Tag Archive: Sam Shepherd


DAYS OF HEAVEN

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September 5, 2011

I haven’t yet seen Terrence Malick’s Tree Of Life; I didn’t particularly want to see it in the dubbed Italian version so I’m still waiting for the official DVD release.

This delay is quite fortunate as it gives me time to plug gaps in my movie knowledge as I realised  that to my shame I hadn’t seen his earlier films The New World or Days of Heaven.

When I read critic David Thompson’s assertion that the latter is one of  the most beautiful films ever made  I decided that i needed to see at least this one.

When you consider how often Richard Gere in Pretty Woman gets repeated on TV, it is a sign of the dumbing down of culture that Days of Heaven doesn’t have a higher profile.

Gere is actually not that convincing in the part of a manual labourer with dreams of grandeur, he’s just too clean-cut. Sam Shepherd as the lonely farmer plays his part in a restrained manner.

What makes it such a marvellous movie is not the individual performances but the way Malick evokes the setting (the Texas panhandle in 1916 to be specific).

The landscape  is beautifully photographed by Nestor Almendros and  Haskell Wexler and this, plus the inspired editing makes the movie a sublime work of art. Continue reading →

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JUST KIDS BY PATTI SMITH

Filed under: Books, Music, Poetry — 2 Comments
March 21, 2011

‘Just Kids’ is a fascinating and poetic account of an era when beat culture evolved into punk rock.  It is also an honest and touching diary of a love affair and friendship between two unique artists.

Patti Smith met Robert Mapplethorpe in the Summer of 1967 and, although their ways parted in 1979,  their paths crossed again in 1986 when he was diagnosed with AIDs and she was pregnant with her second child to Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith.

The book begins with her hearing the news of Mapplethorpe’s death on March 9th 1989, aged 42.

Both were born in 1946 and although they came from different backgrounds they each had a rebellious bohemian spirit and Patti Smith jokes that she was “a bad girl trying to be good and that he was a good boy trying to be bad”

Mapplethorpe’s dual nature is part of what fueled his creativity and made him such a fascinating figure . He is constantly represented as a walking contradiction driven by forces of light and dark so that he could appear as “handsome and lost”, “triumphant and troubled” and an artist-hustler  who loved to court controversy yet also “the good son and altar boy”

Patti’s own artist nature was primed by the discovery of “the mystical language” of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud at the age of 16 . (She stole a copy of Illuminations from a bookstall at a bus depot in Philadelphia).

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JESSE JAMES AND THE COWARD

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July 28, 2008

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD directed by Andrew Dominik (USA, 2007)

Brad Pitt is the star attraction of the movie but, as the full title suggests, the main focus is on the cowardly act of betrayal by Robert Ford. Ford is played by Casey Affleck who is kid brother to Ben and looks like a young David Byrne. He is perfect in the role of nerdy wannabe outlaw.

Anyone expecting an action packed yarn will be disappointed. You only have to hear the score by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis to get the languid and melancholy mood. By the time we see what remains of the James Gang, they are a spent force. After one last hold up the only way is down.

The brothers Frank (Sam Shepherd) and Jesse are estranged and the law is tightening its net. Jesse at 34 is a shadow of his former self and no longer the dynamic man of action whose daring deeds led to his mythical status and notoriety.

Usually I hate the use of a voiceover for anything more than an initial scene setting. In Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Casino, for example, this device struck me as intrusive and superfluous. In The Assassination of Jesse James however the poetic language , beautifully spoken by Scottish actor Hugh Ross, adds to the narrative of this elegiac western.

The screenplay as a whole, from the novel by Ron Hansen, is superbly judged as is the cinematography by Roger Deakens which gives the epic landscape a strangely claustrophobic atmosphere.

It’s a shade too long and the cameo performance by Nick Cave singing the Ballad of Jesse James looks out of place but overall this is a remarkably assured directorial work by Andrew Dominik. He recognises that you can create dramatic tension in a movie even when you know exactly how it will end.

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