Thomas Vinterberg‘s film of the Hardy novel, Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), is about the occurrence of discovery—discovery of  another’s romantic interest, of responsibility, of sexual pleasure, of heartache.  The first hour and the last few moments, the coda, of the film are compelling; the rest of it is too hurried, with short shrift given where it should not be given.  In addition, main character Bathsheba Everdeen doesn’t seem entirely human because of course she is a nineteenth century proto-feminist.

Carey Mulligan, who plays her, never does anything surprising but is interesting in the role nonetheless.  Even stronger are Michael Sheen and Matthias Schoenaerts.  There is no greatness in Madding Crowd, as there is in a period piece like 1973’s The Emigrants.  I believe it to be a failure, but a very watchable failure—a near-success, in fact.

It is the mid 1950s and Leonard Marnham, the English “innocent” of Ian McEwan’s 1990 novel The Innocent, has joined a group of mostly Americans in an espionage endeavor in Berlin.  A tunnel is to be used for spying on the Soviets (a real-life venture), and Leonard is duly put to technical work.  By and by he becomes romantically involved with a German woman called Maria, whose ex-husband occasionally, drunkenly batters her. . . An agonizing episode drives Leonard and Maria to kill the ex-husband in self-defense, and since the Berlin law cannot be trusted in this instance, the desperate couple dismember the lout’s body and place the parts in suitcases.  Alas, the love affair is undermined by this, and after a while the spying operation is subverted.

What Leonard encounters is a non-political violence between wars—the war against the Nazis and the Cold War.  The violence of the ex-husband is an ordinary violence, but no less shattering to the individual than national or collective violence.  Violence, like life, goes on, in war or in peace, and often it paves the way for either betrayal or what looks like betrayal, as it does here.

The trauma and the contingency which James Wood says McEwan’s novels (e.g. Atonement) are about rush to the fore in this gripping book.  They aren’t pretty.

The Innocent (novel) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In Robert Bresson‘s first feature film, Angels of Sin (1943), which I saw on YouTube, righteous behavior intersects with the worldly behavior of a desperate soul.  Here, a zealous young nun, Anne-Marie (Renee Faure), tries to Christianly love a female ex-con (Jany Holt) taking refuge in Anne-Marie’s convent.  Unknown to the convent sisters, she is there after having committed a murder.

Less oddly directed than Bresson’s later films, Angels is also less spiritually vivid and resonant, and is far from first-rate.  It is a serious picture, though, and does well in showing the distinctive lives of nuns.  To my mind, frankly, it is about the impossibility of saintliness (but not sacrifice), albeit we also infer from it that the devout life is a good life.

(In French with English subtitles)

Poster for ”La Règle du jeu, directed by Jean Renoir (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the late 1930s, film artist Jean Renoir was not happy with French society, which he exposed in La Regle du jeu (1939)—The Rules of the Game—as unserious and self-seeking and infernally adulterous.  Curiously, class distinctions take a step back (both Christine and her chambermaid cheat on their husbands), but the camaraderie we see is usually limited to one’s own class.  And yet this camaraderie, such as that between Christine and Genevieve de Marras, quickly departs, and certainly without it, there is mayhem.

For all this, The Rules of the Game is a “pleasant” movie (Renoir’s word, translated); it is pronouncedly comical.  It is a classic, made so partly by some excellent acting.  Marcel Dalio, for example, looks right as the Marquis Robert, but is also unerring with the character’s casual decadence and tired vigor.  Mila Parely, another example, cleverly plays Genevieve, the marquis’s mistress, displaying a range of emotion as admirable as her poise.  But why was Rules Renoir’s last great film?

(In French with English subtitles)