Jonathan Wakeham
Screenwriter at Independent Talent (UK) & Lit Entertainment (US). Mentor at Arts Emergency. Coming soon: Hollywood noir, polar science and wolves. WGGB.
- Peter Weir's WITNESS (1985) is not just a great thriller but a great love story: Ford and McGillis's wit, warmth & chemistry burn through the screen. And watching it this week the title felt like an exhortation: that we must all, for the good of all, bear witness and keep our eyes open to the truth.
- Wonderful to see David Lynch's THE ELEPHANT MAN at BFI. It's a masterclass in cinematic empathy, gliding between the POVs of John Merrick's exploiters, spectators and doctors, and of Merrick himself. It dares us to look away, and asks us to keep looking, not just at John but into our own hearts.
- I've never felt such silence & stillness in a cinema as I did last night at BFI's FIRE WALK WITH ME. Denounced & dismissed by many critics in 1992, it's clear now that they hated & feared it because David Lynch dared tell the truth. A powerful, beautiful, achingly sad masterpiece of domestic horror.
- Peter Weir's FEARLESS (1993) is a magnificent, daringly spiritual movie, from Rafael Yglesias's script. Jeff Bridges & Rosie Perez are electric as two plane crash survivors who connect as they struggle, in opposite ways, to find new meaning in life, while Isabella Rossellini shines as Bridges' wife.
- Wonderful to see MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) again in BFI's David Lynch season. I keep thinking of Naomi Watts reading the script for the first time and discovering what an astonishing, multifaceted, mould-breaking role it would be: a role that darkened and deepened as Lynch expanded it from TV to film.
- Lucile Hadžihalilović's THE ICE TOWER is my favourite film from last year. You can watch it now on BFI Player alongside this really warm, generous and insightful interview with Hadžihalilović by @leighsinger.bsky.social about the film and her creative collaborators: player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/wa...
- It's the last week of Kerry James Marshall's marvellous, monumental THE HISTORIES at the Royal Academy of Arts. Do go if you can: it's a thrilling, challenging, beautiful show and the perfect antidote to the bleakness of both the weather and the times.
- Wonderful to see Éric Rohmer's MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S (1969) at BFI last night. Maud (Françoise Fabian) is one of cinema's greatest characters and performances: funny, flirtatious, worldly and wise, giving Rohmer's philosophical dialogue insouciance and swing. A rich, funny, melancholic masterpiece.
- In 1998 Peter Weir's dazzling THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998) felt like a satire of TV. Rewatching it last night it felt more like a prediction of today's rabbit hole radicalisation: the plausible, paranoid worlds that people can build around themselves, almost wilfully ignoring the clues to the contrary.
- I'm having a Peter Weir rewatch before hosting a screening of WITNESS (1985). I first saw DEAD POETS SOCIETY (1989) as a teenager and thought it was a film to inspire young people. Watching it now, it feels like a prayer to parents, to help their kids to follow their own path, not the expected one.
- What a marvel Renate Reinsve is! A reminder that the true subject of cinema is human faces and feelings, which no AI will ever replace. SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Joachim Trier, 2025) is wonderful: such a rich, kind, complex story, rooted in the world of film but with dynamics that are universal & timeless.
- I am very much on board for Zazie Beetz killing bad guys in a posh apartment building. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqNF...
- George Martin would have been 100 today. I love this clip of him visiting Brian Wilson and remixing God Only Knows. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRb_...
- I'm on a Sondheim deep dive after seeing the terrific new INTO THE WOODS at the Bridge. His annotated lyric books, Finishing The Hat & Look I Made A Hat, are characteristically witty & generous & this is a really insightful conversation with songwriter Adam Guettel. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TofC...
- The delightful Oscar-shortlisted short film A FRIEND OF DOROTHY, written and directed by Lee Knight and starring Alistair Nwachukwu and Miriam Margolyes, is now streaming on Disney+. My brilliant friend James Dean produced it so I am entirely biased, but I do recommend it.
- Halfway through the decade! What are your favourite films each year so far? 2020: First Cow (Kelly Reichardt) 2021: Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve) 2022: TÁR (Todd Field) 2023: La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher) 2024: Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass) 2025: The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović)
- The new films that I've loved the most this year: The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović), Good One (Lily Donaldson), The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt) and Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs).
- RIP Ena Collymore-Woodstock, the first woman of colour to study law at Gray's Inn and the oldest British veteran of WW2. Posted to the ATS, she wrote to the War Office to say that she had not come all that way to type and asked to be moved closer to the fighting. www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2...
- Every Christmas show needs spectacular songs, sensational jokes, unforgettable characters & your husband's late wife embalmed in the dining room. So don't miss @shittheatre.bsky.social EVITA TOO at Southbank Centre, the misteremembered story of Isabel Perón. www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/sht...
- The new SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) restoration is dazzling: sharper, darker & more unsettling than ever. I was struck by DeMille & von Stroheim's performances: they both have such empathy for Norma's trauma, while struggling to help her. And Betty's realisation of Joe's corruption is heartbreaking.
- PETER HUJAR'S DAY is enchanting: a wonderfully warm, wry and intimate look at the art life in 1970s New York. Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall are spellbinding company in Ira Sachs' film, which hums with truth and glows with sadness: part portrait, part premonition, lit by the autumnal Manhattan sun.
- Celebrate 30 glorious, groundbreaking years of @camdenpt.bsky.social this Christmas with two smash hit Edinburgh shows, House of Life and The Green Knight (But It's Gay) cptheatre.co.uk. Or you can support them for the Big Give, which will double your donation: donate.biggive.org/campaign/a05...
- Patrick Marber's beautiful, intimate tribute to Stoppard is so vivid that you feel he's there in the room with you. www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/d...
