Containment - the vessel and the djinn

This is a Festival review of Containment (2015)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

15 July (account of the Q&A added, 16 July)

This is a Festival review of Containment (2015), which screened at Sheffield Documentary Festival on Sunday 7 June at 12.15 p.m., followed by a Q&A with directors Robb Moss and Peter Galison

This review – started on 7 June – has been a long time coming : not for want of what to say, but how to organize it (it failed, in every way, to write itself)

By no means to be mistaken for another release of that name at @sheffdocfest, reviewing which is work in progress... https://t.co/VmxfKPQNW5

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 29, 2015

One could not fail to be struck, at the beginning of the film, by the graphics that directors Robb Moss and Peter Galison had commissioned for Containment (2015), which were based on the outcome of a US government project [the ‘far future’ consultation group], to engage viewers with another era, and with [fears about] what mankind’s knowledge-base* might be in AD 12,000 : as the film unfolded, it is ironic that it had been conceived that, at that remove, people might stumble across the thitherto undisturbed site of WIPP, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad (New Mexico), and – of course, because one simply would – just start digging through the surface there, not knowing what lay below.

Therefore, the consultation group had been tasked with establishing means to warn those people, ten millennia distant, not to do so – and why. The strongest emotional conception, built on the notion that somewhere that felt physically very unsettling would deter them from wanting to be (or stay) there, is used in the poster for Containment (as above). And yet talking about the project – perhaps quite unnecessarily ? – took up [what felt like] quite a bit of space in a running-time of 81 minutes (?)*

The reason is that there is a significant issue of balance with having included that topic [much as one knows, e.g. from the participation, in the film's Doc/Fest Q&A, of the script consultant of Match Me ! – How to Find Love in Modern Times (2014), that some films need several strands ‘to work’] : containment, in the sense of rendering (and keeping safe) nuclear materials, even in its own terms (please see below), is such an unexplored (or poorly explored) area that to consider imagining that one had succeeded (both during and after the process of nuclear fission – which is another widening of the film’s scope), and succeeded so well that 3,500 generations later maybe people knew too little about what had been done not to be at risk of harming themselves, seemed a leap**. Even more, an arbitrary one (regarding the remit of the project), since ten thousand years is not even what we are told is one half-life for Plutonium-239 (Pu-239), one of twenty radioactive isotopes of Plutonium*** (link to the Wikipedia® web-page).

Read here for a review, not by @THEAGENTAPSLEY (Owen Van Spall), of one of the more striking @sheffdocfest films : http://t.co/6D2WO4JFU5

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 16, 2015

In this connection, it has to be a fault of Containment (but an easily rectifiable one, by adding on-screen text, or a voice-over, at the first reference) that it does not take a moment to say what ‘a half-life’ is (i.e. the time in which, through radioactive decay, one ends up with a mass of the substance half that with which one started : that radioactive isotope will constitute 50% of the mass of the material, whatever isotope(s) of that (or another) element [radioactive or not] it may have broken down into) : as suggested by the words quoted in the Tweet above, to have assumed that all those watching the film will already know and understand the jargon takes away its power to present this topic widely and coherently, when the safety of keeping nuclear material is of obvious relevance to us all.

Actually, as mentioned, the treatment in this film of what might be meant by the theme of ‘containment’ is itself wide. (It is also arguably at least as conventional to use it in the context of nuclear fusion (rather than fission, the process that a nuclear reactor is engineered to induce), denoting how to contain [or the problem of containing] the matter to be combined at phenomenally high temperatures.) That said, we do not even know, from sequences that deal with WIPP, how much Pu-244*** it was trying to store, or how, because that isotope will necessarily be around for a very long time to pose a threat (yet, from the way that we see the waste physically handled (please see below), one would not know it).

Instinctively, though, one always thought that it was highly presumptuous to imagine that, far into the future, one would get to that position (please see below). (Not least in the light of the qualms about the storage for waste in France (a country that has made itself wholly dependent on nuclear power) that are expressed in Energized (2014) [to a highly overdue account of which that now links…] by the person responsible for its design : as one recalls, his concerns came to affect his health (which, in our world, served to undermine his credibility), but he came to regret what he saw as the faults in the methodology whose implementation he had overseen.) For picturing the far future assumed (a) the lack of any site-specific mishaps, let alone (b) the survival of members of the human race who might mistakenly intrude. (Watching Last Call (2013), the companion film (for review purposes) to Energized, does not exactly leave one hopeful on (b)’s account…).

Best film so far at @sheffdocfest is @ContainmentDoc - review / account of Q&A to come... https://t.co/0UbG5943L9

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 7, 2015

A little impressionistically, the film takes WIPP as just one of several foci for the purposes of looking at containment, including a secret US government site on the Savannah River, and the Fukushima nuclear plant, in Japan, and the landscape around it that remains contaminated – albeit not, seemingly, contaminated enough for a woman not to visit the nearby town, and the family restaurant there where she had last had lunch, or a man to go back to his former home most days ? (In the Q&A (in which Robb Moss and Peter Galison both took part : more on the Q&A below), the last, rather pointed question – seemingly put by someone with expertise in these matters – observed, having asked after figures for measurement of contamination in the area, that the film had simply not quantified the levels of radiation that surround Fukushima, or even made a comparison with Background Radiation (link to a definition from Wikipedia®)).

