DVDs in Devon: 'Julie and Julia' + 'How to Train Your Dragon'

I've been visiting my grandmother in sunnyish Devon with my girlfriend this week, but I have managed to see a couple of films on DVD - giving me something to write about now as everyone takes a midday nap.

On Monday, at my nan's insistence, we all sat down to watch Nora Ephron's last film, the 2009 culinary double-biography 'Julie & Julia' starring the dependable Amy Adams and the legendary Meryl Streep. I was pleasantly surprised.



'Julie & Julia' acts as both the story of US TV cooking legend Julia Child, as she learns how to cook as the middle aged wife of a US diplomat in 1950s Paris, and of Julie Powell - a popular New York-based cookery blogger who became famous after tackling every recipe in Child's mighty Mastering the Art of French Cooking within one year.

An unashamed "feel-good movie", it feels like a bit of a whitewash, as it nakedly celebrates both women with little scrutiny of either character. It's also a little predictable and sloppy the way that Julie's moment of crisis comes courtesy of an unconvincing fall-out with her husband, rather than say, as a result of online criticism or the pressure of balancing her new celebrity with her mundane job in an insurance call centre. But this is my only serious gripe against what is overall a charming and polished film.

Both Adams and Streep make their characters fun and the film enjoyable. Especially the latter, as she impersonates the beloved cook, taking on her odd mannerisms and bizarre speech pattern perfectly. Stanley Tucci is also worth a mention as Child's loving husband.

As a point of curiosity, it was interesting to note how Ephron shot at many of the same Parisian locations as fellow New Yorker Woody Allen would later use for his 'Midnight in Paris'.

Tuesday night we watched the Dreamworks animation 'How to Train Your Dragon', which entertained me far less.



I confess, I'm not a fan of the Dreamworks house style anyway, but 'How to Train Your Dragon' did nothing for me. The story is exactly the same as that of so many other cartoons (notably the superior 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs') as a young schlemiel (always an inventor) struggles to fit in with a society that doesn't understand his individuality. In this case a whiny young Viking lad (Jay Baruchel) struggles to embrace the family business of killing dragons. Instead he befriends one of the creatures and alienates himself further from his horrifically unsympathetic father (Gerard Butler), before saving the day and changing the world.

The character designs and animation are far superior than any of the other Dreamworks movies, and it's also less of a crass, celebrity-filled gag-fest, but it still lacks the nuance and artfulness of a Pixar film. There is some pleasure to be had looking at the imaginative and varied dragon designs, but the movie is clumsily written and goes to all the obvious places in perfunctory fashion.

It also struggles under the weight of a third act that makes no sense, narratively or thematically, as the film has its cake and eats it too. The "love not war" morality of our dragon-training hero is here undermined by the film's generic need for a massive climactic dragon fight and a conventional villain, as a huge dragon-shaped deus ex machina emerges as the cause of all the Vikings' troubles and is destroyed without damage to anyone's conscience.

Tonight we're due to watch 1981 rom-com 'The Four Seasons', written and directed by its star Alan Alda, apparently one of my late granddad's favourite films.

'Senna' review:

It was a forgone conclusion that I would cry by the end of 'Senna', the biographical documentary about the Brazilian three-time Formula One world champion who died after crashing his car during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. I'm easily manipulated and knew that, by the time the film got to covering the event of his premature death, I would have been rendered helpless by endless earnest accounts of the subject's greatness aided by elegiac, probably string-driven music. I was expecting to feel moved, if for no other reason than it is sad to hear about the accidental death of a relatively young person. But 'Senna', directed by Asif Kapadia, rises above cloying sentiment to provide a portrait of the icon that is as tragic as expected, yet equal parts exciting, joyful and insightful.

