Metropolitan Mixtape: March 2025
Heroes and villains
In
Run Lola Run (1998)
: Finally caught up with Tom Tykwer’s 1998 thriller of forking paths, which turned out to be extremely good fun. It is also extremely of its time, in its evocation of chaos theory and multiple universes, its use of ‘90s techno and its approach to filmmaking.Maybe it's because I’ve been watching a lot of them recently for The Metropolitan, but I was struck by how much indie films of the late ‘90s were influenced by the films of the late ‘60s. Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996), for example, is a Britpop Hard Day’s Night (1964); considerably more dark and cynical, but driven by the same creative and technical energy. (It’s also aged a great deal better than most Britpop output.) Run Lola Run, with its jumpy editing, needle drops and split-screen tricksiness, is very Nouvelle Vague. It’s hyper-aware of its own medium and storytelling techniques.
This was, of course, the cinema of the young MTV generation. It was also more or less the last cinematic flourish before CGI, when generating that kind of manic creativity demanded playing outside the frame, with the form itself, rather than being able to create anything you liked within it.
Daredevil (2025)
: I realise not many Metropolitan readers share my taste for the long-underwear set, but I’m very glad to have ol’ horn head back on TV. (Mandatory Marvel comic backstory: as a child, Matt Murdock was blinded by radioactive waste that also heightened his other senses. He deploys his extraordinary abilities in his day-job as a crusading defence lawyer. He also dresses up in a skintight red suit to fight bad guys.)Daredevil was one of my favourite superheroes as a kid and was one of the few superhero comics I carried on reading as an adult, specifically Ann Nocenti’s run as a writer in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. He’s what gets called a ‘street-level’ hero, as does Batman, meaning that he tends to deal with everyday villains rather than mad gods and alien conquerors. Also like Batman, his rogue’s gallery tends towards the goofy and colourful. Can’t wait till they have Stilt-Man on TV.
Part of the appeal of such characters is precisely that sense of the everyday made extraordinary. They do not soar above the Earth or spend their time in exotic super-villain lairs; the action takes place on rooftops and in back alleys, on the edges of the mundane. The grim and grotty city becomes an adventure playground, a place of wonder.
As Warren Ellis has pointed out, superhero stories do not not really constitute a discrete genre. They belong with ur-literature. The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, the Journey to the West, the adventures of Heracles and Cuchulainn and Coyote: these are all, effectively, superhero stories. They derive their power from situating the fantastical in the mundane; the enchantment of the ordinary is a core part of their delight. Heracles might have journeyed to the Underworld and the Gardens of the Hesperides, but he also mucked out stables and went hunting with the lads. The power of these stories as ‘exempla’, tutelary metaphors for the daily heroism of adult life, lies as much in their everydayness as in their heroism.
Daredevil as a TV show pre-dates the Disney buy-out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It began as a Netflix show which revelled in its grittiness, turning its lower TV budget to its advantage with low-light-downs in dirty corridors.
The series is now on Disney, but they’ve kept the cast and – apparently as a result of the cast’s objections to the original script for the new show – the tone. Or at least, mostly. This is now, after all, a Disney show, part of the MCU four-quadrant-entertainment behemoth. It has to walk a delicate line between tween-pleasing spandex shenanigans and the self-conscious YA angst of the comics. But this is to its advantage. Too much grittiness tends to throw the underlying silliness of the genre into too stark a relief. Christopher Nolan’s Batman films strive for realism, and end up looking far dafter than Adam West’s campily straight version from the ‘60s TV series.
What the show has retained, however, is a struggle core to the character in the comics: the very idea of what it is to be a hero at all. Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) is explicitly Catholic, and thus burdened with both a strict moral compass and crippling guilt. The Disney version shows him having abandoned the mask and suit for the more conventional heroics of doing law real good. He is contrasted with The Punisher (John Bernthal), an antihero vigilante who began in the comics as much more of a villain, given his willingness to kill rather than trust to the workings of law and order. The character has had a troubled real-life resonance, with his skull logo adopted by American law enforcement and the military to symbolise a callous disregard for the judicial system, equality and human rights. The show picks away at these themes, setting Matt Murdock up against a group of corrupt cops who have adopted the Punisher’s logo. They are the antithesis of the traditional Marvel values of responsibility, friendship and self-sacrifice.
Also, it's worth watching the most recent episode simply for British-born Charlie Cox, who plays Daredevil, pronouncing ‘caramel’ in his best American accent over and over again. ‘Karrmul’. Delightful.
Adolescence (2025)
: There is a moment in the dizzying first episode of Adolescence when both the police (who have arrested a thirteen year old boy for murder) and the boy’s own defence lawyer take a beat to consider the boy’s father. They do this with the weary caution of professionals. Is the father trustworthy? Is he safe? Is he a good father? Is he a good man?Everyone has written a great deal about Adolescence, including us. This is mostly because it is a tremendously well made piece of work about an all too pertinent topic, with some brilliant performances and some breathtaking execution. This, however, was the moment I kept returning to.
Because, as it turns out, the father (Stephen Graham) is a good dad. Or at least, he is trying to be. He has anger issues, but is careful not to unleash on his family. Throughout the whole process of the police raiding his house, arresting his son and then accusing the boy of an horrendous crime, he tries to remain responsible and grown up.
Indeed, Graham, who co-created the show, was determined that this should be an ordeal experienced by ordinary people, a ‘normal’ family. Almost all the characters are ordinary; most of the authority figures and civil servants are reasonable and conscientious even as they struggle with a terrible situation and inadequate resources.
