February Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman THE DIG: Lighting the Dark Ages

This post is written by our monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman

An especially illuminating archaeological find on the grounds of Sutton Hoo House, Suffolk, England in 1939 is the inspiration behind this peaceful film on Netflix, THE DIG, starring Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes, Lily James, Johnny Flynn and fine others supporting, especially young Archie Barnes who is compelling as the son of Mulligan’s character. Below Fiennes is juxtaposed with museum experts and young Archie at the site of the dig, a burial boat, described as ‘Like a time machine’. 

The film is based on John Preston’s 2008 novel The Dig in which the rich cache of a cosmopolitan, seventh century Anglo-Saxon king is unearthed in a burial boat. (Note that the adventurers in Michael Hirst’s Vikings and Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom novels and tv series overlap with the world of the notable buried on the Sutton Hoo estate.) 

Mrs. Pretty’s dig commences just as WWII is about to begin — a second German invasion. In the ancient first migration from Europe, foreigners from Scandinavia and Germany came to Britain after Rome abandoned the Isles in 410. Little survived of cosmopolitan Roman urban and Christian life in centuries following to give us a picture of the wealth and lives of those immigrants. But it is worth noting that while much of Britain returned to rusticity and paganism absent Rome, some folk were worldly, minus the means to brag about it on twitter. Thus the Sutton Hoo find in 1939 was destined for attention for its worldliness, if hidden away in an underground tunnel during the war and not displayed until years later. 

This, however, is a quiet, contemplative film rather than one to shout about — altogether a nerve-soother from the anxiety of our times. The story here is about competition among bureaucrats to take charge of the dig and its yield, a little romance, the sadness of impending death, and the rattlings of impending war. However the find itself was exceptional, real, and now long at home in the British Museum (below). 

The film’s quietness is fostered by the mood set by director Simon Stone and the lovely Suffolk countryside. Mulligan and Fiennes are each iron-willed, humble, and thoughtful, as widow Edith Pretty, owner of Sutton Hoo, and Basil Brown, her hired, self-taught archeologist. Brown was scorned by museum experts as a mere excavator, while Edith was subject to their flattery, leading the two principals to operate with sympathy for each other as the laborious project advanced.

So little has survived from the Anglo-saxons that the Sutton Hoo discovery, in the end gifted by Mrs. Pretty to the British Museum, is particularly compelling. The burial chamber at the center of the ship contained lavish goods of the man lying in state, according to Martin Carver, professor emeritus at the University of York and an expert on Sutton Hoo. The occupant had personal things— a buckle woven from pure gold, shoulder clasps, his warrior sword, axe-hammer, shield, coat of mail and spears; also material for hosting a feast in the afterlife such as cooking equipment, a cauldron, a lyre, and parade gear and regalia.

According to BBC’s historyextra.com and Britannica, a king of East Anglia, Raedwald, is thought to have been buried in the oval mound, a convert to Christianity who retained his paganism. Northumbrian monk Bede, his work completed in 731, is the most certain source about Raedwald, who was born 560-80 and ruled 599 until his death in 624. ( Note 1.) He is not the only candidate for the occupant of the mound; there are others, though he is favored. 

The rites of ship burial and grave goods have parallels in Sweden, suggesting a Swedish origin for this particular royal. A quantity of silverware and 41 solid gold pieces were found— (Frankish) coins to pay the boatmen for transport to eternity, date to the early 7th century. A silver dish dates from the Byzantian Anastasius (491-518), a bowl comes from Egypt. The conclusion, loudly proclaimed by the British Museum archeologist in our film, is that at least this dark age East Anglican did not live in the dark. Some were world-wide travelers and traders or had the wealth and knowledge to benefit from it. The film offers next to nothing about specific burial goods. War broke out so suddenly that scholars did not know all that they had until the cache was examined after the war. Below is an archival photo of the original dig. 

