REVIEW: Room (2016)

Lenny Abrahamson has often had a fondness for outsiders (excepting his best film, What Richard Did, which focusses on an insider, albeit one who accidentally ousts himself) – indeed, to the level of fetish with his painful Frank. This has continued into his most mainstream film so far, Room, based on the novel by Emma Donoghue (here adapting her own book) itself in turn based on the Josef Fritzl case.

Ma (Brie Larson) and Jack (Jacob Tremblay) lived in Room, a small garden shed fitted as a domestic prison. Ma has been imprisoned in Room for eight years and Jack, who is five, was born there. The film charts their ability to cope and survive.

As off-putting as it is to consider a film, particularly one coming with all the bells and whistles of awards season marketing, based on so specific a case, in which there were real victims and real pain, Room largely manages to feel sincere and respectful. Donoghue and Abrahamson pursue their version through the eyes of a five-year old child who has no knowledge of the real horror of their situation. Any real abuse is seen by misdirection – seen through Jack’s perspective, we know what is going on even if Jack does not. Since the focus is so much on Jack, we can often forget that Ma (we find out her real name later in the film) is also a victim. Again, these scenes come through a degree of misdirection. When Ma, now Joy, comes home and back to her bedroom, untouched for eight years, Abrahamson knows to put the camera on her in this instance, bringing home sharply Joy’s own stolen years. It is a powerful little moment, done without show, but one that reminds us that Abrahamson does have his heart in the right place.

Even in one sequence in which the film slightly starts to lose its way, Abrahamson and Donoghue pull it back. In one extended sequence, Joy’s mother Nancy (Joan Allen) opens the house to a TV crew for an exclusive interview with Joy. The film takes pokes at the media, suggesting that they might be immoral scavengers after any kind of marketable human misery that might give the viewing public a little emotional kick (if not full-on freak show) to mull on over with their dinner. The thought is inescapable: the film itself could be tarred by its own brush. However, the film addresses instead the responses of those disinterested observers, which are often as damaging and traumatic as any kind of media intrusion. The interviewer chastises Joy for keeping Jack with her, suggesting that a better parent would have convinced their captor (Old Nick, played by Sean Bridgers as a very sad and lost human rather than as a monster) to anonymously leave the child in care where it could have a normal life. This, though a morally valid argument, is a cruel and coldly logical view of the situation and is not one that Joy ever considered. What the film is then calling for is not so much a renewed attempt to understand the victims of abuse, but merely that we remain compassionate and accepting. It is, again, a suggestion that the film is not just a shocking, headline grabbing cash-in, but one that actually addresses its subject matter in a constructive and positive way.

The performances are fantastic – Larson and Trembley keep the film feeling human rather than grandstanding. Even the film’s biggest moment – Jack in the back of the police car – is, although pure trailer fodder, sincerely focussed on the characters and the performances. Room feels compassionate as much for their performances as for Abrahamson’s distanced and empathic camera. Room’s greatest success is that it feels like a caring and human film for the majority of its running time, rather than a potentially damaging cash-in. It is a film about a mother’s love and the power and resilience of the human spirit, though one wonders why a version of the Fritzl case was such a necessary angle to address these fairly common themes, if indeed these themes were the primary motivations for writing the book and making the film. That said, Room is a film about the victims, preferring scenes of strength, weakness and recovery over empty histrionics. If one can’t fathom why anyone would make a film like this, it is equally difficult to fathom what cast and what filmmakers could have done it better.

REVIEW: Brooklyn (2015)

Brooklyn comes with all the bells and whistles of a major Hollywood production, but underneath its classical trappings, its score and its range of veteran character actors credited under ‘with’ and ‘and’, the film is refreshingly simple and personal.

The film begins in Enniscorthy in Wexford in 1950, Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) is a young woman in her twenties with no prospects in her home town. She has decided to go to America in an effort to find a better life. She moves to Brooklyn with the help of her sister Rose (Fiona Glascott) and friendly priest Father Flood (Jim Broadbent). Suffering initially from homesickness, Eilis finds love in an Italian-American Tony (Emory Cohen) and manages to make the big city feel like home. However, a tragedy forces her back to Ireland and she begins to question the meaning of home.

Brooklyn is an old-fashioned story and its handling here feels very much like a throwback to classical Hollywood. John Crowley’s direction is all stately, well-framed shots and slow, ruminative tracking shots – a bit of a surprise considering the jerky, nervy Intermission. Indeed, everything from the direction to the costumes, the score and the tame humour adds to this impression. And as an old-fashioned romance tearjerker, it works quite well, moving along at a decent pace, tightening the screws with only an element of manipulation. The romance between Eilis and Tony and Eilis and Irishman Jim (Domhnall Gleeson) are pleasing without being overly convincing. The romances here falter from a feeling of narrative convenience in some stretches, rather than a natural character development. However, this hurdle is overcome by the sincerity of the performances. Ronan goes for quiet and subtle throughout, which works quite well and is a pleasant surprise in a film released towards a particular season. Julie Walters and Broadbent do great work in little character roles. Cohen and Gleeson suffer a little from under-written characters, but their performances are very good.  

As an adaptation, it flounders at certain stretches trying to fit in too many nuances that may work better in prose, often to the detriment of other moments that don’t get the time they deserve. The two central romances never totally seem right – both develop too quickly and inevitably to be wholly recognisable. This is not as much of a problem as it may seem, since the film’s clear focus is on Eilis herself and not on her romances. However the film falters in other ways. Late in the film, Eilis cannot seem to decide if she should remain in Ireland with Jim or go back to Brooklyn and Tony. We know that the Ireland and Jim option will not be chosen, having been given so pervasive a sense of a community conspiring to keep her there that all, even Jim, are appear suspect. But when she does decide to return to Tony, it seems as much to do with a bad run in with the evil Miss Kelly (played by Brid Brennan on slight material) than her independence or her love for Tony.

Where the film does work very well is as a tale of Irish emigration, of leaving one home and trying to make a new home of a confusing new place. This is where Ronan particularly shines – in quiet scenes, often alone, she creates a three-dimensional character who is confused and contradictory, happy and sad, nervous and excited, but always with an inner confidence and strength. Her performance holds the film together.

A poignant and traditional story of a young woman emigrating and making a home for herself, Brooklyn is a moving, funny and likable film. Though the film is a little light on development, it will stay in the mind for its heart-breaking examination of emigration, its avoidance of ‘big’ scenes and a great central performance. It’s also quite nice to hear a bit of Gaeilge in such a wide release.

REVIEW: Miss Julie (2015)

Twenty-four years have passed since Thaddeus O’Sullivan drew a potential connection between an emergent Northern Irish cinema and those of the countries of Northern Europe, particularly Sweden, with his minimalist December Bride. That Northern Irish cinema, and Irish cinema in general (a distinction is at best difficult), ultimately went the way of largely action comedy thrillers with the likes of Man About Dog and Whole Lotta Sole was a disappointment – not least due to the fact that O’Sullivan’s own subsequent films, particularly Ordinary Decent Criminal, were in much the same vein. Welcome then is the genuine thing, an adaptation from August Strindberg’s Swedish play ‘Miss Julie’, written and directed by Liv Ullmann, one of Ingmar Bergman’s closest collaborators, and produced by and filmed in Northern Ireland – primarily within the grounds of Castle Coole in Enniskillen, Fermanagh. Ultimately, the film is not without its flaws and, like December Bride before it, will most likely prove not to influence a new wave of serious cinema in Northern Ireland.

