Films Seen - April 2001

[Pre-'96 films not included.]

ENEMY AT THE GATES (45) (dir., Jean-Jacques Annaud) Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Ed Harris, Bob Hoskins [Annaud should've been a producer : he's obviously good with financing, knows how to get the money on the screen - it looks spectacular, even with the sub-PRIVATE RYAN overcranking effects getting in the way - and knows the value of a high concept (Stone Age man! the story of a bear! Stalingrad!). Strong sense of place and occasional good ideas - hero and heroine making love surreptitiously at close quarters - but it all comes to nowt each time the characters emote, or react to one another, or just open their mouths. Maybe it's part of making a 'good old-fashioned entertainment', like the stentorian voice-over and map of Europe gradually turning Nazi-coloured ("crushed beneath the Nazi jackboot"), but you'd have to go a long way into the recesses of Old Hollywood to find such stilted lines or embarrassing 'peasant' characters. "My mother makes the best potatoes and bacon in town," chirps a brave little tyke ; "It's not the back page. It's not the second page. It's the front page!" Fiennes enthuses when news of Law's exploits makes (yes!) the front page ; "This city is not Kursk. It's not Kiev or Minsk. This city is Stalingrad!" explains Hoskins, clearly reading the same Idiot's Guide to Rhetorical Devices ; "Vodka is a luxury we have. Caviar is a luxury we have. Time is not!" he adds a little later (who says the film has no authorial voice?). Cheap shots, perhaps, but it's hard to enjoy a movie when you spend half your time cringing in anticipation of the next howler ; Harris alone emerges unscathed (in, admittedly, the coolest role), striding through like an emissary from a cleaner, more dignified world (if he could survive STEPMOM he can certainly survive this). And why the gratuitously heavy-handed Commie-bashing? What with this and EAST-WEST, could it be a case of veteran French film-makers finally letting loose after decades of having to pull their punches, lest they be accused of betraying leftist ideals and the Spirit of '68?...]

THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE (55) (dir., Robert Redford) Matt Damon, Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Bruce McGill [I'm not surprised people hate this movie ; like the other recent film written by Jeremy Leven (DON JUAN DE MARCO) it's all sensibility - dramatically undernourished, to put it mildly - and offers little to those not in tune with that sensibility. Like MARCO it's also (very conspicuously) a film without villains, which is a large part of its charm - but Mr. Leven's rather wimpy style might underwhelm were it not complemented by Redford's patent sincerity : he does the whole period-nostalgia thing (voice-over, glorious sunsets, mansions with ballrooms, boys in cloth caps and suspenders) without a trace of irony, but there's more to it than that - not just TV (too ambitious, too understated) but a definite worldview, blending classical style with a New Age philosophy. As in THE HORSE WHISPERER and (especially) A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT, they play off each other, the four-square visuals grounding the babble (which in turn lends them resonance) ; the film goes beyond nostalgia for a specific time or place - it's Utopian nostalgia for a certain breadth of spirit that may never even have existed, tying in with Romantic notions of glimpsing God through Nature or the innocence of childhood. There's nobility to it, something gentlemanly and Olympian in the best sense, which is why it's touching when champion golfer Damon insists on playing fair, giving himself a penalty stroke though it means falling behind (and nobody would know if he cheated) - and also why it's petty and small-minded to criticise the film on socio-political grounds (for ignoring the racism Bagger would undoubtedly have suffered in the 30s, or the millions who are starving while these rich parasites play golf) : it soars far beyond such mundane considerations, like a climber on Mt. Everest lost in the magic of the mountain, unconscious of the Third World poverty in the valleys below. Much more relevant to ask why the theme of the three golfers representing the three aspects of Man - mind, body and spirit, respectively - isn't properly developed, or why Redford simplifies so unnecessarily (the scene where Damon starts getting cocky and ignores Bagger's advice is obviously a cue for a lesson in humility - but turns instead into 'inspirational' waffle about finding your own special swing). Not cool, obviously ; not even very good, truth be told ; but something in the nature of its allegory - golf as Life ("can't be won, only played"), each of us alone with his demons, not a race or competition but simply a road to travel - I found fine and generous and full of feeling. Mileage will vary, I suppose...]

