This is a whole lot more fun than expected. I mean, it’s fun enough for around the first half hour with Heath Ledger – I think between this and Brokeback Mountain in 2005 we have another acting masterclass to match Russell Crowe’s turns in 2000 in The Insider and Gladiator, I mean you couldn’t ask an actor to play more different roles more differently. But here Ledger is practically just icing on the cake once Jeremy Irons and “is that really?!?” Oliver Platt arrive. I’ve always thought Platt a brilliant actor, Simon Birch and Pieces of April most immediately come to mind … but I’ve never seen nor did I ever expect to see him as he is here, practically doing Timothy Spall better than Timothy Spall. It’s very funny, very fast-paced, and with a lot of interesting things to say about religion, censorship, and gender: in the latter’s case, importantly to me, never in ways that annoy. Definitely one I’ll watch again – and there aren’t many recent period movies I can say that of.

I wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that this would be the least interesting of the Boaz Yakin double bill tonight, but yikes … I appreciate Uptown Girls even more now, lol. This reminded me a little of the Barbra Streisand movie Up the Sandbox minus all the surreal stuff that made that movie so much fun. If this one had been made in the 70s and starred Streisand with say Mandy Patinkin in the Christopher Eccleston role – that said, the one positive I can give it is how startlingly convincing he is – then and only then might it have been anything worth recommending. One of the quotes on the DVD cover says, “Highly entertaining” ... I have no idea what movie they were watching.

It’s just impossible to describe this movie so I’m not even going to try, except to say that though it took a while to get started, longer to even come close to comprehending (I’m still working on it, as is probably annoyingly evident), there wasn’t a moment where I wasn’t completely absorbed in it.

It might be the “something even better” from 2007 I wondered about in my Oscars post last week. It might just be a load of claptrap – the thought certainly crossed my mind more than once over the 100 minutes. But going by the feeling it left me with … a heady mix of sadness, worthlessness, joy that just felt like a warm blanket when I was 2 or something … this movie goes further out there even than Vanilla Sky yet what it comes down to in the end is so real and right and wholesome … for now I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. A second viewing is a must … but whatever the case, it’s certainly a mindblowingly original piece, and a far cry from anything I could’ve expected from my occasional dips into writer-director John August’s blogs about it, that’s for sure. It honestly felt almost like a religious experience, and I know how corny that sounds but I just don’t know how else to describe it. A lot more Elle Fanning than expected (well – I didn’t actually know she was in it, lol, so that wasn’t gonna be hard) didn’t hurt either

I wasn’t sure this weekend whether to watch this acknowledged silent classic version of the Joan of Arc story or Luc Besson’s lavish 1999 production first. I might’ve better understood what I wrote about the manic style of Milla Jovovich’s performance in The Messenger had I watched them the other way around – she was clearly trying to bring something of Maria Falconetti’s performance here in, in the same way there are some visual references I noticed like the cut between Jeanne’s burning face and the cross in the sky etc – but certainly watching that English language version first helped me understand the odd bits of the French interstitials here that I couldn’t quite translate (the DVD player’s still having problems with subtitles, lol – I was pretty impressed with myself how well I coped though :))

The difference between Jovovich and Falconetti’s performances is hard to put into words that don’t include, simply, “Falconetti’s is just better” – where Jovovich, like I said, came off mostly as plain crazy, Falconetti’s wide-eyed gazing comes across more like a superhuman degree of conviction obstructed by a mind too young and human to quite comprehend it; ie, simply closer to “the truth”. A sizable portion of the movie consists of simple headshots of her reacting to the men around her. It shouldn’t be anywhere near as compelling and hypnotic as it is … but it really is the greatest performance, male or female, I’ve ever seen and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of it on any number of repeat viewings.

This is before you even touch upon the aspects of the film outside of her performance. Though, like I said, it’s full of a lot of plain headshots, there are some camera moves that perhaps by sheer contrast blew my mind a little, like the rolling move that follows soldiers from an aerial angle to one level with the ground; one that tracks the spikes of a torture device down to the ground; another weird almost queasy motion while Jeanne burns, following maces thrown down to guards from a tower, up and back again, up and back again.

It’s not often I’m so immediately impressed by movies as old as this – though I consider myself to have a wider knowledge of cinema than most, it never really struck me as a given that older productions should necessarily be somehow better than modern stuff by default. Then you get exceptions like this – it is one of those movies, as François Truffaut has said, that simply “vibrates”, in this case sometimes so violently that it threatens to burst out of the screen. It amazes me that there are people who dismiss it so quickly as “just headshots” ... it’s the person who’s in those headshots. For the performance alone it’s a masterpiece. But it’s so much more besides.

