Interstellar

Interstellar

Director – Christopher Nolan

Writers – Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan

2014, USA-UK-Canada

Stars – Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain

 

‘Interstellar’ is ultimately more about parenting than space adventures. This is what they call the “heart” of the film. Perhaps this may interest you more than the hard science-fiction elements such as playing with time and wormholes that occur in the second act, or maybe not.  There is little doubt that this middle section, which involves visiting other planets in a search of a new home for mankind, can provoke genuine awe: it’s what special-effects companies were made for, to provide alien landscapes and giant waves and spaceships… But despite this, there is the nagging self-absorbed feeling that the film thinks that the human individual and his feelings trump this awe. There’s the sense that it’s a little strong on the “I am centre of the universe (and other dimensions)!” It’s the same issue that troubles ‘Arrival’, although ‘Arrival’, as Philip Challinor writes, fails dramatically by making the super-smarts of its female protagonist secondary to motherhood (be smart, girls, but don’t forget what you’re on the planet for!). Not that science-fiction can’t be moving,* but these films seem to foreground and broadcast their emotional arcs in such a mainstream fashion (“Hey, we’re going to be, you know, weepy!”) that their serious treatment of otherworldly ideas seem belittled consequently.

Perhaps this would not be so problematic if Matthew McConaughey (who is, you know, great) as Cooper was not such an all-round genius at everything: not only is he an accomplished farmer but he used to be a brilliant space-craft pilot too. He kind of excels at parenting too: he’ll happily drive through a field of presumably precious crops for an exhilarating parenting moment in pursuit of an errant old drone, for example.** This means his character doesn’t really offer friction, except where he might occasionally butt heads with others. But we know they’re wrong and he’s right anyway. He is perpetually in motion by quest, but when he finally makes his way back his daughter, the moment is more-or-less waved off and brief, leading the audience investment a little short-changed. For a film so hellbent on parenting-as-cosmic-quest, the daughter should not be a McGuffin.

‘Interstellar’ won the American Film Institute 2015 award, and the blurb says:

INTERSTELLAR is proof on earth that artists provide our strongest voice to rage against the dying of the light. Christopher Nolan illuminates the darkness of deepest space with the brilliance of his singular creative vision, while grounding the cosmos in a deeply emotional tale of fathers and daughters. This is cinema at its most ambitious, with Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain providing the beating heart to this awe-inspiring work that reaches across time and space to find meaning in the unexplainable.

 Well, it is a film that is heavy on explanations for its science-fiction – black holes, other dimensions, etc – and that’s what agreeably grounds it. This is where it shines: heady ideas and existential peril that bends time and space.

The imbalance is that the sentimentality outweighs the science-fiction. The aesthetic, effects and ideas are fascinating and wonderfully executed, because Nolan excels at this stuff; indeed, this middle section is apparently credited more to Christopher than his co-writer, Jonathan Nolan. But these strengths are mitigated by the human drama being routine and pedestrianly executed. Hans Zimmer will sweep and soar at the emotional bits, for example (but the score did win an Oscar). It’s very signposted and it is not nearly as smart as it should be; or rather it relationship drama could benefit from being as smart as its concepts. 

The ending is not so much gratuitous as a little unsatisfying. Via Entertainment Weekly:

Nolan’s early take on the ending, however, essentially cuts Cooper off inside the black hole. His script “had the Einstien-Rosen bridge [wormhole] collapse when Cooper tries to send the data back.”

Actually, Jonathan Nolan's original ending would have struck me as more tragic rather than sentimental, and therefore conceptually superior. Science would not necessarily give way to sentiment.

‘Ad Astra’ is more obvious pulpy fun because its flaws are more evident so you can just go along for the ride without thinking too hard. ‘2001: a space odyssey’ remains the pinnacle of Hard Sci-Fi cinema and doesn’t feel the need to explain itself or rely on routine human dramatics. ‘Interstellar’ is better than the former but doesn’t reach the heights of the latter.

