Quand le doigt montre le ciel, l’imbécile regarde le doigt…

I first saw Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain on a cross-channel ferry on the way home from a holiday in France, and immediately fell in love with it. It’s become a real ‘go-to’ film for Rachel and I: if the world is a bit sh*t and we need to be reassured of its goodness and joy and the magic of human relationships, Amélie sets us back on the right path.

It’s recently taken on a very prominent role in our household, but for more positive reasons than the world is completely sh*t (more of that later). Having not watched it for a couple of years, I must have seen it five or six times in the last couple of months, and become even more familiar, but without losing any of its charm or personality for me. When I checked what I had said about it at my Facebook/Flixster review page, I discovered this (rather pithy) review…

The most perfect imperfect film… it’s quirky beyond belief, stylish and stylised, deliberately, knowingly odd.

And I love every moment of its fabuleux, wondrous, charming, touching run-time. The ensemble cast are fantastic. The red-green art direction is lovely. The visual effects are brilliant. Watch it, watch it again.

Marvel at the details, bask in its glorious humanity, enjoy its foibles and flaws. This is beautiful.

…and I was right. But because it’s become so ‘important’ to us this year, indulge me. Here are three reasons why I love Amélie, and why I Reckon you should seek it out and watch it if you have an ounce of humanity. To be honest, I could probably work out thirteen reasons why I love this film. Give yourself up to its magical realism and quirks, and feel better for it.

This will contain spoilers, to both the plot and other aspects of the film…

The Importance of Seemingly Insignificant Moments…

From the opening shot on Rue St.Vincent in Montmartre, Amélie is filled with details that other films would leave on the cutting-room floor, or more likely would simply get cut out during the writing process. These give the film and its characters great depth and real humanity, that we can relate to. that we can care about. The quirkiness of characters is brought to life explicitly with “he likes…she dislikes”, celebrating very personal pleasures. There are countless moments like the beggar who declines Amélie’s offering as he “doesn’t work on Sundays”… Character flashbacks are wonderfully drawn and often incredibly rapid, giving us barely a glimpse, but even that glimpse is enough. The montage of orgasms lasts just a few seconds, but is utterly hilarious, better than 90% of jokes in other (ahem) comedies. We are told Amélie likes to skim stones on the canal, which the film then reinforces occasionally as we notice her stop to pick up and pocket a stone off the street. These details are priceless to us identifying with her.  The opening sequences, in which we are introduced to Amélie‘s childhood, are simply gorgeous, from taking photos of animal-clouds to her cherry earrings and eating 10 raspberries at once…

It’s about people, not plot…

All those rich, nuanced, vibrant character details would be left out of most films, because writers and studios are usually obsessed with plot, with action, with the progression of the protagonist towards their goal, and how they will overcome their antagonist and other obstacles. The basic linear plot of Amélie is almost ridiculously simple, and spans just a few days. She’s a quirky young woman, who seems unable to form a lasting relationship, until she meets a young man in a train station. Will she make that connection with him?

But Jean-Pierre Jeunet uses this storyline as the carrier to encompass a whole milieu of characters from Montmartre, and explores them constantly, with tangents galore and flights of fancy. We become immersed in the world of the Café des deux Moulins and its staff and regulars. There are layers of ‘stakes’ in the film that apply to the different characters at different moments. Many of these people are hardly the stuff of Hollywood rom-coms, as in fact many are at best quirky, if not downright outsiders or ‘marginal’ in terms of a Hollywood society.

The romantic hero pf the film, Nino Quincampoix, works two jobs, one in a sex shop, the other on a ghost train, and seems to have little motivation except his collection of discarded passport photos. Joseph is basically a bitter misogynist who records conversations in the café. M.Dufayel is a failed artist, Hipolito a failed writer. Amélie‘s father is a withdrawn widower who barely ventures beyond his garden. M.Collignon is a crass bully and Lucien has more than a hint of being a bit pervy.

M.Bretodeau is (by his own admission) a bit of a loser, estranged from his daughter and grandson. But when, through Amélie‘s intervention, he recovers the tin box from his childhood, we are swept up in his bittersweet memories, and the final shots of the film give him and us wonderful redemption, yet he gets less than 5 minutes’ screen time. This richness and affection for all the characters is a joy to experience, and something virtually unique to Amélie.

It’s fabuleux for a reason. This is a fairy tale, wonderfully told…

I Reckon Amélie is one of my favourite examples of ‘magic realism‘. The sound design, camera movements and colour palettes are distinctive, definite and deliberate, and Jeunet repeats things throughout the film. The camera swoops in on faces, the narrator plays a huge role as an omniscient presence. Household objects even come to life and talk to  Amélie. Meanwhile, she’s not afraid of breaking the 4th wall with abandon, whether it’s a glance, a smile or actually talking to the audience.

The relentless use of red and green makes Amélie look like no other film; it’s obsessive. From her clothes to the lighting in almost every scene, from the suitcases that go past in a station, with barely seconds on screen, to her Father’s beloved gnome, everything is red and gree. These details, like the characters’ humanity, reward multiple viewings: they’re a real treat. The score is fantastic and utterly French, filled with both jaunty tunes and bittersweet melancholy. The film is filled with discovery and adventure, from Amélie‘s childhood to the truth about the man in the red sneakers to the word-pictures she paints for the blind man.

I love love love this film. Just writing bout it has made me happy, which is something the late, great critic Roger Ebert also acknowledged in his review, describing it as

…a delicious pastry of a movie…You see it, and later when you think about it, you smile…

It is so hard to make a nimble, charming comedy. So hard to get the tone right and find actors who embody charm instead of impersonating it. It takes so much confidence to dance on the tightrope of whimsy. “Amelie” takes those chances, and gets away with them.

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Does he look like a good guy to you…?

I first saw Nicholas Winding Refn’s latest film almost a year ago, and came to it with mixed expectations. I’d loved Bronson, an odd arthouse piece featuring a tour de force performance from Tom Hardy, mixing theatrical pantomime with extreme violence. On the other hand, Valhalla Rising was all a bit empty and tedious, despite Mads Mikkelsen’s enigmatic role as the one-eyed mute Viking…

Drive came with excellent reviews, and featured both Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, who have both impressed me enormously in everything I’d seen to date. But after my first viewing I wasn’t sure what I thought. Style over substance? Brilliant, or empty? So I held off writing a review until I saw it again, and it’s taken nearly 10 months. And now I feel I can confidently Reckon that Drive is fantastic; really, really fantastic.

Please note: this review contains significant spoilers throughout

The Opening Sequence

Right from the first frames several things are clear. First, this film wears its influences on its sleeve; although it’s set in the present day, it looks like something Michael Mann made 20 years ago, in a very good way. Second, it subverts expectations and genre tropes as often as possible. Third, it’s brilliantly executed, with a singular vision.

No-one will be looking at you…

Drive’s opening sequence is the antithesis of most action films with their squealing tyres and crunching metal. “The Kid” does everything possible to avoid attracting attention, from using the most popular car in the city of Los Angeles to the way he turns off his lights, parks up, hides. He listens to the police radio, which while it serves him well, also ratchets up the tension in the silence that surrounds it. The rest of the time he’s listening to some basketball game on the radio, whose significance only becomes clear in a stunning shot as the game commentary climaxes and he pulls into the arena’s underground carpark just as the fans emerge after the game. He wordlessly leaves the car, pulls a team cap over his eyes, and (like Keyser Sozé?!) he’s gone…

Like Michael Mann, but better?

The fabulous 1980′s style soundtrack, the slow-motion montages, the use of song lyrics as a kind of Chorus commenting on the characters and action, the neon pink titles script, the whole feel just oozes Miami Vice, but better, more knowing, with more edge. And it’s truly beautifully shot with a precision that Mann surely influenced. Inside the car we always see Gosling from low in the passenger seat, or from over his shoulder, with his eyes ever-present in the rear view mirror. The lighting and the colour palettes are deliberate and fantastic. Is it always ‘The Golden Hour‘ in Los Angeles?

