Comparing Survivors: 1975-77 vs. 2008 – which is the best?

The third and last part of my Survivors retrospective where I compare the 2008 re-make with the original show. Which is best? Read on to find out…

Follow the links for Part 1: Survivors 1975-77 and Part Two: The Novel of Survivors

Perhaps the only surprise in Survivors returning to the small screen is the fact that it took over 30 years for it to do so. Despite it’s one off broadcast on terrestrial TV, the influence of Survivors can be seen in many later screen apocalypses, from 28 Days Later to The Last Train. Yes, that’s right: no repeats back in the good old days of British TV. Of course it had a video release and in its day the show was inexplicably successful in Italy for some reason. However the success of 28 Days Later lead to the much anticipated DVD release of the original show and a few years down the line we see a new look Survivors back on our screen. Now, it would be all too easy for me to do the grumpy old man thing and lay into it, saying ‘the original is better’ and how ‘television today is a load of crap,’ but I’m afraid the original is better and television today is a load of crap. Sorry kiddies but its true! Still, the new Survivors isn’t terribly bad in the cold light of day. Just a little bland maybe. Possibly the original too was a little bland in its day. Certainly compared to post-apocalypses in literature the original Survivors wouldn’t score particularly well in man-to-man combat with Triffids or The Drowned World. But this is television not literature and to compare television dramas to novels, no matter how good the drama, is like comparing instant coffee with freshly ground coffee.

Still, the original Survivors would have seemed pretty fresh compared to other science fiction series on the goggle-box in its day. For a start, it really wasn’t for the kids. I’m sure kids liked it but it’s not Dr Who. True, its no Prisoner either, but neither is it as kitsch or inaccessible as The Prisoner.

Survivors was also highly topical in its day. While I suppose the current Swine Flu scare (and past Bird Flu scares) might make the new Survivors seem more probable than the old show, it hardly condenses so many of the issues of its age as the old one did. The Survivors 2008 basically stays fairly true to the premise of the old show (although judging by the number of characters there seems to be a higher survival rate), yet it doesn’t share the original show’s philosophy. It seems to pay only lip-service to Terry Nation’s old query ‘how would you make a candle from scratch?’ Although it does briefly pose the question in passing.

No, the new show is more interested in action and melodrama, two things sadly lacking at times from many of the original shows episodes. Now action and melodrama aren’t necessarily bad things per se, but action and drama are pretty common occurrences on the telly these days, while thoughtful speculation is sadly a comparative rarity in TV or indeed in any medium. Not that the new show is bad. It’s okay. More a post-apocalypse Eastenders than the post-apocalypse Archers.

Like all television programs today the dialogue lacks the naturalistic pacing and theatrical expansiveness of classic British television: the insidious influence of Hollywood I’m afraid. The directing and editing is also much more frenetic and cinematic, although for all its jump cuts and bombastic sound tracking (and I won’t pretend that it is in any way the worst offender on the screens in this regard) it fails to archive what the original show managed with its longer cuts and – almost unheard of today – no soundtrack.

I find it amazing how well the old show depicts the aftermath with almost no on screen physical evidence of the actual apocalypse. While the new Survivors regularly shows us empty motorways and looted shops, yet it totally fails to evoke a feeling of emptiness, loss and loneliness. A classic scene in the original Survivors shows Abby’s awakening into the post-plague world. We get a high lingering shot of her walking down her road, a few close ups on her face as she explores the dead village and an ever present silence as she realises that she is on her own, before the extreme high shot of her leaving the church when she softly asks the heavens “Dear God, don’t let me be the only one.” I stumbled across this scene and its 2008 equivalent on YouTube which perfectly illustrates the difference in style and quality. While both scenes don’t correlate exactly, they both cover Abby’s first steps outside the house.

Press ‘play’ below and see what you think…

Good isn’t it? We don’t need to be told what she is thinking and feeling through opvious cinematic sign-postings: the director has faith in the power of his material and he lets the scene play out slowly and naturally. Okay the final “Please God” bit is a little hackneyed (maybe), but still the scene does a lot, while not trying too hard to do too much.

Now play the following clip showing the same scene 2008 stylee…

Now if you think that is aesthetically better than the first clip you are a plebeian idiot!

It’s a pity the first clip doesn’t also show Caroline Seymour finding her husband’s body, as that is beautifully done in comparison to Julie Graham’s shouting and screaming  in the 2008 version. Indeed shouting, screaming and hair-pulling seem to define the whole clip. Instead of the cold silence of the street, we get in-your-face rapid-fire jump-cuts, danger-music, screaming and spinning close-ups. By the time we get the final plea to God there is no power left in the scene because the idiot director has bled all the meaning out of the scene by throwing every trick at it in one go. Instead of capturing my attention I feel sick and bored and I want to die – much like travelling on the National Express coach!

And this scene is fairly typical of the series as a whole.

Fans of the, once, excellent Peep Show will be pleased to see The Johnson, aka. Paterson Joseph, playing Greg in the new-look Survivors, until they realise that he is an even weaker replacement than Julie Graham is as Abby. At least most of the survivors are good-looking this time around if Robyn Addison is anything to go buy, although Greg seems less than impressed?

Unlike the original Survivors, the acting is fairly mediocre in general, despite having the amazing Zoe Tapper in it (who, alas, keeps her clothes on for a change) and I doubt if any of the actors will express the same enthusiasm and fondness for the show as the original cast do in 30 years time. Despite its difficulties the original being an obvious labour of love for all concerned, while this being little more than another gig and a labour to watch.

Not even the classy British actress Zoe Tapper (left) can save this show. Here she helps the new, soon to be dead, Jenny (Freema Agyeman) with here dying pal.

