Outline for a proposed film 2.1 [corrected / with casting ideas] : Primavera [or Dario ?] - or The Mandrake Serenade

Outline for a proposed film 2.1 : Primavera [or Dario ?] - or The Mandrake Serenade

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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16 July

Outline for a proposed film 2.1 [corrected / with casting ideas] :
Primavera [or Dario ?] - or The Mandrake Serenade

'Reap what ye shall sow'

For Rosy and Brent

1. Lucia Argenta and Michael Hope meet at a performance of Verdi's Otello, and, talking during the interval, become friends : he is in Milan for a year during his degree (Italian and French), and she is older. (Despite the name, Michael is unaware that Lucia married date-rape Carlo Argenta when young, who killed himself in guilt that he had shaken her and she then miscarried.) She did not go to university, but has already established herself in business, buying and selling rare recordings [as Dischi Mandragora]

2. They are close, but never lovers - something holds him off, even at romantic operas at La Scala, and he never quite trusts Vincenzo, Lucia's father [Vincenzo, from the old Italian Mandragora family], who was widowed early, during the birth of Lucia's younger sister, Primavera (who is away, in Manchester, at Royal Northern)

3. Michael and Lucia write to each other when he returns to the family home in Lancashire (where he sings in a church choir, led by Nancy Kadmuss), before completing his degree
4. A year or so on, Lucia is visiting Primavera in Manchester (who chose to stay there, despite giving up on becoming a professional singer) and, to see Lucia again, Michael (who has never met Primavera) is invited to a party that Primavera is throwing in Lucia's honour

5. Primavera works there in music publishing, and Michael works for a company that makes travel arrangements for musicians

6. Unknown to him (and of which Primavera is also unaware), Lucia and Vincenzo (who is also visiting, but not in evidence at the party) contrive for Michael and Primavera to meet early on at the party, and have bewitched them both with love-potions

7. The effect is such that they abandon their wontedly cautious behaviour and disappear to the roof-garden, where they kiss and pet heavily, then return to the party separately

8. As the party continues, so does the effect of the love-philtres, and Primavera (having told Lucia how struck she is on Michael) manages to suggest privately that Michael should stay the night, who, without his usual level of reserve, agrees

9. One of the last to leave, Lucia had earlier seemed to slip out of the party and to have brought back a chilled bottle of a quality Italian sparkling wine for Primavera (and Michael), but, in fact, she gets the bottle from Vincenzo, and lets him in (to hide in the roof-garden ?), when she returns, as the bottle will knock Primavera and Michael out soon after they take it to bed, and, when Vincenzo has seen that they are unconscious, he will let Lucia back in, who rapes Michael to orgasm while he watches / listens next door, afterwards emptying away all but a small residue in each glass (and leaving the empty bottle, as if the couple had consumed its contents)

10. FF through a montage or other telling of Primavera's being mortified that she does not remember the vigorous love-making, without protection, that proves to have made her pregnant, and that, although Michael also does not have any conscious memory of that first time, he seems never to find her or her love-making exciting, and yet they marry and stay together because of their son, Dario, with only the distant attentions of his grandfather and apparent aunt, except for family visits

11. The suggestion that, although they are a couple out of duty, they do not even find themselves blessed by Dario (or vice versa), and that - not just through teething, etc. - they have never been able to rely on undisturbed sleep, and have moved to detached property (where tensions with neighbours no longer arise), and near Michael's parents. George and Anne (who can give support with childcare)

12. Yet tensions repeatedly happen, when Dario pesters and pesters to be allowed to play in the garden, but invariably wreaks 'destructive wonders' on the planting, etc., as soon as anyone's back is turned (which behaviourally mirrors their life with him in microcosm), so that Primavera finally asks Michael to fence off the garden and gives Dario his own patch of the garden near the house, where nothing that he plants he does not soon uproot or trample on - until three seeds are given to him by Nancy, Michael's old choir-mistress, as part of Dario's Christmas present, all of which, now oddly assiduous, he feeds and waters into vigorous life, as he approaches his seventh birthday

