nicksthoughtsonthings

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Deliverance (1972) ☆☆☆☆

Director: John Boorman

Writer: James Dickey

Deliverance opens to the wide, expansive, mountain regions of the Southern States of USA. We are tracking the cars of four friends who have banded together for one final canoe trip through a soon-to-be-gone region of the state. This region – including the river, a town, numerous houses and, outwardly, even its backwards inhabitants – will be flooded by an enormous artificial lake used to generate power for the local city. So the tone is set for Deliverance, a film which is principally about the inadequacies and ignorances of civilised, 20th century men in the wilderness; the mistakes they make, and their scrabbling to atone for these mistakes, often without any luck.

Ed, Lewis, Bobby and Drew arrive at the start of the river with both nervous fascination and patronising contempt for their surroundings, depending on the group member. They think they are alone, but they need volunteers to drive their cars back to the nearest town where the river ends. It turns out they are not alone. A selection of undesirables seep out of the surrounding forestry, and the few dilapidated houses, with disquieting stealth in order to meet the group. They are “mountain people”: filthy, inbred, and with all the physical and mental afflictions we might expect from inbreeding – and all carrying their own looks of contempt for these intruders.

Appearances can be deceiving, though, and through an impromptu ‘battle’, we quickly realise that the locals aren’t to be underestimated. Drew (Ronny Cox), the moral, sensitive heart of our group, is casually plucking at his guitar after the group has arrived at the river. He notices that a small boy, physically lame with an unnerving stare, is copying every note he plays. They begin to duel. (In fact, they play “Duelling Banjos”. A famous song before, the music has become inextricable with Deliverance now.) While Drew plays contentedly, smiling and looking in awe at the boy’s ability, the boy takes a more combative posture. At one point Drew gets lost in the song, and the boy thrashes his ukulele, without faltering, to finish the song and the duel. Ever the gentleman in defeat, Drew holds out a hand, only to be rejected by the boy. It wasn’t a game for him, it was a message.  

The men begin their voyage downstream in two canoes. All the canoeing and stunts in this film were done by the cast themselves. This gives the audience a palpable sense of threat, because 3 of the characters – and, indeed, all of the actors – do not seem qualified to be in the rapids. It also means that there’s no need for any dubious editing: figures can move from the background to the foreground of the shot, over very real and very violent swirls of the rapids, and we can see that, yes, these figures in the canoes are indeed the lead actors of the film! This would never happen on film sets today but it makes a marked difference as a viewer. Similarly, Ed (Jon Voigt) really climbed a mountain face for one scene, and again, I cringed at this unmistakably real threat.

This realism also intensifies what is now the film’s most notorious scene. Squirm-inducing in 2020, it is hard to imagine how audiences reacted to this singular type of humiliation towards a white, male businessman in 1972. Halfway through the second day, Ed and Bobby (Ned Beatty) pull up their canoe to the river’s shore; the other boys are upstream somewhere. There is no music. The soundtrack is the familiar sound of insects and birds, unchanged since the first time the canoes went into water 50 minutes ago (film minutes). It is a serene sound of nature. Nature will continue to be the soundtrack over the next 8 minutes, as we watch two mountain men confront Ed and Bobby at gun point, forcing Bobby to strip naked. Bobby is then chased, exhausted, toyed with, ridden, forced to “squeal like a pig” and then, finally, raped. To have prepared the audience for this horror with a brooding soundtrack, starting from when they left their canoes, would’ve been obvious and less effective. By guiding the audience with a soundtrack, we remove one of the crucial reasons why the terrifying things that happen to us are so terrifying: there is no warning. Almost invariably, horror arrives in our lives unannounced, from medical diagnoses to rape. With everything else kept constant in the film to this point, such as the setting, pacing and soundtrack, we ask ourselves, how is this happening to Bobby? Is this really about to happen? And our questions recede as the horror unfolds in front of us.

Shorty after, just before Ed is about to suffer his turn at the hand’s of these unsavoury mountain folk, Lewis (Burt Reynolds, of course) shoots the perpetrator through the heart with a bow and arrow, with the other mountain man narrowly escaping. Two questions then arise, one obvious and the other not so obvious: the obvious question is, in a region where everyone knows everyone, how long will it take before the mountain man brings his friends? The other is more subtle and might have been omitted in a lesser version of Deliverance, but is picked up here: what do they do with the body? While the other men seem to have made an implicit agreement amongst themselves already, only Drew remembers that a legal system and society exists outside of this sordid place, a fact so quickly forgotten by the others, to deal with these problems. Drew’s view is not shared by the others; and after a quick vote, it is decided that the dead man is to be buried and forgotten about – and nothing more is to be said on the matter.

As the men make their way back into the river and approach a new set of rapids, Drew, who’s been in a trance since the burial, willingly slumps into the water to his death. The whole affair is too irreconcilably wretched for him. His conscience has overwhelmed him. The men in the other canoe offer the opinion that he was likely shot by the other mountain man. Ed knows better, but in a curious case of self-denial, he begins to agree with them, and even looks for this phantom bullet wound when he finds Drew’s body later. It’s as if Ed doesn’t want to believe that their actions are so morally heinous to warrant such martyrdom. After all, as a moral person himself, where would that leave Ed?

The remaining men’s voyage down the river becomes more arduous and more dangerous. There is another death and there are more lies to go with it. They finally arrive in the local town, thoroughly defeated, but not without provoking the suspicion of the local police force. Their half-baked story is a little too fanciful to be believed. But they’re in luck, because the town is getting ready for its great watery burial, and it seems that the town’s imminent death is suppressing the Sergeant’s scepticism on Ed, Bobby and Lewis. At one point, the Sergeant concedes to Ed, “I don’t think you boys should come back. Just let this town die in peace”. In other words, you – and city boys like you – have done your damage to this town, just let the funeral commence; let the slate be wiped clean.

