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The art of community-mindedness: Click into Culture at Fabrica, Brighton – Q+A with Clare Hankinson

April 14, 2021 — Leave a comment
Street view of Fabrica’s exterior, Brighton.

Having settled in the deconsecrated Holy Trinity Church in Brighton’s city centre 25 years ago, arts organisation Fabrica has since worked tirelessly to engage with the local community as a social hub and support centre. 

The past twelve months have presented new challenges to the continuation of outreach programmes, tailored to the needs of vulnerable groups, that Fabrica has spent years developing. 

While their physical exhibiting space and workshop facilities have remained closed due to external factors, the arts organisation’s team of staff have been striving to extend socially-minded community programmes into the digital sphere.

Clare Hankinson, Fabrica’s Audience Development Manager, has been an indispensable driving force behind many of the organisation’s groundbreaking outreach initiatives in recent years. 

Her altruistic approach to audience development has given rise to the creation of community programmes that provide an exceptional level of local support from the multifaceted arts hub that she has worked with for just over a decade.

“One of our key aims as an organisation is to reach the broadest audience possible; that’s really inherent in our bones,” said Hankinson.

We spoke over Zoom this week about Fabrica’s community outreach initiatives, including their brand-new digital programme Click into Culture, which has been designed to assist people who might have difficulties with mobility or their personal health (that may ordinarily affect their access to art institutions) in experiencing artworks from home in a supportive online environment.

“Of course, with COVID, a lot of people are struggling to get out of the house but what we identified, really, was that it isn’t a new problem for a lot of people,” she said, and explained that Click into Culture has been designed with a post-pandemic future in mind.

We also discussed the opening of Olafur Eliasson’s upcoming exhibition at Fabrica, which has been in the works for a number of years and will be opened up to members of the public in May.

Although we were separated by the distance between two terminals of a Zoom call, it was easy to get a sense of the unmistakeable enthusiasm and passion Hankinson has for her work. 

Read the Q+A in full below:

SIS: Did Click into Culture start as an offshoot of the established Going to See Culture Together programme Fabrica runs monthly for older audiences?

CH: It is a bit of an offshoot of Going to See Culture Together. Click into Culture is probably the culmination of a few things. Luckily, we applied to take part in a Tech for Good research and development programme […] before the general lockdown happened. 

It was a 12 week program, and some of my colleagues took part in research, developing ideas, talking to the people we work with, participants we work with, digital engagement, what people use.

This gave us the chance to really dig down into where the barriers were for that group – or, actually, where there were opportunities – so as part of that project I got to develop some prototype ideas. 

We’d gone in specifically thinking about older people with low mental health, and one of the prototype ideas was basically what Click into Culture has become. We got really great feedback from the prototype testing that we did with some of our participants, but we realised that it wasn’t something that only older people might take advantage of.

Click into Culture, I hope, will be one of the things that we take forward as a digital activity in the long run, because we could be engaging people outside of the city – there should be no restrictions on where people are. So that might be exciting for [a new group] to connect with each other as well.

Our mental health programmes and lot of our older audiences programmes are heavily oversubscribed, so we’re always thinking of ways we can diversify and reach new people because otherwise you just feel like there’s so many people who are missing out.

SIS: How did Fabrica’s mental health support events and group workshops emerge – were these parts of a broader therapeutic arts initiative that the organisation has always worked towards?

CH: A lot of arts organisations over the last five or ten years have started to consider themselves as working on a health and wellbeing agenda. I think it’s taken us a while to really see ourselves as [an organisation] that could really apply to health-related funding. 

A big step change for us was when we started doing Men in Sheds, as that was a Public Health funded commission. I think that put us in the right networks to start […] working with doctors’ surgeries, and also with mental health organisations, with Public Health and suicide prevention services.

Often you still feel like the odd one out in the room, because the arts feels – when you’re working with frontline services – a little bit soft, but there’s obviously value there.