Mostly avoiding the driver's personal life, beyond frequent references to his devout Catholicism, the documentary does well to maintain a solid focus on Senna's career - showing us his development as a go-kart racer in his youth and following his F1 years season-by-season right up to his death. The relationships that become a part of this narrative include Senna's notorious rivalry with McLaren teammate Alain Prost, his friendship with team boss Ron Dennis and his unhappy experiences dealing with the political side of the sport - as personified by FIA President Jean-Marie Balestre. This narrative, which plays out like the best dramatic sports movie, is allowed to play out using only stock footage and candid shots of life behind the scenes. The fact that those who have been interviewed especially for the film are heard but never seen keeps the focus on the amazing racing footage and ensures the film keeps its forward momentum.



A film about the triumph and tragedy of the attractive, charismatic Ayrton Senna is not a hard sell, even for myself - as someone with next to no interest in F1 racing. But what is surprising is that the racing itself is incredibly exciting to watch, especially those shots which are taken from the perspective of Senna as he whips around corners at immense speed. Through the cinema, even those allergic to sport are made to appreciate Senna's art and his daring desire to win at almost any cost. We witness high-speed overtaking and marvel at his aptitude for driving in the rain - a condition under which he seemed simply unbeatable. Watching him race, it isn't hard to understand why so many millions of Brazilians looked to him for inspiration during some of the country's poorest years.

Audiences have been reported as staying until the very end of the credits before leaving showings of 'Senna' - a practice usually reserved for those expecting a brief epilogue at the end of a superhero movie. They'll tell you they were enjoying the montage of still photographs, though I suspect this is a convenient smokescreen for those weepy souls battling to compose themselves before re-emerging into the outside world. Yet 'Senna' is not an on-screen funeral for those looking to re-acquaint themselves with grief almost two decades old: this is ultimately a celebration and an invitation for those of us who missed it all the first time around to see what made him so undeniably special.

'Senna' is on a wide release now in the UK and has been rated '12A' by the BBFC.

Trailers: Fincher's 'Dragon Tattoo' Looks Good, But 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' Less So

I really didn't at all like the Swedish adaptations of Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy": The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. Personally, I found them to be more than a little nasty and I felt they were blandly made, with a television aesthetic.

However, David Fincher - hot off the excellent 'The Social Network' - has been busy making his own adaptation, which looks markedly better. The trailer below is pretty electrifying, helped a lot of fantastic editing to the beat of a really energetic cover of Zed Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" by 'Social Network' composer Trent Reznor and Karen O - who provided songs for Spike Jonze's 'Where the Wild Things Are'.



I may still dislike the tone and attitude of the eventual movie, but this is a fantastic trailer regardless and I'm now excited to see the film.

Less exciting is the latest trailer for 'Planet of the Apes' prequel, 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' - which stars Academy Award host and nominee James Franco, alongside Brian Cox and 'Slumdog' actress Freida Pinto. The trailer makes it look really boring, with shots of men in lab coats talking about genetics, intercut with the faces of unconvincing computerised primates. I don't really know who this movie is for, unless the franchise is much more popular than I realise.

To me it seems like the wisdom of the age dictates that all "properties" have to be continually "developed", and therefore we were give Tim Burton's lacklustre take on the series and now this (with a view to several sequels, I'm sure).

I'm not completely writing it off as it could be really good, but the trailer leaves me unconvinced.

May I'm mostly put off by the core concept: that a bunch of laboratory apes could overwhelm a well-equipped human army. This seems to me to be completely stupid. Just because the apes become more intelligent, I don't see why that means they aren't still gunned down en masse as soon as the trouble starts. I guess I'll have to see the film if I want to find out how they overwhelm the world of man. We know who ultimately wins after all.

What is Film Criticism For?

I don't really know what film criticism is "for" - other than the obvious, if facetious, response: "good movies". Though I was thinking about it (it was troubling me actually) and fancied throwing around some ideas here in the hope of coming to terms with the question.