13. Dario's screams and rages at night have finally subsided, but Michael and Primavera, driven mad by a shrieking of unidentifiable origin when they tried to sleep, have resorted to heavy-duty ear-plugs, which means that they are unaware that, after arriving on Dario's birthday, and on an early flight, Lucia and Vincenzo have been greeted at the door by Dario, and proudly shown his three established plants - which so repulse and horrify Vincenzo, at some gut level, that he wrenches them out of the ground, unaware of their shrieks, and that first Lucia, and then Dario, fall down dead behind him, and we see him - as if at the end of Mozart's Don Giovanni - reached for by arms and pulled down, through the patch of soil, and into [???]


ENDS

© Copyright Belston Night Works 2020


Preliminary ideas for casting :

Michael Hope ~ George MacKay

Lucia Argenta ~ Saoirse Ronan

Primavera ~ Florence Pugh

Vincenzo Mandragora ~ Ralph Fiennes

Nancy Kadmuss ~ Carl Peck (or, also, Fiennes (in the vein of Alec Guinness) ?)

Dario ~ Timothée Chalamet [by CGI, made to seem a child of four to nearly seven] ?

George Hope ~ Also Fiennes

Anne Hope ~ KST


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Don’t you dare waste it !

This reconsiders Pride (2014) after a screening plus panel discussion

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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8 January

This reconsiders Pride (2014) in the light of a screening, plus panel discussion, at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, on Monday 8 February at 6.30 p.m.

Looking forward to watching Pride @CamPicturehouse & Q&A with Gethin Roberts tomorrow 6:30pm https://t.co/d379qLiuWa pic.twitter.com/xwvmaHQvMT

— Amnesty_UK_Cambridge (@AmnestyCambridg) February 7, 2016

NB As this is not just in the nature of a review, it assumes knowledge of the film, i.e. *containers spoilers *

One of the touching aspects of the closing captions, watching Pride (2014) again, is that Sian James (Jessica Gunning) did take that advice from Jonathan Blake (Dominic West) [given in the title of this posting], getting a degree, and becoming an MP in 2005 : the film leaves one in a little doubt whether a preceding scene with Jonathan / Sian had been shot (but had to be lost to get down to 119 minutes), because the film’s style is generally not really just to tell you what it includes, but also to show it¹.

[Since Bromley / Joe (George MacKay) is fictional, we have to imagine what happens to him when he abruptly leaves home, and whether, as the film shows Gethin Roberts (Andrew Scott) being¹, he is reconciled to his family, although, at Onllwyn, Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) gives him advice that we see him follow.)


In the post-film discussion, the real-life Gethin Roberts suggests that the film is, which it is, about solidarity (in oppression), and that there are not [not his exact words] goodies and baddies. However, quite opposite to that latter view, and with the benefit of watching a film unfold and know (roughly) where it is going², there are actually clear elements of pantomime :

* Most obviously, the combination of a malign character egging on her stupid sons as her agents (Lisa Palfrey, as Maureen Barry)

* The same woman, tricking those whom she opposes by catching them unawares (moving the time of the meeting)

* Before that point, generating the bad press that causes the meeting to be called : although screenwriters adhering to a conventional model of a film’s development will have a difficulty arise, and the action develop from overcoming it (and, of course, seeming not to be able to) [and that is not what one happens here], one could almost imagine Maureen Barry talking to camera, saying what she is planning, and inciting the audience to hiss and boo her

* Almost where else, but in musicals, does someone win over affections or hearts by dancing² (as Jonathan does, at the Onllwyn Miners’ Welfare Hall ? – a spectacular moment from Dominic West, even if it was but, as Gethin Roberts told Screen 3 at The Arts (in describing the left-wing credentials of the real location), one of those plot-obstacles just alluded to above)

* Probably for no very good reason, and not that Paddy Considine (as Dai) is not on top form in the film (as are so many others – please see below), not least when he makes a superbly scripted speech of thanks about Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, his character seems like Buttons, almost too good for this world