Those guys we’ve been working with through Men in Sheds for years […] – as soon as we weren’t able to open our doors we were phoning them every week. We were trying to suggest things to do from home, and trying to connect people together, and getting them involved in anything else that we were doing. We ended up really trying to find [things that would be] suitable to each individual that we know.

SIS: Have you been able to continue your regular workshop programmes and support events for children and young audiences, such as CHOMP, throughout the pandemic?

CH: The situation of lockdown has meant that we’ve tried and tested so many routes to keep engaging people, and I would say it’s certainly – unsurprisingly – not a ‘one size fits all’ situation.

There were a few things we’d planned for young people and children that haven’t gone ahead […]. We run a lunch club for low income families that just couldn’t run as an event […] and the really big opportunity with that event is that the families get to meet each other, mix and mingle, and create together and support each other.

Several community programmes were sending out food hampers to those families, so […] nine times we sent out a hundred activity packs alongside the food hampers so that they were getting something a bit more interactive physically to do from home – obviously making sure that they had some materials provided, and that it was something that was also replicable – something using household recycling materials, and things like that.

SIS: It must have been difficult to shift programmes that you’ve spent so much time building up as people’s needs and capabilities changed during the past twelve months – and some vulnerable groups have been struggled even more to engage with the wider community as many of us have not been connected in the ways we would ordinarily be. Do you think that when Fabrica is able to reopen as an arts hub, interest in those small group events will return?

CH: A lot of our events run really regularly. And I can’t think of one that has totally lost touch over lockdown.

Access to digital [technology] has obviously become a much more understood disadvantage, if you can’t get online; we’ve had a relationship with city council-led Seniors Housing for a long time and they have free wifi, but only in the lounge – so when people didn’t want to leave their flats during lockdown they were totally away from the wifi connection.

We’ve been able to engage people with the bespoke projects we do [but] where we’ve probably lost a big part of our dialogue is people coming in to see an exhibition and having a really good chat with the front of house team, and […] coming across it in this church, and not knowing what to expect. I think that’s something you can’t replicate online in the same way.

SIS: You must be looking forward to having the option to organise in-person events again soon; is part of the pleasure of audience development seeing the reactions from your visitors and groups in the moment, in the physical space?

CH: Yes, and there’s something about trust as well with these programmes – a lot of the work we do is about getting someone’s trust, especially if they don’t think that art is for them, or that it is elitist … 

It’s very hard to get all of that through a digital medium, and we’ve all had to become accustomed to that, haven’t we?

SIS: Fabrica’s upcoming exhibition, Olafur Eliasson’s The Forked Forest Path, is going to be shown through a Click into Culture event in April – but will it also be open to the public in the gallery’s main art space?

CH: Yes, from the 17th of May, when non-essential businesses can open. That’s the plan, and we’ve extended it into June to make the most of the show.

It’s one of those shows that we’ve been working on for a few years and it is [a piece] that is very encompassing, and physical, and fun – all of those things that are classic Fabrica. It’s like a little magical forest.

SIS: Looking ahead, are there any projects that you’ll be working on this year that you’re particularly excited about?

CH: There’s existing projects that we haven’t been able to do recently, like the dementia-focused programmes – I’m really looking forward to getting back into discussing those and getting the gears turning again.

I am hoping that we’ll get something that will give us a bit of longer-term support towards Click into Culture. There’s always so many ideas, and so little time!

Fabrica will be exhibiting Olafur Eliasson’s The Forked Forest Path between 18 May – 20 June. Accessibility information can be found here.

For further information about Fabrica’s special events programmes, visit their Events site here.

Many thanks to Clare Hankinson for her time, and for speaking with Sophie I See.

Still, in motion: Julian Vilarrubi’s Shifting Moments exhibition breathes life into the Phoenix, Brighton

April 13, 2021 — Leave a comment

One of the most generous aspects of contemporary landscape art is its ability to translate a pastiched visual language of urban development – mixtures of modern and historical architecture, natural effects and organic structures – into something harmonious and profoundly beautiful.

