Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell

Another fun series at the Brattle. I wish I could have gotten to the other double feature - The Music Lovers and Mahler - but I couldn't make the Monday show, and then the Tuesday one had something else subbed in for the 7pm part. Major bummer.

I wound up drawing parallels between Russell and Takashi Miike. Both, at least in their early careers, bounced between film and television (if Russell had had video to work with, he probably would). Both are known for outrageous and over-the-top visuals and plot twists, and both have done unexpected pictures - a couple family movies for Miike, a G-rated musical for Russell.

Will Miike have the career that Russell has - both in terms of it being long and kind of fizzling toward the end? Who knows? But from what I saw at the end of May/beginning of June, both almost invariably make interesting movies, even when they don't necessarily make good ones.

The Devils

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 27 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

There's a simple lesson to Ken Russell's The Devils: Don't place too much power into the hands of any one person. It not only makes them dangerous, but it gives your community an obvious point of vulnerability. Russell shows this truth being spectacularly exploited - so spectacularly, in fact, that the audience may become overwhelmed by the grotesqueries used to illustrate the situation.

In Paris, Cardinal Richlieu (Christopher Logue) is cementing his power, but cannot convince the king to allow him to seize Loudon, a walled city in the south which acts with disturbing autonomy, sheltering Protestants among other things. The local head priest is also not to the Cardinal's liking - aside from being liberal, Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) has very little use for his vows of chastity. The handsome Grandier is adored by the entire city, however, from the nuns in the convent to the man on the street. His behavior toward the fair sex is about to get him into trouble, though - he's just kicked a wealthy merchant's daughter out of his bed upon her becoming pregnant, secretly married the fair Madeline (Gemma Jones), and angered the convent's hunchbacked Sister Superior Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) by refusing to act as their spiritual advisor. Seeing an opportunity, the Cardinal dispatches a witchfinder, and while Grandier rides to Paris to confront the king about rumors the city will lose its autonomy, the visitors and everyone who bears any sort of a grudge against Grandier whip the city into a frenzy.

Read the rest at HBS.

Altered States

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 27 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

Lots of horror or sci-fi stories take as their premise that there are things that humanity is "not supposed to know" or not ready for; it's usually just a way for the movie to not be very specific. Altered States seems different; it seems like director Ken Russell and author Paddy Chayefsky actually have some conception of what we're not supposed to understand.

You can tell by the conversations the characters have, filled with scholarly terms and academic hair-splitting. The film's science and philosophy haven't been simplified to the point of absurdity, but they're presented in language that anyone who is willing to let their brain keep working while sitting in the cinema can comprehend. This is not a film that will offer up a simple metaphor for the lazy audience member and then proceed to act as if that metaphor is a literal truth. Or at least, it doesn't appear to; at it's heart, it's still a scientist finding things at the edges of science that wind up literally being dangerous ideas.

Read the rest at HBS.

Lisztomania

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

Some people will tell you that the 1970s were a golden age in film because of the gritty, character-based, challenging films that directors were able to produce during that period, and they wouldn't be completely wrong. However, when you talk about artistic freedom, you have to remember that it cuts both ways, and the same environment that got Taxi Driver made also meant that someone at Warner Brothers signed a check that gave Ken Russell the money to make something as gloriously insane as Lisztomania.

Russell's biographical picture of Franz Liszt starts off from a reasonable enough premise - that in the nineteenth century, composers and virtuoso pianists like Liszt were their day's equivalent of rock stars, So Russell gets an actual rock star (Roger Daltry) to play Liszt, and one of the first sequences is Liszt backstage at his recital, which is as full of topless groupies, drugs, alcohol, wannabes looking for Liszt to play their compositions, and other hangers-on as any modern-day rock concert. Now, Russell isn't actually saying that things happened just like what he's showing, but metaphorically, they're today's equivalent. If you can't get down with the idea that everything on-screen is an exaggerated metaphor for Liszt's real life, stop reading this review and don't bother seeing this if it ever shows up on video or some crazy rep house shows it. You won't like it.

Read the rest at HBS.

