for Tribune this week : ’35 Shots of Rum’; ‘Soul Power’
35 Shots of Rum [6/10]
Director: Claire Denis
Soul Power [6/10]
Director: Jeffrey Levi-Hinte
Five years ago Claire Denis made one of the decade's finest films with the dazzlingly mysterious and unclassifiable L'intrus (a.k.a. The Intruder.) Apart from 2005's relatively little-seen documentary Vers Mathilde, 35 Shots of Rum is the first we've heard from her since.
It's the empathetically humanistic story of middle-aged black Parisian train-driver Lionel (Alex Descas) who lives in the capital's faceless suburbs with his twentyish daughter Josephine (Mati Diop). Josephine's white, German mother has been deceased for some time, and Lionel has – we deduce – been romantically connected with his tower-block neighbour, happy-go-lucky taxi-driver Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue.) The plot, such as it is, revolves around Josephine's slow-budding relationship with another neighbour, free-spirited bachelor Noe (Denis regular Gregoire Colin).
But 35 Shots of Rum isn't chiefly concerned with the development of story. Instead Denis traces the bonds which connect family members, friends, lovers, work-colleagues, and acquaintances in a modern world defined by its "flexibility." What she's after here is a representation of what might be termed the 'soulful quotidian', showing how individuals bind themselves together via shared culture: music, cookery, experience.
And she's very much concerned with how people – especially those whose families originally came from what's referred to here as "the global south" – find room to live and breathe in the chilly, sometimes hostile north. "I don't think we can forget Stiglitz," someone remarks early on, and there's no mistaking Denis's fascination with 21st-century economic and social structures – as illustrated by the small set of characters she chooses to dramatise.
But while her intentions are solidly admirable, there's something not quite satisfactory about the results. Whereas last year's Couscous essayed similar territory – concentrating on the bond between a French father and a daughter in a long-integrated "immigrant" community – with seductive vivacity and charm, 35 Shots of Rum feels more academic, more a working-through of concepts than an involvingly organic experience.
Whatever its merits, this is emphatically a disappointment after the genre-busting expansiveness and tantalising elusive mysteries of The Intruder. The single most original element here is a minor one: the way the actors' names are displayed on screen throughout the lengthy opening titles. In contrast, the crew – including such key contributors as the cinematographer and the editor – have to make do with a few fleeting, shared seconds in the closing credits.
This is, however, entirely appropriate for a film which is primarily constructed as a framework for its performances – and 35 Shots of Rum does feature a near-flawless ensemble, including a likeably eccentric cameo from Rainer Werner Fassbinder's sometime muse (indeed, his sometime wife) Ingrid Caven as the sister/friend (typically, the exact connection is never made crystal-clear) of Josephine's late mother.
If music is a crucial cultural signifier for 35 Shots of Rum, it's the very pulse of life itself in Soul Power. This is a rousingly enjoyable documentary about the 1974 concert organised alongside the 'Rumble in the Jungle' heavyweight bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman – both fight and concert taking place in the Zairean capital, Kinshasa (Zaire now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.)
Whereas the boxing match has long since embedded itself in popular culture – via books such as Norman Mailer's The Fight and George Plimpton's (underrated) Shadow Box, plus Leon Gast's Oscar-winning documentary 1995 When We Were Kings – the concert (described here as "the greatest musical performance that ever was" by reliably-hyperbolic promoter Don King) has been perplexingly overlooked.
Having worked on When We Were Kings' editing, Soul Power's director Levi-Hinte realised there was a treasure-trove of high-quality concert-footage waiting for someone to lick it into shape. More than three decades after the event, that's exactly what's now happened – allowing us to enjoy the likes of James Brown, Miriam Makeba and BB King in what looks and sounds very much like their prime. Any film bookended with Brown in such electrifying, diamante-bedecked form must be worth at least a look – and much of Soul Power has the feel of a project shot on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury a couple of weeks back, rather than a time-capsule of a bygone era.
That said, there are some naggingly troubling aspects of what's otherwise a breezily engaging bit of historical revision. Chief among these is the shadowy presence of Zaire's despotic president, Joseph-Desire Mobutu, who sought to boost his international respectability via his sponsorship of both the prize-fight and the music-concert – historical perspective now casting much of what we see in a decidedly troubling light.
And then there's the gig itself, a two-day affair which seems to have passed with barely a hitch, without a whiff of egotism or trouble from any of the outsized personalities on view. We get a hint of the real rough edges that must have accompanied such an ambitious staging in early scenes that show sponsors' representative Keith Bradshaw – by no means a rock-n-roll type – fretting over minor technical details.
It's in such priceless behind-the-scenes glimpses that Soul Power really comes alive: during such junctures, what we're witnessing is a bit like a documentary version of Robert Altman's Nashville (1975). Elsewhere, the film-makers seem a little too content to take the likes of King, Ali and Brown at face value – when the passing decades have made us realise just how complex and flawed each of them were behind their carefully-constructed, painstakingly-maintained public facades.
Neil Young
30th June, 2009
written for the 8th July edition of Tribune magazine
35 SHOTS OF RUM : [6/10] : 35 Rhums aka Thirty-Five Shots : France (Fr/Ger) 2008 : Claire DENIS : 101m (BBFC) : seen at Cameo cinema, Edinburgh, 26th June 2009 (Edinburgh Int'l Film Festival) - public show (complimentary ticket). Original review.
SOUL POWER : [6/10] : USA 2008 : Jeffrey LEVY-HINTE : 92m (BBFC) : seen at CinemaxX cinema, Berlin, 11th February 2009 (Berlinale – Berlin International Film Festival) – press show. THR review.