The new opening credits state that it is based on the novel (a strange claim seeing as the novel was a novelization of a TV show), but as the show progresses it’s interesting to note that the Abby story-arch again diverges from that of Terry Nation’s original idea. Although unlike the original series there are no signs that the producer intends to write this key character out of any future series. Instead they seem to be sowing the seeds for further, and increasingly unlikely, adventures regarding her child and a sinister government research lab… Ho, hum… Still, the new Survivors probably shouldn’t offend too many fans of the old show, it just won’t thrill them too much either.

The show probably owes more to ITV’s melodramatic adventure-focused asteroid-impact post-apocalyptic mini-series The Last Train than it does to the more thoughtful original Survivors and in fairness it’s probably of just about the same quality, i.e. watchable low-brow entertainment with little real depth and little to no aesthetic charm. It’s unlikely to score the same fanatical fan-base as the original show because, frankly, there’s much more ambitious stuff around on television these days, from Lost to The Wire…

It’s not terribly bad, I suppose, but it’s not good either – not even a little bit good. So, which is best? If you even have to ask such as question then there’s no hope for you…

NOTE: When I found the two same scenes on YouTube I thought ‘brilliant, this really shows the difference between the two shows,’ hence I structured this piece around them. Anyway that was a month or so ago, so when I was looking for a scan of the original book cover I found a web-review which does exactly the same thing and (to make matters worse) who I imagine must have been responsible for ripping the respective video clips to YouTube in the first place. Of course it should have been obvious to me that for these two clips to exist like that, someone else must have done the same comparison somewhere. D’oh! Well rather than re-write, I thought I’d just acknowledge my unconscious plagiarism and post a link to the original review here, which does a far better and more detailed job in deconstructing these scenes than I ever could. Anyway, if you want to know more about the first episode of Survivors 2008 and read a superb rant about how shit it is then check it out!

Survivors: The Novel (1976)

Here follows part 2 of my Survivors retrospective.

Part 1, covering the original series (75-77) can be found here and Part 3 which compares Survivors 1975-77 to 2008 can be found here.

The original cover to the novelization of Survivors

A year after the first series of Survivors Terry Nation published his novelization of the series, which tells the original  Abby and Son story-arch and the long-term consequences of the aftermath. Out-of-print since the late 70s, the novel has recently been republished by Orion Books (UK £6.99) in conjunction with the new BBC television incarnation of the show broadcast in the Fall of 2008, which, much like the recent republication of John Christopher’s Death of Grass, allows post-apocalypse and Survivors fans to experience the novel without having to spend an arm and a leg on an overpriced second-hand copy. Unfortunately the new version of the novel comes with a terribly bland cover showing actors from the new Survivors posing like models in a Little Woods catalogue rather than the edgier graphic cover of the original print, although this – I suppose – is a small price to pay to save some cash in these credit crunch times we live in.

The first two-thirds of the novel stays pretty true to the first six episodes of the first series and is probably guilty of spending a little too long on setting the scene before the catastrophe rather than concentrating on what the post-apocalypse junky is really interested: i.e.  getting on with the aftermath itself! Nation’s prose is functional and generally terse, but his TV heritage shows, as the novel lacks a literary edge of other better post-apocalypse novels and we get little inner-dialogue of the characters. Still Nation can tell a good story and his writing is no worse than much to be found in genre fiction: his plotting is tight and the action is punchy.

Interestingly he chooses not to go into the minute details of the agrarian rebirth of society as the series does, instead he paints a picture with broader brush strokes. The story told in the first series of Survivors covers no more than six to eight months of th aftermath, whereas this novel finishes some five to six years after the ‘Death’ as the plague is called. Admittedly I think this kind of more expansive storytelling is probably much easier to handle in the context of a novel than an episodic TV drama, but still it is hard to understand why the series spends so much time micro-managing the apocalypse.

Parts of the novel are a little clunky. Perhaps it is also a little episodic in places and the emphasis on Abby’s sexual fantasies/frustration (an aspect which the series doesn’t delve into at all) is hackneyed to say the least. However the real reason to check out the novel if you are a fan of the original series is to find out what exactly happens to Abby’s search for her son, which the television series drops like a brick after series 1. And here the novel gets a big two thumbs up! The Survivors novelization delivers a sucker punch that puts many ‘real’ novels to shame. Of course there are other ways of finding out the plot if you just want to know without the hassle of reading the novel (the extras on the DVD lets it slip for a start and I’m sure you wouldn’t have to Google too long for our friend the good old internet to spill the beans), but if spoilers were good enough then no one would ever read a book or see a movie. No, we want to experience the ending through the story (or at least I do) and not just be told what happens. Needless to say that there is a sting in the tail for Abby, although I won’t spoil it for you here.

Although Survivors: the novel, is no classic, it is a decent enough read if your expectations are not too high and probably quite enjoyable for even for those who don’t know the series. For fans of the series, it is pretty much essential reading: for it shows a direscton in which the series could have gone in  (surprisingly in the direction of the Mediterranean as it turns out) and – more importantly – it shows us dramatically what happens to Abby in the end, poor thing.

If you think this cover is better then you have the aesthetic tastes of a toad and should poke your own eyes out - you don't deserve them any more

Survivors: The TV Series 1975-1977

Here follows my first part in my mini-Survivors retrospective.

Part 2, covering the novel, can be found here and part 3, commparing the new show to this the original, can be found here.

First broadcast in 1975 on BBC television Survivors tells the story of a small group of predominately middle class ’survivors,’ who by some natural immunity, have manage to pull through a mysterious man-made virus that has wiped out 99% of the world’s population. Pretty lucky for them! The brain child of Terry Nation, cult scriptwriter and inventor of the perennial Dr. Who baddies Daleks and Blake 7, Survivors was a brave attempt to show how helplessly dependent modern British had become upon pre-manufactured technology and how disconnected we had become from the natural world. Very much jumping on the self-sufficiency Zeitgeist of the times, Survivors in many ways echoes the lighter message of the British sit-com The Good Life, which was also first broadcast in the same year. Survivors’ philosophy is very much a spiritual predecessor to the modern Green-movement.

