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MWF 2010 authors on… the last movie they saw
I’ve given MWF guests a list of 15 random topics to respond to. The idea is to entertain and introduce you, the reader, to other sides of the MWF authors and their work, which may not be revealed on festival panels. The authors were allowed to respond in any way they liked, and were given no word limits. To learn more about the authors and what they’re doing at the festival, click their names through to their MWF bios.
My love for British film director Alan Parker was reawakened when I rewatched Shoot the Moon, a devastating story about the breakdown of a marriage that makes Kramer vs Kramer look like You’ve Got Mail. The main protagonist of the film is a writer (Albert Finney) who in his wild success experiences a midlife crisis that leads him to leave his wife (Diane Keaton) and four unruly yet charming daughters. It is a decidedly uncomfortable and confronting viewing experience, and one of the most unfliching portraits of a narcissistic writer ever presented on screen, yet strangely remains one of Parker’s most overlooked films.
Alan Parker was once accused in a review of Mississippi Burning of being a ‘manipulative’ filmmaker, with a directorial style equivalent to a ‘cinematic bludgeoning’. Parker’s response to this was that it was a ridiculous accusation because the very role of director is that of manipulator. Parker comes from an advertising background and knows exactly how to get his audience right where he wants them: how to elicit need, emotion and desire. Most of what I have learnt about writing has come from filmmakers rather than other authors. Those who write with light have just as much to teach us as those who use a pen.
The ending of Shoot the Moon is so sharp and tragic it reminds me of how I like my fiction: short, punchy and leaving me in a state of despair and wonderment, a changed person from the experience. I like my stories to shoot from the hip, and Parker doesn’t pull his punches. He hasn’t made a film since the very bizarre The Life of David Gale in 2003, and I hope he returns to deliver a cinematic one-two punch to confirm his status as one of Britain’s greatest auteurs, or at least erase the memory of The Road to Wellville.
I borrowed Women in Love from the library thinking I would be swooning over Oliver Reed, when in fact my eye was on Alan Bates.
I usually go to the cinema relentlessly, but it’s been a while now as cinemas in Helsinki really slow down in the summer. Choices are also restricted by my not speaking Finnish or Swedish. The former is a deliriously difficult language and I have no excuse for not speaking the latter. Most things slow down in Helsinki during the summertime, with the exodus towards The Summer Cottage (On the Island / By the Lake)… The capital, which is usually lovely and mellow, becomes something of a ghost town, pleasantly drowsy.
Mother and Child: A rather disturbing endorsement of the current paradigm that blood/genes prevail over human relationships.
I don’t know what the last movie I saw was for the reason that, simply put, I don’t really like movies. This isn’t some highbrow pretentious thing (I love television and don’t trust anyone who doesn’t own a TV set), but I hate movie theatres, for the reason that there’s nothing more alienating then going to see a movie which you find unfunny/didactic/obvious/ham-handed/emotionally manipulative etc., only to find that everyone around you seems to be laughing and having a good time (this may sound inherently misanthropic, which, of course, it is). It’s to the point where my wife won’t even go to the movies with me, because I inevitably end up sitting there huffing and fidgeting and basically making the movie-watching experience uncomfortable for everyone around me despite my best attempts to remain still and quiet. If I were to try to justify this intellectually – and I am always happy to attempt to justify everything intellectually – I might argue that television has clearly surpassed the film as a storytelling medium and that it’s difficult to think of any movies from the last decade that match the power of the best television from the same period (like The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, or Arrested Development), and at times when I’m feeling particularly emphatic, I might even suggest that all government funding for film should be reallocated to novelists – but that would be absurd, wouldn’t it? Clearly, I’m just not that fond of movies…
Angela says…
My man and I have been on a bit of a vampire bender. The classic Dracula, then Nosferatu (superior – wonderful) and the other day The Hunger, a very sexy film that I can’t believe I haven’t seen before. It has everything: Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve getting it on; David Bowie in an old-man suit; ’80s decadence; monkeys; an original kind of undead; and so much more. Delicious fun.
Feel free to share your own responses to the topic, or to the authors’ responses, in the comments. What was the last movie you saw?
Melbourne Writers Festival blog 
