The Tree of Wooden Clogs

 

 L'albero degli zoccoli

Director & writer: Ermanni Olmi

1978, Italy 

I am a sucker for Epics By Masters, ever since I first saw Bertolucci’s ‘1900’: I had not seen anything like it at the time (it was part of some “World Cinema” season on TV, after which I was never the same again). Well, I always watched Leone’s ‘Dollar’ films when they were on as a kid, so that might qualify. Other than Leone’s work: ‘The Children of Paradise’, Kaurosawa’s ‘Ran’; ‘Heimat’, and at the time of writing I am watching ‘The Human Condition’; Tarr’s ‘Satantango’, Kieslowski’s ‘Dekalog’, Bergman’s ‘Fanny and Alexander’, etc. Pawlikowski’s ‘Cold War’ impressively condenses the sprawl of history, vistas, time and individuals that typifies the genre within ninety minutes. 

Olmi’s ‘The Tree of Wooden Clogs’ has the sprawl at three hours, and yes this contributes heavily to the label “epic”. But it’s the inverse of grand and sweeping, for it details the dramas of small community a handful of families of farmers, dependant on the graces of their landlord. It is like the counterpoint to ‘1900’ in that it eschews big gestures, overt political symbolism and shocks: they are there – a visit to a city in turmoil; animals butchered in real time – but they are organic rather than punctuation. But aside from length, it is both classic in scope and in its intent of recreating 19^th Century Italian feudal life, with its wealth of vistas and informative mid-range shots that keep its characters surrounded by a wider context of the farm. The symbolism more lies in the dedicated and delicate planting of tomatoes and hope.

Religion is organic and dominant. John Pym writes that, “the film’s juxtaposed and half-complementary political and religious arguments are underpinned by what Olmi has suggested is the film’s key, the permanence of the relationship between God’s land and the people who work it.” But there is nothing exotic in this peasant life and the land they toil. Religion is how they hold hope. Politics, however, is mostly a vague concept to these people in their limited experience, at least until the honeymooning couple go to the city and see but do not understand the upheaval. But then there is the moment where, rather than listening to a public speaker talk of change and democracy and respect for a citizen's right over privilege, the old man concentrates secretly on getting a coin lying in the dirt. Olmi never forgets the political context that the characters are unaware of.

Yet ‘The Tree of Wooden Clogs’ is also very much slice-of-life in that it is more about vignettes and incident rather than story or narrative. It is driven by the tales of how, for example, a woman seemingly saves an ailing cow with prayer; how this community gives one another jobs; shucking corn; the joy in community gatherings in the barn; the hiding of a coin; the routine of courtship. Or how girls spill laundry into the dirt making more work for their long-suffering mother. This farm is their whole world. There’s the overarching storyline of one of the family’s boys being deemed too smart for farming life and, at the priest’s instruction, is sent to school: it’s this that leads the incident with the wooden clogs which eventually leads to the closing injustice (an expulsion from Eden). 

 Roger Ebert says, “We say the movie is a masterpiece when we mean that it is about people we pity and respect.” If sentimentality leads us to overvalue a film… but by what criteria should a film be a graded a “masterpiece”? Not pity and respect? Ebert is famed for saying cinema is a machine for creating empathy, but surely sentimentality is a facet of that, too, for an audience? And surely sentimentality is an ingredient of the lives depicted? There is a hint of the condescending here. He goes on, “What I'm suggesting is that this movie should be viewed for its actual visual content, rather than for its noble pretensions.” I guess this is how I similarly ignore that garish sentimental half of a Spielberg film to enjoy the other half? Or, perhaps, the WWF mentality of ‘Predator’ to enjoy it as a monster movie? It seems to be that Ebert found the sentimentality of Oli’s film too saccharine, perhaps, but it didn’t strike me as such. My personal reaction is that the sentimentality of ‘The Tree of Wooden Clogs’ was not so garish that I felt myself rejecting it. Like its religious ethos, I felt it to be part of the fabric of these lives. By example: am I to believe the film is telling me that prayer can save a dying cow? I don’t go for this, but I can fully accept that the character believes this. And there are other reviewers contest its sentimentality. I am more in agreement with Kristi Matsuda: 

“Although Olmi, who also wrote, photographed, and edited the film, poeticizes some aspects of the peasant farming community—perhaps a hazard of filming in such pastoral parts—he presents a clear-eyed portrait of the farmers’ relationship to the land as one that’s practical rather than mystically earthy; in doing so he affords them an astonishing humanity.”