When I watched ‘Interstellar’ for a second time, I enjoyed it more as pulp, as the kind of science-fiction I was reading as a teenager (Harry Harrison comes to mind). For me, in this example, “grounding the cosmos in a deeply emotional tale of fathers and daughters” is not respectful of and belittles the cosmos.

·   * For example, that’s me as an adult on the bus trying not to cry as I’m finishing ‘Flowers for Algernon’; that’s me as a teenager wondering why Philip K Dick’s ‘Our Friends from Frolix 8’ has left me feeling so oddly emotional.

·   ** They grew the field for the film and sold the crops.

One moment in: Zombie Flesh Eaters

 ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS

ZOMBI 2

Director – Lucio Fulci

Writers – Elisa Briganti, Dardano Sacchetti (uncredited)

1979, Italy

Stars – Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson

Probably the film that saved Italian cinema and part of a particularly notorious strain of extreme splatter that would fuel the  Eighties’ Banned Films list. The eye-gouging is the other scene, but the shark-versus-zombie is the sequence that stands out. It registers high on the WTF!? chart because whereas the eye-gouging is special effects, that’s a real shark.

Fulci is not an elegant filmmaker (although I did find that quality in 'Don't Torture a Duckling'), but he knows how to lay out a set piece. It’s only the set-pieces that matter; or at the RottenTomatoes critic consensus says “Zombi 2 [‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’’ original title] is an absurdly graphic zombie movie legendary for some gory scenes and nothing in between.” Yes, but it scores high on the schlock meter. One moment you can laugh at the dialogue and inattention to detail and the next admire the boldness of the set pieces. So two people got past that guard on the boat, and then he just shakes his head upon finding a couple canoodling on a crime scene? And there’s no escaping the fact that the main reason the zombies get to chomp on the cast is that they stand still long enough for the undead to shamble up. Yet it’s not in the So Bad It’s Good camp. It’s the kind of laughable inattention to internal logic and detail that brings out the nit-picker and in me, although I am less likely to dismiss an entire film on what I see as flaws now (say, far less likely to reject the roast meal because I don’t like the swede), and I do not gravitate towards schlock. However, there is something in Fulci that always intrigues me, and I put it down to the set-pieces. The final cellar scene in ‘The House by the Cemetery’ is another favourite. Although it’s the gore-pieces that get the renown, ‘Zombie flesh Eaters’’ scene of the rising of the dead from the graveyard is equally effective (hey this helmet must be 400 years old!). 

So, the scene goes: exploitation objectification of Auretta Gay as she undresses and stays topless to do a spot of underwater photography (regardless of any urgency in the search for a missing father); a bit Jacques Cousteau; then the threat of a shark; then the appearance of a zombie – underwater! – then a showdown between shark and zombie. Ramón Bravo as the zombie gets up close to tussle with the dangerous fish and it’s most satisfying. There’s an inherent pasted-together veneer to Fulci’s direction that makes any clumsiness and continuity issues in this sequence irrelevant. Is there a little inconsistency with how big the shark is portrayed? Didn’t the zombie tear a chunk from the shark? Just the verve and audacity of the concept, and the knowledge of the perils involved with filming (it would just be CGI if done now), make this fun and unique. You even get ripping sounds when underwater foliage is torn off to fend away attacking zombies, and chomping sounds from the shark. Meanwhile, Georgio Tucci’s* score throbs along most leisurely and incongruously. 

And then the characters never mention it again. 

Wikipedia says: “The underwater scene featuring a shark attack was devised by Ugo Tucci, and was shot without Fulci's approval, by Giannetto De Rossi, in Isla Mujeres, with the zombie portrayed by a local shark trainer.”** It is, of course, the kind of juvenile mash-up concept that leads to ‘Sharkotopus’, or ‘Freddy vs Jason’, or ‘Frankenstein meets the Wolfman’ and its ilk; the kind that can be more silly than inspired. But this is an occasion where it works, and of course one cannot help but think of ‘Jaws’ and in terms of a face-off between two mighty monsters. We can go meta with it: low-budget battling mainstream takeover. There’s no higher, smoother art required from Fulci – the typically negligible logic, drama, characters, dialogue, and dubbing undermine that from the start. But, again, the execution of the set pieces is all. 

