Review of 'Begin Again'

Quite pleasant no-rom com about the music business - Keira Knightley is a singer-songwriter with integrity who gets taken up by a washed-up drunk of an A+R man. They record an album in the streets using mobile equipment ("Hey kids...let's record the whole album right here!").

Keira's character (probably has a name, don't remember it) finds out her big-star singer boyfriend is cheating on her with someone from the crew, they nearly get back together but don't because she dislikes the way he has sold out to the suits.

In passing Keira heals the exec, cures his alcoholism and reconciles him to his family. Absolutely no sex or drugs, though a bit of profanity and drink. KK looks like the pretty alien that she is - attractive without being remotely sexy - so the absence of any sexual chemistry in the film makes complete sense.

Nevertheless quite enjoyable.

Review of 'A Little Chaos'

Pretty to look at but dull. Not much plot, a few moments of nearly pointless melodrama, acting generally not all that good – though Alan Rickman is clearly having fun as Louis XIV.

Of course no sign of the poverty on which the court rested, or the cruelty which was necessary and unremarkable to ensure its survival. There’s a hint that the nobles are prisoners of a court system that keeps them busy and out of trouble, but even there the film is a pale shadow of the depiction of this in Ridicule (a much better film).

The Rabbi's Hat

This picture from the Girona Jewish Museum apparently depicts a Jewish wedding. The rabbi is wearing a bishop's mitre. Did rabbis ever wear such headgear? If not, how come this picture? Was it done by a non-Jew who thought that's what clerics wear? What seem to be crosses on the hat makes that seem more likely. In which case, how did the picture happen?

I have something of an interest in the story of Jewish hats (we didn't always keep our heads covered, not before the 14th century) and am also intrigued by ecclesiastical headgear. So I'd really like to know the answer to this.

Review of 'Woman in Gold'

I didn't think much of this. First, I was bored much of the time. Lots of courtroom scenes, without much drama. I never really engaged with any of the characters or their dilemmas, in so far as they had any.

But mainly I think the effort to restore Nazi-looted art to its owners leaves me cold. Valuable paintings are a form of money. That Manet or Van Gogh isn't worth squillions because that is its intrinsic value, but because it’s scarce and monetary value can be attached to it. So everyone who owns a valuable painting is by definition part of the super-rich.

In this story the happy ending is that the Klimpt paintings are transferred from a public gallery in Vienna to a privately owned gallery in New York, where they are on public display. The heroine realises that the return of the paintings doesn't resolve her sense of loss of world and family, her guilt at fleeing and leaving her parents behind – she still has to live with that. Well, guess what? Other holocaust victims have to live with that too, only they weren't ever rich, so they didn't either have to deal with losing their valuable art, or have any prospect of getting it back.

And a small quibble. In the apartment, at Maria’ wedding (and what sort of name is that for a Jewish girl anyway?) the exquisitely bourgeois Viennese Jews dance a hora. Would they have, or is this just the film trying to connect them with the European Jewish world as imagined by an American audience?

Review of ‘The Grand Seduction’

This film is very much in the tradition of small-community-conspires-to-deceive-outsider movies, as established by ‘Whisky Galore’ and refined by ‘Local Hero’. This is not nearly as good as the fore-runners. Apparently it’s a Canadian remake of an earlier Canadian film, which rather begs the question why bother? This one has Brendan Gleeson, but the other one looks like it might have been better. Oh, wait a minute, it was in French...presumably this was remade for the US market.

It’s watchable enough, though the deceived outside barely escapes the too-stupid-to-live designation in noticing what is going on. There is a vague sense that someone has cut all the more interesting parts out of the film. The enigmatic post-mistress who provides the love interest for the deceived outsider is barely a character at all. Nevertheless, at one point she raises the question as to whether the town will really benefit from having a petroleum waste reprocessing place – an issue which is never mentioned again, or even considered by any of the other inhabitants of this pristinely beautiful harbour.

Part of the process of the town being able to secure the oil company’s decision to locate its reprocessing plant there involves a personal bribe to one of the executives. This is presented as a technical challenge, and thus forms part of the plot (will the local bank manager be able to get this approved as a loan, or will he just steal the money from his own bank?) but it is not presented as a moral or a political element at all. It’s not even reflected on much by the characters – it’s just one more hurdle, like pretending to understand and like cricket.

Technical note: watched on telly via HDMI cable from laptop, because the film was downloaded.