London Film Festival Diaries: Day 3
Two masters return with two masterworks.
The London Film Festival (LFF) is running from October 9 - 20, and I will be among the plebs attending the regular screenings. The days of me going to press screenings and getting paid to attend festivals are behind me (for now?) but I won’t let that stop me from sharing my thoughts here. Immediate impressions will be on X if you’d like to give me a follow there.
Caught by the Tides - dir. Jia Zhang-ke
Plot in a Nutshell
Qiaoqiao (Tao Zhao) searches for her long-lost lover over two decades across an ever-changing China. Blending documentary and narrative footage, the film explores themes of love, time, and the relentless march of progress.
Even though I’m unfamiliar with Jia Zhangke’s films, I quickly recognised that I was under the spell of a master while watching the uncanny, perplexing and mesmerising Caught by the Tides.
Walking out of this impressionistic trip down what feels like a very personal memory lane made me want to dive headfirst into Zhangke’s narrative films. And not just because he uses a lot of outtakes and B-rolls from his previous films, so a lot of “aha!” moments are lost on me. His use of editing and music turns cinematic storytelling on its axis. It completely abandons narrative convention for some kind of free spirited approach to visual-first storytelling that I’ve never quite come across before, and there were moments that truly took my breath away.
Zhangke himself cuts a funny figure. Short in stature, zipped up in a puffy winter jacket and wearing dark poker-style sunglasses, he revealed a bit of his thought process after the screening. Talking about the decades of footage he was rummaging through, the emotions he was after in this film “could not be delivered through regular cause and effect” or “narrative physics” as he put it. Having done many scripted and conventional narrative films before, he was aiming for something closer to “quantum physics”.
It’s fascinating to hear him speak in such scientific terms about an artform that essentially deals in emotions and feelings. Zhangke also mentioned the big influence a course on A.I. had on him, and how much that opened up the possibilities of storytelling to him. Indeed, a scene towards the end featuring Tao Zhao’s Qiaoqiao and a robot mall assistant is one of the most endearing moments between human and machine I’ve ever seen on screen.
That Caught by the Tides paints a portrait about a land and its people, and the effervescence of love, regret and nostalgia, using Zhangke’s personal home-video and B-rolls from his previous films for a mix of fiction and non-fiction that is, at times, breathtaking to behold. It feels like the cinematic equivalent of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, but it’s much too early to tell if it will have that kind of lasting impression.
Hard Truths - dir. Mike Leigh
Plot in a Nutshell
Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a disagreeable woman riddled with a myriad of complexes. She struggles with her relationships, especially with her husband and son. Her sister, Chantal (Bryony Miller), leads a more balanced, happy life. Leading up to Mother’s Day, the film explores the lives of Pansy and Chantal, and those around them.
Mike Leigh is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers, so there was little chance I wasn’t going to love Hard Truths. And while I admit its third act’s got me asking some hard questions, we can safely add this next to Secrets & Lies (1996), Another Year (2010), Naked (1993), and the other slice-of-life monumental dramas from Leigh’s ouvre that deal with the burdens of everyday life and the paralyzing fear of loneliness
Leigh’s films are nothing if not acting masterclasses, the sense of lived lives he manages to capture is all down to his infamous process with the actors, who are all practically co-directors. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is phenomenal. Fernanda Torres deserve an Oscar nomination for her role in I’m Still Here, but Jean-Baptiste deserves the win. Her Pansy an emotional wreck of a tornado that destroys everything in its path, and it’s equally tragic and comic to observe.
Like the similar curmudgeons that make up Leigh’s rogue’s gallery (Alfred Dolittle from Naked, Mr. Turner from, well, Mr. Turner etc.) Pansy is riddled with complexes and a horror to be around, and yet — the humanity within quietly devastates you and makes you reconsider so many things about people, life and society at large. It’s also laugh-out-loud hilarious to the point where you have to ask yourself “is it okay to be laughing this much?”
After what was not one of his best efforts in the ambitious Peterloo (2018) Leigh took his time coming back, but back he is most certainly is. Hard Truths sees the British maestro doing what he does best: creating an entire psycho-emotional universe from a tiny corner of the simple and the everyday with absorbing and seemingly effortless compassion and humanity.
Thank you for these reviews. Will try to see Hard Truths. Another Year was a such a kind, humane film!