A Hard Day's Night (1964)

A big music act doing a movie meant a very different thing in 1964 than it does today. The first movies that come to most people's minds are those associated with The Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, The Spice Girls. I think we're all expecting at least one movie out of Justin Beiber, less so out of Arcade Fire. Which might just be a comment on the divide that now exists between fun, mainstream entertainment and critically acclaimed, "important" works of art that has grown since the days of The Beatles, when they could practically be the same thing. What I'm trying to say is: A Hard Day's Night wouldn't have seemed like a cheap cash in or something just for screaming fan girls. Movies had obviously been around a long time, but there was still a mystique to them - the glitz and glamour and the big American stars. No one was shooting hour long drunken videos on their phones on a Saturday night and using it as proof they were the next Scorsese. There is something really playful about The Beatles doing a film. It doesn't feel like people capitalizing on The Beatles success, it feels like people simply enjoying it. These four Liverpool lads had blown up: they were playing in night clubs, now they're making a movie!

The film opens with the four Beatles running through the streets while a crowd of fans chases them. They're trying to make it on a train in time, touring the country at the height of Beatlemania. There's no goal or journey that drives the film forward, instead we're allowed to see a brief snippet of life from the biggest band in the world. This could have easily been a concert film, or a documentary that just recorded what The Beatles were up to, but instead the story is part fiction. I don't imagine the details of backstage shows were hugely different from this, but all of the characters are exaggerated. Again, if a modern band like One Direction filmed a movie playing exaggerated versions of themselves I imagine they'd be accused of tricking people, of their performances only adding to the 'PR machine', but nothing about what The Beatles are doing seems malicious. I imagine the fab four found fantasy more appealing than reality. John fancied himself the mischievous joker, George reckoned himself the cool, smirking ladies man. Even Ringo gets to play out a 'being yourself' narrative straight out of a Hollywood fantasy. The Beatles music, especially the music they were playing when A Hard Day's Night was released, is all a fantasy: I've never seen the point in criticizing The Beatles' love songs as unrealistic, or too picturesque, when surely everyone wants things so perfect and serene. The film only adds to the warm aura that surrounds The Beatles.

This film really 'gets' The Beatles. They had an interest in women, surely enjoyed the interest their fame gave them, undeniably objectified women too, but there was a romance there that this film gets. The Beatles might have been sexy but they weren't dirty sexy like The Rolling Stones were. If you hooked up with a Beatle they might have taken you back to their hotel room, but after that they might have taken you on a romantic trip to take slow walks in the moonlight and written catchy songs about you too. This film gets that. It gets that they were very 'us against the world', they didn't want to play by the rules or listen to their managers, but that they were too playful to cause any real trouble. They had a comforting glow that surrounded them, like the best comedians, and A Hard Day's Night is such a care free film - in one scene the boys run around a wide open field together, they don't look like they know what they're doing, they are just doing it for the hell of it.

There was a few Beatles films, although none remembered as fondly as A Hard Day's Night. By the time of the other films, starting with Help, and especially with Yellow Submarine and The Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles weren't the same: they'd packed in touring and moved into the studio, and joined the psychedelic movement which dictated much of their image. These other films were more about what The Beatles were trying to share with everyone else: the drugs, the culture, the freedom and the success. A Hard Day's Night works because The Beatles aren't sharing anything but themselves.

Streaming, Buffering

I have the habit of working through The New Yorker website by opening each article I'd like to read in a new tab, until the tabs at the top of my screen don't have enough space to include any words - which I realized a long time ago I like doing a lot more than reading the actual articles. I guess you could blame this on The New Yorker, the over-expensive-fancy-restaurant-that-if-you'd-only-stop-being-such-a-snob-you'd-realize-tasted-like-piss-compared-to-McDonalds of the writing world, although this rule applies to nearly everything I do on the internet. My "bookmarks bar" works as a procrastination bar that now has over 300 pages saved. I'll be on a page I like, tell myself I need to focus on something else or that my brain is too tired right now for something new and add it to the list to view tomorrow. Which is bullshit, since whenever I do decide to make my way through my bookmarks I start from the top, which means the oldest links. By the time I get to most pages I'm confused why past me thought future (now present) me would be interested in this. How did I even get onto this? I even do this with porn - I probably spend more time masturbating to the main pages of porn sites as I line up tab after tab than I do jerking it to the actual videos. It's because there's just too much - a landfall of blogger posts and news articles and new links to look at, and god forbid I miss any of it. Which I do every second. Reading one article means ignoring the hundreds being posted during your reading, some of them probably better than the one you're reading, and more useful too, but you'll never know most of these pages exist. The internet is everything you don't know expanding second by second; standing in the middle of a rushing stream made out of gold coins and only able to catch what you can carry while the infinite wealth of the world passes you by, and still you don't swim to freedom.

