Beats, Rhymes & Life-The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest

I have written a review of Michael Rappaport's fascinating documentary on A Tribe Called Quest over on the NTS Blog Go and have a look.

The Kid with a Bike (2011)

Like the Dardenne Brother’s previous films, The Son (2002) and The Child (2005), The Kid with a Bike sees the filmmakers return to their distinctive naturalistic style. The simplicity of both visuals and plot are key as they allow the human drama to unfold without being overshadowed by grandiose visuals or ambitious narrative techniques.

The kid with the bike is Cyril, a red-haired, angry and vulnerable 12-year old played brilliantly by Thomas Doret whom we first encounter trying to escape his foster home. Cyril wishes only to find his father and his beloved bicycle. Cyril’s unequivocal love for his father blinds him from the truth that his dad (Jeremie Renier) has sold his son’s bike and made an escape.

After literally falling into the arms of hairdresser, Samantha (Cecile De France) at a Doctor’s surgery, Cyril is taken in by the woman who agrees to take care of the boy at weekends. Why Samantha takes such a clearly troubled child into her quiet life so quickly and without much hesitation is the only slightly troubling aspect of the film. A common reading of this element of the story suggests the film should be regarded, in some senses, as a fairytale, and that interpretation makes this narrative strand more understandable. What is clear is that Samantha is kind and lonely and sees, behind Cyril’s unpredictable and angry exterior, a boy that is vulnerable and alone.

In arguably the film’s standout scene, Cyril and Samantha track down Cyril’s father, Guy. Here, Cyril’s unquestioning faith in his father’s supposed good nature and love is horribly shattered. Cyril appears outside the kitchen window of his father’s restaurant exuberantly trying to get his father’s attention. Guy’s expression combines total indifference with mild annoyance. Guy makes it clear to both Cyril and Samantha he wants nothing to do with his son and never wants to see him again. What is noticeable in this scene is its understatement and quiet brutality. There are no raised voices and no tears are shed- Guy’s rejection of Cyril is plainly delivered and explained in simple terms. Guy feels unable to take care of his son or financially support him, delivering this news in a way that reduces his son to a mere object that can’t be paid for.

The nature of this story may easily have seemed clichéd and overly sentimental in the hands of other writer/directors. This is a story involving an abandoned child, a pretty and lonely woman and their journey into (literally) each others arms. However, the restraint and naturalism of the Dardenne’s style in this film sums up their style as filmmakers. Rather than using sweeping camerawork or grand orchestral scores, they use a basic but brilliantly effective cinematic style, using hand-held camerawork, close-ups of their actors, minimising their musical scores and allowing the stories they tell to stand alone without assistance. The Kid with a Bike is an excellent way to start exploring the work of the Dardenne Brothers.

I'll Have More Of The Same Please: Duration, Persistance and The Turin Horse

After leaving the cinema having watched Bela Tarr's new, and supposedly final, film The Turin Horse, one feels windswept and empty, a sick feeling gnawing at the bottom of your belly, your hair full of dead leaves and soil, bedraggled and thrown against your face.  Throughout the film a steadicam drags after the young peasant woman and her father that are the films protagonists, as they battle the howling wind that screams around their dwelling like a banshee.  Virtually every scene is made up of just one of these persistent takes, the world an uncultivated terrain in murky black and white, the same downbeat melancholy score for strings reoccurring through the film.  Tarr's utterly unwavering, rigorous modus operandi, although a hard praxis to come up against for the viewer, is so complete in it's approach and so stunning in it's execution (the black and white imagery depicts the harshest of living conditions, coming across like the visual equivalent of some funeral dirge made from the very dirt, sweat and rock of everyday existence) that it can't help but captivate you, hold you in a vice-like grip.

Like his seven hour Satantango (1994) (written about here), The Turin Horse is barren of luxury.  Every activity the characters carry out arises from the basic tug of survival: getting dressed, lighting fires, getting water, making food.  The only respite seems to come when the half-literate girl begins to read, in faltering words, from a bible, the holy idealism contained within like some bleak joke on these two figures whose life offers no hope of change, no interval from hardship, possibly no love, and, by the end, no light.  Family film, date movie?  These boxes remain firmly un-ticked.

This is one of the most single-minded films I have ever seen.  It's perseverance in forcing the audience to undergo this earnest monotony achieves an absolute purity.  Someone once said the me about Lui Jiayin's Oxhide (2005) that one of the extraordinary things about it was that he could remember almost every single shot throughout it's duration (if you haven't seen Oxhide, read more about it here). In The Turin Horse I am fairly confident that I can recall every single event.  Things do happen in this film, it's just they happen slooooow.  And because of their spacing, when an event occurs, it hits home like a battering ram on a teacup.

There are certain films that serve you with such an unflagging certainty in their repetition of technique, that slowly bruise you from the inside with their purposefully similar mise-en-scene, that you can do little but give in - wide eye in reception.  In Vanda's Room (2000) by Pedro Costa is another such film. For three hours you sit and watch, eyes and eyes firmly OPEN, as the Portuguese slum of Fontainhas is slowly demolished around its impoverished inhabitants, who shoot up, laugh, cough, chat, argue and vomit their way through the film's duration in shadowy, beautifully composed interiors filled with life.  There are many more, the previously mentioned Oxhide being another, films that take us by the hand and then don't let us go until they say so; and they may be arduous and difficult, but they are films that have hewn themselves into granite, monoliths of duration and persistance and they deserve to be watched and remembered.

Snowtown (2011)

Australian director, Justin Kurzel’s debut feature dramatises the grisly Snowtown or Bodies in Barrels murders that occurred in South Australia between 1992 and 1999. Victim’s remains were found in barrels of acid in a disused bank building in the small community of Snowtown, 147km from Adelaide. Of the 4 people arrested in connection with the murders, the authorities found John Bunting to be the ringleader and handed him multiple life sentences.

The story is told from the point of view of teenager, Jamie Vlassakis (Lucas Pittaway) as he is sucked into the bigoted and violent world of John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) and ultimately into murder. Snowtown shares similarities with Winter’s Bone (2010) showing us a bleak landscape and existence where the setting is vital enough to the mood of the story that it becomes a character in itself. The location, the run-down Adelaide suburb of Salisbury North, is grim and grey, its people jobless chain-smokers whose hopes and dreams are as beaten and empty as the streets and front yards surrounding them.

Jamie shares a bungalow with his mother and younger brothers. The family are poor in every way. They look malnourished and dirty and have a look of glazed resignation to their fate in such a hopeless place. Jamie’s mother, Elizabeth, enters one unsuitable and misjudged relationship after another and when her latest boyfriend takes indecent photos of the boys, the charismatic John Bunting comes to the family’s aid, hounding the ex-boyfriend from the neighbourhood doing everything from revving his motorbike outside the man’s house at 3am to throwing hacked and bloody kangaroo body parts on his front porch.

John and the brothers

We meet John properly in a scene at the breakfast table. Food and the idea of gathering around the table for communal meals figure a lot in this film. Snowtown, along with the ‘family meal’ scene in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), contorts the idea of the typical family dinner into something perverse and twisted as a broken family unit take part in a ritual intended to show togetherness.

