IRISH REVIEW: The Company of Wolves (1984)

Neil Jordan’s second feature certainly established him as a filmmaker who wasn’t afraid to try new things and The Company of Wolves is certainly a very different film from Angel. But is it any good?

A Freudian retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, the film begins with a sleeping Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson), who has just stolen her sister’s lipstick. She dreams that she lives in an alternate, fairy tale world. She lives in a village constantly under threat from a large population of wolves who live in the woods. Rosaleen’s Granny (Angela Lansbury) tells her a series of stories designed to make Rosaleen cautious of the woods and the wolves inside, but which are also intended to make her wary for her growing sexuality and potentially predatory boys. Rosaleen takes note of these stories but she also has an independent streak and so when she meets the sinister Huntsman (Micha Bergese) in the woods, she is more intrigued than frightened.

The film is based on a screenplay by Jordan and Angela Carter and takes as its inspiration stories by Carter. Carter’s intention with these stories was to rewrite famous fairy tales from a less conservative and oppressive slant. She found that fairy tales were designed to teach women to fear their sexuality and taught them submissiveness. In her stories, which were loaded with Freudian imagery, the female characters are far from passive and the stories encourage women not to fear their sexuality but to take control of it. Essentially, her stories were modern, feminist version of the ancient fairy tales. The Company of Wolves sets out to do the same thing, and all of the typical elements of the fairy tale are present, albeit presented from a Freudian perspective and with a dream-like feel.

As interesting as this may sound, it is rather unsatisfying. The Freudian imagery is over-used and dated – films had been drawing parallels with Freud’s writings for years and Jordan doesn’t offer anything particularly new. The film’s symbolism is also heavy-handed. The phrase “Don’t stray from the path” – though taken from the original versions of the Little Red Riding Hood tale – and often repeated by Granny is so clearly meant to represent the rules and limits placed on women in male dominated society that it’s lack of subtlety only causes one to roll their eyes at its every repetition. Granny is here an ambiguous figure – being both loving and restrictive or, in other words, a parent. The stories that Granny tells explicitly link sex with danger, violence and death – and never with love – while the stories Rosaleen tells represent instead the power of women, particularly a story in which a wronged peasant woman somehow turns her rich abusers into wolves – the wolf (usually a symbol of predatory sexuality) presumably taking on a new significance here. This stuff, though interesting in a surface kind of way, is ultimately over-subscribed. In this day and age, how many are truly convinced that red represents a budding sexuality via menstrual blood or that fruit represents sexual organs?

Neil Jordan has claimed that the appeal he finds in the film is not the heavy Freudian symbolism, but instead the simple joys of storytelling. This argument is not wholly convincing but it does point towards the most interesting thing about The Company of Wolves. In the first half of the film, Rosaleen is told stories that are clearly intended as cautionary tales to guide her through puberty and into adulthood – a patriarchal society that is not too interested in raising strong, independent women is evident. But when she starts to tell her own stories, she takes control of her own destiny (such as it is) and reclaims certain desires as her own and not the dangerous evils that she has been taught to avoid. The film then shows the regenerative qualities of fiction, particularly in making up one’s own fictions. The film delights ultimately in making an oppressive story (Little Red Riding Hood) into a story of sexual awakening and power.

None of which particularly works with the jarring ending, in which Rosaleen reawakens from her dream at a point where she has finally become a woman in control (as represented by her becoming a wolf), only to see a wolf entering her room (read the maturation of dream Rosaleen impacting onto real life Rosaleen) and start screaming, horrified. Hardly a feminist ending. Taken together with the fact that while in the original fairy tale Red Riding Hood is either killed or saved by a man, in the film’s version she overcomes a man but nonetheless becomes a wolf on his terms, not particularly on her own. Surely this means that the meaning of the film’s version of the tale is not particularly better than those that came before, since Red Riding Hood is still waiting for a man to act for her in both cases – either to save her or point the way for her passage into womanhood.

Also problematic, and leaving the symbolism aside, is the film’s dream-like style, in which scenes follow on from each other in a off-kilter, irrational way intended to reflect the pacing of (or lack of) a dream. This has also been done before, though here it is very distancing device, which keeps one outside the film rather than inside, like listening to two people who know each other so well that their conversation is impenetrable to anyone else. Like a lot of Neil Jordan’s films, it is very cerebral and not particularly welcoming.

