By a film-student.
I’ll admit I don’t know an awful lot about the Venice Film Festival, other than that it takes place in Venice. Sure I’ve got some ditties up my sleeve, just in case of a mix-up with that Golden Bear, and also the fact that George Clooney can grab a bus home. But these are just that, ditties, and it would be embarrassing to presume such trivia qualified as knowledge. My daydreams, on the other hand, remain the stuff of pedigree, so despite my all-round ignorance, I have some grasp, at least, of how exciting it must all be.
The quaint inn where one is putting up, in the next room from an aspiring actress who’s tactful about putting out; the wonderful neglect to put on a jacket, or an undershirt, or, hell, underwear, because the weather’s as good as hand-set in Italy; the aspiring actress, smiling deliciously as you half-waltz past one another in the hall, trading the phrase ‘Bon giorno’; the socks-less skip you embark on down the lane, and the gentle gondola to a cafe down the canal, with an operatic gondolier and a paper whose headlines you don’t understand; idiotically ordering a baguette with coffee, as if this were Cannes, then just as idiotically flipping through a Lonely Planet guide for the Italian translation of ‘bun’; the aspiring actress joining you at table, with an elegant grip on her tea-cup , and those deferential eye-lashes; a chin-wag later, with George (Clooney) and Matt (Damon) and Michael (Moore), on healthcare reform and how absurd the other side is, on Italy and all its subtle charms....
If you are, by any chance, at the Venice Film Festival, feel quite free to interpose my grand projections with even tea-spoons of actuality. I am, myself, in attendance at the Mediocrity Film Festival, in the bunker-like comfort of home, as an esteemed and distinguished guest. My entire wardrobe is filled with cashmere garments, and Eva Green has promised to teach me manners on the weekend.
Mediocrity is my favourite word in the English language. It has, at once, the sound of scorn, and the appearance that it is a complete indictment of the way things are. I like that mediocrity is what maddens men, into a state of revolution... of refusal, of not having anymore and of uprising. The pattern always makes for some fantastic movies, a bunch of them independent, and the occasional mind-job bio-pic.
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Even of what’s going on in Venice, I have a crudely rough idea. I understand somebody’s let Nicholas Cage in, and that Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass (the Bourne trilogy) have made another film together. It’s called The Informant!, totally with the exclamation mark on there, and my subconscious has to be totally tripping bolls about this, ‘cause there’s a political knife-edge to it too. The new George Clooney project is called Men Who Kill Goats By Staring At Them, so I’m definitely tripping bolls, and with Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore’s latest smart-ass documentary, I’m all out of bolls to trip. Oh, and Paris Hilton’s reportedly flogging her jewellery off the red carpet, ‘cause apparently there’s a recession on.
In the evenings, after another day at the Mediocrity Film Festival, I’m reading Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, so I can impress Eva with my dandiness – it’s off to a cracking start. I’m trying to get my hands on Les Miserables, so I can get my hands on Eva – I don’t think Ms. Green would give any man half the chance, had he never read Les Miserables.
The films on show at the Mediocrity Film Festival aren’t in themselves mediocre; it’s the fact that I’m seeing them once, two years, or even decades late, that’s what’s truly mediocre.
I began with In Bruges, possibly two and a half weeks ago now. I remember this winning an Academy Award for best screen-writing not long ago, unless I’m much mistaken, but I have my doubts now from how sparse the dialogue is. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, the script’s great – I just didn’t know the Academy gave out Oscars for scripts this concise, else I’d have won one by now and dedicated it to me cousin Finn and me ma. I hope to die a painless death in Ireland.
Colin Farrell’s hilarious as the troubled hitman who’s killed a boy with a bullet through a priest, Kevin Gleenan fatherly as his frustrated mentor, and Ralph Fiennes pleasantly surprising as the London mobster who’s sent them off to Bruges on an unspecified errand. The joke’s supposed to be how naff a city Bruges is, but I could die in Bruges... except I’m already scheduled to do so in Ireland.
The global cinema-goer, averaged out, has probably seen Public Enemies already, and patiently awaits the syndication of Inglorious Basterds now; where I live, we’re yet to see either one, and at this point, I’m tripping everybody else’s bolls. Leatherheads, the Clooney-directed love-around set against the Twenties of proprietor-driven American football, was a lot of fun last Thursday. It just tried too hard, maybe, and John Krasinski from The Office – I love you, man – didn’t try at all. I didn’t know what to do with myself when it was over, so I caught the end of Iron Man, which I have seen, for the heck of it. LOVE!!! how the Led Zeppelin track in the credits captures perfectly what it’s like to fight crime in an iron-freaking-suit. My friend told me to look out for the Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury cameo if I ever got the chance, so I did; Tony Stark, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D? Tantalising, somewhat.
I’m a man without obligations on Sundays, so I juggled the prospect of reading an art-mag with that of watching one of the classics. But The Belle of New York ended as awkwardly as Singing In the Rain began, so I did away with that pretty quickly. I could only manage ten minutes of Diamonds Are Forever at six PM, ‘cause I had gouged my eyes out on Xbox – the poor little buggers just couldn’t take it anymore. It’s got some amusing murder sequences, Diamonds Are Forever. Baby Mama, my Monday night from heaven, didn’t pan out as such: Tina Fey was the snarky, relatively sane observer she always is, while Amy Poehler was snug as a bug playing the crazy, unpredictable blonde – when it would’ve been much more fun to see them swap roles for once. I’m also getting round to absorbing the sight of Greg Kinnear on Tina Fey, but only just.
Christian Bale’s all about technique; Cate Blanchett, God bless her, depends heavily on a trademark gait and all-round spazzed-outness (‘cause all I do is rock, and roll); and Marcus Carl Franklin, very tellingly, bears the most striking resemblance with ol’ Bob in Dylan uber-flick I’m Not There, as the boy rocker under the adorable impression that he’s an Afro-American soul-man (wonderfully inscribed on his guitar-case is the warning, ‘This Machine-Gun Kills Fascists’). But the most charged, most energetic moment of I’m Not There is when Heath Ledger issues entry, strapped with musical machine-gun, and yet his Dylan’s never called upon to play a tune by director Todd Haynes, in this multi-faceted mind-job of a biopic. Dylan’s a hero of mine, and in all likelihood everybody in this movie’s; but it’s Ledger - in a film that side-winds enough to make you permanently colour-blind – who’s daring enough to perform against archetype and see what happens.
It’s the way he speaks, like a shifting tectonic plate; the way he holds that there machine-gun, like it’s a plastered drinking buddy. Every other movie I watch, I am in constant mourning for Heath Ledger, wedged between awe and some uncomfortable envy at his performance in The Dark Knight, and the finality he was unknowingly sprinkling on it. You stand up in applause, watching his work in retrospect, and you request an encore, before you realise you can’t have anymore.
A full review is coming soon, and so’s District 9... If I were you, as far as impending doom goes, I’d be worried about the review.
Exit film-student, live from Mediocrity.