John is charismatic and even funny. He assumes the role of father figure to the boys almost immediately and holds court at the breakfast table offering a fry-up to Jamie and showing a jolly enthusiasm that is infectious. However, behind John’s dark eyes there is a sense of menace that is truly disturbing. John easily holds the attention of those he talks to but the underlying threat of violence he carries is what keeps his audiences on their toes.

Without a father figure, Jamie is captivated by John and is attracted to and finally de-sensitized by his anti-gay and paedophile hating views. John and his cohorts, including a now brainwashed Jamie, embark on a series of brutal murders targeting gay men, those they suspect, even on hearsay, to be paedophiles, the handicapped and drug addicts.

John spreading his hate to the impressionable JamieSnowtown is a grim and upsetting film and can be hard to watch. One particularly harrowing scene involves someone being tortured and strangled in the family bathtub in what is the most shocking moment in the film. While the scene is not as graphic as it appears, it feels like it goes on for a long time and was reminiscent of other infamous sustained scenes like the underpass scene in Irreversible (2002).

Unlike more violent films intended to shock and titillate, Snowtown’s power comes from suggestion and the story it tells. Actual scenes of graphic violence are rare but like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it is the bleak world of the uneducated and hopeless that makes events so disturbing. The sunny, beach-based Australia of soap operas is turned on its head here.

There is realism within Snowtown that makes it extremely effective. Like early Scorsese films (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver) it feels like we are getting an authentic documentation of the place, its people and the events that have blighted it. Given the film dramatises real events, the decision to keep the aesthetic and acting style so natural and stripped-down feels totally right.

Every character and actor in Snowtown shares a similar haunted expression. They have the look of people with no choice but to smoke themselves into oblivion and find new ways to be angry. Aside from John Bunting, it feels like the locals who attend the vigilante community meetings and then harass and attack paedophiles do it more out of simple boredom than from any kind of real hate or agenda.

Snowtown is dark and troubling but brilliantly made and acted and is ultimately captivating. Daniel Henshall as John Bunting is terrifying and his performance alone makes the film worth seeing.

Two Years at Sea (2011)

I went along to the ICA to see Ben River’s, Two Years at Sea, a work of art shot entirely using 16mm monochrome and a hand-operated Bolex camera. The old cliché that film can transport audiences to other worlds felt particularly poignant in this case. As I emerged onto The Mall after the film and was greeted by cars, voices and noises, the environment felt alien and almost shocking.

River’s film follows the life of Jake, a bearded and ageing hermit, living in the Scottish Highlands. The film contains no dialogue and no narration. The only sounds come via Jake’s daily activities and from the very occasional words he mutters to himself. When he showers, we hear water, when he walks through the snow, we hear the crunch as his feet touch and leave the ground and when he plays a record on his old player, we hear music. The lack of any dialogue or narration is at once troubling as it seems not to provide answers or context, but at the same time is rewarding as the sequences of Jake going about his daily life provide the sense we are being given an intimate and honest insight into the life of this unique character. Jake’s behaviour suggests he has become so comfortable within River’s presence he can behave as though the camera were not there.

My natural response when watching this film was to look for answers to explain and contextualise what I was seeing but Rivers has no interest in explicitly helping his audience out. Throughout the film, I looked for clues to discover who Jake is and why he lives this isolated existence. Multiple long static shots of Jake, his possessions and the woodland that surrounds him, gave me time to think and to question. Who are the people in the photographs he gazes at? Are they family or friends? Where are they now and have they abandoned him?

While the film’s lack of obvious answers and motives for Jake may seem frustrating I took myself back to the idea of art generally and the fact it can not always provide answers. Using this way of thinking, I instantly thought of David Lynch and his films. Many of Lynch’s films don’t always have a coherent structure or ‘make sense’. They, like all great films, should be considered as works of art. Art means different things to different people. We may collectively love a piece of music or a painting but each work means something to us individually and we will see or feel it in a way that is unique. Ben River’s film, like all art, can best be enjoyed and personally understood if it can wash over you, the experience of seeing it seeping into the subconscious.

The Son (2002)

The Dardenne Brothers', Le Fils (The Son) is a technically brilliant and emotionally powerful piece of cinema. Much of the film is shot in a deliberately claustrophobic style to gain an insight into the mind of its central character, Olivier (Olivier Gourmet). Up until the film’s climactic scene, most of The Son is shot either in close ups of the central characters or using over the shoulder shots. We know the film is set in a French town but the near constant use of close up camerawork where faces and necks of actors are in clear focus but backgrounds are nearly always out of focus, results in the disorienting feeling of not knowing where the film is taking place. The French dialogue is all that reminds us we are in France as the oppressive camerawork and seemingly bleak and lifeless nature of the fuzzy backgrounds and buildings, suggests the film may be taking place in a northern England town.



The simplicity of The Son is key to its effectiveness. Olivier teaches carpentry to youths at a training centre. He knowingly takes on and teaches, Francis (Morgan Marrine), a moody and troubled teenager who murdered Olivier’s young son some years before. This murder has also led to the breakdown of Olivier’s marriage. From the outset, the film is rife with ambiguities and mystery. Why has Olivier chosen to take on Francis? Does he want revenge or is he seeking some kind of closure so he may forgive and find inner peace?

Olivier Gourmet’s incredible performance is the film’s crowning achievement and is notable for its brilliant restraint. Given the character’s circumstances, Olivier could have been played with far more flamboyance and outward drama, but Gourmet’s approach is far more cerebral. He and the Dardenne’s do not insult the intelligence of the audience and realise it was unnecessary for Gourmet to give a psychotic and babbling performance. By no means does Gourmet’s restraint result in his character being impotent and weak. This restraint is replaced far more effectively with the long static shots of Gourmet’s face, which provide a far deeper insight into the pain he feels and the aggression and anger that may lurk within.

The Son deals with ideas of forgiveness and parental psychology in a fascinating way. Though Olivier’s son has been taken from him, he chooses to surround himself with young people. Rather than stay away from the very people that may remind him of his pain, he works as a nurturer and teacher within their presence so they may ease his painful memories and remind him of the joy he experienced with his son. This is a very positive and powerful alternative to the very understandable negative emotions we may all experience were we in Olivier’s position. An excellent film.

Directing A Film Is Like A Box Of Chocolates: You've Got To Eat Them All...

I'd like to talk about a director who, I think, has the most exciting approach to film at the moment. But first I need to talk about a disease.

There is a disease that can afflict all filmmakers; it can ruin their films (although not necessarily their careers), dissolve their once bright minds into a grey, dull sludge.  Once afflicted with this blight, this infection, a director's work becomes shallow, vapid, passionless, plastic, pretentious and overbearing.  What is the name of this murderer of honest creativity?  The name of this plague of false endeavour is: Enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is a killer.  You can see it eating away at a film's authenticity as the plot unfolds.  It's there, slowly murdering the movie when you watch a film in which the director is so intent on impressing the viewer with the camera gliding across meticulous production design that they haven't noticed the film's honesty and inventiveness falling away behind them like so many lemmings off a cliff.  When a director is determined to cram the soundtrack with all their favourite songs played over exquisite slow motion shots that they know you're gonna love, that they forget to question whether the music is actually relevant.  When a director is too bothered with inserting homage upon homage to cult B-movies that the acting becomes a mere recital of ridiculous ineffectual dialogue, utterly devoid of enigma.  When a director is too concerned with a technique; when a director is too eager to impress you; when it feels like the 'auteur' is sitting on your shoulder for the duration of the film nudging you, going 'That was a good bit wasn't it?  Did you like that?  It was pretty cool huh?'

