Showing posts with label Sightseers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sightseers. Show all posts

Friday, 31 March 2017

Films of former collaborators, with Q&As within 48 hours of each other

Responding together to Free Fire (2016) and Prevenge (2016) as food for thought

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

31 March


The mental collision of Free Fire (2016) (plus Q&A with director Ben Wheatley), at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, on Wednesday 29 March 2017 at 8.50 p.m., and Prevenge (2016) (plus Q&A with actor Jo Hartley), at Saffron Screen, Saffron Walden, on Friday 31 March 2017 at 8.00 p.m., gives food for thought


Babou Ceesay (Martin), Brie Larson (Justine), Armie Hammer (Ord), Sharlto Copley (Vern), Noah Taylor (Gordon) – confusing being brightily with well dressed (even if handily differentiating them…) ?


When Kevin Spacey (@KevinSpacey) talked – on the Wogan t.v. show ? – about K-PAX (2001), in which Jeff Bridges and he starred, the indications were that the film was going to be one from which one would derive much more than from his account of it¹.

Ben Wheatley (at an event for High-Rise (2015)

Were it not that one has the practice of seeking to go ‘blind’ into films, and letting them speak for themselves, hearing the interesting and excellent Q&A at The Arts Picturehouse with Ben Wheatley (@mr_wheatley), director and co-writer of Free Fire (2016) (@FreeFireFilm), and well hosted by Evie Salmon (@eviesalmon), might nonetheless have persuaded one that the film itself, even if it would not just seem like a technical exercise¹, was one in whose outfolding one would find relatively little more of interest.


Cillian Murphy, Sam Riley, and Michael Smiley in Free Fire (2016)

Maybe a title at the top of the film, which said that it had been inspired by a report into what had happened in a real-life gun-battle, would have given one a different perspective from which to watch ? Since, despite the script’s origins, the actions and motivations of the characters are principally fictitious (e.g. we learnt that there had been a sincere expression of interest from Cillian Murphy in appearing in a Wheatley film, and so the question had arisen what business could Michael Smiley and he be about together), one doubts that something such as the step of having an image inset into the frame of where they all were, so that one could much better follow who was shooting at whom (at any time), and from where, would have made much difference to engaging some viewers (others may, of course, have been able to understand that very much more easily - and so also do not find battle-scenes boggling).

Self-confessed fan Ben Johnston writes thus, in a review for TAKE ONE (www.takeonecff.com, @TakeOneCinema), and for whom he also interviewed Ben Wheatley² [surely 'a Ben thing' going on... ?] :

While the tenuous unions form the basis for a lot of the character motivations and a fair bit of the plot, it is the rivalries that bring the most laughs, with plenty of insults flying in between the bullets. This razor sharp banter makes it extremely difficult to figure out who to root for at any given time, especially since nobody seems to be taking the whole situation very seriously. One minute a guy is shouting out that he’s forgotten whose side he’s on, the next someone is taking a quick headcount of who’s still alive – there’s a distinct element of cartoonish slapstick that helps keep the extended gun battle from feeling too monotonous [my emphasis].


Sienna Miller, as Charlotte, in High-Rise (2015)

Having watched the film, one found that, in the event, it had had an essentially similar effect to Amy Jump and Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s novel High-Rise (2015) (@HighRise_movie), in that one largely, and to an equivalent degree, really did not give a damn about what happened to any of the characters (Laing’s being so naively self-deceived about his importance (and other things) did not help³), or so tend to maintain much active awareness of where one was (obvious exceptions were for the swimming-pool, or Royal’s (Jeremy Irons’) penthouse), because the script could be used to draw one’s attention to it. In fact (unless one can generate enthusiasm and / or concentration), whichever happens first, the law of diminishing returns is likely to apply, because of a feedback loop in which the other is undermined, and then in turn undermines the first. In High-Rise, the issues started early, with what had brought Laing (Tom Hiddleston) to be where, and as, he was shown at the opening of the film.


