It really is impossible to overstate the fact that most of the music around us sounds the way it does today because of an electronic revolution that happened primarily in the 1960s and 70s (with roots stretching back to the turn of the century). While folk and rock and roll solidified the sound of the present on home hi-fis and coffee shop and festival stages, the sound of the future was crafted behind studio doors and in scientific laboratories. What the Future Sounded Like, the short documentary above, transports us back to that time, specifically in Britain, where some of the finest recording technology developed to meet the increasing demands of bands like the Beatles and Pink Floyd.
Much less well-known are entities like the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop, whose crew of engineers and audio scientists made what sounded like magic to the ears of radio and television audiences. “Think of a sound, now make it,” says Peter Zinovieff “any sound is now possible, any combination of sounds is now possible.” Zinovieff, London-born son of an émigré Russian princess and inventor of the hugely influential VCS3 synthesizer in 1969, opens the documentary—fittingly, since his technology helped power the futuristic sound of progressive rock, and since, together with the Radiophonic Workshop’s Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson, he ran Unit Delta Plus, a studio group that created and promoted electronic music.
Also appearing in the documentary is Tristram Cary, who, with Zinovieff, founded Electronic Music Studios, one of four makers of commercial synthesizers in the late sixties, along with ARP, Buchla, and Moog. Zinovieff and Carey are not household names in part because they didn’t particularly strive to be, preferring to work behind the scenes on experimental forms and eschewing popular music even as their technology gave birth to so much of it. The aristocratic Zinovieff and pipe-smoking, professorial Carey hardly fit in with the crowd of rock and pop stars they inspired.
In hindsight, however, Zinovieff desires more recognition for their work. “One thing which is odd, is that there’s a missing chapter, which is EMS, in all the books about electronic music. People do not know what incredible mechanical adventures we were up to.” Those adventures included not only creating new technology, but composing never-before-heard music. Both Zinovieff and Carey continue to create electronic scores, and Carey happens to be one of the first adopters in Britain of musique concrète, the proto-electronic music pioneered in the 1940s using tape machines, microphones, filters, and other recording devices, along with found sounds, field recordings, and ad hoc instruments made from non-instrument objects. (See examples of these techniques in the clip above from the 1979 BBC documentary The New Sound of Music.)
Many of the sounds that emerged from Britain’s electronic music founders came out of the detritus of World War II. Carey’s first serious studio design, he says, “coincided with the post-war appearance of an enormous amount of junk from the army, navy, and air force. For someone who knew what to do, and could handle a soldering iron, and could design audio equipment, even if you only had 30 shillings in your pocket, you could get something.” With their knowledge of electronics and hodge-podge of technology, Carey and his compatriots were designing an avant-garde electronic “high modernity,” author Trevor Pinch declares. “I think you can think of people like Tristan Carey as dreaming of a future soundscape of London.” Nowadays, those sounds are as familiar to us as the music piped over the speakers in restaurants and shops. One wonders what the future after the future these pioneers designed will sound like?
Screenplay By: Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke & Richard Linklater Directed By: Richard Linklater
You know that you are watching a great movie when Baseball Tonight has taken up most of your night and at about midnight you figure, “Oh, what the heck I’ll start this and watch a little bit before I fall asleep” but next thing you know it’s one thirty in the morning and time has passed you by. That is what happened with my viewing of Before Sunset. I already had a good jumping off point since I loved the preceding Before Sunrise, but loving one movie doesn’t guarantee you’ll love it’s successor. Before Sunset is a different movie, it’s much the same as Before Sunrise, but in important ways it is very different. Before Sunset is engaging to the point of time flying by. It’s not paced fast, it’s paced naturally, yet it moves by at incredible speed because it is one of those rare movies where real time stops while you watch it. Some sort of cosmic speed time takes over and time moves faster than it should. Maybe I sound crazy, but hopefully this is a feeling others have had with some movie, because I know I have had the feeling of the loss of real time with more than a few stellar films.