Its poignancy doesn’t end there: the classic opening title sequence (see below) shows an unnamed Chinese man collapsing in an airport and a succession of visa stamps in a passport, which seem to foreshadow the 2003 SARS outbreak and, coincidentally,  the current Swine Flu pandemic scare! Honestly, this isn’t just a piece of shallow opportunism on my part, I had decided to cover Survivors on here over a month ago.

A message often repeated in the show is this: could you make something a simple as a candle from scratch? Or a table? Could you fell the tree, find the ore, smelt the ore, to forge the ore, to make the tools, to fell the tree, to make the table? With the modern worlds complex division of labour Terry Nation argues that no one person has the knowledge to do all these things and without that knowledge, if you remove us from our technology and society, we will become less capable than stone-age man.

Terry Nation’s concept for Survivors was to produce an adventure series that would deal with these issues as motivations for the action; however clashes with series producer Terence Dudley who was more interested in producing a more pastoral series of agrarian rebirth meant that ultimately the series failed to tackle its mission objective, instead it becomes guilty of meandering into terribly earnest pseudo-philosophical debates and too many scenes of rural domesticity.

The original Survivors: (L-R) Greg, Jenny and Abby

But forgetting these ultimate failing for a moment, Survivors starts of amazingly strongly. The first couple of episodes sets the scene of a society rapidly collapsing under the grip of the plague and the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe as we follow separate stories of the series protagonists: Abby, Greg and Jenny, until they eventually met and join forces. The main ’story-arch’ of the first series is Abby’s search for her missing son; despite the statistical unlikelyness of him surviving as well (as no hereditary link with immunity is evident in the show at this stage). However the search is a great plot-device and helps give the show much needed direction. All three of the characters are well conceived and appealing, and the cast is strong. The three leads, played by Carolyn Seymour, Ian McCulloch and Lucy Fleming are all compelling and likeable – despite their toffyness! All helped by a strong supporting cast, including: Peter Bowles, George Baker and Talfryn Thomas – among others.

Of course Survivors is very much of its age and that’s part of its charm. The good guys are terribly middle-class, while the working-classes are, at best, lazy idiots and, at worst, murderous and/or power crazed scum-bags. Survivors is also hideously ‘cosy.’ If Brian Aldiss finds The Day of the Triffids too cosy* (see below) for his tastes then I can’t imagine what he would make of this. Of course elements of the show are dated – some badly. The script at times is far too wordy, over-written and preachy, but compared to today’s’ comic-book-like scripts, the dialogue feels incredibly naturalistic. Survivors is not alone in this regard, as one of the defining aspects of pre-90s TV is the naturalistic pace and relative wordiness of the scripts which gives so much of retro-TV a greater theatrical feel and made the TV experience back then distinct from the filmic one: being more like telly-plays than mini-movies.

The low budget also plays its part in the look of the show. Apart from a few bodies in Abby’s village and one or two in the outskirts of London, I don’t think we see any direct signs of the plague in the first series. Instead Survivors depicts the new post-plague world by a growing sense of stillness, loneliness and isolation. Jenny’s relief when she finally meets Greg near the end of the second episode is evident. The show neatly avoids having to deal with the scenes of bodies in the streets by setting the action entirely in a rural setting, which presumably was a decision partial driven by budget constraints, although this obviously detaches the characters and us, the viewers, from the true horror of the situation.

However, when watched today, the lack of attention to detail does hurt the show and is less forgiveable. Throughout the first two series the characters all have immaculate hair and clean new clothes. A situation only remedied by series 3 when it finally clicked with someone that these guys should be starting to hum at least a little bit by now. Still even then the hedgerow and gardens are mysteriously immaculate. There are no Hieronymus Boschesque landscapes from our primal Id here to haunt our dreams, I’m afraid.

The first six episodes of series 1 were recorded in the standard way of the time, i.e. a mix of video shot studio set work and 16 mm location work, which is eventually changed to 100% outdoor broadcast video location work. The change allowed faster filming, although sadly this also heralded an uglier aesthetic,  probably due to the faster work rate. However despite the poorer video quality, I find myself liking the crunchier saturated pallet of early video. It’s a pity that they didn’t try to shoot the show in a more handy-cam mockumentary mode to accompany the outside broadcast unit technology that, at that time, was almost exclusively used for news and sports coverage on British TV.

Episode six and seven also heralds another disappointing milestone in the first series: a splitting off from Terry Nations initial eco-adventure premise to Terrance Dudley’s agrarian soap-opera vision of Survivors. Although the first six episodes aren’t all written by Terry Nation, they all stayed true to his vision and the characters remain constant. The remaining seven shows lack that consistency, with character motivations being thrown out for heavy-handed moralising storyline and the total abandonment of the Abby’s son storyline. The blame can’t be entirely lain at the door of the two supporting script writers, Jack Ronda and Clive Exton, who both had to contend with Terrance Dudley’s constant script amendments. The interference was so bad that  Clive Exton changes his screen credit to M.K. Jeeves in order to distance himself from the series.

That is not to say that the second half of the series isn’t without its moments: episode 9: ‘Law & Order’ shows their embryonic community deliberating over the fate of a murder suspect and is a perennial favourite of fans of the show. However for me the crime and punishment issues raised in this episode is still handled far too heavily, and the behaviour of the characters is frankly bizarre and inconsistent. After contending with feuds, thieves and internal strife the series kind of peters out and the queen of Survivors, Abby, or more pertinently Caroline Seymour, got written out of the show by the time of series 2, which is also the point that Terry Nation left the series in Terrance Dudley’s agrarian hands: chnages from which the show never recovers.

Should I stay or should I go now? Sorry Abbey, you'll be going, I'll be staying...

