Saturday 14 January 2012

2221 Three adult films of different quality and interest

In a week dominated by the continuation of the Leveson Inquiry and reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens I did not expect to be enthralled by a film abut the Spanish Inquisition Day of Wrath and one which Wikipedia had incorrectly assigned as the 1943 Danish film of the same name. One source also provides a sentence overview of the film claiming that it the stars were Christopher Lambert and Brian Blessed. In a week of intrigue subterfuge and a little plain speaking the way this important film has been treated suggests powerful forces are unhappy that the subject has been aired.

I had intended to see the film the Artist which many are saying will be voted the Oscar film of 2012. This film is in Black and White and silent for great parts and showing at the Tyneside Film Theatre. Having risen early I had planned to attend the 11am performance and arrived in Newcastle in time to do this. During the journey on a gold but sunny day which continued until mid afternoon and winter’s dusk I changed my mind. I did visit Marks and Spencer’s where I purchased two new Track suit bottoms of £33 using a £20 Christmas voucher. I then visited the Lakeland Shop in Eldon Garden for a microwave dish with holders for my porridge or mushrooms and tomatoes. I also noted that in the main pedestrian street there has been a proliferation of street tables for the various coffee and tea shops

I also noted that at the Monument end of the Eldon Square shopping centre there are a number of vacant shops on both levels and before this a coffee shop restaurants which I have used in the past has also closed.
On return I paid into the bank a cheque for £50 gained from a local lottery win and then bought black printer cartridges. I returned via Morison’s for sprats which I enjoyed at lunchtime, some milk and a copy of Renaissance the latest disk by the choir of 16 and which opens with the extraordinary Miserere by Allegri. There is over an hour of such music from Byrd, Tallis, Monteverdi, Barber, Poulenc including two Agnus Dei and an Ave Maria.

The film Day of Wrath “Dies Irae” deals with one aspect of the Spanish Inquisition that period of eternal damnation where the Catholic Church of Spain executed citizens, usually after torture and trial from serious crimes against religious orthodoxy of the time. The number of executions was surprisingly small considering the total number of cases tried, and even these were not of the same order as the great purges before and since. What the film argues is that those behind the Inquisition were in fact Spanish families with Jewish backgrounds who following the banishment of Jews from Spain and not wishing to leave did a deal to become officially Christians and creating false identities rewriting family histories.

Christopher Lambert plays a Catholic who marries an exceptionally devout woman from Antwerp where he has been sent by his mother from a small Spanish town in the middle of the sixteen century and where his wife has bore him two children. He is then asked by the Governor to return home and become the chief law enforcement officer although the real power rests with the Official Inquisitor and his officers who almost daily test and execute heretics, an aspect not based on the reality.

Lambert is confronted with a series of deaths of prominent men whose bodies together with their escorts he discovers badly disfigured and with the initials D and E cut into their bodies. However when he investigates he discovers all traces of the bodies and blood stained streets have been obliterated and worse still not only there are no witnesses buy the wives claim their husbands have gone on missions abroad.

The Governor is played by Brian Blessed who appears to be a man only interested in splendiferous banquets of fine foods and being entertained by the court fool. We the audience know that there is a group of local worthies who appear to be led by the Chief Inquisitor meeting in secret and expressing concern about what is happening and also about the existence of a list and the possibility of it falling into the wrong hands.

When the Governor goes to the Church for confession instead of the priest he is confronted by someone threatening to disclose a truth unless there good payment.

One of the men who dies is the husband of Lambert’s first love who he is still attracted especially as his wife is sexually frigid seeing the adult relationship has intended to create new life rather than an act of pleasure. This woman also denies the death of her husband.

In a third situation someone he knows from childhood warns that he and his daughter/daughter in law are in peril if they do anything other than continue with the fiction of what happened.

The Sheriff, as he is described in this film, undertakes research and cannot find any trace of the families in published work on family histories. However he is told this is a false book and is referred to one kept by the local clergy, a large old and dusty volume which shows the histories of the families of the murdered. He has noted that in each of the households there is the same style and period created family portrait of ancestors. In one instance it is claimed the portrait is a copy of one held at the family home in the capital.

He eventually comes across the murderer who admits to being a paid assassin and who has been instructed not to kill the Sheriff but to warn him off, including threats to his wife and children. His mother appears to know something which she also refuses to disclose. Eventually he discovers that his assistant is also part of the conspiracy and he man throws himself through a window to his death rather than be captured and tortured to reveal what he know.

