Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 2/4/2015)

If proof were ever needed to back up Hannah Arendt's views on `the banality of evil', it exists in abundance in the carefully numbered missives that were acquired at auction by journalist Vanessa Lapa's father on the proviso that she used them in a documentary to expose the workaday wickedness of the Third Reich. Read by over archive footage, the extracts from the correspondence and documents chillingly justify the decision to call the film, The Decent One. But how much more powerful and disconcerting it would have been without the calamitously misjudged sound effects that add nothing by way of atmosphere and seriously risk undermining the gravity of a psychologically chilling and historically valid enterprise.

Born in Munich in 1900 to a Roman Catholic school master, Heinrich Himmler was a zealous patriot from an early age and bitterly regretted being too young to fight in the trenches. Unhappy with the compromises being made by the new Weimar regime, he joined a number of right-wing paramilitary organisations while studying agriculture and participated in Adolf Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch as a member of Ernst Röhm's Reichskriegsflagge movement. Deeply impressed by Mein Kampf, he joined the National Socialist Party in 1925 and was elected to the Reichstag in 1930.

By this time, Himmler had married Margarete Boden, a Protestant divorcee who was seven years his senior. His family heartily disapproved of the match, but it is clear from their letters that they had much in common and raised their daughter Gudrun (whom they called Dolly) with a disciplinarian affection that was also extended to Gerhard von Ahe, the son of a fallen comrade whom the couple fostered. As Himmler was often away from home on Nazi business, he kept Margarete informed of his health and filled in the duller details of his routine in messages that were detachedly fond and would have been utterly unremarkable had they not been strewn with such heinously casual bigotry against the Jewish population, as well as Romanies, homosexuals and Communists.

However, the letters also offer some fascinating insights into Himmler's status within his own household. As he was frequently absent after the Nazis were elected to office in January 1933 and Hitler appointed him as the head of his SS bodyguard, Margarete became the dominant domestic force and she frequently complained that he devoted more time to the Party than his family. Despite being a member from 1928, she particularly disliked the Nuremberg rallies and resented having to be nice to the wives of other SS bigwigs, although she tolerated Reinhard Heydrichs spouse, Lina von Osten. She also put up with the fact that Himmler started an affair with secretary Hedwig Potthast in 1936 and turned a blind eye to the fact that she bore him two children, Helge and Nanette Dorothea.

But, while the documents afford access to Himmler's personal life, they are even more valuable for the light they shine on his attitude to the war, his relationships with his colleagues within the Führer's inner circle and his regard for the rank and file loyalists who carried out his orders. As the assistant chief of the Gestapo, Himmler had masterminded the elimination of the Sturmabteilung (SA) from the Nazi Party during the so-called Night of the Long Knives in June 1934. He also supervised the building of the first concentration camp at Dachau and expanded the SS's security and espionage activities. During the war, Hitler tasked him with eradicating covert resistance in occupied territories and gave his Einsatzgruppen units the power to commit mass murder in the name of the Reich.

Most infamously, however, Himmler was placed in charge of the slaughter of Jews from across the conquered continent, who were dispatched to the extermination camps at Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor. Yet, even while he was engaged in genocide, Himmler still took the time to write to Marga and send her Christmas presents. He also extolled the decency of the men under his command in the Waffen-SS and made a point of urging them to treat their prisoners with the humanity expected of the proud German volk.

By 1943, Himmler was Minister of the Interior and his power grew further following the Von Stauffenberg plot against Hitler in July 1944. Yet, while he rarely alludes to his vaunted status in his correspondence, he maintains unstintingly optimistic that the war would be won. However, a series of psychosomatic problems led to Himmler being excluded from the Berlin bunker and he sought to broker a peace with the Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte. Branded a traitor, he was stripped of his offices and fled in the uniform of a common soldier. However, on 23 May 1945, he managed to swallow a cyanide capsule after being captured by the British and escaped having answer for his crimes against humanity.

In many ways, Lapa (who is the Israel-based granddaughter of survivors) seeks to put Himmler on trial here and uses his own words in evidence against him. He frequently betrays his prejudices and takes quiet pride in his service to the Fatherland. But it's hard to detect in his dry prose the rampant egotism of a murderous monster. Instead, Himmler comes across as a dull workaholic who was content to keep up appearances on the home front in order to maintain his reputation and avoid any unnecessary distractions from the performance of his duty. As the diary entries and official reports prove, he loved his work more than his wife. But the curious bond between these two cold, austere people managed to endure and, while they may shed little light on the mechanics of industrialised slaughter, the perspectives that their exchanges do afford of the everyday concerns of the Nazi élite are intriguing, if never entirely compelling.