From jagged scaffolds to the potent beams of an evening sun, Julian Vilarrubi’s most recent series of works on paper – Shifting Moments, currently on display in the Phoenix Art Space, Brighton – encompasses a full and enveloping experience of the artist’s perception of his exterior environment from a principal vantage point.

In various mediums, at numerous intervals, Vilarrubi renders a view of St Peter’s Church as he observes it continuously in transient glances from the window of his working studio upstairs at the Phoenix, which stands on the opposite side of the road. 

“It’s a visceral, in the moment response. A reaction to something.”

Vilarrubi is a warm and thoughtful conversationalist, with astonishing self-knowledge and an enthusiasm for reflective artistic practices.

With faces covered and distancing observed, the artist and I took a tour of his exhibition, while he illustrated the process of creation behind the artworks on display along with the lasting influences and inspirations that fed into Shifting Moments.

‘St. Peter’s Sunset’, 2021, 154 x 119 cm. The final work in Vilarrubi’s Shifting Moments, on display in the Phoenix’s Canvas Coffee Bar.

When I met with the artist shortly after the show opened to the public, he spoke of his fondness for producing works in rapid succession – something he encourages his students to do in exercises when teaching painterly techniques.

“There’s this strange ‘no man’s land’ between being conscious of what you’re doing and being […] in the moment,” he said.

“If I’m under pressure, then I’ve got to do something quickly – and I love working quickly.” 

Vilarrubi attributes this, in part, to time he spent working under a Fine Art tutor during his studies at Newcastle University.

His tutor had once led a trip to the Swan Hunter Shipyard by the Tyne, where the students were asked to paint inside the immense industrial sheds on-site in natural conditions – while it was half-lit and bracingly cold. 

Those paintings produced in-situ inspired the artist’s working method throughout his most recent series, which exemplifies a passion for painting with immediacy, and employing fast-acting materials. 

Vilarrubi also commended Sky’s Landscape Artist of the Year for giving him the opportunity to explore new modes of on-site painting guided by set conditions, and to practice responding “from reality”, when he participated in the programme back in January.

‘Swan Hunter Shipyard II’, 1983, 59.4 x 42 cm. One of two early works on display in Shifting Moments.

Two of the paintings produced in the Swan Hunter sheds are on display at the Phoenix, and occupy the first and second positions in the Shifting Moments exhibition.

“I only decided to put those two there right at the last minute,” he said. The decision was motivated partly by a recognition of parallelism between the recent studies of St Peter’s and his early studies of the Swan Hunter buildings.

“It’s about having those restrictions: going to the same place, working in the same way … in the same scale.”

When initially offered the corridor exhibition space at the Phoenix, he had planned to produce a series of 8 or 9 identically sized paintings that would lead a viewer through the effects of changes in the time of day on a single landscape. 

The artist had a working deadline of 6 weeks to develop and finish the series, which pushed him to adapt his initial conditions to suit the constraints that he had, for the most part, imposed upon himself.

Having created an inceptive piece which measured 60 x 80 centimetres in its frame, Vilarrubi sought to replicate the dimensions across all the works in Shifting Moments, but found that the number of identical frames he required would not be available for the exhibition – so he decided to make use of older frames he had stowed away which were diverse in proportions.

“The frame determined the composition,” he said, as he indicated towards outer edges of a painting in the series that had been deliberately spliced onto a painting of St Peter’s in order to extend the image and create a Baconesque focus on the central subject.

Vilarrubi adjusts focus and perspective in his compositions by working in layers, and considering the effect of “deep space” at each stage of production.

Six of the works on display in Shifting Moments are iPad drawings, and the artist enthused about the freedom digital drawing awards as the layers in each piece are able to be transformed, modified or repeated to great effect.

‘Morning Rain’, 2021, 29.7 x 21 cm. One of Vilarrubi’s six limited edition iPad prints in Shifting Moments.

“The top layer is the rain on the window, and then the next layer is the balcony, then the trees and the sky,” said the artist, in describing Morning Rain – the first iPad drawing encountered in the exhibition. “I started playing with the space even more.” 

