Linus Roache appears at RO3 Friday night

Free Press Houston spoke by phone to Linus Roache last week regarding his starring role in Before the Rains. Roache will be familiar to viewers of Law and Order (Michael Cutter) or as Christian Bale’s dad in Batman Begins but those are his mainstream roles. In fact, as a child in the 70s Roache appeared in Coronation Street, a British soap opera that stars his father William Roache. “I was only on a couple of episodes,” recalled Roache, “But my dad has starred on the show since 1960.” Coronation Street is the longest running BBC soap and still airs.
The lavish drama of Before the Rains takes in the political atmosphere of India during the late 1930s, a full decade before its independence. “The scenery speaks for itself, “ noted Roache about the locations in Kerala, which is in the south of India. “This part of India feels unspoiled, there isn’t the harshness of poverty you find in the north.”
Roache plays plantation owner Henry Moores whose Indian mistress has gone missing. Moores’ go-between, T.K. (played by Indian rugby player turned movie star Rahul Bose) has been accused of her disappearance. Director Santosh Sivan observes the distance between T.K. and Moores as men while slyly commenting on Indian patriarchy. Jennifer Ehle and Nandita Das also star.
“The director specifically went for an authentic feel,” said Roache about the contemporary mood the film evokes. Before the Rains pull a switchback on the audience and before you know it you're on the side of either Moores or T.K. as fate pits them against one another.
Roache has also appeared in Wings of the Dove and Pandaemonium where he played Samuel Coleridge. One role that he found “life changing” was playing Robert Kennedy in the TV movie RFK from 2002. Before the Rains is currently playing exclusively at the River Oaks Three. Roache will make a personal appearance at the RO3 Friday, May 23.

Two by Godard

If a Jean-Luc Godard film pops up theatrically it’s probably going to be one of his more accessible works like Breathless or Contempt or maybe even Band of Outsiders or Alphaville. But Godard made so many ground breaking films that it’s inevitable that some of his less known, and hard to find films should appear on disc. Koch Lorber has just released La Chinoise and Le Gai Savoir on DVD in their original 1.33:1formats.
Le Gai Savoir was Godard’s “return to zero” film. The two actors (Jean Pierre Leaud and Juliet Berto) discuss language and politics on a bare stage the entire time. If you have no taste for the French New Wave you will think this is dryer than the wine served for My Dinner With Andre.
At one point a woman reads a poem standing in front of life size artist renditions of Hulk, Spiderman and Batman. In 1967 Batman was no doubt the best known since he had a camp TV show, yet the fact that Godard groups them together shows an uncanny taste for cultural artifacts not to mention that it’s practically a template for big budget films being made today. Watching the film pushes buttons in your mind, maybe triggering thoughts you'd rather not have. Maybe that's the reason to watch.
La Chinoise, also with Leaud and Berto and Anne Wiazemsky, deals with French students wanting to embrace Mao to the point of terrorism. Once again Godard reminds us of the power of suggestion. And the characters are too busy looking attractive on camera to really blow things up. The character interaction also brings to mind Bertolucci's recent The Dreamers.
One character holds a toy rifle called the Johnny Seven One Man Army. It was so called because you could fire it seven different ways. Next, another character sports a toy that is a radio that morphs into a rifle (the barrel compresses into one side and the stock swings out from the bottom when you push a button) called the Agent Zero Radio Rifle and made by Mattel. I found one on eBay that sold for over 110 dollars.
Both films will be embraced by fans of Godard, but perhaps too strange for casual observers who might even find Masculin-Feminin or Weekend unnerving. Much of the dialogue reeks of political rhetoric. The tone is didactic to the point you want to scream back at the screen, “I get it.” Yet the imagery, the Esso tiger that was a popular ad logo (now known as Exxon), victims of war, the aforementioned toys and comic heroes, are mixed like a smoothie and confront the part of us that can’t resist temptation. Godard knows how to use music better than most directors. Just when you want to give up he blasts forth with a new act bracketed by a rock ditty that intones over and over "Mao, Mao."
Extras on Chinoise include Godard speaking at a Venice Film Festival press conference and seemingly agitating the crowd.