Set in Ireland in 1890, Miss Julie is a three-hander, which examines the power relations behind both gender and class. Miss Julie (Jessica Chastain) is a bored member of the aristocracy, first seen escaping her claustrophobic country house via a drawing room window only to wander within the walls of her estate, who finds some small respite in the classless freedom of the celebrations of Midsummer Night. However, her openness is treated with unease by her servant John (Colin Farrell) and cook Kathleen (Samantha Morton), who have some secrets of their own.

One immediate criticism of Miss Julie that has been thrown around is its apparent staginess. This is not a fair complaint, given that several films are just as stagey without equal criticism i.e. 12 Angry Men and because the film’s aesthetics have a purpose. The film is powerfully claustrophobic, intimately revealing the stagnancy of both sides of the class divide. Julie has more societal rules restraining her than John or Kathleen, though they are trapped within the narrow confines of their station. John and Kathleen are deeply terrified of the apparently unhinged Julie, whose willingness to ignore class puts them at risk of ridicule and dismissal. During the first half of the film, it is Julie who appears to be in control, using the authority and respect due her because of her place in the world against both Kathleen and John, who can only meekly obey and respectfully protest. John reveals that he was deeply in love with her when he was a child, his talk eloquent of the limits imposed on a young working class boy before he can even understand them. This breaks through Julie’s cruel exterior and they finally (albeit joylessly) consummate their relationship – Ullmann fading to black, acknowledging both their need for privacy and emphasising the obvious risk and pain that this lovemaking will immediately entail. This handling is reminiscent of Tolstoy’s similar ellision of the affair in ‘Anna Karenina.’

The second half of the film reveals then that, after sex, the power relations in the house shift to favour John. Though Julie still has her class against him, he now has a moral superiority (in 1890 terms) since he has degraded himself less than she. It is now his turn to be cruel and to threaten. The rest of the film details these three characters’ attempts to come to terms with their social, sexual and class transgressions.

Ultimately the film is about the various ways that each character is trapped and how they deal with it. The conversation regularly shifts as each character achieves a feeling of superiority over the others only for some other concern to bring them right back down again. Kathleen, a working class woman, is unexpectedly the most staunchly conservative with regards to the class system. However, there is an interesting shift towards the end when we realize that her devoutly-held faith is what gives her a feeling of self-satisfied superiority and complacency, since Jesus had said that the last will be first and the first last.

The film concludes then with Kathleen going to mass to pray for normalcy, John shaving and putting back on the uniform of his class and heartlessly encouraging Julie – the ultimate transgressor, against both her class and her sex – to cut her wrists. This she does by a river.

The original play was written by August Strindberg, who holds a central influence in Swedish theatre and cinema – this film indeed has a Bergman feel, which must mean that Bergman has a Strindberg feel. Liv Ullmann presents the play critically, revealing both the stultifying values of the time that the play criticizes and also those that the play may uphold. The film’s final shot, in which Julie lies dead in the river, could intentionally or unintentionally recall John Everett Millais’ painting of Ophelia and could intentionally or unintentionally be pointing to an inherent sexism and patriarchal hegemony in Western culture in general, then and, quite possibly, now. Equally the film’s late examination of Kathleen’s faith reveals that faith to be just as self-serving as the rules of class which give the aristocracy their place in the world – if not one of the primary forces for keeping the working classes in their place. Ullmann’s film has an intriguingly critical and open quality that all of these criticisms can be inferred without the reading feeling too close.

The film has a couple of great moments. The film is bookended with the image of flower petals drifting along a stream. We first see this from the perspective of the young Miss Julie after she has escaped from the confines of the house (possibly for the first time) and again later when Miss Julie is about to kill herself. Initially a symbol of the wish for freedom, the second time, however, Ullmann shows us the leaves getting stuck up against some jutting rocks, an eloquent and quietly heart-breaking evocation of the impossibility of even this small, vicarious escape. In another moment, Julie invites John upstairs. He follows her but suddenly stands still, as if he cannot physically cross the threshold between the servant’s quarters and the rest of the house without his livery – a nice Bunuelian touch. Also, look out for the moment when Kathleen rushes to the back entrance of the house to lock it against a marauding band of revellers – a powerfully haunting and deeply cinematic sequence. And the moment when Kathleen leaves the house for Mass – betrayed by John – and stands out in the bleak sunrise and starts to cry. Ullmann keeps the camera behind her and we can infer Kathleen’s tears from the slight shudders of her body, but it is an equally powerful and emotive scene, all the more so for its sheer economy.

That said, there is no getting beyond the fact that Chastain and Farrell’s performances are not particularly great. Both of their accents falter – Chastain doesn’t seem to be going for one at all whereas Farrell’s Northern Irish accent is lost in the emotional scenes. Neither performance is good enough to hold the film. This may be primarily a fault in the script. The dialogue feels a little over-written and a lot of the lines are difficult to believe and Chastain and Farrell definitely have difficulty making them work. Equally the always altering power relations between the two of them are too sudden and apparently without transition or cause, making it easy to get a little lost with the characters. It often has the feel of a rambling monologue (or soliloquy) rather than an authentic conversation. Sadly, all of this means that a large part of this otherwise powerful and maybe even excellent film just does not work.

Miss Julie then is far from a great film, though it has a seriousness of purpose and an engaging multiplicity of meaning and some unforgettably evocative moments. It does not ultimately work because it is badly written and overlong, but, for the moments where it grabs you, it is the real deal and Northern Irish cinema, if not European cinema in general, needs much more of this.

SHORT REVIEW: Glassland (2015)

This short review appeared on The Upcoming website here.

Glassland is the new film from Gerard Barrett, whose first feature Pilgrim Hill won all sorts of praise. I have to admit that I haven’t yet seen it as cinemas in Northern Ireland are not very good at giving screens over to films from across the border. Glassland should, however, get a bigger release and is certainly worth seeing.

Jack Reynor (better remembered for the great What Richard Did than Transformers 4) plays John, a taxi driver struggling to care for his alcoholic mother Jean (Toni Collette). Exhausted by long hours at work and at home, he convinces her to get help, though help will cost money and will force John to accept shady, criminal work that he may not be able to do.

Glassland is a powerful drama about love and vulnerability and the extremes, or depths, that a person may have to go to help someone they love. John is a nice guy, but he works in human trafficking. We cannot condemn him as the film shows us his reasons, making it a powerful indictment of an indifferent state as well as a deeply moving drama of desperate people. Reynor is fantastic, rarely off screen and almost always in oppressively tight, darkly lit frames, but always deeply expressive.

