Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 24/5/2018)

At some point in the late 18th century, Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) finds himself stranded in a dead-end colonial posting for the Spanish government in what is now Paraguay. Standing on the tideline with the sound of cicadas and playing children ringing in his ears, Zama wanders along the beach and spies on some women mud bathing near the dunes. He tries to run when his presence is detected, but he turns to slap the woman chasing him for daring to impugn his status as a man and a colonial official. On returning to his office, he proves equally callous towards a bound black suspect undergoing interrogation. Eventually, an underling suggests letting him go free without charge and, in his desperation to leave, the man knocks himself out by running into a wall. 

Despite being due a transfer to Lerma, where his wife and children are awaiting him, Zama writes to Marta to express his frustration with the broken promises of the governor (Gustavo Bohm). He also promises to help a merchant skipper from Montevideo get his goods ashore and is spooked when the soothsaying son of a a crew member called the Oriental (Carlos Defeo) greets him as the corregidor who pacified the Indians and makes predictions about his future. Zama reassures the crew that the notorious bandit, Vicuña Porto (Matheus Nachtergaele), has been executed and can no longer threaten them. But, when he chases an intruder away from his home, his landlord is worried that his three daughters will be in danger from Vicuña and his brigands. 

Although he stands out in his faded red brocade tunic, Zama is less socially adept than colleagues Ventura Prieto (Juan Minujín) and Manuel Fernández (Nahuel Cano) and cuts an awkward figure at a gathering attended by the glamorous Luciana Piñares de Luenga (Lola Dueñas), who is the wife of the treasury minister. However, she has a soft spot for him and, while sipping brandy, she promises to intercede with her husband to get him a new posting. They reminisce about Europe (even though Zama was born in South America and has never been there) and she urges him to be discreet in front of her mute black servant, Malemba (Mariana Nunes).

Zama acts as magistrate in the settlement and he agrees to grant an encomienda of Indians to a family with no documents to prove their connection to a respected landowner. Realising that Zama has been swayed by the beauty of the couple's mixed race granddaughter, Prieto questions his decision and they fight when he mocks Americans with ideas above their station. Exhausted and aggrieved, Zama returns to his lodgings to be bathed by Rita (Paula Grinszpan) and her sisters. She informs him that she has been assaulted by a soldier named Bermudez (Juan Pablo Gomez) and asks him to avenge her because he has nothing left to lose. He assures her he is in no position as a royal official to take the law into his own hands and leaves to attend to the burial of the Oriental and his son, who have died of plague. The bishop overseeing the dousing of the corpses in quicklime tells Zama that they have confiscated goods from the ship to cover their expenses, as even the Church can't operate solely as a charity. 

Hurrying to break the news of the Oriental's demise to Luciana, Zama discovers she is more concerned with the fact that Malemba has declared her intention to marry, even though she cannot speak to give her consent. Zama assures Luciana that he can find a way around the problem and she promises him a kiss as a reward. Further frustration follows when the governor announces (as a llama casually wanders around the room) that he has been posted back to Spain and that Prieto is to be dispatched to Lerma as punishment for laying hands on a superior. Dismayed that an underling in disgrace has been granted his own cherished wish, Zama goes to see Luciana for some sympathy, only to find she is cavorting in her boudoir with another man. 

Discovering that the governor has taken several items of his own furniture on departing, Zama throws himself into his duties (as far as he is able). When he goes to the beach to fetch some fish, he asks one of the Indian women, Emilia (Maria Etelvina Peredez), why his toddler son crouches like a crab when he walks, but she offers him no explanation. He takes the fish to the tavern where the new governor (Daniel Veronese) is throwing dice to win the ears of Vicuña, which were sliced off before his execution. On winning, the governor promises Zama that he will write to the king to secure his immediate transfer. However, when they call on scribe Fernández to compose the missive, they find him writing a book and the governor is so furious with Zama for having no idea that such an enterprise was going on under his nose that he includes his last few pieces of furniture on his own inventory. Fernández asks Zama to read the text, but he refuses and advises that he keeps it hidden until the fuss blows over. 

Having given Emilia his bed, Zama takes his few remaining possessions to a rundown shack owned by Zumala (Silvia Luque). He asks Emilia to wash his shirt, but she wants nothing to do with him. The governor compounds his misery by refusing to recommend his transfer unless he writes a report denouncing Fernández for writing on government time. He returns home to find that Zumala has died and been replaced by Tora (also Luque), who informs him that he is her only guest, even though he insists he has seen two women with extravagant hair in the vicinity. Stricken with fever, Zama struggles to sleep and is taken aback by the discovery that the governor has moved Fernández into his already cramped office so he can keep an eye on him. Determined to regain some control over his existence, Zama confiscates the manuscript and submits it to the governor, who is impressed by Fernández's talent. But he is crushed to learn that it will take two years to process his transfer and the governor chides him for having an illegitimate son, as this could complicate matters. 

More time passes and the now-bearded Zama seeks to impress the new governor (Rodolfo Prantte) by volunteering for a mission led by Captain Hipólito Parrilla (Rafael Spregelburd) to vanquish Vicuña once and for all. Despite the claims that he has been executed, the bandit remains a potent force and the governor wants to exhibit his head to prove to the superstitious people that he no longer poses a threat to colonial law and order. They set out on horseback through the swamps and find a dead body in a tree. During the night, however, their camp is infiltrated by blind Indians, who steal their horses. As Zama tries to lay low, he is cornered by Vicuña, who taunts him with his own sword and lets him live with his humiliation. 

Despite his hand beginning to smell after being bitten by a spider, Parrilla mounts the sole remaining horse, as the party continues its expedition. However, Zama and three other soldiers are abducted by Indians coated in red dye and they are taken back to the village, where they are stripped and also smeared with the rusty pigment. The next morning, they are returned to their comrades, along with the horse and they press on without discussing the incident. Zama opts not to expose Vicuña. But, when they reach a lake and decide to rest for a while, he informs Parrilla that they are harbouring the fugitive. In trying to arrest him, however, Parrilla is overpowered by Vicuña's men and they are bound together by ropes on the sand. 

