Starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Hailee Steinfeld, Barry Pepper and Domhnall Gleeson.
SYNOPSIS:
A tough U.S. Marshal and a Texas Ranger help a stubborn young woman track down her father's murderer.
If you’re really good at making films, the audience forgets they’re watching them. Reality dissolves into a dream-like state, only with more clarity and a musical score. You come to just as the credits start to roll. “That was pretty good,” slowly dawns on you as you wake.
Afterwards, you start to appreciate those bits that were so finely crafted that they made you forget the film wasn’t real. There are many of these in True Grit, but by far the most impressive, and poetic, is the script. It’s as bold as Hemmingway and flows just as good. The characters speak in some lost American dialect from the turn of the last century. In another’s hands it would come across forced and clunky. The Coens make it effortlessly naturalistic. An example;
LaBoeuf: You give out very little sugar with your pronouncements. While I sat there watchin' I gave some thought to stealin' a kiss... though you are very young, and sick... and unattractive to boot. But now I have a mind to give you five or six good licks with my belt.
Mattie Ross: One would be just as unpleasant as the other.
It’s as though the script were written out in modern tongue, only for every other word to be replaced by its much grander synonym.
True Grit is about Mattie Ross, a girl no older than fourteen, who seeks revenge on the man who murdered her father. To do so she employs Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), an old, U.S. marshal. They cross paths with a Texas Ranger by the name of LeBoeuf (Matt Damon) who seeks the same man. Cogburn is a drunk and a murderer. LeBoeuf is dull-witted. But in helping Ross they get to show they are both men of ‘true grit’. Not that fake stuff that’s flooded the market.
True Grit is a long way from the black and white morals of most classical Westerns, but it evokes the same misty-eyed steel that they projected - when people were good and decent and weren’t prone to self-indulged soul-searching like the protagonists of the present day. Though it takes the course of the film to show it, all three characters are built upon their principles. Stubbornly so.
It is Ross who eases out Cogburn and LeBoeuf’s true grit. She’s a remarkable gal. Her superego seems too large for her age, separating everything into either ‘good’/‘bad’, ‘lawful’/‘unlawful’ and ‘godly’/‘godless’. She goes about revenge in the language of bureaucracy and supports her sass with knowledge (often to the embarrassment of the adults with whom she talks). It’s what makes her pairing with Cogburn so parental, like she’s some chip off the ol’ block. There’s always the sense that she’s imitating the talk and actions of those much older than her. It’s kinda cute, if a little brash.
The film’s great strength, alongside and because of the script, is this sincerity. The score doesn’t have an ironic note in it. Being post-modern is the easy way out these days. The Coens don’t allow their characters to sit and agonise over personal pain – they internalise it and proceed with the tasks at hand. Psychoanalysis had yet to take off on those shores. Consequently, True Grit conducts itself in heroic charges against terrible odds. It’s easily the film of the year thus far.
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Featuring the voice talents of Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Tim Daly, Lea Salonga, Frank Welker, Pat Carroll and Paul Butcher.
SYNOPSIS:
In post-war Japan two young sisters move to the countryside and discover a forest inhabited by magical spirits known as Totoros.
Remember when you were a kid and everything was massive? Cynicism barely existed back then. You could genuinely believe that a ‘People’s Elbow’ was the most devastating move in all of sports entertainment when really it was just The Rock doing an elbow drop. You could sit for hours in your bedroom plotting out mass, universe-wide battles pitting a Boba Fett action figure against an evil army of Lego drones. Some stories would span across many planets from under the stairs to the back of the garden. Christmas was great not just for the presents, but also because there was a rare military base that appeared only once a year in that assembled tree.
Suspending disbelief is easy when you’re young. There’s no doubting or second-guessing the realities you create with friends or toys. I’ve never seen a film that commits this unquestioning belief to film more than My Neighbour Totoro. It’s about two sisters who move to a new house with their father. Their mother is in hospital, but with nothing serious. It isn’t that sort of film.