Eventually the assassin brings him to the home of Governor with two lists which were held by two further nobles who have been killed in the same manner as before. The Governor explains that when the expulsion of the Jews was enacted a number of families did a deal with the King and had new family histories created as devout Catholics eliminating all trace of Jewish ancestry or of involvement with the Jewish faith. One list covers the original names of the families and the other their assigned names. The decision was taken for the leading families to come to live in one town to provide mutual protection and where their secret was known by the Inquisitor because he was also of a former Jewish family hence the enthusiasm of his actions in order to underline his position. Only the local priest was unaware of the true situation. The Governor discloses that the Sheriff is the son of his sister and his closest legitimate heir someone he hoped would succeed him in the future. He then admits that he had paid a blackmailer but grew tired and assuming it was someone on the list had employed the mercenary to kill everyone else on this list. This later includes the Chief Inquisitor. The Sheriff is at first horrified but comes round to the situation when he finds that is wife wants to report him and the children to the Inquisitor. The film ends with the Sheriff marrying his childhood sweetheart and becoming the governor and being given caskets of jewels and gold coin in gratitude for his protection. Later they are seen practicing the Jewish faiths in the vaults of the Governor’s residence.

The Spanish Inquisition was established in 1480 about 80 years before the time when the film is set, The Royal decree demanding that Jews convert or leave was made in 1492 and with that for Muslims made in 1501. The reign of terror lasted for over 300 years. Some of those who converted were allowed to hold office and it was one convert who financed the voyage of Christopher Columbus. A few were ennobled. The extent of the Inquisitions is the subject of much research with the numbers surprising low ranging from 50000 to 15000 and the total deaths between 1000 and 3000 with a similar number condemned in their absence so that only their effigies were burned. This is not to minimise what would have been the impact on the population at the time and on those directly affected in particular.

I enjoyed the role of Michael Caine in the role of Harry Palmer, a character created be Len Deighton in three of his early books, The Ipcress File released in 1965, Funeral in Berlin 1966 and the Million Dollar Brian 1967. Some three decades later the aged Caine reappeared in the same role with new screenplays, Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in St Petersburg.

I have now seen the final film and what a great disappointment although it provided the opportunity to view some good shots of the modern city. Caine is now operating as an independent investigations agency with a small Moscow based team which includes an ex CIA and an ex KGB specialist as well as a young assistant played by the son of Sean Connery, Jason, who appeared with Caine in the earlier film and for a time was married to the actress who also played a lead role in the film.

In the film Caine is hired by the International Atomic Authority to prevent a stolen quantity of Russian Nuclear material being sold to one of the countries seeking to develop nuclear weaponry. The deal is reported to take place in St Petersburg before the end of the week so Caine moves to the City where’re he has no previous experience although leading criminals with whom he has crossed swords in the past are also prominent.

A contrived complication arises when his assistant realises that his prima ballerina girl friend is being shadowed on her way home to St Petersburg from Moscow where she had been appearing. Her father is the curator of the Hermitage and what with Caine and the young man asked to attend the circus to receive their new assignment we have the Bolshoi Ballet, the State Circus and the greatest museum in the World all introduced into the film early on.

The girl is being trailed prior to being kidnapped so that instead of a number of valuable paintings arriving at their destination for an arranged exhibition they are to be taken out of the country. The paintings are being stolen for a fee of $5 million by a man who specialises is picture recovery. He will then negotiate a finder’s fee significantly greater than the $5 million investment so no one losses other than the Insurance Company. The $5 million is then being used to pay for the nuclear material which is then to be sold to one of the many interested governments, again for a significantly greater amount. This is the first individual signalled a big clue, as is the young US reporter who first wants to interview the ballerina and then Michael Caine although the idea that one correspondent would be employed to cover both types of stories is preposterous as is much of the rest of the film.

I do accept the central proposition however linking the art theft/fraud with the financing of the nuclear material sale as it is well documented that the US Government for example used the drugs trade to finance political and military operations although in the instance of the film there is a lack of credibility throughout because the main protagonists have been transported from Moscow to St Petersburg in order to show off the Russian second City and the Hermitage which is my understanding is the only tourist reason for visiting. Certainly according to the film the best restaurant in the city serves bad food, is frequented by the Russian criminal class and is shot up by criminal rivals to the owners. The idea that the place would immediately reopen and be frequented by the same customers including the police chief is absurd.

