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| BOKO DETAILS | Released
02 November 2009 | | Author
Geoffrey Macnab | | Publisher
Palgrave/BFi Books |
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Screen Epiphanies (2009) Review
Kudos to film writer Geoffrey Macnab for allowing a simple premise to blossom with such varied, interesting results. His starting point is merely to ask filmmakers — largely European, but with a few token Americans (Martin Scorsese, Frank Darabont) — what their earliest, most significant film-viewing memory was. The responses range from those who engage with the concept (Anthony Minghella, illuminating on The Blue Angel) to those who reject the idea and resist the reduction (“It’s a nonsense, really,” grumbles Mike Leigh, with pleasing predictability).
As such, we’re treated to insights into early lives (certain narratives read like opening chapters of yet-to-be-penned autobiographies), learn about how cinema was consumed in bygone decades, become intrigued about films we may have never heard of before (Alan Parker picks forgotten ’50s US indie Little Fugitive), and gain insights into inspirations — often not the ones you’d expect. Sure, Marty waxes lyrical about The Red Shoes yet again, but then we have Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park picking Hitchcock’s Rebecca (“I see the influence of Mrs. Danvers coming through in the penguin in The Wrong Trousers”).
At times, such variety makes the book wander too far off brief. You sometimes wish a filmmaker would stop wandering off on tangents and explain just how their chosen movie has sunk into their creative DNA. Whether it’s Frank Darabont having digs at George Lucas (who has, as he puts it, “seen fit for reasons beyond me… to add a bunch of CGI” to Darabont’s chosen epiphany, THX 1138), or Gurinder Chadha reflecting on how the British-Asian experience was reflected in 1970 Bollywood pic Purab Aur Pachhim, there’s much joy to be gleaned from reading about how and why those who make the cinema we love have also loved cinema themselves.
Reviewer: Dan Jolin
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