I don’t know why I keep on going to documentaries about architects… they certainly seem to be a more popular film subject than, say, chemical engineers or traffic flow designers. Anyway, I was about two minutes late for Learning From Light: The Vision of I.M. Pei, but I don’t think I missed anything essential. This movie was about the famous architect in the title, and his involvement in the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar. I think I learned some really interesting things about his take on Islamic architecture, and a bit about Islamic art in general.
One of the interesting points that I took away is the importance of light, particularly the strong, shifting light of the sun, in keeping strongly geometric building shapes alive – the circular dome on the octagon on the octagon on the square on the square that makes the iconic Islamic temple shape takes on different looks at different times of the day. He talked about looking at the fortresses of Islam to see purely secular examples of Islamic architecture, and used the traditional hanging oil-lanterns as his inspiration for his chandeliers; it was fascinating to hear a bit about his process, and how much a role actually building the museum had in the design (or re-design) process.
The other nugget of knowledge was the observation that almost all the art in this particular museum was functional – wall tiles, carpets, jewellery, pots, they all served a function in addition to their value as art. Presumably the ban on representational art meant that statuary and paintings weren’t in the picture, and those are the big two things that are objects whose only use is decorative. Well, I guess they’re slightly functional, since you can use them to cover up unsightly patches or what-have-you…
Anyway, interesting and well done, and I think Ellen would enjoy it, but I don’t think I need to see it again.
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Women Without Men was sad, as you’d expect a movie about the situation of Iranian women circa the 50s military coup to be. Some quite impressive camera work, and what I sincerely hope was some impressive makeup or effects (because otherwise one of the actresses got terrifyingly thin for her role). One interesting character was the brother, determined to marry off his sister before his wedding, and who offers to marry a girl who had crush on him… and says that his current wife will be her servant. Until, she points out, he tires of her, and then she will be the servant to the next girl who catches his eye.
I thought it was a good film, in the sense that it was well made, but I’m not sure that I enjoyed it.
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I hadn’t intended to have as Islamic theme to my day, but Four Lions turns a coincidence into a theme. The premise was that a bunch of bumbling British Muslims are trying to join the jihad, but they’re a white guy convert who does things like leave a Twin Towers cake at a synagogue on 9/11, a guy who thinks he can train suicide-bomber crows, an amiable but dim guy, a rapping rich kid, and a moderately bright one.
But – in some ways the film made the problem of Islamic terrorists a scarier prospect, since it humanised them, but didn’t make them seem less dangerous. The bright one has a son who he reads stories to, and a wife who works as a nurse, both of whom cheerfully support his decision to martyr himself, to be “in heaven before his head hits the ceiling”; and I have no basis to know whether their normality is ridiculous for a jihadist bomber. While the rants he’s seen trying to record seem more rehearsed than heartfelt, he does mention that his uncle died in the Balkans defending a mosque – and that anger seemed to be intended to be genuine.
Very few people come out of this looking good; the security forces are depicted as gung-ho incompetents consistently targeting the wrong guys, for example, while the Islamic brother of the bright one who advocates peace won’t enter a room or argue with a woman, and comes across as annoyingly sanctimonious. In fact, the people who seem most competent and focused are the terrorists in Pakistan… which might not be the message that the film-makers intended to send
It was a funny film; but it mostly left me a bit sad, because there was a certain amount of “ha-ha, only serious.” I don’t think I’d watch it again… although I’d be interested to see how it reads in, say, twenty years time.
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I met up with C for Candyman, which was preceded by a short doc made by a woman about her two dads (biological and step). One was an outgoing Polynesian ladies’ man with a smart new car who was shown drinking beer with his mates and barbecuing, the other was a quiet, reserved Pakeha with a vintage car who was shown watching Coro St and hoarding enormous amounts of stuff in the garage. I asked C which one I resembled more, but she couldn’t stop laughing long enough to answer, so I guess it will remain a mystery.
The movie proper was both fascinating and sad – basically David Klein had his one big idea when invented Jelly Belly jellybeans, but a series of poor business decisions has meant that not only has he been muscled out of his trademark, he’s been erased from the history books: despite the fact that he was the public face of Jelly Belly until 1980 (where he was browbeaten into signing over his interest to the current owners), he is not mentioned by the current company in any of their histories, which seems a very petty act for no obvious reason. And he hasn’t had another big idea.
There are other stories of skullduggery, too – the ice-cream shop where he started his business taking out the California trademark and extorting money from him, for example. And Costa Botes has done a good job sketching out how the character of the man made these tricks possible, as well as the dark times that this led to… showing the consequences for the family, without wallowing in them overmuch. I thought it did what it set out to do well.
There were a few interesting anecdotes in the Q&A, but one that caught my attention is how difficult it is to get into festivals – I believe he said that one festival where he was accepted had 5000 submissions, and accepted 8. He attributed this to the lowering of the entry costs, but didn’t suggest a possible solution.
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Finally, it was off to the remastered Once Upon A Time In The West. Firstly, watching this made me want to play Railroad Tycoon again. Secondly, it reminded me that a lot of the Morricone soundtracks that I’ve heard just don’t work for anything but the film which they were made for. And thirdly, even though it’s a bit slow by today’s standards, it is good, clever, funny and tense.
I enjoyed watching this film.
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