Elisabeth Moss (Helen) and Tom Hiddleston (Laing) in High Rise

Yet Laing’s matter-of-fact observation about the dog being barbequed rather said it all in a nutshell (or as with Wheatley’s account of how he saw the report that had documented a shoot-out) : the act of saying it presupposes another state of affairs, and who necessarily can maintain interest in what then led up to that point - even though some films work perfectly well so (such as American Beauty (1999), or Sunset Blvd. (1950)) ? When Wheatley spoke to The Arts Picturehouse audience (Screen 1), he made quite clear that he rebels against the portrayal of ‘good guys and bad guys’ per se, but one supposes that it depends what reaction a director hopes to gain for his or her work, if everyone is seen to be flawed. As it is, the presenting reason for everyone to be there at all in Free Fire, initially or later, is illegal activity – quite apart (please see comments above) from the double-dealing between the two groups that constitute the parties, or, as it emerges, the tensions between individuals in the same group, and the other group (a continuing theme since A Field in England (2012)). (In High-Rise, an additional element of more moral illegality / dishonesty is also in play.)


By contrast, with Prevenge, the quality of Alice Lowe’s self-direction, acting and editing [at the latter of which activities, as Jo Hartley (@MissJoHartley) told us at Saffron Screen (@SaffronScreen), Lowe’s baby Della Moon Synott was, as by then fully present, able to be there] is such that her wicked jokes are both amusing and feel truly transgressive⁴ (about the word ‘cut’ after, say, her character Ruth has used a knife on someone : on reflection, one recalls that tone in Roger Moore as Bond, speaking chummily to someone who is, at least, unconscious).


Roger Moore in Live and Let Die (1973)

Whereas, except for those members of the Free Fire audience (who also found every injury or wounding a source of great amusement), the bickering and next bad behaviour that cause matters to unravel felt fairly functional, if arbitrary⁵ – could one even locate this at the level of Tarantino’s successful black humour in Pulp Fiction (1994), or did it just feel awkward when, for example, an actor is trying to be off hand with some doubt whether a character has really been killed ? As predictively Tweeted, Michael Palin and Terry Jones seem to hit the mark well with an episode from the first series of Ripping Yarns (Murder at Moorstones Manor (1976) [the link is to IMDb's web-page])...




Saffron Screen's Q&A guest, Jo Hartley (not in character)

At Saffron Screen (@SaffronScreen), Jo Hartley (@MissJoHartley), who plays the midwife in Prevenge (2016), deliberately used the word 'gestation' to refer to the timescale (as confirmed by IMDb, @IMDb) within which the film was both written and shot (very quickly, and yet with no compromise in values !) :



No time, there, for 22,000 storyboards, etc., of which Wheatley spoke, or mapping the interior terrain (such an amazing space !) and plotting all the movements out on it, or six weeks with actors such as Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy and Michael Smiley, 'lying in shit' (as Wheatley put it). (As for Ripping Yarns, one can hear Michael Palin commenting on the quality effect that director Terry Hughes and he were aiming to achieve : the shoot for 'Murder at Moorstones Manor' (in 1976), just a thirty-minute episode, was Friday 15, Monday 25 to Friday 29 and Sunday 31 October, and (on set, for the final shoot-out in the hall) Wednesday 3 to Friday 5 November.)

'Murder at Moorstones Manor' (Ripping Yarns), with Harold Innocent as Manners


Despite the time-pressures on her to get the film made, Alice Lowe lets dawn on us, at our own pace, what we see happening (or why), but we certainly have no idea of it when her character Ruth has an opening encounter with Mr. Zabek (Dan Renton Skinner), a fruitily-suggestive-cum-titillatingly-menacing proprietor of an emporium of exotic creatures : we ask what it means, and what perversion he committed that – by a voice from which we will be hearing more fully⁶ – is being 'called in' (Ruth arrives with a prepared weapon, and we also see clothes being destroyed) ?



