REVIEW: Whole Lotta Sole (2012)

Whole Lotta Sole is Terry George’s follow-up to The Shore, his Oscar-winning short film. Contrasting with the reception of the short (sold-out screenings, a lot of news coverage, rounds of applause), this new feature, filmed in Belfast and Downpatrick, played once locally in the 12^th Belfast Film Festival in 2012. Afterwards, it disappeared, wondering into the smaller and more obscure US and UK film festivals, before being released as a straight-to-DVD feature under the pointless title Stand-Off with a blurb that makes no reference to Belfast or The Shore and a remarkably feeble tagline – ‘Will Appeal To Fans of Snatch and The Guard.’ Where The Shore was praised as the great leap forward for a viable film industry in Northern Ireland, George’s follow-up seems to have given a lie to that notion.

As the DVD has it: In an attempt to protect his family and pay off his gambling debts to a local gangster, Jimbo robs the local fish market unaware that it s owned by the gangster. On the run, he hides out in an antique shop where he takes hostage a group of people, including Maguire (Brendan Fraser) who may (or may not) be his father. Surrounded by the police, the SAS and the gangsters crew Jimbo must use his wits (and some antique guns) to try and stay alive.

Jimbo, by the way, is played by Martin McCann, one of the more talented local actors, but presumably not a big enough name for the back of the DVD.

Anyway, the film, such as it is, is very much a crime comedy, a staple of Irish cinema since I Went Down did so well. Since then, however, the genre hasn’t produced many greats, merely a few fun but disposable gangster comedies. Only In Bruges managed to be properly subversive and create something dark and original out of these kinds of tropes. The villain of Whole Lotta Sole is a gangster called Mad Dog Flynn (David O’Hara) so it was never particularly promising. The story of the film – as it plays out in the film and not as described on the DVD – is slightly off-kilter and the opening moments throw in so many strange characters that the film might only prove unconvincing to a local audience and bewildering to everyone else. Father and son policemen, the Wellers, (Colm Meaney and Michael Legge) are introduced long before they are needed and a family of over-the-top gypsies seem to be there for no reason until midway in the film. Maguire seems to be the main character but the film never takes the time to introduce him – the plot unfolds slowly with a lot of twists and turns, which requires many of the characters to be initially unknowable – and he disappears from the screen for long periods of time. Sophie (Yaya Alafia), Maguire’s love interest, has nothing whatsoever to do. The dialogue is poor too, with mostly vague lines given by characters who often appear confused and lost. An early confrontation between Flynn and Jimbo’s wife Annie (Mary McCrossan) seems either to be full of meaning or awkwardly made up on the spot. The plot, when it is all revealed, relies heavily on odd circumstance and coincidence and the stand-off of the DVD title is devoid of tension since it is all played as slapstick.

As a comedy though, it is only slightly diverting. Detective Weller’s exasperation with the SAS is a comic nod to Northern Ireland’s current situation and it is believable but lacking in wit. Weller is equally exasperated that no one recognises that quote from Cool Hand Luke. Colm Meaney is stuck with more bad dialogue about ‘those days’ though it isn’t as embarrassing and morally dubious as the truly awful A Belfast Story – which, incidentally, got a cinema release. Weller is also exasperated by his son’s secret conversion to Catholicism, which seems to be trying to make light of The Troubles and the divisions still prevalent in Northern Ireland (if not spuriously attempting to suggest that they no longer exist) but it doesn’t go anywhere. In fact, most of the references to The Troubles in the film are bizarrely pointless, some possibly even misguided. When the twists have played out and all is revealed, the film has nowhere to go so it just wraps up with a few bangs haphazardly done and a truly awful ending in which the characters pose awkwardly in front of a fake holiday backdrop and wave to the audience in a last ditch attempt to charm a gypped audience.

Some far as acting goes, Meaney is better here than in A Belfast Story and Legge is decent. Brendan Fraser, presumably here for complicated co-production reasons, has nothing to do. The two kids Petie and Paulie (Jamie Kierans and James Napier respectively) are quite good but too many scenes rely too heavily on them for cheap laughs, while their parents (Amanda Hurwitz and Frankie McCafferty) are over-the-top. Martin McCann continues to prove himself as a talented and convincing actor, but he still hasn’t got a role to properly showcase his abilities. In certain scenes, he acts everybody off the set. He is also the only actor who doesn’t play it as a comedy and is the best for it.

Whole Lotta Sole is, then, another wasted opportunity for Northern Irish cinema – not as bad, or as funny, as A Belfast Story but nothing to be proud of. Like The Shore, it builds itself up and then goes nowhere. Neither of these films seems like the work of the Terry George who wrote In The Name of the Father and Hotel Rwanda – though it does feel like the Terry George who wrote The Boxer. The film’s release seems like a bewildering mistake until one actually sees the film – a ramshackle and uneven mess that is just plainly badly made. A lacklustre, misleadingly designed straight-to-DVD release being probably the most appropriate.

See also:
Perrier's Bounty
Jump
The Guard

REVIEW: Death of a Superhero (2012)

Death of a Superhero is a 2011-made Irish-German co-production, which never saw a cinematic release in Northern Ireland other than as part of the 12^th Belfast Film Festival – the same fate suffered by the much more dull Stella Days. Directed by Ian Fitzgibbon (Spin The Bottle, A Film With Me In It, Perrier’s Bounty) and a bit of a departure from crime comedies, Death of a Superhero is a sombre drama about a young man coming to terms with terminal illness, ineffective chemotherapy, terrified parents and girls.

Donald (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) is dying and though he tries to put up a front for his parents (Sharon Horgan – Run and Jump - and Michael McElhatton – November Afternoon, All Soul’s Day, I Went Down, Saltwater, Intermission, Adam and Paul, Mickybo and Me, Spin The Bottle, The Tiger’s Tail, Fifty Dead Men Walking, Perrier’s Bounty, Parked, Albert Nobbs, Shadow Dancer), inside he is wracked by thoughts of nihilism and suicide. A thanatologist cum therapist Dr. Adrian King (Andy Serkis) breaks through his defensiveness and they form a bond, which will ultimately give Donald a new outlook on life. At the same time, Dom falls for the rebellious Shelly (Aisling Loftus).

Donald is a talented animator and he has created a private, highly personal comic book world for himself, inhabited by a doomed superhero, that significantly reflects his own experiences. The film intercuts between live-action and animated sequences, the animations representing Donald’s thoughts and actions. Donald will often retreat to this animated world, although here his heroic counterpart is frequently seen restrained and under threat of imminent death. These sequences also feature a series of highly sexualised women, who represent Donald’s own burgeoning sexuality. Intimacy is something Donald has had little experience of and these fairly chauvinistic caricatures speak equally of his willingness to lose his virginity before he dies and his lack of experience with the opposite sex in real life. Shelly, calling his animations ‘porn’, will disrupt his ideas about women, though it leaves the film with a kind of Madonna-whore dichotomy that it never outgrows.

