19th century
Jill Chuah Masters
Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-born French filmmaker, has a reputation that precedes her. Her upbringing was the subject of the acclaimed films Persepolis (2007) and Chicken With Plums (2011). Persepolis won the Cannes Jury Prize, two César awards and was nominated for an Oscar. Satrapi adapted and co-directed both films. She also wrote and illustrated the comic books on which they were based. Over the past ten years, Satrapi has parlayed her success as a cartoonist into a formidable career as a filmmaker. Her latest film is her biggest. Radioactive is a wide-ranging biopic about the life of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The prolific Lord Fellowes returns with this six-part adaptation of his own novel (for ITV), a niftily-wrought yarn (originally issued in online instalments) about the old aristocracy and the rise of new money in the early 19th Century. Some are inevitably calling it the “new Downton”, but it really isn’t.Fellowes, the assiduous social historian, has planted his story firmly in factual soil. It opens at a pivotal moment in the Napoleonic Wars, when the Duchess of Richmond held her celebrated ball at her temporary home in Brussels on 15 June, 1815. This was days before the battle of Waterloo, Read more ...
Richard Bratby
No orchestra wants its conductor to cancel in the week of a concert. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s illness was announced only on Monday, but even in ideal conditions, if you needed to find a last minute replacement maestro for a programme of Bartók and Bruckner, you could hardly do better than Omer Meir Wellber: a conductor with whom the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has built a relationship that predates his recent appointment to the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester. And while it was unquestionably disappointing to be deprived of Gražinytė-Tyla’s first adventure into Bruckner (on these Read more ...
Robert Beale
Omer Meir Wellber, who once used to do magic with music for children, pulled a whole set of rabbits out of the hat in his reading of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony on Saturday. Others may make the work's rhythms and melodies alluring through the sheer forward momentum of a steady beat. Not Wellber. The most striking thing about the first two movements, as he directed them, was that the contrast of mystery and vigour embodied in the shapes and dynamics of the music’s rhythm, melody and harmony was also represented in its speed – or rather, speeds.It's a way of conducting Beethoven symphonies that Read more ...
David Nice
Fast is fine in Beethoven, so long as you find breathing-spaces, expressive lines and crisp articulation within it. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra's febrile new chief conductor, Maxim Emelyanychev, started the "Pastoral" Symphony last night with a brisk but detailed walk which was interesting in itself, especially given the level of commitment from the players, but a breathless rapidity saw diminishing returns even in a symphony which ought to be able to take it, the Seventh. There's clearly an excitement about what's going on in the new partnership, but is it enough?It should have been a joy Read more ...
David Nice
Emblazoned on a drop-curtain in front of a mirror-image of the auditorium, the three great tenets of the French revolution seem to be mocking us right at the start, above all the second of them: equality, really, given the make-up of the Royal Opera stalls? But the last, more bitter laugh is on both the audience and the director, Tobias Kratzer, who cheats Beethoven's admittedly lopsided liberation opera of its significant events and, ultimately, some fine singers, above all the eagerly-awaited Lise Davidsen and Jonas Kaufmann, along with their conductor, Antonio Pappano, of what has to be Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“Nothing you’re about to see is true,” this adaptation of Peter Carey’s novel about Australia’s iron-clad Victorian outlaw Ned Kelly declares. Justin Kurzel’s wild investigation of the Kelly myth, Australian manhood and nationhood carves out its own truths anyway.Kelly grows up in an impoverished, outback Irish family led by necessarily feral mother Ellen (The Babadook’s Essie Davis, pictured below left). This maternal Lady Macbeth is glamorous, cunning, hopelessly defiant and fearsomely vicious. First recalled by Ned pragmatically giving a blowjob to the local policeman, she later violently Read more ...
Robert Beale
Honouring Beethoven in Manchester is a united enterprise, at least between the Hallé and BBC Philharmonic, two symphony orchestras that have worked out a series of Beethoven specials between them. Last night’s Hallé concert even had two conductors – the Hallé’s music director Sir Mark Elder to direct Act Two of Fidelio and the vocal trio with orchestra Tremate, Empi, Tremate, and the Philharmonic’s principal guest conductor Ben Gernon in charge for the Eighth Symphony.There’s a theme here: all of them were (in their final versions) first performed in 1814 – but they come from very different Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Jack London’s original novel was a brutal and Darwinian account of a dog's life in the Klondike during the gold rush at the end of the 19th century. Chris Sanders’s film, on the other hand, with a screenplay by Michael Green, is a family-friendly entertainment in the Saturday matinee tradition, delivering a message of lump-in-the-throat positivity reminiscent of earlier canine classics like Old Yeller or The Incredible Journey.Harrison Ford gets top billing and delivers the somewhat sententious voice-over which pushes the story along, but the real star is Buck (pronunciation of whose name Read more ...
David Nice
Those who booed the production team last night - there was nothing but generous cheering for singers, conductor and orchestra - might reflect that this was at least regietheater, that singular brand of not-all-bad director's opera in Germany, with discipline and purpose close enough to its subject. There were some cliches and the occasional question-mark - who's the trembling, plastic-wrapped youth in underpants and why the nearby oil drum? - but you had to hand it to Barbora Horáková for making everything connect, in however stylised a way.Think back to Daniel Kramer's party nightmare in La Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It looks as if vandals have ransacked Whistler's Peacock Room. The famous interior was commissioned in the 1870s by shipping magnate, Frederick Richard Leyland to show off his collection of fine porcelain. The specially designed shelves have been broken and their contents smashed; shards of pottery lie strewn across the floor.The destruction seems also to be coming from within, though; it’s as if some form of vile corruption were infecting the very substance of the exotic room. Over the mantelpiece hangs a painting of a princess by James McNeill Whistler; circles of mould have infected Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
A creepy lighthouse on a remote island, a blistering storm, a mermaid languishing on the shore and two fabulously bewhiskered actors chewing up the scenery like there’s no tomorrow. The Lighthouse feels like it’s been washed up in a bottle, a film from another time with a story sprung from ghost stories or nightmares.The American writer/director Robert Eggers really knows how to create mystery and a particular sense of unease. He follows his outstanding debut, the pre-Salem horror film The Witch, with another deeply atmospheric concoction, which doesn’t really feel like horror Read more ...