We hear and enjoy how Alice Lowe (@alicelowe) has scripted her own role to give us a person with immense verbal and social facility, fully as much as Dennis Price’s ready charm as Louis Mazzini in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), and an equal, in her personas / accents, for Alec Guinness’ celebrated cameos as members of the D'Ascoyne family (even though, properly seen, he is not the star of the show anyway, but Price’s impressive adjunct – i.e. when not seduced by novelty and the wonders of make-up, as by Linklater's gimmick in Boyhood) (2014)). For Len (Gemma Whelan), shown confronted here by Ruth (feigning to sound Welsh), Lowe has created someone who has the presence of mind to don gloves to try to box her assailant into submission, but who cannot quite help simultaneously believing - to Ruth's incredulity - the presenting story that all this is part of Ruth’s trying to sign her up to donate to a children’s charity !


Likewise, we are not only amused by DJ Dan (Tom Davis), when he casually takes his hair off, but also by the added grotesquery – here, more reminiscent of Steve Oram, with Lowe, in Sightseers (2012) (@SightseersMovie) than of Mr. Zabek’s particular qualities – of what happens to it later. Irrespective of Ruth’s motives in meeting someone such as Dan, and going through with everything necessary to be invited back, we can also – if we try – glimpse our own faiblesse in who he is happy to think that he is, as against where he turns out to live : as Ruth, Lowe does not allow herself to see her own banality (does, also, Louis Mazzini ?), but she roundly presents to us the people whom Ruth can only denigrate into prey (who disparages what someone would do on account of being called Josh - although she did try to relate to him, and, having humorously tried one, called him Dr Anchovy).


The manner of filming, and the intense look of some shots or scenes, working in conjunction with the score⁶, evoke moods and emotions in a very cinematic way : because cinematographer Ryan Eddleston seems to have free rein to make dramatic adjustments to focus and depth of feel within a shot, one experiences more than viewing what is literally depicted, so as to include being aware as a participant that (and how) one does so. There are also other moments, which are more expressionistic than suggestive, but, of course, still vocal, such as when the tables are turned on Ella (Kate Dickie), at the other end of a long, corporate table - in that Ruth is the one who gets Ella talking about her interests and activities outside work, as if she were a candidate for employment at interview. Meanwhile, at some level, we may notice that Ella’s end of the room is blue, in a cool way, whereas Ruth’s lipstick and skin-colour are alive, and fresh...

Alice Lowe (not as Ruth)

In cinema, which principal characters, and / or their relations to others (without our necessarily needing to like them, or their behaviour), will happen to interest us, but perhaps not someone else (and vice versa), may vary greatly (such as in our response to Free Free). Our reaction may be partly, but signicantly, influenced in the manner of the telling, e.g. when Stanley Kubrick decides (amongst other changes) to employ a narrator (Michael Hordern) in adapting Thackeray’s novel as Barry Lyndon (1975) [discussed in reviewing Further Beyond (2016)]). Without an obvious device (such as the inset location, mentioned above, as if the film were a crime construction), Free Fire would be different, say, with the guidance of a sardonic narrator's words, making comments such as To hammer home the offence of having been shot, Justine did not resist expressing a lot of pain, or Vernon really was more affronted at the damage to his jacket than to his shoulder.

At which point, and excused by the fact that Ben Wheatley shows what can happen to gas-cylinders, it is apt to slip in the funniest reference (in context) to people in a building and bullets, with Mia Farrow (Tina Vitale) and Woody Allen (Danny Rose) : this link is to YouTube, of Danny and Tina being shot at in Broadway Danny Rose (1984) [the scene in the hangar for the Macy's Day Parade].