The frequent cityscapes of Los Angeles at night made me think almost immediately of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s influential masterpiece that also depicted L.A. to a wonderfully ambient soundtrack. As I say, Drive picks its references from the very top drawer.

Silence is Golden…

Whereas I recall Bronson as being mostly a full-frontal assault on every sense, and Valhalla Rising the polar opposite, like a sensory-deprivation tank, Winding Refn here uses sound brilliantly to create his moods. The police radio chatter and sports commentary in the opening sequence is a great start, and instead of squealing tyres, we mostly get the approaching police sirens and a helicopter overhead to increase the tension. Throughout the film The Kid is taciturn to the point of silence. Dialogue is sparse most of the time he’s on screen, which is a lot.

More than that, the contrasts between quiet and loud are dramatic, and for a reason. They heighten the tension in a chase scene, when moments before all we could hear was his knuckles clenching inside his leather driving gloves, then the car engines finally burst into life and it feels like a fighter jet going over. When violence erupts, it’s brutal, shocking and sudden, and the sound is gruesomely gory.

The party sequence in Irene’s apartment is amazing – we hear the actual song playing in the room, then a muffled version from inside Gosling’s neighbouring flat, then a different level again out in the hallway, but instead of hearing only the bass (as would be more realistic) we get all the words, because the lyrics are important for the scene, this commentary on the action. In a sense I Reckon Nicolas Winding Refn is as manipulative a director as they come, but in Drive he does it brilliantly.

Taxi Driver?

The Kid seems almost like a Travis Bickle for his generation. He’s not damaged by Vietnam, but consider the evidence…

• He’s a driver for hire, deliberately anonymous among some Very Bad Men doing Very Bad Things
• We often see him reflected in mirrors
• When he meets Irene and her son Benicio, he sees in them a way out of this world, and even more, innocents whom he could protect
• For someone who seems mild-mannered and withdrawn, he turns to violence, brutal, physical, imaginative violence almost effortlessly, and he’s very good at it. But there’s always a sense of that’s what he feels he has to do, to fulfil his role, to protect Irene.
• He doesn’t seem proud, in fact there’s a sense that he has damaged everyone around him with his actions. His violence repulses and terrifies her, and his inability to express himself fully makes him even harder to reach.

Several times a song breaks through the soundtrack to proclaim

…you became a hero, a real human being…

But I Reckon this isn’t about being ‘real’, it’s deliberately not real, more like a fantasy. And this, to me, is the heart of Drive…

A Knight in White Satin?

In David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, there’s a line from Nicolas Cage’s Sailor that came back to me again and again during Drive.

…this here jacket represents a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom…

Our first shot of The Kid is from behind. This jacket is his uniform, it’s just about his only expression of self beyond the toothpicks he carries around  and his driving gloves (also part of the uniform). Otherwise he wears an anonymous haircut, white t-shirts and jeans. He wants to be anonymous. But as he goes through the film’s narrative, he seems to take on an ever more heroic stature.

He shows Irene and Benicio kindness and attention, helping with the shopping, taking them out of their apartment. He sacrifices himself for her husband, getting into ‘one last job’; not to win Irene’s affection, but so that she might get some security and happiness with ‘Standard’. But it’s clear from the first time we see the two men together that The Kid is most definitely ‘the deluxe version’.

The relationship with Irene is developed wonderfully, almost wordlessly. They seek each other out as she goes to his garage and he visits her diner. He shows them oases of calm within the city, almost as a promise of something better to come. He seems like a child with Benicio, talking about cartoons, discussing what makes a good guy or a bad guy, and how you can tell.

The first half of the scene in the lift is astonishing in both its tension and the climax of Irene and The Kid’s relationship. Finally he initiates physical intimacy with another person.

But seconds later he is literally stamping out the threat to Irene, smashing the skull of a man he’d never seen until moments before, just like Nicolas Cage at the start of Wild at Heart… He steps back, barely out of breath, still lit in golden hues. Irene steps away silently, horrified, into the car park. She’s in blue and the car park is dark. The door closes and she is gone.

From here he becomes the ultimate anonymous weapon, donning a full-head prosthetic mask, further isolating him from reality, and also sending him deeper into this emotionless, hard-to-read place. In casting Gosling, Nicolas Winding Refn has thrown the audience a Michael-Haneke-like problem: he’s a deeply difficult character to like, he does repellent things, but at the same time he looks like Ryan Gosling and he seems to be trying so hard to do the right thing. But in the mask he looks like a serial killer in a horror movie.

As the gangster narrative twists and escalates, The Kid seeks out his next move almost without thinking. He moves up the levels like a video game, from the intruders in the motel, to Cook, to the scene in the lift, to Nino and finally Bernie Rose, the boss. He confronts these dangerous men head-on, and they often don’t know how to deal with him. Nino mocks him with

You’re not very good at this, are you?

But The Kid is at least quite good at what he’s doing, improvising with hammers, curtain poles, fists, feet and cars to achieve his mission. He has no superpowers, but he seems to survive when he has no right to. Even right at the climax, after we’ve seen him stabbed in the gut, we cut to see him motionless in his driver’s seat, motionless for what feels like minutes. There’s no apparent breathing as the camera holds and holds on his face. Until he blinks, at last, and he’s resurrected.

Drive has elements of horror, heist, one-last-job, mobsters, action, romance, fantasy, damsel-in-distress all crammed into its taut 100 minute runtime. But it never feels crowded or messy. It’s almost inevitable the way the story escalates, and the stakes are threateningly clear throughout. There’s not a single superfluous shot or line. Even the repeated cityscapes and driving montages serve to present the world and The Kid’s smallness within it, yet within this story he is truly larger than life. We know almost nothing about him, and by the end we’re still struggling with whether he is a real hero, a good guy, or even a real human being.

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Do you hear the people sing…?

I was very lucky to see the Original Cast productions of the musical Les Misérables in both London and New York when I was still a teenager. The music and songs blew me away, I’d never seen anything quite this operatic, yet genuinely human and real. It was a mile away from remote, unintelligible operas with seemingly over-wrought acting from enormously healthy women playing apparently destitute women dying of consumption.

And so the musical rested in my subconscious for 26 years (ouch). I never saw it again, I never watched the anniversary concerts or bought the CDs. Every time I heard a song it resonated with me, like any other much-loved album or song from my youth just comes back to me, lyrics and tunes intact.

There has been an enormous amount of hype surrounding the new film production of Les Miz. Tom Hooper is fresh from his success with The King’s Speech and has an all-star cast to carry the songs. From the outset we were promised an intimacy and intensity of performance as he had used hand-held, extreme close-ups for most of the songs, as if we were almost sat on the stage/set with the performers.

Rachel and I went to the film with high expectations, me because I know the source material is pretty fantastic, Rachel because she has almost no knowledge of any of it, but has heard such strong recommendations from me about the music, and from others about the film. We were advised by many, many people to take plenty of tissues. I now seemingly have the ability to cry while watching Strictly Come Dancing or The Great British BakeOff, so knowing how much I love the music, I assumed that tears were inevitable.

So why, during, immediately afterwards and in the few days since we saw the film, were we largely unmoved? There were a few tears for me during Anne Hathaway’s amazing rendition of I Dreamed a Dream and her death scene, and again in the parallel scenes at the very end, but that’s all. Is this a problem of hyping up expectations, is it a failure of execution, an inherent problem with this musical?

I came to the film with lots of history, Rachel with none, but our reactions were pretty similar, which makes me Reckon it’s not the source material, but something about the film.

