ENB Creature film

[Beryl H]

I was just reading the ENB website, and noticed that Creature has just been released as a film, this was news to me although I possibly can't find any postings, and is almost in the cinemas now, in fact I've booked for this coming Saturday 25th at Dukes at Kommedia Brighton at 4,20pm, there are about another 5 showings at awkward times i.e. 11am, 12.30am, and 21 pm. I half wanted to see it at SW but this is so much easier and cheaper, the first cast presumably, and hopefully easier on the ears!  

 

 

 

 

[Jan McNulty]

After an initial press release and some limited showings last year, Alison posted the latest information a couple of weeks ago:

 

 

There's also a couple of features and a review in links going back over a couple of days.

 

It will be interesting to hear what you think of the film Beryl.

[FionaM]

Watershed cinema in Bristol is showing it this weekend ..  24-26 February 

[zxDaveM]

being discussed on BBC 6Music at the moment (Lauren Laverne's show). Be on Sounds later, about 2hr 10mins in

[Jan McNulty]

I find it interesting that reviews of the film (more in links today) seem much more positive than people's feelings about seeing the performance live (including critics).

 

 

@Beryl H and anyone else who is going to see the film, please let us know what you think of it.

[alison]

I'm sure being able to see the dancers in close-up may have contributed to that.  Wish I hadn't been too busy to post my thoughts at the time  

[FionaM]

The filming was immersive which added greatly to the harrowing experience of this grim story.  This is not your usual proscenium arch film of dance.  The dancing and dramatic portrayals by everyone was fabulous. And the music was not too loud (in my cinema at least).

 

CAST

Jeffery Cirio as the Creature

Erina Takahashi as the cleaning woman Marie

Stina Quagebeur as the doctor

Ken Surahashi as the Captain

Fabian Reimar as Major

Victor Prigent as the other prisoner Andres
 

I didn’t feel we needed any of the added film sections, which didn’t appear in the stage version. The multiple views of the same rocket taking off almost every time the dancers pointed skywards, got repetitive and laboured the point.  The external scene of a frozen artic landscape and the poor Creature (Jeffery Cirio) freezing out there, were also not needed though they were beautiful in a devastating and expansive way.  
 

 

[alison]

It's also worth remembering, from what was said at the premiere, that this was filmed after Covid had put the kibosh on the original opening at Sadler's Wells.  So it's not necessarily the same as what we eventually saw on stage.  And as Fiona says, it's not a film of a stage performance.

[FionaM]

29 minutes ago, alison said:

It's also worth remembering, from what was said at the premiere, that this was filmed after Covid had put the kibosh on the original opening at Sadler's Wells.  So it's not necessarily the same as what we eventually saw on stage.  And as Fiona says, it's not a film of a stage performance.

the cameras are clearly filming very close up, on and around the performers as though the viewer is in amongst the action.  

 

I am interested now to re-see the stage version to notice if there are differences

in the actual dancing or choreo or whatever.  

[alison]

I did think I spotted some when I watched it, but again I can't remember what those were now.  Note to self: put down thoughts on "paper" in future!

[Nogoat]

The promotional blurb around this filmed version of Akram Khan's Creature placed a lot of emphasis on the involvement of 'acclaimed documentary maker' Asif Kapedia, to which my immediate reaction was 'Oh dear, the lives of Amy Winehouse and Ayrton Senna are - quite literally in this case - poles apart from a stage performance of a ballet.' And, just as a named choreographer evokes the expectation of a particular style, to what extent would the involvement of a prominently-named director lead to a particular presentational style?

 

Would Asif Kapedia add another 'creative layer' to AK's Creature to give us some weird chimera - AK's AK's Creature?

For me, the overall result was a mixed bag - a few aspects were enhanced by the film, but a worrying number elicited frustration, and for others there was disbelief at their apparent naivety.

 

So, what was good? 

 

Well, the cinema we were in (Waterside, Bristol) was almost packed, which was great to see. The alternative was a 50 mile journey, but I wonder if that excellent attendance was repeated elsewhere? 

 

And the cast were uniformly on cracking form - Reimair as the callous, arrogant, misogynistic Major; Quagebeur as the Doctor, torn between her scientific calling and loyalty to her own sex; Saruhashi as the Captain, similarly torn between duty and morals (though we preferred Frola at Sadler's Wells); Takahashi as the lowly cleaner with soaring aspirations, brought crashing down to earth by toxic masculinity; and Cirio as the Creature, for whom adjectives and superlatives quickly run out...

