MADEMOISELLE C

OK confession time. I'm an (ex) menswear designer and had more than my 5 minutes mixing with my peers and many of the stars in the fashion industry of my day but until today I had never come across Carine Roitfeld. But then I have never ever read US or UK Vogue let alone French Vogue where Ms Roitfeld was Editor in Chief for ten years until she stepped down in 2011. Now thanks to Fabien Constant's slightly adoring star-studded documentary that followed Ms Roitfeld as she broke free of the Conde Nast shackles and started her own free-spirited new venture with the launch of CR Magazine.

Before she ended up at Vogue it turns out that Ms Roitfeld worked as stylist with Mario Testino for some years and then with Tom Ford as a consultant and his muse at Gucci and Yves St Laurent.  Her relationship with Ford is still very close and he in facts shoots and styles a whole article for the first issue of C.R.

It is impossible not to compare this movie with 'The September Issue' which covered the making of Vogue's biggest issue of the year starring the Ice Queen herself Anna Wintour.  Ms Roitfeld is the antithesis of the US Vogue Editor and is infectiously warm, stridently enthusiastic and extremely talkative .... at least that's what M. Constant insists we believe.

As they film the very first meetings of the new team that Ms Roitfeld has assembled, the whole creative process is fascinating to watch more so for the frankness when she admits the ideas are not always forthcoming. She is very hands-on in all the photographic shoots ..... each one a sheer work of beauty, albeit completely over-the-top as she evidently has established somewhat of a reputation for her sex infused styling.

As M Constant's cameras follow Ms Roitfeld globe-trotting around the world he captures her at a Book Launch in Tokyo, sitting in the front row at the Runway Shows in Paris, and dressed up to the nines attending NY's fashion social highlight of the year, the Met Ball. Everywhere she goes there is the constant kissing and hugging not just with every major Fashion Designer she evidently knows very well, but a whole plethora of celebrities and rock singers who obviously consider her an close friend too.  It's all slightly overwhelming at times as it seems that M Constant is determined to show us how very popular his favorite Diva is.

Of all Ms Roitfeld's encounters in this film, none are more delightful than the ones she has with Karl Lagerfeld who she co-authored 'The Little Black Jacket Book' with. Up close the man is really really scary but the scene of him dressed up in his usual extreme garb and pushing a toddler in a stroller up and down when Ms Roitfeld's daughter brings her new new baby to a shoot is delightfully bizarre.  Especially as he is heard complaining that 'she can't talk much'. 

It's an entertaining wee film even though it never gets too deep about anything or anybody.  M.Constant touches on the reports that Conde Nast were doing everything possible to stop people from working on the new magazine but he sadly this lets this potentially juicy story drop without investigating it further. Whether he has captured the real essence of Ms Roitfeld is not something that I feel qualified to comment on, but what he does show is an exceptionally talented fashion maven who looks like she is a bundle of fun to be with too.

Available on Amazon

★★★★★★★★

THE AUCTION aka Le Dematelement

Gaby Gagnon hasn't had more than three days off work in the past 40 years. Working his isolated hilly sheep farm totally on his own with just his dog for company and the occasional neighbor passing by, his is a very solitary and desolate life. Once a week Louis his friend and accountant stops by to keep up his quest to persuade Gaby to finally modernise the place. However in this impoverished remote area of French-speaking Canada Gaby barely makes a meager living and the farm that his father left him and his brothers, who are long gone, is mortgaged up to the hilt at the Bank.

Gaby's wife left him some twenty years ago, and so too have his self-absorbed adult daughters who live in Montreal some six hours away and rarely keep in contact.  When Marie the elder one does actually make the long drive out there one day with her two young boys in tow, it is to announce that she and her husband are separating and he is leaving her with an enormous debt.  She asks Gaby for money so that she can keep the fancy house that she and the children are used too, and suggest that he goes to the Bank and put the Farm up as collateral. Although he doesn't tell her when the Bank turns his request for a Loan down flat, as he still promises to help her out.