The film looks great: Sergio Salvati’s cinematography capturing the anti-Gothic crisp brightness of the crewless boat on the New York City Harbour and then of the tropical island. It also means there’s no shadows for these undead – Romero’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’ showed how these monsters weren’t interested in dark corners – and these zombies look great and disgusting. Again, there’s almost a juvenile edge to this too – worms in eye-sockets!! – and how they regularly seem to have freshly blood-stained chins is a bit of a mystery.

Compared to Romero, this is unintentional comedy, but Fulci was capable of far worse (‘Zombi 3’***). It may be mockable for its flaws but its set-pieces still make this enjoyable. And notorious. 

·       * Music by:  Giorgio Cascio      (as Giorgio Tucci), Fabio Frizzi          and (uncredited) Adriano Giordanella and Maurizio Guarini.

·       ** Albiero, Paolo; Cacciatore, Giacomo (2004). Arriva il "poète du macabre", ovvero: Zombi 2 (1979), in Il terrorista dei generi. Tutto il cinema di Lucio Fulci (in Italian). Un mondo a parte.

*** As a friend chides me: "the Zombie 3 reference isn't really fair cos he only directed like 20%, the rest was Bruno Mattei."

Caught in Time

Caught in Time

除暴

Director – Ho-Leung Lau

Writers – Leo Hong, Ho-Leung Lau

2020, China-Hong Kong

Star – Qianyuan Wang, Daniel WuJessie Li

 

Quite a mess of a film, all flashbangdazzle and propaganda. ‘Caught in Time’ is ostensibly based upon the true case of Zhang Jun, but not a note of it rings true. Not least the title, whose history according to Wikipedia speaks of political agenda over logic: “The film's working title was 限期破案; Xiànqī Pò'àn, literally "Solving the case in time", but in September 2020 the title was changed to 除暴; Chúbào, literally "Getting rid of outlaws", in support of the ongoing law enforcement campaign to crack down on underworld crimes.” At least the last one makes sense where the others don’t as many people are murdered and injured and the case takes at least a year, so the “in time” is surely arguable.

 

The veracity is unconvincing not just because of the usual liberties taken to bring a “true story” to the screen, but mostly because Lau Ho-Leung takes the approach that this tale is just an excuse for a director’s box-of-tricks, leaving the story secondary. It has bombast to rival Zack Snyder or Baz Luhrmann. And also, partly because it’s a vehicle for Chinese state propaganda, which is obvious from the moment they take time to peel fliers from a patriotic poster (and these must be the easiest fliers to peel), and then it ends with a state execution and text that the Chinese police force make the country one of the safest in the world.

 

It also falls to unintentional humour, not just the fliers raising an eyebrow but also when the cop stops a riot with some reprimanding words; when he finds himself dream-dashing through security camera footage; or when car lights shine on a patriotic salute.

 

For the propogandist element and turning the true crime casualties into just collateral damage in the bid for exhilarating set-pieces (there’s a rather good street battle and the bathhouse showdown looks suitably brutal and painful), its misjudgements and token depth-deprived characters make it hard to take it on just a superficial action entertainment level.

The Black Phone

The Black Phone

Director – Scott Derrickson

Writers – Joe Hill (based on the short story 'The Black Phone' by), Scott Derrickson (screenplay by), C. Robert Cargill (screenplay by)

2021, USA

Stars – Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke

 

Adapted from Joe Hill’s short story: Hill is, like his dad, a writer that offers lots of enjoyment from horror tropes. There’s enough edge followed up with neat resolution to make the genre a safe space to exorcise anxieties: red meat with just desserts. It’s comfort food horror. Having established a Seventies context – allowing for mention of ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and use of the Scratchy Retro-Film flashback filter – ‘The Black Phone’ sets up a memorable child abductor in which Ethan Hawke’s performance finds many creepy sleazy and unnerving corners mostly through line readings as his face is obscured by The Grabber’s mask (designed by Tom Savini and co., horror fans!).