Although Lapa's strength lies more in the rigour of her research than the in cinematic presentation of her findings, editors Sharon Brook and Noam Amit deserve enormous credit for assembling such potent footage from the various newsreels, propaganda shorts and printed and photographic material at their disposal. And Robert Kennedy proves equally adept at marshalling the audio and visual items that make Ron Mann's profile Altman so slick. Anyone familiar with excellent tomes like Patrick McGilligan's Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff (1989) or Mitchell Zuckoff's Robert Altman: The Oral Biography (2009) may find the saving grace of a study that has not only been sanitised to ensure family co-operation, but which is also patchily incomplete in its overview of the life and times that shaped the cinema of a New Hollywood titan, who refused to the last to play by the rules of the game.

Skirting his 1930s Kansas childhood, the picture keeps its focus firmly fixed on Altman's professional life, which began with the Calvin Company in Kansas City after he returned from war service as a bomber pilot. Thus, while we learn about his first attempt to make it in Hollywood as the co-writer of Richard Fleischer's Bodyguard (1948) and his direction of industrial shorts like How to Run a Filling Station (1953), there is no information about his failed marriages to LaVonne Elmer and Lotus Corelli, who respectively bore him his daughter Christine and sons Michael and Stephen. Similarly, little is divulged about how he made ends meet before he was offered a chance to direct `The Young One', a 1957 episode of the popular TV series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The same year saw Altman make his feature bow with The Delinquents, which chronicled the misdemeanours of a Kansas City punk played by Tom Laughlin. However, it failed to make an impression and Altman spent the next decade working on such shows as Whirlybirds, The Millionaire, US Marshal, Troubleshooter, Bonanza and Bus Stop. However, he alienated his employees when he used handheld camera, low-key lighting and overlapping dialogue on the `Survival' episode of Combat! (1963) and was fired, even though Vic Morrow earned an Emmy nomination for his performance. He ruffled more feathers when he resigned from Kraft Suspense Theatre in 1964 after the sponsor refused to sanction the casting of a black actor. But was having two character talk at the same time also seemed to annoy studio boss Jack Warner, who removed Altman from the moon saga, Countdown (1967), and another two years passed before he could raise the funds to mount his own adaptation of the Peter Miles novel That Cold Day in the Park.

But everything changed with M*A*S*H (1970), a farce set in a Korean War field hospital that was adapted by Ring Larnder, Jr. from a novel by Richard Hooker and caught the back end of the counterculture boom that had followed the collapse of the Production Code. With its irreverent approach to conflict, authority and death, this anti-war classic transformed Altman into the 45 year-old new kid on the Hollywood block. However, he had no intention of becoming a studio lackey and he embarked upon a series of acute pictures that introduced the phrase `genre revisionism' into the film studies lexicon. But, while Brewster McCloud (1970), McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), Thieves Like Us, California Split (both 1974) and Nashville (1975) were all acclaimed as modern American masterpieces, the likes of 3 Women (1977) and A Wedding (1978) were dismissed as disappointments and Images (1972), Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976), Quintet, A Perfect Couple (both 1979) and HealtH (1980) were rounded upon as disasters.

The calamitous misfire of Popeye (1980) virtually made Altman a pariah and he had to endure a difficult decade, in which he almost made as many TV-movies as features and few of Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982), Streamers (1983), Secret Honour (1984), OC and Stiggs, Fool for Love (both 1985), and Beyond Therapy (1987) found much critical favour. The beacon was re-lit, however, with the HBO political satire, Tanner `88, which ran for 11 episodes around the presidential election that saw George Bush, Sr. beat Michael Dukakis to the White House. Following the rare period biography, Vincent & Theo (1990), Altman was welcomed back to the auteur fold with The Player (1992) and Short Cuts (1993) before he missed his step again with the haut couture satire, Prêt-à-Porter (1994).

