BFI | Sight & Sound | October 2011

October 2011

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Features

On Ken Loach

As the BFI launches a major Ken Loach retrospective, Antonia Bird, Luc Dardenne, Tony Hibbert (online exclusive), Peter Kosminsky and Jimmy McGovern pay tribute to the director’s work over a career spanning almost half a century

PLUS (in the magazine): further tributes from Martin Compston, Nell Dunn, Tony Garnett and Jonathan Morris

PLUS (in the magazine): The social navigator: During a directing career spanning almost half a century, Ken Loach’s work has become a byword for brand of naturalistic, socially conscious British filmmaking. But there’s more to him than that, says John Hill

PLUS (in the magazine): Michael Brooke welcomes back a lost Loach film from 1969

Persona non grata: Lars von Trier’s Nazi rebellion

Lars von Trier’s controversial outburst in Cannes this year was not entirely out of character, finds Nick James

PLUS (in the magazine): the Danish controversialist talks to Nick James about his dreamily apocalyptic new film Melancholia (and his Nazi gaffe)

Lost and found: See You in the Morning

Alan J. Pakula is best known for 1970s paranoia, but See You in the Morning is a more personal later work, says Peter Tonguette

Cover feature: To catch a spy

Despite inevitable compression, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy the movie captures the mood of John le Carré’s source novel, says John Sutherland

PLUS Gary Oldman talks to James Bell about how he made the role of George Smiley his own

The social navigator

During a directing career spanning almost half a century, Ken Loach’s work has become a byword for brand of naturalistic, socially conscious British filmmaking. But there’s more to him than that, says John Hill

PLUS Michael Brooke welcomes back a lost Loach film from 1969

PLUS Antonia Bird, Martin Compston, Luc Dardenne, Nell Dunn, Tony Garnett, Peter Kosminsky, Jimmy McGovern and Jonathan Morris pay tribute to Loach’s films and working methods

The confessions of Lars von Trier

Interviewing Lars von Trier about his dreamily apocalyptic new film Melancholia, Nick James was under strict instruction not to broach the subject of Nazism. But the Danish controversialist had other ideas

Out there in the dark

In recent years British TV has given little airtime to serious coverage of cinema. But all that is changing with the transmission of a 15-hour documentary by Mark Cousins that offers a truly global perspective. Ian Christie immerses himself in The Story of Film

Life on earth

In the extraordinary new Greek film Attenberg, a woman fascinated by David Attenborough’s nature programmes confronts the mysteries of human behaviour. Director Athina Rachel Tsangari talks to Jonathan Romney

Eyre conditioning

A director with an ‘outsider’s eye’ is unleashed on a British literary classic: it’s a familiar strategy, but it pays dividends with Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, says Claire Monk

Stealer’s wheels

Best known for his Copenhagen-set Pusher trilogy, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn brings a European style and sensibility to his first American film, the gripping crime-and-cars thriller Drive. He talks to Nick Roddick