Nothing much happens besides three brief scenes. The two sisters, Satsuki and Mei, about ten and four years old respectively, play in the garden and explore their new surroundings for most of the film. Satsuki eventually starts attending school, leaving Mei at home with her father. Mei’s the sort who could entertain herself for hours with only a toy bucket. On one of these play sessions, about half an hour into the film, she sees a tiny, faint blob hopping across the ground in her garden. Its ears are two small triangles on the top of its head. Mei startles the creature and chases it through the bushes at the garden’s edge. She comes to the base of an enormous tree, one that stands about twice the size of the rest of the forest. The faint blob jumps down into a gap between the roots. Mei jumps in after it.
Here she discovers two more of these blob-like creatures, only one is a little bigger and furry, and the other is much bigger and furrier. They are ‘Totoro’, which is Japanese for ‘forest spirits’. Satsuki compares them later on in the film to some drawings in Mei’s picture book. A lesser film might have used this to reveal the Totoro as figments of Mei’s imagination. That’s the easy interpretation – the sisters have created a fantasy to deal with their mother’s extended stay in hospital. If you wish to reduce the film with such redundant psychoanalysis, you’re missing its point. My Neighbour Totoro isn’t about the power of a child’s imagination. It’s about an entire realm of fantasy of which only children are conscious.
My Neighbour Totoro wisely never addresses this explanation, rather opting for a world where such fantasy is real for the children but only warmly humoured by their parents. It suggests that these Totoro are real, but because we’re a little older now, we just can’t see them.
Toy Story does this more obviously. After first watching that film, who didn’t believe that their toys would jump to life as soon as they saw you close the door? See it when you’re a little older though. You’ll appreciate the technique and some of the humour more, but you’ll loose that sense of wonder – that Toy Story was actually revealing something a lot bigger, a grand conspiracy where toys are actually sentient beings. My Neighbour Totoro addresses how a child’s imagination experiences the world more subtly. In doing so, it merges together this fantasy with reality. It makes you want to not only believe like a kid again, but for that lost perspective when you could see where the Totoro existed.
That the Totoro are used so sparingly is another of the film’s great strengths. You’re left wanting far more than you’re given and you start to dream yourself about what they might be up to when they aren’t on screen. Are they nocturnal? Are they the last of their kind? Do they take trips into space on the Cat Bus? Oh, right, the Cat Bus…
The Cat Bus is arguably the greatest animal form of transport ever conceived. It has five legs on either side and two mice on its roof for illumination. Its face owes a great debt to Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat and its eyes beam out strong headlights.
Its first appearance comes in the rain, whilst Satsuki and Mei are waiting for their father at the bus stop. He forgot his umbrella and they’ve brought one to give to him when he arrives. That’s how nice they both are, and how superbly simple this film is. King Totoro (the biggest of the three) has joined them, but he’s has only a leaf to cover his head from the rain. Satsuki offers him her father’s umbrella. He doesn’t know what to do with such a contraption, so he plays with it in Chaplin-esque naivety. He’s delighted when it opens above him. This is the first time Satsuki has encountered a Totoro, yet she batters not a single eyelid.
After standing in the rain for a while, King Totoro lets out an enormous roar to summon the Cat Bus, who gallops down the road and takes him away. You’re as unfazed as Satsuki because you share her child’s perspective, accepting the bizarre with a merry shrug. It’s only when the camera cuts to a witness frog across the street, mouth agape, that you realise the how absurd it all is – two girls and King Totoro underneath an umbrella that’s hardly half his width. Oh, right, and the Cat Bus. Taken out of context, it’s as trippy as balls.
So many movies are hard going. Lead characters often have some form of parent trouble or bereavement; others require parts of intense conflict for the conclusion to mean anything. Some, however, like My Neighbour Totoro, are just charming. It’s easy to read “a child’s perspective” as condescending, like it’s inferior to our wiser, aged view. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience addresses the differences between the two outlooks. He also spoke of a higher innocence, an enlightened stage that follows experience. My Neighbour Totoro helps you get there.
Starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Jennifer Ehle, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, Guy Pearce and Timothy Spall.
SYNOPSIS:
Plagued by a stammer, Britain's Prince Albert strives to overcome his speech impediment in order to rally his country for war with Germany.