The framing of space is a prominent motif across Shifting Moments, and mature works like St. Peter’s Brighton VII showcase the artist’s ability to draw depth by capturing details that create an interplay between foreground and background.

“Actually, what I’m painting is […] the space between me and the church,” said Vilarrubi. He explained that by representing dust, streaks and speckles on the glass of the window from which he observed St Peter’s, he was able to render the ephemeral moment more accurately.

The artist described the difficulty of creating landscape scenes that are true to life, even when painted plein-air. “There’s a gap between what you see and what you do. Therefore, in that gap, you’re memorising what you’ve seen.”

The soft psychedelia of Vilarrubi’s acrylic colour palettes suggests that he is open to creative renditioning of a direct environment, and working with electric colours was imperative for the artist when painting from life in Malibu or Tenerife. 

One of the more exacting challenges he has faced in his most recent series is developing and discovering greys or flat tones that are so ubiquitous across everyday Brightonian scenes over winter. 

View of St Peter’s Church, Brighton, in the spring.

Tuning into the moment and translating that moment into a composition simultaneously involves a great deal of control over practical methods, and a freedom of thought.

“It’s not relaxing at all. It’s full of tension, and the risk of potential destruction,” said Vilarrubi, while admitting that this process of creation can yield remarkable results, and therefore tends to be highly constructive.

Shifting Moments is a delightful exhibition which showcases the artist’s manifold talents across different media. The concept of a fixed central point being observed through changing points in time is acutely relevant in the context of recent months, and the delicacy with which Vilarrubi depicts his surroundings inspires the onlooker to seek such vibrancy in their immediate environments.

Shifting Moments is currently showing at the Phoenix Art Space, Brighton. The building’s main entrance is accessible to wheelchair users via ramp.

Many thanks to Julian Vilarrubi for his time, and for speaking with Sophie I See.

Hey! We’ve got to hide that film away… Legacy art + The Beatles

March 16, 2021 — Leave a comment

One night, in a plush room after a few rounds of Sambuca, when the evening was drawing to a close, a question was asked among friends – half in jest.

“What do you think music would be like today if not for the Beatles?”

As the rules of conversation had ceased to be coherent, this was answered with another question.

“Well, if the Beatles weren’t the Beatles, do you think anyone would have listened to the songs?”

Could we ever really live without you?

Friends ponder over this for a moment. And the idea begins to bloom.

“If the Beatles were around today, would they still be successful? Would people LIKE the Beatles?”

Call it pure conjecture, naturally, but this could well have been the session of revelation that planted the seed for Jack Barth’s ‘Cover Version’, which later became Richard Curtis’ Yesterday. 

This is a story adapted for film by Danny Boyle, and it begins to seem as though it’s a comic tale about a young man, Jack Malik, and his interminable love for music which is given a boost by his opportunistic commandeering of the Beatles’ work. 

But why? What makes it so special?

Jack, an unrecognised talent in the music industry and a sort-of schoolteacher by day, is hit by a bus on his way home from a gig after being dropped off by his ultra-loyal manager and admirer, Ellie, and finds that when he regains consciousness, all memory of the Beatles has been erased from his world – including their music.

He decides to take on their songs and perform them as a one-man Beatle, reaping the historic fame and rewards that came with exceptional songwriting and performance. At its best, the film should have been about the corrupting pursuit of fame – about deception, greatness and singularity.

Unfortunately, in its cinematic iteration, Yesterday comes across as a clinical, shallow and confused example of a self-involved love story; the result of an ideas tap running dry before the tub filled up. 

While it is fair to conclude that Yesterday came from a place of admiration and love for those boys in the band, it really had nothing at all to say about musicianship.

That film demonstrated no real understanding of the fabric of the Beatles – what made them truly exceptional in their own time, and in ours, too. It wanted to decontextualise the music, and argue for timelessness.

But the Beatles were a context-heavy band. They are woven into the cultural zeitgeist of the 1960s, and one of the most enchanting things about their work is how serendipitous each of their creations were.