One thought is that criticism is supposed to function as objective, empirical analysis which hopes to distinguish the worthwhile from the rest in the name of history. Is this critic in service of what might be termed "the canon", keeping it in order like some kind of cultural clerk? I don't know if true "objectivity" is possible, let alone desirable, in a critic, though, judging by the number of people who angrily rail against reviewer "bias" on internet message boards, it may be that many see dedication to such an emotionless approach as a critic's solemn duty.

Akin to that definition, but slightly different, is the popular assumption that art criticism exists as nothing more than a form of consumer advice: a way of sorting which novels, CDs of theatre tickets are worth paying for - and which are not. Film criticism may even be thought of as an extension of advertising. A bad critic might be one who gets it "wrong" too often, advising people to see things they then consistently fail to enjoy and who dislikes all the things that prove most popular.

It doesn't suit my voice, as becomes clear when I find myself ending reviews in a way that suggests a direct dialogue with a concerned investor, writing closing statements along the lines of: "if you like [insert genre] then it's certainly worth seeing" or "it's got plenty to find fault with, but it's the best on offer at the multiplex right now". At least when I do it, these types of endings highlight a failure of the imagination, providing me with a convenient way of summarising what has gone before without too much effort or skill. However, the best of these types of critics - who can do this with charm and authority - are by far the most popular, recognisable and beloved.



Generally (and conveniently) I prefer to see criticism as an end in itself. And, far from having a duty of care towards an imagined readership, perhaps reviewing should be about inciting a discussion amongst those who have already chosen to engage with a novel/CD/film? It could be that the best criticism is about providing a strong viewpoint which causes others to consider their own position on a given work and transform previously vague feelings into fully formed ideas.

Indeed, it might be termed an act of pomposity to aim to tell readers what to do, as if they were aimless sheep looking for a shepherd. I often feel embarrassed to hear that I've persuaded anybody to see or not see a movie. I immediately worry that I've prevented them from doing something they might otherwise have enjoyed, or that I have tricked them into sitting through something terribly dull. (Though I'm aware that this reaction is potentially quite patronising.)

One thing I am certain of is that I don't enjoy disliking anything very much. I've written lots of negative reviews over the last year and, at their worst, they are predictable demolitions of known turkeys, such as 'Sex & the City 2'. They never fill me with joy to write, especially as I consider the possible bursting impact I could have on somebody else's hard-earned happiness bubble.

I've come to admire the principle of the great Cahiers Du Cinema editor André Bazin, who preferred his writers to review only those films they enjoyed - calling it "appreciative criticism". For one thing, I like the way this approach is tacitly an even worse rebuke for a bad movie than an explicitly bad review - suggesting that an ignored movie is beneath discussion. But mainly I like how good-natured it seems and how good it must feel, as a writer, to concentrate on the positive.



If you are expressing your love of something, you are bulletproof. Even if everyone else thinks the film in question is naff, nobody reasonable is likely to shove a metaphorical turd through your letterbox. In contrast, when you criticise a film's score, you might get an e-mail from the crestfallen composer, and when you tear apart a small movie, you might find an angry letter from the director awaits you. Both these things have happened to me and they aren't pleasant to say the least. Not because I don't stand by what I write, or because I am allergic to criticism of my own work, but because you really don't set out to hurt a person's feelings. I assume that everyone is basically probably quite nice, so I never want to think I'm making a personal attack - though it must seem that way to someone who has poured considerable time and effort into their art. I have some sympathy with that point of view.

I'd follow Mr. Bazin's noble example and stop writing negative reviews tomorrow, only it would be much harder to fill the "pages" of this blog if I took that high road. As with any art form, the vast majority of movies are, by definition, average and many of them are very bad. To ignore these is a luxury I can ill afford.

If I have learnt anything from thinking about this as I write, it is that I want to resist the impulse to imply that I'm sorting films into two great piles marked "ones to watch" and "ones to avoid". There is undeniably a place for that critic, but it wouldn't make sense for that to me be, as I'm not a reliable populist. I didn't enjoy any of the three biggest current releases ('Pirates 4', 'Hangover 2' or 'X-Men: First Class'), though they are doubtless to prove highly popular with audiences and I would never dream of telling you to avoid seeing them.



