Extra Extra - screen time

a selection of what I've been watching lately

Dear thoughtful reader,

I’m writing this after a massive thunderstorm rippled through my neighbourhood. The sky was capped in cloud so signs of lightning were muted: occasional electric flickers of blue-purple-pink amid the grey. The rolling waves of thunder sounded at times like giant wooden blocks awkwardly rolling down stairs, or a rocket engine buzzing past. Then the monsoon hit: nearly an hour of sheets of rain hitting so hard it bounced off the driveway.

I sat on the back of my sofa, legs dangling and swinging for balance and watched the show. The air streaming through my half open window was fresh, ozone-tinged and welcome after the stifling morning.

Nothing is as real as when nature flexes its titanic muscles. You have to take shelter, hunker down, and hope you emerge to the world as it was before. Your problems are put into perspective — your ability to control the situation are minimal

Luckily our power supply flickered only once, but it was enough to shut down computers. After that we kept equipment powered down.

Already the sun is out and the rainwater is soaking in, so the heat and humidity is rising again. On my weather app there are golden lightning bolts darting out of cloud icons for much of the coming week.

The weather show is going to dominate.

Speaking of entertainment…

I’ve just finished watching the fourth, and final season, of Never Have I Ever on Netflix, a witty, funny and very watchable series about three girls forging their identity through the ups and downs of High School. The main point of view character is Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), a 15-year-old American Hindu girl from Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles. In a remarkable and genius move, the show has a voice-over narrator, who fills in information and offers insight to Devi’s thoughts and motivations, which is spoken by John McEnroe.

McEnroe is best known as a short-tempered tennis star and sports commentator, and he plays himself in his narrator role in the series. This works because of what they have in common: Devi is a confident, ambitious and vivacious person with anger management problems and a penchant for dramatic scenes. She’s also dealing with the deep grief of witnessing her father’s sudden death at her school recital. McEnroe’s craggy voice of experience is as a perfect foil against Devi’s angsty tribulations.

Devi's two friends Eleanor Wong (Ramona Young) and Fabiola Torres (Lee Rodriguez) have their own personal struggles throughout the series, and the girls’ friendship is tested on a number of occasions.

The show is the brainchild of talented duo Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, and they (and their team of writers) manage to deal with sensitive subjects with refreshing humour and kind-hearted understanding, without preaching or moralising. There is a wide cast of fellow teens, crushes, and the parents who are coping with their teenagers’ dilemmas.

I have to be persuaded to watch shows featuring teenagers, but I’m a fan once I find snappy dialogue and fun situations. The more catty and blank-eyed the teen, the more solemn and ‘gritty’ the drama, the less I’m inclined to watch. It’s been a pleasure to watch Never Have I Ever, and I’m sad to see the show end. Although I also believe it’s a good idea to get out while you’re on top.

Sisu, a hard-boiled Finnish action film with nods to exploitation films of the 1970s, is a ninety-minute Beckettesque gem.

Released in 2022, it only received a recent general release in English-speaking markets recently. Written and directed by Jalmari Helander, it is set in the spare landscape of Finnish Lapland during the Nazi scorched-earth withdrawal towards the end of World War II.

The story is divided into several chapters, with the opening one following loner Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) a former Finnish commando and gold prospector, with only his horse and his terrier for company. In the distance the war rages, but initially, we only see Korpi and his animals. Once he strikes gold, and its reflected light shimmers over his face, he is man determined to cash in his find.

His journey leads to a confrontation with a 30-man Wehrmacht platoon led by SS officer Bruno Helldorf (Aksel Hennie) and his subordinate Wolf (Jack Doolan) who are returning to the front with a group of captive Finnish women. They know the war is ending and want the gold Korpi possesses. The series of confrontations between the Nazis and Korpi are bursts of raw violence and a reminder of the inhumanity inculcated by a prolonged war.