Even at Sadlers Wells, armed with binoculars, I didn't realise just how accomplished a dance-actor Cirio is -  the close-up filming of his face (and body) revealed him as a tabula rasa onto which a dazzling range of emotions could be projected at will by his musculature, and similarly changed in the blink of an eye.

Part of it would be the lighting and camera angles, but his mimicry of a prowling, animal gait across the stage could easily be mistaken for CGI, it was that good. I know Andy Serkis contributed his vocal talents to the soundtrack, but could he also have been coaching Cirio on movement, given his experience in 'animating' otherworldly creatures in mainstream films - eg Gollum in Lord of the Rings? 

 

I'm so glad Cirio's back for the upcoming run at Sadler's Wells - and that we have tickets to one of his performances!

 

What wasn't so good?

 

There's a couple of things that occur with annoying regularity in ballet films and cinema broadcasts that are guaranteed to wind me up (especially when perpetrated by ex-dancers turned directors who should know better!). 

 

First is the seemingly willful (because they must know what they are doing!) tendency to cut off dancers below the waist when they are jumping/spinning/etc. Kapedia took it a stage further, often also cutting off forearms with over-tight shots (yes, I know I said that the close-ups helped with conveying emotions, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the dancing - it's a ballet, after all; let the dancing do the majority of the, er, heavy-lifting. If the director can't 'trust' the audience to understand the dance, then either get a director that can, or commission a play called Creature instead). 

 

The other, marginally less annoying tendency is to keep cutting from one camera angle to another. In increasing order of 'guilt' are; The Bolshoi (they seem to use a limited number of cameras in the auditorium, and have the fewest shifts of perspective - bravo!); the Royal Ballet (there are too many shots of spinning torsos rather than spinning dancers); La Scala (where a spin is almost guaranteed to be accompanied by an overhead shot; even folk in the upper slips at ROH would never see anything from that extreme a perspective!). 

Creature was performed on its stage set - presumably at Sadler's Wells - yet additional liberties were taken during its filming by positioning cameras on the stage itself, sometimes looking out, and also by making them mobile. The worst examples were the spinning of a central camera to track Creature running around and around the stage, and conversely the continual circling of the camera round and round the table on which Creature and Marie were dancing. All it did was draw attention to the movement of the camera and detract from what we really came to see, the movement of the dancers.

 

For me, the worst transgression was the inclusion of video effects in what could otherwise have been a pretty faithful recording of the on-stage action. For, once post-production effects are admitted, faith in what we are watching is irreparably damaged. 

Ballets such as Alice and Frankenstein are both replete with special effects, but, importantly, the experience you get from watching the cinema broadcast or DVD is exactly as it would be in the theatre - they are completely faithful.
On the other hand, I recall a seeing a Shechter ballet on the TV a few years ago (was it Clowns?) that seemed to have some quite subtle slow motion effects in it that completely undermined my appreciation of the piece - I wanted to marvel at the natural skills of the dancers, not the director's/editor's ability covertly to 'enhance' them. 
Even my enjoyment of my favourite recording of Nutcracker (the Baryshnikov/ABT) is diminished by the inclusion of some video effects (eg the dissolving of the Nutcracker mask to reveal the handsome prince) - though those effects (no doubt cutting edge at the time!) simply look a bit twee now, and the recording is so obviously a studio recording that the overall effect is thankfully minimal. 

Creature, however, is a recording made on the proper stage set, so the inclusion of video effects during the performance itself is particularly jarring (I didn't mind the video prelude showing an Arctic wilderness and the pre-credit simulation at the end of earth/space from orbit, as they sat outside the performance itself). 

