Give me a break or "I could do with a fag"

Another image of woman smoking is as a strong feminine character, this image is steeped in seductive posing that smoulders with sexual promise, the impenetrability of that promise and the image of a woman who will not stand for a domineering patriarchal society any longer. This image heralds from the mid twentieth century when women became a genuine consumer market for the tobacco companies and also when this image of women popped from the cigarette case of Marlene Dietrich.

In Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott – and I am here talking of the 1991 directors cut – there is a scene early on when the Blade Runner Deckard interviews (Void-comp test) Rachael, ostensibly this is to see how the test reacts to humans, as opposed to the usual subject matter that are Replicants. As anyone who has seen the film knows, it is made explicit at the conclusion of the interview that Rachel is a Replicant, although she believes she is Human but suspects that she may be otherwise. So it is clear that Rachael is a woman caught in a precarious position of not knowing what she, Replicant or Human, endangered or simply normal.

At the out-set and during the interviews duration we are lead to believe that Rachel in human. She appears at first glance to be a strong and determined woman albeit with innocent inchoate eyes that are slightly cold, her dress is a clean fusion of 1930’s, where the cut of her clothing is fitted to her body’s curves, and the hypothesised synthetic styles of a Si-Fi 2019. But after a marathon interview Deckard concludes that Rachel is a Replicant to which the head of Tyrell Corporation replies that she suspects that she is.

During the course of the interview Rachel had been smoking and smoking played a large aesthetic part in the scene, not only did it help cultivate film noir styling at one point an edit was cut with an eddy of smoke as the segue. A question as to the motivation for Rachel’s smoking is lighten up if we consider why women smoke, at first glance Rachel smoking is indicative of a strong, emancipated and seductive woman in control of her situation but we also know that Rachel suspects that she is a Replicant and that the interview she is taking aims at determining her true nature. She has something to hide no doubt, so is her smoking more of a crutch for her emotions to help mask her inner most secret or a weapon of seduction?

This is an interesting little scene as it is a polemic mash-up, stylistically with the mingling of film noir and Si-Fi, the boundaries of the human and non-human and of particular interest here Rachel’s smoking, is she in command, as we are lead to believe, or is she for the duration of the interview trying to mask something. The implementation of the cigarette devise is wonderfully subversive. We the viewers are seduced and led, with the scripting of signifiers, up the garden path with the line of thought that Rachael is a strong and seductive woman and her smoking being the obvious tool of expressing this, but this garden path does a u-turn at the conclusion of the scene where we learn that Rachel was in fact trying to mask an inner secret in what in short amounts to an interrogation. It is in this light that the smoking signifier has now morphed into one of emotion support: an ever diminishing crutch, which by the scenes end can no longer support what Rachel desires to conceal.

A berry from North America

My blueberry nights:

My Blueberry Nights is Wong Kar Wai’s first English language film and is also his most accessible, it is a straight forward film about living without loved ones and attempting to move forward. It uses the road movie genre as a vehicle for telling the story of a young, heartbroken and innocent woman Elizabeth (Norah Jones, in her first acting role), but this gener is more of a backdrop to the old Wong Kar Wai themes of searching for love, issues of alienation and probing memories. It is perhaps a lack of understanding on Kar Wai’s part that the road movie theme of travelling the frontiers of experience and identity is not played out more; he is also a stranger in a strange land.

Elizabeth starts to hang out late at night in a New York diner run by Jeremy (Jude Law) who has his own backstory of loss. His way of dealing with it is to stay put and things will come to him, whilst Elizabeth decides that she must take to the road and learn of life, love and loss. So she sets off, along the way she spends time in Memphis where she meets a separated couple who tried to drink themselves back into love, but alas for the sultry and seductively wasted Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz) even this did not inspire and compel her to stay with Arnie (David Strathairn), who subsequently carries on drinking each night and is a sad story of a heart broken man. It is during this story sequence that the song ‘Try a Little Tenderness’ by Ottis Redding is heard repeatedly and we can infer what we will from this, but it further stresses the importance of music in the storytelling technique deployed by Kar Wai in his films.

Earlier in the film the track ‘Yumeji’s Theme’ with its themes of nocturnal longing and memories dancing a mournful tango, first heard in Mood For Love and again in 2046, rears its head; with the characters on screen swaying to similar moods as in earlier films. Could the use of this piece again be a thread that constitutes the three films representing a trilogy of sorts? But whatever the case, what is apparent with this first English language film by Kar Wai is that he still likes to cast musicians in a role. Along with Jones, Cat Power/Chan Marshall pops in for a cameo along with her aching recollection of a song ‘The Greatest’.

From New Orleans Elizabeth is on the road again working in a casino and meeting up with Leslie (Natalie Portman) who teaches her some lessons and takes her along for a rids to Las Vegas. All this plays out in a quite un-Kar Wai straight, linear time narrative and as such there is not any jigsaw pieces of time to fit together, the narrative is all laid out in front for the viewer to see. The film only once cuts back to the past: it’s only for a fleeting, towards the end of the film and serves more as garnish. The remembering of a moment from the past that has been built into a memorial by the memory is lacking in this film, in previous films a memory was probed repeatedly and its nuances revealed a sensual bounty. The one cut back serves only to tell fleetingly that Elizabeth didn’t want to be the person she was anymore, but it is safe to assume that this point was a given and didn’t need to be explicitly stressed.