Equally, a perfectly good film may build to a conclusion, as The Rocket (2013) does, but only give a pay-out that leaves one satisfied just then, rather than thinking about (the world of) the film afterwards : for some, this would be a deficit in a film, that the story’s end is co-terminous with the ending of our active satisfaction in it. In a way, A Quiet Dream (2016) falls into that category [(whether it tries, it does not achieve the effect that concludes The Hairdresser's Husband (Le mari de la coiffeuse) (1990)), whereas one almost defies anyone to be left in that place by the latter two on this list :




In the Saffron Screen Q&A, Jo Hartley referred to how, as the midwife and during one of Ruth’s appointments with her, she tells Ruth, You have to decide what's right, what's wrong - clearly, the midwife is not exactly a conscience personified (as Jiminy Cricket, in Pinocchio (1940)), or an angelic character (such as Clarence, from It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)), as both of those know what, respectively, Pinocchio and George Bailey have been doing / going through. Still, as with any prophecy, whether that inherent in a pronouncement of the oracle at Delphi or otherwise sibylline in nature, the effect is dependent – and incalculably so – on the attitude(s) of the hearer to what he or she is hearing : Jocasta and Laius, by trying to avoid what is said of Œdipus, as surely more bring it about that it does happen than as if they had ignored it. At any rate, Jo Hartley’s character is kind enough to shield Ruth from enquiry about how and where she is living, given that the story of Prevenge is inevitably heading towards a birth.


Talking, in The Arts Picturehouse Q&A, about Free Fire's ending, Ben Wheatley (without naming any films) effectively confirmed a suspicion, when watching, that there is a resemblance to one for which, around the time of Reservoir Dogs (1992), Quentin Tarantino was an executive producer. Contained in a derelict factory (which nevertheless has more resources and working utilities than one would expect ?), the film speaks of the world outside, which continues to exist, even if the warfare of person against person makes it seem remote.

In Prevenge, if we even take none of what we have seen on the level of phantasy, the question What happens next ? is not asking to be answered at the end of the film : what we have seen has been so full that we do not need to project into a future.



Spoiler alert for the following images...



Some film-references, for Prevenge (by Tweet) :






End-notes :

 ¹ As one did, and so went on to read the novels by Gene Brewer, of which the first (K-PAX) was the only one adapted for the screen. Twenty years on, do films, etc., still get this sort of exposure on a chat-show (probably only later at night, with the likes of Graham Norton – though he is perhaps more interested in increasing the quotient of dubious double entendre than any real form of culture ?) ?

Having said which, the documentation that Wheatley reported originally having seen, and which had been a springboard for the film, did sound to show potential at the level of forensic documentary : in the case of this film, it was just that hearing him talk about it for a short time, as against what had ‘panned out’ in ninety minutes, gave rise to a disparity in what the two time-frames had communicated. Whereas - presumably by the real Wheatley fans in the house - the opportunity was being taken to laugh deeply and fully at every moment of comedy, and not a joke, of any kind, went unbidden.


² Here are some #UCFF Tweets, which give a link to the interview (and suggest perils in being too impressed by one's interviewee) :



³ Blue paint aside, though, this is not a Godard film, and so Laing’s disintegration does not have the weight of Jean-Paul Belmondo (as Ferdinand Griffon) in Pierrot le Fou (1965).



⁴ We know that, when someone says something – it may be us, tickled by how our words have come out – or something happens, there is a difference between registering humour, because what was said or done takes a comic form, and actually smiling because of it, or finding oneself laughing – the latter is mainly involuntary (although one can, of course, set out to have a good time). With Alice Lowe's performance, we laugh despite ourselves (and not even with a groan) - for which a close correlate, as argued further down in the main text, is Dennis Price in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949).

 ⁵ Ben Wheatley said, in the Q&A, that he dislikes genre, but Free Fire belongs to one that comprises plots that are dependent on animosity going beyond antagonism to propel behaviour, and which then tend to be located in some types or circumstances of human interaction : the Bond films, already just mentioned, for one are where we often see competitiveness in the line of some sort of spy duty take on an aspect of personal rivalry (obviously, unto death – or apparent death).

⁶ Some of us may be reminded by it of Oskar, in Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) (1979). (An odd coincidence, since IMDb credits the music to Toydrum, along with, first, to Pablo Clements and James Griffith (because it does not seem to appreciate that the latter are Toydrum).)




