A couple of years back, we had Moon, a sci-fi thriller directed by Son-Of-David-Bowie-Used-To-Be-Called-Zowie-Bowie, Duncan Jones. And now we have Source Code, a sci-fi thriller by Director-Of-Moon, Duncan Jones. Important distinction; with Moon, Duncan Jones established in my mind an absolute right to be known in his own right as a creative force. And Source Code, therefore has the much tougher job of living up to the high standard of his own debut, rather than the relatively simple task of proving that he's more than a celebrity's kid.
Anyway, not to worry. Because while I couldn't hand on heart say that I think Source Code is as good as Moon, I couldn't say that about many other movies I've seen in the last two years. This is a tense sci-fi thriller, that is the mongrel son of Groundhog Day and 24, and an interesting hybrid it is!
Jake Gyllenhaal is Captain Colter Stevens (fine 80s action series name there), a helicopter pilot who, suddenly, bizarrely, finds himself Quantum Leap stylee, in the body of another man, a school teacher travelling to work by train with a female colleague. Not knowing how or why he is suddenly there, he goes into a bit of a panic, ending up in a bathroom of the train, where he sees in the mirror that his reflection is not of himself. Eight minutes in to his "leap", the train explodes.
He then finds himself in some sort of capsule, being talked to by a female Army captain, who wants to know if he can tell them anything about the explosion, and who is very cagey indeed about how he suddenly and unexpectedly appears to be part of this mission. (She does not, sadly, tell him to take his protein pills or put his helmet on, though). The science it seems is that they've managed to sync him with the last eight minutes of this guy's life, quantum-entanglement-style, and that he can go in and relive that eight minutes in any way he likes, and explore all the possible variants of those eight minutes. This, they hope, will allow him to discover who set the bomb, and thus help them catch him before he kills again - the train bomb itself has already happened, and can't be changed, only relived.
Hence, we have a 24-style thriller played out in an endlessly repeated 8 minute loop, Groundhog Day style. And in addition to the mystery of the bomb on the train, Stevens has also got the mystery of just what the hell is this Source Code project, and how did he come to be involved in it?
Like I say, this isn't as good a film as Moon. But it *nearly* is, and I would recommend any film you could make that claim about. See this film, and eagerly await whatever Duncan Jones comes up with next.
Views, Reviews, and Inflammatory Comments on the subject of Cinema.
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
Unknown
Another one of those US-made ersatz Euro thrillers that Liam Neeson seems to be so fond of making these days. This one seems to be something of a cross between The Bourne Identity and Frantic, but of course, not nearly as good as either.
So, Neeson is Martin Harris, a biotechnology professor from the US. He's in Berlin for a conference, and to meet a German biotechnology professor he's been corresponding with. When he and his wife are checking into the hotel, he realises that his briefcase has been left at the airport (and somehow not blown up in a controlled explosion by the German security services) and so he rushes back there to find it. As he rushes, the taxi he's in has an accident and goes off a bridge into a river. He languishes in a coma for about a week, wakes up, and rushes off to find his wife, who he realises must be going spare, since the hospital weren't able to ID him, and she presumably couldn't find him.
He arrives back at the hotel, however, to find that she's got over him and moved on with her life, to such an extent that she's got a new Doctor Martin Harris for a husband, played by Aiden Quinn (who's a lot chubbier than you remember him) and everybody including her swears blind that they have no idea who Neeson is. Aiden Quinn's got all the proof on his side that he's the real Martin Harris, and Neeson sort of just staggers out of there in confusion, assisted from the premises by hotel security.
And thus starts his quest to work out what the hell is going on.
Now. Here's a thing. I can score highly on a standard IQ test. Higher, perhaps, than my intelligence merits. This is the case because I am test literate. I know these tests of old, I know the forms, I know the tricks. Hence, when it comes to IQ tests, I appear more intelligent than I am. And it seems that perhaps, the same is true of identity based espionage thrillers. Throw me the absolute basics of the plot, and I'll tell you what the twist is. And I can tell you, with no exaggeration, that I was able to tell you exactly what was going on in this film after watching the trailer. And I'm not patting myself on the back here; chances are, if you saw the trailer, and are moderately espionage-thriller literate, you will too.
