Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)

Rutger Hauer is a Hobo.
If it had been a UK film, I hope it would have starred Bernard Cribbins.

So, there's a hobo, and he has a shotgun.  The title is the pitch, and the film delivers pretty much what you'd expect or hope for.  A nameless, homeless man happens on a crude weapon, and engages on a fabulously violent campaign of homicide.  He's the hero, by the way, or else the concept would be terrifying.

The hobo rides into Hope Town in an empty luggage compartment of a freight train, and finds the conurbation to be a nest of iniquity and sudden death.  Fights and muggings go wholly unchallenged, almost unnoticed in the colourfully graffitied streets.  At the top of the town is the Drake (Brian Downey), who keeps the people in thrall with flamboyantly public murders of the most sensational varieties.  His sons Ivan and Slick pick off their victims almost recreationally, using dodgems to smash open their heads like watermelons.  Says the Drake: 'when life gives you razor blades, you make a baseball-bat covered with razor-blades.'  It's a mantra to live by.

The Drake, about to decapitate his brother.
Isn't it magnificently colourful!

Crowds guzzle spilt cocaine.  The people have long-since learnt to ignore cries for help, and let aggressors commit their murders uninterrupted.  Half-clad women dance in the spurting blood.  Since the cops have found complicity to be both lucrative and enjoyable, the victims have no champion and no hope.  The hobo is disgusted by all he sees, and circumstances eventually, eventually, provide him with a shotgun.  So he goes on a rampage of justice, and everybody deserves what they get.

It has something of the flavour of a Western, with a nameless stranger riding into a town in the middle of nowhere and straightening out the streets.  It put me in mind of 'High Plains Drifter' (1973), though there are probably many closer to this format.  This is all the better, though, for its modern setting, its familiar looks.  Any modern city could become Hope Town remarkably easily.  The look of the place is thrilling: everything is so colourful that the graffiti and trash seem beautiful, not dirty, and the blood seems appropriate decoration.

I love that someone's actually graffitied the word 'feces'.
It's the plural of 'fez', you know.

I was rather wary of watching 'Hobo With a Shotgun', for two reasons.  Firstly, I was concerned that a film so-titled might be as ironic and as wilfully awful as 'Snakes On a Plane' (2006).  To my relief, this was a work of merit, delighting in its schlock but never using it as an excuse.  Secondly, it looked to be distressingly violent.  Now, I've seen, and regretted seeing, some nauseating films which revelled in their characters' pain and sought to horrify their audiences with long scenes of torture and maiming.  'Hobo With a Shotgun' isn't that sort of thing at all.  Pain isn't lingered on, and the deaths are, while unpleasant, spectacular.  It's too stylised and too positive in message to give many nightmares.

There's a charm to it: a feeling that good can prosper, and villains might eventually be brought low.  The hobo isn't a violent man; he's a simple one with an innocent dream: all he wants is to own a lawnmower and use it to find work as a gardener.  His rampage against crime is just a step towards that dream, and an act to protect Abby (Molly Dunsworth), the young prostitute with whom he finds a tender friendship, and who dreams of going to the zoo to see the bears.

Don't worry - it isn't her own blood.

It's attractively directed, and the pictures are all striking.  Rutger Hauer gives a magnificent performance as the hobo, at one point giving a masterclass in eye-acting through a slit in a coffin.  The film's world is believable, beautifully stylised and intriguingly layered, as the eighties-tinged modernity of the town eventually opens up to show something more mysterious, more ancient, as the Drake calls forth The Plague.  This pair of mute knights are seen only briefly, and seem to hint at a long, long history of pestilence and butchery.  Their mediaeval stylings never jar with the rest of the film, and their faceless armour seems well-placed alongside the school-buses and monochrome varsity jackets of the modern American continent.  They expand what could have been a crude morality play, leaving something more mysterious, not restricted to a single time and place.

---

Despite my initial reservations, I'm glad I saw this film.  It's not so horrible as I feared, and while I would hesitate to show it to an infant, I think it's far less distressing and damaging than, say, 'The Death of Pencilton' (2011), or 'Na Srebrnym Globie' (1977), or  'The Snowman' (1982).

Ninja Terminator (1985)

Ninja-Master Harry, about to prostrate himself before a metal arm.

