12 Years A Slave (2013)

Based upon a book published in 1853, a memoir by Solomon Northup, this film brings the story alive in a direct manner. The narrative is simple; a free African American living and working in New York state is kidnapped and sold into slavery to a Washington slave trader and auctioneer. He is then sold on first to a benevolent plantation owner and finally to a violently malevolent owner. For 12 years, we see the story unfold via a series of brutal and honestly portrayed episodes that show us something of the total removal of humanity from one race of people.

The director, Steve McQueen, is also known as a Turner Prize winning artist. I recall one of his video installations which was a carefully crafted film of McQueen re-enacting a Buster Keaton scene. This is where the front of a wooden building collapses and falls on top of Keaton but he safely survives where he stands, appearing through the open door as it collapses upon him. The video by McQueen is shot from different angles to show the physicality of the action including the vibration ripples on McQueens face. Unlike the Turner Prize judges, I never “got it” and although it looked interesting – I passed on by.

Seeing this film, which has re-awakened the world’s awareness of the slave trade and slavery during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, I was fully aware of where McQueen was coming from as an artist. We see the physicality of the act of enslavement repeated from every angle until we ourselves in the audience are reduced and stripped, leaving our emotions bare.

The timing of the film’s release is appropriate. Gone with the Wind was released over half a century ago and it portrayed slavery in a benevolent non-violent way, a class ridden plantation pecking order where even slaves had status in their working ways. Last year saw Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained in which we were invited to laugh at slavery from a white man’s perspective in a mock spaghetti western style.

On the day of the film’s release in Glasgow, the Herald published an article by Professor Geoff Palmer (Heriot-Watt University). He reminded Scotland of its one time economic dependence on the slave trade. He illustrated this with examples that we live with today all over Glasgow via its street names and buildings. Jamaica Street lies parallel with the River Clyde from where the slave trade was conducted. Not in the trading of the slaves themselves but in the output of their enslavement, sugar and tobacco. These two commoddities were economic foundation stones for three hundred years. In 1800 there were ten thousand Scots involved in running and managing this plantation trade in the West Indies. Professor Geoff Palmer has a Scottish name but he was born in Jamaica.

If this film does anything, it needs to influence the way we see our inheritance as a nation and how we respond to humanity in the 21^st century.

American Hustle (2013)

A hustle is a confidence trick. An audience can feel confident that they are being tricked. Magicians use smoke and mirrors but a hustler has to give you the confidence that although you are being conned, you can still enjoy the process of believing that you are getting something for nothing. Some hustlers could sell sand to the Arabs but in this movie the Arabs are selling the sand.

After two hours of watching American Hustle I had to discuss what I had witnessed with a companion to assure myself that I had understood what I had I seen. Which makes the film more clever than it was an outstanding piece.

I’ll try to explain. A seasoned and professional hustler teams up with a pole dancer to enter into a bond raising scam which works for them until they are caught out by an FBI investigator. He strikes a deal with the pair which will let them off if they can finger three corrupt local and national politicians for fraud. The pair devise a plan which will involve a colleague disguised as an Arab who is prepared to fund a money laundering casino in Atlantic City for the Mafia but it will require $2 million of FBI money to set the scam up. They succeed in this via a wild and funny route involving the hustler’s wife and the seduction of the FBI investigator by the pole dancer. The denouement is the arrest of the three politicians and the disappearance of the $2 million by the hustling couple.

So, how did a story that could have been effectively aired on the British TV series, Hustle, become a multi Oscar nominated film which has a Hollywood A list in its casting ? Well that could be the clue. It would have been reduced to a TV series had it not got the A list. Bradley Cooper does excel as the FBI investigator in a really OTT performance of a man carried away by his own confidence. Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams are superb and carry the film. Christian Bale commands attention in an eccentric way that reflects the ra of the story, namely the 1970’s. This is reflected in the careful detail of the sets and and good selection of music.

There is a brilliant cameo from Robert de Niro as a scary Mafia boss who did not play the part for laughs. The rest of the film is fast, furious and funny in parts and enfuriatingly confusing in others. You have to keep up or you will get lost – or hustled.

Saving Mr Banks (2013

Mary Poppins passed me by when it came out. I was not young enough and not quite old enough to be able ever to say that I sneaked in to see it when the film was released. And it would be many years before it was shown on TV. In fact, the first time that I saw it was shortly after watching Saving Mr Banks. Thus completing the story for me.

Saving Mr Banks is a film with two stories tracking each other with a denouement that is cleverly created by Walt Disney himself – not just in the film but also in Mary Poppins.

Emma Thompson plays P.L.Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, which was a very popular childrens book on both sides of the pond. Although not impoverished, her agent uses the lack of funds coming in as a lever to persuade Travers to travel to America to oversee the script and music preparation that Walt Disney is commissioning. He has yet to secure the rights of her treasured book. Treasured in the sense that Travers is reluctant to have any creative embellishments made to her story. Walt Disney, played by Tom Hanks in his second big acting role this year (Captain Phillips was the other) has yet to get Travers’s signature on the contract to give him the film rights. He devotes his time humouring her and trying to win her over to allow him to use imaginative, creative methods to put the story over to a young and old audience alike – with music and song. The latter proposition is a painful one for Travers and provides a number of funny and frustrating moments for the composing and song writing team.

Two characters, Hanks and Paul Giametti, chauffeur to Travers in Hollywood, are used to good effect as vehicles for engaging with humanity with Travers to help her unpick her uncertainties. For the audience we also have the second thread of the film. This is the episodic flashback of her childhood story and her relationship with her father, and to a certain degree, her mother and aunt. This is not an untypical childhood story, set in 19^th century Australia, where adult truths are not always clear and sometimes hidden from children growing up.

Hanks has begun to understand that Travers’s reluctance to let go of her master piece (and I use that phrase in its literal sense) because the book is synonymous with her experience and relationship with her father. The film is neatly brought to its finale with Disney travelling to London to complete this analysis in her living room over a cup of tea (milk in first). This is a touching and thoughtful scene that is beautifully and sensitively filmed and scripted. We could not end without some acknowledgement of her home truths and we see Travers inviting herself to the premier of Mary Poppins (she had previously been overlooked to save any embarrassing criticisms from her). In true Hollywood tear jerk fashion we see her in the stalls acknowledging the end result with her own tears.

The acting is very good, the script is well crafted, the two stories converge properly, and most amateur psychologists will be pleased with the conclusion.

However, a spoonful of sugar will never take away the fact that Walt Disney was a ruthless businessman who knew the power of money especially when he knew the artist was in need of an income.