artist – The Framing Device

Full disclosure, I haven’t written anything in well over a year – it’s probably closer to two if I’m being completely honest – for a multitude of reasons: a severe lack of confidence, general work-related inability, the pandemic, or just general disgruntlement at the world around me. Inspiration took me by complete surprise when I began looking back over this blog space and I allowed myself to briefly reminisce about the enthusiasm I once had, and the encouragement I received from two wonderful souls. Both of whom are, devastatingly, no longer with us. Anyway I digress… although I’m sure there is something to add about the fragility and futility of life. Do what you love. So, I figured I’d try and write about a subject I love, a bit of an obsession* if you will.

One of the first pieces I published was way back in 2012 for a long-defunct film-site and it got me thinking of my onscreen main squeeze, Viggo Mortensen. Eleven years later, he is still somewhat of a King (and technically a Knight having been bestowed with the honour back in 2010 by Queen Margarethe II of Denmark) and continues to work, thankfully, choosing roles that are fascinatingly complex, interesting, and most of the time utterly unique to him.

“I have no plan. Maybe I should have a career plan but I don’t. I usually wait and hope the right thing will find me.”
The Evening Chronicle

Now a spritely 65-year-old (come October), the dimple-chinned deity has received countless SAG award noms, Golden Globes, EFAs, recognition at TIFF, the Goyas, BIFA, and BAFTA. Plus, wins at Stockholm FF and San Sebastian for his directorial debut, Falling, and a second and third Oscar nom (for Captain Fantastic and Green Book respectively). I can’t say I was a fan of Green Book to be perfectly honest – it was fine, j’adore Vig and Mahershala Ali but I kind of loathed Tony Lip. Thankfully, there has been plenty to enjoy since 2013 (which is where my original Viggo is King piece left off).

The Two Faces of January (Dir. Hossein Amini. 2014)

Based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1964 novel of the same name, Viggo is Chester McFarland, a con-artist married to Colette (Kirsten Dunst), who has to quickly rely on Oscar Isaac’s perfect stranger Rydal Kenner to get him out of a sticky sitch. Cue: frustration, jealousy, paranoia and a slow unravelling. As leading men go, few have looked finer in this tragic murder-flight-redemption mystery thriller. There is an almost Oedipal theme running throughout despite the link to Janus, and with filming taking place in Athens, Crete, Knossos, and Istanbul the emphasis is on heat, sand, and bright light (there are few shadows to hide in). Chester’s Man From Del Monte suit begins to look rather grubby by the end.

Jauja (Dir. Lisandro Alonso, 2014)

In 1880s Argentina, Danish Captain Gunnar Dinsen (Mortensen) is there with his daughter Ingeborg (Viilbjørk Malling Agger) who wants a dog, falls in love with one man, and has to spurn the affections of another… to reveal anything more of the plot would spoil the experience. This is a slow-burn and magical piece of cinema, its gorgeous visuals shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio (Mortensen also served as the film’s composer). The title, Jauja, refers to the once capital of Spanish Peru known as ‘never never land’ and the ‘land of milk and honey’; a mythical El Dorado of sorts. The film itself is existential in tone, hypnotic, and haunting and has me excited for Lisandro Alonso’s next film Eureka – a recent Special Screening at Cannes – which is also anchored by Mortensen.

Captain Fantastic (Dir. Matt Ross, 2016)

Ben Cash (Mortensen), his wife Leslie and their six, uniquely named children live deep in the wilderness of Washington State, “off-grid”. The kids are home-schooled, they hunt, fish, read Noam Chomsky and can be more than a little wild. When Leslie takes her own life, Dad and the kids have to shun isolation and venture into mainstream society, the first time for a lot of them. Vig continues his run of ‘out-of-time’ men, male characters on the cusp of, well, somewhere else. His Ben exudes a childlike simplicity and whimsy but he’s a limiting, almost dangerous, father; selfish, imperfect, and deeply flawed. It’s an incredibly honest and raw performance.

Falling (Dir. Viggo Mortensen, 2020)

Mortensen’s most personal project to date – a work of auto-fiction – based on his own childhood, his parents’ love story, and the last few years of their lives. He directed the film, wrote the screenplay, and composed the film’s score as well as starring as John, a Pilot charged with looking after his father Willis (Lance Henriksen), an unflinching and uncouth, bad-tempered old bastard of a man whose brain is slowly surrendering to dementia. This film is the antithesis of Florian Zeller’s The Father and one which looks at memory, communication, forgiveness, and is evidently made with love.