Where My Blueberry Nights lets down is in the style department: stylistically it’s quite weak compared with what we have come to expect from a Wong Kar Wai film. It may look better than most films, especially with the neon lighting of night-time highlighting the ache of the heart, but, gone is his long-term Kar Wai cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s tight angles and dreamy hand held camera work and the film looks pedestrian without it. Also it would appear that the story for the film was quite advanced during production and it wasn’t cut together in the editing room as is often the case with a Wong Kar Wai film. Cut from the film are many of the tricky narrative structures of repeating a moment to explore its differences; like watching undulating ripples cast from the coins we cast into the wishing-well of time.

Given that Kar Wai’s films are generally quite literary – the calligraphy in Ashes of Time and the writing in the Mood for Love and 2046 – My Blueberry Nights is a bit light and it’s hard for postcards to pass as literature. But then again, perhaps this film was something of a cinematic postcard sent to us by Wong Kar Wai.

puff puff

Women smoking on screen: Women smoke for emotional reasons, men smoke for other reasons.

In the film Stalker (1979) directed by Andri Tarkovsky the Stalkers wife lights up a cigarette just after she has nursed and put her husband to bed after his latest return from the Zone. She is in an obvious state of distress, the Stalker has had his faith in humanity punched by the desire for easy happiness and after he has been placed in bed she leaves his side and crouches on the floor in a corner, lights up a cigarette and explains why she decided to live and marry the Stalker despite him being a Stalker and one of God’s fools and the warnings from her mother. She is distraught as she reflects on the hardship that she must endure whilst also gaining so much happiness from her love, a love that is bitter-sweet and un-regrettable. Her hands tremble and it is the cigarette and the act of smoking that offers her a touch of calming solace

While a scene earlier when the Writer, Professor and Stalker had just returned to the café, where they were eventually meet by the Stalker’s wife who asked the Stalker to return home with her and the child: here she exhibits a quiet strength. As the family leaves the Writer look back after them with a smoke between index and middle fingers and his chin rested on the anatomical snuffbox of his hand that holds the cigarette. He is in deep contemplation regarding the Stalker and the experience he has just had. The shot is largely static with little movement and the visceral quality of contemplation is framed. The Writer is show to be quietly contemplative and is in control of his emotional state

What we have in quick succession, by a director who is regarded as one of the great maters of cinema is both male and female on screen and being quite expressive with a cigarette in hand. The Writer is composed and thinking whilst the Wife is having an out pouring of emotions and it seems that she needs a smoke just to be able to breath. We are presented with two polemic depictions of smoking, one being for a activity whilst contemplating the other as a claiming activity whilst distraught. But also are we being presented with and solidification of an old myth: that women smoke for emotional whilst men for other reasons?

Public Enemies review

Public Enemies: free but in chains.

A new Michael Mann film is always something for me to get excited about. Mann is a serious film maker with an unmistakable aesthetic; a pristine veneer covering a dark and tangled depth.

Much will be made of how we the viewer doesn’t get to know the characters much in the film. This is an old critique of Mann and his handling of the unfolding of a characters motives and history. And this critique is somewhat right but it is also not entirely the case, Mann shows much about his characters without telling much and it is this understated storytelling that can be missed whilst viewing images that are so meticulously constructed and stylised. What do we learn of Dillenger played by a dapper and steely Johnny Depp: his mother died when he was young, his father beat him, he grew up on a farm, he likes cars, baseball, whiskey, beautiful women, the company of others, expensive clothes, he likes to look handsome, he enjoys the movies and he is his own man. Quite a list then of things to learn about a character, but what quite that Dillenger broods over and is running from we don’t quite learn, perhaps it is the open desolate youth that he endured or is it that he knows the opportunities that the depression provided are beginning to wain and he must find a way out, a way to slip off the edge of the map, or is it perhaps that Dillenger simply doesn’t want to become one of the many victims of the depression that litter the streets in many of the films scenes?

Dillenger’s world is closing in on him, the law and the organised crime syndicates, both of which have no desire to have a free radical running around who has the courage to live out the dreams played out on the silver screen, are slowly but surely blocking off the roads that Dillinger once hurtled down. These, of course, are themes visited in various shades and from different angles in most of the Michael Mann films going as far back as The Thief; what does one do when the world around them impinges upon their freedom? It could be said that Mann is an auteur who interrogates the impact of the social contract

In the city a profuse of discussion, rumors and talk has oozed from the site of 76 Dean St in Soho, London: the site of of Fridays 12th of July's fire. The verbal coagulation of water and ash has spread forth on the lips of those who saw, heard and read about the fire (least us forget that thankfully no one was injured in the blaze and the worst that happened was that a fine Georgian building has been gutted) and the a babel of communication has been built on the site where only a facade precariously stood a few days ago.

Perhaps the grandest utterance from a pair of lips to be overheard is that this event was "The Great Fire of Soho". And perhaps it was, never before has a fire in Soho been so quickly reported with coverage and updates of the event sent out into the electronic community and back into the real world. "Great" being that this is one of the first fires that news of has been dispersed so quickly in real time and by citizen journalists

A spectacle was born that roamed the playpens of Twitter, Flickr and the blogosphere.