Liam Neeson, however, despite his absolute veteran status in this kind of film, does not spot the twist immediately, so it's down to him to plod ponderously through the plot until the third act, at which point everything becomes clear to him, and his need to challenge the fake-Martin-Harris and prevent Disaster becomes all too urgent, and it's all over bar quite a bit of shouting.
It's not a badly made film, but there's little original about it, and perhaps that's why it's so easy to see through. It's like a jigsaw that's much easier because you're intimately familiar with the picture you're trying to put together. As such, it's destined to go down in history as "That thriller Liam Neeson was in. No, not that one, the other one."
So, Neeson is Martin Harris, a biotechnology professor from the US. He's in Berlin for a conference, and to meet a German biotechnology professor he's been corresponding with. When he and his wife are checking into the hotel, he realises that his briefcase has been left at the airport (and somehow not blown up in a controlled explosion by the German security services) and so he rushes back there to find it. As he rushes, the taxi he's in has an accident and goes off a bridge into a river. He languishes in a coma for about a week, wakes up, and rushes off to find his wife, who he realises must be going spare, since the hospital weren't able to ID him, and she presumably couldn't find him.
He arrives back at the hotel, however, to find that she's got over him and moved on with her life, to such an extent that she's got a new Doctor Martin Harris for a husband, played by Aiden Quinn (who's a lot chubbier than you remember him) and everybody including her swears blind that they have no idea who Neeson is. Aiden Quinn's got all the proof on his side that he's the real Martin Harris, and Neeson sort of just staggers out of there in confusion, assisted from the premises by hotel security.
And thus starts his quest to work out what the hell is going on.
Now. Here's a thing. I can score highly on a standard IQ test. Higher, perhaps, than my intelligence merits. This is the case because I am test literate. I know these tests of old, I know the forms, I know the tricks. Hence, when it comes to IQ tests, I appear more intelligent than I am. And it seems that perhaps, the same is true of identity based espionage thrillers. Throw me the absolute basics of the plot, and I'll tell you what the twist is. And I can tell you, with no exaggeration, that I was able to tell you exactly what was going on in this film after watching the trailer. And I'm not patting myself on the back here; chances are, if you saw the trailer, and are moderately espionage-thriller literate, you will too.
Liam Neeson, however, despite his absolute veteran status in this kind of film, does not spot the twist immediately, so it's down to him to plod ponderously through the plot until the third act, at which point everything becomes clear to him, and his need to challenge the fake-Martin-Harris and prevent Disaster becomes all too urgent, and it's all over bar quite a bit of shouting.
It's not a badly made film, but there's little original about it, and perhaps that's why it's so easy to see through. It's like a jigsaw that's much easier because you're intimately familiar with the picture you're trying to put together. As such, it's destined to go down in history as "That thriller Liam Neeson was in. No, not that one, the other one."
Saturday, 2 April 2011
Killing Bono
Neil McCormick is a boy with a dream; he's a Sixth Former in Dublin, and he's got his sights set on megastardom. Paul Hewson is a friend of his at school, who also has his sights set on megastardom. Hewson, of course, becomes Bono, and front man of the biggest band in the world(tm). McCormick becomes bitter.
Specifically, having once rubbished Hewson's chances of making it, and telling him that his own band will soon be on Top of the Pops, and having prevented his brother joining the band that would go on to be U2, he has to sit back in his garage with the no-hopers in his band while watching U2 produce a hit album. And thus starts McCormick's quest, as he will stop at nothing to make his band as big as U2 - nothing, that is, except accept several very generous offers from Bono to help him along. This, then, is not so much a film about U2, as about one man's futile battle against an oblivious and uncaring music industry, and against his own pride and hubris.
