Hard to Be a God, Metamorphoses and Oxi: An Act of Resistance

Day 2 at LFF2014
Day 2 of the LFF provided plenty of food for thought, with common threads running through the three films I saw, even though they are not linked in the programme, and there was certainly no effort on my behalf to link them when planning the day's punishing cross-London film tour.


Hard To Be a God + intro by Svetlana Karmalita
London Film Festival 2014. BFI South Bank, 9/10/2014

The LFF audience take steps to ensure they stay to the final credits

Hard To Be a God is Russian filmmaker Alexei German's final work, the finishing touches of which (mostly sound edits) were completed by his screenwriter widow Svetlana Karmalita and son. In a lengthy introduction, Karmalita warned the audience that this was a film that polarised people. Moreover, she said that there was no plot at all in the first half of the three hour film, and that leaving at this point would be a rational and intelligent response and that she wouldn't blame anyone that did so. Having our expectations raised thus, we eagerly awaited the action.

The first half sets the scene in Arkanar, a planet that is 800 years or so behind earth in development, where there was no renaissance and all the intellectuals and skilled people have been hunted down and brutally slaughtered. Those that remain are a bunch of uncultured and very unhygienic barbarians. A party of scientists arrived from Earth some time ago and have settled to live on Arkanar. The outsiders' intellectual and physical advantages lead to their being referred to as Gods by the natives. The long introduction doesn't seem all that indulgent in the end, as the planet, it's society and customs are so bizarre. Everyone communicates through half grunted greetings, spitting, broken noses and rubbing snot on each others faces. This film is a hygiene freak's worst nightmare. The world German creates is remarkable in its coherence and detail, conveyed through meticulous tableaux captured through his wandering black and white camera.

The plot, such as it is, is minimal. Don Rumata, one of the visiting Earth scientists has resignedly assimilated and made his home on the brutal planet. His morning routine begins with a jazz sax solo, during which his slaves and minions stuff rags into their ears. His presence threatens the ruling Don Reba, who attempts to get rid of him. In the ensuing showdown Rumata singlehandedly massacres Reba's army. There are clear references to anti-intellectualism in totalitarian society, the responsibility of the powerful and the place of the intelligentsia in the cultural orthodoxy.

Hard To Be a God is without doubt a test of endurance, and one of tolerance for bodily emissions. German's wet and muddy Arkanar is almost Python-esque when revelling in its squalor - "It's squelchy", says one grotesque imbecile, "It's always been squelchy", replies another, (sniffs), "Smells like shit" - but is an amazing construction and utterly believable, all done on an enormous scale, and without cgi. It works well as an allegory, and though long in duration and thin on plot, it is a far more immersive, thoughtful and meaningful experience than something like the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series of films, but is perhaps not what anyone would choose for a Sunday afternoon at the multiplex.



Metamorphoses
London Film Festival 2014. Lumière, 9/10/2014

In Metmorphoses, Christophe Honoré transposes Ovid's tales of gods and mortals from ancient Greece to modern day France. From my rusty memories of early secondary school adaptations it appears that Honoré has gone for relatively straight retellings of the fables, with a few external details like cars, police and women in hijab lending a modern day edge to the stories.

Europa, a high school student is led through a series of adventures by Jupiter, Bacchus and Orpheus. There is an erotic emphasis that I don't remember from the child-friendly versions (understandably I suppose), along with the violence and vindictive vengefulness of the seemingly emotionally immature deities.

Like Hard To Be a God, Metamorphoses addresses power and responsibility, but there is less of the easy moralising seen in the junior versions of these stories. Honoré's recontextualising goes some way towards making these stories relevant for a modern audience, but the theatrical deadpan acting style employed here proves unnecessarily distancing for this viewer.



Oxi: An Act of Resistance + Director Q+A
London Film Festival 2014. ICA Cinema, 9/10/2014

In Oxi, director Ken McMullen addresses the modern day Greek financial crisis by referring to ancient Greek texts on ethics and politics. The film is assembled from dramatic sections depicting a french detective and a mysterious sphinx, poems, Greek theatre and interviews with politicians and members of the public who have been affected by the crisis.

McMullen's passionate riposte to mainstream coverage of the crisis outside Greece points out that the Greek people are victims of a disconnect between democracy and power and the prioritisation of the markets above ethics and social justice. Debt has enslaved the Greeks, but McCullen makes the point that western civilisation owes a huge cultural debt to Greece for the very foundations of modern democracy.

The film makes its points, but for this viewer (a fairly intelligent and open minded non-classical scholar) this particular use of the classic texts is alienating, not in the sense that I am not open to the insights from these texts, but in that they add a needless layer of obfuscation where I think making more tangible connections between long established ethical principles and the current crisis could be more effective without sacrificing the film's intelligence or its wider resonances. I would not think that anyone who has benefited from a classical education and is thus familiar with the ancient texts needs to be told that the invisible hand of the so called free market and current economic system are morally indifferent and have consequences. I am not familiar with McMullen's other works, but considering this film in isolation I maintain that though accessibility isn't everything, I question its effectiveness towards the director's stated aim of taking on mainstream coverage in this seemingly obtuse way.