I stupidly didn’t book a seat for my first attempt to watch The King’s Speech on the Saturday of its opening weekend. We had to go and see 127 Hours instead, which isn’t the easiest going film for a date. The Tuesday afternoon, almost a fortnight later, fared only a little better. The screen was rapidly filling up to capacity – for a 2.25pm showing on a Tuesday. Not by rowdy teens or romantic couples, but by an elderly, creaking horde. So I was pushed a little to the back and a little to the left of where I usually sit, and surrounded on all sides by pensioners and pensioners-in-waiting. But aren’t we all?
Rather than being annoying, there was a certain charm to all this. This film has found huge resonance with the British public, and only the deeply cynical can deny the romance of it all. The King’s Speech deals with events still in living memory, yet it is essentially a period piece – possibly the most recent a period piece can be (any later and it would be a ‘war film’), as it somehow feels shackled to the Victorian costume drama. The pensioners on all sides of me could have very well experienced the period details, quaint nostalgia and historic events first hand. My grandfather was born in 1930. He would have been nine at the film’s conclusion. I doubt many can remember what being nine was like, but I’m sure they can recall what the 1930s were like, just as those of us in our 20s can remember the 90s in a Fresh-Prince-esque haze of clashing colours. It appears as though the Academy shares these sentiments, preferring The King’s Speech’s past to The Social Network’s uncanny present for the Best Picture, Director and Actor Oscars. The King’s Speech is a period piece from living memory – a memory undoubtedly shared by many in front of the screens in which it is projected. Being amongst such collective age and experience is really quite humbling.
The King’s Speech is a very good film. The sort that makes you choke up in misty eyed nostalgia for a time of which you were never even a part. When stiff upper lips and smart hats were standard fare. One is connected to those apparels through the history books in school and archive footage on television. The nostalgia, like most nostalgia, has a longing ache to it. It arguably depicts the last era when Britain was internationally regarded as Great– limping a little from World War 1, but not yet crippled by its sequel.
If a film is so closely linked to themes of British pride, it’s probably best to cast a national treasure as the protagonist. Colin Firth is quite superb as King George VI (Bertie), and will most likely be rewarded for his portrayal. However, one must not overlook the other performance that contributes so significantly to the film – Geoffrey Rush as Bertie’s speech therapist and antithesis, Lionel Logue. Because, fundamentally, The King’s Speech is a buddy movie.
There are little thrills to be had at the period detail and recognisable faces (Timothy Spall chewing away as Winston Churchill), but the true satisfaction comes from the class-differing relationship between Bertie and Logue. Bertie’s stammer is chronic, which the film effectively conveys in its opening scene – a speech to a stadium of people for the British Exhibition and, slightly more intimidating, the millions listening around the world on radio. According to some surveys, the majority of people are more terrified of public speaking than their own death. Most of us are familiar with the crushing stage fright. The dry throat and mental stalling, the unbearable heat on the back of the neck – Firth manages to stutter this all without sounding comedic, a trap into which speech impediments often fall.
Bertie’s anguish is ever present in his contorted face and closed expressions. The eyes sometimes let a little out, like a glimmer of hope or love, but mostly stay stern and angry. In comparison, Logue’s features are an open window, the curtains drawn back with the sun pouring through. A failed actor and Australian immigrant, Logue works as an experimental speech therapist. His techniques are far removed from the ancient exercises (marbles in the mouth) used by the therapists to whom Bertie is accustomed. Desperate to help her husband, Helena Bonham Carter (the future Queen Mother) goes to Logue for help. However, Logue requires absolute equality with Bertie for his unique therapy to work. Bertie, not because he is a spiteful man, but because things are just not done that way, refuses such demands. So maybe it’s more of a class-clash, buddy movie.
The coming of war is only ever a background murmur, yet it seeps the film’s otherwise unimportant narrative – treating a stammer –in historic significance. The murmur becomes more anxious as the film progresses, when it becomes apparent that Bertie will become King, and that he must address the nation on the eve of war. Imagine a stuttering monarch against the aggressive staccatos of Hitler.