Gaby feels that the only way out is to literally sell everything on the Farm and the land and house too in the hope that when the Bank take what they are due, there will be enough left over to give to Marie.  When his neighbor and Louis discover news of the impending Auction via the advert in the local newspaper they tell him that they horrified at the ghastly mistake he is making, but for stoic Gaby the die is cast and there is no going back.

In the days leading up the Sale, Gaby goes looking at tiny apartments in the nearby town and ends up with depressing one not much larger than a closet in a high rise besides a busy highway.  It's a far cry from his spacious house set amongst the rolling hills of his tranquil farm.  The next task on his agenda to prepare for his new life is to part with his faithful old sheepdog, and its a heartbreaking scene when he takes the poor animal to be put down for just $25 ( spoiler alert .... he gets a reprieve). The last part of his plan is to go into town and seek out his ex.wife to tell he wants her back. This surprising move which comes totally out of the blue, doesn't go down to well with her as this is the first time he has spoken to her in 20 years, and she is happily remarried.

As the Auction looms Frédérique the younger daughter suddenly appears on Gaby's doorstep.  She has been s alerted by Louis and is there to get her father to change his mind and stop him giving up everything he has ever known and devoted his entire life too.  She has sussed out that he is doing this just to bail her sister out even though she knows that Marie doesn't know or wouldn't even care about her father's sacrifice. But Gaby is no idiot and is more than aware that he has raised two rather spoilt girls (he's been paying Frédérique's rent too), 'Fathers need to give to be happy' he explains to a baffled Frédérique, 'we’re like that.'

It's a very melancholic tale with its layer of sadness that is imbued with a soulful strumming steel guitar soundtrack.  With this glorious setting it is beautiful to look at, but just very sad to watch. 

★★★★★★★

BLIND @ Sundance

Blond thirty-something year old Ingrid has lost her sight abruptly to an undiagnosed condition and now, depressed and unsettled, she just whiles away in the stark white high rise apartment in Oslo that she shares with Morton her architect husband. She refuses to ever venture outside at all and actually suspects that Morton actually sneaks back in the middle of the day and just spies on her silently. In the deliberate and slow pace at the start of this story we see Ingrid sitting with her laptop on the window sill peering out into the void and we are not sure what she is up to as we hear her thoughts in the voice-over.

Turns out that she is actually writing a piece of fiction that she vividly imagines as she sits there in her darkness.  At the center of her story is Elin a single mother who has recently moved to the city from Sweden and lives in an apartment building opposite the one that Einar lives in and spies on her all the time when he is not engrossed watching pornography on his computer. And then Ingrid writes her husband into the piece, and that's when the movie goes in a totally different direction mixing imagination with reality.  

Saying it gets complicated is a gross understatement especially when the pace steps up with Ingrid's imagination running wild and Elin, also blond and not physically dissimilar, starts dating Morton and goes blind too.  For once I had no idea what to make of this all when I viewed it at Sundance earlier this year, but people around me were quick to compare it to a Charlie Kaufman movie ('Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind', 'Adapation' + 'Being John Malkovitch') which makes a lot of sense.

The reason that it was on my 'watchlist' in the first place is its because its the directing debut of writer Eskil Vogt who was responsible for one of my favorite movies of 2013 'Oslo, August 31st'.

★★★★★

MITT

The opening scene of Greg Whiteley's new documentary has Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney in an hotel suite surrounded by his family pondering out loud on how he should write a concession speech. The year is 2012 and Romney has just lost the general election and he now needs to call President Obama to congratulate him. As the ex Governor of Massachusetts is trying to put a brave face and be magnanimous to the winner after his defeat, one cannot help feeling sorry for a man who now realises that he will never ever run for public office again.

Whiteley then sharply shifts the action back to 2006 when the Romney Family are being asked for their opinion of their Patriarch pitching in for a run to become President in the 2008 election.  The consensus of this tightly knit extended family is to encourage the ex Governor in his attempt, even though this will mean several of them pitching in to help run the Campaign. Romney and his wife Ann are particularly close to their five adult married sons who become a constant support and cornerstone for their father's electioneering.

