Rembrandt: The Late Works at the National Gallery

I enjoyed the Rembrandt exhibition quite a lot more than I expected to. I like Rembrandt quite a lot as a technician, and admire his phenomenal technique and subtlety, and the only reason I don’t count him as amongst my favourite painters is that I don’t tend to connect emotionally with his subject matter. He had a very painful life, losing his wife and son before his own death and struggling badly towards the end with money and falling out of fashion, and his major themes are the aging of the patriarch, the contemplation of death and inner turmoil. Very seldom does he engage with youth, though one of the highlights of this exhibition was the juxtaposition of a sweet daydreaming picture of his son with a rather stunning painting of an older woman in a hood with a book.  

And in fact, this exhibition really tied his work together better than I’d seen it before. In conjunction with the newly-reopened Rijksmuseum, which lent some major pictures, as well as pieces from the States, from Sweden, from the Louvre and numerous etchings and sketches from the Ashmolean and the Fitzwilliam. Thus it was possible to arrange the gallery into strong themes: the famous self-portraits first and foremost, but then interesting thematic groups like experimenting with light, pushing softly against boundaries and dealing with his personal demons. The arrangement did very well at framing the narrative of his life, using less significant pieces to inform the more impressive ones nearby, and there were some stunning pieces beyond those self-portraits, including the National’s prized portrait of a husband and wife where the wife is clearly the empowered one, a fascinating depiction of Alexander the Great and a large equestrian portrait – though while the figure in it was excellent, it must be said that Rembrandt probably avoided equestrian portraits for a reason, and his horse was not very convincing. Similarly, for such a consummate master of faces and poses, I do think he has an odd problem with making forearms look very short – for which foreshortening does not adequately compensate. And his depiction of Joseph accused by Potiphar’s wife was bizarrely dreadful in terms of conveying emotion and drama compared with his other far more subtle and believable paintings. In fact, it seems there’s another version by ‘an assistant’ in Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art with Joseph looking penitent rather than like a drama queen.

But that aside, the gallery was well-designed, informative, clever in terms of its flow and really highlighted Rembrandt’s genius. I like artists who work within the boundaries of the prevailing fashions yet push things in small, subtle but innovative ways, which Rembrandt certainly did. And very few artists can match his ability to evoke textures and the play of light in clever, sparing brushstrokes. It is a real joy when his brushstrokes seem so disassociated and oddly-chosen up close when viewed from a distance perfectly represent the back of an old man’s hand or the gleam on a suit of armour. That shows the genuine genius of an old master, and I have nothing but admiration for his skills. 

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

I didn’t care for the previous Hunger Games films – or, indeed, the novels. I didn’t like Katniss or Peeta, and disliked how the first film took all the easiest options and never explored the genuinely interesting dilemmas it hinted at. The second film very much annoyed me for almost completely repeating the first film, only with less emotionally interesting things in it. The contents of the first film could essentially have been a prologue, and this film was where it could have quickly gone.

And I have to say, this was a much better film than its predecessors. It had big problems, mostly down to following the trend of splitting final films in big female-fandom franchises into two and thus having pacing and narrative issues, but it was much more interesting in general. No more stupid game. No more pretence that this ridiculously evil dictatorship could actually suppress the proletariat. 

This is classic good vs evil as the rebels in the militarised District 13 – thought to have been destroyed - have Katniss. But the Capitol have Peeta. First the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character has to convince Katniss to take part in his propaganda – and it takes indirectly causing the deaths of dozens to spur her into action – but she is soon firing up the masses. This leads to impressive scenes of terrorist attacks on the government – but it’s all good because we know the government is evil so this time terrorism is what we support. The action is kept nice and fast, there are some genuinely funny moments and the angle that Peeta is being used against Katniss – while she is convinced he’s being tortured – provides some interesting depth. The love triangle with Gale is also interesting, though it’s very, very obvious he’s going to have to be killed off because Collins always solves her dilemmas the easy way.

The problem is that the last act is very slow. There’s a protracted attack on the underground bunker, which is meant to be tense but is just boring. Then all power in the Capitol goes down because one dam is destroyed by a random force of rebels, and instead of using the chance to invade, break down the borders or neutralising as many enemy military targets as possible, the rebels use this time to extract Peeta. It leads to the big cliffhanger, and does make sense in narrative terms even if also attacking other targets seems like common sense, but it’s done too slowly, and attempts to seem grown-up by hinting that Snow pimps out his Hunger Games winners (ooh the decadence) ring hollow.

