Lejink

I came to this Todd Haynes movie circuitously via his two rock star bio-pics "Velvet Goldmine" and "I'm Not Here", neither of which really connected with me. This 2002 feature of his is something else again however, a lush melodrama which seeks to transpose modern day ethics to 50's aesthetics. The obvious reference point is the cinema of Douglas Sirk, whose work in the 50's I highly revere, although director Haynes sometimes walks the thin line between homage and pastiche.

It's as if he's taken the model of those beautiful CinemaScope Sirk classics, especially the Rock Hudson / Jane Wyman classic "All that Heaven Allows" (even finding an echo in the title itself) and pumping it with steroids until it's almost fit to burst. As we join the action, Julianne Moore's everyday suburban housewife Cathy Whitaker seems to be living her best life. A pillar of the community, she is, on the face of it, a comfortable, middle-class mother of two, happily married to successful advertising executive Frank, played by Dennis Quaid. They live in a big house, with a lovely garden, the one attended by their black housemaid, a young Viola Davis as Sybil, the other by their black gardener, Raymond Deagan played by Dennis Haysbert. But if it's true that into each life some rain must fall, poor Cathy is made to suffer veritable torrents when Haynes introduces two of the biggest taboos into her well-ordered life. First of all, she discovers that her highly-respected All-American husband is in fact a closet homosexual and then finds herself falling on the rebound for the handsome, well-spoken, handily recently-widowed gardener Raymond. The twin scenarios play out to the background of the changing seasons, another Sirk motif of course, with the only question at the end being if Cathy is brave enough to break with the conventions of the day to follow her heart and if she does what will she find there. The only clue I'll give us to perhaps have a handkerchief close by as the film reaches its climax.

Sirk's films in his own time were sometimes subject to misinterpretation with some detecting biting satire just beneath the surface of his cinematic soap-operas and perhaps it's a compliment to Haynes that I too am uncertain as to whether his storytelling here is truly tragic or tinged with sardonicism. It's hard to credit that Cathy's cosy existence could be tarnished by the two big prejudicial -isms of the day, one immediately, but the film is so beautifully shot, very much in the style of the great Russell Metty and so meticulously directed by Haynes that neither interpretation should spoil anyone's viewing pleasure.

Elmer Bernstein contributes his final film soundtrack and it's suitably sympathetic to what's depicted on the screen while the acting by Moore, Quaid and in particular Haysbert completely sells the heightened narrative.

I suppose the big question is whether maestro Sirk would have approved or not. For more reasons than one, I rather think he would.

I came to this Oscar-winning movie of 1968 pretty well armed, I thought, having recently listened to a history podcast on the life of Henry II as well as watching Peter O'Toole's earlier tilt at the King in the 1963 "Backet," movie which co-starred an impressive Richard Burton. This imaginary dramatisation covers the events around the time of "The Great Revolt" when the King's three sons, Richard (the Lionheart) Geoffrey-in-the-middle and the runt of the litter, John, in league with their ever-scheming mother, Henry's estranged and indeed imprisoned wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, plotted to overthrow his rule and carve up his kingdom amongst them.

Gathered together at Christmas time 1183 at Chinon Castle in France, the scheming also takes in a pretty young French princess Alais, betrothed to Richard but who is in fact Henry's not-so-secret mistress as well as the newly crowned young French King Phillip who himself dramatically reveals at one point that he and Richard had been lovers. Set almost entirely within the imposing, labyrinthine castle, we witness these blue-blooded snakes in a pit or ferrets in a sack, take your pick, go at each other with seemingly endless dynastic permutations involving land-grab, territorial carve-ups, military confrontations, unholy alliances, a strategic marriage, pregnancy and even a strategic annulment, all to settle the planned succession of the English throne as Henry rages against the twilight of his reign.

Near the beginning Henry invokes the Lear legend of an ageing King also struggling to put his affairs in order before he dies but there's no question here of the current king being simply pushed aside. Henry prowls and roars throughout the piece like the lion of the title but he also reveals early on that he actually welcomes the febrile atmosphere the gathering he's engendered has produced as he believes it produces the qualities needed to ultimately wear the crown, a process he himself went through in his younger days as an ambitious young prince.