In summary, Death of a Superhero is a film about cancer and has all that can be expected from such a film. Its clichéd and a lot of what is done here has been done before but there are moments where a detectable sincerity and a willingness to tell the truth can manage to slip through. The performances are all very good with Horgan and McElhatton the most interesting as parents who cannot cope with what their son is going through. Serkis is good although in The Good Teacher role, which is as clichéd as anything but which somehow always manages to work – even when Adrian allows Donald to smash up his boat because it is therapeutic. Aisling Loftus is very good in a role that could have ruined the film – it remains a not very rewarding role but somehow Loftus, with her unpredictable performance, makes a lot out of it. The superhero stuff is silly but it is nonetheless a meaningful and useful way of getting inside Donald’s head, as well as a somewhat unique approach to a story like this.

Despite this, the film falls flat in the end. The typical sentimentality rears its head and though the film does pack an emotional weight, there is a sense of unreality and stupidity. Donald, of course, inspires everybody by the end. As soon as we see Adrian’s boat, abandoned in his front garden, we know that, by the end, he will be moved to take a sailing trip, probably after Donald has died. The sea plays a part in the end just like in a lot of Irish films about physical or emotional journeys – Lamb, Into The West, Disco Pigs and Dollhouse.

The animations end with ‘success through adversity’ in which the hero uses his very weakness to destroy his enemies, which says a lot about the message the film is trying to pander. It is of the ‘inspiration through illness’ malarkey, a difficult Hollywood message and one that Irish cinema would do well to get away from – My Left Foot is great despite it mainly because Christy Brown, as portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis, was a much more ambiguous figure and because the film itself is very funny; Inside I’m Dancing, however, couldn’t come out from under its unbecoming sentimentality. Death of a Superhero comes somewhere in between – compassionate, likeable and by turns realistic but ultimately a little childish, a little too desperate for closure, for something good to come out of the story of a 15-year old terminal cancer patient.

Death of a Superhero, then, is a confident if traditional cancer story that doesn’t quite succeed in avoiding the trivialisation and sentimentalisation of its subject. Dr Adrian King feeling the need to sail away in his boat makes sense only because it has been done before, not because of anything to do with his character or the film’s storyline. It gets by mainly on the strength of its cast. 

See also: Perrier's Bounty

Hit & Run (2012)

Hit & Run is a low-budget action-comedy car chase film that has a slew of influences and yet seems to be entirely the product of its writer, co-producer, co-director, co-editor and star Dax Shepard, who has also cast fiancée Kristen Bell and mate Bradley Cooper.

Charlie Bronson (Dax Shepard), whose name comes more from the infamous British prisoner than the stone-faced star, is in Witness Protection, hiding out in Milton, California, with his girlfriend Annie (Kristen Bell) and his bungling US Marshal protector Randy (Tom Arnold). Annie is a professor at the local college and has a doctorate in Non-Violent Conflict Resolution from Stanford. Instead of laying her off, her advisor Debbie (Kristen Chenoweth) gets her a job interview at a new Conflict Resolution faculty in the University of California in Los Angeles. Annie initially refuses to leave Charlie yet he decides to drive her there anyway.

Charlie cannot return to Los Angeles for fear of reprisals from Alexander Dmitri (Bradley Cooper), a former partner who was set to prison on Charlie’s evidence. However, it has been four years and Annie’s once-in-a-lifetime job is worth the risk. However, Annie’s jealous ex Gil (Michael Rosenbaum), suspicious of Charlie’s motives, follows them. He finds out Charlie’s real name and contacts Alexander. Alexander and his band of hoodlums are soon on Charlie’s trail.

Hit & Run most obviously refers back to such chase films as Smokey and the Bandit and Midnight Run, though there are a host of allusions. One musical cue during a romantic moment would recall the criminal lovers on the run classic Badlands where it not for the fact that the film seems more familiar with True Romance, which quotes the same music. The use of an LA storm drain could be a nod to either Grease or Point Blank. Charlie’s real name is Yul, in reference to Yul Brynner – apparently no one younger than Beau Bridges has ever heard of him. The references do not really add much to the film, but they do help position it as light nostalgia, making sure that its audience won’t expect too much.

As nostalgia, the film is neither funny nor exciting. As a car chase film, the car chases themselves are quite uninspiring. They are put together with a jittery editing style that makes them both confusing and distancing. You never feel that you are in the car with Charlie and Annie, nor do you feel that their driving is all that exhilarating. The chases feel like regressions after Tarantino’s awful but for the final car chase vanity project Death Proof. However, Hit & Run’s primary mode is Sunday afternoon light entertainment and anything too exciting or anything suggesting that the couple might be a danger might break the mood. Similarly, the film is never quite funny; it nods in that direction but never delivers on any laughs. An early sequence involving Randy shooting his own car could possibly have been funny except for the fact that it is not clear why he is shooting his car. Kristen Chenoweth does a spiel about Xanax as if Woody Allen never picked up a pen. The film’s opening scene tries for idyllic and touching romance and light comedy but comes off awkward and tacky. A surprising revelation that explains why Alexander feels so aggrieved is over-extended. Hit & Run is silly and freewheeling and yet it is heavily restrained in many ways.

Having said that, the film is, in retrospect, somewhat likeable. Annie’s doctorate in Non-Violent Conflict Resolution means that Charlie is not allowed to use violence for fear that he might disrespect her self-created degree. Following one frustrating confrontation with Gil, Charlie has to make do with covering him in exhaust smoke and dust. Later, while someone is checking out Charlie’s prized car – about which there is a lot of chatter – Charlie is foolish enough to use the word ‘fag’ for which he is reprimanded and forced to apologize. On top of that, there are a few gay characters in the film who, though primarily comic relief, are presented fairly realistically and certainly non-judgementally – probably the film’s only diversion from already-covered ground. The ending is similarly surprising since the film’s climax has more to do with Charlie helping out his girlfriend than with settling any old scores. It makes for a rather unsatisfying ending but it is a welcome change from the glut of redemption through carnage films that leave a bad taste in your mouth. Typically, Annie remains a woman entirely dependent on men, presumably the film’s willingness to be PC did not extend as far as its female characters. However, it is Charlie’s encouragement and consideration of Annie that wins her back, rather than his prowess with violence.

Hardly a deconstruction of the action genre, Hit & Run nevertheless ends up being a rather pacifist film – if only by comparison – in which Annie’s job interview deadline is more important than Charlie getting rid of Alexander once and for all. In this sense, it is much more of a romcom than it is an action film. The film is certainly post-PC in that it seems to recognise that violent actions films often do make you feel dirty afterwards. Hit & Run is primarily nostalgia, but it is surprisingly non-macho and open to diversity. If only it was more radical and less disposable. 

ARTICLE: The Top 10 of 2012

Films that were good but missed the Top 10 include:

Young Adult - in which director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody return after less successful solo projects to deliver a surprisingly funny, sad and angry piece of genre criticisl that was worthy precisely becuase it was adult. Another good indie comedy was Whit Stillman’s Damsels In Distress, worthwhile for its sense of humour and its almost total incongruity – and the fact that it has an appendix. Whimsical, funny and entirely enjoyable would also described To Rome With Love, not one of Woody Allen’s best but a nice, cheery film nonetheless.