This sentiment of wilful ignorance is reiterated in perhaps the most touching moment in the film. Ed walks into the dining room of the place where he and Bobby are rehabilitating. It is dusk, and Bobby is sitting round with several other people, laughing, eating and enjoying himself. It is a picture of warm, Southern hospitality. When Ed sits down, he is quiet and restrained. He says he’s hungry and politely accepts his meal; but within a few moments he has broken down into tears. Whether it’s the picture of Bobby so civilised and unscathed after the horror of the last two days, the hospitality of the locals, or an overwhelming sense of moral responsibility, we don’t know. And the locals – and Bobby – don’t want to know. For no sooner has Ed started crying than he has stopped crying. Let’s move on. The cornbread is delicious. Don’t concern yourself with your crimes and mistakes, Ed, because they can just as easily be buried – or flooded.

28th May, 2020

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Lord of War (2005)  (☆☆)

Writer: Andrew Niccol

Director: Andrew Niccol 

Lord of War follows the career of Yuri Orlov, an international arms dealer played by Nicolas Cage. Orlov's life, both professional and personal, begins to feel the strain as he gets unwanted attention from zealous Interpol agents and African warlords alike. It is an entertaining film and worth watching for many reasons. As usual, I’ll stick more to where it could have been better.

The films zips along for its 2 hour runtime. It’s fast paced and the soundtrack gets your toes tapping. There are at least three visually impressive scenes that I’ll quickly talk about before getting under its skin. The opening credits follow the making of a bullet and its journey from the factory to an unsuspecting brain. There is something wonderfully astute about this depiction. On the surface we’re shown that this is a truly global operation, with the bullet jumping from continent to continent; like drugs, a bullet is a product which is class-neutral, traversing all social boundaries. On a deeper level it sets the film's tone, never to be bettered, that moral responsibility is unavoidable when we work in manufacturing or trafficking of weapons. We see the bullet as it is: a soulless, purposeless object that moves only with human action. It travels to the country’s we choose, it’s shot where we choose to shoot it. The camera cleverly stays on the bullet's perspective to show how this lifeless object is given life by us. It also deftly points out how consequential the whole process is. The supply chain can be followed precisely, and with it the responsibility for the destruction it causes. 

Another scene I like is when Yuri’s pursued plane makes an emergency landing onto a dirt road in Africa. The plane is then stripped to its bones by the locals within 24 hours of landing. A  time lapse shows the plane being dismantled by people much like an elephant is decomposed my maggots. Indeed, Orlov talks about the plane “going back to the earth”. Here we see the opportunism of the people Yuri’s dealing with, driven to take the metal for a reason Yuri fails to comprehend from his Western perspective. The scene where Yuri is drunk not long after is also well done on a technical level. When you’re drunk it can feel like the environment is spinning and fluid, but the people and situations you meet are incongruously static, or spring up as if from nowhere. Lord of War manages to replicate that same feeling.

The writing has a split personality. The film is narrated by Yuri and the result is two different dialogical styles weaving together. The dialogue written for Yuri on screen has a tendency to be predictable, while the thoughts he gives over the narration crackle with wit: "I supplied every army but the Salvation Army. I sold Israeli-model Uzis to Muslims. I sold Communist-made bullets to Fascist”. The narration also includes maxims that could appear in any film: "There are two types of tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want, the other is getting it”. The interesting narration weaves in and out of uninteresting dialogue. This is lazy – and it’s dangerous for the film. All of the film’s most remembered lines, bar a few, come from the narration. (Check IMDB for the quotes. Before every popular line you will see: Yuri Orlov: [narrating]). Narration should be used in a film, if at all, to explain essential parts of the plot or to supplement the character with thoughts that couldn’t be expressed on screen; this narration has the effect of creating two Orlov’s in the audience’s mind, the insightful and the bland. There is a clear disjunct between the two, even though they need to be a cohesive whole. And apart from the closing scenes, much of Yuri's moral reflection is delivered through the narration. This is a shame. The intention of the writer/director is to impute into the scene a sense of Yuri’s guilt, but the guilt is slapped on top of a scene, usually at the end, and often the scene itself did not have the structure to evoke the sentiment which is eventually narrated, hence the disjunct.

Imagine it this way. I’m sitting on a bench at lunchtime with no money, hungry, and someone comes over to give me an apple. As I eat the apple you hear my voiceover, “there are two types of tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want, the other is getting it”. Strange, right? Not because it’s wrong, but because it’s too strong a sentiment to be possibly going through my head at this point. This faintly ridiculous analogy is how I felt with Yuri in some of the scenes of Lord of War. Cage just couldn’t express the internal conflict which the film needed him to have, so it’s jarring to hear it concurrently in his own voice. It would work better if you moved as many of the sharp lines into the dialogue as possible. The maxims which are used to express his growing disillusionment should be removed, and evoked within the scene by the actors. Aside from Cage being occasionally inert, the acting is largely good. The performances from Ethan Hawke as the Interpol agent and Eamonn Walker as the African warlord are convincing and entertaining. 

Another issue that stops this film becoming great is the lack of detail. Yuri begins this tale as a nobody from Brooklyn with religious parents and an aimless younger brother. He spends most of the film as the world’s biggest private arms dealer. There is enjoyment in watching someone start from nothing to become what they’re great at, even if it’s an arms dealer. Just as much enjoyment as watching the arms dealer operate or even fail. We expect to see why the young amateur is drawn to this dubious career path, how he learns his tricks, grows his network, builds his confidence. Films that do this well are Catch Me If You Can, Scarface and Wolf of Wall Street. In this film, it takes 5/10 minutes for him to go from kitchen chef to a self-assured, international virtuoso of death. The transition from one state to another is so sharp, and uses connections that are so tenuous, that it is hard to believe how he got there.

The details are lacking outside the narrative too. At the beginning of the film, Yuri is shot in the stomach with a .44 magnum as he wistfully explains in the voiceover that you “should never get shot with your own merchandise”. One scene later, and Yuri is in the car snorting cocaine after diagnosing himself as “fine”. This does nothing but make the film less effective. We know how serious such an injury would be, and we also know that our spouse would notice the scars of such a wound (alas, Yuri’s wife, who never knows her husband’s occupation, never stops to ask what that scar might be). I have a suspicion that audiences are much more intelligent than either they or movie studios expect them to be. You might not have consciously questioned this small detail, but subconsciously it has been registered. And once you lower your audience’s reality-meter like this, it’s gone – forever. The subsequent acts of violence have less effect because the previous act didn’t have the action/reaction which exists in the real world. A Cage film which presents violence as it is is Kick-Ass. Other great examples are No Country for Old Men and, recently, Joker.

