fevered.earth

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  • Mr Andor-son (Andor Episodes 11, 12)

    Last time I thought a lot about sentimentality as Andor escaped from space-prison.

    “Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.”

    This is how Andor leaves us for now, and it’s in a typically idiosyncratic fashion. These final two episodes are more of a coda than a climax, as most if not all of the remaining tensions of the previous ten episodes are released and the main story is pared back to where it was nine episodes ago: Andor is leaving Ferrix and all his material attachments behind, to join the Rebellion with Luthen. Like Luke in A New Hope, Andor has been radicalised by the actions of the Empire and his personal loss, and is ready to give his life to the cause this bearded mystic represents — and so he does.

    Having watched (until now) the indicated groupings of Andor episodes in batches, I watched these two week-to-week, feeling like the serialisation of the show had finally broken banks and flooded. I’m not sure if that’s the case, if Andor is now more TV than film, but I still wish I’d watched these two together. Episode 11 is mostly moving the pieces into place to make Episode 12 happen, with the exception of Luthen’s high tech escape from the tractor beam, a small moment of traditional Star Wars cool that’s almost (but not quite) in danger of spoiling Andor’s low-stakes mood.

    Andor himself is mostly out of the way across the two episodes, listening to a beautiful rendition of Chapo Trap House on his space-iPod and getting trapped in a sticky white web by some aliens whose car he was trying to space-hijack. He has learned that his mother has died, though, and against advice heads back to Ferrix for the funeral. Diego Luna has had ten episodes in which to teach us the face Cassian Andor makes when he is in pain, and that effort pays off here.

    Like that.

    The big finale of these two episodes is the funeral riot on Ferrix, which proceeds in a true-to-life fashion from a mood of elevated tension, elite contempt, over-policing and flashpoint violence, before immediately becoming a mad dangerous crush. The Empire tactically loosened its grip on the people of Ferrix, and pays for it in all the accumulated retribution and resentment that are hurled back, alongside a pipe bomb. The industrial construction on the Death Star, glimpsed in a somewhat superfluous post-credit sequence, is mirrored here in the unsteady hands of a young man piecing together this improvised explosive, the explosion of which is another triumph in Andor of making small-scale action impactful and terrifying.

    Having assembled all our main characters here, instead of having them play off each other we simply see how they react to the chaos, with (by turns) Luthen being distressed by it, Cinta taking it as the cover for tactical violence, Imperials of all stripes making terrible mistakes and misjudgements — most notably the officer who sends a single man to take a spiral staircase bell tower, but also Dedra in particular is unprepared for a situation in which she has to self-preserve. Syril on the other hand, despite all his other wretched qualities, takes the opportunity to be a hero of sorts. Andor, who has been in this situation far too often lately, sticks to the plan. Mon Mothma is blissfully unaware of any of this.

    The marching band sequence that leads up to the funeral and speech, and disorder thereafter, is striking and beautiful, drawing on the shared culture of real-world mining communities and treating them with respect. In the heist episodes we saw how Empire’s power can be brought to bear to clear people from their historic land and exterminate their culture; here we see the action through which a culture can reassert itself back against Empire.

    Ferrix is very well-realised.

    In the final episode the show lurches to a halt whenever it has to cut back for the remaining Coruscant scenes, brief though they are — though Mon Mothma suggesting indirectly to the ISB that her husband might be the cause of all that missing cash is a typically smart story moment, and her daughter running a Mishima-esque traditionalism cult for her schoolmates is deeply funny.

    The other notable scene on Coruscant is also strong. Dedra having found herself exactly where the action isn’t in the fight against the rebellion is funny, follows the dog-eat-dog rules we have seen in force at the ISB already, and is neat foreshadowing for how badly her show of force is about to go. Dedra and Syril both came to Ferrix to conquer and leave it bruised. Best for your career prospects to stay in the Imperial centre and watch from afar.

    Time gives the ability for a character to blossom and Dedra’s villainy is stronger for having had the time over these episodes to first pull you in with her girl-boss rise to acclaim and then push you away again with the reality of the character’s underlying fascism. It’s true that great movies can establish a character with such depth in a handful of scenes — it’s also true that the worst ones try and fail. Andor has luxuriated in the time taken to flesh out these characters.

