The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (63 page)

Avatar
opened on December 18, 2009. The best reports were that the picture had cost close to $300 million to make. As such, it needed boxoffice in the region of $1 billion to be in profit. After three weeks, the box office claimed was $1.14 billion. The immediate target was to surpass the $1.84 billion earned by
Titanic
. I wrote this in the first week of January 2010, at which time I felt confident that
Avatar
would win best picture. In the event, however, the members of the Academy declined to vote for an old-fashioned sensation. Instead, they elected a film “no one” had seen. As voters they were right—but as the Academy they were wrong.

I don’t like anything about
Avatar
—beyond the passing curiosity of feeling the need to brush aside a luminous fern in the 3D jungle rather than let it swipe my face. But I cannot deny the way in which huge audiences—and some film critics—have felt in this a return to the young wonder “we” felt with Meliès,
Metropolis, Gone With the Wind, E.T.
, and so on. In other words,
Avatar
has worked the basic trick of cinema—it has shown us something we had never seen before. That thing, in essence, is the realization of fantasy through computer generated imagery. And this miracle or curse has been on its way for several years.

It was dawning in
Aliens
and the two
Terminator
films, which I like a lot. Mr. Cameron (back from the dead or the abyss) is already talking of two sequels for
Avatar
—if the money is right. And if he really has the patience for this kind of excruciating work. Will this mean a new age of movie palaces? No, I don’t think so. Rather, I suspect that
Avatar
may look like the swansong of that age. As such, it will be remarked that the film has social and racial attitudes that Griffith might have endorsed—though I suspect he would have winced at the dialogue.

So you pay your money and you take your choice. Opinion and taste hardly matter any longer, the numbers speak for
Avatar
—but it is not what I came for.

Donald Seton Cammell
(1934–96), b. Edinburgh
1970:
Performance
(codirected with Nicolas Roeg). 1977:
Demon Seed
. 1987:
White of the Eye
. 1996:
Wild Side
.

As the sultry age of the late sixties and early seventies recedes, so Donald Cammell may seem most plausible as an invented or literary figure—the brilliant, handsome boy with roots in fine art, the occult, and drugs, who has only a few, threatened, credits for films that may be more intriguing in description than actually witnessed on screen. But Cammell was a real person—and in a future age of electronic amateurism, where countless characters and geniuses have fragmentary career outlines, he may even seem like a prototype. On a more mundane and tragic level, it is clear that, at the age of sixty-two, as a longtime and failed resident of Los Angeles, Cammell killed himself because he could not get enough opportunity to work.

He was the son of Charles Richard Cammell, who wrote about Byron and Aleister Crowley. As a youth, Donald attended the Royal College of Art and became a noted portrait painter (and an expert on portrait society) in London. He did illustrations for Alice Mary Hatfield’s
King Arthur and the Round Table
when he was only nineteen. As such, he was very well placed as an artistic figure in what became “swinging London.” That’s how he got to be a screenwriter—on
The Touchables
(68, Robert Freeman), in which some groupies try to kidnap a pop singer, and
Duffy
(68, Robert Parrish), about half-brothers, played by James Coburn and James Fox.

One may see these ingredients feeding into the spectacularly outrageous yet enigmatic
Performance
. How did Roeg and Cammell collaborate? Maybe, like the Mick Jagger and James Fox characters, trying to resist osmosis. We know that Roeg shot the film, and that Cammell edited it—and legend has it that the larger aura of perverse experiment was more to Cammell’s taste than Roeg’s. Somehow, I have the feeling that not many people have ever watched
Performance
all the way through too many times. On the other hand, moments from it are as unforgettable as they are influential. Seldom has there been a vaguer, but more idyllic, stew of poisoned drugs and wicked sex—it may well be revealed one day as an ideal diversion for very self-consciously naughty children. And it could be a rare case where being there as it was done remained more interesting than any viewing of the finished film.

Demon Seed
is awful, yet the idea of a computer mating with Julie Christie moved many people at the time. By now, Cammell was living largely in America, married to China Kong, and attracting the long-winded and ultimately misty overtures of such figures as Marlon Brando—who allegedly wanted Cammell to do a pirate film with him. Nothing developed until
White of the Eye
, which may be Cammell’s most coherent film—and not to be damned on that account. Taking advantage of the tortured landscape around Globe, Arizona, it is a story of sex and serial killing that builds towards real fear. It also has good performances from David Keith and Cathy Moriarty.