* Much as one should disregard any notion that it really means much, when reading about a film, to have something described as happening in the third act… (save that some films can, all too easily, be more programmatic than theatre, and fall into patterns already mentioned, with the initial situation, difficulties in the way, and a resolution), shots of The River Severn and one of its crossings (one forgets which, but one bridge did not exist then) do serve to punctuate, both giving us a breather (with some stunning aerial and scenic views), and mentally effecting the repeated transition from a city with an openly gay and lesbian bookshop (although not always well received) and how Pride chose to portray The Dulais Valley (Gethin gave us some facts about inclusivity³ in Onllwyn, and its not being as remote) to tell its story


One could go on, and risk just becoming more tenuous, but there is something about the way in which the characters are drawn (those of Dai and Maureen have already been caricatured a little) that lets them make an impact. From the start, Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer), to whom Joe / Bromley (George MacKay) looks up, is a committed campaigner for rights, seeing the connections / the similarity with others³, not the superficiality that separates.

One on one level of memory, one might recall this film for (the role of) MacKay’s character (and as an innocent, gay, coming-of-age story, grafted onto the historical narrative), with him gingerly going up from Kent to London to see what the Gay Pride march is all about. In fact, Bromley / Joe sticks in our mind because, structurally, he is really our way into (the life of) this film, and the way in which it unfolds is quietly pinned onto his being present :

He is there right from the first, stumbling out of the Underground station and into the parade, instantly to be met by Mike (Joseph Gilgun) – and at the end (with a brief hiatus of house-arrest by his mother (Monica Dolan), despite, after her husband has shouted at him, her work of seeming relative sympathy), as the marchers are assembling, stunning people such as Mark Ashton by how he now expresses himself. It is through Joe, in between, that we see the founding steps of LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners⁴), as someone intrigued, but shyly confused and on the margins, who sees how people’s support drops off, and stays in, a little by default. For its purposes of concentrating on this group of people⁵, what the film does not show - until, at the end and by implication at least, it has to - is that there grew to be LGSM groups in eleven cities.

Indeed, as one of the panel of speakers told us, Cambridge had been one of those cities, with volunteers, and those who donated money and food, etc., providing support to mining areas in Nottinghamshire (and, also, South Wales ?) : a memory-project, where those who remembered that time had been invited to submit their contributions to a record of its history. (It is now written up, as Cambridge and the miners' strike, on the Internet here [www.cambridgeminersstrike.com].) Gethin Roberts, and the local representative (@AmnestyCambridg) from Amnesty (@AmnestyUK), talked about showing the film elsewhere in the world to those involved in strikes or political struggle.

If, say, Dancing in Dulais *were* on YouTube, @CamPicturehouse, it's a short film about when / where Pride is set... https://t.co/0vnOzuGHF4

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 8, 2016

It has been cheekily suggested (above) that Paddy Considine’s Dai might be seen as a bit of a pantomime goodie, but the role, as Stephen Beresford’s screenplay has given it to him and Considine has played it, is to the latter’s credit, as a portrayal of someone not afraid to stand up for what he believes, and to face a difficult situation with courage. In his way, for self-belief and leadership qualities, Dai is a structural counterpart in the film to the part of Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer), with Dai’s speech at the gay club mirroring the reception that the party from LGSM seems set to receive at Onllywn, even when Ashton has announced them…

On another level completely, away from the impact of set-pieces, there is a very affectionate moment (and also one of nicely underplayed humour) with just Bill Nighy (Cliff) and Imelda Staunton (Hefina), making sandwiches together in the kitchen at Onllywn : it might be that we are more engaged with the dialogue, and how Matthew Warchus has directed it, when Cliff tells her that he is gay.

If so, we might not see not only that these are hard times, so they are filling-less sandwiches, but also realize that, when she tells him how to cut them, he had been doing them that way at first, before his utterance. The comedy in her pretending to recall when she realized, and telling him that it was around the end of the 1960s, shows that she has cared about, and for, him that he thought that he had to keep a secret all that time, and that they know each other well enough that she can make making him know that she knew a little joke. Both actors play this short scene beautifully and tellingly.