To drum up appeal the screenplay gives us a relationship between Edith Pretty’s invented cousin Rory who is photographing the site (Mr. Flynn, below, l) and archeologist on site, Peggy Piggott (Ms James, below, r) whose husband (Ben Chaplin) prefers men. Note 2 offers a feminist view of this flaw. Two women actually photographed the goods (see them in the second note), and Peggy Piggott was a twice degreed archeologist, not the awkwardly insecure young woman that James is given to portray. It’s true that the Piggotts divorced 15 years later, but whether he was gay is unknown and the trumped up romance was a lazy plot device. 

An agism offense is not having cast an older actress to play Edith who was fifty-six, forgivable because 35-year-old Mulligan is perfection as the ailing Mrs. Pretty, frightened by her failing health and the prospect of orphaning her son. Mulligan is no show horse — less is more is how she works, as she continues to burnish her reputation of excellence. (Below Mulligan and the real Mrs. Pretty.)

She and excavator Basil’s quiet simpatico and his with her son Robert are relationships that don't scintillate but wear well in this tranquil tale. (Edith died in 1942 at 59 of a blood clot. Robert was just 12; he died of cancer like his father in 1988 at 57, leaving 3 children.) Taken together for its discovery of ‘Britain’s Tutankhamun’, to increased knowledge of the ‘dark-age’ early centuries, to the calming pleasure of its beauty, this lovely film is a pleasure. 

Note 1: Raedwald

Note 2: a feminist critique of characters

Finally -- a Blu-ray/DVD release of Hayao Miyazaki's 2014 Oscar nominee for animation, THE WIND RISES

What a bizarre (but somehow blessed) subject for an animated movie: the story of Jiro Horikoshi, the Japanese aircraft designer whose work, though he did not believe in the Japanese war effort, resulted in the production of massive fleet of airplanes used against the allies during World War II. From the little I know of Horikoshi's life, the resulting movie -- THE WIND RISES by Oscar-winning filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) -- though greatly fictionalized becomes in the hands of Miyazaki a beautiful meditation on everything from flying and dreaming to love, trust, friendship, creativity and (perhaps to a lesser degree) responsibility.

The result is an animated film, old-fashioned but still eye-poppingly gorgeous, that seems -- despite its tale of childhood love lost and found -- surprisingly adult, the work of a mature artist (the filmmaker is shown at left) wrestling with difficult themes and finding a way to make them meaningful, resonant and moving.

The time and place in Japan in the 1920s, which makes a nice change from much other animation we've seen, and the pre-WWII background, including an Italian inventor, young Horikoshi, and the German military adds a certain irony to the proceedings, especially for those of us from the Allied side.

"Inspiration unlocks the future; technology eventually catches up," the movie's Italian inventor (above left) tells Horikoshi (above, right) -- an idea of which I'm sure Tesla would approve, and the film spends a surprising amount of time on the details of the technology of flight. And then, in its second half, it becomes a love story that begins in humor and delicacy then morphs into something extraordinarily poignant and sad.

This change is not jarring, however, because the whole enterprise in infused with Miyazaki's rich sense of beauty, mysticism and the natural world. He uses dreams to help forge a new reality and, as usual, his movie is both thoughtful and humane.

Along the way we get everything from a major earthquake to a windswept parasol, and the movie ends all too appropriately in an airplane graveyard and on a note of mysticism and sadness, leavened with as much hope as can be gleaned from a situation this fraught and wasteful. And yet how much beauty and invention Miyazaki has been able to offer us!

From Shout! Factory and running a long but never boring 126 minutes, The Wind Rises is available now for digital download, and will hit the street on Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday, September 22 -- for purchase and/or rental.

June's Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman -- WORLD ON FIRE in Puzzle Pieces

This post is written by our

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman

A blizzard of WWII films keeps pace with pandemia; our own world on fire resurrects the last one — conflagration, white supremacy, strutting dictator. WORLD ON FIRE (WOF), a seven-episode series now on PBS Passport is a pastiche of all the memes, dozens of them, we associate with early WWII. It’s a giant puzzle to parse bit by bit, filling in sections with events and folk all jumbled together on the tabletop — an international melting pot vs the German master-race machine.

