Veracity in Vera Drake

Watched Mike Leigh's "Vera Drake" w/ Imelda Staunton in it the other night. Possibly his best (though dont we all like Naked)? Imelda's performance and Leigh's tight close ups reminded me of the Passion of Joan of Arc, and something Gilles Deleuze had to say about the face in film.

He suggests that in film, the face is used to capture two kinds of affect, or rather that the face has two affective modes: one is expressive (and angry face, hurt face, a face expressing the individual's feelings); the other is impressive/reflective (when the face is used in a reaction shot to reflect back to us what's happening in the scene).

Imelda's face goes through these transformations during the film, and at the one pivotal moment that is the crux of the story, that show her face literally wiped clean of its expressive charm and captured by external forces. Brilliant.

For a filmmaker to see the potential in an actor to do that -- and to hang the film on that. It's as if he gives us the story, which is one of Imelda's personal perseverance and choice set against societal codes, in one slow, dawning realization. Her performance was incredible.

Bela Tarr... when will they release you?!

Tarr's Satantango, which I've seen 3 times (this required two film festivals, Berlin and SF, and a retrospective, as the 8.5 hour film is not in circulation), is one of the finest things ever rendered in celluloid. Susan Sontag used to say she could (and others should) see it once a year. Well we would if we could!

I have to take issue with the notion that Tarr is nihilistic. That's like accusing Francis Bacon of morbidity interest in the carnal... To paint horror is not to be horrifying. Filming the bleak is not to affirm bleak. Subject matter is not opinion. How do they put it these days? "The interviews contained on this video disc do not represent....etc." Perhaps Tarkovsky is more interested in our destiny, or destination, and Tarr more interested in the getting there. But both know what it is to look, and to reveal what they see.


"Tarkovsky died in 1986 and is buried in Paris. His influence is visible in the work of several major contemporary directors. His friend Alexander Sokurov (whose Moscow Elegy [1987] is a beautiful film essay on Tarkovsky) has often been perceived as his 'successor' and there is a definite affinity in their use of rural landscape and their spiritual preoccupations. However there are more differences than similarities and at worst the 'new Tarkovsky' label obscures the more versatile Sokurov's very particular achievements. Sharunas Bartas' impressive studies of incommunicability are Tarkovskian in their use of time and attention to the visual textures of objects, faces and buildings. But perhaps the most interesting 'answer' to Tarkovsky is the more recent work of Béla Tarr, most notably his masterpiece Sátántango (1997). Although he employs many of the same techniques as Tarkovsky with comparable authority, he could be described as the Russian's negative mirror image. In the nihilistic vision of atheist misanthrope Tarr, the promise of salvation is a dangerous illusion often used as a weapon of power and frequently leading to confusion and violence. Even at its bleakest, Tarkovsky's universe is suffused with faith and the idea of transcendence."
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/tarkovsky.html