Nostalgia, cooking, and memory
Dan Slevin
At the movies with Dan Slevin
TWO OF THE big three Academy Award contenders this year are about looking back on the early days of cinema itself. Scorsese’s Hugo uses the latest technical whizzbangs to bring to life the idea of early cinema and its novelty and excitement. In The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius recreates the techniques of old Hollywood in search of pure nostalgia.
A painstakingly created silent movie with several moments of loveliness, The Artist follows the riches to rags story of screen hero George Valentin and the concurrent rags to riches story of starlet Peppy Miller - who tries to catch him as he falls. The performances of Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo as the two leads are both splendid, Dujardin in particular displays a technical precision that most actors can only dream of.
It’s helpful that pastiche is a French word because The Artist, for all its, ahem, artistry and attention to detail never manages to tell us anything new about creativity, hubris or adaptability. But, come to think it, panache is also a French word and The Artist has plenty of that which may just be enough for a good night out.
Don’t miss the mesmerising documentary, El Bulli: Cooking in Progress which follows Spanish genius Ferran Adrià’s legendary avant-garde restaurant during the long close-season while they develop even more of their weird and wonderful - deconstructivist - dishes, cooked using strange technologies like liquid nitrogen and vacuum chambers.
Structured like one of those backstage putting-on-a-show stories, Adrià’s team struggles with what new to do with sweet potato as opening night approaches and there’s a lovely series of scenes as one chef tries to introduce the idea of a peanut oil and water cocktail that is initially met with skepticism and turns out to be one of the hits of the season.
Every guest gets to sample 40 dishes a night over three hours and, despite all the science, Adrià still finds himself busking his way through some of that first night, paying close attention to customer responses thanks to a huge team of superb front-of-house people.
The great chef himself has the slightly distracted air of someone who is operating on another plane to the rest of us, sitting quietly in one corner of the restaurant sampling every dish even as the patrons arrive, taking notes, dreaming of the next great thing. The famously unprofitable El Bulli has since closed and Adrià is devoting himself to teaching and pure culinary research, no doubt working on things like truffle ravioli in tangerine blossom cooked in a small hadron collider.
Valentine’s Day mawk is provided by The Vow, based on the true story of a woman who suffers a head injury and forgets everything from the previous five years, including the guy she married. Rachel McAdams is the wife - also a sculptor - and beefcake Channing Tatum is the husband - also a record producer.
The biggest problem with The Vow is that McAdams’ character should be the focus - she has by far the most interesting journey even if most of it is internal - but the story focuses on Tatum and what it all means to him, the poor wee thing. And, in a lost opportunity, the team of five people responsible for the script decided to make the conflict between McAdams’ old life and new life about authenticity when it would have been more interesting - and braver - to make it about class instead.
TWO OF THE big three Academy Award contenders this year are about looking back on the early days of cinema itself. Scorsese’s Hugo uses the latest technical whizzbangs to bring to life the idea of early cinema and its novelty and excitement. In The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius recreates the techniques of old Hollywood in search of pure nostalgia.
A painstakingly created silent movie with several moments of loveliness, The Artist follows the riches to rags story of screen hero George Valentin and the concurrent rags to riches story of starlet Peppy Miller - who tries to catch him as he falls. The performances of Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo as the two leads are both splendid, Dujardin in particular displays a technical precision that most actors can only dream of.
It’s helpful that pastiche is a French word because The Artist, for all its, ahem, artistry and attention to detail never manages to tell us anything new about creativity, hubris or adaptability. But, come to think it, panache is also a French word and The Artist has plenty of that which may just be enough for a good night out.
Don’t miss the mesmerising documentary, El Bulli: Cooking in Progress which follows Spanish genius Ferran Adrià’s legendary avant-garde restaurant during the long close-season while they develop even more of their weird and wonderful - deconstructivist - dishes, cooked using strange technologies like liquid nitrogen and vacuum chambers.
Structured like one of those backstage putting-on-a-show stories, Adrià’s team struggles with what new to do with sweet potato as opening night approaches and there’s a lovely series of scenes as one chef tries to introduce the idea of a peanut oil and water cocktail that is initially met with skepticism and turns out to be one of the hits of the season.
Every guest gets to sample 40 dishes a night over three hours and, despite all the science, Adrià still finds himself busking his way through some of that first night, paying close attention to customer responses thanks to a huge team of superb front-of-house people.
The great chef himself has the slightly distracted air of someone who is operating on another plane to the rest of us, sitting quietly in one corner of the restaurant sampling every dish even as the patrons arrive, taking notes, dreaming of the next great thing. The famously unprofitable El Bulli has since closed and Adrià is devoting himself to teaching and pure culinary research, no doubt working on things like truffle ravioli in tangerine blossom cooked in a small hadron collider.
Valentine’s Day mawk is provided by The Vow, based on the true story of a woman who suffers a head injury and forgets everything from the previous five years, including the guy she married. Rachel McAdams is the wife - also a sculptor - and beefcake Channing Tatum is the husband - also a record producer.
The biggest problem with The Vow is that McAdams’ character should be the focus - she has by far the most interesting journey even if most of it is internal - but the story focuses on Tatum and what it all means to him, the poor wee thing. And, in a lost opportunity, the team of five people responsible for the script decided to make the conflict between McAdams’ old life and new life about authenticity when it would have been more interesting - and braver - to make it about class instead.
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