THE TARGET SHOOTS FIRST (67) (dir., Christopher Wilcha) [What do we do with this one? Put it in a time-capsule? Mail it to the National Film Registry as a film of "cultural and historical importance"? Double-bill it with OFFICE SPACE? All that and more, for the diffident Mr. Wilcha ("To my total surprise I was not only taken seriously - I was offered the job") somehow weaves his own tale of twentysomething floundering with a near-definitive take on a particular early-90s moment - post-punk aesthetic and the Whatever culture fusing into grunge, then being co-opted into the mainstream. Like Kurt Cobain (who hovers over the film like a spiritual mentor), our hero breaks the bonds of a stifling corporate culture, doing something startlingly new, then can only stand and watch as that culture happily embraces - and assimilates - everything he stands for ; and of course, like all good slackers (those who came between the equally work-obsessed yuppies and dot-commers), he views office life with a mixture of horror and satirical glee - the office politics ("You said that Chris Wilcha said I was bitchy"), the conflicts between different floors, the "Casual Fridays" and annual office picnic where everyone is ordered to let their hair down ("attendance is mandatory"), the motivational messages ("Each customer is a unique human being") on the walls. The twist, in this case, is that it's made from the inside, hence can't keep corporate life at satirical arm's-length : the film itself seems to be fighting against absorption (Wilcha finds less and less time to film as the job gets on top of him), and the behemoth is finally invincible - we end on the company's elderly CEO, godlike in his eyrie, master of all he surveys. Nothing great cinematically - neither truly stylish nor completely artless, so it just looks like they tried to jazz it up and didn't do a very good job - but affecting nonetheless, a film about defeat, youth swallowed up by the grown-up world and creative anarchy by capitalism. Most appropriate that it should be made and released nearly a decade after the fact, giving everything a nostalgic sheen ; even more appropriate that Wilcha should've been employed in the first place as the company's resident Gen-X guy, hired to explain his generation's bizarre values and "self-referential irony" - and, in a film where he debunks that role and stresses his non-corporate credentials, does exactly that. How's that for self-referential irony?]

DRY CLEANING (62) (dir., Anne Fontaine) Charles Berling, Miou-Miou, Stanislas Merhar [Absorbing, very well-played slice o' bourgeois repression, given a Chabrolian tweak : as ever, the staid and settled can't handle too much freedom, but they don't get destroyed (as they did once upon a time in e.g. THE BLUE ANGEL) - they destroy their liberators, as they did in e.g. WEDDING IN BLOOD (only now with a repressed-homosexual backdrop, taboos having moved on since 1973). Complex motivations get their due, Berling's fussy little laundry-owner ("cleaning other people's shit," as befits an expert in emotional cover-ups) inexplicably pursuing trouble for any number of possible reasons (his perfectionism, meaning that he hates leaving anything flawed or unfinished, is as much a factor in persistently flirting with the wild side as any latent homoerotic urges) ; saddest of all is the fate of Merhar, catalyst and free spirit (first a threat, finally a victim), who just simply doesn't fathom the absurd lengths 'respectable' people will go to to deny their feelings - and naively imagines them to be his friends. Minor, 'very French' (whatever that means), very dry, assiduously paced and proportioned ; definitely needed more plot in the second half, though...]

HARRY, HE'S HERE TO HELP (55) (dir., Dominik Moll) Laurent Lucas, Sergi Lopez, Mathilde Segnier [A thriller with a twist, only without the twist : elegant and suggestive, till it ends and you realise it was never quite as offbeat as it seemed on the verge of being. Lopez is delightfully creepy, but it would've been nice (for instance) had his murders been shown less explicitly, more from a detached, God's-eye view, which is after all what he stands for (the opening credits get it exactly right, cutting from the chaos inside the family car to a placid overhead shot : wouldn't it be great if the stress could just magically ... disappear?) ; and it would've been nice (for instance) had he been unmasked - instead of the present, conventional denouement - by one of the hero's kids, as at one point seems about to happen (which might also bring the recurring parent-child motif to a graceful conclusion). Details, certainly, but it's those little fillips that seem to be missing - and M. Lucas pushes Regular Guy-dom till the 'ordinary' starts to shade into the deadly-dull. Often effective, could've been more.]