    Andor’s mother, too, benefits in this way. It would be rote for a character who we only saw passive in life to speak posthumously of revolt. It would be better to see her feel that first spark of rebellion, so that we know what motivated her to want to fight back. But in having the time allocated to a TV show, Andor can have us know Maarva first, know the aspects of her character, and have us realise along with her that she has always been in rebellion. And that she’d want her cremated remains in the form of a brick be used to take someone’s face off.

    The hotel’s faux-Imperial stylings have all been building up to this shot.

    I was pleased that the “Luthen wants Andor dead plot” was both not compromised on (he really did want him dead) but also not dwelled on, set up only for the crushing final scene in which Andor, like Kino just a few episodes ago, has nothing else. One way out. Through the rebellion, or death.

    The strand of plot between Vel and Cinta is thus left to lie, with a few scenes stressing how Vel’s pampered mores are clashing with Cinta’s fervour but not much else, save for a stunning shot of Vel running into the chaotic fog of the funeral uprising which in all honesty justifies their presence all by itself. It’s an odd loose end for a show that has otherwise avoided them at all costs though.

    Andor is over then, for now. I’ll be interested to see if it can remain this good in the wake of critical success — I’m certainly hoping so. Much of my writing about Star Wars over this year has been grappling with the idea of what ‘good Star Wars’ is or should be, and this season of Andor is the most compelling argument that it can exist at all.

    The fashion in which the series leaves off here is sufficient that it could lead into the (hacked, chopped up) events of Rogue One just fine. It’s always been enough to just place Andor in the company of characters in the nascent Rebellion and say “that’s how it happened”. So it comfortably allows a second season to succeed or fail on its own merits, unnecessary as a continuation of this story. Andor has, stray plots aside, come to a conclusion here.

    Me, waiting for more Andor.

    Andor being good has catastrophically unbalanced my ranking system so I’m going to abolish it.

    Chronologically, if you want to follow me on my Star Wars adventure:

    1. Obi-wan: Episode 1
    2. Obi-wan: Episode 2
    3. Obi-wan: Episode 3
    4. Obi-wan: Episode 4
    5. Obi-wan: Episode 5
    6. Obi-wan: Episode 6
    7. The Phantom Menace (video essay)
    8. Andor: Episodes 1, 2, 3
    9. “Can Andor save Star Wars from itself?” Andor: Episodes 4, 5, 6 (supplemental)
    10. Andor: Episode 7
    11. Andor: Episodes 8, 9, 10
    12. Andor: Episodes 11, 12

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  • Tár

    Spoilers.

    That’s Tár.

    Really loved this. Loved the confidence to open the film with an extended one-on-one interview with the main character to an audience, a move that could easily prove as cataclysimically boring as those events often are. Loved the inverted front-credits — the Avengers could never.

    Cate Blanchett dissolves into the character of Lydia Tár, a female trailblazer in a man’s world who not only resents both of those facts but also the question that prompts them. She furiously defends the practise of interpreting an artist through their life and their intent, but seeks to scrub every decision she herself makes down to a purely rational level. This culminates in two cataclysmic mistakes, wherein she seeks to avoid the appearance of impropriety by denying a promotion to her long-suffering assistant at the same time as she contrives an ‘objective’ route to seeing a talented young cellist granted a solo above more senior members of the orchestra.

    A fun aspect is that despite everything, neither of these actions is strictly inappropriate: the cellist and the assistant both are talented! Some level of grooming them for success would not be terrible. But Tár lives in fear of others interpreting her in the same way she engages with the great composers, keeping her life so strictly compartmentalised she continues to work in an old apartment that she considers a terrible working environment, full of noise and distraction. She has a great, remote house with her partner and their child that would be better in every way, except that it would mean letting other people in. The compartmentalising isn’t just physical — the worst thing Tár does in the film, though it mostly happens off-screen, is ostracising one of her former mentees who is now stalking her. A partner or a friend would have been able to offer advice that could have helped them both. Instead, Tár becomes implicated in her student’s suicide, and not unfairly.

