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EIFF 2026 – The Mad World of Harvey Kurtzman

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EIFF 2026 – The Mad World of Harvey Kurtzman,
Directed by Bart Simpson,
Featuring Adele Kurtzman, Al Jaffee, Arnold Roth, Art Spiegelman, Denis Kitchen, Gareth Gaudin, James Warren, Karen Green, Matt Groening, Meredith Kurtzman, Nellie Kurtzman, Pete Poplaski, Robert Crumb, Sarah Downs, Sergio Aragones, Terry Gilliam, William Stout

I usually find some interesting documentary work to watch during the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and this year I found one which dovetailed rather nicely with my own passions – comics. A film about a gifted and influential comics creator. That’s two of my favourite things in one, so of course I booked tickets to this Canadian-Scottish production.

For those unfamiliar with his name, Kurtzman was an incredibly inventive comics artist and writer and publisher. Some of his early work would involve a lot of research (despite the fairly fast and cheap nature of the medium at the time) to get details and ideas correct, especially for his war comics. These were not like most other rah-rah, here are our boys, the Good Guys, valiantly facing and vanquishing the Nasty Enemy. For starters these were aimed at much older readers, not kids, and Kurtzman managed to work in an anti-war sensibility while delivering the story, the sort of remarkable trick Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun would pull off decades later with the influential Charley’s War; no honour and glory antics here, this was war as hell and the effect is had on those who made it back.

Kurtzman started convincing the iconic EC Comics to start looking at new directions, not just their war, crime and horror titles, and his incredibly inventive sense of humour, combined with his distaste for those in authority, would really start to manifest (although some who knew him said this was already apparent when he drew cartoons even at high school). The road to the now-iconic MAD magazine was laid, and entire generations of creative talents would grow up influenced by this.


(restored version of the first MAD Magazine cover)

Simpson assembles some terrific talking heads scenes with people who knew Kurtzman, not least his youngest daughter, Nellie, who is a frequent “anchor” figure through the film, often talking with an old friend of her father’s, and a well-known name in comics circles in his own right, Denis Kitchen, who has carefully archived so much of Kurtzman’s work, and as they go through this material – from published work to personal notes and letters, we get more insight into Kurtzman’s varied output across the decades, while an animation studio took some of the artwork and brought it to a simple but effective form of life, to make it more visually engaging than simply showing a number of static images.

Another framing device used to structure the film is an old Canadian talk-show broadcast with Harvey, which, as director Simpson explained, allowed Harvey, gone now for some decades, to speak for himself about his work and his motivations. Around this and Nellie and Kitchen, we get quite the array of others who knew or worked with Kurtzman, including names from succeeding generations of creatives who would go on to become huge, influential names themselves, such as Art Spiegelman and Robert Crumb, not to mention Terry Gilliam and Matt Groening.


(cover for Help! Magazine number 1, with comedian Sid Caesar on the cover, the first of a string of famous figures who would gladly grace the pages)

Gilliam particularly is full of praise, and not just for the encouragement and work Harvey gave him when he was starting out, in Help! Magazine, but the connections – for a while they were playing with the photo-comic idea, but giving it their own subversive twist. One of the young actors used in such a strip, a man who falls for his daughter’s Barbie doll, was played by a very young John Cleese. As Gilliam notes, if he hadn’t had this comics connection to Cleese through working with Kurtzman, would he have travelled to the UK to become part of Monty Python? Would he have had the film career he had afterwards?

For me one of the warmest parts of this film wasn’t just those who knew or worked with Kurtzman reminiscing about him, it was about the influence, that ineffable effect where someone often doesn’t even know they are doing it, but they are passing on influences to a new generation, who take it and run with it, doing their own new things, which in turn influence more that come after them. With the run on Help! Magazine publishing early works from the likes of Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton, who would go on to be pivotal figures in the emerging underground comics scene and the wider counter culture (as indeed did Kurtzman’s work). Or his teaching spell, alongside the equally legendary Will Eisner, at New York’s School of Visual Arts, frequently bringing in established creators as guests to his class.

There’s even a nice segment of Kurtzman in Europe, where his approach to comics and satire for adult readers inspired many in the Franco-Belgian comics scene. It was especially interesting to me as today in English-language countries, although the comics form is treated better than before, most comics creators here envy the way the medium is treated as a proper part of the arts scene in the Franco-Belgian world, so it was interesting to hear of a time when that influence was coming the other way and inspiring creators like Gotlib and Moebius.

EIFF 2026 - The MAD World of Harvey Kurtzman 03
(Director Bart Simpson talking with the Edinburgh film fest crowd in the Cameo, after the screening of the Mad World of Harvey Kurtzman, pic from my Flick)

And the nice thing about that influence is that, long after we lose the artist – or for Nellie and her family, they lost a loving father and husband, and too early – is that the influence remains, streamed into newer generations of creators, who in turn influence other, younger, newer creators, and so it goes on, a living influence. A warm-hearted look at not just a great comics creator and humorist, but a creator who genuinely influenced the popular and then the counter cultures (there’s a reason Steven Spielberg paid top dollar for a framed early MAD cover by Kurtzman, now, ironically, worth far more than he ever got paid in his own lifetime); today one of the major comics industry awards is named for Kurtzman, another way his legacy continues.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Oh, Canada

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Oh, Canada,
Directed by Paul Schrader,
Starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Jacob Elordi, Michael Imperioli, Victoria Hill

Adapted from the novel Foregone by the late Russell Banks, this is the second of the author’s works Schrader has spun a film from his friend’s writing (the previous one being Affliction). We have Richard Gere, playing an acclaimed American-Canadian documentary film-maker, Leonard Fife, now reaching the final stages of his life. Gere, known, of course, for his leading man looks, here starts off as far from that image as possible: Fife is dying, slowly, of cancer. We see him being woken by his much younger wife and former student, Emma (Uma Thurman) and his nurse, his face sunken, his strength mostly gone, his hair sparse on his head, his face unshaven, totally reliant on the help of others now as the end closes in. They are readying him for a final documentary.

However, this time, as Fife himself tells the camera, while looking directly at it, after a career spent encouraging others to open up and tell him things they normally never would, it was now, finally, “his turn”. His former students, Diana (Victoria Hill) and Malcolm (Michael Imperioli), with their younger assistant Sloan (Penelope Mitchell) arrive at his grand Canadian residence, rolling up a thick carpet, moving decorations, including a Christmas tree, in a large, oak-panelled room, setting up cameras and film lights.