The lack of detail even goes to the casting. I’ve already mentioned the brilliant Eamonn Walker as Andre Baptise Senior. Well, Andre Baptiste Senior has a son, and this son is played by an actor who looks about 10 years younger than his dad. Also consider the actors and the types of characters they’re playing. Ethan Hawke, famous for playing a cop in Training Day, plays a cop here. Jared Leto, who plays a junkie in Requiem for a Dream, plays a junkie here. This isn’t a particular gripe – actors have their qualities and casting directors use their qualities to produce a desired effect for their next film. This is nothing new, and most people don’t watch enough films to even know this is happening. What is does do, however, is leave your film with less identity than it might have had if you had casted less obviously. So in the moments where you’re watching Leto craving for another line of cocaine, your mind might drift to his similar role in Requiem for a Dream, and in that moment, some of the mystery of the film unravels. You’re consciously – or at least subconsciously – aware of the artifice and process behind how people get casted in Hollywood, and why he appears in the film at all. The film loses its identity as another film slides into your headspace and taints what should be a clear vision. 

A final note on the philosophy of the film. Yuri concedes at the end ‘They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails.”’.  And at the end credits we are further reminded that it’s our governments that sell the most weapons throughout the world. In fact, it’s our governments’ position that means Yuri goes free after his capture by Hawke’s character. If he is free to sell weapons to the enemies of the enemies of the USA, so the argument goes, then it’s in the interest of the US to keep him selling, to avoid a sticky paper trail and to keep their enemies suppressed. I didn’t like Yuri’s smug self-satisfaction with this result, mostly because I don’t think he’s justified. Your country's abhorrent intervention in global affairs does not give you a valid reason to play your part. Yuri might be right, and evil might always prevail even if good men act, but it doesn’t follow that you should reverse the situation to augment evil wherever it may lie. That is a broken philosophy. The degree to which “evil prevails”, and our parts in facilitating evil, should be considered as consequential, exactly how the opening credits show. This irked me because I felt that this was more the film’s position on the subject, rather than just the character of Yuri. This is open to your own interpretation. 

4/04/2020

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Escape from New York (1981) ☆☆

Director: John Carpenter

Writers: John Carpenter, Nick Castle

Today, it’s popular to say that Hollywood has run out of ideas. The people who say that might remember a time where films had a plot like this: Manhattan is now a locked-off island housing every criminal in the US. AirForce 1 is hijacked and flown into the criminal-infested Manhattan, leaving the President to the mercy of its inmates. Luckily for us, Kurt Russell is an ex-soldier, Snake Plissken, and Snake has recently been arrested and condemned to the island for “robbing the federal reserve”. The warden hatches a fiendish plan: give Snake 24 hours to save the President and he’ll win his freedom back; fail, and 2 cyanide pills will be released into his bloodstream. Now that is an ambitious plot.

I didn’t really enjoy this film. I knew the plot, and the film’s graphic poster, and I was willing it to be better than it turned out to be. My expectations were high because this film was released a year before The Thing, an infinitely better Carpenter-Russell outing (The Thing is comfortably in my top 10 of all time). The problem with this film can be explained in comparison to that film. Both have spades of ambition, but The Thing has a sharper script, believable wardrobe, better set design, better editing and better direction. The failing of this film is not in its premise, but in its execution.

The characters needed to be more. Consider Russell’s main character in The Thing, MacReady. Gruff? Sure. Overly masculine? absolutely. But despite these similarities with Snake, MacReady is a 3-dimensional character. He’s enigmatic, cautious, vulnerable, scared. The first hour gives him the humanity that you need for him to become an action hero in the end, because he isn’t in the beginning. Without this humanity you cannot expect an audience to rally behind him when the film enters its final 3rd.

Snake Plissken is a paper-thin character in comparison. Russell delivers every line with a pained, gravelly tone, but it comes off more parody than sultry, and I couldn’t take him seriously for the whole runtime. And that’s just the main character. The rest of the cast is littered with greats: Donald Pleasance, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Lee Van Cleef  – all have rather forgettable turns. Not through lack of effort, but because the script never allowed them to display anything other than basic emotions and motivations.

A lack of emotional engagement with the core characters of a film is not necessarily problematic. It can still be enjoyable, or at least amusing. It just means that, as an audience, you skate around on the surface of the film, enjoying it for its parts rather than the sum of its parts. You can enjoy watching Kurt Russell fighting in a ring in Central Station. Who wouldn’t? You might even really want him to win. But you don’t really care about the context, whether he wins so that he can go on to save the president, or not. The narrative is lost, and you’re simply enjoying the parts of the film. Because this is enjoyment of a sort (you could coin this aesthetic enjoyment) you could be mistaken in thinking the film working for the right reasons, that is to say, narratively.

Where this is more problematic – or at least more noticeable – is when you get to the emotional finales of the film. For example, a melancholic moment of tragedy between two inmates, Brain (not Brian) and Maggie. This is usually the moment where you know if a film has worked. In Escape from New York, I caught myself wondering, “Oh, this is the moment where I’m supposed to care”. I say it is more noticeable with this scene because there is no surface level of enjoyment in this scene, in comparison to the ring fight in Central Station in the previous paragraph. It’s just a character lamenting the loss of another character. There is no aesthetic enjoyment for the film to hide behind, and the film is narratively nude. So when it doesn’t work, you’re simply bored, and you know it. You’re waiting for the film to just move on. Or at least I was.