At other points in the film, we had had to wonder (as the film left us doing so) why a man was handling a turtle from the Savannah River whose shell he had said was contaminated with radioactive Caesium – so he seemed to be saying, as Robb Moss had to agree, in conversation afterwards, it did sound [although Moss went on to interpret the turtle as having previously been contaminated (or that others like it had been ?)]. Or why thin rubber gloves sufficed to protect employees at WIPP from the vessels, containing nuclear waste for storage, with which they were working. In themselves, in the orthodoxy of scientific understanding, there might have been reasons why this is [thought] adequate protection / safe, but the film did not explain, and thereby (as it wants to tell us itself) hangs quite a tail about what anyone really does know of these matters :

* Containment gives time, just before showing us the turtles, to show us a minister of religion on a vessel on the Savannah River, commenting on the proximity of the site to where people from his church live (although he takes it that they are deemed not to be in enough numbers for them, or any risk to their health, to be a consideration ?), and how the warning notices about fishing relate not to privacy, but to radioactivity in the fish

* What happened at Fukushima, the result of a tsunami consequent upon an earthquake, had revealed the flaws in its design, in that the pools that contained the spent fuel-rods from the reactor had been deprived of supplies of coolant, and so the danger that was posed was as much from them overheating as from the reactor(s) doing so – though, as was commented in the Q&A, it appeared that the set-up would not have survived the smaller size of quake that it had been intended to withstand ?

* Towards the end of the film, we hear how there has been an explosion at WIPP (in 2014 ?), which is not only attributed to human error in the design of the vessels constructed to hold waste (in making them, the word ‘organic’ had been misinterpreted for ‘inorganic’ (or vice versa ?), which led to using constituents that, combined, gave rise to a chemical reaction : the simple mistakes that threaten great consequences), but also proves that the underlying assertions about how geological layers, between which the storage is taking place, and which are supposed to work to guarantee its integrity, are simply wrong – since radiation did, after all, escape to the surface


The last that we hear is that operations at WIPP have been suspended – as is usual in life, or politics, it takes a mistake to displace [over]confidence such as that of The Mayor of Carlsbad, and the claims of the geologists, which would otherwise be accorded credence : all that thinking about how to alert people to the existence of a secure facility that has been discovered not to be secure…

In essence, the film contains a lot of material, as well as reminding one vividly of the situation of Meryl Streep, Cher, and Kurt Russell in Silkwood (1983) : one does have to ask oneself how far we have really come since then, or, indeed, how close is the world of that film, still, in terms of our competence, of what we really understand about dealing both with nuclear waste – and what our experiments with nuclear fission have done with Earth (and left us with*) ?


Detail that emerged in the Q&A (and later…)

In the Q&A, it was put to Moss and Galison – when asking about the ‘far future’ project – that they had given space to this aspect, but had also, by contrast, not chosen (or chosen not ?) to pre-date the circumstances of Fukushima by referencing what had (or could have) happened at Chernobyl (or Three Mile Island) : with little explanation of what this actually meant, Containment just told us that there had been ‘three meltdowns’ at Fukushima (another tacit assumption of knowledge on the part of the viewer ?), albeit it suggested that the situation had very nearly been much worse (yet without saying in what way, or how).

Although it seems to turn out that the scenario first envisaged by Ralph Lapp in 1971 (and retained by the world of film in The China Syndrome (1979)) is more of a fictional one, and that, if this popular description is therefore used (in the nuclear field), it denotes a lesser catastrophe, one asked, for example, how close to that syndrome events at Fukushima had been (and the rest of the Wikipedia® article goes into detail about such nuclear meltdowns, which, in their answer, the directors did not).

They said, but without a complete explanation for not doing so, that they had considered talking about other sites, such as Chernobyl (and may have said that they had been there), but that they wanted to look at linguistic and sociological aspects of the subject, by making part of the tone of the film to imagine the future, too – to suggest a measure of distance on what was being shown. As well as having an artist realise some of the designs, they achieved this aim with and through stylization (e.g. we see an animated sequence both of naive discovery, and of deploying an earth-boring machine that is distinctly reminiscent of The Mole from Thunderbirds).

In the event, the question that was mentioned above (about contamination at Fukushima, compared with that at Chernobyl), elicited nothing from them in terms of units (or doses), but generalizations : although the mountain area was further away, it had higher levels than a flatter one that was nearer, because of the direction of the wind, which had changed twice at the time.

In the bar afterwards, some viewers were heard (who must clearly have approved of the film), critiquing the questioner for having challenged the film-makers (presumably because of the enquiry about Background Radiation) – as if in the same breath as those who had (once) advocated dumping nuclear waste in the oceans (which he was not remotely proposing)… ?

Before that, in the space just outside the screen, there was a lot of chat going on with Messrs Galison and Moss, which is where that query about the turtle was made (please see above). As to the handling of containers at waste at WIPP, Moss made the puzzling assertion (which then had to be checked – please see below) that one can hold a piece of Plutonium with no ill-effect, because the danger is inhaling its dust into one’s lungs. One’s knowledge of radiation, though one could not grope for the word isotope (in the depths of one’s memory), suggested that a substance, almost by definition, had to emit, at the very least, alpha-particles to be radioactive : as one recollects, one did blurt this out to Moss, to which he countered, by saying that a piece of paper will stop them.

As, by now, the lateness of the hour had made one abandon plans for what to watch next and (after making notes, and coffee, in the bar) head for a drink****, the word ‘Becquerel’ came stumbling into one’s mind (a standard measure of radiation). Over a pint, one was soon checking – on the Internet (when the source of information about isotopes (above) was found) – what had been claimed about Plutonium (apparently, according to Wikipedia®, first made by bombarding U238 with deuterons) :

The web-page confirms that Plutonium 238 (Pu-238, with a half-life of 88 years) emits alpha-particles, and talks about the significance of the spontaneous fission of Pu-240 in connection with terms such as ‘weapons grade’ Plutonium. Thus, ’Supergrade plutonium’, with less than 4% of plutonium-240, is used in U.S. Navy weapons stored in proximity to ship and submarine crews, due to its lower radioactivity.