BILLY ELLIOT (44) (dir., Stephen Daldry) Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, Gary Lewis, Jamie Draven [Disappointing, though the last half-hour is the strongest. Kind of scary how completely Thatcherite it is - explicitly linking the end of the strike (i.e. defeat of the Commie unions) with working-class Billy storming the bastion of privilege, like a pint-size symbol for the new meritocratic free market - yet still gets lumped together with the left-wing likes of BRASSED OFF (doesn't anyone care about this stuff? it's only been a decade, for goodness sake) ; but that isn't really the problem. The problem is how bland and synthetic it all feels, right from the early scene of Billy making breakfast, every 'adorable' detail (juggling the hot eggs, pushing open the door with his head as he holds the tray) looking utterly staged - compare, e.g., the charm and freshness of the boy's morning routine in KES (which this is obviously out to echo, esp. the stuff about Billy sharing a room with his much older brother) ; it's very much a 'product', from the triumph-through-adversity dramatic arc to the musical montages thrown in whenever things start to sag (fans of The Jam may be especially offended) to the dead mother used for full Sniffle Value ("She must have been a very special woman") to the deliberate coyness about Billy's sexuality (some may call it bravely ambiguous, but he's just asexual really). Daldry seems to think he's making a magical-realist fable except that he only remembers at irregular intervals, dropping bizarre out-of-nowhere touches like the girl disappearing as the police car passes. Lewis' subtle take on inarticulate love is immensely moving, and the best thing about it - the scene where he crosses the picket line brought a lump to my throat - but pales beside Chris Cooper in OCTOBER SKY. Slick, simplistic and incoherent ; why does a film set in 1984 have a 70s-glam soundtrack, anyway?...]

PROOF OF LIFE (52) (dir., Taylor Hackford) Russell Crowe, Meg Ryan, David Morse, David Caruso [Crowe and Ryan : the romantic pairing of a lion and a gnat. Ms. Ryan can't be too impressed with this movie, which gives her nothing to do except look concerned and run her hand through her hair a lot, looking fluttery and puny beside his heroic gravitas - but what's really perverse is the way the film sets up a clash between emotional and mercantile / mercenary, then stubbornly fails to deliver. The rebel kidnappers (for whom it's "simply about money") are clearly meant as a mirror-image to the big corporations (who "don't care about people, it's all about profits to them"), with Ryan - a "little hippy", as her husband puts it - presumably standing for the opposite ; all the signs point to a tale of jaded Crowe (remote and businesslike, even with his own son) rediscovering humanity through her love and compassion, but the film turns instead into Tom Clancy-style geopolitical thriller with properly jingoistic climax. It's a very well-mounted jingoistic climax, and the film as it stands probably better than it would've been - but why all the indicators? Gives the impression of complex ideas systematically reduced till nothing was left, then desperately padded out with filler - the constant cross-cutting to the kidnapped Morse is disastrous for tension, making it feel like he's never been away (some cross-cutting was necessary, given the plot, but he could easily have been absent for an hour or so - at least if the film had anything to say during that hour). Crowe, magnificent, just about carries it, and it's certainly a handsome film - but the script isn't great (silliest line : "I am not getting pregnant again in the Third World!"), and it fatally lacks the human element. Eerie similarity between Crowe and fellow mercenary Caruso may or may not be a deliberate comment on the military mindset ; still, I'm pretty sure his Band-Aid switches eyebrows from left to right at one point...]

REMEMBER THE TITANS (45) (dir., Boaz Yakin) Denzel Washington, Will Patton, Wood Harris, Ethan Suplee [Oboy, so much going on! Where to begin? ... Racial equality, right on, terrific theme - but we get full integration by the 45-minute mark, and the thing lasts nearly two hours. What else? Wall-to-wall classics on the soundtrack - here's "Spirit in the Sky", here's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" ; here's "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" (sorry, but THE BIG CHILL owns that one). Here's bone-crunching football games shot in fluent Bruckheimer, leavened by heartfelt pronouncements on what a wonderful game football is ; here's Washington exuding smoulder as he whips his players into shape ("I don't care if you like each other. But you will respect each other!"). Here's a funny fat guy. Here's the whole schizophrenia of our Belgrade-bombing era (aggression in the service of 'humanitarianism'), Fascist-militarist means - boot-camp training, enforced haircuts, not even a drink of water ("water makes you weak") - chasing after good liberal ends. Here's a bunch of sub-plots, all left hanging so they can be resolved together at the climax. Will the racist girlfriend finally shake hands with the black firebrand? Will the fat kid finally make his C+ average? Wait, Coach is having a moment of self-doubt ("Maybe I pushed them too hard") ... no, okay, it's gone now. Wait, here's a last-minute sub-plot about umpires trying to cheat the team out of its rightful place ... no, okay, it's gone now. Breathless, overstuffed, utterly ridiculous - but at least it's never boring. Would high-school kids really appreciate a reference to Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in 1971, though? Surely Rowan and Martin might be more appropriate? Or is it just a case of one old-movie reference fits all?...]

