A triumph of style of substance, in the end. Which isn't to say that there's no substance, merely that there's just too much style.
"2046" is a dazzling showcase of technique, never tiring of its own preening beauty. Wong Kar Wai uses colour, particularly bamboo green, exquisitely; he creates wonderful illusions with transitions between scenes, sometimes replaying the same action from a variety of affected perspectives. Most striking is his penchant for veiling part of the camera lens, shutting off part of the vision to create a new, reshaped screen. It's marvellous stuff.
But it gets in the way. Any emotional connection with the love stories being told by the narrator, looking back over his life with considerable regret, is continually broken by the stylistic exercises. Visually, there's just too much going on, too much to remind us that we're only watching a film. A bizarre, futuristic interlude towards the end doesn't especially help: ambitious, yet pointlessly so.
Which is a shame, as there's potential here. It's never realised, though; it's just left in a corner, forgotten by its creator. A beautiful failure.
24 November 2005
Book review: Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
If nothing else, it can't help but earn your respect. "Wuthering Heights" is many things, but it is emphatically not what you expect it to be; indeed, I've read few classics that have evaded predictability so completely.
This is a dark, nasty novel that's stalked by violence and hatred, almost to the point of being a sardonic parody of itself. At times, only the steady pace of the narrative provides a familiar reference point, something to cling onto as hard, selfish characters pointedly turn their backs on your interest. That's also its problem, of course: it spends so much energy on keeping you at arm's length that there's no possibility of emotional engagement.
Instead, you have to admire from afar, and it's only at the novel's conclusion that you fully understand what you've been admiring. Until then, the simple, effective narrative has promised a complete story; in reality, though, that's just the means to an end and Bronte stops as soon as she's accomplished her goal.
So, rather, this is a simple and rather bold portrait of one man, Heathcliff. It's an intimidating portrait too, glaring at you from the wall and following you around the room until you leave. Quite impressive, if not at all easy to love.
This is a dark, nasty novel that's stalked by violence and hatred, almost to the point of being a sardonic parody of itself. At times, only the steady pace of the narrative provides a familiar reference point, something to cling onto as hard, selfish characters pointedly turn their backs on your interest. That's also its problem, of course: it spends so much energy on keeping you at arm's length that there's no possibility of emotional engagement.
Instead, you have to admire from afar, and it's only at the novel's conclusion that you fully understand what you've been admiring. Until then, the simple, effective narrative has promised a complete story; in reality, though, that's just the means to an end and Bronte stops as soon as she's accomplished her goal.
So, rather, this is a simple and rather bold portrait of one man, Heathcliff. It's an intimidating portrait too, glaring at you from the wall and following you around the room until you leave. Quite impressive, if not at all easy to love.
21 November 2005
Book reviews: Two novels by William Golding
The Pyramid
Hard to believe, really, that a writer of Golding's intensity had such a bland, innocuous novel in him, still less that he bothered to publish it. You can see the point of this as an exercise, an attempt to make the fearsome imagination that characteristically drives his fiction confront everyday life.
But the results are quite frighteningly dull: three novellas that wander around aimlessly with no particular place to go, relying on uneven characterisation and observation that never match Orwell's lovely eye for the England of a similar era. There are some pleasing touches along the way, but no warmth, no depth, nothing to make it all come alive. Oddly, Golding seems to struggle more with commonplace mundanity than he does with the extraordinary....
The Spire
A masterpiece of quite unsurpassed power. That power, driving what is essentially an extended parable, is derived from the key elements of Golding's incredible writing: his breathtaking vision and ambition, the almost physical density of his prose, the remarkable subtlety and skill that enables him to describe emotions, thoughts, ideas as vividly as he conjures up unseen, forgotten worlds at the edge of human experience.
This is, perhaps, the most astonishing product of that artistry, a novel that burns with the insane obsessions of its central character and, magnificently, peaks and slides with his perceived failure and subsequent death. As ever, there are occasional false steps - inevitable when you push the envelope so far - but the overriding impression is of Golding's range, capable of describing the monstrous strain of a disintegrating, splintering cathedral and the tender, hushed moments at the end of a human life with equal gravity, dexterity and potency.
One of the great modern novels, even if history won't ever acknowledge it as such.
Hard to believe, really, that a writer of Golding's intensity had such a bland, innocuous novel in him, still less that he bothered to publish it. You can see the point of this as an exercise, an attempt to make the fearsome imagination that characteristically drives his fiction confront everyday life.
But the results are quite frighteningly dull: three novellas that wander around aimlessly with no particular place to go, relying on uneven characterisation and observation that never match Orwell's lovely eye for the England of a similar era. There are some pleasing touches along the way, but no warmth, no depth, nothing to make it all come alive. Oddly, Golding seems to struggle more with commonplace mundanity than he does with the extraordinary....
The Spire
A masterpiece of quite unsurpassed power. That power, driving what is essentially an extended parable, is derived from the key elements of Golding's incredible writing: his breathtaking vision and ambition, the almost physical density of his prose, the remarkable subtlety and skill that enables him to describe emotions, thoughts, ideas as vividly as he conjures up unseen, forgotten worlds at the edge of human experience.
This is, perhaps, the most astonishing product of that artistry, a novel that burns with the insane obsessions of its central character and, magnificently, peaks and slides with his perceived failure and subsequent death. As ever, there are occasional false steps - inevitable when you push the envelope so far - but the overriding impression is of Golding's range, capable of describing the monstrous strain of a disintegrating, splintering cathedral and the tender, hushed moments at the end of a human life with equal gravity, dexterity and potency.
One of the great modern novels, even if history won't ever acknowledge it as such.
20 November 2005
I've been on holiday!