Malcolm and Diana have talked him into being the subject this time, a final documentary for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company), which they assure him will cement his already formidable reputation among cinephiles for documentary movie making (Fife, we learned, earned that reputation exposing secret shames of the country, such as the vicious seal clubbing trade, which those of us of a certain age will recall with horror, and the way the children of indigenous peoples of Canada had been treated by parts of the school system to “fit in”). And it appears he wants this, not so much as a last piece of his legacy in cinema, but more because he is a dying man and welcomes the chance for a final confession before the final curtain. The camera will be his confessional priest, his wife he wants nearby as his witness.

It starts in a fairly standard manner, Fife talking to the camera about his early life before we cut to seeing it in flashback, with Jacob Elordi playing the younger Gere, taking us back to the US in 1968. Fife’s wife, daughter of a wealthy businessman, is pregnant and we see a touching scene of him reading to their first child and whispering to her baby bump, it all seems ideal, but also far removed from the old man we saw at the start of the film who is a respected documentarian.

Fife finds himself faced with choices – he has been offered a teaching job at a small but respected college he and his wife plan to move to, which would support them while he tries to write his novel on the side, but his father in law also offers him an incredibly generous and lucrative deal to be a part of his multi-million dollar business, which would set up his young family for life. There is also the looming threat of the draft, this being the era of Vietnam. In the end Fife chooses to run away from both obligations and to Canada, while along the way we see him indulge in numerous affairs.

This, understandably, upsets his loyal wife, Emma – he insists he is not being cruel, but she should know the sort of man she has been married to these last several decades, a man who ran away from his marriage, his children (his estranged son will turn up later and also add his voice to the narration). She, however, was never sure this documentary was a good idea, given his illness and medication, and believes that those are confusing him, that he’s not confessing buried truths but half-remembered other stories or wholly invented ones, and that the filming should stop, while Malcolm and Diana insist this is what Fife wanted and agreed to (we get the impression that despite their respect for his position, there’s also a distinct tension between Malcolm, Diana and Fife).

As I mentioned, Schrader does use Elordi for the younger Fife in flashbacks, but this, however, is not exclusive – there are scenes which start with Elordi as young Fife, such as the one I mentioned earlier with his pregnant wife, which then cut to Gere himself (as he is now, not as the older, dying version of Fife) playing his character. This happens several times throughout the film, while other flashbacks show Emma, Diana and Malcolm in their days as Fife’s students, but played by the same actors, only styled more for the period. It’s an interesting visual device, and a signal that Fife is a very unreliable narrator.

As the stories continue, Emma protests more, Fife insists he has to continue and that he is finally telling the truth, but there are moments when someone comments that couldn’t have happened when he said it did because he was known to be elsewhere at the time. Then he we see him stumble, confused, wondering where he got to in his narrative, losing his own thread in the labyrinth of his memory, that labyrinth not a solid, permanent structure, but a crumbling and shifting edifice. How much is real, how much is age, illness, the medication, a dying man who feels guilt for something, but what is real? Which of these sins did he really commit, if any?

Some of the film, notably those scenes with the dying Fife, are not only about a documentary being filmed, they use some of the conventions of the documentary film-maker, such as the subject, head and shoulders, talking directly to the camera (a trick we are told Fife used often himself as a way to get people to open up and talk). Those of us familiar with documentary film are almost pre-conditioned to accept that style as a form of verite, but here Schrader is playing with it undermining that filmic convention, reminding us even the realism of a documentary is artifice, it is choices, cuts, edits, omissions, inclusions, prejudices (conscious or otherwise), it is, in short, a constructed media, not reality, even if it is attempting to reflect it.

This confusion and tension builds through the film – did Fife really have this secret life before fleeing the draft to Canada? Did he really abandon a marriage and children his current wife had no idea about? The appearance later of his estranged son seems to confirm at least part of that, but by this point it is clear we can’t really take anything we see in the flashbacks, or what Fife tells the camera, as gospel. This will likely frustrate some viewers, which I can understand, but at the same time, to have then come out with a “this is what really happened” approach later would, I think, have betrayed the film.

An older man, full of regrets, seeking some sort of absolution, is, of course, not new territory for Schrader, so while this ay not be novel, it is however interesting, with the unreliability of what we are hearing and seeing leaving the viewer to make up their own mind about truth, reality and memory in the film (and by extension, in our own lives and in any other media). The actors give their all, especially Gere – this was the young, handsome, leading man who played the Gigolo for Schrader way back in the day, and while the flashbacks to Fife’s many youthful dalliances hint at that, the present day, weak, ill, dying, worn Fife, is in total contrast to that, and Gere plays it straight to the camera, documentary interview style, a brave move and a powerful one.

Not for everyone, but anyone who has followed Schrader’s career most likely knew that going in.

Oh, Canada will be available from Blue Finch on streaming platforms in Britain and Ireland from January 12th.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: I Know Catherine, the Log Lady

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I Know Catherine, the Log Lady
Directed by Richard Green

Catherine Coulson had a long career, both in front of and behind the scenes, from stage to television and film. Catherine worked as a camera assistant on films as diverse as Eraserhead, Night on Earth, and Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan, as well as being a moving force in and for the Ashland’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival. But of course, many fans, especially those of us who love the works of David Lynch, will always remember her as “The Log Lady” in Lynch and Mark Frost’s remarkable and unusual Twin Peaks series.

The various talking heads here are drawn from the people that Catherine came to know through that wide body of work, across her career; family, friends, lovers, colleagues, including some very familiar faces, such a Kyle MacLachlan and David Lynch himself, the two having been good friends since Eraserhead (where the initial seeds of what would become the Log Lady character were first sown). This array of people who knew and loved Catherine gives the documentary a deeply personal, and very emotional depth – this is not like some documentaries where people speak in platitudes about a departed great performer, these are heartfelt reminiscences of someone they miss, and you can often hear the emotion in their voices as they talk.

Any of us who have spent time sharing memories with others of someone we loved and lost will identify right away with the nature of those emotions, that peculiar mixture of melancholy at the thought we now have to talk of that person in the past tense, that you will not see them, hear them again, but mixed with a strange joy at talking about memories of times shared with them, that make us smile even when crying. In many places this felt almost like a cathartic chance for some of those who knew Catherine to let some of those feelings and memories out, and anyone who has been through a loss (and sadly that is most of us) will empathise with the emotion on display here.

Structurally the film starts with the new of Twin Peaks returning after twenty fives years, with Lynch happily telling the actors that he was getting the old band together again. Followed closely by Catherine, who though perhaps he had been suffering pneumonia or an infection, finding out she actually had stage four lung cancer, and very little time remaining on the mortal coil, but determined to live long enough to play the Log Lady one more time.

We then move more chronologically through her life, from a very middle-class, 1950s American upbringing which is later traded for acting and living in California and embracing the more open, experimental lifestyles of 1960s San Franciso, then sharing a Hollywood apartment with Lynch and Eraserhead’s Jack Nance. We see her marriage, the tragedy of illness and how this affects both her body and marriage, the friends she made, the stage and behind the scenes work she loved so much, eventually reaching Twin Peaks itself in the 80s, her frequent appearances at conventions that helped keep the fan interest in the show going, then to those final months, with Twin Peaks: the Return, and her diagnosis.