Many action films don’t bother with a romantic storyline these days for that reason. Those that do must decide either to build in an emotional thread of a more manageable emotional size (think of Furiosa’s personal reasons for the drive in Mad Max:Fury Road), or go all out, and base the whole film upon such an emotional relationship (think of the reason why the father and daughter have to travel in the Last Train to Busan). Those films that shoehorn in an unwieldy relationship for the side characters may have the short-term gratification of a steamy sex scene, but when the time comes for that relationship to pull its narrative weight, and we’re watching two stick figures trying to draw blood from an emotional stone, we’re likely to ask ourselves: was it worth it? Be wise, if you’re going to make an action film, make an action film.

So the character’s are thin and the plot is ambitious, both in the physicality of the sets required, the emotional punch planned and the societal subtext intended. So be it. Good on them for giving it a go and not quite getting there. Without this we may not have seen The Thing, and the world would be a poorer place for it.

16th March 2020

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Mid90s (2018) & The Irishman (2019)

Just some very quick thoughts on two films I’ve watched recently. I won’t bother with the plot!

Mid90s is an interesting little film with all the indie quirks we know and love. The film works because the quirks are executed well – simple as that (my rugby teacher here would aptly describe this as “doing the basics well”). It’s not laden with trite exposition, character reveals or plot conventions, though there’s at least one worth mentioning: there’s a literal car crash at the end of the film. This is always the device used for reconciliation between once estranged characters in indie films. If you want to avoid a car crash, avoid independent cinema!

But the basics are done well, like I said. The film looks beautiful shot on 16mm academy ratio, and the editing is slow with well staged set pieces and a few moments of visual panache. The film really looks as if it was made in the the 90s. In this respect it works really well. It’s also well acted. The actors playing the skaters on the streets of Los Angeles really ARE kids from the street of Los Angeles. Too few directors use this authentic – and presumably much cheaper! – resource when they make films. This is story telling after all, and the more invested in the story, the better the film. A last comment would be the soundtrack. Being pedantic, I would say there was too much pop music in the film. Too much music can make a film feel like a music video or, at worst, a skating video for Supreme. This made the film feel like a first feature.

I had a harder time liking The Irishman than Mid90s. About half way through the Irishman I decided it was pretty damn good, and entertaining. Before then, I had some problems with it. This is a LONG film. It’s 3 hours 30 minutes and has more characters than you could shake a revolver at. Scorcese is world building here, in very much the same way as he did in The Wolf of Wall Street and Goodfellas (but, importantly, NOT like he did in Taxi Driver, Silence, Mean Streets, etc.). So for a long time you’re getting “and then he did X, and then he did Y, and then he did Z”. If you’re familiar with basic rules of story telling, you will know that this is the cardinal sin of “and then” (rather than “but what about this” – a contrast in the story, with two strands, lending more dramatic weight to each element). But as this was being fed to us in the form of a monologue from the De Niro character, I found myself asking “when is this going to kick in?”. I wanted more than just a well realised world with things happening in it; I wanted some consequential drama. (N.B. in Goodfellas you get the joy of seeing Henry become a wiseguy, in The Irishman, our titular character is strangely inert, and I never felt as if I knew him, or his motivations, as well as the former lead.)

Eventually the story does kick in, and arises almost unnoticeably out of the quagmire of vignettes we are given in the first hour and a half. Graham, De Niro and Pacino are great. And Pesci is great. In fact, Pesci is really, really great. He steals the show. At around the two hour mark I started to really enjoy this film. My point is, though, did we need such a comprehensive oversight of the Bufalino family to enjoy what is, eventually, a very personal story of betrayal? I can’t know for sure just how much the latter relies on the former, though my thought is that the beginning is a little gratuitous.

My final comment is that it’s well worth a watch. It’s an impressive world to behold, no one is making films like this any more and you get to see Joe Pesci intimidating everyone for 3 1/2 hours! If I had to draw a comparison between Mid90s and The Irishman, for nothing more than their joint appearance on this post, I would say that, yes, Mid90s may pull you along quicker, but The Irishman does feel more refined, and the work of a film maker who’s very comfortable with the stories he tells and how he wants to tell them. If Scorcese wants a broad canvas to tell his mob story, am I really going to tell him it’s not necessary?

Mid90s (3/4)

The Irishman (3/4)

N.B. Quantifying a films worth should only be done when it’s terrible.

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Private Life (2018) ☆☆☆

Director: Tamara Jenkins

Writer: Tamara Jenkins

When Juno had her baby in the 2007 smash-hit film, she might’ve considered naming it Paul Giamatti, such are the tonal similarities between that film and this film, Private Life. In this film, as in Juno, we have the tumultuous journey of pregnancy at the centre of the drama. But the primary focus in Private Life is instead shifted towards the middle-aged couple, Richard and Rachel, as they try to start a family by any means necessary, whether it’s by adoption, IVF or whatever the doctor’s suggests next. Hope comes in the form of their family friend’s daughter, Sadie, when she offers one of her eggs to significantly improve the chances of their next attempt at artificial insemination.

I didn’t know much about this film before I started. In the first twenty minutes I began to wonder if it had the momentum to sustain itself for the run time. It begins with a literal episodic look at the stages of artificial insemination, with all the awkwardness this ensues. Rachel’s undignified inspection by the gynaecologist and Richard’s unaroused trips to a sterile room are scenes of discomfort which delight in their embarrassment but express nothing new. I feared it was going to prey on this type of drama the whole film; that is, the drama which comes from people fighting the medical odds, whatever they may be. They might lose at first, but as we’re accustomed to, they usually get what they’re looking for by the end. 

I welcomed the film’s turn into richer dramatic ground. When they realise they need another egg to increase their chances of success, it’s a question of who. Who will be the genetic mother, then? Someone from the internet? Or maybe someone you know? The first seems like a cold commercial transaction “based on a fucking thumbnail”, to quote Rachel. The other is not so simple either. Consider the emotional bonds formed and tested between all the parties when your prospective child is 50% your husband and 50% your friend? How do you feel when the child grows up looking, as it might well do, like your friend? It is these types of questions which Private Life encourages us to think about, and ultimately handles with great sensitivity and empathy. In one scene Sadie and Kathryn are sharing a moment and Sadie asks to no one in particular: “I wonder if our baby is going to be artistic”, and Kathryn, though touched by the sentiment, is clearly anticipating these issues of ownership. It is a small moment but it is telling.

Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn are strong in the main roles. Giamatti is well known on the indie circuit for his ability to balance drama and comedy within a role, but I was most impressed with Hahn’s turn as the mother caught up in the maelstrom of personal and social crisis. There are many moments where she needs to appear strong and confident for Sadie, but her darting, caring eyes give away the vulnerability, guilt and hopelessness she feels towards her situation and her young friend trying to aid her. Kayli Carter also gives a tremendous performance as Sadie. Both female leads, but particularly Carter, have the wonderful ability to show off that most natural of human states: trying not to cry. Crying, I presume, is relatively easy for actors and, I hate to say this, is not very affecting for an audience. In a modification of Hitchcock’s example (there is no fear in the explosion, the only fear is in the anticipation of the explosion), I would say that trying to elicit sadness from an audience by showing them the visual image of someone crying is roughly equivalent to an attempt to make an audience scared by only showing them the explosion, without the suspenseful buildup. In the same way that we are not scared by the explosion, nor are we moved by unprovoked floods of tears. It is the ‘suspense’ which is so critical in both; the emotion needs to be built. And, as I hope most would agree, in both real life and in cinema, it is seeing someone holding back their tears as they continue talk which heightens the senses and gives a real pathos to the words and the moment. 

The film is also technically well made. The photography and soundtrack are unexceptional but perfectly fine. What I like the most are the locations and the set design. Though it’s set in New York you seldom catch the iconic skyline or any typical landmarks, which is a nice change from the patchwork of exteriors you might find in a film based in NY. Rather you see the city through Sadie’s eyes as she moves from Long Island to Manhattan for her brief stay with Richard & Rachel. Despite her sharp tongue and her self-deprecating, blunt personality, she’s still just a young girl who’s enamoured with the thought moving to a city she doesn’t know. This montage shows exactly that. The Grimes’ flat in Manhattan is also believable in its lived-in quality and interior design. The sound design is also cleverly deployed. At the moments of frustration for the couple it seems like every appliance (coffee machine, door bell, and so on) is grating and piercing its way through the main character’s ear drums to exacerbate what is already an unbearable living situation. 

There is perhaps just one problem with this film – and there’s an argument to be made that this problem has proliferated throughout independent cinema – and it is the problem of the film’s quirkiness and its occasional self-awareness, two related points which manifest themselves in different ways within Private Life. Firstly, there are the characters and their lives. Rachel is a writer and and Richard is an ex-thespian, and everyone who’s at their house or who they mix with is either a writer or an ex-thespian (or is somehow jealous or their status as writers and great thespians); their walls are covered with art (from their art friends) and famous literature (presumably from their friends Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal etc); when Sadie arrives we are struck by her encyclopaedic knowledge of culture and politics, and are expected to be charmed by her bohemian ‘screw college, I’m going to a writer’ attitude, her painfully self-aware, cutting comments about the generation she represents, and her living situation with the Grimes’ (”we look like an advert for Apple”). Now, I’m sure that these people do in exist in the world, but it bemuses me that they are so often romanticised and exaggerated in this manner. 

The second point is that this self-awareness spills over into the dialogue occasionally: “I feel as if I’m in X’s play”, “why do I feel like a character in X”, “this is very Scorpio” etc. Cinematic references casually thrown in like this are lazy and not particularly subtle, and nor do they really serve a purpose except to show us that, guess what, the person who wrote this film also knows a lot about other films, plays and literature. A visual cue to another film, on the other hand, is both a much more rewarding and nuanced nod to the attentive viewer who spots it, and it also gives the film a greater smack of authenticity when your characters aren’t being so self-referential in the dialogue. The two points are connected because they’re both a result of the writer loving art and film culture, or themselves in other words. I believe that Bohemian types are frequently used in independent cinema, even when they don’t need to be, because the writer is themselves totally absorbed in writing and the lifestyle of writers. Simple narcissism, then. 

An overly self-aware screenplay cannot mar Private Life, an entertaining film with solid performances and emotional complexity. 

3rd November 2019

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Mean Streets (☆☆)

Year: 1973

Director: Martin Scorcese 

Writer: Martin Scorcese & Mardik Martin

Violence, New York, gangsters, romance... tell me if you’ve heard this one before. ‘Mean Streets’ is Martin Scorsese’s third feature film and it sees him firmly within his own genre as a film maker. 

Watching Mean Streets in retrospect is like watching a highlight reel for all the great Scorsese films to come. It has the wandering feel of After Hours, without any of the pitch black, absurdist comedy. It also has the locations, characters and the sleaze of Goodfellas; but, again, the inhabitants of Mean Streets don’t quite carry the same emotional realism as they do in that movie. 

Ah, retrospect! It is no doubt a mistake to dwell on the other films of Scorsese whilst watching Mean Streets. And though it is impossible to shake, the familiarity of the world, characters and the motivations did not bother me. They were simply the cinematic seeds of a quality film maker with greater things to come. And the world is a rich one. Indeed, most of his New York-based films can find their roots in this sprawling world; Goodfellas and After Hours I’ve mentioned, but Taxi Driver can be found here as well (in a character played by De Niro, unsurprisingly). In finding these connections you can only applaud Scorsese’s maturity as a film maker, for there are a lot of ideas in here, and almost all of them are expanded with later films of greater depth and substance. 

So what is the crux of the story? IMDB describes it as “A small-time hood aspires to work his way up the ranks of a local mob” – but this is not the story at all. This mistake says a lot about the film, because although the story line isn’t weak, I half expected it to kick into a higher gear at some point (no doubt because the ringing of Goodfellas was still in my ears). More fool me. The film is called Mean Streets and this is precisely what you get. The story plays out as a series of vignettes of Jonny Boy and Charlie as they work around the city collecting debts and drink in the evenings with their friends. We get stock characters such as the love interest and the powerful family member who disapproves of the love interest, but the film is simple in its plot movements. It is occasionally befuddling to have an inconsequential scene, however. For example, one scene introduces us to a lion in a cage at the back of the bar. Why is it introduced to us? is it important? Apparently not. It’s a reason which is never revealed and seems unnecessary by the end.