The rest of the plot involves the father going along with the kidnap demands without seeking help from the authorities so the young man trails the father and immediately assumes the young reporter is an ally who keeps turning up and also keeping company with the art dealer. The young man appears to have little judgement or skill to equip him for the private intelligence business and Caine looks and behave his age and would not have survived five minutes in reality. However they manage to recover the nuclear material and recover the paintings to enable their loan the gallery in question with some of the baddies apprehended. The art dealer is required to forfeit the $5 million bankers draft for restoration of the Hermitage but otherwise is left free to continue his global criminal activity joining the celebration party which ends the film. It is OK nothing better to do late night viewing to complete watching the five Harry Palmer Caine interpretations of the characters which may well have pleased some of the teenage weekend audience at the time, but given the else was being offered I doubt it. There is a lack of tension, thrills, credibility and sincerity

However the film is significantly better than the extraordinary popular Resident Evil: After Life which possibly may frighten thrill some immature minds new to the genre. It is the fourth instalment of a series with another promised for this year The ingredients are a world devastated by a virus gone wrong experiment which turns the human population in zombies who cannot bear anyone to remain normal and in in this instance congregate in their thousands around a building in the USA where a small group of individuals immune to the virus survive.

Before this we learn that the man who created this holocaust survive in an exceptionally well fortified multi level compound which is penetrated by a minor army of clone female acrobatic martial art and multi weapons equipped female warriors. The Man escapes this and every situation sometimes involving a nuclear type explosion or being shot to shredding. The remaining female warrior and heroine of the series (men are on the whole criminal, bad, stupid, treacherous, lecherous etc while women are sensible, courageous, inventive, trustworthy and loyal etc slant) goes off in a light aircraft to Alaska where a group of surviving humans she knew from previous episodes and gone in response to a call from a group/place called arcadia. Here she finds only girl who appears to be a maniac zombie, controlled by a device clinging to her chest reminding of the parasite type entity of several previous series but which in this instances appear to be removed with a little hand pressure without detriment to the victim except for a temporary continuing memory loss.

The girl cannot explain what happened especially what happened to the others and the duo go off in search of other survivors down through Canada and the USA to Los Angeles where she crash lands the plane on top of a former state penitentiary and which later in the film one member of the group manages to take off although we do not fully see the incredulous development. The plane also appears to have an unlimited fuel supply.

The grater part of he film centres on the building and an attempt to break out and reach a large super tanker moored in the harbour called the Arcadia and which appears to have gone along the entire coast of North America trying to contact any non zombies and offering them salvation.

When the majority of the party managed to reach the vessel they find two things. The crew has disappeared and below decks the vessel has been transformed into a super space laboratory in which all those who have been picked have been transformed by the parasites and held in a form of frozen statis tubes in a sub deck but who appear to return to instant normality as soon as they are released from their captivity. Interestingly they all appear to be young and fit although this might suggest that only the young and fit survived something which is not so with the group discovered on the roof of the state prison.

As the heroine progresses horizontally with in the lower decks of the super tanker there is one area containing a fleet of the latest armoured attack helicopters and then an almost empty area with central at a control console the mastermind who escaped the nuclear destruction of his previous control centre. He has been part affected by one of the virus which on what hand has led to his having invincible super powers similarly to our heroine but also those of a special zombie who has a destructive set of embracing sucking killer tentacles coming out of the mouth. He wrestles between these two forces within his body and he assisted by two dogs which split partially open to reveal horrendous devouring razor sharp teeth. After a climax confrontation the man escapes in one of the helicopters which explodes in mid air although he escapes again by parachute.

There is then finale epilogue in which the heroine announces they will continue to original intention of the vessel to rescue other survivors as the they have unlimited food and water not disclosed and water and with the helicopter should be able to travel in land looking for other survivors. However just when they are underway a horde of other helicopters descend on the vessel led by someone from the previous series still control by a parasite on her chest.

The film is reported to have grossed five times the alleged $60 million it cost to make. The film was released and viewed in 3D. This enables the audience to be shot at and splashed with blood and gore and to see any horrors in vivid close up reality. However I found none of the effect convincing or frightening and the while lacked tension and credibility which others have been able to achieve in the past. This appears to be a successful weekend franchise also translated into video games

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