Vicuña takes Zama to one side and confides that he has only committed a fraction of the crimes attributed to him. However, he has promised his men that he will make them rich and orders Zama to tell him where the coconuts filled with precious stones are hidden. After killing Parrilla when he plots his escape, Vicuña loses patience with Zama for refusing to co-operate and has him held down in the sand while he cuts off his hands with his sword. At the Conradian conclusion of this futile trek into the heart of darkness, Zama is shown lying in a punt with his stumps bound with mud, bandages and algae. A young Indian boy asks him if he wants to live and he just about manages to nod in the affirmative. 

Although Brazil has a rich tradition of films set in the colonial period, they have been fewer and further between in Argentinian cinema. Thus, it's easier to compare this gruelling study with the likes of Werner Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972), Lisandro Alonso's Jauja (2014) and Ciro Guerra's Embrace of the Serpent (2015), which all pitch hapless individuals into hostile terrain that relentlessly saps his physical and psychological strength. However, Don Diego de Zama drifts with the tide of events rather than attempting to shape them, as he endures a Godotian wait that consistently reminds him - for all his unentitled airs and shabby graces - of his subservient place in the imperial system.  

Boasting Pedro Almodóvar, Gael García Bernal and Danny Glover among its producers, this has been hailed as a politically and aesthetically daring masterpiece by some critics and a capriciously inaccessible bore by others. As one might expect, the truth lies somewhere in between, as Martel makes few compromises to the uncommitted viewer with her elliptical brand of storytelling, stately pacing and anachronistic use of music by the 1950s Brazilian combo, Los Indios Tabajares. She overdoes the symbolism in the opening anecdote about a fish struggling to avoid being left high and dry on the riverbank. But she also generates an atmosphere of soul-crushingly surreal ennui that is superbly conveyed by the pompous, but pitiable Daniel Giménez Cacho. 

Martel also frames the action in a way to expose the dismissively supremacist mistreatment of the black and indigenous populations, who occupy the backgrounds and margins of shots that invariably foreground the Hispanic characters who are making an unholy mess of subjugating and exploiting the New World. She owes much in this regard to cinematographer Rui Poças, production designer Renata Pinheiro and costumier Julio Suárez, whose use of colour, light and space captures a lost world of tatty tricorn hats, sweat-stained shirts and ill-fitting wigs. But sound designer Guido Berenblum also plays a vital role, as he combines the ambient sounds of insects and water with a cacophony of chattering (and often untranslated) voices and grinding noises that seem to come from another time and place to reinforce the state of delirium that sucks Zama under, as he loses any sense of hope, purpose or self.

The call of commercials has restricted Simon Hunter's feature-making options and he has only managed two more since debuting with the 1999 horror, Lighthouse. As the second, Mutant Chronicles (2008), was based on a role-playing game, it's safe to say that Edie represents a distinct departure, as it accompanies a widowed octogenarian on an expedition up a Scottish mountain. However, it was while he was cooped up in a green-screen studio that Hunter promised himself a return to Suilven, the mountain in Sutherland that he had often climbed with his father during his Scottish childhood. The resulting picture may throw up few dramatic or thematic surprises. But it has a warmth to match its heroine's intrepid spirit. 

Eightysomething Sheila Hancock is up in the attic recalling adventures with her father when husband Donald Pelmear dies in his wheelchair in the front room. Daughter Wendy Morgan chides her mother for having a fry-up on the morning she is due to visit the Ivy Manor retirement home. But the prospect of fading away in slow-motion doesn't appeal to Hancock and Morgan is frustrated by her refusal to co-operate. She is even more upset when she discovers her mother's old diaries after the house is sold and learns that not only did Hancock not love the controlling and parsimonious Pelmear, but that she had also considered raising a child to be a duty rather than an act of love. 

Unable to prevent Morgan from storming out into the rain, Hancock tosses the treacherous memoir on the fire. But she retrieves the postcard that her estranged father had sent her suggesting that they make up while climbing Suilven and decides to take the Caledonian Sleeper from Euston to Inverness. As she disembarks, however, she is knocked over by Kevin Guthrie and girlfriend Amy Manson, as the latter rushes for her train and Guthrie offers to take Hancock to her hotel in Lochinver in his Land Rover. 

They pass through glorious Highland scenery, only for Hancock to discover she has arrived a day early and that there isn't a room to be had anywhere because of the annual fishing festival. So, Guthrie puts her up in his room and Hancock is appalled by the state of the bathroom. She is also surprised to discover the living-room floor covered with sleeping Scotsman after Guthrie's pals drag him out for a night's drinking and Hancock is about to cancel her reservation and head home when the sight of a slumbering pensioner reminds her that she is here to prove something to herself. 

Wandering into the nearby camping shop, she finds Guthrie behind the counter with his chirpy pal Paul Brannigan. While Guthrie fetches a gas bottle for Hancock's stove, Brannigan convinces her that it would be folly to attempt Suilven without an expert guide and she agrees to pay £800 for his services over the next four days - providing they throw in a new stove for free. However, she also deducts the price of some new walking boots after Guthrie loses one of her wellingtons in the loch while trying to wash it after Hancock gets stuck in some mud during their first trek. Unconcerned that he also fell in while trying to recover it, Hancock proves testy when he shows her how to assemble her new stove. But she enjoys having a spending spree in the shop that evening and smiles with quiet satisfaction when she makes tea in her hotel room with the stove after the kettle fails to work.

The next day, Guthrie takes Hancock to the beach. She paddles while he builds Suilven out of sand and shows her the three-day route he proposes to take after they row across the loch. He is taken aback when she taunts him with a crab, but she is touched by his gift of the small stone that he had used as her stand-in on the sand mountain. She washes it in the bath that night and removes her wedding ring and is raring to go when Guthrie proposes a rowing lesson. Hancock is amused when he turns out to be hopeless, but they make it far enough from the shore for Guthrie to cast a fishing line. 

