Unknown's avatar

We went to see a film: Fallen Leaves

by

“The way I see it, the difference between a ‘movie’ and a ‘film’ is that one is scared to death of boring you for a second and the latter refuses to entertain you for a moment.” Alan Parker (Will Write and Direct for Food)

The first thing to say is that going on the Alan Parker definition Fallen Leaves felt like a film to me, not a movie.

The story is set in Helsinki, Finland, and follows the bleak prospects and lives of two lonely, low paid workers – Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) who have never met, but whose paths start to cross with increasing frequency as they fall in love, and in and out of jobs. Aki Kaurismäki is the director, and all dialogue is in Finnish, with subtitles.

It’s hard to describe how minimalist it all is. Not much talking. Not much smiling. Not much colour. No gunfights. No murders. No sex. Just day to day. Too much drink. Too much bad luck. Too much war on the radio. Not much hope. Then a dog comes along. And things change. Just enough.

Did I enjoy it? Yes. It kept me on the point of smiling, almost laughing, and hoping, all the way through. It is so pared back – such a quiet depiction of the odd luck of life, and of how love survives, despite never-ending corporate heartlessness, war and drink.

Should you go and see it? I would say a definite yes, provided you’re not craving fast-paced entertainment, crammed with sensual overload. This is gentle. It left us smiling and took only an hour and twenty minutes of our time.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

Unknown's avatar

Going to the movies

by

“Don’t you go to the movies?” “Mostly just to eat popcorn in the dark.” Charles Bukowski

It’s cold out there. It’s winter out there. It’s madness out there. Feels like just the right time to get out there and go to the movies.

“Movie? Surely you mean film?”

Well, fairly surely, I’m sticking to movie, and this brilliant article on the movie versus film debate is one of the reasons why. It seems movie has bounced into our vocabulary like a grey squirrel, and pushed little film out on to a lonely, professional limb.

Then there’s the what to watch question. Not sure what we’ll go to see yet, but just the idea of it is helping to shift the dark. For me there is such pleasure in sitting in the popcorn gloom of a cinema, surrounded by strangers and their mobiles until the lights go out. Then the small screens disappear and off we fly, all of us together, to another world.

We could, of course, be transported from in front of our television or a laptop, but it always feels like an edge is missing. Like we’ve cheated. How can we properly go to the planet Tatooine, or the Mushroom Kingdom, or Barbie Land, or Into the Void, on a sofa by ourselves?

And besides, homemade popcorn may be good, but it hasn’t got that cost-us-way-too-much pop about it.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

Unknown's avatar

“Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas …”

by

Christmas is settling in around us, mushrooming up through the pavements and jangling out from the shops. We know the traditions, and we know it’s never a good time for turkeys.

This Christmas I’ll remember the turkeys, and the British poet and writer Benjamin Zephaniah who died on 7 December of this year at the age of 65. Born in Birmingham, and the eldest of nine children, he knew first hand the realities of racism, domestic abuse, borstal, and prison. He was dyslexic, and by his early teens he was out of school but already he was getting known as a poet. And the poems kept coming.

Talking Turkeys was published in 1994. It feels funny and joyful, just as he so often seemed himself, but there are messages tucked inside the poem’s feathers, ones that perhaps we’re more inclined to take notice of now, than we might have been when the poem first came out almost two decades ago.

Here it is if you’d like a listen:

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023