Writer *Peter Bowker, below, picks up and puts down (over and over) every piece of the WWII puzzle as Hitler clamped his vice on Europe starting 1939. We are in on the ruin/submission of Poland, the blitzkrieg through Holland, Belgium, France, and exodus from Dunkirk. The reason this big paint-by-numbers thing works is that some characters and intertwining predicaments are so quirky and well-written they jump off the screen; you keep watch to find out how the people-in-chief are faring in the jumble of puzzle. The relentless jerks between scenes are near fatal annoyance but not quite. 

From our English homebase in Manchester, there’s well-to-do young Harry — dimpled pretty-boy (Jonah Hauer-King) who has mushy intention and not much charisma. His mother, Robina, is a major player, her caustic tongue having reduced the bon mots of Violet, Duchess of Grantham, to ciphers. Robina, played by the accomplished Lesley Manville, social-climbs her way through life with a case of the nasties, disinterested in politics except for her crush on the swaggering Oswald Mosley (real), far-right heretic of the 30’s (and Tommy Shelby’s obsession in Peaky Blinders). We watch a smidgen of kindness leak through Robina’s elitist pronouncements as time goes on (Harry is top photo, center; Robina, five photos below). 

Douglas (Sean Bean), playing against heroic type, is working-class bus-conductor, Douglas Bennett, a shambling pacifist still suffering from WWI (above). His daughter Lois, factory-worker-cum-singer is Harry’s girlfriend (Julia Brown), much to Harry’s striver-mother’s annoyance; Douglas’s son is ne’er do well (‘bloody nuisance’) Tom, played by charmer, scene-stealer Ewan Mitchell. 

This player and this part are the perfect blend of actor and writing; Mitchell shines as a scrappy sailor (above) full of sea adventures, scrapes, near misses. We last see him fleeing occupied France to Spain on foot and hope for more mischief as the war rolls on. 

Back to the front, Harry is sent to Warsaw as a translator for the British embassy and there romances lovely waitress girl-next-door Kasia (Zofia Wichlacz) above, whom he marries on urgent advice: It’s not about which girl he loves most, but saving this girl’s life as Nazis rage across Poland. Kasia takes her little brother Jan to the train (below) and shoves him on board into Harry’s arms, begging Harry to save him not her.

Kasia joins the Polish resistance, partnering with one of WOF’s incidental Jews, Tomasz, to seduce Germans (preferably officers) one by one into a dark alley and shoot them — a lethal tag team until their luck runs out. In Manchester, little brother Jan is now living with Robina who hates mothering (below) adding a war-orphan story and immigrant bullying to the tabletop puzzle. 

Lois meanwhile is entertaining the troops (Ms Brown, below, does her own singing), pregnant by Harry (losing her virginity was a piece of life business— now she’s done with him), and being pursued by ace pilot, Vernon, who loves her, even ‘up the duff’ with Harry’s baby.

Our mellifluous-voiced, conscientious radio-caster is Edward-R-Murrow-esque correspondent, Nancy Campbell — token American (Helen Hunt, third from left, cover photo). She narrates Hitler’s stealth build-up on Poland and the blitzkrieg across Europe. Nancy is the glue among major characters and some lesser ones such as a gay black jazz musician (on the Nazi hit list for being all three) and his white American doctor lover, Nancy’s nephew. This couple (below) dares a moment too long. 

Nancy’s Berlin neighbors, whom she is drawn to help, fatally, are a ‘good’ German family with an epileptic child who must be hidden from the sorry Nazi scheme of purifying the race by killing the disabled. And to belabor the shell-shock narrative a lot more, we accompany Harry as he minds a truck load of mentally-damaged soldiers on the road to Dunkirk. Back home in Manchester, Douglas takes little Jan to the local mental hospital to reunite with his (and Kasia’s) brother Grzegorz, who, having joined a troop of English soldiers and escaped to England via Dunkirk, is hospitalized, suffering the same mistreatment for PTSD that afflicted Douglas at the Somme. 