Enjoying the peace, Hancock explains how Pelmear had disliked her father and had prevented her from going camping with him. Thus, when he had sent her the postcard of Suilven, she had been determined to go. But, in the middle of an argument with Pelmear, he had suffered a stroke and never spoke another word during the three decades that she had to care for him. To lighten the mood, they have a race to erect their tents and Guthrie has to cook the supper when Hancock wins. He talks her into sipping cider from a can and she revels in the tranquility of the idyllic spot. But Guthrie says it's tough for young people to find a niche in such a remote place and wonders whether he and Manson are doing the right thing in taking on a loan that will take 25 years to pay off. 

That night, Hancock puts on a long red dress over her boots to visit the local bar. She gives Guthrie a card in which she calls him `the world's best teacher'. But, while he is touched, Manson finds the sentiments a bit twee before she rushes off to take a phone call. A drunken Brannigan comes to the table and charmlessly comments on Hancock's age, prompting her to retreat to the washroom to remove her bright red lipstick. As she returns, she hears Brannigan calling her `an old bag' and she slips and falls when he tries to steer her on to the dance floor. 

Convinced she's too old to scale the peak, Hancock packs her bag and leaves her new equipment in her room. Guthrie runs her back to the station, but refuses to accept her money because he had promised to take her up Suilven. When she protests she's in no fit state, he forces her out of the vehicle and leaves her with a mountain bike to make her way to Inverness. Realising he has taken her luggage, Hancock has no option but to cycle to Lochinver. But Guthrie is waiting for her on the route and they ride to get a fine view of the mountain before perching on the rocks near the lighthouse to make their final plans. 

The next day, however, Hancock announces that she is going to make the ascent alone and reluctantly agrees to take Guthrie's phone in case she gets into difficulty. He drops her off a fair way from the loch and she makes steady time in the breezy sunshine. She needs help pushing the boat into the water from German hiker Daniela Bräuer, but rows confidently until she drops an oar and is fortunate to drift to the bank without coming a cropper. Pitching her tent, she cooks supper and is reading when Guthrie checks she is doing okay. During the night, she is woken by the bellowing of some deer and is stunned by the beauty of the starry sky. 

A combination of long shots, drone swoops and timelapse cloud sequences help Hancock on her way the following morning. But, while she strides out, Guthrie feels hemmed in at a party to celebrate Manson getting the loan. As a storm gathers outside, he becomes increasingly concerned for Hancock's safety and leaves the bash with Manson fuming at him for letting an old dear tackle Suilven alone and for lacking the maturity to be her partner. Having recklessly decided to plough on in the darkness, Hancock has her tent blown away in a downpour and she is preparing to hunker down for the night under a tree when something urges her to venture on and she finds an old bothy with a fire miraculously burning in the grate. 

She wakes to find Calum Macrae making her tea and porridge and is glad that he has recovered her rucksack. Leaving her rescuer her cherished postcard by way of explanation and feeling the sun on her face, Hancock girds herself for one last effort, only to struggle in excruciating slo-mo as the gradient rises. By the time Guthrie catches up with her, she is spark out on the grass and he fears the worst. But she is determined to go on, as she has wasted a life she would change in a heartbeat and she urges Guthrie not to make the same mistakes. Ignoring his insistence that getting this far is not a failure, Hancock clambers to her feet to tilt at the summit. Together, they conquer Suilven and Guthrie beams with pride as he leaves Hancock to take the final steps by herself. Gazing out across the majestic terrain below, she places her stone on the rocks as proof of her achievement.

The only way to start any assessment of this modest, but enjoyable movie is by commending the courage and commitment of 83 year-old Sheila Hancock, who braved the elements and no little danger to complete her memorable performance. She is solidly supported in converting the clichés of the odd couple scenario into creditably amusing and affecting incidents by the affable Kevin Guthrie. But this is very much Hancock's picture, as the camera lingers on her wonderfully watchful face and twinkling eyes, as she overcomes both her own doubts and regrets, as well as her physical limitations. 

Hunter and editor Otto Stothert rather overdo the cross-cutting between the anguished close-ups and August Jacobsson's evocative vistas when the going starts to get tough. Moreover, Debbie Wiseman's score swells a touch too effusively, as the friends are reunited and strike out for glory. But their hands are somewhat forced by the steepling melodramatics of Elizabeth O'Halloran's screenplay, which is much more intriguing when exploring Hancock's relationship with daughter Wendy Morgan than it is in contriving a bond with a twentysomething stranger whose travails are far too sketchily limned. Perhaps Hunter and O'Halloran should have taken heed of the play of light and shade on Suilven. 

With apologies to all concerned, this review of Roger Michell's Nothing Like a Dame comes rather too late for its fleeting cinema run. But, rumour has it that this delightful record of Dames Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Eileen Atkins reminiscing about their lives on and off the stage and screen will soon be shown by the BBC under the Arena banner that has always tended to guarantee excellence. 

Gathering at the Sussex home that Plowright once shared with husband Laurence Olivier, the fabulous foursome waste no time in recalling their early days on the boards. Atkins blushes at the memory of the initials she had to sport on her costumes when she joined the KY dance troupe, while Dench has to remind Smith of having to hide from Miles Malleson during a run of The Double Dealer in Edinburgh. Over clips of a 1962 television version of The Cherry Orchard, Dench also credits Peggy Ashcroft and John Gielgud with saving her career, as they told her to ignore the bullying of director Michel Saint-Denis and their kindness gave her the courage to carry on.

Another small-screen snippet shows Smith telling a chat show host that she stole her comic technique from Kenneth Williams, while Atkins relates an anecdote about Timothy West returning to his theatrical digs to find his landlady having sex on the dining-room table and they joke about the old habit of nailing a fish under the table in sub-standard boarding houses. Once they have retreated inside to avoid the rain, Smith sings a song about a table from Listen to the Wind and we see the programme from the production at The Playhouse in Beaumont Street. 