Somehow those statements about safely holding a piece of the element begged the question what sort of Plutonium one was talking about…

Seen at Sheffield : Doc/Fest films with full reviews


End-notes

* And, having said that, some of its ideas had saved – as if it has an inherent, rather than a given, meaning – the symbol on a yellow ground with a round core, and a triangle of pulses that, almost sonically, emanate from it (pictured below, in one of several versions). If we have, in these postulated far-off generations (and we saw endless scenarios that had been envisaged), forgotten about nuclear waste, why, then, will that symbol signify ? (Surely, a fantasy that we will be nuclear free, with the States and others so keen on their arsenals ?)

** As an abiding problem, only briefly touched upon as [the idea of] the safety and integrity of WIPP was talked up by Carlsbad’s Mayor (as well as addressed, in general terms, by Allison MacFarlane – who chaired the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2012 to 2014, and who seemed to have more questions than answers).

*** Plutonium-239 (Pu-239), with a half-life of 24,110 years, may have to be seen as a major headache that the twentieth century has caused, but others are far more persistent : the half-life of Plutonium-242 is more than 15 times longer (373,300 years), and that of Plutonium-244 a staggering 80.8 million years.

**** For those interested, The Sheffield Tap (@SheffieldTap) was a good discovery at Doc/Fest :

Fab Day in Sheffield. Here is the station Tap captured in mirror. pic.twitter.com/3rIQ6mWrs3

— Jim Kelly (@thewaterclock) July 6, 2015

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Thaxted Festival, from several years ago : Charles Owen demolishes Schumann, but builds with Bach

A much-delayed review of a recital given by Charles Owen at Thaxted Festival

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 July

Much delayed (through having hidden itself in a sub-folder), a review

(now impressionistically completed) of a recital given by Charles Owen at

Thaxted Festival on Saturday 30 June 2012

By which title one means that Carnaval, Op. 9, when played, coheres, but this performance had the opposite effect.

One cannot claim, of course, to be able to play the work, with its demands, but would one wish to, if it sounded as measured, as ‘balanced’ as this ? :

One had taken more pleasure from hearing the close of the work played, by chance, on Radio 3 an earlier day, and longed to play a CD of Martha Argerich to counteract this impression of performing the work, but without actually seeming to play it.

It was not that what Charles Owen did was four-square as such, but that, in each movement, every phrase or gesture balanced every other one out, feeling as if it were leaving nothing. Also, in terms of a feeling of a whole, nothing linked each movement, and it was only when we got to the Davidsbund, in that there then has to be a leading-up to something, that using restraint seemed to come off – but too late.


So there were reservations about how The Goldberg Variations, following the interval, would fare : there was the promise that, led by feeling, it was likely that most of the repeats would be played, but would one stay, and be there for seventy minutes or so, regretting it ?

No, for this was a recital of two halves, and, as night atmospherically fell in Thaxted Church, and one could see less and less, and focus less and less on seeing Owen in a pool of light (there with Bach, in his score, and the page-turner), one experienced the greatness of this work, its inevitable, but always surprising, unfolding – leading back, as we know that it will when we get to Variations 30 / 31, to the simplicity of the Aria.

We had been told that what to notice were the three variations in the minor, and the performance did really work around them. Unlike with Charles Owen’s Schumann, where one felt that we had heard – and he had brought out of it – nothing but the notes, the essence of the Bach had been present to us here, and one lingered in the darkness, satisfied, before daring to applaud as the impression of the quiet close Aria died away.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Le marteau avec maître : A Q&A with Alix Delaporte

An account of a Q&A with Alix Delaporte for her Le dernier coup de marteau (2014)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 July

A little account of a Q&A with director Alix Delaporte for her
Le dernier coup de marteau (The Last Hammer Blow) (2014), as screened at
The Arts Picturehouse on Monday 13 July at 6.00 p.m.

Salut! Our @uniFrance Summer of French Cinema season kicks off tonight at 6pm with a Q&A:)X https://t.co/Inw59ojiep pic.twitter.com/x5r1g7WbBz

— Arts Picturehouse(@CamPicturehouse) July 13, 2015

When one thought of it, the story about Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, and the two (or three) hammer-blows, is oft told (one was in the screening without a grasp of the title – but it proved not essential to watching the film, and one almost respects the art world for the fact that Untitled is an abiding description) : to Alix Delaporte, who did not know this work (or the composer), this story had attracted her to make a film around the work. That said, she said about Samuel Rovinski that she first needed to give the father a job / profession, so why not that of a conductor ?

Actually, we do experience Grégory Gadebois (as Samuel), seen from within the orchestra as he sits on his stool, quite well* : it is our way into who he is, as against the convincingly big, bluff, blunt man who strides around The Opera Berlioz as if he is Stourley Kracklite (from Peter Greenaway’s The Belly of an Architect (1987), played by Brian Dennehy), denying his paternity. (Just in that respect, as the generous rehearsal time that the film affords (against the time to make a recording in the 1990s) is hardly realistic for nowadays, the film reminds of our relating to Stéphane (Daniel Auteuil) through his music in Un Cœur en Hiver (1992).)

It is at that level of connection that we have an understanding of who people are : as is clear, and as Delaporte confirmed in the Q&A, she leaves these things open so that, in a way, we construct our own film (or our own understanding, at any rate, of what happened, and why, and what it means). So we do not have explained to us, as another type of film-maker might (so that it is established and fixed in our mind, as a given to work / build on as a necessity of plot-driven cinema), things such as :

* Who Miguel is and what his relation is to Victor

* What (other than geographical proximity) brought Nadia** to have a relationship with Samuel (as we gather, she is not a fellow musician)

* Likewise, what (except, patently, shortage of resources) caused her to move to this place three years or so ago to bring up her family (one is reminded of the location of Bombay Beach (2011))

* What happens, except by implication, between Victor and his father when they are off screen


We heard from Delaporte how pasty-faced young Parisian actors who auditioned for the part of Victor did not suit her conception of someone who lives where he does, and how Romain Paul’s affability made her love and want to put him on screen (confirmed by his warmth on set). She was asked about his resolution and determination (in relation to how he is filmed), and she characterized him herself as a serious boy who does not seek typical teenage rebellion against his mother (parents, now that he comes to meet his father).

