BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

The central character in Steven Soderbergh's excellent new movie "Behind the Candelabra" isn't really Liberace at all but Scott Thorson which, I suppose, is as it should be since the film is based on Thorson's book about the years he spent as an 'employee' and, more significantly, as a lover of the closeted gay star. How accurate it all is we can only surmise since everything is seen through Thorson's eyes. If it had been up to Liberace he would have carried his 'open secret' to the grave. After dying of an AIDS related illness his family still tried to pass his death off as simple heart-failure. Thorson's book, and now Soderbergh's movie, have blown his cover once-and-for-all.

This isn't a conventional biopic by any means. As I said, it's less about Liberace and more about Thorson, in which role Matt Damon gives a career-best performance, as indeed does Michael Douglas as Liberace. Since the film has already, or is about to, screen on American television it means it's ineligible for next year's Oscars. However, both actors are surely assured of the Emmy and the Golden Globe and I'm surprised they didn't share the Best Actor prize at Cannes. Douglas, indeed, is the revelation here. He may not look much like Liberace but he has the mannerisms and the voice off pat.


Fundamentally, of course, it's a film about a failed marriage. It isn't the partners' sexuality that scuppers their relationship but fame, drugs, vanity and the large age difference between them. A heterosexual relationship in a similar situation would probably have gone much the same way. Yes, in Douglas' performance Liberace does come across as a temperamental old queen just as, in Damon's performance, Thorson comes over as a spolit, bad-tempered kept boy but the humanity of both men shines through as well. It's as if they were making the best of a bad situation and finding the pressures, particularly that of secrecy, more than they could cope with. While neither man would have been someone I might have chosen to be friends with, had I known them, (in some different celebrity universe), I think it would have been amiss of me not to have forgiven them their foibles. Soderbergh has said he intends to give up directing in the future; on the strength of this moving, witty, intelligent picture he will be sorely missed if he does.

NEW JERUSALEM

Practically a one-man show. Rick Alverson did almost everything in his film "New Jerusalem" except sweep out the set, (though maybe he did that, too). It is, then, as 'indie' as it gets, down to the non-performances of his non-acting cast. It's a kind of bromance between two guys who work together in a used tyre depot and who are as different as night from day. They are played by musician Will Oldham and the little known Irish actor and writer Colm O'Leary and it has a lovely improvisatorary feel to it. It's also singularly lacking in structure or a real centre while being observational to the point of being almost a documentary with Alverson, who also photographed and edited the film, getting in as close to his characters as his camera will let him, illuminating their joys and sorrows in a way no studio-bound, audience friendly film possibly could. It's also one of the few films to examine male friendship with this degree of depth and lack of sentimentality and in its own quiet way it is also one of the best films I can remember to touch on the subject of religion. Outstanding.

CRIES AND WHISPERS

In a house full of ticking clocks signalling the passing of time and rooms of bright red redolent of blood, three women wait for a fourth to die. Two of the women are the sisters of the dying woman , the other, their maid. Is "Cries and Whispers" Ingmar Bergman's greatest film? Perhaps not and yet it remains one of the towering masterpieces of world cinema which should tell you exactly where Bergman stands.

His extraordinary use of colour, (mostly reds and whites; Sven Nykvist won the Oscar for his cinematography), goes some way in alleviating the almost unwatchable horror of the films central situation of a woman dying in agony while those around her are powerless to help her or lessen her pain. There are flashbacks to fleeting moments of happiness and a lot of grief in the women's pasts but for the most part this rigorous and unrelenting film concentrates on that terrible journey into what? Rarely has the cinema tacked the subject of death with such an intellectual compassion as here.

As always Bergman's repatory company of players are extraordinary, down to the smallest part. The sisters are Harriet Andersson, (the one who is dying), Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulin, (the ones who wait), and Kari Sylwan as the maid. The men in their lives, (Erland Josephson, Henning Moritzen and Georg Arlin), also play a very significant role in shaping the lives of these women and yet they remain very much in the background. Of course, you could argue that only in Bergman's world could people behave as they do here. These people inhabit a world almost entirely devoid of joy, their only 'pleasure' steming directly from some form of pain. This picture is grim enough to qualify as a horror film and it certainly isn't an easy watch. Indeed, if anything, this was the film that finally cemented Bergman's reputation as cinema's premier master of misery. However, once seen it can never be forgotten and it's a film that repays frequent visits. I reiterate, "Cries and Whispers" is one of the greatest films ever made.

THE LAVENDER HILL MOB

A heist movie like no other; it's particularly, peculiarly British and, of course, it's a comedy. (Once upon a time the British preferred their thieves, and even their murderers, to be genteel as if they never took seriously the nefarious business they found themselves involved in). The thieves that make up THE LAVENDER HILL MOB are more genteel than most and they are played by Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sidney James and Alfie Bass and their target is none other than the Bank of England's gold reserves where Guinness is in charge of the delivery of the bullion.

This thoroughly delightful little comedy-thriller, (it only runs for 78 minutes), was beautifully directed by Charles Chrichton and written by T E B Clarke, (he won the Oscar for Best Story and Screenplay), and like all the great Ealing comedies it has stayed the course. (For a heist movie it has a great idea). Both Guinness and Holloway give marvellous performances, (Guinness got a Best Actor nomination), and watch out for a split second cameo from a young Audrey Hepburn while the use of real London locations adds considerably to the film's period charm.