With interviews shot over several years, Green, who previously worked with Lynch on Mulholland Drive, assembled dozens of people from Catherine’s life, taking in the acting and backstage craft, but also the everyday things that make our lives tick (many commented on the way she looked after others, all the little things that someone does for you that just makes life better), and, as I said, the emotion many feel talking about her is palpable, while the fact that in the intervening time we have also lost Lynch himself adds another layer of poignancy to the film. It’s an emotional and rather lovely piece, and of special interest to all of us who enjoyed Lynch’s work, but mostly it’s just a personal little story about a life well lived and a woman who faced the end, as much as she could, on her own terms.

 

I Know Catherine, the Log Lady is enjoying screenings in several US cities over coming weeks and will then be available to stream – check the official website for full details.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Hello, Bookstore

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Hello, Bookstore,
Directed by A.B. Zax

Here we have a gentle and charming documentary, and on a subject very close to my heart – a local bookshop. Matt Tannenbaum has owned The Bookstore in Lennox, Massachusetts, since the mid-1970s. The Bookstore is a lovely-looking independent bookshop, they type I think many of us who are book-lovers adore – an eclectic mix of titles assembled by the booksellers, piles on tables and corners, unusual books rubbing shoulders with popular, bestselling fiction, the sort of place you can happily spend several hours browsing in.

This is a world I know very well – I’ve been a bookseller for over three decades now, and am fortunate enough to work in a small (but mighty, not to mention award-winning) bookshop, which like Matt’s is far more than a business, it’s a special place in the community. Regulars come in as much for a book browse or reading recommendation as they do a wee chat. Parents can have a nice browse for their own books because the kids are happily sitting in a corner of the children’s section, noses stuck in books, the world beyond forgotten, swapped for the land of words and stories.

Indy bookselling, indeed independent small retailing of any kind, is often precarious – you have limited resources, compared to large company chain-run stores, these days there’s the competition from online (especially a certain river-named site), it can be tough going. But one of the critical differences between many Indy bookshops and big company chains or online is that they are often located in local communities. That’s a crucial factor – they are important places for many of the locals. Like the local pub or coffee shop, they are there as a business, yes, but they are also a hub where people meet, a safe space to relax, those who work there know many of the customers by name and can offer up personal recommendations for adults and younger readers alike.

And when times get even tougher, as they did during Covid, that community aspect is vital. We see Matt and his friends doing what many of us did, trying to keep things running in some form during all the restrictions of the Pandemic, taking orders over the phone or email, or serving people in the doorway (when it wasn’t safe for them to come inside and browse). Like many businesses, we went through the same – having to be closed for a while, then allowed to do a “click and collect” service from the doorway. It allowed some sales, although far less than normal, but it also offered a lifeline to locals; with so many places closed, people stuck at home and only able to walk a short distance during restrictions, being able to ring the local wee bookshop and pick up from there was a great thing in a hard time.

And that’s where the community aspect comes in again – because that same community appreciates all the local bookshop gives, and as it struggles increasingly during the Covid restrictions, rallies around to support that bookshop, to ensure its survival. We’ve all seen the decline of high streets in towns and cities around the world, far too many are full of empty units where there used to be numerous independently owned shops. The old adage of “use it or lose it” is true, if we don’t use those locals businesses, we end up with dead high streets and reliant on a few big chains and online. And clearly the readers of Lennox understand this, because they support The Bookshop through its toughest times, because this is a place they want to keep in their community.

The documentary itself is a gentle delight, taking some scenes through the seasons, intercut with Matt chatting with regulars, reading quotes from some of his favourite works, talking about how he first got into bookselling (he talks about a friend after his navy service, turning him onto Kerouac, Mailer and more and how the then “fell in love with writing”). It’s another aspect of the trade I am very familiar with – few people are in the book trade to make big money; booksellers, distributors, writers (unless you are fortunate enough to become a Stephen King or Ian Rankin or J.K. Rowling) rarely make a lot, they are in it because, well, they love books, they love stories. And there is something rather wonderful about that, which Zax showcases beautifully here. This is just a charming, lovely watch, especially for those of us who are forever in love with the written word and those lovely, tome-lined emporiums where we can find them.

Hello, Bookstore is out now in some cinemas and on demand from Bulldog Film Distribution

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: The Other Fellow

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The Other Fellow,
Directed by Matthew Bauer

“The name’s Bond, James Bond...”

Possibly one of the best character introductions in cinema, Connery’s first appearance in Dr No, at a late-night casino table, has become not only memorable, but iconic, and that particular phrasing of the name has informed this long-lived character ever since; even those who don’t care for the films know that line. But what of the other James Bonds? No, despite the title of Bauer’s documentary, we’re not talking about George Lazenby. Rather Bauer looks into regular people in the real world who happen to share that now-famous name, from the respected ornithologist whose name Fleming cheerfully purloined (he had his book on the Birds of The West Indies by James Bond on his shelf in Goldeneye, his home in Jamaica) to people today who have grown up with this name, and all the baggage it brings with it, from an avid superfan to a man wanted by the police in Indiana.

Obviously to people today, the name James Bond comes with weighted with a lot of baggage, but of course this was not always the case. In the mid-twentieth century it was just another name – unless you had a keen interest in nature and had read the books and essays of the highly-regarded ornithologist, James Bond. In some archive interview footage, we see Ian Fleming being asked about the creation of his Bond novels, and how he selects a name for a character, whereupon he reveals he had Bond’s book on birds on his shelves and thought oh, that’s a good solid but not too flashy name, perfect.

Anyone who has ever tried penning a story will know that naming characters is often quite difficult, and inspiration for names – be it from strolling an old graveyard and noting the names on tombs to picking names from older books or journal articles. And in the normal run of things this is rarely a big problem for others further down the line – unless you have that rare thing, lightning in a bottle, a work that just grows and grows, crosses various mass media and becomes a global phenomenon. Bond – the nature-writing Bond, that is – and his wife are blissfully unaware of the existence of the superspy for the first few years of his existence. It’s only as the books become much more popular and are reprinted in America, and then along comes that first film, Dr No, that they really become aware of it. Uncomfortably aware of it.