Thence, the move on to discussing Cleopatra. Atkens and Plowright admit to turning down offers because they felt they would be criticised for being too plain to play such a fabled beauty. Smith confesses to playing the role in Canada, where no one would notice. But Dench remembers asking Peter Hall if he wanted `a menopausal dwarf' for the lead in his 1987 National Theatre production of Antony and Cleopatra. She fondly recalls the crew slipping her champagne and a lobster salad on the last night of the run, while Atkens pipes up that most Antonys bitterly resent having to play second fiddle in a play they had hoped to steal. 

Smith jokes that Alan Bates probably wished he could have played Cleopatra before Michell prompts them into considering roles that gave them problems. Dench flawlessly delivers a speech she could never remember when she was a young actress, while Atkens admits to being told by an upcoming thesp that what she had considered to be a daringly naturalistic performance in a 1971 TV rendition of The Duchess of Malfi was `okay for its day'. Plowright dislikes actors who deliver Shakespeare's poetry as though they were improvising it and we see her movingly playing Shylock in a 1970 TV take on The Merchant of Venice. Yet, while Plowright thinks an actor should strive to be true to the text rather than drag it down to their level, Smith opines that styles change over time and that declaiming to the rear stalls would look very odd today. Over a clip of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968), Dench insists there should be a middle ground.

The subject moves on to the tenure of Laurence Olivier at the Old Vic and Smith admits to Plowright that she was terrified of her husband when she played opposite him in The Recruiting Officer (1963), The Master Builder and Othello (both 1964). She remembers him slapping her so hard across the face that she claims it was the only time she saw stars at the National Theatre. Smith is seated on a sofa with Dench and, over clips from Olivier and John Sichel's The Three Sisters (1970) and Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001), they admit to finding filming a daunting business because people's expectations are always so high and the silences are always so deafening when something goes wrong. 

Neither were avid moviegoers as kids, although they saw Olivier's Henry V (1944) and Hamlet (1948) at school. Smith also recalls being put off films by The Jolson Story (1946) and only becoming hooked on acting after playing two minor roles (one of which was a Chinese boy) in The Letter at the Oxford Playhouse. Chatting with Atkins, Plowright remembers her breakthrough role in a Coventry production of Roots and how good it felt to have the audience in the palm of her hand in The School for Scandal (both 1959). She was informed by her mother that she was no oil painting and was lucky to have inherited her legs and not her father's. As we see Atkins in the `Richard II' episode of An Age of Kings (1960), she also remembers being told she wasn't a looker. But she has always been grateful to the old actor who told her to cover up any physical deficiencies by being sexy. 

Dench and Smith muse on the fact they can remember lines from Oxford revues they did decades ago and yet can't recall what they did last weekend. They reflect on raising their children alongside each other and Smith tells a story about Olivier trying to get one of his sons to tell him where he had hidden the keys to his bar. Atkins was married to Julian Glover at the time and she recalls going on a demonstration in Trafalgar Square with Vanessa Redgrave and Dench interjects that Redgrave once missed a show after she was arrested. Over a montage of TV clips (including Dench on Z Cars), Atkins quips that they got up to some mischief in the 1960s. However, Dench continued to have a weekly session of silent contemplation, which carried over from her Quaker school in York. She is shown footage of the York Mystery Plays when she was 18 and Atkins is impressed that Dench can still remember some of her lines. 

When the four are reunited, they discuss their attitude to being created dames. Plowright says she isn't sure she believes in the honours system, but was determined to accept after the other three had received their awards. She had been Lady Olivier prior to her elevation and Smith cheekily asks if the two titles ever compete for precedence in her imagination. As the pair had co-starred with Dench in Franco Zeffirelli's Tea With Mussolini (1999), they recall walking out of a hotel because Smith insisted it was `a knocking shop' and joining Plowright in the Grand, where they used to drink a bottle of Prosecco and then try to remember where their rooms were. 

Off camera, Michell pushes them in the direction of reviews and, over footage of Dench in Romeo and Juliet (1960), she and Atkins admit to getting poisonous notices from the famously waspish Caryl Brahms. He also tries to goad them into exploring ageing and Smith makes a joke about Dench needing a hearing aid. As she is now blind, Plowright is quite content to accept her need for assistance. But Dench seethes on recalling being patronised by a young paramedic after she had been stung on the behind by a hornet. When he asked if she had a carer, she roared back that she had just spent eight weeks in A Winter's Tale at the Garrick. 

Moving on to working with their famous husbands, Smith consoles Plowright with having had to put up with the most difficult one of them all. She and Olivier had teamed in Tony Richardson's The Entertainer (1960) and she admits that their relationship changed her life, as she was bound to the finest actor of his generation until he died in 1989. Atkins and Glover co-starred in Electra (1974), while Smith won an Oscar opposite Robert Stephens in Ronald Neame's The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Over an extract from Private Lives (1972), she concedes that his alcoholism meant it was difficult to know what state he would be in each night. But she is grateful that they were a golden couple for a while and prefers to dwell on the good times. 

Dench is more reticent in talking about Michael Williams, with whom she enjoyed great success in the BBC sitcom, A Fine Romance (1981). Her pause speaks volumes for how much she still misses him. But she relates a sweet story about them being dreadful corpsers and how Richard Vernon reduced them both to helpless laughter by changing a car registration number into a risqué jape. 

When Michell asks whether they will ever retire, Smith declares that it all depends on how many roles Dench declines, as she always gets her leftovers. Plowright also ribs Dench about getting her paws on everything and she feigns being offended by the implication she shamelessly hoovers up cameos. Smith volunteers the fact she has never watched a single episode of Downton Abbey, even though she was presented with a boxed set. She is in the process of explaining about reaction shot acting in Chris Columbus's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) when she becomes aware of the still photographer on the set and wonders if he has enough snaps yet. 

Dench claims that playing Queen Victoria in John Madden's Mrs Brown (1997) changed her life, as it reminded people she could do film roles. She also reveals that she agreed to play M in Bond films like Sam Mendes's Skyfall (2012) because Williams had been a huge fan of the series and had always been impressed by Kim Philby's acting skills when he invented the media to his mother's house to deny being a spy in 1963. However, as Michell tries to coax Smith and Dench into discussing the part fear plays in a performance, the former protests that she's tired and asks her director if anyone had told him that they're all quite old. 