    The film as a whole treads a neat line in keeping Tár sympathetic while not excusing her. She is brash, unpleasant, cruel. She tells terrible easy lies, cheats on her partner, neglects their child. But she excuses all this in herself as she excuses it in her heroes: as incidental to the music. It builds to the beautiful moment where Tár charged Mark Strong’s character on the conducting podium, throwing him to the floor. It’s a completely outlandish moment, ridiculous even within the world the film has established. But you can understand it — despite everything it seems justifiable, and as if the film may have slipped into a universe where she can stand at that plinth and through force of will along inspire the orchestra to play. Tár finally identifies that true note of passion/betrayed that will allow her to conduct the perfect Mahler’s 5th. You really want her to be allowed to continue.

    The one part that felt slightly off to me was the sequence where, disgraced and out of Berlin, Tár goes back to what is presumably a childhood home and watches the old tapes of conducting that inspired her — a neat tie back to the cellist — who had the same inspiration but all different, and Blanchett deserves an award just for what her face does when the young prodigy says she doesn’t know who was conducting. As well though, she has a brief interaction with presumably a brother, who has a strong accent and notes that she changed her name from Linda to Lydia (the credits take this one step further and have him credited with the surname “Tarr”). As apropos as it is to Tár’s self-serving mantras about understanding the composer to understand the work, it’s too tempting to take this as the root cause of everything the character is. It goes too far, it’s too cruel, to try and take her name from her like this. For better or for worse — and the character does much that shouldn’t be forgiven — her identity is no facade.

    The actual ending strikes a more agreeable note, with Tár shipping out to East Asia and rebuilding, alone, applying her exacting methods to what turns out to be a concert of video game music. The sequence is constructed like a joke, with a punchline, and would be easy to understand as a ironic punishment for the unapologetically snobby maestro — except that she takes it exactly as seriously as she did the (unfortunate) climax of her Mahler sequence in Berlin. There’s no suggestion that she considers this pursuit in any way humiliating or beneath her. She is uncomfortable and unhappy — but that was also true in Berlin. No matter how unacceptable it seems, Tár is content so long as there is music.

    I’m currently reviewing Andor, piece by piece. How many reviews of Tár do you think will be written by people currently writing about Andor? Not enough, in my opinion. All links here.

  • Dream a little dream, Andor (Andor episodes 8, 9, 10)

    Last time we pondered the Gungan.

    The insignia mirrors the room, mirrors the job, mirrors the uniform, mirrors the doors and tunnels. Trapped at every level.

    Andor flickers back on forth on the boundary between being better treated as a serialised narrative and better treated as discrete stories, even accounting for the all-serial episode 7 which ended with effectively a prologue for this run. Having waited two weeks to watch all these episodes together, after the first one I felt like I’d have been better splitting them over the weeks, not least because the ongoing stories with the characters on the fringe of the current story were gelling better (at first) than the new cast of incarcerated workers.

    Serkis is a real treat.

    By the end of the second episode however I didn’t care, idle thoughts about the formal structure of the show swept away by a solid 50 minutes of man’s inhumanity to man. One of Andor’s great strengths is in avoiding sentimentality, a habit that dogged Obi-wan, a show which was full of doe-eyed tributes to the inspiring sacrifice of the Rebels and future Rebels yet to come. Even the great climactic prison break isn’t lingered on. There’s no scene of the prisoners hoisting a new flag over their floating prison. They just escape by force and leave by the first means available to them, even if it is a nightmare plunge into an unknown sea.

    As well as the prison — which doubles as a factory (didn’t spot Foucault’s name in the credits but I’m sure it was there) — we get a string of supporting characters ensnared in various scenarios where they have to choose to be rational over idealistic or compassionate — but without sentimentality, or the sort of nihilistic fatalism that is the flip side of it. Mon Mothma engages with a grotesque aristocrat whose (unknowing) support for the rebellion is pending on her handing her daughter over to the kind of relationship that has made her miserable. The up-and-coming ISB agent has to turn to torture to extract the information she needs, but the show is not so squeamish as to have her prevaricate over it nor so dull as to linger on it for longer than necessary. And we get a delightful guest appearance from Forest Whitaker, reprising his character from Rogue One in a barnstorming cameo which makes his truncated appearance in Rogue One all the more upsetting. Here he’s Luthen’s equal, sparring with him over plans and funding and refusing to be drawn or baited with the kind of revolutionary logic Luthen engages in. I’m hoping he makes a return.