WE ARE THE BEST

Lukas Moodysson's comedy "We Are The Best" is one of the greatest of films dealing with childhood as well as one of the most uplifting, and uplift is something you're not always guaranteed with Moodysson. The kids in question are three girls barely into their teens who form a (not very good) punk band but this is only a jumping off point for a genuinely funny picture about friendship based on the graphic novel by Coco Moodysson. It has the flimsiest of plots but a surfeit of feeling and Moodysson handles his young, and not so young, cast superbly.

As the young would-be punks who start the band Mira Barkhammar and Mira Grosin are absolutely terrific and if Liv LeMoyne, as the older girl they rope in to help them, doesn't make the same impact it's simply because she has the more sober role. Otherwise I can't find fault with this film and, as well as laughing out loud several times, I had the biggest of grins on my face from start to finish.

THE HAPPIEST DAY IN THE LIFE OF OLLI MAKI

Winner of Un Certain Regard at last year's Cannes festival "The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki" is a film that lives up to its title; it's a charmer and no mistake. Set in 1962 it's the true story of young boxer Olli Maki who is given the chance to go for the World Featherweight Championship but who lets his romantic inclinations get in the way of his training. In keeping with the period feel, director Juho Kuosmanen shoots the film in glorious monochrome and draws excellent performances from Jarkko Lahti as Olli and Eero Milonoff as his manager Elis and a thoroughly delightful one from Oona Airola as Olli's girlfriend Raija. Like Rocky Bilboa, Olli is a mixture of reticence and romanticism with not a smidgen of Rocky's brouhaha and there is none of the triumphalism of the Rocky pictures on display here. Low-key and often very funny this is a film that surprises in all the right ways.

EARTH

Alexander Dovzhenko's "Earth" is as great as "Battleship Potemkin" or anything else in the Eisenstein canon and yet not many people have seen it, However, I don't doubt that anyone who has seen it will easily forget it for this is one of cinema's great masterpieces. The theme is solidarity or more appropriately humanity as this is one of cinema's great humanist films. It is also, of course, propaganda, a paean of praise to the doctrine of communism that some may find objectionable. However, others with broader minds will see in that doctrine of communism a need and a willingness for the oppressed to rise up and to take a stand against the oppressor and I doubt if anyone can argue with that philosophy. Of course, that in itself doesn't make the film a masterpiece but Dovzhenko's film, made in 1930 and silent, employs filmic techniques like few others before or since. Frame after frame dazzles the eye, the mise-en-scene is sublime and the editing, (remember this was 1930), breathtaking. If I see anything as good this year I will be very surprised.

KIND LADY

The "Kind Lady" in question is Ethel Barrymore. She isn't so much kind as vain and very foolish, allowing thief, con-man and potential murderer Maurice Evans into her home. This began life as a short story by Hugh Walpole, before being adapted for the stage by Edward Chodorov and having been previously filmed in 1935 with Aline MacMahon and Basil Rathbone. This version was directed, (very well), by John Sturges in 1951 and as well as Barrymore and Evans the excellent cast also includes Angela Lansbury, Keenan Wynn, John Williams and Betsy Blair. However, the real stars of the picture are the house where all the action takes place, (Cedric Gibbons was one of the art directors), and the luminous black and white cinematography of Joseph Ruttenberg. Not quite a small gem, perhaps, but very good indeed.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'

The young Romanian director Cristian Nemescu was killed shortly after completing this tragicomedy set during the conflict in Bosnia. His death was a double tragedy; the loss of a young life, (he was only 27), to be sure and the loss of a potentially major talent in international cinema. However, despite it's setting "California Dreamin'" isn't so much a comedy of war but a biting satire on bourgeoisie attitudes in a country struggling to make itself heard. It may not be quite in the same class as some of Milos Forman's early Czech films, though on occasion it does come close, and there were times when I was reminded of Jiri Menzel's similarly set "Closely Observed Trains".


The plot revolves around a group of US soldiers, part of NATO, caught between a group of striking villagers and the corrupt station-master who refuses to let their train pass through his station and it is apparently based on fact. Nemescu manages to poke gentle fun at all sides; no-one finally emerges intact with both the Americans and the Romanians coming off equally badly and he does a wonderful job in evoking the boredom of village life. The performances throughout are superb with perhaps Ion Sapdaru as the mayor and Razvan Vasilescu as the station-master the standouts. Those icons of both American and Romanian culture, Elvis and Dracula, also make an appearance.

RAISING CAIN

"Raising Cain" is often cited as minor De Palma but surely even minor De Palma is often so much better than the best of many other minor directors and even minor De Palma can be a lot of fun. His critics call him a plagiarist and his many homages to Hitchcock, (some call them rip-offs but I don't), could, in other hands, become tiresome but Mr De Palma elevates them to the level of art. The plots may often be silly and he doesn't always bring out the best in his actors but the set pieces are glorious if sometimes a little too obvious.

Here "Psycho" gets the full-on treatment right down to the car in the swamp and the psychiatrist's explanation and, as in "Vertigo", he gives us the big reveal quite early on. But it's those set-pieces, in this case a slo-mo climax during a thunderstorm, that carry the picture and, of course, there's always John Lithgow pulling out all the stops and then some as a distinct first cousin of Norman Bates.