The portrayals are a lot of fun. Ben Barnes, who has previously wasted our time playing Prince Caspian in the Narnia films, turns in a pretty epic comedy turn as McCormick, reminding me a lot of a young Ed Byrne. His brother Ivan is played by Robert Sheehan, previously the irritating gobby one in Misfits, who isn't the least irritating or gobby here, and is a really sweet, trusting puppydog, trusting his brother to steer their music career, while not realising the catastrophic decisions that are being made on his behalf. There's a lot of quality support; Peter Serafinowicz as their clueless management, Peter Pothelswaite in a lovely turn as their landlord in London, and Martin McCann as The Mighty Saint Bono Himself. The portrayal of Bono is actually pretty key to the story; he's very generously portrayed as a lovely, supportive, helpful friend to McCormick, who is quite willing to give him a helping hand, no matter how many times McCormick throws it back in his face; this only serves, of course, to make McCormick's self-destructive pride even more amusing.
So, really, this is a film that ticks all the boxes, it's funny, charming, warm, and never tries to treat the subject matter too seriously. U2 got lucky, and encountered the right combination of factors to propel a pretty good local garage band into the big time. The portrayal of McCormick's band (under various names) is of a pretty decent outfit who change with the times, being variously punk, rock and new romantic as time goes on, and who plausibly *could* have been the bigger band, had the cards been dealt differently. The message, then, is that you can never tell what breaks you're going to get in life, that it isn't fair, and that you should never let pride make you refuse a helping hand. Wise words for us all there, I think.
Specifically, having once rubbished Hewson's chances of making it, and telling him that his own band will soon be on Top of the Pops, and having prevented his brother joining the band that would go on to be U2, he has to sit back in his garage with the no-hopers in his band while watching U2 produce a hit album. And thus starts McCormick's quest, as he will stop at nothing to make his band as big as U2 - nothing, that is, except accept several very generous offers from Bono to help him along. This, then, is not so much a film about U2, as about one man's futile battle against an oblivious and uncaring music industry, and against his own pride and hubris.
The portrayals are a lot of fun. Ben Barnes, who has previously wasted our time playing Prince Caspian in the Narnia films, turns in a pretty epic comedy turn as McCormick, reminding me a lot of a young Ed Byrne. His brother Ivan is played by Robert Sheehan, previously the irritating gobby one in Misfits, who isn't the least irritating or gobby here, and is a really sweet, trusting puppydog, trusting his brother to steer their music career, while not realising the catastrophic decisions that are being made on his behalf. There's a lot of quality support; Peter Serafinowicz as their clueless management, Peter Pothelswaite in a lovely turn as their landlord in London, and Martin McCann as The Mighty Saint Bono Himself. The portrayal of Bono is actually pretty key to the story; he's very generously portrayed as a lovely, supportive, helpful friend to McCormick, who is quite willing to give him a helping hand, no matter how many times McCormick throws it back in his face; this only serves, of course, to make McCormick's self-destructive pride even more amusing.
So, really, this is a film that ticks all the boxes, it's funny, charming, warm, and never tries to treat the subject matter too seriously. U2 got lucky, and encountered the right combination of factors to propel a pretty good local garage band into the big time. The portrayal of McCormick's band (under various names) is of a pretty decent outfit who change with the times, being variously punk, rock and new romantic as time goes on, and who plausibly *could* have been the bigger band, had the cards been dealt differently. The message, then, is that you can never tell what breaks you're going to get in life, that it isn't fair, and that you should never let pride make you refuse a helping hand. Wise words for us all there, I think.
Sucker Punch
In some senses, you've got to hand it to Zack Snyder. Whatever else you say about him, this is a man who can Get Stuff Done. With 300 and Watchmen, he delivered what many at the time believed impossible - comic book adaptations which were faithful to the source, and which neither the fans nor the mainstream thought were totally horrible. Whether they showed much art or creativity is debatable, but he does have something of a knack for reading something, liking it, and making a film that looks just like it. So, with Sucker Punch, we're in uncharted territory. Since it's entirely his creation, written and directed by him, Sucker Punch might be a faithful reproduction of the inside of Zack Snyder's head.