The plotting is muted so that we never really think of the film as a story with a structured beginning, middle and end, more a series of causes and effects, realistic and human. Some moments are surprisingly moving, often unexpectedly, making it a deceptively simple film that may linger in your mind. The film is a little quick with its denouement but its ending is compassionate and daring, rounding of a film that is not about gangsters, sex and violence but about the people that are so often forgotten about in these kinds of stories. The film is set in a seemingly remote, barren wasteland with little warmth and few people, where alcoholism, desertion and trafficking seem both pervasive and commonplace. But this is not to say that this is a depressing film, because there are little joys in this world – it is just that they are often hard won. At first glance a minor film, Glassland nonetheless holds a powerful emotional, and political, wallop. It promises great things, important things from Reynor and Barrett and, if you’re able, you should watch.

IRISH REVIEW: The Company of Wolves (1984)

Neil Jordan’s second feature certainly established him as a filmmaker who wasn’t afraid to try new things and The Company of Wolves is certainly a very different film from Angel. But is it any good?

A Freudian retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, the film begins with a sleeping Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson), who has just stolen her sister’s lipstick. She dreams that she lives in an alternate, fairy tale world. She lives in a village constantly under threat from a large population of wolves who live in the woods. Rosaleen’s Granny (Angela Lansbury) tells her a series of stories designed to make Rosaleen cautious of the woods and the wolves inside, but which are also intended to make her wary for her growing sexuality and potentially predatory boys. Rosaleen takes note of these stories but she also has an independent streak and so when she meets the sinister Huntsman (Micha Bergese) in the woods, she is more intrigued than frightened.

The film is based on a screenplay by Jordan and Angela Carter and takes as its inspiration stories by Carter. Carter’s intention with these stories was to rewrite famous fairy tales from a less conservative and oppressive slant. She found that fairy tales were designed to teach women to fear their sexuality and taught them submissiveness. In her stories, which were loaded with Freudian imagery, the female characters are far from passive and the stories encourage women not to fear their sexuality but to take control of it. Essentially, her stories were modern, feminist version of the ancient fairy tales. The Company of Wolves sets out to do the same thing, and all of the typical elements of the fairy tale are present, albeit presented from a Freudian perspective and with a dream-like feel.

As interesting as this may sound, it is rather unsatisfying. The Freudian imagery is over-used and dated – films had been drawing parallels with Freud’s writings for years and Jordan doesn’t offer anything particularly new. The film’s symbolism is also heavy-handed. The phrase “Don’t stray from the path” – though taken from the original versions of the Little Red Riding Hood tale – and often repeated by Granny is so clearly meant to represent the rules and limits placed on women in male dominated society that it’s lack of subtlety only causes one to roll their eyes at its every repetition. Granny is here an ambiguous figure – being both loving and restrictive or, in other words, a parent. The stories that Granny tells explicitly link sex with danger, violence and death – and never with love – while the stories Rosaleen tells represent instead the power of women, particularly a story in which a wronged peasant woman somehow turns her rich abusers into wolves – the wolf (usually a symbol of predatory sexuality) presumably taking on a new significance here. This stuff, though interesting in a surface kind of way, is ultimately over-subscribed. In this day and age, how many are truly convinced that red represents a budding sexuality via menstrual blood or that fruit represents sexual organs?

Neil Jordan has claimed that the appeal he finds in the film is not the heavy Freudian symbolism, but instead the simple joys of storytelling. This argument is not wholly convincing but it does point towards the most interesting thing about The Company of Wolves. In the first half of the film, Rosaleen is told stories that are clearly intended as cautionary tales to guide her through puberty and into adulthood – a patriarchal society that is not too interested in raising strong, independent women is evident. But when she starts to tell her own stories, she takes control of her own destiny (such as it is) and reclaims certain desires as her own and not the dangerous evils that she has been taught to avoid. The film then shows the regenerative qualities of fiction, particularly in making up one’s own fictions. The film delights ultimately in making an oppressive story (Little Red Riding Hood) into a story of sexual awakening and power.

None of which particularly works with the jarring ending, in which Rosaleen reawakens from her dream at a point where she has finally become a woman in control (as represented by her becoming a wolf), only to see a wolf entering her room (read the maturation of dream Rosaleen impacting onto real life Rosaleen) and start screaming, horrified. Hardly a feminist ending. Taken together with the fact that while in the original fairy tale Red Riding Hood is either killed or saved by a man, in the film’s version she overcomes a man but nonetheless becomes a wolf on his terms, not particularly on her own. Surely this means that the meaning of the film’s version of the tale is not particularly better than those that came before, since Red Riding Hood is still waiting for a man to act for her in both cases – either to save her or point the way for her passage into womanhood.

Also problematic, and leaving the symbolism aside, is the film’s dream-like style, in which scenes follow on from each other in a off-kilter, irrational way intended to reflect the pacing of (or lack of) a dream. This has also been done before, though here it is very distancing device, which keeps one outside the film rather than inside, like listening to two people who know each other so well that their conversation is impenetrable to anyone else. Like a lot of Neil Jordan’s films, it is very cerebral and not particularly welcoming.

As interesting as the film may or may not be, it feels badly thought out. The ending would seem to be directly contradictory to all that came before and the symbolism is so obvious and so dated that it just isn’t convincing. Nonetheless, it is a fairly original film from a filmmaker who is clearly trying something new, which is something that remains worth celebrating since it is now so rare.

See also:

Angel

Michael Collins

REVIEW: Jimmy's Hall (2014)

Jimmy’s Hall is in may ways a follow-up to The Wind That Shakes The Barley, expanding on that film’s theme about how Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which ended the War of Independence and brought about the partition of Ireland, was a betrayal of the socialist ideals of the IRA. This version of Irish history remains contentious amongst historians, but The Wind That Shakes The Barley was nonetheless a powerful film about the clash of pragmatism and idealism in war (amongst other things), just like the earlier Land And Freedom. Jimmy’s Hall then is set ten years later – in 1932 – and examines the independent Ireland’s continued betrayal of the left, though at a smaller level.

James Gralton (Barry Ward) returns to Leitrim, Ireland after ten years in America, having fled from the security forces for agitation. Now back, he wants to have a quiet life and help his mother Alice (Aileen Henry) around the house. However, it isn’t long before the local kids – lead by Marie (Aisling Franciosi) – bored by the dances approved by the Church, beg James to reopen his fabled dance hall. Ten years ago, James taught dancing, music and politics before he was forced to flee. Finally agreeing to reopen the hall, James finds himself under attack from his political enemies all over again, including Father Sheridan (Jim Norton) and a local landowner O’Keefe (Brían F. O’Byrne).