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday, 18 March 2016

Hiding in plain sight

This is a review of High-Rise (2015)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

18 March

This is a review of High-Rise (2015)



 High-Rise is not a short film, but it seems to handle with unnecessarily great brevity – either because one has been overly tempted that one will find out (Curiosity killed the cat, after all), or because Amy Jump’s adaptation of J. G. Ballard least wants to tell (if not maybe Ballard himself ?) – what, after the very opening¹, the inter-title ‘Three months earlier’ has one most expecting, i.e. something like 'a story', or, here, an explanation :

 We may well end up feeling that there is an allegory in train that is essentially contentless, because it descends to typifications of character and social impulses from which one may easily disinvest, although it is concerned, as if tasked to be so, to proceed linearly back to the opening - for us to understand anew (or maybe feel that we were misdirected into construing awry ?). In contrast, a film such as Metropolis (1927) (to which we will return below : Ballard must surely be responding to Fritz Lang) is expressly, unmistakably a parable, whereas this film seems to have pretensions to be something else, but progressively withdraws (from) them : whether that is adaptation or original, we may feel that we are re-visiting the territory of a film such as O Lucky Man ! (1973), but arguably less interestingly (despite a little energetic reference to Pierrot le fou (1965) thrown in for good measure).


The result is remarkably emotionless – sex on the glass dining-table, and even with Charlotte Melville (Sienna Miller) hanging over the balcony of the twenty-sixth floor, all of which one knows should feel daring, but is actually as exciting as the lack of affect with which why Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) asks, and is answered, why the sex is not continuing, after it has banally been interrupted. Dr R. Laing (we must be reminded of R. D. Laing), from the Department of Physiology, is described by other characters as Hiding in plain sight, and, in a semi-naturalistic way, his look, physique, make-up, demeanour are all used to make him seem a creature apart, later subverted by that Godardian gesture of absurdity. (And, somewhere in all this, do we find hints of Kingsley Amis in Lucky Jim, and that Jesse Eisenberg in The Double (2013) deserves greater respect than the film seemed to merit when it was released… ?)

Maybe the fact is that Ballard’s novel does not exactly have a narrative, which is what this review appears to suggest (and Will Self confirms - please see the Post-script) : Ballard moves us randomly up and down the (initially) tripartite building with chaotic aplomb; his narrative is controlled by the dysfunctional elevators, blocked by the broken chairs, cupboards, desks that jam the stairwells.. If so, this is surveying the building, from top to bottom and around, as an environment for, and one that has given rise to, one excess after another – almost as if Plato had got it all wrong, with The Republic, and authored chaos. But is High-Rise any better than, say, choosing Samuel Beckettt’s short story Le Dépeupler (The Lost Ones), if his literary executors would even allow one, as the basis for one’s screenplay - what, one would have to ask, would making a film add to what that text describes (there are some quotations below) ?


In fact Carmin Karasic's The Lost Ones seems to exist, as an immersive installation and VRML work based on Beckettt's text

By analogy with the focus of this film (or indeed this question whether it was best left as a novel, without the burden of visual representation ?), it is as if, in The Matrix Reloaded (2003), Andy and Lana Wachowski had taken a brief, but important, moment, and instead had it dominate the whole film : one thinks of when Neo penetrates to their own character called The Architect². What film, one has to ask, would it have been if that scene, when Neo realizes that what he had thought beforehand (i.e. that getting there was the be all and end all - which, to have him make the attempt, it was expedient that he believe), had been handled that way : not as Neo's impetus to what, in the light of his accepting the reality that he did not achieve what he expected and acting on it to provoke what next happens, but as an occasion for a massively extended philosophical and existential enquiry between The Architect and him [there appears to be a complete transcript of that scene, which is worth those who are unfamiliar reading, at http://www.scottmanning.com/archives/000513.php] ?


