Adam Curtis tells us how we made our world, the better to try again. Plus Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, two new spy-thriller documentaries, a history of the ‘cursed film’, looking back at Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express – and forward to the future of Studio Ghibli.
Where do we go from here? After a year of isolation and lockdowns, it’s a question on most of our lips – but will we press our answers while we have the chance?
Adam Curtis’s compendious new series Can’t Get You out of My Head, subtitled ‘An Emotional History of the Modern World’, offers a steep, giddy ride through how we got here – a time of many crises including, in his telling, a fatalistic mood amongst too many, after all the clashes and calamities of the twentieth century, that radical reform and democratic control are dangerous mirages.
So he tells Nick Bradshaw in an extensive conversation ranging across the role of ideas and emotions in history, his quarrel with erstwhile radicals in the cultural world, and the ways and means of his crazy-quilt film constructions mixing his voiceover assertions, sublime pop music and montages of mad metaphors from the far reaches of the BBC archives.
As well as talking us through a selection of those images, Curtis also offers us his own guide through ten films that capture the mood of their times – from Stalker to Scream 2 to The Souvenir.
Also in this issue, Lee Isaac Chung discusses belief, migrant experience and his new film Minari, a semi-autobiographical portrait of Korean-American farmers in 1980s Arkansas, with Violet Lucca.
Bryan Fogel and Ryan White talk Jonathan Romney through their contemporary docu-thrillers The Dissident and Assassins,about the recent murders of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Kashoggi and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s exiled half-brother Kim Jong-nam.
J. Hoberman essays the history of the film maudit – the ‘cursed film’ – in the context of Richard Kelly’s infamous Donnie Darko follow-up Southland Tales (and we single out 11 key films maudit).
Legendary Studio Ghibli co-founder and producer Suzuki Toshio talks to Alex Dudok de Wit about the studio’s next steps for the world of CGI and streaming distribution – not least Miyazaki Goro’s forthcoming Earwig and the Witch.
And from our archive, Tony Rayns visits the set of Wong Kar-Wai’s Fallen Angels just as his defining 1990s breakthrough Chungking Express was taking the Wong worldview to the world.
Plus regular features:
Editorial Not content
Rushes
Mapping calamity in real time Adam Benzine, the director of a documentary about America’s mishandling of Covid-19, tells all about making a film in the midst of a pandemic.
Sundance report: are you still watching? This year’s Sundance worked hard to reproduce the sense of being at a festival – but there’s no escaping the streaming giants. By Thomas Flew.
+ Fantastic four: Sundance discoveries.
Rising Star: P.S. Vinothraj The Indian director of last month’s Rotterdam Best Film winner Pebbles in profile. By Katie McCabe.
Faking it Could deepfake films make their way from YouTube novelty and artworld provocation into mainstream cinema? By Dominic Lees.
+ F is for fake: four viral hits.
BFI Flare preview: life in the Fass lane Actor Oliver Masucci on inhabiting the wild, monstrous personality of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder for a new film. By Ben Walters.
+ Five BFI Flare Highlights. By Chrystel Oloukoi.
+ Private view: Fassbinder on BFI Player.
In production: Earwig Isabel Stevens speaks to Lucile Hadzihalilovic about her latest project.
#MyDreamPalace: what now for cinemas? To mark the anniversary of the first lockdown, we surveyed people working in UK cinemas about the future of the big screen. Interviews by Isabel Stevens and Katie McCabe.
Dream Palaces: Gardenia Open-Air Cinema, Hydra, Greece Documentary maker Nick Broomfield, director of Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, recalls dogs, donkeys and cinema under the stars.
Obituary: Cicely Tyson: 1924-2021 From Sounder and Roots to The Help and the Tyler Perry universe, Tyson’s performances were as full as they were upstanding. By Alex Ramon.
Obituary: Giuseppe Rotunno: 1923-2021 The great Italian cinematographer worked with directors from Visconti and Fellini in Italy to Altman and Gilliam in America. By Pasquale Iannone.
Wide angle
Archive film: seeing life through a different lens We think of film history in terms of cinemas and entertainment – but the vast number of films made for other reasons can tell other stories. By Marsha Gordon and Allyson Nadia Field.
Primal screen: alternative comedy What can the case of Fred Evans – a silent film comic once beloved, swiftly forgotten – tell us about his contemporary Charlie Chaplin? By Bryony Dixon.
Reviews
Films of the month
A Sun Chung Mong-Hong’s piercing drama shows a Taiwanese family tested to near ruin. Reviewed by Tony Rayns.
Undine Christian Petzold’s latest is an uncanny, shapeshifting fable about a haunted woman. Reviewed by Jonathan Romney.
plus reviews of Ammonite Apples Assassins The Columnist Dead Pigs The Dissident A Ghost Waits Judas and the Black Messiah Malcolm & Marie Malmkrog Minari Notturno PVT Chat Slalom Stray The Stylist The Twentieth Century
Television of the month
WandaVision WandaVision lands a Marvel superhero couple in a series of smartly evoked pastiche suburban sitcoms. Reviewed by Kim Newman.
plus reviews of Call My Agent! Season 4 Ethos Lupin Pretend It’s a City Home cinema features Prince Albert: Films by Albert Brooks Two reminders that writer-director-star Albert Brooks is one of America’s most acute chroniclers of modern life, and afterlife. Reviewed by Kate Stables.
Rediscovery: Viy A Soviet state that disdained horror films somehow ended up sponsoring this gloriously surreal confection of hags and demons. Reviewed by Anne Billson.
Lost and found: Rich and Famous Though this remake of a 1940s Bette Davis vehicle left critics cold, 40 years on its picture of friendship and frustrations rings true. By Sarah Fensom.
plus reviews of The Ascent Columbia Noir #2 Films by Samuel Fuller: House of Bamboo/Hell and High Water Films starring Jean Gabin: Un singe en hiver/Melodie en sous-sol Geronimo: an American legend Augusto Genina: il prezzo della bellezza Light Sleeper Restless Natives
Books
Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris (Penguin Press) reviewed by Farran Smith Nehme.
V.F. Perkins on Movies: Collected Shorter Film Criticism, edited by Douglas Pye (Wayne State University Press) reviewed by Brad Stevens.
Letters
Endings
Pulse,Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s uncannily prescient 2001 cult horror about the evils lurking in the internet closes with a moving vision of hope. By Matt Turner.