WONDERLAND (70) (dir., Michael Winterbottom) Gina McKee, Shirley Henderson, Molly Parker, Ian Hart, John Simm [Watched the first half hour with a mixture of awe and anxiety, dazzled by the speed and facility of the image-shuffling but wondering where it would end up - bogged down in shopworn flatness like PLAYING BY HEART (which shares the same family-with-three-sisters set-up) or taking off audaciously, MAGNOLIA-style? In the event, it plays it safe, ending more or less as it begins - without glib metaphors or easy resolutions (the coda is a mistake, though not a major one), doing nothing very grand with the characters but never reducing them to tabloid 'issues' either : no-one gets AIDS, or battles discrimination, or comes to terms with disability, though the worldview's certainly grim enough to make the climax - new life coming into the world - agreeably bittersweet. It's the combination of eye-candy and social realism (what a Wong Kar-Wei film might be like if he actually included people in his equations), heightened reality framing and magnifying the quotidian ebb and flow - renting videos, jokes about the Lottery, a sudden realisation that sex will be the end (not the beginning) of a new relationship (nothing forced, just a subtle shift in the atmosphere), violence lurking on the fringes in the snap of firecrackers or the angry barking of a dog. Maybe it's a bit overdone : bingo players hunch over their cards as Michael Nyman's score tolls in the background, like a flashing caption reading 'Poignant Misery' (look, my friends, look at these lined and weary faces) ; yet Winterbottom is a marvellous observer, his camera always in place to catch a sudden grimace, a flicker of expression, an eloquent face in the crowd (it's just he has no gift for story, which is why this and I WANT YOU work best among his films to date) ; maybe he should turn - or return - to documentaries, where his sharp, roving eye can operate without having to invent a reason. Mostly familiar, but seriously superb film-making - even if it does cast the great Ian Hart in its most one-dimensional role. What's up with that?...]

CHOCOLAT (39) (dir., Lasse Hallstrom) Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp, Alfred Molina, Judi Dench [I don't really get this movie. Some people fast during Lent and some people don't, but if you are in fact fasting then you're obviously not going to eat chocolate, and it doesn't really make any difference if it's scrumptious and desirable and you really want to eat it but force yourself not to (isn't that kind of the point of a fast?). The main point of conflict here - "Don't worry too much about 'not supposed to'," coo the chocolate-peddlers - therefore collapses, unless you can somehow step back and see the whole thing as a symbol for the forces of repression and conformity (bad, obviously) being vanquished by tolerance and open-mindedness (good), without worrying overmuch about specifics : fuzzy thinking saves the day, which is typical of the film's mealy-mouthed sweetness. Hallstrom's early films (esp. MY LIFE AS A DOG and ONCE AROUND) often seemed to suffer from tonal shifts, putting genuinely painful moments side-by-side with amusing cutesiness, which may be why he's now decided to drop everything except the cutesiness : village life meanders on, a little girl beats the locals at pelote, a fairytale sheen is attempted ("Once upon a time" is the opening line), story's put through its sub-BABETTE'S FEAST paces but nothing dramatic actually happens, as if drama might be offensive just in itself ; a climactic fire has no serious consequences, and it all ends in compromise and smiles-all-round rather than triumphalism, heroine meeting the conservatives halfway. A great cast take their moments, which is why it's watchable : Molina makes the best of a bad deal, plus beguiling turns from Dench, John Wood and young Aurelien Koenig ; Hallstrom's always been good with kids...]