I was sent this Ninja Z-movie by Andrew Collier, who was likewise responsible for my viewing of 'Train to Hell' (1998).  Now, given my preference for jikatabi (it's a type of shoe, if you don't know), I ought to delight in ninja movies; in fact, I don't think I've ever seen one until now.  As bizarre as this low-budget action adventure is, it's my only window into the genre, so I'm going to have to assume they're all like this until I can see a real one.  By real, I mean one that's actually Japanese.

Richard Harrison (who is, alas, not Richard Harris) plays Ninja Master Harry.  He has a moustache, but we're meant to think he's a really cool guy.  The moustache kills it, and he comes across as one of those people who fill their house with swords and guns, and pose with them, and dress up as a macho ninja type, and have a moustache and spend all day waxing their wakazashi and taking uber-manly photos of themselves holding weapons, and growing a moustache.  In short, he looks like a P.E. teacher, and I can't look to him with the same admiration for his colossal virility that he might admire in himself.

Ninja-Master Harry has a moustache

I don't know why the moustache is such an issue for me, but apparently it is.  Now, David Niven can wear a moustache, and so can Nicholas Courtney, or Frank Zappa, or Freddie Mercury.  I appreciate Movember, and don't rail against it.  Perhaps it's that these people know that moustaches sans beards are slightly bizarre, idiosyncratic things, not badges of manliness.  Ninja-Master Harry seems to represent a coolness without irony, and it doesn't work.  He's a hero who could never laugh at himself.  His being a caucasian Ninja and also (with an implied 'therefore') the best Ninja doesn't help matters.

So anyway, this is a movie full of people fighting each other.  Despite this, it's not as violent as I expected.  The fights are fun and exciting, with very little blood.  Sometimes just a trickle from the lip, to suggest that an opponent has been thoroughly trounced.  Enemies are dispatched, not killed, and conflicts are as likely to end with the sudden disappearance of one ninja, leaving behind a cryptic message.  Often the fights saunter into bizarre comedy, with the less credible of henchmen having their noses tweaked, armpits tickled, even the odd blow to the old family jewels, replete with agonised hopping about.  Ninja movies are clearly a sort of drama to be played by dancers, not orators.  I like the way they move, the dynamic, rather angular way characters sit up, or turn around, or even double-take. 

A henchman who knows how to moustache properly.  His hair and mine are alike.

The aggressive cheapness of the opening credits (the music for which sounds to have been extracted from a cassette) left me expecting a less impressive film than I got.  True, the dubbing into English was questionable, and Ninja-Master Harry had something of Garth Marenghi about him - but much of the footage seemed to have time and genuine skill put into it, especially the fights, and anything featuring the stylish Jaguar Wong, who can carry out whole fights one-handed, while idly chewing on gum.  Since Harry and Wong never meet, nor interact at all except over the telephone, I think director Godfrey Ho may well have played the standard Z-movie trick of borrowing half-an-hour of action scenes from somebody's abandoned film and cutting them in with his own footage.  This would go some way to explaining a bizarre scene early on, where two characters, who appear only briefly, are over-dubbed with a great deal of exposition, the contents and emotions of which have no bearing on the performances we see.

So, it's fun, the fighting is visually impressive, and it holds the attention far better than I was expecting.  Naturally it's flawed in many ways, which in a Z-movie of this calibre is to be expected and even hoped for.  One problem, though, is far less excusable: women in this film are commodities and nothing more, there to be kidnapped or traded, to sleep with or cook for our heroes, or admire their weaponry.  Every single man in the film has been trained to fight, but the women have learnt only to be victims.  When Ninja-Master Harry's woman is stolen, he sees nothing objectionable about kidnapping an enemy female to arrange a trade.  Like the golden statuette that the Ninjas pursue, the women are merely possessions to own and guard.  It's tempting to brush past this and say it's a product of its time, but by the mid-eighties surely people knew better.

---

Currently only one pence plus postage, if you have the time or inclination.

Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr Leonard Cohen (1965)

Though Leonard Cohen is now known as a singer-songwriter, this documentary was made two years before he'd released his first record.  Here we see Leonard Cohen the poet, the novelist, the stand-up comic.  He plays a harmonica at one point, and is briefly seen playing some chords on a guitar, but these are momentary novelties.