I'd certainly be vain and out of touch to suggest a family of four forgo the thrills and spills of 'Pirates' and opt instead for 'The Great White Silence', just because I found it to be of greater interest. Someone who watches up to thirty films a month (usually for free) has next to no business telling anyone who sees one or two (for upwards of £7 a go) how and where to spend their money. A critic who sees thirty films a month may well develop different tastes to those with less cinema literacy and may lose sight of the fact that most people see film less as art and more as something to pass the time. My say on what you go to see is of no discernible value. It is only hopefully of some interest.

I haven't even mentioned people like Charles Gant or Nikki Finke, who talk about movies as part of an industry, let alone journalists who come to cinema from the perspective of satisfying the public hunger for celebrity gossip or fashion advice. There is also the film historian, like David Thompson or Ian Christie, to consider - but this'll have to do for now.

What are critics for? Damned if I know. But I'm certain there is a place for all the types I've described above and I know that, for whatever reason, I like to read what the best of them has to say.

'X-Men: First Class' review:

It's barely been a year since the release of Matthew Vaughn's last film, the ultra-violent indie superhero movie 'Kick-Ass', yet his new movie - Marvel comic book prequel 'X-Men: First Class' - is already upon us. As that rapid production time might suggest, 'First Class' feels rushed: poorly scripted, with ropey back projection, lots of intangible CGI and a forgettable score. Problems which are only slightly alleviated by an interesting and talented cast, which includes James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Kevin Bacon, Nicholas Hoult and Oliver Platt.

As the name implies, 'First Class' is an origin story about the founding of superhero team The X-Men, which centres on the relationship between future enemies Professor X and Magneto - Charles Xavier (McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Fassbender). It starts by contrasting the lives of the two characters as children in 1944, showing how the metal manipulating Erik spent time in a Nazi concentration camp, where his parents were murdered and he was victim of experimentation, whilst the telepathic Xavier spent his formative years living in a mansion, dedicating himself to the pursuit of knowledge in order to better understand the mutant phenomenon.



The film then moves forward to 1962 where Xavier is graduating from Oxford as an expert on gene mutation, spending his free time downing yards of ale and charming sexy students with his well-rehearsed chat up lines. Meanwhile, Erik has become a Nazi hunter, scouring the globe in search of the man who shot his mother and experimented with his abilities, an energy adsorbing mutant named Sebastian Shaw (Bacon). With Cold War at its height, Shaw sets about provoking nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States in the hope of destroying non-mutant kind forever. It is he who is behind the Cuban Missile Crisis, playing both sides against each other. Xavier and Erik meet whilst in pursuit of Shaw (Xavier in the service of the CIA), leading the pair unite and set about recruiting other mutants in the name of preventing his evil plan.

This convoluted, time-traversing structure means that the first half of the film consists almost entirely of insubstantial moments, as Vaughn cross-cuts between exotic locations and introduces us to a multitude of obscure Marvel characters. It takes an age to get moving and in this time none of the perfunctory sub-plots are developed beyond the superficial minimum, with the movie feeling like a simple box-ticking exercise. Many of the mutants - including Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), Angel (Zoe Kravitz), Havoc (Lucas Till) and Darwin (Edi Gathegi) - are not fleshed out at all beyond the level of simple archetypes and are only really present to make up the numbers, in a film which might have done better to restrict the comic book heroes on screen in the name of greater depth. Certainly the best scenes are those which rest on McAvoy and Fassbender, who make for an appealing pair of opposites.