CHOPPER (64) (dir., Andrew Dominik) Eric Bana, Simon Lyndon, David Field [I'm with those who don't see much of a character arc here, but it treads a delicate line with tremendous assurance, not just 'seeing the world through a psycho's eyes' but evoking the slippery nature of his very existence : one minute we're ready to take him at his word as a "bloody normal bloke" (albeit with a comma possibly inserted between the adjectives), the next he seems clearly demented, then the next it's clear he just "worries" too much - torments himself with fancies and suspicions, then uses violence to cut through the Gordian knot of paranoia. The whole film teeters on the brink - between horror and humour (set amid the "g'day mate"s of Aussie culture), fantasy and reality, self-destruction and self-awareness, blood-reds and morbid greenish-greys, often in the same shot (Chopper and his girlfriend in bleached-out almost-b&w, lying on the bed against a fiery-crimson backdrop) ; which unfortunately also means that it never quite takes off, suggesting rather than imposing - ambivalent character study more than three-act drama. Maybe not a great film - but it is great film-making.]

GANGSTER NO. 1 (63) (dir., Paul McGuigan) Paul Bettany, Malcolm McDowell, David Thewlis, Saffron Burrows [No doubt suffered through being seen in a double-bill with the more shaded CHOPPER (see above), and it does glorify violence even as it shows such glorification to be at best immature (and at worst psychotic) : "It appears we have a vacancy," purrs Thewlis' dapper gang-boss, having just created said vacancy by smashing a champagne glass across a henchman's head. Guess it does undermine that whole laddish attitude in a way, the Guy Ritchie school of having-a-laugh - ratcheting up its initially 'cool' protagonist to an axe-wielding, deeply misogynist psycho, just as it pulls the rug out from under the cosy Runyonesque gangland world (crooks called "Fat Charlie" and "Skinny Charlie", though Fat Charlie's thin and vice versa), giving way to a tougher, nastier era (or perhaps the nastiness was there all along, we just chose not to notice) ; above all, it goes for perspective, bringing Time into the equation, the years dulling the flashy things our anti-hero lusts after so intensely - the gold watches and ruby cuff-links, leather couches and Italian clothes - leaving only a sad old man. Nice to see someone took a look at ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA before making a gangster movie, not to mention POINT BLANK (sculpted visuals, lounge-jazz 60s-style score), but it's really just a RESERVOIR DOGS with Mr. Blond in the lead, and the eye-rolling villainy gets a bit monotonous, not to say self-defeating : it should end in shabbiness and melancholy, Nietzchian superman diminished, but it ends with Malcolm McDowell (middle-aged psycho in excelsis) yelling "I'm No. 1!" on the balcony of his plush penthouse before plunging into the void. It's a hollow triumph ; indeed, he's insane ; but it's still a pretty fuckin' badass way to go...]

FINDING FORRESTER (33) (dir., Gus Van Sant) Sean Connery, Rob Brown, F. Murray Abraham, Anna Paquin ["Punch the keys, for god's sake!" yells Sean Connery as his protégé hesitates at the typewriter ; not the least of the problems in this hugely misguided movie is the way it tries to sell writing to the jocks, playing down any intellectualism : "No thinking!" thunders Connery. "The key to writing is to write - not to think!". (Or, in the words of a well-known sporting goods company : "Just do it".) What's especially bizarre is the film depends on separating books and sport (basketball, in this case), man and boy finding a bond because they're both 'undercover artists' - reclusive Forrester withholding his talent, Jamal hiding his, GOOD WILL HUNTING-style, behind hanging out and shooting hoops with his buddies (it's how he gets "acceptance", explains one of his teachers). You naturally expect the basketball to fade away as the film steps into gear, yet it seems to take it just as seriously as the main story (at least if slo-mo implies seriousness) while the writing is almost insultingly trivialised, Jamal tossing off encyclopaedic knowledge like something he bought in a store - a cool accessory for the teen who has everything : hit the books for a couple of hours every night (reading Mishima and "Finnegan's Wake", apparently) and you too can one-up your professor by naming and completing any obscure literary quote he cares to throw at you ("You beat him at his own game," says Jamal's girlfriend admiringly). Taps into one of the fondest shibboleths of our democratic (hence, we assume, meritocratic) age - that creative talent can emerge from anywhere, irrespective of class ; but, in defining the talent in terms of the class (and making the boy so self-confident you feel he can take it or leave it anyway), it's merely condescending. More bad things : Abraham doing his umpteenth variation on Salieri, plus a feeble (non-)climax where Forrester appears out of nowhere and sorts out the whole case of (non-)plagiarism in a couple of minutes. Occasional good things : Anna Paquin, Busta Rhymes, a stray snatch of "Deep Night" on the bandstand and one of the year's most effective shock moments (who'da thunk it?). The homoerotic subtext isn't really there - no-one would even care if it wasn't Van Sant - but why does the camera linger over Brown's body as he sleeps? And why is Forrester peeking at the kids playing basketball through his binoculars in the first place?...]