 

Abducted and stored in a basement that’s empty but for a disconnected black phone on the wall, young Finney (Mason Thames) finds that The Grabber will procrastinate long enough for ghosts of his other child victims to call on it with semi-vague advice on survival. Having set up the unsettling threat of The Grabber, the script has the ghosts talk with annoying allusiveness so that the runtime isn’t too short, and once the tacky ghosts appear, it becomes clear that the supernatural half is almost ‘Goosebumps’ level (the supernatural is the bond that kids have to overcome the violence of adults). And that’s fine, but there’s a lack of balance here; the slightly drained indie-vibe perhaps promises a grimness, or at something like ‘The Boy Behind the Door’, but that’s not fully the case. The unscary supernatural element is nowhere near as unsettling as the violence and brutality of the bullying or the abuse at home. It’s the same with the popular ‘It: part 2’ where a nasty homophobic attack opens proceedings and casts doubt on the fearsomeness of the fantasy threats). ‘The Black Phone’ film also seems a little coy about what The Grabber does, although there are plenty of hints at the unspeakable. The recent ‘Scary Stories to tell in the Dark’ had the balance right – nastiness for young folk, but a lightness of touch – and then there’s the more recent example ‘Summer of ‘84’ proves itself to be playing a far darker game and isn’t comfort food at all.

‘The Black Phone’ isn’t quite bolstered up so much so that you don’t note the plot holes as you are watching. Wasn’t he going to see his pal after school? But then again, the timescale is unclear overall. He’s abducted but The Grabber doesn’t come down too much and certainly doesn’t see all the digging and other attempts to escape, which you think he might since the previous captives also tried. And if we go with that, surely, he would have seen the freezer damage (again, the timescale is unclear so maybe The Grabber wasn’t due to visit the freezer)? And I am not convinced the police would come out in force based on her call. Hell, if you’re going to strip the basement, why leave a broken phone on the wall at all? All this to say that ‘The Black Phone’ is as frustrating in its plot holes as it is enjoyable in its play with tropes. Or, as George Elkind writes, “Its best moments far outstrip its worst ones, though, resulting in a work that feels at once fussily prepared and a bit undercooked, with artistic attention and running time too often feeling misspent.”

 

It’s a coming-of-age film where the kid gets the respect and awe his peers and of those that bullied him and he gets the girl. All he has to do to gain his masculine credentials is to abducted by a murderous sleazeball and turn his back on his natural aversion to extreme violence to survive. He’ll even get a couple of one-liners: “It’s for you!” and “Call me Finn.”

It has an agreeable indie-vibe and Derrickson seems sincere. Mostly, the film’s strength is the performances of Thames, Hawke and Medeline McGraw – the latter as Finney’s sister Gwen having an existential crisis when her supernatural visions are, like the ghosts, giving her clues that tend to abstractions. Hawke’s vocal performance and the two-part mask nicely convey a fractured psyche. Thames conveys Finney’s intelligence and fortitude even as he is sometimes paralysed in the face of violence, so that when he just becomes a conventional precocious kick-ass, it’s arguably a betrayal of a more complex character.

Men

Men

Writer & Director – Alex Garland

2022, UK

Stars – Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Paapa Essiedu

 

 

(You should not read this if you haven’t seen the film.)

 

The first thing noted is the issue of a man writing with this focus on the female experience of misogyny. A theme of Garland’s ‘Ex Machina’ was male objectification of a woman and the object turning the tables, so there’s precedent for this writer-director’s interest in gender issues. In the pro camp, ‘Men’ is a good film that carries its premise to the end, where its symbolism, eccentricities and outrageousness have meaning. In the con camp, he’s taking up valuable space that should be taken by women filmmakers; does he have the right? So Garland’s privilege as male filmmaker goes to mitigate ‘Men’s status as a successful provocation on behalf of female issues.