I worried for a moment that this was gonna be another movie to suffer from the “Jane Eyre syndrome”. Jane Valentine, the young girl who plays Jeanne d’Arc here aged 8, is not only extraordinary, powerful, everything I in my limited knowledge associate with this person and story, not only is she a dead ringer for Milla Jovovich in the eyes, but she’s also onscreen for a hell of a longer time than I ever would’ve expected. Unfortunately, following her breaking into the church and taking mass underage, it jumpcuts forward so harshly that if I weren’t watching on the TV I’d have feared a whole reel was missing.

When Milla Jovovich appears, she’s so alternately whimpering and up-in-arms it’s at times unintentionally laughable. She, or Luc Besson, or maybe someone else involved, seems intent on showing Joan’s fear under the circumstances and I don’t know if it works, at least not the way they do it. The whole movie, as a matter of fact, suffers similarly from its own desire to entertain and be epic and commercial, etc, and I’m not sure Besson’s frequently boyish direction (you wouldn’t expect it, but some of the goggle-eyed raving here is extraordinarily reminiscent of Jean Reno in Leon) is so suited to this particular story. The occasional attempts at deliberate humour (“There’s an arrow in your leg.” “Oh. So there is.”) didn’t go down well for me either.

It certainly happens upon some stirring and memorable moments … Eric Serra’s score is reassuringly sweeping, there’s some surprising gore in the battle scenes … and ultimately I did find myself believing even in Jovovich’s manic Joan as a leader – if only because she’s sold so much as a gal who did something while everyone else was talking about doing things. The dodgy reshoot hair on Jovovich that I think I’ve heard Mark Kermode mention a few times in talking about this movie didn’t really bug me as much as I expected either – going back to the Leon similarity, she actually looks a lot like Natalie Portman’s Mathilda in her last prison scene. I’m looking forward even more to seeing the old Carl Dreyer silent now, though.

This was supposed to be my first movie of this year but I had technical problems. I can’t not mention Mark Kermode on this review, I’m afraid (so it’s a good thing I didn’t make a resolution to mention him less, I guess, lol), ‘cos this was one of the first movies I heard him review on his podcast towards the end of 2006, and he’s mentioned it many times since (not to mention interviewing Young early last year on The Culture Show). This was the movie that “converted” him to a Young fan having pretty much despised him previously.

I was never so passionate about my basic apathy towards him and his work – when I was starting to really get back into music a few years ago, I tried listening to most of his stuff and I later listened to “Prairie Wind” (the album that forms most of this concert) and “Living With War” but didn’t get a lot out of them. For me, it was his most recent album, “Chrome Dreams II” – which I thought was by leaps and bounds the best album of last year – that finally made me “get” Neil Young. I don’t know, maybe it’s just ‘cos Kermode told me to like him, lol. But anyway, what I’m saying is, I came to this show already primed to love it.

I wasn’t quite “moved to tears” as Kermode has repeatedly said he was; but I can see where it touched him, I think. This was a very philosophical album, with lines like, “this old guitar ain’t mine to keep, it’s mine to play for a while,” and “when god made me, did he just make me in his image, or every living thing?” and the whole matter and God thing is clearly big on Kermode’s mind. Then there’s the whole age thing that pervades the whole concert, and I’ll admit even got me; though I have to say, I was pleased by the anecdote about writing “Old Man” (”... look at my life, Twenty four and there’s so much more, Live alone in a paradise …”).

One thing I was worried about in watching this was the sound sync problems I’d heard about. Things like that can really make me hate a movie. I don’t know if they fixed this when it went to DVD, but I barely noticed any such problems. If there are any, it’s down to the fact that they shot over 2 nights and obviously picked the better shots at times, sync be damned. It really didn’t bug me at all, and those who are whining oughta pick up a copy of The Phantom of the Opera.

In the end, it’s a filmed concert of Neil Young – you kind of know what you’re gonna get, especially if you’ve fleetingly touched on his music at some point; and I wouldn’t expect it to have the “conversion” effect on many people other than Kermode. It has a really nice “pre-concert” sequence with a few mini-interviews and even a cute little POV shot of someone handing in their ticket at the door. It really would’ve made a good start to a new year, it’s a shame … but there are plenty more years to follow that plan, and I’ll probably relax to this on many late nights / early mornings to come.

“I have told the truth. Whether you believe it is your choice, not mine.”