'Scuse the excitement, but it really doesn't happen very often. You can share the glorious peace of Church Cove on the Lizard here.
Current listening (among quite a lot of other things)
Piana - Ephemeral (Happy LP, 2005)
Pretty much impossible, really, to write about this without using the word "sublime"...and "sublime" is merely "nice" for postmodernists, so we should avoid that if we can. It's a quite impossibly gorgeous record, though: at first listen, a saccharine mulch of coo and froth; on closer inspection, a concise collection of songs so thoroughly perfect that you have to keep checking that they still exist.
Available from Boomkat, of course.
Murcof - Remembranza (Leaf LP, 2005)
Oh, I dunno. A disappointment? But it's a fine and accomplished record, unquestionably: if this had been his debut, then it would've been raved about every bit as much as his debut was raved about. A triumph, then? Well, no: it's just a little too conservative for that, a little too obvious. So, "Remembranza" is another album of precise glitches and delicately poised classical samples, and it's perfectly fine. It really is perfectly fine. It's just not special, that's all.
Samples and stuff on Boomkat.
Skream - Midnight Request Line (Tempa 12", 2005)
Skream is a bloody genius. Of all the presents that the dubstep scene has delivered onto my virtual doorstep this year, his August mix is the greatest, an absolutely towering collection of tunes that combines thunderous bass with exquisite melody and thereby thrusts a still-adolescent style of music into adulthood without sacrificing any of its vital innocence. You should stop reading this rubbish and download it now. Then, buy a copy of "Midnight Request Line", his completely magnificent, world-conquering dubstep-grime hybrid. Or ignore me, and never know such glories.
Boomkat.
Toasty Boy - Angel (Hotflush 12", 2005)
An oldie, by common standards. But Distance is still playing it on his Rinse FM show and he's right to: it's about the most perfect distillation of modern break-driven dance music that you'll ever hear. A great looping whale of a bassline, topped with just the right shuffle of beats...and it makes my heart sing every time I hear it. Which is quite often.
Boomkat.
Pretty much impossible, really, to write about this without using the word "sublime"...and "sublime" is merely "nice" for postmodernists, so we should avoid that if we can. It's a quite impossibly gorgeous record, though: at first listen, a saccharine mulch of coo and froth; on closer inspection, a concise collection of songs so thoroughly perfect that you have to keep checking that they still exist.
Available from Boomkat, of course.
Murcof - Remembranza (Leaf LP, 2005)
Oh, I dunno. A disappointment? But it's a fine and accomplished record, unquestionably: if this had been his debut, then it would've been raved about every bit as much as his debut was raved about. A triumph, then? Well, no: it's just a little too conservative for that, a little too obvious. So, "Remembranza" is another album of precise glitches and delicately poised classical samples, and it's perfectly fine. It really is perfectly fine. It's just not special, that's all.
Samples and stuff on Boomkat.
Skream - Midnight Request Line (Tempa 12", 2005)
Skream is a bloody genius. Of all the presents that the dubstep scene has delivered onto my virtual doorstep this year, his August mix is the greatest, an absolutely towering collection of tunes that combines thunderous bass with exquisite melody and thereby thrusts a still-adolescent style of music into adulthood without sacrificing any of its vital innocence. You should stop reading this rubbish and download it now. Then, buy a copy of "Midnight Request Line", his completely magnificent, world-conquering dubstep-grime hybrid. Or ignore me, and never know such glories.
Boomkat.
Toasty Boy - Angel (Hotflush 12", 2005)
An oldie, by common standards. But Distance is still playing it on his Rinse FM show and he's right to: it's about the most perfect distillation of modern break-driven dance music that you'll ever hear. A great looping whale of a bassline, topped with just the right shuffle of beats...and it makes my heart sing every time I hear it. Which is quite often.
Boomkat.
Film review: The Descent
There's a moment, two thirds of the way through "The Descent", when we're told that the once-human creatures gradually eating our party of terrified cavers alive has evolved "perfectly" to live in darkness. Until that point, it's been a distinctly smart horror film, careful and deliberate in its attempts to build up a fiercely claustrophobic atmosphere and to draw portraits of its characters rather than merely send them to their inevitable doom.
But that moment tests your belief. Because these creatures haven't evolved perfectly. At all. They can't see, for a start. Or smell, apparently. And while we're told that they hear like bats, the scriptwriter should probably be grateful that bats don't have lawyers. In short, they're stupid enough to make this a fight that lasts longer than ten seconds.
So, what remains is much less sensible. But it's terrific nonetheless: a gruesome slaughter that barely gives you time, in the murky cavelight, to work out who's still alive. Crucially, though, some of that earlier groundwork pays off too: the conclusion has an emotional kick that makes it linger, and the entirety has a morbid, haunting quality beyond the undeniable dumb thrills.
Not a masterpiece, then. But "The Descent" succeeds where horror often fails: its essential coherence, even when it gets silly, pulls you through, drags you along. Makes you watch, even when you don't want to.
But that moment tests your belief. Because these creatures haven't evolved perfectly. At all. They can't see, for a start. Or smell, apparently. And while we're told that they hear like bats, the scriptwriter should probably be grateful that bats don't have lawyers. In short, they're stupid enough to make this a fight that lasts longer than ten seconds.
So, what remains is much less sensible. But it's terrific nonetheless: a gruesome slaughter that barely gives you time, in the murky cavelight, to work out who's still alive. Crucially, though, some of that earlier groundwork pays off too: the conclusion has an emotional kick that makes it linger, and the entirety has a morbid, haunting quality beyond the undeniable dumb thrills.
Not a masterpiece, then. But "The Descent" succeeds where horror often fails: its essential coherence, even when it gets silly, pulls you through, drags you along. Makes you watch, even when you don't want to.
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