It’s inevitable that similarities will exist with Before Sunrise, the crew of Before Sunset is essentially the same across the board as it was in Before Sunrise. The same conversational tone remains, the dialogue flows free and easy between the two leads and is highly engaging and smart for the audience to take in. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have the same chemistry as before. They are in sync with one another from the get go and it shows. As with Before Sunrise you have two actors giving brilliant performances that will no doubt go unnoticed by the great masses. Yes, Before Sunset is similar to Before Sunrise, but in so many ways it is very different.
The conversations are still existential in nature, but now they are of a different existentialism. In Before Sunrise the focus was on Jesse and Celine as individuals, how they viewed the world and how the world affected them. Before Sunset changes up their viewpoint in accordance with their older ages and new found maturity. Now they talk in terms of how issues relate to them only in the larger picture. The focus isn’t on them as individuals, rather the focus is on Jesse and Celine and the world. Big issues are still tackled, some of the same issues from Before Sunrise are touched upon again, but now they offer worldly insight as opposed to individual insight.
Before Sunset is a love story and a film about the relationship of Jesse and Celine. But, it’s also not a love story and not about their relationship. It’s important to realize that the film works on both levels. At the same time you have the personal story of these two characters and how they feel about each other, there is the theme of growth in humanity. The movie focuses on the ideas of growing up, how we change and why, what we were like, what we remember and what the future may hold for us just as much as it focuses on the very intimate tale of Jesse and Celine. All the while you are taken by the story of these two maybe meant for each other people, you are also caught up in the larger picture of where humanity stands today in relation to the growth of these two characters.
In a film like Before Sunset it’s easy to overlook the role the director plays. Richard Linklater once again makes his camera another character, we live through his camera because it allows us to become a part of every conversation and moment. But, in Before Sunset his camera isn’t static like it was in Before Sunrise. This time the camera moves, it circles around, it tracks, follows, etc.. The locales aren’t just backgrounds in Before Sunset, because this time Jesse and Celine aren’t in a fantasy world. Before Sunset is real, they have real consequences to deal with and they know it. So does the camera, it never frames them as solitary beings off in their own world. Linklater presents Jesse and Celine as part of the larger world around them, their fantasy night is long over, now they are enmeshed in reality.
If forced to pick, and this is really hard, my favorite aspect of Before Sunset would be the idea of how our past greatly affects us. One missed chance can have serious repercussions just as much as one mistake. Our past leads to problems that will haunt us through all our waking hours, and our past even seeps into our dreams. More than anything our past can lead to an inability to connect. The car ride is the best example of this, filled with many moments where Jesse and Celine want to connect with each other, they reach out to each other but they can’t because of their fear of the consequences of their actions and remembrances of past pain. The car ride displays this idea beautifully, and that is when Hawke and Delpy are at their most powerful, eliciting emotion from each other and from the audience. Cheesy drama isn’t needed, in the simple act of watching one break down and the other try to console but fail we feel for these characters more than any manufactured drama could hope to make us feel.
The ascent up the stairs to Celine’s apartment is handled masterfully. That is when the film begins to mold into whatever shape you have decided to apply to it. Their ascent is full of oodles of bottled up tension, with each and every turn on that stairwell it feels like something should happen, needs to happen, but you know it can’t. This leads into the perfect ending, it is sweet and it is honest. It’s also up to each individual to interpret the oncoming blackness in their own way. Does Jesse leave or doesn’t he? Do they both go back to their false lives or do they finally realize that they were meant for each other and give it a go? You can’t go wrong no matter what way you go, but I tend to believe that Jesse stays and they end up together. I’m sure that is the hopeless romantic in me coming out, but what can I say, I am hopeless after all.
Maybe this is the last we will see of these characters, or maybe Linklater, Hawke and Delpy plan to come back in another nine years. I can only hope that is the case, because those three, along with the rest of the crew, have found a winning combination. If they don’t come back then I am still content, because Before Sunset is a splendid movie, a rarity that doesn’t come along all that often. More would be welcome, but if this is all I get then I couldn’t ask for anything better.
Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) inhabits the perfect role in a movie that’s a story about telling stories. She works in the equally fictional-sounding position of narratologist, specializing in myths and legends, and while she resides and teaches in London, at the start of “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” she’s arriving in Istanbul for a conference. Writer and director George Miller based his movie on the title story in A.S. Byatt’s 1994 anthology “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye,” but it’s apparent early on that “Three Thousand Years of Longing” is as much a personal, affectionate tribute to the power of story as it is a fantasy about the highs and lows of love and desire. When Alithea arrives at her hotel in Istanbul, she’s surprised with a stay in the Agatha Christie suite, where the famed mystery writer reportedly penned her most renowned work, “Murder on the Orient Express.” At a lecture, she and a colleague delve into how comic book superheroes comprise our modern myths, a graphic prominently featuring Superman displayed behind her. And at a curio shop in this ancient city from which stemmed some of the world’s most oft-told tales, Alithea buys a pretty little vase she digs out from beneath a pile of knick-knacks.
It’s after she returns to her hotel room that Alithea becomes a part of those stories that so much of her life seems to revolve around. While scrubbing the dirty bottle, she inadvertently pops its top and unleashes billowing clouds of purple smoke that coalesce into an enormous, human-like being: a djinn (Idris Elba). After the djinn gets situated, quickly catching up on the current culture and language by examining Alithea’s laptop and TV, he informs Alithea that she needs to make three wishes— her heart’s desire, with some limitations— because after he grants them he will finally be free. It’s the sort of opportunity most people would leap at, but Alithea is flummoxed. She, ever practical, has no heart’s desire— at least, she doesn’t think she does. In her narration that opens the film, she states that she is alone (no spouse, no children) and likes it that way. We later discover through her conversations with the Djinn that she was married, once, but that she and her husband grew apart and he eventually left her for another woman, a child lost before it was even born implied to be the impetus for their downward spiral.
But moreover, because she is so well-verses in myths, Alithea knows what the Djinn is capable of, and of what follies can come of indulging in his powers. To catch her up on how he came to be her in possession, the Djinn tells Alithea three stories: three stories of love, and how the actions love spurred him to caused him to end up back inside the bottle every time, spanning from three thousand years ago to the time of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (Aamito Lagum), to palace concubine Gülten (Ece Yüksel) in the time of the Ottoman Prince Mustafa in the 1500s, to the intelligent and fiery Zefir (Burcu Gölgedar), a woman thirsty for knowledge and stuck in a passionless marriage to a much older man. Like most anthologies, these extended flashbacks framed as the Djinn telling Alithea stories as they huddle in her room occasionally miss the mark, but it’s difficult not to be drawn in by Miller’s beguiling concoction of fantasy and history, especially when Elba is the storyteller, his low voice conveying the tinges of sadness and regret over his past that provide the emotional beats the narrative sorely needs. The spell-binding visuals don’t hurt either. Some of the computer effects aren’t too convincing, but cinematographer John Seale (who Miller lured out of retirement for 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” and again to work on “Three Thousand Years”) works his magic, whirling the viewer over vast landscapes and elaborate palace interiors and in and out of the Djinn’s perspective. Exhilarating cinema is crafted even from the scenes where the characters are mostly sedentary. He keeps the camera moving even when characters are just sitting in a car, or following Alithea out of the airport. Margaret Sixel, Miller’s wife and frequent collaborator, serves as editor and enhances the camerawork even more with her cuts, a series of match cuts in the aforementioned sequence, for example, tracing the wheels of the plane touching down, to the wheels of Alithea’s baggage cart as she disembarks.
