Christopher and his kind (film review)
Mar. 24th, 2011 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakFirst of all, oh makers of films and tv shows set in Germany, while it's appreciated when actual German actors are cast, it's very distracting to cast siblings with one English and one German actor and then have them talk in German, because that exposes one of them can't really do it. Anyway. This film based on Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical book has to deal with the shadow of Cabaret which in turn was based on various novels (usually published together as The Berlin Stories) based on his experiences in Berlin. Life being more messy than fiction, it made the result feel far less structured, but one thing that struck me immediately about both Cabaret back when I watched it and Christopher and his kind is that both the Michael York character in Cabaret and Isherwood (played by Matt Smith in this film) are at core narcisssists. It does tie in them being the writers/observers; there is a chilling unaffectedness there other than by surface reactions which Christopher and his kind exposes far more. W.H. Auden, who pops up now and then, played by Pip Carter, and basically steals the film if you ask me, gets to make a devastating epigramm about this near the end.
Matt Smith as Isherwood is entertaining but essentially hollow. (I don't mean his performance is bad, on the contrary; that is how Isherwood is written.) Imogen Poots is really good as Jean Ross (the original for Sally Bowles), given she's contending with the mighty shadow of Liza Minnelli). Of the various German men Christopher is involved in, only two, Caspar and Heinz, get more profile, and Heinz (played by Douglas Booth) made me really feel for him in both the awkward, awkward scene with Christopher's family and the post war re-encounter which was devastating in its quiet "You do understand, don't you?" way. But let me state here and now I found it inadvertendly funny to see all German males in the late 20s and early 30s played by specimens who'd have delighted Leni Riefenstahl with their physique. Not a single skinny or overweight or just not physically perfect German in all of Berlin? With the depression going on? No wonder the Brits thought it was the sex tourist place to go. (Seriously, even if you look at the actors in German movies at the time, i.e. people who are supposed to look better than avarage - that type of casting wasn't realistic in the slightest.)
Then there were the politics. In terms of the British side, I think if you don't know that the paper Christopher briefly considers writing columns for until Jean Ross is appalled was one of Oswald Mosley's, you completly miss the implication there. As for the Germans, you get in various dialogues the usual shorthand explanation for the rise of Nazism (people poor, Hitler organized) but other than the Communists no other political movement is even mentioned. We did have various parties in the Weimar Republic, you know. Several of whom actually were bigger than either the NSDAP (the Nazi party, for non-German readers) or the KPD (German Communist party) at their strongest (pre-1933, that is, as long as elections were real). So presenting the alternatives as Hitler or communism isn't just simplistic but wrong. Oh, and while we're nitpicking, I get that they wanted the name of well-known authors in the 1933 book burning Christopher witnesses, but whoever did the research for this film should have tried harder. Thomas Mann's Buddenbrocks weren't on the list. Neither, for that matter, was Thomas Mann. Brother Heinrich and son Klaus, yes, but Thomas Mann being a nobel prize winner and having been rather conservative in WWI, the Nazis actually would have liked to keep him, and Thomas Mann kept being published within Germany (though he lived abroad) until 1936 when he was basically forced to come of the fence and make a public statement once and for all. And I haven't checked, but I would be surprised if Oscar Wilde was among the burned authors of 1933, because his plays were still performed and filmed right through the war. (They used the fact he was Irish as a get-out clause post 1939.) So: book burning: powerful image, capturing so much. Absolutely, go for it. But please, do your research about the books.
