Victoria

Sebastian Schipper, Germany, 2015

A single take capturing a heist in real time. 

What could have been pure novelty – however enjoyable – becomes something much more due to exemplary performances. Given the constraints, ‘Victoria’ runs an entire gamut of emotions as lonely Spanish woman in Germany Victoria falls in with a group of capering Berliners, falls deeper and deeper with them and then discovers herself in a crime film. 

‘Victoria’, manages to use the intimacy of the hand-held without, for the most part, the problematic incoherence of vertiginous shaky-cam; it shows up the pretensions of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s ‘Birdman’ one-take-trick-shot (however agreeable). It’s a surprisingly convincing storytelling considering all that happens takes place over more than a couple of hours. If anything, the film displays how the entire scope of drama can take place in such a short space of time. Yes, the one shot by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen is remarkable, quite stunning for its consistency as it weaves and dips the highs and lows of the drama; but it’s Laia Costa’s performance as Victoria and Frederic Lau as Sonne that will remain as an aftertaste, the camera often focusing right on their faces and expressions, returning to them again and again to trace the changes and reactions there. Funny, angry, vulnerable, resourceful, stupid, raw, impulsive, ruthless, charming – it’s all there in all the characters in this compressed scenario. Director Sebastian Schipper never allows the single take conceit to be the sole focus, but rather allows it to provoke a naturalism that reaps great rewards. As a technical, storytelling and acting achievement, it’s quite breathtaking.   

Hardcore Henry

Ilya Naishuller, 2015, Russia-USA

Should you have ever wondered what the first person shooter you play looks like as a film, or if you’ve ever imagined the game you are watching a friend play is cinema, then Ilya Naishuller's ‘Hardcore Henry’ is that thing. Henry wakes up to artificial limbs being attached to his body whilst his wife explains that he has amnesia that will pass, etc. Then just as he’s getting a voice implanted, his revival is interrupted by the bad guys and it’s all running and fighting and killing from then on. 

The camerawork is from a stuntman’s point-of-view and sometimes this perspective makes things thrilling – free-running, climbing buildings, etc – and sometimes it makes it incoherent; but the film is quick to recalibrate so we never completely get lost. If you find shaky-cam nauseating, this unyielding p.o.v. may not be for you.* And there’s carnage aplenty, the outrageousness one of its chief gags from the opening credits. If you’ve come for story or insight into the first-person-shooter genre, this isn’t it. Rather, you’ll be impressed at the visual tricks employed to achieve this perspective: Wow, did he just flip from a crashing van onto the back of a bike? How many people is he fighting?? Etc. The other main gag is the comedy turn of Sharlto Copley who plays several roles that range from not particularly good (that Cockney accent is quite bad) to amusing (the military Toff-Brit is perhaps the best, but the weed-smoking character may depend upon how funny you find stoner comedy). The dialogue is also deliberately ungood to emulate the games it’s mimicking. That Henry is constantly running into places that have racks and drawers full of firearms and cabinets marked “Adrenalin” is surely far more successful joke. 

Franck Khaulfon's ‘Maniac’ used the first-person viewpoint to elaborate on its themes, to put you as cinematically close to the protagonist as possible, to show the film from his serial killing perspective: with ‘Hardcore Henry’ there is no psychological resonance to tap into because it’s not that film. This is more like dangerous sports: for the thrill of it. There’s a shoot-out in a brothel (of course) and the highlight of a musical routine. The former panders to the worst of gaming storylines and the latter dance routine is the only time that the film really promises to break out from its pastiche. But it doesn’t and your brain would have long since switched off before the final onslaught. As remarkably rendered and relentlessly paced as it is. With a little self-awareness instead of just imitation, this might have been more than just well-executed fun. A full story also might have helped make it more than just an experience.

• And normally this may cause issues for me, as I found myself sitting through Tobias Lindholm’s ‘A War’ thinking “Stop trembling the camera! Buy a tripod!” A yet with ‘Hardcore Henry’ I didn’t find this an issue: perhaps because I went in expecting; perhaps because that is the film.