It’s when “Three Thousand Years” turns into its overlong fourth act after the stories have been told that it becomes a much more trying affair. Alithea discovers that she does want to make a wish, as much to her surprise as it is to the viewer. Miller’s attempt to end on a big swing for romance is admirable, but the change in Alithea is too abrupt, and the romantic chemistry between Swinton and Elba, talented performers though they are (I mean, who else could play a a woman named Alithea Binnie but Swinton?), is too flat when it ought to sizzle. The issue of the film’s exoticism of people of color, a problem that haunts the otherwise fantastical images Miller conjures in his imaginings of Middle Eastern countries and peoples throughout, takes on an even more troubling edge in this chapter as well. Perhaps being a magical being like a Djinn means he transcends race, but Elba’s character is essentially repressed by a white woman for an extended period of time, existing to serve her but not able to be his own person because of that. Of course, that’s part of the film’s lesson—that love must grow organically and not be forced, so that by the end of the movie the Djinn spends time with Alithea of his own volition— but the casting of a Black man and a white woman in these specific roles automatically casts a problematic shadow over the relationship.
Despite issues that make for an underwhelming experience, I kind of love that “Three Thousand Years Longing” is the movie Miller chose to make in between his acclaimed— and dare I say, revolutionary?— “Fury Road,” and his upcoming prequel to that film, “Furiosa.” Proving over and over throughout his career that he is as adept at creating charming family fare (“Babe,” “Happy Feet”) as he is gritty dystopian action movies, Miller marries the two here for a story that, for all the tragedies it contains, is too in love with love and with the creation and telling of tales to ever feel cynical. And it’s a real family affair as well; in addition to Sixel, Miller collaborated on the screenplay with his daughter, Augusta Gore. That affection that exists in the very fabric of the film’s creation is reflected on screen, because for all its faults, “Three Thousand Years of Longing” above all makes it clear that it is never too late to open up to love.
Strange, how Howard Beale, “the mad prophet of the airwaves,” dominates our memories of “Network.” We remember him in his soaking-wet raincoat, hair plastered to his forehead, shouting, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” The phrase has entered into the language.
But Beale (Peter Finch) is the movie’s sideshow. The story centers on Diana Christiansen (Faye Dunaway), the ratings-hungry programming executive who is prepared to do anything for better numbers. The mirror to which she plays is Max Schumacher (William Holden), the middle-age news executive who becomes Diana’s victim and lover, in that order.
The movie has been described as “outrageous satire” (Leonard Maltin) and “messianic farce” (Pauline Kael), and it is both, and more. What is fascinating about Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning screenplay is how smoothly it shifts its gears. The scenes involving Beale and the revolutionary “liberation army” are cheerfully over the top. The scenes involving Diana and Max are quiet, tense, convincing drama. The action at the network executive level aims for behind-the-scenes realism; we may doubt that a Howard Beale could get on the air, but we have no doubt the idea would be discussed as the movie suggests. And then Chayefsky and the director, Sidney Lumet, edge the backstage network material over into satire, too–but subtly, so that in the final late-night meeting where the executives decide what to do about Howard Beale, we have entered the madhouse without noticing.
The movie caused a sensation in 1976. It was nominated for 10 Oscars, won four (Finch, Dunaway, supporting actress Beatrice Straight, Chayefsky), and stirred up much debate about the decaying values of television. Seen a quarter-century later, it is like prophecy. When Chayefsky created Howard Beale, could he have imagined Jerry Springer, Howard Stern and the World Wrestling Federation?
Parts of the movie have dated–most noticeably Howard Beale’s first news set, a knotty-pine booth that makes it look like he’s broadcasting from a sauna. Other parts, including the network strategy meetings, remain timeless. And the set that Beale graduates to, featuring soothsayers and gossip columnists on revolving pedestals, nicely captures the feeling of some of the news/entertainment shows, where it’s easier to get air time if you’re a “psychic” than if you have useful information to convey.
Most people remember that Howard Beale got fed up, couldn’t take it anymore and had a meltdown on the air. It wasn’t quite like that. Beale is portrayed as an alcoholic doing such a bad job that he’s fired by his boss (Holden). Then they get drunk together and joke about him committing suicide on the air. The next day, in a farewell broadcast, Beale announces that he will indeed kill himself because of falling ratings. He’s yanked from the air but begs for a chance to say farewell, and that’s when he says, the next day, “Well, I’ll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bull- – – -.” His frankness is great for the ratings, Diana convinces her bosses to overturn Max’s decision to fire him, Howard goes back on the air, and he is apparently deep into madness when he utters his famous line.