It's understandable, this condition of enthusiasm.  Part of loving and making films is to love the very nature of film, to love it's essence, the possibilities of it's combinations of technique: long takes or quick cuts; naturalism or theatricality; slow tracking shots, fast tracking shots; hand-held camera, static shots, jump cuts, detailed close-ups, montages, flash backs, flash forwards, freeze frames, photographs, voiceover, title sequences.  This list could go on forever.  The very nuts and bolts of film, for many, are what makes it so exciting.  The use of any number of the above in new and exciting ways has led to such 'head-rush' moments in cinema: think of Jean-Luc Godard's jump cuts in A Bout de Souffle (1960), Scorsese's freeze frames in Goodfellas (1990), Kubrick's tracking shots, Tarkovsky's tracking shots (two completely different entities), Wong Kar-Wai's slow motion, dropped frame rates and use of music in films like Chungking Express (1994) and Happy Together (1997).  There will always be an inscrutable, inexplicable element to cinema, all truly great cinema anyway, and all of the above films have that inscrutability.  Whether they whisper it in your ear of scream it from the rooftops.  This fascination and enthusiasm for the tools of cinema is certainly valid, but the hard part is putting them to use in an honest, unaffected way and not ending up like a teenager who's bought an item of clothing so he can rise in the ranks of popularity in the corridors of high school.  We see many directors these days attempting to scrabble at these moments, in an all too knowing way.  An enthusiasm that leads to a dishonest film.  A film, that, if you will, thinks about the audience too much.  To name but a few: Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Paolo Sorrentino; directors who operate in or on the edge of the mainstream who are keen to bombard us with consumate stylishness, dare I say it, desperate to impress us.

Apitchatpong Weerasethakul

The most stunning films are those that perfectly walk the tightrope between self-indulgence and precision; and if you ask me perhaps they waver a bit more towards self-indulgence.  Let me explain self-indulgence as I mean it in this context: a director giving in to the absolute passion they feel for cinema.  The examples I began this article with were also in their own way self-indulgent, but in a more out-looking way; they are about impressing the viewer, about ticking boxes of 'coolness' 'stylishness' and so on.  The self-indulgence I'm talking about now is the same self-indulgence we feel when we polish off a box of decadent chocolates even though we're not hungry.  When we do this we do it for no other reason that for ourselves, it is not to impress anyone.

This brings me round to what was the original inspiration for this article: the films of Apitchatpong Weerasethakul.  Or rather Apitchatpong Weerasethakul himself, or at least his enthusiasm for films.  For me this enthusiasm oozes out of his work more than any other element; his films are cinema, and in a way they are also a demonstration of cinema, an inundation of cinema.  All of the films I have watched by him are in some way love letters to cinema.  He channels and interweaves his love and interest for the cinematic elements to produce a film, and yet in no way is he out to impress anyone.  He is out to capture emotions, atmospheres, and shroud everything in enigma.  Weerasethakul crafts spellbinding films typified by a fuzzy sedateness, a hazy mise-en-scene that often details a loving relationship between two people.  That's another thing I adore about Weerasethakul's films: his spirited ambition to capture nothing more than a feeling sometimes, a sense of love, happiness, perhaps a twinge of nostalgia, a sense of memory, of past lives, possibly of regret, but nothing certain, and never any sort of conventional story.  Rarely is there any great peril in his films, most if not all of his characters are kind, gentle people, who display a great tenderness towards each other.  His extended, often static takes allow the viewer to dwell on the ephemeral facial expressions of his characters, creating a certain cinematic human truth.  But he also populates his films with mesmerising tracking shots through jungles, still photographs, and narratives that jump centuries into the past, while his characters inhabit a Thailand populated with monkey ghosts, tiger spirits and talking, sexually proficient catfish, but simultaneously are rooted in a very real Thailand featuring modern pop music, Buddhism and national service in the army.  None of this is garish or overworked, it all drifts along, naturally unfolding at a beautiful contemplative pace.  He appropriates different cinematic techniques, as well as different story elements (naturalism and fantasy for example), and blends them together to create quietly joyous and utterly unique movies.

The monkey ghosts of 'Uncle Boonmee...'

Let's take a film at the opposite end of the spectrum in many ways, but also jam-packed with 'different styles': Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994).  The film is a tumbler of mixed imagery: black and white, animation, sitcom parodies, handheld video camera footage, a variety of different filters and colour schemes.  This smorgasbord of technique reflects societies trash TV culture, our garish obsession with projections of sex and violence, and it intertwines with the plot line of the film, where two serial killers essentially become celebrities because of their antics.  An interesting and appropriate idea perhaps, but one carried out with such heavy-handedness, such desperate affectation to 'shock' the viewer into stupefied submission, that there lies nothing 'real' underneath this schlock-y layer of garbage.  Suffice it to say, I found watching Natural Born Killers utterly dull.

In Apitchatpong Weerasethakul's films I sense a genuine love of the very makeup of cinema, one that urges him on to try out different technical elements in his films, to see what happens, and yet to carry out the whole endeavour with genuine honesty, never becoming trite.  Halfway through Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) we are treated to a homage to 1960's Thai costume dramas, shot day-for-night; halfway through Tropical Malady (2004) we get a new title sequence for a seemingly new film that observes the pursuit through the jungle by one of the actors of a tiger spirit.  Is it a whole new story, or is it just a symbolic interpretation of the love story we have been watching for the first half of the film?

Tropical Malady

The amount of project's Weerasethakul is involved with also, I think, demonstrates his sheer enthusiasm for film; his Primitive project (of which Uncle Boonmee... was the final instalment) was largely mude up of installations and two short films (Phantoms of Nabua and A Letter To Uncle Boonmee, both 2009).  Another of his projects, Haunted Houses (2004), had working class Thai communities living on the outskirts of the jungle, re-enacting episodes from mainstream Thai soap operas that deal largely with the love lives of rich jet setters.  The visual look of Haunted Houses' power lies in the contrast between the imagery (although often in beautiful landscapes, the houses in which these people reside are clearly homes of people who work hard and live hand-to-mouth) and the melodramatic dialogue they are reciting.  It draws a stark contrast between what mainstream television has to offer and the reality of these people's lives, highlighting the huge disconnect.  But it is also stuck through with Weerasethakul's tenderness towards his players, a factor in all his films; we see the people's personalities come through as they recite their lines, some attempt to hold back laughter, others really throw themselves into the acting while others are disinterested or uncomfortable; yet another facet of this filmmakers loving approach to his work.

When asked what advice he would give viewers to enjoy his films, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul replied: 'The key point is not to think.  We are so used to the idea of narrative and certain structures that we come to expect some kind of pattern.  My films have a pattern if you care to look.  But when I watch any film and also my own films, I just relax and look at moving image as moving images, sounds as sounds - as they go along.  I don't think about what might happen in the next 5 minutes, 10 minutes.  So maybe it can be more enjoyable that way'.  With Weerasethakul's Mekong Hotel screening at Cannes in a few months, and a short video piece he has been commissioned to do for the Walker Art Centre in the US, as well as talk of other short projects for various other arts organisations around the world, he is certainly one to watch, a director who's excitement and honesty leads us down filmic paths we've never been to before.