It’s stylish film, and generally well made. The soundtrack is frenetic and so is the editing. It has a quick pulse and, in some particular moments, is exquisitely acted (by the whole cast, but particularly De Niro). There is a sense that it is an early feature, though. Particularly in the beginning of the film I felt as if it was almost too stylish for any single purpose. In the opening there are a lot of cuts, changes on the juke box, big character intros (occasionally in slow motion), heavy red lighting, and heavy handed ‘I’m a geezer’ moments to show you that, in fact, they are geezers after all. These are scenes the cast and crew had a lot of fun making, and in a way they’re effective and fun, but in another way they’re sophomoric. Compare with the opening of Taxi Driver four years later with that sumptuous Bernard Herman score and the equally gorgeous shots of a neon soaked, steaming NYC, and the contrast is sharp. I’m sure that the contrast was even sharper in Martin’s head as well.

This is a perfectly good movie, it’s just that its offspring are so much better. But as a portal into a young Martin Scorsese’s mind and his manifesto on film making, this is as good as you can find.

27/10/2019

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Mad Men (☆☆☆☆)

Year: 2007 - 2014

Creator: Matthew Weiner 

Spanning the sumptuous glamour of 1960′s New York, ‘Mad Men’ impresses as an intense character study of Don Draper, the enigmatic creative director of an ad agency, as we follow his spiral into depravity, alienation and, ultimately, redemption. The series also has a multitude of colourful characters, on their own difficult moral paths, to enjoy on the way down. To the phantom reader who wishes to watch this series but doesn’t want spoilers, I’m sorry to say, but everything will be revealed from here onwards...!

There are 90+ episodes of Mad Men so there’s a lot of plot to discuss. It’s also been a long time since I’ve watched the earlier episodes so I’ll be discussing in terms of the overriding thematic elements, rather than particular plot lines, to give an essence of what the show is really about.

The show’s central tenet is identity, and coming to terms with your identity. It exposes this theme quite literally, in the fact that Don Draper is not who he says he is; he is Dick Whitman, and after a turn of events in the Korean War, he assumes the identity of a fallen comrade, Don Draper – the real Don Draper. This matter is a source of drama in the early seasons, but this idea of identity continues to be pervasive throughout the whole series, and not just for Don Draper; it overshadows every character in whichever ‘role’ they play. 

Consider Bert, the sage individual who sits as a founding partner in Sterling Cooper – as well as Sterling Cooper’s many other guises throughout the programme – and his response to this revelation: "The Japanese have a saying: a man is whatever room he is in, and right now Donald Draper is in this room". This is characteristically Bert, who provides a voice of calm and reason throughout the show. It lets Don off the hook, but it exposes the great idealogical battle in this programme: do our past actions define us, or don’t they? Don leads a double life literally, but many of the other characters have double lives in one way or another. The older characters are of the age to have fought in World War II, and the joys and comradeship, as well as fear and prejudice, continue to bubble under the surface of their characters and guide their action. 

No character exudes this more than Roger Sterling, the great wit and charmer of the series, brilliantly played by John Slattery. Sterling is a philanderer as well; a drinker, twice divorced, wealthy, insecure – not unusual traits to find in the men which inhabit the world of Mad Men. His memories of the War are fond; and despite his inexorable charm towards clients, he stands firm on rejecting the business of Honda, a Japanese company, on the basis of his fallen allies. He cannot forget who he was then, and who he still is today. The partnership status, the reputation, the money and ‘the room’ have a limited effect on who Roger Sterling is at his core. So while Bert’s words of wisdom provide a soothing balm to the viewer and to Donald Draper, we know it can only be temporary, and whatever Don has left in his past will have to be confronted for true catharsis. “for the past is never dead. It’s not even past” (I will never pass up an opportunity to use this quote).

For men of Roger’s generation this era sits in stark contrast to the horrors of war, and this provides a nice interplay between the two periods. But the beauty of the 1960′s setting – apart from the sublime aesthetics, which I will deal with later – is that each societal role was in a state of flux. It was an era of great cultural, social and political change in America. As such, the evolution in the identities of blacks, gays, hippies and women – and all other outliers in mid-century America – is traced with sensitivity throughout the programme; and even if the evolution traced is more a regression, the show has the ability to make you empathise fully with these outliers, and reveal the prejudice as both horribly old-fashioned and deeply offensive. One character who struggles against the misogyny of this era is Joan Harris, whose femininity is frequently alluded to by the men in the office, or in one important moment, used by the office to court commercial favour. She is a sad character. For all her business savvy, she will never be taken seriously. This sad realisation is captured towards the end of the series, after another callous sexual advance by a superior, and we the audience are just as exasperated as her. The 1960′s was, of course, the defining era for free-love and liberal progress, but at the same time it was still a world ultimately ran by Roger Sterling’s and Don Draper’s. The clash between these two worlds fuels a lot of the drama in this programme, and exposes many of the attitudes of the time as flawed.

Towards the end of the series one could feel jaded with the choices of Don Draper. He consistently cheats on whomever he’s with at the time; he drinks himself into a stupor regularly, and even brings down other characters with him (on this point there are too many to name, but two that stick with me are Ted Shaw and Lane Price); and finally, his credentials as an ad man are tested when his creativity seems to be dwindling. He starts out as an enigmatic, charming character, and at the end he is pitiful. As difficult as it was to watch, this was necessary. You need to feel contempt for these characters, and unfortunately this requires repetition and a certain affection for the other people he harms. Only then do you feel the weight of his personality disorders, of which there are many, and the frustration. He gives his car to a young boy whom he sees himself in in the final episodes: “Don’t waste this”. The mask is slipping, as the mistakes of Don Draper at last take their toll. This life of excess can satisfy no longer, and he goes to California, where his life as Don Draper began, for closure. 