The adaptation is pretty faultless. There are additional transition scenes and titles to help explain the jumps in time and location that on stage are only really dramatised by a (nonetheless impressive) series of rotating sets. The locations are fantastic and there are wonderful examples of taking the single-stage enclosed feel of the musical into genuinely breathtaking moments, including the opening sequence in the docks, the truly nasty, grubby scenes in the alleyways and brothels of Montreuil, and the Parisian barricades. Hooper’s never afraid to let the camera swoop, even (or especially?) when characters are precariously positioned, like Javert singing to the Stars from a parapet.

I Reckon the choice to film all the key songs in close-up is inspired. It truly brings out the nuances in performance and can add levels of intensity that simply aren’t possible from 60 feet away in a theatre audience. This is especially true when the vocal performances can stand the scrutiny of the camera’s unblinking attention; which brings me to the very good and less good parts of the film…

Anne Hathaway has been rightly praised for her performance. Fantine is nailed-on Oscar-bait as a role, unremittingly tragic and almost entirely innocent, she only features for a few scenes in the very first act, and has two amazing songs, dies slowly and is physically humiliated in pretty much every way as she sells her hair, teeth and sex to send money for the care of her illegitimate daughter (who, tragedy upon tragedy, we later learn is being treated as a slave despite the money Fantine provides…). But to be fair to Anne Hathaway, she absolutely knocks her songs out of the park. She’s fantastic, a highlight of the film.

Just as good, if not better as he has more of a character arc, is Eddie Redmayne as Marius. I’ve previously been lukewarm to him, as he spent most of Birdsong wistfully or miserably staring into the middle-distance. Here he is a revelation, getting over not only Marius’ conflict between his aristocratic upbringing and revolutionary zeal, but also his romantic heroism and later guilt. Empty Chairs at Empty Tables was a brilliant scene here, a rare example of being than the stage version I remember. He has an amazing tenor voice that held up both in quite numbers like A Little Fall of Rain as well as the bigger choruses. I Reckon he deserves at least as much award-attention as Anne Hathaway.

Which brings me to the executional problems that make Les Miz less-than-overwhelming for me…

The comic-relief duo of Monsieur et Madame Thénardier, as played by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, started off OK, but lost me by the end. They are important characters, as they link lots of the scenes together, and provide some relief within the gloom and despair of the Parisian poor. But their scenes focused so heavily on the visual that the performances were lost. Whirling cameras and intricate choreography crammed in so many comic moments that the brilliant lyrics of Master of the House were almost entirely lost, seemingly an afterthought to the visual trickery on display. The focus on their changing costumes and accents simply distracted, and by the end  I was wishing they’d shut up. Pantomime caricatures, but not in a good way.

Russell Crowe has been pilloried for his apparent inability to sing. It’s not that he can’t sing, but that (in the wonderful words of a friend), never has a performance been so dedicated to mezzo-forte. Javert is implacable, monolithic, relentless and single-minded in his pursuit of The Law and his version of Order in the Universe, and Crowe more-than-manages that physically, but his voice simply can’t command the fear and presence Javert is supposed to have. His voice simply doesn’t quite get there, which contrasts clearly with many of the more supporting roles, especially Aaron Tveit as Enjolras and Samantha Barks as Eponine.

And here’s why I differ from many reviewers, in that I don’t think Hugh Jackman’s voice is all that. His performance in the central role of Jean Valjean was terrific. He looked awful as the bitter convict in the opening sequences, and his transformation to reformed citizen & mayor was fantastic. His emotional range was excellent, except his voice doesn’t quite manage with the very tough demands of the role, and especially not in extreme closeup. In the upper range (and there’s quite a bit of that), it loses the power and resonance it has wonderfully in the lower register. Sorry if this is being picky, but this is, you know, a musical, and his thin, full-throated vibrato really took me out of the songs in a way that the intimate camerawork was expressly designed not to.

This was most obvious in my favourite song in the whole story, Valjean’s desperate prayer for the life of Marius, Bring Him Home.
After Fantine’s tragedy, this is the number that should bring the house down, to complete silence for the duration, and then in floods of tears afterwards. I was lucky to see Colm Wilkinson perform this. Sorry, Hugh, for all the extraordinary talents you do have, you’re no Colm Wilkinson.

The film of Les Misérables is by no means a failure. It has great spectacle and some fabulous moments, but its inconsistency is a major weakness. While the locations and settings are often wonderful, they do take you out of the immediate action in the way a single-stage doesn’t. There are no pauses between scenes like there can be on stage in a live performance, so it can feel like an onrushing treadmill, and despite the ambition to capture live performances, these don’t always work, sometimes with major consequences for the film.

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…then I’m a very manly muppet…

I end the year with a look back at the films I’ve watched in the last 12 months. I think this year I’ve reached over 70 ‘first-time’ viewings, plus at least another 5-10 repeats. More than in recent times I’ve seen probably 5-10 films on the big screen, not all of which were animated…

Anyway, in no specific order, my highlights…

Bronson: a tremendous tour-de-force of a performance from Tom Hardy as the eponymous career criminal, something between a sociopath and a circus ringmaster (mostly sociopath). Astonishing bravery in his acting and fearless direction from Nicolas Winding Refn. Not for the faint-hearted, but for anyone who likes either that actor or director, a must-see.

Super 8: a fine tribute to the heyday of Steven Spielberg, with lens flare and suburban streets, bike chases and kids hat home movies, this recreates a slice of 80s magic wonderfully. Much better than I had expected. Very entertaining.

The Muppets: a joy from start to finish, for both Rachel and I (who grew up with The Muppets TV show on Saturday evenings) and our daughters (who only know the Christmas Carol movie). Fabulous songs, brilliant fun performances from Jason Siegel and Amy Adams, with the best maniacal laugh of the year from Chris Cooper, showing Tom Cruise he’s not the only person to send himself up (but in a much less stagey, self-conscious way).

The Guard: how Brendan Gleeson was overlooked during Awards Season I’ll never know. He tremendously unsympathetic as the titular Guard in a small Irish backwater, and his chemistry with Don Cheadle is amazing. Just as funny as In Bruges with an even better ending.

The Raid: OUCH. When I left the cinema I genuinely felt like I’d been kicked in the ribs a dozen times and had the air sucked from my lungs. Breathtaking fight choreography and barely a moment’s respite in 90 bone-crunching minutes.

Confessions: a very strange Japanese film that starts with an astonishing 30-minute sequence where a teacher starts to confess something in front of her class. At first they’re paying no attention, she seems incapable of commanding their attention. But gradually, she does, and from there her confession leads to episodes from various pupils’ point of view, as they confess their own part in a terrible crime.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: a fantastic old-school thriller that’s as much about characters and human interaction as the fairly labyrinthine plot. The ensemble cast is uniformly fantastic, not least Gary Oldman, Toby Jones and Colin Firth. I saw this early on in the year, and can’t wait to see it again.

Benny’s Video: as a fan of Michael Haneke’s more recent work I sought out this earlier film, which (unsurprisingly) is as bleak as they come. On the one hand there’s Benny, alienated teenager who spends most of his time making or watching violent videos, with similarly violent images from news footage constantly in the background. And then, when Benny Does Something Very Bad, there are his parents.

Coraline: a wondrous stop-motion animation that seems like it’s in the tradition of Roald Dahl, as it goes to some pretty dark places and revels in the macabre. Again, I’m sure this would repay multiple viewings.

Tyrannosaur: a barnstorming directorial debut from actor Paddy Considine, with what is ostensibly a three-hander between Eddie Marsan, Peter Mullan and Olivia Colman. A truly brutal, bleak depiction of alcoholism, abuse and damaged souls. Colman is outstanding in a hugely complex and difficult role that’s light years away from her TV comedies; my performance of the year.