Bertie’s debilitating stutter is not just conveyed by Firth’s performance, but by the deep-focused lens and large interiors of the film itself. Space is a very important part of The King’s Speech as its framing is consistently used to isolate characters within the screen, trapping them in a room or wall. Consequently, objects appear either further apart in the focused, long shots and completely alien to each other in the shallow close-ups (like the blurry microphone that obscures Bertie in the film’s opening scene). There are two great examples of how this can have contrary effects in The King’s Speech; firstly, of an overwhelming isolation; secondly, of intense intimacy when it is abandoned.
Before Bertie’s brother has abdicated the throne to be with his (twice-married) American girlfriend, Wallis Simpson, Guy Pearce hosts a party for his friends and family. The influence of Simpson has made it a very relaxed affair, not what the other Royals, dressed in formal attire, were expecting. It is during this scene that Guy Pearce first displays the cruel taunting of Bertie’s stutter of which had only previously been hinted. Although only childish, the mocking is undoubtedly mean, made worse by our strong identification with Bertie thus far. There is a shot of the two brothers at the side of the door to where the party is being held. It is tall and long, dwarfing Bertie in its size. After the spiteful mocking, Pearce leaves him, walking into the party and popping a bottle of champagne. The cork bounces off a wall and down onto the ground, rolling back towards us where Bertie stands alone. Those inside the party are ecstatic, cheery and laughing, listening to music and occasionally dancing. And then there is Bertie, standing outside the room slumped against the wall. No one can see him and he can’t see party. Only we can juxtapose the two simultaneously. Bertie, despite regally dressed in a kilt and jacket, becomes a child, the one teased and laughed at by all the others. Rarely has a man been framed so alone.
But shortly after his father’s death, Bertie runs to the only non-royal friend he knows – Lionel Logue, his speech therapist. Logue, surprised at Bertie turning up unannounced, but affectionate enough not to show it, offers a cup of tea. A whiskey would suit him better, Bertie replies. This is one of the sole instances where Bertie talks of his childhood, not indulgently, but with hurt restraint. Remarkably, for a character that has hitherto been so pent-up, his sudden release feels wholly naturalistic. And so Bertie and Logue sit, this future King and Australian amateur actor, share a drink, and talk. But the dialogue is filmed far more conventionally than the empty frames of before and a comforting tempo develops between its shot/reverse shot structure. The warmth comes from the closer framing of each character. This intimacy is made all the more poignant in a film full of cold and vast interiors. Logue and Bertie are not just becoming closer emotionally, but also perceptively, to the audience, they are together.
Looking at The King’s Speech alongside The Damned United, Tom Hooper’s only other theatrical film (although he has a considerable body of work for television), one can see similarities in their visual styles; of man-made interiors - rooms, palaces, and football stadiums – which dwarf the characters that inhabit them. David Thompson wrote that Hooper “seems to have no visual style”, but this was before The King’s Speech’s release and his Best Director Oscar. Did he deserve it? Maybe, but not as much as David Fincher for The Social Network. The Academy does tend to operate a “swings and roundabouts” policy for empty-handed directors though.
Hooper may be without a substantial oeuvre to assess yet, but already he shows a consistency in his visual style. Thematically, too, of real stories from history and enduring male relationships. Perhaps cinema is freeing Hooper from the ‘house-style’ of television to assert his own vision through film.
Starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis.
SYNOPSIS:
The iron-gloved head Sister of a Catholic school clashes with a charismatic priest after she becomes suspicious about the nature of his relationship with a young student.
I missed Doubt when it was first released in 2009. It came out during the concentrated flurry of January / February Oscar hopefuls, flooding the multiplex screens with that Academy-specific style of acting intensity. The nagging sense of having ‘missed’ its first theatrical run oddly increased my expectations as “the one that got away”.
What intrigued me so much was that I knew hardly anything of Doubt beyond its dramatic trailer: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep in a religious school. This is essentially what the film details, but also approaches child molestation, homosexuality and Amy Adams.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is a fine actor who can raise the calibre of any film. He gives Charlie Wilson’s War its one great scene. He dominates every frame he graces, even when he has to play the pathetic, quivering sort as in Happiness (another child molestation film).
In Doubt, Hoffman plays a very likeable priest who is also head of the Catholic school where the film is set. It begins with one of his Sunday sermons, a personal account of doubt in God and his beliefs. By showing such honesty so early on, and in front of a congregation so large, even the most anti-religious of us would find him difficult to dislike. By Hoffman having such a strict, mean antagonist in Meryl Streep only accentuates this.