As a whole, the screening was full of good spirits – even if, without being trite, Pride finds the positivity in the situation (with an engaging and appealing lightness of tone and approach), but does not play out what the NUM’s losing the strike was to mean (leaving that to films such as Still The Enemy Within (2014) [review still to come…]). Nearly the biggest laughter must have been when Hefina (Imelda Staunton) claims that she is driving the LGSM minibus to take them to Swansea [?] for a big ‘lezz-off'.


End-notes

¹ Gethin’s being attacked, which is what brings Sian and Jonathan to be in the same place, for obvious reasons is not (the film is rated 15), and, until the same place in the film, we are kept in suspense how he was received when he calls on his mother.

² Though one knew that there was that stupendous dance-scene, it occurred where, but not when, one recalled it…

³ One is reminded, as brought out by hearing from Gethin Roberts about the long-term links of the miners in South Wales with those in Spain, and their involvement with The Spanish Civil War and the efforts of Paul Robeson, Snr, for equality, of a documentary at Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) : Héroes Invisibles (Invisible Heroes) (2015), which is subtitled Afroamericanos en la Guerra de España (and one might interpret that as ‘The part played by Afro-Americans in The Spanish Civil War’).

⁴ Since Gay Pride, in the UK, had its roots in protests in the States, there is a certain irony that the American-Scottish Ian MacGregor, the nemesis chosen by Nicolas Ridley / Margaret Thatcher for the National Union of Mineworkers, was another US 'import', but one that LSGM opposed… (Rather puzzlingly, MacGregor’s Wikipedia® entry claims : Margaret Thatcher herself felt that he had handled the public relations aspect of the miners' dispute poorly, failing to empathise with the British public's widespread sympathy for the miners and their communities, and the pair were on cool terms after his departure from the NCB.)

⁵ Another consequence of eliminating our having an awareness of what LGSM was doing elsewhere is that the issue that is made to cause difficulty for the miners’ group to receive LGMS’s money artificially has to be made a local one about, literally, bad press and its ill-effects.


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Accented to good effect

This is a review of Pride (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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21 September (updated 19 October)

This is a review of Pride (2014) (which screened at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (#CamFF), but was seen later)

Ours will be a pint of @PrideMovieUK (4.1%) from Moonshine Brewery please. Solidarity and cheers :)X pic.twitter.com/PKfXuZPrDn
— Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturehouse) September 15, 2014

At a greater remove (or distance) than when we first saw The Full Monty (1997) or Brassed Off ! (1996) (with, respectively, Tom Wilkinson (steel) and Pete Postlethwaite (coal) – and both films, perhaps, made in anticipation of New Labour coming to power in May 1997 ?), various film-makers have returned to the political struggle that was fought out, on the ground and in people’s lives and homes, between British Coal (in full (according to Wikipedia®) the British Coal Corporation) and the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) :


In addition to Pride (2014), we have had – at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (@Camfilmfest / #CamFF) – Still the Enemy Within (2014) (write-up to come of a Q&A soon...), about the struggle to save pits / collieries, and references in Tony Benn : Will and Testament (2014), quite apart from the equally political We Are Many (2014) (dealing with the Stop the [Iraq] War campaign).

Yet the major influence on the content, look and characterization of Pride, and which had four screenings at the Festival, is Dancing in Dulais (1986) (NB, possibly through format issues / successive copying, the image-quality is not always good), where, in their own film, we see, for example, now identifiable members of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, we hear how and why Lesbians Against Pit Closures broke away, and we can listen to the real Mark Ashton explain the affinity with and solidarity for the miners’ position that led to LGSM (words / sentiments that are used in the film).