Published work on other sites

I have had the chance to write and contribute to some other sites recently. Here are some links to my work:

A piece on unmade films of the 80's for Vice

An article on director, Victor Salva, for VICE

A review of Bill Cunningham New York for GARAGE

A retrospective on Company Flow's seminal, Funcrusher Plus for NTS Radio

The unbearable positivity of the 'wilderness film'

It is not often you watch two critically lauded films and actively desire the death of the two heroes but in the case of Into the Wild (2007) and 127 Hours (2010), exceptions must be made.

At the time of their release, both Into the Wild and 127 Hours were well received by critics and audiences. 127 Hours was a story of survival while Into the Wild was ultimately a story of death regardless of its generally positive message. Both films focused on and were set in nature and both films contained heroes, notable for their unrelenting positivity even in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges or difficulty.

Reading reviews and speaking to people about each film, it was the positivity of 127 Hour’s James Franco and Into the Wild’s Emile Hirsch that was the main reason for the glowing feedback each film received. Both characters are earthy-types portrayed as being at one with nature and the wilderness. Audiences seemed attracted to each man’s self-belief and overwhelming inner strength, their love of people and nature, their qualities of forgiveness and ability to see the best in everyone. It is, however, these celebrated qualities that are responsible for both films being as irritating as they are.

Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsh), the hero of Into the Wild, makes friends everywhere he goes. From the fun-loving nudist Swedes he meets while canoeing down the Colorado River to an ageing and childless hippie couple, Chris can do no wrong and everybody loves him. Chris’s behaviour and the love others feel for him provides a gnawing sense of annoyance as the film progresses to all out anger in its final third as Chris befriends and becomes a surrogate-like son for sweet old man and widower, Ron (Hal Holbrook).

Emile Hirsch & Kristen Stewart

In the eyes of all he meets, Chris takes on a Christ-like magnetism due to his supposedly infectious, down to earth and inquisitive nature and his generous attitude towards others. Chris constantly displays an almost sinisterly perfect range of human behaviour that results in him appearing as an android-like, non-entity, an unrealistic person and a sickening suck-up. When Chris meets Ron it feels like the final straw and you actually look forward to his arrival in Alaska, his consumption of poison berries and his inevitable demise in a knackered old bus. Chris and Ron’s relationship is intended to appear sweet and touching but is actually patronising. Ron asks Chris if he would be interested in seeing some of his woodwork, thinking, of course, that young people would not care about the meaningless examples of an old man’s hobby. Chris, though, is no ordinary young man and is simply dying to see Ron’s work. We are then shown a montage of Chris in Ron’s workshop while the old man tenderly shows the fruits of his labour to a fascinated Chris. It really is quite nauseating. At this point it would have been wonderful to see Ron turn on Chris, suspicious to the point of murder with his brown-nosing and beat him to death with one of his wood works and bury the idiot in the desert. Chris is simply too much like Jesus or the perfect human being to actually sympathise with.

James Franco as Aron Rolston

In the case of 127 Hours, Aron Rolston (James Franco) possesses the same levels of incredibly positivity as Chris McCandless and the film evokes feelings of irritation and anger that are strikingly similar to those experienced when watching Into the Wild. It has been argued that director Danny Boyle shot much of the film in a hyper active, frenetically edited style to try and mirror the nature of Aron Ralston and help audiences understand the character better. Perhaps this is true but it does not deflect from how simply annoying this style is particularly when you consider Boyle was in his mid 50’s when shooting this film. As Aron cycles at breakneck speed through the Utah desert as the audience are shown a split screen, wildly edited montage all accompanied by a pounding electronic soundtrack, it is hard to escape the image of Boyle sitting with his bemused editor as he desperately tries to appear young and hip while commanding cut after cut in order to make the film suitable for the reality tv generation. It just doesn’t feel right.

Aron Rolston, much like Chris McCandless, is rather annoying. He is a jumped-up, energy drink consuming, sports-walkman-wearing, gym freak and when he finds himself in the understandably ghastly position of being trapped in a remote gully with a boulder on top if his arm, he manages to put all his positive character traits to good use in order to survive his perilous situation. When, however, Chris drinks his own urine to enhance his survival and slices his arm off with a pen-knife to escape the boulder, it is impossible to feel relief and not escape the overriding feeling of disappointment that he hadn’t remained stuck under the boulder forever so his unreasonably positive attitude and sunny disposition could no longer annoy everyone. That’s one way of looking at it anyway.

Here's To The Little Guy In Big Action Films: A Tribute To The Losers

Tom Wood as Private Nash in Under Siege

I want to give short tribute to the little guy in big films, action films to be exact; the extra, the side character, the nervous bloke who you just know isn't gonna make it through the film.  You all know whom I'm talking about, so let's take some time to think about their story.  For all the accolades it's received, watching The Hurt Locker (2008) reminded me more of Hollywood action movies (erm...because it is, I'm looking at the DVD cover right now and emblazoned across the top is 'FROM THE DIRECTOR OF POINT BREAK'.  Need I say more?) than any serious study of warfare's damaging psychological effects, and I'd like to take the time to mention, with a dash of seriousness and a good helping of whimsy, one of it's scenes.

What really demonstrated the action facet of the film to me was the sequence where the EOD unit come across a gaggle of British mercenaries.  Apart from the highlighting a hilarious stateside point of view of the English as greedy and stupid (not that we aren't, we most definitely are but...'kettle' 'black' 'pot' 'calling', there must be something I can do with those words...?) the scene fixed itself into my head for another reason.  It really shines a light on how people are ear-marked for death in Hollywood action films; namely demonstrating any sign of weakness.  There must be a whole host of extra's over the years who've been dispatched in various ways for playing nameless characters who's penchant for being below average at their job means they'll be 'assuming room temperature' preeetty soon; the sort of guys who would get a bad bi-monthly appraisal if they lived to actually attend one.  In this one scene from The Hurt Locker a rather large bloke is immediately singled out as 'The Wrench Man' because he threw his wrench at someone and consequently this is the reason why the Brits don't have a wrench to fix their car.  He is mocked ('You know you can shoot people here, you don't have to use a wrench!'), and then shown to be rather useless at using the wrench the US troopers subsequently supply him with, something his curt boss has no time for ('What's the problem with the wrench?  Come on!'), sounding like an impatient market trader.  Then as The Wrench Man fetches a bigger wrench he is mercilessly shot in the back; his large body thuds to the ground.  Thus is the catalyst for the ensuing firefight with faceless Al-Qaeda villians.  And we see it coming from a mile off: the long ponderous silences, the seemingly pointless focusing on poor, unaware Wrench Man shuffling to and fro between truck and tank, but most of all because the film draws attention to how lame he is at his job.  How much better would I be in this situation?  Not much, I'm sure.