This choice feels crucial to the effectiveness of the show. Each episode is filmed as one take, rooting us in the real time of events, pinning our attention to every moment. Similarly, rather than pile up dramatic twists and turns, and drown the story in soapy secrets and lies in the way of most ‘issues’ dramas, Graham and his co-creator Jack Thorne focus intently on its central point. And as all the attention on the show testifies, it works perfectly.
Tarot (Warburg Institute until 30 April)
: A lovely little exhibition on the evolution of the art of the Tarot. It starts with Renaissance decks to which were added ‘triumph’ cards depicting Humanist symbols, including the Muses, the Planets and various Classical gods. The depiction of these trump cards varied from pack to pack, gradually including contemporary figures such as jugglers and street magicians. Then in 1781, in true Enlightenment style, a French clergyman decided they were ancient Egyptian symbols, and everything went mad.The exhibition focuses on the visual content of the cards, and features both Pamela Colman Smith’s Arts and Crafts illustrations for the Rider-Waite pack and some of the stunning original paintings of Lady Frieda Harris’s Vorticist Thoth Tarot, created with Aleister Crowley, with their extraordinary Hilma af Klimt-like palettes.
What it casts into relief, though, is how the mystic meanings applied to them are as much an imaginative and artistic response as the actual visuals. This can be seen directly in Austin Osman Spare’s deck, where he has annotated the hand-drawn cards with his own notes as to interpretation. You can see how the visuals and meanings change under the hand of each artist and interpreter. The way in which different generations have imbued these essentially abstract symbols with new meanings and significance is fascinating.
Out
Chernobyl (2019)
The continued quest to find things to watch with Ro’s Dad led us to a rewatch of 2019’s Chernobyl mini-series, which is an amazing piece of work: well written, splendidly cast and abso-fucking-lutely terrifying. Having said all that, we’re not sure we’d recommend watching it right now. It’s an alarming reminder that autocratic regimes actively mitigate against competence. It also demonstrates that health and safety ‘red tape’ protects not only lives, but also the reputations of bureaucrats and technicians. It does this by preventing the kind of unthinking incompetence that might lead you to, I don’t know, share military secrets on a compromised messaging system. To which you’ve invited a journalist.
It also brought to mind the fact that a Russian military drone recently punched a hole in the $2.7bn ‘New Safe Confinement Structure’ built to immure the damaged reactor at Chernobyl. And if the necessity for something called ‘the New Safe Confinement Structure’ doesn’t already fill you with happy confidence, the IAEA says radiation levels haven’t changed since it was damaged. Breathe regular!
Anyway, you should watch Chernobyl if you haven’t yet, but maybe not right now. Not if you want to sleep again.
A Real Pain (2024)
Jesse Eisenberg’s drama about two Jewish cousins on a pilgrimage to Polish Holocaust sites and pre-War family landmarks is now on AppleTV. Again, this one is in the ‘Out’ category not because it’s bad, but because of our viewing circumstances; it was impossible to ignore the creeping realisation that Ro’s Dad absolutely hated it. A Real Pain is really a series of gentle dramedy sketches and character studies; it requires viewers who are in a receptive, thoughtful state. Unfortunately, the meandering narrative and the constant fucking swearing had Roy crossing his arms silently within the first ten minutes, and it’s very hard to be receptive and pensive when you know someone in the room is having to physically prevent themselves from shouting at the screen. There should be a word for this.
Keiran Culkin does his highly effective eerie man-child routine and Eisenberg is as skilled and charming as ever, but even without the scowling octogenarian, we suspect it would have felt a bit undercooked.
Shake it all about
This month’s playlist: ten stand-out tracks that Tobias has enjoyed this month.
The playlists are all on Spotify.
The Test - Billy Nomates. A new single from Billy Nomates is always a cause for celebration and this one is a cracker (as usual).
Midnight Legend - Special Interest. There seems to be much disagreement about what genre of music it is that Special Interest makes but whatever it is, it's great.
Brother Where Are You - Oscar Brown Jr (Matthew Herbert remix). Oscar Brown Jr’s biography is amazing and I’m delighted this remix led me to it.
African Sweets - Gene Harris and The Three Sounds. At first I assumed this was a cover of ‘Paint It Black’, but then it goes on getting better and better.
Stranger Still - Vetiver. Vetiver is one of those bands that Spotify keeps recommending to me and it’s usually right about that.
Lying In The Sunshine - Free. The sun’s out. It’s not warm enough to lie in yet, but I do have the doors open in the writing shed.
The Devil Is Loose - Asha Puthli. Probably the only disco song written about the note sent by Philip of France to Bad King John1 when Richard the Lionheart escaped from captivity: ‘Look to yourself. The Devil is loose’.
Fun For Everyone - Hachiku. The video for this is a delightful reminder of where I used to live in hideously hipster East London.
Ballerina - Daisy The Great. Another new single. See? Not entirely out of touch. Not yet. On the other hand…
El Manisero - Xavier Cugat. PEANUTS!
In case you missed it, this month’s Mixtape also included, inevitably, Donald Trump
That’s not just me saying that; his subjects nicknamed him ‘Lackland’, Disney portrayed him as a silly lion, and, 800 years later, he still has the lowest ‘favourable’ rating of any English monarch https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/51496-who-are-the-most-and-least-popular-kings-and-queens-of-england-and-britain
Rowan’s piece on Adolescence earlier this month is what brought the series to my attention. I thought it was excellent and I agree that its matter of fact tone and lack of sensationalism is what makes it so effective. Hugely thought-provoking, the episode in school gave me chills.
I actually loved A Real Pain. I thought it was a beautiful film. The lead performances were outstanding and while it was sweet and funny in places, it left me deeply saddened.