 

A Dangerous Method was a fascinating talking piece full of interesting ideas, performances and techniques. That it may not even be the best Cronenberg film of the year goes to show how great this filmmaker remains. This description also works for Cosmopolis with the addition of the powerful performance from Paul Giamatti. Both are riveting cinema.

The Woman In Black is messy and unoriginal, but it was fun to watch with an audience that didn’t see it all coming. Similarly The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is nowhere near good enough, but it was likable. And 21 Jump Street gets a mention for being surprisingly funny.

Rampart is like some of James Ellroy’s best recent fiction – morally complex and full of incident but awkwardly repetitive and a little too long. Woody Harrelson gives what must surely be one of the best dirty cop performances in cinema. Less complex, but incredibly dark and funny was William Friedkin’s Killer Joe, which was equally fun and offensive, and an incendiary, challenging film. Looper was intriguing and full of ideas, though less successful in hindsight – worth a mention because it beats out all the other dumb, male-centric action blockbusters and contains a critique of their conceptions of moral violence.

Room 237 was a thoroughly enjoyable trip into the labyrinth that is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. A group of ardent fans spin their interpretations about what the film is saying - some enlightening, some nonsense but all revealing the joy of film watching and film discussion.

10. Five Broken Cameras was a powerful portrait of a peaceful struggle against oppression and some much needed insight into a people who are too easily presented in the West as terrorists. Like the writings of Edward W. Said, it is convincing precisely because of the moral and humanist force of its argument.

9. Rust and Bone is a film with too much at stake and too many dramatic devices on show, and yet it manages to be entirely convincing and often very moving for the majority of its running time, mainly thanks to Cotillard and Schoenaerts. Audiard continues to show an ability to reinvigorate pap into powerful and realistic cinema.

8. Breaking Dawn – Part Two. It was not the best of the series but it was a very good closer, one that remained thoroughly enjoyable despite some rough patches. It deserved its money for being a blockbuster that focuses on emotions and characters rather than on CGI and battles and for being one of the few films released to focus on strong females and to aim at a female audience.

7. The Turin Horse is apparently the swansong of Béla Tarr and is possibly even more powerfully apocalyptic than von Trier’s Melancholia, precisely because its focus is so much more intimate and, hence, so much more devastating. It says a lot about mankind, that, for all our progress, we still depend on a few simple things that we cannot control. A powerful visual and emotional work that is also intellectually satisfying as only the best of arthouse cinema can be.

6. The Master was fascinating simply because it was so open to interpretation and yet many of its successes are simply down to talent. Phoenix and Hoffman are both great and the writing and direction is focussed and evocative. A lot of the joy of The Master is in seeing a collection of talented artists doing a very good job.

5. The Angels’ Share is the funniest film on the list but it might also be the most politically important in the current climate of cuts and the demonization of those on welfare. Loach continues to bring the concerns of those too often ignored to the foreground and, though he is in a lighter mood than normal, his message and his anger have not been blunted.

4. Martha Marcy May Marlene is a well-made thriller with a lot of interesting ideas about society and indoctrination and some techniques that recall the best of the French New Wave. Sean Durkin proves himself to be one to watch and is already one of the most interesting of a new generation of American filmmakers.

3. What Richard Did is another film that leaves a lot up to the audience and it is specific yet general enough to point to a lot more issues than its plot would seem to accommodate. At once simple yet complex, it features a powerful performance from Jack Reynor and an evocative subtlety of technique and purpose from director Lenny Abrahamson. One of the few films of the year in which the camera is placed precisely where it needs to be for exactly as long as it should be.

2. The Descendants. Alexander Payne has become a skilled director of comedy-dramas in which the emotions and the laughs are not at each other’s throats but instead pleasantly co-exist. The Descendants is his most human film and his least distanced and critical. It is very funny but also very moving – ultimately, it is an incredibly well observed and likable film.

1. This Is Not A Film. It was difficult to decide whether The Descendants or Jafar Panahi’s multi-faceted study of cinema and imprisonment should get the top spot, but I opted for This Is Not A Film because it is the more important and innovative. In a very short running time, Panahi questions the power of cinema, whether political or otherwise, and the need for a filmmaker to make films. Defying categories, it is also a documentary about Panahi’s house arrest, an essay film about his ideas about what cinema, and art in general, fundamentally is and a powerful act of defiance.

UPDATE: The Hunt, Thomas Vinterberg's fantastic and powerful companion piece to Festen should be placed at No. 3.

See also: The Top 10 of 2011

REVIEW: Seven Psychopaths (2012)

With In Bruges in 2008, Martin McDonagh made a dark comedy about hit men that was both extremely funny, bittersweet and practically art all in one. Despite the Tarantino trappings, any comparison with that hopelessly waylaid once-interesting filmmaker proved utterly inappropriate and almost insulting. However, after four long years, McDonagh is back with a film that is stuck with that comparison, one that is now sadly accurate.

The plot, or at least the film’s presentation of it, is complex beyond any real justification. The website IMDB has it as: “A struggling screenwriter inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends kidnap a gangster's beloved Shih Tzu.” Add to this the fact that the screenwriter, Marty – read Martin McDonagh -  (Colin Farrell) is writing a script called ‘Seven Psychopaths’, for which he has only one psychopath worked out. Of course, as the script takes shape, it starts to resemble the writer’s reality, especially when his oddball friends Billy and Hans (Sam Rockwell and a really rather good Christopher Walken) decide to help him out, inadvertently getting him involved with the genuinely psychopathic Charlie (Woody Harrelson).

It is all a bit of mess, really. Seven Psychopaths is about a writer who is trying to write a script entitled ‘Seven Psychopaths’ and yet he does not want to make a film about men with guns and disposable women and a bleakly immoral worldview. In fact, he wants his script to be life affirming, and at one point decides that his script should have no climatic shoot-out and basically finish discursively, with the main characters sitting in a desert and doing nothing but talking. And yet Seven Psychopaths is another film about men with guns and disposable women and a bleakly immoral worldview. McDonagh fills the film with guns, violence and badly characterised women. Underneath, however, is the impression that he is somehow above these tainted films, if only because he is making a meta-movie that messes with audience expectations. McDonagh is critical, yet he also glories in the very things that he is supposed to be condemning. At one point, Hans criticizes Marty because his female characters are terrible, an in-joke that reflects McDonagh’s own script and the nature of the genre itself. Yet McDonagh never really makes amends by introducing a real, three-dimensional female character. Instead Abbie Cornish and Olga Kurylenko are embarrassingly underused. The film suggests that there should be no shoot-out, and it goes a long way towards keeping its word but, ultimately, there is one and it is a big disappointment. In the end, McDonagh isn’t a pacifist and he isn’t a ‘psychopath’ – he is just a filmmaker who has lost sight of whatever it is that he had wanted to say, hopefully only briefly.