Badlands: a long-overdue viewing of Terence Malick’s first film, a truly beautiful depiction of disaffected youth in the heartland of middle America. Lyrical, sometimes infuriating, often breathtaking.

Drive: Nicolas Winding Refn’s second mention, featuring a brilliant turn by Ryan Gosling and even stronger support from Albert Brooks and Carey Mulligan in another 1980s throwback that oozes style and class in every frame.

Martha Marcy May Marlene: a really interesting, strong directorial debut from Sean Durkin, starring Elizabeth Olsen in an amazing role about identity and memory. Ostensibly telling the tale of a girl who somehow joins then escapes from a cult/commune lead by the very scary John Hawkes, it’s more fractured than that, with unexplained aspects throughout and a notoriously ambiguous ending. I loved it.

The Innocents: perhaps my discovery of the year, a 1961 horror classic. It opens to a pitch-black screen, and silence. Then a child’s voice starts singing; pure, angelic, and more than a bit creepy. Slowly, a pair of hands are revealed, dimly lit against the black, shaking. We can hear quiet sobbing. The child’s song ends with “then I die” repeated. With an image that surely influenced ‘that scene’ from The Blair Witch Project decades later, we close in on Deborah Kerr’s terrified, trembling face, babbling almost incoherently about ‘the children’, wanting to protect them, not destroy them…

It’s a stunning opening that utterly unsettles the viewer. What could possibly have caused all this? Immediately it cuts to Deborah Kerr as Miss Giddens, clearly a sane and proper young woman, meeting “The Uncle”, a wealthy bachelor who wants her to act as governess to his orphaned nephew and niece. He makes it clear that she is in sole charge as he doesn’t want anything to do with them. We hear phrases from that opening scene of terror in this conversation. It’s chilling. We know the set-up and we know that Something Very Bad happens. But what?

There are hints almost immediately… the house is a huge Gothic pile, inhabited by two children and the housekeeper, who is clearly unsettled already when Miss Giddens arrives. The previous governess died mysteriously. The girl Flora seems creepy in the extreme, and we learn that Miles (her brother) has been expelled from school, with words like “contaminates the others” involved.

Then they play Hide & Seek, and there’s a scene that reminded me of ‘the face in the boat’ moment from Jaws: truly scary and unsettling. The paranoia escalates, the sound design is fantastic in ramping up the tension (again, I feel Stanley Kubrick learned from this film for The Shining about creating tone and dread through sound and space).

While the climax felt a bit rushed, the way the film comes full circle back her trembling hands reveals the full horror of what has happened and is simply brilliant. The ending has almost no glimmer of hope for the innocent children of the title, nor indeed for their tragic governess.

This has influenced countless horror classics, if not the whole genre. It’s sense of paranoia and paedophobia must have been groundbreaking at the time. There’s almost no onscreen violence or blood. It works completely on the psychological level, with lingering images designed to unsettle, with sound that creates tension and dread, and with a tone that never lets up.

Thanks for reading my blog this year, I’ll try to be more regular in 2013! I thoroughly recommend all these films, and I hope from my descriptions you can gauge whether they’re your sort of thing (quite a few are definitely not easy viewing)…

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Every now and then a trigger has to be pulled…

Should I be ashamed in the same week that Barack Obama became only the third Democrat POTUS to win a majority of the popular vote twice, the British Prime Minister went on a trade mission to sell more fighter jets to an unelected authoritarian regime that systemically subjugates women and a shambolic journalistic mess has caused chaos at the BBC, I’m writing 1,600 words about the latest James Bond movie…

PLEASE NOTE: this review contains spoilers throughout.
I Reckon Skyfall is a pretty great film. I really recommend it, but if you’re seriously thinking of seeing it, you should do so before you read this…

The 23rd film in the James Bond series of spy/action thrillers was always going to be more than just another instalment: it had damage to repair. The widely-praised and excellent Casino Royale defibrillated the franchise with a brilliant new Bond in Daniel Craig, and a gritty realism that was surely influenced by Paul Greengrass’ Bourne films. It was followed by Quantum of Solace, which while trying to complete the themes and story from its predecessor, was incoherent from its title to its script to its terrible direction. More than that, Skyfall was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of James Bond, and the studio marketing didn’t shrink from raising expectations, by hiring Sam Mendes to direct and Roger Deakins as DP. Into the considerable hands, hearts and minds of these genuine talents was placed the expectations of generations of Bond fans. So, no pressure…

If Casino Royale owes a lot to Jason Bourne, Skyfall can thank Christopher Nolan for quite a bit too. There’s a lot of the recent Dark Knight trilogy in here. By the end of the pre-title sequence Bond is lost, feared dead. He does return, but embittered, wounded and sinking in booze. His rehabilitation is fractured and difficult. Although still pretty beefy, Craig is impressive as we watch his humiliation in physical, psychological and firearms assessments to evaluate his readiness to return to the field. It’s all he’s ever known, and it could well be taken away from him. He meets a nemesis who owes a lot to Heath Ledger’s Joker in terms of physical mannerisms & cold-hearted brutality, and indeed seems to represent the Other Half of Bond. There’s also a whole lot about parents (and especially mothers), but more on that later.

Now it’s true that Skyfall plays fast and loose with Bond chronology, and sometimes basic logic, but if you don’t stop to think too much about that, it’s a glossy, fantastic ride.

The Pre-Titles & Titles Sequence

From the opening shot as Bond emerges from blurry shadows into a dimly-lit warren of shabby rooms filled with bodies, it’s clear we’re in safe hands. The pre-title sequence is pretty much everything we could hope for from a Bond film. From motorbikes roaring across the rooftops of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar to jaw-dropping close encounters with railway tunnels on top of a train, Bond tries to get his man, and the stakes are made incredibly clear by his (amazingly crystal-clear) radio link back to M in London. A master file of all NATO’s undercover agents has been lost: it must be retrieved, at all costs.

Take the bloody shot!

M’s squawk of desperation sets into motion the rest of the film, and as Bond plummets into the depths of a Turkish river, we fade into a fabulous titles sequence, so good that it even made me like Adele’s theme song. Matched with gorgeously animated whorls of blood, and definitely harking back to Shirley Bassey, it’s fantastic. Her opening line This is the end… only reinforces the feeling of dread and uncertainty that hangs over the film, of Bond’s evident mortality and limitations.

A proper, old-school villain…

James Bond needs a villain, and Skyfall provides us with a terrific 21st Century villain in Raoul Silva, the ex-MI6 agent abandoned and left for dead, back for revenge. Not exactly an original set-up, but I Reckon in more recent times the plots and villains have been so complex and anonymous that the threat is lost. This time, it’s very personal.

Javier Bardem dominates the screen from the wonderful extended take in which he first appears. By this point he’s been trailed to the viewer as a cyber-terrorist capable of hacking into and destroying MI6, as a ruthless killer and abuser of the only ‘traditional’ Bond girl in the film. But at first, he’s a marvellous mix of gleeful high camp and only a little direct menace.

His opening encounter with Bond has direct parallels back to Casino Royale, where Le Chiffre tied Bond to a chair in a grim cellar; except that in that (great) sequence, Bond is naked, and assaulted with a heavy knotted cable-rope to crush his unprotected manly bits. Here he’s fully clothed in his dinner suit, and Silva seems to have no intentions of physically damaging anything; quite the reverse. He tenderly caresses James’ gunshot scar, barely raising his voice at all.

It’s not long, however, before we see the ruthless menace that Séverine had warned Bond about. He despatches her almost for sport, before escaping from the heart of MI6, from a glass cage that just screamed Silence of The Lambs. Bardem’s performance also seems influenced by Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, from the soft voice, the massive, manipulative intellect that is always several steps ahead, the pre-planning, and the sudden switch into violence to achieve his ends. Compared to Bond’s excruciating struggles and creaking physicality, everything Silva does seems effortless: he glides through London’s tunnels and streets, only occasionally even lengthening his stride.