Ken Loach’s best films can engage with a political debate in a way that humanises that debate, bringing it down to real terms. Riff Raff very clearly and concisely shows the problems of builders being forced to work on unsafe building sites while also being very funny and moving. Raining Stones shows the lives of long-term unemployed people, their attempts to find pride in their lives, in a way that thoroughly counters the government’s preferred description of them as lazy spongers. The Navigators almost prophetically told us why rail privatisation would be a bad thing. Meanwhile, Loach’s historical films often attempt to represent alternative histories. Jimmy’s Hall then is a film that shows how a conservative priest-ridden Ireland (as Joyce called it) betrayed the people by oppression and the refusal to allow dissident voices in times of turmoil. That James Gralton was ultimately deported from his homeland never to return is shocking, but it is also a little known part of Irish history. The connection between a post-Depression Ireland and a post-Tiger, recession Ireland is easy to make, but Jimmy’s Hall is ultimately a tribute to those who speak out against conventional wisdom and who refuse to be silenced.

The film, then, is one of oppression and is such it is a fairly typical exercise, keeping close to the expected story beats. It is not entirely successful in avoiding its own clichés – we all know, for example, that the chirpiest member of the dance hall will be the one to suffer the most brutal consequences. The other problem with the film is in it’s first half, which jumps back and forward through time, clearly trying to deliver as much information as possible before the action can properly begin, but getting hopelessly bogged down in quick flashback scenes which add little beyond exposition. It gives the film a sluggish and slightly confused feel, which the rest of the film never quite escapes. Ultimately, the film only rarely seems to get right to the heart of the matter – there are a few debate scenes that recall the best scenes from Land And Freedom and The Wind That Shakes The Barley, though here they just don’t work quite so well.

Oddly, Loach avoids addressing Gralton’s socialism all that much. We know that he teaches these ideas because we have been told that he does, but there are very few scenes in which his ideas are portrayed, where they are brought to life. Surely the film would be doing more justice to his ideas if it represented them realistically and empathically for a modern-day audience. Loach and his regular writer Paul Laverty seem to be wary of being criticised as dogmatic, but surely they would only be doing justice to the ideas. Indeed, it is not hard to see why the misleading trailer (which suggests that what Jimmy’s Hall is primarily about, and what the priests oppose most, is simply the dancing – making it look like an Irish Dirty Dancing) was made the way it was, since there’s so little of the politics.

There is something stilted and badly thought out about Jimmy’s Hall, possibly something to do with the fact that most of the script is speculation. Even the performances, rare for Loach, suffer, with Ward having little to fully get his teeth into and others, like Aileen Henry, left looking lost. The romance between James and Oonagh (Simone Kirby), an invented character, is shockingly awkward and by-the-numbers for Ken Loach – the man who made My Name is Joe. The best scenes are few and far between and are almost always too short and fail to dig far enough beneath the surface. The film lacks a forward momentum until its final moments, a surprise when one remembers not only the pace and energy of the recent The Angels’ Share and Laverty-scripted Icíar Bollaín-directed Even The Rain but also the passion and the force of those films’ political argument. Jimmy’s Hall is moving, especially towards the end, and it does make you angry – just as every Ken Loach film should – but, sadly, it just doesn’t seem moving or angry enough.

See also:
The Spirit of '45

IRISH REVIEW: Intermission (2003)

Though it would obviously be foolish to claim that Intermission owes more of a debt to something like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia than to films like Pulp Fiction and Snatch, Intermission is nonetheless much more a film about people than it is a self-consciously stylish showcase for violence and other things that its director finds cool. Director John Crowley and writer Mark O’Rawe (the not as successful Perrier’s Bounty) feature a variety of interlinking characters and plotlines but they never forget that the film is ultimately just about people trying to get by in life and love.

Small-time thief John (Cillian Murphy) decides to test the sincerity of his girlfriend Deirdre’s (Kelly MacDonald) feelings for him by breaking up with her. This all backfires when she is left broken-hearted and shortly afterwards takes up with a married man Sam (Michael McElhatton), who leaves his wife Noeleen (Deirdre O’Kane) devastated. Noeleen is encouraged to go out and try to find another man. Meanwhile, John’s love-starved best friend Oscar (David Wilmot) becomes increasingly depressed and his other friend Mick (Brían F. O’Byrne) is left unemployed when a small boy (Taylor Molloy) throws a rock through the front windshield of his bus, resulting in a remarkable crash involving Deirdre’s mother Maura (Ger Ryan) and sister Sally (Shirley Henderson), which sparks the interest of a documentary crew led begrudgingly by Anthony (Rory Keenan) who would much rather be filming the tough life on the streets of policeman Gerry Lynch (Colm Meaney) Gerry has it in for local hood Lehiff (Colin Farrell), who may have a proposition for John and Mick.

Intermission is a reasonably convoluted film but it doesn’t let itself get too bogged down in exposition. It is primarily the story of John and Deirdre with additions from a supporting cast, who have their own problems, some not as interesting as others but there is a general feeling of a close-knit community in an optimistic post-Tiger Dublin. If it isn’t the most taut plotting, it is forgivable since life is never simple and because the film romps along at a nice pace and a likable and easy-going tone. Cillian Murphy and Kelly MacDonald do well, but their parts are somewhat underwritten to make room for all the other characters, many of whom are very good. David Wilmot has a larger role here than many of his more recent roles and proves to be a very likable presence, as does Brían F. O’Byrne, Michael McElhatton and Deirdre O’Kane. Colm Meaney plays his typical role, the hard man who doesn’t realize how funny he is to other people, but he does it well here thanks mainly to a good script – something clearly missing when he took on similar roles in Whole Lotta Sole and A Belfast Story. Colin Farrell gets a great opening (with excellent use of ‘Out of Control’ by U2 – so exciting for an Irish film at the time and now, in retrospect, so optimistic) but he is surprisingly kept largely to the background until towards the end of the film.

What is so likable about Intermission though is the fact that it avoids the cool style and ‘funny’ violence that was so in vogue at the time that the film was made, preferring a light tone and a hand-held feel, making it a film about people, not trendy pop culture references, crime and violence. It is, more than anything else, a comedy and a rather funny one at that, though it is one that doesn’t avoid the more harrowing and gritty side of life on the streets of Dublin – the mean streets, as Meaney’s Lynch prefers to call them, though only to heighten his own hard-as-nails image.

As the film plays out, it becomes unclear what exactly the unifying theme behind the whole thing is, but by then, it also ceases to matter. It ends up being a small and really rather charming film – not wholly successful but certainly good enough – a pleasant surprise given the poster that was very suggestive of Trainspotting and Snatch. In the end, its primary value is that it is entertaining, full of good performances from a whole pile of recognisable faces (I didn’t even mention Tom Murphy, Conleth Hill, Laurence Kinlan and Ruth McCabe). It is mostly light, fairly unexpected and quite a bit of fun. And with a major stunt that was said to be the most expensive thing in Irish cinema at the time.

REVIEW: Frank (2014)

Is it easier to make a ‘fun’ film than a dark and serious one? And if a filmmaker is good at making a particular type of film, is it a bad thing for them to try something new, to take a risk and make something totally unlike anything that they have done before. As with Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master – or, at least, as it appears – is the weight of expectation sometimes just too much for a working filmmaker to bear? In my review of What Richard Did, I wrote that Lenny Abrahamson was “Ireland’s most important living filmmaker.” A big statement and, on balance, a deeply unhelpful one – isn’t it better after all to have a range of interesting voices than a single “most important” one? Whether Abrahamson was afraid of being typecast – I suppose directors can be typecast too – as the director of low budget dark dramas or he just wanted to have fun, the result is Frank – one of this year’s most pointless films.

Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) is trying to get into music but he doesn’t really have all that much talent. He ends up joining a band, the unpronounceable Soronprfbs, headed by Frank – a damaged man in a giant papier-mâché head (played by Michael Fassbender). No one else in the band (including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Scoot McNairy, François Civil and Carla Azar) likes Jon very much. They go to Ireland and live in a remote cabin for almost a year in order to record an album. Jon films the process on his phone and his videos become popular on Youtube, which thrusts the band into the limelight. But are they ready for it?

Some have said that Frank is the kind of film that half the audience will love and the other half will hate, though that is overly simplistic. Some certainly seem to love it and others will certainly hate it, but my own reaction was merely initial disappointment followed by boredom. For me, it was deeply uninteresting, it wasn’t funny or engaging. It is one of those heavily ironic films that seem to enjoy their own company – not unlike Wes Anderson films – and smugly disregard the audience, secure in the knowledge that someone somewhere will love it and be vocal enough about it to make it a cult film. Frank is one of those films that will be trendy and might even be talked about in almost religious terms twenty years from now – like The Big Lebowski is today. All the naysayers who saw it when it came out and who didn’t get it will be stuck with some kind of old conservative label – their reviews quoted ironically in the same way that Pauline Kael’s negative review of Star Wars is now a T-shirt. All of that sounds bitter so suffice it to say that Frank is one of those films that has nothing much to say about anything, doesn’t go anywhere interesting and doesn’t bother to make you care.

Those who will love Frank have probably already made up their minds about going to see it, though I wonder if Lenny Abrahamson was the deciding factor for many of them. It is probably just as well because there is very little of what made Abrahamson’s previous work so good. There are no interesting characters. The comedy falls flat and the drama is only semi-successful at the very end of the film, in which the re-formed Sonorprfbs play one last song as Jon looks on. It is a decent conclusion to a film that spent the previous ninety minutes wondering around, looking for an idea and a point. Ultimately, the film is about how we tend to deify artists, how fandom (and social media) can exaggerate aspects of an artist’s life and work beyond all proportion – Kurt Cobain is a good example as is (I suppose) calling Lenny Abrahamson “Ireland’s most important living filmmaker.” So Frank, then, is an intentionally poor film designed to make Abrahamson’s life a little easier. Maybe. Probably not. But Frank leaves you with very little else to think about.

For me, music films don’t tend to work. You probably have to be in a band or at least have some kind of ambition in that direction to fully appreciate Almost Famous (its just OK) or that other terrible film now gaining a cult following (these days films don’t wait twenty years to become rediscovered gems) Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Frank has nothing interesting in it and it isn’t as funny or as emotionally involving as it might think it is – assuming any thought went into it whatsoever. Taken as a whole, it is just gibberish, unfocused and annoying. It isn’t a film I hate, it’s just one that did absolutely nothing for me. Which is a pity because I really like Lenny Abrahamson’s other films – whether they are millstones or not.

REVIEW: As If I Am Not There (2010)

As If I Am Not There is the tough, surprisingly mature feature film debut of Juanita Wilson, which certainly suggests that she will be one to watch. Ireland’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, the film is a rough and uncompromising story about women forced into sexual slavery during the Bosnian War of 1992-5. The film is based on true stories told during the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.

Samira (a powerful central performance from Natasa Petrovic) is a schoolteacher from Sarajevo who takes a job in a small country village. Fairly quickly, the village is overrun by Serbian soldiers who shoot the men and kidnap the women. Kept initially as labourers, Samira and a few other women are taken into a hut and used as sex objects by the soldiers. The film follows Samira’s suffering and her ability to survive.

Though it is odd for an Irish filmmaker to make their feature film debut about crimes against women during the Bosnian War, based on actual testimony and on a novel by Slavenka Drakulić, As If I Am Not There almost immediately defies such doubts with its clear sense of purpose and its mature handling of truly horrific subject matter. Though the events depicted in the film are unremittingly bleak – ethnic cleansing and systematic rape – the film is powerful in its bravery, its refusal to avoid difficult truths and in the humanity of its protagonist. If you don’t know anything about the film, the course that the story takes is shocking and although most of the film’s horrible moments occur off-screen, the pain and suffering is conveyed expertly with restrained camerawork emphasising the inescapability of the situation. The war is visible only in the distance – smoke rising from a distant village and the repetitive rattle of faraway machine gun fire – and often seen through the windows of the so-called ‘women’s room’ where the majority of the film takes place. Juanita Wilson directs the rape scenes very well, emphasising their horror without unnecessary detail, focussing almost entirely on the face of the victim. Samira’s disassociation from her rape – which gives the film its title – is much more effective and respectful than a handheld camera swooping around the set trying to capture every horrible, clinical detail. As If I Am Not There is not about the violence and the horror; it is about the human victims – all women – and about their struggle to come to terms with what is happening to them. Juanita Wilson displays an incredible honesty, respect and tact in her treatment of the women’s ordeal.

Natasa Petrovic is fantastic in the central role, showing as much pain and anguish but also is much defiance and bravery as would be believable – its greatest success is that it feels wholly natural; it never feels like a performance. She is not so much a hero in the film as a traumatised woman who is able to survive. The film’s stark conclusion, showing her attempts to get used to a normal life and deal with her pregnancy by one of the soldiers, is all the more powerful since it realistically represents the consequences of such traumas without needing to tone them down for a happier ending. Juanita Wilson is too good a filmmaker to attempt to suggest that anything positive will come from these experiences – preferring instead to show the damage and the sense of life going on. If Samira is ultimately heroic it is because she copes and because she survives.

As If I Am Not There is powerful cinema and a very moving drama, but it is also a responsible retelling of real events and a respectful representation of what women went through during the Bosnian War – or any war for that matter, since the film largely avoids specifics. Juanita Wilson is sure about the purpose of the film, and it moves quickly and fearlessly into dark but important territory. It doesn’t trivialise and it doesn’t suggest that anything particularly good or positive can come out of such situations, but it is a story that needs to be told. As If I Am Not There tells it with respect and integrity.

REVIEW: All Good Children (2010)

The opening scenes of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs show cruel children torturing animals, Peckinpah’s point being that the ability to carry out violent actions is something innate in humanity and present even in children. A range of paedophobic horror films, particularly The Innocents, represent the loss of a child’s innocence as a frightening and psychotic experience. Puberty and a burgeoning attraction to the opposite sex is often represented in cinema as a challenging and sometimes murderous time – Heavenly Creatures, The Scouting Book For Boys, this year’s The Sea. All Good Children is pretty much a heterosexual version of Heavenly Creatures – aside from some slight differences – and it adds very little.