Series 2 must be held up as some of the most boring 12 hours of television ever broadcast in Britain. Highlights include copious arguments on who will do the washing up for fuck’s sake! In fairness the double ‘Lights of London’ episodes are pretty good, which for the first time gives us a glimpse at the urban aftermath and the dystopia that has filled the gap left by the pre-plague society. Also the Ian McCulloch’s scripted episode ‘The Last Laugh’ is also okay. But little can compensate for the lose of the character Abby and series creator Terry Nation, although the return of actor Charles Lill from a one-off early episode  from the first series to one of the main characters in series two works well.

Jenny looking surprisingly clean considering the situation, wearing her famous blue coat

Series 3 is a partial return to form of the first series and a much needed return of more adventurous storylines. Still the series seems to meander too much and ultimately Survivors failed to deliver all it promised too. Still there are few post-apocalypses that cover the aftermath in such detail and despite its inconstancies, it compares favourably to much to be found in genre TV over the years. Despite its faults (of which there are many) Survivors is a fine example of the potential of television to discuss ambitious and topical issues in a populist and accessible way. A potential that, alas, TV rarely achieves nor even aspires to do, and remains a fascinating example of how creative differences in a production team can ruin what would have been one of the finest pieces of British television.

Fashions change: by Series 3 Jenny finally gets tough

If you want to buy Survivors on DVD today then you’ve got a problem. Originally Survivors was released in three DVD box-sets: one for each series, which sensibly were available separately. Meaning that you could just buy the first series and forget the rest unless your are a fanatic or have no critical faculties. However since last year those individual box-sets are no longer available and all three series have been made into one huge box-set: not the most convenient of ways to attract new fans and obviously quite expensive. Of course there is still the second-hand market, but – as always happens – greedy sellers used the ‘deleted’ status of the individual box-sets to crank up the prices. I’m glad to say that the prices seem to be setling again to more realistic levels and careful browsing of eBay and amazon MarketPlace should yeild reasonable results for the Series 1 box-set. Series 2 is still expensive, which isn’t a problem because its rubbish, and Series 3 is comming down in rice. Alternatively you could just suck-it-up and buy the Series 1-3 box-set and be done with it.

Some useful links:

• Survivors website with lots of information, interviews and discussion
• The episode from the third series ‘Mad Dog’ has its own site, which is quite good too

*: By ‘cosy’ I’m basically quoting Brian Aldiss’ ‘cosy-catastrophe’ a term/insult he uses to describe those pre-new wave classic British post-apocalypses, especially Day of the Triffids, where almost all of the population is effectively wiped out (by dying of plague in Survivors or through mass blindness in Triffids) leaving the protagonists largely untouched in an increasingly empty world. By wiping out 99% of the population the survivors lot is relatively idyllic, compared to those in the Death of Grass, where the whole pre-catastrophe population is fighting for its piece of pie. Also the psychology of the protagonists in these so-called ‘cosy-catastrophes’ remains largely untouched and the new society that replaces the old is basically a reproduction of the pre-catastrophe society, complete with bourgeois norms and values.

However the cosy-catastrophe shouldn’t be mistaken for the ‘last-man’ sub-genre, which I think its fair to say explores slightly different themes.

Now there are many who disagree with B. Aldiss’ view on Triffids, saying that there is too much , death, violence and social disruption in it for it to be fairly labelled ‘cosy.’ Personally I do think B. Aldiss is being a little harsh (or should I say that I think he’s being deliberately provocative in order to create a debate), but at the same time I know what he’s getting at. While I found the old 1980s BBC production of Day of the Triffids excellent, the novel failed to excite me as much as I hoped. I’m not saying that it isn’t very good or that I didn’t enjoy it, but I did feel slightly frustrated by the conservatism of its aftermath. Still a massively important and enjoyable book, if a little underwhelming at times IMO.

Anyway, while there are many who might rush to defend Triffids from this ‘cosy’ charge, I doubt many but the most hardcore of Survivors fans would ever consider it worthwhile doing so with Survivors, which is about as hard-hitting as The Waltons!

The Other Door by Tim Jeffreys (audio book)

The first audio short story collection by Tim Jeffreys for sometime this, as he’s been busy with longer and non-audio forms of fiction just lately, and in The Other Door we see a slight departure from his past work. There’s less (well none in fact) traditional ghost stories, nor any summer spooky strangeness  (for want of a better way to describe them) that marks much of his earlier collections. Instead TJ is developing the more secular fable/parable side of his fiction in quirky and surreal stories: exploring themes such as morality, mortality, alienation, psychoanalysm and dreams, which in fairness has always been there – just not as prominently as this. While this collection is less immediate than his last two they show an extra depth and conceptual development in his writing, which has to be commended. And upon a second listening I’ve warmed to the collection immensely. In fact I think I’d best describe The Other Door as a slow burn. TJ’s prose is literary, rich and evocative, his tales are rewarding, meaningful and intelligent: it’s good stuff. It’s a pity that there doesn’t appear to be an outlet for it in the wider fiction-land, but that’s their loss… and anyway I’m liking the DIY ethos. Proof that there might be legs in the self-publishing phenomenon yet…

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The best stories are: the title story ‘The Other Door,’ a Kafkaesque thing that brings to mind Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, ‘We are Three,’ a Freudian dreamland fable, and ‘Soft Clocks,’ a Daliesque nightmare, which has been aired before (somewhere in another collection) but seems to find its home here. Another interesting tale is ‘The Toymaker’s Ruin:’ a slightly confusing  parable about… well several things (I think) but you can find out  for yourself by buying  yourself a copy As usual the narration is excellent and the recording  is highly professional. TJ’s regular storytellers Mia Jaye and Josh Cass are both there and new boy Klemens Koehering adds an appropriate Teutonic tone to this collection.

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This CD can be found and bought at Tim Jeffreys’ lovely new website here, where every month he’s posting some examples of his fiction to read too.