When Romney's campaign in the 2008 Primaries falters and he is running neck and neck with John McCain, his chances are scuppered when Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida goes back on his word about being neutral and at the 12th hour backs McCain, thus ensuring  he wins the State, Romney is out of the running.    Its a cruel twist of fate that the Candidate publicly berated for his constant flip-flopping on policies is thus stabbed in the back by one of the worst turncoats in Florida's political history.

Romney and his family licking their wounds after this defeat collectively say 'never again' .... but despite this, four years later and he's back seeking his party's nomination, and this time he is the front runner who goes on to become the Party's Candidate.

Whiteley seems to have been allowed unfettered access to Romney with his family from the very beginning to the final defeat.  It is a very definite attempt to humanise a man who has in the past been universally slammed in the media as being a very cold fish.  This fly-on-the-wall technique works in this case to a certain point but the big problem here is a real lack of credibility to the spontaneity of the occasions when the camera was rolling.  Too many times the conversation seemed stilted and choreographed as if everyone was playing nice and holding back until Whiteley's crew had left the room. It seems just a tad too unbelievable that in this highly contested fight to be the President that the language and tone didn't get rougher and tougher than this. Mormons aside that is.

Whatever Whiteley's documentary claims of being a intimate true portrait of a Presidential Candidate's campaign pales in significance with the other more revealing footage shot at the same time.  This is the infamous video of the occasion when multi-millionaire Romany casually dismissed half of the country as people who don't pay taxes and don't take responsibility for their lives to a group of his well-healed peers.

When the going gets tough for Mitt Romney we learn he evidently does one of two things.  He either prays or obsessively goes around picking up litter.  So I guess if he had been able to convince the electorate he was a much better bet then he did and managed to win, then our Capital would have had much cleaner sidewalks at least.

I'm sure the Romney family will be happy playing  this movie for years, but I like my documentaries a little less staged, and a lot more real.

P.S.  Produced by Netflix, its available Streaming.

★★★★

THE FRENCH MINISTER

The Minister in question is France's Foreign Secretary and although the script is based on the popular graphic novels of Abel Lanzac (the nom de plume for Antoin Baudry) the story is based on the antics of Dominique de Villepain a real Minister who went on to become Prime Minister. And that's the main reason why this oddball of a comedy that relies on the fact you know its a satire falls so flat to anyone not au fait with the French political scene.  

The garrulous windbag of a Minister who thinks he is impressing his staff with his endless stream of platitudes hires a new writer to put some fresh impetus into his major set piece speeches.  That's what what he tells Arthur his new scribe, who quickly discovers that his new Boss rarely reads anything presented to him, and if pressed to do so, will skim through it quickly and promptly ask for an immediate re-write using all his own cliched phrases.

Arthur also has to deal with all his colleagues who are desperate to defend their own positions in the Ministerial hierarchy so that they sabotage the speeches in private too whilst sucking up to the Minister in departmental meetings.  There is only one voice of sanity in the whole place, and it belongs to M. Maupas the Minister's Chief of Staff who also actually is the only person in the place who actually gets any real work done.

The Minister is a right wing politician and as such wants to push his xenophobic policies that he incessantly pontificates changing his position like the wind but wily elderly left wing M. Maupas makes sure that it's his agenda that succeeds. Played sublimely by the veteran actor Niels Arestrup, he is the one real joy in this very flat piece.

It's a strange choice of material for the French auteur Bernard Tavernier who is best known for his big historical epics like 'The Princess of Montpensier' and I'm sure that back in France where everyone recognises the joker in the piece, the film is a helluva lot funnier.  Here is seems like one weak joke just stretched too thin.

Available at Amazon

★★★★

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

Wes Anderson's latest extravagant cornucopia of cinematic delight is a visual overload that as it's multi-layers are unpeeled, bombards one with such glorious minute detail at a frenetic pace one that there are times when you cannot fail to be dizzy with glee. 

