The 'Berliner' Guardian

The Guardian has redesigned itself today. It has a new size (called Berliner - smaller than a broadsheet, bigger than a tabloid), a new masthead, and every page is now in full colour. The best newspaper in the world is now even better. [In the photo, the first Berliner edition is on the right, with an old broadsheet edition on the left for comparison.]

Rashomon

I saw Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon today, a very thought-provoking film. Although the absolute truth of the events it describes is shown to be irrelevant, I can't help wondering exactly what the 'real' scenario is.

The plot is, at least initially, uncomplicated: a woman is raped by a bandit and her husband is killed. Also, the film has only three locations: the wood where the rape and killing take place, an open-air court where witnesses describe the events, and a derelict building in which the situation is discussed.

What the director does with this simple scenario, though, is quite amazing: he presents the narrative in flashback, from the perspectives of four different people. Each version of the events is different, as each one favours its own self-serving and unreliable narrator. We are never told which, if indeed any, of these versions is entirely true, though we are left with the clear awareness that truth itself is highly subjective.

Toshiro Mifune stars as the proud yet naive bandit. He recounts what he regards as his noble actions, though, in one version of events, the woman escapes after he begs her to marry him. Her surprisingly stoical husband reacts calmly to everything around him though is also a skilled samurai swordsman. His wife is alternately terrified and dominant, screaming in fear though later mocking the two men for their lack of verility. So, each version of the story presents a different interpretation of the characters.

In the wood where the central story takes place, the sun shines through the trees creating a dappled light that reminds me of the lovely Pierre Auguste Renoir painting of the Moulin de la Galette. Rashomon not only shows this dappled sunlight, though; he also films the sun itself, glinting between the trees.

Lens flare, when a light source is pointed directly at the camera, is one of my absolute favourite photographic effects. Akira Kurosawa was one of the very first directors to point his camera directly at the sun, and when he does so in Rashomon he creates a beautiful and natural image.

Charlie & The Chocolate Factory

I saw Charlie & The Chocolate Factory today. I'd been really looking forward to it, because I love Tim Burton's films. His 're-imagining' of Planet Of The Apes didn't have much imagination, and I thought Big Fish was too sentimental, but Burton's best films all star Johnny Depp so I had very high hopes for The Chocolate Factory.

And, mostly, it was as good as I hoped it would be. Depp is excellent as Willy Wonka, and there's a very strong resemblance to Michael Jackson. They both have too-pale skin, dandyish clothes, high-pitched voices, and girly laughs. They're both isolated megalomaniacs who have lost touch with reality. They both live in secluded fantasy worlds: Wonka's factory and Jackson's Neverland. They both invite children into these enclosures, and the kids mostly end up regretting it...

There's a lovely scene near the start of the film when Wonka cuts the ribbon to open his factory - Depp holds the scissors in a clear reference to Edward Scissorhands (probably my favourite Burton/Depp film). There are also some very funny moments - when the first child tells Wonka her name, he replies "I don't care"; when he's given a business card by one of the parents, he immediately throws it away. (These incidental moments are much funnier than the too-obvious, conscious attempts at humour, like Grandpa's dancing scene.)

The design of the factory, both exterior and interior, is stunning. On the outside, it looks like an Expressionist creation from Metropolis, while inside it resembles the Technicolor Munchkin Land from The Wizard Of Oz (the Munchkin-like Oompa Loompas obviously enhance the Oz connection). It's refreshing that Burton tried to reduce the use of CGI to a bare minimum - the sets are all real, as are the trained squirrels and the river of chocolate. The Oompa Loompas were all played by the same man, but instead of simply being digitally duplicated he actually acted each character individually,

It is never made entirely clear where the factory is located. It looks very much like England, with rows of terraced houses built for the factory-workers during the Industrial Revolution, though Charlie finds a banknote with Abraham Lincoln's portrait on it, and in the British-style corner shop the customers try to buy his ticket with dollars. This is distracting, and a bit odd considering that Burton lives in London himself.

Lastly, I should mention that there are several sustained film references. A miniaturised child shouts "Help me!" in a clear reference to the original version of The Fly, and there's a spoof of the Psycho shower scene in black-and-white. Most unusually, there is a sustained reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Wonka announces that he can teleport a chocolate bar into a TV screen, and we are shown an uncanny recreation of the Dawn Of Man sequence from 2001. Wonka reveals an over-sized chocolate bar, and Also Sprach Zarathrustra swells up on the soundtrack. The chocolate bar is teleported into the TV screen, whereupon it transforms into the 2001 monolith. (Contrary to Wikipedia, this scene does not use actual footage from 2001.)