And may heaven help him if it is.
The Plot:
A wicked stepfather has (probably) murdered the mother of two girls, and subsequently finds that they inherit all; there's a bit of a tussle which reveal him as an evil fat bastard rapist, and we end up with the younger daughter dead, him injured, and the older daughter being accused of having gone mad, and incarcerated in a mental asylum from the 1950s. Once there, the evil stepfather bribes an orderley to have her lobotomised. The doctor who will perform the procedure arrives in five days. She has that long to escape. At this point it should be noted that all the inmates are women, all the orderleys are men, and there's a woman psychologist working with the girls.
And then it goes a bit weird, as it seems that she genuinely has gone mad, and the perspective of the whole film shifts and they're no longer inmates in an asylum, they're exotic dancers/hookers in a bordello, and our protagonist is the new girl, who's to be handed over to a high-roller who likes virgins in five days. At this point we learn her name, and the names of four other girls at the asylum/bordello. They are "Baby Doll", "Sweet Pea", "Rocket", "Blondie" (not blonde) and "Amber". Already, it's beginning to look that this delusional fantasy-scape that Baby Doll is trapped in is very much out of a man's head, rather than any plausible female character's.
Anyway, the girls dance for clients, being taught to dance by a bordello madam who resembles the psychologist, and when Baby Doll dances, she goes into one of a series of linked fantasy scapes in which she is now a warrior fighting in one of a series of slightly linked scenarios. Opponents include 10 ft tall samurai golems, clockwork steam-powered WWI German zombies, orcs, dragons, robot gunmen, and so forth. Again, these are all looking like male fantasies to me.
Throughout all this, there is an escape plan hatching, in a slightly Inceptionish way; in her war fantasies, she sort of works out what she needs to assemble to escape, and in the bordello fantasy she assembles these items, all the while evading the orderley/bordello owning gangster.
Essentially, what this film looks like is what would happen if you gave a geek going through puberty some mescaline, transcribed his babblings, then filmed it, stitching it together into a narrative structure that attempts to explain why it's otherwise totally incoherent. As a film, it succeeds in only two areas. First, when we're having our fantasy war sequences, for all that it's utter nonsense, and actually admitted by the plot to be just a hallucination, it all looks pretty spectacular. Zack Snyder knows how to make an action sequence look pretty damned epic, and all this is pretty much 300 without the taste and restraint. So, on the pure eyecandy "women in lingerie with guns shooting steampunk zombies" front, Great Success. Second, although the film pays a debt to a number of "multi layer reality" films, like Inception, eXistenZ, and the majority of the back catalogue of Terry Gilliam, there is a sense of originality here - nobody else is doing stuff remotely like this, even if it is pretty debatable whether anyone at all should be.
Downsides - well, frankly, the whole asylum/bordello thing is pretty queasy exploitation stuff, along the theme of "Fat ugly men abuse beautiful young girls who are forced to dance for their amusement." It's the kind of thing that might, maybe, in the hands of a director and cast with sufficient talent, transcend the "ick" factor, and say something interesting. In the hands of Zack Snyder, I'm afraid it comes off looking rather cheap and tawdry, with nobody coming out of it looking particularly unsullied.
I've long held the opinion that it's perfectly fine for a film to be stupid, so long as it's fun, but for far too much of this film, it just isn't. The good fun bits that are fun do not outweigh the bad bits that aren't. I'm looking forward to Zack Snyder's version of Superman, but he should never, ever, be allowed to write a script ever again.
And may heaven help him if it is.