The strange entanglement of Douglas and Robina (below) is something to watch— grandparenting a bastard baby from opposite ends of the social divide (her McMansion/his worker row house). Robina is still minding Polish Jan. (Robina tells Lois: "If I had known Harry was going to marry a Polish waitress, I’d have thought you more of a prospect.") Douglas quietly becomes uncle-grandpa to Jan — playing ball and chess with him. Since Harry loves both Lois and Kasia, the messiness between these two families is sure to get messier. I’m rooting for Kasia, but Douglas and Robina?

We are left with a major cliff-hanger: Handsome Harry has parachuted back into Poland on a spy mission; he makes his way to a safe house of Polish fighters where amazingly Kasia turns up (having fled the scene of her hanging as bombs fell). The Polish resistors are found by the Germans at that moment; Harry and Kasia are on the run, heading into the second year of the war (1940) and the second series, already scheduled. There are doubtless dozens more WWII memes to overwork —trains, camps, slave labor, battles, etc. — all of which we will watch to find out whether Harry outgrows callow youth and/or bumbles his way to Kasia or Lois.

I see Peter Bowker’s bind — he can’t show every Nazi trope in the war and develop interesting characters without all those leaps among scenes. But other series manage smoother transitions, and scoring memes feels like a vanity project. Maybe he could edit the scope — his characters deserve it and his audience already knows what the Nazi’s did.

*Note: See a BBC interview with Peter Bowker
in which he notes his own issues with structure.

Blu-ray debut for ICE COLD IN ALEX -- J. Lee Thompson's World War II desert road trip -- part of Film Movement's new five-disc set, THEIR FINEST HOUR

Forget having ever seen ICE COLD IN ALEX, I had never even heard of the movie prior to receiving news of Film Movement's new five-film/five-disc series entitled Their Finest Hour, devoted to classic World War II films. (Also included in the set are the unusual and quietly spectacular Went the Day Well?, German prison-escape thriller The Colditz Story, deservedly heralded The Dam Busters and the original 1958 version of Dunkirk.)

All these are worth seeing (probably more than once), but Ice Cold in Alex, TrustMovies feels, proves a splendid discovery for those of us viewing it for the first time, and very likely a rediscovery for anyone who saw it long ago.

Made in 1958, it is also one more reason to re-assess the career of journeyman filmmaker J. Lee Thompson (shown at left) -- not only for his well-known and popular movies such as Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear, but for his even better, lesser-known work like Yield to the Night and this first-rate genre-jumping film.

Ice Cold in Alex derives its title from the delicious cold beer one of its main characters hopes to have a glass full of, once he and his party reach Alexandria, Egypt -- if the place has not been already conquered by the German army by the time the rickety ambulance, by which the party is crossing the desert, arrives there.

En route from the military base at which the film begins, this quartet of characters faces all sorts of hazards -- from a minefield to pursuing German troops, a collapsing axle to, yes, desert quicksand -- all of which makes the movie off and on extremely suspenseful, in addition to its much-better-than-average ability to create complex, full-bodied, emotionally resonant characters who consistently engage and surprise us.

Those characters are played by (left to right, above) John Mills, Anthony Quayle, Harry Andrews and Sylvia Syms, and each could hardly be bettered -- either in choice of casting (Ms Thompson was a master at this) or via the performance each actor gives.

Mr. Mills, in particular seems cast against type (not to mention his platinum blond locks!) as an angry, alcoholic, often petulant fellow who still manages to almost rise to most occasions, while Ms Syms -- so gorgeous in her younger years -- helps transform a role that could have been played in fairly standard fashion into something rather feminist, considering its time frame. (Be sure to watch the terrific interview with the actress today, as she recalls, wittily and with great pleasure, what it was like to be a part of this movie.)