Tommy

* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

Opera is generally thought of as grandiose, bigger-than-life art. Rock & roll has always been looking to top itself in terms of bringing passion to its performances, to the point of Pete Townshend smashing his guitar onstage in a sort of rock-induced frenzy. So "Tommy" a rock opera written by Townshend and recorded by his band, The Who, is starting out ahead of the game in terms of being a handful. With the film in the hands of Ken Russell, it's an open question as to whether Russell is the kind of showman that the form needs or the guy who will push it too far over the top.

The story, which folks who unlike me have actually heard the album probably already know, is that little Tommy Walker's father was thought killed in the war before he was born. Mother Nora (Ann-Margaret) later remarries a nice-enough seeming man, but when Tommy spots Nora and Frank (Oliver Reed) murdering his newly-returned father (Robert Powell), he takes their admonition that he saw and heard nothing too much to heart, becoming psychosomatically deaf, dumb, and blind. This condition persists until he's an adult (and played by Who frontman Roger Daltry), although he does show an affinity for playing pinball, and becomes famous for it. Eventually, his senses are restored, a miraculous-seeming event that, rather than making him appear a fraud, sees him treated as a sort of prophet or guru.

Read the rest at HBS.

Women in Love

* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

The title of Russell's Academy Award-nominated 1969 adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel refers to sisters Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen, but they don't receive first billing and it likely won't be either of their courtships that makes the biggest impression on the audience For that, you've got to look to Alan Bates and Oliver Reed.

But first, the ladies. Ursula (Jennie Linden) is a sweet if insecure schoolteacher who finds herself smitten by the school inspector, Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates). Glenda Jackson's Gudrun is the younger sister (though I didn't realize that until watching The Rainbow), a more cosmopolitan artist who attracts the attention of Rupert's friend Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed). The Crich family owns the mine that serves as the early twentieth-century English town's major industry, and it is mainly at functions thrown by his family that the quartet meet. But even as opposites are busily attracting, the two male friends can't help but discuss how good it is for a man to have other important people in their lives, aside from their young ladies.

Read the rest at HBS.

The Rainbow

* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

Although Ken Russell is best known for his less restrained works in the 1970s and 1980s - things like Tommy, The Devils, and Altered States - he received his only Academy Award nomination for 1969's Women In Love. It would be twenty years before he revisited that territory with his 1989 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow - long enough for Glenda Jackson to play the mother of the character she'd played in the earlier film!

Gudrun Brangwen, the character Jackson played in Women in Love, is barely a factor in The Rainbow anyway; she's just a baby in the opening scene. Of course, her older sister Ursula is only three at the time, trying to chase down rainbows and nearly falling into the river doing so until her beloved father (Christopher Gable) retrieves her. Fourteen years later, Will Brangwen is still trying to protect Ursula (Sammi Davis), urging her to remain at home and find a husband, while she wants to go to the city and earn her teaching certification. Her physical education teacher, Winifred Inger (Amanda Donohoe), invites her to spend time with her in private, but when Ursula invites Winifred to come with her to the estate of her Uncle Henry (David Hemmings), she feels tremendously jealous when the two of them hit it off - and Henry's guest, a handsome young soldier by the name of Anton Skrebensky (Paul McGann), is only partial consolation.

Read the rest at HBS.

The Boy Friend

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 June 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

As long as there's been stories, there's been stories about storytellers. It's a natural thing, and when done well, a joy to watch; after all, these people know of what they speak. Unfortunately, The Boy Friend is not quite one of those joys; while it features several small pleasures, it has trouble focusing on the right things. It's fun to watch, but by the end, I was pretty glad it was over.

Apparently, this wasn't originally a backstage comedy; the original Sandy Wilson stage musical is actually being performed by the characters in Ken Russell's film. In the film, the theater where The Boy Friend is running is struggling - the audiences are tiny, easily outnumbered by the performers; the whole thing seems like it could go bust, with the cast going through the motions because it beats being out on the street. But today, two things are going to be different: Mr. Cecil De Thrill (Vladek Sheybal), a big-name Hollywood producer, is in the audience, looking for talent and his next feature; backstage, word has come that their star has broken her foot and assistant stage manager Polly Browne (Twiggy) will have to step in. This sets her all atwitter, not just because she hasn't really understudied quite so well as she perhaps should have, but because she has such a crush on her leading man, Tony Brockhurst (Christopher Gale).

Read the rest at HBS.