Partly inspired by the works of Stefan Zelig a Austrian Jew who was one of the world's most famous writers in the 1930's but is now mostly forgotten.  The author who serves as narrator of the movie is based on Zelig, but Anderson also claims that the central character of the exuberantly fastidious concierge M. Gustavo is in fact modeled on him too.

The setting is the fictional mid-European country with a Cinderella-esq pink palace precariously perched on top of the Alps is The Grand Budapest Hotel.  The story told in flashbacks is of that glorious carefree pre war period when unseemly luxury was the order of the day.  This temple of excess where the wealthy landed gentry were indulged in every whim was overseen by the purple coated M. Gustavo.  Adored by both staff and guests alike nothing was ever too much trouble for this dandified perfectionist, from religiously handing out his mots of wisdom to his team, to sleeping with any of the elderly dowager guests.  Preferably the ones who were very rich and blond.

When one such lucky recipient of his sexual prowess upped and died and M Gustavo travelled to his late lover's Schloss to pay his respects, he discovered much to the chagrin of her evil son, that she had left M. Gustavo with a priceless painting.  By now M. Gustavo had taken a paternal shine to Zero his latest Lobby Boy, and the two contrived to snatch the painting and make off with it before the son could stop him.

What follows is a joyous frenzied romp that includes M. Gustavo being jailed, Zero and his confectioner girlfriend aiding and abetting his escape, with the local militia in hot pursuit. Packed with incidents which really are all about marking the passing of this old World of a more leisured era before the War would end all of this and all that The Grand Budapest Hotel represented.  Now as all the goings on are related to the author decades later by the new elderly owner, the Hotel is a sorry remnant of its glorious past.  As is the owner, who was once the newbie Lobby boy Zero.

Mr Anderson as usually sets out to prove that there is no such thing as a 'small part' in his movies by packing his cast with a roster of major Hollywood players that they ensure that no character is anything less than a star turn. They include Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Kietel, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Saoirse Ronan, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson plus Tilda Swinton in her totally scene stealing cameo as an 84 year old Dowager. Ralph Fiennes is superbly sublime as the cologne-reeking reckless Gustavo M., and full credit too the unknown Tony Revelon who held his own in this star studded piece with his captivating performance as young Zero.

For me like most of Mr Anderson's previous movies he has to share the well deserved applause with his production designer Oscar nominated Adam Stockhausen and his cinematographer Robert Yeoman who made it look simply stunning.  There were times I was so immersed with the impeccably choreographed shots on this candy-box covered set that I practically ignored the story line itself.

Anderson's wicked sense of humor and the outrageous characters and the sheer joy he imbues in these near masterpieces of movies have established him as one of the most important filmmakers of his generation.  I can't to see what he gives us next .... but in the meanwhile I need to see this again.  At least once.

★★★★★★★★★★

LIFE ITSELF

There are very rare occasions when the somewhat jaded and sceptical Press and Movie Industry audience at the Sundance Film Festival are ever moved to tears. The genuine kind that is. The screening of this highly emotional documentary to a venerated member of the clan was one such occasion, and I swear at one time there was not a dry eye in the house.  

This tribute by Oscar nominated director Steve James on the critic and writer Roger Ebert which he started filming during what turned out to be the last four months of the great man's life and so this became the most perfect cinematic epitaph.  

James goes back to Ebert's early life when even at a young age he was obsessed with newspapers and became the Editor of his college paper where he was very vocal with his impassioned support for the burgeoning civil rights movement.  In 1967 when he was hired by the Chicago Sun-Times he became the youngest daily newspaper movie critic in the country. Here he not only started to develop his own very incisive plain-speaking style (which Pauline Kael told him constituted some of the best ever film criticism she had ever read) but he learned to love the excesses of a lifestyle that went from newsroom to all night drinking binges.  Ebert reveals frankly on screen that his battle with alcoholism then could have ended both his career and his life.  Instead in 1979 he went to A.A. and found sobriety and his future wife Chaz. 