Appropriately, when I first saw this documentary at university in 2004, I hadn't heard any of Cohen's albums.  I'd heard a few of his songs, as the neighbour who showed me the film always had Leonard Cohen songs blaring from his open door, and his classic 'Hallelujah' was especially unescapable in those days, wherever you went.  I was very taken with the short film and with the charisma of its lead, and it only took me seven years to get around to listening to his music.  This week, having a far clearer, and rather different understanding of the man and his career to what I had in 2004, I revisited the documentary and found it excellent.

The young Cohen signs a book of his poems for a fan

Leonard Cohen knows he's somebody special.  That makes him sound arrogant, and perhaps he is, but for the most part it's just a confidence in the worth of his art, in the quality of his poetry, and in the fact that a documentary made about him at this young age will some day be a work of historical significance.  Since he's become both famous and highly influential since then, I'd say he's been vindicated in this high self-esteem.  The narrator speaks with the same confidence, as if this film was intended as much as an advert for the merit of Canadian culture as a documentary in search of the truth.

'His talent has been saluted by the international press.  Canadian critics have called him the finest poet of his generation.  He himself has said he has chosen a path that is infinitely wide and without direction.  This, he says, is a very good path for someone who moves in the funny way that he does'.   It's a pity Cohen now has such a reputation as miserable and depressing, as his sense of humour is apparent throughout the film, as it is through his records.  When he stands on stage to tell a story he remains deadpan while his audience roar with laughter.  When he's in more intimate surroundings, he can hardly contain his giggles at mild whimsies.

We get a good showing of Cohen in action.  He delivers a number of poems, none directly to camera: some are given to live audiences; one in a recording studio, where the camera observes him from within the booth, and then from the mixing desk; some, we have only the audio over shots of Cohen travelling or socialising.  In an especially 1960s sequence (for this is a very mid-60s film), we see him interviewed by men in suits, who struggle to understand his youthful idiosyncrasy, his irony, his claims to be apolitical.  Away from the interviewer, he talks more candidly about the questions he was asked and the answers he would and wouldn't give.

A highlight: Leonard Cohen takes a postmodern bath

At the end of the film Cohen is shown some of the footage and interviewed about seeing himself on the screen.  These five minutes are my favourite part, and the reason this short feature stuck in my mind for a decade.  There's a shot of him asleep in bed, and he talks about how privileged he is to see himself asleep.  He then points out that, of course, he isn't seeing himself asleep, only himself pretending to sleep, as this was faked for the cameras.

Continuing this theme, we see Leonard Cohen in the bath.  He sits, bathing himself for a while, but eventually picks up a pen and writes 'caveat emptor' on the wall.  'Let the buyer beware'.  He's asked why he wrote this, and explains that he's warning the audience: what we're seeing isn't Leonard Cohen privately bathing, it's Leonard Cohen observed by a camera, pretending to be alone.  It's a brilliant illustration, a moment of postmodernism which comes back to me quite often.  Watching documentaries of any kind, but especially reality TV of the Apprentice mould is intriguing when you remind yourself that the subjects are surrounded by cameras, and any action, any emotion they show is given in the knowledge that it may be broadcast.  With very few exceptions, we never see people going about their daily lives, and the reality we're given is all constructed for us.  Leonard Cohen knows this, and knows how to play us.  No wonder he got so famous.

---

It's way expensive for 45 minutes.  Borrow my copy instead.  And listen to some Cohen music, why doncha?  There's an affordable box-set of most of his studio albums, and they make a magnificent guide through the latter third of the 20th Century

Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993)

Until a week before I saw this film (or should I say, 'these films') I had never heard of Glenn Gould.  I received many recommendations during a merry weekend, but the title and the very brief description I heard from my friend and scientific advisor Fnord meant this was one of only two films I sought after from the ten or twenty titles I solicited.

Glenn Gould was a concert pianist and this is a set of 31 short films (averaging 3 minutes apiece, plus or minus three minutes) about him and his life.  Being a few years dead, he himself does not appear, not even in photo.  What we have are dramatisations, vignettes, monologues, snatches of animation, and interviews (in English and French) with those who knew or met him.

