David recommends . . . . go and see FORBIDDEN PLANET at Dulwich Picture Gallery Monday 18th October 2010

FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956, USA, 98 mins, Cert U)

1950s pulp sci-fi classic as Shakespeare meets spacemen meets Freud

Monday 18th October 7.15 for 7.45pm in the Linbury Room, Dulwich Picture Gallery

£8 (£6 for Friends of the Gallery)  Free nibbles and wine.  Google SE21 7AD for map.

In 1609 the Sea Venture set off from Plymouth as flagship of a small fleet bringing supplies and new migrants to the first successful English colony in the Americas, Jamestown. The ship was severely damaged in a violent tempest and deliberately driven onto a Bermuda reef to save it from sinking. Crew and passengers spent 9 months on that exotic island while their ship was repaired, before finally making it to Jamestown. And then the ship back to England.

This adventure was the biggest news story since the defeat of the Spanish Armada twenty years earlier. It captured the imagination of Jacobean England, including one William Shakespeare. 

To his contemporaries, America was a fantasy land offering riches and a new future. Much was written by wildly imaginative writers who had never set foot there. The Americas became for the 17th Century English a socially constructed fantasy of dreamlike possibilities. But combined with danger.  For Jamestown was the 12th English attempt to start a permanent colony on the land they called Virginia.  A majority of the souls who took part in the previous 11 efforts died - drowned, starved, or killed by the indigenous inhabitants. Virginia meant adventure and anticipated wealth, but also danger.  

Which is where Shakespeare and Forbidden Planet explore the same themes - psychological ambivalence.  

Most Americans today do not have a passport. Apart from day trips to Canada or Mexico only a small minority travels abroad. So abroad can seem an alien, scary place, as often represented in Hollywood films. Large numbers of Americans left their continent and found death,in 1917-18 and in 1941-46. Forbidden Planet was released 10 years after the War in the Pacific, and just 3 years after the Korean War ended.  And at the height of fears of Soviet invasion.  Not to mention Martian invasion. A new generation is now finding, in Iraq and Afghanistan, that exploration and the pursuit of gold are mortally dangerous.

The ambivalence of excitement versus danger begins in both The Tempest and Forbidden Planet with this geographical exploration. Forbidden Planet starts with the characters of The Tempest, and with its opening situation. A spaceship is sent to a planet to search for colonists not heard from for 20 years. 

Doctor Morbius is Prospero, enabling an update of Shakespeare's question about a second form of ambivalence: science. Can the exploration for new knowledge go too far? Prospero and Morbius use science to do good, but can they unwittingly do evil? Shakespeare wrote when the Renaissance was a hundred years old. But with the Scientific Revolution still a hundred years ahead. And the burning of women as witches in between. 

Forbidden Planet was released not long after the scientific horror of Hiroshima, and the scientific industrialisation of death at Auschwitz. And with worries about global warming, nuclear power, and GM crops lying ahead in the future.

Hence our third level of ambivalence - the psychologically deepest of all. Are humans good or bad? 

The Tempest's characters can be placed on a continuum from good to evil. Prospero and Morbius both have sweet, innocent, virginal daughters. Reflecting the Jacobean assumption that the natives of Virginia would be innocent, 'noble savages'. The 'natural' versus the civilised, including science. Prospero's helpful spirit Ariel has become Robby the Robot. In the middle of the continuum are the ambivalent figures of the two magician-scientists.  But what about the far end of the scale- Evil?

The most interesting character in The Tempest is Caliban,a  hideous, deformed monster. Not just evil but the son of evil, begotten by a witch. And confined by Prospero in a tree, repflecting the socially necessary suppression of our dark side. For Caliban expresses the dark side of nature / The New World / space. And of us, humans. Who is Caliban in Forbidden Planet? The film takes a thoroughly 20th Century route to answer this question.  And contemporary ones: how can we ensure we do good rather than evil?

David recommends . . . go and see WINTER'S BONE

Hot on the heels of MADE IN DAGENHAM comes a much better film about female self-empowerment.

Ree Dolly is just 17, her father Jessop has "gone" and Momma is "sick" and "don't talk much". Which means Ree has to bring up her brother and sister (12 and 8) as well as take care of Momma.  All this happens amid the tree-clad and beautiful Ozark mountains of rural Missouri.  

Culturally, if not geographically, the Ozarks are an extension of the Appalachian back hills of Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia.  All double denim, checked shirts, unemployment and family feuds. "Cooking up crank" is both a popular local lifestyle choice and cottage industry.

This is real poverty.  The horse has not been fed for 4 days. Ree has to teach the young siblings how to use a rifle. Then how to skin squirrels and prepare them for the pot. Turns out later that being able to cut up dead things comes in handy in them thar hills.