Constantine's Sword

Constantine’s Sword doesn’t ask the viewer to lose their religion but rather to re-examine their faith. Based on a book by former priest and peace activist James Carroll, CS traces evangelical zeal in current day America (Rev. Ted Haggard was also profiled in Jesus Camp) but also retraces steps back to the introduction of the cross into Christian iconology.
The original symbol was a fish or shepherd but the cross was Roman conqueror Constantine’s idea in the fourth century. His mom (Saint Helena) claimed she found Jesus’ robe and actual cross used for execution. Constantine’s Sword has a hard time accepting the robe as fact. Further roads through history show the church provoking war with Muslims and persecuting Jews in ways that are neither just nor holy. “Pius XII was not Hitler’s Pope,” states the narrator, “But he was Hitler’s Cardinal.”
Other fascinating topics include the reformations of Vatican Two and statements from the current Pope. War and religion are never far apart as Constantine’s Sword illustrates. As recently as last month, and of course this is not covered in the docu, the Vatican issued a statement claiming, and I paraphrase, that if aliens existed they would be God’s creatures too.

Standard Operating Procedure

Errol Morris, no stranger to polemic cinema (Thin Blue Line, Fog of War), brings together forensic evidence and eye-witness testimony from Abu Ghraib in a manner that leaves no doubt what went down on one particularly dark night of the soul.
All the people involved in that scandal, all of whom are currently serving time, are seen save for one (he got the longest sentence), along with a couple of experts who first examined the evidence.
Three digital (you probably have one sitting next to you) cameras were used during the ordeal and Morris presents a graphic that takes the digital info on each device and spreads it across the screen in three horizontal lines, then vertically aligns them by the time and date until you actually see that one moment was captured, front and back, by two of the cameras. Similar albeit broader ground was covered in Taxi to the Dark Side, a searing documentary on the corruption of the war that won an Academy Award and made less than a million dollars at the box office.
Morris seems intent on putting his subjects under good light, and they seem equally intent on providing truth. Press reports have stated that some of the interviewees were paid, but that’s not uncommon for feature docs. In between the filmed testimony we have recreations of the environment of a prison room so cramped for space that you get claustrophobic just looking in its direction. SOP may not rate among the top of Morris' work, but like all his films it leaves you in thinking mode.

Raiders 4

Mutt Jones and the Kingdom of the Atomic Groundhogs. That could be the title of the next Indiana Jones or better Raiders series, after all isn't it all about the franchise and team play? You won't be disappointed seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but it certainly isn't the home run over the fence movie that everyone has been waiting for in 2008. That said, the opening shot takes in the logo of Paramount Pictures - based on the 9,712-foot-high Ben Lomond Peak in the Wasatch Range near Ogden, Utah - that then morphs into a rodent mound. In the first few minutes I thought of Caddyshack so many times because Speilberg keeps cutting to groundhogs for a reaction shot. The fourth movie in the Indiana Jones/Raiders series starts at an atomic bomb test site in Nevada in 1957 before it proceeds to Peru for an alien finale that achieves an encounter of a close kind symbiosis between 80s nostalgia, crystal skull imagery and 21st century audience expectation.
As the character played by John Hurt, the Ox (Professor Oxley) says "It's not outer space," referring to the film's aliens, "It's the space between the space."
String theory and multi-dimension hi jinx combine to form a perfect Saturday afternoon diversion. The CGI effects are wedged into the exotic locations in a manner as to not be noticed. For instance, on a moonlit night we see the Nazca plains in the background and everything seems in place. The attitude here seems to be tongue in cheek and we have repeated visual motifs from other films. When Shia LaBeouf appears it's through a cloud of smoke like Brando in The Wild One. Groundhog Day and the previous Raiders flicks (look for the golden ark in the opening sequence) are but a few of the reference geoglyphs littered throughout. A diner scene evokes both Back to the Future's diner and Edward Hopper. Frankly, I want Speilberg to get back to Munich and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence territory.