THE CRIMSON RIVERS (53) (dir., Mathieu Kassovitz) Jean Reno, Vincent Cassel, Nadia Fares [Saw this in a dubbed version - which seems appropriate given how blatantly it grabs for the international market, most hilariously in the gratuitous fight scene where everyone suddenly starts making like Keanu in THE MATRIX ; even its comic relief (a goofy pair of village gendarmes more interested in their glasses of Bordeaux than police work) can be seen as a nod to traditionally French elements, which it very deliberately leaves behind (though it's also a bit surreal, seeing how Jean Reno dubs his own lines whereas everyone else speaks fluent American). Goes for the SE7EN market, opening on long, lingering close-ups of maggots feasting on a dead body, but in fact develops into a much more interesting hybrid, rising to the operatic frenzy (if not quite the elaborate visuals) of a Dario Argento with nods to the world of Sherlock Holmes and (especially) THE NAME OF THE ROSE, looking for clues amid the weird and baroque : talk of demons, a nun who's taken a "vow of darkness", a little girl coming back from the dead, a hothouse college where the staff have been inter-marrying for generations and everyone always has to sit in the same place, STEPFORD WIVES-style. Works just badly enough to show how difficult this stuff is to do well, and just well enough to make you (just about) forgive it. Lots of things are mishandled - Reno's canine phobia should be just a throwaway, gets the wrong emphasis and comes off looking like a failed sub-plot - the score is bombastic and the staging isn't slick enough (it's the kind of film where the cop glances through a murder victim's apartment and a "doctoral thesis" with bizarre photos and cryptic pronouncements on the "crimson rivers" is lying open right there on the table) ; yet, as the various intimations of Evil start to come together, it becomes nightmarishly effective, both nuttier and harder to shake off than pedestrian serial-killer fare like THE BONE COLLECTOR. I might really have gone for it if the plot actually made any sense ; unfortunately, it doesn't.]

BRIGANDS, CHAPTER VII (55) (dir., Otar Iosseliani) Amiran Amiranashvili, Alexi Djakani, Keli Kapanadze [Only my second Iosseliani, and I loved the first (ADIEU, PLANCHER DES VACHES) ; this is less successful, heavy going, never really comes to the boil, but still the same wonderful aesthetic - wry, free-flowing, deceptively casual, playing little Raul Ruiz-like games (it begins with a drunken projectionist screening its final reel by mistake) but quite cold-eyed beneath the high spirits, very aware of human brutality. Indeed, that's the theme here - cruelty and conflict through the ages - and it's no doubt significant that Iosseliani films it mostly in his native Georgian, not the French (his adopted language) of the other films, as if admitting his own atavistic propensity to violence : the film's final twist (exposure to violence makes people violent) might be applied to human history as a whole - we're subconsciously conditioned by our ancestors' atrocities, and so on through the generations. Not a think-piece, though, more a philosophical joke-book, specialising in gallows humour : a torturer brings his kid to work, showing him the tools of the trade ; guards prepare a little snack next door, ignoring the torture victims' screams ; an official is handed a report listing subversive jokes overheard by government spies ("Two Communists go on a fishing trip..."). Doesn't work as a film, but clearly the work of a sophisticated man, and the shots have a charming deadpan grace : three soldiers sit around a campfire singing a melancholy song as a tank appears in the corner of the frame, rumbles down away from them (followed by the camera), disappears behind a crest as the whistle of an approaching shell is heard - then an explosion, 10 seconds of nothing and a couple of bedraggled survivors limp into view from behind the crest, followed back towards the campfire and the still-singing trio. Lovely stuff...]