Ballet can be an almost miraculous medium, with subtle meaning transcribed and communicated through movement, expression and gesture. I can only conclude Kapedia misinterpreted his own lack of understanding of the medium as the medium's inability to communicate through such analogy. 
Why else would he feel the need to 'explain' the meaning of characters pointing to the sky by showing actual footage of a Saturn V rocket soon after launch? And do it not once, but over and over again? It had all the sophistication of a primary school nativity play...
And given the superb job Cirio was doing in physically manifesting every aspect of the chopped up Nixon speech, why did Kapedia feel the need to 'enhance' the static noise inherent in those early  earth-to-space communications by breaking up the picture with visual static post-production? Again, just too literal, unimaginative and naïve. 
And, if we don't 'get' that it's Nixon speaking, in what way does an almost subliminal flash of his image contribute to the experience? 
And, during the sequence where the Doctor examines Creature, I'm convinced I briefly saw a green ECG trace superimposed on the film (or projected on the back wall) while she was taking his pulse - deary me. 
Other unnecessary, overly literal, interpretation 'aids' were the close-ups of a rocket taking off towards the end; flashes of Creature mouthing the words spoken on the soundtrack; and the shot of Creature stumbling around in a blizzard having been ejected from the research station. 
Taken together, it all smacked of a lack of confidence in ballet as a communication medium, or a rather insulting lack of faith in the audience's ability to understand the medium. 

A simple solution would have been to take the traditional approach of naming/showing the principal characters at the start rather than the end (which would have had the added benefit of giving deserved prominence to the wonderful dancers who bring these projects to life), and also providing a brief synopsis. Or does being a 'creative' nowadays preclude one from doing anything so obviously 'traditional'?

 

The start of the ballet was not as I remember it - I don't recall Marie being 'lifeless' at the beginning - she was caring for Creature. I also recall the string of beads being passed from Marie to Creature to the Captain, rather than being with the Captain when he first appears (the beads were a puzzle, which is why I concentrated on them at Sadler's Wells). Was this a sub-Mayerling attempt to make the ballet 'circular' with Creature starting off with an apparently lifeless Marie and ending the same way (if so, it was half-hearted as the music wasn't the same)?

 

The final part of the ballet was rushed and (deliberately?) confusing. From the point at which the decision to leave earth is made, the film becomes chaotic. Multiple, rapid camera angle changes; what appear to be flashbacks showing video from earlier sections (anathema - see above!); the corps, who make repeated crossings of the stage with backpacks and then helmets, are seen only in the background, and out-of-focus; I'm sure, after he kills Marie, the Major is confronted by the Doctor in the original run, and is threatened in return before he takes her off stage to what is now an uncertain fate; the poignant ending, with Creature cradling the lifeless Marie and the station falling apart around him, is played out in the theatre to the entirety of an amazing vocal track with soaring notes - in the film, the on-stage action is truncated to accommodate the 'orbit' video mentioned above with that music still playing. All very unsatisfactory!

 

Other points

 

The beads remain a puzzle. The work carried out at the station appears mostly soulless, mechanical, coldly scientific and dehumanising - even if its aims (saving the remnants of humanity?) are lofty in comparison. Perhaps the beads represent religion, or those 'higher values' of humanity that might otherwise get lost in the headlong pursuit of the project's success? It would seem that the Captain thought those 'higher values' had been sacrificed - making the whole enterprise ultimately pointless - as he deliberately chose to leave the station with no protection, presumably to die.

 

The film solved a minor mystery. In the synopsis for the original stage production, it states that the banished Creature 'returns with a creature of his own', but over the course of four performances we couldn't figure out what this referred to. Well, the brief footage at the start of the film that places the action in the polar wilderness includes a brief shot of what looks like an Arctic fox and, indeed, an apparently dead animal is brought back in by Creature in the film itself (and he attends to/is distracted by it at the back of the stage while Marie is being killed by the Major). It will be interesting to see if this change, which better fits the original synopsis, also appears in the stage run next month.

 

A major mystery, however, remains - just who is this filmed version of Creature aimed at? In mixing 'live action' with video effects, and in filming a performance but disregarding the convention of keeping the viewpoint in the auditorium, the whole enterprise becomes a rather unsatisfactory, immiscible mix - as a creature itself, it's neither fish nor fowl; it falls between two stools and sits there, looking up to the lofty heights it could have reached by trusting the stage presence of performers and performance.

 

[alison]

Although it wasn't an actual performance that was filmed, anyway - and I suspect (think I remember?) that it would actually have been filmed in the production studio at ENB's headquarters due to the Covid restrictions in force at the time.  Don't forget that, as I understand it, no live performances of this took place until after the film had been shot, and I think Khan made tweaks before the work's belated live premiere.

[FionaM]

@Nogoat your thoughts are so detailed, and I agree.  
 

I too was delighted at sold out audience at the screening I went to.   60+ seats at Watershed in Bristol.  
 

It’s the first time I’ve seen a dance movie at this venue.  Hopefully they will show more now that they see there is an audience in Bristol!