed out so much that was wonderful- what did you enjoy the most? And did you love Christophe as much as I did? As ever, let me know!