It all starts with a word.

In fact, it is easy to lose sight of how much chance was involved in the meeting of minds between John, Paul, George, Ringo. In Craig Brown’s raucous and colourful tome of Beatleology One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time, he opens early in his book with an illustration of two scenarios for the reader.

First, scenario a). While they don’t consider each other potential romantic partners, Jim McCartney and Mary Mohin have spent some time together as Mary lodges with Jim’s sister. During an aerial bombing in wartime Liverpool, Mary has to stay overnight at Jim’s mum’s. They talk and talk, and know they’ve got a connection. They marry. Macca is born. 

Then, scenario b). The air raid never comes. Mary never stays overnight at Jim’s mum’s. Macca is never born. The Beatles never are. 

Time and place are truly integral to the birth of the band and their trajectory. The summit of their careers coincided with pop movements across cultural institutions in Britain – and across the globe – whose missions were to create works that reflected the throwaway trends and fast consumption that defined the sixties.

Ironically, of course, many of these artists produced pieces that became timeless markers of an exploratory era. 

From Fluxus to Boty and Paolozzi, the legacies of the artist contemporaries of the Beatles now exist dichotomously as momentary spectacles and everlasting displays of experimental artisanship.

The products of the Beatles’ craft are enjoyed still perhaps because of their innovative technical qualities, their whimsy, the encompassing worldview and personality injected into all songwriting.

Curtis and Boyle’s Yesterday misrepresented the connection between the Beatles and the people. If one man could pluck the songs from the void, perform them with no real motivation or understanding – other than the fact that he can, and he wants to – then that music is cheapened, and made meaningless.

It would be like trying to paint a de Kooning in 2021. You’ve got all the ingredients, you know the style. You can mimic, and you can recreate – you can even nail the texture, and make the painting breathe. 

But you’re not de Kooning. And the time for his work has long since passed. It wouldn’t impress, and it certainly wouldn’t make sense.

How can that sole day last forever?

There’s no magic in Yesterday’s vision of the creative process. And the songs that the writers chose to illustrate the story were fairly counterintuitive to the theme.

Why did the filmmakers choose the tracks they did? 

Instead of going with:

Moment when Jack is weighing up his fame with his life outside of music = Can’t Buy Me Love. 

Moment when Jack is a struggling musician who can’t catch a break and is stuck in a creative rut = Nowhere Man. 

They went with:

Moment in studio = I Want To Hold Your Hand.

Moment in studio = I Saw Her Standing There.

Early days. Avant-garde in situ? Of course.

Why choose songs that – while brilliant and highly listenable, in their own right – are arguably some of the least likely to be able to break through in this era with the lyrics as they are?

“She was just 17, if you know what I mean.” Would we know what that meant? And if we did know what it meant, would we still really want to hear it from a global megastar’s mouth? And what about the name of Penny Lane?

But how closely, then, could you tie a narrative into all manner of Beatles tracks based on lyrics alone? 

Very closely. The boys did this themselves, and the payoff was – for the most part – spectacular. 

Think about A Hard Day’s Night. That rambling, freewheeling, youthful, technical masterwork which had its own genre-defining style.

“He’s very clean.”

The Beatles were self-mocking, and seriously witty. You’d be hard-pressed to find another British comedy film from ’64 that can still stand up as a source of ultimate fun. 

(And on that note, it isn’t difficult to think of plenty of examples that can be watched only through the cracks in your fingers. Probably with clenched teeth.)

Something troubling about the way the Beatles’ music is presented in Yesterday is that it becomes straight-laced, too perfect – dull. 

There are missed opportunities for gags all over the place, but the film also lacks any serious tension; here’s a lad who’s allowed to do exactly as he pleases, with no one to stop him but himself.

And when two Beatle-knowing mystics arrive to presumably throw a spanner in the works as they confront Jack about his appropriation of the Beatles’ songs, they merely appear to congratulate and thank him on his good work bringing the music back into the world – then, they’re away.