Billy is the character that represents the audience and he is also the only true psychopath in the film. He is the one who makes sure that the shootout happens as if his own expectations are what force the film to include a shootout. Seven Psychopaths is presumably suggesting that it is the audience’s appetite for carnage that results in the proliferation of these horrible films. No blame can be levelled at the door of Martin McDonagh, who after all merely wrote and directed the film. Similarly, the film feels free to criticize its own audience, especially because they have chosen to go and see a film called “Seven Psychopaths”, the audience’s complicity only compounded further by the utterly woeful trailers. However, McDonagh overlooks his own status as a very good writer-director, exactly as Haneke did with Amour. Certain members of the audience were not there to see a film called “Seven Psychopaths”; they were there to see a film by the “writer-director of In Bruges.” The audience, hence, are not necessarily raving adolescents like Billy, but simply fans of someone who previously proved themselves to be a really good filmmaker and playwright.

Seven Psychopaths is not all bad and indeed there are a few scenes that work really well and which clearly served as the impetus for the project during its formation. It is often very funny and Billy’s imagined shoot-out, which plays out with all of the genre’s most tiresome clichés, is a hoot. The return of the Vietnamese should raise a smirk in anyone familiar with In Bruges. However, the few times that the film comes together merely point to the fact that the majority of the film does not work. There is also a feeling that McDonagh is much more out of his depth in LA, with his American characters all largely insufferable, where, with In Bruges, his characters are nearly all likable. The American landscape seems a little too unknowable in the film as if McDonagh is lost in a foreign country.

Seven Psychopaths is a compromised film and it is very difficult not to blame McDonagh entirely. His script is a mess and whatever point he wanted to make, whether he is ultimately criticizing or glorifying this dodgy genre, is lost in the fray. Colin Farrell is miscast, Woody Harrelson needs better lines and Sam Rockwell overplays it – I don’t need to mention the women. The best performances are from Tom Waits and Christopher Walken though both have too little to do. McDonagh is nothing if not ambitious and Seven Psychopaths does suggest an intention, whatever it was. It just needed a bit more thought and maybe a bit more daring. All that remains is to hope that McDonagh, his fingers severely burnt from his laziness here, will return in a few years with his best film yet, something that does remain likely.

REVIEW: Amour (2012)

Michael Haneke has always been a highly intelligent and critical filmmaker, often saving especial opprobrium for his audience and their expectations. Whether it be his ‘trick’ film Funny Games in which audiences expecting cathartic carnage or the slightly less inhumane The Piano Teacher, which harangues its audience for wanting to see explicit sex scenes, Haneke has always been a little tough to take, if not infuriating – especially if you are watching the films, not for the sex and violence, but for the filmmaker himself. However, Haneke has improved. Hidden is a masterpiece of art house cinema, a blend of seemingly endless interpretations and a remarkable control of effect. He is also credited with a new tenderness towards his characters, as with The White Ribbon, which is horrible and sympathetic in almost but not quite equal measure. Now comes Amour, which is considered to be his most personal and tender film. However, it remains true that Haneke has not dropped his self-reflexive and hectoring tactics just yet.

Anne and George Laurent (Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva) are both retired music teachers. One day, Anne has an attack and her health rapidly debilitates. Having promised not to take her back to hospital, George prepares to care for Anne himself. He is left to watch her deteriorate, practically helpless, with only his strong love for her keeping him going.

Thus goes the plot of Amour, one that would hardly have audiences rushing to the cinema, particularly if they have not read all the glowing reviews or if they were not interested in Haneke the filmmaker. And Haneke seems to be very much aware of this. Following a prologue, which adds little if anything, Haneke begins the film properly with a long take featuring a concert audience filing into their seats, gleefully awaiting the night’s entertainment. An announcer’s voice is heard, wishing the audience an enjoyable evening. The parallel with the cinema audience going in to see Amour is obvious, the joke being that we couldn’t possibly hope to enjoy the night’s entertainment, it being a story about debilitating health and death. Is Haneke then asking us why we are there? What benefit can we possibly hope to get from a film with such a bleak premise? Surely anything positive that can be taken from the film would be insulting or, at the very least, patronising to the people who deal with these problems in reality? Would you like to see some scenes of realistically rendered suffering, all portrayed incredibly convincingly by two of the most renowned French actors of their generation? Do you want their situation to move you to tears? Would you enjoy it then? In short, Haneke wonders, what the hell are you doing here?

In answer to the question, a new film by Michael Haneke will always be of interest because he is an interesting filmmaker. Any filmmaker as good as Haneke ought to find a core audience who would be interested to see his next film, no matter what the subject is. It is not that Haneke is incapable of making a bad film – as Truffaut would have put it in his writings in “Cahiers du cinéma” and, incidentally, Haneke has – but that Haneke’s films are always likely to be worth going to see. Forget the Palme D’Or win and the widespread good reviews that the film has heavily marketed itself with, it is Haneke himself that may draw a sizable degree of the film’s audience. Indeed, the idea behind Amour, as marketed, is not particularly interesting in itself, sounding more like the stuff of bad Hollywood melodrama than anything else. That Haneke feels he can harangue an audience for being interested in a film like Amour is a clear extension of his earlier ‘trick’ films, like Funny Games and its abortive and regressive English-language remake, and an indication that he misguidedly feels that he can slip effortlessly in and out of his auteur status – attracting (tricking) audiences with generic tropes in order to surprise them with a reflexive and by now recognisable critique once inside.

Amour is littered with such moments as this early concert scene, though never so obviously self-reflexive. At one point, an angry but controlled George criticises his daughter Eva (Isabelle Huppert) for being ineffectual and unnecessary. George makes it clear that he does not need her help or her pity. Equally, he would prefer for her not to come as it embarrasses Anne and himself. They do not want to be seen in that way and her watching them is not helping anyone. Although these sentiments may be realistic, it is difficult to see where they leave us, the film’s audience, the ultimate watchers of George and Anne. Amour seems to appeal for their privacy, despite portraying their strife in the most acute detail. At one point, a neighbour congratulates George on how well he is coping and George can barely respond. The point is a clear one – the neighbour’s applause is not helping and it is merely an annoyance, a reminder that there is something wrong with Anne. And yet Eva and the congratulatory neighbour are not so different from the film’s audience, who watch every minute detail of Anne’s deterioration and who are encouraged to see George in a positive light. Yet who is most to blame for this breach of privacy – the audience for not turning away or Haneke for not turning the camera off?

Admittedly, it is foolish to consider the film from this angle alone, but yet it is a device that drives a wedge between the audience and the film. Many reviews claim that it is tender and moving and yet it does not seem to be, precisely because it is so self-reflexive and distancing. When Anne has an attack and can only say the word ‘hurt’, the camera watches unblinkingly for many minutes. Riva’s performance here, though undoubtedly one of a sincere intent, feels mannered and out of place. Anyone familiar with Funny Games might expect her to suddenly snap back to lucidity for a brief second, wink at the camera and ask, “Are you enjoying this?” Yet when George becomes increasingly violent, it is Haneke who refuses to look away. In the end, both Anne and George have disappeared and Eva, the previously thwarted spectator, wonders around the empty flat alone. With all the apartment doors now open, Eva is able to see everything uninhibited. Anne and George have hidden away from view, but it remains open to question whether they are hiding from the gaze of the viewer or the camera wielded by Haneke.

