The Iron Claw

The Iron Claw

Director ~ Sean Durkin

Writer ~ Sean Durkin

2024,

Stars ~ Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson

 

Perhaps expecting a telling of the all-wrestling Von Erich family to go the way of all tropey sports films, it was only when realising that Sean Derkin was directing that I became intrigued. Derkin’s ‘The Nest’ had a faintly off-kilter manner, a chill and distance and a sensibility for melodrama that felt more indie than mainstream that I prefer.

The target of ‘The Nest’ is a self-deluded, desperate charlatan of a father, and ‘The Iron Claw’ similarly ultimately lays the blame of constant tragedy at the feet of toxic masculinity, enabled by a distracted/indifferent mother. Holt MacCallany gives an excellent bristling and bullying turn as the patriarch that turns his family into a cult. Or, as Letterboxd commenter dylan troesken writes, “when your“family curse” is just the mere existence of your father”. Fritz's way is more manipulation and psychological shoving whilst he leaves the physical punishment to the ring (as far as the film goes).

 

The fights are brutish and there is no doubt that they that they bruise, no matter the camaraderie of the faux-adversaries behind the scenes. This is violence made family-friendly and almost huggable by the set-ups and pantomime, by the operatic depiction of machismo. But faking it hurts and Durkin leaves no doubt to that. All this is as expected, but these fights that you assume to be the fulcrum of the melodrama are not the peak moments, as damaging and ferocious as they are, for they are almost the backdrop for the wider family narrative (and relegated to montages at times, made necessary to pack in as much story as possible). It’s the family drama that dominates and it is here that Durkins’ way with melodrama is most at play.

  

The Von Erich brothers have a strong bond, despite and because of parental figures that seem to swing between poles of dominance and disinterest: we see them partying but not in the kegging jock way we are familiar with such films. Their closeness is rendered in vignettes as well as bouts. We know the tropes, so when one brother says he’s going for a ride during an emotional peak, we know the narrative rules, but we skip to the consequences. It’s in daddy’s disappointed glare. It’s in the striking scene where mom has a grief-stricken fashion crisis when she realises she is wearing the same black dress as last funeral. The film is full of such moments and if there is inevitably a skipping-stone narrative over the major points, it doesn’t dimminish the cumulative gut-punch.

And for sure, those that know that story might be disappointed with omissions, which defines these kinds of films. Indeed, the Letterboxd comments is dotted with accusations that the film is a soft on Fritz. If you didn’t know the story ~ and I didn’t ~ it’s a shock to learn that there was another wrestling brother that followed a similar path. In passing, Mark Kermode’s review mentions that Durkin omitted Chris because: how much tragedy can you take? And yes, it would feel like heavy-handedness, surely? I mean, you can’t sell all this as fiction, right? Indeed, but this additional detail only belies a pattern, not a curse, of something damaged and damaging. No supernatural curse here.

There is a quiet anger marinated in heart ache here. But it’s Zac Efron’s performance as a somewhat gentle giant Kevin that stands out, a stunning wrestler’s physique almost blocking out all else until the nuances shine through. All this tragedy culminates in a moment where he gets to truly stick the landing with a most singular instant heartbreaker of a line. Like ‘Past Lives’, another film where you don’t truly realise the emotional impact until the finale. 

"Signs of Radical Midnight" - album by Buck Theorem

 This one is ambient & instrumental. Designed for when your mind drifts with tales of animals and space, loss and snack-times. 

Recorded at The Hide-Out, finished February 2024.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

Sinbad and the Eye of the tiger

Director ~ Sam Wanamaker

Writers ~ Beverley Cross, Ray Harryhausen

1977, UK

Stars ~ Patrick Wayne, Jane Seymour, Taryn Power

 

Both the characterisation and dialogue veers between bad and bland, and often the story depends upon stupidity (“Are you looking for THIS? And THIS?” “Let me try this magic potion on a mosquito that looks like a bee!…”) and there’s a streak of inconsistency and daftness, as if this is just a first draft script.

 

“Best to keep him caged,” then he’s playing chess on deck, etc).

Or:

“Sounds like an earthquake!”

“There can be only one possible answer!”

“The witch…!”

Oh, so “earthquake” wasn’t the logical answer?

Or:

How does he think he’ll win the fight on the stairs?

Or:

One minute Trog fears the temple entrance; the next he’s helping them lift the lock on the door.

            Or:

The gull-foot seems to be forgotten about.

 

And a little casual sexism and racism and full of both impressive and bad matte work. But you don’t really go to a Harryhausen film for the script (by Harryhausen and Beverley Cross) we’re here for Harryhausen creations and in that we can be satisfied. The opening ghoul attack is promising, but mostly it’s oversized animals rather than monsters. The Minaton radiates inhuman menace (apparently Patrick Mayhew was the stand-in, having just been ‘Star Wars’ Chewbacca) and the Trogolyte and the baboon out-act everyone else. Whereas Margaret Whiting gives the hammiest villain she can ham, the subtlety and nuance of Harryhausen’s amazing work on the baboon is perhaps lost because it is not making realistic the fantastic but realising something more recognisable and by extension, less magical.  Of all the sets, it’s the journey through the ice tunnels with all the frescos of frozen victims that impresses most.