Following a heart transplant that was hushed up to avoid insurance complications, Altman remained wildly inconsistent until his death at 81 in November 2006 (a few months after he received an Honorary Academy Award from an industry he viewed with deep suspicion). For every Gosford Park (2001) and A Prairie Home Companion (2006), there was a Kansas City (1996), The Gingerbread Man (1998), Cookie's Fortune (1999), Dr T and the Women (2000) and The Company (2003). But Altman was now enshrined as a national treasure, whose maverick ways were indulged by adoring critics grateful that someone was still prepared to defy the Tinseltown machine that now resided in the portfolios of multinational conglomerates. It's become a cliché to discuss Altman's achievement in terms of triumphs, struggles and comebacks, but his career was so full of peaks and troughs that it is hard to see how easily Mann and screenwriter Len Blum have managed so successfully to smooth them away.

Part of the explanation lies in Mann's heavy dependence upon the good graces of Altman's widow, Kathryn Reed, who acts as his narrator, alongside the splendid clips of her husband holding for everything from ensembles and improvisation to aesthetics and studio politics. But there are many acolytes willing to be associated with this exercise in cinematic hagiography and Paul Thomas Anderson, James Caan, Keith Carradine, Elliott Gould, Philip Baker Hall, Sally Kellerman, Lyle Lovett, Julianne Moore, Michael Murphy, Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams and Bruce Willis all provide sound byte answers to the request to define the meaning of the word `Altmanesque'.

It's a nice gimmick and the responses form into a patchwork that is laudably sincere and apposite, in spite of the odd instance of fulsome pomposity. Yet, one cannot help wishing this delved a little deeper in a lot more places and that a couple of non-fawning critics had been invited to provide a bit of desperately needed qualitative analysis. But, for all its superficiality (especially where Altman the husband, father and friend is concerned), this is a decent beginner's guide to Altman's idiosyncratic and iconoclastic oeuvre and it will have fulfilled its purpose if it sends people back to the best and the worst of his gleefully eclectic output or prompts newcomers to seek them out for the first time.

The pick of the week's fictional features is Frank Berry's I Used to Live Here, a well-intentioned drama that was inspired by Dr Tony Bates's Irish Times article, `Breaking the Ripple Effects of Suicide'. Set in the community of Tallaght outside Dublin that has endured its own harrowing experience of `cluster suicides', the story was workshopped with a largely non-professional cast by its writer-director, who made a solid impression with the 2011 documentary, Ballymun Lullaby, which explored the centrality of music to teenagers in the Republic of Ireland's sole high-rise estate who have no prospects and little hope. Owing more to the Andrea Arnold than the Ken Loach school of social realism, this is not without its unconvincing contrivances and longueurish subplots. But it's comfortably the best of the recent spate of issue pictures that have been produced by British and Irish film-makers and deserves to be seen, of only for the exceptional performances of its two teenage leads.

Although it's been three years since her mother died, 13 year-old Jordanne Jones is still struggling to come to terms with her loss. She lives with her mechanic father, James Kelly, on the Tallaght estate and channels her energies into keeping an eye on Dafhyd Flynn, a classmate who has trouble at home and who keeps being bullied by Ross Kelly and his mates. However, the news that the seemingly popular Richard Price has jumped to his death from a bridge overlooking the motorway sends shockwaves through the school and Jones goes with friends Nikita Rowley and Laura O'Connor to see the flower-strewn spot and add their own `RIP' message in red ink.

Shortly before Kelly's birthday, he gets a call from ex-girlfriend Alicja Ayres, who informs him over a drink that he is the father of her young son. Moreover, her current boyfriend wants her out of the house and she turns up on the doorstep in the middle of a party in Kelly's honour and Jones sits in the garden with Flynn lamenting that things will never be the same again. But, while Flynn continues to have problems with Ross Kelly (who is demanding money with menace), Jones becomes friendly with Ross Geraghty, an older boy who meets her between lessons and invites her home to play video games and meet his mother, Pauline O'Neill.

As the week drags on, Ayres accompanies Kelly to the hospital, where he takes a paternity test. Meanwhile, the fascination with the suicide leap grows and Flynn comes to share the sense of desperation, as he is caught trying to steal money from his mother's handbag and can't discuss his situation with Jones, as she is now spending all her spare time with Geraghty. But, by the time Saturday comes around, Jones is also feeling stricken, as Geraghty humiliates her by standing her up on their first date in Dublin and she gets home to have a stand-up row with Kelly, who has received a positive test result and is worrying how he is going to care for Ayres and her son on the wage he makes at the garage.

Ultimately, Jones (who occasionally does drugs) thinks better of emulating Price and a coda shows her getting a manicure from an old friend of her mother's before playing with her half-brother at Ayres's new home. But, as Ross Kelly has withdrawn his temporary offer of friendship, nothing has improved for Flynn and he fixes the camera with a angry, but vulnerable stare as the film fades to black.