Though certain scenes manage to be moving, such as when George watches Anne plays the piano, and tender - the fact that all the music in the film is unceremoniously interrupted as a parallel for Anne’s life - the film is hopelessly lost in a self-reflexive critique that implicates itself as much as it does the audience, if not more. The critiques of spectacle and voyeurism and the intentions of the audience merely make the film appear cold and distant. And yet if the film is taken at face value, as a tender and moving treatment of love and illness, it is horribly patronising by its own standards. If Anne and George want to be left alone to live through this terrible illness in privacy and in dignity, then Haneke should not have made the film. And if he made the film to ensnare audiences, then he is as guilty as any audience member of using the plight of Anne and George for his own ends, be it emotional or intellectual.

See also: The Seventh Continent

REVIEW: What Richard Did (2012)

What Richard Did is the third feature film by director Lenny Abrahamson and his first since the phenomenal Garage made Abrahamson an international name in 2007. He has taken his time choosing his next film and with What Richard Did we get another insight into modern Ireland that is both universal and recognisably local.

Richard (Jack Reynor) is a successful rugby player who would seem to have the world in the palm of his hand. He is planning to go into rugby professionally, but also continue his studies at the same time. He is very popular and is surrounded by mates and people who look up to him, particularly Stephen and Cian (Gavin Drea and Fionn Walton). He starts a romance with Lara (Roisin Murphy) and looks set to enjoy a long, uncomplicated summer. However, his drunken actions during a brawl outside a house party one night might just ruin his life.

Abrahamson imbues the film with a very real sense of sympathy for Richard, just as he did with the social outcasts in Adam and Paul and Garage. Though the middle class milieu is totally different from those of his previous two films, Abrahamson nevertheless displays the same ability to lift the lid on a particular group of people and reveal the psychology beneath. Richard is a popular guy, but Abrahamson and Reynor present him as an ambiguous character from the very beginning. We often see Richard staring enigmatically at a sunset or at some scenery, the observational style and the ambiguity of the film’s title suggesting that there is a lot going on underneath the surface that Richard presents. When he is alone, Richard is subdued, almost immobile, as if constrained by some deep dissatisfaction or fear.

This may seem premature as all of this occurs before the event, midway through the film, which will alter Richard’s life forever. However, Abrahamson is more interested in his character than he is in conventional plotting and, as a result, it is clear that there is something mildly wrong with Richard before the unfortunate incident. This feature of What Richard Did is worth emphasising as it is emblematic of the film’s ability to suggest almost as much as it reveals, making it a film full of allusive possibilities. Indeed, the previous relationship between Richard and his eventual victim remains unclear throughout the film. It seems that there is some kind of a past between them but the film never bogs itself down in redundant specifics, preferring a richness of possibilities. As a result, What Richard Did is the kind of film that ought to be endlessly talked about.

However, Abrahamson, for all his allusive illusiveness, has not made a film full of ciphers. Most of the actors in the film are very good and the film has a very Cassavetes-feel to it, seeming semi-improvised and workshopped. Jack Reynor is fantastic, easily carrying the film with a performance that is keenly aware of both Richard’s sheer confidence and extroversion and his less definable, darker qualities. Of the adults, Richard’s father Peter (Lars Mikkelsen) is the most interesting, producing a fine study of ineffectual horror. The majority of the young actors are very good at presumably just being themselves with Sam Keeley and Patrick Gibson. Richard will eventually have a long awaited breakdown and Reynor’s performance and Abrahamson’s eye for harrowing realism make the scene a key moment.

Of course, the film will end somewhat inconclusively, but the drama that Abrahamson wrings from the film’s situation is utterly fascinating. The film’s final ten minutes are remarkable for the sheer volume of ideas and nuances that are presented. Defiant, having finally made a decision that he feels is the right one, Richard and Lara spend one last bittersweet night together. However, in the cold light of the morning, Richard has a change of heart and the romance of the night before is tarnished. All of this is conveyed practically without words and is a powerfully evocative depiction of indecision, quilt and fear. Similarly, the film’s final shot is a deeply effective conclusion albeit one without many answers.

Beneath the surface of What Richard Did, an ostensibly straightforward drama about guilt and the loss of innocence, is a complexity that defies easy answers and categories. Similarly, the story is told with a subtly that is only matched by some of the performances making the film as thematically rich as it is enthralling. To say too much about the film is to give too much away so suffice it to say that What Richard Did is the second great film from Ireland’s most important living filmmaker.

What Richard Did will be playing at the QFT from Friday 14th Dec to Thursday 20th Dec.

Also on: http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/article/5404/film-review-what-richard-did

REVIEW: Rust and Bone (2012)

Rust and Bone is the sixth feature from writer-director Jacques Audiard, best known for his previous, the tough A Prophet. Rust and Bone feels like a return to the odd couple motif that gave his otherwise gritty 2001 crime film Read My Lips a heart. Whereas these previous two enlivened the tropes of the crime film through their extreme intensity and earthy realism, Rust and Bone is a bit of a departure, being mainly a romance between a disabled woman (Marion Cotillard) and a bare-knuckle boxer (Matthias Schoenaerts).

Unexpectedly put in charge of his young son Sam (Armand Verdure) after his mother disappears, the practically destitute Alain (Schoenaerts) moves to Antibes and begins to look for work. As a bouncer in a nightclub, he meets Stéphanie (Cotillard), a killer whale trainer. Following a horrible accident at her work, Stéphanie is disabled and a friendship develops between her and Alain. Meanwhile, Alain gets involved in bare-knuckle boxing for some quick cash.

Like Read My Lips and A Prophet, there is nothing especially new here in terms of the film’s plot, which is instead somewhat derivative. However, where the film excels is in Audiard’s ability to give potentially tired material a breath of fresh air. With a handheld camera and natural lighting, his films approach the material with an eye for realism and an honesty of focus. Though it can be manipulative, Rust and Bone is refreshingly uncritical and its emphasis on the emotions of the characters rather than on the developing plot mechanisms makes it surprisingly warm and heartfelt. Technically, the film rarely displays any meaningless stylistics, with Audiard typically preferring to shoot his characters in tight close-ups even when mobile. The film is not without its technical flourishes but, for the most part, the film stays with its characters and happily down to earth. As a result, the film’s contrivances become believable and Rust and Bone becomes a film that it is very easy to be taken away by.

Audiard is ably assisted here by some fantastic cinematography. Stéphane Fontaine, in his third collaboration with Audiard, proves equally adept at shooting intimate indoor scenes with a minimum of intrusive lighting set-ups and the large crowds scenes set in the sea park. Similarly, the film has many impressive lyrical sequences usually to do with the killer whales or with the bare-knuckle boxing, which are off-putting in terms of the film’s otherwise realist aesthetic but do manage to convey a certain beauty. The scenes early in the film set in the sea park are almost sickeningly tense as we are left waiting for something horrible to happen without being quite sure how or when. When the accident does occur, it is shocking precisely because it is unexpected, unseen and subtly presented. Similarly, the bare-knuckle boxing sequences are all horribly realistic, despite a few passages during which the film seems to poetise the violence.