Someone pops the cork on a bottle of fizz and spirits rise, as Smith regales the assembled with the news that Dame Edith Evans used to have two pairs of dentures - one for eating and one for speaking. She admits she used to think she was a terrible old dear, but time has mellowed her. Michell asks what advice they would give their younger selves. Plowright wishes she had discovered yoga and meditation earlier, while Atkins regrets being so confrontational and not listening more. Smith claims her motto would be `when in doubt, don't' and the subtitle `Cum Dubito Desisto' pops up when Atkins wonders what this would be in Latin. Dench wishes she hadn't fallen in love so often, but Plowright says it's never too late for that sort of thing and they all get the giggles. 

A montage of celebrated roles follows before the conversation returns to Olivier and Smith mischievously asks Plowright if she ever told him she preferred Michael Redgrave's Hamlet. She remembers seeing another actor playing the Dane in New York and ducking out of a moment that had inflamed the critics. When he told them he wasn't in the mood and couldn't give the audience a lie, she had reminded him that all acting is an illusion, as Hamlet always gets up for his curtain call. Atkins smiles that it's impossible to follow that and they all fall silent. 

Following a montage of the quartet picking up award that's accompanied by a live version of the Rolling Stones hit `Honky Tonk Women', Dench reads Prospero's lines from The Tempest: `We are such stuff, as dreams are made on, and our little life, is rounded with a sleep.' Little else needs to be said. Just watch, listen and marvel. Perhaps someone can persuade Glenda Jackson, Diana Rigg, Vanessa Redgrave and Helen Mirren to do the sequel. And why don't they show plays from the classical repertoire on television any longer? Maybe somebody needs to launch the stage version of Talking Pictures. God bless it. 

Last year, the BFI released Pioneers of African-American Cinema, a magnificent five-disc set chronicling the history of the `race film'. Produced on a shoestring with mostly black casts, these short features were written, directed and distributed outside the Hollywood studio system by the likes of Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams. They were mostly shown in churches and meeting halls, although a number of movie theatres held after-hours screenings that became known as `midnight rambles'. 

Documentarist Nancy Buirski has delved into the archives to help illustrate The Rape of Recy Taylor, which was inspired by Danielle L. McGuire's book, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance. Having already tackled a landmark case in the campaign for Civil Rights in the United States in The Loving Story (2012) - which charts the ordeal of Richard and Mildred Loving after they were charged with violating Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws in 1958 - Buirski is ideally placed to explore the ramifications of a sickening attack on a 24 year-old wife and mother in Abbeville, Alabama on 3 September 1944. However, she lacks the journalistic rigour to follow up some of the important points made by her interview subjects, while her use of songs and film extracts often dictates audience response and, sometimes, undermines the significance of what's being said. 

An opening caption reveals that a `staggering' number of black women were raped by white men in the United States. However, they were often too afraid to report the assaults and only the African-American press and the makers of race films like Spencer Williams's The Blood of Jesus (1941) tackled the issue. As we see footage of a religious service filmed in the 1940s by Zora Neale Hurston, Recy Taylor's siblings, Alma Daniels and Robert Corbitt, recall how she used to love going to church and was returning from praying with her friend Fannie Daniel when she was abducted. Alma dismisses the idea that her sister was a prostitute (as was claimed in the aftermath of the attack), as she was a devoted wife to Willie Guy Taylor and a doting mother to their daughter, Joyce.

In the first, but not the last incidence of emotional manipulation, Buirski backs Dinah Washington's rendition of `This Bitter Earth' with Max Richter's `On the Nature of Daylight', as Robert describes how seven white men had piled into a car and followed Recy, Fannie and the latter's son, Wes, after they had left the church. As the streets were poorly lit and there had been some rabid foxes around, Wes was carrying a stick. But, after Sam Jurdin had chased the teenagers away from pestering his daughters, they pounced on Recy. Private Herbert Lovett pulled a gun on her and ordered her to stop running and get into the back of the car. In voiceover, Recy takes up the story, as she was blindfolded and forced to listen to the boys debating what to do with her. Someone mentioned killing her, but they decided instead to drive to a remote spot and rape her on the ground. 

Having lost his mother when he was 18 months old, Robert had virtually been brought up by Recy and Alma reveals that their home life wasn't always easy with their father, Benny. But he was a decent man and, when Fannie came to tell him what had happened, he took down his rifle and went looking for his daughter and embraced her when she came home, after being dropped off on the outskirts of town. Although she had promised her assailants that she would keep her mouth shut if they spared her life, Recy told sheriff Lewey Corbitt that she had been bundled into a green Chevrolet belonging to Hugo Wilson. Yet, even though he lived a few hundred yards from the Corbitt house, Wilson denied having ever seen Recy before. 

Alma and Robert explain that the boys probably felt they could get away with their crime, as they had been brought up to believe that a black woman's body didn't belong to her. Over a dramatic scene depicting a white man forcing himself on a black woman, Recy's nephew, James Johnson II, suggests that attitudes had changed little since the plantation era and that the notion of white supremacy meant that youths were brought up to believe that black people were little better than animals. He claims that sex was used to demonstrate the control whites had over the black population in the southern states. But white Alabama historian Larry Smith reckons that some slave owners felt they had a right to sleep with black women because they belonged to them. Astonishingly, he labels this a `consensual type of affair' before smiling at recalling the old saying that every white man had a woman at the next crossroads. 

According to Robert, Recy had been subjected to a four- to five-hour ordeal and he claims that had told her to behave as if she was in bed with her husband. Although four of the attackers were strangers, she knew Hugo Wilson, Billy Howerton and Luther Lee and everyone knew the group used to hang out on the bank steps in town. But Wilson was the only one questioned by the police that night and the Taylors were offered no protection when they returned to their home a few days later. Consequently, they were defenceless when the property was fire-bombed. Fortunately, Willie Guy was able to douse the flames, but Robert says this was so typical of the intimidation that the family faced that Benny used to sleep with his rifle in a chinaberry tree behind the house to keep his offspring safe.

