Disclosure Day, Tuner and Virginia Woolf's Night and Day

 

Steven Spielberg is back with his aliens, but this time the story is far less obvious. Actually Disclosure Day is quite obtuse. For me, it was a strange mixture of some exciting and well-staged set pieces but with, at times, some quite stupid plot points. And it was too long. Typically, there were chases thrown in for excitement. But don't get me (or many critics) started on the ending. The fact that this month's Sight and Sound has no mention in their sci-fi edition speaks volumes. 

However, Emily Blunt is excellent as the TV weather girl who is mesmerised by an unwelcome gift. But the way she embraces this new ability is the best thing about the movie. It's just a shame about her boyfriend, who, thank goodness, is absent in the second half. Josh O'Connor playing Josh O'Connor also leaves behind his girlfriend, so we lose the marvellous Eve Hewson later on. I was very disappointed that Colin Firth played the villain; he was totally miscast. The film was written by Spielberg's long-time associate David Koepp. The script was OK, it was just that the story was all over the place.

A partly flawed drama that turns into a thriller. Leo Woodall plays Niki, a piano tuner who has a hearing condition that gives him that sensitivity to work his magic on the instrument. Never having seen a piano tuner at work, this was quite something. His boss Harry is played by Dustin Hoffman, of all people, soon to become seventy-nine years old. During his work, Niki comes across a professional pianist, Ruthie, played by Havana Rose Liu with whom he starts an affair. However, it's when Niki begins working for a bunch of unconvincing Eastern European criminals (to pay for Harry's medical bills) that the film takes a different turn. That might have been OK, except the boss of the baddies is such a horrible character who was played pretty badly. 

But what did interest me was the music that was mostly jazz piano. From the superb "Unsquare Dance" by the Dave Brubeck Quartet (taking me back to my youth and their LP that included "Take Five") to the classic "Tenderly" played as a solo piano. (I found a George Shearing version). Thank goodness that the relationship between the two leads was so much better. Henry K. Miller's full-page sympathetic review in June's Sight and Sound says that director Daniel Roher "provides a satisfyingly unsatisfying, perfectly imperfect ending with a great flourish that draws attention to this loose end that cannot be tied". I thought it was just right.

The great things about Virginia Woolf's Night and Day were the cast, the photography and the locations, all beautifully filmed and set in 1910. Let's start with the cast. Haley Bennet (whom I remember vividly in Widow Cliquot) is surprisingly good as Katherine "Kit" Hilberry, a young independent woman from a well-off family. She's obsessed with astronomy and incurs her father's wrath in not settling for marriage. Timothy Spall in his obnoxious persona. Her mother, played by Jennifer Saunders, is in a different world. Jack Whitehall (splendid as William) is Kit's oldest friend who wants to be more than that. Add in Lily Allen and Sally Phillips (both excellent) and you have a cast to die for. 

The locations are all in the north-east of England: Beamish Museum, County Durham (an open-air living museum that was just perfect); Ryhope Engines Museum, Sunderland; Durham Cathedral (see post of 5th July 2021 for our visit) stands in for Cambridge University; and The Lit and Phil, Newcastle (The Literary and Philosophical Society) are all superb. There are even more on the Northern Echo website. 

The book was adapted by Justine Waddell, and Tina Gharavi directed it with style. See my review on this blog. The film centres on the heroine's struggles in a man's world; the suffrage movement gets a look in, but best of all are the scenes that involve the family and Kit's suitors. In the summer edition of Sight and Sound, Kit Francis Bradbury Rance thought it had a "meandering plot" which didn't seem right. Mark Kermode, like me, loved the cast and how its loosely based adaptation seemed to work. And it did look so good.