Encounters at the End of the World
USA 2007
Documentary
Director : Werner Herzog
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From Russia With Love
UK 1963
Starring : Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi
Director : Terence Young
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Shifty
UK 2008
Starring : Riz Ahmed, Daniel Mays
Director : Eran Creevy
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"THE only truly alien planet," wrote J G Ballard in 1962, "is Earth." Ample corroboration for this statement can be found in Werner Herzog's outstanding documentary Encounters at the End of the World, in which the veteran German film-maker travels to and around Antarctica, interviewing those hardy folk who have made their home in this most extreme and inhospitable of continents. Along the way we get to examine some truly stunning vistas – both on land and underwater – while gaining intimate access to the fauna which flourish in the harshest of environments ("slime-type blobs [in a] horribly violent world").
Encounters - which obtained the Los Angeles-based director his first, belatedly overdue Oscar nomination when shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature earlier this year – is easily one of his most accessible, enjoyable works. Nevertheless – as he himself warns – audiences expecting another March of the Penguins natural-history affair are likely to be disappointed. Herzog, as always, is drawn to the oddball, the weird, the ornery and the disturbing. So when penguins do pop up, they chiefly serve as focus for Herzog's typically eccentric philosophical/psychological musings – as stimulating as they are deadpan-comic (as when, nearing Mount Erebus, he speculates on "the etiquette of dealing with this volcano.") Indeed, Encounters at the End of the World is easily one of the year's most hilarious releases – as well as being, courtesy of Peter Zeitlinger's cinematography, one of the most visually striking. Though originally commissioned by TV's Discovery Channel, it absolutely demands to be seen on the biggest screens.
But Herzog deploys comedy for serious purposes: his film's title has apocalyptic as well as geographical applications. Interviewing a range of scientists at various research-stations – and few films have such a casual, taken-for-granted respect for science, learning, and their practical applications – Herzog comes to some pretty grave conclusions about the planet's prospects. Elegaic and acerbic, displaying a genuine empathy and engagement with its subjects, and delicately scored by Henry Kaiser and David Lindley, Encounters at the End of the World thus stands as simultaneously a warning-bell and a requiem, both transcendent and urgent. Catch it if, and while, you can.
THE majority of Tribune readers will, by contrast, already have "caught" From Russia With Love on several occasions – the 1963 spy-caper having become, like the rest of the James Bond series (this was the second, after 1962's Dr No) such a famous telly fixture. There's a certain irony in this, given the fact that such big-budget enterprises were specifically devised to counter the dire threat to box-office revenues posed by the arrival of televisions in the nation's living-rooms at the end of the fifties. Now Sean Connery's Bond is back in the multiplexes – on screens only recently vacated by Daniel Craig's sophomore 007 outing Quantum of Solace – via what's touted as the "pristine digital restoration" of the movie many critics apparently regard as the finest Bond-picture of all.
They're wrong, of course – On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) is by far the best of the bunch, but is usually subject to knee-jerk dismissal thanks to the presence in the lead of George Lazenby. From Russia With Love is pretty standard-issue stuff, adhering very closely to the standard 007 template – a series of concomitants, elements, scenes, situations and lines that comprise something akin to the rituals of kabuki or commedia dell'arte. As ever, audiences are allowed to wallow in some vicarious high-end tourism as Bond arrives in Istanbul (a "rough town," apparently) only to fall into a trap set by the nefarious forces of SPECTRE – as personified by the chess-playing Putin-lookalike Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal) and hatchet-faced Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya, a very long way from Brecht.)
Robert Shaw – as SPECTRE assassin Red Grant, kept coyly mute until the final act – is probably the best thing about the picture: an Aryan-superman type who proves a much tougher-than-average opponent for our quip-wielding hero. Indeed, Bond only bests Grant via a decidedly implausible bit of business involving a "final cigarette" request and an exploding suitcase. At such ludicrous, campy moments (Bond arriving in a hotel-room to the full-bore accompaniment of the blaring 007 theme; Bond and babe escaping through the mouth of Anita Ekberg) Austin Powers and such spoofing ilk seem more than a touch superfluous.
ERAN Creevy may never get to make a Bond movie, nor is he likely to become Britain's answer to Werner Herzog, but with Shifty this thirtyish writer-director has turned in a sparkling little debut that shows significant amounts of both promise and achievement. What's particularly encouraging is that Creevy has taken a budget of only £100,000 – provided by Screen London's 'Microwave' project – and used its limitations to his advantage, rather than falling into the trap (all too common these days) of trying to make a champagne movie on lemonade funds.
His story – which unfolds with truly classical unity, in one day and in one location (suburban Borehamwood doubling for the fictional 'Dudlowe') – is a character-based piece focussed firmly on the up-and-down friendship between two blokes in their mid-to-late twenties. Shifty (Ahmed) is a Muslim drug-dealer, cocky intermediary between small-time hoods such as Glen (Jason Flemyng) and users like harrassed family-man Trevor (Jay Simpson). One day his easygoing best mate Chris (Mays) unexpectedly shows up, having been living "up north" for a few years, and the pair very quickly fall back into their old routines. But things have changed – and the duo must face up to the unresolved issues from their past, and also to the realities of their present.
Carefully avoiding melodrama and exaggeration, Shifty is a convincing journey into a semi-hidden stratum of 21st-century Britain via a script that deals lightly but effectively with tough social, cultural, ethnic and economic issues. Structured around a pair of engaging, rock-solid performances from the leads – who, crucially, actually do come across as best mates – the film explores some pretty dark territory at times, but always does so with a certain swagger, a beguiling strain of knockabout comedy, that prevents proceedings from descending into gratuitous grimness. It's the kind of thing that the BBC's Play For Today used to turn out with apparent effortlessness time and again in the seventies and eighties, but which now comes around so infrequently that to stumble across it is cause for quiet celebration (albeit tinged with a certain nostalgic regret.)
Neil Young
written for the 22nd April edition of Tribune magazine
ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD : [8/10] : USA 2007 : Werner HERZOG : 101m (BBFC) : seen 25th June 2008, FilmHouse cinema, Edinburgh (press screening – Edinburgh International Film Festival). Original review.
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE : [6/10] : UK 1963 : Terence YOUNG : 115m (BBFC) : seen 23rd January 2009, CineWorld cinema, Milton Keynes (press show – 60th CinemaDays event)
SHIFTY : [7/10] : UK 2008 : Eran CREEVY : 85m (BBFC) : seen 23rd January 2009, CineWorld cinema, Milton Keynes (press show – 60th CinemaDays event)