In relation to the specific question about using a shallow depth of field, both (but not only) when Victor enters the auditorium, and has the orchestra behind him, and in the closing moment***, and when that had come into the conception of how the film would look, Delaporte told us that she does not work on a film in such a way : that it had not been planned beforehand at that level, or structured or themed (not her exact words) as to the choice of shots – hence, as here Tweeted :

Which just goes to show how susceptible the creative process is to self-doubt, @CamPicturehouse - but do watch Le dernier coup de marteau !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 13, 2015

End-notes

* If, though, we also know about music, we know that the players whom we see are miming (and not producing what we hear), and the orchestral sound does not quite match what we would expect, e.g. from where Victor is in the auditorium.

** Clotilde Hesme, who plays Nadia, reminds a lot of Kristin Scott Thomas, when younger, and how she might play such a role.

*** When Victor is on the top of the building, with his mother, and he is sharply foregrounded against Montpellier (which someone in the audience thought was deliberately referencing Les quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) (1959), but which Delaporte said had not been in her mind / her intention).


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Blackmail and Brand at Saffron Hall

This is a review of Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929) with full orchestra at Saffron Hall

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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13 July

* Contains spoilers *

This is a review of a special screening, at Saffron Hall, of Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929), with a score by Neil Brand, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the conductorship of Timothy Brock

So much fun! https://t.co/PC2gM63QoZ

— BBCSymphonyOrchestra(@BBCSO) July 13, 2015

From the opening blasts on the brass in the overture to Blackmail (1929), composer Neil Brand (@NeilKBrand) establishes a contrast between a martial, accented tone, where Morse code is not out of place, and a softer one, complete with, in the ranks (no pun intended !) of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (@BBCSO), a celeste. As conductor Timothy Brock and he were to agree in the Q&A*, Saffron Hall’s (@SaffronHallSW’s) acoustic response is incredibly live, which made for a thrilling evening of silent cinema, adeptly accompanied by at least a hundred players.

Timothy Brock / @NeilKBrand described @SaffronHallSW’s acoustic response as 'incredibly live' in a post-Blackmail Q&A: Trust the experts !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 13, 2015

Opening with brass, and martial tones, @NeilKBrand's score for Blackmail (1929) soon gives the impression of a film of high energy / anxiety

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 13, 2015

Moving from a quickly rotating wheel to a police-van, crammed with listening / transmitting gear and personnel, so a tone of grandeur was established, and it was communicated – in scenes that led to an arrest where violent resistance was attempted – the impression that this was a film, too, of high energy and high anxiety, with ‘swirly’, kaleidoscopic string-effects that felt as if they were in tribute to Bernard Herrmann and his score for Vertigo (1958) (also, of course, Hitchcock).

With the all-seeing police-van in Blackmail (1929), Michel Poiccard(À bout de soufflé 1960)) would not have lasted five minutes, @BeccadT !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 12, 2015

Here, as for Underground (1928), an appropriate appreciation of pace is the hallmark of Brand’s writing, and, even in the quieter moment of the identity parade, he marks the presence of time in the moment by a chime, and soon after engages us with a jazzy feeling that he gives to muted trumpets (as well as nodding towards the signature-tune of Alfred Hitchcock Presents for the usual Hitch cameo).



The boldness of Hitchcock’s direction, and his love of symbolism, is all over this film, with plonking a waitress smack in the middle of Frank and Alice, after they have fought it out with another couple to get seated at the same table (momentarily, we have – till a better opportunity seems to present itself – one member of each couple facing the other in a stand-off) :


We ‘hear’ their words through the inter-titles, of which there is here a plethora, but he teasingly deprives us of their faces, and so their expressions (although, from the note that we see Alice take from her handbag, we know that she is not playing Frank straight**). Hitchcock, when Alice has given Frank the slip, also has the big shadows of ‘The Artist’ and of the man whom we come to know as Tracy all over where Alice is waiting for the former outside where he lives : there, after she has ascended through more shadow (with staircases cut away so that we can see their upwards progress), she then comes to be haunted by his laughing image of a jester.

Even before we get to his atelier, which madly – in keeping with having painted a jester – has the look of a mediaeval castle, those shadows, and Brand’s score, have told us that no good will come of a girl accepting an invitation to a Bluebeard’s dwelling of a place like this… Alice, who is willing to conform to the idea of a girl who just wants to have fun, just cannot resist exploring, and (with her host’s help, happy to be that close) creating an androgynous painted monster. Maybe, too, that little dress, so conveniently left out, is not meant ‘to be resisted’ ? – already, when she has toyed with getting into it, the commanding words Put it on have uneasy undertones in the orchestral writing, reminding us that this may not be the best fashion choice ever.

When, with what is perhaps spontaneous, but no longer a borderline playful removal of Alice’s own clothing***, the pair end up tussling, it is a struggle of shadows that we see – and, of course, we are catapulted forward twenty-five years to imagery of Grace Kelly, resisting attack from Robert Cummings, in Dial M for Murder (1954) (although the hand that emerges is with the knife – in 3D (yes, it was so made), it seems to come out of the screen).