Olmi’s cinematography reminds me something of Polaroids, with contrast that seems both turned up and yet a little dulled on occassion. It is like that kind of look that I have a penchant for in Ozu’s colour films, where the establishing shots look like Polaroid snapshots. It’s a 16mm camera. The cast are non-professionals – but not that you would know or criticise, for such is their veracity – speaking in the Bergamasque dialect (the subtitles on the Arrow release only translate much instead of all that’s said; non-speakers are missing out). It’s the little details that hook: the boy frequently in the background leaving the farm for his long daily walk to school, for example. That’s the story.

For all of cinema’s heightened dramatics, a film like ‘The Tree of Wooden Clogs’ reminds that its recreation of ordinary lives is the equal of any fantasising, and equally as picturesque and wondrous. It is long but always compelling in its recreation of the forgotten lives of workers lost to history.

Buck Theorem videos for songs

 Here are two videos I made to accompany my album "Breakfast in Exodus". They are both Covid compliant: masked up and no crowds. These are for "For You, I Go Ape,", and "Afterward, in the Afterlife".

'Black Peter' and slice-of-life

Black Peter - Cerný Petr

Milos Corman

1964, black& white, Czechoslovakia

Writers: Milos Forman & Jaroslav Papousek

Loose-limbed New Wave slice-of-life, Czech style. It’s about nothing-and- everything: about a hapless 17year-old starting out in the world of work and romance, and none too successfully. This age of uncertainty is captured wonderfully, without judgement, and often funny. There are truthful organic details such as Peter/Petr (Ladislav Jakim) being ever-so-slightly more confident with his own age-group but just sitting and absorbing his parent’s concern and hectoring, browbeaten. Every time he is with them it seems like an interrogation: they aren’t mean, just overbearing and old-fashioned and not understanding of their son’s underdeveloped sense of confidence and ability.

There’s subtle political context in the way Peter’s first job is employed/trained in a store to spy and inform on shoplifters – with his boss’ spin of “we’re just trying to educate our customers to themselves” quickly dissipating – and how even the painting of the Madonna is watching them at home. The parents hector and lecture because, probably, they just feel it’s their job, not aware they are giving away their own discontent. They aren’t really inspiring aspiration. Aside from the political allegory, overbearing parents are something any teen could understand. But Peter isn’t intending to rebel, just trying to fit in or do what is expected. Even Peter’s acquaintance, the boorish Cenda (Vladimir Pucholt), isn’t quite the bully and rebel he initially might seem to be, but as equally awkward and embarrassing as he is pushy. Hey, he even comes to give Peter his money back. He’s the light relief.

The slice-of-life sub-genre is easily dismissed as inferior to something more strident and obviously trying to say something. Not that they don’t have a point and themes, but I am defining these as films that are led more by incident than narrative; less defined and marred by tragedy than accentuating the incidental the trivial. I seem to be thinking slice-of-life as the lighter side of neo-realism’s trend towards the downbeat. It’s about tone, editing, a feel an intention. So ‘Kes’ qualifies more as neo-realism but ‘We the Animals’ is slice-of-life, with its elliptical editing and dreaminess, even though they are both tragic.  But the modest agenda of something like ‘Black Peter’, or ‘We are the Best’, or a litany of other coming-of-age dramas that don’t hold with clamorous character “journeys” holds their own considerable power as reflections of daily life; of capturing moments between all the vivid dramatics. ‘Jim Jarmusch excels at this, perhaps the slightest of his slice-of-life being ‘Paterson’ (a favourite: it tells acres about daily artists; Jarmusch is less reliable when doing genre narrative). Or you have the likes of Linklater’s ‘Before’ Trilogy, or indeed his ‘Boyhood’. An example like ‘Les Centre Cents Coups’ is an example where the New Wave condenses that slice-of-life lightness with neo-realist tragedy.