In being drawn to microcosm, though with a narrower focus, Ben Wheatley’s (@mr_wheatley’s) A Field in England (2013) is most like High-Rise, but Sightseers³ (2012) and it both have a concern for story-telling (even the former, for all its psychedelic elements), which is largely abandoned here, except in appearance. For although High-Rise, in its own terms (let alone that of its predecessors), often does not seem very cinematically motivated, it does enjoy employing visual spectacle, and gives us moments or set-pieces that it luxuriates in, such as when ABBA is being played by a string quartet, or with Laing patchily applying the contents of a small tin (for which he has absolutely fought tooth and nail), but somehow perfectly painting the whole of flat 2505 – and skating over what might hold any of this together...


In the event, maybe the film just asserts that there is no story, that that is just how things are when the lives of individuals, in a melting-point, battle it out. (This is part of the reason, despite its very different tone and purpose, for mentioning Le Dépeupler (The Lost Ones) above, and seeking dominance is certainly highly relevant in A Field in England, of course.) In the concluding minutes of High-Rise, Wheatley employs a laconic voice-over, which formally assumes the role of being informative, but now seems oddly inessential, given a scenario where it is patent, because at such length, that people in this place have abandoned everything to pursuing their self-interest, at any cost.

 When the device of voice-over is used, one seeks after the utility in doing so : here, it seems to be to underline what has already been imparted, which is a sense of inevitability about the upheaval, of resigned fixity in the face of societal disintegration and chaos. Concluding a number of meetings that the screenplay choreographs, the architect Royal (Jeremy Irons) and Laing casually chat about these things, over a dinner of sorts (and that, as mentioned above, is specifically where one is put in mind of The Matrix Reloaded, when Neo encounters The Wachowskis’ Architect, and learns that he effectively exists and operates at the level of a computer program, albeit an anomalous one).


Charlotte Melville, after all, told Helen Wilder that Robert Laing is definitely the best amenity in the building (a building that, we should note, Royal's right-hand man Simmons claims, when Royal wants to sack him, to consider to be his employer, not Royal). On one level, as that terminal voice-over wants to suggest, High-Rise is about Laing, and the very familiar theme of the mercenary instincts of someone who becomes attracted to power, scheming, etc. (e.g. obviously O Lucky Man !, but also Bel Ami (2012), though it scarcely bears mentioning alongside Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) [It is better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody]).

On a parallel level within the film, and in common with Metropolis, which gives the youth of rich parents (such as Joh Fredersen’s son Freder) a sky-top place of pleasure in which to while away their hours (unlike the toil of working life underground, and the hours of respite on lower levels up from the workplace), High-Rise has an almost absurdly and floatingly unreal roof-space garden⁴. It adjoins The Architect’s penthouse, and, in imitation of Marie Antoinette at Versailles (cake is even suggested as a food at one point…), represents the life of the elite. (* NB Spoiler * Even if it is an elite that ludicrously believes that it can regain power by the implausible step of lobotomizing one individual, who is the perceived source of trouble.)


A still from Metropolis (1927)

God forbid, though, that Ben Wheatley, in filming this text, should leave us feeling cheated, as at the conclusion of Metropolis : no one need fear on account of appearing to be naively expected to embrace a resolution that, except on some symbolic level, hardly addresses the cause of all the disturbance and violence, by presenting a gesture and a form of words. (This highly unconvincing rapprochement that Fritz Lang gives us, as if it changes what we have seen, is mediated by Freder, between Joh Fredersen and Grot, the leader of the workers (and the foreman of The Heart Machine), who links their hands : we are told that There can be no understanding between the hands and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.)


Ballard must have explicitly wanted to reject that sense of papering over from Lang, but High-Rise arguably gives us not something else, but just the opposite extreme, where passionate urges do not get controlled reasonably. His novel, and its impact as a piece of writing, may be one thing. This film gives us, without the coherence or explanation that some might want (unless one simply subscribes to the view that an account of incoherent actions, intentions and the resulting processes and patterns has an innate right to be incoherent in its own right), a picture of where the brutal and horrific have become commonplace.