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Reviews of his other CDs can be found by clicking on the audiobook tab on this blog.

¡Viva! Film Festival Review – Part 2: The Night of the Sunflowers (2006) and El Aura (2005)

Two more film reviews from the ¡Viva! Film Festival:

The Night of the Sunflowers, aka. La Noche de los girasoles (written and directed by Jorge Sanchez-Cabezudo 2006)

The Night of the Sunflowers wastes no time in lighting the fuse of this multi-narrative noir-bomb and rolling it under the seat of this unsuspecting viewer. The catalyst is a particularly callous attempted rape and murder from which the rest of the events rapidly snowball. A new cave has been discovered just outside a dwindling small rural Spanish village, which if is found to be expansive might revitalize the community to the world of tourism.

Two experienced cavers, Esteban (Carmelo Gómez) and his photographer, are brought in to investigate, but while they are exploring the subterranean realms, which turn out to be a dead-end, Esteban’s girlfriend is attacked by a travelling salesman/serial killer. The film continues to explore the consequences of this violent attack from the perspectives of six different characters, including two old men who spend their days squabbling, a jaded adulterous cop and his father-in-law, who is also a cop on the cusp of retirement. Needless to say the fallout of the attack escalates as Esteban’s attempted revenge upon who he expects is his girlfriend’s assailant turns out to be misdirected.

Multi-character narratives telling the same story from different perspectives tend to be repetitive affairs and occasionally confusing with much jumping back and forth; however The Night of the Sunflowers tells the story in a fairly strict chronological narrative and rarely goes over old ground. Due to the nature of the film, I am loathed to give away any more spoilers than necessary so I will stop here, but for those looking for simple closure and all the loose ends neatly tied up then I would advise you look elsewhere. Possibly this story feels a little pointless, being little more than a quick glance through the window of some ordinary people thrown into an extraordinary situation, but still this is an intriguing, beautifully shot and intelligent film by yet another excellent début director in the ¡Viva! Festival’s line-up.

El Aura, aka. The Aura (written & directed by Fabián Bielinsky 2005)

Definitely the film of the festival in my humble opinion. El Aura is one of the finest films I have ever seen at the cinema and will certainly be making its way into my DVD collection ASAP! The sad thing is: this is director Fabián Bielinsky’s second and last film as he died last summer.

Shot beautifully in a muted natural pallet in full fat-assed cinemascope El Aura simply does everything right. Never flashy or trying to impress, instead El Aura just does impress. Somehow it reminded me of The Godfather. Not as flashy as say Apocalypse Now but still utterly perfect.

The film tells of Esteban Espinosa (Richardo Darín), an epileptic taxidermist with a brilliant memory, who harbors a fantasy to pull off the perfect robbery. Again I am loathed to spoil the film, but while on a hunting trip in the Patagonian woodlands Espinosa has a tragic accident that leads him to a plot to rob the local casino’s bank holiday taking and the dark world of Argentina’s underworld. As you can imagine events soon spiral out of Espinosa’s control and he finds that conducting the perfect heist is not quite as easy as he first thought.

Richardo Darín deserves special mention in his superb performance as the introverted taxidermist: his dark-eyed hangdog expression strangely reminding me of Ray Romano (Ray Barone) from Everybody Loves Raymond, but a Ray Romano suffering from a particularly nasty bout of smack withdrawal symptoms.

But it is the direction and plotting that really make this film. Fabián Bielinsky’s direction is simply outstanding. Cleverly using the gloomy forest shades and cinemascope to produce a feeling of a fish out of water or should that be a man out of his depth? Either way it’s brilliant. The hunting scene is particularly memorable, and the revolving camera work and distorted sound design during Espinosa’s fits sent a shiver up my spine.

Like a lot of noir thrillers, perhaps El Aura relies a little heavily on a few too many coincidental meetings and a slight suspension of disbelief; however I cannot recommend this film enough. Go out and see it or snap it up on DVD. You will not be disappointed. As for myself, I will be checking out Fabián Bielinsky’s first film, the much lorded Nine Queens to maintaining my fix while waiting for the DVD of El Aura.

¡Viva! Film Festival Review – Part 1: El Violin (2006) and Madeinusa (2005)

Strangely enough the thematic order that I have grouped these films in is in the same order I saw the films. I can not see how the ¡Viva! festival organizers could have arranged this as some of the viewings were loosely scattered across the week’s line-up, so maybe my categorising has been slightly influenced by the order I watched them in. Anyway, despite my happenstance subliminal suggestibility it is my order and I am going to stick with it and although some of the thematic links between these films is speculative, I consider that these first two contain many similarities in their narrative structures, concepts, audio-visual style and backgrounds. Both films develop the story predominately from the perspective of an outsider trying to do the right thing against a potential hostile and seemingly stupid community. Both stories have music, roots and community at their hearts. Both are set in a rural location. Both films document the inequality and brutality of their respective nations. Both films have an authentic feel, using non-actors and simple no thrills directorial techniques. Both films look beautiful. Both films unravel their relatively linear and simple stories thread by thread; and both stories have stings in their tails.

I consider both these films to be cinematic folk tales…

El Violin (writen and directed by Francesico Vargas, Mexico 2006)

This film opens in harrowing fashion: a brutal interrogation and rape of a village. Shot in stark black and white El Violin’s opening hits you like a brick in your face. Actually this is untypical of the rest of the film which is by and large more subtle, with much of the violence implied rather than shown. Still this opening leaves you in no doubt that the risks involved by the revolutionary campos village community in the 1970s against the brutal military.