There’s a lot of flash-and-dazzle in the New Wave, but in ‘Black Peter’ Forman only allows for one obvious trick: a freeze-frame that can’t help but nod to the aforementioned ‘The 400 Blows’, but for different intent: here, it stops Peter’s father’s lecturing in his tracks, as if saying make-way-for-something-new, or is-that-all-you-have? Certainly, Peter looks up expectantly.

Forman keeps the tone low-key and unaffected, but like the work of Yasujirô Ozu, the understatement allows for themes to bubble under and captures a mundane truth of daily life that something more bombastic can’t ease in to. For example: I never was a Czech teen starting work in the Sixties, but I certainly related to the slightly rudderless stumbling into adulthood that starts with Peter’s slightly difficult road crossing. For example, the prolonged aimlessness of the scene at the dance is a highlight, a delight in its capturing adolescent navigation of awkwardness and bravado and expectation. This slice-of-life genre captures the universality of experience, its randomness, despite the specifics, however strong our proclivity to impose narratives.

 

His House

Director & screenplay: Remi Weekes, 2020, UK

Story: Felicity Evans & Toby Venables 

‘His House’s distinction is in using the genre to give voice to the experience of those that are not usually heard, just derided, mistrusted and used as scapegoats. This has always been part of the genre, speaking for the outsiders, but this particularly socially-aware horror of course follows a welcome recent trend invested in the experiences of the Black community that seemingly follows the roads kicked open by Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’. Saw an IMDB comment saying that the scares are the greatest thing about horror films, but that surely does the typical, tired thing of reducing the genre to its  most superficial level: the social commentary and reflection the genre offers is so often overlooked or just ignored. Or the troubling emotional truths of ‘The Babadook’ or ‘The Relic’ (2020) are the kind evoked in a way only horror can provide. If jump-scares are all you came for, you’re missing out.

‘His House’ is the tale of a refugee couple escaping horrific circumstances and trying for asylum in England. When they reach those stark, unwelcoming shores, they are given a list of stringent rules that do not seem a life at all (no work; no friends; but you must prove you are assimilating) and a house – a big house, as everyone reminds them, seemingly with surprise and resentment as if they are undeserving. Microaggressions all present and active. And of course, it’s haunted but it’s far from the glamour of delipidated Gothic. Mostly cleaned out and barely furnished, it still has the feeling of a potential squat, situated in a bland, unappealing English street. Where they are is never specified, all to increase the feeling of being unmoored and kept in the dark. As CH Newell notes:

“What’s unique is how Weekes uses the Gothic to explore contemporary immigration issues, which makes for a memorable story, and shows how rich the horror genre can be when we make sure stories from all cultures make it to the screen.” 

It’s a depressing backdrop more at home in a social-realist drama. Bol (Sope Dirisu) wants to pin everything on their new home, to assimilate, to sing stupid football songs in the pub, to eat with cutlery, to forget the past. Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) isn’t able to do that. One of the most memorable moments is when she goes out, gets lost and sees some black kids, assumes they will be allies, only to learn it’s very different here. And then the alleyways of the estate turn into a homage to the maze of ‘The Shining’ (Weeke’s deliberate and effective homage). It’s in a moment like this where the melding of kitchen sink drama and horror tropes blend most effortlessly. Nothing is truly welcoming.

This is where casting Matt Smith as their case worker is a true asset: Smith has an aura that you can’t quite pin down; friendly and on-your-side one moment, but somewhat threatening and broken the next. This is why he made such an effective ‘Dr Who’: there’s something about him you can’t quite pin down. He has a way of making prosaic lines seem threatening. 