It's curious to reflect how the opening arrest misdirects, @BeccadT : Tracy isn't identified by finger-prints, nor the killer from the knife

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 13, 2015

Afterwards, strings and an eerie kind of playing [for those who had not seen, we were told in the Q&A that it was not a theremin, but the effect of bowing a vibraphone on full****], give the immediate psychological significance – although, by contrast, Hitch and Brand make Alice seem very purposive when dressing, covering her tracks, and leaving.

However, the shadows are there, and Alice now seems to descend a toy staircase (as if she is beginning to disassociate – as, later on, in Marnie (1964), which Brand acknowledged was in his mind now). Soon, then, we hear and are shown, in how she hesitates to cross the road, and in the daggers that she hallucinates in the neon of Piccadilly Circus (against which, not for the last time, she seems so small), her purpose is much less so, as she drifts all night…

At this stage in the proceedings, and by kind courtesy of Neil Brand himself, a link to his piece in BFI's (@BFI's) Sight & Sound (@SightSoundmag) :

@THEAGENTAPSLEY @SaffronHallSW @Saffronscreen @BeccadT thought this might interest you! http://t.co/lF4VIa9tbL

— Neil Brand (@NeilKBrand) July 13, 2015

With the police at the scene of the crime, once the alarm has been called, the military-type theme returns, in a heavy guise. Then Frank arrives, and is directed to have a look around : when he recognizes first Alice’s glove, and then that the dead man is The Artist, the moment is pure theatre, but we do not linger with him, as there is dramatic irony in Alice’s mother saying, via the inter-title when she has brought in a cup of tea, that anyone would think that Alice had not been to bed. And then, just as soon, Alice is left alone to get out from under the covers, in her clothes and even shoes, and with her thoughts. As she repairs her overnight damage in the mirror, a little touch of the sound of Vertigo, and we somehow know that life is never going to be the same :


* At the breakfast table, when asked to cut the bread, the combination of hand, shadow, and knife brings it all back

* Behind the counter, and against the towering shelves, Alice White, newsagent’s daughter, looks small again

* We have a spectral, soft-focus Alice, but we also have Frank, showing her the glove, and (ironically) saying This is the only clue that you were there

* When Tracy comes onto the premises, Hitchcock steps back with the camera, and we have space for deliberation, with these figures just standing there – in the Q&A, Brand told us that, scoring this, he was challenged, and just had to strip back and think of the sub-text

* Tracy reaching towards Frank’s pocket, somehow knowing that the glove is in there – and then he shows us that he has its pair


Vertigo seem to be with us again : when asked in the Q&A, Brand said that he only quoted the themes for Hitchcock Presents and, when the patrolling bobby knows nothing of what is happening high above, that of Dixon of Dock Green. However, he said that the chordal structure of the main theme from Vertigo, with its elevenths and thirteenths, is capable of being both major and minor, and Brand was glad to learn that a Bernard Herrmann sound had been heard through the use of this structure, with which he meant to evoke film noir, but without directly quoting the theme*****.

At the heart of the plot, the nub of the problem faced by Frank and Alice is in the awkward breakfast and its aftermath, with Frank at the back, on the step, and Tracy sniffing the cigar that he forced Frank to buy him. Elsewhere, though, Mrs Humphries is calling at Scotland Yard, with the note that Tracy had left for her lodger. With his score, which Brand was keen to stress to us that Timothy Brock had orchestrated and developed, we hear how paced it is, and how it is in and out of themes as emotions rise and fall.

So, when a search is under way, looking for Tracy through a montage of mugshot books and wanted bills, the martial quality in the music is there in louder form, but, very soon after, we have jazzy notes accompanied by strings : talking about Hollywood orchestras later, Brand said that that string players were always classically trained, but those on trumpets or saxes were jazzers, who were able to deliver with an immediate, full sound.


When the photo of Tracy is found, we are given harp glissandi, and then, on xylophone, dashes and dots of Morse. In Frank’s perception, Tracy becomes, as he calls him, a suspicious looking man with a criminal record, and, with a big sax swagger, he leans cockily on the mantelpiece – domesticity itself, and the assertion that a man, once fingerprinted, is assumed to lose credibility. In large form, a reference to that Vertigo sound again, before we end up with ‘brassy’ negotiation, and then, with ‘pregnant’ strings – Tracy trying to persuade himself as much as Frank that he has reason to be believed over and above Alice and him (my word against hers).

But his nerve does not hold, when other police arrive, and the whirl / swirl of the orchestra must reflect as much his state of mind as Alice’s confusion, having tried to tell Frank that she does not want him to do this and that she has something to say, but being silenced. Out through the window Tracy goes, and we revert to the opening image of the van-wheel in motion, as he flees, but keeps encountering police officers, to whom, rightly or wrongly, he thinks that his status must be known:

So it is that, after he has paused for a drink, we see him as the pursuers do, as a speck against the hugeness of the façade of The British Museum, between whose monumental columns he passed, and which towered above him. Inside, massive Egyptian heads also stress his insignificance, and his likely fate being in larger hands, and – when he descends a chain – there is another huge head behind him, with Brand giving us heavy brass, and throaty trombones. A momentary glance into the Reading Room, and then – terribly small again – Tracy is on the breast-like dome, and, next, has plunged through the glass, back into the famous space below.


As at the opening, when Alice is waiting for Frank (and berating him for keeping her waiting), we are at Scotland Yard. There is an open, gracious theme as she asks to speak to the inspector, and is told that she needs to fill in a form. In terms of instrumentation, we are down to her small voice, and, when she is shown in, we find that Frank is there : again, he is wishing to head her off in the light of Tracy being implicated. Just when she is about to speak, news of what happened to Tracy obliges the inspector to leave her in Frank’s charge.

As they leave the room, we can see her torment in her tortured hand on her bag, and then, now that she tells him, and when Frank finally realizes what did happen, he drops her hand (with nothing offering a way back).