Lumet and Chayefsky know just when to pull out all the stops. After Beale orders his viewers to “repeat after me,” they cut to exterior shots of people leaning out of their windows and screaming that they’re mad as hell, too. Unlikely, but great drama, and electrifying in theaters at the time. Beale’s ratings skyrocket (he is fourth after “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “All in the Family” and “Phyllis”), and a new set is constructed on which he rants and raves after his announcer literally introduces him as a “mad prophet.”
Counter to this extravagant satire is the affair between Max and Diana. Dunaway gives a seductive performance as the obsessed programming executive; her eyes sparkle and she moistens her lips when she thinks of higher ratings, and in one sequence she kisses Max while telling him how cheaply she can buy some James Bond reruns. Later, in bed, discussing ratings during sex, she climaxes while gasping about the “Mao Tse Tung Hour.”
That’s her idea for a prime-time show based on the exploits of a group obviously inspired by the Symbionese Liberation Army. In a secluded safe house, she negotiates with its armed leader, has a run-in with a Patty Hearst type, and uses an Angela Davis type as her go-between. This material is less convincing, except as an illustration of the lengths to which she will go.
Much more persuasive is Holden’s performance as a newsman who was trained by Edward R. Murrow, and now sees his beloved news division destroyed by Diana. At the same time, Max is fascinated by her, and deliberately begins an affair. For him, it is intoxication with the devil, and maybe love. For her–it is hard to say what it is, because, as he accurately tells her at the end, “There’s nothing left in you I can live with.”
Beatrice Straight’s role as Max’s wife is small but so powerful it won her the Oscar. It is a convincing portrait of a woman who has put up with an impossible man for so long that, although she feels angry and betrayed, she does not feel surprised. The meaning of Max’s decision to cheat is underlined by the art direction; he and his wife live in a tasteful apartment with book-lined walls, and then he moves into Dunaway’s tacky duplex. It is clear that although she cares how she dresses (costumes by Theoni V. Aldredge), she doesn’t care where she lives, because she is not a homebody; her home is in a boardroom, a corner office or a control booth.
The film is filled with vivid supporting roles. Ned Beatty has a sharp-edged cameo as a TV executive (he’s the one who says the famous line, “It’s because you’re on television, dummy”). Robert Duvall plays an executive who, when murder is suggested, insists he wants to “hear everybody’s thoughts on this.” Wesley Addy is the handsome, gray-haired executive in the network’s display window; he looks good at stockholder meetings. (If you look closely, you can spot a young Tim Robbins as a revolutionary assassin.)
One of Chayefsky’s key insights is that the bosses don’t much care what you say on TV, as long as you don’t threaten their profits. Howard Beale calls for outrage, he advises viewers to turn off their sets, his fans chant about how fed up they are–but he only gets in trouble when he reveals plans to sell the network’s parent company to Saudi Arabians. There’s a parallel here with “The Insider,” a 1999 film about CBS News, where “60 Minutes” can do just about anything it wants to, except materially threaten CBS profits.
Sidney Lumet, born 1924, a product of the golden age of live television, is one of the most consistently intelligent and productive directors of his time. His credits are an honor roll of good films, many of them with a conscience, including “12 Angry Men” (1957), “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (1962), “Fail-Safe” (1964), “Serpico” (1973), “Dog Day Afternoon” (1975), “Prince of the City” (1981), “The Verdict” (1982), “Running on Empty” (1988) and “Q and A” (1990).
Because he works in many different genres and depends on story more than style, he is better known inside the business than out, but few directors are better at finding the right way to tell difficult stories; consider the development of Al Pacino’s famous telephone call in “Dog Day Afternoon.” His book Making Movies (Knopf, 1995) has more common sense in it about how movies are actually made than any other I have read.
In “Network,” which is rarely thought of as a “director’s picture,” it is his unobtrusive skill that allows all those different notes and energy levels to exist within the same film. In other hands, the film might have whirled to pieces. In his, it became a touchstone.
After the Crash 