It happens again (or should I say previously) in the Steven Seagal vehicle Under Seige (1992) (a far superior film to The Hurt Locker for it's lack of pretension).  Now if anyone was ever earmarked for a bullet to the head it's Private Nash.  Okay so at least he get's a name, but look at this guy!  As soon as the oversized Commander Krill impels him to guard the imprisoned Casey Ryback he's gulping down his adam's apple like a wide-eyed cartoon character.  How did this pitiful guy ever get in the army?  Which cruel bastard let him in?  He should have been turned away at the recruitment door: 'Go to work in a library son, you'll help America better that way.'  He maintains guard over Seagal's Chef-cum-Navy Seal-cum-strange flippy/wavy knife expert, who Krill has imprisoned in the kitchen's walk-in freezer and charged Nash with watching over him.  But it's clear Nash is bringing a new meaning to the word 'naive', oblivious as he is to the fact that Commander Krill is the 'psychopath', not Ryback.  Private Nash probably doesn't even know what to do in a kitchen, let alone use a rifle.  No, seriously, he doesn't, he manages to burn Ryback's pies by ignoring his pleas of 'Get ma pies out the over!'  After this pie burning incident has clearly demonstrated Nash's incapacity to perform any basic act or have faith in the right people, it's only a short while before he's lifeless in a mahogany coffin draped with the stars and stripes while his mother sobs: 'Why didn't he become a librarian?  He such a quiet boy, he had such a love of books!'

And I think this is clearly where the problem lies: these guys are in the wrong jobs, (Nash by the way is shot in the back of the head by two of Commander Krill's merciless mercenaries).  There is no question about it; where was the genuine, good quality career advice when they needed it?  I mean, take Wrench Man in The Hurt Locker, was someone going to tell him he should get some sort of qualification in engineering before he becomes a full-blown mercenary in Afghanistan?  At least get a Saturday job in a  garage!  And Private Nash, did nothing click in your head when doing press-ups at boot camp, adam's apple boinging up and down, with a man screaming into your face something about being 'lower that a worm!' and 'more useless than a balloon filled with shit!', and you thinking 'IhatethisIhatethisIhatethis', and wishing you were snuggled up with a dog-eared copy of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' rather than a cold gun every night?

But an even greater tragedy is that Wrench Man and Nash probably weren't even that awful; I'm sure Nash worked hard in training, he looks in tip top physical shape, he probably had a mean aim when hunting deer back home with Pa (whom I suspect pushed him into the armed forces against his will), and The Wrench Man follows his bosses orders diligently, trying to do the best he can.  But they can't handle the pressure, because, I'll say it again, they're in the wrong jobs!

I feel bad for these guys because I think they're a bit like me really, or, to put it another way, I'm a bit like them.  If I was in their situation, trying to unscrew bolts in a war zone or standing guard while oblivious to the hostile takeover going on around me, I would most probably be a goner fairly sharpish. So I'm sick of rooting for a film's main character.  Whether he be the underdog or the loser or the unlikely hero.  And I'm sick of rooting for the villian as well, the bad guy you love to hate, or the anti-hero.  Why can't we root for the side character's in an action film?  Why can't we learn a little bit more of their story?  This is a tribute to those poor guys whose sole purpose in the film is to die, who in their one scene unknowingly display their inherent weakness as a herald for almost immediate death.  Their demise is short and brutal and merely a catalyst for a fight to take place.  Let's pay homage to those guys.  Because in reality, in a film like The Hurt Locker or Under Siege, these are the ones I can relate to, these butter fingers, these foolish clumsy people clearly in the wrong profession, clunking about, fumbling and getting things wrong, paying for it with a bullet to the head, I'm happy to say that that is me.  Men of honour: nervous, sweaty, clumsy, frail, unimaginative, foolish, dim, fidgety men of honour, I salute you.  Cue bugle.

Aforementioned bugle

North American Structuralism, The 'Big Screen', and How Sometimes A Corridor Is All You Need

Like the first time I ate haggis, I was nervous walking into the BFI to watch a night of North American Structural Film from the 1960's.  Nervous of the foreign density which awaited me, but eager to experience the transcendantal (yeah I've found haggis transcendental...and what?) nature of works by people such as Michael Snow and Paul Sharits.  But let's stave off a discussion about the similarities between avant garde film and Haggis until another day and have a little discussion about cinema (I'll do most of the talking thanks), we'll get to the avant garde film in a bit...

The Thin Red Line

The amount of times people have said to me 'You've gotta see it on the big screen!!  You've gotta see it at the cinema!' about a newly released film, is a lot more than I've eaten haggis, sadly (sorry).  Not withstanding the obvious benefits of seeing a film in a space specifically reserved for the very act of watching, this urging, or at least the reasoning for this urging, has always seemed to me rather diminutive, for various reasons.  For one, it undermines the film in question's strengths by tying it irrevocably to the cinema screen as the exclusive place where the film's true potential can be understood.  Most of my favourite films, films that have burned themselves through my retina and branded their very conceit and being into the intricate, spongy matter of my brain, I watched either in my bed or on a sofa.  In a house.  On a rather normal sized screen.  And some of these films fucking blew my mind.  Some of these films haunted me for days, weeks, months, years, they still do, that's why they're my favourite films.  I watched Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998) four times in one week after it brought out the obsessive in me shortly after my first screening (at home).  And it's three hours long.  It's possibly my favourite film, and I've never seen it at the cinema.

Eraserhead

Another thing about the 'You have to see it at the cinema, you absolutely have to, you can't see it anywhere else!' comment (or goading, as I like to call it.  One smarmy ignoramus from my school once told me that I couldn't watch The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) anywhere else other than Leicester Square Odeon) is that it suggests that you can either view a film at the cinema or 'anywhere else', and every location contained within 'anywhere else' will basically amount to the same experience.   Well surely that's nonsense?  The environment we watch a film in greatly affects our experience of the film and also possibly our opinion of it.  The first time I watched David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) I was sitting on a uncomfortable wooden chair with a very rigid back, in my friend Guy's parent's very minimal, modern living room.  This physical discomfort was exacerbated by my being very tired and it being very late.  This situation made watching an already gruelling film into an even more demanding experience, heightening every skin crawling and tortuous moment in that bizarre and disturbing movie.  It was brilliant!  But when Eraserhead rears it's head, or should I say misshapen haircut, in conversation, do I say 'Oooh, you've got to see it in my friend Guy's minimal lounge on one of those really uncomfortable chairs with the really straight back!  And get up real early that morning, maybe go for a few runs that day as well.  It's the only way to take in the mise-en-scene properly!' ?  No, I do not.  Maybe I should...

When we do say this to each other ('You've got to see it on the big screen') it's often about major, Hollywood-type films.  These films are more universal and have a wider audience, have general release, etc etc etc, so it's not surprising.  What's funny is these films generally have tightly planned plots, beautiful faces and swelling music.  Surely films as manipulative as these can be viewed almost anywhere?  So geared as they are to grabbing the audience with every element in a way the audience can easily settle into.  You're generic plot based film is made for the sofa...