He reveals his intentions in a  fantastic scene where the Oedipal conflicts between Silva, Bond and M come to the fore. He talks to her like a mother, then shockingly removes a plate from his jaw to reveal the damage M indirectly wrought by abandoning him in the field, just as she abandoned Bond…

It’s only after the courtroom shootout that things start going awry for Silva, and we immediately see the frustration and spite in his face. Like an angry teenager he starts improvising, but he’s not so good at that. When the action moves to Scotland, he maliciously and deliberately wrecks the Aston Martin, just to upset Bond, and by the climax he’s like some avenging dark angel. This amazing image reminded me of Keyser Soze from The Usual Suspects…

M is for Mummy

I Reckon Judi Dench gets more screen time in Skyfall than in all her other Bond appearances combined. Finally the franchise uses her considerable talents for more than a few quips. It’s true that the maternal relationship with 007 is repeatedly clubbed over our heads in the script, but it is great fun. When she returns to her house and Bond is there,  she speaks like an angry mother who’s been waiting up for a teenage son. The revelations and half-revelations in the final trip to Scotland are important and moving. I loved that we see her constructing improvised bombs – she’s not just a desk-jockey!

All this adds some proper heft to the film – not only are the stakes globally important – brought horribly to life by news footage of agents being executed after their cover was blown by the lost file, but personal. M’s career is set to end in failure, her offices are shattered, and she may well have contributed to the end of her protegé.

Sam Mendes & Roger Deakins

Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins are genuine A-Grade film-makers, and in Skyfall they have done some of their best work, which is not faint praise.

Mendes has taken the rebooted Bond franchise as his starting point. The action is largely scaled back from the blockbuster sequences of earlier decades, but no less thrilling. There are plenty of jaw-dropping moments in the first few minutes alone, not to mention the explosion at MI6, the tube train in the tunnel, the destruction of the manor house. These are contrasted with some very still scenes, notably Silva’s first appearance and the final not-with-a-bang moments.

If Deakins doesn’t finally get an Oscar now, there is no justice. The Shanghai sequence is probably the best thing I’ll see all year. Except for the arrival at the Macau casino, and the deserted, ruined city, and the shadows of subterranean London, and the mists of Scotland. The colour palettes, use of light and shadow, and sense of place (especially interiors) are like nothing I can remember in a Bond film.

The Shadows

It’s there from the first shot as Bond appears as a blurry shape before emerging into the light. Skyfall is a film about shadows, about what has been kept hidden. Silva taunts M to think upon her sins, Bond has to confront his own mortality and loyalties. A good deal of action takes place underground, or in the dark, even underwater. One tremendous shot has Bond pursuing Silva beneath the streets of London, and as he illuminates a vast space, we see the shadow of his quarry escaping up a fire escape, lit like a German Expressionist film.

Rosebud…

Don’t get me wrong, this film is no Citizen Kane. But it has a central plot device that keeps us involved throughout. What is Skyfall? And why does it matter? Lots of things are revealed or half-revealed in the final act. There are still issues of logic (if Silva could muster up half a dozen men and a helicopter gunship, why didn’t he just blow the house to Kingdom Come…?!) and the climactic scene felt very rushed to me, but the outcome is fantastic.

Demons have at least been confronted, if not destroyed. The list of agents is still missing, but Bond has a new boss who’s more than just a bureaucrat, and it feels like this could run and run. On the evidence of Skyfall, I Reckon that’s a really good thing.

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There’s always more to a horse than meets the eye…

There’s a scene fairly early on in Michael Morpurgo’s excellent book for children “War Horse”, when two English soldiers are training horses they have recently bought from villages and farms around the countryside, preparing them for the imminent battles ahead. In this scene, they start talking about the titular ‘hero’ of the novel, Joey the gallant horse.

‘Is he not the finest mount in the entire squadron? I’ve never seen a horse so well put together as he is, have you?’

‘Oh he’s special enough to look at, sir,’ said the Corporal of Horse. Even his voice put my ears back. There was a thin, acid tone to it that I dreaded. ‘I grant you that, but looks aren’t everything, are they, sir?‘

This snippet of dialogue sums up for me Stephen Spielberg’s film adaptation of War Horse. It’s beautifully made with great technical skill and no little visual flair. It’s very, very ‘well put together’, it certainly is ‘special enough to look at’. But the Corporal of Horse is right to be suspicious. Looks aren’t everything.

Indeed, I found this film very disappointing. It seems a long, long way from earlier masterpieces like Jaws, Raiders and ET. This is schlocky film-making par excellence. It’s true there are some terrific moments; when the cavalry emerge from the cornfield for their first battle-charge, when Joey runs amok through the trenches and into No-Mans-Land, and the scene at the windmill. However, too much else is hackneyed, manipulative, sentimental tripe, and there are so many irritating and unnecessary changes to the book I almost lost count. But more about those in a moment…

A moment of Spielbergian magic. But don’t get your hopes up…

Throughout the film, the score is overpoweringly loud, and signposts almost minutes in advance what to expect and feel. It’s a constant Fantasia on Themes by Ralph Vaughan Williams, folk tunes and a smattering of Aaron Copland harmonies (presumably to keep it familiar for a US audience). The film tries desperately to make Wiltshire (the actual village) and Dartmoor (the fields and landscape) look similar, despite an entirely different geography, stone, trees, grass. The lighting choices often beggar belief with ‘golden’ sunlight like I’ve never seen in the UK. Why they couldn’t find a suitable village location in Devon I’ll never know, but honestly I don’t really care.

If anyone’s ever seen a tropical sunset like this on Dartmoor, please let me know…

The adaptation of Michael Morpugo’s brilliant children’s novel is pretty awful. He’s written on several occasions about the impact of war on children, families and communities, and in this story he uses a truly innocent observer, a horse, as the narrator. Joey doesn’t judge humans except by their behaviour. There’s no difference between a kind German and a kind Englishman. He describes what he sees, and trusts the intelligence of his reader (whether s/he is 9, 19 or 99 years old) to draw conclusions.

The film, on the other hand, manipulates and signposts even minor points at every stage. More significantly, it attributes human virtues to Joey at every possible opportunity. Where the book simply describes Joey’s feats and allows us to interpret them for ourselves, the films smacks us in the face and expects us to be grateful. Joey is repeatedly described as a marvel, a gem, a horse like no other. Again and again shots linger on Joey’s glistening flanks or his deep, deep eyes. Meanwhile, John Williams tells us what really lies behind those eyes with his surging / limpid / heroic score.

The story is altered throughout: the father’s back-story is rewritten completely, which changes the whole set-up of his debt problems. It also tries to justify his drinking problem with a military history and traumas that are entirely absent from the novel. Spielberg and his screenwriter Richard Curtis also introduce a ‘baddy’ in David Thewlis who isn’t in the book, and set up a ridiculous ploughing sequence that’s ludicrous in the extreme. There’s a comedy goose I can’t even begin to explain.

After 50 minutes we finally make it to France (it takes fewer than 50 fairly short pages in the book), and then the war is condensed into a series of episodes that feel like they take about 6 weeks when in fact the story unfolds over more than 3 years. The war scenes and the horses are generally excellent, although that constant ascribing of human emotions to the animals really becomes annoying in the extreme. At one point Joey runs more than 50 yards uphill to save his ‘friend’ from a brutal job hauling guns in a way that would stretch credibility if they had all been human. The whole sequence at a farm is twisted around, changing the meaning from the source material. Horses apparently walk upstairs in a tiny low-ceilinged cottage without any difficulty or noise. One of the best sequences in the film is entirely invented, but seems not to serve any purpose except to demonstrate (again – in case we hadn’t noticed) that war is bad and lots of children got killed.