So what seemed grim and desperate when first seen is then how things have developed to be, with the connivance of all, and are as they are. But maybe Beckettt (translating himself from the original French of 1971), and not Ballard (from 1975), deserves the last word – who says, of those occupying the ‘flattened cylinder fifty metres round and [eighteen] high’ in The Lost Ones⁵ :

 Obliged for want of space to huddle together over long periods they appear to the observer a mere jumble of mingled flesh. Woe the rash searcher who carried away by his passion dare lay a finger on the least among them. Like a single body the whole queue falls on the offender. Of all the scenes of violence the cylinder has to offer none approaches this.


Post-script

 In The New Statesman (@NewStatesman), Will Self (@wself), who knew Ballard personally, and was even consulted by Amy Jump for that reason, concludes his piece about film adaptations of Ballard’s work (‘What would J G Ballard have made of the new High-Rise film ?’) by saying (about High-Rise) that ‘It may not be everyone’s idea of a laugh-out-loud film but, frankly, who cares what everyone thinks ? I don’t – and nor, quite obviously, did Ballard.’ Earlier, talking about when he met Jump, Self says (NB Contains spoilers) :

All I can recall saying is that she and [Ben] Wheatley had their work cut out, given that the novel has no proper plot to speak of, being, in essence, a series of flashbacks from a scene neatly encapsulated by the book’s opening line: ‘Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.’


End-notes

¹ Playing the sprightly theme from the Allegro of Bach’s so-called Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 (in G Major, BWV 1049) [the link is to a performance of the Concerto, by Das Freiburger Barockorchester, on YouTube] deliberately sets up an incongruity at the outset with the grotesque manner of domesticity that we are shown. (Elsewhere, Wheatley uses material from one or two more of these Concertos as a method of effecting a dislocation between the pleasant civility of the music and what he shows us.)

² Planning the city in Metropolis, Joh Fredersen is another architect, and, of course, all of these take their lead from freemasonry’s tenets. (Both have a regal bearing, but Ballard’s architect (Jeremy Irons) is even called Royal.)


³ On whose screenplay Amy Jump also worked, with the film's stars, Steve Oram and Alice Lowe.

⁴ However, unless visual distortion (or some strange geometry) is at work, the extent of the walled garden is not matched to the footprint of the building (which, although it shifts across at the top of the tower, does not change).

 ⁵ The Lost Ones, pp. 7, 59-60. Calder & Boyars Limited, London, 1972.




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday, 25 January 2013

Jean-Luc and François meet Ben, Alice and Steve

This is a review of Sightseers (2012)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

24 January

* Contains serious amounts of spoilers – watch the film first ! *

This is a review of Sightseers (2012)


What did I expect from Sightseers (2012) ? Well, the Twitter name Mr Wheatley kept appearing, along with Catherine Bray reporting that she had seen the film five or more times, and I had tantalizingly seen the poster, so I was aware that a caravan was involved, and knew the faces of the principals (well, maybe not one of them as what wasn’t covered by a hat bore a frown and a beard). I knew nothing else, which is the way that I like it – except that (I forget how) I was prepared for a few deaths…

Those principals (Alice Lowe and Steve Oram), I now know, had written the screenplay (with additional material from Amy Jump, whose name was all over the credits), which need not be unusual, but seems to be, and which appeared to have led to a very full conception of who Chris and Tina (together, Christina ?) are, and how they will behave towards each other and react with others.

I was very much reminded - and still am - of À Bout de Souffle (1960), not because Tina and Chris are as stylish as Jean-Paul Belmondo (Michel) and Jean Seberg (Patricia), but because of the common enterprise (though I did, also, think of Thelma and Louise (1991)) – someone with whom I shared this comparison called Tina and Chris ‘plonkers’, but saw what I meant.