Meryl Streep, another fine actor, is the head Sister at the school and commands a troupe of nuns with military sternness, amongst who is the incredibly sweet natured Amy Adams. Streep singles out children just to berate them, as an old, bitter woman would, desperate to spread her misery around. She is a cold, hard caricature of all those lonely, angry teachers we all knew at school. She would punish an un-tucked shirt as if it were attempted arson.
As a viewer, we’re used to this. Hoffman is our hero, everyman protagonist - warm and offering us his flaws - whereas Streep is the baddie, an obsessed hag with a vendetta. She begins to suspect Hoffman of something after his initial sermon, telling the other nuns to keep a close eye on him. What – she doesn’t say – but the very fact that he has ‘doubts’ is enough for her paranoia.
But then the film starts to play with our expectations of character convention. Streep will occasionally flash a moment of compassion – cutting up the dinner of a sister slowly losing her sight – while Hoffman will do something creepy, like explaining the importance of clean fingernails and how he likes to keep them a little long. This by itself is only odd, but when edited together with the expression on one boy’s face, the hygiene lesson is given a sinister subtext.
These subtle moments of doubt are framed jarringly by Roger Deakins’ cinematography. The film is mostly shot ordinarily, if not aesthetically as is Deakins’ manner. Yet every now and then there will be a Dutch angle to rival the most askew of noirs. A Dutch angle is where the camera is titled to its left or right, embedding an instant disjointedness in the frame. Its name is an ironic one, like Little John not being little at all. The Netherlands is really quite flat. These shots will interrupt a sequence suddenly, drawing one’s attention away from the drama and to the picture itself. Something doesn’t look right. Everything is on edge. Deakins captures the essence of doubt within a single shot.
Overall, Doubt is engaging, but a little overwrought. The film feels less than the sum of its parts, suffering from being too theatrical. Not in an overacting sense, but in that the entire thing reeks of adaptation. There’s nothing wrong with long scenes in small rooms, but if handled wrongly, as they occasionally are in Doubt (some of the framings are too expressionistic), you can tell they were originally crafted for the stage.
There is, however, a very memorable sermon in the film, one that captures the essence of doubt as much as Deakins’ Dutch angles. After the first accusation against Hoffman about his relationship with one of the young boys, he delivers a fiery story about the nature of gossip. It sums up how we, as viewers, can be influenced by the slightest movement on camera, which can infect our minds for the rest of the film.
A woman begins to gossip about a man, about some terrible things she has heard he might have done, but with no proof of such. Her tales are at best based on hearsay, at worst on lies. She confesses gossiping to her priest. Furious with her, he tells her to take a pillow and a knife, and climb to the roof of her building. “Stab the pillow,” he tells her, “stab it until all the feathers have been scattered across this city by the wind”. So she does. She takes a pillow, and a knife, and climbs to the top of her building. She stabs the pillow for every bad thing she has gossiped of, and, sobbing, watches as the wind scatters the feathers across the city. She returns to the Father, in shame, and asks him “What next?”
“Now,” he replies, “you must go and bring every single feather to me.”
Directed by Thom Eberhardt. Starring Michael Caine, Ben Kingsley, Jeffrey Jones, Lysette Anthony, Paul Freeman and Peter Cook.
SYNOPSIS:
Dr. Watson (Ben Kingsley) creates the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes as cover for his own crime-solving exploits, hiring a drunken actor (Michael Caine) to portray the legendary sleuth when the British government request the aid of the country's greatest detective.
When did everything get so fast? In comparison to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, Without a Clue plays like syrup on the eyes. Both find their source in Arthur Conan Doyle’s deductive detective. Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes is surprisingly faithful to the books, but thinks nothing of its pacing. Without a Clue is the opposite.
Its premise has John Watson (Ben Kingsley) as the brain behind the duo. In fact, Sherlock Holmes is nothing but a literary invention of Watson’s. Not wanting to sacrifice his medical integrity as an occasional crime solver, Watson creates the Sherlock Holmes character. But, as Homles’ popularity increases, the public demands to see him. So Watson finds an actor, Reginald Kencaid (Michael Caine), to perform for the 19th century media.