I kinda knew this would not only be good but also visually impressive with Catherine Hardwicke at the helm. I didn’t expect it, however, to completely cement her as one of my favourite directors. This is really quite a perfect movie, so perfect it really left me speechless. Of course, if you’re not a Christian, or haven’t been brought up with the Nativity story, the experience will be a different thing, though I’m sure the visuals are still sufficient for most and the religious aspects of the story aren’t dealt with entirely preachily. I can only speak as someone who was brought up with this, and though I’m not a church-going, god-fearing Christian or anything – I don’t identify with any specific religions, though I certainly love this one’s stories more with every year I live – this moved me exactly the way I wanted it to. To be that first shepherd, to witness something that absolutely brings you to your knees with its sheer purity and beauty, its complete lack of modern cynicism and skepticism, to just realise, we are nothing compared to This … that’s what this movie needed to be to impress me, it’s a big demand, and I can say picking my jaw off the floor, it succeeded.

The Nativity story has always for me either been rushed through school play style, shown in fragments as in carols or advent calendars, or shown as part of the grander story of Jesus’ life. Singled out, it allows for what I found to be the most powerful aspect of this production, and it’s the way we get to feel Mary’s loneliness at the start, we get glimpses of her thoughts, her fears, how frightening to be given this secret and feel unable to tell anyone. When Joseph finally believes, we get the same thing – there’s a wonderful moment when they walk past a man on the streets foretelling the birth of the Messiah and they share a look that’s just amazing. Having loved her in Whale Rider, I knew Keisha Castle-Hughes would be fine as Mary, but relative unknown Oscar Isaac is perfect as Joseph too.

The other thing this production does well at is not shying away from the bitter side of the story. As they say, God is in the details, and though it’s all mostly offscreen, we’re still “shown” things like Herod’s slaughtering of the children, the circumcision of John, a ceremonial slaughtering of a cow, even a small thing like Joseph’s manual gutting of a fish for a meal. Even the significance of the gift of myrrh is not overlooked at the end.

All I can say is, if you celebrate Christmas, you can do much worse than watching this to remember why you do it. I’m guilty as anyone for “forgetting” and I’ve had plenty of recent Christmases where out of guilt I almost consider not celebrating such are my religious views. But I love Christmas … and I love this story … and you really can’t ask for a better version of it than this. If anything it honestly made me want to believe more.

“The Devil goes after the young. Those who cannot fend for themselves.”

You said it, Miss Fischer …

You kind of get the gist of where this documentary is going early on, when evangelist leader Becky Fischer asks a crowd of parents and children, “who believes God can do anything?” and we see one mother forcing the hands of her two kids – who don’t look old enough to even raise their own hands on command let alone have such an opinion – in the air.

It’s hard to write a lot on this documentary, or any like it, without spilling over into a mess of a babble on the contentious issues and one’s own opinion on it rather than focusing on the basic film-making quality, such are the touchy topics it covers.

In a nutshell, this movie shows a pretty intense “camp” – a training ground for young evangelists where I guess the highlight is Fischer talking about Harry Potter, referring to him as a warlock, and therefore he makes the baby Jesus cry.

But apparently Fischer isn’t as upset about the movie as you’d expect from the picture it paints – I read on Wikipedia, “To Fischer, the real message of Jesus Camp is to show how passionate children can be when given the right opportunities.” Right. And there are moments here where the pendulum does swing her way, you do see good things coming out of it; one girl, for example, has unbelievable strength against the obvious taunts she gets at school for her beliefs etc. But, y’know, as to the passion thing? You could get that by giving them large quantities of junk food too. It doesn’t make it good. Like a radio DJ – the only real voice in the movie that calls a spade a spade and tells her how crazy she is, since you really don’t need any voice but her own to tell you that – tells her over the phone, you can get kids to do anything, you can turn them into soldiers, anything. Now I guess the argument for Fischer in answer to that is – well, at least she’s not doing that. The worst most of these kids are ever gonna really do is annoy people. It could be worse. But it’s still incredibly sad to see kids – at times, incredibly smart kids – basically having their lives snatched away from them in the name of God.

I don’t have problems with other people’s beliefs, and I’m sure for some of these kids whatever the camp leaves them with might be much better than any other alternatives. But anything that teaches, nay forces, children so young to be so certain about something which, by its very nature, is forever uncertain – that’s what bugs me the most.

As to the film itself, it is certainly well-made, arresting, and at only 90 minutes, refreshingly short for a documentary. Like I said, really only the DJ flat-out “makes a case” either way for or against Fischer, she pretty much damns herself. There’s no narration and only a few snippets of text impart basic pieces of information about locations and names etc. There’s really not a lot of gimmickery involved. It’s what I’d call “a proper documentary”, and it’s pretty scary.