Heavenly Delights

With 'Nina's Heavenly Delights' coming up, I saw 'Brick Lane' last week. I think they make interesting companion pieces, since they draw on some similar themes but treat them very differently I think. Both have been shot with typically small budgets for British films - 'Brick Lane' cost only £3.2 million, but the producers comment (in Q&A) is that every single penny is up on the screen. The cinematography in both is breathtaking given the budget; Robbie Ryan, who did Andrea Arnold's fantastic 'Red Road', shot 'Brick Lane' as well.

At the heart of both films is an intense (and for some controversial) drama. Brick Lane relies (rightly) on the strength of Tannishtha Chatterjee's ability to convey emotions with very little dialogue - translating the inner world existence of this immigrant woman, powerfully, from the book to the screen.

I found it reminded me of others of our films - The Namesake, for its powerful realisation of dramatising a woman's journey to a new identity in a new country (although these are interesting to compare for their different treatments of the issue of racism) and something of the intensity Ahoo's resistance in 'The Day I became a Woman'.

Top Tens

After Roy mentioned the excellent Senses of Cinema site, I thought I would just throw in this out of interest. It's quite old now, but shows an attempt to compile a top ten of women's films and women directors. It uses contributions from a number of random contributors.

The problem of women being excluded from various 'canons' of work has been a thorny issue for a long time. I'm not convinced by the idea of trying to create an alternative version, though.

I think it is quite worthy in trying to raise the profile of women's work, but does highlight (as it says) the problem that the work is so disparate, there's not a lot of merit in trying to relate it all together or compare it. I suppose it's what Hollywood top tens have been doing to male directors for decades -- so some equality there? http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/top_tens/womens.html

The Day I Became A Woman

I hope everyone enjoyed last night's screening. I had forgotten that the 35mm print didn't have the same quality of subtitling as the DVD. For instance, it didn't translate the titles of the three stories -- which corresponded to the three central characters. In the first story, the little girl is called 'Hava', which is a version of 'Eve', the 'first woman'. In the second story, the young woman is called 'Ahoo' and this is also the Farsi word for 'deer' -- which are shown twice darting across the landscape as the husband shouts out. In the third story, the old woman is called 'Houra', which (presumably as a deliberate irony) means 'nymph'. The English language script is on the Makhmalbaf website on the film's own page.

The excellent web essay by Adrian Danks on the Makhmalbaf Film House that I quoted in my introduction is on the Senses of Cinema website. There is also an earlier posting on this blog about the Makhmalbafs.