Kencaid is a drunk, a gambler and a womaniser, clinging onto his one great performance pre-Sherlock Holmes. Watson is a cultured, intelligent man who finds Kencaid insufferable. Kencaid is too drunk to care. They make quite the odd couple.
The film initially grates because it is just so slow. The comedy deserves a much snappier delivery. One longs for Without a Clue to at least break into a jog, but alas. Think of Fawlty Towers with John Cleese slamming doors, running in and out of various rooms - that is the sort of farcical mayhem the viewer will yearn for. But when did the film ever declare itself as a bawdy, slapstick comedy? Was Ritchie’s Holmes really so good that all adaptations before it have been cast into a sluggish slumber?
But then, after a while, little parts of Without a Clue start to click into a rhythm, like a good run of brick shapes in Tetris. I don’t know whether the film quickened, or whether I adjusted to its pace, but everything became rather effortlessly fun. The occasional slapstick set-piece eased the flow, snowballing into a comical sword fight for the final scene. In the end, looking back, there was a Peter Sellers, Pink Panther sheen to it all.
This leads me to think that Without a Clue is probably a pretty good film at a certain time. Not for a boozy, lads’ night in, nor for snuggles with a loved one. No, Without a Clue, to appreciate it fully, must be watched on a Sunday afternoon, between 2pm and 5pm, on a full, post-roast dinner stomach, and with a cup of tea. For optimum viewing, the more dedicated amongst us might even wait till it’s on ITV4. Those commercial breaks open up so many tea-brewing possibilities.
Oli Davis embarks on a journey through 100 films in 365 days...
1st March, 2011 - I panicked as the clock approached midnight. Not for pumpkin carriages or silver slippers, but for a New Year’s resolution, one other than the standard fare: go to the gym/eat healthier/become a wrestler. In the distress, I stole a friend’s resolution – to watch 100 films one had never seen before. Fuelled by the New Year liquor, I added ambitiously, “and to write an article on each!”
8 1/3 films a month, 1.92 a week, 0.27 a day: 100 films in a year. Surely I watch a lot more than that, but then again, maybe I don’t. I’ve never kept a record. Maybe I’m not the film obsessive my personality is constructed around. A serious character evaluation could be in order if not…
So it’s now March and I’ve seen only eleven films. That’s 0.186 films a day, short by 0.084. That sort of number can add up pretty fast. I thought I’d be well over the average by now. More worryingly, for the resolution’s trickier part, I’ve written nothing.
After a mirror pep talk with self-help book in hand (another attempt at a different resolution), I’m beginning to eliminate the backlog. A toast, then, to that cynical, optimistic bitch – January – almost forgotten as we wake afresh in Spring...
4th March, 2011 - I’ve been a bit of a latecomer to Real Life, being in full-time education up until 22 ½. Perhaps that’s why I still count my age with fractions. Because of the abundant spare time full-time education can provide (when done wrong), I’ve always been able to watch a lot of films. In fact, between the ages of 18 and 22 ½, my life was almost exclusively film; watching, making, studying, reading. Little things sometimes got in the way, like drinking and meth, but film was always there - humming away like the Big Bang’s eternal background fuzz. Real Life, it seems, is against this. Commutes, cutbacks and council tax are what Real Life wants. Real Life has no time for the petty distractions of cinema. In Real Life, film is a hobby. Or worse - a pastime.
Half a year I’ve been living in Real Life, almost to the day, and already it feels as though film is expendable, as just something literally to pass the time. This task of 100 films in 365 days too – I’m moaning after only having done one review. But one must overcome such tests of the Will. I’ve seen people with no discernable hobbies, their joys eaten away by the demands of career and family, of being an adult, soaking whatever free time they have with television and wine. Is there anything more disheartening than these victories of Real Life?
So instead of these hobbies fading away, as time becomes more and more scarce, one must make that which was once gloriously abundant into precious, sacred hours. After all, what is more poignant: sitting in a University room from 10pm to 6am doing a Bourne film marathon; or working all week, making the time, earning the time, to get the train to the cinema, pay an adult ticket price and sit amongst the Sunday afternoon crowd?
