From Only The River Flows to Star Wars: What’s on at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse
Mark Walsh, in this feature sponsored by the Cambridge Arts PIcturehouse, look forward to upcoming releases on the big screen.
Only The River Flows
Chinese cinema has struggled more than most with the effects of the pandemic, with an extended lockdown compared to Western countries having an effect on both production and distribution. Wei Shujun’s latest film is his third in a row to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, appearing in the Un Certain Regard section, but it had to endure the cast and crew being put on lockdown after its director and star both tested positive for Covid.
The star, Zhu Yilong, is a police chief called Ma in a small rural town in China in the 1990s. He’s investigating the death of a local grandmother who had taken pity on a homeless local nicknamed “Madman” by the locals. Avoiding the easy explanation, Ma begins to dig deeper into the surrounding situation, but finds more questions than answers. The dead bodies begin to pile up, the clues become more elusive and Ma gradually begins to question his own sanity.
The decision by director of photography Chengma Zhiyuan and director Wei to shoot most of the film on 16 mm helps to lend the film a lived-in feel, as if it’s a lost treasure from the pre-digital era. Zhu also underwent a Christian Bale-esque set of transformations for the film, both gaining weight beforehand and then losing almost four stone during production. The commitment from both cast and crew make this mysterious neo-noir well worth catching.
Only The River Flows opens on Friday, 16 August.
Scope - Solaris
The Scope series of classic widescreen films at the Arts Picturehouse continues this month with one of the most famous Soviet films and also one of the most influential science-fiction films to boot. Andrei Tarkovsky’s body of work includes such classics as Andrei Rublev, Mirror and Stalker, but with Solaris he was responding to a genre he saw as shallow, soulless and obsessed with technology. Instead, his adaptation of Stanisław Lem’s novel explores a more emotional landscape with a soundtrack interspersed with J S Bach, and visuals that make full use of the wider frame.
Tarkovsky expanded Lem’s text beyond its space setting and the cinematography by Vadim Yusof makes good use of the Earthbound scenes to provide contrast to the stark space settings. Donatis Banionis is psychologist Kris Kelvin, who’s sent to the orbital space station around the titular planet after the three scientists there experience strange visions and hallucinations. However, when Kelvin arrives on the station he also begins to experience inexplicable sights, including his long-deceased wife Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk). Tarkovsky defied Soviet censorship to produce a significant moment in cinema that you can now enjoy again in all of its widescreen glory.
Solaris is screening on Saturday, 17 August.
Star Wars Day
Unless you’ve been living in a cave in the desert for the past few decades, you will almost certainly be aware of a film called Star Wars. Of course, the film’s own cave-dwelling hermit, Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi – as the action figure I had as a child confusingly called him – is one of the aspects of the film series we now take for granted, but back in 1977 there must have been some bemusement at classic British actors of the likes of Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing lining up alongside a couple of young unknowns, a struggling actor who’d turned to carpentry to support his family and two men in tin suits playing robots.
George Lucas knew what he was doing though, drawing on influences as varied as aerial dogfights in war films and Akira Kurosawa’s back catalogue to craft the first true summer blockbuster. Star Wars changed the landscape of cinema forever, for better or worse, and its legacy now extends to nine films, a handful of movie spin-offs and an increasing roster of TV series exploring the times before and after that original epic. But until 1999 there were just three films, a self-contained trilogy despite their titles as episodes four, five and six, and for my generation, that grew up and loved these original films, they represent a particular place in cinema history.
Consequently, the chance to see these films back where they belong represents more than just a nostalgic thrill: they are a defining moment in the cinema history and education of so many, and they still hold up brilliantly. Whether it’s the original, with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) on a quest to rescue a princess from jeopardy; The Empire Strikes Back, where Luke learns from Jedi master Yoda (Frank Oz) and confronts his destiny; or Return Of The Jedi, where the rebels attempt to take down the Galactic Empire once and for all, everything from the visual wizardry of effects house ILM, created specifically for Star Wars, to the pomp and majesty of John Williams’ thrilling music, mean that these films remain an unmissable big screen treat.
Star Wars Episodes IV to VI are all showing on Saturday, 24 August.
The Count of Monte Cristo
French cinema is going through a period of big budget adaptations of classic French literature, and for those that enjoyed the two-part adaptation of The Three Musketeers last year, another Alexandre Dumas classic is making its way to the silver screen courtesy of some of the same producers. This time, writers and directors Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière are serving up more of the same swords and swashbuckler, with Pierre Niney in the title role.
Edmund Dantès is living a blessed life, with an imminent promotion to captain, which in turn will allow him to marry the love of his life Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier). But then he’s falsely accused of conspiring with Napoleon and finds himself exiled on an island prison. While languishing there for over a decade, he discovers the location of a secret treasure and then sets about using it to gain his revenge on those who cast him out. It’s the most expensive French film of the year, but Delaporte and de La Patellière have successfully condensed Dumas’ weighty tome into a lean thriller that proves French cinema can do the blockbusters just as well as more art-house offerings.
The Count Of Monte Cristo opens on Friday, 30 August.