What else is there to say? Cammell died in possession of a screenplay for
Pale Fire
, and a collaboration with Kenneth Tynan on a Jack the Ripper film. There was also a script set in Istanbul in 1933—called just
’33
—about the heroin trade, for which Cammell wanted Stanley Kubrick as director. Aren’t such dreams more potent than the actual release of a bizarre sexual story
—Wild Side
—from which there dangles the eventual hope that we may one day get “the director’s cut.” As it was, New Image removed it from Cammell, and he asked for his name to be dropped.

There is a good, atmospheric documentary film (by Chris Rodley), and surely one day there must be a biography—for which Christopher Walken (he’s in
Wild Side
) is the providential casting.

Jane Campion
, b. Waikanae, New Zealand, 1954
1982:
Peel
(s). 1983:
A Girl’s Own Story
(s). 1984:
Passionless Moments
(s). 1985:
Two Friends
. 1989:
Sweetie
. 1990:
An Angel at My Table
. 1993:
The Piano
. 1996: The
Portrait of a Lady
. 1999:
Holy Smoke
. 2003:
In the Cut
. 2006:
The Water Diary
(s). 2009:
Bright Star
.

From Europe or America, New Zealand looks like an offshore island of Australia, and films from New Zealand are easily misread as Australian products. But Cook Strait—the narrows between the two islands of New Zealand—is at least one thousand miles from the nearest Australian coast. That’s about the distance between Paris and Moscow, or Dallas and Detroit. So New Zealand is a place unto itself, with thoughts of its own secret landscapes, the neighborliness of Australia, and the oceanic desert of the southwest Pacific. New Zealand has a cinema that should not be confused with Australia’s, and in Jane Campion it has one of the more daring directors anywhere in the world.

After studying film in Australia, she made a number of shorts that won great acclaim at Cannes in 1986.
Two Friends
was a TV movie—made for Australian television—about two teenage girls. They were so real and particular, so unglamorous, so fresh in word and deed that one could feel a movie sensibility that easily seemed “literary”—in other words, the film had the feeling of novelistic texture and privacy, as well as a remarkable naturalness in the acting.

Campion remained most interested in awkward, shy, or marginal young women, people close to being outcasts or rejects, but in whom there is a great strength of private vision and tranquillity. Thus in
An Angel at My Table
—the autobiography of writer Janet Frame—the years in a mental hospital, the mistaken diagnosis, the pain and the humiliation, are all reduced by the talent that we know exists in this unprepossessing, chronically timid, and unactressy heroine. Such unworldliness has a way of looking after itself, Campion seems to suggest, and the film is not too far from a religious serenity amid all the travails.

This confidence owes a lot to Campion’s style. She leaves things out; sometimes the viewer is frustrated by the lack of basic information. Sometimes this oddity of emphasis seems like a mirroring of the near-insanity, or the lack of ordinariness, in the central figures (this is true of
Sweetie
, too). Campion may still be wary of or uneasy with old-fashioned narrative. But her films exert their power through the mysterious or the cryptic collisions of their structure. The slightly fractured air leaves the films to heal in our minds, knitted together by the appetite for life and the invisible guidance of performance from actresses (notably Kerry Fox as Janet Frame) who come from so far away they are like people we are meeting.

The Piano
was an astonishing step forward, yet it helped reveal Campion’s earlier talent. This is a film about that commonplace genius, the human will, set in the semitropical frontier of New Zealand, with muddy oceans and wild shores. The sense of place, of spirit, and of silence is Wordsworthian. The love story needs so little charm or romance. And in the very severe look of Holly Hunter as her heroine, Campion found the rare poetry of
The Piano
. No one has better caught the mix of sensitivity and ferocity in the human imagination.
The Piano
is a great film in an age that has nearly forgotten such things.

As well as acting Oscars,
The Piano
won a screenplay Oscar for Campion. The international success of the film may make it harder for Campion to remain simply a New Zealander.