The Sheriff is looking for Ree's father who is due in court next week but cannot be found. He explains that the terms of Poppa's bail bond mean if he fails to turn up then the family will lose their house and land. "We'll have to live in the mud!!" No namby-pamby social safety net in this Cameronian-Cleggian free market paradise.

So we are perfectly set up for a Quest Film, one of the half dozen or so basic plots. For young Ree sets off wandering round the neighbours and extended family to ask if they've seen the errant dad. And a mystery emerges. Asking questions is not encouraged among the local community. "Talking just causes witnesses". "You were warned, why didntcha listen?". Something suspicious is going on. To find out what, you have to see the film.

Jennifer Lawrence is excellent as Ree.  And this is so much more of a "women's film" than the faux left-leaning Made in Dagenham, for at the helm is celebrated young Director and co-Writer Debra Granik. 

WINTER'S BONE won the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, which establishes it's Indie credentials. Independent US cinema, as encouraged by Sundance, challenges the myth of many Europeans that all American films are dumb mass-audience fodder. WINTER'S BONE is an intelligent and thoughtful piece. It provides mystery and suspense without a single car chase, gunfight, or gag.  And the autumnal Ozark countryside is atmospheric and beautiful.

David recommends . . . don't believe the hype about MADE IN DAGENHAM

MID will be an enormous box office success. The reasons are very simple.


1.  It's about wimmin, nay working-class wimmin, empowering themselves against discrimination. So millions of women will go see it.


2.  There is a new law, apparently, that all reviews of MID have to refer to it as a "feel-good movie". So that whole Richard Curtis "I wanna feel-good!!!" crowd will be queuing fast.


3.  It portrays trades unions and strike action in a positive light. So everyone on the Left will go and see it, especially given the New Dawn of Edism.  This, combined with 1, will draw in millions of right on men.


4.  It's a British movie which has been massively hyped. This will bring in all those who (a) are desperate for the UK film industry to do well (despite making crap films) and / or (b) hate American blockbusters.


5.  It's set in the 60s so will draw in herds of 60s nostalgia fetishists, irrespective of whether it accurately reflects the 60s. (See "The Boat That Rocked")


6.  Everyone covered under 1 to 5 will fall for the hype and tell all their friends it is "the best movie ever made", "it's really really feel-good!!!" etc.  Bringing in even more millions.


7.  It's got Sally Hawkins in it, who gurned her way, appallingly, through previous bad British film HAPPY-GO-LUCKY (bit like "feel-good" - are you getting the picture?). And there's another new law that she has to be promoted as (a) a wonderful new talent and (b) the future of the now-being-reborn UK film industry.


In other words it's a triumph of marketing that will be studied in business schools for many years to come. It illustrates the difference between advertising and marketing. The latter meaning you plan for what demographics (see 1 to 6 above) you are going to sell to BEFORE you even design the product. Which means YOU are being manipulated even as you consider - for no longer then 3 seconds probably - whether to go and see it.


Since I'm already clearly biased, here's a few snippets from a couple of the less hysterical user reviews on imdb.com. And note that these are quotes from what are positive reviews overall.


"The film has all the look and feel of a TV movie and is utterly predictable in its mix of humour and tragedy."


"The movie is set in May/June 1968 and it's a pity more care wasn't taken to ensure the period detail was spot on."


"All the ingredients of a British feelgood movie are there but the overall effect is somewhat spoilt by the tendency to portray all the male authority figures as buffoons."


"It's just a pity that in portraying the women as strong salt-of-the-earth characters, the men have to be seen as caricatures."


"This is big screen TV material. A bit of humour; a bit of heart-string tugging; a bit of stereotyping; a bit of costume drama, a bit of vintage vehicle spotting; a bit of real life documentary; a bit of 'celebrity star' spotting - actors playing roles you wouldn't think they'd take; a bit of flesh baring, a bit of social comment; a bit of this and everything else so as no one feels left out. Trouble is, this makes it a Jack & Jill of all trades and master/mistress of none".


"It is, at the end of the day, a superficial treatment of a ground breaking industrial dispute."


Or how about rottentomatoes.com?


"It’s jolly stuff, yet for all the bawdy banter, there’s a Boat That Rocked-like sense of a genuinely interesting moment being regurgitated as a cuddly sitcom."


"I'm not saying Made In Dagenham is a shallow piece of nostalgic fluff. But within five minutes, Bob Hoskins is singing My Old Man Said Follow The Van during a power cut."


The comments about the male characters are perhaps the most subtly significant. Basically, it's a chick flick.  As a few minutes spent watching TV advertising will reveal, marketers sell to men using sex, and to women by portraying men as stupid.


That is perhaps the ultimate irony. A film promoted as about women's self-empowerment will make millions by manipulating women. The film clearly (some would say, rather obviously) reveals women's oppression by capitalism as workers. Less obviously it reflects how women are oppressed by capitalists as consumers.  I wonder what Naomi 'No Logo' Klein would have to say?