Crimes of the Future (Dir. David Cronenberg, 2022)

David Cronenberg’s 2022 body horror is the fifth time he has worked with his favoured leading man (a safe assumption by now, right? For anyone questioning the five films, Cronenberg plays a staid proctologist in Falling). After Tom Stall, Nikolai Luzhin, and Sigmund Freud comes Saul Tenser, he of tender soul – and still a man ‘undercover’ or in hiding. This is a vulnerable Vig. His Saul is a performance artist whose body leaves him in constant pain – he has the ability to produce multiple new body organs, which are then removed during a live show by his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux). He is then approached to go undercover to infiltrate some radical evolutionists. The world is changing (again) and “surgery is the new sex”. There are visual nods to The Man Who Laughs (1928), The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and call-backs to Videodrome (1983), Crash (1996) and Existenz (1999). Viggo is, as ever, compelling but I think the women of the cast, Seydoux, Kristen Stewart (who is fantastic), and LifeFormWare Techs played by Nadia Litz & Tanya Beatty shade him at times.

My admiration goes way back to The Indian Runner (Dir. Sean Penn, 1991), I was 15 when I discovered the DVD in 1998, I’d just seen him in another directorial debut (ugh) Albino Alligator (1996) and wanted to see more, beyond the bespectacled and besuited moustache he played. Aside from the obvious aesthetically-pleasing exterior, there’s a quiet intensity, and nuance to his performances. He’s not a method actor but I find him as mesmerising as Brando (unsurprisingly, I’m a huge fan of Bud too). 27 years later, Mortensen is still my go-to, one of a select group of actors who I’ll watch anything and everything they churn out.

This has resulted in a wealth of work to look back on and dip in and out of from the multi-hyphenate artist. As well as the new projects he completes to look forward to. Perhaps, I will even, finally, get to those elusive three that I have yet to watch – La pistola de mi hermano (1997), On the Road (2012) and Far From Men (2014).

It’s rare for him to give a bad performance even if the film itself is a dud. Whether he’s onscreen for one brief scene or the King of a 682-minute trilogy, he tends to bring his kind of magic to it which keeps you enthralled or at least pique your interest. Next, however, will be his sophomore outing behind the camera, The Dead Don’t Hurt, an 1860s-set western love story, in which he will play Danish immigrant Holger Olsen opposite Vicky Krieps’ Vivienne Le Coudy. Can’t wait.

*“Without obsession, life would be nothing.” – John Waters

Tove (Dir. Zaida Bergroth, 2020)

It is hard not to picture Tove Jansson (1914-2001), as a shyly smiling, jumper-clad woman pushing 70, windswept or chain-smoking on her island of Klovharun. Zaida Bergroth’s charming new film seeks to expand upon that image and expose more about the woman, artist, writer and Moomins creator. What’s in a name? Tove [Too-veh]. Such a diminutive old Norse word meaning ‘beautiful thunder’ and so obviously close to the English spelling of love, and boy did she ever. It appears to have been the driving force of her whole life’s wonderful adventure.

Tove focusses on three specific time periods 1944, ’47 and ’52 as Jansson navigates her artistic struggles, successes, love and loss. Beginning during war-time – after a brief and lively opening vignette – 30-year-old Tove (Alma Pöysti) sketches as bombs sound around her. It immediately establishes place, time and general mood as life, in Helsinki, begins again. There’s more disagreement with her famous sculptor-father Viktor (Robert Enckell) in which he once again attempts to dismiss her work and instil his artistic merit upon her. Apparently, her drawings do not constitute as ‘art’ – and she even describes herself as a “a bleak shadow of his genius” when eyebrows raise at the sound of her surname.