Things come to a head in two culminating scenes, one in the chamber of the French King where each of the three English princes has come to conspire but then has to separately hide timidly behind the drapes when big bad Henry shows up with a plan of his own and then at the end of the film when Henry imprisons his boys and is pushed by his young mistress, who he now plans to marry and so open up a new line of succession, to execute all three and then produce a new heir with her as his new queen.

The princes however aren't the biggest obstacle to his plans, his ex-wife Eleanor, effectively out on bail from her long-term confinement, takes up that role. The King and the still dangerous Eleanor thrust, parry and counter-thrust at each other in a series of heart-to-hearts underpinned by their old love and a mutual admiration for their respective mastery of dark political intrigue.

The Lear analogy is a good one as the film, based on a successful contemporary play of the same name, certainly reaches for Shakespearean heights with its grandiloquent speechifying and convoluted plot turns. The acting too is heightened throughout but for me it was all overcooked and in the end, overdone. I'm an admirer of O'Toole, Hepburn and the young Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton, both in early prominent roles, but my head was spinning with every new plot revelation, my ears hurting with the sheer volume, especially of O'Toole's oratory and my eyes wincing with every forced change of expression in Hepburn's pained face.

To its admirers I can imagine this film serving as a feast of.historical drama, but I'm afraid I tended more to indigestion with too many ingredients and too much spice for my taste to handle.

I was around when the televised interview between former Labour politician turned television presenter Brian Walden and the then serving Prime Minister, the formidable Margaret Thatcher took place, although I don't remember it being quite as consequential as this two part dramatisation would perhaps indicate. Nevertheless portraying real life interviews can make for good television and sometiimes cinema, as witness the Frost-Nixon exchanges, the two recent programmes on the Prince Andrew / Emily Maitlis tete-a-tete on the BBC "Newsnight" show and I can even recall the infamous exchange between rival football managers Don Revie and Brian Clough being made into a very watchable drama starring Michael Sheen and Colm Meaney a few years back. There's just something about a head-to-head confrontation between two usually media-savvy individuals striving to put across their point of view, although the ones we tend to remember are the ones that go wrong for the interviewee, another recent example being the catastrophic Michelle Mone interview with Laura Kuenssberg. People might also mention the most famous one of all, Princess Diana's confessional outpouring to Martin Bashir, which captivated the nation, but Bashir hardly took the offensive on that occasion and clearly was cleverly played by a Princess determined to have her point of view put across.

Still, this well-made programme certainly brought back the dog-days of Thatcher's near 11-year reign as Prime Minister, and indeed, within months of the broadcast, she had indeed been forced to resign by her own Party, at last sick and tired up of her autocratic ways, ruling her cabinet by dictat rather than consensus.

The show uses the by-now familiar format of retrospectively inserting into the present-day narrative, which actually doesn't amount to much more than watching Walden and Thatcher prepare for the interview, the preceding events, taking us back to Walden's own days in the Commons and Thatcher's surprise rise to power. I'm not sure I recall Walden ever being talked of as a future Labour leader as the show states but he assuredly was up there with the Robin Day's and the Dimbleby brothers as the grand inquisitors of the day.

A picture is built up of a growing mutual respect and possibly even a friendship between the two protagonists with the indication that this led to Walden going soft on Thatcher with each succeeding interview. In the end, Thatcher perhaps takes her relationship with Walden for granted, not receiving his calls and Walden at last reacting adversely to this as well as the promptings of his editorial team that he go on the offensive for once.

That he certainly does in the actual interview, with Thatcher, who coincidentally was at a particular crisis point in her administration with the recent shock resignation of her "unassailable" long-serving Chancellor Nigel Lawson, visibly bristling with each incisive thrust of Walden's. It's no surprise then to learn in a subtitle displayed over the end credits that the pair never talked again after the show.

The two episodes here seemed a bit fleshed out but nevertheless were well staged and very well acted by Steve Coogan and Harriet Walter in the lead parts. I just hope, well-made as they often are, that these heightened dramatisations of documented real-life events never get confused with the real thing! In these days of AI and fake news, you just never know!