    He’s so good! Why wasn’t he this good in Rogue One!

    If the show indulges in sentimentality anywhere, it’s ironically in the baroque misery of Luthen, whose grandiose monologue about sacrifice closes out this block. Skarsgård plays it fine, and there’s an implication that it may be more deliberate smoke and artifice than deep-seated agonising, but it’s still in sharp contrast to the episode’s highlight: work group supervisor Kino — played by Andy Serkis — as he delivers the message over the prison PA to the other prisoners that a break is in progress and the guards are no longer in control of the prison. Kino is unsure of himself, starts out meandering, steals lines that Andor and the other prisoners have been saying to him. He’s not struck by the moment and infused with the holy spirit of speechmaking, nor is the deep personal sadness that Serkis brings to the character lingered on. Luthen is just having too much fun with it all even when it’s not going his way; he comes across strung out and grumpy, not hollow from years of loss.

    Luthen claims to be ‘using the tools of his enemies’, here doing a sterling Vader impression.

    The finest scene, to my mind at least, is the one that closes out the second episode, where the prisoner Ulaf, who has been struggling and often confused at the work desks, has a stroke while heading back to the cells. As above, there is no sentimentality here. Ulaf doesn’t get to deliver a final speech, rousing his friends to action. It’s not even clear that they have a friendship other than the basic compassion shared between human beings. Conversely, there’s no cartoonish unpleasantness. No-one gets shocked or zapped or punished because the old man collapses. But it’s still horrible. The inhumanity of the institution fills the whole scene. There is no compassion for the man’s coworkers to see that he is taken care of. There is no time to lift him from the floor where he has fell. There is no interruption of the standard routines, either to bring help faster or to avoid the people caring for the old man from having to raise their hands to their heads. The doctor, another prisoner, barely has the time to learn the dead man’s name. When he dies, Ulaf is placed in a bag on a gurney and rolled straight out. The other prisoners never see him again. It’s deeply sad — I found it deeply sad.

    The relationship between Andor and Star Wars continues to fascinate. It’s very good, which sets it apart from most (if not all) the other Disney Star Wars projects. But it’s good beyond being good Star Wars, and yet it determinedly is still Star Wars and is in a deep conversation with the rest of Star Wars. The Senate chamber makes another appearance here, and the prison institution resembles nothing so much as the cloning facility on Kimono. When Andor says “we’re cheaper than droids and easier to replace” the comparison is explicit. Saw Gerrera talks about Separatists and New Republicans. The space wizards are absent for now, but Star Wars hasn’t gone anywhere.

    Oh, and Andor finds a small but crucial opportunity to shoot first here, keeping up the run of once per episode block.

    Up next:

    Ranking, best to worst:

    1. The Phantom Menace
    2. Andor: Episodes 4, 5, 6 (supplemental)
    3. Andor: Episodes 8, 9, 10
    4. Andor: Episodes 1, 2, 3
    5. Andor: Episode 7
    6. Flashback recap of the prequel trilogy
    7. Obi-wan: Episode 5
    8. Obi-wan: Episode 3
    9. Obi-wan: Episode 1
    10. Obi-wan: Episode 6
    11. Obi-wan: Episode 4
    12. Obi-wan: Episode 2

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  • Andor think to myself, what a wonderful world… (Andor Episode 7)

    Last time we considered whether Andor could save the world.

    It does seem like the whole room was built just for this.