Glenn Gould coming to a resolution

Since the movie is divided so clearly into many short segments, it has the feel of one of my favourite novels, 'Bear v Shark' (Chris Bachelder, 2002) which is made up of 100 very short chapters, typically only one or two pages in length.  Snippets and snapshots, ideas rather than full scenes.  Each of the 31 films here is given a chapter-heading.  Few if any of the dramatisations give us major events in Gould's life, preferring to show us quiet or private moments, one side of a telephone conversation or, on several occasions, Glenn Gould listening.  Almost the whole soundtrack is Glenn Gould on the piano, either supporting or competing with the contents of the scene.

I like this, as a way of telling the story of a person, more than any biopic I've seen.  In my comments on 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' (1928) I talked about how 'I'm Not There' (2007) broke Bob Dylan into seven characters to examine his different facets.  This managing something similar, but without divorcing the parts from the whole.  The scenes point in from myriad directions but in a manner less fanciful than that other film.  A lot, perhaps everything, can be shown about Glenn Gould in these 31 attempts far more quickly and economically than if these 90 minutes were given over to more straightforward structure.  For one thing, that would require more characters than one; in this form Glenn Gould is the film's only focus, and any other face or voice is likely to enter and leave his life in under six minutes, never to be spoken of again.

Glenn Gould on the telephone again

It's remarkably solitary.  Many scenes with the one character, thinking, listening, often being highly sociable and articulate but only over the telephone.  Refusing to speak about his music, which speaks for itself.  The only extended dialogue in the film, and my favourite of the chapters, is 'Gould Meets Gould', a dramatised interview in which both sides were scripted by the real Gould.  It shows Glenn, his voice as sonorous and pedantic as ever, leading a highly-strung interviewer (of the same voice) through certain fascinating ideas, theories of art, the ways he thinks and works - his insistent dislike of the ratio of one performer to a whole roomful of audience, for instance; Gould favoured a more intimate relationship with the audience-member, and so abandoned public performances in favour of studio recordings.  The interview is conducted at break-neck pace in a wired-up church, and the two parties (Glenn Gould pacing, the interviewer head in hands) are lit only from behind, their faces in so much shadow as to be invisible to the viewer.  All this dominated by his thunderous piano.

I feel I have rather a lot in common with Glenn Gould.  Perhaps anybody watching this film would come away feeling equal affinity with the man (as is so readily the case with any biography which really gets of the heart of a real person in favour of caricature or easy answers).  Nonetheless, I feel compelled by Glenn Gould's thoughts and philosophies, ways of working and talking; I feel some kinship with his troubled hair; his habitual solitude balanced against a capacity to be extremely talkative and rhetorical, away from people.

'Gould Meets McLaren'

An animated sequence of spheres

Something I always forget about biographies is that the main character dies at the end.  I once made the mistake of reading a biography of Gilbert and Sullivan, in which they both died, which was more than I was prepared to deal with.  The films hardly seemed arranged chronologically, but they did begin with Glenn Gould's beginning and ended with his death and legacy (the latter of which was some consolation, at least), and though I'd only known him for an hour and a half I was more upset than I'd expected.

This might be my favourite of the films I've watched for this project so far.  I once made a video documentary about a singer-songwriter friend of mine, Tom Hollingworth, and wish I'd had the sharpness of mind to have made it in the fashion of these 31 films.  I might actually have been able to say something interesting about him.

P.S. When I made mention of this film to my mother she gave a nostalgic cry of 'oh, Glenn Gould,' so my dearth of knowledge of the man is probably down to my ignorance rather than his obscurity.  In my defence, there was never a year when we both of us walked the Earth.

P.P.S. I know I've already covered 1993 with 'Jurassic Park', but this film was something special, and I was unwilling to ignore it.  Since it seems quite as much documentary as dramatic biopic I'm content to count it toward Achievement 6, my intent to see documentaries from ten decades.

P.P.P.S. Come back this weekend when I'll be commenting on a documentary about the life and work of another Canadian artist, 'Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Leonard Cohen' (1965)

---

The DVD isn't so Region 1 as Amazon might claim, and I'd recommend it gladly.  It's pretty cheap, too.