Don Plutarco (Don Ángel Tavira), his son (Gerardo Taracena) and his grandson (Mario Garibaldi), a musical family, become involved in a guerilla war as the military aggressively lay siege to their simple village. Don Plutarco’s son becomes involved in the guerilla’s attempt to release the capture villagers and ammunition that has been abandoned in haste by the surprised fleeing villagers, but the wily old Don conjures up a subtler way to liberate the hidden stash of ammo. Selling his future harvest for a mule he makes his way into the occupied village and via his fiddle the one handed violinist starts winning the trust of the oppressive comandante (Dagoberto Gama), a bully and a buffoon, who harbours a secret love for music. Holding the Don Plutarco’s violin to ransom the comandante forces the violinist to return every day to teach him how to play. In exchange the comandante allows the Don to tend his crops which is coincidentally where the hidden ammo is…

*SPOILER* Obviously something has got to give and it eventually becomes clear that the comandante is not quite the buffoon that Don Plutarco takes him for. If you are looking for a happy end then look else where as Don Plutarco’s mistake costs him dearly, although writer/director Vargas does offer his audience a glimmer of hope for the future.

Unlike many modern films shot in black and white, El Violin does not have that super polished monochrome look of the soulless Angel-A. Instead it is high contrast and grainy. I have no idea of the vintage of Vargas’ equipment but I am guessing that it is older rather than newer – and the results are testament to its fine application. Vargas’ début feature is a simple story, told simply. That is to say it is told extremely well. Perhaps it is not the most ambitious film you will ever see, but it will certainly be one of the finest. The non-actor Don Ángel Tarira’s début performance is also fantastic as the loveable, sleigh old goat.

Madeinusa (written & directed by Claudia Llosa, Peru 2005)

Madeinusa has a brilliant premise that positively oozes potential. It is kind of a surreal Latin American twist on a typical western scenario, with more than a sprinkling of Wicker Man-esque mysticism.

Basically Salvador (Carlos J. de la Torre), a young man, gets stranded in a remote Peruvian town who are preparing for a bizarre Easter festival, where for the duration of Christ’s death, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, the population is free to partake in any sin, fun and frolics from the prying eyes of God. While Salvador manages to escape the simple makeshift prison that the guilty villagers try to impose on him for the duration of the festival, he does not manage to escape the attentions of Madeinusa (Magaly Solier), the attractive daughter of the corrupt and incestuous major who plans to take his daughter’s virginity during the absolute freedom of the festival. Madeinusa sees a means to escape the cheery but oppressive rural community in the hansom stranger and sets out to seduce him with her beautiful voice, but the bemused Salvador is not the knight in shining amour she thinks he is. Unsurprisingly Madeinusa’s father is less than happy to find out that his daughter has just given away the object of his desires.

Despite having all the right ingredients, all seemingly coming to the boil in a tightly packed pressure cooker situation, I feel that writer/director Llosa slightly takes his foot off the gas (apologies for all the mixed metaphors) allowing events to drift along without quite the tension which the premise seems to suggest. However despite this the sleepy realism of Madeinusa is beguiling and the end is surprising wicked!

*SPOILERS* Reluctantly Salvador decides that he can not leave Madeinusa behind with her lecherous father and vengeful sister; however Madeinusa can not leave without her mother’s earrings. Discovering that her drunken comatosed father has crushed them she sees red and pours rat poison soup down his sleeping throat then watches him die. Salvador returns to see what is keeping Madeinusa, only to discover the scene of the crime and to realize that the sweet girl is possibly a bit more unhinged than she at first seemed. Unfortunately for Salvador he finds that blood runs thicker than murder as both Madeinusa and her jealous sister bury the hatchet and frame him for the murder of their father. Salvador, like Don Plutarco in El Violin and Sargent Howie (Edward Woodward) in The Wicker Man, finds that his underestimation of what he perceives as simple caricatures leads to his ultimate downfall.

Like El Violin, Madeinusa uses a predominately non-professional cast with brilliant results. Also like El Violin, Madeinusa does all the simple things right. It simply tells its story. Visually it is stunning, with beautiful cinematography. While El Violin uses a black and white pallet to enhance the brutality and realism, Madeinusa uses rich natural colours to enhance a feeling of otherworldliness and exoticness. Madeinusa is less linear than El Violin and conceptually much stronger; however it never quite reaches the heights it promises, while El Violin delivers it all in a tight little package. Still, like Salvador, Madeinusa charmed me with its innocence and weirdness. While Madeinusa drifts a little wayward in places it is a unique little gem of a film with a bitter-sweet sting in its tail, so watch out for virgins in strange towns!

EDIT: At the moment neither of these films are widely available on R2 DVD, indeed El Violin doesn’t seem available at all at the moment; however Madeinusa is available in Spain. I’ll try to update this as/if they become available.

D.B. by Elwood Reid (Bitter Lemon Press 2006)

The facts: In 1971 a man using the name D.B. Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727, ransoming $200,000 with only a note and a suitcase containing what appeared to be a bomb (a stewardess caught a quick glimpse of red cylinders and wires within it). The infamous D.B. Cooper escaped by parachuting at an altitude of 10,000 feet into a Thanksgiving eve storm without causing any fatalities or injuring any of the passengers or flight crew, and has never been heard of again and has become the subject of much conjecture, films and now a novel by Elwood Reid.

The fiction: Elwood Reid uses the bare bones of the cult crime of D.B. Cooper to construct a bizarre road trip for Vietnam vet, divorcé and drifter Phil Fitch, who decides to take the plunge and pull a once in a lifetime crime to escape his meaningless life and hop the boarder into Mexico with his small fortune in tow. Meanwhile, back in the states, recently retired and disgruntled FBI agent Frank Marshall dodges his wife’s incessant henpecking and the boredom of his empty days by drinking, fishing and more drinking. Frank’s days are haunted by the memories of an unsolved murder that he happened upon while searching the suspected drop-zone of daring D.B. Cooper and by vainly struggling to resist the charms of a female witness he has continued to ‘look after’ even after retiring. Despite his better judgement Frank gets persuaded to unofficially assist a young and eager FBI agent who has some fresh ideas on the old and apparently cold trail of a certain D.B. Cooper.