Dara and Eoin (Jack Gleeson and David Brazil) move to France following the apparent suicide of their mother to live with their aunt Valerie (Laura Persain). Dara soon comes across an English family who live not far away and almost immediately falls under the spell of Bella (Imogen Jones), the young daughter of Julian and Lynne (David Wilmot and Kate Duchêne). They have a brief and idyllic summer romance. When their relationship becomes too aggressive, they are forced apart and Dara is not able to adjust to life without Bella.

Writer-director Alicia Duffy has a fondness for moody arthouse aesthetics and the entire film has been made with that slightly distanced, elliptical tone that has become so familiar now in art films about love and sex. There is probably a bit of a Haneke influence, though without the thematic and intellectual rigour of, say, Benny’s Video – Haneke’s own killer kid film. The early scenes of Dara and Bella’s flourishing relationship are all bright sunshine and Malickian sequences of running through grass and dancing barefoot in forests, though played less for romance since it is unmistakably telegraphed that things will soon turn sinister. By the time a heartbroken Dara begins his transition from innocent kid to nut job, the colour scheme has become muted. Though the distanced camerawork remains throughout, we now see dark cave-like dwellings and rotting animals instead of big, open spaces and sunlight.

The film is both dated and redundant – with a very Freudian view of the romance (and a scene involving blood that recalls Andrea Arnold’s films, particularly both Fish Tank and Wuthering Heights) and a storyline that recalls too many other ‘love is confusing for children and might even be dangerous’ films as well as her own short film The Most Beautiful Man in the World.

The performances from the children are quite good, though Imogen Jones suffers from a necessarily underwritten part as the unknowable object of Dara’s attraction. Jack Gleeson (soon to become infamous for playing King Joffrey in the overrated Game of Thrones series) is very good and holds the film together better than the script or the direction. The parents are all practically silent – see also, again, The Most Beautiful Man in the World. Presumably, Duffy is making the point that parents are becoming more detached from their children and that the unfortunate events in All Good Children are due as much to neglect as puberty. As a result, David Wilmot, as well as Persain and Duchêne, is left with little else to do but offer a restrained, quiet performance and is rather forgettable as a result. Apart from Dara, no one in the film seems to be particularly human.

Just like Duffy’s 2002 short The Most Beautiful Man in the World, All Good Children is a film about the difficulties of growing up, particularly in terms of experiencing emotions that one cannot understand, but it is so distanced and humourless and so self-consciously minimalist and arty that it never really makes you want to care. And by the time Dara goes on his violent rampage towards the end of the film, it feels merely unbelievable. As a feature film debut, it is well put together but it doesn’t seem, on this evidence, that Alicia Duffy has a particularly original voice.

REVIEW: The Sea (2014)

The Sea is the directorial debut of Stephen Brown and an adaptation of John Banville’s 2005 Booker Prize winning novel of the same name – Banville also writes the script. Having not read the book, it is difficult to assess the film since it is so closely tied to another work. It is also difficult to work out whether to praise (and blame) Banville’s script – presumably close to the book – or Brown’s direction.

Max Morden (Ciarán Hinds) is recently widowed – his wife Anna (Sinéad Cusack) having succumbed to cancer. Apparently trying to escape recent bad memories by revisiting the site of older bad memories, Max travels to a lonely coastal guesthouse run by Miss Vavasour (Charlotte Rampling). As soon as he gets there, he is flooded with memories from his childhood, ones that fill him with guilt concerning both the long ago and the more recent past. In flashback, the film details the events of a summer of the 1950s in which a young Max (played by Matthew Dillon) falls in with an eccentric English couple, Connie and Carlo Grace (Natascha McElhone and Rufus Sewell) and their strange children Chloe and Myles (Missy Keating and Padhraig Parkinson).

The Sea is about memories, how they both change and stay the same and how they affect one’s everyday life. The beginning of the film has several Proustian moments in which memories suddenly impact on the present. Max lingers on the sound of a creaking gate as it palpably brings back memories of his past. Immediately after, a revisited hallway suddenly and shockingly brings back a traumatic memory that the film does not fully explain until towards the end, allowing it to haunt the rest of the film. The film fairly quickly splits into three storylines – Max in the present dealing with the past, the illness and death of Anna as he helplessly watches and the 1950s storyline. For a film under ninety minutes, it is ambitious and Brown is a capable enough filmmaker to pull it off well, but it does mean that The Sea is a wandering, cluttered film. Though it is clear that the film will reveal all when it wants to, it leaves you in the dark long enough for its later explanations to seem both obvious and contrived.

Brown is very good at transitions. Where one director will merely cut between different times – usually with the help of a sound bridge to help the audience along – Brown allows the past to suddenly appear within the present in a way that is both evocative and visually arresting. For instance, after a day’s drinking, Morden returns to his room in Miss Vavasour’s guesthouse in which we see Anna lying on her death bed. Memories, then, are not about juxtaposition, they are not separated from the past. They are living things that can effect the present, intrude on it. This is borne out with equal clarity if not equal formal experimentation in a scene in which Morden realizes that a fellow guest is a retired British soldier who may or may not have been stationed in Belfast. Like Northern Ireland, memories are inescapable for Morden; they are almost dangerous in the way that they can take over. Hinds is good as a man trapped by the things inside his own head and the choice by the filmmakers to eschew explanatory voiceover is a brave but welcome one.

As successful then as The Sea is as a film about intrusive memory, it remains deeply flawed in other ways. As a faithful adaptation of a book, it is too closely tied to elements that may work in the novel but which do not necessarily work in film. It tries too hard to differentiate between the past and the present with colour – the present grey and the past bright and vibrant. And while it makes sense that Max Morden ought to be a little unknowable, it does not make sense that every other character should have such underwritten roles. The Grace family is represented quickly as a family of eccentrics and the actors have little to do but play eccentric in capital letters – particularly Sewell who offers a bi-polar performance at odds with the rest of the film.

Instead of the film having its own significance independent of the book, certain scenes feel like vague gestures towards more meaningful moments in the book. Meanwhile, other scenes and storylines feel rushed and the ending, despite being clearly signposted, occurs with little context. Not unlike Julian Barnes’ novel of memory, ‘The Sense of An Ending’, the story here is of damaging memories and the form is one of slow revelation, but both test the reader/viewer’s sense of disbelief – while things get more and more emotionally charged they also get more and more outrageous. Here, a series of revelations become increasingly unlikely until a final revelation about who Miss Vavasour is, like the ending in general, flubbed.

The Sea is an interesting film about memory and it does display a certain willingness to experiment and take risks on the part of director Stephen Brown, so much so that one wonders if he won’t do much better with a script not based on a book. The film is ultimately decent – in terms of direction, editing and in its performances, particularly Hinds, Cusack, Dillon and Keating – but the fact that it is closely based on a book (and the fact that the author wrote the script) is a millstone around its neck. It seems as if The Sea could have been an adventurous and fascinating film if it hadn’t been so closely tied to a previous work.