What Pride has done, however, is to seek to be maybe too entertaining / too comedic, whilst at the same time wanting to educate us about what happened (although, of course, that leaves us free to seek out material such as that contained in Dancing in Dulais for ourselves, if we want to look beyond the film) – to be too independent of the facts, when needed to drive the plot, but otherwise being close to them, so that there feels to be a compromise :


* Paddy Considine (Dai) has a free stage, and not so much as a heckle, in which to allow his words to reach out – yet it is supposed to be (so we have just been told) a potentially difficult crowd, but he does nothing special to begin with that would have made them accept him

* A mirrored Tom-Jones-like display of exuberance* has the standoffish miners won over in five minutes – both this one, and that with Dai, seem unnecessarily easy victories, if one really wants to build tension that is later released

* The opposition to LGSM’s involvement (is this just an invention to give the plot a turn ?) being focused on a trio of evil-minded people (members of one family) – as if, at one stage anyway, dazzling dance movements had converted everyone else to miners, lesbians and gays working together (as long as no one knew about it ?)

* Bromley / Joe (George Mackay) and Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) having a conveniently similar impulse, which gives the latter the occasion to tell the former what he needs to do with his life to make a real difference (on this day, we are made to focus on following a personal story, ignoring the relevance of what is happening to the battle that both men had been helping to fight – please see below)

* When the Gay Pride march in 1985 at the end turns out to have a greater significance, the film again serves its purposes by having us believe in surprise (as against planning and knowledge, which could have explicated the national NUM repercussions of events typified, for us, by our visits to The Dulais Valley)


Of course, we can accept these things for the sake of the fact that this is not a documentary, but is trying (albeit in an often comic way) to show LGSM’s story (and, within it, Joe’s, Mark's and Gethin's steps for maturity and independence), and how the miners and they influenced and affected each other for the better – and because, unlike Tom Hardy’s wandering attempt in Locke (2014), the Welsh accents, and performances, seem pretty good from the likes of Considine, Bill Nighy (Cliff), and Imelda Staunton (Hefina).

Snow, The Severn Bridge from unusual angles, and the local scenery complete the establishment of Wales as one locus, with London as a second, and make for the necessity to demonstrate that physical separation*** has effects – the aspect that is most clearly drawn out in the film. When those from the locii do combine, we see them receiving welcome, hospitality, and invitations to participate in social activity, and so engaging with life in the other locus.

In that it partly concerns workers' rights, Pride (2014) reminds of Made in Dagenham (2010), but the latter is as amusing, but more telling.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 16, 2014

Pride occupies a very different space on the continuum from Made in Dagenham, which, although also a film of positivity, feels closer to what Ken Loach is doing both in The Spirit of ‘45 (2013) and, arguably with even more political effectiveness, in Jimmy’s Hall** (2014). Dagenham also dares conflate several real people in the one figure of Sally Hawkins’ character of Rita O’Grady, whereas Pride, almost with veneration, chooses instead to give us mostly real individuals amongst the miners, their families and the supporters from LGSM :

Pride’s approach roots the story in actuality, so (in Dancing in Dulais) we hear marchers for Lesbians Against Pit Closures singing the chant ‘Every woman is a lesbian at heart’ (which the film locates on a minibus trip), and Dulais shows us the actual vehicle donated to the miners (and the caption / heading ‘Dulais wears our badge on its van’)).

However, it then means that the artificial ploys cited above by which Pride’s script gives rise to dramatic movement rely on non-historic developments : so, although LGSM’s film acknowledges that there was trepidation from the community before the first visit, it then asserts that, as Ashton had hoped, barriers were broken down between people who had both been oppressed by government and the police (probably not because one gay man amazed them with his prowess…)

That is a key message, and the fact that The Labour Party Conference (although it had debated them before) then officially embodied support for gay and lesbian rights shows that the links made between the striking miners and LGSM proved a commonality in their causes.

Nearly finished, a review of Pride (2014) - good, but maybe too busy making sure that it covers various points to cohere as a story ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 22, 2014

That said, at maybe too many times, it feels as if the film both has its cake and eats it, for it does not even outline in its written closing statements about Ashton and some of the others what the outcome was, in South Wales and other mining areas, for the NUM and its members – maybe Pride’s makers wrongly assume that everyone knows that part of the story (for it concentrates, in its ending, with the encouraging side, that of miners, gays and lesbians getting to know and value each other beyond The Dulais Valley) ?