Ebert's encyclopedic knowledge and his limitless passion for every aspect of the cinema and his sheer generosity of spirit was the part of the dialogue that so many leading filmmakers stepped up to talk about. The most moving of which was Martin Scorcese's touching story of how Ebert had organised a tribute of his work in Toronto at a particular low point in his career when he needed it most.  In fact James himself had originally met Ebert when the critic mounted a campaign in support of his Oscar nominated 'Hoop Dream'.

Ebert's highly successful long running TV show first with Gene Siskel and later with Richard Roeper seemed to attract the disdain of a few of the more elitist critics who claimed that it debased film criticism. But the story of the behind-the-scenes 'battle' between Ebert and Siskel who loathed each other seemed much more relevant and interesting.

It is Ebert's remarkable combination of sheer energy and unfettered enthusiasm for life that strikes one most, no more so when in 2002 he was diagnosed with the first of several cancers that robbed him of his voice and eventually some 11 years later, his life too. His bravado and enormous courage in dealing with his declining health and the traumatic facial surgery was buoyed up by the unwavering support of Chaz his wife. The pair had not married until Ebert was 50 years old (he didn't want to displease his mother) and their inexhaustible devotion to each other shines out so radiantly from the screen like a dazzling beacon.  Chaz is not just the Vice President of his business and his partner and his biggest fan, she is also clearly the reason that he fought so hard to survive in those last very tough years.

In an industry that feeds off hyperboles and exaggerated praise and believes that 'air-kissing' is an art form, Ebert seems to be one of those rarities when all the tributes from President Obama (a local Chicago boy too) to Robert Redford really rang true. The President remarking on Ebert's death said 'that Roger could capture the unique power of the movies to take us somewhere magical and the movies won't be the same without him.'  And for anyone that has remotely any sort love for the movies, Ebert was a legend, a champion, an inspiration and a sheer joy.

He was working until almost the very end and his final entry to his blog three days before he died simple said 'So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I'll see you at the movies.'

Totally unmissable.

★★★★★★★★★★

HAPPY CHRISTMAS @ Sundance

Jeff and Kelly are trying are trying to do a balancing act juggling their freelance careers whilst bringing up their 2 year old son Jude.  Its slightly off kilter right now as Jeff is managing to work on pre-production of his next movie, but Kelly has got writers block since she completed her first book so has settled for full time homemaking for the time being.  The couple are however quite happy and things are going along relatively smoothly until they get a holiday visit that shatters their peace and throws the household into disarray.

The visitor is Jeff's rather volatile sister Jenny who's just had a bad breakup from her latest boyfriend and she flies into town for some much needed t.l.c. in return for helping them out with some childcare. It is soon apparent that self-absorbed Jenny is incapable of looking after herself let alone a small helpless baby. On her first night she goes to a party with an old friend and gets so totally wasted and passes out that Jeff is forced to go collect her in the middle of the night.  

The next time Jenny gets totally drunk is when she is a babysitting young Jude at home and this time she almost manages to burn the whole house down.  It then takes a lot of persuading on Jeff's part to convince his very sceptical wife to give her sister-in-law another chance. Kelly does eventually reluctantly agree and the two women very slowly start to bond. Jenny actually encourages her to her back to writing by telling her to set aside her planned second novel and instead write a sexually explicit trashy novel to make some fast ready money.

Suddenly Jenny has a purpose too and she looks less likely to self-destruct and even grabs herself a new beau and starts to date the family babysitter (and pot dealer) Kevin and surprisingly looks that she might live happily ever after all.  Possibly.

This is the latest movie from prolific filmmaker Joe Swanberg who as usual directs, writes and stars in it too.  I will confess that I am a fan as even when the plots are slight (as this one is) there is a cast of well-rounded characters whose inter-play with each other as they cope (and enjoy) their daily existence makes for fascinating viewing.  Swanberg injects it all with his own tempered sense of humour, and in this instance is aided by the presence of Lena Dunham playing Carson, Jenny's best friend.  But then he is always shrewdly casts his movies with what appear to be his mates ... Melanie Lynskey as Kelly, Anna Kendrick as Jenny and Mark Webber as Kevin.

