Superman Returns

Saw Superman Returns the other day.

It’s a big-screen extravaganza of the classic comic book tale.

A huge budget production, rich in special effects and riding an out-of-this-world fantasy storyline.

Brandon Routh bears an uncanny resemblance to Christopher Reeve, the Superman I remember.

All the familiar characters were there, just updated for the 21st-century audience. Superman’s ‘mother’ in her prairies farmhouse; Louis Lane, the determined reporter (a modern, feminist reinterpretation); Perry White the ebullient newspaperman and Jimmy White the bow-tied junior hack.

Clark Kent is the socially awkward office geek. Clumsily tripping over things and stammering through conversations. But, with that famous cape and boots he takes to the skies as the ultimate super-hero.

This is a uniquely American story.

At one point Superman is even depicted patrolling the skies over New York, in an eerie echo of the fighter jets over the city on 9/11. 

Had America only had Superman and the reassuring certainties of his world that day, everything might, just might, have been alright…

Downfall

Watched Downfall the other night. A German dramatisation of the last days of Hitler. Traudl Junge, a young staff typist, is our witness to the Führer’s final days and suicide. Deep under Berlin Hitler and his generals face the Russian advance and their imminent defeat.

Bruno Gantz gives a terrific performance as Adolf Hitler. The Führer is portrayed as a withered, grey old man. Bent double, shuffling with one hand shaking uncontrollably. A broken dictator.

Hitler is fanatical to the end, screaming wildly at his generals. Issuing deluded commands and conjuring up phantom regiments to defend the city. Hitler demands a decisive counterattack while condemning his commanders for their cowardice and treachery. The terrible reality is the army is broken and Germany defeated.

The bunker is cut off from the world. Insulated from the terrible battles raging above. They are a strange, isolated community existing in a concrete underground of sterile corridors and reinforced steel doors. Many of the bunker scenes are remarkable for their domesticity. Hitler takes lunch with his staff in a purpose built dining room. They eat off china plates and exchange pleasantries, commenting on the food.

The claustrophobic atmosphere of the bunker juxtaposes sharply with the terrible shelling and chaos in the city above. Children desperately man the guns as the adults turn on each other amid the chaos. Brutal execution squads roam the city hunting collaborators. They kill at will, hanging suspects in the street. The death squads insist ‘order must be restored’ and adorn their victims with makeshift signs declaring, “I sided with the red beasts”.

Denial is a constant theme. People are drunk and despairing at the hopelessness of their situation and imminent arrival of the Red army. Eva Braun is depicted as a self-obsessed hedonist, indulging in wild dancing and open drunkenness. No one can face the future. The defeat and humiliation, the moment Germans must account for Nazism.

The fanaticism of the young is shocking. A nurse collapses hysterically on seeing a broken and dishevelled Führer. Young officers declare their loyalty to Hitler and vow to fight and die rather than surrender. They blindly cling to the oath of allegiance and many commit suicide rather than fall to the Russians.

In a pathetic scene, a reproduction of Hitler’s last appearance on camera, the Führer decorates a line of bewildered child soldiers for defending Berlin.

Goebbels is depicted as a sinister figure, gaunt and limping. Fanatical to the end and devoted to Hitler and Nazism. In a terrible scene, Frau Goebbels is seen coldly administering poison to her own children. Finally having to force a reluctant Helga to drink it. Somehow it comes to symbolise the cold barbarism of the Nazis. The Goebbels then kill themselves.

As the final hours approach, Hitler is seen earnestly discussing the effectiveness of various poisons with a visiting surgeon. He instructs an aide to burn his corpse to prevent it from falling into Russian hands. Hitler and Eva Braun marry in a pathetic ceremony and retreat to their rooms to end their lives.

Leading Nazis record their final testaments and Goebbels dictates a rambling diatribe to Nazism and what could have been.

A German general tries to negotiate a desperate peace with the advancing Russians. His approach is rejected outright. Unconditional surrender is the only offer.

At the end, Hitler is dead and his generals drink and argue as the bunker staff flee.

Defeat and suicide are recurring themes. Nazism and it’s murderous ideology are defeated as Hitler and the leading Nazis commit suicide. The proud German army is beaten. As the last defenders are pushed back to within a few yards of the bunker, men kill themselves rather than surrender.

The suffering of the German people is portrayed in harrowing detail. Germany is ruined, it’s citizens left to beg in her shattered cities. The price for Nazism is paid.

As Germany’s surrender is announced, people emerge, dazed and uncertain from the ruins.

The film is about witness. Dramatising the accounts of survivors. Characters are picked out and their stories come to life through the film’s narrative. It’s important the film is made by Germans and the dialogue is in German. It lends it authenticity and makes its witness more meaningful.

The film ends with Traudl Junge’s escape from the bunker, Berlin and the war. Our witness must survive. Children are among the first to adapt to life in the ruins and a resourceful boy leads her through the Russian lines to safety.