The more that I think about it, the more binds me to the notion:

* Both men kick off the chaos, and the women fall in with it

* In Godard’s film, the shooting of the policeman is imprecisely shown (Michel spread-eagled, his hand on the gun, the shot, and the policeman falling into a ditch), so that we cannot be sure how it happened – Tina, though, is present when Chris reverses over his first victim, and maybe is almost initially convinced by his sobs that it is an accident that has ruined the visit to the tramway museum

* In both cases, there is something ludicrous about what happens – Michel running across the fields like a long-legged hare, and the pathetic details of the man under the caravan and his shaking hand

* The women fall in with it for very similar reasons, and Patricia just as much knows that Michel is wanted for murder as Tina does that Chris has killed, but both women are doing it to please the man and as part of finding out whether they love him

* In one case with a caravan, both films feature dangerous overtaking, though Michel’s is more than anything part of his general frustration with others’ driving, rather than to beat a rival to a pitch

* The separate development of the stories apart, with no sense that Chris is exhausted by what is happening (only irritated that Tina has herself taken to killing, and in ways of which he does not approve), the films converge again with the choices, depending on their feelings for the man, that Tina and Patricia make

* Patricia uses the number that she has been given to report Michel, and is not expecting his response that he will not run any more – nonetheless, just before he dies, he is still calling her a louse for what she did (and so remains, to the last, an unreformed child, loving or hating things and people depending just on how they please him)

* Chris is with Tina on the edge of the viaduct, waiting to jump, and he does, but she looses his hand, and he makes no attempt to grab hers and pull him with him


Are these the choices that we make in life ? To run with a man and help him steal cars as long as one loves him, whatever else he has done, and to embrace casual slaughter of others, but maybe hope to pass all the blame onto the person who is dead and cannot contradict what is said ?

Yes, in the Godard, there is a death, but as I have hinted at, what happens in uncertain, although the consequences are not, with detectives somehow knowing who Michel is, reports in the papers, and then the more and more crazy banners and announcements that proclaim that the police are closing in. All of this, and the brisk and casual manner of the film (with the very long bedroom scene at the heart of it), makes for a jumpy but light-hearted quality, because Michel, despite keeping an eye on his pursuers, seems focused on getting his money and escaping to Italy with Patricia.

The feeling about the deaths, largely, in Sightseers is that they are passed off casually in a way reminiscent of Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), although there is no attempt to disguise the bloodiness of the bludgeoning of victims 2 and 3. As with the Godard, we have the reports on the radio that alert Tina and Chris to what is happening, and likewise form part of the texture of the narrative (Michel’s photo is in the paper and so he can be recognized, and a description of Chris and Tina is also given).

So much for the comparison, although I think that there is a compelling case that the similarities cannot be there just by chance. Sightseers begins with Tina’s mother playing on her alleged weakness like someone out of Little Britain, and acting as a sort of Cassandra-like oracle by declaring to Chris I don’t like you ! and calling him a murderer. Later, whether sprawled for attention at the foot of the stairs, or surrounded by the remains of a Chinese take-away and by tonic and gin bottles, she punctuates the supposedly romantic trip.

Tina, with her nutty knitted bra and split-crotch panties, gets a disappointment when Chris feigns sleep on her, and it is only a couple of times what she might hope for (to judge from the rocking of the caravan, drawing fascination from the bystanders, when they first dive into bed). She is a confusingly entertaining mixture of innocence and its opposite, and, because of the matter-of-factness of the killing, it can be the backdrop to not so much the furtherance as disintegration of their relationship, as, another night, Chris gets drunk, rather than being with her.

We never really know who Chris is, or Tina, but that is not the point – whether he is ever telling the truth, e.g. about his job, injection-moulding, or Tina being his muse, the string that we saw being wrapped around pins at the beginning and mapping out their course is what we see unfold. And, with Tina, did the dog really die that way, and, if so, was it an accident, or a petty act of revenge ? Chris + Tina = Christina = two sides of the same coin… ?


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