However, the film is best during its slower and quieter moments between Cotillard and Schoenaerts and it is here that the performances get the chance to shine. They approach their characters with a large amount of understanding, often conveying a lot without saying very much. Similarly, they are far from one-note and both display moments of real cruelty, which the film bravely does not make apologies for, instead accepting that, in real life, there are never simply just heroes, villains and victims. Cotillard makes Stéphanie’s devastation queasily real but is also powerfully convincing as a woman tries to get herself back up after a life-shattering accident. One sequence in which Stéphanie begins to do her whale-training exercises for the first time since the accident is a moving and triumphant moment, only slightly sullied by Audiard’s bizarre decision to drown it out with Katy Perry song on the soundtrack. Schoenaerts is equally good in an intensely physical performance although, again, he is best when things are quiet. We are not always supposed to like him, but Schoenaerts is adept at portraying a hint of vulnerability even when he is at his most thuggish. His developing attraction to Stéphanie is well handled and his refusal to let her sit inside and mourn her legs could have been annoying and contrived but is instead surprisingly convincing. It is a tribute to the two lead actors that when the film is focused on them it is at its best.

The film is not without its flaws, often the result of a certain over-egging of the cake. Audiard sometimes moves into an oddly lyrical approach during the bare-knuckle boxing scenes, which feels like a bit of a misstep. The same is true for the use of Katy Perry during an emotionally significant moment that would have worked better without brash American pop. Similarly, the film’s final third does become less convincing and towards the end the film rushes to throw a variety of dramatic devices into the mix, none of which really come off. Cotillard is robbed of a real ending and Schoenaerts is given too many. One involving a frozen lake, while admittedly effective as it plays out, feels in retrospective to be a little too artificial and cheap. The ending also feels a little too optimistic, as everything seems to work out so well that it undercuts the film’s realism somewhat. However, the film is full of enough nice touches and enough honesty that these inconsistencies feel like quibbles.

Rust and Bone is a very good drama, marked by Audiard’s typical intensity and his ability to make recognisable material refreshingly new. Cotillard and Schoenaerts compliment Audiard’s directness with great performances, most likely a career best for both of them. The film is hardly perfect but is not an easy one to dismiss. 

ARTICLE: Beneath The Earth Film Festival

Beneath The Earth is an internet-based film festival, which specializes in films that would otherwise be overlooked. The festival is designed to give its films an audience it would not otherwise have and to give the participating filmmakers a leg-up in the industry.

The film that was awarded Best Film was Ditching School to Whistle (directed by Ien Chi), a short documentary about Ien Chi and his journey to a Whistling Convention and what went on there. It was a well-made film about a subject few would know anything about. While not the most conventional of subjects, the film does manage to convey, to a degree, what the Whistling Convention means to some of those who attend. However, the film does not go into as much depth as it could have and the conclusions that Ien Chi comes to at the end of the film are not entirely convincing. As a portrait of people’s enthusiasm for whistling, it is illuminating, but the subject matter is nevertheless rather slight and deeper meanings are a little too hard to find. Ditching School to Whistle also won the Best Story award.

The Audience Award went to Taiwanese short The Double (Yu-Tong Weng), a strange short film that reflects on trauma and isolation, dreams and awakening sexuality. The camerawork can be off-putting, with many of the shots fragmenting faces and objects without much apparent purpose. Similarly fragmented was the narrative, which refuses to reveal the full story until the end. Overall, it is a little too long and sombre, but it is commendable for its seriousness and artistry, attributes that feature in most of the seven films in the festival. The Double also won Best Soundtrack.

Refuge (David Schmudde) picked up the Best Acting and Best Editing awards. Refuge is a good short that plays around with a complex narrative and a central mystery that is not revealed until the closing moments. It deals with such themes as guilt and expiation. It overdoes the narrative jumpiness to an extent as the viewer left confused for the majority of the running time as to what the point of the film is. However, when everything becomes clear, the film reveals itself to be an interesting and assured examination of guilt. That said, the stakes could have been a little higher and I’m not sure if the God-like stranger was the best way to carry the film through to its conclusion. Overall, it is an interesting film with only a few minor flaws and very well made.

Best Cinematography went to Extranjero (Dan Lumb and Crinan Campbell), a complex short film, presumably a story about immigration. It is let down by having too many ideas packed into too short a running time – five minutes. The end result is an interesting and well-made film that is somewhere close to incomprehensible. It is rather difficult to work out if the filmmakers had a point beyond the visual and editing stylistics.

The other three films were all interesting. Jackpot! (Tony Ducret) is an odd film with a story that verges on misogyny and a host of characters that are all deeply unlikeable. As a look at our celebrity-obsessed society, as a result, it works very well. However, some scenes feel a little stilted and the camerawork can be quite leering and the rap music video editing goes some way towards robbing the film of any seriousness. It’s a nasty little film but there is nothing wrong with that if something is being said – though I’m in two minds about whether or not the filmmakers intended to say anything. That said, it was the funniest, silliest and most ironic film in an otherwise largely sombre selection.

My two personal favourites were Stay Still (David J. Kelly), a gritty urban neo-noir in which the older of two siblings is forced to do a drug run for his mother’s lover. His younger brother, who is still relatively innocent, but not necessarily for long, follows him into the night. Refreshingly, there is a moral hue to the action, which is not all shouting and violence as these things can so often be. The dilemma here is the protection of the younger brother from the world around him even as that world slowly and inexorably infects him. The performances are all very good. However, the film is let down only by a few dream-like sequences, which undercut the grim premise, offering an escape that is otherwise impossible. There is also a degree of anti-climax at the end of the film, though the film is wise not to suggest an ending in which everything is fixed.

Drowned Out (Leo Claussen and Nicholas K. Lory) is impressive for a number of reasons. First of all, it is a feature-length film – the only one in the selection - that, for the most part, sustains itself. The premise is interesting and the film develops its simple idea well, moving through a number of tones and moods without losing its overall point. The performances are all good and the writing works well. The film is essentially about the disintegration of one man’s mind and, as a result, there is a lot of interior exploration, which is done with subtlety and understanding. However, especially towards the film’s end, there is a degree of ponderousness, particularly a point of view shot of the film’s protagonist HR climbing some stairs.  Overall, the film is a good exploration of isolation and it has a number of ambiguities that would sustain a second viewing.

As a viewer, the most interesting thing about this selection of films in the Beneath The Earth film festival is that they are all completely different in terms of influences, themes and approaches. There were a broad variety of ideas and techniques and every voice was unique. As well as that, they all work very well as first-tries, the filmmakers behind them all showing promise. To watch all seven films is to feel optimistic about the future generation of filmmakers and the quality of the films they will make.