End-notes

* Which one could object to both as an early deus ex machina that invokes Billy Elliot (2000) (another film that combines the miners’ strike and personal development), and as stereotyping the talents and interests of gay men (which ABBA capitalized on in ‘Dancing Queen’ ?).

Yet, according to what we hear in Still the Enemy Within, the apparent delay to LGSM's being welcomed, at the Onllwyn Welfare Hall, was actually only a momentary, hesitant quietening on their arrival - followed by a round of applause...

** Reviewed here.

*** The film cannot even resist having Gethin (Andrew Scott), again prompted to do so as Joe is by Mark, being shown visiting his mother, then rushing us on, only to return to the fruit of that contact at a testing time… That may have happened, but the film generally both wants to give the message that things can change, but rarely to show that happening in a credible way (with Gethin, we are not even shown that).


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A fairy tale within a fairy tale

A rating and review of For Those in Peril (2013)

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20 October

91 = S : 15 / A : 16 / C : 16 / M : 15 / P : 14 / F : 15

A rating and review of For Those in Peril (2013)

S = script
A = acting
C = cinematography
M = music
P = pacing
F = feel

Mid-point of scale (all scores out of 17) = 9


For Those in Peril (2013) is a very powerful, intense drama, set on the southern Aberdeenshire coast, and both very well acted by George MacKay (Aaron) and Kate Dickie (Cathy), and carefully brought to life by Paul Wright (in his first feature). It is not the sort of film that some might choose to see, and perhaps one could liken it to an Amour in what it demands of us, for no one will stay the course without accepting its emotional pull.

The story that, towards the end of the film, Aaron asks his mother Cathy to tell him (we do not know his age, but MacKay is 21), about the devil, the sea and the people*, is one that we have heard – snatches of – throughout. She declines to tell it, saying that she does not remember, but then, without saying more, just starts – and maybe finds the words in the telling, itself a sort of metaphor in the whole piece.

That story, because we finally hear the ending (which Aaron may have actually forgotten, and so is asking for the story) takes us to the surprising closing shots - and suddenly brings home how it is more than that Aaron identifies it with this place where he lives, but that the story somehow is about these people and this place. Aaron, his mother and his brother Michael, lost (with four others) the first time that Aaron goes out to sea, feel that they might be better not living here, and that Cathy could have had enough to keep them going in some less exacting community, but then there would be no story – the story that ambiguously resolves with the film serves to keep them there.

Blackbird and For Those in Peril, both screened at @camfilmfest, both with folklore, both in Scotland, but similarities end - watch Peril !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 20, 2013

Younger brothers of a similar age, problems with those living around, but the conception is quite different : there are some interesting elements in Blackbird, but they in no way coalesce, and remain jutting out, whereas here song, the story, Aaron’s mental life, and the Peter-Grimes-like gossip and hostility of the community are a whole, and brought to us by mixing in a whole variety of home-filmed footages and images to represent their past, their history.

On another level, with one film one can ponder long and hard what might have happened to Michael and to Aaron (resented as the only survivor), but there is really nothing to reflect on in the other, save (as done in this review) what diagnosis might fit Ruadhan’s behaviour – which is actually the last thing that one wants to do with Aaron, so careful is the film (as, we were told, Wright intended) to look at his experience in it social context.

Nonetheless, the film is about where mental health resides, and the ambiguities help us meditate on the nature of loss, guilt, blame and separation, both for Cathy and for Aaron, as well as for Jane (?) (Nichola Burley), Michael’s fiancée, and the tentative support that Aaron and she find in each other. Watch this film, but heed the words of this year’s Cambridge Film Festival programme :

[A]n engaging plurality of filmmaking styles [serve] to emphasise the growing disjunction between Aaron’s reality and his subconscious


End-notes

* Another Scottish tradition has a tale of wolves descending on a town, but they are really less wolves than Viking raiders.