 

Attending horror film festivals, I have noted a welcome and inventive rise in films that centre unapologetically on the female experience: Bea Grant is one to watch (‘12 Hour Shift’, and especially ‘Lucky’), and Emerald Fennel’s ‘Promising Young Woman’, Natalie Erika Jones’ ‘Relic’, and of course Julia Ducournau’s ‘Raw’ and Emerald Fennel’s ‘Promising Young Woman’; and I was also mildy entertained but not convinced by Coralie Fargeat’s ‘Revenge’. So these voices are out there, but underheard and not quite in the mainstream. (I’m thinking of Kitty Green’s ‘The Assistant’ too.)

 

But it seems that even detractors are inclined to credit the atmosphere and the aesthetic of ‘Men’. The set piece where Harper’s (Jessie Buckley) innocuous walk the woods gets creepier and creepier, where she seemingly summons something when singing down a tunnel, is just one early highpoint. And then there’s the excellent performances of Rory Kinear, covering a wide spectrum of men. Kinear steps one step back from the caricature – broad but subtle – so the point about male modes doesn’t stumble into reductive stereotypes. It’s all coached in a near fairy-tale aesthetic (forbidden fruit and all that; but dandelion blowing verges on the trite), turning a small corner of an English village into an area where reality can’t be trusted.

 

This is the tale of a woman who thinks she is coping with the traumatic end to an abusive relationship, but when she gets away to a country cottage as a part of her recovery, the memory of her partner influences and infects every male she meets (men: they’re all the same). This memory makes all her interactions with men increasingly toxic and violent, culminating in excessive body-horror. It’s all there in the tagline: “What haunts you will find you.” If the outré ending baffles those that aren’t used to the language of genre extremes – ‘The Thing’, ‘Society’, ‘The Special’, early Cronenberg – it is a provocative body-horror metaphor of regurgitating/rebirthing misogyny across the ages and types of masculinity. It’s the kind of WTF moment that amuses the hell out of my inner horror fan, visceral and cathartic, unsettling, brutal. (I went in with no idea of where it would be going, or exactly what it would be intending, and I credit the trailer for being that rare example of fuelling my curiosity whilst keeping the mystery. Hence, I was fully and pleasingly surprised.)

But what I liked, in the middle of the rebirthing set-piece, is how Harper eventually just looked and walked away, as if to say, “I have no time for your showing-off, guy.” All the way through, it’s evident that she is no fool for the passive-aggressive abuse of men. She wastes no time in rejecting it or calling it out, even if she got herself into a bad situation in the first place. Nevertheless, this whole fantasia reveals that she isn’t coping as well as she thinks, and Harper is ultimately left on the sofa with the aggressive haunting of her ex-boyfriend asking if he she still loves him, after everything. It’s a tale of working through trauma.

 

It is then arguably not so much that Garland is stepping on the toes of the experience of female artists, but that he is using his platform to criticise his own gender. ‘Men’ doesn’t stop the film to explain, as does the otherwise wonderful ‘Get Out’, but neither is it as ambiguous as some credit it. Yet, for all its conclusive meaning, ‘Men’ echoed in me the broader satisfaction with confronting gender issues that I got from ‘The Special’, rather than the troubling aftertaste of sorrow from Bea Grant’s ‘Lucky’ or ‘Promising Young Female’, or even ‘The Beta Test’. As ‘The Special’ and ‘The Beta Test’ are evidently critical of the misogyny from male artists, from the inside as it were, these are surely more appropriate peers. And I count ‘Ex machina’ in this camp too. The difference is that ‘Men’ has a female avatar. That is to say that for all its dreamy veneer of trickery and profundity, it works best as a slow-burn visceral portrayal of one woman’s trauma, and in that sense it’s more akin to the broad end of b-movie expressions of the genre. And that can possess a cathartic and horror-hilarious quality that succeeds where other genres can’t. 