Dirisu is all energetic but desperate hope, his vulnerability and denial almost embarrassingly open. Warm but obviously troubled. Mosaku, by contrast, is all wisdom and acceptance, without being patronising. Integrity and worry. They provide a mesmerising performance chamber piece without overbearing the tone (this could easily convert to a play).

Everything is uncertain, but when the supernatural pays a visit to make sure their past can’t be dismissed, she especially knows exactly what it is. It is an apeth, a Sudese witch of guilt and revenge following from their homeland to terrorise them. It is not what haunts them that proves the mystery – which is typical of haunted houses – but the secret of how to traverse assimilation (what is it, even?). As noted, the film is very good on the microaggressions the Black community experience, of creating a system an atmosphere where the needy are kept pleading and in their place, where they can't win.

The film deftly maintains its balance of social issues, speaking to the humanity of refugees against a Hostile Environment, as it delves into its haunted house tropes. Like films such as ‘The Babadook’ , ‘Under the Shadow’ or ‘Get Out’, it wears its analogy on the surface,  and it guides and permeates everything; rooted in the zeitgeist but never forgoing its genre thrills. The social-realism may date a little given time, but its horror movie identity won’t.

Oh, ‘His House’ is likely to spook and scare you at times with its holes in the walls and open doorways. The first appearance made me jump; a central set-piece where the ghosts just seem to pile on is a highlight. And just when peaking with dramatic conflict, the film segues into revelations of the past, into steps-into-flashbacks; the kind that often feel a lazy means of exposition in many genre films but is smooth and fascinating here. For rather than just explaining the mystery, the flashback complicates this story further, opening up more themes, muddying waters. It feels narratively straightforward and superficially familiar, but it’s always introducing new nuances and this makes ‘His House’  increasingly dense and always intriguing. Even when Rial calls the Englishmen officials bored, it provides an alternate perspective on the other characters that assume their positions of superiority.

And then, as you think you may have it figured, it turns into a monster movie of sorts. Within its framework, ‘His House’ never rests. Its deftness of genre tropes and social issues only become fully apparent upon reflection. If perhaps the final declarations feel a little too on-the-nose, they are fully earned and feel true to the characters. It is the mystery of people and community that leads here rather than the supernatural, but it doesn’t skimp on the spooks either.

"Breakfast in Exodus" - new Buck Theorem album

 So here is the album I have made & played during lockdown. My blurb for it is: A drift into apishness, flying pigs, the afterlife, stupidity, friends and darlings.

Amusements: links of distraction

Pat Healy on Werner Herzog, Spielberg, and tossing a naked stuntman into the snow

Interview by Andrew McLevy

Interview - I SEE YOU Director Adam Randall

interview by Eric Hillis

The Comfort of Strangers: Significant Others

by Maitland McDonagh

Here's the latest album from my  pal, James Eastwood, with some dreamy guitar ambience.

Brahms: The Boy II

 Brahms: The Boy II

Director: William Brent Bell

Writer: Stacey Menear

You know how the original ‘The Boy’ was distinguished because you thought you were watching THAT film, but actually it was THIS film? ‘Brahms: The Boy 2’ just goes, “Hey, let’s just do THAT film!” Therefore, it doesn’t demand anything from itself besides a tedious explanation  from a web site - which now replace libraries as the bane of horror mysteries - to shove away the distinction of the original. So, it’s a little disrespectful in that particular way sequels have. For two thirds, it is slick and intriguing with everything solid but unexceptional: the mother and son are trying to recover from the trauma of a violent burglary, and the son isn’t coping so well. And of course you have the "Paranoid Mother" trope. But the third act and revelations descend into silliness and no pleasing sleight-of-hand. It is disappointing coming from the same director and writer team of the original.