Where there should be conflict, we find none. John and Paul were notoriously different in character, but the collision of their occasionally polarised perspectives was a driving force behind the storytelling within their songs. Conflict was not antagonistic, but healthy – and realistically productive.

And there were times when the band themselves were unhappy with what they produced. Myth can be mendacious, so to assume that all the work felt triumphant when it was still in the making is a fallacy.

The problem with the concept of a one-man Beatles in the first instance is that they had to be a gang of four. They inspired each other with abundances of influences, and tempered one another’s wilder creative tendencies. But there was always a space for each to have their voices heard.

Their creations were open, embracing, and fed from the outside in. Yesterday’s power dynamic is all wrong. There, the creations are closed-off, owned, and earnest.

Inspiration starts at home. Open hearts, open minds.

Even the love story in Yesterday is colder and far more outdated than a sixties pop song. Poor Ellie, who hasn’t been given a personality or life of her own (apart from “teacher”, which is an occupation rather than a human trait), pines after Jack and lives to serve his every whim when he has no time for her. 

He lies, he mopes, and behaves in selfish ways – but has little self-awareness, and fails to put any of those experiences into a musical medium.

And as soon as Ellie decides to regain some agency by pursuing the life she wants and finds a little happiness, she chucks it at the first sign of interest Jack offers her. Only once he’s decided to chuck in his own music career.

All of this, of course, is truly inconsequential to the legacy of the Beatles: their music, their talents, their lives, experiences, the art they created. 

Which is why Yesterday should be kept distant from the Beatles’ back catalogue, especially from their lives on film. It never asked why the Beatles’ songs were so revered, it merely stated: because.

That something.

What I hope Peter Jackson’s Get Back will be able to show is the symbiotic relationship between four talented and eccentric young men that nourished their creativity, and catalysed the writing process behind profoundly unparalleled pieces of music.

“If the Beatles were around today, would they still be successful?”

Probably not. And who cares? Whatever “success” is, it can’t be replicated. And if you’re seeking it out, then you’re miles away from where the fab four began.

Instead of worrying about what could have been in the Beatles’ legacy, take some advice: let it be.

Looking for something to stream this February?

February 19, 2021 — Leave a comment

If you’re searching for some worthwhile films and series to fill your quiet weekend at home, try these titles; all available for UK viewers to stream now on their respective platforms.

Lupin

Since VOD-born series have pushed forward changes in the release tactics of television shows, the way we anticipate tuning into those programmes has also become drastically different. In this sense, it is a gratifying feeling to find yourself frustrated about staggered releases. Lupin is so addictive, so shrewd and mirthful, that you will be left longing for more of the magic the show brings—at the heart of which is an exuberant protagonist, Assane Diop (Omar Sy), who has a taste for danger, a bone to pick with a tyrant of the establishment, and a fixation on the literary works of Maurice Leblanc.

Modelling himself on Leblanc’s gentleman thief—and subject of many popular works of fiction—’Arsène Lupin’, Diop uses his charm and cunning to undertake missions that seem nigh on impossible to achieve. The payoff in each episode is, naturally, enough to wrap up the questions around the hows and whys of his adventures, but these instalments are clues which fit inside a larger high-stakes mystery. If you can manage the wait between now and the release of the series’ latter parts, give it a watch with subs and French audio. You won’t regret it.

First five episodes available to stream now on Netflix

Disclosure

Essential viewing for film buffs, this documentary sees trans* representation in mainstream cinema through the eyes of the people whose voices matter in the coverage of trans* histories. The success of Disclosure’s format is due to its smart and straightforward structure; the documentary is comprised of a series of interviews with influential Hollywood figures, who analyse the presence of trans* people in the products of popular culture that their generations were attuned to.

What Disclosure makes clear is that popular media is capable of shaping people’s minds and imaginations, and to use this power responsibly Hollywood must make fair and accurate trans* visibility—in consultation with trans* people—a critical part of its present-day cultural vision. It is only fair that everyone should be able to get to see themselves illustrated on-screen, presented as the nuanced, bright and complex people that they should be; to let them feel loved, and to inspire young people to hope for an outstanding future.