 

 

It's then a weaker work ~ yes, the Minaton creates a bit of a shudder of intimidation although its demise is a bit ignoble; the baboon is a fascinating achievement, but we live in a time w

here realistic sci-fi talking racoon is just a standard and one of a rash of CGI realistic critters on offer at any cinema season. Of course, ‘Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger’ came out the same year as ‘Star Wars’ and a new age was obviously being ushered in. The realism given a fantastical dinosaur in ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ is astonishing, and yet there is always a place for going back to old-school stop-motion, because being aware that it is the work of one man’s dedication is still thrilling and jaw-dropping. So there is still awe and pleasure in Harryhausen’s effects work, but it is a shame that more strength of story doesn’t ward off datedness.

 

Poor Things

Poor Things

Director ~ Yorgos Lanthimos

Writers ~ Tony McNamaram, Alasdair Gray

2023, Ireland-UK-USA-Hungary

Stars ~ Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe

Like ‘Barbie’ for Goths and Tim Burton fans, ‘Poor Things’ is similarly a tale of gender existentialism, of a woman finding her place in a patriarchal world. It also reminded me a little of Ransom Riggs’ appropriating old photographs to generate a narrative for ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ and the work of Walter Potter. It has excellent Bafta award- winning set design by Shona Heath, James Price and Zsuzsa Mihalek, a brilliantly wonky score by Jerskin Fendric, and is afflicted with fish-eye lens. If at first it seems dangerously close to a male fantasy of creating and maltreating a child-woman, it soon becomes apparent that this is not a ‘Weird Science’ fantasy but more musing on nature and nurture.

 

Dr Godwin Baxter (yeh yeh: God.) makes Bella Baxter, Frankenstein style, utilising a suicide victim, but it is evidently more interested in the creation of a daughter-figure rather than the impulses of a dirty old man. In fact, the film walks this fine line deftly until Bella’s curiosity is insatiable and she is able to assert herself. And these are not men to hold her back. As an examination of Bella’s self-discovery, it never allows her to be a victim even when she chooses prostitution as an option to maintain freedom. Her tale is just blithely stomping through patriarchy and class and blithely not acknowledging their attacks on her curiosity, whether carnal or intellectual (although we get more of the former demonstrated rather than the latter). Her tale is not one of overcoming suffering and abuse; we have that in Godwin’s hints of his childhood.

I am aware of critical heralding of Emma Stone’s Bafta Award-winning performance and have heard anecdotally how it annoyed others. She certainly gives it her all as she stomps and furious jumps her way through experience and naïveté in a manner more defiant than innocent. But it is Mark Ruffalo’s turn as a conceited lothario that surely steals the show as he goes from cocksure seducer to broken man in Bella’s wake. Their dance scene is a highlight.

There is of course a lot absent from the novel – Scottish politics for one; faux-Victorian London in place of Glasgow* – and the longer the film goes on it surely loses its argument for its length. It feels an act too long and Bella’s conclusions get increasingly muddled. The most glaring moral failing is that Bella discovered and melted down over class guilt of recognising poverty and yet the film achieves her happy ending by sidestepping any awareness she has developed and leaves her lounging wealthily in an English garden, blissfully privileged and ignoring the truths that made her so outraged. (This is not the same as the book.)

There is black humour, of course, but the tone here is more in the amusing absurdity of Godwin burping gigantic bubbles at dinner. It is not nearly as acerbic and finely tuned as ‘The Favourite’ ~ another Tony McNamara script ~ but perhaps Lanthimos has never worn comedy so clearly on his sleeve. Or rejected the dark comedic potential of cruelty so readily, for that is not Bella’s way. Danny Leigh writes, “Like The Favourite, his new film comes to feel like a costume drama for an age that thinks itself above costume dramas.” Yes, but this is a fantasia and just falls short of steampunk; it is not so much a metafiction commenting upon itself rather than a series of amusements full of fantastical and/or incongruous detail.

It’s a heady confection whose oddness is always engaging, and yet there is the sense that this is less than the sum of its considerable parts. Or that its goofiness falls just short of greatness. Perhaps the gleeful chaos of this picaresque bildungsroman achieves more diversion than conclusion. Perhaps a near miss, then, but the aesthetic and the picaresque chaos of Bella’s self-discovery offers many treats, not to mention a widening of Lanthimos’ range.

 

·         * In his ‘Little White Lies’ interview (No. 101 Dec ‘23/Jan’24), Lanthimos talks of how the Scottish element of the novel felt like another book, and so they focused on Bella. This also led to the change of ending. Regarding the change to London, Lanthimos says that, “Well, I think Alasdair probably wouldn’t be very happy about that, because he was a very proud Scotsman.”