Frank (2014)

We've all been living under the guise that Gonzo died when Hunter S Thompson did, or likely well before that, when actually it just migrated over to film, where no one seems to care what's real and what's not anymore. Take Frank: the title character inspired by the real life papier mache headed alter ego of comedian and singer Chris Sievey, who from 1984 til his death wore the head more often than not. One of the film's writers, Jon Ronson, toured with the real Frank, although the real man seems to be only an influence on the movie - other real life stories like Captain Beefheart's infamous recording sessions of Trout Mask Replica are mixed in, the story is updated to modern day, and things end up more dramatic and romantic than I imagine anything life would allow.

Domhnall Gleeson plays Jon, an amateur keyboardist who lucks out on landing a job in Frank's band. He packs up and moves with the band to a remote lodge in the countryside of Ireland while the band record their album - a claustrophobic recording session that goes way over schedule.  Jon doesn't fit easily into the band: like any musician who's only ever imagined himself on stage, he finds reality an anti-climax. Another bandmate, Don, hangs over Jon as a a reminder of what he doesn't want to end up as: a backup musician, his music never good enough to take the spotlight, forced to the background of his own life. Frank, more than anything, is about an artist who can't accept he sucks; everyone who's ever wanted the creative lifestyle knows the itch to be truly great at something, and the pain of not being good enough, of not being Frank. In one scene Jon says how he wishes he had had a troubled childhood - I know many won't understand this line, although anyone who's ever put up posters of Kurt Cobain or Jimi Hendrix on their walls and knew what those walls now said about them will. It's easier to chalk other people's talent up to their tortured lives and troubles. Thing is, it's all a myth. Even with the head off, Frank has real talent, the talent that Jon longs for. Frank is as much a story of Jon accepting this as about the curiosity of watching a man who refuses to take his head off.

Michael Fassbender is great as Frank. It's one of the "in things" in acting right now to praise performances that impair the actor in some way. Like Tom Hardy's emotion hiding mask all through The Dark Knight Rises, or single person films like Locke and Buried. It's becoming a cliche to see people going crazy over performances because they were a challenge for the actor, regardless of whether they were good or not. Fassbender's Frank still doesn't feel like a gimmick though; his natural charisma comes through even from behind the papier mache, and he manages to suppress it to show a much darker human being when the mask comes off.

The premise alone made me think the filmmakers had found a quirk mine of a character and Frank would end up a film about a lovable weirdo, but the film arrives at a much darker place than that. The characters travel to America for a big gig and the film changes to something else, it becomes a film about all the things artists think about but wish they didn't. The line between selling out and becoming more "likable" as Frank puts it. If all music is for an audience or if, sometimes, it's for no one more than the people it's made by. If the torture of every "tortured artist" is really where the magic springs from, or if they're the rare lucky ones who've made it despite their problems. The film talks about these things, as all films can talk, in such simple terms. I wouldn't imagine everyone would understand the appeal of this film, the same way many people would consider wishing you had a troubled childhood a weird thing to do, and not a bad thought pattern you have to work your way out of. Frank is a film more for people who, at least at their lowest moments, could see the benefits of living inside a papier mache head.

The real Frank

Gone Girl (2014)

Gone Girl: not David Fincher's worst film but his blandest, despite working perfectly on paper. Fincher's directorial style - calculated, efficient, precise - has meant his best films tend to be based around the analytical side of detectives and police work. He has a knack for making the uninteresting interesting. The mystery of Gone Girl might be in the title, but it's hardly a mystery film at all, and not as cold and inhuman as Fincher wants it to be.

A man walks into a bar. He chats awhile with his sister who works there. He says it's his anniversary but he doesn't look in the mood to celebrate. The phone rings, it's his wife; he heads on home. When he gets there he finds no wife and a broken table (despite no sign of a break in). The police are slow on providing answers; the media are a lot faster. 

Gone Girl is based on the bestseller by Gillian Flynn (who also adapted it into a screenplay). I can't comment on the adaptation having not read the book, although Flynn's work here is good; yet Fincher never accepts the more human side of the story. A savage killing is edited so that after every jab the screen fades to black and a dramatic sound effect repeats - it feels more like a trailer than an actual scene from the movie, especially one so savage. A woman experiences true freedom for the first time in years, possibly ever - she's speeding down the motorway and chugging on coke and not giving a shit. We only see this for a few seconds though. She's feeling alive but we're still trapped in Fincher's precisely boxed frame. His direction feels perfect for the earlier parts of the movie, where the viewer is as curious and confused as the characters. For the rest of the film, Fincher feels limp. 

Like any good mystery story, Gone Girl isn't really about that mystery at all. Flynn's story is about the media and how people's reactions to a topic become part of the topic itself. Ben Affleck is perfect casting as a man who has a bipolar reception from the public. There is a lot to like about the movie - the ending will get a chuckle from those with darker tastes - if only Fincher had saw the potential in the material, or someone more accustomed to this sort of material entirely.