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Tim Cawkwell

~ currently publishing my poetry and verse. Blog entries on film and painting going back to 2014. My main website is www.timcawkwell.co.uk

Tim Cawkwell

Category Archives: time puzzles

The bullet that killed Nelson

11 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by Tim Cawkwell in biopics, cinema and culture, costume narratives, crucifixion on film, painting and photography, time puzzles

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Dunkirk, Lord Nelson, Nelson's bullet, Norwich Castle Museum, Rashomon, Trafalgar

Death of Nelson by West

I saw an exhibition last Saturday called ‘Nelson and Norfolk’ at Norwich Castle Museum. Everyone in Norfolk knows that Admiral Lord Nelson was born in Norfolk and went to school in Norwich, but this fact may have escaped others not born in or not living in Norfolk. Never mind the Norfolk connection, it is a fascinating exhibition, really about the creation of the Nelson legend.

So, in Nelson’s case, given the choice between fact and legend, do you only print the legend? Not quite: in his case the facts firmly underpinned the legend. It made me think of a Death of Nelson film, on the lines of Kurosawa’s Rashomon, that is to say from the different viewpoints of those involved.

It opens in the midst of the Battle of Trafalgar, all smoke, fire, destruction, dead and dying, above all action from the still living (a bit like the film Dunkirk). The camera in a long crane shot comes to focus on a French soldier preparing his musket and crossing himself. He inserts the little round bullet, he kisses it, he shins aloft the mizzen mast carrying the musket (not easy, surely?), and proceeds to scan the decks of the Victory seeking suitable targets. Then he spies the Admiral himself – or is it the Admiral? Yes, it must be, he’s only got one arm. So he manoeuvres himself to a good position, except Nelson keeps moving about a little, and his officers and midshipmen keep getting in the way, so will he, won’t he get his shot in before he loses his chance. And then the way clears, the Admiral stands in view, the music comes to a crescendo. The Frenchman shoots; Nelson sinks into legend.

After the Long Shot, a Middle Distance view. Rewind. Do the same scene viewed by a British midshipman running messages, clearing a passage and so on. We watch the midshipman watching Nelson and then gasping when he sees him shot. (It’s a ‘Where were you when JFK was assassinated?’ moment.)

Rewind again. This time it’s a close-up view, from Nelson’s close friend, Captain Thomas Hardy. Hardy’s shock: he quickly looks where the bullet came from and sees, from a long way off, a Frenchman exultant in the rigging.

After Nelson is struck, we get the doctor’s view, choosing not to remove the bullet because the case is hopeless. Nelson only has hours to live.

The dying Nelson asks for a progress report on the sea battle. Flashback to him briefing his admirals before the battle. Digital/animated reconstruction of scenes from the battle in the manner of contemporary marine painting. Narrative up to point where Victory tangles with Redoubtable. Scene of French officer ordering sniper aloft with orders to pick out Nelson.

Scene of report given to dying Nelson of victory.

A series of tableaux of the Death of Nelson: was it like a photograph, unglamorous fact? Was it like a catholic apotheosis on the lines of a Deposition from the Cross? Was it on the orlop deck (a public spectacle)? Or in the stern cabin (a private spectacle)? The fact that it is public is important for the legend.

Armitage, Edward, 1817-1896; The Death of Nelson

Death of Nelson by Devis

Death of Nelson by Legrand

End with news of the victory and of the death of Nelson being brought to the Admiralty in London. After the sound and fury, silence.

Final sequence: the bullet that killed Nelson is extracted by the doctor from the corpse of Nelson – gruesome, Baconian close-up. What to do with the bullet? Hardy takes the bullet and resolves to mount it in a locket and give it to the King. The final image is of this sacred relic on display in an exhibition in the Queen’s Collection.

Nelson's bullet

‘Nelson and Norfolk’ is on at the Castle Museum in Norwich until Sunday, 1 October 2017.

http://www.timcawkwell.co.uk

DUNKIRK REVISITED

14 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by Tim Cawkwell in British cinema, cinema and culture, costume narratives, time puzzles

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Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk, Inception, Jonathan Nolan, Melies, Memento, Prestige

Seeing Dunkirk  a second time made me spot something which had passed me by in the IMAX image-blitz of the first viewing (see previous post). Nolan deals with three time-frames in the film: a week for the infantryman, a day for Mr Dawson and his boat, an hour for the flight of three Spitfires, and they all come together at a key point around three-quarters of the way through the film. To cope with this, Nolan puts the narrative on pause: we see a Heinkel attack a minesweeper from the air, then we cut away to something else, we then resume the narrative (actually Nolan has wound it back slightly, I think) from a viewpoint in Dawson’s boat. Secondly, the film’s cross-cutting is far from simple since the three stories on land, on sea and in the air are being shown ‘simultaneously’ but did not happen all at the same time.  I hadn’t glued these things together when I first saw the film, but now I have at least a little.

I like time puzzles in films so I like this one, but there is another pleasure because it connects the film to some of Nolan’s others which opt for a labyrinthine manipulation of time and memory: Memento, The Prestige, Inception.

Still pursuing the auteur theory after all these years, I watched The Prestige again to see if I could see how one film-maker made both it and Dunkirk. They share top production values of course, as they do with a lot of Hollywood films. Prestige is much more labyrinthine, and consequently for all the fascination it engenders rather heartless, not an adjective that applies to Dunkirk. However, they do come to some degree from the same mind, although this is significantly complicated by the fact that Christopher’s brother, Jonathan, helped with the screenplay for Memento and Prestige. If Dunkirk is less labyrinthine, is that because Jonathan was not involved in the screenplay? I doubt it because Inception, Christopher Nolan’s most intricate film about time and space, did not involve his brother.

As it happens Prestige has a strand quite of its own. Is it a metaphor – I am sure other commentators have picked up on this – for the invention of the cinema? The film carefully makes sure that the spectator understands the trick behind each illusion of magic, while still preserving the magic. The birth of the cinema, which like the setting of Prestige belongs to the end of the 19th century, is both a mechanical process (projecting each image for a fraction of a second) and a scientific one (the phenomenon of persistence of vision on the retina means we see differently from a camera mechanism). We want the illusion created by moving images but once you know how this comes about you ‘see’ film is a rapid sequence of images.

One of the earliest filmmakers, the Frenchman George Méliès, was a magician before he was a film-maker. Prestige enjoys showing us conjuring tricks as if filmed in real time when film-editing makes them the easiest thing in the world to re-create. But the film narrative, in its pursuit of the Tesla transporter, wants to tell us, just as Méliès did, that there is a magic (or so it seems) beyond the magic: the trick is that there is no trick.

I had to re-see Prestige to get some sort of grasp on the film, and no doubt need to re-see it again to get a better one. Will Dunkirk need these repeated viewings? Maybe, but one would do it more for the pleasure and excitement of images than to fathom what is going on.

http://www.timcawkwell.co.uk

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  • yearning for the sixties
  • FILM PORTRAITURE 4: Bob Fleischner Dying

Recent Comments

Sarah Cawkwell on FILM PORTRAITS 2: TACITA …
Antonioni: more De C… on Antonioni’s Metaphysical…
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  • British cinema
  • cinema and culture
  • cinema of hyperbole
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  • crucifixion on film
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