The crack supporting actor Harry Andrews (above, left) gives another of his subtly memorable performances as the fellow who provides the most help whenever needed, while Anthony Quayle (below, center left) essays the film's most interesting personality: a South African of beefy body, questionable character (and maybe suspect nationality) who consistently surprises us -- not to mention his effect on the other characters.

The screenplay by T. J. Morrison and Christopher Landon (based on the novel by Landon, which in turn is said to have been based on a real incident that happened during the African campaign) is replete with smart pacing, crisp dialog and plenty of "incident." The movie movie never lags, despite its 130-minute length.

Even though Ice Cold in Alex was made a bit more than a decade after WWII, its attitude toward the Germans is surprisingly benign -- which, as we learn via some of the Bonus Features on the disc, didn't prevent the film from becoming a huge hit both in its home country and internationally.

And the finale -- funny, witty, suspenseful, moving and surprising -- could hardly be better. This is a wonderful war film, even without any battle scenes, as well as a fine road movie, character study, suspense thriller and more. And given our current age of everything black and white, good and evil, truth and lies, it's a salutary reminder of a time when we were still able to modulate and see those necessary shades of gray.

From Film Movement in a sparkling new Blu-ray transfer, Ice Cold in Alex is available now as part of the five-disc set, Their Finest Hour, for purchase and (I hope soon for rental, too). My single caveat regarding this transfer -- and this entire new set of discs -- is that there are no SDH English subtitles to be found. Shameful!

Rescue vs. revenge in Jonathan Jakubowicz's intelligent and immersive Holocaust-themed bio-pic, RESISTANCE

Yes, this is a bio-pic, but the biography we get here is a quite interesting look at that of the late/great world-famous mime, Marcel Marceau. For many of us, including those of the senior years, M. Marceau will have been known as only as a mime. Turns out, however, according to the new movie RESISTANCE, written and directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, Marceau was part of the French resistance to the Nazi takeover of France during World War II -- during which he helped save the lives of hundreds of children.

As the Venezuelan-born Señor Jakubowicz (show at right) tells it, in his tale as-close-to-truthful-as-an-entertaining-bio-pic-can-manage-it, Marcel -- born with the name Mangel, which he only later changed to Marceau -- was a Kosher butcher's son chaffing at his job assisting his father in the shop in Strasbourg, France. In the evenings he performs at a local cabaret, entertaining the patrons with his funny imitations, à la Charlie Chaplin, of the increasingly powerful Adolf Hitler (the film begins on Kristallnacht, 1938).

Marcel is played, surprisingly (to me, at least) and quite strongly by Jesse Eisenberg (shown above and below), who does a bang-up job doing mime routines, especially for the Jewish children he's seen training early on regarding how best

to hide from the Nazis, and he is expectedly excellent (when is he not?) in all other regards. Even his faux French accent is surprisingly good. Though he's no fighter, the need to save Jewish children -- initially in Germany, soon all over Europe -- has Marcel helping the French Boy Scouts and eventually joining the French Resistance, while getting up to the kind of derring-do that you'd expect from the most thrilling adventure film.

One of the great strengths of Resistance, however, is how it shows Marcel's need to place rescue above revenge, even though there is plenty of cause for the latter throughout the course of this two-hour-but-never-draggy film. The movie refuses to become an exercise in "revenge porn," in the manner of the new Amazon Hunters series, which my colleague Lee Liberman recently reviewed. (TrustMovies agrees with her mixed assessment of the series: that "the bits and pieces outweigh the whole.")

Here, the whole is relatively synonymous with the pieces, as Jakubowicz has filled his film with exciting events alternating with quieter scenes that help fill in the characters of Marcel, his family and the children that he and the other resistance fighters try to help.

The Nazi regime pretty much coalesces in the character of the notorious Klaus Barbie, here played well and even relatively subtly by Matthias Schweighöfer (above), shown as a "family man," though not above torturing a priest, let alone flaying alive a woman resistance fighter (in front of her sister, yet). Blood and gore are kept to a minimum, though the acts themselves are spelled out in all their horror.