Suddenly this respected scientist who has had this name for decades, find that people attach new meaning to it, especially those meeting him for the first time, or attending a public lecture by “James Bond”. I’m reminded of the Scottish lawyer and history writer who has the name Harry Potter, and also would have had no problem with that moniker for most of his life, then suddenly find that his name, through no action of his own, has suddenly become associated with far more. Bond and his wife, on a trip to Jamaica, decide to make an unannounced call at Goldeneye; when asked who is calling for Mr Fleming, they reply “Mr and Mrs James Bond”. After some discussion, and realising there was no malice here, they become friendly, Fleming telling Bond if he ever finds an especially silly looking new species, he is free to use his name for it as it would be only fair, before inscribing a copy of one of his Bond books “to the original James Bond” (it sold many decades later for tens of thousands of dollars).

What, however of all the James Bonds since then? Bauer selects quite a few, of different ages, from an elderly man who, like the ornithologist, predates the existence of the fictional spy, and has little care for or interest in the films, to much younger men who have had to deal with the fact that every single time they introduce themselves to someone new, they get that look and almost always some sort of joke (all of which they have heard many, many, many times before, as you can imagine).

One young African American man finds it even more troublesome when the police take an interest in him – being black in America and pulled over by the police is, as we’ve seen all too often in the news, a dangerous moment. Throw in that name when asked to identify yourself, and the officers deciding you are being cheeky to them, making them angrier… In a later moment the African-American Bond is wanted by the police, and the cache of that name means his case is spread all over the media. Astonishingly there is another man with the same name in the same area, and it’s not long before he gets people asking if it is him, and he has to explain no, it just happens to be another James Bond in their part of the world! (later the two get to meet and share stories about living with that name).

Bauer also introduces us to a number of other Bonds, including a theatre director in the US, who makes it clear how much he hates being stuck with this name, and all the expectation and connotations that come with it – and yet he accepts offers to appear in advertisements to trade on that name (we see him introducing himself as James Bond then endorsing a betting service for TV ads). Bauer asks him if this is a little hypocritical that he says how much he hates the name and yet here he is trading on it for advertising money, but he comments that unlike the name and what comes with it, doing the ads is his free choice. Another chap in Sweden, whose ex-Nazi father had vanished decades before, has become a Bond superfan, with his own Bond museum, trying to live the lifestyle, and perhaps partially substituting Fleming as a sort of spiritual step-father figure.

I have to admit, while I was intrigued when I was first offered a chance to see this film, I really wasn’t sure what to expect with this documentary, but I have to tip my hat to Bauer and his crew – they have crafted a fascinating, human-interest story here, which ties together everyday life (in all its complexities and variations) with mass pop culture.

The Other Fellow is released in theatres and on demand from February 17th

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival 22 – Le Chêne (Heart of Oak)

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EIFF 2022 – Le Chêne / Heart of Oak,
Directed by Laurent Charbonnier, Michel Seydoux

A huge hit in France (the programmer introducing it at the 75th Edinburgh International Film Festival told the audience it had sold over half a million tickets at the box office), Le Chêne – titled Heart of Oak for the English-language market – the film made its UK debut at the EIFF this week. And while it is a French film, worry not if you are no good with subtitled films, as this is a “silent” documentary – there is no narrator or dialogue or talking heads experts. Instead the cinematography and the soundscape carry us through the entire film, essentially a year in the life of a huge, two hundred year old oak tree, and all the myriad varieties of life it supports on it, in it, below it and around it, from insects and fungi and wood mice in the roots to birds and squirrels in the branches, deer and boar around it, through the four seasons.

We open with a beautiful aerial shot over a forest, slowly descending through the canopy into a small clearing around a vast, gnarled old oak (the descent is so slow and gentle it gave me the impression of coming down gently in a hot air balloon). It’s spring/summer and the foliage is in full greenery, the huge, thick branches of this old tree covered in leaves, and there’s that marvellous sound of the breeze moving through the branches and leaves (isn’t that just one of the nicest sounds in the world?).

As the camera moves circle the trees, top, bottom and in-between and around, the camera lingering over the fantastically gnarled, tough bark on this regal tree, and then as we get closer in we see the community of life it sustains. Tiny acorn weevils with their long proboscis giving them a distinctive look, a red squirrel darting around, seemingly defying gravity as it pauses on a vertical climb, face down, leaping and jinking, constantly on guard, looking around for opportunity and danger.

Tiny wood mice who have a colony in tunnels among the roots cautiously stick their heads out while a barn owl scans the area from a high branch, looking for just such an excursion, a mating pair of birds make their home in the oak’s branches, sharing them with the squirrel, the editing of the footage of each giving the distinct impression of an almost human neighbour feeling – not someone you know personally, but like someone whose face you recognise, know they live in your area, the sort you nod to at the bus stop or in the shop. The much larger animals of the forest such as the boars and deer forage around the trunk, the boars using its rough surface for a good scratch while they’re looking endlessly for food.

We move through each of the seasons, watching the animals fight for survival, a whole ecosphere based around this tree, from fungal connections in the earth among its deep roots to the tops of its branches; it is, essentially its own little world that we are visiting here. We see the excitement when the acorns start to drop, especially for the resident squirrel, leaping around to try and grab several then stash them – one it will bury and forget, and by the time the next spring rolls around we wee that acorn has started a small root system below the earth, and a tiny trunk – more like a small branch with a few leaves – above ground; the life cycle continuing.

We see the creature and the tree weather the worst of the winter, the preparation for spring, new births, screeching baby birds in a new nest demanding food, the acorn weevils, all died off at the end of the summer and autumn, have implanted embryos into some acorns, which finally wriggle out, burrowing into the ground below to mature into the next season’s group of insects. The whole natural cycle rolls past us in simply stunning footage – including some clever techniques to let us see below the ground, for instance into the mice nest – or to flip momentarily to give an animal’s perspective (as a hawk hunts one of our mating pair of birds from the tree we see the exhilarating rush of the chase from its point of view for a moment.

I think the only main issue I had with this was that the editors seem to have chosen to avoid showing much in the way of any creature being killed – we see a number of attacks and hunts from and on various creatures, but other than a kingfisher catching a small fish, none of the hunts we see are successful. While I know there’s a high failure rate for even the best predators in a hunt, after several of these on screen it felt more like this was a deliberate choice by the film-makers.