N:O:T:H:I:N:G

Well, I've rambled a fair bit there, possibly it's time to completely denounce my argument of the previous four paragraphs.  The four film's showing at 'Purity: North American Structural Film' screening at the BFI on 7th March, put in good stead the argument of those people who berate me with 'You have to see it on the big screen!', although I'm not entirely sure they had these 1960's exercises in formalist potency in mind.  First up was Paul Sharits' N:O:T:H:I:N:G (1968) and at 36 mins it was the most intimidating of the films.  As the lady who introduced the films (I forget her name but she was very good) noted, it is pointless to try and describe these films, but I will give you a rough idea.  N:O:T:H:I:N:G pounded at me for half an hour, flashing and strobing different coloured frames at me with hints of images in between and the ocasional ruthless interjections of musique concrete.  As I watched, the changing rhythm's in the pacing of the flashing hypnotised me, echoing music.  I could say more, but instead I'll just quote Sharits: 'The film will not 'mean' something it will 'mean', in a very concrete way, nothing'.  So why waste words?

Film in which there appear sprocket holes, edge lettering, dirt particles, etc

Second up was George Landow's Film in which there appear sprocket holes, edge lettering, dirt particles, etc (1965).  We look at an almost still image (it's a few frames looped) of a young woman.  It is actually an image that film processing labs used to calibrate the colours when developing material, but Landow was interested in the bits of the film process which were normally cut out.  Hence we get this image, topped with all the hair, dirt and specs that would normally be cleaned off a reel before it is printed, as well as a very conspicuous cut where the loop is made.  Through this we start to look at the very material of film itself, and although this is almost a still image, the activity demonstrated by the dirt and purposeful flaws on the celluloid create a jittery, shifting, dirty hive of activity on the screen.

Serene Velocity

Okay lastly was a Michael Snow film called Standard Time (1967) which I liked, buuuut what I really want to talk about was the third film, Ernie Gehr's Serene Velocity (1970).  Wow.  Ostensibly a shot of an empty basement corridor in a university, this 23 minute film subsumed me into the BIG SCREEN.  Perhaps this is the sort of film that I will grab people and yell at them 'You have to see it at the cinema!! You have to see it on the big screen!' about.  By rapidly cutting between different focal lengths, Gehr took me out of my cinema seat and into an ever moving, almost kaleidoscopic filmscape.  Because of the natural depth of the corridor, I felt like I could jump into the screen, at other times I felt like the corridor was jumping out at me.  Because of the rapidity of motion the corridor is abstracted into various patterns of symmetry made by the different elements of the location: the horizontal lines of the overhead lights and the strip of white that these lights make on the floor, the straight lines that shoot out at you, these being where the floor meets the walls and the walls meet the ceiling, these are just some.  This hallway image, abstracted by simple cutting, completely dominated me in a weird ritual that felt like it was sucking me in then spitting me out.  For a shot of an empty corridor it was one of the most alive, exhilarating film's I've seen in a while; full of activity and expressing, for me, a heightened love for two of the very basic elements of film itself: zooming and cutting.  Because of the speed of the cuts my mind started to interact with the images on a visual level, I created movements in my head, merged patterns on top of the patterns that already existed; Serene Velocity was a beautiful, exuberant adventure and seeing it at the cinema was to experience a complete domination of my visual and mental state.

So, as usual, I'm left rather befuddled as to where I stand on a subject.  All I know is that I bloody love all sorts of films.  And I can watch them in most places.  Till next time...

The Gritty Workforce of Sci-fi in Moon & Alien

A ponderous Sam Rockwell in Moon
Separating Moon (2009) and the films it pays homage to such as Alien(1979), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) and Solaris (1972), is the presentation of a gritty realism where space and the universe beyond earth is not purely a camp battleground where lycra-clad warriors engage in mortal combat with masked super-villains. This gritty realism is best shown in the jobs and work carried out by the central characters occupying these films. All these characters are workers of some kind doing mundane, contractual jobs. The underlining message from the filmmaker’s is: Given the speed in which technology is advancing, in the future, normal people will be working in space and not for adventure or to save the universe but to work.

The idea of earth-bound monotonous jobs being transferred into space lends an air of bleakness and, at times, dread to films such as Moon and Alien. In the past, and particularly in America, space and the moon were presented to the public as exciting places of the unknown, full of adventure. The early sci-fi films of the 50’s would show all-American heroes in huge garish spacesuits taking on seemingly invincible adversaries on exotic looking planets littered with craters and cliffs. Space and the universe were not meant to be places of work where the mundane daily grind was simply transferred from earth as a means of making money for mysterious ‘companies’ and all due to the relentless march of technology and the desire for profit.

The crew of Alien's Nostromo
The crew of Alien’s Nostromo and Moon’s Sam Bell are workers, pure and simple. These workers have signed contracts back on earth for greedy unnamed companies that exist purely for profit and to satisfy, as Sam states, their ‘shareholders and investors’. Like all of us, Nostromo’s crew and Sam Bell need to work. Sam Bell sends back the vital fuel, helium-3, using repetitive skills he has learned through training. Alien’s crew operate a haulage ship carrying vast amounts of mineral ore back to earth, a task not drastically different from haulage truckers on our roads today. These are normal people doing average, even boring jobs. Any of the fantasy and attractiveness of space alluded to in early sci-fi films, books and comics is removed as audiences are given the grim reality check and ultimate reminder that, no matter where you are, some things don’t change- a job is a job.

It is when uncertainty and terror are added to such deep-space monotony that a palpable sense of fear emerges. In the case of Alien, this terror and dread is overt and constant while in Moon it is subtle and sporadic but always lurking beneath the surface. It is not discussed often enough that fear and horror can effectively be evoked via the sense of depression that occurs through experiencing moments of bleakness and futility. So much of the genuinely frightening moments in film have occurred within such circumstances and surroundings that are drab, depressing and without hope. Candyman (1992), for instance, was set, uniquely, within the grey and poverty stricken urban nightmare of the Cabrini Green housing projects in Chicago rather than a castle bathed in fog or a haunted house. The horror of Candyman’s basic story was heightened by the palpably real and natural settings in which it took place. In Cabrini Green, people with nothing are terrorised. This was an innovative departure from the characters and settings in which so many horror films had been set in the years before.

The no-thrills interior of the Nostromo in Alien
Alien’s Nostromo contains no glitzy or attractive design and colour schemes and is the haulage truck of the spaceship world. In the future those people that once drove coal and cargo up and down the motorways will haul mineral ore through space and such blue-collar, basic work is reflected in the design of the spaceships. The ship is dark, cold and depressing, a place of work, certainly not a spectacle. When the alien is let loose on the Nostromo, the chaos and murder that ensues is all the more terrifying for the bluntly real and seemingly authentic environment its takes place in. In this respect,Moon is no different to Alien. As Sam loses his mind aboard his ship while carrying out a mind bogglingly long 3 year solo contract, the prospect of the loss of his sanity in what is merely a future representation of the modern office, is a frightening one. It reminds us that the idea of losing our minds and of slowly losing control may not necessarily occur in the world of the unknown or the mythical but in our offices at the mercy of unsympathetic companies who just don’t care.