The Plot:
A wicked stepfather has (probably) murdered the mother of two girls, and subsequently finds that they inherit all; there's a bit of a tussle which reveal him as an evil fat bastard rapist, and we end up with the younger daughter dead, him injured, and the older daughter being accused of having gone mad, and incarcerated in a mental asylum from the 1950s. Once there, the evil stepfather bribes an orderley to have her lobotomised. The doctor who will perform the procedure arrives in five days. She has that long to escape. At this point it should be noted that all the inmates are women, all the orderleys are men, and there's a woman psychologist working with the girls.
And then it goes a bit weird, as it seems that she genuinely has gone mad, and the perspective of the whole film shifts and they're no longer inmates in an asylum, they're exotic dancers/hookers in a bordello, and our protagonist is the new girl, who's to be handed over to a high-roller who likes virgins in five days. At this point we learn her name, and the names of four other girls at the asylum/bordello. They are "Baby Doll", "Sweet Pea", "Rocket", "Blondie" (not blonde) and "Amber". Already, it's beginning to look that this delusional fantasy-scape that Baby Doll is trapped in is very much out of a man's head, rather than any plausible female character's.
Anyway, the girls dance for clients, being taught to dance by a bordello madam who resembles the psychologist, and when Baby Doll dances, she goes into one of a series of linked fantasy scapes in which she is now a warrior fighting in one of a series of slightly linked scenarios. Opponents include 10 ft tall samurai golems, clockwork steam-powered WWI German zombies, orcs, dragons, robot gunmen, and so forth. Again, these are all looking like male fantasies to me.
Throughout all this, there is an escape plan hatching, in a slightly Inceptionish way; in her war fantasies, she sort of works out what she needs to assemble to escape, and in the bordello fantasy she assembles these items, all the while evading the orderley/bordello owning gangster.
Essentially, what this film looks like is what would happen if you gave a geek going through puberty some mescaline, transcribed his babblings, then filmed it, stitching it together into a narrative structure that attempts to explain why it's otherwise totally incoherent. As a film, it succeeds in only two areas. First, when we're having our fantasy war sequences, for all that it's utter nonsense, and actually admitted by the plot to be just a hallucination, it all looks pretty spectacular. Zack Snyder knows how to make an action sequence look pretty damned epic, and all this is pretty much 300 without the taste and restraint. So, on the pure eyecandy "women in lingerie with guns shooting steampunk zombies" front, Great Success. Second, although the film pays a debt to a number of "multi layer reality" films, like Inception, eXistenZ, and the majority of the back catalogue of Terry Gilliam, there is a sense of originality here - nobody else is doing stuff remotely like this, even if it is pretty debatable whether anyone at all should be.
Downsides - well, frankly, the whole asylum/bordello thing is pretty queasy exploitation stuff, along the theme of "Fat ugly men abuse beautiful young girls who are forced to dance for their amusement." It's the kind of thing that might, maybe, in the hands of a director and cast with sufficient talent, transcend the "ick" factor, and say something interesting. In the hands of Zack Snyder, I'm afraid it comes off looking rather cheap and tawdry, with nobody coming out of it looking particularly unsullied.
I've long held the opinion that it's perfectly fine for a film to be stupid, so long as it's fun, but for far too much of this film, it just isn't. The good fun bits that are fun do not outweigh the bad bits that aren't. I'm looking forward to Zack Snyder's version of Superman, but he should never, ever, be allowed to write a script ever again.
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
Submarine
I don't know about you, but I grew up on a diet of movies involving American teens, whose lives bore no relation to my own. Much as The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off are seminal teen movies, as Morrissey once warbled, they say nothing to me about my life. I never had an adventure of any kind in detention, and I didn't know anyone whose dad owned a Ferrari. This, then, is the antidote to all that.