That’s a minor quibble though – in truth this is a film to cherish in our current world of endless worries and fears over environmental collapse, financial hardship, warfare. Here’s a reminder to take time out, listen to the sound of branches moving in the wind, remember that the whole natural world goes on regardless of how buried under stress and worry we are (Lockdown reminded me of that very much, walking in a deserted city and hearing the spring birds calling out so clearly with no traffic to drown them out, and it lifted my spirits). This is like taking a “forest bath”, a cleanser, a reminder of the sheer majesty of our natural world, the simple beauty of a tree, the entire network of life it sustains around and on it. It’s a movie to see on the big screen, and let the visual and sounds immerse you into this tribute to the majesty of our natural world.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Buddy Guy at the Edinburgh International Film Festival

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And another review from this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival…

Buddy Guy: the Blues Chase the Blues Away
Directed by Devin Chanda, Matt Mitchener, Charles Todd

Chanda, Mitchener and Todd’s excellent documentary one arguably the greatest living Blues legend, George “Buddy” Guy, opens, appropriately enough with Buddy himself revisiting Lettsworth, Louisiana, where he was born way back in 1936. Like the great Johnny Cash, his parents were poor share-croppers, and he grew up picking cotton by hand, slowly being introduced to music as he grew up, through friends and relatives bringing over instruments to play at get-togethers, or when they finally got hold of a record player; he knew when he heard the music that he wanted to make his own, but of course he could have no idea that it would ever become a lifelong career, let alone one so long, successful and influential. As the now eighty-something Buddy looks back over those fields where he grew up, we’re taken back along his long journey.

Working whatever low-paying jobs he could get after leaving home for Baton Rouge, he continued to practise his guitar and soon was noticed, picking up some work with bands in the city, but eventually he moved to the Windy City, Chicago, in 1957, one of the great spiritual homes of Blues music. As Buddy tells it to the camera, back then the city was teeming with Blues bars, many of them free to enter – only drinks cover charge – making them accessible to pretty much anyone, an absolute feast of live music, right place, right time, and its here he came to the attention of Blues God Muddy Waters, as well as, eventually, the famous Chess Records label, although as he and others note, although Chess used him in recording sessions with others, they refused to record him doing his own now unique style.

As Buddy recalls with a laugh, most Blues players would play sitting down, but he stood up, moved about energetically, bent the guitar strings about as far as they can go without breaking to create interesting, new sounds, wasn’t afraid of some feedback, he could be a wild man with a guitar and a song when playing live. It’s not hard to be reminded of Jimi Hendrix in this regard. But Chess just didn’t get it, and while Buddy stuck to his work ethic of plugging in and playing pretty much every night, outside of a small circle he wasn’t getting the wider attention because they wouldn’t record him playing in that live style.

As the turbulent 60s rolled on and then the 70s, his influence was still getting out there to a select few though – among them new talent from across the Pond, in Britain, people like Mike Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and more, and these increasingly famous musicians were very open about their Blues influences and how it fed into their rock’n’roll style, and about musicians like Buddy, or Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker, paying their respects to the people who inspired and influenced them. And of course they mentioned them when they came to perform in the US, incredulous that so many into music didn’t know of these creators right on their own doorstep, and naturally this got a lot of youngsters thinking, who are these guys Clapton and Richards are talking about and how do I hear their music?

That theme of inspiration and legacy is key to much of this documentary – just as these now global stars like the Stones paid tribute to Buddy (there are some wonderful scenes of them jamming in his club in the early 70s, and Buddy and Guy playing around each other on stage decades later, the looks of pure joy on their faces is a delight, it’s not rock stars, it’s just mates making music together), Buddy takes great care to pay very sincere respect to his inspirations, and the pleasure on his face even now in his 80s as he talks about meeting John Lee Hooker – whose music he used to practise to as a youngster – just shows unvarnished joy. That legacy is also paid forward, not just backwards, with new, young musicians who have grown up and carrying on the Blues tradition, in their own styles but all influenced by Buddy’s playing, and he is clearly delighted – the legacy he inherited from the players before him, all now gone, is passed on, even when he’s no longer here the Blues will live on.

The film is beautifully crafted – the directors talked after the film (via Zoom, in-person appearances and travel not very easy at this year’s festival, as you can imagine) about how they had to rethink some of the filming because after the planning stage, Covid hit, and everything had to change from their original idea of following Buddy on tour (until Covid, despite his age, Buddy still did around 130 gigs a year around the world). They talked about being able to get hold of people like Clapton and Santanna to talk about Buddy’s influence on their playing when they started out, about the struggle to find archive footage and photographs. Later stuff is a little easier, with recordings, photos, even footage, but early images, well, nobody had a camera documenting their life as rural share-croppers in the 30s, so they turned to a painter they’d seen in a leaflet Buddy himself had in his house, Earl Klatzel, who had covered that period, and his imagery fitted in perfectly to their Covid-revamped filming plan.

This is a wonderful documentary, going through the good times and the rough, but mostly it is joyful, celebrating the work of a musical legend, and the enormous influence his work has had on so many other performers. Even if you’re not a Blues fan, there’s a big chance some of your favourite musicians have been inspired by Buddy’s work, he’s a musician’s musician. And if you are a Blues fan, then this is Blues heaven for you, an amazing life story and a banquet of fantastic music. This is the sort of music documentary that makes you want to go home and spin some of your favourite vinyl for hours. And the film circles around nicely, back to that opening of Buddy as he is now, back looking at the fields where he grew up in the 30s, but he’s here not just for nostalgia, or for the documentary, but because they are naming the nearby road after him, complete with historical plaque, giving him his dues as a local lad done good.

And that title: well, that’s Buddy. As he explains in the film, you can’t just sing the Blues, you have to have lived the life and have it inside your soul; you have to have the Blues, not just play it. Funny thing is, he comments with a big grin, is that when you’re playing it, the Blues go away and you feel better: the Blues chase the Blues away…

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Philosophical Musings in A Glitch in the Matrix

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A Glitch in the Matrix,
Directed by Rodney Ascher

Dogwoof continue their run of some damned fine documentaries (I particularly enjoyed their Making Waves: the Art of Cinematic Sound, reviewed here), this time with acclaimed documentary director Rodney Ascher, who, among others, previously brought us the excellent Kubrick doc, Room 237, bringing us A Glitch in the Matrix, which arrives with some good word of mouth at the Sundance film fest. The question of what is real – can we actually trust what our senses are telling our brain about the world around us? – is an old philosophical argument, one that, like the debate over whether humans possess free will or if everything is pre-determined (either by a deity or by the nature of the space-time universe itself), has fascinated, and often confused and infuriated, people for millennia.

Simulation Theory posits the possibility that the world we see around us and everything in it, from rocks to people, are all just some form of digital simulation, the “reality” we experience is essentially a deeply immersive virtual reality. Our entire civilisation and its history could be a simulation running on a very advanced computer system by researchers from a technologically superior species (or even our own species in the far future) using it to study history, human behaviour, different possible outcomes in that history, much in the same way we use mathematical and computational modelling to study, predict and test theories.

The film starts with two influential strands which have long fed into this discussion – the cave thought experiment by Classical philosopher Plato (people who are kept in a cave facing only the back wall know the world beyond only by the shadows it casts on their wall) and, unsurprisingly, the great Philip K Dick, returning several times to a talk this fascinating and influential author gave at a convention in the 1970s, while also drawing on contemporary influences, both academic and cultural (as you would imagine, The Matrix features a lot here as both an example of a simulated reality and also as the cultural artefact which brought the basic concept of Simulation Theory to a far wider audience).