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George MacKay Q&A

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19 October


When George MacKay answered questions at @CamPicturehouse yesterday afternoon, it was after a screening of one of his latest, For Those in Peril (2013) - guarding against the peril of forgetting, here is a posting to record the main points...



* Non-spoilery answers *


NB Here is a link to the review


MacKay worked on three films last summer, which, in order, were How I Live Now, For Those in Peril and Sunshine on Leith.

He said that, as he had most involvement with the director in this film, he had found it a more involving experience, whereas he might have relied more on the cast on other projects.

I asked about the voice that he had used for the voiceover, and how it had been arrived at - it sounded like a complex process, not just of director Paul Wright making it sound more breathy in post-production, but of MacKay working with Wright in a studio, trying being himself, being his character Aaron, etc.

I also asked whether MacKay thought that, given that Aaron sees through Michael Smiley's character (Jane's father), he would have taken in what the people in the town were saying about him, or was too absorbed in trying to get his brother Michael back to pay attention - MacKay thought that it would have affected him, but that he knows what he thinks

Host Jack Toye, Marketing Manager at @CamPicturehouse, asked where MacKay saw himself going in twenty years' time - Toye asked if he would be a Hugh Grant by then, but MacKay said that it was not for him to comment

It was also commented that, despite appearing in this film and Leith with an accent, Mackay is not Scottish - I am not so sure that those who do not sound Scottish do not call themselves Scottish, but am assured that MacKay is from London.

Regarding those fellow citizens' derogatory comments, we were told that they had a script for them, but improvised with Wright, who then processed the results in post-production

As to the arduous nature of the part / story, MacKay said that the support from Wright had made it not difficult, but an enjoyable experience

He had not researched mental health much, and his work with Wright had always been to see where the roots to what was happening to his character lay in events, rather than approaching the film as if it were about mental ill-health as such - the status of the doctor whom he sees was left deliberately imprecise regarding being a psychiatrist


At the end, the irrepressible Rosy Hunt from TAKE ONE presented MacKay with two gingerbread figures, the traditional gesture of welcome in these parts


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Get George HERE !

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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15 October

My good friends at @CamPicturehouse now have a confirmation that George MacKay is expected to attend a Q&A after a special screening (in Screen 2*) of For Those in Peril (2013), which screened at @CamFilmfest, recently finished.


It will be at 2.30 on Saturday 19 October (booking information is now posted on the web-site here) - the film is also showing, without the special guest, on the day before and in the week after this screening


Click here for various resources about the film, including a synopsis and a video interview from Cannes. You can also read the reviews written by two of the participants (aged 16 to 19) in the Young Critics scheme, which was run at this year's Festival to promote writing about cinema.


I have not had a chance to see the film, but I understand that it is a challenging drama, and involves elements of Scottish folklore, the stuff of the sea, and a portrayal of mental-health issues...



End-notes

* I am told now that it will be in Screen 3.


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Mum says that I am a monster for chocolate

This is a review of How I Live Now (2013)

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3 October

This is a review of How I Live Now (2013)

* May contain spoilers *

Piper (unclear why she is called that, but played, somewhat precociously, by Harley Bird) says the title words to this posting to Daisy* (Saiorse Ronan), who, rather clumsily / unconvincingly tries to reassure her that there is not a connection between her mother not being there and eating chocolate : as we may well know, in cases of a separation, children can look for an explanation and end up blaming themselves, finding a causal connection and a regret, e.g. If I hadn’t eaten chocolate, mum wouldn’t have gone. (Daisy probably blames herself for her own mother’s departure : her mother, we are told, loved this location, and we see a photo of her by a sundial, later seen atop a hill.)

Pure observational / empirical psychology. Later, Daisy talks about chocolate, too, saying what she thought she was doing by not eating it, but, much more than that, her depiction as a person with intrusive commands in her head, and who describes herself more than once as a curse, suggest that she may be meant to have (touches of) obsessive-compulsive disorder (better known as OCD). It is not merely that she is fastidious (calling the contents of the fridge ‘gross’, and claiming that cheese is ‘a lump of solidified cows’ mucus’), but that she believes that something dreadful will happen, if she does not do certain things, and we hear what is in her head, compelling her.