With four credited screenwriters, including Vaughn and Jane Goldman (with whom he scripted 'Kick-Ass'), it is perhaps no surprise that 'First Class' isn't the model of structural coherence or thematic restraint. The dialogue rarely rises above in-jokes about Xavier's future baldness or trite, over-explained literary references, to Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde, though a few of the actors are able to rise above the material with their credibility intact. The whole thing also reeks of compromise as the director sets up some quite sadistic and threatening scenes of violence before presumably remembering the film's prospective family audience. The brutal final kill shot is one such example, as Vaughn's camera maliciously, even pornographically, tracks the action. Only, without the blood and energy that would have underscored such a scene in 'Kick-Ass', this self-conscious moment feels muted and misplaced.

Worse still, Vaughn's treatment of female characters is the stuff of mild teenage fantasy. We are introduced to Rose Byrne's Moira MacTaggert as she strips into her lingerie to gain entry to a club filled with scantily-clad women. Similarly, minor antagonist Emma Frost (played by January Jones) is given little to do but look pretty, whilst Kravitz's Angel is first shown as a stripper, dancing for Charles and Erik as they sip champagne. She demonstrates her mutation - her insectoid wings - in a hopefully "sexy" way as they watch her from a red velvet bed. "How would you like a job where you get to keep your clothes on?" asks Charles on his recruitment drive, in the most chauvinist, patronising tone possible. Jennifer Lawrence too is subject to the film's leering male gaze, with her sub-plot being that her often-naked blue-skinned shape-shifter Mystique just wants to have body confidence. Like Byrne and Jones, Lawrence is all but written out of the film's biggest action sequence and instead is reduced to a kind of romantic hot potato, thrown between three of the male leads in the course of the film's two-hours.



For me though, the most troubling aspect of 'X-men: First Class' is that Vaughn's sympathies lie with the forces of revenge, intolerance and indiscriminate violence - and as such he is at fundamental odds with the source material. Fassbender's enigmatic future-Magneto is cast as an effortlessly cool anti-hero and it's with sickening relish that Vaughn stages the character's violent revenge killings near the start of the film. His emphasis on Erik's concentration camp struggles make it clear where our most reactionary sympathies are supposed to lie. As with 'Kick-Ass' before it, the film runs on thinly concealed right-wing politics: this time promoting the idea that "victim's justice" is a form of common sense.

By contrast, it's the sheltered and wishy-washy Xavier, the college kid, who wants to get along with the non-mutant humans and "fit in" (tellingly, he is even shown to be disparaging of Mystique's natural blue form and wants her to undergo treatment to become "normal"). He hasn't lived life and felt hatred like Erik has and, naturally, harbours none of the resentment. Here the "good" concepts, of self-confidence and rugged individualism, are wedded to Erik and a militant ideal. Certainly, the film wants us to love McAvoy too, but Vaughn's heart really isn't in it. Vaughn celebrates Xavier most as a loutish drinker and sleazy womaniser, rather than as the genius future leader of the X-Men, and by the final shots it is clear who we are really rooting for under the stewardship of this cynical budget-Tarantino.



'Kick-Ass' had an infectious energy, matched by a humorous style and editing so slick that I was forced to turn a blind eye to its dark-hearted contempt for human life. Sadly, 'X-Men: First Class' didn't provide me with that same excuse and, consequently, I was never given permission to shake off my sense of disbelief and partake in the unalloyed joys offered by the best superhero movies, let alone Vaughn's love of mindless, anti-social violence. By commercial necessity, it's a weak, flavourless blend of 'Kick-Ass' and Bryan Singer's earlier films, which doesn't tread anywhere with much freedom or confidence.

'X-Men: First Class' is mean-spirited, but isn't mean enough. It isn't allowed to get as bloody as it would like to. It isn't as stylish as it thinks it is. It isn't camp enough to be fun in spite of these failings and it isn't knowing enough to be considered ironic. Conscious of its brief to please a wide audience, the movie limply rests somewhere between those positions, unsure of what direction to take and which movie it wants to be - hoping you don't notice amidst all the explosions and the boobs.

'X-Men: First Class' has been rated '12A' by the BBFC and is on general release from today in the UK.

