2023 Q4 Media Roundup

I actually forgot to include Sorry We Didn't Die at Sea in the last post. It's a play I saw at the same theatre that showed The Garden of Words and is quickly becoming a favourite of mine. Originally an Italian production, SWDDaS is set in a dystopian future where Europeans are fleeing the continent via the same means as the migrants and refugees our governments are so set on denying entry to our countries. It's a dark and absurdist comedy that plays out almost entirely within the shipping container which plays host to three such migrants and their smuggler. The show was engaging and thought-provoking and the production choices inventive and inspiring. I've been really loving live theatre this year.

In September, I watched 2021's The Summit of the Gods after learning about it from Beyond Ghibli's great video. It's a French animated film adaptation of the 2000s manga which I also now want to read. I was somehow unaware of Jiro Taniguchi and his legacy but am excited to dive into his work at some point. The Summit of the Gods, like the rest of his bibliography, is a grounded story, focused on a photojournalist who reports on the feats of Japanese mountain-climbers and uncovers his potential biggest scoop yet after he catches wind of the discovery of George Mallory's missing camera, containing the answer to the question of who was first to summit Everest.

The weaving of the real-life mystery into a fictional story with fictional characters is an interesting narrative choice, and fascinating for me as someone who knew nothing about climbing history. Overall, I adored Summit. It's visually stunning, beautifully scored, expertly crafted all around and really moved me in its message. The want to fully comprehend the inner workings of people who are driven to do such dangerous things is something that's preoccupied me before, and Summit's exploration of this question is multi-faceted and rich. Highly recommended!

Next, I went to a screening of the 2021 British film Boiling Point after a recommendation from my mum and then the discovery of a showing in a local cinema (on account of it being set in the area I live in). Boiling Point, very simply, captures one night in a high-end restaurant in London. Its biggest selling point is the extraordinary choice to film the full 92 minutes all in one take.

Boiling Point might as well be a thriller because the combination of the setting and this directorial decision make for one of the tensest viewing experiences I've ever had. It's a testament to honest, great film-making, with an unembellished concept and set of performances proving perfectly sufficient to craft an incredible watch.

The film also just received a sequel four-part BBC TV series which I followed up by watching and cannot rave enough about. As expected, the show is a different experience (no single take!), but arguably an even better one, delving fully into each of the character's lives outside of the restaurant and just how flimsy this separation can be.

Boiling Point has all the finesse of a top-class BBC drama and still a particular authenticity to its script and (consistently phenomenal) acting I've rarely seen on TV. It should be said that it's not easy viewing - when it's not the stress and stakes of things going wrong in the kitchen or on the restaurant floor, it's the unflinching depictions of addiction, poverty and self-harm, the characters' personal demons. On paper, Boiling Point could sound melodramatic, but there's immense expertise, care, honesty and above all, heart to its portrayal of its characters' struggles that more than once brought me to tears.

On a personal level, as somebody working in a different and yet similarly fast-paced, high-stress environment, Boiling Point's handling of how this affects it characters and their one-of-a-kind relationships with one another was really emotive and gave me a lot to reflect on.

Needless to say, the film and show combined are some of my favourite watches of recent years and are another resounding recommendation. Fingers crossed for season 2!!

The only book I managed to finish in the last few months was Virgina Woolf's 1929 essay, A Room of One's Own, written after she was invited to give a lecture on 'women and literature'. She used the topic as a springboard to explore women's status in the literary field historically and, more to the point, the things that had held them back from occupying more of a space within it, and from producing better work. She concludes that women's literature cannot be viewed separately from women's material circumstances -- in summary, the lack of 'a room of one's own', independence, the ability to create without financial or other concerns.

This was my first Virginia Woolf. I respect it for its necessity at the time that it was written and continual relevance in many ways, and I did enjoy Woolf's way of writing, but don't have much else to say about it.

Finally, I was able to catch The Boy and the Heron at the cinema a few weeks ago. For the record, I consider myself a big Miyazaki fan, but like most of us, have my ranging feelings on his films -- some are among my favourite films of all time, others I'm lukewarm on etc. I respect him as a filmmaker but don't expect to love everything he does.

The Boy and the Heron will likely sit towards the bottom of my personal Miyazaki ranking once the dust settles, but I don't want this to be taken as a slight towards the film. I really respect Miyazaki and Ghibli's continual willingness to innovate against popular opinion -- TBatH takes new strides with 3D animation that, while not a first for Miyazaki, certainly mark a departure from the typical 'look' of his films, and I also found TBatH to be perhaps his most abstract work yet.

I can't be the only one who noticed various visual and thematic call-backs to Spirited Away, a film that has in part resonated so powerfully no doubt for how it bottled the feeling of being a child: the vividness, newness and vastness of everything, the inherent terror and adventure of it all, and the awareness of this beginning to slip away against all efforts to preserve it, the loss of innocence its own kind of grief.

Mahito, by contrast to Chihiro, has his childhood taken from him too early, with his journey into a fantasy world more of an exercise in processing that grief, but his departure from it also thus a more triumphant one -- a signalling of his acceptance and healing, the future spread out ahead. As others have said, if this does end up being Miyazaki's final film, it's a fitting note to end on.

(Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, I'll be back later this week!)