Available to stream now on Netflix

One Night in Miami

Brought to the screen by Regina King, this adaptation of Kemp Powers’ stage play of the same name is a bittersweet celebration of great young minds and Black talent, blighted by an undercurrent of dread anticipating the loss of two of the gifted people in that hotel room in Miami. Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) (who was about to join the Nation of Islam and take up his chosen name, Muhammad Ali)—same place, same night. 1964.

King’s direction keeps the scenes tightly focused on the exchanges between four vibrant, contrasting characters—each of whom has their own perspective on the progress of Black civil rights in America, and all of whom are fighting for a common good, albeit in separate ways. What the film captures so brilliantly is the disquiet that is so often at the heart of political movements, the lack of cohesion weighing heavily on members who strive always to remain strongly principled in ways that meet their own unyielding expectations.

Available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video

Can’t Get You Out of My Head

As much as this sounds like hyperbole, Adam Curtis really is one of the most watchable documentarians in television today. He commands your whole attention without ever appearing on screen. This six-part series sketches out a history of power relations in the UK, USA, Russia and China by encompassing the views, movements and grievances of groups and individuals in the aforementioned nations.

Conducted through a mixture of archival mashups and narration, Can’t Get You Out of My Head journeys in and out of the human subconscious, tapping into fears but reaching out to the rational aspects of our natural thought processes—if they truly are independently instinctive. The docuseries is like an immersive, psychedelic experience, and it gives you the chance to truly meditate on images and stories we see daily but infrequently connect together.

All six episodes available to stream now on BBC iPlayer

Possessor

A bizarre, seething body-horror with a moody score and elegantly dressed minimalist sets, Brandon Cronenberg’s most recent feature film is well-executed and creatively paced. Suspense ebbs and flows throughout, with moments of staggering brutality puncturing a gradual, sustained movement towards true mindlessness – a state of non-being, accompanied by nihilistic cruelty.

This film was capable of getting under my skin, inside my head – a troubling watch, but absolutely captivating. Cronenberg has found a way to take a fear of surveillance to new heights, enhancing the violating nature of complete invasions of privacy by introducing an element of human error. Possessor also demonstrates how easy it is to forget how to be a person when we cease to recognise the value of every life there is.

Available to rent now on BFI Player

RE: Mank

February 19, 2021 — Leave a comment

“You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours. All you can hope is to leave the impression of one.” 

These words from Oldman’s Mankiewicz (Mank, to his many associates) describe perfectly the achievements of two separate films that converse with each other through time.

They build each other’s myths up, forging links between generations that add new dimensions to the cortex of Hollywood’s (occasionally justifiably) self-aggrandising lore.

All players agree, in Fincher’s sparkling and tender-hearted Mank, that the script Herman J. Mankiewicz has drafted is the best thing he’s ever written. 

In the context of its lasting legacy, that script has proven to be arguably one of the best English-language screenplays ever written.

Mank is the man who wrote Citizen Kane.

He is given, by Oldman, a vivaciousness that does justice to a man who appeared warm, droll and often self-aware, but ultimately compelled towards his vices in too destructive a fashion to accommodate the full extent of his talents.

Fincher’s film traces the life of Mankiewicz over intervals throughout the 1930s, moments during which led inevitably to the development of an anarchic relationship between Orson Welles and Mankiewicz, which produced the screenplay that brought Charles Foster Kane into public consciousness.

There is a distinction between “smugness” and admiration that critics frequently fail to account for, and Fincher’s film is a celebration of the innovative mastery of medium that Citizen Kane exhibited.

Mank pays homage to the source material through its recurring shots in deep focus, its tightly paced and witty dialogue exchanges, and its ability to layer moments – past and present – so that threads in the story running concurrently help establish a full sense of a person. 

This effect is created without a hint of elitism. Not every homage is accessible only to an inside circle. 