The Portrait of a Lady
had major mistakes (as I thought): the several dream raptures damaged the tone; Malkovich was allowed to be too sinister—and if you can’t stop him, then why cast him; and even Kidman seemed more valiant than natural. That said, and despite its complete commercial failure, it had passages of intense beauty and passionate cinema.
Holy Smoke
passed over me too easily, but
In the Cut
was a very promising project, granted Ms. Campion’s dedication to danger.

In the Cut
was trashed—yet I think it’s a brilliant film and a superb evocation of troubled female sexuality. When films like that are ruined by response, do we deserve “cinema” anymore? Campion made shorts for a few years and then she appeared with
Bright Star
—about Keats and Fanny Brawne—and while it won admiration from many, still the emotional connection seemed distant.

Milena Canonero
, b. Turin, Italy
These days, the costume designer in movies personifies the way the industry has gone freelance. Edith Head reigned at one studio (in her case, Paramount) for nearly four decades, rising from the rank of designer to creating the role of head of the design department, and thus mistress of a vast wardrobe. Head was as responsible for the Paramount “look” as any one person, and vital to the careers of many of that studio’s stars. By contrast, there are now very few wardrobe departments. Instead, there are costume shops (open for parties, live events, and “ordinary” requirements as much as for show business) and there are great designers and their private workshops.

Costuming may seem a less secure job because of that, but costumiers are paid better, credited more lavishly, and they often have fruitful connections with the fashion industry—for the crossover of new clothing ideas from movie to street (and salon) is quicker now and more complicated. No respectable magazine can shoot a movie star without crediting designers, stylists, and the stores where the clothes can be bought. The screen is a ramp. From
Bonnie and Clyde
to
Moulin Rouge
, everyone has an urge to look like someone in a movie. Once upon a time, the arts may have taught us ethics; today they often settle for lifestyle accessories. Wardrobe consultancy has become an adjunct of psychotherapy.

In that movement, Milena Canonero is a goddess—and she is generally accepted as one of the leading designers for movies (if they can afford her). Her work ranges from the modern exotic depraved (
A Clockwork Orange
), to the J. Peter-man catalogue style (
Out of Africa
), to the authentic, everyday, and cool grungy (
Single White Female
). But she is at her best with a fusion of antique and modern that comes close to science fiction (
Titus
).

She began working in England with
A Clockwork Orange
(71, Stanley Kubrick), and she won her first Oscar for the fragrant, gossamer Gainsborough world of
Barry Lyndon
(75, Kubrick). But she was just as impressive with the prison range of
Midnight Express
(78, Alan Parker) and that tweed jacket Nicholson wears in
The Shining
(80, Kubrick). She won another Oscar for
Chariots of Fire
(81, Hugh Hudson), and has since worked on
The Hunger
(83, Tony Scott), where clothes blend into skin;
The Cotton Club
(84, Francis Ford Coppola);
Out of Africa
(85, Sydney Pollack); the skid-row chic of
Barfly
(87, Barbet Schroeder);
Tucker: The Man and His Dream
(88, Coppola); the comic-book primary of
Dick Tracy
(90, Warren Beatty), with Dick’s heavy yellow coat nearly embossed on the screen;
The Godfather: Part III
(90, Coppola);
The Bachelor
(91, Roberto Faenza);
Single White Female
(92, Schroeder);
Damage
(93, Louis Malle), where the clothes are so right for those people it’s creepy;
Only You
(94, Norman Jewison);
Love Affair
(94, Glenn Gordon Caron);
Death and the Maiden
(94, Roman Polanski);
Camilla
(95, Deepa Mehta);
Bulworth
(98, Beatty);
Tango
(98, Carlos Saura);
Titus
(99, Julie Taymor);
In the Boom Boom Room
(00, Barbara Kopple);
The Affair of the Necklace
(02, Charles Shyer);
Solaris
(02, Steven Soderbergh);
The Life Aquatic
(04, Wes Anderson);
Ocean’s Twelve
(04, Soderbergh);
Marie Antoinette
(06, Sofia Coppola);
Belle Toujours
(06, Manuel de Oliveira);
The Darjeeling Limited
(07, Wes Anderson);
I Vicerè
(07, Faenza);
The Wolfman
(10, Joe Johnston).