She leaves the family home and rents a dilapidated space ravaged by the war, missing windows, heat and electricity in order to gain her independence and create. Living, loving, working and sleeping in one large room. While Tove’s frustrations are evident, she continually strives to push herself without ever fully realising her artistic success and as the years advance, how beloved she will become. From her solo art exhibitions, tenure as a visual artist on GARM magazine to her publications of Moomins stories and weekly comic strips in the Evening News, all are given some attention here. As are her love stories, for there are many. Affection surrounds her via her graphic designer mother Signe (Kajsa Ernst), brother Lars (Wilhelm Enckell), fellow artists Sam Vanni (Jakob Öhrman) and Maya Vanni (played by the film’s screenwriter Eeva Putro) – but none more impactful during this time than her lovers, journalist-cum-MP Atos Wirtanen (Shanti Roney) and theatre director Vivica Bandler (Krista Kosonen). It is their relationships which allow for personal and professional growth, and which sets her on the path to meeting the love of her life.

While Tove’s lifestyle trangressed the conventional, the film seeks to normalise it in the same vein as Carol (2015) and Angela Robinson’s Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017). Depicting a time when society refused to accept the existence of the queer community. There was huge risk involved, Finland wasn’t always so advanced in relation to LGBTQIA+ rights. The decriminalisation of homosexuality did not occur until 1971 and then it, and lesbianism, (there was no word for pansexuality then either) was considered a diagnosed ‘illness’ for another decade after. Tove’s bravery to live authentically is the film’s main focus.

Whether you consider Jansson a pansexual radical or not remains to be seen – though when one thinks of the themes and amorphous gender identities embedded within the Moomin stories and the many satirical caricatures in print by her hand over the years, she was. Bona fide. Yet what we do get here is a fully-formed, credible version of her and that’s largely due to Alma Pöysti’s wonderful performance. No stranger to Jansson, she first portrayed her on stage in 2017.

Resemblance aside, her Tove is a joy: fierce, child-like, funny, wicked and supremely talented. People are drawn to her sunny disposition. Which is often literal as she is bathed in light, yellow and golds emitting a halo of warmth around her head and making her face glow. At times Tove is the burst of colour within a frame of muted dullness while at others, primary colours flood scenes, with the room décor matching Tove’s costumes -beautifully designed by Eugen Tamberg – the fabrics of which are often reminiscent of illustrations which are in and adorn the Moomin books.

This attention to detail and use of light and tone is gorgeous and make Catherine Nyquist Ehrnrooth’s production design and Linda Wassberg’s cinematography sing. All cherry-topped with Mattie Bye’s eclectic soundtrack which brings together the likes of Josephine Baker, Edith Piaf, Glenn Miller and the more contemporary Mambo noir trio amongst his own compositions. Dancing was incredibly important in Moominland and it seems only fitting that Tove has her own recurring motif when she goes to bust a move in the form of Benny Goodman’s Sing Sing Sing which bookends the film rapturously.

Little has changed in regards to the discourse surrounding art and the preoccupation with dictating who can create and what (but that’s a patriarchy for you). Declaring one form as somehow superior to the other was just as ludicrous as it is now; art is art just as love is love, and thankfully while it clearly gave her pause, it never stopped her. Jansson began providing illustrations for GARM at fifteen and continued until 1953, her work found its way into publications of The Hobbit and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She authored five novels and seven short story collections which followed the seventeen works (including novels, short stories, picture books and comic strips) featuring her beloved Moomins.

It is heart-breaking in those moments when she considers herself a failed artist, and dismisses the stories and sketches as “just for children”. Especially when she worked so tirelessly on the drawings and placed herself and each and every person she loved within the pages, constantly using words and pictures to express her feelingswhether they were separated or not. Moomintroll became her alter-ego (“Love makes Moomintroll brave”), Atos became Snufkin, Vivica/Vifslan – Jansson was able to code their love in the symbiosis of Toflslan and Vifslan (known as Thingumy and Bob) – and her partner of 46 years Tuulikki Pietilä (Joanna Haartti) the inspiration for Too-Ticky. Staggeringly, on top of all of that, she still found the time to write some 92,000 letters (by hand) to her ‘darlings’. This connection between art and love is rendered beautifully in the film whether through the re-painting of a canvas in stifling white, the creation of a fresco mural, or new love triggering a portrait in oils.

Tove is a sumptuous celebration of an inspirational and adventurous life. It intimately re-creates just eight years in the life of an iconic artist and the genesis in the creation of a cultural legacy. A beautiful thunder clap that lived with courage, curiosity, and passion, and one who loved fiercely and honestly.

Tove is in cinemas 9 July from Blue Finch Film Releasing