Peppered throughout these academic asides and numerous relevant movie clips to illustrate points and make examples clearer there are, as you would expect in a documentary, a number of talking heads adding their voices and viewpoints. In a nice move, Ascher uses normal video viewpoints for some of these contributors, but for the ones who are actual believers in Simulation Theory, rather appropriately, Ascher uses digital avatars for each of them. This fits the feel of the film very well, in addition to giving the documentary an added bit of visual flair, and it soon comes to feel quite normal when those contributors are talking.

Those speakers who are believers outline the experiences in their lives which lead to embracing that belief, although most are quite moderate about it – as one notes, he thinks he may well be in a simulation, while acknowledging that the world could still be the flesh and blood reality most people take it for, but adds whichever it is, it’s his life and he doesn’t let that belief get in the way of enjoying his day to day life. Others get a bit more concerned – what if it isn’t just a scientific simulation, what if we’re in some sort of Sims style game? What if we’re not being studied by an advanced academic but at the mercy of the super-intelligent version of a teenaged gamer? How does this impact how you view life, value your life, friendships, family?

It’s a fascinating discussion, one we can probably never entirely prove or disprove, but an interesting topic to explore nonetheless, and Ascher handles it very well, with a good range of contributors (including one believer who was so traumatised by his belief that he was in a Matrix style artificial reality that none of the loved ones around him were real, and so he committed a terrible action), and it boasts some clever use of appropriate film clips and visual flair to add to the interest level. To coin the old Vulcan phrase, it is “fascinating”.

A Glitch in the Matrix is out now from Dogwoof, on HD Digital, DVD and Blu-Ray

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Helmut Newton, the Bad and the Beautiful

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Helmut Newton: the Bad and the Beautiful,
Directed by Gero Von Boehm
Blue Finch Releasing

“A lot of the men told me they were afraid, the girls look down on the man who is looking at them.”

Helmut Newton, who passed away in 2004, was one of the most famous photographers in the world, especially in the realm of fashion photography. He was also often very controversial, not least for his very stylised nude images of women. For some they were the height of misogyny, the photographer arranging women’s bodies in a style and pose that fitted some mental image he had, indulging his own inner fetish of how an idealised female form should be, the models denuded, not only of clothes but personality, becoming like artfully arranged mannequins for his camera & mind.

But for others he created images of very strong women, often sexually imposing – as the quote by Newton himself at the top of this piece indicates, in many poses, despite being naked ostensibly for the “male gaze”, the women strike such a powerful pose, often shot from a low angle so they seem to be looking down at the viewer, their physique idealised, and powerful (like a cross between Classic Greek statuary and the idealised athletic bodies Leni Riefenstahl filmed in the 30s), in a manner which could intimidate the viewer. In some ways they look more as if they are the ones in the position of power, quite assured of their own place, tolerating the gaze of the viewer, not at the mercy of it.

Some of this is corroborated by the many famous “talking heads” included in Von Boehm’s documentary, which includes his wife (and sometimes model and fellow photographer) June Newton, Grace Jones, Charlotte Rampling, Isabella Rossellini, Anna Wintour, Claudia Schiffer, Marianne Faithfull and more. Rossellini, who was first photographed by Newton with David Lynch during the Blue Velvet shoot, noted he posed her with the famous director almost like a puppet that Lynch was moving as he wanted it to move, which, as she adds, in a way is partly the actor-director relationship so it worked quite well. Charlotte Rampling commented that he could be provocative, but that can be a good thing as she thinks the world needs a little provocation from time to time, especially in the arts, as it stimulates thought and discussion.

The formidable Grace Jones laughingly recalled him dismissing her at first because her breasts weren’t large enough (which rather adds to those arguing he was a misogynist who saw women as objects for his imagination and lens), but he eventually did make a pretty remarkable sequence of photos with her, notably some with actor Rolph Lundgren, which remain pretty striking. These included some interestingly posed nudes with the pair looking almost sculpted, one with Grace, already a tall and pretty striking looking woman as we all know, looking even taller and more imposing as she stand nude in a high position in a truck looking down on Lundgren (and by extension the viewer). “He was a little bit perverted. But so am I, so it’s okay,” Jones added, with a huge laugh.

The film does not ignore his detractors, however – for instance there is a fascinating clip from a 1970s French talk show with Newton and Susan Sontag, where she says that she quite likes him personally, but she has great problems with his work, and considers it to be strongly misogynistic. Newton replies (also in French) that he cannot be a misogynist as he loves women more than anything else in the world. Sontag fixes him with a look and coolly responds that she has heard so many misogynists make exactly that claim that they love women, with the inference being that no, what they really love is their own, internal, idealised version of what they want a woman to be.

There are other moments that show a sly sense of humour – he offers, for instance, to do a portrait shot of French politician Jean-Marie LePen. Who is of course flattered the world famous photographer wishes to do his portrait. Why does Newton – who was a child in Germany during the rise of the Nazis – want to take a portrait of this far-right fascistic politician? Well it turns out he does a lovely portrait, suggesting LePen bring his beloved dogs into the picture – LePen unaware that Newton is quite deliberately styling this portrait of the French far-right politician to look like a famous portrait of Adolf Hitler with his dogs. By the time LePen realises he has been played and the image criticizes and pastiches him and his lamentable politics it is too late and it has gone to press.

Other subjects discuss his work in terms of time and place, especially the 1980s fashion world, where his style of photographing women coincided with the rise of designers like Karl Lagerfeld, their fashions and the stylistic approach of his camera working well together. Other more personal moments reveal the person behind the lens, away from his “perfect”, idealised model imagery, his wife June recalls him taking his camera to visit her in hospital, but knowing this was a coping mechanism, that having the camera there helped him mediate the terror of seeing a loved one ill and in hospital, gave him something to cling to, some structure, a little control

It’s a fascinating documentary of an iconic twentieth century photographer; where you may fall on the discussion over celebrating or exploiting women in his imagery is a debate that I suspect will long continue, and as the documentary shows, those who knew him best, those who worked with him, have different opinions themselves on this issue. What the documentary does well is to show his work, place it in some context both of its time and of his life and influences, and to explore these different views of his work, while also showing that we are talking not just about these issues but about a person and their life, with all the complexities that entails.

Helmut Newton: the Bad and the Beautiful comes out via Blue Finch Releasing in Curzon Home Cinema and Digital Download from October 23rd. This review was originally penned for Live For Films.

