The Oxbridge Gap - Varsity

20 Varsity Arts 03.03.06
And the award goes to...
As part of our Oscars special, our reviewers pick their own Best Picture winners
This year’s five Best Picture Oscar nominees: (l-r) Brokeback Mountain, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich and Capote
Brokeback
Mountain
Directed by Ang Lee
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger,
Michelle Williams
Brokeback Mountain is not just the best film
made this year, but the best made in the
past ten years. That it is a ‘gay cowboy’
flick, though politically and cinematically
important, is subsidiary to the fundamental
qualities of the work.
Ang Lee, in his signature subtle fashion,
has been able to create a beautiful and
romantic film, in which the acting, cinematography
and editing are exquisite.
Sure, he also chose to make the romance
same sex, leading to walk-outs in the
cinema, but it never feels like anything
other than an attempt to tell a gripping
story, a commitment which lies at the
heart of its success.
Oliver Tilley
Crash
Directed by Paul Haggis
Starring Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon,
Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Esposito,
William Fichtner, Thandie Newton
Crash is an instantly appealing, well-made
ensemble film. With over ten key characters,
all played by Hollywood giants, the
film could easily have run away with itself
and devolved into an overcomplicated
mess. However Paul Haggis’ masterful
script and direction keep everything
together so that each story is interesting
and never outstays its welcome.
It is impeccably acted and in many
places fantastic to look at, but the real
success of Crash lies in the subtle interweaving
of so many separate plot strands
into a captivating whole that raises fascinating
questions about society. A triumph.
Stuart Smith
Good Night, and
Good Luck
Directed by George Clooney
Starring Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon,
Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Esposito,
William Fichtner, Thandie Newton
Good Night, and Good Luck is an unmitigated
success. The film portrays Ed
Murrow making the broadcasts which
undermined Senator Joseph
McCarthy’s accusations of
Communism during the 50s. No actor
plays McCarthy; in this respect the
film is utterly reliant on archive
footage, so that McCarthy seems
almost to hang himself with his
own words.
The film is beautiful, the
performances practically flawless.
David Strathairn is outstanding as
Murrow, and the screenplay maintains
the balance between our
interests in the characters and the
central story. Good Night and Good Luck
does not fail at any point to entertain
and challenge its audience.
Izzy De Rosario
Munich
Directed by George Clooney
Starring Eric Bana, Daniel Craig,
Mathieu Kassovitz, Geoffrey
Rush
Munich has been passed over
by the other awards ceremonies,
but it’s time
Spielberg’s film got the praise it deserved.
Returning to the filmmaking heights of
Schindler’s List, this turns an unflinching
eye to the contemporary politics of the
Middle East and to the futility of
vengeance.
Although a film with an important
message, Munich is also packed with understated,
heartfelt performances and is
painfully taut with suspense. Unlike the
other contenders, Spielberg’s film manages
to both blaze a moral trail and keep the
audience on the edge of their seat.
Unrelentingly brave, Munich is this year’s
best picture.
Sam Law
Capote
Directed by Bennett Miller
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman,
Catherine Keener , Clifton
Collins Jr.
Capote is the exception to the
Hollywood rule that the life of
the solitary writer does not have
the requisite dramatic potential for
the big screen. But what if there
was a remarkable correlation
between the writer’s life and his
fiction due to his pioneering of a
revolutionary new genre of “nonfiction
novels”? Would that work?
Yes it would. And Bennett Miller’s
Capote is proof.
Against all odds. every
Hollywood box is ticked; the
glimpses of tears behind the
public mask, the childhood
secrets behind adult traumas and
even a suggestion of redemption.
Capote is the thinking
man’s choice for Best Picture.
Ed King
Capote
★★★★★
The problem with most
biopics is they’re poorly
structured and boring.
Luckily, Capote manages to avoid
these pitfalls by focussing on the
critically important period of
Truman Capote’s life.
The film tells the story of how
he came to write In Cold Blood -
his revolutionary “non-fiction
novel” about the killers of a
family in a quiet Kansas farmhouse
in 1959.
Philip Seymour Hoffman,
portrays, in effect, two Capotes
- one who is arrogant, selfish,
deeply dislikeable and highly
manipulative, and another who
is compassionate, caring, lonely
and misunderstood.
At the beginning of the film,
Hoffman is clearly portraying
the arrogant Capote, on a high
from the fame and praise
bestowed upon him for Breakfast
at Tiffany’s, and living a
glamorous New York lifestyle.
Slowly, however, this gives way
to a startlingly different portrayal
of Capote as a misread, sad
figure who we learn was
neglected as a child and who
seems to find a kindred spirit in
Perry Smith, one of the Kansas
killers and the focal point of In
Cold Blood. The film then brilliantly
juxtaposes these two
Capote personas as he struggles
to write his book, and we are
constantly reminded of his two
competing aims: to help and
possibly emancipate both
himself and Smith, and to
simultaneously manipulate
Smith in order to write a gripping
narrative (which would of
course bring him even greater
praise and fame).