Thankfully, as in the exploitation tradition, the women are tough, and not prone to weeping over their fate. They want to fight and the group is led by Aino (Mimosa Willamo). It’s her who describes Korpi’s attitude of Sisu, a Finnish word for the sheer willpower to survive despite incredible odds.

Korpi is not immortal, we are told, it’s just he refuses to die. And he does endure a tremendous amount of pain…

This film was shot in Lapland during 2021, before the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, but as I watched the film I thought about how timely it was for the confrontation taking place in the world today. I also thought about how awful it was that a film set in 1944 was relevant to events in 2023.

Helander said the film was partly inspired First Blood (1982) and by Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä, who killed more than 500 Soviet army soldiers in the Finnish winter war.¹

If you want stony-faced judgement on vicious Nazis, this is your go-to film. Plus, the soundtrack by Juri Seppä & Tuomas Wäinölä is a Nordic folk beauty with dashes of Spaghetti Western flourishes — it’s fabulous.

Rounding out this wide spectrum of screen time is the immensely strange, Beau is Afraid (2023), written and directed by Ari Aster, who created the eerie Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019).

I watched this film knowing little about it beside viewing one trailer, as I guessed I had a strange experience ahead of me. I wasn’t wrong. The greatest sign from the cinematic universe of what I was in for was a trailer for the 4K restoration and re-release of David Lynch’s most difficult film, Inland Empire (2006). Lynch, and Inland Empire, came to mind repeatedly while watching Beau is Afraid.

This is a deliberately disorientating film with oddball characters, surreal scenes and a discordant narrative, so it’s not got mass appeal. I appreciate films like this, even when I think they’re not entirely successful, which is the case here. In a world of cookie cutter formulaic cinema, I’m always thankful that people are stretching the form and expecting an audience to rise to meet the writer/director’s vision.

I saw Inland Empire with a friend in a cinema (with only one other person attending) when it was released, and I’ve always been glad that’s the way I experienced it, because it forced me to watch it in one continuous sitting. If you saw it, or Beau is Afraid, at home you will be tempted to pause it due to the disquieting nature of the film. You will want to escape its grip.

The film is partly a trial of sorts — by submitting to the process you obtain a sense of liberation at the end, a weird uplift from going through what is a disturbing journey with Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix), an anxious man with severe coping problems, as he attempts to get home for his mother’s funeral (Patti LuPone plays Mona Wassermann). Phoenix once again puts in a tremendous performance as a passive man pushed around by chaotic forces, child-like, confused, and sometimes, pushed to anger.

The crossover with Lynch’s hallmark style is striking: the colour schemes, the uncanny soundtrack (by Bobby Krlic), the disjointed narrative, the obsession with plays, red curtains, and demonic characters.

The film is also divided into chapters, and I think they could be titled: Beau is in Hell (the opening sequence has dreadful scenes that are almost unbearable to watch), Beau is Captured (the suburban monster part), Beau is Fictional (the most surreal element) and Beau is Judged (where some coherence arrives).

If you were to read the description of the film’s plot — on Wikipedia, for instance — you might wonder if I’m exaggerating the unreality of the film, but any synopsis is written in hindsight. None of the story is explained in sequence, it starts to slot together toward the end. Many people will not have the patience for this film, or indulge its outlandish moments.

I walked out of the cinema feeling slightly shell shocked, and spent about half an hour aimlessly wandering in the city to allow the film to percolate through my mind.

I have pondered it often, since. It is a film designed to haunt you. A melange dream that lingers for days.

It is also the type of movie that makes me want to write about it in minute detail. That would take time and repeated viewings. So instead, I’m describing it in broad strokes.

If you fancy your world upended for 178 minutes, then Beau is Afraid is for you.

If you like long analysis of films, check out the chapbook I wrote on David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, from PS Publishing. It was written before the release of Twin Peaks: The Return, and one day I plan to dedicate a chunk of time to writing about that addition to the Twin Peaks universe.

Finally, a reminder that my daily ‘Reading the Signs’ challenge for June continues. You can read all my observations so far in this section on Substack.

1. As detailed in this article.