Making Waves – the Art of Cinematic Sound

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Making Waves: the Art of Cinematic Sound,
Directed by Midge Costin

Last year you may recall I reviewed Score, a documentary on the history and evolution of music in cinema (see here). Making Waves is a perfect partner to Score, with Midge Costin’s new documentary (taking a bow at this month’s London Film Festival) focusing more on the role of sound in the cinema, from the earliest days (basic sound effects, the struggle to find good ways to record decent quality dialogue for the talkies) through to later film-makers who consider the soundscape – dialogue, effects and more – to be an integral part of how they wish their audience to experience their work.

As with Score, Making Waves takes a roughly chronological approach, starting briefly with the silent movie era, and as with Score pointing out that even in the teens and roaring twenties, those early flickering images were never truly silent. Most cinephiles are, I’m sure, well aware that live music usually accompanied silent projections (indeed performers like Buster Keaton sometimes worked visual clues into the film to give the musicians in the cinema a clue to the tempo they should play), but as is explained here, some of the fancier cinemas for some big releases would also employ what we would now consider special effects sound technicians who would make basic effect live to go along with the film, drawing on the theatrical tradition.

With the arrival of the talkies, of course things changed, although not as much as you might assume. Obviously we could now hear the stars of the Silver Screen talk (and as was well satirised in films like Singing in the Rain, those early recording devices and microphones came with all sorts of problems!), and there would be music and effects, from the crack of thunder and lightning (what would Frankenstein and so many other Universal monster movies be without that?) to the simple sound of footsteps, all adding depth and believability to what we are watching, drawing us further into the film’s world.

The film does note, however, that for the most part, for several decades after the arrival of sound, most directors and producers treated the audio as an afterthought- dialogue, some music, some small sound effects like a door hinge squeaking, or a car engine backfiring. There were, of course, notable exceptions to this approach – the iconic King Kong wasn’t just groundbreaking in terms of visual effects, it was clever in creating and mixing sound effects to partner those visuals, thanks to Murray Spivack. The boy wonder Orson Welles had taken his usual methodical and experimental approach to his famous radio productions, giving them a rich soundscape to draw in listeners, and unsurprisingly he took this belief that the soundscape was a vital component of the whole experience to his movies as well.

Much of the most interesting material comes a bit later, unsurprisingly with the new wave of film-makers, who grasped how important the audio elements were, creators who were interested in every aspect of the many components that go into making their films what they are. Hitchcock, of course, Stanley Kubrick, and a raft of hungry new talent like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, David Lynch and more. There are some fascinating talking heads here from many of these now-iconic talents, Coppola and his sound team discussing working the sound ideas into the script, ideas like those amazing helicopter blade effects swish, swish, swishing, using multi-channel recording and playback to allow the sound to move around the theatre. Lynch discusses the soundscape in the astonishing Eraserhead, how much it added to the visuals he was crafting (think on that deceptively simple slow zoom on the radiator and the increasing hiss of steam, audio and visual working perfectly together).

Alongside newer directors and sound techs interested in working together, the latter half of the twentieth century really ups the level of what sound can do in a film on the technological side too. Dolby and multi-channel recording, mixing and playback offers up so many possibilities, and again the film draws on a roster of top talent to talk about how they have used the new sound technologies, from Barbara Streisand innovating the way music and song was incorporated into the film-making process, to George Lucas on the importance of sounds like the scream of a TIE Fighter or the swoosh of a lightsabre, talking to innovative sound techs like Walter Murch and Ben Burtt as well the directors they’ve worked hand in glove with (and boy this has an impressive array of big names – Spielberg, Nolan, Redford, Lucas, Coppola and more).

Linking the different elements covered- ADR(Additional Dialogue Replacement), the Foley artists, editing, music, sound effects etc – the film uses a “circle of talent” to show each element as it covers it (the graphics pleasantly reminding me of VU meters on a sound deck, very appropriate), and this allows the film to move through the different aspects involved in the soundscape of a film production in a clear manner, showing how they have evolved and how they operate, not to mention how they are drawn together into the completed film. This is a fascinating documentary for any cinephile, and while the big name directorial talent doing vox pops here is impressive, it’s even better to see the normally hidden, behind the scenes talent given their fifteen minutes here. I think the only problem I had with this is that with a century of movies to explore there is so much more I would love to have seen explored, but that would take a mini-series on TV rather than a film, and given the constraints of a ninety or so minute film I think Costin has done a wonderful job.

Making Waves is being show by Dogwoof at this month’s London Film Festival, and will be released in cinemas and on-demand from November 1st

EIFF 2019 – Memory: the Origins of Alien

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Memory: the Origins of Alien,
Directed by Alexandre O. Phillippe,
Exhibit A Pictures

Hard to believe, but here we are in the last third of June and that means Edinburgh International Film Festival time. My first screening out of the bunch I have booked was Memory: the Origins of Alien. You may know director Alexandre O. Phillippe for some of his very interesting previous documentaries, The People Vs George Lucas and Doc of the Dead (both highly recommended), and here he and his team have created another fascinating set of insights – this is not a standard making-of approach, rather this is an exploration of the myriad of people involved in the gestation of this now-iconic film, their thoughts, their inspirations, their dreams, their nightmares, the ingredients which would coalesce into the film Alien.

As anyone who has ever had to study Alien for an essay will know, it is one of those films that is replete with elements that can be endlessly debated and discussed, and some of those you are likely familiar with already, not least the surreal, dream-nightmare imagery of H.R. Giger, with its biomechanical, highly sexual motifs, which dovetails with other sexual aspects of the narrative (the “baby” alien chestbuster looking like a penis with teeth, as actor Veronica Cartwright put it, the “male rape” and insemination and the abomination of a birth), or the real-world parasitic insects which lay their eggs within other insects to feed from within then burst forth at birth inspiring what is now one of the most fabled scenes in cinema.


(above, the Furies, below, paintings by Francis Bacon, which fed into the idea for the chestbuster version of the Alien)

But Memory, while exploring these qualities, dives deeper, into the stories and myths that influenced Alien’s various creators, taking us from the Furies of Classical Greek culture (a beautifully shot scene takes us from Delphi, the “navel of the world” into a cave which becomes like an Alien set, right down to the laser beam from the egg cavern, except here the Furies wait below that glittering beam) to the paintings of Francis Bacon. Various talking heads comment, from academics to some of those personally involved, such as editor Terry Rawlings and art director Roger Christian, or co-writer Ron Shusett, with some clever use of archive interview material to allow some who have passed on, such a Giger or co-writer Dan O’Bannon, to be a part of the process, while others who worked with them also give us more insights into how those creators shaped their work, from early drafts, O’Bannon;s work with Carpenter on Dark Star and even his time with Giger on the Jodorowsky attempt to film Dune, all filtering into the eventual ideas in conjunction with the other film-makers.