They pull a bicycle from a river and cycle through the countryside to freedom. The boy represents a future of hope and renewal. The journey is symbolic of a new, reconstructed, democratic German nation.

As the credits roll, eerie snapshots reveal what happened to the bunker staff after the war. Many died in Russian prison camps while others survived, living to old age.

The final few minutes show Traudl Junge today, looking back and reflecting on her life and time in Hitler’s bunker. She concludes that being young was no excuse and finding things out was always possible.

Saw

Saw ‘Saw’ last night at the Vue Cinema West End.

Scary stuff.

Two guys wake up chained at opposite ends of an industrial washroom.

Between them is a decomposing corpse.

One has to kill the other or face a terrible death before time runs out. A series of macabre clues lead them to concealed hacksaws – to their horror they realise the only way out is to cut through their ankles…

The story unfolds through a series of carefully managed flashbacks. We discover they’re the victim of a sadistic psycho called ‘The Jigsaw Killer’ who traps his victims and forces them to make gruesome life-or-death choices to escape.

It’s a chilling psycho-horror that turns on the desperate plight of the two characters, played by Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell.

They are trapped.

Trapped by the chains, trapped by the serial killer, and trapped by their mistrust of each other. The sense of claustrophobic, no-way-out horror is cleverly developed and unnerving to watch.

Elwes hams it up a bit, but it’s an intriguingly dark horror film and well worth seeing.

Before seeing the film we shopped on Oxford Street in the driving rain. Huddled under a windswept brolly fighting off the worst the British weather could hurl at us. Darting in and out of shops trying not to get utterly soaked.

After a warm up at Costa coffee and a browse through the department stores we hit the cinema.

We rounded off the evening with a lovely meal at the Thai Pot, Covent Garden and a late train ride home with all the pissed up party goers.

Two lads opposite were hilarious – faking sleep, somewhat obviously, whenever the ticket collector came by… !

Kandahar

Saw Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar last night. A thought-provoking film about a woman who returns to Taliban run Afghanistan in search of her sister.

It was filmed before 9/11 and gives a taste of life under the Taliban. The film opens with a surreal scene. Prosthetic limbs are dropped by parachute to a wind blown field hospital for land mine victims. Limbless men engage in a desperate race across the desert on their crutches to reach the falling parachutes.

Women have to wear the burka and are not permitted to travel alone. Nafas, the central character, is an Afghani-Canadian who has to rely on the kindness and curiosity of strangers to find her way to Kandahar. Along the way she is helped by a young boy and an American doctor with a strange false beard.

Afghanistan’s mountainous scenery and haunting desert landscapes provide the backdrop. The setting is strangely resonant of the opening desert scenes of Star Wars and some of the incidents are just as alien.

We encounter a schoolroom full of young boys fanatically reciting the Koran under the watchful gaze of a taliban mullah. One boy is expelled for copying the rhythm of the chant rather than learning the words.

Women are veiled in the burka and we rarely see their faces. Some even conceal brightly polished red fingernails beneath their heavy clothing.

In tracing Nafas’ journey, the film unveils a stifling atmosphere of religious oppression. People are forced to struggle to get by and live as best they can.

Spiderman

Saw Spiderman II last night. Great film. Alfred Molina was excellent as the demented Doc Ock and Tobey Maguire played a convincingly geeky Peter Parker.

The story was a little convoluted, but soon stabilised into a classic doubting superhero beats the baddie and gets the girl flick.

Peter Parker is a geek. Weedy, always late, overlooked, under-performing and a low achiever. But, pull on the Spiderman mask and he’s a superhero. Rescuing children from speeding trucks, catching bad guys and saving the city.

A cod-science nuclear accident turns the preening Dr Otto Octavius into a tentacled monster who’s out to get our hero. A superhuman battle rages across the city as the two fight it out.

On one level the film is a comic-strip superhero romp. A piece of fantasy fun. The film also manages to touch on the secrets people keep, and the masks people wear. We all fulfill different roles, each with a different public mask. Peter Parker is a nerd whose secret is that he’s spiderman. Put on a webbed body suit and a spider mask and he’s miraculously transformed into a superhero.

There’s a classic scene where spidey stops a runaway city train. He spins his webs of steel and, while straining to halt the catastrophe, loses his Spiderman hood. Peter Parker, the boy behind the mask is revealed. He wakes, surrounded by astonished passengers. He’s immediately overtaken by self-consciousness and is horrified to be exposed. It drains his superhuman powers.

The assembled crowd reassured him that it’s OK, and they unanimously agree, ‘not to tell anyone’ before returning his discarded mask. This re-energises him and he dashes off to track down his evil foe.

The subtext, albeit a little obvious, is it’s Ok to be yourself. There’s no need to wear masks, keep destructive secrets or assume disguises.

It’s OK to be you.

Spiderman is ‘outed’ as Peter Parker and it’s just fine !

After all he’s a superhero with a job to do and a city to save….