So Long, My Son

So Long, My Son

Di jiu tianchang -  地久天长

Director – Xiaoshuai Wang

Writers – Mei Ah, Xiaoshuai Wang

2019, China

Stars – Jingchun Wang, Mei Yong, Xi Qi

A Chinese epic covering the history of two of families and especially the lifelong effect on their friendship and repercussions of the “one child” policy that lasted from 1979 to 2015. Chronicling both domestic and political contexts, its narrative requires patience and attention as it is non-linear, flip-flopping across decades. This elucidates life as a mosaic of incidents and drama, where the past, present and future are concomitant, always making away for and crashing into one another. It is also a challenge in that the audience must wait for clarification on details. The jigsaw structure means it engages like a mystery.

The shot framing is often exquisite, often being visually beautiful and busy. The locales look/are convincing lived-in, the minutiae of life cluttering up and almost overwhelming. Like the film in total, the nuances of performances, especially by the exceptional Wang Jingchun & Yong Mei, gather increasing weight as details and suppressed emotion accumulate, as understanding of their characters is layered. Inevitably, when spanning many characters over a long period and with such a complex, diced narrative, there are lacunas – Moli’s motivation is a little vague, for example – and maybe appearing a little cumbersomeness, but once the viewer gets into the flow, the temporal changes and cues reveal themselves as deftly handled.

It is also a film that centres on the political contexts that define domestic lives: here, it's the Chinese one-child policy, the post-1978 era of Reform and Opening-up, work life, etc., with a focus is on how one affects the other. It’s awareness and presentation of the micro and the macro is astute and relatable and establishes ‘So Long My Son’s place as an essential, humanist, melancholy social epic.

The three-hour length reaps tremendous rewards in that, come the end, the audience is no doubt craving for reconciliation. Antecedents like Edward Yang’s domestic epics are obvious, demanding patience and attention to detail until investment in the characters has gone deeper than the viewer perhaps realised (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Drive my Car’ being another recently). Personally, I was surprised to find myself aggressively wishing for a sympathetic resolution – and it comes not as wish-fulfilment “happy ending”, but just the tide of life. It’s deeply moving.

Midnight Mass

Midnight Mass

2021, TV mini-series

Creator – Mike Flanagan

Stars - Kate Siegel, Zach Gilford, Kristin Lehman

 

 

Flanagan’s characteristic slow build and grasp of character reaps rewards, and is always punctuated by memorable horror set-piece or images: glowing eyes in the bushes (look closely); dead cats washed up on the beach, etc. The impending horror is at first hinted at in throwaway comments and then sealed in uncanny and disturbing incidents like a disappearing pregnancy. And then, when things are settled, a surprise is thrown in and things really get going…

 

It’s a wordy piece, very concerned with existential questions – guilt, responsibility, repentance, existence, mortality, death, etc. Second Chances are a major theme, with the limits of the island manifesting those of the characters. But it’s also very good at the passive-aggressive and manipulative rhetoric of religion: in this case, used to invite and justify the monstrous/vampirism. Dracula seduced his victims with promises of longevity and anti-Victorian liberation, warded off by Christianity’s piety and symbolism; but Flanagan’s piece here suggests that Bible prose isn’t any protection at all and in fact can be used to fit any personal agenda, even tailoring it to vampire lore. When scientific explanation is also thrown in, the story has all bases pleasingly covered. The tale of one man's Faith being endorsed with an encounter with a vampire is the pleasing, playful, subversive stuff of horror, however po-faced the aesthetic (and that's a fine vampire). And there's all the stuff equating religion with a plague.

But this talkiness becomes an issue in the last chapter, when action and character agency gives way to monologues and speechifying. Proceedings still slow for philosophical and existential discussions even though the show has covered this at length in the build-up. In light of what is happening and has gone before, the show seemingly making a last-minute reach for God feels more like a platitude given what the show has proven.