As interesting as the film may or may not be, it feels badly thought out. The ending would seem to be directly contradictory to all that came before and the symbolism is so obvious and so dated that it just isn’t convincing. Nonetheless, it is a fairly original film from a filmmaker who is clearly trying something new, which is something that remains worth celebrating since it is now so rare.

See also:

Angel

Michael Collins

REVIEW: Cal (1984)

  Cal is a 1984 adaptation of a Bernard Mac Laverty novel directed by Pat O’Connor (The Ballroom of Romance, A Month in the Country, Circle of Friends and Dancing at Lughnasa) and starring John Lynch, Helen Mirren and Donal McCann. Not unlike Angel, it is set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, but unlike Angel, it is a much more conventional near-melodrama, which just might have something to say about the conflict.

  Cal (John Lynch, in his film debut –In The Name of the Father, Words Upon The Window Pane, The Secret of Roan Inish, Nothing Personal, Some Mother’s Son, This Is The Sea, Puckoon, Evelyn, Isolation and Five Day Shelter) is a perennially out-of-luck IRA volunteer, who becomes helplessly besotted with Marcella (Helen Mirren – Some Mother’s Son), the wife of a policeman that he had had a hand in killing. Cal and his father Shamie (Donal McCann - (Poitín, Angel, Budawanny, The Dead, December Bride and The Nephew) are the only Catholics in a Protestant housing development and are constantly under threat. And if that wasn’t enough, the local IRA commander Skeffington (John Kavanagh – Paddy, The Ballroom of Romance, Joyriders, Into The West, Circle of Friends, Some Mother’s Son, The Butcher Boy, Dancing At Lughnasa, Puckoon, The Tiger’s Tail and Closing the Ring) wants him to do a few more jobs and won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

  Cal is a film that is seemingly obsessed with the suffering of the oppressed. Cal is always troubled and is frequently beaten up by bigoted thugs, the army and the police. Most of the other characters in the film do not come out well either, with one falling into a severe depression and another deep disappointment. O’Connor’s, and Mac Laverty’s, who adapts his own novel, vision of life during the Troubles is a bleak one, with a heavy focus on suffering, guilt and repentance. In one scene, a guilt-ridden Cal burns himself in the hand with a lit cigarette as atonement for the crime that he cannot tell Marcella about. There is also the figure of The Preacher (Tom Hickey – My Left Foot, Circle of Friends, The Butcher Boy, Inside I’m Dancing, Breakfast on Pluto, Garage, Alarm and Stella Days), who is often present to represent the question of faith and repentance. Ultimately, the film seems to suggest that the best response to the Troubles is self-harm and self-sacrifice, with more political or social avenues largely ignored.

  So, Cal does little to lift Northern Ireland out of the quagmire of the Troubles, but it is, nonetheless, a rather effective melodrama, despite an overdone story. Cal’s frequent flashbacks to that night may be overused, but the presentation of the drama (leisurely and muted, almost cold) and the quality of the performances, particularly McCann, whose downfall is the most tugging as he was the chirpiest, manage to make the film more than just a quiet moan. John Lynch plays the unfairly and too-frequently prosecuted man well, and would continue to play that role in In The Name of the Father and Nothing Personal. Helen Mirren does not have a huge amount to do, but when she does, she is convincing. The end of the film, though expected (who would ever have thought that it would all turn out well), is effective, the fade to the credits and their slow climb up the screen accompanied by some melancholic music quietly devastating in their own small way.

  Like Angel, Cal has little to say about the Troubles, a pity as both were, after all, opportunities to reach wide audiences and purvey a better message than that of the violence. However, unlike Angel, Cal has no pretensions to great art and, as a result, does not fall so far. A diverting and sometimes affecting melodrama, it is a much more fruitful starting point.

REVIEW: Heimat - A Chronicle of Germany (1984)

  At 925 minutes, Edgar Reitz’s Heimat – A Chronicle of Germany stands as one of the most ambitious television productions ever made. This 15 and a half-hour monolith was filmed over two years with a huge cast and covers German history from 1919 through to 1982.

Beginning during the immediate aftermath of WWI, the series begins with the return of Paul Simon (Michael Lesch, later Dieter Schaad) to his rural home, the small town of Schabbach in the Rhineland. Paul has been released from a French prisoner of war camp, still suffering from the effects of the war.