At this dramatic conclusion, the applause was enthusiastic.

Brand was welcomed to the stage, where he warmly embraced Brock, and where the orchestra and both men took several curtain-calls : the film had been honoured by this playing, and this score, and this first venture by Saffrons Hall and Screen had been very well received.


But do not take one's word for it, as there is verification by Tweet here, with even a link to another review :

Congratulations @saffronhallsw, @Saffronscreen & @BBCSO for riveting screening of #Hitchcock's #Blackmail last night http://t.co/tB5qxBIOjc

— Richard Fisher (@RFisherwrites) July 13, 2015

Last night the @BBCSO raised the roof of @SaffronHallSW with my score for #Hitchcock's Blackmail - cracking review - http://t.co/spWPsTYaKu

— Neil Brand (@NeilKBrand) July 13, 2015

End-notes

* Which was hosted by Saffron Screen’s (@Saffronscreen’s) Rebecca del Tufo (@BeccadT), since this successful community cinema, also based with Saffron Hall at The County High School, was its projection partner for the evening.

Neil Brand, Timothy Brock, and Rebecca del Tufo at the Q&A (left to right)

** Seeing, further on, the portrait of Frank as a constable in Alice’s room suggests that they have been going steady for a while (he has now risen through the ranks), as does the dutifulness with which, when prompted, he gave her a peck on the cheek when she has waited for him after work. Is having him as a beau more to satisfy her parents’ needs than hers ? (My Russian friend, pragmatically, had no sympathy for Alice for putting herself in harm’s way with The Artist (and being no better than she should be), but that is just she…)

*** Contrast with the mucking around, even with a stranger, in Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday) (1930), which Brand (and Jeff Davenport) played for us at Cambridge Film Festival 2014…

**** One heard / seen recently when, in chamber configuration, Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) performed Joey Roukens’ new work Lost in a surreal trip (2015) (where these ears, at least, detected North by Northwest (1959)).

***** And, on the use of the theme itself in The Artist (2011), Brock and he said that they gathered that the theme had been used as a place-holder, which, when those composing for the film did not satisfy the director with anything else, simply came to be used at that point in the film : Brand agreed that the direct use of the theme not only is a musical strength that is not ‘earnt’ by the film, but also that it inaptly connects us straight to the pair of Kim Novak and James Stewart.



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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Baroque glory at King's, two hundred years on

Tweets about The Dunedin Consort's Bach Celebration for Concerts at King's

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

11 July

Some collected Tweets about the Bach Celebration, with The Dunedin Consort directed by John Butt, for Concerts at King's on Friday 11 July at 7.30 p.m.

Very lovely yesterday was, too ! :) https://t.co/B9av7Iv0dL

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 11, 2015

Returning from a few days at @yorkearlymusic Festival with John Butt and the @DunedinConsort at @ConcertsatKings was a very good transition.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 11, 2015

John Butt directed @DunedinConsort with energy from the k/b at @ConcertsatKings, with especial pleasure in Jane Gower's crisp bassoon work.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 11, 2015

What a way, @ConcertsatKings @DunedinConsort, to revel in the master's music, with lovely oboe sound from Frances & Oonaghin Suite No. 1 !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 11, 2015

Cecilia Bernardini's Adagio in the E Major Concerto was very moving, and she worked so well with John Butt and the whole @DunedinConsort

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 11, 2015

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

The best and worst of York Early Music Festival Young Artists’ Competition (day 1) - work in progress

The best and worst of York Early Music Festival Young Artists’ Competition (day 1)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 July (updated 11 July)

The best and worst of York Early Music Festival Young Artists’ Competition 2015 (Day 1, on Thursday 9 July)

For the first time that one remembers, being around when York Early Music Festival (@yorkearlymusic) has young performers in competition (although only for day 1, Thursday 9 July), but previous winners have been heard before (including Le Jardin Secret, and, one of their supporters suggested, La Morra this year).

Talking to Linda, on the @EMTrains service, about university and what it's for, was nice, but meant no writing last night on @yorkearlymusic

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 10, 2015

Order of performance :
1. Amsterdam Corelli Collective
2. Ensemble Ancor
3. Diapason
4. Il Giorno Felice
5. Sollazzo Ensemble

The National Centre for Early Music (St Margaret's Church, Walmgate, York)

Order of increasing [perception of] merit :


Diapason (3) ~ Cello and harpsichord

One is no expert as to whether the way in which a cello is being played is ‘authentic’, but the bow-hand really did not look as it did with that of the cellist of Il giorno felice – the sound definitely resembled the vibrant, but modern, style of the approach of a great such as Rostropovich.

Please also see below (under Sollazzo Ensemble) about what ‘fits in’ with our early-music ears and eyes as to performance practice and ‘stock’ sound…


Sollazzo Ensemble (5) ~ Fiddles, harp, clavisimbalum, voices

If one were told that this was not meant to be a Balkanized take on works by fourteenth-century composers, or that they had set texts in Italian, one could not credit it.

Of course, the uniformity of the sound police can be accused for associating a sort of tone with the music of Mozart, and saying that what strays outside is ‘wrong’. However, did this ever sound as though what one might have expected were being infused with, say, what Joglaresa does by way of realising mediaeval compositions ?


Amsterdam Corelli Collective (1) ~ Strings and harpsichord continuo

Nice to have the thrill of a large period-instrument ensemble, but it is also an undesired challenge when not everything in the ensemble (qua sound-world) is fully in register.

Of course, playing with gut-strings is authentic, but, if one is not in control of – and so can adjust for – the variability of tone and pitch, the unmet technical challenge becomes an auditory one…


Ensemble Ancor (2) ~ Recorder quartet

The reflective, thoughtful approach of this ensemble was welcome, although one was unsure about the historicity of usually making long breaths through the instrument, only occasionally accenting / articulating notes with shorter ones.

