Showing posts with label Jimmy's Hall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jimmy's Hall. Show all posts

Monday 22 September 2014

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)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

21 September (updated 19 October)

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




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.



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.



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).




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tuesday 3 June 2014

A safe space […] where we can dance ?

This is a review of Jimmy’s Hall (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

2 June (updated 3 June, following Ken Loach's masterly Q&A, as hosted by The Arts Picturehouse's (@CamPicturehouse's) own Jack Toye (@jackabuss))

This is a review of Jimmy’s Hall (2014)

Director Ken Loach first began working with screenwriter Paul Laverty on Carla’s Song (1996), then My Name is Joe (1998), since when (including this one) they have made ten further films together*. Their previous film was The Angels’ Share (2012), but, certainly once we are out of Glasgow, it occupies significantly different territory in terms of historicity and emotional depth from that of Jimmy’s Hall (2014) (even if it is rooted in the world of rare malt whisky, and lost or ‘mothballed’ distilleries) :

The Angels' Share romps with its central conceit, whereas Jimmy’s Hall broods over its. In between, Loach made The Spirit of ‘45 (2013), though…



The opening sequence proper – with just a rill of bright water as variation from the slow process of Jimmy Gralton (Barry Ward) and his effects, being hauled along the winding road – complements other moments of transit in the film, just as 1922 (located by the ‘ten years earlier’ of a caption to come around ten minutes later), is an adjunct to understanding where we have begun : parallels, paths, not mapped out, but taken (not lightly), and then What are the sequelae… ?

The story-telling montage has told us much already, with news-reel footage** from New York City of the early-to-late 1920s, showing the boom and bust of The Great Depression : when, after a pivotal moment a good while later on (to which we return anon), Jimmy refers to what happened with The Wall Street Crash, we both have those images, and they have already helped us understand his own history. Personal experience as motivation for campaigning for change, but pitted against the masters and pastors (as we heard them succinctly referred to) and what they wish to protect.


Without a doubt, in Jimmy’s impassioned plea to reject greed in favour of motives such as love, Loach and Laverty are appealing to our times of austerity and downturn. They are pointing the lesson that – though, of course, the film never uses any such word – sustainability, and people being able to have something that they can rely on to ground a worthwhile life, are what being alive should be about, not facing eviction for missing a payment of rent…

In Jim Norton, as Father Sheridan (on ‘the pastor’ side of things), Loach has gone with an inspired choice, casting Father Ted’s Bishop Brennan as the man from the church who is pushing, with landowners / high-ups such as O’Keefe (Brían F. O'Byrne), for the status quo, even embracing (in words, at any rate) the cause of Irish country dancing so that he can denigrate American jazz for (supposedly) seeking to supplant it. Norton has more fire, of a zealous kind, just in his eyes than many another actor would have in the whole of enacting a towering tirade, and he makes a perfect complement for Jimmy (and has his foil in Father Seamus).

Yes, the exact detail may be fable, with exaggeration, conflation or invention, but no one is claiming that this is a bio-pic (whatever defines one), any more than with Saving Mr. Banks (2013). It is a telling of the origins of The Pearse–Connolly Hall 1922, Co. Leitrim, filmed on location there, and in Co. Sligo (which, Ken Loach seemed to be saying in the Q&A, was where the replica was built). It is the telling of Jimmy Gralton (who died on 29 December 1945), even if, in part, fictionalized.

At the start of the film, when the cart has had to interrupt the dancing that Father Sheridan later affects to approve, Jimmy apologizes for having missed ‘Charlie’s funeral’ (his brother) – it is just a fleeting moment, as his mother acknowledges the words, but it hints at exile, exile where his mother may have been under the care of pastoral visits from Sheridan. Loach, who is sceptical of authority and what it does to people’s motives (as in the powerful film Hidden Agenda (1990), set in Northern Ireland at the time of the troubles - and, interestingly, with Jim Norton again and centrally, as Brodie to Brian Cox's well-intentioned Kerrigan), makes Sheridan much more than a one-dimensional figure of self-interest in utilizing police, the landed classes and even the visit of The Papal Legate, Cardinal Lorenzo Lauri, and the 31st Eucharistic Congress to further his aims : whatever arm-waving his fellow priest Father Seamus (Andrew Scott) may make, it is he, though not wavering from his opposition, who comes to a grudging respect for Jimmy’s courage.


— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 1, 2014


Laverty’s story-telling also makes us work, needing to listen to what else is said in passing, and giving us, without compromise, the politics of the 1920s and 1930s, following the end (of which captions told us) of The Civil War : the world that he shows has a vivid disconnection between the rule of law (represented by the court and its judgements) and what happens when power is exercised on the ground, but concertedly coming together in the closing scenes. Just as with the earlier films referenced (in particular Land and Freedom (1995)), we may not exactly follow the ins and outs of the political machinations, but we see again the broad thrust of unholy alliances, betrayals, and seeking self-determination.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 1, 2014

At the centre of this world, for part of the time and offering hope (as does the enthusiasm of Marie (Aisling Franciosi)), is Oonagh (Simone Kirby), and our piecing together her story, in the context of the reasons for Jimmy’s absence and return. In particular, the heightened reality of the moonlight scene - if one surrenders to it - is electrifying, and part of the sure use of light in this film***, as also when Jimmy sets foot in the building, and starts opening the shutters. At one point soon after, not necessarily through our inattention, but seemingly in a wish to show how little separates the two initial time-periods, we hesitate, because the subdued colours are suddenly gone (though their brilliance was always suggested by Oonagh’s hat, as she cycles away in the gloaming from Jimmy's homecoming), to say when in time we are.

The credentials of Jimmy’s Hall to be a well-made feature are compounded by little technical things such as sparing use of soft focus, but varying the depth of field from a tight one (within which faces are brought in and out of sharpness), or a more generous one to encompass the wider sweep of a scene – and the full-throated whirl of the dance (inside the hall, as against outside on the road), whilst letting us imagine that we see Jimmy show us some dance-steps, but doing much of it by suggestion from the waist (or thereabouts) up.

Other hallmarks to notice are the quality of the writing and editing, the extent to which – in the two scenes where there is discussion in the hall – the debate is on multiple levels (as in Land and Freedom), for and against, and how violence (or the threat of it) tinges the hope that Jimmy’s supporters give him, and he finds in Oonagh. The performances from Ward, Kirby, Norton are strong, and committed to the truth of this film as one feels that McDonagh and his crew, led by Brendan Gleeson, are to that of Calvary (2014).

Ultimately, how we respond to this piece of work here should depend less on what Jimmy’s politics (we see him take stock when leafing through a book by James Connolly) may have been than on his principled care for others : though Loach and Laverty present scant favourable view of the likes of Sheridan and O’Keefe, they give enough idea of the complexity of the political situation in The Republic, and, as with The Spanish Civil War (in Land and Freedom), how alignments and changing coalitions not only affect the course of history, but individual human beings.



End-notes

* Sources : IMDb’s page for Laverty, and Loach on Loach (Faber & Faber (ed. Fuller, Graham), London, 1998, p. 78) in the excellent Faber series where directors talk about their films, broadly chronologically.

About Laverty, Loach says Then Carla’s Song came out of the blue. Paul Laverty, who had been working as a civil rights lawyer in Nicaragua, got in touch with us about doing a script after he had been there [p. 105].


** As deftly assembled as in Spirit of ’45 – or, for that matter, interspersed in the two time-periods of Land and Freedom (1995) (Loach working with Jim Allen, just before starting with Laverty).

*** Several people in the Q&A commented on how well light had been used, and Loach had nothing but praise for cinematographer Robbie Ryan (who is not even given a credit on IMDb's web-page for the film !), who, we were told, had largely used available light (shooting on Kodak stock).



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