Why the Darth Vader Volkswagen Advert is Evil

You might not know this, but that adorable 'Star Wars' advert - the one that sees a cute kid try to use "the force" in the name of selling cars - is evil, damaging and must be stopped.

I'm not just ranting about George Lucas "selling out" here. Sure, it's sad to see the space opera series used in this glaringly commercial way, with John Williams' glorious Imperial March put to such sinister corporate use. But 'Star Wars' has been assaulted in the name of profit since the day it was born and will have to withstand similar attacks forever more.

No, for me the problem with the advert is that 'Star Wars' - at least in the UK - hasn't been used to sell anything other than itself in my lifetime. Toys, video games and whatever else are all part of selling 'the brand' and as such it is in the interest of Hasbro (or whoever) to take some duty of care towards it. Maybe there would have been a Burger King tie-in or a coca-cola promotion in the early part of the last decade, but there were at least new films to sell then.

This ad, however, is happening in 'peacetime'. There is nothing to promote except the car. This is Darth Vader in the service of Volkswagen with no bloody excuse for being there.



This is much worse than the franchise just being milked as a cash-cow. For the sake of a few easy bucks now, Lucas is damaging the series for future generations.

The following argument is mostly sentimental and contains several amorphous references to "the kids" which serve to age me horribly.

I didn't see 'Star Wars' until I was ten years old and I was then living under the previous system - where the characters were not also expected to sell affordable family cars. Hard as this might be to believe, I had no idea what 'Star Wars' was as a ten year-old. I grew up in that 'Star Wars' free bubble that existed between the original franchise finishing and the Special Edition theatrical release some years later. As a result, it was able to take me by surprise and had a tremendous impact on my childhood.

I didn't know anything about it at all. I'd heard the name "Luke Skywalker" and knew of a "Dark Vader", but really I assumed it was just another old film my dad was making me watch. In this environment, I was allowed to hear the Imperial March for the first time within the context of The Empire Strikes Back and I was given the chance to come to "Darth Vader" and "the force" in their original context too.



I'm not saying the Volkswagen ad is especially evil in of itself. Rather it's part of a disturbing trend in which all popular culture is now endlessly re-regurgitated for pay until people hate it. The kids of today who are yet to see 'Star Wars' are experiencing it first through these advertisements and, as a result, they won't care about it as much.

Maybe we're entering an age where viewing a cultural object in isolation is the stuff of fantasy. It's worth remembering that, when I was growing up, there was no You Tube and kids didn't have access to every film/piece of music/TV series on their mobile phones. In fact they didn't have mobile phones at all.

Forget 'Star Wars', maybe future humans will only know of 'Casablanca' or 'Indiana Jones' via bits of 'Family Guy' and three minute web parodies made of LEGO. That is what the Darth Vader Volkswagen ad represents to this embittered and prematurely old man.

For anyone who hasn't been moved to watch 'Star Wars', this is how you were supposed to hear that awesome car advert music for the first time:

'The Great White Silence' review:

We British are very good at turning crushing defeat into heroic victory, whether it's at Dunkirk or the death of General Gordon in Khartoum. But no British colonial folly has ever been so celebrated as the 1910 journey of Captain Robert Falcon Scott - beaten to the South Pole by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, before freezing to death on the trip back - Scott is seen as the very model of an English gentleman and his fate is held up as a fine example of the British character. It is in this tradition that photographer Herbert Ponting's celebratory and romanticised account of the badly managed expedition, the recently BFI-restored 1924 documentary 'The Great White Silence', is best understood.

Ponting was part of Scott's expedition as far as Ross Island, charged with taking the photographs that would then form the basis of a lucrative lecture tour for the explorer upon his return home. He was expected to capture the Captain's heroic return as conqueror of the Antarctic, though the documentary as exists takes a different and more tragic direction. The final third of the film is restricted to Scott's journal entries, as well as an inspired mix of rudimentary stop motion animation, model work and staged pre-enactments of Scott's expedition trudging to the South Pole (filmed before the party made the actual trip). This is a film which, from the off, nakedly hopes to capitalise on Scott as myth - with a telling opening inter-title declaring that the following is a tale of courage which should inspire boys around the Empire. And doubtless it would have done upon its original release, with Ponting's miraculous images rendering our most romantic ideal of the "Age of Exploration" palpable.