 

It makes sense that the characters plunge into a hymn, but by this moment the show has leaned towards sentimentality and undermines the horror that has been so carefully arranged and earned (this was the same failing with Flanigan’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House’, only more destructively there). And it’s true that the burning up of vampires is more poetic and romanticed here. Let’s leave aside that I am not wholly unconvinced, given they have a whole island, that there wouldn’t be some way that some of them could have hidden from sunlight, that there wouldn’t at least be protective shade.

 

Nevertheless, the slow build features lots of memorable horror exclamation marks and Hamish Linklater’s performance as Father Paul is a wonderful, riveting and nuanced anchor*. Samantha Sloyan’s turn as Bev Keane is also delicious as the kind of Stephen King God-bothering fanatic you can love love love to hate. As a contemporary ‘Salem’s Lot’ (and to be honest, what could replicate the effect that had on me as a thirteen-year-old?), it holds its head up high. ‘Midnight Mass’ continues Flanagan’s run of mature, character-based horror that knows how to deliver its genre ingredients with both deliberation and full-blooded relish.

 

• For which Hamish Linklater won both Critics Choice Super Awards’ “Best Actor in a Horror Series” and IGN Summer Movie Awards’ “Best Dramatic TV Performance”.

The Northman

 

The Northman

Director – Robert Eggers

Writers – Sjón, Robert Eggers

2022, United States

Stars – Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang

 

Alexander Skarsgård’s long-term desire to make a Viking film definitely hit the target with Robert Eggers, a director renowned and celebrated for his attention to verisimilitude and detail. Eggers calls says, “this is in some respects me trying to do Conan the Barbarian by way of Andrei Rublev”, a description that perfectly captures the twin poles from which it works: rip-roaring blood-and-guts machismo and downbeat adherence to period pseudo-realism. One minute, characters are primally impersonating roaring rampaging beasts, the next we are shored on the pixie-witch beauty of Björk, or the sharp and stony beauty of Anna Taylor-Joy.

 

This tone also makes it a bit of a mainstream outlier: ‘Conan’ had pseudo-seriousness and fantasy fun, and ‘Andrei Rublev’ had existential humourlessness and sublime artiness; but ‘The Northman’ falls somewhere in-between, so that one moment you’re enjoying the Defoe cameo and ‘let’s be a dog’ rituals, and the next you are stunned by a brutal one-shot village massacre which can’t help but remind of the similar unbearable sequence in ‘Come and See’. It’s a big-budget gung-ho action-art film with solemn interests. It is perhaps the same feel that puts off punters from Denis Villeneuve.

 

Starting with a growled narration that would put ‘The Batman’ to shame, ‘The Northman’ offers up an everything-all-at-once splash, like a fevered painting of a historical battle, anchored by the same source that inspired Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’. If ‘The Witch’ and ‘The Lighthouse’ showed what Eggers could do on low budgets, this Viking epic sees him glorying in and using this budget for all it’s worth, as if he knows that he many never get such a chance again. It focuses on the beefed-up, primal wounded animal performance from Skarsgård as Amleth, frightening as a Beserker. His adored father, the King (Ethan Hawke), murdered by his uncle, who then marries his mother. All but orphaned, Amleth loses himself in Beserker rages, which we see in a stunning tracking shot of a terrifying Viking raid on an unsuspecting Slavic town. He is then reminded by casual post-pillaging gossip and a Björk vision of his vow to avenge his father. The ever-popular revenge narrative goes full-ahead, peppered with a little magic-realism and fantasy portentousness and ending up at the edge of a volcano.

But there is no deep slavish dedication to machismo here: the violence may start as exhilarating camerawork, but it’s horror. Amleth’s mission of vengeance brings nothing but ugly truths and betrayals, plunging towards that showdown by magma that doesn’t truly possess the catharsis that revenge is meant to bring.