As you may expect O’Bannon gets a lot of the running time here, as the original story creator, and we hear from his widow and from Shusett about “Star Beast” and how he knew he had something but he just couldn’t get past page 29 on the script, so Shusett pitched in, and the now-famous chestbuster scene was born. This scene, understandably, also takes a fair amount of the running time here – everyone involved, from the early drafts of the script (studio execs not being overly impressed until hitting that scene and experiencing their WTF moment) through to setting up of the actual scene, the puppet, the effects and filming it, they all knew this was where the film would live or die. It may now be one of the most well-known and important scenes in film history, but they had no way of knowing that when crafting that moment, and it is truly fascinating just how much went into its creation, from so many people.


(above, the now iconic chestbuster scene from Alien, below some early concept sketches for the scene, bottom: writer Dan O’Bannon on the Nostromo set)

And as for that iconic scene, so too for the whole film – Memory rather deftly tugs on the many different strands that went into the making of what we saw on the big screen, from childhood reading habits to art influences, to friendships or arguments that opened some doors or pointed people towards others. Of course all films are a gestalt entity – too often the director and the stars are the only ones focused on by the media, but those of us who love cinema are very aware of the huge amount of talents that go into the making of any film, and Memory beautifully, warmly. and with great respect for the creative process, shows how all those individuals, with all of their own histories and ideas and influences, work together to craft a feature film, in this case one that is now forty years old and assured of its place in cinematic history.

The EIFF screening also boasted a short post-show Q&A with producer Annick Mahnert who has worked with Phillippe before (he often uses a lot of the same team), and it was interesting to hear one of the team talk about how they brought together so many different strands of influences and people’s recollections to put together Memory, and she also let us know that their next film, which is mostly shot already but is now going into editing, will be about William Friedkin and the Exorcist, so I shall look forward to that.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, the “Memory” title comes from a very early version of the story by O’Bannon.

Blue

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Blue,
Directed by Karina Holden,
Sparky Pictures

“Wherever you live on our planet, you are connected to the sea.”

This powerful and thoughtful documentary by Karina Holden (Magical Land of Oz) arrives at a very opportune time, as recent reports on the unbelievable amounts of plastic waste in our oceans is highlighted in reports and the media, and the Extinction Rebellion movement is pushing the environment further up the news and political agenda. Blue is a sort of ensemble documentary, taking in different aspects of human-made problems in different parts of our vast world oceans, with several guides, Lucas Handley, Madison Stewart, Philip Mango, Doctor Jennifer Lavers, Tim Silverwood, Mark Dia and veteran diver and campaigner for aquatic life, Valerie Taylor, taking us from bleached corals to the industrial slaughter of sharks to seabirds dying of malnutrition with stomachs full of small pieces of plastic and sea turtles dying a long, slow, lingering death caught in abandoned old fishing nets.

From that you may well infer that Blue is pretty heavy going, and in places you are correct – in fact there are moments here that are not just disturbing but sickening and horrific. Lavers performs an autopsy on a young fledgling, which died while still in the “fluffy” stage, its flight feathers not even fully formed. She strokes the tiny, vulnerable body very gently, her sorrow as yet another animal killed by our throwaway junk culture quite clear from her body language and how she handles the small body. When her autopsy reaches the stomach it crunches when pressed, because inside it is full of pieces of plastic, bits of old buttons, pen tops and more, which the chick’s parents had seen floating in the water, mistaken for food and taken back to feed the chick.

Stewart walks among Indonesian fisherman landing large numbers of sharks. She spots many species she has swum with back home in Australian waters, but these are all relatively small, because the fishermen are catching younger and younger sharks, and since this species is slow to mature and reach sexual reproduction levels, this over-fishing is especially devastating, giving little space for the species to recover, new sharks to mature. As the lifeless corpses are hauled into the sheds with hooks, they are lined up and then assaulted with knives, cutting off the fins – the mutilated remains of the bodies are then dumped back in the oceans, the fins sent off to richer markets, often China. It is to Stewart’s credit that while clearly revolted by this mass slaughter for so little (over seventy million sharks a year), she doesn’t blame the fisherman entirely, she is aware that most of these coastal villages are extremely poor, that they know the sea, they know they cannot continue like this, and yet if they don’t then they and their families will starve, they have nothing else but to harvest these creature’s fins to sell to richer markets.

Each of the experts and campaigners here shines a light on different aspects of how humanity is destroying the oceans, from industrialised fishing that exhausts the seas far beyond their ability to regenerate, to disgusting, huge amounts of plastic pollution (not just floating and looking bad but breaking into smaller pieces that life, from microscopic krill upwards eat, then they are eaten by larger fish, dolphins and whales and birds, moving this pollution up the food-chain – eventually to humans), to the increasing damage to delicate corals (and the great array of life they support around them) to the many old nets cut loose by fishermen around the world, drifting slowly in the currents and all-too often claiming more lives – an especially horrific scene shows a long string of nets, dotted with several bodies of seals, gently bobbing in the underwater current, dead. It’s sickening. And as one expert replies when asked who is responsible for all of this, we all are.

But no, this is not just about the horrors humans have inflicted – often not deliberately, just mindlessly, careless of the consequences of our actions – there is also a huge amount of beauty and even wonder to take in here too. There is some truly beautiful cinematography on offer in Blue, which stands in stark contrast to the vileness of the scenes of pollution or the large-scale slaughter. An early aerial shot shows clear water with moving dark patches – for a moment it looks like oil slicks, but then the dark patches move and it becomes clear these are huge shoals of fish, their movements synchronised, creating what looks from the air like dark moving blobs, then we are below the waves, the silvery, teeming balls of fish zipping and darting around Silverwood as he free-dives among them. In another scene he floats upside down as a whale floats above him, as if man and cetacean are observing one another peacefully. It’s stunningly beautiful, majestic, delivering a real sense of wonder – and reminding us what we’re fighting to save.

Blue is a mixture of the shocking and disturbing and even horrific contrasted with remarkable beauty and wonder, and for all the human-made disasters visited on the oceans – the seat of all life on our blue planet – there is a positive message here: we can slow then stop this brutal assault on the natural world (which is, in the long-term, an assault on ourselves too), we can undo some of the damage, protect others sites (the film highlights how some parts of the seas are now getting the protection national parks enjoy on land), and the film actively encourages the viewers to consider what we can all do as individuals to try and help.

There’s a fight going on here, and despite a depressing toll of awfulness, there is hope, there is still a chance, and Blue, for all the devastation in our oceans that it shows, retains a lot of positive energy and optimism that is infectious. More of us should be watching this and thinking about these issues, no matter how far from our own shores some of these events may be, as the opening quote reminds us, all our shores are connected to those great, globe-spanning tides on our vast world of water, and we all have a responsibility to it.

Blue Trailer from Blue The Film on Vimeo.

Blue is available now on digital on demand, and will be released on DVD on July 1st by Sparky Pictures Ltd.