I'm generally on the same page as Charles Laughton when it comes to children in movies, but even I could not helped but be seduced by scene stealing baby Jude played by Swanberg's own son.

After last year's 'Drinking Buddies' this is probably Swanberg's second most accessible work to date and part of his continued evolving from a filmmaker once known as the king of mumblecore. Long may it continue.

★★★★★★★★

THE MAID

Raquel has been the live-in Maid at the home of a wealthy middle class family in Santiago, Chile for the past 20 years.  Pilar, her very p.c. employer insists on claiming that Raquel is one of the family, but she’s obviously not.  In the opening sequence we see everyone somewhat reluctantly celebrating her birthday in the dining room, before she shuffles back to the kitchen in her uniform to wash the dishes as usual.  Raquel runs the household from the time she wakes up at sunrise, unto all are in bed at night and along the way she has not only got quite entrenched in her ways, but quite bitter too.  Several attempts to impose new maids on her to lighten her load and loosen her grip are sabotaged by Raquel, until eventually Lucy comes along and there is finally someone in the house who ‘gets’ her.

This wee gem of a movie that was a big hit at Sundance in 2008 and went on to pick up even more Awards and a Golden Globe Nomination was billed as a drama, and is actually quite deep and dark.  I must admit with her stoic expressionless face throughout Catalina Saavedra in a delightful wonderful performance as Raquel had me laughing loudly at times too.  But then again I’ve never been nice to my maids before … but I think I will from now on.

Available on DVD at Amazon


★★★★★★★★★

NEVER LET ME GO

I’ve never been a fan of the supernatural but the buzz around this movie back in 2010 intrigued me sufficiently to want to see I would change my mind.  The story from the best selling novel that almost won Kazuo Ishiguro the Booker Prize, is about children who are reared with the sole purpose in their lives of becoming organ donors so that other people can live beyond 100 years old.  More specifically it’s about 3 in particular Kathy, Tommy & Ruth who we first meet as children at a rather austere and scary Boarding School where they are indoctrinated with their predestined futures.  Love is never meant to be part of the ‘plan’ so when Cathy falls in love with Tommy much to the chagrin of Ruth who steals him away to become her boyfriend it throws mire than spanner un the works.

We later meet the three again when they are now grown up and in the process of making their ‘donations’ which will inevitably lea to their deaths, known much nicer as ‘completions’, except for Cathy who has become a ‘carer’ who looks after others like them.  Ruth confesses up about stealing Tommy's affections in the hope that now Cathy and he can be together they can apply for a ‘referral’ which will delay the donations a while so that they can have a life together as lovers.

The first part of this movie dragged at such a slow pace I was bored enough to start imagining Charlotte Rampling, the elderly prim headmistress Miss Emily, as she was back in the 60’s in her scant Nazi uniform in 'The Night Porter'  … but I digress.  But the pace quickened, and so did my interest as the real story unfolded, and by the end I was actually interested on what happened to all three of them.

Two fine Brit actors in the leads helped. Cathy was played by Carey Mulligan who the camera loves as much as me; Tommy by Andrew Garfield (about to hit the big time with the lead in Spiderman).  Ruth was played by my nemesis Keira Knightly who irritates me consistently as much as Catherine Zeta-Jones (yes, that bad!), so the less said about her the better.

Out on DVD at Amazon
★★★★★★★

THE DOUBLE

British Comedian turned Filmmaker  Richard Ayoade's sophomore feature 'The Double' was not what I expected.  After his Sundance debut in 2011 with the delightfully refreshing quirky coming-of-age comedy 'Submarine', Ayoade has chosen to go very dark with this existential black comedy/thriller based on Dostoevsky's novella of the same name. Thanks to Jesse Eisenberg's energetic performance playing both protagonists, it is another delightful wonderful movie albeit on a totally different level.

