Film of the week
The Salesman
Asghar Farhadi, the Iranian director of A Separation, is a master at luring you in with the everyday, only for the weight of events to take their toll later on. In this 2016 film, the plot offers an early dramatic hit, but its deepest effects are cumulative. Married actors Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) are staging a production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. One night, while alone in their new flat, Rana is attacked. They discover the previous occupant was a sex worker, so Emad takes it upon himself to find the assailant, presumed to be a client. How this connects to Miller’s play only gradually becomes clear, as the couple’s relationship fractures over their reactions to the incident.
Saturday 13 November, 12.55am, BBC Two
***
The Colour Room
Her work is now sought after by collectors, but the famed art deco pottery designer Clarice Cliff was once a lowly factory girl in 1920s Stoke, albeit one with grand designs. Her rise to success is the focus of this amiable biopic directed by Claire McCarthy (her Ophelia is on Wednesday on BBC Two). Phoebe Dynevor has a warm screen presence as the infectiously optimistic Clarice, who works her way into an influential position at Wilkinson ceramic factory in the Potteries, where she impresses the co-owner Colley Shorter (Matthew Goode) in more ways than one.
Out now, Sky Cinema Premiere
***
They Shall Not Grow Old
The colourisation of vintage black-and-white footage can be a fraught business – there are some horrific manglings of classic movies out there. But Peter “Lord of the Rings” Jackson is far from a slipshod film-maker. His stupendous first world war documentary, with computer-treated footage of the western front from the Imperial War Museum, is a faultless exercise in bringing the conflict to colourful life. Using audio interviews with veteran soldiers, and with actors lip-syncing any onscreen chat, the experience of war is grounded in individuals who live and breathe before our eyes.
Sunday 14 November, 9pm, BBC Four
***
Days of the Bagnold Summer
The soundtrack of Simon Bird’s 2019 feature directorial debut, an adaptation of Joff Winterhart’s graphic novel, epitomises the emotional fine-tuning at its heart. In the deliciously awkward spot between the teen angst of Belle & Sebastian and the death metal loved by its 15-year-old protagonist sits a closely observed comedy about a boy and his mother. Daniel (Earl Cave, son of Nick) is in a sulk after his absent father in Florida cancels his holiday there; even worse, he now has to spend more time with his mum, Sue (the superb Monica Dolan). A low-key jewel.
Sunday 14 November, 11.20pm, Film4
***
While We’re Young
A childless fortysomething couple – Ben Stiller’s Josh, who lectures about documentary film rather than finishing the one he’s been making for eight years, and his producer wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) – are lured into the seemingly carefree lives of hip twentysomething film-maker Jamie (Adam Driver) and his spouse Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Noah Baumbach’s smart 2014 comedy plays slyly with notions of authenticity as the younger pair exploit Josh and Cornelia’s desire to fend off the evils of middle age.
Sunday 14 November, 1.25am, Great! Movies
***
Charulata
Based on a novel by Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray’s moving 1964 drama is one of the great Indian writer-director’s most effective explorations of tangled romantic relationships. In Calcutta in the late-19th century, bored young wife Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee) finds her intellect and creativity stimulated when her husband, political newspaper editor Bhupati (Shailen Mukherjee), invites his would-be poet cousin Amal (Ray favourite Soumitra Chatterjee) to stay and entertain her. As their friendship deepens, she finds herself falling for the handsome, soulful Amal.
Thursday 18 November, 3am, Channel 4
***
Tick, Tick… Boom!
Before Rent, which only became a success after his early death in 1996, Jonathan Larson was a struggling New York composer of stage musicals. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s song-filled film is a vibrant adaptation – part staging, part fiction – of Larson’s one-man show about his attempt to get a sci-fi rock musical off the ground. Andrew Garfield plays Larson as an engaging, Tigger-like obsessive; he worries about turning 30, about his relationship, about the 90s Aids crisis, but mostly about emulating his Broadway idol, Stephen Sondheim.
Friday 19 November, Netflix