Hoffman and director,
Bennett Miller succeed wonderfully
in portraying both sides of
Capote, showing his despicable
manipulation of Perry Smith,
but also what appears to be his
genuine affection and even love
for his supposed kindred spirit,
who Capote claims had “grown
up in the same house”.
The tension is ratcheted up
in masterful fashion through
“ THE FILM
BRILLIANTLY
JUXTAPOSES
TWO CAPONE
PERSONAS
”
Capote’s compellingly complex
relationships with, amongst
others, his literary agent, his
friend Harper Lee, his partner
Jack Dunphy and Smith, the
killer, to a ferociously gripping
drama in which, even at its
end, we are still unsure where
Capote’s real spirit lies and
whether we should love his
genius and compassion or hate
his selfishness and arrogance.
It’s difficult to convey how
enjoyable this deeply intriguing
film is, and if there’s any justice
in the world it will quite righlly
claim the major awards at
Sunday’s Oscars, including
(and most importantly) Best
Actor, for Philip Seymour
Hoffman’s commanding
mastery of these two Truman
Capotes.
Tom Hannan
When I was
21
Bryan Ferry
Bryan with the sculpture ‘Virginia
Plain’, which would give its
name to Roxy’s first single.
Michael Bracewell, Ferry’s
biographer, writes this for
Varsity:
Since his first recordings with
the art rock group Roxy Music
in the early 1970s, Bryan
Ferry has become one of the
most iconic singers in popular
music. Having studied Fine
Art at Newcastle in the middle
of the 1960s, Ferry moved to
London in 1968 and became
a household name within five
years. Internationally famous,
his name considered
synonymous with glamour,
Bryan Ferry is also one of the
most private of stars.
'Roxy Music; Art School
60s/London '70s’ will be
published by Faber & Faber
in 2007.
In what year were you 21
and what were you doing?
1966. Studying at University
in Newcastle.
Where did you live? In a
flat in Jesmond.
How did you celebrate
your 21st birthday? In a
café in Dreus, France.
What did you keep secret
from your parents?
Everything.
What were your illegal
activities? None.
What was your most
prized possession? My
Studebaker car.
What were you afraid of?
Failure.
What made you angry?
Same.
Who were your heroes?
Marcel Duchamp, Richard
Hamilton, Leadbelly.
Who were you in love
with? Nobody.
What was your favourite
outfit? White Levi’s.
Where did you spend
most of your evenings?
The club A-Go-Go.
What did you eat? Rubbish.
What music did you listen
to? RnB.
Where had you travelled
to? France, Italy, Spain,
Germany.
What did you believe in?
Art.
What made you cry?
Music.
What did you hope to be?
Appreciated.
Emily Stokes
The Successor
Tod Hartman reviews Ismail Kadare’s latest novel
★★★★★
Until a few years ago, Ismail Kadare was who is speaking, as the narrative suddenly and
almost entirely unknown across the inexplicably switches from a character’s
Anglophone literary world. But, last year’s perspective, to the narrative first person, then
inaugural International Booker Prize and some to some all-knowing international observer of
helpfully excellent translations later, he has events in the Balkans.
become by far Albania’s most eminent cultural This style is by turns intriguing and frustrating.
Nonetheless, The Successor’s 207
export. His books are amongst the only descriptions
of the much-troubled Balkan state that large-printed small pages, filled with political
have reached many western readers.
denunciations, secret tunnels and Balkan
The Successor, Kadare’s latest offering, is in revenge cults, make for an enjoyable, if brief,
fact Albania’s most famous real life murder read. They are certainly a good introduction to
mystery thinly disguised as fiction.
Albania, and to the work of its greatest author.
In December 1981, the country’s Prime
Minister, Mehmet Shehu – the novel’s eponymous
‘Successor’ – was found in the bedroom
of his lavish Tirana residence, dead from a
gunshot wound to the head.
Was it suicide or murder? Everything seemed
to revolve around Enver Hoxha - (here, ‘the
Guide’), the Stalinist dictator who so brutally
ruled Albania between 1944 and 1985. Shehu
had been Hoxha’s right-hand man until shortly
before his death. He was known throughout
Albania as ‘Number Two’.
In the novel, as he was in life, Hoxha is
regarded by many as a God-like, fearsome
figure. The caprice of his favour literally meant
death or survival for thousands of Albanians –
especially for the Successor’s family, set to
become victims of one of Hoxha’s Stalin-like
purges in the book.
Indeed, Kadare’s writing bounds along like
some disembodied Greek chorus, reguarly
bursting out with exclamations of woe as yet
another misfortune befalls his hapless characters.
Sometimes it’s not quite clear enough Kadare: International Booker Prize winner, 2005