Mank will certainly provoke a hunger to revisit Welles’ magnum opus, but it will do so having laid out a roadmap, signposting structural qualities of the film in a framework which can be used to watch that fine yarn with a purpose.

The most astonishing thing about Herman J. Mankiewicz and his screenplay is that he could just as easily have never written it. 

(Although, on balance, that could be said about almost all works of culture since time immemorial.)

Part of the charm of early Hollywood is how unbelievably messy it appeared. Hard-nosed and demanding executives pushed for innovation, but also popular appeasement, and hired their creatives in a manner that was relatively organic.

Sometimes all it might have taken to get a picture made was dumb luck and privilege. The production process was corrupt, exclusive and selective.

But there were certain renegade qualities about the film industry that disappeared with the professionalisation of moviemaking, including the magic of spontaneity that manifested in imperfectly shot takes.

That sense of danger that came from the trial-and-error production modes and the embodied, human experience of filmmaking was brilliantly rendered in the scene which has Mank walk into a shoot for one of William Randolph Hearst’s (Charles Dance) Westerns.

Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) is about to be burned at the stake on set, in character. She sees Mank approaching across Hearst’s San Simeon estate, where filming is underway, and beckons him over. 

Their rapport is instantaneous, and Davies is played by Seyfried as a radiant, playful wit who is at once self-assured and self-deprecating. Asking Mank not to laugh, she confesses: “I am being burned at the stake and I am dying for a ciggie-boo!”

Cinema was full of risk-takers, which goes a long way to explain how a nonlinear narrative like Citizen Kane could ever have been adapted for screen, especially at a time when enthusiastic audience reception was the determining factor in a picture’s success.

What Mank expresses so intelligently is that perfectionism is miles apart from flawlessness.

Flawlessness is dull, and professionalism – that is a myth in itself, emphatically driven by the compulsion contemporary society has towards placing an exchange value on every element of our productivity in and out of work.

Commodification of creative thinking is the death of our natural propensity for curiosity, and desire for lifelong learning.

In the film, perfectionism manifests itself as auteurship, and it is – paradoxically – shown to be an imperfect and unprofessional quality that is difficult to manage, but is of inestimable value to the creative process.

Mank’s approach to writing is a fair representation of the synthesis of creative ideas, which should allow for periods of crescendo and flow to the same degree that it permits aridity and blankness.

His method is haphazard, and the shadow of his alcoholism looms over his broken body, ready to engulf him while he is stationed in bed – having been seriously injured in a road accident (depicted as being largely the fault of a fast-talking friend.)

But his addictions and his misfires – the social faux-pas that he committed in front of Hearst and Mayer (Arliss Howard) – they do not detract from the man’s vivid personality. 

His storytelling is made richer from his experiences, and his growing antagonism towards those Hearstian figures in his acquaintance allows him to express the contrast between his values and theirs indirectly by constructing the proto-Murdochian Charles Foster Kane.

Mank is rather dysfunctional across all areas of his life, propped up continuously by his practical antitheses – the female figures who are steadfast elements in his otherwise chaotic lifestyle. 

“Poor” Sara (Tuppence Middleton), his endlessly tolerant wife, and Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), his  stoical but sensitive secretary, are the facilitators of Mank’s work, providing him with the support he needs to survive in the material realm so that he can retreat into his metaphysical one. 

The interconnectedness of memories and episodes in Mank’s life over a series of years give the impression that the vintage ‘selves’ that he has been before have never left him, and they continue to live on as he – a mature man, with an elaborate personal history – evolves and matures himself, as time moves forward.

The film is a retelling of a man who is retelling another man’s life, and turning that into a picture about a man’s life being retold. This is the beauty of storytelling; the more Mank’s microverse expands, the further we can trace the labyrinthine connections that wove his art together.

Mank shows what it takes to be an auteur.

It is about the fact that something spectacular can emerge from the right combination of chance factors and a full, passionate application of vision in the development of a unique idea.

Primarily,

it’s about the man

who wrote Citizen Kane.