Frightfest Halloween day 5: 'Lucky', 'Slaxx', 'Scavenger', 'The Nights Before Christmas'

 SCAVENGER - Carroña

Directors: Luciana Garraza & Eric Fleitas

2020, Argentina

Writers: Sheila Fentana, Luciana Garraza & Eric Fleitas

Set in a post-apocalyptic world… no land for vegetarians … ‘Mad Max’ with misogyny turned way up. A woman (Nayla Churruarin) – an assassin and organ-trader –  with a near-permanent grimace goes on a mission of revenge on the gang that massacred her family, with lots of rape and degradation. But it’s not the kind of film asking for any validation. The nihilism is total, the exploitation is nasty rather than fun, but this Argentine film must surely win an award for the scuzziest aesthetic ever. 

Slaxx

Director: Elza Kephart

2020, Canada

Writers; Patricia Gomex & Elza Kephart

“When a possessed pair of jeans begins to kill the staff of a trendy clothing store, it is up to Libby, an idealistic young salesclerk, to stop its bloody rampage.” But this IMDB summary misses the vital ingredient that the jeans are out for revenge for the abuses of Indian sweatshops. It’s broad in its satire – director Elsa Kephart herself says it isn’t subtle - so although the jeans being able to hypnotise its victims with logos and the corporate nonsense-mantras are acute, the manager willing to do anything for promotion doesn’t hold any surprises. Perhaps it’s best melding of the ridiculous and meaningful is the Bhangra-dancing slacks then turns out to have relevance. The film occasionally struggles to reconcile these twin poles of the silly and the political, but both sides score points along the way.

Lucky

Director: Nathasha Kermani

2020, USA

Writer: Brea Grant

I am a sucker for failure-of-reality genre, and this fits that. She says, “There’s man outside!” And husband replies, “Yeah, he comes every night to kill us,” in a tired this-is-routine way. And from there, a seemingly supernatural daily recurrence of slasher danger defines her life. But Brea Grant’s script (I was a big fan of her ’12 Hour Shift’) is after bigger game as allegory takes hold and squeezes until, with the final reveal, there’s a deep-rooted sadness. It’s the horror of being unmoored of certainty in yourself: “I don’t know the rules,” she says at one point. The general tone of misogyny and gaslighting is baked into experience and encounters with authority and people rather than any meanness or cruelty on any individual’s part. And that’s perhaps the slyest, most subtle trick of Grant’s script, so that there really isn’t any recognisable villain to pin this on: it’s there but not quite obvious; it’s a lifelong experience. The horror of That’s-Just-The-Way-It-Is. The move from straightforward plot to being trapped in allegory is not something that is often successful, but ‘Lucky’ pulls it off and grips right to that final reveal … and the inevitability is what’s sad.

The Nights Before Christmas

Director: Paul Tanter

Writers: Paul Tanter and Sean Phillips

A wannabe Joker storyline – teeth; a hysterical homicidal pig-tailed sidekick; crazy games; totally "unpredictable" psycho – but there’s no wit or satire here, just a lot of empty madman pontificating and police procedural hokum. 

Frightfest Halloween day 4: 'Relic', 'The World we Knew', 'Blood Harvest, 'Broil', 'Cyst'

The World We Knew

Director: WW Jones & Luke Kinner

2020, UK

Writers: Benjamin Jones & Kirk Lake

The concept is Gangster’s versus Ghosts, with a concentration on the psychology. But British gangsters seem to come with that talking in cliché or colourful criminal style that is quickly tedious. Jones and Lake’s script is better than just ugly men snarking, but it’s still a group of criminals talking tough to each other. There’s the young’un, the psychopath, the veteran, etc. The cast is good, though, with what they have. You know there’s going to be speeches about the good ol’ days, about their dad, and there will storytelling and monologuing. Hiding out in a house after a job-gone-wrong, these men have to reckon with the ghosts of their past. It’s not jump scares, it’s about the characters. And then confrontations with ghosts just end up being more tough talk. A slow-burn is fine, but perhaps this depends upon how much you invest in a bunch of near-cliché men being sentimental and/or having a conscience about a reprehensible past. It doesn’t build to anything, but it does have a good endnote.