All seven films are available until the 30^th of November on the Beneath The Earth website.

http://beneathearth.com/watch/

REVIEW: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part Two (2012)

The Twilight Saga, as it has named itself, is now over and the final film remains a victim of an undue opprobrium while other, much worse franchises (there are called cash cows when critics are being sniffy, franchises when they are not) receive much less flak, if not wholly unjustified adulation in the case of the lazy and meaningless The Dark Knight Rises (incidentally, now the final film in a trilogy, despite never having been planned that way). The hatred may stem more from male viewers having little time for films decidedly not aimed at them, a failure of insight and understanding on their part. And while it remains true that the thinking man’s (or woman's) franchise would be no franchise at all, the Twilight pentalogy remains a rare female-centric series that has ideas to burn.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part Two, to give it it’s full double-colon name, begins with Bella (Kristen Stewart) waking up as a newborn vampire and finds herself very well adjusted to her new found superpowers. A plot involving the Volturi is soon to kick in, but the less explained the better. Plot, as in some of the best art cinema, is not necessarily something that the Twilight films paid all that much attention to – something that has always been grist to the critical mill even as they lauded the latest Godard or, yes, Paul Thomas Anderson.

Part Two is not the best of the series (Eclipse is), but the Bill Condon diptych comes a close second. Like Eclipse-director David Slade, Condon is not afraid to do both the softly lit slightly overdone romance sequences and the 12A boundary-stretching carnage, here with a full-on battle sequence full of head-ripping. And like Slade, he gets the balance right, tipping the scales to the favour of the romantic scenes, which are, after all, what distinguishes Twilight from all the male-centred dehumanised action spectacles. The plot is addressed often and a comically large number of new characters are introduced but the film is all too aware that it is the three leads that hold attention. In one sequence, some exposition involving traitor vampire Irina (Maggie Grace) is swiftly handled and the camera focuses in on Edward and his daughter Renesmee (played mostly by Mackenzie Foy following some dodgy CGI) playing piano. Here it is clear that Condon is aware that what Twilight does best is a kind of unpretentious romanticism unhindered by embarrassment or a need to please or, even, the knowing tongue-in-cheek sensibility through which much romance in Hollywood cinema is dealt with. This sequence also nicely recalls the moment in the first Twilight in which everything slows down to allow Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ to take an evocative and unexpected precedence. Yes, it is corny, but one of the best things about the Twilight films is that they are not afraid to be corny. You may cringe initially, but they always manage to bring you in.

That said, there is as much to laugh at in Part Two as there is to be touched by, and the film is extremely funny and wantonly bizarre – there are few, if any, less conventional franchises/cash cows at the moment. The Jacob/Renesmee stuff is awkward but can raise a few laughs. Regrettably, Taylor Lautner has little to do in this film other than a very funny scene early on between him and Charlie (Billy Burke, also underused despite often being one of the best things about the series) and the battle sequence concludes with a very good surprise/joke. As always, the film does have its dodgy moments, the line about the Loch Ness monster being a step too far into silliness. And, as with the rest of the films, Part Two suffers from what is presumably a high degree of loyalty to the books, no doubt at the demand of the fans, which gives the film quite a few obstacles to overcome. However, part of the fun of the films is that they are far from perfect but they are always risk-taking, surprising and always strike a good balance between being ridiculous and funny and moving and romantic.

As for the message, this has always be the most misunderstood part of the films and this one will no doubt be no different. Bella has always been the strongest character in the films and in this one she is able to match the other characters physically. She takes to her newfound abilities without any problems and, as always, is remarkably adept. Eclipse ended brilliantly with a speech from Bella in which she addresses what the films have been about so far – her choice and her pursuit of self-definition – a scene, which also acts as the series’ rebuttal to its many critics. Part Two has a similar scene, this time coming from Edward, in which he apologizes to Bella for constantly underestimating her. The films have all centred on the idea of Bella’s single-mindedness and the fact that she knows better than anyone what is best for her and the fact that in every film and in every situation that the narrative throws at her, other characters tell her what to do – usually using the words “Stop” or “Don’t.” However, Bella is never dissuaded and always succeeds. When Edward apologizes to Bella for misunderstanding her, it is almost as if Edward is here embodying the film’s critics who often sanctimoniously complain about the film in terms of feminism and abstinence and of being a bad influence to legions of young women (a recent article by Periwinkle Jones is equally harsh and nonsensical). Many people have misunderstood Bella and the message that the films have been making about self-determination and self-expression. If not a feminist icon, Bella is at least a good influence and there aren't very many of them for young women in mainstream cinema. And, incidentally, Bella, and the film in general, are far from asexual.

Twilight, as a whole, and Part Two is no different, is thoroughly entertaining, unpretentious and bravely romantic. The performances are all good, with Michael Sheen great fun again and the three leads still playing it with the right degree of seriousness and honesty. Far from flawless, the films are all very touching tributes to young love in all its hopes and naiveté. But the films are also committed to speaking to young women, something that no other franchise really does.

REVIEW: The Master (2012)

Is there much point in mentioning that The Master has divided audiences and that it is the long-awaited new film from a writer-director who has previously offered some of the best films of 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2007? Much better to merely say what one thinks it is all about.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, a recent WWII veteran in 1950 who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. After a series of unsuccessful attempts to return to real life, Freddie jumps onto a yacht and stows away. He is suddenly introduced to the ship’s commander, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a “writer, doctor, nuclear physicist theoretical philosopher” and the man behind “The Cause”, a pseudo-religion that he has doctored up and is touring around the country to promote. Quell is quick to fall under Dodd’s wing, but how will he react when the indoctrination begins?

The links between the film and the life of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology have been emphasised enough. The Master has its filmic antecedents in John Huston and Orson Welles – two big filmmaking personalities who excelled in 1940s Hollywood, but who also excelled in more outré films in the 1970s. John Huston gleefully played the repellent Noah Cross in Chinatown, a role that could also have inspired Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. Huston’s very strange Wise Blood is also worth mentioning with its links between charlatans and religion. As for Orson Welles, one needs only to have seen his fantastic, mesmerizing F For Fake in order to be able to draw a lineage from the character Orson Welles presents himself as there to the character that Lancaster Dodd almost perfectly embodies – apart from when he is challenged and the whole brilliant façade crumbles into the very lack of restraint and animalism that he so detests. All that having been said, however, one film that exerts a most palpable influence on The Master is Paul Thomas Anderson’s previous, There Will Be Blood. The hype surrounding that film, as well as its own high quality, must have made it a tough one to top and The Master is almost self-consciously similar. One scene, in which Quell and Dodd go off in search of Dodd’s hidden manuscript in a rocky desert, can’t help but bring to mind the similarly harsh setting of There Will Be Blood. Jonny Greenwood’s score is equally an attempt to re-do what he did so well on the previous film. They work well as companion pieces with There Will Be Blood a look at greed and The Master a look at fakery, albeit with less of an emphasis on the perpetrator.