 

Perhaps this dour, existentialist tone is why David Stratton calls it “surprisingly dreary”? Filmspotting feels the need to ask, “does the director’s new Viking revenge epic add up to anything but a bloody good time?” So which is it: drearily reflective or rip-roaring mindlessness? That Eggers delivers the pleasures from both ends without losing balance is ‘The Northman’s overall artistic success. Fun, furious fantasy and packed with a seriousness approach to theme and detail that will reward multiple watches. It’s epic, pretty, a bit crazy, a bit lost in its own detail and excess.

Playground - Un Monde

Playground

Un monde

 

Director – Laura Wandel

Writer – Laura Wandel

2021, Belgium

Stars – Maya Vanderbeque, Günter Duret, Lena Girard Voss

 

Laura Wandal’s camera is only really interested in the faces and reactions of our two young protagonists and never strays, only occasionally taking in the faces of others. We first meet sister and brother Nora and Abel in a fraught embrace as this is Nora’s first day at the school and she’s very nervous. And that’s the poster.

 

What follows is a back-and-forth, up-and-down rotations of the bullying that comes between the siblings that comes to define their lives as they try to negotiate their place in this world. Watching Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) build in confidence and find friends is warming, but that too comes with pitfalls and snidey remarks – more bullying.  It’s a short film and just as anxiety-inducing and gruelling as ‘Uncut Gems’, but without the fun. It’s spare, direct and acutely focused even as it is loose enough to allow the naturalism and, therefore, vulnerability of the young actors to reach through to audience empathy.

 

And it is even more enraging for the recognisable truths it portrays, a clear-eyed portrayal of playground and classroom politics for anyone that’s been the recipient. Its protagonists are just youngsters trying to survive in a world of cruelty, whether that’s outright physical violence or micro-aggressions. The adults are mostly helpless in this battlefield. Indeed, one vivid moment is when a beloved teacher admits that sometimes adults don’t know what to do. There are no solutions here, because there aren’t, but the representation goes straight to Roger Ebert’s statement that cinema is an empathy machine. A kind of 'Eighth Grade' where consolation is hard to come by. It’s the kind of social minefield that will lead to adult contexts such as ‘The Assistant’.

 

James Lattimer* feels that the naturalism and the story are not fully reconciled – the contrivances of aesthetic and narrative – and attributes this to being a debut feature. But most doubts are likely to be overwhelmed by the visceral reaction the film provokes. It’s a little heartbreaker which portrays the kind of difficulties of socialising that any sensitive person will recognise.    

 

·       * James Lattimer ‘Playground’ review, ‘Sight & Sound’ May 2022. Vol. 32 issue 4, pg 78

The Devil Commands

 

The Devil Commands

Director - Edward Dmytryk

Writers – Robert Hardy Andrews (screenplay), Milton Gunzburg(screenplay), William Sloane(novel "The Edge of Running Water")

1941, USA

Stars –  Boris Karloff, Anne Revere, Amanda Duff

 

Perhaps you can’t go wrong with a black-and-white shot of a “haunted” house in a storm with a portentous opening narration, but the mood is immediately set to maximum Gothic pleasure.  It’s the kind with the feel of ‘Rebecca’, and as with all good Gothics, the storms happen at the correct moments.

Slightly mixed-up from William Sloane’s novel ‘The Edge of Running Water’, this has some nice black-and-white imagery – the séance of corpses in diving suits is quite unforgettable – and some hilarious science-y stuff with equally madcap/entertaining experiments and equipment as a main source of enjoyment. And, of course, Karloff’s central performance to ground it all. In fact, all the older actors give their thin roles more colour than perhaps warranted; and although Karloff rules, it’s Anne Revere that steals the show as the mercenary sham medium.

The mash-up of science and supernatural, but without the influence of religion (the title means nothing), is notable and promising, but although there’s the sense that the execution is all a step above the script, it never really delves deep into this mad doc’s delusion and what he might be touching on. But it’s short and entertaining in an old-school gothic-horror manner.

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