Over home movies of Benny with his brood, Robert confides that his father had wanted to go out and shoot the culprits. But he knew such vengeance would be counter-productive and he kept his powder dry. There was no love lost with Sheriff Corbitt, however, whose family had owned Benny's ancestors. So, with the police doing little to pursue the case, the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sent Rosa Parks to take Recy's statement. As the NAACP's official rape investigator, Parks was well known to the sheriff and, as Yale professor Crystal Feimster reveals, he arrived on the scene within 15 minutes of her knocking on Recy's door. He ordered her to leave and used physical force to eject her when she returned a fortnight later. Feimster notes that such resistance anticipates Parks's refusal to give up her seat to a white woman on a Montgomery bus. She had family in Abbeville and, as an extract from a letter written in 1981 reveals, she had endured sexual harassment herself, as an 18 year-old in 1931. 

In October 1944, a grand jury hearing was held at Henry County Courthouse. But no blacks were allowed to attend and Recy was kept in a separate room from the accused. Unsurprisingly, the all-white male jury acquitted the indicted and the case was closed. Robert explains that such injustice was designed to bring about subservience, although Alma recalls being taken to the town jail after she slapped the off-duty cop who had struck her for not backing away from a shop door he wished to pass through. She smiles as she remembers her father coming to collect her and barring her from going out until she learned how to behave. 

Activist Esther Cooper Jackson remembers visiting Recy and noticing how traumatised she was. So, Parks arranged for her to move into a safe house on Johnson Street in Montgomery. Feimster points out that Parks might not have been a member of the NAACP by this time, but she had been taught to fight for her rights by her grandfather and we hear an interview clip in which Parks describes how she was appointed secretary of her local branch on the day she joined because they needed someone to take the minutes of a meeting. She proved instrumental in the formation of the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs Recy Taylor, which used letters, petitions and stories in the black press to shame the white establishment and coax other black women into coming forward with their own experiences. 

Author Danielle L. McGuire shows how Recy's cause was taken up as far away at Harlem, where there was a rally calling for a fair hearing at the famous Hotel Theresa. She explains how vital the black press was in reporting crimes that were ignored by white publications, as their records prevented lawyers from dismissing accusations as hearsay. We see a clip from Oscar Micheaux's Birthright (1938 - not 1939, as Buirski claims), as Feimster reveals that race films like Micheaux's Within Our Gates (1919) and The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920) also depicted the bigotry and brutality that mainstream cinema ignored. This insistence on presenting reality gave audience the courage to speak out and, eventually, Alabama governor Chauncey Sparks agreed to send private investigators to go to Abbeville and uncover the truth. 

In extracts from the report submitted to Sparks by Assistant District Attorney John O. Harris, we learn that Sherif Corbitt had retracted lies about Recy being a prostitute. However, Dillard York, Robert Gamble and Luther Lee (who were all 17 at the time of the rape) insist that Recy had readily gone with them and accepted money for her services after she had safe sex with them, as well as Lovett, Wilson and Willie Joe Culpepper. According to 14 year-old Billy Howerton, he declined to have intercourse, as he knew Recy and wanted nothing to do with her. But 16 year-old Wilson also swore to have abstained, even though 15 year-old Culpepper had made no bones of the fact that they had forced themselves on Recy and had thrust some banknotes into her hand while she was with Lovett. However, the 18 year-old soldier denied having set eyes on Recy before and she admits that she would find it difficult to identify her assailants in a line-up.

As a result of the inquiry, a second grand jury hearing was held on 14 February 1945 and Chris Money, a criminal defence attorney based in Abbeville, declares that the failure to secure a conviction had more to do with race than the validity of the facts. Siblings Leamon Lee and James York insist that the accused were good boys, but concede that they often got into scrapes. Lee remembers his father giving Luther a whooping over this incident and reveals that Sheriff Corbitt was married to their mother's sister. He joined the navy soon after and saw action in the Second World War, as well as in Korea and Vietnam. York also went to sea and received a Purple Heart after being wounded before acting as the chief recorder at the Korean peace talks. He married a Japanese woman and his brother smiles knowingly, as he declares that `that went over great'.

Culpepper returned home a hero after being captured in the Korean War, but Robert Corbitt reveals that the sheriff had informed Benny that one of the boys had perished in a car crash, while another had been killed after being caught with another man's wife. However, this information was false and they all lived lengthy lives without being punished in the slightest for their crime. By contrast, Recy slipped down the NAACP agenda and struggled to make ends meet after her marriage ended. She worked as a sharecropper for a spell before moving to Flordia to pick oranges after her daughter lost her life in a traffic accident. 

While researching her book, McGuire got to interview Recy, who lived until she was 97 and only died in December last year. But Larry Smith tells Buirski he feels uncomfortable discussing the situation in too much depth, as some of those involved are still alive. He contents himself with stating that McGuire's book ruffled feathers and that the state legislature sought to calm things down by making an official apology to Recy Taylor in 2011. Feimster is more outspoken, however, as she regrets that the focus on Martin Luther King has distracted historians from the role that women played in the Civil Rights movement. She describes the indignities that black women faced when travelling on trains and buses and McGuire insists that it was the transport boycott imposed by these women that taught the leadership the potency of peaceful resistance. 

As we see Fannie Lou Hamer singing `Go Tell It on the Mountain', McGuire and Feimster sum up that the Civil Rights movement emerged from the determination of impotent black men to protect their womenfolk from white males who felt entitled to do whatever they wanted with their bodies. Alma (who died in 2016) is pleased that some of the Abbeville Seven died in tragic circumstances and is even more delighted that Recy got to outlive them and expose their pitiless lack of humanity. The closing images show Recy being helped out of a wheelchair by Robert in what looks like a hospice room. She admits that she could easily have been killed if the Lord hadn't been beside her during her ordeal and this knowledge has given her the strength to tell the truth about what happened to her. 