The final scene is deeply satisfying; Don is sitting down on the grass, with a number of other lost souls, at a retreat in California. It is a moment of peace after a traumatic day of owning up to his actions to the important women of his life (on the phone with Peggy and Betty). His job is as good as gone, and his life in New York a distant memory. In this moment of calm there is a slight smile, and the screen cuts to a coke advert – apparently one of the most successful ads of all time – as a bunch of hippy types, of all races, sing with a bottle of Coke. It’s Don’s ad. In this moment of tranquility and genuine bliss, his thought is how to commodify it for Coke. At his core he’s an ad man, and it’s this which can give his life a purpose. All the excess and debauchery was, hopefully, just a poor coping strategy for a traumatic childhood. 

I think that is basically the sum of the programme. There are endless character arcs to choose but ultimately the people in this show are looking for meaning and purpose and demand the right to find this meaning on their own terms, and down whichever avenue they choose. No one gets killed, there is little melodrama outside the necessary amount for a TV show which needs people to tune in every week. It’s simply a series which confronts and displays the true drama of our personal and working lives. For this alone, it is worth watching.

N.B. From grand themes such as identity and meaning, it feels almost shallow to discuss the design of Mad Men, but this is an important part of its appeal. The sets are large and ooze that 1960′s cool. The apartments; the furniture, the cars, the suits, the restaurants; there is meticulous attention to detail ensuring the illusion of 1960′s New York is not broken. More than that, the design and textures of the interiors tell you a lot about each character. Roger Sterling has a monochrome office in later seasons which notably more thought out than others in the office. It suggests more of an interest in the luxury of the business than the business itself. Similarly, when the team leaves for McCann at the end the corridors are dark, tight and suffocating; the direct opposite of the light and airy space of Sterling Cooper, and a subliminal reminder of the enormity of McCann and the oppression of the new takeover. Overall, it’s a charming and beautiful world to spend 50 minutes in.

8/09/19

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood (☆☆☆)

Year: 2019

Director: Quentin Tarantino 

Writer: Quentin Tarantino

There are a few filmmakers working today that bring the punters in every time, whatever the genre. Their name is the selling point. For me, off the top of my head, this is probably Fincher, Villeneuve, Nolan, P.T Anderson – and Wes Anderson come to think of it – and maybe a few more. Tarantino has been amongst these ‘event film makers’ from Reservoir Dogs, and though I raced to see Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood this evening, with the buzz from Cannes ringing in my ears, it’s difficult to say, but I feel it’s a film that treaded lightly around its subject matter leaving much to be desired. When these masters of modern cinema write a script it’s never questioned or rewritten; this film needed more work on the writing level.

This is a film about Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth. Rick is an old Hollywood star and the other is his stunt double. There’s a lot to enjoy about this movie: it’s beautifully shot, the costumes are great, the music is well chosen, the locations are also well chosen; the acting, lead actors, and range of actors is impressive – what else from a Tarantino film? – and ultimately, it’s a very well executed film on set and in post-production. 

The problem with it, as I realised about half way through the film, is that it never really builds on its central conceit: fading away in the golden age of cinema. I thought there would be an interesting character study of Rick Dalton as he deals with his fading stardom. Indeed, there was early promise in the opening 20 minutes, but the film never sinks its teeth into this crucial idea. Instead, the story tries to marry two other sub-plots which, for me, never really gelled with one another. It brings in Sharon Tate and some of the Manson Family whom we presume will be the source of the former’s downfall at some point in the film. The film knows we are waiting for this to be addressed, and without giving too much away, the unfolding of the film only makes sense if we are privy to what actually went on in 1969. I’m being vague on the off chance that whomever’s reading this doesn’t want the film ruining. 

As the film introduces these ideas early on you become frustrated with how the story develops. You become less interested in Dalton trying to save his career because you know that, in the end, it’s not going to be a film about fading away in Hollywood, it’s going to be a film concerned with violence and destiny. This made many of the ‘acting’ scenes in the middle fall flat for the story, though they were impressive in and of themselves. Juggling the sub-plots also made the accessory characters a little defunct. It made me think of ‘Inglorious Basterds’, where each character is as essential and interesting to watch as the other. In that film the object of the narrative is clear, and the sub-plots move purposefully towards that fateful cinema in Germany; this shared goal gave the interaction between characters genuine tension. There is not this shared goal in ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’, so the accessory characters (Al Pacino, Bruce Dern, Damian Lewis, Emile Hirsch, and so on) do not have a strong, necessary point in the film to attach onto. It made certain scenes, such as at the Playboy Mansion, seem self-indulgent and irrelevant.

This is a film caught in two minds; a film with many ideas but too interested in all of them to understand which are the ones worth pursuing. I for one would have rather have seen the film lose itself in absurdity earlier, rather than saving it to the end. For we know that at some point the film is going to lose any semblance of realism, so why mess around with half-baked ideas of an identity crisis in the middle? Knowing when you should kill your darlings is important for a film maker. Tarantino has yet to discover this, and it shows.

16th August 2019

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Mars Attacks! (☆)

Year: 1996

Director: Tim Burton

Writer: Jonathan Gems

This is a bad film. Why is this film so bad? Let’s start with the premise. You can tell even from the title that this is going to be a spoof of sorts. It’s not trying to be a ‘serious’ alien invasion film, like ‘Independence Day’ for example (an infinitely better film), and instead takes a camp B-movie approach to the subject. 

Once you sacrifice the element of drama you had better be sure that what you’re left with is funny. This is not a funny film. It is full of clichés, but presumes that the clichés are enough to make it work; the sleazy night club owner in Las Vegas, the enthusiastic army General, the hopeless President, the stupid middle American hick, and so on. The film flits from story-line to story-line as you sit there bewildered at what you’re supposed to be taking from scene to scene. The plot occasionally matches up with a previous scene but there’s no drama, theres no comedy, and so there’s no relationship to root for, or even a character you just want to see for the hell of it.

This is particularly sad and notable because the cast is phenomenal. That’s why it’s so obvious when the storylines don’t work. Oh, Pierce Brosnan and Sarah Jessica Parker have been taken onto a ship, have fallen in love (a Professor and a reality TV presenter), have been experimented on, and confess this unlikely love, and so what? Cue six other story lines with equal inconsequence played with something like dead-pan, and we have a turkey on our hands.