Read this. Don’t watch the film.

Please – do yourself (and your kids) a favour. Read the very, very good book, which skips by in barely 180 well-spaced pages, while the film is much, much too long at 2 hours & 20 minutes. The film is schmaltzy and over-wrought where the book is disarmingly simple and honest. The film looks fine indeed, but it’s ultimately manipulative, lightweight and hollow, where the book encourages you to think, and leaves a deep impression that is as surprising as it is meaningful.

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If your name’s on the list…

Kill List is the best horror film I’ve seen in ages. For plain old nastiness it was up there with The Descent, the film that reiterated why I’m not interested in caving. But more than that I cannot say, because this really is a film that is worth seeing without knowing anything very much about it.

The set-up is simple to the point of being mundane; like Mike Leigh but with more shouting. From the opening moments we’re plunged headlong into a domestic scenario. Jay is married to Shel. He’s an ex-serviceman, she’s feisty in her own way and they have a young son, Sam. Jay hasn’t worked for months, and despite having a nice home, they certainly seem to have money worries. Jay’s best friend and comrade (Gal) comes round for dinner with his new girlfriend Fiona. Dinner doesn’t go well. So far, so nothing like what follows.

Suffice also to say that Nigel Floyd, Mark Kermode and the Sound on Sight radio/podcast team (who all know a thing or two about horror/genre films) have all raved about Kill List. Be warned: it is nasty, it is filled with a creeping sense of dread and threat, it has more than a couple of moments of gruesome violence. This is not for everyone, but it blew me away. The trailer is here, but if you think you might watch the film, I’d genuinely avoid both reviews and the trailer.

From here on, there be many, many spoilers…

Eeven the bl**dy poster has a spoiler in it...

The opening sequence really does feel like a shouty TV sitcom. Jay is evidently traumatised from some previous job (in Kiev?!) and his lack of work is causing money worries, although they don’t seem like they’re on the breadline. Gal comes for dinner, and has a job offer for Jay. It seems Shel is already aware of this, and more arguments escalate. All this feels tremendously naturalistic and real, the relationships are very ‘lived-in’: the tensions in Jay & Shel’s marriage feel real, the banter between Jay and Gal is genuine, the chemistry between all three characters is terrific.

Gal & Jay (BFF?!)

Then we realise Jay and Gal have progressed from the military to private security work to contract killers. Behind the barbeque and piles of recycling in the garage, Jay has a stash of weapons. The job offer is a lucrative one, more killing. But of course, they’re good at that.

From here we leave Mike Leigh and progress into more familiar hit-man territory. Still the style is handheld, naturalistic. The relationships are well-drawn. Jay and Gal seem like professionals. It’s hard not to think of Pulp Fiction’s Jules and Vincent, but mainly in an ‘opposite’ way: the dialogue here is totally real, not mannered or stylised at all. These guys drive a family estate car, they stay in anonymous hotels. They have their list, and the first killing seems to go exactly to plan.

Except that the victim (The Priest) seems to smile at Jay just before he dies, and says “thankyou”. And suddenly we’re questioning everything that occurs. All the hints up to this point start to weigh even more heavily; Jay’s temper, his unexplained trauma in Kiev, what did Gal’s girlfriend do in the bathroom, what was that knife cut when they took the contract…?

You'll get a very different feeling about this after the end...

And then it goes downhill rather quickly. The Librarian sequence is as intense and unpleasant as anything I’ve seen on screen. Jay starts going properly off the rails. He sees a film which the audience does not, and this seems to flick a switch in him. He wants to kill people, this is more than just a name on a list. The professionalism of the first hit is forgotten as he uses a hammer to its full potential. The victim seems to know more about what’s going on than Jay does. Meanwhile, Gal has discovered that their victim has a file of photos and documents about them, even from the mythical Kiev assignment. What is going on?

The film’s final third takes an astonishing ‘left-turn’ into the occult. Almost like a much more malign version of The Wicker Man, Jay and Gal find themselves in a very, very bad place. The final scenes are as bleak and soul-crushing as any story I can think of. There’s no light, no glimmer of hope or redemption for Jay at the end. He has been duped into destroying everything and everyone that could have offered him a normal life, he has unravelled his self and revealed a very dark heart, but he almost seems to have accepted this willingly, and possibly even enjoyed it.

Kill List is by no means perfect. It deliberately leaves plot twists unexplained, there are MacGuffins galore, and I know that many people will find that infuriating. Jay’s downfall is complete, but what part did Gal or Shel play in it? What was that symbol Fiona scratched on the back of the mirror all about? What was that scene with the weird doctor?! The Director’s commentary on the DVD gives precious little away, as though Ben Wheatley wants to keep the different possibilities open for interpretation.

I don’t believe it’s sloppy film-making, quite the reverse. Kill List is an exercise in tone and mood. The oppressive dread and threat that builds from the early moments is inescapable. We witness the destruction of a man who seems almost complicit in this process by the end. We are afraid of what might happen next, as there seem to be no limits to the violence, nastiness and horrors the film is prepared to explore. The sound design and colour palette only add to the bleakness. The first half of the film is domestic and claustrophobic, mostly set in small rooms, with close shooting angles. The second half is very dark, often shot at night or in gloomy places, and the soundtrack is always unsettling.

My version of WTF happens in Kill List is as follows…

Fiona is doing ‘HR’ for the cult. She/they have observed Jay and Gal, and identified Jay as their ‘candidate’ to be a new leader. She uses Gal to recruit Jay for the Kill List job. She also encourages him to speak to Shel to get her on board first, making Jay more likely to accept.

Gal is NOT aware of the cult’s motivations, at least not at first. The Priest murder is very ‘straightforward’ and professional. They scope him out, prepare the scene, it’s a clinical killing. When the priest says Thank You to Jay, noone understands.

The second killing is slightly more dodgy, in that Gal definitely seems to send Jay in first, where he discovers the film that seems to send him (further) over the edge. While Jay is torturing The Librarian, Gal doesn’t rush back downstairs and intervene, when he could easily have done so.

The MP‘s murder is the one that makes me think Gal had at least received some kind of instruction. Why on earth would they camp out in the woods overnight? The house is isolated, but not so much so they couldn’t have approached it differently. Only because they were in the woods did they get to see the cult’s moonlit procession and human sacrifice. When they were in the tunnels, Gal screams at the blocked up wall “that wasn’t supposed to be there”, which made me think he’d been told about this route and that he could escape.

But I don’t think he’s part of the cult. He expected he could get away. His panic in the tunnel is real, and his ‘thanks’ to Jay is for the mercy killing. Nor do I think Shel is part of the cult. Fiona continues to woo her to keep her onside even as Jay loses his mind. Her smile at the end is a reaction to how ****ed up everything has got.

Bet you didn't see this coming from the start...

The cult’s mission is to have Jay sever ties with everything that means anything to him, so he has to kill Gal, Shel and Sam. I’d thought that ‘Kiev’ was a job-gone-wrong where Jay lost it and went on a frenzy. That’s why the cult identified him as a potential leader, but they needed him to ‘rediscover’ that frenzy. His expression at the end is a rictus, almost like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.

Is Kill List about the dehumanising effects of war, about trauma and PTSD, about the dark heart of a society that sends professionals to kill in the name of democracy? I’m not sure about that at all. I Reckon it’s a fantastically scary, often disturbing, completely dark and bleak horror film that has lived with me after the final scenes. I’m sure it would reward a second viewing.

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Is a picture really worth a thousand words…?

 It must be a trial to adapt a book for film or television. Without the budget and time to bring the nuances of every character arc and description to life, you must always feel like you’re on a hiding to nothing. The fans of the original text will reject every altered or omitted scene, every composite character. If you yourself admire or love the original, it must be like Sophie’s Choice in deciding how to approach the material.