    At the risk of eating my words in three weeks time, this felt like the odd one out in the season so far. Not, as I saw predicted, a self-contained story but a grouping of some excellent scenes that didn’t quite fit into any of the preceding episodes. It’s enough, I think, to say that the scene with Fiona Shaw was the absolute highlight, a heartbreakingly tragic farce where Andor’s actions in the previous six episodes have alienated her from him in a way he cannot explain. I had full expections that the show was going to go with the trite old ritual of “Oh, I’m secretly ill/infirm/otherwise unable to come with you by virtue of being old” and what happened instead was really good. Special mention as well to the Imperial bureaucracy scenes, a stunning mash-up of the original trilogy’s Imperial Officer scenes with a modern-day KPMG internal presentation.

    The whole building bears a passing resemblance to the ancient club Luthen keeps handling.

    With that out of the way, we can get down to the one absolutely critical question this episode raises (and a minor corollary to it). That is: when are we going to see Senator Binks?

    Jar Jar Binks was so ferociously maligned on the release of the Phantom Menace that his role in the subsequent prequels was trimmed down considerably, but Lucas did retain for him a critical role. Binks is the Senator who — in a repeat of the events of Phantom Menace where Padme played this role — proposes that the Senate grants the Chancellor emergency powers, that he then uses to create the Grand Army and ultimately elevate himself to the position of Emperor.

    Small cog, big machine.

    Since Mon Mothma’s original intrusion into this series the Coruscant content has only been creeping up. We’ve seen the Senate, the speeders, the endless political hokum. Not noted enough is how much this content, which is of a high quality with much of the rest of Andor, draws almost exclusively from the prequels. Indeed, the spectre of the Emperor which hangs over many of the Coruscant-set scenes can only be understood as the conniving, sophisticated Chancellor Palpatine rather than the seething space wizard from Return of the Jedi.

    Andor does diverge — as noticed in droll fashion by twitter commentators — from the stage-like dialogue style of the George Lucas films, instead going for a somewhat naturalistic style, though far from the hyperactive modern blockbuster sensibility the sequel films ended up with. It would be hard to imagine Anakin and Padme’s romantic exchanges intercut with scenes on Ferrix. Jar Jar however, despite having his own dialogue controversy, does not speak in particularly romantic terms. Indeed, given what would be his now long departure from his home world of Naboo for the life of the senator, a broadening of his speak would make sense — one fewer ‘meesa’ here and there.

    Below-level Coruscant looks a lot like Heathrow airport, the quintessential British dystopia.

    If you’re wondering how the character of an aging politician who has done little in their political career other than inadvertently vote for terrible things might be portrayed, might I suggest the array of colourful characters in the British Parliament.

    But perhaps that would be too cynical for poor Jar Jar, who retains a childlike innocence through his appearances that parallels him with Anakin, the other ‘stray’ adopted by Qui-gon Gin during the course of The Phantom Menace. Both Anakin and Jar Jar have a wide-eyed approach to politics that allows them to be manipulated by Palpatine, and while we know that Anakin is enmeshed into the Imperial apparatus long into the future, it would be very neat to see a comfortable Senator Binks do the grunt work of the new Emperor in the Senate — perhaps engaging in some light menacing of Mon Mothma. Alleline, the US-aligned up-and-comer who takes over MI6 in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy isn’t a villain — just someone too unaware to know when he’s being played. That’s how I’d fit Jar Jar in here.

    Mon Mothma’s husband is a fascinating character. I hope he ends up doing a Mishima coup or somthing.

    Anyhow, idle thoughts.

    The corollary is (of course) are we going to see Sheev himself? But I think the answer to that one is “probably, yes”.

    The best scene in the episode by some distance.

    Up next:

    Ranking, best to worst:

    1. The Phantom Menace
    2. Andor: Episodes 4, 5, 6 (supplemental)
    3. Andor: Episodes 1, 2, 3
    4. Andor: Episode 7
    5. Flashback recap of the prequel trilogy
    6. Obi-wan: Episode 5
    7. Obi-wan: Episode 3
    8. Obi-wan: Episode 1
    9. Obi-wan: Episode 6
    10. Obi-wan: Episode 4
    11. Obi-wan: Episode 2

    If you like my writing, please subscribe to my Letterboxd reviews or watch Sixteen attempts to talk to you about ‘Suicide Squad’, available on Youtube now.