The Landscape IS The Story: Background As Foreground In Winter's Bone and Meek's Cutoff

Meek's Cutoff

Rather than a protagonist or plot, can the physical setting of a film be the main driving force of a movie?  Can this scrutiny of buildings, trees, cracks in the ground, weathered faces and specific accents, climate and colour; can these things lie at the heart of a film?  Be the reason for it's existence?  Rather than a character's journey or a complex plot?  Two films released in recent times embody this: Debra Granik's Winter's Bone (2010) and Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff (2011).  Both films engender such a palpable sense of place, their setting seems to envelope their main protagonists.  Interestingly, both films tell their stories through the eyes of female protagonists and are directed by women, but both are coarse, harsh films set in coarse, harsh environments, settings perhaps more associated (in the film world) with the male psyche than the female.  It's also interesting to note that after seeing both films for the first time, although impressed by the power and atmosphere of their mise-en-scene, I felt slightly underwhelmed, felt that their plots never quite reached a climax; I seemed to be waiting for something that never quite happened.  And yet for months after the films played round in my head, haunting me.

The locality in which Winter's Bone takes place got it's hooks into me almost immediately: Granik's adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's novel is set in the Missouri Ozark mountains, depicting a highly rural, highly impoverished area where methamphetamine dealing and addiction is rife.

'There is not one aspect of looking at meth that is mellow or benign: what it does to a human being's body, their faces, their teeth.  Everything about it is so vicious, and so dramatic and so relentless.  There is basically not one bit of solace in that whole depiction of actual reality of it'
-Debora Granik

Ree Dolly and her siblings in Winter's Bone

Granik's highlighting of the visual effects of meth addiction in the above quote is something that's not only visible in the faces of the characters in Winter's Bone but also demonstrates an overall attempt to capture the location as it is in life.  Her comment belies an endeavour to reference a whole strata and way of life in American society that I have never seen portrayed in film before, and it jumped off the screen  and sank into me like a thick illness.  As Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) attempts to find out what has happened to her father, Jessup, a meth cooker for local crime lord Thump Milton (Ronnie Hall), she slips into a world where methamphetamine addicts live on farms, breed horses and play the banjo, where violence is bubbling away just beneath the surface.  As an outsider this unlikely juxtaposition of the rural with the skittish and pugnacious world of drug dealing transfixed me.  So rooted was the film to a distinct place, that once I understood that it was this aspect of the film that had struck up digs in my mind, returning to the film I no longer felt disappointed at it's conclusion, because I saw the landscape, the environment, the world in which the story unfolds, as it's true subject.

Dale Dickey as Merab Milton in Winter's Bone

This of course includes the people: Teardrop (John Hawkes), Ree's uncle, a violent, taciturn meth-addict, we we warm to as the film plays out; Merab (Dale Dickey) the wife of Thump Milton, who warns Ree away from trying to contact Thump, a woman who's face is sometimes that of a stern mother, at other times that of a violent, vicious beast; and Thump himself, barely in the film, but a presence before we've even met him, who looks like an old cowboy, an incongruous vision for a man who is a drug kingpin of sorts.  These people live in log cabins, dilapidated shacks in scrappy woodland, littered with old caravans and burnt out cars; a strange hinterland of mountain wilderness congealed with the dismal detritus of modernity, and for me this is the films most resonant point.

Meek's Cutoff is a gruelling film; dedicated to palpable experience.  Just watch the first ten minutes: three cattle-drawn wagons, slowly move across an expansive flowing river.  The women fill up on water; who knows when they will come across it again?  Not a word is uttered, we just soak up the solemn grind of the process of journeying across the Oregon desert.  Mainly filmed in long shot, this sequence conjures a stark and powerful sense of the dominating landscape and the silent figures moving through this wasteland.  It is a subtly daring tactic to open a film with as it immediately distances us from the characters; in the mid-shots and close ups we do get, faces are turned away from us, and the wide shots allow us to differentiate the figures only by their different outfits.  The travellers are insignificant, they seem at the mercy of the landscape, and indeed they are.

Throughout the film the travellers debate who to place their trust in, their guide Stephen Meek, who has seemingly got them lost, or a Cayuse Indian who they keep captive in the hope he will lead them to water.  But it is really the landscape whom is in charge, who yields only alkaline water that is undrinkable, offers them steep and dangerous inclines to navigate their wagons down, and is made up of a terrain of hard dry ground and barren mountains.  Much of the discussion of whom to trust and which path to take is told in long shot, the men are a distant group of murmuring figures, we barely catch what they are saying, isolating us from the very plot of the film.  It also emulates the view of the women, primarily Emily Thetherow (Michelle Williams), wife to Soloman Tetherow (Will Patton).  Again, like Winter's Bone, Meek's Cutoff subtly highlights the matriarchal aspect of otherwise male dominated worlds (some have called it a Feminist Western, although I wouldn't like to start attaching labels to a film as oblique and purposefully inscrutable as this).

'Insignificant' settlers in Meek's Cutoff

We are constantly reminded of the all encompassing nothingness of the landscape; shots tracking along cracked desert ground, nothing changing; vast wide frames in which the little stream of wagons, cattle, and people walk, from screen right to screen left; a wailing fiddle echoes around the otherwise bare soundtrack, like a lonely ghost, like a strange desert siren.  The minimalism of the narrative (there are maybe two key turns in the whole film) forces us into surrendering to the landscape.  In this way the Oregon desert subsumes not only the characters, but the plot itself, and the viewer.  The notion of unknowing in this film, the settlers inability to decide whether to trust Meek, to trust the Indian, or their weak reassurances that they will find water soon if they keep going, all seem to act as elements of the impenetrable shroud the location blankets everything with, including the film's themes.

In both these films the landscape is the nucleus.  It is the driving force, the core which everything hangs off, the element which determines the films investigative qualities, the main constituent which the characters are there only to help define.  Whether impoverished backwoods or arid, bare desert, the setting dominates everything that steps into it.

'Tyrannosaur' and the actor-turned-director debate

The high quality of Paddy Considine’s acting, particularly in Shane Meadow’s early films and films such as Pawel Pawlikowski’s Last Resort, made the prospect of his directorial feature film debut, an exciting and intriguing one. It was a shame then that Considine’s skills as a filmmaker in Tyrannosaur failed to match his skills as an actor.

It is difficult to be openly critical of Tyrannosaur as its subject matter focuses on domestic abuse and alcoholism. These topics are rightly seen as socially important within society and therefore should not simply be regarded and subsequently critiqued for the merits of their entertainment value or lack thereof. However, while it is true that cinema should educate, stimulate thought and debate and pose challenging questions to audiences, films should, at the very least, be plausible or should provide new arguments and responses to sensitive debates and Tyrannosaur fails to do this.

On paper, the film should be a success. The acting, from a small cast, is uniformly excellent. Olivia Colman who plays Christian charity shop worker, Hannah, produces a performance regarded by many critics as revelatory. This is actually a fair assessment of her acting here as her turn as a beaten and humiliated but ultimately positive and kind woman marks a drastic contrast to her previous performances in UK sitcoms, in particular as Sophie in Peep Show.

Eddie Marsan, a veteran of Mike Leigh’s films, plays Hannah’s violent and abusive husband, a cowardly and ruthless man who, seemingly, has no redeeming qualities. Marsan’s performance is convincing and he is a genuinely unsettling screen presence.

Peter Mullan is brilliant in every film he appears in and Tyrannosaur is no exception. Mullan, however, has clearly become typecast and while his performance as Joseph is passionate and convincing, we have seen him play the destitute and destructive Glaswegian alcoholic-type many times before and to equal effect in films such as Ken Loach’s, My Name Is Joe, his self-directed film, Neds (which suffers from the same drawbacks as Tyrannosaur) and now here in Tyrannosaur.