 

The Cyst

Director: Tyler Russell

2020, USA

Writers: Tyler Russel & Andy Silverman

A gleefully silly creature-feature that reminds of early Roger Corman, or Frank Henenlotter, or  the films like ‘TerrorVision’ released on the Charles Band’s Entertainment (I always had a soft spot for ‘TerrorVison’… not exactly sure why). Set in the Sixties in a clinic where an increasingly off-his-rocker doctor (George Hardy having heaps of fun) treats cysts, it’s limitations are part of the fabric: as with  most mad scientist scenarios, it’s hilarious to think he made such a breakthrough device in his squalid clinic – it’s just a big block of dials and buttons made from whatever sciencey-looking equipment was seemingly left around his garage. The cyst monster is a glorious old-school practical effect with lots of squirty pus and a beachball eye (Russell said in the post-screening interview that about 80% of the effects were practical). A short run time, things kept just this side of zany although continuously ridiculous, with Eva Habermann greatly appealing and up for anything make this a lot of fun.

 

Blood Harvest

Thomas Robert Lee

2020

 

A somewhat generic horror title that does the content only nodding service. Originally called ‘The Ballad of Audrey Earnshaw’, or ‘The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw’, which are far more appropriate. But Alan Jones’ introduction referenced ‘The Witch’, so immediately upping my expectations.

Secretly living as occultists on the edge of a Protestant town, a mother and daughter collide with the community as the daughter’s asserts herself. Eerie things happen and soon it’s more than just crops not growing to contend with. There’s a good portrayal of a town besieged by witchcraft and Black Magic, menace and tragedy become the default with the story perhaps going not quite where you expect it to. Good performances; generational clashes run parallel with clashes with the community which is apposite for a coming-of-age tale; a consistent atmosphere of unease and washed-out tones dominate. I note accusations of loose plotting, but the bubble of dread besieging an isolated community, where seemingly random tragedies build up a bigger whole, is consistently the focus. A quiet, understated horror-drama of a whole town receiving the brunt of a girl’s displeasure. 

Broil

Director: Edward Drake

2020, Canada

Writers: Edward Drake & Piper Mars

Any plot synopsis is likely to spoil ‘Broil’s drift. It starts like a typical high school scenario but the information and story then comes so thick and fast that for a while it’s uncertain what conventions it will follow. It uses many tricks of shuffling perspective and expectation so that when it does settle down, it doesn’t take too long with exposition and keeps up the speed and therefore maintains an entertaining momentum. It’s colourful, smart, and excellently played: one of its successes is that even the minor characters leave a mark. It’s a little more conventional than its razzle-dazzle surface, but it’s always engagingly played. There’s the theme of rich-people-are-different and Family Secrets, but it mostly services as a fun ride peppered with nastiness and a little genre-mashing.

 

Relic

Writer & Director: Natalie Erika Jones

2020, Australia

One of those horrors that is so rooted in relatable, sad and difficult reality – a mother and daughter facing grandma’s apparent Alzheimer’s – that when it slips into genre, you hardly see the joins. Satisfyingly chilling and emotionally authentic that it is no wonder it’s been getting a lot of praise. It has the kind of resonance that people with a narrow view of the genre wouldn’t expect. It uses the uncanny to both indicate illness and the genre: for example, it wasn’t a surprise when writer-director Jones said her grandma lived in a house that scared her. It probably goes without saying that the three female leads are exceptional,. Robyn Nevin's performance is brave and captivating, warm and unsettling, covering the whole gamut. Mortimer and Heathcoat are wonderfully grounded, with the edges between the younger mother-daughter dynamic implicit without obvious dramatic conflict. With an emotional resonance that gives it crossover appeal, even as it sticks to genre and analogy to the very end, this is a gem.