As in There Will Be Blood, the performances take centre stage with much of the film focussing on Joaquin Phoenix’s fantastically driven performance as a traumatized war veteran in search of a family. The film does go some way to revealing how, in the wake of the end of the war and with the influx of damaged veterans back into normal life, that dissatisfaction and isolation grew and a demand rose for such things as The Cause. Philip Seymour Hoffman is equally good as a man whose rampant knack for self-promotion has found him at the head of a movement, the intricacies of which he himself can be caught out on. Initiation into The Cause is marked by a deadening sadism, entrants are harangued into submission by endless repetition of utterly meaningless actions until a personality much stronger than their own tells them to stop as they have discovered the truth. Bewilderment and belief are intertwined irreparably so that when Quell finally sees Dodd for the charlatan that he is (in a scene that is remarkable for the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it quality of the exposition), the first thing that he does is half-heartedly beat up a fellow sceptic before he sits down and starts to cry. Though the film makes clear that The Cause did help Quell for a brief period of time and that more from the sense of belonging that the community gave him than the teachings themselves, the teachings of The Cause are both Quell’s entry and exit from the cult. The film concludes brilliantly with Quell performing a “processing” of his own (that being the questioning which is intended to bring out the true self of the subject and the beginning of their initiation into The Cause), though whether he is in fact becoming a second Dodd or is merely amusing himself, incredulous at how he had previously been taken in, the film refuses to say.

The film is not an easy watch and will probably have as many detractors as it will have supporters. There are too few challenging films that are as widely available and even fewer that are made with such confidence and artistry. Much of the joy of the film is in merely allowing yourself to be taken wherever the film and Anderson want to go, with many scenes being all about the performances and others being pleasingly confounding, safe in the knowledge that you are in the hands of a filmmaker who knows what he is doing. The Master is not as good as Magnolia and There Will Be Blood, maybe because cults and charlatanism is not as interesting as, respectively, loneliness and greed. However, Paul Thomas Anderson has managed to move away from the sometimes too-obvious influence of Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman and has become a rather unique voice in American independent cinema and is probably the only one of that rather hit-and-miss Sundance group not to do a film that could wholly be discounted from his filmography – Alexander Payne aside.

The Master rewards attention and intellectual investment, as well as, of course, emotional investment. There are a lot of things that the film leaves unanswered and an attentive audience can leave the screening with a lot to talk about. Indeed, this review might well be amended, if not entirely renounced, in the coming weeks – just as it took several weeks and a second viewing before There Will Be Blood came together. That said, The Master is a difficult film to recommend as it is entirely up to each individual’s predilection for unconventional and challenging cinema and those intrigued enough have probably already seen it by now. Ultimately, The Master is a difficult film to wholeheartedly like but as an example of how invigorating and rich cinema can still be, it is unsurpassed so far this year – This Is Not A Film maybe being the sole exception.  

REVIEW: Elena (2012)

Elena is the third film from director Andrei Zvyagintsev (The Return and The Banishment), a slow drama that raises some difficult moral questions and contains some great performances.

Elena (Nadejda Markina) is a middle-aged housewife in modern day Russia, who has married up. Her husband Vladimir (Andrei Smirnov) is much richer than her and her family, including her son Sergei (Alexei Rozine) from a previous relationship and his family, whom Vladimir refuses to support financially. Elena and Vladimir barely communicate with controversial topics either avoided or addressed only in notes left next to his separate bed. When Sergei asks Elena to help fund his son Sasha’s (Igor Ogourstsov) university fees and hence avoid being drafted into the army, Elena has to get the money somehow and Vladimir won’t help.

Elena opens with a near two-minute shot, which recurs at the end of the film, showing the side of Elena and Vladimir’s flat as the sun rises in real time. It acts, much like the opening shot of Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, somewhat comically, as the director’s shorthand for communicating to the audience that they had better get into a contemplative mood fairly soon, because the film won’t have any of the traditional Hollywood pleasures. Though the shot does have its aesthetic merits, it is quietly mesmerizing and quite beautiful in its way, it is a little too much of a director’s indulgence and a bit of an art house cliché, not unlike the shot that lingers on a nurse making a hospital bed after the patient has left. Elena establishes itself from the very beginning as an art house film, almost self-consciously.

However, the plot resembles more the pulp fiction of James M. Cain (note that Elena is a retired nurse), no surprise since Cain has influenced many writers and filmmakers all over the world, from Luchino Visconti to Albert Camus. The plot unravels slowly and methodically, with Zvyagintsev more interested in the moral and socio-political implications of Elena’s, and others’, acts. Though that is not to say that the film is cold and clinical, as Nadejda Markina proves more than capable of giving the drama an emotional power despite the distancing devices. Elena becomes, as a result, a beautifully visual film with an emotional heart and a contemplative and critical eye. What lets it down is really what Andrei Zvyagintsev and his co-writer Oleg Negin seem to want to say with it.

The film is dark at its core, suggesting that all humans are essentially self-serving and arrogant. Vladimir and his daughter Katerina (Elena Liadova) are emotional cripples and have nothing but contempt for the world and for the people in it. Sergei and Sasha are useless and stupid and do little of value. Sasha, it turns out is openly violent to those even lower down the social order than himself, in a visceral scene in which he and his mates battle a group of homeless men. And Elena, though seemingly so modest and charitable, ends up being the most morally compromised and criminal character. Zvyagintsev paints all of the characters critically but offers no real alternative or credo of his own. Worse still, he seems to openly side with Vladimir and Katerina, presenting them as emotionally cold and cynical, yet ultimately wise and articulate. In fact in one scene between Vladimir and Katerina, they come to an understanding and a rapprochement, one of the film’s few warm scenes. Their worldviews are grim and nihilistic but they find comfort in their agreement. On the other hand, Elena’s family are presented as stupid, practically monosyllabic or thuggish. When, by the end of the film, Vladimir and Katerina have been removed from the picture and Elena has ascended to prominence, bringing along Sergei and Sasha, it is hard not to feel that Zvyagintsev sees them as uncultured louts, represented through their constant watching of daytime television and drinking. There is more than an air of snobbery in this representation and the ending is an uncomfortable critique of class upward-mobility. It is difficult to tell how much of this to take seriously, but if the film had been made by, or at least championed by, a Conservative MP it would be critically mauled. One scene played for laughs, in which Sergei and his wife Tatiana (Evgenia Konushkina) announce that they are pregnant with yet another baby, seems to be illustrating the same ridiculous arguments made by John Ward in 2008.

Who says that the art house isn’t the place for right-wing films? Nevertheless, Elena is that strangest of films, that is modernist in form and full of great performances and made with an eye for composition and beauty and with an obvious artistic intent and yet manages to be if not stupid then poorly thought out. The argument it makes at the level of class is at the very least insensitive, but on a social level, the film is merely celebrating nihilism like it was fashionable. Zvyagintsev, through his many references to Andrei Tartovsky, is clearly interested in the idea of the director-philosopher, but he seems to celebrate nothing other than snobbery. Intellectual superiority seems to be his only value; one that he seems to believe is the preserve of the rich.