But there are none of the huge glaring problems I had with the previous films, and it’s settled into a much more interesting classic battle against an evil dictatorship. Katniss will never be likeable...but the next film may still be interesting. 

The Imitation Game

Alan Turing is now established as one of the great heroes of the Twentieth Century, as well as a beacon of our progressiveness. Formally pardoned of his gross indecency crimes by the Queen – symbolic of how the vast majority of such convicts should be pardoned – and with an apology from Gordon Brown for how he was treated, he is now recognized for having given perhaps the single greatest individual contribution to the war, for his contributions to cryptography, the development of computers and to the philosophy of artificial intelligence. That he could have been arrested for having a sexual relationship with another man and sentenced to be chemically castrated is a hugely significant example of how barbaric this supposedly enlightened society can have been just a few short decades ago over something like being gay.

Thus, we have this biopic. And I actually loved it – but more for its artistry as a screenplay than for its central messages. This is the fictionalization of a subject done in a remarkable and rather odd way. This is actual human life, just on the edge of living memory, made into melodrama. It came over as very artistic and allowed for a wonderfully heavyweight and varied performance from the media’s current absolute favourite Benedict Cumberbatch, but ultimately it was Hollywood cheese about a worthy subject. Everything was framed in the simplest, most easily-recognised terms: Turing is essentially written as Sheldon Cooper, unable to understand others, convinced of his own genius and quite open to taking jokes literally, at one point going over everyone’s heads with a letter to Churchill. All his drive and motivation derives from his first love at boarding school. His commanding officer is the cliché of an authoritarian. The whole thing is neatly framed not only as an account in a police investigation, but as a Turing test. Enigma is cracked not thanks to the work of prior Polish teams or in a variety of complex ways, but with a Eureka moment over three words always found in morning messages. When it is cracked, there is an intriguingly grey-area dilemma about using that information, made mawkish by the possibility of a team member’s personal loss. It is in large part sentimental drivel, but in fact it works well to move, entertain and hold the interest. These have become the clichés of modern film-writing for good reasons.

And in a strange way, the film made me glad to have lived my life. In many ways the 1940s were the end of the old Britain, but I feel like the 1980s were the last wonderful time to be a British child. I am happy I grew up in a sleepy village, and experienced both simple state schools and a daft opulent private boarding school before Cambridge. There’s a faded romance to that – and I did not live in a time of such absurd persecution of gay people. Though it probably ought to be noted that in keeping with Hollywood schmaltz, the real during didn’t lose his mind and develop some kind of pseudo-Parkinson’s from oestrogen. He got flabby and developed man-boobs. But that doesn’t send such a clear message, does it?

Film Impressions: Effie Grey

The latest fictional account of the doomed relationship between John Ruskin and Effie Gray comes from the pen of no less a respected writer than Emma Thompson. While it tries to be much more sincere and genuine than the last notable attempt – 2009’s extremely fun Desperate Romantics – having just written so much about myths in collective memory, I feel compelled to point out that it is very far from accurate. 

Thompson wants to tell the story of an imprisoned, trapped, innocent young woman oppressed and tortured by her probably paedophilic husband and his overbearing parents. She is effectively imprisoned with nobody to talk to, deprived sexual contact, nearly raped by the only one she opens up to while in Venice, and finally manages to stand up for herself by getting an annulment having seen a better path with Millais. To do this, Thompson excises all the records of Gray being a popular socialite who far from being isolated had numerous people to speak with. She apparently invents the rapey fellow in Venice, and to have a more interesting dynamic in the trip to Scotland with Millais, removes his brother from the narrative altogether. The biggest irony, though, is that in a film marketed as feminist, Thompson reduces Effie from a spirited, powerfully opinionated woman who frequently argued with her husband to a meek, submissive damsel in distress who can do nothing until she goes to find a man to help her.

I also found it a little baffling that for such an interesting life, Thompson’s desire to make a claustrophobic film meant we had two hours building up to the point of Effie’s life where it really gets interesting.

Overall, I rather preferred the version in Desperate Housewives, where Ruskin was buffoonish, Millais was rather wet (and didn’t look more like a dashing Rossetti) and Effie was a little cleverer than them both.

Which isn’t to say there wasn’t much to admire here. The scenery is utterly gorgeous. The cast is brilliant, with Fanning doing a good job as the winsome, heartbroken young Effie, perfectly-pitched controlling-parent performances from Julie Walters and David Suchet, and perfectly-judged cameos from Derek Jacobi, Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson herself.

But this was a story that took a historical premise well into a fictional context. Which is fine, but I’m baffled as to why, if that was the intention, the fictional direction chosen wasn’t more entertaining.