Directed by Richard Ayoade, of IT Crowd and much other stuff fame, this is a tale of a teenage boy who's too smart for his own good, growing up in a small town that he clearly feels is beneath him. In this case it's Swansea, but it could be any provincial British town. The boy's name is Oliver Tate, and he's just the kind of amusingly unsufferable prick that I'm sure we all were at his age. And he is about to go through something of a minefield of his life, which includes bullying at school, getting his first girlfriend, his parents going through a sticky patch, his mother taking up with a new age hippy type who's just moved in next door, and so forth.
All of this he navigates, narrating his life as if it were a movie, trying and often failing to do the right thing, and get through it all unscathed and mentally intact.
So far, so Adrian Mole. And in many ways, it's got quite a bit of the Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole about it. Where we part from it, however, is in that it's cruelly funny, with excellent dialogue, and a genuinely hilarious central performance from Craig Roberts (who you may have seen recently in Being Human); it's also a very well judged performance. Oliver Tate is, to put it mildly, a bit of a tit. As he's portrayed, he's amusingly so, with a lot of pathos about him. Any more of a tit, and you'd probably lose patience with him; any less, he wouldn't be funny. Hence, between the director and the actor, they've captured something pretty special, which is a portrayal of a teenager which seems true to life, and yet is still endearing.
It's a highly enjoyable film, and if you're in your mid to late thirties, and grew up thinking that you lived among social and intellectual inferiors, in a small town you couldn't wait to get out of, then you'll also find it hugely nostalgic.
Directed by Richard Ayoade, of IT Crowd and much other stuff fame, this is a tale of a teenage boy who's too smart for his own good, growing up in a small town that he clearly feels is beneath him. In this case it's Swansea, but it could be any provincial British town. The boy's name is Oliver Tate, and he's just the kind of amusingly unsufferable prick that I'm sure we all were at his age. And he is about to go through something of a minefield of his life, which includes bullying at school, getting his first girlfriend, his parents going through a sticky patch, his mother taking up with a new age hippy type who's just moved in next door, and so forth.
All of this he navigates, narrating his life as if it were a movie, trying and often failing to do the right thing, and get through it all unscathed and mentally intact.
So far, so Adrian Mole. And in many ways, it's got quite a bit of the Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole about it. Where we part from it, however, is in that it's cruelly funny, with excellent dialogue, and a genuinely hilarious central performance from Craig Roberts (who you may have seen recently in Being Human); it's also a very well judged performance. Oliver Tate is, to put it mildly, a bit of a tit. As he's portrayed, he's amusingly so, with a lot of pathos about him. Any more of a tit, and you'd probably lose patience with him; any less, he wouldn't be funny. Hence, between the director and the actor, they've captured something pretty special, which is a portrayal of a teenager which seems true to life, and yet is still endearing.
It's a highly enjoyable film, and if you're in your mid to late thirties, and grew up thinking that you lived among social and intellectual inferiors, in a small town you couldn't wait to get out of, then you'll also find it hugely nostalgic.
Monday, 28 March 2011
Frankenstein
Directed by Danny Boyle, starring Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch. If you've not heard of this coming out, and are thinking that maybe you should have, that may well be because it's not strictly a film. It's part of the National Theatre's NT Live programme, which are a series of stage plays broadcast live to cinemas nationwide. This is, without doubt, one of the best, most obvious ideas ever, and one which presumably has only become possible with the advent of digital projection.
This isn't the first one I've been to, but it's the first I'm claiming as my weekly cinema visit; mostly I think because it actually feels pretty cinematic. Also, I went to see it twice, and so I haven't had much time for anything else this month, and I need to pad the numbers somehow.
Why did I go see it twice? Because it's two performances. Miller and Cumberbatch have apparently been switching the roles of Frankestein and Creature night by night. Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXnQLiMTpw
Obviously, the story is the classic - Creature is created, thrown out into the cruel world, and thus is educated in the ways of cruelty. It's very interesting to watch two actors take that basis, and interpret exactly the same script in very different ways. In Benedict Cumberbatch's hands, the Creature seems like a person recovering from a debilitating brain injury or stroke, slowly relearning the way his body works, and overcoming its limitations. And thus, the play becomes about how we treat disabled people, and the rage they must feel at being marginalised by society. When it's Johnny Lee Miller's turn, the Creature is more of an infant, new to the world, learning as he goes, and the film is much more about ideas like nature vs nurture, and how people become who they are through how they're treated in formative years.
