From directors Christine Molloy
and Joe Lawlor, Mister John follows Gerry Devine (Aidan Gillen) as he
travels to Singapore following the death of his brother John (Michael Walsh) by
drowning. John had owned a nightclub called ‘Mister John’ and had a local wife
and daughter (Zoe Tay and Ashleigh Judith White respectively). As Gerry remains
in Singapore, partly for his brother’s funeral and partly to escape a traumatic
argument with his wife (Claire Keelan) at home, Gerry begins to take on some of
the characteristics of his brother.
Mister John is a film
primarily about identities becoming confused and merging with each other.
Initially, Gerry is something of a non-person. As the film unfolds, we find out
more about him and about his brother’s life in Singapore. Gerry seems to become
confused about whether to retain his own identity or whether the best thing for
him to do would be to take his brother’s place. This is made explicit many,
many times; we see Gerry putting on John’s clothes after his own are lost in
the airport (the exchange of clothes representing the exchange of personalities
is an art house cliché – Antonioni, a clear influence here, made it a
trademark: see L’Avventura and The Passenger), dreaming about
owning a nightclub called ‘Mister Gerry.’ It is also suggested more implicitly
by Gerry’s apparent lack of a clear past and his often surprising and
unexpected actions. Similarly, the film has a few lurches in tone and style, as
if the impulse towards more traditional film aesthetics, like Gerry’s
fascination with the space left by John, sometimes proves irresistible.
However, the film’s own fascination with liminal states leads to a rather
stolid, forced and unlikeable film.
Mister John is so
self-consciously minimalist that it is almost self-defeating. It is intentional
slow and vague and oftentimes the camera will go for a wander, with our without
a character to give the shots context, as if it is not sure what it should film
next. This is all justified thematically, but these lengthy diversions merely
suggest that the ideas presented here are not complex enough to hang a feature
length film on. Although clearly an unfair comparison, yet one that remains
somewhat illuminating, La Jetée addresses similar ideas with much more
complexity and ingenuity in less than half an hour. With 95 minutes to kill,
Molloy and Lawlor allow their film to become irritatingly repetitive. A doctor
warns Gerry “he will not be himself” following an illness, a warning that is
later repeated in case you missed the double meaning. They also allow the film
to become very sluggish in a way that recalls ‘slow cinema’ without matching,
again, the complexity of other films. Essentially, Mister John is about
a man reassessing his life after he is suddenly offered the chance to take on
another identity. The film shows Gerry facing a variety of dilemmas – quite a
few sexually available prostitutes (again, repetition), a lucrative but immoral
business and a man who owes him money – in order to see whether it will be
Gerry or ‘John’ who reacts to each stimulus. It is left to one’s own
interpretation if Gerry’s choices are the result of the vagaries of Gerry’s own
moral outlook or if they are the result of a fluid personality. Shrug.
The film is also rather
uncomfortably recalls Edward W Said’s brand of Orientalism in its depiction of
Singapore, full of heady mystical exoticism that is just too much for a simple
Westerner. Is Mister John also a fable of a stranger in a strange land
questioning the West’s conception of the East? An examination of the
post-colonial world in which exploitation is still present? John’s nightclub is
clearly dubious though sexual exploitation is only hinted at, the filmmakers
clearly not too interested in this angle to give it the full Ulrich Seidl-style
examination it deserves. It seems that all this, when placed alongside the film’s
dogged questioning of identity and morality, unlike for Chris Marker’s other
classic, San Soleil, is just a step too far. In reality, Mister John
gestures at ideas without addressing any of them, making points only by vague
suggestion and, ultimately, not really sure what its conclusions are. The film,
hence, has more to do with political speeches than with art – it talks but it
doesn’t say anything.
Mister John is hard, if not impossible to like
since every character is left unknowable and somehow impure, the storyline is
left intentionally vague and the editing is very slow-paced. But although the
film’s self-questioning nature offers justification for the above, the film
itself is not particularly interesting and the actors are not given much room
to impress. Instead, it is a very cold, cerebral and rambling film, one that
replicates the devices and aesthetics of certain strands of 1960s art cinema,
particularly Antonioni and, to a degree, Bresson, with not quite enough depth.
Ultimately, there is very little to get out of Mister John.