This an important film and it's deeply frustrating that it's not a better one. It's a huge shame that Buirski wasn't in a position to embark upon the project earlier, as it would have been nice to hear more from Recy Taylor herself. However, her siblings speak with eloquence and passion on her behalf, as do Crystal Feimster and Danielle McGuire. However, by opting to remain a silent presence during the interviews, Buirski misses the opportunity to press the mealy-mouthed Larry Smith about the case and the way in which the white community continues to close ranks around its own. She may well have been prevented from interjecting by the agreed terms of the interview, but this failure to confront Smith, Leamon Lee or James York feels like an abnegation of the documentarist's duty. 

The assembly of the audiovisual material also has its problematic moments, as so much of Rex Miller's cinematography is so stylised. The juxtaposition of top shots down on to illuminated trees in dark woodland with low-level views of the underground feels self-conscious, as does editor Anthony Rispoli's superimposition over these images of clips from pictures like Roy Calnek's Ten Nights in a Bar Room (1926), Frank Peregini's The Scar of Shame (1927) and Micheaux's Veiled Aristocrats and The Girl From Chicago (1932). The use of music over the extracts also has a melodramatising effect, which detracts from the gravity of the themes Buirski is seeking to highlight. So, while one can only be grateful to her for bringing this harrowing case to a wider audience at a time when racial and gender rights are very much hot topics, one can only wish she had shown more editorial trenchancy and stylistic restraint in presenting it.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is seemingly never out of the headlines. A fortnight ago, focus fell on British tourists Bethan Davies and Robert Jesty being rescued from kidnappers in Virunga National Park, while this week it has shifted on to an experimental treatment for Ebola. Such contrasting stories rather sum up the recent history of a country that is still feeling the effects of the 1994-2003 civil war, as American documentarist Daniel McCabe reveals in This Is Congo. This may not have the visual panache of Richard Mosse's The Enclave (2013), which turned the landscape an eerie bubblegum pink by shooting exclusively on Kodak's 16mm infrared Aerochrome film. But McCabe knows the terrain well, having worked there as a photojournalist in 2008. Consequently, he makes an ideal guide for this tour of `Narnia on acid'.

As he walks along a path on his farm in the rolling Congolese countryside, National Army colonel Mamadou Ndala declares that if you live in God's Congo it's idyllic. However, man has turned it into a hell on earth with his wars. On another rural road, refugees take cover as soldiers fire a rocket launcher and, while the grown-ups and the animals cower, one small boy is shown in close-up being more curious about the rockets than afraid of them - such is his inurement to conflict. 

Using an alias, Colonel Kasongo (who has deserted to the rebels on three separate occasions) says the war will continue as long as leaders fail to find a common sense of patriotic purpose. We see an erupting volcano before news footage of President Joseph Kabila voting in the 2011 elections and violence being used to suppress opposition. Kasongo says the army is poorly led and many soldiers desert to join the rebels and are often taken back at higher ranks. The leader of the March 23 rebels (aka the Congolese Revolutionary Army), General Sultani Makenga, was once in the National Army and he laments that the elections have solved nothing and that action must be taken to help the people. 

Ndala - who is the leader of the 42nd Battalion of the Rapid Response Unit - shows us some of the 12 bullet wounds on his body, as he reveals he is willing to lay down his life for Congo and Kabila. Paying little attention as one of his men is thrashed with sticks for an undisclosed transgression, Ndala insists he is on the side of the people. But there are 60,000 in the displacement camp where 58 year-old tailor Hakiza Nyantaba has fled after the fighting in his village. He has brought his old sewing machine, as he needs to make money, and takes loving care of it. Outside, people queue for rations from aid workers and Nyantaba complains that the registration system isn't fair and that some are deliberately left out of the loop. When the rains come, the camp is turned into a quagmire and kids look into lens with a sense of injustice and defiance. 

Over an old newsreel explaining that Congo is three times the size of Texas, Kasongo reveals that it's abnormally rich in minerals. A teacher and his class spell out what is mined in places like North and South Kivu to the east of the country, as Kasongo complains that none of the wealth generated by these sites trickles down to the population. We see people trekking over muddy land to a mine and meet Bibianne (aka `Mama Romance'), who trades in gem stones including tourmaline and takes them to Goma in North Kivu for smuggling out of the country for sale in Rwanda or Uganda. This is illegal, but she is not afraid of taking chances. 

Kasongo explains that there are 450 tribes in Congo and they are all represented in Goma, which has a population of one million and is sufficiently distant from Kinshasa to make governance difficult. We see the HQs of various charities. Yet, over 50 rebel groups operate alongside and in rivalry with the M23 and they hide in the dense forests that are so rich in minerals that they coerce locals into fronting for them in order to buy food and weapons. 

Makenga says they are not fighting for the hell of it. They are trying to stop Kabila stealing from the people and we delve back into history to learn how Arabs came from Zanzibar to coerce the locals into poaching elephants for ivory. Over harrowing archive footage of an elephant hunt, Makenga notes that the Arabs were chased away by King Leopold II of Belgium, who colonised the country and exploited the people for gold and rubber and those who failed to make their quotas had their hands cut off. We see hideous monochrome images before Makenga goes into a village and removes his green beret to show that he is one of the people. He informs the residents that Kabila is their enemy and that he is there to protect them. But he admits that there are so many dissident groups fighting in this region that the ordinary Congolese don't know who to trust. 

Ndala has no doubt that Kabila is a worthy leader and we see his battalion on a training exercise (making the noise of their guns in order to save bullets and stay safe). He explains that they have been taught about the customs and traditions of the country and are patriots keen to uphold them. Moreover, he reveals that they have received training from foreign forces and are part of a new wave of the reformed army. As far as Ndala is concerned, M23 is being helped by Rwanda and Uganda, despite government denials. Makenga blames Kabila for refusing to negotiate, while Kasongo says he will never open talks while they are demanding control of the areas rich in minerals. 

Villagers come to collect the bodies of some truck drivers who have been ambushed while carrying wood. Back in the camp,  Nyantaba sews away until panic breaks out and we cut to news footage of M23 rebels walking unopposed into Goma, as UN peacekeepers simply look on impassively. Nyantaba brands the National Army a disgrace and accuses them of raping women and harming the people they were supposed to protect. A news reporter claims there has been mass desertion because the troops are so disillusioned with their superiors. But, after just 12 days, the occupation ends and M23 leaves Goma after Kabila agrees to talks. 