It's hard to say which is better - and a false dichotomy to believe that one of them has to be. Ultimately, I think the production is better for having these two aspects to it.
Overall, the production isn't without its weakness; I don't think the stage adaptation is particularly brilliant, and early on in the play where the world is being presented as a confusing place for the Creature, the staging is a bit self-indulgent. But once that's done with, and the Creature's off to meet its maker in good old fashioned melodramatic style, and from then on it's full tilt towards the suitably gruesome conclusion.
You should definitely seek out future NT Live productions. You get to see top notch live theatre, and with a bit of luck, the widening audience might go some way towards the arts being cost effective again.
This isn't the first one I've been to, but it's the first I'm claiming as my weekly cinema visit; mostly I think because it actually feels pretty cinematic. Also, I went to see it twice, and so I haven't had much time for anything else this month, and I need to pad the numbers somehow.
Why did I go see it twice? Because it's two performances. Miller and Cumberbatch have apparently been switching the roles of Frankestein and Creature night by night. Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXnQLiMTpw
Obviously, the story is the classic - Creature is created, thrown out into the cruel world, and thus is educated in the ways of cruelty. It's very interesting to watch two actors take that basis, and interpret exactly the same script in very different ways. In Benedict Cumberbatch's hands, the Creature seems like a person recovering from a debilitating brain injury or stroke, slowly relearning the way his body works, and overcoming its limitations. And thus, the play becomes about how we treat disabled people, and the rage they must feel at being marginalised by society. When it's Johnny Lee Miller's turn, the Creature is more of an infant, new to the world, learning as he goes, and the film is much more about ideas like nature vs nurture, and how people become who they are through how they're treated in formative years.
It's hard to say which is better - and a false dichotomy to believe that one of them has to be. Ultimately, I think the production is better for having these two aspects to it.
Overall, the production isn't without its weakness; I don't think the stage adaptation is particularly brilliant, and early on in the play where the world is being presented as a confusing place for the Creature, the staging is a bit self-indulgent. But once that's done with, and the Creature's off to meet its maker in good old fashioned melodramatic style, and from then on it's full tilt towards the suitably gruesome conclusion.
You should definitely seek out future NT Live productions. You get to see top notch live theatre, and with a bit of luck, the widening audience might go some way towards the arts being cost effective again.
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Route Irish
Some background. "Route Irish" is the road from Baghdad International Airport to the secured Green Zone in the centre of the city. It has been described as the most dangerous road in the world, rife with ambushes, IEDs, random gunfire, etc. And of course, it's this road that everybody arriving in Baghdad on some sort of business must travel. And so, there's quite a security trade, private security contractors employing ex-soldiers to bodyguard various people and packages on this route. And it's this that's the basis of the film.
We have two ex-army scousers, and best mates, Frankie (John Bishop) and Fergus (Mark Womack). I say we have them; at the outset of the film, we have, sadly, a pine box containing not quite all of Frankie. The pair of them have been working for a private security company in Iraq, and while Fergus has been back in the UK, Frankie's been killed in action on Route Irish, escorting a journalist. We're told by their bosses that it's just an unfortunate case of "wrong place, wrong time". Fergus, however is having none of this.
Being unwilling to believe that no-one is responsible, and tortured by the guilt of having recruited Frankie to work for this company in the first place, Fergus embarks on a crusade to determine just who's responsible, and get justice.
Now, obviously, this is a Ken Loach film, so we aren't talking Matt Damon's Green Zone here. If anything, it feels like the TV Drama Hillsborough, focussing on the grief of the bereaved, and a seemingly unquenchable desire for more justice, regardless of the current findings. In many respects, Fergus is well on his way down the path to the film's conclusion long before he's uncovered any wrongdoing; he has a need to uncover it long before he could reasonably expect it to exist. He's looking for someone else to punish for his own guilt.