That said, interference fringe-effects are exciting in the right place (e.g. the work of Steve Reich), but, when resonance sometimes almost overwhelms the musical-line, something seems amiss* : tuning, or harmonic compatibility / integrity of instruments ?


Il Giorno Felice (4) ~ Cello, recorder and harpsichord

This felt like musicality – accent and rhythm at the intelligent service of the flow of the instrumental lines, as were pacing, phrasing, and mood (even if Catherine Bott (@CatherineJBott) and others found the balance not quite right between tenor recorder and cello).

Michaela Koudelková’s dexterity and sound quality matched that of Red Priest’s Piers Adams, but without extremes of showmanship or ‘sheen’ – and not the ‘blockish’ style of instrument used by Ensemble Ancor, and a different approach to tongueing / style (please see above).


Those, at least (and for what they are worth), are @THEAGENTAPSLEY's observations... for the NCEM web-site now announces :

Congratulations to Sollazzo Ensemble, Nexus Baroque, Consone Quartet – all prize winners in this year's York Early Music International Young Artists Competition.

Delighted to announce that The Sollazzo Ensemble have been awarded the @CambsEarlyMusic prize @yorkearlymusic #YEMF15 pic.twitter.com/9Nx59ojInS

— CambridgeEarlyMusic (@CambsEarlyMusic) July 11, 2015

The names of the prize-winners can be seen here in full, but Sollazzo Ensemble, only rated four out of five in this posting, unsurprisingly won the lion's share (as they were very popular on the day)...

The Finalists : Sollazzo Ensemble are, of course, in the front, but Catherine Bott is also there – in the second row, to the left of the three members of Il Giorno Felice (far right)

See all 10 performances which were part of this year's York Early Music International Young Artists Competition 2015 http://t.co/RMx9hz8V3Y

— NCEM (@yorkearlymusic) July 14, 2015

End-notes

* By contrast, with a paired set of instruments (such as La Morra used), jointed at the mouth to allow both to be played at once, it is a deliberate effect.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Seen at Sheffield : Doc/Fest films with full reviews

A list of films fully reviewed* (with links) at Sheffield Doc/Fest

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

8 June

In alphabetical order, a list of films reviewed in full* at Sheffield Doc/Fest (with links) :


A Sinner in Mecca (2015)
Doublethink in Mecca : Being devotional despite inflicted modernity


A Young Patriot (2015)
Full circle in Shanxi province


Containment (2015)
Containment – the vessel and the djinn


Iris (2014)
Big glasses to Big Eyes


Monty Python : The Meaning of Live (2014)
Sheffield – God's own City ~ Michael Palin at The Crucible


The Nine Muses (2010)
The best of Sheffield Documentary Festival 2015 : in the John Akomfrah retrospective


End-notes

* The same reviews can also be found linked in A round-up of events at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2015 (@sheffdocfest).


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Report from York Early Music Festival 2015 : The Early Opera Company

This reviews Early Opera Company in Charpentier / Purcell, York Early Music Festival

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

6 July

This is a review of The Early Opera Company’s performances of
Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon and Henry Purcell’s Dido and Æneas at York Early Music Festival on Sunday 5 July 2015 at 6.30 p.m.

At The Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall at The University of York (@UniOfYork) for York Early Music Festival (@yorkearlymusic), Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon was realised for two transverse flutes, viola da gamba, bass violin, theorbo, two violins, and harpsichord continuo (played by director Christian Curnyn). The introductory sections to the work had a melancholy tone, with restrained use of adornment : amongst them, were the brightly famous melody, and another that, part of the fluidity within moods, created one from repeated note-patterns.

The Scène première began urgently, and moved into and back out of reflectiveness, as Actéon (sung by Ed Lyon) engaged us in story-telling, his enthusiasm kept clean by very little vibrato, and with an instrumental ‘tail’ to this Scène. The next began with two dances, the first more lively, the second more measured.

Singing Diane (Sophie Junker), unforcedly understated her voice in a way that conveyed both substance and, through these more inward means, the evocation of desire, and which made the one large accentuation that she made all the more effective. The impression of the Scène was open and relaxed for the Chœur des Nimphes, with flutes and theorbo, before becoming more like a state occasion. The setting of the text was matched, nigh phrase for phrase, by the instrumentalists, the violinists leading our way, and into a delicate feel to Gardez vous, importuns amants, / D’en troubler les douceurs parfaites.

With a resemblance to a ground on the bass violin, as Arthébuze’s (Ciara Hendrick's) section alternated with that of the Chœur, and she used a different tone-colour when she came to the fore (partly achieved at the cost of swallowing the sound a little ?). As if bringing down an excited heartbeat, the instruments slowed slightly to a soft close.

Those seeing @yorkearlymusic from Friday say that @EarlyOpera is the best event : massively complementary works by Charpentierand Purcell !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 5, 2015

In the Scène troisième, Actéon lyrically engages with his experience : the poetry is in the music, the music in the poetry, as he is hoist by the raptures of his own words, in S’il vient m’attaquer, […] Il verra ses projects se tourner en fumée, the verbal trap of setting himself up as a challenge to his [notion of] Dieu. Only too late does he rein himself in, with a slight hesitation in the final words, and, here, we are in the territory of Euripides (in a play such as The Bacchae), dramatizing those overweaning urges that we all are prey to, and making from this very familiar story our common experience :

Plaintive violin and theorbo bring out the bright resonance within these textures, and, as Actéon continued to boast his bluff naivety in the shorter block of verse about Liberté, the ensemble goes up tempo, and he – with all the meanings of the words – got simply ‘carried away’, fully as if he were William Harford (Tom Cruise) in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), embracing he knows not what dream, and with the enchantment first in the tones of theorbo and of Reiko Ichise’s [viola da] gamba, and then, with the flutes joining in, in Eligio Luis Quinteiro giving his playing a particularly plucked quality, as – so quickly – Actéon is seduced by the notion of cette route inconnue / M’offrira quelq’endroit propre à les [Diane et ses sœurs] écouter.