Although some of the secondary characters are sketchily drawn and awkwardly played, Jones and Flynn are quite superb as the troubled teens trying to make sense of a world that seems to have something against them. With the grown-ups being either preoccupied with their own concerns or indifferent to the those facing their kids, it's easy to see why adolescents might feel abandoned and helpless in the face of seemingly insurmountable problems. But Berry withholds the reasons for Price's tragic decision to end it all and, thus, his friends are left to wonder if they might not be better off sharing his fate and being fondly remembered by peers who would otherwise scarcely know of their existence.

Given that Robbie Ryan shot Berry's 2000 short, Black Suit, it's hardly surprising that Colin Muller's photography adheres to much the same style. There are far too many following shots of people walking through nondescript sections of the estate, but Berry uses the location (particularly a cramped underpass) and tight facial close-ups to suggest the limited options open to residents who mostly seem to exist rather than live. The strands involving Kelly and Ayres feels a bit soap operatic, while Flynn's relationships with his parents, a bespectacled playground pal (Warren Moore) and the bullies are too thinly drawn to make his growing despondency feel authentic. However, as community worker Eileen Hedderman testifies over Daragh O'Toole's plaintiff score in an insert within the closing credits, cluster suicide is a very real problem in Ireland and one can but hope that this sincere and sensitive feature does something to help address it.

Sadly, there are far fewer reasons to recommend Chris Bouchard's debut feature, Hackney's Finest, the latest slice of BritCrime to clout its audience about the head with 90 minutes of Mockney mayhem that begs the question, `if this is Hackney's finest, what must the worst be like?' This is a bit of a cheap shot, as Bouchard (who came to fame with the 2009 short, The Hunt for Gollum) directs with plenty of panache, while screenwriter Thorin Seex (who met the director while taking the same creative writing class as his mother in Gloucester) comes up with some amusing variations on the usual suspects one expects to find in the average Guy Ritchie rip-off. But, while this has its guilty pleasures, it offers too little by way of novelty to make it stand out from the crowd.

Shortly after murdering British Asian drug dealer Marco Aponte in a lock-up on Tilbury Docks, corrupt cop Arin Alldridge hauls his nephew in for questioning. He and partner Malcolm Tomlinson beat seven shades out of Rajan Sharma and force him into placing a call to buddy Nathaniel Wiseman to set up a deal with Welsh-Jamaican gangsters Enoch Frost and Marlon G. Day. However, Sharma suspects that Alldridge is planning something more than a legit raid and contacts motorcycling cousin Neerja Naik to stakeout the flat Wiseman shares with girlfriend Katarina Gellin.

By day, Wiseman works in a courier dispatch office with blowsy boss Jeanette Rourke and her milquetoast assistant, Tom Bonington. However, he can't get through a shift without slipping off to the toilets to freebase and the knowledge that he will be able to get his hands on some good stuff and make a few quid in the process sends him home in high spirits in more ways than one. He fails to see Alldridge and Tomlinson parked along the street and has no idea that they are being watched by Naik. But, when Gellin comes home, there is no mistaking the presence of Frost and Day, who have taken over the living room with their paraphernalia and a bag full of guns.

These come in handy when Sharma arrives in a blind panic and warns Wiseman that Alldridge means business and intends stealing the consignment and the cash. But in order to complete their transaction, the friends have to get to Tilbury and they know that the psychotic copper will follow them. However, they are blissfully unaware that he has called in a favour from Russian Mafioso Sean Cronin and his trigger-happy oppo Christopher Dingli to give them a warm reception.

Up to this juncture, the picture has been a fast-cut gabfest that makes effective use of caustic wit and the East London locale in setting up its pleasingly convoluted storyline. But things become a tad more predictable once the double-crossing begins and the bullets start to fly. In order to confuse Alldridge, Wiseman makes for the rendezvous with cabby Kulvinder Ghir, while the cousins travel on her motorbike and the out-of-towners go by car. However, loose cannon Dingli can't resist taking a pot shot at the taxi and he kills Ghir. This sparks a shootout that leaves Dingli dead and Tomlinson seriously wounded. But, while the `good guys' take him hostage and tie him to a chair as a bargaining chip with Alldridge, he is in no mood to negotiate and kidnaps Naik with the vengeful Cronin.