REVIEW: Calvary (2014)

Calvary is the second feature film from John Michael McDonagh, following on from the very successful The Guard. Unlike his brother Martin’s second feature, the messy, dated Seven Psychopaths, John Michael has followed his funny (though somewhat flimsy) first film with a darker, much more bold tale of the clash between faith and doubt in modern-day Ireland. Calvary is interesting for its contemporary significance but disappointing for its lack of originality.

Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is threatened by an unknown man in his confession box – the man claims that he will kill James in one week, not because he is a bad priest, but because he is a good priest and that would make it more noteworthy. Over the next week, James continues with his job, offering his services in a town full of doubt and anger. Practically everyone in the town (including Chris O’Dowd, Dylan Moran, Orla O’Rourke, Killian Scott, Aidan Gillen, Pat Shortt, M. Emmet Walsh and Isaach de Bankolé) has lost their faith, actively hates the Catholic Church for their crimes and resents Father James for his confidence and integrity. Father James’ daughter Fiona (Kelly Reilly) also returns from London with her own problems.

The first thing to know about Calvary is that, despite its marketing, its casting and the McDonagh brand, it is not a comedy. This is not to say that it is unfunny, since there are a few laughs scattered throughout, but that it is a dark morality tale with some jokes thrown in to, as McDonagh calls it, sugar the pill – more on this later. Calvary is instead a film about a post-Church Ireland, a country of, as the film suggests, lost people who still need their Church but who can no longer trust it. The figure of the priest is no longer a trusted figure, more an anachronistic and slightly suspicious one. Father James is one of the good ones – a compassionate and committed man who feels that he has a valuable role to play even if no one else seems to agree. There is a great scene towards the end of the film in which Father James, about to flee for Dublin, spots two airline baggage carriers leaning casually on a coffin unaware that the dead man’s wife is in view. Father James’ decision is conveyed without words, only Gleeson’s facial expression (in what is overall a fantastic performance) reveals what Father James is thinking – that there is still a place in Ireland for someone willing to preach about compassion and about caring for one another. This being a McDonagh film, however, things are not quite so schematic – Father James is a man of integrity but he is not entirely pure and the other people in the town often do have genuine criticisms. Lynch (Shortt) wonders why he never criticised the actions of the bankers from his pulpit, while Jack (O’Dowd) criticises his emotional remove from stories of Catholic abuse. One great scene late in the film in which Father James comes across a young girl on holiday on a lonely road may even force you to question how much you trust him. Calvary then is an interesting film about the state of the Church in Ireland today, a rare film that reveals the value of such an institution while also starkly revealing many of its inadequacies.

That said, the film is powerfully redundant, wearing its influences much too clearly on its sleeve. The films of Robert Bresson are clearly evoked, with many of the elements, ideas and characters lifted from Diary of a Country Priest and a final scene taken entirely from Pickpocket – albeit via American Gigolo in its use of a modern prison visiting room. The film’s own gigolo character, Leo (Owen Sharpe), endlessly impersonates James Cagney for no apparent reason and the set-up recalls High Noon. Meanwhile, the drama escalates exactly like Vinterberg’s The Hunt and John Michael McDonagh lifts several identical shots, sequences and lines of dialogue, actors and characters from his own unenlightening 2000 short The Second Death. As in The Guard, the only two characters who seem to understand Gleeson’s character is a young boy played by Michael Og Lane and a recently bereaved widow (this time played by Marie-Josée Croze). The film is also way too self-aware, with talk of ‘startling opening lines’, ‘third act revelations’ and Gillen’s atheist doctor all too aware that he is the ‘clichéd character’ with not many ‘good lines.’ For all the seriousness of its themes and the honesty in their treatment – the film does after all have the courage of its convictions and it does not cheat – it ends up feeling much too indebted to other films.

The other problem with Calvary, particularly if it reminds one of the films of Bresson, is that it lacks the rigour of those films. McDonagh casts actors known for comedy and allows them to play eccentric characters and awkwardly included jokes to sweeten the pill. In a way, then, the film is slightly restrained, as if McDonagh is afraid of making it too dark, too disturbing. It would suggest that McDonagh likes the ideas of other filmmakers but is afraid of their conclusions, their unabashed intellectualism and their often strictly spare aesthetics. McDonagh photographs Gleeson dressed as a priest standing head bowed in front of a cross on a bare white wall, but it seems to be only a gesture, a stylistic nod to another filmmaker rather than anything particularly significant to the film at hand. And for all of McDonagh’s talk of Bresson’s transcendental style, he seems to feel the need to puncture similarly redemptive and spiritual moments with emotive score and floating camerawork. You are left wondering how sincere a film is Calvary. Did McDonagh start with his themes or did he self-consciously set out to make a ‘masterpiece’? Is Calvary then inspired by the questions and themes of Pickpocket or is it just inspired by its acclaim?

Calvary is, at heart, a modern, and more specifically Irish, retelling of Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest but told via Quentin Tarantino’s somewhat vacuous style of surface imitation. Calvary is a bold and interesting film but it is often hard to tell how many of his own ideas McDonagh is really using – and of those how many were lifted from The Second Death and The Guard. Calvary is an interesting mood piece and a fascinating examination of the state of the Church and of faith in Ireland today, but it really needs some of its own ideas.

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: The Stag (2014)

The Stag has been getting a lot of attention in the Irish press because it seems to be one of the most patriotic Irish films made in recent years. This is an Irish film that is not about the Troubles, is not sombre about Ireland’s past or particularly worried about the Ireland’s current problems – failing banks and Church scandals. The characters are the kind of characters that would appear in a Woody Allen film if he ever included Dublin as part of his European tour. But does that make it any good?

Fionnan (Hugh O’Conor - the kid from Lamb) is getting married to Ruth (Amy Huberman) and is getting seriously involved with the wedding planning. Ruth thinks that he needs a break and that the wedding planner needs some peace, so she enlists Fionnan’s best friend Davin (Andrew Scott) to convince Fionnan to go away on a stag. He succeeds, and their friends Simon (Brian Gleeson) and the Kevins (Michael Legge and Andrew Bennett) agree to come as well. However, Ruth insists that they invite her brother The Machine (Peter MacDonald), despite the fact that everyone thinks he is a total eejit. They are desperate to avoid him but are ultimately forced to take him along. Comedic reversals and complications ensue.

The Stag is gleefully conventional and it feels very much like a Hollywood film. The six men each have their problems – all of which are resolved by the end of the film with a little help from their friends – but the film is far too optimistic to get bogged down with these. The overall impression of The Stag is of a film that is trying to brighten what can often be a rather dark national cinema and an even darker national psyche. The majority of the film is concerned with The Machine’s unorthodox attempts to help these five men learn to love life (and being Irish) again, learning some of his own lessons in the process. His success and his speech at the big wedding that finishes the film suggesting that we should forget about the banks and the Church and revel in being Irish and having a good time, have allowed suggestions that The Stag is that rarest of Irish films, a patriotic film. This, sadly, is unconvincing, since the wedding is so tacky, so cheesy that it can only be dismissed, an awkward attempt at heartfelt grand statements that fails to chime with the rest of the film. It is all too clear that, while they may have fun at this wedding, tomorrow they will be back worrying about their troubled love lives and serious financial debt. It is also a bit of a cheat, especially the fact that the lonely and heartbroken Davin manages to get a plus one for the wedding but we are never told who she is and the camera awkwardly avoids giving her a close-up. Meanwhile the issue of Fionnan’s dad’s (John Kavanagh) homophobia and his refusal to accept the two Kevins – one of whom is his son – is cleared up much too easily.

