The Future or How do you choose a satisying film? (Part 5)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 February

* Contains (almost nothing but) spoilers *

Probably full circle, and definitely the end of this group of postings, and to that alleged film The Future* (2011) and how, no less, it was sold to me by that clearly blasphemous publication, Picturehouse Recommends - sooner read Uncle Joe Stalin Rather Unequivocally Recommends**, and at least know where I stand and the permitted level of adoration!

I am confronted, once more, by that whole-page image of July*** (I think that the background has been edited out to make it more stark, as far as I recollect), leaning urgently out of the window as if - and this is the clever bit!? - some emergency is happening beneath her, and she is doing her best to intervene.

Rather than, when they both know that he should not be able to hear her (given where they both live), shouting nonethless - I forget what she does shout - to see if someone she has spoken to one the phone for the first time after all does. The image, as I say, suggests a crisis, because one wouldn't - unless Sophie (July) - go to the window with a hair-dryer and stick one's torso so emphatically out of it just to shout to someone who's not there, but it provides a great opportunity for the hair-dryer, a love-gift that has just been presented, to be pointed out of the window and suggest, in a phallic way, the direction of events and where her interest lies.

Redolent of that crazy connection that there is between teenage friends, who might try such a thing, rather than a woman of 35 trying to engage with an older man (Marshall) whom she probably didn't even meet when her partner Jason talked to Marshall and his daughter, and Jason, who had seen the drawing of the daughter's hamster (or whatever it was - possibly to raise funds for the animal welfare centre, possibly to line Marshall's pocket, as I don't recall, and don't intend to find out) bought it for Sophie.


The facing page is in two parts, the top about the film, the bottom about July. Here, mainly in order, are some quotations from what the write-up alleges (mostly, as if it were stating facts) from the top part, with a commentary as to why I take issue of them and believe that they built up a sigificantly misleading portrait of The Future:


July returns in typically charming fashion
I think that it’s very much a matter of opinion whether this film is charming – a Sundance jury might have thought it so, where a differently constituted one might not – and might not have found any real depths in this piece of work.


A film about confronting the stark realities of adulthood
Well, to be honest, this couple (meaning a pair of people, not an entity) does not have a clue about any sort of reality, and, if so, they have left it half their lives to address things that another generation does much younger than 35 (please see below - they are not a thirtysomething couple).


After weighing up all the pros and cons
I must confess that, aiming to skip the trailers, I missed the very opening minutes, and only met the three of them (including the cat, who confronts stark realities, for my money, far more meaningfully than Jason or Sophie does) when the humans have gone to collect the feline.

Only to be told that, allowing time for healing of the wounded (bandaged) paw, they must come back in twenty-eight days (or was it a month? I don’t care). They also learn that the thing that they have clearly been banking on, life-expectancy of six months, could be five years with love and care.

So whatever they weighed up offscreen to me, the two were never looking for a pet capable of surviving, but, frankly, an opportunity for short-term do-gooding, not a commitment to an animal’s life and well-being.

Of course, if they were wholly cynical (which they are too soft to be), they would go away, realize their mistake, and just call in to cancel the arrangement. But what arrangement? The clinic is crazy enough to say (words put into its mouth by July, and purely for reasons of the pretty thin plot) that it will put the cat down, after feeding and watering it for almost a month, if they do not show up – brilliant ethics for an animal shelter, and an insane way of spending someone’s money on sick or injured animals that you end up killing****.


[They] decide to take the next big step in their relationship: they are going to adopt a cat
As outlined above, they have no intention, at the outset, that this cat will be around very long – what big step? It’s more like an extended version of pet-sitting, with a limited duration. I do not know whether the clinic misled them initially, but they know that what they believed was wrong, and somehow, with a limited access to their own psyches, feel trapped with their previous decision. The write-up does not acknowledge any of this in:

But before they can bring their new pet back to their cost apartment, they will have to wait an entire month for the rescue centre to give them the all-clear
So, it’s hugely convenient that, when they expect that they are collecting the cat, they have a month in their questionably cosy dwelling (which may or may not be given a once-over by the centre) in which to regret being tied down – a bit like going to the dentist for an appointment for a filling, only to find that it is just one at which you are asked what sort of injection you’d like, and you have to come back another day for the filling.


With the big day marked on the calendar, our couple soon begin to fret over the consequences of their commitment
Yes, they fret straightaway about learning that it could be five years, but there is no actual commitment: they could pick up the phone and say ‘We’ve changed our minds’ – and let the centre kill the cat then and there? – is that the issue?


This mog’s going to tie them down; they will be trapped in a round-the clock routine for the next 10 years of their lives
It may be that what I missed is that this an HIV-positive LA cat, and thus that such a routine could be relevant, otherwise do these people really not know how capable cats are of looking after themselves? (They also, then, cannot have any friends who could do pet-sitting so that they go on vacation, and don’t know that, anyway, such help can be hired.)

Where ten years crept in from, I do not know, but Jason makes a rather fatuous speech that has been written for him to say that 5 years onto their 35 is 40, 40 is the new 50, and there’s nothing worthwhile in life then, so they are effectively dead now. Sadly, not very convincing, and even The Sophists of old came up with better reasons than that for the things of which they wished to persuade others: but it does need to allow those watching the film to believe these two credible, and their lacklustre thinking doesn’t do that.