Exists

Eduardo Sánchez, 2014, USA

‘Exists’ is a good monster-movie romp but a lousy drama. You will spend a lot of time thinking of how stupid the lead characters are. And it’s not the same as the flawed thinking that marks realistic, inexperienced people - the kind that colours in the characters of ‘It Follows’ for instance - but the kind of character behaviour that makes you aware of mediocre writing. So you have the hysterical girl that won’t stop crying and potentially giving their position away (which I can go with because as annoying as this may be, people will do that under extreme duress, etc) but then there’s the guy coming out of hiding just to blast away all his ammo and trying to confront the Sasquatch with challenges I guess he would’ve heard from sports programmes and action movies. Good going, stupid, you’ll be thinking. Yes, pretty soon they all stand out as annoying movie types.  So no, it won’t be challenging ‘Willow Creek’ as a definitive Bigfoot film. Or a found-footage film.

Director Eduardo Sánchez was one half of the team that made ‘The Blair Witch Project’, but ‘Exists’ doesn’t solve the major problems of the hand-held-camera genre the former instigated: why keep filming? Who’s editing this afterwards for maximum drama? Etc. To justify all the covering shots (like the creepy exterior one of the Sasquatch coming up the cabin in shadow), we begin with one guy (hey, you won’t remember the names of these characters) having a considerable stash of cameras: I guess we are to take for granted that he could afford all this and that he would set it all up without any trouble or comment. (And then he never checks them?) Although this reaps rewards with a helmet-cam when the beast is running after a speeding bicycle (shades of Sánchez’s funny ‘A Ride in the Park’ entry in ‘V/H/S/2’) or a vision of the Sasquatch jumping onto the camper van, at other times it will just make things incomprehensible. Again, the intimacy of subjectivity forfeits the drama of a well-placed shot. This has none of the care or ambiguity exhibited in his ‘Lovely Molly’.

On the plus side, it wastes little time with getting on with things: these privileged idiots knock down something that is probably just an animal and won’t let that get in the way of having a good time to show on social media. And then they get attacked, the creature besieging them and then retreating, tormenting them and showing evidence of intelligence in its assaults. And, the film does have a great Sasquatch and that makes up for so much if you are a monster fan. Oh, it's an excellent Sasquatch.Brian Steele wears the suit designed by Mike Elizalde with sound design and grunts and roars by Kevin Hill and Matt Davies. It’s impressive. At first, the creature is seen in shadow, then long-shot, then medium shot, then in fragments like an eye or a foot… all implying that this monster suit is going to be kept at arms’ length to keep up credibility. But this isn’t the case. There is a good cellar attack scene and visions like the Sasquatch keeping pace with the bicycle or coming out of the smoke and the final close-up justify this is a creature feature.

The Revenant

Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2015, USA

‘The Revenant’ is as much a box-of-tricks as Alejandro Iñárritu’s previous critic-pleaser ‘Birdman’, but it’s a box-of-tricks designed to win over a viewer like me. The unwavering long takes… repeatedly I found myself thinking Wait – this is a single shot! And it hasn’t finished yet… The camera moves from participant to participant in the opening camp raid, for example, and it doesn’t break. Then it goes underwater to follow a near-drowning and then back up again without cutting away. Long takes like this are showboating but also exemplary cinema. I am always a sucker for them.

The fact that this is supposedly based on the true story of frontiersman Hugh Glass is much touted, but of course one must always take such claims with a pinch of salt. It seems that Based on a True Story is equated with depicted truth and, maybe, a superior narrative. But this is rarely that case because films are fabrications and they have the habit of making the truth a pliable thing: they use oppressions, elaborations and omissions, usually not giving the complex truth at all and aggravating those well versed in it. For example, apparently Hugh Glass did not have a son. Besides, this true tale is surely just a framework to dazzle with cinema rather than narrative, although one can see why the idea of this tale is compelling. 

And then the bear attack. I thought perhaps they had blown a trump card by featuring it in the trailer. The trailer that baffled me at first and then slowly got me more-and-more intrigued. But the trailer does not prepare you for the length and execution of the bear attack. About halfway through the scene, I realised my jaw had dropped. So smitten was I with this scene that at first I wondered if it was setting a precedent for CGI in narratives, the interaction between the artificial and real actors. But then of course I came to my senses and remembered that we had Richard Parker from ‘Life of Pi’ and it is probably easy to forget that almost the entirety of ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ was a CGI animal showcase. Or even 'Paddington'. But yes, the bear attack in ‘The Revenant’ is an exceptional special-effects sequence. This is not the only jaw-dropper, but it probably tops all the others the film offers.