Paul is soon at odds with the conservative views of the townspeople, deciding to pursue his interest in radio communications rather than continue in his father’s footsteps and go into blacksmithing. As well as this, he begins an affair with Apollonia (Marliese Assmann), a maid in the local inn, a suspected gypsy because of her black hair. The townspeople also believe that she has had an abortion and frequently investigate the surrounding area. Though they are clearly in love, Paul is too afraid to elope with her and, instead, marries Maria (Marita Breuer), the daughter of the local Mayor, Alois (Johannes Lobewein).

Years later, with two sons, Anton and Ernst (respectively, Rolf Roth and Ingo Hoffmann, and later, Mathias Kniesbeck and Michael Kausch), by Maria, Paul comes across the naked body of the dead woman in the forest. The discovery is a scandal in the town, though it doesn’t last for long. Not long afterwards, Paul goes for a beer and disappears from Schabbach…

Above is a brief description of the first episode of the 11-part series, covering the years 1919 to 1929, which does little to show the breadth of this series. In total, the series follows three families – the Simons, the Wiegands and the Schirmers – creating a vast tapestry of a small village growing into a bustling town, crowded with people and running through many decades. In fact, possibly the most fascinating thing about the series is watching the growth of Schabbach, which goes from being small, cut-off and extremely rural to busy, modern and ever expanding. The house of the Simons remains recognisable despite the modern trappings that surround it, the forge beside it surpassing the years despite the homegrown industry becoming an anachronism.

It is difficult to find a main character in the series, as each episode shifts or expands its focus. In the first episode, Schabbach is antiquated and suffocating, as seen through Paul’s eyes, though, in subsequent episodes, it will become a haven from the modern world and a place of beauty. Similarly, there is no apparent authorial presence throughout the series. One episode may be about forbidden love and teenage angst only for the next one, set years later, to be about loss and regret over past mistakes. Reitz, either as director or co-writer, does not judge, something that can either feel authentic or unsettling depending on your outlook when the series tackles the Nazis. Reitz is interested only in presenting a portrait of a town and its people in the process of transition as the years pass. Hence, one character may appear ruthless, even demonic, in one episode and sad, pathetic or funny in another.

The final episode, by way of a conclusion, presents all of its surviving characters feeling the quick passing of the years. The deaths of the past generation weigh heavily on them, as well as on us as most of them would have featured prominently in the first half of the series. Ultimately, an awkward and unconvincing impressionistic ending notwithstanding, the series is a tribute to life; it’s unexpectedness and the wisdom and memories you gain throughout its duration.

Good as the series is as drama, it is also a fascinating tribute to filmmaking. The series is filled with lyrical but probing tracking shots that recall the work of Tarkovsky. There are several interludes throughout the series, some more successful than others, which add a type of eerie poetry to the series, making it more than just an average, everyday soap opera. Reitz gets a lot from the simple image of a coffin abandoned on the road during a storm or a sheet hovering over a war memorial following its unveiling.

Heimat – A Chronicle of Germany is a massive summing-up of the German Heimat genre, nostalgic films set in rural landscapes and usually following a family, and a likely attempt to reclaim the genre from the Nazi propaganda with which it became associated. Mirroring Werner Herzog’s attempt to bridge the gap between the German cinema of the 1920s with the present (then the 1970s and the 1980s) with his remake of Nosferatu, Heimat – A Chronicle of Germany tries to re-map the history of German cinema, a glossing over of the Nazi propaganda films of the 1930s and the 1940s. Whether you agree with this approach or not, the series does remain a powerful and frequently riveting drama. As a side note, quite why the series jumps between black and white and colour and back again is anyone’s guess.

Despite a difficult and fiercely televisual score, Heimat – A Chronicle of Germany is a great series. Each episode adds to the entire project, which covers 63 years and features 140 speaking parts. Played out in front of you are the lives of several characters, their highs and lows, their births and deaths all within the constant growth of the town of Schabbach. The length of the series, far from becoming an endurance, becomes a necessary part of what makes the series work. With no major plot or authorial voice, the series unravels and complicates itself much like life. The series is also packed with great performances and, thanks to great make-up, the cast visibly age in front of you – making it a series as dramatic as it is melancholic.