At first D.B. appears to be a fairly typical hard-boiled American crime novel that uses an unsolved real life case for its inspiration in the manner of James Ellroy. However as the novel progresses it becomes apparent that Elwood Reid has something altogether subtler in mind, as much of the novel concerns itself with following the parallel lives of Frank Marshall and Phil Fitch rather than a more predictable manhunt-style thriller that the novel seems to promise in its first few pages. Fitch, who soon drops his real name for his hijacking moniker Cooper, who finds the rambling memoirs containing information of a ‘secret land’ in Mexico and a beautiful hippy woman called Jane, decides to follow his heart, fleeing his deadbeat life in the states, and search for Jane and the ‘Hidden Territories.’ The novel tells of Cooper’s random blunderings in Mexico from hippy communes to Mexican villages and betrayal, juxtaposed with Frank’s post-retirement blues.

Cooper and Frank are different sides of the same coin. Cooper has drifted along the shady margins of the American dream; while Frank, who is fully immersed in suburban America, is equally dissatisfied with where he finds himself. Both have empty lives with little in the way of meaningful friendships or real happiness. While Cooper is prepared to throw his old life away for a dream and take a leap of faith, Frank, despite his unhappy marriage and his desire for the witness Anne, holds on tightly to the trappings of his life. Cooper is prepared to risk it all. Frank risks nothing. It has to be said that Cooper has a lot less to loose than Frank, still the parallel is very much relevant, as the lives of both protagonists are equally dictated by their circumstances rather than their own free will. Equally, while Cooper is ultimately self-absorbed, Frank cares about others. Putting their happiness above his own.

Elwood Reid’s perspective on capitalism seems deliciously ambiguous. At first D.B. seems to be suggesting that money is the only means that a person can obtain the opportunity to escape the drudgery of everyday life, yet it is interesting to note that, despite the ransom, ultimately Cooper remains adrift. By cutting off his past Cooper has lost his roots, while Frank remains financially solvent, yet trapped in his unsatisfactory life. Just like life, no one wins.

While D.B. is not without faults, perhaps it looses its focus in the middle and perhaps it relies too heavily on an unlikely coincidence to tie its two story threads together, but nevertheless it is a very fine novel indeed. Perhaps it will leave those wanting a more traditional crime story feeling a little short changed. However for readers wanting something with hidden depth then they will struggle to find too many novels that can beat D.B. for its subtly intrigue and clever juxtaposition. A worthy read indeed.

The Secret Season by Tim Jeffreys (2006)

The latest audio book by Tim Jeffreys is another fine home-brewed collection of macabre short stories – compiled together with almost concept album-like care. At first glance this might seem like more of the same; however – this time – there is an almost summery feel to the proceedings, as Tim Jeffreys drops the more melancholy tales that have been increasingly present on his last few releases, for stories with a quirkier and more lively attitude. As usual Tim Jeffreys’ tales are told by Mia Jaye and Josh Cass, who as usual are both in fine form. In sheer quality ‘The Secret Season’ marks a quantum leap in terms of writing and production standards.

• The Secret Season’s opener: ‘Bones in the Meadow,’ is so good that it pretty much makes this collection worth it’s price by its presence alone. Tim Jeffreys’ is certainly playing to his strengths with this one: it is a distinctively English ghost story, full of heady summertime delight, childish teasing and adolescent sexual awakening, all overshadowed by an ancient evil and an almost Freudian fear of the female - slightly reminiscent of Arthur Machen’s seelie stories and Graham Joyce’s horror parables. The main difference between Tim Jeffreys past fairy tale horror and this, is the sheer quality of the prose and his understated delivery of the story’s ‘money shot.’ Mia Jaye casts her usual vocal spell over the events: adding a bitter-sweet after-taste to an already quite sinister tale.

• ‘The Caged Sea’ is perhaps the least successful story here, being more of an enjoyable unhinged rant than anything else. Like many rants against society, there is a lot that strikes a chord with me here, yet the problem with other people’s rants is that they can soon grow tiring for the listener, and ‘The Caged Sea’ certainly goes on far too long for my liking. More importantly its angry presence is entirely out of place with the rest of this collection. However Josh Cass, the narrator, obviously enjoyed the opportunity to let rip, which he does with some gusto, and although out of place ‘The Caged Sea’ will certainly entertain your ears – for a while at least.

The other tales are an eclectic mix of summertime strangeness:

• ‘The Monkey and the Munequita’ is a bizarre and highly enjoyable little tale – perfect for a dreamland siesta escape from the harsh realities of our cold-grey world – all told with flamboyant charm by Mia Jaye – this story is guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

• ‘Two Cards on the Table’ is the most complex and ambiguous offering on The Secret Season: a quirky Neil Gaiman-esque story about a sleepless night and some symbolic dream-like almost mythological musings about destiny or chance or the decisions we make or… life, I guess? Well, you get the idea. Here Tim Jeffreys shows a timeless sophistication and subtlety, allowing the reader to draw his own conclusions. Josh Cass abilities to narrate and deliver dialogue has come on a long way since Black Flowers (Tim Jeffreys’ previous audio book) and he is quite excellent throughout this collection, although it is just about noticeable that his voice has been pitched up a notch or two for main squeaky female character in ‘Two Cards on the Table,’ yet – never fear – it does not get too far into The Chipmunks territory.

• ‘After Closing’ is a somewhat stilted ghost story, lacking any real sense of dread or otherness, and feeling -sadly – quite mundane. Even the normally superb Mia Jaye seems less than enthused about this story and her usual gift for accents seeming a little less than convincing to my ears. Still, ‘After Closing’ is a passable if unremarkable ghost story.

• The collection’s title track: ‘The Secret Season’ is a poetic, fragmentary and demented celebration of summer, death and sex, all told with ye oldie theatrical vigour by an over the top Josh Cass. A suitable and brief finale to a generally fine collection of short stories.