And just when you thought it couldn't get any cheerier, there's the waterboarding. I won't get into the specifics of why, but in the later stages of the film there is a very, very graphic scene of torture by waterboarding. And, I find, they managed to film it with such authenticity by actually waterboarding the guy - that is, the actor was actually put through the actual waterboarding process by the other actor in the scene. To the point that he suffered post-traumatic stress afterwards. I don't know how to feel about this; it echoes another thing in the film, the use of actual stock footage of victims of war. In this film, you're not just being asked to think about something appalling happening, you're asked to watch a genuine reconstruction.
It's powerful. It sends a message. It makes you think. But there's a sense of disquiet in watching it that is nothing to do with acting or filmmaking; you get to look into the eyes of a man genuinely in fear of his life. I can't decide or not whether this is responsible thing for them to have done. I feel like I should have been warned, and that it was somehow inappropriate to present such a thing in a fictional context.
In any case, other than that scene, I can't really fault the film much. There are the usual hallmarks of Ken Loach social realism, to the point where you get a couple of scousers shouting at each other, and it's as genuinely unintelligible as the real experience. But it grips you, it moves you, and if there's any fault to the piece at all, it's that it's preaching to the choir somewhat; I don't think there's many people who ever sat down to watch any Ken Loach film who thought waterboarding was a good idea.
We have two ex-army scousers, and best mates, Frankie (John Bishop) and Fergus (Mark Womack). I say we have them; at the outset of the film, we have, sadly, a pine box containing not quite all of Frankie. The pair of them have been working for a private security company in Iraq, and while Fergus has been back in the UK, Frankie's been killed in action on Route Irish, escorting a journalist. We're told by their bosses that it's just an unfortunate case of "wrong place, wrong time". Fergus, however is having none of this.
Being unwilling to believe that no-one is responsible, and tortured by the guilt of having recruited Frankie to work for this company in the first place, Fergus embarks on a crusade to determine just who's responsible, and get justice.
Now, obviously, this is a Ken Loach film, so we aren't talking Matt Damon's Green Zone here. If anything, it feels like the TV Drama Hillsborough, focussing on the grief of the bereaved, and a seemingly unquenchable desire for more justice, regardless of the current findings. In many respects, Fergus is well on his way down the path to the film's conclusion long before he's uncovered any wrongdoing; he has a need to uncover it long before he could reasonably expect it to exist. He's looking for someone else to punish for his own guilt.
And just when you thought it couldn't get any cheerier, there's the waterboarding. I won't get into the specifics of why, but in the later stages of the film there is a very, very graphic scene of torture by waterboarding. And, I find, they managed to film it with such authenticity by actually waterboarding the guy - that is, the actor was actually put through the actual waterboarding process by the other actor in the scene. To the point that he suffered post-traumatic stress afterwards. I don't know how to feel about this; it echoes another thing in the film, the use of actual stock footage of victims of war. In this film, you're not just being asked to think about something appalling happening, you're asked to watch a genuine reconstruction.
It's powerful. It sends a message. It makes you think. But there's a sense of disquiet in watching it that is nothing to do with acting or filmmaking; you get to look into the eyes of a man genuinely in fear of his life. I can't decide or not whether this is responsible thing for them to have done. I feel like I should have been warned, and that it was somehow inappropriate to present such a thing in a fictional context.
In any case, other than that scene, I can't really fault the film much. There are the usual hallmarks of Ken Loach social realism, to the point where you get a couple of scousers shouting at each other, and it's as genuinely unintelligible as the real experience. But it grips you, it moves you, and if there's any fault to the piece at all, it's that it's preaching to the choir somewhat; I don't think there's many people who ever sat down to watch any Ken Loach film who thought waterboarding was a good idea.
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