Eisenberg plays Simon James an awkward geeky loner who appears to be total invisible to every one including his mother who shows him nothing but contempt.  Mr Papadopoulus his boss at the Kafkaesque office that Simon has slaved away at some pointless job for years doesn't even know his name.  Even the Security Guard he encounters every day refuses to remember him.  And Hannah the beautiful co-worker who runs the Copying Department that he stalks barely notice him.

This drab non-existence of a life then turns into a total nightmare when a new man is suddenly employed at the office. No-one seems to notice that James Simon is the exact physical double as the lack lustre Simon. However everyone, including the usually sullen boss, is immediately totally captivated by James's smarmy charm. Simon begrudgingly seeks out his double's advice on how to become popular like him, and in return for doing all of his work, James feeds him a few tidbits. Soon enough, the lazy James starts completely encroaching on Simon's life. He takes credit for his work and gets the promotion that Simon has desperately pursuing for years, and of of course he chases Hannah too.  When James pushes him too far, Simon begins to fight back but no one believes his story and he's slowly pushed to the brink of madness.

Eisenberg is joined with perfect performances from Mia Wasikowska as Hannah, Wallace Shawn as Mr Papadopoulus, Chris O'Dowd as the mother's nurse, and a great wee cameo from Sally Hawkins. To be fair though a major portion of the credit for the movie's success is due to David Crank the Production Designer for his very surreal wondrous stark retro-looking set. With very dramatic lighting and very stylised cinematography, the whole piece is a visual treat.

Highly recommended.

★★★★★★★★

THE NOTORIOUS MR BOUT

According to this new documentary from filmmakers Tony Gerber and Maxim Pozdorovkin it would seem that everybody has wildly exaggerated polarizing ideas about who Viktor Anatolyevich Bout really is. None more so than Mr Bout himself who considers himself simply as a devoted family man and a highly successful international entrepreneur,  and the D.E.A. who claim that his illegal arms trading and gun-running activities have rightly earned him the title of Merchant of Death.  It seems that the truth may lie somewhere in the middle.

After the fall of communism in his native Russia Bout was determined to embrace the newly permitted capitalist society and so bravely entered the world of import/export.  At first he traded in anything he could lay his hands upon, but then hit on the fact he could make even more money by buying up old Russian planes and starting a cargo service in the Third World. As well as shipping produce and home electronics he and his rather dubious partners included Bulgarian made arms in the consignments that they flew around some of the more troubled countries in Africa.  

Bout is undoubtedly a larger-than-life colorful character. One of his many excesses was his love of his video camera and whilst it made for some very intimate and extraordinary footage for this film, he also shot footage when he was cavorting with several warlords and some very shady despots, and that provided damning evidence when the Authorities decided to go after him.  The D.E.A. set up a covert sting operation in Bangkok where it was alleged that the shipment of arms he was selling were intended to be used to kill Americans, so he was arrested and extradited to the US where he was made an example off by being given a excessively long jail sentence.  

According to investigative journalists who had met Bout out in the field, he was really very small fry in the world of arms trading and he did not in anyway justify either the reasoning or the ferocity of the way that he was pursued.  The D.E.A. could have felt that they had been taunted by the brazen way he carried out his activities, which frankly were fueled by both his love of the limelight and his sheer naivete. 

Bout's loyal wife Alla is a constant presence throughout the film (the very dated archival footage of their wedding is particularly wonderful) and she dutiful plays along as his supportive partner.  As she deals with her husband's trial she also proclaims her innocence too, but whilst she may not have been explicitly involved, it is hard to believe that she didn't know what her husband was up too.

At the end of this excellent and compelling documentary its clear that  the 'notoriety' in the title really split between Bout's activities but also with the questionable motives of the D.E.A.  At Bout's trial, the Judge made a point of mentioning that prior to the entrapment operation that the D.E.A. had set up, there was no evidence at all that Bout had broken any American laws.  

It seem that they wanted to make a scapegoat/example of someone and so they chose Viktor Anatolyevich Bout. This is a distraction from the main picture as just before the credits role, someone makes the point that most arms trafficking in the world is done by Governments trying to help their friends, and this is rarely considered illegal. 

Highly recommended

★★★★★★★★