However, although the film’s message is unconvincing, it is pleasingly entertaining and pleasantly honest in its emotions – at least until the wedding scenes. There is a great moment, surprising in its length, in which Davin tearfully sings Patrick Kavanagh’s poem “On Raglan Road”, the lyrics clearly meaning a lot to him. Director John Butler holds the camera on him, on a close-up, only rarely and briefly cutting away, and allows the poem – sung almost in its entirety – and Scott’s performance to speak for themselves. It is a surprisingly artistic moment in a film that would have otherwise not been too far away from an irritating Apatow film. In other words, despite the obvious clichés and the tacky, unconvincing sentimentality of the film’s final moments, the film is actually refreshingly heartfelt.

As for the comedy, the film is knowingly contrived in the kind of way that would seem lazy if you weren’t prepared to just go with it. It isn’t particularly funny, though there are a few laughs. It is likable as light entertainment – being more fun than funny – and it has a pleasing lightness of touch, that gestures towards serious problems in a way that marks them out for seriousness without allowing them to overwhelm what is essentially a happy film about overcoming failure and resolving one’s confused take on modern masculinity. As poor as the wedding scenes are, by the time we reach them the film has built a certain degree of good will, so that what would be awful in a lesser film is merely awkward here.

The Stag is surprisingly likable with good performances that make up for a somewhat lazy script. It is nice to see an Irish film being optimistic for once, even if the film’s final moments would suggest that such hopefulness requires you to live in an extreme state of denial. And while this kind of light entertainment will most likely never attain the heights of the best Irish films, all of which is much darker (see Rocky Road to Dublin, In The Name of the Father, Garage, In Bruges and What Richard Did), it is nice to see Irish cinema being cheery and proud to be Irish for once.

See also: 

I Went Down

When Brendan Met Trudy

DVD REVIEW: Michael Collins (1996)

By an odd coincidence, I watched Braveheart on the same day as Michael Collins, which offered, by way of contrast, a useful insight into why Neil Jordan’s influential biopic of one of the heroes of Ireland’s fight for independence just doesn’t work.

Michael Collins begins with the Easter Rising of 1916 and the subsequent shootings in Kilmainham Gaol, which caused public favour to fall behind the revolutionary nationalists. The film then jumps forward to 1918 and the beginnings of the War of Independence and then into the Treaty, which caused the partition of Ireland as well as the end of the war. Shortly after came the Irish Civil War between the pro-Treaty government of the Irish Republic, led provisionally by military chief Michael Collins, and the anti-Treaty rebels, incensed by the partition and Ireland’s status as a dominium of Britain, led by Éamon de Valera, Collins’ old commander and previously the President of the Irish Republic. Collins was killed at the age of 31 in Béal na mBláth, near where he was born, during a tour of West Cork.

The above is more of a potted history of Michael Collins than a description of the plot of the film, though it offers about as much insight into the history of the time as the film does. The film is primarily about the events and the circumstances and it will introduce novices to such things as the Black and Tans, the Twelve Apostles, the Cairo Gang, and the Bloody Sunday of 1920. But it does not go much further than that, readdressing each event from the perspective of an international audience and the rules of the three-act structure. As a result, it rushes through the events and loses sight of, as the title would suggest, its main subject. Michael Collins (Liam Neeson) is a bit of a cipher in the film, as is Éamon de Valera (Alan Rickman), played, for the sake of simplicity, as egotistical and unrepentantly evil. In Neil Jordan’s carefully timed and paced version of events, both characters move between a variety of registers without much sense of an inner consistency. Every decision that de Valera makes seems ridiculously stupid but it couldn’t be otherwise because the film spends no time whatsoever in trying to create a sense of what he is thinking of. Similarly, Collins is played as a fun-loving joker who will do anything that a man has to do for freedom but will be alternately ruthless and depressed about it. In Jordan’s rigid subservience to historical events, simplicity and pacing, he does both of them, and nearly every other character, a disservice.

Compared, oddly, to Braveheart, which has been named one of the most historically inaccurate films of recent times, but that nonetheless managed to convey the passions and sacrifices of a fight for national independence. Although the real events and the real life Wallace’s character are far from what the film represents, the film succeeds nonetheless as a rousing entertainment of national heroism overcoming foreign subjugation. If the facts are false, at least the emotions are not and the film represents such nationalism, as it must feel to those committed to national struggles. None of this matters as much as the fact that we never lose sight of William Wallace, the character as played by Mel Gibson. We see his inner struggles, his dark almost animalistic side, his wisdom and his refusal to deny his beliefs – and, crucially, we see how the myths that generate about Wallace are comically inaccurate. The film is simplistic, overly macho and full of falsehoods, but it is a fantastic, old-fashioned epic.

Michael Collins, meanwhile, is not. It works neither as a historical record of the events nor as a hagiographic, rousing spectacle. It ends up being a toothless beast, which fails to bring across either the character of the man (neither fictional nor real) or the significance of the events depicted. It refers to the events with an emphasis that excludes all else, but presents them so simplistically in shades of black and white that nothing of interest can be learned from them. It also refigures them to assist the sentimentalised drama and the running time. Neither does it get a sense of its characters, being both hagiographic in its attempts to make a hero out of Michael Collins and also assisting in mystifying the character more through its terribly inconsistent and unfocused characterization. Short, sporadic scenes will show a likable Collins at home and enjoying himself, but these scenes don’t add up and often feel misplaced. Elsewhere, the film shows only a man going through historical motions.

Only rarely does Jordan’s strategy make sense. We briefly get a sense of one of Jordan’s apparent trademarks, the moral complexity in his work. There are scenes that seem intended to present Collins ambiguously – leaving it up to each member of the audience to decide whether certain actions are justified or not. But these scenes are given short shrift and are only noticeable if you look for them and the rest of the film mainly contradicts them by either making it clear that Collins has no choice or guiding the argument with a simplistic representation of what is at stake. It both makes a saint of Collins and loses sight of him. The film is hence neither rousing or moving nor informative or interesting. It succeeds in being only bland.

Forgive Braveheart its falsehoods and it is a great film made in the old style – not to be taken seriously and a little hokey, but something to be swept up in and enjoyed – the kind of underdog story that Hollywood has forgotten to make since America now makes war with the underdogs. Michael Collins, meanwhile, forgiving its falsehoods, is far from emotionally engaging. Neither is it interesting in its complexity or in its storytelling. It is a grey, cold, dull film that is both contrived for the sake of entertainment and wholly lacking in entertainment.

See also:

Angel

The Company of Wolves