On a technical level it’s not great either. The aliens are CG in a time where CG was still in its infancy. Here, the aliens have limited facial expression and do not reap the benefit of practical effects and makeup, which is infinitely more charming than CG and surely more in line with the film’s B-movie ethos.

Ultimately, though, it’s the quality of the script which brings this film down. Think of the children’s film ‘Monsters v Aliens’ and see how an alien invasion parody can be delivered in clichés and still be fresh, funny and original. ‘Mars Attacks!’ sits with a number of other films where the budget is enormous, the cast superb, but the underlying idea unquestioned, because it’s brought to you by Tim Burton. 

12th August 2019.

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Distant voices, Still Lives (☆☆)

Year: 1988

Writer: Terence Davies

Director: Terence Davies

I'm a little surprised that I didn't enjoy this film more, and flinch at going against the grain on this one, as anyone does with acclaimed films. It was voted the 3rd best British film of all time in a Time Out poll in 2011, and although lists are not water-tight with quality, it's rare that anything in the top 10 will be mediocre. 

If the film's goal is to offer a fractured view of a person's memory then it succeeds. Executed well this is a very effective tactic to deploy, and consider movies like the Tree of Life, which has an equally dreamy feel to Distant voices, but succeeds more in evoking a transcendent quality needed to make it work. This at times felt stitched together. 

There are some beautiful moments to be found – particularly with Pete Postlethwaite's character – but overall I found them few and far between. Other parts of the film just felt a little repetitive and boring. Do people really just sing all the time? perhaps in 40's Liverpool they did, but it didn't ring true to me and, except for a few scenes, any singing felt devoid of emotion.

Perhaps it is an ode to an era I can't relate or emotionally connect with, but this isn’t usually a problem with period pieces, so there must be some fault in the film itself. I would like to be proved wrong, but singing in films has to be one of my least favourite things in cinema. Oh well.

7th August 2019

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Paddington (1&2) (☆☆☆☆)

Year: 2014 & 2017

Dir: Paul King (1&2)

Writers: Paul King (1&2), Hamish McColl (1),  Simon Farnaby (2).

I watched both of these films in the space of a week and they're similar enough that one review will suffice.

There is so much to like here, but it starts with the cast, which is just excellent. From bit parts to the main cast, it's a who's who of home-grown British talent (on much the same scale as Harry Potter). This is impressive in the first and even more so in the second.

As so often happens in successful films these days, the budget is increased and the ingredients which made the first so sweet can get diluted in the sheer scale of the sequel. This does not happen here, what made the first so charming is even more apparent in the second.

there are two things which make these films so enjoyable: the set design and the movement within this set design. The set design itself is impeccable. It has the same precision and vibrancy that you would expect from a Wes Anderson movie, and like an Anderson film it has the same pseudo-nostalgia where you're not sure if it exists in the 1980's or the present day. The character's costume design seems to seep into the set design or vice versa (green house, green car, green suit etc, achieved with a little more subtlety than Balamory). The result is that this world is totally immersive and believable, it exists outside the camera's eye and offers a richness of detail that was a little surprising.

The dynamism of the film is also what makes it so watchable. This, again, is something visible in the first but memorable in the second. It has the same visual playfulness of a Pixar animation and for probably the same reason: when you painstakingly render an animated character within a live action world, the set-pieces will always have been conceived with more thought. It flits between different geographical locations and different animation techniques seamlessly. This is what I mean by the movement within the set design; the choreography of the actors in order to compliment soon-to-be-animated Paddington is clearly well rehearsed, and the result is there to be admired. The prison scenes (which I have learned to dismiss generally) are reimagined with zeal by Paul King and his team, and became some of my favourites in the series.

The film has a lot of stories to tell and as many messages for the audience ("be yourself", "be independent") so Chekhov's gun is more 'Chekhov's AK47' but this is not really an issue. I haven't watched a family movie in a while but I seem to remember these moral stories always being a little on the nose, and they usually work well in this setting anyway.

overall, I loved it. I hope Paul King returns at the helm for a 3rd but it seems he's been whisked away to Pinocchio and Wonka. No doubt on strict orders to produce more of the same.

4th August 2019

[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Doubt (☆☆☆)

Year: 2008

Director: John Patrick Shanley

Writer: John Patrick Shanley (screenplay), John Patrick Shanley (play)

There are certain pitfalls when moving stories from the theatre to the cinema. Simply, the common problem is the movie is not 'cinematic'. The actors stay in the same room and progress through pages of dialogue. In the wrong hands, this can be trying exercise of patience.

So It lives and dies on the strength of the performances, then, as well as careful blocking and shot choice from the DOP; the DOP is crucial here, because apart from a few stunning interiors (in the churches), all we have are empty rooms. The performances in this film are as good as you'll see anywhere. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the priest Father Fylnn, with Meryl Streep as the principal of a local religious school. The plot revolves around Sister Beauvier (Streep) suspecting Flynn of an indecent relationship with one of the alter boys.

Suspicion boils over and 'doubt', as you would expect, is the constant theme of the film. I thought Hoffman was just wonderful here. He was so brilliant in dealing with the minute. In one scene you could visibly see the colour drain from his face, which is just about the most complex 'emotion' I have seen in a film. Streep is predictably solid as the cynical nun who has total conviction in her accusations, wrongly or rightly, we're never really told, and I think that's a good thing.

The usual seal of approval, Roger Deakins, again spins his magic here. The film is rich with colour and warmth in the church scenes, and is stripped back to harsh, cold lighting in the 'interrogation' scenes. Despite the limited opportunities there are still beautiful shots to be found, particularly the visualisation of one of Fylnn's sermons. It could only be Deakins.

Unfortunately, it's just a reminder to me of the great talent we lost in Hoffman. I'm still discovering great performances, and there are many gems I still have to see, but his performances are so rich with detail that I happily rewatch most of his films without a second thought; and will still see something more, another twitch, another suppressed thought, another suggestion of the character he was always so able to portray. He was a marvel.

2nd August 2018