In the closing Chœur des nimphes, the writing is highly accented, and Charpentier reduces down to just the voices, to herald, at the start of Scène quatrième, extreme effects on the gamba (whose aesthetics endeared it this specific age, where it had its heighday ?), as Ed Lyon finds himself struggling to utter human sounds : the Ovidian transformation did not need staging to be fully real to us, a lightning disintegration of the kind that, in Die Winterreise’s much slower descent, takes us to the cold horror, beyond feeling, of the disintegration in and of Der Leiermann ? Actéon’s closing words, acknowledging l’estat ou je me voys and ma honte, show that he knows his fate, and we close with harpsichord and violin, then nothing.

Nothing, that is, until a theme couched in pain that will soon usher in the penultimate Scène, where, known but to us (as yet), the dramatic irony of words such as Un spectacle si doux ne s’offre pas deux foix, addressed to Actéon (imagined absent), will ring false and belie the sentiment (though, mimetically, one is ahead of one’s self : please see below). In the meantime, we have a tortured, suffering quality – and are we not inevitably a little reminded (though without, of course, redemption) of the tenor aria from Bach’s St John Passion ? :

Erwäge, wie sein
blutgefärbter Rücken
In allen Stücken
Den Himmel gleiche geht


This is the very nub of this music, what it has been written for, so that it would lead here : we heard this material alluded to in the instrumental introduction, we know the familiar story, and it was all preparing us for this point (not unlike, again, the Bach, although Charpentier died more than twenty years earlier ?), with its slide and Sul ponticello effects, which, in an interlude, give us very great subtlety of note-painting (Charpentier’s and this ensemble’s), and heartfelt feeling (albeit Actéon’s full plight is undercut by reverting to four vocal parts at the finish).

The Scène cinquième, prefigured above, comprises the Chœur des chasseurs alone, ironically with bright, female voices urging Quittez la resverie [Kubrick, again, with what is dreamt, what ‘real’... – though dream is eternal, older than Chaucer, and The Boke of The Duchess], but, with a recursion of the central section, male voices are becoming more evident :

Having said that the work had built up to Actéon’s despairing transformation, and the unknowing members of the hunt’s delight in seeing him cornered, the final Scène consolidates it all, starting with a difficult quality to Junon’s declaring and – in triumph – enjoying his death, delighting in his fate. Especially its manner (par ses chiens dévorés), as a lesson to les mortels odieux, the tone being set to Actéon’s retinue by the word ‘Ainsi’.

Risking we know not what wrath, they briefly dare plea for his worthiness, and her howl and leonine roar shout them down with passion : her reasoning, rooted in sharp jealousy and Hilary Summers’ real relish of this stage fury, turns out to be politics, and above all mortal issues of merit and justice (Gloucester has it in Lear, ‘As flies to wanton boys’ ?). (Thankfully for them, one supposes, and their little moment of protest, someone has to survive to tell the tale, if there is to be deterrent…)


Quietly (as suitable for one subdued), the Chœur des Chasseurs revolves the final three sections of text – with Ed Lyon (who had been our Actéon) joining in with the male voices, after a while, before, at Faisons monter nos cris (which begins the central section), all gave voice for what is, at heart, another posture at defiance / more posturing (from a place of safety). Since the text is not just set once, it is not a final gesture, after all, when bass is added to the female singers and a tenor voice, and Charpentier instead revisits Faisons monter, feigning, with the violins accenting the last word, to end with Qu’ils pénètrent jusqu’aux enfers.

However, the female voices, leading all to sing with them, take us to the preceding section of text, where the taxing question, Quel cœur, à ce malheur, ne seroit pas sensible ?, separates off from the other lines, and – somehow – Charpentier even seems to make it right to conclude on a concord, and to very much applause at The Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall (about which there was no doubt !).

No distinction between vocal / instrumental performers, constructing a work of drama as effortless as this took real work from @EarlyOpera.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 5, 2015

Some less-detailed impressions of Purcell's Dido and Æneas - noting throughout 45 minutes of drama, in Part I, leaves one just wanting to sit back for Part II...

As to both works given, this is living, breathing music, with an assurance to all aspects of the staging of the performance by The Early Opera Company under Curnyn, and there were almost religious sensations at play here, as if of litany.

It deserved a standing ovation. (But maybe they don’t do that at Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall… ?)


In instrumental terms (and with the addition of a viola, compared with Part I), Purcell had set out his stall of more complex grief and grieving in the very opening of the Overture to Dido and Æneas.

Emilie Renard*, as Dido, has a voice to describe whose qualities all of these characteristics are applicable : strength, uncomplication, clarity, immediacy, pliability. Opposite her, Callum Thorpe (as Æneas) had palpable directness, with power in his bass, projecting the words and feeling alike of the role.

When Renard’s colleagues Sophie Junker and Ciara Hendrick sang as a duo, working their voices together in pursuit of her character’s downfall, they did so with honeyed diction, and little vibrato – the former did so with particular ease.


Here, a link to a review (by James Whittle) in The York Press



End-notes

* Who had also been singing roles in Part I, but the credits appear incorrect in the programme :

@THEAGENTAPSLEY I sang Daphne; Ciara sang Hyale, and Aréthuse's little verses. Does that help? :)

— Emilie Renard(@eflatmajor_) July 8, 2015

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)