Gay sex: if you're watching this to see Matt Smith in various sex scenes with other men, you'll be satisfied, the film isn't coy about it at all. But emotionally, I find it rather depressing. Toby Jones' (btw, Smith and Jones on screen reunion for the win!) character tells him early on one can't really sexually cut loose with one's equals (meaning lower class Germans with whom one doesn't even share a language are just the ticket), and this is juxtaposed with a scene between Isherwood and Auden (who are equals) where Auden is clearly feeling more than friendship and Isherwood just as clearly doesn't want to go there emotionally. He does become emotionally involved with Caspar and Heinz, but in the end doesn't really know either of them, being shocked when meeting Caspar in SA-Uniform again and confessing to be relieved when Heinz' arrest rids him of the responsibility for him. It's best summed up by the epigramm I mentioned early on, said by Auden to Isherwood near the end of the film: "The only cause you really care about, Christopher, is yourself. But you’ve turned it into an art form.”
Matt Smith as Isherwood is entertaining but essentially hollow. (I don't mean his performance is bad, on the contrary; that is how Isherwood is written.) Imogen Poots is really good as Jean Ross (the original for Sally Bowles), given she's contending with the mighty shadow of Liza Minnelli). Of the various German men Christopher is involved in, only two, Caspar and Heinz, get more profile, and Heinz (played by Douglas Booth) made me really feel for him in both the awkward, awkward scene with Christopher's family and the post war re-encounter which was devastating in its quiet "You do understand, don't you?" way. But let me state here and now I found it inadvertendly funny to see all German males in the late 20s and early 30s played by specimens who'd have delighted Leni Riefenstahl with their physique. Not a single skinny or overweight or just not physically perfect German in all of Berlin? With the depression going on? No wonder the Brits thought it was the sex tourist place to go. (Seriously, even if you look at the actors in German movies at the time, i.e. people who are supposed to look better than avarage - that type of casting wasn't realistic in the slightest.)
Then there were the politics. In terms of the British side, I think if you don't know that the paper Christopher briefly considers writing columns for until Jean Ross is appalled was one of Oswald Mosley's, you completly miss the implication there. As for the Germans, you get in various dialogues the usual shorthand explanation for the rise of Nazism (people poor, Hitler organized) but other than the Communists no other political movement is even mentioned. We did have various parties in the Weimar Republic, you know. Several of whom actually were bigger than either the NSDAP (the Nazi party, for non-German readers) or the KPD (German Communist party) at their strongest (pre-1933, that is, as long as elections were real). So presenting the alternatives as Hitler or communism isn't just simplistic but wrong. Oh, and while we're nitpicking, I get that they wanted the name of well-known authors in the 1933 book burning Christopher witnesses, but whoever did the research for this film should have tried harder. Thomas Mann's Buddenbrocks weren't on the list. Neither, for that matter, was Thomas Mann. Brother Heinrich and son Klaus, yes, but Thomas Mann being a nobel prize winner and having been rather conservative in WWI, the Nazis actually would have liked to keep him, and Thomas Mann kept being published within Germany (though he lived abroad) until 1936 when he was basically forced to come of the fence and make a public statement once and for all. And I haven't checked, but I would be surprised if Oscar Wilde was among the burned authors of 1933, because his plays were still performed and filmed right through the war. (They used the fact he was Irish as a get-out clause post 1939.) So: book burning: powerful image, capturing so much. Absolutely, go for it. But please, do your research about the books.
Gay sex: if you're watching this to see Matt Smith in various sex scenes with other men, you'll be satisfied, the film isn't coy about it at all. But emotionally, I find it rather depressing. Toby Jones' (btw, Smith and Jones on screen reunion for the win!) character tells him early on one can't really sexually cut loose with one's equals (meaning lower class Germans with whom one doesn't even share a language are just the ticket), and this is juxtaposed with a scene between Isherwood and Auden (who are equals) where Auden is clearly feeling more than friendship and Isherwood just as clearly doesn't want to go there emotionally. He does become emotionally involved with Caspar and Heinz, but in the end doesn't really know either of them, being shocked when meeting Caspar in SA-Uniform again and confessing to be relieved when Heinz' arrest rids him of the responsibility for him. It's best summed up by the epigramm I mentioned early on, said by Auden to Isherwood near the end of the film: "The only cause you really care about, Christopher, is yourself. But you’ve turned it into an art form.”