In the role of the young woman resistance member whom Marcel loves, Clémence Poésy (above, right) registers strongly, as do Edgar Ramírez (below, right), as the father, and Bella Ramsey (below, left), who plays his daughter, the soon-orphaned child with whom Marcel and his brother first bond.

If, overall, the film retains the feel of a somewhat standard bio-pic, the fact that most Americans will be learning a good deal more here than they ever knew about mime Marcel Marceau and see Jesse Eisenberg stretch his acting wings another notch, all coupled to the theme of rescue vs. revenge, makes Resistance a Holocaust-themed movie worth a visit.

From IFC Films and running 121 minutes, the film was to have opened theatrically this coming Friday, March 27, but will now be available via digital platforms and cable VOD -- for purchase and/or rental.

Blu-ray debut for the under-appreciated George Roy Hill/Stephen Geller adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE

Back in the 60s and 70s, when TrustMovies endured his late-coming-of-age period, Kurt Vonnegut was one -- maybe the --most favored novelist of those of us in or near the boomer generation. I think his work holds up pretty well, and so does the movie version of one of his most popular and enduring novels, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, directed by George Roy Hill (shown below, an Oscar-winner for The Sting and a nominee for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), with a good screenplay that follows the book well yet not too slavishly from Stephen Geller.

What might seem missing from the movie -- this being but an adaptation rather than the original -- is the peculiar, particular Vonnegut tone. For instance, the refrain that echos through the novel, So it goes, is nowhere to be found in the film. Not literally, and yet Hill and Geller find their own right tone that carries through their movie so that So it goes -- which you can interpret as icy irony, a kind of capitulation, or perhaps an acceptance of things as they are rather than how you might like them to be -- is there in the film without ever having to be spoken aloud. Via the manner in which this movie builds and coalesces, this now famous phrase seems absolutely part and parcel.

Slaughterhouse-Five is a combination time-travel sci-fi/philosophical treatise novel, and it works equally well as both. One of the things that Hill and Geller get right and handle extremely well is the constant zipping back and forth from past to present. This is so quietly and subtly managed that audiences back in 1969 may have been unprepared for something this skillful. Even today, some 47 years later, it seems fresh.

The movie also brought to filmgoers' attention a new actor named Michael Sacks (above), who then and now seems a perfect fit for Vonnegut's based-upon-himself-as-a-young-man hero. Sacks never had a long nor hugely memorable career in films but his performance here in the role of Billy Pilgrim was about as good as could be.

The supporting cast includes the late Ron Liebman (above, center), nastily impressive as usual, and a luscious and sparkling Valerie Perrine (below), along with a host of fine character actors, all doing some of their best work.

Although I saw the film when it first came out, watching it again became a new experience. Yet as much as I was enjoying it, Slaughterhouse-Five seemed as though it lacked a certain depth and raison d'être as it moved along. Then, around three-quarters of the way through -- the point at which Billy's explanation of the philosophy of the time tripping Trafalmador coincides with the burning of the corpses found after the WWII fire-bombing of Dresden, for this viewer at least, the movie took on the profundity that the novel sometimes reached.

And from that point until the spectacular, moving, charming and funny finale, Slaughterhouse-Five did indeed seem wonderfully profound, finally serving up a philosophy by which one might profitably live. (That's fine character actor Eugene Roche, above, right, as Billy's mentor, protector and best friend during his time as an American POW in Germany.)

From Arrow Video (distributed here in the USA via MVD Visual/MVD Entertainment Group) and running a mere 104 minutes, the movie hit the street last week in a pretty good Blu-ray transfer -- for purchase (and, I hope, rental).

As usual with Arrow product, the Bonus Features are well worth watching. The best here is a lovely, smart, and very entertaining interview about/appreciation of the film with author/critic Kim Newman, as well as a interesting present-day interview about the filming and how he came to this film by Perry King (who plays Sacks' son in the film; in real life, the two actors were the same age, but the make-up department did a fine job in aging Mr. Sacks in surprisingly believable fashion, considering what was possible back in the 1970s).