I’ve Reckoned before about the brutal poetry of Cormac McCarthy’s prose, most especially in The Road, possibly my favourite book of all time, and how that was adapted into a film by Joe Penhall and directed by John Hillcoat. McCarthy’s prose is unlike almost everything else I’ve ever read: often lacking punctuation or indications of speech, it forces the reader to concentrate on every word, on the rhythms of the sentences, which adds astonishing depth and richness to the mere words.

In Blood Meridian he makes real the savagery of the Old West in constantly unflinching terms. Early in the novel, a group of riders are set upon by marauding Comanches, who appear to have arrived from some surreal version of Hell…

A legion of  horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil…

…and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like the vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

Sentences are extended and extended, until you feel your imagination cannot take the brutality, the rush of images and descriptions that assault every sense and every sensibility. The attack and slaughter goes on for a couple of pages, there is no escape.

…And now the horses of the dead came pounding out of the smoke and dust and circled with flapping leather and wild manes and eyes whited with fear like the eyes of the blind and some were feathered with arrows and some lanced through and stumbling and vomiting blood as they wheeled across the killing ground and clattered from sight again. Dust stanched the wet and naked heads of the scalped who with the fringe of hair below their wounds and tonsured to the bone now lay like maimed and naked monks in the bloodslaked dust and everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming.

I’m not sure about you, but I think I need a lie-down after that. Apparently a film is in development. I can’t see it will get even close to that level of violence (and that’s just one scene…).

The BBC recently produced a two-part, just-shy-of-three-hours adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’ novel Birdsong. Billed as a flagship drama, it condensed the shifting times of the plot into a simpler story of the WW1 trenches and one soldier’s memory of a doomed love affair before that war. The production was beautiful, with excellent period detail and impressive effects, and the trenches were recreated to terrible effect.

Nevertheless I Reckon that Abi Morgan, who adapted the work with Faulks himself, effectively conceded the limitations of the medium in doing so. Subtleties within the original storytelling, the order of revealing events and the emotional journey of the reader were lost. The structure of the TV version repeatedly intercut from the trenches to the pre-war affair and vice versa, when in the novel the protagonist only rarely had those ‘flashback’ moments of recall. The experience of the fighting was so intensely realised in prose that it was overwhelming, all-engulfing. TV adaptations have to accelerate the action, and inevitably miss out on the underlying meaning.

After the Big Attack during the Battle of The Somme, the survivors regroup and a roll-call is held, where the full extent of the tragedy becomes clear. This was well-handled in the TV version, as it panned across the men; exhausted, shattered, realising their comrades are all dead. But even that doesn’t get close to the amazing richness of Faulks’ original…

Names came pattering into the dusk, bodying out the places of their forbears, the villages and the towns where the telegram would be delivered, the houses where the blinds would be drawn, where low moans would come in the afternoon behind closed doors; and the places that had borne them, which would be like nunneries, like dead towns without their life or purpose, without the sounds of fathers and their children, without young men in the factories or in the fields, with no husbands for the women, no deep sound of voices in the inns, with the children who would have been born, who would have grown and worked or painted, even governed, left ungenerated in their fathers’ shattered flesh that lay in stinking shellholes in the beet-crop soil, leaving their homes instead to put up only granite slabs in place of living flesh, on whose inhuman surface the moss and lichen would cast their crawling green indifference.

Only in this beautiful, heartbreaking sentence do we get the full impact of WW1, of the loss of humanity in both physical and spiritual terms. Throughout the novel’s sections in the war, the characters reflect that nothing will ever be the same for mankind now that we have proved ourselves capable of inflicting that level of inhumanity and violence upon each other. This much greater meaning is lost in the TV adaptation, as it concentrated the drama into one soldier. But I Reckon that does Faulks a disservice. His novel, for all its personal intimacy and beauty, depicts the personal losses against the larger impact of the war, across communities, nations and generations.

Birdsong and Blood Meridian are both masterpieces, but their ambition and achievements in realising the horrors and beauty of humanity cannot easily or satisfactorily be translated onto screen.

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I told you we should have got him a hat…

I think I watched just over 70 films in 2011. Some of these I watched more than once (usually the ones my kids liked on DVD). Some were ‘re-viewings’ of things I’d first seen years earlier, but most (more than 60) were new to me. Only a handful (Tangled, The King’s Speech, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Arrietty, The Adventures of Tintin) were on the Big Screen. As such, most   of my favourites were not originally released in 2011, and indeed I saw none of the list below in the cinema.

I’ve also revelled in Mark Cousins’ astonishing (if more than occasionally infuriating) The Story of Film: An Odyssey. Shown over almost 4 months on Channel 4, it covers an amazing amount of ground, with often breathtaking side-by-side shots and comparisons between modern films and their influences, captivating interviews from around the globe and a perspective on world cinema like I have never seen before. Sadly, it’s not available for viewing from 4OD, but I recommend it to any budding cinephile if only for its historical perspectives (but beware of Mark Cousins’ very distinctive style of narration…!).

Anyway, my favourite films I saw last year, in rough chronological order.

Red Riding (2009)
Already this is a bit of a cheat, as it’s actually a trilogy of films made for television. Grim, dark, bleak, violent, they are terrific character studies set around a fictionalised version of the 1970s / 80s in Northern England. Everyone smokes, swears, drinks and are corrupt, especially the policemen. Based on novels by David Peace, these are tough stories.

Un Prophète (2009)
Marked by the tremendous performance by Tahar Rahim, and several scenes of heart-pounding tension, this is an epic tale of survival and ambition within a brutal French prison.

I saw another great ‘prison’ film last year; The Escapist stars Brian Cox and is well worth your time…

Bloody Sunday (2002)
Perhaps the most harrowing film I’ve watched since ‘Grave of The Fireflies‘. The opening act is filled with dread, as we already know the brutal outcome, it’s an exercise in claustrophobic film-making. Expert hand-held camerawork and extreme close-ups combine to make the viewer feel intensely close to the action. You can feel the soldiers’ breath, smell their uniforms. You can feel the bleakness on the barricades and in the sparse concrete. As stones rain down upon the troops’ vehicles, the noise is deafening and the tension palpable. When the tension breaks and the shooting starts, it’s terrifying, a massacre made all the more vivid by having the HQ Commanders realise too late what might be happening, the tragedy of unarmed civilians (or at worst stone-throwing kids) being shot in the back. James Nesbitt is terrific as Ivan Cooper. His idealism turns quickly to shock, horror, disbelief and righteous anger as he sees his friends murdered by The State. This was a massively important film before The Savile Enquiry finally verified its storytelling is much closer to the truth than anything The British Army had tried to peddle before. It’s still an extremely important and visceral retelling of a pretty shameful day.

Network (1976)
How I got to be a 42 year-old so-called cinephile without seeing this film sooner is a mystery: it should be required viewing. Peter Finch barnstorms his way through the film as a TV newsreader on the verge/in the fullest throes of a breakdown. William Holden is terrific as the old-school boss, and Faye Dunaway is terrifying as ‘television incarnate’. There are so many brilliant scenes and lines it’s hard to single some out, but I laughed out loud at “It’s The Network News Hour – with Sybil The Soothsayer”, and at the contract negotiations between the Network Production Execs and the Revolutionary Communist Terrorist group… Prophetic, chilling, funny, brilliant.

Off the back of this and prompted by various tributes on the death of the director Sidney Lumet, I also watched Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict and Serpico,  all of them brilliant, important films.