The production of ‘The Secret Season’ is simply outstanding, with little to separate it from more so-called professional productions. If I was being picky perhaps the relative volumes between stories could have been further normalized; however – as I have said – that is being highly picky.

The Secret Season comes entirely recommended to any fans of spooky tales, literary short stories or for anybody fancying something a little different. If you are tempted by any of Tim Jeffreys audio books then it is certainly the one to get. Quite excellent.

If you are interested in finding out more about Tim Jeffreys and his audio books then check out his website or you can listen before you buy on his new MySpace writer’s profile. The Secret Season (for £3.99) and other audio books are available via his Ebay shop. Also further reviews of his earlier work can be read here in the audio book section of this very blog or via the A-Z page.

Visits from the Drowned Girl by Steven Sherrill (2004)

Steven Sherrill’s second novel Visits from a Drowned Girl is a off-beat and – at times – vulgar tale of a simple disconnected man, who becomes increasingly emotionally isolated by a chance encounter with a stranger’s bizarre suicide. Sadly this most intriguing of novels never really reaches the heights that it initially promises. Still, Visits from a Drowned Girl is an original and engaging attempt to dissect our post-modern dislocated lives. The novel begins when Benny Poteat: our withdrawn and voyeuristic protagonist, observes a young woman stop by a flood-swollen river, set up her video camera, the leaving the tape running she undresses in front of it and calmly walk into the water. Only the video record of her strange suicide, a bag of video tapes and a business card of a manager of a local apartment complex remains as testament to her final act. Benny, torn between handing the tapes in and keeping this secret to himself, takes the tapes and slowly starts to untangle the girl’s life from the recordings, finding his own closely-woven life also starts to unravel.

As you would expect, Benny’s investigations drags him into the girl’s life and the underlying seediness of his Southern small town, but unlike David Lynch’s noir-esque Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks, which Visits from a Drowned Girl is slightly reminiscent of – where a horrific incident leads to the character’s learning of the sinister truth lurking behind the façade of their cosy communities -Steven Sherrill instead uses the suicide event and the power that this secret gives as a means of unlocking the dark side of Benny’s own character, rather than just the world around him. Indeed even the improbably long time period over which Benny plays the tapes, seems to be an act of control via denial of himself, although this could have just been a plot devise to keep us from finding out the drowned girls secret in the first three chapters.

As we see the inward corruption of the drowned girl tapes start to erode Benny’s moral compass and destroy his bustling yet disconnected life, Benny developments from an affable, if slightly stoic guy with an innate fear of relationships, into an cowedly, pathological control freak, who becomes increasingly unable to make decisions or take instinctively act, but compelled to passively observe. By the end of the novel Benny’s voyeurism, decisive paralysis and moral breakdown destroys his once simple life and drastically reduces our own identification with him, as he becomes increasingly unforgivable. Still, there is much to like in this novel: almost every character, nook and cranny of Benny’s atomised yet over-crowded community has a beautifully constructed back story to discover and while Sherrill’s writing sometimes gets a little cluttered for its own good, he has a rare gift of quirky prose and realistic dialogue, making Visits from a Drowned Girl a real pleasure to read – although there are many scenes that will make difficult reading for the more prudish reader, especially the disturbing goat scene!

Unfortunately there is little all that significant about the drowned girl herself: her life is as artificial and soulless as the society she lives in, and while we certainly get to see some of the less savoury aspects of Benny’s community, the reader will never get that investigative noir-esque sense of discovery that the novel’s splendid premise seems to suggest. While using the drowned girl’s death as a simple plot dynamic might have seemed a little cheap and – even – cheesy, there is still plenty of intelligent literary quality here that would have stopped it from becoming another genre pot-boiler.

While Visits from a Drowned Girl lacks that vital element of having a solid story, which – sadly – stops it from becoming the Great American Novel it so much wants to be, it is still a fine, intelligent and original novel, and judging by the strength of this novel, I would not be surprised if Steven Sherrill might just produce the next Great American Novel sometime soon.

BloodSpell: episodes 7-8 (2006) written and directed by Hugh Hancock (Strange Company)

Finally, after a long delay episode 8 of Hugh Hancock’s feature mechinima production of blood, magic, monks, swords, fights, busty maidens, bald heroes, rock music, Scottish accents and Shrek-like humour has finally overcome its technical difficulties and been released. Despite my misgivings about episodes 1-6, I am pleased to see that this initiative project is still rolling along nicely.

• Episode 7 is probably the most action packed episode so far, despite its frankly clunky start. The main body of this episode is taken up with our heroes overcoming a fairly mediocre puzzle booby trapped with some excellent gollums or steam-age robots. Unfortunately this is all slightly lacking in ambition, as it could all be out of some Dungeons and Dragons adventure or a bog standard RPG computer game – certainly nothing greatly cinematic. Still, this scene is mainly played for laughs and the rockabilly soundtrack adds to the sense of farce. This is followed with a twist in the tail, which promises us more heroics to follow.

• Episode 8 is by far the best and most sophisticated episode so far and, hopefully, boding well for the future of BloodSpell. Jered is, literally, thrown back into the ‘blooded’ ghetto, where he needs to enlist the help of Carrie and Gad, her less than friendly uncle, to save the sassy Arianne from the Black Monks. While comparatively little happens in this episode, the lack of repetitive fight scenes, allows the characters and plot to develop at a more natural and satisfying pace. So far, BloodSpell has been a fairly linear, if enjoyable, series: with simply action scenes pushing the story from A to B, from B to C, etc… However for the first time episode 8 suggests that more complex character motivations and plot subtleties might be on the cards – I sure hope so!

So BloodSpell continues and I will continue to watch it. While I doubt it will ever be entirely to my tastes, I think I am getting used to BloodSpell’s occasional quirks. Well worth checking out, especially as it is free!

If you want to see BloodSpell then clicky here.