Certainly, Edmond (Eddie, played by George MacKay) knows that Daisy has an inner conflict, and seeks to encourage her that she does not have to do what she is telling herself, after he has toppled her, fully clothed, into the plashing current of the family watering-hole, and thereby makes a further connection with her**.

Shortly before, he has whispered the herd of cows away that puts Daisy off proceeding, and, when she clumsily climbs a gate with barbed wire on, heals her hand, magic elements no doubt from the novel, and which enliven a fairly inert story, which would otherwise be of type ‘upheaval plus making a dangerous journey to be with loved ones’***, e.g. The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Lord of the Rings : Return of the King (2003), etc.

Anyway, back at the OCD, we hear Daisy talking about the change in her way of thinking that she has found herself making during the course of the film, and we have long since seen her doing things that would have made the earlier Daisy squirm or scream. I doubt that this ‘progress’ is anything other than symbolic, although, with psychological treatment, people can learn to do things that would otherwise overwhelm them with disgust, but I do not know what it is meant to mean on a figurative level, as some may be confused by what she does and hears anyway

As, considered differently, a story about insurrection or war, there are brutal moments, such as the enforced ‘evacuation’ (though less harrowing, because of the sheer violence, than an equivalent scene in Sarah’s Key (2010), and later parts of the film leave one wondering, from the available evidence, what need there could have been for splitting up the family) and when Piper is under threat from two men, as well as sudden detonations and overflights of aircraft.

Such things apart, there is a fairly static presentation of military conflict by means of low-frequency notes in the score and shots of burnt-out cars or the debris of an airliner (although there is the failure to appreciate that a box of chocolates might not be so pristine that it even has a tag on it (a tag to play on Piper’s mind ?)). The strife, then, seems too staged, almost as if it might only be happening in Daisy’s mind…

That may be the answer to it. When we knew that Daisy was with the family for a summer, it all seemed a bit My Summer of Love (2004), and the representatives of (full) adulthood being largely absent in a rather Narnia way, until the trees shook (in Tarkovsky vein, or that of Looper (2012) maybe) and Something Happened (again, a bit Narnia). Fairport Convention performing Tam Lin, about a magical abduction, has already paved the way ?

If it is all symbolic, then the ending can be reinterpreted as seen from knowing the beginning, as the ending voice-over invites us to do. Probably a comparison with Beckettt’s novel Molloy is pretentious, but his fastidious character Moran makes a punishing journey (in more sense than one ?) and ends up transformed. Moran opened his part of the book with ‘It is midnight. It is raining’, and closes it with ‘It was not midnight. It was not raining’. (Here, maybe that means that the end condition does not differ much from the starting condition, and maybe Eddie is no more than another aspect of Daisy's own personality, as there are certainly touches of A Beautiful Mind (2001), suggesting as much.)

With this film, it is all (for good reason) reminiscent of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, too, with another dramatic transformation. That said, it is the words spoken over by Ronan that make one think that anything is significant, since the ‘journey home’ with Piper seems hare brained, succeeds against all the odds, and sees Daisy using excessive force and threats to protect her – unlike in Lore (2012), there is no great sense of something that needs to be done except in terms of telepathy and / or dream, or of Daisy being / becoming a different person because of what happens.

Coupled with the fact that the film, even at only 101 minutes, seems to drag, all of this makes me think that it will not do very well, as comments that I heard were that it was like Twilight, and at least they had had a free ticket…


End-notes

* Daisy is really Elizabeth, but has chosen this name for herself (although using both to introduce herself to her aunt) : not surprisingly, such renaming is not often unassociated with some turmoil about identity.

** Previously, she had declared, rather abruptly, that she did not fish, did not swim, but then decides to go along for the ride.

*** Of which, I take The Road to be another such.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)