Peter Mullan as 'Joseph'

Mullan’s typecasting is a good place to start when finding exactly why it is that Tyrannosaur fails to work on a general level. Mullan’s Joseph character is, in many ways, a summation of all that is wrong with this film. It all just feels rather tired and at times quite clichéd. Yes, domestic abuse is horrific and depressing and yes, so are alcoholics and deprived midland council estates shot in drab shades of grey but what is Considine actually saying here that hasn’t been said before and in a far more superior way in the films of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach? The answer is not a great deal. While, Tyrannosaur is not a thriller and nor is its purpose to be one, the sense of predictability from one moment to the next leaves one feeling that they are seeing something that presents a noble cause but whose level of depth or originality is sorely lacking.

The lack of subtlety or any real subtext is key in Tyrannosaur’s failings and brings forth a theory that came to mind as the end credits began. Can great actors make great films? The evidence, using Robert De Niro as a prime example and to a lesser extent Peter Mullan as mentioned before, would suggest not. De Niro’s directorial efforts are by no means bad but they lack any depth or substance to make them memorable and were they not directed by such an acting heavyweight, it is questionable whether films such as A Bronx Tale or The Good Shepherd would be reviewed particularly kindly as when looked at as films within their own right, forgetting briefly their director, they appear one dimensional and dull.

From L-R: Paddy Considine,Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman

While Paddy Considine does not possess De Niro’s fine body of acting work (he may well in years to come) it would be fair to say that his acting, like De Niro’s, shines above many of his peers- it is honest, brutal and totally convincing. Like Robert De Niro, Paddy Considine’s debut feature as a director contains many of the flaws that mar De Niro’s directorial work. Along with A Bronx Tale and The Good Shepherd, Tyrannosaur deals with issues most would regard as important and worthy of serious discussion but does so, like the other films mentioned, in an uninspiring way. This all leads to this assessment that was first attributed to De Niro but can similarly be used in Considine’s case: Considine’s acting performances are so well regarded because he is able to utterly immerse himself into the roles he plays to the point where it appears that what we are seeing is not a fabricated performance but an extension of the actor’s psyche on the screen within the character he is playing. The downside of this skill appears to be, on the part of both men, that their personalities outside of the characters they portray, are disappointingly empty. It is as though De Niro needs Jake La Motta or Travis Bickle to show any hint of originality or creativity just like Considine needs Morrell from A Room For Romeo Brass or Richard from Dead Man’s Shoes to showcase his best work or any spark of personality. Both of these men are empty vessels waiting to be filled by the characters they become. When Robert De Niro and Paddy Considine showcase their true personalities via their directorial work, their inner emptiness is highlighted by the mundane and flat realisation of their artistic visions.

The Piano Teacher (2001)

Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher is a film so rich that it is difficult to know where to start when trying to analyse it and is almost impossible to do so in one article without its length becoming ridiculous. Conversely, trying to briefly cover the multitude of discussions that arise from it would surely result in not doing the film justice. With this in mind, it makes more sense to look at a key aspect of the film, in this case the idea of its central character, Erika, and her obsession with the notion of control and to focus on that.

Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) is driven by the idea of control whether as the controller or the controlled. At times the lines between her outward and inner desires become dangerously twisted. Does she know what she wants and is what she thinks she wants merely a mask to cover her true desires? It can be hard to tell. The ambiguities between Erika’s conscious and subconscious desires are stark at times. Certainly from the outside Erika feels the need to exercise control and this notion of control is dictated by two elements in this film- sex and music.

When the films begins Erika is shown as a mistreated and repressed woman whose tyrannical mother has failed to provide her with a healthy and normal upbringing and has instead infantilised her, punished her and made her feel as though sexual desires are filthy and animalistic urges that have no relation to love. It is perhaps no surprise then that Erika’s desire for sex is intrinsically tied in with violence and pain and the forbidden. Ericka visits porn booths where she smells the discarded tissues, spies on couples having sex in cars and even mutilates her own vagina in a seeming act of pleasure. However, Erika’s vice-filled sexual landscape and her desires are not simply dictated by her relationship with her mother. Erika herself has a strong part to play in the direction and outcome of her thoughts and actions. Sexually, Erika seeks control at every opportunity. The sexual voyeurism which acts as Erika’s sex life in the early part of the film all points toward a desire to be in control as her actions all ultimately revolve around masturbation and self-pleasure as the idea of sharing her sexual experiences with anybody would be to surrender the controlling barrier she has constructed around herself.

It is suggested, through Erika’s age, actions and her unhealthy relationship with her mother, that her experiences of functional and conventional sexual relationships are minimal. When she is given the chance to break away from this dysfunction by entering into a relationship with young pianist, Walter (Benoit Magimel), Erika seeks to impose the same levels of control she exercises through her acts of sexual voyeurism into a relationship with another person. Erika tells Walter to read aloud a letter she has written for him detailing her desire to be punched, kicked and forced into sex. Even when expressing a desire to be controlled, Erika is exercising control.

Erika and Walter's first sexual encounter

Erika displays an outward desire to be in control and sees this as her means to achieving fulfillment. It is, however, when she surrenders this control that she comes closest to attaining any real happiness. This idea is exemplified in Erika’s job. She does not want students that can simply recite Schubert. She wants a resignation to the music; a total escape into it- a total surrender of control. Erika is truly at peace with herself when she also surrenders herself to Schubert and it is this resignation to her love of the music that Walter initially finds attractive as he knows that, perhaps subconsciously, such dedication to her craft and her ability to submerge herself into what she loves must extend itself into her intimate relationships with people. Walter is not deterred by the cold and distant outward persona displayed by Erika as he senses that such behaviour is a front

By telling Walter of her deviant sexual desires to be beaten, raped and humiliated, Erika feels she is gaining control and opening a door to satisfying what she thinks are her fantasies. However, Erika is understandably unhappy and frightened when she is beaten and raped by Walter and not just because such experiences are painful and unpleasant but because the loss of control she thought she wanted was an artifice; a false construct of the loss of control. Erika may have found happiness if her relationship with Walter had been based on a spontaneous loss of control derived from the power love rather than a falsely created and pre-meditated loss of control as this would have truly reflected her inner desires.

Erika's final defiant act

When Erika finally stabs herself, we see her final and desperate attempt to gain control. This incredibly distressing moment is deliberately ambiguous as it is unclear whether the self-inflicted wound is fatal. The knife appears to have entered an area between Erika’s chest and shoulder. As the blood emerges on her white blouse, it is clear the stabbing has caused pain and harm but has not necessarily killed her. Haneke seems to be suggesting that Erika can gain a small satisfaction from this act of masochism but, as she has found from her experiences with Walter, to totally act out her desire for control is not what she wants and can provide just a small instance of self-gratifying pleasure however fleeting it may be. It also suggests, somewhat bleakly, that Erika is unable to learn from her experiences and that allowing herself to be happy in a natural and non-violent or deviant way is something she is not willing to allow for herself. It is a disturbing and defiant final act in an equally disturbing and wholly unforgettable film containing one of the truly great screen performances from Isabelle Huppert.