And of course the film’s length and slender narrative will cause criticism, but there is always another visual jaw-dropper around the corner. It is fuelled by ambience, showstoppers and themes. The length and episodic tribulations are narratively coherent when the theme is given as only God decides when vengeance is over. In this sense, DiCaprio’s defeating death multiple times puts him in some way as God’s envoy, or at least under some Divine protection until he has completed vengeance (and what this says about God is another discussion).  And there is the moment when Hardy/Fitzgerald states that there is nothing else to him but the identity his work gives him, which furthers the questions of what makes a man. But the film squarely puts the revenge fantasy centre-forward and that is always popular in American cinema. The film in not really interested in skewering this theme, just impressive rendering. 

And of course, it has to be noted that this is a Boy’s Own Adventure so no real room for womenfolk, except in Terence Mallick-y maternal and floating form. And speaking of Glass’ dreams: the pile of skulls may be impressive production design work from Jack Fisk, for example, but it’s not original symbolism (even if justifiable as rendering the limits of Glass’ imagination). As such, these excursions into dreams are the least convincing aspect of the adventure, even if the try to colour Glass with some softness against the relentless theme of revenge. It also nods to the villainy of colonialism and the savagery and nobility of colonialists and natives alike, but these are more asides, gesturing to a more complex humanity that Glass is forgoing on his quest. 

Tom Hardy swings from being impressively sullen to scenery chewing, often at the same time: at least these tendencies are fused here unlike ‘Legend’ where, playing both the Kray twins, one could see his tendency between both brilliance and gimmicks. He seems to be trying to trump Jeff Bridges and Nick Nolte for occasionally incomprenhisble mumbling accent. Quietly, Will Poulter steals the film by getting on and not trying to show off, using his vulnerability to make an impression at odds with the other heavyweights. And of course, DiCaprio’s physical trials in this role will demand accolades – he looks so obviously like he’s suffering! 

S. Craig Zahner, the director of another exceptional western ‘Bone Tomahawk' really doesn’t like ‘The Revenant’:

"I certainly hope there’s going to be a western resurgence. My view on it is, The Revenant got made, Leonardo DiCaprio is a huge star and Inarritu is a big director. I think that movie is probably the single worst movie I’ve seen in the last five years and just totally empty and terrible and didactic. And it’s just awful—lacking humor and characterization, and anything I ever want to see in a movie. But that movie got made because there are two powerhouses there."

But ‘The Revenant’ isn’t about humour and characterisation (which both feature strongly and impressively in ‘Bone Tomahawk’). It’s about a world with the humour sucked out and reduced to survival and retribution and state-of-the-art film making. And the magic-hour vistas are just the start.

The Borderlands

Elliot Goldner, 2013, UK

 

A Vatican research team sets out to prove or disprove supernatural occurrences at a church in a small Irish town.

Another entry in the “hand-held camera” genre that of course doesn’t overcome the questions inherent in that aesthetic (who’s editing? etc). However, the film colours in the characters and provides increasingly good performances, benefitting from having convincing protagonists instead of just pin-ups. Aidan McArdle particularly starts out as the usual brattish cameraman but soon fleshes out into an innocent out of this depth, as someone relatable and to care about. The still inserts of the landscapes seem to imply that this isn’t so much “found footage” as simply filmed this way. It benefits from the Gothic atmosphere of a church and takes its time to set up an air of genuine unease. Soon, it gets down to being genuinely unsettling. It is also quietly bolstered by an argument between faith in “what is seen” and “the supernatural”,putting them in cahoots, making the latter phenomena bait for the former and making “The Borderlands” more thoughtful than its chosen appearance may initially imply. An unnerving exercise with a humanitarian streak so that the audience is left with genuine characters that do not deserve what happens to them. When the hand-held agenda succeeds it can give a descent into hell an intimacy that can be surprising and refreshing: “The Borderlands” escalates to a finale whose sheer audaciousness goes someway to justifying that angle, shedding some fresh light on some of the preceding dialogue.