However, the grenade the Russian tosses into the warehouse to facilitate his getaway comes back to haunt him, while Sharma's sharpshooting prevents Alldridge getting away with Naik in a white van. The finale showdown is a bit anti-climactic, as the injured plod is something of a sitting duck. But there are still a couple of violent outbursts to endure before Wiseman arrives home in the cold light of dawn with a souvenir brick tucked into his jacket and a look of shock that suggests he has finally learned his lesson. But, of course, as he zooms off on his motorbike wearing a crash helmet sporting a skeletal hand with a raised middle finger, it's all too clear that the next adrenaline rush can't come soon enough.

Played with considerable laudable energy by a relatively unknown cast, this makes few intellectual demands on the viewer. Indeed, it is stuffed to the gunwales with moments of crudity, banality and needless violence (such as Tomlinson having his fingers and his tongue shot off while in captivity). But Bouchard slams the pieces into place with some assurance and he is ably served by the likes of Alldridge who summons up his inner Jack Regan to snarl his way through a plot that doesn't always make sense and is dismally low on suspense and surprise. Nonetheless, there have been many worse and there will be many worse still to come.

Finally, this week, we have Ester Martin Bergsmark's Something Must Break, a transgender love story that proves something of a disappointment after She Male Snails (2013), especially as it has also been co-written by Eli Leven, whose source novel, You Are the Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth in Place, was based on the pair's own experiences. Taking its title from a Joy Division song and cleaving closely to the gay romance template that has most recently resurfaced in Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Colour and Tomasz Wasilewski's Floating Skyscrapers (both 2013), this allows its slender storyline to be swamped by a stylistic affection that not only ill-suits the rather grungy atmosphere, but which also serves to distance the audience from the sketchily drawn characters.

Sebastian (Saga Becker) works in a Stockholm warehouse and only allows a handful of people to know that he also has a female alter ego known as Ellie. Flatmate Lea (Shima Niavarani) is quite content to accept Sebastian for who he is. But his conflicted nature frequently leads him to make grievous misjudgements and he is lucky that Andreas (Iggy Malmborg) intervenes when a bid to pick up an older man in a public convenience culminates in a beating.

Something of a punk rebel in his leather jacket, Andreas finds himself drawn to Sebastian and their fun-seeking antics inevitably result in them tumbling into bed. Andreas seems to enjoy the sex. But he shocks Sebastian by informing him that he is straight and is reluctant to get involved with the Ellie side of his personality. Yet, even though he finds it difficult to cope with the growing predominance of Ellie, Andreas can't keep away and he returns to save her from a growing drug dependency and thoughts of suicide. But, even though they try to make a go of things as a couple and start shoplifting together to furnish their new home, Andreas's macho insecurities rear their head once more.

One can imagine German film-makers like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Rosa Von Praunheim making melodramatic art with such a scenario. But, in making the transition from documentary, Bergsmark throws the directorial kitchen sink at a flimsy saga that simply isn't able to bear the weight of his pretensions. It's one thing for Bergsmark to keep Lisabi Fridell and Minka Jakerson's handheld cameras flitting endlessly around Elin Magnusson's cluttered interiors. And it's fine to have editors Andreas Nilsson, Marlene Billie Andreasen and Hanna Storby fragment the action to reflect the energy and uncertainty of the lovers. But the florid voiceover narration and observations like `You're so beautiful I want to vomit' are as resistible as the heavy-handed symbolic references to roses, thorns and collapsing walls, the slow-motion sex scenes and such woefully misjudged attempts to goad any bourgeois onlookers as having a naked Becker urinated on in a Pietà pose to the accompaniment of Peggy Lee's `You're My Thrill'.

Bergsmark and Leven also seem completely indifferent to the fate of Niavarani's feisty friend, who disappears once the focus on Andreas and Ellie intensifies. This is perhaps dramatically forgivable, especially as Andreas is embarrassed about introducing Ellie to his mates. But removing the couple from the real world makes their relationship feel artificial. Becker and Malmborg (who is a performance artist by trade) work hard to convey the sense of lustful hesitancy that keeps threatening to erupt into passion. They share the odd touching moment, such as when Andreas lights two cigarettes à la Paul Henreid in Irving Rapper's Now, Voyager (1942). But there isn't much tangible chemistry between them and they often appear like props in stylised promos for the achingly hip tunes on the calculatingly moody soundtrack. Thus, while this fleetingly exposes the homophobia and consumerist shallowness of Swedish society, it is simply too mannered to fulfil its laudable intentions.