RIP Ken Russell

[ibanezmonster]

I should probably post here just because of the irony of my signature (which I typed before this happened)... 

[MDL]

I should probably post here just because of the irony of my signature (which I typed before this happened)... 

Ha! Nice one.

[Lisztianwagner]

I saw his "Mahler"....a strange, but interesting movie.

R.I.P.

[knight66]

I sent off for 'Mahler': I watched it within hours of it arriving. I did not enjoy it. It was not so much the divergence from literalism that I disliked; rather the crassness of feeding in cow bells and bird song through the composer's ear and at once tipping it out through his music onto the sound track. There was no suggestion of processing the sounds that went into this psyche. I quite liked some of the playfulness, but it jarred with the arc of the film.

Also, I think Georgina Hale as Alma was completely misscast.

Mike

[MDL]

I sent off for 'Mahler': I watched it within hours of it arriving. I did not enjoy it. It was not so much the divergence from literalism that I disliked; rather the crassness of feeding in cow bells and bird song through the composer's ear and at once tipping it out through his music onto the sound track. There was no suggestion of processing the sounds that went into this psyche. I quite liked some of the playfulness, but it jarred with the arc of the film.

Also, I think Georgina Hale as Alma was completely misscast.

Mike

I'm surprised that you find the "feeding in of cowbells and birdsong... onto the soundtrack" so crass; yes, it may be obvious, but it's not incorrect, surely? Mahler's music seethes with the sounds of nature, of the real world, no matter how he processed them or integrated them into his scores. Russell didn't make his  film for die-hard Mahler fans; he made it for the general public, people who might need guidance into Mahler's sound world. His methods may seem obvious to those of us steeped in Mahler's music, but back in 1974, when the film was made, cinema audiences would have been largely ignorant of Mahler's methods.

However, the film is incredibly uneven; the Conversion scene, for instance, is, well, crap, to be honest. But kudos to Russell; Mahler was shot on half the budget of one episode of The Incredible Hulk, apparently (according to Ken Hanke). Despite this, the photography is often stunning and there are some splendid scenes, as well as the odd stinker.

Georgina Hale won a Bafta for her performance. She may have been miscast (blonde vs brunette obviously), but even though I've read Alma's book about her relationship with Mahler, I find it hard to build up a picture of her. Maybe she was every bit as shrill and shrewish as Russell's film depicts her. I don't know.

[knight66]

Not that it matters, after all, there were no claims to it being history. I thought Hale was tarty, I believe Alma must have been more siren. Alma was as remarkable in her way as Mahler. Her liaisons were with extraordinary men, a string of near geniuses. She was highly intelligent, not superficial, a muse for some. One of her lovers was so devastated at her leaving him that he had a lifesize fetish doll made of her. She was like a siren wrecking lives as she went through men and this continued well into middle age.

Yes that conversion scene was not just over the top, but far too long.

But, my main issue is indeed the crassness of the way the composing process was described. Russell spent a lot of his life explaining the artistic spark; but here we got the Janet and John version. It is difficult to portray how any artist operates. Patrick White surmounts the problems brilliantly in his painful novel about a painter called 'The Vivisector'. Probably easier in writing than on film.

Mahler did not listen to a cuckoo then write one into his score moments later. He processed the sounds that were significant to him for years. He did not sit by the lake and write about what he saw from his window as it happened. It was a lot more elaborate than that. The film gave the impression that Mahler was not just inspired by the world, but lead by the nose and a prey to whatever he happened to see or hear. So whether or not it was for Mahler fans; it was the bertayal of the creative process that I found so tawdry. A director of Russell's ambition ought to have had more of a go to explain what happens.

After the third symphony he was much more intent on conveying music as abstract, without the programmatic aspect.

I know Russell could be a bit tabloid, but he was also capable of subtlety. I was disappointed by the film.

Mike

[MDL]

Mahler did not listen to a cuckoo then write one into his score moments later. He processed the sounds that were significant to him for years. He did not sit by the lake and write about what he saw from his window as it happened. It was a lot more elaborate than that. The film gave the impression that Mahler was not just inspired by the world, but lead by the nose and a prey to whatever he happened to see or hear. So whether or not it was for Mahler fans; it was the bertayal of the creative process that I found so tawdry. A director of Russell's ambition ought to have had more of a go to explain what happens.


Mike

I've not seen the film for a few years, but isn't there a line about, "Why is everyone so literal these days? I was speaking metaphorically." How do you convey and condense years of study and composition? How do you make it interesting or cinematic? It may have taken years of thought and analysis for Mahler to turn a cuckoo's song into the clarinet calls of his first symphony (or he may have copied Beethoven's Pastoral... who knows?), but it would be hard to make that process   interesting or engaging in a film.

[knight66]

I agree with you. But then, that is what Russell attempted. It worked within others of his films. Here we got the DC Comics version.There is no sense of layering, evolving, sweating through the process. But there we are, we got what we got and some like it, others don't. I am waiting on some other Russell films arriving.

Mike

[bwv 1080]

A heartwarming 2007 Christmas special from Ken

http://www.youtube.com/v/fu-KncLqDjs