Kasongo shrugs that this is typical of the country's recent history, as since King Baudouin granted independence in 1960, there has been incessant foreign interference. The Americans felt that Patrice Lumumba, the first independent prime minister, was a Communist and the CIA backed army firebrand Mobuto Sese Seko's bid for power and turned a blind eye when 
Lumumba was assassinated after his third arrest. At first, Congo seemed to thrive under Mobuto, with universities opening and business booming. But, when he created Zaire in 1971, he ejected all Western executives and handed their companies to his inept cronies, while pocketing profits from the gold and diamond mines. Furthermore, Mobuto also stole foreign aid, as corruption became the name of the government game, while his people starved as he lived in luxury. 

Bibianne resides in a shack on the outskirts of Goma and she reveals that she was scraping a living by selling milk at the market when friends suggested that she started trading stones. The high quality stones go to German, the mid-range to Thailand and China and the lowest to India. She knows the trade is shady. But she has no complaints, as she has funded one of her children through university and the rest are happy at school. By contrast, Ndala lives in a sturdy brick house with his wives and many children. He has a huge television set and his devoted troops revel in being invited to watch it. Ndala is such an inspirational figure that he is promoted to command the garrison at Goma and takes his men on route marches singing anti-Makenga songs. Beaming modestly, he is proud of what he has achieved at a comparatively young age and hopes to keep being promoted before returning to his farm. 

However, the M23 launches a fresh attack and Ndala has to prepare his men for patrols in the outlying villages. They argue among themselves about the extent to which Rwanda and Uganda are involved in the struggle and Kasongo takes us back to the colonial period when the Belgians declared the Tutsi to be the brightest African tribe in the region and, thus, prompted a fierce hierarchical rivalry, as the majority Hutu tribe was subjected to discrimination and injustice. Around a million fled into Congo from Rwanda during the genocide and Kasongo claims that many Hutu leaders sought sanctuary in order to plot their revenge against Paul Kagame's regime, while he had wanted to stamp them out and take control of the mineral lands. We see street demonstrations against the UN troops (who are regarded as corrupt and ineffectual) and the Tutsis and their ally, Kabila. Angry young men chant slogans and kids throw stones and Kasongo says it will stay like this until the burden of history can be removed from their shoulders. 

Undaunted by the troubles, Bibianne smuggles her stones into Rwanda and explains how she employs drivers to take the risk of transporting them across borders, while she travels by plane to do her deals in Nairobi. Back at the camp, Nyantaba buries his pregnant niece and her unborn child. He has already lost four children and is angry that Sifa died of cholera because he believes they deserve better than to die in such squalor.

Meanwhile, Ndala leads a patrol to the frontline some 15km outside Goma and shows great cool and courage to stride at the head of his troops, as they make a slow advance. He also chides the soldiers he finds cowering behind a wall and sends them into action. The UN pick up casualties and the camera keeps pace with Ndala, as he barks his orders, wielding only a walkie-talkie. He returns to town to a rapturous reception and is dubbed `the Jesus of Goma' for staving off an invasion. Crowds gather at the base to cheer him and young men perform tricks on motorcycles, as they ride through the streets in jubilation. When the head of the army comes to Goma, however, he reprimands Ndala for not stressing Kabila's part in the victory and press conferences are held to declare that the president's strategy rather than any personal military heroism confounded the M23 forces and drove Makenga into Uganda. Ndala allows himself a wry smile into the camera, as the credit for his victory is snatched away from him and handed to a man on the other side of the country who had little or no idea what was actually happening on the ground.

Despite this setback, Ndala remains the darling of the crowd and is in attendance when Kabila comes to claim his victory. Bibianne gives thanks for both the peace and a marriage proposal from a pastor to her daughter and gets tearful on the wedding day. Nyantaba is told it's safe to return home and arrives to find only superficial damage to his property. He is equally relieved to be back before the rains come. 

But, as the screen goes black after Ndala warns the rebels that he will not allow the peace to be shattered, we cut to jerky footage of a sobbing soldier pointing to the blazing vehicle in which his commander is trapped. Kasongo opines that Ndala enjoyed the spotlight too much and that his popularity proved his undoing, as envious colleagues decided to end his meteoric rise. A caption reveals that two National Army colonels were charged with paying $20,000 to Ugandan-backed rebels to assassinate him. 

In November 2016, Kabila cancelled the planned elections and announced that he plans to rule with unrestricted powers until he feels it's safe to return to democracy. As some children slide down the wings of a crashed aircraft, McCabe cuts to Ndala urging Congo to change its mindset and discover the unity that will foster a flower whose fragrance will entice the whole of Africa. He smiles with satisfaction at his words and, with that flicker of impudent charisma, one can see why his enemies considered him such a threat. 

Having placed himself in considerable danger to obtain such remarkable and often deeply disturbing footage of a beautiful country in the depths of despair, McCabe can be forgiven for providing only a sketchy backdrop to DR Congo's ongoing woes. He can also be excused the fact that he makes so little of the stories of Hakiza Nyantaba and Mama Romance. As a case study in military futility and human venality, however, this proves hugely effective, as McCabe exposes the in-fighting that prevents either the National Army or any of its multifarious foes from seizing the initiative. 

Fittingly flmed in silhouette to protect his identity and voiced on the soundtrack by Ivorian actor Isaach de Bankolé, Colonel Kasongo is a shady, battle-scarred cynic, who had learnt to trust no one. But Mamadou Ndala is more egotistical and guilelessly patriotic and his inability to spot the warning signs after the top brass rob him of his moment of triumph seals his fate. It's easy to see why McCabe and editor Alyse Ardell Spiegel decided to build the film around his testimony and exploits, but those unfamiliar with Congo's course from independence to civil war will be frustrated that they presume too much foreknowledge. All will be moved by Ndala's tragic demise, however, while there is something harrowing about the images of the innocent children who have known but carnage and chaos and who will inevitably be swept up by it as they grow older.