Monsters (2010)
This is a terrific achievement of real independent, low-budget creativity. Gareth Edwards developed the concept, directed, operated the cameras, did all the special effects at home, and probably booked the taxis too. It’s an almost-completely improvised drama with a similar feel and tone to District 9. The creation of a world filled with extra-terrestrials is brilliantly done, and the emotional and physical journey of the two lead characters through this landscape is really well told. There’s unease and tension aplenty, as the threats seem to come both from the rarely-seen monsters and the human military. The final scenes are wonderful, and are moving on all sorts of different levels. A tremendous piece of work. I can’t wait to see what Edwards does next.

Submarine (2011)
I loved this gem of a film. It’s funny and occasionally moving. It’s surreal and sometimes jarring. The writing and direction from Richard Ayoade is remarkably assured for a first feature, with stylish flourishes that (IMHO) never intrude on the film, but enhance it. The unreliable narrator, Oliver Tate, is a fabulous creation, full of teenage angst, self-centred to a fault (the scenes where he imagines his own funeral are breathtakingly honest and hilarious), but also painfully self-conscious. The coming-of-age elements are handled sensitively, and indeed by the end we’re not sure if he really has come of age or just learned a couple of lessons about dealing with stuff. The supporting cast are terrific, with Paddy Considine stealing scenes and Sally Hawkins looking like a shop mannequin. Noah Taylor is heartbreaking / infuriating as Oliver’s father, Yasmin Paige is great as the capricious Jordana, and Darren Evans makes the most of his comic lines… Sort of like Juno but better, like Son of Rambow but with more panache, this is a treat.

 

Panique au Village / A Town Called Panic (2009)
This was a complete surprise and all the more joyous for that. Old-school children’s toy figurines are animated, creating a world unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The nearest I can get is something like Terry Gilliam’s most bizarre work.
The main protagonists / housemates are Horse, Cowboy & Indian. When the latter pair unwittingly destroy the house after trying to buy a last-minute birthday present for their friend, all sorts of panic ensues. Meanwhile, Horse is pursuing a fledgling relationship with the local music teacher (also a horse). There are also thieving creatures from the local pond, a journey to the centre of the earth, a mechanical penguin that hurls giant snowballs and a fight at a disco. Surreal, hilarious, and often magical.
“I told you we should have got him a hat”.

 

Attack The Block (2011)
I came to this as a massive fan of Joe Cornish, and hoped against hope it wouldn’t disappoint. It’s inspired by and builds on genres from sci-fi to horror, comedy to social satire, and is wonderfully constructed, shot and performed.
The gang of teens are beautifully portrayed, and we’re given just enough clues about their backgrounds to understand where they come from, where the good is within them, and why they’re trying to break out for themselves. Scene follows scene with dynamic shots, gripping action, and a lot of genuine threat. Cornish does terrifically to make us dislike the kids for their initial crimes but also to root for them throughout. And he doesn’t get sentimental about killing people off – there’s plenty of bloodshed.
This is a fabulous directorial debut, proper cinema. Why can’t all films be this good and this much fun?

 

True Grit (2011)
I haven’t seen the John Wayne original, but this is The Coen Brothers at the top of their game: a very simple story told with such depth, richness and a wonderful cast of characters that it connects and resonates way beyond the basic plotline. Hailee Steinfeld is fantastic as Mattie Ross; tough yet vulnerable, wise-cracking but deadly serious, more than a match for virtually every adult she comes across. Jeff Bridges chews up scenery beautifully, while Matt Damon is great as Texas Ranger “LeBeef”. As with every Coens’ film, the supporting cast are universally watchable, in even the smallest roles. The cinematography and writing are also exemplary, with evocative 19th century dialogue and speech patterns alongside suitably gritty and dirty frontier towns. Every shot contributes to the mood and development of the story. Perhaps my favourite Coen Brothers film after Fargo.

 

Dancer In The Dark (2000)
Perhaps my favourite Lars von Trier film, a mix of his usual hand-held camerawork and grim storytelling with Hollywood Musical interludes that are bizarre to say the least. Björk is the director’s lead female ‘victim’ (taking a similar role to Nicole Kidman in Dogville and Emily Watson in Breaking The Waves), and her performance is astonishing, perhaps the best of all three of those.

 

Other notable mentions could include two (more) revenge films: the stark Romanian/Hungarian Katalin Varga and Paddy Considine’s tour-de-force in Shane Meadows’ excellent Dead Man’s Shoes. Jennifer Lawrence was outstanding in the beautifully bleak Winter’s Bone, and Mike Leigh was on fabulously understated form with Another Year, and I really enjoyed George Clooney in Up In The Air.

2012 is already shaping up well, as I was given a wonderful Michael Powell/Emrich Pressburger DVD Box Set for Christmas, so expect some gushing reviews of timeless classics in the coming months on these pages…!

I would love to receive recommendations for things I’ve missed, or things I certainly should not miss: I’m really going to try and see Hugo with Hannah… Given I only make it to the cinema a few times each year, what should I book a babysitter for now?

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Whatever you do, bring the truth…

A couple of months ago – on Sunday 17th July, just before 7pm I was outside a pub in Windsor and my heart was beating fast. I had driven 80 miles to meet someone I’d never met before, but whose voice I’d listened to every week for the past 4 years. I wasn’t alone: I was expecting to meet a group of complete strangers too.

I walked into the pub and looked around. I knew (sort of) what ‘he’ looked like from pictures, but couldn’t see him there. One guy was sitting on his own, and a group of about 6 people were sat around a large table, drinking and talking. I tentatively approached them. “Excuse me, are you guys Filmspotters?”

They paused for a moment while they tried to understand the label I’d given them, before politely laughing and saying ‘no’. Moments later they left the pub joking that they were “just in time to ‘spot’ the 7.14 to Maidenhead”… With hindsight it should have been obvious that they were all good friends, rather than a group of cinephile strangers with a more-sophisticated-than-average-taste-in-film-podcasts.

However, the guy on his own was one of those cinephiles: we introduced ourselves and sat down together. We were both there to meet Matty Ballgame, co-host of the very excellent Filmspotting podcast. His ‘other’ job had brought him from Chicago to the UK for a few days, and another listener had made the effort to invite him to a pub for a few beers.

They arrived a few minutes later, as did around half a dozen other Filmspotters, and until closing time we drank beer and talked about stuff – mostly films and music. My fellow Filmspotters are all very nice people, we had a laugh. Matty is charming and funny, and talks about pretty much everything he cares about with passion and commitment. What you see is what you get, in a very good way. He was also being very positive about potential acting opportunities which at the time made me wonder how long he could keep presenting the show if his intended career took off.

Malcolm, Matty Ballgame, Ellen, Danny and me

And so it now transpires that Matty Ballgame is leaving Filmspotting, at present for destinations unannounced. Filmspotting is my favourite film podcast by some distance (sorry Dr Kermode), because it has done more to broaden my cinematic knowledge and experience than anything else. I rarely make it to the cinema, and FS fuels my DVD-rental list months in advance. Even better, it has introduced me to directors and films I might never have sought out, but for the passionate, committed and considered recommendation of its hosts.

Filmspotting will survive Matty’s departure (sorry, Matty!) because (a) it’s a terrific format that has been consistently delivered by the fantastic Adam Kempenaar for 6 years, alongside 2 co-hosts and occasional guests, (b) it has a scale of supporters (including me) who love it, and (c) there will always be films worth talking about.

I don’t know Matty, but it feels like I do. His frank openness and honesty about himself, his work, his love life (or lack of) and his love of films make him much more than just a radio presenter or film critic (although he might deny that he’s even a film critic!). I want to wish him the very best of luck from all his Filmspotting fans. I hope he succeeds in his ambitions (whatever they might be!?), that he continues to Bring The Truth™ and that he can occasionally return to Filmspotting once in a while.

In the meantime, we’ll just have to wait to see his Lear. But we’ll always have this piece of broadcasting gold…

And if you want to hear the quality and range of his performance skills, you should really check out this gem of a Massacre Theatre scene from FS#258 (starts around 33mins).

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