Doubtless the original run would have been accompanied by triumphant, patriotic music, but this 2011 restoration benefits from an eerie and atmospheric new score by Simon Fisher Turner. Turner's restrained and haunting soundscape lends the whole enterprise a sort of otherworldly quality - as if we are watching strange men from another planet. It puts a surreal, almost Herzogian slant on things which gives the hundred year old footage renewed vigour. It's also often quite funny. Ponting's film is already rich with comic moments - with shots of sailor's dancing, a performing cat and stills of bewildered looking penguins - but Turner's score gives them all a new lease of life. Turner proves that a silent movie well scored can be every bit as effective now as it was then - in fact I'd wager the film is better now.

Yet even Turner's majestic accompaniment would struggle to lift the material were it not for the fact that Ponting's film feels so very modern to begin with. The best part of the film - in terms of running time and enjoyment - takes the form of a wildlife documentary, which sees us observe penguins, gulls, seals and orcas in their natural habitat. And this is takes the form of something instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with the work of David Attenborough. Ponting creates the same narrative as a modern wildlife documentary maker would, asking us to root for a hapless baby seal and its mother as a pod of killer whales closes in. He creates tension and prepares us for heartache as we see that infant struggle to come ashore as its mother frantically tries to push it up onto the ice.

The only anachronism that pulls us out of the moment, and reminds us we're watching antique footage, is the moment's resolution, as the crew of Scott's ship, the Terra Nova (a whaling vessel), harpoons one of the giant mammals and causes the attackers to break away. It's hard to imagine that happening in an episode of 'Planet Earth', but there are many details which flag up cultural changes (for instance, the ship's mascot, a black cat, is called "Nigger"). Also familiar to a modern audience will be Ponting's casting of the animals as little Christian families, with terms like "Mr & Mrs Penguin" or "the husband" used frequently, showing that there is nothing new about the anthropomorphism evident in films like 'March of the Penguins' (2005).



The most eye-catching, modern feature of the film however, is Ponting's frequent reference to the making of the film. He is sometimes seen on-camera himself, walking among the animals, and he often shows several takes of the same incident, allowing us to see how many times a particular set-up didn't go to plan. When watching a seal, he tells us how grateful he was that the "fellow" didn't keep him waiting long before performing the desired action. Better still, after inviting us to see a close-up of the bow of the ship breaking through the pack ice, he pulls back to show us how the shot was achieved - with the filmmaker perched atop a specially constructed wooden rig hanging precariously over the starboard side of the vessel. Ponting demonstrates himself to have been a very fine cameraman, with every frame of the film a beautiful photograph in its own right. His use of a handheld camera was pioneering and one panning shot, as the Terra Nova is buffeted by waves on the sea, sees him afford us an astounding view of the ocean filmed from somewhere up in the rigging.

The film ends with pages of Scott's immortal journal, telling us he and his comrades died like proper, stiff-upper lip Englishman and didn't grumble too much about their "unlucky" fate. Scott wrote that, whatever private misgivings they might have had, morale was always high among the men, who met their fate as esteemed examples of imperial valour. To my mind, these are the writings of a defeated man, once full of hubris, conscious of history and chiseling out his own legend. Even at the time of the film's release in 1924, the heroic ideal was being undermined by the senseless waste of life that was the 'Great War', and now those nineteenth century attitudes - which cast people as the expendable instruments of Empire - seem all the more alien to us. But set to a breathtaking new score and amongst Ponting's gloriously restored images, Scott's tale - and the dubious values of his age - are afforded a new lease of life.

'The Great White Silence' is rated 'U' by the BBFC and has been given a limited release in the UK.