[D]ay by day they drift apart. Until, that is, a moment of catharsis reunites their souls and reconnects them with their suburban world.
Funny, not in the film - of the same name - that I saw. Yes, they drift apart, but what is this cathartic moment supposed to be? Whatever it is, nothing reunites anybody's souls, and the rest is just fanciful padding!

Narrated by Paw-Paw (July herself putting on her best purr), The Future is a contemplative indie gem from one of American cinema's most enlightening free spirits.
So am I seriously being told that this film is enlightening? (And, yes, that was the cat's name, but, no, it doesn't narrate the film - it just narrates its own experience in the rescue centre of getting excited about going somewhere else and being happy, then reconciliation to not going there, then being killed, but there's an afterlife, so that's OK, and really contemplative, too!)

This may just be enthusiastic opinion, but it is making some pretty big claims, for July and The Future. In the section about her:

Like her films, she is understated, she is a citizen of a world far removed from the showy artificiality of Hollywood: the real world.
Oh, I think that I might vomit! It's not the studios' gizmos, hype and big budgets, so it must be good and appeal to those who prefer arthouse films - law of the excluded middle, again, for even if all Hollywood did = Bad, it doesn't follow that non-Hollywood = Good.

I end, speechless (at both ever having read this twaddle / seen the film), and feeling only that there is an enormous effort in this write-up to strong-arm me into why I should see / like it, viz.

Call her kooky or cute, but there is a truth in July's works that distinguishes them from other like-minded films. Without the slightest shade of pretence, The Future captures a tentative step along the potholed corridor towards middle age and an existential dead end*****.


End-notes

* Even Philip French (who he?) doesn't like it - he dismisses it in one outraged paragraph at http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/nov/06/the-future-miranda-july-review.

** By the way, none of this 57 varieties stuff about which I've just piffled on (at, funnily enough, 57 alleged varieties) - one bloody tin of soup and, if you're lucky, you might be at the head of the queue when that one tin is on the shelf!

But it beats all this possibility for deliberation as to whether this bloody 18-month-cured prosciutto is better than a 12-month-cured packet of real Parma ham... Reminiscent of 'Should I see The Future, or save my pennies for The Artist?'?

*** With just the title top right in pinkish capitals, and some details of actors, director, etc., bottom right.

**** Perhaps Sophie and Jason are paying (even though they went there to collect the cat)?

***** There is another sentence, but I just don't feel the need to inflict it on both myelf or anyone reading this posting.


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Tyrannosaur and Another Earth

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

23 December

* Contains spoilers *

Both hailed at Sundance, but how Paddy Considine's direction won a best award is beyond me, whereas Brit Marling / Mike Cahill's film did deserve all that it got (and probably more):


Did Tyrannosaur tell a story? Yes.

Was it pretty much a linear narrative? Yes.

Was the story shocking or innovative? Well, a man kicking his canine best friend to death because angry at someone else did jolt, but it just set the tone, only slightly offset as a stereotype by Joseph's (Peter Mullan's) being someone who can give a fuck (sometimes).

What was innovative about the direction? Yes, what was innovative about the direction?


In interview at Cambridge Film Festival, Considine was clear that: his script was the script; he is on the Autistic spectrum; and there was no role play / improvisation in sight.

For my money, he wrote a decent enough script, given what he wanted to tell a story about, but all of these actors* - Peter Mullan, for God's sake! - were quite capable of delivering it with minimal direction.

And the title and the poster image that incorporated and reflected it? Sheer red herring, as far as I can see.

Just part of this comfortable myth that Joseph had enough humanity to go with his brutality and bullying that he would be self-aware when telling Hannah (Olivia Colman) that calling her that name (i.e. 'the Tyrannosaur') was how he mocked his late wife's clomping around because of her obesity or disability (I forget which).

So I know which film praised at Sundance I'll be rewatching - on a screen, if I get the chance!


* Incidentally, a factor links the three main figures:


Peter Mullan

Olivia Colman

Eddie Marsan


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There is another Earth – and, wow, up there with Solaris! (part posting)

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

23 December

Something doesn’t have to be plausible to be genuine, human, warm and engaging, and elements of Another Earth are not plausible*, but that didn’t matter.

If I had earlier followed up, as I intended, the newspaper’s and Sundance’s recommendation to see this film, I could have given it the ‘watch it again and see if it matters / works’ test. However, this was the last screening most locally to me, so no another Another Earth for me just yet…

One thing to have known from a second screening might have been whether there were clues in the first 20 to 30 minutes that I missed that it was going to develop and build so dramatically. That said, there was nothing about it to say ‘Cut your losses, this isn’t going anywhere’, it’s just that it gave the impression of being unexceptional, which, start to finish, it certainly isn’t. (It would have take a cussed ‘This isn’t what it was cracked up to be!’ to walk out.)

Another would have been to know when Brit Marling’s luminous quality as Rhoda Williams first came through, because, again, I had the expectation from the write-up that the actress / co-director / co-producer was striking and her performance revelatory, which she and it are. For what she reveals, she sometimes also conceals, but there was a subtly amused tone to her response to what John Burroughs (played by William Mapother - a curious alternative to cartography!) was saying to her.


... To be continued - in another posting



* They are minor things, but criminal rehabilitation, both in prison and on parole, would have involved seeking to apologize to the victims of the crime or, as the case might be, being directed to stay away, because saying sorry wouldn’t be welcome.


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